3.31.2006

Bizarro World

When we last left our hero he was working nights at Disneyland, wishing fervently for a jet pack, and mulling over stories that might be big foot sightings, might be leads in unsolved homicides.
I'm still working at Disneyland and I'm beginning to get use to the strangeness of it all. It really came home to roost a couple of weeks ago when I was fertilizing grass in the rain by myself at two o'clock in the morning when I tripped over a tiny little house. That's when I thought to myself, "This is, indeed, bizarro world." But that's not the only bit of weirdness.
Let me start this story with a little disclaimer: On a moonless foggy night, surrounded by a thick planting of trees, an animatronic indian looks a whole hell of a lot like a non-animatronic indian.
The meeting went like this. Walking....walking....walking....bump. [turn - indian face]. Me yelling something that sounded like, "Kra-florb-bak!" and running in place for a couple of seconds.
Of course, I know that my odds of bumping into an actual tomahawk wielding Cherokee in the middle of Anaheim in the year of our Lord two-thousand and six are rather slight, but that particular factoid has surprisingly little relevance in the woods somewhere behind Frontierland at 2:30 in the morning. I mean, even if it wasn't a real indian, what kind of guarantee do I have that one of the janitors didn't flip his lid, strap on a loin cloth, and head into the brush in search of human prey? It is the ultimate game after all.
Or consider this. It is the magic kingdom. Nobody ever specified what type of magic. What if it's some kind of scary indian magic? No such thing as "scary indian magic" you say? Have you ever seen Poltergeist? I rest my case. Speaking of Poltergeist, I have something to say here. Let's pretend I'm a magical dead indian and some yutz builds his house on my grave. Further, my scary indian magic allows me to manipulate the physical world. I'm scalpin' folks. I don't play around. Scalp comes off, people go away. That's a rule that works whether you're a dead indian or not. Instead, what do they do in the movie? Push a chair across the kitchen. They even do it on command.
Magical corpse: Me push-em chair across kitchen. Make heap big scratch in linoleum. Careful what you wish for, pale face.

Guess what. If you want people to leave, you gotta do some serious haunting. You know, chain rattling and floating knives and stuff. Kick that passive aggressive ghost action to the curb, man.
Oh no! What will they do next?!? Put all my butter in the freezer so I rip my bread when I spread it? Maybe throw a red shirt in with my whites?
Oh, oh, wait. That's gonna be my new reality show. I'll have a couple of 20-something roommates live in a house with a passive aggressive ghost. The weekly house meetings are gonna rock.
Roommate #1: You used up all the ice and didn't fill the tray.
Ghost: I'm sorry. I don't know what you're talking about.
Roommate #2: We were gonna make banana daiquiris tonight but there was no ice. You were here by yourself all day.
Ghost: What do I need ice from a tray for? I have a freezing spectral touch. Even if you handed me a glass of water, I couldn't hand you water back. It automatically just turns into ice.
Roommate #1: Let's hate him
Roommate #2: Totally.
Ghost: Whatever, I'm going to my tomb.
What was that I was saying about bizarro world? Oh yeah, the world is bizarre. It's not me. It's the world.