HOT HOT HOT!

Is your love life currently residing at the bottom of a cat box? Are you feeling that something's missing in the boudoir? Do you crave excitement and a night of sensuous fun? Want a good time with Sluggo? Meet me this Tuesday night at Luxuria Music ( www.luxuriamusic.com ) and we'll see where the evening takes us!

The fun will begin on Tuesday, September 18, at 8 PM PST (that's 10 pm for you Midwestern studs and stud-ettes, 11 PM for you East Coast hotsters) during the "Love Hour" at Luxuria, hosted by none other than Ron Sures, whose velvet voice will enliven your evening and raise your...spirits. Join us in the Make-Out Room for an evening of sprightly conversation and wicked fun! And for all you voyeurs ("I like to watch") there's a live studio webcam and videocam chat--so you can view the DJ in all his sexitude AND see what the other Luxurians are doing during the show!

To access the Make-Out Room, just log in to Luxuria...you will need to join but it's a painless process (OK, we'll make it painful if that's your bag, we have a whip and some spurs) and then click "Chat" on the main page.

If you want MORE MORE MORE, go to the Peepshow at www.stickam.com/profile/luxuriamusic and click on the large Luxuria image to the right of the screen. If you already have the equipment and aren't afraid to use it, become part of the show by joining Stickam!

The first Tribe friends of Sluggo who show up in the Make-Out Room or the Peepshow will receive a three-pack of special-edition Luxuria Music condoms AND a limited-edition Tiki pin from yours truly, who hopes to meet each and every one of you for a polymorphously perverse evening of musical hotness!

When at Luxuria, be sure to go to www.luxuriamusic.com/Article226.phtml and share your favorite three songs for knocking boots! Then tune in to the special edition of "Let's Get It On" with the Lovemeister himself, the Millionaire, to see if your choices made the cut! "Let's Get it On" will air Saturday, September 22 and 29, at 7 PM PST (9 PM central, 10 PM eastern).

Hope to see you there! Bring your favorite beverage and we'll play.

one word

OK, OK, Sluggo is also stepping on to the trolley. Please leave a one-word comment that you think best describes me -- it can only be one word long. Then copy and paste this in your journal so that I may leave a word about you.

It ain't insulation.

For the individual who said "What's the problem? It's just a little poop in the attic."

This is what you call "a little poop in the attic"?

The entire attic looks like this.

I hate raccoons.

I just wanted to give a shout out to my burgeoning horde of Constant Readers, all three of them, and let everybody know there is news on the home front. And man oh man, the news ain't good.

Apparently, the attic of Casa de Crockett was being used as a veritable Shit Amusement Park for a ravenous clan of angry raccoons with intestinal problems, to the tune of an estimated $7,500 in extra cleanup costs, and a week of rehabbing and hazmat suits. The attic is completely trashed and is loaded with piles of raccoon shit and, I'm told, worse...what could be worse than raccoon shit?...I can't imagine. Well, maybe I can imagine. It's not something I want to imagine, though.

We are mulling over our options at this point. These options include going to the sellers in a Righteous Fury and asking them to split the costs of attic rehab, because there's no damn way they didn't know what was up in that attic. I am moderately sanguine about our chances at this point because I think these people just want to get rid of the property. It's a drug on the market. Sure, they cut the costs tremendously, but you have to wonder how much further they will go. I think the fact that they were selling what amounted to a toxic waste hazard with no disclosure of said fact may be in our favor, since we are more than willing to correct this defect if we can get a little help in doing so. This is eating into our comfortable profit margin to the extent of putting us into red-line territory.

Another option is to put our stuff in storage and get an apartment in Merrillville and just go shopping all day until we find a place. This is tempting but it sure ain't Casa de Crockett. We kind of have our faces fixed for Casa de Crockett. Plus, the idea of going round and round again, looking at shitholes and hiring inspectors and placing offers, is not very appealing to yours truly. I'm not seeing any good-looking houses, not even with the most current listings available. Some of you have heard about the Crazy House and the Hoosier Daddy. There was also the Cape Cod Almighty, which was priced at about $130,000, stank of raw sewage, had no appliances, had plastic pipes that wobbled if you sneezed on them, had 70-year-old wiring and an oil tank in the basement, not to mention an angry ghost lurking in an attic closet. I say "angry" because it had majorly bad vibes and it tried to push my daughter down the stairs. I saw it.

Did I mention that we close on our house (and have to be out) a week from Wednesday?

And is Casa de Crockett worth all this Sturm und Drang? Yeah, it is. It's a veritable mansion. I guess the question is how far are we willing to go and how much chutzpah do we have? I have beaucoup chutzpah (sorry for the mixed languages) but poisonous raccoon shit is enough to disturb anybody's sangrfroid.

I don't have any photos of raccoons so here is a photo of my grandfather and great-grandfather going fishing. I sure wish I was fishing. I wish I was anywhere else except packing all these fucking boxes and worrying about where the fuck we're going to live next week.

A good reason to move.

We had a neighbor here who was Bad Juju. She was in her late forties and she looked like the end of a very bad road indeed. She was flabby and tired and kind of sad and her husband weighed 400 lbs., wore jumbo overalls, and looked like that guy who chases Pee-Wee Herman around with a dinosaur bone in the movie "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure." Anyhow she had the hots for old Chucko and expressed her longing by sitting on her front steps every single fricking morning, drinking her coffee, wearing an old chenille bathrobe and nothing else. When Chuck walked past the patio door, something that he tried to avoid doing whenever possible, she would expose her Piazza di Espagna and bat her eyes at him (and unfortunately, at anybody else who was in the line of fire). Then she would go inside and just disappear for the rest of the day, sometimes even leaving her coffee cup behind. We never saw much of the husband except once in a while he'd be walking up and down a road several blocks away, leading a very tiny poodle on a five-foot leash. These neighbors had kids, two sad-looking little girls, and everyone was very quiet and kept to themselves except the mom who had "issues."

Then it all stopped. It gradually dawned on us that nobody had really seen the entire family, including old Hotpants and her fuzzy, for at least a month. They were living there but only coming out under cover of darkness, if at all. It was like Willy Wonka's factory: nobody goes in, nobody comes out. People came and went and rang the doorbell and sometimes pounded on the door, but nobody answered and we suspected murder had taken place. But the real reason was revealed when one day the police came, banged the door down, hauled everything out of the house, dumped some of it on the front lawn, took a lot of it away, then shut the door and padlocked it. After all the goods and chattels had been piled on the lawn, it started to rain like blazes and the entire thing was the saddest situation I have ever witnessed, though I was glad in a way, because it meant I didn't have to look at that woman's tired old fuzzy any more.

It turned out that the family hadn't paid any of their bills for almost a year and the people at the door were various collection agencies and representatives of the association, and finally the place and much of what was inside it had been repossessed. And when new owners moved in, they said the interior looked like a hobo encampment because all the water and heat and electricity had been turned off and they had been living like nomads in the basement for quite a while.

This situation still haunts me and it could happen to any of us, except for the tired old fuzzy part. Eviction is probably preferable to having to look at THAT every morning.

Real real estate.

As some of you know, Chez Sluggo is in the process of relocating our swanky establishment to another site, and this means playing a crafty game of (business) cards which goes something like this:
1. Clean and fix up your old house, and then ask for top dollar;
2. Find somebody else's house that has also been cleaned and fixed up, and then offer them way, WAY less than top dollar.

I say "cleaned and fixed up" but this is not always the case with some prospective homes, which often appear to have been slathered with buckets of paint atop anything which doesn't move, including household pets that were too slow to get out of the way of the paint roller. Another gambit is to make sure the electricity is turned off so you can't look at inconvenient details like that hole in the bathroom wall, or the four-foot crack in the basement floor, or the scorch marks in the bedroom closet.

There have been many "humorous" looks at real estate jargon, of which we have seen a lot these days, so I offer up to you yet another "humorous" look at what that jargon actually means in Real Life, judging from what I have seen this past few weeks. For example, let's imagine you're looking at a listing which runs as follows: "Pride of ownership shows in this charming three bedroom home. Open concept LR/DR and kitchen, 4 fireplaces, fenced back yard for enjoyable evenings, loads of features, 3 baths, can be nice with a little TLC, bath in basement totally remodeled, great view, seller motivated, make offer."

When you look at the place, this is what is actually meant:
--"Pride of ownership": The outside looks marginally better than the inside even though this means they stuck plastic cemetery flowers in the dirt by the front door.
--"Charming": Not charming.
--"Three bedrooms": One fairly large bedroom, one miniscule bedroom, and a dank, dark cubbyhole in the basement with a closet nailed on.
--"Open concept LR/DR and kitchen": It's one big room with a fridge and a stove at the end of it.
--"4 fireplaces": One wood box fitted with a gas fireplace system and three electric space heaters (no, I am not making this up, I saw it).
--"Fenced back yard for enjoyable evenings": There's a four-foot high chain-link fence surrounding a bare plot of dirt, which still looks better than the inside of that house.
--"Loads of features": It features all the requisite doors and windows. It also features atrocious wallpaper, pink shag carpeting mottled with stains, and "DAD" plaque stapled to the basement wall which features purple wood paneling. The house also features holes drilled in the kitchen floor for no apparent reason, and it features an odd smell running through the house that you cannot quite identify, it is either that of lizards or an incontinent dog, but it does not smell good.
--"3 baths": There is one bathroom upstairs with an old tub; there is a sink and toilet in the palatial "master bedroom suite"; there is a toilet in the basement which is just sitting there in the middle of the room.
--"Can be nice with a little TLC": You will need to remove wallpaper from every room, tear up all carpeting throughout the house, replace all the rotted kitchen cabinets, tear out all the flooring, pull out all the hideous paneling in every room, repaint everything, install a new sidewalk, replace three cracked windows, retile all the bathrooms, replace all plumbing, replace all appliances, redrywall the ceiling where somebody put his foot through while installing a ceiling fan, and hire somebody to remove the enormous half-dead tree in the front yard before it comes crashing through the roof. Oh, and you will also need to replace the roof.
--"Great view": Of the neighbors' really nice-looking houses.
--"Seller motivated": Please, please buy this house, it has been on the market for a year and nobody wants it.
--"Make offer": Please, please buy this house, it has been on the market for a year and nobody wants it.

In the meantime, I have also found that when a listing contains the following term, DON'T GO ANYWHERE NEAR IT.

--"Sold As Is" with no further descriptions whatsoever: Oh, dear Lord. Run away. Call an exorcist. Do what it takes, but don't go in that house.

Family matters.

Reading Tremain's great blogs about his family has moved me to submit one about my own folks. A favorite family story and one of my daughters' favorite childhood bedtime tales has always been a story about my fourth great-grandmother, Jane Marshall Daviess. I grew up hearing a very truncated version of the story: "And then there was the time your great-great-grandma was captured by Injuns," with not much other detail.

So I had already planned on writing this, but imagine my excitement when just now, while looking for a photo or map to augment the blog, I found an even more detailed account of the story, which I now submit for your approval.

"Mrs. Daviess was another of these women who, like Mrs. Williamson, was a born heroine, of whom there were many who acted a conspicuous part in the territorial history of Kentucky. Large and splendidly formed, she possessed the strength of a man with the gentle loveliness of the true woman. In the hour of peril, and such hours were frequent with her, she was firm, cool, and fertile of resource; her whole life, of which we give only a few episodes, was one continuous succession of brave and noble deeds. Both she and Mrs. Williamson appear to have been real instances of the poet's ideal: 'A perfect woman nobly planned To warn, to comfort, and command.'

"Her husband, Samuel Daviess, was an early settler at Gilmer's Lick, in Lincoln County, Kentucky. In the month of August, 1782, while a few rods from his house, he was attacked early one morning by an Indian, and attempting to get within doors he found that his house was already occupied by the other Indians. He succeeded in making his escape to his brother's station, five miles off, and giving the alarm was soon on his way back to his cabin in company with five stout, well armed men.

"Meanwhile, the Indians, four in number, who had entered the house while the fifth was in pursuit of Mr. Daviess, roused Mrs. Daviess and the children from their beds and gave them to understand that they must go with them as prisoners. Mrs. Daviess occupied as long a time as possible in dressing, hoping that some relief would come. She also delayed the Indians nearly two hours by showing them one article of clothing and then another, explaining their uses and expatiating on their value.

"While this was going on the Indian who had been in pursuit of her husband returned with his hands stained with pokeberries, waving his tomahawk with violent gestures as if to convey the belief that he had killed Mr. Daviess. The keen-eyed wife soon discovered the deception, and was satisfied that her husband had escaped uninjured.

"After plundering the house, the savages started to depart, taking Mrs. Daviess and her seven children with them. As some of the children were too young to travel as rapidly as the Indians wished, and discovering, as she believed, their intention to kill them, she made the two oldest boys carry the two youngest on their backs.

"In order to leave no trail behind them, the Indians traveled with the greatest caution, not permitting their captives to break a twig or weed as they passed along, and to expedite Mrs. Daviess' movements one of them reached down and cut off with his knife a few inches of her dress.

"Mrs. Daviess was accustomed to handle a gun and was a good shot, like many other women on the frontier. She contemplated as a last resort that, if not rescued in the course of the day, when night came and the Indians had fallen asleep, she would deliver herself and her children by killing as many of the Indians as she could, believing that in a night attack the rest would fly panic-stricken.

"Mr. Daviess and his companions reaching the house and finding it empty, succeeded in striking the trail of the Indians and hastened in pursuit. They had gone but a few miles before they overtook them. Two Indian spies in the rear first discovered the pursuers, and running on overtook the others and knocked down and scalped the oldest boy, but did not kill him. The pursuers fired at the Indians but missed. The latter became alarmed and confused, and Mrs. Daviess taking advantage of this circumstance jumped into a sink-hole with her infant in her arms. The Indians fled and every child was saved.

"Kentucky in its early days, like most new countries, was occasionally troubled with men of abandoned character, who lived by stealing the property of others, and after committing their depredations, retired to their hiding-places, thereby eluding the operation of the law. One of these marauders, a man of desperate character, who had committed extensive thefts from Mr. Daviess, as well as from his neighbors, was pursued by Daviess and a party whose property he had taken, in order to bring him to justice.

"While the party were in pursuit, the suspected individual, not knowing that any one was pursuing him, came to the house of Daviess, armed with his gun and tomahawk,—no person being at home but Mrs. Daviess and her children. After he had stepped into the house, Mrs. Daviess asked him if he would drink something; and having set a bottle of whiskey upon the table, requested him to help himself. The fellow not suspecting any danger, set his gun by the door, and while he was drinking Mrs. Daviess picked it up, and placing herself in the doorway had the weapon cocked and leveled upon him by the time he turned around, and in a peremptory manner ordered him to take a seat or she would shoot him. Struck with terror and alarm, he asked what he had done. She told him he had stolen her husband's property, and that she intended to take care of him herself. In that condition she held him prisoner until the party of men returned and took him into their possession.

"These are only a few out of many similar acts which show the character of Mrs. Daviess. She became noted all through the frontier settlements of that region during the troublous times in which she lived, not only for her courage and daring, but for her shrewdness in circumventing the stratagems of the wily savages by whom her family were surrounded. Her oldest boy inherited his mother's character, and promised to be one of the most famous Indian fighters of his day, when he met his death at the hands of his savage foes in early manhood."

Chapter 9, "Some Remarkable Women," from "Women on the American Frontier," by William W. Fowler
historicaltextarchive.com/books.php

To me, one of the best parts about this story is the fact (not mentioned here) that Jane Marshall Davies was only just out of childbed, having delivered a baby only a few days before the Indian attack. I can't imagine what it was like, going through childbirth at all whilst living past the very edge of civilization, let alone being dragged through the woods by Indians, so it boggles my mind.

Hoosier daddy?

Well, boys and girls, we just got back from our first look at the real estate market. It was a loud, honking wake-up call and no mistake. Trying to spend as little as possible for a new residence is not a very good idea, unless we are extremely lucky, and...no, not even if we are extremely lucky are we going to be able to find anything for as little as we had hoped to spend. We did a walk-through at two places and it was not very good, but the real-estate agent is wonderful, I like her a lot, and I place my trust in her capable hands. This agency comes well-recommended, the people are nice, and they take care of you, which is important. But let's cut to the chase.

We are rather taken with what is called a "Hoosier home" design, an example (though by no means not the best example) of which can be seen in the photo here. Hoosiers have this great retro look. Built in the early 50's, they all have the same original layout: long triangular line, carport, picture window with 12 panes, L-shaped brickwork, fireplace, basement, and (theoretically at least) a nice amount of space inside: three bedrooms, an extra bathroom, large living/dining area, and so on. But here the similarity ends. Some have been rehabbed and remodeled and look like va-va-voom, while others...well, others are kind of sad and lonely and bereft. On our budget, we just looked at the latter kind of Hoosier and it didn't ring any bells. However, hope springs eternal. The idea of having a neat little '50s pad is a fine one and these homes have got style.

The first house was a Hoosier, as I said, and our walk-through revealed that the entire thing was in such a state of disrepair we would have to replace everything--so we just shook our heads "no" and went to the second house, thinking (since it was for a lot more money than the first) that things would be different.

And things were different, indeed.

Oh, dear Lord, were they different.

The house was literally two blocks away from the lake and the exterior led us to believe it was a sweet little 40's brick home, very gemutlich, but closer inspection from the outside didn't exactly raise our hopes any. And then we went inside.

I have never seen anything like it in my life, nor had my family, nor had the real estate agent. Words almost fail me but I will try to give my impressions. There was no electricity in the house. Living room in mirrored tile with orange sunburst motif, with 12-inch black wallpaper borders on top of it; dining room in contrasting smoky-webbed mirrored tile, more wallpaper borders; kitchen a big empty hole with only original cabinets under many coats of paint and contact paper, counter original Formica with burns and belt-sander marks, crumbling linoleum, and the biggest damn silverfish I have ever seen: trophy size, mounting size, probably eating size for all I know. The back porch was literally caulked shut and three different layers of tile flooring in various states of undress gave a nice Mondrian effect to the dirt and cracked glass and peeling paint theme.

Hot-pink bedroom with handpainted "murals" of cartoon land: Grumpy dwarf head on Popeye's body, a raddled Snow White, more contact paper, lime-green splashes of paint. Lime-green and sky-blue bedroom with strange handwritten notes on the walls, and "Number One Mommy" ribbon stapled to doorframe. Bathroom deep blue, more contact paper, black toilet, I got scared in there because it was dark and murky, and ran out before I could get any more impressions. Then we went upstairs. Oh, sweet Jesus on a handcart, we went upstairs.

The "bedroom" turned out to be the entire length of the attic, which was swathed in no less than five layers of contrasting wallpaper, the top layer of which had been painted in more hot pink, lime green, sky-blue in random slabs of color. The ceiling tiles were collapsing and, no doubt, emitting many pestilential wisps of toxic asbestos, as were the random peeks of insulation gasping out of holes in the wallpaper. We beat a quick retreat down the stairs and went to the basement.

They saved the best for last. It was all black and red and very dark but we could it was clean as a whistle. We could also see there were chains suspended from the ceiling in various locations, one with a wrist strap. On one of the chains, somebody had impaled a Troll doll that appeared to have blood on it oozing from the nails attaching it to the chain. There was a toilet against the wall, reminiscent of visits to the ladies' room at O'Banion's, and next to it was a crude cartoon drawing with a Bible verse and a mention of cutting throats and disembowelment. We noted, however, that the furnace was new.

When we tried to leave the house, the door refused to lock, and I don't know how the agent and my husband managed to get it shut again, but they did. While they were fussing with the lock, I looked up at the street address: 6615, or 6 - 6 - (1+5=) 6.

We have since determined that we can afford way more house than we thought. It was not just a real estate ploy to get us to buy higher, either. It's the truth. We spent the rest of the day looking at other houses from the street and I can see that while money goes farther in our future neighborhood, it doesn't go as far as we previously believed.

But who got the checkered flag?

All right kiddies, gather round for another happy funtime tale from Sluggo's Bedtime Story Book. Everybody comfy? Good. Here we go.

Many years ago, after my parents got divorced, my mom was engaged to a very nice Italian guy from the South Side of Chicago. His official occupation was in the field of newspaper printing, but his actual occupation was working for a large group of Italian guys who have no fixed business address and do a lot of interesting things that are generally outside the limits of the law. His name was...we'll, let's call him Dave because that was not his actual name.

Dave was a really neat guy and I liked him a lot. He was always bringing us nice little gifts, I don't quite remember most of them, except for the time he showed up with a purebred miniature poodle for us to keep. We went to dinner at his house and his parents, Mama and Papa S (who were, of course, also Italian) would make a big dinner and we'd eat in the kitchen and listen to Mama and Papa shouting in Italian, and Papa would have a little glass of wine that he'd let you sneak a taste of, and if you looked out the kitchen window you could watch the White Sox game (or at least hear it) because they lived practically across the street from the old Comiskey Park.

Dave eventually became enamoured of stock car racing and then Demolition Derby, and spent a lot of time at Raceway Park in Blue Island, where we used to live. He got an old car and he painted my sister's name on it, and my name on it, and we would go to see him drive it around.

One night after the race he came home with us and we had pizza, and it was fun, and then my sister and I went to bed.

At some point in the middle of the night I heard the most horrendous noise I ever heard. I can still hear that noise. It sounded like a gorilla had escaped from the zoo. So I tiptoed out of bed and ran to my mom's room.

There I found my mom and Dave, both stark naked and both wearing crash helmets.

Since there wasn't much I could do about the situation, I went back to bed. They didn't even notice I had been there because it is very hard to see or hear out of a crash helmet in a darkened bedroom in the middle of the night.

Not long after this, Dave disappeared from my mom's dating horizon and from ours. Nobody was sure what happened to him. The story I heard years later was that Dave ended up at the bottom of the Chicago River with a pair of cement overshoes. Whether this is true or not, I can't say.

I was about seven years old and this experience confused me so much that it wasn't until I was about sixteen that I finally got it mentally straightened out. Now that I am older and wiser, I realize one thing: wearing crash helmets during sex is really not a bad idea and it just might save some lives, so go out and buy yourself a crash helmet today. Tell 'em Sluggo sent ya.

More edumacational woes.

If I haven't been answering e-mails or being Out and About it's for a good reason. The crise du jour is now my older daughter, who has the same medical problems I have: rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis. She's missed an entire week due to her back being in a high state of OUCH. Since I am having a corresponding flareup and am similarly crippled at the moment, it's been like the blind leading the blind, except blind people generally have healthier spines.

My daughter finally returned to school today, her back gave out, and I had no way of getting her back home...so I got a bunch of calls from the school nurse. The nurse wanted her OUT of the office and informed me she was sending my kid back to class.

"Oh no you don't," I told her, "she's in there for a reason."

The nurse also told me I need to rent or buy a wheelchair and they can have somebody push my daughter around from class to class. No, thank you. She also wanted yet ANOTHER copy of the physician's note exempting her from PE. The school tends to lose these notes, or they take exception to the wording. It's always something.

So tomorrow I will have TWO students enrolled in Firesign Academy. Anyway, to my friends who sent e-mails, I will answer them within the next day or two, but this is why I've been uncommunicative over the weekend and today. I'm so tired of this structured corporate "educational" bullshit, I could just scream. The teachers at the high school are wonderful, I have no complaint with them, but I'm tired of going in there every month to discuss disability plans, only to find that nobody HAS a disability plan.