The Log Lady Incident
By Jon Konrath
“FIGURE SKATING IS PROSTITUTION!” Odin yelled from the passenger seat of my VW, as we drove to Denny’s for the 23rd anniversary of the cancellation of Twin Peaks. He wore an SS officer’s uniform with a stick-on mustache and a fake plastic monocle, and sieg heiled the pedestrians as we drove through Jet City side streets, weaving through surface roads to avoid the I-5 pileups.
“Hey bro, you think we can drive through more school districts? Those crossing guard cops really dig the uniform.”
“He’s right,” said Freddy. “Every Washington cop that straps on a badge and a glock’s got a secret fascination for Nazi gear.” Freddy sat in the back seat, dressed as a very unconvincing Log Lady, trying to chop up some Sudafed tablets with a giant Gerber combat dagger on a Slayer mirror precariously balanced on his log. “I used to go to this Uncle Kenny’s Sex Dungeon off in Issaquah, the one right off of 90, and the FOP had gang-bangs there every month, crazy domination orgies and bondage marathons. They’d all dress like Goehring, Goebbels, the trannies all trying to beat each other and be the best-looking Eva Braun. There was even this one traffic cop, I think a local from one of those little hick towns right before Portland — what are those?”
“Longview? Kelso?” I asked.
“Something like that. Anyway, he was really into bestiality, had a bunch of german shepherds named after Hitler’s dogs. Some sick bastards.”
“YOUR MOTHER SUCKS HER GUATEMALAN OPTOMETRIST!” We sat at a 4-way stop, and Odin kept screaming insults at a group of ten-year-old kids waiting for the bus. “YOUR ECONOMIC PREDICTION MODEL OF THE VIETNAMESE GOVERNMENT IS USELESS IN A TARIFF-BASED ECONOMY! KILL YOUR DENTIST! DO IT NOW!”
I peeled out, not an easy task in a front-wheel drive diesel Rabbit with maybe two dozen wheel horsepower and skinny twelve-inch tires. “Dude, can you cut the shit? This is my car, my license plate number.”
“Sorry bro, I always assume everyone’s driving a stolen car,” he said. “I’ve never bought tags on any of my cars. The WADOT is slavery, dude.”
We pulled into the Denny’s, and I shut off the car stereo, which was playing the latest posthumous Euronymous project, a bunch of his black metal remixed to Sinatra standards and respun into dubstep by Mike Oldfield and Paul van Dyk. “Do we know who’s coming to this thing?”
“I don’t know man, but they were supposed to reserve the back bar.” For some obscure reason, when Schedule I drugs were decriminalized, every Denny’s in Washington State opened a shooting bar and trip room, separate from the main restaurant. You'd walk through the lobby, past the morbidly obese eating their Moons over My Hammy, and into an annex lounge with sports bar TVs hanging from the ceiling, and crusty old waitresses selling Sam Adams, Jack and Coke, methamphetamine samplers and PCP one-hitter pipes. Each lounge had a different theme, like the one in Ballard had all Swedish death metal decorations; one on Aurora was decorated in a hookers-slaughtered-by-serial-killers motif, and the location by the Lynnwood mall was all UFO conspiracy stuff, with an emphasis on anal probing. I think the dude that owned the Denny’s franchises in the Pacific Northwest had some serious problems as a child. He’d later get arrested for some torture-rape rap involving Rick Astley music, which got blown way out of proportion because of the rickrolling meme.
The server at the front podium asked us “how many tonight,” and Odin screamed “FUCK OFF BITCH!” as we blew past her and made a beeline for the back lounge. This one was done up with the theme of failed Microsoft products. Every flatscreen had a WebTV hanging off of it; instead of mini-jukeboxes at each table, they all sported Zunes; when you waited for a seat, they handed you a little pager thing that was a Windows Phone.
Inside, the tables were packed with people dressed as characters from M*A*S*H. A dude dressed as a zombie Colonel Blake bumped into Freddy, spilling his drink, which was one of those surgical beakers filled with moonshine, like Hawkeye and Trapper John used to brew in the swamp.
“WHAT THE HELL BRO?” Freddy yelled.
“Hey man, that’s the worst Klinger in drag costume I’ve ever seen.”
“It's a fuckin’ Log Lady costume!” he screamed. “What the hell is up with all of these M*A*S*H losers?”
“Dude, every Tuesday is 4077 night here,” he said. “You want a bong hit?”
“Freddy, you illegitimate son of a migrant farm worker!” Odin yelled. “Did you screw the schedule again?”
“No! The web page said it was Tuesday the 22nd, Shoreline Denny’s!”
“You are a god damned genius,” I said. “This isn't the shoreline Denny’s, it’s the Lakeshore Denny’s.”
“Partial credit — it’s on a shore, dude.”
“MOTHERFUCKER!” Odin yelled. “THOR’S FUCKIN’ HAMMER DUDE!”
“Look, let’s try to sit at the bar and get some chicken fingers and angel dust,” I said. I stole a menu from a cashier. It was all in Comic Sans, a throwback to Microsoft Bob.
- - -
Jon Konrath is an absurdist writer from Oakland, California. His hobbies include fantasy demolition derby and collecting nuclear hardware. Go read more of his stories and books at http://rumored.com
By Jon Konrath
“FIGURE SKATING IS PROSTITUTION!” Odin yelled from the passenger seat of my VW, as we drove to Denny’s for the 23rd anniversary of the cancellation of Twin Peaks. He wore an SS officer’s uniform with a stick-on mustache and a fake plastic monocle, and sieg heiled the pedestrians as we drove through Jet City side streets, weaving through surface roads to avoid the I-5 pileups.
“Hey bro, you think we can drive through more school districts? Those crossing guard cops really dig the uniform.”
“He’s right,” said Freddy. “Every Washington cop that straps on a badge and a glock’s got a secret fascination for Nazi gear.” Freddy sat in the back seat, dressed as a very unconvincing Log Lady, trying to chop up some Sudafed tablets with a giant Gerber combat dagger on a Slayer mirror precariously balanced on his log. “I used to go to this Uncle Kenny’s Sex Dungeon off in Issaquah, the one right off of 90, and the FOP had gang-bangs there every month, crazy domination orgies and bondage marathons. They’d all dress like Goehring, Goebbels, the trannies all trying to beat each other and be the best-looking Eva Braun. There was even this one traffic cop, I think a local from one of those little hick towns right before Portland — what are those?”
“Longview? Kelso?” I asked.
“Something like that. Anyway, he was really into bestiality, had a bunch of german shepherds named after Hitler’s dogs. Some sick bastards.”
“YOUR MOTHER SUCKS HER GUATEMALAN OPTOMETRIST!” We sat at a 4-way stop, and Odin kept screaming insults at a group of ten-year-old kids waiting for the bus. “YOUR ECONOMIC PREDICTION MODEL OF THE VIETNAMESE GOVERNMENT IS USELESS IN A TARIFF-BASED ECONOMY! KILL YOUR DENTIST! DO IT NOW!”
I peeled out, not an easy task in a front-wheel drive diesel Rabbit with maybe two dozen wheel horsepower and skinny twelve-inch tires. “Dude, can you cut the shit? This is my car, my license plate number.”
“Sorry bro, I always assume everyone’s driving a stolen car,” he said. “I’ve never bought tags on any of my cars. The WADOT is slavery, dude.”
We pulled into the Denny’s, and I shut off the car stereo, which was playing the latest posthumous Euronymous project, a bunch of his black metal remixed to Sinatra standards and respun into dubstep by Mike Oldfield and Paul van Dyk. “Do we know who’s coming to this thing?”
“I don’t know man, but they were supposed to reserve the back bar.” For some obscure reason, when Schedule I drugs were decriminalized, every Denny’s in Washington State opened a shooting bar and trip room, separate from the main restaurant. You'd walk through the lobby, past the morbidly obese eating their Moons over My Hammy, and into an annex lounge with sports bar TVs hanging from the ceiling, and crusty old waitresses selling Sam Adams, Jack and Coke, methamphetamine samplers and PCP one-hitter pipes. Each lounge had a different theme, like the one in Ballard had all Swedish death metal decorations; one on Aurora was decorated in a hookers-slaughtered-by-serial-killers motif, and the location by the Lynnwood mall was all UFO conspiracy stuff, with an emphasis on anal probing. I think the dude that owned the Denny’s franchises in the Pacific Northwest had some serious problems as a child. He’d later get arrested for some torture-rape rap involving Rick Astley music, which got blown way out of proportion because of the rickrolling meme.
The server at the front podium asked us “how many tonight,” and Odin screamed “FUCK OFF BITCH!” as we blew past her and made a beeline for the back lounge. This one was done up with the theme of failed Microsoft products. Every flatscreen had a WebTV hanging off of it; instead of mini-jukeboxes at each table, they all sported Zunes; when you waited for a seat, they handed you a little pager thing that was a Windows Phone.
Inside, the tables were packed with people dressed as characters from M*A*S*H. A dude dressed as a zombie Colonel Blake bumped into Freddy, spilling his drink, which was one of those surgical beakers filled with moonshine, like Hawkeye and Trapper John used to brew in the swamp.
“WHAT THE HELL BRO?” Freddy yelled.
“Hey man, that’s the worst Klinger in drag costume I’ve ever seen.”
“It's a fuckin’ Log Lady costume!” he screamed. “What the hell is up with all of these M*A*S*H losers?”
“Dude, every Tuesday is 4077 night here,” he said. “You want a bong hit?”
“Freddy, you illegitimate son of a migrant farm worker!” Odin yelled. “Did you screw the schedule again?”
“No! The web page said it was Tuesday the 22nd, Shoreline Denny’s!”
“You are a god damned genius,” I said. “This isn't the shoreline Denny’s, it’s the Lakeshore Denny’s.”
“Partial credit — it’s on a shore, dude.”
“MOTHERFUCKER!” Odin yelled. “THOR’S FUCKIN’ HAMMER DUDE!”
“Look, let’s try to sit at the bar and get some chicken fingers and angel dust,” I said. I stole a menu from a cashier. It was all in Comic Sans, a throwback to Microsoft Bob.
- - -
Jon Konrath is an absurdist writer from Oakland, California. His hobbies include fantasy demolition derby and collecting nuclear hardware. Go read more of his stories and books at http://rumored.com
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Jon Konrath IS an absurdist and well-loved in the blogging community, despite his denying the existence of Tupperware and his insistence that cats stand when he enters a room.
Pearl
Tupperware is a CIA plot to cover up the JFK assassination! If you can't cover up your bowl with saran wrap, you are a patsy just like Oswald!