All Entries Tagged With: "dining out"

Other Names for The Boogie Man

(and The Boogey Woman in different cultures)

La Chula Chaqui

(ghosts in Peruvian Desert)

Would approach a lone rider at night during a blinding sandstorm and hurl him from his horse onto the barren ground where he would often trample or beat the hapless victim until first light.

El “Homem del scan”

(Child stealer of Bahia)

The sacking man or the bag man takes disobedient children along to live with bands of madmen. Known in Brasil, Portugal, Angola, Cape Verde, and Mozambique. He or she creeps through open windows at night and lives in damp basements, embracing the light of day only to do evil. He kidnaps naughty children in broad daylight and carry them away in a sack. Depending on regional variants, he either sells the children or eats them.

The Coco

(Latin American poltergeist)

Monster who visits the confused and disoriented, the self-defeated and people frightened of new things. Appears in black or bright red at sundown and stays all night. Lives under beds and in dark closets. A bugbear. Often used to refer to groundless, irrational, illogical or exaggerated fear.

Buga Buga

(Constant nightmare in Northern Europe)

A shadowy, amorphous ghost who hides in dark places in order to frighten unsuspecting victims. He’s more of a nuisance than a danger, and his power is easily neutralized by bright light. Netherlands. Other known whereabouts: Belgium, Germany

Bokkenrijders 

(Vengeful marauders in Italy and Spain)

These creatures of fright are ghost robbers riding on flying goats. These boogies were  actively created by thieves in the 18th century to intimidate and terrorize local farming communities. Haunts southern Europe and South America. In Northern Europe he often works as Saint Nicholas’ evil sidekick.

Baba Yaga

(Cold, cruel and deadly)

A Slavic witch of the Russian forests. She lives in a shack that stands on giant chicken legs, rides around in a flying mortar and carries a giant pestle. Unpredictable with humans, she is just as likely to help you as eat you. 

H’awouahoua

(The most horrible presence in North Africa)

A terrifying Algerian monster – the H’awouahoua is described as having a body composed of conflicting government entities and eyes that are blobs of flaming bullshit. It only votes by party line and spend most of its elected term getting reelected.To top it off his coat is made from the clothes of the many children it has eaten.

Tokoloshe

(The Wizard’s Helpers in South Africa)

Tokoloshe are water sprites who do the bidding of evil South African wizards. They can become invisible by drinking water then pouncing on and grabbing at children. One might protect himself from Tokoloshe while asleep by placing a brick beneath each leg of your bed. That will keep them at bay while rituals take control. Final banishment will require the services of a witch doctor.

Gurumapa

(Himalayan beasts now pacified?)

The Gurumapa iof Nepal was a man-eating giant who abandoned his evil ways and enjoys a position of honor in Katmandu in exchange for not eating local kids. He is known to consume an entire water buffalo in one sitting.

Wewe Gombel

(Benevolent, yet frightening witch)

Female spirit, Wewe Gombel kidnaps Indonesian children in order to save them from bad parents. She lovingly cares for them in her nest atop a palm tree, refusing to return them until their parents alter their abusive or neglectful ways.

Namahage

(Japanese ghosts on the New Year)

These Japanese ogres go from door to door on New Year’s Eve, looking for children who have misbehaved that year. They celebrate the season by carrying away children who are lazy or insolent.

Mètminwi

(Island Fiend of little discretion)

This Haitian boogeyman is described as a man with incredibly long legs who walks around towns at midnight to catch and eat anyone who is still outside. His name is a contraction of the French maître (master) and minuit (midnight).

La Llorona

(Wandering murderer searching for peace)

This Mexican ghost of a woman who drowned her children in order to be with a man who ultimately spurned her. Destitute, she drowned herself — but she’s barred from entering heaven until she finds her children. At night, she wanders along the riverbanks looking for them, crying “¡Ay mis hijos!” (Oh my children!) and snatching any child she mistakes for her own.

Socialism

(Frightens the sheep)

This very American spirit confronts the ancient concept of the divine right of the rich to rule. Socialism is not the boogyman that breaks down the door at night with a machine gun and furry Russian hat. That terror is attributed to communism or fascism. Instilling fear in the hearts of the great unwashed keeps the poor from seeking what is theirs while paying taxes and tribute to a rogue government that represents only the rich. Most of the people who are afraid of socialism cannot define the term. These people have been brainwashed into believing that they are included in a Big Boy Democracy when there is not one. Until people stand up to these fictitious soul-eating intruders, the monsters that plague them will continue to marginalize their lives and invade their sleep.

– Fred Zeppelin

The night the little people took over O’Leary’s

By Pat O’Neill

     Straight away let it be said that Irishmen are often prone to hallucinations of mind and spirit.

     I know that, for certain, great grandpa came from Kerry and was well acquainted with lots of leprechauns and many a mermaid.

But I’ll be swearin’ to this tale that I’m about to tell. For, it really did happen. And I’m not one to be makin’ up drivel.

     It was just a week ago tonight that I was rousted out from under the cozy confines of my electric blanket by the post midnight rattle of the telephone.

     On the other end, talkin’ a mile a minute and in all the official language he could muster, was none other than himself, our local police chief.

     “Mr. O’Neill,” he said. “Upon checking the latch of your bar this evenin’ we did notice that you went off and left the lights blazin’ and the jukebox blastin’ one of those Irish songs you insist on botherin’ yer customers with.”

     Well, this was unsettling news, for, although I didn’t dare tell the chief this, I knew as sure as Harp has bubbles that I had doused the lights and unplugged the box when closin’ the joint just a few hours previous. So, keeping my wits about me, I assured the concerned cop that everything was fine and dandy, but that I would drive down to O’Leary’s and check things out my own self.

     Which is what I did.

     And upon arriving at the outer limits of the snoring little town of Parachute, all muffled by a soft layer of new snow, I ascertained that, sure enough, my old brick and boards pub was twinkling wide awake like a tree on the courthouse lawn at Christmas time. A curious thing, in the least. For just hours ago the last whiskey had been spilt and the last human fixture removed from a barstool and sent home to his mad wife and happy dreams.

     Now, it is not that I place any stock those old tales about pukas and banshees or boogiemen, but I thought it’d be to my benefit and safety to approach the old building with a degree of caution. And I did. I sneaked up on the back door with the car lights off and cased the place before doin’ anything rash.

     Just as the chief had said, the lights inside were shinin’ full tilt and the box was blastin’ a reel to beat the band. Takin’ a quick peek through the crack in the door I could see that there wasn’t a soul inside and that all that electricity was goin’ to waste.

     Now it’s not a brave man that I am, but one concerned about hefty bills from Public Service. And so I fit the key in the lock and pushed my way inside.

     The place was empty, spooky almost. The bottles shined in the light and the ghosts of my customers in hard hats seemed to wave at me from their assigned perches along the bar. And then I shut the door behind me.

     Laughter and Irish curses rolled over me then. Pipe smoke hung around the lights and small figures began taking shape in every chair and on every stool. Gartered bartenders standing on empty beer kegs were pouring draws and sloshing pitchers about behind the battered mahogany bar. The Wolfe Tones reel that I had been hearing before had changed to enchanted flutes and fiddles, the likes of which my ears had never before been blessed with.

     And I stood there with my keys in my hand and began counting in my head the number of Murphy’s that I’d allowed myself before goin’ to bed and concluded there was only two and that on Grandma Maggie’s grave I wasn’t drunk. Yet, the little people partying there around me paid me not so much as a random glance.

     There were fat roast beefs and platters of fried cabbage soaking in butter and sprinkled with sugar all about and a bottle of my best Tyrconnell on every table. Guinness was running from every spigot like faucet water. Faery queens in crimson velvet and capes of ermine flitted about the dance floor enraptured by the Irish airs being woven from the flutes and strings and bones of a faery band.

     At the biggest table a group of little men refilled their glasses and clapped time to a newly uncorked jig. They were fun-faced little gentlemen, dressed not as pretentiously as the women; in velvet derbies with matching vests and silken knee stockings.

     And, sure as I can’t doubt my own two eyes, there was Liam O’Leary, my great grandfather’s own arrogant leprechaun, sittin’ at the head of the table. On his right sat a sparkle-eyed old man who looked, like me, to be of the mortal persuasion. By the devil, he was familiar to me, too.

     But just then O’Leary eyeballed me standin’ with my feet stuck to the floor by the back door and in an instant the music stopped and the tiny revelers all froze in their tracks.

     Should I not have been caught so dumbstruck, I might have asked to see all their I.D.s.

     “Well O Danny be the divil, if it isn’t the martal bahrkeep, himself,” O’Leary said winkin’ to the old man on his right. “And I see ya got the invitation we sent ya, Pathrick.”

     Beaming at his sawed off cohorts Liam bragged. “What a grand party it is, too, if I do say so meself! Come over here, laddie, and sit by me and your grandfaether. Have a tumbler full of this bad beer.”

     Sure enough, that old fellow was my great granddad, himself, who promptly poured me a glass o’ golden lager beer which, when tasted, kicked magically like stout. This being done the party resumed and from then hence no one paid me any never mind. Except my handsome, gray-headed great grandfather, “Big Pat.”

     For a long enough time he merely rubbed my already tousled head and stared at my soul with his old politician eyes. Family stories had always held that “Big Pat” had had a way with the little people, that his Democratic oratory in the Pendergast precincts had been blessed with the butter of blarney because of his being held in good stead with the magic folks.

     I guess I already knew, even then, that the old man from his place in Heaven — or the furnace room, as the case might be —  had been keepin’ a close eye on me, his namesake, because O’Leary had told me as much on a previous occasion.

     The first time the obnoxious little imp appeared in front of me– long ago in a dimly lit college newsroom — he had blasted me in the name of my departed namesake for bein’ “phony Irish.,” for thinking that my heritage was a pitcher of green beer, not in centuries of suffering and English spit.

     That night grandpa didn’t have to say anything. I knew this was just another small reminder. I knew why I had been summoned the night the little people took over O’Leary’s.

     St. Paddy’s Day was coming soon. The bar, of course, would be done up in banners and plastic party hats. The Jameson and Murphy’s and Harp and Guinness would run like the Shannon. We would surely wax phony Irish to beat the band.

     The old man was in my bar that night to make sure I could still see through the green costumes, the cardboard cutouts and crinkly St. Pat’s hats and know that to be Irish was to be rich. That the people strong enough to have stayed on the “ould sod,” deserved more than a toast on March 17. They deserved a piece of my Irish heart and soul.

     The following morning I woke up on my front porch sharin’ a blanket with the dog, sifting through various excuses (for my wife) and explanations (for myself).

My Grandma’s Irish Stew

Actually this recipe comes from my great grandmother, Mary O’Brien,

who moved to New York from County Tipperary in 1858.

*Fry equal portions of lamb and beef in flour and oil (About one pound of each)

*Add eight medium size potatoes and a dozen carrots.

*Add three stalks of celery, 1/2 an onion and two small cloves of garlic.

*Put ingredients in caste iron cook pot, cover and simmer for twenty minutes.

*Salt and pepper to taste

*Add two fifths of John Powers Irish whiskey

*Simmer for 45 minutes. Serve with soda bread and a keg of Guinness.

If any portion of the above ingredients seems too extreme feel free to cut back on the suggested amounts. For instance: Maybe there are too many carrots for some tastes.

– Kevin Haley

Who’s Afraid of The Ides of March?

Today is, or begins, the Ides of March depending on which interpretation one follows. While the only person in recorded history whose demise is connected to the date (s) Julius Caesar, there is no reason for any of us to take chances what with spring just around the corner.

The initial problem with The Ides is grammatical in that the term is singular and can be used only with a singular verb. The Ides is is correct while The Ides are is hillbilly talk.

When attempting to examine The Ides, most reference is to the assassinated Roman Emperor brought back to life by William Shakespeare in his tragic 1600 play, Julius Caesar.  Here he coined the term The Ides of March in order to amaze and frighten the English peasantry, who populated most of his weekend audience.

Along with all this ascribing to Caesar, we found little mention of much else: a Thornton Wilder novel and the website of Ides Inc., a plastic materials information managements company. Despite the fact that Czar Nicholas abdicated on March 15, 1917 Julius Caesar has corned the market on The Ides which have become synonymous with the offing of this particular dictator 2050 years ago.**

Robert Krulwich, of National Public Radio suggests that the hit men themselves celebrated the successful coup by singing Roman beer drinking songs such as 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall using Roman numerals. The thought of swooning Roman senators belting out mathematically challenging tunes at what he calls an “Apres Slaying Party” is certainly a possibility. However, did they do it before or after a trip to the vomitorium?

Precautions taken for The Ides should be simple and direct. Experts suggest that if one must leave the house he should not mingle with congregating bodies of politicians in strange haircuts. In addition, he should particularly avoid government buildings with marble steps and columns. Do not respond to invitations from anyone named Brutus, Cassias, Boomer, Portia or Bluto. Cease your power trips. They may provoke violence on the part of already, agitated colleagues.

And don’t go anywhere wearing only a flimsy toga. It may be starting to look warm outside but it’s still winter and you could freeze your arse.

Getting back to the scene at the Forum, it is apparent from his arrival from Gaul that Caesar is about to go under the knife.  It is likewise clear that Brutus orchestrated the murder with the help of Ligarius and Trebonius (who allegedly preferred piano wire to knives) while Cassias was only supposed to drive the getaway chariot.

The plan itself was childish. Had leaders like Cicero and Publius not been out campaigning or investigating the ethics of their colleagues in the senate they might have long in advance ferreted out the planned attack and called the Praetorian Guard. They might have blamed the whole attempt on Gaelic terrorists and bumped up the military ante. God only knows the Gauls had a motive to waste Caesar after all that reconnoitering up north.

But alas, poor Caesar.

*Hereafter we will refer to the Ides of March as The Ides because we want to. The Ides are the 15th day of March, May, July and October and the 13h day of the other months. The Ides of March is the first day of spring.

**Of note: there is the instrumental, The Ides of March, by Iron Maiden from the album Killer acknowledging the event.

Continued from “Brasilia in Flames-Amazoa Revenge”

Continued from the front

then draping taut clusters of Kapoc and pieces of ancient Sumaumeira trees around the windows and doors so that they could insulate themselves from the ever-creeping jungle now intent on engulfing the entire logging camp. Over across the clear-cut pastures it was much the same.

“During the day everything is fine as well-armed burning crews set out to reclaim more virgin rainforest so as to run cattle and plant soybeans,” said one Quechua source. “The Amazon can never recover from this wanton destruction.

“The smoke can be seen for miles and miles. The smell of the executed trees is overwhelming. At dusk the men return to the makeshift camp and then all the retribution starts. The sound of the plants moving en masse and the screams when they take a worker are nightmares many of us will never outlive,” continued the Quechua man, who lives in a traditional village nearby – one that is threatened by the mass destruction.

Terrified eyewitnesses report that massive vines as well as epiphytes like moss and bromeliads lead the initial assault, trapping stragglers and choking many of the often drunken residents of these filthy, diesel-infested sites. During sleeping hours the situation grows worse as plentiful Euterpe Precatoria and tough rubber trees join in the one-sided massacre of smothering and strangulation. In the morning there is little else to do but dig shallow graves in the sandy soil and go to work cutting and burning, hoping to punish rogue plant life and discourage another night’s rampage.

“The governments and the land barons do not want this news to get out, as one might imagine,” said the indigenous source. “All that violence might get someone’s attention and the mindless burning and cutting brought to a halt. After watching this struggle emerge night after night I realize that not only the native people are of no value to these agricultural monsters. We are all expendable.”

Scientists working for several South American concerns agree that it is highly unlikely that a confederation of plants is at the root of the havoc. They say workers have simply stumbled onto bad whiskey and have imagined the hellish harassment, the nocturnal dosage, and the jungle’s spell.

Despite the downplay by the experts local authorities are on alert after reports of monkey brush vine, pitcher plants (carnivores) passion flowers (pollinated by bats) and Victoria Amazoa perched within striking distance of towns and cities that harbor plant murderers (homicidam donari flora, genus: tropicae silva).

– Suzie Compost

Mobs Attack Science Fair

(Cajones, MO) Prompted by local climate deniers an angry crowd attacked an itinerant science exhibit here scattering participants and obliterating over 100 booths before disengagement.

The mob, leftover from an anti-immigration rally held here last night smashed displays and interrupted demonstrations of alternative energy and evolution before moving on to burgers and fries in a secure pavilion provided by a local soft drink concern.

The Earth Is Flat Society, the Know Nothing Party and several local religious sects denied involvement in the destruction although leaflets distributed before the assault bore the birthmarks of previous intervention.   

“It’s the devil’s workbook,” said one Calvinist preacher. “There is nothing about these secular postulates in our teachings. They are dirty like sex education and voting for a Democrat.”

Physics and chemistry are not offered in the mandatory public education curriculum…especially at the middle school level. As a result many of the zombies involved in the violence see these disciplines as witchcraft.

Progressive elements, busy cleaning up the mess, blamed the outburst on the use of Teflon in the kitchen, the constant exposure to talk radio and the daily consumption of trash food.

“It’s the standard xenophobic boilerplate,” said one chemist from Moline. “Up until now no one has successfully produced stupidity in a test tube but it is not for the lack of effort.”

– Juliene Pettifogger