[PDF]Mere Malarkey Alan Good

MERE MALARKEY


SELECTED
NONFICTION





PNYPVIBOTIIIL





Mere Malarkey


Selected Nonfiction
Ebook version


Alan Good


Death of Print


No need to pirate this book as it will be available for free in
the internet archive as well as the Malarkey Books Pirate
Library. As far as reviews go, quote away. If, like, you want
to make a movie out of something in here (weird but okay)
I’ll probably say yes if you give me some money.


Published by Death of Print in 2021
Deathofprint.press
Cover and book design by Alan Good.


Print ISBN: 978-1-0879-7102-5
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-0879-7101-8


Turning and turning in the widening gyre The
falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...


—William Butler Yeats


I don’t believe in writing tidy essays. Any essay I
write is a huge mess just like me.


—Alan Good, on twitter, March 18, 2021


Contents


Stupid
The Bedbug_Theodicy
The Animal Review Review
Wish I Knew How to Write Poems
A Life on Paper Review
Skammon Sense
Hayes Carll Appreciation
John Prine Appreciation
ParaBull
Serotonin
Roll Call
Motion
Scars
We Live in Hell
Snake Stories
Experimental Literature
A Brief History of Nakedness Review
American As Fuck
Interstate
God and War From Above
Yes Day
Time for Baseball
Inauthentic
The Bottom of the Mountain
Parenting Award
Conversation in a Chairlift
Disclaimer
Obit
69 Rules for Novelists
Knowing What to Say
How to Not Make Very Much Money...
Mental Hellness
Shoal Creek
Frontline
June 10
Why Do We D














This book would not exist without thse Neutral Spaces
blog. I also recently learned that on the first day of my
parents’ honeymoon in Branson, Missouri, the cabin they
were Staying in was struck by lightning and burned to the
ground. So I guess this book also would not exist without
my parents ignoring a pretty clear sign from heaven for
long enough to bring me into the world.


Stupid
Neutral Spaces
February 3, 2021


God, about twenty-one years ago I guess I was walking my
dog around the neighborhood. I had spent a few months in
Colorado, working at Subway, then working at Wal-Mart,
but I was back in Joplin for the summer. I never used to
take the dog on a walk. I just decided to do it. What
happened on this walk has stuck with me for so long, I’ve
thought about it so many times and felt guilty about it
because I did the wrong thing and got called out for it. My
dog took a shit in somebody’s yard and I hadn’t brought
any plastic bags to pick it up even though I had learned
from living in Colorado that you’re supposed to pick up the
poop when you walk your dog. I had never seen anyone do
this. It never occurred to me people would do this. This
dude came out of his house and said “Hey, man, let your
dog take a shit in your own yard next time.” It was close to
noon but this guy looked like he’d just got out of bed. He
was scruffy and thin but muscular. He was wearing pajama
pants and a wifebeater. Someone might email me or
something to tell me I shouldn’t say wifebeater, I should say
A-shirt. That’s fine and all but if you want wifebeater to
disappear from the vernacular you really have to have
something better than A-shirt to replace it with. This guy, to
you, might not seem that great, but to me in that moment
he was unfathomably cool. He was just so nonchalant and


easy-moving. He wasn’t mad, he wasn’t yelling, he was just
telling me to let my dog take a shit in my own yard like he
was my mentor. I never had a mentor. Every time I tried to
have a mentor it just all went to shit. I was embarrassed,
and I just said “Okay, sorry,” and hurried away in shame,
but in my head I thought, I’ve got to start wearing
wifebeaters.

Whenever I do something stupid, which is more or less
all the time, I think about my father, who once shot an
arrow through his hand. He was shooting with his buddies.
I think this was back when he lived in Stafford, Kansas,
where I was born. They were drinking beers in the
driveway, taking turns shooting at a target, with the garage
door as a backstop. If I’m getting any details wrong it’s
because if I was even born yet I was a baby, and my dad
told me this story a few years ago, and since I’m not
writing this for The New Yorker I don’t have to bug him for
fact-checks. He missed the target and his arrow struck the
garage door, and the next time he shot with that arrow it
splintered on release and part of the shaft went through
the webbing between his thumb and index finger. This
essay Started as a tweet. Like I said I’m kind of stupid.
When my wife saw my tweet she replied “That’s where all
your stupid shit comes from.” I’ve been thinking about my
father a lot lately because I’ve moved back to Joplin.

We had planned to move to the farm. My grandpa’s farm.
When he died his three remaining children got it, and my
mom handed her share over to me a couple years ago. This


place has always had a hold on me. It’s magic to me. I want
to spend the rest of my life there. My wife and I talked
about moving out there and building a house several years
ago, but we finally decided not to because the schools are
shit, but now I think we figure who knows when we’ll send
the kids back to school anyway so fuck it.

We were going to have a mobile home brought out, a nice
one, 1,500 square feet, way bigger than our house in
Denver, so we did a lot of work getting our site prepared.
We rented an excavator and ran water and electric and
installed a septic tank and three hundred feet of lateral
lines. That’s where the wastewater goes. After it’s treated
in the septic tank it flows out and filters into the soil
through perforated pipe. The grass is always greenest over
your lateral lines.

We'd call the mobile home place to check in and they’d
tell us it should be two or three more weeks. We figured
while we were waiting we’d build a garage. Spent weeks on
that. We kept calling the mobile home place every week
and it was always two or three more weeks. Finally we
realized it was going to be more than two or three weeks,
finally they told us they had no idea when it would be ready,
because of covid, and we finally just canceled. On their
website they said they were taking every precaution; when
we went to their office no one was even wearing a mask.
Can’t believe they all got it. So now we have water, electric,
and septic, but no house. We’re going to build it ourselves,
my wife and me. We are stupid.


So that’s how I’m back in Joplin, my hometown. We’re
renting a house right in my old neighborhood, one street
over from the house I lived in when I was in high school.
That house is still standing. The tornado just missed this
neighborhood. This year is the tenth anniversary. Bad
omen. My wife has started working and everyone has a
story about the tornado. I wasn’t here. I was living in
Colorado. I’m writing this in early February but just last
week there was a tornado warning. The sirens went off and
my kids were so scared. There’s no basement in the house
we’re renting. No shelter. Not even that last resort, an
interior room away from windows. I stuffed some essentials
in a backpack, car keys, laptop, raincoats, water bottles, a
few granola bars, a pistol because we live in hell. We
huddled in the little hallway outside the bathroom. Closed
the bathroom door and the bedroom doors to block the
windows. My kids were holding on to each other so tight. It
was nice to see even though it was so sad. They fight over
the stupidest things, which is hard for me to understand
because I was an only child for a long time, had no one to
play with or talk to or fight with except my dog and my
imaginary friends, until my dad remarried and I got step-
siblings, but I never fought with them. I guess it’s different.
Oscar, who is five, said “I’ll always remember you George,
mom, dad, and Charlie.” Fucking adorable. I wasn’t scared.
I’d been through this a million times growing up. I just kept
thinking how stupid it was to come back here.


Our temporary house is also right down the street from
the garage apartment where Bonnie and Clyde hid out from
the cops for like twelve days until some upstanding citizen
of Joplin ratted them out. Probably the most interesting
thing that ever happened in this town.

In our little rental house we have a little folding table
next to a window that overlooks the little porch. My kids sit
here in the morning and with the light on they can see their
reflections in the window and they like to pretend their
reflections are their friends, who are out there on the porch
copying them. Fucking adorable. I feel so bad for them, it’s
unfair the way their lives have been disrupted, by covid, by
us. We’re supposed to be living up at the farm right now.
They were supposed to each have their own room right
now. But they make everything normal. They’re adaptable.
They have such big hearts. I should be trying to teach them
right now but I’m letting them play. It’s George’s birthday.
His mom is at work but we let him open one of his presents
before she left. He’s putting together a new Lego set and
his little brother is watching and playing with his own
Legos and I’m using the time to write this stupid essay.


I do think it was the right thing, coming back. In the long
run it will feel right but right now, a lot of the time, it feels
stupid. Fuck it.

This neighborhood is dead. No one seems to live here. So
many houses are empty. People don’t go outside except to
smoke. It’s just me, walking among the ruins. It’s fine that
way because there’s still a pandemic and I don’t think it’s


ever going to get better and I don’t want to see anyone
anyway. I have a new dog. Charlie. He’s a black lab and
he’s got this curly tail. Fucking adorable. I take him on
walks three or four times a day because we don’t have a
fence. I walk past that house every day, my old mentor’s
house. I always hurry by because I’m afraid my dog will
take a shit in that yard.


The Bedbug Theodicy
Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency
September 16, 2009


On August 4, 2008, I sat down with my girlfriend to enjoy a
leisurely, late-morning breakfast of fried potatoes and
strong coffee. We had returned the previous evening from a
ten-day trip visiting family in Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas,
and Oklahoma. We enjoyed the visit but were happy to be
back in Denver, where the weather was less oppressive. We
took our breakfast on the living-room couch and discussed
the trip, for much of which we were apart. I felt something
crawling on my foot and casually brushed it off. I looked
down and saw a brown insect crawling on the floor toward
an old chest that served as a coffee table. I shoved the
chest, blocked the bug’s path with my foot, and grabbed a
nearby hunting knife. My movement attracted Virginia’s
attention. She looked down and said, “Oh my God, it’s a
bedbug.”

I squashed the bastard with the back of the blade, and
she stood up, shaking, and said she felt something crawling
up her leg. She pulled down her plaid pajama pants and
flicked away another bedbug.

Unlike ticks, fleas, and other bloodsucking insects,
bedbugs presently don’t spread disease, but their bites are
irritating, and their presence leads to anxiety, insomnia,
and nausea. They are brown parasites, comparable in size


to apple seeds, that resemble miniature hand grenades.
Bedbugs—or things, as Virginia calls them—are generally
nocturnal but are sometimes (as in our case) active during
the day. They hide in tiny crevices and can survive for
several months, sometimes even more than a year, between
meals, which can lead their human victims to a false sense
of security and accomplishment. They are attracted by
warmth and carbon dioxide and can feed on poultry or
mice, but they prefer human blood, and they inject an
anesthetic before drawing out blood in order to dine
undetected.

Bedbugs, after a few quiet decades, are resurgent across
the globe and can be found in homes, apartment buildings,
college dorms, homeless shelters, and hotels, or anywhere
humans spend time. Some experts attribute the recent
increase in bedbug populations in part to the 1972 ban on
the pesticide D.D.T., which could not discriminate between
bedbugs and bald eagles. If bedbugs were the antagonists
in a horror movie, this would be the sequel. We blanketed
the earth in pesticides and believed the bastards dead, but
they’re back with a vengeance... and they’re hungry for
blood.

The most important thing to know about bedbugs is how
to kill them, the cheapest way being, as illustrated earlier,
the ruthless application of force. A certain amount of
therapy accompanies this method, as well as a high level of
nausea.


After the initial tears and suicidal ideations, we called the
building manager, and he came over and sprayed some
kind of pesticide, although he probably should have waited
until we had left. I generally oppose chemicals but was in
no emotional state to object. We bagged all our clothes, and
I called my mother, who drove down from the suburbs to
collect us and our garbage bags. She drove us to a
Laundromat near her house, and we spent more than $50
and endured an uncomfortable conversation with a strange
man who had recently seen a television program about
bedbugs and seemed excited to encounter people with real
field experience. (He had been eyeing us and
eavesdropping on our conversation, and then someone let
slip the keyword, which served, in his mind, as an
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