Author: Fred Blahnik

You cannot CONTROL the future; you can only DEAL WITH the quadrillion vagaries it unceasingly throws your way.  You are the undisputed servant, and fate is your stern taskmaster.  Life on Earth has always been this way and forever will be.  We should hope for the best and fear the worst.  Pray for rain while installing a deluxe irrigation system.  Hope the bully backs away as you ball your hands into fists and estimate the distance from your right foot to his crotch.  Slip a condom into your pants pocket while knowing full well it will likely still be there at the end of another luckless evening.  This is not being pessimistic or necessarily fatalistic; it only articulates and reinforces our human status as an infinitesimally puny lifeform in an infinite Universe that we will never be able to fully comprehend.  And if we are arrantly unable to comprehend our role and our place in a cosmos that defies description, of what value is our limited intelligence?  Precious little.  Human life matters, but then again it doesn’t matter too much; its main import lies in the eye of the beholder.

Just try your best to splice this upcoming day together one piece at a time…..one step at a time…..one thought at a time…..one breath at a time…..if that is what you have to do to survive it.  Never get too far out ahead of yourself.  Don’t take shortcuts with time.  The next moment is all that really matters, and then the one after that, followed by the one after that, the one after that, et al.  Lives are led sequentially, and we cannot hopscotch from one day to the next without experiencing all the moments in between; there is no condensed version of living.  But come to think of it:  Why on Earth would anyone pine for such an asinine thing anyway?!

 If not here…..where???  If not now…..when?????  If not me and you…..who???  All relevant questions, these, and all must be suitably answered before you can cavalierly walk away from a pressing dilemma without lifting a single finger to address it.  But if fashioning convenient excuses is your standard modus operandi and you never like to get involved in others’ business because you might run into—Gasp!!!—messy complications, now is the time to speak up and swiftly remove your sorry carcass from these premises, okay?  You’re either with us or you’re not; you cannot be both.  You cannot be split down the middle. You cannot be cut in two.  Trust me, we’ll get by just fine with or without you—preferably without you if your attitude continues to remain so shitty and self-centered and distracting.  A friend in need is a friend indeed, and you sure as hell ain’t behaving very friendly right now, Two-faced Asshole!  The door out of here is right over there, okay?  Why don’t you use it before I lose further patience and provide significant additional boost for your imminent exit with a fast-moving, well-placed foot into the cleavage of your bulging gluteus maximus muscles…..

Note: Excerpted from the forthcoming memoir “Jim Blahnik: Separating the Man from the Myth”, written by James P. Blahnik and edited by Frederick J. Blahnik

“Green Death”

By James P. Blahnik

First, allow me to provide a little background information for my assorted readers to make this story more complete.  In the fall of 1961 I was scheduled to do my student teaching assignment at Spring Valley High School–Spring Valley, Minnesota—while in pursuit of a high school teaching degree from Winona State College (it was still “College” at that time rather than the more pretentious “University”, a name change which was to come myriad years later).  Commuting from our Blahnik family farm just northeast of Austin, Minnesota was impractical and undoubtedly too far for someone living on cartoonishly limited means like me.  My Uncle Fred and Aunt Catherine Blahnik, who lived and farmed seven miles north of Spring Valley, next sprouted angels’ wings and graciously invited me stay with them for those three months of student teaching, simultaneously making my educational internship feasible and greatly reducing my living expenses.  I obviously jumped at their offer without thinking twice.

                One Saturday that fall Fred and Catherine invited me to ride along with them on their weekly grocery jaunt to Spring Valley, and I gladly accepted their offer.  My social schedule at the time, given the fact I was living about forty miles away from home and didn’t know a soul in or around Spring Valley, wasn’t exactly bursting at the seams so even an invitation to chaperone my middle-aged aunt and uncle on a pedestrian shopping excursion sounded about as exciting as personally attending the deciding seventh game of a hotly contested World Series.  I should probably note here that Catherine did not possess a Minnesota driver’s license (her choice) at the time and so that is why grocery shopping for the married couple was a two-person endeavor.

After Fred parked their car in front of the grocery store in downtown Spring Valley, Catherine suggested that I might like to accompany Fred over to the municipal liquor store across the street from the supermarket to have “a beer” while she shopped for household goods.  I had turned twenty one years of age the previous spring and felt that one beer was more than doable since I’d had a few myself during my legendary earlier sojourn in Winona (Heh heh heh!!!).  Thus my short, stocky, nearly bald uncle and I sat down at the bar in the liquor store and I expected Fred would probably order a popular tap beer, which he would then sip leisurely while relishing every last drop. 

Wrong!!!

Wrong ten times over, Jim!!!!!

Fred immediately ordered a can of Stite beer from the bartender.  My readers in the year 2021 have probably never heard of Stite before.  I had.  Having listened to a phalanx of neighboring farmers whispering conspiratorially with Cheshire grins away from the womenfolk when I was much younger, I knew that Stite packed a much bigger wallop than ordinary strong beer; the alcohol content in that tepid stuff is somewhere around five per cent.  Conversely, Stite was a malt liquor and contained around fourteen percent alcohol.  In other words, it possessed the eye of a tiger and the kick of a furious mule.  Of note, Stite malt liquor was also nicknamed “Green Death” owing to its putrid green color.  Stite came in eight ounce metal cans that required the use of a “church key” type opener to punch a hole in the top before one could consume any of the contents.

                I figured that Fred would unhurriedly sip on his can of Stite while I casually drank my twelve ounce glass of tap beer.  Wrong again!  Fred chugged that small can of malt liquor like a Green Beret on a deadly mission and instantly ordered another even while I rushed to finish my glass of draft beer.  Catherine usually took about thirty minutes to do her shopping so Fred was obviously operating on borrowed time, and trust me when I say he knew it and knew it well!  If I recall correctly, that wild man from the rural environs north of Spring Valley threw down FOUR Stites  in all and we subsequently stumbled out of the tavern with glazed-over eyes and slurred speech and met Catherine just as her groceries were being loaded into the trunk of their massive automobile by a supermarket employee.  And I must confess to my readers right now that I was having a hard time keeping the four glasses of draft beer I had poured injudiciously down my gullet in less time than it takes to fart in cadence from suddenly reappearing unexpectedly out of the same orifice they went in just minutes earlier.  I don’t remember much about the ride home to Fred’s and Catherine’s farm north of town that day, but the fact I am writing this essay right now offers incontrovertible proof that Fred somehow managed to navigate the route safely.  A little voice in the back of my brain tells me the man probably had considerable practice doing so…..

Now let’s fast forward several months to January, 1962 after I had returned to Winona to continue my matriculations at the state college located there.  It, once again, is a Saturday afternoon and I’m sitting alone in the sparsely furnished room another guy and I have rented for next to nothing.  For some reason which I don’t recall today, I decided to do some drinking.

                And not just wimpy, piss-ant drinking either……

No no no, professional, industrial-grade drinking like only a lonely college kid feeling down on his luck can do!!!

Hence I threw on my bulky parka and trudged a few blocks down the street to a nearby liquor store.  Perhaps recalling Fred’s Stite escapades from a few months before and how much my squat uncle had seemed to enjoy the putrid green stuff, I purchased a six-pack of Stite malt liquor.  Upon returning to my rental room I proceeded to consume that entire six-pack, but at an admittedly much slower rate than Fred had done back in Spring Valley.  Things would have turned out great if this story ended right now, but of course it doesn’t because that would be wholly unentertaining to my readers.  I decided to retrace my steps back to the same liquor store in downtown Winona and bought a second six-pack of Stite malt liquor.  I believe I threw down one more can of “Green Death” in my rental room before an epiphany visited me and I decided right then and there that this might be the perfect time to attend a varsity basketball game being contested on the Winona State campus.  Drinking stupidity had taken over by this juncture and I made certain to stuff a can of Stite malt liquor along with a church key opener into my coat pocket to ensure I wouldn’t get thirsty at the game.

                There was a fairly good-sized crowd at the basketball tilt that night but I managed to find a seat about halfway up the fold-out bleachers.  After a short interlude of watching basketball I grew slightly bored with the action and decided that now was the perfect time for some liquid refreshment, ergo I reached into my parka pocket and retrieved the can of Stite and church key opener I had brought along precisely for that purpose.  But…..having jostled about in my pocket for quite some time while I cheered the basketball exploits taking place in front of me, the beer was especially eager to escape the metal can constraining it.  Upon punching a hole in the top of the can with the church key opener, a loud Psssssssssttttt pierced the air all around me before a disgusting gusher of malt liquor raced from the metal can and sprayed all over a young woman sitting directly in front of me in the bleachers. 

Well, ahem, ahem………………let’s just say that attractive young woman didn’t embrace me in a warm bearhug and extend glad tidings in my direction after having been thoroughly inundated with malodorous “Green Death”.  Instead, she was ferocious and more put-out than a wet hen in a high pressure car wash and who could rightfully blame her?!  The coed proceeded to verbally assail me in a vicious manner as though I had stuck a .45 pistol in the small of her back and demanded not only all of her money, but presented her with a list of sexual favors I was expecting as well.  I know I would have been upset too if I had been accidentally sprayed with beer, but probably not as much as her.  Let’s face the bald truth here, Readers:  The pretty damsel in distress grossly overreacted to a relatively minor transgression…..

That said, the ornery bitch finally settled down and went back to watching the basketball game and I eventually finished drinking my devilish Stite and was then faced with the decision of what to do with the irksome empty can.  Of course, the prudent, responsible course of action would have been to just stick it back in my coat pocket and carry it back to my apartment and thereupon dispose of it in a trashcan, but in my omniscient “Stite Wisdom” I alternatively decided to drop the empty receptacle below the bleachers during a lull in the action where it landed on the hard floor with a resounding clatter that could easily be heard throughout the cavernous auditorium.

Cool, Jim, that was such a cool, suave, impressive thing to do…….yeah yeah, so so COOL, y’know…..especially right after you gave that attractive young woman an unappreciated Stite shower and now you openly and loudly litter on the gymnasium floor and all these total strangers are giving you angry, dirty looks mixed with unmistakable pity!!

                So anyway, after performing that stupid, impulsive act and distinguishing myself from the rest of the basketball crowd for the evening I returned to my room with no more fanfare and no further unsavory incidents.  But the next day a good friend of mine who witnessed my buffoonery informed me that, unbeknownst to Yours Truly, a Phy Ed professor at Winona State College had been seated two rows behind me at the game the night before.  Thank God that very tolerant bastard had mercy on one very fatuous fool because, at this particular time in the early 1960s, I believe proper punishment for a dumb infraction like I had committed—i.e. being visibly inebriated and openly consuming alcohol on campus–would have called for me to be expelled indefinitely from the institution of higher learning I had grown to love over the years. 

So, once again……..thank you, God Above and, most of all…..thank you, thank you, THANK YOU, Lamebrained but Altruistic Phy Ed Professor!

…..feeding the dinosaurs.  I call it “feeding the dinosaurs”.  Funny expression, I know, but I’ve really grown to like it and gleefully embrace these three simple words.  To wit, such behavior entails bowing to and being overly deferential to the gods of the past.  Saluting the past.  Looking to the past for every correct answer.  Kowtowing to the past.  Worshipping the past even.  Triaging the past over the present and, more sinisterly, over  that treasure chest of hopes and dreams for the future which, naturally, means selfish, highly immature people who behave this way and think in this fashion effectively prioritize their wishes and lives over those of their children and grandchildren.  Now let me ask you this:  How onerous is this type of egotistical behavior?!?!  How self-centered and self-indulgent can people get where they actually believe their personal welfare and continued existence supersedes that of their progeny?!?!  HOW REPUGNANT AND REVOLTING AND DETESTABLE AND DOWNRIGHT LOATHSOME……….?!?!?!  And yet countless doddering relics defy common decency and seem to believe their continued presence on Earth’s surface is the most pressing problem facing humanity…..

Is intrinsic, unalloyed ignorance justifiable and a forgivable offense?  If someone has not been blessed with a naturally open, inquisitive, expansive mind, is that somehow the ignoramus’s fault?  Can one be blamed for the way they were born or, more precisely, for being granted a Lilliputian intellectual arsenal with which to view and pursuantly attack daily life?  Who knows the correct answers to these questions, chiefly because it is so difficult to discern between authentic natural deficiencies as opposed to cultural adaptations.  Yet I suppose the affirmative is true.  One shouldn’t blame a white man who is only 5’6” in height and jumps like a bloated hippopotamus for underperforming and embarrassing himself in the NBA; you shouldn’t blame a man who has been color-blind since birth for fucking up the wiring in your new house and causing it to burn to the ground; you shouldn’t blame someone who is totally deaf for being a piss-poor musician who can never adequately immerse himself in a classic piece’s rhythm; you shouldn’t blame a man who was born ghastly ugly for not being a woman magnet; you shouldn’t blame a leopard for being born with spots all over its body; and likewise you should never hold a stupid individual entirely responsible for his/her uninformed, reactionary opinions, particularly as those opinions might relate to the political arena.  I’m obviously referring here to those staggeringly fatuous dipshits who vehemently deny global warming even as temperature records continue to tumble on a yearly basis while wildfires consume ever more land throughout the world, refuse to get vaccinated against a deadly virus in the name of some goofy, undefined individual “right” and as a result needlessly exacerbate a once-in-a-century pandemic, support common criminal Donald Trump even as ever more incriminating information comes to light indicting the unscrupulous louse , insist the January 6^th riot was not an insurrection intended to overturn a legally contested election, promulgate the idea of unlimited firearm “rights” so mentally disturbed individuals can run around massacring innocent people, etc., etc., etc.  Yes, THOSE unimaginably dumb bastards!  It ain’t entirely their fault, remember.  For better or worse, these disadvantaged creatures were simply predestined to be born in this manner and that fact will never change, just as the sun will come up tomorrow morning in the east and rivers will continue running to the sea and the Loch Ness Monster will continue to go unsubstantiated.  After all, the more things change…..

…..I called her name and she didn’t answer.  I called again…..still no response.  And of course that’s when I started getting nervous, started getting antsier than a dropped potato chip at a summer picnic.  This wasn’t like her, wasn’t characteristic of her normal behavior.  Something must be wrong…..  So I went to investigate the mystery, and what I found stopped me dead in my tracks.  She was there alright, there right where she was supposed to be…..but not as a living, breathing organism anymore; rigor mortis had already set it, and her eyes—although still hauntingly open—were glazed over and drying up rapidly.  What the…..?!?!?! The bizarre scenario didn’t afford me time to answer this hypothetical question, however, because I suddenly turned pale and got sick then and narrowly missed hitting her stiff body with a blistering stream of vomitus.  Shiiiiitttt!!!  Goddamnitall!!!  HOLY SHIT ALREADY!!!!!  “Great!” I thought to myself.  Now you have more than a dead body lying in your bedroom under suspicious circumstances to contend with; you also have this smelly, unseemly mess to clean off your carpet before the gross stuff settles into the fabric and subsequently reeks for half an eternity whenever the indoor humidity spikes.…..

If you believe in something badly enough or want something to happen badly enough, that wish will probably come true!  The five senses with which every human body naturally comes endowed subliminally shape themselves to accommodate what we are expecting or longing for.  A strongly held belief is akin to a detailed road map which will religiously lead us to the destination of our choosing.  Ergo, a strongly held belief is equivalent to probably ninety five percent of the so-called “knowledge” we carry around with us in our brains.  When you know precisely what you are looking for—be it a gold keepsake locket in a dresser drawer, the freshest watermelon in a bin overflowing with them at the local supermarket, the proverbial needle in a haystack, or—And here’s the crux of today’s lesson, children!—“factual” and/or sensory data points to support a powerfully held belief, finding that desired item pursuantly becomes immeasurably easier.  We inveterately see only that which we are looking for, and in the process generally ignore or disregard any observations and information that might obfuscate our Holy Grail of thought.  We know what we believe, and everything else is heresy.

…..I don’t ever wanna go back to that innately beguiling place.  Yeah, yeah, I know that it is alluring as all get out and beckons with the magnetism of a ravishing seductress, but the past is a fraud, a liar, a destroyer of youthful dreams.  It can never be trusted.  The circumstances surrounding me today are hopelessly fucked up and a complete unadulterated mess and maybe (likely) beyond redemption, but the past is not the answer for any of that; it is no tonic or remedy or secret sauce.  Rather, the past grossly misrepresents—lies even—with regard to its true underlying character.  Things were never so good back then as they appear nowadays.  Not all roses and no thorns.  Not all laughter and no pain.  Not all days blessed with radiant sunshine and a pronounced absence of stormy nights showcasing howling winds and pelting hail as house lights flickered on and off signifying mischievous electrical gremlins were in the process of deciding whether they wanted to pull the plug on the grid completely to inflict even more havoc into one’s personal life.  The past would have you believe that every day was a stroll through a redolent lilac garden and that Nirvana had at long last been found and that no ill was ever visited upon anyone, but that is all a big lie.  A huge, disgusting lie!!!  Bad things did happen to you back then—Lots and lots of them!—but for some unknown reason a mammoth filter has since been erected between the past and the present which screens out evil and drudgery and every unpleasantry and leaves in its wake nothing but rosy memories and sweet reminiscences.  Forget that deceitful shit already!  It’s all a charade, a big fib, a house constructed of flimsy Dollar Store cards.  The past is quite simply a mirror reflection of the present, only it features a younger version of your present day self—and you are inarguably a substantially wiser, more enlightened, less naive individual now than you were back then—yet with that aforementioned ginormous filter separating the two timeframes.  Nothing more and nothing less.  You are exactly the same person now as you were back in “the good old days”.  Same person, only undeniably smarter now as you struggle to navigate through a totally different era.  So don’t hyperventilate over the past and believe that it is some sort of panacea for the present and a benign refuge from today’s nagging, intractable problems.  It isn’t and never will be.  Those problems were just as nagging and intractable back then as they are today; “callow you” were just too credulous to realize it.  The past will always look highly attractive and superior to the present—That’s purely the nature of the flirtatious beast!—but don’t believe such nonsense for even a nanosecond.  The past makes a habit of lying indiscriminately and today is no different.  These problems you are currently facing and bemoaning are uncommonly challenging, no doubt, but looking backward in time is not a solution for any of them.  Work on solving your problems predicated upon today’s terms and circumstances exclusively.  The present can be brutal and bleak and unforgiving, but at least it’s inherently honest.  The same cannot be said of that dishonest scoundrel masquerading under the alias of “the past”; that deceitful asshole lies and distorts the truth all the time and, what’s worse, it takes great pleasure in doing so.  As a result, the shape-changing past inflicts a lot of needless pain upon undiscerning individuals who insist on looking backward rather than forward…..

“pride, principle, poise, and purpose”     When all is said and done and your final life script has been written and submitted for review, these are the only human character entities that authentically matter.  Nothing else.  Nothing more nuanced or multi-layered or esoteric. Nothing hiding in the attic or in a secret crawl-space or somewhere unobvious—lost between cracks and covert niches and camouflaged nearly to death.  Pride, principle, poise, and purpose.  If you live your life constantly tethered to these four foundational paragons—using them and them alone as the buoys to guide your one-time odyssey across a vast, pitch black, uncharted temporal body of water—you will never have anything to be ashamed of.  In the big, BIG scheme of things—the only scheme which ultimately matters, in other words—pride, principle, poise, and purpose rule the day and define you as a person and noble denizen of Earth; nothing else even comes close, nor should it.