A Sardine on Vacation, Episode 5
Social Excretions

Father Grindgrad cannot believe what the Sardine just admitted.

"Go ahead, tell the readers what you just said."

I don't read newspapers, on or off the Internet.

"That wasn't everything."

Okay. Nobody reads the newspapers. Fewer and fewer people do. The Newspaper-Reading Public dwindles by the day. Why do you think I dropped them as the chorus to this column?

"You originally wrote these for the papers, you have an obligation to...."

To what? I'm not being unfaithful. Besides a little sports, a weekly crossword, and the headlines, I don't follow news at all.

"Then how, bright boy, do you know what's going on?"

I don't. Not things in particular. Some of the larger trends interest me.

"How? Time, Newsweek?"

I go to the supermarket. Yes, by the check-outs.

"Hah," laughed the Father hideously, "now I've got Mr. High and Mighty, visiting those unorthodox journalistic venues which, by the way, I refuse to bless. There's nothing true in them."

I agree. Not necessarily the truth or news.

"How can you read them?"

Who said I read them?

"You. . . ."

Never touch them. But I cull the headlines. Celebrity gossip. Miracles and killer diseases. Weird stuff about the Presidents. Visitations by aliens. The stuff newshounds eagerly deliver to the tabloid-reading public. Social excretions, society's runoff. I can't help staring at some of the items.

BABY GIRL FOUND IN FIVE-YEAR OLD BOY

WOMAN GIVES BIRTH TO BIGFOOT'S CHILD

WORLD WAR II BOMBER FOUND ON THE MOON

"Those weren't, if you excuse the oxymoron, even from the respectable tabloids.

All the better.

"What do they tell you about the world you live in?"

Not much.

"Aha."

I've often pondered the delightful impossibility of that baby girl. The other two, well, are nearly anti-climactic. Sometimes the headline speaks to me like an oracle.

"Not orifices?"

Father!

"I couldn't contain myself.”

I’ll give you some examples.

TEEN LEADS PACK OF WOLVES

A metamorphosis before our eyes. Teenager to wolf. The young prey on the old. Society fears teen gangs. The Wolfman legend lurks behind these fears.

"Without the teenager," says Grindgrad generously, "there would be no one to deliver newspapers to the homes of old people."

The second example combines several motifs also.

FLYING SAUCER SEEN WITH CONFEDERATE FLAG ON ITS UNDERSIDE

A dark suggestion regarding contemporary race relations. Aliens confirm that the South still lives. All the fighting to get the confederate flag out of southern courtrooms and stadia comes to a halt. Of course, this assumes that beings from outer space are morally superior to earthmen because of a superior technology.

"I would've thought that."

A subject for another time. Those with a latent wish fantasy that the South will rise again are the ones that mostly buy the tabloids. For the vilest excretions. To substantiate racial superstitions.

"Now you're stepping on the stalwarts who drive the trucks with the bundles of newspapers to the teenagers in the early morning hours so that people can read the featured columns with their morning coffees.”

This last one most intrigues me.

TWO HEADED WOMEN IS PREGNANT

So many questions. Who got her pregnant? Will the child be one- or two-headed? Do both of the heads want the child?

"Oh, please, don't disgust me," the Father interrupts.

I wouldn't dismiss her dilemma too quickly. One head might want to get an abortion; the other prefers to put the little monster up for adoption. This headline, which you have been quick to scoff at, best encapsulates the national debate.

But something more amazes me.

"That you can descend any lower!"

The way that the headline assumes that the two-headed woman is a known quantity, like Bigfoot and the Abominable Snowman. Yet, I'm an outsider when it comes to understanding these things.

"You should read the entire articles then."

Are you kidding? It's one thing to stare at excrement on the sidewalk, but I'm not going to pick it up and hold it in my hands, let alone smell it.

"You're certainly a man of principle," Grindgrad says and begins to walk away.

Anyway, I expect a raging controversy soon. The Two-Headed Woman has had a career of sorts in the tabloids. Finally, someone decided that her life dilemma should mirror society's.

The Father turns and says: "That will satisfy the crowd which tips the teenagers and reads the Op-Ed page."

The Sardine's essays, articles, and stories have appeared around the Internet in the last few years at 3 A.M., Facets, Eclectica magazine, Fiction Funhouse, The Fiction Warehouse, 5_trope, and several film journals. Who and what he is probably will be revealed at various points through the articles appearing at this site. If you want to reach him, his address is popesixtus@aol.com.