Warning: Adult language, sexual situations

“NASA Reports Moon Is Wobbling” is a fucking hysterical way to start your morning. The coffee is brewed, I’m sitting comfortably after a pain pill, and the warm embrace of dope, clonazepam and caffeine have me. I’m theirs at the moment,  able to think without pain and nerves and the cloud of age-induced suck that is growing more steadily than I’d like.

I can see it now, all across the country: “Ed, dear, what’s wrong,” a woman asks her husband from across the living room, as she watches Netflix while he’s on the Apple Macintosh that sits on an elaborate computer desk and is bell-and-whistled for everything from gaming to monitoring stocks while writing articles for his UFO site.

But Ed isn’t going to respond. He didn’t hear her. He’s frozen. Terrified. Shaken to the soul.

Of course after 60 seconds of the latest episode of upchuck, she notices his cringing silence. “Ed, what?”

Finally, a hushed and terrified whisper: “It’s wobbling.”

Martha will remember that ages ago there was a toy with a TV commercial that said in song, “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.” And that kids in school referred to the more rotund people of the world as “Weebles”, fat, rolly-polly toy people. Martha will giggle. But Ed will hear it and call her over to read this article. While she attempts to read and comprehend, he begins shouting and pacing the floor. “It’s wobbling! Fuck, I knew it! The government has been lying all this time! A conspiracy, that’s it. It was a conspiracy! We’re all gonna die, because it won’t affect just the tides! It’s caused by alien interference as a prelude to invasion!”

Hey, someone is going to make this connection. You know it, I know it. In the next county over from Ed and Martha, someone will read Ed’s article about the coming apocalypse and start neighborhood patrols looking out for zombies infected by aliens. If a patrol spots a distorted shadow, which shadows tend to be, as someone takes the Hefty from the kitchen out to the trash cans, perhaps the patrol will even attemp intervention while armed with a butter knife or, worse, a gun.

Some people will get hysterical–not the laughing kind–and hurt themselves or someone else. Because they will not see the article above. No, they’ll read Ed’s article and come to even worse conclusions than he has, because they’ll grab the Bible and match the event with the Book of Revelation: oh shit! “And the moon turned red!”

We are adrift in a vast ocean of misinterpreted knowledge. I tell you, it’s scary.

But people don’t always use their ability to reason, comprehend or trust. Indeed, some people cannot, and never could. Others choose to believe the complex lie over the simple truth.

And some people are just plain stupid.

•This week, Annapolis, Maryland. A woman went to a Mercedes Benz dealership and asked to test drive a car. She has not returned. The car is valued at $45,000.

Some people no doubt have concluded that some kind of harm befell her. Others, that she’s possibly mentally ill and just committed a stupid crime. I don’t know anything else about it because that’s all the article provided. She asked to test drive a car and never returned. So far, it’s pretty funny. And the funniest part is, if she stole it, why boost a car from a dealer, and, of course, why a car valued at forty five grand?

It’s a fucking Mercedes dealer! Go for something really expensive!

She’s gonna end up in prison anyway, so why not go out with some style for pity’s sake!

But who ever said everyone’s gifted with equal wisdom and judgement? In truth, people are stupid.

•Years ago a woman lost her license to drive. Judge took it because of too many DUIs and driving on a suspended license. Now she had lost it for a really long time.

The next day she had a date. You know, the kind that can’t be missed: a sex date, a booty call. So she was going to have to drive.

Well, since she had no license, she’d have to take someone else along. But she was still going to drive.

Her ex-husband agreed to ride shotgun, and during the drive, she realized that she had neglected to shave. As she did not have a mustache and her legs were groomed and smooth, this would involve sliding her shorts down to her ankles in order for her to get to the nooks and crannies. Her boyfriend deserved the full treatment, after all.

If you think you know where this is going, you’re probably correct. Because as she spread one leg wide to dry shave a cranny, she had to use both hands, one to hold the razor and one to keep the fold of skin accessible. Hubby the ex dutifully grabbed the wheel.

But he could not reach the pedals.

She rear-ended another car. It was a warm Florida early evening. So of course she jumped out and, pulling up her shorts, switched places with her ex. She’d blame the accident on him.

That fooled nobody, from cop to judge. Besides, there were witnesses. Nobody forgets the first time they see a bottomless woman in public at the scene of an automobile collision.

Nobody.

•Being in high school is tough. Dating is even tougher when you’re both planning on skipping the movie both sets of parents were told you would be attending at Marley Station Mall.

For my brother, ten years my junior and bleeding testosterone like Captain Quint bled in Robert Shaw’s final scene in Jaws, it was more complicated than any average date.

His girl was dressed to kill. Prom attendees would have been envious. She even had a ribbon in her hair.

They weren’t going to the prom. They weren’t going out to a formal dress restaurant. They weren’t even going to McDonald’s. Nope. None of the above.

They had been told that Northeast High School had a dark place to park in back. It wasn’t the school they attended, which they knew better than to use. More modern, better lighting. You know.

Her daddy had put her in a brand-new Honda Civic. Clean, tight. Good car.

And when high school kids get horny, they’re more empty-headed than usual. And being in a dark place behind a school can be very agreeable for such a condition. Because it really isn’t ideal, but, again, they’re not thinking.

And some young women don’t want to get pregnant. No intercourse for them. Oral and hands only. And that is how it went.

It went well, apparently. Because he was approaching orgasm and began to look for something to “clean up” with. Because she had made him swear not to “put semen in her mouth.”

And, being as she was in an expensive dress, and there wasn’t so much as a tissue in the car, he…didn’t want to make a mess. So he opened the door, got out, and stood there on the asphalt in the dark, vision dimming with his ecstasy…

As his sight returned to normal, he became aware that a long rectangle of yellow light had appeared on the pavement in front of him.

And he was facing it, facing away from the car.

And the light came from twin steel doors. Access for deliveries and employees of the night crew, the janitors and maintenance workers.

Every one of whom were now staring at him from five feet away, in stunned silence.

People often use such awful reasoning and judgment that all we can do is stare and be shocked into a disability to do or say anything.

Imagine some guy whose hands were greasy from working on the boiler, though, 30 minutes later: “Well, that’s something you don’t see every night” to kitchen worker Juanita Park, whose trembling cannot be stopped by his dry wit.

And people react very badly to a wide range of things. But a bottomless woman, possibly bleeding down there from a shaving accident, running around the hood of a car, or some kid jizzing on the school parking lot? Funny stuff. Later, ya gotta laugh.

•A young man in Tokyo went to the park at night. He found a bench to sit on. Steel, with many holes in it. He decided to test one hole for its potential for sexual gratification. As he became erect, though, blood engorged his Johnson. On the other side of the hole.

He was stuck.

And he remained stuck. It just wouldn’t go limp enough for him to withdraw. Finally, he had to use his mobile device to call for help.

However much we wish fire and rescue crews had leaked photos to the internet, that didn’t happen and it is left to our imagination to visualize the rescuers carefully cutting most of the bench from its legs for emergency transport. Men and women alike felt bad for him but it got worse.

In the emergency department the cutting continued. He was evidently given the needle, but ultimately the steel vagina had to be completely cut away. The elapsed time exceeded that which is considered safe, and beyond which vascular and nerve damage set in. It was probably his final erection. Poor choices often have lasting consequences. The universe is not forgiving.

***

The moon is indeed going into a wobble. And in the next decade, coastal regions will be changed, because even though the moon does wobble regularly, this time rapid warming is adding tons of fresh melt water to the sea. It is the perfect time to start looking for buyers for your low, waterfront property, especially if you have your own private pier. People who make shitty judgements will snap it up so fast you’ll have a hard time trying not to laugh in their faces.

On the other hand, if you’re the kind of woman who would test drive a Mercedes and not return it, or the kind of guy who would stick Jimmy in a vacuum cleaner hose and turn the machine on, then by all means, keep your property in the cove.

Nothing bad will happen, I’m sure of it.