Monday, June 10, 2002
It never fails, I tell you. The last good kidnapping was the Patty Hearst case. Kidnappers so damn good at it they convinced her to join up with them. That Symbionese Liberation Army made it cool to kidnap. Ever since then it’s been all downhill. Half-assed kidnapping attempts, pervs just kidnapping to commit sexual crimes and murder the victims, or the worst, the parents or relatives who kill then fake a kidnapping. What a bunch of poseurs.

I mention all this because I was the victim of a kidnapping last week, if you can call it a kidnapping. I hesitate to use the word out of respect to more famous accused kidnappers like Bruno Hauptmann or such. Then again, there’s a lot of questions about whether he did it or Lindbergh killed his own son, so maybe he’s one of those poseurs I mentioned earlier.

The wannabe-kidnappers grabbed me as I left the commune offices for the day Friday, just before lunch. I was forced into a minivan at knifepoint by a burly man in a Member’s Only jacket, which told me right away the guys I was dealing with hadn’t seen much success through kidnapping before. Not that I was expecting Gucci suits or anything, you want to maintain a low profile. But I do mean low, not pathetic. If people are throwing you change on the street you’re not exactly sinking into the background.

Turns out the knife wasn’t even a knife, it was a clothespin sharpened at the end. If I had wanted to test it, I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have even broken the skin. I probably could have escaped, but I’m always intrigued by kidnappings and I wanted to see how this one turned out.

I’ll cut right to the chase: Boresville. The six times I’ve been kidnapped and held for ransom have all been letdowns, but this was the king of the losers. The perpetrators, two dudes, took me back to their one bedroom apartment and tied my leg to the dining room table. Then they stuck my fingers in a Chinese finger trap, presumably because they ran out of rope. If I’m not mentioning the kidnappers by name, it’s through no effort to conceal their identities because I’ve fallen in love with them like that Helsinki Formula or whatever it’s called. It’s because they didn’t make a lasting impression of any sort, I couldn’t even give a description to the cops.

Then, after going through all the trouble of kidnapping me, the cockknockers had no idea who to tell that they were holding me for ransom. How embarrassing. They called up Red Bagel at home but he was obviously in a fit of ether madness or something, he kept dropping the phone and wasn’t even coherent. At least it might have been Red Bagel, sometimes Lil Duncan answers his phone, though I’m not saying anything everybody else doesn’t know. And then the stupid kidnappers wouldn’t pay the long distance charges to call my parents, which doesn’t make much difference anyway because my parents don’t have any money anymore. Why do you think they’ve been trying to have another kid for 15 years now? They need someone to share their love with? Ha.

Come Monday morning these two shmoes had to be back to work at Hardee’s or they were going to be fired, they had missed too many days already. Call me crazy, but if you’re going to plan a kidnapping right, at least have the foresight to ask for a few days off. This is not the kind of thing you do over a weekend. Anyway, I hate to have an anti-climactic ending, but I bit through the fingertrap and then bit through the rope and escaped. And the only reason I bit through the rope was to add a little bit of excitement to the story somewhere.

I’m a little nostalgic for the kidnappings of my youth, where the guys weren’t perfect, but at least they had some things right. Some even blindfolded me so I couldn’t see their faces. Asked for millions of dollars my parents never had, even if they didn’t really want that much, you know, just to make me feel special. But I guess those days are gone. Now you can be kidnapped by any idiots with a pointy object, a minivan, and a couple days off.

If anybody is serious about trying, though, I’ll be checking out of work around noon this Friday. Unless I decide to cut out early.

What's A Cornhole?
Please don’t laugh now, I’ve just never heard the term before. I grew up in California and we had no real experience with corn out there. I mean, we’d eat it, but it’s not like in Iowa or nothing, we didn’t go out and plant it and grow it and sit and watch it for hours and burn it for fun or nothing.

Lindsay Wagner Wants Me Dead
That’s right, the Bionic Woman herself. If you think I’m delusional you’ve obviously never been woken up at four in the morning by the pound of glass breaking with a bionic shatter. This is what happened to me yesterday.

Come, Come to Jamaica
For another thing, Jamaica’s not even a state! It’s a whole other country or something. If it’s not American, forget it, you won’t catch me tanning my backside on some communist beach in Castroland.

Let the Buyer Beware
Any implication that I did try the Waffle Messiah, or in any way endorsed the Waffle Messiah or purchase of that kitchen appliance, was unintended.