Thought Provoking, Insightful News & Analysis

A shocking update to Washington Irving's Headless Horseman! Friday, October 21, 2004!
Headless People Terrorizing Cities And Towns Across The Nation!

Beware! The headless are everywhere!

It is deep into October. The days are short and a long black gloom haunts the night. Eeriness creeps in from the clammy midnight air. It was in October when Washington Irving wrote about Ichabod Crane and the headless horseman. Irving must have looked out his window in the dead October black and got a chill. What was out there?

Have you wondered what happened to the headless horseman? Does he still roam the deserted night roads and haunt the nervous traveler anxious to get home safe from unseen eyes that spy him from the dim woods, and from underneath the bridges?

Surely you do not literally think there is such a creature, do you reader? It is all a fiction, right? I would like to laugh off the story of Ichabod. But why has Irving's tale lasted two hundred years? Do you not feel something there in the dank lightless October still hours? Something, I dread, still roams the lonely roads. The hideous spirit that haunted Ichabod still stalks us. These ghouls have even multiplied! Reader, you might hide under your blanket and wait for the morning light and go about in your bright day. But there is shadow world from which you cannot hide. I have discovered it and I will warn you now so you may protect yourself if that is possible: Thousands, no, not just thousands, but millions of people in our fair country have lost their heads! Beware!

These headless ghouls roam the streets. They haunt the shopping centers. They drive on the highways, they are in workplaces, in factories, in offices and stores. The headless sit on couches in countless homes watching TV! Whoa to you if you so enter these homes! That they would be confined to one deserted path where Ichabod Crane unhappily chanced upon. No! Today it is far more dire. The headless are everywhere!

You say I may be crazy. You have seen no one without a head. Fool! Look closely. These creatures hide it with sunglasses, make-up and hats. There are a million tricks of deception. Have you never seen a woman with make-up gunked on so thick it looked like a pastry chef mistook the face for a cake and frosted it? Could anyone be so ridiculous? Of course not. They were covering up a non existent face on a head that wasn't there!

Millions of people have lost their heads!

Maybe you have even seen a man whose face was thickly caked with make-up. He was wearing a mink and a dress. You laughed and thought, “How odd, a transvestite!” But no! This person was diverting you from seeing an oddity even more shocking than a man in woman's clothing. He had no head, and you didn't see because you were looking at his fish net stockings!

Who would wear a baseball hat in public? Of course, someone without a brain—someone without a head! They are covering up the fact that no head or brain is there! Many of these headless creatures don't even know that they have put their hat on backwards. Why? Because they have no brain. A baseball hat looks ridiculous even if you put it on the right way—but what would it take to mess up even that? Of course, only someone without a head could not manage to put a hat on the right way.

Beware! The headless are out there. Do not let pass upon you what happened to a dear friend of mine! Late at night this friend was walking down a deserted street. A dark fog hung in the air. A truck with giant tires drove by. The truck stopped and my friend saw that the baseball hat wearing driver had no head! My friend bolted down the street. The truck followed behind. My friend's heart pounded. He turned down an empty alley and ran. The truck followed knocking over garbage cans, but no one heard. The alley was bordered by dilapidated deserted buildings. An eerie insane laughter was all my friend heard as he ran as fast as he could. The maniacal laughter and the truck stayed on his heels. He came to a dead end--surround by a chain link fence. The trucked screeched to a stop right in front of him. My friend climbed up the fence, but it was twenty feet tall and topped with barbed wire. The insane smirking was right in his face. The headless driver got out of the truck, stood before my friend's feet on the fence and sinisterly laughed. My friend shook—he had no where to go so he climbed further up the fence and grabbed the barbed wire. He got a fierce shock—it was electrified —and he crashed to the ground right before the headless driver's dirty boots. The headless driver pulled out a sword and swung onto my friend's neck. His head went rolling down the alley.

The headless driver snickered and snorted and got back into his truck, put on his baseball cap and drove off. My friend sat there for a while as if he had no thought in his head. Actually, he had no thought in his head because it just rolled down the street--he didn't even see where it went. All of a sudden he got the urge to go home and watch television.

Life became easy for my friend. He didn't have to think—well, having no head he didn't have the capacity to think. He was un-perplexed by philosophical and existential questions like: “Why do we exist? What is the meaning of life? What is the meaning of meaning? Is history cyclical and are we doomed to repeat it, or is it somehow tied with the space-time continuum in an ever changing quantum vortex? Is the sky made out of bell metal or some sort of gooey jell-o like substance?”

Come to think of it, when I learned that my friend used to ponder these questions I wondered if lost his head many years before he claims it happened. But anyway—on with the story. Something had changed. People got along with him better at work. He would just nod in agreement with everyone. If someone, for example, said, “Aren't we having just the nicest weather?”

“Oh yes it's just lovely, isn't it?” my friend would respond and then add, “How is your lovely poodle doing?”

“Oh, he is not doing very well. He has a skin disease and I need to take him to the dog clinic.”

“Oh my, I do hope he will get over it.”

“And how is you mother? Is she enjoying this nice weather?...” This would go on and on.

Sorry, dear Reader, to put you to sleep but I must report the facts of this story. You see, conversations like the above abound and only prove how numerous the headless are. But it is striking how different my friend was before he lost his head. Employers had canned him for offensiveness, sexual harassment (he told a dirty joke), bad attitude, and disorderly conduct. Before he lost his head I once met him at his workplace. He was waiting for me in an employee lounge outside a lobby. I didn't turn the corner to let him know I arrived because I was fascinated by the conversation he was having with a co-worker:

“So how are you doing?” asked a co-worker.

“OK, even though I have been contemplating suicide.”

“Oh my. I hope you will be OK. We have been having very nice weather haven't we?”

“No, not at all. I like violent storms. Torrential downpours, sleet, ice, sub zero deep freezes! I hope this mild stuff blows off and we get a hurricane, and a tsunami would be a hell of a lot of fun!”

“Oh my, you're not serious, are you? My little chiuaua, Caesar, is not partial to cold weather.”

“If he freezes to death in the next storm save him and we'll barbecue him for lunch.”

“Oh my. Have you done your Christmas shopping?”

“There is another holiday I like best. So I celebrate that.”

“Oh, you're Jewish?”

“Yes, I celebrate Ground Hog day—it's my favorite holiday. Don't you think it should be a national holiday?”

“Isn't it already? It's a lovely holiday and I never knew it was a Jewish holiday.”

My friend was still attracted to women. Us men, especially in regard to the opposite sex, do not always think with our brains. So it didn't matter that my friend had no head. My friend would just walk into a bar and sit at a table with women. Instead of speaking his mind, of which he now had none, he would just nod in agreement. So when women would ask him something like, “What's your sign?” instead of my friend saying, “You believe in that crap?” my friend would just nod and say, “Sagittarius,” or, “Brontosaurus. What's your sign?”

Women would take his blank stares or nods as deep listening--“You are so sensitive!” “You are so in touch with my feelings!”--they would say. So the one good thing about not having a head was that my friend got a lot of sex. However, even though he got a lot of women he didn't last long with any of them. He was not good at oral sex—so the women would dump him. How can you give head if you don't have a head?

But many women also are not skillful at giving oral sex to their men. Sometimes you see what you think is a pretty face and there is nothing behind it! They also are incapable of giving head because they have no head! Beware!

So how was my friend able to tell me about all of this if he had no head? Does it not take a brain to tell a good story? One day my friend was walking down the street and looked into an aquarium shop. He saw in the window a big 200 hundred gallon aquarium. Several big Oscars and other big fish swam around in the tank. But another strange fish was swimming around. It wasn't a fish! It was my friend's head! How the hell did that get in there? He walked into the shop and took a closer look. Sure enough, it was his head swimming around from side to side in the aquarium.

He stared in disbelief. An employee of the store walked up and said, “Can I help you sir?”

“Yes,” said my friend pointing to his head, “can you tell me what kind of fish that is there?”

“It's an Oscar sir.”

“No, that one there with the hair, blue eyes, ears and big nose.”

“I don't know sir. I can ask the manager, but he is not here now.”

“How can you ask the manager if he's not here?”

“Good point, sir.”

“How much is it?”

“I believe it is already sold sir. Sorry. We can try and order another one, but they are very hard to find. Good heads have become an endangered species.”

“What? You just said it was a head. So it's not a fish?”

“No sir, sorry, I misspoke. It is a fish.”

“First you don't even know what it is and now you are telling me all about it. It's a human head, isn't it?”

“No it isn't. That's absurd. It is a fish.”

“Fish don't have ears and big noses.”

“Yes they do. What about sharks?”

“Oh come on. Sharks have noses, but they don't have ears.”

“Yes they do.”

“That's ridiculous. Human like ears? You're not going to tell me that fish have hair also?”

“Well, that fish does. It's an Oscar.”

“You just told me you don't know what it is and now you are telling me it's an Oscar.”

As my friend and the clerk argued a woman entered the store and browsed around.

“Yes, that fish is a new breed of Oscar. Yes, that's it.”

“But it looks nothing like the other Oscars in the tank. It's a human head!”

“I am sorry, but it is a new type of Oscar and if you insist on being disagreeable I will have to ask you to leave the store.”

“You can't tell me that is an Oscar. I have never seen an Oscar that looks anything like that. It is a human head!”

“Well, have you ever seen a human head that looks like that?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. I used to look at that head every morning in the mirror while shaving. It was my head before it was ripped off.” My friend tore off his sunglasses and baseball hat and exposed his headlessness. The woman who had entered the store screamed. My friend continued, “It was my head and I intend to get it back.”

“Stand back!” said the store employee, “that is a fish and it is already sold!”

“I don't care. That is my head and I have a right to it,” said my friend and he lurched for the aquarium to grab his head.

The store employee ripped off his sunglasses and baseball hat and said, “Back off! It is I that will fasten that head to my body! I am tired of having an aimless low paying job in a fish store and not even caring about it! The head will be mine!”

The woman, who had been staring in disbelief, screamed again and ran out of the store.

The aquarium shop worker pulled out a sword and swung it at my friend and said, “I am tired of making superficial small talk with people who come in here. I want a brain so I can say something interesting or tell the people to fuck off!” He swung the sword at my friend and he dodged out of the way. He swung the sword again and my friend dodged it once more and then jumped on the shop employee. The two headless men wrestled on the ground. The store employee overpowered my friend and kicked him good in the balls. As he lay on the ground agonizing, the shop worker grabbed a stool and stepped up on it to take the head out of the aquarium. My friend mustered some strength, jumped up and kicked the stool out from the guy's feet who crashed to the ground. But the store employee bounced back and pounced on my friend. He belted my friend in the stomach and then kicked him again in the balls. My friend writhed in agony on the ground as the employee once again took the stool, stepped up on it to grab the head as his own.

As my friend moaned in pain the employee evilly laughed and reached in the tank to grab the head. But it was a catch-22 situation. The store employee needed just a little bit of a brain to put the brain on his body. He inadvertently took a large Oscar out of the tank. Laughing, under the impression that he was making a victorious getaway with the head, he walked out of the store. Since he had no brain he failed to notice he was walking down the street with a fish on his shoulders. My friend got up and bobbed his head out of the water and screwed it back on. Hence, when I asked my friend to tell about how he lost his head I heard an interesting story instead of getting a blank stare.

But do not think you can find your head if you so lose it. Most people lose their heads and they deteriorate. They go to waste. A head is a terrible thing to waste--but it happens all the time. Millions have lost their heads. Millions of brains have been lost in the oblivion. They wander aimlessly in the land of the headless. Beware! For the headless are among us. You are blind if you do not see it. Look behind the disguises. Have you seen what crap people are loading in grocery store shopping carts? Look at what politicians are elected to public offices! It can only be the work of the headless! Do you know what movies, music and TV shows are popular? People cannot have heads and subject themselves to that stuff! The evidence is all around us! Pay heed! Beware!