MADAM MISTY MERKEL AND THE BATS IN THE BEDROOM

by Mystic Madam Misty Murky Merkel
Associate Psychic News Director
Humor News Nuts Publications

Well, spring has come to Northern Michigan and I can again hear the pitter-patter of little wings flying in and out of my spare bedroom.  The racket in my little bedroom indicates to me that the many thousands of bats that I share my trailer with me each winter have awakened from their hibernation and are now out snatching up flies and other bugs as they hatch out in my neighborhood.

Of course, many people would be disturbed if they shared their home with a bunch of guano dumping flying rodents but, I am kind of proud of my roomers.  I certainly like them better than previous roomers I have had staying in my little extra bedroom.  And, although the bats pay no rent they are still less expensive and far easier to live with than most of my former tenants turned out to be.

For instance, there was this woman called MS Wong.  She certainly was a nice enough lady and paid most of her rent most of the time but, she always lifted the toilet seat up whenever she left the bathroom.  I asked her why she did this and she told me that she grew up in a family with five brothers and they never lifted the toilet seat so, the seat was always wet when she went to sit down.  So, after a while she got in the habit of lifting the seat up on her brother's behalf so, she wouldn’t get a surprise when she was in a hurry.

Now, although MS Wong's story was cute and sweet still, poor Madam Misty had more than a couple of surprises when she had to make a midnight trip to the potty.   Naturally, Ms. Wong did not get her rental agreement renewed.

Then, there was the red-haired lady named Mrs. Shapley.  She was a nice enough lady as well except, she had a little dog name Snickers.  Of course by little dog I am being facetious since Snickers was actually a very large Doberman and he liked to attack and bite Madam Misty.  I really like Mrs. Shapley and Snickers was a good dog except for the biting thing but, after Madam Misty's third trip to the emergency room and corresponding third blood transfusion, it was clear that Snickers and his owner were not a good fit for me personally.

My final human tenant in the little bedroom was Mr. Beekman.  Now, Mr. Beekman was a very elderly gentleman and a retired merchant mariner.  I rented the room to him because I thought he could afford the $9.99 a week rent.  I figured that he had to be pulling in at least $400 a month in Social Security money.   Well, sure enough Mr. Beekman paid his rent every week with a $10.00 bill and told me to keep the difference.  What's more, not only did Mr. Beekman not have any pets but, he had the courtesy of never lifting the toilet set up.  Of course, I would have preferred he did lift the seat up when he used the bathroom and then put it down again but, getting just a little bit wet in the middle of the night versus getting an unexpected dunking was certainly an improvement.  It seemed that in Mr. Beekman I had finally found a tenant I could live with.
   
For several weeks all was going well with my living arrangements with Mr. Beekman then suddenly, after the first two months he started falling behind on his rent until he soon owed me rent for about 15 weeks.  Now, at about the same time as Mr. Beekman became seriously in arrears on his rent hunting season was about to start and Mr. Beekman got out his shotgun and started target practicing outside of the trailer.  The noise of the gunfire was a bit disturbing but, he always quit about midnight each evening and went into his bedroom to go to bed and smoke cigarettes until he fell asleep.  But one night, at about three in the morning, I woke up to the sound of gunfire.  It only took me a second to realize that the gunfire was coming from Mr. Beckman’s room.  I went to his door and called "Mr. Beekman, are you alright?"

Mr. Beekman did not answer at first except to fire several more rounds.  Then finally, Mr. Beekman yelled "Fire!  The place is on fire Madam Misty."

I immediately remembered that I had a fire extinguisher down by the woodstove so I ran down and got it then, ran back to Mr. Beckman’s room and shoved open the door just in time to see Mr. Beekman exiting the room through a hole he had blown in the side of the trailer.  I looked around for the room and spotted a fire burning in the wastebasket next to Mr. Beckman’s bed.  I quickly put out the fire with the fire extinguisher while Mr. Beekman breathed a sigh of relief after escaping the burning trailer with his life and his shotgun.

"Are you o.k.?" I asked the old mariner as he gasped to catch his breath.
"I'm fine Madam Misty," he replied.  "I'm just lucky I had my shotgun with me so I could blow a hole in the wall and escape with my life."

"You know I think you probably could have gotten out faster just by leaving your room and exiting the trailer through the front door," I pointed out.

"Yeah but, I've face down death before on the high seas and I survived by acting first before thinking.  You see back during the Vietnam War, wow, am I glad I opted out of that one; I was once on a ship that caught fire out in Lake Huron.   I was a cook in the galley when I accidentally dropped one of my cigarettes into a vat of grease.  The grease started to smoke so, fearing an explosion and fire I abandoned ship."

"That's horrible," I said, "so what happened?"

"Well, noting happened to the ship.  It seems the grease never actually caught fire and no one else jumped off the boat.  No one even realized I was overboard until someone observed that no one had cooked any food for super.  I was left alone on Lake Huron to drift with just my pack of cigarettes to keep me afloat.  Finally, I drifted to shore but, the shore was located in Canada."

"You poor man," I said sympathetically.

"Yes," he said," I was stranded there in Canada until I could escape 15 years later.  I don't know how I survived.  Their culture was alien to me.  I couldn't digest their food and I didn’t speak a word of their language.  After a few hours of being in Canada I had given up on living then, a group of Native Americans found me and took me into their tribe.  They taught me how to live in that terrible place so very far from my home.  Finally, I made it back into Michigan."
"But, how did you get past the guards at the border.  Without proper papers I'm sure they would never let you back in."

"Well Madam Misty, I used the oldest trick in the book.  I simply walked across the border backwards and the border patrol thought I was leaving."

"Clever," I said admiring Mr. Beekman’s ingenuity.  

"Well, I guess I'm going to have to be moving on from here Madam Misty," Mr. Beekman said in a sullen tone.  "If you'd just hand me my suitcase, it's already packed and, I'll be on my way."

"You could keep staying here Mr. Beekman," I said, "I'm sure my insurance company will repair this wall right away.'

"No, I think I should be moving on now," Mr. Beekman said shaking his head no," I won't of course have to pay you the $9.99 rent or any of the back rent I own you since, it was your trailer that caught on fire and I feel very distraught after barely escaping the inferno.  And, you know how litigation over rent and violations of safety code could drag on for years and no one knows for sure how it will turn out so, I think it best we settle it right now by calling us even, don't you Madam Misty?"

Of course Mr. Beekman," I said, “so, good luck to you and stop back again any time,"

And with that Mr. Beekman walked off into the early morning fog and I have never seen him again.

As for the insurance to fix the hole in my trailer; the insurance company sent out an adjuster and he nailed a green tarp over the hole.  Two weeks later the insurance company sent me a letter denying my claim and billing me $5.00 for the tarp and another $35 dollars for the labor the insurance adjuster used to nail the tarp up over the hole.  

Well, it's been four years since Mr. Beekman moved out and since then the tarp has long been ripped away by the wind leaving my extra bedroom open to the elements.    The bats moved in about three years ago and I haven't had any problem with them at all.  I keep the door on the bedroom shut so the bats can't go near my bathroom and monkey with my toilet seat.  They also don't have any chance to bite me or make nearly as much noise as a shotgun.  They don't keep their rent up but, most people don't do that either.  So, overall, the bats are still the best tenants I've ever had.    
         
   
         
     

LIFE OF AN AMOEBA

By Mystic Madam Misty Merky Merkel

Assistant Associate Contributor

Humor News Nuts Online Publications

Well, I ended up in the weirdest place.  It seems that after trying to determine who would be the next president of the United States I ended up lying on my back on top of my trailer with a chipmunk sitting on my face and looking me in the eye.  Unfortunately, when I stood up I accidentally stepped off the side of my trailer and ended up in another trance after my skull bounced off the side of a rain barrel as I fell to the ground.

I then found myself floating as gooey blob in a small puddle of rain water.  I could not move about or do much of anything but luckily, I was somehow able to see or sense my surroundings.  It would have been lonely in my new form except there was this other gooey blob beside of me who struck up an immediate conversation.

"Hey fellow blob, welcome to the puddle," he said.

"Well, hi," I said, my name is Mystic Madam Misty Murky Merkel and I am apparently having a psychic happening."

"Well," responded the other blob," I am an amoeba and so are you.  I was just formerly a tree squirrel but, I died and now I'm an amoeba in my current life.  Seems I've been demoted from Squirrel to single cell life-form."

"How'd that happen to you?" I asked.  

                                         

  "Well, back when I was a squirrel I did some stuff.  Stuff, I'm not proud of.   You see there were these chipmunks and I sold them this really rotten incense made up of decomposed acorns and they got sick.  They said that they got really runny noses and terrible headaches from my product.  Then they chased me into the street and a school bus ran over me.  And you know what the worst thing was?" he asked rhetorically.  After the school bus ran over me I heard a kid say 'hey look, the bus ran over a rat.'  Just think, the last thing someone said about me was that I was a rat."

"That's just awful," I said.  I just hit my head so I'm pretty sure I'll be waking up from this anytime."

"I wish I could say the same," the squirrel replied.  "Now that I'm just an amoeba I'll have to go through several life cycles before I get back to being a tree squirrel.  Let's see," wondered the squirrel out loud," I'll have to be a worm, then a frog then, a chipmunk before I get back to my tree squirrel status.  Of course eventually I want to move up to the highest life form."

"You mean you want to be a human," I asked.

"Heck no," replied the amoeba, former tree squirrel.  "I want to be a bear.  Bears eat humans so bears are above humans in the natural order of things."

"I guess from a food chain perspective then I guess a bear is the top creature in this neck of the woods," I observed.

"Of course after I get back to being a squirrel I'll have to go through several more reincarnations before I become a bear.  Let's see, I'll have to be an opossum, a weasel, a beaver, a fox, a coyote then finally, I'll have to be a raccoon.  Raccoons are just about like a bear.  They forage around and eat about everything but they're not big and powerful like a bear.   Of course I don't think I'll like being a beaver after floating around as an amoeba all day."

"It wouldn't be so bad if we had cilia like those amoebas over there," I said, referring to some little bug like creatures moving just to one side of the amoeba, former squirrel and me.

"Oh those guys?" my new companion asked.  "Those guys are really stuck-up.  They think they're something special because they can move around and they become really active if they think you're looking at them just to show off their powers of locomotion.   I hate those guys.  Just wait until I'm a squirrel again then I'm going to pee on them every chance I get."

"What kind of creature is attached to that big snotty nose that's poking down into our little waterhole?" I asked, referring to a black nostril ball that was so close it almost sucked me up from my puddle. 

"It's a dog and he is either going to drink us up or drop a load on us.  I've seen them do this type of thing before.  Of course if he drinks us down we won't stay in him for too long because we'll make him sick to his stomach.  Those other guys can keep their cilia because our type of amoeba is the kind that gets everyone’s attention and we are remembered for a long time.  We might not have any cilia to move around with but, we can make any host we happen to be in move pretty quickly to a place they can unload us along with their bowel and stomach contents."

"Well, here comes a big sloppy pink tongue," I observed, "so I guess this is goodbye."

"It's been really nice chatting with you," my companion amoeba commented.  "I'll try to look you up once I'm back to being a squirrel.  I'll leave a nice fresh acorn in your shoes for your dinner.  Acorns are so delicious and I know how to pick the good ones.  The caps have to be easy to pop off.  That's when they're good and ripe and ready to eat."

"I'll remember that," I said," and I'll look forward to finding an acorn in my shoe."  Then, we were both picked up by the sprawling tongue of a dog with a serious halitosis problem.

NORTHERN MICHIGAN PSYCHIC ATENDS PSYCHIC MUSHROOM FESTIVAL

by Mystic Madam Misty (Murky) Merkel
Northern Michigan Psychic
Associate Assistant Contributor
Humor News Nuts 

Well I just got home after a week at one of Northern Michigan's mushroom festivals.  This particular one is unusual because it is not sponsored by any community but, is one of those word-of-mouth spontaneous deals.  It's like a "Room-Rave" party.  Anyway, there's lots of dancing, sometimes with music and, all kinds of mushroom products to sample and admire.

This year I sample some mushroom chili and that's pretty much the last thing I remember about the festival.  The next morning I found myself on top of a radio tower wearing nothing but my tennis shoes.  I'm going to have to contact the spirits to find out where my cloths ended up.  The blouse I was wearing I bought at Kmart four years ago and I doubt I'll ever find another one like it now.  The price of sequins has skyrocketed in Michigan since then.

Anyway, once I got down off the tower the cops showed up.  I would have been arrested for trespassing but, I agreed to let the radio station to use some pictures of me on their radio tower for advertising.  I figured it was a win-win situation because the publicity should be good for my psychic business this summer.

Of course, after what I've heard I don't think I'll be going to anymore "Room-Raves."  I guess about 50 attendees had to have their stomachs pumped and another 35 are still in comas.  According to blogs on the internet the types of mushrooms available at the "Room-Rave"  were not the normal ones used in your better eateries.  In fact, they were mushrooms that you probably should not consume at all.  I for one am against consuming anything that might be bad for my body.  That's why I'm gong to end my day with a nice big bottle of wine so I can cleanse myself of any residual poisons from that nasty Michigan mushroom-party.

My prediction for this month is that it will be warmer then last month.  I also predict there's going to be a lot of trouble between Michigan and Canada this summer.  Michigan is insisting that the Upper Peninsula is part of Canada and the Canadians insist that the U.P. falls clearly under the responsibility of South Michigan.  It's early yet but, hopefully this doesn't end up in another curling challenge by the Canadians.  Michigan does not do curling, we do lawn jarts:   the kind with the nice long spike on the end.     In long-spike lawn jarts you have two opportunities to score.  Either when you get your jart in the little circle or, if you can tag your opponent.  Both score the same.  


     

THE CURSED TOBOGGAN

By Psychic Mystic Madam Misty Murky Merkel

Psychic/Contributor

Humor News Nuts Online Publications

It's a new month and there's lots going on.  There's an election afoot in America and there's going to be a bumper crop of jellybeans up in Canada.  I love jellybeans and it is one of the few crop harvests that I pay attention to.  In addition to the jelly bean crop I am going way, way out on a limb and predicting that 2016 will see a huge growth in sock puppet production.  It's not that the demand for sock puppets is going to increase but instead because shoe prices will climb to record highs people will no longer be able to afford shoes and who needs socks if you don't have any shoes to put them in.  Ergo, all those excess socks will be used to make sock puppets.

For me these last few days have been kind of busy.  Everyone is asking me which types of petunias to plant this spring and which type of manure is best for their primroses.  I even had three brothers ask me if I could help them exorcise their toboggan.  It seems that every time these three brothers, named Grimm, went down a hill on their toboggan their toboggan would crash into a tree.  The brothers told me that even if there were no trees near the path they chose down a hill their toboggan would inevitably veer toward some large tree even if it were several hundred feet away.  

Now, I am not actually known to be much of an exorcist and generally stay away from such requests but, because I knew their family virtually forever I decided I would do the brother's Grimm a real solid and try to exorcise the spirits that were guiding the brother's toboggan into trees or at least try to appease the nature of the spirits so that the brothers could have much safer journeys on their toboggan.

In order to find out why the brother's Grimm were having such a problem with trees I had to ask them a few questions.  The brothers names were Rizzo, Izzy and Pete and their parents, Pete and Leona had been friends of my family gong back decades so, I felt comfortable questioning the boys and they seemed very eager to answer my questions.  Of course, I kind of knew from previous experiences what was wrong with their toboggan but, I thought I needed to ask them a couple of questions just to make sure I was on the right track.

Now boys," I began," I need to know if you had your Toboggan christened before you decided to start riding her?"

"Yes, we did Madam Misty," Pete answered, "We had it christened The 

Deathbed because we all thought that was a real cool name for our toboggan board."

"O.K.," I responded, "Did you happen to christen this vessel with a bottle of champagne as is traditional at such christenings?"

"Well, yes we did," responded Pete again.  He was the elder brother so; I was not surprised that the other two left the responses up to Pete. A lot of siblings get use to deferring the speaker role to the eldest when they are kids and follow through with that arrangement throughout life.

"And, was the bottle unopened and full of champagne when you christened your toboggan?" I asked.      

"I swear to you Madam, the bottle was still corked and we did not drink a single drop of champagne out of that bottle before we broke it across our curvy snowboard," insisted Pete while making a heart crossing gesture with his right hand.   

"Well, that's the problem," I said, "you wasted a perfectly good bottle of Champagne on a hunk of wood and you angered the spirits of alcohol.  You see the spirits of alcohol get very angry whenever alcohol is wasted."

"But, I thought all the great ships that have ever sailed were christened with an alcoholic beverage," Pete rebuffed.

"Yes, but the ships that stayed afloat always had their contents consumed before the bottle was broken across the bow.  Every ship that has ever sunk sank because the simple step of not drinking the alcoholic contents of the bottle before christening was not adhered to.  Many a captain and his crew have wished on the day their ship went down that someone with a thirst had had the forethought to empty the contents of the champagne bottle before said contents were wasted in a meaningless bottle breaking ceremony.  

Tisk, tisk, you boys don't know how very angry you have made the alcoholic spirits and what trouble you have brought down upon yourselves because of your ignorance of both tradition and the spirit-gods of alcohol."

The three boys jaws dropped when they finally perceived the seriousness of their situation.  Their eyes stared forward like the eyes of three condemned men, waiting for their sentence to be carried out.  

Then, Pete asked in the meek voice of a capitulating man, "But, what are we to do Madam Merkel?"

I knew it was my duty to these men and to their family that I tell them the truth about what had to happen.  "First of all," I began, "you must quit tobogganing and put your snowboard away forever. Then finally, you must never speak of the sport of tobogganing ever again."

After my suggestions the Grimm brothers looked even more depressed, lowering their gaze directly to the ground in a sign of total capitulation.  Then Pete spoke in the lowest possible audible tone "But, Madam Merkel, we can't give up our toboggan or tobogganing.   You see our father, you knew him David, people all called him Zippy, was a great tobogganer.  He even almost went to the Olympics he was so good.   Well, as you might know he was killed on his toboggan on M-72 when his toboggan swerved suddenly off the toboggan trail.  It was a terrible accident.  He had been drinking at a nearby bar before he hit the toboggan run and wouldn't you know the irony of it all is that our dad slammed directly into an ambulance.  In short, he was killed when he hit an emergency vehicle.  And, before dad's funeral the undertaker upset my mother when he told her that our dad might have still made it if he had been given CPR.  This information crushed my mother because there were three trained medical people on board that ambulance but, they were all men and in those days men didn’t give other men mouth-to-mouth CPR."

"At least men didn’t give other men mouth-to-mouth in the Midwest," I added.  "Well, if you men want to keep tobogganing then at least get yourselves a new toboggan.  Look, this one is obviously cursed so it's going to be hard to shake that curse and make this toboggan safe again."

"But, we have to use this toboggan," Pete insisted, “You see this toboggan has a lot of the original wood in it that was salvaged from our dad's crashed sled.  And, he also told us that the wood he used in his toboggan came from a wooden sarcophagus belonging to an ancient god-king.  You see my dad was stationed with the army in Southeast Asia during the seventies. 

Well, in his free time my dad liked to dress with just a loin cloth and take long walks in the jungle while pretending he was Tarzan.  It was during one of these walks that he came upon this ancient temple that was all covered with plants and snakes.  My dad being an adventurer and wearing nothing but his loin cloth made his way into the temple and found this beautifully carved wooden sarcophagus.  Dad opened the sarcophagus and found this nasty looking dried-up dead guy inside.  Well, dad really liked the wood so he dumped out the dead guy and chopped up the wood enough so he could send it back to Michigan.  Once dad’s tour was up he returned home and proceeded to build the fastest, most beautiful toboggan the world has ever known.  Dad said it took sixteen coats of varnish to get the dead guy smell out of the toboggan but once the smell was covered up, dad said the toboggan was a pleasure to ride. Of course dad’s toboggan was completely destroyed during the accident however, some of the wood we were able to salvage and we used it when we built The Deathbed.”

"You know you boys are completely without luck.  After what you have just told me I have to say that there is no way this story is going to end well for you but,   out of respect for your family I will do my best to advise you on a course of action that might just save both your lives and your tobogganing fun.  

I need the three of you to meet me over on the big tobogganing hill just North of M-72 at midnight tonight and bring along your toboggan and two very expensive bottles of champagne.  Just make sure they're expensive and make sure that they are full."

"We can do this Madam Merkel," Pete assured me in a much more positive tone as he looked up from the ground and into my eyes.  "We all want to thank you for helping us with our terrible problem and we really want to do something to show our gratitude for your help.  Just how can we repay you for helping us?"

"Well," I said, "the first bottle of champagne is for rechristening your toboggan and the second bottle is for me to drink after you've made your run down the hill.  A full bottle of expensive champagne is thanks enough.  I’m also glad that I’m able to help out three old friends of my family."

So, at midnight we all met at the top of the toboggan run just North of M-72.  We rechristened the toboggan the Death Box in honor of their dad who had died within the toboggan and the dead Asian god-king who had probably spent several millennium undisturbed within the wood of the toboggan before being cast out by the father of the brothers Grimm.    I figured that changing the name of the toboggan might just help change its destiny and the destiny of the souls who chose to ride on it.  Maybe a new name would calm the alcoholic spirits who had been so offended at the original christening of the toboggan.  Of course, we also tried to appease these spirits by drinking down the contents of the bottle that was eventually used to break across the bow of the snow vessel.  And of course, because there were two bottles of Campaign I let the brothers drink down the contents of the first bottle while I opened and took large gulps from the second one trying to numb my senses for the horrors which I knew I was about to witness.  

  Finally, it was time.  The brothers Grim took off on their toboggan down the hill heading toward an open field at the bottom maybe a mile or so away.  However, about halfway down the hill, the Deathbed suddenly veered way off toward the right and headed straight into traffic on highway M-72.  The Deathbed crashed ironically, into the side of an ambulance.  The Brother's Grim were lucky that this time the ambulance had three ladies on board who all gladly gave it their all through mouth-to-mouth CPR to revive the brothers (the brothers Grim were all three quite handsome) but, the brothers had sustained very serious injuries and never made it to the hospital.

The memorial service for the Brothers was very moving however, here was a great deal more crying then I am use to at such services.  I never knew the family Grimm to be such weepers. 

I am still quite shaken up over the whole ordeal.  I just wish I would have asked the brothers to bring three bottles of champagne to the toboggan run that night.  I could have used a second bottle after witnessing the carnage on the highway below. 

I'm still keeping track of anything said about the accident in case I might be questioned by the authorities for, according to the latest news release from the local Sheriff’s department the accident is still under investigation with alcohol suspected as a contributing factor in the crash.