The Buzzard

A State of Unrest

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Miss Fern Buzzard is Leaving the Small Office of “Two Morrows Investing” @ 1:00pm, On the 12th of December, 2,017-just-about-18 Years Post-Christ

Miss Fern wiped her now sweaty hand off on her cream colored shaw, and then donned her pointy purple sunglasses because the first flurries of the season had actually lain on the ground, rendering it eye-blisteringly white outside right about now. She ceased wiping. Now she had to angle her arm at more or less of a right-angle, perhaps dabbling in a more acute nature, forming a type of arm coat rack that would maybe remind you of a mannequin, so that her titanic purse could rest on her forearm rather than be lugged around at the low level of the ground. She was short and the straps were not. Miss Fern’s gargantuan purse - it was really more of a fancy duffel bag - could easily conceal a child. It might even be a papoose. Instead she opted for the typical older-person habit of housing a variety of sauces, salt packets and napkins. Most older folks will purloin a couple of salt and pepper packets, and your standard grape jam from whatever greasy spoon they eat at, but Miss Fern was exceptional. She would extricate nearly wholesale amounts of packets into her purse by the time she had left your average diner, all in an unsettlingly insouciant manner - as if she alone knew the world was about to end but didn’t want anyone else catching on. Waitresses love her. She had plans for the day, post-Two Morrows that involved grocery shopping and actually that’s it, just grocery shopping.

Her propensity to nab ketchup packets bleeds over into her shopping habits; that is, she gets excessive amounts of things, just to be safe. The moment she was introduced to Costco Wholesale (or as she calls it, CosKōze) she had never again shopped anywhere else. The only problem she had with shopping there was that ever since the recent developments regarding ingredients lists, the check-out lanes had become a serious nuisance. Due to a successful attempt by junk food mega-corporation to be able to hide their ingredients from the average consumer, ingredient lists were now printed on the receipt immediately after the purchased item. Corporations were sort of counting on emailed receipts taking off, which never happened. Realizing that emails themselves were often trashed, many companies and corporations decided to stick their would-be-emailed deals\coupons\offers\bargains\advertisements right onto the end of the receipts as well. This meant that receipts were now in the dozens of ft. long and the majority of that acreage was actually somewhat important, so no one threw away their receipt anymore due to the ingredient lists - giving the deals\coupons\offers\bargains\advertisements a higher chance of actually being read. Couple this with the wholesale nature of Costco and you have a checkout lane that spits out thesis length receipts for every customer. Needless to say, the store clerks were extremely diligent in remembering to ask if the customer wanted their receipts - and were infinitely more amiable if said customer answered in the negative.

The receipt machine amanuenses could be heard throughout the store if someone did in fact request their receipt. It sounded sort of like hundreds of very tiny trumpets going off.

Miss Fern needed to purchase her monthly supply of rations, mostly consisting of precooked frozen meals and cases of eggs. Being an avid baker, she used about a flat of eggs every day. Costco was difficult to navigate as none of the aisles were labeled, and the store seemed to sell everything imaginable. She would be in the store for about 6 hours, just shopping, and then spend an additional hour in the food court by the exit, slowly consuming the foot long hot dog that she bought during the close of every shopping trip. She inconveniently parked all three of her carts right in the path to the exit of the store, with absolutely zero spatial awareness about it. During this extended ingestion of elongated hotdog, Miss Fern would sort -brood- over a garden-variety of topics: her daughter’s choice of husband, the kids these days, prices going up, ect., ect. How she handled three full-sized shopping carts was truly a wonder to behold.

Her daughter’s husband had died years ago, but Miss Fern still utilized this time to think poorly of him, and then consequently be disappointed in her also dead daughter, but mostly blaming the son in-law for her - the dead daughter’s - death. It was like a contrarian balance existed in her where she simultaneously thought of her daughter/son in-law as alive and dead, depending on the mental complaint. This hotdog is far too large. 12 inches of miscellaneous meat and bun. Now Yidsock was gone too. She wasn’t even given closure because they never found him. She actually didn’t know if he was dead or alive, but she had come to terms with it and tried to move on. Something she never did with the nature of her daughter’s death. She had no idea what to do with the money the parents left to Yidsock, and she didn’t feel entirely right spending it, so she decided investing it could be a good plan - just in case he ever came back. A foot long hotdog and a soda for $1.50 is a good deal though. She’s never been able to resist a good deal. She wasn’t quite an extreme couponer, but she did always request her receipt and look for the deals\coupons\offers\bargains\advertisements at the bottom. Store clerks love her.

Miss Fern Buzzard is Traipsing Around the House Hopelessly @ 9:00am, On the 13th of December, 2,017-just-about-18 Years Post-Christ

Mrs. Fern doesn’t do much, really. As with most older people that don’t have anything better to do, she watches a lot of news. News is really just the plural of new, and she knows all the new things. She had recently heard about a body found not far from her house that had both of its eyes removed. She was reading the paper this morning and lo and behold, another eyeless corpse had been found and that sort of freaked her out enough that she doesn’t leave the house unless it’s important. The paper said the murders were thought to be a part of recent drug related killings, and that there were trace amounts of this new drug on the body. Mrs. Fern personally thought the whole country was really going to the dogs, and she blamed the “new” president.

In 2016 two terrible candidates had become the final “contestants”, as Mrs. Fern puts it, of the Republican-Democrat game show, and America didn’t want either. The overwhelming majority of American’s didn’t vote at all, which wasn’t unusual, but the majority of those who did vote opted for a write-in rather than either of the two horrible choices the major parties put forth. The astounding and unexpected part was that everyone wrote-in the same candidate - Mickey Mouse, with Jesus Christ winning another 1% of the votes. With a fictional character winning the popular vote, no one in the electoral college was quite sure how to respond. The nature of the votes soon made news and became a fad that saw most Americans vying for Mickey to actually be sworn in - whatever that would look like. Mrs. Fern remembers this with extreme contempt, as most old people tend to look back on any noticeable historical mistakes.

The electoral college saw some loyalties shift when Americans called for jobs and heads if Mickey wasn’t the vote that was cast for their state. After much of a rigmarole, Mickey Mouse won and due to businesses holding legal personhood, Disney eagerly assumed the role of POTUS, seeing a huge opportunity for product placement and profit. Needless to say, Disney was only interested in the duties of presidency on a barely even surface level, focusing much more heavily on rebranding America in its own image. The White House came to be called The Clubhouse, the American Flag’s stars changed to Mickey heads, and rumor has it that the nuclear launch codes were changed to the words “Meeska Mooska Mouska-doer” but these are completely unfounded.

Mrs. Fern blames the current sitting president for the rise in eyeless victims, though she actually adores Mickey. She typically blames whoever the last Democratic president was, but in this case Mickey has taken a much more Liberal approach in his minimal policies that Mrs. Fern has come to blame him for everything that goes wrong. His party was officially announced as Unaffiliated, with an Americanized Mouse Head Logo instead of an elephant or ass, but Mrs. Fern knows who Mickey really sides with - those Progressives. And now there’s murders happening in her own neighborhood, and nothing is being done about it. The news is so saturated with the novelty of having Mickey as president that anything else gets washed away in a torrent of marketing and product placement. To be fair, Mrs. Fern agrees the novelty is at unprecedented levels and is worth keeping tabs on - and she does - but now that she feels physically in danger, she realizes the news isn’t doing it’s job. Interestingly, she doesn’t associate the poor presidency with the fact that it’s a fictional character, but more-so with the fact that the fictional character leans Left.

Miss Fern Buzzard is Watching the News @ 6:00pm, On the 19th of December, 2,017 Years Post-Christ

The room is lit solely by the harsh, flashing glow of television. One moment the room is entirely blue, the next white, the next green. Miss Fern is sitting in a rocking chair that makes a very soothing and rhythmic wooden squeak. She is absentmindedly knitting something too large to be a hat, and too short to be a scarf. The fleeting light of the television is reflected perfectly in her small trifocal glasses to the point where you could watch the news on them. It might be a hand muff that she’s knitting. The volume of the TV is at a reasonable level. As she feels the need, she whispers commentary on the current events to no one in particular. The clicking of her knitting needles is faint and mesmerizing, almost melodic, like an alien language only certain elderly women can speak with years of practice.

“…authorities say that they are still searching for the stolen dog…”

Miss Fern is the type of elderly lady that color coordinates every stitch of her outfit, and is never to be seen in anything casual. Her nail polish is a periwinkle purple that matches the amethyst in her necklace and the flower on her excessive white hat. Casual, to her, means no jewelry. She doesn’t go out much, but when she does it always results in a week or more of whispered comments - also to no one in particular - about the clothing of the youth. She calls anything remotely tight, yoga pants, and anything remotely short, booty shorts. Once she gets started on this subject, it’d be easier to stop a freight train with a French Fry.

“…the president made no comments on rising somnium cases…”

A bald man named Joe Calhoun just appeared and is delivering the weather now, and Miss Fern thinks he looks rather sharp today (he’s wearing the same thing he wears everyday - a suit). All of the window blinds are pulled and the thick Victorian curtains are shut. A sliver of sunset colored light has managed to find a crack between the curtains. It looks like a tractor beam that is sucking up tiny dust particles. The weatherman is gesturing to a large sweeping mass of pink that covers most of Pennsylvania. The entire room lights up pinkish-red like a darkroom. The sliver of light terminates on a stained spot of carpet about six feet from Miss Fern. The carpet is mold-blue and resembles a cheap putting green at a mini golf course.

“…wanna break out the old snow shovel, because this is looking like a heavy snow…”

The TV is an old tube television that is permanently set in a small wooden entertainment system. The speakers are covered by an intricate swirling mesh for aesthetic purposes, and the volume and channels are changed by a knob rather than buttons. It emits an extremely high whine, akin to a dog whistle, that Miss Fern has never heard. It’s the sort of sound your head makes when it’s very quiet. There are yellow channel numbers displayed in the top right corner whenever the channel is changed, and the volume shows up on the bottom as a yellow line of dominos followed by dots for every unreached decibel. Miss Fern has owned the TV for over 20 years and it still works perfectly fine. She is of the firm belief that they simply don’t make them like they used to.

“…on ET; Brittney Spears’ father denies all accusations of misconduct, and the real reason George Clooney married young…”

The sliver of light is quickly dissipating as the sun sets. If the lights were turned on (which they rarely are, to save money on electricity) you would see that the room is neatly ordered and houses many decorative pillows. There are worn paths in the carpet for where Miss Fern always walks, otherwise everything is mostly untouched. There are many stuffed animals, but they are the older kind that look more creepy than kid-friendly: a rabbit with button eyes, a teddy bear with a sewn mouth that looks too much like a grim frown, a cockamamie cat that is mostly featureless and weirdly proportioned, etc. Miss Fern gets up to change the channel, because despite being a huge gossip, she finds these types of shows revolting.

“…pangolin scales are purchased on the black market because they are thought to…”

“… Yeah. It’s mold alright. It should only take a day or two - to remove it…”

“…of allergies? Talk to your doctor about Alergino. Do not take Alergino if you are pregnant or plan…”

“…-antis shrimp can punch with the same relative force as a .22 caliber bull-..”

“… courtroom gets heated when this couple hears the defendant’s reason for…”

“…faces six years in prison. Our next story is about a local school teacher who had walked to class for years, until his students…”

Settling on another news channel, Miss Fern eases back into her rocking chair. The rhythmic squeaking of the chair and clicking of the knitting needles can be heard again alongside the exaggerated delivery of local news. Before she gets too comfortable, she decides she’s hungry enough to make dinner early today (she typically eats around 8 or 9 o’clock, and stays up surprisingly late). She makes her way to the kitchen which is lit by a candle on the stove, and the clock on the microwave. The only reason she has a newer microwave is because she mistakenly nuked a plastic Chinese takeout container of Mac and cheese with a metal fork in it in her old microwave.

Miss Fern’s diet primarily consists of three things: baked goods (made by herself), English muffins with assorted spreads\jams\jellies\preserves\marmalades, and the vegetable lasagna from Lean Cuisine. Today’s choice was an English muffin with a thin layer of butterscotch peanut butter. She didn’t want to use the oven because she thinks it requires quite a lot of electricity. Unbeknownst to her, she has a gas stove. First she cuts the English muffin into two perfectly even halves due to excessive practice. Then she toasts both halves in her tiny white toaster, having it set exactly to the time it takes an English muffin to get golden and crispy. Finally, she evenly lathers both sides with a single knife full of butterscotch peanut butter. Somehow her knife doesn’t leave the telltale lines of serration that every butter knife does, even though it is serrated. She uses a ceramic white plate with brownish floral designs on the outer rim. It’s reminiscent of the large Dutch hex signs typically seen on barns. The TV can be faintly heard in the background.

“… president delivered his address on the issue from the White House at 5:00 o’clock this evening…”

Following her well-worn carpet trail, Miss Fern ends up back at her chair where she positions a TV tray for her English muffin. Her knitting rests in a wicker basket beside the chair. The TV light dims and flickers with fluctuating static lines that streak across the pixels. Miss Fern attributes this static interference to the planes flying overhead. It actually only happens when her neighbor gets a text while in the bathroom, because the neighbors bathroom is near her TV. The predominantly blue light of the news bumper illuminates the room, but interference causes white flashes of light to momentarily brighten the whole area. Miss Fern’s face takes on a ghostly and disembodied quality when anything white comes on screen. Strangely enough, the interference does not affect the audio.

“… like this, we need to stand together and remain strong…”

The new noise that dominates the soundscape is the clacking of Miss Fern’s dentures. The butterscotch peanut butter causes them to suction to and release from the roof of her mouth. The grotesque smacking sounds overpower even the TV’s volume. There is also a less noticeable crunching sound that only a keen ear would notice, because the dentures are so distracting. There is no remote to the TV so Miss Fern is left to fixate on her own chewing. The volume is set not quiet, but low. There is a remote in the side pocket of the rocking chair to the heater that sits below the TV facing Miss Fern. It’s currently on, which is why the lights are off: when the heater is off, the lights are on (Miss Fern is not poor by any means, but is very frugal none-the-less).