M.C. Humphreys
Martin Chizelwit Humphreys is a frank man. If he suspects some character flaw in you, he’ll tell you to your face. And if you resent him for lacking tact, then you’re a coward for being polite instead of punching him in the face. Martin doesn’t like cowards reading his biography.
At 88, he’s still going strong, though most of his vital organs don’t work. His five senses can’t pick up much anymore, so he has to rely on his sixth sense – faith – to know that whatever is going on in the world is totally irrelevant.
Martin is a firm believer in faith seeking understanding seeking trust seeking knowledge seeking probability seeking a volume of Darwin, which is actually a bible with an Origin of Species dust jacket, that has a good rigged deck of cards nestled in its hollowed-out pages. Because when you’re gambling for your eternal life during a really boring biology lecture, it’s important to have a poker face so that your opponent doesn’t know where you stand on controversial issues in society.
He reached maturity at a young age, and he was handsome enough to convince people to sell him beer and cigarettes. Nobody would think anything of it (this being a time when there was no age restriction on harmful substances) if it weren’t that those huge discounts the shopkeepers would give him put stores everywhere out of business. Nobody could help it, he just had a way about him. And that smile near broke the Midwest.
Martin’s writing style matured early, too. He published his first novel when he was still in high school. About cows. He's been into rearing and breeding cows most of his life, so that he can tell their story in a way that is free of the corruption of modern language. He refuses to use any slang in his prose. He tells the cows’ story purely through the ‘moo’. People just don’t understand that there are subtle shifts of meaning, a vast range of expression in those moos.
Martin seeks to belie the common stereotype that cows are dumb unknowing creatures, by exposing their hidden intelligence. There is great danger in this intelligence, yes. But these aren’t just cold, calculating, ruthless minds: there is great compassion to be found in there, too. And it is a compassion we have much to learn from.
“I don’t want the finer things in life, like preserves of jam and thick soft quilts, until I get what I need: the machinery to make that stuff for me.”
“If you ask me what remains to be known in the future, I’ll say, ‘Memorize all the world’s encyclopedias.’ Once you do that, forget all that fancy junk and rake the leaves – else I’m gonna take a stick to you, boy.”
“No one knows who they are more than someone who changes their identity (before I became a farmer, I was a leadership coach).”
“What’s the most difficult thing you can do? Live simply. ‘Cause in order to be self-sufficient, you got to get well near everybody else to work for you.”
“Quotes ain’t all that useful. Fact is, there’s more concise ways to express what you’re feelin’, like screams and moans.”
“The nose can’t help catchin’ what the ears get sick with. Yessir, rock bands just sweat evil. Evil’s been around for a long time, ever since rocks started getting real hot and making a lot of noise as they exploded out o’ the ground and evil spirits wisped out of hell. If a band ever uses a fog machine, hold your breath so you don’t become possessed by one.”
“The thing about the black market is, it’s racist. White children make useful slaves, too.”
“Someone told me once, ‘It’s time to get you a pair of overalls, boy.’ But I don’t believe in summing up nothin’ – I let my experiences speak for themselves – and even if I did, a synopsis should be singular. That’s why every time I go out to work in the fields, I work naked. It lets my neighbors speak of my experiences for me.”
“With tractors, you just don’t get the feel of tilling that land. So when planting season comes around, I use a hoe. To grow one useful whore, that’s the motto of my pimp farm.”