It
was my turn to speak upon the mountain. I climbed the mountain for three days
to reach the summit and the podium that was there. The clouds were below me.
All around was stillness and cold. I spoke. "The essence of maturity is
nothing less than" and at that point a great wind blew into my face and
rammed the words backwards back down my throat, "than less nothing is
maturity of essence the," one word at a time, and I could speak no more.
I
came down off the mountain over the next three days and I went where I was
supposed to go, to the Hut of the Elders. They were waiting for me there. The
First Elder asked, "Did you speak your words?" I lied and said yes.
The Second Elder asked, "Do you think your words were heard?" I lied
and said yes. The Third Elder asked, "Did you receive the sign?" I
lied and said yes. They all smiled at one another, nodding.
They
took me out of the Hut of the Elders and introduced me to the men after I had
bidden goodbye to the children.
No-one
ever learned of my eternal shame.
---
Home & Kitchen > Furniture >
Bedroom Furniture > Beds & Bedframes > Beds
> Deathbeds
Charles
started unwrapping the present. Ten minutes later, it was all unwrapped. It was
a bed. "It's a bed," he said.
Mary
entangled her fingers and pressed the resulting misshapen clumsy ball against
her left cheek. "Read the label!"
Charles
found the label and read it. "Sealy Deathbed. Black Ebony Finish. Single. Made in
He
said to Mary, "I didn't know there was such a thing
as a deathbed."
"Of
course there is. People die on them all the time."
"What
I mean is, I didn't know you could purchase one. I
thought deathbeds were ordinary beds upon which one is about to die."
Mary
shrugged happily. "Apparently that's not the case anymore! They're now
mass-manufacturing them so one can plan ahead."
Charles
smiled. "Well, what will they think of next?"
"Now
you don't have to worry about dying on some smelly cot God knows where. You
never know. Maybe you'll need it as soon as tomorrow!"
A
tear came to Charles' eye. "Sealy saw a gap in the market, and they filled
it. Truly, it's the age of miracle and wonder."
---
"She
was telling me about her father's death. She said, 'I figured it was the end
when the thought went through my head that rather than lying on a ordinary bed he was actually lying on his deathbed. When
that bed became a deathbed that's when it sunk in that this was the last chance
to ask him about the present.
"'I
said to him, "Father, I have to know something. About the gift I gave you
five years ago, when I was seventeen."
"'He
looked at me with a question.
"'I
said, "I gave you a little metal box. Did you ever even open it?"
"'A
look of recognition came into his eyes. "Oh yes,
the box. I opened it. It was just a bundle of wires inside."
"'"It
was more than that. It was a cure for what's killing you now. What happened to
it?"
"'He
sighed and tried to speak but no words came out. And that was the end of him. I
never found out about the box.'
"I
said, 'Wow. Did you ever find it?'
"'Never.'
"'That
cure could have helped a lot of people.'
"'It
could only cure him alone. Only him, only him.'"
---
Almost True
I
moped on home after the class election. The dreary traffic lights held me up at
Harmony and
My
mother was at the door. "How did it go?"
"I
lost."
"Oh dear. Well, better luck next time. How much
did you lose by?"
"Thirty-two votes."
"That's
rather a lot. How many are in the class?"
I
swallowed hard then. "Thirty-two."
"You
didn't get a single vote?"
"Not
one. It was unanimous. For
"She
must be very popular."
"That
she is."
I
put my filthy books down on the dining room table and sighed. "I was wiped
out."
My
mother then said, "Wait. What about your vote for yourself?"
"My what?"
"You
voted too, right? You should've gotten one vote. You should demand a
recount!"
This
confused me. "You don't think I would vote for myself, do you?"
This
happened forty years ago. Still, to this day, I can't understand how someone
could vote for himself. It sounds like a really arrogant act, doesn't it? Hey, everybody, look. Look at me.
---
Two
backpacking northern travellers named Pat and Mike ran into one another on the
Polar Bear Express heading up to Moosonee. Since they
were both planning a little day trip over to Moose Factory they teamed up and
got on the boat together. Soon they were walking the main streets, swapping
stories of their travels and seeing the sights.
Two
dogs, a retriever and a collie, came running along and joined them in their
journey.
Pat
said, "Hey, doggies, come along."
About
a quarter mile later a labrador
fell in with them.
Mike
said, "Hmm, another dog."
Ten
minutes later a beagle and a second retriever joined their sightseeing pack.
The dogs seemed happy, maybe because they had something to do. Pat patted them
all and made hero sounds.
Mike
said, "Lotta dogs. I wonder why they like us in
particular."
"I
have a thing with dogs. It's funny. I think it's because they think I'm a dog
too."
Mike
said, finally using a gag he'd thought up some years before, "Maybe it's
really because you smell like garbage."
Pat
stopped, the dogs stopped, and Mike stopped.
"Not
funny," said Pat.
The
dogs snarled, bared their teeth, and commenced salivating.
---
The New Tamburlaine:
A Novel
Book Two
PART TWO
Chapter Two
2.
¿¡*+=:![{(THE
ENDING)}]!:=+*!?
The female protagonist cried, "Someone
save me! Come quick, and save me!"
The male protagonist shouted, "It's
too late for that! No-one can save you now! We're way too close to an end for
that!"
She leaned out the castle window or
whatever. "Is this really how it's going to end?"
He knelt at her feet. "Don't you
understand? I've loved you for so long! All this was ... for you!"
She smiled unexpectedly, and touched his
cheek. She laughed lightly. "I didn't know I was in a romance."
"The stars of on high have said
so."
"I've never heard the construction 'of
on' before."
"Dammit,
that's because you've never loved
before! It's perfectly common, in Romance!"
She knelt. "Does this mean the
end?"
A character from Book One PART TWO Chapter
One rushed in, crying, "Does she think it means the end?"
A character from Book Two PART
And she our protagonist cried, "I will
be married!"
So it ended.
So it ended.
So it ended.
So it ended.
So it ended.
---
Having
noticed myself being in a kind of sentimental elation after providing to the
writer Neil Gaiman the only known footage of his
father, said footage having been forgotten by everyone in the world and
misplaced uncatalogued, I made the quite causal
connexion between the former and the latter, i.e. that a pleasurable feeling
follows the commission of a good deed.
Thus
this morning seated on the streetcar I noticed a pretty woman standing beside
me and I looked up at her and said, "Excuse me. Would you like to sit
down?"
"Why,
thank you."
We
fleetly exchanged places.
As
I basked in the aura of my well-done deed, I glanced down repeatedly at the
pretty woman only to witness in flickering stop-time the man who had been
beside me and was now beside her looking directly into her eyes as he asked her
where she was going, what was her name, where she'd grown up, her history of
pets, her middle name, marital status, phone number, the colour of her underthings, her experience of nude beaches, and if she
liked being on top.
Thus
I experienced a second epiphany: one cannot be sentimentally elated while being
really friggin' jealous.
---
Her
right eye socket was a smooth concavity as if her embryonic RNA had somehow
misplaced that page of the instruction manual. Jim could see fatty epidermal
tissue in there, without a hint of muscle. She said, "It's not an easy
job, this writing game. You have to able to observe carefully. Jim: where are
we?"
Jim
looked hard. "Top of a smooth grass-covered hill.
Countryside, within earshot of a host of crickets."
The
man with one arm said, "Is that the proper collective noun? Why
'host?'"
Jim
answered, "I think I used it because we're their guests. Should I look up
the collective noun for crickets?"
The
woman said, "It might be more meaningful. You can check it later. But
host, host is good."
Jim
looked hard again. "A town with a chapel's over there," pointing.
"You
can't point!" cried the one-armed man. "No-one can see you
pointing!"
"Okay,
like a, a medieval town of three hundred painted by Breugel."
"That's
better."
"This
is really not that easy, you know."
"We
know it's not."
"But
it has to be done."
Jim
said, "Is this how you two got started?"
"Ah,"
said the woman. "We haven't started yet."
"Not
yet."
---
From de Maupassant's
Sketchbook
The
humble parish church in which we were all sitting was built for Masses, but
through the centuries had begun offering christenings, baptisms, weddings ...
and funerals, which was the reason we were there that Tuesday.
Heads
turned this way and that and quiet mutters passed the air, mingling with the
minor chords provided by Sacristan Otto. The funeral had been scheduled for
nine, and it seemed to be well past that--perhaps nine-and-a-half or so, and
the hearse had not arrived; nor, for that matter, had Jacques' young widow
Hermione.
Some
snickering passed lightly as Hermione made her appearance, still sweating and
smelling of a hayloft assignation, to take her seat in the front pew. She
whispered to her pew-mate, "I simply had to stay for seconds."
We
all turned at that point, for the casket was being carried down the aisle. We
crossed ourselves, thinking about the brevity of life and the preciousness of
time. A pallbearer apologized quietly about sheep on the road and the
consequent delay.
Hermione's
pew-mate leaned to her and whispered, "You got here in the nick of
time."
She
shrugged. "I knew Jacques wouldn't be on time anyway, so...."
---
"Where's
June?"
I
said, "She's out there somewhere in the dark. We had a fight."
"She's
out there all alone?"
"She'll
be back."
I
walked back and forth on the porch feeling righteous and justified. Dawn and
Jim continued their game, never once daring to look up at me. Lucky for them,
that's all I can say.
I
smoked a cigarette, drank a beer, and smoked a cigarette.
Dawn
stood up and looked off the porch into the black. "Where did you leave
her?"
I
waved my arms around. "Oh, up near the road, that's where. Fine, she's
sulking, it's a game, everything's a game to
her."
She
looked over at Jim. She said, "Let's go look."
I
said, "You're gonna be giving her everything she
wants. Leave her be."
Dawn
went inside; the light of a flashlight broke through the window and onto a
tree; she came back out. Jim got up and went with her.
I
watched the flashlight's beam bouncing away for quite some time, then it disappeared behind some trees.
I
got another beer and drank it.
I
sat, still angry, dreaming up speeches.
I
sat, waiting for them to come back; which they never did.
---
Little Gun Goes Off
Once
upon a time there was a little gun named, simply, Little Gun. Now, Little Gun
was a happy little gun who danced and played in the sunshine. He figured he
could never do anything bad and that nothing bad could ever happen to him.
One
day his parents sat him down for a talk.
Little
Gun's father, Daddy Gun, told him, "We want to warn you about the world,
son."
"Oh?"
cried Little Gun.
Little
Gun's mother, Mommy Gun, told him, "There are people in the world who want
to lock you up."
"Oh!"
cried Little Gun.
Daddy
Gun said, "The people who want to lock you up are called liberals."
Little
Gun asked, "If they're liberals, why are they against liberty?"
Mommy
Gun said, "No-one quite knows. However, liberals have a magic potion
called Nuance that makes contradictions disappear."
Little
Gun said, "I think I understand. So I should be good?"
His
parents said, "You should be good."
Little
Gun was good for a time, but then one day he went crazy. Somehow he harmed a
neighbour, and a teacher, and a policeman, and he got locked up.
And
everyone lived happily ever after.
---
Circle Dance
So many parts
to this thing I don't get,
There's
courtship and kindling, mistake and regret,
There's
walks on the beach
and ice cream at dawn,
There's
writing of sonnet and writing of song,
That I can't
make it whole with the chunks that I'm missing
And how can I
know when I've done enough kissing?
Don't try to
get love before you get L,
Don't try it
before you get O,
You got to get
V before you can tell,
And
e-special-e E 'fore you know.
But how can I
know what the meaning I'm aiming for
Is really
dependent on each little particle?
How can there
be knowledge that each little act
Has to be in
its place to suppose it as fact?
Without an
awareness of which parts are necessary
How do I know
the resultant's involuntary?
Don't try to
get love before you get L,
Don't try it
before you get O,
You got to get
V before you can tell,
And
e-special-e E 'fore you know.
The circle of
meaning, don't try to outsmart,
It's called
hermeneutics with no place to start,
With
part 'fore the whole and the whole 'fore the part....
---
"Mother
Whimple, Mother Whimple!"
"What
is it, my child, whom I have known since birth?"
Laura
puts her fingers together tightly. "I am expecting a child of my
own!"
Mother
Whimple thinks. "When were you
impregnated?"
"The
fifth of April!"
Mother
Whimple closes the blinds and shuts out the light.
She forces Laura into a conveniently-set chaise longue.
Mother Whimple whispers, "Do you know what this
will mean?"
THE CAPRICORN
Years
later.... Lara is churning butter, five hundred pounds a sitting. She thinks
back... back... back....
Mother
Whimple: I can never bless your child.
Laura:
Why ever not, old woman, whom I have known since I attained the age of reason?
Laura
(in the 'present') calls for her son. She calls, "Wicked Child! Wicked Child!"
Wicked
Child (wearing barnyard filth for clothing) creeps anxiously into the churnery. "Yes, mother?"
"You
wicked child! You killed our neighbour's
daughter!"
Wicked
Child knots his fingers. "It's in my astrological nature to do so, mother.
How can I be what I am not? For example, a Libra?"
Laura
fists the sky. "Why? Why, oh God, a Capricorn?"
Wicked
Child sucks his filthy thumb. "These forces I cannot control, Mother. What
want you dead for dinner?"
---
PORNSTAR FUNNIES #3
FIRST PANEL
Charles and
Nancy engaging in sexual intercourse,
Charles'
speech-bubble: I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted a ticker-tape parade.
OUT-OF-PANEL
VOICE: Lean back, pussy!
SECOND PANEL
Charles: I
couldn't do math good enough. It was so long ago I
forget the rest. How did I decide not to pursue it?
OUT-OF-PANEL
VOICE: Dick, move your arm!
THIRD PANEL
Charles: Do
you ever get the feeling you're just a robot?
OUT-OF-PANEL
VOICE: Pussy, lean back, let us see junk!
FOURTH PANEL
Charles: Life
is so disappointing. Whatever happened to the child I once was?
OUT-OF-PANEL
VOICE: Dick, on top!
---
My platform? You're asking me for my platform? I
have but one plank in my platform, so it's more like a board, or one of those
planks bad sailors are forced to walk off of. I'm not comparing myself to a
sailor, understand. Sailoring is serious business.
Besides, boats bore me stiff. The only thing worse than life
is life on a boat. Pessimistic, but demonstrably true.
Very dull. Maybe it's the flatness of everything
around you. Though I suppose there'd be something sublime on, like, an ocean
liner, out in the middle of the ocean with nothing but flat water in every
direction. No. That's wrong. It'd be dull, dull, dull, and there'd be too much
of a temptation to jump off. All it takes is an instant, or so they say.
So,
my platform, such as I may call it, is simplicity itself. Vote for me, and I
will pay no taxes. With the money I save, I can buy myself nice things, like a
house or a car. If I'm not elected, I don't get any tax break. That's all there
is to my election platform. I get to not pay taxes. I don't expect to win.
---
The
principal said to
The
High School administrator sighed and said, "It's her hair. We can't have
another of her hair colour in here. We have too many already."
"But-but-but
she's brilliant! Her father--me--look me up on LinkedIn! I have a thousand contacts! And Nola's mother,
why, she's redesigned
The
administrator said, "We have Nobel-prize-winning parents aplenty here.
It's not a matter of accomplishments. It's simply that her hair shade colour is
already over-represented, and we must try to most accurately (re)present the
true community demographic."
Then
he got a magnificently Roy-like idea, saying, "What if I dyed her hair black?"
The
administrator frowned thinkily before saying,
"That would be hair cultural appropriation, wouldn't it?"
---
Softball
-Hello,
and welcome to another edition of softball, the program that's not afraid to
ask easy questions of the headline-makers. Tonight on our program, we have with
us Mr. Donald Trump. Welcome, Mr. Trump.
-Thank
you, and thanks for having me on your program.
-Very
good, very good. Is that a comfy enough chair?
-It's
like sitting in my mama's lap.
-Excellent.
And so: right to it! Mr. Trump. You have recently been making quite
controversial statements. So I would like to ask you: Did you have a pet as a
child?
-Yes,
I had a dog named Ralph.
-Ralph,
as in the sound of a bark?
-No,
he was named after Ralph Cramden, from the television
show "The Honeymooners."
-I
see. Was he your own dog, or the family dog?
-Funny
story there, funny story. I thought--I was told--that
he was mine. As it turned out, he was actually my father's dog.
-And
why was that?
-Well,
I didn't understand it until later, a child cannot actually own a pet.
-Isn't
that extraordinary.
-The
extraordinary thing, understand, is that I didn't "get it" until I
was nineteen.
-Sorry
to interrupt. We'll be back after this commercial.
---
I remember, I
remember brushing the dirt from my knees
As I walked
away from the manger
There was a
cloud looking like
Up high in the
sky and the day was getting warmer
And it didn't
matter to the birds hiding noisily in the trees
And I asked
myself
"Is that
all there is to having sex with a goat?"
Is that all
there is?
Is that all
there is?
If that's all
there is my friends
Then let's
keep dancing
Let's break
out the booze and have a ball
If that's all
there is
Then there was
the time I noticed something odd
About my
father's eating habits
Perhaps he was
autistic
He'd always
pick the smallest egg in the carton first
And work up
from there
I thought it
was a stupid habit, and finally I asked,
"Is that
all there is to poisoning your father?"
When I finally
turned around, I thought I could smell
Flesh
burning--but that must've been an illusion
Because I was
seven miles away from ground zero
I saw a cloud
looking like a cute mushroom
And I said to
myself,
"Is that
all there is to a nuclear explosion?"
---
I'm
increasing the odds that some vestige of western civilization can survive in
the face of kill-all-infidels Moslem imperialism; cf. A Canticle for Leibowitz. [link to Toscanini's
Complete RCA Collection.]
Oh, the
Eagles of Death Metal cover the old song by Duran Duran
'Save a Prayer.' Naturally they should be murdered.
It seems Facebook is on a blackout concerning the Islam slaughters
in
When can I
quit my job? A slaughter happens at a concert. Somewhere around a hundred kids
get murdered by moslems. My
TV broadcast--"The National"--cannot use the words Islam or Moslem.
(I will verify they didn't.) They treat it like it's a natural disaster. Such a fucking joke.
Have you
heard Moslems are killing Christians in
*
"River" is a tv show written by Philip Marlow.
Toscanini. His violence illuminates what
Geoff Sinclair (french horn)
said to me a decade ago. "You get a lot of musicians on a stage, they want to make a big noise."
I went into a shop today to buy seven
items. Each item cost three dollars. The teenager at the cash register had to
get out a calculator to do the math. The children are our future.
---
Missing Cat
Five-ten-fifteen
"Hey,
I let the cat out at five and she's still not back yet"
I
figured that she'd come back on her own, sure, so I waited calmly
Thirty-five-forty-forty-five
I
walked the alleys and streets, looking for signs of a car accident maybe
Fifty-fifty-five-sixty
Then
I imagined her no longer in the house ever again, and it hurt
Sixty-five-seventy-seventy-five
At
twelve hours gone, at
Eighty-eighty-five-ninety
Mary
came home, we searched, asked the corner store, hadn't thought of that before
Ninety-five-one-hundred-one-hundred-five
To
bed sad, recalled dog-catchers in cartoons, thought maybe she'd been picked up
by
One-hundred-ten-one-hundred-fifteen-one-hundred-twenty
Found
her on the Animal Services website, in a photo, held in a shelter
One-hundred-twenty-five-one-hundred-thirty-one-hundred-thirty-five
Went
to get her, I took her to the vet then, finally home again
One-hundred-forty-one-hundred-forty-five-one-hundred-fifty
Now
she's either in shock or irreparably damaged from the high blood pressure event
One-hundred-fifty-five-one-hundred-sixty-one-hundred-sixty-five
Recriminations
all just, like why didn't I search harder earlier
instead of simply waiting
One-hundred-seventy-one-hundred-seventy-five-one-hundred-eighty
None
of this had to have worked out, I might not have
guessed "shelter"
One-hundred-eighty-five-one-hundred-ninety-one-hundred-ninety-five
Tomorrow's
another day, I will go back to being myself won't I, selfish again
Two-hundred
---
There
it all was. The meaning of everything, all accomplished by me and in the right
place. A house in a good neighbourhood, and a wife, and three
children. It had taken a decade to get, and I had it. There were no
secrets to any of it.
So
why did I start so, on A February night, when a loud whooshing roar of sound
came from the basement? It could not have been anything, really. I knew the
basement from one end to the other, and there was no possible way for anything
to be making a loud whooshing roar down there. What was wrong with me? I had
been victim of a hallucination. I chuckled and decided
to go down to the basement, just for the fun and pleasure of it. I felt like
stretching my legs.
I
could have turned on the lights down there; I chose to use a small black
flashlight instead. Understand that the house was quiet, with everyone (save
me) asleep. "Hello, hallucination," I said as I descended, counting
the thirteen steps down.
How
had I misjudged? Another hallucination? I stepped down
and down, my light ahead of me, down ... sixteen steps.
---
The
flashlight illuminated the steps down which I was stepping down into the
basement of the house which had once belonged to my parents and which then
belonged to me, via inheritance. I'd known these steps since I had been a boy;
they were more familiar to me than any steps I had ever known. It was Christmas
Eve, and I had heard an unusual noise down there, a floor-rattling whoosh which
I could not entirely attribute to the powerful eggnog I had consumed. My wife
was sleeping or whatever, and the children likewise
sleeping or whatever. I had chosen to not turn on the basement light for I had
wanted to feel something of a tense scare on that hallowed Eve. The basement
had been a frightening place one-upon-a-time, and I had wanted to recapture
that childish terror, if only for some two minutes. Without really knowing I
was doing so I counted the steps as I descended; I stepped off the bottom
step--the thirteenth. Things did not look right. My slippered
toes slid forward; I was still on a step. Had I miscounted? Where could an
extra step have come from? And that's when I saw it.
---
I
took the kid up onto the wall to show him. "Watch," I said. I
spotting one of the off near a copse so I fired a shot in its direction. It
looked towards us and started stumbling closer. When it was about twenty yards
from the wall and starting to go in the wrong direction I aimed carefully and
blew its head off. "That's the first step."
We
went down to the gate. The gate-master opened it up and the kid and I hurried
out and dragged the body into the compound. The gate-master quickly closed the
gate. "Simple, no?" I said to the kid.
We
dragged the corpse to the cook-hut where the water was already boiling. We
stripped it naked and shoved it into the pot.
"There,
see?" I told him. "In two hours there'll be meat for us all."
The
kid said, "Don't you find eating zombies disgusting?"
I
shrugged. "Protein's protein."
He
grimaced. "Zombie stew."
"You
put in veggies and it's just like squirrel."
"It
ain't like what our people did."
There
he was, going on about his
---
At
the centre of the party was the man of the hour, the lecturer philosopher Swami
Draupadu, formerly of
He
was saying, "It is an illusion, all an illusion."
Mrs.
Earnson: "Are you saying that the whole field of
biology, nutrition most precisely, needs a revolutionary revision?"
"I
am. All the nutrients one needs one may get from the fertile lifer-giving air.
I myself eat nothing, and have eaten nothing for eleven years."
"Indeed!
And you look none the worse for wear."
The
Swami excused himself for some minutes during which we discussed his radical
ideas. He came back and I distinctly smelled smoked salmon.
In
the car home, I told my wife of this. She said, "Is not the smell of
smoked salmon carried through air? The Swami had obviously drawn the nutrients
associated with smoked salmon from the air and into himself, and you were smelling the detritus."
What
a wise woman, my wife! Of course--it all made sense! I cannot understand why
these ideas aren't mandated into the national curriculum. Isn't this 2015?
---
The End
Once
it became apparent to the animals that life could not go on forever, Loss
entered the world, rubbed its new chapped paws together, and said, "I know
what you're all going through; really I do; really."
He'd
known, he'd been introduced to, his great-grandmother, that much he knew; but
on the day of her funeral he was forced into new little clothes, and he didn't
know why.
Rachel
was at the bottom of a dark pit so disorienting she couldn't focus on the
pinprick of light so high above it might have been a lost hallucination.
It's
said all the time, by everyone: "I can't believe it. Why, I just saw xxx
last xxx; it's really hard to believe."
If
the loss of each person is unique, can't we key people to prime numbers? What's
the trillionth prime?
How
many people did you see today for the very last time, those both familiar and
unfamiliar?
Why
do the dead say first off? Is it: "Where did everyone
go?"
I
used to know this neighbourhood but now it's so empty.
The
dog that howled at Mac's grave.
"Don't
you forget about me."
People
vanish daily.
My loss.
Lost.
