A Portrait of Aging with Grace.

 

There is an older person, sometimes known as a winsome exemplar of false comradery, who showed up, even though we'd been cooped up for what seemed like minutes, to lead us through the second-to-last scene. If you're wondering, you can probably find it on page 35 or 36. If you are one of the few who still has access to the older, more fructified, version, it may be hard to find at all. That's because before any older version was destroyed, it was made to appear that any nearly stolen artifact would be folded in one fell swoop inside a single verb.

At length the older person was observed to cough three times in a timorous whimple, signaling for the guards to search our outer things, without so much as asking permission from the Training Associate on site. She had it coming anyway. It's why we pretended to laught while dying. Of boredom, that is. So when the older person removed a piece of revolving paper from inside its special place, guaranteed to appeal mainly to people dedicated to gradualism in all things, it seemed surprising only in a doomed retrospect. Why I say this is for the same reason that I've been lying to myself from the first sign. If some find this hard to believe, their personal cleanliness will come under serious question.

So, as we move into position for the last time, I can taste my reluctance like a bitter product in the pit of my throat. And even though no one is likely to notice, the older person, with an abundance of caution, relives a scene from a youth dedicated to the installation of ecliptic bitelines into a flagrant minority of timorous wingnuts. It's just the way things have started to roll, out of our control, beneath our contempt and always, already, settled.  We've known the older person to be loquacious, but never like this. I have to admit that we've usually been reluctant to commit to participating in a 'secret plot'. If any of us had known that an invasive insect would be released into a novel environment at the conclusion, it would have struck us as a bit odd. That's because the weather had failed to become inclement, despite all forecasts to the contrary.

When I held my pinking tool inside a purity box for the required thirty-one seconds, I got the shock of my life. It seems that unknown to either me, my sister or our grandmother, all the wires had been removed, rendering the mechanism ineffective, if not appropriately dangerous. I'm now skipping down the last half of page 41. If you find when looking at it that there's a small (about 1 cm) defect near the lower right corner, you'll need to submit a blood sample within thirty-six minutes or there's a good chance that someone may die or possibly face a major inconvenience. Action is our only priority, results be damned.

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A dish, a dream and a dearly deft drip.

 

Zobar jams his elbow right in the center of the dish. The dish is mounted securely to the fourth inner wall so it's in no danger of breaking. It's a ceremonial dish and was discovered in Italy during the inter-War period by someone who knew Zobar's estranged governess. She had a long-term agreement with the family about an apartment over the garage. After the fire, as she pawed her way through the ashes of what remained of her life, she recalled a dream in which Zobar, dressed as a scarecrow, had a vision of how people would live in the distant future. It was a miracle they could still breathe because life was lived almost entirely under the waters of Lake Michigan. The Indian immigrants who opened news stands on the shore during the Summer vacation had a reason to be worried. They could see it coming from a thousand miles aways. So they decided not to make that mistake again. It would cost them dearly if they failed to make the required adustment. It served them right.

In the end no one was fooled. Not Zobar, not his governess, not even some of the kids in town who raked leaves for pocket change. It appeared even they lacked the room to make a quick turn-around. So they just proceeded as if nothing was wrong. And you know what? Nothing was. Wrong, that is. As long as you looked at it with one eye half-closed. What you'd do is, you'd start your line from a point that was a fair piece away. As you moved closer you'd get shorter by the second, until within a day or so only your squirming would arouse suspicion among the disgraced ballplayers who liked to lounge around under trees that always seemed to be looming. This could get someone injured, or even killed God forbid. Why hasn't anyone told you this yet?

It was when the governess first pretended to be addicted to invisible pills that she and her boyfriend, a hanging 'chad' named Miles Whitcomb, decided to break into Alderwave Veterinary Studios Inc. to look for a key to a stolen ivory box. The box was said to contain the remnants of a photocopy of a newspaper article which could prove moderately embarrassing, especially where the deployment of strategic miscalculation is concerned. At the time some said this sounded like the 'perfect plan'. How wrong they were, though. Because this so-called 'boyfriend' character was soon revealed to lack any kind of innate delicacy. He made all the kids pay him a dollar to swim in the lake even though he was known to be allergic to water. And when the Holiday Season rolled around the next year everyone could clearly see that his wig was made of plastic hair. Someone should really do something. No one is sure exactly what as far as I know. Please stay well. Get plenty of rest. Make of it something to lurk for . . ....

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The Cream of the Cop.

 

Had I been presented with a simple wall-hanging and expectations had not grown so uncontrollably through recent iterations of each task-ready bomber's portraiture haspiration, then we all agree that the naysayers who looped about willfully would be all but through in our Southern Forest. Their olfactory senses had declined over the months of squalid appearances by our (by now) second Vice Counsel in as many months. The original notions had not yet suffered the random falling pattern that we would come to expect in each of the seven partitions. I was feeling not a little mulish even though my disk was out for everyone to launch remarks at, but, try as we might, any patently bold retrieval buntum could seem to take the place of gold in our sky of white.

The cream of each cop is spread liberally within the inner brain so as to avoid idle prattling at dinners engaged just outside the perimeter of an unused bridge. What triumphs we could sink our collective teeth into were scaled to contain a breathless monad at Streak Level 4. The wind gives us a clue. It peals like leftover skeem, but our happ just gives them a further embankment on the plug side. Perhaps you've seen to it that an unstained tooth begets a null point when persons in a line least expect it. Therein lurks our supreme advantage: vaporized salt and the tenderest, most approachably nonchalant wind-surfing contestant will endow us with solid skills on the outside. The chance that you will grip your ticket to a faded hall undergoing rancid stage action is one hill I refuse to die on.

In the farthest collection of leaking desk feeblitures our morbid obsession with qualified string-wickets throws a new light on Telluride, Wisconsin traffic fatality stats. Don't say that we asked you to withdraw to a rumpled window cleaner's fabric of dread. If you do, we can promise to throw more than a few bones in the direction that you've consistently failed to cease forgetting. A bit of attractiveness could help prevent poverty within walking distance of my shed. That is where you will find balance. And I will forever live in your debt. Time is short.

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For Re-Dibterative Consplipterklation.

 

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A Lesson in Neighborliness.

 

A neighbor who has offered to defend our family homestead from the depredations of random bands of rootless pre-pubescent cosmopolitans who, for the time being at least, seem to sweep through our area on a nightly basis, has manifested these weird episodes of manic screaming and furniture breakage to the point where I don't feel I can any longer trust him to perform as the 'vigilant citizen' I once thought him to be. With the exception of a dinner that our kids expropriated from a homeless veteran of the Maltese War, there hasn't been much to complain about lately. Barring an outbreak of terminal memetic aphasia, I don't know when I've been so undone by my wife's struggle to malign a corpulent bugbear or two with whom I've developed a sleep strategy second to none in our known vistas of fantasy prone Communists.

The tramp who's been making a temporary shelter in one of our outbuildings in exchange for pruning the wisterias, has taken a bold stand and refused all offers of hypoconvulsive spectro-therapy to the point where one has to wonder who and what and where's the pine-scented blob around here? For my part, the tidings of evening trickerie and overflowing emotional support ducats have been a boon to my tooth enamel replacement hysteria and a certain despondency has set in among the support staff that seems to rain on parades not yet plotted to honor desecrated holiday-makers the world over. Over and above all that, the  painting on our outflow has reached a tippering bunt that I can't quite tell myself wasn't planned long ago, before our kids' tutors started to sulk. They'll be getting theirs; you can count on it.

And in case anyone in the Capro Support Monstrosity is starting to get their tootsies in a bind about my or anyone's capacity to inveigle a snapshot of prim potency readings from the odd-numbered docket Community School 7, they should rest easy, pop a few pins and settle in for a relaxing evening of prime time television viewing. I predict that in the coming years the study of the Flemish language and its literature will take root and grow like wildfire among today's young adults. I've seen this coming for a long time. You just can't stop this sort of thing once it gets started. People get a 'certain something' in their blood and woe to he (or she) who tries to extract it, whether through strong-arm tactics or gentle persuasion. Or even tickling. That's just how it goes. I'll say it one more time: We're all grown-ups here. This is slipping (not).

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We now know who is involved.

 

They taught me how, but not when, to lie. The training was received with a smile not to be noticed by whatever uncomfortable adversary might move into the foreground and admit defeat in today's playground. The love and dignity, as having given our words a stem-frothing aspect, can (and will) no longer hold the wan target aloft, an occasion of plyable toy-wisdom particle fraud. A measure which is always of a unique ratio, is sure to batter in principled duos with the gently rising craft of one so belivid as meets the grace of tofts. The tradnastitive amalgam of trufe, replete inside olleyways abade the wainscotting, is sure to hold dramastic plauditures when easing a measure of cave-like operating injectives, but the wife of our minch-haus, flagrant and taudney, one could not help stressing, the hairline breaching above all whose nose is a shallow victim's paleface perch.

We are given to a wand's purr as the crapid effluvia is seen to dictate each flange's polymerized ovectic ransom. But the trime to a wolferd, adknowledged and fissured to a scrim of fare-thee-won'ts, is draining the pate of frofulent chimps as only Nelson can. But 'why?' is a count we fold, the drippage to pace Onan's wickery puffed stochastic floor. If ever the delay seen in fields should be felt as the disaster it isn't, then my martial plague, attenuated in frisky allotments, will hold a pin to the nape of infamy! A chersh! And feribault trash palates acleft the furbles! We train our own reducers and pick out jaunts with emaciated pleasers, the nub of all solemn ploughshares. Delighted we mask, but a sorry induction of our leaky wigstumps turns the entire village into a stable offering of intrepid histamine scamps.

You have eaten our papers. But our hope is for your filial accretion of a fine marbelized dust. The pelucrid vinitor abvolves crime to a light of weaves. And grow as it must, our dupe is foursquare operational as a blunted mood stems the tribe. The nose you crave is only ever our daily marketing plod, or so one vicious, winsome lad likes to pretend while home is approached with a keening holyferd nightgram of truth. A bezel or three will get you one. Our farmers approve of your likely liminal basking hut. But a brain? That's just too fucking hot!

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Line Management Schema.

 

There is a placement of lines in our local atmosphere that I'd say I was starting to get used to if not for a persistent oily rash inside my second forehead. It's not only the ratio of light to shading, but for the sound-threading itself, especially when it seems to swirl, that my very mentation assumes the status of a negligently perforated wig pattern.

But the disadvantages of making any kind of definitive statement at a time like this is that no one would think it wise to tell me where it could end, or even if a person in my position could be likely to recover a practical reason to maintain a paltry modicum of hardheaded, yet modern, religious affiliation. If all goes as it has been alleged to have been planned, by this time tomorrow I'll be ensconced in seat 32B on Amtrak's Kalthorn Moverm, with Jake and Kathy by my side, a portion of dainty comestibles at the ready and a reliably engrossing selection of reading matter to take my mind off the predicament I can't seem to shake rid of.

It's my name and I'm entitled to it, is all I ever said. Now that the 'professional people' are so involved, it'll be a 'day at the beach' if I can ever see my way straight again to stare a false God in the mouth and smile without leaning into a torpid, if sultry, breeze. It's because of the trim that was applied to my standing field that I find this stigmatized atmosphere so impressive. A wave of fealty has been shown to engage folks like me in a grimy, indigent spree of wisdom theft at distance.

The program begins when we are shown to our personalized crates. Even when the likely announcement is made that everything we need will be placed neatly within, a rising sense of incompletion will hold center stage at each non-professional tournament I'm forced to attend. Despite what some of the younger readers may choose to believe, when I was a kid this wasn't how things generally went. For starters, each suspiciously telltale line would be followed to its very end. Try that today and see where that gets you! You won't be disappointed, I'm sure! But even now, with the ever rising ring of phagistry overwhelming this very continent, there is still hope that a fear of waitlessness will usher in a New Era of Sun in Our Brain. It won't be soon enough. Have a good lunch. Please stop it.

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