The Quandaries of Fatherhood.

 

Now I've got to call my son who lives in another state. Some may wonder if I've lost my mind but I prefer not to think about it. Something tells me that I've got to 'take it like a man'. It's all some people can do to stop making plans for an upcoming scenario. When my son answers the phone, I can tell that he's thinking about refusing to participate in illusionary spectacles. He shares his Mother's taste for delicate featureless surfaces. I've never been one myself but no one ever said that I didn't know how the game is played. We all line up like this. One person gives the word and it's off we go. I can usually find mine near some sand. Others have to drive miles. I get to go inside, lie down for a minute, wash my hands, read the Bible, blow a load and then get down to raw specifics.

My other son usually drives up on the weekend. This weekend he's sleeping in his car on the golf course with a ready-made device which makes him the envy of every two-bit fraud this side of I-don't-know-what. When I get to him, his breathing is full yet troubled. He tells me about his time in Our Nation's Airport, and how it made zero difference in the ultimate outcome. Somewhere deep inside of me, I know he's lying. On the surface, though, I have a hard time getting bothered by the clothing choices of younger members. As long as someone sits calmly, appears open to new ideas and has at least a trace of je-ne-sais-quoi, no one is under any obligation to offer commentary on my mood disorder. It just goes like that. Who ever said they expected me to offer any unprovoked promises? I'll leave that to 'the big guy' in the special chair.

When we appeared at the Wainscott Club, my sons and I each purchased a secret bag. I couldn't tell what the markings meant, but son #1 seemed to think that it had something to do with an observance with which we would each have to become intimately familiar or risk losing everything to some of the sharper characters lounging about in the antechamber. I could tell that neither one of these two losers had ever seen the business end of a scraping tool without a protective bonnet to ease their way through a dull opening. There was more work to do. I gave each of them five bucks and told them to, in effect, get lost. I rode out the next few weeks with my clerk, his wife, her sister's boyfriend and his (the boyfriend's) personal chef. Once I got used to the crinkling sensations, I knew the new diet was finally kicking in. Hey, I've got the lumps to prove it,... and not in flappy way, you can be assured. Testing one, two, three.

____________________________________ 

This Title Contains an Important Clue.

 

There's a piece of (or in) the title which works in my favor. I'm all about keeping strangely quiet when those who labor to, simply, understand, go to their homes in the evening and consider whether our putative equality is  a piebold fiction. Every one of them sees our arrangement as a stark, utilitarian nightmare. I remain the sanguine one, always polishing off a roster of comely surface agents so the real work can find its obligateur and those who ply me with rum and drills won't look bad in light of weekend recasts. It's telling that they offer me a seat in the nactual backing plant while participating in a subculture of atomized grief at a stage where gruffer heads prevail beyond any need for supplemental amprigens.

All of us have rounded off one number after another. The way we look inside each of their compartments leaves a charge on the floor under which we've refused all offers of trouble from a stacked round of double-dealing bantry surgeons.

Is it true that not one of them will arrive any time soon? Now that their wedding has been postponed, they've decided to move my miniature house to the border and lie in wait on a veining  slide. When I get up and running in the spring, one of the most striking debutantes in our structure will be asked to plop down and read some figures into a pancreatic device. She needs to be shown the whole capital flight scenario to help her let her guard be pummeled safely off-shore.

While I pace alongside one of our most trusted ad-mins, I'm given to understand that even leaking my initials to randomly complected colleagues could embroil the least of us in a never ending game of deny and delay, approve and approach. I take her 'lucky brooch' from under my lid, eye her into a comatose coöperation and send a trio of debauched marketing honchos into a reeling cylinder of icy brindle-toast. For this I am rewarded with a seat for one in a unitary kneading suite. There goes my sincerest Abplanalp! Gets 'em every time! Who is the official 'do-gooder'? Pesmo!

___________________________ 

 

Sonic Consciousness 30

 

Michael Roper 5 · Consciousness 30

A Roundabout Path to a Realworld Invitation.

 

The sandy-haired line operator, who will go nameless for his benefit to allow for appearances to gel in the hereafter, is said to be at my beck and call for any and all anterior motives. Once he moves his hands into position, everyone feels certain—or ought to!—that our very lives have been plucked out and restored to a status needful of amplostomy. He regards us with a sullen stare and proceeds to shape a narrative, by turns resentful and oleaginous, which helps to bind us ever closer to serve a higher calling on the road to certain perdition. I will leave each of my sons a brittle indication to help them follow a train of thought not likely to be overcome in the three years since my liver transplant. They have been groomed from infancy to correct their corrupt Dad's approach to the science of 'ordinary materials'. This is where it gets ugly. Stop blaming me or I'll have you thrown in the River. Literally!

No one has been late for lunch yet this year. We begin with a group prayer and a 'good faith offering'. I grip each of them between my forefingers and search their eyes for clues to our most recent burglary. One after another, they tell me of their struggles to repair doomed relationships and attain financial solvency. I don't fall for any of it. Why? Because there's no physical, mental or even molecular exam to which I have not subjected them while they slept peacefully on my garage floor. And the results? It pains me to have to report that they all come up severely wanting in every 'department', so to speak. Even as I write this, they are being dissolved, slowly, painlessly.... but with great gusto nonetheless!

If you can see your way free, it would be a great honor if you could join us on the morrow for a fish-fry at my infected Grandmother's laundromat. It will begin promptly at 10:35 AM. Please remember to bring a disposable pencil and wear solid tones as my Wife is allergic and prone to fits. There will be a non-refundable $100.99 registration fee. You will be asked for a specimen as per current guidelines. I will be coaching you in a contemporary folk revival. Once the meal is served you will be asked to leave immediately on pain of a lengthy prison term. If you've ever seen any of our pictures, you know we don't fool around. Let this be a lesson to you, for the good of your family, if for no other reason. 

___________________________

General Guidelines for When 'Things' (seem to) Go Awry.

 

Yes, friends, this is the Sacred Motion Sickness Detector.

Normally, when I see parts of a sacred motion sickness detector scattered around the floor of a room I share with a tall guy named Duff, I think that maybe the power's gone out and it'll be my name on the blotter when our wife wakes up. This week, however, the list I've drawn up looks more like a 'best-of' or even a 'wonder-if'. If a ring heats up and something large enters a chamber, I will get one of the pipes which come in a sack and make swift work of my fellow contractors. Nothing can beat one of our falling cars if capacity rises to an insane level. My list always includes something for the little ones, a fogging machine and manpaper stilts. We can think of words like kindness, respect, bonhomie and feedback.

People in the trades will call a number. The person who answers will get a name and pass it through a hardboard slot. Once the crew learns a team song, even if night is upon us, we'll be good to entertain a set of unique ideas which come to us after a short nap. Each one wears a sanitized chapeau with onyx studs to break up the monotony. I'll bring every one of them into my room at the Colony, ask them to do their business into a bag and wait out the storm as part of an improv sketch group. Each is expected to throw a line or two into the hopper and anticipate a novel reaction to chemicals in the water supply. There aren't enough to do much harm, but some folks are starting to tread more carefully on uncharted wafers [sic]. Where can I tell them to go to match my own slippery slope?

 The best sound you can hear while pulling stubs off a railpipe is sort of like a high-frequency wheezing. It can trick you if you haven't bothered to hold both shoulders square to the right side of your sham. The plaincloth which will bring you a Type A release can be purchased in packages of three from Our Nation's Supply Chain. It will show a number in excess of 691 if you've been acceptably darkened. One of our rooms will resemble the layout of a diagram from the late 50s. Don't let that shock you into grabbing something and running. That's the mark of a first-class, Grade-A lump. No one wants to be 'that guy', even if it means slipping a shade under your forest and resettling a well known short story by Hyman Dick. That's been tried before—more than once, in fact—and everyone who has a face to prove it will find an egg in their coffee within two winks and a nod. We've been asked to convey to you that 'unknown forces' kindly request that you take the 'high road'. Anyone else should try to think about ships.  

_________________________________ 

Panselmo Gnoctuary Poem.

 

Incident at The Old Temple Bath.

 

This happened at my Old Temple Bath. We were waiting near our kingly door. I had already been decorated with prints in more than the tan shade alone. My hair held a waxy sheen all its own. Pretending was over. But on the bright side, anyone who wanted to could see that all of our most humble emotions would come into play in a moment of dainty empathy. People who remarked on the quality of our faces had the right to claim ignorance when it came to the detection of mild trembling in the eyes of fair-weather frauds. Let's hope we can keep them safe from their own petulant indiscretions. God may be our final recourse. For that you will pay.

Now someone swings the door with a partial lid and has a hard time seeking justice in this, our thirty-first year on the ground. There, but for a dark-haired person, we feel certain that sticking around near the barrier might have appeared to have a certain 'ring' to it, like none other that people in our group have declined to notice since Day One. It always goes better in the dark, but plenty of others feel confident enough to remove a telltale marking that clots the breezeway and renders most of our studio opportunities into your standard issue 'miasma-du-jour'. When I bring up this plaint, to the irritation of most, I make a sullen gesture with a peculiar aspect of my anatomy which gets their attention to circle in on itself. They are—each of them—coping as best they can, having wandered throughout the previous night near the Pleasant Soup Factory and held an impromptu sing-along with the distended mentors of the Carolina Boating Commission [CBC].

When I consider playing a trick on someone taller by orders of magnitude than your vengeful superbud, it means a store visit will be one of the outcomes of a future series of activities. This involves modes of locomotion, making small talk with a disgraced investor, learning to read and speak Latin by age nine, and finally, taking a firm hold on the one thing that most people miss if they're out of the system for more than a week or two. I present to you my Iron Siding Chef Competition. All entry fees will be waived in the interest of impersonal diversity, with all that implies. For the Women of the Lillies, a message will be sent. All others are urged to remain in place until the last conflagration brings all our queers a blast of telling stances. The way is clear. Please perform an activity meant for apparent persons.

____________________________ 

Yes Friends, The Gloves Have FINALLY (!) Come Off.

 

The gloves have come off in my dining platiner and I'll rave about it later once the time of the hour has been set. There's no getting around an uncomfortable question of affordability, but likewise, a settlement is a distant memory and we're all sure of the one thing that counts more than the others. What gives us a solid footing, though, isn't thought to be when a hand is withheld at distance. But from this far away, the only vehicle which comes into a romantic view is sure to adhere to a trend-line that others could find hard to fake. You can tell by the way  people in chairs waver as they dwell on a minor fiasco that gives them a basis for incremental appeasement. We'll have one for our own road and disown the others. These others, I might add, are known far and wide for their profligate pneumonism. They say it keeps their head in a peculiar game. One of them had always flown with us until yesterday.

Now that a crime is in process (this would be behind a shed, but in broad daylight, nonetheless), we've decided to take our good sweet time and approach a seminal figure whose donated plasma has enabled unbilleted inciters to score a load of scorched earth problematics and head for the nearest desultory mound of evacuated pith. It's our only hope to keep deficient plastic from burgeoning in our feed. I will score all sincere non-violators with a truncated vent from a diachronic puffer-ball coach. He's wanted for questioning in the Fiona Farkler case. You've heard about it, right? No? Well, take it from me, people who like to walk around won't like what they hear. Please, just do the math.

The chain which is presented as a virtual pendant can only be removed for cause. And, even then, some fly-by-night operators will still be held blameless if your jaundiced mascot evinces even a modicum of gaping syncrasm. I'll be on stand-by throughout the night, ready to log your call in the flightbook which is ready at the keeper. Our frame is the broadest possible inverted cube. It attaches with scalloped hooks that you can find beneath your final harboring bench. What scares us is if, while backing up with no flowing hoops to spare, something comes into your head which could give you a reason to forego a wrist abjurement. There are likely one or more stains on the precipice of a lovably ingrown doodad. If anyone who you've seen recently is a known person then we WILL take action. The only remaining question is: What would your reaction be if we recommended you be re-assigned in perpetuity?

_______________________________ 

The Upcoming Investiture and Its Piquant Aftermath.

 

During the coming Investiture, which has been the subject of not a little consternation, our opening idea is to wait until a loud knocking is heard from below and take that distractive opportunity to wrangle a deplenitive wench into a wayward opening on the opposite side so that any residual doubts are evaluated as dubious at best. With each of her arms pinned into a staircase-type of position, three of our turncoats will pronounce her a liability to our cause and leave her confused as to the origin of a blanking flash. Only the slightest scratch will be enough to effect a transfer to a more congenially shapeless affair. For this we only offer the most turgid of elemental instructions. You must remember that she has promised numerous times to carry a light and frimpy shield to signal a masterless deficit of penumbral strokes.

When it comes to the plea that I will submit at the end of next month, each participant is asked to donate one solid red setboard and memorialize a list of qualified ruminants whose actions are questioned even if our own Federally subsidized preachments engulf a packed house of raffish teddies. Their own smell is a clue, as if any were needed, that this activity is throbbing with opportunistic borderlessness. They feel that your expressions of devotion should be enough to end a day of rootless whispering. I tell them that their style of carping is likely to help us monetize the flood-eating cafeteria at the end of an extended lounge-type spatial arrangement. They act like I'm seeing things when all I want to do is lead by an example that is not to be trusted in any case. Yes, I was bowled over. Is that why you asked? Don't tell me.

When it comes to pestering League officials with a statistical ponsibiquity, anyone who is aligned with our peripheral magnet is guaranteed one solid oak mystallion to be assigned in the order of conformance and treated with a subtonal perfuke at a random second hand blotch. Her vocal performance is tantamount to a ready-made confession of misadventures in a highlighted instrument or two. You will go there with a former friend in tow. I will bind each of you to a tinged yellow box of some distinction. This is not to be trusted without my say-so. Just ask if my name is Joseph Santangelo. Then approach me about my part in helping your companion engage in questionable behavior. And finally, if you find any of my responses to be problematic, you will be given a ceremonial plaque for safekeeping during the upcoming disturbance. That should keep you quiet for the remainder of the term. Can I have that in writing? No.

________________________________ 

Abfactual Reflections.

 

The shape defines its owner by the color of the day it reaches fruition. The sound is one of serious caution, although one may love definitions beyond any strategy of pulling in tandem. We live beside a halted landslide of immeasurable promise. Personally, I keep a leavened derpictionary at the ready to aid in the observance of predicate disorders of the ontic flesh. She, who rescues any who sink beyond our willingness to negotiate a pageant of soundless yelling, will enable the transmission of our customs into a newly conquered borderland. There, the ones who flip inside a ring have limited recourse to the power of song over love. Any face which greets the rising gun with a toothsome promise of fidelity to a dreamed up calculation, is shown to be the one for which all late arrivees offer a word of balsamic cheer.

You can tell that we never made an effort to treat the demands of faded characters with the seriousness indicated by our expected farewell address. All attendees who evince a sound quality which encourages an internal spinning sensation are set to receive a reward in the name of a deceased caller to our show. This will be one of the few times they are allowed entry into a camp that bears the name of an anonymous settler.

Clothing is inspected and a person who lives in a room may be delayed while rumors are circulated in name only. Where might we grieve when all who plow are given a gentle tap into a wider lesson? The fate of charity balloons is no mystery if lanterns serve just as well to ache the day. As it is wide, so does it glow. And now, with a chipper meal afoot, all of our basic parameters are fixed to a negative charge as our well is groomed for future cases. Inside of each case we place the tonal result prior to the ingestion of any plan. When asked about our signal, his only response was to  point his staff at our half-finished enclosure and aver that his own wagon was well and truly cooked. And yes, this surprised no one at all.

_______________________________ 

 

Sonic Wrink Land (the First)

 

Michael Roper 5 · Wrink Land I

A Brief Portrait of Two Known Persons.

 

One claims to be the recipient of a set of facts which he can trace to their inchoate origins. The other, seemingly without the approval of his peer cohort, prefers to be seen in the company of large-fisted young ladies of a Slavic profile. Together they decide to corrupt one of our finest Companies for the private amusement of a non-compromising base, the overarching goal of which is to one day see each and every person of a prohibited flancing status be reduced to a red-light behemoth figmented in our very own shelter of frailty. I have seen both of them in action, most recently during a drive I took into the Central Highlands of Northwestern Virginia. As each one reached for my cape, I let it be known that my appetite for juvenile wariness had reached its sell-by date in just the manner they might have safely supposed. It was a warning sign, as if any were needed, that those who we previously thought could be hounded into a basalt containment regime when all others had demonstrated their profound motionlessness, could be brought to term in only the dimmest light imaginable. Sorry if that breaks anyone's iron resolve. It couldn't be helped.

When the breen is fought to a standstill, all anyone sees fit to consider, is what a guy who used to do my nails used to call, with a rare if unbastardized candor, a trial which tests our ability to hold space for the likely opponents of our lamest targets. This is how micro-sound often enters the picture. On the plus side, it can be proven, without recourse to patently feeble constructs, that a brightness on the seeded end need not engulf all who enter without life-positive support compounds. To our detriment though, when persons whose names are randomly disclosed seek to nullify each of our vain attempts at resolution, then our 'army of one' will scorch their testament in a manner that can no longer be tolerated without a blast-prevention workshop taking place during the off-months of every second year. This is why we hold you nightly inside a fraught ligature. It couldn't be any easier than that.

With the drain on our resources now verging on a full-gallop phase, we think it only fair to request that anyone who goes by the moniker of Dermott Driscoll now come forth to enable us to enshroud a phantasm in plant-based residual warning flaps. You'll find that they usually measure in the six to nine mile range. The colors will quite often shift from a tawny yellow to a frimpy aquamarine luster. The hairs, while sometimes resembling infant oyster threads, are once in a while found described in lists of risk tangents attached to the normalized flow of meta-logical umbral palace shits. Thus we go to our most taut specimens for believable succor to withstand the expected shift of pleasant balances in our most boring practice mode. No one who hasn't handled these kinds of extended farm trophies can be expected to seek a moment of rest in a fully bitten wainscott. They won't be coming back without the usual fenculic pleas. Please take just a moment to consider that. Okay.

___________________________ 

Quotidian Observations.

 

We are content to sit and watch pairs of faintly Teutonic mademoiselles skip gaily by our station. It is not for us to make hasty judgments. Our moderation is only one of our protective layers. The future for which our breaths are held is approaching at a rate not to be exceeded by the vanishment of embarrassing flashes. The skirt of one of the taller ones catches on a thorny bush and all comers are relieved when order is unveiled in the midst of a nightly singing conflagration. This scarcely counts toward replacing our regimented tightwads with burly cone-sitters anytime soon. By the time some of your wearier colleagues are told the truth, all who value a candid exposure will be released to scrounge beyond self-imposed limits on tertiary language concerns. Where exactly does this fit in with an all-encompassing element? Would anyone go so far as to say that they tried it one too many times? They wouldn't have if some persons had indicated otherwise. Don't say that.

We will place each of the boxes in its own sacred circular mush-bath. The penalty for a non-compensatory religious oath is to be foiled in an attempted transition to modern scruples. It will be for the remaining ones to decide to express their deepest misgivings in a sharing community of likeminded nitwits. All the time we see them and wonder if they could be paid to escape a continuity procedure at our Nation's Airport. It  won't get any easier to 'go the distance' without first having checked to see if we still had a ride. A foothold in/on a bash is all we ever asked. Our plea to the President of the Carpenter's Union (Local 987) has gone unheard and now we are forever stuck with our eyes on a Premium Forecast with nothing to show for it whatsoever. Sometimes on days like this, it's not uncommon for your typical rando to loan someone a ballpoint pen, if only for a minute or so. No one should apologize for not being in a bit of a hurry. Them's the breaks! 

_______________________________

Notes on a Holiday Luncheon.

 

Embroiled as we were in the drama of a Holiday Luncheon, we thought it wise to begin adjusting our group expectations to life in near-term containment. I felt constrained to tell the person I'm mad at to consider whether 'getting ahead' is worth all it's made out to be, especially in outlying areas. She would like to think about slamming a door near someone whose opinion I value, but since I've already attached a note to her bottom shelf, we've all agreed that problems could stop mounting once we get time to take a leak. This would be a strictly private function, as is sometimes the case.

Our group meets near a bridge during a month like no other. Our Leader, who goes by Bill Toomis (not his real name) has purposely lengthened the time it takes to reach a firm consensus. He ushers each of us onto a rounded scheduling platform and pretends to communicate through pre-verbal formulae. This involves the alteration of specified tissue, to tempt one or all of us to back out at the most inopportune moment. I make my best effort to insinuate that these types of enjoyment are of limited issue, but fail miserably, as can be seen in abandoned dress factories the world over. Why does it feel like I'm saying this inside a pure-blooded spring? I'll tell you why: because it isn't. That's why!

There's a lad who tags along sometimes—this is when, with all the Summer heat, we've had it up to HERE! I took his Dad aside and warned him, in no uncertain terms, that he had to enroll his son into another temporary program. Also, he needed to restrict the boy's intake, or get busted trying. He looked deep within me in an effort to appeal to my better nature. I slotted him in for a 2:00 PM rebuke. His wife brought in some chewy snacks, so we sat down near a tree in a Park not far from here. He showed me a picture of his adopted turtle.  I asked if he'd be willing to take my wife to the movies (she's handicapped). He told me that he  thought I'd never ask. I said 'what took you so long?'. He stared at me with a dull gleam in his eye, coughed, and went to sleep. I never heard from him again. What a prick!

____________________________ 

The Waning Days of the Brunk Adminigestion.

 

The Facts Can No Longer Be Denied.

 

It is now a well established fact that the one to whom I have given my word has taken it upon himself to utter a word all his own—not the one I gave him, I hasten to add—to a convention of cross-generational pollinators which took place in a monstrous circus tent on the outskirts of a major Southern metropolis of some note. The reason he thought this would be a good idea is still obscure but the repercussions have been severe. I have received multiple death threats on social media and all my appearances have been canceled through the Spring of 2025. I am looking to have him declared 'in violation' and reduced to a stark remnant concomitant to his absorption into a briny mallow solution. I am advised that this will not undo the considerable damage to over three million donated internal organs which had already had a rough go of it, what with the folks who already had skin in the game taking the wind out of efforts to induce enhanced persifilage in extra-mundane ebens.

The word that some people in a population of over-indulged runts is looking forward to using in florid sign language displays is in danger of hanging on faded tiskets, even while inherent meaning decays at a pace previously thought unlikely without industrial strength chemical spills. You'll take one to the gut and then you'll re-introduce a singing competition as if no one could get any wiser without the aid of a foreign faction. They will begin counting you into their triage and demand that you remove a lozenge from the inside of a ballsy hat trick. You will give them the satisfaction of an honorable bowel movement and think that this will 'settle the score'. Sorry, amigo. No can do.

I have personally witnessed each of my seven adopted convicted felons try, on evenings somewhat like this one, to recite a pledge to a remote homunculus and honor a flag blurring azimuth in our molten laundry sheath. They have given every indication that my failure to secure a bondage contract in a foresworn timeframe could only result in my removal to a desiccated room convenient to all major transition parks. The objection that I am allowed to raise hinges on my ability to adjust colorscales to meet the needs of developmentally delayed Oscar nominees. This is guaranteed to put anyone with whom I've shared even the most banal utterance into a position from which recovery is to be deeply feared, if not actively resisted. There will be a ketchum handle placed under your purview. A blind priest will oust the last sources of rare earth magnets from impudent fisheries. All told, nothing will satisfy like the hymn of a safely pre-mental Orinda. You will get what I've already paid for. If it's not to your liking, please take it up with a donated Pope. It pops!

______________________________ 

There's Just No Conceivable Apology for the Forthcoming Account!

 

Each of us has been certified to deposit our sidereal topcake near the contour of a looping route known only to our designated bigamist. The details are shady but, nonetheless, the delegate in our section is asked a question by a young fellow who appears unsure as to which applications will assure his continuance in high-measure metropolitan combines. He is told that at the conclusion of a cluster of trial periods, his collar mandate is sure to unfold exactly as predicted in the syrupy flier stanched from a woolen box of all-weather boat-registers. This he regards as repellent, but nevertheless decides that one of his five-fold tracking pits should do the thing and take a full-course clove into the next decade if conditions permit and scattered signals point to an early revolution in infant-animal relations.

We know that it can't seem any easier than it will ever be to treat apprentice pawns to a view of life in a donated volcano. When the sweetest love of our parasectual rampart turns to a trailing expert and expects one or more triads to suit his swill, then all manner of bannerisms could be called into the anti-struggle to secure the rights of disabused truculent fathers. As we observe them walking in pairs to a luncheon swapmeet on the grounds of an antisemitic second hand car battery distributorship, all our unfounded preconceptions as to life in a molecular aspatromy crumble like the vegetable-based tablature upon which they once found a measly surface. But without our many hands outstretched in a vainglorious gesture of nightwad jerpinquity, no one is surprised by the vectors ensconced in a once proud fecundite and her apparent negligence in the face of automatic instruction. If anyone claims that they didn't receive word, please know that they are lying.

_________________________________ 

What Happened to Our Payment.

 

The entirety of our payment was impounded for a failure to disappear on a whim. I had already boxed my Raskin and gone to play a short game of ball with some of the local fellows. The one who you've heard about has a case of preliminary trenchmouth and I'm devastated. Because of the place he held in our grouping, it's assumed that I'll be on airport duty for the rest of the night. If the people in my blockage can't see where I've hidden a large plastic matting, we will assume that all your silvery painted cords are apt to be deployed on a roster of evenhanded ruffians. They'll tell you some of their complaints but not give you time to surrender to a windy condition. Which is why we lack even the most basic ability to follow trends to their tragic endpoint. Try to get comfy. This can't be easy. They won't.

But if they do, you can ask for a moment to rely on a peculiar gentleman who lounges weekly in corduroy weejuns. It's thought that his only reason to  keep a place in a busy segment is because he likes to hide his preferences behind an icy wall of stagflated countenances. They will seek assurance from him in the only way they know how: by scooping a dreaded mulvin from between the blades and coring it within an inch of his solid hat. It's made to stand up to undue pressure. Then we'll release it beneath our bedfellows' sheath and play like we've had something up to here (or there). Please try not to judge us by the way we motion to others in the dark. They can find it humiliating to observe you undulating in a provocative manner. The way that one thing explodes is lost on the rarest type of monad. If you search his effects, you won't find the least clue to his monstrous proclivities. That's because he keeps his business in the shadows where nothing grows evenly without bookish advice from a seldomly seen prankster. They will hold you with us. Now we go to bed. It is a scorchable index. Their slob is fried. Parents.

________________________________ 

Sonic Mas Dent.

Michael Roper 5 · Mas Dent

How to Tell If Your Room Has Been Moved While You Slept.

 

One of the ways I can tell if my room has been moved during the night even while I slept silently within it, is, if on the following day I'm approached by a person who claims to have been given a message to convey to a dear friend who I once knew well but has now gone on to die, not only alone but in a transparent ignominy for which he was never to blame. When that happens—and it has, I'm afraid, more than once—my only choice is to hike up my britches, look him straight in the eye and wonder aloud if I might have met him in the years before polarized television was invented. If he comes at me with a knife in one hand and a hand written friendship card in the other, I will ask if he'd care to see a specialist while I have the time to show him the ropes and make good on my promise to his parents to introduce him to people who won't hold his skin condition against him like all the others.

When he asks if now would be a good time to bask in premature adulation, I tell him that I'm through kidding around and he can either take it or leave it, by the side of a forgotten road or even near a facility that I've never had time to use. Now that his secret father-in-law has promised to donate over sixty-one million dollars as part of a research figment from the Abraham Michaelson Foundation, it seems clear that all is set for a whirlwind engagement party in the Nation's Capital. Each of us will be sure to secure our best shoes against an ironclad certainty of theft in the 'golden hour'. The children will no longer be permitted to enter our home without having first vandalized the out-building of an unpleasant neighbor. I will get a piece of spongecake and secure it to the bottom of an untapped lake which used to be the home venue of the Cleveland Cancer Babies. They won't think twice about stepping on my head when that project is curtailed sometime in May of 2031.

By the time my 'rigging' campaign is all but complete, it's thought by seasoned observers that the chance of him coming around my daughter's place of employment and offering a series of ever lamer excuses on the behalf of a besieged ethnic minority is nil at best. On the off chance that he decides to equip a targeted individual with a high powered, medical grade drippage detector, people at large will finally see the truth of the assertions that I've made for the last thirteen years and perhaps even consider hosting a testimonial affair. There's a set of flower puffs that I've prepared for just that eventuality. In addition, there's a name that I won't be using, though. You can look that up if you're so deeply invested in the outcome. They won't hold you liable if my protein supplement is siezed by Postal Authorities in British Columbia. If anyone could possibly provide an excuse, I will look kindly on their petition. It's about time!

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Tracking Tips for the Concerned Citizen.

 

It was all I could do to get her to let me follow her at a distance of about twenty-five feet into and through a passageway built and operated by the Department of Notional Outcomes. Once she realized that I was the type of person for whom the term 'gallivanting' had little meaning or appeal, she decided to undo a sacrosanct floppy overprinted mitten from her underutilized forequarter and attempt to feed me lines which might later come in handy when I was obliged to wrestle one of the three Beauregards to the ground. They would frequently  wile away their days in underused pitch-black Osterzones while we considered where to have lunch once our kids were released from Juvenile Detention. Instead, they had broken from their heritage and initiated a balodorous campaign of wondrous impunity which took everyone by complete surprise. I wasn't the least bit worried about being able to hold their Coach inside a crappy metal ball, because I knew he could swim away at the drop of a hat.

By the time I fell too far behind for her to tell that I'd never been serious about keeping her informed as to my whereabouts, I thought to look up an old Army buddy who is NOT named Fandy Loonx. We'd been through a few times together, but I couldn't help but thinking that if he could try to begin a peculiar process and I could t help him get to a spot in case he needed to, then I'd be able install his aging parents into subsidized housing for the criminally insane. It's not that I had anything against them but they always just rubbed me the wrong way, like against the natural grain of my hair, if you must know. The Dad was a punk from the South Side and the Mom knew a thing or two about solid state electronics, with all that implies. In short they'd had a rough go of it and I wanted to do what I could to see them through to a darker part of the current Century. Can I have one?

When we arrived in Atlanta, Georgia on July 9, 2013, I accidentally-on purpose caused her to step on my left eyebrow while I retrieved a tennis ball from underneath a maroon beach umbrella which gale force winds had blown into our mesolithic foyer. She played like this was just another 'walk in the dark'. I undid her mechanism and re-slid a copy box between her final two years of graduate school before she had a chance to fake an incident. Once I got her under control, I had to ask myself if any of this was worth it. After all, if one person can initiate hostilities with a small brown country, what could a team of telltale hitchhikers arrange if they put their minds to it? It's not like anyone ever thought to ask a person in late middle age if they could arrange a meeting with a mid-level mediocrity. We've now decided to sell a blanket we own in Lake George, NY. Someone might consider asking if now would be the right time to pretend to live once again. What would that type of person's answer be? We may never know, that's what.

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Ballad of the Ten Sons.

 

The ten sons, who were part of a loose knit, if ongoing, team of sorts, took turns grabbing at a furry appendage which fleetingly protruded through an opening in an otherwise opaque barrier. Their stated purpose was to bury the thing and be done with it. After all, what else could their project involve, if not the procurement of mysterious parts, to the consternation of most, but the delight of not too many in this final night of the thugfest? Most would never consider asking this kind of question, unless a rear guard action made it all but inevitable. This is where you could see some of them singing as if they really meant it. Not like the last time, if you're at all familiar.

When the first one issues his now familiar stratagem, all eyes and ears are focused as if part of a rampant melee. Each one carries a small bottle. In some cases the contents have been approved by the Lord Major. Others haven't been so lucky. One of the most low-key victims keeps his hands safely concealed beneath a treasured plate. This one has the inscription we've all been anticipating. We hear that it relates to our friends in the insect kingdom. Some of them find that uniquely laughable. Others are prepared for what cannot be avoided. Without a larger version of themselves coming to grief, that is. This is what will help you trust us no matter what conflagration shatters the peace of one thousand miniaturized blackened stones. Good for 'flicking'; but please don't go 'there' if  you know what's good for you. Sorry.

The prospective expedition to a balmy pond is what keeps them all filing backwards in a line precise enough to be observed from the flanks of 'inner space'. What galls the outermost ring of participants is that certain merrymakers have taken it upon themselves to rank their efforts on a worrying scale of appropriateness. By the time the last little bugger is grabbed and shorn of its tankless fur, you can be sure that one of their sullen dykes will have seen to it that a chewy snack is provided, if nothing else. This is where some try to worm their way in to the side where a bluff is hidden inside a temporary shithouse. They like to hound people because of it. Or else you can be assured that the trick they play in lieu of morning TV privileges is sure to gin up a mob for the coming antiquated struggle. I have each of their pictures in a book. This book is a priceless first edition. It is endorsed by the editors of Parade Magazine. One of those self-same editors one time asked me if I'd like to 'go for a ride'. I politely declined since I had a few things to take care of. He's not my friend anymore. Oh hell.

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