Close Observation Can Yield New Vistas of Understanding.

There's a report of a person who ran near a local camping area where some Scouts were going through the motions of planting a seedling as part of an obligatory Service Program. I say 'going through the motions' because there never was any seedling. It was all some kind of ruse to create an impression. I heard about this just before noon on the 16th. The month doesn't matter. And no matter how much someone may think otherwise, it never will.

The person who ran is thought to have been pretending to jog. Really though, because of a marked hitch in his stride, the conclusion couldn't be any clearer that he was in charge of a large operation of willful deceit. It seems like it got him far since he was never seen again, at least not in that section of our State. However two States to the East there were at least three other non-confirmed reports of similar activities, except this time the person was thought to be at least one inch shorter. I should mention that he was seen from about four or five miles away. It wasn't snowing but it wasn't clear either. People will resort to the most desperate measures in situations of this kind.

The third incident (not chronologically) only emerged belatedly in May of 1968. I was scheduled to have my stomach removed in an experimental procedure after I'd been involved with  that 'Fisk' woman. She'd been giving all my neighbors the heave-ho without so much as a 'how-ya-do', and people were frankly up in arms and ready to have me extradited to Canada. On  Mother's birthday no less! I drove into town to conference with Sheriff McCulkey about a zoning issue. That's when I heard about someone seen walking around a neighborhood up the hill. It was said that he carried a small paper bag folded up in his front right pants pocket where no one could see it. We all felt that was fairly unusual behavior for that time of year. I still don't know what to think about it. I did see that some folks on Facebook have a theory, though.


Please prove me wrong. I'm waiting. Well?

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A Restatement of What Should Have Become Obvious Long Before Now.

The light, which is edged with an evanescent dodge-comb has been burning through our section of olden stairways for over a week now. My painter-slash-husband has attempted to flush this into one of our miraculous course-works to see if any type of blood is present. So far no messages have been received into what we call our 'waiting category', but if that means that a sledge will help us achieve closure, then I think we could go in for at least five bucks. If anyone wants to see how trim we can become once our height comes under merciless questioning, they are invited to accompany the Boss's third-string strategy punk and put love into the picture with all the rest. They feel you with their eyes. It's quite something, really.

Whether or not a brain is packaged with faith and babies is still debated while people sit in disposable chairs on a beach known for hazardous riptides.The current will help us get accustomed to outdated notions of pantry-ready bezels and a furnisher of actionable nouns is one to have by your side at all costs. He might say that he needs you to think about floods. Don't let that fool you. Because if you do, we can't guarantee that any help will arrive in time to avoid the inevitable boring routines coming back to haunt your former friends. If that comes to pass, they might feel free to shout your name in a darkened room near some type of road. Here comes the funny part: no it doesn't. Now you know.

There's a sleight-of-hand maneuver you can learn to perfect at your leisure. It won't cost you a 'plug nickel', but you will have to sign over your third child to bask in our tutelage. He or she will learn the basics and be all the better for it. But if there is some kind of biting problem, the manual clearly states that an adjustment could be in order. A specialist from the Greater Chicago Area is due to make an appearance on a local show. He will have all the details if you decide to make your move. It should come naturally. They all do. That's why we use them. At least since the War ended. There's a part where your clothing is seen to appear inside a small opening. After that, if you've paid even halfway decent attention you should be able to spot our car down the hill. By this point there will be no more reason to 'play stupid'. Everyone will feel the need to release your number near a lake. If this happens during the Summer months you should just keep moving as if nothing's happened. Please don't think that you've 'had it up to here'. You haven't had anything yet. And it shows. Could you try to stop making that sound? 

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Sonic Mimbo and the Farmering Thereof.

Michael Roper 5 · Farmering Mimbo

Now It Begins.

The sanitary enclosure which has been provided (at cost) as, in effect, a sanctuary in which to abundantly finger a sorepoint, is increasingly lessening the time needed to eclipse the wanton tailspins that this generation—moreso than any other in history—regards itself duty bound to evince and evade by any means necessary. This is the situation into which I and my team were thrust just four short seconds ago at the behest of a namby-pamby Executrix on duty at this segment of the sector, so help me God. Now, to my utter delight, it seems a delegitimization campaign is rearing its not-so-ugly head as a raging raft of warnings appall even the hindmost to which we owe our extra-dimensional crapshoots.

If there's a shorter version of the person I pretended to be during my youthful training period, I would request that someone in your relaxed position call for him (or it, or her, for that matter) to make a bold announcement that will fly like wind through generative jelly. The oily taste will only be momentary and a flipping sound is only peripheral to the galactic sound-cloud we crave to induce. You might find your mouth to have been concealing previously unknown sanctioned substances. They will control you to the nth degree. This is not a time to begin worrying, because, try as we might, our hands are tied. All is for the best, but a cull is not the worst that can happen, far from it in fact.

If you or your people observe my vehicle in a transition zone, you will be asked to enforce any manner of 'knock-on' effects which render a foreclosed obcision null, with 'roid accents. The police are to be given any realistic numbers you've had time to generate. Then it will be up to a quality enforcement clique to scale the heights of a mapfinder's calling, approach the closed circle with impish ennui and scold whichever truants choose to regain consciousness. At dawn or dusk the connecting threads are expected to proceed in a novel direction and offer only limited resistance. The rare bit of tasteless film can be flecked off with just a slight movement of the head. You shouldn't find much to complain about when you receive your packet. Whether either I or my trusted associates decide to intone a multi-frequency loop bomb is best left to your better half. Now it begins. Drain nightly. Absolve heft. Imbibe. 

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Strange Doings in Auburn, NY.

She confided in her neighbor, an old cuss named Russ Wibbum Jr, about a little wrinkled wisdom mat that she was gifted for service in the Baltimore Chinese Medical Constackulary. It seems that the mat, imprinted with an inspirational slogan, had been mistakenly slipped through a slot in a doorway in one of the surrounding areas and certain self-appointed busybodies were out for revenge. Russ heard her out and then showed her the door. She'd always liked his door, found it comforting in fact. But she really didn't need him to show it to her since she already had several pictures of it on her phone. As you can see, she's a very modern person.

After Russ got clipped while driving through Auburn, NY, he decided that he'd had enough of rehab and signed himself out the next morning. He wasn't sure where to go since his home had already been demolished. He tried phoning his Pastor but the line was busy. Inside the glove compartment and over on the right side there was a small piece of metal. He'd never seen it before. This led him to question his sanity. Also he wondered if foreign actors could somehow be involved. He decided to not be a victim anymore. Now he was ready.

After Russ had lined up some former associates to take the fall, he appeared at my door wearing a Navajo-themed blessing vest. I took him into my den where we both sat comfortably for a few minutes. I offered him a cigarette even though I knew he didn't smoke. This was a test. I stepped out to make a sandwich. When I returned he was sound asleep. I arranged for him to receive an honorary degree. I thought this might get through to him. He wasn't having any, so, when she arrived a half hour later we decided to make it look like an accident. The kind that happens, you know, accidentally. We never heard from him again. I've been told he got a place down in West Virginia and started a ducklet breeding operation. He always had a way with words. I wonder what happened . . ... . .  .   .    . .. .

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A Two-for-One Holiday Special! Act Now!

When a sallow field hand, with whom I engaged in fisticuffs as recently as fourteen months ago, sidles up behind me while I'm taking the air, helps a 'young thing' to emerge from the preternatural darkness of his 'as told to' autobiography, grabs me by the elbow, launches a crew of Albanian cetaceans into low-earth orbit just for the fun of it and decides that now would be the time to announce a winner in some dreamy badinage contest, then I'll know beyond a shadow of a doubt that my 'time in the barrel' has finally arrived.

It strikes a young peckerwood who goes by the handle Hyphid Bermish that my reaction to the above provocation is somehow less than adequate to meeting the challenges of life in the Twenty Third Century, to the point where he requires a one-of-a-kind surgical procedure not seen in these parts since July 11, 1951. That was the day that I swore up and down that a circulation award, bestowed upon my infant daughter by no less a star in our cultural firmament than Jimmy Durante, was not the thing it seemed, even if observed from a microscopic viewing platform, restored at great cost by the New York Police Athletic League as a summertime youth make-work project gone terribly wrong. If anyone could be persuaded that giant prongs of steel could be seen to materialize from the frozen smiles of the Danish Cheerleading Squad, it would be me. Is now the right time to apologize? No? Okay, forget it then.

Some complaints have been registered concerning several of the items in this whatever-it-is-you-call-it. I had my doubts going in but full participation will do wonders for one's urinary tract infection. If anyone is failing hard enough to try to believe, please bring it to me personally. Let's not get the police involved, shall we? I'm an easy person to do business with. You'll see. They all do. Naught. 

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Note to readers: In case anyone is wondering what Holiday
is being referenced in the title of this post, please be advised 
that today is Easter Sunday in the Eastern Orthodox Christian
Tradition. Please behave accordingly. For any other wonderments,
please post your queries in the comments and our sprightly intern
will do her damnedest to accommodate any infections. So there!

Something It Might Be Useful to Know About the Truth.

In a meadow near a field adjacent to an open area just to the South of the house where my kids used to collect supplements for an older gentleman who I knew in our local Bonding Authority, there was a gathering over the weekend of people who insist that they feel 'put upon' by a certain type of event. Even though costumes are rarely required, some feel that an effort could be helpful. If they can get back around to a side where nothing is visible only an occasional visitor will be asked to give assistance. Once the maps come out, our playful countenances will manifest an 
aggrieved tone.

 Usually in a scene like this, if I remember correctly, we take turns throwing pitiful hoops skyward in an effort to enforce stillness in a population of statistical bastards. You can see them hum if you watch carefully. All the teeth in China will no longer impress a likely opponent with your skillful appointment of rounds. They will take you into a car and bend something into a very impressive shape. We call that a small victory. Sometimes that's all it takes to keep us in the mood for a starlit evening under a tarp. We count on its protection in hours of need. Something will arise. Starting later in the year, we prefer to go in pairs. It should make the pain more endurable if such a thing is likely.

The one time a Lunar Eclipse took place near our trailer, my Dad went down to the attic and got a book where he read a true-life account about a woman who needed help with her dogs. It's important to note that he read the passage silently so we didn't find out about it until years later. No one knew why but we always felt 'funny' in situations like that. I usually wore a felt ranger's hat indoors, even before I went bald. My Mom used to scrape people's sheds to earn a few bucks for 'snack money'. This is why it's my policy to always appear to be telling the truth. Because the truth can sometimes hurt. And I never wanted to hurt anyone. I just couldn't help it. Oh well... 

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The Irv Sholtbin Story.

Irv Sholtbin, who lured some youthful miscreants to my Method Acting class under cover of darkness as a favor to an exceptionally slim transgender mortgage broker he'd been dating over the holidays, seemed just a tad disappointed when I finally revealed to him that I was looking to leave the field and move to Manitoba, Sweden. I'd found out there was a service there specializing in training infants to silently deliver messages of all kinds, including the kind that most folks might find just a little bit 'icky' if they thought about it for more than the five or six seconds it might take them to tie their shoes. If it was a day that they were wearing loafers, then that would be all to the good. Some people, though, believe the old wives' tale that loafers would make someone look fat. That couldn't be further from the truth.

You've got to watch certain persons very closely because if you take your eyes off them for just a moment or two, they could be gone in a way that appears to happen very quickly, even though the planning could have taken months, or at least weeks. And if that includes downtime and third-party transfers, you're talking  major financial exposure.

I've decided that if this is to be my last year in the Pit, then there's really no downside to monitoring your dietary regime in as little as sixty-two seconds or less. The more I think about it, the more the whole scheme just feels right. A grim façade will be erected at the exact location where I learned to express my feelings with a sterling clarity. Each and every one of the people I've told about this agrees that the specialty of a boastful servant in subverting societal norms should not be enough to merit the involvement of Michigan Law Enforcement. I beg to differ. If lines are drawn in a way that resembles an innocent child's stick-figure drawing, then one will get you two that our plan will fall flat like a lamp fixture in an abbreviated explosion of perimeters.

The way a nurse I used to know who liked to, in effect, tickle her own neck with a feather she recovered from a crash site, would get on my nerves in a way I can't begin to explain. Even though I wasn't the one being tickled, just to be clear. If I thought I could deliver an anonymous complaint to her Supervisor, or maybe just invite him to lunch at the club, I'd know there was no turning back. The case I keep in my official compartment would no longer be made available, as I was on waivers. I figured if I just moved slowly enough, few would notice and the plot I was about to hatch might get the go-ahead and we'd all be home free. What I didn't take into account was the bold action of a particular aviator of my acquaintance. He'd been surveilling my house since the end of the second Iraq War due to a scheduling dispute. I liked the way his wife flounced around the Mall in a way that suggested she might just know a little something. About flouncing, that is. Like, just how does one learn to flounce in the first place? The second place? There is no 'second place', just a mildly tired face. Oh, and winner take all! 

_______________________________

Journal Entry: August 4, 1991.

If some occupationally outmatched stranger grabs an individual, of whom it is sometimes said that you and he share a predilection for waxy tacticians, throws him deftly underneath a disabled futurist's box of essential supplies, then you'll be entitled to express the now prevailing consensus that once in a while 'fairness' just is not what it's been cracked up to be, at least in recent years.

Speaking of 'passing the smell test' (not that we were; could you please try to get over yourself?), one of my wife's Franklin Oxides barely even starts to do that for me anymore, at least if I believe some widely marinated Sailor's baldfaced account of life in the Ancient Perneeya's squalid seacoast. A pageant is a good way to take your mind off of less suitably atrocious difficulties. A beauty pageant, I mean. Not the other kind. That would be literal suicide.

But if a book of predominantly pastel paint samples is to be considered any kind of authority, then why would the folks we regularly see bandying stuff about not just get lost like we told them to? Because it's not fair? Is that it? NO! The long and the short of it is that the person I love has been called a traitor. State, County and Municipal dingbats are convinced that I have personally poisoned the Community Water Supply Cistern. 

Shopping is now nearly unendurable. Each one of my plastic ornaments has been forcibly removed by a certain busybody named Helen P. And, as if all that weren't enough, my not-so-permanent floral arrangement contiguity-Satan, is now just a rusted out and neutralized hostile party-planner utility desk. It's also been thrown directly in the water for all I know. Please do not try to correct me with the facts just because I'm fat. 

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Snirp League Proceedings.

The people in my Snirp League (all 67 of them) are right now waiting in an improvised holding cell until after I finish giving my statement later this evening. They're a motley crew: several up and comers, one or two upstarts and more than a handful of lifers. The reigning mood, as of our most recent confab, is one of almost unendurable mastication leavened by a soupçon of chiseling bewilderment. We all do our best, some more than others, while one or two take it to a virtual 'level three' and have at it with an unbridled masochism that only finds fault with the pansy-ass locutions of the unpardonably pesky.


At this juncture, several of the mounds (which I personally paid for and installed, in case anyone was unaware) have become ribald reminders in our area of a time when these types of items were tragically not nearly as common as they have now become. This is all due to the efforts of my manager, Leo Farnseca and his enviably hirsute protegé Jindrick Vazner. They've worked their little hearts out over the course of the last twenty-seven and two ninths months to make this thing what it is today and help keep it that way so our  kids have half a chance to duplicate our feverish obsessions in what remains of their abbreviated puberty.

The 'Solid Seven' who've taken credit for the petrol bombing in the Gaston Quarter have expressed an inwardly bemused altitude while remaining firmly tied to the rock-solid convictions of their infant forbears in the struggle for the limp-proof range-of-motion studies that justice demands. Not only do I stand with them (at some significant personal risk), I also make it my business to stand well apart from them and their spouses who somehow smell kind of 'funny' (not 'ha-ha funny', to make that clear).  Even though my prescription eyeglasses were irreparably damaged in the most recent disturbances, I'm still of a mind to enact a fake kidnapping of Chairperson Ovmer or his sycophantic 'panty boy' Jerome Slurtner Jr. 

If ever there was a time to think back on where we started and how far we've come, this would not be it, as much as I wish it were otherwise. There is a standing order from 'above' to make our participation a thing of tragisty while keeping all around us in a state of perpetual moisture. It CAN be done but we have to work together, shoulder to neck, finger to ear and eyebrow to instep. By the way, in case anyone reading this is 'out of the loop', my wedding has been postponed until January 8, 2035. Please mark the date! 

_______________________________

Sonic Closet God X

My Word Is My Bond.

When we heard an ungendered voice say, almost out of earshot, 'I'll just leave this here', it was plainly not meant for us, the spoken words, that is. Nor whatever the word 'this' designated. And whatever 'here' might mean, it couldn't mean where we were since, from the perspective of the unknown speaker we were certainly 'there', not 'here'. This is what I reluctantly returned home to, after what turned out to be my final engagement in this cycle. You see, there are a number of rooms. That number in fact has always been in dispute because where a given wall doesn't extend all the way from floor to ceiling, then we're not sure whether there are either one or two room at a given site. Fortunately this is something that I refuse to concern myself with, even while heated controversy swirls about, often consuming countless productivity hours of the less disciplined grownups who flounce around inelegantly with barely contained fixations on dental health, wearable carbon, you name it.

But for the fact that we were expecting the imminent delivery of a Physician's Report concerning the recent health crisis of our second lowest ranking member, we would have ignored the enigmatic, if short verbalization. Sadly, it turned out that my goggles had been mistakenly left in a faulty (and now removed) transit sack which now sat with other 'sacks of shit' (pun intended) on Loading Dock 4, so I had to make do with the only implement at my disposal which in this case was a miniature Founding Fathers Rookshell that would fit smartly on the inner crease of my scalar hat. I like to keep certain aspects private but in the event that I am forcibly removed, please know that I've always treasured the way your group refuses to stop ceasing to deny that they never did not know what wasn't not true, at least in hairy situations like this.

When my name came up in a meeting just before Summer break and it was attached to a now abandoned project, called simply 'The Project', I thought, mistakenly it turned out, that I could kiss my wife 'goodnight' for the second-to-last time in any given week. She's been leaking documents like a Dutch colander for over a year now and it seemed plain, to me at least, that our time was at hand, in a good way. When they fished her disheveled portfolio out of the community spillway we all agreed it was a small price to pay for what turned out to be a microscopic increase in the ambient comfort level afforded to us by virtue of the seriousness of our vocal inflections. As for anyone else, please get your numbers straight and plan to make your home in a future of burnished skin. You have my word. 

_________________________________

Frank Advice From a Lieutenant of the Finnish Air Brigade.

There's a sloping area near the meridian where, if last time is any indication, my comfort level should reach a point which will soften any intimations of defeat. The heart, which was written about in a magazine last year, seems okay for the effort wasted on my behalf. Prior to this winter I'd circulated a list of favorite tonal pictures for everyone to select the one to help them meet their inevitable end head on, should it come to that. My own brickture will stay at my slayer's house for safe keeping. He loves me for that but my temperature appointment can't wait. I've been told to appear willing to accept a small scar if there's even the tiniest possibility that my grade would not be scotched.

I have to admit right now that it was difficult to conceal my delicious embarrassment when the men (of whom I'd only recognized one, the last through the door) brought a six-foot length of harbor rope and an inactive chain saw. None in our group had any reason to expect that but we'd grown so close over the preceding nine seconds that our smirks revealed—like it or not!—the activation of a sensitive plot. As a lieutenant in the Finnish Air Brigade once told me, if you have to ask then your name will no longer serve its purpose as a quiescent plaything. This could cause some to lose their sense of valor. Those of us who still feel a pride in our (literal) blood are a diminishing quantity of enraptured beings. But that can't stop a thing like me from boiling over, if it comes to that.

Where my former partner, Bernhilda MacIntyre, lost her tooth encryption is anyone's guess. If you'd told me that this would be how it ends, I'd be all up in your face like a dilatory apostate. It goes to my upbringing. But the Southern Plains don't even exist anymore, as most folks are sadly aware. In the bag I keep at the ready, you'll find not even one bug, electronic OR organic. They make them that way now.  Bags, I mean. And no, it's just not in my nature to be mean, but sometimes I just can't help myself. If you need to know it's because of my deformity. I don't really like to talk about it; why do you ask? I could get you in after dark. All you have to do is ask me later. When it's dark. 

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An Explicit Re-Framing of a Non-Ordinary Jeremiad.

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My Singular Adventure With NutriTube®.

Characteristically, in the evenings when my caretaker would arrive to initiate the feeding procedure, usually by attaching the NutriTube® with a keen gadget she carried in her case to the meadow-facing sprill, I would for the most part only be leaking the thinnest portion of the black fluid from beneath my left prosthetic vent. On this particular night, she didn't seem so much in some kind of hurry, as just not her normal self in ways that caused me to adjust myself to the extent the binders would allow. These new Eastern European models, while less expensive, never didn't cause extensive, if harmless swelling.

As she began the countdown this time, I noticed the slightest tremor in her left knee, since it was, as usual, at eye level which allowed her maximum leverage. This was something that by itself wouldn't cause me any alarm but for the fact that the very same left knee (of which she had two) was now lacking both diodes and the tripwire assembly which enabled the stealth for which she's well regarded throughout the Valley. You see, after I'd impregnated her younger brother and he was forced into exile, I resolved never to again remove any of the African violets which ornamented the ten-quarter healing stand which, in effect, stood watch over each and every procedure. Doctor's orders; you know how it is.

It was only when I found myself coming to in a non-local velvety blankness, that the realization slowly dawned that not only was I not 'in Kansas anymore', but, truly, the papers I'd struggled to preserve for the prior twelve and one half seconds had seemingly vanished even as they'd vanquished my doltish prime opponent on the Appropriations Committee. My 'body', if you could call it that, was now reduced to the orifice attached to the NutriTube®, only one vent (the central one) and three or four small metallic branching contours without which I'd never ride a bike again.

If you knew what I went through in the years that followed, you would certainly seek my nomination as Humanitarian of the Year. But, as some might be aware, I've never sought the limelight. Never have, never will. By the way, if anyone has any bright ideas on how one might initiate a micro-stripmining contest among the Middle School retards I plan on leading into a totally avoidable, if somewhat amusing, disaster, please don't hesitate to drop me a note at the office tomorrow before six PM when my  suicide should be finalized. It might actually do you some good. It won't hurt to try, right? 

____________________________________

Note to readers: As documented and affirmed by the date stamp

above the title, this entry is indeed posted on April 1,2020. However

it is vitally important that no one interpret that as in any way averring,

or even subtly implying, that this is any sort of so-called 'April Fools

Day' prank, joke or hair-brained knackerie. This disclosure is all-

inclusive, i.e. title, text and accompanying images while not necessarily

'true', are meant in deadly earnest. Anyone who doubts this is invited to

sit beside me while I read the Holy Bible during a Solar Eclipse while

blindfolded and dealing forthrightly with the 'heartbreak of psoriasis'.

Thank you and good night. You'll need it.