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.

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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!

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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. 

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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.  

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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.

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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?

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