Crucial Update on 'the Situation'.

 

We're all about growing our way out of this situation. It will take all that we stand for to hem in some of the forlorn clowns who no longer take time to practice during off-hours at a nearby beach. Some of their intimate items are all but besmirched and a reckoning is at hand. I will take it upon myself to inform their wives and girlfriends that they won't be coming back. At least not without catering to a hamfisted exfoliator who rules the roost in our banal cotton-bob trick pattern. Once I see to it that no one feels free to sit with their back to an oaken display case, a barely comforting, if mildly untrue, fable will be transmitted through a latent address system. By their own coats everyone will be certain of their guilt. And, in case you're unaware, it only takes one precious malvin to leak what's left of our porridge for all the words we waste trying to de-mentalize understated infants.

The trial of the century is for you and him and it to now 'get along' without feeling the need to praise unparalleled truculence. It won't be the first time that I saw you slip up while attempting to install a regency brocade in a fiscally insecure hermitage. It has been stated quite clearly that those who decide to swim in our family's old-timey aquaduct can expect the father of a denatured loan officer to stride in here like nobody's business and call a halt to some activity within a inch of its vegetative life span. There are even awards given out-of-season to a local stalwart who refuses to pamper a teacher of soluble language studies. That's because, for all they try, it's still a scandal in the making the way his oratory soothes primetime bitches while retaining some objectively positive feeling-tone for the hopeless truants in our midst. This is why we call them when a problem presents its 'southbound' face. You know the type.

I'm still afraid that no one will consent to an unsubtle searchlight placed within earshot of their only functioning dirt toilet. In the event of crosstalk during our Stability Seminar, please hold one of your dandy trinkets inside a miniaturized armband. This way, anyone who wants to can field a probing question about undying love from a homesick camp counselor. He got his stripes in an old Army van that had been marooned on his property since his Dad leaked a few details about our water deposit system. The time we spend looking after their scaffolding could be put to better use installing ice-making machinery inside a prelate's exercise corrosion template. In the Summer, when my inflatable sticker is more than suitable for younger scofflaws, we will be able to count the ways you loached on an ofay. It can't hurt that you still live at Carruthers Towers. We like to match your towels to our moods. That way no one can ever say that we only pretended to try. Unfortunately, we can't say the same if a 'scorched earth' policy is at risk. Thank you, I'm sure.

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Trouble in My Backyard.

 

Some of my friends came over last night while I was having trouble in my backyard. They each brought a roll of magnetic tape. I'd stuck my neck out before, but, by the time they felt free to fall into line, I had a not-so-funny feeling that this would be the perfect opportunity to see if any of them had a change of heart. We took turns probing one another's inner recesses with a customized instrument. When my own reading came in at 9.7 we gathered around a temporary unit and slipped each other the barest hint of where we might take this thing if our continued existence proved problematic in the long term. By now one of us would always agree to remain standing on the other side of a road while the rest would resolve a matter of deep concern. To keep morale at a fever pitch, I would now beseech random passers by and have them follow us into one of our Community rooms here at the Centre. Then we would ask them if negative thoughts had ever presented a problem for their loved ones. Generally, assuming they behaved themselves, we'd try to wrap it up in under an hour and they'd be free to get in the chow line. Mild contamination would only be an issue if one or another acted thoughtlessly toward a female Board Member. Then the police would be called.

After I went back inside, I couldn't stop asking myself if it had somehow been all my fault. I wanted to know out from under which rock I might have slithered before I first got to town. Having given up on my search for answers, I lay down on a leather-bound legal couch. I tried to touch my toes. There was nothing else to do but consider writing a letter to Neal Harkman. He and I had always gotten along until that day in the Summer of 1971 when I tricked him into performing his magick act at a long-term care facility in the Canadian Rockies. He never got over my duplicity. I never got over the doughiness of his fingers. It was frankly disgusting. Sometimes he would run around our house in the middle of the night throwing stones at the roof. My Dad, who never had any ambition to become an open-heart surgeon, would use his consumer-grade metal detector to search for lost coins on the beach at Barnegat, New Jersey during the Winter months.  I hadn't added to my stamp collection in weeks. Only when I heard my name from the loud speaker during Fifth Period did it finally dawn on me. I knew what I had to do. And no, I was never caught. You might be able to google it, though.

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The Baby's Father Is At It Again!

 

The baby's father, for reasons unknown, likes to stop by the house once in a while. We give him all the room he needs, but even now, some of our patients express not a little surprise by the way his clothes fit after he's spent the better part of two hours on some little thread which the rest of us have trouble making heads or tails of. In my usual way, I try to see it from his point of view. He'll race into the kitchen and exit just as rapidly to the bewilderment of our most trusted advisees. They'll complain about his false judiciousness and I'll try to change the subject by complimenting them on the way their hands look at least somewhat smoother. Sometimes, yes, they fall for that. But otherwise I'm sure to be taken to task about things, places, events and even occurrences about which my knowledge is scant at best. More than once I've had to send them a concealed message and then meet them halfway when their call to duty sends them running for cover, when all it was was a flashlight which fell from a lower shelf in our French style utility closet.

I know it can't be me, but I've been instructed to keep these critters well covered—slathered even—with some of our finest ointments. This way, if the baby's father decides to take a well deserved break and ends up spending the night in our Chapel, no one will even consider casting aspersions on my questionable ancestry. It's doubtful that anyone will ever guess my place of birth. Likewise, when I hand them a five-spot and suggest an exploration into alternative lifestyles, I know that my conversion rate is about to get a well justified comeuppance. It's okay, though. The only time I ever wanted to play this thing all the way to the end was the same day that my sister-in-law lost a tooth in a freak motorscooter accident. The guy was doing six to fifteen in the Arbendale Correctional Facility. He thought that this would be a good way to flush out some suspects before anyone got the wiser. This caused me to lose my water big time. Fortunately, no one there that day held any attraction for me. To be honest, they all looked like the type of impeccably dressed cretins I've done my best to avoid for going on fourteen and three ninths years.

If I had it to do all over again, I'd try to more effectively pretend that their odor caused me no discomfort whatsoever. When I think of all I've done for them over the years, I have to stop and wonder if I'll ever get my deposit back. It was over six hundred big ones and, as you are well aware, they don't make them like that on trees anymore. Far from it, in fact. My own Mother wouldn't even try to steal my short wave radio, God rest her soul. That's why I'll never coach an Explorer's troop ever again. It's just not worth it. As if it ever was. HA!

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A Tragisty in the Making.

 

There is a person about my size who is considering asking his adoptive parents some increasingly uncomfortable questions, or so I've been told. So far, I've refused to make an issue of it, beyond making a few discrete inquiries of certain fair-weather acquaintances who we share in common. One of them was said to be 'on the warpath'. Another needed spinal surgery. A third requested to never be seen in my company after the 12th, when his papers will be fully withdrawn. I failed to see why any of this was an issue. Boy, was I wrong! Here's the thing: it's just not what you, or anyone under your direct control, thinks it is. It involves a terrycloth bathrobe which was a Framers' Day gift to me from the Leipenzoid Auxilliary. Sure, I'd done some work for them over the years, but I never expected to be dragged through the mud as I was on that particular day. And, I mean that quite literally, by the way.

Once I secured his head to a particle board palimpsest, made a  robo-call to the Centre and had a quickie tooth extraction, it was my turn to gloat because now, at this ever-receding time, some of us had started to get the idea about where we needed to go to have certain 'things' resolved in the most painless way possible. Her knees appeared to be stuck to the outside of my windshield but her fabrications never became any more interesting, believable or mundane. As I helped her walk under her own power, it occurred to me that I still hadn't received her materials in the mail as I'd been promised more than once. This set up a powerful conflict of interest between the place I'd reserved in the SkyBox and the outflow I knew I had to count on to get any purchase on the hold-outs who never stop spouting slogans when I or my daughter take to the airwaves. There's a complicated weaving process which results in livid make-up artists struggling to fill what remains of their last solid meal from this side of an internal penflict.

My most mature Belgian colleague has made it a habit to bring me preliminary designs with the expectation of instant results. When I try to make it clear to him that that's not how the game is played, he stalks off into a wooded area for a mandatory 'cooling off period', after which I try to knock some sense into his woebegone skull. On the third impact he generally 'sees the light' and it's all I can do to detain him for questioning by a certain very dubious authority figure. It turns out they knew each other in flight school and now I'm the one who's up a creek without a paddle. When I hand over my portfolio with a negligible fiver secreted at the midpoint, the tables turn once again and I'm being hailed as the latest 'hometown hero'. I like to tell my kids that they don't make them like that anymore. Generally, they stare up at me with their oafish eyes and mumble words to the effect that they hope I'm not going to 'snap'. What do you think I do? I'll tell you what: I snap my fingers and they're out cold! Now who's laughing? Not me, buddy, not me.

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This Is Truly Humbling.

 

A person who once tried to strike me is eating dinner in our recreation center. I can tell from the way he holds his food that he doesn't remember anything about where I live, or even who lived there before we decided to take the plunge. In my calmer moments, I can't help realizing someone of his bulk is sometimes barred from positions of public responsibility. Even so, one of our many 'nuisance' regulations is apt to be applied should he seek a footing which could upset a temporary structure. I've been asked to help his foregn-born nursemaid register for necessary pantry items. She lives in a fort I've used many times to avoid having to embarrass myself in front of older robotic slaves. Her hair is a shade of velvet which all of us here in town have a hard time putting our fingers on. Not that we actually want to touch her hair. That would be going too far. But not so far that we feel the need to step out of line and just go ahead and apologize. That would ring too many bells for a lot of otherwise tepid cumsquats.

Right here in the brain that I was born with, I can picture a very large piece of toast. It has my name written all over it. I'm being driven into a city near a little known dining establishment. A person who refuses to be either indentified OR indemnified has asked if I will help him defile a proto-revolutionary graveyard. I am sure to be given every chance to think it over and come to a decision before the weekend is out. Meanwhile, I have this humiliating odor problem. It's like the color of baked shoes gone rogue. The fishing gear in my emergency closet is all but unused. But that doesn't stop me from scraping cooties off a bulletin I found floating in a stream while filming a unique camera shot. The people from overseas are expected to get here soon. Would you be willing to watch for signs of trouble if the consistency of this thing gets called into question? I ask that as a friend and nothing else.

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Can You See This?

 

You can see us. Anyone can see us. Try as we might, though, our appearance is often deceptive. There is a barbed insight or two. Once we go into a room, the plan is torn up. We'll replace it with one from the marking tablet. Jeff is the name I was given. He doesn't look like someone who would respond to a name like that. We continue unassailed. There's a bit of a tremor but we can work with it. We'll dig up the details along with the rest. Certain kinds of spatial volumes avail themselves of high-passcode tactics. Otherwise our feet play dead in the daylight. This gives the lie to the notion which helped us to line it up. After a key is removed, I'll begin a fire in the trench. No one can be counted on to scrawl what ends up being a missing battle plan. He will bring my battery with him to the picnic. Before that I'll be going out for drinks with the deposed Chairman. That's when I'll be wondering why he gives me 'that' look when I needle him about his failed abromitorship. No one has asked if any of us are less than satisfied. People requesting transitory medication is another thing altogether.

If none of us find that we can use you in the last eighth, it will, in effect, hold our feet to a very awkward fire. Not to be outdone by the 'missus', he thinks that standing alone while pretending to wait for a non-arriving guest gives him a pathetic appeal. To the younger demos, sure, but once you ratchet up the pain level, we won't have any choice but to see to it that no one is permitted anywhere near Wanderer's Park. They've got some tough customers up there. We've been called more than once to reassure people about a vague uneasiness. When we port them into a fresher venue, all the vanishing disappears, and with it all the delayed 'thank-yous' and 'you're welcomes'. It doesn't pay to accept a benign facial signature when the readings in your own hand offer indisputable proof that a master carper fits the mold to a proverbial 'T'.

The one thing which won't see us limit our cranial impressions, is when the vaunted 'feather' is bandied about to a fare-thee-well while the rest of us are wondering if the magnets provided will keep the wires displaced through our family of origin. The older ones can expect to see a limbic fissure widen even as the soldier-of-record recedes from view. Everyone will scatter. We have the proof you said you need. You can accompany us into a training module. The slightest increase in capacity will honor your commitment to a panicked diversion. This does not bode ill for your impunity. Now you may lead your smallest hand into one of our scarpin tanks. You are made. Check.

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A New Chapter in Life!

 

Just to bring some of you up to speed, there's a young woman I've been spending an inordinate amount of time with for the past year or so. When she first came into my life in the late fall of 1962, I really thought I had a 'live one' on my hands. As the years went by, I approached a retired professor emeritus from Emory University in the Speleology Department, and wondered aloud while he worked in his vegetable garden if there was any chance that he would be willing to help my young friend secure a position in the then-burgeoning Human Potential Movement. He looked up, coughed and pretended that he hadn't known me since I was barely old enough to walk to the store unsupervised. I took this as either a grave insult or a distressing sign of incipient senility.

I was left with only one plenific alternative, and that was to order a series of round-the-clock tests administered by a team I had flown in from the Coast for situations just like this. When they arrived later that evening, it was plain that they were 'dressed for bear'. I took it upon myself to have a heart-to-heart with each one alone in my private chamber. There was a roaring fire, drinks were served and then we watched the game. By the sixth inning the game was tied and our team was in the toilet. I'll mince no words here: I was disappointed. Not only that, I realized that I had quite possibly made the biggest boner of my life so far. There comes a time when a person of great ambition has to admit to himself that just maybe there are more important things in life. And that as some interests, activities, hobbies and obsessions are left by the wayside in a cold and unforgiving rain, some other people with questionable intentions could be waiting just outside (and to the left) of the back door. It is these very people who I came to know very well during my service as a foreign correspondent for the Daily Mail in our Nation's Capital.

One day, while I puttered around in the staff coffee room, I noticed a soft 'buzzing' sound emanating from the area of my head just behind my right eye. My closest confidant at the time, Gerald Molpin, was quite adamant that he heard it as well. What could this mean? Would I have to give up my interest in a Chilean copper-mining operation? Could I still afford to send my kids to the Pezmont Academy? Would my wife leave me for another woman? Is there a way to contact creatures from outer space that isn't scary? Is there anyone in the greater St Louis area who would be able to visit my former Bible instructor and help him get back on his feet? All these and so many other questions ricocheted around my cabasa that I just can't tell you. What DOES matter, though, is that for maybe the first time in my life I've resolved to never again be the fall guy for some kind of zany stunt. No one should blame me if I sound like I'm heaving a great big sigh of relief. Why? Because I'm not. That's why. 

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This Happened Last Month.

 

We were seated near my living room one day last month. I'd been having trouble keeping up with a dangerous collection of conflict agents who were at that very moment conducting an inventory of our extended membership's crafted response objects. This was far from the first time that I spied their presence before they began intoning the names of home-bound transients to see how we would react. I walked into the kitchen, opened a cupboard, sighted a finious notecard, took my younger sister's temperature and then left all of them to figure out where I'd go once my papers were released. The truth is, I had no idea either. All I knew was that there could have been a series of inscriptions just to the East of a tree where someone had once done their business. I'm not in the habit of calling out to people from across the way, but now that I've gotten used to it, I'm very comfortable sneaking into certified locations and trying to pick up the thread.

The very distinguished Fallencourt Dome is what you need to look for when you find yourself at odds with some of the characters who've gone on to invent some very terrific gadgets. That's where, if you're lucky (and not a little daring), you might pick up some weekend roles. Right now they're looking for folks from 5'7" to 6'1", between 31 and 46, who have thinning darkish hair and an obsession with projecting balanced opinions into modern influencer cohorts. You should be not very well dressed and have a clean record. When I pick you up later near the stables, I'll ask you to look straight ahead, not say anything and pretend that we once knew each other casually since we dated the same cashier. Her name was Janet Stewart. She liked to sew and was allergic to short-hair cats. Once when she fell down in a parking lot at the mall, a younger person made a face in a nearby store. From where she'd fallen, she couldn't see the face, but it reminded her anyway about how things sometimes happen in life, and how there's really no good explanation, except to believe in God or Satan or Zeus. If you get that far, you might be able to sleep easier than anyone who takes things at face value. Or who smokes. Yes, we talked about that as well. Why shouldn't we? We've had our shots. 

Everyone I know seems to think that this is such a tragisty. But, quite frankly, no one is amused when we start to get all huffy. And then, when two or three (usually the most 'well grounded') begin to sing together very softly each time they round a corner, those who are left behind might try to report them. This is not considered fair play where I come from. Not one person knows what you do in secret. Even high-scorers are troubled these days, according to a self-proclaimed expert. I had dinner with this expert the other night. His wife was there too. She was sitting at another table, though. Alone. Reading a book. Drinking mineral water. Stroking her left eyebrow with her right index finger. When I asked what the big deal was, she pulled a piece of paper out of her purse and placed it gently on her head. I'd never seen anything like it. Now I'm having trouble sleeping. You be the judge. Go ahead.

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