Thursday, May 27, 2021

This Is Where You Come In.

 







If you're very quiet, not long after 10:00 PM, you can hear long, gray tones emanating from the birch trees behind our deck. This isn't the kind of thing which folks hereabout really want to talk about. But, if you meet them half way and even indicate that amends are sure to be made, then they might take you aside, offer a bit of string or even a piece of scrap paper and start singing like anybody's baby. If you hit at the right time of the month, then they'd be open to inviting you inside for  a 'friendly' game of cards. Once when I did that, it was all I could do to think of things to avoid when the subject of the gray tones came up, as if we hadn't stopped worrying about it the whole time. From the way they all seemed to be chewing gum, even though it's frowned upon here in the Borough, no one who valued their life would disagree with me when I say that something 'just wasn't right'.



Nowadays, I sit nightly in my neighbor's finishing school hoping to catch a glimpse of his stunning collection of out-of-district devices. Because once some of our younger members get it in their head to use their influence to determine outcomes, even a willing patient can't be blamed for setting up a lighting system with auxiliary microscopes. You see, if a longer fiber than we have any right to expect becomes lodged, and the offices are closed for one of our bi-monthly breaks, then we'll have no choice but to begin the digging in earnest. This is where you come in. You'll bring a normal sized trowel and make it your business to attend to all impressions. A female member could see you at the gate. In that case you'll be asked for your Privacy Number. A stiff dosage will swiftly follow. I'll be by with my wheel barrow within the month and we can collect seedlets while you finish tiling the guest bathroom. After that, a light lunch will be served on the patio for one of our performatively grim retinues. If either of them looks you in the eye, you can just say that I told you so. After that you can continue loading excess dirt into the last training locker on the left as you proceed down the upstairs hallway. Anyone who sees you will be whisked away for their own good.



You can be assured that your extended family will be offered sanctuary in our home-grown witness protection program. I'll see to it that an infant refugee will be placed in your care before hostilities get underway. This will allow you time to get your affairs in order. In the last few seconds before detonation, someone under my direct control will contact your supervisor about a missing clothing allowance. In case you hadn't already guessed, this is just your garden variety ruse. A medium-sized bottle of the mildest solvent should be your very first 'go-to'. After that, I promise, we'll get a bite to eat and send you down to meet with the Sales Committee. They've been developing a kick-ass plan for after you've gone missing for good. You really shouldn't worry your pretty little head about your chart. It will be as safe with us as it's always been. Now, if you'd like, it's okay to go outside and feed the children. Thanks for your time. They just don't make us like them anymore, am I right?


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Sunday, May 23, 2021

The Dilemma of Arrival.

 







When the signal is given, more often than not the insertion of  a covered flag, one and then the other of us will rise to the adjacent landing and deliver our pledge. As the seconds tick by and my time grows ever shorter, I'm faced with a dilemma. You will be reminded of a conversation we had on the stairway of a domestic field hospital. Me with a small scrap of wood, you with an oven-ready comestible. As the judges make a lukewarm effort to hide their fealty to a hidden Authority, more than ever I'm aware of my unfitness to hold a position of leadershit in a world gone mad. It's not for nothing that I've neglected to offer segmented resources to several of our challenged co-termers. They live with our name burned lengthwise on their wooden candy boxes. This helps them to never feel unloved when the time comes for a rank evaluation. I am now ready to ride in the only carrier left on this island. Yes, I will take every opportunity to demonstrate peasant dances during the once-per-week recreation period. Otherwise I'm occupied for hours at a time distributing secret recordings of high-level meetings that occurred in the late Summer of 2005.



When we, as a group, are dismissed without even a token examination of our stress injuries, I make haste to appear in a casual outfit at the entryway of our autogenous Stability Seminar. There I am greeted hand and fist in a manner to which I've renounced an oath to behold. In the basket which follows my sublimated hand signals, anyone interested will be able to look for themselves and verify what I've said from the very beginning. A tattered bland cloth and a used testing cylinder are all I've got left. Beyond that, even the feral children with whom I've shared the random bon mot will be quite happy to tell any of our discouraged visitors that they need not feel their way through a darkened corridor without putting up a fight. In the event of a 'knock-down-drag-out', they should be given a chance to state in as simple and direct way as possible why they haven't become ever more familiar with our baroque procedures. If they come at you with a pre-tested lotion, please offer no resistance. It will get you precisely nowhere. If, however, you lie quietly using only your eyes on a recumbent nurse, then we might be persuaded to line you up for a spot in one of our Evening Presentations of the recent past. What will it take? Not one this dark, that's what.


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Friday, May 21, 2021

One Simple Question.

 







We ask after the one who has been so instrumental in our succession dynamics. It seems that he's been left ashore with our prettiest office ploys and their merciless expansion profiles. I sweep all that matters  into an uncharted nestule and that's all that's needed to satisfy the inner ring before the intrusion is noticed, logged, evaluated and dismissed. A smaller shirt than is strictly necessary will be donated at cost when the time is right. Until then, we will light a fire every night until appreciative cowpers are under the total control of the Committee and its local counterparts. I say this because some have seen fit to spread rumors to the effect that one of our least circumspect juvenile detention experts has been seized with a month's supply of oxidation inference wads. This isn't something that anyone is inclined to take lightly, or not at all.



When we awaken amid a freefall of likable subsets, the self-same sailor who never once considered abandoning our cause will come to eventually be seen for what he is, was and never shall be: a protean lickspittle of the Transcendent Order, with all that implies. The hair which he keeps in a not-so-special container is known to transmit uncountable particles in the moments before palliative hostilities conclude. Our brains emit one stolid tone per hour. And now that no one feels any compunction about spreading layers of substance in a micro-manager's substrate, all of our kindly proberts will feel ever less inclined to jump between lines specially constructed for this very purpose. What does it benefit a person who 'has it all' if even an infant psychiatrist cannot procure an aggressive turncoat who is made to serve 'double duty' in Our Nation's pansectual windfarm?



This is a bonus which was never anticipated: The logs that riddle our breach are sure to inscribe their musk with a barely literate message to our most actionable fanzine appropriators. I know of one who even on the fifth day of Konder still doesn't know the difference between one and the other. Mostly he takes it in stride, but I will evade his shoes nevertheless. Because the one thing I've learned over the last twelve years is that all it takes is one uncoöperative plagiarist to drain all hope from a lurking wisdom hag. They won't count to one for drilling if that leads to ancestral oil spills. I say that as one who freely spreads random formations. When you get them just right, you'd be surprised what type of reflection appears in your haptic goo. A train by any other number will still deliver an application folder to an ascendant bastard. For this it lives in a lumpable pit. You're thankum.


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Tuesday, May 18, 2021

A Remarkably Guilt-Free Confession.

 







Some of the ones I haven't mentioned yet seem quite content to go on ignoring the fact that I've been stealing from them for years. I like to concentrate on the pieces with a baked-in sugary stain. Even the petals, when there are any, make it easy to pretend to be engaged in a minuscule repair operation. Once the covers come down, I'm the kind of guy that people count on with all their might. What they might not know, though, is that I continue to think things through without coming to a premature conclusion. That way, when they approach me during a filtration recess, I can honestly come to their defense even if their casual attire draws attention to our shrinking opportunities for an honest attempt at a snazzy friendship.



The pilfered items, now sitting blamelessly in a storage facility which has seen better days, are estimated to have a combined value of $631.27. I know that because I went on the show using a fake name and that's what the guy said. But, it's important to admit, he only saw pictures, therefore had no idea what they looked like either from the back or on the inside. Because, you know they're hollow, right? I mean, you must have read about it, right? So, the guy on the show puts me up in a motor lodge on RT 35 which is near the studio. Then he brings in this broad who looks just like Helma Venser from that flick that won the award last year. He tells me to ask her if she'd like go with me to this burgundy warehouse affair on a strictly platonic basis. This is when I start to ask myself if I'm good for the payments. It turns that, well, no, this is only a come-and-go type of application.



So, I round up my crew and we head for the waterfront. My first-in-league, who goes by Denny Applegate (not his real name) is in the lead car. I follow up on foot, lugging my three-speed and pulling a cart holding what few jugs we've got left. In the tan pickup bringing up the rear, there's a defunct copy machine and a three-by-five inch painting of Orson Bean's racehorse 'Jonny Wad'. This is all a ruse to persuade one of our 'friendly' guards to let us through so we can 'go swimming' (HA!), if you catch my drift. After dinner, my wife and I went out for drinks with a neighbor from down the block. Turns out he knew my Dad before the house burned down. I found that a little odd because he didn't strike me as the type of guy who'd ever say a thing like that. So, I had to, quite literally, 'walk back' some statements I'd made over the course of several rash moments. Some of us think it might be a good idea to ask around to see if anyone wants their money back. I've never doubted if for one moment, is all I'm trying to say.


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Friday, May 14, 2021

Just Another Saturday Morning.

 







Usually on Saturday mornings I'm stationed behind a two-way mirror for a bit of sullen observation as they bring them in, mostly two-by-two, but once in a while a solo act makes the grade and I'll be up to my ears in foreign fluids, as well as forms in triplicate to be poured over in my normally dainty approach. When I look down and notice, to my astonishment, that a brace has been applied to my left ankle without anyone becoming any the wiser, I, ever-so-briefly, hesitate in the continuance of my habitual arm motion. This is the one where I make believe that I'm tossing a baseball-sized rock at a decrepit gravestone in a run-down cemetary about a mile from where I was born. No one has ever seen me do that in 'real life', but they can dream too, can't they?



Everyone agrees that it's just too damned soon to carry you over the finish line and declare you the winner by default. For that you'd have to defame the corporate marketplace for all it's worth. No one is certain what kind of childhood you REALLY had. That's not to say, however, that most of us don't enjoy nursing a set of fairly likely suspicions, especially where your cross-pollination with other extractions is concerned. Please don't get me wrong, it's not that we're particularly concerned at all. It's just that we can't stop worrying about your fitness to resume your duties in time to avoid a telltale mark being put next to your name. And look, even if it's the phony name that you originally gave us, that won't stop certain very large and ambiguous vagabonds from making a home in your most private of areas. But, we don't have to go into that now, as it seems there are a number of nutjobs listening in from the far court and irretrievably counting the days until we can find a way to get in touch with those who, prior to now, regarded themselves as virtually untouchable. And I do mean that quite literally, as well.



As I motion to the waitress to bring me off in the cleanest way possible, I have no idea that she's about to press a glass of mineral water into my hands and then make a gesture that any sufficiently grown person would instantly recognize. Whenever they do that, I tell them that I'll take a little off the top, do a fade on the sides and apply a natural curative powder to the back. If they're still standing near my desk in fifteen seconds, I make discreet animal sounds. If they don't flinch (and most do, by the way), they're given the 'royal heave-ho' and issued an ultimatum, answerable in Federal District Court in all kinds of daffy ways. Assuming that my advice for newcomers has any standing at all, in this, the third decade of the twenty-first century, then, MY GOD!, just what the fuck do we have here anyway? Isn't it enough that I had to back out of the Heffenclurt deal? Or, is that not considered 'fair play' anymore? You tell me. I'm waiting.



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Sunday, May 9, 2021

والعائلة والأشخاص: จารึกประวัติศาสต์ใหม่

 








I'll put it to you quite bluntly: should anyone who felt the need to wait for over an hour at a training complex be denied their right to due process if it could be shown that other, more sanguine prospects were only presented in a halting, if inescapably jejune manner? In other words, why do even middle aged prosecutors often fail to take into account the most minuscule presentations when one or more of them continue to suffer failures of nerve where the qualifications of our most minor opponents are concerned? It must not be overlooked, when vouchsafing for weakened exiles, that to be flatly contradicted in the presence of one's most senior peers, is only appropriate if trade-offs can be offered on the basis of trusted words issuing from the mouths of improvident despoilers.



By the rhythms we associate with underlying focal lengths, we can tell beyond any doubt that the salt content of a colleague's dietary regime is suggestive of that person's tendency to inflate the delivery of barely pronounceable gerunds. They forever live with the feeling of being trounced like some smallish occupant in our District's most palatial skating emporium. To them it must be as if all coppersmithed reliquaries have suddenly been stripped of any identifiable features. For one of their own, it wouldn't seem like much. But, in a game which in any way resembles our ballyhooed 'success quotient', they've really got to be asking themselves some very uncomfortable questions.



Even in my own car, you can sometimes find indications that one of our least important circles has been breached. Not once, but perhaps even twice. The momentum is clearly on the side of those who no longer sup at our table. And with that goes all of their septicular bonhomie. But if even one of our most adenoidal sales associates showers bumbling praise in cuplets of threes, sevens and nines, then you'll know that we are listening even while you sleep in a threadbare barnstead. There is a report, and for all we know not even one, which, without any of the availences of ponderousness, gives a transparent indication of your fitness to be duly injected. Even when it can be reasonably shown that there are 'lines within lines', the sighting of which still has the capacity to amuse, our most able com-decks are, even now, apt to have difficulty forced upon them, by flame if necessary. This may very well not hold up, even without people on the inside to gather younger organisms for patient expositions. Yes.


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Thursday, May 6, 2021

Confidential Treatment Report.

 







One of my patients, who shall remain nameless (Landon Purnak), is beginning to evince a mild suspicion. When I exit the examination room at periodic intervals as required by State Law, I'm often flabbergasted when I return to find him barely leaning against one of the partitions, giving me the side-eye and mumbling about the pending indictment of Councilman Earl Rothstein for conducting private occurrences without a license. I hasten to have him lie face-down on the mahogany carpeted floor. He usually complies, but I can tell that when he was younger than he is now, someone said something in his presence that he found not a little 'off-putting'. I try to provide him with a list of reasons. He pretends that all my efforts will lead in only one direction. I inform him that I've had 'the talk' with his nearest and dearest and that they all agree with my preliminary assessment.



When I notice that he's lost consciousness, I know that I now have time to get my affairs in order. Also, I decide to order in. This will save time in traffic and could quite possibly save my crumbling marriage. I arrange to have his body flown by a designated carrier to Bainbridge Associates in Tecumseh, Maryland. There they will do a complete work-up and let me know in the morning whether I should make the trek myself, or if one too many out-of-town jaunts could seriously affect my tolerance for paradigmatic boilerplate. When I furtively glance into a private area at a local financial services establishment, I'm pleasantly surprised to see a gathering of like-minded parolees receiving an emergency briefing on unfunded mandates. Even as they snicker among themselves during pregnant pauses, I know that one day soon I'll be taking them on a camping trip in the Shenandoah Mountains and teaching them important life-skills.



The next day when I sign for a package at the urging of a drably attired colleague-in-waiting, the temperature outside has already reached the mid 70s, if that. There are reports of recently retired sportscasters escalating their campaign to 'take back the night', whatever that means. Meanwhile, my estranged applicant, Morton Lockwood, has placed a soiled map inside a sealed envelope in the hope that this would be seen as a 'difference-making' tactic. I never was a fan of the 'cut of his jib' but I resolved to try like the dickens to get him approved for an emergency optical alignment. The last he was heard from, the reports indicate that he had foresworn any involvement in the Tender Moments Club. Needless to say, all of us here regard that as a net positive, albeit with some serious misgivings.


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Sunday, May 2, 2021

The Truth Is Self-Evident.

 








This concerns one of the most daring persons around whom our circle gathers for nightly sessions of smothering affection amid war-torn afflatus. In his off moments, which, if one isn't too careful, can be observed at irregular intervals since autumnal brown is our nesting berb's native casing, he will sometimes absorb each and every prevailing sentiment and then go his own way, having seen the consequences long before. Yes, in fact, I will bring him a palette of wafers. More often than not, he will upbraid my common-law partner for acts of dubious currency. You see, it wasn't more than six or seven weeks prior to the end of our Service Agreement that he was observed rifling through some minor belongings of our future Accidental Infection Specialist. This caused not a few heads to roll in a way which raised hackles throughout the Line. And my own home-based inspection incident will never be the same again, if I can help it.



Jennifer Drake and Robert Gaufler believe that they will live to see the day when his downfall is close at hand. To that end, they make it their business to handle all outgoing fraudulent profiles and extract their own capricious tribute in a way which marks them as golden in truth and flaw. I see them tarry innocently and then turn and face the ever present device. They then deliver a blistering encomium to those who documented a tragic episode in the not-too-distant past. I live not less than a mile from where they were found unconscious but unhurt in a favorite dissociative stream bed. By the time nightfall made its unsurprising appearance, all traces of their wanton activities had been cleared for delivery to the medical examiner. I escorted some unhinged war profiteers while they performed the due diligence as per US Code 25-19.01a8. They have promised to handle my name very carefully in case I'm desirous of establishing title precedence for the meticulous weasels about whom nothing has been resolved. This will require the greatest lengths of gentle padding because anyone who expresses even the mildest certitude is sure to be handed a rough draft in place of a finished parapet. This is when almost anyone could think about jumping. Unfortunately, not all rescue sacks are created equal.



We live to create these bonds. The future of our children's lively palaver depends on it. I make a daily struggle to sit through yet another session of abortive badinage. When the truth comes to insert a claw, the maladies of our droning saints are put on viscous display. Not one of us can afford to be disappointed. Only a few will 'get through'. This will enable their spouses to collect a negligible fee. Outstanding careers are theirs for the taking. Some others notice that things are starting to seriously drip. Anyone else who's name fails to rhyme provocatively can expect a sealed offer in an unlikely box. This isn't about apparel. Only dames will get it. Tables but no chairs. Cancer.


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