Something Doesn't Add Up.

 

I can tell that some who have recently come under my wing have a newfound, if snarky, interest in the 'pain equation'. I counsel them through the vapid movements of my fingers over the tabletop which sometimes separates us. Try as we might, a threatening word, uttered with a calm, professional demeanor, is not always guaranteed to add up to an exculpatory episode. Instead, we are more than likely to escort them, by stealth if necessary, to a local pontoon factory, where the manager, whose son is married to my niece's oncologist's chauffeur, will make every effort to do a little number on their confidence. Before you know it, they're eating quite happily out of both of our soiled hands. And, just who do you think we have to thank for this state of affairs? It's a person who's well known in the community of survivors of the Jonestown Massacre. His name is Harvey Fish. He's a Kaplan Scholar, a master chef in Roumanian cuisine and enjoys bowling on those rare weekends when he feels the need to return one or two items he stole from my parents' most recent houseguest.

They say that it will take on a dull umber sheen before even the first person thinks to inquire about the value of an alternative high school education. Closer to the moment of no reports, a standing order to an over-compensated vagabond is sure to elicit not a few comments and raise all sorts of uncomfortable questions from the peanut gallery writ large. I will only have myself to blame if anyone from down below thinks it wise to interpret hazardous chemical spills as a sign from the Almighty. If you put two of them alone together in a room with enough sound baffling, making sure that sufficient funds are provided to set them up in a forgotten estuary or two, you'd be surprised what kind of result you'll fail to see. The reason is that some of them operate only after a state of darkness has prevailed over one and all. Further, if all your bounties are tied up in corporate boosterism, how could you ever believe that a random shooting would scare away some of our most fanatical supporters?

One baleful glance is all it usually takes to cause those on the rim to delay their approval of an eminently coercive mealplan from being adopted campus-wide. It seems that more than one of their advisees is on the take and the only sense we can make of it amounts to a piddling lack of results overall. I am constantly on the alert for invasive spores on my dining room divan. Because, if one should get lodged in a sensitive location, a visit to Border Control is mandatory. You are asked to bring six or seven bundles wrapped in burlap into a non-obvious pageant trap. I will be there to guide you every step of the way. Without my wife on hand to provide a baffling non-sequitur or two, we should be good to go in about three or four hours at best. At worst, my head person will tap you lightly on the back of your head and inquire as to your involvement with a precision road crew. If you can cough up the goods, we may be able to go lightly on your Father's tree surgeon. Please don't ask us about this ever again. Then make amends. It won't hurt.  Promise?

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Please Oppose an Unbuilt Bridge.

 

Over our painful toes he would keep watch. Some would even call it a 'vigil'. So, yes, he'd keep a roughly nightly vigil over our toes waiting for some, or any, indication of movement. Later he would aver that what he was really watching for was a kind of 'sign'. Not the kind that you might see in a store window. No, the other kind. The kind that could make you think that one or another event is likely. At least in the interim, if not before.

And this went on for months. He would arrive at the oddest times. Times in which we could ill afford to be affable, bland, cooperative—even a little bit teed off! He'd come in wearing his special shirt. The one which helped him appear in a new light. We weren't fooled, though. Even though he'd renounced the religion of his debauched parents. The lineage is sealed. And with that went all the world's Gnostic pretensions. You can't have it both ways. They go up and they go down all over again; but they still won't seek their own level. Now we're in it for real. You can have one too if you'd like. Who's counting?

No one is about to blame a stranger for not condoning multiple felonies in the third degree. To the extent that I've managed to pull one over on the least among us, there won't be any tears when a hole appears as if out of nowhere. In case anyone is curious, it seems to be a slow-motion scorched earth policy in spades. A precious little hanky is all we have to show for our efforts at the misdirection of improbable elites. The minions can all go to Hell. I've got my sights on the big boys. They won't tell you, but I just did. It hurts like heck to say it but, how out of the ordinary does a situation have to get before everything gets backed up into a new iteration? You'd have thought that we said something awful. We became our own personal pin cushion, in a manner of speaking. Before I'm set to go inside someone's hut, there's a few things we need to get straight:

• 'Drainage mode' will spread panic far and wide.
• A temple on a hill should be enough to leave our sponsors begging.
• Soporific tension can lift your average Waloon into a position of bastardized power. (and finally)
• What sense do you think it makes to take us into a show without access to a premium gondolum?

This is only the beginning. From here on you need to be on guard for leaks of sensitive particles. There isn't much time left. Be sure to attend our meeting tomorrow morning at 8:75 AM. Please bring a malleable, if cherished, object of scorn. Planet.

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Nothing Could Be Further!

 

All four of us have been guaranteed a spot. Except for Jeremy, each has been given to understand that our diverse methods of operation have real-world consequences. It doesn't surprise me in the least to see them bail at the last minute. As ever, I'm left holding a suspicious package. It has my name all over it and now I'm due in town for a weekend seminar. There's a certain chair which I won't let go of no matter what. We've left a total of six people stranded at various points unknown even while I knocked myself out to provide a chewy concoction to keep arms at the ready should anyone get the better of a charming grifter from down the way. The only time I looked into a surgical solution was when a patently false allegation was bandied to and fro without any regard for the feelings of younger criminals the world over. What has anyone got to show for putting in their time in the Long Carabine?

No one ever stands still while I insert a wooden ruler into an Old Wisconsin Set and hope to be noticed in the throng outside the Police Station. I can tell by the way everyone avoids looking at my feet that trouble is brewing in Tinsel Town. Words were had and plans were made, but, before I could start searching in earnest, a barely implicit notification was made very real in the lives of millions of ingrates from coast to coast. I did my time in a call center. Those are years I'll never get back. But if one of the inchoate seamstresses who like to brawl in my absence are detained in an elementary school just a few blocks away, can I be blamed for trying to get involved in planning session or two? You have my word that I'm loving this as much as the next Average Joe, but when it comes to making myself scarce for random moments throughout the duration, I like to keep well insulated from a melee of judgmental peckerwoods. They've been charged more than once with damaging my 'special' hat. It's even rumored that they were put up to it by Ted Seibert. The only problem is, he's been dead since before my parents consolidated their bastion. This should provide at least some context as to why I love you so much.

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The 'Meat-for-Water' Deal Explained.

 

When one of us states quite unequivocally that he feels a breeze in an unaltered location, can the rest of us be blamed if we ask him to accompany us on an unauthorized shopping excursion? After all, it wasn't but three or four weeks ago that he tried to stain an old hand-me-down and was asked to leave his number in a small envelope near a door to a mediocre dining concession. And, what with all the excitement swirling about in the run-up to the Annual Jupiter Finster Gala, could anyone ever imagine that my own logical proposition would find its way into the hands of a ghoulish representative of our Nation's exposure industry writ large? There's a lot more we could do to make you over in no time flat. With that said, part of the reason that you won't be permitted to stand alone on the outskirts of a vanishing marshland is that, by one estimate, you only have a minute or two of Registered Time before we remove said caller from an overbroad queue.

Now that my wife, Stella Daniels, feels free to leak the embarrassing details of my neurostomy procedure to some of the boys in the downstairs portion of the most recent episode, there's just no telling where we'll all end up before one of the sturdiest contraptions in our collection is confiscated without even a pro-forma hearing or two. I've done my best to control her movements since Day One. However, she quite frequently feels the need to sidestep my part in the Marina disaster and then show up at the airport with only a wan grooming basket to her name. During the Summer months, I usually stressed loading times above all else. There would be three or four guys per episode on loan from the DA's office. This is what's often referred to as a 'meat-for-water' deal. Whenever I'd tell someone to hide in the back and pretend to 'just mosey' into an unoccupied stateroom, the evidence will show, beyond any reasonable doubt, that I always made a donation to a children's cancer charity in lieu of background payments to a third party.

Even now, there's a telltale chirping which emanates from the interior anthrex where the globes are undergoing transparency trials at the request of Alfmin Rumault. His can has been found mixed in with all the others and we're afraid that a pattern is about to be detected. Several of the Jones Boys are on the case and, to be honest, it doesn't look good. In fact, I'd go so far as to inscribe a legend of my own on the back of a hot little number who's been making the rounds of every flaky bentument this side of I-don't-know-what. And, to top it off (as if that wasn't more than enough!), I've got a wicked case of scabies the likes of which you'd have a hard time believing if you weren't so stuck up in the process. I'd like to clue you in to my time in the Second World Theater, but I'm afraid that would only make you more eager than ever to put some of your things in my blacked-out area. No one will be watching in the morning when one of your least balanced patients is observed affixing stickers to the walls of a restricted fiber. For that you know that someone will need to make serious amends. And no, it won't be anyone in a non-compliant trust fipulation, just so you know.

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Domestic Issues at the Forefront.

 

Just now when I came in, she began to remove remote controlled pieces from a pie-wedge shaped contraption, the likes of which have me wondering if I'm in the right line of work. Or even the right room, if I'm being honest. I had no choice but to pull her temporarily away from her betters to inculcate in her at least a small modicum of respect for the gravity of the situation. No one who's ever seen me fight with her in our local convenience store can question my true devotion to her eventual healing. It's a process which can sometimes take a matter of seconds. Still, though, if you'd ask around at the office, you'd notice that not a few folks would give you the cold shoulder before inviting you on a camping trip in the Shenandoah's.

This could be a kind of Springtime excursion in a Valley of One. All you'd need would be a compass, a canteen and some beef jerky. It also wouldn't hurt if you boned up on your Martial Arts techniques since it's a well known fact that some escaped convicts have been seen wiling away their vacant hours playing video games in the parking lot of Signcorps Arena, not fifty miles from here as the crow flies. They've impressed myself, my wife and our two children with their attention to detail when they wash our car at the annual Church fundraiser. Anyone who needs to be extricated from a suffocating timeshare will be able to apply for an appointment once we get back from the trip.

It's but a small step from our front porch to a concealed lab set-up where we process indentured servants for our involuntary organ donation program. By the third ride I was most definitely up for trying to grab vicious co-eds from the campus of Emory University to have them inducted into one Hall of Fame or another. From what I hear, no one is very particular these days. And, you know what I blame that on? I blame it on the wrath of Hurricane Martha from June of 1971. She cut a swath of destruction from here to the County Line. After that, anytime you'd see someone on the street, they're just as likely to ask you what time it is as they are to light a cigarette and just keep on walking. My kids are always talking about preparing for the End Times. I tell them not to worry. By the time they're old enough to drive, I will have given up on their Mother and joined the Merchant Marine. I've heard their sandwiches are to die for. If only.

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A Potpourri of Accidentalized Kiosks.

 

Every three or four years, after I've gotten hold of one of the antique rifles from my Uncle's parlor cabinet, I like to initiate a whirlwind of activity to blunt inevitable deferrals here at the Battery. The woman who eventually went on to pose holding a package of burnt filigrees seemed to virtually magnetize all who lacked the primrose badges to take them over the bridge without incident. I'd always try to keep my thoughts muffled against psychic perimeter incursions. Once, when I thought I was all alone, a very brave individual was caught duplicating my tragicomic delivery switch in a place where no one would ever think to look, if that. The thing was, it looked just like another 'inside job'. There is a definite curtain on wage growth in the Third Sector. For that, we call in a few of the guys for a round-robin. Usually someone will spark for the chits. I'm good for a few myself. Just please don't ask me to bring anyone down to my level. It never gets this crowded unless the kids show up with glue-on moptops. Then you can hang me by my thumbs. I just don't care.

One day when I asked my assailant what his preferred posture was for pedestalizing demand-side weemus, he turned and revealed a side of him which I'd heretofore found hard to stomach. There's an Air Force veteran who collects dipts to distribute at the Mental Hygiene Clinic here in town. He's told me on more than one occasion that I make him feel very much at home when I sling back a few while I keep my resting pulse at or below 765 nautical miles per second. The house he shares when I'm out of town is where he likes to take pictures of wall damage in case anyone gets persnickety. There's always a trust issue here in the Lower Twelfth. The kids often tell me that they think I'm just making everything up in my head as I go along. I reply that not all people of a certain age can be persuaded to make do with an isolation chamber of their own when everyone else on the train seems to be associated with one particular villain. His name is Charles Otis. One time he handed out stuff in flagrant disregard for clothing regulations the world over. I took him to task for employing coarse language while applying for a massage therapy course at the local Extension. He made it seem like I'd had too much to drink. And besides, where does it say that people under my tutelage are liable to rip up a piece of paper before engaging in one of your 'little games'? Nowhere I've ever heard, that's where.

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The Tale of the Tape.

 

There's a tape right here in my desk drawer where you can distinctly, albeit softly, be heard intoning a series of non-invasive numbers. Only the most petulant of scorekeepers would think to hold it against you. It's true that I'm one of the few who is aware as to what brought you to that point. It's well known here in the Township that you made it a habit of scuttling to and fro without the required coverlet. Not even when you were in shouting distance could anyone lay the blame on your lying feet. Otherwise, your sandy-haired paramour would take to telling off-color jokes in front of the entire Auxiliary Department. Even then I knew that you had it coming. What I didn't know was how far you'd be willing to prance before the serious infestation really got underway. By which we in no way mean to offer you egress into a fantasy slalom of your own pitiful crevices. That would wait for another day. That day is now. You can do nothing.

Our plentiful market-rate denialists have caved to the latest ruminant to show its sorry face in one of seven nuclear lavatories on the premises of the Ike Cullen Co-op. It stands with its lingam, Dutch-to-the-wind, wound up, inflamed, but even so, tolerably accoutered. In the zone of which we take our implausible sand for what it so manifestly is: a green-horn's only excuse for failing to evacuate a semi-porous stone from the bowels of iniquity. This is what it might get you if no one takes care to strengthen the bonds of infantile germinaries. Only on the side sporting green and gold stripes could you ever expect to encounter a spiteful replica of Madame Tussaud's waxy prolapse. This should inspire an all-hands con-fab. But only if we can arrange for malleable toreadors to threaten the lifestyles of discomfited nabobs the world over. Otherwise, there will be no choice but to extract the remaining filth from the core of a hypotrophic wastrel. Please don't think that this could mean anything other than a miniature farling placed 'just so' under the watchful eyes of a vengeful bailiff out for blood in the light of a puerile maw. Does everyone have what they need to get started?

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Prescott, Arizona Diary Entry: the Tension Builds. (And no, this ain't no 'prank'!)

 

July 18, 2013, 3:91 AM

Everything was worked out ahead of time for the people who approached my acting coach with barely concealed insouciance. He'd been taken out before lunch was served in the vestibule. And in the backyard, while the game was rent asunder, I knew a few people who just could not stand watching the most diminutive among them pretend to fold outer-directed objects into the path of separately installed remote sensing algorithms. I also knew from the way he stole away that I needed to stop involving any third parties in a procedure to insure lasting damage. At best, the husk would be hidden from view before I could be bothered to investigate my personal origin story.

This made even the strongest wankers seem weaker by the second and I never stopped making it my business to inculcate a directionless outcome into the bosom of our Nation's most flagrant violators. It's not for nothing that I was referred to in my absence as a 'walking timebomb'. Even as the burden of carrying my things devolved to a pleasantly mixed consortium of level-headed bottom-feeders who customarily wait by the side of the road in broad daylight, if that. When they grew tired of weaving tales of osnographic perfidies, I took hold of the tallest one, ducked into a nearby Porta-John and looked to see if I'd forgotten anything beyond how I got there that morning.

When the person who first questioned my version of the events under review was asked to disrobe at a Carnival Cruise Executive Board meeting, it was all I could do to simultaneously maintain a rock-hard erection and give instructions to a short-handed crew of late-blooming pederasts. Their putative leader, a Social Isolationist named Nelson Phanteebwa, was hard to get hold of, even on the best of days. This goes a long way to set the stage for the occurrence of a moribund development in our Nation's thriving mid-section. I started my day the way I usually did, with a channel full of fennel-encrusted diodes swathed in a fancy mercury-accented brooch. It wasn't long before I came to believe that anyone involved in pilferage on the Southmost would be required to reckon with all manner of objectionable materials.

I had a good mind to try to improve my access to the stolen Bledsoe Trophies. There was only one person who lived near my yurt who would go on to fellate my Security Officer's Chauffeur later that Summer who I seriously considered for membership on a revamped Commission. The only thing which gave me pause was the way he would encounter risk-averse  steamfitters and attempt to enroll them in a Solar Affairs workshop against their will. This didn't make for a 'pretty picture', to say the least. Nonetheless I figured that my facility with Montebellum pottage lore would grant me privileged access even as other lukewarm supporters were encouraged to work on bail reform in their spare time.

*****

The one lesson I take from all this is not to unfurl a preposterous banner in the company of barely nescient paymasters when all that's actually at issue is my unbidden intolerance for unbreakable interlocutors. Even as they conspire to interrupt my morning ablutions, I take great pains to appear rested, ready and at the beck and call of a thriving corporate sector, without which even my lamest denouncer would be hard put to come up with even the silliest reason to abandon social pretense at the drop of a nonce. You go there. They always do. When? 

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