Foreswearing a Well-Earned Eubontic.

 

It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that we've got a lot of patsies. My wife and I pride ourselves on our devotion to well-adjusted evaluees. The ones who make the grade are ours for the taking. About the others, it would be the wiser course to not look extremely closely. Out of all the people who scorned the entrance to our central room, the one who stands head and shoulders above the rest has come in for the kind of awakening sometimes called 'rude'. No one is ever advised to feel put upon, especially when it comes to making diagrams on the spur-of-the-moment. By their names alone, you'd swear against your better judgment that one very peculiar individual suffered a secret hurt. We will apply each of four distinctly flavored and colored rags to the forehead, genitals, lower back and sole of the right foot respectively. In the owners' manual, it states quite clearly where our obligations lie. When any uncalled-for questions are raised in the coming days, we are to lie repeatedly, in a halting and falsely timid voice if at all possible.

The imported Roumanian basin stands a-ready. The peter-tools are flounced just so and any of the congregants who quite regularly abjure the company of trusted minions are now about to receive, under the care of Ike the Stevedore, a lesson in underwhelming the composition of our Nation's tax-writing committees. In honor of their One-Hundredth spontaneous remission, we are removing them to Spudenburg, Ohio for the annual Enforcement Festival. There will be workshops galore and plenty of opportunities to bandy about the kinds of phrases for which they are so well known. I have pledged to have everything stacked in under a minute. But, while we're waiting for that, could you help me bring a bit of sure-fire authenticity to the proceedings by attending in your incongruous naugahyde chapeau? It won't take nary a passel but it would mean so much to one very special little boy. He lives in an underground parking garage not far from here. During the daylight hours he can be spotted darting to and fro, peeking through cracks in the framework and keeping his nodule in tip-top shape. Come the evening, one or another of us will escort him, with or without spandrels, into an august body of military contractors where he will sit for hours absorbing so many life lessons that it's hard to know where to begin.

But, begin I will, and not for the first time if I'm being honest (I'm not). You see, the long and the short of it is that we're just not the kind of couple who anyone would ever think would involve themselves in highly technical missile guidance systems. Secondly, if and when you finally decide to pony up your end of the bargain, we can assure you that a content-free compartment will be reserved in your name for use on or by January 12, 2011. In the event that we enact a deceptively intuited plan, your cooperation will be consigned to a strictly 'moot' status. Please don't go telling anyone that you got the raw end of the stick. Why? Because it just won't wash, that's why! All of our subtendrils are well aware of the part you played in the collapse of the 'Free World'. Without you and that 'friend' of yours, we'd still be out in the backyard lifting thousands of containers into a place you know very well. And now we look to the skies and plead for even the slightest morsel of reappraisal. Nothing is what we thought it was, is all I'm trying to say. Is that enough? Sure?

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Vacation Notes (not what you'd expect).

 

Any of the people I've been watching during my time off could go on to become a focus of my infantile obsessions. On the other hand, if, when you walk down your typical street during lunch hour, and find that your innate sense of control is slipping, does that mean that only a person taller than yourself has any right to expect better treatment? It would shock absolutely no one if the answer were a resounding 'NO!'. And I wouldn't blame them. Because, I mean, what have they got to lose anyway? It's not like anyone ever stood a chance. From their feet on down, you could see that they were goners, in both senses of the word. All of which is just another way of casting suspicion in a novel direction. Those of us who've been underwater for, quite literally, years, like to think of ourselves as people that someone would be proud to take out for a bite to eat. The thing is, though, that's just not how the game is played, and you know it. Better than most folks, I'm afraid.

Even when I was gently admonished to try to be a little 'more cryptic', there was a bit of a problem arranging for my name to be announced on the public address system. The team tasked with developing scripts for third countries had their hands full and I was in no mood to hold them liable for damages in the millions. The one who was repeatedly photographed lingering in the feminine hygiene aisle at CVS was my mentor. He liked nothing better than to insert a smallish wooden dowel into a magnetized dispenser and wait for the 'fun' to begin. And 'begin' it did, in earnest this time. I had to hold him while authorities did the basic background stuff. For that I still receive calls, just not in my native tongue. Which, in case you're wondering, is proto-Albigensian. No one should think twice about getting up to speed if the future of our actual cohort is on the line. The only folks who have anything to worry about are the ones whose slovenly ways attract a crowd which blocks egress for the chosen few. In that sense, everyone seems to buy in to the basic premise. Which is, in a word, 'baffling'. Just don't tell that to people who represent themselves as ready and willing to come up short. Because in that case, we have major work to do. Agreed?

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Helping Folks Get Back on Their Feet.

 

One or another of us has been asked about our resemblance to a premier individual who also happens to be deceased. We take turns trying, usually without much luck, to make our lines stick. In the end, we are politely asked to vacate the facility. With our blackened hands still wet, we walk to the next exit and have it out with one who's still on duty. It seems there was a problem with his ability to swallow stolen hair and then keep it down. My speciality was to bring numbers forward on a springboard pallet and then attempt to make my voice heard over the lionized commotion. If it weren't for the quick thinking of a woman I'd only gone out with once or twice, I'm afraid we might've been nailed right then and there.

The part where we cut one of them in half always seems to be a crowd pleaser. What they don't know is that if any one of us hadn't gone undercover to take a hike in the other guy's shoes, you'd be looking at a very different, if well turned out, Executive Vice Associate. Not that anyone has anything over which to cry into their spilt milk. Far from it, in fact. I'm looking at YOU, Walter Birshup Jr. Far be it from any of us to donate a very large box in the name of a transitional parking magnate, but, if this seems like just another excuse to slip into a comfortable outfit, climb a tower, hoist a brewski and have it out with a remedial reaction fomenter, then it might do you good to get into a safe space from which to draw up plans for our firm's thirty-fifth anti-diversity shindig. Eventually, I'd be willing to crawl through the skylight and surprise the diners with a triple whammy in the form of a curving swath of unguarded pellet gum.

The terms were all set while our mouths resumed the 'open' position. A woman in a beige caftan appeared from a door in the back of the room and immediately returned to her place in line where, until then, a gentleman claiming to have known her Father before the War, had been amusing some of the infant brides with the sullen way he pronounced a very particular vowel. Once I got through with her, there was no denying that her cord had been pulled. I peered into an opening and, with the scant illlumination still available, began to read aloud from a prepared statement to the effect that I had agreed to take full responsibility for the actions of others who I'd never met and whose identities were an all but foregone conclusion. In reply, I was presented with a very soft, if empty, envelope. Once I regained control of my faculties, it seemed that I was left alone and unaccounted for in a medium sized city in the Northeastern quadrant of the Southern Mid-west. I took to my new home like a fish under a watery dome. I finally came into my own as a dimesmith, got married by default and adopted the ways of a livid market flop. This is all about helping people get back on their feet.

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It's only a matter of time . . . ......

 

We've only had one small face appear on our diskette in the three years that our lives were, quite literally, on the line. I'd take two of the substances with the worst solubilities and then rank them according to their applied muting characteristics. At the end, every other face would no longer be a factor in our vanity lounge roster of independent stanchons. Even the tiniest trim is nothing compared to the movement we observe when our band is favored for its rogue-tinged perfiguity. The pitiful combatants appear one after the other, which more than makes up for a puzzle in the form of a knocked out 8-beam. It troubles me to say it but, what is it about people in your position which makes it so hard to form a concrete description of a stranger's deadpan chatter?

When we're in the throes of something basic but still charted, it gets us to wonder if this is all that we asked to be concealed in the first place. During my time underwater, anyone who still fought a dues increase could usually be seen from the roof of a very tall building trying to prevent their hands from being scalded while those around them never betrayed even an inkling of the defeatism for which they are so very widely renowned. As a Chaplain, it's always been my practice to withhold payment until your average woman asks me to re-arrange a wall plot in another bum's name. This way, any of us who crave a career in the iron trades would no longer have to flag down a service car and do double duty as an icy pitch salesman leads the way. Please don't go getting any ideas which haven't yet been approved for distribution to underage violators.

The skeleton which is so widely declared to be taking up space in my third closet is the closest we've come so far to a discovery which may one day make the journals. If the wind is just right, a person who's just arrived from an overseas mitzvah could have you looking like a spare duckling unless those doing the feeding take you on as a student-in-best-interest. A gabled vehicle is parked in a vaseline solution which sticks to the trendline in every way but the one which counts. This could get you thrown out of a very classy affair, or, you might be able to come to a reasonable decision on your own. In case a wily runt speaks out of turn, our only advice is to immediately turn out the offending light and then take a stroll through a woodsy area with a hint of flavor. When we tell you about people who claimed to have seen you embarrass yourself in a harness, it's only fair that you should go on living as if nothing of the kind could be further from the truth. If this sounds like some kind of game, then you've got some major explaining to do. Place your hands in a darkened room and count to one (1).

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Justice for Our Temple Bathers!

 

It's high time that we give our temple bathers a break. They've been at it for going on six months or more and anyone who would have their precious security threatened will be hard pressed to donate a spare lamp to the Lincoln-Mercury Dealership here in town. I know what I ate, but at the time no one thought to tell me where or when I could ever hope to achieve closure on the big screen. Who is it profitable to lump all comparisons onto? It doesn't take much to irritate a person who marinates at the drop of a sanctified pin. This amounts to a terrific opportunity to have your scales washed clean of any precious signage. It's only because we break into pairs at the first notion of footsteps on a foregone veranda that anyone still prizes a motionless decanter under the moonlight on an auburn twill. This keeps us steady without the need for almond tourniquets. You have my birb.

There is a place on our team for people in need of weathered dumping gear, with all that implies. On the occasion of the 'first look', your typical noob will, quite literally, run in circles in search of even the barest assurance during times of frantic tunneling. A lace kerchief hung from a neighborhood fob could get you one to three if your behaviour meets the proximity test. We've all expressed doubts about your fitness to serve the finest Tyrolian suasages here in the Valley. Yes, it's something which often comes up in conversation. At this point, I usually take pains to get them to lie face-down in a newly dug pit when their knowledge of Roman numerals comes into play. What right does your average honcho have to see children as people too? It goes a long way to answer some of society's stickiest questions. For that I always turn to face in a Southerly direction, intone a prayer to Third Father and then manually alter my own DNA to achieve automatic membership in a newly desirable cohort. I never thought I'd hear myself say that. Just goes to show you how times have changed.

The bell in our riders' pale tincture will be struck at three-second intervals throughout the training nightmare. At the conclusion, a ticket to the blasted countryside will be awarded without even the slightest trace of irony. I am scheduled to leave in the morning. In the event of unanticipated delays, you are to wait poolside for the arrival of my French tutor, Danielle Berkowitz. She is in touch with all the files in your case. I picture her scowling into a waste basket at the conclusion of our most recent tête-a-tête. She has a knack for weaving improbable characters into water-born investigative units engaged throughout social dominance hierarchies. The first time we teamed up to tame an unnameable foe had lasting consequences for life in the Global South. She gave my anjectomy a run for its money in no time flat. Only in the case of the merest happenstance should you consider leafing through a booklet while I catch up on my shows. We'd love to have you over next week. Why the glum face?

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MAYDAY! MAYDAY!

 

The weighted flares were all done up at my expense, even though I was never consulted, beyond a random comment uttered under the breath of someone in a toilet stall on the fifth floor. So, you can imagine how floored I was to discover that a lid had been placed on a container in an infamous parlor prior to a regular period for open discussion. There is a certain kind of trimming which you'll only find in the Far East during Holiday Season. Unfortunately, due to overwhelming demand, I was not to be cut free to pursue other interests in the neofatalogy cubicle. A conviction has circulated through the corridors of power that one of my former supervisors has misappropriated a severance package in order to have influence in a breakaway civilization. They'd prefer to pretend that it was something from a cheap sci-fi treatment of a George Wallington original screenplay. What I know to be true is that a person of meager means has taken control of one of my most trusted intubators. In light of subtle fame issues, all choice has been removed from our view of palliative cognition.

A descent of grace which has been foretold through multiple administrations, is now something which appears through a nightly cascade of dis-assembled table parts. The appearance of a medieval shield in the hands of one so young brings delight to the countenances of all who stand regularly expecting a signal from on high. I can tell by their postures that one or two of them refused to be fooled by the wiles of a master deceiver. If it would help, I can personally escort you into our deluxe crepuscule and see that your every whim is indulged; behind my back, if that's any help. If not, my friend's wife is anticipating at least four try-outs if a dark-haired accuser requires an adjustment. Flexibility is always our watchword. We yearn to participate in the boldest of schemes. When you search through a darkened warehouse for an errant envelope, please try to not give the impression of any desperation on your part. Otherwise, they might come to believe that we once knew each other before the War. No one is winning any prizes for not acting like a jerk, is all I'm trying to say.

We believe in our heart of hearts that the best moment to move into a drought-stricken area is just before a purpose built webbing machine is off-loaded as just another territorial blunder gone wrong. If you want, I could tell my kids that you once approached a sanctified imposter with the idea of having him put a proposal in writing for the benefit of the deaf community at large. You see, they have a hard time understanding why you stood by and seemed to take delight in a rather ungainly trio badmouthing a revered figure in their cohort. And, to be honest, it gave me the willies as well. Going forward, why hasn't anyone hidden behind a steel pole in the middle of the night while you slept peacefully, with no misgivings whatsoever? We think we know the answer to that. It (the answer) doesn't start with a letter. No. It starts with a number. Here's a clue: it's not a number which you've ever liked very much. And with very good reason, if I'm being fair.

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