Autobiographical Notes from an Alternate Timeline.

 

Younger strangers who are thought to appear to be 'well liked' are often the last to know. I should know because I was one myself once. Problem was, I didn't find out until everyone had already gone. I was left in an opponent's gymnasium even though it was dark outside and I remembered a lot of people saying that no one could be expected back until after eleven. I decided to use my fabled brain and call this kid a liar. He wasn't there either so I ditched my nukes behind a Pastor's toolshed, started selling drugs in the inner city and got a cheerleader pregnant even though I was secretly gay. The baby, who I never saw, was named after my Grandpa who died in the War.

I went on to edit my College newspaper. After graduation I got a job in marketing, rose through the ranks to become Senior Executive Vice Assistant and retired early at age 37 in Boca Raton, Florida. By the time I made it plain to the United States Government that I had every intention of defecting to the People's Democratic Republic of Korea (AKA North Korea), I swore that I would never again risk exposure by pretending to throw a baseball in a way that made me look like I wasn't a girl. Because, you know what? Some people like to go around saying things. Even talking about stuff that can't be proven—unless you're a goddamn psychic or something!

I sold my Ford SUV to an Ohio mortgage delinquent, threw away some spoiled food and decided to make a clean break of it. No one was getting any younger. That said, someone I saw just the other day looked in my direction when I pretended to be standing somewhere. Once I achieved a long neglected orgasm, I decided to help my sister, Mervy Flimtar, clean out her garage. It took us all day and into the night. Since she was leaving later that evening, we had a lot of catching up to do. The next day she caught the flu and, unfortunately, passed away in her sleep. Now I run a private investigations company in Pyongyang, North Korea and I couldn't be happier. Why should any of this be a surprise, is all I'm asking. What is it? 

Expectation Can Be a Cruel Master.

 

We who live with a long term prospect can be expected to always inspect a less-than-solid person's scattershot approach. Once our vanity is appealed to, anyone who goes by the 'silent name' can be counted upon to issue a terse injunction against any and all soporific trailer plants. The word still irks, but sometimes, when a leak is upended and our suspicions confirmed, a three-day delay can be helpful, even if behind all notions of trust one can find a likable dingbat to harvest their fair share in the warbling hours just after the cars arrive, as if on cue. Even less so, our current Occupant, now that she rotates each limb in accord with a newfound spatial perdiguity, can be observed listening intently behind all of the men who remember to climb each wicket with a tooth and a nail on anyone's personal Eastern Seaboard.

Why do those who thrust mildly and who refuse to install a much needed railing brake in their Winter moulding, more often than not, insist on colliding gently when not impelled to retract a less-than-colorful account for the benefit of egregious time-servers without ever availing them or their, quite frankly, nervous spouses, of the chance to harness split-second technology in the  interest of generalized pudential neutrality? This is one of the many questions that occupied the attentions of our over worked staff of de-spaculated matrons. Some of them prefer fo sit with their feet pointed skyward while skewering lifelike opponents in their dream-laden voices of yore.

We feel primly afflicted by the notice we gain from slumping in a pale field of antique organ meats. Our wellness is not to be taken for granted in any event. A sanitized field hand is given to dust around our carpenter's odd blistering shrub. We look to his heritage to explain his icy movements which propound the gumptious freedom which we all take for granted when one is beaten into many. The sandy walk is hewn with a money-crushing utility ship and I praise your planetary awareness to the high half-pins. This still can't get me arrested in this 'two-horse' liverburg. I tell them all the time to please stop by my hostel, expand my showplace and pet my cowels under a two-tone lancing buldge. The lawyers alone will make sure that they are stuck in a foreign room. This one is for draining our pump. The other one braces for a mild impact. I've seen both but only one makes the difference which counts in the end. Why can't anyone see that? Is it something we ate? Or, would that be pushing things? You have my boat. 

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Memorandum of Interest.

 

In view of the increasingly dull recognition as to the limited duration availences during which to score our processes, I have been tasked at this morning's meeting of principals, stakeholders and a skeletal assemblage of their various functional robots, to inquire as to whether, if, when and ever you and the other segments that comprise our 'Third Floor Project' could be expected to exhibit or even sustain a level of interest concomitant with a so far unheralded notion of conducting an Enterprise Search of our latest female example's sterling pencil to ascertain whether or not an ammonia-enabled pendulum can be located somewhere within.

This proposal has been enskeptulating, in seed form at least, for the better part of the sixty-one days that our presence has been detected by the remaining Floor Staff who have survived all our efforts to render them blandly and crucially ineffective in their efforts to dissolve our track-positive modalities.

Under the covering of a false chartreuse envelopiture, and receipt of blue identity profiles from a majority of your segments, we will act with our characteristic stealth to secure a maiden hobby-horse the primary plectitude that constitutes its remaining due. You will then find the opportunity to bring closest familial relations of our subjects (and a random selection of former dumblexes) into one of the newest state-specific Open Space Dullness Portals for mass influction at the interval of our choice. Upon final bisection the Task is expected to encounter a blistering of autonomous tissues which will usher into existence the Final Grade.

Your reply to this proposal is expected—and yes, mandatory!—within six and one half minutes of the receipt of this communiqué. Short of that, please anticipate that any and all evidence of the existence, past, present and future, of you and your prime segments will be permanently erased.

Good day.

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Public Notice: Announcement.

 

If anyone has noticed traces of very fine sand around the perimeter of this or any building, there's a question which needs to be asked before a notice is posted. In addition, one of our untrained lackeys has sustained major fentibular damage and will need various provisions from a central location if any of us are to be afforded the chance to feel hope anew as our struggle ascends its vital avenscrypt. We all look with eyes focused on a mere legend. His demeanor is not one to be sneered at, regardless of which side of the candle is deemed suitable for a fenticious lavermont. My objontuous assistant, Klevon O'Toole, will likely arrive at your doorstep in the coming days fresh out of soluble water pills and you will be expected to make good on the one promise which could bring all solid ground into a ringing saltessence. Nutrition in all its various forms is not to be taken lightly in any event. By their chairs you will know if they are one of ours or one of theirs. If it's the latter, please try to delay any soporific reaction until we've had time to examine your road scores and impart your hand into a layered pacing yeild. After this, no one can pretend that your axis is the stiff end of a monument to ever more feelthy tracer scores.

The life we lead in the Plaza after dusk sets in is one which is not unfamiliar to the unpretentious braggarts who mottle our faith community into a rust-belt sogar at the i-bent of a treacly stuncore. As each of us speaks with a rueful stupidity about the impressions which our graven images have made on hyperactive youth pastors, we are observed to sink ever so slightly in our seats and hum the Anthem even more quietly and assiduously than our naive fellows. That's because our beliefs are on the line. But the problem is, the very line which looms so large in our minds isn't one we feel any comfort in shaping for the delight of visiting offisuaries. Each of them has their own private problem and this doesn't make it any easier to get involved in 'ground-floor' projectiles and their place in future baffins. Now I will remove a wireless relay from beneath my cardigan and begin switching providers until I find one who meets my precious denials with dubiously phrased entreaties. This should make for good 'appointment television'. At least that's what I've heard as per now. If this describes anyone you know, there will be a paper outside that you can sign in total confidence. This should not in any way be interpreted as the petty scam we've planned all along since Day One. No. It should be seen for what it so manifestly is. And that's not what you think. So there!

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A Friendship is Tested: Daylight Odors.

 

One of my friends, Harlin Blasfer, worked his way out of a plotless marriage the old fashioned way: he just went ahead and blurted things out. Untold and unsaid things which sometimes cause a man to be looked at in a short-fisted manner. He had even written letters to the then Governor-General and all he ever got back was a coupon for discount batteries. Now that he lives in my car every third weekend, as per Court mandated insufferance, I have taken it upon myself to groom him for a role in an upcoming kitchenette drama to premier at the 5th Annual Negro Women's Baccanal and Postal Release Tributary. Everyone has been signing on left and right and I believe at current levels, no one should ever feel forced to back out of a trading plan by the Winter's end. If a 'certain somebody' does his (or her?) part, we can virtually guarantee that a fully stocked basket will be placed squarely in the line of fire down a road which snakes directly off Our Nation's Highway.

When it comes to smaller registrants, one only has to include a packet of odorless hairs to insure that  their negligible attention remains upright throughout the concourse. One or another of them (usually the latter, if I'm being honest) will normally hang out after the others have gone to sleep for good. That's when all sorts of buzzers go off. Quite a racket, but nonetheless, we feel obligated to bring their secular patterns to the notice of League officials who have promised to do their darnedest to insure that even the most minor colloquy won't interfere with the habitual sogginess which we prize beyond all else. Why? Because that's the only way to bring others under our sway. The faces they expose at sundown make it all worthwhile in the end. But even before the final twiddle, when we look out over the thousands of impatient, partially solidified yammerers, we can sense the opening of an incessant pathway to painless simulations of aquatic warfare gone rogue. 

It has been alleged that I've never blamed anyone when the third person in line would do just as well. I will go to my grave reciting a secret oath or die trying. When it comes to playacting in a fantasy grill-room hobby, I leave it up to my Second-in-Command to brief me on all manner of hypothexical tissues which are usually scattered in an inscrutable pattern on our deck while I have my morning tea and scones. He acts like he's never heard of a person who doesn't trip over his own feet before. When I ask him, 'before what?', he often becomes very bitter and withdrawn. What he doesn't seem to be aware of, however, is that I know for a fact that he's only 'faking it'. He couldn't be farther from the truth if a bird hit him with a baseball bat. You get the idea. But there's only one little problem: I've lost my place. Which place? The one down in [DELETED], you dingbat!

___________________ 

This is the title which some of you have requested. You're welcome.

 

She keeps us to herself while tearing up. I live in a one-room house near a school yard. The companion who we share in common is not one to compete for our affections. It dithers and it dathers, but still we behave as old friends have come to expect. 'Circumspection' doesn't begin to describe our approach. On the other hand, if either of the three of us feels neglected or otherwise held apart from our fellows, all we need to do is issue a proprietary rejoinder, wait a few minutes and then resume our studies at the field house under the guidance of experienced mental laborers. Their own coatings still hold clues to the events leading up to a precarious climax. No one is the fonder for having held any old package for this long. Quite the contrary, in fact. I try not to go there much anymore on the slight chance of a not-so-random rebuke. But then again, why should this cause alarm at the end of a long and gruesome day?

It's plain to me now that if I leave her under the care of a loathesome surgical resident, I will only have myself to blame if she feels justified in scrimping on the deployment of strategic affections. A photograph of a minor child in need of psychological assessment is what brought us together in the first place. This was years ago, before either of my parents learned to drive. Yes, that minor child in the photo is yours truly. But no, you continue to be quite mistaken in your sweeping assumptions. It wasn't for nothing that when we first moved to the Coast, I made it known that anyone who issued a statement in her presence could expect a major winnowing in the months and years to come. And, in case that wasn't clear enough, I made it a practice to expose the remaining spouses to some harmless bacteria to see how they liked it. By now we've agreed to patch up the garage we share and ask someone to make an offer. If I am prodded by any more false alerts, you might try asking me to sit lengthwise in an Army Surplus tent. I've heard they're having a clearance downtown. Please look into it.

I've already glued a surfeit of pages into our handbook. These will comprise the addendum that so many have found lacking from the opening boomlet. But, it's very important to tread carefully so as not to offer false comfort to defective stragglers. They could come at you with all manner of hooks and scythes. In the event that we decide to purchase a vacation home in which to conduct 'the experiment', we both intend to keep ourselves at arm's length in the expectation of another penitent breaking out first. There's one particular party who excites our instinct for survival. He's obviously the kind of bloke who trods roughly and garrots a big wimp. But even if our postural learning curve has flattened to a bare incline, why would it be anyone's business if and when we see fit to settle our affairs in the most  public way imaginable? It's not for nothing that the morning trend line is all that people talk about anymore. They just can't get it out of their system, is all I'd like to avoid saying. But, if anybody sees me scurrying through a Carbonetta HQ while the others avert their eyes, then you'll know that my work is far from complete. Please approach the bench.  

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This 'Family' Isn't What It Seems . ..

 

There's a family that appears regularly on our side of the fence, usually after we've retired for the evening. But once when I was scrounging in the shed for some maple-inflected duct tape, I observed them on the security monitor. Two adults, male and female, and three children, two female and one male, which is why I assume they're a family. They appear to be of Alsatian-Dutch lineage and seemingly have zero fear of dark wooden objects. The male adult, hereinafter referred to as 'the dad', carries with him a neutrally shaded cylindrical ice-posket sled measuring about three and one half by seven and two thirds centimeters. Occasionally the adult female, hereinafter referred to as 'the mom', coughs an odd number of times, most often three, and periodically seven, nine or five, at which time the whole group lies face down on the sandy surface (this is in the Southwest of the property) and 'plays dead' for about fifty seven seconds, before sitting up, retrieving writing implements and paper from their pockets and lightly tapping the paper with their pens/pencils.

After consulting with my wife and our attorney, we've decided invite this 'family' to enter into a web of deceit and lies. Their hair color alone should make this a cinch. We're going to keep this color 'close to the vest' for the time being for obvious reasons. When our son, Lucas Kylie Jr., graduated from the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, I had the bright idea of forming a squad of kendricks to uphold a standard of dignity and forebearance in the nearby towns. No one of this variety has seen fit to approach us with a plausible solution. 

When my handkerchief was stolen at the MiniMart on Presidents Day eve, it was all I could do to not fail to call in my chits from the negligent parties who comprise the lion's share of thought-leaders who infest the Council Flats down the way. By the standard of excellence that we've set in previous decades, there's no doubt that an extension could be made available in which to store a pervasive vehicle. The paint will be offloaded at the Port of Baltimore and my gift to a search party near City Center will consist of a balsa wood replica of Joe Dimaggio's World Series ring.

But if anyone is wondering about the crew of deaf-mutes who have almost completed the construction of our new septic system, they should (please!) relax, as they're likely to inflict only the most unavoidable frottage, to the point that I'm regularly called out-of-state. I'm not sure if I haven't yet forgotten to neglect to write something. If it comes to me later while taking a shower I'll be sure to post an update. It's not my intention that anyone should be kept in the dark. Sometimes less than desirable events occur in conditions of negligible light, even while sometimes to the contrary notwithstanding. Peace out.

______________________________

Late Breaking Reactions to the Current Situation.

Since our negative welding tour last year, my wife's smell has occupied an increasingly catastrophic load of bandwidth which is only now bringing to bear those difficulties the chewing of which we had bit off too much. When I say 'she had it coming', you can be sure that I am being as mild as current regulations allow. However, on those occasions when I'm heard (or seen) to mouth the lyrics to a half-century old 'also-ran', then we can all agree that the time has come to put various items in an order which won't arouse the kind of suspicion that can have someone refusing to eat out of the hands of warm-hearted carpers. The illusion of control can take us far afield in a way that disabuses iatrogenic pest framers of their former jubilation to finally be rid of the context which had kept them pegged to the very end. I always knew that I would stand by them. But in the interim I had sufficient cause to undergo bladder surgery in lieu of an invitation to a Calming Supination sponsored by a Mr Dennis Grant of the Randolf Hines Foundation.

Sometimes there is no cause which can be isolated to bring about undesired results. In that case, if you should decide to meet me halfway between here and there, I can promise unlimited access to my collection of antique spinach strainers. These will help you attain a vibrancy which you formerly scorned, not so much in the manner as in the breach. I will take it upon myself to bring you one of our most loyal specimens so that you may exert your evocative wiles on an innocent nomad. Don't let that name fool you, though. We've had to run through over sixteen thousand cherry-picked professional liars before one could be seen as adequate to waltz through a covered display. At pains to risk exposure, I pulled her arms through a device which flattened them into a manageable tightwad. Please don't say that we didn't try. That would be a shame. That's why I'm telling you. 

In our own last-ditch effloresence of strategic bonhomie, I was informed by no less than the Principal Actor that my own hazy recollections of past exploits would scarcely do the trick to insure our inclusion in all manner of striated gumtwats. When I tell you that this has caused indelible damage to our forensic image clusters, you can be sure that I know whereof I speak. To treat people with a laminated disregard is all we ever hoped to achieve. Instead, I'm now faced with a boiling hot reaction to my placement in a row of picayune onanists. The result has been as harrowing as it is fulfilling. In my own narrow-guage fashion, I will judge each of my tormentors in a way which brings credit to our own cohort of tungsten-eschewing allergists. When faced, as we were, with a delayed faction of unyielding psychopomps, the rules of engagement were thrown to the dogs and my own weight became a thing of true futility. For this I have you to blame. You're welcome.

___________________________ 

The question answers itself, if you ask me.

 

A question has been raised repeatedly in recent hours. It has to do with where a person in my position, or indeed, a more principled co-mingler of funds, could go to locate a rare segment of vegetable matter and still find the time to execute an overbearing ontology in the run up to a crisis of conscience in the American South. No one who has brushed the lawns in our division has any doubt that blame should be laid in a direction that couldn't even last the night, if there were ever to be one. Even those who claim to speak with the authority of a Higher Force are quite pleased to be rid of the rooted paranoia which, at the time, seemed to go so well with underhanded leisure-time pursuits in the face of overweening opportunism. Likewise, the cunning 'Mistress of Ennui' has served notice that her stilted frame, once thought to be impervious to the mildest reckoning in years, is holed up in a damning process of epidemiological fooforaw. Yes, I had the same reaction.

In case anyone would care to assume the duties of my personal monitor, they are well within their rights to demand a reading of the relevant articles in the company of impudent returnees from a formally redundant speed-reading competition. It might help if all seven living former Secretaries of the Bastard Nations be consoled as to the affordability crisis afflicting a random sample of sullen pre-teen assailants. The way some people scoff at all hours when a snacking duo slips the precious umber dot under my already weirdly inflated pudendum, is enough to discourage all future trackless manbots from ever straining to spring a leak from a perilous cancer flood. It irks no less than the purveyor of life-giving waters to have to witness this disgraceful display on the banks of our very own sulphurous wave. Some might go even farther. Everyone is advised to remain glued to their sets for further updates. As morning turns to afternoon, a certain delicate morsel will be indicated by a subtle itching sensation in the center of the palm. On the other hand, anyone worth their weight in salt has all of our permission to lie in wait in lieu of performing a perfunctory procedure. Could anyone register a position as to why it has come to this? At this very moment, no less?

______________________________ 

We need to work this out privately.

 

Would anyone you know be willing to approach a stranger in a hallway not far from here? It shouldn't take but a minute or two and in the end, those who wondered what I was made of can finally get the answer that they were afraid to hear from Day One. On the off chance that I'll be visiting my cousin, the Lance Corporal, I'll be incorporating some fecal material into my routine. And if anyone thinks that's 'not kosher', please take it up with my de-platformed road manager, Ira Soskin. He seems to be under the impression that you, or someone you might have met a couple of years ago, has something to hide. I'll never stop trying to talk sense into that man, however frustrating it may turn out to be in the end. To tell you the truth, I'll be saving my major firepower for a character widely rumored to be sort of intelligent. He goes to great lengths to look the part, always figuring stuff out in his head, even while his wife is looking at five to fifteen in the State pen. I know it might sound funny to say this but, you've got stop taking every little thing I say (or write) literally. They say that a mind which is frozen is cold to the touch. I say that one out of three bastards will have his work cut out for him when I start wearing a very attractively styled new uniform.

Yes, it's true what you've heard: we all strive in our little ways to follow precedents and decorum. I keep a stick of gum hidden in the flap of my hat and sing in the Youth Choir of my local habitat. It turns out that not all plant species are beneficial to eat. It comes down to consuming stuff in patterns which are built one brick at a time. A road crew can be asked to help you make ripples in the morning crud. When you receive the latest scouting report, you should look for a name which doesn't rankle people who are touched in the head. For all the others, it's okay if you relax on the beach in the off season. Who would ever think to look for you there? Not anyone who's submitted their forms on time, that's who.

Could we get down to particulars yet? To wit: why have you seen fit to patrol in my neighborhood without risking societal opprobrium? It would never have entered any of our calculations that someone in your position might have once broken bread with Harry Belafonte Jr. We were even somewhat surprised that you entered one of our eateries unaccompanied by individuals of a high caliber. It showed us just how wrong a person can be when they take it upon themselves to move all my furnishings into a squalid sub-basement without provocation. It makes sense in a bizarre kind of way that your doings are plastered all over the Conway even while the youngest of our children are shut out of the job market entirely. Does this strike you as 'fair'? I ask because you've never seemed to be that kind of person, at least not when I knew you growing up. Some things never change, though. And you know exactly what that would be. Don't lie.

______________________________   

 

It's quite simple, actually . . . ..

 

No one was in any doubt that the guy I'd signed in had trouble keeping each of his several explanations straight. No matter how many coupons I'd donated to his kids' education fund, the only glimmer at the end of a constricted tube was a glint from an ameliorated cufflink which gave some of us hope that not all whimpering contained any kind of secret clue at all. Which is why a person in my line of work sometimes gets in a bit of a fix if a trusted colleague tries to outline yet another agenda in the face of implacable opposition from 'you-know-who'.   Even my defrocked Rector, Asmer Chomsul, tried to have a go at matching finger prints to astrological signs and came up empty every freaking time. When it was my turn to lie face down in a morphological chamber, some of the hysterical busybodies who controlled access decided they'd had just about enough and began to enforce a body of antiquated regulations that would make your head spin if any game had the remotest quantity of skin in it at all. As of press time, we can report that a peculiar cohort of seditious ectomorphs is even now approaching Terminal G at Newark-Liberty International Airport. Do we even have to stipulate that their intentions are not, as we say, 'good'? If so, consider it so stipulated. If not, I dare you to try to seal my coating.

In this kind of game, every able-bodied fussbudget is due for a clandestine physical exam on the Observation Deck at the Empire State Building in New York City. I will personally see to it that each of the spouses receives a complimentary pastry item, courtesy of Stunad's Cake Shoppe at 584 Rt. 14 South in Dairytown, PA. Our Master of Ceremonies is Edwin Tumblaine of the very well known Tumblaine Brothers et al.  Once each evacuee is checked for specimens, they'll be approached by a member in good standing of the Oregon Highway Patrol and requested to proceed very quietly to the back seat of an unmarked late-model sedan of some distinction. There they will be introduced to an ungrateful prospective adoptee and asked to measure them for rabies, cholera and tongue-in-mouth syndrome. If everything is determined to be on the up-and-up, a unique plaque may be presented in lieu of a cash payout. The requisite farms are to be pillaged at the direction of the Oneonta Homebound Charity Complex, and not one minute sooner.

When I saw her exit the arena in the company of my infant daughter, I knew that something just didn't smell right. We'd had issues for years but I must say, this one took the prize and left all the others in the dust. Now that some of the folks downstairs have had time to think about it, they've reached a preliminary decision. Following the collapse of my business in 2006, I was given three months to reach a settlement with the woman's father and then pipe down for good. Nothing about this sat right with me. Instead, I asked some of the others to sit right next to me while I hammered out a response by the seat of my pants. It wasn't looking good. But I felt okay. The fact is, I'd lost five pounds in the prior three months. No one thought I was capable of this but I knew they were lying from the very beginning. That's why I never leave my house without something in reserve. You never know when a third party might show up and make one uncomfortable demand or another. This way I always knew where my bread was buttered, so to speak. And no, I ain't getting any younger, if that's what's on your mind, okay?  

_______________________-

Update on the 'Sally Merkel' situation.

 

I've looked through all my files and I can't find anyone named 'Sally Merkel'. Some folks on loan from another department are quite adamant that that can't be right. Why? Because just the other day as I was drying off from an obvious mishap, a statement was read over the public address system which made a hash of all of our previous efforts. Even though the name appeared to be that of a popular donor, the application process alone could take a week or two. Once it was resolved in my favor, there was only one thing left on my plate: a somewhat dry grilled cheese and tomato sandwich. Someone had placed a small piece of paper on a table in a nearby building. This building had been designed by a distant relative who had participated in a certain number of parades back in the 1950s. I'd been told that his headgear was the envy of the entire Unit. People had trouble convincing me that my picture of the thing was way off in the distance where some could experience difficulty breathing if the air continued the way we expected after a year like that. Like what? Please try to be more understanding. It's true that some will continue to get old and possibly die from trying too hard.

In case anyone has an inkling that the image they've cultivated for lo these many years is apt to receive some serious scrutiny, it should be a relief to learn a self-effacement technique once known only by default on the strong side. If the other one inspires needling and jealous talk, then the recommendation is to don a favorite jacket and enter a field hospital bringing only a notebook, a flashlight and a cup holder designed for Berber infants. They will hold them all day and then look into the tiny hole while wishing this would never be an issue. All the other victims received financial consideration in lieu of reputational apostomy. This is how it will all 'go down': at first a sound will be heard, it could be any sound at all, just so long as you can hear it. Then some people will come in sopping wet. You are to pay them no mind but instead count the number of times their heads move in the average second. Next you'll want to be up on your Antasian History. This could take some doing but in time those who look like they could be next will be all but watering your plants for all you care. By now you'll be set up to take the reins and make a major haul. It might be minutes before we find out if your body is up to the stress. Sometimes people chicken out right about here. To guard against that, we recommend that you spend some time getting reacquainted with our Rules of Engagement. Should you need a piece of mildly colored string to be attached to a portable antenna, you can pen a short note to our man at the Arena. He'll be able to complete all the paperwork in about three months. After that you're on your own. It never gets simpler after that, but you don't see me complaining, do you? Be quiet.

___________________________ 

Life-Lessons Learned on the Battlefield of Contemporary Existence.

 

The saving grace is—and was!—that my feet, normally used to walking on the eggshells of modern social conventionalism, have attained a hard-won anchoring that only rank stolidity can provide. Three prior children of my fourth wife have duly arrived and have the run of the place which they've so long sought to deny. I can't say that I mind hearing them out. The vestibule sounds like a nice spot. I'll happily arrange to help them go over some of the pre-scripted remarks so that no one can say that they 'just made it all up'. That's just the kind of thing which some temporary health officer could be counted upon to blurt out, as if out of nowhere at all. The funny thing is, he never struck me either on the head or the arms, even if I thought nothing of breaching a contact flow. The availability of edible materials is never far from our thinking process. Someone whose opinion often gains parallel access wants it known that his flavor preferences run to the decidedly 'mild'. This shouldn't make him an object of scorn even as he goes about seeking redress in a haplessly forlorn manner.

Now the children are arrayed in a half-circle between Partitions 7 and 9 (the odd numbers encode signals from the Western periphery). Normally I prefer to go from one to the other, but on this night, as on all others, I have them taken at face value, if nothing else. They can be depended upon to redirect their innate fury at the one person whose bona fides will, in all likelihood, never effect the state of play. For my part, I can't understand what role I'm meant to play in the ongoing discussion. If the specialist requires that I cough into a marked linen sack, then so be it. If, however, someone is so bold as to make our asking price an object of rank vituperation, there will be no alternative but to inquire as to the national standard which he maintains at height in our corner grove. A person of his ilk will be given all the time he needs to feel settled. The shoes will be offered in consolation. If he becomes moist in return, I will see to it that his list is settled before injuries are sustained in the medium term. Here we mean minor scrapes and bruises, nothing more.

How have we not let the Bastion get the better of us in the foregoing eras? Anyone is privileged to guess color schemes and guiding principles. But, if they determine that one of our embattled former appointees is to be given the shortest of shrifts, then we're all but certain to detect barely muffled sobs during a post-prandial dunking session. Because, you know what? That's just what we'd expect you to say if you were held to task in a barely willowy pilot-beam. They've all but wrecked our expectation of leaving Stage 3 before someone gets violently ill. I can't tell if they've had too many ribbons applied. Some say that they can smell the difference. There's one thing you need to remember: that's a damnable lie! Mis-statements have a 'funny' way of becoming the Gospel Truth in this Ministry and Pastor Joe could use your help putting out this latest fire. Are you on board with our most secure stranglehold? Or, can we count you as 'black-pilled without context'? It won't suit our plans to have you snuffed out for good. That will be followed by a relaxing dinner on the Veranda. Please say you can't make it. It would be a real shame. Not sorry.

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This is a personal message for you, and you alone. [ALL OTHERS ARE PROHIBITED FROM READING]

 

 

As we move into a new month, I think you're going to see people who've been shielded (so far) from your way of doing things start to develop rashes neither in nor near their armpits. The fact that up till now they've resisted complaining about the way you've been said to treat a particular landscaper should not put you at ease if and when you discover some discolored markings within a mile of the parking facility that you made pains to avoid starting sometime just after the holidays. No one I've talked to thinks there's anything coincidental about it whatsoever. In fact, they're after me to launch either a probe or a whispering campaign. I don't plan on doing either. What I WILL do is take my good sweet time and make it a priority to include you in a round-robin I'm organizing that is supposed to kick off at just about the same time that your Mother is to be released from the Missouri State Correctional Facility.

I've resisted talking with you during my lunch hour because the way you've been observed to move your fingers while spitting into an empty cup makes my brain hurt. The one time I took you to a specialist, someone presented me with a pamphlet where nothing about our situation was even mentioned. And I found that a little bit hard to swallow. Even when I was digging under your house while you were away, I still had a not-so-funny feeling that certain people would start looking into beginning new types of activities. To a person they look down, smile, don a new outfit and traipse in front of my townhouse as if they haven't got a care in the world. Now they want me to include them in my secksual proclivities. It's plain to me that you've been telling tales out of school. Now I'd like to put in my two cents worth, if you don't fucking mind, okay?

In the space between where one thing ceases to begin and another starts to fade out altogether, you'll find that there's often a minuscule puck (about the size of my left thumbnail seen from five or six miles away). It's no longer purplish but has now taken on a golden hue. At this point I can practically hear you hissing as you sit alone in you den. I know for a fact that there's a Penn State pennant mounted on the wall opposite your blanching unit. People who've been there recently assure me that you still have trouble remembering the time we talked about a particular TV show. You've been known to try to influence a few of the younger members with tasteless remarks—often at my expense. Why do I get the feeling that we're on a collision course? Do you know that I've legally changed my name since our last fist fight? Would it surprise you to learn that one of our mutual acquaintances is modeled after a moderately well known figure from recent history? Is there anything?

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The 'Ruth Wingate' Scam Exposed!

 

In my native tropsicks I am  known as 'the salinder'. It is my duty to goad well considered trustees to banish non-compliant doofusses into a majestically lighted cylinder. There they will be approached individually, as well as in groups of two or three and made to lie down in the company of ground penetrating rebar. Unannounced as all reasonable measures should be, the insertion is set to be guided by defrocked clergy at the drop of a bat in a vat of fat-free unguent. Then we will apply a plainly astonishing amount of fletcher in the vicinity of their necessary foam. By the time my wife arrives from the Coast, all venerable assailants are to be engulfed in a hidebound tragisty of their own behooval. For this, and this alone, we are naked in the wind. You have a sour puss. Have you heard that before?

Once  up-wind from the Almighty Chauffeur, we are assaulted with mounds of pasty tumbwitch and annointed with a requisite dollop of feminized, neutrally colored lempodizical bolus. I acquired each of my companions by pretending to be a person named Ruth Wingate. As I grew more confident in my impersonation, I began adding touches of grim humor into my otherwise stentorian manifold. In the days before 'the problem' presented itself as if it emerged from a virtual nowhere, the barn where I'd discovered the final hoovers was sold to an outfit from 'down the way'. People started asking questions. I went all out and bought set of sawhorses to partition a peculiar area until further notice. No one knew where I got any of the firearms that were displayed in my shed. I said I'd put them aside if I was left alone in the shade. They aren't laughing now. No, why?

When trusted partners bestow a flammable nocturne upon a breeze-activated dimswitch, our final vapid loop engages a voluble societal pathogen in a gambit of absorbency and treacle. My own jamb is perfectly effective if, after one too many off-kilter bromads kites the spy, a pre-eminent physicalist is induced to shred his recent paper and take up residence in an immaterial goo. That will make our point very clearly but not before we rescind any late-century bluster that found a way to survive in the hack-infested igloo of socialist realism. Do you still have one?

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This is how these things usually play out. Are you in?

 

We could begin by agreeing to allow things to remain as they were before we were forced to decide. If that's what ends up being our choice, then the hair could be a problem. In fact, only one cellophane packet containing a sample was lost prior to being ripped from the frosty mitts of a commonplace lurker. How was it possible that he got in? The best of them are always one shot too narrowly focused on seeming transfixed. Now they'll have to pay in the only way they know how: by signing seven identical sheets of distributed paper and then fleeing into a foreign wooded area. The borders alone should make them tingle to avoid the obvious trap set by my enemies in neutral locatioins. We can lament all we like, but if we can't start to take seriously our place in the order of reputed pensioners, then no one who can afford any better will be in a position to request a new placement without which their strongest argument will go 'poof' in a Southern wind. That's why we believe you might have some talent as a 'soul' singer. You just look the part.

The brainiest girl who lives in my part of a filthy shack has told me that she misses looking into pools for lost sandboxes. Everyone thinks that we should try her out in half-length sleeves. It will help if she applies a strict color standard to her weekly chartable outcomes. I have asked her parents if they could join their emblem into a petulant bromad. They have assured my assistant that they will see to it that I receive an alluring scar which will allow me to prance about in an even more justifiably haughty manner. I have examined each of them for any recording equipment. Each has just such a device implanted in their panterior vulpnar. They've also promised a stultifying birdcall recital in the Spring. No one is sure that that's a game we have any interest in playing. As long as my desk sits in a common area, my safety is assured in a matter of seconds. This is how things get done. Listen and learn. But sometimes swallowing itself becomes overly broad. You know this.

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The Line Which Begs the Question.

 

There's a line which, when it closes in gently beside this head, everyone will finally be forced to admit to a range of findings.  Not one myself, I'll only be able to stand nearby, my arms placed just so, and undertake a task which is barely seen outside of trusted townsfolk. We've held them apart from the first time it became apparent that no one was in the mood for joking around. If one of us had something to say, we would generally think better of it and try to estimate the time it would take to hold ourselves apart from a terribly likely current.

The pause which those of us in the back beheld at our significant peril, can only be adduced to the woman whose innocuous soldier is now being held for an impartial briefing in the sullen manner seen in these types of incidents. Some darker purpose is served when a location is scouted for an (until now) secret meeting. I was asked to expose my rampant judiciousness to every kind of paltry scenario. In the event of a brighter fusion, all our stumbling relatives will be delivered unto a raving mob of teenage putrescence. All of our worries are encapsulated in a brief account designed to elicit a standing freeze of onboard restrictions. Large moves are from now on to be forbidden. Even the smaller ones will take some getting used to. By which I mean that you may not be invited. Don't worry, they'll come for you eventually. It's now or later. Pick one and leave your stuff with my punctured bailiff. He won't ask for your name because he knows it's none of his cotton picking business.

Why do some of us like to go around to the houses of former neighbors and install devices which we know will not help us win any upcoming popularity contests? Could it be because deep down, when we know no one is looking, our appetite for copious intrigue helps us 'double down' when 'starting over' is and never will be an option in our case? Because if that's true then some of our least finest molecules will be exposed to a prurient dose of previously non-available light. And then we'll start coupling and re-coupling, until all our favorite journeys stop being written about in ways that have us doubting our creepy life choices. You will give me one for my head. The line will go on stringing itself, lighter every day until sometime soon nothing will be seen at all.  Even your love of simplified folk melodies will be questioned. Can you see how this ends up? No? Then please try again, if you would.

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