Suspicious Behavior Elicits Emergency Response: CODE: oxcake.

 

The parents of some of the people who've escaped my notice are beginning to evince not a little suspicion. It's true that they used to drive by my house on the random weekend (in their words, 'just to check' HA!). But now it's a nightly ordeal. I try and give them all the room they need, even to the point of providing marshalls who don't mind taking part in a mindless charade. Yet still they question my motives, relationships, hobbies, educational attainment, attendance at Worship Services, blood type, stool status, morning routine, magazine subscriptions, nuclear watchdog crumbcake inspection, drug habits, affiliational proclivities and whatnot and so-on.

I've been asked more than once to stop making a mockery of their concern for folks who never amounted to much in the first place. They have made it known to my accountant that they intend to donate in excess of one hundred and twenty-three dollars to an emergency fund in the event of certain 'dangerous' ideas being bandied about to-and-fro. I've been quite clear to said accountant that they are not to be given the short end of the stick. In fact, I even went so far as to plunge the assembled throng into what passes for artificial darkness. I knew that in this way they'd be very unlikely to find some of the pieces which I'd planned to throw under a bus. People said that obviously I no longer felt any concern about these pieces,.. we all know what 'under the bus' implies, right? They just won't cop to the fact that I said 'A' bus, and not 'THE' bus. You don't think this made any difference, do you? Because if you do, please see me later and we'll see what we can do.

What would you say if I told you that not one of us here will any longer take the risk of being seen in the company of those whose only concern is to appear only weakly attracted, by dint of hard work alone, to the faithless electors who, in the Summer months make our recreation center their virtual headquarters. For real, right? I think a lot of others feel the same, yet I can't get the go-ahead to install any more state-of-the-art units without the say-so of 'you-know-who'. We have it on good authority that someone you know was seen not more than three miles down wind from a very tricky 'incident'. The keys were found protruding by the truckload from a mound in the backyard of a very dear woman friend of mine. She's at her wit's end trying to control your every movement. They tell her, and I second the motion, that even if every particle is washed away in the next few weeks, the training for bio-hazard will continue, days, nights, weekends... you name it. The problem is, though, no one thinks you'd ever be able to any longer affiliate yourself with the underlying pro-cram. For that we need a sanctified spatialist. and this just doesn't describe the person who once offered my parents free passage for the cost of a mediocre cup of coffee. This doesn't sound like anyone you know, does it? Thought so.

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Story of a Man.

 

The man, who dons dull brown duopoly pants as a matter of course, believes it prudent to outwait the onlookers who gather nightly just adjacent to our vestibule to engage one another in tiresome social rituals. Due to his lack of common graces, he may not be permitted access when the time comes for 'the big reveal'. You see, about seven years ago, before we were married, my wife saw fit to carry on a torrid, if loveless, dalliance with a brilliant, now deceased, architect. This architect was a trusted confidant of the man's step-father. It turns out that they'd been on good terms until 'that' day at the quarry. No one can ever forget how the man, now just entering a squandered middle-age, took to his knees to stage what amounted to a mini-drama, all in the effort to lead a lesser cohort in an unappetizing direction.

Just across the street from where I write this, there's a plaque embossed with naive riddles. Also you'd find one or two names. They'd mean nothing if you weren't one of the ones caught cycling through cancer screening cards. We've told him that there's precious little time before he will be expected to arrive undisturbed at our remote testing facility. I routinely take him aside to explain the fundamentals. As is so often the case, he claims impunity against any ongoing designations. In any other language, this isn't enough to get you out of the loop. That's why I had to call his folks. They should be able to make it up here by Sunday afternoon. At which time I'll ask the Mom if she could get me up to speed on the basics. The last time I asked her, about a year ago, she just smiled and walked away super pissed. Go figure...

It's now common knowledge that the man feels impelled to bring in outsiders so that they can wait while he asks my permission. I know that with even one more click, he could be eliminated forever. The thing is, we both need him to stand guard in case anyone arrives after official screening hours. It will only be played once, this time for laughs. The hat he wears makes for quite the conversation piece. Why has he never told us any of this? Could it be that he found my cologne to be a righteous 'turn-off'? I'm not asking these questions to sound petty. There are only two other people who no longer feel comfortable playing juvenile tricks on elderly seamstresses. 'Self-awareness' just doesn't cut any ice with these bastards. That's why I normally stop in front of their house once or twice a day to just reflect on what it takes to succeed in life. Please don't say that you weren't warned. It's already too late by half.

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Paper and Paste? Really?!?

 

The paper and the paste I have been given are for later. The dapple-rod is for this moment, and this moment alone. I regularly meet just outside the wall with those who seem somewhat pleasing, what with their mannerisms and something else besides. When one wonders about ambient room temperature, I can't help but look at him coldly. This isn't an event which inspires confidence among my surviving forebears, of which there are maybe two or three at the top of my box. I'll go one better and open it myself if you give your word that a name will never be provided, save under a District-wide enforcement decree. I'm debating whether to tell you exactly where I will ask you to sit once we get started. It could be a total wash if you're brought in too soon. You do have kind of a 'funny' look. Just not the 'ha-ha' kind.

When the local people become inconsolable, the paper and the paste are set to be my 'go-to'. The rags which were all the rage three or four years ago have come and gone and now no one worth his salt can find the time to frame the entire area in a grid to make our portions stand alone when the light fades.  A barely consonant feeding-post helps everyone get settled. I lead them via individual halters and they seem contented enough that any fear of swarming amounts to one of us taking on something which is decidedly over our collective head. I can't quite place the guy who told me just the other day that he'd found an empty binder in a park not far from here. This is important because I've had my doubt from the beginning as to when, or even if, we have any right to expect a priority notice. It's not every day that you have to compile a series of factors. This could get ugly. Please bear with me.

While we've been waiting in real time for our house to be completely demolished, I've been staying downtown at a rooming house normally frequented by high-flying nobodies who're just trying to get a grip. As if that's something that strikes a bell! The children have been placed behind a local Catholic girl's school where they can busy themselves with makeshift projects and possibly even earn extra cawthorns for all the trouble they've been. In my day, we took to flying through windows with a snippet of torn fungus as backup. I'd say it was worth every penny, except that when the car stalled smack dab in the middle of the Lincoln Tunnel, my wife decided that that would be the perfect time to perfect the timing of her outbursts. I'd like to say that I've never had it so good. But, before I say that, it'd be more appropriate if people on your level could investigate personal growth modules. Someone may have gotten the wrong idea, among much else. Why so gloomy?

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A Cautionary Tale.

 

From her own lips it was not at all unthinkable that a verdict would be rendered, at distance if needs be. Still, those of us who stood to gain could take pleasure in knowing that her perspective was not without its very own zone of impactive tussle. We could lift a measly tribute and have it for her by the following week, except that time itself was rumored to have begun a process of telescoping which, quite frankly, has some of our most eminent physicists scratching their balls in wonderment. Try as we might, each of us has to face the real possibility of having to go without in the near term. What rankles us, though, is how your average passerby will seemingly go to any lengths at all to appear unconvinced. Our appeal to some well-armed colleagues is all for naught. Which leaves us no alternative but to seek redress through an informal arrangement of the fifth kind, thus confirming the unadorned suspicions of amoral data brokers from Day 1.

I have it within my power to transgress all prior novelizations in one fell swoop. But this shouldn't encourage like-minded refugees to begin scouring the countryside in search of clues to the whereabouts of a missing bannister. Because, even though I'm one of the people most enraged by her high-handed tactics, I will still leave it to my betters to breach a flaccid barrier in service to an emaciated agricultural agent. He will be a force for our own incipient removal to an isolated Summer residence where our sleep habits and morning routines can come under the kind of scrutiny which any fair-minded adult would have a hard time denying. The lone service provider who we've seen underneath our area was forced to admit to having waited for smaller members to take the hit. Otherwise, he told us the other day, he might never have been able to tell his family about where I did my post-graduate work.

From the way she styles what's left of her cotton-nibbed mane, the feeling in the room is one of incisive declension. Yes, I continue to roll my smallish cylinders just to the right of the can on the floor of the Third Annex. My erstwhile compagnard, Jerome Afgew, thinks it wise to prepare ourselves for an unballasted reliance on sybaritic cow-herds if things go our way. If not, we could be looking at more than three dozen training sessions, courtesy of Joe Ivy Associates of Bangor, Maine. They will most certainly deploy the most up to date lighting technology and no doubt bring in timing prods by the boatload—literally! Meanwhile, I rest in my ballow, trunk in hand, beasterage at the ready, hoping for a common solution to an age-old conundrum. It irks me to say it, but I'm only mildly ensnared by her seemingly eternal rapid-release response. Not that it doesn't rub the other fellows in a way which says, 'You can't get there from here!' Please, if you're reading this, try not to get too puffed up. It could happen to you as well, and probably will, if I have anything to say about it. And I do. Plenty, in fact. Wouldn't you like to know? No.

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