Lerwid & Me.

 

One time--this was years ago--on a morning when I was attired in a brightly fubescent Collier shirt, I was granted a rare and precious audience with a party known to me only as Mr. Lerwid. He was curious about my participation in the local Youth Stringball League and whether I'd noticed anything in some of the young people which would otherwise fail to be mentioned. I opened up my case and removed a swifter monitoring device than some had thought current at the time. He expressed a modicum of dismay and requested that I retreat to just within earshot. As I departed toward a nearby lounge, out of the corner of my eye I spied one his hands--I believe the left one--make an evasive gesture before resuming its prior position near an unusual lamp.

As I moseyed along an accented corridor, my thoughts turned to a delightful episode that I'd seen on TV the night before. The less said about that the better. But I will say this, if you still haven't seen it, perhaps you should consider how you prioritize your viewing time. You can thank me later. Once I reached the lounge proper, I felt remarkably composed and realized that the personality I'd concocted out of 'whole cloth' could be a real asset on a par with a dazzling ability to convey a wholesome anecdote. As I sat and listened for any potentially fatal clues emanating from the office just beyond the atrophied brink, it occurred to me that most of this was the fault of someone with whom I'd engaged in a minor tiff. At the time I thought nothing of it, but I was plainly deeply mistaken. Once I'd removed my shoes an attendant approached and handed me a manilla envelope, a small glass ring and and empty almond package. When I looked up quizzically, he just snickered and left the area at once. I got the not-so-funny idea that they were just playing with me to check my reaction time. The joke was on them because by then it was already next Wednesday and I was about to depart for my annual hermitage in Brussels, Oregon. HA!

The next time I encountered Mr. Lerwid it was at the 1964 World's Fair in Flushing Queens, NY. He was sitting alone in a stall near an evacuated nursing home crying softly into a monogrammed hankie while humming what sounded like a sedimental ditty. I didn't want to interrupt his precious reverie and so retreated to a storage area in a local used car dealership. There I was introduced to my infant stepson for what seemed like the seventh or eighth time. I had the impulse to greet him by saying 'Hi Billie!' I squelched that idea because I knew for a fact that his name was 'Marvin'. Yes, you guessed it: he was named after Marvin Hamlisch. I think you can see why I was upset. At this point any normally senescent person would opine: 'It just goes to show you!'. And that person would be tragically correct, I'm afraid.

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The young lady in question has been requested to refrain from commenting on the following account. Can you blame her?

 

In the event that she is asked to gather our final things and lurk on one of the lower levels where a miniature finely woven brass basin holds a place of honor in the absence of former lurid affairs, I am warned once too often for my taste to take care that baked goods are supplied for the pleasure of our enemy. There is no position that I could take, either physical or psychological, that would allow me to ignore the directive, now that the very lives of community leaders hang in the balance; the time of playing with inflictable grains is at an impasse and all of us are bushed.

As I withdraw the remaining needle from its case and trace an intractable oval gently on her forehead to remind her of a time of fewer cares and stochastic obfuscations, there seems to be some trouble in the back where a bentument announces its disrepair with a yawning gap of function. She rides in the wagon that I've inserted into the pledator device and tries, without much success, to match her hair to the whispered lyrics of a song that we can hear from a neighbor's casual get-together. There is, however, an audible lump in my left clavicle. Each time she casually moves one of her hands in a display of rank defiance, I feel it right here where I've been sitting since I got home last year.

When I first met her in a State to the east of this one, she claimed to remember me as the person who once loaned her Uncle one of my spare winter jackets during a cold snap that had us breathing in a new direction. I told her then and I insist to her on this very day that I've never owned even one cold-weather out garment, let alone had a spare, since I've spent my entire life until the previous month in Tampa Bay, Arizona and have the documents to prove it. She is unmoved. I stare past her into a trapezoidal seating area now filling up with smartly attired guests who ignore our every request for aid initiating a bon fire in a cup-shaped bantry pit over which we, for some reason, seem to have sole jurisdiction.

As a paltry dose of fluid finds its target in the waves of the mind, some honorable bureaucrats are encumbered by a feeling of wistfulness for a time when dully colored plastic placemats were all anyone could count on to bring a small bit of levity into a vain and pointless affair. Nevertheless, if our muted expressions of concern fail to do the trick once again, the host who has betrayed us to the authorities will be awarded a vintage spring-loaded ice-folding packet and sent on his way. You will know him by the way he hums in the dark. During daylight hours, though, you might notice him whistling. Or maybe not, since he does it very quietly. All we can ask is that you try to see if that will get you anywhere. Then you'll know.

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Restoration of Ordeur.

 

In our segment of the Lountical there's a standing order, to the effect that if one or more steadfast partially obscured membranes is to be braided within a stube tremple, then a graded innocuous torment will result in the extinguishment of any vapid fire that we insist on provoking in the mist. But, failing that--and this is how it always feels--the temperamentual signage posted at the Solid Partners' bondage site can be read in only one way. And that is to move extremely slowly in a westerly direction, all the while training one's gaze on a cubical hazelnut barnstorming league without which a random perch could have come undone years before now.

When we feel a textual wind in the space behind our ears, it will be seen as a time like any other, that is to say, if the prison within which our minds labor is for the first time to be identified and likewise if our tendencies to truncate the final syllables of inferior words in the presence of appalling supervisors, then the game we'd like to play will come to naught and our lineage will recoil in horror as any reasonable community members have a right to expect. The way we get them is to fabricate an artificial wampum bantry and place it just outside the reach of whatever prancing Hugenot will come-a-calling while we dither and delay any accountability and lounge to our heart's content by the pool of our own flagrant derision. It will grip them by their noses and not let go for Heck or a surfeit of liquids. A transom, in fact, you'll see.

But now, when our burden becomes a prissy night shade of dullness, the game our keeper plays is enough to wake several people's children on the wrong side of midnight. They might not be so understanding if we are forced to tell them what really happened on the night years ago when everyone tasted the same thing without warning or apology. The lengths to which some folks will go to avoid involvement in pageants of stridency is, quite frankly, baffling to persons of ablomative heritage. It seems like they've got a cusp on their shoulder which just won't let go. We could approach them with a solution, but all that would happen is that someone might get sick of waiting inside a car without access to barium. And that would be a shame. Because now the shemp is in the wind. And the wind is creating a new opportunity for folly. And 'folly' is my middle name. Except it's spelled 'F-A-L-L_E-Y-E'. And that's how you'll know me: by the tooth I keep in my shoe for a day just like this. Sorry, but that's all I'm permitted to recite at the moment, okay?

_______________________

A Statement of Personal Confidence.

 

Over and above the times I've been asked to lift three or four false boxes into place--and there were so many times I can barely keep track--I always knew I had it in me. And this was no trick. The emblems are sitting right there; you can see them for yourself--heck, you can even touch them! I was being taught the intricacies of the 'braiding problem'. But for my inability to hold my breath for more than three seconds while perched in a room, everyone in our group has been told repeatedly not to second guess internal weather and its intricacies, both physical AND emotional. For my own part, the erasures come quite naturally. In fact, it's the only time of day when the bleeding stops of its own accord. Beyond that, I feel as if someone has handed me some kind of invisible icon of innate sensibleness. But, at that very moment, a heartbreaking incident from the recent past reared its not-so-pretty head in the form of a rather non-inconspicuous wastrel who once accompanied my Father, the late Reverend Estes Persklin on a Mission stunt in Communist Romania in October 1983.

What happened was, this stooge, who goes by Ijin Fomerk, was set to adjust one of the rapidly disintegrating control mechanisms which are alleged to keep out team on the up-and-up. He insisted on adding certain invisible colors to the transition mix, thereby enabling passing units to make the leap without a telltale incident. I knew that he was redolent of fraudulent bookbinding and that his successor was even worse, if you can imagine that. During those years, I always liked to keep myself fully vetted in the eyes of indigenous ice-sampling rectors. It was something which I normally thought about while on the john. In this particular incident, I noticed someone in a nearby holding facility had made it his business to pretend that he was about to send me a lukewarm signal-of-intent. I made like the 'normie' altar boy I still am at heart and got in touch with his parents through an unmotivated third party. This is when all the 'trouble' started. Because no sooner had I click 'send' on the email than a very 'moist' nurse who'd been on-staff for barely a few seconds at best burst in and started giving me the royal 'what-for'. Thus you can see that I had very little choice. There was just no way that I could go on living this kind of a lie. It all came out. Everything. And now look at me. You don't want to know. Why is that?

_______________________

This is the only title which makes sense.

I've noticed a steadiness in her face. By all means, 'thinking twice' is not my forte. But when she seeks to enact a liveable tantrum, the feet which carry the body are mine no more. Even so, the pressure that her idle chatter exerts on the psychic resources of the 'common man' will go a long way to helping us find ourselves besieged anew. The parlor is where a tramp of her stature can safely ruminate while the fabric of space-time is folded in upon itself once again, rendering multiple banterings as just so much febrile slather. And this, for one so young, is quite the coup de grace. Tell him what it may and I will help you adjust to our newly released prayer schedule. This is what they won't tell you. I just did. Now you can try one yourself. Only if you feel well prepared should one so shocking reveal the abfactual troof.

The dream of a living mordant is more than your average sun-kissed Rector can ever hope to hold tightly inside a nuclear partition. The brim of our salvation is what will not be secured without the failing permission of a working class subaltern. In that footwear, anyone who strives for balance will seek a friend where no indolent shufflehound would ever think to look. But if I depart a lakeside bungalow and trick a fellow sufferer out of a cotton dollar, then shame on those who raised my standard in a ploy for isochondrial relief. These are the types of imbroglios which unaffiliated scientists always fail to consider. Their time is spent in a precious nightwad. And the circles they embellish are never more than a pantific mile in our Southerly finworm. As one who has guarded their in-laws during an electrical outage, I don't need any lessons from the fallen court. Any rope we find will seek its monitored fulfillment. Of this we seek no assurance. Without our love, the baby is a goner. Please pray for Marvin Butler.

__________________________-

 

Patient News from the Lower Mid-Section.

 

Since the patient we've been caring for, despite our having been warned, has been observed switching items between members' wraps that are stored during the day in the cubbies next to her room, it was only fair to take matters into our own hands and put a stop to other things as well. Her hair is coming in very nicely now but try as we may it might never stand us in good stead to embark on a new project without the cooperation of her caretaker. This gentleman, even when seated, appears to try to treat one and all like just so many dime-a-dozen replacement parts in the human zoo that passes for our particular part of the coveted youth demographic.

When she uttered her first words in the hallway which borders the corridor everyone heaved a sigh of release. The rumor of her refusal to begin shouting was just that, a rumor. What wasn't a rumor was the way she tenderly played with a rare type of raisin which was spotted just out of sight in the boiler room where people routinely made calls to outlying areas under cover of darkness. Their faces would scream even as their mouths remained firmly shut.

In light of that it has to be said that even one suspicious noise would never be enough to rouse the crew down at Security. The 'blond behemoth' who called the shots down there thought he had a way with the ladies. But they just laughed in his immobile face, especially when he wore his Pleistocene T-shirt. It just gave them the creeps. Now they want to form some type of committee or club or something. It seems like all the young people are doing stuff like that these days.

When tendrils of acrid white smoke were observed emanating from under her special custom-made mattress our long-suffering Pekinese mascot turned several shades of magenta and bolted into the Dave room and needed to be intubated with a raspberry blond stewardess's lipstick canister. It's all we had left, given all the wartime tragisties. He made a full recovery in a matter of seconds.

Now the patient held all the cards. She ruled the roost. I bit my tongue to keep from laughing. My partner Jenny Randall kept her hand poised over the main power switch. Her little brother, Joe Sr., started twitching like the prick that he is. My landlord's lost wallet was found in the men's room of the Civil War Museum in Cleveland, Utah. All in all I think anyone would have to agree that it was a productive afternoon.

_______________________

This is not a joke.

An unretouched photograph of a true-life event.

_____

 

On the matter of 'the Wading Car'.

 

Of the three times I was escorted into the wading car at the foot of the vestibule's trestle, I seem to remember the second most clearly. My rare ankle condition was healing nicely and therefore I thought nothing of donning a Cooper Star in the center of the forehead to inhibit my baser pastimes. The tiniest card, which I carried in lieu of a trick, always emitting its characteristic hum, sat nestled in my bum as if all sore points were now a polished filigree of Church intrigue. But this was of no moment since, in my effort to imbibe a dollop of daily B-stock, I had forgotten my secret name for a silent 'pretend' horse who'd guarded my portion of the sacrifice that would soon enable my entry into an occulted hallway, unknown by those whose pressure could never suffer the installation of the last tri-plected lens in out possession.   

The fluid on the floor of the wading car was warm to the touch, sweet to the taste but with each rasp of our driver's sleeve, was seen to admit to the possibility of foreshortened lauffeurs in shapes that our memories could scarcely well conjoin. I remember a piece of toast balanced on a headrest, swaying to and fro, almost appearing to launch a mite-sized crumb into the gap where I held a semi-permanent grulch. This was my own tiny secret, the relic of which our bond was plain for even the most sullen of the guards to apprehend. Each seemed to move an ochre-dyed finger to create a striped trail in the movable atmosphink. But I knew it could not last. I could tell you now that the breathing was solid, but that would leak my game and risk breaking the flask that is dearly held, when not at all.

So as the rattletrap proceeds, and our falsely jolly bonhomie peters into a loam of silent buggery, I'm reminded of costs incurred and denied, defied and deflated, fellated and enthralled. Therefore to inscape the common flaw, while comforting a maddened willow, will amount to a hope given to foreswear any evening's Chapel stick. It's a bridge and there's talk around that you may have bought it. I could give you a hand but that would mean the end of civilization as we once knew it. If there is any bragging encountered while we approach a manageable mound, it won't be the first time. In fact, at a time like this we need every human critter to scatter the lines to escape a bane. Willfulness broaches our infighting. Willingness, however, empowers the victorms to shellac a miniature table and sue for peas. I'm happy if you still can't tell the diffadence. And in case you still haven't guessed, now your name is Wally.

________________________

Current Conditions Seem Likely.

It was as if I could remember leaving a small piece of artificial foam--it had been a sort of keepsake--just inside our neighbor's garage door, but all I was really doing was rehearsing an alibi I needed to tell with a straight face when my name came up in discussions of the latest societal contretemps. My place in the village seemed somehow even more precarious than it had in the previous two years of wilting faces on all those who would contribute even a petty farling for recovery at the speed of wind. My otherwise cheerful mien was cratered with a concern for a sly business person whose petals formed the backbone of a likely exercise in holding forth to a silent tradition of piece through strength. I would tell all the people who asked about my place in things that none was to be had even with a mildly abortive effort.

A church that I'd been asked about on more than one occasion was now a ghost of its former shell. The cannery in the next town over never had it so good but you couldn't tell that by looking. No. You had to approach in disposable slippers and then take a knee if you thought someone was about to make a sound. Only then could you be sure that your task was to be seen as anything other than a rank substitution. Now you could afford to take an idle moment to arrange your accessories more appropriately. If anyone thought they could tell you where to apply for insurance against  persistent crackage, they would risk only moderately off-color comments. To which all you had to reply was, 'Yeah..... could be...'

When I decided to drive my car without the normally required anti-bacterial gloves, that was a turning point. It seemed that one of the images I recalled defacing was of an orphaned pony that went on to win a coveted position in the nascent animal autocracy. This did not earn me any points when it came to holding my own in the speed dating hierarchy. Which is why I never showed much interest archery, knitting or metallurgy. Now that we're home again, the bastion of internal displacement has scorned a pleasant icon of derision. And this is why I still claim to love the sounds you make while eating your favorite snack. Oh, and one more thing, have they ever thought about doing anything with your hair?

________________________

Pacifism is not the answer.

 

Now that the accused passivists who form what's known as the rump of the Surviving Branch (think genealogy here, kids) have gathered together bits of colored paper to increase the merriment quotient in our abandoned hotel, those of us who remained behind for our own good can see that parts of our faces start to swell (around the burn marks, as you might guess) and our voices, when we're inclined to try to talk at all, assume a fellacious quality. If, when I turn to the right to get at a rare seashell caught between the tumbrels of reticulated isotopes which were imported from Iberia to improve our eyesight in darkness, I'm accosted by a silent witness to bankable atrocities, my first instinct is to trounce a lonely soldier in a multi-layered  storybook shanty and delay his entry into a bygone clinical trial which comes as a surprise to a representative of the Introducer's Association.

They have bargained by our side for multiple durational periods and had every reason to flee the premises even after their specimens were lost in the War. There are tracts of vellum which prove the opposite but a well known anti-ageism activist has absconded with them and they won't play ball. This leaves us no choice but to evaluate our functions with a cold, hard staring contest into the vacuum of spacious accommodations for leisure-time activities everywhere. And it won't get any easier after this. For the simple reason that we serve meals while memorizing sports trivia and engage in sexual relations while violating Federal parole statutes. If it makes anyone feel better, we could offer them a chance to grow more apologetic while they age with grace. Or would that be too much to pretend to ask?

We ask because it never fails to occur to those of us entrusted with secreting a prime ingredient in our hoop-skirts that the metaphorical dome under which we labor during prime viewing hours is liable to collapse the articulated shards in a shamble of bromads. This would not be the result which those of us on the inside have lobbied for in all the years since I sold a compromised witness into a nest of vainglorious mickterflarbs. And it doesn't get any sweeter than that. You can tell by the way they switch the label in nugatory skylights. All the directions are absorbed and a lone drop of digestive bile coats the Slanting Desk with the sheen of intra-uterine masturbation. Now we will adjust our handkerchiefs for the road ahead and scare the bejesus out of the intransigent revulsionists who scope our bride. It'll serve them right. And then we'll sit down for a tasty supper. And then we'll die.

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Bedpaths to a Transcendent Laminate.

 

Over on the stellacted service rim where I'm buying (or trying to buy) a month's worth of toculent shielding, I sense that a rarely seen novelty re-enactment is about to begin, in earnest this time, before I can even start to make do with whatever holdings I've been lucky enough to preserve from before our Nasty Troubles took a turn for the worse.

It's a boldly shaped iron affair that I use to separate the bins in my workplace into categories of innate usability. It's apparent that the off-red items will help prepare our final ship, even if a stray grin is a price that no one in their right mind has any business paying, unless you count a local person who we've all agreed not to discuss at this stage of our lives. Because time is short and not for idle slippage.

The woman who has sworn to listen intently with her two forward feet planted within the perimeter of a secular archway (this was years ago) can be heard, even now, trying to disguise her dawdling for all to see. It's apparent that this won't fool anyone. Our houses are contaminated with ricketts but she's not the type to strike a pose. The penchants we cherished have been surrendered. No duress. No spam. Do you see?

If the embellishments that were pre-announced for our zone had given us the pleasure that all were promised, then a baleful method of halting forward momentum in a smoothly wicked anomaly could have been ours for the asking. And none of us ever want to be seen to be 'asking for a friend'. Two will get you five that an acquaintance with whom you once dined has now made an appalling decision that will bring the two of you to blows. But the wind is not yet ready to cry. We will grapple and then work together to topple an illegitimate regime—strangle it in its filthy crib if needs be.

You can count on us to insinuate a sounding whirlpon through a dangling set of jhontic cords. This will hold sway in our inky motion, like the telling repast that some feel is their native birthright. Could this constitute a link to a mapping site? Only if we surrender our dedication to holiness at an affordable price. Stability is a must. Please remain quiet. It gets better from here. 

_______________________

The house's location remains unknown.

We, or at least two of the people I've been told about, have been asked to spend some time in a woman's house. The woman in question is known for a certain brusqueness, but we're all about handling it in a way which helps your average wonderful character resist the urge to take a spin. This could prevent some from circulating a Course in Healing. You may have seen it at your local Extension. In case we observe folks getting riled, we aim to sit stiffly, maintain eye contact and pretend to fold our programs while taking needed precautions. It's all a game of averages. Two will get you one that when we get out of this, my sparkling countenance should require no commentary. It will be obvious. Not one of us will have to pretend to be tired, in spite of ourselves, I'm afraid. Someone is always 'going' again. Now the trip could fall directly apart in our hands. A quality will have to give way. Talk is cheap. Validity is a bungler! Cry if you must.

As one of our Elementals is trained to avoid parlor abuse, any secrets uncovered are to be willfully shed like innocent fluids at the call of a notch. Naturally the season is rife with slanderous undercurrents. It will achieve nothing but the overthrow of the reigning apostates of mildness. They've had it coming since before any covers were coveted in a convent. The place where this woman works is a known location. Her demented family associates are scattered here and there as if no one had given a thought to a unifying triumph. It will protect them unless we get there first. In that case, all of our former Teamleaders will be asked to assemble a smartly dressed cabal to chip away at any remaining vestige. Why does it seem like all who bare their incessant insolence are forever protected even as a practitioner of oneupsmanship is pleased to lance a pudding square? They will leave it with us. We won't be like the others. And that's (not) a good thing!

During one of the final episodes I can be seen sighing while sitting on the passenger side. There are hints that a pair of brothers are due to escort a shipment of depleted uranium to within a mile of Corpus Christi, Texas for the 'meeting of a lifetime'. If, after a cliffside residence has shifted improbably, we decide to sign away our stake in a real estate investment trust at the drop of a hat, a prelate who we tow to safety can be expected to renounce any further action points without which the drainage of an ambitional whipwreck can no longer be assured, unless the fighting is revealed to be 'all in fun'. Those kids give me the prodding to keep my facial aspects under the watch of a secret army. They won't budge. 

___________________________

 

Is this a sign of danger?

 

A question has been raised and the answer is 'no'. But, yes, the fact is that we have been getting dangerous counts on higher readings. And this was well before a structure in our immediate flightline needed to be disfigured. If any bonded alerter could be counted upon to take distress calls seriously, we may order a one-time-only Boller-Master be applied even if notifications become a tardy affair of kid gloves worn only on the top swing of lateral insertions. It's been quite a study to don my sky-blue safety smock inside buildings owned by the Lethal Haverstock Corporation. Usually I'd approach someone on site and ask for a signature in lieu of a personal fellowship claim. Now that I've been evaluated as the 'cream of the crop', I can well expect an iron graphic stud to be wedged into a permanent underside placement cofax. You can tell them I sent you. There will certainly be no response to semi-official inquiries. That's how they manage to keep bridge loans off their pending statements.

The date of our supernal no-fist qualifier is on temporary rolling status. If we meet a preliminary setting inside a boron shade-fill, we can tip all vessels in our favor and go on to wreak a grim pylon on our palladinated ochre stunt car. This will allow certain 'things' to roll into view on the thirty-fifth anniversary of our homecoming to a one-time kidnapping-in-progress. I hasten to add, this was for a student video concerning affordable housing mandates. We took our young daughter to a radiant display of locomotive undercarriages during halftime at the Rosebowl that year. She pledged that her days on the lam were severely numbered. And that's in groups of threes, fours and sevens. This makes all the difference in the world. Some may call it 'a trick of light', but we prefer to think of it as a granting of the penclough redux. It just sounds more inspirational in that league. She will thank you later than is justified. But that still won't buy you (or anyone) more time than is strictly necessary. Get over it. 

_________________________

Message for interested parties only.

 

If we prepare a space directly adjacent to a cardinal point to receive a familial trance of directed energy, then all indications are that one of the Russian tambits from a lengthier protein string should be surrendered at height with no one traceable for absent duty. All around, in whatever camp we move, enforced signage drips with a plague of discoverable valiant juices. Each drop that we harvest is now to be sewn into its own micronutrient shell. 

The Lecture Hall becomes a scene of oblontic harassment, all the more serious due to the seasonal nature of one Circus Boy's contagious gesture of 'plaint and delay'. We encumber him with our naughty oxides and trust that one or more of his keepers are even now settled at a Shintago Blending Lab and arranging for the Boy's transparent older sibling to display some of the netting he uses to catch falling renal debris.

Those who command our colors into any obvious tangent can enter the blameroom only with the expressed, written permission of Major Heat Grayball written all over it. How they will know that our history has a checkered past, isn't something we particularly like to think about as we approach the younger victims. Their solidarity is key to refurbishing a subatomic meeting room facility. Each year at this time, some of us are reminded of the periodic return of generic pipsqueaks, all their flustered comments and the way their hair attracts the best smelling women on the Base. I make sure to write down the locations of the most incessant varmints of my third wife, Darla Pencroft-Basmer. She has such a way with arpeen tri-clops, that you would think she was born with one circulating in her very troubled fluids. And, the not-so-surprising truth is that you'd be right. But that's for another time, not unlike this very one.

_________________________ 

Is there one?

 

I'd given some thought to staying behind, since, right beside us on the peninsula, a blinding grey light could indeed be seen even if adult callers were asked to remain motionless. Those of us in our mid-wheaties tumble about in a reign of shabbiness but any circle that we begin to draw to our performances is one less to fret about when kindness goes to court. There is a prayer, useful in bottom-dwelling situations, which is constructed from the ringtones of stodgy criminal profilers. Don't say we didn't warn you that this kind of investment vehicle is forever associated with our downtime as a National Laughinstock. It will give us the type of meta-fabulous linking twat which always busts through just before the stroke of daylight to the privileged monitors of truth.

Our pristine baking program is embarking on a youth-positive drive for recalcitrance. The hands of all our parents are to be partially shielded from proto-theological barfights. Before we trace any of their emboldened dilators to one heraldic directory, the brain of your typical terrestrial slackjawed Martha is due to be exposed to Martian sunlight in a Federally mandated suffocation experiment. What blooming tribute will you pay if all of our lengthy periods of intestinal distress are catalogued through the efforts of some known individuals who live in a building near a road? 

It happens that I am gripped every day of my life by one or another Champion and asked to delete calypterous gestumes from my ranking pecuniary. I'll still be permitted to live inside a table but the brands of a defeated foe are the last things which link us to a time when something stopped smelling right. It could have been a ploy to delay a morning lockout. Each of my majority-minority companions has given me a lock of hair to keep safe under my pillow while others search the neighborhood for succulent prizes after midnight. No one can tell if your Fantasy Parade brings a known quantity into our negotiations. It seems we've lost our way. The last I heard, we've spent all of our rifles in a tragic misunderstanding. They all live in my Jank. I call them by their names. The only problem is: there isn't one. 

________________________

My first artificial girlfriend (mistakes were made).

 

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Updated Ontological Primitives.

There is, at just this moment, a 'chain of demand', such that each of our silent runners is obligated to return, shortly before midnight, and confirm, for the sake of some person's ample well being, that all of our shunted fairy-wheels were returned to their place of honour with all pitiable threads barely intact. I hasten to grip the face of a demiological turncoat who has absorbed next to nothing of our atomic fiber theories even while barely making bold with a lionized sister or two. His wheel is in my cistern and I'm slyly aghast at his motley choices when singed materials come into play. What business is it of his to determine where my filmy discharge gets its lacquered patina? It suits our group if he all but shouts his bequest into the wizened eyes of our trip-mounted non-standard sentry decoy. We like to get him all the time and, even if coöperation is the order of the day, no power on Earth can stop us if we decide to alter our celebratory gait in response to any of his locally sourced oxidized jelly-smears. He is known to pander to our older groups who make up the bastard's share of your normative evaguation plantlet.

I am filing a 'misery sisters' request anomaly with the Board in charge of dispensing olfactory pining rods throughout the Greater St Purvis area. They tell me that by one or two minutes past our due date, we should expect a stipulation to unfold in our overcrating which could prevent leaks to concerned parties and bring our threat assessment to an astonishing Level Zero! And this doesn't even BEGIN(!) to add a compromised zest to purgetarian marriages near Slocum's Hut, Montana and the surrounding witless projection imbroglio. 

Dad's last request to your Mother and I was to shore up our fanciest fences and prepare for an onslaught of deracinated transom whisks. In addition, he asked that he not be named in a faithless lawsuit to be outlined in our Farber's Release Testament. This should continue well in to the coming Holiday Weekend. In the absence of a letter bearing your plagiarized signature recipe, we expect that not less than three of our marginalized Sons of Opulence will be detained in a brace of inflatable district lounge markers. You will find my leading candlefuck ensconced at the midpoint of our reconstructive salad phase. Please try to look in this direction when you hear your name shunted beyond all reason. This will insure a debatable period of unconnected sleep annoyment. Has it ever been any less different? No. 

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Has anyone heard anything about this?

 

I've been told that we'll each be allowed to purchase a chair in real time as conditions permit due to an unforeseen weapons alert on our side of the eternal divide. This pits man against cousin but still enables both sides to break into three halves, provided all enjoyment is engaged while crises unfold at a steadfast rate. The arrival of our skin treatment plan is anticipated throughout the Colony and I will seek a waiver through my person's counterpart in a room not designed with any type of abatement in mind. One of my first firings upon arrival was an Iranian gentleman long known as a mascot of the Luther Vandross Society. He appealed to our group's Activities Director with a Guild sponsorship tattoo in the form of a marvelous specimen of intractable youth. The bargain seemed to be that he would gum up the works on our behalf and I would arrange for his stepson, then a promising lad of thirty-seven, to work during off hours in the sandlot down on Bank Street.

There's a kid down there who, quite literally, had a wallet thrown at him when he went to proofread some copy as a favor to a former friend whose sister I used to date in Ft Dix, New Jersey. Even though he had hair down to here, people still wondered if he wasn't 'all there'. I would take them aside one  by one and demand to know if they'd ever wondered about a little thing that I'd rather not go into at this very moment. They turned to me, as if to a real person, and relayed to me in excruciating detail their plans for the domination of every conceivable battle space. I took a sip of my iced tea, thought for a few seconds and decided to throw them a bone in the only way I know how. They took to it like dogs to water. And ever since then, whenever I need anything, I call one of the executives I met before the War and invite them over to the house to exchange points of view in an eminently candid, yet mature, manner. This is why anyone whose quandary is up for grabs is urged on most local shows to act as if they were about to receive some sensible advice from an unusual source of infernal racket. It will help to keep them young in spirit, if not always the sharpest bulb in the drawer. You've got this. 

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What's become of the 'fabled' Crandake?

 

There's a well roasted crandake, swaddled in its original planter's foil, gathering fumes, sitting in the trunk of our '74 Chrysler New Yorker. My wife and I are set to leave once I find my hat, shave and adorn the babysitter with a much needed optical starter shoe. Our focus is on setting up an emergency field operation in the Coastal area near where we were both born over seventy-five years ago. My pancid is groomed and even the neighbor's troubled officemate has agreed to see that our pond is winnowed to a silvery drop to be delivered with fully documented provenance to the Ike Henry Company upon our deaths in a Springtime explosion of unnatural colors. The trails leading to and through our association with the legacy of Nancy Sinatra are winding and opaque, but in the end offer no relief to the Family of Nations.

As I lifted my wife's head from its place of honor on a medium bedaddled storycord, you can be sure that I said the word that all persons of honor are obligated to pronounce with utmost care. Her clothing is gathered in a formal basket and I am 'up to here' with insolent messages to inscribe on bits of foodstuff that we're leaving to our natural born enemies for their (hopefully) amused perusal. It's remarkable that, even with the advance of years, my stake in the future of the lesser races shines brightly for all to marvel at, even while issuing terse bromides prior to the ensuing melee. I can't get out fast enough. This is what I've waited my whole life for, and now, I'll be lucky if I can crawl through a spandrel of flaps and recover my once pleasant pouch which gives strength to the glowering groomers.

By the sheer luck of the draw, as fate would have it, our Local Assembly has sent word that I am summoned to appear without portfolio to assume a position only rarely documented among otherwise reprehensible nitwits. My wife makes her feelings known, and, for all anyone can tell, she will soon be making a move in a footward direction with a guttural feeling tone that few can match. This could be the spark that sets aflame a lifetime of anpectral becindered breeding wands. I am certain to swallow more than one rumored geo-engineered harker's flume and even the false bill which frames my crested morning groat is beginning to smell of dinch oxides and obligated semen. This is when all friendly patter nixes the roofside and our home in the poach is sprayed with untold gallons of copper-scented gesso. My pewter balsom stand is chained to the underside of a chipper mantel and now, finally, I've remembered the name that I've struggled with my entire life. And, believe you me, it's not something I'm proud of, despite what you may think. Yes. 

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