Saturday, December 19, 2020

A Roundabout Path to a Realworld Invitation.

 







The sandy-haired line operator, who will go nameless for his benefit to allow for appearances to gel in the hereafter, is said to be at my beck and call for any and all anterior motives. Once he moves his hands into position, everyone feels certain—or ought to!—that our very lives have been plucked out and restored to a status needful of amplostomy. He regards us with a sullen stare and proceeds to shape a narrative, by turns resentful and oleaginous, which helps to bind us ever closer to serve a higher calling on the road to certain perdition. I will leave each of my sons a brittle indication to help them follow a train of thought not likely to be overcome in the three years since my liver transplant. They have been groomed from infancy to correct their corrupt Dad's approach to the science of 'ordinary materials'. This is where it gets ugly. Stop blaming me or I'll have you thrown in the River. Literally!




No one has been late for lunch yet this year. We begin with a group prayer and a 'good faith offering'. I grip each of them between my forefingers and search their eyes for clues to our most recent burglary. One after another, they tell me of their struggles to repair doomed relationships and attain financial solvency. I don't fall for any of it. Why? Because there's no physical, mental or even molecular exam to which I have not subjected them while they slept peacefully on my garage floor. And the results? It pains me to have to report that they all come up severely wanting in every 'department', so to speak. Even as I write this, they are being dissolved, slowly, painlessly.... but with great gusto nonetheless!




If you can see your way free, it would be a great honor if you could join us on the morrow for a fish-fry at my infected Grandmother's laundromat. It will begin promptly at 10:35 AM. Please remember to bring a disposable pencil and wear solid tones as my Wife is allergic and prone to fits. There will be a non-refundable $100.99 registration fee. You will be asked for a specimen as per current guidelines. I will be coaching you in a contemporary folk revival. Once the meal is served you will be asked to leave immediately on pain of a lengthy prison term. If you've ever seen any of our pictures, you know we don't fool around. Let this be a lesson to you, for the good of your family, if for no other reason. 



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Tuesday, December 15, 2020

General Guidelines for When 'Things' (seem to) Go Awry.

 







Yes, friends, this is the Sacred Motion Sickness Detector.



Normally, when I see parts of a sacred motion sickness detector scattered around the floor of a room I share with a tall guy named Duff, I think that maybe the power's gone out and it'll be my name on the blotter when our wife wakes up. This week, however, the list I've drawn up looks more like a 'best-of' or even a 'wonder-if'. If a ring heats up and something large enters a chamber, I will get one of the pipes which come in a sack and make swift work of my fellow contractors. Nothing can beat one of our falling cars if capacity rises to an insane level. My list always includes something for the little ones, a fogging machine and manpaper stilts. We can think of words like kindness, respect, bonhomie and feedback.




People in the trades will call a number. The person who answers will get a name and pass it through a hardboard slot. Once the crew learns a team song, even if night is upon us, we'll be good to entertain a set of unique ideas which come to us after a short nap. Each one wears a sanitized chapeau with onyx studs to break up the monotony. I'll bring every one of them into my room at the Colony, ask them to do their business into a bag and wait out the storm as part of an improv sketch group. Each is expected to throw a line or two into the hopper and anticipate a novel reaction to chemicals in the water supply. There aren't enough to do much harm, but some folks are starting to tread more carefully on uncharted wafers [sic]. Where can I tell them to go to match my own slippery slope?




 The best sound you can hear while pulling stubs off a railpipe is sort of like a high-frequency wheezing. It can trick you if you haven't bothered to hold both shoulders square to the right side of your sham. The plaincloth which will bring you a Type A release can be purchased in packages of three from Our Nation's Supply Chain. It will show a number in excess of 691 if you've been acceptably darkened. One of our rooms will resemble the layout of a diagram from the late 50s. Don't let that shock you into grabbing something and running. That's the mark of a first-class, Grade-A lump. No one wants to be 'that guy', even if it means slipping a shade under your forest and resettling a well known short story by Hyman Dick. That's been tried before—more than once, in fact—and everyone who has a face to prove it will find an egg in their coffee within two winks and a nod. We've been asked to convey to you that 'unknown forces' kindly request that you take the 'high road'. Anyone else should try to think about ships.  



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Panselmo Gnoctuary Poem.

 






Monday, December 7, 2020

Incident at The Old Temple Bath.

 










This happened at my Old Temple Bath. We were waiting near our kingly door. I had already been decorated with prints in more than the tan shade alone. My hair held a waxy sheen all its own. Pretending was over. But on the bright side, anyone who wanted to could see that all of our most humble emotions would come into play in a moment of dainty empathy. People who remarked on the quality of our faces had the right to claim ignorance when it came to the detection of mild trembling in the eyes of fair-weather frauds. Let's hope we can keep them safe from their own petulant indiscretions. God may be our final recourse. For that you will pay.




Now someone swings the door with a partial lid and has a hard time seeking justice in this, our thirty-first year on the ground. There, but for a dark-haired person, we feel certain that sticking around near the barrier might have appeared to have a certain 'ring' to it, like none other that people in our group have declined to notice since Day One. It always goes better in the dark, but plenty of others feel confident enough to remove a telltale marking that clots the breezeway and renders most of our studio opportunities into your standard issue 'miasma-du-jour'. When I bring up this plaint, to the irritation of most, I make a sullen gesture with a peculiar aspect of my anatomy which gets their attention to circle in on itself. They are—each of them—coping as best they can, having wandered throughout the previous night near the Pleasant Soup Factory and held an impromptu sing-along with the distended mentors of the Carolina Boating Commission [CBC].




When I consider playing a trick on someone taller by orders of magnitude than your vengeful superbud, it means a store visit will be one of the outcomes of a future series of activities. This involves modes of locomotion, making small talk with a disgraced investor, learning to read and speak Latin by age nine, and finally, taking a firm hold on the one thing that most people miss if they're out of the system for more than a week or two. I present to you my Iron Siding Chef Competition. All entry fees will be waived in the interest of impersonal diversity, with all that implies. For the Women of the Lillies, a message will be sent. All others are urged to remain in place until the last conflagration brings all our queers a blast of telling stances. The way is clear. Please perform an activity meant for apparent persons.



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Thursday, December 3, 2020

Yes Friends, The Gloves Have FINALLY (!) Come Off.

 







The gloves have come off in my dining platiner and I'll rave about it later once the time of the hour has been set. There's no getting around an uncomfortable question of affordability, but likewise, a settlement is a distant memory and we're all sure of the one thing that counts more than the others. What gives us a solid footing, though, isn't thought to be when a hand is withheld at distance. But from this far away, the only vehicle which comes into a romantic view is sure to adhere to a trend-line that others could find hard to fake. You can tell by the way  people in chairs waver as they dwell on a minor fiasco that gives them a basis for incremental appeasement. We'll have one for our own road and disown the others. These others, I might add, are known far and wide for their profligate pneumonism. They say it keeps their head in a peculiar game. One of them had always flown with us until yesterday.




Now that a crime is in process (this would be behind a shed, but in broad daylight, nonetheless), we've decided to take our good sweet time and approach a seminal figure whose donated plasma has enabled unbilleted inciters to score a load of scorched earth problematics and head for the nearest desultory mound of evacuated pith. It's our only hope to keep deficient plastic from burgeoning in our feed. I will score all sincere non-violators with a truncated vent from a diachronic puffer-ball coach. He's wanted for questioning in the Fiona Farkler case. You've heard about it, right? No? Well, take it from me, people who like to walk around won't like what they hear. Please, just do the math.




The chain which is presented as a virtual pendant can only be removed for cause. And, even then, some fly-by-night operators will still be held blameless if your jaundiced mascot evinces even a modicum of gaping syncrasm. I'll be on stand-by throughout the night, ready to log your call in the flightbook which is ready at the keeper. Our frame is the broadest possible inverted cube. It attaches with scalloped hooks that you can find beneath your final harboring bench. What scares us is if, while backing up with no flowing hoops to spare, something comes into your head which could give you a reason to forego a wrist abjurement. There are likely one or more stains on the precipice of a lovably ingrown doodad. If anyone who you've seen recently is a known person then we WILL take action. The only remaining question is: What would your reaction be if we recommended you be re-assigned in perpetuity?



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Sunday, November 29, 2020

The Upcoming Investiture and Its Piquant Aftermath.

 







During the coming Investiture, which has been the subject of not a little consternation, our opening idea is to wait until a loud knocking is heard from below and take that distractive opportunity to wrangle a deplenitive wench into a wayward opening on the opposite side so that any residual doubts are evaluated as dubious at best. With each of her arms pinned into a staircase-type of position, three of our turncoats will pronounce her a liability to our cause and leave her confused as to the origin of a blanking flash. Only the slightest scratch will be enough to effect a transfer to a more congenially shapeless affair. For this we only offer the most turgid of elemental instructions. You must remember that she has promised numerous times to carry a light and frimpy shield to signal a masterless deficit of penumbral strokes.




When it comes to the plea that I will submit at the end of next month, each participant is asked to donate one solid red setboard and memorialize a list of qualified ruminants whose actions are questioned even if our own Federally subsidized preachments engulf a packed house of raffish teddies. Their own smell is a clue, as if any were needed, that this activity is throbbing with opportunistic borderlessness. They feel that your expressions of devotion should be enough to end a day of rootless whispering. I tell them that their style of carping is likely to help us monetize the flood-eating cafeteria at the end of an extended lounge-type spatial arrangement. They act like I'm seeing things when all I want to do is lead by an example that is not to be trusted in any case. Yes, I was bowled over. Is that why you asked? Don't tell me.




When it comes to pestering League officials with a statistical ponsibiquity, anyone who is aligned with our peripheral magnet is guaranteed one solid oak mystallion to be assigned in the order of conformance and treated with a subtonal perfuke at a random second hand blotch. Her vocal performance is tantamount to a ready-made confession of misadventures in a highlighted instrument or two. You will go there with a former friend in tow. I will bind each of you to a tinged yellow box of some distinction. This is not to be trusted without my say-so. Just ask if my name is Joseph Santangelo. Then approach me about my part in helping your companion engage in questionable behavior. And finally, if you find any of my responses to be problematic, you will be given a ceremonial plaque for safekeeping during the upcoming disturbance. That should keep you quiet for the remainder of the term. Can I have that in writing? No.



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