Donald Jerkins: Summary Findings.

 

Donald Jerkins enjoys manipulating other people's expectations so that when remote leisure enters the picture, he feels a deep certainty that any other face will enjoy equal protection. When sitting on location near a partially burnt household totem, he dreams of one day performing an amateurish subdominal procedure without the benefit of artificial lighting. This arouses a latent glow in one who hovers in the distance hoping (without any reasonable way forward) to issue a terse denial to all who have given Donald advice in the personal growth domain.

By turns loquacious and subtly refractive, Jerkins scrapes the bottom without indulging in vacant self-recriminations. This strikes some folks as odd, but others use the time which has now been released to seek closure in an abandoned Fallcraft shelter. With one hand he pretends to make a feeble gesture of allocation while with the other, curled into a limpid fist as it is, he displays colorful novaks which timorous eunuchs seek to dispel. Eventually this may lead weaker members to make questionable comments to newly released pickaninnies. Some of the names have been forgotten, others are to be heard from the mouths of flaccid strangers.

Once the last list has been delivered into the girl's hot hands, a muffled sigh is all that escapes the singular presence of a trusted bromad. Now we learn that the girl has escaped vetting and 'gone rogue' in the process. She'll sashay into a medical office bragging about a feudal inheritance, invite a beleaguered grifter into a dark alliance and then move to the other side of the country without so much as plugging into the nativist petrie dish writ large. This is what causes some of us to move to a different side of a room we've already occupied, not that anyone's entitled to feel comfortable with my personally improvised arrangement of molecular portents. The word is shot. Is anyone asking you?

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It's all about fairness.

 

So, it wouldn't be unfair to say that I'm not inclined to go near a person who has not been so designated. But you see, this is not about fairness. It's about the lengths to which some of our major operators might extend themselves to enforce sectional discipline, even if the lowest link in the chain never thinks twice about altering the placement of an ordinary chair. A person engaged in a cavalier frenzy of factional optimization isn't apt to be on the lookout for parlor crypts in which to deposit telltale footwear-adjacent memory cards. You might come to the next meeting claiming to have 'heard it all before'. Alternatively, you could be in the mood for a bracing rejoinder or two while under the tutelage of our foremost Formosan Ice Pokey signatory. The choice isn't yours to make, as much as we'd like to have you pretend that it was. If keeping up appearances for the benefit of younger campers is your idea of a social nicety, then please try one of our new pro-cap dinches. They don't know?

Anyway, everyone here is finally getting along and has decided to begin in earnest to create a Master Page where those who are stuck in the brindles can register to have their clothing donated for the ongoing care of a lab-endowed fictional monster. Their hearts are on fire with love for all things road-related. Including the time you were observed from afar making a rough sketch of a road which you fraudulently claim to have seen in a low-budget film years ago. At my own expense, I took to the stage—in a bathrobe, no less!—to offer a meager defense of your pathetic proclivities in the only way I know how. And that's with butter, rather than glue, if you catch my drift. By the time I was done, a woman was seen crying in a wheelchair on a Channel 16 Action-News segment. The gentleman who compiled the statistics has been known to keep several slimy characters at elbow's length, if that. And, if that is what you're considering, please stop leaving faulty explosive devices in my dressing room. It's just not fair!

By the time I got her up to my room, her hair had started to fall out in droves. I drove to Methodist Central Hospital at 2:87 AM under a Chapter 13 blackout. Still in all, I was able to gather the necessary herbal concoctions and snuck through airport security before my flight crashed. Quite ignominious it was, but I still harbored hopes that my singing career wasn't all but dead, if that. Now I know what people mean when they go around mouthing off to folks who they perceive as weaker by half. Yeah, that's right, you guessed it: it's just a vain 'cry for help'. Anyone with half a brain would have already backed out by now. Instead, anybody who's already been fobbed off on a lucrative relative won't have a problem looking into the nearest doorway for an open container. 'Container of what?', you ask. Carbonated cigarette candy, you fool! And, that's just the topmost layer. Once you're inside, you'll find all manner of people lined up to receive their personal note card. You know what I say to that? UNDER MY DEAD BODY! that's what!

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The small matter of a minor proposal.

 

When Paul and William Tanagore at length approached my first wife with their proposal, I knew that her personal vanity would render a moot arrangement all the more tempting. As she stood next to our beach ladder, I began going through a series of lists in my mind. The abruptness with which she'd diagnosed the cantankerous news agent who lived near our dentist's final victim made me all the more certain that I might not survive the surfacing of tangential materials in the hands of those too young to fold into a disingenuous cohort.

Try as one might, the rapid dissolution of anyone's instructional fabric only serves the interests of those whose previous involvement no longer rises to the level where our betters abjure red flags to seek out the indolent party. Why is it that I always get the creeps when you peel away to join the others for a round of 'pygmy squatch'? It always seemed that when they lived behind us, I was more often than not the one to be put on speed dial. The 'crazy complaints' are all we have left. There are, though, those who freely circulate in a frankly painterly pattern. Once yet another has been dumped into a phantasmic mortgage stipulation, we make it our business to be very watchful in case anyone tries to hide 'in plane sight', with all that implies.

Who's to say that I wasn't feeling all that generous as I picked my way through the remnants of a diacritical plot, hatched courtesy of the one couple whose harried expressions concealed a thoroughgoing effort to exert maximum pressure worldwide? It might sound like one of my trainees has given up the ghost, but what I know to be true is that no one took the time to enroll our son in an organ exchange manifold. I've had to repay every red cent before my picture came up for review. On or about the third week in February 2014, approximately thirty-five wellness practitioners sought to peacefully enter the grounds of the Fulton County (GA) Municipal Building in hopes of gathering forged signatures to make a play for the 'sympathy vote'. Does anyone still believe they did anything wrong?

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A brief explanation is in order.

 

Part of the reason that I held so tightly to my prior obligation, is that the person's name which appears to have been all but erased, is one which I found strangely appealing in the years leading up to the accident. I don't know what it was, but in the event that I was about to be implicated in unexplained fires, the one briefing book that I'd want in my toolkit was all but certain to raise the ire of our most expensive prisoner to date. And, if we add in the several emergency adjustments only agreed to at the last minute, we're talking in multiples of ten to the point zero power. There just wasn't any alternative but to circle the room slowly to get everyone's immediate non-reaction.

Take the woman who sits directly in front of me in Spelling, for example. She's had her work cut out for her from Day 1. I refused to get involved in her penny-ante struggles. Why? Look, I have to admit I was put off by the way she just 'sat there' and pretended to not have a care in the world, when, in point of fact, there was no denying that she'd been part of this thing from the start. In order to prove my point, I had her diagnosed with a 'quack' placebo and installed in a nightly surgical brigade which was just ripping it up down at the club. Yes, it's true, she got to perform the least favorite number from her repertoire. She had this weird idea that she could malignly influence the Judges by offering sexual favors of a very gross and disgusting kind. I'll have you know, and when I get my hands on her, I'll have her know, that these Judges are, to a person, Men and Women of the Cloth. Therefore, it doesn't take much to get them to see it your way. The point is, though, perversion of any kind, is most definitely an outlier extraordinaire!

While I coped with what seemed to be unsupportable contradictions, I had no idea that each night, while I slept soundly in my tent in a parking lot downtown, all the usual busybodies took to the airwaves and gave it their best shot when it came to trashing my already shaky reputation. I couldn't help but wondering if any of them ever had to meet payroll even once in their miserable lives. Also, I began wheeling large vats of indigestible protein broth at all hours through the streets of Little City to try to lure one or more of our incandescent marauders into a more health-conscious lifestyle. It's plain to see that we build a new relationship to ourselves one brick at a time. And no one who was there that day could ever deny that our moves wouldn't budge a thing without a major look-see from 'the Man Upstairs'. To that end, I've decided to give up any access I ever enjoyed to various and sundry perquisites concomitant to my former position in a now defanged hierarchy. We are now—each of us—beguiling what remains of our once substantial resources to convert a defunct bowling alley into a state-of-the-art escalator factory. I've made peace with my God. What, exactly, do YOU have to say for yourself?

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Emotional Inventory Suggestions.

 

It's not a mistake if some of you get a not-so-funny feeling that those of us on the other side enjoy nothing so much as whiling away the hours, days and weeks all by our lonesome in Room 9. It's in that Room (and that Room ONLY!) where envoys from advanced extraterrestrial civilizations take the time to make their feelings known, understood and—finally!—absorbed like so much 'mother's milk'. Once we've parlayed our advantages, root and branch, and had a go at a bit of tragic epistrophy, we feel like nothing so much as a smallish container of warmed-over Insta-Ade. With a winning smile and a trunkfull of 'collectors' edition' soiled doilies, it's our distinct pleasure to run the numbers and hide some snails in a bigwig's oven mitt. Not to worry, because he'll never know about the time I hosted your parents in a freeze-frame extravaganza which existed, it that's the right word, for all of a second or two before anyone got the bright idea to contact Senior Justice Department officials. I always wondered, like, what if I got a nosebleed or something? Would people realize that I'd been missing for years? Does this thing even work?

Now that I've entered the third and last pavilion on the Motorway, it seems increasingly obvious that no one in my shelving party will be able to go the distance without even the tiny trace of help that I might be persuaded to provide at cost, if that. But, that's only on the off-chance that an oily residue won't gum up the works something awful. What is it that anyone has to lose anyway? Would they still exhibit such profoundly disturbing characteristics if I was honest about their chance to forestall a troubling absence in the time it takes to paint a crescent Moon on your average dust flap? I don't know about you, but I'm the last person you should tell about a feeding problem in your troubled infancy. Because, even before you put down your pen, I'm on the phone with one of the top people in the business. He'll set you straight on exactly how much I need and in what colors, denominations and hair lengths. After that, we could go for drinks at the club. If that doesn't suit your fancy, why not come clean about your role in the Helen Weiskaupf affair? It'll only hurt when I start to apply direct pressure to your anterior weemus. That's okay. Don't mention it, I'm sure.

There's just no telling if the ponticle parked in my bar court has seen better days or if I'm off my game like a windshear in a shell-shocked bentilope. If these trends continue unabated, it's a virtual certainty that one of my least trustworthy associates will be due for a major looking-at before anyone decides to get down and dirty with an isotrophic plaything or two. Now that I've tunneled my way through to the inner recesses of a reformed ice-pokey juggernaut, what do you suppose it would take to have my granite-faced accomplice installed in a well-oiled mechanism second-to-none? Because, if not, I'm just not having any, thank you very much. And besides, is it really anyone's business where I get my hair done? It's only those who play fast and loose with a trust fund who spark my pride in ever vigilant coprophagiacs. No one on this floor thinks that will get you very far. In fact, the only time you've ever gotten stuck on the business side of a punk register-show will be the very LAST instance when you can count on our direct involvement going forward. Without even winking, you'll know it was us all along. And then what will you do? Go cry on your widdle wommy? Yeah, right. Sure. 

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Any Delay is Fade Critical: Manko

 

The copper fitting has run to mould, but sell we will without a moment to spare. I have been given scraps to stow but the bracing stand I'd normally use is wet from dis-use, and now there's even a paired dispenser underneath the side dish. More than anyone would think, we brush away the plaints and proceed as if all our years have yielded to a mild compression. As I call my assistant in from the patio, it appears that he's squatted on his portion, so we'll have to begin again. Against everyone's better judgment, we hold him until the Highway Patrol arrives to retrieve samples from his mistress's duodenum. I prepare by sitting them down in a prayerful pose so that I will be undisturbed while reciting a litany of overbroad characterizations. Some might be inclined to question this tactic, but it gets the job done, and then some! Once the day recedes into an infant's memory, I take tooth to comb and compose a voluble solution-based enconium to a martyred co-mentor of the fifth design. Smoothness is not for the least willing but camping in a sand-lot could get you cited.

The chain bears a striking embankment to our linch-pin in more sunny climes than one. By the way the easement is enforced, you'd think that all of our ingrained foibules have plum split the show in two. But I'll tell you what really set them off: It was the time my wife returned from a short jaunt to see her overbearing sister. She (the wife) carried in her pocket nary a particle of a rather common element. At the crossing she was stopped and scolded and made to stand without reinforcements until an unknown forecaster let it slip that he'd once positioned her to take the heat for an unfortunate incident on one of our Nation's Highways. The Highway will go unnamed, but something else won't. Go unnamed, that is. Now that you've settled into your new digs, could we ask you to refrain from fantasizing about life in an underwater civilization of the future? We find that it disrupts the memeplex which we've worked very hard to effectuate over the last three seasons of unforgiveable retards. Thanks in advance for being 'a good sport'. You'll need all the help you can get.

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A Situation of Concern.

 

With all that stood between her and the game I was reduced to, you'd think there wouldn't be more than a handful of rotational foundations to which our lives could be pinned without a secret addition being imperiled. I'd always loved the way her hair seemed so well starched, especially for a morning person. When she thought better about fixing up our space in time for the Dutch New Year collaboration, I took her straight to the Department of Surgical Interventions at Mass General. There I was greeted by Lois Parnell and her assistant Hyman Lurfshpatzel. Through a set of pre-determined hand signals, Hyman made it known to me that Lois was in the middle of a very concerning situation on the home front. Her son and husband had been implicated in a botched hush money scheme which had spilled into a local watering hole putting several Olympic swimteam hopefuls' lives at risk.

By the time I arrived at Josh Swenson International Airport (Terminal 2) at roughly 3:98 in the wee hours, all I could see was a clearly upset Okinawan dental hygienist who seemingly never knew what hit her. And, to be fair, we've been wracking our brains for months now trying to figure out if, in fact, she was ever actually 'hit' at all. You see, when you play the game as long as I have, certain telltale features will leap out at you like a sore thumb at an anti-clerical  Rumba Contest. Other than that, I'm not the first to admit that there's no age limit on people who might feel the need from time to time to lean against whatever wall or other support structure might present itself. The person I dream of, night after night for going on a year or two, if that, is of medium height, with salty eyes and generally favors tan formfitting apparel. He—or she, it's never clear which!—continues to drum their fingers on a level-high synthetic table while I politely ask when I can expect to hear my name on one of the local shows. Other than that, there's an urban stickiness which I just cannot shake.

Now that my Pastor, Dr Dan Stimfler, has heard the full story, he's asked that I submit to a full battery of specimen contours under the direction of a bonded Service Agent who hails from the Four Corners region in the Sebna area. He (the Service Agent) has been keeping a lot of stress bottled up deep underneath. So much so, that when he was apprehended leaking caustic substances from the upper tier of Veterans Stadium, all we could do was to laugh out loud and thank the Lord for small miracles. To think that I was about to entrust my wife's mother to a solo camping event to be overseen by a pre-psychotic scoutmaster, gives more than a few of us chills and a runny nose. Sometimes even our tummies get uncomfortable. Which makes it difficult to bank our fair share of shut-eye. The Task Force has seen the contamination up close and personal. They'd also like to counsel at-risk youth during their time in-country. There's still the language barrier though. Plus, of course, they're deaf. Which might mean that we'll have trouble getting our sheets in before the cut-off. Just do the math. You might not like what you come up with, is all I'm trying to say.

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