Getting to Know You, Pt. 1

I'm going to take down the American Feelings fourth wall for a bit here in order to document some goings-on over at LinkedIn. I acknowledge that this is a bit masturbatory and troll-feeding in nature, so take from it what y'all will. I promise to return to blank-stare-inducing humor -- perhaps even within the context of this thread -- lickety-split.

Some background:

Late last week I received a LinkedIn network invite. The sender was not familiar to me -- nor had he included a personal message in his request -- so I browsed his profile to see how we might be acquainted. He has 500+ connections. He is in St. Louis; I lived there for several years. We have a couple mutual connections, but they are loose at best (one I have not spoken to in perhaps five years, the other I've spoken to twice). Because I take LinkedIn more seriously than I do Facebook, because I believe a network connection implies trust (or at least acquaintance), because he did not provide me any reason to believe I wasn't just another of the 500+ notches on his bedpost, and because LinkedIn by its very nature discourages meaningless connections, I clicked the button which most accurately described my relationship to the sender:

"I don't know this person".

Shortly thereafter, I received this LinkedIn message:

Subj: My Apologies

I was reaching out to you because I was informed that you could quite possibly be the perfect creative force to design and deliver a website that I have secured funding for....but obviously not. Yes, paid work with equity.

Sorry I interrupted your day with an invite.

Kind Regards,

Dxxxx

To which I replied ...

Subj: Re: My Apologies

Dxxxx,

I try to engage in equitable working relationships, such that neither party feels they are being exploited -- or doing the other a favor. For _this_ reason I am likely not the right creative force for your project.

However, to insinuate that I am somehow rendered incompetent because your original invite was indiscernible from LinkedIn spam is, well, just plain immature.

Cheers,

M

To which he replied ...

Subj: Re: My Apologies

Matthew,

It was a small test of the universe and well, you simply failed.

And as for immature I guess that now someone with an email address of forgiven@babyimsorry.com is capable of judging the rest of the normal world.

Wow! Clearly the wrong person.

Again my apologies.

Dxxxx

To which I replied ...

Subj: Re: My Apologies

Dxxxx,

The novelty of your approach is not lost on me.

My marketing background has taught me a few communication principles which, I admit, I perhaps rehash too frequently. Foremost, I try to speak clearly and directly. Especially within forums where self-edification is the norm, I try to construct introductions that are meaningful to the audience. In a new twist, you engage in tests of the universe, a technique favored by the Nigerian prince. Then, when those tests are not met with your desired -- yet unarticulated -- result, you resort to personal insult and sarcasm. In your estimation, would it be unprofessional for a fisherman to curse the fish that failed to bite an unbaited hook?

If you define success as the opportunity to work on a project with you, we have different definitions of success. I imagine that this will not sit well with you, because it seems that you wish me to feel the sting of a missed opportunity. That perhaps, if I had just accepted a complete stranger into the my professional network of trust, I would see benefit tenfold. Perhaps if you explained your project in detail to me -- reminding me of all that I have now lost -- you would achieve your desired, unarticulated result.

Unapologetically,

Matthew

PS In your first email -- at least, the one where you first saw fit to include a personal message -- you mentioned that you had been informed that I might be the right creative resource. May I ask who or what informed you?

To which we shall see ...

Alternate Titles

Y'all Come to Hell Now, Ya Hear?
Please Join Me At Your Earliest Convenience (in Hell)
Wish You Were Burning

And if you're gonna do work in the woods ...

Before putting your ear to the rail, check if a train is coming.

The boss had seen fit to purchase a brand new Escalade in spite of it all. In spite of the depressing sales outlook. In spite of the paychecks he couldn't write. In spite of his office's noodle-thin parking lot.

And somehow parking became the rallying cry of the disgruntled. Sandwiched in an alley, the slender strip of asphalt held cars like an aircraft carrier, diagonally and wing to wing. Even before the behemoth's arrival, pulling in took precision. Backing out took ages.

But now, where the brand new Escalade stopped, so too did the parking lot. Four spots in or eight, the math was simple. None shall pass.

"What, do you expect me to park it on the street?" the boss reasoned, "it's a brand new Escalade."

He showered it with attention. Once a week, a representative from the nearby carwash would jog over -- jog -- to retrieve the keys, drive it off to a thorough cleaning, and swiftly return. Once a week, in addition to the preexisting claustrophobia, this sudsy interloper would rearrange the boundaries mid-day, trapping employees like miners in a cave-in.

During one such week, there emerged a great calamity from that parking lot. The commotion spilled into the office, bringing with it dire words like "crashed" and "his brand new Escalade". Before gawkers could even muster, the boss sped through the office and toward the side door. He was met at the threshold by a new representative from the nearby carwash: a young man with slouched shoulders, a terrified look, and an eyepatch.

Pizza sends out for YOU.

When I was 15 I worked at a Pizza Hut with a manager who admitted to suffering regular, severe acid flashbacks. I several times took an order from a customer that didn't exist on a phone that wasn't ringing just because he looked at me with those crazy eyes and said "are you gonna answer that?"

Operation: Ventriloquitler

Incognito

It was Mom's birthday, or maybe Mother's Day -- one of those days that comes every year and yet for which I am totally unprepared -- and she had requested a family lunch. The three of us had submissively agreed. We would do our best to keep it cordial, of course. This is not to say that we did not care for eachother's company -- we did and do -- but the swiftness with which we ran out of conversation might otherwise be attributed to knockout gas.

Mom had chosen a small French-fusion boutique on the West side of town. Le Whatever. It enjoyed some degree of novelty from the unique brownstone in which it pretensed. Tall windows. High ceilings. Touches of art nouveau. My mother immediately took an above-average interest.

"How much of this do you think is original?" she asked.

"Some." I replied, simultaneously being accurate and a total dick.

We sat down at the usual white-clothed cafe table. Mom was unusually chatty.

"The owner of this place has two other restaurants in town," she grinned, "one of them is very well rated in Zagats and referred to as someplace to 'see and be seen' as long as you 'don't mind another diner's elbow in your souffle'"

She may have said more. We ordered.

"That sounds just amazing!" Mom emoted.

"Oooh, what's in that?"

"May I have a taste?"

Her enthusiasm was equal parts refreshing and disconcerting. It was her day, and we wanted her to be happy. But we also wanted her to be drug-free.

The second act -- the long moments between ordering (talking about what we were going to eat) and eating (not talking; talking about what we were eating) was, under normal circumstances, and opportunity to collect one's thoughts. I found myself daydreaming a bit, listening to clinks of flatware and ambient music, and I must've flickered a self-congratulatory smile after recognizing a somewhat obscure song.

"What song is this?" asked Mom, suddenly gave a shit.

I told her. She nodded thoughtfully.

Each of us was inspired to some degree by the sudden shot of maternal enthusiasm, yet also a bit wary of it. I looked at my father, who shook his head at me almost imperceptibly. I saw in it a whisper:

"I have no fucking clue, my boy. No fucking clue."

The meal was, in fairness, worth talking about, so the banter was sustained. Mom led the way, of course, at this point the most recognizable voice in the restaurant. She chewed with her eyes closed and noted nuances of each dish as she pecked away at plates not technically her own.

"Yours has a hint of morel, doesn't it?" she said, squinting at some unseen hovering fungus.

The display continued until, content and lethargic, we made our way back to the car. After perhaps a block, my (strangely) silent mother betrayed what I assumed was gastrointestinal distress. But what I at first thought was a grimace transformed into an unrestrained shit-eating grin. She burst the silence one last time:

"OK OK I WAS A SECRET SHOPPER BACK THERE!"

The stickiest hands on Tatooine

St. Louis, it should be noted, has a disproportionate number of women who like to skate and punch. It makes sense that they so readily support all-girl roller derby.

One particular match had a Star Wars theme ("Scar Wars", specifically) and, being shortly before Halloween, brought out costumed players and spectators alike. A sight, a stormtrooper with a PBR.

During intermission, a psychobilly emcee invited all interested spectators onto the rink to participate in the Star Wars costume contest. On they shuffled, like the exodus of last call at Mos Eisley Cantina: all ages and sizes of Jedi, the periodic plastic Vader, a handful of geekporn Leia -- and one diminutive, confused-looking Spider Man. At once, everybody's buddy mumbled the same crack (variations on "I totally freaked when I found out that Vader was Spider Man's father"), but the pajamic webslinger was so adorably out of place that no one had the heart to be mean spirited.

The emcee organized the contestants from tallest to shortest (Wookies to Jawas), and began eliciting audience applause to determine the intergalactic winner of cash, candy, and trinkets. Most participants were rewarded only with respectful applause -- Leia's torso drew a few hoots -- and the roller derby crowd was decidedly subdued for being so decidedly sauced.

Still, as the emcee scuttled down the line toward the young and squirming, a chant seeped from the bleachers.

"Spi-der Man ... Spi-der Man ..."

Others heard it and quickly added to the cacophony.

"Spi-der Man ... Spi-der Man ..."

The noise triggered the tiny arachnid's Spidey Sense, and soon he was spinning around, trying to echolocate his supporters (his eyes had been rendered useless the moment they became misaligned with the holes in his mask).

"Spi-der Man ... Spi-der Man ..." Louder and louder, as the emcee shirked droids and Ewoks.

As muttonchops held his hand over the penultimate contestant, the crowd seemed to find perfect synchronization. Their cheery chant -- in fact, all noise -- seemed to break cleanly as they drew a unified breath.

The emcee filled the gap: " ... and how do you guys feel about ..."

"SPIDER MAAAAAAAN!" they ALL erupted, of single mind and voice, scaring the living daylights out of that kid.

Das Delorean

Greg's 82 Volkswagen, "Spence"
Was a time machine (well, in a sense)
By the time eighty-eight
Was his traveling rate
'Twas seventy five minutes hence

Whatcha got there? Oh. A biscuit. Um, I'll pass.

Now I wouldn't say my dog, Bob
Perpetually acts like a snob
But we drove past some deer
And I swore I could hear
Him lean out and bark "Get a job!"

Just in time for Valentine's Day: Romantic advice from my 92-year-old grandmother:

"Take off your garters, roll down your stockings, and stand on your head."

And worse with a hot plate.

There was a nice hooker from Paris,
Who with her rice cooker was careless.
Atop the hot pot,
She popped an odd squat,
Now from navel to asshole she's hairless.

And salty.

Though he was the size of a tater,
Mick's dick was a true multi-stater,
The minute he came to town,
All the girls gath'red round,
And his junk arrived ten minutes later.

Killing This Dead Meme Dead

There once was a pirate Somali
Who terrorized Bangkok to Bali
With his one unpatched eye
He still managed to cry
At the last 15 minutes of Wall-E

How to tell these two things apart:

If it's fun, it's Tetris.

If it's not fun, it's tetanus.

Once we've perfected time travel,

statements like "I haven't peed since Milwaukee" will totally lose their impact.

I probably should put a disclaimer on here somewhere.

The finest fellatrix on Earth
Costs every penny she's worth.
Through mouthwork and pinches
She'll add on three inches
(At the expense of two inches in girth).

Another, presumably NSFW.

There once was a hooker from Boston
With a twat a train could get lost in.
To trek lip to lip
Required a steam ship
Took three weeks and was fucking exhaustin'.

Lesser of Two

In line and patiently waitin'
For my civil participatin'
Hoping "less of the same"
Thus more of a shame
When Obama turns out to be Satan.

Fresh Meat

Flipper

Her deluxe vibrator, "Sir Jolts",
Was rated at ten thousand volts.
'Twas metallic, non-porous
and felt like a porpoise
with a cock that shot pink lighting bolts.

In the traditional style:

There once was a burly Sri Lankar,
Who crewed a Pacific oil tanker,
And at each port of call,
He'd impress one and all,
When he used his prick for an anchor.

It's because he's yellow.

Blessed are those who've retired,
In the bullshit they're no longer mired,
"Better that guy than me",
Said without sympathy,
Did I mention my friend just got fired?

Better With a Mop

There once was a goatmaiden, simple but pretty, who came to see the wizard under most distressing circumstances. She had made the four day walk to the castle in a little under seven days -- fine time for a one-footed dwarf -- and, per usual, pleaded for the wizard's assistance.

"Please, wise wizard," she genuflected, "please save our village from the marauding barbarians -- who murder and kidnap and lustfully force their large bodies upon us -- and also from temptation ..."

The wizard replied: "THIS I SHALL DO FOR YOU. FOR I AM THE GREAT GOZOOMBU!", his glowing, 60-foot disembodied head mugging heroically.

"Oh thank you!" pogo'd the goatmaiden, "I knew you would come to our aid!"

The wizard nodded.

"And please, wise wizard," she bowed, "please bring rain to our valley. The earth is but dust, our crops are withering away, and we haven't enough food for our people."

The wizard replied: "NO FEAT IS IMPOSSIBLE. FOR I AM THE GREAT GOZOOMBU!"

"Thank you thank you thank you!" she gushed, "all that has been said of you is true! You are a wise and benevolent wizard, a savior of our people!"

The wizard nodded.

The goatmaiden paused and, blushing, steadied herself for one last request.

"Wise wizard, I hesitate to even ask, but your powers seem boundless ..."

She drew a breath.

"Wise wizard, please find me a prince. My father is old and can no longer care for me, and my mother is beginning to wonder. For all our hardships, all that is missing from my life is the love of a brave and noble man."

The wizard replied: "NO."

" ... no?"

"NO. FOR I AM GARY THE JANITOR AND TOTALLY FUCKING WITH YOU!"

Bullshit Sampson

She asked me why I got into this business.

I told her "I want to make the world a better place. I think that the greatest impact can be had where the money is. With how people spend. With how companies earn."

I told her "because I'm a liar," and she didn't question it.

That's where she held the match.

Delectable, flexible Rose,
Only had nine of her toes,
She lost the last,
To a firecracker blast,
Along with the end of her nose.

clarity or condescension

He spoke at her with his loud, over-articulate voice -- one she presumed he also used with animals and plants, to whom English is not a native language.

_Night of the Zombie Cannibals!_

Wherein problems with the living dead pretty much take care of themselves.

Welcome to Tiki Time. Welcome to Tiki Time.

"Hi, I'm Debbie ... where y'all from?"

Debbie extended her hand ritualistically.

"I'm Stuart, from Honolulu."

"I'm Matthew, from St. Louis."

We shook.

Debbie was a veteran bartendress, somehow hardened into graciousness. Her handshake was a preemptive pact, and regularly committed its recipient to the long term intoxicated servitude of a tavern "regular". Downwind, these regulars took their time to size us up, waiting for our responses before totally committing to their assessments. They appeared to wish us away. Perhaps for their sake, perhaps for ours.

"Well what are y'all doing here anyway?" Debbie asked.

"Just seeing some of the country," Stuart offered, "Tulsa, Austin, Shreveport, Memphis ..."

We ordered our $2 drinks, the specialty of the house.

"I just looove Memphis," Debbie cooed, "me and my husband used to drive up there. We really loved it. But Shreveport will always be my home. I was raised here, you know. We moved down South for a while, then to Monroe. They think their shit don't stink out there in Monroe, but it does. Their shit stinks in Monroe."

Two TVs blared a much-hyped football game. A glitch in the satellite circuit delayed the signal from the first set to the second. The resultant echo doubled the crack of each hit, the blast of each whistle, and the color of each commentary. At the bar's peninsula, a character in a cowboy hat was more concerned with the lustful predilections of the dark-skinned running back who, he surmised, was more distracted than his white counterparts.

"... We moved back to Shreveport and my husband bought this bar," Debbie continued, "but he died ten years ago so now this feller here is my business partner," she said, motioning to a disinterested manlump. "So what'd you all see in town?"

"We just had Herbie K's," I smiled.

Debbie's nodded. "That place is the best. The owner was killed last year. Last year, wasn't it? Somebody tried to hold him up and I guess he got shot and was killed. What was his name? The owner of Herbie K's who got killed. Last year ..." she trailed off as a risky play called her attention back to the screen.

The bar was sparse, the result of just enough decoration to convince patrons that their drink was justifiable, part of a special occasion. Plastic palms dangled from corners, confused. Microphones threatened karaoke. A gaudy red analog clock perched atop the liquor shelf. It read "Welcome to Tiki Time". It had long since stopped ticking.

Debbie turned away from the TV and caught our eyes.

"Hi, I'm Debbie ... where y'all from?"

Debbie extended her hand ritualistically.

"I'm Stuart, from Honolulu."

"I'm Matthew, from St. Louis."

We shook.

Um, yum?

It wasn't the restarting

that pained him so much about a complete system reinstall,
it was the default torture of operating on an interface set to "RETARD BIG".

0 g

We hugged in the weightlessness of space,
where only our own forces pulled us together,
ever closer
until we broke through the membranes of our bodies,
and our souls embraced,
like amoebas in reverse.

Hot Coffee After Hibernation

It was hard to imagine, given the extended stretch of asphalt traveled, that six hours of driving could pass without notice. Previously, the silence between CDs would have announced each hourish block, but it seemed my iPod had yet again made consciousness unnecessary. Still, the stocky fields outside my window confirmed my location within the agrarian sealand of Illinois, if not an errant wormhole somewhere between Michigan and St. Louis (the sort a traveler may enter with less noticeable effect than the conclusion of the Downward Spiral album).

I awoke from the locomotive trance at the very limit of my tanks, one of which warned of its emptiness; the other, the opposite. The tiny illuminated pump triggered a momentarily forgotten fuel paranoia, and for the first time in hours I consciously navigated. (Steering felt labored and unnecessarily involved.) It was not without relief that I finally idled into a grime-coated gas station, certain that every combustive cacophony was actually that last sputterance of propulsive fume.

As my vehicle suckled the enemy of the state, I turned my attention to other social pressures. I cursed my haste. In my eagerness to avoid toting the red plastic icon of roadside shame I had managed to discover a locale of unique disrepair. The hose handle held its requisite stratus of viscous grease, of course (the stuff transferred almost immediately to French fries in transit); the station itself was a wonder of muck. It was a beautiful building, really, probably built in that hopeful postwar time when cars first became an accessible luxury and Eisenhower's pavers assured wide-eyed passage to hotspots like Dallas and Des Moines. It hoisted tentative bits of ornamental indulgence that sidestepped architectural modernism entirely. The bricks were (I guessed) coated in a multi-hued enamel. Their natural variations gave a deliberately patchwork appearance, with no pattern but conscious placement, as though our bricklayer had decided 1956 was the year to embrace his inner artist. The flat tar roof was crowned around its edges with a series of staggered swirls. These undulations peaked at a central summit which coiled upon itself in mirrored spirals, as if cast by a dual-nozzled soft serve concrete dispenser. This ordinarily remarkable extraordinariness was almost totally doused by time, as the building had wound itself in an ever darkening cocoon of soot and other atmospheric smegma. Normally, urban decay -- even to this extent -- held a bit of wabi-sabi charm, but as I considered my practical concerns with relief, the besplotched skunk palace proved an ineptly named and wholly undesirable comfort station.

A geyser of civility and masochism required me to soldier on, toward funk's gaping maw. And since I drew my motivation from the same source that flung me into an unfamiliar dentist's chair -- tooth objecting, hammered by the immediacy of throbbing pain -- I decided to employ a similar method of discomfort management. I had read in a magazine years back about self-induced trances. The author, smithing as though she were the first to introduce the concept, expounded on the virtues of a light trance for dealing with disquieting situations. The sidebar described the process of self-induction as visiting a "happy place".

Mine was an island untouched by dentistry.

It was just before sunset in the South Pacific, and in the warm evening nature began to assert its mastery of gradients. I cast a long shadow as I walked parallel to the water, in that borderland breached by only the most ambitious and frothy waves. I followed a meandering, invisible line of ideal surface density and two dogfighting gulls followed me.

I could regulate my comfort with the slightest deviation toward sea or sand. There was an subtle art to it, I found, absorbing the tiniest of stimuli through the otherwise calloused barrier of my sole. It reminded me of finding that perfect blanket coverage on a brisk autumn night; how an inch more or less of exposed skin modified my core temperature perceptibly. And the act of such focused regulation was itself a Zen exercise. To pay that much attention to the minutia of the physical body had a delightfully counterintuitive result: elevation to an isolated, ethereal plane. I was in a warm, comfortable place, my feet told me, where I was finally free to release the pent up pressures of fear, regret, and self doubt.

I stopped for a moment and pressed my hands palm-down into the surf. The water baptized my wrists with a shock of cleansing, exhilarating refreshment. As I hunkered over the waves, a seaweed-laden overachiever deposited its snotty biomass around my bare foot and ankle. For a moment the greenish batwingy fibers wrapped in lock-step, then tumbled into flight, end over end, flung by my less-than-graceful kick.

The clump slapped against -- then slipped off -- the service station's restroom doorknob, leaving the tarnished brass bulb to glisten with an unidentifiable moisture (pray condensation). I paused. Above the knob was mounted a long-forgotten bathroom cleaning schedule, a relic of once meticulous attention, like so many blogs enthusiastically created and woefully left to decay.

I stopped dating women who were like me

when I realized that I couldn't take care of myself.

Wheel in the Sky

Dear Heavenly Father,

We struggle to understand the mystery that is you. We struggle to avoid temptation. And you've made your instructions clear:

"Thou shalt have no other gods before me."
"Thou shalt not make wrongful use of the name of thy God."
"Thou shalt remember the Sabbath and keep it holy."

So why, Almighty Redeemer, must you close St. Peter's gates when you open the doors to the St. Peters Expo Center for the GODS OF MUD RALLY THIS SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAAAAAAAY!!!!

Is it in you?

"Oh, I didn't know you were using the NuvaRing," she blurted, suddenly remembering her own string of bad experiences with every other contraceptive known to womankind, "did you experience any side effects?"

"Oh, none at all!" June replied without hesitation. "Well ...

"... the thing about the NuvaRing is that you put it up inside yourself. It's a flexible little plastic ring like this big and you leave it up in your business for weeks at a time while it does its thing. You can't really even notice when it's in, which I guess is the point, but I used to get really paranoid that it wasn't up there or I pushed it out while making a poop or something. So I'd poke around a little bit with my finger every now and then to make sure it was there. One time I couldn't find it. Bear in mind that you keep this thing in for like three weeks, so if it wasn't in there I would have been unsafe the whole time. Before I started to freak out -- which, who was I kidding, I was already doing -- I took a deep breath, and tried to hunt for it again. Aggressively. Still nothing. So I ran across the hall to my neighbor, Amy, who thank god was also my best girlfriend and told her the situation. I knew that before I really freaked out -- which, like I said, I was already doing -- I needed to be absolutely sure that it wasn't just tucked up in a corner somewhere. So I looked Amy dead in the eyes and I was like 'you're my best friend, right?' and she said 'yes' and I was like 'you love me and you'd do anything for me, right?' and she much less enthusiastically said 'yes' and I was like 'OK, I need you to check if it's way up there somewhere.' Because you know the angles, right? It's just easier for someone else to get way up there. She understood, too, so I gave her a latex glove from my nursing class and dropped my pants and threw my leg up on the edge of the tub and said 'do it' and Amy did a quick swoop and stood up and looked at me with this beautifully sympathetic face and shook her head.

"So then I freaked out for real and went back to my apartment and started to cry and instinctively called my mom. She listened to the whole story of the ring and how you wear it inside you and can't always feel it so it's tough to know whether it's in or out. She could hear how upset I was and was saying 'it's OK honey' the whole time, even though I knew she was a little disappointed with me. And I told her how I had lost it and then I really lost it and she tried to calm me down and asked if I was absolutely sure it wasn't in there somewhere. I told her I was sure, and that Amy had even helped me check. And ... silence.

"I got a phone call from my father an hour or so later and he told me that my mother was devastated that her daughter was a lesbian, and that she couldn't talk to me, and she was in the process of taking down all of the pictures around the house with me in them. I told him that I was not a lesbian, a fact that didn't seem to matter to him. But this huge shitstorm erupted, and my mom basically disowned me, and the whole time I was the fighting with my father and brother for not standing up for me, but they both said that my mom was acting totally crazy and wouldn't listen to either of them. Only my grandmother, who was and is of course my hero, stood up for me. And not in that sweet little grandmother way of 'dear, now maybe you should just talk to your daughter and give her a chance to explain' but more like 'you're acting crazy! you and your brothers did awful things and I still love you all no matter what!' But it didn't make a difference. Even when Christmas came around months later I was pleading with my father to help me make things right, but he said he couldn't, and so instead of spending Christmas with my family as I had done every year for twenty-six years I spent it with my adoptive family (you know those people who are your friend's parents or whoever and you end up practically becoming part of their family?), which probably saved my life, and I haven't spoken with my mother or father since.

... so I take that back: Yes, I experienced some side effects."

Specials

"I don't know about you, Kyle, but I think this place had WAY better drink specials when Tuesday was '50% Discounted Beer & Drinks' night."

Waders.

"This is NOT a Minnesota conversation! This is a TROUT conversation!"

Also regarding laundry:

It was no misogynistic mystery why gender roles had evolved to protect Hank from laundering. He was clumsy and oafish; a woman's garments were stringy and sheer. Transferring them from washer to dryer had all the potential of juggling honey.

He came to appreciate the subtleties of apartment living

when he came to recognize neighbors by lint.

"'Grandpa's dead!'"

, "just like I wanted to say!"

Don't go to sleep angry.

Chuck won their argument with his usual technique: pretending to think deeply for about twenty seconds until she dozed off.

On at eight:

"Dog Eat Dog" on Channel 55
"Dogfights" on Channel 56
"Dog Whisperer" on Channel 57
"It's Me or the Dog" on Channel 58

Burnt Out

"I think Burning Man has jumped the shark," he said, catching a sad glimpse of his grandmother's psychedelic airbrushed tits.

Professor Schwan's Gastrofantasmapromenautomaton

In small-town USA, a new wind stirs. Signs have appeared all around this simple village; portents of an approaching phenomenon. Wheatpasted on barns and five-and-dimes are announcements of an inbound traveler, one Professor Schwan, and his "AMAZING!" "STUPENDOUS!" "MUST-BE-SEEN-TO-BE-BELIEVED (AND MAYBE NOT EVEN THEN)!!!" mystery: the Gastrofantasmapromenautomaton.

Rumors flow and excitement builds throughout the shire until one day, lumbering down the main thoroughfare, is the Professor himself. He manages to cut a handsome figure in his slightly disheveled, lace-trimmed three piece suit, bow tie, and velvet top hat. He kicks up dirt with a showy canter. Behind him is a massive mechanical beast: an ornate, mysterious trolley like the luxury rail cars of old. Pipes and vents of every description belch odors both pungent and delicious. Brass and woodwork is splayed in the organic swirls of pastry decorations.

As curious onlookers approach, the silver-haired Professor barks his call to one and all. To the residents of this fine hamlet he offers all of the wonders the eyes, nose, and stomach can behold: the Gastrofantasmapromenautomaton! In this horseless locomotive, he waxes, is more than just the kitchen of the future, more than just the finest victuals ever devoured, more than the speed of the space age and the power of the atomic age. At the core of the Gastrofantasmapromenautomaton is the greatest culinary motherbrain ever assembled of circuits and vacuum tubes ...

One by one the townspeople are led aboard the trolley. Inside they bear witness to the Professor's claims: it is a mechanized masterpiece of which Mr. Wonka would be proud. Machines of alien appearance chop and cook and mash and peel and boil and bake foodstuffs of every description. In automated symphony and before their very eyes, metal hands knead dough, roll a crust, assemble cherry filling, and bake a pie to Rockwellian golden-brown. A dozen other down-home staples are similarly and artfully prepared, all at the Professor's theatric pull of oversized levers. With each new meal the onlookers' eyes and stomachs grow. With every forkful, they are further convinced of the Professor's magic.

But one resident remains dubious. Ethel, the unofficial matriarch, has mastered her culinary craft through the toil of her eighty-some years. Her biscuits are known in three counties. Her sweet potato pie is blue ribbon. She naturally finds such automation preposterous, and wears her distaste in a suspicious squint.

The Professor politely accepts the praise of his happily stuffed guests and focuses his attention on his lone unsatisfied customer. To her, he admits that the machine's motherbrain, the Deep Blue of deep fry, is a parlor trick.

"You see, my dear", confides the Professor, "these recipes are the real magic. I have traveled to every corner of this fine land, and visited a great many towns such as yours. In each town, I've met a remarkable woman such as yourself -- proud, skilled, a master of her craft. And each woman, in realizing the twilight of her life, was eager to share with me her greatest accomplishment -- her secret family recipe."

"Now, I knew I hadn't the skill to recreate their delicacies myself, so I used the skills I do have to build the Gastrofantasmapromenautomaton to make them for me. So really, that was Mrs. Kelley's cherry pie you had. And Mrs. Lundgren's pot roast. And what about Mrs. Albert's corn casserole? Delicious, don't you think? And though Mrs. Kelly and Mrs. Lundgren and Mrs. Albert are no longer with us, bless their souls, fine people in towns just like yours can still enjoy their master works, for ever and ever. All thanks to their generous hearts and my wondrous machine."

With a twist of his mustache, the Professor leans in to whisper.

"So, my dear Ethel, tell me about this sweet potato pie I've heard so much about?"

Yahweh Phones In the Plagues

• Laundry turns pink.


• IFC French Film Showcase.


• "That bitch" gives your buddy Mike "goddamn crabs".


• Yard particularly squirrelly.


• Bartender down at Minky's won't let you get up to take a piss until you've agreed that, yes, it's possible that a sheep could have ADD.


• Mosquito bite itches in spite of fingernail "X".


• Some asshole on rooftop patio drops cigarette into your mojito.


• Just one locust, except trapped between your bedroom window and screen for like, ever.


• Sunset.


• That sitcom pilot that you thought showed promise? Promptly canceled.

Decisions.

Drunk #1: "What'll it be? Sleep or White Castle Crave Case?"

Drunk #2: "Dude, I don't have anything to do for SEVEN DAYS."

just to clarify

"When I saw my beautiful new home I almost began to cry.

(Tears of joy, of course, not tears of sadness)"

in the making

It was Friday night, and he didn't have any real responsibilities, yet Steve found himself wishing Ben would stick to the schedule. It felt kind of unappreciative, somehow, to fuss over time that was free time; like winning a lifetime supply of cookies and demanding milk. This, of course, was silly: most of Steve's time was free and most of the time he drank beer.

Like Steve, Ben didn't have a job. Unlike Steve, Ben was the Gretzky of the bubble hockey world. After getting trounced in a best-of-eleven-dammit the week previous, Steve had demanded a rematch. Ben had graciously accepted.

"Eight o'clock next Friday, you silly little bitch!"

While there were no clocks at The Cherry Bar, it was surely later than eight o'clock. Steve had already commiserated with two cans of PBR: Ben was at least twenty six minutes late.

Steve felt guilty for caring what time it was, given his copious amounts of it. During the day, he suffocated under the weight of time. He found himself engaging in whatever mindless activity ushered time to pass most quickly, racing toward whichever non-event would next distract him. He relaced his Addidas. He reorganized his CDs. He felt disturbed by the march of minutes and seconds, which blasted him with constant and punctuated recurrence. He promised to himself to not think of units of time for at least the next six hours.

By now the band was setting up, and the guy in the ponytail made that a real and present threat. He wore a leather vest almost indistinguishable from the tan, shaved chest he borrowed from that overcompensating guy in the Bowflex commercial. He professionally ignored the two established women idolizing him from the foot of the stage. They loved it. He nearly cudgeled the skankier one with a monitor. She conceivably orgasmed. But for as much as this mating ritual amused any onlookers, one figured at this pace they'd be two verses into "Gimme Three Steps" by the end of beer four. Steve started taking smaller sips.

The bartender (and single T-shirt owner) offered one of those "need anything?" glances. It came off cold but well practiced. Steve made a gesture he'd seen on a celebrity blackjack show that he thought meant "no thanks" but, thirty seconds later, discovered meant "hit me". This did not have the time-accelerating effect that he for a moment anticipated.

Steve wondered if bubble hockey could be considered a hobby. Two pretty girls twirled away at the machine now. They had managed to seduce a third out of her quarters. They giggled a lot and spun their wingers into diminutive nausea. The trio had already been noisy and lovely when Steve arrived, probably driven to false haste by the feeling of freedom that comes at that Friday happy hour. Steve promised to himself to start referring to it as a "happy event".

The redhead giggled the most. To her, every sloppy slapshot was amusing. She at one point accidentally scored on her own goal, an event which elicited such a cascade of laughter so as to distract a sour regular from his Pride fight. The burly partron threw his fifty pound beard over his shoulder (an effort which would account for his neck), and a dirty look followed. A flick of beer froth splorted onto the hockey bubble. Steve considered wiping it off with his shirt, but quickly remembered the situation of his laundry.

It was a chivalrous thought, at least.

Note to self:

Run screaming.