January 31st. This is that awful, oddball day Washington Irving warned us about. The day we all spend too much time watching chimpanzee documentaries and questioning our humanity. This is the day everybody gets paid in big handfuls of Canadian coins and pretends the change feels better scotch-taped to the bottoms of our feet than on the front of our faces. Many of us woke up this morning and found ourselves permanently confined to life inside a hospital elevator by the great decider. Math equations across the board, all balance out. No remainders, no .666666666 repeating. What does the American mind make of these irregularities? Half the population is tempted to throw it all away, run into the forest, and take up a life with the bears and bobcats. They’ll have to cut out their...
Archive - January 2013
An old man, hair combed, staring right at you.
Assembling my thoughts with tweezers and mirror.
Drum roll up to the first wretch.
Peel off the masks, one after another.
And biting; biting down hard.
We'll have a bite contest later. Remind me.
Going through the photos in my wallet of each beloved bruise.
Houses labeled, “Liar.”
And a swift denial of the color orange.
More and more people are finding themselves lashed to posts, left outdoors, and forced to sing. It's not so much a performance. Their singing is not for others to view but is a sort of punishment for them to endure. To experience, first hand, culture in its most brutal form.
Resistance, as it does so often in these times, comes through choice of song. Thus we are greeted with the sight of half-crucified peasants yelping out Achy Breaky Heart while volcanoes ignite the sky and pilots lose their will.
The populace has walled itself off from the arts as though they were an infectious disease. It's about time they began acting as one.
Confirmed, this is the future. We made it. We did, the Russians did, the polio virus made it too. You’ll notice the air has a permanent, faint cotton candy scent. God did that. Just a little pleasantry. You’ll also notice that All Your Enemies Have Been Vanquished. Yes, sir. You came out on top. There never was anything to worry about. They’re all writhing in a dark, fiery pit – that you don’t have to pay for, thank you. Smooth sailing and parades every day for you, that’s right. And all you have to do is, every day at noon, go up on top of that hill and ring the Liberty Bell. Ring it at least four times. Maybe five. Use this big mallet as a salute and honor to our relatives and their haircuts. Ring in freedom and justice done right so that all of us...
And while we’re on the subject of live mice working crossword puzzles…
The crisis in men’s wear cannot be ignored. Put down that baby and devote yourself to the revival of double-leather suspenders and sock garters. Sock garters! These exist! A human man thought them up and made them real. His care and concern brought them to us, so that we may be better. Now, because of other men’s thoughtlessness, the sock garter has fallen out of favor. From disuse it is mere steps to disgrace. Civilizations don’t combust, nor explode. They crumble. Each time you – yes, you – fail to dress your stuffed animals in sock garters, Western man is diminished. It was common practice in polite society for a man to stuff handkerchiefs into his cheeks each morning in hopes of impressing nature with his abundant bloat. He would take his meals this way...
The trick is to launch all of earth’s motorcycles – even the ultra-rare models once ridden by Charlie Chaplin himself – into the Sun all at once. Catch it off guard. It’s not the impact, but the surprise. That would shock the giant gaseous ball into showing a little humility.