Aidan Badinger

Egregious

“Of course we have our ways
of eating elephants,
but they’re egregious
and I’ll take no part.”

-Mother Chorizo
from her famous ‘Sermon on The Gout’

Sloppy Pour

Hello.
My name is James Arnettison.
In the following words,
I am going to enlighten you
on the perfect form that is
the sloppy pour.

First off, you might be asking:
“hey James, I gotta ask you something”,
and then I’ll say:
“well go on ahead”,
and then you’ll say:
“cool, thanks for taking the time to listen”
and I’ll say:
“of course, any time!”

It may take a few more exchanges
before getting to the question at hand,
which is this:
what is the sloppy pour?
Excellent question.
A sloppy pour is an upcharge
on a shot (the kind you order at a bar).

Rather than a neat pour,
where all the contents are neatly contained
within the confines of the glass,
the sloppy pour
requires virtually no skill.

The bartender is, in fact, encouraged
to waste alcohol
as they attempt to hit the glass
with about 80% accuracy (give or take,
depending on the establishment’s preferences).

The result is the perfect sloppy pour.
Those long ropes of vodka and tequila
will now be even ropier–
up to 30% ropier, in fact–
as bartenders are given the go-ahead
to wreak havoc on the bar top.

We can get into
the sanitary aspects of this practice
another time, though
liquor does tend to disinfect
more than it infects.

With a Vengeance

I thundered through the threshold,
enthralled by many a porcupine diary–

when will we ever learn the true everlasting
Constantinople cantaloupe constitution?
I reckon never, though many local geniuses
think there’s a global phenomenon unfolding
with a vengeance.

I can only postulate,
though the post-latte high
seems to have stalled for a moment,
just briefly enough to incriminate
the most experimental of dancers
both near and far.

We’re still left baffled
by Hemingway’s cat collection,
but a learned individual once told me
that the more toes a feline has, the closer to
ultimate self-actualization
the beholder becomes.

Shotgun or no shotgun,
there’s quite a bit of cortex
to bandy about all willy nilly
if you’re willing to lose a day or two
to the unbending, unaltered
chimpanzee rhetoric machine.
Oh lord, I’ve lost
too many days
to count.

Spackle

Dalmatian infringement, circumlocution–

tendril paradise was never meant
for us,
but for the others
[the others who backfloat
with a tendency to drift, aimless,
through the tides of amalgamated superiority
and spit themselves out afresh
on a new morn, weaving
in a pattern of non-commitment, content to
spackle neurolinguistics to
the shoehorn of
common intellect].

Barnabus

Beg to Differ

The alligator
prefers the ditties
over the deities,

though the allocator
would beg to differ.

Author: Aidan Badinger