Charlie’s stifling influence couldn’t possibly affect me today, you can bet all your marbles and even some lesser mechanical components on that. I have half a mind to bust out my old soldering iron and go to town. I’ve been shopping around for motherboards to house in my new homemade personal computational device, for crunching numbers and the like. I’ve heard that there are some more sophisticated uses for them now, like finding a life partner and pissing away all your money on fake virtual coins, but that’s not my prerogative. Now food, that’s something I’m never tired of exploring. What a brave new world of culinary concoctions we’re in these days, I can’t even keep track of all these new fusion joints being put together by trendsetting chefs in the chic corners of the world. It’s just as well, I can’t afford to be jet-setting around just to try some cannoli wonton soup or petri dish gelatin dessert that costs $75 and you can’t even use a fork when eating it. Seriously, you have to just slurp it down like a jello shot. A $75 jello shot. Kids these days, I swear. We in the previous generation appear to be on our own now; the youths don’t seem to have the same kind of rapport with the common man as we do. I mean, I get it. There are more depressed and violent whackadoodles out there than ever before, and if you’re not an expert in sociolinguistics such as myself, you sure could feel like a quivering little leaf falling from the top of one of those monster eucalyptus trees. Everyone just seems to be craving personal time now. Gone are the days where I could just sit in a café and strike up a conversation; everyone is plugged into some whozit or whatzit. I don’t know, I always thought I wouldn’t turn out to be one of those stick-in-the-mud kind of guys, but now I understand the allure of the “ain’t what it used to be” paradigm. I’m just having trouble dealing with the old grouches to happen to share my viewpoint. Miserable old pricks. Well, we all have to get started on living our best lives at some point. Jeez, have I been talking this whole time? Sorry, kid. Can I have a club soda and some of that deconstructed fondue? I mean, I thought fondue was already decon–eh, forget about it. Just go ahead and put in my order. And don’t worry, I’ll tip!
Category: absurdist
Superficial
If bears could write,
would they choose that pastime
over climbing trees?
I’ll let you ponder that for a minute.
A can of whoop-ass overshadowed our biweekly WoundFest; there are only superficial injuries detailed in the most recent meeting minutes, no instances whatsoever of skin being broken. An average WoundFest should typically entail deep flesh wounds, mainly for the purpose of scaring away enthusiastic and misled newbies. The WFers are a tight-knit group, can’t have fair-weather harm-infliction hobbyists just jumping in and out all willy-nilly! What would say about WFers as a group? I’ll tell ya right now, it would make them look desperate! Soliciting the pain of complete outsiders and kicking them to the curb when they balk at the notion of losing a pint or two of blood… those despicable near-masochists need to stick with their own kind, so we don’t even broach this conversation in the first place, airing out our dirty laundry for the world to see.
Now, what these here WFers need to do, if they’re in the business of enlisting new members, is go out to the woods and rustle up a few bears. That would definitely take the unrequited writing ability off of their minds for a little bit, while practically guaranteeing worthwhile flesh wounds in the process (bloodlust is a hell of a drug). I can only imagine how excruciating it must be to possess the ability to manipulate something as complex and abstract as modern language with absolutely no ability to record it, aside from rudimentary scratch marks on tree bark that could never be appreciated as a contribution to the literary canon. At best, they’ll be confused with the cliché summer camp gouge marks left behind by horny pre-teens.
Ne’er-Do-Well
I
Meticulous electricians developed this lovely method for measuring their professionalism by throwing oil-soaked towels out of their respective windows at variable rates, unbeknownst to their long-suffering mothers and clergymen.
II
Once upon a time, our heroes of stage and craft built an anomaly that would mortify the ne’er-do-well karma wankers until no measure of cigar-stoppage could unravel our collective albatross leanings (as uncharted as it would seem to any non-intellectual types out there), and we sorely apologize for any bruised egos.
II
Ether assists in the quarantining of hostile entities, it sure does. If we hadn’t discovered this inexplicable gassy juice thing, we still would have been muddling along in Tommy’s sauna, insisting that no level of gallantry or goofus-ery could upend our preconceived notion of how to get down when faced with a horde of potbelly pigs. Now, potbelly stoves I could handle. They tend not to move for years on end. I could easily prepare for a stove rebellion. But pigs? No way in hell, my hypothetical friend.
Mile a Minute
Tainted ivory beats the scoundrel flagon,
peregrine cheaters flocking
to those most savory passes,
wafted there
upon the sea’s rippling intentions
that (as of May 14, 2013 and October 9, 2016)
match the price of a bodega avocado–
and for what?
One pound of lighter fluid (yes, measured dry).
No scale available? Substitute
a week’s worth of third grade valentine cards
(read at the rate of roughly one mile a minute).
Significance assured,
we must set our sights on the next horizon,
where our assertions flourish,
undeterred by argument and bolstered
by the chaos of existence (or
existence of chaos, whichever floats your boat).
A rainy day soiled the arid week,
flash flooding the earth’s
hard-earned cracks (as though
temperamental life’s perpetuation
were the goal here).
Kicking Around
A shrewd entrepreneur would–should–do anything in their power to corner the intuitive market of scarcity designed for the particular demographic concerned with–for example–how many hands reside on their watch face. Two is the bare minimum, three is optimal, four is impractical and irresponsible.
Along with this peculiar and pragmatic market segment, several other significant archetypes are not to be left behind (popular categories are conveniently located in your handbooks for perusal at your leisure). As their respective facets are revealed, it will invariably be identified that many of these have indeed been kicking around since the dawn of history, let alone the beginning of the free market economy.
When pressed to demonstrate our knowledge of these groups, exercising our right to dissect this polarizing slice of modernity, we must admit to ourselves that stereotyping can be dangerous if taken as truth. All of a sudden our watch-hand-obsessive type takes on a bit more humanity. Did you know that a noticeable amount of people within the watch-hand-obsessive grouping prefer their toasts unbuttered, substituting a liberal helping of sliced avocado? The algorithms never lie.
Recall
Artie told me one day something about the importance of swallowing twice to signal yes for some particular mission. I lost everything after that, my money, my mind, my family, essentially all articles of existence worth living for (I’ve been told), but I know that a person named Artie told me one day about swallowing twice, some thing lodged in his arm when he was saying it. I couldn’t figure out why he was telling me something about swallowing when some thing was just jutting out of his arm. But then the world went black and I came to–
a different person, where all I knew was that Artie told me something about swallowing while his left arm was being attacked by a pointy fish of some kind as he tried to swim away to safety, and I couldn’t understand why he would be telling me something about swallowing while fleeing for his life. Was I swimming? I can’t remember, because the next thing I knew, everything went black. I woke up to the knowledge of only Artie. Or was it Archie? No, definitely Artie. He had a rifle pointed at me, resting it on his forearm like one of those old black and white cowboys. Told me something about swallowing twice to make it all stop, my mission from God? Mission from something, I can’t remember because everything went black and I awoke–
Archie was sitting in a temple as I watched from my bed. He was somber, very intentional with his movements, as I could always recall.
Crux
Feel free to experience the soul’s consciousness for as long as you can possibly bear it; don’t make excuses to avoid or replace it with cheap thrills designed to siphon thought into a tawdry funnel of spent emotion. You’re better than that, Deandre. I’ve known you since you were a budding young talent. Don’t get me wrong, I’m your biggest fan. I can only imagine the potential you hold in your incisors and between five to ten fingers, depending on your level of ambidextrousness. Do not fret! Fretting will get you absolutely nowhere. I’m saying no man’s land, ya dig? Many people have been in your position plenty of times in recorded history, and the issue lies in their penchant to alienate themselves until their perception of life comes from an internal gyration that’s out of tune with the common perception of just what it is that seems to make life so special in the first place. If you can answer me why it is that life is at all special (with a nod to my unflappable inner cynic, mind you), I will reward you with the knowledge that comes along with the essence that could be construed as the crux of Johnny Cash’s “A Satisfied Mind”. Just listen to good music, dear, and don’t worry about forming your own tastes and possibly offending others with your assertion of the importance of personal expression.
Are you going to eat that applesauce?
WHARVED 