Category: Fiction

We lit afire a pile of tires.

Now hear us out before you pass judgment. We figured there was no other way to adequately dispose of them in here this neck of the woods, having already thrown together a hasty pop-up shop in an attempt to somehow sell those tires (in the wake of that huge indy car race to end all indy car races–I’m sure you’ve read about it somewhere, what with all the invasive media in our modern lives). We knew we definitely had the market cornered when it came to tire-related memorabilia, and seeing as how there would be no more of these particular sporting events (primarily due to environmental concerns), we figured it would be a good enough idea to set up shop and see what kind of interest we could generate with a genuine tire fire sale.

It was almost as though the universe had pre-ordained this turn of events. We didn’t have anywhere in particular to go for a couple of weeks, since our boss basically gave us no choice other than to take a bunch of PTO hours for the sake of our sanity. I suppose we’d been burning the candle at both ends while balancing on a tightrope suspended over a lion’s den, so he had a point there.

Anywho, we gave the fine local people eight full days to come over and check out our wares, but not a single customer even graced us with their presence. In retrospect, they really would have had to go out of their way in order to find us. There was probably a better chance of someone stumbling upon us accidentally while hiking through the woods, though that sequence of events didn’t transpire either.

There were thousands of tires left lying around in the aftermath, resigned to living out their years ensconced in weeds. No way, we thought. We had to rescue as many of those fallen warriors as possible, to give them a grand send-off. Now, without a large body of water on which to conduct a proper viking funeral, we just looked around for locations where we wouldn’t inadvertently start a forest fire due to our shenanigans. It took us–working in perfect harmony–about three days of scouting and schlepping, to the point where if there were only one of us to undertake something so ludicrous, it would probably never have gotten done.

The actual ignition of the blaze was rather anti-climactic. We’d been anticipating it for so long at that point (not to mention working ourselves half to death) that we were just plum out of accessible emotions.

We still had a couple days left before we had to retreat to the city and our anthill tendencies, so we tossed a dead raccoon atop the smoldering rubber and burnt some rubber of our own, back to Metropolitan Anyplace, USA (home of the ever-wilting inner-child disposition). We envied that raccoon.

Intermittent ingenuity from industrial interchangers investigates inebriated inchworm investments, though we hold these truths to be

so self-evident

that any other painstaking rendering of rhetoric could possibly stall the rising tide of jumbled up (or jumbled down) cookie cutter manufacturers–finally represented in the florist’s factory of flour fandangos–fired up for the filet mignon we’ve justified as the most important, least-treacherous teachable moment perpetrated to generate genuine love of the written word as less of an unnatural amalgamation of sounds and sorry emotions, and more a living canvas of the interchangeable ideas that could, in proper combination, ring up the governor and slap him in the face with his own stupid ahs and ums.

Just try to think of that the next time you’re third in line at the convenience store and all you want is a candy bar–so you think you should have the top priority among these other schmucks–but you have to follow the traditions set forth by our more civilized foreparents; such an unexpected period of time in line leads to thoughts of buying a pack of cigarettes for the first time in something like five years, and all of a sudden you’re diverted into thinking about the capitalist structure you’ve been bred into, with a certain cigarette supply being sold in the same location where candy bars are also widely sought after. Coincidence?

Belly extravaganza profundities topple otherwise insatiable plethora-averagers, which is no small feat in and of itself. Anyone who’s tried already knows that attempting to persuade a passionate professional to cease determining the median amount of objects or entities in an absurdly large grouping can never end well. On paper you can theorize all day about the efficacy of diverting attention away from pervasive pet projects, but not until they’re put to the test may you then see the sheer pragmatic impossibility of such a notion.

Only at such a juncture may an enlightened individual step back and re-evaluate. This is a state in which all manner of solutions have been reached throughout human history. You know, those moments that could only have been reached through sheer trial and error–with some luck tossed in (if you want to call it luck).

Benny Goodman (no relation) was one of the unfortunates tasked with upending those pesky plethora-averagers, and he knew all-too-well the dangers of intentional plan-making in this particular arena. Benny was provided the impossible project because of his special ability to judge all passions and purposes objectively, separating societal expectations and mores from what is ultimately to be determined the optimal conclusion. With all this in mind, he took a page from his namesake’s book and let the solution come to him through improvisation. We may never know whether it was a stroke of genius or just sheer dumb luck that brought him to the doorstep of the belly extravaganza profundities; we can only be certain that Mr. Goodman was the right man for the job.

Why all this plethora-averaging had to be stopped is still unknown.