Straitjacket: V-17X – Page 13

Sentimental

I once held a sentiment dear to my heart. I named it Pomona and gave it free reign. Pomona was quirky, but stayed in the house with a crippling fear of losing its balance in public and shaking too much while I ate my corned beef. So I let my dear sentiment stay in while I roamed; Pomona was grateful and gave me more trust while lying in bed and burning the toast. When the house burned down, Pomona escaped and called 911, then sat on the curb while I got the good news.

Pomona was gone when I rushed to the spot where my house used to be. I wasn’t surprised. I called my ex-wife and I moved in with her. I swallowed my pride and I waited in vain for my poor lost Pomona to find me again. It didn’t. I got my insurance check and boarded a flight to New Zealand, to hide in my sorrowful, uprooted life and wait for new sentiments to fix my depression. They didn’t.

Less Yellow

In the midst of the middle with a stone in my bed, absolutely nothing had fallen my way. I befell a certain curtain chaser with a penchant for sodium pentathol and a mincemeat pie methodology on his way to uncharted technology. I asked him: “Hello, where are you going so fast?” and I met his response, a fist to the gut. It stung for two days as I wallowed and cried, just wondering why a man would cause a stranger such pain. I meditated, prayed and fasted for days, just trying to see where that man’s passion lay. Then I stood by my doorframe, abstaining from nourishment until I knew for sure that this man would come back. Thankfully for my health, he was there in ten minutes, as though he’d known I was waiting for some reason. I asked him again: “Hello, where are you going so fast?” and I met his response, a fist to the very edge of my gut’s personal space, then quickly withdrawn. He had a smile on his face. He said: “You young men have too much curiosity. It could kill you if you don’t understand with whom you should not speak. You’re lucky I’m a conscientious fellow, and I teach you this lesson just to make you less yellow.” He then went on his way, as quick as before, and I yelled after him: “Did you mean to rhyme like that?” He stopped in his tracks and let out an audible laugh before continuing on his predetermined path.

Thought Capital

We thought outside the box when it was still a triangle. We are the progenitors of unconventional thought. Every day, our ad house pumps out unique campaigns and slogans that guarantee our stability as we move forward through the 21st Century. Our mission has always been to scare up free associations and create valuable commodities through words alone. We are America’s last true cottage industry–our creative staff works at home in their boxers and does nothing but generate new combinations of letters in eye-catching tidbits. It only takes one ingenious concoction to make our agency more valuable, and we understand that the road to such lucrative products is paved with half-baked, sometimes ludicrous content. For every JeanKnees and Penergy we create, there are thousands of RhinBows and StareWells left behind. There is no known formula for marketing success–we rely on the public to weed out the bad ones. Our office downtown is set up for nothing but focus groups, 24/7. The building is rigged with more two-way glass than every police precinct in the state combined. Twenty-six floors (we use letters, not numbers), fifty suites in each one. We have more ideas from A to Z per capita than the entire country of Armenia.

Kind of Sane–Behind the Transaction

Whoever (besides you) could have thought of putting Betsy White in a limousine before her operation? All common sense stands to reason with you, but you seem to take no mind. Precautionary measures should have been taken to at least notify any kind of sane individual as to the negligent way you prepared to take care of the patient. I, for one, am appalled at the limousine company’s behavior for going along with your scheme and not asking a single question, as though they only cared about the money they’d been promised ahead of time. I don’t care if a business needs to take any income it can get, as long as they ask a courtesy question or two about the intentions behind the transaction. Then I’d be spared all of this embarrassment.

Frosty’s Eviction

I won’t drag out the inevitable if it means that you’ll turn into a puddle on the floor before I’m even getting to the point of my visit. It pains me to be the errand boy for these kinds of things, even if I am getting paid handsomely.

You’ve undoubtedly noticed how much things are heating up around here, and you probably wouldn’t be surprised to hear that your landlord doesn’t much like your style of living. I chalk it up to good old-fashioned prejudice and ignorance.

That being said, he’s giving you 48 hours to pack up and find another place to live. He wants to wish you good luck in the future, especially when it comes to affording a place where you can let your popsicles just sit out on the kitchen table.

Any Good Pastry

A half-baked carp cheek croissant smears in the oven
as the room rotates itself a full 90 degrees,
never to return to its original orientation.

Spread too thin, the pastry burns within minutes
and catches fire, as any good pastry should.

The fire, fueled by neglect,
engulfs the cabinets and cutting boards
before the leisurely smoke detector decides it’s had enough.

Frightened, I Packed

A dull thud emanated from the cabinet last week as I passed by the kitchen. I didn’t investigate, but the thud got louder and louder while I camped out in the living room. Not one to be entirely superstitious, I shrugged it off and continued drinking my beer. You know, I couldn’t tell you what the thud was, but my next-door neighbor happened to see movement in my kitchen from their window at allegedly the same time as the thuds. Frightened, I packed up and moved away from that house as quickly as I possibly could. There’s no way in hell I’m going to live next to a nosy neighbor.