A palletful of organized criminals has just suffered the worst possible fate imaginable–at least from the vantage point of an ordinary human with access to some kind of means (or even just innate privilege). The fate? To be typecast as tycoons when they’d really prefer to just joust about with their bodacious buddies at their weekly jousting outing. Is that too much to ask? The sunflowers sure don’t think so, no sir. No sir, indeed. Just catch up to that vacant laundry (propelled by propane gas) and hand me that cheddar–while we’re young. The cheddar, however, must be somewhat aged (24 months, or best offer). It will complement the sunflower seeds we’ve sown over the past couple months. That, and the red-berry jelly.
Tag: Innate
To and Fro
Suppose you start stammering
at these shimmering jewels
on your nightstand, as though
you’ve established some
sort of language connection
in the realm of Greater Jewelese.
You do innately understand
that jewels possess no mental capacities,
but that seems only to fuel your curiosity
as you divulge your deepest secrets
to their faceted surfaces
(eg. the state
of your psyche, regardless of stymying
ethics preventing your profits, etc.).
It beats talking to a therapist,
you tell yourself
as you realize
that a counselor would only cost
a fraction of what your precious stones
just ran you at the jeweler’s stand
(and then it dawns on you
that you never left home this morning,
and you’ve been hallucinating
those jewels all this time).
You take the opportunity to sit up in bed,
wishing
that you could at least have some kind of
shiny bauble
to stare at
(cursing
the day that you broke your bedroom window
while throwing your weight
to and fro,
resulting in a cardboard and
duct-taped mess).
———-
First draft posted to WHARVED in 2014
Ramshackle Paradise
Onset guerrilla warfare builds a stun gun for us all to accept the northern aggression as nothing more than an attempt to belittle the profession of soothsaying. But very little can persuade the sanctimonious union soldiers to just stand in line with a musket and a lollipop, each one hoping they’ll be the lucky one-and-only who gets an extra-long exposure in the makeshift photography tent.
Meanwhile, in the ramshackle paradise of our own inclusiveness:
Enraged and otherwise narrower than an encumbered and intuitive giraffe whisperer, Ralph decided that now would be the time to really just go for the gusto. “I mean, come on. I get so many chances to stand up for myself, but what do I do? Settle for omnipresence like a jerk. Man, I would kill to have omnipotence! Whatever, I’d probably just screw it up anyway. I mean, I seem to have this innate method for sensing how people around me are reacting at virtually all times, but I can’t for the life of me seem to get with the capitalist program and ascribe a monetary value to that skill. Chalk it up to laziness, or perhaps genuine concern coupled with an unwillingness to contribute to our species’ unfolding downfall. Jeez, I need a lollipop.”
Appetite for the Absurd
Heralded as the Jonestown Network alternative to Stem, the Fruitful Terrier Sitter Extraordinaire, Pango Pango Junction packs quite the wallop when it comes to pure, unadulterated edutainment at a reasonable price. Parked at the intersection of broad leaf swelling and matriarchal patronage, I defy anybody to come away without some kind of interesting new trivia in their noggin by the end of each episode.
Before I agreed to subject myself to the bizarre ritual that is test-viewing a public television program for the determination of proper demographic distribution, I thought “oh jeez, here goes another several hours of my life that I’m never getting back. And right on the heels of finishing up my kite-flying apprenticeship at Old American [for Profit] University, too.”
But, being the good sport that I am, I didn’t even balk at the dubious honor. I suppose it doesn’t hurt that the show’s producer and I had a bit of a fling a few holiday seasons ago, and that we still flirt pretty heartily with each other. I’m a real sucker for shallow intimacy, especially if it’s spread out over the course of several years, where I can put the person/people out of mind for a while and reconnect with that polarizing animal magnetism as though we’re on a sinking ship/divebombing plane/bucking bronco… I guess it would be tough to get two of us on one of those beasts at the same time, but you get my drift.
You know, I’ve had a lot of time to think about this topic. Not to wax depressing, but living alone has afforded me the time to step back and reflect upon the foundation of relationships at their very essence of innate human fragility. I’ve come to develop the inconvenient understanding that I was never meant to settle down with any one person, and the fairy tale love affair might as well go the way of the dinosaurs–at least, as far as I’m concerned. Damn, now I’ve gone and gotten myself all glum again! What the hell?!
But anyway, I promised Gwen I’d do her a favor by giving my unvarnished opinion on the latest project, so I borrowed her official showbiz flash drive and gave the first few episodes a spin. Yes, plural episodes. Just shooting a pilot clearly wouldn’t have been enough doing to properly showcase their dean’s list-caliber aptitude for creative enterprises. One could chalk it up to insurmountable confidence or simply an arrogance that never got flushed out of the system by regular beatings/embarrassments, but I reserve such judgments for the critics of the world.
Well, this review got a bit out of hand. Suffice it to say that I recommend Pango Pango Junction to anyone looking to spend some time on a contemporary spin of the “one-size-fits-all daytime head-scratcher” subgenre. Or simply anyone with a healthy enough appetite for the absurd.
Until we meet again, gentle reader–
Sardonicus Q. Jellyknife, Esq.
WHARVED 