Tag: Otherwise

Schmooze

Apple juice permeation of what would have otherwise been considered a cordial affair has shed a new light on the rather pretentious category of social gatherings as we’ve come to understand it (ever since the bungled bungalow endeavor of ought-three).

This particular fiasco began when an advocate for fresh fruit juices invited himself to the festivities, taking every possible opportunity to schmooze with the big names in booze. He slipped past security under the guise of a schnapps magnate named Sir Wilfred von Königstupp and promptly began pushing his non-fermented agenda on the room to decidedly mixed results. The drambuie set found his spiel appalling, whereas the cointreau folks were rather intrigued. Grand marnier was unavailable for comment.

Needless to say, our buddy Wilfred (whose real name will be protected for arbitrary reasons) got the old heave-ho once the Jaegers found out what was going on. His famous charisma at least allowed him to get a couple stream of consciousness quips out there, if only to confound the preppy old money set. Most notable was his impromptu list of “lost arts”, which included (among other things): stadium hopping, hamburger flipping, turkey trotting, limburger tossing, butter mashing, charity giving, the pompadour, and original origami.

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Longing

I track my razors
how a bird of prey
tracks its ancestors’ nest locations:

stealthily
and otherwise full of a longing
that I can’t begin to understand
without years of intense psychotherapy.

Pastimes

Pastimes indicative of passion incarnate sweep themselves well past the staircase of emotional stagnation and scoop out higher understanding, as though our state of being affords us the time to crank out our pulp and surrender our wills to the greater good (otherwise known as that giant lizard occupying the innermost outhouse amongst the outer rings of the planet we currently refer to as Saturn).

Charmishness

Charmishness has its own splendiferous
nature, unbeknownst to the easiest of
all the catchers in their respective ryes,
earnest though they may be.

Feathery nothingness strategizes with the
foremost Giza wranglers on their paydays.
Sometimes what a conservative observer
would call an extraordinary happenstance
is just the thing needed to grant a certain
amount of leeway for hair-brained ventures
(profitable or otherwise).

Chalk it up to another one on the rack,
or just another one taking its sweet time
as the patsy for an unholy ponzi scheme
that would otherwise have fizzled out
were it not for the conviction and stupidity
of the general population of this here planet.

But here’s the thing: people will always be people,
and there’s nothing to be done about it now
or any other time (as far as I can tell).
So all you can do is be kind and understand
that folks just naturally have shortcomings
on a severely regular basis, and
if you can’t get that through your skull,
you’re bound to lose all faith. No biggie.

By All Accounts

As a younger man–though old enough to know better–I once navigated a rather cryptic epoch during which I chose (wholeheartedly or pigheadedly) to stick with my plague-rich mentality of promotional ice cream lotteries, confident in my god-given ability to strike it rich. With my trusty two and a quarter inch nail at my disposal, I scribed the five luckiest numbers ever known to man and beast in my favorite subterranean cave, positively declaring an end to the ceaseless turmoil of fumbling around in the cosmic muck for a few measly digits that–at one of my lower points–I thought would elude me as long as I were to inhabit this particular body. I then hastily chucked good ol’ Rusty (that’s what I called my long-suffering galvanized friend, knowing that his kind doesn’t rust for decades–a joke we shared on countless occasions) into the nearest ravine, a flourish that would–by all accounts (payable or otherwise)–bring this self-imposed trudge to a meaningful conclusion.

Boy, what a boneheaded mistake. No sooner than I’d comforted myself with that symbolic nail toss, a magpie hopped on by and casually reminded me that the most lucrative lottery drawings typically have six numbers. I wept, knowing that I’d severed the most rewarding relationship of a lifetime under the false pretense of a free scoop of rocky road at a participating Neddy’s® Frozen Custard.

I shaved and went back to my old CPA job.

Phourit Gharl

Triumphance rarely conquers the spirit of the wide-ranging pituitary-minded poltergeist wrangler in his heartiest of times (from the Belgian Riviera to the Spanish beer mines the proletariat sent their kids to one fine Summer evening only to find that mines aren’t as fun as they’re cracked up to be); I’ve lately found myself drawn toward the lively canary fields from my youth, where the kids and elderly alike would frolic in ways suitable to their particular stations. I would perform amateur somersaults and insist on becoming a gold-medal gymnast, knowing full well that I’d most likely have to settle for silver and a life of abject mediocrity (though producing a silver medal in and of itself is quite impressive from a layman’s standpoint).

Nevertheless, the frolicking continued into the wee hours of the afternoon, both the youths and elders needing to be put down for naps by their respective caretakers. At such a bizarre turn of events–otherwise considered contrived–the caretakers had a brief period all to themselves while their wards recharged their batteries. Seeing as how I was never awake under these circumstances, I have no idea as to what my au pair would have been doing at the time of my napping. However, I do have several theories batting around in my head (not unlike the 1927 Yankees’ unfair offensive firepower). I won’t bore you with the sheer volume of my ruminations, as those would only emphasize my madness. I will, however, provide a few of the “greatest hits”, as it were.

But not today. That’s for a different time. For you see, in the time it took me to describe my aversion to pointing out the minute details of my meandering mind, the youths and elders have already awoken from their sun-drenched siestas, relegating their caretakers to once again looking out for soiled diapers, skinned knees and broken hips.

Parlor

Perusing the parlor of the Parisian Peruvian consulate wouldn’t be so difficult, were it not for the giant window-washing syndicate purporting to require seven hours a day, every day, to free the egalitarian edifice from smudges and insect remnants that would otherwise mar the immaculate façade and strip its dignity away through a slight uptick in entropic rate that would, over the course of two to three generations (depending on who you speak to on the topic) detereriorate that aesthetic je ne sais quoi, anywhere from 14 to 17% per decade on average. Extrapolating from there, we’re looking at complete disavowal of the skin-deep school of architectural and biological beauty that allowed our “modern civilization” to “flourish” under the spell of charming artifice.

So good luck ever getting into that parlor, and don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.

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