The High Road

An intricate series of hoofprints
on the stale lithograph
we’ve come to call home
has bled insignificantly–
but not unnoticeably.

Yes, that’s correct. Hoofprints
have bled just enough
for this observer to comment.

Now, I’m aware that there are countless crackpots
who espouse the virtues of anti-vaxxers and birthers,
and this would be right up their alley.
However, I choose to take the high road.

A wise individual once told me
that the low road is the slipperiest,
because the maintenance people need to mop
more often than on the high one

(they have the kind of smelly chemical
floor cleaner that doesn’t dry as quickly
(and they’re always out of wet floor signs)).

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Big Whoop

A man named Garvey sedated me once, though the whole outcome could have been avoided. We’d begun feuding the week prior, a trivial dispute over the price of corn muffin mix. Stupid, right? Well, this Garvey feller sure didn’t think so. And it just so happened that his friendly neighborhood drug dealer unloaded a ton of vicodin on him that week, so he was bound to sedate me whether or not we disagreed on anything. I may live to regret having anything to do with that man, but life is a rich tapestry that deserves its fair share of intrigue.

His sister, Nancy, had her own agenda when it came to handling the G-Man. Having lived with him a majority of her life, she’d developed an ingenious coping mechanism for dealing with his ridiculous foibles. Any time he began ranting about the military industrial complex, the go-to strategy would be to bring up the time he’d run into Steve Harvey while jogging on the riverfront–near the Wrigley Building. That would immediately stop his conspiratorial theorizing and send him spiraling through all five stages of the celebrity run-in phenomenon. Turns out Garvey is this joker’s last name. First name: Steve.

Originally, Nancy had only been prepared to shift her brother’s mania away from excessive government spending, but she eventually developed a secondary strategy out of necessity. After letting Steve go on about the Garvey/Harvey thing for a couple minutes, she’s gotten quite skilled at channeling his enthusiasm into a creative jag. Now–since Garvey prefers to make ink drawings, Nancy has set up a corner in her apartment designed solely for her brother to zen out after he gets a little too worked up about the 10-second exchange that he and Steve Harvey’d had. The passion lends itself to the page as he jots up a storm. He doesn’t want to burden himself with any extra material possessions, so he leaves all his creations at Nancy’s place. Nancy has turned a tidy profit from his efforts, since Steve-o gets worked up quite often. It’s reached the point where Nancy could take a year-long hiatus from waitressing and not feel pinched for a minute of it.

So yeah, I let Garvey sedate me. Big whoop. I was hoping he’d feel bad about it and draw me a nice picture that could finance a backpacking trip through the Black Forest.

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).

Like Wildfire

Figurine damage indication is just one of the important areas [here at Gareth Laboratories] where I’ve made myself indispensable. I’ve trained 54 associates–and counting–to specialize in the sixteen elements that directly contribute to the continuation of our great institution. I’ve created a simple mnemonic device for them: HOME SMELLS FUNNY P. I’m not very good with anagrams, so that last P is just kind of sticking out there to the side. But that doesn’t matter very much to me, because it serves as a reminder of the absurd penguin amendment to the corporate charter that Lance’s nephew added as a joke (but then ironically caught on like wildfire when I unknowingly passed out invitations to the zoo’s new special penguin house later that afternoon). Coincidences sure are a bitch.

Quackery

Edification via popular happenstance (due to improper ventilation) would not be my goal for this symposium, since occurrences related to HVAC quackery deserve their own symposia just to unpack the harm done by feckless contractors for decades in the name of frugality. “But At What Cost?” would likely be the working title before a more effective one comes along.

I’m really looking to discuss the aerodynamics of flat vs. concave disks when shot out of of a giant sloth’s rectum (damn near killed ’em). Older studies have been conducted with various megafauna from the glamorous Pleistocene Epoch, but not a single one of them exemplifies the untethered wildness of apex mammals more than Megatherium (particularly when cloned specifically to shoot laserdisc-sized projectiles from their dang bungholes).

Our work in this field is second to none, as our data will no doubt show you… some other time.

Out of Line

Braggadocious surrogate behavior
ties real-time stomach knots
in this observer. Either
buy that croissant
or step out of line, lady.

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