“I ran all the way home, just to say I’m sorry.” The Impalas (1959)
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It was his wife, Amylyn, who had initiated the separation. She was hoping to light a spark under his lazy butt. But instead of grasping the importance of what his wife was trying to say to him, Sean motored down to Portland and met Charlene at a vegan strip club. Continue reading “All the Way Home by Fred Vogel”
Silvia said that from some angles I looked handsome; she left me when another man convinced her that she was beautiful. I tore her picture and put on a kettle of tea. I munched a corn muffin and contemplated my fate. I’d exposed my heart like a puppy’s underbelly. Emotional involvement was the problem. I’d begin a no-female diet. I’d tone down all my relationships and avoid acquaintances whose neck veins bulged in discussions over gay marriage, climate change, or how to cultivate tomatoes. I’d develop a Solomon’s coolness in the face of thorny disputes. My wisdom was often ignored, so I’d stop giving advice. I’d be cheerful because likeability was the most important quality. My superiors would dote on me. Even better, I’d enter politics. Why sweat when I could earn money for flattery and smiles? I’d inflate others’ self-importance. Praise would be the opiate I dispersed; I’d seek people for whom no complement was too grandiose to swallow as truth. My face would be a smiling mask; no one would see behind the image. Insult and injury would be swirled and swallowed. Like a jagged rock plunged into the belly of life’s giant mixer, I’d smooth myself into an indistinguishable shape.
I was on the moon all alone. Looking out the window the weather was always the same—moony. The terrain, too, was all moony. It could have been lovely but for the utter mooniness of it all.
I dislike cheerful old people. Something’s wrong there: Them with their fastidiously kempt white hair; melanoma-proof golf course tans; smiling Hitler-blue eyes. The existence of cheerful old people proves that there isn’t an even distribution of pain in the Universe. Cheerful old people do not know the Endless Now.
“No,” I told him, “we cannot ask the monk for the password.”
“Why?” asked the Apple support guy.
“Because he’s dead.”
I was seated on the train near the center car on the aisle so as to keep my gaze fixed upon the despicable Sandibal Huxley. He was a loathsome creature in need of gazing upon. I had picked up his trail around the Café Fulcro in Naples at about three in the afternoon and had trailed him to the Napoli Centrale. I watched him from a distance and waited for my orders to apprehend, which never came, so I boarded his train and continued my pursuit.
Here we are at Week 154.
Well this is our penultimate post.
I’ve always wondered about the word ‘penultimate’, I think it’s a bit up itself. Why would you feel the need to have a word for second to last? Does that mean it was more important to come second last than last? Some would argue that but if you were in a field of more than three, it’s still not very good.
There’s only one thing that you would want to be penultimate at and that would be at an orgy. If you were a female, you wouldn’t want to seem stand-offish and if you were male you wouldn’t want to show off, so coming second last would suffice.
Continue reading “Week 154 – Second Last, Panda Steaks And The Malevolent Hartley Hare.”
“Does Frida have a good nose?”
Harold Zelenko lit his ninth cigarette of the day, and took a gulp of coffee. “Old ball and chain has the best nose in perdition,” he said. He loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar. The Florida sun hadn’t yet reached its zenith, but there was no roof over the fenced motel patio, and it was a barbecue pit.
When I was twelve years old my grade six class went on a camping trip to the Coromandel, a rugged peninsula on New Zealand’s North Island. Three teachers came to supervise the boys-only class. After a two-hour bus trip we pitched our tents at a campsite off a dirt road, thirty minutes from the small mining town of Thames. The site was surrounded by bush and mountain ranges, one mountain caught everyone’s eye, it had a long flat top, a teacher, Mr Larson, informed us it was aptly named Tabletop Mountain.
The clouds were moving. If Harvey closed one eye, he could see them as they drifted above him. He didn’t know when dental offices began putting relaxing pictures in their light fixtures, but he was damned grateful for it. It could have been the numbing stuff they jammed into his gums or that he had been in this chair for an hour and was starting to hallucinate, but those clouds were definitely moving.
literally stories 