Thursday, November 3, 2011

You don't have to find it funny, [old poem]

You don't have to find it funny,
But you do have to laugh.

Eulogy for Taco's Near Future Funeral [old poem]

We wanted you to live forever
But you obviously didn't.
Your best maneuvers were aeriel,
The sly half-turn with airless paws
On the kicking away from a door.
The suddenly desperate flop that accompanies a rare but powerful head-butt.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

This is just to say

This is just to say
That William Carlos Williams -
If that is his real name -
Has ruined my personal correspondence.
I am drawn to starting with, "This is just to say,"
Which is a beautiful way of warning obliquely,
But makes the recipient think you have eaten all their plums.

Friday, October 21, 2011

[personal letter, 2010][abridged]

Dearest [REDACTED],

I am writing you from the Tik Tok Restaurant and Bar. It is 5:09AM. I was misled about the availability of wireless Internet at this establishment such that this e-letter is being sent well after the fact of its creation. As much as I may desire to, I have not altered this communiqué in the time elapsed.

Despite having no Internet access, the Tik Tok Restaurant and Bar is open 24 hours of the day and offers hearty fare. They also play the Cher song “Believe” and provide several televisions upon which to learn that there will be “Plenty of Rain Showers.” This information is wasted on me as I was showered with several ounces of water on the walk over. The waiter has addressed me as “Boss,” which means that we are fast friends. I would have it no other way. I suspect that the owners of the Tik Tok Restaurant and Bar refill their Heinz catsup bottles with non-Heinz catsup but I understand the harsh financial realities of this universe and take no offense.

I wish so much that I could see your beautiful face and touch your soft and supple skin. It is even worse that the song currently playing, “Mexican Radio,” reminds me of that night we spent eating barbecued iguana. I am planning a trip to Hawaii or Guam as [REDACTED] has told me that it only costs $300 to go to Hawaii. I would rather go to Guam but am unsure of the cost. I hope to do this in March. Speaking of travel, have you heard of credit cards? They give you money that you don’t have, for free.

Eating at this establishment makes me want to write a fresh and unprepossessing vignette about a foolish person writing to their friend that is equally foolish but in a different way, containing the line “It was the kind of place where they don’t ask how the food was because they don’t want to start something.” That is not how the Tik Tok Restaurant and Bar is because the food is as decent as one could expect. I like the feeling of writing a word like unprepossessing, not sure if it is real or what it means, and having your conviction that it does exist confirmed by the spelling checker.  If only I knew what it meant, and also the right way to refer to spelling confirmation software.

I am going to include in this e-letter a picture of me dining at the Tik Tok Restaurant and Bar. Not pictured is the half-eaten hamburger and fries that I am currently half-eating. I believe that eating a hamburger and fries while typing on my laptop is probably the most irresponsible thing that I have done towards my computer, but I probably wouldn’t remember the other contenders. To my shock and horror, another patron – a regular at that – has entered the Tik Tok Restaurant and Bar. I have lost my feeling of entitlement and security. I have not felt this violated since I first arrived and a beardo was vacuuming around me. She is chatting up my waiter, talking about perfume and her father.

I have remembered that there is a built-in dictionary embedded in the search bar of my computer. It has informed me that unprepossessing means not particularly attractive or appealing to the eye: despite his unprepossessing appearance he had an animal magnetism. It was not the correct word to use above, but it was a word. I find the example sentence to be humorous, and I wonder where the lexicography capital of the US is; where can one find someone hired to think of sentences that correctly employ a certain word? The waiter just referred to me as “partner,” which makes me very happy and restores my faith in humanity.

I imagine that the word unprepossessing, being the negative form of the word prepossessing, refers to beauty as something that one has possessed before. Before what? Before it was possible to obtain possessions, I imagine. “You are quite prepossessing” is not likely to catch on as an invitation to the boudoir any time soon. “You are invited to my boudoir,” while seemingly unrealistic, is in fact more likely to catch on as an invitation to one’s boudoir.

I would like very much if you would read this e-letter over the song “Men Down Under,” on your radio show. If that is not going to happen, please read it to [REDACTED] while you are both lounging about in your underwear. I have enjoyed all of the songs that have been playing during my excursion to the Tik Tok Bar and Restaurant, except for the current one. I am not surprised to learn that this is Charlie FM, the [recipient's radio show] of the United States of America.

An anecdote: In Prineville, or some other such place in the Great Oregon Desert, my traveling companion and I stopped at a restaurant that is so well placed on the road to nowhere that I have eaten there at least three times. This restaurant has two entrances, as it is a blatant secret that it is half diner and half ice cream parlor. Even if you wanted to, you would be unable to patronize both at the same time, as the kitchen itself separates them. Dining in the half of the restaurant that serves hamburgers were three men, not together. One of them, a regular patron, explained to the waitress that he wanted to try something different. He ordered the fajitas, a food item of Mexican origin. After a moment of self-reflection, he inquired whether there were peppers in it. The waitress said that there were. He was overcome with doubt, and then, with deep resolve, asked for the dish without peppers. “It’s a mix, she makes it ahead of time,” the waitress informed him, referring to the restaurant’s chef. He thought for a second, considering that at this moment he was as far out of his comfort zone as he had ever been, seconds away from committing himself to the consumption of a plant food that he found to be unpalatable. He ordered a cheeseburger instead, resolving at last to never again attempt to try something new.

The definition of “eat”: put (food) into the mouth and chew and swallow it. The example sentence: he was eating a hot dog. I will spare you the vulgar slang definitions. I think that someone who genuinely did not understand the English language would have a very hard time with the example sentence, in particular the words “hot” and “dog” in combination with the defined act.  Insert culturally insensitive and reductive joke about an Asian person consuming a canine, such as “Unless they were Asian,” or “I heard Asian people eat literally hot literal dogs.”

After consuming maybe five cups of coffee, my eyeballs are beginning to bug out a bit. I attempted to tell the waiter that I wanted to get the check but it came out as a mumble so I was forced to drink the extra cup of coffee that he thought I was asking for while he ate the breakfast burrito that he split with the other patron. Now the waiter and the cook are outside smoking cigarettes, which means that I am the only person left in the restaurant. It is too early for mischief so I will instead stop in the bathroom and then depart.

It was pleasant to spend this hour and 13 minutes with you, in my mind. I hope that you get my package soon and that you enjoy its contents. I would very much like to see you some day, though often life does not give you what you want.

Kisses,
[REDACTED]

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Pals.txt

A and B are standing.

A: Did anything happen to you at work?

B: Nothing unusual.

A: No crab-walkers?

B: No but there was this woman that came in and kept asking me where the aspirin was. I was telling her. I guess she didn’t get it. She acted like she was from this country but I don’t know.

A: I saw a man’s nude belly today. On the bus. He was wearing a half-shirt. Like only the top half. He was just letting it all hang out.

B: Good for him.

A: So what do you want to do? I don’t have to go home until ten tonight.

B: You’re like a teenager.

A: I wish I were. If I were a teenager I would just be silly all the time.

B: Being a teenager was fun.

A: What part did you like the most? Push-ups? Macking on ladies? Wearing Umbras and chasing pigeons outside of McDonalds?

B: No.

A: I had fun for a while but sooner or later you get tired of it.

B: You became post-pubic.

A: Yeah I guess. I should have had a coming out.

B: Yeah you should tell your family.

A: (beat) Uncomfortable silence.

Care Cycle [fragment]

A sitcom that takes place across multiple dimensions. Each episode exists on the same time continuum of the other. The situations change every single episode, depending on what choices the characters make.

There are fifteen characters, introduced in differing frequencies, and across the entire first series. The viewpoint shifts between some of them, with others appearing sporadically.

PRIMARY CHARACTERS:

1. Kimberly Walven, 0, the never-born ghost child of Kelly Peterson Walvern. She died in a barn fire, set by her mother’s jilted lover. She is the sole voice of reason in this universe.

2. Rajiv Vinegar, 28, the only member of his Nepalese family who didn’t become a doctor. He is a constant victim to his sisters’ emasculating comments. His father once tried to disown him, but he didn’t want to pay the lawyer. He lives at home after an accident at the construction site dealt him severe mental trauma.

3. Keerna Vinegar, 30-something. She was supposed to get her next promotion at Barnes and Nobles, but she refused to blow the Afro-American manager. She later admitted that she it was in her moral worldview to fellate a superior to maintain job security, but she is a racist. Divorced.

4. “The Cool,” 18. Cool haircut, cool women’s jacket. Cool everything. He wants to become the best at something, but he always breaks his legs.

5. “Clover” the Cow, 4, “desperately seeking Staghorn.” Lonely. Very, very lonely. Actually a cow.

6. Thomas Baird Hughes, 22. Son of deposed Romanian diplomats. Timber baron.

SECONDARY CHARACTERS

1. Michael Walven, 54. Widower and sole survivor of the fire that claimed his two daughters, one unborn, and his wife.

2. Lester ven Hague, 11, orphan and drug-addicted prostitute. Diseased.

3. Lovely Peterson, “NOT telling,” pancake-make-up’d stripper. Androgynous.

4. God, ∞, Onlooker – possibly responsible for everything, possibly insane. Never seen.

5. Rad Dad, 39, father of “The Cool.” He is just really rad, when you need him to be, and otherwise he stays out of your hair. He buys you cough syrup so you can abuse it. Divorced, but has custody, so “fuck you, bitch!”

6. Fay Shull, 31, self-titled icon. Had tryst with Rad Dad during the hectic months of 2002. Never regretted it, except when he made her get an abortion. Went crazy, but is now getting better. Has switched from heroin to methadone, but sometimes steals car radios just for the fun of it all. And to buy heroin.

7. Forever Kevin, 75, homeless, laid down for a spell under the gazebo in the park, and during the night, moss grew over him and he was trapped. It wriggled into his skin and became part of him. He was nurtured, like a baby, by the cool embrace of the Earth. Only his torso and half of his face are recognizable, but he speaks with the perverted wisdom of generations.

It takes place in the near future, but few things have changed. Biodiesel has been proven economically invalid and unimportant ecologically.

Height w/o Bow

I am six feet and two inches tall.
At least, I used to be.
I shrunk an inch,
And now I am completely unsure what my limits are.
A doctor, six-foot-five by all accounts,
Has fathered a legion of children
Through donations to a sperm bank.
He feels that his genetics allow him this wanton
Though sanctioned, abuse of the institution of fatherhood.

I have friends in a band who are all
Of varying heights,
And despite their individual shortcomings,
Coexist as equals.
What does this tell us?

Sometimes I am jealous
Of their freewheeling road lives,
But I keep my shame at bay
With the knowledge that
They will tell their children that they were in a band,
And their children will find it queer,
On many levels,
And will turn up their neon audio decks
Beaming straight into their half-man half-machine
Mind-soul-brain-interfaces
To drown out the quaint warblings
Of the soon to be dead.

The Bear Hunter

Man: I want to kill a bear. I’m not talking about hunting. I want to murder a bear. I don’t care how it gets in front of me. Hear me out - go get your posse, go into the woods with a couple of stun guns –

Dude: How did I get involved in this?

Man: - and round up some bears. Put them in a truck, drive it to a warehouse, and tie them to the ground. I’ll come in, pull out my double Uzii, and just – pow pow pow pow pow – dead.

Dude: That's horrible. There's no sport in that.

Man: I'd hunt a bear, too. On its own turf, man to man. Just me, in the woods, alone, ‘cause I’m not very fun to be around. Taking shots at deer, ducks, quail. My girlfriend hates when I kill quail, on account of they're cute. I agree with her, they're cute. Deer, deer are the illegal immigrants of the outdoors. If I were a giant I would crush deer with my huge boot. I’m not a giant, so I use a gun. I’ll sit behind a tree at the top of a hill, looking for deer to exterminate and, blap! Blap! Dead.

Dude: Did you just say “blap?”

Man: (Making gun motion) Blap, blap! Shootin’ ‘em dead. F’n deer.

Dude: You can’t say ‘blap,’ nobody says, ‘blap.’ Never ‘blap.’

Dude: I was born this way.

Man: But you’ll help me, right?

Dude: Help you what?

Man: You got me hard — you could at least jack me off or something. It’s not so cool to leave me with a hard on.

Dude: I hate that scene in Boogie Nights.

Man: It’s a metaphor. You gave me a hard-on for man-on-bear violence, and now I need you to help me ejaculate.

Dude: I am not helping you kill a bear.

Man: Oh, hell no, that’s illegal! Don’t say that. Conspiracy. Besides, we have to work our way up.

Dude: Up?

Man: You drive us to the zoo.

Dude: Or down?

Man: We buy tickets, so it looks legit. Just hang around, let people see us. Then we leave, sneak around the fence, snip a hole into the bear pen, lure a bear over with a treat, and then take turns punching it in the face.

Dude: It’d just run away. Or bite your hand off.

Man: You don’t know bears. They’re like illegal immigrants – tenacious. You put a little hole in the fence and drape some bacon around the edges of it. That bear’ll get its head stuck in the hole, we’ll throw some duct tape around its mouth, then it’s punching season.

Dude: That’s messed up.

Man: A couple of months later, we do it again, but this time, the bear gets to use his arms. It’ll be the last time he uses them.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Pieces.txt [excerpt]

"Alternative Rating Systems"
Rated U for “You won’t laugh, this is unfunny on purpose”

Dear Past, From the Future: Don’t make me come back there.

"Someone as stupid as you could think that was true."
"Someone as stupid as I does."

Children are the future of my nut sack.

“Nut Sack 2.0”

I’m sorry, son, but lust isn't greater than love - and your mom is out of the equation.

"Tongue Twister"
"To my niece I bequeath my teeth and a piece of this queef."

What do you call the useless piece of skin at the end of a penis? A foreskin. No, wait, a man. I always mess that one up. I hate being a man.

The betrayal of a syllable: "OH"

"Motto"
"Worthwhile pursuits in prehensile fur-suits"

"I thought you understood."
"They call it senseless violence for a reason."
"We could still go to the newt store."
"That won’t bring my balls back."

Oyster in Love [excerpt from Oyster]

Oyster in Love

“You don’t have to like me. You don’t have to spend time with me. I do. I have to hang around myself twenty-four hours a day. I have to brush these teeth and squeeze the pus out of these pimples. The answer is yes when I think, ‘Did I say that?’ I am the me that I can never not be, and that’s poetry. And I just said that out loud. And I’m not taking it back. I choose to like me. I give back. I do twenty push-ups for every hundred calories I eat in a meal. I read the back of the boxes. I change outfits three times a day and I always wear two pairs of underwear. What kind of underwear do you like? Not what you wear, but what you like. I like snug fabric, but I like to be modest in case I need to change in mixed company. If you want to get sexy try the “tursacken,” which is a g-string, thong, and speedo. Small to large, unless you’re going for the superhero thing, which I understand is gaining traction. I guess back in the day everybody wore briefs but when I was in middle school everyone suddenly stopped wearing them. When I want to feel youthful I wear tight briefs under slack polyblend boxers.”

“What were we talking about before?”

“Before what?”

“Before boxers. Before push-ups.”

“You had asked me why we could never talk about you.” Oyster licked his lips. “I think it’s because you’re uninteresting.”

“I’ve never thought about it that way.”

car [from standup.txt]

I used to have a car, but it broke, so if you mention that you’re driving somewhere I’ll totally come with you and act like I don’t always talk about how nice it is to not have a car anymore.

meat [from standup.txt]

I eat a lot of meat and I’ve found that if I stop eating meat my brain goes into thought loops like “Eat some meat” and “Insert meat.” I feel bad eating vegetables because they are way cuter than a fat pile of meat. I think about the onions and potatoes in the fruit bowl just cuddling and sometimes you find those baby peppers inside of the adult peppers and then you’re just like “I KNEW IT!”

Quick joke. [?] [from standup.txt]

Quick joke. How to you get a sanc ti mony? Judgmentally

Cosmic [from standup.txt]

I try to be a certain laid-back kind of person. I try to be zen, I try to be cosmic. Eventually my goal is to have people to call me Cosmic [REDACTED]. “Hey Cosmic [REDACTED], what’s up, hey, we met that one time, remember?” And I’d be like, no, I don’t remember. Cosmic [REDACTED]. This is a true thing that I want. I really do, I want to be cosmic as shit. Cosmic as a big smooth shiny turd squirting through the universe.

My friends met a guy named Cosmic Tim once. I know it’s not cool if it was your friends that met someone, but I’m two degrees away from the dude. How far away are you? Three degrees, maybe four, but I'm sure he gets around. He’s known across the galaxy. As a huge burnout.

"Independent PSA Awards"

Meth makes people look like velociraptors - can be tailored pro or con.

The Forever Vault

A private venture solicits information from people. It will be preserved as long as humanly possible. Each person only gets one short paragraph, and it costs a moderate fee. It is decried as a scam, but becomes a popular institution over decades. It is made public, then privatized again. There are data/identity thefts, selling of "influences," and return memes (people pay other people to write their paragraph about them, but then others find out and start adding warring paragraphs [permanent Wiki]). People quickly run out of space, and become obsessed with getting more. The rules are changed to allow multiple paragraphs, then more. Storage space has become a non-issue so the vault becomes a useless information dump. Control of the text changes hands, and the integrity of the data is under debate. The project fails. A group of people take the core of the information, the first millions of paragraphs, and reproduce it as much as possible. It is sent throughout space, in beams and rays and physical objects. It goes through wormholes and irregularities in space, ending up in far dimensions. It is what it is.

I literally punched

"Sorry, excuse my language. I’m a veteran."

"What war?"

"The Korean War."

"Aren’t you a little young to have fought in the Korean War?"

"I mean the secret war that we have been waging with North Korea. That TV Station in Seoul that plays exclusively live Internet war games is actually broadcasting war footage with Final Cut filters over it. It’s madness. I literally punched Kim Jong-Il in the face, twice. It turned out that it was just one of his doubles - and a child with an unfortunate bouffant hairdo."

perspective

“You were just staring at me in my house.”
“Yeah, well from my perspective you're staring at me.”
"I'm not jerking off."
"That ain't the only thing wrong with you."

transference

This your place? You live here alone? It's so spartan. Is this a loveseat? You have three loveseats but no couch. Six people could be very uncomfortable here. I mean, you might as well get a divan, it would be such an improvement. You know, a divan, one of those chair-beds with one armchair arm and the rest of it's a bed. A bed for one, or for two intimates. They're the psychiatrist chairs. You sort of lie down, but if you wanted to you could sit, like you are finding your assertiveness. But then you could lie down on your side and watch a DVD too. You could watch Girl, Interrupted and talk about your feelings. Or you could fuck. You could seduce your shrink and afterwards you'd both blame it on transference. I like to fuck but not with my therapist. She's a hot lady but I don't go for ladies, or even for hot. I like guys like you - unattractive guys who known their own dicks. I look at you and I can tell that you've jerked off ten times this week already. You probably thought you could bring me over here and show me your dolls and your work would be done. I'm sorry to tell you this is just the beginning. Wait, wait - can we just be quiet for a minute? ... I need to think. It makes me feel warm. Some people don't like it but I do. Do you? Yes, but - sorry, I keep interrupting you. Sometimes I think I interrupt people because they're boring, but really it's just because I'm a narcissist. Do you know what narcissist means? Yeah well a lot of people don't.