The Schoolmarm

    I admit now that perhaps I was wrong in calling the schoolmarm a dried up old hag. But it’s not as though I called her a ‘bitch.’ It’s not like I killed anyone. The last I checked, the schoolmarm was in stable condition, and there’s no way to prove that my calling her a dried up old hag led to the outburst that caused the heart attack.
    So, sorry, but I was almost sure she wasn’t within earshot, because she is really old and old people aren’t that good at hearing. Really, too, I was only using that term, “dried up old hag,” to liven up my story, the one that ends with me exclaiming, “So I said, sucks to you, ya’ old bitch!”
    That one always got a lot of laughs from the guys. And even though none of the guys were around, I had to practice telling the story some time so, when the guys did arrive, I could tell my “the schoolmarm is an old bitch” story with perfect rhythm and inflection--for optimal laughs.
    That term might have been harsh.
    Then again, the schoolmarm’s skin really is quite dry, so the dried up part at least is accurate.
    As, obviously, is the “old” part. A hag is traditionally thought of as a mean old woman, so that part is true too--as evidenced by her yelling at me for calling her a dried up old hag.
    No, I can’t rightly be blamed for this one. No one can, I reckon. Except for that schoolmarm, the dried up old hag.

Sophie

No sooner had Sophie stepped back and said, “Did you just bite me?” than I realized, probably, I shouldn’t have bitten her.
    Oh, this damned pride of mine, I thought. I could have pinched her, or poked her a little bit--a bite! What was I? Some kind of beast? Some uncivilized hound incapable of discussing my problems like an adult human? I tried to say “I’m sorry,” but the words wouldn’t come, so, instead, I put my arms out at my sides and made a face that seemed to me to say, “Uh, I really lost control there--my bad.”
    Sophie had tears in her eyes, and the words still wouldn’t come. I got down on all fours and nuzzled her bite wound with my mouth and nose area, but again she pulled away. “No!” she said.
    “What have I become?” I thought. “Oh, woe is me, he who bites and occasionally scratches to solve petty disputes!”
    Whether she was hurt more by the emotional trauma or the bite itself, I did not know. Probably the bite, though, because I bit her really hard. Still, she was hurt--that much was certain. Ashamed, I laid on the floor and whimpered my penance, to which she came over and scratched me under my beard.
    “It’s okay,” she said, in infantile tones. “But you can’t just bite me.”

    Driving home that night, I still felt pretty bad about that whole “Biting Sophie” thing. And even though I’ll never agree with her assertion that Rocky II was better than Rocky III, I know now that that’s no excuse.

Knocky Knock Knock Knock

Like most people, I used to adhere to the old truism “don’t knock it ‘til you try it” with all the zeal of a dog clothes manufacturer in the week leading up to the big dog parade, or Stalin. But whenever someone says that, it usually means that whatever you may be knocking deserves to be knocked, or at least prodded at a little. I’m pretty sure I can knock eating a railroad tie, for example. Have I tried it?
    Sure. But I was pretty sure of its knockability before then.
    Then of course I got drunk, and, before I knew it, there I was at the kitchen table, a large, splintery railroad tie stuffed between two slices of potato bread and a blend of six Italian cheeses.
    I was about halfway through with the sandwich when, with a mouthful of wood and bread and cheese I thought, next time, I’ll just knock railroad tie eating beforehand and save myself and everyone around me the trouble.
    I’ve only tried railroad tie eating three or four times since then, and I can tell you, it’s not an acquired taste! Aside from the splinters and unpleasant texture, you have to deal with the angry people down at the railroad commission knocking at your door at all hours.
    So before you go stealing railroad ties and eating them, just know, brother, it ain’t worth it! (Not even with delicious potato bread and a succulent blend of exotic cheeses!)

Some Other Things I’ll Knock Before Trying

• Live grenade juggling
• Broken glass swimming
• Human trafficking
• Chivalry
• Paella
• Scrapbooking
• Hornet snorting
• Bear raping

Twizzler Beard: A Delicious Tragedy

    One morning, as I awoke from my anxious dreams of half-man, half-moose hybrid beasts, I discovered that on the pile of newspapers on which I sleep, my beard had been turned from a regular beard made of hair, to one made of Twizzlers candy straws. I lay there on my back, a cherry scent emanating from my sugary mustache, my sticky facial locks sticking to my upper chest, the dog chewing at my face rather contentedly.
    “What’s happened to me?” I thought. My beard supplies, now rendered useless by my metamorphosis, lay on my dresser: my beard comb, my beard wax, my beard blowdryer, all suited for a normal man’s beard. My trinkets, which I liked to carry around in my beard sat on the dresser as well, and I quickly realized that, unless I wished my trinkets to be forever sticky, I would have to find a new means of conveying them about town. “Oh well,” I thought. “At least I got all these Twizzlers.”
    I would quickly discover that the notion of a Twizzler beard, much like the Rodin sculpture composed of peanut butter (which was eaten by Nazis in 1943) or that fountain in Rome made of hot links (eaten by Visigoths in 327 CE), is tragic by its very nature--it's beauty being true but always ephemeral, and delicious. As the old timers say, “You can’t have your Twizzler beard and eat it too.”
    For breakfast, I ate the left side of my beard, and saved the right for lunch. I carefully tweezed off my Twizzler mustache and had that for dinner. By midnight, my Twizzler beard was but a memory. As I lay in bed that night, chewing on the goatee part of my Twizzler beard, the last remaining piece of my tasty candy beard, I pondered the meaning of this peculiar development:
    “Will my Twizzler beard ever grow back,” I wondered hopefully; “If so, will it come in different flavors, or will it remain the standard cherry?”; “Do girls like to eat Twizzlers?”
    And also: “My stomach hurts.”

A Serious Story

Dick Harden hated double-entendre.

It was for this reason that he dropped out of wood shop in high school and skipped college, the destination of most of his filthy-minded classmates, to take a job as a nut picker down at the Springdale Nut Farm. Shortly thereafter, the tawdry sense of humor prevalent among the migrant workers at Springdale preempted him to put down nuts for good.

Old Dick got around a good bit in those days: clams, kielbasa, pork butt. He sold them all down at Richard’s Sack & Suds, during his stint as the boner at the deli there. He laid carpet, he campaigned for Mike Hunt (the unsuccessful democratic mayoral candidate), he even spent some time as a bosom presser down at Wang’s Laundromat.

Dick was a ladies man. Around the time I met him, he was dating a pretty young thing named Eileen Ulick. After that it was Sharon Cox, and Betty Humpter after her. None of them worked out, as they always left a trail of snickering jokesters in their wake. No, Dick wasn’t one for double-entendre, or those who seemed to so enjoy it.

Dick once pulled me aside at the old textile factory--where we worked together as muff winders--and said to me, “The waters of bad taste are threatening to break the levees of decency in this country, and I’m not going to stand for it, Jimmy. I’ll get my finger in that dyke yet!”

That day was the last time I saw Dick. He was killed in an electrical accident while working as an impregnation inspector for the city. Earlier this year I visited his grave to pay my respects. His epitaph read, simply, “Dick Harden: Forever An Upright Man.”

How Fergie And I Are Different

Fergie: A woman
Scott: A man

Fergie: Four top five singles
Scott: Zero top five singles (yet)

Fergie: Okay Calves
Scott: Great calves

Fergie: “Where is the love?”
Scott: “Where’s my fucking hamburger?”

Fergie: So three-thousand and eight
Scott: So two-thousand and late

Fergie: Married Josh Duhamel
Scott: Proposed to Josh Duhamel, but was turned down

Fergie: Has a feeling that tonight’s gonna be a good night
Scott: Has a feeling tonight will be mediocre at best

Fergie: No wiener
Scott: Wiener

A Cry From The West

    When the shells went silent, Paul lit a cigarette against the tremble in his hands. He thought briefly of his family back in Tulsa, Ma, Pa, Dooly, Little Pete, Big Doug and Fat Sherri, wondered what they were doing, if they were thinking of him. This time last year, he was the star left end of Tulsa Senior High. Now, he was dirty, cold and scared, an 18-year-old kid in a new and frightening world. But, accepting his duty and his fate maybe, he gritted his teeth and went over the top to launch a grenade at the German line.
    The explosion shook the ground and he hunkered back down into the dugout as chunks of earth rained from the blackening sky. As what remained of the sun began to set, and after a lull in the chattering of rifles, he took out a letter he’d gotten from his sweetheart. “Dearest Paul,” it said--and then gunfire from a lingering Mauser rifle. “Jerry son of a bitch!” Paul grunted, and reached for his sidearm. And then, “Ow, papercut! Ow, ow, ow!”
    Later that night, Paul stopped crying. Then America won the war.

Fancy Rats

“I’d like one rat, please,” I told the man. His name was Mario, his name tag said, and he looked at me for a moment as though he were trying to solve a case on one of those procedural crime shows, before waving me over to a corner, near a noisy bird cage. “Do you want a regular rat?” he asked. “Or a fancy rat?”
    Frankly, I was stymied by the man’s question. Throughout my life, I’d attached a great many adjectives to the great many rats I’d come in contact with, but never did I use a word like “fancy” or even “ornamental.”
    “I’ll just show you one of each, and then you can decide for yourself,” the man said, taking note of the confused look on my face.
    As we walked to the rat station, I imagined little rats, wearing little top hats, little monocles and little tuxedos with tails on them. Maybe one of the rats goes to the other one and says, “Tally ho, Gerald. Would you have the time?” And Gerald, one of the fancier of the fancy rats, would produce the time piece from his coat pocket while demurring, “I say, why not just look at the clock tower?” The first rat, named Stanley, would say, “Old chum, it’s these blasted cataracts,” and Gerald would say “Well, as you like it, it’s half three.”
    Later that evening, Gerald and his wife Elaine would go to Stanley’s for an elegant dinner party, complete with Stanley’s wife Marie’s famed shepherd’s pie. They’d drink tea out of dainty chinaware and joke about politics and society, and what’s to be done with these working class rabble-rousers?
    After a grand and lovely evening, the couples would bid each other adieu, by saying, with a doff of the cap, “I bid you adieu.”
    It was all very elegant.
    But when we got to the case, there were no timepieces or tuxedos or top hats. Some of the fancy rats wore overalls, some of them t-shirts and shorts. Seemingly each piece of raiment was covered in paint. One of the fancy rats had a little Mercedes, but it couldn’t have been any less than 15 years old--the rest drove pickup trucks. I did notice some art on the walls of their single-story, Spanish mission-style homes, but they looked like those cheap reprints you buy from a frame store.
    “Well, what do you think sir?” the man asked.
    “They’re kind of fancy,” I said, defeated. “I guess.”

Behind You! Story Nuggets

Love In The Time of Garbage

I was down at the city dump, spinning around and making myself dizzy. After a while, as I am wont to do occasionally when spinning in circles, I fell to the ground. When I looked up, I noticed the most beautiful flower, standing proudly among the mountains of garbage. I considered its beauty for a moment, and wished I had a camera. “Wow,” I thought to myself, “It really smells in here.”

Man's Man

      “Let’s go out tonight,” Dave said. “Get nice and hammered.” He heard Luke pause, and knew that, once again, he would be drinking alone. “Come on man,” he continued. “It’ll be fun.”
    Luke explained that he already had plans. “I’m going to take Denise out to a nice dinner at Il Dulce, then bring her back and crack open a nice bottle of wine. Then, I’m going to take her to bed, tear her clothes off and fuck her, long and hard. After that, I’m going to take her to the shower and fuck her again. After that, we’ll make some ice cream sundaes. Then fuck.”
    Dave sighed. “Dude, you’re so gay now.”

More Better

Even before he saw the woman, standing there on the train tracks, he knew trouble was afoot. He heard the chug-a-lug of the engine and saw the look of obliviousness on her face. Maybe she was deaf, or maybe she had one of those stupid bluetooth things in her ear. Whatever the case, as he stood on the other side of the station, he knew he had to call out to her, let her know that she was in harm’s, and the train’s way. He cupped his hands around his mouth and licked his lips. Just as the word “Hey--” was about to leave him, he remembered that day his father took him aside, and said: “Never raise your voice to a woman.” He always was a stickler for the rules.

The Stripey Horses

    My friend Jeff once gave me some advice that changed my life. It was so eloquent, so beautifully stated that I stood up in my chair and hit myself over the head with my shoe, all while going, “Wowza wowza wowza” and so forth. Anyway, I’m pretty sure it had something to do with zebras.

 

The Basket Question

    They always say never put all your eggs in one basket. But what if you can only afford one basket? What if your other baskets are damaged, and structurally unreliable? What if your arm got cut off somehow, and, in your condition you can only carry one basket? How did your arm get cut off? Maybe it was in a basket-making accident. So really, what has all this basket talk gotten you? A bunch of shitty, unusable baskets and a lopped off arm. That’s why, whenever someone tells me to not put all my eggs in one basket, I look them square in the eye and say, “Fuck you.”

Hiding Places

Whenever shopping for a new home, I think it’s a good idea to ask the realtor about hiding places right off the bat. But you can’t just ask your realtor about hiding places--you have to pull him or her aside, lower your voice, and in a sexy whisper, ask “Could you show me the hiding places?” while moving your index finger from the tip of your nose out toward his or her face, and raising your eyebrows up and down, and then up again. This’ll let them know that you know your hiding places and, failing to do that, the realtor will show you the obvious hiding places--the cupboard, the attic, maybe even some crawlspace--while leaving out the really good stuff.
    I recently moved from a two-story colonial. It was a beautiful home in a good neighborhood, but like I told Carol that November morning, “not enough hiding places.” I need crevices, cubby holes, underground tunnels, maybe even an oubliette, for what we pros call “permanent hiding.”
    Not a lot of homes have oubliettes these days. It’s much more practical to look for cellar doors, trap doors and false doors. I also find it necessary to tug on all the books on the book shelves to check for secret rooms, which, I can tell you, are just tops for hiding from chores or work or packs of dogs, whatever.
    The realtor may find this practice a bit odd, but that’s fine. Just laugh and say something like, “Gotta find the hiding places somehow, goober.” Calling them goober will let them know that you’re an aficionado, and, after that, you can continue your search in peace. Remember to check any candle sticks, statuettes and electronic eye scanners as well, as these have also been known to lead to secret rooms.
    “My dream house has fine columns, French doors, and more secret rooms than non-secret rooms,” I explained to Carol last week. “It has tunnels leading from room to room, and a fireman’s pole, in case I need to move from an upstairs hiding place to a downstairs hiding place quickly; it has seven dog houses, only one actually containing the dog. The other six: You guessed it, hiding places. Hopefully, one of these hiding places will have a scary skeleton in it--that’s the sign of a really good hiding place, you see--”
    Carol cut me off.
    “Why, exactly, do you need all these hiding places?”
    We stared at each other for a moment, and I turned, to run away.
    “I’ll tell you,” I yelled over my shoulder, “If you can find me.”

Thoughts On My Failed Election Bid

I promised you wealth. I promised you prosperity. I promised you a healthy steed in every driveway and a nice roasted baby on the table each Thanksgiving Day--I realize now, this is where I may have gone wrong. My typist was supposed to type “turkey” but, a few scotch and sevens later, “turkey” turned to “baby” and my loyal constituency thinned. I can’t rightly blame you. I mean, who wants to eat a baby on Thanksgiving? That’s weird.
    Under my leadership, you would only have eaten baby under the most dire of circumstances. Or on “National Baby Eating Day” (a holiday that you won’t enjoy under my opponent Ron Summers). I tried to explain this to my typist the dingbat, but she was probably preoccupied by thoughts of which mascara to buy or something. Women--am I right? Okay, so maybe my stupid dingbat typist cost me the election.
    Or maybe it was that some were turned off by my idea of personally checking all the “sexy women” of the town for breast cancer. Words like “pervert” and “miscreant” were thrown around like baby carcasses on “National Baby Eating Day,” so, Oh, I’m so sorry, I care about women’s health--excuuuussse me! Do you see Ron Summers taking such initiative in matters of women’s health? Hell. No. Because that guy sucks, his wife is chubby and I’m pretty sure he’s a pervert and a miscreant.
    Or maybe my loss was the result of a so-called “sex tape” which depicted “me” making love to a tube of so-called “Gogurt.” But when have matters between a man and a portable dairy product been of any relevance to anyone but the man, the portable dairy product, the refrigerator and my friend Rod’s camera?
    “Oh,” you might be asking yourself, “but what about that thing with the spray paint?”
    Yes, fine citizen, I have an answer for that too, and it goes something like this: shut your fat face. Why I broke into that hardware store is my own business. Maybe I thought there were some terrorists in the metallic spray paint aisle. Maybe, after locating them in that aisle, they forced me to spray some of that spray paint into a sock and sniff it, so I could never identify them--a tactic that obviously worked because, honestly, I couldn’t describe them to you today.
    But believe you me, they were totally there, as sure as my no-age-of-consent policy would have freed oppressed lovers forever.
    Then, maybe it wasn’t my shortcomings that led to my loss, but Ron Winters’ prowess. I find that hard to believe. Ron Summers is a loser, and I know this because I went to high school with him. He tried out for basketball in the ninth grade and got cut on the first day! Then, the next week, his girlfriend Sally French broke up with him in the lunchroom--Haha! And did you see what he wore to the City Park opening? An orange shirt with a red cap. What an asshole.
    Well congratulations, townspeople, because that’s your new mayor. A guy who can’t even make the freshman basketball team, a guy whose wife is a chub-monster, a guy who (probably) suffers from erectile dysfunction. Good job, guys.  Sweet.

The Legend of the Really Big Duck

Ask any local about the legend of the really big duck, and they’ll likely give you a detailed personal account, each varying wildly from the last. Some say the really big duck isn’t actually all that big, but makes a habit of standing near the smaller ducks, so as to perpetuate his legend. Others say, indeed, that the really big duck is as real as the creek he’s said to live in, and the dentures he is said to have stolen from Rue Johnson, the town’s oldest resident.
    What the really big duck has done with those dentures is a question always on the tip of the townspeople’s tongues, and the Really Big Duck Awareness Council frequently finds themselves in the midst of a heated debate over the matter. “A duck! With dentures!” Peter Feldman, Council president was overheard yelling at last week’s meeting. Feldman then composed himself, and sat down at the table. “I think we need to consider the option that this duck is not only really big, but also a renegade.”
    Feldman is of a small minority that believes the really big duck to be a menace and a criminal. Most townspeople, meanwhile, believe that he is a sort of benign prankster, with some going so far as to call him “The really big prankster duck” or “Pranky, the really big duck.”
    The size of the duck is the source of another debate, even among the most staunch believers. Some say he is around the size of a goose, while others say he is more resemblant of a turkey, only without the red droopy thingy on his beak and more duckish. The mystery stems from the absence of any physical evidence of the really big duck; a grainy picture, purportedly of the really big duck, was found and quickly discredited in 1989 when it was discovered that the photo actually showed several smaller ducks taped together. Feldman believes the really big duck was behind this ruse, as well. “Oh totally,” he said. “Sly bastard that really big duck.”
    Oliver Daniels, an out of work carphone salesman, is the latest resident said to have had a run-in with the really big duck, and his account differs greatly from that of the Really Big Duck Awareness Council. Indeed, Daniels says the really big duck is the consummate gentleman.
    “I was walking along the creek, when I saw a really big duck, and it clicked: That’s the really big duck! Luckily, I had a slice of bread in my pocket. I gave it to him and he quacked, and then politely paddled off to join the other, more reasonably-sized ducks. He even shared the bread with the others! Class act all the way.”
    The RBDAC refutes Daniels’ account, with Feldman saying that, “had [Daniels] truly encountered the really big duck, his bloated corpse would be face down in the creek, his pockets emptied, his eyes pecked out and riddled with denture marks.”
    The theories abound, and the arguments rage on over the legend of the really big duck; Really big or really, really big? Mean or nice? Cold-blooded denture thief and potential murderer or funny prankster? These debates are old as time itself, and they won’t likely be settled anytime soon; but at least one thing is universally agreed upon: this is no medium-sized duck.

A Funny Story From The Deli Aisle

    Carol walked out of the bathroom wearing a solemn face, took my hand and told me she was pregnant. For whatever reason, the news made me hungry--but not for pork or beef--I had to have some chicken salad, and I had to have some chicken salad now. I’d put it on some potato bread, maybe, or Jewish rye. “Hold that thought,” I told Carol, and sprinted out of the apartment, grabbing her keys on the way.
    It had never occurred to me what a funny place the deli aisle could be; one minute, you’re eyeing some good old fashioned honeybaked ham, and the next you find yourself face to face with something called “turkey bologna.” What’s that all about? Those things are totally different!
    Also, it’s funny to use meat products to initiate conversations with strangers. “Hey, stop hamming it up over there!” I said to a pretty lady holding a package of pre-sliced ham. She looked confused by my witticism, so I pointed at the guy holding the turkey breast-- “Hey, get a load of this turkey,” I exclaimed. The woman looked back at me and smiled a little smile, and I made a mental note that, next time, I could do something funny with the “breast” part of turkey breast.
    It was then that I noticed a group of mimes arguing silently over which meat product they should buy. One of the mimes held a pack of bratwursts, and was tugging on an invisible rope as if to say, “I’m pulling for hot links in this argument;” another seemed to be trapped in a box, which I think was a metaphor for how much he wanted that ham steak he was holding; a third casually leaned against an invisible structure as if to say, “Eh.” Now, none of this actually happened, but it very well could have--the deli aisle is a funny place, after all, and mimes need coldcuts, too.
    While I was thinking of funny things for mimes to do in the deli aisle, a new group of customers had entered and were perusing the meats. I was going to repeat my “hamming it up” joke to a hirstute elderly man, but noticed he was actually carrying pastrami. Making a mental note to think of some funny pastrami jokes, I left, never realizing that I forgot the chicken salad!
    Oh well, I thought to myself on the drive home, just another wacky day in the deli aisle!

Notes on Malliavin's Absolute Continuity Lemma

--What is this?

--Who or what is Malliavin?

--Where’d my sandwich go?

--Research “measure theory.” See if it has something to do with measuring things.

--If that guy in the sweater took my sandwich, I’m going to poison him

--Disregard last note. Guy in sweater’s sandwich is pastrami. Mine was turkey.

--What is this?! Aaaaahhhhh!

--The professor looks just like Donald Sutherland in Animal House, only is a fat blond woman, and no mustache.

--That guy’s sandwich looks really good.

--Later, buy some pastrami.

--Thought I saw girl sitting across from me’s panties. Turned out to be sleeve of jacket. Still kind of cool.

--Hey, you know what would make a good movie? Adam Sandler plays a guy with a pet gorilla, and they go on adventures together. In the end, the gorilla kills Adam Sandler. Then he cries when he realizes he killed his best friend.

--Guy next to me is wearing glasses--must be smart. Copy his notes?

-- The sum and difference of two absolutely continuous functions are also absolutely continuous. If the two functions are defined on a bounded closed interval, then their product is also absolutely continuous.

Grizzly Junction: A Restaurant For Bears

    After six months, it was clear that Grizzly Junction was doomed to fail. The restaurant business is a tough one; the restaurant business for bears is damn near impossible, a lesson that Pinky Wright, proprietor of the nation’s first bear restaurant was learning the hard way.
    The restaurant itself hardly resembled the gleaming edifice that drew bears of every sort to Portland for the grand opening in early April. Piles of berry-marked bear feces spangled the floor now, and claw marks tore through the oak doors. “I swear,” one of the employees overheard Pinky saying one evening, “I thought bears knew how to use doors.”
    The door conundrum was but a fraction of Pinky’s troubles. The bears seemed to have no respect for the one plate per customer policy of the trash buffet, and all but ignored the poached salmon--of which Pinky was particularly proud.
    Then there were the rogue bears, who, ignorant or dismissive of the clearly posted hours of service sign, routinely smashed in the windows at Grizzly Junction for a late-night snack. After the first incidence of a break-in, Pinky found the culprits sleeping inside, and called the police. The police told him to call the Parks Department, and, an hour or so later, a group of men and women in green uniforms took the rogue bears out in a net, and released them into the wild. They returned the next night, undeterred.
    The bears that did pay were poor tippers, and those were rare. More often, this or that grizzly or black bear would rise from his place at the table, let out a guttural moan and take to clawing at the door as if to say, “How do I get out of this place?” Pinky would confront them and, sometimes, they’d stare back at him, confused; but more often, they’d really maul the shit out of him.   
    So maybe it was the maulings; maybe it was the bear’s inability to use a door, or their lax and stingy approach to tipping.
    In any case, in late October, Pinky came to the heartrending decision to close the doors of Grizzly Junction forever. As the men loaded the still-pristine urinals into a truck, as he watched his life’s work being gutted and torn asunder, Pinky cried.
    Just then, a leviathan grizzly ambled over to him and grunted softly. Pinky looked up, and the bear stood erect on his hind legs, towering over Pinky yet looking in his eyes as if to say, “Thank you, Pinky. On behalf of all bears--thank you.”
    Pinky reached to shake the bear’s considerable paw. The bear looked confused at first, and then reached out, and mauled him.

With Regards To Mannheim

You look at her and she looks at you, your mouths curling at the corners. As if on cue, you erupt in laughter, you hahahaing and her heheheing together in an intimate sharing of experience. She slaps your back and you pound your knee. She covers her mouth with her hand and you begin coughing, from laughing too hard. Milk would shoot out of your noses, if you happened to be drinking milk--luckily, you weren’t. For a moment, it seems as though this moment will last forever, this blithe indulgence of humanity, this otherworldly sense of uncontrollable joy.
    Then, the woman dusts herself off and gets back on her bike. The moment is over, but the laughter hangs in the air.

President Everyman

For centuries, the American Presidency has been a sort of highfalutin position filled by men who don’t like pornography or skee-ball or talking to people who are covered in vomit--unless they’re babies, and even then they proceed with caution, so as not to contract what scientists call “pukey-breath.”
    The day I met the president started like any other, with a stranger nudging me awake with his foot and saying, “Hey, get out of here! This is a place of business!” I ambled on down to Doug’s Tavern and ordered a pint, and Doug told me he couldn’t legally serve me alcohol until ten. I cursed at Doug under my breath, per my routine, and headed over to the gas station.
    It was there that it happened.
    A light-skinned black fellow sat on the curb, leaned against a bindle, smoking a cigarette. He was dressed like any old Joe Schmo, with an American flag t-shirt tucked into a pair of streaked sweatpants, two mismatched, worn-out flip-flops dangling off his crusted feet. I asked him for a cigarette and he slurred something about Vietnam. “Yeah,” I said, “just terrible.”
    I knew he was our president by his easy air of urbanity, the way he slurred carefully chosen words with conviction, and, of course, his patriotic t-shirt. I saluted him, and he saluted back. I said, “It’s an honor to be in your presence,” and he said, “Can you spare some change? I’m trying to get bus fare home.”
    Imagine that! A bus! And all this time, I’d just assumed presidents rode in limousines and jet planes.
    I emptied my pockets, and gave every last dime to the President. He thanked me and wished me a happy birthday for some reason. I shook his sooty hand and bid him adieu. He pulled a forty of Colt .45 from his bindle and took a long swig.
    “Hey, how’d he get malt liquor so early?” I thought to myself, and then, chuckling under my breath, “Well--I guess being of the leader of the free world has its perks!”

The Treasure Hunt

    It was on day three of our treasure hunt, our white t-shirts  transparent with sweat as we walked into the kitchen, that Dad asked us, “What are you boys up to?”
    “Trying to find buried treasure,” we told him.
    “Oh,” he said. “And what makes you so sure there’s buried treasure in the backyard?”
    We looked at each other for a moment and shrugged.
    “Well, who knows?” Dad said with a warm smile. “No sense in not trying, right?”
    We had dug up most of the backyard--Mom’s flower garden, Dad’s chives, and the pet graveyard, by the end of day four, with nothing to show for it but some scary pet corpses in shoeboxes. Plodding into the house, Dad asked us, “How’s the treasure hunt coming?”
    “Bad,” we told him. “It’s been four days, and no treasure.”
    Dad laughed and told us to keep at it. “You may be on the verge of a big discovery,” he said winking.
    The next morning, we agreed that day five would be our last. After breakfast, we gathered our shovels and all the dead animal boxes, as Mom instructed, to put them back into the ground. The early sun was reaching over the trees in the east, beating down on our slumped backs from afar, when Jeff called out to us. “Guys, I found something!”
    Sure enough, when we got over to Jeff, he was holding a small wooden chest. We opened it to find twenty-three crumpled dollar bills, a cheap locket with Mom’s picture inside, and a fallow note staring back at us. In Dad’s handwriting, the note read: “Aaaargh, matey, If ye have found this trunk, ye have found the booty of John Redbeard, the most feared and infamous pirate in all of the seven seas.”
    We ran away from home that day, not because we thought we could live on twenty-three dollars and a cheap locket, but because we were pretty sure Dad was a pirate.

The Condescending Octopus: My Response

   Don’t think I don’t see you in there, looking so happy with yourself. Yeah, you think I’m inferior to you because I only have two arms and you have eight; you have three hearts as compared to my one; you have a hard beak, whereas I have no beak at all. But I’m here to tell you, octopus, that you can suck it.
    Hey what’s your life span? Oh, yeah, five years, six tops? You know what that means? It means that I’ll be here long after you die, to dance on your stupid, watery octopus grave, you boneless freak.
    Yeah, yeah, you can squeeze through very tight spaces. So can cockroaches, and you don’t see them swimming about in fancy tanks, sucking on the glass with their tentacles and acting like this whole scene is beneath them. So, I’ll say it again: you can suck it.
    It says on this plaque that you eat mostly small fish and crustaceans. I could eat that stuff too, if I wanted, but I don’t. I eat cheeseburgers. Morning, noon and night--cheeseburgers. You probably don’t even know what a cheeseburger is, and frankly, that’s kind of sad. Sometimes I feel like I should pity, and not hate you, but then I look in there at your beady, condescending eyes.
    You can squirt ink? Whoa, stop the fucking presses! This guy can squirt ink!
    I’m being sarcastic, captain dick-arms. You think I’m impressed by your stupid ink squirting? Watch this: (spits tobacco juice at the octopus tank). Check, and mate. I bet you didn’t think I could squirt things, huh? I bet you thought you had the squirting-stuff market cornered. Shows what you know, shit for brains.
    I wish you could escape this cage, so I could show everyone else at the aquarium what a shiftless fraud you are, but you’re too spineless. Get it? You really don’t have a spine!
    No, but seriously, escape that cage and I’ll give you a red-ass beat-down. I’ll grab one or two of your arms and pummel you mercilessly with them, and then how silly will you look? All the other octopi will be in there ashamed, trying to pass themselves off as squid and whispering amongst themselves about what a disappointment you are. Which is probably why you’ll never come out here and face the music; because, aside from your beak and sucker-arms, and ink-squirting you have only your sense of self-importance to hide behind.
   Oh, I’m on to your game octopus, and I’ll play along--for now.

That's Baseball

Going into the bottom of the fifth, a steady rain falling, coach gathered us in front of the dugout. “Alright boys,” he said, “We’ve got a five-run lead and rain on the horizon. Three outs, it’s official and we can hit the titty-bar winners.”
    Riled by the promise of drier, nakeder conditions with more booze, the boys took the field, charging across the soggy diamond, raindrops exploding on the bills of their caps. On the first pitch, the Kangaroos’ first baseman popped to third. One out.
    After going up in the count, the next guy hit a long drive that seemed to die abruptly at the warning track, where it fell into the glove of our center fielder. Two outs.
    At the cusp of victory, the team exploded in encouragement, slapping their gloves and yelling in at the wide-eyed freshman pitcher. He wiped his hand on the side of his pants, took a deep breath and stepped on the rubber. A fastball on the inside half, taken for a strike. A slider to the outside, swung at and missed. At 0-2, the encouragement grew from fervid to ferocious, the infielders and outfielders screaming as if to will the 18-year-old hurler to victory.
    The kid took the sign, nodding in agreement. Just as he came set, though, a pack of prehistoric lizard-men leaped the wall in left field. There was a gasp from the crowd as the man-lizards began attacking the players on both teams indiscriminately, tearing flesh from bone and running around in that funny way they do. One of them picked up our third baseman, threw him in the air and caught him again, which was kind of neat. 
    After just a few minutes of carnage, they were gone, reptilian shrieks fading in the distance--but there still weren’t enough players left to finish the game. The surviving umpire broke the news to coach, that the game would have to be made up at a later date, on grounds of a raptor attack. "One minute, you're a strike away from the win--the next your boys are being torn apart by a pack of vicious lizard-men," coach said, tucking a pinch of Copenhagen in his lip. "Welp, that's baseball."

A Few Words On My New Life As A Cattle Rustler

Like any career I’d imagine, cattle rustling has its share of ups and downs, but like any foolish optimist entering an exciting new position in life, I concentrated solely on the bright side of things. Oh, I thought it’d be all fun and excitement, prostitutes in fanciful gowns and free cows. Little did I know, being a cattle rustler in the 21st century is tough work.

First, as a resident of Dallas, Texas, there’s not much cattle to be rustled. Any good beef will require a drive of a half hour or more, and my standard GMC pick-up can hold one or maybe two cows at a time--four to six calves, depending on their age. Seven if I let one ride in the passenger seat next to me. As you might imagine, this makes for some long days in “the biz” (what we cattle rustlers call the business of cattle rustling).

Next are those pesky lynch mobs. Now, I’ve never actually seen a lynch mob in action, and I don’t intend to; but they are as much a part of the business as the smell of manure, large hats and chaps. Every cattle rustler, upon embarking on this career path, must acknowledge the fact that if you’re caught, you’ll be pursued and strung up by the torch-wielding townspeople, who will then have a hoe-down around your cooling corpse. But, as the great French cattle rustler Marcel LeChance would say, C’est la vie, as a cattle rustler.

Another problem is the lack of space to keep the cows I’ve rustled. My apartment is around 1,000 square feet, which would be fine for an accountant or a numismatist, but not so much someone in the business of transporting large bovines to and fro. I wish I would have given more thought to this before becoming a cattle rustler. I doubt it would’ve changed my mind, but the smell of manure and constant lowing is becoming something of a nuisance for my roommate. Imagine my embarrassment last week when, after rustling a few heifers, I returned home to find no room for them. Finally, I had to cut my losses and release them in the parking lot. (Which reminds me, if anyone sees a cow running amok in North Dallas, it’s mine. Give it back.)

To this point, you may be thinking that cattle rustling is miserable, thankless work. I can tell you now, though, that a life of absconding with cows that aren’t yours certainly has its perks.

For starters--and I’ll write this in italics so you know I’m not kidding--All the milk you can drink. Ditto for beef, but my roommate has enacted a “no-slaughtering-cows-in-the-apartment” rule, obliging me to go the “traditional route,” and leave the slaughtering to the fellows in the slaughterhouses.

It is true that the ladies love cattle rustlers, but then you go back to your place and they're all "It smells in here;" "I just stepped in cow shit;" "Hey, what's this in my drink?"--which is a contradiction when you think about it.

Sometimes I wonder if I wasn’t better off at my old job, as the CFO of a Fortune 500 company. Sure, I had a nice salary, an apartment that wasn't filled with livestock and feces, and a beautiful fiancee--but you can't dwell on the past; I've made my bed, and I have to lie in it, even if it is filled with manure. So do I second-guess my decision? Sure.

But then I just drink some of that sweet, sweet milk...Free and straight from the udder, as God intended.