Next life, if I’m a man, I know that facial hair will be the least of it, but the prospect of it really freaks me out.
You made a mistake in classifying today’s news: all the national headlines should have been filed under “Oddly Enough”.
Exchanging punches with a government agency is seldom fun.
It’s my damn book idea and you can’t steal it.
Fingers in chili, buried treasure, kidnapped brides—FUCK ALL YOU PEOPLE!!! and the media who breathlessly tried to sell me these examples of human compost—ahhhhh, now I feel better, having gotten that out of my system, anyone want to go out and smell some roses and enjoy spring already?
I spent the afternoon at the Southern Baptist church, behind a cut crystal punchbowl unendingly refilled with sherbet and Sprite, carefullly ladling out cupfuls to attendees of Aunt E’s silk orchid-strewn 99th birthday party—at which the Birthday Girl didn’t sit down for a minute but instead worked the room, incessantly introducing all to all lilke the Southern Lady she has been becoming since 1906—and I found myself thinking, “it’s in the genes, right?”
Ms. Like-Men-Are-Such-Sluts disembarks, one-third of a large tattoo protruding from the low-rise jeans which nicely highlight the last jiggly bits of her babyfat.
Which should I do - stay in a job that’s boring but lets me concentrate on school, or find a better-paying job that will be much more difficult?
I’m not just president of Scrine Club For Sentences, I’m a member!
An old aunt of mine once told me that my smile was “a ray of hope”, which at the time sounded a bit cryptic, even to my small boy way of thinking, considering I had both an Uncle Ray and an Aunt Hope.
I’m wondering what percentage of me is empty space; I mean, if you drained out all of the food, waste, blood, and whatever other fluids are sloshing around in there, what part of me would be solid, and what part of me would be hollow?
All this snow will surely kill my peonies.
For his sins our hero suffered through several lifetimes trapped in a steel tube, hurtling through the air at 35,000 feet listening to the 20-year-old girls (these were not women) in the seats in front chattering about, “Like, you know, I’m not dating now, because, like, guys are all the same, like, ‘I’m gonna cheat on you,” like, y’know, ohmygod, it’s like so not worth it,” all the while thinking that when he got home he was going to speak with his daughters and if the word “like” came up in any sentence more than once he would have no choice but to kill them to save others from the misery he had been through.
French fries are really good.
I fear my shirt has somehow become tangled in the gears of my state’s Employment Department, and now there is nothing left to do but watch my company be slowly mashed to a painful, bureaucratic death.
This is not the best sentence I’ve ever written, not by a longshot.
Don’t marry a pessimist.
Peter didn’t mind rejection, and often imagined it as the shadow of success.
Someday Keith will combine our sentences when we’re finished, and it will all make sense.
Zen is the ideal path for me, based as it is, on tenets like “doing less is doing more” and “inaction is the highest form of action.”
Peter missed the old zoo days, when the petting zoo still had a tortoise for kids to ride and they still handed out drinking straws with soft drinks.
Pain that is kicked out of one’s muscles by liberal oral application of tequila is sure to come back about 12 hours later, duller, sodden, very pissed off and dead-set on taking up residence inside one’s skull.
Father Perrine’s confession was the same each week - that every Saturday night he selfishly found himself wishing that no one would show up for Sunday service, and that for once the sermon could be nothing more then a long quiet silence, broken only by the splash of the communion wine, pouring into his favorite coffee mug.
“No, seriously,” she said, “is there anything under that thing?”
Peter was thrilled to be playing lead robot in the school play, and secretly hoped Lucy Johnson would notice the robot suit’s telescoping arms, which, he would tell her, were his own idea.
When it comes to walking straight lines here on this farm, the order goes: cow, duck, chicken, rabbit, cat, human, dog; yet oddly enough, when it comes to telling a straight story, the order goes: cow, duck, chicken, rabbit, cat, dog, human.
Mr. Johnson was upset when his incense factory caught fire, but soon the scent was so soothing that he didn’t much mind.
The public agency’s secret mission, developed with care by the staff, involved the revocation of the licenses of every business they regulated, in the name of Mighty Fa-Rol, the pagan god of overstuffed file cabinets.
Once again, the camera pans in on our hero, ‘mouse, who is found sitting with his head in his hands, sobbing quietly and looking throroughly miserable and lost in thought, apparently driven beyond distraction by the number in the upper-right-hand corner of the screen whose purpose and meaning he has been vainly trying to unscramble these several long weeks.
Was it scary back then, living in a flat world with unknown edges, wondering where you’d fall, or how far, or even if you could?
After nearly twenty years of eating nothing but pickles, Lester realized he preferred the fresher taste of cucumbers.
Victor had to choose between paddling straight into the rising sun or taking a meandering tacking course which would certainly mean he would arrive late for breakfast.
In an unexpected twist, I was stopped on the street this morning by a man carrying two large, poorly-made speakers and asking if I had an unmarked white van I could sell him.
It is a well known scientific fact that the sun is opposed to work of any kind being done in its presence, and that’s why I haven’t finished the marketing report yet, sir.
If you invite me over to talk about your garden—like the way it sweeps around a half-buried stone, or how a small splash of Siberian iris will somehow soften the transition of an envisioned path, in spite of their seemingly razor-sharp leaves and menacingly dark black throats, or the way the corsican mint will creep between the stones and bricks, and the crush of you just walking across this now vacant space will fill your nostrils with sweet mint air—be prepared for the begging tug of your dream dragging you out of the yard and through your house, searching for the checkbook.
As the water closed over them, they held each other tighter and kissed with more passion than they’d ever kissed before, knowing that in the perfect melding of their souls they would stop time and be safe forever.
When he used diamond pads on his grinding wheel to transform raw granite to a perfectly polished surface, he found he became one with nature, elemental earth and time.
But your honor, I’m not claiming ignorance as my defense, but my offense; do you understand what I’m saying?
Little is known about the vegan dinosaurs, other then they were fast runners with low self-esteem.
Scott wasn’t abused as a child, he wasn’t born with a silver spoon, his parents weren’t alcoholic or doctors or criminal, his marks in school were normal, he was never outstanding in sports, his relationships with women were healthy and tended to end gracefully without undue distress to either party, he was a safe driver, he drank in reasonable moderation, didn’t have any food allergies and he had travelled when he was younger but then smoothly transitioned into a position of responsibility at work and providing for his healthy, well-adjusted family, so there was nothing, nothing at all, to presage what happened next.
There is nothing about this headache that a well-placed ball peen hammer between the eyes wouldn’t fix.
Legal procedures can be slow, complicated and expensive.
St. Gulik, a goliard monk back in 22nd century Finland, devoted his life to visiting remote cybervillages and ministering to the faithful - who were mostly in need of therapy for their implant-induced schizophrenic symptoms.
Were men’s builds more square in the 30’s and 40’s, or is that just the cut of their trousers I’m seeing?
There’s nothing funny about a crack shot pigeon with a sense of humor.
So now those Cardinals will probably stop calling me in the middle of the night so often.
How completely repellant: I can’t believe that box has so much smelly goopy protoplasmic sloo in the bottom of it.
Even though I’m not Catholic, and have been indifferent to the whole conclave thing this month, it suddenly feels freakin’ weird to see a new pope on the dais.
One day, I’m going to get up in the morning, go to the bank, withdraw $5,000 in cash, climb into my little red car and hit the road.
Greetings from the Bizarro world: I renewed my license at the DMV in five minutes, but getting there and back on the freeway took an hour.
If there is any hope of knowing what’s on the other side, I’ve decided that I better find some time to walk both paths, both honesty and lying, both less traveled and more traveled, so that when I do eventually stumble out onto the other side and get to wherever it is I’m going, I’ll recognize truth for what it really is, and that it won’t sneak up on me during some desperate moment and end up looking like an outhouse in the middle of nowhere, with a crescent moon on the door and a fresh roll of toilet paper stuck on a nail; and that when it’s all over yet again and again and again, I won’t be caught standing there lost, hopeful for something better then my own shit staring back at me.
The child’s world is all about play; rules are but an adult’s attempt to introduce gravity.
If that guy’s name isn’t Meat Locker, it should be.
As anyone who has driven in San Francisco can tell you, two wrongs don’t make a left, but three rights do.
Sometimes success is all about the image; remember, Tom and Meg are always praised for their romantic chemistry in “Sleepless in Seattle”, even though in reality they only shared one scene
“It is impossible to cry and eat your kiwi jam at the same time.”
Peter ran a tight circus and had no tolerance for that wishy-washy “half-full or half-empty” bullshit - you’d either locked the lion’s cage or you hadn’t, there was only one answer, and it damn well better be the right one.
If it wasn’t printed on those ubiquitous 8 1/2 x 11” sheets of paper and assigned to her by either her boss or her professor, chances are she hasn’t heard already.
As my mother used to say, it’s all fun and games until someone pokes an eye out, and then it’s just FUN.
John was surprised to learn that Heaven had only one duck, but even more surprised when the duck waddled over and introduced himself as God.
Just as soon as I finish this beer, I’m going to get out of my hammock, turn on the hose, and put out the fire that seems to have spread from the grill to the house.
Maybe it was the idea of so many different takes on the afterlife, just blowing past me one after another, like the way small Iowa farm towns used to blow past my uncle and that chicken.
The thing is, if it turns out the citizens of the great State of California actually like low vehicle license fees, almost no property tax, decaying K-12 public education and the circus atmosphere of budgetary sleight-of-hand in lieu of responsible fiscal management, then my career is meaningless before I even graduate.
It seems that California becomes the new Florida.
I didn’t know that coat was meant to belong to that man who shuffled up the driveway so carefully, but when he picked it up, I knew it had found its destiny.
The reason there are so few kings in the world is due largely in part to a crown’s inability to keep the rain off a man’s head; farmers and good ‘ol boys, however, are in great abundance.
I’ve always admired people who can embrace change; for instance, just last week I was standing in line at the bank and spotted a small boy, a coin-filled fruit jar gripped tightly in his hands, hanging on for dear life.
The week rolls around much too fast, affirming my belief that calendars are a bad invention.
Equally overlooked is the significance of Jefferson’s herpes to the course of the young American republic.
Now I understand, completely and with existential certitude, that at the bottom of every box is a single Barbie shoe, with no exceptions.
The hirsute must value their razors highly, or have access to extremely competent self-image therapists.
How is it that Bob Mould can plumb the depths of my soul from a vantage point ten years ago and a continent away?
Which is worse - that my scriner stats are about to be overtaken by an imaginary person, or that I’m actually worried about it?
Listen to Pink Floyd a lot, and whenever it gets to the part where it goes Did you exchange a walk-on part in the war/ for a lead role in a cage/, say to the radio, ‘Roger, you didn’t have a fucking clue how a lifetime of compromise can suck the soul dry - but it’s for damn sure you know now.’
When the poet dropped his lunch on the sidewalk, bystanders were much more impressed by the elegance of his cursing than by that of the bicycle courier whose misfortune it was to entangle a crusty French loaf in his spokes.
For those who wish to alleviate suffering less expediently, invert the body from the bars of a jungle gym or swingset, and allow six to eight hours for gravity to remove the affixed octopus from the face.
There aren’t many words you can make with the word “scrine” but “cersin” is certainly one of them.
First clues that it had gone horribly wrong: the ripping sound overhead and the gently drifting lint.
Do we dare talk about deadlines, here amongst the sentences?
’Mouse wasn’t sure which amazed him more, that he had thought to wonder out loud on Scrine whether or not cunnilingus could transmit a cold virus, that he’d spelled it right on the first attempt, or that Word’s spellchecker actually purred slightly in approval as he ran the word through it.
Even though Stan had never once been on a pair of stilts, he could find no rational reason not to collect them.
Cats must be humiliated almost constantly or they will take on airs.
Last time I saw Jan she was standing outside the monkey cage at the zoo, screaming and thowing feces.
Mimosas are for sissies; from now on I’m re-constituting my frozen orange juice with nothing but rum.
Most successful board games really hinge on only four things and one decision - red, green, yellow, or blue?
Looking around the room, Hector wondered if he should tells his coworkers about his past lives, and if he did, whether he should start with the life where he was the very short man named Samuel, no taller then four feet, but with extra large extremities, or if he should tell them about Louisa and get it over with.
Nothing is simple.
(Why, I do believe you’re right.)
Brenner had one, secretly-cherished foible, which was this: he had named the five urinals in the office men’s room after the workdays of the week, and he would only utilize each one on its respective day.
I knew we were on the cusp of something new and special when my two kids insisted on learning sign language and going to a school for deaf kids so they’d never have to take off their ipods, ever.
Fred tried to meditate a few times, but he gave it up when he discovered that the deeper into himself he delved, the closer he came to that sound that sometimes bothered him in everyday life, the powerful grinding, shrieking, tearing, crashing he could only describe as the noise of a huge slow motion train wreck.
I imagine there are words that give sentences headaches.
I’m as in tune to the existential as the next person, but do not think for a minute that I’ll apologize to you or anyone for all the bad big-hair TV dramas from the 70’s; they’re not my fault, despite my former Farrah wings.
That night, owing almost entirely to it being the 1111th consecutive day of being ambushed by dozens of tiny, toothy problems the minute she walked in the front door, her thoughts turned to her locked door, her birthday, and her waning tolerance, causing her to wonder: Is it easy to recognize a midlife crisis as it’s happening, or is one only able to identify it long after the fact?
Every time I tell someone I’m a scriner, their eyes dance about my head and then try to peer into my pockets, looking for my funny hat.
Scott awoke to an overwhelming feeling of relief and cheerful optimism when he realized that he had not murdered his family, burnt the house down and lept to his death off the golden gate bridge.
Five years after Roger’s arranged marriage to the deaf-mute girl from Bakersfield, his own lifelong dream came true when their one and only child, Chester, upon reaching the age of three, told his family to call him The Little Tramp, and announced that he would spend the rest of his years in complete silence, wearing only black oversized suits and imitating the antics of Charlie Chaplain; Roger, as much as he enjoyed the quiet, soon found that not all dreams should come true, and that as much as he loved his son, he would never be comfortable with the young boy’s new mustache.
Singing and dancing, dancing and singing; I believe I may have gone mad.
I suggested at lunchtime that we become an opera family, putting lyrics to all the mundane things we might want to express to each other, and I think this might be a good suggestion for other families as well.
Why, when we instantly know the steps to hoof and the lyrics to to sing, am I having such a difficult time communicating with this girl?
Floating there in the darkness and quiet of the sensory deprivation tank, Ron went over and over the mental checklist he had compiled over the years regarding the benefits of being in a coma, making sure nothing had slipped by him.
The thing about disappearing for ten years is: when you return it’s not so much that you are older, but that everyone else around suddenly seems to have a decade less mileage than you while you have no photos of your travels, and you’re unsure now where you went.
2. Narrow topic
3. Prioritize
4. Question parameters immediately
5. Refuse and revise, reduce
6. Submit
Currently, there is a very special place in my heart for the few people in my life to whom I can say, without a trace of self-consciousness, “Yeah, I take a picture of where I am every day at 10:10 for this blog I know.”
I’ve noticed that most of the stupidest things I’ve done in my life involve chainsaws and ladders.
Understanding time is really just a matter of finding the right saddle for such a wild ride.
Time is one of the more vexing of the inventions, second only to grammar and its famous cousin, fascism.
Perhaps the most ambiguous question posed to complete strangers on a regular basis would be: do you have the time?
There are those who say time is a vexing illusion, others will tell you it’ll take you on the wildest ride of your life, once there was even a brilliant philosopher who claimed the true passage of time could only be measured by the burnt, curled edge of his plastic spatula, but when it comes down to it, there is only one reason for the existence of time and one thing you need to know about it: Friday afternoon Happy Hour begins down at the local tavern at 5:00 p.m. sharp.
I don’t understand why everything about religion has to be so complicated; for instance, the guys and I are thinking about driving up for the Pope’s funeral, but if we call it a roadtrip, will it sound like goofing off; and can we drink beer on the way?
Time is an illusion…understanding time moreso.
It’s not easy retrieving a toy from behind my seat while changing lanes in front of a driver who is wandering all over the road, but I’m willing to try anything to get my daughter to stop screaming, and I’m certain the world agrees.
Even the wildest imagination is built upon order.
At first there were just spots which could be ignored or mopped up, but as the rising tide of paper covered his entire office floor, a cold layer of anxiety floated on top, quickly rising to envelop his chest, heart and lungs.
Scrine and I met in the oddest of places - the library - where I was searching for information on Depression era footwear, and this strange, metal bird, with a book on world domination tucked under one wing, was searching for a better way home; we hit it off immediatly and went for pie.
Don’t worry if, before trying to retrieve your keyring from inside a mailbox, it doesn’t occur to you that you might become stuck, because you’ll have plenty of time to consider it after the fact.
Tequila is not a hallucinogen, tequila is not a hallucinogen, tequila is not a hallucinogen…
If I’m not mistaken, there was a time when hitchhiking didn’t seem quite so much like begging.
Two sentences were sitting at the bar, discussing meditation over glasses of scotch, when one says to the other, “You know, I agree with you about corporations destroying your will to live, but I’ll have you know, the result of working for yourself, and maybe this is also the out-and-out goal of the large corporation, is the destruction of your ability to live.”
But the inconvenience of having a rare miniature condor nest in his hair didn’t annoy Harold half as much as the shocking number of hunters with no regard whatsoever for the bird’s status as an endangered species.
After reading the Fungi or Bacteria Exclusion included in his company’s Commercial General Liability Coverage Policy,
Fungi or Bacteria, a. “Bodily injury” or “property damage” which would not have occurred, in whole or in part, but for the actual, alleged or threatened inhalation of, ingestion of, contact with, exposure to, existence of, or presence of, any “fungi” or bactrea on or within a building or structure, including its contents, regardless of whether any other cause, event, material or product contributed concurrently or in any sequence to such injury or damage
Imaginary Keith knew he should test the backbone of the policy, and immediately called up his agent, threatening to inhale an unusually large amount of peach yogurt.
Sure the world almost ended with over-crowding and mass starvation, but that was before they enacted the Windows Related Printer Problem Act of 2034, which guaranteed the elimination of one human for each and every printer problem found to be Windows related - these days people everywhere are free to breed like rabbits and there’s still plenty of food to go around.
I can’t believe this shit that “Cooking Light” subjects me to every month, ‘Mouse moaned (while Bakerina nodded sagely), “The original recipe was an embarrassment of riches: Two sticks of butter overloaded the shortbread crust; one cup of whipping cream made its way into the custard; and an additional cup of whipping cream plus 6 ounces of full-fat cream cheese weighed down the topping,” what kind of scrawny excuse for a human says something like that about good, healthy, heavenly old-fashioned rhubarb custard bars?
Harry Potter remembered the dreadful day Dumbledore had told him he must either kill Voldemort, or be killed; however, over the years, the lack of a timeframe for this showdown had stretched his fear into a kind of rubbery anxiety, so that often he could not recall exactly what was worrying him.
Begin by looking deeply into this glass of scotch.
You’re not an idiot if you stand in front of a clothes dryer, pushing the button over and over, swearing at it for not working, and you’re not even an idiot if you finally look down and realize you haven’t closed the door; on the other hand, you are if you admit it.
The result of working for a large corporation, and perhaps their out-and-out goal, is the destruction of your will to live.
What’s the problem, is that what you’re asking me, because if you are, the problem is that sentences are nothing more then foot soldiers, and the sooner you realize that, the sooner you’ll realize the need to march a few of them off to their death; now get over yourself and do your job.
The last ten seats at the counter, furthest from the front door, are known to the staff and regulars as “Hawaii.”
One inch of cold milk, one bwip of Fox’s U-Bet Chocolate Syrup, seltzer to the top, stir, stir, stir.
The problem with Seattle weather isn’t the rain – that’s highly exaggerated – the problem is the dog-years it ages you to have to live through several completely unpredictable manic sun-rain-sun-rain cycles nearly every day.
My (now deceased) disabled husband and I were married for 43 years and loved each other very much, so you should have understood that when I filed for divorce and tried to get him summarily and forcibly removed from the family home of 40 years by falsely accusing him of dangerous homosexual phone sex and by making up false stories of physical violence against me, it was just my way of showing him love and trying to get him proper medical care; you should have represented his interests better—or at least gotten a bigger retainer before defending him from me.
If it has artificial flavors, artificial colors, no trans-fat, low carbs and reduced calories, AND there is a legal injunction against calling itself by the name of the very food it is trying to imitate, maybe Nature is trying to tell you something.
“I’d like to appreciate your cooperation.”
Even moving around the room was difficult, stuck in that gray space where reality and perception blended together, constantly fighting off the idea that he was neither asleep nor fully awake.
Just in case you decide not to watch the news tonight, I thought I’d let you know that the Pope is still dead.
I’ve heard of people who can’t live without the sunlight, but I’m fine with the constant clouds rolling slowly overhead, tumbling along in the gray light, the sun more concept then reality as it draws my shadow on the sidewalk with such soft edges that I can finally bear to stare at it without questioning what it is to be a man; I lived in the sunlight once, and it hurt, no matter which way I turned my head.
“You want to make friends with your carotenoid pigments.”
I have fallen under the evil spell of ice cream.
The vast potential of coconut drinks comes not in the vessel, so much as the delivery system for the sweet blotting effect; they’re all about love.
Ideas and concepts, the visualization and the act of creating - these are the things that entertain me; the things themselves almost always bore me once they are complete.
She quietly, unobtrusively carved a niche for herself within the emotion-choked clutter of her own house; with every object purloined from other rooms - table, chair, computer, task light, small travel clock - the simple excitement of potential seemed to be able to scrape guilt off the very walls.
I thought it would be easy coming up with one pithy, meaningful, really awesomely cool sentence each day, but the more I think about it the more I realize there’s rarely a complete thought, much less a full sentence in my head—right now there’s just a single word, “mango”... oh, wait, now the word is “coffee”—but neither of those words, nice on their own, suggests any inclination to joint other words in a sentence that’s worth the pixels it takes up on your screen.
Running from the wild hobo, he knew he should never have skipped school; knew it the same way that he knew that kicking his boot out over the ice was a bad idea, and knew it just like he’d find out later when he finally made it home that he should take his time when it came to thinking up believable lies - too late.
They don’t have to be flashy words, if you know what I mean, but if I’m going to trade in my nine year old for nothing more then a bunch of arranged letters, then by god, those words better be good ones, a couple of real doozies, something easy to manage, and not something that’s going to throw a fit and stomp around the house giving me heartburn and gray hair, because if you really need to know, I already have enough of those words to tend to.
Does a tree ever tire of the wind, or find itself wishing for a nice big hat when it begins to rain?
Perhaps he has entertained veterinary pursuits of which I am unaware, but it seems odd to me that Keith would post a photo in the lower right colum of himself, probing the nether regions of a bird.
I heard someone say that according to a recent survey, Realtors are a lower form of pond scum than lawyers. I’m not sure if I get much comfort from that.
Measuring social capital through cost-benefit analysis may be difficult, but it is not impossible, and several excellent studies have identified useful proxies for social capital, using different types and combinations of qualitative, comparative and quantitative research methodologies.
I thought about it before I hit the delete key, I really did, promise, because the delete key is death for those of us without any resurrection powers, and I don’t take anything lightly, especially deleting another person’s Scrine entry, and certainly not our friendship, and certainly, beyond reason, really, any concept of resurrection at all, but that’s way off topic and I don’t want that to happen, not when all I’m trying to say is that I thought I knew what the problem was when really I didn’t know at all, which I should have known all along because I know about as much about html and css as I do about what makes a giraffe’s neck work, which isn’t much, although I suspect it’s kind of like this apology, some sort of combination involving muscles and gravity, the idea that hitting the delete key on a friend’s Scrine entry is like an unchewed apple three-fourths the way down a giraffe’s neck - it’s not coming back, no if’s, and’s, or but’s about it.