The older Bob got, the more he enjoyed watching other people exercise.
I wonder how many tiny hidden places there are scattered throughout the world.
“What I’m saying is I’m not gonna sit around for hours every day having norgasmic sex with a computer or a TV set. These machines will fuck the life right out of you if you give ‘em half a chance.”
Bob knew that the energetic, optimistic feeling he felt while drinking his morning coffee was just an illusion, but that didn’t stop him from enjoying those few hope-filled minutes each day.
You will get wrinkles.
My local newspaper called, asking me if I would like the honor of having my own landscape-related column, with byline, appear in the paper every other week; unfortunately, as luck would have it, I can’t afford the current going rate of honor.
’Mouse has convinced Bakerina to be my proxy re: buying Boot a beer should Boot be in NYC.
Sometimes the only cure for what ails me is a good book recommendation.
So I open up my Triple J newsletter and see ‘Festival of the Boot’ and think… “Wow! Boot has her own festival now… cool!”, but it turns out that it’s just some Rugby thing.
The Earth actually spins on an axis formed by two twins, separated at birth, who just happen to stand on opposite ends of the planet, and who, lucky for all the rest of us, happen to enjoy standing still very much.
Such a pretty way to say Rat-Bite Fever.
“Problems cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness which created them.”
The secret agents who routinely bug my car left a note on my dash this morning, asking if we could please listen to any other CD than “OK Computer”; I’m pleased to think I am doing my small part to drive the octopus mad, just by yelling the lyrics to “Electioneering” at the top of my voice every day.
As Bob sat looking across the desk at his lawyer he thought, if people would just be nice to each other, these smart folks could dedicate their considerable intelligence to far more productive pursuits.
Vienna Mocha Chip ice cream absolutely counts as a healthy breakfast when you sprinkle it liberally with Wheatabix or something called Nutty Nuggets.
I’ve fixed a lot of problems in my life using bailing wire and duct tape, but I never expected that I’d end up getting my DSL service to work using those standard farm remedies.
Maybe next time.
grudknows… looking around frantically in a panicked state, yelled, “Where’s Boot? Who’s seen Boot?” but there was no answer as boot had disappeared off to ‘merica to investigate why they use ‘ize’ to end words instead of ‘ise’.
In the war against terrorism, Henry’s weapon of choice was sleep, and plenty of it.
As Bakerina pulled from a sepia manila folder a 1924 issue of The Cooperative Poultryman, her mind was suddenly filled not with visions of poultry cooperatives, but rather with visions that cannot be discussed in polite society.
Deep within the city-sized megabuildings that held most of the remaining human population, a fringe cult called the Sol Society was building both membership and dominion among the disenfranchised (which was, admittedly, nearly everybody not employed by the Administration); leaders led their chanting faithful on pilgrimages up and down staircases, winding corridors, and plazas, in an endless quest to find a window to the outside and a glimpse of the fabled sun.
how long will it take to read every word of 80 years of the new yorker, starting now?
With the walrus parka and his own thick, blubbery fat layer to protect him, Gola felt invincible against his upcoming battle with the angry penguins.
The museum’s hovercar display always made Jep wonder what it’d been like living back then, in such simple times.
Over the years, Katie had endured incompetent management, deliberate professional sabotage, being unjustly accused and investigated, having her boss spitting mad at her for six solid weeks, concerted attempts to discredit her, subterfuge, obfuscation, apathy and ulcer-inducing actions by disgruntled clients … yet in the end, the thing that finally, finally goaded her into looking for a new position was something brand-new: boredom.
Lourdes don’t know which was more disconcerting - that she agreed for the first time with something Rush Limbaugh said on the radio, or that the world around her did not immediately warp and twist into something that looked like a Crystal Cathedral/NRA/Amway convention, as she had always unconsciously believed it would were such a thing to happen.
on the way in to work this morning the radio tells me that the one and only Dr. John, Hisself, will appear tonight at the perfect venue that is the historic Tampa Theater, and I note once I’ve run screaming to ticketmasters’ page that there can’t be more than about 300 people slated to attend just 12 hours before showtime, so it seems this will be an intimate, emotional and rather anticipatory gathering between Mac an’ me, under the tinfoil stars, under the creole moon, on the much-dreaded Eve of Rita.
“They were like tiny confused birds weaned on a diet of Pop-Tarts and Diet Pepsi and cigarettes and acne medication and then stretched out on racks until they reach six feet tall, at which point they have all traces of authentic femininity surgically removed and their infinitesimal bee-sting breasts sucked into their concave chests to the point where they look like their skin was one giant FoodSaver bag vacuum-sucked around their rib cages, with what appeared to be their butts replaced with these tiny little half-filled water balloons and they marched down the runways like sullen teenagers who never learned to masturbate.” (Mark Morford)
“You can have my porn when you pry it out of my warm, gooey hand. “
I just woke up from a dream where I posted the following to Scrine: “I really like cardboard”
There are two kinds of activities in the world: The things you want to do (such as drawing designs on your lover’s body with high quality chocolate in preparation for impending ravishment), and everything else, the latter being pretty much a waste of your far too finite life.
Wouldn’t you know it, just when we all thought that the existence of amber ended millions of years ago, a great big drop of it falls in my office, freezing me into a nonproductive, working class specimen.
In the 21st Century, when Job offended the powers in charge, a wrathful God sicced three phone companies and two internet providers on the poor man.
Following his death, Bob was quickly assigned to one of Heaven’s street repair crews, which basically meant that the back-breaking career in cement that he’d had on Earth could now go on for all eternity, except of course that it was now a back-breaking career in gold, which turns out is much harder to build roads with.
Bob sometimes wondered if he just started walking, how far he would have to go before everything began to feel new.
fwwwwwwwwwwwwisssssssssssssssssh: the sound of my brain
many years ago (one, actually), before global warming, one could leave one’s bicycle out in one’s back yard in San Jose, California between June 15 and October 15 with no fear whatsover that it would get rained on and turn all rusty.
“Not tonight, honey, I have a parsing headache.”
Toast is the answer.
If we were truly the white trash family, we wouldn’t move the couch off the porch just because a couple of rain clouds appear on the horizon; no, we also wouldn’t have spent this much money on a damn house in the first place.
ok, scriners, at ease. this one is heading AWAY from me and goli. (although i can’t really speak for goli, not having heard from her in an eon, but I doubt she’s in Texas so i’m going out on a limb—we have some limbs left here. at least this week we do.)
I’ve never lived far from a road that didn’t have a tractor on it.
Lester’s tear-filled laments often centered around his love of pears, the world’s seeming lack of enthusiasm for the unicycle, and how difficult it had become for a person to run off with the circus.
The ideal Greek Chorus at this point would be a couple of dozen motivational speakers and self-help authors all shouting encouragement simultaneously.
If you’re a mis-fit you don’t fit in and if you are misinformed, you’re not informed so when a friend in an email calls me ‘Miss Social’ is he saying I’m not social?
Is it really fair to be asked to do something (that will put you under a great deal of pressure to Get It Right) at an hour of the morning where your head is still fuzzy from sleep (and the night before)?
Thank you for holding, one of our operators will be with you shortly.
If one suddenly finds oneself late on a Sunday night, alone, in a Holiday Inn, three or four states away from home, and one is lucky enough to have a computer with which to access the free ‘net service, the first thing one should do is log on to Scrine to make sure that part of the world has not suddenly gone and slipped 1600 miles off its axis too.
… it’s good to see people doing whatever it is at the time that makes them feel good/right rather than just muddling on in order to conform with what Society At Large thinks they should be… [doing].
If you return late Sunday night from a weekend at your parent’s only intermittently connected home to discover that the phone line with which your housemates/gracious hosts have chosen to access their pay by the minute Internet has been on the fritz for four days, and that furthermore, they really see no reason to fix it, you will be forgiven for spending the following morning at the library, presumably finishing the resume you need to take to your future employer two hours ago for the only casually scheduled job interview, but really writing email, checking blogs, and wishing you were not running out of Internet socializing to do, because then you will have no excuse not to go get that job you really don’t want.
What I’m not is the easy question.
Personally, I am completely into the idea of playing the Blame Game.
I’d like to offer my personal, heartfelt and deepest apology to Australia (and the rest of the world for that matter) for American television.
“Don’t take my word for it, Huck—run over your own bare toe with the wheels of your chair, and see how much fun it really is!”
Cake-domo (n) - the coworker charged with responsibility for the office birthday cake: duties include wheedling for funds, hunting/gathering cake, plates and forks from Costco, and presenting everything at the festive event, all while wearing facial expression ranging from forced good cheer to a workaday exasperation.
I am filled with the glorious knowledge that I have my scrine subscription back at last, and furthermore, I can whistle with my pinky fingers, which makes me one of the coolest people ever to grace the planet.
grudknows, grinning mischieviously (and snickering behind her tackily ring adorned hand) offers Boot a virtual yellow rose - not a real one, just the idea of one, in friendship - because grudknows, of course, values boots friendship.
The time has come for a get together over an ale or two, time to talk, time to be human, time to be yourself, time to leave the suit of work behind you and walk into a crowded room as ‘you’; yes, the time has finally come, it’s beer o’clock.
“I hate Mondays,” thought Bob, “and I’m not real fond of Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays or Friday mornings either.”
Either the temperature in my classroom was up really high, or I had a brief, sudden attack of Dengue Flu, but a few minutes into teaching today I transformed into the world’s sweatiest man, thereby nipping all potential for awkward student-teacher crushes right in the bud.
Understanding Bush’s response to the devastation in New Orleans is easy, as long as you have a firm grasp of the concepts behind the Einstein-Rosen bridge, and are willing to visualize politics and money as worm holes bridging theoretical, matter-ejecting white holes, contrary to the evidence that politicians are much more black hole-ish in nature, absorbing anything and everything around them.
Dignity is as real as God.
It’s one thing to keep your nose pressed to the grindstone when you’re a person, but when you’re a ‘mouse you do it and you’re likely to lose your whiskers.
Despite knowing that they are only somewhat more accurate than astrology, I can’t help being cheered up when I get a “good” one.
If it’s true that every time I take a step I might be creating a parallel universe, should I be worrying about what shoes to wear?
Had he been in any way conscious, Reginald would have been relieved to find that there was, in fact, no afterlife and that he therefore would not spend eternity regretting the last words, “No, I don’t think this cheese has spoiled yet.”
As yet another shop assistant got what she wanted wrong, behaved as if she was an inconvenience to their loafing, charged her the wrong amount and gave her the wrong change, Miss Jane grumped to herself “yep, sunny-jim, if I ever go postal, you’ll be the first to go”.
I wonder how many tiny hidden places there are scattered throughout the world.
…but the good news was that by being barefoot at the time, Bob hadn’t ruined any of his shoes.
Illusion continues to transcend me.
Henry would have liked to attend his high school’s first-annual biennial ten year reunion, but he couldn’t figure out when to go.
Confusion colludes to ascend me.
“Go to your place of peace,” intoned the yoga instructor soothingly, and Bronwyn’s brow unknitted as she thought of the gun in the freezer, wrapped in heavy plastic sheets, duct tape and turkey foil, nestled just behind the vodka bottle, between a packet of petits pois and a bag of chicken…
This is going to hurt, thought Jen as she contemplated what was ahead of her, and at that moment she wished that Bill Murray were there to throw his arm protectively across her, the way he did when he said the exact same thing to Owen Wilson in The Life Aquatic.…
Screaming, pink, chubby and wrinkled pile of delightful screams and tears - the world isn’t full of death, after all.
I didn’t look up in time to see the geese I heard honking overhead, but I watched the stream of their rippling shadows slip over one rooftop after another as they left our neighborhood behind for the season.
After the funeral, she rounded upon her husband with the following, oft-repeated directive: “When I die, nobody is permitted to speak one word about me who didn’t personally know me; if you can’t locate a friend of the ecumenical variety, then dammit, declare the whole funeral an ‘open mic’ event.”
The priest spent close to an hour quoting from the Good Book, trying to convince us that the soul of the dearly departed was assuredly winding her way to Heaven even as he spoke; his only proof, however, that the Good Book was right about this, was direct from the Good Book.
Funerals, like Christmas presents, are usually more a reflection of the taste of the giver than that of the (dearly departed) recipient.
Bob suddenly had the strange feeling that God was a chain-smoker, and that humans were nothing more than nearly finished cigarettes, tossed carelessly onto Earth to burn themselves into nothingness, occasionally ground-out under the creator’s foot with barely a passing thought.
I came here this morning to create art, but when I looked inside myself for a sentence all I got was a low buzzing noise and a visual image of the late-night, after-the-television goes off-air test pattern.
In old men, sex has a way of becoming replaced by the pleasure of a fresh haircut.
My blog doesn’t understand me.
Announcing the first-ever Bunni-betting pool: ‘Mouse’s money says she breaks this vow by before 5:00am Saturday New York time.
eventually your clubhouse will be discovered, and try as you might, you can’t pull up the ladder
As Bob sat at the bar alone and stared into his second beer, he was struck by an ephiphany, of sorts: He was a man who had no luck—no good luck and no bad luck—and that began to gnaw a him.
All my life there have been more than enough people lined up, willing to do whatever it takes to help me fill out the paperwork for the loan on that new shovel I was forever wanting to replace, but now that it’s nearing time to dig my grave, I’m beginning to think I may be digging alone.
Stuck on a jam-packed bus, a great sentence popped to mind, sadly I couldn’t scrine nor write it down and now it’s gone forever.
The moment greed infused itself with survival, I felt lost.
Some nameless sludge has set up shop in my sinuses, and frankly I’m not pleased.
Disappointment haunted him like a third nipple, hidden from the world, yet never far from his own thoughts.
The life of choice seems to be a sparrow: you can fly around, just like all the regal hawks and so forth, but no humans are interested in hunting you and you seem to be able to eat just about anything.
We think of our own birthday as belonging to us… with a sense of ownership when, in reality, birthdays are a joint-custody deal - sometimes resulting in quibbles about where they’ll be spent, when and with whom.
The team rolls into place on schedule, and within minutes their shots can be heard echoing up and down the narrow, downtown street, each shot dropping another looter, one by one, into the neat piles that begin to form in front of the storm-damaged shops.
So much of who we are is determined not by that tiny obsure thing which is a unique part of our soul, or our DNA make up, but by that which is bent and twisted and unfurled according to our environment - how others act and react toward us and by things that happen to us.
“No, Towser,” shouted the witch, “Bad dog - drop that bag of powdered bat wing!”