This afternoon I found out that there is something satisfying about having all my sockets in the same toolbox, and what do you know, it has nothing at all to do with the tools themselves.
You can outrun the wolves, but it’s not easy, and you have to be willing to leave others behind.
“We all have to learn from our own mistakes,” said thumbless Randy as he tried to fix the jammed table saw.
I am the frost as day first breaks, burning away.
With a swift tap of his staff, the witch doctor exclaimed, “Boom boom chaka laka boom boom,” and forever changed the history of the way things used to be before gangsta rap was brought to the mainstream.
Kipple reflected how she’d taken the young woman to her first day of school and now was here to farewell her for her first moving out of home experience and wondered if she’d be there for other major moments… for example, the first face lift.
The earth goddess, after standing on a chair and reciting Shakesphere to friends, decided to become a lawyer.
After running over Odin’s toes with the mower, Jorgyn, Norse Goddess of Failing Light and Things Fall Apart, caught a train into the city, all the while trying hard not to think about how unfortunate the whole business was, especially the uncut grass.
When it’s all said and done, I’ll miss these mornings drifting in and out of sleep and dreams, the house perfectly quiet, birds singing just outside and the fresh, cool, early spring air blowing in through the open window just over my head.
In like a whirlwind, out like a whirlwind…Daddy Warbucks came and bought my kid a bunch of crap and off he goes…see you in another two years, jerk!
If you live in town where the bars line up like blackbirds on an electric wire, then you probably also believe God was a working stiff, and that he’d want… no, he’d demand that you drop to your knees (or sit on a stool is fine) and pay homage to each and every one of them on the way home from work.
i wasn’t going to post this but i just can’t stand it: WWOZ is streaming the whole of the New Orleans Jazzfest, which began today and is a miracle, and which they’ve just ended for today, the opening day, but will be back live in the morning, NOLA time.
There’s nothing like waking up in the morning to see that you’ve missed a short story’s worth of conversation to make you doubt your own ** POP **
As inspired by: 'mouse's Depression
Idling behind Eli, Bronwyn thought, och and began to cast forty stitches onto a size 6 needle for a dishcloth.
It was about yea big, sort of prosey - um, in a Mailer vein; not, you know, Dickensian - and it had a little Scottish interjection right in the middle.
I’m sure I left a sentence here… has anyone seen it?
“I broke Bakerina’s sentence,” sniffed ‘mouse, hoping Keith would make things all better.
As inspired by: pam's denial
“Fucking Job had it easy,” moaned Juan as idled at the intersection, checked his watch, and realized he was going to be late to court to challenge the ticket for running that red light (“it was yellow, yer’honor… yes, I know I’m late, let me explain”).
“Boyle, you’ve spent more time on latrine duty than any man in this entire unit, “barked the Sargent, “which is only an observation—Boyle!, latrine duty!, POST!”
Late on a Friday afternoon, the young (okay young-ish, maaaaybe mature-aged, look, she’s just not old, okay) woman (uh, what was I saying, oh, yeah, beer, no, stout, no, dark ale) sat at her desk staring vacantly out the window, when the sudden call lurched her to her feet, swept her out of the room and away down the street to the closest watering hole she could find.
It’s not that I don’t like Kathy, it’s because I don’t like Kathy.
Which is the greater evil… that which is perceived to be a transgression by sight or true transgression that occurs in the dark; the former may be a false lion but the latter is already clawing at your hide.
As inspired by: pam's anger
“They must be timed or somethin’,” said Eli, as they idled beneath Juan’s fifth red light in a row.
Chet would usually isolate any strangers that came into the bar and start telling them about his bum leg, and how it hadn’t been the same since that fateful day he’d been trampled in the stampede, hoping for once in his life that none of the other regulars could hear what he was saying, but someone always did and would just have to say outloud, “Yeah he did… a goat stampede,” which of course always got everyone laughing and completely ruined any hope of him convincing the stranger that he was one of life’s rugged survivors.
As inspired by: pam's jeux sans frontier
I’m seriously tempted to find me a baby names forum and post this list of star’s names under a heading ‘great ideas for baby names!!!!!’.
Today I discovered that the hinge in my spine has worn completely out, and that if I were to ever bend in half, say to plant flowers all day or even try to touch my toes for just an instant, I would probably never get up again, but fortunately for me, my belly prevents any of this from happening.
“Take my wife, please!” said the barista, and because this was the only part of the joke that Hiroshi overheard, he figured he’d just discovered yet another odd American custom.
Bob blundered blindlessly besides Beth.
As she banged on the glass in the holding cell, she yelled “We’re perfect, too!” and I knew it was going to be a long day.
The key hovered gently in front of her, occasionally startling itself with a mild hiccup and skidding slightly sideways, until some coworkers walked towards her area, and the key zoomed back down onto the board, nestling in again amongst Vee and En.
as inspired by: ‘mouse’s bargaining
“Yellow light! Bastards!” shouted Juan, as he gripped the wheel and put his foot to the floor.
Once in a while, I am seized with fear that I was supposed to be waiting for a fax.
and they want me to give them dollars and buy metallic ribbons: i try in vain to not screech and pull my hair and have an unnatural meltdown in the face of the do-gooders, but suffice it to say: I’m aware.
There are plenty of ways self-employment sucks, but when the boss decides to grant staff a two hour mental-health-break in the middle of the afternoon to finish reading a novel that’s just reached the exciting part, it makes up for a lot.
As inspired by: 'mouse's God damned
“I’ll do anything—confession, burnt offerings, just name it,” Juan pleaded after he began to notice that nearly every red light was now coming equipped with a pedestrian to push its walk button.
In class, philosophy discussions always leave me staring vacantly into the middle distance, drool from my open mouth dropping gently onto my shirt; later, however, when it comes time to write the paper, I am inevitably at a loss, and wishing that the professor would relax his unrealistic 5-page minimum requirement out of sympathy for me.
Sometimes when the cat pukes I miss not having a dog around because they’re so good at cleaning that stuff up.
when you read Brautigan’s ‘In Watermelon Sugar’ and listen to Neil Young’s Unplugged album at the same time: you can hear my voice in 1968.
After being nearly sleepless for weeks, in the sick bed and sick with worry, Jean finally drummed up the courage to have that conversation.
Mick (62) takes a swipe at Bush, 59, on the latest Stones album A Bigger Bang, savaging his Iraq War policy.
Always wear a patterned purple shirt when preparing borsch.
The crowd watched as we fumbled with their paperwork through our bullet-proof glass.
Juan came to regret shouting, “Show me a sign you exist!” after about three weeks of driving in which he never once hit a green light.
Late one night, two shadows slid quietly through the sleeping neighborhood pulling up all the real estate signs of their favorite prospects.
As inspired by: Keith's Disbelief
Carla, who originally flung the monkey poop at her blind date, Peter, had always regretted her rash behavior, winced every time she was reminded of it, and constantly looked behind her everywhere she went, fearing retribution; she always kept a change of clothes in the trunk.
“Sanjay told Mikaela that Roberto likes Jessica,” explained the fourth-grade girl with exaggerated patience, “an’ Jessica has always liked Roberto, so Jessica told Genesis to tell Sanjay that she DOESN’T like Roberto, so that Roberto will wonder if she really DOES like him, and now he’ll probably get somebody like Dreamah or Jacob to tease Jessica that she really likes Roberto and see if she tries to hit them.”
Peter no longer believed in superheroes or poetic justice, and had no trouble blaming it all on the blind date/monkey poop/laughing crowd incident of 1987; he did, however, now believe in having a change of clothes in the trunk of his car.
What my sister really needs in her house is a portable Starbucks, with a part-time barista or two.
For years Charlie’s neighbors had felt he took his theming too seriously, but even they had to admit that the towering Easter Island-style heads he spent the winter carving by hand really made his tiki party stand out.
Julie sat in her armchair watching a repeat of Pick Our Banana!!! and thought to herself, “I hope this reincarnation thing works out, because there’s no way I’m going to fit everything in the first time around”.
Johnny pulled Elizabeth’s pigtails and ran laughing to the other side of the jungle jim where he began scrambling up, just slow enough to be caught.
In time we pass into the oblivion of choice, render ourselves apart from that which we desired, and become bereft of anything bar the repercussions.
Jessica credited her orchids for teaching her humility and patience.
I’m sure my first mistake was even loaning my van to my brother’s dog, but the biggest mistake I made was not taking out shedding insurance.
Bob, tired of toting the past around with him decided to leave it on the side of the road, assuming that like hard rubbish, the college kids and ‘just moved out of home’ brigade would sift through the pile and take home what they could use.
The Tired Demons have set up camp in my spine and seem intent on pulling my eyeballs inward to a spot behind my nose.
Being a hater of pink, I was pretty interested when Keith hinted that historically pink was not always associated with girls, so I tried finding some answers, but a lot of the links associated with this point of view, particularly the most frequently referred to, but rarely linked, website Gender Specific Colors seem to have run screaming out of the room like a crazed girl wearing one too many pink ribbons in her hair.
Aerobatic Angie ascended airward at amazing accelerated agility!
Siblings are God’s way of saying, “I really haven’t messed with your head enough; ready?”
I can hardly wait for the release of 2020: A No Parking Space Odyssey, but in the meantime, I’ll continue to wait tables and hope to catch my big break.
When and why did guys start wearing pink?
Sed realised that the ship had crossed the equator when, suddenly, the “[character omitted]” on his computer suddenly quit working and the science textbook he was reading began referring to “the soology of sebras” and “Seppelins at their seniths.”
Herman’s wife privately held a wildly fatalistic conviction that if he didn’t find a job soon, his frontal lobes would simply atrophy and waste away, leaving him useless for any profession except a beligerant guest on a daytime talk show.
As inspired by: bakerina's non-rant about the loss of uniqueness
These pockets of individuality and creativity, these people and places that have not been stamped out of the mass-moulding machine of homogenisation, they leave us, but we never know where they go; do they become hollow and cease to exist, or have they found another world, full of like-minded, but, of course, so very not alike people, a place we’ll never find, a place now only in our hearts.
I’ve never spent any time pretending I was Mr. Darcy, but maybe I should.
“Today’s a school day?” she said sleepily.
As head mouse, it naturally fell to Linton to enforce the Poop On Practically Everything rules.
It’s a little troubling to me that I suspect my body of being part of a conspiracy against me.
Aren’t you suspicious when the day you were dreading turns out to be actually quite nice and even a little interesting?
When it rains it pour also goes for idiots; they just keep coming like an idiot storm.
where have all the typepad people gone, send up a flare, come baaack????
edit: oh phew, apparently it was momentary.
If people had a head on each end, I bet they’d stack together just like Lincoln Logs.
After nearly twenty-eight years of experience as a corporate doormat, Jefferson was without a doubt the go-to guy for good footwear stories.
I sincerely hope that my kid’s OCD tendencies are just a phase; barring that, I recommend all of you buy stock in Proctor & Gamble.
Elements of a classic bad dream plagued the office birthday party; first the Dollar Store cake knife - made of that type of plastic that’s always doomed to fail - cracked under pressure (reducing Francine to scooping hunks of cake onto plates with a spoon in her sticky fist), then somebody’s capuccino landed on the carpet and had to be mopped up with dozens of tiny pink napkins, while the constant bark of forced laughter pinged off the walls.
i didn’t win even one of the 82 million Florida lottery dollars last night, so there’ll be no tropical backyard landscaping, legal advice for life, world travel, or food, no debt eradication or anything much resembling it this week, and i suppose i’m returning all the shoes; sorry, resume your positions.
In this hectic life, all you really need is….an extra pair of hands and you can get it here at your friendly local hands-r-us, where beauty and functionality meet.
is it possible that i am the only one who finds the name of Mr. Trump’s spanky new son, Baron, obstreperous, or have i just not been paying sufficient attention again?
I am convinced that my life would be more entertaining if I had my own entourage of dancers and a background of emotive music.
At 3 p.m., as Bronwyn trudged back to her desk after learning that the conference call for which she had skipped her lunch hour had been cancelled, the thought occurred to her: I would strangle an orphan for a day off.
It’s important to pick up all the candy wrappers from the coffee table not just to keep the place clean, but also so it won’t be quite so obvious that you ate quite so many of your wife’s chocolates while she wasn’t home.
Jumping up and down, Jimmy relayed to this mom the story of how he caught a coyote with a refrigerator box and a couple rolls of spearmint Lifesavers.
He knew that he would soon meet up with the piper but was unsure of the price that he would have to pay.
Trees leave the forest just like people leave the city.
Zack was reassured that all the stories he had been told about karma were true as he heard the news report that a couple charged with tax evasion were caught on April 15th.
And on the 41st day (170th day?), the sun came out, and it was Good.
the price of gas starts to cut into my drug money.
A sentence a day, keeps the scrine at bay!
Let me tell you how it will be
there’s one for you, nineteen for me
cuz I’m the taxman
Posting back-to-back sentences that aren’t remotely amusing.
Kathy took a walk to clear her mind and absolutely nothing happened, despite all of her wittiness.
“Why yes,” she agreed thoughtfully, and after some consideration, “I believe a really good, high quality excuse should count for something.”
“If you can stop telling us for one second about being hit by a bus on your way to work this morning,” said Henry’s boss, “perhaps you’d like to explain why you’re late for this meeting?”
oh yeah she could have written that passage if only she knew what it meant.
“It’s funny,” Henry said to his wife, not realizing he was about to alter his own future, “but I just now realized that filing that tax extension makes me feel better than our Monday sex.”
“Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of—but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.”
She spun her web of words and shuffled back into the rustling pages to await her prey.
Time passes ... and then you find yourself at a place when the memory of her fills you, not with grief, nor with loss, but with this thoughtful, beautiful and, above all, fragile feeling of melancholy.
but
if you write it
in short
brief
strokes
it might be
As I gazed at my dream house, a rundown 1920’s bunglow that needs a lot of work, I wondered why buying a house had to be so dang difficult!
Is it because duckling sounds a bit like underling that the word seems so ominous, or is there something else going on?
stolen from badger, who has a cameraphone just like mine, apparently also with feet at the end of it and everything.
in conversation yesterday with one of my australian friends, she “was going to ask if your prescriptions aren’t on the US equivalent of the PBS (pharmaceutical benefits scheme - government funded and makes the majority of prescriptions affordable to everybody) but I seem to recall the US doesn’t have anything like that” and i’m sure she’ll be puzzled why we’ll all find this so very amusing.
Imaginary Henry might tell you that he and I are alike, he might even say that we’re the same person, but I assure you, it is not at all true.
“The mints are mine,” she snarled while Wintergreen scented spittle dribbled down her chin and specks of white mint flew from her mouth, with eyes overdialated from a sugar overdose, she dug into the candy bowl for just one more Lifesaver induced fix.
Imaginary Keith’s days are numbered.
luckily, she came from the sort of family who wore plastic easter eggs in the middle of their foreheads like third eyes.
Mom used to keep sweets away from me by putting them somewhere up high, where I couldn’t reach, but now that I’m older, she just puts them down by my toes.
So many people collect things, some people have collections inflicted upon them, some people go that little bit insane about it, some are quite happy to stop before double digits, some collect the expensive and rare, some collect the quirky and cute, some just collect things because they can, but at the end of the day, it’s all just a variant of the same disease.
You can outrun the wolves, but it’s not easy, and you have to be willing to leave others behind.
The demon felt a surge of pleasurable anticipation as he waited to hear the Most Evil Invention award announced, knowing with absolute certainty that the next words out of the announcer’s mouth were sure to honor him, and then his dream of glory among his peers came true, “... single-ply toilet paper.”
I take back what I said about my neighbor’s taste in music, because it’s 10am on Easter morning and he’s blasting Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit”* from every window of his house, and I can’t help picturing a certain messianic fellow emerging from his cave to that fine robotic beat (or, perhaps, rockin’ inside it with robots while followers await him outside).
* Follow that link for bonus John Denver footage!
“I have just the thing,” Henry said, popping in the disk.
“Hogwash,” replied my uncle Edmund conversationally, “if they’re called ‘toe socks’, why aren’t the dang toes covered?”
“The humans taste like zucchini,” the tiger said to the jungle animal quorum, “and as everyone here is well-aware, one can only eat so many zucchini.”
Don’t try to type with your cat on your arms.
Jennifer stood about the edge of the pond, wondering whether or not to dip her toe in the hogwash and worrying, needlessly, about what might happen to her beautiful toe-socks.
After wandering the aisles for what seemed like hours, Jed was finally forced to flag down one of the blue-vested clerks so he could ask where the store kept the hogwash.
I have five phone numbers, four telephones, a palm pilot, and access to the worldwide web through my two computers and a laptop ... and yet, there’s nobody I can effectively hire, by phone or e-mail, to come out and stop this stupid rain.
Looking back, Kathy remembered clearly holding no rancor for her baby brother; it simply happened that she had been interested in where toilet water goes after it leaves the tank, and she felt sure that little Henry could take a peek down there and report back to her.
“This year I’m giving up gravy for Lent,” Jacob told his wife, “but only dinner gravy, mind you, not my breakfast gravy; Jesus wouldn’t want that.”
or is… no, it is just me.
“The tattoo on my leg says, “Each night Tansy would practice drowning”...the first line of my novel, in my handwriting…my way of making a commitment to the book before I sent it out into the world: (n)o matter what happens with it now, good or bad, it’s part of me.”
The question on everyone’s mind, at least those who knew what was going on (the beer drinking, the language barrier, the distance still to drive, etc.), was not whether Todd could design and bid the job within the next sixty minutes (because most assuredly, he had already done that on many occasions, many times over) but whether he could sell the job within the next hour, and even more importantly, whether he would walk away with a signed check and a trusting customer.
Sometimes even a handful of chocolate-covered espresso beans won’t overcome the the need for an afternoon nap; they will, however, lead to vivid dreams.
Kathy recalled that all of her life’s problems began around the time she had attempted (and not succeeded) to flush her baby brother down the toilet.
Kat whistled a tuneless happy melody and even skipped a little in anticipation as she rounded the corner toward the bakery where she would buy a fresh jelly-filled donut and a cup of coffee.
As inspired by: steve's a wish
As Henry turned morosely away from the fountain he noticed a little girl run into the street chasing after a bright yellow ball, he turned back only to see a large truck jack-knifing across the street towards her and, without stopping to think of his own life, he leapt boldly across the road, swept up the girl, rolled both of them safely under the truck and came to a stop in front of what appeared to be her terrified, wealthy-looking and grateful parents, who exclaimed “you saved our Jasmine, how can we ever repay you?!”
Marrying into a female cat, for someone who has always had male cats, is surprisingly easy.
Any time I feel the least bit down about working too hard I just consider the image of the accountant across the hall brushing his teeth in the office sink this morning after last night’s all-nighter, facing the prospect of four more between now and midnight Monday, April 17.
The ground dove up and down in huge, deep pits of anxiety, throwing clusters of giraffes and banana plantations aside as if they were feathers, racing along in waves after the diminunitive and sparkling creature that flitted gently away into the distance.
As much as Prig enjoyed killing missionaries and adding their heads to his shrunken head necklace, he never had acquired much of a taste for them in stew, although this, he sometimes thought, might have something to do with Prog’s heavy hand with the salt.
Although Bob considered his own mother rather thick-skinned, he’d not once thought that eating the outer layer would make a nutritious meal.
I know it’s nothing to be proud of, but it’s beginning to look like my seven month collection of unopened mail and bills will turn out to be a complete set, which makes the accountant in me happy in that strange, anal, cross-your-i’s-and-dot-your-t’s sort of accounting way.
Donna and her husband’s long-delayed verbal confrontation, when at last it happened, was not as nasty as a television drama would have produced it; then again, the rustle and snap that punctuate household lies cannot be heard aloud, even by the best of microphones.
The terror that once lurked only in shadows and in the far reaches of people’s darkest thoughts, now sensed the world’s growing apathy and began its long, slow crawl into the light.
The guy next to me on the Subway was reading a book that proudly proclaimed to be “the Number One Bestseller on Fasting.”
I should take a cup of coffee and walk to the back of the property to see the pear blossoms before they drop, past the barn and through the nursery, maybe stopping along the way to see if the killdeer eggs have hatched, knowing I’m almost guaranteed a smile watching the mother and father killdeer limp along ahead of me, pretending they’ve broken their wings.
I keep thinking that I’ve written a sentence about bipolar bears, and that the sentence involves some sort of witty wordplay, like I’ve written about a new kind of bear that no one has ever heard of that’s not a polar bear, but a bipolar bear, and because of this play on words, the sentence ends up being very interesting and even a little funny; this, of course, is not that sentence.
Although he wasn’t at all what she’d been expecting, June found herself secretly attracted to the new Piano Man.
Everyone had a very nice time at Henry’s birthday party—everyone except Henry, that is.
As Henry cast his penny into the fountain, he wished that once—just once!—he would be the subject of a sentence that didn’t make him sound deviant or pathetic or both.
Although the whole robot sex industry continued to grow and flourish, Henry still preferred his sex the old-fashioned way - seldom.
Being a gambling man, Jeff got out of bed.
“Did you floss today?” she asked her therapist, desperately trying to change the subject.
If the streets of Heaven end up being paved with gold, I can’t help but wonder if shoe rental will be required, like when you go bowling.
That evening, sensing her husband actually had no intention of hitting the gym like he’d said, she got in her car and began a circuitous loop through town, past every local bar she knew; and when, at the sixth bar (around back), she saw his distinctive Ford pickup, she sat there for an indeterminate length of time, abstractedly watching her fingers trembling on the steering wheel, wondering how her life had come to this pass.
“I wouldn’t call it an obsession,” Henry told his fiancée as he loaded the shovels into the trunk, “but more of a hobby.”
I know you’re going to say I should have already found the bathroom trash can and gotten rid of that old sack of potatoes next to the toilet, but then what would Barncat have peed on after charming his way into the house this morning?
She realized, as he was talking, that not only did she not understand a word his mouth uttered as it moved, but that all she could picture was the pen in her hand jammed into his ear as far as it would go.
As inspired by: Jo's Also, the Traffic Jam Minutes
Jim, having read the latest study which proved that every minute spent walking adds one minute to your life, experienced a great epiphany about this fountain of youth, got up off the couch, tied on his sneakers and headed down the street, feeling good, feeling strong, hearing the chirp of the birds, smiling at the first tulips of spring, his step light and full of hope; he never saw the bus.