Their day started at dawn and filled quickly with thousands of errands, some crucial (omigod, the bouquet is still at the florist’s!) but most of them insignificant, humiliating; though they were happy to have served the Cause of True Love this day, there came that point in the reception when the DJ played “I Will Survive”, and something inside them just snapped, you see, and the bridesmaids ran to the dance floor as one, in their rustling skirts and stocking feet, and they danced together this disco-beat tarantella of primal anger that surely drove fear into the heart of every man in the hall.
“I thought you’d be more loving,” Timmy told the turtle as he dropped it into the lake.
Close one, the chicken said, who’d been watching us from atop a nearby pile of dirt.
This afternoon we’ll all find out if aging, overweight men can still buck hay in the hot, afternoon heat without gasping to death; and yes, if I do happen to die, I would like my death certificate to say just that: Death By Gasping.
Hara-kiri is the only honorable path at this point.
What the hell kind of present do you get for someone turning forty?
Most people and animals in my life are much shorter than me, though I’m not the boss of them, oh no, not at all.
I went to the beach yesterday and came out to find myself wedged out of the driver’s side entrances by a white pontaic parked no more than 4 inches away: after squeezing children and myself through the passenger side, i found a piece of notebook paper, wrote ‘You are an Asshole, signed- the Car Next To You’ in really big print and impaled it on the car antenna (reachable from my window). i felt better anyhow.
I can’t seem to stop eating guacamole and I’m starting to fear for my digestive system, as well as my family’s well-being.
Tired of being snubbed by the other wenches in the bridal party, she shimmied out of her constrictive pantyhose, hoisted her floor length rented taffeta nightmare up between her knees and ran to the kiddie table where she had the time of her life dancing the Hokey Pokey with the flower girl and ring bearer.
The problem with having such a short hairstyle is that I can no longer give myself a drastic new home haircut every time I experience a revelation.
If I had a pen that was a fork and a sheet of paper as sweet as a slice of warm peach pie, I would scratch out secret love notes to you in the crust, wondering if you were hungry.
I may very well have been going insane at this point, but as even the worst psychiatrist can tell you, there is a huge, dark abyss lying directly between going insane and being insane, and as far as I could tell, listening to a chicken was not enough to get a person across that particular chasm.
“Oh, daddy, you’re up, I had a good dream, I’m going back to sleep.”
Lucy was forced to use the strawberries and california plums that she had on hand in order to make the right pie, the pie that meant she loved you.
dear blue pen, you make me feel smarter.
But you’re not quite sure…is anesthetic supposed to last for 4 and a half hours?
With some such nonsensical combination of impossibilities do we all try to describe something- book or food- that has given us a new sensation As it were possible to suggest in words any sensation except those already known to everybody! Of course the only sensible thing is to say, “Take a taste, yourself. You’ll eat it to the core, if you do.”
I had resolved to be less offended by human nature, but I think I blew it already.
she often wondered whether the little green plastic garden buddha was happier with the woodchips or without.
“While I would agree with you that berating other passengers and behaving in a generally abusive and irritating manner certainly does not warrant such a violent response on my part”, said Miss Jane as she paused to wipe the lumps from her bat, “I would have to say that it is unfortunate for you that I am not generally considered to be a reasonable person in these matters.”
Vacations, she thought feverishly, as she resisted the urge to jump up and push her bemused supervisor out the door, are not just for the vacating, but are sometimes enjoyed just as much by those left behind.
When his mother’s name came up on the caller ID, James briefly considered hara-kiri; instead, he opted to paint his phone with gasoline and move it closer to the wobbly candlesticks on his kitchen counter.
bribery, treachery, verbal and borderline physical abuse, checking arrest records, passing a bad check for bail money; Lucy was a lot like a box of chocolates.
1/3 part kahlua, 1/3 part raw tupelo honey, 1/3 part strong coffee (to chase 10mg of valium with….)
There’s every reason to feel light-hearted this morning - and every manner of e-mail waiting to change all that.
As Keith sipped his coffee from the back porch —chickens wandering about the yard, goldfinches and starlings and all types of finches jumping about in the nearby trees and shrubs, moles, near the garden, pushing up dirt from below, and, almost unbelievably, out near the chicken coop not 80 feet away, the appearance of an extraordinarily large, wild pheasant rooster, slipping into the yard from the field— he pondered the paradox of land ownership.
It’s a disturbing sort of day when your friend decides to ring you up, quack and then hang up.
Five and a half years of friendship, six months of estrangement; I swallowed pride and anger to make amends; I shouldn’t have bothered.
Grudknows sipped from the nice shiny new coffee mug with some suspicion - it’d be presented to her sister who couldn’t restrain the maniacal twinkle in her eye but so far the cup hadn’t sprung a leak, made any sounds or done anything out of the ordinary - it’s really *just* a mug, she quacked to herself in reassuring tones.
The rule was simple: don’t become attached to food animals—so Sophie the milk goat, Thomas Jefferson, the adopted orphan baby deer, Thumper the stud rabbit and Ocho, the calf born on 8/8 were all safe—the same could not be said of the goat named 4th of July BBQ, the steer named Ribeye, the piglet named Bacon and the innumerable rabbits named Hossenpfeffer.
As inspired by: Jo and Keith and their dadblammed govment conspiracy
The surprisingly sexy looking scientists hit the big red button on the DNA recreator machine and leant back to watch what they expected to be the swirling coming-togetherness of their very own Other Keith, but instead watched the shape morph into something big and rather beaky.
I was going to head this something like “Scrinetic” to note how frenetic it can be when you’ve been away from a computer/Scrine for a day or so, but then when I looked up frenzy in the online thesaurus I found an even better term.
To the manager who created an office rule that department computers would display only the “star field” screensaver, Carrie wanted to reply: You utterly missed the point of network continuity.
As inspired by: goliard's a resignation.
thought the young impressionable Lucy, once the bell of the ball and now just a middle-aged morally stymied frigid woman of little importance simmering on the back burner of life.
“Jones, get this pillow drool down to the lab, ASAP!”
You surprised me when I opened by lunch bag and discovered a Polaroid with a red lipstick kiss inside.
Sitting in class, Jeanette couldn’t believe the gall of the student next to her who spent the entire morning playing Bejeweled.
Geoffrey fretted about when he realized that his connections to the world of the internet had been seriously compromised by an idiot addicted to online porn.
As inspired by: Jo's Intrigue!
Having always suspected the government would one day steal his DNA, Keith had, over the years, been systematically injecting himself with a secret animal DNA mixture that he called LUCK (one part lion for cunning, strength, and cat-like quickness and three parts duck, which was mostly for their wit and incredible foresight), but what he’d failed to suspect, and would later write about in his memoir, was his surprise that the government would stoop so low as to steal his favorite coffee cup, which made him realize (but too late!), that maybe he should have added more duck to the DNA mix.
Little Bobby hoped with all his might that Superman Returns and Pirates of the Carribbean: Dead Man’s Chest would be next week’s double-feature at the drive-in.
Holding her breath, she replaced Keith’s favorite coffee cup with an exact duplicate, and returned stealthily to the sleek black government car, where she placed it in the foam case, careful not to smear any of the precious DNA.
Sometime just after 3 a.m., the favored coffee cup stumbled into the house, stinking of toddy.
Keith (or was it the other Keith) tossed aside the beer, took one last long look at his bed, put down his coffee mug and added the ‘newest scriners’ to the home page - just like he said he would.
eventually Jill found herself small enough to stick to the wall, and there she overheard many important conversations and was privvy to all sorts of information which she passed on to the spider beside her almost immediately.
An empty gallon-size plastic bag with “poblanos” scrawled in red marker was found tonight, clinging with frosty fingers to the back of the ice machine in our dying fridge-freezer.
“It’s an absolutely shocking crime - so, can you tell us exactly what happened?”
“Damn it, Jim, I’m only a doctor and I can’t find that coffee cup anywhere!”
Finally otalgia-free, Keith plugged in the big speakers to rattle his eardrums from the outside for awhile.
When Monday beats you down so far you could swear it must be Thursday, you know it’s going to be an ugly week.
Carrot feared greatly for the welfare of her older brother, as he was exhibiting a tendency towards highly pretentious photography; perhaps her brother feared for her as well, as a result of her distinct (and awkwardly executed) fondness for snobbish diction.
As inspired by: Keith's Lost: Favorite Coffee Cup. Reward.
Henry temporarily lost control of his car as the unidentified ceramic projectile smashed through his window and bounced off his forehead.
Once every forty-five years Henry would magically turn into a septic system drain-field repairman, which when you think about it, doesn’t seem magical at all.
i’ll pick up some duct tape and cardboard boxes, a few shovels and a bb gun (that ought to keep them busy for a while).
Become sleep deprived and then make important decisions.
I was three rungs away from the top of an eighteen-foot ladder when they turned the lights off this evening.
Knowing that for the rest of the summer, I will not be required to be at any specific place at 6:30 pm every night, gives me a fluffy feelings like my belly’s full of serated marshmellows.
Keith walked slowly about the farm, stopping occasionally to call out for the lost coffee cup.
At the big all-staff meeting, I met a woman who dressed like she might be a blogger; for the life of me, though, I did not know how to ask her without sounding like an idiot in at least five distinct ways.
As I travel, I leave behind a trail of sheet music, post-it notes, empty jars of salsa, and tortilla-chip crumbs.
What sort of deity would allow a universe in which the air between the raindrops does not feel cooling and soothing, but rather thick and oppressive?
As we sat down to watch the movie Eight Below, the boy asks me, “Does anyone die in this?”, but then adds, before I can answer, “I don’t care if it’s a person, but it better not be an animal.”
I thought I had something figured out today, but as it turns out, I was mistaken.
What word would you use to describe someone who is a landscaper / small-marble-or-plastic-toy-retrievalist / archaeologist?
I need to remember not to fall into my big, open sewer trench, because I think I’d really hate that.
You can lead an Aussie to biscuits, but you can’t make her bake ‘em.
The young woman dived innocently into her coffee, unwittingly setting hearts a-thunder.
I stare at the web, I navigate around my “favorites” list, I read the New York Times online, I check my email, and I wonder, as I drink my coffe, what am I missing?
Odd, knowing that in a few hours the sun’s onslaught will cause my IQ to drop at least 100 points, probably putting me in a deficit situation.
John Henry could pound spikes all day long with the pressure inside this aching head.
It’s funny how finding even the smallest things can bring about the biggest smiles.
SOCCEROOS! Woooohoooooooo! One-sentence-rule-breakers, every one of ‘em, I’m sure.
(oh, forgive me rusty bird, I have no self control)
No matter how many times you try, you won’t out-stubbornness your bowels.
Although they claim to be all natural, I’m starting to suspect that they put something ‘extra’ in their juices that have brainwashed me into paying nearly three dollars a bottle for all their stuff over and over and over again…but oh, it’s worth it.
could someone please explain to me what the word, ‘Faithful’ means in this fine twenty first century (taking into account that surely definitions will vary wildly between the male and female among us…
Jill sat on the front porch, swinging her feet in time with the exhalations of the cigarettes that she had stolen from daddy’s drawer; she wondered if Tom really liked her, or just one of her friends; she wondered what his motive was in asking her (a frizzy haired gigantic girl in a hand-me-down dress) to the dance- and somewhere in the back of her not yet fully developed emotional self, she wondered how the other girls would change the way they treated her afterwards.
The man laughed in a hauntingly familiar manner and every time he did so he caused a quiet smile in the woman seated across the way.
‘Mouse sat there in front of the computer, his eyes big and his jaw hanging open in complete and utter awe as he zoomed in from space and looked the roof of the log cabin he and his family built in the Colorado mountains when he was five.
As inspired by: a true story
“Twelve dollars for a purse is far too expensive,” said the customer, stalking out of the store; her Prada handbag swung smartly in time with her swaying trophy-wife hips.
‘mouse felt a range of expressions cross his face as he opened the door to be greeted with a crowd of Australians bearing trays of nibbles and demanding Margheritas.
Gertrude developed a severe case of Scrine-itis after reading the New Matilda headline, ‘A Keith Amongst the Pigeons’.
If you saw a little white worm peeking out from your cat’s butt, I wonder if you’d write a sentence about it…. no, I don’t think I will either.
Texas does feel like another country, with its overgrazed grasslands and spiny west; it is wild and beautiful, but I’m ready to leave.
Pigpen had his cloud of dirt, Eeyore his little black raincloud—I have my own personal gravity well that follows me around and makes it feel as if I’m walking on a much bigger, suckier planet.
There are few universal truths, but one of them is that if you drink a beer at 5:00 p.m. your motivation to work late will decrease logarithmically and your ability to rationalize putting things off until tommorow will increase exponentially.
Sure the movie’s good, but I’m not convinced it’s an accurate portrayal of what really happened when Abbott and Costello met Frankenstein.
Show up about 8pm any warm summer night for a refreshing treat at the ‘mouse house.
While dining over the weekend, I allowed myself just one beer; wouldn’t you know it, the boy smiled and explained ‘it’s always two for one here at C——’s!’ and I was left with no choiche other than to explain my alcoholism to the damned waiter before I could get him to take the second beer off my table.
One of Eli Whitney’s earliest inventions, the zombine, a horse-drawn, combine-type machine capable of finding and killing zombies, quickly became obsolete due to its history of frequent breakdowns while in service—i.e., the zombies kept eating the horses.
The salesman assured me the fedora was unpeckable, but I’ve yet to put it to the test.
As inspired by: random eyes (a comment in a Becky-scrine)
Let’s start an underground movement and call it Scriners Recommend or possibly just we don’t agree with you Keith, so there, ner.
Miss Jane stalked the low-lit streets, draped in stained and bloody clothes, ranting “retribution for the innocent and fallen” to herself, knowing that this time she would find Lady Luck and she would make her pay.
As Tammy glared at the blood stains on her new jacket, she couldn’t help but think back to the painful incidents that preceded the engine-oil stained ‘new’ jacket and the train-track-grease stained ‘new’ boots and she found herself wondering just how many coincidences needed to stack up before something bad happened.
As inspired by: pam's more on adulthood
The dessert trolley lurked in an empty and rather menancing manner and as Boot and Pam leaned bloatedly backwards in their chairs they simultaneously espied a fallen tart.
As inspired by: Snow's Pie
I’ll cook you a fragrant dinner, ply you with aged, fine red wine, assail your senses with delicately roasted espresso coffee and, lastly, freshen your palate with lilly-pilly berries.
Spelunking is to an unexplored network of caves as ___________ is to a hard drive with several hundred gigabytes of music.
“Freshly-baked bread with butter and honey” is only a sentence fragment, but should be given all of the privileges and immunities enjoyed by complete sentences.
If you’re like me and trying to catch a thief who’s been stealing things from your barn, you’ll maybe want to reconsider setting up that ingenious amateur burglar alarm (baby monitor, with receiver right next to your ear on your pillow) because if your barn cat is anything like mine, he’s most likely holding organized hissing and growling matches with all of the other neighborhood cats; these matches begin promptly every thirty minutes and seem to last the entire night, or at least until you finally give up on the idea of sleep.
If procrastination is such a bad thing, why does it affect over 99.999% of the population…..well 98%, but the other .999% has got to be lying.
If you’ve ever wondered what sort of marvel our own fabulous Bakerina produces, then you should invite her for a visit.
“Go brush, Howard, you’ve got baited breath.”
Itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy.
As inspired by: MFK Fisher
Yum!
the first sign of giving up…must be when you don’t get depressed over birthdays anymore, eat that extra piece of cake, and scowl at the local teenagers driving their dirtbikes in the dark
Nothing epitomizes the modern suburban experience as much as making three trips to buy dirt, in a station wagon with two yelling children.
Timothy waited impatiently by the window for happenstance to drop by, hoping he would drop a piano on serendipity, who had overstayed her visit.
Hurtling down Highway 101, hoping he wasn’t too late, he pulled over, aghast: replete between the soybean fields that asshat developer had made manifest his flimsy and endlessly repetitive erection, a horror of Arts and Crafts-style bungalows baking in the blazing sun.
Most Americans tend to think of working on a Saturday the way hermits think about their bath - once in a great awhile is okay.
It seems that, if the music on the radio were to line up with the beat of the windshield wipers, something would explode.
“Opposable thumbs, my bum” trumpeted Ramona as she sat firmly and damply on the monkey.
The electronics in place, the baby monitor on, and the big stick and duct tape ready by the back door, Henry’s trap was finally ready.
I think it’s probably best that my children never have my exact blog address, but rather a false front I erect replete with charming little stories about their innocent antics.
As inspired by: grudknows's So my strange little birdy friends…
“Well, of course it’s me,” thought Betsy as she carefully painted in the shadows, “any other critter would just be mucking about.”
As inspired by: steve's a historical footnote
As all the giggles died away in the distance, the giant yellow duck removed her caped costume - emblazoned with QB - pulled on her boots and strolled back into the office.
Juan became a firm believer in karma after he fed the meter of the car in front of him and then returned, very late, to his own car and found someone had fed his meter.
You’d be surprised how irritating it is to try and move everything of value from your barn and cram it into your garage.
I will not play at tug o’ war,
I’d rather play at hug o’ war
where everyone hugs
instead of tugs,
where everyone giggles
and rolls on the rugs,
where everyone kisses,
and everyone grins,
and everyone cuddles,
and everyone wins.
it’s the Imperial Council Session set for July 1 and they’re expecting a run on the little red hats…oh, wait….never mind.
There is a hoary old joke, the punchline of which is: “I got a fuck for a duck, a duck for a fuck, and two bucks for a fucked-up duck.”
As inspired by: Keith's Speaking Duck
In America, the duck says “quack” and the dog says “woof” and the horse says “neigh” and the cat says “meow”; I wonder what they say in France or Germany or Italy and if in Australia the ducks really do say “quack, mate.”
“Combine grapes, spam, peapods and onions in large bowl”
You know you’re old when you hear about the “Tootsie Roll” for the first time on June 15, 2006, but you know you’re not completely beyond hope when you immediately think to look it up on YouTube (so you can torture your fellow Scriners with it).
The best time of day in my neighborhood is when all the young mothers walk to the preschool to pick up their kids, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.
Now I know precisely how many beers it takes to override years of restaurant knife skill and muscle memory!
As inspired by: Keith's Speaking Duck
Slightly less well-known is Spiro Agnew‘s condemnation of the “Quackering Quackbobs of Quackitivism.”
As inspired by: Keith's Speaking Duck
110 million years ago it walked like a duck, swam like a duck, looked like a duck and said “quackmire” just like a duck.
Interestingly, the word “quagmire” is pronounced “quackmire” and retains much of the same meaning.
At first George tried to fight off the wolves that were eating his legs, but when a bit of himself accidentally got into his mouth he was surprised at his own delicate flavor, and instead started in on an arm.
There’s an excess of dirt in the world, but Simone is willing.
Timothy woke up one morning to find a strage face staring back at him in the bathroom mirror; he replied: “I’m sorry, do I know you?”
My dog was exploring the nooks and cranneys of our house, and had followed his feline friend into a particularly dark hallway only to find no cat there and a new scratch on his nose.
“So… can you tell me”, the funny lady at work asked, “if an insect or animal was going to draw - which insect or animal would it be?”
I always believed that Scrine-bird was born unto this world, but perhaps not, as he has no (disclosed) date of birth.
There are a lot of things that can be done with a hose and nozzle, particularly when your hateful little sister is frolicking about so temptingly.
As inspired by: Keith's Henry At The Consulate
“I’m not sure, sir,” the clerk said into the phone, “but the American is very insistent, and keeps repeating, ‘insert turtle soup’.”
Hoping that the Chinese Consulate clerk would understand him, Henry repeated the well-rehearsed line slowly and as clearly as he could, then felt hopeful when the clerk picked up the phone.
“May you have a tailwind throughout your journey”
They say every person has a bullet out there somewhere with their number on it, but what they don’t tell you is that your name is also on every battlefield in town, and therein, my friends, lies the rub.
You struggle so hard for so long, and then the fucking thieves come again in the night, and you’re right back where you started from.
Sometimes she calls me her little passage bird.
“I wish I knew what to do,” I sighed, and the cat looked at me and said “Are you a complete moron?”
I heard today (and will link when I find a print copy) that heavy drinkers can cut their risk of cirrhosis of the liver by 20% by drinking one cup of coffee a day and by 80% by drinking four cups of coffee a day!
As inspired by: bakerina's desolation: a definition
“I guess things could be worse,” said Juan to his dinner of cheesesticks and Coco-Cola, as he contemplated the remainder of his 16-hour workday, “I could be that poor woman walking down the street after a hard day who’s being hassled by some guys in a soup kitchen line… or I could be one of those clueless men who somehow thinks that being in that line makes it okay to be an asshole.”
You pass the line of people queued up for the soup kitchen at the church down the block from your subway station, and you notice that the line has become longer in recent years, filled with men of varying ages, races, sizes, and states of health, some homeless, some working poor, some lost in their own world, some chatting amiably with their neighbors, no two alike, brought together because they have fallen on hard times, and they are hungry; you think about the circumstances that led them here, and you wonder exactly how many paychecks away you are from being here with them, and what exactly would be running through your mind if you found yourself here; then someone on the line makes a snide comment about your ass.
“The rumor around town is that Carl’s stopped eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,” the sheriff told his deputies, “but that could just be diner talk; but just in case, I want everyone on their toes out there this morning, especially you, Pete.”
Because Ted was the only member of the Toddville, Iowa chapter of Moosing Around™, the club for men who enjoy goosing other men, the monthly meetings were almost always boring.
She collected the odd bits of time between events in her day, rolled them into a ball, and was able to eke out one more batch than usual by the time the stars came out.
“There’s a river of love that runs through all times,” sang T-Bone Burnett, and at that moment Bronwyn knew exactly what Turgenev meant when he said that there were some emotions that could not be expressed in words, only evoked in music.
Cyrus’ levitation powers had grown weak, and the mug floating across the room towards him jiggled and shook, spilling half the coffee onto the carpet.
He rolls away from her, fumbling with pants and belt, and while he’s doing this feels her arm come around his shoulders and the amazing warmth of that small body snugged up behind him, and he holds still, and so does she, the two of them silent at the feet of the Buddha while a velvet calm comes over him and he decides Clara hasn’t been laughing at him after all, that she’s a small vessel for huge emotions that race through her in bewildering succession and almost without her notice, and laying this way for some minutes he feels her arm relaxing in sleep, this sleepless star, pursued across the nights by visions that won’t let her escape until daybreak when she can reenter the world of make-believe.