“What I’d really like,” Frank told his wife as she scratched inside his bodycast with a yardstick, “is to live someplace where the local slang for bicyclists isn’t ‘speedbumps.’”
“You could get hit on the leg with bananas and you’d still bruise right up.”
’Mouse and Goliard had been having a discussion in which ‘Mouse posited that it might be a Good Thing if his wife. Mrs. ‘Mouse, had an affair—ideally, it would make her feel sexy and desireable and reawaken feelings in her that ‘Mouse wasn’t so good at awakening anymore now that they’d fallen into old-married-person routine (despite doing his best to be a caring and attentive lover), and if things held true for women the way statistics and anecdotal evidence says it does for men, it would be very unlikely she would leave him and the family for her new lover—it would just be a dalliance which would ultimately underline for her her commitment to the long term with ‘Mouse while increasing the net-pleasure in her life; Goliard appeared to disagree with the premise though she jokingly (?) admitted to harboring some interest in the old sexy UPS-driver fantasy as a means to spice up her own sex life.
“So, you’re telling me I’m covered,” Bob asked his insurance agent, “even if a random firework burns down the entire house three days from now and everything in it is destroyed except for my laptop, all the photographs, and my three favorite t-shirts?”
They say that Pavarotti’s voice came from so deep down that sometimes while he was singing meatballs would pop out and roll across the stage, but I don’t for sure if it’s true, since I’m not a meatball expert.
It’d been nearly three months since the sentencing, but Bob didn’t think he’d ever get used to his cellmate’s penchant for staring, or the man’s particular fondness for repeating, “Don’t worry fireman, I got your back.”
Sometimes I fail to notice that the morning folk show on the radio has given way to the musical theater program at 10:00, until I realize that “You’re never fully dressed without a smile” is playing and I’m getting a headache.
The only thing better than the scent from the bowl into which you’ve just scraped the froth off this year’s batch of fresh apricot jam is the feeling you get when you realize that you’ve still got one piece of cheesecake left in the fridge from last night’s dinner party.
For my birthday, I’ve asked for a massive lens for my Nikon D70, in keeping with my prowess for all things gadgety.
You just know you’re WAY off base when you actually resent having to pay $100 for a Holiday Inn Express room in Chipley, Florida immediately after spinning out of control on Interstate 10 because a truck lost a tire tread and you had to do some racecar moves you didn’t know you knew to get up and down and back up the median on the right side of the highway pointed in the right direction all the while managing to stay upright, and then leaping from your car as soon as it came to a rest to wave to the rather stunned man still stopping to assist and/or identify the body, who has difficulty believing that anybody who’s spun around five times over 100 yards of highway divider swamp like that is not only merely mud-covered but actually upright and leaping AND has only lost two hubcaps and knocked the car out of alignment in the process; I mean, I could have stayed three, maybe four more days in New Orleans on what I may have to pay to stay here in sharkland over the 4th of July until somebody opens to fix me! (But truly, I’m fine.)
And if elected, I promise to fuck over each and every American, but not in any way petroleum, military, or pharmaceutically related.
I know the old stereotype is about “those clever Japanese,” but I think the real cleverness is in the French, who not only get us to eat their moldy old cheese but who also have convinced us to pay premium prices for it.
All other things being about equal, 160 proof bourbon will cause a far worse hangover than the same quantity of 120 proof scotch.
Dear Sir or Madam: When we saw the crucifix pin in the display case, with little red, green and blue flashing lights all over it, and I remarked very loudly, “Disco Christ died for your sins,” you might have had the good grace to look offended, as that was the reaction I was going for.
the toilet, it gurgles, you don’t suppose..not…could it be an aligator access point?
If so, I musta clocked a mess of them in that swamp as I just now ventured out to the convenient next-door high-pressure car wash and Goo Goo Cluster stand in order to utilize the former and score from the latter; the swamp mud that shot out from the wheel wells had that unmistakeable, foetid, odeur morte de rongeur.
Finally, the ferris wheel lifted us high above the incessant noise of the tattooed and unwashed crowd, and into the stillness of nature’s evening air: a reward for our endurance that was as refreshing as it was fleeting.
Humans will never build perfect robots because of our own pre-programmed flaw, that one inapplicable question we can’t help but always ask - man or woman?
My ultra-rich neighbor (4th wife, each younger and more vacuous than the last) and his less-than-useless nearly 30-year-old kids have to be among the least classy individuals on the planet.
Doesn’t the word “rhinoplasty” summon a mental image of a fierce jungle beast about to go under the knife, a picture of Jennifer Lopez’s cute little nose fixed in its animal brain?
I’m so sunburnt it’s not even funny, but try telling that to the comedian selling lotion at the pharmacy.
I’m going to the parade today, if only to see if the firemen march without wearing pants, just like in my dream
“You know, you could kill a rhincerous with your breasts.”
I guarantee, all fascination with titties exhibited today on this blog would evaporate immediately if the tits in question were attached to one’s very own chest, and one were then forced to drive to a mall, hunt/gather at a lingerie department, get measured by a bored clerk, and squeeze into a dozen different brassieres while viewing one’s cellulite in a dressing-room mirror.
Apropos to nothing really, except Jo Spanglemonkey’s justifiable nervousness about the whole Eichler image, I met a woman this weekend who is a window & woodworking expert and she was telling me how, by throwing money wood and windows at the problem, she can transform an Eichler from, well, an Eichler, into something that would be identified by anyone seeing it as a Frank Lloyd Wright.
You can be pretty sure that when a rhino is checking you out and what’s going his brain is the word, “NICE,” he’s not thinking about your tits.
I’m so ultra-rich it’s not even funny, but try telling that to a rhinoceros, [or my] 4th wife, a vacuous, less-than-useless 30-year-old [with] breasts you could kill [for].
Is it against the law to eat nuclear waste, or only to sell it from a window, cut into the side of a delivery van, and depending on your answer to either of my questions, will the use of ketchup or hot sauce counteract any or all of the negative side effects, or should I stop and buy Tums, or life insurance, or both?
My computer has 139,806 files and the number is increasing daily; my brain has about 14 and the number is decreasing at an alarming rate.
Have you heard of my new book, about the retired baseball player who goes on safari; it’s called Catcher in the Rhino.
Okay, men, let me send a message over the gulf: your own breasts lose their exotic quality very quickly, particularly when they become utilitarian nozzles good for placating a squalling child, but this isn’t to say that I don’t envy Catherine Zeta-Jones’ perkiness and wonder what they would be like, you know, up close.
I must tell the world that although my younger daughter is quite smelly and dirty at this moment, she left the house this morning clean and in fact shiny.
If all works according to plan, this process will have placed a copy of Taj Mahal’s version of Janis Joplin’s “Mercedes Benz” from the album Blue Light Boogie where Keith can link to it in Scrine or in perhaps in Wordshadows—look for it.
[Third update - a lot changes in a year. Now we’ve got Scrinecast and you can ask Keith to put it up there if you have any special requests.]
“Yes, let’s talk about brains,” I said to him, by voice getting louder with each word, “because you’re always using your’s and I’m not, and let me tell you, that’s really starting to piss me off.”
The showoff goddess in charge of Washington State is now giving out candy to attract attention to herself.
I seem to have infected my older daughter with the urge to record everything that ever happens to her, and to keep it all secret from her mother.
I don’t know if you have ever walked into a firestation/bar/mexican restaurant in Texas in the worst winter weather for maybe five years, soaking wet and covered in mud, carrying a hard hat under your arm with a posse of similarly attired huge guys, but I recommend it.
“Good morning Keith,” said the population of wild birds of Deadwood, uniting in their cacophony to deliver the message from my patio.
“That just proves,” he said as we walked hand in hand down 30th Avenue, “that you’re too codependent to be truly funny.”
Laughter is like cancer, spreading and consuming until there is nothing left but the memory of it.
Analogy shouts “look at me” like a petulant 2-year-old while the powerful eagle of metaphor soars gracefully through the skies of Lex.
There is no reason to stare at me, sir, because I am not a Klingon—my forehead is merely peeling from sunburn.
“You’re out of your ever-lovin’ mind,” Bob told his wife, “if you think I can remember the first girl I ever kissed; hell, I don’t even remember the last one.”
“I’m tired of being sick and sick of being tired,” Bob said, feeling undue pride in the perceived quality of his sentence.
I’m really mad, but I can think of no pithy way to describe it, coming at the heels of so much history.
Trailside chipmunks are too thrilled to be alive to bother with petty things like avoiding death.
Farewell, sweet Scrine, for today I fly!
The best way to ensure another person will promptly show up to your open house is to cut yourself some nice sharp cheese.
Mostly, I’m depressed because I’ve realized that I’m a person who gets depressed.
In her diagnostic exam, one of my students described her boyfriend as being “strategically built.”
In describing his development as a teenager, my student lamented, “I grew the feeling of gloom and obscurity.”
If ‘Mouse could be granted just one wish, just one, it would be to be able to share the music in his head with y’all.
While on vacation recently, I almost had the opportunity to meet a lactose intolerant dairy farmer.
At that precise moment, she realized that things would never improve, and furthermore that she really didn’t care.
What kind of evil wife reminds her husband of his recent lack of exercise and his increasing spare tire and then goes and leaves him alone to work late at the office where she has left a baited ‘Mouse-trap in the break room with a half dozen homemade cranberry muffins and a fresh, new bag of Nutter Butter cookies?
I nearly made a scriney shrine here to the best sentence from today’s post, but then I remembered that I’m the sort of girl who listens to albums not songs, and really, if one good phrase wrenched from a mediocre rant isn’t a misleadingly good single off an otherwise unlistenable record, I don’t know what is.
After much introspection, Rufus realized the anger management classes he’d taken had not only been a tremendous waste of money, but were now, in fact, also making him quite angry.
As Scott paddled his kayak across the lake in the morning light he could sense the silver salmon under him on their annual migration, connecting him to the earth and sky and water the way northwest Indians must have felt on this lake for hundreds of generations—but then the shattering roar of a jet overhead destroyed his timeless revery and brought him firmly back to July 2005 where he would soon have to return to land and face up to his failures.
Today I replaced my ratty 15-year-old office chair with a 100-year-old chair that’s in far better condition, ready for another 100 years of service to asses like me… er, mine.
She actually thought she was the first person to say “I mean, it’s real, but it’s really real” when asked to describe tripping on acid.
Keith did not get the Alice’s Restaurant “I wanna kill, Kill, KILL” reference, which I must assume means he does not hear the song at least once a year, every Thanksgiving (as all people must), which means he must have been raised by (and may still be held hostage by) musically deprived wolves—what shall we do, Scriners?
but then I found la pate a son
Raymond’s highly-polished collection of productive Thursdays was one of the finest in the neighborhood.
I can turn around, look at my hands, I can see my own breath here, at this site, where my friends all conspire.
Flakes of rust fell to the ground as Scrine rubbed the tips of his metal wings together, the curve of a smile broke across his normally stiff beak, and his hard, rebar-constructed feet stomped at the dirt nervously, as the secret in his head grew and grew, nearing fruition.
I sometimes see Scrine muttering to himself, “Is it omouse, imouse, or emouse, I wonder?”
It’s okay with me if my clients are batshit crazy or if they are unreasonable, but if I sense at all that they’re going to be both batshit crazy and unreasonable, their retainer doubles on the spot.
Every day without fail, Joe greeted the waitress at the diner, “I wouldn’t actually kill for a cup of coffee, but only because I’m too tired to pull the trigger.”
When I made my first million, I fulfilled a promise I’d made to myself long before by paying the world’s leading competitive cyclists to ride the Pyrenees stages of the Tour de France course on big wheels.
It seemed like such a simple plan - a sleeping bag, a night sky full of stars, a head full of thoughts and dreams - and it would have worked, if it weren’t for his hip bones and a piece of hard ground that couldn’t seem to get along for just one night.
A person who does not believe in airplanes probably should not fly twice each week.
“If knowledge is power, and power corrupts, it’s got to be all these books making you so damn evil.” Mildred explained to Ursula.
A wise man (or perhaps it was a wise woman, my memory is understandably hazy) once said that the solution to seeing double when you’re drunk is simple—just close one eye.
All this rotating and revolving is making me dizzy.
In Scrine, you’re mine, you’re divine, say it fine, never whine; it’s a spline chime kind of lime!
Our lives hide here behind words, our shadows reaching out from around the corner of some building we’ve hidden behind, where we hang on tightly to our armload of emotion and secrets, thinking no one will ever find us.
“Now put on these ruby slippers,” Bob told the Pope, “tap your heels together three times, each time repeating - there’s no place like Rome.”
“In Latin?” the Pope asked.
As a dog who had wholeheartedly embraced the efficiencies of the 21st century, Rover felt no need to go outside, choosing instead to take his regular morning walk through his electronic neighborhood, sniffing amongst various blogs for news of his friends.
Goodbye old Scrine (sniff), we sure hope that you’re like a phoenix which wil rise from the ashes stronger and more beautiful than ever a few days hence.
Can I have my own bells and my own whistles?
Muriel’s fleeting vision of the grab, the flight, and the thrilling tri-state robbery spree that would eventually land her on the six o’clock news after a spectacular freeway chase, was interrupted with a sad jolt by the realization she was going to be late for work.
I like progress as much as the next guy; especially the way it’s boots feel on my back as it stomps on by.
Nothing emerges from the fire quite as glorious as a metal bird.
“You see,” Muriel explained to the nodding 7-11 clerk, “we would rob you, but then what with the police chase and being booked in jail and all, we’d be so late for work.”
I think I’m as ready for the Scrine revamp as I’m ever going to be, having hoarded water, canned goods, and firearms up here in the attic with my best (and only) friends, the rats.
“Oooh, pretty,” she said, putting the gun down slowly and making her way cautiously down the attic stairs.
The convenience store clerk, for whom the English language had always been a perplexing series of ear-assaulting noises that could only be toned down with liberal inhalations of marijuana smoke, nodded benignly during Muriel’s feeble joke.
Thanks to her parents, poor Sally grew up thinking effective birth control meant not planting cabbages in the garden, and couldn’t for the life of her figure out where all her babies kept coming from.
Mr. Johnson, PhD. didn’t seem quite as amused as I was when, after he’d just spent 10 minutes telling me how he spent his career designing software used to model and build next-generation helicopters, I snappily tossed off the comment, “Well, that’s interesting, but it’s not exactly rocket science.”
my tub faucet turns itself on in the middle of the night, by itself; I think an exorcist will be cheaper than the plumber?
“There is no world record for being depressed,” the doctor told Bob, “so you might as well just stop looking forward to that right here and now.”
“You can have my husband, but please don’t mess with my man.”
It might have been some type of miracle that sunny afternoon,
a tiny little miracle that made her realize you could change the way you saw it all.
“Baby, I can multi-task;I hate the player AND the game.”
GodDAMN, it takes a long time to haul children as far away as humanly possible.
For two long days and nights the ragged, tired and depressed man stumbled along, coffeeless.
The man has really great hamstrings.
There’s been a rumor growing lately that famed anthropologist, Dr. Louis Leakey, tired of losing games to chimpanzees, consequently chose Jane Goodall as his assistant based solely on her skills on the checker board.
Summer is just so damned inevitable.
Scrining makes me regular, every day!
Standing ankle deep in the bills, he sometimes thought, “Duck slaughterhouse, which seemed both funny and sad, just like his floor.