This is a smattering of the old-blog stuff, the things I left behind but couldn't quite bring myself to leave alone. Out of 333 posts over three years, I'm only vouching for the quality of these fifteen bits, and while that might seem like kind of a waste... mmm; I can't think of a positive way to finish that sentence. No, right, I remember: it was a growing period, artistically, and it certainly makes no difference to me that said growing period allowed me about a 0.05% success-rate. Doesn't bother me at all.

All right, maybe it would bother me some were it not for the fact that my calculator has rabies. Really. Poor thing can't even spit out a decimal without yelping like its ass was on fire. I mean, 15 divided by 333? What are you, some kind of sadist? Can't you see my calculator's in pain, you monster?

(Make sure to check out page 2, too. Also, page 3. And storyhole, over there on the right - Pork Monkey is from the old blog as well. Factoid.)




Oh, coffee-shop – what happened to us?

There was a era when, should I be milling about with time to kill and change in my pocket, it was a foregone conclusion that I would venture into your loveliness and treat myself to a nip of your caffeinated nectar; I would share a laugh with similar-minded members of your flock as I patiently awaited my steamy beverage, partaking, on more than one occasion, in your varied sugary delights. Ours was an unbridled romance, coffee-shop, and you know this to be true.

So why then, on this day, would an underling of yours, one of your caretakers, forsake me so?

To be castigated by a monosyllabic melonhead in your employ – the jowly, shit-faced bulldog with the sporadic facial hair, you know the one I mean – is an affront to everything about you that I hold dear, and I feel betrayed down to the subatomic level; my mitochondria is throbbing.

Today, after slipping through a line longer than a list of your delectable menu-items, I was stopped with a vicious 'hey!' as I approached the washroom. Thinking I knew my aggressor, for his tone was so comically venomous it had to have been in jest, I smiled obtusely and pushed through the door. 'Hey!' was barked again, however, this time with more vitriol than 45 beakers of battery acid, and I thought it best to face this intrusion with a full bladder, surmising that, if it came down to it, my urine might be useful as a method of escape, not unlike the ink-bag of a squid.

'The washroom is for customers only,' spit this greasy wretch, spraying me with his filthy spittle. As you would know, coffee-shop, I was, in fact, a customer, or a would-be customer at worst; I was handling my business in order of importance, and since coffee is an 'anytime' thing, I thought it obvious to go with the 'now' thing first. Upon explaining this to your unibrowed and presumably small-testicled employee, I found myself puzzled that neither his vapid gaze nor his obstinacy had waned. Clutching my bottom lip with my teeth, for it hurt me to imagine what pain I had caused to anger you so, coffee-shop, I shrugged and said, 'you’re welcome to try and stop me, sir, but I’m going to pee; whether I do so in the urinal or on you yourself is your call.'

It was wordlessly decided that the urinal was, indeed, my best bet.

Relieved, at least physically, I joined the line after my hotly-contested foray into forbidden territory. I looked for your minion, coffee-shop, the one convinced that I was doing some irredeemable wrong in relieving myself before buying coffee, but if he was present, his camouflaging skills were unparalleled. Surprisingly, his was a cloaking technique perfectly suited to his environment, for he was there, hiding in plain sight, a shiny, sweaty donut in a sea of similarly glazed confectionaries, and he made himself noticed by one and all as I reached the front of the line.

'Can I help you?' the woman in the hairnet asked. I opened my mouth to respond to her pragmatic query, but was interrupted by this pea-brained slab of congealed bacon fat: 'No, we’re not serving this guy.'

I was stunned. Could it be? Was it even within reason that this grimy drip of sperm had any authority over me and my ability to procure coffee? No; the idea itself was too fantastic, too utterly unjust, that I refused to accept it. Instead, I turned to the line behind me and apologized that since I also had stood in line just to be denied service, I would then have to speak to the manager. Since everyone had witnessed this vaginal-excretion playing his two of clubs like it was a straight flush against a guy who was unaware there was a poker game afoot, nobody seemed especially argumentative.

A pleasant-looking man came to the counter wearing a concerned expression, and as he set himself to accommodate me, I noticed that the washroom’s gate-keeper was attempting to slink away.

'Where are you going, muffin-head?' I asked, and he ceased his fleeing.

What can I tell you, coffee-shop? As I clarified the situation to the manager, he revealed that they, as a group, had just had a 'meeting' in which employees were told to keep 'vagrants' from using the washroom. While he apologized profusely, I was disappointed that, in some roundabout way, the responsibility for this entire mess fell on your shoulders, coffee-shop; how could you have sullied our special place, our spot, with the likes of that festering, quasi-mobile intellectual pothole? Dismayed, I wanted to fight no longer, nor did I want my coffee for free, despite the protestations of the manager. No, I paid for it with a five, shook my head sadly at that malignant rhinoceros and his insipid countenance, and imagined what had been, what I had assumed would always be.

Then, just as I was almost out the door, I turned back for one last fleeting look and spotted the sulking moron staring fireballs at me from behind the counter. I stopped, flipped open my middle-finger, and slowly but surely raised it triumphantly over my head.

Though the creamy-filling of life may be melancholic at times, coffee-shop, mine is an ice cream cone topped with a scoop of sweet jubilation and sprinkled with the salty nuts of victory.

[originally posted 11/28/2008]



Have any of you ever snorted cocaine through a rolled-up buttermilk pancake? I don’t recommend it. I’ve seen, second hand, the depraved and unconscionable results of breakfast hootenanny, and it never fails to make me sick to my rock-hard stomach. My powerful abdominal-muscles quiver at the thought.

Please, save all questions until the end. I’m talking to you, over there, with the hand up. Put it down and keep quiet.

Early-morning tomfoolery is but one of the many horrors awaiting your modern-day action hero on a daily basis. We see it all, bad guys doing bad things in bad ways at bad times. I mean, really inopportune moments. Sometimes the distress call comes in just after we’ve managed to get to sleep, warming ourselves with nothing but our generous, heaving pectoral-muscles.

Didn’t I ask for quiet? Giggling is not quiet, even if you’re doing it quietly. Be quiet.

Crime-fighting is a dangerous business. Barnaby Slaphonest, whom you might know better as Sergeant Punchfacer, had to go on extended medical-leave after he came across a back-alley mallard offering 'duck-jobs' for a ride across town. The sad thing was, after Punchfacer explained that we had already broken-up the underground gambling ring of water-fowl blackjack that this wayward duck was debasing himself to get to, the mallard just said, like an innocent birdling on his first foray to the pond, 'Quack?'

Quack. Heart-wrenching. I’ll never forget the look on the good Sergeant’s face, clenched in agony like an impenetrable steel-trap of firmness, not at all unlike my buttocks after I blast them to bits on Workout Wednesdays. No emotion, nor rear-end, not even one as toned and outlandishly brawny as mine, can withstand the psychological impact of human misery, the sticky-wet ejaculate of life’s wretched suffering.

All right, I don’t want to have to say this again: I’ll answer questions at the end of the presentation. Waving your arms to get my attention doesn’t change my mind on this. Arms down, time for quiet.

You girls in the class probably know all about Commander Blast’emall, her exploits fictionalized in some of your more forward-thinking comic-book serials, but did you know that, as Sheila Falseweather, she also teaches improvisation at a local-community-college twice a week? That’s right: even super-heroes need to have hobbies. The entirety of one’s courageous, life-saving existence can’t be spent constantly dwelling on evil, regardless of how chiseled and irresistible our enemies’ features may be. I myself collect rocks from the beach that look like vaginas, sometimes piling them together on a table in the front hall so that anyone entering my apartment would be left with no doubt as to what I’m totally into, other times pooling them on the front porch so the mailman will stop spreading those ill-mannered and vicious lies.

Some of you older children might remember Lieutenant Armedforces and his well-publicized battle with the Argyle Phantom a few years back. The Lieutenant tried to be a hero, tried to pretend that this tragic encounter didn’t leave him with three fleshy stumps where his legs and right arm used to be. He tried to carry on as Lieutenant Armforces, but finally took the retirement package once it became clear that very few criminals take wheelchair-access into account when deciding on a hideout. Now, living the life of a pensioner, Peter Hurthandle has finally found his hobby: making moonshine in his basement. The last time I visited him, he was the happiest I’d ever seen him. He looked, and felt, magnificent.

Hm? No, 'felt' as in the past-tense of 'feel'. Like, 'I took his temperature and it was 98.2 degrees.' '98.2 degrees? Well, that’s absolutely normal. He must feel fine.' You get it? He felt perfectly healthy, at least from where I was standing. Can we move on? No, we’re moving on.

As Major-Domo Hammerfist GloryJustice, I’ve meted out my fair share of righteousness upon the heads of evil doers, and that’s a fact you can look up in any number of encyclopedias, or on thousands of hundreds of trillions of websites... but as plain old Mandrake Swallowbottom, I spend my spare time doling out a different kind of trademarked GloryJustice: cutting up counterfeit video-cards at a major DVD-rental establishment. Business is good, too; pretty soon I’ll hold the title of both leader of The Flying Screwdriver Burrito Attack Squad and counterfeit video-card cutting operation shift-supervisor. I am practically swollen with pride, all but engorged with satisfaction.

Okay, look Ms. Teacher; I find it immensely distracting when one of your students holds something like that up. You see that? I know it’s just a drawing, but surely your students know better than that. No, that isn’t a vagina he drew because I said 'vagina' earlier. No, look again. See the starfish pattern here, the gentle creases emanating out from the centre, the almost inviting suppleness of the flesh surrounding that hypnotizing circle? Two things, Ms. Teacher: one, this student is quite the little artist, and, two, that’s an asshole. Believe me, I’m sure. Listen, I’m almost done here, all right? We’ll talk about it in a minute.

Of course, one question we get asked frequently is how we came up with our sensationally impressive and universally unforgettable name, The Flying Screwdriver Burrito Attack Squad. Well, some things are better left to the imagination, like a presenter’s elegant but rough-hewn body buried under layer after layer of bundled clothing that, while accentuating some of the more imposing aspects of his statuesque frame, virtually ignores the more ample, enormously appealing aesthetic wonders that lie beneath. And, yes, that wink I just shot you, there, in the front row, is only my charismatic way of politely avoiding any additional discussion as to this charming yet, possibly, sensitive issue.

Yes, and I’m pretty sure I will take no further questions at this time.

[originally posted 1/26/2009]



On a lark, the girlfriend and I switched bodies this morning. The change was immediate and foul, at least for one of us.

'I don’t know how you can even walk,' said my voice as I watched my body stretch and contort as though a new driver was testing the limits of a rental-car.

I stood, as a reply, feeling sexy as all get-out and wondering how much longer I was going to have to wear this bra.

'Everything hurts,' she said in my voice, stiffening, whimpering, twisting my neck around and contorting my body into positions that succeeded only in mangling her grimace into a wince.

'How do you live like this?' she asked, and my voice sounded sultry... I wasn’t really listening, suddenly very hot-to-trot for myself.

'Courage,' I replied, batting her well-manicured eyelashes coquettishly and delighting in the pain-free wonder of a well-rested body. 'Heaps of courage and a little thing called heroism.'

'This is ridiculous,' my voice said, incredulous and limping along with my body, a conveyance that looked older and more defeated than the one I routinely wore. 'I want to switch back.'

'Don’t be silly,' I said, feeling divine. 'Hey, you wanna have a baby?'

'Oh god,' said my voice. 'I need coffee, painkillers, a smoke...' My words trailed off, but the look in my eyes betrayed the sheer terror evident in the inky-exclamation-marks of my eyebrows.

'Oh, stop whining,' I said, almost mockingly. 'How bad can it be?'

'You did this to me!' my voice squealed in a register higher than was customary, breaking and grinding against itself like a folded-over belt-sander. This was getting ugly, but my mind was suddenly occupied with the fact that my body didn’t want to have sex with me, so I told the girlfriend that she was a jerk.

'What?' my voice hollered, and the confusion in the eyes staring back at me was comical. 'I’m in pain - real, legitimate pain - and you’re mad because I won’t have sex with you at 8 o’clock in the morning?'

'I guess you don’t love me as much as I love you,' the girlfriend’s voice said, and though I didn’t really mean it, I managed to suddenly get very sad very quickly; I could feel my emotions gathering steam like an upset-train, and I, too, suddenly wanted to switch back.

'Fine,' I said, holding back tears. 'Let’s switch back, if for no other reason than for you to feel the pain I feel when you tell me that you don’t love me.'

I heard 'What?' yelped again, though by the end of my larynx’ vibration it was me asking from my old body, and I was immensely satisfied to once again be saddled only with physical pain.

'Whew, that’s better,' said my girlfriend, smiling and relieved.

'Glad you’re happy,' I said, popping Advil and lighting a smoke.

'So, why don’t you want to have a baby?'

That’s when I collapsed, from what they tell me, and I’ve been riding this coma ever since; how I’m getting this on paper is a mystery best left to the brilliant minds of marriage-counselors, wizards and self-help book authors.

[originally posted 7/7/2008]



'You think I give a fuck about the lines in a fucking parking lot? Fuck. You. All right? I’m in a fucking rush, you piece of fucking shit. Who the fuck are you, anyway?'

For some it’s a personal thing, and for others it’s purely circumstantial, but there are those times when you just have to let it out, just blast yourself hoarse and clear your chest of everything that’s eating you up inside. For this guy in the Best Buy parking-lot today, this was one of those times.

'Who are you, standing there, fucking judging me, huh? Yeah, you never been in a fucking rush in your whole fucking life, have you? No, I’ll bet you haven’t. Where’s your fucking car, huh, you fucking prick? Let’s see how you fucking did.'

I calmly gestured to my car and its pristine placement between the lines of its parking space and breathed in the desperate rage that whooshed out of this guy, listened as his cracked voice broke further after each burst of fury, imagining that voice disintegrating into a cloud of dust that read 'shrill' when viewed from above. It was impressive, and I smiled.

'What, that? I’m taking shit from a guy who drives a fucking Contour? Yeah, great parking, asshole. Too bad it’s a fucking Contour.'

He was really letting me have it, boy. Me, an innocent bystander, watching this guy twist himself into knots for the sole purpose of giving me a piece of his mind. Devastating. After he was breathing heavy and wearing something of a smug look on his face, doubtlessly because I had remained studiously smiling and quiet as a blink throughout his meltdown, he started to reel himself back in. This was no longer a screaming fit, judging from his change of tone: it was a stern talking-to.

'That’s right, and maybe you’ll watch your fucking mouth next time, huh? Don’t start shit for no fucking reason, right? Maybe think about that.'

All I had said, and it’s so inconsequential as to be almost laughable, but all I had said when this guy whipped crookedly into his parking spot was that it was the laziest, ugliest piece of parking I had ever seen. That’s all. Okay, I also might have asked him if he was suffering from vertigo, and I might have explained to him that there were pills he could take if he was so afflicted, and that if he wasn’t taking said pills, well, he should probably refrain from driving a car. Who knew that such friendly, helpful advice could set someone off like that?

Anyway, where were we? Oh, yes: 'Maybe think about that,' this guy said.

I nodded, and as he opened his mouth to impart some more advice, I interrupted him:

'Aren’t you in a rush?'

He stared at me.

'I mean, wasn’t that your excuse, your whole argument, when I pointed out your shitty park-job?'

'Go fuck yourself, asshole.'

I considered this for a moment, pushing out my bottom lip and frowning like I was auditioning for a silent movie, and then smiled.

'Nope.'

'What?'

'Wrong.'

This guy’s faced scrunched up like a paper bag, and rightly so, for I was adding absolutely nothing to the conversation; I was outlasting him with nonsense.

'Sorry.'

'You’re a fucking dick.'

'Oops.'

'What?'

'Too bad.'

I could see that he was sweaty from exertion, and I heard his gears grinding as he tried to figure out how to get the last word on someone who was just spouting gibberish.

'Fuck off,' he spit, turning immediately so as not to hear my snappy retort, my firecracker finisher: 'juh?'

In retrospect, it’s maybe no surprise why I wall myself up in my house for weeks on end – just living takes so much energy, doesn’t it?

[originally posted 2/6/2009]



I was trying to negotiate a fairly benign turn in heavy traffic when I realized that a 280-pound sloth had affixed itself to my back. It was the loud chewing in my ear that alerted me to its presence, a kind of slow, methodical slop-crunch that I had somehow ignored while speeding through town. I wasn’t surprised, not in the least, for I had been distracted with other matters, but I was chagrined that my brother hadn’t made mention of this hairy behemoth from his view in the passenger seat.

'How does something like this slip past you?' I demanded, kicking the accelerator and forcing the beast’s grip to loosen, however briefly.

'Your indulgence sickens me,' spat my brother, 'and I won’t stand for it.'

'You vicious little creep,' I said, eyeing his twitching fingers dancing on his lap. 'This is your problem and it just licked my neck.'

'Where are you taking me?' he asked, coyly. 'Have you ever actually driven an automobile before?'

In one fluid movement, I grabbed his ear in a knuckleball-grip and slammed his nose into the dashboard. After a sharp shriek, he slumped back in amazement and checked his teeth for looseness.

'The journey of thousand miles begins with the first step' he said, wiping his bloody nose with his sleeve, 'and the harvest of a thousand opiates begins with the first poppy.'

'You’re a babbling sociopath,' I screamed, slapping him around the eyes, 'and a terrible navigator.'

'Unprofessional, perhaps, but my sense of direction is flawless.'

'You and this despicable sloth deserve each other.'

I surged into the left lane, cursing the monster on my back for moving from my neck to my earlobe with its revolting, probing tongue. My brother was drumming his fingers on the dash and whistling some slide-key country tune that sounded vaguely shameful.

'Take a left at these lights,' he said, shivering suddenly. I turned abruptly in front of two screeching cars and snatched a glimpse of my brother’s horrible face pulled back into a paralyzing mask of terror and regret, a condition that reset itself once I jumped a curb and came to a smoldering stop on the lawn. His talk was demure, though his shoulders continued to jerk back and forth frighteningly.

'The world is a far uglier place,' said my brother, kicking ferociously at his door, 'without your acute driving acumen.'

'Real men don’t crash cars,' I said as a plume of black smoke erupted from under my hood. 'Now get this goddamned bastard-sloth out of my car.'

'I will take the animal,' he said, 'and will teach it the secret handshake.' Sadly, my brother paused. 'Beyond that, I promise nothing.'

'I would expect nothing more from an admitted communist,' I said, sparking my disgusted engine to life with a series of obscene commands and easing it backwards over the curb. With a cough and a howl, I sped off into the night watching the reversed image of my brother and his sloth staring into each other with hatred and acceptance diminishing in my rearviewmirror, and I knew then that the secret handshake, regardless of its sophistication, would only solve so much; no, this was a battle that would require many more high-speed turns and curb-jumping before it was through, so I flipped on the radio and steeled myself for more action on those warped and heinous roads, singing along to the tinny, warbling voice of some madman's twang as it assaulted my speakers:

Listen up close to get yo’ earful
Ain’t nothing but yo’ dog to make you tearful
You can let it run wide
But that don’t mean it ain’t gon’ die
You only who you is when you be fearful

[originally posted 7/14/2009]