Like most things of the sort, some immediately turned away from it; others inclined to stare it down often approached it but in so doing they almost invariably became either disenchanted or desensitized and rejoined the throng of the former. And it was this thought which led Gary to first consider that his commitment to eradicating homelessness among sheep might be nothing more than a novelty.

For a time he’d thought of himself as a tough not in the sense that he’d lift wallets or ruin topiary but that he knew what he knew and stared out as if on a world already traced with the hairless, fingerless hand of close-cropped chance. He could tell when someone was about to flee and he could tell when someone was about to eat. He sensed beginnings in the slightest of snack samplers and endings just after. He knew the form of wild winds and the content of nameless sauces. But this was not the first time he’d begun to feel self-consumed like a fat man, as wretched as wide, cursed to be covered in candy shell. And there’s no word for feeling like you know what you know whilst knowing that you’d previously known knowing only to once again be surprised at new sounds and meal deals. There’s not even a shorter way of saying it besides maybe at once sure and unsure; joint and several like the father and the son or the steps to clutterers’ anonymous. And so it was that his sudden fall was quite unexpected. When the world, one day, formed itself anew the terror which he felt was just too much and so he screamed and when he heard the sound of his own voice set against the world he now saw he screamed some more and when he felt that he could no longer scream this prospect too terrified him for its only by calling its name that terror relents and so he thought to write down his thought but no combination of vowels and consonants could capture the rough edge of it so he screamed himself silent and then resolved to hurl the pencils which had failed in the face of their greatest calling and the colored pencils too, though they had given slightly more effort, and when there was no more to throw or voice in his lungs he flung out his arms at intervals while extending his digits at alternating intervals and when he could barely lift his arms anymore he sprinted and sprinted away from the falling night and when his feet could move no longer he at last sensed that resignation was the only path left to what paltry righteousness there could be in such a feckless world and at last he sat down to the very lunch in which his doom seemed but a side. And it was only after he had nothing left to lash that he accommodated himself to the hot dogs hastily thrown into his macaroni and cheese.

The Last Day of Langley Collyer - Chapter 1

The cure had begun to take effect: Homer's blindness was no match for the daily regiment of 100 oranges and black bread. Small wonder. His affliction was no more mysterious than the machinations of the outside world bent on infiltration of our perimeters and, once inside, forced adherence to various principles of determinism and weight loss which I've only been too proud to eschew these past years even if the efforts required for our continued security have surpassed even previous estimations but are quite commensurate with the persistence of their provocations as laid bare more by the silences between than the shouts that come ringing through our halls admonishing us to "smell the topiary" or "flush the grundles" or "sniff the dandies" or any number of countless exhortations designed for no purpose but to make me question my convictions; but I will not; I must not for were we to surrender at this point the bureaus and legions would have little choice but to try us for the highest brand of treason and treachery - they'd probably force us into educational programs designed to make us forget the powers of the life force just within once it's awoken with fragrance. Which brings me back to where I started: Homer. A fool would treat his affliction as if it were merely one sensory faculty affected. Such a simplistic view of the world belongs in the schoolyards or the docks. No, just as it takes two eyes to perceive depth, it takes all the senses together to behold the manifold mystery of our day. Things are only rightly understood when taste and smell are in concert, when touch and smell waltz, and when hearing and smell twirl. It was this folly that engendered Homer's compromised state. Homer had been relying too heavily on his eyes, had thought the world can simply be seen. Well it can't and if it could be known through a single sense it would surely be smell. That's where the oranges come in; there is no object in this world that is such a delight to each of the senses jointly and severally and there is nothing so uniformly disappointing to each of the sense as black bread. Why is it black any way? The point is this: through the systematic derangement and rearrangement of the all-sense scheme as executed through this repeated excitement and disappointment of the senses, Homer's senses could begin to work as a team again with the captain taking his post at the olfactory watchtower. It's already begun to work. I just need a few more weeks to allow its proper course but they advance daily. Will Homer's cure first afford me the reinforcement I so desperately need in our defense? Or will they overtake us and pound us into the submission of scolded children through campaigns to compromise heightened senses of smell or at least heightened awareness thereof? Or will these booby traps I've rigged throughout the newspaper piles spell victory for us once and for all? The answer is out there curling through the air like the aroma of ham or broccoli.

He’d learned what lessons he could and his success was manifest as the zombies he was trying to organize spent most of their time vomiting in their seats in the auditorium. You’re dreaming again she heard him say, I didn’t actually just do that it was just a dream. But he’d known better. And he wasted no time by first testing his reality with candy corn and plums. Day after day and night after night he’d felt that his days were coming two at a time and his nights in threes. We’ve been promised new knobs and I want to know when we’re getting them an angry older tenant inquired from the back as loud as she could but only half loud enough to rise above the din of zombie ministrations. A portly fellow cum zombie turned as she spoke and ran for her with an alacrity he likely never knew in his alive life but was quickly turned away by auxiliary police who’d been contracted for just such services and who by all available criteria had performed it well even as some of the tenants had suggested that they were in league with the zombies. The local magistrate continued his speech by noting that he had been in touch with the very highest echelons of some local agencies and he could assure them that progress was a-coming. With patience, he admonished us, mountains can crumble and the towering incompetency and cronyism that had run the city long enough would be on its way out with just such inaction on the part of those in attendance. His thoughts drifted back to the race he watched earlier in the day. As the fleet-footed participants passed it was strange custom to offer the athletes presents. Almost invariably the runners would refuse prompting the offeror of the gift to keep it. Thus the gifts had become more wrapped items sought by the would-be benefactor for their own sake. And so it was that when an athlete did accept the gift it would often times be kitchen implements or brassieres. And before long the custom had become to hurl undergarments and rolling pins at the passing crowd because it is often those traditions for which there can simply be no explanation that stand the rigors of time while those which seem to be informed by principles of middling measure fall off. Such were his thoughts anyway when the zombie running for him was felled after being pelted with a frying pan by a tenant whose plea for functional salad crisper drawers for all refrigerators had hardly skipped a beat.

It wasn't that he didn't think things through. It was just that the deliberative process never seemed to yield the answers which informed his actions - most times it just wasn't done yet by the time he began whatever undertaking he was considering. And it was this fact that made him think that perhaps he was doing someone else's bidding, that perhaps all this thoughtful consideration was really just a charade, like a sweater put on a hog. But if that was true then who was it pulling the strings? Who was the Svengali? Who was the puppet master? He went down the list of people he knew that perhaps had benefited from some of his hastily conceived acts. Aunt Una certainly seemed pleased when he broke down and bought one of her pamphlets on safety with power tools; His friend Madge was only too happy to learn that he and his long time swimming buddy had decided that they just swam irreconcilable strokes. His brother Murtha certainly benefited from his decision to start wearing vertical stripes as he was gifted all the horizontally striped leftovers. And still he felt that behind it all there was someone or something pushing the buttons to make him do his trademark twirls. But all this was palatable, he reasoned, but what if whomever it was making his decisions showed a comparable disregard for reasoned acts - what if whoever was behind him was just as willy-nilly? How could he go on? How could he think of himself as anything but a pawn's pawn? And what is there for a pawn's pawn to do but...but wait, maybe he could take some comfort in the invisible intrinsic coherence of others' acts: maybe Lutz had a reason for practicing his jump kicks; maybe those geese had a reason for just staring at him like he was a piece of bread; maybe it all made a sense that wasn't his to understand. And he felt a peace that he'd not felt since he inexplicably began hording root beers.

True to his campaign promises, his first official act was to try to eliminate any laws of evidence and his purposes were elucidated and enumerated in his now-famous Fort Ticonderoga speech: trust: it is the cornerstone of every healthy relationship and what was an electorate if not a series of relationships - and what were the rules of evidence if not a formal cataloging of man's distrust for his fellow man, a veritable latticework of misanthropy, a codification of all that keeps us apart? So, he reasoned - and his reasoning is now thought to have catapulted him into office along with some vagaries about whether toddlers are allowed to vote - whatever one says in open court shall be taken at its word. If I say I couldn't have stolen those garden hoses because I was busy myself investigating the alleged victim of suspected cronyism then the scrutiny is rightly placed on them instead. If I say that I didn't throw plums at them at all but they threw them at me then my history of similar incidents leading to similar counter accusations is really not all that relevant. And if I say that I have never even heard of the term 'stewing chickens' then I surely couldn't have been able to fence them. For without trust, he admonished us, all is lost.

His conviction that his sense of proper punctuation far exceeded his peers was dubious enough but the fact that it was the only basis for his certainty that he was among the greatest writers of his day was just wrong no matter how fast he claimed to have wrote those - they're not prose nor poetry nor narrative nor expositive and it looks as if he was just writing down the things his speech pathologist had him repeat to overcome the stigma of his speech impediment. But still, bearing out the old adage that the poet's real work of art is his life , he spent his days in curious repetitions of altogether odd, though no less prosaic acts, be they: experimentation with his lifelong belief that one could stop a sneeze by forcefully rubbing one's eyeball; or pursuit of proof of his suspicion that the most erogenous part of a body is not among the popular choices, nor the brain as has been posited by more booky types than himself, but rather just behind the ear right about where a Labrador might happily receive your solicitations; or fleeing from suggestions that he floss more; or in invariably aborted attempts to breathe underwater by allowing water passage through his throat. But in the end, his mark was indelibly stamped upon the world, as his written repetitions were hailed by many as the ignominous end of communication and the beginning of a world where those afflicted with stutters and the like needn't fear anything but pillage by the hordes which stalked the ruins of our once great townships and shopping centers making sounds of their own choosing fueled by their now-inexpressible rage.

Perhaps, he thought, I'll just not think those thoughts - maybe no thoughts at all; for anything that can enter the mind without really making itself known is not really there - more like a ghost free to haunt all it likes but without recourse to typical tricks like hurling candelabras or blowing, like a draft, through the cellar or causing to be misplaced various articles not entirely essential for everyday living but certainly helpful including the salt-ternative, the October Reader's Digest, the just-bought lunch meats, or the lufa sponge: just a ghost condemned to live amongst the living able to walk through the door into the women's locker room but unable to hide towels. No thoughts at all, just the faint suspicion that someone's watching.

Loaves and Fishes: the story of one Christian woman's battle against yeast infection

Coming Soon!

As days turned to nights, nights became days again making the difference as semantic as silly as the Sun surrounded and silhouetted her leaving her sleek, graceful and equine as her decision became final, against suggestions to the contrary, not to call before digging. The impulse to dig had come as suddenly as its execution for why should the heretofore theoretical existence of buried wires call for any sort of forbearance that the far more real threats from the true owners of the land had - assuring her, as they did, that their retribution would also call for damage to her decorative landscaping. Really, she reasoned, there was probably already a parallel world where she had already begun digging; probably one where she was even done in addition to those of the sort of mystical mitosis perched in present potential as her digging would either run aground on the electric snakes or not. There was maybe even another world where her damn silhouette wasn't so horse-like, she thought, as the sudden futility of any sort of action in any of the infinite worlds instead inspired in her a brand of melancholy and a taste for fried rice.

Though his speech was erudite and eloquent there was just no getting over the effrontery of stealing a man's palm wine and then urinating that selfsame fluid, slightly altered, back onto that man's hut.

"They may bite you" he was often heard to say "but no one, but no one, can ever bite you in the teeth." Though his meaning was unclear, it was generally accepted as true and the children - so selected for displays of a willingness to work through common ear infections and predispositions towards cannibalism - were given sometime occasion to test its veracity as they tried to make plans for their evening without the guidance of hour or minute hands instead making use of only second hands, the evening weather report and makeshift wind sockets. The results were clear and if it cannot be said that they were running away from something they must have been running towards something else as they spent most of their time - understanding it however they might have - in fits of frenetic desperation or its intestinal equivalent. Such is the way of children made to do with just that which their parents had; for what could be wrong with parents and children in social stasis is just that which should be wrong with it: a perverse incentive to give your children something better by conception when scarcely ready to bear for little reason more than to make sure their implements are only 19 years old and not 27-33 and the fact that the satisfaction come by through experimentation with cannibal children will always be fleeting.

The villagers worked the while separating the corn niblets from the cobb only too careful not to drop one lest their punishment be swift, odorous and, by custom and law, self-imposed. They milled and spoke of the ways that it was different before the millennium though few could offer examples to help the claim apart from the fact that back then it seemed easier to find certain seasonal fruits and properly fitting pants. And still they spoke. “How are you?” they called out. “Not as good as the king.” they’d reply. They had no king and the meanings of the response were as mysterious as the practices of their Queen whom, it was said, believed, according to a prophecy of the local oracle/notary, that a challenge to her throne would arise from the east on a dusty day. The Queen kindly confused east with left and forever made people approach her from the right with their questions and suggestions at pains of death or public embarrassment by impugning their chastity or hand-eye coordination. The days were all fairly dusty and the nights passed with chilled corn cocktails. As the recipe had been somewhat lost in translation several generations back the cocktails never had any alcoholic-content though, it bears mentioning, people felt compelled, by the weight of history perhaps, to act in ways suggesting just such an influence if in no other way than slightly slurred speech (equally applicable to the corn chunks floating in the brew which all to easily lodged in what few teeth the people could claim their own). For who were any of them - humble to the right of the queen, to the left of their corn work and under the printed vault of a sky - to question history. Though historians have since suggested that the Oracle may have merely noted to the Queen that a change of address would slow the receipt of her East Bay catalogs.

I saw the sign that said you'd cobble shoes while I wait.
That's right we'll cobble them while you wait.
Ok, sign me up.
Well, it's actually less formal than all that; just give me the shoes.
What do you mean 'give me the shoes'?
What part required explanation?
I thought you'd cobble them while I wait.
And you were right to do so.
Well now you want me to hand them over?
Yes.
So, I'm to wait without shoes?
I'd just as soon leave the details of your wait to your discretion and tastes.
I can't wait with my shoes on?
Take all the time you like. When you're ready, hand them over. We're not changing oil.
Have you got a spare pair?
Only the shoes of others who, for reasons all their own, opted not to wait here.
Well could I put them on so I'm not sitting here like a vagabond?
I don't believe it's my place to make such an offer with another man's shoes.
Surely there's no cobbler's oath.
Sometimes it goes without saying.
Come on.
OK

[he gives him a pair of shoes]

[customer runs off with the shoes just as he'd done to cobbler's throughout the tristate area.]

Trace their airy orifices to their center and proceed and, slowly, you’ll reach the night-lit sky of their common struggles. Constellations trace the hairy hand that first lifted them out of their soupy stoicism. On the ground it’s business as usual as various grains, widely thought to enlarge the teeth so as to facilitate chewing, command top prices to be paid for in seasonal dishes or by money order. The problem of people coming to blows after disagreements over proper pronunciation has largely subsided after it was agreed that epistolary communiqués were a more refined mode until the letter carriers demanded additional deference to their decisions on certain matters including headings and physical education. And still the gears turn and the wheels crank and the antennas bow gently in welcoming the night’s programming and the telephones lie in their cradles because no one knows how to say what everyone’s thinking without sounding like a stew or a beet farmer trimming the horizon for borscht that won’t be eaten until the cabbage is done and the sun hangs like a head turned down to see if the smell traveled with heat and rose or at least to mind the curb. At this point it’s safe to say that they’re not coming. They never come and still it’s not always safe to say it for fear of reprisal. But just where they are is the sort of thing that anyone can imagine and most are probably right for they spread their tendrils with the sweeping certainty of a rat-bitten salesman come to peddle this the last, though finest, of his extension cords: freedom can be yours. And with it you too can do what you like but you ought not go that Hardy’s again. It’s their loss, but your shame, but their “wall of the banished”, but your picture sitting alone as you were when the police entered.

And you won’t get the report because it hasn’t been written

As the door opened, Jimpers couldn't have been more surprised to learn that Heaven was a place where unkempt types wore lined flannel and almost preferred not to speak to their Maker for the blinding light that punctuated everything He said, whether He was trying to be emphatic or not, opting instead for seemingly endless ruminations on how strange it was that it wasn't quite day and wasn't quite night.

Noodles the Cat had learned almost everything he knew from the Temptress Sheharizad but try as he did his attempts at her lustful ennui came off as little more than kitty hi-jinks.

Mavis was certainly sorry, but it was just funny the way a little beer always made her think of her late husband and how he'd said beer was proof that foam in all substances had curative properties. The laughter would soon stop as, invariably, she'd next be reminded of the tragic fate innocently staged as a mere foam enthusiast once again tried to treat his wet cough by eating styling mousse.

Cosmonauts, Uri, Vlad, and Uri, react to the news that because of strained relations with the U.S., Russia will be resuming the space race.

It's true: Michael Bloomberg is Margaret Thatcher for the new millennium!

Yeah, I've stolen his chickens before while he slept off his lunch but you just can't live your life in fear like that. Look at me and the life I lead; I fear few things; I wouldn't be afraid of turning around and taking that chicken right now.

And the warm tune kept them dry. And the Sea Goddess heard her Taiwanese devotees and blessed them with a scented wind. Some said it smelled like home. Others said it smelled like herring. But they all knew it was not the sort of scent that just anyone can smell. It was the smell just beneath. And they knew that their studies had paid off with the opening of their fabled third nostrils.

What are you an infidel? Take the picture already!

Strange Facts About the Life of Former Associate Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter

Fact #1: Born Felix Aristotle Lipschitz in Vienna, Austria the Justice did not come to be known as Felix Frankfurter until the mid 1940's after a wager with FDR saw him eat 19 frankfurters directly from a pail alongside a tub of sauerkraut without the use of his hands.

Fact #2: When he helped to found the ACLU in the late 1920's he suggested it be called HOMU or "Hands Off My Uterus"

Fact #3: In a tribute to the only other Supreme Court Justice with fast food for a last name Warren E. Burger sang an impromptu "I Loves You, Porgy" at Frankfurter's funeral.

Fact #4: Frankfurter suffered a stroke in 1962 which went undiagnosed for three long months during which time all of his opinions read simply: Over the tongue/ Under the nose/ Look out Stomach/ There it goes. Order in the court! Shrimp Looey here.

Fact #5: After undertaking an extensive study of crime reporting in Cleveland, Frankfurter concluded enthusiastically that for every inch of crime reporting there is on the average 1.01 inches of horoscope.

Fact #7: A skilled equestrian Frankfurter insisted that real gentlemen only ride side saddle.

He didn’t like himself as much as he liked liking himself. Truth be told he was not a likable sort even qualifying by some measures as a fraud and a crook having once attempted to pawn his mother’s prized spatula rumored to have been used by Ladybird Johnson before she was the first lady (only returning it after experts agreed that it was not a spatula at all but rather a broken ladle). But liking, as he did, liking himself there is little reason to dwell on all that nitpicking and handwringing when a simple act - sort of the cognitive analogue to a squat thrust - could suffice. While it may seem that liking feeling like a virtuous person should come in under the title of liking liking one’s self, that’s liking yourself as the feeling is predicated on yourself. On the contrary, liking liking yourself requires no such introspection and its onset need not track nor examine your days in any normative, comparative or qualitative way. Instead, all that’s required is a simple affirmation entirely removed from any analysis or scrutiny. Liking liking is like loving loving it needs a vehicle but any will do. So go ahead and treat yourself to some validation, you’ll be proud of yourself for having done it.

Why I Don't Wash My Hands When I Pee (But You Should)

The idea is not revolutionary. On the contrary, its opposite – which I write now to oppose – is more rightly considered a novel concept with little more history to commend it than the electric mixer or the hula hoop. Why wash my hands when all that I’ve touched is profoundly my own? Touching the faucet would invite the intrusion of more unpleasantries than it would ward off. But beloved Deputy Postmaster General (nominal, ceremonial honor bestowed by the local post office), what about the door knob that requires your touch for exit, you may inquire? Well, hopefully others who have touched it have washed their hands as propriety would humbly request, leaving me no worse for their lasciviousness. Some may feel inclined to subject their practices to the scrutiny of a question like what if everyone did what you now do? To this sort of ill-conceived self-righteousness I’d respond that if everyone did as I do, the world would be suffuse with the sort of modern solutions for everyday kennel cough that I have made a modest name for myself developing in my home offices in Dubuque, IA. If the question were put to me if I’d rather live in a world without a common if crippling infirmity of house pets and a world where every toilet was flushed, my answer would be clear.

Lord Balthingmount was said to be fair to his faithful devotees; and in return for his mercy, infectious songwriting and social discretion he only asked that no one ever touch his fence.

"I'm afraid the law is quite clear on this point, Sir."

The things they disapproved of were limited but definite, including:

-fat Asians (for surely no principles prizing individuality could operate to question the fact that Asians were not, by their common genetic ancestry, predisposed to obesity; therefore, fat Asians have no one to blame but themselves.)

-shoe trees

-the expression, in its common usage, it is what it is (under certain circumstances it seemed like it could be the stuff of paltry revelation but as it is often used it seems to say something at times when silence would suffice).

-the way twins are so proud of their status like - as Flannery O'Connor has said - they thought up the damn idea.

-Bulgar wheat

-improv troupes (because if they were either as concerned with the present and contemporaneous as they'd have us believe or really a troupe at all, they'd be fighting in the new war.)

-the way people say sex symbol when they really just mean sexy person (there are very few sex symbols but they are all emblematic of genitalia with small heads or gaping mouths)

-decorative landscaping (though she loved corsage)

-ginger snaps

-artichokes

Europa, Europa!

The plan was perfectly wrought: what better way to seduce the object of your desire than to turn yourself into a cow. For such was the way of this woman and such was the will of Zeus whose sexual prowess was only matched by the duplicitousness required to effectuate his zealous loves and ecstatic erotic unions. And when the cow spoke she thought: hey, talking cow! and she was filled with a sense of adventure and rebellion. And when she was installed as the Queen of Crete she knew: this was more than just a talking cow, this was a magical cow. And though Zeus had long since revealed his true form she always looked back fondly at the cow who had first swept her off her feet.

Gunther A. Macoulahputz, Postmaster General: the 80s

What an anomaly. After returning to ourselves throughout previous decades we now turned away like one would from a video of your lower intestine hard at work. Everyone, but everyone, was seized with the certainty that we were living in the future. But not the idealized future posited by ideologues; as often as not the future we'd suddenly found ourselves in was a dystopian revelation. What choice did I have? We were losing. So, I did what I had to do: I allowed mail-carriers everywhere to start wearing short pants, but, only if they wore safari hats too.

And when the moment comes you will feel nothing: no fear, no love, no pride, no pain, no pants, no shirt - just an urge and a headband. And when you can't fit it into your empty can nor squash it beneath your sandal, you'll raise the bullhorn to your lips and through your song the world will know the terror and exhilaration you feel at having absolutely no recollection of the past 48 hours. And your unintelligible admonitions and indecipherable entreaties will set us all free.

Favorite Proverbs Explained

"Cleanliness is next to Godliness."
Explanation: If you can't be a pious sort, at least wash that frock once in a while.


"Discretion is the better part of valor."
Explanation: the other part involves a knowledge of explosives and, in all probability, flame-retardant pants - you choose.


"Charity begins at home."
Explanation: First treat yourself to a nice piece of fish; then, go ahead and donate that car in the garage to the blind but maybe make sure they only drive it slowly.


"Don't go near the water until you learn how to swim."
Explanation: but even after you've learned there are plenty of strokes that are equally useful on dry land.


"Barking dogs seldom bite."
Explanation: go ahead and take that soup bone back, Rex won't mind.


"Better to be alone than in bad company."
Explanation: they were an altogether shitty band, your solo career can only improve.


"Don't wash your dirty linen in public."
Explanation: self-explanatory


"Every man has his price."
Explanation: maybe, but you're a real bargain only wanting that last bit of corned beef.


"Fear of death is worse than death itself."
Explanation: If you're that upset about it, the Powers that be will probably let you keep that sectional sofa or promise to get you another one just like it.


"He that is master of himself will soon be master of others."
Explanation: you too can end your almost chemical reliance on toothpaste if you just follow my simple instructions.


"He that knows nothing, doubts nothing."
Explanation: If you knew anything you wouldn't have trusted Dr. Mojak’s promise to refrain from fondling your breasts while you were sedated.


"He who hesitates is lost."
Explanation: what the hell are you waiting for these yams won't peel themselves.


"Ignorance of the law excuses no man."
Explanation: Yes, it is against the law. No, you weren't 'saving' the chickens by stealing that bucket of extra tasty crispy from KFC.


"Let the dead bury the dead."
Explanation: Just enjoy your enchiladas.


"Lightning never strikes the same place twice."
Explanation: You're not getting off that roof until the shingling is done.


"Live and let live."
Explanation: There's no such thing as a Lord of the Soup; Lou has got the same right to enjoy his navy bean as you do.


”We’re known by the company we keep.”
Explanation: when I’m with you I’m known as a guy that constantly points out all of the passing things over which he’d prefer to have a turkey.