« November 2007 | Main | January 2008 »
We're taking some time off, folks. Time to "kick back" and "relax" and "get in touch with our inner child." We'll be back around January 3, 2008. Have a Happy Holiday, all. Remember, in a universe ruled by dark fate, failure in all human endeavors is preordained. And that which doesn't kill you is merely being polite to that which will. So be happy. Or at least have some laughs. Peace, Unremitting Failure
It started snowing and it just wouldn't stop. It was one of those snows where you go out into the street and get hit by a bus and go into a coma and the doctors give up hope and your wife remarries and your kid quits visiting you and there's long and angry debate about your quality of life and suddenly you wake up and everybody says it's a miracle and it's still snowing.
It never fails: you're trying to get to Nevada, and you end up in Hackensack. It had something to do with the CITGO maps, or a glitch in the interstate highway system. He went into a deli. There was a woman behind the counter wearing a hair net over her bald head. He explained his problem. She said, "That's nothing. I was trying to drive my first husband's GTO to my second husband's compound in Montana so he could chop it and sell the parts and the next thing you know I'm in Ancient Rome. I got out to ask directions, and when I came back some wiseacre had written "WASH ME" in the dust on the trunk in a dead language." He said, "What happened to your hair?" She said, "My fourth husband's in jail for killing my second husband. It was all my fault. My boyfriend's father used to be in the Four Tops. I went to this little club where he was singing and one of the other Tops came in they started shouting at one another. If my hair hadn't caught on fire they might have killed one another. Boy, were the drinks overpriced."
Goddamn, he was in love.
He said, "Where's your boyfriend now?"
"Nevada," she said.
He bought a plasma television. It didn't work very well. Perhaps it needed a transfusion. He wasn't worried. He was a great believer in the ability of appliances to heal themselves. He had a clock radio that simply couldn't keep time but he kept it on because it appeared to be making an effort. So many devices simply couldn't be bothered. Once in a hotel in Mozambique he met a machine that polished shoes but he didn't trust it. He finally let it polish one of his stockinged feet. Sure enough, it did a piss-poor job. You walk around this life long enough and you will run into machines that will eat you alive if you let them. Giant grinders, for instance. He would have no truck with tiny electrical gadgets. It was his belief that attempting to make a virtue of your insignificance was just pride in reverse. He liked portable phones better when they were the size of shoe boxes. Did appliances have souls? Yes. Did they understand the concept of personal responsibility? Yes. Were they insane? You betcha.
Nebraska: you just can't get out of it fast enough. He got beat up outside a bar. It was just like a Nebraskan to take the words "Go fuck yourself" the wrong way. He made it to his car and drove off. He was just congratulating himself on his forthcoming escape from Nebraska when a tree ran into his car. There was a man there when he got out of his car. The man said, "You hit my tree." He said to the man, "Why don't you have that thing on a leash?" The man looked at him covered in blood and said, "You should go to a hospital." He said to the man, "I'm my family doctor." It was late at night and the sky was crawling with stars. It was like Nebraska had extra stars that you could only see in Nebraska. He looked at his car with its hissing radiator and the pity of it all came near to killing him. He looked up into the sky and saw a constellation shaped like Kool and the Gang. He said, "Is that always up there?" The man looked up and said, "Usually. Sometimes Kool goes to rehab."
He decided to go to Paraguay. He wanted to go someplace he could be sure he didn't run into anybody he knew. He wasn't there five minutes when he ran into somebody he knew. The guy took one look at him and said, under his breath, "Damn it!"
He got thrown out of a moving car. He must have said something wrong. He rolled into a ditch. He stayed in the ditch for a while, thinking about an old girlfriend who liked to hide McDonald's coupons in her copy of The Enchanted Brocolli Forest.
He finally got up and started walking along the side of the road. He didn't know where he was, but he thought he was probably in Utah.
It was beautiful, if you liked that kind of thing. There were mountains off in the distance. At least they looked like mountains. He tried to recall the pictures of mountains he'd seen in books, as a child. Had he ever been a child? He must have been. Everybody was a child at some point. But that didn't prove a damn thing. Perhaps his childhood was still ahead of him.
Cars passed him by. He ignored them. You get thrown out of one car, it makes you leery of all the rest. He finally came to a gas station. There was a guy standing by the pumps wiping his hands with an oily rag. What a cliche.
He walked up to the guy anyway. He said to the guy, "So this is Utah."
"You bet," said the guy. "Except this is North Carolina."
He looked around. He said, "You could have fooled me."
He fell asleep on the roof. He rolled off the roof. He fell into the bed of a moving truck but didn't wake up. The truck took him north. He woke up, got out of the back of the truck, and walked up to a guy with antlers. The guy with antlers turned out to be a moose. He asked the moose, "Where am I?" The moose pointed to a sign that said "Canada."
He said to the moose, "I've never been to Canada before. What's it all about?"
The moose shrugged.
Said, "Donuts."
President Bush: Steroids Have Sullied Baseball
Steroids: President Bush Has Sullied Existence
Until you get there. Then they hand you a cigar and tell you you're dead. It's the oldest story there is. You explain to them about the big Holiday party, and they say, "Gosh, guess you should have thought about that before you got gored by the moose." And you say, "Moose?" And they say, "You really should have had eyes in the back of your head."
You know what the hardest part is? The walking on clouds. It's like trying to walk across a waterbed. You know what the best part is? Playing quoits with your halo.
in Heaven you can finally take off your suit
