UNREMITTING FAILURE

We've Always Loved a Parade

In small towns, like the one we grew up in southcentral Pennsylvania, they're a big deal.  We didn't miss a single one, although it meant having to skip our parents' funerals.  There were baton twirlers, marching bands, convertibles with pretty girls waving from the backs of big white convertibles, new fire trucks and antique fire trucks, the guys on the new and antique fire trucks who started all the local fires, and, pulling up the rear and drawn by six clopping horse, that piece de resistance, the float with the big patriotic bald eagle on it. 

Dot Crabbs Would Be Proud

Georges Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grand Jatte has 1 monkey, 3 dogs, 5 watercraft, 8 umbrellas, 11 trees, 22 hats, and, if we counted correctly, 29,478 dots.  Oh, and 1 guy in a sleeveless t-shirt smoking a pipe.  Seurat called his revolutionary new technique pointillism.  Psychologists call it obsessive-compulsive disorder.  Seurat's overuse of dots led to the terrible French Dot Famine of 1886, during which millions of i's went undotted and periods had to be strictly rationed by a national lottery.  In an 1887 attempt to increase the dot supply, authorities removed most of the figures in Seurat's masterwork, and distributed the extra dots to the poor. 

Bad Folk Song Attacks Chestertown Man

In a Future World Where Everyone Has Weird, Lumpy Heads

We alone will have a normal, non-weird, non-lumpy head.  Why?  Because we don't have a cell phone.  In this futuristic world, where the forlorn and the doomed drag themselves about under their misshapen heads, a delegation of the odd-headed will come to us, and say, "Oh, great non-weird, non-lumpy headed one, lead us!"  And we will look at them with pity and distaste, and take a long pull on our cigarette, and gazing out upon a world of elephant men and elephant women and little elephant children we will say, "Who's the monkey now?" 

ambassadors from the future

Art Expert Unremitting Failure Squints at: Rodin!

Speaking of mad skills, when it comes to the so-called plastic arts, which are like the regular arts but will never biodegrade, Auguste Rodin is the toppermost of the poppermost.  Dude had major talent, not to mention a beard like a waterfall of shit.   Throw in the fact that he had a name like a Japanese monster movie, and it's no wonder Rodin was the first guy inducted into the Sculpture Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.  Just check out "Rod the Mod's" homage to Honore Balzac, who died, or so we've heard, from drinking too much coffee.  No wonder the guy wrote 9,000 books.  We used to live right by the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, and occasionally we'd stand by his Gates of Hell thinking how it ought to be the door to our apartment.  We actually stepped foot in the museum once, and stayed for about 10 minutes, a new world record for us.  We burst out the Gates of Hell, took a big gulp of fresh air, and kissed the ground, which is probably how we ended up with that bad case of rickets.  Anyway, there's a reason they call Rodin the Father of Modern Sculpture.  Just check out his La Danaide, which practically invented the tasteful art nude you could look at without the wife giving you shit.  Where would Penthouse have been without this groundbreaker?  And then there's his brilliant I Won the Marathon Because I Had Wings, which won first prize at the 1901 Armory Show in Paris in the category of Chicks Not Wearing Sports Bras. 

faster than an El Camino

Where We Got Our Mad Debating Skills

What? To debate a subject  you have to know something about it?  It is my view that a debate requires that at least one of the disputants knows nothing of the subject under discussion, and that in a so-called lively debate in its highest perfection neither party knows anything about it or is even aware of the meaning of what he is saying...  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Sitzen on a park bench, eyeing little girls with bad intent

Our Evil Empire

Is eviler than your Evil Empire, eviler than bombs, eviler even than lesbians in taxi cabs.  Our Evil Empire throws sunshine off the roof.  Our Evil Empire  is the skyline of a city nobody wants to visit.  Our Evil Empire owns a white cape with powers (it speaks five words of Esperanto) that will scare the bejesus out of you.  We have so much, so many,  shut up.  Put out your hands and we'll give you some, but if you spill any accidents will befall your memories.  We don't take hostages, we take all the free samples on the tray in the cheese section of the Whole Foods Supermarket, all the toothpicks too, ignoring the cries of the children behind us, who wanted only to sample one of the great cheeses of Switzerland, where our safety deposit box is filled with your longings, the fugitive ones with prices on their heads. 

We have this recurring fear

That there will be an earthwide extinction level event, and we won't be invited.

We're Going Into the Woods

This morning.  We may not be back.  What with the homicidal drifters and bears and coyotes and  packs of rabid dogs that roam all forested places, not to mention the falling trees and landslides and forest fires and boring college professors walking their dogs who will want to stop and shoot the breeze.  No doubt we'll accidentally happen upon a makeshift hillbilly biker meth lab, which won't be good as the cranked-to-the-gills hillbilly bikers will no doubt come rebel yelling at our approach to chase us through the woods and shoot us down in cold blood so as to prevent us from divulging the whereabouts of their little business venture to the authorities. Whew.  Is that going to be unpleasant.  We hope our dogs are happy.  Because they need fresh air, we're going to die horribly. 

The Dead Astronauts

1

We drank Tang every single day growing up, because Tang was what the astronauts drank.  And we ate Twinkies every single day growing up, because Twinkies were what the astronauts ate.  And we smoked pot every single day growing up, because pot was what the astronauts smoked.  And we threw rocks at windows every single day growing up, because rocks were what the astronauts threw.  Until at last like an astronaut we floated up, far up above the town where we grew up, which grew tinier and tinier as we ascended into the stratosphere, where the dead astronauts waited and we drowned.

2

Some of them burned up and some of them fell into the sea like that teacher of school kids, poor what's her name.  That was a tragic photo, wasn't it?  Imagine walking on the moon.  Or being stranded on the moon.  Help!  Houston, we're stranded on the moon!

3

Shake hands with the dead astronauts.  The whole line of them, waiting, bubble helmets in the crooks of their arms.  If you could place their faces you would wake up, right here where you are, in your bed over there, next to the last country over.

4

America has contributed more dead astronauts to the world fund of dead astronauts than any other country.  We think.  How many dead astronauts are we up to, anyway?

5

The space capsule crashed in his cornfield.  He saw it happen.  He ran into the cornfield and there it was.  He stood there looking at it.  He didn't hear any voices coming out of it.  It wasn't on fire.  He stood there looking at it for a long time.  It didn't look like anything he wanted to mess around with.  He figured he'd wait a week or two then bury it, or cut it up and sell it for scrap.

6

The dead astronauts went to the ballgame.  It was sunny but then it rained.