On A Sunday

            Oh, how I wished it wasn’t Sunday, but it was. It even felt like a Sunday when I woke up that morning, that’s how I remember the particular day on which it happened. I remember waking up, stretching, scratching my bellybutton, and commenting to my hamster, Rex, how much it felt like a Sunday. He didn’t seem to care much, as he kept nibbling himself. That’s what hamsters do, though, don’t they? They just sit there, nibbling themselves. I can’t remember how he even got into my house. Maybe it was a gift from someone. Anyway, yes, that was the day your mother first came to my door and asked for tea. It struck me as odd at the time, but I had some tea left over from the tea party the day before, so I gladly shared the rest with her. The stuffed bear was still passed out on the couch from the tea party festivities, and your mother (I’ll call her Marcy from now on, if that’s ok with you) was shocked that the bear was in the tea scene. She hadn’t gotten to know him very well just yet, you see. She was the newest person on the block. The unicorn had left late the night before, even though I had offered it a bed in the back yard. She left some unsightly marks on my front lawn upon leaving, and I made a mental note to keep track of how much tea that unicorn drank next time around.

            Marcy and I talked for a while, sharing experiences and tea as the morning drifted by, and then the afternoon. We almost didn’t notice Tiddles Tedbear leaving, but the tea was obviously still affecting him, since he began floating across the living room against his will (muttering curses about the tea the whole time, I’ll have you know). We had a good laugh about that, and spent the rest of the day drinking tea, talking, and watching the day slither by. What a wonderful way to meet someone.  Let this be a lesson to you, now: Tea parties are more real than they may appear, and are even more wonderful than you could possibly imagine. Especially when Marcy is in attendance.

Community

            When I woke up, I found myself laying on the floor and bound by duct tape around my wrists, elbows, ankles, and knees. There wasn’t much light in the room, but at least the place was carpeted. I looked around a bit, and saw McFlaherty coming at me from the adjacent room. Tried rolling out of the way, but he kicked me something fierce. I admit, I screamed like a little bitch at that point, no shame in that. It hurt like hell. When I was done, he sat me up on my shins and pulled out his pistol.

            “Wha-why? I’ve only met you tonight! What have I done to you?” I begged him, trying to hold my hands up, but found (much to my chagrin) they were still restrained behind me.

            “You seem like a good enough fellow. I would have enjoyed your company.” Was his only reply. I thought about that for a second. Something about what he said just didn’t seem right.

            “That doesn’t seem right.” I said, figuring he may well want to know that, too. I didn’t see much point in keeping that thought to myself. “If I seem like a good guy, why are you not helping me out of this duct tape?”

            McFlaherty sighed, and told me “You see, I enjoy having friends, but they never really seem to stay around for extended periods of time. I hate saying goodbye, and with hello, there must also inevitably come goodbye, so I refuse to say hello to anyone anymore. I refuse to know any new people, there is no point to it. I haven’t quite gotten to know you, and I certainly haven’t said hello. My plan is to kill you so I won’t have to say goodbye at any point, as I would most certainly want to say hello.”
            “You could have just told me to fuck myself and go home. This is a bit unnecessary, don’t you think?” I said. If I could move my hands, I would have scratched my head. It itched really badly right about that point.

            “Hmm… You have a point, but this is much more effective. Someone may write a book about me some day. Then I can move into the mountains and become a successful recluse. The rum-“ and he would have gone on, but my security gopher bit his heels off and killed him when he hit the ground. It wasn’t pretty.

            But that’s neither here nor there, is it? Sorry for prattling off like that, the closest pharmacy is down on the right, near Sycamore St. Run along, now.

Crinkles!

            I woke up this morning and felt distinctly wrong.  I’m not used to making a crinkling sound like newspapers being smashed into a ball as I sit up in bed, but I made exactly that sound. Needless to say, I was a bit confused.

            “No, I’m befuddled.” I muttered to myself as I got out of bed. Befuddled was a better choice of words. Less common, which made it seem like that much more of an appropriate word, considering the novelty of my situation.  I continued to make crinkling sounds as I waddled to the bathroom, scratching my ass half-heartedly all the while.  How was I making this sound?

            I tried to think back on the day before, hoping to remember any unusual things I might have done to cause this. There was the park, nothing unusual there.  A nice walk downtown, I had hot dogs from a vendor for the first time ever.  I had told myself for months that I would give that a try some day, and I had finally worked up the nerve to give them a shot yesterday.  Yay for me, right?

            I made it to the bathroom without any further incidences. Maybe more stuff happened and I didn’t notice it, but that’s not important.  Trying in vain not to have the usual bleary morning eyes, I examined my face in the mirror.  It was the same as it was every other morning.  The bathroom light seemed a bit bright, but that wouldn’t cause crinkling sounds. Or maybe it would have, I don’t fucking know.

            The noise was coming from inside me, though, so logic finally kicked in.  I grabbed the zipper tag at the base of my neck and unzipped my belly. It took me a few seconds of stupefied staring to grasp what I saw.  My stuffing was burnt like some pyromaniacal little kid’s hot dog after 15 minutes in the campfire.  How could this happen? The outside of me was just fine, nothing wrong at all. What could have happened to burn only my insides?

            I understood the crinkling at that point, but all new questions arose this morning in the wake of that one answer.

Public Service Announcement

These are the lies, as we know them:

            Contrary to popular belief, pigs CAN fly, which leads to some rather unsettling predicaments.  People have reacted either by killing themselves, trying to fly, or grabbing butterfly nets and baseball bats to harness the “magical powers” of the newly discovered aeronautical pigs.

            Sales taxes are a national lie created as a joke between Jose Consenco and Fred Jones, two custodians that worked the same area and shift in the Pentagon during the 40’s.  A security guard on duty finally caught on while watching some of the tapes, thought it was serious, and it spread from there.

            Van Gough didn’t cut off his ear as an expression of love for another.  He cut it off and hung it from his alarm clock to remind himself of what happens when you fuck with Santa Claus at the wrong time of year.

            Santa Clause isn’t really human. He’s a disgusting mutt-mix of a polar bear, walrus, and George Harrison, otherwise known as The Beatle That Wasn’t John, Paul, Or Ringo.  The American people must be kept from the terrible truth, for the truth is horrible.

            The truth really isn’t all that horrible most of the time.  Scientists have discovered that all we need to cope with it would be a nice slab of honey ham, 29 oz of Sunny Delight, and a ferret every day, and the impact of truth on the common man is diminished by at least 83.74%.

            The AMA has been misspelling Asperger’s Disease for decades to avoid the obvious criticism that victims of the disease would suffer if everyone knew that they were pronouncing it correctly, and it truly is called Ass-Burger’s Disease.  The FTA has been saying for years that assaults on retarded people’s anuses would increase by at least 6-fold if everything was spelled correctly, so we continue printing and insisting on spelling it “Asperger’s”.

            On a related topic, Ass-Burger’s victims have been observed socializing with flying pigs, and there are reports of odd people flying on pigs through major metropolitan areas.  This led geologists to look more closely into the idea of hell, which gave us the opportunity to use the Hell-o-scope.  There was much rejoicing the finance department, since the accusation that the Hell-o-scope was an enormous waste of tax money are finally being refuted with viable evidence.

            Much to the disappointment of religious people everywhere, and to the befuddlement of geologists somewhere over in the next room, the Hell-o-scope shows that hell is not the fire-y pit of doom as is believed by the masses.  Under closer inspection (which is ANY inspection at all), we have found it to more closely resemble a snowman’s head.  Sociologists were prompted yesterday to look into what inspires children to make such horrendously coincidental constructs in snow.

            Having read this memorandum, it has been assumed that you have donned the appropriate necktie with tracking device, and the indoctrination has been an overwhelming success.

Please sign at the bottom of this piece of carpet to confirm our assumptions.

Meter Fairies

            In an empty parking lot late one night, Tom and Jim-Bob found themselves putting coins in the same parking meter in the same lot at the same time.

            “Why are we doing this, again?” Jim-Bob asked, shoving another quarter into the slot. They’d already wracked up 5 hours’ worth of parking time, and it had just occurred to him that he might not have any reason to be there.

            “What? You’re still stuck on this ‘why’ thing? Just because, Jim-Bob! Just because! God, every day, it’s ‘Why are we doin’ this, Tom? Why are we doin’ that, Tom? Why am I puttin’ my finger up your ass, Tom? Why’m I blah blah blah? Soon, you’re gonna have to learn to just roll with what life deals you. Sometimes you just wind up with shit-covered fingers.”

            Jim-Bob thought about that for a few seconds. It was true, he had been asking a lot of questions recently, and most of them had the word ‘why’ near the front of the sentence, if not the very first word. But Tom kept getting these weird ideas, and Jim-Bob never had been good at spontaneous shenanigans. Planning was what he did. He planned to go to work, he planned his lunch break, he planned his bathroom break, he planned on coming home most days. Some days, he didn’t, but he usually wound up back home, anyway. It was the odd day like this where he didn’t wind up going home that made him wonder what was going on. Then, he remembered that time Tom mentioned where he made Jim-Bob stick his thumb up Tom’s ass in the middle of the grocery store they went to.  Jim-Bob was just out getting some milk, lettuce, and Aspirin, when he wandered into the wrong isle and found Tom waiting for him, pants-less. There was a bit of white powder around his nose, and he seemed much happier than normal. “You never did tell me why you needed my finger. Have you ever had a finger covered in shit? It smells like ass, I don’t like it. I didn’t really appreciate what you did that time, it didn’t make any sense.”

            “Who gives a flying fuck about making sense?! You make sense every single day of your life, and look where that’s gotten you!” Tom threw his quarters down in frustration, scattering them everywhere. It was the perfect way to lose a group of thug ferrets, had there been any around.

            “I’ve got a job at the fac-“

            “That’s right, a job at the factory!”

            “What’s so bad about that? I like my job. I can get food and pay rent for my family. You live in a box on top of my neighbor’s house. I think I’m going ok.” Another clink as Jim-Bob put another quarter into the meter.

            Tom quickly picked up a quarter from the ground and shoved it into the meter, following Jim-Bob’s quarter. “But it’s SO BORING! Your life is the same as everyone else’s. So, in that, making sense has achieved you NOTHING! You won’t go anywhere. You’ve never thrown feces down a storm drain and laughed at the passers by. Will you ever be on the FBI watch list? I don’t think so. You can’t see what I see in life.”

            “You’re on the FBI watch list?”

            “No, not yet. But I’ve heard it’s an awesome club to be in, and I’m gonna crash their party.”

            “That’s fine, I guess.” Concluded Jim-Bob, as he pushed his last quarter into the slot.