Thursday, June 30, 2005

The Strange Mailbag

To Bryan in Williamsburg, Virginia:

It’s true: Mark loves Teacup Poodles. He has many porcelain figurines and inspirational posters of them in his bedroom. Currently, he’s trying to save up the money to start his own kennel which will traffic exclusively in Teacup Poodles. He’s thinking of calling it “Muffy’s Teatime Kennel,” though that’s still tentative.

Michael, on the other hand, hates Teacup Poodles. In fact, he hates all small, yippy dogs of that ilk. Not so much out of blind hatred but more because Mark loves them and Michael must destroy everything Mark loves.


To Claire in Minnetonka, Minnesota:

I’m sorry if my overture of affection was taken the wrong way. It’s just that you said you were having problems with your parents, so I thought you’d want me to poison them with dioxin. Look: they’re not dead, merely permanently disfigured. So what’s the problem? Why are we still talking about this? Christ.


To Hieronymous in Carpathia:

There is an ill wind rising from the East. Steel yourself against the movements of the Eye and give tribute, as always, to the Great Owl. There are those who Know and who will do Something. Be ever vigilant, and keep yourself redolent with vetiver and rose of hay. The Great Owl is watching, and, when the Time is Proper, will Take Flight.


To Senator Rick Santorum in Washington, D.C.:

Back at ya, “Count Fistula.”


To Maggie in Brookyln, New York:

You. Me. Noon. Museum of Natural History. Blue whale. Fresh panties. Be there.

And don’t worry about Claire. That’s being taken care of.

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Five Little-Known Facts About the Second Presidential Assassin, Charles Giteau

He failed several times in his life to fill both of his knees with sawdust. This should have been a tell-tale sign that he would wind up killing President Garfield. If we only knew then what we know now about such disorders.

He loved Twinkies. Not as much as the possibility of killing the president though.

His mother often dressed him in corduroy and denim, Mr. Sedaris. Does this mean you want to kill the president?

He once wrote a poem entitled “James A. Garfield, I’m Going To Shoot You Twice in the Back with a Silver-Handled .44 Revolver While You’re Boarding a Locomotive at the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C.” Again, this should have garnered suspicion, but, much like today, nobody really gave a flying crap about poetry back in 1881.

He wanted to be a dentist in his teenage years. Instead, he just settled for killing the 20th president of the United States.

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

You’ve Got To Hear This Album That Satan Recommended

Steve! Steve! There you are, dude. I’ve been looking all over for you. Figured if you weren’t at the garage working on the Rambler or scarfing down burgers at Pete & Pete’s, you’d be at your girlfriend’s house. Her parents aren’t home, are they?

Anyway, dude: You’ve got to hear this album that Satan recommended. It’s so fucking good you won’t even believe it!

I know what you’re going to say: Why would I trust the Dark Lord of the Underworld on anything, even something as mundane as His recommendation on an album of rock ’n’ roll music? Isn’t he the Ultimate Deceptor, willing to do whatever it takes to compromise my immortal soul and lead me down a path of wickedness and iniquity?

Well, just listen to this!

Isn’t that bass intro killer? It almost sounds like the Armies of Hell marshalling their forces to walk upon the earth, spewing sulfurous mayhem with every step.

And listen to those drums kick in! Like the rhythmic pounding of the Archfiend’s metalworkers fashioning His terrible weapons of human ruination. Wicked awesome, huh?

What do you mean this is fairly derivative? How can you say that, Steve? How many doom metal songs also have an organ line like that in them? That sound is as chilling as the cold finger of Apollyon tracing my spine, whispering in my ear to do His sinister bidding.

Well, since you’re such “the poet,” let’s talk about the lyrics then. How could you not appreciate “Come to me, come to me, Ray / leave the world this inhuman day / come to me, take your leave / be sure to kill your good friend Steve”?

What do you mean you don’t hear the same lyrics I do? I’ll admit, they are a little obscured by the almost subhuman drone of countless wailing demons, but if you listen to it over and over and over again, you start to pick up the words.

And what about this part in the next verse? “Follow my path, follow my will / be sure to also kill his girlfriend Jill”?

Wow, Steve, I can’t believe someone such as yourself, who has such good taste in music—from Iron Maiden to early Metallica to Mastodon to Noxagt—can’t appreciate this song and the message it’s delivering from the One True God of Total Recompense and Horror.

You can make all the threats you want, but I don’t think Jill’s parents are going to help you when they get home. Why is that, you ask? Just listen to this last verse: “Before you kill them, do this, I, Satan, will / slay also Jill’s parents, Amy and Bill.”

Oh, you don’t hear that either? Well, maybe you just don’t need your ears anymore. Or any part of your skull for that matter. Maybe you’re better off if I harvest all of your organs for Satan’s throne room which I’ve started to ready in the boiler room of the old high school.

No, Steve, I’m not acting weird, you’re acting weird. Weird enough to deny the numinous splendor of this song and Satan’s all-encompassing power over humanity.

And this blazing guitar solo!

Monday, June 27, 2005

Sherwin-Williams Paint Colors George Lincoln Rockwell Might Choose When Redecorating His Study

Opaline
Heron Plume
Sagey
Marshmallow
Icicle
Snowfall
Topsail
Downy
Biscuit
Muslin
Nuance
Quicksilver
Alabaster
Nacre
Frostwork
Acanthus
Porcelain
Nonpareil
Pure White

Friday, June 24, 2005

Who Do I Have To Skull-Fuck Around Here To Get Some Sour Cream?

Excuse me? Excuse me?

This is unbelievable! Every time I try to flag one down a waiter, they act as if I’m not even here. It’s as if the other customers and their condiment needs are more important than mine.

Who do I have to skull-fuck around here to get some sour cream?

All I want in this life, right now, is some rich, ambrosial sour cream to compliment my Potato Stuffers, and I can’t even get that. I would perform fellatio on a decomposing giraffe to get some sour cream.

I would carry out a home invasion on an elderly retarded couple if they had some sour cream for my appetizer that is, minute by minute, losing all it’s piping hot deliciousness because this heads-up-their-asses wait staff can’t even acknowledge my rapidly waving steak-knife-clenching hand.

What do I have to do? Take a rife, steamy dump in the middle of the table while mothers cover their children’s eyes lest they see the man who has been wrongly denied his luxuriously cool sour cream act out an aggrieved and righteous act of civil disobedience the likes of which both Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi would be proud of?

If that’s what it takes, I’ll do it.

Remember the time at Chili’s I lit the hostess station on fire and then urinated on it to squelch the flames when they brought me the incorrect dipping sauce for my Boneless Shanghai Wings?

Prepare yourself for a grand repeat of that incident unless the waiter brings me some sour cream in the next 15 seconds.

Look how lonely the cheddar cheese is! And the bacon bits and chives are not fairing any better. Do I have to call Amnesty International and report this place like I did with Outback and their “limited” servings of bleu cheese dressing with their Kookaburra Wings?

It would appear that way.

This wait staff couldn’t find a cup of sour cream at high noon riding a heifer in the Breakstone Creamery. I don’t know what that means either! All I know is, I want some sour cream and I want it now!

Where did all the waiters go? Are they over there with the S.W.A.T. team and the rest of the restaurant patrons?

Typical.

Thursday, June 23, 2005

How You Might Be Annoying Me: Selected Examples

Using your straw as a spoon to eat your vanilla milkshake and making a sucking sound with each “bite.”

Wearing a Tom Brady #12 jersey when you’re obviously not Tom Brady.

Asking other adults how excited they are about the new Harry Potter novel on an almost hourly basis.

Replying to every request of mine with “Not a problem” while clicking your tongue and then making a pistol-like shooting gesture with your index finger and thumb.

Referring to spaghetti as “pahsketti.”

In addition, referring to all sugary, brown carbonated beverages as “Coke.”

Being Billy Corgan.

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

I Am Jumping Jack Flash

Contrary to popular belief, life’s not always a gas. Oh, sure, sometimes it’s a gas, but more often than not, it’s pretty shitty.

How do I know?

I am Jumping Jack Flash.

While a good portion of my life has been outlined in song, hyperbole has taken over and blown some of the details out of proportion, specifically me thinking everything is a gas.

Yes, I was born in a crossfire hurricane. And I did howl at my mother in the driving rain. However, she had locked me out of the house after stumbling upon my pornography collection.

Things were OK after that, but I wouldn’t call my life, at that point, a “gas.” Mom understood, it being just the two of us after dad had left. Or died. I can’t remember which. It was a while ago.

In any case, I think it’d be completely off-base to call my beautiful Swedish nanny a “toothless, bearded hag.” Inga was beautiful. She was the one who’d given me the pornography, you see. They’ve got some weird stuff over in Europe, especially in the colder climates. Come to think of it, it’s a little weird that mom was so forgiving . . .

What was I saying? Oh, yeah: Inga. I guess you could call what she and I did being “schooled with a strap across the back.” Like I said: Europe = Leather Fetish Sex Parlors.

But even that got boring, so, yet again, life wasn’t exactly a gas. Especially when you and your 25-year-old Swedish nanny are in love, have gotten a quicky marriage in Port-au-Prince, and, because of your age differences, are now entangled in a court case involving child molestation charges.

But when Inga hired that hitman to murder me so that she could inherit my wealth? Yeah, that was really messed up. I was thrown overboard one day when we went white water rafting. I was basically drowned, washed up, and left for dead. All the while Inga and my lawyer fled to Uppsala . . .

So, yeah, maybe I did try to kill myself. I didn’t want to eat, I was so depressed. I frowned at even a crumb of a crust of bread. Then I wanted to make a big statement and tried to crucify myself, but in the middle of it I looked down at my feet and saw they bled. That kinda freaked me out, even though I was good and pilled-up. But when I tried to removed the spikes, I pulled too hard and impaled myself through the head.

So, you know what, doctor: can you just get this fucking spike out of my head and stop laughing at the fact that my name is Jumping Jack Flash?

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Temptation Is All Around Us In the Dessert Aisle

Beware, ye of feeble faith and conspicuous desires! Thy will is weak and easily led, thy soul skirts the edge of Hell’s bright flame with every free sample you consume!

Temptation is all around us in the dessert aisle!

Look there! These Grandma Gam-Gam’s brownies are filled not only with silky peanut butter chips but also with Satan’s laughter! Can you not hear the manic guffaws of terror and sulfurous damnation amidst the fudgy richness?

And these Habitué gourmet cupcakes! The frost is vanilla but deep inside its velvety cake lurks demon upon dark demon, ready to rise up bask in the glory of your idleness!

Sinners! Do not dare lay hands upon the Miss Randy chocolate chip cookies! Ye might believe only one or two be necessary for fulfillment, but soon enough ye will find thy hands stuffed with their wanton moistness, unable to stop gorging yourself, you fat swine!

O congregants, O brothers and sisters, remember the words of our Lord: “Do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him; because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and is eliminated?”

Bullshit!

These candies and cakes, these sweetmeats made sweeter by science, while delicious, are the diabolical confections of Beelzebub!

Leave, now, while you can!

I will stay here and exorcise this Legion for the sake of thy immortal souls! Be sure, as ye flee, to stay away from the Boston cream pies as those are especially sinful and delicious and Satanic.

And I’ll just need someone to grab me a couple gallons of 2% from the dairy case before they go, O.K.?

Monday, June 20, 2005

It’s Not the Goddamn Heat, It’s the Fucking Humidity

What’s that? Oh, you bet. Sure is. I’ll tell you, it’s the hottest it’s been in a long while ’round these parts. Why, it sure enough could peel the paint off a barn.

But I’ll tell you something: it’s not the goddamn heat, it’s the fucking humidity.

It’s like a thousand and one alien suns had decided just now to descend upon the earth in the hopes of quickly stifling all human desires and—

What did you say? Oh beejesus! Can’t you feel the Christ-fucking dampness around us? It’s everywhere!

Are you slick-shitting me? You’re telling me it’s not the fucking hottest you’ve ever felt in your whole worthless Judas Priestly life? And even then it’s not because of the God’s-cock-sucking dewpoint?

Fuck you, you fucking liar. I said it, I’ll say it again: fuck you.

You whoreson dog! I’m honestly surprised that the entire air is not dense with a demonic fog, filled with creatures so Christing horrible they defy description.

If the death-veiled heat had not stolen all my motivation toward movement, I would strike you squarely in the nose, causing splinters of bone to be driven upwards into your philistine brain.

You’re not worth the sweat beads off of that dead whore’s decomposing snatch-hairs. Yes, I killed her. Why, you ask? The fucking humidity!

Ah, cock! I wouldn’t trust your meteorological skills over that of a retarded groundhog.

That’s right: Give me the pea-brained fucking creatures of the earth before I trust your mongoloid judgment on any other fucking thing of consequence.

You a fucking cowardly child molester and—yes, I’ll say it again—a liar, sir.

Fuck. Is it ever humid.

Friday, June 17, 2005

Plausible Rock ‘N’ Roll Conversations

1968. England. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, just before the band is about to perform “Sympathy For The Devil” at their “Rock ‘N’ Roll Circus” extravaganza.

MICK JAGGER: Say Keith, remember that deal we made with the Devil?

KEITH RICHARDS [tuning his guitar]: The what?

MICK: That deal that we all made with the Devil, to make us really famous by granting us awesome riffs and crazy lyrics?

KEITH [confused, indifferent]: Yeah. What? Who?

MICK: Well, the Devil came to me last night and said that we have to whip the crowd into such a frenzy that they give their souls over to Him in devout worship, or else he’ll kill one of the band members.

KEITH: OK.

MICK: Oh. You’re OK with that? I thought you’d be a little pissed.

KEITH: About what?

MICK: About hypnotizing the audience members to do the Dark Lord’s bidding.

KEITH: Do you know where the Jack Daniel’s is?

MICK: Are you listening to me, Keith? So . . . I painted crazy goat faces on my chest and arms, so that the audience will bow down to me, and will, then, in effect, be bowing down to the Hoary King of the Netherworld.

KEITH: Sure. [turns to go on stage, pauses] Wait. He’s not gonna kill Charlie is he?

MICK: What? No. He said he’d kill—

KEITH: Fine. Whatever. Let’s just play the song, Mick.

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Where In the Goddamn Is My Hot Fudge?

What in the hell do you mean, “hot fudge costs extra”?

When I woke up this morning, I still lived in Bakersfield, California, United States of America, and not Pyongyang.

I was P.O.W. in Korea and I demand hot fudge on this sundae. Where in the goddamn is my hot fudge?

For eleven weeks, those slanty-eyed Reds kept me in a putrid hell-hole without food or water. They murdered my best friend in front of my eyes and burned my back with hot irons. They made me shit in my helmet and then wear it.

And you’re gonna stand here and tell me hot fudge costs 50 cents extra? I don’t think so.

What’s the confusion? Maybe what I’m saying doesn’t make any sense to you. Why, you were probably just a gleam in your unborn father’s eye while I was gutting those smelly slopes on Lamb Shank Hill like our nation’s freedom depended on it. Because it did.

In my day, hot fudge came with a sundae, along with nuts, cherries, and any other goddamn thing I wanted on it. A fucking V-8 engine if I wanted!

You try spending 30 days in a room barely bigger than this ice cream case and then tell me what it feels like when some pimple-faced shit whose balls haven’t even dropped dares to charge you a quarter for chopped nuts.

That’s what I thought, Johnny.

Go ahead, get your manager. That femme doesn't scare me. Don’t think I didn’t learn anything in the Marines, you cock juggling thundercunt. I’ll deal with him like I did those dirty Maoist assbiters.

And maybe this time I’ll get some goddamn hot fudge out of it.

Monday, June 13, 2005

I Can Brighten Up Anything

Hi everybody!

I’m Geoffrey Kaleidoscope, and I can brighten up anything, from a drug overdose to a horrific car crash!

My multi-colored pants and wacky demeanor mean never having to be sad! Even if your child is dying of cancer!

What’s that? You say you can’t smile right now? That life is meaningless?

I don’t think so!

Just watch me as I create colorful balloon animals while wackily adjusting my comically-oversized bowtie!

What’s your favorite animal? A giraffe? Maybe a panda? I can make them all! And they don’t care about terminal diseases or gangrenous limbs!

Just smile and let Geoffrey and his madcap antics take care of everything!

Why just last week, I traveled to Africa after another reported outbreak of genocide in Darfur! Those supposed massacres were, in fact, a reality! But that didn’t stop the families of the assassinated from laughing harder than they ever have before! My mongoose impression gets them every time!

Hey, you gloomy Gus! No more tears! Geoffrey Kaleidoscope turns frowns into smiles with his neon orange vest and his Super Kazoo!

Yes, even when your auto-immune virus causes you to shit blood!

Do you need me to be there when the newly-installed elevator in your luxurious condominium complex plummets inexorably toward the earth? Done deal! My fantastic acrobatics will take your mind off the aforementioned soul-rending tragedy!

Like I say, each day is a gift—even when you find your baby dead in her crib!

Friday, June 10, 2005

Things I Have Dropped As If They Were Hot (Because They Were)

Sizzling fajita platter from Maggie McFly’s

Fireplace embers

Cider

Blood

Shell casings

Abortion rights issue with senile grandmother

Brimstone

Radioactive squirrel

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Being a Ruthless Mercenary Has Not Affected Me in the Least

Some of you PC/Commie types have characterized me as a half-cocked brute, unable to assimilate back into society after having spent decades orchestrating every major armed conflict in recent memory.

Well, I, Everett “Bruise” Brouseau, am here today to say that those allegations are utter bullshit. You’re lucky that I turned in my neutron cannon when I left the Special Forces, because I have a good mind to melt your innards with its searing blasts of nuclear hatred, you little bitch.

I was born and raised in this small Minnesotan township I still call home. I joined the Marines at 21, fresh out of high school. After training at Fort Bragg—where my superhuman and innate combat skills were instantly recognized by my superior officers—I was flown to a secret base in Nevada. There, I underwent a battery of tests and was subsequently given an interior cybernetic implant that was linked to a monitor on my right forearm, thus enabling me to increase or decrease blood flow to any region of my body and release morphine, adrenaline or—in a worst-case scenario—cyanide directly into my bloodstream. My left hand was replaced with a robotic limb of titanium alloy, upon which could be mounted any number of tools, weapons, and devices, and I was officially promoted to the rank of Sonderkommando.

But all of these are “enhancements”—nothing more. They don’t make me so different from all of you, with your Mitsubishis and your barbecue grills.

And not all of my missions had me slaughtering the innocent, you know. My first mission was to end the festering 17-year civil war in Addis Ababa. With the help of nine strategically placed thermonuclear devices and a native guide named Saadiq, I crushed the opposition and escaped the country under cover of night. Peace was restored almost immediately.
Just like in America!

I was then deployed to Sudan, where I annihilated all rebel opposition to the proposed Jonglei Canal in the marshlands of the south. Later, I served as a security attaché to Jaafar Nimieri, Sudan’s erstwhile president. My daughters love the photos on our mantle of me carrying him on my back through a crowd of armed supporters of his nemesis, Imam al-Hadi al-Mahdi! What a laugh we had that day!

As the years went by, I never forgot where I came from. Not while annihilating Tutsis in Rwanda. Not while obliterating a Uranium dump near a residential area in Kyshtym in the South Ural Mountains. And certainly not while currently working as a double agent to murder Senator Arthur Marshfield of Wisconsin. I’m still that same little freckle-faced kid, eating an ice-cream cone and throwing antique grenades into the gymnasium.

So maybe you should think twice before you accuse me of not being the person you married.
Or I’ll slit your throat while you sleep.

Friday, June 03, 2005

I Thought We Agreed to Never Speak About What Happened to Jenny

Why are you bringing this up again? It was all so long ago. Don’t you agree that what’s in the past is best left there? Why do you want to keep on dredging up ghosts?

What do you mean “Funny I should mention ghosts”? Tom, don’t start this haunting business again.

I thought we agreed to never speak about what happened to Jenny.

I don’t care how much blood suddenly bursts forth from the walls every June 3 or that sometimes there are bizarrely-patterned scratch marks on your arms when you wake up in the morning. We just shouldn’t talk about it.

No, I can’t explain why all the fish in Sandover’s Pond have suddenly started to die off or why the water is a soupy black. Nor do I have an explanation as to what slaughtered the livestock at the Merwin place. But I don’t think it has anything to do with Jenny or the horror that the three of us endured five years ago to this very day.

Do I know why a pack of feral dogs chased you through the woods when you were walking home from Lauren’s party last week? No. But instead of immediately assuming it’s a manifestation of an incredibly powerful demonic energy, why not just chalk it up to bad luck?

Dozens of people spontaneously combust every year, Tom. I’m not surprised that it happened to Father O’Shaughnessy.

I’m sure there are scientific explanations for all these things: the surge in the locust population, the eerie howling from the attic, the giant maggots that suddenly crawled out of the stew.

Can we please put this behind us? Well, then, can you at least dismantle those gigantic crucifixes you erected around the house? We’ve got enough wolfsbane in the basement to choke a horse and when I go to work every day people ask me why I smell like garlic.

You’re being ridiculous. I’m going to bed now and if, in the middle of the night, another disembodied goat-horned skull that vomits forth flies appears in the bathroom doorway where we found Jenny’s ritualistically mutilated body, then, maybe, I’ll start to believe you.

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Even the Midget Likes It

Why are you never pleased by anything? This performance of Siegfried is by far the best I’ve ever seen. This is one of Wagner’s masterpieces, regarded by many to be the pivotal opera in his “Ring” Cycle. And yet even that isn’t good enough for you. It’s intermission and you haven’t applauded once, much less smiled.

Even the midget in the front row likes it. Why don’t you?

How do I know the midget is enjoying it? Look at him! His pixyish hands are clapping rapidly and he’s practically jumping for joy using his adorable bantam legs.

And look at the smile on his teeny-weeny face! Besides, how could any person have not enjoyed that first half? Besides you, you philistine midget-hater.

What do you mean, “How is a midget the barometer for artistic pleasure?”

I’ll tell you.

Midgets face an uphill battle every day to be accepted by a society that is normal-sized. While they don’t suffer as much as dwarves, surely they hear the same whispers as they pass by: “Look at his pygmy gait!” “Don’t let that crumbsnatcher get near my food!” “Is the circus in town again?”

Because of the prejudice and hatred that they endure, midgets derive pleasure from where pleasure can be found, and they cherish every moment that crosses their dainty path.

But you! You take everything for granted, believing that you’re too good for such a grand expression of artistic mastery because you’re of normal size and nobody’s ever asked you to work as one of Santa’s elves during Christmastime. For shame!

The midgets of the world are undoubtedly disgusted by you. As am I.

If you want to leave, then leave. But my new Lilliputian friend and I are going to stay and watch the second half.

Hop up on my lap, Tom Thumb! You shall be my miniature squire!

This is going to be grand. Just grand.