In a Blink

“Phfft! Phfft! Phfft! Phfft! Taxi! Taxi!”

An outstretched arm suspended. At ninety degrees. Upside down pendulum. Timing out the passing train. Blue cruisers, mad hatters, radio blasters, nail biters, and the top shelf. Back and Forth. Back and Forth. Shouts:

“Phfft! Phfft! Phfft! Taxi! Phfft!”

Rushing past. Blurring. Like an alarm when the terror strikes, low beneath the mix. These flashers. Gassers. Kicking up the waste. Plastics in flight. Tic toc tic tic tic. Tic toc tic tic tic.

A HONKing alert. Breaking through the blur. Lay on it hard fella. Stop for a second. “Stop for a second!” One yellow fish tugging on a line, jumps, blots out the sky, snap! Rips flesh. Tide moves on. Broken line.

Outstretched arm. Disembodied. Stretch-ing-out-ward. Back. Fingering the middle of the fray. The visible disembodied now-single-bodied arm floats. Above. The fray.

No taxi. Vultures on by. “Vultures!” Wingless. Walk. Walk. Walk. Where’s the bus?

“How long you been here?” No response. It’s close enough. Walk on. Walk on. Walk.

“Can’t get a bus going north. You get a bus going north? Naw, man. Can’t get a bus going north. How far north you go to get a bus going north? North man. North. North.”

Tall man. French words. Bald. Monk’s hair on the sides. Glasses of color. Smiles into the sun. Pockets deep. Hands uncovered. Cold outside. Smiling into the sun?

“Take a taxi? Take a taxi?” Eyes affixed on the flame in the sky.

On the bus. Eyes out the window. Ducking low. Spots the sun. Bounding between buildings. Into the smile. Ray flare. Blink.

An alleyway. Blink.

A gas station. Blink.

A low roof. Blink.

An intersection. Blink. Squint.

Hold.

Smiles into the sun. Colored Glasses. Brown edged little bunkers. Full of flare. Spotting the sun. What’s to see? What’s to see? With that smile into the sun.

Green on Go! Darkness. Blink between the buildings. All the way home. Moving. Home. Blink.

Blink.

~contributer

what's impossible!
the perfect question.
leave your answers
to the Knotts

let the question
remain unanswered
it's too perfect
for you young Tots.

I want to be able to say
with little push or little play
that you have not
or ever
given me a chance

To show you the impossible
The Untraveled Way
of Enlightened Apostles
The most beautiful
And valorious melee!

so come then
give it once
that fat chance revival
of all things
requiring
the most mind bending
of mind travel

And let's get on
with the goddamn show.
Oh let's get on
with the goddamn show

Do you see impossible?
Watch it grow.
Do you like impossible?
It's all over yo yo yo!

Do you feel impossible?
It's like a snake.
Wet and wily
and on the take.

Do you want impossible?
I'll give it to you.
Do you want to see it?
Close your eyes.

What's impossible
Oh what's impossible.
Ask yourself

And respoond

with

Life Life Life.

~contributer

Kiss Your Friends

There's a helicopter floating above the ground
attached to a rope that has a person hanging on
for his dear life and to the contraption that is causing our ill fate
which if enacted will cause the ill fate of many of us who,
mere onlookers, consider ourselves as entrenched in this man's
dear life as if it were our own because of course we're watching a movie.

It's called Die Hard II or III or whatever.

I love those movies and all of their brothers.

YippeeKaiAYE Happy New Year.

~contributer

Friend Victoria Ruan was making cranberry short bread for her christmas party and I figured that was a lot of effort.  I like a good buttery cookie just as much as the next guy, but I wanted to know if it were worth  the effort.  So I googled it.



Whoever made that cookie, and made it come alive is a genius.  I heard about this stuff on CNN or whatever, but this is real.  The recipe was under the video, and it said, as you would guess : ginger, bread, baby, deli meat, dale's pale ale, christmas curveball.  If we could all figure out how to hold our fingers for the curveball, maybe more of our cookies would come alive.


Ginger Baby was even useful in the last moments as he trotted gleefully to a car stuck in the snow.  We can only imagine that at his touch the car itself became a ginger car pulled by ginger horses, because a christmas curveball, when enacted is passed by ginger touch.  Like Midas the King, except this gold brings laughter.   The many people touched passed along the curveball in their own ginger way, like having a party and everyone there wasn't actually invited.

On how to spread ginger cheer widely consult this video:

 

 

Now I am interested in how to hold my fingers for the christmas curveball.  I know if I could make a cookie come alive somehow or any kind of bakery product, I would tell everyone I knew so we could all be throwing christmas curveballs all over our respective towns.  If anyone has an idea please let me know.  I spent a lot of time googling it and this is what I found:


fingersntoes does fingers from fingersntoes on Vimeo.



I think I'm missing some instructions.


~contributer

FORIT

I'm not a speaker.
I'm not so bright.

I'm not what you chose for me.
I'm not your plight.

I'll have for me my own of course.
And mine I will have.

But I won't fight for you
the things you couldn't fight.

When you said to me
It's not of you I was made

When you said to me
it'll never be us be made.

When you said to me
find your own.

I said.

I'm looking
I'm looking.

~contributer

Jonathan

It's always nice to get a recommendation from a friend.
"You have to hear this!" --- "Read this immediately." --- "Get in your car and drive to the theatre TONIGHT." --- "This is the best thing since the reverse Oreo." --- et cetera --- et cetera
A good recommendation is simply a friend saying to you the best thing that a friend can say: This is good. You are good. You will see that this is good.
And so the devastatingly sad thing is that the only "recommendations" I get these days are really just lists of stuff, which lists are culled from the occasional scan of twitter-feeds, facebook updates, g-chat statuses, and the rare and treasured personal text-message.
And yes, this means that I am an embarrassment. And yes, you do the same thing, and I know it. It is shameful, and we need to start talking to one another again, and we should all probably have a barbecue or a bonfire and sing the actual songs and tell the actual stories, but for now I'm just going to finish writing this blog entry, if you don't mind, thank you very much.
At some point during the day, I slink away to the bathroom and, while seated, begin scanning the pantheon of digital avatars of various friends, family members, and other characters whose personal tastes and interests satisfy my need for recommendations of a certain standard.
Friend Jonathan is almost always included in that initial sweep: both because of his exceedingly flinty taste and his unparalleled commitment to updating his g-chat status. So, that particular day, when Jonathan's status read "[Jonathan] . . . thinks IGEL is the enemy," I knew that I would think IGEL was the enemy too, goddamn them, and I needed to know what we were fighting against.

So I googled it.

This is a composite graphic of the first five images that appeared that afternoon, and yes, they are shocking. My spirit broke when I saw that center photograph (obviously taken by an undercover journalist or squirrel). Yes, the hedgehogs are the enemy, and if they developed advanced gas masks, then they must be testing biological weapons of some kind, and if the hedgehogs are testing biological weapons, then you know they're going to use them, and so I find myself pummeled with one question over and over again:

Do I really want to live in a world where hedgehogs are the enemy?

I mean, my God, they're so cute. Can the concept of evil be so pliant as to include among its legions the single most adorable animal ever? Can a hedgehog be the enemy?

At the end of the whole thing, I needed someone to tell me what to do. I couldn't come up with the next step on my own, I needed . . . a recommendation. So I called my brother and told him the whole thing.

"What should I do?"

"Did you say reverse Oreos?"

"Yeah, I think I did."

"Are you sure that's what they were called, because I can picture the packaging and I'm pretty sure that they had a different name. Golden Oreos? I think that might be a different product altogether. Are you sure it was Reverse Oreos? Do you really know what you're talking about here?"

"Maybe they had a different name, I don't know, it's just this hedgehog is wearing this . . ."

"Uh-Oh Oreos."

"What?"

"That's it. Uh-Oh, Oreos. There was a plot line, something about a mix-up at the Oreo factory. Probably the Keebler elves screwed stuff up or something. Uh-Oh Oreos. God those were good, I haven't seen them in years, do they still have them? Were they limited time only? Did they fix the mistake at the factory? Oh, I want one. I really wish I could have one right now; I mean my lips are just aching as we're talking I want one so badly. I would literally break a man's arm right now for an Uh-Oh Oreo. I'd break it. Just for one. I can't even imagine, and I mean I literally probably couldn't imagine, the things that I would do for an entire package."

"Yeah, they were pretty good."

"So are they still around?"

"You know what, I have no idea."

And I didn't know.

So I googled it.

Pork Chops Tonight

There's a pork chop in my mind
that looks just like you.
Lightly salted, genuinely dry,
Shaped like a moon.

I'm sorry to cut you up
I'm sorry to fork you down
But you're a pork chop
no longer you
and it's dinner time.

Pass the apple sauce.

~contributer