Stories
Mattie Taco is an affiliate of Swanson Web Designs.
|
|
Stories Mattie Taco is an affiliate of Swanson Web Designs. |
|
A pox on you all, and damned be they who try to see me for who I am. The Man Who Heard The Bee Gee's Every Time I Talked ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The oleo dish sat in the sunlit window, with the cryptic: words "Maltodextrin, Potassium Sorbate" inscribed on its side. Closer examination revealed that the lid had been removed. As I peered into its depths, I saw that it was filled to the brim with the second hands from Timex watches. I was just about to unravel this mystery when the doorbell rang. It was a bunch of turtles, all wearing buttons that said "We ain't ninja, and we ain't mutant". The leader said to me, "Give us all your L. Ron Hubbard books, or we'll tell Tammy Fae Bakker where you live." I gave them the books. They left. When I returned to the sunlit windowsill, the oleo dish was gone. The phone rang. I answered it. It wasn't Dan Quayle. It was Nicholi Schmoutzenguiterbaum, lifelong advocate for underprivileged lemmings. Nicholi wished for me to donate a rechargeable 9-volt battery to his cause, I declined. Instead, I sent him a remote control inflatable snake with glowing eyes. He was pleased. The Pope then dropped by for an afternoon snack. I offered him Nutter Butter's. He accepted, on the condition that I remove all the filling. We then split a bottle of JD for dessert. He wanted to drive, but he was so trashed I called him a taxi. He thanked me for the insult and walked home. Just then a two foot tall man who looked exactly like Abe Lincoln climbed in my bedroom window. "Can you tell me how to get to Gettysburg?" he asked. "Go to Cleveland and take a left" I answered. He thanked me and crawled out through the dryer vent. In an effort to ponder the days events more clearly, I turned on my stereo and blasted some heavy duty industrial new age thrash punk fusion into the house. A knock on the door disturbed me. It was the cops. "Ya?" I asked, They told me I was under arrest. I asked what the charge was. They told me my shirt didn't match my socks. I pleaded temporary insanity and they let me go. I called Judy, the Time/Life operator. She offered me a free portable cheese fryer if I would subscribe. I declined. She got mad and vowed to set all my goldfish free. I cursed the day she was born and slammed the phone down. I left for a minute to go to the Quick Mart. I needed new shocks for my recliner. Amazing what a zebra can do to one of those. The sign on the door said open 24 hours. They were closed. I yelled at the clerk inside and asked if they weren't open 24 hours. He said “Yeah, but not in a row”. I went home and found the bearskin rug two stepping with my floor lamp, I quietly left the room and headed upstairs. It was then that I realized it was two minutes past my bed time. Harold, the sleep god, would be angry. Sure enough, he was on my pillow when I walked in. He looked me straight in the eye and said "If a cow laughs, will milk come out it's nose?" I countered with "If I melt dry ice, can I swim without getting wet?" He replied "If the purpose of a light bulb is to make a room brighter, why do people put shades over them to make them dimmer?" I confessed I did not know. He sentenced me to three laps in a bowl of hot porridge for missing my bedtime. Then he was gone. I went to bed and dreamt of hot apple fudge pancakes and orange peels.
Cry, Olivia, cry. Melancholy. Sentimentality. Grief. Embrace them. Roll each
I grabbed the phone as it rang. It was Phinnie McPherson from across the street. He was calling to invite me to his Halloween party in an hour. I accepted and hung up. Fortunately, I had a costume contingency plan in place. I dressed myself all in black and attached a small name tag to my shirt that read "Doubt". I gathered up a stack of small slips of paper that I'd been saving and put them in my pocket. When I got to the party, I handed a slip of paper to each person I met. Each slip had a phrase such as , "I don't think you are big boned", "Have you checked the brake fluid lately?", “Maybe it's not just a mole”, “It's not paranoia, people really don't like you”, “Oooooh, you probably should have the doctor look at that”, and "I think your wife knows". After the party, I headed back to my full time job of sitting in my house with a regular screwdriver in my hand. I was waiting for someone to assemble a public restroom stall using regular screws so I could take it apart. No one ever did so I hopped in my car and went for a drive. As I passed the school by my house I saw a sign that said “Drug Enhanced School Zone.” I drove on. A bear crossed the road in front of me. I stopped and asked him his name and which way he was headed. He said Earl, and he was going back to the circus to get his unicycle. He had been back in the wild for about six months, but he figured the unicycle would really speed up his berry gathering. I agreed with him and offered to drive him back to the circus. When we got to where the circus was, it was gone. We kept driving. I figured there weren't more than about 30,000 small towns where that circus might be. Eight years later, we found it in Beaumont, Nebraska. The circus master didn't want to give the unicycle back, but when I offered to trade my collection of motel towels for it, he agreed. Earl thanked me and rode off on his unicycle. I headed down the road, not sure what to do now that my eight year quest had ended. Then I had it. I had always wanted to dig ditches. Not just any ditch, but a real ditch. I started asking around. One farmer needed a ditch dug across his 40 acre farm, but that wasn't far enough. The city of Ft. Collins, Colorado needed a ditch dug halfway across the state, but that wasn't far enough. Then I met him. Juan Fidalgo Suarez Castillo VonHausen a German-Mexican frog leg importer from South Africa. He was digging a ditch from Mexico to Canada, starting in San Diego and ending in Edmonton, with a stop in Boston. That was the ditch for me. I asked Juan if he thought I was the right man for the job. He looked me over and said “I doubt it...”
This one here and there one that. Calling out into the street, Yellow stripes I paint on me, My best friend his name is Ned, That's my story if you like it
A green manalishi with a two-pronged crown stepped in front of me. I asked him the way to Berlin. He directed me to the nearest pizza hut. Once there, I ordered a personal pan pizza. It was ready in five minutes or less, I ate it. Unfortunately, the anchovies got on my brain, boy did that itch. I started thinking about sandpaper and nail files. That helped. A man with a tag that said manager asked me tor tickets to the Bob Marley concert. I gave him three. He thanked me and gave me a four pack of AA batteries. I left a happy man. When I got outside, it was gone. Except for Vanilla Ice. He asked me if I knew what was going on. I said "Yo yo yo yo yo, whas up Ice, baby?" He declined to answer on the grounds that I never bought any of his stuff. I gave him the shirt off my back and ran screaming into the nothingness. Nice thing about it, with nothing else around, I finally found myself. I ran into an Elvis impersonator convention. I wisely skirted around it to avoid trouble. Suddenly, everything reappeared and I was in Miami. I got on a boat and set sail for the Bermuda Triangle. When I got there, it had disappeared. I hate when that happens.
A pox on you all, and damned be they who try to see me for who I am. Depression stems from fear. Fear of letting yourself out? Fear of letting yourself be. Social interaction = fragility. It is possible to have a significant role in something, yet not be a part of it. Always on the outside. Just at the fringe. A great guy, sure. A stand up guy. The kind of guy you introduce to your parents. Not the kind of guy you have over for dinner. Not the kind of guy you call just to talk to. The kind of guy you call if you need something. The kind of guy you can use because he's trying so hard, you won't drive him away. Everybody loves him when they see him out, but no one asks him to come along. If he didn't invite himself, he'd never go. Fair, not hardly. True, very much so. Depressing, most decidedly. On a separate note, they had no right to go boom, boom, boom in that honky-tonk fashion. Toadstools at night are equal in height to their daytime counterparts. Flaming ignorance does one opinion make. I take exception to those who share my opinions.
I went for a bike ride. It was hot out, about 90. I was cruising along the road when I saw this shape on the shoulder. It wasn't moving much, so I thought maybe it was a rock. When I got closer though, I found out it was a cat. The reason it wasn't moving is it was dead. When I got up to where the cat was, I stopped. It opened an eye and said "Hi". I was surprised. Once I overcame my surprise, I asked the cat his name. He said, "Fillibuster J. Alabaster, but you can call me Phil", so I did. I asked Phil to lunch, and he accepted. Over lunch, I discussed with Phil his deceasedness. He admitted that yes, he was dead, but he wasn't about to let that slow him down. "Uh, excuse me?", I managed. "Well, it's like this...", and he proceeded into this lengthy discussion of how Sun Catchers were the secret to Life. The gist of his argument was that all life comes from the sun, and that Sun Catchers catch and reflect sunlight, so therefore, all one has to do is wear a Sun Catcher around their neck and they can never die. It was then that I noticed the shamrock Sun Catcher around Phil's neck. As I reached out to touch it, he stepped back, baring his teeth. "So, you think you can get the power that easily, do you?" "N-N-No" I mumbled. "I just wanted to touch it." "You may not touch it", he answered. "We'll just have to get you your own Sun Catcher". With that, we headed for Kmart. Upon our arrival, I was told that cats were not allowed inside. However, once we explained that Phil was dead, there was no problem. We proceeded to the Sun Catcher aisle, and were dazzled by the vast array of items we had to chose from. It didn't take long for me to find the one I wanted though. It was a black circle with a purple lightning bolt through it. Phil said it was perfect, because it would absorb a great deal of sunlight, and radiate it back into my body. Now, of course, it was time to try but my new found immortality. Phil and I headed for a construction site down on Eleventh Street. Upon our arrival, I immediately jumped in front of a speeding fork lift carrying two tons of cement blocks. As the lift screeched to a halt to avoid hitting me, the load of blocks slid off the forks and crushed me. Obviously, the workers knew I was dead, but they didn't know I was immortal. Boy were they surprised when I got back up and laughed. The great thing was, I didn't even bleed. So it came to pass, that I was unable to die. No matter what, the end of my life would never arrive. And so Phil and I lived on, sharing our secret only when we had each found someone we could spend an eternity with, literally.
If I told you I had killed a man, would that lower your opinion of me? What if I told you it was an old man? An old man that no one loved. An old man just sitting in his broken down recliner in his broken down house in his broken down life. Would you still love me? What if he wasn't the only one? What if there was a girl in Tuscon? A girl with her whole life ahead of her, full of hopes and dreams. A girl with long blond hair and beautiful blue eyes. What then? Now has your opinion dropped? Are we still friends? What if there's one more? A body closer to home. A body buried in your own backyard. A body that belonged to your gardener. What? Oh, now I have your attention? Do you remember the day I told you he was moving to L.A.? The day I found out about the two of you? The day I killed him? So what now? How's your opinion of me now that you know I killed your lover? Can we still be together? Can we still have pot roast tonight?
At a crossroads in Akron, a blue van squeals to a stop. A body is quickly tossed out the side, and the van goes careening off. The body rolls over and stands up. He dusts himself off and looks around. “Damn!” he thinks, “Akron again. I've got to get out of this crazy loop.” His name was Kyle. He walked back to his basement apartment, in Akron. He invited his friends over. His friends were all hooked on pyramid power, and Kyle didn't want to miss out on a good thing. He took down eight of his favorite empty beer cans and twisted them into a metal pyramid. He carried the pyramid carefully out of his house and put it gently on the dashboard of his '72 Ford Pinto. He started the engine and pulled slowly out into the street. Suddenly, the car lurched, swerved and gave a tremendous thump and he found himself at a 7-11 in Lincoln, Nebraska. He hopped out of the car and walked in, passing Bruce Springsteen on the way. As he entered the store, there was a loud clap of thunder, and Kyle's universe ceased to exist. Fortunately, Kyle had been through this before and he knew that a mixture of cherry icee and 12 green peanut butter M&M's would restore the universe. Unfortunately, all he could find were plain M&M's. He went ahead and tried it, but the only part of the universe that came back were the TV evangelists. Each came to him and assured him that God had spoken with them, and that all it would take to restore Kyle's universe was a cash donation. Kyle thought “God doesn't work in mysterious ways, God's a capitalist.” He managed to come up with a small donation for each evangelist, and the universe was restored. Except for the Hare Krishnas; no one wanted them back. Hank left the 7-11, walked out the front door and found himself at the Vatican. The pope was there. Kyle offered him some of the leftover M&M's. The pope accepted, but only on the condition that Kyle peel the blue ones. After their snack, they sat down to a poker table, and the pope started dealing. Considering his direct line with God, he did pretty bad. By the time Kyle had won his hat, they were both ready to quit. With the pointy hat on his head, Kyle wandered down the hall and into an elevator. He got on and found only one button, marked “K”. He pushed it. When the doors opened, he found himself in his own kitchen. Ah, Akron. The Pinto was out front, so Kyle built a small jump at the end of the driveway and drove the Pinto off it. The car neglected to come down until it reached Mick Jaggar's living room. Here, it crashed into Mick's stunning, but quite young, wife, killing the Pinto instantly. “Damn!” thought Kyle as he pulled the pyramid from the wreckage. Wearing the pyramid like a crown, he crossed the room and handed Mick a large bag of satisfaction that he had been carrying for twelve years just in case he ever ran into him. Kyle then walked out onto the lawn, where he was promptly picked up by a Xomarian space freighter enroute to the Forgon system. Kyle still recalled a bit of Xomarian from high school, and so was able to carry on the following coversation with the ship's captain. “Xomanteri fotular sonkipat mon farlimi?” “Geramant pontule watiimal o pimborallo.” Translation: “Could you possibly drop me in Akron the next time your in the vicinity?” “Certainly.” After the seven light year trip to the Forgon system, (that story can be found in “Visiting the Forgons, Vols 1 thru 262), Kyle bade the ship's captain a fond “kuframden”. He was then propelled at a high rate of speed out of the ship's disposal unit. As he fell, he pondered death, found it lacking, and chose instead to land in the large blue van travelling down what seemed to be a very familiar road.
I sat on the couch, remote in my hand, waiting for an inspiration. Then, I had it. Twinkie flavored Kool-Aid. I couldn't go wrong. I grabbed the phone and called my agent. He answered. “Billy Bob's Marketing and Patents”. I asked him again “Why two first names Billy Bob, why?” “In case I get drunk in my brother's trailer and forget one.” Damn. Different answer again. Last week it was because all the great Nascar driver's wives named their first born sons “Billy Bob”. “BB”, I said, “How about Twinkie Kool-Aid?” “Been done” he said. “1979, the Panama Conference. Jimmy C. took some home and that's how we got Billy beer.” I hung up the phone, disappointed again. Not knowing what else to do, I walked out to the driveway and hopped in the car. Leaving it in reverse, I drove backwards into town. With the elephant on the hood, I couldn't do otherwise. I stepped out onto the street to find the mimes already there. They had surrounded my cousin, Reginald, and his band, the Defenestrators. It took me a moment to fight past them. When I got to Reggie I realized that he had been here too long. He couldn't speak or sing, he and the band were just pantomiming the songs. If you've never seen a mime on bass guitar, I hope you never do. I loaded them all in the backseat of my '73 Dodge Dart and headed for the high school. I knew Billy would be there. He always was. We found him in the Biology Lab. He was sitting next to the frogs hanging upside down in their jars. He asked the frogs how they were and the frogs said, "Hey, could be better". Billy thought, that's weird, live frogs can't talk but dead ones can. He asked the frogs if they knew the meaning of life, now that they no longer were living it. They said “Sure, it's...” just then Billy's teacher Mr. Tackenfifer walked in and asked Billy to polish his authentic Elvis belt buckle collection. We offered to help. We did help. We finished. With that done, we hopped in the Dart and headed for my house. When we got there, no one was quite sure what they wanted to do. “Hey,” I said, “how about some Twinkie Kool-Aid?”
Ray was hungry, he hadn't had lunch that day, and his stomach was killing him. His morning business meeting had run through the lunch hour, and that had thrown a wrench into his whole day. Ray owns a construction company, or perhaps, more accurately, a deconstruction company. You see, Ray is a termite. His company, "Wood to Sawdust", specializes in houses in the high rent district of town. The meeting that morning had concerned a new job that Ray had bid for. The customer, John, liked Ray, and gave him the job, but there were a few catches. John failed to mention a couple of things until after the contract was signed. One of these was that the house was surrounded by the new automatic Raid dispensers. If that wasn't enough, the house itself could only be reached by scaling a two foot concrete wall. Needless to say5 Ray was having a bad day. But, he made it a policy that no job was too big,, so here he sat, searching for ways into the house. He couldn't concentrate though, because another problem was tugging at the back of his head. Once they got in, how would they get the sawdust back out? You see, that was the trick of the termites in the deconstruction business. They could bite off the wood without eating it. That way, the sawdust could be taken to the customer's home as a winter supply of food. Once out of the house complex, transportation was easy. The dust was simply loaded into Tonka dump trucks, and delivered to the customer. Concentration was impossible for Ray, Despite it being against company policy he decided to order a pizza. He called up Wooden Dominoes and ordered a large Birch with Maple, Fir, and extra Cottonwood. The promised delivery time of half an hour had stretched into forty-five minutes before the guy showed up. After paying him and sneaking back to his office, Ray settled back to enjoy the pizza. As he opened the box, a burnt aroma wafted into his nostrils. Ah, perfect, the Fir discs were still glowing; around the edges. Ray sank his mandibles deep into the pizza, enjoying it, as no termite had enjoyed a pizza before. Ray looked up as he finished the pizza and discovered it was closing time. He locked up the office and headed into the parking lot. Once there, he climbed into his rented Days of Thunder model car, and raced home to the wife and kiddies. On his arrival, he was greeted by his wife's vivacious voice from the kitchen, "Hurry up and git in here ya old louse, yer dinner's gettin' cold." Home sweet home. Ray pleaded indigestion in preference to telling Maude that he had just eaten a pizza. As he retired to the study, the idea hit him. He knew how to get into the house. First, he needed to disarm the Raid dispensers. No problem. He would get Johnson, an old war-buddy and a member of the Ant Demolition Union, to take in a team and disarm the dispensers. Then, the wall, twenty-four inches? To a termite, 250 feet. There was only one answer, spiders, Ray didn't like to work with spiders. They were shifty, and often left a job unfinished, but here he had no choice. He would have Frenchy, a Wolf Spider he had met in Paris, lead a crew of Sun Spiders who would weave a ladder up one side of the wall and down the other. Then they would weave a large basket and rope to be suspended from the top of the wall. The termites would take the ladder over, load the basket with sawdust, and haul it over the top and down the other side. So it was settled, and Ray went to bed. The next day, Ray made calls to his friends, and set up the project for the following day. It went off without a hitch, Johnson had the Raid dispensers disarmed in ten minutes, and within half an hour, Frenchy was well at work on the ladder and basket. Once these preparations were complete, Ray's swarm of workers clambered over the wall and into the house. Day after day, they worked incessantly, hauling sawdust to the customer's house. Finally, they reached the Critical Point. They had gotten out all the sawdust they could, and all that remained now was to take the one final bite that would send the house crashing to the ground. This duty fell on Ray. In addition to being the head of the company, he was also the fastest termite among them. Once all his workers were clear, Ray took one final look at the house, chomped, and ran for his life. He reached the top of the wall just in time to turn around and see the house crumble to the ground. As he reached the ground outside the wall, John stood waiting with the check. Another job well done.
Heart of hearts oh heart of hearts, where does your garden grow. When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to set in words that which doth ramble through the mind, this shall be the result. Who shall remember in the depths of time, that which occurred on this day of days. Why should those who need not suffer suffer with those who should suffer? No one asks if we should go or do this or that, who decides. When is it too much, or too little. What if nothing matters? That is too easy a way out. What if it all matters? That is the question, afraid to be asked, to which there is no answer. Juggling? Not necessary, yet quite fun to see. Why am I this and you are that? If I could be anything, what would I be? What would any of us be other than that which we are, but is that what we can be? Plywood shards of peach cobbler rend my flesh as I type these words. Hard Nerf balls of yogurt make me sticky when I swim. Why is this not sense? The sounds I make from my lips enter your ears and create images. If I say these things to one who knows not English, I create in his mind gibberish, how? Kind fruits are just bad apples reformed. You and I cannot say what is good and bad.
The Man Who Heard The Bee Gee's Every Time I Talked Every time I opened up my mouth We'd sit across the lunchroom table When I told him all about my son I said that from his walk it seemed I couldn't take it anymore,
I don't like the cost of Fruit Stripe gum, or maybe it's the annoying zebra on the package. Mockingbird's singing. A man on a bridge in the dark with a toothpick. He strikes fear into the hearts of lizards everywhere. If only Superman was here. He could fight the toothpick. Or is it toothpaste. I don't know. Judd Heathrow put a flowerpot on the back of my head and affixed it there with thumbtacks. I couldn't take the humiliation, so I ran screaming into the night singing "Hungry Like The Wolf" as loud as I could. Nobody noticed. Except for this old guy cleaning his teeth with the carburetor from a 1957 Chevy. He asked me to be a little louder and sing a little from "Rio". I did. Meanwhile, on the set of "A-Team", Hannibal was telling Face to get Murdock to fly the plane while B.A. got knocked out so he could fly. He did.
All Milicent could think of was that spot. That one tiny spot set in the middle of the vast expanse of her bathroom floor. It couldn't have been more than the size of a pinhead, that spot. How could one little spot be so all consuming? Milicent ate, slept, breathed, and dreamed that spot. That spot was before her eyes when she woke. That spot was lurking behind her eyelids when she lay down at night. It was such a little spot. Sometimes she called out to it, like a spot could be flying through the blue sky above her. Sometimes she sang to that spot, as though it were a lonely child. Always the spot was with her. Such a little spot, with just a hint of red to it. Such a spot as we could step on ten thousand times and never see. Why did that spot raise it's ugly head and show itself to the world? If only it had stayed hidden, amidst the vast empty plain of the bathroom floor, just resting there on the linoleum like a good spot. But no, that spot had shown itself, and it was her fault, hers and hers alone. She should have cleaned the spot. Removed the spot. Not missed the spot when she got the other spots. Oh the cruelties of spots: oh their wicked ways. Poor Milicent and her spot obsession. The only good thing for Milicent and her spot was that she only had a few days left to be consumed by it. Just a short time now and her preoccupation with the spot would end. The bad thing was that the spot would be the death of Milicent. She had missed that spot when she had cleaned, and now she would pay with her life. Lose her life, not for killing her husband, but for not cleaning up that one last spot of his blood.
Taking the last flight of of Topeka, I glanced back to that red Ford pickup as I walked into the terminal. There she stood, silently condemning me for the anguish I had put her through and the uncertainty I left her facing. I knew I couldn't stay, yet leaving took all the strength I had. It had begun in August last year, the affair with Megan. I never meant for it to happen, but those things are never meant to happen. Amy never understood. How could she? A marriage of fifteen years, three kids, why did I need Megan? Hell, I can't even answer that one, it's no wonder she can't. Now she stands, watching me go. The kids are at her Aunt Eileen's. Probably watching Sponge Bob, or some such crap. I don't know why I can't take that kind of shit. It drives me nuts. I guess I was never cut out to be the family type, and yet I love those kids. With Megan, I knew I had found a soul mate. Not that Amy wasn't. But Megan was a soul mate on a whole different level. I know, you're thinking sex, but that's not it. Not that it wasn't good mind you, but that came later. At first, it was a true meeting of the minds. Again, with Amy I had that too. You know, they say you can't love two people equally, or simultaneously, but that's bullshit. It can sure as hell be done, but not the way I did it. If you're going to try, and I'm not saying I recommend it, I'd say make your commitment and stick with it. I should have stuck with Amy and everything we had. What I could have had with Megan could have just completed all that. I should have left well enough alone, and just enjoyed the friendship with Megan that I valued so much. But, spilled milk is spilled milk, and I'm moving on. So I threw a wave in Amy's direction, and I vowed to never set foot in Topeka again, no matter who I fell in love with.
A man in an LA Dodgers cap led me to the steps. "Up here is that for which you have been seeking" he says mysteriously. I have no clue what he is talking about. I get up the stairs and all I see is dark. A light comes on and I can see Kevin Bacon dancing under a strobe light. It's not a pretty sight. I leave. When I get back down the stairs, the man in the cap is gone. I'm left to fend for myself. I hop a rocket to Venus. Once there I find myself lost. I rent a small rover type vehicle and go cruising. To kill some time I drive it off small jumps. Suddenly a time/space pit appears before me. I drive into it. Without warning, 1 find myself seated at the Round Table with King Arthur. I offer him some Tabasco Sauce. He declines on account of heartburn. I get angry and leave. I can't find another time/space pit. I opt for sleep. I nap under a tree. When I awake, I find I have overslept and the world is being run by computers and they keep sending machines called terminators back in time to kill people. I apply for the job and get it. I go back to the year 1988 to kill myself at my high school graduation. I do. When I die, my terminator self dies also, and his life is rendered void because I died before I became a terminator, and so I lived, but in living, I went on to apply for the terminator position, and so I was actually dead, and my terminator self never existed, so I was alive, and... Finally I decided it wasn't worth the trouble and failed to kill myself, thus ending the vicious cycle. As I survive dually then in 1988, my one self decides to follow my agrarian heritage and join the peace corps, while my other self joins the Marines, and becomes a trained killing machine. On maneuvers in Guam, my two selves meet each other and are caught in a transmogrifier. I am reunited again as a hybrid being. My new self combines the best of both of me. I hire myself out to the highest bidder as the mighty medfly slayer. Unfortunately they have pesticides for that, and I go on unemployment. The unemployment guy turns out to be Tony Danza. He asked me to saute him some moose lips. I accept. I then offer him some round bagel shards to use as paper weights. He declines and demands instead a package of fig newtons with the fillings removed. I refuse. He sends me to Apgar. I walk back to Siberia and visit the people I love. They give me a bus. I paint peace signs on it and drive around preaching Free Love and playing Grateful Dead music really loud.
Congratulations. You have acquired one of the most exciting party games ever developed. On the market for only two years, this fascinating contest enjoys a popularity that is sweeping the country. Now in its third edition, it has sold nearly two copies. HA HA HERMAN may be played by any number contestants, but it is most fun when played by one or more. It appeals to all ages, but has enjoyed the greatest acceptance among the prenatal group. The rules are simple. 1. One member of the group arbitrarily elects himself "Herman". 2. "Herman" collects one dollar from each of the other players. 3. While the other players watch television, "Herman" visits the nearest package liquor store, and purchases three six packs of Old Munich beer. 4. Returning home, "Herman" shuts off the television set in the middle of an exciting episode of "My Uncle, the Pool Cue." 5. "Herman" pours one glass of beer for each player in the game and lines all the beers up in front of himself. The players are seated on the opposite side of the table. 6. Starting with the fourth player from three seats left of the center of the second man from one end of the row, "Herman picks up the first glass of beer and hurls it into the face of the player to the immediate left of that man, while at the same time loudly shouting, "Ha". 7. If the man into whose face the beer has been splashed says "glub", Herman selects from the refrigerator a can of "Old Copenhagen" premium beer which he had secretly purchased prior to the arrival of the guests, and drinks it. 8. "Herman" collects $100 from each player who laughed while the first player was saying "glub." 9. Play continues in a semi-clockwise direction until either: a. The beer runs out. b. The wife of any player comes into the room and says, "Come on, you stupid drunken lout, it's time to go home." 10. The object of the game is for players (discreetly and without appearing too obvious) to say "glub" as often as possible, so that "Herman" will become so drunk that he falls off his chair, at which point all remaining players stand up and point a jeering finger at "Herman" while at the same time shouting in unison, "Ha, Ha, Herman". 11. When all players are in a drunken heap on the floor, the last surviving player gathers all the cash, collects any remaining beer, and adjourns to the living room to join the wives for the balance of the party.
All I think of all I see Cheese, cheese, I like cheese. I don’t work and I don’t sleep Cheese, cheese, I like cheese. Asiago with its tang Cheese, cheese, I like cheese. <screaming guitar solo here> Colby tastes so very fine Cheese, cheese, I like cheese. Can’t get enough of Provolone, Cheese, cheese, I like cheese. <drum solo from In-a-Gadd-da-Vidda here> Cheese quesadillas and cheese tacos. If it has mold or has a rind. Cheese, cheese, I like cheese. Cheeeeeeeeeeeeese.
She was my 5th grade girlfriend. She was so pretty, young and sweet, We never really talked too much, She was my 5th grade girlfriend. My brother graduated Across the room I was shaking Her two round eyes She walked away I walked to her We danced all night We didn’t talk We drifted apart She was my 5th grade girlfriend. |