Bon mots and just plain mots

Here are some piping fresh witticisms, brought from my brain to yours. . .

• Self-deprecation is acceptable, self-defecation is not

• I once talked to a mimbo (male bimbo) who said he had a “dark complex”—is that a complex about being in the dark?
• Here’s a popular self-coined witticism: small towns sometimes breed small minds
• When you’re at the end of your rope, don’t hang around people that are going to continue fraying it
• Cowardice is contemptible
• Avarice is to be avoided
• Self-doubt shows humility
• Humility makes people human
• Respect sometimes has to be demanded, and there ain’t nothing wrong with that
• Come out with guns blazing, loaded and cocked: grab life by the balls, it’s too short not to
• I second the notion first coined by the witty Oscar Wilde that “talking about the weather is a sure sign of failure of the human imagination”

Vignette, contd: Tom versus the MUNI

Tom had to take the MUNI that day, and walked from his job at the Superior Court building down a few blocks. He was tired, and couldn’t wait to get home to watch t.v., and eat some snacks.

As he ascended into the bus, he paid the fare, and sat down on an aisle seat. Thank god he found a place to sit at all—the bus was packed.

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Two stops later these two guys get on, and they’re drunk and homeless looking. They scan the bus, and see that there aren’t any seats… guess they’ll have to stand over next to… Tom.

Jim and Bob were homeless brothers; they had seen it all together, and they thought that maybe there was a chance they’d be able crash at T-bone’s place tonight.

They stood next to Tom, and held on to the bars. With every lurch and jerk of the bus, their legs would almost give out—they felt like Gumby dolls that were made out of jell-o.

Suddenly Tom felt something itching his arm—it was the sensation of something crawling down his arm, and it was caught inside his shirt sleeve…

He started to sweat, started to panic—what in the fuck was this? It kept crawling and touching his skin! The itchy little legs were crawling and then stopping and tapping his skin with its antennae …

Tom was no stranger to these panic-inducing events that happened in public—there had been too many to count over the years, and somewhere from within the bowels of the universe, his worst fears were always reflected back to him like an existential funhouse mirror.

As he lay sitting on the seat, with his existential dread, and with the great surrealism and humility that only a situation like this could produce, it started to happen in slow motion horror: the cockroach finally made it way down his arm, and out of his shirt sleeve, and it was visible to all…

At the exact second that the cockroach crawled out into the open air, Jim and Bob’s eyes happened to take in the spectacle and then all hell broke loose:

“Holy shit, man, did you see THAT??? A cockroach just crawled out of that guy’s shirt!!! Wow, what a trip!!!!!”

Upon hearing these observations, Tom felt like his soul was going to go into paroxysmal convulsions or maybe a whole-body reverse peristalsis whereby his body would turn inside out and be rippled forth like a pupa turning into an insect. He wanted to DIE…

This commotion caused multiple passengers on the bus to turn around and laugh hysterically.

Tom’s upper lip twitched, and he felt his face getting hot.

Vignettes: when life is stranger than fiction

Here are some small, comedic vignettes that are taken from real life—they are real life. Sometimes the absurd and bizarre abounds in all kind of places, as you will see…

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House of the Iguanas

She walked into the early 80s-era tract home with a sense of heaviness that is generally regarded as being bordeom. There was nothing that set this house apart from the rest in the neighborhood, and she and her housecleaning tutor made their way into the house. The tutor’s name was Stacey, and she was worn down as well.

When they opened the door, all hell broke loose…

The horror! Oh, the shock! What in the fuck was this???

It was a doorway to hell, or a black market iguana breeding prison, where the iguanas were shut inside the house with their ire, their feces, their tempers. They had to walk in a single-file line to get past the couch, while the beasts lurched and hissed at them—this WAS insanity. They had been multiplying like fruit flies, and they were everywhere: huddled in the bed, crouching in the bathtub, watching Maury Povich.

When the horror and peril of the situation was too much for the cleaners to handle, the newbie decided to leave a note explaining that they just couldn’t do it, that in fact, it was not humanly possible to clean this hellhole. At that moment, a crazed cockatiel who been sharing quarters with the feral iguanas decided this was the right time to take out all pent up hostility out on this poor, young woman, and made its first Kamikaze run for the girl’s face…

It had its target locked. He had run a risk assessment of the kamikaze death blow that he was about to execute, when “Splat!!! SQUAAWWWK!” it flew into a clipboard the young girl had had to hold up at the last second to narrowly avoid maiming injury.

The note. She still had to write the note.

She searched frantically through a tin of pens, and pulled out what looked to be an ordinary fountain tip pen, and proceeded to take the cap off when, “BLAM!!!” the pen turned out to be a pen-gun and discharged near her face. Singed hairs, smeared gunpowder and fear all ensued. This was a crazy world.

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When Ritz Bits became Ritch Bitch

 

She had some down time on the job, and pulled into a shopping center—she had wanted to check out this little second hand place for awhile, what the hell.

She looked through clothes, and the store actually had quite a few people rummaging through its clothes racks. Nothing unusual about this scene… yet.

A benign looking little boy and his grandmother shuffled up to the front counter, where they were also selling little snack items. The little boy peered at all the snacks, and decided he liked the Ritz Bits the best of all:

“Grandma, could I get some of those?” the little boy innocently asked, while glancing up at his dear grandma.

“Why yes… which ones do you want?” grandma asked lovingly.

“I want those—the Ritz Bits crackers,” the little boy pointed at the shiny red bag of mini crackers.

“Those right there? You want the Ritch Bitch crackers?” grandma queried, while being blissfully unaware of what she had just said.

She was within earshot of this jewel,and looked to see if anyone else had caught it. No one had.

A poem about Captain Scowley emerges from the bowels of my e-mail

When Captain Scowley strikes
there is a massive blight
From his chair he sits,
never to remit
a smile, a nicety, an expression

Canines shroud his feet
And wait for a piddly doggie treat
A plume of Cannabis smoke
That always threatens to choke
Lord of the Rings, and crystal skulls,
Raiders paraphernalia
That illuminate an empty soul hull

Sergei and his hopes

Sergei was a man on a quest, and he didn’t know quite what for. His mother Olga, had sent him off with well wishes, hoping that at least one of her sons would marry and be good for something. He had left with not much more than the clothes on his back, some Ukrainian good luck pieces and a desire to see Graceland, find a nice American woman to marry, and maybe play some cards and take in a few T&A shows, American-style in Las Vegas.

“I don’t know what to do…. er…ah… where to go?” Sergei wandered hopelessly as he got off his plane at SFO. His quick movements and animated eyes caught the eye of Robbie, an East Indian charter bus enterpreneur “Hey mister! You-a looking for work, huh?”

“Me? Yes! Howdidyaknow?” Sergei cocked his slightly backward, as if to indicate to all how incredulous he was about this event.

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Sergei waited in Martinez every day, a foreign fly on the wall, taking in impressions of the Amtrak customers and the local business owners, but never having a clear cut identity of his own. He had to play Mikhail Cornuz all the time when he drove the damn buses, and had a fake rose clipped on to his sun visor, a symbol of the American woman he’d someday meet and de-petal.

His driving style was swift and fatalistic, his broken English and gesticulations drove even the most calloused and seasoned traveler to take a second look and marvel at all that there was.  When he really needed to let off some steam, he would swear in Ukrainian–cussing out the mother of a bitch-Petrovka who was involved for this accident leading to gridlock, or a certain passenger being late because of late-arriving baggage.

In his aims in finding the “right woman,” Sergei instead found himself alone and world weary most of the time.

He had knick-knacks in a glass chest, and a cheap Playboy martini shaker stuck out conspicuously in the midst of it. Hair shavings and specks of shaving cream dotted his sink, and he liked Axe shave gel and deodorant. It had that adolescent “good luck babe charm” appeal to it, and he liked to think that perhaps the Axe Gods would lend their beneficent sexual mojo power to him. In the confines of his small apartment, empty beer bottles and flickering florescent light dotting the interior, his life seemed like its strength could be snuffed out at any moment. His ideas and ideals seemed to be challenged by this strange and menacing new country.

Snap shot sketch of a family in danger

This was written after I made an observation about a tortured looking family while sitting down in Armstrong Woods State Redwoods Reserve.

They looked irritable—this trip to California had been hard on them. Ryan had his IBS issues, and his accounting job at McMullen & Samperson was weighing him down all the time. Janice had had it as well: her husband’s erectile dysfunction had been gnawing away at her for an eternity. Syrene, and Daniel were wearing them out, and they thought the redwoods would have held in store a respite from the daily drudgery of their suburban nightmare.

“You made your decision! Now you’re going to have to deal with it!!” shrieked Janice, whose voice broke the silence of the picnic area. “Are… are there bees in there?” Syrene asked crying. “NO!!!!!” was the primal belting out that Ryan and Janice synchronized. This kind of orchestrated assault was like an artform to them. People nearby tried to hide their sideways glances, and instead chuckled at the horror of the situation.

A little ways down the road, Janice urges the kids to stop off by a big log and have their picture taken, and while Daniel loped off without any hesitation or fear of embarrassment, Syrene hung behind, looking like she was standing on the edge of a sharp precipice. “There aren’t any bees here!” Daniel yelled at in an attempt to assuage Syrene’s fears, and she ran to pose next to him.

“Look at MY nose, Daniel!!” yelled out Janice, feeling as though her ovaries were getting all wrung up inside–a twisty, tortured physical manifestation of her state of emotional neglect.

While she assumed the menacing persona of a female S.S. officer, Ryan kicked some dirt on the road, and scratched his groin area momentarily. What had happened to his life? What had happened to his beautiful Janice? She used to have such a great little body, and none of this “Miami Diet” bullshit had worked. Shit.

And the Weidermyer family walked down the road,  the walking cautionary tale that they were.

Jack London

This is something I wrote in application for a radio-journalism internship. It was inspired by reading I had been doing about Jack London, about his death, and his life. In keeping with the theme of the credo I used at the end of the piece, he is likened to a force of energy, which when done with his creative romp in the material world, transmutated back into immaterial energy.

At age 40, the body of Jack London looked small and expressed a delicate quality, according to his wife; but in life Jack London had been a giant.

His body of work and life story would have stood out like a giant monolith as the backdrop for the solemn occasion that was his body viewing. One could have imagined that they would have been separate entities unto themselves. The desk which had acted as Ground Zero still had at its epicenter, a typewriter, pens, and memo paper.

A palpable kind of aura still clung to the sun porch that he died in–a kind of quiet, ethereal repose. And that same sense of acquiescence versus energy still permeates his ranch today. We can only wonder then, if his transition from this world to the great beyond, was imbued with the kind of spiritual acceptance he had gained near the end of his life.

The horse-drawn ride to the crematorium in Oakland, CA, where his body was to be cremated would have then been the last ride he would have taken–a return to the cosmic source from which we all come–a world of infinite mysteries and realities, to which London had explored in The Star Rover.

The rebellious spirit was returning back to the city where years earlier, he had harnessed his will as an oyster pirate, and a young Socialist. The wind and water of Oakland would have proudly spoken back to him, as he returned in his mortal coil. He had been a conduit for a force larger than himself, and the Western expansionist presence spoke through him.

And as one form or substance is always in a state of transforming into another state, the dissolution of material into immaterial, finite into infiniteness, Jack London made it full circle, from the manifestation of mortal material success, to the simplest and most creative form in the universe: pure energy. This notion is echoed in a quote from Jack London:

“I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”

IHOP dumping stations for acute existential dilemmas

This originally appeared as a blog posting last year. And yes, it’s based on factual events.

If you ever find yourself with a clingy, and by clingy, I mean a parasitic barnacle or tumor of the human kind, then I suggest dumping him or her off at your nearest IHOP parking lot. Here’s the reason why: They’re usually open very late, and the baroque decor and dismal dining options offer a kind of veil through which the dumpees cannot see the real existential horror as it unfolds before their eyes (please note that it’s easier if the dumpee has been asleep and is therefore disoriented).

When you arrive at the dumping destination, try to pull in very quietly, and then as you open your trunk, or rear hatch, or whatever you may have, and race out to pull their luggage out on the ground, get in the car, and try the ‘shock and awe’ approach–something like this: “Oh shit! What in the f*** is that??? Holy mother of God! Crap, get out and run! Run!” If that doesn’t work, try the meancing, threatening approach: Listen, either you get out on the count of 10, or I’m going to have you pumped full of scorpion venom and shipped to Tijuana, where you wil be forced to peel bananas with your mouth, while you’re chained up to a plank, slathered in grease, for 18 hours a day.”

Apple Valley Horror Show (take 1)

This piece was inspired by a strange mobile chamber-like building structure that was outside of the Apple Valley Convalescent hospital…

Apply Valley Horror Show (take 1)

Alfredo pulled his taco truck into the parking lot and glanced over to see an ashen, gnarled hand stuck in the door crack of what looked to be a mobile chamber outside the Apple Valley Convalescent hospital. What was it doing there? The patients were supposed to be on the inside of the hospital instead of the outside. Their death and decay was supposed to kept protected–NOT in plain view of the restaurant patrons and others.

He pulled up a chair and was served a Negra Modelo beer by Alfonoso, his brother and co-owner of the Mazatlaneria, a restaurant that had a proud fleet of taco trucks named after the place.

“You know what I saw driving in here?” Alfredo asked, taking a drink of his beer and then putting it down.

“No. What’s that?” Alfonso asked as he crawled into the booth with his brother.

“I saw some kind of hand–like an old person’s hand kind of clawing the door of some kind of outside room outside Apple Valley.”

“What?” Alfonso asked incredulously, his eyes widening a little, as a slight mocking grin crept across is mouth.

“Yeah man, I’m totally serious. I think something’s going on over there. Something just ain’t right.”

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The truth was that there was something going on over there. The same scientific theories that had been manipulated and used for the Philadelphia Experiment were being used now to teleport aged and dying patients to “holding camps” somewhere in order to make more room for incoming patients. In the senile states of many of the teleported patients, they were being used as labor for the US heroin trade. They were processing the drugs, and packaging them,  all the while thinking that were working in “Maude’s old tyme herbal sachet Emporium.”

Book Synopses

These are a few book synopses that I wrote from the NBB while I had a gig there last year. It is important to take note that the editor had schmaltzy aesthetics and sometimes questionable editorial judgment, so only one of these book synopses made it into the “lit review” for that season. The one that made it in was a synopsis for the (clears throat) “Cock Chronicles.” Enjoy…

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“Delving in to the depths of sexual and romantic nuances, Graton author Justine Michaels documents her experiences with a select few men using poetry and prose in The Cock Chronicles. The first half of the book contains the majority of the poetry, some of which is erotic and some of which pertains to the experience of being a woman.
The book has a decidedly different change of graphic scenery and tone midway through, when we are suddenly introduced to a third-person prose narrative, in which the author writes about herself as a character, replete with sexual fantasies that take place in Safeway supermarkets while waiting in line at the meat counter. An ephemeral rendezvous with a sea captain and then a marine (their members also make a few guest appearances to help the show along) follow, and there is even a sitar-playing heartbreaker by whom she is jettisoned, as he feverishly jaunts back and forth to Thailand, finally returning to the mother of his child and leaving Michaels with a gaping void and a sense of betrayal that can only be filled with the next Great Phallic Hunt.”

Santa vs. Satan:

Have you ever wondered what would happen if diametrically opposed personifications (the grim reaper vs. the stork) and psychological disorders (the manic-depressive vs. the obsessive-compulsive), or relative and competing characters (Uncle Ben vs.  Aunt Jemima) were to duke it out in a fight ring of our imaginations? Santa vs. Satan (Three Rivers Press; $13.95) by journalist and humorist, Jake Kalish satiates those ponderings in this book. He lays out side by side comparisons of each of the allies, and their different defining qualities, thus helping to paint a portrait of their psychology. One of the reasons Kalish gives behind using this concept of invented pugilism is that it might help to liberate the world from having to find answers (ex: Adams vs. Darwinism and the Creationist argument), if the original antagonists were to find the answers themselves for the questions they raised. In this sense, it could also be viewed as a book-centered, humor-tinged Socratic method, its phantom fights in part being created to help the reader answer questions for themselves.

The Everlasting Gospel:

Think of this book as a primer on intergalactic prophecies spliced with new interpretations of biblical scriptures, as told by messenger-turned-messiah-by-way-of-divine-alien-induction, Allen Michael who has penned (and channeled) The Everlasting Gospel (Starmast Publications; price negotiable upon successful alien probe). *Note that this is not the final product/final draft, and it’ll be a challenge for me to find it, but you can get the gist at least.