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Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Bird post

I need to save my gloom for a sunny day that may dilute the mud of my recent deploration (I made that up, I think).
   Soon it will be Thanksgiving, then Christmas. Each upcoming holiday must be treated as my last as the odds of it being true, already many times more likely than most, become easily calculable.
   I hope that all the family I cooked for on Turkey Days past recall how honored I was to bring my little feast to the table each year.
   This bird day squares Rachel in my place, paying respects to my cookbook, flipping the winged gobbler upside down and adding her flavor and flair to every dish. She owns my chef's jacket and as so retains the lone right to modify my recipes without fear of recrimination or decapitation except where it comes to shrimp.
    Everybody enjoy the holidays in spite of my absence.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

A short story segue, off my reservation for a respite from me

A strong wind cut at the trampled grasses, stirring flak and prairie dust into vortexes of life upon the arid plain. Stitched from left to right across the fields, wind battered and age weary, an ancient fence crossed, horizon wide, an endless expanse of leaning posts and rusty wire strewn with barbs.
The coyotes were on the run. A million in pack. Their numbers, all driven by identical thirst, all crazed, all insane, moved in a frenzy toward the fence. The stench from their breath and their hides, a fecal and rotted menagerie, raced ahead upon the wind. Their howls and screams ran alongside the airborne sewage of their scent.
The rabid, rancid bestial storm bore through the fence. Ten thousand animals were degloved, their living carcasses, naked sinew and flesh, continued forward, slowing, dying the death of writhing agony, trampled and bitten by the more fortunate creatures in flight. Onward the pack furied. Ever forward, ever mad.
     The rats followed, slower yet no less determined, undaunted by the distance, unfazed by the barbs. Their numbers out counting the coyotes tenfold. They moved as a great gray mass, a living sea, a writhing parade of vermin on march. A scant million paused to feed on the fallen. Disease hung in the air, intermixed with the dust trails, vile and heavy, cloying and thick with the remnants of sickness and death.
      A million souls lied upon the high ground, their clothing tattered and soiled, their rifles gleaming. At the ready, each set with grim determination, each with clenched teeth, squeezed eye, with steady hand. Waiting, waiting.
    The fanged, drooling posse tore upon the hill in a storm of tearing frenzy, leaderless, followerless, a united, shoulder to shoulder mass.
    A million shots pierced the atmosphere, a million bullets found flesh. The howls became shrieks of surprise and agony. Tens of thousands fell. Thousands fled. Only scattered few continued, struck down by a second volley.
      Even as the sounds of pain and death carried forth on a breeze of oily, foul odor, the cheers of victory took flight.
     Nobody saw the rats, nobody thought of the rats.
     Feast upon feast upon dying dogs of the prairie elevated the senses of the rodent throngs to a fever pitch. Living meat particlized their minuscule brains. The entire mass, having devoured its fill of coyote, caught wind of new prey, strange and alluring, compelling beyond reason.
     The rats, near a billion in number, ascended the hill as one.
      Not a single human saw them coming.
      The onslaught was immediate and forever, a million were trampled and eaten by their own kind as the stampede mounted the summit twenty deep. Screams were muted as scores mounted and encapsulated their victims. In the end, all that remained was an undulating carpet of gray, an occasional bone, stripped clean of flesh, a globe of white skull, the irony smell of a slaughterhouse.
     Eventually, the rats, engorged, scattered, leaving the scraps to the flies and maggots.
    New earth was turned and the hilltop was again in its natural state. The valley grew out and the fence was repaired.
      A million starving hyenas were released. This time all the rats had been accounted for.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Vent lost

Vent. This stupid machine ate a post stuffed with negative, depressing statements of futility and desperation aimed at the future and its prognosis. My prognosis. If it shows up, you will not be spared.

Monday, November 18, 2013

Back home

We are back. I'm okay. Now. I am never given to hyperbole. Yesterday I experienced an epic event perpetrated by my ever excessive thoughts and obsessives.
      I discovered that travel for me is much easier downhill than up, making it a breeze to head toward the lake (an obvious downward trajectory), bent upon hitting the dock at a maximum velocity of six point four miles per hour. At such speed, coupled with the mass of a four hundred pound chair and a two hundred pound live load, an explosion from deck to drink would seem pedestrian at best. It was. I hit liquid on the fly. Sideways. I clipped a protruding nail and lurched askew at the last second, lighting sidesaddle.
      The blasted water was only a foot deep! 
      I lay, one eye submerged, hung in my seatbelt.
     Someone saw me.
     A rumble upon the pier. A splash. A mouthful of lake fluid. A scream from behind, a release at my waist. I fall forward and out of my Permobil, into the drink. Arms tug. I choke and panic (for the first time today).
      Up and out. Soaked and cold, embarrassed. I am a failure and a fool and now I have upset everyone. I can't seem to lose for losing. What kind of jinx have I inherited from my past behavior? Why do I deserve such misery welded to immense frustration? When may I sign out? How? Why, you ask? Why not? If the afterlife is so great, as many believe, and my current situation sucks, as many know, what is the big holdup?
      I know, I know. Dark shit, dark contemplation. Yeah. Wishing for an unknown commodity is like asking to trade your life, no matter how pathetic, for what's behind door number two (which could very well be shit).
      Einstein stated that God doesn't throw dice, but He does pull wings off flies. I stand (not) as living proof.
      Why do I even ponder door number two? Hell, (Freudian slip?), I don't know anything any more. Long ago I  abandoned political correctness. Desperate situations call for desperate measures.
      I would have plunged into our pool in the back yard but Sarah put a net over it that would prevent me from bathing.
      As an end note, this entire post consists entirely of hyperbole sans factual content except for opinion. As we all know, my opinion may as well be construed as fact, thus validating all fiction expressed.

Saturday, November 2, 2013

Trip approaching

Wednesday we leave for Mesa, Arizona to attend a service for my mom who died this past June. The one thousand odd mile trip is not daunting in the least. For me. You'll have to ask Amy her thoughts on the matter.
     Having had problems with the latest Tobii upgrade, I have downgraded to my previous level of inadequacy, thus downgrading my posts, in both frequency and quality, certainly affected by my upgrade of impatience.
      Don't fret. I will find a way to continue my nuisance reports for as long as I can. On that note, the chance of my acquiring a PCEYE is nearing zero. I guess older boys must settle for older toys.