Archive for the ‘The Stories’ Category

My airborne happy space. Why must it be off limits to me?

That I possess an avid interest in congregating near the forward lavatory of commercial jetliners cannot be denied. And because one person does not constitute a congregation, my peculiarity becomes all the more cultish. This quirk, this foible, this idiosyncrasy of deriving immense gratification in Proximal Flight Deck Loitering has been discouraged by flight attendants and Air Marshalls alike. But like my life coach always says, “There’s nothing I can do for you David. Not now. Not ever. Oh yeah, and stop with that airplane loitering sh*t.”  

Like most people with a socially unwelcomed interest, it came to me uninvited – I was born this way. So I like to loiter at the front of planes. So big deal. I know I’m harmless. Why should I have to convince you? Can’t you look into my soul and see that I’m not nuts. I’m just differently advantaged? Besides, my supposed trespass doesn’t pose a danger to anyone. And anyway aren’t Christians supposed to “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Well forgive away, and start with me. “I accept your forgiveness.” Read the rest of this entry »

Truth right there in Black & Red. Breathe easy. It’s all going to work out.

I’d heard the uncharitable whispers: “His brain is an unkempt mess” and “His thoughts are badly disheveled.” This pained me greatly as I prided myself on appearing both kempt and sheveled. Many of these sotto voce critiques of my wordiness were true: I was a walking trove of excessive verbosity. And when I was prose-doping (taking literary performance enhancing drugs), I became a towering trove of staggering prolixity. It was all mental masturbation giving me the illusion of control and masking a feeling of helplessness. Then again maybe I was being too hard on myself? Maybe I just liked to have fun with worms. See what I did there? You thought I’d say fun with words, instead I said fun with worms. What can’t I do? A lot. Because most of my grandiose ruminations don’t amount to a hill of beans. Or (as the prose-doping kicks in) don’t amount to a towering mound of staggering legumosity.   Read the rest of this entry »

Quite a ghoulish cross to bear.

I was car shopping in New Jersey when I accidentally visited a Hyundai dealership instead of a Honda dealership – thank you very much GPS w/voice recognition. It was there, near the entrance to Hackensack Hyundai where I suffered an unexpected bout of amnesia. Amnesia in New Jersey is different. Instead of suffering from clinical memory loss you simply fuggedaboutit. And this is the story of my struggle (or mein kamp  for my German friends) in reclaiming my memories – at least what I think are my memories. See what amnesia can do? It can scramble your brains when you’d prefer them to be over-easy. And whether scrambled or over-easy, a nice side of bacon with your brains is very healing – whether it’s cured or uncured (the bacon that is and not the brain). 

Back on the Rails

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Unimportant – Aaron Unimportant. I come from a long line of Unimportant people. We were known as VUPs (Very Unimportant Persons). I don’t know why I’m even telling you this part of the story. It’s really unimportant. So let us begin my journey from forgetfulness to mindfulness where I travel from a blank slate devoid of any impressions to a full slate populated with numerous Post-it Notes. As you come to understand my calamity, it may all become quite confusing in a “Why-am-I-still-reading-this, kind of way.” Read the rest of this entry »

This is what it is? I don’t think so. My advice: Don’t settle. Go beyond so-called questioning authority. Be the answer and rest comfortably in knowing it’s never what you think it is.

We often rely on the bedrock cliché “It is what it is” to armor ourselves against IEDs – Idiotic Earthly Dilemmas. We need its unerring guidance to help us navigate through the mental minefield of wondering just what in tarnation is going on around here (italicized phrase should be read with a thick southern accent). To maintain some semblance of an equilibrium we humans need to be very accepting of our predicament and resorting to that age old explainer-awayer “It is what it is,” goes a long way to maintaining our stability in an uncertain world.  In times of stress a quick visit to the mental medicine cabinet for a handy dose of “It is what it is” often provides immediate temporary relief for minor existential pain. So what if it’s just a placebo masking the anxiety-producing effects of gnawing, insoluble challenges. This brings to mind the unlaunched man-child who finally realizes: “Jesus, I’ve got to move out of this basement for so many reasons. The first one is because the people living upstairs don’t even know I’m down here. Oh well, it is what it is.”

And as much as I belittle “It is what it is” I wouldn’t want to exclude it from our coping repertoire. It’s important to make some kind of informed decision and then act upon it. I mean we don’t want a lot of quibbling philosopher-Kings running around spouting-off, “Yes, but why does my toast burn when the universe knows I’d prefer it otherwise.” We don’t need that level of self-absorption. We need people to keep their noses to the grindstone so the rest of us can enjoy the freedom of going to a 7-11 at 3 a.m. for a Slurpee fix. Let us all stay engaged and directed. We know life is at its best when it’s uncomplicated, and saying “It is what it is” helps to keep it that way. Read the rest of this entry »

Ursine-toppling Mania Grips Region as Hillbillies Invoke Unknown Constitutional Amendment: “The right to bear tips.”

Groggy bear emerging from den just begging to be tipped.

Fifteen miles east of Dollywood Theme Park, in the backwater hamlet of Intelligence Gap, Tennessee, Purvis Cooter is excited about Hickam County’s upcoming bear-tipping festival. Early on the rural community was in a quandary over whether to fund the festival or spend the money on electrifying the town. They chose the festival and now the annual jamboree is the town’s major source of revenue – especially since the Fotomat closed. As the sister city of Pamplona, Spain, Intelligence Gap has reformulated Pamplona’s annual Running of the Bulls and calls its version The Tipping of the Bears. In 2012 Chuck Norris kindly refused their request to be Grand Marshall. Chuck Norris doesn’t tip bears. He just points, and they go down. Read the rest of this entry »

Young Adolf, seen here in happier times. Note absence of malice.

With the recent discovery of Adolf Hitler’s Berlin bunker diary, scholars and skinheads alike have been combing the pages for insights into why the charismatic German Chancellor and spawn of Satan unleashed such evil. His diary was unearthed quite inadvertently when Disney broke ground for a new theme park in Berlin called “Maus Haus”. The handwritten journal catalogues how Hitler’s formerly unshakable belief in Aryan supremacy, miraculously transforms itself into a muddle of anxiety, so that ironically, by the end of the diary he sounds less like the ruler of the Master Race and more like a kvetching Jew. The same accounting firm that supervised the Oscar voting process (PricewaterhouseCooper) authenticated the diary, so we know it’s legit. Of course verification was made easier because of Hitler’s telltale handwriting – he dotted all his i’s with little swastikas.

Historians wonder what motivated Hitler. They speculate on Hitler this, and Hitler that. What I wonder is why Hitler is always referred to simply as “Hitler” and never as “Mr. Hitler”, as in, “Mr. Hitler then decided to invade his neighbor Poland.” Wait! Oh I see why. Mr. Hitler humanizes Hitler. Historians want to eliminate the possibility of a buoyant and fatherly “Mr. Hitler” rallying his nation to find their greatness after the humiliation of WWI. But one can easily imagine a title-less “Hitler” fanatically leading Germany down an inglorious path of self-destruction. Maybe that’s why there’s no Mr. Genghis Khan or Mr. Vlad the Impaler. Read the rest of this entry »

John Jacob Astor was one of the 5 richest Americans ever.

John Jacob Astor (1763-1848) was America’s first multimillionaire. He made his fortune in the fur business, which at that time, was an honorable and necessary profession. In those mean, frigid times before the invention of Gore-Tex and Holofill, fur didn’t mean murder; it meant survival. Astor was a renowned furrier and his witty wife Sarah would often quip, “Oh you’re a furrier alright. In fact you’re furrier than anyone I’ve ever seen.”

Astor was born in Germany and emigrated to the United States after the Revolutionary War. He settled in New-York City, which at the time was just Manhattan and not yet the 5 boroughs we’re so familiar with today. Astor’s monopolistic fur trading empire stretched from the Great Lakes into Canada and all the way to the West Coast, which at that time was not yet part of the United States. That concludes the book report aspect of his life, which at this point has not yet become interesting. Read the rest of this entry »

Fellow Romantics and Normal People,

11th President James Knox Polk rocks my world and not because I’m stoned.

In life there are happy little things that appeal universally to everyone – like getting the crunchy, brown corner piece of macaroni & cheese or firing-up your Netflix cue on a rainy day. And then there are more esoteric things that appeal to a small clutch of peculiarly curated humans (yours truly among them) that make our hearts soar and our dreams toggle from wishful thinking to sweet reality. The experience I’m about to describe definitely falls into the latter category. It was my “macaroni & cheese moment” for the eccentrically endowed.

I have an extravagant interest in presidential history, so you’d not find it surprising I’ve grown especially enamored of the few extant presidential daguerreotypes taken at the dawn of photography (1839-1849). I’ve breathlessly examined these precious early daguerreotypes like a sculptor minutely studies the contours of his model to understand the interior superstructure supporting the external surface. I’ve pored over these images with wistful reverence, ardently projecting myself into the static black and white scenes to animate and colorize them while dreaming of meeting the personalities and experiencing the tenor of their times. And in all the time I’ve been doing this there has only been a finite number of images to enliven because (to paraphrase Will Rogers reason on why it’s a good bet to buy land) “They ain’t makin’ anymore.” Read the rest of this entry »

So What Else is New?

Dateline: 4 July 2012, Geneva, Switzerland at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research)

Dispiriting news from the world of Quantum Physics. Shortly after CERN research scientists confirmed the existence of the so-called “God particle” (aka the Higgs boson), a group of contrarian nuclear physicists calling themselves Doctor’s Without Scruples denounced the finding and proclaimed the so-called “God particle” to be nothing more than Cosmological Dandruff. Although there were many competing theories explaining the particle’s composition, Doctor’s Without Scruples believe their Cosmological Dandruff theory was Head & Shoulders above the rest.

As far as atoms go, the CERN facility is absolutely smashing.

What scale! A 17-mile loop.

Lead ion collision debris field – like you didn’t know. 

To everything CERN, CERN, CERN.

Read the rest of this entry »

A Spoof on Stone Age Living – by Rock O’Fages

Early photo of cavemen taken with stone iTablet. Man at center may be an ancestor of Beatle drummer.

Disclaimer: In the world of comedy writing, spoof is a cringe-worthy word on par with yuckfest or laugh-o-rama. I would not be guardedly optimistic about reading a spoof on cavemen. Quite the opposite. I’d be carelessly pessimistic about reading a spoof on cavemen. “Spoof” is a comedic red flag and as unfunny as seeing the word hijinks in the description of a caveman spoof: as in “Ogg takes a wife and hijinks ensue.” Can’t wait to read that – not. I must disclose I have a steamy wordmance and a mad nouncrush on the word hijinks. Hijinks has beauty marks only a literary cosmetologist could love – 3 consecutive dotted letters (iji). The only other words that come close are ḋu̇ṁb and ḍụṃber, and you won’t find me taking them out for dinner and a movie. Read the rest of this entry »