Mary Janes

It was in one of her molars, in the back of her mouth. Metal, because that’s what they used back then. Her first few would later be replaced– tooth colored.
Afterwards, her mother took her shopping for new shoes, the pretty ones with the buckles she’d liked so much, but she was woozy from the experience (not the Novocain, but the memory of the needle pushing into her gums, of the dentist holding it there, holding), and her legs felt light and wobbly. Her mother told her that if she were brave, if she got through it, she’d get a present. It would be wrong, of course, to fault the girl for her sweet tooth with her mother parked nightly on the couch with a bag of Maple Nut Goodies.
It was a word the girl didn’t like, ‘goodies,’ and would never like, thought the candies were pretty good.

polyconfusion

If you told me I was meant to be a polygamist, what would I say?

I would say you were fucking crazy, that’s what I would say. I am not meant to share marriages or domestic responsibilities. Nor am I meant to have lots of children who will swing from my hip and cry all day as I shuffle around grocery stores in long, denim skirts (no slits, not even for proper movement). I don’t want to move to a compound where I can’t swig a bottle of Coca-Cola even if my throat is so parched that a tumbleweed comes bouncing out instead of words. Not that you were going to let me talk anyways, even with my tongues. Even if I went to the store and pointed to the Westmalle behind the cage, telling the clerk “yes, that’s the one,” you wouldn’t let me drink it. You’d rip it from my hands and yell, “devil, devil, devil!”
Always the devil: any man with long hair, the smokers out on the sidewalk, dogs with dark fur, the tumbleweed which rustles, bristles dryly because it is not rolling towards Joseph Smith.

election day post

I posted on D2L as well. Under discussions>workshops

Shiva Leaving

When the time came for leaving, I clung on at the elbow in the lamp light to the words she had just spoken, a few random words, but spoken in sweet whispers as she led me away. Through the sweeping streets in the sloping maze of churches and palm boulevards, down dark and ominous alleys, along cool stone walls, through silent shadows in the ambit of the bell tower under its eaves and red clay roofs. A distant musician plucked his guitar and the sounds tickled me with a strange anxiety as if all the people asleep in their beds were dead. Her voice had killed them. Her soft voice. Shiva was talking and had not seen me or this place. Now I could no longer deny that I loved her and why did it take so long, such an impossible time.

If You're Going to Preach, At Least Take a Shower--Leo's Last Word

It’s a shame, some people.
I'll have to take over now, because Leo isn't feeling well. I know what he told you I was at his ex-wife's house and got a restraining order against him. That's not true. He did that. I actually was there to keep him from hurting somebody. He owes me. I saved his life. So, I'll tell you this last part of the story because Leo doesn't really know how to tell it.
Now, he's arguing with me, saying there are some details I don't know, so I'll just let him tell the story with me. Or will I?
It's a shame, these kids today, with all their electronic little gadgets. Listen, Leo admits he doesn’t know a whole lot about much of the stuff out there. We have a cellular phone, a cd player, a computer. We get on the internet when we need to look stuff up, but we don’t think any of that crap is the key to anything. A guy can be just as happy without it. Anyway, a couple of days ago, some kid came into the store. Probably about legal age or a couple of years older. He had his cell phone and a briefcase, not a nice briefcase, but we thought he was making his point by carrying a briefcase at all. You know, “I’m important! Look at me!” That kind of thing. He had on a button-down shirt and slacks, but he was kind of dirty. Well, his shirt was wrinkled and his hair looked really greasy. He picked out a couple of donuts and poured a small cup of coffee. The whole time he’s walking around being real vocal, speaking to everybody—
“Hey, how’s it going? How’re you doing today?” We knew he was going to say something crazy to me. So he comes up to the checkout counter. “How’s it going, there,” he says. His breath smelled like shit. Oh, excuse us—We're not cursing anymore. Feces. It smelled like feces. His nails were dirty, too. We felt sorry for him, really. Poor kid. He asks us if I’d seen any good movies lately. He said he’d seen the movie that told him the truth about life. Go to the MOVIES, he says, to find out the TRUTH about God.
He kept saying, ‘Religion is ridiculous,’ or something. Like the movie changed his life. He said something that some other guy who gets up and shaves every morning just like him taught him the truth about God. He said people who believe in God are idiots, and that Jesus was a con-man. We couldn’t believe it. He said our Lord and Savior was a con-man. We don’t know if you’re a praying man or anything, but we ask you, how in the hell—excuse us, how in the world can a guy who gets whipped and spat on and nailed to a cross by his hands and feet be a con-man? Isn’t the purpose of being a con to get something out of the deal, to
get over on people?
It goes back to what we said earlier. The key to being found after being lost is to admit that
you don’t know anything. Seems like whoever made that ridiculous movie is pretty lost, himself. We didn’t say anything to the guy. We wanted to punch him in the nose. We knew if we said anything, it would end with him picking himself up off the floor. So we kept silent. That’s another thing we’ve learned too—how to pick my battles. No, we didn’t say anything to the kid. We just wanted him to leave. We figured this kid would learn soon enough the TRUTH about lies. So, he tried to pay with a debit card, which was declined. We took back the donuts and coffee. He left. We kept thinking about what he said: going to the MOVIES taught him the TRUTH about GOD, about LIFE. He hadn’t made his truth look all that appealing to me. We figure if you’re going to preach, at least take a damned shower. He had a cell phone but couldn’t pay for two donuts and a cup of coffee. For the moment, that was his truth.

Leo Takes a Stand

I don't know what that son-of-a-bitch told you about me. I don't even know the guy really.
He just shows up sometimes, saying he knows what I need. Talking about he's gonna take care of me. Don't listen to him. Then again, he is pretty straight-forward. I think he'd give his life for me. I definitely have to say I trust him. Still, I don't know. He just showed up at my ex-wife's house one day, crying. Begging her to take him back. Like he knew her or something. I mean, I'm Leo. Wouldn't I be the one to beg her to take me back? Why would he beg her to take him back? To go 'back' to something, don't you gotta be there in the first place? I show up, and my wife is standing there looking at me, asking these stupid questions.
"You alright," she says.
What the fuck are you talking about, I say. Of course I'm alright.
My son Leo, he's Junior, says, "Pop, get the hell out of here, 'til you straighten up."
I'm going, "What the hell are you fucking fucks talking about? I'm straight! I just came by to say 'hello.'"
So, that guy messed it up, where I gotta stay about 150 feet away from my wife at all times.
I don't care what the courts say, she's still my wife. So, that guy screwed that up for me. Still, he's been there for me in some tight pinches. Taking over when my head starts hurting.

Okay, I'll tell you this before he comes back. I definitely believe there are just as many bad people in the world as there are good. Before this job, I was a licensed electrician. For about nineteen years I worked with the City, then with Com Ed (that’s Commonwealth Edison to
you non-Chicagoans). I knew a lot of people and made really good money. Then my head started hurting all the time, and I screwed up. I hit the booze. Things got pretty bad. I lost my family, my license. I was even in a shelter for about ten days. So I know what it’s like to be lost. And I know how to come back from that, too. I guess I could have gone back on the job, back to working with the Union, but I think that’s what got me in trouble in the first place—stress. My head would be pounding. Anyway, my son Leo and I have finally gotten to be pretty good friends, and we talk sometimes about how things were when I was drinking. He was just a kid, and God knows I wasn’t a great father then. He says the scariest thing for him was
that he might end up like me. You gotta respect that. Who wants to be like that? I never hit my wife or kid or nothing, but I broke furniture, crashed the car, yelled at them all the time, showed up at work drunk. When things were at their worst, I felt out of control, but in the beginning of it, I felt like I was a king. Like I had the world in a jug and the stopper in my hand. Like I knew everything. Which brings me back to my point about working this job and knowing how to come back from being lost. The key is for a man to admit that he doesn’t know a damned thing.

Okay, this fucker's coming back. I'll talk to you when the coast is clear.

Is Obama the death of Flarf?

Gary Sullivan thinks, "maybe, yeah."

What do we do with a President who can talk, run a decent campaign, and be so damn hard to demography? Will we have to look to Canada for redneck government leaders?