Wednesday, October 14, 2020

Kalamazoople


      It had been such a lovely autumn in Kalamazoople. Joseph "Bon" Riley was feeling sublime as he delivered for the tech giant PuberTreats.  He was almost in bliss listening to different radio stations or CDs as he drove fast food to students in apartment complexes, Italian food to families out in the country, and all sorts of food to perfectly normal folks of all stripes in all kinds of Kazoople neighborhoods.  Surprising to him was how beautiful the fall colors were this year, almost otherworldly in their surreal hues, in town and out of town. The trees of western Michigan are large and lovely, and after a decade in the more conifer heavy Pacific Northwest, it was striking to drive down boulevards through caves of branches resplendent  in the warm hues of fall, bright red-oranges, yellows, dark reds, purples, and half greens. 

     With a dreadful pandemic wiping out hundreds of thousands of people, and the economy sputtering after having shut down completely, Bon was very thankful that his formerly 'shit job' was now considered a very essential service, and he, formerly seen only peripherally as just some slob, now almost a hero to the public.  People were thanking him.  Children were waving out the window at him.  Millions upon millions of folks were unemployed, but he was making enough to keep the wolf away and then some. 

      He liked delivering, because he could do it when he needed to versus having to adhere to some corporate managers schedule.  The longer he delivered for a living, the more he appreciated the independent feeling of it, and even the somewhat dangerous aspect at times. Sure, he was putting a lot of miles on his car, but he had to make money, especially because of how uncertain things felt in the world.  He was trying very hard not to despair.  After all, things weren't so bad, he and his wife were going to be buying a nice home on a nice street and it was something that, though it was a hundred years old, would be theirs to do with as they pleased.  Renting a home is less worry, perhaps.  He'd have to see.

His sons would grow to know the place as the house that they grew up in.


  



Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Lipstick on the Joystick

Klaus blinked rapidly and then closed his eyes for a long time.  

When he opened them, Ralf was standing there with an Atari 2600 joystick. Just the joystick.  

     "It was better than drugs and beer before we knew drugs and beer, and it was better than the love of women before we knew the love of a woman, it is the addiction that doesn't kill but takes what we all run out of, as precious as our very breath.  Our time," Ralf said.  

Klaus looked perturbed.  

     "How did you get here? I thought the universe ended or reset or something.  Huh.  Where are we, anyway? I really need to get back..."   


Friday, July 24, 2020

Omezeno I

"I didn't know what I was doing. Which is a lie. Rise of Rock City isn't a game. It's a job. An unpaid job. It's harder than a real job, and less rewarding, in more ways than one. You're actively punished for working it. While saying your playing it, everydaying it, no other waying it, it's just the same, but you say it's different, you're playing different, but you're playing the same, because you're playing, but it's work, but it's unpaid. Sorry, did I repeat myself? I certainly rhymed. But I can't stop, because you can't top it. You can't stop it. Even if the universe ended. Because there's nothing better. There's nothing worse. But there's nothing better,"

Klaus said.


The universe had ended.

But Klaus, like a Jew who hadn't yet celebrated this year's Passover, wasn't ready to day.

Rydeen

EYES EYES EYES EYES EYES EYES EYES EYES EYES EYES EYES

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Beating a dead seahorse

"Beating a dead horse
in the sea,
Drowning in waves of habitual haze
Burying the old me with more old ways
I'd give my left sock to be
Beating the clock
defeating the greed
Beating the road rage
frustration hate spree
with a visit
to my favorite watering hole in the oceanic scrub
A typical day at the Coral Reef Pub
The swordfish and the sponge
Dart parry dodge absorb lunge
As mermen sip on conches of Mermead,
they listen to the tones of a Great White plead
If be a man a great white can, that shark is a piano man
This briny lounge has gone a long way to
make up for my horrid day
And as the shark began to sing
he exhaled a giant bubble-smoke ring
With eyes of red and cheek of tears
the great white rolled back the very years
to another time when he'd been young
and oh, the sadness that shark sung!"

--a bit lichen on the back of the Ringleader's left bootheel



Sunday, June 21, 2020

An excerpt from the new Rial novel "Dystopia in Kalamatopia"

    Suddenly some older type hipster took the microphone from the Ringleader and began to recite from a beat up paperback novel:

     "Bob looked off the balcony of his apartment at a couple of deer who stood in the woods about five meters away.  The lush Kalamazoo trees were abuzz with the sounds of many birds, and insects were in healthy supply, and he was definitely struck by the increase of bugs on the front end and windshield of his car after trips.  He sat on the balcony's lone bench and lit one of the two Cutter brand citronella candles. After smelling the candles fine citro aroma, he sat it on a rickety crate fashioned into a table, and took a drink of a fine Michigan craft beer, reflecting.
     It had been in 1986 when he left the State of Michigan to move to a little town on the north side of Dayton, Ohio.  His high school years in West Milton, Ohio seemed like an idyllic old television show to him now.  It was surreal being a Michigan resident once again, and in his heart he felt somehow like he'd returned to Ithica after an amazingly detailed long journey to Troy (oh,and a war) and all over the world and the seven seas.  He did feel a bit like Odysseus.  The part about finally coming home is that it will not be how or what you hope or expect.  'But the craft beer is exceptional', Bob thought."

Meanwhile, Jens had stopped shooting after one shot, and had painstakingly attached a fishing silencer to his fishing rifle. A Fishing silencer is the most important part of the fishing rifle, for, as every good fish hunter knows, one can scare all the fish away, once they hear the first fateful blast from, say a Wilcomber Mach II, one may as well pack up the tackle box, put your rifle back in its case, and row to shore, because you're quite finished, my good man.  Of course, it doesn't matter a farthing if you have on a silencer if one is firing at fish in barrels, mind you.
     

Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Shooting Fish in a Barrel

The origins of the phrase "shooting fish in a barrel" is not exactly known, though some speculate that it references a time before refrigeration when fish were stored in barrels.  As in, if you shot a barrel full of fish, you would be guaranteed to hit at least one. But, as it turns out, gentle reader, the term originated in the circus industry.

Jens was a good shot with a fishing rifle.  I mean, everyone remembers his legendary fishing match against John Scot in 1971, where a Moby Dick-esque gigantic sea-carp named Georgina was caught by both of them several times before she finally succumbed to her wounds off the Cliffs of Mohir and was interred in an undisclosed location (in case any of you archeologist types were gonna try to grave rob).

Jens could hit a lone minnow in a barrel full of molasses at 100 yards.

The spectacle that the audience was exposed to was nothing short of breath taking.