Category Archives: shards

mister flatulence

Mister Flatulence

He always wanted to be a comedian, but on stage he became tongue tied, until one night performing at a stand-up comedy club he resorted to flatulence and in nothing flat had them rolling in the aisles.

Next thing he knew he was a guest on a late-night talk show. He tried to tell jokes, but they bombed, and so he did what got him there in the first place – he lifted one ass cheek and let go a whopper.

In no time flat he had his own prime-time TV show and people would turn on their sets to see what he’d do next. A favorite routine that he did repeatedly without having his ratings drop was breaking raw eggs over his head one after another while shooting dried green peas thru a pea shooter at a hamster hanging upside down by a string tied to its tail. Each time he hit the hamster there’d be a drum roll from the house band and a hot babe in about six square inches of bikini wearing impossibly high spiked heels undulated across the stage holding up a large card with a number on it indicating how many hits he’d made up to that point, and following close behind her was a Rocky look-alike in boxing shorts with gloves and everything, doing fancy foot work and shadow boxing.

He had to keep breaking eggs over his head until he’d hit the hamster fifty times, and after about twenty hits it got easier because the hamster stopped wiggling and just hung there. After each hit he’d cut a fart, and the audience would go wild.

Stop the average Joe or Jane under twenty-five on the street and throw out names like Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Jonathan Winters and Robin Williams, and their faces remain blank. But ask them who Mister Flatulence is and they lite up, lift one leg, and cut loose a good one.

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rainy night in georgia

Rainy Night in Georgia

London Bridge is falling down. The first London bridge to burn was constructed out of wood and dates back to the Roman invasion of England around the year 100 A.D. It got reconstructed, and nine hundred years later the Vikings burned it down again. The English got fed up and rebuilt it out of stone.

I learned all this in The School of the Americas down in Georgia. London Bridge Is Falling Down, A Lonely Night in Georgia, Georgia on My Mind. We were a bunch of frustrated musicologists back in the early days of the School. I’m not at liberty to disclose how we worked music into the scheme of things, but believe you me we did.

We also learned how to slip LSD into water supplies and slit someone’s throat while he slept. If he did more than gurgle we had to do it again. I made it on my first attempt, but some of the group had to slit as many as six throats.

You’re probably wondering, “Whoa now! Wait just a minute here! How do you simulate a throat slitting?”

You don’t. The streets of America are teeming with dispensable riffraff.

Now you’re probably alarmed, like maybe you’re in some sort of danger, but not to worry. I’m not out to slit your throat! I’ve been a long time out of the game. I turned evidence on some Blacks-Ops higher-ups who’d fallen out of political favor, and then I got into the Witness Protection Program. That’s how I wound up here in London, living a modest life.

I don’t care who reads this. Let them come for me, I could use some action. But they won’t. I’m a living legend.

But this new breed that’s in the field now–sometimes I feel like running a shiv between the ribs of one of those computer-geek snot-nosed patriots, puncture his lung and listen to the air hiss out of him as his eyes glaze and I lower him to the ground, whispering in his ear, “A rainy night in Georgia…it’s raining all over the world…”

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physical collapse

Physical Collapse

My hat fell off my head. My head fell off my shoulders. My shoulders caved into my rib cage and got chewed to shreds by my digestive system. My synthetic arteries snapped loose and wrapped themselves around my vas deferens, causing domestic chaos. I went on the prowl.

I wandered back alleys in my diminished condition. The soles flapped off my shoes. Blisters formed and burst on my feet and raw flesh got embedded with pebbles.

Along the way my toes fell off one by one and my balance grew unsteady. My fists clenched, my arms grew numb and my hearing failed. I tried to whistle a happy tune, but my tongue rolled down my throat.

I took a rest by the wayside. My skin grew scaly and I scratched it. I knew I should call in sick, but that would make three times this week.

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keep dancing

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Keep Dancing

I’ve got my heroes. They’re hiding in the closet and under the bed. One popped out of the toaster just this morning and scared me half to death. He was thin and golden brown. I smeared him with butter and ate him.

People go mad to keep from being scared. Don’t ask me how I know, it surfaced in a dream, like a submarine. The hatch popped open and out sprang crazed sailors smoking pipes and eating spinach.

Tap dancing is one way to deal with being scared. Do it barefoot on a metal tray submerged in water. Do it like you mean it. Don’t blink when your eyes fill with sweat. Ignore the tiny fears that surf the waves.

Keep dancing until you run out of heroes.

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last sane man on the face of the earth

Last Sane Man on the Face of the Earth

He first noticed it in his own children. They weren’t committing random acts of cruelty like previous generations of children, their cruelties were systematic and prolonged.

His daughter, four, had a collection of grasshoppers in her room that she fed to keep alive, but she kept them alive with a leg pulled off or an eye poked out or a pin stuck thru them in places where it wouldn’t kill them. She kept the grasshoppers in a shoe box on a tray under a heat lamp next to her bed, and at night she’d poke at them with a kitchen fork until she grew sleepy.

Then he noticed it in his wife. She’d go into the children’s room, turn off the heat lamp next to their sleeping daughter’s bed, and kiss her on the forehead. Then she’d go over to their son’s bed where he was still awake with one of the kittens under his pillow with duct tape over its mouth and binding all four of its legs together. “Don’t forget to say your prayers,” she’s say, fluff the pillow, kiss him good night and leave the room.

He witnessed this routine from the doorway three nights running, and each night as his wife left the room she went up on her toes and kissed him, then led him by the hand to their bedroom.

It had been happening all around him for a long time, but it wasn’t until it surfaced in his own home that he realized he was the last sane man on the face of the earth.

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houdini & the yogi

Houdini & the Yogi

It’s only when there’s almost no future left that you can stop living in the past. Well, for most people anyway. Maybe not if you’re a yogi who regurgitates his intestines and swallows them back down again, or passes 500 mics of good acid thru his system without having it faze him, or gets sealed in an air-tight chamber for twenty-four hours sitting in the full lotus and steps out again when the door swings open, unruffled and with a blank look on his face.

These guys never blink, even if they’ve got something in their eye. They don’t dance or sing or chase women. Sometimes they wake up in the middle of the night with an enormous hard-on, but they never touch it; they don’t throw the covers back and stare at it; if it persists they’ll regurgitate their intestines on it, and that usually makes it go away.

It makes you wonder how they got this way, these yogis – some sort of childhood trauma that erased time? That’s just a wild guess on my part, I really don’t have a clue. The only story I’ve heard that might give a clue is the one about the yogi who was present when Houdini got dumped in the Hudson River in the dead of winter. He was in a straitjacket and had chains on his wrists and ankles and they stuck him in an iron box, sealed it from the outside with ten padlocks, and dumped him in.

He was down there for a long time. Women on shore began wailing, and strong men cried out, “Bring him up! Bring him back up, for Christ’s sake!”

And then he came bursting thru the surface of the choppy water, free of his straitjacket and chains and grinning from ear to ear. He waved at the crowd and then swam to shore with strong strokes.

They pulled him out of the icy water and wrapped him in blankets, and the crowd surged around him. Reporters were firing questions at him and taking pictures with flashbulb cameras, and radio announcers were waving microphones in his face. And then the yogi worked his way thru the crowd, walked up to Houdini, and spat in his face. He turned and walked away again.

Right there, ladies and gentlemen, if only we knew how to decipher it, is the answer to the riddle of why we dwell on the past while the future dwindles away.

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