Every year, around Christmas time, those few subscribers who I feel will actually care get a nice, random email from me. The funny thing is, in my slower years, this has been the only mass email I've sent out, so a new subscriber will say, "Yeah, I took a look at that and threw it out after one paragraph." Which is to say, they're much better received than my usual emails.
This started... gosh... I guess it was in the Christmas of my sophomore year. I wanted to see if I could write a protracted email with no continuous thought, and no rhythm. In those respects, the first one was a smashing success. Subsequent attempts have been a little disappointing, given to the fact that I've actually started saying things in them. If you know how to read these, you'll get some very candid insights into my life.
But I'm safe that my gray searchlight secrets will remain hidden.
January 10th, 2002
Hello,
No, do not adjust your television sets; I'm only barefoot. That's a funny way to talk to somebody you just embalmed, mister, so I recommend you shake hands first next time.
I was going to have some sausage for breakfast but they're all so rude my mother has told me to never have them over again. They knock over our windows and break all of our couches. I said "Mother, if you didn't shave our trashcan, none of us would have to worry about penguin infestations," but all of you know that there are just some things a forest ranger won't understand, no matter how many gallons of cream cheese she's thinking about at the time.
Only five hours later I was asleep, which surprised me, because I had been declared legally dead yesterday morning. Other than that I was having a good day. Did you ever have one of those days when you stick your head in a mousetrap but you still aren't able to find the Philadelphian midget running around all of your boxes of breakfast cereal? I've never had a day like that, to be honest, but it gives me something to plan for for the weekend.
It was raining really hard when I went to bed, so I wasn't able to throw the cats into the sink after all. That's what I get for being so tall, I guess. Serves me right; next time I should just try tying my pants in a Windsor knot before I put them on. I know, you tell me that that isn't going to solve my problems, but it makes the guilt of being a Scandinavian chess player with no hands a lot easier. At least, that's what my Canadian friend says, and she's not even Polish.
I said, "So, what do you think of the one on the left," and he said, "I don't like brunettes," and I said "That has nothing to do with lampshades, keep your mind on the matter at hand before they kick us out of Wal-Mart." We were kicked out of Wal-Mart anyway by three lemons who all had British accents (except for the two that didn't, but I don't think they were collecting calendars anyway) but they looked a lot more like toasters with mixture of a Japanese brogue and an umbrella. This was all very surprising because we were in Target at the time.
Maybe. What are you asking me for, do I look Dutch? I do? Well, then you should have no difficulty finding an angle grinder in the middle of December. If your name is really Sal Magicpants, that is, which I'm beginning to doubt heavily, because you don't know how to bowl. It's very easy: you just throw the chicken up in the air and whatever God wants He keeps.
But who asked you anyway, and no I won't believe it if you tell me Don Adams is your sister. He looks nothing like that coatrack I gave to my dog for Christmas last Easter.
No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. Well, actually, I'm lying. The real answer is "chihuahua." But don't think that'll do you any good, you only have until midnight to collect all the Spam from the Illuminati, or else I get to sit in my chair without having to yodel first. You can complain if you want, but those are the rules we agreed to, and you can like it or you can lick your toes with somebody else's hat. You can actually do both, but not without a doctor's note saying that you are not, after all, Cesar Romero.
So I went to the Dentist today and he said "Give me all your teeth," so I said "Give me all your money," and then he said "Put your socks back on your head; this isn't Finland." Since then, we've become best friends. It's amazing how tolerable somebody can become after you kill them.
My Irish friend is telling me to play a game where I just talk, but it all seems like brain spasms to me. All the other people in on the bet think they see what's going on with the last one, but they have to comb the rest of their mailbox for a month to see how many metaphors there are, if any. I thought that as soon as I said "fire hydrant," I would win, but there aren't any good Puerto Rican safety pins on my payroll after all, so the jury is still out.
I leave you with one final word, dearest, but this is a commutative property state so I get to keep the article. TOENAIL. Yeah, that's right, I said it, now that you see the blind factory worker singing on a moving train, you'll wonder if the penultimate ditty really does give any sort of feeling that I'm not sitting backwards after all.
And tell the milkman no more cheese.
December 28th, 2003
Oh yes, my chickadees, you knew that it was tree time. You should not be surprised to find me shouting in your ear. Just like last time, eh? Only this time, more hats!
I am the potato of journalism. Do not look under the cupboard, or else you may find the dog is no longer willing to sit idly by like a trophy. Who is it that says that electricity is only for the minions? Not I, and I�m not even Icelandic. Or are you Czechoslovakian? If you are educated in the arts of drinking, where�s my leather jacket?
I don�t think he quite understood the game, because the guitar is just as clean as it had been before the cat went discount surveying. I still get a slight, warm feeling every time I feel my keys jab into the side of that deer tick. Oh, but that was just the folly of youth. I�m not the sort of person who likes getting caught up in the dishwasher, unless Ross Perot can beat me at chess, in which case I say, �Bring all the baskets; it�s time to knit the socks.�
Roast beef was not invented, so it would seem, but rather discovered. But, of course, you knew this, which is why I still have a hard time in finding your kerchief. Oh, but you thought you were a sly one, sending me an anagram, when I know full well who nailed that bee to the boxcar. However, it was funny, even for a country-song.
Which reminds me: The other day I sent out a box of spring-loaded string to my cousin in Samoa, only to find that there was nobody in Bora Bora who really cared to file down my jaw. Another Easter without a hat. You would think by now I would learn how to plug the refrigerator into Jerusalem, but no, I have to be difficult, and never even bothered to learn how to play piano.
There is, of course, a simple lesson to be learned from this, and perhaps that man with the fuzzy hair can tell you what it is if you can distract him from those circles he keeps drawing with the divining rod. I must confess, though, that as I watch you step on the Frisbee, it does see quite a fun way to wean someone from his dependence on an ice tray. Again, we have nobody to blame but Stockard Channing.
Did you hear the joke about the man named Leonard who tried to sit on a bag of knobs? You have? Then why do you continue to live your life in a manner not befitting a prizefighter of your stature? I tried renting out your wristwatch, but those ruddy Amish gypped me out of a singing horse. This never would have happened if Frankie Avalon had turned left when we gave him the chance to buy a new razor. Note to self: the teacup does not work.
Of course not.
If you believe one word that I�m saying, I would appreciate it if you told me which one, because I�m having a hard time figuring out what a Japanese brogue is and just how it can be crossed with an umbrella and put into a lemon. Shut your mouth, when I want you to sing I�ll hop up and down on the little electric mannequin. Do you know how to spell �horseradish?� I just ask because I don�t feel like mentioning the Civil War at this time of day.
So my niece climbed a tree and looked all over the branches, but could not find the one that claims to be Prince Charles. Isn�t that just like a rabbit? Trying to get sausage when you�re fixing mustard, but all any of your really want is a duck you can love and pet and call George.
Bill called me last night and said, �Yo.� I don�t think he was quite English at the time, though, because I could notice just how many fingers he was counting, and they weren�t mine. But I was not about to be rude, so I slapped him in the knee and said, �Yo yo, yofenstein, you got that crazy moon-mambo up and running yet?� which is a traditional greeting amongst the elks of Labrador. He just smiled and said, �How about hopping like fish, because I know this great place where they speak into shoe-boxes and all anybody has to know is that there are no pigeons.� I do not need to tell you how I responded to Communism in my bathroom; you know full well that I will not abide a kitten with a knife. Not with my mother defending her arm-wrestling championship.
There is a deeply rooted fear that my job at the mint has invaded my life, and that I�m cranking out currency even know, and that a random number might not cover the bride�s face quite so quickly as I�d hoped. Mark me well, and I�ll tell you the average when you get a headache. Until then, I am not ever to be compared to a squirrel by anybody except your mother, but we�ve been through all that before.
That joke you told me the other day was very good, but it gets better every time you tell it. To avoid this, try something in German, and put some orange on it. If that doesn�t work, then when you run a fever of one-hundred-and-three, mail the ostrich back to me and I�ll show it slides from that trip we took to the land up over.
I would think it would be fairly obvious just where I tipped my hat to the Old Man. You don�t get quite so much Tito Puente as you used to, but my spelling is different. Every once in a while, you may be able to fit your head around something that smells like my lunch, but I try to avoid repeat occurrences of David Lynch.
Sequins are good.
If you ever decide to follow through with it and deliver that love letter to Poland, I wish you�d let me know, because that woman is shouting at the ball of caffeine in the next room that she refuses to be trained in Russian. Oh, yes, you knew it was only a matter of time before those sorry pedicurists attempted another coup.
Ethan Hawke borrowed a nickel from me today and said �I�ll pay you back when I can get my own kazoo.� Oh, how I wished at that moment to be standing on my own head for a change, just so I could see the stars in glorious Technicolor. There are probably reasons both moral and ethical, though, that I can�t have any mint until seven continents get jiggy with it.
I don�t mean to brag, but it was I who rescued the leper from the People�s Republic of Canada. They were not going to do anything about that sorry pogo stick of a yard sale, but you know me. It makes me want to burst out in song every time I see that porcelain frog with all of its secrets, and that woman sending radiation into her head to try to find them, but that�s just what I get from watching to much TV.
I�ve got to get much better with my self-control. Only today, I was walking down the street when a man said to me, �Hi,� and I had the audacity to exchange his currency for lint. In broad daylight, even. And now, here I am with recycled ink, trying to jam a radio in your head. I think I�m trying too hard.
Fuzzy. Hmmmmm. It reminds me of breakfast at the farm. Those were the days: we�d rise early to shoot us up some pancakes: just like in a William Faulkner novel. If only they would let me talk about the wounded Trojans just on the basis of how well I can hurl around the word �biscuit weevil,� as if there were something special to that part of Africa.
I really should be watching my cholesterol. Just the other day, I bought a book, which said that Edgar Allan Poe died of rabies, but I�m afraid that I might be lying about that, too. How can I be certain with this little white-haired man rocking on his heels as if he were a physicist? He thinks that he�s a Genius, but little does he know, I can replace him with a puppy or a beach ball any day that I want to, and half of the days that I don�t.
Whee, I haven�t had this much fun since the trampoline went skiing. Remind me never to take chocolate on another rendezvous, though. You may accuse Vonnegut of that, but not me�I never want the charge connected with my name. It�s just a coincidence. I really should try to stop thinking about what I�m saying.
Do you remember when your Uncle Betsy would get up early in the evening and shout at the mailbox �You are not befitting to share your name with Eric Estrada?� I sure don�t, but it would be something nice to write a haiku about, if I ever decided to become Dutch. Which reminds me of that drum. Why do people think that if they do not have a good staff, that they have to say, �look at me� and slap a block of wood? Sure, some of them really know how to spin their beards, but a lot of them are just playing with electrical cords without any power and claiming that it makes them nice people.
Once again, we all need to learn where we put our keys. Why do you think I would know the combination to your cheese bin? Because I�m not Lawrence Welk, that�s why. Therefore, it is seventeen left, one thousand two hundred forty three right, Farrah Fawcett left.
You know, Kojak was always my favorite Golden Girl. The way he could toss down a screwdriver made me want to stand up and say �I�m PROUD to be French!� But my head is not aerodynamic enough and I do not squint, so nobody believes my claim. Stupid T-shirt, this is not even my favorite breakfast cereal.
The first song I sung with that funny bit of clothing on is coming to my head, but I must inform you that, contrary to popular belief, I have no daughters at all. Day in, day out, and nothing new to show the tall guy.
Navel. Now that�s a word you can set your watch by. I tried setting my watch by �cumquat� or �plaster,� but, dad gum it, Anthony Burgess told us all how not even Talleyrand wanted to recount all those piddly little things, which is what you would have to do if you suddenly wanted to switch horses like that.
For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say, �I�m going to sleep.� And half an hour later the thought that it was time to go to sleep would awaken me; I would try to put away the book which, I imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I had been thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just been reading, but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own, until I myself seemed actually to become the subject of my book: a church, a quartet, the rivalry between Francois I and Charles V. This impression would persist for some moments after I was awake; it did not disturb my mind, but it lay like scales upon my eyes and prevented them from registering the fact that the candle was no longer burning. Then it would begin to seem unintelligible, as the thoughts of a former existence must be to a reincarnate spirit; the subject of my book would separate itself from me, leaving me free to choose whether I would form part of it or no; and at the same time my mind would return and I would be astonished to find myself in a state of darkness, pleasant and restful enough for the eyes, and even more, perhaps, for my mind, to which it appeared incomprehensible, without a cause, a dark matter indeed.
But maybe that�s plagiarism. No, I�m fairly certain that man had a bigger moustache, so I need to escape before Garrison Keillor arrests me.
Wow, these things get progressively longer, don't they!
December, 31, 2003
That blind Greek can really chew on a wristwatch, and that is why I walking through molasses after the cat chases red reflections down from conifers. Pilltime! You knew the rain would fall.
Relax the biscuits and let the cheese fall to the floor. It's time for the dance of meringue. Oh, you can't fool me. I know full well that your toes aren't puppets. Try to get your sieve, and see just what little pennies you can wring out of the paper. For instance, would you know a Coleridge if he bit you on the hermitage?
What's the deal with a hocky-puck: It doesn't curse, it doesn't sing, and yet it gets all the women in Bratislav. Well, we all know what we say about those people we say those things about. Victory is only so much sausage, wrapped around a golden nugget. Is my stomach lining replacing my hands here? So it seems to me as a stuffed lion glares happily at Harvey Birdman (or maybe eighteen inches higher--who can tell with plush?)
So many rookies, so little conundrums. I could drop kick the fogey about now, going on like a caveman. But that's for another day. (I still insist on solid people--no abstraction walking across my uniforms). Touchy touchy.
You can blame this Frenchman on that Frenchman, but I have said nothing about a tuber. I was like this even before the tea party. How curious it is, how curious it is, how curious it is, and what a coinicidence.
By the light,
Of a silvery spoon,
On Kakrafoon,
We'll watch Benny and Joo-oo-oon.
Or, as that old humanist materialist predeterminst (you knew he'd show up somewhere) has said,
When the tupelo
Goes a poop-e-lo
I'll come back for you-pe-lo.
Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you, and you sold me.
How do you like my John Hurt impersonation? To do it any better, I would have to be wearing trunks. Chest-poppin' fun. MEDIC!
Tilde. Fun word. It makes me want to mail pencils at somebody. Meanwhile, all my colleagues line the stands, chanting DEFENSE, DEFENSE, DEFENSE, and I come in with a Gotham answer, winning the microcosm again. Oh, to be young and alive.
Why a cow? Of all things that could be sitting on my telephone right now, why must it need to poop? And I can't help feeling things are a little too magnetic right now. I'll try to throw a bowling pin at everything, and we'll see if that can slip out the tea bags.
It appears that there has been no progress. As much as I have tried, I still find myself bathed in gray light, and enjoying it immensely. Oh sure, I tried dancing with Hobbes (or at least his friend, who listens to every word Mr. Rogers says) just as ardently as I tried to do bayonet twirls with a candy cane. I've made every bona fide effort here, but I find myself continuing to voluneteer for the strangest things.
Cut off in my prime,
Surrounded by beautiful women all the time,
A eunuch's life is hard,
A eunuch's life is hard,
A eunuch's life is hard,
And nothing else.
Ha ha ha ha. The seagull used to live with Mel Gibson! Just like so many unsuspecting Chicken McNuggets. Change is good, unless we're talking about Ping-Pong. Wheeeee!
Pictures of dead men are supposed to endure me to surrounding myself with helium balloons. I still want to contiune with a chalk-board. Maybe we can come to some sort of compromise. You kick me in the face as hard as you can, and I'll call up for flynt and tinder.
Anybody else considerign Oblomov in the morning? I just sit for the longest time, contemplating the exercise of my teeth. But I get ahead of myself.
I remember when I had to wait for the air conditioner to talk. That was a spastic little trollop. I wonder what happened to her. Pretend you're Irish and you end up with a pint of coffee in your veins.
It is my guilt that I have so many snapshots next to my pacemaker. It makes me question the validity of water--even in the painful quantities adduced.
Mmmm. Orange soda.
The turkey and I were arguing about Germans. He says the short one sputtered comic nonsense, and I say NAY! Look to the one surrounded by iron. I shall say this only once: I don't li ke it when my nails are long, which is why I splurged at midnight. I've been doing that a lot lately. So much for my khaki oath (number nine, spefically). I wouldnt' make such a big deal out of it, but we all know those fellows only echo leather-bound volumes.
Just like the Brazilian elevators. You push buttons and push buttons, and meanwhile that chick is dealing with someone a lot meaner that Gordon Kaye.
ALL THIS PROBLEM COMES FROM LEAVING THE SCOTSMAN IN THE SOUTH!
The same music plays, and everybody's heard this song. Let me off when the bus stops; I don't think I want to hum these flowers. Oh yes, I just tossed up a cookie. Not as bad as the chihuahua promised. Moron.
Considering our present advanced state of culture, and how the Torch of Science has now been brandished and borne about, with more or less effect, for five thousand years and upwards; how, in these times especially, not only the Torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely than ever, but innumerable Rushlights, and Sulphur-matches, kindled thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest cranny or dog-hole in Nature or Art can remain unilluminated,--it might strike the reflective mind with some surprise that hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of Philosophy or History, has been written on the subject of Clothes.
Beats a French candle any day of the week, but who's going to notice?
Still, I say that I hop a bit more than I have been known to. Perhaps I may at last deserve an arrow? PING! A word to be thrown around, but no more bandied. Yes, yes, yes, the same note over and over again. I'm giddy.
We shall see.
Vwa ha ha ha ha!