domestication of common pets

Games I Played As A Girl

I dug holes on a beach by myself. 

I spied on the cats and took copious notes. 

I built a spaceship in the attic.

I went to space. My son went to space. 

I gave interviews as both mother and son. 

I co-founded a secret organization on the hillside by the powerlines. 

I was a rabbit in the snow. 

I was a Persian cat on a Persian rug. 

I was a mouse in an airport. 

I locked my daughter in my mansion’s cupboard when my gentleman suitor was visiting. 

I peddled scrap parts from a junk yard with my buddy Jim. 

I was a destitute pigshit farmer on a muddy beach. 

I was an extremely obese Hispanic woman owning an Italian restaurant. 

I headed an illegal pot growing operation. I also smuggled cocaine. 

I led witch-hunts. 

I invented a language. 

I went back in time, kidnapped and cryogenically froze famous historical figures.

My best friend was Count Dracula. 

I had a magic remote control that could grant wishes. 

I held funerals for bugs I found deceased in spiderwebs. 

I narrated the life of an invisible giant who inhabited our world, unseen by everyone else. 

I was on a game show where girlscouts are set in cutthroat competitions against each other. 

I was a zookeeper. 

I was an emergency veterinarian. 

I was a pokemon trainer. 

I danced with emus. 

I spoke with roosters.

I interviewed my dalmation on a talk show.

hallie tries to be a store artist

I am sitting in my bedroom surrounded by garbage, as usual, so I start to cut up some paper bags and arrange the bits and pieces to make little characters. It is really fun and soon I cannot stop.  

I call my friend Alice on the pay phone down the street (I do not have a phone. Another detail is that I was wearing a bathrobe at the time.) 

"BRING ME MORE WHOLE FOODS BAGS!" I demand. Alice works at Whole Foods.

Alice refuses but I plead miserably. I think she finally agrees because she imagines me sitting on a pile of trash, crying. I'm not sure why that would change her mind, though. That's what I do like every Saturday night. 

Alice comes over with the grocery bags, and sees me all sprawled out gluing things, and getting glitter and paper scraps all over myself. 

"you should really get a job, Hallie" she says. 

I make a scoffing noise.

"You know, Whole Foods is hiring a new Store Artist. You should apply!"

"THAT'S IT!" I scream. Immediately, corn on the cob begins to turn in my head. I will win the position of 'store artist' by winning the hearts of the store managers. I will bring them my colorful garbage-collages, dripping with glue, and they will hire me on the spot, I won't even have to fill out an application - I'll just become the store artist! I'll get the meaningful duty of making paper mache fruits and vegetables to sell to the puppets who shop at Whole Foods.

Jump to 2 weeks later: I've gone through 2 interviews and it's down to me and a few others. They ask me to draw an avocado on a chalk board and do some other stuff. I am really tired and find myself talking about pirates in the interview, and I don't even try to convince them that I'm an organized person. My sloppy collages sit on the table in front of us. 

Needless to say, I do not get the job. But I am resilient:.

"Back to the ole' trash heap!" I say, hitching up my patched overalls and grinning. 

I never set foot in Whole Foods again. I'm a Trader Joe's kind of gal.

a highly nostalgic friend-love-letter about nicole

Nicole and I met in 7^th grade. She was new at our school, but immediately established herself as one of the smartest kids in our class. She wanted to be a pediatrician. I wanted to make movies. (She is now going to medical school; I make exclusively terrible movies.)

Some might have thought she befriended me because she didn’t know how uncool I was – nobody had warned her! But the truth is, unpopularity and bad haircuts never mattered to Nicole. She gave everyone a chance. Eventually our misfit friends formed a close group consisting of really brainy girls who ate lunch in the math teacher’s classroom and laughed a lot and talked about books and did lots of extra credit assignments. 

She lived far away in a surreal little company town called Moccasin. I spent lots of summers with Nicole in that shoe-named place. I was fascinated by the mysterious town, its abandoned factory, Nicole's only-child lifestyle, her incredibly clean house. (The only messy thing about it was the sound of the clocks. They had tons of antique clocks, all slightly off sync, and each hour was marked by a strange and overwhelming flurry of chimes.)

In between hours of bad television and reading girly magazines, we would hunt for crawdads, spy on her neighbors, practice synchronized swimming in the pool. At night we would sneak off to the huge, vacant baseball field and run around in our underwear in the sprinklers, or to walk up the hillside and climb on the massive concrete blocks which connected the enormous water pipes that brought water down to the turbines. 

I feel so lucky to know Nicole. She is incredibly kind and caring and hilarious and determined and growing up with her was just really fucking fun. 

the story of Gnarlamange

            Try as he might, Gnarlamange never enjoys himself at water parks. There are always tons of kids everywhere, who scream when they see him in his bathing suit, as their parents look disapprovingly at his abundant hair, which always dries really weird when he gets out of the water, revealing senseless bald patches and remnants of the many incredible cow-licks he sustained as a youngling. His claws come out when he is scared going down the big slides, and sometimes he accidentally digs them so deep into the plastic slide-siding that he just halts midway down and children, many screaming children, pile up behind him as the water continues to gush beneath them.
          "MOVE!" they scream, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING" because the point of slides, I guess, is to move. So Gnarlamange has to calm himself down so he can get his claws to retract, but who can be calm when there are seventeen 10-14 year-olds screaming at you with their freckled, sun-burnt cheeks puffed and wheezing with gargantuan child-anger?! When he finally struggles down a slide and drags himself out of the water, he has terrible traction on the tiles and sometimes slips and falls, and the life guard yells at him in front of everyone.
          Once, even, Gnarlamange was mistaken for a beach towel, and a horrible woman rubbed him all over her body until she was dry. She was jiggling and squawking at her children while she did so. He protested at first, then resigned himself to just wishing, with all his mental capacity, that a cranky swarm of wasps would mistake her swollen head for an enemy hive, and they would dive into her ears, in sharp military lines, straight towards her tiny brain: the doomed, bumbling queen.

The phases of "preparing an art show"

phase 1: Shop for frames. Buy weird ones, big and small, from random antique stores and thrift stores. It will take several days. Claim that you must do this before anything else can be done.

phase 2: drive two hours to the nearest art store. Stock up on art supplies and $6/sheet watercolor paper that is completely worth it.

phase 3: clean out a room in the old house for your "studio". Scream and make faces all day at the dozens of spiders you find, like a hapless little girl. Shriek and run up to the house and get Nick when you find the big black one in the desk drawer. Feel free to exaggerate its size and coloration. When the room is finally clean, furnish with stuff found around the old house: old album covers, a swan-shaped vase for your brushes, candles, a lamp. Tack pillow cases over the windows to keep the heat in.

phase 4: burn tons of incense and stare at frames and paper until you can stand it no longer. Bring pen to paper. Produce 2 pieces and feel satisfied and relieved that you still possess some artistic ability. Or at least basic use of your hands.

phase 5: spend most of the day drawing and painting. Produce 3 more pieces, get excited, you feel some momentum gathering. Scream when you see that the cat has walked all over your $6/sheet watercolor paper. Draw stupid-looking cats over the muddy paw prints. Write "cats are stupid" next to them.

phase 6: Another whole day in the "studio". You're used to this now. Just relax and let ideas come to you and paint whatever you like. Say to yourself in a shrugging way, "eh, what the hell," Make it sortof your motto.

phase 7: sleep very little. Play Grand Theft Auto late into the night.

phase 8: realize suddenly that you hate everything you've made. Hold up one of your pieces and say to Nick, "maybe assholes would buy this." Gaze dejectedly at the glowing green lamp that looks like an incubating alien fetus.

phase 9: when your self-motivation and confidence betray you, choose a new adversary. Allow your resentment of cats be the solitary fire that drives you to continue. That paper is really expensive and you're not about to let it be covered in stupid-looking cats.

phase 10: write up list defining the "phases" you have undergone thus far in your efforts to prepare an art show. Do this to delay the terrifying task of actually continuing under these conditions. Try to remember your motto and the shrug that should accompany it.

Marcel, Plagued by Birds

        Marcel had grown used to the birds. In fact, they'd become integrated into his act. He'd keep bits of popcorn up his sleeves to tease them with, and he could count on them for endless tricks. They might collide in mid-air, fighting over a kernel, or squawk and twitter excitedly as he danced. They would animate the pecking tap-tap-tap of his shoes with wing-flutters and floating feathers. And all was good, and the laughs were golden, and the few kernels he sparsed out to them were enough.
        But one day, while performing a tap dance, Marcel felt their talons digging more earnestly into his pouffed sleeves, as if he was only made of popcorn underneath, and the squeaks became desperate (he was sure they were saying popCORN!!.. POPcorn!) and their beaks pulled frantically upon his hair as if they believed it could be unraveled, thread by thread, and popcorn would burst out and feed the whole flock of them, forever.
        Marcel kept calm at first and maintained his steps, carefully, as if balancing the birds would stave off their hunger. But soon the tapping became more frantic, finally exploding in chaos, without rhythm - pop-pop-POP-POpPOPpOP! His motions could not be contained! There was no longer order! And as he danced wildly, the birds pulled upon his billowing, expanding robes, and Marcel himself began to doubt whether or not there was anything beneath them but popping corn.

"too beautiful a dream"

My Dear Angelita,
        A year ago you asked me to save you from being removed to the miserable province of Trenque Lauquen with your family. Because I loved you, and you leaned slightly towards me and touched my forearm while you asked me, I brought you to live with me on my turkey farm in the mountains. Here I thought we would be safe and live happily forever. But now I see that it was too beautiful a dream, Angelita. Too beautiful. And we had to wake up.


         When I kidnapped our “son,” Little Ricardo, from a wealthy family in town, I thought we made up the perfect family... I think Ricardito misses you, but also, he misses his original family. I think it’s probably just a phase. If I could get anywhere near my suppressed memories, I'm sure I would remember that it took me a while to accept my captors as my parents, too.


        I understand that the life of the turkey farmer wasn’t for you. Every day, the turkeys attacked you. There were endless chores. The people in the nearby village despised us. Ricardito constantly asked to be returned to his original family. And sometimes, the police came by. Yes, they were very suspicious… Yes, I see now. The life of the farm was very difficult for you.
       
      But, the farm is now strange without you. And I am strange.
      
       This morning I woke up in an empty bed, confused. Then I found your letter saying you had left. Oh how I chewed at the sleeve of my pajama shirt, buried as I was in the deepest woe. Ricardito came to me and asked,
       
     “Excuse me, where is the woman who cooks the food?”


        “Ah, Ricardito,” I said, with great sadness, “Your mother is not here! Our perfect family is shattered!” Ricardito left me in solitude, surely too upset to say anything. I sat with your letter for ten or twenty minutes. I read it ten or twenty times, with my mustache absorbing my tears like a kitchen sponge cut into the shape of a mustache. Then I started to read the phone bill. Were you making long distance calls to arrange your departure? Do you expect me to pay for these?


        Then I heard the remote screaming of the turkeys. When I ran to the barn, there I viewed our precious Ricardito among the turkeys, eating with them, playing with them… Evidently, our child, this boy without his original family, with no perfect family… he has a family of turkeys.
I will vaccinate him accordingly.

Everlasting love,
                          Carlos

Francis and Henri Collect the Eggs

There's clearly a magic chicken involved in this story. I think the chicken's name is Count Flannery and he defies all the rules of gravity and also knows how to surf. This will be an endearing story which is then made into a major motion picture called Flannery which will be followed by Flannery II: The Quest for the Nest, and finally Flannery III: The Pecking Order which will be the most successful and of course, most violent of the three films. Flannery will be played by Daniel Radcliffe who will call it his most challenging role yet. He covers his body in feathers and lives with chickens for a month to prepare for the part.
He tells Oprah, "I've got the magic part down from my role in the Harry Potter films. It's the chicken part that I really struggle with." Oprah feeds him chicken seed from her open palm. He eventually wins an Academy Award for Flannery III: The Pecking Order.

Fascinating And True Historical Facts

        The phrase "slow as molasses" was first heard in the early 1800s. Some believe it developed in the aftermath of the European Condiment Conference of 1801, where the condiment derby is held each year. Sir Dillon Yorkenshire, for the first time in the derby's history, entered molasses (some claimed this wasn't even a legitimate condiment) against a bottle of Hines ketchup. Of course the stakes were high, and when the gates opened up, molasses faltered and froze in its tracks. The ketchup took off and didn't look back. The loss was one of the greatest controversies in condiment history, and when something is slow, anything at all - it is only natural that people should casually reflect on that dark dark day at the derby in 1801.

Do you question the legitimacy of this? Go ahead, check the Wikipedia article on molasses.

The Part

In my movie,

i want you to play an alligator.

scales, brownish green slimey flesh.. you're perfect for the part

Looong rows of sharp yellow teeth.

a sly eye and a nosey sneer.

in the movie you keep your babies in your mouth

it’s a morning like any other – doing errands,

you run to the bank to deposit some checks.

as you walk up to the counter you engage in polite conversation with the bank lady.

as you talk, your babies slither from your mouth and down your chin and your yellow sweater-set.

they climb all over the bank cashier lady as she talks to you

they get dirt all in her makeup, claw her skin

she pretends not to notice

she keeps smiling, and you see her pin reads : we guarantee flawless customer service.

goddamn, she's good

you think,

as one of your many children begins to nest and tear at her finely curled hair

i'm gonna stick with this bank

you think,

they've really got this down.

i am one satisfied customer.

The Story of Bob Smiley and the Sailors

A carni stumbles to the port-o-potti. A hawk drifts above. Manure pools in the stables where pigs and other obese lie adorned with ribbons and trophies. At this, the Mercyville County Fair, Bob Smiley and the Sailors are scheduled for a reunion performance after six years apart. They had split because of Wayne’s pretentious move to Aspen with his family, which was only forgiven after he went bankrupt and moved back to Mercyville. (He was forced to sell his boat, though Garth, Wayne and Mark still refer to themselves as “the sailors.”)

With Wayne back in the clutches of middle-America, the quartet stands proudly outside the Festival Hall. Garth begins the bee-bopping the melody for Let Me Call You Sweetheart. Wayne snaps his fingers, and Mark starts in with the bass, and Bob, his voice like a snow cone to the teeth:

I am dreaming Dear of you, day by day.

Dreaming when the skies are blue, When they're gray…

They feel like a hundred dollars – like Disneyland in ’91, when they got paid a hundred dollars and used it all to ride Space Mountain as many times as possible until Mark threw up and they had to cancel the next day’s show…

Meanwhile, beside them, Tyrannosaurus Jones’ Jellyfish Trapeze has a trailer full of creatures the ingenious Jones has adapted in a laboratory and trained to perform elaborate acts: A monkey who can scuba-dive, a cat who sleeps a lot, an iguana who can tell if you have cancer and whether or not you are scared of lizards. It is a marvelous array, and not long into their performance Bob Smiley and the Sailors feel they are singing in the shadow of Jones and his surreal subjects. The crowd is clapping and hooting, all their attention on the vampire bat which Jones has trained to brush his teeth… Their reunion show is getting flimsy! Six years apart and an emptied retirement account can't yield such an emberassment! Bob Smiley and the Sailors really have to turn it up. They begin to sing louder and louder:

Birds are singing far and near, Roses blooming ev'rywhere

You, alone, my heart can cheer; You, just you.

And still they are unheard. Garth is growing aggressive. Bob is sweating, barely able to hold his harmonies as he glares over at Jones and his stupid vampire bat. Resentment swims through their old-timey tunes.

But Bob Smiley and the Sailors would be the focus of the show once again… The mutant rat (“Barnie”), which Jones has failed to train but still injected with a violent regimen of steroids, growing irked by the conflict of noise outside, breaks free of its cage and lumbers towards Mark and tears off his arm straightaway. Then the rat gnaws on Mark’s neck and blood spews and oozes from his fresh wounds. Suddenly the crowd shifts quickly from Jones’ demonstration to the scene of the ongoing massacre. In panic, the quartet has stopped singing and attempts to save poor, struggling Mark from Barnie’s jaws. But still, it is the four of them, the quartet, together after all this time. And still, the crowd screams and oohs and awes and gaspes. All eyes are on them.

This is it, they are at the top once again. Just like Disneyland in ’91.

Maureen's Tea Party

Maureen was having a tea party. She invited two of her friends.

Denise arrived first.

“Why, hello Denise, thank you for coming over to tea!” said Maureen.

“Of course, Maureen, thank you for inviting me. Who else is coming to our little gathering?”

“Miss Marsicova, who lives next door, is supposed to come. You met her last time.”

“Oh perfect, perfect. I meant to get her scone recipe from her! So I guess now’s my chance.”

“You’ve got to grab life by the porcelain handle, Denise.”

“I’ll drink to that. What are we having today?

“I just brewed a steaming pot of earl grey.”

“Lovely. The Earl is one of my favorites.”

“Yes, yes. Mine too. But then you know, I got to thinking, shouldn’t we have something to spice it up a little?"

“My, aren’t you crafty!”

“So I looked in the cupboard: sugar, cinnamon… All quite typical things. Then I looked in the drink cupboard, and there was a little more to look at: some wine, some fine old merlot, some rum and some absinthe!”

“Oooh!”

“So I popped the absinthe and added some of that to the earl grey. Then I put in some of the rum just to give it smart flavor. It gives it a kick, you know? “

“How exotic!”

“Then I thought, why stop there? There are more cupboards in my house. Like my medicine cupboard. That’s a thing!”

“It certainly is!”

“So I peeped in the medicine cabinet and what do I see but there’s some cough syrup and sixty or so vicadin tablets I was prescribed back when I got my knee surgery.”

“Oh my, yes, I remember!

“So I put the cough syrup in the earl grey.”

“All of it?”

“Yes. All of it. And I crushed up some of the vicadin pills, just a few handfuls, and dissolved those in the tea.”

“Mmmmm.”

“I think it really fazes us, you know, drinking the same stinky old tea all the time. Keeps things so bland… You know? We should always customize everything.”

“I completely agree, Maureen. That’s one thing I’ve always admired about you. You’re not afraid to get a little crazy once and a while. “

There was a knock at the door.

“Yoooo-Hoooo!” a voice called. “Anybody home?”

It was Mrs. Marsicova.

“It is Mrs. Marsicova!” said Maureen.

“Sorry I’m late!” Mrs. Marsicova said. “I had to put the dogs inside and you know pugs, they’re such little bitches, just sniffing around the yard and won’t hear a word I say. Florence is just about deaf nowadays – why hello Denise! Lovely to see you again. How are you?”

“I am splendid. Won’t you sit?” said Denise.

“Yes, yes, please have a seat. Let me pour you a cup of tea!” said Maureen.

“Oh thank you! How delightful, what are we having?” asked Mrs. Marsicova.

“Earl Grey!” said Maureen.

“I love earl Grey!” said Mrs. Marsicova.

Maureen poured her some tea.

“There you are, it might be a bit hot.”

“Oh no this is just fine. Thank you.”

She sipped.

Denise said, “You know, Mrs. Marsicova, I had been meaning to ask you for the recipe of the scones you brought last time. They were simply delicious, and I have been telling everyone about them – I don’t quite understand how you got that orangey flavor so pure.”

“Did you puree orange peel?” asked Maureen.

“Did you use some kind of extract?” asked Denise.

“What’s your secret? Is it a secret recipe?” asked Maureen.

Mrs. Marsicova was silent.

“Hmmm… perhaps Mrs. Moriscova isn’t feeling well? Mrs. Moriscova? Are you ok?” asked Denise.

Mrs. Marsicova was even more silent. Silenter.

“Well I’ll be! This is just so unlike her to sit at a tea table, at a proper gathering, with her face flat on the table, in complete silence! Why, she’s acting quite peculiar. I’m not sure I like it,” said Maureen.

“No, I don’t like it one bit. Whatever happened to manners? Have we forgotten them completely?” said Denise.

“No, darling, we have not,” said Maureen. “Would you care for some tea?”

“Yes, yes, thank you very much.”

“Of course!”

They clinked their cups together.

They sipped.

“Gah! Would you look at that, Mrs. Moriscova has stopped breathing!” exclaimed Maureen.

“How rude!” said Denise.

“How terribly, terribly rude!” said Maureen.

Elbows!

There comes a time when a person must have a talk with her elbows.

“I prop myself up on you all the time,” she admits, “I clumsily knock you against things, I hardly ever moisturize, and I imagine that sometimes you must feel totally trapped between the shoulder and forearm. You’re always there to support me. What can I give you in return?”

The elbows pause for a moment, then say in soft voices: “It must be nice to have elbows,” they say, “we’d like some elbows of our own.”

So she gets some elbows for her elbows and thanks her elbows for being elbows and props herself up on her elbows which prop themselves on their elbows and they all read children’s books on the floor, thanks to elbows.

Mystery of the Pay Phone Pervert

Walking in the student union building of my school yesterday I passed by a pay phone and it started to ring. I picked it up, and the caller said,

“Hey, I’m looking to get an unbiased opinion about this idea for a show I have. Can I tell you about it?”

I was really overjoyed, “yes! I’d love to hear about it!”

“Okay, well, it starts with my wife, our two kids, and the family dog on stage. My wife bends over and we start to do it doggy style. The kids are watching and get really confused, ‘what’s going on?’ they ask. ‘No, this is a learning experience, you guys try it too. So then the dog walks over–”

I stop him there. “To be honest with you, I really don’t like this idea so far.”

“Why not?” he asks, “nobody likes my idea!”

“Well, it’s really vulgar,” I say, “it sounds like a porno.”

“Do you at least want to hear the name of the show?” he asks.

“Sure, go ahead.”

“The Aristocrats.”

I start laughing. He hangs up.

Love is Stupid

“Louise,” he thought. “she looks like a Louise.”

He went up and introduced himself. Her name was not Louise, but it was still nice. She was drinking espresso and doing a puzzle meant for four year olds, multicolored with little wooden pegs to lift up each cutout shape.

“I think that one goes there,” he said, pointing to a square, then a hole shaped like a triangle.

She tried it. It didn’t fit. They each hummed with consideration. After a few seconds pause, she picked up the piece shaped like a triangle and put it in the hole shaped like a triangle. It fit.

She only had the square, the octagon and the circle left to go. There were 3 holes remaining, shaped like a square, an octagon and a circle.

“Would you like to go on a walk with me tomorrow if the weather’s nice?”

She blushed and smiled, “yes, that sounds lovely.”

They exchanged numbers, he lingered for a moment but decided to leave her to her puzzle, not wanting to seem over-eager.

“Pleasure to meet you, miss. Until tomorrow.” He walked out the door. The coffee shop resumed its murmuring, and she picked up a puzzle piece shaped like a rectangle and tried to put it in the hole shaped like an octagon. It didn’t fit. She sighed and tried the one shaped like a circle.

That night she fell asleep dreaming contentedly of their walk, and eventually their date, marriage, children, and golden years together. She awoke to rain pounding on the roof.

And he sat at his breakfast table, an English muffin growing cold in front of him. He was unable to think of a way out of the stipulations he had set for their walk: “if the weather’s nice.”

The rain came down incessantly on the city all day long. Each watched the downpour with round eyes, through square windows.

Neither of them were terribly intelligent.

Letter from the Circus: #3

My Dearest Isabella,

I have received all your letters. I am so sorry I have only now collected the courage to deliver a reply. When I read that we were to have a son, I was filled with a mysterious feeling I couldn’t identify – as if fear and excitement were battling for my heart’s attention. That night, at my acrobatic performance, I could hardly concentrate and my partner, The Great Mystique, nearly fell to her death on my account.

That night I lay in my cot wondering what we should do – get married? Tell the parents? Bring both of you here and raise our son as a wolf-boy?

It was then that I chose to seek the advice of our Psychic Advisor and Bearded Lady, Beatrice The Bearded Wonder. We spoke of you and our son, and the many options that lay before us in our lives. We spoke for hours. It was after she gave to me a cup of mysterious wine that I fell into an enchantment with her, and the woman beneath the beard, that I could not ignore.

I have fallen so deeply in love with her, with her facial cascade of hair and the 10 rings of gemstone which decorate her plump fingers, that I am afraid I can never return to you. I shall send funds for the upbringing of our son, and a candle for in case the electricity goes out. I hope my honesty has been some redemption for my terrible actions.

Terribly, terribly yours,

Flying Frederick

PS: You should consider growing a beard. You would look most handsome.

Letter from the Circus: #2

Dear Mother,

When I ran away to join the circus I never imagined a place like this. Every night, the show closes up, and the clowns have sweated off their disguises to reveal something much more gruesome – hateful drunks, users, dirtbags -- the sludge of humanity; Men whose false red noses merely function to conceal their hollow, coke- inflated schnozzes.

Mother, I can no longer stand this place. The lack of soap, the smell of mud and straw, sex and death permeate everything. I have seen how they make the rainbow lollipops, mother, and it’s not how anybody thinks.

Please come take me home, and I shall clean my room and your room and every room, forever, for sheer gratitude for the fact that it is not elephant shit that has soiled the floor.

Your Distant Son,

Oswold

Letter from the Circus: #1

My Dear Friend,

I am sure you have been wondering when you would be hearing from us. And aha! The time has come. I most genuinely invite you to join myself and my companions as part of The Greatest Show On Earth. I am sure you are wondering which of your many talents we shall make use of – and of couse, I’m sure you understand, you must work your way up the ranks.

I feel that you could be much appreciated as a monkey therapist for the first few months, as our apes become quite agitated in the springtime, and a calming voice is needed to soothe them and quiet their political rants and hormonal rages.

And from there we shall see which marvelous wonders and abilities emerge. As my colleague Doctor Ivan Yveske believes, in one’s quest for identity it is best to start with the apes, for it is with these creatures that humanity itself came to be.

Most Sincerely,

P. T. Barnum

A Bedtime Story / A Vocabulary Lesson

Word of the day:reckoning: an accounting, as for things received or done, an appraisal or judgment.

Used in a sentence: "Gumby showed up at the portal to the afterlife to witness the reckoning of his soul, which took the divine form of a single dry pinto bean. Gale Tomlinson, a retired librarian, worked part time as keeper of these heavenly gates and not having eaten since breakfast, she mistakenly ate poor Gumby's dry little soul and sent him straight to hell, where he melted quickly in the heat and was mistaken for a rare type of dragon fungus and sprayed with a violent pesticide. This, children, is how Gumby Demon came to return from the underworld seeking revenge on humanity and probably why he comes when you are asleep and sucks out your brain with his mutant tenticles."