Yep.

Parties, huh.

Yep.  That’s for sure.

(A BEAT)

Good punch though.

Pretty good, yeah.  I like the orange slices. 

Yeah, me too.

I like to bite the flesh off in my mouth and spit out the rind into my hand. 

Yeah, me too.  I guess I like that too.

(A BEAT)

My name’s Larry.

Hi Larry.

(A BEAT)

What’s yours?

Who wants to know?

Um.  Just me.  I guess.

Jerry.

Hi Jerry.

Yo.

(A BEAT)

Who do you know here?

Me?  No one.

Me neither.

Huh.  Well I guess we know each other though, don’t we?

You don’t know me.   Nobody knows me. 

(A BEAT)

Okay then.

(A BEAT)

Good punch, though.

Yeah, pretty good.   Makes you gotta run to the john though.  Where is it?

Over there.

Over there?

Yeah.

Okay.  Bye.

Bye.

THE END

Is it a square?  A triangle?  Is it flat or three-dimensional?  Maybe it’s a shape that nobody has ever seen before– a shape from outer space, with tentacles and suckers or maybe even flowers coming out of it.

Wow.

Step closer to the shape.  Talk to it.  “Hello, shape.”  What does it say back to you?  Listen carefully.  What does your shape want you to do?

Maybe it’s hungry.  Maybe it needs a bath.  Maybe your shape has brought a present for you.  Will you unwrap it?  Do you trust your authentic shape?

Feel the fear.  Approach it.  Touch the other shape that is your fear, and introduce your fear shape to your authentic shape.  Will they have a conversation? Maybe they will sit down and have a Coke– a holiday Coke that is easily confused with Diet Coke because both cans are white. Huh.

That’s okay.  Everything is okay.  Breathe into your shapes.  Believe.

It just makes me sad.

It makes me sad because I made this whole meal– roasted tilapia with red potatoes and a Brussels sprout salad with an emulsion of raspberry puree, with fresh-baked gluten-free bread and rosemary salt, with a fine dry white Chardonnay, and–well anyway, it makes me sad because there are children in Somalia who are at this moment getting eaten by tigers, and here we are with such abundance spread out in front of us, and, fish doesn’t really keep and I had to throw half of it away through the back window.

Don’t walk over there, I think there’s still glass on the floor. I’ll call the window guys tomorrow.

It just makes me sad, that’s all.

And this letter came today.  It’s from Miss Hartwright, you know, Caleb’s teacher.  His AP English teacher.  Apparently Caleb wrote a paper that was so stupid and so ill-conceived — it was a 45-page tome about what would have happened if the scarlet letter would have been green instead of red– well anyway apparently Caleb is no longer an AP English student.  He got sent back to regular English.  That means he’s probably not getting into Wesleyan.  And that means that he’s probably going to end up going to state and marrying a cheerleader.  Did you check his assignment that night?  Because I think he wrote that paper on a night when you were supposed to check his homework.

No, I’m not mad.  I’m just saddened by the whole thing.  I think I’m going to cry.  No no.  I’m not going to cry.  I’m a strong woman.  A strong woman. Breathe, breathe.

Okay, it went away.

Listen, I know you’re training for a marathon– a marathon in September — and that’s the most important thing on your plate right now.  I get that.  And I’m fully supportive of it, really, I am.  I know you’re entering your hypoxic training phase and that it’s a crucial point in your preparation and what you crave more than anything is a trip to the oxygen bar after every workout.  I know it takes time to get fully oxygenated after how hard you work out, and it makes sense to me, really, it does.  I totally get it.

I just wish you would have been here when the contractor came, because he charged us $400,000 dollars to replace that bannister, and honestly, I think he did kind of a crappy job.  The wood doesn’t match and the spokes or whatever don’t really match up with the holes in a few places.  I don’t know how much these things cost, so I just paid him the $400,000., and now we’re not going to have Christmas, and I wonder if you would be okay telling Caleb about that.

No?  Why not?  Because if you had been here to supervise the contractor, then maybe none of this would have happened and maybe–

No.  No I’m not mad.  I’m just sad that we have a weird bannister now, because if your mother comes to visit and she falls down the stairs and breaks a hip because she touched a wobbly part of the bannister, that would be really sad.  Because often people don’t recover from broken hips.  That’s it for them.

Do you want some wine?  Oh, shoot. I guess this bottle is empty.  I mean, no, it’s not empty– this bottle is currently “not full”.  I’m a “not full” kind of person instead of a “totally empty” person.  You know that.  That’s why you married me.  I’ll just go get another one. Wait right here.

Oh, you’re going to bed?  Oh okay.  There might not be any hot water though, if you’re taking a shower, because I took a 2-hour shower right before you came home.  It felt great.  One thing I know is at least we have great water pressure.

Unlike those kids in Somalia.  They don’t have any water pressure there.  The only water pressure they’re going to get is when an elephant sneaks up behind them and douses them with trunk-water.  Right before the tiger eats them.

God, it’s sad.  The whole thing is sad, really.

“Just hear those sleigh bells jingling, ring ting tingaling, too…”  Yeah I hear it. Obviously.  How can you not hear it?  Cold air carries sound farther.  Those horses are probably 6 miles away and it sounds like they’re in bed with me.

“You better watch out, better not cry…”  Well.  I think any psychologist could tell you that holding your emotions in is unhealthy and can lead not only to neuroses and mental instability, but also real physical illnesses, like certain cancers and autoimmune disorders.   Is Santa working for the pharmaco-industrial complex?  Well, duh.  Look at him.  He’s a big old white man and he’s giving away all those toys every year like he’s Bill Gates in Africa, and honestly, it’s probably all just one big tax write-off for him.  Yeah he lives at the North Pole but what about his other houses?  There’s probably one in Bermuda or the south of France, maybe a big mega-yacht sitting in harbor in Lower Manhattan.   So you know what, Santa?  It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire I can get behind.  That sounds delicious.  Also, he’s just describing those chestnuts.  He’s not ordering me to eat them.  But I want to eat them anyway so if he did order me to eat them, I guess I would say, “oh all right” and take a handful.  And then when he wasn’t looking, stuff another handful in my pockets for later.

‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus’ is the most disgusting song that was ever written.  It’s borderline pornographic and I am shocked and appalled that schools force children to sing it year after year.  Especially since young children don’t yet know that daddy IS Santa Claus.  It sends the wrong message.  I say send it down the garbage chute and burn it.

“Deck the Halls?”  Guess what, I already did it.  Boom.

“Here We Come A-Wassailing?”  Get away from me.

“Do You Hear What I Hear?” Probably not, because I don’t have tinnitus. Not yet anyway.  But if those sleigh bells keep ting ting tingaling all night long, I’ll probably have it by tomorrow.

Since I’m up anyway, I might as well make a fruitcake.  That’s always popular, right?

But who remembers the cities that were not so great, but still had their own thing going on nevertheless?  Do they cease to exist in our cultural memory, simply because they were not #1? Do they deserve that oblivion?

Probably.  But still, there is something to be said for being #2, or even #47– these not-so-great civilizations had not very much to lose, and therefore probably had a lot more fun than those obvious, super-stuck-up places you sometimes read about on Wikipedia.

 Kerplonalis

A city made entirely of shallow holes dug into the earth, where people would squat, or lie down and go to sleep.   Later the Kerplonali were introduced to the concept of building structures up towards the sky, instead of down into the earth.  Then they were embarassed (‘how obvious!’) and their civilization vanished out of shame.  Kerplonali also invented that thing where you absentmindedly scrape around in the dirt with a stick.  How many times have you done that?  I know I’ve done it a lot.  And I have Kerpolonalis to thank, mainly because they didn’t copyright that move, because their self esteem was so low they thought nobody would ever want to do that.  Boy, were they wrong!

Ferconistanople

Pineapple upside-down cake was invented here, when someone made a pineapple cake and dropped it on the ground.  They ate it anyway, and it was still good.  But they didn’t eat the whole thing, because a snake came into their small hut and bit everyone and they all died.  Snakes aren’t into pineapple, so the snake left the cake on the floor, where it fossilized, and was found just last week, after millennia, just sitting there waiting for something to happen.  Surprisingly, it was still good.

Thur

Thur was the first place where people discovered talking without using your hands.  Before Thur, speech was always punctuated with dramatic hand gestures, the way it still is in places whose economies hover on the brink of oblivion. But Thurites discovered that you could conserve a lot of energy— energy that could later be used to hunt fanged beasts– by simply not waving your arms a lot while talking.  Unfortunately, most Thurites were wiped out when they were all stranded on a desert island, and a ship went by and nobody waved at it. Whoops.

Conclusion

So you see, history had a lot more going on than just the fancy-schmancy civilizations you may have studied if you majored in something other than what I majored in.  If you have time when you’re finished texting your friends and growing your semi-ironic mustache or putting on your legwarmers that pretty good on their own while informing the viewer, “I’m quirky, and I don’t take myself too seriously, but not to the point where I’ll actually look bad..” then maybe you should pick up a book and learn about these not-very-important civilizations.

Thank you.

We wander through the lovely woods

We wander through the woods.

Ironic, isn’t it?  This used to be a happy vocal warm-up practiced by me and the rest of the choir on the bus on the way to show choir competitions.  But now, since our bus broke down in the mountains and the sopranos slipped off the cliff and we were forced to eat the buttocks of the baritones just to stay warm, it’s not so lighthearted anymore.

Today is day 65.  I’m scribbling this in blood on a piece of birch bark– the small piece–the larger piece I ate.

Kenneth is asleep.  So it’s just me, Julie and Karen from the alto section, and Kenneth (tenor) left out here.  No idea where we are.  In addition to this being life-threatening and traumatizing and emotionally draining and just sucky in general, this cold is really bad for the voice.  And it’s not just the cold…. it’s also really dry up here.  So, it’s a double whammy.  Plus I’m missing winter carnival.

You know what the shit of this is?  The night before this happened, I had actually made a real effort to charge my cell phone ALL THE WAY, which I never do.  And wouldn’t you know it, the bus broke down in the exact place where there is absolutely no cell phone service.  Oh no you didn’t!

We wander through the lovely woods

We wander through the—

Oh forget it.  We’re not even wandering at this point.  We’re just sitting down.  We dug a pretty deep ditch and the four of us get in there every night and huddle together like bears.  Skinny, naked bears.  I mean, we’re not naked, I’m just saying we have no hair, not in the way that bears have hair.  Except for Jonas Randheim, but he was a baritone, and so we ate his butt, and I don’t know where he went after that.  I guess he was embarassed or something.  Whatever. Also, Kenneth is gay, and none of the rest of us are, so this is all strictly platonic, you know, in a kind of “we’re-all-probably-going-to-die” sort of way.  It feels sort of like a weird school assembly that just never ends.

Being up here, if nothing else, gives me a lot of time to think.  Like maybe this is god’s way of telling me that I should have played the trumpet in jazz band instead of joining choir.  I thought about it.  The jazz band bus would never get stuck in the mountains–they’re too cool. Sometimes I think the only reason we got stuck is because we’re the ones with the sparkly vests.  So even if they do find us, we’re going to look stupid.  We’re wearing the vests because the vests are warm, because they’re made of man-made fabric.  (Cotton kills, cotton kills, say it again, cotton kills.)   But if the rescue chopper comes and sees us waving at them and wearing our sparkle vests, they’re probably going to think we’re doing jazz hands and the shuffle off to buffalo or something.  They’ll probably think we’re just having a great time, and fly away.

Man.

This is what The Sound of Music never really told us.  It’s freaking COLD up in the mountains, and birch bark doesn’t taste that great.  But at least I don’t have to go to chemistry class.  I guess there’s always silver lining.  Or a light at the end of the tunnel, like the song says.  Although, when there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, usually that means you’re about to die.

I’m going to bed for real now.  Maybe tomorrow we’ll start inching down the mountain.  I don’t know.  If the baritones can do it without their butts, then I don’t know why we couldn’t.  Probably because we’re altos and tenors and have self esteem problems.  But this could be our week!  This could be it!

Never trust a bus.

Yes, there are pictures of me naked, outside of my shell currently circulating on the internet.  Yes, that is me.  Clarence B. Tripskunk, the first hermit crab to run for Congress.  And no, I was not doing anything weird.  I did nothing wrong.  The reports that I was out mating are simply not true.  If you knew anything about the mating habits of hermit crabs, you would know that we don’t have to emerge all the way from our shells to mate.  We only have to go halfway.

In the circulating photos, I was simply looking for a bigger shell.  This is what happens to us:  we outgrow certain shells, and we have to go off and look for a new one, a bigger one, whatever.  Do I really have to explain myself?  No, I was not at a hermit crab orgy.  Sometimes when it’s new-shell time, we all congregate and do a swap.  So yes, a lot of us were naked.  Did it mean anything?  No, it did not.  Do I take photos of you going through open houses and post them all over the Twitterverse, hoping to take you down? No I do not. So that’s all I have to say about that.  Thank you for your attention.  And yes, this is a new shell.  It’s slightly loose, and it’s blue, and I think it’s going to take me very comfortably through at least 2012, maybe 2013.  So if you’ve got a camera trained on me right now, as I’m typing this (myself, very slowly), you can just forget about it.  Get a life, people.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a press conference to attend, and a bunch of schoolchildren to meet and greet.  And a few of their classroom hermit crab prisoners to free.  See?  There are real issues in this country.  Now let’s get down to business, shall we?

This letter is to inform you that your home has been selected as the perfect new site of the future Piranhas stadium.  As you are surely aware, the Piranhas are a professional football team with many thousands of devoted fans, and they bring with them plentiful opportunities for ticket sales, gift shops, TV deals, and paid parking.  Building a stadium on the site of your current home would create jobs, expand opportunity, and create valuable business traffic in your otherwise quiet and– dare we say desolate?–residential neighborhood.

Your home, by contrast, is a small blue ranch-style home that, as far as we can tell, contains only you and your cat.  You seem to spend a lot of time at your computer and you don’t clean your bathroom very often.  You’ve been underemployed for over six months and your garage only fits one car, and that car needs repair. Plus the Piranhas’ team colors are red and gold, and your house is blue, so you can see you are off to a poor start.

Homeowner, if you think about it, you will understand that the very concept of America means success, and that is why we are prepared to offer you four thousand dollars and eighty five cents to bulldoze your home on or before July 14.

Should you turn down this offer, you should know that we are fully prepared to come in through your window and remove you from your home, with or without your cat, after which bulldozers will follow to flatten everything in sight.   We would like your ellipitical trainer though, so you should remove that from the home, first. The Piranhas love elliptical trainers.

Should you resist the men coming through your window to create progress, be aware that we are prepared to chop you into bits in your very own living room and feed you into a giant blender and flush the whole mess of you down your own toilet.  We hope you don’t have one of those low-flow ones. They don’t really save water because you have to flush them so many times.  We know that you know this.

Homeowner, Americans love football and they would love to watch football taking place where you are now sitting—according to our spies sitting in the white van across the street, you are sitting on your plaid couch and holding a can of Milwaukee’s Best.  Please think about this, homeowner, and then come to the correct conclusion–for yourself AND for America.  We’ll be watching, and waiting.

Signed,

Everybody, especially The Piranhas.

“It’s over,” said Karl, “the 3-speed thing is over.  It went mainstream a long time ago.  Now it makes me sick.  Bikes used to be cool.  Now they’re like Top 40 radio.  Let it be known that I’m the first guy in town to be riding a pinto pony,” said Karl, who was on his way to his favorite coffeeshop where he was working on a screenplay about a colony of gnomes.

“Not so fast,” said a voice behind Karl, and Karl whipped around and there, sitting behind him, was a Native American on a palomino horse, with the full outfit on and everything, right here in the middle of Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

“Whoa man.  Where did you come from?”

“I’ve been here the whole time,” said the Native American.  “I was here before any of you guys were here.  I was here before America was cool, and while it was cool, and I’m still here now that it’s awful.  Everything’s so ‘Top 40′.  It makes me sick.  I want to go to Canada.”

“Man, I feel so uncool right now,” said Karl.

“You should,” said the Native American.  “Because you are.  So why don’t you give me that pony and good luck with your screenplay about gnomes.”

Karl got off his pony, Roger, who appeared visibly relieved.  Karl gave the reins to the Native American.

“How did you know I was–”

“I know everything,” said the Native American.  Karl knew the game was up.  He turned over Roger to the Native American, and Roger perked right up and the Native American gave him a carrot.    They turned around and headed north, towards Canada, leaving Karl there to contemplate his suddenly reduced coolness factor.

He slouch-walked over to a very cool (read: dirty) kiosk and he bought a newspaper.  On the front page of the arts section was a big movie story:  Tamara Knutson’s hit movie “Road Trip Gnomes!” hits theaters this weekend.

Oh.

But what he is angry about is another puzzle, perhaps one that is not meant to be solved in this lifetime.  At least that’s what disciples of intelligent meteorology used to think before the invention of the Prophet Doppler, a new atmospheric scanning device that picks up subtle messages from god that are out there floating in the airwaves, much like the jet stream, which of course is there but you never see it, and yet you still believe in it, don’t you?

Well.

Let’s take a look at this map.  (pulls down map) Oh, boy.  As you can see, there is a massive system stalled across the upper Midwest with two words clearly visible in the doppler formation:  “collective bargaining”.  Aha.  So god HAS been following events in Madison, it seems.  Although in typical god fashion, he hasn’t really given us much of an indication of how he feels about this.  But we can at least get a pretty clear idea that this is what he (or she?) is stewing about.

In the south, you can see a pretty persistent pattern of dry and airid weather accompanied by the doppler message “strip malls”.    Okay.   In the Northeast, over here by Boston and New York, and particularly strong in certain Brooklyn neighborhoods are rather persistent messages:  “hipsters” and “pretentious irony”.  A smaller system is moving in right behind that, however–a system that says “roommates.” A rather faint system behind that seems to have left a wispy trail that reads “drawings of animals by Dave Eggers.”

Interesting.

And here we thought god was unknowable.  It turns out that we just didn’t have the right tools.

Up next:  Intelligent Cooking.