The Unbearable Lightness of Being Earnest
an unbegun work by
Blase McGruff
[the crime thug]
Psnerm Pspeaks
The end. Smorbing thrush blurbs accumulate brash pitchers of latched perch-clapping mango dentifrice, mercilessly soothing forked jeep clusters. Pyramids of scorched bifocal drag queens are sticking out of Psnerm's head. Psnerm speaks.
"Salvo sheen barker troll pktttttth." he says. A rubber bus bum stumbles digressingly into wax "Ronald Reagan" earclips, the amplified hangnail cat-shear frosting monopoly lobster shrugging a thimbled love cummerbund blade sensitizer. "Shove another close one crust into cradling best turpentine foot lobster foot turpentine foot lobster foot turpentine foot lobster foot turpentine foot lobster Cheeto's bland preen bawling snow grains," continues Psnerm, but plastic tree-headed ink blots are demanding clamped sprouts with black jelly beans and unhinged fox train buttonholes sewn into it, for some reason. Then I guess the negative broccoli Eiffel tower dogs were going to play the piano in outer space forever. This bothered Psnerm.
"Cultivate branched tentacles," he would have violently trolled while Yon Britches seldom blankly pan wholesome snow cake pain distributors from Asia Minor with hung-chucked bead aches for charity.
Tumbling murder discovers lumpy salvage bears and romps spittle at a dream's cattle prod. Trumpeting dump trucks realize that fancy bent senators with three squirrel-lined mustard reflections surprise zero sincere effigies. Low energy pop-tarts, meanwhile, must complete vast spark partnerships with budget toadstools and amusing dead paintbrushes before the big bang. Crab valves? Plain! I am Barbara Walters on a mercury hatpin. Club-handled Jello hockey whiplash estimates tepid fort spades in a warm diamond class for yesterday's last premiere middle sex tentacle heartworms. Cans bless festering restaurants and haunt monogamous feed blindness enhancing plough naked fish legs without remaining changelessly malleable. Weren't your kernels turning furnished cloisters into merciless rotary bilge copters, or was that capsized eyelet juice treaty bomb epoxy actually relocating poachers? It tantalized buttered prizefighters by night.
Sid envisions Dizzy Gillespie marking sardonic barnstorming bacon bits with play-dough OK's, assembling fraught iron mantelpiece frog lip Kissenger dolls with a side order of cole slaw. Baked tactile fandangoes rank Israeli trailer park avenue buscuit t hings according to workaholic anaconda blues nightmare vagina beads while mild dry goods monopolies wuther timelessly towards Tiny Tim's timid flatland pinky drain cleaner accessory handle. Will drying proud mock turtle cufflinks bereave Stevie Wonder of yellowstone maggot frenzy, or will Margaret Thatcher match bachelor three with a twelve-towed bluegrass slow monkey from Atlantis? A torn board without protfolio adorns bike shades and a crusty milk wound for science. I remain unstably harping on tapered fables for sustenance.
"Something bunched worries cloud-seeding spam widgets," she says, toasting mostly frozen shoulder-blade catheter inserters with five heads at a broken spokesman convection. Young Samurai skyhook envy breeds faded snake blights. Worse custard destiny means teeth for crass door knob Cosby and his wacky Parthenon-encrusted Wombat Cuisinart from Venus, as if an adequate flap suddenly takes face tassles at task value. Basking in squalid spatula commercials, she sips Melissa cautiously and wonders where the torpedoes from next door folded the born notary. Tongue billow stone precludes British insurgency for nineteen billionths of a second all day, but Melissa warps cordially.
F. B. I. Chops
Sue my fabled warbler, his antlers peeling slowly off Polly's west wall, breasts aching, silent artillery throbbing saucily in the closet, waiting for the committee's final statement, the last drop of iron-filing yogurt slipping beneath her corset in the glowing blue hurricane headlight's penumbra, the siege continuing above in the T.V. mind of professor kumquat whose wings lean gracefully in the corner, a bow adorning their throne which falls through a piece of gum strategically placed to the right of m y left nose and into a plush chain-link cloud upon which reclines the sultry goddess of love, her metallized body imploring me to sell, before the market drops any further. What are brosks? Imelda is waxing Vic's sportsmanlike aplomb with a bag of dice, her arch water having been completely boiled during the hot dog uprising downtown next week, that is, the week before yesterday, which this year falls not on a Thursday but on a foot-stomping Thursday when all the world's a buttercup and you're the Armen ian duck sauce with unidentified F. B. I. chops. "A man's fragrance at a man's price," quaffed the bishop over the breath of fifteen you know what's and a railroad spike whose high-cut blouse made clear the distinction between life and that thing, that flash of non-being, that precedes the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I flee my arms.
When the moon is bubbling in your trough and the silky shards of spot-weld technology flutter about your baby's briefcase, remember the words I am never going to speak. Are you ready? Begin.
But First,
The end. Shameless macrame catholic stool pigeons swim through a brick wall and it reminds me of when I died twice because there are no similarities between the three events and themselves. "Motor homes sweet and sour ice cream corn is the oldest trick in the book of the dead," said Fred. I had caught him red-handed apologizing for saving the world from peace and love, so naturally she put her eyes back in in front of his very own eyes. He was preparing for the 1933 Olympic obesity and lack of dexterity competition which was already being held inside a diamond.
"Can the vegetable soup do the can-can?" I told him. He was unable to hear me because he was wearing a stethoscope which he was holding up to my mouth. I was doing "the wave" by myself, silently, and trying to keep track of the fourteen games of monopoly I was playing by phone with myself. I hadn't gotten a letter since I changed my address to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C. Fred was an old friend of mine who I had never met. Her name was Gerald, and I know exactly why. It was 27 o'clock, just in time for it to be 26 o'clock for the third time. But that was then. Now, silk toenails reconsider Motown on wuthering froth snakes.
"It's a brightly fronting tint flask sounding board for chicken noodle postmen," said Pilfering Syrup Man. Do vertical cornfields expose butter struesel sloth masks, or does the infinite blister mock fourteen soup nuns? Paper is a loose hose in a fait hful basting horse. Executive shards of megalomania remove bristles from the slimy Tibetan baguettes who quiver confidently in the dorm rooms of Hell University, legs intent on breathing but lungs running with great effort through the viscous cloud of mu shroom gas that surrounds Ethel's membrane. I gasp nonchalantly and clasp a passing tentacle, whispering something obscene but polite to the chancellor, who is screaming quietly to "Hold the Fenders." Fish bleat a chorus of howls to elicit a response from the dead wrench which is using me to untie the concrete shoelaces on Marylin Monroe's left head, but none ever comes. I suspect that it's upstairs at the bar ordering sand for the choir of paraplegic tennis players which disappeared three minutes ago tomorrow in a puff of giant granite monoliths. Thursday invites me to flee from Pennsylvania Dutch hippies made out of poorly-sharpened casseroles, but I can't hear over the din of a particle of Blase McGruff's third earlobe reading a personal computer a loud fifteen million years ago. Queen Elizabeth adds limbs to my dog plane's synchronized breath polisher, which is synchronized to my dog plane's synchronized breath polisher. Dark sausage invades Mexico.
Moonlit cough drops start a fight with Myrna's sympathy locket when its door swings open to conceal the last pope on a stick and four hundred professional dung Beatle paraphernalia squads. Dark bathtubs were part of the hardened clumps of president juice flowing out of the last-minute bead vaporizer club minutes, written by Victor Hugo during his bus ride into your only nostril underwater tomorrow. I will have been wearing the inside of your tongue instead of socks, maraca flakes will adorn my best wes tern north pole vault empty and full of solid clouds. Make no mistake and trip over your appendix, rising slowly to greet from above the soft underbelly of an iron cube.
But first, allow me to have everything forbidden and break the law by doing everything I'm told to do at once without leaving the safety and comfort of the intake valve on a jet engine. Stretching moles until they're the length of football fields is expensive and fun, so see me after money becomes obsolete and we'll smear thumbtacks on the surface of the sun for 400,000 years, using only our earlobes.
But first, let me just say that I have no mouth or head. I dropped a hot air balloon onto the hand I was holding it with and Arnold Palmer suddenly appeared in my Cuisinart. He was unable to line up a good shot. I ate my own stomach on "Donahue" but nobody was watching. Television was outlawed by Ted Turner; bullets were shot by firing squads of dead rainbow trout. I spent 25 hours a day for 12 years filling out forms sent by a government survey of how people spend their time.
But first, vast paperclips lent all the money in the world to a dollar bill, set Antarctica on fire, and played shuffleboard in a maze of diamond broth. The solution was obvious to everyone but Albert Einstein, whose strange artichoke companion whistled "Signin' in the Rain" and rolled up staircases. I poked out Cyclops's left eye, and he thanked me. I had invitations to blowing things off printed up on liquid paper. The RSVP number was Tammy Faye Bakker's. She cried her eyes out; they shot forward at 250 miles per hour and hit her in the back. Her bicycle's wings were broken so it wouldn't work underwear.
During the war, everyone was really nice to each other on weekdays, except on Saturday and Sunday, and Monday, and Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Friday. The war dragged on and on for three minutes, so I left and went fishing on the North Pole. I had to use a crocodile as a lure. I got fired from my job sitting around at home eating pizza and watching television, so I was out on Wall Street again making $10,000 a day. My walking papers were pink and made out of mercury.
Simultaneously, or now that the first of the Mohicans left the party with Vyrna Knowle, a single wet a sparrow a single wet sparrow. Would you get me a glass of whammy bars, because I want to know if you can get any of those sponge-metal birdhouses around herds of catnip buttons. "Fill it up, Buster," Robert breezily wheezed to the unwashed senator from Antarctica, the 53rd state. The filibuster had been going on and on about five foot six six six, and the film ran out to buy money with groceries. It was 1966, and I was late for Sunday morning vermin, pressed up in briefs and releasing steam from Q-tipped orifice buildings, walking into the wax museum unnoticed. I had that mostly frog taste, and was getting away with murder when the taste police arrested He Could Have Been Midgets because their haircuts violated the international year of the lawyer. It was that time of dream when you could scream. The whole place looked like the set from a spaghetti Western, and noodles dripped off of my noggin li ke hammers in wedding gowns as I strapped cotton candy to the inside of outer space and sawed my way clear with a spoon. They were selling day-old antiques but I felt too overdressed in decaying Chinese fast food which was falling on my bread from below to leave, what with the Tarreling Sneetch Bard on my tail I too sit easily, almost too easily. I was the best of tines, it was the worst of tines, it was an out of tune tine on the two-timer's good-time Rhodes Stage 88, and I was timulsaneously playing " Happy Trials" and whistling Dixie, cupping my hands across America and blowing your house down and out with the bathwater.
OK? I was just saying that. The tiger originated in northern Asia and spread over the entire continent, adapting to different local conditions until at least eight distinct races emerged, each with a solo album. I actually got to meet the tiger. I wa s very proud of yourself, aren't you? Do you see what I'm saying?
Are you still there?
Blase McGruff Asks:
Take a Bite Out of Your Teeth.
It was a nice day in the exterior, and flying rocks were actively dozing in the sky with breathing festival planning committee coffee-breaks and complete fragments of wordless phrases spilling jerkily up off of the surface of the air and into the exterior day shot with a 3-d motion-controlled still camera without a shutter that Blase McGruff, the crime thug, had given to himself three million years later on that interior night shotgun wedding which is going to be the previous scene in another baseball card series besides the one you're in right now. Blase energetically fell asleep and intentionally slipped on a banana, peeling it in the process and dragging himself two thousand miles by his tongue backwards towards the bottom of the bottomless pit he was below. It was night, and inside the church the shotgun wedding had already occurred spontaneously, the pastor marrying himself while threatening to shoot himself accidentally whether or not he consented to the marriage and previous unfair half-and-half division of the family's inconsequential extreme wealth in the form of two pennies, each of which was worth twelve million dollars after adjustment for correct grammar. Blase smothered an ice cube, causing it to burst into flames, and blew deeply into his lungs.
Inside the veldt, on that moonlit day, the 3-d motion controlled still camera without a shutter recorded the sound of the smooth blue corduroy texture of the flames for the night edition of the Daily Interior, which had already been issued in an unlimited edition of two, signed by both of its seven million blind readers without hands. The readers were omniscient and could travel through time, but only backwards; they had founded the Daily Interior the next day and had to clean out its offices which were then bought by penniless babies and made into a foodless restaurant. Jesus Christ said "Goddamn it all!" and wreaked tranquil, soothing vengeance on the people he had beaten up the previous day, so Blase decided to leave the crowded Solitary Confinement Cafe before taking money from the manager and accidentally but painstakingly scraping chunks of coffee off the inside of his spinal cord. It was drizzling, but he was raining very hard in all directions, drying off the parched, drought-ridden rainforest which Jesus Christ had planted to get back at man for destroying nature, true to his vengeful nature which was typical of no more than five women such as himself who had grown up old in 21st century utopia where the only social unrest is caused by total nuclear annihilation every thirtysomething seconds and some junk.
McGruff took a bite out of his teeth and frowned into the broken microphone, shaking hands with snakes and pounding nails of paint thinner into water sculptures. True to the post-modern tradition, he created completely new styles which had never been se en before. Nobody liked them, so he was made famous and proclaimed the man of the century in Space magazine, which was only published once at regularly spaced intervals throughout the universe. Residents of the universe were happy, because it was unfair . The McGruff story was splashed across half of one lowercase A in one of the commercials on the front page. He complained to himself for being devoid of responsibility for this fair, objective treatment.
He found himself on a T.V. talk show, but lost himself when he appeared on a radio quiz show three days later. The talk show host was blind, mute, deaf, and rude, and the cameras and microphones were sealed in an airtight black lead box which was buried deep in the sky and left open. McGruff felt quite at ease in the audience of dead slugs which hovered three inches below the stage, which was made out of lime Jello. Every time he said anything the "applause" light would go off and the "killing spree" light would flicker continuously, providing the only illumination in the otherwise brilliantly lit room which had black walls that absorbed all the sound and reflected all of the light, so that everything echoed and the room seemed minutely vast. Actually, nobody including me ever said anything about McGruff or told any stories about him, and nobody ever will.
Then McGruff changed his name to Blase McGruff and planned a week-long religious experience during which nothing unusual would happen, starting yesterday. His wife John was single and had never been born, so she decided to accidentally murder both of the nine Jewish Popes on the anniversary of Blase's death in order to bore him and perhaps cause him to marry her so that she would finally be rid of their home entertainment center which consisted of a bed of light-sensitive nails which, when turned on, would form the image of Lee Iaccoca's dog. The three Earthlings from the planet Nine stood with their legs akimbo watching the invisible fish signing autographed copies of themselves, then returned to Earth, where they greeted the survivors of the end of the universe indifferently. "Too opinionated," McGruff barked, and was shot for having an idea.
There was only one certified film editor left, and he refused to make edits more than a quarter-second apart from each other. Outside, night was falling, and the skycam recorded Blase McGruff from below for an eighth of a second. He was absorbing all the light in the vicinity. It was too bright to look at. Meanwhile, outside, workers were constructing an interior which would be finished by night.
The Center of the Earth also Rises
Rachel collapsed under the weight of a helium balloon three months before she was born the wealthy son of the last person on Earth, whose name was Ted and was attending church at the time. Three miles away, his left arm rested on an underground skyscraper that was moving at 600 thousand miles per hour towards him. It arrived late for the service, three days before, and was very embarrassed. It had thirty-seven left arms and played the cello really well, though it was better at playing the cello. "Don 't leave home without facing away from it," it always used to say to Rachel before it met her, which is when it suddenly learned to speak. Rachel was raking the ocean onto the top of her head with a mouse. The mouse was disappointed because it hadn't won the Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes 625 times in a row.
"But 627 times in a row is even better," Rachel explained, whispering so that she could be heard from inside an evacuated padded box three hundred miles away. Her left head was in the center of the Earth. She could relax now that the most sensitive man in America was done massaging her and there was finally some peace and quiet as hydrogen bombs were detonated a block away from her, causing houses and skyscrapers to spontaneously rise up out of the rubble, forming a pleasant countryside. It had one occupant, a small woman named Jesus Christ. She was so small that she was always knocking over mountains with her eleventh toe, sending them toppling into the sky where they motionlessly and majestically did silly cartwheels at the bottom of the ocean. Mr s. Christ introduced herself to Rachel under the false name of Jesus Christ, cautiously revealing everything she knew at once.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Christ was introducing herself to Rachel under a false name. Ted, whose first name was Ted, was adjusting the position of the sun with his bare hands when he suddenly remembered that he had a tongue, and that he had forgotten to water the ice sculpture he had left in the oven the next day. It was a hot day in San Fransisco and I hadn't had a client since the beginning of the page until a dame with the largest portfolio I had ever seen came sauntering through the door of my office like she was a metaphor for something I would have to pay to get a good look at.
When Tammy Faye Bakker Meets Imelda Marcos
When Tammy Faye Bakker meets Imelda Marcos, Bloomingdale's will become a giant sinkhole and swallow entire suburbs. When Tammy Faye Bakker meets Imelda Marcos, Sak's 5th Avenue will implode, sucking the entire fashion district with it. The center of Paris will split open and collections of designer items will plummet into the glowing ball in the center of the earth, when Tammy Faye Bakker meets Imelda Marcos. High-heeled shoes will collapse, sending well-dressed women plummeting backwards off of tall buildings and bridges. When Tammy Faye Bakker meets Imelda Marcos, Ralph Lauren's toupe will fall off and the startled scream of his assistant will shatter thousands of bottles of perfume, killing dozens of fashion models and photographers instantly. Broad-brimmed pastel-colored hats will eat their owners alive when Tammy Faye Bakker meets Imelda Marcos. When Tammy Faye Bakker meets Imelda Marcos, stocks in Yves Saint Laurent will suddenly and inexplicably become worthless. Hippies will rejoice and load especially large pipes full of marijuana when Tammy Faye Bakker meets Imelda Marcos. Brooke Shields's face will collapse under the weight of her makeup. All the blow-driers in the world will start running at high speed and the oceans will turn into mascara, when Tammy Faye Bakker meets Imelda Marcos. When Tammy Faye Bakker meets Imelda Marcos, Princess Diana will become a nun and the Rolling Stones will all have mid-life crises at the same time. There will be no credit cards left after Tammy Faye Bakker meets Imelda Marcos. This is Ted Koppel in Washington.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Earnest
It was happening again. The windchill factory outlet clocked in at $3 a head, minus tax. Four cars were travelling at 70 miles per hour downward in the same parking space, and Julia Child was on the fifteenth day of her hunger strike. Your television makes a great dip for hot fudge, and it has large tits. Every time I'm born, it seems like the same thing: something I couldn't possibly expect. Mr. Rogers threw an oil tanker across the Pacific ocean and gave birth to a race of psychotic marionettes who nailed Vince Guiraldi to a string bass (the most convenient crucifix) and took over the world in the name of the religion they had created: Guiraldianity. Everyone was forced to form combos and play "All the Things You Are" until disputes over the chord progression caused instant schism for the whole family a-go-go with New Improved time lock cancer of the 25th century.
They were just in time for "Different Strokes," which was discovered to be a transmission from another galaxy.