Refuge for little things I've written without a home

-This Pop-Tart tastes like shit, verifying the old axiom, "If it's purple and not a grape, don't fucking eat it."

-Her ass shook, defiantly exuding happiness as she walked away.

-Post Facto Pot Muffins will be the name of my first blues band. It's a title that infuses the music with preliminary meaning, spawning in the audience questions, like, "Are they post facto because you eat them after you've had a snack?" Such rumination can only lead to enlightenment, which is, of course, what the blues are all about. Awfully Zen, for a music originally created by guys with no teeth.

-"Whoa, whoa, whoa! You can't eat that."
"I can't?"
"That's a human spleen."
"I thought it was an oatmeal cookie."
"It's not a cookie."
"Maybe we could pretend."

-Personally, I think fascists are the tasiest of ideologues.

-When we say that someone tried to funny, we are not saying that they attempted funny and failed, but that they had to exert effort in the process at all. You can't force funny.

-"I bet Jesus would have been good at hockey."
"Better than Gretzky?"
"Not that good."

-The hollow man wasn't made of wood like everyone thought. He wasn't made of anything at all, though his steps reverberated like his insides were an old phonograph cone, or the body of a guitar. It wasn't until he left, and people noticed the echo was gone, that they realized his very being was the sound, what people thought was wooden was actually a vibration in the air. He called himself hollow not because of what wasn't inside him, but because he was a hole in fabric of the universe, detectable only by the sonorous fall of his footsteps. The void at the center of creation, a cave of nothingness, wandering eternal, empty.

-Masturbation is the sincerest form of narcissism.

-I wonder where all the lost sarcasm goes? Is there some place in the universe where it accumulates, until the day its own mass sucks it into a singularity, in its collapse triggering a great explosion of dry wit that will sweep across all of creation, wiping out existence as we know it, leaving only the doublespeak we have so far been unable to express in written word?

-The little Shriner cars are perhaps the greatest symbol of our time, representing as they do heedless frivolity in the application of Industrial Age technology. In that way it is the American dream, a level of success only understandable in its meaningless trappings, doing donuts on the worn asphalt of functionality in a brazen display of the triumph of want over need, liberty over socialism. These tiny purposeless vehicles are accepted and adored, not because America truly finds their irresponsible nature appealing, but because it's the day of a parade, when irresponsibility is encouraged and the obvious inequities represented by the little cars can be ignored. Bring them to the road any other day, and an infinitely more practical vehicle would smash the little one all to hell. And so the American dream would die.

-Given a million years of evolution, squirrels will learn to look both ways before crossing the street. Left, right, scurry. To the safety of trees past blacktop on a wind called whimsy. Such paltry motivation, but it's enough for a squirrel to learn basic traffic safety. The crows peck away at the pancake remains of everybody who didn't get it.

-The realization of his talent's degradation saddened him. He had always taken his pride for granted, but with age everything of which he had once been proud drifted away. All that remained was a shell in the shape of potential lost.

-Vanilla is not your favorite flavor. What kind of pussed-out answer to the question is that? Ask a virgin their favorite position, or a yuppie their favorite rap song and you'll get an equivalent answer. Those responses come from a world without 31 Flavors, where instead of the prismatic bliss of a glass-topped freezer full of ice creams colored to pastel renderings of the intended flavors (in blindness as easily left white, but somehow then lacking the childish, anticipatory glee that so epitomizes American youth…at least our memory of it). Yeah, vanilla is the three-year-old's answer, from a perspective below the counter, too short to see the wonders in store for later ages at greater heights, of taste buds developed by then to appreciate things like broccoli. Until you can say fuck you to the little sample spoon, because goddamn, you've already tasted their 31 and a dozen besides, don't you dare say vanilla. I'll have Pistachio Almond, thank you very much.

-Each time Yorokobi rampages through the streets of the abandoned part of the city, I watch like everybody else, wondering what in that land's long history so unsettles the beast that with the regularity of the moon the giant monster comes to destroy the shells of buildings we feel compelled to construct for the very purpose of satiating its rage. But I'm sure Yorokobi sees it differently, instead feeling the biting attack of civilization on grounds that once belonged to nature. The poor animal cannot know, however, that the empty structures it destroys are our deliberate attacks against it, made so that the beast is always consumed, always unmaking the unoccupied, robbed of real accomplishment by our primates' cunning. If Yorokobi ever realized the truth of the deception, it would surely turn its wrath on the greedy eyes of the spiteful masses gawking stupidly from the opposite shore, for whom the spectacle has become sport. And surely, we would all deserve to die.

-The bodies marked the jagged line he'd walked, necks bent at abnormal angles, skulls crushed, eyes gouged out, blood spatter on the stainless steel of the bar, looking more blue than red where it had streaked thin allowing the metal to shine through. The bartender shook his head and added the cost of cleanup to the man's tab. Kicking the last body out of the way, he was about to run after her, to introduce himself, ask her out for coffee and a bagel or some biscotti. Half the bar had tried to stop him, old enemies waiting for his moment of indiscretion to pounce, but even in the distracted state he'd dealt with them easily enough. As he reached the end of the bar, ready to step out into the misty evening, ready to sprint half a block to catch up with her, the big guy stepped into the doorway, his tremendous girth blocking all the light from the street outside. Shit, thought the man, there's always this guy. Even if I kick his ass it'll be too late. Bus or taxi spiriting away the elusive goal, lost not because he couldn't defeat his large foe quickly enough, but because one last opponent offered an excuse for failure, and nobody would ever know that he himself had invited the big guy to the bar.