Robert T. Jeschonek, Fiction Writer

January 2, 2008

Good riddance to resolutions. This year, I have banned them all.

I know this won't be popular on the Island of Unfulfilled Resolutions , whose population growth depends on schmucks like me making and failing to keep resolutions. I know it puts me out of step with the resolution-happy residents of my homeworld, Exuda, where resolutions really are made to be broken (and in fact, a lack of broken resolutions is considered humiliating).

On the other hand, I am sick and tired of my resolutions jumping up and biting me in the ass. Year after year, on New Year's Day, I line up my fresh new resolutions all in a row. They look so pretty and promising in their cages, with their bejeweled beaks, fluffy plumage--deep purple, pale blue, or daisy yellow--and their swishing, tiger-striped tails with tiny, talking heads on the tips. I feed them and play with them and promise to keep them...and then, at some point, every last one of them bites me in the ass.

They seem like good choices and fine ideas...and they end up hurting not just me, but other resolutions in the bargain! For example, "Make Lots More Money" can end up stressing me out, biting me hard when I don't make lots more money...and kicking the crap out of resolutions like "Spend More Time With Family" and "Read More Books."

I've had it with resolutions. I despise them. So they're all banned for 2008. If they try to sneak up on me and weasel their way into my life, I will crush them. They won't catch me unawares again, and they won't bite me in the ass or anywhere else, either. I am done with resolutions! You'll see! By December 31, 2008, I won't have made a single one, thereby proving that I do not have a resolution addiction, and I do not need or want to have anything to do with them!

I resolve it!

November 28, 2007

The Sun came out today, disproving my theory that she was angry with me. This is a positive development, to say the least; the prospect of going through the rest of my life without one more jot of sunshine was pretty depressing. Turns out she’d already forgiven me for my offhanded remark about how she was getting in my eyes while I was trying to drive last week. Though I hadn’t seen her for quite a few days, she was only away on business, visiting brother and sister stars in the galactic core of the Milky Way. She left a babysitter in place to keep Earth and the rest of our solar system rolling...but the sitter just wasn’t as strong or intense. Hence all those sequential gray days of late. But anyway, all’s right with the world, there’s a smile on my face, and the forecast is bright with a capital “B,” because the Sun doesn’t hate me after all! Woo hoo!

From Earth-Yoyo to Earth-Fatquake: A Writer's Tour of the Alternaverse

The fan mail keeps pouring in...all of it from alternate realities. I get bushels of letters from Earth-Equine, a world dominated by intelligent horses and horse-offshoots. Earth-Purple can't seem to get enough of my "purple prose," and the inhabitants of Earth-Candy (capital world of La Dolce Empire in the Sugarverse) are plenty sweet on everything I write. Likewise, Earth-Jazz seems to be tuned in to my wavelength, and all my novels are bestsellers on Earth-Sarcasm. So what does it take to become a hit here, on Earth-Blah?

Answering this question is the number one task of my new pan-dimensional quantum marketing consultant, Hoka Hey Fungus. According to Hoka Hey, my popularity in other neighboring realms has fueled a cosmic backlash of sorts. The great extradimensional demand for my work and persona has literally drained my local notoriety from this universe, leaving me largely unknown, undistinguished, and unfashionable. Perhaps, by extracting some of my popularity from alternate Earths, I can improve my renown on this one...either that, or tampering with the quantum flux will trigger a mini-big bang which will convert all alternaverses in the megazone into one giant cloud of gas, dust, and particles of imagination, or ideatrons.

So off we go, for the next few weeks, on an incredible journey in Hoka Hey's flypod, transsecting the riftibulations and flickerflacking from one mysterastic wildzone to the next. All twelve of Hokay Hey's yellow pollentennae weave and wiggle like centipedes as he contemplates the breadth of this astounding tour. On the last one, many decades ago, we encountered an alternate Jules Verne made of gum and a 60-foot-tall, blue-skinned Hemingway who wrote even better than the one from our "normal" world.

To help in draining my popularity from these manyzones, I've composed a fabulously horrible book titled BOW WOW LUAU. It's a 790-page epic about the relationship between a man undergoing a midlife crisis and a dead Great Dane who teaches him one life lesson after another, all during one glorious Hawaiian luau in rural Wisconsin. Best of all, the story is told from the dead dog's P.O.V....in dog language. SPOILER ALERT: In the middle of the book, the reader realizes--DING DONG--that the narrator is not the dead dog, but the man with the crisis! His mind has become that of a dog...TWO dogs, rather, as he develops a split personality! And in the end, he/they stop the bomb from exploding just as the countdown reaches ONE, and he/they get the girl...only, SPOILER ALERT, she's got the minds of two CATS in her ass!

Somehow, I think this tour will work. Earth-Sandwich, Earth-Upside-Down, and all the rest will come to hate me...freeing my popularity force to grow in this reality, which after all is clearly the best of all of them, better even than Earth-Troutface or Earth-Loudnoise (which is really saying something). So cross your fingers, everyone, and let's hope for the best! And if someone with purple skin or three faces or candy bars for hands tries to sell you a copy of BOW WOW LUAU, do yourself a favor and PASS.

My Life As A Space Alien Agent

If you're ever contacted by my space alien masters, please tell them not to worry about the blood screening. The lab tech who worked on my blood did find the secret antibodies, but with the help of my mind control ring, I was able to convince her they were normal human T-cells. No one is the wiser.

Well, almost no one. Dogs are a different story, of course. Nothing I do fools them for a second; they all know I've spent time on another planet. They can sniff out my genetic alterations with ease. The secret aerosol does nothing to block their incredible senses.

I think there's a problem with ghosts, too. Everywhere I go, they're drawn to me, as if my altered physiology provides something they find appetizing. I brush them away like sheer curtains as I go about my daily business...but I must admit, they're annoying. Just another of the hazards the space aliens never warned me about.

Like my allergy to certain hours of the day. Every time 2:00 in the afternoon rolls around, I break out in star-shaped hives. Four in the morning makes my whole body itch as if I were wrapped in raw wool. I won't even tell you what happens between 7:15 and 8:15 A.M. every other Thursday.

But such is the lot of an alien agent. Someday, when my masters descend from the skies in their spinning polygons and conquer the world, I expect things will go more smoothly. Not so many worries about being found out, for instance. Environmental reprogramming ought to do away with a lot of the little annoying allergies and digestive upheavals. Instead of a square peg stranger in deep cover, I'll be a king, or a duke, or a regent. Maybe a mayor.

Or something. At least, that's what they told me when they beamed me down.

Big Red and Corn Stalk's Rasslin' Workout

Big Red was really big, over 300 pounds, with shaggy red hair and a bushy red beard. When he walked past me in the gym, he glared, holding my gaze with rage--or was it an astigmatism? His eyes had that kind of almost-crossed look that makes you wonder.

He marched across the basketball court like a king in his white-and-blue t-shirt and shorts, followed by his retinue: a scrawny corn-stalk of a man, all knuckles and Adam's apples, in a John Deere ballcap and beat-to-hell leather jacket. Corn stalk twitched back and forth in Big Red's wake like a wild rat trailing a groundhog, hoping for a dinner ten times his size.

I was shooting baskets around the hoop at center court, but Big Red and Corn Stalk had plans for a workout of their own. The next thing I knew, they dragged a black rubber mat across the floor and flopped it down at one end of the court.

I was annoyed, because I didn't want company. I was only planning to shoot for another five minutes, and I didn't want to have to work around someone else. I didn't want to be bothered.

Little did I know just how bothered I would be.

After planting the rubber mat on the floor, Big Red and Corn Stalk crouched and circled it, staring grimly and silently at each other. Arms held loosely at their sides, they circled one way, then the other, occasionally feinting with a hand or foot or shoulder. Then, with a primal roar, Big Red lunged, plowing Corn Stalk to the mat. Once down, they proceeded to wrestle.

Big Red rolled back and forth on top of Corn Stalk, grunting and twisting. Corn Stalk flailed his arms and legs, at least until Big Red pinned them. The two of them lay there on the mat, Big Red's sweaty girth immobilizing Corn Stalk, until Big Red decided he was pleased with the outcome. Then, Big Red rolled off Corn Stalk, bounced to his feet, and straightened his white-and-blue t-shirt. Corn Stalk retrieved his John Deere ballcap and stuck it back on his head, preparing for the next round.

By this time, I'd watched as much of the car wreck as I cared to. I headed for the door, determined to get out before the next round got underway.

Unfortunately, this got Big Red's attention.

"You!" he roared, pointing at the rubber mat. "You're next!"

"Thanks anyway," I said in a friendly voice. "Gotta get back to the office."

Big Red moved to block one door. Corn Stalk skittered over to block the other.

My heart pounded as the trap closed around me. I picked what looked like the lesser danger and ran toward Corn Stalk.

As Big Red bounded across the floor behind me, I leaped into what became a half-slap-fight, half-kick-fight with Corn Stalk. He head-butted me once, sending me reeling...and Big Red's footsteps got closer.

With one last burst of desperate energy, I pushed past Corn Stalk and charged out the door of the gymnasium. I bolted down the hallway with Big Red close behind and innocent bystanders flying in all directions.

I hurtled through the door to the swimming pool area and froze. The pool was drained, its floor covered with black rubber mats. Dozens of people stood around the edge, all of them weirdos, all of them grinning at me.

Big Red strolled through the door, barely out of breath, and cracked his knuckles and farted.

That was when I realized that this what he'd wanted all along.

July 21, 2006

Senior citizens terrorize the swimming pool!

If you plan to swim in the pool at my local YMCA on Tuesdays or Thursdays at lunchtime, you would be better off swimming in a raging sea.

Lunchtime on Tuesdays and Thursdays is time for Senior Swimnastics. Otherwise known as The Vortex.

The senior citizens gather at one side of the pool. Dozens of them, mostly women, bob in the water to the droning of ancient disco music on a boom box. Three lanes are left open for lap swimmers...but there might as well be none.

Each session, the seniors begin their workout with the same routine. Led by a cheerful young blonde, they walk lap after lap in a huge circle. Through sheer force of numbers, they are able to disrupt thousands of gallons of water in the entire pool with these simple, circular laps. The Vortex bubbles to life.

When the senior citizens begin their deadly Vortex, the pool swirls like a seething ocean. Whatever your age or strength, you have no hope of resisting the churning currents. No matter how you cry for mercy or make a show of being unable to swim a lap or even stand up straight in the water, the show will continue.

The Vortex goes on for at least fifteen minutes, during which lap swimming is impossible. Everyone who has come to the pool to do back-and-forth laps either sits on the side until the turbulence dies down or just gives up and goes home.

Those who leave are the smart ones. The next routine in Senior Swimnastics is called Sunken Treasure.

It goes like this: when the seniors have had enough of the Vortex, they stop walking in a circle. When the water has calmed enough that the younger lap swimmers get back in the pool, the seniors make their move.

Slowly, inexorably, the seniors spread out through the pool. They help each other under the divider cables, drifting across the lanes where the lap swimmers rush back and forth. Then, someone gives the signal, shouting “Sunken Treasure!” The fateful words echo through the pool area.

In teams of three, the senior citizens confront each young lap swimmer. One senior distracts the swimmer by dropping his or her bathing suit, while the other two seniors attack and wrestle the swimmer underwater. The seniors force the swimmer to the bottom of the pool, then jump up and down on him until his air is exhausted. Just as he is about to drown, they haul him to the surface and revive him with sloppy mouth-to-mouth resuscitation...then sling him over the divider cables while cackling wildly.

Next, they claim their prizes and hold them high while shouting “Who wants to trade me treasure?” Sometimes, the prize is the swimmer’s goggles...sometimes, his trunks...or his nosepiece or earplugs.

The seniors string these prizes on belts and necklaces, wearing them proudly like shark’s teeth or bear claws taken by hunters. They fight over them sometimes, obeying elaborate rituals that determine who will pair off after each session of Swimnastics.

That’s why, sometimes, you can hear new lap swimmers, who haven’t been through the Vortex and Sunken Treasure before, asking why all the old timers wear goggles and shreds of swimming trunks on cords around their necks and waists.

By then, of course, it is already almost too late for them. Poor, dumb swimmers.

June 21, 2006

On the run from super-villains of every stripe!

This morning, the Man of a Million Faces posed as my back door. I went out the front door instead and heard him cursing in frustration as I jogged off down the street, making my escape.

He is only the latest to try to apprehend me. Last night, for example, I caught a glimpse of the Imaginary Fiend creeping through my vegetable garden, wielding his terrible I-Beam. Thank heavens I was able to get inside and lock the doors before he could transfix and de-realitize me.

Two days ago, Simple Simon and El Parmesano teamed up and cornered me at the mall. Thanks to some quick thinking and the timely intervention of teenage rowdies who ridiculed and distracted them, I made yet another hair’s-breadth escape.

I wasn’t quite so lucky last week when Emperor Scarlemagne captured and hauled me to the razor blade factory. Fortunately, my body had just shifted from its glass to rubber phase and was pliant enough that I lost only one finger. Sadly, it was the finger I loved to use the most.

Razzmatazz was the worst of them all, though. She came after me a month ago, when I was at the beach. At first, I thought she was just a friendly groupie hoping to touch the stars...but I soon realized she had the power to make me upbeat. Trust me, this is not a good thing.

Razzmatazz led me on a giddy tour of L.A. , skipping and singing and sipping smoothies while I screamed and melted inside. We visited hospital patients and shut-ins, adopted puppies at the pet shelter, and let people cut in line at the supermarket. I might still be all sunshiny and tiptoesy today if we hadn’t run into another enemy, Decompoza, who wanted to kill me more than Razzmatazz did. While the two of them duked it out--butterflies versus maggots, flower petals versus formaldehyde--I slinked off to look for my self-respect.

One after another, they keep coming for me. All my enemies plus all the young turks and loudmouths I’ve never even met before, drooling for a piece of me. Once, I was a top super-bad guy, and now I’m public enemy number one of all the public enemies on the planet.

All because I made one huge mistake: while attending a banquet at which the awards for evil--the Adolphs--are handed out, I accidentally ate Genghis Flan, top boss of the entire super-villain world. How was I to know his twisted genius mind inhabited the matrix of a creamy custard desert drizzled in caramel sauce?

So now I’m staying barely a step ahead and I’m wondering if there’s another world or dimension where I could possibly find asylum. Is there anywhere in all the infinite realms, imagined and otherwise, where I can hole up and not have to worry about Raw Nerve or Wallflower or Potty Mouth or Ignoramus catching me off-guard and ramming a vibro-cane or fire-pike or laser-plumber’s-helper up or down or sideways through one of my orifices?

Wait! Shhh! Is that you, Spandexa, twisting my costume tighter, ever tighter, binding...and digging...and cutting off...my breath and heartbeat?

Time for one final warcry: Noooo Goooood!!!

April 14, 2006

Help! The Sauerkraut Men are coming!

Men made of sauerkraut stand outside the windows of my home, waving and faceless, amber strands of sauerkraut fluttering in the breeze like seaweed in the ocean current.

Each wears a different colored t-shirt--pink, white, yellow, pale blue--but no pants. They don’t speak, since they have no mouths, but they make a kind of humming, buzzing sound, like MMZZMMZZMMZZ. Each one makes the sound at a different pitch, every shade of high, low, and in-between.

I don’t understand their language, if they have one, but they do send me impressions like daydreams. What they want, I think, is for me to lead them. In the visions, I see green skies, fizzing golden rain, and strange creatures that look like animals turned inside-out. It might be their home, or something else altogether…but it’s where they want to go. That much is clear.

But I don’t want to go there with them. I don’t want anything to do with them. I just wish they would go away.

They started appearing four days ago, after the Sauerkraut Incident. The incident happened when I took sauerkraut and kolbassi to work…and the container turned out not to be airtight. I placed the plastic container in my lunchbag, then put the lunchbag on the back seat of my car and drove to work. The bag must have flipped around during the drive, because when I got to work, it was soaked with sauerkraut juice. So was the upholstery of the car seat. The interior of the car stunk like sauerkraut juice…and so did I, as I carried the sopping lunchbag in the parking garage elevator, down the sidewalk, and up the stairs to the offices of my employer. All I could smell for the rest of the day was sauerkraut. It only intensified after I microwaved the sauerkraut and kolbassi and ate it for lunch. Now, not only did I, my lunchbag, my car, and my cubicle stink like sauerkraut, but so did the whole office.

I think it was the smell that drew them. Maybe they came from far away, or maybe they were already here, among us, waiting for a sign. Whatever their origin, the sauerkraut men appeared to me that very night.

I was sleeping soundly when a strange smell woke me. Barefoot, I padded downstairs, following the smell…and I jumped and cried out when I saw him. He was standing right outside the front door, his glistening sauerkraut head framed in the window, just a few feet away. I fell back on the stairs, gasping for breath, as I watched him through the glass, his head slowly bobbing from side to side on his rubbery sauerkraut neck. He sent me an impression of what looked like a beating heart covered in white moths…then, a tumbling metal cube with brass horse-head doorknockers on each gleaming face.

And then, he was gone…but not for long. The next morning, he was back, waving along the street as I drove to work, his bright red t-shirt hanging loosely on his slimy, fibrous body. I didn’t stop to see what he wanted, and neither did anyone else.

There’s a good reason for that. As I’ve found, I’m the only one who can see the sauerkraut men. In fact, other people actually pass through them as if they are ghosts…though I’m certain they aren’t ghosts in any sense of the word. I know in my heart and soul that the sauerkraut men are real, and aware, and purposeful.

And they won’t leave me alone. Every night, they stand in a circle around my house, waving and humbuzzing in the moonlight. When I look out the window, even if I just peek out a corner and think they can’t see me, they inch closer to the house. If I don’t look out the window, I can still hear them humbuzzing. They still send me waves of bizarre impressions, trying to get me to douse myself with sauerkraut juice and come outside. Trying to get me to lead them through what I think are sixty-four dimensions of alternating horror and delight.

At which point, in the land of golden rain, green skies, and inside-out beasts, they either want to merge with me, worship me, or devour me.

Wait. There they are again.

I hear the humbuzzing…no! It’s shifting, going higher, becoming something different. A whistle! They’re all whistling. It’s a bizarre whistle, too--constantly rising and falling, rising and falling in quick succession.

Now they’re passing through the walls! Please no! The sauerkraut men are passing through the walls! And they’re reaching for me!

Faceless, implacable, speechless, terrifying…they’re reaching for me! Twenty pairs of hand-facsimiles shaped from sauerkraut, dripping sauerkraut juice, stinking stinking STINKING!!

HOW WILL I ESCAPE TO WRITE ANOTHER FLOG???

April 7, 2006

Don't miss out on the million-and-one thrills of the days to come!

I should wait a few days to write this, because nothing interesting’s happening right now. In the next few days, though, look out! Here’s just a PARTIAL list of the cool stuff that’s about to take place in my world!

1. DIRTY DIRTY YARD: Tomorrow, four tons of screened topsoil will be delivered to my home! I’ll use the soil to fill holes, level off a sunken trench, cover frost damage, create a front-yard mud-wrestling pit, and create gardens for the mysterious, glowing seeds that fell from the sky three nights ago. I know the seeds want me to plant them because they told me so telepathically.

2. TIMBERRRRIFIC!: Monday, a local tree-cutting service will take down the 60-foot spruce tree in my front yard. When that’s done, they’ll grind out the stump and roots, making a nice, smooth surface that I can use for my next planned venture: a 60-foot scarecrow to drive away the screaming crows that wake me up every morning like the devil’s own roosters!

3. WET PAINT: Also on Monday, a local painter will start painting the kitchen and dining room in my house. Like Diego Rivera, he’ll cover the walls in magnificent murals portraying a great human struggle…in this case, my failed struggle to learn how to paint a wall. He’s doing the ceiling like the Sistine Chapel, only with Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters from the 70s. Just wait till you see the incredible image of the Funky Phantom touching the fingertip of Hong Kong Phooey.

4. MEET THE NEW BOSS: And by Wednesday, my secret plan for world domination will finally come to fruition. It involves Sea Monkeys, plaster of Paris, “Henry the Eighth” by Herman’s Hermits, a fungus that walks like a man, and 300,000 tons of…but that would be telling. Suffice it to say, when next you read this flog, my control of planet Earth shall be TOTAL!

So there you have it. See? I told you the events of the next few days would make a great flog…but I can’t in good conscience make you wait that long for a new flog. I know you’ll miss the excitement, but at least you have something new to read today. You’re welcome!

March 23, 2006

Why did the man in the car want to give me his driver’s license?

It was twenty minutes after five o’clock, and I was walking from the building where I work to the parking garage. That was when I saw the car approaching. I was irritated right away, because the car was slowing down, and I could see the driver leaning across the seat to wind down the window. There was no one else on the sidewalk around me, so I knew I was the one the driver was going to talk to.

The car was red, and fairly beat-up. I was carrying my bookbag, my gym bag, and my lunch bag, and I wasn’t in the mood to slow down and deal with anyone at that moment. My wife was fixing dinner, and I just wanted to get home...which is always when things like this happen.

The guy leaned over and hollered out his window at me. “Hey! Can you help me?”

I stopped and listened. Maybe I’d just be asked to give directions, which probably wouldn’t take too much time.

“Do you live around here?” said the guy.

“Well, I work down here,” I said. “I live around here, but not down here in town.” (Keep in mind I tend to say too much sometimes.)

“Could you help me out?” said the guy. He had greasy, shoulder-length brown hair. His car was junkier on the inside than on the outside. “I’m trying to get to my uncle’s place in West Virginia .”

Oh boy, I thought. I didn’t know where to begin to give him directions to West Virginia . I could see my work was cut out for me.

“My car’s overheating,” said the guy. “I have to get it to a garage.”

Okay, I thought. Right there, he probably crossed the line of my being willing to deal with him. If he was having car trouble, he might just want directions to the nearest garage…or he might want help trying to fix it, or get water for the radiator, or get oil or something.

But no. Whatever he had in mind, it wasn’t anything I could guess.

“Can I give you my driver’s license?” he said. “Then, you could…”

That was when I interrupted him. “I’m sorry, I can’t help you.” I couldn’t think of any reason on Earth or elsewhere for him to give me his driver’s license. Whatever he had in mind, it was some kind of whacked-out deal of which I wanted no part.

Of course, at the same time, I was curious. I couldn’t help but wonder what crazy scheme he had in mind…and I’m still wondering. Did he plan to get me in the car and rob me or hurt me, or did he actually have some legitimate reason for offering to give me his license? On the one hand, I’m glad I beat feet away from him and he drove off without further comment or squirreliness.

But on the other hand, I wonder. I mean, it was 5:20PM…broad daylight…no one around at that second, but there would’ve been someone coming by in short order. What the hell was he thinking?

It was just one of those weeks, I guess. The night before, I’d seen one of the signs of the Apocalypse: Barry Manilow performing “Copa Cabana” with a rapper on PBS. That morning, I’d been awakened by screaming crows outside my window. Five minutes after encountering the driver’s license guy, when I stepped out of the elevator on the roof level where I park my car, I saw a strange falcon--not one of the usual ones--picking apart what looked like a human foot on the ledge.

I made sure not to stop off anywhere on my way home.

February 27, 2006

“We mous wunt cheez or els!”

This message, left in muddy tracks on the floor of my garage, is only the latest shot in a struggle between mice and man. It has been going on for some time now, and I am terrified when I think of where it may ultimately lead.

It all started one night months ago, when I was pulling into the garage. My headlights illuminated the floor under my wife’s car, revealing a single skittering shape, a gray blur. Four legs, a skinny tail, and a body no bigger than my hand, darting out of the light.

It was not the last time I saw a mouse in my garage. Weeks later, I saw another, or the same one, back for another visit. Then, a little while after that, the worst thing imaginable happened: my wife caught a glimpse while she was in the garage smoking.

The mouse, which until then had seemed harmless, suddenly rose to an elevated threat level. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire…so who knew how many mice could be living in our garage? And not just the garage, but the house. They could be anywhere at any time, dripping with filth, lurking, salivating, and waiting to attack us from the shadows with their tiny claws and jaws.

It was the day we all fear in our hearts from birth, the Day of the Mouse. Once it starts, it can only end in blood and suffering. The only question is, blood and suffering for whom?

As I’d feared, the mouse (or mice) ignored the traps I set. My wife continued to see and hear them…or their traces, at least. Not the usual leavings--tracks and turds and such--but more subtle and ominous signs. A bit of bubble wrap on the floor. A droplet of water falling from the rafters (was it mouse pee?). A scratching sound in the wall. A squeak in the night.

A missing cigarette.

I implemented bigger and better-baited mousetraps, to no effect. If anything, the situation got worse. My wife saw more droplets of water and bits of debris. An army of mice poured into the house, rushing over us in a slashing, squealing torrent, tearing the flesh from our bodies in our very own bed! (She had a dream that that happened, anyway, which is just as horrifying as reality.)

My wife could no longer bear to stand in the garage and smoke, for fear that the mice would pounce on her. Instead, she started getting in her car, opening the garage door, and backing out into the driveway. That way, at least, she could be out of the garage, away from the mice, and warm in the car with the engine running.

Which brings us to the note on the floor: “We mous wunt cheez or els!”

The mice have made their demand. Now, I am faced with a terrible choice. Do I cave in and give them what they want, opening the door to future demands…or do I refuse to comply, perhaps triggering an all-out war?

And if I give in to the mice, what do I do about the moles and ground bees, who also have demands on the table? My wife has also had terrible dreams about each of these backyard forces embarking on a bloodthirsty rampage.

She claims there is one simple solution, if only I have the courage to follow through with it. We must revoke our agreed-upon ban on smoking in the house, thereby removing her from the line of fire. If she isn’t forced to stand around and smoke in the garage and the yard (like some kind of sub-human lowlife), she won’t anger the little creatures by infringing further on their territory. The fate she has foreseen in her nightmares can be averted by welcoming the poor, haggard smoker back in from the cold front lines.

It seems like a sensible plan. I only hope we can implement it in time, before this madness goes any further. Before the mice leave any more drops of water or bits of bubble wrap on the garage floor.

February 10, 2006

Highlights of the Week

As I’ve been doing every week without fail since 1957, I now present you with the highlights of the week that was--February 6-10, 2006.

Monday, February 6: What I thought was a prank phone call turned out to be an urgent message from my alien masters. I didn’t realize this until I’d already cursed them out and told them never to call my home again. Lord Shaa will not be pleased. He was counting on me to give the crucial signal alerting the Hordes of G’losh to make their move...so I guess the invasion is off.

Tuesday, February 7: While my wife’s car was at the repair shop, she drove my car, and I drove my father-in-law’s. Life became more interesting when I opened the trunk, where I found a pirate radio station rig, a small arsenal of medieval weapons, and a stone with the power to carry its bearer into the seventh dimension.

Wednesday, February 8: Today, I showed a corporate executive in the building where I work how to pull extra lengths of paper towel from the stingy new automated dispenser. Since then, I’ve noticed wadded up paper towels littering the hallways. I’ve also seen wet towels spread out and stuck to the walls to form letters and symbols. Building security is on the lookout for the mysterious perpetrator.

Thursday, February 9: Uncle Giblet finally got his dream job, reporting on the voices in his head to the world at large. It’s a “for-the-love” kind of job, as the pay is Monopoly money, and the only people who want to hear more about the voices in Giblet’s head are the voices in Giblet’s head. He plans to expand the franchise to include the voices in his fingers and kneecaps.

Friday, February 10: While picking up a Cobb salad at McDonald’s, I tried to joke around with the counter attendant. Not only did she refuse to participate, but she answered my efforts by jumping the counter and smacking me repeatedly with a rock-hard McGriddle. She followed this by dumping the salad down my shirt, pouring dressing on my head, and stuffing plenty of extra napkins down my trousers. STILL she never cracked a smile!

Whew! What a week! How can the next one even hope to measure up?

February 3, 2006

Just another typical day in the life for me.

Nothing special happened today, I’m sorry to say. Just ho-hum boredom and low-key blahs.

It started with my usual drive to work. This included scaring off a tailgater by slamming on my brakes, waiting for a herd of sheep to cross the lane, jumping my car over the missing section of bridge down by Miller’s farm, and breaking up a mugging with the cannon-launched grappling hook.

Next, I parked in my usual spot atop the parking garage and walked to the elevator. I was greeted with the friendly message scrawled on the doors long ago by someone having mean-spirited fun: “F**k You!” When the doors opened, and I entered the car, I reached for one of the folded slips of white paper taped to every square inch of wall by the Poet Bureau. The poem I chose was called “Rock Scissors Chicken” and left me thinking about the true meaning of beauty as I stepped out on the ground floor.

I entered the building where I work and went to my cubicle. I opened my “door,” which in true Les Nessman style is really just a chair with the word “Door” written on a piece of paper taped to the back of it. Then, I sat in my chair, which is a door with a sign that reads “Chair” taped to it. I put my bookbag down on my desk, which is a bearskin rug with a sign that says “Desk” on it. Then, I turned on my computer, which is a computer with the word “Nothing” on it.

After starting my chores for the day, I went to the break room for a cold drink. When I took two ice cubes from a tray in the freezer, a surly co-worker leaped out from behind the water cooler and charged me. He grabbed me by my shirt-front and throttled me violently, screaming purple-faced the whole time. “YOU TAKE SOME, YOU MAKE SOME!” he said. “ICE DOESN’T MAKE ITSELF!” When I promised to make some ice, he released me, whereupon I ran like hell and hid in the men’s room.

On my lunch break, I went for a swim at the neighborhood YMCA. While crossing the length of the pool, however, one of the floating lane dividers hit me in the head. Once I stopped and looked around, I realized that a guy was trying to pull the divider over to mark off his lane, with complete disregard for anyone who got in his way. “Nice one, buddy!” I said. “What are you, blind?” After which, the two of us got into a knock-down-drag-out fight, using the divider floats as weapons to bludgeon each other. He won, which was kind of embarrassing, given that he was probably in his 60s and wearing a truss under his trunks.

Next, I nipped over to Central Park to get in on the big pep rally for the Pittsburgh Steelers, who were Superbowl bound. There were people in the crowd with foam hats that looked like steel beams driven through their heads. There was also a steel beam with a hat that looked like a person driven through it. The local marching bands did a nice job playing the fight song, until a team of NFL reenactors ran them down while reenacting the playoff game against Colorado . I stood in line for a half-hour waiting for a black-and-gold gob until I finally read the sign more carefully and realized they were giving away black-and-gold “globs.” Said globs, in some cases slimy, in other cases muddy, did not look terribly appetizing.

Like I said, just another boring, uneventful day in me-ville. Yawn.

January 27, 2006

The woodpecker finally shows up to apologize after all these years. He towers over me in the darkness, the whites of his giant bulging eyes glowing like phosphorescent alarm clock dials. I see the outlines of his cartoony face with its wild red crest and balloony cheeks…and worst of all, I see the beak.

It gleams golden in the pale light from his eyes, a metallic curve swooping up to a spiky point that looks like it could drive right through my skull with one peck. It is this that haunted my childhood nightmares for years, this very beak, this very creature.

This very moment, as the crazed thing appears by my bed in the night.

“Hoo hoo hoo!” Its voice is just as I remember it from television, looping and zany and lunatic. “Sorry ‘bout the nightmares, kid! No hard feelins, right? Woo hoo!”

I shrink back into the pillows. I’m forty years old, I tell myself. How can I possibly be afraid? For that matter, how can this even be happening?

It must be a dream. How can it be anything else?

“I’m a gonna make it up to ya by takin’ ya on a trip!” The beak dips perilously close to my eye, then swings up, then dips even closer. “Next stop, A-OOGA LAND !”

The beak swipes downward. It’s as razor-sharp as it looks. Though I push away fast, the tip of the thing still comes up from my cheek daubed in blood.

“There’s nothin’ but antics in A-OOGA LAND ,” says the woodpecker. “You’re gonna WOVE it, pal! You’ll become a thing just like me and spend eternity bouncing back from mortal wounds!”

The beak chops back down and nips my shoulder. I grab for the spot, and my hand comes away bloody.

“Come with me, pal!” The freakish creature leans toward me. “Quickest way to that magic land is for me to gobble ya up on this side and spit ya out on the other!”

As he dives at me, I heave up a pillow between us. The razor-sharp beak jabs right through it.

While the woodpecker shreds the pillow, I leap from the bed and stumble through the bedroom door. I hammer my way downstairs and throw open the front door of the house.

The sky in every direction is purple. I hear music like a hurdy-gurdy and smell nothing but rubber and French fries. Across the street, an elephant in a tutu beats a six-foot-tall frog to death with its blood-streaked trunk.

Behind me, the door to my house closes softly. I hear a familiar voice.

“Woo hoo hoo HOO hoo.”

January 6, 2006

Help! Hideous creatures have invaded my gym!

Flushed and dripping with purple sweat that smelled like gasoline, the grunting creatures each grabbed hold of one of my arms, lifted me from the elliptical exercise machine, and threw me across the room. As I slammed into the far wall and slid to the floor, the creatures fought each other for possession of the elliptical machine, slapping and shaking each other with great ferocity.

“I put on ten pounds over the holidays!” said the creature in the yellow tank top and bright red sweat pants.

“Try twenty!” said the other creature, whose rolls of fat hung out from under her overstuffed belly shirt. “I need this machine more than you do!”

Dazed, I got to my feet and headed for the door. Just as I touched the handle, one of the creatures finally said it, and I understood. I knew who and what they were and why they had invaded the gym where I regularly worked out.

“This is my New Year’s resoluuution!” said yellow tank top. “Rrresoluution!”

They were the deadliest and most irritating form of gymnasium life, the Resolutionists. Every year, they swarm through the nation’s gyms, chasing goals that they know in their hearts they will never, ever attain. They come in early January, eager to fulfill their New Year’s resolutions and lose the weight they gained over the holidays.

They are gone by February, sometimes sooner…but not before they have made their terrible mark.

While the two Resolutionists continued to fight over the elliptical machine, I stumbled into the hallway. I opened the door to the basketball court…and was knocked off my feet by a stampede. Roaring with macho bravado, a pack of Resolutionists charged into the hallway, fighting for possession of a ball, oblivious to the fact that they had left the court. One of them bounced the ball off my head, caught it between his slimy white tusks, and bolted down the corridor. The rest followed, squealing and squawking like a henhouse afire.

Dragging myself up from the floor, I shook my head hard, trying to calm the dizziness. I hobbled off down the hallway toward the weight room, then caught myself before entering. Through the doorway, I saw barbell plates flying back and forth, plates as heavy as forty-five pounds skimming through the air like Frisbees. “My resoluuution is to bench twice my body weight!” shouted someone. Equipment clanged and crashed like the pounding pistons on a factory floor. “My resoluuuution is to double the size of my biceps and carve out my six pack!” said someone else.

I turned around and headed for the locker room. Even there, I found no peace. More Resolutionists crammed the rows of lockers, hogging bench space and leaving me no place to change. In the showers, naked Resolutionists jockeyed for position under the showerheads, filling the room from wall to wall with one heaving, purple-sweated, white-tusked mass of scaly green flesh.

“Hey!” one of them said to me from the middle of the shifting mass. “Can I borrow your soap, Mister?”

Without answering, I turned around and walked out. I left the showers and the locker room behind and staggered out into the snow, so shellshocked that I didn’t feel the cold though I wore only shorts and a t-shirt.

I made a resolution myself then. It involved staying away from the gym until February.

December 16, 2005

Can the little men in the light bulb save the universe?

“Don’t shovel me!” said my snow-covered driveway. “Please, sir. Please don’t do it!”

Leaning on my shovel, I frowned at the slope of white leading from my garage to the street. “But I have to, driveway snow,” I told it. “I mean, come on. You’re at least six inches deep here. My wife and I have to be able to get our cars out, right?”

“You don’t understand.” The snow had a high, piping voice. More flakes fluttered down from above as it spoke. “I am a magic snow, friend! Somehow, I have developed intelligence and free will! If you were to shovel me, my newfound mind and will would disappear forever!”

“Hm.” I thought it over for a moment, then nodded. “All right then. I’ll grant you another hour of life…but then I’ve gotta shovel you. Sorry, man.”

“Oh thank you,” said the driveway snow. “Even one more hour of life is better than none.”

Turning, I closed the garage door and leaned the snow shovel against the wall. Next, I headed for the rear of the garage, where the cold water pipe leading up to the kitchen sink had frozen solid. To thaw the ice, I got an old hair dryer from the basement, plugged it in, switched it on, and directed hot air at the copper pipe.

Almost immediately, the pipe yelped. “Hey!” It spoke in a gurgly alto voice. “Cut it out, pal! You’re destroying an entire civilization in here!”

Stunned, I jerked the hair dryer away from the plumbing. “What? You mean…there’s somebody in there?”

“Yeah,” said the voice from the pipe. “We’re a race of genius crystals evolved from mutated amoeba. We’ve just entered our renaissance era, so buzz off!”

I stood on tiptoe and stared up at the pipe, looking for some sign of the beings within. “How many of you are there?”

“Look,” said the voice from the pipe. “Could you just give us like two more hours? We oughtta have our escape vessel launched into space by then.”

“All right,” I said with a shrug, then headed upstairs to change a burned-out light bulb in the kitchen.

The light bulb’s voice was deep and rich. “Stay your hand!” it said as I reached up for it. “Can’t you see we’re trying to save the universe in here?”

I sighed and rolled my eyes. “The universe, is it?”

“Unscrew the bulb, and you’ll see! Everything will wink out of existence in one screaming instant, leaving naught but a trembling membrane in an ash-gray nothingscape!”

“I give up,” I said, and headed for the living room to watch TV.

My wife came downstairs a moment later. She didn’t believe a word I said about the snow or the plumbing or the light bulb telling me not to do my chores. At least, that was what she said until I threw my voice in her direction.

“How wonderful,” she said in a voice that didn’t match the movements of her mouth and sounded not at all like her own. “Sparing the living snow and the civilization in the pipe and the little men in the light bulb is much more important than doing anything I asked you to do around the house tonight. Bless you, my husband. Bless you.”

November 30, 2005

The mystery man in the toilet stall shared his twisted wisdom.

This morning, I had to dry my hands after washing them in the men’s room at the building where I work. While using the new “hands-free” paper towel dispenser, I told another restroom patron at the sink that I was annoyed because I couldn’t get more than one length of towel to feed out of the dispenser at one time. “You have to tear off the first one for the machine to reset,” I said, demonstrating as I explained it. “Then, you have to wait for the red light to switch off. After that, you can finally wave your hand in front of the sensor to get a second length of towel. I hate this system!” The other guy joined in complaining about the dispenser…but we were both brought up short by a voice from one of the toilet stalls.

“You don’t have to do it that way,” said the voice. “I know how to get it to work. After the first towel comes out, tug on it without tearing it. Then wave at the sensor.” Sure enough, when I did as he said, I was able to get the dispenser to wind out as many towel lengths in a row as I liked. “How’d you know how to do that?” I said.

“Because I’m smarter than you,” said the man in the stall. “In fact, I know a lot of things you don’t.” “Like what?” I said.

“For one thing, the universe is a ball of string batted around by a cosmic cat. You and your human ilk are a disease infecting an otherwise perfect and serene creation.”

“What the heck?” I said.

“Better get back to my desk,” said the other guy who’d been complaining about the towel dispenser with me. He flipped the door open and scooted out of the bathroom in a hurry.

“On a more mundane level, you personally are a failure in every way that counts.” The man in the stall snickered. “You are under constant observation by higher lifeforms who laugh day and night at your ridiculous pratfalls.”

“Who are you?” I said.

“Your superior in every way,” said the man in the stall. “I have come to replace you and smear your so-called ‘good name’ in every way imaginable. You will be forced to watch from a prison cell in a dark dimension with no name.”

I started backing toward the door. “What have you been smoking, man? You’re nuts!”

“I am but the first of the dreaded four toiletmen of your apocalypse! We shall ride our screaming porcelain steeds into this miserable realm and leave you and everyone who knows you exist in a state of terror that cannot be flushed away!”

With that, a single roll of toilet paper rolled out from under the stall, leaving a trail of white. The stall door swung open, and I was assailed with the stench of brimstone. Just before I ran as fast as I could from the bathroom, I saw that there was no one at all in the stall. No one I could see.

November 18, 2005

The man in the white panel truck wasn’t a man at all. He was an ape!

At lunchtime today, I followed my usual walking route from the offices where I work to the YMCA. Little did I know that I was about to encounter an uncommon hazard: a wild animal at the wheel of a motor vehicle.

As always, I walked across the parking lot along the Stonycreek River , then crossed a street and entered an alley behind the YMCA building. A large, white-panel truck sat at the far end of the alley. So far as I could tell from a distance, a man was in the driver’s seat of the vehicle.

When I had walked halfway through the alley, the truck lurched toward me…and there was not enough room for both of us to get through at the same time. Angry that the driver couldn’t wait just ten more seconds to drive down the alley, I stepped to one side, pressing myself against the wall of the building, and waited for him to pass.

And that was when I realized: the driver wasn’t a human being!

As the truck lumbered toward me, the driver shook his arms in the air over his head and hooted in a simian fashion. As I got a closer look, I could clearly see that his face was that of an ape, not a man!

The ape driver continued to shake his arms wildly in the air and howl at me. He hopped up and down in his seat and bared his bright white teeth at me. For seemingly no reason at all, he shrieked and jumped with all the savagery of a jungle creature…perhaps just to demonstrate his supremacy and revel in his victory in making me duck to one side of the alley to let him pass through?

Since he let go of the wheel to flap his arms and beat his chest, the truck veered to one side, heading for a row of cars parked there. At the last possible instant, the ape driver grabbed hold of the wheel and jerked it, wrenching the truck away from the cars…and hurling it perilously close to me. Just as the front end of the truck loomed toward me, I bolted around it and out of the alley, thanking God that I had escaped the ordeal alive and intact.

As I watched over my shoulder, the truck trundled out of the other end of the alley and turned the corner. I could still see the wild ape leaping and gesticulating in the driver’s seat.

Inside the YMCA, one of the staffers, Carol, was putting up a Christmas tree. “Where did that white panel truck come from?” I said. “It almost killed me!”

“Did you pull out in front of it?” said Carol.

“No, I was on foot,” I said.

“Huh,” said Carol. “There haven’t been any delivery trucks in the parking lot all day.”

November 1, 2005

I’ve started a podcast…about pods!

The following is a transcript of an excerpt from my upcoming podcast, in which--appropriately enough--I discuss things that are connected in some way to pods. Look for my series, “Oh My Pod,” on finer podcast directories everywhere.

“Oh My Pod,” Episode One

"So what I have here is a milkweed pod, which, you know, is one of my favorite pods. Always loved them as a kid. All that fluffy stuff inside, and it just blows everywhere when you open one up. Now what I’m going to do here is—no, change of plan. What I, what I was going to do was paint this milkweed pod, use a rainbow of colors and do sort of a psychedelic thing…but instead, I’m going to try to place this pod inside…(laughter)…I’m going to stuff this pod inside a pea pod. Well, I’ll try, anyway…but, you know (laughter)…pea pods are quite a bit smaller than (laughter) than milkweed pods, so it’s just cracking me up. THEN, I’m going to put the pea pod with the milkweed pod inside it (laughter) INSIDE this toy spaceship ESCAPE POD…and (uproarious laughter) okay…this is…(more uproarious laughter)…then, I’m gonna wrap the escape pod in this…(laughter)…in this picture of a POD OF WHALES I got here! And THEN…oh, man, this rocks…and THEN, I have a poster of the POD PEOPLE from…(laughter)…from INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS…and I’ll…(laughter)…I’ll put THAT inside…(laughter)…(starts to choke)…can’t breathe…(more choking)…HELP!"

October 21, 2005

How was I to know that my night at the movies would end with a screaming clown?

It looked like I would be the only person in the theater last night…but two more people, a middle-aged man and woman, showed up right before the feature started. Naturally, they sat in the row directly behind me. By the middle of the movie, these people were the only thing I could pay any attention to. The man started by heaving his boots up onto the headrest of the seat in front of him. Even though this was four seats to the right of me, I couldn’t help but notice when he continued to kick the seat-back, jarring the whole row of seats. I turned and gave him the furry eyeball, which seemed to settle him down…but not for long. After he’d finished crunching his way through an extra-large trough of popcorn, he began a symphony of snorting and horking. He kept making a spitting sound, as if trying to spit flakes of chewing tobacco or maybe popcorn kernels from his lips. It only got worse from there. It wasn’t enough to repeat every funny line loudly to his wife and ask dumbass questions about every plot point. No, he had to add to the fun by clipping his fingernails, then whittling a block of wood into a misshapen lump that he threw at the screen. Then, out came the washboard and spoons, which he played in a raucous rhythm that I think was supposed to match the movie’s soundtrack…and his wife joined in with an impromptu clog dance. Before long, for reasons that escape me, the guy took his shirt off, exposing a flabby and pendulous gut, and ran up and down every row of seats (leaping right over me as I tried in vain to trip him). Next came a falsetto rendition of “The Lumberjack Song,” followed by alternating simulated dog barking and cat meowing. I got up to find a manager who could put a stop to this crazed performance…but the guy and his wife wouldn’t let me leave the theater. They boxed me into my row, and whenever I jumped to the next row, they followed and boxed me in there, too. Finally, I rolled up my sleeves and stomped toward the woman. “Out of my way,” I shouted. “We’re here to save your soul,” she replied with a warm smile. “We are your new mother and father.” She reached out with both arms, and I turned the other way. The man was waiting there, his face smeared with clown-white makeup, a bulbous red ball on his nose. “YIEEEEE,” he shrieked, his saliva spraying my face. “YAAAAAA!! WIIEEEEE!!” I heard the woman running up behind me, screaming a lullaby, even as the clown painted my face with something that smelled and felt like ham salad. And still, there was not an usher in sight.

October 10, 2005

This morning, during the ice cream social with the Secretary General, I kept daydreaming about Royal. Whatever happened to him? No one seems to know. It’s as if he fell off the face of the planet two years ago. To hear his glorg tell it, Royal left Saturn to pick up a pack of cigarettes on Mars, and he’s been gone ever since…but glorgs, as you know, cannot be trusted, so this might just be pure B.S. Investigators have turned up no clues in any of the parallel dimensions or virtual realities. Rewards offered by Royal’s starball teammates have attracted one false lead after another. I don’t think anyone’s even looking for him anymore, though they should be, since Royal is the key to it all, the only man alive (if he’s still alive) who can prevent the destruction of the galaxy in seven years. When I daydream about him, though, I mostly think of the little things: his constant cursing, his depraved dirty jokes, his hatred of lying glorgs, and his love of Martian bluegrass music. More often than not, I remember one particularly glorious day, tubing with him down a liquid methane river on Saturn’s moon, Titan, getting high doing oxygen shots in our spacesuits and blowing away red-whiskered Titanian platypiranhapuses on the riverbank. Please, if you or someone you know sees hide or hair of Royal, contact me immediately. He raised me like a son, even though he was actually my son from an alternate universe where people age more rapidly than in our own.

September 29, 2005

Miles Davis walked up to me this morning on my way out the door. He shook my hand, smiled, and promised that he would get me through the day. I knew that this was a bold claim, as I had a tough day ahead, but Miles’ firm grip and confident wink gave me the lift I needed to get rolling. As I slid down into my car and backed out of the driveway, I kept my window down to hear as much of the tune he was playing on his trumpet as I could. It was beautiful…light notes rippling from the bell of his horn like a stream of water, like the call of the first bird of the morning starting up the dawn chorus. I stopped on the street and listened, and I swear I got a chill straight up my back, cool and slow like one of Miles’ long high notes. He waved a hand at me, “Shoo, get going,” and then he closed his eyes and played the kind of drifting, dreamy ballad that he does so well, so perfectly every single time. Doo doo…dee doo dee da...da dee…da doo…deeee. Standing in the dewy grass as red gold purple leaves fluttered down around him, sky a shimmering bright blue, his back straight, his face unscarred, unworried. Dee dee da…doo dee deeee. I wiped a tear from my cheek, wishing I could listen all day and night, and then I checked the clock on the dash of the car. Running late again. Miles’ eyes were shut tight, but I had a feeling he saw me wave goodbye as the car rolled forward. One last long note, which I never did hear the end of, and then I’d gone too far and couldn’t hear him and couldn’t see him in my rear view mirror either.

September 6, 2005

At first, the e-mail exchange with my alternate self was fascinating and fun. I learned, for instance, that Anti-Bob has glow-in-the-dark skin with swirls and patches of every color in the rainbow. He can generate miniature duplicates of himself to serve as butlers, friends, or foodstuffs. He flies through the weird, green soup that fills outer space in his home dimension with a singing ship that looks like a cross between a giant worm and a quivering soap bubble. Anti-Bob is 145 years old but still possesses the vitality of a twenty-year-old. He lives in a floating house made of cotton candy and flower petals with a genius wife made of pure electricity. Anti-Bob’s nose runs constantly…and by running, I mean it jumps off his face and zips around on tiny, sneakered feet.

Unfortunately, being opposites, the two of us did not get along well when he came to visit. For one thing, when I made the mistake of letting him drive my car, he turned out to be a front-seat driver, continually harassing me for how I was sitting and moving and breathing while he drove. When we went to dinner at a restaurant, he criticized the wait staff for their excellent service and lashed out at me for picking up the check. His accommodations in the guest room of my home were far too comfortable, he said; the soft pillow and mattress would certainly keep him asleep all night. And my POLITENESS! It made him sick to his stomach. If this was how I treated visiting alternate selves from other dimensions, he was surprised that I EVER entertained such company.

On his way through the portal back to his home (two days early, I might add), Anti-Bob punched me in the nose and kicked me in the crotch on my way down. He cursed me out and swore that he would never return to this miserable cesspit that I called “reality.”

The next day, being Anti-Bob, he dropped me an e-mail to let me know what a wonderful time he had had during his visit. His miniature duplicates agreed, including the one that he was munching on while typing his message.

August 23, 2005

After returning from Paris this morning, I noticed something strange about Uncle Marcel—namely, that I had an Uncle Marcel. He lumbered up out of the basement on his little lobster legs, wrapped in a threadbare smoking jacket the size of a baseball field tarpaulin, and clapped me on the shoulder as if I should know him. “What a trip, eh?” he said, grinning around the toothbrush in his mouth, dripping toothpaste on his smoking jacket and the floor. “Dose aliens…who’d have guessed dey were so delicious?” I pinched my eyes shut and tried to rub away all sight of the mustachioed behemoth, but when I opened them, he actually seemed to have enlarged. Instead of taking up one quarter of the kitchen, he now occupied at least one half of it. “Paté de foie gras a la Alpha Centaurian,” said Marcel, spitting orange toothpaste in my face. “C’est magnifique!” He had to be some kind of dream or illusion, and I comforted myself with this thought…at least until my wife came downstairs. Or should I say, the woman who claimed to be my wife. “Hey there, Marshall !” she hollered to the bloated Frenchman, her Southern-fried accent twanging like banjo strings. “Welcome back, y’all!” “Merci,” said Marcel. “You are a breath of ze fresh air, Mitzi.” Not only did this woman have a different name than my wife, but she looked nothing at all like her. Instead of blonde hair, she had NO hair. Instead of a trim figure, she was huger than Marcel. “Gimme a taste a that there sweetpaste,” she said, scooping orange toothpaste foam from my face with a fingertip. “Mmm,” she said as she tasted the foam. “No more homemade frostins fer MY cakes an cookies!” Even as I backed out of the room, my heart slamming in my chest, I suddenly realized what was going on. Somehow, I had slipped through a crack into an alternate reality, one in which everything I knew had taken a different turn. My life was a nightmare…but otherwise, as I discovered later, the world was a perfect utopia, with all suffering transformed into joy. Was my personal suffering a small price to pay for the glories of New Eden? Should I just do a gut check and accept it? Or should I find my friend, Gila Robinette, who posts an avatar in all the manifold alternate worlds, and sell another piece of my psyche for safe passage back home, where the world sucked but at least I personally was happy? I don’t dare speak of this in front of Marcel or Mitzi.

August 19, 2005

When the man with silver eyes had given up wrestling for my shovelful of turf and rock, he backed away seven paces and watched me, breathing hard. Waves of pure hatred seemed to ripple out from him, though I had never seen him before in my life and had not done anything to enrage him until he tried to take away my shovel. Glaring, I stormed past him and dumped the turf and rock over the side of the hill, then backed away toward my house across the street. “Give back my dog!” he said, his voice strangely high-pitched and crackling. “Give me Meeney-Miney!” He feinted forward, as if to grab the shovel that he thought was his dog. I ducked back, raising the shovel high. “Meeney-Miney doesn’t love you anymore, man!” I said, swinging the shovel back and forth. “Go find a new dog! Or better yet, a hamster!” The man’s silver eyes flicked gold and began emitting a strange glow. I felt my knees weakening as I reached the protection of the garage. “I’ll never leave without her!” shouted the man. I hit the control for the garage door. As the door began to descend, a bright flash of light blinded me. The next thing I knew, just before the door touched bottom, a shaggy white cat sprinted under it. The cat leaped onto my shoulders and clawed at me, its meows sounding for all the world like “Meeney-Miney Meeney-Miney.”

August 11, 2005

I thought that I had an unspoken agreement with the guy who parks on the roof of the parking garage. If I got to the elevator before he did in the morning, and he was in sight, I would hold the elevator for him. If he got to the elevator before I did, he would hold the elevator for me…at least, that was how it worked until this morning. When I pulled into my parking spot, I saw that the guy was at the elevator, and the doors were closed. I tooted my horn as I pulled in, then leaped out of my car…just in time to see the doors of the elevator open and the guy step inside. Then, the doors closed. He had violated the unspoken agreement, leaving me stranded. Enraged, I threw open the door to the stairwell and rushed down the steps. I beat the elevator to the ground level, and when the elevator doors opened, I was waiting for him. Unfortunately, the guy was not in the elevator car. In fact, no one was in there…though I caught a fleeting glimpse of a shadowy shape in one corner. As soon as I looked in that corner, the shape was gone, though I caught another glimpse from the opposite corner. This time, when I focused on the spot where the shape should have been, I distinctly heard a man scream. “Help!” he howled, his agonized voice rising above a churning snarl and a ravenous chewing sound. “HELP ME!!!” I backed away fast, tripping over the curb behind me, my heart pounding as I realized that only the rude guy’s violation of the unspoken agreement had saved me from a terrible fate. A final, awful scream, mingled with the fierce roaring of something bestial in some realm just an elevator ride apart from our own, pierced the morning air as the doors of the car slowly slid shut.

August 3, 2005

After returning early this morning from the secret meeting with Mr. Penumbra, I sat for a time in the back yard, waiting for the birds to begin their lovely Dawn Chorus. As expected, the chilly pre-dawn air filled with lilting, breathtaking birdsong all at once. Smiling and sipping my mug of warm krill-nog, I leaned back, drinking in the delightful concert…and then, I heard the unmistakable sound of a high-pitched human voice joining the birds. This voice, the voice of a woman, sang a familiar song with all the glorious force and range of an opera-level soprano. Her song: the “Alphabet Song” that taught so many of us our A-B-Cs as children. Next, I heard the voice of a male tenor, upraised in magnificent, ululating grandeur, piping “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” in the midst of the avian medley. Then, I heard one more human voice joining the birds’ Dawn Chorus…but this voice was fainter. Mug in hand, I rose from my chair, striding into the yard and cocking my ears to try to capture the sound. My tail picked up cool droplets of dew when it brushed the damp grass at my feet. I squinted and strained to hear…and finally, the voice became clear to me. It was the voice of an old man, and it was neither operatic nor in tune. Over and over, he sang another familiar and well-loved refrain: “Beans, beans, the musical fruit. The more you eat, the more you toot. The more you toot, the better you feel. Beans, beans, for every meal.”

July 19, 2005

In the grocery store today, the half gallons of one percent milk were out of reach. When I asked the man who was stocking the cooler shelves to hand me one, he proceeded to hand me a full gallon of two percent. I handed it back, asking again for one percent, whereupon he handed me a pint of whole chocolate milk. When I handed that one back and asked again for one percent, he reached around into the cooler and lifted out the goggle-eyed head of a fish. Instead of handing it to me directly, he tossed it down the aisle, shouting "Fetch, boy!" and giggling as it flew. At this point, I decided to cut bait. I thanked him for his time, gave him a thumbs-up gesture, and proceeded to the fresh suit counter.

July 18, 2005

On the way to work today, I first passed through the wooded zone near my house, enjoying the sweet perfume of mingled foliage hanging heavy in the humid air. I breathed deeply, grateful for the summery scent...then got behind a bus. The bus belched its black smoke all the way across town, forming a noxious cloud that clung to my car and snaked through every window seal and vent. Squinting against the cloud, I saw what looked like a withered swami with a hooked nose atop the bus, beaming and clacking the castanets on his bony fingers. Almost too late, I realized that I was following the bus too closely, and I slammed the brake down hard. Heart pounding, I rubbed my eyes...and the spots on the inside of my lids swirled like snowflakes, each with a tiny, hook-nosed face.

July 11, 2005

The house that my wife and I recently purchased came with a rickety, dilapidated deck around the above-ground pool. Today, as contractors tore off the decking, they found that many creatures had taken up residence underneath it: rabbits, moles, chipmunks, bees…even a bat! And something else: at the heart of a patch of thick, pink weeds, a drain formed of some kind of strange, spongy material. When the contractors tried digging around it, they never seemed to make any progress; eventually, they realized that the drain itself was retracting into the ground as they dug. One of the men, Garland , refused to work further on this oddity…but Shoop and Thorn brushed off his worries and continued to excavate. By mid-afternoon, they stood in a six-foot hole…and the spongy tube was at its base, dug out no deeper than when they had lifted away the first shovel-full of earth. While wiping their foreheads with blue bandanas, they heard something and turned to stare at the house. Shoop, the sweeter of the two, climbed out of the hole and retrieved a can of white paint and a brush from the truck. I don’t know the meaning of the strange sigils he is still painting around the swimming pool while Thorn chants in the pit, but I’m starting to have second thoughts about using the pool this summer.
©2005 Robert T. Jeschonek

July 6, 2005

In the shower at the YMCA today, an elderly gentleman said to me, “The one day I don’t bring soap, and there’s no soap in the tray! I don’t have any soap!” Apparently, he uses pieces of soap left behind by other YMCA patrons, as the “Y” doesn’t supply soap, at least not in the showers open to basic members. In a generous mood, I broke my small bar of soap and gave him half…which he proceeded to chew vigorously and swallow, the biggest, most grateful grin of all time spreading across his knobby features.

June 27, 2005

In the checkout line at our local Wal-Mart Super Center last night, my wife, Wendy, saw that the couple ahead of us had a bag of Bing cherries. Wendy had been unable to find cherries in the produce department and was dying for them. When Wendy asked the couple where they found them, the woman actually walked back with her to show her where they were...and upon finding that the cherries were all gone, she GAVE Wendy half of her bag, which she had already purchased! Sometimes, it seems like the world has really gone to the assholes, and then someone goes and does something nice like this for absolutely no reason. It helped balance out the whacked-out driver who nearly ran me off the road an hour earlier.

June 22, 2005

Waves of excruciating pain engulfed me yesterday as I endured the passage of a kidney stone. In the hospital processing room, I shouted and banged the walls in pain, but the processor went right on asking questions. This morning, a man showed up at my front door, demanding to take possession of the stone. The man, Al Dritch, claimed to be an orderly at the hospital. He believes that this stone will provide him with the ability to foretell the future using a technique similar to rolling bones or reading swine intestines. I'm wondering how much to rip him off...I mean charge him for it...