Deadly is the Female

Hey, friend. Let me buy you a drink. I guess we know the same dame. Blonde, waist like a wasp and everything else like Venus. Cold eyes, but pretty. Yeah, that's her. I guess you do know her. Let me tell you about her.

She wore night cream the day I met her and it wasn't even evening yet. Later I found the pistol under her her pillow, daintily covered with a doily her maiden aunt Lise had sent her.

That about covers her, doesn't it: guns, vanity, and a calculated femininity that men fall for but women see through. I fell like a stack of papers with nothing but bad news in the headlines.

I thought she was just about perfect, but I was just a bum, a door to door salesman hawking illustrated bibles. I knocked on her door in the apartment building. She opened it wearing that house dress - the lavender blue one I know you've seen her in. I looked at her as a customer first. Let me tell you, friend, a single woman does not want to buy an illustrated bible even if she's Irish just off the boat, so it took a moment to realize she was a woman and not just a mark. By that time I guess she'd sized me up and figured out how long she could milk me for and just what for.

Within a week I'd punched out three men in two different bars for her. Broke the ribs of the second, beating him after he was down. Do I remember why? Yeah, I do: I did it for her. She convinced me to buy a pistol after the second fight. I picked up a little .38 at a pawn shop. Took another month after that before I shot anyone. I guess you just met her, 'cause I can see you’re not packing.

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Read my associate's interpretation of this postcard here: Progression Towards Something of Unquestionable Insignificance

The Cool and the Crazy

"Maybe," she says to herself, "maybe suggesting we re-enact A Clockwork Orange was a bad idea, given that these boys will connect not to the malaise and social criticism of that book, but will be interested in the violence instead."

It was, in retrospect, like giving a teenager with women problems a copy of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Or showing Scarface to a disadvantaged Cuban-American teenager, but ejecting the DVD just before Tony Montana's empire starts to go downhill. Subject to only surface interpretation. A broken bottle smashes at her feet. She scuttles two steps back but a few shards hit her legs.

"Shit," she says to herself, "This is exactly what the guy who sold Mark David Chapman his first copy of Catcher in the Rye must have felt when he picked up the afternoon paper on December 8, 1980."

With a heaving, guilty sigh, she reaches for the phone and dials 911.

Read my associate's interpretation of this postcard here: Progression Towards Something of Unquestionable Insignificance.

Henry Darger's drawing table

Henry Darger's drawing table, originally uploaded by Billa.

The Amazing Colossal Man

The Amazing Colossal Man had a heart as big as a sofa, one of those old-fashioned ones that seated four or five people, just like the bench front seat in a 1973 Chevy Nova, or, if you grew up in the country, an Ford F150. Do you remember how your dad could fit you, your sister, and your mom beside him?

A child or a small woman could curl up comfortably with a book in one of the four chambers. A girl and a boy could sit together. It would be cozy. If the boy said something to make the girl mad - but not mad enough to run away for good - the girl would just move from atrium to ventricle. The boy would climb up the pulmonary artery and take a walk. Be guilty. By the time he reached the arteries of the neck he would feel sufficiently contrite to turn around and apologize. If she was young, the girl might cry or sulk in the ventricle while he was gone. If she was wise, she would do something to distract herself.

When he walked back through the superior vena cava and saw her gone he would notice her absence.

When he went through the tricuspid valve he would apologize. And then they might sit again together.

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Read my associate's interpretation of this postcard here: Progression Towards Something of Unquestionable Insignificance

TBF 11, originally uploaded by KatrencikPhoto.

DSC_6531, originally uploaded by KatrencikPhoto.

Daphnis and Chloe, Peter Jay Shippy

To soften their mouths they practice kissing
The earth like defectors or popes
Or Raskolnikovs seeking absolutions.

Her face pales like a page
Of deleted sentences.

“What?”

Her eyes are like wildflower seeds, perfect
For his little catapult.

“Nothing.”

I, Robot

Do you, Robot, android, metal servant, child of Rossum, anthropomorphic machine, artificial human, heir of Unimate, mechanical serf, take Astronaut to be your lawful wedded wife, to have and to hold, to protect and obey, till death or system breakdown do you part?

I do.

And do you, Astronaut, spaceman, cousin to cosmonauts and taikonauts, son of Glenn and Armstrong, space traveller, moon-lander, and interstellar test pilot, take Robot to be your lawful wedded husband, to have and to hold, to direct and to repair, till meteor impact or life support system failure do you part?

I do.

By the power vested in me by the lunar government, I now pronounce you Robot and Astronaut. You may pick up the bride with your hideously cold mechanical arms and trot across the barren surface of this wedding-moon.
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Read my associate's interpretation of this postcard here: Progression Towards Something of Unquestionable Insignificance

Gang Girl

When they jump you into the gang, they take you into an alley in Alphabet City and beat you for thirteen minutes. You will not be allowed to fight back. This is about running the gauntlet, not about proving your mettle as a fighter, because presumably you’ve already done that. Thirteen minutes is a long time, and you're a superstitious teenage girl, and it’s 1954, and you dropped out of high school after a couple years of not doing the work, and your mother and father are first generation immigrants who until pretty recently believed in the evil eye, so it's going to be hard not to focus on the significance of the number, but try to keep your mind off of it.

You're going to be beaten by all the girls in the gang, and the problem is that the gang is so large that, even when they encircle you closely, not everyone in the gang will be able to reach to punch you. So a lot of the girls, the ones on the outskirts, the ones who can’t reach, end up insulting you, and the gang is big and they’ve had a lot of practice insulting new members. And some of the girls know your parents, and your brother, and that you sleep in the living room on the couch with a curtain between you and your parents’ bed because it's a tiny apartment, so the insults will hurt a lot more than the fists heavily striking your kidneys, and a lot more than the boots clumsily stomping your instep.

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Read my associate's interpretation of this postcard here: Progression Towards Something of Unquestionable Insignificance

Thirty feels a lot like 29.

But then 29 was awesome, and didn't feel anything like 28. And Lord knows that 24-27 were something of a blur. And, to be perfectly frank, 21-24 were also a blur, but a different kind of blur. And life before 21 was, well, kind of embarrassing, so let's just move past that and get back to thirty.

Thirty feels like 29, except I feel like I've got better balance, maybe a lower center of gravity. Try knocking me down now that I'm thirty: Yeah. You can't.

Thirty is pretty great so far.

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.

I sometimes have the sneaking suspicion
that every fun activity
I undertake with my closest friends
actually fits neatly
into a large and well-orchestrated plan intended
to lull me
into a long-term state of trust
which will eventually allow them to
murder me
with casual ease
and
a complete lack
of consequences.

A reasonable person might ask,
What motive?
I might answer:
As with any conspiracy, the motive isn't as important as the intent.

But if pressed for motive:
Take your pick.

Never go to a second location
with your closest comrades.
They might hit you in the head
with a shovel,
bury you in a ditch besides the freeway,
and then,
twenty-four hours later,
make a call
full of well-rehearsed panic
to the police
about a missing person.
After making the police report,
if they are clever,
they might make another call
to your parents:
It's about your son. Are you sitting down?

My Autopsy, Michael Dickman

There is a way
if we want
into everything

I’ll eat the chicken carbonara and you eat the veal, the olives, the
small and glowing loaves of bread

I’ll eat the waiter, the waitress
floating through the candled dark in shiny black slacks
like water at night

The napkins, folded into paper boats, contain invisible Japanese
poems

You eat the forks,
all the knives, asleep and waiting
on the white tables

What do you love?

I love the way our teeth stay long after we’re gone, hanging on
despite worms or fire

I love our stomachs
turning over
the earth


There is a way
if we want
to stay, to leave

Both

My lungs are made out of smoke ash sunlight air
particles of skin

The invisible floating universe of kisses, rising up in a sequinned
helix of dust and cinnamon

Breathe in

Breathe out

I smoke
unfiltered Shepheard’s Hotel cigarettes
from a green box, with a dog on the cover, I smoke them
here, and I’ll smoke them

There


There is a way
if we want
out of drowning

I’m having
a Gimlet, a Caruso, a
Fallen Angel

A Manhattan, a Rattlesnake, a Rusty Nail, a Stinger, an Angel
Face, a Corpse Reviver

What are you having?

I’m buying
I’m buying for the house
I’m standing the round

Wake me
from the dash of lemon juice,
the half measure of orange juice, apricot brandy,
and the two fingers of gin
that make up paradise


There is a way
if we want
to untie ourselves

The shining organs that bind us can help us through the new dark

There are lots of stories about intestines

People have been forced to hold them, alive and shocked awake

The doctors removed M’s smaller one and replaced it, the new
bright plastic curled around the older brother

Birds drag them out of the dead and abandoned

Some people climb them into Heaven

Others believe we live in one
God’s intestine!

A conveyor belt of stars and saints

We tie and we loosen

Minor
and forgettable
miracles

There is a difference between hollow and empty.

A hollow thing was never full and is not there to be filled.

An empty thing's function is to be filled.

Experience Retrieval

Floyd: The last time I drank, I ended up doing a Man-On-The-Street commercial for Tarzan on Ice.

*Flashback*

Floyd: It was awesome. He was flinging on skates, and the little monkey was funny! I wanna see it again!!

*End Flashback*

Liz: Yikes.

Floyd: Yeah, and I didn’t even see it.

Because the English language has a set number of words and because we are programmed with a specific American dialect which informs not just our word choice but our phrase choice, so even when relating the most intensely personal experiences we rely on the same phrases as everyone else. The result is that these phrases are code words through which we can access a multiplicity of intimate human experience.

This is what you’re all missing. The internet isn’t a tool for data retrieval. It’s a tool for experience retrieval.

Go to google.

Input “the last time I drank”
Input "my son's first words"
Input “my father’s last words”
Input “After he shot himself”
"How my parents met"
“She broke my heart and I didn’t even know it”
“I beat cancer”
“We lost the farm”

"When I hit bottom"
"I met your mother"
"My divorce"
"She said yes"

I have no idea what you will find.

Packing List for a Reunion

Two pairs of jeans, one Hawaiian shirt, one pair worn hiking boots, one belt, the address of a son whom you haven’t spoken to in fifteen years, two sets of chipped sunglasses, two hunting knives, several plastic bags of heirloom plant seeds, a tupperware container of homemade crackers and raisins, three lengths of braided sweetgrass as air freshener, a digital camera, one carboy of raspberry wine, a set of socket wrenches, a cell phone, a conversion van, and one girlfriend of roughly the same age of the already mentioned son.

Packing List for a Three-Week Vacation to the Bahamas

Twenty-five pairs of socks, 40 pairs of gray briefs, 21 2-ounce bottles of Purell hand sanitizer, a combination money belt/chastity belt, one velour tracksuit, travelers' checks in an amount sufficient to buy four mimosas each morning for 15 days and 10 mixed drinks each evening for 21 days (these mixed drinks will be split equally between myself and another person), twenty-five Powerbars (one for each meal plus four extra for between meals snacks), four hundred zinc supplements, and one dental dam.

What To Do In Case Of Grain Bin Entrapment

Objective: To know what course of action to take should someone become entrapped in a grain bin.



Background: Entrapment in a grain bin can be very serious.

Knowing the proper course of action can reduce rescue time and increase victim and rescuer safety.

• Turn off the auger or unloading equipment.


• Call the emergency rescue team or fire department.


• Be patient and do not give up. Individuals have survived for two hours completely submerged in grain. Wait for the rescue squad before attempting rescue.


• Offer assistance to rescuers, but follow the directions of the incident commander.


• Do Not activate the auger again until the victim is free.


• Ventilate the bin with an aeration system.


• Do Not activate the heat source.


• Avoid putting additional pressure on the victim.


• Only enter the bin if absolutely necessary, and only with safety lines.


• If you must enter the bin, use respiratory protection as required (dust filter masks, filter respirators, or a self-contained breathing apparatus).


• Gather plywood, sheet metal, bottomless large trash cans, or heavy cardboard cylinders for the rescuer to use to keep grain below the victim’s chest.

• If the victim is not completely submerged, construct a retaining wall if the grain slope is above the victim’s head.


• A series of retaining walls may be needed.


• Support or brace walls to prevent collapse.


• Remove grain from around the victim.


• Use a vacuum conveyor or scoop to remove grain from around victim.


• Put victim in a harness to keep victim from being swallowed by the grain.


• Be aware of the position of the victim’s body.