Breathe this in

I know what you're thinking:

'Life's great, I have lots of great things going for me, my relationships with people I care about are great, my career is great, I'm great at both chess and telling which fly caught on a spider web will be eaten first, I've got great lats, I drank a great latte recently, and when I let him my Latin mate Lettie let's me like leftie leaning lightning strike lesions on lascivious lions, I've got great gumption, the word 'great' is great, and I'm great at using it to lie about things being great when occasionally those things are only good, or possibly even so bad I just don't want to talk about them, yep, life's great, really great, except for one single thing - the fact that I'm pretty sure I have lungs - but how can I possibly know COMPLETELY for SURE that I have lungs?' 

Well people, as usual I'm here to help.  

Your current doubt is completely normal, as in fact it's actually impossible to know for SURE whether you have lungs or not, but there are numerous signs which can help you get as close as possible to figuring it out. And because I'm generous, sometimes even greatly generous, I'm going to share right now with you some signs to look out for that you do in fact have lungs:

- You can breath.

- You're currently a lesbian, or a gay man, or a heterosexual, possibly even a male or female or other, or even some kind of human.

- Or even some sort of mammal or possibly a reptile or bird, depending on whether you believe in science and what not. 

- You've never had a heart and lung transplant where the surgeon put in the new heart but then got lazy when it came to the lungs and was all like 'just throw in a couple of Coke cans and let's hit the bar', which is fair enough, I mean who hasn't gotten lazy at work? 

- You've also never had a surgeon successfully give you a new heart but then stick Pepsi cans in your body instead of lungs, laziness isn't brand specific people! 

- You don't live underwater.

- Or if you do, you live in an underwater palace with great air-conditioning.

- Or you live underwater without any palace, but bizarrely you can't seem to stop sucking on that really long straw that's pointing upwards.

- Or you live underwater, without a palace or a straw, but before you went down there you made sure to fill an owl up with lots of air and now suck on his beak lots. 

- When you smoke people say stuff to you like 'aren't you worried about your lungs?' 

- You're not from some kind of weird planet where people have cellos instead of lungs - do we have any of those people here? 

- Oh sure, deny you're one of those people if you damn well want to, but I'll catch you next time we run a marathon and you can't get up hills without your bow! 

- By the way I can get you wedding gigs if you need money.

- Ha, that was a trap, you need VIOLIN lungs to get wedding gigs! 

- Your name is Stephanie - in my experience most people named Stephanie have lungs.

- When you were a baby and cried a lot some dude went 'man that kids got some lungs'. 

- When someone asks you 'do you have lungs' you answer 'yes'. 

- You're not a liar. 

- At least not when lungs are involved. 

- Or you live underwater, without a palace or a straw, but before you went down there you made sure to get an owl to fill ITSELF up with air, and you were so impressed with its ability to follow directions you now breath by mouth kissing blow fish. 

So how'd you do? Do you have lungs?

If so, congratulations, you can breathe easy now, ha ha, but seriously, it's hard being lungless, so congratulations. 

If not, my commiserations, but worry not, I was serious before, if you have violins instead I can totally get you wedding gigs, or if it's Pepsi or Coke cans you can always sell them

to thirsty people at marathons.

Wow, happy endings for all. Except people with cellos for lungs. And blow fish. Poor guys get mouth kissed and then fed to underwater owls! 

Thirty one - Horse Foot Dice

With action on my brilliant plan now officially begun in an official sense, things were beginning to look very fortunate for me, officially. Of course by fortunate I meant unfortunate, and by unfortunate I meant unfortunately for those who wanted me to be unlucky in luck, and by luck I meant fortune, and by unlucky I meant unfortunately, and in this case unfortunately in the fortunate sense, officially. 

It gave me time to take stock. Something I didn't feel bad about at all, we were changing this restaurant to all Icelandic, and so there was no longer going to be any need for anything in the 'fresh produce', 'refrigeration' or 'petty cash' stock. If I didn't eat all that cash then it would just go to waste. 

And as I sat down to eat it, I began to take stock, this time in a not very selfless way, but instead in an extremely selfless way, by taking stock of my own mind. 

'I've got many things to be fortunate about' I stocked to myself. I stocked it so hard that I could feel it whip against the inside of my skull. 'But I've also got an equal amount of things to feel unfortunate about' I added to my thought stock, this time stocking it so hard that the whipping against the inside of my skull knocked me over, and caused me to cough up a printed zero from a one hundred dollar note. But was it the first zero or the second? I had no way of telling. And this made me sad. 'I need to take stock!' I screamed at my brain, and it needs to be BIG stock and I need to stock it NOW!' This last word, that is the word 'NOW' was stocked so BIG that it knocked me back to my feet, which made me light headed, which reminded me that my stomach was bleeding from my earlier fight - clearly fate wanted me to write a list of all my fortunate and unfortunate things, and write them in blood on the floor. The list came out as follows: 

Fortunate: The guy I pay to thicken my baths with wood-chips has given me a fifty percent discount since I no longer have access to my bath.  

Unfortunate: He now uses Pine wood, ewwww. 

Fortunate: Not one pen has ever DEMAND I stab myself in the eye with it, it's usually a polite request at best.

Unfortunate: I'm too polite to ever turn down a polite request.

Fortunate: I'm the one that convinced FRESH air that it would be WAY sexier if it would at least TRY wearing the bandana I gave it for Christmas. 

Unfortunate: FRESH air NOW seems to let just about ANYONE taste her. Hussy.

Fortunate: I'm the one who came up with the theory that if we painted the pyramids fluorescent orange they might finally reveal themselves to shoot lasers. 

Unfortunate: The Egyptian government for some reason won't lend me the people who built the pyramids to carry me around all the time, so I still have to walk! 

Fortunate: I'm the one who introduced the law making it illegal in some counties to not start every sentence with 'I'm the one'. 

Unfortunate: That's made dobbing your friend Kev in for murders they didn't commit just for fun, way less funny. 

Fortunate: Due to my best friend Kev being an amateur professional Botanist I've been lucky enough to wake up at various times surrounded by almost every variety of orchid.

Unfortunate: I'm almost deathly allergenic to orchids. 

Fortunate: But I've got to hand it to Kev, he keeps trying to find one I'm not allergic to. He often even tries the very day after I've whipped him or played a funny joke with him in mind. That's the kind of give and take that makes our friendship work. 

Unfortunate: I don't get the chance to whip him while I'm in the emergency room begging for another life saving anaphylactic shot. 

Fortunate: He's often there mumbling 'Kev, if you're just going to drive him to the hospital why even damn bother' and when he mumbles he reminds me of a sick hyena, ha ha, you're not laughing now are you, you dicks!!!

Unfortunate: I miss the laughter.

Fortunate: Most of the times I've been on fire it's been my choice to be that way.

Unfortunate: I had a weird 'I wonder what my genitals would feel like on fire' phase of life in my thirties. And twenties. And from ages two to four. Although in my defense I didn't know the word 'genitals' for half that time. Surprisingly the second half.

Fortunate: I knew just how to inspire a foreman to get this job done NOW, and with BIG success.

Unfortunate: I was my own Forman. 

Fortunate: I'm ace.

Unfortunate: Being ace doesn't make you a good foreman.

Fortunate: But I knew just how to develop the skill of being a great foreman. And I was going to have to remember this skill big and now. 

Unfortunate: For some bizarre reason I was beginning to feel a tad light in the blood department, and my personal blood department is my body, and that was the exact body I needed to remember the skills of being a great foreman. 

This was a potential hazard, I was going to have to react, and react HARD and IMMEDIATELY! 

*The future* is near 

*And by 'future' I mean the next bit of this story, which actually happened in the past.

*Speaking of the future I was once politely requested to stop licking an axe while sitting in a school yard, and that's why YOUR kids school doesn't have any warm burning fireplaces going at the moment (unless they're in Iceland and therefore burning whale bone). So I say make sure your kid knows what 'genital' means NOW, and in a BIG way, depending on the facts at hand, or else there may be a fire coming soon for your kid, and by 'soon' I mean in 'the future'*! 

*Not that they'll light their genitals on fire, just that if they don't know that word they may end up dumb and forced to be an arson for a living. 

Thirty - Oversized under shaped

I stumbled around the restaurant for a moment. Things were now moving at such an obviously outlandishly swift speed that I had to just jump into the wave and ride it. And this was a BIG wave, and it was swollen NOW, and it was obvious that it was swollen in an obvious way, because it was outlandishly BIG! 

There just was not a long wait between events I was willing or capable of making. It was as if not one second had passed since the last thing I'd done. Which was good cause not one second HAD passed, and I like it when things seem like they seem because they are seemingly the same as they seem, where by 'seem' I mean 'are'.

I needed to do something FRESH, and I needed to make it NEW! And it had to be something very FRESH. And something extremely NEW! 'NEW and FRESH' I thought to myself, solidifying the situation, the goal and the necessary NEWNESS and FRESHNESS to myself, while simultaneously wasting time that could have instead been used to think of something else, possibly something FRESH to do, or even something to do achievable with NEWNESS. 

'WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT ALL ICELANDIC!' I suddenly screamed at the top of my lungs, towards my construction foreman, immediately putting things into action.

'Everything has to be Icelandic, from top to bottom, and left to right. Although based on my memory of world maps, mostly top and to the left. Then again I think Iceland is to the right of Britain, and Greenwich Mean Time is based there, making Britain literally the center of our time universe, so why the hell isn't Britain in the center of the map, are you trying to confuse us map designers? Because that makes you dicks!'

It was time for me to start a NEW trend and to make this restaurant sing in the way the manager had clearly wanted it to when he picked out those coasters shaped exactly like that beautiful yet little known Iceland island. And he wanted it to sing in a mostly non-singing way, because it's a restaurant, not a singer, and frankly if it did sing it probably wouldn't sing very well, I mean it's a restaurant, and restaurants are busy places, so they don't have time to do proper vocal warm ups. 

The plan was simple - to make this restaurant Icelandic all I had to do was look at the elements which make a restaurant restauranty, in the restaurant sense, and then change the elements of the restaurant which were currently not Icelandic to make them Icelandic elements, and by 'elements' I meant 'restauranty'.

This was going to involve the following: 

 - Installing all Icelandic decor (lots of beautiful fire places burning crisply burning freshly cut whale bone). 

- Icelandic tables (freshly cut whale tongue flopped over lost and startled sea-lions). 

- Icelandic food (mostly a still swimming schools of live pickled-herring shooting out of a freshly cut whale mouth).

 - Icelandic toilets, (which are freshly cut whale blow holes dipped in resin).

- Icelandic music (mostly the sound of freshly cut whale's screaming 'why do you have to freshly cut me, everything is frozen up here, I'll keep damn it!')

- Icelandic clientele (mostly blonde people, and whales sneaking in to mourn their freshly cut fallen family members, that get past security by wearing blonde wigs).

- Icelandic security (freshly cut whale gall bladders with signs stapled to them saying 'blonds only').

- An Icelandic complaints department (mostly filled with comments saying 'this wig is super itchy, got any balm?'

- A well stocked balm supply (made from freshly cut whale juice). And 

- Icelandic staff (mostly immigrant whales that have escaped their homeland after their communities have seen a bizarre spout of unexplained fresh cuttings). 

This plan was great. And having yelled at my foreman it was officially NOW in action, and this action was BIG! 

To be cont*....

*still short for 'continued', you know to save time and space. 

*Because things are moving too damn fast to come up with new ones of those, at least ones that really sing*. I now have time for nothing except the truth and getting to the point. 

*Speaking of singing, I once met a great white shark that taught me a thing or two about how to do a proper vocal warm up to sing. According to him the key was opening your mouth really wide to let the sound out, he demonstrated and it was genius, he got his mouth so open it was almost scary. I even lost a chunk of my left kidney (he didn't bite it, it just got scared and ran away). I was so impressed that I couldn't wait to find out just how wide I could open my mouth, which resulted in me ding the following. 

- I pride it open with my fingers.

- I hung from the roof with meat hooks jammed in the top of my jaw. 

- I attached the top half of my jaw to a steam train to see if it would pull it open.

- I complained to the stream train company that the train never seemed to leave.

- I denounced the words 'but we're in a museum sir' as irrelevant and rude.

- I found it hard to keep my mouth open while I unleashed words of advice on the museum owner.

- So I jimmied my mouth open with three carefully selected and clearly brave green plastic army men.

- Then I needed dental surgery to have three of their guns removed from between my teeth.

- And the dentist fucked up and took out six teeth too.

- But thankfully he replaced them with freshly cut whale husk. 

- Which made me so handsome that my run away chunk of left kidney came home. At least it seemed like it. Although he really hadn't been taking care of himself, he was now all red. 

- Have you even heard of sunscreen you dick? 

Twenty Nine - Swarming From Above

Sometimes when the heavens hand you a forsaking, and you decide out of spite to forsake the heavens right back, and therefore take things into your own hands and handle it yourself, the heavens double up their forsaking and make it so your hands have to get involved. And here was no exception. 

So I vowed to use my hands whether the heavens liked it or NOT (turns out they DID like it, apparently they INVENTED hands, but that's not something I knew at the time). 

I began working in swift earnest to complete my goal of having the manager seem good enough at his job to have him fired. So the first thing I did was pause to think, which I normally do by holding my breath and squeezing my nose with my fingers, which are on my hands. 

I do this knowing the lack of oxygen will force my hand, and this is what happened again, my hand was forced to let go of my nose to stop me passing out, but this time my hand also went rogue and tried to poke me in the eyes, so I had to bite it, and while it was in my mouth being bitten by my teeth, which are right near my face, I spotted 'it', with my eyes, which are also near my face, and this 'it' was an ace up my sleeve (I'd later find out that the heavens also invented faces, wow, pretty impressive). 

The ace was a type of card which strangely had an ace on it, and I spotted it poking out of my sleeve, and it reminded me that I'd been cheating at poker last week, which reminded me that I hadn't had a shower or change of clothes in a week, which reminded me that change is like a holiday, which reminded me of romantic beaches, which reminded me of romance, which reminded me of Romans, which reminded me of the coliseum, which reminded me of chariet races, and whenever I've personally been in an epic chariot race I like to cheat, and cheating reminded me of poker, which reminded me of an ace card, and this reminded me of things made of cardboard, which reminded me of beverage coasters, and more specifically that the beverage coasters in this particular restaurant were unique!

I clawed at the table. I couldn't see it  due to my neck, but I still managed to grab a coaster, and I held it in my hand and up to my eyes to observe (eyes, incidentally, were NOT invented by the heavens, but I found that out the HARD way). 

Now, I consider myself I pretty good observer, like one time I observed that I am great at observations. And another time I went to an observatory and discovered that they weren't good at observing me, so I stole a baby windmill from the garden, which let me observe that sometimes I mistake vital observation tower maneuvering technology for tiny windmills. 

But that's still not all I've observed. Consider these things I've also observed over the years:

- A lady 

- A cop 

- A piece of pie 

Pretty impressive right. So yep, I'm awesome at observations. I find that the KEY to observations is to use more than just your eyes. I recommend observing with EACH of your senses. Consider the observations above, well there was more to each of those that I would not have seen with just my eyes, for example:

- The lady SEEMED like a casual, pretty, normal, calm lady, while I observed her with my eyes, but after observing her with my nose, ears, fingers and mouth I discovered she was irate, angry, volatile and borderline violent. 

- The cop, SEEMED like he was minding his own business, and uninterested in his immediate surroundings when I observed him with my eyes, but when I added the rest of my senses I discovered him to be aggressive, vocal, handcuffy, and willing to arrest just about anyone.

- The pie didn't just look good, it felt, smelled, tasted and even sounded good, sounding almost like my friend Kev, and as if he was yelling 'ah man, that was mine you dick! Oh hey, but there's um, a lady I think you should meet, she's down the street standing right next to a cop'. 

And here in this restaurant, NOW, once again my skills of observation were strong, and I observed myself making an observation that to a casual observer would seem remarkable, but to me was merely a second ace up my sleeve, making my sleeve crowded, forcing me to free the Spring Footed Yellow Crowned Silverfish I had hidden there, but it was worth it, because, yep, I observed that - the beverage coasters in this restaurant were peculiarly, yet specifically, shaped like the small Icelandic Island of Krejuik, an island which is an island that is particularly known for its peculiar specificity, due to its spookily unnatural utterly perfect roundness! 

This was it, THE 'it' as mentioned earlier, and this 'it' was a BIG it, and NOW that I'd seen it I knew exactly what I had to do to finish the job I'd set out to do. But more than that I knew that I'd know exactly when I'd achieved it, because I promised to observe the entire thing. 

*To be continued, but not for much longer, because when I know how to attack* a problem I attack BIG, and NOW! 

*Like the time I was under attack by a swarm of bees and I stopped to think about what to do, and somehow despite getting stung in hundreds of places and passing out, I miraculously didn't get a single sting up my nose*! 

*A body part invented in a rare act of cooperation between the heavens and a guy named Luke. Can you believe it? Strange right? Someone would actually name a kid 'Luke'! Some people are so weird. 

My new character - Harry McDeely - Aussie politician, offering help to America with their issue

My new character - Harry McDeely - Aussie politician, offering help to America with their issue





 In this episode is - Isis

In this episode - guns

Twenty Eight - Sharp Ended Attack

I had much to do. So I set to it in the logical ways.

First I opened my arms out wide, tilted my head back, opened my mouth, then closed one arm up back in to adjust the treadmill I was wearing as a codpiece which had shifted to a slightly uncomfortable position (where I could see how little distance I'd run on it life time - pathetic).

I then opened my arm back out again, and then closed the other arm back again to press the off switch on my codpiece, as it turned out I must have bumped on the on switch as I was making aforementioned adjustment, then I opened that arm back out, before closing the other arm back in and turning the codpiece back on as, hey, if fate wanted in on then maybe I should listen to it.

I then shooed away a middle aged married guy who had begun setting up a TV next to my codpiece while drinking a beer, and setting it to a low speed and yet still boasting to his friend on the phone that he worked-out nearly everyday (although from where I could see he appeared to have only run a small amount on it life time - pathetic) so I was forced to curse fate for being a dick, and make a mental note to pick a more practical codpiece next time, like an exercise bike, rowing machine, or stairwell to a skyscraper.

Following this I opened my arms back out, and then checked in the mirror on the wall that my head was still tilted back, and found that it was instead titled towards the mirror for some reason, so I tilted it back to back, then checked the mirror again, and found out once again that my head was bafflingly titled towards the mirror again, a duo of actions which I repeated a dozen or so times, before smacking my forehead as I noticed that, um duh, that's not a mirror, it's a mural of a father and son fishing, so I mentally called the painter a dick, and then I realized that I'd smacked my forehead so hard that my neck was now LOCKED in the tilted back position, then I praised myself for my ingenuity, and attempted to yell to the heavens! 

At first this didn't work at all. No noise came out. Not even a peep. And I was baffled. So I let Fredrick, the mouse that lives in my left jacket pocket out to do some checking up on things. As usual, he ran straight for my mouth, hoping I had some food in there. In his defense that's where I keep his food. In a small pouch I'd had sewed to the inside of my cheek, but even so his selfishness still disappointed me. I had a problem I needed fixing, and I needed help NOW! Luckily he also completely reverse disappointed me, or pointed me, as it should be known, and bit me on the lip, and he bit me with his BIG teeth, the ones I'd had a pet dentist install on him, when I'd briefly wished he was a North African Blue Necked Black Gazelle. Unfortunately this adjustment to his regular appearance had regular-disappointed me considerably, as it reminded me that when he'd tried to dye his neck-hair blue he'd misread the instructions on the box and had instead turned it more of a mauve color. And that reminded me of another time he'd POINTED me, when he'd been named 'mouse most capable of reading English'. Which was of course one of many times the committee of Recognizing Human Skills In Rodents had regular-disappointed me. As I personally would have voted for my pet Australian Bungle Pouched Rataroo into first place, after he had COMPLETELY successfully read a bottle that had said 'poison'. And I for one don't think that his subsequent epic risk taking, leading to his death, should have disqualified him (he attempted to put poison in the neighbor's cats bowl and got his face eaten off). But Fredrick's biting my lip had identified the problem here, during the mirror debacle I must have closed my mouth. And I'd obviously forgotten to note it on my mental body movement log. So I made a mental note to punch my brain later for its mistake, and got back to the task at hand. Yelling to the heavens! 

'Can you do all the work for me?' I screamed as loud as I could, which wasn't very loud, as my voice was muffled by Fredrick raiding the pouch, opposite pointing me HARD, and also poking me with his claws, which also disappointed me and pointed me, this time in the original meaning of being pointed, although more like poked in this case, and specifically poked with his claws, which were very pointy.

Yet even with my cry muffled the answer came back clear as day.

'Nothing, I suppose'. 

It was a weird thing for the heavens to reply. And I was worried for the two staff members I could hear around the corner from where I was now standing. One of them had just asked of the other 'what's stopping you from driving him to the hospital?' And the heavens reply had sounded strangely as if it was coming right from that area. 

And it turned out that they HAD been confused. And the two of them NOW carried Kev's seemingly lifeless body to a car, and it definitely took both of them because Kev is BIG.

As I looked around it now seemed like I was the only one left in the restaurant. Admittedly I couldn't do a full reconnaissance as I wasn't completely sure I was using that word correctly, and also because due to how my neck was locked I could now only look at the ceiling. However I could tell for sure that there DEFINITELY were no customers nor staff hanging up there. 

It was clear - following logic had obviously not worked. And The heavens had forsaken me once again. I paused for a brief moment to make a note to myself to stop burning an original issue still in package Luke Skywalker figurine every morning as a sacrifice in the heavens honor. It was a tough time to lose my religion. But on the other hand, it would save me lots of time stealing from nerds, and even save me money buying all those figurines off the internet (I only steal hugs from the nerds, both they and I need them, me because of a weird unexplained dull ache I often have inside my cheek, them because of some weird unexplained thing meaning some of the Star Wars toys they own keep going up on value, and inflation hurts us all).

Logic wasn't going to help me, the heavens weren't going to help me, the staff weren't going to help me and obviously Kev wasn't going to help me, those dicks. So I was forced to do something illogical, something no one should ever do, just get the job done themselves. 

It was up to me, and me alone, to carry out this plan. It was a BIG job. But I knew I was up for the job. And I was up for it NOW.

How I handled* it coming up next. 

*Speaking of which here is a brief list of things I've handled that have pointed me just this week:

- A frustrated old lady with knitting needles.

- A baton waving conductor.

- A kid with sticky fingers.

- A knife wielding psycho.

All of which I handled with kid gloves, something that was easy, as they had kids hands in them, and that freaked them all out so they ran away. In fairness, there was an entire kid attached the the hands, the worst kind too, a laughing one, and the knife wielding psycho was the kid's mom, who was a conductor, and who liked to knit, but I don't know why she was yelling at me, she was the one who put gloves on the kid OVER sticky fingers, and made me deal it, regular- disappointing me hard! That dick. And they all pointed me, by not pointing their pointy things at me, allowing me to feel like my point about how the opposite of disappointed should be pointed was a valid point, and that's a point I will point out as often and as a sharply as I can forever! 

Things less stupid than the current US gun laws

Here at Fleeting Forever we don't tend to get political, or topical, or opinionated, or make even the slightest bit of sense. And we like it that way, because these ramblings may well one day get us out of jury duty. However sometimes something happens that we just feel like commenting on. And even THEN we usually hold our tongues. Like when we wanted to comment on the current ramshackle state of the international tongue holding championships, and we spent so much time holding our tongues trying to get into the minds of the competitors that we forgot to file a story, got tired fingers and sore tongues, and then accidentally won a silver medal, and now we can no longer 'please' our girlfriends, if you know what we mean (yeah you do, you know what we mean - they're occasional pastry chefs and we no longer have the sense of taste). 

But something happened this past weekend that we just feel the need to comment on. The latest shooting in America. And here is that comment - We're starting to think that American gun laws may be a tad dumb, possibly even EXTREMELY a tad dumb.

Phew. We did it. We had an actual option, and we made an actual point. Alright. Thankfully that business is done. 

And now because it's something we've done here on this blog from time to time in reference to stupid stuff, with an admittedly too soon light heartedness, yet still sourced from outrage and heartbreak, it's time to play - Things Less Stupid Than Other Things - and on today's episode here now are things that admittedly may not seem smart, but are still WAY smarter than letting ANYONE buy an assault rifle for personal use: 

- Deciding you want to go to the moon and making it happen by eating an entire commuter train without even a single splash of hot sauce!

- Refusing to leave the house without your lucky rabbits foot, even though you're currently a horse, and you HAD said lucky foot the day you foolishly got your mane caught in an elevator door. 

- Putting new born bear cubs in charge of teaching wise old wolves how to write applications for jobs at glass recycling facilities. 

-  Putting someone who’s as yet never left their mothers womb in charge of convincing the Vatican to let Jesus come back as a unicorn.

- Being a Kanye West fan.

- Buying a rabies infested dog in hope of using it to shape a new type of wharf order.

- Drowning an elephant to prove the existence of sponges.

- Saving up trillions of dollars to buy the great pyramids to try and bribe Monica in human-resources from complaining at you for wasting printer toner.

- Slobbering your heart in maple syrup and then standing around a pancake fundraiser hoping that people that accidentally grab your heart will end feel bad enough to buy life insurance from your cousin Artie.

- Covering your front lawn in ceramic windmills with the intent of their delightful spinning inspiring you to finally tell your estranged lover that you think we're all made of granite fearing starlight memories and that therefore you should be able to catcall at tulips.

- Cross breeding lounge chairs with recently lassoed pond builders, hoping their babies thank you with a pre-shelved framed piece of paper splattered with the sweat whisked from a light-post fighting hot air balloon. 

- Kanye West lyrics. 

That was - Things that are really stupid but are still far less stupid than the current US gun laws - And now that that's over, back to opinions. We, like most people, LOVE when foreigners have opinions on other nations hotly debated and complex decision making that they can't possibly truly understand, but even with that love strong we're pussies that have an embarrassingly huge fear of upsetting anyone, literally anyone, so even though we kind of criticized you America please still let us have US visas one day we love your onion rings and chicken fingers, and yet I don't get to have them as often as we'd like. 

Twenty Seven - A pulsating Velocity Perception

Ever since I'd spotted 'IT' things had begun moving at speed. Fast speed. Breakneck speed. Speed faster than a speeding speed train with its speed set to high, where high is the top, and where speed refers to the distance covered over a period of time, in a fast or slow sense, where the sense in this scenario in particular was fast, the forgotten sense, and where the other speed referenced above is also speed in the same sense. I had a mission. And when I have a mission I attack It NOW and in a BIG way, and fast, once again in reference to speed. 

Nothing could slow me down. I would not and could not double over a single fragment of what I was doing, what was happening, or how I happened to be doing it. I had not time nor inclination to spend one second stuck somewhere I had been before or was already. And even if I did, it wouldn't have mattered because this speed was strong. Overpoweringly strong. 

In fact this speed was so strong that it even out-lifted gym guys! And I'm talking the steroid abusing gym guys. And those are the gym guys who do a lot of steroids, and spend a lot of time lifting, and do that lifting at the gym. And let's not forget that even without the gym, the steroid taking itself can be like a yoga workout session, that is once once they've lifted so much that their arm muscles are so BIG and the gluteus-maximus is equally as BIG so it's hard to reach to penetrate with a needle. So they have to roll around on the floor struggling to reach to get the needle to penetrate with cheek, or in very rare cases instead make a friend to do it. So I'm talking speed. Which, as well as the type of speed I'm talking about, could also be a a different type of speed that required being injected into the butt cheek, but I'm not referring to that sort of speed AT ALL. 

And this speed was breakneck. So breakneck that chiropractors across North America were sensing something was in the air and were warming their voices up to be ready to say 'Seems you have a broken neck, I'll need to see you for at least six or seven sessions'. Giraffes across the Sahara were randomly bursting into tears for reasons they couldn't even fathom. And chiropractors across the Antarctic were thinking of branching out into providing not just broken neck fixing, but also therapy and anti-depressants for giraffes in the Sahara, and wondering why the hell they even thought about opening a chiropractic firm in the middle of an ice-desert. And giraffes across South America were thinking 'what, so you're going to branch out into a hot desert in Africa, how about helping us out, we're out of place too!' And the inventors of the international giraffe-chiropractor radio network were thinking 'man, maybe when we brain stormed this idea we should have considered a more lucrative couple of demographics to bring together, such as ones on the same continent, or at least the same species, but who'd have thought that giraffes didn't actually give a lot of business to chiropractors'. And brain weather reporters were reporting a new storm developing in their region to combat this initial mistake. THAT's how break-neck speedy this was.

Yep, I didn't have a SECOND to waste. Seconds were like potato chips at my friend Kev's house when he's invited you over to watch sports. You can't waste a single one. Once you've eaten all the chips that you can possibly eat it's best to just dump the rest onto the lawn for the birds to eat. Because if Kev had wanted to eat a chip or two then why did he even invite you over, and then spend six minutes looking for the exact beer you've requested from his spare fridge, he'd have just stayed home alone and eaten the chips by himself. Yep, I'm talking waste avoidance based chip eating, and I'm talking waste avoidance in a generous sense, the forgotten sense.   The type of waste that Italian men working in waste management always exemplify so well. They NEVER waste potato chips, because they don't eat them, they prefer lasaguola with a flake or two of parmesan, or a broskalini with a shake of olive oil, or sometimes even a non-made up snack. 

Yep, this thing I'd spotted was BIG, and I'd spotted it right NOW, and that meant that the ONLY thing that mattered was doing what I had to do with as little fuss as possible. Without laboring over a single point. Without dawdling a tiny bit. With pure focus on what was at a hand, and what was important. And this was too important to even consider procrastinating even a second. To stall for even a moment would be to fail. And I was NOT going to fail today. 

*To be proven 

*By the way if you ever meet a chiropractor that specializes in psychosomatic rooted giraffe neck injuries, always ask to see his fingers, it's the strangest thing, but for some reason they're always covered in broskalini sauce. 

*By the way, if you were thinking of inventing the 'sensing when giraffes sense things that they sense may seem like their necks may soon senselessly break machines', don't bother, I tried for several years and at best I could only get the machine to sense when giraffes sensed something that made them sense things that they sense may seem like their necks may soon get senselessly sprained, and that information is fucking useless. 

Twenty six - Tasty Actioned Magnificat

'You're bad at gathering information about the typical longevity of surprise merriment springing from the ashes of an intense period of bereavement - for your age!' I screamed, flawlessly insulating my foe. 

As I'd predicted I did have a struggle on my hands, but as I established earlier, even though danger always looms, and is easy identified as long as you have a special tooth, it's impossible to predict exactly what TYPE of danger you face.

The struggle this time turned out to be a physical altercation. The worst type of physical altercation. One with a creature whose powers were unpredictable. And undocumented. And unheralded. And unadulterated. And unsandwiched between a sky storm and a slippery curve, and didn't even have a delicious chipotle aioli in this unsandwiching. In this specific case my danger lay with a foe which was a decorative curtain I'd accidentally walked into. 

It seemed to have a dozen limbs wrestling with me, all of which were strangely sewed together, something I had to admire, and consider copying to start a FRESH and NEW trend later in the week. Its skin was coarse and materially, and colored bruise purple (My FAVORITE color). And it was tall, almost as tall as the ceiling. I'd scrappled with many a foe in my life, but this one was unique, clearly I couldn't out-muscle it, or out-skill it, which is why I set myself the task of instead trying to out trash talk it. 

'I bet when you see someone truckin' you say to them 'keep on truckin', knowing FULL well that eventually they'll have to stop trukin' to refuel, you dick!' I screamed at it.

'You're so ugly I bet you've never even TRIED to go to Jupiter!' I bellowed at it. 

'If you were friends with a lampshade I bet you'd consider it your best friend and yet it would only consider YOU its THIRD best friend!' I shrieked at it. 

'You appear to seem like your feeling-based predictions of the longitude of regular overpopulations a of mice founded steamboat races would be so awful that you'd be off by a degree or two!' I howled at it. 

That last one was a low blow. And frankly a slight exaggeration of what I truly believed. Something I'm not completely proud of. But it did do the job. It's feelings were hurt, so much so that it seemed to go limp. And I used my new upper hand to struggle it to the ground, and after only twenty to thirty minutes of hard fought battle I overcame it's mighty grapple.

It was a bitter sweet victory. Sweet because I'd beaten it's pants off, finally answering a question that's plagued man for millennia 'do curtains wear pants?' The answer is that they don't. I'd had to put my own pants on the curtain to wrestle off, and then swear up and down that they were a gift, and therefore owned by him, and that he didn't need to pay me for them, or even reciprocate with a gift for me in the future, although if he insisted I am partial to foods that are traditionally made with a spinach base, only with the spinach taken out and replaced with a new home devoid of ghost monkeys. And bitter because I'd tried biting his face off during the melee and for some reason it wore what seemed like ten years of restaurant waft as a moisturizer which tasted real bitter. So weird. 

But mostly my victory felt triumphant. It roused me. It inspired me. It made me feel like an all powerful King. Doubt oozed out of my body almost as fast as the blood dripped out of the gaping stomach wound I'd picked up during the brawl. And that was a lot of blood. Which meant that was a lot of doubt leaving me. And without it this doubt I felt dazzled, formidable and confident for perhaps the first time in my life, I was so lacking in doubt that I was getting giddy and light headed. 

When you're overwhelmed with belief, credence and conviction you have to strike and use it NOW, and luckily I had something BIG to use it on. And with confidence practically spraying from my core across the room I was forced to look closer to my body for answers, so I wasn't grossed out, and that's when I spotted it!

*Where 'it' is the thing that I spotted, that shall be revealed* really soon.

*Revealed like the rib of a man who's tasted a BIG victory*.

*The type of victory that this curtain has NEVER experienced. So much so that I think it's ribs had shriveled to almost nothing. Sad really. 

Twenty Five - Large Lycra Needed

The world is full of problems. Luckily I have a solution to almost all of them: 

Need to shave but forgot your razor? Just stick your head in a fire started on a flame retardant blanket, implausible flame NEVER burns the skin because it doesn't want to ruin its reputation.

Want more friends named Jeremy? Simply run an ad in the paper saying 'found wallet belonging to Jeremy with ten thousand dollars cash in it, come to Connell Park on Friday to pick it up' then use the money to buy their friendship.

Want to find it easier to deny the existence of a seemingly frequently found bird? Just cross breed lizards with camels until you've created a Loch Nest Style Monster, unleash it on the city water supply, reveal that knowledge to the local news, which will start mass citywide hysteria, leading to people running all over the place to collect supplies in case this is an alien attack, and all the running will scare the birds off. 

Get offered the choice between a 'bowl of nuts' and a 'nut of bowls' and you just can't choose? Just remember that they are very different, VERY different, clearly the second one is just stupid, I mean you can't have multiple bowls! 

Need to insult someone? Simply say 'for your age' after any statement. Example - 'you are not a linoleum floor- for your age!' Boom, they'll be insulted NOW and BIG. 

Got faulty shocks on your car? Simply re-name them 'big springy things' and you won't even know what shocks are, let-alone know if they're faulty.  

Want to sell more product? Just give people what they want and make it easy, I mean hey supermarkets, seriously, I don't care that you always pre-cart them for some reason, but I really don't want to buy a baby! Dicks.

Got shot in the stomach? Just rub mayonnaise onto the wound to let the doctors know you probably deserved to be shot. 

Want an interesting, admirable in effort and yet ultimately failing way to prove that you rarely sail? Just eat an enormous garbage bag full of dried leaves. Frequent sailers only do that on special occasions at best.  

Want to prove that your fear of horns is in direct contrast to your time-machine building skills? Just publicly head-butt a tyrannosaurus.

Need more money due to some recent awesome schemes? Just collect the paper work needed to legally change your name and then keep an eye on the paper,  I've heard people sometimes find wallets full of cash and will just give it the the person with the right name! 

Yep, solutions to problems are easy. And I had a BIG problem here, and it was affecting me NOW! 

But as usual a clear answer came to me, and I came up with an ingenious, smart and flawless solution  - I was going to make the manager of this restaurant SEEM like he was great at his job, so good that I could get him fired, where his level of goodness was GREAT. It was ingenious, and flawless and even smart! 

There was only one problem - I didn't know HOW to make him seem great at his job. And even though I have answers to almost every dilemma imaginable, even I was going to struggle with this one, and this struggle was NOW, and it was BIG! 

*To be wrestled with further*

*As in wrestled with more*, rather than wrestled with far* away

*Speaking of more, own an arena and you need more events to put on? Just have tyrannosauruses wrestle lizard-camels, all the failed babies of attempts to create a Loch Nest Style Monster are currently not being used for ANYTHING!

Twenty Four - Opportunity Poking

I was ready to sacrifice my own selfish needs of demanding to look like the good guy, and look out for the greater good instead, which required having the manager fired, so I began looking for him, and I looked for him great, in a good sense, which is where the level of good is greatness.

There was just one little problem. As I walked around the restaurant I suddenly realized something that was potentially an obstacle - I didn't know HOW to have him fired. 

This baffled me for a moment or two, and I found myself muttering to myself (for the record, trust me, 'yourself' is the BEST person to mutter to. When you mutter to others you hardly EVER get what you want. Like once I tried muttering 'your hat is cool, can I try it on?' to this cool looking individual wearing a cool looking hat, and he replied 'sorry dude, I can't take it off, it's not a hat, it's a mane'. Fucking horses, such dicks, if your going to get pissed at me for muttering, then how about improving your own speaking quality, I could barely understand a word he said, nay, mumbled!). 'Getting fired is easy, you've done it in almost every job you've ever had, so what's different here, other than its not you getting fired?' I muttered to myself. And I decided to think back to the last time I was personally fired from a job. 

I had been hired as ‘Head Of Great Ideas and Motivation’ for my local Stolen Identities and Molotov Cocktails Super Store, Simcomart (for the record, NEVER buy a stolen identity disguised in Molotov Cocktail form from one of the small stores, trust me, half the time when you take the identity out, the Molotov Cocktail won't even work, I mean fuck you dicks, why didn't I just go to Sioco: Stolen Identities Only Co?)

And the job was going great, until one day my boss, Dannelle, told me to come into her office, and then absolutely bellowed 'WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO?'

'Oh tons' I replied 'in fact consider this list of Great Ideas and Motivations I have instilled in this company so far, things that are FRESH, and NEW:

- I instilled Greatness As A Goal To Aspire Towards at the company.
- I instilled Snake Nest Toilet Rolls On Fire Next To Jars Of Worms at this company.
- I instilled Do Something Wrong That Kind Of Rhymes (But Not Really At All, So Much So Some People May Not Have Even Noticed You Even Tried) With Your First Triumph Tuesdays.
- I instilled Wear Nothing Except Coat Hangers, Come On, THEY’RE Fashion HEROES, But They Never Get To Enjoy Any Of The Glory Mondays.
- I instilled If You Poke Out Someone's Eye, You Should Put It In The Scanner And Send A Picture Of It To Everyone In The Company Worldwide, The Most Hilarious Caption Gets An Extra Day Off Thursday Afternoons.
- Which of course was my solution to complaints over some of the lob-sided scores during my recently instilled Chug LOTS of Mimosa Then Play Darts On Dart Boards Situated Really Close Together Thursday Brunches.
- And I even instilled Use The Word “Instilled” As Often As You Can Everyday; it's doing absolute wonders down in acquisitions and actuaries. Oh by the way, I also combined the acquisitions and actuary departments, it turns out that despite their names, those are actually very different skill sets, it’s like a slapstick movie DOWN THERE!’. 

I was nearly bellowing myself by the end, and I could see why SHE was screaming at ME! And as I thought back to this day NOW, I realized something BIG - no wonder I couldn’t think of how to get the manager fired, he was clearly awful at his job, and I was clearly only ever fired from jobs I was clearly AMAZING at! 

‘You’re fired!’ Dannelle screamed at me that day. I hadn’t realized just HOW great I was at this job even myself. I was clearly TOO good at the job. I'd only worked there two hours, and I'd overhauled that company, I mean consider how many ideas and motivations I could have developed had I lasted a week! And I'd even had had to spend half of that two hours filing an official complaint against a co-worker for yelling 'my eye, my eye, the new guy hit me in the eye with a dart!' I mean what I dick, some people just don't care about other people, yelling in the work place is distracting! I suspect he was just jealous because I beat him at darts!

Oh plus, because of me, the receptionist had met a cute paramedic. Sure they couldn't chat, because as the paramedic said himself 'I've never seen such horror' while he ran to the ambulance carrying three eyeballs with darts stuck in them, but it's good to meet someone nice regardless. I remember thinking at the time:

‘EYE love meeting new people' and 

‘EYE come here often, do you?' And 

'Has an angel fallen from heaven? If so while he's on the ground can you have him look for an EYE, I heard someone's missing one'.  

Even though I was fired I was sure that I’d still be included in the best caption contest. Wow, I had a chance to get and extra day off work! That was too good an opportunity to miss. 

As I thought back to this time NOW it was clear what I had to do. Clear as a window that was so dirty it's been removed completely and sent to a professional window cleaners, who themselves weren't that good, yet while they worked on the issue the window was windowless which is the clearest type of window ever, unless there is lots of pollution, which is always, yep I'm talking REALLY clear. And this was BIG, and required my attention NOW!

*What that is is still to taken off its hanging spot, so to speak*

*Kind of like clothes taken off your coat hanger, which just held it for you for possibly months with ZERO thanks, just try wearing a coat hanger occasionally, they deserve the opportunity!*

*Speaking for opportunity, for the record if you even get the opportunity to play Chug Lots Of Bloody Mary's and then Play Darts on Dart Bords Located Adjacent To Your Key Arteries on a Thursday Breakfast, trust me, say 'YES'. Most people amazingly quit after only two or three darts, so victory is EASY!

Can YOU follow instructions?

Here now are ten signs that you've grossly misinterpreted your extremely simple and very specific instructions: 

1. You've had a scientist use lasers to miniaturize you and now you're riding a manatee that has been giantized and turned into a Minotaur which dreams of becoming a matador, and you were told to only use 'plausible science'. 

2. I mean seriously, 'a matador?' As if the cow of the sea would dream of being cruel to bulls. That's soooo implausible. 

3. Well, ok, maybe if one had told her it was willing to move into the sea with her, but then when it got there was all like 'this is getting too serious too fast, you're suffocating me!' Then I guess it would be a TAD plausible. 

4. But then again, I mean you KNEW what you were getting into bull, seriously, it's not her fault you make promises you can't damn keep.

5. Plus why take the Minotaur step in the middle? You can be a matador without being a Minotaur. I've seen the bullfights, nearly HALF of the Matadors were not Minotaurs! Also why be giantized if you want to be a matador then do it, you can't let your dreams rely on you becoming someone or something else completely first, geez, no wonder miniaturized people are riding you, seriously man, have some balls. 

6. Oh wait, unless you've been castrated, that's sad, and you don't get to choose that as a baby calf, someone just does it. And then some people eat those things in some places! 

7. Disgusting people! 

8. Unless that's normal to them, who the fuck are you to judge how people eat in whole different places, being a judgmental dick may well be plausible, but that doesn't make it something you should allow into your heart no matter WHAT instructions you've been given. 

9. Plus maybe just don't 'ride' other creatures, we're all equal, don't you know about equality you dick, how fucking dare you think you have the right to dominate ANY creature, I don't care how much you've been miniaturized. 

10. And in this case your specific instructions were simply - 'use the art of litter gathering to redefine the unspoken language of love in a way that speaks to clouds, using plausible science ONLY' 

So there you go. How'd you go? Were YOU able to follow simple very specific instructions, or did you fuck it up just like everyone else? And if so can you recommend someone who isn't unable to follow simple instructions to me please. I really need someone to do this job for me, I have a friend who is a cloud that's sick of looking at litter and not being romantically warmed by it, oh and can you recommend a good miniaturizer to me? I met this cute manatee and I promised her I'd move into the sea with her, but her only possession is an old sunken shoe and as if I'm going to sleep outdoors, I'd get cold, be realistic please people. 

Twenty Three - See Through Shake

It was clear as day what I had to do, bright clear like the bright sun, clear as a cloud that's a cloudy cloud, and more specifically like a cloudy cloud which was so not cloudy that it was clear, as obvious as what's on the other side of a door, and when the door is made of air, and the air was made in a vacuum, and the vacuum hadn't sucked up whatever it was that was on the other side of the door, but HAD sucked up anything that was between the other side of the door and the thing on the other side of the door. Clearly I had to listen to my lesson - never ever EVER delay anything! 

I needed to know what dilly dally meant NOW, or I was in BIG danger of doing it, where 'it' meant 'dilly dally', and there was only one clear thing to do, clear as what's left behind after a nuclear bomb has been dropped on a town, and thousands of years have passed to let the radiation radiate away, and then the future people, most likely people who are part human, part robot, part mole, part alien and mostly balloons filled with lightning bugs, have gone 'you know what, let's just clear this whole area', and then despite not having any hands or even arms they have somehow managed to get ancient bulldozing technology to work and have miraculously pulled off this clearing, only to NOW be frustrated, as they have no idea what to do with this cleared area, and yet they, being beings without fingernails nor heads, can't even have the joyful physical satisfaction of scratching their noggins while they figure it out, yep I'm talking clear! 'Really clear' would he another way to put it. That's right - I had to have the manager of this restaurant fired, and hope that his replacement would swiftly add a dictionary to the restaurant library, and hopefully also use his managerial powers to have the man from the photos stop yelling at me so I could look in the dictionary in peace.

Now, having someone else fired isn't as fun as you'd think. They lose their jobs, their families possibly break up under the strain, they often cry, sometimes they make big heartbreakingly desperate yet ultimately fruitless speeches begging for another chance, and you have to watch them pour out with a yearning passion, a despairing need and a desperately impassioned hope for a reprieve born from their desperation and their passion, only to see their faces go white, and their hearts implode, as they are told that their efforts were frucked! Yeah sure, but yes, as strange as it seems, there can also be a DOWN side to having someone fired. 

For example it can sometimes appear to others that YOU are the bad guy. This is a HUGE sacrifice for someone like me, because I HATE seeming like the bad guy. Hate it like morning dew on my raincoat, 'hey it's a RAINcoat, not a DEWcoat you condensationed dick! Go to a restaurant library and read a friggin' dictionary!' I'm forced to scream. 

That's why I'm careful to be nice all the time. Like when I used to whip Kev, I always used a whip braided into the head of a girl I knew he found both pretty of face and of personality, and I made him walk in front of us, which gave heavily subtle phycological guidance that he was our 'pride' or 'flock' leader, even though he wasn't, and to make sure she didn't figure out the phycological games I was using to toy with her emotions, I'd tell her that Kev didn't date girls that had met a wizard. That's how nice I am. 

Being nice is just built into my soul, I tell myself that all the time, so I know it's true, and having this man fired was just an extension of that, I just had to be willing to sacrifice 'looking' like the bad guy, even though I was clearly the good guy here. 

The only thing that wasn't clear was whether I'd be ABLE to make this sacrifice. Ableness is not my forte. My forte is wrestling fructose deficient Freemasons, frequenting firestorm founders fondle fountains, and starting trends, and you only get one forte, so ableidity could never be it. And this could be BIG. This little nugget of murkiness was as misty as a fog descended into the darkened windows of a nugget factory, but I had to wipe the window with a cloth NOW, and it had to be a BIG cloth, because it often stinks in nugget factories, so they need BIG windows to open to let the stink soar! 

Would I ponder making this sacrifice? You're damn right I would!  

*The results of such pondering to be revealed*

*Revealed like what was on the other side of that door*

*Which was a wizards* hat.

*The wizard himself was vacuumed up, they really need to work on their anti-being-vacuumed spells, we get it, you've got the going 'poof' and  disappearing into a cloud of smoke thing nailed, but we then always need to get out vacuums to clean up the dusty residue that this leaves behind and I for one am sick of having to shake you wizards out of my vacuum bag, dicks!