Sixteen - Behind The Shaker

I had suckled from the teet of self-made genius, and had been rewarded  in the form of a god-sponsored gift, and from that day on I transcended the mysterious mud pit between science and truth and grasped the weeds growing in it with my whole soul, or to put it another way - my tooth now throbbed ANYTIME danger lurked near me. Especially when the danger loomed NOW, which would make it throb BIG! 

Now all I had to do was listen for the throb, and I listen best with feelings, so I listened to that tooth with my feelings as hard as anyone had ever listened to a tooth before, spotting the throbbing with my very eyes EVERY TIME I was in danger. 

It throbbed when I stuck my head into the mouth of flame throwers controlled by robots that seemed 'too' nice. 

It throbbed whenever cops were near by and I was up to no good, like standing in front of a cop station making prank phone calls to the cops. 

It throbbed whenever I rode my scooter that I'd made cool with a lawnmower engine and full speed exposed lawnmower blade where the handlebars should have been, and powered it with six huge wet batteries I'd found behind the nuclear hospital and accidentally dropped in the polluted lake while duck mocking, which was dangerous because I HATED wearing kneepads. 

It throbbed the day I first realized the rats in the rats nest I'd been bunking in only cleaned with a recognized brand name all purpose cleaning spray every OTHER week, letting me know I'd have to do something very dangerous - have a stern chat to the king rat about his discipline.

It throbbed the day I threw Kev a surprise seance for his brothers soul letting me know that Kev, that dick, had failed to get the hint and have his brother killed briefly while being monitored by a team of medical students as a test to see if the mostly forgotten movie from the 1990s 'Flatliners' was plausible or not, leading to me having to do something extremely dangerous - temporarily kill Kev's brother myself, which would require me holding a very dangerous scalpel and risking nicking myself. 

It throbbed the time I noticed the clouds turning grey, REALLY grey, and the lightening turning flashy, REALLY flashy, and on the same day a mysterious football field length metal rod had been stuck protruding from my bedroom window and focused on my pillow, leading me to have to do something always dangerous - putting my ear to the metal to see if a train was coming. 

It throbbed the time a deadly snake had been hidden behind my sofa cushion ready to plunge it's venom into my woefully soft skin, a day that coincidentally coincided with the day the snake was pissed off because the  sofa cushion turned out to be woefully not soft enough. 

It throbbed when seven panthers were hiding in the tree in front of my house, and coincidentally on the day which coincided with the day these panthers had been shown video footage of delicious looking wildebeests that had had their faces CGI altered to look like my face!

It throbbed when I failed to get any leads or clues on who or what had been seemingly trying to get me, letting me know the danger was still out there, unless they were tired, which they probably were, as I've heard panther wrangling is hard. 

It even throbbed when the danger was only superficial and implausible, like the time where my towns one and only dentist, Kev's brother, who was a hobbiest CGI expert, and a freelancing zoologist, threatened to 'get me'! 

I mean obviously he was just joking as he had no reason to dislike me, I mean I never even went to the dentist, and I'd stopped trying to date his wife after I found out she was a large metal rod saleswoman, what a boring job. Plus I'd made it less likely anyone would steel his prized rare and expensive bird collection as I'd had all the breeds existence officially denied rendering them worthless and therefore stupid to steal.

Plus I was the one who'd started the rumor that dentists were the ones who caused the recent disease outbreak at the nuclear hospital after their backup batteries had been stolen, which caused dentist visits in my town to drop ninety percent allowing him the time for his bird hobby in the first place.

So yes it even throbbed when the danger existed in its trickiest form of non-existentence. In fact it NEVER stopped throbbing, because as the wisdom of the wise quote I coined earlier taught us all - danger is ALWAYS existent, lurking behind everything, surprisingly even angry panthers. 

It even throbbed when I invented a dastardly tooth laser gun and shot myself with it set it to throb, proving that my weapon didn't work at all, and was probably unstable and ready to blow.  

And NOW I was in this restaurant and my waiter was praising me for kicking him in the knee seven times, and he was praising me BIG. And he was offering me rewards, all the most cliche awards ever offered by anyone, including and strictly limited to: 

- Offering me any one of his six daughters' hands in marriage.

- Suggesting that if none of those daughters sufficed that he'd be willing to divorce his now menopausal wife and take up with a younger fertile lady and sire daughters with her until one DID suffice. 

- Offering to be my sherper on any future expeditions to the famous K-Mart at the top of the small hill.

- Telling me I could get a two for one dessert even if my coupon was out of date.

- Suggesting that even if one of those daughters' hands were to my liking he STILL could take up with a younger fertile lady and we could double date.

- Offering to split the bill on the double date but pay ALL the tip himself. 

- Asking if I knew any younger fertile ladies that I could set him up with.

- Recommending that I gave him the number of several options in case my first or second choices weren't into him.

- Offering to get into shape so that they were more likely to be into him. 

- Giving me a free keychain. 

A lesser man, like Kev, would have taken at least some of these awesome offers. Kev even tried to accept one of the daughters, before I even had the chance to answer he screamed 'any of those daughters willing to drive me to the hospital', that dick, she was offered to me. 

Still this all seemed great. All my problems seemed solved. All my dreams seemed to have come true. All of my tribulations seemed to have been mopped up with an old towel. I could have taken these wonderful offers and been a happy man. So it seemed.

But nothing is ever as it seems. One day I'll come up with a wise ancient Chinese saying that will prove that. But I didn't need that NOW. 

I had something else. And it was BIG.

My tooth was throbbing. 

So I TURNED down those offers.

As clearly I was in danger. 

Oh also it occurred to me that some of the offers weren't completely selfless. Like I didn't even have an out of date two for one dessert coupon, so he was going to make me pretend that I did, which was pretend time I'd already allocated to being a pool shark later that week. I find pretending to be a pool shark and making huge bets and then turning out to not be able to play pool at all really makes people happy. Plus that particular K-mart was actually DOWNHILL from my place. Yep, I was in danger. So I needed to do something BIG to avoid it, and I needed to do it NOW! 

*What it would be is to be revealed*

*Speaking of which if you are that robot can you please reveal how you appeared so nice? That seems like an awesome skill to have. 

Yes it can, good milk too

I don't get mad often, but something has had my goat for a long time, and on top of that I'm currently very weak from lack of rich goats cheese sourced calcium, and I'm just pissed off at this, and I need to get it off my chest, so here goes:

Hey, assholes, maybe instead of complaining that your sack is sad all the time, have you thought of perhaps giving it a break from carrying around all the marbles you're not currently playing with and giving it a hug? 

No. You'd rather complain. Dicks. 

Ps: If instead of unused marbles your sack is currently full of dead goat parts (like mine is for some reason I can't figure out, I'm sure my goat would have let me know if another goat had come into the house before someone got him) well then it's got TONS of reason to be sad, depending on the size of the goat. 

Pps: Assholes! 

Fifteen - Shaking Answers From The Sky

Jeremy Pondasy, a slightly pensive salesman of pansies, originally from Pulsy in Pindfay County, was living a great life. Most times when he bought something he was happy with the price, he hadn't been to the paradise of Tahiti once he'd been there twice, he had a wife named Glice, named after her mother's pet mice, his kids had hair lice, and the hair lice had made thousands of dollars betting on dice, the last time someone had attacked him with a knife he hadn't been stabbed, he'd merely been sliced, and he'd stolen the thousands of dollars from the lice and bought lots of nutmeg, which is a really nice spice. Which are all things almost anyone can have, but he also had the one thing everyone REALLY wants - a fun hobby. 

Unfortunately for him his hobby was really stupid. 

It was trying out different Japanese restaurants in his town. And as we all know almost all Japanese restaurants have strict 'no outside nutmeg' rules. Also his town had no Japanese people, so the local Japanese restaurants were mostly run by men who worked at the local quarry, who had learned to prepare Japanese food off a visiting astronaut who had crashed in the quarry hole and begged them not to turn him in to the local scientists at the university and then had used his green fingers to to turn seventeen rocks into tuna fish. 

I visited one of these Japanese restaurants myself one day. And I witnessed Jeremy on the unfortunate day that he inexplicably found a rock in his Cucumber and Ear of cloned Alien Seaweed Roll. Which normally isn't a big deal. But get this, he MADE a big deal about it! He even complained! Over something so tiny! I mean what a dick.

But the incident gave me an idea, and ideas fuel my scheme brain, and my scheme brain alighted my plan objective region of my brain, which was exposed because I had recently rented it out to the local scientists at the university for them to use as some weird sort of 'splicing with the green man clone efforts' or some crap. Who pays attention to these things? Who cares, I got twenty bucks.

When ideas hit you have to grab them NOW and blow them up BIG, or else they float away and get turned into butterflies, and I don't like butterflies, they remind me of birds, especially when birds are eating them, so I jumped on it, and just eight months later put it into action. 

My idea was to copy him and to start a new trend of eating bowls of rocks for meals, something that once I started, I attacked with a gusto, aplomb and a desire to be aplomb in in the gusto department. 

I ate bowls of rocks for breakfast, lunch, dinner, food between meals and even for snacks. Soon I was eating so many bowls of rocks that I was on a first name basis with the owners of all the local rock restaurants.

Fun fact: Most restaurants ARE rock restaurants, they just don't put their rock dishes on the menu because as they'd tell me 'we only sell rocks to people special enough to seek them out'. Sometimes so few people are seeking them that the restaurants seem unprepared and end up having to dig for rocks in the garden, that's how special these dishes are. 

Now why am I telling you this? I'll tell you why, because it was during one of my rock meals that something hit me, and it hit me BIG and right THEN, which at the time was NOW! 

While I'd been busy spreading this awesome new trend I'd forgotten that I was supposed to be developing a special new skill to be able to spot danger BEFORE it got me, and I NEEDED that skill, and I needed it THEN, which also was NOW at the time, and I also needed it NOW, which is NOW at THIS time. 

Just then. As I remembered. A miracle struck me. Striking me so hard that if there were ten of me and the miracle was a bowling ball I'd have been struck hard enough for it to be a strike, or maybe one of those nine pin knock downs that make you scream 'how was that not a strike you dicks!' And I knew it was a miracle because it was FRESH and NEW and came unexpected and completely out of the blue - that's right, inexplicably one of my teeth began to throb. And I knew immediately that a throbbing tooth would be an EXCELLENT danger detector. 

God had given me a gift. And he'd given it to me by letting me just decide to have it. Still I needed to double check that this was real.

'God' I cried out-loud in the loudest voice I could get out 'if this is my danger detector then please let my tooth continue to throb right now!' 

I paused.

I took stock.

I sold that stock on the black market.

Then I paused again.

My tooth was still throbbing, this WAS it! 

Then I paused again.

'Oh wait, God, is this throb a throb to answer my question, or is it to answer my question AND to let me know I'm CURRENTLY in danger, if it's the latter have it remain throbbing?' I screamed louder than a heavy metal concert played by an all steam train band, you know, you because you have to, Gods WAY up there.

I paused.

I took more stock.

I decided I didn't have the time to nick off to the black market to sell it, so I tried to sell it back to the restaurant.

Then the restaurant threw me out violently.

And as I sat on the pavement bruised and bloodied, I realized, my tooth WAS still throbbing, and I HAD been in danger! Danger of being inexplicably thrown out! 

This was BIG. And it was happening to me NOW! 

To be explained more* 

*Speaking of more, I'm dying to try more of those Cucumber and Alien Ear Seaweed Rolls by the way, there is an inexplicable familiar and comforting taste to those things, almost like a part of them is coming home*

*And where home is YUM, not two times but thrice. 

Fourteen - A Carrot Of Temptation

It was in a cold and musty room where I discovered the impetus which would lead to my special skill. There was a painting on the wall of a man on a wall. On the window sill sat a glass model of a boy making glass. On a table to my left was smaller table, and on that an even smaller table, and on that a yet even smaller table, and on that was a much, much, much larger table, fortunately the first table was about the size of a gnat, so the whole contraption only wobbled slightly, unfortunately someone had put on the table an overfull vial of a newly government developed super flu, and the vial toppled over and spilled, leading to EVERYONE getting the flu. 

I'm sure you all remember the Great Fluing Of '98. It was awesome. EVERYONE was phlegmy, so no CARED about being phlegmy. We all played with tadpoles in phlegm puddles. We went on the phlegm slides at Wet And Gooey Phlemg Recreation park. We rested our weary bones in relaxing phlegm jacuzzis. We swung off ropes into phlegm rivers. We went phlegm skiing across the local phlegm lake behind phlegm shooting speed boat propellers. And we made beautiful love in the phlegm grotto at the Playboy mansion (although technically that had been there since the sixties and so was not part of the great fluing of '98). I even heard three toddlers learned to blow their OWN noses. It was so sweet, it was their first time doing something their older sisters were trying to teach them. And it was also kind of gross, they held those tissues with their fingers, do you know how DISGUSTING toddlers' fingers are? Ewwwww.

Everyone was having fun. Except me of course. As the first person to have this particular strand of flu I got the blame, which is stupid! I mean I was also the one hired by the government to chemically develop the flu, out of some fly feces, six vats of melted treadmill tread, the phlegm of a hundred Phlegm Tailed Canyon Condors (which don't actually exist, obviously, who's stupid enough to believe such in an obviously mythical bird? Mythical things aren't real you dicks - These Condors are actually just Doves with Meryl Streep's used tissues from her crying scenes in Sophie's Choice stuck on them using the seaman from a werewolf), and the memories of two ghost monkeys fighting in a burlap sack, so surely THAT'S why I deserved to get the blame. People are such morons. 

Plus it's not my fault everyone fell for my practical joke, you know the one where I announced everyone on earth had to lick my used dinner plates or I'd release the ghost monkeys in THEIR houses.

People are so stupid, everyone knows it's annoying and tedious to try and entice ghost monkeys out of burlap sacks, do I look like someone who would do something annoying and tedious? Yes I do, obviously. And it's so boring doing something you look like you'd do. Do I look like someone who would do something I look like I'd do? Yes, clearly. So I'm NOT going to do something boring am I? That's why I pulled the practical joke in the first place, because one day Kev said 'wow you look cool today', and I was like 'so you're saying that I'll do stuff other than be cool, cause why would I look cool AND act cool, you're such a dick'. So I had to do something cool to show him! 

It was only after the seventeenth person was licking my seventeenth now empty plate of gnocchi in hash-brown sauce that something unprecedented and unique hit me 'I'm sort of full,  in fact I have been nearly all week since I started this, maybe I could just spit in people's mouths instead for a while'.

And that's what made me realize something even unprecedenteder and uniquer 'also I have tons of this flu in vials at home, I could just put it in the water supply'. 

And that's when something even unprecedentederer and uniquerer struck me in the face 'or I could just NOT spread the flu to everyone'.

And that's when something slapped my very soul with epic levels of 

unprecedentedererist and uniquererathons 'nah fuck that, why should I be the only one who feels a tad sick!' 

So I went back to eating gnocchi in hash brown sauce, and kept it up non-stop for the next three months, before I was hospitalized with a rare form of Potato Poisoning. I don't know how I got it, I hadn't eaten potato in years. I must have got it while melting the treadmill tread, some dick must have been eating potatoes while working out. Idiots. 

Three years in the hospital getting your veins one by one taken out and scraped of potato residue can give you some time to think. And I hate thinking, so I watched LOTS of TV. But then one day the TV broke, and I was FORCED to think. 

I began to feel proud. The great Fluing had happened because of ME. And, outside of the unprecedented levels of suffering, it had brought joy to the world, I'D done that. And I'd done it by making a BIG decision and making it THEN (which at the time was NOW). If I could do that I could do ANYTHING! I controlled my own destiny. If I wanted a special skill all I had to do was decide to get one. And that's why I made a BIG decision and I made it NOW! 

I decided to only ever make BIG decisions from NOW on. And the first one I made, and I made it BIG, was that as soon as I figured out how to do it, I'd decide to have that special skill right NOW. And that's just what I did. 

There's more coming to town*

*the town of Inthisstoryville*

*which would be a badass place to live, I bet they'd have cool things, like maybe they'd even have a local park, and parks are badass, and badassness is awesome, and awesomeness can be cool, wow now THAT be worth enticing out of a burlap sack! 

Off the top of my head

I know what you're thinking... 'My favorite hat is great! It's stylish, it looks good on my head, I look good with my head under it, and just ONE of those things would make headless people jealous of us, it's never once whipped me to a bloody pulp with a bike chain on a Tuesday, together we've solved more crimes than most envelope paper cuts, when lit on fire we're easy to spot on snow fields, since we've been together very few South East Asian Sea based islands have been sited sneaking off to the North West Moldavian Tar Pits, and it pairs well with two, maybe even three of my favorite belts, it's a GREAT hat! Yet, well, it's just that sometimes I think it's unsatisfied, do you think maybe it secretly wishes it could try being a sock?'

Well I know your pain. Lucky for you I have a special skill, the skill of knowing the exact signs that YOUR hat secretly wants to try being a sock, and these include and are strictly limited to the following: 

- It's always oddly quiet when you ask it if it thinks you should update your sock collection. 

- It once said 'Oooh, I'd let someone hide their jewelry in the ME draw'. 

- When you and it are on fire in the snow it always says 'I'm jealous of your socks' but NEVER clarifies 'you know, because they're in the snow and therefore not as hot as we are'. 

- Sometimes when it's startled by a spider instead of leaping with fear it merely sighs 'think of all those feet'.

- When you hang it on a hatstand near a fish tank it's always looking at the space below the fishes legless bodies and saying 'what a waste'. 

- Once, as a nice gesture before a big exam it had to sit at Hat University (HU), you gave it a lucky rabbit's foot, but instead of saying thank you it shoved you to the ground and screamed 'WHY THE FUCK WOULD I WANT THAT?' and you replied 'sorry, sorry, I know you're not the superstitious sort' and it yelled 'NO NO NO, it's not that, it's that it's CRUEL! I mean the poor thing is fucking NAKED!' 

- Sometimes when it's giving you a foot rub, and you say 'alright, that's enough, time to put my shoes on and go to work' instead of stopping it only seems to rub harder. 

- When one of your socks goes missing after you've done laundry it's often seen nearby blushing. 

- Once it said 'I'd kinda like to try being a sock one day, nah screw that, I'd REALLY like to try being a sock one day'. 

- It's a hat shaped like a foot. 

So there you go, feel pain no more, you no longer have to wonder, you can now KNOW if YOUR hat wants to have a go at being a sock. 

Oh and yes, I've been saying YOUR hat, because, ha ha, that would NEVER happen to me, what kind of an idiot gets themselves the sort of quandary where your not sure what your hat is thinking? You people are SO strange. Ha ha, I avoid nonsense like that by having daily heart to hearts with MY hats. 

Ps. Hat university? What a lame name. Come on hat centric higher learning establishments, there's no People University for fuck sake! Plus I've heard about your prejudice against berets in the Actuary Department, for fucking shame! 

Pps. Stop making your hat wonder and just let it have a go as a sock for fuck's sake. What are you scared of. Being killed? That's ludicrous. The famed People Wearing Hats As Socks Slasher hasn't been active in months! 

Things like chopsticks

Oh man if I was holding a bowl of rice right now the things I would do, the THINGS I WOULD DO!! Oh yeah, I'd do things. THINGS I tell ya!

Oh yeah I'd do things like COUNT the rice! 

I would. 

I would.

I so would count the rice. 

One, two, three AND so on! 

Like that wouldn't be the end, there'd be more than that, the so on bit...

Eight, nine, ten even! 

Fucking ten!

Oh man, if I was holding a bowl of rice right now there could TOTALLY be as many as ten rices! 

Depending on the size of the bowl.

Wow. 

Potentially ten! 

Oh man, if there were more than ten rices the things I would do, the things I WOULD DO, oh yeah I'd do things! I'm talking THINGS! 

Things like name other things that come in more than ten. 

Oh hell yeah I would.

I'd count things that come in more than ten things harder than mice count hammers in hardware stores they've broken into and don't want to be hammered in. 

I SO would. I'd count things that come in more than ten.

Trees, people, types of hat AND so on. 

Like that wouldn't be the end. I'd count even more that. If there ARE more. And there might be? Who knows? 

Well If I had that bowl of rice, then potentially I would know! 

Depending on whether there were more than ten rices. 

Which there may well be!! 

Depending on the size of the bowl size.

And most bowls aren't tiny! 

That means, to my best guess at least, that there could be at least six more things that come in more than ten! At LEAST six.

Wow. Oh man. If there were more than six more things that come in more than ten the things I would do. Things I'm saying. THINGS! 

Things like trying to remember things. Things I tell you! 

I LOVE remembering things.

I'd remember things like things that I've previously encountered like the way rats remember which hardware stores their mouse friends have been hammered in! 

I would totally remember things that had happened before. 

The past, times before now, historical occurrences of my existence AND so on.

Like that wouldn't be the end. Because WHILE I was saying that other things had happened. Like a rodent ate all my rice.

Oh fuck.

Everyone Does

Today's been one of those days. Yes THOSE days. You know the ones? Everyone does. Where you wake up and get slapped in the face, and you go 'hello, what's this, a kidnapping, yaaaaayyy' and then it's not that, so you go 'it's not a kidnapping, that's strange, then what is this?' and a murky shadow of silence whispers 'actually it would he strange if it WAS a kidnapping' and then you go 'says who' and it goes 'just about everyone actually' and you go 'actually I don't think "everyone" ever has the same relationship to experiences you dick, plus you still haven't answered the question, if it's not a kidnapping, then what IS it?' and then it goes 'it's TRUTH!' And then you go 'how can murky shadow of "silence" whisper' and it yells back 'I was being mysterious you dick!' 

We've all been there. And there is nothing you can do but RECKON with that truth, because that murky shadow of silence has a bad attitude, and who wants to deal with THAT? Frankly if a murky shadow of silence doesn't have a good attitude I don't even want them in my room pre-dawn.

So right now I'm reckoning with truth. And that's hard, because truth is subjective. 

Like take this undeniable fact: 

'Quitting pie is often the fastest way to delinquency! The fastest!'

It's as true as the sky is blue, and the hue is too, but rarely is glue and that you shouldn't try to poo out a screw. 

And it's especially true for kids that are part of the 'jam them full of pie, that'll stop them being delinquent I reckon. But still, hey, between you and me, how cool is delinquency man! It's a gem. It's got mischief, shenanigans no good up toness, and sometimes even thieving, and theiving is super fun, especially when you realize realistically that you can just about always thieve delicious stuff, oooohh stuff like pie, mmmm pie, I could go some pie right now, wish we didn't give it all to these little delinquent shits, let's go steal some' program. 

Which if you ask me was a fine program, super fine even. 

And well, sure it had its draw backs, the name was a tad long, and some of its developers turned out to be thieves, and over all it proved to increase, rather than decrease, total delinquency, but hardly any of the kids on the program were delinquent while they were actually eating the pie.

Well, sure some of them were truant from school while they were eating the pie, but I think that has just as much to do with the fact that sign ups for the program happened during school hours, and right in front of the school, and on test day, so you can't blame them for that particular act of delinquency, the truancy that is. 

But when the program ran out of pie almost every one of them turned to delinquency. Especially seeing as they ran out of pie at 2:43am and all of them had curfews between 11pm and 1am. Oh and also because the pies turned out to be laced with drugs. Which were illegal in the town this program began. 

Regardless of these small obstacles though, TRUTH shone through. Stopping eating pie led to delinquency FAST!

So if you don't want to be a delinquent don't quit pie today. Although I heard delinquency is a gem. So feel free to go that way too. 

Okay, truth reckoned with successfully, it turned out in this case their was no element open to subjective opinion, so that's nice.

But I'm still not satisfied, why DIDN'T the murky shadow of silence want to kidnap me? I'm a good kid.

Also how come no one ever shoved my face full of free pie? It really has just been one of those days. But you know what it's like. Everyone does. 

Boldly doing stuff

'Okay! I'm gonna do it. No no no, I HAVE to do it'. 

That's the type of awesome, pumped up, call to arms as said, nay SCREAMED, by people who do stuff, and more specifically stuff like 'it', and when I hear things like that it reminds me of things. Things like the fact that here at Fleeting Forever we have a bold mission statement: Do stuff. 

And here at Fleeting Forever we're not the type of people who take things lightly. Consider these four points on things we do or do not take lightly:

1. We do NOT take 'mission statements' lightly.

2. We do NOT take 'boldness' lightly.

3. We DO take being places lightly (especially heavy places, like clouds made of refined lead floating in vats of oil, with the vats being on fire, and with cracks in the vats, and with the vats being located above the flimsy ceiling of a children's school, the flimsiness being a result of letting the students do most of the carpentry work, which turned out to be a mistake, despite it being a rousing success at the 'adult school of advanced carpentry: that is carpentry school for students already quite advanced in the skill of carpentry', so the fact that it didn't work at this school baffled school administrators, yet not as much as their failed 'let's let the school's pet gnats decide where to keep vats of dangerous stuff' program, I mean what sort of idiots let the kids pick what sort of school pet they get? Everyone knows kids choose whichever animal is most likely to light stuff on fire!) 

4. And we do NOT take 'have' lightly!

That's right. So at best we could justify taking the decree to 'do stuff' one quarter lightly, but we wont. We CAN'T. Because one quarter is a TINY amount. Consider one quarter of these things:

1. An atom of an ant.

2. The memories of a blind worm.

3. Jupiter.

4. A small breath of air as breathed by a small air breathing air bubble.

Yep, only one forth of that even amounts to anything, and even though that particular one fourth amounts to more stuff than on the entire of planet earth I think we've still proven that a quarter of stuff is nothing. 

We also won't take quarter lightly because if we do then a quarter of us will legally have to jump on that vat, and those school kids will then be crushed and burned due to their own laxidasical and poorly thought out pet choices, and nothing BUT that, which is exactly HOW that should go down. I mean gnats, seriously? Of course they're going to be haphazard with vats, they're totally pissed off their name rhymes with wats, because 'wats' aren't anything, and who would ever want their name to rhyme with something that doesn't at least a quarter exist? 

So we ARE going to 'do stuff'. And because we've talked about it so much already we're going to make sure we do it boldly, and if we're going to do something boldly we're going to make the thing we do a bold thing, and there is nothing bolder than making a bold statement! Except of course there is - making a bold statement BOLDLY! 

Here goes, consider these four boldly stated statements:

1. You shouldn't hug garbage.

2. Spinal Dysophage Disease doesn't sound that nice.

3. Cheese is often kept in the fridge.

4. Being stabbed in the eye sounds unpleasant. 

Boom.

Yeah we fucking did it. Clearly all four of those statements was stated boldly, but one out of four of those statements was also in itself BOLD! And as we've established one out of four of things is kick ass! 

And yes, yes, fucking yes, I hear the doubters, I hear the cries, I hear the naysayers, I even hear he lollygaggers, and I hear the voices of reason.

'Which one was bold'

'Not always'

'Depends what sort of cheese'

'What the hell ARE we?' 

'Yeah, we know, it's a cold dairy product, of course it goes in the fridge'. 

But you can all shut it.

And by 'it' I mean your mouth. 

And by 'shut' I mean something akin to open but not quite, depending on how you feel. 

Because we here at Fleeting Forever do stuff, and when we say that you can once again count that stuff will be DONE. 

By which of course all I really mean is - hey who the fuck left the cheese out on my kitchen bench? Don't you know it's supposed to go in the fridge

Also I think my pet small air breathing air bubble has stopped breathing, anyone know how to give CPR to something with an outer membrane less strong than a gnats pinky toe? I really could do with it living, it's supposed to tell me by tomorrow where I should keep my melting cauldron of liquid hydrogen encased in a crate made out of killer bees! 

Late Saturday Night Thoughts As Delved On Wednesday

Sometimes I can't help but focus on the fact that I'm a silly monkey full of starlight juice, and stars are hard to juice because they're so pulpy, so while you're squeezing them you often get distracted doing Tarantino quotes from Pulp Fiction, which can lead to doing tarantula quotes, and some people claim tarantulas can't talk so you have to throw snakes at them, which are a natural enemy of monkeys, reminding you that focus is hard, and maybe you need to update your glasses prescription. You know? 

Wait, I'm sorry, I take it back. I think it's Thursday now. 

Still, fuck you pulp. 

Thirteen - Crying Darkness

I'd officially made the official decision to develop an amazing new skill and have it made official. And making a decision to develop an amazing new skill is no small thing. It requires an official declaration for one thing. Which can include a lot of annoying paper work. But that's just the start. As surprisingly actually developing the skill can also require some difficulty. Sometimes even extreme lengths are required. And it's tough to get a length officially registered as extreme, so I knew that NO part of this would be easy.

For example I once knew a guy who decided one day to develop the skill of x-Ray vision. To facilitate this he first officially declared that he wanted this skill, obviously. Then he did all the paperwork. And then he plucked his eyes out with a fork, stuck them in the microwave on high for three minutes, then finished them off in the sandwich press for a further four minutes! 

And that's when he realized something NOW, and it turned out to be BIG! 

He realized that he'd accidentally gotten the instructions for developing x-Ray vision mixed up with his own personal preferred method for reheating pizza. 

It was a crying shame too, shame being what he felt in his eye ducts, something they found heart breaking, leading them to leak, and leaking eye ducts always made him sad, and sadness made him cry. 

I mean he'd done SO much to get those instructions. 

This is how it went down - he'd paid a mysterious and scary man in a turban in the back of dark, dark and extremely smokey car wash cafe twelve bucks. And that was no small feat. The the man hardly just offered to sell them for twelve bucks at his regular selling spot, my friend had to MAKE this happen. 

This is how it went down - my friend had gone to get a coffee at his favorite coffee place. He liked it there because he'd always wanted to meet someone who could drive a car, and he thought this was as good as place as any. Plus it was only a ten minute taxi ride from his house. So he'd been going ever day for months hoping to eventually get the confidence to talk to someone. But before he did he saw someone else is wanted to meet even more, this was a NEW goal and it was FRESH! You see he'd spotted a man in a turban. 

This was a HUGE opportunity, and he had to act on it NOW, and in a BIG way. So he immediately smashed the light bulbs out with a chair to create some dark, dark atmosphere. Next he mugged a magician for his smoke machine, and set it up. Then he kicked it a few times because it wouldn't work. Then he looked up instructions on how to make it work on the Internet, where he discovered that the plastic cylinder labeled 'water container' was not indeed a cylinder that MADE water, but rather one that REQUIRED water. So he had to run out and track down the magician. Which was hard, as he had to attend fourteen different magic shows to find him, which sucked because he had to be careful not to watch a single trick being performed, knowing full well that if he couldn't figure out how they did the tricks, he'd have to go back stage and kick the magicians in the kneecaps once for each time he'd been fooled, and he didn't have time for that, because he had a magician to find! Then when he finally found HIS magician he kicked him in the kneecaps and yelled 'that's for not telling me that your machine didn't MAKE water but instead REQUIRED it, you dick!' 

Then he ran back to the car wash cafe, now suitably smokey and dark, dark as he'd desired for the atmosphere he desired, with dark, dark and smokey being his desired atmosphere of smokiness and dark, darkness. 

Lucky the man in the turban was still there. Well not really luckily, some how his car had kept getting mud sprayed on it. By which I mean my friend had mugged a magnetician for his mud sprayer (but that's a whole other story - just know this, the way it went down was fun and exciting, and included bad ass things such as magnets! And even mud!)

He now gingerly and warily approach the man in the turban and gave him a big hug and sloppy kiss, and said 'wow, I've heard about guys like you, and I've heard that guys with those head things, in dark, dark and smokey places always have secret magic! And and I've ALWAYS wanted to experience magic but the opportunity never arises for some reason, it's bullshit, magic people are such dicks, so show me a trick!'

The man in the turban had been caught out, but he wasn't going to give it up yet 'I don't know any tricks, you racist' he replied. 

'Yeah you do' my friend now said with conviction 'you're just scared I won't be able to guess how you did the trick and I'll kick you in the kneecaps, but I won't, unless it's REALLY hard to guess' he added as reassurance.  

'Oh WHAT an OFFER, how could ANYONE resist that' the man in the turban responded with a weird questioning sing-song tone in his voice, a tone that screamed loud and clear, screaming 'you got me!' 

'Okay show me' my friend said.

'I don't want to' came the reply.

'Please?' Came a further request.

'Nah'

'But I want to see one, I really, really want to see magic. Let's say this - I'll hurt if you don't show me. But if you do I promise I won't kick you in the kneecaps if I can't figure it out, I'm not a violent man promise'.

'Nah, still don't want to'. The man in the turban replied arrogantly. 

'Please?'

'Look I don't know any tricks, honestly, but I do have something else' he suddenly said with a cheeky look in his eye. 

'I want it, I WANT it, give it'.

'No pay me twelve bucks'. 

'That's actually very reasonable, why do people resort to violence and muggings so often when perfectly fine financial transactions are available?' 

After an extreme lengthy conversation was had about the nature of economics and the flaws of a capitalist society was concluded, with the required paperwork finished to made the length officially declared extreme, twelve dollars was handed over, and that's when the man in the turban got serious, and handed over a list, that to the layman appeared to just be a list of standard items available at a supermarket. 

'Hey I'm a layman you dick' said my friend 'what is this?' 

'Um' replied the man in the turban 'um, well, um, are there any skills you've been wanting to acquire?' 

'Yes, x-Ray vision!'

'Oh wow, fluke, cause that's EXACTLY what buying these things and delivering them to me here, oh and possibly some other tasks, will gain you, I will give you further instructions on your return!' 

'Of course!' My friend yelled. 'I always wondered why people purchased food at supermarkets instead of just mugging people for it, clearly they've been acquiring x-Ray vision, and now I will too! 

But because he didn't know that acquiring amazing new abilities was hard, he'd gotten too complacent. And decided to go home to reheat some pizza first. And well we all know where that went wrong. 

When he put his sizzling eyes back in his head he realized his fuck up 'ah man' he sighed 'I can only see through stuff if I squint REALLY hard, and everyone seems to have black charcoal colored skeletons, I don't want to see that'.

Then after finishing the man in the turban's detailed and difficult tasks he ended up with three slices of pepperoni deep dish pizza living in his car that use the x-Ray vision THEY got to mock his underwear choices RELENTLESSLY (stock mock: you should wear SOME underwear you gross bastard, seriously, or shower occasionally, maybe both even?) 

I've of course since also mocked my friend relentlessly for the relentless mocking he cops, how could I not? The problem is this man is ME! That's right, I'm my own friend, that's a win for me you dicks! So imagine how much relentless mocking he'd get from me if it was someone else? 

I'd HATE to be mocked that much. That's why I HATE trying to develop new skills now. Unless their importance is BIG, and their importance imminent, in fact so important and imminent that their imminence is important NOW! 

Like it was in the case with this waiter, and luckily I had a skill developed NOW and that's BIG, but to have it now first I'd had to develop it, and its development had to be GOOD and it therefore it had to be developed SMART! 

Here's how I did it...

Explanation coming* 

*Note this explanation includes very little magic, so your risk of having to kick me in the kneecaps is minimal, REALLY minimal! That's the truth, and I ALWAYS* tell the truth

*By the way I lied above, I didn't do my own paperwork. This is how it went down -  I had Kev do it. 

Twelve - Popping Safety Attack

Amazing skills are hard to come by. I once heard of a guy who pick pocketed eight hundred and twenty seven people to try and get a special skill, and he did it at a massive police convention, and he pick pocketed them on the stage in front of ten thousand cops, right after the marching band played and right before the talk on 'staying alert', and he didn't get caught for a single one, and EVEN he didn't acquire his desired special skills, he didn't even get ONE! 

So I don't want you to take your special skills for granted, if you have any, which you don't, but I do, so don't take mine for granted dick.

Here's how I discovered my newest and most amazing skill, the skill to always know when danger lurks:

It was a hot and sweaty day the day this happened, as it was International Sauna Day, and Scandinavians had stormed city squares, parks, gathering spaces, bird nests, beaches, offices of actuaries, food courts with foods from around the world 'yet no Norwegian Pickled Herring Desert Huts?, "around" the world my ass' , football players underwear draws, the inside of hollowed out not yet formed holes in the ground, and even food courts that DID have Norwegian Pickled Herring Dessert Huts, and these Scandinavians had set up Saunas the size of LARGE saunas, REALLY large saunas, and they were screaming at their hostages 'just try it, it's actually really relaxing, why do you think our nations have such low crime rates?' But little did the Scandinavians know that they WERE trying it, EVERYONE was, the Scandinavians had forgotten to close the sauna doors and the whole world had become a sauna! 

I'm sure you all remember the Great Sweating Of '97. It was awesome. EVERYONE was sweaty, so no cared about being sweaty. We went rafting on sweat rivers. And we swam in sweat pools. We splashed about under fire hydrants spraying sweat across roads. And we made love under sweat waterfalls. I heard three Eskimos even went skinny dipping in a warm bubbling pond of sweat. It was their first ever encounter with warm water! It was so awesome! And of course kind of gross, none of them had ever been naked before, and it turns out those Eskimo outfits are a tad sweaty on the inside, yuck! 

Everyone was out enjoying the fun. Except me of course. I don't follow trends, I START them. So I was inside having a bath in ice, a new trend that I'd started after seeing Scandinavians jump in snow after delightful saunas. Man that looked nice, I wish I could try it. 

Just then a REAL LIFE ghost monkey invaded my home! It was running around pushing things over. Breaking stuff. And picking things up it had pushed over then breaking them and pushing them back over. And there was NOTHING I could do. It had disguised itself as a human, so I couldn't call it implausible, I was stuck. 

And that's when it did something BIG and it did it NOW! 

It began screaming at me...

'That's for whipping my brother Kev all the time you dick, among other ways you treat him bad, STOP it!' 

I was dumbfounded. 

'I have NEVER whipped a ghost monkey you dick!' I screamed. 'I only whip my HUMAN friend Kev. How dare you accuse me of that. Cruelty to animals is cruel, and if I did something cruel it would cruel my chances to get into The Society Of People Who Don't Like Cruel Stuff, and I REALLY want to get in to that society, I have a really cruel practical joke I want to play on them. Get this, I'm going change the official records so that some birds I have had officially denied, get put down as having previously existed, but say they were killed off by The Society Of People Who Don't Like Cruel Stuff, then I'm going to release a canary in their office that I'd nailed-gunned bubble wrap too, so they'd think it was a previously thought extinct African Rasping Elephant Vulture, and then I'm going to laugh at them!  I'm just waiting for a canary to volunteer. So I would NEVER be cruel to a ghost monkey, or anything else, you dick!' 

Then I ran out of the house. And I put locks on all the doors, and windows, and covered the entire home in air sealing gel, except one hole, that I used to gas the place, with some of the immense supply of mustard gas I'd found in my dead granddad's (a war hero), home and kept because I had at first misread it as being mustard gaffe, and I thought 'ha ha, can't even spell gas, you idiots', and which I'd been using to set booby traps on my mail box to try and get the paperboy to throw my paper at the front door like they did on those TV shows, and because that lazy paperboy started walking it to my front door instead, three postmen had ended up in hospital. Well done paperboy you dick! 

The ghost monkey seemed to not believe my very truthful explanation though, because I could hear him still breaking stuff, for some reason he really wanted to break my front door, which he did, then he ran down the road, yelling 'you're nuts, you're really nuts'. So I yelled back 'jokes on you ghost monkey, no one likes name callers, you dick!' 

Then I realized something BIG, and I realized it NOW! 

'Oh my god, are you stupid?' I said to myself. 'A ghost monkey can just go THROUGH doors. Therefore it CAN'T break them. Therefore that CAN'T have been a ghost monkey!!!!!!' 

It was now very clear what had just taken place. 

That must have been a ghost LEMUR! And I HAD been whipping a ghost lemur's bother Kev. I mean it had asked me to. I'd never be cruel. But still, whoops. I was SO embarrassed. REALLY embarrassed. 

And thats when I realized I needed to figure out a way to stop things like from keep happening to me. I need to spot danger BEFORE horrible things, like me getting embarrassed, happened again. And I needed to figure out this danger spotting method NOW, and it had to be BIG! 

There's more coming*

*oh I like that one, simple and straight to the point* it's nice to find something purely nice and helpful

*the fun end of a spear, often with blood dripping off! 

Eleven - Hot Endowment Snorts

There's an Ancient Chinese saying of wisdom that I coined recently – ‘If you're headless and you ride a horse you're the headless horseman, but if you're headless and you ride an evil robot dragon that's probably how you lost your head you idiot!’ 

I like this saying for four main reasons:

1. It's very wise.

2. Because I came up with it.

3. It's a reminder that there is danger everywhere, at all times and it wants YOU! 

(Fact: Danger lies in bed at night dreaming of you. It wakes up in the morning and wipes it's phlegmy drool on its still sleeping lover's face just rabid for you. Danger sometimes even sits bolt upright at its desk at work, with steel fire in its eyes, and has to walk over to its boss and say 'mind if I take a quick break boss, I'm feeling insane desire for you again' and sometimes it's boss says 'again? Look you can't take another break until the Harrison account is balanced okay, I'm sick of you letting your personal life come into this office, we're accountants damn it, numbers ARE our personal lives, not deep seated yearning for people' and that makes danger covet you even more, so much so that sometimes it replies 'but boss, please, I don't just yearn you, I CRAVE you, I boil with lustful NEED for you, like a perfectly boiled batch of French Fries' and then danger goes home and thinks to itself 'man sometimes I feel like I missed my calling by becoming an accountant, but you have to take the safe option in life sometimes don't you, I mean I want everyone, especially you, and I can't get them following some fancy pipe-dream "fun" career'. Yep danger wants you BAD! And you may think that you're safe while its at work, but I'll tell ya, when that Harrison account is balanced danger could be on break ANYTIME!)

4. It has a cool evil robot dragon in it.

The wisdom of this saying has affected me deeply, and it's in my deep spots where I make decisions, and my deep spots are always deciding to say to me 'listen to wisdom, and listen to it NOW, then respond to it with something BIG!'

Now if there is one thing people all know about me, it's that if I need to do something BIG, and if it has to be done NOW, then I always, ALWAYS, do that thing NOW, and I make it happen in a BIG way!

That’s why since this saying came into my life, over the following months I instantly made lots of changes. I bought stocks in several mechanics and technology companies, hoping to make some of that sweet evil robot dragon cash for myself. I fired my accountant after I realized he was probably taking way too many breaks. And I started to come up with ways to spot danger BEFORE it got me.

I tried several methods before I found one that worked, walking around yelling 'I see you there, you can't hide from me!' hoping that danger wouldn't know that I was lying. Bathing in squid slime every morning hoping that danger would abhor the smell as much as I did. And having my mate Kev walk three feet in front of me at all times while constantly whipping him with a bullwhip hoping danger would think that I was on its side. All these methods worked at times, but then for some reason strangers would look at me funny, sometimes even with scorn, and I knew that it was danger at work letting me know I hadn't beaten it.

Then God intervened - and gave me a gift. 

God's given me lots of gifts so far in my life, including but not limited to:

- Perfect powers of perception. 

- Dream ability to detect the presence of people who are dicks.

- The skill to pretend to be a ghost monkey for periods up to twelve minutes without a single person pointing out that this was implausible (today I got away with it for nearly twenty eight seconds, which is EASILY within up to twelve minutes).  

- A capacity to never be on a farm for more than four minutes without saying 'a farm, seriously, why would you bring ME here, you dick, why are you ALWAYS bringing me here?' 

- The power to be on a farm and spook the cows WITHOUT spooking the pigs.

- The aptitude to then prove I still wasn't scared of the cows, by climbing into the bull pit.

- The dexterity to say 'yes I WILL really prove it' then slapping a bull in the face. 

- The competence to tell my friends to video what would then take place. 

- Discovering now that that dick Kev had totally worn out my bullwhip, but then having the talent to then only get gored in the soft bits of my torso.

- The intelligence to look up 'ability' in the thesaurus while in the hospital waiting for my wounds to heal.

- And the resourcefulness to tell my friends 'I've been cooped up in a hospital bed all week, you owe me, take me somewhere please, oh I know, some where rural, that'll be a nice change from a hospital for sure'.

And then one day God gave me a yet another new thing: 

- A facility to know whenever danger lurked. 

The waiter had made it clear that clearly he wanted to be really clear in that he was clearly hard to read, and so clearly I had a clear goal in mind, figure out WHY he wanted to be hard to read. 

'Stop that, it's implausible' he said to me as I flawlessly ghost monkeyed throughout the restaurant for twenty eight seconds, 'you're a hero, how can I ever repay you?' He added, adding to his clear need to be hard to read. 

And it was right then that I noticed my danger notifier going off. It wasn't clear why. But that's just how it is when the danger is BIG and in my face NOW, so clearly whatever was about to happen was about to happen NOW, and it sure was going to be BIG! 

To be continued*

*Yes I know that was the first one, but I think sometimes it's okay to go back to the beginning, in fact it probably always is, PERFECTLY* okay! So fuck you if you think it's not. 

*Another word for 'clearly an exaggeration*, what are you trying to hide you dick!' 

*Something I have the dexterity to NEVER do.