Christopher and the Curds

Christopher had been working as a snack attendant at the Ye Olde Bar & Grille for two summers before encountering the singular misfortune of being held up. The small conflagration of deep friers was situated in a fifteen-by-fifteen foot sailor "shanty" half way down the main concourse of Family Towne. The majority of his days were occupied in observing every variety of man, woman and child emit shrieks of joy, excitement, and incontinence as their slippery bodies barreled down heavily lubricated water slides with their arms folded across their chests. Last Tuesday proved slightly more terrifying.

Christopher pulled his sister Karen's dented Volvo into the Family Towne staff parking lot at 9:53. He spent a few moments reaching into the seat behind him uncomfortably, until he found the pleather pirate hat which clearly defined his attachment to the Ye Olde Bar and Grille. Other members of the Family Towne food service team wore different forms of head gear based on their placement: naval canvas hats at Sailor Terry's, explorer hats and monocles at Commander Bobby's, and felt headbands sprouting tentacles at Ursula's Under the Sea Lounge. Christopher slipped on his matching black, pleather vest and swiped his key card in the staff entrance lock. It was a humid mid-August morning, and perspiring patrons from Family Towne's surrounding suburbs swarmed, seeking the gentle, cooling lull of the gargantuan wave pool. They hungered for the moments just before entering the chute of a particularly large water slide; comfortably reclining in a two-seater tube just under the lean pelvis of a Polish lifeguard. Christopher however, had an eight hour stint of tireless frying ahead, and braced himself for the ensuing labor.

He walked around the the eight foot wooden embodiment of a pirate called Jones and slipped in the side door of the Ye Olde Bar and Grille. He bent awkwardly at the sanitation sink, and washed his hands with the harsh brown soap, mandated for food service employee use by the state of Wisconsin. He dried his hands and attached his name tag to left side of his vest just above the nipple. He talked with his co-workers Tricia and Marie about their plans for the evening, and made his way up to the front where the sun burned and dripping, fatigued from lengthy lines, came to inquire about hamburgers and fried cheese curds.

It was early yet, and aside from the desirous eyes of chubby children, Christopher only encountered three customers until noon. As morning traipsed into afternoon, things began to pick up, and in no time beads of Christopher's sweat were dripping into the deep frier. In the space of ten minutes, he had been verbally accosted by a Russian woman and her grandma, spilled half a vat of mayonnaise on his left foot, and been hit in the face with three spit balls, propelled from the unholy straws of a gang of slack jawed miscreants sitting fifteen feet away. As the third spitball assaulted the bridge of Christopher's nose, the crowd at the counter cleared, making his aggressors fully visible in the mid-afternoon sun.

They were a rusty looking crew, four boys between the ages of ten and thirteen. The tallest of them stood five-foot-three, with a curly blond rat tail resting limply between his shoulder blades. His stout body was clad in a pair of red hibiscus print swimming trunks, and blue bands latched the wires of his braces. He raised his straw over his head in triumph as Christopher looked up yelling "Boo Ya Biva Ka Shaw!" His three comrades followed suit, their soft, pubescent bellies jiggling slightly as they thrust their hands upward in excitement. The roundest of them lost his glasses in all the fervor and exposed a sliver of his wide, mosquito bitten butt crack as he bent to retrieve them. "I'm gonna get that asshole", Christopher muttered under his breath as he observed in disgust.

As the rotund youngster secured his glasses with a sharp push up the sweaty bridge of his nose, the boy next to him poked him in the shoulder saying,"Herbert. That guy is looking at you." Herbert lifted his head to meet Christopher's gaze. He rubbed his limp pink nipples tenderly and yelled "Come and get it snack boy!"

The whole gang guffawed raucously as they turned their backs on Christopher and formed a huddle. A moment later they began to advance toward the counter with wicked conviction. as they approached, they each reached behind behind their backs and pulled squirt guns out of their swim trunks. "We filled these up at the urinal." Herbert informed him with a glint of sweat in his eye. He continued, "Give us four orders of cheese curds now or you'll get it right in the face." Incensed, Christopher wrinkled his brow, pursed his lips and walked toward the deep friers, where at least a pound of cheese curds floated atop a vat of bubbling oil. 

As he emptied the golden brown contents of the metal basket into four separate paper boats, Christopher heard the tall boy with the rat tail whisper, "I knew he'd cave. What a jerk." Christopher picked up a pair of scissors and inconspicuously slipped them behind his back as he carried the tray of cheese curds toward the counter. The gang licked their lips eagerly as he approached and put down their guns in anticipation of their snack. 

As Christopher set the tray down on the counter, he leaned forward and whispered, "Now you're gonna get it assholes." With that he punched Herbert square in the face with such force that he toppled off of his flat, wet feet onto his fat ass with a dull thud. The boys reached for their guns, but Christopher was too fast, having already jumped the counter. He violently stepped down onto Herbert's naked stomach with one foot, holding up the pair of scissors and seethed, "Get the fuck out of here before I kill you." Two of the boys immediately began running, but the tall one defiantly raised his gun and aimed toward Christopher's face. Christopher ducked as a stream of yellow shot over his shoulder, and began to run.

The tall boy turned and ran as Christopher barreled toward him with the scissors brandished high above his head. Christopher did not run long before catching the boy, grabbing him by his rat tail and throwing him to the ground. Herbert could be heard crying loudly thirty feet away, and his sobs pushed his blond friend into a panic. "Please don't kill me! I promise I'll never come back here again. I just wanna live!" Christopher laughed and pulled the boys rat tail tighter in his fist. He raised the scissors and opened them wide, fitting them around the base of the clump of hair. The boy cried silently as Christopher quickly chopped off the rest of his rat tail. "Get the fuck out of here." Christopher whispered in his ear. The boy got up and ran to Herbert who was still lying on the ground. "Let's go!" he yelled, and they both bolted toward the gate.

Christopher put the rat tail in his pocket and finished his shift. When he got home that night he pulled out the ball of hair and carefully crafted it into a glistening blond braid. He pulled out his memory box, kissed the braid twice and laid it inside. He returned the box to its place on the top shelf of his closet, behind his stack of sweaters, turned out the light, and went to sleep. 

fellas of the world

Want to be my man?

I'll knit you a cloak.

a poem? maybe.

I'm working on it,
he said for days and then months.

I'm working on it,

but building a time machine can take a while
sometimes.

and don't you feel sad about how one day most of us will stop loving each other?

I do.

LeAnne in the Bathroom

LeAnne urinated furiously as she overheard two younger women singing about mermaids in the adjoining stall. She had been enjoying a game a of billiards with her husband moments before, but the urge for release had driven here, to the ladies' room in the corner of the dingy bar. As she clumsily thumbed the toilet paper roll with her splinted finger, she yelled over the wall of the metal stall " You girls have beautiful voices. Ever think about being on broadway?" They continued singing for a few seconds before answering, and confronted her as she exited the stall.  The taller of the two, who was wearing a brown hat answered her question saying "Oh yeah. Broadway. I was offered a position , but turned it down to become a clown." At this, the shorter bespectacled woman gave a brief snicker, looking surprised. 

This excited her, and she asked the woman for her card. "Oh sure I have a car." the stranger replied somewhat drunkenly. " No. Do you have a card?" LeAnne repeated. "Yes. I have a tiny tiny car and giant pants" the woman in the hat said loudly. Leanne made one more attempt, using her fingers to form the rectangular shape of a business card, "Do you have CARD? Where I can call you? I have a bunch of kids." A wave of humiliated understanding swept over the woman and her cheeks reddened slightly as she said too loudly "A card? Oh no. I'm a private clown." LeAnne was confused at this. She had never heard of a private clown, but feigned recognition with a sexually suggestive grin. "Not like that. Oh no. I'm not a sexy clown." All three of the women laughed nervously, wondering where the conversation was going.

LeAnne ended the awkward silence with "Well at least you're not a mean clown. I hired a mean clown by accident once." She paused and took a breath as both of the strangers gazed at her curiously. "Well, I ran over my kid a few years ago." The woman in the hat laughed bemusedly while the other stared at Leanne in wide-eyed horror. "Oh. Well he was alright" she continued "but when he came home with tubes coming out of his nose we threw him a party. You know. We invited all the kids from the neighborhood and I hired a clown." Wondering why she was telling this story, LeAnne went on "So this clown shows up three hours late, drunk off his ass, and starts yelling at my kid. I got right in his face," she said as she jabbed her splinted pointer finger toward the taller woman's face, "and I said 'Hey! This is a survival party, and I'm not paying you!' I paid his wife half later, but I told him never to come back to my house again."

All three woman stood in silence, and again LeAnne was the first to speak "So are you really a clown?" she asked the woman in the hat who was washing her hands. "Oh yeah. I'm a real clown." she replied over her shoulder. "I'm a graduate of the clown college in Baraboo Wisconsin." LeAnne looked at her incredulously, "Noooooo. You're not really a clown. Look at me. Look me in the eye and tell me you're a clown." LeAnne demanded. "Okay." The stranger consented and bored into LeAnne's eyes " I. Am. A . Clown" she said seriously but giggled as she added "I even have a rubber nose." LeAnne pointed at the stranger again, this time saying "See, I knew you weren't really a clown, but I love those rubber noses. I love dressing up for all of my kids." Both women laughed at her as she realized it was time to leave. "Oh my hubby's waiting for me. I better hit the road." she said as she pushed the door open. The stranger's waved mockingly and continued giggling as she left the bathroom

She left the bar shortly afterward with her husband, and drove sloppily back to their suburban home. She climbed the stairs drunkenly to get ready for bed and went into the bathroom to brush her teeth. After spitting, she opened a small plastic case on the edge of her sink. She pulled out the small red rubber nose sitting inside and placed it firmly around her nose. She smiled at herself in the mirror, and made her way to the bedroom where her husband was waiting for her wearing a curly red wig, and sporting  white face paint. They kissed passionately, her rubber nose shifting slightly. She turned around his arms, falling asleep, and spent the night swept up in dreams of dancing elephants and trapeze artists.

Damon and the Samosa

The flustered waitress hastily bent over to pick up the shattered glass. It had fallen off of her tray as the eager and substantially chubby boy demanded another plate of samosas. "The customer is always right" she repeated in her head, hoping to find an exception which deemed punching this odious, fat-assed punk in the teeth as hard as she could acceptable. Nearly thumbing this invisible clause, she continued sweeping the shards of glass onto her tray with her bare hands. She went back to the kitchen to find a broom and asked Peter, the cook, for another plate of samosas. She pushed the kitchen door open with a red wooden broom to find the fried pastry connoisseur back for more. "Hey. Can you hustle on those samosas?" he demanded "I have to go deejay my cousin's birthday party." "Oh yeah? What are you gonna play?" she asked as she grabbed the collar of his oversized t-shirt which read "HIP HOP IS DEAD" on the center in large, oozy purple letters. 

"What are you doing?" he shrieked in a much higher voice.  Just as he was about to scream for his mother, she tightened her grip on his shirt, inching closer to his face. "What in the fuck is your name chubs?" she whispered fiercely. "Jesus lady. It's Damon" he stuttered, silently praying that his parents would discover him soon. "Damon? That's your name? Damon?" she asked, barely audible. "Take off your fucking shirt Damon." she insisted, baring her usually concealed snaggle tooth. "No way! Are you crazy?" he gasped incredulously, nearly shitting his pants. "NOW!" she grunted in his ear, pushing the broom handle into his throat threateningly "Or your cousin will never have another birthday again." He threw his hands up in the air in surrender pleading "Ok. Ok. I'll give you my shirt, just don't hurt Mazie." 

"Alright." she heaved "and you're not going to tell your parents either, because I'll fucking kill them too." Damon pulled up the bottom of his shirt, and slowly began pulling it over his head, revealing a large potbelly and a pair of sweaty, stretch-mark pocked breasts. "Here. Take it" he yelped "just stay away from my family." The waitress reached for an extra large restaurant t-shirt sitting on the chair beside her. "Here. Put this on." she said with the tiniest twinge of remorse. He obeyed as Peter yelled from the kitchen "Hey Tracy! Your samosas are up." She opened the kitchen door and reached for them. "Here you go Damon. Eat up." she smiled "You want another coke to wash those down with?" He replied with a hesitant "Sure" and returned to the table with the plate of samosas.

When his mother asked what had taken so long, he used everything he had learned in his three years at the children's theater to convince her that the waitress was really nice and they had been hanging out in the back. "See? She even gave me a t-shirt." he exclaimed gesturing to the large picture of Ganesha dancing over his heart. "Oh how sweet of her." his mother exclaimed  "We'll have to give her a nice big tip." A moment later, the waitress came out with a glass of soda for Damon. "Thank you for being so nice to our little boy" the mother said, gingerly touching the waitress's forearm with her scarlet nailed hand. "It's no problem Ma'am. Damon is such a delightful boy. I hope he likes his new shirt." She returned a few minutes later with the bill and wished the family a fine evening at Mazie's birthday party. After they had left she went back to clear the table and discovered a forty percent tip. She smiled to herself, freeing a long captive laugh and returned to the kitchen. 

"I'm out Peter." she informed the cook and walked out the back door to the parking lot. Stepping out onto the asphalt, she stripped naked and put on her new t-shirt. With furious glee, she gazed down at her chest to see the purple letters gleaming in the new started drizzle. She let out a long "WHEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" and ran all the way home.

Jermaine and the Finger

The rosy cheeked butler sat on a three legged stool in the basement, blotting his soaking brow with a silken purple cloth. He let out a slow grunt of frustration and resumed his crooked position over the table. He gazed confusedly at the little machine; it's gears locked in an eternal jam, unless he could mend them. He surveyed his tools and reached for a small needle nose pliers. "This oughta do the trick" he muttered in a dampened tone. He reached cautiously into a narrow space between two gears and gave a hopeful pinch. In an instant the machine resumed it's course and the gears churned a wild tune. Sparks flew out as the man's finger severed neatly, half still attached to his hand, and the other forever lost in the depths of the machine. He once again removed the silken cloth from his front pocket and wrapped it tightly around his newly formed stump. "I've done it!" he exclaimed, and leaped in jubilant excitement, a river of red meandering down his forearm. The gramophone was fixed. He would be eating well tonight.

"Jermaine!" an anxious voice called from the floor above. He dropped the cloth in surprise and mopped up a small puddle of blood on the floor as he replied "I've fixed it madam." He lifted the machine off of the table and ascended the thirteen stairs which separated him and his mistress. As he opened the door, his eyes were cut by the bright lights of the lounge. Hours spent in the din of the basement made for a lengthy adjustment, but as the room came into focus he spotted Lady Fiona reclining in a La-Z-Boy in the corner. Her feet rose above her head as she pulled the upholstered lever to her right. "Do you have it?" she asked despondently. "Yes ma'am" he replied and pulled a Rick James record out from behind his tailed waistcoat. "Let's Dance!" she demanded and threw herself onto the bear skin rug. He dropped the needle on the record, and hoped Lady Fiona wouldn't question the absence of half of his ring finger. They boogied earnestly until the butler was too winded to continue. 

He climbed the stairs up to his attic bedroom and exchanged his uniform for a pair of striped pajamas. His old bones creaked with the bed as sat down. He picked his feet up off of the ground and positioned himself comfortably on his back. He turned off the small lamp on his bedside table, heaved a sigh of a prayer, and was asleep. He died that night, deep in dreams of Rick James and affordable yet luxurious living room furniture. Lady Fiona discovered his body the next morning and wept at the loss of her old friend.

Two weeks later she noticed a most foul odor coming from her gramophone, and when her vast collection of febreze failed to cover the smell she decided to take apart the machine. She toiled for the majority of the evening, finally stumbling upon the old butler's decomposing finger around eleven o'clock. She lovingly wrapped it in the purple hanky she had found on his bedroom floor, and thought about what to do. Moments later, with a fiendish grin on her face, she went down to the basement and filled an old apricot jam jar with formaldehyde. She returned to the lounge, tied a red satin ribbon around the butler's bony finger and dropped it into it's final resting place. 

From that day forward, each time she yearned for her old dancing partner, she would play a disco record on her newly refurbished gramophone. During especially lonely times, she would sweep the jar off of her kitchen counter and waltz feverishly, imagining a sweeter time, when her butler Jermaine would hold her firmly in his experienced arms and masterfully caress the back of her next with his index finger. Yes. She missed him, but the beacon on her counter would shine through a world of weariest darkness.

Gregor and the Cracker Mishap

The small bearded man took joy in the little salted crackers.  He opened his mouth wide in anticipation and knocked a hearty handful of Asian delicacies down his eager gullet.  Masticating, the man fell back in horror at the memory of a mortifying childhood incident occurring June 21, 1989:  A large grasshopper, brown.  crisp, entered his mouth unexpectedly as he sat in a wicker seat.  The grass quivered, the sprinkler sprinkled.  Dude was choking. . .and the salty critter tumbled in his startled mouth.  Aware that his beloved was watching, he chewed twice in surprise and shuttered at the bitter taste of shame.

  He smiled a wormy grin and reached for another sizeable installment of rice crackers.  At once, the sprinkler turned on, twitching in its nervous pattern, and he turned and took pause, alarmed at this:  a second reminder of his former embarrassment.  He recalled the X-ray that had revealed the grasshopper live and running the length of each rib like Sisyphus, like the eternally damned.  A whispy shadow in a darkened chamber.  

With every swing of the wok, the bag of rice crackers edged closer and closer to the corner of the counter.  Eventually, the bag slipped off and slopped onto the linoleum floor to join the victim.  Soon the plastic of the cracker bag was spattered with shiny blood droplets.  The bearded man's behemoth cat Gregor had desperately attempted to clean himself in the sink at the discovery that his massive haunches were too wide for his antiseptic tongue to reach.  Through these efforts, Gregor sustained a nine - inch slice through the belly carelessly given at the hand of a neglected butcher knife resting on the counter.  The bearded man heard a banshee - like yelp; a call to fell weeping willows, to stir cold lakes into crested waves, to ignite the fires of the ashiest hearths, and the most heartless bellies.  "My beloved," he thought.  

Trouble arose when a group of punks emerged from a shrub ,sporting bicep tattoos and necklaces.  Melvin immediately cowered and offered them his weekend funds, but they craved the taste of blood.  Fin.

Missed Connections

Recently, we've become fascinated by the Missed Connections section of Craig's List, in which people write addressing people with whom they'd had chance encounters in restaurants, or made eye contact with on the bus. I wrote a series about such encounters this morning.

7:43 AM
Saw you on the 3 bus yesterday. You were wearing a green jacket, the green was the color of elm leaves in full sunlight. One sleeve was rolled up almost to your elbow, and your forearm pushed a little against the fold. You took the jacket off, and your arm moved slowly and elegantly, as if its own separate being. Would you like to talk sometime?

8:24 AM
I was on the 3 yesterday in a green jacket that I did indeed remove. It was hot on the bus, and I steadily felt myself becoming foggy with the temperature, as if the feeling of being overheated could conceal and muffle other happenings of my life, the way cloud cover does on a bay. Have you ever been to the ocean? Were you the man in the red hat across the aisle?

9:11 AM
I am not the man with the red hat, although I recall him too, now that you mention it. I don’t wear hats, I’ve never liked them. I once had a tightly knit cap that my aunt made for me. It had an itchy stretch and pulled slightly upwards when I wore it, in part because it was too tight and in part because of the massive pom pom she had sewed on the top. I always had to wear it in cold weather, no excuses my mother said, although I thought of many: it was too unique for daily wearl, it was too artfully stitched, it pulled at my ears and might eventually pull them off, hairs of mine that found their way into the wiry knitting were inevitably pulled out. And as I ran on the playground with my friends, the pom pom flopped back and forth, counting the moments until a hole would appear, and the hat would be set aside. I am the man who was holding lilac clippings in his hand. I have never been to the ocean. You got off at Spooner and Monroe. Where were you going?

9:35 AM
I was going to the grocery store to buy eggs. I was once presented with a single egg from the grandmother of a friend. She talked little, but when we were putting on our coats she approached me and placed a large, white egg in my palm. I cupped it in both hands as we walked to the driveway, as we rode home in the car. Out of sight, it grew warm, and somehow the slightness of its shell became more apparent. Yesterday, I awoke from a dream in which she had placed another egg in my hand, a fuchsia one dappled with deeply pigmented spots. Awake, I checked the refrigerator but was out of eggs. I closed my eyes, and recalled making a fritata for a dinner party, and cracking forty eggs into a large metal bowl for whisking. Each yolk fell, vibrantly whole, into its own clear gel. So I got on the 3, and eventually bought four cartons of eggs, a little bit of thyme, a sprig of fresh basil. But in truth, now that they are in my fridge I am reluctant to recreate this memory. Today I fried two eggs and ate them with toast and cheese, the favorite breakfast of a former lover of mine. It was too heavy, in the end. Where did you get off?

9:57 AM
Have you ever seen the shells of ostrich eggs? A woman sells them at the Farmer’s Market on Saturday mornings, and the eggs themselves are weighty and tan, somehow more reminiscent of the developing bird that would have been inside them. The woman keeps a basket full of pieces of the shell on her table. They are like mosaic tiles, thick, and white along their broken rims. Anyone who likes may keep a piece, but I never take one. I got off way on the west side of town, at a strip mall near a lone ice cream shop that stands on a patch of dry ground away from the other shopping stretches. There’s an Iron Skillet nearby, I often went there as a teenager for black coffee and hash browns, with friends or alone. One woman has been working there for at least half a decade now, and she has never showed me any signs of recognition, although she must know me at this point. The other day, I felt as I sometimes do after a few weeks without black coffee and hash browns, and I clipped some lilacs for her from the bush behind my house and got on the bus. They’d already started to wilt slightly, as if they are made of muscles that have tired from weeks of blooming. The bus ride didn’t help. I watched you take off your jacket and crack each finger on each hand, a gesture I’ve never been able to bring myself to do but I admire every time I see someone else doing it. It indicates, I think, such a trust in one's own body, that something won’t just snap, that all of your joints won’t be whittled away years later. I watched you, and I thought, that is some lady. And the woman at the Iron Skillet, she is some lady too. I arrived on the West Side, stepped out of the bus, and crossed the four lane road to the strip mall. Inside the air conditioning was on, and the room tasted so dry it was almost chalky. All the booths were empty, and I sat in one by the window, where I could imagine the heat leaking through the glass. I ordered black coffee and hash browns and made a tower out of the creamer and jam packets while I waited. My food came, I ate. I left the bouquet of lilacs with my pay and tip. I looked for her through the window once I’d left, to see her reaction to the flowers, but couldn’t see in because of the glare. I wanted to tell her, Do you realize how long ago the potato first left its origins in the Andes, and do you know how unpopularly it was received by Europeans? Do you know that Marie Antoinette wore potato flowers in her hair to try to make it palateable to the French, because of it was cheap, nutritious, and calorically dense, and because the King realized that famine would contribute to their eventual downfall and death? That he placed his guards on the lawn to guard plantings of potatos, and strategically let them off early so that people would steal them out of the yard? That one can live indefinitely on potatoes and milk? That you can do whatever you like with these lilacs, you can wear them in your hair? By which I would have meant, People all over the world have been interacting for a long, long time, yet I have never found it in myself to leave the Midwest, and I don’t know if I want to.

You can check out Missed Connections for the Madison area here: http://madison.craigslist.org/mis/

You can read more about the history of the potato, as well as the histories of human relationships with the apple, the tulip, and marijuana, in Michael Pollan's book The Botany of Desire: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/conversation/jan-june01/botany_06-29.html

Excerpts from a Pizzeria

In the wee hours of this Saturday we happened by Pizza Di Roma when hunger pangs became too much to bear. My small notebook informed us as to the evening's events this morning. It read:

The unfortunate victim of a sprink(u)ler stumbled, soaked into a late night pizzeria. He peed in the face of the handsome cashier, and fell stone dead on the linoleum floor. He trembled, and for a moment, everyone in the room sat in contemplation, recalling their own urine soaked youths. 

Note:

Also, see "Where He Found Himself" by Stephen Dunn for striking similarities.

Found Poem

Last night, we looked up "summer" in Merriam-Webster's online thesaurus and found that the first eight listed words formed a rhyme:

cannier, chummier,
gamer, gummier,
junior, keener, saner,
scummier.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/summer

(Photo credit: www.demarismiller.com/ McNair.html)

Birth

After a night of heavy boozing, a pelican half-filled with whiskey and half-filled with traces of feces spewed into the waters of Lake Mendota, stumbled into our basement and demanded a blog.

"I'm drunk," he informed us.  

"Get lost," we said.  "We're hooping."  The hoops circled bellies comfortably bloated with the evening's meal and freshly-baked bread.  

"Did you guys bake bread?" he slurred.  "And I'm dying for some asparagus."  He stumbled and caught himself when his webbed foot slid inside a wide-brimmed hat.

"That's none of your business," we said, and advised him that the Farmer's Market is held on Saturdays, when local farmers would happily sell him a pound of asparagus for a minimum of three dollars.

"You think pelicans got cash?" he demanded.  "Hell, I'm not even from the Midwest.  I carry sand dollars, man.  And though I generally hold my food for a week before eating, at the moment, space in my obscene beak is devoted to the fermentation of whiskey."

"You're a walking distillery?" we shouted in amazement, and threw down our hula hoops to further inspect this aviary anomaly.  

And an anomaly he was, a beak which held broth swirling into eskers of mash and bubbling with yeast.  It was moonshine, it was extraordinary.

At this point, the pelican sat down on our couch, reopening the hole in one cushion that our landlord, Bill had so lovingly sewn with dexterous hand only a week prior.  But we didn't mention this because before we could reprimand him for his carelessness, he began to heave great pelican sobs.

"But what's wrong?!" we shouted, and patted his back a little gingerly, ruffling his feathers.

"It's just that I have so much to give," he explained, "and it is so difficult for a pelican to get a word in edgewise these days.  Few humans can understand my shrill, birdy voice.  And I'm drunk so often, distilling my whiskey, that nobody can take me seriously."

We felt bad.  We really did.  And we were ready to help him unload some of that whiskey, over-exercised by hours of hooping.

And so we proposed the following arrangement:  Diligent, pelican-inspired blogging services in exchange for a whiskey and coke now and then.  And so far the endeavor has worked out nicely.  The pelican slumbers in a comfortable hammock for half of each day, while whiskey drains from his beak into an old fish tank we bought from Bill.  The bird prefers smooth jazz before bed, and modern country in the mornings.  While these preferences have incurred some disagreement among house fellows, he is a pleasant creature, and in moments of silence and great poise, gazes out our basement window at sandaled, passing feet, dreaming of the day that a pelican's voice will ring through the hillsides, the valleys, the algal bloom of the lake lying only feet away.

If you have any sympathy in your heart, you will no doubt continue to read this blog, and help this singular animal realize his ambitious aspirations.