Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
Mike Driver
Janaina Medeiros
trying on a metaphor
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
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titsay
dirt enthusiast
noise dept.
Three Goblin Art
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Today's Document
JBB: An Artblog!
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YOU ARE THE REASON
if i look back, i am lost
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@tomoatmealarchive
“Hey look everybody! That guy is holding the door open! Come on!”
Though most of us had no business in the building, we knew an opportunity when we saw one and so, one by one, we bolted through the door while the now very annoyed gentleman stood holding it open. Every single one of us participated. All TEN THOUSAND of us!
Just kidding. A few people looked over when I screamed, but I was the only person to run through the door.
“Asshole,” said the guy as I zipped past.
The elevator went, “DING!” and I tossed the bite-sized candy bar in my mouth. But when the doors opened, I could see that there was woman already on the elevator.
“Oh no,” I thought.
I went ahead and boarded the elevator. I waited for the doors to close and then I did a couple of test chews.
“Oh no,” I thought again. “The test chews are crunching too loud!” I stopped chewing and just held the candy in my mouth. But then I began to panic, prompting a heated exchange of thoughts.
“She knows that you have candy in your mouth, you idiot!”
“Shut up! I know!”
“You can’t stop chewing because she knows you already tried chewing! Just finish chewing it! Who cares if it’s loud!? You don’t have to be friends with everyone!”
“But it’s too loud!”
I decided to try and do a fake swallow, hoping that she would see it out of the corner of her eye. Like, “Hey, look at me! All done with the candy! Yum Yum!”
I tried a couple of versions, but each came across as weak and, ultimately, fake.
“I hate her,” I thought. “I hate her for ruining my candy break.”
The doors opened and I let her exit first so that I could go the opposite direction and chew the candy bite in a safe, isolated spot.
I thought about that crazy woman again. What is it with some people?
THE END
If you have to pass by the self-checkout stand to enter the grocery store, it doesn’t hurt to socialize with the people checking out. How else are you going to meet people? Magic?
“Honey Bunches of Oats,” I said. “Mmm, Mmm! I think you’re going to be very pleased.”
When he looked up, I was standing there looking at him with that all-knowing, “Mom face” from the commercials.
“Uh. Yeah, I’ve had them before,” he said. “They’ve been around for a pretty long time.”
“I’ll bet he doesn’t know what face I’m making,” I thought. “Because I’m just some guy. I wish I had a mirror to check the accuracy.”
“I’m making a mom face,” I said. “They make this face in commercials sometimes.”
“A what face?”
“This was a mistake,” I thought.
Over by the bakery, a group of friends were laughing and joking as they rounded up ingredients for what looked to be a delicious turkey dinner. I turned to watch them and was momentarily stricken by the thought that what they had accomplished was the exact thing that I had just proven myself to be incapable of achieving.
“But it’s not fair!” I said. “They already knew each other when they walked in.”
“What the hell are you even talking about?”
I turned to look and once again, it was that obnoxious guy at the self-checkout stand.
“For God’s sake, can this guy just fuck off already?” I wondered.
THE END.
My wife, Diane smiled and motioned for me to join her in the doorway to watch the carolers out on the lawn. But I wouldn’t budge. By staying low and keeping my body pressed against the small section of brick wall, I had all but eliminated the chance of being picked off by gunfire. If they wanted me dead, they were going to have to storm the property and kill me with close-range weapons. And even though my familiarity with the floorplan would give me the clear advantage in a breach scenario, I didn’t want it to come to that.
“Just end it,” I said to Diane. “Tell them anything, but make them stop.”
“C’mon!” said Diane. “C’mon! They see me talking to you. Stop being silly.”
I strained to make sense of the lyrics; a strange and escalating demand for a type of pudding that I wasn’t familiar with.
“Figgy pudding?” I thought. “Well we don’t have any of that. We have Greek yogurt, though. I wonder if that will suffice.”
“Diane,” I whispered. “Give them the Greek yogurt. Give them all of it.”
“Will you please stand up and get over here? Dave and Linda are out there.”
My wife’s hesitation had enraged the carolers and they wasted no time upping the stakes in a tone that was louder and far more menacing.
“We won’t go until we get some!” they sang. “We won’t go until we get some!”
“Oh, Diane, you fool!” I barked. “You’ve fucked us!”
It was clear that any negotiation that I might’ve been able to achieve with the Greek Yogurt was long gone. These people knew what they wanted and they were going to take it – even if it meant barging in here and cooking it themselves in a pan or a pot or do you use a microwaveable bowl? I wasn’t sure of the logistics, but I knew one thing: It was time to take action.
Diane waved at the carolers and smiled and several witnesses would attest to it months later, in the courtroom. That Diane waved and smiled, unaware and therefore, unaffiliated with my decision to smash through the window and fire at my attackers with a shotgun.
THE END.
Sorry for spam posting today but I was in a mood to read old posts and thought I might as well post them since I’m there! Maybe I’ll start queuing them lol.
What worried me about my basket was that the items were large enough to take up all of the space and then some. A couple of cans were actually balancing on top of a cereal box that was sticking out of the basket. But it was fifteen items. I knew it for a fact because I counted them. But did the other customers know? Probably not. Fools.
In my fantasy, the guy behind me says, “Hey! It’s fifteen items or less, buddy. Wrong line!”
And then I go, “Yeah? Well let’s see what I have here!”
And then I place each item from my basket onto the conveyor belt, counting them one by one in a patronizing tone. Sure enough, it’s fifteen.
Why not dream big? They’re selling calculators by the gum! I take a calculator off the peg and stare at the humbled naysayer as I throw it into the pile.
“Tell you what,” I say like a total jerk. “This one’s on me.”
Everyone in line laughs, including this really attractive woman who is also incredibly smart, but not so smart that she’s automatically repelled by mediocrity. In fact, maybe she finds it enticing. The intangibles. Kind of like when you coax a stray dog into a shopping center after they refuse to let you return something because they think you opened it.
“That’s sixteen items,” says the checker, snapping me out of my second daydream and back into the first.
And I think, “Oh no! The calculator!”
“Umm..I guess, uh… I’ll just leave the milk here,” I say.
On the walk home I try to justify leaving the milk behind. I think about how I heard that humans aren’t supposed to drink milk anyways. I think about how I’ve heard it’s bad for you.
But then I remember all of the cereal I have at home and my heart feels like it’s melting into my stomach.
“Well surprise, surprise!” I think to myself. “Real tough stuff back there.”
“Oh shut up!“ I scream.
I think of kicking the fictional guy from the line. He has this condition where he dies after one kick.
THE END
“Actually, why don’t you let this little old lady go first,” I said to the barista.
“I’m forty,” said the little old lady.
“Well I guess you just have that angry old lady face,” I said with a cheerful grin. “It’s like when old people are just so exhausted by life that the default position of their face sort of turns into that permanent scowly face. You know?”
But she was done listening.
After I got my coffee, a woman and her young son approached me.
“It was really nice of you to let that woman go first,” she said.
“Oh I’m no hero!”
“I try to teach my son here about those kinds of manners.”
I laughed and looked at the young boy.
“Take my word for it, young friend. You do nice things for other people and nice things happen to you.”
I smiled again and took a sip of my coffee. But the lid popped off and the scalding hot beverage splashed against my face and chest.
I screamed. “ARRRRRRGGHHHH…..FUCK! FUCKING SHIT! OW!”
The boy and his mom recoiled in horror. It was still burning. I ran to the center of the mall and dove headfirst into the wishing well. SPLASH!
When I emerged, there were pennies stuck to my boiled skin. I opened my eyes and saw a wall of wide-eyed children.
“I’ve stolen your wishes!” I screamed. “And I’m taking them to hell with me!”
I ran out of the well and into the parking lot, where a minivan ran me over.
“Does this mean my wish won’t come true?” a young boy asked his mother.
She sighed and reached into her purse. “I don’t know. Probably not. Here. You might want to toss another one in there, just in case.”
The young boy tried again, but his wish didn’t come true. However, to be fair, it was a stupid, implausible wish. A live dog that’s also a skateboard? Come on, man. You think the weight won’t be hard on his back?
THE END.
At dinner, my wife Diane told me that Deb and Gary were going to stop by for drinks later and that it might be nice to put out one of the good candles.
“Oh?” I said. “Which ones are Deb and Gary?”
“They’re our next door neighbors.”
“Hmm..“
“I thought it might be nice to light one of the Yankee candles.”
“Isn’t that a little excessive?” I asked. “It’s not like we’re sleeping with them. At least. It’s not like I’m sleeping with them.”
I eyed my wife suspiciously, but she remained focused on her dinner.
“I just thought we’d light it for a little while,” she said.
“And then what is our excuse for blowing it out?” I asked. “When the time comes, what do we tell them? How do we extinguish the candle in a way that seems casual and good-natured?”
“I don’t know.”
“What?”
“I said I don’t know. I guess I didn’t think of that.”
“You never do, Diane. It’s a miracle we’re not sleeping in the streets.”
We ate in silence for the next five minutes as my mind worked towards a possible compromise. I wasn’t a monster.
“Describe their breathing habits,” I said. “Are they excitable? Do they breathe heavily?”
“Forget it,” said Diane. “I don’t even care at this point.”
“I just don’t want them breathing up our expensive candles!”
“I said forget it.”
A week later, there was a fire in the locker where I kept the candles. They melted together into one, gigantic candle. It was too horrible to look at and so I had the firefighters put the candle into a garbage bag so I didn’t have to see the damage.
We buried it in the backyard. Diane cried, but it was a dry cry. There were no tears and I asked her about it.
“I guess I’m all cried out,” said Diane.
“I had a medical procedure,” I said, as I shoveled the last of the dirt onto the candle. “Where if my heart stops beating, I explode. I’m a human bomb.”
It wasn’t true, but if my suspicions were correct and it was Diane who had destroyed the candles, then I knew that I was next. I needed to buy some time until I could investigate the depth of my wife’s lies, starting with these supposed “neighbors.”
That night, from their closet, I watched uncomfortably as Deb and Gary made love in their bed. I had broken in to look for other proof and I guess they kind of surprised me.
“Okay. Well I guess the part about neighbors was real,” I thought. “Well played, Diane.”
THE END.
My wife, Diane told me that Barb’s husband, Denny had left a trail of Hershey’s kisses from the front door of his house to the bedroom.
“So it was a nice little surprise when Barb got home from work,” said Diane.
“Sounds insane,” I said. “She’s lucky to be alive.”
“Well I thought it was romantic.”
I sighed and continued rubbing my temples. My head hurt. I imagined crushing Tylenol, sawing open the top part of my skull and then sprinkling the Tylenol directly onto my brain.
“What was at the end of the trail?”
“Well, Denny was, probably.”
“Like a chocolate mold of Denny?”
“No, probably just real Denny,” said Diane. She sounded tired.
“Seems like it should have been a big, Denny-sized chocolate bar. Otherwise, why all of the fuss with the little candies? The correlation is puzzling.“
“I don’t know.”
As my wife ate breakfast, I thought about chocolates and decided that I hated Hershey’s kisses. They were a trick to get people to pay for foil instead of actual chocolate.
“Do you know what I hate, Diane?”
“I’d rather not hear.”
“I hate Hershey’s kisses. I think they are a trick to get people to pay for foil instead of actual chocolate.”
THE END.
And if Pop could manage to steal a scarecrow, well then that was good news for my brother and I. It meant two outfits: The denim overalls and then whatever garment Ma could make by sewing the scarecrow’s straw body together.
“And I got the straw,” I said to the tourists. “It’s a cape.”
“We’re kind of in a hurry,” said the mom. “Can you please just take the picture? I’m sorry. I know you’re doing us a favor, here.”
“Don’t mention it, Ma’am,” I said with a smile as golden as my straw cape.
The mother and her two sons huddled together and posed as I lifted the camera to my face, backwards.
“Wait,” the young boy started to say, but I took the picture. It was bright. The mom stepped forward and retrieved her camera.
“It’s fine,” she told her young son. “We’ll do another one later.”
For the rest of their lives, the mother and son only thought of me twice after that. Once when they got the film developed and then about a week later on the news.
The report said that the crane had been lifting the gigantic telescope lens into the museum when some guy covered in straw had accidentally walked under it.
“He just burst into flames,” said a witness.
“But he was also kind of melty,” added the young son of the witness, whose learning disability made him prone to tactless observations.
“Yes,” said the man. He reached down and tousled the boy’s hair, a gentle plea for silence that was successful in both its intent as well as summoning the man’s guilty conscience. Every book he’d read had lauded encouragement in these instances; One even going so far as to describe it in a tangible sense: Seeds from which miracles grow.
In his heart he thought it was probably all bullshit, but what the hell? Encouragement was free.
“Yes,” said the man, once again. “He was melty like a candy bar.”
THE END.
Whether he meant to swallow the harmonica is debatable. He was probably just trying to play it. But we waited because if his plan was to have his voice transformed into bursts of musical chords, then we wanted to pay him the respect he deserved as a performer.
In the end, he settled for beating on his chest a few times before coughing up a moderate amount of blood. It wasn’t the best performance in the world, but it certainly wasn’t the worst performance, either. That award would go to my wife, Diane.
And when the elevator got as close to empty as I thought it was going to get, I addressed her reflection in the mirror. “You’re mad about something, baby! But if you think I’m going to waste this entire 7-day, desert harmonica festival trying to guess what it is, then you better think again!”
The more she kneaded the dog’s head, the more he burrowed into her hands.
“He must smell my dog!” she said.
“Actually, he’s a cadaver dog,” said the scientist. “So he’s probably just attracted to your expressionless face and your icy, cumbersome hands.”
And finally, after hours of discussion, the team at Mucinex had whittled their list of potential mascots down to two options: globs of cartoon mucus or a talking asshole that inquired about the head congestion like a downstairs neighbor. “Hey! What’s going on up there?!”
If you don’t mind my asking, what on earth did that dog say that was so controversial?
Out of everyone, I was the one who won the big contest. I was the 2013 champion of the Scott Paper Towels: Most Regular Guy competition. I couldn’t believe it.
“In your face!” I screamed, still not entirely sure what I’d won or how I’d entered or to whose face I was demanding that something be either thrown or shoved into.
“What do I win?” I asked the representative.
“Free paper towels for a year.”
I was so happy I could cry.
“Plus you get to be in a commercial.”
The way it worked was that the winner of the contest was determined to be the most statistically average man in the entire world. The data took everything into account; things like age, height, weight, marital status, and even Internet search history. I was smack dab in the middle.
“Like ALL of my search history?”
“ALL of it,” the representative replied.
“Even though I went back and…”
“Yes.”
“But I thought if I went into ‘Settings'…”
“Nope.”
“What happened to last year’s winner?”
“He shot himself,” said the representative. “But here. We need a signature for the paper towels.”
That year, I lived like a king. At least, when it came to paper towel usage, I lived like a king. In every other facet of my life, I lived about the same. Okay, so maybe a little less than the same. In a moment of weakness, I’d quit my job thinking that I could somehow use the unlimited paper towels as currency. No dice. It was a foolish mistake financially, but far worse was the emotional toll that the days spent sitting in an apartment filled with paper towels took on me.
Every waking hour only seemed to drag me cruelly towards the end of my eligibility for free paper towels. Any moment not spent thinking about how to use more felt like wasted time. Nothing else got done.
One night, my wife Diane came home to find that I’d wrapped the mattress in several layers of paper towels.
“So when one layer gets dirty, bam! We just peel it away and there’s a new layer.”
Diane stared at it for a while then said, “I just don’t see what’s stopping multiple layers from getting dirty all at once. Paper towels are pretty thin.”
I sighed and closed my eyes. “I need a friend here, Diane. Okay?”
“But do you really think it’s a good idea?”
“I think it’s an idea. And I’m proud that I did it.”
“Proud?”
“I can acknowledge that I did it.”
I was loitering all right, but when the cop asked me about it I said no way.
“I’m just a door-to-door salesman,” I lied. “I sell Jacuzzis.”
“Do you install them, too?”
“I sure do.”
The cop then followed me into the liquor store and planted himself by the door; watching as I launched into an improvised sales pitch to the old man behind the register. I described the different shapes and styles of Jacuzzis as well as the various price ranges. I told him what was popular and what the options were with water jets.
“I think I like the one with just the two jets,” said the old man.
“Oh come on, man - two jets?!,” I shook my head, disappointed. “If you really only want two jets you may as well just run over to the hardware store and get yourself one of those little pans you soak your feet in.”
The old man laughed nervously.
“I should really talk to my wife…”
I rolled my eyes. "Wow. You run every little decision by your wife first?“
"Fine,” he said firmly. “I’ll take the one with ten jets.”
I grinned and patted him hard on the shoulder.
“That’s what I’m talking about!”
About a week later, with the cop watching everything, I had managed to dig a pretty respectable-sized hole in the floor of the liquor store, but the work was hard and it was difficult for me to envision how to build functional water jets.
“Okay,” I said to the cop. “You win. I was loitering.”
I’ve always wanted to host one of those round table discussions about finance where I start off all nice and then as it goes on, I get angrier and angrier until finally I pull out a hacksaw and start sawing the table into a rectangle so that I can be at the head of it, but then one of the guys questions the dimensions of the new table, alleging that I’m in fact, NOT seated at the true head of it. He’s right and I’m so ashamed that I try to manually remove the man from his seat by grabbing low on the chair legs and tipping it, but the man is so heavy that I can only struggle while my face rubs awkwardly against his doughy stomach, which, after a while, un-tucks his dress shirt. The whole thing ends with the other panelists hammering me into submission with closed fists.