Ergonomically Speaking

If your furniture could speak, what story would it tell?

By Steve Mast

I sat, with my fingers caressing my ergonomic keyboard, staring at the computer screen. “If my furniture could speak, what would it say?” What the hell? I bounced up and down on my ergonomic chair, hoping to hear some grinding or grunting that could be mistaken for some sort of language. Nothing – that sucker was lubed up better than Paris Hilton.

I know what you’re thinking: what the hell is up with me and my fixation on ergonomics. Once I was at a store and they were selling ergonomic silverware. I bought every piece they had in stock. I figure it will supply my family for three generations. Why? I don’t plan on getting cancer. Ergonomics is the future.

My stomach rumbled disagreeably. That broccoli and cabbage pesto sauce was not sitting well for some reason. I had to get this assignment written and written fast. When I was boiling my pesto I could have sworn the bubbling sounded a bit like it was laughing at me.

I picked up my scotch glass (currently empty) and flung it at the wall to hear it scream as it died, broken into dangerous pieces. The crash of glass broke the heavy silence and shards rained down on me, as if it were out to get some petty revenge for its destruction. Maybe I should have thrown it at the far wall. But even with the noise I heard no voice. No speaking. Perhaps I threw it too hard and it died on impact.

Godzilla was staring at me, angrily, looking ready to spew a fire that never came. Maybe he was mad cause he was made of plastic and only two inches tall. But I had given him dominion over my computer, to keep it safe and in line while I was out. He should be happy. He was like my second in command. But he never looked happy and he never said thank you. Hell, I couldn’t even consider him furniture anyway, so what good was he for my story?

Nobody has ever created an ergonomic monitor. It’s an idea that’s worth millions. If you make it and get rich you owe me royalties.

The story was going nowhere so I walked over to the couch, careful to avoid the glass. It was time to sit on my couch and relax. It was time to digest. Now I know what you’re thinking: is it an ergonomic couch? It’s fluffy – you can’t get more ergonomic than that.

As I sat down my pesto finally decided to catch up to me and some…well…gaseous formation decided to expel from my lower half. That’s right, people: I farted. It was a boomer. Jim Carrey would have been proud. And while it did make me feel better I wasn’t about to stick around, so I stood up to leave. As I did my old fluffy, rickety couch creaked. And as it did I could have sworn I heard “God Damnit! What an asshole.”

The artist

You are watching a home makeover show on television, and the homeowners are going in to horrid detail describing the loathsome appearance of one of the rooms of their house. You realize that this house used to be yours, and the design they are tearing apart was your crowning achievement in home improvement! How do you react?

By Steve Mast

I guess the first thing you have to understand about me is that I’m an artist. It’s my sole identifier. It’s what defines me. It’s how other people see me and quantify me. Respect me. It is, in the end, the sole of who I am and what I am and what I do. What I mean how I live and what I live for. Without art I am nothing.
And I am very good. Some of the others, Picasso, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Dali, Manet and all the rest, I mean they were pretty good, I guess. If somebody asked I would have to say, however minimally, that I was inspired by them. But that would be a half-truth, if I were to be really honest. No student of art would admit otherwise if they wanted to be taken seriously. The real truth is that my own shining brilliance comes to light when I inspire myself. If I wanted to be really truthful with you I would tell you that I would bet those other artists were actually inspired by me, as implausible as that may sound, them being mostly dead and all.
I don’t let anybody else affect who I am and what I am and what I do. How I do it. I don’t like to use the word “Genius” or “Greatest Ever” or any other term that would be used as a pigeon-hole identifier, but the truth is that I would have to admit that this is true. I wouldn’t say it out loud. I wouldn’t confess it even in a memoir to be published at the time of my death. But in my heart of hearts I know that this is true.
The fact is that every other artist in the history of mankind has limited themselves in the mediums that they choose to express themselves in. Paint on this canvas. Carve on that rock. Solder that hunk of metal. How boring. It has its uses, to be sure, and was a necessary evolution in mankind seeing art for its true purpose. I simply refuse to live in a world where everything touched by my hands isn’t, in some powerful form, art.
The walls, the sofa, my car, my home have become the very definition of art. A fulfillment of a promise. My dining room table used to have four legs. But now it only has three and a half. I removed half a leg to symbolize society cutting down people’s ambitions and goals and purpose. How we are crippled. We are hobbled by society’s permutations of expectations. So my dining room table has also been hobbled. And splashed with greens and reds and purples and shades of yellows. And each color meant something different, something important when I splashed it on. Something moving and powerful. I cried. Unfortunately I didn’t write them down and quickly forgot the meaning, but it remains a sweeping epic of our social consciousness non-the-less.
Of course now I am unable to eat on my table, but these are the sacrifices we make to our art. That in itself is symbolic of how a man, removed from his true purpose, becomes a useless shell. So I eat on my sofa.
And this is a sofa I constructed myself out of boards of discarded wood found on people’s lawns. To symbolize how the trash of society and their discarded leavings will support me while I watch my television.
It is not comfortable. There are no cushions. But I shall sit and I shall watch. And I shall eat, too. And my TV has been splashed with reds and a light pink dotted and lined to remind me how society has been consumed and absorbed by violence. And sex. This is fed to us nightly in half-hour and one hour servings. The paint does make it hard to watch, and I don’t really turn it on much anymore, because the wet paint blew out the speakers, but it is art.
There are, of course, no paintings hung in my home. No canvas. My walls are my only canvas. And when the walls dry of the current streams of paint that have been splashed on I paint more: covered thick layers of paint constantly dripping and wet. That didn’t work so well when I tried it on the ceiling. But I have managed to create some stalactites, running down five and six inches, to remind me that I live in a cave. I am sheltered by my home, like a bat, although I find it impossible to get to sleep hanging upside down. Although if I had – if I had! It would have been art.
It is my haven. The one place I can be truly alone, truly myself, and truly an artist. Able to express myself as I need to be expressed, without police interference, like that time at the mall.
Did I mention that I live alone?
I’ve been collecting city warnings. Apparently they have some issue with the van that I have parked on my lawn, spread out in pieces instead of a lawn. Apparently they have a problem with the dripped greens and pinks and reds streaming across the walls and windows of my house. On my roof. Apparently they have a problem with the banana tree in my front yard that I painted black. Apparently I am not allowed to paint the curb purple. Apparently I am not allowed to carve faces into the telephone poles. Apparently the Halloween limbs I have sticking out of the broken bits of van have caused some people concern. Apparently I am supposed to have a lawn, and not just have the empty bits of land painted green. And they don’t like the family of yard gnomes now hanging by hemp string dangling from the power lines.
But all of that means nothing to me. I take their rebuke as a source of pride. I collect their warnings in a scrapbook. It is as close as I will come to a canvas and they are a reminder to me that I am making an impact.
I’m guessing now that I should have paid closer attention to those notices, as one of them may have hinted that I could possibly end up in jail. There was, after all, a knock at the door (and nobody ever knocks on the door, it being wet with fresh coat of dripping black) and I see the police officer outside, looking at his freshly painted hands (a fresh new work of art by yours truly), and holding a pair of handcuffs.
Suddenly he’s yelling at me to open up in the name of the law. And apparently my rights extend to an ability to remain silent, as those handcuffs are getting clicked onto my wrists. And he’s just yammering on about this right and that right, blah blah blah, and how I’m going to jail and blah blah blah. This guy is a serious drag.
But he does start talking briefly about my beautiful home and he mentions that the film crew will be arriving in a couple of hours. I guess they need me out of there so they can get the place ready for them. And I just smile and nod.
Finally a film crew is coming to respect my work. To show the world who and what I am. So he hauls me into his car and I can just smile, a mile wide. But I can’t stick to that silence right. I give that up.
“What’s the TV share?” I ask the cop. “What kind of audience we got playing for this?” He just gives me a long look and drags me off to jail.
Two hours later I’m pacing in front of the jail house TV set watching, wondering when my house will be on display. Suddenly, after a commercial break, there it is, for all the world to see. And the title comes up: “Cops: Home Makeover Edition.”
I wish I was there to explain, to show them what the house meant, what every piece of furniture symbolized and how it defined our society. A microcosm of our world. But they’ll just have to figure that out themselves cause I’m stuck behind these bars. The thrill of excitement comes over me as I watch them pull out sledgehammers and drills, setting out to destroy this home piece by piece and wall by wall. It’s beautiful.
As they drill they take the pieces and set them on these careful piles. Art on art on art on art. How appropriate it is for them to take my dining room table and saw it in half, then in quarters, then shredded to bits, added to the pile. Shards of blue and grey and red. And they take one of the Halloween arms from the lawn, the one holding a Coca-Cola bottle, a symbol of our society’s dependence on marketing and sponsorship and name branding. They throw it into a trash can and I am in awe. It’s exactly right, it’s perfect. I wished like mad I could be there to watch and help and direct the mad destruction.
Then, when it is done, and my house has been destroyed into bits and pieces of colored parcels I turn off the TV and wonder for a long time: why didn’t I think of that?

Patio

The patio glistened with morning dew. Slim fingers of sunlight reached through the pine shaded back yard and splayed across the weather sealant like spider webs on an abandoned exer-cycle. A coral-breasted nuthatch twittered its morning soliloquy before dropping a graceful string of pearly white excrement across the sky blue Jacuzzi cover.

“Ah, morning.” said the patio table (who liked to think of her self as PT), reveling in her roundness skewered with an adorning umbrella which sheltered its well worn surface from sun and bird-poo alike. “I am queen of the pay-she-oh” she breathed. She pronounced patio as if it rhymed with ratio, which in her wooden mind it should.

The sliding door opened to expel a slipper footed User. It was one of the older ones who held a canister of steaming liquid. PT noted the coaster with approval. Just because she was an outdoor-seater was no reason to risk her finish. With the pay-she-oh door open and the French door to the kitchenette spread apart she could see into the living room. Pt felt her bolts tighten with anger.

There it was. That stuck up, elitist, plastic covered hussy; Couch. PT resented Couch with every splinter of her being; with its prissy woven materials and its plastic cover. What were the Users protecting her from? Rump dent?

PT knew that indoor furniture or softies as they liked to call them were weak and vulnerable, but this was an outrage. They never even Used her!

Deck chair once suggested that Couch might feel a prisoner, locked up in the tower, unUsed and unloved, but PT knew better. Couch was smug and she deserved body fluid stains and termites. Maybe a sleeping smoker - yeah, that would be what she deserved. Smug, bitch.

Then she nearly lost her umbrella. They had finally done it! The Users had removed her plastic. Oh, glorious day! That snob was garage food inside a year. PT settled her wood and turned her attention back to the glorious morning sun. Ahh…

-Brihac

Island Paradise

Here's another assignment by Laura harkening back to the "Write a story set during your most recent vacation" assignment. Enjoy!

Island Paradise
by Laura Mahoney

A New England September is like a hunk of week-old cheese: cold, clammy, and slightly off-putting. The last vestiges of summer filled with visits to the cape, eating corn on the cob and lobster rolls by the seashore, are but a golden memory, and you begin to brace yourself for the unavoidable onslaught of winter.
At that time of year, I would give anything to hold on to that pure ecstasy of summer for just another week or two. I long for the chance to transport myself to some sunny paradise where I would never be more than a stone’s throw from a beach. So when I learned of the opportunity at my office to win a trip to anywhere in the world, I jumped at the chance.
But which paradise would be my paradise? There were so many to choose from, and as a travel agent, I was all too familiar with their names and resorts: there was the Beachcomber Resort on its own private island off the coast of Fiji, reportedly the best place for snorkeling in the country due to its status as a protected marine wildlife sanctuary. Or perhaps the Secrets Resort in Playa del Carmen Mexico, where an all-inclusive lifestyle would surely give me that sense of luxury I desired.
When faced with so many decisions, it became a bit overwhelming. I finally sat down to write my application essay, and thought about what I loved about traveling in the first place. I began to realize that all of my favorite vacations had involved being on the water in some way. From crossing the Atlantic to Scandinavia aboard a training ship for 2 months on a summer break from college, to the boat I took to a deserted island off the coast of Jamaica. There was also my trip to Costa Rica, where my traveling companion and I made a point of being on the water in some capacity at least once every day.
I flipped through a couple of tour brochures, all glistening with photos of dozens of boat trips. There was a triple-decker wood-paneled passenger boat for drifting lazily down the Amazon in Peru, a majestic-looking tall-ship for a week’s journey from Sao Paolo to Rio de Janeiro, and even a glamorous yacht for island-hopping in Greece.
But the one boat that caught my eye was neither glamorous nor majestic. It looked to me like it had seen one too many tourist seasons. The photos of the cabins looked as though they were peering into the dark cramped space of a closet, rather than a room where you were expected to stow yourself and a week’s worth of luggage.
But all that could be endured, I thought, because the destination this boat would give me the freedom to explore was Croatia.
Not the first place you think of when you think of “beach paradise.” The mere mention of the place most likely conjures of images of a politically unstable, war-ravaged landscape. For me, however, it was just the kind of remote, less traveled place I was looking for.
The trip I took was a 7-day island-hopping excursion. I pored over the tour dossier excitedly, and tried to wrap my mouth around exotic words like Makarska, “Brac” (pronounced Buh-rotch), Hvar (ha-var), and Mljet (still not sure about that one.) We ate, drank, slept, and drank some more while sunbathing on the well-worn decks of our “vintage sailing ship.” Though the sun was almost always shining, sunbathing was something you could only do in spans of about 45 minutes to an hour. Our tight schedule meant we were sailing from about 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day at a fairly high speed, so wind was constantly whipping over the decks, causing the Croatian flag hung proudly at our stern to be nearly ripped to shreds. For respite and to nurse wind-burned faces, it was necessary to gather your things and go indoors to the dining room for a game of cards or to read a book.
Our crewmembers were all Croatian and spoke no English, save the waiter. He was a forty-something guy named Tonchi with lots of lines in his face. There was the cook, a grisly old fellow who we affectionately named “Cook,” in part because his given name was also Tonchi. Moving up in the ranks, there was the first mate: a tall, lanky fellow of few words, who had an unsettling way of sneaking up on you, and who was the son of the Captain, or El Capitan to my raucous Australian boatmates.
The fact that English was a rare commodity among our fearless leaders was something of a challenge. Living on a boat in an unfamiliar country, and traveling from place to place each day, requires at least a rudimentary form of communication between passenger and crew. Take for example the scene that unfolds upon arrival at one of the afore-mentioned unpronounceable islands. It’s 3:00 in the afternoon, and thirty-two young adults, near exhaustion from overexposure to sun, wind, and warm Croatian beer, anxious for some solid ground and a change of scenery, are all clambering to run off the boat and see the sights while there is still a little daylight left. But what is this place? Where is here? And what time is it necessary to be back on the boat to ensure that we don’t get left behind while the rest of the group continues on down the jagged coast? The only information we received in return was Tonchi (the waiter)’s chicken scratch on a chalkboard above the gangway leading off the boat. All that appeared there was an indication of the time we would need to be back on the boat in the morning: 0700. Thank God for the universal language of the 24-hour clock.
All in all it was a fabulous trip, highlighted by the 2-hour walk around the two-story high medieval wall encompassing the UNESCO world-heritage site at Dubrovnik, which affords spectacular views of the ancient stone city and the island-dotted Adriatic sea that crashes up against the wall like an enemy invader. Despite my many adventures along the way, including a pirate theme party on International Talk Like a Pirate Day, I don’t think Croatia is the beach paradise I was hoping for. While beaches do abound in a coastline with over 1,000 islands, they’re mostly covered in pebbles and are painful to walk on. Maybe next time I’ll stick to the old standbys, and leave the exploring to someone else.

Moment of Discovery

Deftly, his practiced fingers unhinged the lock on the large, wooden chest that held the secrets of his origin.

His skin buzzed from the elevated nanobot activity in his veins.

Almost automatically the adrenaline boost activated to increase his heart rate and ensure total focus. “Better than a triple espresso,” he would brag to the cell-based skinners at on Drakmar VI.

The lock wasn’t the real threat. The box contained nano viruses. The NVs would reprogram his ‘bots to kill him. Bad way to go.

Removing a long thin tube, he unraveled a sheet of material so thin it appeared to be two dimensional. Slowly he lowered to horizontal material across and through the chest.

The material singed an ugly dark mottle as he passed it through the box before it self-ignited with a hissing crackle.

Seventeen years he had been searching for this box. All his money, all his time, what was left of his humanity and now it was here in front of him.

Activating the cam inside his ocular implant for posterity he simultaneously reached into the past and into his future…

-Brihac

Next Stop, Haaaaaarvard Square!

Here's a post from Laura, harkening back to one of our most popular assignments, "Write a Haiku about Pirates Stealing your Lunch."

Ordinary day
Listening to my Ipod
On my way to work.

Stuffed like a sardine
In this tin can subway car
Between two big dudes.

I crank up the sound
Groove out to some old Motown
To drown out the crowd

In my lap rests lunch:
A sandwich of ham and cheese
And a pudding snack.

Painstakingly packed
This morning while I tuned in
To Ellen’s dance moves.

Suddenly I see
Dude 1 looking down at me
Ogling my lunch.

I pretend all’s well
But I can’t avoid his stare.
“Whatcha got there, hmm?”

“Oh, this? It’s nothing.
Just some two-day-old cold cuts,”
I say nervously.

I notice he has
A parrot on his shoulder.
My god a pirate!

As we pull into
The next stop, he drawls “Ay Mate,
This be Harrrrrrrvard Square.”

He gets up, walks out
Leaving me in peace at last.
I breathe a heavy sigh.

Just as the doors close
His parrot swoops back in and
Deftly grabs my lunch.

Before I know what’s what
The parrot and his owner
Are reunited.

They slip from my view
Just beyond the plexiglass.
Enjoy lunch, you fiends!

So I says to my bunkmate

So I says to my bunkmate, “Fingers, you gots to see dis.”

And Fingers, rolls over in his bunk, which I can hear from below and I am guessing he stares at what I’m eyeballing and all he says is, “that ain’t good.”

So, I prods him a bit for conversation and I says, “Ain’t that your place, where you lived before we was busted last time? Think they are gonna rearrange all them paintings of poker dogs you got up on the walls?”

And I am guessing he was just nodding only I couldn’t see on account of him being in the upper bunk and me being in the lower one. But again he says, “That ain’t good.”

So, I keeps looking at the television and its one of them home turnover shows where they take one guys lousy taste in decorating his walls and picking furniture and trade it for someone else’s, but there’s always some dame screaming as it happens and everyone hugs afterward. Reminds me of a turf war, but I don’t really get it.

Anyways, on this particular eppy-sode they was taking a run down old house offa Mulberry and they was going to gut it, walls and all and turn it into some kind of yuppie-tarium or something.

“Hey, fingers,” I says at this point, “ain’t that your old joint, where you lived before we came to stay at this fine establishment? Waddn’t that the one you was going to fix up with the loot from our haul.”

Then, like a broken record Fingers comes back to me with, “That ain’t good.”

“I thought you stilled owned that place, oh, hey, ain’t that your sister, Fingers? Ain’t that Phyllis? She don’t look so good no more, ever since you broke her nose. That’s old Philly thought ain’t it?”

Fingers does his line again and I can’t get nothing more from him. Then the show changes - like. Not that it ain’t the same show anymore, but they change the speed and the lights and stuff like that and there is this far away kind of look at the house then, Wham! The whole thing goes up inna ball of flame.

Well, I am hooting and hollering and laughing so hard I nearly shits myself and then I get all quiet and I turns to Finger, even though I knows he can’t see me through the bunk. “Wasn’t that house where you stashed the dough from the last job? You said no one would find it, you promised me Phyllis wouldn’t get it ‘cause you booby trapped the hiding place with a big bomb which… ah, shit.

“That ain’t good.”

-Brihac

Trash my Bath!

I was casually flipping through channels when a familiar pattern of wallpaper caught my eye.

A couple in their early thirties was standing in a fantastic bathroom. The wallpaper was peacock blue and rich Tudor brown and silver leaf, and drawn in intricate Art Nouveau floral designs. The woodworking was dark and rich, and pendant lamps in lapis blown glass hung in delicate drips over the sink and toilet area. The commode and the sink were a royal blue as well - not an easy color to find a toilet in. A rich cobalt tile covered the floor of the bathroom, and extended up the walls of the shower. The whole room was steeped in glimmering glamour. It was stunning. It was decadent.

It was my old house.

My husband and I sold the house two years ago when our kids moved out. We bought a condo and moved south. But I was thrilled to see my design being showcased on this HGTV show and quickly hit the info button on my remote to see why they were highlighting it. I called my husband into the living room and then read the paragraph blurb about the show. As I read, my excitement slowly turned to horror.

The show was called "Trash my Bath!" and it promised demolition of horrid bathroom design and renovation into a new space. Surely they were using my bathroom as a "what to do" on this show. But as I listened to the thirtysomethings in my old house talking about my luxurious bathroom, it became all too clear that it was not praise they were heaping upon my design skills. Adjectives like "hideous" and "nightmarish" and "ghastly" bounced off my beautiful wallpaper - a very expensive paper, mind you - and the thirtysomethings lamented about the "old fashioned" lamps and the "cave-like" darkness of the rich wood in the room.

I was offended. I was aghast. I was horrified when the show's host appeared in a hard hat with a sledgehammer and decimated the beautiful cobalt tiles in the shower. The wood cabinets were gutted and thrown in a dumpster. My pendant lamps were tossed and I nearly cried as I heard the glass break. The wallpaper was scoured and saturated and pulled off, and a blase taupe paint went up where the bold pattern used to be.

In the end, my old bathroom looked like every other bathroom these days - a dull, taupe box with white trim and boring white porcelain fixtures. No imagination, no escapism, no luxury. I could hardly bear it. I snapped off the television and grabbed my purse. There was decorating to be done. I needed to set things right. My husband didn't even blink as I headed out the door to the nearest showroom, in search of new design heights to combat the unimaginative designs of today. I already had a palette in mind - dusty rose, mint green, and gold leaf. And lots of whitewashed wicker. It would be decadent and lush and most certainly not taupe. And then I would have the last laugh.

STAND UP EGG

Eggbert was a very normal egg. Sure, he was smooth and white and shined a little bit in the morning sun, but mostly he was incredibly normal.

Eggbert’s one true wish was to be something special. He watched all the other folks going about their days, happy and content and he told himself that he should be happier too. But he wasn’t.

One day, out of a desperate need to do something, he decided to place a large red dot on the top of his shell. This, he knew, would mark him as someone special, someone important.

All day long Eggbert waited for someone to notice his special red dot. But, no one did.

Finally, tired and frustrated he went to see his mother Eggdwina and when she saw him she opened her arms to give him a big hug, but before Eggbert could reach his mother’s comforting shell, she flicked the red dot from his head and said, “Oh, Eggbert. You’ve got some schmutz.”

Eggbert endured the hug and quickly left for home. On his long unhappy walk he saw a flyer on a telephone poll, it read, “Open Mike Night at Ye Olde Muffin bar and stand up club, tomorrow night.”

Eggbert felt his insides churn, this was it. He was going to be a stand up comedian and everyone would see how special he was. Running at full speed, he stopped at the book store, bought a joke book and ran home.

Eggbert stayed up all night reading the jokes and all day memorizing them for the show.

When the time came to go to the club, Eggbert was bleary eyed, but excited. This was going to be the big day!

After the first two acts finished, Eggbert took the stage. In a small and almost whiny voice he recited the first joke from his book. “Why didn’t the skeleton cross the road?” he asked the audience.

He was met with utter quiet. No one in the audience responded. “Um, because he didn’t have the guts!” Eggbert said all at once. Again, no reaction from the audience.

Eggbert continued, unable to bare the silence, “You see, skeletons have no body, and so they literally have no guts and guts also means bravery, like being brave enough to cross the road…”

Someone in the back of the crowd let out a huge, “Boo!!! Get off the stage! You stink!”

Eggbert tried to continue, stammering, his hands shaking he began again, “What goes stomp, stomp, stomp, squish?” He looked out into the crowd for a friendly face.

“You do!” a woman shouted from the left side of the audience. Then the first spit wad sailed up on to the stage and splattered against Eggbert’s side.

His confidence failing, Eggbert slunk off stage to a nearby bar stool.

****

After his first drink he heard a warm and mellow voice at his side, “Hey there, Mate. Hang in there.”

“The name’s Toasters. I am the English Muffin who owns this comedy club.”

Eggbert looked over at the source of the voice, and sure enough, a distinguished looking English Muffin sat perched upon the bar stool to his left.

“Hello, Toasters,” Eggbert mentioned without any enthusiasm.

“Open microphone night not up to snuff for you, eh?” Toaster asked, his buttery shine glimmering with mischief.

“I was horrible,” Eggbert said, his tone indicating that his state of horribleness was what always was and what always will be.

“Chin up, Mate. All you did was get it wrong the first try, who doesn’t? You got to see it as one step in the overall process, not as failure.”

“You think I’m a failure?” Eggbert whined.

“Not unless you sit on the stool for the rest of your life whining about how you stink. See here. The trick with the comedy is to talk about stuff which is very much about you. Not just reading jokes out of a book. What works for me might now work for you.”

Dragging the words out of some deep place in his soul Eggbert asked, “What works for you?”

“What works for me, is being me! Think about it. What kind of jokes do you think I did when I was doing stand up?”

“Knock-knock jokes,” Eggbert asked cautiously.

“No, of course not! I’m an English muffin, so I come out on stage and tell them that it’s easy to be a comic, there’s muffin to it.”

Eggbert smiled a bit. “I get it, Muffin to it and you are a muffin.”

“That’s right.”

“And your name is Toasters!”

“Because I am a muffin and because I own a bar.”

Eggbert’s voice gained a note of excitement, “Two jokes!”

“Yes, but sadly being an English muffin does not provide as much material as I would have hoped.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be, I own the bar and am very happy, but you my friend, are an egg!”

Eggbert stared at Toasters without comprehension. “You mean I have to be a muffin to be funny?”

“No, you are an egg and when you find the humor in being an egg…”

“I’ll really be funny!”

“That’s right. Will you come back and try next week?”

“But I don’t know what I will say; I don’t know what the jokes will be.”

Toaster slid off the bar stool and began to walk away, “You’ll think of it. See you next week, kid.”

Eggbert felt the beginnings of excitement as he raced home to discover the jokes that came with being an egg.

****

And Eggbert thought about it until he thought he would explode. He thought about jokes which would be right for him in the morning when he showered. He thought about jokes during lunch. He thought about jokes when he drove around to get his shell polished and he thought about jokes all night long in his dreams.

Every time he thought he had the right kind of joke he would decide that it wasn’t exactly what he wanted.

****

Finally the day of the show arrived and Eggbert nervously got himself to the club, he wanted his jokes to be exactly the right kind. Even his mother Eggdwina was in the audience this time. He could not have possible been more nervous.

The act before him was a real ham and the audience looked angry. Carefully, with slow and deliberate movement Eggbert approached the microphone. The sharp whine of amplified feedback nearly caused him to run from the stage, but he held his ground.

Nervously he began, “Hello, folks. My name is Eggbert.”

The audience quieted with expectation and Eggbert was sure he remembered a few people from the week before. No one smiled.

“My name is Eggbert, and I am here to CRACK you up!” Eggbert yelled into the microphone. His last word echoed into the silence as the audience stared at him without expression.

Eggbert felt his heart drop to the floor and was about to continue when he heard someone in the audience yell out, “Oh, I get it. You are an egg and you are going to crack us up!”

Someone else in the audience laughed. “It’s a joke.”

Eggbert wasn’t sure if this was working, so he decided to charge on ahead.

“Anyway, I am so EGG-cited to be here tonight!”

Again, it was quiet for a moment and then a small group of folks in the audience laughed. “He’s an egg and he’s egg-cited!” one of them said through his chuckles.

“You guessed it,” Eggbert replied, “I guess the YOLK is on me!”

At this half of the audience began to laugh.

“Hmm,” Eggbert said, pretended to not know what to say, “What SHELL I say next?”

Now the other half of the audience began to laugh.

“Seriously,” Eggbert continued, getting exited, “I am SCRAMBLING for another joke!”

Now the audience was howling with laughter. They were falling out of their chairs and slapping each other on the back with delight.

Eggbert yelled to the audience’s delight. “Hey you guys are great, I wasn’t sure that I would like you, but you won me OVER EASY!”

The audience was in a frenzy now, chanting, “Eggbert! Eggbert! Eggbert!”

Toaster joined Eggbert on the stage and took the microphone, “Brilliant. How about a big hand for Eggbert everybody!” and the applause was deafening.

As Eggbert made his way off the stage, Toaster called to him, “You did it kid, you looked deep inside and you found your very own voice!”

Eggbert smiled and called over his shoulder, “EGG-zactly.”

Oh, Reality

by Marcy

Everyone was sick and tired of Eddie Glug, but try as they might they could not get him to trip up and do something stupid.  Annoying he was, and rank smelly, but he was a smart player with no scruples.  He was made for reality television, and he was the person on the show that everyone - on the show with him or at home watching - loved to hate.

Eddie was manipulative.  He wooed Charice in the first three episodes just to turn on her when she lost the mud race challenge in episode four.  And you would think that his betrayal of Charice would have set off alarms for Bran and Alyssa, his closest cohorts in the tribe, but he outsmarted each of them in turn to win immunity and eventually lead to their being voted off.  The others tried to gain his trust in an attempt to figure out his motives, but he cut them down with his strategies week by week, one by one.  They had been on the deserted island twenty-five days, and Eddie still had yet to take a bath or shower.  Rhonda was convinced he had something growing out of his toes.  She never got the chance to investigate it, as she was booted off the island on the fifteenth day.

On day thirty one there were three people left; Eddie, Martin, and Kataya.  In an unprecedented three-way tie, all three had immunity necklaces and therefore could not be voted off.  The rules of the game stated that should a stalemate like this occur, the remaining contestants must stay on the island as long as possible, and the last one to leave the island would be crowned the victor.  Kataya was sunburned and starving, and Martin had sprained his ankle in the last challenge wherein he won his immunity.  Eddie, aside from his toe fungus, was still intact and completely convinced of his victory.  After fifty-four days, Kataya finally gave in to the elements and begged to be removed from the island.  Martin and Eddie were the only ones left.  

The viewers at home were rapt with attention as the show moved into day fifty-four.  How long would they last?  And who were they rooting for at this point?  Eddie had played an incredible game, and the viewers at home had seen his masterful manipulation of the game unfold from the comfort of their own couches.  But Martin had played true.  He was the good guy.  But still, Eddie was captivating.

Week seventy-two finally saw a victor, in the form of a poisonous marple snake who took both Eddie and Martin in their sleep.  It was the highest rated and most critically panned episode of reality television to date.  Until next season when Bret Michaels attempts the same game on the same island with a group of crazy half naked former strippers in search of attention and 15 minutes of fame.  

Everyone was sick and tired of Eddie Glug, but try as they might they could not get him to stop giving honest answers when asked how he was doing. You see, Eddie always had one tragedy or another hanging over his head and he was always just moments away from turning it all around. When innocently asked how he was doing he would invariably come back with” Horrible. But…” and fill in some grand plan for turning his life around.

Now, Eddie’s four best friends from growing up would never dream of making him leave their little group. They had all been friends since the kindergarten, when Eddie had thrown up from eating too much paste and stuck the five of them together, quite literally, for the first time.

But Edie, Nora, Jeff, 'Cisco and Andrea were all in the mid forties now and at least 80% of the paste friends had long ago tired of Eddie’s neurotic compulsion to tell everyone exactly how bad things were and how great they were going to be. Eddies plans never turned out and the lamentation of their failure was utterly draining to endure.

When Eddie was 27 he was made manager of the video store where he worked. He was convinced that he had finally turned a corner. Then, of course, his store shut down because no one rented videos from a store any more and Eddie was laid off. Everyone got an ear full on that one for about a million years.

So, it was with some surprise that non long after the four friends were about to retire and slow down to a rather modest and fixes income that their fifth friend, good old Eddie Glug bough himself a winning lottery ticket; 24 million dollars after taxes.

It came to pass that for the next two years everyone was sick and tired o Eddie Glug because you could not get him to stop answering the question, “How you doing?” With the answer, Fantastic! But…” and then he would drone on endlessly about taxes and solicitors hitting him up for donations and how much stress he was under from having his new mansion renovated.

So the paste friends killed him.

They made it look like an accident. They convinced Eddie that he should leave all his money to them in equal parts because they were his only and best life long friends. And they killed him.

Which of course was a huge mistake, because within a month everyone was sick and tired of Eddie Glug’s ghost because they could not get him to stop haunting them every moment of every day and whining about how he was killed by his friends just as things were finally turning around for him. But… just as soon as he was done haunting them, he would get to go to heaven and then everything would finally be great.

-Brihac

Make Mine Rare

By Steve Mast

Belinda Budge was as stubborn as her last name implied, and on this particular day she was resolute in refusing to eat her dinner. Melinda Budge, the porky fiend’s mother, was staring in disbelief at her husband, who was, apparently, allowing their daughter to misbehave.
Melinda’s arms were crossed and she kicked the thin, shrunken and balding man under the table. There was a loud “THUMP” and a tiny cry of pain emanated from what looked to be more of a corpse than a man. “DO something about your daughter,” the woman growled, and tilted her head at the girl, who was sitting in a cross armed imitation of her mother, her lower lip stuck out, staring at her food.
The corpse gave a hint of a consolatory smile and glanced back and forth between mother and daughter, as if trying to decide which was the lesser evil to talk to. “Now sweetie,” he said, settling on the daughter, “Why don’t you at least try your ham?”
The little girl raised her pudgy eyebrows to her father and said, “I don’t LIKE this ham. I don’t WANT this ham! I want PIE!” Her voice raised in volume and pitch with every phrase.
“But honey-pumpkin – you asked for the ham – you LIKE ham.”
“This ham is OVERCOOKED! I want RARE ham!”
“But lubby-hunkins – nobody eats ham rare – you have to cook it to be sure it’s…”
“I’ll eat a WHOLE FUCKING PIG ALIVE if I want to – I won’t eat this overcooked processed FILTH!” The mammoth child was shouting. She picked up a fistful of peas and mashed potatoes and flung it at her father. Half the food stuck to his chest and face and the other half splattered around the room.
Melinda, seeing the scene begin to get out of hand, grabbed her purse and swung it at the corpse’s head. He ducked but too late and there was the noise of glass breaking as it struck him solidly in the ear. Her own shouting matched her daughter’s. “Why are you doing this to her? Just order her some GOD DAMNED PIE, you GOD DAMNED IDIOT!”
The corpse looked down at the table but put a hand up until he had somebody’s attention. “Waiter, we’d like to order some desert now.”

LOVE IS A BATTLEFIELD

By L. David Wheeler


Belinda Budge was as stubborn as her last name implied, and on this particular day she was resolute in refusing to fulfill her duties. As she was a guardian angel, this left her charge, Darrah Rongweld, in something of an awkward situation, as she was marked for humiliation, desecration and ultimate annihilation by the Secret Dark Lords of Malevolence.

Why Darrah Rongweld was marked by said Secret Dark Lords of Malevolence as their particular repository of wrath, why they feared her as they had few others – the Galilean, certainly; Merlin, quite possibly; Gary Cooper, most definitely, for the magic was strong within him – is obscure. For Darrah Rongweld was a file clerk. In a third-string American city named Rochester, New York. Who collected Snoopy figures and played piano badly and made decent chili and occasionally gave bums a dollar. She grew up in the thickest suburbs and lived a thickest-suburban life. She had a boyfriend named Murray who sold advertising for a free shoppers’-rag and had a rockabilly band named The Burnin' Beulahs. She named her two cats after Jane Austen characters. She was smart but not brilliant, cute but not beautiful, steady but not resolute, strong but not steeled. She was, in other words, perfectly ordinary.

Belinda Budge figured, rather, she knew in her sinews that she was made for grander things than to guard the perfectly ordinary Belinda Budge. She had guarded Winston Churchill! Miguel de Cervantes! Abigail Adams! Joan of Arc – well, that hadn’t turned out all that well, but it was quite a gig while it lasted. Just because the Secret Dark Lords of Malevolence had apparently made some appalling clerical error didn’t mean she had to waste however many decades the wretched creature would live, just because the Secret Lords of Lofty Luminescence said so. Just because they said Darrah Rongweld was this era’s Chosen One Who Beats Back The Forces of Entropy Simply By Existing. What did they know? (And what kind of title was that, anyway?) They weren’t real archangels, any more than she was a real angel or the Secret Dark Lords of Malevolence were real demons. Those folks existed, but traveled in different circles, it seemed. No, the Secret Lords and their associates – once Malcolm Mudge called her and, she supposed, himself, “minions,” and she disemboweled him extra disembowely for the affront – were free-lancers in the field of Meddling in the Affairs of Mortals. And subject to the occasional lapse in intelligence gathering, it seemed.

Let Darrah Rongweld get hit by a truck today. No, a bus! A train! A cruise ship! The space shuttle! Let her get eaten alive by mad dogs – cows, bears, kangaroos, dinosaurs, basilisks! Let her Diet Dr. Pepper turn to arsenic, hemlock, Drano, acid, even that foul draught they call Mello Yello! The Earth would continue to spin. Evil would not run rampant over the cosmos. Both the Secret Dark Lords of Malevolence and the Secret Lords of Lofty Luminescence would sheepishly realize their error and root around for the real Chosen One.

And maybe Mudge would finally shut up.

“Hey, come on, Belinda, the day’s half-over and we haven’t even started.”

She was sitting on the Court Street bridge over the Genesee River, welcoming the meaty fumes from the nearby Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, wishing her kind were corporeal enough to eat. He was standing behind her on the sidewalk, nervously stroking his moustache and making entreating eyebrow motions even though she had her back to him, because that was his way. This is the kind of demon the stupid Secret Dark Etcetera send to stay the Chosen One? Stupidity and folly.

She’d done battle with some of those Teutonic hunks of virile vileness that hovered around Hitler and his posse. Malcolm Mudge just ... sucked.

“What we?” Belinda asked, never taking eyes from the river. “Do whatever you want. Shoot her. Stab her. Lase her, tase her. Boil her blood and bake her bones. Toss her off the Xerox tower. Force-feed her Garbage Plates til her heart ignites. Feed her to the zebra mussels. The choice is yours.” She hopped down to the sidewalk and looked Mudge in the eye. “The day lies spread before you, and it’s all yours. I won’t stop you, 'cause I quit. Abdicate. Surrender. Hit the road. Shuffle off to Buffalo. Bet I can make it in an hour.” She smirked. “You’ve won – or you will if you quit bugging me and destroy her already. She’s a Chosen One” – she poured as much bitter irony into the term as she could – “your promotion is assured. You’ll get out of Rochester! Just cowboy up and do it. Be a man!”

“I’m not a man, Belinda, I’m ...”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

“... an Incorporeal Spectral Personified Entity. Just like you. And you know it doesn’t work that way.”

“Who says? You try to kill Rongweld. I try to stop you. Today I stop trying. Ball’s in your court, Mudge.”

“It’s in our court. Because I can’t do anything to her unless you resist. The victory isn’t won unless it’s taken. That’s the rule.”

“Rule? What rule?” She had never heard of such a rule – but then again, she had never heard of any Incorporeal Spectral Personified Entity, on either side, refusing to do her or his duty. She was, as far as she knew, the first, for she was as stubborn as her last name implied.

“The Deepest, Truest Canticle from the Well of Portentious Power Ere Eternity’s Onset Decreeing Ever Matched and Met Combat O’er Reality’s Covert Hinges, of course.” He crossed his arms. “Really, Belinda, you should study up on this stuff.”

“The Deepest, Truest ...” she muttered the litany to herself, trying to recall the ponderous title, than stopped short at “Onset.” She jabbed a finger in Mudge’s face. “You made that up!”

“I most certainly did not!”

“You made it up just now!”

“All right, all right. What gave it away?”

“What didn’t give it away? What the hell is wrong with you?”

He was silent for a moment, but his face was moving, various shadows passing across his eyes while his lips ... trembled, they truly did. Then he spoke, looking her square in the eye. “I don’t want it to end.”

“What to end?” she snapped.

“This. Well, not this, but that. The fight. The battle. The sparring. The parrying.”

“What are you talking about? The sparring and parrying don’t stop when one of the mortals does. Your bosses will find another alleged Chosen One for you to harass, and my bosses will send someone out to stop you. And you can fight and battle and spar and parry to your heart’s content.”

“I don’t want to fight anyone else. I’ve got my heart’s content.”

Belinda’s confusion and honest curiosity had almost overwhelmed her anger and annoyance. Her gaze softened, if only a mite. “Mudge. Malcolm. What are you saying?”

Malcolm Mudge looked more miserable than Belinda had ever seen a free-lance nondemon look. “I’m saying I love you, Belinda. I’ve loved you for years – since Darrah Rongweld was in preschool.”

She didn’t know what to say. So she pushed him off the bridge. And hoped that didn’t turn him on.

And she cursed Darrah Rongweld, while getting back to work protecting her worthless but possibly pivotal life. She preferred Malcolm as ardent adversary to whiny stalker, so Darrah would get her guardian angel back.

Belinda perched her incorporeal, invisible body atop Darrah’s cubicle wall, watching her nibble on Lean Cuisine fettucine as she worked her way through her lunch break. She leaned forward and stared into unseeing eyes, addressing her charge’s unhearing ears. “Bitch, all I can say is you’d better save the whole damn cosmos.”

And, as they drew swords, Malcolm Mudge smiled. Someday she’d come around.

Closing in

By Bryan M.

When Max spoke, people listened. The problem was, he was behind in the polls by 13 points and now he watched his lead plummet like mercury in a New England winter.

His left foot took the last step before he'd be at his podium. The sea swelled. Arms and flags and signs with his name undulated in a powerful heave all around him. Red, white, blue sparks danced around him. They were good, he thought, to stick with me to the end. But a wounded animal knows when it's licked. Would Max play dead and hope his predator had mercy? He had a chance to go out graciously, to tell the masses of New Hampshire voters to back Barack or huzzah Hillary.

No, the instincts told him otherwise. Go out swinging, his conscience said. Take 'em all down. Make them believe you were their last, great ... white ... hope. Make them regret their doubts. Make them guilty for being suckered in by slick ads and shiny propoganda. Make them second-guess, don't make yourself the second choice.

Max raised his arms. The crowd hushed. His eyes lowered.

They waited for a speech that never came.

He raised his arms because his suit was stifling, and he needed his arms free. The crowd hushed - it saw something in him it hadn't seen before, and for the first time their confidence wavered. His eyes lowered to take one last look at the speech he'd never give, and to make sure the podium wasn't bolted to the floor.

In one motion he lifted his leg and sent the wood podium flying. His hands went to his waist, and fluidly his belt was off. Before the heavy box crashed to the convention floor, flattening a widow in the process, his back was turned. His pants were down.

And the last thing they'd remember was Max. The great white hope.

And his butt.

Glub Glub

By Kris Dreessen

When Max spoke, people listened. The problem was, Max lived underwater in a new, fancy aquarium in India. He was one of the first visitors, leaned over a little too much to get a better gander at the clown fish and fell in. Instead of letting him out the staff was excited at the prospect of a "larger" exhibit. They tossed him a regulator and scuba mask, placed a new lid on tight and have held him captive for 2 years. He gets fed through an opening in the wall. But no one knows this because when he speaks, only gurgles come out.

That's the Spirit

by Marcy

When Max spoke, people listened. The problem was that Max had been dead for 15 years, and he was tired of talking to people. He tried to tell the latest group of ghost hunters this on their EVP recording device, but what he had said as “leave me the Hell alone” had turned up on their recordings as “give me the telephone.”

They then brought in an old school rotary phone and swore that it would ring when not even plugged into the wall because the entity in this dwelling was so powerful. Frustrated, Max instead made one of their cell phones ring just to spite them, and the energy his spirit had to draw from the room sapped the battery in their video camera so they couldn’t get it on tape. That would show them.

But it didn’t. When people hear that things happen in the apartment building at 105 Franklin Street, every ghost hunter team, psychic, clairvoyant, and hack show up just to have a piece of the easy proof. Max used to enjoy it, but after 15 years it had gotten old.

The only person Max wanted to talk to these days was Andrea, a clairvoyant who had lived on the fifth floor of the apartment building he lingered in. She was quiet, and funny, and oh, would that he were still alive … well, it couldn’t be. But at least she could hear him, and talk back. When she had first moved into the apartment she had sensed him right away. Other tenants had burned sage – a smell that Max abhorred – and filled their apartments with crucifixes. Others held séances and begged Max to tell them things from the beyond. Max avoided their apartments, as they seemed the most likely to try and either raise him from the dead or have him exorcized.

But when Andrea had moved in, she did none of these things. Instead, she casually acknowledged him over her shoulder while unpacking dishes in the kitchen. She said “I know you are there. And I don’t mind, as long as you don’t try to harm me.” Max tested the water by speaking, asking her how she knew. “I sensed you,” she said, without looking away from her task.

Max lingered a while and she told him little things, like where she got this particular painting she was hanging, or how her great-grandmother knitted the afghan she was unpacking. Each day, when Max’s travels around the building brought him back to her apartment, she greeted him kindly, said a few things, and went on about her day. It made the ghost hunters and cuckoo psychics that visited the building at the landlord’s whim more bearable, back then.

She stayed in the building for two years, but fate took her elsewhere. The day she moved out she said goodbye to Max and thanked him for being a good roommate. Max hadn’t seen her since, but his travels never really took him out of the building so that was no surprise. What was a surprise is how sad he felt. He missed her. And now he didn’t want to talk to anyone, but more came to find him than ever before.

So sometimes he played their games, and sometimes he avoided them. And still other times he tried to make them go away. But they still listened when he spoke. They recorded it and catalogued it and chalked it up to evidence of life after death. When Max spoke, people listened.
But no one had talked to him like Andrea.

Hacky New Year!

Greetings, 2008!

The No-Talent Hacks welcome you.

Our Hack resolution, though challenged by distance, time, and workloads, is to try and have more Hack posts on this here blog than we did for 2007. So here goes.

Write on!