Once again, I must be separated. The drawings will cease for about a month, though they will continue. After about a month.
There was one other thing I wanted to say: Bye.
-the one who draws these things
Thanks for sticking around and seeing these things. Do they see you?
Gallons by the gallons, pound for pound, bang for the buck.
I'm just here for the rock opera and to shine my shoes.
Story by: Ben Bowman
At Joe's Supermarket, the aisles overflowed with food. Truly, it was a melting pot of all cultures. In the same aisle, you could find Chinese, Mexican and Italian foods, sitting in harmony. Cans and boxes stood row on row, their labels facing out, proudly.
Near the entrance, an old cooler was filled with bags of ice. Shoppers headed to the cooler almost always had smiles on their faces. They were the hosts of parties, families headed to the beach, members of happy gatherings.
But it was a difficult life for the ice cubes within. Unlike the food stocking Joe's shelves, the ice was never fully appreciated. Each cube would be subjected to intense heat, melting away, little by little, until it was little more than a puddle. Then, it would likely suffer the indignity of being tossed into someone's backyard.
The cubes often envied the ice cream at Joe's. Ice cream didn't come wrapped in a flimsy plastic bag. It had shiny, colorful packaging. Though ice cream could melt, none of the shoppers would let that happen. And unlike the ice cubes, the ice cream would be savored - loved - before it vanished from existence.
Within the cooler, a cube sat atop his brothers in one of the newer bags of ice.
"It's not fair," he said. "Why doesn't anyone care about us the way they care about everything else in this place?"
An older cube lower in the bag spoke up. "It's not our place to be loved. Be cool. Do your job."
But the young cube sat there, seething as the day wore on. He didn't want to do his job. He wanted to live. He wanted to be appreciated.
Just before closing time, Joe's florist walked past the cooler with an armful of new arrivals. And the cube watched in awe as the florist gently placed a bouquet of lovely stems into a vase across the aisle.
The cube's gaze became fixed on a sunflower in the back. She radiated warmth and beauty not seen in Joe's Supermarket since Miss Pawtucket stopped by to cut the ribbon opening the store.
The cube held his breath, hoping no one would take that sunflower before the doors were locked.
Promptly at 10 p.m., Joe turned the key. The cube exhaled.
"I'm getting out of here," said the cube.
"Are you crazy?" shouted the old cube. "You'll melt! Without cooling anything! You can't do that!"
"I don't care."
With that, the young cube pushed his way out of the bag and threw himself against the cooler door until it opened just enough to let him out.
He fell to the ground with a horrible crash. It hurt, but he wasn't phased. His eyes were fixed on that sunflower.
Slowly, but surely, the cube slid his way toward her vase. With every inch, the heat seemed to increase. He was sweating, faster than he'd expected.
When he finally reached the floral case, he shouted upward. "Hey, Sunflower!"
She leaned forward. "Yes?"
"I saw you from the cooler and I wanted to introduce myself. I'm an ice cube."
"Nice to meet you," she said, her voice just as bright as her petals.
"Would you mind spending some time with me?" the cube asked, sweat
pouring down his forehead.
"Sure," she said. "I'd love to get some sun."
The ice cube gulped.
The flower jumped out of her vase and fell to the floor. "Let's go!"
The cube spent the next several hours sliding along with the sunflower, staying close to the refrigerated sections to keep cool. He sometimes became so stricken with her beauty, he forgot how fast he was melting.
At 6 o'clock, the ice cube and the sunflower finally made their way to
the roof. Darkness was breaking.
The flower smiled brightly as the sun rose. "It's beautiful, isn't it?"
"Yes," said the ice cube, looking straight at her.
"Oh!" she said. "You'll melt!"
"It doesn't matter," he said.
"Yes it does!" she said. "I don't want you to melt!"
The cube smiled. "I melted the moment I laid eyes on you."
Blinding sunlight burst from the horizon. The flower looked more
radiant than ever.
"I'm so sorry," said the sunflower. "I should have never brought you
into the light!"
But as her words entered the air, the ice had already melted.
And for the first time in the history of ice cubes, the end was beautiful.
I thought of you then something else
Turned into you
And I'm slowly arching the bridge in my back
To broken nails, clustered back room deals, and things I already forgot
Maybe it's turned away but it turns out it's much too late
To be singing these encore blues
To be scratching syrup out of this thick skin
And you can't sell piece of mind
No you can't sell piece of mind
Not in this place
I thought of something else
So don't call that doctor and tell him to rebreak my heart
I'm pretty set in my ways already
The last thing you can't do
Is sing those encore blues
And not be forbidden to think
It's the last thing you could possibly do
Is take these crooked roses and burn the empty sky
And then sing those encore blues
The tiger thinks the leopard would really trade spots
(But) The leopard thinks the tiger really earned his stripes
The owl knows not who he speaks to (no, not quite)
The door mouse is the quietest of all, caring not who enters and who goes
But the canary in the mine, he's stuck singing those encore blues
And that's just the way it goes (yes, you're right)
So don't make it the last thing you can ever do
Until it was all clear at the bottom lot
The field leveled and burned its brightest
When everything to clearer
All's well at sixteen bells
To slit the street in two
Oh, and what could you do
But watch
And sing those encore blues
Salt-flavored sour grapes taken with a grain apart from the wood cut the die cast the moment won't last but at least I'm attached to the heart of the beast with kicked in heels and breathing easier behind clenched teeth and broken smiles I'm struggling to have some kind of a foreign exchange through a wooden pail with a hollowed out hole in the hallowed halls of the preteen youth a pretensed tooth reminds me of something else I threw over my shoulder and walked out the door to find my shaken down bones from the rusted out apple tree someone else planted but it sent me a letter in 1993 addressed to no one has a grip like the cutting room floor and it turns out everywhere I go there's phones off the hook and coffee in cups but it's getting later than it was before before they started dying along the banks and just made deposits of calcium in the crooks of my eyes and when someone at last shoved their fist down my esophageal canal to pull out my stomach, only two words came to mind: "Thank you."
And I guess I should protect my investment
I should really learn to
someone tried to pull all the teeth out of my smile
so i spit them all out to ring the bell
still i'm fed a healthy diet of triangles and i get plenty of vitamin d
you could try
arbitrary arbitrator
see ya later traitors
lionface baby basinet pregnancy scare
you could try
i've got my health
but send it priority overnight
if you could contain what i have within
but i can't
as if i need an excuse
I was in the basement, wrapped in ancient cloth for four days when it occurred to me The Mummy might not let me go. Sure, he called it a kidnapping from the get go. So I guess I can respect him for being a man of his word. And sure, I had it coming -- I did sell his sordid secrets to the tabloids.
But who could pass up such sensational headlines? There it was, in black and white, with a color photo: THE MUMMY CAUGHT ON TAPE!! WHAT A SHOCKER!! GUESS WHO'S PREGNANT!! MUMMY SNAGGED IN
Plus I made a cool $50, which is a lot of money made in very little time. And if you believe money is time, as I do, then it's a win-win, assuming you don't care about the consequences of your actions on others.
And I guess we've all been guilty of, in our lonelier moments, doing that to a sandwich. I just happened to tip off Weekly World News of this particular preserved corpse's acts against nature and breadkind. But there he was, in his pumps and earrings, and there I was, walking to the bank. It was unrelated to the $50 I made; I was meeting a friend of mine who I later remembered no longer worked there. So I guess, in retrospect, The Mummy should have considered us even with the time I wasted waiting for Barry to get off work. But he didn't see things that way.
No, he didn't see things my way at all. So I found myself, for four and a half days, living The Mummy's way. My stomach was sucking up against my spine because I haven't eaten in 108 hours. I tried swallowing my saliva, but it wasn't very filling or satisfying. It was time for me to face facts. I was going to die. And I wouldn't be preserved like my scorned friend The Mummy.
And I guess, as I write this account in my makeshift journal -- my bareback as paper and my toenails as pen, and of course my bodily fluids as ink -- I hope you, dear reader, will heed my warning. If you sell the secrets of undead or differently abled, they will hunt you down. Or at least they will if you call to tell them you liked what they were doing with that sandwich and safety cone near
Still, I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
As my lungs were expelling their final breath, I couldn't believe my eyes.
Suddenly, my good friend Dracula burst through the door, and began beating The Mummy mercilessly.
"How dare you do this to my dear friend!" Dracula said between savage punches.
“Dracula, you came for me!” I gasped!
“Of course, you’re my best friend in the whole world and…hang on.”
Then Dracula started dousing the scarabs escaping from The Mummy’s cloth holes in tangy barbecue sauce. He chucked them into my mouth after cradling them on the Ronco grill he seemingly always carries along with him. I used to tease him about it, but damned if those scarabs weren’t the tastiest things I’d ever eaten. Or maybe it had something to do with the severe starvation I’d been subjected to. Plus I’d been vomiting blood and losing hair pretty steadily for the past long Memorial Day weekend.
Then, as Dracula was about to deal the final death blow, choking The Mummy with his own cloth, he shouted, “Mum’s the word, asshole!”
Later that night Dracula made me spaghetti and we watched expensive Pay Per View movies on his large screen TV.
I just found out my life was a mistake but I lived it anyway.
My reasons were strictly blurred but the logic was clear.
Someone turned my house into a bridge and I just made do.
But this much I know.
I don't know much.
Where ever you are, know the culture's stunted
In a petri dish, go down for seconds
You
You know what you are
But that could always change
Didn't you count on that?
Someday faraway came and gone while you were in the living room
So
Live it up
While you still can
The updates are great
But only call to say goodbye
So
Goodbye
And have a nice life
Better than how I left it
Please
How did I leave it
Confused, right?
No, better.
But I'm afraid of whatever it used to be
What is it now?
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