After nine years you might be surprised that I can recall some things from before I set out. Nonetheless, I am startled to recognize this boy, especially considering how he has changed. I see his face in and out of an old dream that keeps me listless. Unfortunately, it is a dream that I do not enjoy retelling:

The dust had settled in layers on my brow and upon my shoulders as I stood motionless in an empty office space. Yes, an office space devoid of furnishings and proper light fixtures; an office space among a series of vacant buildings, sitting on a large concrete slab that I suspect was never worth commercial appraisal. We had picked the spot together and in secrecy with the hope of finishing our project. But, as he left me there, pinned against the wall, in the quiet behind our silent beast, with its mechanical sleeve pushing fluids into my gut, I knew our partnership was at an end.

But now he was just a boy, shaking and pale.

This jon is not that jon…this jon is that jon?
A strange coincidence occurred yesterday. Two universes collided. The result, an ancient version of someone I once thought I knew. Stark naked under the sunlight in a field of thorny white roses. Lost. Withering. I approached the character from behind to calm him, but only seemed to engage with his higher orders of dementia or schizophrenia. God. I don’t know who he is. Maybe I do. A calloused soul does not wear thin.

Oh yes, back to the coincidence of it all. The lad, who I soon recognized, had no discerning motions other than an impetuous shiver. A circle - he stood on the verge of a circle. You see, here is the dilemma. I only happened upon the boy because in fact it was I that had tramped the circle. It took 9 years to travel its perimeter.

JONNY-5 WROTE:

Many unusual birds came to greet him. Some stayed to chirp and chat, but others left quite quickly. I imagine this was in large part due to my precarious strectching regimen. After some time Mr. Hubbard began to sing the walloping kookoo’padoo song and the mighty walrus bird quickly appeared. She was an odd pear shaped bird, but had the must beautiful mane of hair flowing from her undercarriage. As her wings flapped the walrus bird wiggled its elongated nose, tilted her head back and warbled “sharumph – sharumph – shoom”.

“Wow. That’s great! But what does that mean” I asked. “Oh nothing. She is just embarrassed. She normally does that when meeting someone new.” Mr. Hubbard then turned to me and said “I have something even more special to show you. Do you like the carpet bird?” Slightly confused I replied “Well, I don’t think I know what that is. Are you playing scoopy with me Mr. Hubbard?”

“No sir. I would not do that. You see the carpet bird is the largest and most magnificent of the miniature birds. It is approximately the size of three goolong balls.” Mr. Hubbard then performed the most astonishing feat. A myriad carpet birds fell from the sky as if they were ash falling from a volcanic explosion.

In one motion, Mr. Hubbard slung his arm underneath my shoulder and carried me high into the air above my house. Before I could react, he spotted a bird flying in the distance to which he made some odd chirping noises. He then looked at me and asked,
"Do you know that there are seventy-three species of birds nesting on your property?"

"No, sir," I replied, trying not to look down.

"I've counted every species of bird on the planet and know where each and every last one of them lives."

"That's amazing," I yelled, "But how could you have done that?"

He looked at me with a wink and said, "Easy my boy, by learning all twelve of the avian languages."

Within a few seconds we were surrounded by thousands of birds all chirping in happy dialogue with Mr. Hubbard.

NEW SHORT STORY

"an evening shower with the muskrat
puts a worried mind at ease
much more tender than the house cat
who fills my tub with fleas"

I was humming a silly tune this morning as I set out to find some breakfast. As you can imagine, I was startled to come across L. Ron Hubbard hovering above a street light near my car. I didn't immediately recognize the vision as Mr. Hubbard, which is not surprising considering how little I knew of his great work. But, strangely, I was not afraid. There was something pleasant and familiar about his face. With his decidedly masculine features and glimmering blue eyes, Mr. Hubbard reminded me of my grandfather, who was also a great sailor. In any event, he soon descended to the sidewalk, leaned over against my car, and quite naturally ran a hand through his light red hair.

"Would you like to see some of the artifacts from my life?" he asked.

"Sure," I replied, and walked over to his outstretched hand.

[JONNY-5 WROTE]

It's Tough to be Mr. Puffy's Polyp.


Mr. Puffy returned to the scene. But this time, he immediately commanded our attention. His thunderous snort followed by three sharp, but abreviated, chirps informed us that he was ready to tell us the answer. He began in a near whisper...

"How could I say no? After all, I certainly am no specimen of outlandish magnitudes. Really, could this ever happen again?" Clearly the children's eager lauding had elevated Puffy's trounced self-worth. "She's so pretty." His eyes drifted upoward. There, attached to a sequence of iron hoops, hung a curled photograph of a woman's face. Her lips flittered as her jaw ground mechanically to the pulse Puffy tapped with his walking stick. (Of course this was the same magic stick Jbird had jettisoned earlier). The woman's torso soon appeared as the chorus of beats grew louder. At last her full figure managed the iron loops. It was obvious she and Puffy had rehearsed this lesson before.

But something unusual was happening. She spun a circle weaving her legs in and out of several rings. Dramatically, she drew a gleaming instrument from her nearby satchel. Her brow carved a rich and solemn crescent across her forehead. A scant grim came over her face while she witnessed poor Puffy's obese faculties attempting to evaluate the unexpected options. At last, he shouted at us "If I don't hurry, she'll know... "

"QUIET. Oh god, I nearly shouted at her." Puffy oscillated between barking orders at us and mumbling to himself. "She has such a bad temperament. This is becoming too dangerous. If she knows what I have... but how could she? I've never disrobed in anyone's (let alone hers) plain sight before." Puffy's obvious concern had swept over the room. We prepared ourselves for any unexpected intrusion, and according to his instructions, smeared marshmallow paste on the back of our hands.

Puffy reached for the jar, but it was too late. She had his full attention. He stood erect, gazing at her fiendish body. Puffy could not shake those placid eyes. Those dire green constellations. He later explained that her eyes could see through his cunning. They spoke to him. They would verify for her the utter bowel stricken angst he dreaded most.

"It's time." She said with a lilac trimmed voice. The sounds rumbled through his chamber, bouncing off the jagged frames holding previous years' conquests. "No!" His voice was desperate. We all screamed back. But Puffy was motionless. Again she chided him. This time her voice was apparent. All subtlety and discretion cast itself to the dark matter. She wanted it. She needed it. But what if it goes wrong? We wondered. She'll blame us forever. Another gaping breath and Puffy charged her with all of his might.

"Ole!" The crowd cheered. J-bird squealed with delight. Thurston jumped up, nearly dropping his precious mommy-cup. Chelsea howled and thumped her bronzen cleavage. And I? Well I watched with fearful eyes. I knew Puffy intended to teach us a valuable nutrition lesson, but at what cost? She was going to win. "Fuck." I screamed in agony. It's exactly wrong. No, it's exactly what she wanted. The crimson stream burst from Puffy's abdomen. "You Devil!!!" Puffy screamed and then wilted to the floor, writhing forwards and backwards alternating between bliss and pain. Her arm reached past the curdling at the incision, past Puffy's exposed intestinal tract, deep down into his swollen colon. Her stained arm retracted with a baseball of purple veined tissue. "Ahhhhh." Puffy mouthed a theatrical "Thank you Susan!" And fell into a deep slumber.

Charles Winslow Puffington regained his lost esteem. The room ogled over him as a mother would would her newborn baby. Unwittingly the answer had dawned on all of us simultaneously. It was something we had thought all along. Puffy had spent years eating processed foods. It was only recently that he had expounded upon the virtues of proper dieting. Susan soon vanished. But there in the fruit bowl on the counter. Next to the bananas, sat Puffy's colon polyp. A reminder.

[PETER WROTE] By now, Jbird had lost interest in his "magic" stick, which was, in actuality, a piece of hardened wood filler that had been peeled away from the side door, and which Jbird had just dropped into the dog's excrement. He shook his head as it occurred to him that he had forgotten to ask Puffy the Claw about the health benefits of raw Orangutan. These types of jabs were not above Chelsea's head. Indeed, like many of the great apes, what Chelsea feared most was public humiliation, and even the most innocent and seemingly innocuous of slants could send her into a violent rampage. Both Mr. Puffington and Chelsea were sensitive creatures. The difference, however, was that Chelsea had only a crude appreciation for sarcasm, which made her suspicious of people like Jbird, who were always speaking with double meaning. That's why she looked so flustered when Thurston asked her -- and with a straight face, no doubt -- how fortified wine effected the evolution of the female orangutan's digestive system.

[MIXMASTA P WROTE] Upon hearing J-Bird proclaim that one's name evolves over time, Thurston began to ponder how his lack of pigment had impacted the evolution of his own name. He clumsily poured his 7th or 8th glass of port into what he affectionately called "The Mommy Cup"--a round bottomed cup with a nipple shaped drinking surface. Something about holding the Mommy Cup soothed his albino skin.

[TOLGA WROTE] Jbird was thinking about the question that has been bothering him since the day he discovered that wine is actually spinach in some strange form: “Does death choose you or do you choose death?” After thinking on this question for a while, with a broken glass of wine in hand, he stumbled upon a more practical question: “Does one’s name evolve over time?” This question will not trouble him till death unlike the other, thought he. As he attempted to sip from the broken glass, he realized to his surprise (but not mine) that the answer to the second question has been staring at him the whole time. He stopped dancing but not bleeding. The reflection of the moon of Kular, the planet which J-Bird has recently traveled to, in the pool of blood on the floor made him feel like a promiscous chimpanzee for just a second. And then, he screamed: “Eureka! Yes, the answer is yes. One’s name evolves over time.” The answer can be only discovered by those who are willing to read the enitre history of Jbird, Chelsea and Mr. Puffington, thought he. He was feeling somewhat happy for having answered one of the questions. But the other remained. “Does death choose you or do you choose death?”

[JASON WROTE] Like Popeye with his spinach, the replacement glass of wine revitalized Jbird. By this time both the dog and Chelsea, the Orangutan, were hiding in the stairwell; they seemed to be frightened by the strange patterns our guest was creating on the floor with his blood.

When Mr. Puffington arrived, Jbird seemed to calm down. To be honest, I was never sure if he was frightened by the gentlemen we all referred to as Puffy the Claw or if Mr. Puffington represented some intellectual curiosity for the Birdman. In any event, Mr. Puffington stomped around our bloody floors with little attention to the state of affairs. As was generally the case with Mr. Puffington, he began preaching the virtues of the raw-food movement and the general problem of accumulated toxins in the typical American's endochrin system.

Now I'd always suspected that Chelsea had some instinctive animosity towards Mr. Puffington but I'd have expected her to be more even-keeled. Quite to the contrary, she began screeching and throwing bits of Jbird's wineglass -- Jbird had ceased his feckless attempts to clean the glass when Mr. Puffington began speaking of the benefits to the liver from eating raw foods -- at Mr. Puffington and myself. Fortunately no-one was injured but Mr. Puffington took his leave quite quickly and in an obvious state of frustration and with what I was surprised to discover later was a deeply wounded sense of self worth.

[PETER WROTE] J-Bird hadn't noticed that his wine glass was now on the floor in little pieces. Too busy smiling and gushing about his "magic" stick. Not until he turned around on those soft white feet-- undoubtedly to put the end of that thing in someone else's ear -- was the situation made clear to him. And "Oh shit is right!" I yelled as he flopped to the ground, still gulping and cussing. Only the dog was unnerved and attempted to give aid. But J-Bird swatted him away and, with great pain, asked me to pour him another glass. I couldn't help but laugh even though the blood was making me light-headed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzMNGO4cSx4&search=zappa


This is a great clip of Zappa on Crossfire. He had balls.