PHP Pointers at Hardee's

Wobbly on desiccated legs, a proud father of three dictates his grocery list on the grand veranda. Potted trees hung with opals - the most magnificent any of us has ever seen - rotate on unseen mechanisms behind him. Occasionally a child throws a bushy little mitten or decorative writing instrument over the edge, and it falls into the mostly ineffectual moat below.

Fiddlers and trumpeters recline on salvaged comforters on the lawn, awaiting their moment to raise a joyous noise. Wistful in poultry waste, a music expert balances on a sycamore log, forming a capital G with her beastly body.

Interior Wand

The young women next door communicate with each other by way of rocks, painted with intricate patterns and left in designated locations in the yard. I have discovered that the content of the messages is determined by a number of factors, including the colors and shaped used in the pattern, location in the yard, orientation of the rock, size of the rock (ranging from the size of a plum to the size of a grapefruit), and taxonomic identity of the rock. 

My efforts to decode the messages these clever young women leave each other have been fruitless. I applaud their ingenuity but gravely fear the intent of their clandestine communiques: too often, I have observed, such extreme measures are only used by the most nefarious individuals!

The Best Socket

We have been commanded to make a specific soup recipe, a flat soup with caustic fibers suspended in a brash peppered broth, topped with a mixed-starch crust.

When I say "commanded," I do not mean that some fickle Earthly authority has issued a painfully-worded dictum from the musty den of a tiresome bureaucrat; no, this command comes from that great ineffable presence we all are subject to, and whose presence you yourself may have grown increasingly aware of in the months since inauguration.

The soup is offensive to all but the most finely-honed palates, and I am personally honored to be among its most vociferous proponents. Sir, will you crack the crust with your preferred oblong utensil and verbally communicate your reaction?

We Hung the Dinosaur

Cantankerous, the author must attend church. His lapis lazuli finery and porridge-colored briefs are admired by 33% of the parishioners. The other 67% feel threatened by him, so they pack heat in the form of really good and powerful handguns. 

Fruit and free chewing gum fills the collar of the grunting book writing guy in the back pew (stained as it is with greasy exhalations of five decades' worth of Christian rectums). But when the bad kids come around they get their fruit and gum. Because two thirds of the congregants value their childrens' pleasure, they refrain from shooting the novelist in the face, thighs, breast, and wormy dick.

Trouble with the Thick Stencil

My pet, on the end of the waxed rope, a heavy head like fly agaric, deposits scraps of itself along the scarred walk. Occasionally a business owner or driver attempts and fails to guess the pet's name.

Along the canal, abandoned toys prove to be an alluring prospect for the pet, and more than several times I'm forced to wrestle a worthless thing from its mouth. 

I throw it hard into the water and they are carried slowly down stream. They pass the cannery and metallurgical academy. They pass the fictional mausoleum. Eventually, inevitably, they're pulled into the eddy and pile up under the scenic overlook where estranged families attempt and fail, usually, to reconcile.

O! Off Their Moult!

Family means writing and rewriting the rules for cooperative sports and playing word games until the distant scent of the beach seduces the elders. I thank God for hobbies: climbing a lot, tumbling by myself, coming repeatedly for the perfect man. Why doesn’t he love me?

Anthony is ready to bring girls to Chicago, letting me live in their world. Letting me notify God of my new arrangement. Letting me play alone in the garage. Anthony is on God’s phone.

I can't see the cat in my mind these days. There was a blue sheen to its fur that seemed possible, if one had the privilege of ecstatic product.

Going to Flaccid Golf World

Verification of slop! Yucky goo in the pocket and weeping ooze in the cone under the porch. Ouch!