The Butterfly Lanai 5

"Now why would there be a huge honkin tiger on the lanai?" asked Mr. J aloud. He heard something and turned quickly, thinking someone was in the room. He nudged the sprawled body of Hollybrick Vine, and found him inert. There was no radio. The telly wasn't working. It was broken.

"I know I hear someone," said Mr. J. "Could it be coming from next door?"

Mr. J felt compelled to look at the lanai, which he'd been trying to ignore. The bengal tiger was looking at him. Mr. J jumped. What was he was hearing was the tiger.

whale songs are like people songs, they have repeating patterns and they rhyme. there are two types of whale songs: love songs and songs to ward off rivals. whichever male sings the best wins the mating ground. so singing females flirt, even with divers, and females are always looking for the better mate. the male sticks close and vies for her attention while the divers observe. when divers surface the male approaches and shows dominance, and raises its head checking out the divers, like it would to any rival..

thinking and believing are functions of homo sapiens in the same way that singing is a function of the whales. both are a chief thing that people can do, these things are in fact fundamental. as such people are stuck on it and will continue to do it, just like sex, and dreaming, and automatic body functions, to name a few, regardless of the value of scientific arguments. this accounts for the rise of religion in modern times. people will probably never agree on the fundamental questions. consequently even in the future there will be factions and disagreement. as each succeeding generation becomes faced with the suffering and bleakness of life, many turn to traditional non-scientific philosophies to activate the belief function that the species evolved..

we believe the stories so we don't have to feel like animals. but animals is what homo sapiens will always be. perhaps the next-step evolution of people will move closer toward the mythological heroes of the stories, and farther from being animals..

It licked its paw and rubbed its cheek, seeming to lose interest.

"Heavy," Mr. J said.

The Butterfly Lanai 4

The tiger had haunches that had seen a lot of pumpin. Mr. J reeled back on his, he was allergic to cats and the sight of one with reddish brown splotches on the long hairs off its jaw unnerved him. He tripped over the ottoman and fell through the coffee table, snapping its thin surface in two.

"Don't worry, it's locked," said Hollybrick.

"Where's the broom handle?" Mr. J said. "You should have a broom handle sticking in the door."

"The only broom handle has a broom on it."

Mr. J was too upset to argue, so he ended it with his pistol, a nickel-plated tart of a weapon. He went in the kitchen and pleasantly surprised made himself a baked rigatoni with garlic, plum tomatoes, onion, capers, and malenska cheese. He ate quickly, fearing the odor would reach outside. As he was on his way out, something occurred to him and he looked back, where around the corner was a dead body that could be disposed of, if he could figure a safe way to get it on the lanai.

The Butterfly Lanai 3

After he'd got Mr. K out of the way, Mr. J took a hanglider to Hoboken. Believing he was in Baltimore, he spent some long walks by the water looking for Revolution Hill. That was where he was to meet the man who'd fix his telly. But as the nature of wandering along a waterfront gets one approached, as the shushing ocean bids one to reach out, Mr. J found a different man to fulfill his needs. He said his name was Hollybrick Vine. He was 42 and ambled along as though he were about to fall backwards. His jeans were beat up and his shirt hung on his shoulders like the lumpenproletariat on Vichy. There was nothing in his pockets, and his only possession was a tribal tattoo on his left shoulder blade. Hollybrick Vine also went to elementary school with Mr. J in Jersey but neither recognized the other.

Hollybrick Vine saw patterns everywhere, on solid print wallpaper, in suburban long grass curling over in the breeze, in disparate pop music, on buildings and underground trains, at bottoms of cups of coffe and tea, and more. He made an excellent handyman. Even so he was a notorious hermit, and only the inconvenience of hunger brought him out of the house. His life was noteworthy for its abstractions of everyday matters into the song lyrics he already knew by heart. It was brilliant from a single point of view.

They retired to Mr. J's flat. Hollybrick entered with purpose but while there was a telly that looked broken sitting on a TV tray by the radiator, his attention was drawn to the sliding door displaying a white bengal tiger lying coiled on the blue tile of the lanai.

The Butterfly Lanai 2

Mr. J became an assassin by following the common route of frustrated education. He was perhaps descended from from a line of garrulous misanthropes with good aim. As a child he was involved in a car accident that took his little sister Lulabell even though she rode in a carseat in the back. A week after that while riding his bike on his paper route he witnessed another accident between a hatchback and a heavy pickup, an accident with a bloody body halfway through a windshield. The hatchback victim was a hotel employee, a gopher and a junior bellhop. His little red bellhop cap had landed in the oncoming lane and was being repeatedly run over. Mr. J often thought back to those times, St Louis 1957. He wasn't there, but that's where he thought Casablanca was set. He should have been a piano player. As a kid he loved his uncle's Victrola. He had dexterity. But instead of playing keys he pulled triggers.

Yeah, he was a clean guy, Mr. J. Fastidious, smart, and territorial, he talked louder when he felt nervous. This used to get him in trouble in elevators, so he made up his mind and took the stairs everywhere. Mr. J was in good shape. Once in Cleveland Heights he ripped a bathroom door off its hinge to get to the toilet. He had something to dump and I don't mean drugs. That job was a clusterfluster from the get-go. His assignment was a leggy blonde who was running around on her NFL allstar husband. But when he entered the hotel room using a passkey he'd reset with a magnet and a grocery scanner, Mr. J found a middle-aged man reading a Korean surfing magazine on his lap. Under the magazine something dirty was going on. That man was Mr. J's first hit. His second was "Leave Dem Bagz Ol' Hagz." He'd done a job for a producer in LA, and like everyone else Mr. J gave the producer his demo CD. The producer recorded one song with a German hiphop artist and released it in Japan. The single went to number three on the Japanese charts before Mr. J found the guy, a lacerated buffoon with one ear that was noticeably lower than the other. The reason for the contract was spite. At a street festival he met the buffoon, who claimed he knew accounting so he took the producer's books and returned them spread through guava jelly. The pressing shared the songwriting credit with Mr. J's given name, Gin Fitzwallah.

The Butterfly Lanai

Mr. K's tough-guy talk trailed off and died like a chalk outline. A pug-nosed copstopper with a handle worn smooth from handling will do that to a body. The surprising killer emerging from a haze of cigar smoke was Mr. J. He came up from behind Mr K, and he was invisible unless where the smoke came from sprung to mind. The K was for Kum Tadd Lincoln. Only his Poppy called him that. To the rest of the world he was the guy with the free pass. But now, staring at the fallen KTL, Mr. J fancied having a go at an old free-standing garage, the kind that were eroding at the end of a farm's gravel road, with a two ton earthmover. To Mr. J, his only call in life had been demolition. Assassination kept him in fedoras. Men were too easy, the moment too quick. Something he could really mow down, that was in his stocking cap as he drifted off to sleep each night. Sown into its side was his real name, Gin Fitzwallah.

After tomorrow

The gag meme swelled by conversation both broadcast and in person. It was recommended by nine out of ten dentists and their community in fact developed the method of transmission. It was packaged and sold in thin colorful wafers that dissolved into a variety of flavors when placed under the tongue. Each wafer released sixty seconds of seratonin while eliminating the desire to speak. Superstores, restaurants, and endless boutiques became calmer as people took to nodding, each with a tiny roll-back smile pulsing on his face. Vending machine operators hadn't cleaned up like this since the introduction of the lunch meat cracker snack.

Gone haywire, shooting sparks

Evan crained his neck to see out the street without disturbing the blinds. With its arrival night had sent the garment workers home, and it settled on the Warehouse District like a dominant dog. Evan wore a dark suit with a vest and watch chain. He also had a shoulder houlster and a gun. Out the window the streetlights cast a candlelit glow but the swathes of shadow had control.

"We know you're out there, Evan," a voice called. A girl stumbled into one of the faint spotlights as if she'd been pushed. Her hair spilled like a churning ocean over a light-colored rain slicker.

Evan couldn't pick out any targets, but he was sure guns were scanning for him. Maybe he could get close and induce her to run to him. But he couldn't be sure they wouldn't just kill her.

He threw up the window and began to sing a popular song, one that everyone always liked. No shots came. When nothing happened, Jess, which was the girl's name, walked into the short 50s office building Evan was in and closed the door behind her. No one else tried to come in.

CLR

What's up Chris Riley? Chris recently had a couple new paintings in a couple of gallery shows in Cincinnati.

Check out the contrast of the sleak, icy skateboard piece, which has a modern look and a friendly elephante in the middle, with the cool mixing of styles in the Fringe piece. It has abstract in the background with representational drawings in the house, etc, and on top of that, literally, is the sort of kinda-not-cubist figure bolted on to the canvas. Very experimental, very cool.



Piece for the Fringe Festival



Piece for DECK, the skateboard gallery show

Chris also posted a ton of in-process pics so you can see how these pieces came together. Click paintings 3 and 4 here.

I say

Custard has a number of uses outside the cooking world. Apply three thin layers separated by wax paper to the concierge desk at your exclusive bed and breakfast for a delightfully odiferous reservation-refusing experience. Pour into plastic pink bottles, pass out antique '50s wire antennas to the kids, and voila, you'll have big custard bubbles blowing in the breeze at your next dime-ticket church festival. Or, sprinkle some dried custard on all your foldin' money, and a magical sprite will bless you with ten buckets-full of myths 'n legends. That's sweeter than a sticky bun. Mwah.

Stranded motorist 1, Demon-occhio 0

If your Chrysler K-Car ever breaks down after midnight on a lonely forest road, and you're forced to seek shelter in a rickety house atop a bone-strewn hill, and you've hardly wrung out your drenched clothes when an evil acid-dripping puppet appears at the end of the hall, and it stalks you through a maze of rooms with dusty covered furniture and flowing drapes, you should set out a small dish of soy sauce. Killer puppets cannot handle that level of concentrated sodium. Once they get a whiff they'll wither right up like a slug. And you can smoke its acid for a killer high.

A little bit of thunder

When the Peruvian python got my forefinger in its mouth, it made a ginchy feeling in my belly. It held me only for an instant, but the suction was incurably strong. There I was, outside the tent in my PJ's trying to have a pee. I leaned against a skinny, smooth-barked tree, a kerosene lamp at my feet. I watched ants bigger than any we have in the States scurrying in a single row toward the damp mossy ground. I pissed all over them. They could've been endangered for all I knew.

The python sniffed my hand, its forked tongue darting back and forth like a pilot flame. The damn thing was camouflaged. I thought a butterfly was tickling me, and I thought I could snatch it for the professor. A new species would get them off my back, maybe then they'd give me back the bug spray. I caught a glint. I pointed it out to myself. The snake accepted my challenge.

It held me only for an instant. I felt its row of stubbly teeth, which surprised me. The pressure was astounding. But largely it felt warm and damp, tight and soft. The ginchy feeling in my stomach, I know, rose from the snake's sensual mouth. That's why I yanked away. My pants were down. Yelling I smashed the kerosene lamp on its head. I hoped it would roast the damn thing. I hoped it would burn the whole rainforest down.

The ground was too damp to catch. It retreated, alive but scorched. I hoped the liquid fire got in its mouth. That's why I yanked away, because part of me desired to wiggle all the way in.

Il n'en peut plus

Night upon night Atan sits behind a cherry roll-top dolling out the brains. There appears to be no method to his decisions. He's his own random number generator, as it were. After all this time, and this endless procession of helpless big brown eyes, the masses passing by effect no consideration within him. Each winces, their due feeling like a swat on the behind with a wet rolled-up towel.

Atan wears a double-breasted pin-stripe suit with a mint button-down and a cornflower polka-dot tie. No one can fault his sense of style. The job has become rote, and Atan is restless. Another fellow stands before him. Nothing about this one is different than any of the others.

"I can't take anymore," Atan says. "You can have mine."

He cracks his own skull. The fellow works his hand in there and flees with the useless prize. But as a brain-in-head is worth ten-in-hand, the fellow doesn't notice the slick mess on the floor. He slips, falling against a rusty bandsaw someone's left running in the corner. The queue erupts into peals of laughter. A robotic mop bucket arrives, followed by a replacement. He cuts a fine figure too.

"Congratulations, you've been promoted," he tells the brainless Atan.

Complimentary edicts from the fore!

Choose 3 for 3.99.
- At least there's no scabs on your hands and feet
- Your eyeballs are a wonderful white
- Let me see, nope, no freckles on your back
- The sore between your big and second toes <--- your sandal strap, don't worry
- Your expressions convey the full range of emotion
- You emit more carbon dioxide than methane
- I have seen you smile

Cosmos close

I want to read a little while. I can read in the light. It won't keep you up. You will tell me.

I grow tired and switch off the light. Your eyes open. On your back you stretch one hand toward the ceiling. You gesture to find the words. What are you looking at?

--The stars.

I can't see them. It's okay. Being asleep you can't tell.

Dizzy

I swore off fighting and fled the war when the greengrocers bilked the last remnants of mineral salt from San Rafael. Without that mineral salt we could not mix our colors. It was everything we stood for, and all that we could stand, and for SR to cave the way he chose to, for him to set fire to the collanade as the detuned violas had finally paralyzed the enemy's advance, it made me long for the old log trail. At night I tore off my uniform. It lay mixing with the fern moss and kindling, colorless. I had the ability to reintroduce to it brilliant oranges and reds. But that meant aping SR.

There's a Vegan by the pool

Vegans believe that puppies are magic. They are not to be eaten, they are to be herded onto the backs of swans where their big puppy eyes will act as beacons against the night sky. The swan-pups are startled from the still lake by the calls of an angry moose I'm making like my dingdong's in the gas tank. I'm flat on my back twenty paces from the RV, moonbathing on the dirt-road cul de sac. Here they come, descending toward the campsite in a geese-like pattern. I can see their eyes. Vegans believe that when a shortening of swan-pups appear, they mean to spirit a fortunate soul into Asparaguay, the mythical mystical land of meat-free rapture. Asparaguayans speak Cornish, a language that thanks to the tropical climate has developed over 200 words for thick hairy coconut. These people, whose society can best be correlated with the Earthan belief system Buddhism, are alas a bunch of skirts. But for our friend the Vegan, paradise is a moonbath away.