Tag: just goofing around

Manscaping News

I spread the good news to my friends. “Hey, the local WalMart supposedly has the latest manscaping products in stock, and it’s supposed to be the best!”

They, twelve retired professionals ranging in age from sixty to eighty-five, responded.

“What?”

“WalMart!”

“Manscaping.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

I was not put off. I’d already talked to them about anal bleaching. They often overlook these fine points of pop-culture. I’m the chosen one to educate them.

Many immediately said, “We don’t shape at WalMart.”

I said, “You might need to change your ways, if you want the latest manscaping products suitable for urbane gents such as as yourselves.”

Bill laughed. “Manscaping! I don’t have the eyesight for that kind of thing. I’d be afraid of what I’m clipping.”

“Get your wife to help you,” I suggested. “You can make it a romantic evening.”

“A romantic evening of manscaping?” Joe asked.

“Yes. Light some candles and have a few glasses of wine, and then strip down, lay back on the bed, and let her groom you.”

Bill roared. “That’d be a bloody mess. Her eyesight is worse than me.”

Andy nodded. “Enough said. No one sees me naked and I’m not interested in landscaping myself just for the joy of it.”

“Someone change the subject,” Chris said.

“Hey,” I said, “did you hear about the new waxing place in town, just for men?”

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A Simple Philosophy

He was reading Big Sky by Kate Atkinson, and enjoying it. His laptop was on in front of him on the desk, and the television was playing an old movie, Jumanji. Sunday evening multi-tasking at his finest, in his opinion, reaching for another piece of Colby and a cracker.

His shifting position let him see her in her armchair to his left. She was giving him a look. Having been together for fifty years, he’d developed insights into her looks. Although many would see it as outwardly little different from her other looks, small clues in lips, eyes, and her head’s posture led him along a diagnostic path that finished, she’s about to register a complaint.

A bright smile was flashed her way. “What’s up?” The cheese and cracker found his mouth. It was so good, he reached for more.

“You need a haircut, babe.”

He shrugged, prepared to return to his book. “You’re probably right.” She was, but he wasn’t going to be so bald about it.

“I don’t understand your attitude toward your hair. Have you seen yourself ? Your hair is an unkempt mess.”

“Unkempt mess, as opposed to a kempt mess? Is kempt a word? I should google that.”

“You look like a homeless bum.”

“Isn’t that redundant? If you have a home, can you — ”

“Don’t change the subject. My point is that your hair is a mess. What’s with you and your hair?”

“Well, my philosophy is simple.” Raising a glass of pinot noir in her direction, he smiled. “Hair today, gone tomorrow.”

She was not amused.

0

Time

Good times, bad times

pastimes, last times

the next time, a new time

beyond time, besides time

just in time, the nick of time

a niche in time, high times

time beyond measure

time after time.

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Unifloof

Unifloof (floofinition) – Animals who hang around colleges and universitites.

In use: “Unifloofs were abundant, with unideer bringing their unifawns to mingle with the students, to unisquirrels racing across the campus and up trees, and, most popular with the students, unicats soaking in sunshine and knowledge while spying on the students to see what they were learning.”

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A Little Thing

A bowl of water was in the tree’s shade, probably there for animals. A yellow jacket thrashed about in it.

Bending down, he put a finger into the water beside the yellow jacket.

Grabbing his finger, it ran up out of the water as he pulled his finger free of the water.  The yellow jacket sprang into the air, buzzed by his head for a second, and then flew away.

The encounter was a little thing taking less than five seconds of his life, but it felt so good.

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And Again, and Again, and Again

He talks to his wife across the house,

demanding answers that she doesn’t give.

She doesn’t hear him, and he gets mad,

again, and again, and again.

He trips on the cat in the dark,

and curses the cat for not learning.

He goes the same way, every time,

again, and again, and again.

He leaves the lights on and the water running,

and complains about the waste,

and argues about whodunit,

again, and again, and again.

He sleeps the same times,

and does the same things,

eats the same food,

and complains the same ways.

Goes to the same places,

listens to the same tunes,

watches the same tube,

and hears the same news.

Then he complains that nothing changes?

Again, and again, and again.

 

0

Something Fundamental

His head was down against the silvery sunshine heat. Walking along, he looked up to orient his course and spotted Doctor Frank further up the white cement sidewalk.

He literally froze where he was. His heart beat – he felt it – but a shocked stupor held him stiff. Doctor Frank had died two months before. This had to be a doppelganger. He’d heard or read that everyone has an exact replica of themselves elsewhere on the world. This was the most perfect one he’d ever seen. The man was just like Doctor Frank, the biologist, in every aspect from his impish, good-natured expression, gray and white beard, and slender-as-a-broom frame to the outdoor pants, boots, and vest that were Doctor Frank’s regular attire, including the forest green bush hat.

He snapped out of it. The result put him up the sidewalk past where he’d spotted Doctor Frank, as if he’d never stopped. His head swooned. Pausing to regain control of his senses, he saw Q across the street, waiting to cross.

Now that was fucking impossible. Q’d died four years ago. Like Doctor Frank, doppelganger Q was an eerie ghost of his deceased friend. As he wondered what the what, he saw his mother-in-law, Jean, dead for the last two years, off to the left, with her husband, Carl, who’d been dead since 1992. 

“Holy shit,” reverberated through his mind and came out his mouth. “What’s going on?”

In a blink, he realized all the color had deserted the world, as though he was watching a movie on an old black-and-white television. Closing his eyes to recover, he gasped; with his eyes closed, he could see everything taking place in color, except the dead folk that he saw weren’t there.

Slowly, he cracked his eyes open and took in the monochrome world. The sound differed from before. Swiveling his head, he saw more dead friends and relatives. It wasn’t his beloved hometown any longer, until he closed his eyes. With eyes closed, color was restored, and he was in the town where he’d been living and walking.

Keeping them closed, he resumed his walk. That seemed to work, but it was a temporary solution. Something fundamental had changed in his world.

He was going to have to open his eyes again sometime. And then…

He shook his head. He was going to keep his eyes closed until he was home. And then —

Well, he’d see.

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