Oh ye 2015

normally, years close quiet or loud

understandably, not all times do that

we had a lot to be grateful for this year

sometimes just a lot

garump garump garump

Oh one day with the sun in our eyes there will be...there will never be a day like in the long heat when the birds...formally, it seems there is always one more thing.

that's way less than twelve thousand

later at night, the contents of your cashmere drawer emptied, in switzerland, hanging precariously between steel poles, inside of a gondola, there are some things you don't want to have to ask. whose burnt out flashlight is this? oh, it's not mine, then who else is...wait, does anyone even? are we going to start moving again? yes, that is starting to feel more like...is that bread? does anyone have bread? are you telling me there is no bread in...why? for all the time you've been standing there with your back to the window whistling and looking at pictures of...no you are not helping, and i shouldn't have to ask this but...why? for real, why why why is there so much raspberry jam?

i am waiting for my response

clickety clickety clickety click, you say

Post haste

the deranged monkey farm is almost operational

don't make the cars start driving themselves

people, fish, oxygen-deprived citrus fruits of the world:

there are simpler ways to solve your problems than attaching beep beep beep mechanisms to everything that moves. and no, i do not need flashing lights. maybe a nice root vegetable or two? turnip and a dashboard clock. makes about as much sense as a sonic death ray that's supposed to kill you before you slam into the next parked car.

just stop trying to do what the other people are doing. yes, there's this nice line of four-wheeled objects squirmed as close as possible to the curb, but that means very little. it does not mean you are obligated, invited, recommended, or even permitted to flatten the vanillaberry milkshakes others have been carefully cooling by the roadside.

because what good is desert without a show?

Don't tell the worm farmers

It's almost impossible to get decent soil these days. First you have the ever expanding olive oil lakes, then there's the commuters and their cheese skis, and the worst thing is the way everyone is banging chili peppers into the soil all the time. It's like for real there used to e this deep dark delicious mess under us and now it's a sticky, smeary, firework-spicy disaster.

Can someone just mail me a new box of cookies?

glub glub

everyone wonders when the orange juice is gonna be drunk, but the truth is the orange juice has already been drunk.

pretzel attack

some of us are twisted. you had better watch it.

the rules

we received a complaint about our curtains. having stood on the sidewalk attempting to blindly throw snowballs at my roommate on the third-floor balcony, it surprises me that people can see our curtains. the curtains are taller than my roommate, however. perhaps one of the neighbors drove by in a double-decker bus.

don't get confuded

zere are many places that sell disposable apes, but far fewer that offer the disposable toucan.

not like grapes

here is an object. it is a small object about the size and weight of a stone that you might find on your lawn. that is, if you live in one of those places where your lawn is made up entirely of stones, or one of the places where stones are simply things that frequently pop into place between clumps of dying grass.

you have this object and you do not know exactly what it might be, however you feel that it was a gift. it's not a gift from anyone you know, but you have this sense that you can't really get rid of it without bothering the person who gave it. you decide to keep the gift, probably in a drawer or box that stores things with minor sentimental value or occasional utility.

if, later in life, you meet the gift giver, will you show them the object, or is it best not to mention the gift at all? or, when it comes to that chance meeting, would you remember the object was ever a gift?

naturally

marc stopped complaining about the bottom of the barrel. an empty barrel was always an empty barrel. every time he tipped the lid off and ducked his head inside, the bottom was still a part of the barrel.

naturally, the following day, he found some new candies to add to the barrel. he tore at the paper sacks they'd been delivered in, and tipped them in one at a time. the echoing of the bouncing candies was mellowed with each load.

finally he stood and replaced the lid. on the table the shredded sacks waited. grabbing the first, he balled it up with both hands, then reached for another. when he had gathered them all, he had no idea where they should go. marc left the door open behind him, walking out to toss away the papers. he left the barrel standing where it had stood empty.

sorry grapefruits

but you have passed your usefulness for this season

appladay

a large backlog of apples at my disposal, i bit first with dulled knife, finally with sharpened teeth. slices, juices, shards of skin ripped between molars. stem and seeds cast off, fruit eaten.

the fight for five continues

the people have begun to speak. some have embraced its value. soon understanding will spread wider. steady progress occurs daily. eventually, all happenings will become fived.

sort of like dust

for one, two, three seconds it stops. then the snowfall returns and the atmosphere sparkles once again. the flakes hop through the sky, half rain. on every surface they cling in a thin sheet. icy steps, each flake tickles as it melts.

grape

it's oppressive. humid and a hundred degrees outside, and i hear cheering. yelling, applause, the crowd seemed less a living thing than a collection of sounds.

i turned to a waiting bowl of fruit, finding it strangely empty. now the noises had taken both the peace of the afternoon and the remainder of my meal. as i looked back through the doorway to the other room, there was no one.

put a stamp on it

if the world doesn't make any sense, what are the five most annoying things about that fact?

if the world does make sense, should anything be annoying?

better than six?

it's time to launch an all-out campaign against the number five. originally, people thought that odd numbers were inferior to even numbers. such familiar digits as 1, 3, and 7 are just too popular. lonely 5 is stuck in a neglected backwater of single-digit sadness.

what is so bad about being five? it might seem easy for a number equal to the amount of fingers we have on each side of our bodies to be ubiquitous. the problem is, five is always stuck being half of ten. nearly all psychological milestones are thrown around in whole multiples of ten. our digital bias is manifest in decades, not pentads.

what can we do about this? well, clearly we need to ditch that awful food pyramid and bring back the five food groups. it's time for an expansion of 5k runs and a preposterous increase in the number of iconic pentagonal structures. we must stand while we still have five toed feet to support us.