a partial list of things I’ve been meaning to ask or tell you (sorted by relevance)
By: Davy Carren
Tags: Lit, Lists, Humor, Fiction, Philosophy

photo: davy carren

1. There are no pigeons in the stew, yet.

2. Could we star in TV shows? Basic-cable sitcoms perhaps? I am fairly sure that I am made for the time between commercials.

3. I had to stop seeing Thomas Pynchon’s daughter. The incessant crying over her life’s lot was unendurable, at long last, and she snored.

4. Sunbeams are not made of dollar signs. Dark-age columns of light radiating beyond even Alfred The Great’s ability to describe them, they might sign more checks than we’ll ever have the pleasure (I am not so sure) of knowing.

5. Feel free?

6. Walk in the middle of the street, sometime, if you can.

7. Those bunny ears you pilfered are not my fancy ones, so the joke’s still on you, sucker.

8. My “Do Not Resuscitate” T-shirt has gone missing. Also, survival has gone out of style.

9. Graffiti removal is only a part-time gig, apparently.

10. I used to agree with Mr. Wilde, that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do. Now I think it is just a scam people use to hoodwink the passing time out of their lives. There is a difference; and bonhomie? It is no longer necessary.

11. The vacuum cleaner refuses to obey my attempts at making peace with the carpet’s piles and whorls. It is war now. Yes. This is war.

12. The bandwidth of my slow, slow heart has become narrow and inescapable. I am stuck buffering in the present’s stall.

13. Do you prefer doodles of poodles to maps of laps?

14. Roman numerals are for morticians and milliners.

15. My collection of coloring books are now too water damaged to be of any practical use: just a labyrinth of grays, a wad of snot-encrusted tissues. A mistake in stowing technique perhaps, and all is lost.

16. I think the toilet flushes better at night.

17. Smog punched, found out of love, delivered frond-friendly to the palms, meandering purple-gloved butlers gone tray-less, empty vending machines — it is with these things in mind that I spill Milwaukee’s Best on the pillow.

18. I was correct about the Kentucky Jodhpurs; they are only used in Saddle Seat riding. So, there.

19. Fuck the national anthem. I’ll tell you why: The statutory suggestion (under Title 36 of the U.S. Code) of standing for the national anthem does not have any penalty associated with violations. It merely states that during a rendition of the national anthem, when the flag is displayed, all present except those in uniform should stand at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart. It does not say that they must stand, but that they should stand. Under protections from the first amendment any citizen of the United States is free to do as he or she pleases during the playing of this godawful song, the same song whose original lyrics include the lines, “No refuge could save the hireling and slave, from the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave.” The same song that took 11 years (from 1918–1929) and six attempts to pass through congress to be recognized as the nation’s anthem by a dopey congressman from Maryland named Charles Linthicum. Yes. This piece-of-shit song that was set to the tune of a popular melody called “The Anacreontic Song”, by English composer John Stafford Smith, the official song of the Anacreontic Society, an 18th-century gentlemen’s club of amateur musicians in London. Also, the lawyer Francis Scott Key who wrote the lyrics to the tune, used his position as U.S. Attorney under Andrew Jackson to suppress abolitionists. In defense of slavery he once said this in court, “Are you willing, gentlemen, to abandon your country, to permit it to be taken from you, and occupied by the abolitionist, according to whose taste it is to associate and amalgamate with the negro? Or, gentlemen, on the other hand, are there laws in this community to defend you from the immediate abolitionist, who would open upon you the floodgates of such extensive wickedness and mischief?” So, yes, fuck the national anthem.

20. I pulled the fridge’s plug. It is now just a breadbox — bigger though.

21. Writing letters to the post office is more fun than you’d think. And, yes, I still never send them.

22. My Darwin’s tubercles vary in size depending on my diet. Cassava, limes, and dogfish seem to cause swelling, while stingray soup will render the damn things almost invisible. I wonder, do you still refer to these as Woolnerian tips? Well, I am sure Chucky Boy himself would agree with you on that one, if you still do.

23. Do you miss the way the windows would drip with sprinkler water in the late afternoon?

24. San Francisco is cold, but I like where I’m living. There’s music on Mission Street all through the evening. (Leonard Cohen never said that.)

25. Objects viewed in a (plane) mirror will appear laterally inverted (e.g., if one raises one’s right hand, the image’s left hand will appear to go up in the mirror), but not vertically inverted (in the image a person’s head still appears above his body). However, a mirror does not usually “swap” left and right any more than it swaps top and bottom. A mirror typically reverses the forward/backward axis. To be precise, it reverses the object in the direction perpendicular to the mirror surface (the normal). Because left and right are defined relative to front-back and top-bottom, the “flipping” of front and back results in the perception of a left-right reversal in the image. (If you stand side-on to a mirror, the mirror really does reverse your left and right, because that’s the direction perpendicular to the mirror.) See? Told you.

26. Tallulah Bankhead’s last words were, “Codeine…bourbon.”

27. I am not the most enlightened joker in the abstruse universe of making lists for morons to refer to, but these short, furious bouts of being oneself are most likely all we’ve got left to make us who we are; and so, here went something.

28. There aren’t any marigolds left in these moonbeams, and the tap’s laced with dirt — still my favorite flavor.

29. Joe Louis used to hide his boxing gloves from his mom inside of a violin case.

30. I feel smudged, Dear.