Confusion 1

PROFILES IN CONFUSION 1

Comics by Michael Lowell Teague

Best of Volume One

2005-2006

Someone has been tampering with my foil hat. It smells like baked chicken. How can I keep alien mind control rays out of my head if someone is using my foil hat to cook with? I just hope it was a good baked chicken. With garlic and basil, it should have been. When I am strangling you in your sleep, because aliens have put me up to it, I hope you die knowing you had a good dinner.

These missing kids on milk cartons with their “age-advanced” photographs—hasn’t anyone put it together, yet? Who has the secret, diabolical power of age-progression? What “alien intelligence,” I wonder? Have you ever wondered why school buses are yellow? Or why yellow isn’t in the American flag? Think about it. There are three primary colors, folks: red, blue, and yellow. Not just red and blue. Can you see where I’m going with this? Not just red and blue. Am I the only one staying up at night and thinking about this stuff?

When they hauled out the giant pickle, I laughed. Putting wheels on it was a dead-giveaway. It told me they weren’t serious about sticking around. About seeing it through to the end. Sure, they were making a big show of it, with the floodlights and balloons for the kids. But look at the wheels! It’s a damn pickle with wheels!

I believe only God can make a tree bark, or a fish bowl. I believe this not because it is easy, but because it is hard. Some men look at a challenge and say, “Why?” I look at a challenge and say “Why not?” Why can’t a dog have arms? Why can’t a pizza sound good?

I had the beady-eyed devil at knifepoint. I told him what he could do with his random seatbelt compliance check and rectal probe. Damn space aliens are always trying to run a scam. Setting up roadblocks for rectal probes every other day around here. Every other day, mind you. I told the varmint, “Try doing this at the grocery store in the ‘twelve-items-or-less’ line. Rectal probes if you have twelve-items-or-less.” That shut him up.

Couldn’t get the sideburns even. No time for that now. Must procreate. Procreation—essential. Bring forth the baby-making apparatuses. Two lines. No shoving. Earth in the balance. Repeat—don’t look at the sideburns. Couldn’t get them even.

Call me old-fashioned, but I like brushing lizards’ teeth. I get up early in the morning when they’re basking on rocks and still a little sluggish. Monitor lizards are the hardest. Big suckers, they are—with poisonous saliva. They can be a little grumpy in the morning—I can tell you that! Once one of them bit me. Followed me back to my house and lingered in the driveway by the mailbox. I guess it thought I was going to die or something, like a deer. But, being a tough old broad, I walked it off. I ended up having to run him off with that stuff—noisemaker in a can—before Joe came home and needed to park his car. (Joe’s my oldest boy. Home for the summer from college.)

If you make your arm fall asleep, and then comb your hair, it feels just like someone else is combing your hair. I do it once or twice a day. Three times if my girlfriend is out of town.

I, Sister She-Wolf, with cubs teat-clinched to her bosom, drink moonbeams. I, Maiden of the Forest, dance to summon the woodland creatures from their sleepy burrows. Let my interpretive moves empathize with their furry pain. Let me hold a torch to the night in silent protest. Let them come to my campfire—adorn my leotards with their jeweled tears. Let them come, I say! Come rabbit and fox! Come little turtle and fish! Come one and all and drink my moonbeams! Drink, I say! Drink!

There’s a Hawaiian guy gunnin’ for me. Followed me back stateside. I told him I wanted decaf. That’s what I told him. But he didn’t care. I was bouncing off the walls all day long. He watched—like a kid who pulls wings off flies and laughs. Laughed like he didn’t care. Laughed like a demented birthday clown. One of those that tell inappropriate jokes to children. It was creepy the way he laughed. Creepy. Like a hyena with piercing eyes in the darkness. Creepy.

I don’t believe children are our future. What evidence is there of it? They wake me up at four in the morning. Four in the morning, I tell you! Three-thirty on weekends! The damn Sun isn’t even up yet and they’re scratching on my window screens and chanting in Latin, then putting rabbit blood over my front door. Who’s giving them the ladder to do that? Who’s giving them the damn ladder? Let whoever is giving them the ladder pay to support public schools!

Mommy packed my lunch for me today. I brought my Mary Poppins thermos. I carry enough cranapple juice to share. You have pretty hair. Can I rub it if I promise not to catch it on fire? That would be rubbing it not very hard. Not hard enough to catch on fire. Do you have a best friend? I lost my best friend at the Shoe Barn. It's a big place. I can use the bathroom all by myself now. Would you like to see me do my belt buckle all by myself? The thing that sticks out goes in the third hole. It used to go in the fourth hole, but my belly got big. I have a eating disorder. After I eat dis order, I eat dat one. Would you like to hear a poem I wrote all by myself? Booger, booger, burning bright. In my nostril on the right.

This plate in my head—she’s a fine plate. Like a Buick gleaming at the curb filled with children on their way to the circus. Wonder in their eyes to see the elephant until, at its wits’ end and with nothing left to lose, it rampages amid blood-curdling screams. One man is trampled to death; others trapped under a bleacher. Five bullets to bring it down. Five bullets. She’s a fine plate, all right.

When I said you had your mother’s hands, I lied. I have your mother’s hands.

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