PROFILES IN CONFUSION 10
Comics by Michael Lowell Teague
Best of Volume Three
2007-2008
No
worshipping Lucifer round here! No winks, side-glances, or passed notes,
either! That side of the room—devil! This side—non-devil! Devil doers and devil enablers: If you’re in this line, you didn’t
follow the signs! Don’t make me repeat this message, people! (Turn
off your cell phones.)
Hey
guys! Remember how we used to run around as kids and play outside when
it was cold? Remember how Playdough tasted salty? Remember
how milk used to come out of our noses in the cafeteria when we laughed?
Hey! Who’s up for a game of Pictionary?
Elvis
didn’t leave the building. Elvis IS the building! When will you
open your damn fool eyes and see it!
Yes, as you may have guessed, I am The Fifth Beatle. You can call
me “The Fifth Beatle” if you like. In fact, I had my name
legally changed to “The Fifth Beatle” last year. It used to
be “The Second Gunman,” but nobody but my mother calls me
that now.
Where’s
your mother at? And don’t act like you don’t know what I’m
talking about. Look at you. You’re toothless—can’t even
make a fist. Can’t focus on anything but bright lights and the service
end of a pacifier. My mother’s up there, queuing up for a pumpkin
spice frappuccino. You’re pretty messed up if you are here all by
yourself. Seriously messed up.
Do
you know that guy’s phone number? The guy whose hands smell like
corn? Tell him if he brings his corn-smelling hands around here again,
I’m packin’. Tell him to stop touching my things. Tell him
to stop thinking about touching my things. If he lifts a finger to me,
he’s going to draw back a stub. A corn-smelling stub.
Okay.
One more time. And with the nice face. The jelly knife is in the fourth
dimension of space, sometimes called “time,” and the peanut
butter knife is in the third dimension of time, sometimes called “space.”
There is no one knife for both, and you can’t use the peanut butter
knife in the jelly jar or the jelly knife in the peanut butter jar. Did
I mention that I’m wearing my nice face?
It’s
9-11 on the clock twice a day. Now you look me straight in the eye and
tell me that’s an accident. Or that it’s an accident there
are precisely 1,671 steps leading up to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Subtract
911 from 1,671 and you get 760. Multiply 760 by the number of times 911
is on the clock each day—2—and you get 1,520. Multiply 1,520
by 2 and you get 3,040. Subtract 911 from 3,040 and you get 2,129. Subtract
the year 2001 from 2,129 and you get 128. Subtract 1 from the 12 and you
get 11. Add that 1 back to the 8 and you get 9… 9-11, you see. There’s
no way around it. You can’t make the math come out different. They
must think we’re a bunch of rubes or something!
It’s
written in the US constitution. It’s written right there about how
me and my descendents never have to pay to learn how to cut hair. As long
as my bloodline continues, me and my descendents will have employment.
No hair cutting academy, in any of the thirteen original colonies, can
ever charge me or my descendents a single red cent for learning how to
cut hair.
Air
kiss, Traci...! Air
kiss, Natasha...!
I
walk around and scrape unsightly frozen stuff off the sidewalk. Stuff
that has no business being on any sidewalk. Can’t say what most
of it is. Something formerly liquid, usually. Don’t get paid to
do it. Not one thin dime. Unless I find a dime on the sidewalk, of course.
I
thought of this all by myself: taping remote controls together. This here
is a bundle of four. Four is the most I would recommend in any one bundle.
Five would be unwieldy. Masking tape is too weak, and duct tape covers
all the buttons. Electrical tape is what I would suggest. Good old fashion
dirt-dumb electrical tape.
Camping under the stars. Burnt weenies and marshmallows. The smell of pine. Otters standing on rocks and waving. (Are otters bipedal?) Light rain. Car battery is gone. Just plain gone. Mopeds popping wheelies all night somewhere in the forest. Couldn’t sleep. Bigfoot—maybe a family. Not otters. Sugar Pie disappeared off her leash. Fingers—extra ones— found in a sleeping bag. No idea whose. More mopeds last night. Closer this time. Warning shots. Quiet. Unearthly quiet all day. Dreading sundown. Mopeds—maybe nine or ten. The whites of their eyes. Not otters. Not otters…
I
like the five golden rings, but there are altogether too many birds in
that song. A partridge in a pear tree, ten French hunting hens…
(Or whatever those birds are called.) I believe a number of geese are
also involved. If I knew this guy giving all these birds for Christmas,
I would have two words of advice for him: gift cards.
Copyright © 2008 Michael Teague. All rights reserved.