Confusion 10

PROFILES IN CONFUSION 10

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 used to taste kinda 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. Multiple 760 by the number of times 911 is on the clock each day—2—and you get 1,520. Multiple 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. In the part about keeping your receipts and filling out warranty cards. 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.

Remember. Only you can prevent forest fires. And only you can visualize world peace. And only you can light a candle for justice. Actually, scratch that last part. Leave out lighting the candle while preventing forest fires part. We all square here?

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.

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