Confusion 4

PROFILES IN CONFUSION 4

Best of Volume One

2005-2006

I don’t understand your idea about the coin-operated prosthetic devices! Sue me! The amount of pocket change you would have to carry around would be insane! Insane, I tell you! I-N-S-A-N-E! And the reusable disposable diaper? And the solar-powered night light? INSANE!

You can tell a woman’s age by looking at her elbows. Pruny and scaly—you’re looking at forty or over. Size matters, too. Wrinkly elbows up to the shoulder—we’re talking Mesozoic. Elbows covering all the back and buttocks—you’re going all the way back to the damn Cambrian Explosion. Elbows so flabby and voluminous as to require their own accommodations in hotels—now that’s just damn freaky! Generally speaking, I always say look at the mother. If you want to do the mother, then marry the daughter. Unless, of course, the mother’s elbows resemble a couple of Swiffer dust mops trailing behind her.

You’re wasting your time with me, young man. Hot pokers duct-taped to hot pokers will not induce me to love you. Writing my name in cursive will not make me feel special. I have rocks in my belly that help me digest food. I can never have babies. What man would waste his time on such a woman?

I rearranged the deck chairs. Like they told me. They said, “You’re the ‘go-to’ man on this. The ‘looking busy’ guy.” I nodded affably. I wasn’t going to disagree with them. Who’s going to disagree with giant kangaroos with telepathy? Especially ones with electric prods coming out of their foreheads? One of them (smirking, mind you) said, “They didn’t paint behind the refrigerators. Right? Didn’t bother to move them?” I just said, “Yes.”

It taste like real sugar because it’s made from real sugar. But there ain’t no calories! That’s the genius of it! I took regular old white sugar and locked it in a room. Wouldn’t let it go to the bathroom or spend all day jawing on the phone to friends. I made this sugar appreciate the harm it was doing to people’s teeth and waistlines. By the end of the second day, this sugar was ready to wax my car and do my taxes. It was almost like having a sex slave chained to the washing machine in the basement. The kind you can make bark like a dog and eat disgusting things. It was intoxicating! The kind of intoxication that can drive a man mad! Mad—I tell you!

A Swedish mattress. Write it down. A Swedish mattress. Look at my face? Does it look like I’m lying? I’m almost falling asleep just thinking about it. And the little trolls? The ones that come out of the box spring and change the expirations dates on your canned goods while your snoring like a baby tanked up on Nightquil? Forget all that!

He was throwing his weight around and bragging about having stolen janitorial supplies in the trunk of his car. He was walking funny, too. Like one leg was shorter than the other. Kept winding back up at our table. Thought we were playing a trick on him. We had to buy a ten-gallon drum of industrial-strength floor wax stripper just to lose the guy.

I was your Cinderella. Your golden girl. But you’ve changed. It’s as though you don’t trust me anymore. Hiding the rat poison. Flinching every time I walk by you with a baseball bat. What’s that about? Huh? Can’t a loving wife carrying a baseball bat around the house without it raising all these questions? Is this the man who used to write me love letters in college? Who is this man, I ask you? Who is this man who jumps every time the gun goes off while I’m cleaning it? You’re breaking my heart, here.

He said I needed a flu shot. I told him why in the hell would I want to get a flu from a shot? My mother didn’t raise no turnip! They may hand out free flu shots in communist countries, where they don’t believe in God or use deodorant—but this is the U.S. of A., buddy-boy! If I wanted to get sick I would go around licking doorknobs in public bathrooms along the interstate! That’s the American way!

Yes, madam! You with the panty-lines! Tell your baby to stop pointing its finger at me! The one in the purple carriage! (Or is that mauve?) It’s very rude. What are you raising? A baby or a monster? If my hair was on fire—that would be one thing. But my hair is not of fire? Is it?

Once on the elevator, create a distraction by setting a small fire in an out-of-the-way corner. As the passengers begin to react to it, use the calamity to jab the Ambassador in the leg with the poison-tipped umbrella. Now here’s where it gets tricky…

If a donut hole, independent of its donut, were to be crushed by a falling tree in a forest where no one had ears on a planet with no right angles, would it be eaten by a man who went back in time to kill his grandfather before he was born?

Nay, sprite! Away with thee! I have no more use for thee than dwarf spittle! You have a sweet tongue with barnyard animals, and park like a maiden! Thy white back summons downhill skiers seeking winter sport! Thy singing voice breaks up kidney stones and sends them painfully passing out the urinary tract!

Sometime I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about goat shoulders. Without shoulders, goats would be in a great deal of agony. I can’t even picture it—what a goat without shoulders would look like—but I’m sure it would be bad. Do I sound weird? I don’t think of myself as a weird person, but thinking about goat shoulders all the time can’t be healthy. Maybe I’m just being self-conscious?

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