Confusion 9

PROFILES IN CONFUSION 9

Comics by Michael Lowell Teague

Best of Volume Two

2006-2007

I am the Master of All-Possible Reality, and I must tell you in all honesty that you cannot be my girlfriend. There are many, many things I cannot share with you. I can breathe under water, for one thing. And converse with earthworms in a very rudimentary form of semaphore. If I were to say my real name to you, it would make the blood vessels in your eyes burst. You will cry yourself to sleep many, many nights over this, and curse the white-colored Moon that has brought you such a fate. But love is unreality to the Master of All-Possible Reality. Like mackintoshes on quadrupeds, or cheese in a can, I cannot fathom it. And so, my little cocktail onion, I must go. I have many slow-moving enemies to confound before nightfall. But you will remain in my thoughts, always. Whether as beached particleboard, or nickel (a nonferrous metal) I, the Master of All-Possible Reality, will be watching you. Au revoir! And again I say, “Au revoir!”

Someone should have warned me. When I went on the supermodel diet, I didn’t receive any literature informing me about the three hundred pound tapeworm that would take up residence in my colon. I can feel it eavesdropping on my phone conversations, and staring at my pancreas. (Kids at school used to make fun of my pancreas all the time.) At night, the beast even exits my body and tries to strangle me in my sleep! Jeez’em pete! I feel like I’m back in college with my roommate!

If I had a dollar for every dollar I had, I would buy bottles with half my dollars and put the remaining dollars in the bottles. Then I would put the bottles on submarines made out of Alka-Seltzer tablets and drop them into the ocean. When these antacid vessels dissolve, all the freed bottles would rise to the top of the water and float to islands where children live. And if the children who found these bottles were to take the dollars and add them to the dollars they already have and make Alka-Seltzer submarines… Well, you see where I’m going with this. I think we’re talking about an end to global poverty. Am I wrong? I challenge someone with a calculator to make a liar out of me.

He, of course, slept right through it!

There is sex being had! On various substratum, in innumerable inclinations, in and out of socks, in FEMA trailers and on top of them! This sex is startlingly frank! Runs in the low three figures! Requires special glasses to be seen! Lawn furniture to be endured! And a sack lunch for a sleepover! You will gouge your eyes out to see such hairy, hairy people going at each other like this! But there will be no going back to the old life! No getting the thing back in the box with the confusing Styrofoam packaging it came with!

Don’t prime the pump handle, tasty pants, unless ya brung a bucket fur fetchin’ and totin’!

I’m definitely in the market for a bride, but wearing this noise-baffling headset really limits my ability to socially interact. I simply can’t deal with the deafening roar of jet engines flying overhead, you see—even at thirty thousand feet. And what’s worse are those squeaky beverage carts the stewardesses push down the aisles. Gracious! You’d think United and Delta would be able to afford a can of WD 40! A significant other would be ideal, especially for a catch like me with two credit cards. But some things I guess are not meant to be.

I have cultivated the ability, with the aid of my own saliva and glycerin, to create air bubbles under my chin. My reasoning is very simple: you never know when an emergency situation will pop up that requires a backup supply of air. Grant it, what I have at any given time is about a minute or two of oxygen. But seconds can count. Imagine being pinned under a bank safe on the Titanic, and with an octopus blocking your way. In that situation, I would have an advantage. You might be able to get a girlfriend because you don’t have spit bubbles under your chin, but when I get back from the Titanic without you, I’ll give her a shoulder to cry on.

I thought it was a Tyrannosaurus Rex head from a distance, but it was actually a Vegas showgirl. They are commonly confused. A Tyrannosaurus Rex head has teeth, you see. Hurtin’ teeth. But without a body, dinosaurs in general don’t pose much of a problem. Showgirls, however—they’ve got legs. Legs that can make a man lose his head. Legs that can follow you back to the car when you are with another showgirl and pop you in the back with a loaded gun. They’re different—Tyrannosaurus Rex heads and Vegas showgirls—but equally deadly. If you’re not sure which is which, approach with caution and wave your billfold around. If you detect interest, then that’s a showgirl. Tyrannosaurus Rex heads don’t give a hoot about greenbacks.

I’ve got a video of animals doing it, and a case of Budweiser. I need a chip man. Someone to bring chips. Dip would be good, too. It’s going to be a hardcore evening: one for the books. I’ve got two maniacs already enlisted for this “Nature-does-the-nasty” free-for-all—two guys completely out of control. But you look like you could ride buckshot. You up for the job? You a razor’s edge kinda guy? Up for some Buck-on-Bambi action and some brews?

Call forth the one they call, Enfamil. The one who comes from the dimension of the natural prostate healers. Let him speak for himself. Let him explain to us the parts of an insect’s body, the atomic weights of noble gases, and the inscrutable nature of a woman’s heart. Let this learned man speak for himself so we may be edified.

First of all, this is a head cold—not a flu. I wish you would get off this topic. Can’t you find some other alarmist, apocalyptic fad to obsess over? Whatever happened to that meteor crashing into the Earth deal? Or what about that Y2K computer business? I’ve got an idea—why don’t you start freaking out about plate tectonics? Or the Sun burning up in six billion years? I’m coming up with a list, here. Pick one and move on.

I call thee out, Satan! Doe-see-doe! Swing your partner and don’t let go! Get thee behind me! Scoot that boot! Barb-tailed fiend of cloven foot!

I had a mime routine based on being trapped in a pyramid—not a box. While all the other mimes were being trapped in dumb old normal boxes, I was taking it to the next level. The “being trapped in a pyramid” was going to be my great contribution to the art form. But then I developed an allergy to greasepaint. My face would swell up like the Elephant Man every time I put it on to perform. Suddenly my routine became about something else: about the Elephant Man being trapped in a pyramid. People were drawing the wrong conclusions about what I was doing, thinking I was trying to make some kind of connection between the Elephant Man and the lineage of Egyptian Kings. Sometimes my performances would turn into shouting matches over interpretation—and mimes aren’t suppose to speak! It was horrible. Ugly. Needless to say, I had to give it up: the greasepaint, the pyramid, the whole works. To be brutally honest, I’m rather burned up over it.

The four invisible people I carpool with are really ticking me off. Not a single one of them has ever offered to drive their car. Not a single one of them has ever even offered to pay for the gas! Can you believe that? And of course, me being such a devout religious woman, I would never say anything about it. It shouldn’t be my responsibility, anyway. People—invisible or not—should know their civic duty. But you know, some people are givers and some people are just takers. I’m a giver, though I don’t like tooting my own horn about it.

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