Month: November 2025

The province of Moesia Inferior was in trouble.
Invaders were at the gates of Varna. These were not particularly smart invaders, because the smart invaders always sailed around to the Black Sea side of the city and walked right in. At least now, Moesia Inferior need not have that much of an inferiority complex.

Rome had tried to tell these people: You’re the Bottom, I’m the Top. Did they listen? No, they took the best of Roman culture, like mineral baths and cannoli, and lived a fun life.

One day, a watchman named Radovan was on lookout duty when he saw the barbarians set up camp on the plains outside the city. Were they invading? No, not yet, so he called his friend Dinko over to ask what to do. Just keep watching them and see if they have weapons or whatever. Radovan watched the invaders put up their gaudy tents, which seemed to have been looted from other settlements, and install what looked like a very large sun deck. Dinko suggested, these may be Northern Barbarians, the kind of people on the other side of the Danube. They live in cold places, so it’s perfectly understandable that they want to come out here and lounge around in the sun.

For several days, the invaders didn’t invade. Watchmen came and went, and once again it was Radovan’s turn. As the sun climbed in the sky, he used his spyglass to observe some migrating birds. Then, his eyes landed on the barbarians’ sun deck, and he saw something he could not unsee. A warrior man with many strange tattoos lay naked on his back. Another warrior man, also naked but wearing a collar with a chain attached knelt before the first man, and put his priapus inside his mouth. “Cannibals!!” Radko clenched and looked away. He ran to the nearby gong, which had been a gift of Caesar Augustus, and banged away as though his little heart would burst. The rest of the city looked up from doing their mosaics and pressing grapes into wine. “Did you say ‘cannibals’?” “See for yourselves!” No one could bear to keep looking too long and hard at the sausage swallowing and what was surely bloody carnage and dismemberment.

Well, after the city council had been convened, they decided to defend themselves. They lined up their cannons, all three of them, on the wall facing away from the Black Sea. That was the heavy part. They aligned the cannons. They cannonized the cannoli. And they shot their creamy missiles at the cannibals.

As expected, the naked sundeck of muscled invaders did not react well to being drenched in dripping, white, creamy liquid. They screamed, and yelled that the Wrath of Khan would be directed at the city. Some invaders then got the idea to lick the running, sweet ambrosia off of the other men’s bodies. Again, watchman Radovan had to look away in despair.

The next day the city was invaded. Not much to tell about. Once the barbarians had put on their armor and saddled their mighty Asian Steppe horses, flying pastry were not serving as a deterrent, Indeed, during the next century, cannoli were banned as per Mongol rule #438: if it doesn’t have something to do with horses, we don’t need it. Anyone who wanted to enjoy the secret local tradition, well, they did it in secret. Only with the coming of the Ottomans in 1396 was it again legal to eat cannoli on main street. Say what you want to about the Turks, if it goes with coffee it’s a gift from god.

That is why, to this day, the canonical history of Varna and Veliki Tarnovo sings of the bittersweet resistance wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a cannoli.

I only cry in my dreams. It’s called Oneiric Onion Syndrome.
You’d think I’m unhappy, or inhibited, or something. I don’t think I’m any of these things.
I go to Jets games and tailgate. I laugh and scream. Everything’s fine. I said, everything’s fine.
My doctor says she thinks I cry in my dreams because I wake up with my sheets wet.
I am a very happy woman. I solve crossword puzzles. I solve them during Jets games. Maybe I am doing this to assert my agency when my husband brings me to watch a shitty team that never wins.
My doctor has green eyes like emeralds, like Jets uniforms. I bet my husband doesn’t know what color my eyes are. I want my doctor to tackle me, pin me down and whisper OOS in my ear.
OOS may be an acronym for Oneiric Onion Syndrome, but it feels like the sweet release through breath of all the dreams I don’t remember. When I say OOS, I shudder inside and I see my body hurtling through space like a field goal kick.
I want my doctor to run her tongue through all of my ear piercings, which are like a maze. I hope her tongue, the one that gently tells me I am OK inside, becomes my prisoner.
Isn’t it onerous to keep showing up to watch a team that is less likely to win than you are likely to adopt a dog with three different eye colors?
Let’s open up all the chakras through moaning, which is what you do if you’re a soprano instead of meditative droning. Aristotle may have give us the Poetics, but Diogenes gave us the Onomatopoetics. That dude was always murmuring under his breath.

Sometimes, the scientists come clean about they wish they could have been exotic dancers. It’s hard to earn a living as a researcher, they say both in private and in public.
As if it’s easy to be a stripper? Sure, the money’s good. But how much does the laser hair removal cost? A clever, annoyingly cute junior scientist named Alistair McFuffle was thinking about this, still angry after his boss had called him “boy toy”. Alistair was 4’8” and was frequently dismissed as too good-looking to have a brain in his head. In this way, Alistair felt a deep bond with the women in the scientific community, although without exception they were still taller than he was.

Alistair knew that most transformative consumer items of the 20th century had been created, in desperation, in a lab or back room somewhere. Twinkies, they were an attempt to sell strawberry shortcakes stuffed with banana cream, when strawberries weren’t in season in Illinois but bananas were, for some reason, available. “Twink” was another thing the very butch people in town called Alistair whenever he walked around. Admittedly, the poor guy wore platform shoes, which got him as far as 4’10”. Growing a mustache didn’t help much. A school crossing guard started calling Alistair “Mini Me Freddie Mercury Cum Slut”.

He vowed revenge. But you can’t eat revenge, Alistair reasoned. What can you eat? You can eat pussy. Aiistair went back to the lab after hours to find a way to use all that extra cream to get what he wanted.

Project #1, he called “Vanquishing Cream”. Soooo tired of women saying no to dates with him. So tired of their smirks and snorts when he asked them if they’d like to come to the symphony or a museum with him. To a certain extent, he understood why women might be embarrassed unless their man was taller. Still, come to bed with me and height really doesn’t matter! The cream he concocted, all he needed to do is put some on his palm and shake hands with a woman, maybe hand her something she dropped (which was easy for him to fetch down there) and when he greased her skin, he would vanquish her heart. Was this a violation of scientific ethics? Before Alistair could decide this, he had to change his phone number and move to a gated community to avoid those he had charmed.

Project #2, this was “Vanishing Cream”. One time, Alistair walked into a fancy jeweler’s and asked to look at diamond rings. He was laughed at by all the sales staff. The next time he went to this establishment, he went straight for the most expensive gems and covered himself with vanishing cream, rendering himself invisible. After looting and selling several diamonds, rubies and opals on the black market, he had enough money to take control of the board of his company.

Project #3, “Vandalism Cream”, was something that could only be made by someone who felt he was above the law. In Alistair’s home state, the Capitol building had a big sculpture of the Ten Commandments outside. No, this was not seen as a problem in terms of separation of church and state. Alistair walked over to this gargantuan sculpture, reached as high as he could (up to the 9th commandment) and erased “Thou Shall Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Wife”. That night, back at home, there was a knock at the door. It was the MILF next door! She forced her way into his bedroom and got to showering him with breast milk. After he had his way with her and felt alone enough to turn on Colbert, there was another knock. It was the pedophile mom from down the block. Well, that’s why society has inhibitions baked into it.

Early the next Sunday morning, an unmarked van pulled up in front of Alistair’s condo. Tall, panting scientists in gleaming white HazMat suits plodded up the garden path. It was a little bit like a runway fashion show done by the Knights Templar. They used their secret zap frequency thingy to open the door. You couldn’t say Alistair wasn’t ready for them. At the first, he flung some Foundation Cream. This did little more than force the unlucky scientist to stop and think of which tax deductible contributions he would pledge to foundations by the end of the year. When the second suit continued to advance, Alistair threw a gob of Acne Cream. This caused part of that suit to pop, with white gooey pieces flying everywhere. But it was a multi-layered decompression suit, and this didn’t stop the advance. Alistair attacked the third suit with anti-oxidant cream and anti-aging cream, which only caused the occupant to run faster, with less wrinkles and arthritis.
Within minutes, the HazMat team had cornered Alistair and had pinned him to the ground. So what did Alistair do? He laughed. He giggled. He sighed. He moaned. This had been a big fantasy of his for a very long time.

Dear Liberals and those who like to listen to orations
Are you drinking the Kool Aid and other libations?
Are you high, or is it noon, not yet 4:20, perhaps too soon?
Wanna see what happens when you don’t vote? Go to the library.
There’s some very sad stories there, not to be a crybaby.
It may sound bizarre or unconstitutional
There are things you can’t fix with Liberty Mutual
People are losing their minds. I will put them in an album.
And I’ll bury it in North Korea, land of no cerebellum
Brains, brains, barely used
Carried by assholes somewhat confused
May we rise above such a low bar
And elect a food human if it’s not too hard

I am told that folks from Astoria are a bit salty. Can’t tell you. I haven’t licked them.

But here’s what’s really going on: the East River is no river, because it’s an estuary. This is where fresh water meets salt water. You can hear the waves smashing against the stone shore, screaming “Opa!” and possibly “Please, Sir, may I have another?”

Do you really want to get mixed up in this zone where everything mixes? There’s another name for it: an ecotone. Where else do things collide like this? Bridges and tunnels? Cult mass weddings? Hot dog eating contests? One might be forgiven for grabbing one’s genitals just to make sure that nothing had shifted into something else. I mean, what are we, gynandromorphic butterflies? Why yes, I got up on the female side of the bed this morning.

The cop had pulled my man tricyle car over [e.g. Slinghot, Raptor], but was having a hard time putting my name through the computer. It seemed to be a very hard cognitive test. I asked him if, when he left his house this morning, he had planned on staying human all day long. He asked me if I was trying to exceed the escape velocity of the Earth. Which was a fair question. I guess I learned the hard way that Queens has a higher escape velocity threshold.

What’s done is done, and cannot be effaced. What you just did, you can’t erase. You can blast the volume and listen to Erasure, singing along at the top of your lungs until you turn gay. It doesn’t mean you didn’t get that girl pregnant last week. The one who’s too good for you. It’s OK, you say, there’s no room for a pregnant girl in my Tesla, let alone a baby. You will probably not find out that the baby looks more like you than you do yourself. If you showed your face to the world instead of wearing that ridiculous bandana around your mouth that does NOT go with your sunglasses.

I put that last part into an email to my brother. Will he read it? Not unless I add pictures, or make a bullet-point list. Before email, I used to write notes to my brother, and I would make mistakes on purpose so I could whip out my strawberry-scented eraser and rub until the world exploded like a strawberry patch. That was a very long time ago. It’s OK not to be perfect. The world smells so much nicer when we see and feel what we have done.

“The Barge”

written by Roddy MacInnes, with Robert A. K. Gonyo
directed by Jesse Edward Rosbrow
featuring Kerrie Bond, Ed Malin, & Jasmine Spiess

“The Temple of Knowledge”

written by Jen Browne
directed by Urja Vyas
featuring Chris Emanuel, Shari Hazlett, & Ed Malin