Temerity Theatre

“Cold Hawaii”

written by Roddy MacInnes
directed by John Noel
featuring Claudia Conte Buenrostro, Mark Loewenstern, & Ed Malin

The Wicked Bitch of the North was melting.

We were all sad to see her go. Who else would, by means of a crystal ball, tell us what stocks to buy? Who else would brew the potions, and spill the tea?

If only the Bitch had got vaccinated.

Yeah, that had been a blind spot of sorts.

Her arch-enemy, the Kanye of the West, was quite vocal about how dumb this was.

As another adversary, the Kanye of the East, clarified, most vaccines were developed by that race of creatures with the big noses and there was obviously a conspiracy so why be stupid? Get immunity first and kill the motherfuckers later.

As the crowd of inbred dipshits watched the final suffering of the Bitch, they failed to observe the molten lava streaming from the volcano towards their homestead

A big bird smelled the scent of incineration, signaled to her chicks, who were molting, snapped them up in her beak, and took off for the safety of Tax Shelter Island.

Down at The Kwik Mart, a pizza delivery guy was buying.$75 worth of scratch-off lottery tickets.

Before failing to win, meaning every single card, he would state the odds. He should have worked in finance. He could have been famous. They would have called him The Direwolf of Wall Street. At least then he would have been saved from being dead, which is what was about to happen to the whole town.

Down on the corner, the drug dealers were drinking malt liquor. Being that high, they would feel the least pain in the coming moments. But the sad philosopher knew he was better than they were, because what authentic life does not contain suffering?

Flap flap went the wings of the birds over the high cliffs. Every once in a while, they would poop on the scientists, which, at these altitudes, was quite acidic and corrosive. It’s OK, for this reason, they had developed poop-resistant flak jackets. At least up here, these mostly fearless men could be safe from everything else. It was cold. It was February. Some of the dudes were freezing their big balls off. Ah, but it was big balls that had gotten all of them in such trouble. You see, a messed-up virus was circulating among the rest of the human race. At first, there were scattered reports that were kinda hard to believe. A housewife had started to nuzzle her husband one night, and had proceeded to tie him to the bed and fuck him to death. This began happening with greater and greater rapidity. And, worst of all, it happened towards the end of the football season. Those who played professional football barricaded themselves in their stadiums and always wore full armor. Especially that variant of the chastity belt called the athletic supporter. Other, lucky men hid in caves or on mountain peaks. The rest of the men were largely exterminated. Apparently, this didn’t need to happen. A Japanese sexologist wrote a seminal study declaring that if these men had been able to find the G-Spot on the regular, these women would have been less likely to be understimulated. Another more intuitive theory was not posited; there were just not enough lesbians to go around. How this had all happened was even less clear. A scrawny young man named Cletus, once deemed too scrawny to play for any of his school sports teams, had become distrustful of humans and instead became a judge for a most prestigious dog pageant. He and the dogs were sympatico. He was chill with the Chihuahuas. He bullshitted with the Shih-tzu. With terriers, he was positively Terpsichorean. So was it really a surprise that one day, in the overnight of the dog days of a summer dog-a-thon, he “screwed the pooch”? Sadly, this was no euphemism. He let loose on a dachshund named Hortensia. Bad choice. Hortensia was so, well, tense, not to mention inbred, that when the Intel human chose to play hide the sausage, the dog exploded into a million airborne pieces. Some of these blood particles floated through the air and landed on women with compromised immune systems. It just clicked for these women that all these restrictive sexual practices (breeding sex never for pleasure) ought to be turned back on the men. Which meant even the nice ones, like chess players, who spend so much of their lives in the world of a game where the Queen has the most power of movement. “Is there not a flop house for me?” bemoaned a Nobel laureate in marine biology, so was 60 years old and had only just learned how to spell clitoris. Oh, sad old boys! Always looking up, never down. It’s OK. Fear no more the heat of the sun.

It was that time of the month. You know, the time when I really wanted some sex.
It was the busiest of times and it was the slowest of times, because there’s nothing rational or productive about me as an adult devoting all my energies to pursuing sex. Engels may have challenged Marx on this point, but he was a bottom anyway.
I must have been on my B game, because this quest brought me to four houses, all of which started with a B. Once through the door, I and everyone else started crying for joy. No wonder they call it Blear House. All the emotions tend toward purging, and all eyes are full of tears. It was like Zeno’s paradox. Everyone held space for everyone else, so no one could get close enough for sex, but it’s the feelings that count.
How relieved I was to arrive at Bleat House. I cracked the door and saw couples smearing goat cheese all over each other. Was it aromatherapy, or some offshoot of silent disco, but not silent because of all the bleating? In any case, I decided feta was not a good lubricant, and walked away.
Next stop was Blood House. Naturally, this was dedicated to donating plasma. It was a bit exhausting, though I did experience a long line of tiny pricks. A nurse in a very short lab coat brought me fresh juice of blood red oranges. I hope someone, somewhere, benefits from having my life force put in them.
At long last, I arrived at Bleak House. There was a one-question screener: “Are you a lawyer?” I knew what this meant. Everyone was getting fucked in this place.
As I felt beatified by this belated bliss, a moral burned in my mind.
Don’t be aggressive. Don’t be sharp. Don’t be flat. Just be natural.

Our entire civilization huddles in the shadow of the foreskin.
Whispers from ancient pottery are a grim foreshadowing of doom stemming only from thoughtless neglect.
How can we save ourselves from the grim reaper?
He laughs at all of us as he proclaims:
Never cut off tomorrow what you can cut off today!

Abraham was circumcised at age 90. Is he a jolly good fellow? That is the question.
That must have hurt. Back in the day, they didn’t have CBD gummies. Your choices were: pray or curse.

Just cut that shit off. Nowadays, we have other types of accessories for the penis.
You’re just adding one more place to clean, or god forbid, a place for germs and you could give someone a yeast infection. Don’t be that kind of douchebag!

The field lies fallow. This year, we will harvest neither cucumbers nor zucchini. There is not an eggplant to be seen growing in the entire land. In the sky, no one knows where the drinking gourd is. The laborer is in pain, sitting in bed holding his groin. The surgeon may have cut off a little too much. Don’t disrupt the agricultural cycle. This man will have to be buried, and you will trim the grass on his grave. How much easier if you had done that trim when he was a baby!

The writing was on the wall. Men will always have fewer nerve endings down there than women. Why make it worse by keeping that flip flap thing? What are you, a bird? A naked mole rat? Can you not go buy a hoodie If you want to wear a hoodie?

Yes, you can call me a Debbie Downer. In fact, I am a professional race car driver. I do not need to have to peel something off of my stick shift every time I change gears. I hope you follow, and take the necessary steps.

Too much garlic fell
In your cauldron, dearest one
Sorry if I fart

As tonight we light
Candles in that special shape
And ask for the help

Of a higher power
Or a lower some would say
Power schmower, right?

Tough to say we tried
Threw ourselves on the mercy
Of Satan and yet

I just had to be
The one who farted a lot
Fire and brimstone

Yes, in one fell swoop
Life and dignity erased
Gas incontinence

For as we all know
Veggie farts always offend
Mephistopheles

Yell for justice or
We always scream for ice cream
And we sigh alone

Laughing at trouble
Farting at the devil in
The palest moonlight

Lucifer he sniffs
Murmurs, “yo man that’s foul”
Flexes his wing things

Terror swells in me
The miasma of Brooklyn
Swirls more smellily

And away he flies
Smiling like some Totoro
As he springs aloft

For even a being
Evil, Lord of Hell itself
Likes to breathe fresh air.

The Court Martial began. Magnolia Flowerblossom Summerfield was to held in contempt.
“You have broken the cardinal rule of our nudist colony,” the magistrate fulminated.
“Flagrantly broken them,” echoed the bailiff.
“You were supposed to be in flagrante delicto, and yet, you chose to wear clothes.”
“I was trying not to be too flagrant,” she said falteringly.
“Everyone knows we here at Bain de Soleil Ranch go to great lengths to prepare our Midsummer Festivus.”
“Great, foreboding lengths,” echoed the Bailiff.
“Didn’t we braid the floral garlands? Didn’t we mull the wine? Didn’t we fill the bird feeders? Didn’t we dice the watermelon?”
“So nice we had to dice it twice,” echoed the Bailiff.
“Please, your Honor,” fumbled the Defendant.
“And yet, when it came time for the main event, the traditional Jell-o Wrestling Classic”
“Oh, sacred tradition! Oh contest that molds character,” echoed the Bailiff.
“We found, after your victory, that you had participated wearing NUDE TIGHTS!”
“How do you plead?” asked the Bailiff, anticlimactically.
“Guilty but I have an excuse,” foundered the young woman.
“Oh do you? Did we raise you that way? We are strict nudists! That’s a red flag!”
“We’re flexible but not that flexible,” echoed the Bailiff.
“Your Honor, may I approach the bench?”
“Defendant may approach, but please keep in mind that object are closer than they appear.”
“Your Honor, for your ears only, I must come clean. There’s a reason I didn’t want to get Jell-o all over my bod.”
“Come clean, is it? As I’m sure you’re aware, the winner of each match gets licked clean by the opponent who is vanquished.”
“I know, Your Honor. And believe you me, when the person you’re Jell-o wrestling is your fiancé, getting a tongue lashing is no big whoop.”
“So what is the problem?”
“They break out in a rash every time they touch cherries!”
Under his wig, the Magistrate had a Shaking My Head moment.
“So, if I understand you correctly, you wanted to be licked clean but also to spare your counterpart the allergic reaction to our all-natural, famous cherry Jell-o.”
“That is my humble wish. Cross my heart. I stand before you naked.”
“We all stand before each other naked. At least we do now. You may return to the penalty box.”
The Bailiff cleared his throat. “Has Your Honor decided?”
The Magistrate banged his gavel. “I have been made aware of some extenuating circumstances. The Defendant will not be exiled. She will be flagellated until she shakes like a bowl full of Jell-o. But we need not keep the court in session. She may be dismissed to go home and self-flagellate.
The gavel was banged. The Defendant was released. The Bailiff rose.
“Oh no,” moaned the Magistrate, “you’re not going anywhere. I want you to take this gavel and do some meat tenderizing.”

The Axis of Eggheads had determined it was time for them to strike.
The Axis had become well aware of their own fragility. It was the yoke, I mean the yolk, no sorry, I did mean the yoke that bound them to this world. So, hey, being human and having limitations is something most of learn to acknowledge. Or, instead, you could try to destroy the world. Show that world, hey, don’t fuck with me!
This was why, until recently, the Axis had been behind bars, leaving only their fans to talk about them on the Dark Web.
Oh, Darkwing Duck, come and save us from this mess! Don’t let us down. Because ducks and down. Little girls pray to you. Ryan Gosling prays to you. Darkwing, if only you were my nesting partner.
How dare you ask about the Axiom! The whole purpose of the Axiom is that it is above the horizon of questioning. Like the Noble Gases. Like Yo Yo Ma. Like Yo Mama. Like Maury Povich. Like Shostakovich.
Anyway, instead of “Release the Kraken!” someone heard “Release the Crackheads!”
Thus were the Axis of Eggheads at liberty. What a terrible idea, unless you believe in the rapture or something.
Should we give them the benefit of the doubt? If so, while we wait for the apocalypse, what should we do with the last night of our one, precious, beautiful life? Should I give you all the pleasure I know that you know that you wanted me to all this time? Or does stress give you the vaginismus? Of course, you’re not wrong. But, no matter what, let’s go out with openness and transparency. If we were made with ax wounds, let’s open up those wounds tonight.

On a small planet in the Oxygen Network Nebula, there was a man named Janet. Don’t ask, it was a Polish name that was spelled even less effectively in English.
Janet had two wives: Tate, who lived in Manchester, New Hampshire, and Tontina, of Hanover, whose motto was “surely you gesticulate!”
The wives were blissfully ignorant of each other’s existence. Tate was arguably the more modern of the wives, leaving Janet some wiggle room to arrange his comings and goings. Indeed, Janet maintained that since he was an adjunct professor at two different institutions of medium-to-higher learning, he had to travel and in some cases sleep over in different places. It was also highly convenient because Tontina, being more traditional, as she said, insisted that according to her astrological chart she was subject to occasional Wacky Wednesdays or Fucked-Up Fridays. On these days, she would scream, break plates, and annoy the neighborhood dogs. Janet believed her when she said she was going to rage, and tried to not be around on those days.
Is it easy to whittle an academic career out of the solid granite of New Hampshire? That depends! Although at first poor Janet might seem to be caught between a rock and a hard place, remember that this is New Hampshire, not Vermont. Some folks genuinely have such a hard time getting through snowy mountain roads that they de facto limit themselves to their local area. Thus, Janet could write peer-reviewed articles in one part of the state espousing radical Free Free Somewhere and then drive to his other institution and publish something else defending a completely different position.
Surprised? This can be explained by one humble theory: Libertarians don’t believe that fact checking should be an obstacle to life.
If you go snow-shoeing through the wilderness, all the while composing pleasant haiku in your head, and whistle while you work, perhaps you will be greeted by a nine-tailed fox. Or maybe, just maybe, your whistling will cause an avalanche. Many dream of a White Wedding, but not a White Funeral.
Who would miss me more, mused Janet? He could visualize Tate smoking a clove cigarette and sighing, yes, I loved him, for 7 years, and that surely has to be weighed against all the time I didn’t know him, not to say that I didn’t love him then, but I was incapable of loving him fully. And then she would ash out and, while coughing, think of the lingering love she, might feel for him two marriages on from now. Such is life and death.
Tontina, after having been told, might, instead of breaking things, put on her work gloves and, using Krazy Glue (trademarked item, never a disparagement) glue pieces of different objects together in a novel way. If life is going to go on, we must rebuild. So what if a piece of the Lighthouse of Alexandria ends up in the wall of a government building. We must reassemble. Did she even suspect that, in this way, she was even more like Janet? Janet, who, through the art of love wheedled pieces of different women, could make a new world, or at least a kind of map that resembled Settlers of Catan?
Long Live Janet! We all owned a fraction of him, just like the people of Green Bay are shareholders of the Packers NFL franchise.