Facebook Status Updates Jan - March 2017

Jan 2017

“The government isn’t lying to you about Area 51. The lie is that they really do think they had aliens inside it.”

“.... uh, what?”

“If it had been aliens, we would all be a lot safer.”

You told me the joke was tasteless. I said I didn’t know of any joke that was not tasteless in the end.

“You didn’t kill me,” the monster said.

“Kill you? That would be rude. And we need information.”

“I’ll never talk.”

“We have a tv. A Full House marathon with no sleep.”

“…. what do you wish to know?” the monster asked

Once upon a time, there was a Dark Wood that hid its evil from the world until it was cut down and turned into furniture.

Only then did it begin to destroy the kingdom from within.

“Knock-knock,” I said.

“Who is there?” you screamed.

And that when when I first regretted learning ventriloquism.

The sky cold, dull-grey and empty. I am listening to thunder matching the grinding of my teeth. You are telling me secrets between rumbles in the sky, searching out rainbows while I wait on on lightning. I want one thing, you need another and the sky wishes to be so much more than we will allow.

This is not the tipo you are looking for.

I asked you to wake me up when I was cold inside but every time I imagined myself to be empty, you countered it with a smile or a kiss.

I had a wish but no cake on which to place the candle. Maybe that is why you’ve always walked away.

“You can’t go around pretending to be a god even if you do have a stable 4G connection on your cell phone.”

“Why not? I have more power in my phone than most gods ever did. And far more truth as well.”

"It's not like this," he said. "The world can't be the safe place it is on TV."

“You find words like writers find drink. You use them like they use cigarettes.”

It had been two years, but he still wasn’t sure if the professor had been complimenting him or not.

“It isn’t working out.”

“What?” He turned, stared at her in wide-eyed shock that was almost, almost the real she knew.

“I can’t -. You’re nice. You’re more than nice, my prince, but I miss the frog I fell in love with,” the princess admitted in a whisper.

The prince blinked. Just the once, because royalty is about control and his smile barely wavered. “Dear, I was cold and slimy then.”

“I know. But you were honest.”

And he turned and walked out of the room without a word and no hint of a ribbit at all.

My joy isn’t yours. I can’t be on a leash happy sniffing strangers legs like a wolf pup that never grows up. Some days I think everything would be whole if I could but I can’t be happy like you are. Not on a leash, not being a good boy. Always wishing I had been a cat instead.

Captain Planet stared at Gaia. “But the earth is hurting! The sky still weeps acid, the streets are clogged with smogs, climate change is turning into a climate apocalypse, the industries still - they still -.”

“I know,” she said.

“Everyone else has reboots. Why can’t we?”

“It’s 2017. You think the government will allow our voice to be heard?”

“But you’re Gaia!”

“It means less than you think. It always meant less than you believed.”

And the spirit of Hope Island fell back into sleep, and far away from the world. But Captain Planet took a small measure of hope in that she left her twitter feed open as a last act of rebellion.

“The true danger to our world is He Who Must Not Be Shamed, you understand? There is nothing as dangerous as those who take all slights personally, for those who strikes out at the smallest scratches will invent wounds to justify the most terrible reactions in time.”

As a matter of speculation, wonder how long it will take for France to ask for the Statue of Liberty to be returned?

There are holes that cannot be mended. He watched her drift away. She watched him let her go. Between them the grave sat, as memory and reality, a loss they could not escape even by moving to a home without a bedroom for a child.

“It is a time of great cutbacks,” the administrators said. Meaning everything would be cut except their wages.

Feb 2017

It took you so long to realize that hate, too, was a gift.

You hugged me and I stood still. Even mountains are not this still. There wasn’t a wind blowing, the world devoid of signs. We don’t live in a place that allows for omens. My head a space devoid of miracles. The cruel calculus of reality hovering. Whispering. There is an algebra of loss. Signs. Co-signs. I tried to find my way out as you let go. My shadow would not release yours but you just smiled, letting me fall apart, putting me back gently without damaging a single broken piece.

“But you don’t understand: my tabby cat needs an exorcism!”

“An exorcism. For your cat.”

“He is an orange tabby cat and won’t eat lasagna. I know cats - an exorcism is necessary!”

The tree waited for bodies to be hung on it. But the squirrels brought only nuts.

I was never scared of you. Only of every ending that might comes from all the beginnings we might have together.

They said revenge was a dish best served cold. But Marie found it far better hot as she poured the acid down Ed’s throat.

The app was a news feed that only showed good news and nothing else: every review accused it of one bias or another, from political leanings to those that kindness was somehow an insult to. It lasted four days before the creator was forced to take it down.

The magician stopped pulling rabbits from hats the first time one cried.

That it took over fifty rabbits before this occurred haunted his dreams for weeks.

“Blow out your candles dear, and remember: it’s now too late for you to die young. You’re going to grow old like the rest of us.”

You tried to teach me how to be a monster, but it only made me need you even more. Each blow, each break, and somehow I heal the better for your hate. Every time my family dies I turn to you. My breast is red but you are more than madness, Bruce. You try and make me into you, but each time I fall away. So daring on the trapeze, so lost within my darkness. You are my salvation even if I can never know what I am to you.

The worst part about being a president or prime minister is being unable to jump into pools because of the no bombing rule.

You broke my immersion in you.

“I don’t care about it. Not what is lost. Not if I lose every word I know, so long as I still remember your face.”

“But they are human resources. A resource is not a person,” and the people from the finance department smiled their cold smiles.

I wanted to weep but I had no idea if they understood what tears were. Or if they would bill me for them.

“I can be gentle, though not kind. My nature does not allow for such things.”

I was never scared of you. No matter what they say, it was never you. Only

Me. Only me and what I might do.

Only me

“If you really are a starving artist, shouldn’t you be thinner?”

I don’t have it in me; this being a writer, to take the truth of my life and spin false flags with it. To make truth into a lie that seems more true: it is not a talent I wish to have. Every pretty word touches nothing real, and only the lies are so beautiful. Truth is dull and ugly: the cracked tooth, the spent stone and each time I reach for it I embrace lies. Shadows embellish more than they conceal. Every river seeks the ocean but the ocean seeks the clouds. I hope you understand. I fear I do not. There is a hunger in me. I no longer know what it is for.

“You bastard. There is stripping someone of their illusions and then there is this - this - I thought I was real, damn you!”

“The truth always hides inside the light. I thought you knew that. There is no standard fluoride in water, man. They manufacture it from the local chemtrails.”

Once upon a time, there was a minotaur trapped inside a maze until the SPCA sent an agent named Theseus in to retrieve him but, being a hero, Theseus botched the entire operation.

The recipe called for an ounce of sadness but I couldn’t find anyone with so little sadness in them.

I know I said I’d never lie to you, but sometimes pranks are more important than the truth.

The shop was open 24 hours but the staff never talked about the customers who came in for haircuts during the witching hour.

Mostly out of a sense of profound embarrassment.

“And then they woke up to discover it wasn’t all a dream after all but a nightmare that had disguised itself in kind.”

It was a sad day when he realized that his dreams had become gluten free as well.

March 2017

shakespeare plagiarized nihilism from nietzsche.

“Each of us wields power commensurate with the empires of old. And it is our privilege to pretend that we do not.”

Prompt: The Predator has sought out the most cunning and vicious prey in the cosmos, now at long last he has found one worthy for his greatest hunt; The Batman.

But The Batman was not at home.

There was only Alfred Pennyworth.

And The Butler gave the Predator a thrashing the likes of which he had never received before.

“Every time you cry it just shows that the universe doesn’t care about such things at all.”

“Being so bad you are good may apply to certain genres. It does not apply to people.”

“I said it wasn’t over, but my every action was a lie to the truth my words uttered.”

“No one wins a war,” the old man said, but the gleaming medals on his chest claimed otherwise as he stood at the podium and delivered his lecture earning him a thousand dollars a plate to a roomful of disbelieving stares.

Me: I spent an hour having to wait for that delivery that never arrived. Granted, I was able to clean up the back and furniture area a little but it was a wasted hour.

Manager: It's okay, you were supervising while I was out.

Me: So supervisor means not working?

Manager: Come closer so I can strangle you.

He can’t name one thing that doesn’t get better by ending.

Some days the world feels like a child-proof cap and we are too tired to open it at all.

We are the sum of nothing if not dim sum.

I am too hungry to be so full.

“I used to be a poet. Before I got better.”

“What are you now?”

“Other things. Just - other things.”

Once upon a time there was a monster that never hid what it was at all; and everyone declared then honest and not a monster at all.

We water fake plants in the vain hope that they, too, can be real.This is not a metaphor but the way of the world.

It is not so much that people forget as there are limits to what we are willing to remember.

“Look. I know you want to get granddad an Easter gift, but the Black Rabbit of Inlé isn’t really the best figurine to pick.”

“I think it’s time we broke up: I realized last night that if I had to choose between you and the cat, I’d pick the cat.”

“I’m sorry. Breaking up with someone is many things, but it can never be gluten-free.”

“How dare you call me out on the motivational post I put up!”

“You didn’t include the source.”

“But I -.”

“You didn’t include the source.”

I was afraid of spiders until you gave birth. I was afraid of the dark until a night spent in your shadow. I am still afraid of smiles.

That the magician pulled a rabbit from a hat impressed no one. That the rabbit proceeded to do a dozen card tricks was considered far more impressive.

“There are many forms of warfare.” The magician smiles. “I, for example, have given Jay a set of bagpipes.”

My doctors gave up on me. Now I don’t know what to think at all.

The ideal amount of cheese in a smile turned out to vary from culture to culture.

He devoted years in trying to find a correlation between poor customer service and lack of public washrooms in businesses.

“I said that I had to protect you. I never said what you needed protection from.”

“So many teddy bears. So many hungry eyes.”

“Yes.”

“You burned the house down. What happens now?”

“We find out if that killed them or not.”

“Then there’s all those stories about Atlantis, which is just made up nonsense about a place that didn’t even exist —.”

“What?! Some of my best friends are Atlanteans!”

Nerdy-number facts about Atlantis

2. The number of times Atlantis has sunk beneath the waves.

1. The position Atlantis holds as first nation to join the Underwater Nations (Lemuria, of course, is #2.)

18. The minimum number of years one is sentenced to prison for pretending to be a mermaid in order to drown the surface dwellers.

7. The number of humans who have actually seen Atlantis.

5,000,000: The population of Atlantis for the past 8,000 years.

45,394,493.2: The generally accepted Atlantean lucky number.

“You don’t understand. I was never afraid you would try to hurt me. I was only ever afraid of what I would do in response.”

We met at the bar. Two strangers talking: a story as old as the pub. We talked for several hours, forging a common ground. After, I asked about a toast half-joking.

The smile I received wasn’t something I understood. It felt as if I had passed some kind of test by failing it. “Sláinte,” was said.

“Good health,” I responded, and I think maybe it was that I knew that phrase which saved me.

Only it wasn’t like that at all. Every day since has been sláinte. No sickness. No pain. I haven’t aged a day in thirty years. I don’t know what happens now. I don’t ask about toasts anymore.

I don’t even eat toast.

(I just don’t want to see my children get older than I am.)

I had a secret. Until I told it to you in a stutter-burst of confession. Now I don’t know what I have at all. Or what is between us save a desire for a perfect silence.

Free short story plot for today: Aliens were responsible for the first pyramids, only it was really a pyramid scheme.

After it was over, you thought we could just be friends. As if it was as simple as flipping a switch inside us. Friends have barriers we did not. Each intimate secret was part of us, ours in a way no sharing is. Friends have inside jokes. We had moments no one else could know, thoughts no one else can feel - and I cannot resend that never was, nor wish away all we had been and by content with bring half-strangers.

Sacrificing a black goat together to call up Satan means something even in this age. And I’m not going to let you pretend otherwise.

And after that moment, he was so happy that he never laughed again.

After half of the class contracted the Black Plague, Ms. Frizzle was fired from Walkerville Elementary and the Magic School Bus was made to test its magic against a car crusher at the salvage yard.

Joe applied to become a scarecrow just to master straw man arguments.

Every secret I know pretends to be something else.

If trees could talk (prompt)

“Did you see Denise? I kept saying she should listen to me and moisturize, moisturize, moisturize and - well! She lost all her leaves WEEKS before Ruth did!”