Firecracker Fuchsia

She was a marketer. Her specialty was naming colors. Her calling card became firecracker fuchsia. It won’t be in Wikipedia but everybody has something. She also loved the Counting Crows and collected choose your own adventure books; spent way too much money on this but everybody has something. My vice was collecting felonies…of the arson type. I burned up more than my fair share of abandoned sheds and cars. I ain’t sayin' it was right but I am sayin' they was abandoned and that oughta count for something. We met through a prison pen pal program. To this day I can’t think of how a successful marketer with copper mint in her color naming collection would get involved in a prison pen pal program. I sometimes wonder if it is some part of community service she has to do. Maybe for some sort of misdemeanor arson? Hot. You’re probably wondering what prison is like and if I have set anything on fire in prison. The answer is that the showers aren’t like what you hear, they are worse. Which is why I set an inmates bed on fire in prison. I told her about it in a letter. I thought I was communicating, opening myself up, risking, being vulnerable. She reported it and I got another 3-5 added to my sentence. Just great, another 3-5 years and a Counting Crows Round Here CD. Did she think I had a cd player? What kind of pen pal program puts prison inmates in contact with sadistic sociopaths that send you the lyrics to Mr. Jones? It’s obviously a song about his penis. I’m in prison for god’s sake! I don’t need lyrics about penises or just one penis, singular. I guess I have learned some grammar through the writing class but still. I still think about her. I wish I could reread the letters but I set them on fire. Maybe she’s out there naming a color, maybe it’ll be prison grey.

Quickie S Wonders Ponders Pontificates Contemplates Muses

My street cred alter ego, Quickie S, has usurped my blog but I should be able to wrest it back from him in a fortnight or so. Till then he’s got a case to state:

[blog host cowers away]

Quickie S wonders, ponders, pontificates, contemplates, muses…

Why hiccups be getting’ the short end of the stick? Why ya’ll hatin’ on hiccups?

Allows me to represent hiccups my peeps. First off, what do sneezes have that hiccups don’t be gotten? Both be involuntary, right? Yeah that’s what I thought! B. Hiccups should get more love than sneezes cuz, per the wiki “ooh so sticky” pedia: “Medical treatment is occasionally necessary in cases of chronic hiccups.”


Where you at sneezes?! Huh, where you at! Wen’s the last time some playuh had to get trizeatment for a sneeze, yet you all love up them sneezes like they yo momma. Well truth hurts and a right hook from my favorite boxer, Carl “The Truth” Williams hurts too.


Now how’s about we stop dissin’ the cups you and start respecting the hizzzcups yo.
Here’s what my bad ass got for the cups of hic. You know how ya’ll be constantly blessing and god blessing after cheesy so sneezeys right?


-Quickie if I could just interject here that sneezes are semi-autonomous, convulsive expulsions of air from the lungs through the nose and mouth, usually caused by foreign particles irritating the nasal mucosa.


[punches blog host in the right temple then ties and gags blog host]


Yer homeboy won’t be frontin’ nomo!


Well I’m here to bring the love for hiccups. If we “god bless” for whack sneezes I’m here to propose we high five and man hug for hiccups. Bringin’ it right! This will be dope.


[blog host escapes poorly tied sailor’s knot, undoes gag]


-Quickie I think some readers might be wondering if they should wait until after a series of hiccups, or give the five and hug after each individual hiccup; and which comes first the high five or the man hug?

[pulls out stun gun and tazes blog host; blog host crumbles like feta cheese]

Don’t taze me bro!

Dumb ass. Individual discretion homeys! You wanna high five after every cup, then high five; you wanna man hug after 3 minutes of hizzy cups then man hug after 3 minutes of hizzy cups! You wanna combine and mix a la sir mix-a-lot then so be it, just as long as we respect the cups.

Respect the cups!

[tazes already crumpled blog host a second time]

I’m out!

Fizzuck snizzeezes!

Word!

The Customer Is Always Right Yo!

Hello this is Donna how might I assist you today?

You can live up to the hype Donna.

Okee Dokee sir, how can I live up to the hype today?

You can bring it girl, like it aint’ never been broughten before, like a tornado comin’ out a blow dryer, you hear me girl? I need you to represent the representin’ and not, quote, not be foolin’!

Mmm, okay happy to help you today sir. Please advise how I can best represent to assist you today sir. We sure do appreciate your business.

But don’t’ be all up in my bidnezz Donna! Ain’t got time fo dat yo!

We appreciate your business sir, how can I help you today?

Daaaaaamn Donna…thought you wuz my girrrrl up in here right? Thought you was my representer representin’ and now you all up in my grizznill tryin’ uh gimme blow back like you straight trippin’ and clotheslinin’! Daaaamn, what am I? Ron “clothesline me” Jaworski up in here? You best roll back your roll befo you get served a whole lotta Chuck Noll steel curtain style Donna.

Sir, we appreciate your business sir, if I cannot assist you today, I can…

Oh, sorry Donna, my cable is out, could I please get a representative at your earliest conven-

Please hold.

[muzak]

Ward, Jacqueline Ward

Thelonious Monk’s Straight No Chaser was playing when she walked in. She was tall, like a statue in a rose garden. She swayed like a row boat on a rough lake but kept it together enough to get to a chair. She didn’t so much sit down as slithered down. The piano solo was interrupted when she said “Are you the best detective in the city?”
“Well you see the trophies on my desk. Those aren’t bowling trophies.”
“I don’t have time for incompetence and snark Mr. Stowick. My husband is missing.”
She looked me dead in the eye with some piercing baby blues but I wasn’t playing. A million baby blues on a million dames, I thought.
“You got the money I got the time Mrs….”
“Mrs. Ward, Jacqueline Ward. And yes, that Ward. So I can afford your dailies and incidentals Mr. Stowick. Can you find my husband?” She looked away and appeared to shed a tear but I can’t be sure because she got up and went to the window. Dames, all dramatic when they look out a window like the answers are out there.
“Where and when was the last time you saw your husband Mrs.” –“call me Jacqueline.”

 
The bar was a little too crowded at 2pm for my liking. Hard livers all of em with sharp axes to grind. Axes sharp from a life between two stones will do that to a person. I eyed up the bartender and ordered a Dewar’s on the rocks. He looked at me askance but poured it anyway. I couldn’t imagine someone with the means of Mr. Ward stepping foot in a place like this. Then she walked in, grace wrapped in glory, on top of dancers legs with non-stop beauty and radiance from head to toe. She was a fish so far out of water she might as well have had wings. She smiled at everyone and no one in the bar and made her way to the manager’s office in the back. Mr. Ward would have been a fish out of water in here too; maybe they were fishes out of water together – birds of a feather. She knocked carefully on the door three times as if keeping a beat. When the door opened no light came from the room and she was hustled in; a huge figure waited a second before shutting the door quickly after. I had to find out who owned this place and who she was.

The Lawson's Incident

He was skinny and poor; not the best combo to avoid bullies in elementary school. And he seemed to either: not know he was both those things or in denial of both those things as he strutted down the hall like a wealthy peacock in a peacock tuxedo if you get my drift. He got a lot of punches to the spine. His dad was an umpire at little league games and was kind of the same way, poor and skinny but umpired like he was rich and important, exaggerating strike out calls on 8 yr olds just trying to make contact and not cry and here he was yelling Striiiiike Thureee and motioning like he’s trying to start a giant lawn mower. He wore cracked cowboy boots behind the plate instead of cleats. He usually reeked of body odor that blast out from behind his chest protector. Then there was the mother, all 280 lbs of her, poor and scummy, loudmouthed as hell, with basically a handlebar mustache. She could scare the rings off a raccoon and her breath could fog an entire windshield on a hot summer day. What the son didn’t inherit in girth he inherited in the white trash equivalent of chutzpah. How he got on the pee wee football team is anyone’s guess. He couldn’t have weighed 70lbs and there must have been a sliding scale for the equipment because he wore the same pants year round and they were floods because he had to wear them year round for 3 years now. Anyway, he’s on the team, just taking a beating every practice, never seeing the field on gameday but strutting around at school like he’s Tony Dorsett or something. More punches to the back, and he didn’t have on shoulder pads at school. Well apparently he was telling his mom about who exactly was delivering the most painful blows to the spine. So one day before practice some players were at the Lawson’s convenient store around the block and the old lady must have given quite the shake up to the spine puncher. There were rumors that during the bust up her mustache rubbed all over his face. Some say he see a therapist to this day. Anyway, she didn’t stop there: upon after practice pick-up she was about to light into the father of the spine puncher and he was not going to have any of it. She might have had 30 lbs on him and more facial hair but he yelled something to the effect of “you lay a greasy finger on me and I’ll knock the welfare right off your double chin!” She backed off. The spine punches got worse at school and who knows when they let up. Anyone who thinks about it for more than a minute knows there is no justice in the world but somewhere there is a bully out there, on a couch, trying to come to grips with a handlebar mustache on his face.