DAY IN DAY OUT

"That's just typical liberal bullshit."  Hmm, no that won't do.  "Stop being such a..."  What is the word I need, what is the word.  "u need 2 stop being such a faggot and get yer head out of ur ass."  Yes, yes.  Perfect!  The complete disregard for spelling and grammar coupled with a challenge to his manhood, that's the stuff.  That is the very stuff that will surely earn his ire!  I take my craft quite seriously, I do.  For you see, I am what some people might call a 'professional troll.'  Well, one as learned as I would prefer to be called an agent provocateur but I understand that 'troll' is the preferred vernacular.  But yes, I take great pride in finding the best possible way to needle people over the internet.  What can I say?  It pleases me greatly.  Anonymity coupled with intelligence with a dash of wit...yes, I know my business.  I revel in it!  Every angry word I elicit from an opponent, worthy or unworthy...yes, it's like fine wine.  Your rage is like fine wine to me.  I savor your rage, from a hundred different sources.  Now, back to work.  "Barack HUSSEIN Obama is running this country unto the ground in every way possible."  Yes, yes.  Putting stress on the President's middle name like that is always unpleasant, both intellectually and aesthetically.  And using 'unto' instead of 'into' ought to get his goat as well.  Oh, I'm on a roll today!  

SHOPPING LIST

Get some eggs, flour, butter, salt, vanilla extract, baking soda, baking powder, white sugar, brown sugar, newspaper, read the paper, what's in the paper, she's getting married, she's getting married, get some tissues, drink the vanilla, get a nip of whiskey, drink a beer, drink all six beers, more beers, get a pizza, get some chicken, throw out groceries, fuck the groceries, who needs groceries, get more beer, another whiskey, another whiskey, a glass of water, a beer and another whiskey, yell at bartender, curse at bartender, yell at bouncer, curse at bouncer, wipe blood from mouth, use the tissues, curse at bouncer, curse at bouncer, pick self up off pavement, wipe blood from nose, go to car, revolver, load one bullet, crying, and crying, and crying and crying and crying, load more bullets, get out of car, curse at bartender, curse at bartender, curse at EVERYBODY, fire gun.  Chocolate chips.

FOR A NON-INVASIVE STUDY

Good money, he said. Easy money, he told me. Greg was always full of shit half the time, and this was...well, he was half right.  Three hundred bucks a day, and a place to sleep?  That part was fine.  Just fine.  Other studies I did, I'd get fifty bucks and a couple slices of crappy pizza.  This one, we got a warm bed and three hot meals and three hundred bucks cash every night we're in here.  A fine deal, just fine.  I don't know what the shots were for.  Or why so many of them.  I mean, they tried to explain it to me but all I heard was a cash register ringing.  Three hundred bucks a day and I've been here a week?  That's silly money.  What else did I need to know?  I've got a terrible cold from staying in here, though.  It's like being in the hospital, you check in and there's so many germs and things in the air you can't keep from getting sick.  But it's fine.  Just fine.  They got nurses and doctors all over the place in here, and they gave me a video game machine to keep my mind off of the rash, and the scales that are forming along my shoulders.  It itches something terrible, you know.  I haven't seen Greg in a couple days.  He must have checked out of here, last time I saw him he was coughing something fierce and complaining awful loud about the scaly patches along his face.  But me, I'm happy as a pig in you know what.  They tell me they're going to up the injections tonight, I heard them say I was pregrading at a higher rate than most.  Or maybe they said I was degrading.  I don't remember.  But aside from the coughing and the itching, I'm feeling fine.  Just fine.

ONE HUNDRED SIX

"It's a competitive eating contest, not a popularity contest."  That's what you tell the cameras at the end and it is a lie.  It's a lie because once you get home you're going to spend an hour on your fanpage defending your actions, and attacking your attackers.  You can barely believe you have a fanpage, but that's another story.  "Do the rules say I'm not allowed to interfere with my competitors?"  The rules do not, no.  It is of course implied, but you're damn sure gonna dive through that loophole.  Win, win, win, right?  "So if the rules didn't explicitly bar me from interference, how did I break any rules?  All I did was eat the most meatballs within the time limit, just like I said I would.  And I did it by any means necessary, just like anybody else would."  Yeah, you did.  One hundred and six.  Good for you, a badge of honor for fat fucks everywhere.  "No, I do respect my competitors."  No, you hate them.  You have no respect for them, or this little contest of theirs.  That's why you slipped them the hot sauce, that's why you flipped that other guys plate.  You hate these fat fucks, you want to take their fat fuck dreams and crush them.   And it's about punishing yourself, because you think that you're fat scum as well.  But you can't say that to the cameras, of course.  "I am very proud of what I have accomplished today."  And that was the biggest lie yet.

What An Old Man Sees

The old man stared blankly at the wall, all propped up in his hospital bed.  Hanging there was a painting of a calm New England autumn, a small gazebo on a small pond framed in orange and red leaves.  The old man liked staring at his painting.  It helped the days go by.  But today his view of his painting was marred by some woman who kept pacing back and forth in front of him.  A lawyer, he thought.  She was speaking to him, shouting to the point where he almost heard her despite his deafness.  He thought he could read the word 'testament,' but gave it little mind and he craned his withered neck to look around her and back to his painting.  Then the woman stopped directly in front of him, and tried to catch his eye.  She was a pretty one, he could see that.  He thought that if he was twenty years younger, he might have tried to give that face a little kiss.  But the pretty face twisted up with anger and she jabbed a finger at the old man again and again and he thought he didn't like that as much.  The old man decided that if he was twenty years younger he would given that face the back of his hand instead.  Her shouting trailed off and she suddenly broke down in tears, which was all right with the old man.  Hunched over and with her shoulders heaving like that, he could see most of his painting again.  Basically, all of it.

THE ARMOR

They look crusty and stiff to you, yeah.  I guess that's how they'd feel on some skin that saw showers more'n once a month.  And I don't get enough money to be takin' these over to any laundromat.  But they're my armor, without these coveralls I think I'd have died a long time ago.  Yes, a long, long time ago.  See, these things were eighty bucks three years back.  And I'm still wearin' them today.  They keep me goin' through the winter so long as I get one of them free blankets when the shelter van comes around.  And they keep me safe in the summer.  That one time I got jumped by a tweaker with a busted bottle, he came a-swingin' at me but the coveralls; that glass just grazed right off 'em.  Jus' right off.  Yeah, they're stained somethin' fierce.  But I'm not dinin' with the President anytime soon, so a couple stains don' matter much to me.  And yeah, they've been tore up a little bit.  But I can sew, and I have a little bit of heavy-duty thread put aside for just such an occasion.  I could say I'm pretty handy with a needle.  I shouldn't say that, because bein' handy with the needle is why these coveralls is all I got.

ALONE IN THE SNOW

The last candle went out and spilled darkness all about the room, and that was just fine with Bob.  He felt the deep cold all around him and knew that probably much sooner than later, he was going to freeze to death.  Right there in his own living room, wearing almost every article of clothing he owned and breathing in the ashes of all of his worldly possessions.  Weakly breathing, at that.  He lay there, sprawled on the floor before the dead fireplace staring at a ceiling that he couldn't see for the darkness.  Without the candles, and with weeks and weeks of snowfall pressed up against the windows he might as well have been a blind man at midnight.  Bob realized that the intense cold he'd been feeling for these many weeks now was fading, and knew that eventually he wouldn't be feeling anything at all.  With a supreme effort, Bob rolled his head to the side and stared into the darkness at the wall, and where he had painted his last will and testament of sorts.  It was too dark to see the words he had painted, but he whispered them aloud as he died, "take it."

THE ANSWER NOBODY WANTED

The fat one wasn't breathing, she was sure of it.  No, the fat one definitely wasn't breathing.  She'd been limping back along the path of mayhem for twenty minutes, and this was the first one that seemed to be actually, well, dead.  It was simply the icing on the cake, the cherry on top of the multiple felonies that she would undoubtedly be charged with if she didn't get out of this school and get out of town quick.  Hell, get out of the country.  She dragged herself down the hallway, still strewn with broken glass and injured children.  Clutching her broken arm to her bloodied side, her horrified eyes scanned the carnage.  Everywhere she turned, a sixth grader lay sprawled, beaten insensible.  Crying, whining, whimpering softly in pain as she crunched through small drifts of broken glass, stumbled over bloody textbooks, she skidded on torn construction paper and stopped, gasping for breath.  She remembered a party in college where somebody had asked "how many twelve-year old's do you think you could beat up?"  She never wanted to answer that one, she always thought it was a barbaric, horrible notion.  And then this morning, she was just innocently walking to her office when all of a sudden she was set upon by three separate sixth-grade classes.  Some kind of model U.N. thing in the auditorium.  Suddenly the fat kid gasped and flopped over onto his side and she sighed in relief.  Bad enough she was facing ninety-two cases of felony assault on a minor- multiple assaults on multiple minors.  Jesus wept.  But thankfully, she didn't seem to have killed any of them.  And she was the school nurse.