IN WITH THE FLYING ELBOW

Man, it was crazy.  Crazy.  I was just sitting there, minding my own business with a little jar of honey wine when this big bastard comes running in with a whip -with a whip- and the guy just goes nuts on everybody around him.  He's kicking and punching and laying into everybody in sight and everybody's screaming and trying to get away from this skinny-ass bearded nutjob and things were just crazy in there.  And in the background he's got this posse of twelve other guys just egging him on.  "Nice one, Jesus!"  "Oh snap, Jesus just broke that guys collarbone!"  "Kick his ass, Jesus!"  It was just chaos.  So I'm freaked out and all my livestock is freaked out, and then he turns and points at me and he shouts "YOU!" like I owed him money or I banged his mom or something.  I put my hands up and I'm going "Hey man, I'm just trying to take care of my lambs here-" and BAM!  He jumps up like four, five feet in the air and drops this wicked-ass elbow right down on my head.  I go down like a sack of grain into a pile of sheep shit, and then he's standing over me swinging that whip over his head and screaming like a crazy person.  Honest to Yahweh.  He turned his back and I grabbed my string of sheep and got the hell out of the Temple, the last thing I saw was him turning over the moneylender's tables on the floor with his boys behind him applauding him like he just played a kickass lute solo.  Man.  I heard people talking about this guy before, and let me tell you.  I don't know much about this 'son of God' business, but that dude sure does hit like a son of a bitch.

MY BIG GULP RUNNETH OVER

I was mad.  Mad, I tell you!  Nay, I am weak.  Those fountainheads so perfectly arranged before me; I could not resist a splash from each and every flavor of beverage mixed into one, single Double Big Gulp.  My thirst is quenched, yet I am dehydrated and feel sticky.

And it was not a sound idea to dress my bowl of Frosted Flakes with a Starbucks DoubleShot.

Lo, my KFC Double Down did not need a bowl of gravy for dipping, yet I did order it on the side; for I am loathsome.

I regret that I was fool enow to purchase a sack of Cool Ranch Doritos, for my order from Taco Bell was already of the Locos Tacos variety.  Woe, that I did not think outside of the box!

Yet when it came to dessert, I held fast!  I stood strong!  I resisted the delicious sponge cake and the creamy filling of the Hostess varieties.  No Twinkies nor Snoballs nor delicately crusted fruit pie will waylay me.  After having supped so richly this day, I exerted every erg of willpower to resist the siren’s call of the pastry stand.  For I am no animal.  I am a man!

...but in truth, my strength is a mask for my true weakness.  For I know lurking in the back of my freezer, I own a pair of Sara Lee poundcakes and one cheesecake.  And furthermore I know that I will likely make unto myself a sandwich of these confections, however grotesque and decadent that may be.  

O, lament!   

LEAVE THE BOTTLE

With her head hanging low and heavy she stares back and forth from her lap to the phone in her fist.  There's no life there.  No little jingle of an incoming call, no little green light to show a text or an email has come in.  It's as still as a brick, like the weight down low in her belly, the weight planted firmly on her heart.  She looks up and she's a fright; tracks of mascara running down her cheeks from eyes red and bloodshot.  She tries forcing a grin onto her pallid face, but it fails and cracks and seems to fall off in pieces.  The bartender walks up to her to ask her things, but she does not hear him.  He wants to know how are you doing tonight, what can I get you, what are you drinking.  She knows what he is saying, but she only listens for the phone that won't ring.  She pulls out some cash and points at the bottle on the tallest shelf in the bar with a single, shaky finger and gets ready to speak.

NO REASON TO GET ALL EXCITED

I mean, it's just a severed head.  If you can think about it rationally it's really not that shocking.  If it were somebody I knew, somebody I cared about.  Or even if it had been somebody I had seen before and not known.  A guy on my bus to work in the morning, that lady who was always going into the lobby store just as I was coming out.  You know.  But this, this is nobody special.  Sure it's disgusting, but what would you expect?  It's a severed head after all, I think you need to expect a certain level of gore and mess when dealing with a severed head.  But you know what would be truly remarkable?  A head that was neatly removed from a body.  No stump, no trailing connective tissues or meat or gore.  Just a head, neatly and smoothly disconnected from the neck.  Now that would be something to talk about.  Something that you've never seen.  But then again, maybe I'm a little bit jaded.  If you saw as many severed heads as I do, wouldn't you start taking them in stride?

ASK YOUR DOCTOR IF ITS RIGHT FOR YOU

Symptoms include stomach ache, headache, heartache, heartburn, runny nose, running mouth, anal discharge, nasal discharge, oral discharge, inability to filter, fever, a fever for the flavor, chills, douche chills, hot flashes, night sweats, and nocturnal emissions.  Some users may experience overeating, overcompensating, depression, dementia, disturbances in the force, demonic possession, drowsiness, positive reinforcement, positive attitudes, attitude adjustments, alternate realities, anarchy.  Other side effects include life, because that's all it is.  You shouldn't need to see a TV commercial to sell you on it.  

CAM BAILEY HAS A BRAINSTORM

Cam hadn't counted on the explosion doing quite as much damage as it had.  He'd hoped that while the police and the fire department was dealing with  a minor fire in the basement, he'd be able to slip out of an attic window and then steal away across the rooftops with his little sack of stolen jewelry.  The problem was that ol' Cam there didn't know much about making bombs aside from how to set a time delayed fuse.  So when the bomb went off, it went off with an explosion that was more than twice the bang that Cam had intended and this was why Cam was left stranded on a third floor attic landing that had all of the stability of a box of crackers.   If I can just reach that pole, was the last coherent thought that crossed Cam Bailey's mind, right before the last of the beams in the basement went with a crunch like a boot on a pile of saltine crackers.  And as he plummeted to what was probably his death, Cam had time to think to himself  Hell!  I should have just set a fire on the first floor instea-  And then that was all for poor, dumb Cam Bailey.

SLICK

It had to be impeccable.  He carried a little set of tools with him everywhere we went.  A pocket mirror, tweezers, a little bitty comb, three different sets of tiny scissors, and a disposable razor for, well.  Just in case.  He'd once been described as "well-manicured," and the notion made him so happy that it became an obsession to him.  "Well-manicured."  He worked over that mustache of his every hour.  At least just a swipe with that ridiculously tiny comb of his, if not a whole half hour spent on trimming and plucking and maybe even a quick little shave to maintain the clean lines of definition.  If you were to ask him, he'd say he spent so much time on manscaping because he line between swanky mustache and "fu-manchu" was perilously close.  But nobody asked him that, or much of anything.  Because all he was to his co-workers and neighbors?  The creepy guy who was always working over his pervert mustache.  

OBVIOUS, OUT IN THE OPEN

A pack of students walked down the path in the early morning, most of them silent and tired but one of them loudly grousing about the indignity of an eight o'clock start to her day.  At eleven or so, that same girl wandered back down the path, idly noting the shape of a person hidden inside of a dirty sleeping bag laying beneath the trees by the fencing.  She didn't think anything of it, just some bum sleeping rough.  And then at three, this same girl returned with a different group of friends on their way to another class of theirs.  The same form lay there beneath the tree, seemingly unmoved.  This time she noticed, and started wondering more actively about who lay inside.  She walked by the last time at around nine, after a long day of classes and dinner and a few hours at a bar that didn't worry too much about state issued ID's.  And this time when the girl looked over to where that mysterious person had slept, she noticed black and yellow police tape strewn in a rough perimeter around that same area.  The bottom dropped out of her stomach as she realized what she'd been observing all day long.  Her shoulders sagged with the guilt, knowing that a very sad story had played out right next to where she lived her frivolous little life.