Moose

Chuck stopped in middle of the hiking trail. "That's an odd thing to say."

"What?"

"That I remind you of a moose."

"It's not odd. You do remind me of a moose. I mean, there's nothing wrong with projecting the appearance and demeanor of a moose. A moose is like a regal, macho deer."

Chuck put his hands, palms out, fingers splayed, against the sides of his head and stared into the trees. "Still, it makes me feel odd. A moose is odd." His large bottom lip quivered a bit.

"You know what, I was mistaken. You don't remind of a moose."

"Thank you."

I reached into my backpack. "Here, have an apple."

"Thank you," Chuck said, then swallowed it in two bites.

Thank me later

It's Thanksgiving. I'm thankful for this recipe.

Fried Bologna and Onions

Ingredients

Bologna (whichever bologna you prefer)
Onions (whichever onion you prefer)
Buttered bread (follow above parentheticals)

Instructions

Tear ingredients into similar sized pieces. Wash hands. In a 2:1:1 onions to bologna to bread ratio, place all ingredients in a frying pan. Wash hands. If you are hungry, cook over medium-high heat. If you are hungry but wish to torture yourself, cook over low heat. Cook until onions/bologna lose their unpleasant bite (pre-tasting is required), avoid burning. Transfer to dish. Eat. Enjoy shame.
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Problem/Solution/Com- plication

Problem: I am walking home, but home is far. It's raining. The water pools on the sidewalks and gurgles in the sewers, and I have to pee.

Solution: I strip. Who can tell what is rain and what is pee?

Complication: The police, who apparently don't care.
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Career Counselor

A sly voice inside my head says, "You call yourself a writer?"

"Yes," I say.

"You know, when you say, 'I'm a writer' to people at bars when they ask what you do for a living."

"Yeah."

The voice coughs, "Hah-EH!" And then laughs, "Hah-eh-eh! Hah-eh-eh!"

My teeth grate. "Dickhead, dickhead in my mind, shut up. Ladies don't ask where the majority my of income comes from. Women ask what I do, what I consider myself."

"Hah-eh-eh. Well...then write."

"I'd like to write, but I'm fucking tired," I say. "I work. I have another job. It pays the bills. I'm entitled to watch TV. I'm entitled to not poke and prod at the most sensitive parts of my brain just for a jumble of words which may or may not be any good."

"Eh, excuse me," the voice says. "I just thought the term 'writer' was derived from the verb 'to write.' As in 'one who writes.' But now I understand that 'writer' means one who someday aspires to write, but today is too fucking tired from paying the bills."

"Fuck you." I slap myself in the side of the head. Pain breaks over my right ear.

"You're only fucking yourself," the voice whispers.

My vision blurs, and the world spins. I fall off my chair. I hit the floor hard, right on my left elbow. It hurts. God, does it hurt. I might have hit myself too hard.

This is no way to go about life.

On the bright side, the voice is gone.
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Basic Journalism

Who?

God

What?

Created the universe: the Sun, the Earth, and the life on Earth.

When?

Some 6000 years ago

Where?

Somewhere in the infinite darkness

Why?

To confuse the hell out of scientists.

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Problem/Solution/Com- plication

Problem: Pot smokers knock over your trash cans in search of food.

Solution: Introduce raccoons, a competing species, to diminish the food supply and to induce the fear of rabies.

Complication: The pot smokers don masks and hand-feed the raccoons, and they become friends. The pot smokers name the lead raccoon "Zorro," and Zorro has always wanted a human name and to be fed by hand.

Southern Cross

I've always hated going to church, except in my mid-teens when I would be blessed enough to sit behind some hot suburban mother in a tight pantsuit. I would spend the standing parts of Mass with head bowed, committing her ass to memory and trying to arrange my boner so it didn't poke directly outward, lest it be taken for a Crucifix. I never felt guilty about that, which is odd, because I grew up Catholic. Maybe guilt just became my default emotional state. Or maybe I didn't feel guilty because my instinct told me that my boner was normal and natural (since then I've realized that my boner is neither natural nor normal -- it's cross-shaped).

Cross-shaped. You ever heard of anything like that? Outside of the supernatural?

And the second weirdest thing about my penis is that it looks relatively normal flaccid: not at all like a "t." And then, by accident, I see Joss Stone on Carson Daly. Pop! I can hang Christmas ornaments on it. But only the ones with the strings, not the ones with the hooks, unless it's Christmas Eve.

You want to know what it's like having a cross-shaped boner? Ladies?

Well, the condition manifested itself in my early teens, and I worried nightly that there were malignant tumors in my penis. At fourteen I had a choice to either show the male doctor my boner or risk death. I chose the latter. That was a terrible decision, but twelve years later, I'm still alive. To date, a doctor has never seen the cross (or the Cross, if you prefer). Doctors have grabbed my balls pretty regularly, and they have never led me to believe that there might be something abnormal about my penis. If I were hard, my condition would be staring them right in the face.

It's a cross left-to-right, not up-to-down, in case you were wondering...

My relationships tend to be pretty short. I don't like the awkwardness of pretending that I don't have an intimate defect, so I make it a point to tell a hot suburban mother before she has a chance to see it. And I often ask her name first.

Offerings can be left in the comments section.
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