Posted by NL on September 09, 2008 at 10:11:51:
The Civil War-- Part 5
There were those who were inclined to say, that even as we sit in our jacuzzi's in the late 21st century and pick our noses with solid state rechargeable nose picks, the great events of the past, and even the smallest events of the past, play out eternally, perfectly frozen in time. The final breaths drawn at Gettysburg continue to be drawn, perfectly frozen like an icy mist above the mouths of Johnny Reb and Damn Yankee alike, and all battlefields rage in slow motion in a realm where they live perpetually in that perfect tableau we call the past. Eternity by any other name would appear the same. Old Sourdough Arsenic didn't like to hear such things. He thought, if that's what you think, you need to get your head stove in by a six foot length of black iron pipe, wielded by the likes of ME! Just then he felt especially pissed off. Great and wonderful things were happening, and none of them were happening to him! He spread out his local newspaper, the Krapptown Poopshoot, and read things that made his eyes water.
Just the
other day a fellow name of Guck Glooble sat himself down in the town's
popular diner, the Old Shit Chute, for the daily soup and salad
special. It was not so very long before something strange and wonderful
happened to him, though he hardly deserved it, being low-life of the
lowest order. The other diners watched in awe as Mr. Guck dropped his
trousers and attempted to fuck his soup, much to the consternation of
Mr. Guck's dick, as the soup was hot! But first he had tried without
much success to strangle his soup. "You can't strangle your soup", Old
Sourdough thought. "I know because I have tried it, and it don't work.
The soup slips between your fingers and makes an awful mess!" Mr.
Guck's soup was a kind of "minnie-stronie", the kind of thing they
serve at that diner if you order the special. Old Sourdough was not,
himself, a soup man, though he had ordered a soup once just to see
whether he could strangle it. Old Sourdough favored the foot long
burrtio, filled with chorizo, eggs, brains, hot peppers, cheese, onions
and tabasco. He liked them thick and hard and he liked the juices to
dribble out the end, the end he liked to bite. He liked to sit in the
diner and eat one burrito after another while watching NFL football on
the tv up on the wall. But the best part of what happened to Mr. Guck
was not so much the fruitless strangulation of his soup, but the
marvelous appartion of the groping hands that emerged from his salad!
They were there, and then they were gone, and the hands popped up, by
turns, in every salad in the diner at that time, groping for something,
and it wasn't long before soup was everywhere as all the folks who had
ordered the soup and salad special had attempted to strangle their soup
and then fuck it, or them. A lot of dicks got burnt but no permanent
damage. Of course a lot of ladies from the bank across the street
ordered soup and salad. None of them were affected. Except they all
later confessed to having had desires to remove their clothing. Some
said they "wished to be soup". Women!
Old Sourdough Arsenic was
really pissed off! Amazing things NEVER happened to him. Why can't a
pair of groping hands appear in my salad, if I was to order a salad,
which I never do? He asked that question and many another. Could
groping hands appear in his burrito? That seemed hard to visualize.
That didn't seem possible. Maybe amazing things never happened to him
because his personal habits precluded any possibility of an amazing
event! Mr. Sourdough spent a lot of time exercising his hands and had
very strong hands, with which he felt he ought to be competent to
strangle anything! He crushed, in his hands, beer cans, oil cans, soup
cans, rocks, clocks, socks, and turtle doves, when he could find turtle
doves. He had considered strangling some of the women in town but he
was not sure what to do next. There was a certain frisson in that
thought, of perhaps having a naked lady, like that librarian somebody
strangled the other day, dangling lifelessly from his bare hands,
throat all crushed, but what do you do NEXT? That question ate at him.
He thought it might be better to strangle a motorhome. He had read
about a man who fucked motorhomes, up the tailpipe, and the words made
him blush and throw the newspaper (not a local paper) away. How stupid,
he thought. A man who would fuck a motorhome was the sort of man who
ought to get his head stove in with an eight foot length of good black
iron pipe, a pipe swung in a mighty arc, by HIM, Old Sourdough Arsenic.
But on the other hand, if you were to strangle a motorhome, why, that
would be one for the books! By golly, that WOULD be one for the books!
Old Sourdough took a stroll in the park. By this time everybody in town except HIM had tried to strangle and/or fuck a bowl of soup, and every salad in town had been defiled by a pair of groping hands. It was disgusting. If only they knew, he thought! "I could strangle a CAN of soup, a whole big restaurant sized CAN of soup, if I wanted to!" He shouted to the world, and the world was only empty air. There was that goddamned civil war monument again. General Chillycoot stood on the pedestal, larger than life, gesturing with his sabre. The cannon faced in all directions waiting for someone man enough to fuck them. Old Sourdough felt doomed and damned. All around him ordinary men and women were stricken mad, driven by a crazy vision of hands, hands in salads, hands in the air, hands groping for who knew what, except it all seemed to have something to do with soup-- killing soup, strangling soup, fucking soup. Fucking soup, that's what Old Sourdough thought: take your fucking soup and shove it. Of course, he was only pissed off because no wonderful thing ever happened in his life.