The Mysterious Smokeless Cigarette

DOB: What is this?

TCG: It’s a cinnamon smokeless tobacco cigarette substitute. Don’t light it.

DOB: (Sucking and puffing) It doesn’t taste like cinnamon. Wait, it looks like it went out.

TCG: It’s smokeless – you don’t light it.

DOB: (Continuing to suck in and puff out on the smokeless cinnamon-flavored cigarette.)

UCC: Don’t inhale. It’s bad for you. Perhaps if you dipped the end in your plum wine, the cigarette would have a taste.

DOB: (Sticking the end of the smokeless cigarette in her glass of plum wine, and nodding slowly to indicate either deep understanding or complete cluelessness.) Oh. Ok.

TCG: How is the plum wine?

DOB: Good... (Noticing, with genuine surprise, the cigarette in her left hand) What is this?

UCC: It’s a cinnamon smokeless tobacco cigarette substitute.

WISIMH: This, my dear, is one of the circles of hell that Dante left out. The one where I’m stuck in an endless conversational loop where one party repeats a virtually content-less phrase in lieu of actual cogent conversation. The circle where hope is not only abandoned, it’s left beaten and bloody on the side of the road, registering such minimal brain activity that, if measurable at all, would be at the end of the scale where legally dead could be conclusively established by a four-year-old with a toy stethoscope.

Putting the Ass in Procrastinate

Less than 24 hours ago, UCC left the camera at somebody else’s house.

TCG: (Shouted from two rooms away) Hey! You ever going to do anything about the camera?

UCC: Yeah, I will…(muttered under her breath)…but seriously folks, I ask you - is this guy an ass, or what?

UCC: ...get to it...

WISIMH: ... right about when you get around to disposing of ALL the recyclables, some going back three generations, so that I can actually walk on the brick path I made next to the trashcan corral without having to move flattened cardboard boxes, many evolving into dust after >3 years (presumably left intentionally to ripen like a good stinky cheese, the consistency of both of which, is indistinguishable from baby vomit only through a series of painstaking molecular forensic testing and analysis protocols, performed by one trained beyond the level of Night- Shift Assistant Fry Cook) not to mention a quantity of beer bottles that would make an elephant forget to count them all.

Wheat Grass Incident

The wheatgrass man is in the driveway. Every week at this time, he delivers a fresh flat of wheat grass and picks up the flat from last week. The delivery guy puts the fresh grass on the steps outside the screened porch, and picks up the old flat. I take the fresh flat inside the screened porch and water it a couple of times a week. I make wheatgrass shots (almost) every day before I make coffee.

TCP: (From the room adjacent to the screened porch) Did you put out the grass?

UCC: (In a surly undertone from 2 rooms away, where despite my hearing aids, it’s not always clear what’s being said from such a distance) Don’t tell me last week’s flat of wheat grass didn’t put itself out?

TCP: Hey, What about (unintelligible/incoherent)?

UCC: (Getting up, going to the room where TCP is laying on the couch) Please repeat.

TCP: While you’re here, put the wheat grass out for the guy to pick up.

WISIMH: (Putting the grass out and taking the new grass in to water, while humming "My only prayer will be/ Someday you’ll care for me/ But it’s o-o-only ma-a-a-ke believe.") If there is a circle in hell where the habitually supine will reside, imbricated together like stacked lumber, their collective murmuring just soft enough that nobody else can understand them, mingling together into a low hum, like the sound the world makes rolling around the sun, that’s where you’ll end up spending eternity, bub.

Happy Birthday

DOB turns 90 today.

TCG: (Heading off after his postprandial nap - the second of three per day) I have to pick up the ice cream cake and deliver it to the place we eat every Monday since infinity minus forever. (OK, I paraphrased the last part.)

UCC: (Having packaged the florist flowers delivered earlier, together with the card I got, and a present I bought and wrapped into a shopping bag, to enable the invalid to carry it with him to the restaurant.) OK. There's a vase of H20 next to a wrapped candle in a glass. Be careful.

(TCG drives off. Meanwhile, back at the Fortress of Attitude, a mailman knocks on door to deliver birthday card from DOB's daughter and dranddaughter from suburban Branson and collect postage due. How ironic.)

TCG: (Returning home breathlessly, amid much huffing, puffing, and anxiety to reach the toilet, to sit and to begin speaking. The man is nothing unless it's a dramatic overacting diva who desperately needs attention). Had a minor disaster...

UCC: Oh my goodness, what happened?

WISIMH: Let's see. Selectively incontinent? Broken vase in restaurant?  Other pathetic fuckup?

TCG: (Never one for wasting his words.) Vase spilled, glass candle broke, spill ruined card.

UCC: Yikes!

TCG: (More breathing et. al.) Do you want to run down to CVS to get her something else?

UCC:  (Catching an astonished breath) No.

WISIMH: Are you shitting me, you brain-dead clueless douchebag? What I'd like to giver her for her 90th fucking birthday is my foot up her fat butt so far her demented head'd explode.

TCG: Maybe I'll go down later.

WISIMN: Your filial devotion is exceeded only by your immense absence of initiative, your black hole sucking lack of energy; your tiniest spark of intellectual effort, or your withered fucking imagination.

Meatloaf

DOB: I used to cook...

UCC: You just made meatloaf the other night.

(pause to eat)

DOB: I used to cook...

UCC: You just made meatloaf the other night.

WISIMH: If you can call ground beef and ketchup, baked until a lovely black crust forms on top "cooking".

Pros and Cones

TCG: If you’re going to the kitchen, will you bring me back a chocolate ice cream milk shake?

UCC: I was actually going to the happy place in my mind, can I bring you back a dose of Anti-Laziness Potion, or perhaps a chocolate ice cream cone of despair?

TCG: Isn’t the kitchen on your way to wherever the hell you’re going?

UCC: Yes. As is the abattoir, the slaughter house, the henhouse populated with carriers of the H5N1 virus, the giant freezer where I store my unrealized dreams, and the bathroom. Can I pee for you while I’m up, you lazy bastard?

TCG: You’re not a funny as you might think.

WISIMN: Nor are you as delightfully charming, as accomplished at covering up your paranoid suspicions, as proficient at controlling your smoldering resentment before it bursts into flames of bitterness, or as successful at restraining your self-inflicted self-pity. So that makes two of us, dear heart.

The Stamp Dilemma

TCG: You should know, I used the stamps on the top, in your desk.

UCC: And now I know.

TCG: I mean I used them all up, there are no more – on the top.

UCC: But there might be more stamps on the sides of my desk?

TCG: No, I mean there might be more under the papers and things stacked there.

UCC: And now I know that, too.

TCG: No, I mean there might not be any more stamps.

UCC: You’re telling me I should buy stamps?

TCG: No, you should look first to see if there are more, then buy them if there aren’t.

WHSIHS No, what you REALLY mean is you’re too fucking lazy to do more than pick stamps out of the top of the mess, and notify me of your laziness. Even though you’re going to the Post Office right now, you wouldn’t want to undertake any task involving initiative, decision making, or more than six calories to accomplish.