I know this is too easy, but it demands to be mocked.

First, these women that put their girls into these cash generating ordeals.  The cash is not for the contestants, but for the folks that put these pageants on. Why yes these folk have to spend their money that was earned working at Wal-Mart, part time at the tire center or washing and cutting hair in a “salon”, to enter their little angels in these exploitation farces.

One thing I see in these women is that most of them have an ass as wide as the continental divide.  Next they have the self esteem of a 49 year old virgin still living with their parents.  I just heard one say that she prayed that God would give her a daughter that would be Miss America.  When this lady found out she was expecting a girl, her first move was to find pageants that coincided with her delivery date.  Can you say “I want my daughter to grow up to be a whore“.

Next another lady and I use the term loosely, says her nine month old daughter has great fashion sense.  This compliment is for a kid that still shit’s their pants.  I’m sorry this is just too easy.  I just saw a one year old getting a spray tan.

I can’t take this, this mock is writing itself.  Please let me put my two year old daughter in front of a bunch of stranger’s dressed like a street walker and then wonder why she wind’s up pregnant when she 14 years old.

All of these mothers should be taken out and have the livin dogshit beat out of them.  Yeah they want to tell everybody and themselves that this is good for their daughters.  It builds their confidence.  No what it does is put them on display for every pervert and pedophile in shouting distance.

I’m sorry about this folks, but this whole thing makes me ill,  Now some bitch is trying to put something in her four year olds eyes to keep them open wide.

I have determined where the judges are found, the sex offenders registries of the state the contest is being conducted.

I have to stop now before I say something I might regret, okay one more thing, a lady just said “I am worried how my 11 month old daughter’s modeling style came through on stage.”

If you are one of these sick people that subjects their daughters to this, I hope you get syphilis and die.

Get a life

Remember nuthins free, so send money

cave boy out

On the fourth beat of the fourth bar of “Fell in Love with a Girl” by the White Stripes there lives a flam.  It sometimes strikes me as amazing that I can describe the location of a flam as I would a geographical place.  As in, “You can buy a bag from the guy in front of the 7-11 on the northwest corner of 23^rd and Willow.”  The northwest corner of 23^rd and Willow and the fourth beat of the fourth bar are equally real places to me.

Do you guys know what a flam is?  According to the famous web site “drumsetfun.com” (I am not going to link to it because it is scary and I am worried that it will give your machine the same virus that you get when looking for Lady Gaga websites to jerk off to…I mean, not that I would know) a flam is “a distinct sound created by two successive drum strikes made by the two sticks. It is essentially a way to embellish any given note and play it in a ‘fancier’ fashion.”  I don’t know if I would have described it that way, but what happens to the snare on the 4th beat  of the fourth measure of that song is definitely a flam.   It’s a really good flam too.  You get four bars of heavily-distorted guitar intro before the flam.  If I had been drumming, I would have done some elaborate (as elaborate as I could manage anyway) buildup and fill.

Instead, Meg White gives me this clumsy, sloppy half-assed flam…and it is perfect.  In fact, this flam provokes an internal and  involuntary reaction every time I hear it.  I want to stand up.  I want to shred guitars and jump up and down and kick over microphone stands.  I want to fucking rock.  For a split second, I see a whole different existence inside that flam.  It’s the world that would have resulted if I had stepped on stage when I was invited up on that fateful day in 1999. According to Hugh Everett, in some universe I did step up.  I wonder how that turned out.  Too bad that universe isn’t as easy to find as the guy with the bag on 23rd and Willow and the fourth beat of the fourth measure of a silly White Stripes tune.

The spring semester started at school last night.  As a few of you know, I am pursuing a PhD at a school that is two and a half hours away from my house.  Once a week I drive for 5 hours and attempt to be “scholarly.”  I am only doing it to try to tear academia down from the inside, but they are smart and pretty quick to sniff out my ruse.  I have been working harder to fit in (and not flunk out) lately, but I am afraid I am about to go native.  I am going to end up as a pompous communist douchebag if you guys don’t help keep me sane.

Last night’s class was filled with the same people from last semester – a Korean guy, a Chinese guy and a lady that used to pursue patents for a living.  They all drive me insane…except for the time that the Chinese guy was pissed at the Korean guy and they were trying to argue in English.  They were so passionate about their views and so limited in their ability to communicate that they finally just ended up making nonsensical noises and furiously gesturing at each other.  It was awesome.

The highlight of last night’s class saw the professor suggesting that I quit my actual job and let my wife support me while I went to school.  I asked him for a teacher’s permission slip to take home to my wife.  This was especially funny to me because the guy is kind of famous in certain circles and was definitely not used to people hitting him with crappy one-liners.

The patent lady cackled, the Korean guy attempted to understand what was funny by tilting his head to the side like a collie at a whistling competition and the Chinese dude just sat there fantasizing about weird porn (probably).

So anyway…I know things aren’t off to the greatest of starts here at mockable 2.0, but I don’t really mind too much.  I have found that no matter how busy I make myself in a subconscious effort to garner sympathy and blow jobs, I need to write to keep from going nuts.  So I’ll write…and I hope you stick around.

You know what’s mockable?  The fact that I do my best writing while listening to a man that refers to himself as Girl Talk (nsfw).  As I am not “one of those damned kids today” and I am not known to “put on my skinny jeans and shiny shoes” and head to the club, it is a very odd pairing indeed.

See, I haven’t purchased any music for myself for years.  I don’t download it illegally either.  Instead, I used to opt for the still-cheating-but-not-totally-illegal option of using free.napster.com and clearing the cookies every day.  I could listen to entire albums at my leisure while bustin’ out prose like I just don’t care.

Like all of the golden geese that I’ve ever known, that bitch was grabbed by the ass and turned inside-out pretty quickly and napster completely discontinued their totally-free-music-for-people-who-know-how-to-clear-their-internet-settings program.  So there I was with a novel to finish and nothing to listen to.  It was the end of 2008 and everyone was coming out with their “best of whatever” bullshit and Girl Talk’s “Feed the Animals” was on almost every list.  Despite my hatred of the word “zeitgeist” I listened to the entire 2008 list from these guys.

It was mostly the pretentious horse shit that one comes to expect from such lists, but when Gregg Gillis came on, I couldn’t help but smile.  And then rhythmically nod my head.  And then write.  In fact, I am doing it right now to a track called “Triple Double.”  I can’t help it, the shit’s infectious.

I once tried to convince Jeff to let me revive Suggestaholic.  That way I could write positive reviews there and save my nasty reviews for mockable.  I could somehow feel him nodding and shrugging through a series of text messages.  He may have even texted something like, “That might be a good idea” right before turning to Toney and saying, “I have no idea why I gave this fat fuck my number.  He won’t leave me alone.”  Ultimately, Jeff never said no…but he never gave me the password either.  Due to this effective, yet passive personnel management you almost never knew of my secret love for Girl Talk.  Good thing I know enough to know that I am supposed to be embarrassed for being on the cusp of middle age with two kids and a mortgage and still liking the stuff.

Sorry, this post was not supposed to be about music…or Jeff Kay.  I was going to write about how my 9 year-old son is constantly clogging the toilet. I swear to God that kid eats concrete soda cans for breakfast.  And speaking of music – I was just walking around, minding my own business today when the following  line from Eazy-E hijacked my brain, “Grab it like a rabbit.  Let’s work it – but I won’t love you when I’m done, I’ll still be talking shit.”

This happens to me quite frequently, so I didn’t really worry about it too much.  However, from time-to-time I wonder if the lyrics seize my limited capacity for thought for some specific and higher purpose or if it’s just some bad wiring in my noggin.  It could be either…I’m pretty messed up.

After some careful contemplation I decided that the message was that Eazy got screwed.  I mean, Biggie and Tupac posthumously enjoyed endless cred and sold millions of records because they died at the top of their game in a violent manner that was consistent with the subject matter of their work.  But because Eazy wasn’t necessarily the most talented guy in the group, because he didn’t write much and because he gave in after they threatened to kill his mother…nobody seemed to realize that Eazy was just as much the genuine article as Biggie and Tupac.  Of course, I realize Eazy died a year and a half before Tupac and the comparison is difficult…but it is fascinating to me to know that people will run out and buy records if you die in a hail of bullets (Tupac’s  posthumous works have been certified platinum at least 34 times) while dying from AIDS only gets you certified platinum twice.  The lesson here is that while it’s true that life ain’t nothin’ but bitches and money – it’s probably more advantageous to concentrate on the latter if you suspect that assassination might be a possibility and you’ve got kids to feed.

So anyway…back to the poop.  It’s really messed up.  I remember stuff like this happening to me from the time when I was the boy’s age until my mid-teens.  But see, I was the fat kid…this type of thing was expected from me.  I have to admit that it was really embarrassing at first.  I was never sure when I was going to have to tearfully admit to some unforgiving adult that it was my preteen excretory system that torpedoed their suburban plumbing and leveled it like a Kiefer Sutherland hotel room on a Tuesday night. Of course, this fear wasn’t enough to make me stop eating…I just conceived of new and creative defense mechanisms to help me deal with it.

For example, if I knew it was going to be a problem I would go over to my friend Luis’ house and clog that shit on purpose because his dad taught us how to play cards one summer and then took our money.  Fucker thought he was teaching me a lesson. I hid the plunger for good measure. I was a spiteful little prick…I guess some things never change.

So anyway, the boy is still pretty freaked out about the issue and would probably start bawling if he knew I was writing this and submitting it for public consumption. He’s got two things going for him though.  First, I wasted all of my writing time bullshitting about Ruthless Records. Second, most of you turned your browsers back  to porn when you realized that this was a music post. The bad news for the boy is that I’ll probably come back to him sometime next week.

If you’re still here…thanks for your kind words and thanks for coming back.  I promise to do my best to make your visits worthwhile…starting tomorrow…

Hey everyone…metten here.  This site has now officially been dormant for the better part of a year…and that’s unfortunate.  There is some stuff here that I am really proud of.   Jeff and I agreed at 0ne point after we closed up shop that it would be wrong just to leave this site unattended like the time we left gramma at the amtrak  station after realizing we couldn’t afford the old folks’ home anymore.  We were going to memorialize.  We were going to commemorate.  We were going to focus our energies elsewhere and then come back to mockable.  Well .5 out of 3 ain’t bad.

Jeff is off selling books, eating cold fish eggs and hanging out with Revlon models.  I remain here for you though…refreshed and ready to rock.  I propose we open the throttle on this bitch and see what this kickass friggin domain can do.  I propose this because I love you guys and I love mockable way too much to just leave it dangling in the wind like some sort of device manufactured for some important purpose that found itself repurposed so that it might dangle…in the wind…Shit…this isn’t starting out well.

Despite the cruel neglect,  Jeff and I really loved the premise around this site.  In fact, we guessed that if the writing was good enough that mockable’s popularity might someday come to rival the surf report.  Sadly, this did not come to pass.  However, we’ve still got a good lookin’ domain that continually averages a few dozen unique hits a day and a bunch of folks who were kind enough to continue to subscribe to the feed (Hi guys! **waves**).

I still to have a lot to say and I am perpetually passionate about mocking the living shit out of people.  I also have stuff that I’m trying to get published…so what do you guys say? The new mockable will probably be a little more blogish and a little less funny.  It will feature fiction, classic-style mocks and reports from my fucked up life.  If you guys write guest mocks, I’ll publish them (pursuant to the same rules).  As a wise man once said, it takes a village to write a really good dick joke…that village is still here.  Wanna use it?

Hello, this is Jeff typing, and I have an unfortunate announcement to make.  A few days ago Metten and I acknowledged the 350 lb mama’s boy in the room, and finally had a conversation about the future of this website.

And we’ve decided to take it down.

This is something that makes me sad, because it’s been a lot of fun.  We’ve been at it for roughly a year, and, at the risk of sounding self-congratulatory, there’s some really funny shit posted here.

But, for whatever reason (needless to say, I blame myself), Mockable never attracted a large audience.  At one point there were roughly 500 visitors per day, which ain’t too shabby, but it’s decreased over the past few months.  Not a good sign.

When I came up with the idea for the site, I envisioned it as a depository for comic bitching about the little everyday things that irritate us.  I thought we’d get to the point where Mockable pretty much ran on autopilot, as readers provided the content.

Indeed, we received a lot of great submissions, and I thank everyone who participated.  You guys are awesome!  But the large, vibrant community I imagined never gathered.  Again, I take the blame.

I want to thank everyone who visited the site on a regular basis (both of you), everybody who submitted a guest Mock, and especially Metten.

Over the years I’ve attempted to collaborate on various projects with people, and it hasn’t gone well.  There’s usually a disparity in passion, if you know what I mean.  One of us is more committed than the other, and it leads to hard feelings and the wheels quickly flying off the project.

But Metten has been committed throughout.  In fact, he’s largely responsible for keeping the site operational over the past few months.  At the end I was posting fiction one day a week.  WTF?

So, anyway.  Thanks for everything.  And you haven’t heard the last of the Metten/Kay collaborations.  This one didn’t work, but the next one will.  I’m convinced of it.

Metten might want to post a goodbye, as well.  Or maybe he’ll let this one speak for both us.  I don’t know.  But we’re going to leave the site as it is for a week or so, then remove everything but our farewells.  We agree that Mockable shouldn’t just sit here dormant and sad and flaccid.

So, if you’re interested, revisit the archives while you can.  And we’ll see you guys elsewhere, real soon.

Thank you!

Someone asked for a health update – and since I’m in a considerable amount of trouble at work and school, and can’t really be funny at the moment, I’ll try to quickly oblige.  The official diagnosis was sarcoidosis – which is a kinda rare disease that manifests itself predominantly in dark-skinned Mediterranean people and me.  Nobody knows what causes it and there are generally three ways to make it go away – do nothing, steroids or surgery.  My pulmonologist went with steroids.

I’ve been on them since last December and here are the three things I know about steriods:

1) I’ve gained 25 pounds – I can no longer put on my socks without holding my breath.  My pants are holding on for dear life and my body has taken on a new, decidedly undesirable shape.

2) My face is all puffy and I’m getting zits.  I look like an actor in a fat suit.  Think Ben Stiller in Dodgeball. What?  Shut up – that movie kicks ass.

3) Every day is a challenge to keep from murdering someone with a ball point pen. They walk into the office and say, “Good morning, sir.”  And for no discernible reason, my mental response is, “FUCK YOU, YOU STUPID PIECE OF SHIT!!  I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!”    The same goes for all of my other interactions in life.  If you guys knew what I did for a living, and all the stressful situations that come with the job – you’d be amazed that I’m not on death row right now.  Seriously,  I nearly slaughtered a youth soccer team for allowing an ugly little girl to play on their team.  Goddamn that little girl was ugly!  I’m getting used to it, and I’m getting better…but Jeebus!  This world would be a better place if most of you were dead.

So anyway, I take drugs and go in for a $2500 CAT scan every three months.  Then the doctor says nothing’s changed and I have to bite my lip to keep from killing him with my bare hands.  But hey – At least it’s not penis cancer, right?

Unless for some reason you guys really care, this will probably the last you hear on the subject.

Dear Dumbass,

Yesterday was St. Patrick’s day.  A magical day where everyone’s a little of the worst part of a stereotypical Irishman. Because some guy allegedly drove some snakes from some Island to somewhere else, we are given license to drink a German beverage and talk like a leprechaun until we vomit green bile on someone that isn’t our husband/wife. We get to stumble around and make inappropriate suggestions to members of the opposite sex and act like a total piece of shit without having to endure an intervention and (most of the time) nobody even calls the cops.  It’s truly a beautiful phenomenon.  The only better holidays are the Super Bowl and Cinco de Mayo because we get to be equally retarded (that’s right, I said it – one’s brain functions are in a state of retardation) without all the preachiness of the religious people who think this is an excellent “teachable moment”.  Yes, we understand the irony of wallowing in sin as we celebrate the deeds of a saint…or at least we did up until all but our essential brain functions shut off (by the way, it appears that one’s bladder isn’t really all that essential – I’ll clean that up in the morning…or maybe the afternoon) now shut the fuck up.

Quick tangent – Right now some of my best work is in the field of Facebook comments…check out this little gem I just posted – “So I’m hanging out drinking with Bignar (ed – Bignar is John Bignar, a guy I went to high school with), and he’s had 8 beers. I don’t know if you know this, but Bignar drives a Ford Escort. He finally decides that he wants to get a bunch of girls from the service (an escort, if you will) and drive her around in his car. So he’s driving around with escorts in his Escort. He finally has that 9th beer and he starts flailing and blindly throwing punches in every direction. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a carload of escorts fleeing an Escort. It was some fucking night…” So anyway…there’s more where that came from, so go be my facebook pal or whatever…

Everything about this most holy day is beautiful…except for one thing – people like you.  You stare at me with a condescending eye as I sway back and forth like Muhammad Ali on a boat.  You point at me as you lean over to your other soapboxing friend and say, “That’s why I hate St. Patrick’s day.  All the goddamned drunks.”  On behalf of all the slobbering neanderthal perverts like me – go fuck yourself.  Going out on St. Patrick’s day and complaining about the drunks is like going to a NASCAR race and complaining about all the cars.  To borrow heavily from Mikey of the Goonies:

The next time we see sky it’ll be over a different day – a day wrought with responsibilities and sadness. The next time you sit down, it’ll be at a desk in front of a computer rather than 5 feet from two hot girls who are ten years my junior, drunkenly grinding on one another as though they are attempting to start a survival fire through the power of groin friction. That middle-aged woman and her friend over there who keep glaring at our table, they want the bestest stuff for society.  And most of the time we’re willing to provide that for ‘em.    ‘Cause most of the time it’s her time. Her time, up there. Down here it’s our time. It’s our time down here in the public urination and debauchery.  Our time to kill the brain cells that remind us of the meaninglessness of existence.  Our time to vomit on the stage while singing “You’re So Vain” on the Karaoke machine.  It’s our time goddamnit so for once in your life would you shut up and let us be drunk and stupid for at least three nights a year?  We’ve earned it – and besides this is our biblical right as sanctioned by the catholic church. That’s all over the second we ride up Troy’s bucket.

Wow.  I’ve motivated myself.  Despite the fact that it’s 8:30 in the morning on the day after St. Patrick’s day, I think I might take the day off and go out drinking and get in a fight with someone smaller than me…and of the opposite sex.  So to wrap up, please leave us ridiculous drunks alone on our special day.  Maybe you could go down in the basement and watch a movie or something.  Or you could take to the internet and tell strangers and former classmates about how “stupid” the holiday is.  I’m sure that’d be much more fun than tongue kissing a stranger that smells like makeup and cigarettes and then yelling, “WOOOO!”  Whatever you do, just do us a favor and leave us to it, ’cause it’s our time.

Sincerely,

metten

“Wasn’t it just terrible what happened to Mary McCloskey?” said Edna St. James to Ann Williams early on Monday morning.

“Yes, just horrible,” answered Ann. “I’ve always been a little leery of those lift chairs.  They found her body all the way across the room!”

Edna St. James lived in apartment 311 in Golden Heights Senior Citizen’s Complex and she was the designated gardener in charge of the front flower beds. Ann Williams lived in 708 and was one of the resident “characters” — some would say a royal bitch. Mary McCloskey was the fallen resident of 212. She had looked out the window a lot.

“I hope that old biddy’s out of the flower bed when I get back, I need a new flower,” said Ann to herself as she walked toward city hall to pay her water bill. Ann was very fond of plants and flowers and simply loved a single fresh bud in a small vase on her kitchen table. She had been buying her flowers at the grocers, but the prices had grown intolerable so she had recently resorted to visiting the complex’s prized flower beds.

Edna was very protective of her flowers, almost laughably so. When she would find that one had been picked, she would become visibly angry. She posted signage on all of the bulletin boards and was very suspicious of anybody who commented on them. Most just stayed away for fear of being publicly persecuted. At Golden Heights, flowers were neither a sign of peace nor tranquility.

When Ann returned from her errands Edna was indeed gone.  So she boldly stepped one foot over the miniature plastic fence and snagged a healthy red bud from the black soil. She then winked at Rose McClannahan who sat giggling into her hand on a nearby bench.

Seven hours later an ambulance screamed to a halt in front of the complex. Mass rubber-necking immediately broke out.

“What happened?” said Rose.

“Why, I don’t know,” whispered Ann.

A large slab of ceiling tile had fallen on a tooth-sucking Jesse Winsome in the cafeteria, and he was pronounced dead by the paramedics. Out front a horror-stricken Edna St. James ran through the double doors and stared at the empty space in her flower bed. Ann and Rose watched and said nothing.

Ann found this behavior to be curious. Residents were dropping like flies and all Edna could think about was her damn flowers. She just couldn’t figure that woman out.

While sitting on the bus on Thursday Ann began to piece together some bizarre idea that linked the flower bed to the residents of the complex. She noted that on every day a resident had died, she had earlier picked a fresh flower.  She was momentarily horrified but then quickly dismissed it as the overactive imagination of an old woman.

When Ann returned to the complex that afternoon, she stopped at the flower bed and for the first time took a good long look at it. Edna was giving her suspicious glances as Ann counted to herself. The flowers were planted in perfect rows of fifteen. There were seven rows and there should have been 105 flowers, which was the exact number of units at Golden Heights. But seven flowers were missing. And seven tenants had recently died!

Ann could hardly carry herself to the elevator. Her cheapness and attempts at being cute had caused seven people to die. She went into her apartment and eventually slept a tortured sleep.

Ann had always been a morning person however, and when she awoke she was full of vigor and looking on the bright side.  She convinced herself that she hadn’t reached the age of seventy-three merely by accident. She thought of herself as being a very shrewd woman, and was preparing to fall back on that virtue one more time.

Ann despised living on the top floor and wasn’t about to continue to do so. She devised a plan that would eliminate Edna St. James and win her control of the flower bed. She would then cause one of the first floor apartments to become empty, which she would immediately seize as her own.  Ann was second in line to receive a ground floor apartment, behind Edna who would be dead by then.  It was perfect.

On Saturday morning Ann slid out of bed and proceeded down to the dew covered flowers.  She counted down three rows and over eleven, Edna’s apartment being number 311. She closed her eyes and pulled the flower from the ground. And four hours later Mrs. Upjohn in 511 slipped on an olive and emptied most of her blood supply under the stove. Ann had started counting from the wrong end. Damn!

But on Wednesday Edna St. James quit breathing when she guessed the exact amount of the showcase on The Price Is Right. Ann had completed phase one of her plan. Very soon waiting on an elevator would be a thing of the past for her.

On Friday Ann went to the funeral home and tried to decide on a color of drapes for her new apartment, while Edna’s relatives howled in grief. Then Ann’s friend Rose walked in, and placed a bouquet of familiar flowers on the midriff of the dead Edna St. James.

“Rose, where’d you get those flowers?” inquired Frantic Ann.

“You know she loved them so, I just felt it was appropriate,” answered Sincere Rose.

Ann rushed back to the complex to find flames shooting out of the seventh floor windows. She looked down in horror, and saw that the entire seventh row of the flower bed was missing.  Then a fireman’s helmet fell from the roof and put her to sleep forever.

The plant life was dead. We punched in at three and out at twelve and for eight hours performed as thoughtless robots operating on static habit alone. The only deviations we knew were our own personal, transient pains and discomforts. We would have welcomed real sickness but received the company newsletter instead. I still don’t feel guilty for what happened.

The raw idea of listening to other people’s thoughts is instantly intriguing and, when actually realized, downright exciting. However, the undeniable innocence of our first “study” only managed to remind us of just how immoral our actions actually were. But, perhaps because of our dulled state of mind, our fuckit glands took over.

We gained access to Sammy’s world through a back door that had been left unlocked for us.  A sympathetic night foreman, named Sahley, recognized our sorry situation and allowed us, without involvement, to use the new equipment for our own selfish entertainment. Immediately life at The Piedmont Surveillance Company switched gears.

Piedmont was testing a very expensive and controversial anti-robbery device that allowed businesses and institutions the privilege of learning a person’s intentions by reading his thoughts, and pumping them into a headset.

As a customer entered an establishment he passed through an invisible beam that instantly read and translated his thoughts into a hum. If a customer hummed like a refrigerator, he was OK. If he hummed like a barber, he was suspect. Piedmont hoped to keep barbers out of all convenience stores by the end of the decade.

Sahley and the Piedmont employees knew that the hum was only a gimmick to prevent an outcry of protest, that minds were being read plain and simple. Sahley also saw a morale problem and production decreasing during his shift. He was a desperate man.

So, Sahley allowed the master beam to be turned on an unsuspecting fifteen year old newspaper carrier in the suburbs on November lst. He allowed the boy’s secret thoughts to be broadcast over the public address system at Piedmont during the night. And it had the desired effect.

Workers rushed to the plant to find out hew Sammy had fared in his latest battle with his parents. They cheered his drunken optimism. They howled at his fear of females. And they grew silent when he was having “alone time.” Production increased and Sahley  received a way-to-go raise.

At night, after work, I would invariably think of Sammy. Not about the lustful fantasies he cooked up or the comical predicaments he always found himself in, but the fact that his privacy was being invaded to a degree that I had never dreamt possible. He was a young man who, sitting across from his buddies at McDonald’s, would think, “Jeez, what an asshole,” just like any normal person does from time to time.  Only Sammy’s passing thoughts were booming out of speakers in a cavernous warehouse across town, and eliciting cheers.

Sammy’s every daydream between the hours of three and twelve became subject to our voyeuristic considerations. But I cannot deny that the sound of the time-clock punching me in became more satisfying than the sound of it punching me out. I felt ashamed, almost un-American.

But a funny thing happened on the way to nirvana — we grew bored. After stamping around in Sammy’s world for three months the repetitiveness of his thoughts began to get tiring. The novelty had worn itself out and a predictable rhythm took its place. We tried turning the beam on others but it just wasn’t fun anymore. A retarded girl offered us temporary solace but after awhile it just became more of the same. I think it was Brenda who first danced.

The beam was on a college professor and the rhythm of her predictable thoughts became intoxicating. Brenda dropped what she was doing and began to dance. She twirled and dipped, and kicked and stepped. She pulled Roy from behind his machine and together they danced to the steady syncopation of human thought. Eventually we all danced, together, within the corrugated walls of The Piedmont Surveillance Company.

Sahley confined the dancing to the break area, but allowed us to continue to listen in the shop. Our lunch hours became visits to the set of some bizarre Un-American Bandstand, with Roy as the host. Workers gyrated to the wild thoughts brought on by anger, and slow danced to self-pity.  Strobes and spot lights were eventually installed and platforms were built for multilevel dancing.

Production rose dramatically, despite the fact that the employees were getting little rest. Morale was at an all-time high. Sahley’s status as a genius rose with Piedmont’s profits. And Roy became a full blown celebrity.

But once again we eventually grew bored. Gimmicks did little to stave off the inevitable fall from grace. Rate-a-thought became popular (“it’s got a good beat and I kind of agree with it”) a but it was too little too late. Again the retarded girl was tapped but there were few jazz fusion fans at The Piedmont Surveillance Company during that time. Roy then started mixing real music in with the more traditional fare, in a last ditch effort to save his show.

Workers began using their breaks in a more conventional manner. They still listened, but few danced. And Roy noticed that they responded better to the records than to the “borrowed” thoughts, so he began playing more records.

Eventually we just bought a radio.

Although he was born years before the Herman comic strip appeared, Herman was appropriately named. With a head like a meat bell and a surgically-attached cigarette butt on his bottom lip, Herman could’ve stepped right off the funny pages. He was a human grotesquerie, a disgrace to the tradition of cell division. And it was said that he could be smelled by phone.

Herman had few friends in this world and except for “the shiny fellows” that camped on his scalp, he had no pets. He lived alone in a house that resembled a chemical explosion with a screen door. It overlooked the town on what was once called Pleasantview Hill, but was now known as that goddamn dump.

Because of his hygiene philosophies (“odors are songs for the nose, and I am a jukebox”) Herman led a very lonesome life. He spent the bulk of his days making fishing lures with his rectal hair, and staring at pictures of Scott Baio and Hubert Humphrey, the only two he owned. He missed his friends, who didn’t come around anymore. And he missed his beloved wife Dorothy, who had died years earlier. Herman cried every day, and his tears smelled like cabbage.

Approximately once every three or four months, when the loneliness grew unbearable, Herman would walk out his back door and calmly set fire to his tool shed. Then he’d return to his house and begin preparing for visitors. He’d cut a big hunk of cheese and fill a bowl with something crunchy, usually saltines or pudding. And when he was sure that the shed wasn’t going to go out, he’d call the fire department.  Then he’d lean back and wait for his company to arrive.

The fire department and most of the town knew of this rather questionable practice and while they didn’t exactly approve, they didn’t take steps to stop it from continuing either.  Most had a deep-seated pity for Ol’ Herman and could tolerate his seemingly harmless actions.  Besides, by allowing him to pull such stunts, it erased some of the guilt they felt for letting him suffer up on that hill all alone. They also believed that firemen were the only people qualified to enter his house.

The fire fighters would put out the blaze in the tool shed and then spend a couple of hours chatting with Herman, careful not to let on that they knew his secret. .Then they would return to town and reflect on what they had seen. They marveled at the multi-colored fungus that crept out of Herman’s dress shoes. And they wondered how much time was invested in those huge whole-grain boogers he had plugged in.  And they tried and tried to describe the smell.

The new mayor of the town happened to be passing through the room when one of these discussions was taking place, and he got an idea. The senior citizen’s home was scheduled to open, and if he was able to lure Herman out of that goddamn dump and into an apartment, the town would praise him.  Herman’s rather conspicuous piece of land could be cleaned up and, once in the home, Herman would never be lonely again. Everybody wins! The mayor thought himself a genius.

He put on his best persuadin’ suit and drove up Pleasantview Hill to see Herman the next morning. Of course Herman was ecstatic to have another visitor so soon. He invited the mayor in and they sat down on a moist sofa. Herman offered his guest a slice of milk, which was politely refused. The mayor immediately turned the conversation to the matter at hand.

He had plotted a strategy as to how he would present the proposal, not wanting to spook Herman before the idea could be considered. He began gingerly, by asking him if he’d ever lived anywhere else, and Herman said no. The mayor asked him, as if addressing a child, if he would ever consider moving to another location, and Herman said yeah. The mayor asked him carefully if he’d ever consider moving to a place where all the meals were prepared for him, there were plenty of people around, and activities were planned every day.

Herman said he thought he knew what the mayor was getting at and, as a matter of fact, had been considering such an arrangement for some time now. The mayor was beaming as Herman reached into the drawer of his end table and pulled out a small handgun and calmly shot the mayor in the neck. Then he began preparing for his company to arrive, to take him to his new home.