skit #18: a highly accessible diddy

His song was immensely popular in its heyday. Night and day, all the convertibles and cafes unendingly carried the melody like assembly-line workers assembling casing pre-cut sausage. Subtly dissonant enough for the snobs yet rewardingly whistleable enough for the philistines, frosted with bittersweet lyrics that in flavors from pensive to trite. The charts indicated it as a highly accessible diddy, selling a quazillion copies.

But when she listens to it, she remembers how his mouth moves instead of just the words he once muttered to a microphone. She remembers their conversations, their concessions, their confidences. Between his late night guest appearances and music videos and half-time shows, she saw all the ways his two-dimensional mouth can flatly spew even flatter sentiments.

On the teleprompter, his lyrics only iterated personal events and factoids. She knew he left gaps between verses and words and breath. He now had a nineteen-piece band and a new-found focus on instrumental interchanges, which let him sing so very sparsely. He was more a face than a voice at this point in his career.

She thought how his words would never erode. And she thought how this song is perforated with these holes. And how perhaps he always had this hole for a mouth. And she thought of how his mum ways stung worse than his worst words.

The things she wanted to hear and weren't said are what hurt. She wanted to raze the whole song, leaving the meaning and silence mixed as homogenous rubble. But she knew you can't destroy a song. The song would play on radio stations for generations to come, graduating through the annals of genres: Experimental, Post, Modern, Classic, Soft, Easy, Traditional, Oldies.

skit #17: OTTO

The window washer assumed his throne, dangling beside his sullied doppelganger: a bullhide riveted harness, hundreds of meters high, halfway down the 40 Wall Street building, not a voice to be heard. He hung like a denim angel. An embroidered patch spelling "OTTO" was ironed on to his and his reflection's coveralls.

Otto shaved across the windowface with his squeegee, erasing the patina of city grime -- the clotted residue of cloacal precipitation and palpable misanthropy and combustion engines. Otto cleaned off all the filth. The man with the "OTTO" patch looked nicely polished, so he reasoned the window must too.

The windows themselves aren't interesting much at all. Hundred fifty eight panes. But it's just glass, invisible, you know. You got all these people on the inside looking out. And then on the outside you got this wild world, which is where all the people inside think they are. They're looking out all the time, wishing they was there.

But they got me up here, cleaning off all the slop from that there wild world they're so infatuated with. Once a week. But they sure as hell don't recognize good ol' Otto down in the foyer. I can see them in there under that fluorescent light, all incubating and the like. I recognize each of my little flightless chickadees, watching outwards all starry-eyed, every last one.

Otto slackened his line and sunk one floor down. Inside, the broker behind the desk had been staring outside instead of at his cryptic numbers. From his leather glove Otto extracted his impish hand. In capital letters, his fingertip smudged the letters "OTTO". The stock broker behind the desk became the broker in front of the desk. He smudged in kind with a reciprocal "OTTO".

Inside-Otto unhinged the window, defenestrating outside-Otto's reflection far far far to the pavement below -- quite opaque, quite terminal. Inside-Otto saddled his spoils from the coup, the reflection's harness. Outside-Otto grew fond of his last reflection, but they tend to be disposable. Many vie for the few seats outside. The two Ottos rappelled in reverse, defying the gravity that bound inside-Otto to his desk.

skit #16: all mesmerized like the devil

So the Arkwright fellers. No no no. Over there past the hills. They have a whole lotta cotton fer pickin. Now they cant a fford one a them cotton engines yet and re still running off a the dexterity of the littluns nimble fingers. You know, puttem to work when they re still ripe on mommas vine.

Then all those bales on top a that hill, they re gonna go over aways to the Millassy factry. Little south of the Arkwrights. They ll get all a that cotton turned in a colors you never dreamed of. All wound and spooled and yellers and pinks. And just yesserday those cottons warnt good fer nothing like a lamb without chops. I magine!

So then all these strings and whathaveyou get put on a big grid and the older wimmin get the looms going and they spin it up and you get yerself a nice rug or a tablecloth or maybe a shirt fer yer misses if shes keepin her end a the social contract. The old ladies dont mind if they re all loomin fer food or fer their family or whatever. Theyd do it in their sleep with no motivation this way or that.

Sometimes when I go round there I get all mesmerized like the devil witch doctor from the Fairbank circus, eyes glazed and seein things maybe we arent meant to see. Or maybe things everyone is meant to see but dont get so many opportunities. But these spools are turnin and the thread is dancin and colorful and the wimmins fingers is threshin fast like cattails in summatime.

And I go watchin these colors dance for hours and sometimes think how I think that could be enough for jussa bout anyone, hankys or no hankys. Just the colors and dancin. And I get to thinkin my hanky, and the sweat its wiped up in these factrys and out on those fields, and the color of my dirty face. And I wonder how a little bitta cotton can get pulled so long and thin for the sake of an amenity.

So the four a us sat there for a long ol time and I just dint see what he was talkin bout. An Gawd bless it if it warnt the hottest day all summer. And I dint dare reach fer my hanky even if I dint see what in the Lords name he was off bout. Jussa buncha string.

skit #15: augury had changed

Tiresias slept in until 10:14am, just like he knew she would. He navigated blindly to the bathroom to shave her morning stubble and insert fresh tampon. The plastic applicator laid (as the gods would consider it a gift of life) auspiciously atop a nest of kleenex and pubic hair in the wastebasket. He grimaced at the heavens, just like she knew he would.

One lifetime, what he began with; times seven lifetimes, trampling two amorous snakes outside Athens; minus ninety years, beheading Louis the XVI's pug; divided by three lifetimes, conscripting a golden ass for hard labor during the 1849 Gold Rush; times two lifetimes, feeding the bicycle-riding bear at the Leningrad circus; plus twenty-seven years, buying the singing trout in the bric-a-brac aisle; and so on.

His lifetimes fluctuated wildly beyond her accurate count: a divination from terrible lizard bones, plus one-hundred twenty years; nurtured emerald plants without water or sun or soil, times two lifetimes; a televised words from horse who spoke as a man, divided by twelve lifetimes. Not just his lifetimes, but her gender, too. He, she, he, she, he -- every time a god suspected hubris.

He had the receipts worked out somewhere in her hovel, mostly chickenscratch and erasure skids. All he knew were things were getting worse. Her gut told him she was going to be alive for a long, long time.

Augury had changed. He listened for caws or quacks as he flipped blindly through the more fruitful programming: nature, pet care, historical aviation, sometimes documentaries, sometimes cartoons. She just needed any tweet that sounded like a word from the heavens. Somewhere there hid a prophecy to restore him to the simple and singular lifetime she always wanted.

skit #14: his pouty lips they could not read

KCPX On-The-Minute News televised live footage of a fireman climbing a ladder. It stretched above to some indefinite zenith, revealing no reference how high he'd ascended. Up and up, the camera panned. The ladder's height reached perilous heights seen only in amusement parks. Up and up, to the top of a flaming building, fuming like a matchstick to the landlubbers below. KCPX News-Chopper-3 blades chopped louder than the inferno, louder than his boots marching rung-over-rung, louder than his ingenuous voice, louder than his sweat spattering on the cement sidewalk many floors below. The KCPX news van broadcasted snippets of Firefighter Brandon Bronson's walkie-talkie transmission:

... we got a 10-77 ...
... stairwell engulfed with flames ...
... ladder cause they're stuck ...
... everyone else evacuated ...
... reports received indicate a middle-age woman with child on the ninth floor ...
... no problems resuscitating and evacuating ...

The camera held poor focus on the hero's face, disappointing the concupiscent housewife demographic -- KCPX's most faithful segment in the local broadcast market. Firefighter Brandon Bronson climbed up and up, now just a point on a line. Viewers knew nothing of his brawny muscles they could not adore, his candid words they could not hear, and his pouty lips they could not read.

The cut button was pressed occasionally:

I dunno, Denton. I wish I could pick my own color suit, something red like in the cartoons. And something less itchy, maybe cashmere underoos. My Ma says I look great in those longjohns my Auntie got me. Is that wh-- hey, shut up.

Hang on, Denton.

Man, Denton, yer missing out. This is the life. Two bedrooms, full-range gas stove. The countertop looks like new granite. Very tasteful. She says she pays like $500 a month. And she is gorgeous. Yow, she probably set this ol' shack on fire. You know, because she's so h-- oh, you already got it? The kid is cute too, he's got this whole Dennis the Menace thing going.

One sec, Dent.

Ma'am? Are you alright? Well -- no, ma'am. Well, I had to perform CPR. Sorry about the bra, ma'am. Why, yes, firefighting does keep me in good shape. Here, just wrap your arms around my waist. Yeah, tighter. I can take care of your son, too. Little scamp. Joey, huh?

Say, ma'am -- oh? Say, Irene, do you ever get lonely on the 81st floor all by yourself? At the top of the ladder, I felt so far away from everyone else. It doesn't matter who's rescuing who, sometimes I just need to feel close to someone to feel safe.

Oh, I just thought that -- husband? Yeah, I know there's a fire and everything, it's just that, you know, we were getting to know each other. I-- sorry, Irene. Sorry, ma'am.

An awkard silence ensued for eighty-one floors, nine-hundred-odd rungs, Denton feeling lonely all the while.

skit #13: I can't wait

His hard-earned money bought a house which did not suit his traditionally-rustic-wood-and-shingles neighborhood. He could finally afford everything his visions dictated. In a trance, he drafted blueprints verifying mathematical, architectural and archaeological integrity. Cairo-quarried limestone, equilateral sides, an immense base leaving no space for any chance of a yard or jacuzzi, monolithic. It was built in six hundred and twenty-four days.

He settled in cozily, never marrying or fathering, yet content. After many years, his latent visions awoke and he knew his existence confined to Earth came time to end. He watered his houseplants, deposited his outbound mail, and removed his business casual attire and his underwear. He composed explicit instructions for Rosetta in rudimentary Spanish.

The bathroom contained no evils, only whiteness: the tiles hid no intersticed grout, all pubic hair and other human impurities had been swept, and essence oils purified the smell of foul deeds done. Rosetta was a meticulous keeper of cleanliness. He made note that she be rewarded for her akh-deeds. He entered the sarcophagus, an clawfoot porcelein tub.

Finally. I'm done with all this. These visions are all promise, promise, promise. And now it's time to collect. Just me with all the other pharaohs. Limousines, champagne, harems. No more 9-to-5. I can't wait.

The pill dissolved in the milk, which he and his pussycat drank. The cat's eyes closed first, then the man's.

Though garbled by his poor command of Spanish and jittery manuscript, Rosetta eventually deciphered his macabre instructions: Eliminar todo, pero el corazón. She received Jesus' forgiveness before earning her daily wage. Rosetta broke the bone behind his nose to excavate his cranial marmalade. She sealed the stomach, intestines, liver, and lungs in canopic tupperware and stowed it behind the mayonnaise and to the left of the kosher deli pickles. All other organs were eviscerated and discarded -- except, as instructed, his heart. She piled all his material things on the tile floor, painted him with varnish, and swaddled bedsheets about his still form. Then Rosetta collected her paycheck and left his home for the last time.

His death received a blurb in the Auburn Post obituaries. Respect for the dead and editorial restraint merely insinuated his eccentricity was in fact lunacy. The Auburn Post hoped 'he found the peace he searched so frantically for'. Ra brought him a copy of the newspaper to the Afterlife and they both had a good chuckle.

I'm glad Ra suggested I bring my cat. The pharaohs are alright, they don't talk much. Especially Djedefra. They're stuck with that sort of stoicism only omnipotence brings. Maybe it's the whole language barrier thing. The weather's always balmy, so we're making the same platitudinous conversation every day. Every day for all eternity. But they're always gabbing with Ra, though -- He's the only One worth talking to. But the rest of it gets boring: splashing in the Celestial Nile, watching the crops grow higher and higher, unending bliss.

skit #12: two halves of a whole

A&J's Freezer Co. double-parks and and underpaid day laborer unlatches the rear handle. The door squeals as it retracts, cleaving a two-foot slit. Cloven hooves tumble out the aperture like forbidden roses through a picket fence. A deck of laterally-split pigs is stacked high into the truck's cargo hold until the dim dawn light shows no more.

The laborer slides two half-pigs out of the cargo hold onto the asphalt. There are still too many curly tails and snouts to notice a difference in the scrum. 'Hup!' helps him schlep the half-pigs over his shoulders, wet-side-out. Since the skin has no blood, only that which drips around the division stains his bleach-white butcher's smock, resulting in two crimson auras circumscribing two porcine snow angels.

The two pigsty lovers had rubbed loins briefly before the slaughterhouse. They could die happy. Now they lay side-by-side, two halves of a whole, on butcher hooks.

A shapeless man and shapeless woman are seated perfunctorily at Chez Panisse. The waiter suggests the pork loin, deeming it suitable for their evidently blue collar palates, hoping to earn a tip exceeding the guests' budget. The shapeless man laughs convincingly at her plagiarized jokes which neither of them understand. They drink wine and delight each other, symbiotically seducing each other.

The two suburban lovers had rubbed loins briefly before the economic collapse. They could die happy. Now they lay side-by-side, two halves of a whole, on 1200 thread count Egyptian linens.

Before Apocalypse comes, desperation rules the land. Financial instability induces governmental collapse. Agile revolutionary factions stage a coup here, a coup there; But, even the iron-fistedest tyrannies erode. Juntas, martial law, pogroms, futile pandemic quarantines, and purposeless labor camps seem trivial alongside global crop failures. First soup lines, then bread lines, then grain lines, then no lines. Starvation breeds reports of kidnappings, cannibalism.

The farmer always picks the feistiest or brightest ones first, so as to thwart chances of an insurrection. The man and woman were towards the middle of the list. The farmer takes a chomp out of her thigh and his shoulder. 'Food shortage, my ass.' he belches. He ambles to the captives' pen to add the half-eaten carcasses to the slop.

The livestock lovers had rubbed loins briefly before the harvest. They could die happy. Now they lay side-by-side, two halves of a whole, in the humansty trough.