WHY I LEFT THE DINNER TABLE AT AUNT TERRI'S THANKSGIVING

Mom,

 you asked why I left the table unexpectedly at Aunt Terri's '05 Thanksgiving dinner. Since Terri is your sister -- and your honor was at stake -- I feel you deserve an explanation more than anyone else.

 To be honest, for the longest time I couldn't remember why I left to use the bathroom that Thursday (after all, you didn't bring it up for nearly two years). While walking your Jaclyn last January, I remembered: I was crying about going bald and shit myself.    As the walk ended, a poem came to me. It was dictated to Charles who graciously transcribed it for me:

Boo hoo hoo
Your coiffure is spoiled
So let's play Caligula
I'll bring the petrolatum

 You'll be happy to hear that the poem won a number of awards and made me rich. Terri and I have since made-up and even got together for flutes of mineral water.

 If you ever want to see me again, bring $1,000,000,000 to the old warehouse with the wishing well out front on October 30. You're going to have to wish the whole thing away for a chance encounter at the very least, you old asshole.


 Signed,

 Tod(d).

I GREW UP ON THE REAL PEPPERIDGE FARM

The staff made excellent waffles. Totally bloodsugarsexmagik.

CROMO: PERSIGUE A SOBREVIVIENTES

 Samuel tore the tire iron from below the driver's seat. The left leg of his bluejeans had been ripped wide. Below the knee, the blue fabric turned black from the wound. The jeans could not be mended and the leg would need to be severed, but he was in rapture.

 "I'll give you the motherfucking of your life," he screamed. "You sweet bitch!"

 Samuel pounded the tire iron into his palm. Ten feet away, Clinique held a chrome toaster at neck level, every muscle of her frame taut with violent anticipation. The straps of her black gown had fallen to her arms and pulled; a red line will appear across each bicep by morning.

 "Cunt. Cuntflap! Puny." He cursed her.

 "You don't have a schlong, Sam," she said. "You have a schlort!"

 He cursed her.

 "You oaf! You boar of a man!" Clinique howled like a devil dog and gleaked a sour brown stream at Samuel. He was now holding himself upright with one hand on his sweet Jag. He dropped the tire iron and grimaced as he wiped the gleak from his reddened cheek.

 "I'm not a man, Clinique."

 "No, you're not," she whispered. "You're worse." She lowered the toaster. "I hope you hated toast," she rasped. Raising her gown to her hips, she took a big ol' turd on the toaster. "You never gave me your LSD hook-up!"

"WHO WANTS TO ROLL IN THAT PATCH WITH ME?"

 "Rubbing toes with Fred Savage, sexy encounters with other celebrities."

 "Whistling at all the attractive ladies. 'Hey, honey.' I know all the tricks."

 "I fear a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle stealing my beer!"

 "I love making friends like I love making money. It's like, 'It's the eighties again,' baby!"

 "My girlfriend says I look like Richard Gere if he were a Green Beret."

 "...that's why Japanime did so many... brilliant... [noise] uh...."

 "Yeah, I help my sister wash her dishes. Sometimes. AND FUCK YOU IF THAT MAKES YOU THINK I'M WEIRD!"

 "Yeah, I sold my cat for dope. AND ---- YOU IF THAT MAKES YOU THINK I'M WEIRD!"

 "Damn! Damn, man! ...Was that the sacrifice? [noise] Cuz, dog...."

 "I put my rubber shoes on and get kind of sloppy!"

TALES OF THE TAILS

 Sammy's knee cracked and shifted on the rock. He tripped on a vine near the edge of the ravine and now lay trapped before the creature. Tony turned around to see his friend shriek. And then cry.

 "Tony--please! PLEASE!!" Tony raced over. "Tony...rub a Whatchamacallit on the wound.... There's one in my snack pack!"

 Searching through Sammy's red-and-yellow fannybag, he knew something was wrong. He'd passed out the night before, drunk on Thunderbird and Buck Bunny MD 20/20. Before his lids shut, he'd set the Whatchamacallit on a Foreman Grill under his bed. He didn't remember shutting the grill off. He didn't remember shutting the grill off!

 "Tony, it's in my... Wait a -- wait...!" His eyes widened and he took a deep breath. "...Tony--I found the Whatchamacallit on a Foreman Grill under your bed last night!" His eyes were now crying again. "I hope it wasn't mine, Tony! I hope it wasn't my WHATCHAMACALLIT!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHH!"

 "I love warm choc-- SAMMY!!!!," yelled Tony!

 And then the creature ate Sammy.

TEENAGE BAD AXE 1991

 On his death bed, Jeff's granddad revealed that he had stashed money away under a floorboard. The money was in a back room of the house that Jeff had played in many times as a child. Jeff called me over. "Bring your tools," he said. "I don't know which board it's under. We may have to rip up the whole fucking floor."

 "War on the floor," I said.

 Upon entry, we noticed a 4" x 4" red 'X' painted on a board in the center of the room. "I didn't notice that before." We stuck seven pencils between the crack of the 'X' board and the one next to it and hammered at them until the board came up. Undearneath, we found the loot his granddad stashed: twelve very old dollars.

 "Twelve bucks!," said Jeff. "We're 'woman rich!'"

 "Dood, we could buy anything we want!" A string of saliva greased out of my mouth. "A cassingle! Hostess pies. Magic (tm) cards!"

 "You're right," he said. "Anything we want...." Jeff fanned and slapped his face with the bills. "I've got a better idea.
We put the cash in one of the shoes my granddad died in and hide it. In two years, $12 could multiply to $300 in that shoe. We could buy a Nintendo then. Imagine the advancements in Nintedo technology the next two years will bring."

 "Fucking pagan!," I said.

 Later, we dug up the body of Jeff's granddad. I cried into the night:

 "You're buying us a Nintendo, old man!"

ITEMS FOR A NEW GAME

A child age 5-9, an adult diaper, and a syringe.

THANKS, CRAFTY LADIES!

 Thank you God, for the resurgence in clothes making and design by just about every gal on the block. Designing clothes is responsible for bringing so much fun to people! Wow. I can count on my fingers as well as my friends' fingers all the clothing designers that are out there--and it still wouldn't be enough fingers. I just keeping running to girls wearing funky shirts and then asking my friends to hold their fingers up for counting. Thank you Women, for getting back into knitting and all that. Now if you could only do the same with cooking!

 Sadly, I'm almost completely unable to design clothes myself. It seems as though I've got nine thumbs and half a pinky finger when it comes to sewing. That doesn't stop me from pulling a bunch of fabric scraps out of a shoe box under my bed and laying them over my naked body. Just imagine what it might look like were I able to sew string or whatever it is through them into a snappy pattern. It's at that drunken moment that I can close my eyes and cry to the room, "I design clothes!" After that, I put the scraps back into their box and just cry to the room.

17 JUNE 2001

 "Take my photo." Steve sat on a bucket and rolled up his right sleeve. I was beginning to get used to the Polaroid. He lit a cigarette and put his arm up, flexing his small bicep like Charles Atlas. I loved his confidence. Not that I wasn't confident; neither of us gave a shit about what anyone else thought. But, I liked that I had a friend who was as equally attractive or unattractive as I.

 "No, wait," he said. He walked to the portable turntable we'd set up on the roof that morning. "Let me turn the record over." This particular record came out 13 years before I was born. My parents owned a copy but I'd never taken the time to listen to it until now. It was great. I snapped off a polaroid as Steve dropped the needle.

 "Dood--"

 "No, it'll be good. Sit down anyway." He sat down and rolled up his sleeve again. "This way you've been smoking the cigarette for a minute and it looks more legit." He grimaced and I took the photo.

 "Has it hit you yet?," he asked.

 And then it hit me.

I AM A FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPHER

Well, not famous exactly. My flickr account is watched by over 150 people. By today's standards, I may as well be famous. I'd love to share the address with you but the photos I've taken are of nude people. And if others were to find out that I photograph more others in the nude then the others might find out who the, uh, "more others" are and that would be trouble for both me and my subjects. Also, unlike other modern photographers and flickr enthusiasts, I certainly will not be taking photos of my "pals" in the pub, drinking Guinness and looking dopey. This is my artist manifesto!