Jamie Iredell's Blog, page 8

Mothersscream, “Clean up!” upstairs—still.

Mothersscream, “Clean up!” upstairs—still.

Mountain LionThe mountain lion can be found on city stree...

Mountain LionThe mountain lion can be found on city streets in thedark early morning of weekend days. The cabs willhave nearly ferried him home when a club sandwich callsout. That is, the drunken pit of the mountain lion’s guttalks the language of club sandwiches.
Afterwards, on his walk from the diner, Jay Top stepsa block, unwittingly, with the mountain lion, his armcathetered for diabetes, or some other story. Jay Top saysto the mountain lion, “I know you, don’t I?”
Canines get bared, which are exactly like Jay Top’s, exceptthat the mountain lion’s are in his mouth.
When Jay Top’s palm finds the mountain lion’s chest,stopping him, he says, “Now let’s have your money.”Next comes a smile. “You don’t really want that,” says themountain lion.
Down Peachtree the headlights are always twin mammaleyes floating in the nebulous skyscraper glow. Jay Top’sknife glints across the asphalt, then the white concretedsidewalk.
A growl like the club sandwich hadn’t been enoughgrowls out. The mountain lion is about the size of anadult mountain lion. He hisses and spits as he rips off hist-shirt.

mystery story, theIn the mystery story, we know that some...

mystery story, theIn the mystery story, we know that some dude is alwaysthe killer. The woman’s body is found in the livingroom. The clues that led the hero to these discoveriesare the following: a Bowie knife; the blood smearing theblade; a single hair, curling like a worm, deposited onthe woman’s backside; the tablespoon of semen. The realmystery was our detective going home where his wife’sarms flapped like immensely thick twin flags while shestirred the ground beef in the frying pan. His daughterin her bedroom, kicking up her heels while telephoningher girlfriend, a freckled girl named Anna. The inevitablesound of the daughter’s water pick for the bits of nightlymeat she squirted from her braces. The uneasy sense thatwhat these people needed was a murder mystery, thatnothing about their lives is safe, that at any moment, thepine in their front yard might wrench from the earth,igniting in the subsequent electrical fire, that the pinefalls to crush them, that their flesh will burn away.

Ne’er do wellThe ne’er do well can be found trouncing the...

Ne’er do wellThe ne’er do well can be found trouncing the boulevardsof cities near architecturally unsound buildings thatare not quite but almost influenced by the Spanish, andthat house primarily the Blind (see Blind pg. 14). Ne’er dowells sport trousers hiked to chin height, a style that ne’erdo wells say to one another, is “bully.” Should you upset thene’er do well in the midst of his phonograph’s renditionof Odeon’s Nutcracker with your rambunctious whippersnapper’srap, the ne’er do well shakes a balled fist yourway, exclaiming “Why I oughtta!” To this the reply—tothe ne’er do well in his natural habitat—is “Yeah, you andwhat army?” This has been classified as the ne’er do well’scall and response. This will be what the ne’er do well willcall a fine song and dance. Supposing, though, that you’rewrong about your judgments, the ne’er do well will inquirewhat the repercussions might be should the ne’er do wellcall you a lunkhead. You will suppose that one of these daysit’s gonna be a smack to the moon. The lunkheaded ne’erdo well will tell you that this is horseradish, and you willsay, no, no, ne’er do well, even on the moon ne’er do wellscannot breathe any kind of atmosphere. Even on the moon,ne’er do well, all anyone sees is a dim vision of the Earth.The ne’er do well will ask you what you got to say about it.The correct response at this moment is to have your fistsorbit each other while you mutter, “I’ll say plenty.”

New York CitiansThis moniker is meant to denote the inhab...

New York CitiansThis moniker is meant to denote the inhabitants ofNorth American’s most populous metropolis fromthe citizens of the second most peopled state of thosebe-tagged “United of America.” For example, the oftcited“New Yorker” means nothing when attempting todifferentiate between a human from Brooklyn and onefrom New Greece. And so, an effort to describe thosemembers of the above entry is hereby attempted: AllNew York Citians, when one visits their environment,sound like this:
No dime nada de la coc—ya miter fuc—shup—man fuckHitler—yo dude I don’t think—hey what’s yo—beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep—I wanna wha—I wanna wha—I wanna shoe—I’ll takeyour goddamn—you can’t park—no—no—no—wedon’t have that—we’re out of tha—we don’t have
. . . This is insufferable and tiring. It’s an amazing feat oflogistics that anything ever gets done in New York City,since all the humans must be terribly underslept.

Note on the compilersThe compilers of The Book of Freaks ...

Note on the compilersThe compilers of The Book of Freaks live inAtlanta, Georgia. The compilers were born on thewest coast of North America, in California, near SanFrancisco, and thus retain some of the characteristics ofthe San Franciscan. As a matter of ethos, the compilersare currently professors of composition, literature, andcreative writing. They are the authors of a previousvolume, Prose. Poems. a Novel., published in 2009 byOrange Alert Press. Their prose and poetry has appearedin literary magazines such as The Chattahoochee Review,The Literary Review, and Copper Nickel, among others.It should be noted that beginning in the fourth grade,and carrying on into high school, the compilers sufferedfrom a debilitating disease called Cholesteatoma, a tumorthat eats away at the ossicles of the middle ear, and thatcan eventually eat away the layer of skull separating theear from the brain, thus exposing the brain to potentialinfection. The compilers are consequently sufficientlydeaf, which has been a nuisance to their wife. Said wifeof the compilers works as a lawyer, an occupation forwhich clarity has always been an issue. However, the wiferemains loving, for which the compilers are eternallygrateful. Information about the compilers can be foundat jamieiredell.blogspot.com.

o: the world: of oO is an international imperial force th...

o: the world: of oO is an international imperial force that since 1986has spread so that today the sun never sets uponit. The driving propaganda of this terrorist entity hasbeen through popular media such as a televised religiousrite, a book club, and a magazine, O. It is noted thatthe breakfast cereal Cheerios is also a cleverly disguisedmessage propagated by O. O, for the life of the compilersof this volume, we strive to forget the letter O. However,O has carved a future ripe with Os. At the University ofO young women fresh from family rooms piped full ofthe sonorous voice of O major in seismographicotology:the analysis of visual representations of O impact onplate tectonics. These women will go on to write theseson the restorative qualities of O to victims of Rwandangenocide or children abandoned to the state. Later, they’lltake on an editorship at O—possibly O director—andtally the number of times O appears on the cover of O:13,872,653. By now we have abandoned everythingbut O. One cannot ignore the fact the even the planet,when spied from the surface of our distant moon, is animmense and blue hole-less O. We bow low to O and singO, O, O. Men, like your humble compilers, will be O sosensitive—never avoiding the opportunity for a commenton how good every wife looks in her jeans, never slippingan accidental Lean Cuisine into the grocery cart full offrozen pozole, always renewing her subscriptions, theDVR always programmed to record every afternoon,some specified Standard Time.

OLD BACK , THISonce hefted cinderblocks.

OLD BACK , THISonce hefted cinderblocks.

People named Spencer and their wivesThe Spencers almost a...

People named Spencer and their wives
The Spencers almost always wear fishing caps and,appended to those fishing caps, buttons proclaimingthe Spencer’s political views, which are as complex as “Idislike the idea of collectivism,” or “perhaps a gun couldsolve the immediate issue between us.” The caps andthe buttons and the views upon said buttons are notnearly as offensive as these Spencers’ wives. Such wivesare continually out of breath, exasperated by the factthat most other humans do not agree with and so upsetthese wives’ delicate sensibilities. Example: a Spencer’swife believes that one must always slice an orange, thatstripping away the rind for later zesting is useless anda time-suck and energy waster. She believes one mightsimply reduce the juice of the store-bought orange variety,thus gaining the intensely focused and desired orangeflavor. Even discussing the possibilities of a rindlessorange, the wedges peeled away and eaten whole, willmake a Spencer’s wife squirm in her airline seat, shouldshe be a passenger directly in front of others holding sucha discussion pertaining to peeled oranges. Spencers’ wiveshave an irresistible urge to relate to everyone the wrongs oftheir point of view. This inevitably results in the majorityof humans telling a Spencer’s wife that she can go fuckherself, thus causing the ubiquitous hypertension amongthe wives of people named Spencer. The Spencers, duringall of this, remain gloriously ignorant of their wives’peculiar temperament and condition, and are equallyuninformed about everything else on Earth. Example:Spencers have a ludicrous sense of history. For Spencers,the universe formed in the wake of General Sherman’smarch northward to Alaska, burning a hell on his way tothe North Pole, capturing that stronghold for PresidentUlysses S. Grant. Due to this and other notions, whenone meets another named Spencer, one sees that thesehumans perpetually stand mouth agape, expectant,asking for yet another Coca Cola, because one more CocaCola is all you have to bring them and then your day isfinished. Spencers have been the cause of approximatelysixty-two percent of all known human wars.

People Who Walk on Their Hands, TheThese humans all have ...

People Who Walk on Their Hands, The
These humans all have at least one callus. Not allof their calluses live on their hands. Some havesprouted upon their elbows, or suburbed the tips of theirthumbs. Some say these calluses rubbed to life insidetheir heads—the heads of the people who walk on theirhands. These people—those who walk on their hands—tell us the history of us, for we were all once also peoplewho walked on our hands. If you were to peer closely atthe aforementioned calluses—to do this, you’d need amicroscope—you would find other, tiny people who alsowalk on their hands, who themselves have tiny calluses.You could say that all these hand-walking people areanalogous to you and me. Either way, we are all of us verytired.