A story told and a sketch of Vincent Price smiles and a laugh from a horse's mouth, doing a bit.

Daddy issues for everybody. Plenty of room for histrionics. Everyone was doing a stand-up job, but blowing the punchline. Even though you said your name, I still forgot your character. It was a disconnect, and it's personally insulting, despite the leather effigy and Mick Jagger's ability to do it right and be a scary good soldier. The scene cut is this: Two minutes before we grasp this moment, we find ourselves on skis, not even paying attention, but feeling like a million bucks. I love that feeling, like an athlete, without caring about approval. Who tells someone they are overtalking? People will strive to seek approval of someone who does the firing in person. Everything is sideways and you take it personally. The gnome calls you about all the reasons why, finally, and you want it to be true, although it's your imagination giving you the advice. Your performance watches you and says dollars are not really anything; very Buddhalike. At the end of the day it's you approving you, and the cliche of it clashes with the neuroses of the host, alongside the history of personalities. And I know you're doing this part, but when you find yourself doing it, it could be misinterpreted as weird, because of your family history of insanity. People who stayed the longest stayed because they felt like they belonged. Is the astronaut joke a joke, or just a reality? What was he looking for when he worked the probe, while he looked in my eyes, with his perfect afro? There was a ready symmetry to things. Like we'd made it to the waiting room during a long walk. Shiny, efficient, like we were going to win.

Mini-Twilight

How about a mini-twilight time, right after lunch, before we get back to work? We’ll meet before the day goes back to grinding, before all the real work needs to get back to itself. We can go into my office, turn out the lights, think some different thoughts. We'll write some stuff that’s free of the institutions in our heads. The world hears us listening all the time anyway; shouldn’t we make the most of it? The pants I have on are almost falling off, I’m always nibbling on seaweed, and I’m beginning to hear fish think, in my little apartment by the sea. In our Tiny Dusk we won’t make any plans, we’ll just crawl into a big sundress together and laugh at the glowing stars I’ve stuck to the ceiling. And music? Yeah, big guitar sounds like swans and blues riffs that guarantee a decent hermetic seal.

Invitation

What: Some long-suffering thing about Ways, and/or The Front’s ability to challenge all of Time’s harbors. Where: Beside (or right in) a desert of forgotten collectibles. When: Sixteen if you’re lucky, but probably more like thirteen, when you started realizing you had a reason (a mind or a piece of luggage like it) that brought more chaos to the halls than most kids around you could even conceive. How: via sitting and thinking, not by talking or writing. Who: anyone who appreciates the power in a nipple, or the utterly rebellious act of sleeping long and long.