14.8.13

beardo the fantastic

 
 
one time i had a dream that the lizard preacher and the frog farmer had a discussion with beardo the fantastic about his career as a cabinet maker.

he said that he'd enter people's houses and build new cabinets in their kitchen even if they didn't want them. sometimes, they'd decide they liked them and would actually pay him. it was easier than trying to make appointments.

he told the frog farmer he should build a cave in his kitchen to keep his produce organic. beardo also told the lizard preacher it was important to have a private branch exchange. the lizard preacher said he didn't need one but beardo tried to install it anyway.

the lizard preacher was pretty sure that beardo didn't know what he was doing, but let beardo continue. later that afternoon the lizard preacher decided to place a phone call to the prime minister. the phone system didn't seem to work at all. instead he got connected to dairy farm down in victoria.

the dairy farmer was in his milking parlor. he didn't mind being interrupted from his milking because he was the sort of fellow who enjoyed the unexpected. but, when he found out that it was the lizard preacher he was annoyed. he told the lizard preacher beardo was always installing faulty phone booths in his cabinets. he hopped up and down and called beardo a fraud.

the lizard preacher had no other course to follow but to dismiss beardo the fantastic. he hired a man name otto to sort out the phone difficulties. the only problem was that otto was especially afeared of wires. otto never actually touched or talked on the phones because he was terrified of being electrocuted.

the lizard preacher cautioned him that he had nothing to fear - all is illusion. otto told him you can't make a triple dismissal every game.

7.8.13

extravaganza

 
 
one time i had a dream that the easter bunny teamed up with the language elves for an amazing extravaganza.
 
my pet-fish, bubbles, agreed that even he had to bury the hatchet for this one. he buried it in pennsylvania. the quakers talked him into it. 

6.8.13

the other side of the mountain

 
 
one time i had a dream that my grandmother thought she owned the whole town because the street sweepers saw a bear.

it was very early in the morning in the late spring. they had got their brooms, mops, and buckets. they were walking down the road to buy coffee before beginning work when they saw him. the sun was just coming up. the bear was slowly ambling along and ready to go back to sleep. he stepped off the side-walk pavement stones, over the curb, onto the tarmac street. he disturbed the little grey pebbles that accumulated in the gutter. they rolled and scattered across the street. the coffee seller watched the street sweepers. they were imitating the bear as they approached her counter.

when my grandmother got word that the bear had been spotted she was ecstatic. she went to the city hall and told them it was her building now. in fact, she said, the whole town was her's. she owned it. the bear had been up all night acquiring the land for her. everything was now her personal property.

the officials tried to protest. she threatened to fire them, tear down city hall, and build a theatre on the spot. some of the lawyers objected and told her there would be lawsuits. however, she held up the papers, and they had to agree that it was all legal.
 
some of the townspeople wanted to challenge the bear's right to act as advocate. the judge said that the bear held the original deeds and had sold them fair and square.  
 
the street cleaners didn't know what to do. my grandmother told them that as long as they continued to pay their rent they could continue to clean the streets.

5.8.13

the spigot of the moon

 
 
one time i had a dream that the key to lunar travel was connected to the cold water spigot of the bathtub.

the handle of the old spigot had become worn out after much use. the plumber came and installed new fixtures. he claimed that they were antiques with an elegant provenance. they had  swans as the spouts and bronze globes for the knobs. the sphere for the hot water was a map of the world and the cold water knob was a map of the moon. he wrote out a bill from a pad that he kept in his overalls' front pocket.

that evening i was going to take a bath. when i turned on the cold water, by adjusting the position of the moon, clear water began to pour out, just as i expected. then, something strange happened. white water lilies and green lily pads started to pour out and float around in the bathtub. this was both unprecedented and unexpected.
 
what happened next was completely unforeseen. a lady in a white gown tumbled out of the spout. this was followed by soft music from the pipes. she stood up. her dress was soaked and she kept looking around. it was like she didn't know whether to be amused or to be lost. she was laughing and then covering her smile and saying "i don't even know how i got here." i told her that she came through the pipes but she wouldn't stop giggling. "i'm so lost." although very beautiful, she was completely playing the fool. this irritated me. no one can be that silly.

i told her my name is alfred. this made her laugh harder and blush. i asked her if she came from the moon. she said yes. she had been up on the moon in her pool with her friends and then she had been pulled, like a tide, down to earth. it was a good thing we had oxygen down here, she said. now, normally, i'd want to ask a lunar being all sorts of questions but i could tell there was no point, because she wasn't going to answer my enquiries. she started to pick up some of the lilies and kept saying "look at these. it's so wild." and "this is so crazy." her movements were very casual and yet mysterious.
 
she looked at me, with my plaid bathrobe, and said "you could wear the lilies like a crown." and burst out laughing. i have to confess that i wasn't very amused. she spread out her arms, slightly bent, with sleeves down to her thin wrists, and held up a string of green lily pads.
 
"you could be a frog with all of those." i said. she rubbed the back of her neck. maybe it was sore because she tended to slouch.

she frowned. "a frog? i came all this way and get called a frog?" she pouted. then she saw the moon sphere as the cold water knob. she became very excited. "so, this is what did it?" she asked. she dipped her hands in the water and then rubbed them across the moon globe.

i explained to her about the plumber and the old fixtures. she ran her index finger down the underside of the neck of the cold water swan. she seemed sad or at least serious for a second. she looked directly at me.

"alfred," she asked, "where did he get these pieces?" my previous explanation, i thought, made pretty clear that i didn't know where they came from. i was beginning to realize that she wasn't really very bright and i would be repeating myself often. the clock in the hallway chimed seven thirty.

she heard the clock and seemed melancholy. she told me she had to go back to the moon so that it would shine. one day, when everything was ready, she would return and take me back with her. until then, i should find out as much as i could from the plumber about the spouts -and avoid baths at 7 in the evening. she held up the chain to the stopper and waved good bye with a giggle. she gave the chain a pull and opened the drain. she flowed away, feet first, with the water and the plants.

the music stopped and the tub dried out.

i didn't want to even know what happened when you turned on the hot water.
 
 

4.8.13

backyard masterminds

 
 

one time i had a dream that it all got decided at the bbq.

they swapped lies about their engines performance and tried to impress each other with their network of contacts. they were all good friends. they played golf together all the time. they knew your uncle before you were born. naturally, they should make the decision. things were going to be done differently in this neighborhood from now on.

the man with the calculator shirt knew how to get it done. they were going to rely on him the most. he knew how to close the deal and get the results. it was a plan and they were satisfied with it. 

3.8.13

the cake burner

 
 
one time i had a dream that i was invited to sit with the king. we were having watercress soup and spinach quiche. we were going to have cake, but he wasn't very attentive while they were being baked. they ended up getting burned. he had alot on his mind. he was worried about protecting the people of the kingdom from invaders. he still got yelled at though.

after lunch he played the harp. he sang a very long song about boats and ships.

then he excused himself. he told me that he had a delicate stomach.


that was a good king. 

1.8.13

the grand hat

 
 
one time i had a dream that it was required to wear a hat again. i made a visit to the most famous hat maker in albany to buy one.

for some reason hats became mandatory. i decided that the best hat to wear would be a beret imported from france. when i looked up the conversion rate from dollars to francs and the shipping costs, i realized it was not going to be an easy importation.

instead, i figured i would buy a hat from the greatest hat maker in all of new york. he had a shop in albany down the street from the wolfnoth's mustard emporium. so one thursday i bought a fantastic trilby and a continental cocked hat.

the shop had photos of all the famous and powerful people who bought their hats there over the years. these included big wigs like teddy rooosevelt, the cadre of the local glove-maker's union, the last 4 mayors of albany, the orthodox patriarch of schenectady, a nobel prize winning author, the chief rabbi of niskayuna, the lady from the music station, numerous state senators, the inventor of potato chips, the great liberator, a famous shortstop, herman melville, the director of the museum of science fiction, and most impressively: lord cornbury in a nice bonnet.

all of the fashionable people enjoyed my chapeaux. it was very macaroni.