Several years ago I was crossing some railroad tracks when I spotted a youngster fast asleep between the rails.He was sleeping so soundly that I did not bother to wake him, even though several coal freights passed through town each hour.Did I do the right thing? --Slightly Curious
Dear Samaritan,
You not only did the right thing but the sensible thing as well.Children so often misbehave when they are awoken from a nap prematurely; the resultant mayhem and hi jinx would no doubt have caused you much grief.I once left a sleeping newborn tied to the bottom of a threshing machine for this reason, and while the results of that decision were far from picturesque, to say the least, I’m sure things worked out much better in your situation.It is a little-known fact that locomotives can stop almost at will, and--if the engineer in question was as observant as his arduous task requires--he spied your young sleepyhead with plenty of time to stop before greasing his wheels with him.
My hipster neighbors recently began using clear plastic trash bags. Is it ethical to examine their weekly trash for letters, receipts or other materials of an anti-American or otherwise conspiratorial nature and judge them accordingly? -Seeking Consultation Regarding Every Williamsburg Yupster
Dear Megan,
Your dilemma is one that plagues me daily. Of course you should not only perform a cursory examination of their trash but stab it open with any available sharp instrument. Deftly cut a long incision across the width of the bag; listen to the bag softly gasp as you release the air within. Watch the garbage pour from the hole onto the sidewalk as you smear your guilty hands in it. Take some of the oozing refuse--the fair trade coffee grinds, the leftover organic sauces--and use it to write your neighbors a note on their windows and doors. A kind reminder such as "Stop Hexing Me" or "I Know You're Watching Me in My Sleep." Remove any mail or letters from the bag and read them at your leisure. They were written about you anyway, so why not? After reading them three times burn them in the toilet with charcoal lighter fluid and a blowtorch, or with your mind. It goes without saying that as hipsters most of the contents of their trash will contain items of an Anti-American nature. As we all know, Whole Foods is a thinly-veiled front for the Taliban, who uses the proceeds to stone anyone even considering using irony. So yes, you will find such materials, but more importantly these items need to be tested in the lab I've constructed in my lower colon to see if they are magic, or at least if they possess magic dangerous to you. Stop bathing in their trash immediately and send it all to me in a big red box wrapped with electrical wire, flares and eight rolls of duct tape. In the meantime prevent your neighbors from further misdeeds by relieving yourself in their mailbox, or, as a timesaver, by setting their house on fire and seeing if you can knit a sweater out of the flames.
Copyright 2010 Max Jukes/Brian Edward Hack. No quotation or reproduction of this material without permission from the author. Illustration copyright 2010 by max jukes/brian edward hack.
Last week I accidentally walked in on my fifteen-year-old son masturbating to my wedding album. As you might expect we are both embarrassed and it is becoming more and more awkward the longer we pretend it never happened. What can I say to alleviate his worries and let him know that masturbation is a normal part of adolescence? -Worried About David
Dear Mrs. Weaver,
Since the early nineteenth century, when young boys first began masturbating to seed catalogs and the drawings on the front of burlap feed sacks, interlopers such as you have unwittingly interrupted what otherwise would have been a peaceful "yank of the plank," as it was called in those days before cleverer euphemisms were invented. Masturbation was greatly enhanced after the arrival of the daguerreotype in 1839, although the long exposure time almost but guaranteed that the act would be completed by the time the photograph was developed, mounted and stuffed down one's trousers. Later experiments in masturbatory stereoscopy necessitated the creation of a two-handed, and later, thankfully, a one-handed stereographic viewer; one lad's diary entry from 1858 reported that seeing three-dimensional images of nude statuary made him "quiver so violently that the horse in the adjacent stall released himself, although I am quite unawares of how so much of the milky brine landed on my face and person." This leads us to your current situation. Your son David Weaver needs to know, as do all of his tenth-grade classmates at R. Budd Dwyer High School, that masturbating is essential for proper nutrition and health. In fact, in the mid-1950s it was frequently taught as part of the Home Economics curriculum, as a supplement to those long tedious hours baking and cleaning house. You might begin to repair your relationship with David by spending a few days with him perusing your wedding album. Ask him which photographs he most enjoyed, and then ask him why. Have these images tattooed on his chest by a competent tattoo artist, or a neighbor.
Copyright 2010 Max Jukes/Brian Edward Hack. No quotation or reproduction of this material without permission from the author. Illustration copyright 2010 by max jukes/brian edward hack.
The atoms pulse and hover and fade as I turn away, then focus and form into the familiar upon my return. In my absence they can be themselves: solids relax into blurry whirls of possibility; liquids bend and unravel at their leisure, scattering themselves into marbles of gossamer; even the air assumes hues and shapes that slither along the tenuous matter in which I believe. I believe in the cloaks of objects, and in the consensus constructed around them. Because I believe, you believe, and because we believe, they believe, and they believe because those before them believed. The painters and the poets aspired to lose their faith, and pierce the gauze upon the world to reveal its truths; their tools conspired against them, being in on the ruse from the outset. Even the mind, unseen and unknowable, is particularly unreliable in penetrating material truths. It harbors great secrets. Out of kindness or contempt it refuses to offer a glimpse of what lies beneath. The mind gives form, gives names, gives expectations and veils the buzzing hovering of matter. This enemy within is unflinching. If I stop believing, will objects dissolve into themselves as they are without the deceitful filters of eye and mind? Am I to have faith in what I cannot see, or faith in what I can?
Copyright 2010 Max Jukes/Brian Edward Hack. No quotation or reproduction of this material without permission from the author. Illustration copyright 2010 by max jukes/brian edward hack.
Lange Eylandt Limericks, Concerning Setauket and Neighboring Environs, for the Full and Rapid Release of Ribaldry
An amazing young man from Syosset
Arrived with the force of a faucet.
Yet the briny cascade
left his lovers dismayed,
for they frequently drowned trying to cross it.
There once was a man from Setauket
who kept his wife's pic in a locket.
When girls would ask, "who
is that woman?" he knew
it was time that he run out and hock it.
A well-endowed man from Setauket
Would blush when the ladies would mock it.
"We can see that it's long,
but isn't it wrong
to keep it unleashed when you walk it?"
There once was a girl from West Islip
known as the "Ten Dollar Vice Grip"
Slip it in for a five,
But to pull out alive
Cost you five dollars more, plus a nice tip.
Copyright 2010 max jukes/brian edward hack. No quotation or reproduction of this material without express written permission of the author.
Copyright 2010 max jukes/brian edward hack. No quotation or reproduction of this material without express written permission of the author. Photograph copyright 2010 max jukes/brian edward hack.
they had surrendered the shudders and moans of private devotion to the dog-eared victors of words, books of words, and words of books and that was as it should have been. Tongues were tethered to well-weathered spines and scarce was the day that they sought other, far more warmer and wetter venues to explore; yet the nights were nuzzled with velveteen, high above the princely sounds below. When they came to the last page, she had finished first. Or perhaps she saw the ending coming and began perusing the shelves for a more satisfying read. For when he looked up she had climbed down, down into the heat of the Big D, where other books and other words burned mesquite-slow and lingered longer in her memory. Amidst more dim and distant digs his pages foxed and fell from their brittle binding, spilling, spitting, spewing down the littered lanes. As the days piled into months and heaped into years his hopes were wrung out and hung out and left to fray in the wind like the white flag of a war where news of the treaty had never reached the trenches. Letters and desires went unanswered, unopened. But one afternoon, in the nook of a dark and narrow nave, he dipped his fingers into the font and found the faith to ask for someone, anyone, to help him bind his scarred and scattered pages.
Copyright 2010 max jukes/brian edward hack. No quotation or reproduction of this material without express written permission of the author.
she said before our tongues and our lives entwined. Usually women would say that sort of thing to me as an easy out, a Governor's-phonecall-at-the-last-moment-before-they-flip-the-switch way of getting themselves out of my futon and into anything or anyone else. These sorts of phrases were uttered to evaporate whatever negotiations may have been underway between my mind and the various other freelance ambassadors of my body. Or else they would move my hands from wherever they were to wherever they wanted, and say something like, "Don't expect anything. What's left of my soul went down on the Andrea Doria." Then I would grumble and shuffle off, stumbling half-drunk in the diamond grass at dawn until I unfurled myself upon the unpopulated tundra of my mattress, resigned to spilling rivers of my own longing. But here, but now, with the Donner Party running its course across my upper lip I could only surmise that someone had finally succumbed to the hunger to feed upon the breadcrumbs of my not-so-distant denouement.
Copyright 2006 max jukes/brian edward hack. No quotation or reproduction of this material without express written permission of the author. Photograph copyright 2006 max jukes/brian edward hack.
The last thing I want right now is to hear you The last thing I want right now is to dream The last thing I want right now is to drop The last thing I want right now is to slither quietly The last thing I want right now is to listen respectfully The last thing I want right now is to perform diligently The last thing I want right now is to drink hemlock The last thing I want right now is to wither drearily The last thing I want right now is to pass out willingly The last thing I want right now is to linger unwittingly The last thing I want right now is to pamper unmercifully The last thing I want right now is to dredge the cesspool The last thing I want right now is to defend the rest home The last thing I want right now is to reframe the bedpost The last thing I want right now is to untie the masthead The last thing I want right now is to unfurl the curtainrod The last thing I want right now is to mend the soiled sheets The last thing I want right now is to swirl the majorette’s ribbon The last thing I want right now is to splash in the refuse The last thing I want right now is to meander in the forest fires The last thing I want right now is to drink from the grail of sorrows The last thing I want right now is to harvest the lingering lusts The last thing I want right now is to torment the fascination within The last thing I want right now is to foster the animosity The last thing I want right now is to follow the footprints of the faithful The last thing I want right now is to be strangled by the ghost The last thing I want right now is to look through the venetian blinds The last thing I want right now is to fall through the lint catcher The last thing I want right now is to schedule a moment for you The last thing I want right now is to paint a mental portrait The last thing I want right now is to dress in mesh and turpentine rags The last thing I want right now is to think of hard-boiled marmelade The last thing I want right now is to stretch in the sty with your memory The last thing I want right now is to tease the hands of Time The last thing I want right now is to bathe in the saltmines The last thing I want right now is to fling the foster children into the fire The last thing I want right now is to slumber with the multitudes The last thing I want right now is to ascend the parchments hidden in jars The last thing I want right now is to see the ground below The last thing I want right now is to philosophize on the merits of chairs The last thing I want right now is to pull out the steps on the card house The last thing I want right now is to drizzle the dreary documents of truth The last thing I want right now is to freeze in the midst of mediocrity The last thing I want right now is to defend the denizens of this or any other time The last thing I want right now is to speak of anything or anyone The last thing I want right now is to muzzle the rusted gates of your mouth The last thing I want right now is to bathe in the blistering sun The last thing I want right now is to harness the moment The last thing I want right now is to undress in the restless closets of your memory The last thing I want right now is to pummel the horse The last thing I want right now is to question the maudlin troubadour The last thing I want right now is to seek the bleached words of the turncoat The last thing I want right now is to liberate the cream-lined cages of your pigeons The last thing I want right now is to don the mantle of scrambling peons on the portico The last thing I want right now is to scream to the sky that chains me here The last thing I want right now is to dismantle the pocket watch of creation The last thing I want right now is to reclaim the drainpipe trousers of your youth The last thing I want right now is to document the synapses The last thing I want right now is to educate the brilliant The last thing I want right now is to gesture to the fetid unbedded teenage phantasm The last thing I want right now is to careen off the juggernaut of sensual boredom The last thing I want right now is to mention the serpent rouge The last thing I want right now is to be initiated in the ancient mysteries The last thing I want right now is to defend whatever it is I am The last thing I want right now is to slowly know the oak-lined path The last thing I want right now is to exude the pomposity of unfiltered thought The last thing I want right now is to apologize for thighs intertwined The last thing I want right now is to bellow in the token booth The last thing I want right now is to strangle the mangling machine that scarred me The last thing I want right now is to be knighted by the blind-eyed myths The last thing I want right now is to kneel to the collective hope The last thing I want right now is to take a number The last thing I want right now is to break the tainted seeds of unneeded wheelbarrows The last thing I want right now is to cast my bobber in the crippling miasma The last thing I want right now is to drip down the sides of the lips of the lids The last thing I want right now is to broil beneath the brow of the possessor of words The last thing I want right now is to tame the goose while the noose hangs high The last thing I want right now is to face the mane The last thing I want right now is to hear the dreary words of a mountain trickle The last thing I want right now is to thread the needless through the holes of space The last thing I want right now is to dust the rusted wheels of the cyclotron The last thing I want right now is to spin endlessly in the carousel of your gaze The last thing I want right now is to attend the farmhand’s debutante ball The last thing I want right now is to free myself from the mire The last thing I want right now is to blame the Lusitania for my headaches The last thing I want right now is to make change for my soul The last thing I want right now is to dwindle the spires of the sycophant The last thing I want right now is to bequeath the britches of a blood-soaked tyrant The last thing I want right now is to lie silent beneath the marble The last thing I want right now is to engage with the anemone The last thing I want right now is to coddle the throttle with you on the brakes The last thing I want right now is to draw the map of the inside The last thing I want right now is to strike the serpent-staff against your temple The last thing I want right now is to treat the uneaten portion as a formidable good The last thing I want right now is to drain the pages of their wasted ink The last thing I want right now is to allow the worst to occur on your watch The last thing I want right now is to singularly worry about the impossible hopes The last thing I want right now is to orphan the manatees of their sleepyhead desires The last thing I want right now is to drown you in the frothy moats of mental instability The last thing I want right now is to plan ahead for the tainted torment of talented spirals The last thing I want right now is to gild the barn door with pamphlets of ample maturity The last thing I want right now is to consider the widow in her morbid housecoat The last thing I want right now is to lift the shiftless philanderer to the heights unknown The last thing I want right now is to pull the arrow from your jugular The last thing I want right now is to claim you from the dream I had The last thing I want right now is to cling to any hand that offers to drag me The last thing I want right now is to sustain any popular thoughts in those I contempt The last thing I want right now is to have dreamt of the passionate fellowcraft The last thing I want right now is to laugh at the troubling footnotes The last thing I want right now is to drift into your eddy The last thing I want right now is to strive to be anything The last thing I want right now is to market the mouth of a meddling pedestrian The last thing I want right now is to stroke the lambskin dinner plates in your cupboard The last thing I want right now is to explain the feigned reasons we are here The last thing I want right now is to rage against the pages of lost gospels The last thing I want right now is to call off the talons and fangs The last thing I want right now is to repeal an amendment to my cement mixer mind The last thing I want right now is to cower below the square without my apron there The last thing I want right now is to whisper the unknowable unspeakable name The last thing I want right now is to violate the cryogenic stockades of pseudoscience The last thing I want right now is to fill the jars with senseless acres of tapered logic The last thing I want right now is to stretch my lips to grasp the enormity of your senses The last thing I want right now is to drench myself in trench mouth streams The last thing I want right now is to label the moments and stack them longwise The last thing I want right now is to perambulate within the stated corral The last thing I want right now is to arch into the position you designated The last thing I want right now is to filter out the arbitrary aspirations of has-been nations The last thing I want right now is to bleach the streams of stress that surround me The last thing I want right now is to stagnate the seas that swirl within me The last thing I want right now is to tangle the lines of the telephone wires above me The last thing I want right now is to blanket the tankards of like-minded stowaways The last thing I want right now is to monopolize the thighs of immaculate wives The last thing I want right now is to lambaste the tasteless thoughtless thrashing test The last thing I want right now is to grace the ozone with your hopelessness The last thing I want right now is to pull it from the roots The last thing I want right now is to disband the fragments of the fruitless fervor The last thing I want right now is to announce the coming of the tambourine squadron The last thing I want right now is to taste the carbide lightning rod of your blistering filth The last thing I want right now is to want The last thing I want right now is to not want
Copyright 2006 max jukes/brian edward hack. No quotation or reproduction of this material without express written permission of the author.
Max Jukes is the last of a long line of Jukes, most if not all of whom unwittingly did their part to foul the murky puddle that was their gene pool. He prefers the company of blind mutes, although he finds them far too inquisitive and gregarious.
See also: http://maxjukes.com
