an ice cream man was found in a critical state yesterday with his head covered in hundreds and thousands, raspberry sauce and a flake in his ear – the police have said that he tried to top himself
– ted robbins
first the doctor told me the good news: i was going to have a disease named after me
– steve martin
push rice krispies into the tread of your tyres – to acheive that expensive gravel drive look
– chris donald
when i die, i want to go peacefully like my grandfather did, in his sleep — not screaming, like the passengers in his car.
– anon
we’d made it across death valley, our wallets had survived las vegas, we’d coped with the heat of the mojave desert but we nearly blew it all on the run into los angeles. we weren’t even going to los angeles but that only underlines the efficiency of the fruit police, the californian crack squad. driving along highway 14 the signs read “all vehicles pull over for agricultural check”. with no more warning we are stopped by a uniform with sunglasses and a holster and a revolver.
“any fruit?”
i turned to jo to ask her to confirm that we had none – why did i do that, i should have instantly barked “no” and we’d have been on our way but no – a slight hesitation by me, enough for the fruit police to notice a chink in the armour.
“i don’t think so……………… have we jo?”
“no i don’t think so”
“are you sure?…..no apples, plums, melons”
“er……no”
“no oranges, bananas, grapes?”
“er”
“nectarines, tangerines, lemons, pineapples, blackberries”
“no no”
……..we eventually made it through but only to hear in a news report on national radio one week later that a fruit fly was being held down the coast on big sur. terribly efficient those fruit police.
– vonovitch
tugging at his zippers,
sweat in waterfalls down his leathers,
god used to scream into the mike,
blood-lightning spurted from the speakers
and the sparks were in his hair………..
then he decided to try for the family audience
– adrian mitchell
you can’t win.
mary queen of scots invented high heel shoes to make herself look taller they cut her bloody head off
– john walton
the amazing thing about lee mellons teeth is their strange and constantly moving placement in the many and varied dentures those poor teeth briefly get to call home. i would meet him one day on market street and he would have just one upper left tooth in his face, and then i’d see him again, months later on grant avenue, and he’d have three lower right teeth and one upper right tooth.
i’d see him again just back from big sur, and he’d have four upper front teeth, and two lower left teeth, and then after a few weeks in san francisco, he’d be wearing the upper plate without any teeth in it at all, wearing the plate just so he’d have a head start on gristle, and so that his cheeks wouldn’t collapse in on his mouth.
lee mellon told me that once in modern times he’d had all of his teeth in his mouth at the same time for a whole day. he was driving a tractor in kansas, back and forth across a field of wheat, and his brand new lower plate felt a little funny in his mouth, so he took it out and put it into his shirt pocket. the teeth fell out of his pocket and he backed the tractor over them.
lee mellon told me rather sadly that after he had discovered that the teeth were gone from his shirt pocket, it took him almost an hour to find them, and when he found them, they weren’t worth finding at all.
– richard brautigan
finding something is just losing something else.
– richard brautigan
We used to picnic where the thrift
Grew deep and tufted to the edge;
We saw the yellow foam flakes drift
In trembling sponges on the ledge
Below us, till the wind would lift
Them up the cliff and o’er the hedge.
Sand in the sandwiches, wasps in the tea,
Sun on our bathing dresses heavy with the wet,
Squelch of the bladder-wrack waiting for the sea,
Fleas around the tamarisk, an early cigarette
– John Betjeman
So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars’ll be out, and don’t you know that God is Pooh Bear?
– Jack Kerouac
The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
– Jack Kerouac
celery has negative calories. it takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with
– vonovitch
bubba lived in the hills above knoxville. i was told he was my type of man. we drove up out of town – up into the snow. round winding roads up into the trees. we turned off the road up a steep dirt track with deep snow on either side of us.
there was a house on the left sitting on its own built of wood and had a porch on it like the waltons. as soon as a tall thin moustached figure with thigh length cut off jeans and flip flops walked out of the front door to greet us, i knew this had to be bubba.
we walked in through the door of this two storey house to find that there were no internal walls. he told me he had gradually used them to put on the fire to keep warm. i could see all the way through to the kitchen – through the non walls – where an entire car engine was on the floor in front of the fridge. it was no surprise to find his wife had left him. we spent hours drinking moosehead and laughing until it was time to return to normality.
– vonovitch
little did we know as we set off from yosemite that the big black grasshopper was waiting for us to put the nbc sports news on. little did we know that he was being kept in the dark in 90 degree heat in solitary confinement with no way of knowing whether pete sampras had won his 5th wimbledon men’s singles championship to equal bjorn borgs record of the 80’s …or was it the 70’s. he probably didn’t even know that a spirited tim henman had lost the semi to pete in 4 sets.
we left curry camp which strangely enough only the night before had smelt of curry. only the very efficient and smart park rangers would probably know why……. and if i’d asked them, they would probably be all too eager to point out that they knew why.
after death valley we arrived at bishop and pulled into the second motel. nice old lady, nice old motel room. it was still blisteringly hot so we collapsed onto the bed and put the tv on. the air conditioning suddenly made much more excited noises. jo pointed out that it wasn’t the air conditioning but some living thing behind the bedside cabinet. we looked down the back of the cabinet to see an enormous black thing making noises like………like a grasshopper. we phoned reception to make sure it was a grasshopper – they said it was although we thought they might take a look – perhaps i had a sort of ‘yikes that’s a big black grasshopper’ sound to my voice down the phone ….!! i tried to pick up the cabinet to get it out of the door but i couldn’t budge it. was it a body building grasshopper – no the radio alarm was pinned to the cabinet and in turn cabled to the wall. with a tactical use of an ashtray and an information sheet jo motioned how i might remove the black body building beast. little did we know that his commotion was only because he was so pleased to hear the tv on and wanting me to switch over to nbc sports, after all…. the sports round up was just about to start. i put him out of the door onto the balcony came back in and switched over to nbc………..bloody hell…………pistol pete beat goran ivanisevic in 5 to take the title again. poor old goran i’d like to have seen him win, drrrrt prrrrt prrrrt prrrrt
– vonovitch
