Overheard at Table 1

Ava Guday: While waiting for the 220 today I saw this van passing by, and the name on the side was DH Lawrence Carpet Installers.

Ana Phalaxis: D.H. Lawrence Carpet Installers?

Connie Undrum: They probably specialize in SHAG!

Overheard at Booth 3

did you hear we finally started bombing Libya?

it's about time! everyone in the world was asking us to - save the people from Quadaffi.

yeah, but soon's we did now everyone's mad at us - the Russians, the Arab League, the African Union, even the Republicans!

that's freakin'weird! I never thought I'd see the day when the Republicans didn't want to send bombs into a Muslim country.

yeah, but you know, if Obama does it, then they're against it.

yeah, I know, Obama could erase the taxes for every oil corporation and drug company and insurance agency in America, he could kill the EPA and OSHA and the minimum wage, and they'd STILL find something wrong with him.

sometimes it just seems like the guy can't catch a break. I mean, he's really TRYING to do everything the conservatives want, I mean, he's kept the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, he's letting the oil companies gut the Gulf . . .

. . . he's getting us into another war with no end . . .

right, another war with no end, that's right! I mean, what in the world do these guys WANT?

I dunno. Seems like they're not gonna be satisfied until . . . honestly, I don't KNOW when they'll ever be satisfied.

The Rapture, maybe?

Nah! They'll probably be peeved at God for taking so long. Not working to THEIR schedule.

Yeah, they'll probably call God a liberal.

Wasn't He?

Shhhhhhhh, don't say that too loud! Somebody will hear and will eviscerate us!

Sotano de las Golondrinas

Left at the Counter: from 360s

Scribbled on a stream of napkins:

from 360s
364: 226.

226.

Because, men, she yearns still to
be desired,
she requires your flame, your
torrent of dizzying poetry –
those words that you
lavished on her
like
snowdrops in bloom.

Try to remember, gentlemen,
the tone of your voice
on that first date – how you
at moments,
lost your breath
rushing to speak to her –

a slight hesitation, trying to form
the perfect compliment for the

way she held her glass,

remember how she blushed, slightly,
at the sincerity of what you said, how her

eyes
turned away the moment you mentioned
the earth-hewn beauty of their color,

remember how she used to smile, eversosoftly,
when you noticed a

new pair of earrings,
a haircut,
a new perfume.

Now, men,
now she is just your wife,

and the only men who
need her without ceasing

are your sons.
and your daughters sneer at her behind their
own eyeshadowed smirks for the

sensuality that she left at the hospital
after the firstborn,

and she meanders her days with other people’s schedules,
managing the times of other people’s lives, balancing
the baseball practices, the Algebra tutoring, your drycleaning,
and the thumblessness of her own alleged career,

and inbetween gymnastic meets she follows
the perfect shapes of jumba CDs, dancing away that soft
middleaged riff that you no longer hold gently from behind

with a soft kiss on her neck, and

she does this because
that girl is still there.

That girl is not gone, buried under layers of
Oil of Olay and antioxidents and teeth whitening strips, that

girl who blushed is only dormant, wrapped
inside a bud made of
motherhood and wifehood and househood,

but she is there,

awaiting the spring of your words
to rain sweetly down upon her,

so that she may
bloom again.

Overheard at Booth 4: Angels Make Funny Faces

Showed the kids 2012 last night.

 

What'd they think?

 

Awesome. They liked it. I mean, for terrible complete human destruction, it's actually visually very entertaining, I mean, they were like gripping the edges of the couch when that plane was flying through the buildings of LA and that subway car was flying overhead.

 

That was pretty awesome, I liked it when Yellowstone exploded and it's raining balls of fire down on the tarmac as they're taking off there.

 

Yeah, where Woody Harrelson, the crazy guy, stands there, facing the volcano.

 

You know Yellowstone is a supervolcano, right?

 

Yeah, I think I heard that somewhere.

 

Could go at any time, you know.

 

Yeah, well, you know, we all could go at any time. Just - like - God says, 'OK, boys, time to shut 'er down!' and it's lights out.'

 

So you think 2012's gonna get us? Think that's the lights out?

 

Dude, we've been talking about the end of time since the beginning of time. I think the moment we as humans realized, oh crap! Bill died - I mean, died! You know, that moment when we evolved to the point that we understood that there was an end? I think that was when we started fixating on the end of everything.

 

So you think this is all some sort of collective obsession? Armageddon? End of Days? Revelation, all that?

 

I mean, hey - like, sure - I know the world's gonna end. I'm not stupid. Everything ends. I'm just not living every single moment wondering, 'Oooh, is God gonna take us now?' and all this stuff in the Middle East, what's got everybody all in a wad, 'It's God coming back!' and you know that a lot of people are scared and there are some Christians who are actually happy about the thought of it all going to spit, because they're thinking they're gonna be saved while everybody else stays for years of Helen Earth.

 

Yeah, I hate that, you know - kind of runs totally against the whole 'tell the world about the love of Jesus' - right?

 

Right, so I take a page right out of the Bible, you know, where Jesus has said, "Listen - the main thing is DON'T WORRY about it." He said take care of what you need to take care of, what will be will be, Yeah, it'll all blow up in the end, but I've gotcha!

 

So you're saying the ultimate cosmic message from the creator of the universe is Que Sera Sera and Don't Worry Be Happy?

 

Yeah, that pretty much boils down to it, yeah.

 

That's like opening up a window to Heaven and seeing angels looking down on us with their fingers in their mouths and making all sorts of funny faces.

Overheard at Booth 2: A Century of Progress, Erased

Billy: When you put it that way, it almost seems downright farsical.

Joe: But it's true, when you think about it, I mean, the minimum wage, the 40 hour work week, health benefits, heck! even fire escapes! none of that was part and parcel of the work place a hunnert years ago!

Jim: Exactly a hundred years ago. Back then, my eight year old would be skinning cows in the slaughterhouses, coming home head to foot drenched in blood and grime . . .

Bob: Foot-in-mouth disease!

Billy: Ah, don't be so makin'fun of the boy, now!

Joe: Seriously, we ain't foolin' around - this is serious, I tellya. A hundred years ago, labor was fighting for the working man, now who's fighting for the working man! Nobody! Not the unions, because they done lost sight.

Jim: Became part of the problem.

Bob: Right!

Billy: But now, we gotta start it over again, for ourselves, for what was already fought for us, which was given to us, we have to keep.

Joe: And we got the bosses against us, but this time, it ain't just a few rich guys, it's entire international corporations.

Jim: Yeah, this ain't like yellin' at a Rockefeller or a Ford. This is redressing our grievances against heartless, godless ExxonMobil, SmithKline, Bank of America, Chase, NYSE . . .

Bob: . . . and don't forget the whole dang Republican party!

Billy: Yeah - and they's some mean sumbiches, lemme tellya.

Joe: Sneaky, too.

Jim: Steal a lollipop out of a baby's mouth and then make him buy it back from the corporate lobbyists at twice the price.

Bob: Pocket the extra penny and send the mercenaries to a foreign country to blow up their little chilluns for their slice of the candy!

Billy: Dang, this is gettin' bleak. No more espressos for you guys - it's time to switch to decaf!

Overread at Booth 2: from 365

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/12/21/white.persecution/index.html?eref=rss_topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+%28RSS%3A+Top+Stories%29#


Good night in the morning! i say, this is
crossing the border between
ludicrosity and
udder-insanity,
were we all to cast off our titles,
ripping them off like our fake plastic faces
and scatter the limpid skin to the wind,
we would be left with the underscored
raw tendon, muscle, blood, and bone,
and
there would be
no more tint
or
hue, and

we wouldn't even be
me
or you,

we would be
what was left of a human
be-
ing.

taking root,
in a new philosophy,
that all
are howling
their equality.

only then, can we
take the ragged strips
of colors of that grand-old
once-high flying flag,
and sew back together
a new


red
white&
blue.