Just the Good Stuff

A list of last lines from bawdy limericks.

So the town never sleeps after dark.

Fuck after fuck after fuck?

For after he fucked her, he ate her

Like Father John's thumb after mass

And the other we'll try after marriage.

One fore, and one aft, and one oral

And the general effect was quite lovely.

He went out in the yard and ate dung

For the thing she called "Utterly-utta!"

In the archiepiscopal pants.

His nose out of private affairs.

Again, and again, and again

Won't you do it again, Sir? Bis! Bis!

Against pinches, and pins in the ass."

And fell down again from the smell.

And the band at the Waldorf-Astoria.

And now she is just a plain whore again.

For I certainly don't want to sin again.

And I do it again and again.

And ate up the whole afterbirth.

The scent-ah, that was a failure

Ah, you're changing the t to a p!

Is the squid that I keep in the sink

Or a goat, or whatever is handy

With the aid of his constable's truncheon

He rogered the national School.

And other odd mammals

Now ain't this a hell of a fug!

Ain't that foresight for ya?

Said she, You mean that ain't your finger?

But that ain't my prick-it's a spike.

If you've slept with that sonofabitch again

I'm surprised that by now they ain't mamas.

Ain't it grand and realistic!

But I don't feel as good as I did

This ain't a cunt-it's a corridor

With his backside awave in the air

It shot off in the air like a rocket

And was washed down the aisle on the froth

The arse on our parson needs fixin

But alas he was only a eunuch

Felt dear Alfred's delicious arse wriggle

And they promptly refunded his stub

And all he could shit was spaghetti

For all he had left was the skin

And bought her a chastity girdle

And now all her sisters are aunts

For which all her lovers may thank her

All got clap in their hindermost region

And framed, within miniature cunts

The waiters were all hanging low

And the doctors all fainted away

And the worst is, they all do it well

And dived in all covered with drool

To all but the spermatozoa

That he soon had her cunt all asmokin

(From a scholarly lexiconography paper discovered by Brother Todd).

[Originally posted on Rebel Leady Boy, Apr. 29, 2006]

J Spot

Guess what this is -

My favorite parking spot in Von's supermarket parking lot has been memorialized.

I drive over to Von's every morning at about 5:45 a.m. and park there all day while I ride the bus to work. I'm gone for roughly twelve hours (8.5 working and 3.5 commuting both ways), then I drive back home.

Apparently they re-surfaced the parking lot on Tuesday and, since I wasn't around to move my car, they had to pave around it, leaving a huge unpaved spot, memorializing my favorite parking space.

I think it's cool.

[Originally posted on Rebel Leady Boy, Apr. 27, 2006]

Review of CONTENT by Ross

My cousin Jonnie has always been one step ahead of the rest of us.  It becomes even more obvious after reading his new book that he's been on the cutting edge of human existence since early childhood.....heck probably straight from the womb.

As a kid he always wore short pants under his jeans in case he got hot or had an opportunity to go for an impromptu swim.  After getting hit by a train as an adult, he skipped his last doctor's appointment and pulled the staples out of his head with a pair of pliers.

Any minor discrepancies in Mr. Gilliom's story telling, such as the reference to Coleman fuel as kerosene, are easily overlooked and you'll end up telling yourself the same thing one of the Delta Tau Chai fraternity brother's said in Animal House after John Belushi's character "Bluto" referred to the German's bombing Pearl Harbor.  Shut up he's on roll..... 

Furthermore

By Donald Kilbuck

The Introduction for the book! Real or reel! You may feel this introduction for all the feelings that people have, has, fast, faster, motions may feel motionless, butt the earth may swallow you up if you're not all there. The stink of whatever, if you wear it. Although i got the tide, tightrobe, out into this Island and feel the changing weather, and the emotions may catch all your feelings, vomit isn't all what it seems. Getting a speeding ticket also.

Like Mayflies on a Summer Night: Ephemera and the Hardcore

Jonnie, an introduction

by AmyJo

Ephemera:

1: something transitory; lasting a day

2: an insect that lives only for a day in its winged form, i.e. a mayfly

3: A short-lived thing.

4: Printed matter of passing interest.

Hardcore:

1. a form of music with hard fast delivery.

simple and effective sounds, mainly focussed [sic] on a message. message is ussually [sic] unity, anarky, [sic] strength or public power.

2. HARDCORE is the limit, it is the core of cool things! It is the mother of things!

(1 &2. source, the Urban Dictionary)

hard-core also hard·core (härdkôr, -kr)
adj.

1. Intensely loyal; die-hard: a hard-core secessionist; a hard-core golfer.
2. Stubbornly resistant to improvement or change: hard-core poverty.
3. Extremely graphic or explicit: hard-core pornography.

In the pages that follow we see what happens when an archivist with absurdist tendencies catalogues the minutiae of daily existence.  But Jonnie is no nebbish, collecting facts and sticking them like boogers to the page.  Here are no dull recitations of the collector, no dry scraps preserved in a vacuum.  Rather we find a compendium at once familiar and revelatory—incidents, memories, processes, encounters—that reveal the texture both of everyday life, and the mind of their chronicler—a texture that is not unlike the orange dust that clings to your fingers after eating a bag of Cheetos—sticky, flavorful, impossible to get out from under your nails.

In Jonnie 7-11’s book you will discover the intersection of the ephemeral and the hardcore.  One might assume that these two qualities are contradictory, but in Jonnie’s work the paradox reveals a space where life itself is illuminated with uncommon intensity. 

There is no doubt that Jonnie is hardcore.  From early childhood to his fully-fledged manhood, Jonnie has exhibited the balls-to-the-wall willingness to explore the world as it is and to interact with what’s right there in front of him. Whether he is breaking rocks for eight hours a day , practicing mole removal with ordinary nail clippers, conducting experiments by micturating into his own visage, chasing Amish buggies or freight trains, encountering day laborers, his Liebling, archivists, bloggers, landlords, esquimaux, drunks, golfers or schizophrenics, Jonnie does not shrink from experience.  No subject, no matter how mundane, no person, no matter how crazy, escapes his notice.  As Jonnie himself professes, he has an affection for stupidity.

At first glance this book might seem like a compendium of ephemera—disconnected and utterly without point.  Jonnie himself calls his blog (from which these entries were drawn) “a place to store my stuff”.  However, taken all together, what emerges in these pages is, for me at least, truly rare.   Behind the fork fangs and the hulk hands and the pirate salute is a person who strikes me as kind and intelligent and imaginative and wise. 

Read between the lines of his anecdotes and the ephemera he presents will remind you that life—fleeting, ordinary life—can be exciting and fun.  This is a powerful thing to do.  On the surface his anecdotes and craft projects are hilarious—but after continued exposure they become—absurdly-- uplifting.

Jonnie first came to me by reputation, as the librettist and chief tenor of his dadaist masterpiece, The Toilet Opera.  His aria “hear my flush, fear my flush”, even at secondhand, is unforgettable.  On the basis of that single exuberant couplet, I concluded that Jonnie Gilliom was a man whose hand I’d be proud to shake (after we both washed, of course). 

Nearly ten years later, Boz, Jonnie and I gathered online and audio-blogged  excerpts from “Bat Out of Hell”.  I was grieving the suicide of a dear friend and laid up in bed with a broken ankle.  My family were all far away.  So were my friends.  But online, the three of us had what I will always consider a wake.  Jonnie didn’t speak any traditional words of sympathy. Sentimentality isn’t his style. But he sang Meatloaf  into a pillow while wearing a Frankenstein mask, baying into the phone in his signature tuneless Frank Zappa voice and , four hundred miles away, I laughed until I cried.   

I don’t know if he even remembers that night, and it doesn’t matter.  At a time when I couldn’t be consoled, that evening—three dorks screaming songs into the phone and zonking about Meatloaf—helped me get through a really bad night.  To me, that is Jonnie.  I don’t know how he does it, but he makes me feel that life is good. 

I have been following Jonnie’s work on the web for almost three years now, and over the course of that time his writing has captivated me, instructed me, comforted me, and won my respect.

So settle in.  Let Jonnie teach you the deeper meaning of what it is to be hardcore. Embrace the ephemeral with courage and humor.  Let this book remind you that, somewhere out there in the flickering light of the Del Taco sign, under the swaying palm trees of the OC, a man with a vision cares enough to write about those ephemeral moments that are born and pass away like mayflies on a summer night—brief, beautiful, pointless, and profound.

Book of Lists #2

13 things I've learned from reading The Book of Lists #2 (1980):

1. Clark Gable would have been 80 years old if he had lived until 1981 (p. 1).

2. Breakfast cereals, once considered "junk foods" in 1980, are now often seen as healthy (p. 381).

3. Bob Dylan's forgettable Blonde on Blonde was ranked the second greatest album of all time by rock critics in 1978 (p. 164).

4. There is a street named "Nameless Street" in Manning, Iowa (p. 44).

5. An unpainted wooden stake lasts 1-4 years before disintegrating, while a painted one lasts 13 years (p. 245)!

6. "Gorgias of Epirus was born during the funeral of his mother. The pallbearers were shocked to hear unexpected crying and opened the coffin to discover Gorgias, who had slipped out of the womb and was very much alive" (p. 259).

7. In 1890, Leventon & Co. sold 180,000 Egyptian mummified cats from a burial ground near Beni Hasaan for 3.15 shillings per ton (p. 276).

8. A Picture is worth a thousand words - "The American Society of Magazine Photographers reported the base rate for a full-page photo was $75 for black-and-white, $150 for color. However, an illustration was much more expensive. Playboy paid $800 for a full-page color illustration, while its article rate was about 40 cents per word. On this scale, a picture would be worth 2,000 words (p. 142).

9. Nome, Alaska, was accidentally named after the word "name" miscopied from a British map in 1850 (p. 135).

10. For a 1977 Laugh-In skit, censors insisted the phrase "Don't forget to take your pill" be replaced with "Be careful" because the network objected to the implication that women plan in advance to have sex  (p. 205).

11. Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 was originally going to be titled Catch-18 (p. 229).

12. The Postman Always Rings Twice was originally going to be titled Bar-B-Q 

(p. 228).

13. "The giant squid is the most highly developed of the invertebrates. Its eyes are almost exact replicas of human eyes. Often confused with the octopus, which attacks humans only when threatened, the giant squid is a carnivorous predator. One notable incident occurred on March 25, 1941, when the British ship Britannia sank in the Atlantic Ocean. As a dozen survivors clung to their lifeboat, a giant squid reached its arm around the body of a man and pulled him below"(p. 109).

[Originally posted on Rebel Leady Boy, Apr. 14, 2006]