Chicken, again!?

Drunken chickens from another planet were invading my garden. I don't know what brought them into my little slice of paradise, but they were ruining the creeping phlox and pulling up brick pathways while looking for worms and, their favorite I would later learn, centipedes.

I was sleeping in that day because of the three day holiday and other than a lingering morning dream hadn't given any thought to goings on at work. It seems a boss three times removed was questioning my work ethic and I was sniveling and hem hawing, then I woke up and had breakfast. Waffles and a hot cup of black English tea. The dog noticed the intruders before I did.

Hamster plummeted down the steps from his rumpled bed in my room and jumped against the patio glass barking his fool head off. I figured it was a rabbit and got up to let him out. No way could my little fluff ball catch a rabbit, and more than that, I was fairly sure the rabbit, if it stood its ground, could kick Hamster's furry butt.

A nice morning, I was going to follow him out and sit on a bench in the corner of the garden with my tea cup to watch the morning dew drip off the leaves. Cripes, I saw them. Not rabbits, but space alien chickens, staggering around my backyard. They had laser blasted my weather vane and left scorch marks on the fence. Paving stones littered the grass and one of them had fallen into a birdbath and apparently drowned in his own puke.

I didn't dare let my little doggie out there. These avian sots were liable to shoot him as soon as let him lick them into a lather, then dine on his charred...ugh, I can't bear to think on it. Instead I gathered up the pup and secured him behind closed doors listening to him frantically yap. The inebriates were clucking and weaving on the west end of my yard where the greater portion of my garden lies, while on the opposite end I have a garden shed. I worked out a plan to gain access to the shed and hopefully rid my yard of these foul winos before they destroyed everything I had spent years constructing and lovingly planting. There is dirt so deep in the crevices of my hands that I will never be rid of all of it. That garden is like a child to me and over the spring and summer months I spend hours a day fiddling and weeding about in the crisscrossing brick paths and crouching under weeping trees pruning and picking suckers. I couldn't allow these marauding rummy space hacks to land in my ajuga and set me back ten years on my backyard Eden.

I stealthily departed via the front door and circled around to the back of my tall privacy fence. The rest of the neighborhood seemed quiet, excepting a barking dog 3 or 4 houses down and the whining hum of a blower from a removed addition. Then I climbed up and over the fence to land behind my shed. I had only to creep around the side and open the door to get inside and gather a few tools.

The shed has a little window facing out over a deck into my yard, and I could easily see the bumbling chickens bumbling about and causing general mayhem. Their rocket ship was ass over end and quite nearly broken in two, so I was guessing their stay would be an extended one, at least until they phoned their equivalent of triple-A for planetside assistance. As I watched one of them actually unlatched its helmet to test the air then clutched its throat and expired in a mound of geranium. Its tiny talons stuck up over the dainty pink blossoms. Hilarious. If I merely waited, perhaps all of them would peaceably off themselves.

Hamster still yowled in the house. I saw him in the upstairs' window clawing at the glass. I wheeled about and saw one of them looking up at me. It had wandered into the shed and was leaving jumbled steps on the floor from the wet grass. In its right gloved wing it clumsily held a blaster which it whipped up and fired, but the laser missed me by a foot and ricocheted off a rafter. I grabbed up a shovel and bashed it over the brain case sending feathers cascading into the muggy air. They settled in a pile upon its broken heap.

I had done interstellar murder, but it was in self defense. Space birdocide; was it a crime? But I couldn't wait to find out, they were into my purple garden tearing out the clematis and weaving it into party hats.

The blaster made no sense to me, or I would have cracked open the window and methodically peeled off the bibulous chickens one by one. One was planting a brightly colored flag in a raised bed of asparagus now. Damn these cockeyed cluckers!

I yanked out my mower and ripped the cord. This fine piece of mulching machinery never let me down and started on the first pull. Grabbing up the shovel in my left, I backed out of the shed and pushed down on the handle, raising the deck of the mower to a 45 degree angle, and crouching I lunged forward at the biggest mass of invaders. A third scattered and teetered at me but I deftly swung my spade and set them spinning into the lawn. The rest I eviscerated under spinning death blades. Then I let go the handle and sprung into the midst of them wielding my lethal shovel like a double handed halberd, effectively obscuring their vision by knocking helmets askew and piling them bodily into the ground-cover.

Disabled, I relieved the surviving clutch of their lasers and gathered them and their comrade's tattered remains into a wheelbarrow. Three trips, including the transport of the busted rocket ship, and I had rid the celestial space vermin from my ravaged yard, dumped into the overgrown weeds beyond my fence line. They could sleep it off in the thistle for all I cared. I kept the blasters, figuring once I learned their use I could put them to work eliminating dandelions from my bluegrass.

The flag I rolled up and tossed into my shed, as a souvenir from my day battling space chickens, and as proof if SETI ever came calling. No pissed poultry was coming down from the stars to claim my garden, by God, and I assert my right to dig, sculpt, mow and plant its borders as I see fit, damn the foul that impinges my property line in search of conquest and grubs! Stand up, all you backyard weekend warriors from suburbia. Raise your shovel, hoist your rake and shout at the heavens: This Land is My Land!

And have another beer, or two.

Dinosaur Hand is Post Apocalyptic

Dinosaur Hand: Hey, look at me. I'm a disembodied haaaaand!
Tom: Ooh, spooky.
D.H: Hee hee. Did I frighten you?
Tom: Today me and Dino are going to review some Post Apocalyptic movies that we've seen over the last few months.
D.H: Get this...as of late there have been a plethora.
Tom: Nice word.
D.H: yeah, yeah. Plethora. Plethoraaaaa.
Tom: You really know how to make things sound dirty, Dinosaur Hand.
D.H: Ha, I know!
Tom:Anyway, you're right. There have been a lot of these, and we've picked three to review. They are: Monsters, The Road, and The Book of Eli. So, Dino, where do you want to start?
D.H: At the beginning. Duh.

Tom: Alright, smart ass. Monsters. It's a bit slow moving.
D.H: Dull, actually. The stars are mostly uninteresting.
Tom: Yep. They're frankly mundane, not pretty, and as imaginative as a spelunking gopher.
D.H: The monster I assume is what the film is supposedly named for? You know, Monsters? Really?
Tom: We see glimpses of the monsters and their spawn throughout the film. At different times they show up and wreak havoc, but off camera. Finally at the end you get to see them and I guess they are pretty spectacular.
D.H: I think the monsters are doin' it!
Tom: Could be. If you have to see it, skip to the end and just watch the monster special effects. Kind of cool.
D.H: It's the Monster Mash!
Tom: I was thinking of linking the trailer, but I won't bother.
D.H: And you shouldn't either. Doo whacka doo.

Tom: Now, as far as The Road....
D.H: zzzzz.
Tom: Oh, I don't know. It was alright. This movie starred Vigo Mortensen and some kid. The acting was fine.
D.H: Oh, oh. And CharlizeTheron! She's sooooo hot.
Tom: Oops, I forgot. She's in it, mostly flashbacks. A lot of flashbacks. This movie was based on a best selling book. I guess the premise is good. The world is coming to end and things will never be the same, and somehow we just go on living.
D.H: It is what it is.
Tom: Yep...either move ahead or lay down and die.
D.H: Don't stop or you'll get run over!
Tom: Tomorrow is another day.
D.H: They'll eat you!
Tom: It was just OK.

D.H: Did we like The Book of Eli? Did we, did we?
Tom: I did. Denzel Washington is as excellent as always and of the three, this was really by far the best.
D.H: Better villains. And Road Warrior stuff. Varoom.
Tom: Sure. It was much more mainstream and not amateurish, like Monsters.
D.H: All the way through you're like, 'hey, what's the big deal...it's a bible, dude.'
Tom: Exactly. It turns into a quest sort of a movie, and every player ends up having a significant role, and all is revealed in the end.
D.H: Fas-ki-nating.
Tom: I liked it.
D.H: No zombies, though.
Tom: I'm sorry. Should we have reviewed Zombieland instead?
D.H: That was Awesome !!!

doodles for Sunday

aLiEnAnTiCs!!!

monsters!

another silly UnQuotable..this one stealing the artwork of the master, C. Schulz.

an exercise in futility

She rubs against me sending static charges up my leg.

I look down at her, Fluffernut, and am in no way reminded of Princess Leia garbed in white and transmitting like some ghost scattered over a million radio waves.

She purrs up to me, circling my leg, mewling, but now I can't get the image of the princess in decrepit surrounding, scantily clad and near to falling out of her metal bra.

Suddenly I am reminded of my condition and I hastily kick Fluffernut away in a ball of screeching cat fury while rummaging through my cargo pockets for a bottle of pain killers.

Popping off the cap I hastily dump out a lone pill, but a soundless lightning strike interrupts the moment; I see the pill tumble forth into the palm of my hand in slow motion, then the lights go out.

Only my static image remains to me against the drawn white curtain and I appear pale and featureless like a mummy in a vintage horror flick.

The pain refuses to subside as I fall to my knees in search of the dropped pill, still in the dark but led on by the colored spots that cloud my eyes.

I am in a fog and can almost see myself from a distance, as if I'm detached, when I hear the amplified creaking of my back door, and a skinny man slinks through the opening with a baseball bat in his raised right hand.

My head is still roaring with a migraine upheaval and my fingers are raking through the carpet even as my second sight observes the predator as he invades my humble abode in the dark.

Scrambling on my hands and knees like a dog I frantically back under the dining room table, still feeling about for the pill, but avoiding the careful step of the armed burglar.

He is quiet but hears nothing but the patter of rain on the windows so he lowers the bat and pulls out a flashlight to get the lay of the land, not expecting to see a fully hair raising event staring at him from atop the kitchen table, an agitated cat, so outside of its natural state of being.

The intruder backs up upon seeing the hissing beast, saliva dripping from its fangs, and trips over a chair that I had pulled out earlier, but in mid fall the lights flicker back to life even as he clutches the flashlight in his clenched fist like a life preserver.

Fluffernut leaps and he whips his arm up to fend off the bite, screaming out loud, but fails in his attempt to make anything but a low breathy moan, tasting on his own breath the minty flavor of Aquafresh.

It's all in slow motion as the lights go down again and lightning flashes illuminate the room showing two masters facing off across the stoic mine field of emotions.

The throbbing in my head serves as a backdrop to the illusion unfolding before my eyes and I can see the hapless burglar, now flailing and tangled in a haphazard chair as the assassin cat dips into the thief's jugular in initiation.

Not even Wonder Woman's sniper rifle would help this poor bastard now as he bleeds out onto my Berber.

Slowly I inch forward onto the green swath while attempting to avoid the snare of table legs and a spreading red pool.

It's in my head now that Fluffernut is my protector, sent to me from above by some weird guardian angel, like a little dragon to perch on my shoulder and devour any dangers that lie like pitfalls to my step.

Again the lights pop on and I take in the scene, holding my throbbing skull and hoping my girlfriend doesn't happen to stop in for an unscheduled visit, even as I hear a car horn toot out on the street.

Damn, now is not a good time, obviously; but on the bright side the wind that is wailing through an open window not only is splattering water on my unrinsed dishes, but also tossing my hair and cooling my sweaty bare chest.

My attention is diverted to my brain again, throbbing, and as long as the lights are back on I start visually searching the ground for my dropped pill, thinking it should be more like an Easter egg hunt than looking for a needle in a haystack.

The rain begins to strengthen and droplets spatter the sill to soak the already red drenched floor, and instead of finding the illusive pill and quelling my ill, I see the body under the primping Fluffernut shudder.

I stutter back feeling my naked feet sucking at the carpet like shoes on a theater's sticky floor.

Why is this happening to me, I wonder clutching at my head and moaning alongside the pain, and in a mindless fury I grab at the sink and pull from under a pile of dirty dishes a cleaver, ready in my madness to invoke heinous crimes upon the unsuspecting dead and then perhaps to turn the blade onto myself.

Then the door, ajar, creaks open and silhouetted against a sky that has begun to lighten as the storm pushes off to the east is my pretty girlfriend, dressed in a floral pattern and beaming like she usually does, oblivious to most of what life has to offer.

She is carrying an umbrella and she bends at the waist while lowering and pulling it closed, giving me a perfect view of the street beyond stretching forth into obscurity.

She is tall, Scarlett, and dumb as a box of rocks, but eventually she notices the carnage and pouting she bites at her lower lip.

Still moaning, I am shirtless in my underpants and wielding a meat cleaver crazily in front of me like a blind gardener hacking at his unkempt shrubbery.

“Who are you,” screams Scarlett, knowing full well it's me, but scared shitless as I rip at the air and stumble dazed across the carpet.

She is only at the fringes of my sanity while the nights activity looms heavy; the storms, the pain, the carnage, and all I can see is hell unleashed and flaring, surging; I just want it all to go away.

Scarlett speaks and in my psychosis all I can see are multiple girlfriends circling the room and striking incomprehensible poses alongside the shifting walls while I turn in circles and wonder what new horror will rise up next.

“Do you want to see a movie?” she asks from out of the blue.

I feel the pill moving down my gullet, instantly purging the vertiginous cues, while Scarlett plucks up the evening's newspaper from the table and skips to the entertainment section.

Fluffernut scratches my leg and I itch my nose as I think of an alternative; “not tonight,” I say, “how about we just stay in and, you know...”

another freaky unquotable

cabezza inherant

You will keep your head on a string
a fine thing
of paste and jelly beans,
still you honor your hedgerow
it's a portent of your taste
that the beans grow long
like the winds stretched taut
over a sojourn.

Fine, transmogrify the head
to a bookmark
in a sandwich of pages
trapped around your eyes
that see nothing
except if it's a word
upon word
one each after the next,
skip a line, sight transfixed
alerted and keen upon the point
taken.

Take a memory shot
and hold to it

while the gulls flock from your body,
sparks sizzle at your breast
giving rise to acrobatics
and tasteless innuendo.

A cloud head now
shroud for a passive titan
gingerly peeking
is spreading his fleas
in opaque
and teardrop apologies.

another ridiculous unquotable.

aLiEnAnTiCs!!!

some stolen comic panels paired with unquotables....

haha... right

aLiEnAnTiCs!!!

even Monsters! have a sweet tooth...