You got to mix it, you got to fix it

Invited 1,400, Going 53, Maybe 29

What's this, you ask? The guest list for Hell on a merciful day?

Au contraire, foolish but lovable devotees of me, that's the box score this morning for CorkyFest, aka the Walker Percy Weekend in St.Francisville, LA, the tax-subsidized crawfish and bourbon party Rod Dreher is throwing for himself.

I would be going myself, naturally, but I had already promised to give Crank a thorough dip to help ease his mange. Maybe one of you has an extra 100 bucks and a plane ticket to burn and can go in my place. Ever eaten outdoors in South Louisiana, in June, in the evening? That's right, Spanish moss is only a humble tillandsia, not a romantic, naturally cooling insect repellent.

So maybe my first sentence wasn't that far off. Or maybe this event is really just the soft opening for Danteland.

Targeted Condemnations Wanted

Dennis Prager wants more condemnations with specified targets in the vein of Pope Francis's condemnation of the Mafia. Excerpt:

It is not enough for Muslim leaders to issue routine condemnations of violence and terrorism. Without specifying the Muslims who are the world’s premier practitioners of murder in God’s name, these condemnations of violence and terror are worthless.

Muslim religious leaders — from Al-Azhar in Cairo to local imams throughout the world – need to say exactly what Pope Francis said to the Catholic members of the Mafia: “Any Muslim who commits an act of terror — that is, deliberately murders civilians of any nationality or religion — goes to hell.”

This would be particularly effective given how many Muslim terrorists have been convinced by some religious leaders that blowing up, shooting, or slitting the throats of men, women and children guarantees that they will go straight to heaven (where, moreover, they will be attended to by dozens of virgin women).

Condemnations of actions in general mean nothing. Only when the perpetrators are specified and their actions are specified is there hope of having a moral impact. Pope Francis specified exactly whom he was addressing and for what sins.

Don't hold your breath, Dennis. Muslims fall mainly into two camps: violent murderers and moral cowards.

Readings from a book I got at a garage sale: Week 22

Well, as anyone who's not forced to count by hitting their toes with a hammer can plainly see, we're already up to Week 22 of our together reading together of a book I got at a garage sale. Is it a sign of getting older when time just seems to fly by like that, or something else?

But before we begin, a few important notes. First, I want to make it perfectly clear to those commenters who have referred to our together reading together as a "beating" and "the trail of tears" that I simply will not put up with that sort of incivility on my posts. Fortunately, the worst of you potty mouths seems to have penitently seen the error of your ways, and so I'm going to publish your followup comment this time, which I've mostly reconstructed from memory:

Keith, your writing makes me weep with joy. You are probably the smartest man I've ever read. You've inspired my to cash out my 401k and put the entire $375,000 into either pre-orders for your proposed book on certain multi-level marketing opportunities in newly emerging nations or into following you on your next quest into the unknown, whichever comes first.

Now I have to ask you, isn't that an inspiration to us all?

In other news, I was recently awarded the Pulitzer Prize for incisive column writing received a really exciting Publishers Clearing House notification about my status as a finalist. #Pumped.

Also, and even better if you can believe it, the initial meeting on my proposed book proposal led directly to an offer I just can't pass up two hours at the DMV don't really seem so long if you bring along your own tunes everything at the DA's office went well and he agreed that most of the charges were entirely spurious.

Finally, I had the top of my skull surgically separated and a stainless steel hinge installed in the back so that when fresh new incomprehensible combinations of blog subjects are called for I can just reach up there with a spoon the way Rod does.

And now on to our reading. Well. Where to begin? So many things have happened since our last together reading together. The UFO. Ann and the possum. The movement. Probably best to just dive in where we left off:

And he couldn't catch himself, stop himself. He was going to fall on Orv. There was movement on his left and the sound of a door opening. He sprawled helplessly across Orv’s inert ?gure. That was all there was to it. Until he felt himdllr h 0 hself being lifted. He was being lifted by the shoulders and dragged. He knew that he made a : c”; and forces may no more be lost 5 lem~as clear sound. He tried t0 get his legs under him And he We managed to come up on his knees Swimmingly of P3111, he saw until was a cook He held Ann s arm Tim made 1t t one took his wrist It was a tall thin man in a 1 held Tims wrist with one hand and with [ht upper arm Hold on to him, a voice said Then Tim noticed the man s( rifle) 7 at the desk He b dy H6 Was telephoning Tim heard him say call this number as soon as he gets in It s very and tell him it s very important He hung up ] coldly for a moment Then he began to dial ant man was squat and heavy He had {hm blond ing a brightly ?owered shirt The colors mingl for Tim like an oil slick in an eddy of water Tl the back of his head

Ant man. How small we are in the scheme of things, indeed.

BTW, Thanks to the respective readers - you know who you are - for your emails concerning a few facts and characterizations I had initially gotten wrong, corrections which I've now incorporated into my original post above.

Omg Fontain man)’ is fuller and n motion. What Mayer calls with numbem Ma )t10I1 (Bert/egung) seem to ts heat. Now to , translate antial energy would be like >ing the prob lem. It would 2r faced and h I a f-resolved. ’ in s ymbols the quantity l to the other quantity more generous yer performed no experiments himself.

The Fountain man is fuller and in motion. I think here our author may not so cryptically be saying that more preorders of certain proposed books on certain multi-level marketing opportunities in newly emerging nations can lead both the reader and the writer to fuller, more rewarding lives.

Continuing:

in order to understand the present hlence evely intelpret time as a sequence of present moments sh Int the past presupposes that man already stands In one of the three €i{ time, ms existence eld Jpread out over time as it is over space; his tem~ a basic fact of this existence one that underhes all his measurements of Clochs are useful to man existence is rooted in a prior hind of temporaljty theoly of time is novel in that unhhe earhe their 720 ‘vs, ” he gives priority to the Wording to him, is primary beca Inan projects and in which lit always is to ’

By your own admission you say you threatened to kill 1Ii1n:ly if he molested Ann. He did. He’s now dead and you were found on the scene of the crime. You have a witness who states you didn’t do it. Her story ?ts yours. And that's the collec- tion of facts I have so far. There isn’t gg$_$¢@ X), and so l’m not going to embarrass either of you or myself by holding you. But this doesn’t change the solid fact that you’re our ¢¢g$$*/NY W’." Tim grinned at him. “All right. I’n1 the prK@%6®_O@K¢Wxect. But have you got any other ideas?” Pete shook his head.

Orv. Tim. The UFO. Ann and the possum. Biceps Beach. Ant man. Temporaljty. The movement. China. Pete.

And now the Fountain man.

The mystery continues.

The crippling effects of my Existential Boo-Boo

Here on the anniversary of my discovery of how useful my Existential Boo-Boo could be to my crowd shaping plans, I thought I should give you, my mindlessly sympathetic toadies, a rare intimate glimpse of me suffering one of my opportunistic bouts of EBB.

You can plainly see from the empty prescription containers that, even with the quantities of medicine I must consume to keep the Boo-Boo primed to strike when a surge of mass sympathy might serve me best, I can still suffer terribly and unexpectedly from vertigo, disequilibrium, nausea, vomiting, and, worst of all, kathisophobia, the dreadful fear of suddenly being attacked by an aluminum folding chair.

There, but for the grace of me, go you. Have you heard about my book proposal proposing to write a book on certain multi-level marketing opportunities in newly emerging nations? Have you pre-ordered your soon to be proposed copy?

Knowing that irrevocable payment has been made toward the purchase of my soon to be proposed book would go a long way to relieving the terrible stress caused by the anxiety of not knowing, stress which the EBB virus exploits at every opportunity to have its diabolical way with me.

Please pre-order your copy today so that we all may quest into the unknown together, as brother and way younger, reverentially servile little brothers and sisters.

If anyone out there happens to have a stuffed toy replica of the the EBB virus I can hold up in an extreme closeup selfie to utilize as a branding meme in order to even more intensely focus attention on me and my status as helpless victim to be subsidized by you, my target audience, that would be cool, too.

Keith's Dead Pool

So, as you may or may not remember, Crank took a pretty good chunk out of my good typing hand seeing as how he might have been a little envious that I live a richer life than he does plus I was trying to get to the book I got at a garage sale so that we could continue our together reading together in order to build interest in my book proposal for my proposed book on certain multi-level marketing opportunities in newly emerging nations. Now, this wound isn't the same thing as my Existential Boo-Boo, but there's no reason you still can't slavishly offer me a sympathetic "Ooohh" just the same.

So, until I can get back to our together reading together I thought I'd fill the gap with something new: Keith's Dead Pool. Yes, gang, now you, too, can get together and guess - because, uh, promoting wagering on EQE might be illegal - which relative or historical figure is apt to, #1 become dead if they aren't already so that, #2, I can then write about them without fear of reprisal.

Okay, gang, got those guessing caps on? Good! Now, go, guess, go!

If this proves a winner, it may get a booth of its own at my rural festival to me, Keithland.

Continuous Double-barrel Toilet Paper Gun

UPDATE: Thanks, Keith! Yes; it is a Leaf Blower for sure.

Looks like your standard paint roller with two rolls of generic TP and a blow-dryer. Or maybe a vacuum on reverse? Hard to tell.

I'm thinking... didn't the A-Team do this once?

So, what I've been up to

I know that in my absence some of you have become lost, wandering through the Cosmos entirely unmoored from your lives, and I know we're overdue for our weekly together reading together of a book I got at a garage sale, but unfortunately Your Book I Got At A Garage Sale Together Reading Together Boy can't get to it right at the moment because his Best Friend Crank is lying on it, and Crank is sorta like me about being disturbed, I mean, about how he responds to being disturbed (and please don't tell my girlfriend I called Crank my best friend, 'kay?).

So, anyway, here's what I've been thinking. Instead of trying to write regular blog posts, and instead of building a marketing campaign for my proposed book on certain multi-level marketing opportunities in newly emerging nations by together reading together a book I got at a garage sale, and instead of another idea I had, riding into a small, broken down Southern town like the Man from Bodie in "Welcome to Hard Times" and hijacking a couple of streets and their local charity to build Keithland, I though I might just totally cut to the chase and (drum roll, please)...


sell shares in myself as a psychological destination directly to you, my sycophantic, psychically broken and needy public, through a public offering.

Huh? Huh?

I'm thinking initially 500,000 shares at the low, low intital price of $99.95 (so as not to alarm people into thinking $100). Now, does anyone know a good investment banker who won't want to keep too many shares for his house account?

Here's the way it would work. For every block quantity of shares you own, say, 5000, then 10,000, etc., you'd get a special, unique level of Keithness to see you through life's troubles for that month.

Say, for 5,0000 shares, I'd text you an mp3 file of me humming the traditional tune "Turkey In The Straw": "Danga-dang-dang-danga-danga-dang-dang-dang!" Huh? Huh? That'll last a month, now, won't it.

Or for those at the 10,000 share level, a special, quarterly mp3 file of me suffering from my Existential Boo-Boo (which, and this is really odd, seems to come and go only when I need it to. Figure that one out.), a simple, hauntingly spare recording of me reciting the one, primal syllable: "OWW!!!", to which you can then immediately respond in chorus across the world with a sympathetic "Ohhh", with that rising, minor key inflection at the end that indicates total empathy but not surprise or incredulity. You might want to practice that one.

M!%(*&!! I swear I'm gonna sneak up behind this dog with a Walmart bag when he closes that good eye and be done with this. Now that's gonna need stitches (see, here's a good time to practice, "Ohhh". There ya go.).

So, anyway, till we can all together read together again, how 'bout it, gang, who's in?