Bachelors and Bread

As a dumb old bachelor I have so much stale bread

That if it didn’t start to smell I’d use it for my bed.

I only buy one loaf per week, but then go out to eat

So often that the lonely loaf turns into mucky peat.

I put some in the freezer but forget about it till

It freezer-burns to concrete and would blunt a diamond drill.

But sometimes only sandwiches at home can fill the void --

So if I’m lacking bread I start to cry or am annoyed.

I tried to keep a pig to eat my leavings with no pout --

But once it saw the mess I call my home it just moved out!

Becoming

“In contrast to the institutions of the world, which teach us to know something, the plan of salvation and the gospel of Jesus Christ challenge us to become something.”

Dallin H. Oaks

Each day I am becoming, something more or something less.

Standing still is not an option that I can possess.

The process of creation is vouchsafed to one and all --

We have not been immobilised because of Adam’s fall.

The Gospel is transformative and not an anodyne --

My metamorphosis continues on without deadline.

So do not label me as ‘done’ or ‘through’ or even ‘dead’ --

I’m going to keep on rolling, though I’m just a poor retread!

Are Women Required to Register for the Draft?

(Suggested from a story by Linda Qiu)

Will women be drafted for war?

Our Congress discussed this before.

Right now it appears

Despite new frontiers

They’ll volunteer and nothing more.

Restaurant Review: The Sensuous Sandwich in Provo

There is nothing sensuous about a sandwich -- unless you're making one naked in the kitchen with a similarly unattired Kate Upton. However, in the interests of the public weal, I ventured forth this blustery afternoon to the Sensuous Sandwich on Center Street in downtown Provo to order their namesake sandwich. And this is my report:

The decor is, to borrow a felicitous phrase from Groucho Marx, of the 'crummy moronic' type. The booths are impossibly uncomfortable -- I could not fit into any of them. The walls are plastered with idiotic posters, most of them taped on and starting to peel off. There are several Wayne's World posters, and I was particularly repulsed by one that detailed a host of interesting facts about flatulence.

My six inch sub included ham, turkey, roast beef, and jack cheese. The flaccid meats were overwhelmed by even more flaccid shredded lettuce and paper thin tomato slices. My fountain drink cost extra. The whole shebang came to $5.89. I did not so much eat my sandwich as endure it. This place gets exactly 1 Burp -- and that's only because at least I did not get ptomaine poisoning. I'm thinking a Subway's would clean up in downtown Provo, if this is all the sandwich competition there is. A shrink-wrapped ready-made sandwich from Fresh Market down the street would have tasted better, and cost less.

Since my meal held absolutely no interest for me, I started pondering something that has puzzled me for years. This place offers fountain drinks in four sizes: small, medium, large, and extra large. The prices are $1.39; $1.69; $1.89; and $2.09, respectively. So far so good. But no matter what size you order, you can get all the free refills you want. So why on earth do people pay the most for the largest sized cup when they could get just as much pop with the smallest cup? All they have to do is walk up to the dispenser a few more times. I checked each booth, and everyone had either the large or the extra large cup. What does this say about the kind of people who eat and drink in such a place?

I'm pretty sure a straw poll taken right then and there would have revealed they all voted for Trump.

In Mexico, an Outbreak of Fuel Thefts Becomes a Crisis

The brisk, open gas trade is one of the more obvious manifestations of Mexico’s national fuel-theft epidemic. Thieves are now siphoning gasoline and diesel fuel at record-high rates from the system — often by drilling taps into pipelines under cover of darkness — and are selling it on the black market around Mexico and perhaps even in the United States and Central America.

By Kirk Semple

An hombre who hailed from El Paso

Was collared with some bootleg gaso.

He sold it so cheap

It made tourists weep

When he was dragged off with a lasso.

Church Sleep

“I am pretty sure that church sleep is among the healthiest of all sleeps.”

Dieter F. Uchtdorf

When my head begins to nod

While I’m worshipping my God

I do not become upset

Or begin to shake and sweat.

If I make a pew my bed

It won’t make the Lord see red.

Spirit willing, body weak;

A nap at my age ain’t unique.  

A Quotation from Mark Twain

The only quote I ever want to be affixed to me

Is “Never pay for virtue when a vice is offered free.”

I kinda like the ring of it, although it don’t make sense.

It makes me sound a cynic who is through with all pretence.

I’ll send it first to Hallmark, then I’ll try MAD Magazine --

Between the two of them I ought to see a little green.

But if no one will buy it, still my work is not in vain --

I’ll put it on a t-shirt with a picture of Mark Twain.

My Unfinished Clown Gag

Schubert had his unfinished symphony. I have my unfinished clown gag. I’ve been working on it for years, and still haven’t come up with a satisfactory blow off.

It all began back in the Ringling clown alley when I was a novice joey. I loved prowling around thrift stores in the down and out neighborhoods of the cities we played. I found wonderful cast-offs, including a pure wool tam-o-shanter, a silk top hat, duck calls, wooden train whistles, a pair of pince-nez complete with attached black ribbon, a trombone case for my musical saw, a ceramic ocarina, a patched up squeeze box, a parking meter (I took it into the audience and tried getting quarters from the audience for expired seats), and golf clubs.

I especially doted on golf clubs. I saw myself as another Bob Hope, strolling casually around the ninth hole with a putter. Used golf clubs, all bent, nicked, and twisted, cost fifty cents a piece back then at a Goodwill store or St. Vincent de Paul. I collected a round dozen of ‘em, along with a narrow canvas golf bag to keep them in. But since I didn’t ever play golf I just threw the bag into one of the blue clown prop boxes until boss clown LeVoi Hipps complained about how they were taking up room and not being used for anything.

Fine, I told him, I’d think up a clown gag for them.

There are many precedents. W.C. Fields has a celebrated golf routine that he included in several of his movies. Both Laurel and Hardy and the Three Stooges placed several of their two-reelers on golf courses. Harpo the Clown made a good living just carrying an oversized golf club around at golf tournaments. And my favorite Our Gang comedy, Divot Diggers, was nothing but a series of bizarre slapstick gags with golf clubs, golf balls, and a chimpanzee. I could work up a mashup of golf gags as easily as kiss my hand.

I began by loading up the golf bag with an eclectic blend of strictly non-golfing items -- such as a garden rake, a bamboo fishing pole, a skein of red yarn, and a shotgun loaded with blanks. After discarding the rake I would keep stepping on it, bringing the handle up into my face. I kept one of Mark Anthony’s handmade foam rubber fish attached to the bamboo pole, so I could mime a terrific struggle in landing it. The red yarn just kept coming out of the golf bag in an endless stream until I got tangled up in it like a spider web. And I used the shotgun to blast my hapless golf ball when it refused to take off for the horizon after several futile strokes.

I also added some traditional schtick to my golf routine. My hat kept falling off whenever I bent over to address the ball, and when I would step up to retrieve it my clown shoes inadvertently kicked it ten feet away. When finally retrieved I would place my chapeau on a golf club I was holding over my shoulder, instead of on my head, and then look around in mounting anger for the missing headgear. I took spectacular pratfalls by stepping on the little white golf ball.

But I couldn’t come up with an adequate ending, a blow off. I put the gag in the show, just to get Hipps off my back, but it lacked something to bring it to life, to bring it to a rousing, hilarious close.

Prince Paul suggested I keep a rabbit in the golf bag, and when I was done with all the golf clubs just pull it out, pet it, and wave to the audience as I walked off. That made no sense to me, but Prince pointed out “Who the hell needs a clown gag to make sense? You just pull out the damn rabbit so the kids can ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ over it and then get the hell off.”

Mark Anthony offered to make me a sexy foam rubber mermaid to pull out of the golf bag for my blow off. He had a thing for mermaids, and was always trying to put one or two in every ring gag we did. He was especially painstaking about carving and painting their bosoms. I told him thanks, but no thanks.

“Use a bowling ball instead of a golf ball, Pinhead” Swede Johnson said cryptically.

“What earthly good would that do, you old buzzard?” I asked irately.

“You could drop it on your foot -- that would get a big laugh.”

I never got the gag to my complete liking that season. I put the clubs and bag away at the end of the season and didn’t think about it again until I returned from pantomime school in Mexico to begin working as an Advance Clown for Ringling. I needed a lot of material for school shows, so I dusted off the incomplete golf gag, hoping that I could improvise something that would tie the whole schmear together. And I almost did.

It came to me in a flash -- use a marshmallow instead of a real golf ball! Then eat the darn thing at the end of the routine. When I tried it out it only got a moderate titter. Even from crazed kindergartners, who were so excited to see a real live circus clown that half of ‘em had accidents when I just waved my hat at them.

Once again I packed away my golfing paraphernalia, completely stymied. As the years trickled by I would pull out the old golf bag for mud shows and Shrine circuses occasionally -- but it just never clicked. It didn’t make sense and at the same time it wasn’t nonsensical enough. Maybe I should have actually learned to play golf and joined a country club -- but there was never that kind of money in the Torkildson piggy bank.

I threw the whole frustrating mess away when I moved out here to Provo. It was just junk, anyways -- the heads were rusty and cracked and the handles were riddled with beetle holes. Nowadays when I’m browsing for bargains at Deseret Industries I avoid the outdoor section where they sell the derelict golf clubs. Who needs that kind of aggravation? But every so often, when sleep is as elusive as a plastic shopping bag in a gale, I sit up in bed and wonder if maybe, just maybe, a tennis racket is what that gag needed all along. Or perhaps just a simple pants drop?     

The Rising Tide

As sea levels rise, even graves

Are no longer sacred enclaves.

All those by the coast

Are soon to be toast --

Exposed by the merciless waves.

From a story by Justin Gillis

Water into Wine

“When we trust and follow Him, our lives, like water to wine, are transformed.”

L. Whitney Clayton

Those who prate about bouquet or vintage of their wine

Have never tasted anything as good as from God’s vine.

He cultivates disciples till they sweeten far beyond

Anything a simple grape has ever truly spawned.

Transforming men and women into such a grand libation

Is what the Savior wants when He instructs us in Salvation.