by Jean Marie Carey | 8 Aug 2010 | Art History
Kermesse Jette
Chapter 3: The Vacation
They desperately needed to stop.
“Daddy, Daddy!” screamed Tony in a voice of desperate pleading.
They were on the Interstate, about twenty miles from the nearest gas station, and they had just left Burger Junction and Auto Palace. Tony needed to stop.
“Tony,” Mrs. Jones said calmly, turning around in her seat to hit the teen with a flyswatter her husband had given her as a Mother’s Day gift. “You have got to understand that we are trying our best to make it to the gas station as soon as you can, but Iowa is a big, spread out place. If you need to stop that bad, we’ll pull over here.”
The other children screamed with laughter, tormenting their brother with sadistic cruelty, the same kind they learned from their mom.
Tony became enraged, taken by anger. He began lashing out, kicking the dog and shouting obscenities. The dog bit him back. Fido is a pit bull.
Grandma’s house was just down this oak lined street.
“Des Moines is such a pretty town,” Mrs. Jones said. “But I hate your lousy mother.”
Mr. Jones didn’t hear her, as he was chomping on a Mars Bar, noticing that there wasn’t really an almond in every bite. He slammed on the brakes, rolled down the window, threw the candy out onto the street and pulled out a Heath Bar in retaliation.
“Litterbug,” said Toniya.
“Nazi Swine,” Mr. Jones replied laughing.
“Look there’s Grandma!” Little Boy Joey bellowed. “It’s a Miracle.”
Grandma was there alright, all 350 pounds or her. Mrs. Jones grimaced in disbelief.
“That fat hippo,” she said, giving the old woman the proverbial finger.
She put down her Mighty Mouseketeer Comic Book, and opened the door, proceeding to roller skate up the driveway’s slight incline.
“Your mom can really skate,” Mr. Jones pointed out to the three children.
TO BE CONTINUED
by Jean Marie Carey | 5 Jul 2010 | Animals in Art, Art History, Dogs!, Italian Greyhounds
Chapter 2
Something very evil had clutched the residence at 704 Howser Street. Something that hung over the little home like a black widow’s veil. Indeed, something hideous. Sure, it had happened before, but not in Astoria. This was spooky.
Inside the home, she could feel the presence of the evil force as it hovered over her. She could feel it. None of the appliances were working properly, the children had taken up the practice of walking through solid walls while chanting “Go Wisconsin!”, and sirens were piercing the air, their source unknown. This was most definitely frightening.
Actually, this evening was not unlike the previous few.
The original texts and drawings from 1987.
Only too clearly came the images of the hamsters in the bathroom, and the sailors in the atticway. She also knew the house still reeked of cheap beer and nachos. The smell was overbearing.
Her mind reeled back a few days as she tried to recall the event that might have triggered all of this, but all she could remember was the fight she had with her husband after he replaced their conventional front door with a paper barrier.
As she thought of the incident, her husband, coincidentally, came crashing through the barrier. The tearing of the paper was loud enough that it could have been a truck driving through the door.
Next came THAT voice.
“Hey! I caught that ball!” He exclaimed.
Immediately she knew that Frostie’s Angels had lost the big ball game. Her husband kept babbling about the outcome of the final play, but when he settled down, he asked her where his supper was. She pointed to the recession of the ceiling/wall above the refrigerator. There he saw a drooping wad of spaghetti, clinging for its survival.
“What’d ya do dat fer?” He asked, pointing his finger at her. There was a brief pause.
“I think we got ghosts.” She said, erupting into tears.
“What have you been smokin’?” he retorted.
With those words, the kitchen floor began crackling and crumbling beneath him. Through the crevice that developed, a little green man burst onto the scene. Was this an alien visitor?
No. It was Gumby.
To be continued…
4 Tesems (bas) et 3 hyènes (haut), origine: tombeau de Ptah Hotep à Saqqara.
by Jean Marie Carey | 27 Jun 2010 | Art History, Stuff Found in Library Books
This book, The Hour of Our Death by Philippe Aries (New York: Knopf, 1961) and the pages inside it was rebound recently, with the ad hoc call slip of a patron (who apparently had found the book) joined to new (sewn) binding.
Call slip bound into “Remote and Imminent Death,” in The Hour of Our Death
