My Parakeet was an Anarchist and other short stories

Dominic Macchiaroli

Description

Unexersized CatsOur cat has to be picked up in stages. He is enlarged in his fatness. His girth spreads over time zones and dimensions. Quantum physics can't describe his bulk. My wife suggests a gentle diet, so, 'He doesn't explode'. I suggest having his hair shaved and stomach stapled with industrial strength steel grommets.The Annoying Habit of Henry VIIIKing Henry was a fearless jouster. In competitions, people rooting for him got to sit in gilded bleachers and were plied with free alcohol and cooked game served by fair maids. The opposition sat in fetid mud, drank warm slime out of broken casks and ate gruel.... Henry always had time for jousting, even when he was otherwise busy ordering beheadings, abbey thrashings, and the odd invasion of Normandy.How Lunch Ruined Western CivilizationMy wife produced homemade mayonnaise for a party we had which contained 231,875 % fat, the caloric equivalent of 32x347 to the 10th power, and instantly rotted the wallpaper and countertops. Four people exploded after eating it, three of them theoretical dieticians. And many other stories.......Venture into a world of fractured history and observational nonsense. These stories will captivate and annoy you like none you've never not read before. Book reviews online @ www.publishedbestsellers.com

Sujets

• Short story

Informations

• Publié par: Pneuma Springs Publishing
• Date de parution: 30 novembre 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781782282716
• Langue: English

Extrait

My Parakeet was an Anarchist

and other short stories



Dominic Macchiaroli
Copyright
First Published in 2009 by Pneuma Springs Publishing
My Parakeet was an Anarchist
Copyright © 2009 Dominic Macchiaroli
Kindle eISBN: 9781782282693 Epub eISBN: 9781782282716 PDF eBook eISBN: 9781782282730 Paperback ISBN: 9781905809783
Pneuma Springs Publishing E: [e-mail] W: www.pneumasprings.co.uk
Published in the United Kingdom. All rights reserved under International Copyright Law. Contents and/or cover may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written consent of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, save those clearly in the public domain, is purely coincidental.
If I may be so foreward
I write simply to stay out of the dark places. Many humor writers do. The following are pieces collected over a period of months which have served to satisfy my sense of the absurd, as well as to provide a creative outlet I’ve learned I must have in order to function properly as a member of the human race. The pieces are strictly for your amusement. There is no deeper meaning in the scribbles, implied or intended. If you’re anything like me, you have the cumulative attention span of a fruit fly. With that truth in mind, I want you to read a story and be able to move on to the next, and quickly. Think of it as reading by drive-thru window; your literary satisfaction guaranteed in sixty seconds or less. My desire is that the reader will read the following scribbles, and that these stories will make you laugh, shake your head, whatever. The sole purpose of this book is to make your day, or night, a little brighter. And that’s it.
Acknowledgement
My thanks go to you first, kind reader, for purchasing this collection. I hope you glean as much satisfaction from reading it as I did from writing it. And please buy more copies, as it will make my publisher quite happy and then they’ll want more work from me.
I would like to thank my close friends and family who have served as subjects and comic foils in these stories. I appreciate you letting me abuse you with words and false tales. I promise to do more in the future.
My thanks to the Macchiaroli and Kemper families who have served as a treasure trove of ideas and a sounding board by which to judge this work.
Thank you to Kim, for putting up with me, and for suffering through my tedious and boring stories, verbal and written all these years. You are everything to me; truly my partner in this epic, blessed, and curious adventure we call life.
Thank you to Dominic, for being an example to me, through your diligence, perseverance and dedication. I am so filled with joy for you as you truly begin your life as a man and as a professional. Thank you also for sharing the wonders and amazements of the cosmos with me. Your gifts are limitless.
Thank you to Mia, for your sense of the ridiculous we share together. I couldn’t be more proud of your accomplishments and of the qualities you possess as a great young lady. You’ve always been my heart and you take my breath away, arctic panda queen that you are.
To my father, who read every one of these and called to tell me what he thought. You have set a great example for us all and you have an influence far greater and more widespread than you could ever imagine. This book is for you.
I love each of you with everything in me, to my core.
Thank you to my friends, old and new, from Paiute Elementary School, Scottsdale High School, Azusa Pacific University, Calvary Chapel of Scottsdale, Scottsdale Bible Church, Prime Realty Group, and all the other organizations and groups I’ve been so blessed to be a part of.
Thank you to my great friends at North Bible Church; the worship team and all the other servants who seek to do God’s great will.
Thank you to our home fellowship group: the Robinson’s, Cerva’s, Boyse’s, and Burch’s.
I know I’ve left people out. I duly beg your forgiveness. I’ll catch you on the next one, I promise.
Lastly, but really firstly, I thank the Lord Jesus Christ who has borne my sin, and who extends His overflowing grace to me everyday. I am mindful that it is not in the things I am aware of, but rather the things of which I am not, that His grace truly is exhibited. It is my deepest desire that all who read the following will come to knowledge of His saving grace in their lives.
Dedication

FOR NANCY
who taught me to love music and memorize the presidents in order, among other odd things
Table of Contents
MELANCHOLY, THE HAPPY SPANIEL
DYING FOR A HARLEY
MY NEPHEW WASTES WATER FOR FUN
DINING WITH GANDHI
MY PARAKEET WAS AN ANARCHIST
A TREATISE ON SICK
UNEXERSIZED CATS
HOLLYWOOD ACTOR PLACED IN LOW-EARTH ORBIT
GRAND CANYON UNHAPPY WITH BIRTHDAY FESTIVITIES
MUD IS OVERRATED
BREAKFAST CEREALS AND YOU
LANGUISHING ON THE COUCH OF INCONTINENCE
MY GOLDFISH IS A COWARD
THE UNREMARKABLY TEDIOUS LIFE OF CARL EINSTEIN
PLATO ATE A QUAIL FOR BREAKFAST
YOUR CARTOGRAPHER AND YOU
THE CONSEQUENCES OF DROOL
HANK’S PARADOX
A WOMAN AND TERRIBLE
ODE TO A SNACK CAKE
MARCH WINDS IN APRIL
GORDON’S MOSSY FROG
ANARCHY OF THE HALF-DAY
A WHOLE LOT OF NOTHING
A GIRTH IN THE AGITATOR
PANICS THE CAT
THE ANNOYING HABIT OF HENRY VIII
DEGREES TO THE PERPENDICULAR
A DOCTOR OF SUFFIXES
LEFT OUT OF SOMETHING FUN
GHOSTS IN THE MIRROR
HOW LUNCH RUINED WESTERN CIVILIZATION
SNEEZING FOR DOLLARS
A FACTOR OF INFINITY
COWS WANDER
COME ON, ONOMATOPOEIA
WILL PLANT PEAS FOR PEACE
DO SOMETHING
ENDURE LIKE NIXON
TO BE, OR NOT TOO BEE
A DIFFERENT KIND OF LUAU
FISH WISHES
BLOOD IN THE WATER
WORDS I HATE
THE WAYS IN WHICH ED
SQUASH ME
1 MELANCHOLY, THE HAPPY SPANIEL
Growing up as I did in the hinterlands of Nebraska was a profound and moving experience. The relentless winds of the Great Plains howled maudlin concerts across the prairie, with seething fields of golden grain set waving and heaving back and forth by torrid currents of the same. This was the land of my forefathers, and those who had come before had cultivated an untamed and wild soil in the latter days of Manifest Destiny. We who came after could only hope to follow their hearty example. It was a fantastic and exotic place to grow up.
As kids do, we would dash across those same fields of sod and furrow until our hearts fairly leapt from our chests in protest and exhaustion. The expanse of flat and endless black earth made the world seem infinite, and our dreams were rooted as fast as the mulch we turned. The triumphs of our collective youth were realized in these vistas, and along for the ride of a lifetime was Melancholy, our happy spaniel.
She was the most joyous of dogs, constantly trying to get my sisters and me to play fetch. She had the game's protocol backward however, and would attempt to throw the stick for us. I suppose her genes were full of the most arrogant canine traits, and she assumed we would do her bidding. When ultimately disappointed by our lack of enthusiasm for whatever game we were playing at the moment, Melancholy would go into the garden and defiantly dig holes everywhere. Her behavior could not be settled, and we soon stopped trying. We took every proverbial sip of joy Melancholy could offer, as we knew she could not be controlled or stilled, and restless hearts like this refuse to be kept contained for long.
And then one day she abruptly left us, as if the confines of home, hearth, and mind could no longer hold such a free and untamed spirit. Along with her departure went what was left of our youth. Like a tempest that lifts an unpinned sheet on a clothesline, Melancholy’s death took aloft and away every semblance of our childhood, and stood as a talisman for what was yet to come in our more lackluster adult years.
We found out later that an errant and aloof buffalo had chased Melancholy into the gears of a working combine. That was alright; we didn’t much like her smell anyhow. And her bark was irritating, not unlike the sound of chipped and uneven fingernails on a chalkboard.
Sometime later, we acquired a spotted and rancid ferret named Filberto.
2 DYING FOR A HARLEY
My friend wants a motorcycle for his upcoming birthday. He has taken to dirt bike riding as of late, in a vain and useless effort to stave off the effects of middle age. His parents used to hide the toy motorcycles of his youth and tried to sidetrack his two-cycle attentions by getting him interested in musical instruments, football, and really bad haircuts. This tactic reaped success and my friend became a fine musician and songwriter, even though he never put any of my poetic screeds to music, which still grates to this day.
Even in college, I was implored as his roommate of seven years to hide any and all motorcycle paraphernalia of any type, and to keep him from watching television programs that might tempt him to want to ride.
After moving to the high desert of California, he tired quickly of his bass guitar, and with his wife and children desperate to get him out of the house and offline, they suggested he take up motorcycle riding as a hobby. He quickly took to the notion and has been riding ever since, with every chance he gets. Various conservation groups have actually hired undercover agents to monitor him as he sets out on his two-wheeled device of destruction, convinced by the apparent empirical evidence that everywhere he goes on his bike, he leaves in his wake dead endangered lizards and trampled, imperiled, and ancient creosote and sage plants. Most of these will never recover, simply because he refuses to stay on the well-worn desert tracks.
His mother and father have given up and decided that a grown man should do what he wants recreationally,