Travelling Precognito with my Beans Half Baked

Waiting for a bowl of baked beans to ripen is hardly my idea of a good time. To alleviate the tension, I often rely on board games and miniature waves generated by kitchen appliances that start with the letter M. In roughly the time it takes to sift the alphabet for usable nouns, my bowl of half-baked beans will have crossed the threshold between unripe and moderately swollen, lending an air of quiet optimism to an otherwise monotonous meal.

While it's true that optimism and anticipation often go hand in hand, travelling precognito virtually guarantees a pleasant dining experience. Unlike hindsight, peering forward demands a commanding view of the kitchen, unobscured by the preconceptions and utensils I forgot to wash in the heat of the knight-takes-queen debacle that sent me to bed without supper, or a moral.

In an effort to right one wrong, I would simply indicate that, while an ounce of precognition is certainly the mother of prevention, half-baked beans make unreliable board-game strategists.  It's too late to do anything about the last supper.

 

Binary Baseball

Two teams of two. Two bases. Two innings.

Two fans with two hotdogs and two beers.

The score is tied, one to one.

Hey batter batter hey batter hey baSwing!

Oops.

 

The Dogs of Parity

Hare of the dog that barked at me
Byting at the bark of the logic tree
The nybbled octet leaves a thirst
And half the bits he had at first.

The dog that bytes a rabbit's foot
May grow to rue the foot he bit
No lucky logic keeps the hare
From growing in the easy chair.

The rabid need for parity
Discourages prosperity
A packet sent should be ignored
No matter where the bits are stored.

Enzo's Monkey

When I met Enzo, he seemed every bit the eccentric character among characters who happen to be eccentric, which is to say, he seemed normal. As it turned out, my initial appraisal was accurate to only four decimal places, leaving the fifth and sixth open to investigation. Each morning, as Enzo warmed up his diesel-powered Mercedes, the sound of his didgeridoo melded with the smoky sputtering of his car's motor, leaving many of us to wonder when he might trade for a quieter, cleaner automobile. At the same time, someone who was wondering in a different direction asked how it might be possible that Enzo was up and around in the first place, considering the pile of prescription containers on his living room floor. Shielding my eyebrows, I turned toward the asker with a question of my own, but the look in his eye told me everything I needed to know.

Lowering my shields, I rose to my feet just as the memory of the previous night regained its footing in my conscious mind, yielding another unspoken answer to a question I hadn't even thought to ask. The night before, I had gone outside to inspect a constellation when I noticed Enzo standing in his doorway, glaring at me as if I had stolen his didgeridoo, or his Mercedes. Both insinuations struck me as preposterous, considering he was holding the didgeridoo in his right hand, like a club, while the Mercedes was parked less than ten feet from where he stood. Having become accustomed to the idiosyncrasies of my neighbors, I shrugged it off and went inside to recount my blessings.

During the days that followed, the reasons for Enzo's behavior became increasingly obvious. This was largely due to his confessions, which came to me by way of his mouth, which always accompanied him when he came over to sit on the bench outside my door. On the night in question, he had decided to modify the effects of his usual painkiller regimen with additional ingredients, resulting in a psychotic episode. One of the paranoid delusions featured that night was a body in the backseat of his car, which led him to suspect me, which in turn explained why he was staring at me as he contemplated bashing my head in with his oversize didgeridoo. Like so many mysteries, the answer is a no-brainer once the formula is known.

Within the class of pharmaceuticals known as narcoleptic analgesics, one in particular stands out as a subprime example of too much, too late. Conceived in a clandestine facility deep within the subconscious of a former bodybuilder, OxyMoron^® has been widely credited with the ability to turn the most promising mind to dumplings, while those with less promise are expected to sing for their suppers. Carrying a tune from one point to another can be a challenge under the best of circumstances, but a pill-based diet only greases the downhill slide, especially with a large, lip-driven instrument in tow. Sadly, whether we lay the instrument of blame at pharmacology's door—well away from Enzo's slit-eyed drooling—or blame the instrument for its own monkeyshines, the only certainty is much didgeridoo about nothing.

 

Don's Ranch

Don Rico mends a broken chair
As tables turn to face the rain
Behind the wall he made by hand
When hands were made for building.

Don Louis paints the saddles blue
To match the henhouse and his jeans
Tomorrow's eggs come home to roost
If no one's there to pick them.

Don Rimbaud cures another ham
And smiles into his handkerchief
His tales of wagging tongues collide
With gossip shorn from fables.

Don Felix tunes the radio
While harvesting the current crop
A shock of bulbous hair reflects
The light of a hangnail moon.

 

John Fogarty's Voice

Like most people, I don't mind voices in my head as long as they don't expect me to do unreasonable things. I also don't like being called a maggot, especially when it's done in a drill sergeant voice.

This is why John Fogarty's voice is always welcome here. His voice has never called me names, nor has it asked me to do anything riskier than putting a candle in the window, which is okay because John Fogarty's voice knows all about flame-retardant materials.

I don't think his voice was talking about moving in the literal sense, like having to move on account of setting the house on fire by mistake. Otherwise it wouldn't have promised to come back.

 

False Grit

Yesterday, I might have agreed that false grit is meekminded grit, the kind of insubstantial substance that's hardly worth the salt I throw over my shoulder whenever onions are peeled. Today, I might see eye to eye with the idea that it's all in how the onion's layers are inhaled, and whose eyes are being peppered with the flecks that fly from the reaming and honing of the daily grind.

Tomorrow, I will certainly agree that wishywashitude is no better than sitting on the fence where splinters are concerned, even as I avert my eyes from the blind concern that landed me in hot water, then cold, then lukewarm, followed by immersion in the tank of deprivation I sensed beforehand, when saline was for sniffing.

The day after tomorrow, I may find myself wandering among the gangplanks of my mind, wondering what happened to the spare GPS batteries I so thoughtfully planned to stow below, yet aboveboard, where they might survive even the grittiest circling of snarky sharks and their landlubbing kin.

Who knows what yesterday might bring.

 

Innocent Questions

Call me sadistic, but sometimes it brings me joy to see the Google search terms that people so innocently supposed would result in actual information, but landed them on Omegaword instead.

Here, then, are a few of the actual search terms used in Google queries that returned an Omegaword monologue within the first page of results.

Q Facts and fallacies about the moon

A Lunar Facts and Fallacies

 

Q Poems for thoughtful people

A Thankless Poems for Thoughtful People

 

Q Yard ornaments on steaks

A Interdimensional Lawn Ornaments

 

In one case, two apparently unrelated searches yield the same result.

 

Q Source of the term full goose bozo

Q Hairy eyeball origin

A The Hairy Eyeball

Okay, so every once in a while the result is useful in a more serious way . . .

Q What is material disruption?

A Legal Transgressions and Material Disruption

. . . but hey, I try.

 

Quixotic Reflections

Some say that aluminum clothing reflects poorly on the wearer, especially on a moonless night. Reflecting on the lunar extravaganza slated to appear this weekend, good taste begins to take on the luster of objects below, above, and indeed from any angle that suits a photon's passing fancy.

For those whose taste runs circles around convention, riding the clotheshorse into battle takes on new meaning. Dapper in my new aluminum suit, windmills are afraid, for knighttime is the right time.

I think Silver knew that already. That's why Tonto smiled.