lost time incident 64
This week, we’re going to reward your attention with some delightful nonsense. That’s the plan. It’s written on this clipboard with a checkbox next to it, not yet checked. Says right here: REWARD ATTENTION WITH DELIGHTFUL NONSENSE. I have never in my life won an argument with a clipboard and by gum, I’m not going to even attempt reversing that trend today. Not when so much is at stake.
We’ve got a few of the by-now-familiar writing experiments where I browse health and beauty websites and repurpose headlines from their blogs. And then there’s an exclusive something-or-other that I haven’t written yet.
Really, I should write this introduction last, but I like to keep a little mystery for myself as well. Which is why every one of these newsletters ends predictably with the removal of someone’s rubber mask, the shouting of the revealed party’s name, and the repeated revelation that the supernatural does not exist: All evil dwells in the heart’s of  men and women who cloak themselves to disguise their avarice. Also, there’s a dog that talks but no one thinks that’s weird.
Every newsletter.
I don’t know why any of us keep reading this thing. No surprises.
five reasons to have a teeny, tiny wedding
1) The only official who is free to preside over your ceremony is a talking cricket.
2) All wedding venues are booked except for one, located inside a young girl’s liver, accessible via shrunken submarine in sterile lab conditions.
3) You fell in love with an electron.
4) The global economy is arranged in such a way that your entire generation has difficulty finding steady employment at a wage where an extravagant wedding is even an option.
5) Tiny things are cute! Little wedding cake! Small cocktails at the reception! Reduced expectations to minimize disappointment! Adorable!
four secrets of women who switched to natural beauty routines
1) Dreams are sweeter when you sleep under the soft, cool mud. Let the webbing between your fingers guide you down.
2) To impress aquatic romantic partners, thread seaweed through your scalp. Beautiful, and small fish can hide from predators in your hair-reef! New friends!
3) Want the perfect butt? Try river stones! We couldn’t say how they’d help, but stones are 100% natural and reader polls say butt shape is important so… put it together. We can’t do everything for you.
4) We hid a body once. That’s just a regular secret. Nothing to do with beauty.
free trial
We were having a nice picnic right up until the Purity Squad showed up, loaded Kevin into the pure-a-pult and launched him into the ocean. “Swim back to your own country” they shouted after him and then they put together some take-home plates of BBQ chicken, covered in foil, which we hadn’t offered them, but whatever. Kevin was born, like, four blocks from here.
I asked Jenny if four blocks away was still this country and she said, “Yeah.” She probably knows. She got good grades in school.
One year later, you could pick any house on the block to live in because everyone else had ended up launched into the ocean. That nice couple who worked in television. The folks at the elderly home. The ex-con. Mrs. Yogurt. That empty field that used to be full of racoons.
The Purity Squad would still drive through, their sedan pulling their pure-a-pult behind them. About the only thing that changed is that one of ’em painted some flames on the side of the catapult, to make it seem like it was going faster, I guess. But since it was being pulled by a regular sedan, it was never going to look faster than a sedan. I would have asked Jenny about it, but she sent me a postcard from the Two Pines Temporary Relocation cat asking if her cat was okay, and her cat wasn’t okay (couldn’t swim), so I haven’t written her back.
Sorry Jenny.
Just this morning, the Purity Squad came through and I was the only person around. Just me and my dog. I was pitching rocks at a street lamp that shines in my window at night. I don’t drive anywhere and it’s only me in the neighborhood, so I figured it wouldn’t matter if I broke this one. Since it bothered me.
“Hey,” the Squad said. “You wanna buy a catapult?”
I just looked at ’em. Looked at my dog. My dog was like: “What?”
“We don’t get much use out of the catapult anymore,” they said. “We’re probably going to move soon. Got our bags packed. This was a pretty exciting phase in our life, but… it’s time to move on. So we’re selling it.”
“How much you want for it?” I asked.
“What do you think it’s worth?” they asked back. I never got used to how they would all speak in unison like that.
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ending theme song
Well now! We have arrived at the end. The music comes up. The credits roll. Everyone rises to leave, with a shrugging on of jackets, a shuffling of feet.
Time to go, time to go.
We’ll probably be back, but for now it’s time to go.
—Michael Van Vleet
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