Ynki emigrants arrive

The first wave of persons fleeing political and societal oppression in America has arrived at Krukov International Airport outside cosmopolitan Grig. Seeking asylum from the heavy-handed and anti-democratic policies being enacted by the administration of D.J. Trump, the former Ynki gladly relinquished their citizenship and took up oaths of freedom and responsibility under as well as loyalty to the Glorious Republic of Grigovia.

With cries of joy in their throats, the new citizens immediately moved into the well-maintained communal housing option of their choice. After a stroll in one of downtown Grig’s many public parks, they enrolled in classes designed to help them understand their latent artistic or creative potential and harness it to make their world a better, brighter, and more beautiful place.

When asked what they missed most about America, the emigrants responded, overwhelmingly, with: “Little.”

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

haiku 25 June 2017

Not for the first time
His roomies broke the house rules.
Then, they cried croc’ tears.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

http://www.americanifesto.com/liesmith/june-25th-2017

haiku 22 June 2017

The skies turned light green
As he was riding back home.
Wind blew; cold rain fell.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

no one knows

In a new (but ancient) twist on television crime dramas involving unsolved murders, a leading broadcaster is hoping to lure devout Christian viewers with a series of shows called “No One Knows.”
 
In each episode, the body of a murdered person will be found in field. None of the leaders of the surrounding towns will know who killed the person, whereupon they’ll get together in a nearby valley where there is a stream but no crops. Having already selected a young male cow that has never worked from the herd of the village closest to the field where the body was found, they will break the cow’s neck. Then, the assembled leaders will wash their hands over the dead cow and say, “We had no part in this murder, and we don’t know who did it.”

The show’s producers have indicated that each segment will feature a new valley location, and that a varying cast of star-studded male actors will play the village leaders. Spoiler alert! For anybody who wants to not actually watch the series and find out whether or not at the end of each episode the Christian god Yahweh forgives the town leaders for a murder they didn’t commit, read Deuteronomy 21 from the Bible’s Old Testament.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

someone else now

We left early Sunday morning, just after dawn. The drive to the station was uneventful, and we arrived with a half hour to spare before our train departed. Each of us had a few discs with him, enough to play at least 18 holes. I ate first, and so they kicked in for me first, but one of the other guys ate more and therefore felt a heavier initial surge. Thankfully, we weren’t in the quiet car, because our giggles came on strong enough to make heads turn. By the time the train reached the City of Brotherly Love (and Sisterly Affection), our pupils were dinner plates greedily sucking up stray photons. We climbed up into the 30th Street station and paused briefly to marvel in wonder at its vaulted ceiling and vast marbled-clad spaces. Mere feet from the doors to the outside, the other two decided they needed to find a restroom, whereupon they went to relieve themselves. I waited for them in the hallway near the bathroom and pretended to peruse a restaurant menu while the world around me quietly exploded.

Then we were out in the wind and in the sun with our phones out trying to open applications and figure out how to get visual maps and audio guides going that would lead us to our first destination - the Sedgley Woods disc golf course. We walked, of course, following the river until we hit a police roadblock at a major intersection. At that point we turned north and left the course of the river, climbing a hill and following a shady tree-shaded trail that lead along crumbling old walls. At the top of the hill, in the middle of a field, sat a lone camping tent, which we decided not to enter. Then we almost got killed crossing a major road intersection that didn’t have a pedestrian crosswalk, climbed another hill, made a left, and arrived at our destination. We hadn’t barely figured out how to approach the first tee yet when we met a pair of local guides, two gentlemen who were smoking cabbage and knew the lay of the land. After playing 27 short holes together on the wooden urban course, we took their advice and went for fried chicken at the gas station across the road, which we ate with them, breaking bread together on a rotting park bench under a struggling tree.

With not a minute to spare we arrived at our second destination, a hip brewery in Fishtown. After touring it, I went out to photograph graffiti while my friends stayed inside and kept drinking. Once I was finished we exited into the hot afternoon sun and started for a gin distillery nearby. Along the way we ate more, of course, finishing the bag. At the gin mill we were sipping death in the afternoon when the second round kicked in, prompting us to head for the next brewery. And then the next. The day got sweaty, what with one of us hauling around two filled growlers and another of us trying to enter each abandoned building we passed along the way. We were having a bit of trouble fitting into society but finally made it back to the station with fewer than five minutes to spare, only to find that our train was delayed indefinitely. It left 45 minutes late, long enough for us to fully appreciate each contour of a gorgeous marble panel named The Spirit of Transportation (1895), by Karl Bitter, and for me to get a girl’s contact information.

She’s seeing someone else now, by the way.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

on weighty measures

The Office of Weights and Measures closed its doors today after many years of exemplary service ensuing equity between buyers and sellers. The federal agency stopped functioning due to budget cuts imposed by the administration of Donald J. Trump, cuts that seemed to specifically target such agencies and offices that act as middlemen between consumers and producers. “What a glorious day it is today, now a few days after my birthday, which was last Tuesday,” said Mr. Trump while signing the paperwork that halted funding for the Office and others like it. “No longer shall draconian Washington insiders dictate to the American how much milk can be in a gallon, or how many inches should be in a yard. Now, the people can decide for themselves what’s right, and true.”

Wholesalers rejoiced at the news and immediately began to rewire or retool their scales so as to maximize their own profits at all cost. Car manufacturers changed the distance of a mile from 5280 to 528,000 feet and began claiming that their cars can go a half a million feet on just a quarter pint of gasoline. A million high-school sophomores simultaneously took to social media to claim they had meter-long penises.

Small-town consumers who don’t own or aren’t willing to haul a set of scales to the grocery or hardware store will likely bear the brunt of the relaxation of weight and measurement regulations. Rumor has it that both the Federal Exchange Commission and the Government Accountability Office are up next on Trump’s chopping block.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

dreamstate writing 15 June 2017

A female companion and I went into a towering house of glass to play her favorite game. Its top two floors had metal siding on them but the stories below them, where her game was located, had glass walls. We slid along glass-bottomed and rainbow-walled sky ramps in time to the game’s music while I struggled to read along with the conversations transcribed onto a LCD screen tethered to our face. My companion then flipped on her back and cranked the game’s speed up so fast that everything on the screen went blurry. I shot off the track and fell past many loops of sky ramp before hitting the forcefield at the bottom of the gaming chamber, which looked like an onyx expanse of outer space but was really a big, bouncy net.
 
While my companion was racing along the sky ramps, I explored an area below the central chamber that was walled off with tall glass panels. Various computers and screens were set up there, with different games loaded onto them. Into the area’s far wall, this one made of drywall, was built a control booth in which two men sat monitoring screens. They glanced at me when I came in but didn’t say anything as I walked around looking at the other games on offer. One of them featured a black-haired woman clad in black leather who was fighting hordes of football-sized scrabbling aliens with a complex and heavy-looking pistol in each hand. Finding little of interest, I went outside.
 
It was daytime and I was standing on a slope of grass. Behind me was the towering house of glass. To my left across a flat, fenced-in field the size of a football pitch was a sinkhole that had recently opened into a low hill, a circle of reddish-orange soil full of large rocks. In front of me, but on the other side of the chainlink fence, was a building bisected by an old carriage run, a portal from which a group of screaming schoolchildren came running. One child, a girl wearing a puffy jacket and scarf of dark colors, ran over to the sinkhole and started kicking at snowdrifts that had accumulated there. I saw then that both the field and the slope were covered with what looked like a thin layer of frost, or ice. At that point I realized that some of the children had made it as far as where I was standing, and that one boy had in fact grabbed my right leg and was yanking it toward him. Surprised and shocked, I kicked, sending him flying. I watched him hit the slope, bounce, and come to rest in a clump of arms and legs. He was groaning and complaining but not seriously injured.
 
He kept talking but I started to back away from him, rounding the towering house of glass until it was between me and the frost-covered slope. Looking up I discovered that most of the glass was gone and that the sky ramps had rusted badly, their rainbow walls and glass bottoms gone. At that point I entered a door at the bottom of the tower to my right. I found myself in the darkened basement of the tower and immediately started to climb a central flight of stairs. The walls and stairs seem to have been recently painted white, and bags of white rags or clothing littered every step and platform, with only a small area cleared through them. I reached a higher storey and went through the white door. Inside, I started hitting buttons on what looked like waiting elevators but what turned out to be the light-switches for a row of gleaming walk-in showers set deep into the darkened walls. I was heading for the next flight of stairs when I awoke.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

undead parasitic lifeform

At a symposium of sociologists, economists, and political scientists that met in a ramshackle ballroom located near the seedy part of Las Vegas boulevard, an undead parasitic lifeform was recognized, debated, and correctly named. Long bearing the incorrect label of Federal Reserve System, the symposium identified it as an Indebtedness Generation Scheme Designed To Reduce The American People Under Absolute Despotism, or InGeSc-DeRePe-UnMoDe.

By keeping the American People in a state of constant indebtedness to a privately held organization that legally controls the supply of their money, the Federal Reserve System is one of economic and financial enslavement that requires no walls, guards, or bars. Instead, each second of every day, this unconstitutional and anti-democratic zombie parasite has been sucking out the country’s lifeblood for nearly 110 years, draining it of liberty and ruining justice for all.

Shortly before the end of the symposium, a combination of armed police and military forces forcefully entered the building under the pretext of fighting terrorism. After each attendee was shot to death, the ballroom was set alight and allowed to burn to the ground, leaving few if any traces of what had transpired.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

“That’s right,” says drunk woman

Burlington, VT - In an apparent attempt to keep herself involved in recent conversations with the family of her son’s wife, Geraldine A. Carey, 62, feigned interest by saying, repeatedly, “That’s right.” Everyone in earshot, from her children to her grandchildren, could tell that the elderly matron had no fucking clue what anyone was talking about and was just waiting for an excuse to pour herself another three fingers of ice-cold vodka.

As the family reunion progressed and the alcohol content of her blood increased, Geraldine said “That’s right” in response to people making well-thought-out and educated statements about the fragile state of Internet security, the ongoing war in Syria, the possibility of liquid oceans on Jupiter’s moon Europa, as well as the likelihood that her second-eldest daughter is gay. Few persons present dwelled consciously upon the woman’s repeated use of the aforementioned phrase, preferring rather to ignore her rantings.

At one point toward the end of the day, the youngest brother of the son’s wife, a fellow named Steve, brought up the topic to his sister while the latter stood wiping down wine glasses. Refusing to look at him, she shook her head and tried not to cry. Much to the relief of children and grandchildren everywhere, a recent unofficial poll conducted by the Blomkwist Center for Family Research shows that 85% of alcoholic American grandmothers are starting to prefer “Uh huh” and “Oh really” to “That’s right.”

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

haiku 6 June 2017

On some level, dreams
Are merely a distraction
From reaching silence.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

haiku 4 June 2017

He watched them frolic
Without undue concern, their
Bellies full of booze.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

haiku 1 June 2017

His alarm clock rang.
He offered sacrifices,
Then went back to bed.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥