Frank Tomelli always talked sweetly and with great patience to the elderly patrons of the store. If a customer became impatient, he matched their irritability with even more patience.
Other stock clerks in the grocery department confused this with kissing ass and teased Frank for it.
“She’ll be thinking about that ass-kissing later, I guarantee it,” said James suggestively.
“Why don’t you follow her home and make sure,” said Frank.
“He doesn’t have to. It made me hard,” said Wayne, a veteran employee.
Frank had to smile. If they didn’t like him, they wouldn’t tease. “I can act more concerned than any of you will ever really care!”
They laughed empathetically, each knowing the lengths one must go to keep irrational or confused shoppers from losing their grip. At Big Bird grocery, everyone aimed to please, even when every shopper in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area seemed to want to do the opposite. Read More…
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“Fuck ‘em up, Ren!”
“Kick his ass right now!”
My friends cheered me on, not knowing that I could only project the attitude that I could handle myself in a fight. That I could do professionally. In truth, I lose my wits in the midst of battle. What was more scary, I had to piss so bad I feared I would wet myself. Fuck fighting, I needed to get out of there, so I did the first thing that came to mind. I removed my coat from the barstool, put it on and threw the stool, legs-first at my challenger. It would have been a brilliant display of evasion had I not tripped on the threshold of the bar.
I leaped to my feet like a wounded deer and made it to the wooden steps when a beer bottle hit me hard in my lower back. My excited nerves gave me the reaction time I needed in order to break my fall with my forearms, instead of my face, in a mud puddle. Read More…
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[ Production note: The following is the first in the series encompassing many of the ideas already present on Pathetic Rhetoric. Part 1 introduces the key players and forms the basic conflict. Admittedly, I wrote it in under the spell of the creative moment. I apologize for not considering your perspective, but I feel that I must publish it immediately so as to prevent over-analysis. I trust the nerve endings in my gut. If Part 1 gives you the impression of a ball of frayed yard, I have succeeded. The loose ends will find their place in the whole in the following installments. Happy Reading! - D. Senter.]
People might know the FBI (Faith-based Initiatives) as a programs started by President Bill Clinton and intensified under George W. Bush. President Barack Obama continued to fund the program and took every precaution to ensure equal representation of the several religious superstitions prevailing in our troubled land. Like most of the alphabet agencies started with good intentions by our imperial presidents, it morphed into something hideous.
The recession that began under the auspices of the George W. Bush administration worsened under the stewardship of Barack Obama. A nation stood by, mute and horrified, as trillions of dollars went up in smoke, often literally. By the last of Obama’s eight years, almost everyone who had any faith in the survival of progressive secular bourgeois democracy melted into the morass of survivalism, either clinging to their lace curtains as they witnessed the mayhem in the streets or succumbing to the final temptations of pipe and bottle malaise. The revolutionists continued to get shot and imprisoned. Some things never change.
All the while, the “good” people that brought you old Georgie Boy had their megaphones trained on the masses. A Revival movement gained strength. Like the Incredible Hulk, if you fuck with the militant Christians, it only multiplies their rage, which seems to be as cohesive an organizing principle as faith in Yaweh or J.C. Read More…
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Actually, they aren’t your sponsors. The advertisers don’t give you any money. They work on behalf who want to take your money. Therefore, they or the companies they represent have nothing to do with me or the content here at Pathetic Rhetoric. I don’t want anything from you.
At no point should any reader assume that I endorse any of the products or services that randomly advertise on this page. Given the opportunity to do so, I would turn the offer down like a Vegas chambermaid does a bedspread - flat. So don’t ask.
Those of you who know me personally can vouch for my deep abiding suspicion of the real purposes of advertising. It goes beyond just money and commerce. It colonizes imaginations, slaughtering creativity, independent thought, and self-esteem. It’s a bucket of festering shit on a bed of roses.
That being said, consider advertising on this site detente. Companies spend more and more money on advertising every year, much more than I can imagine. They’ll get their’s no matter what I say. I’m not spreading falsehood about their stuff and if you ever think so, you misunderstand me. Nothing I say should really be taking seriously. It’s all fiction. Except when I say explicitly, like now, I’m just fooling around. In a serious manner, but fooling around nonetheless.
I really do hate the pervasive, patronizing, spirit-crushing, brainwashing nature of advertising. Bare in mind, though, I like the rest of the world, need to buy things from time to time. For that, I need money. If an ad catches your attention, by all means, click it! Please. Part of the proceeds go the the Feed a Starving Artist Fund, i.e. yours truly. Each click helps me pay for a carton of orange juice, the tip at a restaurant, the new book I’m reading. You get the picture.
So, though I reject contemporary commercial values, I ask that you do click on the ads and decide for yourself. Don’t let me spoil your good time. And remember, the more you do, the closer I get to being a full-time entertainer of people in the comfort of my home. This means I’m not out driving as much and, therefore, everyone is much safer. It’s about public safety, people. So do the world a favor and take me off its hands. Click on it.
Happy reading!
D. Senter
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When Earnest was a young boy, his father said, “Son, I wanna tell you the secret to happiness, but it’s in here.” The rapidly aging, already grizzled- at 35 - man raised a red-white-and-blue can with fancy lettering to his lips for a long moment then returned it to his knee. “Aahh! That’s it, son. Now go help your mother cook dinner.” The child stared at his father like a true believer looks at god-incarnate until the already-old man shouted “Go!”
The man had become the source of all earthly wisdom for Earnest until that time in every child’s life when they realize their father’s have to act as the infallible answer machine. His father, who smiled increasingly less over the years, became an example of folly and falsehood. Earnest Sr. saddened and disgusted teenage Earnie with his drunken, maudlin ramblings for “the good old days.” But even when the young man’s opinion of the once great patriarch sank to a pitiful level, he knew that at some point, the old man must have spoken a word of truth. Young Earnest still remembered “the secret” that made his father seem like a living deity.
Like many other young people, Earnest lied and deceived his parents at every opportunity to drink beer. It took him only one hellish experience with hard liquor to swear it off like a new convert does the devil. Beer would do for him. After more than a dozen nights of guzzling, he reached a point when he knew he had never been that drunk in his life while keeping control of his guts. New sensibilities, ones he couldn’t have imagined even as a child, felt like magical powers; at last he could talk to random strangers and impress women with his uncommon wit. The following morning, he awoke in the valley of the previous night’s peak of transcendent cognition. This grief, he discover, was as equally inexplicable as the elation he had felt.
From tenth grade to his senior year, the peaks and low valleys counteracted each other to make a well-adjusted young man, full of original ideas and hope for future successes. The old man, who usually grumbled in doubt of his word, actually cracked a smile and raised a toast to his son. Earnie fought the compulsion to cry for his father’s failing health by working as much as he could before the moving-in day.
That day came as fast as the morning after a sound, dreamless sleep. Earnest Sr. finished a mini-cooler of beers before their arrival at the picture of serene academic discipline: the older man’s opposite. Young Earnie felt a strange mixture of pride and embarrassment as his soused father carried the heaviest items up four flights of stairs. Passing each other in the stairwell, father and son exchanged a series of looks that conveyed hours of conversation.
At last, the time came when the bird leaves the nest. Mother cried, of course. Father watched the tearful good-bye with a look of assurance that the young image of himself would fully comprehend the wisdom he would soon bestow. He motioned for his son to follow him out of earshot of the mother.
“Listen to me, son,” he said in his best sober voice, “You know I’m full of shit and a miserable asshole, but I’m still right about the secret to happiness.” The look of rapture in the newly inducted freshman’s eyes told the tired man that he didn’t understand so, he pulled his son’s ear close to his mouth and released a deafening belch. Earnie Jr. furrowed his brow and gave him a look that asked Why? What the fuck? Is that supposed to mean something? The wiser old man understood this expression perfectly.
“Nothing, of course,” he said. They smiled at each other and shook hands before parting for the semester.
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