Fred: All right, all right. Everyone get in here! (ushers 12 sorcerers into secret lair). Let’s see what we got, c’mon…everybody empty your sacks! That was good work out there. Boris! What do you have there?

Boris: Uh, not much, actually. I got a couple of penises.

Fred: Whoa! You’re not the only one! Look at you guys (looks quizzically around underground lair, notices fellow sorcerers emptying out their sacks containing penises). Armel! Brice! You guys get anything besides penises?

Armel: I had a TV, but I dropped it.

Brice: Listen boss, I just don’t have it anymore.

Fred: Huh? What do you mean?

Brice: I didn’t even get a penis.

Fred: Not a one?

Brice: No…I think I may have shrunk one, though.

Fred: And what does that do for this outfit? Nothing, Brice! Damnit. Look, fellas, we’ve been at this a long time and I know we’re not as young as we used to be and maybe some of us are getting a little careless. I’ve gotta say, while I think we’ve got a whole lot of penises here, that’s not going to translate into what I like to call “profits,” as it were. How do you guys suggest we move all these penises? Do we still have that penis guy in Bumba?

Guychel: No, they hung him last month.

Fred: Great, just great. You know, guys, I love you all like brothers, but when I suggest we knock off a bank, the assumption is that we’re going after money. Armel, did you say you have a TV?

Armel: Had. I had a TV. I dropped it, sir.

Fred: That’s a shame. But I’ve got to ask, where did you get a TV?

Armel: It was on the wall, sir.

Fred: The security TV? You took the security TV?

Armel: Well, yeah. That and some penises.

Fred: Ay-yay-yay, Armel. You recognize that by taking the TV, you don’t have the security tape, right?

Armel: Huh?

Fred: They keep the videotape in another location. Taking the TV doesn’t do anything.

Armel: Well, I dropped it…so…

Fred: Nevermind. Look, does anybody have anything of value? Like, say, money?

Brice: I have three Francs Congolese.

Fred: That you stole from the bank?

Brice: Not really. I brought it from home, for lunch.

Fred: Oh, man. What are the rest of you guys doing?

Olivier, Screve, Stanislas, William, Regis, Lucien, Aristide and Oudry (together): Counting penises, sir!

Fred: Okay, let’s take a step back here. We’re sorcerers for crying out loud. And what is it that we can do that other people can’t?

Guychel: Steal penises?

Fred (exasperated). No, Guy. Anybody can do that, technically. The correct answer would be to cast spells!

Guychel: I did. I cast ‘steal penis.’ Look at these, boss—these are some great penises.

Fred: Nobody is denying that those are some top-notch penises, Guy. I’m just saying…

Brice: Yeah. I cast ‘shrink penis.’ What are you getting at?

Fred: Right, right, right…those are all spells, but they aren’t the only ones we have. What happened to ‘invisibility,’ or “thunderbolt,’ or ‘aura of impenetrability?’ What’s happened to us? We’re dead broke, we’re getting on in years and the only spell any of us feel comfortable casting is ‘steal,’ or in Brice’s case, ‘shrink penis!’ Of all the lame witchcraft, I swear. Not to mention, I’m sure the gendarmes are well on their way, as Armel was nice enough to give them a close-up of his stupid face.

Armel: You know, you’re not so great yourself, Fred. What did you cast? I don’t see you hauling around huge sacks of dough.

Fred: You don’t need to worry about me.

Armel: Hey, Fred, I asked you a question!

Fred: I cast ‘steal penis,’ okay! Does that make you happy? Is everybody happy now?

Boris: No, I’m not. I think I hear police sirens.

(Panic spreads throughout the lair. The sorcerers scramble about wildly, looking for cover).

Fred: Look, everybody. I’m still the boss around here. We need to work together on this, you hear?

ALL (less Boris): Yes, Fred.

Boris: Wait! Did someone say to do something? I can’t hear because I’m hiding behind all these penises.

Fred: I said that we need to work together, gang! Now look, the police will be here any second, so we don’t have much time to lose. I want everybody to concentrate, all right? ‘Once more into the breach’ and all that kind of stuff. Okay, I want you to summon every last bit of sorcery you have, reach deep inside and cast ‘invisibility’ with ALL your might. Then maybe, just maybe we’ll have a chance to get outta this. Everybody ready…NOW

(The door to the lair bursts open and a cadre of well-armed policemen rush inside the hideaway, guns drawn.)

Policeman #1: C’mere, chief. You’re not gonna believe this (gesturing toward the sorcerers).

Chief of Police: Good grief! Look at them! They’ve got infant penises!

Boris: Oh, wait…was I supposed to cast ‘steal penis?’

I’ve been charged by my organizational superiors (the Editors) with the task of increasing Johnny America’s popularity by 50%. How they intend to track its popularity, or what “popularity” means in the context of incredibly obscure literary zines, they refuse to say.

Still, I’d hate to lose the free bourbon press they allot me each fiscal quarter, so to that aim I am proud to announce my visionary publicity strategy: asking our loyal readers to put up J.A. stickers in their home towns. There’s a whole wide world of automobile bumpers, dive bar toilet stalls, vintage Trapper Keepers, kittens, subway signs, and other non-porous surfaces just waiting to be benignly vandalized.

If you’re willing to show your affection for J.A. through small and petty crimes, we’d be honored to send you free stickers.

Yours,

Richard the Intern

The thought has crossed my mind—What if I don’t pay? My wife would kill me. Bottom line. But I think I read this story once about a kidnapper that raised the abducted as their own and the child got a scholarship or something. I might have made it up, I can’t remember.

The slam of the car door sounds like canon fire and my first instinct is to duck for cover. I must have been an infantryman during the Napoleonic Wars (or something akin) in a past life. His shoes beat like the hooves of a horse too confident for its own good. My boy walks beside him, waist high, with a paper bag over his head. My son’s abductor is wearing a cream-colored trenchcoat, collar up, and fedora tipped so the shadow of the rim masks his eyes.

“Looking sharp. Trenchcoat. Fedora. Very original. I think the look is really going to catch on.”

“Oh shut up.” It’s the voice I’ve been dealing with all month; deep baritone, way too smoky to be real.

“Was it really necessary to put the paper bag over his head?” “I didn’t. He must have found it in the backseat.” That sounds like my boy, trying to play it up for the kids at school.

“Come on, Son, let’s go.” He follows the sound of my voice.

I hear a throat clearing.

“There’s still the matter of my ransom.”

“Calm down, calm down. I haven’t forgotten about you.” I draw a thick envelope from inside my jacket pocket.

“Five thousand.” I smack the envelope on my hand and deal it to him. “To be honest, I thought you’d aim higher. I mean I’m sure you know how much I’m worth.”

“Is it too late to ask for more?”

“Yeah, it’s probably too late.”

“You’re right.” He turns back, a little dejected, and then spins back around.

“Well maybe I’ll kidnap him again.”

“I have a daughter too you know.”

“Maybe I’ll snatch both of them and double my ransom.”

“Good luck, I can’t even get the two of them to sit next to each other in church.”

My boy keeps the paper bag on his head as we drive home.

“I hope you’re happy now, you just cost me five thousand dollars.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“Will you take that stupid thing off?”

He takes it off his head. And of course, he’s blindfolded himself with a gym sock underneath.

“For God’s sake.”

I see that spray of black hair and those swollen cheeks and I can’t help but be reminded of a young version of myself. I feel almost bad for him. He’s probably just suffering from that Stockholm syndrome everyone warned us about.

“How about we get some churros on the way home.” I think I see his lips emboss under the duct tape.

The Apartment Security Man wears mirrored sunglasses on his patrol. He drives a golf cart while searching for crime. He fights crime. He is much like a superhero. In fact, he was the only one at Security Guard Academy to have every single back issue of Captain America, and every issue of Marvel Comics to include Captain America, up to the Cap’s death in issue #25 of Civil War.

He cried when Captain America died. Something in him died that day too.

The Apartment Security Man lives for catching people drinking in the pool area. His camera in the guard shack can see everything that happens, but he knows that the college kids and the Mexicans sometimes pour their beer into plastic cups and take it in the pool. For this reason the Apartment Security Man goes deep undercover. He will put his swim trunks on and baseball cap and lounge by the pool when there is a party. He will ask if anyone has a “cold one,” or a “brewski.” If they say yes….BLAMO! They’re busted. He whips his badge out and writes an Apartment Security Citation.

The Apartment Security Man is a stud. He wears a Marine Corps “high and tight” haircut. He has a yellow belt in Tae Kwon Do. He has no sympathy for young punks with skateboards. He busts them fast and he busts them hard.

The Apartment Security Man was once flashed by Ms. Aguila in Apartment #4113. She squatted down in a short sundress to pick up her newspaper in front of him and he saw that she had no panties on. She clearly wanted him. But he held his manly impulses in check. Captain America would’ve done the same.

The Apartment Security Man is very lonely inside. Sometimes, when he works the late shift, he will eat several Double Quarter Pounders with cheese just to kill the pain. He sees the studs that Ms. Aguila dates driving BMW’s or Porsches, and he knows he will never be like them. They are sharply dressed young lawyers, very smart looking young doctors, or tall and muscular young firefighters. They are just like the jocks in high school that teased him about his crooked penis in the gym locker room.

But he is the Apartment Security Man. That is his fate. That is his destiny. As long as there is crime, as long as there is beer in the pool area or skateboarders on the inner courtyard… he will be there.

It was no secret that Emma loved chocolate bunny ears better than any other form of Easter candy. She immediately ate the ears off of her chocolate Easter Bunny every year and discarded the rest. It just didn’t taste the same without the ears. She also woke up early every Easter and ate the ears off of all five of her younger siblings’ bunnies. Her siblings had never even tasted chocolate Easter Bunny ears. They always complained to their mother, of course, but Mrs. Jakowski could do nothing to get their bunny ears back. She could only take away the rest of Emma’s candy and divide it between the siblings. This was really no great punishment since Emma didn’t have any interest in jelly beans or marshmallow chicks or even goo-filled chocolate eggs. It was bunny ears or nothing.

Somewhere around her eleventh birthday, Emma finally decided she could no longer live with having bunny ears only once a year. She wanted bunny ears every day. Of course that meant she was going to have to go to the source. She would take him by force, if necessary.

There was much speculation about how she actually intended to capture the Easter Bunny, but Emma refused to reveal her plan. When pressed, she pointed out that the Easter Bunny probably had spies everywhere and she didn’t want word getting back to him. She spent much time up in the Jakowski tree house building some sort of trap. The rest of the Jakowski clan was strictly forbidden to even so much as peek in the tree house and not one of them dared to cross Emma. They knew she would make good on her threat to cut them off of all Easter candy for the rest of their lives once she had the Easter Bunny as her prisoner. Only JoJo had been let into the tree house and given a very special job to do, so the rumors said. But he wasn’t talking.

One part of the plan was clear. Anyone who wanted to see the Easter Bunny had to pay with a set of solid chocolate bunny ears. Hollow ears would not be accepted. Only solid chocolate bunny ears were worth a glimpse of the Rabbit himself.

That Easter, all across the neighborhood, chocolate bunny ears were lopped off and stashed away in sandwich baggies or wrapped in tissue or aluminum foil. They were hidden away in backpacks so they wouldn’t be forgotten Monday morning. There were those who received hollow bunnies and burst into tears, much to their parents’ distress. There were others who really didn’t believe Emma could do it and so ate their bunny ears. Bunny ears were traded or stolen as needed. Having a ticket to see the Easter Bunny was worth making an enemy or three.

JoJo stood at the back gate and held a huge Easter basket while a line formed. Under Emma’s watchful eye, JoJo examined every set of bunny ears before they were accepted. Any ears that were deemed faulty, whether they were too small, hollow, or had markings suspiciously similar to bite marks, were tossed into a smaller basket and that unfortunate kid was asked to leave. Once all the worthy ears were deposited in the big basket and the chosen children were allowed in the yard, Emma signaled JoJo. He handed the smaller basket to the younger Jakowski siblings to dispose of as they saw fit and disappeared into the house with the large basket. He came back out into the yard and gave Emma the thumbs up sign. She cleared her throat and silence fell over the back yard.

“I won’t lie to you,” she began. “Capturing the Easter Bunny wasn’t easy. I appreciate your generous donations while we’re in the process of negotiating.”

She paused a moment and the crowd inched closer to the shed.

“I promise that as soon as the Easter Bunny and I come to terms, you will all be paid back with all the chocolate you can eat.”

A cheer arose from the crowd and Emma allowed the noise to continue for a moment before she held up her hands. As the crowded quieted down, she waved JoJo forward and asked him to open the shed door. He was painstakingly slow.

When the door was finally open, the children frantically searched the darkness for the Easter Bunny. Finally someone spotted movement in the far corner and as all eyes followed that person’s finger, a small brown bunny took a couple of hops towards the door. “JoJo,” Emma hissed, “You were supposed to put him in the cage!” JoJo looked wide-eyed at his sister and stuttered a little, unable to respond. All eyes were on the bunny. The air was thick with wonderment and the bunny seemed paralyzed with fear. Finally, with no warning, the bunny leapt to life and zigzagged through the crowd before anyone realized what happened.

“After him!” Emma shouted. Instantly the crowd of children took off through the neighborhood after the Easter Bunny. Emma and JoJo followed the crowd to the end of their driveway. They came to a slow stop and watched the crowd of children follow the bunny into the park down the street where they veered out of sight.

Emma turned towards JoJo. Both were grinning. She gave her brother a high five and turned back towards the shed where her youngest siblings stood waiting. They wore chocolate smeared smiles and already held the huge basket of bunny ears between them.

“I told you they were the best, didn’t I?” she asked as she helped herself to a pair of chocolate bunny ears.

Things had not being going well for Jeffrey. His teeth tasted bad in the mornings with the brown fur of cigarettes. His E string was perennially slipping out of tune. And, as ever, there was something about a girl. This time it was one with gappy teeth and an ill-fitting husky voice. She rode an old Raleigh bicycle that caused mayhem on the sidewalks, and she wasn’t in love with him.

Jeffrey took this job because he was broke, two months behind on rent and relegated to a diet of reheated noodles and trash bag bagels. In truth though, he wasn’t so keen on kids, or Macy’s either. He’d expected to feel some nostalgic charm to being in the midst of the parade he’d seen so often on television, but in truth, all he felt was irritation. He hung on to the rope tighter, making sure Kermit’s shoulder stayed tethered as they manoeuvred him down Broadway.

The crowds pulsed and chattered, excited families with talk of rent controlled apartments and pigs in blankets. It was so fucking warm. When he woke at 8, the sunshine had been piercing and brisk, but now the city was drenched in a thick mugginess. 500 000 ovens simultaneously preheating. It was making him cranky, sick of people. He was ready to take the side of those inflatables, with their ludicrous scale and lumbering ways.

Jeffrey had been reading Aristotle, and he was sad for the balloons. Rocks fall to the ground because they are trying to return to the earth. Old dogs come home to die. The balloons wanted to orientate skywards, but they were tied to the ground and dragged street to street. The tall buildings didn’t help either, complicating the world with new vertical horizons. The balloons trundled down Broadway like huge drugged moths, veering in all the wrong directions. Heading downtown, not upwards. Not to the sky.

It was ok though. Jeffrey had a plan: he would set them free. He rolled his fingers round the lump in his pocket, grinning at the vision of it. It had been surprisingly easy, just 60% potassium nitrate and 40% sugar, melted around a Visco Safety Fuse. Enough for a moment of fug and confusion, and screams. And escape, upwards. Goodbye.

A single spark, and everything dissolved.

“BOMB!”

“TERRORIST!”

And it was impossible to tell who had shouted first, the hysteria and choking, and smoke, oh God.

And what’s happening, what are they doing?

Not this, please, not now.

Jesus.

Fuck.

Oh GOD,

The crowd shot apart in panic, like mercury dropped on linoleum. That orderly formation of twenty three ropes scrambled and shrieked and ran. Only Jeffrey was left, clutching tighter and securing himself. Now it was just him and Kermit, and the desire to fly. Kermit turned his head to the sun, his jaw wallowing open in delight. Turned away from the ground and began to float into the air.

The green mass shifted and a fat child in a puffy jacket looked up at him, clutching a small flag. With its oddly round arms, it almost looked inflated too. Jeffrey wanted to reach out, grab the hand and let it fly with them. He offered his open palm and the kid waddled forward, pointing.

“Frog!”

Before he could make contact, Kermit jerked upwards. Jeffrey thought of his sister yanking his hair and grinned. The ropes tangled in the updraft and blew towards him, he grappled madly, gaining a fisthold. The momentum carried and he swung forwards, colliding in the sagging neon vinyl of Kermit’s ruff. In a second they were above the heads and clearing the smoke. Heading for the sky.

There was almost a riot, until the crowd looked up. And the smoke cleared, and there was Kermit, sailing upwards. This wasn’t Al Qaeda; this was cartoons. And that one guy who hadn’t let go, he didn’t look scared at all. He looked happy. Blissful, in fact. Almost heroic.

It wasn’t as quiet as he expected, up there in the sky. The air gasped through his ears and he could still hear the muted screams from down on the streets, though they were softening now, to mutters and confusion. But Jesus, it was beautiful. He adjusted his balance, pulling himself further onto Kermit’s shoulder, and stared down at the tangle of city beneath him. Except it wasn’t as he expected, a mess of crowds and dirt and the wretched stench of people. Up here he could see that everything was geometric and measured, the streets straight and orderly. He felt a great rush of calm wash over him. Even the park was a perfect rectangle. All those MTA maps, and he had never really noticed it before.

They flew southwards, heading for Staten Island and open water. The skyscrapers stared up at them. The hollow of Ground Zero gaped upwards like the gummy cavity of a missing tooth. He couldn’t smell a thing. Up here, away from its inhabitants, the city was beautiful.

The helicopter buzzed closer, and there was a man with a megaphone shouting that it was ok, everything was going to be fine. Jeffrey wasn’t sure. He knew if he let himself be saved they would never let the balloon go, they would bring it back to earth to be gawked at and photographed. Deflated. He couldn’t let that happen. Balloons navigate to the sky. Flesh returns to the earth.

Jeffrey stared straight into the sun, and it pulsed hotly back. If he glared hard enough, he could already see Kermit’s flesh melting in a grotesque rubber parody. A cartoon Icarus. Eyes wide, he yanked his body to the side and let the ropes whiplash out of his fists. Kermit was free to sail to the sun. Jeffrey was falling. Jeffrey looked up at the sun and smiled.

“Thanks,” he said.

They hurtled away from one another like repelling elements, and everything turned white, then black, then green. And quiet.

“Hold tighter,” barked her slightly-older brother Brandon from a few rungs above. Brandon was quite scared as he climbed to the rickety summit, stood on sneakered tip-toes, and unhinged the plastic casing of the smoke detector.

“I’m holding as tight as a girl can hold,” Emily assured him, “but maybe if you weren’t such a fatty I could hold a little stronger.”

Brandon pulled a fudgesickle stick from his jeans pocket and wiggled it under the battery. The battery popped from the plastic housing and fell to the green carpet between Emily’s toes. Both siblings looked at the gleaming silver 9-volt and smiled at their conspiracy.

“Shut it back and come down here,” Emily instructed her slightly-older brother, “shut it back.” Brandon’s legs were wobbly but he stretched back to his tiptoes, snapped shut the smoke detector and eased down the paint-splattered ladder.

Brandon and Emily closed the folding ladder and together leaned it against the herringbone wallpaper. They sat in front of their much-older brother Aaron’s room triumphant, taking turns pressing the battery’s terminals against their tongues.

“What if there’s a fire,” wondered Brandon, “and Aaron dies for lack of warning.” Emily frowned, then motioned for her brother to pass the battery.

“I’m prepared to take that risk,” she answered, here response mumbled because of the electric current scrambling across her mouth.

“Yeah,” agreed Brandon, stretching out his fingers and motioning for the battery’s return, “what did he ever do for us?”

Cost: $1

Maximum Prize: $5,000

Approximate Odds: 1 : 4.56

Critique: At first glance the Quick Crossword scratch-off looks a little chintzy; its silver finish sparkles like stripper garb and the red, green, and yellow accent colors remind the contestant of elven workwear. These elements contribute to a subdued eroticism, but by and large Quick Crosswords is a utilitarian affair. It is also the most enjoyable scratch-off Yours Truly has ever played. You begin by scratching off a large swath of game surface, revealing “Your Letters.” Next, you move your attention to the miniature “crossword puzzle,” which is composed of completed words visible under translucent blue ink. You scrape the blue ink from characters that match “Your Letters,” with the aim of revealing completed words and winning buckets of cash. This process of matching and scratching takes at least seven or eight seconds, a “reveal” several times longer than most of this card’s competition that makes Quick Crossword the best value on the market. The gameplay more closely resembles BINGO than it does a crossword puzzle, which is slightly bizarre for a game called Quick Crossword, but this conceptual inconsistency is easy to ignore when the game is so much fun. Highly Recommended.

Fun: 10 / 10

Graphic Design: 2 / 10

Eroticism: 3 / 10

Overall value: 9.2 / 10

Eileen asked for every Sunday off from Les Femmes. She’d told Bradley, her gay boss that she went to church. He reluctantly agreed. She didn’t go to church though. Sunday was her day. Her all alone-do my own thing-fuck all men day.

Sunday came; half-full or half-empty, and Eileen woke up. As she’s done every night for the last six months, she washed all the traces of Felicia off the night before and this morning her long, suicide blonde hair was a combination of frizzy and frumpy and it made her laugh when she saw her reflection in the bathroom mirror.

Her Dad had objected the loudest. He’d be damned if any greasy bastard is gonna check out his daughter, probably get his hands on her, get her hooked on them drugs. While he was saying this, he was rubbing her back.

“Dad, I may be young, but I’m not stupid. I know what I’m doing.” And she twisted away. “Besides, that’s how you and Mom met.”

“What’s that honey?” Cried a voice from the kitchen and her Mom appeared, framed in the doorway, without a shirt and sipping a Mimosa from a plastic champagne flute.

Anyway, back to Sunday. Eileen was standing at the bathroom sink, brushing her teeth and the phone rang.

“Huwoo,” she said through the suds of toothpaste.

“Um, yeah, is Felicia there?”

“You have the wrong number,” she said clearly, after the shock of hearing that name on this phone had caused her to swallow her toothpaste. She hung the phone up and returned to the bathroom where she rinsed and sat down on the toilet to think.

Who has this number? My house number? She didn’t know and after going to the bathroom left those thoughts there, swirling in a tidy bowl of regrets.

She went back to her room and got dressed, bundled up actually, grabbed a stack of magazines (Blueprint, Smithsonian, National Geographic) and headed to the living room. She switched on the television, flipped through the channels to Fox news and began skimming through the magazines. Soon, the beeping of the coffee maker’s automatic timer signaled its awakening. She fixed a cup and settled back in. Hours passed. Eileen fell asleep.

She dreamed about the day that she’d taught Lilly how to drive a stick shift. It was the day they’d both turned nineteen. The day they first kissed. In reality they’d laughed it off and they wouldn’t get serious for another five weeks, but in the dream, Lilly told her it made her feel real sick and she puked out the window and this in turn made Eileen puke from the smell. She woke from the dream fighting back the urge to vomit and with queasy stomach went into the kitchen for a glass of water. She drank it and looked at the phone, hanging on the wall like an obscenity or an accusation.

“No. I won’t call.”

Eileen decided that they were all the same. Everyone. They all wanted something and it was something she couldn’t and wouldn’t give up. She leaned against the wall and stared at the stain on the tile floor and listed everyone in her head, alphabetically.

Please feel encouraged to try out our new-and-improved commenting system.

Formerly, in order to filter out comment spam for erectile enhancements and IQ-boosting fish oil supplements, we required our web intern spend his precious drinking time filtering “good” comments from “bad.” Sometimes he’d refuse to surrender his drinking time and do both activities simultaneously, which led to deleted comments. Other times he’d choose just one activity, usually imbibing, and comments would sit in the queue for a week.

No more: now comments are approved instantly, provided you can read, which surely you can.

Stay warm tonight, if you’re in a cold place. It’s freezing cold in this drafty apartment but then again I sit at this desk nearly naked, wearing only a chiffon boa and a pair of mittens.

J.A.

This decision came as a surprise to legislators—the majority of whom have found that alcohol works quite well.

I am trying harder to love everything, to think better thoughts, thanks to the noosphere. In a cosmic response to my resurrected discipline of love, my old friend Ed emails from Los Angeles:

“I’ve bought a fortune cookie factory, a small one.”

Ed and I worked together in many kitchens during the L.A. culinary hyper-leap in the mid 1980s. After a while, we were telepathic. After work, dirty and smelly, we’d hang out at Johhny’s on 8th Street downtown, a real dump but just right, and talk about things we’d like to do with food.

One of our brainstorms was misfortune cookies. Well, Ed did well and made money and recently took ownership of a small fortune cookie factory as part of the buy-out of a Chinese supermarket chain. Funny thing is, fortune cookies aren’t Chinese.

Fortune cookies come from Japan. Look it the fuck up.

Ed knew I was now a great writer.

“I need 5,000 misfortunes asap. You get (a great deal) and a case of 1,000 misfortune cookies.”

Our original plan, in the Johnny”s days, was to somehow sneak outrageous, offensive and seditious fortunes into Chinese restaurant cookies. We also had a great plan for rabbit terrine.

So here I am, dedicated to thinking good thoughts, and charged with thinking up misfortunes. First thing, get a jug of Old Smuggler.

— You stinking hypocrite.
— Bird flu comes from Thailand, not China.
— Disagreements are best settled with weapons.
— Catholicism empowers perverts.
— The greatest love is wet and sticky.
— Moron, thy name is frat boy.
— Never trust people in wheelchairs.
— If you can’t laugh, destroy.
— Is there ever a right time for anal leakage?
— Anyone might be a terrorist.
— The beauty of nature is all that shit outside.
— Jamie Foxx is better than Denzel Washington.
— Bon Jovi. Hah!
— To be closer to God, get drunk.
— The opinions of teenagers are as farts.
— Oprah doesn’t read all those books.
— Real men love guns.
— Tom Cruise is almost a midget.
— All new parents think their brat is Jesus.
— The last thing your fat ass needs is a cookie.
— Integrity, loyalty, talent… all worthless.
— Consider the boner.
— You are that doggie in the window.
— Politicians murder.
— NASCAR is to intellect as rectum is to breakfast.
— Foolishly, you let them tap your phone.
— Real men have tits.
—Your tattoo is really cool and unique.
— Death in the drinking water.
— Eat the homeless.