Covidomatic Libs

Leave a Comment / By Paul Hughes / May 7, 2020

Dear _____ , (supporter, donor, customer, friend, co-afflicted)

In these _____ (unprecedented, challenging, dangerous, difficult) times, we know you’re _____ (standing strong, bearing up well, getting ripe, fingering the edge of the cleaver and gazing at your partner’s neck) and miss our _____ (plums, belly dancers, unmatched selection of fine wines, engine repair tutorials) as much as we wish we could offer them.

_____ , (Unfortunately, Bummer, Too damn bad, Ontologically), however, _____ (jack–booted brownshirt government thugs; miscreants, thugs, and scapegraces; current healthcare policies, our respective horoscopes) prevent us.

But _____ (never, sometimes, daily, maybe just a little) fear! We will _____ (soon, probably, any day now, by winter — absolute latest) be in a _____ (prime, mostly ready, greatly reduced) position to once again _____ (connect, circle back, partner, exchange goods and services for cash) with you.

Please bring the _____ . (cash)

That is, if you _____ (still want us, ha! ha!; wear a mask; pay in cash; aren’t agoraphobic by now) and continue to enjoy _____ (plums; zither music; humans, but not like that Twilight Zone, the one about the cookbook and the aliens; fine wine). Practice Safe Specs! Be _____ (aware you’re not the only aggrieved party, ready to back off, kind). Remember social distancing: the six feet we all seek is similar in length to _____ (an adult male, a broadsword or musket, two friends facing each other extending their arms outward with the fingertips … juusst barely, but not quite, touching, the depth of a grave).

And hey, have _____ (fun! extra gloves! your own disinfectant!)

See you _____ (around Christmas — remembering there are 12 Days of it, and that winter technically extends into mid-March).

_____ , (Cheers, Lotsa luck, Don’t cough)

Rex Kwando
In Vino _____ (Nevahmind)

Image:
Vegas Craps 1982
by LeRoy Neiman

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Recent

What I Recalled Watching Netflix

[Television is educational.] One Saying the same stuff over and over looks like you have different things to say. Two If you’re ever in a below-average film or streaming series, and you beat the tar out of a guy, in a house, and you gaze down in both some shock as also a certain

Seeking the King

A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do

He’s the Guy

Those social media posts of ‘this moment in this famous film was totally unscripted!!!’ as if that by itself makes it better miss the point. Moat unscripted material, like most ideas, inventions, ideas, notions, &c … fails — such is the nature of creativity: the best stuff, it is devoutly to be wished, sticks around;

‘Round Here

Imagine someone, potentially anyone, even you, perhaps, but let us, in any case, say. Yes, you. You pull into the diner – Earl’s, Norm’s, Dinah’s, something like that. A sort-of Googie architecture … but maybe not quite, as if it’d been a little late for the Space Age, and late is the one thing you

Random

Bread

“We’re sorry,” said the man, pointing. “We ain’t much here.” The woman, they guessed his wife by the way she puttered around, doing many small things but nothing really, was shaking her head. The two were indicating the table, which indeed was sparse: bread of some kind, though it looked fresh baked at least, with

You’re Doing It Wrong

A friend once recounted how a mutual acquaintance of ours had told her God spoke to him, which he meant both literally and verbally. It’s enough on one point to note the gent didn’t say God spoke with him — which wd seem to be preferred, all things taken together — but that isn’t what I’ll

All Hat No Cattle

The men I respected most when I wrote about the golf business — and being the golf business they were mostly men — were course superintendents. I loved talking with them, because they more than nearly anyone else wanted to be there simply for the grass and the golfers, and in that order. And this

Subjective, Objective

The other day I wrote on a wing and a whim … and misremembering. Or as Prufrock put it, quoting Woman — That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all. Nearly nothing I recalled happened in that way. Except of course the recalling. And a bit more. Wasn’t a

Related

Like A Rolling Stone

A totally unscientific survey — texted my brother-in-law on the other coast — shows [my] fears of the death of the ice cream cone have been at least mildly exaggerated … tho looking, literally, a little topsy-turvy. A’course, I’d not heard anything specific; the reports were only in my head because about nothing from this

Can Imagine

The highest work of the imagination is to have eyes like that. Buechner

Tolkien’s Errantry

‘Errantry’ JRR Tolkien Commercially found in Adventures of Tom Bombadil Image: detail, Pauline Baynes’ illustration, for above [Where did JKR hear the buzz of Dumbledore … ]

People do the Craziest Things

Adam — did he do what he did for love? Did he say, ‘I will join her; I can’t bear to be without her.’ — is that how it went down? He at after Eve; was it because he’d rather skulk around the earth a sojourner and pilgrim at the mercy of the people in that