Congratulations to the three finalists for the 2007 competition: Brandon Hobson, Casey Anderson and Andrew B. Warren. Special thanks to all entrants, as well as George Carr for getting the comp off the ground, running it, and just generally making it happen.

 

 

 

'Try to breathe, son.  This is a gas mask, which is nothing to be
frightened of.  It goes on just like this, see?  Very good.  Your
mother's a breather, son.  Now inhale deeply so that you're taking
several deep breaths in a row.  Slow, deep breathing.  You'll find
yourself becoming very relaxed, son.  And you have my word it's all
going to be okay.  Just breathe in slowly and don't think, and this is
crucial, about the fact that it's soaked in chloroform even though
you'll slowly feel yourself feeling foggy and faint, son.  I'm
monitoring your breathing so that your heart rate doesn't drop to a
dangerous level.  Trust me on this, you're doing fine.  It's very
important that you focus on the object like we discussed.  Focus on
the little stuffed bunny in the chair, son.  See it?  Look at it and
don't look away.  You don't have to worry about a thing because I
won't let anything bad happen.  You have my word.  Have I ever told
you how much I appreciate your kindness and gentle manner?  Plus your
overall demeanor—quiet, reserved, bashful and a willingness to
cooperate without weeping like your younger brother, son?  What I like
about you is that you don't whine or whimper or dribble cerebral
spinal fluids like your mother, son.  You don't get scared of gas
masks or sitting blindfolded in the dark.  Son, you can understand the
inevitable precision of your senses.  And silence, it's the silence
that's most important when we're doing this, and you're able to lie
there, son, wearing the gas mask without trembling or flailing your
arms in horror like your little brother or dribbling cerebral spinal
fluids down that fucking double chin of your mother's, son.  You don't
fidget or move and that's good, keep breathing just like that.  Son,
I'm not able to hear your breathing, which means you're relaxed,
you're not moving at all, son.  What essentially makes this a pivotal
moment in your life right now is that you realize that years later,
perhaps when you least expect it, you'll think of me.  I'll creep into
your thoughts so that you'll remember these times we share here at my
home, and it will happen for years and years, son, let me just say
right here and now that my plan, regardless of what you'll think later
in life, is not that you demonstrate on others what you've learned
here but that you'll simply be so confused whenever people label
you—and trust me son it will fucking happen—as having "serious
emotional problems" that you'll end up hating yourself, becoming so
entirely distressed and spiritless and emotionally drained that you'll
wonder why it all had to happen to you.  Are you listening?  Are you
even conscious?  Let me explain something, son.  For a while you'll
learn to dismiss what others think even though on the inside you'll
know they're right because you've already examined how deeply troubled
you are, and this will happen over a long period of time through
various counselors and psychologists and even psychiatrists who'll
dispense medication you'll quit taking because why even bother
anymore.  See?  For a long time you won't be able to make any sort of
oral testimony about any of this with anyone—not friends or family or
loved ones—until you've had so much counseling it's not even funny,
son.  But it's not really funny at all, son.  It's not funny when you
withdraw from others at school, or when you have trouble sleeping at
night, or when your first date with Abigail Eberhardt will end with
her wondering why you were acting so weird and quiet and withdrawn
because son I'll tell you, every relationship until your late twenties
will be that way.  Do you know what I'm getting at, son?  Do you know
that by flunking Latin in college it will be that much more of a
testimony when you eventually receive the gift of speaking in tongues?
 Because now comes the part where your life changes, son.  It's
because everything for you will work together for a purpose.  Things
will begin to change so that in your late twenties you'll feel
extremely anxious and find yourself watching lots of late night
evangelism, even reading books in preparation for your life to improve
drastically.  Did you know this was exactly the way everything was
supposed to happen?  Feeling, perhaps, as if in an instant something
supreme will happen is much more intense because of everything you
went through as a child?  So listen: you'll come to realize and learn
a great deal about why things happened to you when you were
blindfolded or when you wore a mask soaked in chloroform.  You are
now, at this point in your adult life, very aware of this.  I will
explain everything to you and give you peace within yourself.  You'll
realize that all this, at first, is not easily understood, but then
again neither are Isaiah's prophecies, or the destruction of the walls
of Jericho, or the flood, or even the phenomenally defining moment
when you'll kneel at the altar at St. Luke's on a Sunday evening in
late September '03 to receive the Holy Spirit—that quiet inner voice
that replaces the old voice you heard so often as a child, son.  Hear
it, son?  This is the replacement, a gift from me to you, a shift in
voice in a short story revealing a mere fragment of your life.  And
this inner voice never fails, son.  I will be living water flowing
through you, a light that lives and moves around inside your body and
speaks different languages inside you.….an inner light that lends
itself freely to the less distant and more honest you when you look up
from the altar at St. Luke's in late September '03 to see the light
spilling down on you as if speaking aloud the utterly obvious
Yêshûwa.'*

 *He will save.

 

 

 

 

Wallace Pipped



And the coup d'etat or coup de grace of the whole thing is is that
he(1) never even had a headache to begin with. And but so but you
could've put those new Silkskin disposable triple-blade razors up
against the leading brand(2) four-blade razors and according to the
now YES-Smith Research & Development(3), the increase in the like
relative abrasion coefficient(4) was negligible at best. And so this
was the catalyst that sparked Junior Smythe's pretty much
tektitic-type ascension, despite the burgeoning popularity of electric
razors and his (Smythe's) rather less than mainstream predilection for
woollies, which, in this day/age, though admittedly maybe slightly
troubling is really not that big a deal. But the razor you really
couldn't tell the difference and this really did bear itself out in
the double-blind clinical studies and such and what with the like
sixty-five cents on the dollar kind of production cost savings, T.
Smythe, Jr.'s Silkskin disposable triple-blade put him on the national
health & beauty suppliers map as a heavyweight to be reckoned with for
the foreseeable future. Of course the result was this Coke v. Pepsi
type commercial donnybrook, which where you had the boys over at Bic
taking the whole anabolic/Jack Palance/Jack Daniels stance, and
Smythe's Silkskin line caressing the LEGGS(r) of the
PH-balanced/Danielle Steele end of the market, which given his
(Smythe's) history(5) was none too surprising, but give credit where
credit is due, as Smythe, with the help of(6) then new bride Maria
Steinbrenner, recognized that with the majority of shopping duties in
the US still the responsibility of women, he (Smythe & Co.) was
targeting the more lucrative market. The Silkskin line even managed to
make some in-roads with a few male consumers through a partnership
with the oft-maligned but smooth-cheeked A-rod and Maria's uncle's YES
Television Network, short-lived though it was(7). So then it seemed
that Smythe's razor-designing prowess, which designing sharp objects
really was his raison d'etre(8) since for as long as he'd been shaving
all the hair off of his body, which was like pretty much since about
8th grade(9), had him (Smythe) poised to make an all-out fragrant
assault on the usual suspects of the North American heath & beauty
habiliment trade, that is, up until this last unfortunate little
relapse which, while our man Trent S. was on hiatus at Bellevue
jerking off in a pair of granny-panties while a few wounds of
questionable origin healed on his forearms, Maria served him divorce
papers and Wally Pipped(10) the Prez/CEO position right out from under
him while he was on PTO, the coup d' etat/grace of which is that Wally
Pipp never actually had a headache, he was just in a bigtime slump.



---



(1) Pipp, Walter Clement, b. 1893, d. 1965, First Base, New York
Yankees, 1915-1925

(2) Bic Quadpowerflex, the preferred razor of your 2013 Los Angeles
Raiders of Oakland

(3) Trent Smythe, Jr., then President and CEO, who, at the behest of
inGenus Marketing of America, Inc., and despite the unfortunate but
necessary myriad legal fees and inordinate amount of federal and city
official palm-greasing required, went ahead and changed the company
name from Smythe- to Smith- due to the Smythe
name/pronunciation/spelling's purportedly effete* connotation w/r/t US
consumers

(4) with respect to ASTM D4062 standards of breakaway friction,
running friction, volume resistivity, &c.

(5) T.S. Jr. is still recognized for his monumental victory in the
infamous Smythe v. Limited Brands discrimination lawsuit, the result
of which was Smythe being awarded the right to be first male employee
to secure employment at a Victoria's Secret retail location

(6) or, as the court documents would later contest, wholly due to the efforts of

(7) its brevity neither the fault of Alex Rodriguez nor The Bronx
Bombers themselves, but rather due to the fact that pretty much
everybody who doesn't live in NYC hates the fucking Yankees and would
just as soon see them use the Silkskin triple-blade to slit their own
wrists and/or throats – which, to its credit, was a feat it was
designed too well to actually accomplish

(8) well, that, and a penchant for autoeroticism w/r/t bloomers

(9) not to mention a short stint of experimental self-harm**

(10) The metro-NYC term for coming back to work after taking some paid
time off or sick leave or some sort of hard-earned downtime and then
returning to the office/jobsite/field/&c. only to find that you've
been permanently replaced by a prodigious employee with like say a
progressive amyotrophic neurodegenerative disease named after him/her
is Wally Pipped



 * really faggy British-sounding, according to Smythe's former
business partner and wife (also former), which is really neither here
nor there

** just a phase, really, and Smythe was never clinically diagnosed as
an actual honest-to-World-Health-Organization "cutter"