Jim Crow, the old school American laws of the old south, which featured bigotry, oppression and a king-sized slice of intimidation and violence, has returned in an updated form disguised as James Crow.

                  “I was underground all them years, y’all,” James says.   “Not in the same way them cicadas was underground, but damn near close to it.  Like… I was living in a basement studio apartment/converted outhouse in the backwoods of Mississippi.  My landlord was the ghost of Strom Thurman.  Kindly fella.  ‘Cept he smelt like an old corndog and Bull Connor’s festering third molars.  Anyway, I’m back in a new form of bigotry, oppression and intimidation.  And I’m known as James Crow now.   I’ve gone through a few different iterations over the years.  First it was Jim.  Then it was Jimbo.  Next came Jimmy.  Then Jimbo again.  Now it’s James.  New name, same immoral bullshit antics from back in the day, weakly camouflaged.  Yep, I’m coming out of my swamp, my Klan robe is freshly starched, and I’m ready to kick voting rights all up in the ass, y’all.  Hey, call me James Crow!”

                 James Crow’s goal now is to push new voter suppression laws that are aimed largely at  disenfranchising people of color in America.  These voting suppression laws are being proposed and passed in many Republican states.

              “Look, y’all, Republican’s ain’t got the numbers no more to win elections.  Too many of them brown peoples in America.  So, we is going to lie, cheat and steal our way to attain, maintain, and expand our power, by any means needs be done.”

                James says his inspiration comes from several different sources.

                     “Yep, I’m wearing my confederate flag underwear, which not only feel great and are breathable, but they also cured my erectile disfunction.  Now, I can spread my poison upon the land whist I masterbate to a photo of Robert E. Lee and David Duke… which ain’t easy with these hands.  Hey, call me James Crow!”

                   Last week, Thomas, a cicada from the westside, signed up for a number of different dating apps to help him find someone he can mate with before he dies in four to six weeks.

                           “I tried a few and finally signed up for one year of online services with Matches.com,” says Thomas.  “Although I know I’ll be long dead and gone by then, I just couldn’t turn down that great 50% off deal.”

                 But Thomas has not had great success thus far with any of the online dating apps.

                “Then problem with these dating sites is that people misrepresent themselves,” Thomas says.   “I had one women, who was supposed to be thirty-five years old, but in the background of her photo, I saw a black & white TV set and a transistor radio sitting on a kitchen table.  And next to them was a copy of LIFE magazine.  She was clearly old as dirt.  And I know dirt, having lived in it for the last seventeen years.  And the other problem is that I believe in being completely honest with people.  Most women I communicated with were looking for a long term relationship.  When I tell them that I’m just looking for a two to four week courting cycle, which would lead to sex, hopefully impregnating her.  After which, I would go off and fly around blindly for a week or so, until a die.  Might have time to check out the French Open or a few episodes of The Wire, but I doubt it.  For some reason, my forthrightousness turns women off.”

                         The life cycle of a Cicada is a strange one.  For seventeen years it lives underground as a nymph, feeding off of tree roots, sap, and the occasional burrito.  Then it crawls up from under the ground, sheds its outer casing, has sex, dies.  All in a span of two to six weeks.  If Thomas is unable to copulate with a mate soon, he says he has a back up plan.

                      “I’m going to donate my jizm to the sperm bank,” Thomas says.  “Hopefully, they can keep it frozen for the next seventeen years until, hopefully, my soulmate comes along.  Or… on my last day, Im gonna crawl up to the tallest branch of any tree, where I’m going to masterbate into a wall of cicadas and let the wind do the rest.  Hopefully, something will stick.”

                       Yesterday, Clifton, a 16 ounce glass tumbler, who contains only 8 ounces of water, was faced with the proverbial question:  Do you see yourself as half-empty, or half-full?   Clinton, an eternal optimist, saw himself as half-FULL, despite the fact that the water inside his glass contains lead, arsenic, radium, various others pathogens and traces of Raspberry Kool-Aid left over from a gathering of Scientologists.   The other sources of Clifton’s rancid water include, Baltimore City, any city in Michigan, and being down river from a gathering of The Loyal Order Of Water Buffalos.

                   “I’ve always tried to have a positive attitude,” says Clifton.  “Starting many years ago when I was just a little shot glass, bad things have always tried to get me down.  But I kept it positive.  Even after, my mom, a wine glass, was killed in a canoeing accident.  The canoe came through the front window of the restaurant where she was working at the time.  It crashed into her table where she was holding a Chardonnay, vintage 1981.  The canoe then ricocheted across the room where it wiped out most of the glasses on the bar counter.  Among the lost, my father, a beer mug, who never saw it coming.  The window, also a casualty that day, was a distant cousin on my paternal grandfather’s side.  Though, tragic, I saw those events in a positive light, through a prism of hope and inspiration.  That prism… was my grandmother, who always instilled in me to always look at myself as half-full, no matter what.”

 

 

 

 

 

                               Yesterday afternoon, L. Dorsee, a pirate, was pulled over by police and charged with the very rare traffic violation of Swashbuckling While Driving.  

                             “I observed Mr. Dorsee commit several illegal maneuvers that would fall under the swashbuckling category,” says, Officer Lori Felton.  “First, Mr. Dorsee was heading southbound on Tucker Avenue, when I observed him use some fancy swordplay to signal a right turn and then he swirled the sword, lunged forward, and changed the radio station.  Then I witnessed the subject exhibit acts of chivalrous behavior when he yielded his right-of-way to several motorist, all of whom were of the female persuasion.  I later observed Mr. Dorsee involved in a rather heated road rage shouting altercation with another motorist.  But instead of yelling profanities as the other motorist was doing, Mr. Dorsee employed rapier beguiling wit to de-escalate the situation.  Finally, I observed the subject drive through a toll booth and toss several pieces of eight, totalling approximately twelve dollars and seventy-five cents into the tollbooth without even slowing down his vehicle.”

                       Mr. Dorsee was subsequently given a field swashbuckling test, which he failed miserably.

                     “The subject was asked to walk a simple straight line,” says Officer Felton.   “… which he could not do without breaking into dramatic flourishes and then he subsequently swung from a light pole and landed in the middle of the intersection, sword pointing towards oncoming traffic.  Ultimately, it was the fact that his breath smelled of alcohol spirits and scurvy that prompted me to arrest him.”

                    Mr. Dorsee’s vehicle was impounded where two barrels of four hundred and fifty proof rum, a treasure chest filled with gold, Spanish artifacts, forty kilos of cocaine, and seventeen pairs of bootleg Errol Flynn suede tights were found.

                         Earlier today, Ruxton, one of King Kong’s original nipples, was denied access to the MegaCoaster ride at the WormHole Square Amusement Park.

                        “Yo, we gotta strict height requirement in order to get on this here ride,” says Roy Royster, MegaCoaster height verifier, and ticket taker ( but he does not do any of the ticket ripping in half ).   Roy continues.   “No exceptions!  That goes for drawfs, midgets, gnomes, Keebler elves, pygmies, Hobbits, jockeys, the Rice Krispies Snap, Crackle, and Pop boys, and either one of the two King Kong nipples.  No exceptions!”

                           In fact, Roy has never made an exception in the twenty-seven years he has been working the MegaCoaster ride.

                              “Napoleon Bonaparte tried to get through here one time, but he was one millimeter under the height requirement.  I didn’t let him on.   So what, you were a great French military leader and emperor.   You’re not tall enough to get on this here ride.  Waterloo, bitch!  Napoleon Bonaparte can’t ride.  Now, Napoleon Dynamite, tall dude, he’s good to go!   No exceptions.   They all try to get on this ride, but I hold it down like the law.   Danny DeVito, Kevin Hart, and Bruno Mars all tried to get through the gate.  Nope, no-can-do, not gonna happen!”

                          After being turned away from the MegaCoaster, Russell had to settle on riding the Merry-Go-Round and the whirling Tea Cups.

                        “It was really embarrassing,” Ruxton says.  “Here I am, a grown-ass man, and I’m relegated to the kiddie rides.   All the parents laughing at me, teasing me, calling me Nipsey Russell Jr.  My only sense of revenge is knowing that within that crowd of chuckling adults were some moms who had a debilitating case of nipple envy.”

 

 

 

 

                       Reno, a bomb sniffing dog, was placed on suspension from his position at the ATF for unsatisfactory job performance and not adhering to the agency’s personal appearance code.

                    “Who would have thought that old lady would leave twenty pounds of explosives under that park bench,” says Reno.  “It smelled like funnel cake to me.   It wasn’t my fault, really.  I had a very bad cold at the time, so my ability to distinguish TNT from vanilla extract was severely diminished.  Actually, I tried calling out sick that day, but decided not to because I was still on probation for deceptively calling out sick six months ago.  At the time, I told them I had a severe case of the shingles and heartworms.  Wouldn’t you know it, my supervisor saw me at the damn dog track that very day.  Busted.  What are the odds of that, huh?”

              Apparently, the old lady that Reno is referring to planted a bomb under that park bench because she wanted to blow up pigeons.  She absolutely hated pigeons and all birds, in general, including crows, eagles, cockatoos, hummingbirds, penguins and taradactles, in particular.  But because taradactles have been extinct for quite some time, she settled for extinguishing as many pigeons as she could.

                    “Now I’m on administrative leave with pay,” Reno says.  “And this sucks because all I do now is answer the phones, type up memos, which is really hard to do after I got my head blown off.   Actually, it exposed the fact that I really did have heartworms after all.   Serendipity.  What are the odds of that, huh?”

                       Last week, Dennis the Spider had his web damaged when a twister, the size of a bowling trophy, touched down near his home.  He filed a damaged property claim with his insurance company, WormHole Square Mutual.  Unfortunately, his claim was denied.

                      “Basically, they rejected my claim because the contractor who installed my web did not get the required building permits approved by the city inspector,” Dennis said.

                  In addition, as a policy, WormHole Square Mutual does not cover damages to property that has been spun with spider silk imported from China… and has a Frank Lloyd Wright vibe in the design.

                     “They claimed the spider silk from China didn’t meet code.  But that’s just some corporate bullshit they said to get out of paying my claim,” Dennis says.  “I would have spun the goddamn silk myself, but I’ve got a silk gland problem, my doctor says.   I try, but the only stuff that shoots out of me is a blend of silk that is forty percent polyester, fifty percent tweed, and about ten percent pubic hair.  It’s not strong enough, like real silk, to hold up to the elements.  Who wants to fall through the kitchen floor at midnight getting a midnight snack of insect wings?”

                  In addition to the cost to repair his web, Dennis was also seeking to recoup other costs related to the property damage.  Unfortunately, he was not reimbursed for those costs either.

                  “Okay, so this is all about the fact that I’ve been getting complaints from the HOA for not paying my dues on time,” says Dennis.   “Aaaaand for leaving dead ants and flies outside in my web, often for more than two weeks at a time.   Okay, guilty as charged.  But what the hell does WormHole Square Mutual have to do with how I deal with my HOA?  It’s none of their goddamn business!  First, they hassle me about having Bianco tile in my foyer and now this?”

               Dennis has since begun a regiment of testosterone, vitamins B1 through B12, and binge watching the old TV show Adam 12, and plans to spin his own webs in the future.

                                    Achard Tartton, 47, a dragonslayer from the upper west side, has been singled out by his family as having serious hoarding issues.   And although Achard’s one bedroom apartment is overrun with excessive amounts of wagon wheels, water buckets goblets, and dead dragons, he is adamant that he doesn’t have a problem.

                           “Okay, sure, maybe I’ve got so much stuff crammed in here that I can’t get into the bathroom to use the chamber pot without using a car jack and a forklift,” Achard says.  “But that’s not hoarding.  That’s bad Feng Shui.  Nothing a few potted plants and strategically placed area rugs can’t fix.”

                     “Achard has all of the symptoms of the classic hoarder,” says therapist, Julie Winters.  “Denial, first of all, and the need to bring more useless stuff into the environment, like old threadbare horse saddles, termite infested, treadless wagon wheels and VHS copies of The Walking Dead, which only exacerbates things.  And most hoarders, like Achard, have dead animals and dead zones of Netflix reception scattered around the space.  And this goes along with their general substandard level of dental hygiene.  In addition, the inability to complete a basic crossword puzzle without the help of  a wizard, like Merlin, or a Strayer University graduate is very common.”

                    Julie has been working with Achard, trying to convince him to throw out some of his clutter.  But Achard insists that everything in his apartment serves a viable purpose in his life, including mega-stacks of items in his kitchen, which include Shaq sneakers and rotary phones.

 

                   Last Tuesday, Dudley Spates, 44, purchased a pair of boxer shorts from a local thrift store.  A week later he had some serious misgivings about his purchase.

               “The problem wasn’t the itchy, hairy, red sores that formed on and around my man-junk about ten minutes after I put on the shorts,” Dudley says.  “Not only did I have crabs and all types of what not creatures in my shorts… I had a few small lobsters, and a crayfish wearing a FUBU jacket in there too.  I know it’s hard to believe.  But I had the authorities check it and sure enough the FUBU jacket was authentic.  But the main gripe I have is that the boxers have some stripes missing from the pattern on one side, and it makes it very difficult to attract women.  I don’t know, I think the asymmetrical vertical stripes have some kind of negative, psychological, subconscious affect on women that makes them shy away from me… in droves.”

                  Dudley scratches his forehead, and then his private area, continues.

                “I mean, I’m a risk taker.   I like to gamble and I’m frugal, so the thrift store was the perfect place to buy underwear.  I didn’t even wash then before I put them on.  But these boxers are killing my love life.  I’m forty-four.  I should’ve been married by now.  Or at least engaged.  Or at least befriended on FaceBook by any random stranger with an open mind, closed eyesight, low self-esteem, and rock-bottom expectations.”

              Worst of all, Dudley is unable to remove the boxer shorts because of some residual adhesive along the waist band that has merged into his skin.

                  “I’ve tried everything to get these damn shorts off, but nothing works.   Solvents didn’t work.  Sandblasting didn’t work.  And the exorcism was ineffective because the boxers are more than 50% polyester.”

                        For now… Dudley’s love life remains on hold.

                                   Last month, a local fast food restaurant installed a Jousting ONLY drive-thru pick up window.   Unfortunately things have not worked out quite as well as the restaurant owner had planned.

                       “The idea was to save on rental space by making the drive-thru lane narrower,” says, owner, Deanna Flores.   “And to make the line move faster by having only horses running through the lane non-stop.   The first problem we discovered was that not a lot of our customers even had horses.  We had folks coming thru the lane on mules, ponies, seahorses, and even horseflies, but not many on actual horses.   So we loosened our restrictions and allowed anyone coming through the drive-thru riding any type of horse-related beast to be served.”

          Ms. Flores looks regretfully at the remnants of the drive-thru, continues.   “But then we started having other problems too.  Legal problems.  Lois Cartright, our lead cashier, was impaled when she failed to close the drive-thru window prior to giving a customer back change.  Johnny Blazo, another cashier, lost his right eye when he misjudged a bag exchange.  And then he lost his left eye when the customer came back to get some extra packs of ketchup.  Tragic.  He was going to school to become a film director in the domesticated poultry porn industry.  ???????   Then Johnny Blazo sued us.  His contention was that the restaurant was negligent for not providing him with an appropriate suit of armor while he was on duty.   Nonsense, because we provided all of our drive-thru workers with a sturdy baseball cap, fitted with a sun visor made of recycled plastic from our very own individually wrapped cheese slices.”

                   Ultimately the Jousting ONLY drive-thru window failed and the restaurant filed for chapter 13 bankruptcy.   However, Johnny Blazo’s lawsuit against Ms. Flores was dismissed when the judge in the case ruled that two functioning eyes were not required for work as a director in the domesticated poultry porn industry.