Wilbur by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview
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#9- The Crockers- Two Seasons Prior
Ninety days at the lower end; like what you get for possession with no verifiable intention to distribute. Let’s say six months prior to whatever seems not yet outdated up until the very now, or perhaps more truly that which requires a similar six page flip of the free-ish ASPCA calendar, the residents of a 22 room house in neighboring Upper Darby Manor, Crocker brothers mansion; property of the author.
brothers Major, Spike, and Mad Monty Crocker were having a conversation whose content was becoming as predictable and daily typical for them as the sun rising in the east. That is, if one
Wilbur
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forgets that the scientists say that the sun is stationary, and one remembers which way east is said to be.
The Crocker brothers; property of the author.
Despite having not been so graced through birth, the brothers were always inclined toward the attributes of the enduring and time honored speculative clan. With a tempo roughly as swift as a cleaver’s chop-chop on the butcher block or an unscheduled, droning, noise metal guitar incident, the Crocker brothers believed that they had taken their place within the most profitable branch of the exclusive coterie. Their lack of official confirmation was not negated by any sort of testimony to the contrary. Being rather insular to perhaps much too expedient a fault, the Crockers were not commonly aware of any
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panache based distinctions between people not calculable by the rudimentary tenets of simple math. Unconsciously on that
“progressively” and/or “’new’-lib-up-to-the-minute” flank which is popularly and pridefully considered to be a 21st century
“innovative” and surreptitiously “cool” manifestation of nerdition in being “totes,” please pardon the deference to
“innovative” colloquialisms, racially tolerant, if not “totes again” white derisive, in what some out-of-style retro Pleistocenes subjected to Luddism might consider a very basic contradiction in their demonstrated awkward and annoying faux pas, the Crocker brothers enjoyed the overwhelming type of distinction first popularized by “hawt” Ms. Paris Hilton, who through the backward tradition of the legal process, was unfairly denied the copyright of her ostensible trademark, perhaps a function of a mis-spelling.
No problem for the Crocker brothers; no problem whatsoever.
No one pays any attention to these sorts of ill-timed and tiresome diversions. The current lock step march is always resolute within the banks of its own shores. That undisclosed limitation pervades at least until another “unexpected” flood immerses all. In that manner the water produces, and in that same way the “modern” problematic decade comes to exist rightfully and childishly, much as if all movement is necessarily a rejection of what-is-seen as a past inhibited
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inertia, the lack of a discernable spark, an alternative point of view which confuses through its previous conventional incarnation; yet another ellipse which culminates in
....................
When the collectively accepted Occam type of rationalism, that clearly in favor of whatever or nonever, and imaginatively or un, which only considers the Crocker’s form of ersatz simplicity is allowed to pervade, a certain kind of comfortable and “neat” truth comes to the fore just as sure as that expounded by Moe separated from Larry and Curly. Though it was perennially there for those not yet paralyzed by the seemingly adequate light paled by farce, parody, black humor, or their cousins, its comfort level potentiality was especially maximized for those in need of that same comfort which had a peak of sorts when the Babel-confused-with-credentials declared 2017 the year of post-truth. This proved to be virtually as seductive as any mud slide into the “avatar” played form known as ‘Resident Evil 87: Smoke Induced Biohazard’ with a 1024 bit, 4096KB Nintendo 4DS, for the maximum, four screen visual experience, which covered a synthetic trip into the meta fears which supposedly dwelled in some reality in the psychiatrically affected domiciles of Southern California. An even number of negations were said to be a positive; an odd number a negative. Math PhD’s plagued grammar schools through insisting as such.
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As the simplicity is continually and undeniably favored by the majority, what could not be measured in concrete Crocker greenbacks did not substantially exist for the Crockers. In a sense this relegated them to a marginalized status which they chose to interpret as an attractive exclusivity. Thereby this mindset truly did not, yet in a note of analytical and displaced kindness coupled with a penchant for the guileless banal, unwittingly propose anything to substantially eliminate the Crockers’ obligation to pay any attention to anything other than the number of digits in their personal accounts.
While still in grade school the Crocker brothers had already “discovered” that physical labor was both tiring and not very lucrative. “Franchising,” the art of allowing someone else to pay you to use your lackluster, but publicized name, in return for doing all your work, and paying whatever you want to charge for the privilege of selling the underlying product, if any, sure beat the hell out of the “personal service” lawn mowing business. Their early forays into their well-advertised
“Crock’s Yard Service” provided them with an income sufficient to buy all the collector’s comics they could handle at the mere imposition of having to answer the phone politely and just a few worker warnings about inexactitudes, supplemented as needed by a few maimings. The lawsuits which followed were handled by their attorney father, and he was always able to get them off on
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grounds ranging from self-defense, to no witnesses, to first-time-juvie-offense, the latter handled at sentencing.
This success set the pattern for their adult entrée into their internationally based “What Not on a Burger” franchise, which claimed an ability to enhance buyer burgers with any known edible additive, including opioid sprinkles. After three expansive years their illiquid investment was converted to liquid because of their public offering, and two years after that very liquid thanks to a leveraged buyout. Essentially, LBO’s allow those who own everything to retain the benefits of higher entrepreneurial returns while passing the previous inherently and theoretical risks off to employees of the franchise “owner” as well as the franchise “owner;” him-herself, both, or an algorithmically assisted hybrid concoction replete with “proper” categories, rumored to equal two to the power of eight and growing. Public mis-statements regarding these matters were now on the top ten lists of business mistakes, and the Crocker’s were always careful to get the easy stuff right.
The troublesome trepidations for transgressions topped the potential pecuniary penalties for the prohibited proffering of poppy products. As silly as the uninformed may take this situation, this was no joke to anyone with the least bit of business common sense. The Politically Precise Police (PPP) appendage of the Newlib Social Media Mavens’ (NUSOMMA)
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vociferous, arguably opinion conjoined, and spokesmanlike,
........ errr spokspersonlike tribe invariably was in existence to find “reasons” to take overt umbrage and surreptitious pleasure in finding violations of their changeable and unwritten Code of Currently Censurable Predicaments, commonly referred to as “The CCCP Hardback.”
This selectively and exclusively available to the privileged “meta” book was apparently a resident of the same gated neighborhood as the Holy Ghost, as the only people who claimed to have seen it also claimed to have regularly seen communal faucets and toilets which taunt Artificial Intelligence braggartry by either turning off or flushing utilizing a mind of their own. If one is cynical to a fault, thereby concluding that this was not exactly the stature of a Revelation, it is at the very least safe to say that this may have been one of those occupational hazards common and endemic to those in the well-paid plumbing trade as well as the flaming former followers of Waco Koresh.
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