Sexy Mumbles

Many laypeople believe that R+B (Rhythm plus Blues) music is made by the simple addition of Blues 

to Rhythm. But connoisseurs of the genre know that Rhythm and Blues are only 2/3 of the necessary 

ingredients of a traditional R+B song. The unaccounted for ingredient is Sexy Mumbles. 

Sexy Mumbles are what the R+B artist or group of R+B artists engage in at the beginning of a R+B song, 

pre-harmony, just before the beat "drops." Standard topics for Sexy Mumbles include:

1. Asking the DJ to please start playing ("drop") the beat as soon as possible

2. Reminding us that this is how we (the R+B artist[s]) do

3. Reminding us of the name of the R+B artist(s) who will sing the song you are about to hear

4. A Beautiful Lady (the Subject of the R+B song about to be sung, generally)

Renowned Rhythm Plus Blues Artist Bobby Valentino is like the Cadillac of Sexy Mumbles 

(you only need to listen to like the first 20 seconds of each of these, if you are too busy to HEAR ART):

And of course a short but stellar example of Sexy Mumbles from R+B titans Boyz II Men:

Wonderful.

Now. As an innovator, a pioneer, an asker of difficult questions, and a fervent believer in the 

vitalness of Sexy Mumbles as an art form, The Steelworkers Promise is sitting here wondering 

why not write a whole Rhythm Plus Blues song comprised entirely of Sexy Mumbles? I mean if 

you love chocolate ice cream, you don't buy Neapolitan ice cream, you buy a whole thing of 

chocolate. (That is called a "pitch-perfect metaphor.") 

The Steelworkers Promise believes that this sort of questioning of the fundamental construction 

of Rhythm Plus Blues music is precisely what our troubled world needs right now. 

Why? 

BECAUSE THAT'S HOW PROGRESS GETS DID. 

So buckle your Brain Belt, reader, so you don't get whiplash from this PARADIGM SHIFT.

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PRESENTING: The World's First All-Sexy-Mumbles R+B Song

TITLE: (Oh my God girl) You're so Beautiful

soft violin/piano intro

LYRICS (mumbled sexily):

Oh my God, girl.

You're so beautiful. 

Standing there, 

shimmering in the noonday sun. 

Like a diamond-studded art work

by an ancient art master.

A statuette

representing the faint hope of real human connection and love

in this cold digital age.

And boners.

That's probably the most important thing you represent. 

My boner.

Oh my God girl. 

I can't believe my incredible luck.

Of all the places in the world

that a lovely lady could choose to stand

you picked this one,

this lonely bus stop outside the Big-Lots.

What do you have in those shopping bags, girl?

Is it my heart?

Oh my God girl.

Look at that tasty singlet you got on.

You know some people say a large and floppy bosom

like the one you got girl

is an accurate indicator 

of future success in life.

Girl I am one of those people who say that.

I believe in you. 

Oh my God girl.

Are you really getting on the same bus as me?

How in Heavens have I never seen you on my bus before?

I ride this shit every day.

Are you new in town?

Are you stranger in this big city?

Did you come from a faraway place to pursue your dreams?

Or did your alternator go out or something,

so you have to ride the bus today

to get your errands did?

Either way, girl. 

Fate has descended upon us.

Like a fucking comet from space.

Destiny's comet crushed us girl, 

and left a smoking crater of serendipity.

Oh my god, girl.

Where you gonna sit?

You need to decide fast, because the bus is about to start rolling again.

Girl, come on.

Sit the fuck down. 

I need to know where you're sitting

so I can sit near but not next to you

in the optimum position 

to admire your beauty. 

Two rows back and on the opposite side.

Is the standard position for that sort of thing.

The bus has started moving.

THE BUS IS MOVING GIRL.

SIT THE FUCK DOWN GIRL.

Well God damn it.

I just slopped Gatorade G down the front of my shirt. 

I lost my balance for you, girl.

See how I sacrifice for our love?

Oh my god, girl.

What could you be thinking as you stare out that bus window?

What are your dreams, girl?

Could you be dreaming of me?

Is that even a possibility, 

considering that you and I have never formally met?

Is it even within the realm of reason, girl

that despite the fact that you are unaware of my presence on this planet,

with the exception of that lusty glance you threw at me

when I fell into the bus aisle a second ago,

is it possible that you are staring out that dusty bus window 

dreaming of me,

dreaming of making love to me?

I believe it is possible, girl. 

I believe in dreams. 

The beat "drops," and the song ends immediately.

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And we leave the world a better place than we found it. 

Cialis: Prologue

CIALIS: PROLOGUE

It is the fate of each of Nature's pristine dawns to be spoiled by the first groggy human to wake up and 

begin his noisy human errands. And so it was a kind of a fulfillment of destiny when, just as the horizon's 

axis eased below the peach-colored morning sun, Dan Brown missed the unpaved turnoff from the main 

road he was looking for, jerked the wheel hard right, and sent the tail end of his 1993 Ford Flareside pickup 

spinning and squealing through the roadside gravel. In his oversteer's wake, Dan's wife's pretty sleeping head 

thonked against the passenger side window. One hard sharp thonk, and a second smaller rebound thonk. 

She woke up cursing. 

"-ucking (THONK) son of a (thonk) FUCK."

The truck rocked to a stop perpendicular to the main road, facing it, gravel dust settling on the hood. 

The radio, which Dan had turned way down in respect of his wife's nap, was playing an oldie very softly, 

it sounded like The Hollies maybe, and the beat of it (the oldie) very nearly but did not quite sync with 

the beating wings of the startled birds retreating eastward. 

"I'm sorry. I missed the turn."

"Fuck."

"It was a mistake."

"Most people's mistakes don't concuss other, sleeping people. Generally."

"I'm sorry. People make mistakes. You do. Make mistakes sometimes."

"The very fucking definition of innocence, a sleeping person is."

Dan pulled a U through the shallow trench by the road, and the heavy old claw foot tub he had tension 

strapped to the bed of the truck that very early morning slid surprisingly gently into the little bump in 

the bed's surface that accommodated the back right wheelwell. 

"Very nearly literally the last people on earth who deserve to have their heads slammed into a piece of glass."

"We're almost there."

"Well keep on going then."

But Dan and his wife, pickup and antique bathtub were already gently bumping down the little unpaved road. 

*

Parked lakeside, Dan with one boot up on the lip of the tub. He flipped open the steel clasps on the 

straps, releasing each with a quick zip of retreating nylon. His wife stood at the tailgate's open mouth 

with her arms crossed and the ends of her sleeves pulled over her hands. She watched the lake's easy 

movement, the grace with which water can accommodate anything it touches. 

"Don't scuff it."

"Just stand right where you're standing, and I'll push it down to you."

Dan wedged himself into the narrow tubless space at the back of the truck's bed and unfolded his little 

body against the tub, pushing with everything he had. It moved haltingly for three inches or so, the tub's 

claws turning up brittle curls of the bed's paint. He stopped to pull off his sweatshirt.

"They don't make bathtubs this sturdy, this uh, solid, anymore."

"That's true of almost everything, I imagine." She looked at him directly for the first time that morning. 

"Maybe you should come up here and help me push, and when we get it kind of tilted over the tailgate, 

I'll jump down and grab the other end."

She ignored his offered hand and pulled herself up. They took positions and pushed, Dan's wife's side of the 

tub moving a little faster and veering off to Dan's slightly slower moving side. After a few heave-ho stops and 

starts, they got it seesawed over the tailgate and stopped, hands over their heads holding the lofted end of the 

tub. Dan's wife looked at him. 

"Maybe I better go down and grab it instead."

And of course as soon as she turned the tub loose, the heavy old thing lifted Dan up off his kicking feet and 

slid down the lip of the tailgate and slammed into the ground so solidly it barely made a sound and Dan, 

doubled over the airborne end of the tub, had just enough time to wheeze some air back into himself before 

his own relatively insubstantial body weight tilted the tub clockwise and sliding across the tailgate's edge, 

lengthwise toward the earth. And from his perch he watched his own slow fall, the inevitable advancement 

of the ground, and clung to the tub as if it might save him, somehow. 

When he opened his eyes, he learned he had landed or rolled far enough from his truck to see from the ground 

back up into the empty bed, where the tub's claws had left desperate jagged trails, like it had been trying to 

prevent its own abduction. 

*

Together, they rolled the tub upright and pointed it at the lake. 

"Thank Christ that's done."

"Well, halfway done." Dan a gave a kind of mock-bemused 1/4 smile. 

"What does that mean, halfway done?"

"I mean we have to go get the other tub, back at home."

"The other tub?"

"His and Hers. Yours and mine."

"HIs and Hers antique claw foot tubs at the lake."

"I thought that part was evident, from the two tubs tubs sitting there in the the garage."

Dan's wife closed her eyes. 

"I mean the truck's not big enough to hold them both." He gestured at his truck to her shut eyelids. 

"I can't do this anymore."

"We can get back and set up by sundown, if we leave now. It'll be perfect." 

She pinched the bridge of her nose. Her disappointment always capsized his stomach, rolled it right over, 

it made him hate himself and everything he'd seen and touched in the world in his lifetime that his best 

effort to finally stop disappointing her, his last, best plan, had caused more disappointment, for her. 

"If we can just get through this, things will get better."

"Where are you going to get water to fill the tubs, Dan?" 

He touched the bottle of pills in his pocket. 

"If we just do this, things will start getting better."

"Were you going to use lake water, Dan?"

Shrewd Investments for The Post Global Warming Era

If there is one thing in the world the Steelworker's Promise loves doing, it is MAKING YOU RICH. Here at the Steelworker's Promise Internet-Based Salon of Increasingly and Ridiculously Infrequent Dumb Jokes and Longwinded Nonsense, your bottom line is our ONLY LINE.

So when you wake up next week and look out the salvaged wood-framed windows of your loft that used to be a printer's building and see the sad A-frame homes of the poor people who used to live in your neighborhood floating down your trendy art-district streets past the one-word named design stores and bottle shops, iPhone up your preferred broker and pull the trigger on these HOT STOCKS (literally [fart]):

Consolidated Stilt (CST)

Union of Himalayan Mountain-Based Seersucker Tailors (UHMBST)

The Pontoonary (PNY)

Thompson's Water Seal for People (TWSP)

Things Less Dense Than Water Store (TLDW)

Upside-Down Umbrellas, LLC (UDU)

Whichever Rich Eccentric is Financing the Production of Amphicars These Days (WREFPATD)

It's always Happy Sailing on the Profit Sea!

My lawnmower needs to learn some accountability.

ME: Ok, so just for the record, what is your full name and title?

TASK FORCE: I'm a Task Force© manual lawnmower with 20-inch blades. My title would I guess be: Nick's Lawn Mower, but I'm not sure since I was never furnished with a written job description. 

ME: Ok. Easy. There's no need to get defensive. We're just talking, here. Just two dudes being friendly.

TASK FORCE: Sorry, it's just the title of the post makes it seem like you've got it in for me a little bit.

ME: Oh, you know. It's just to compel people to read further. Give it a little sizzle. What do you expect, I'm in advertising!

So would you way that you're a good lawnmower?

TASK FORCE: For the price, yeah. I mean I only cost $40, whereas even a bottom of the line gas-powered mower would set you back like $300. So, value-wise, yeah, I'd say I'm a pretty good mower. 

ME: Thanks. Now I'm going to show you a couple of pictures, and I want you tell me what you see. Here's picture one:

TASK FORCE: That's an area of your backyard. 

ME: Anything else?

TASK FORCE: No. I mean. It's just some grass. 

ME: Ok. I understand it's probably not the best picture ever, but I'm no Annie Liebowitz! Let's try this one. Same angle basically, just a little closer.

TASK FORCE: Oh. 

ME: What do you see?

TASK FORCE: I see some tufts of grass. 

ME: Well, I think "tufts" is a bit of an understatement, don't you? "Clumps," maybe, or "chlorophiliac monuments to mediocrity," or "things that if you had a Lawn Mower Father, and he saw these chlorophiliac monuments to mediocrity, would cause your Lawn Mower Father to throw his whiskey glass into the fireplace and scream, "I HAVE NO LAWN MOWER SON!"" 

All of those are more appropriate terms, I think. 

TASK FORCE: ...

ME: Was I right to assume that you have no Lawn Mower Father?

TASK FORCE: I was assembled by a series of machines at a plant in New Jersey.

ME: Ok, orphan. So why exactly are there still huge tall clumps of grass all over the yard after you mow it?

TASK FORCE: Like I said before, I AM A MANUAL MOWER. I don't have an engine to help turn my bl...

ME: Oh sure, blame everything on the lack of a gas-burning engine. You're like the opposite of Al Gore.

TASK FORCE: It's simple sci...

ME: Greenpeace is going have a field day with that one. Now I'm going to have pontoon boats full of lunatics blocking my path every time I try to mow the lawn. Thanks.

TASK FORCE: I just think you need to temper your expectations a little bit.

ME: I should temper my expectation that a lawn mower should mow the lawn?

TASK FORCE: It's just that the grass gets pretty thick in some places.

ME: THE GRASS GETS PRETTY THICK. So what's the cutoff point exactly? You won't cut anything that's thicker than what, a cherub's kiss? A single dandelion seed floating on the breeze?

TASK FORCE: You know, if you mowed more often, the grass wouldn't get that thick, and I could cut it better.

ME: Yeah, maybe you're right. And maybe the car wash would work better if my car was already clean. Maybe my physics teacher's job would have been easier if taught myself a unified field theory.

TASK FORCE: You have a real talent for self-serving exaggeration, you know that?

ME: Hey, you want a glass of water?

TESK FORCE: No, I just finished a big thing of Aquafi-

ME: THEN IT'S THE PERFECT TIME FOR MORE WATER! You should always drink water when you're not thirsty! Just constantly drinking water preemptively, glass after glass, until your insides adopt their own ecosystem, supporting all manner of deep sea life, kelp and dungeoness crab, WE COULD OPEN OUR OWN AQUARIUM INSIDE OF YOU, we could sell little stuffed kelp in the gift shop, and charge extra to see the dolphin show, and we'd make so much money, all thanks to your foresight regarding hydration!

TASK FORCE: I knew it was a mistake to trust you. I'm leaving.

(TASK FORCE removes mic, exits studio)

ME: Hey, come back! We can name the aquarium after you if you want! The Task Force Manual Lawn Mower with Useless 20-inch Little Girl Blades Memorial Aquarium!

TASK FORCE: ...

ME: Get your ass back here! Where are you going to go? Who's going to love you?

TASK FORCE: ...

ME: YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE A DAD!

I need you to move your car, please.

Your car was parked out in front of my house this morning:

I know it's difficult to find parking on the street sometimes, but your car is scaring my cats (my cats are afraid of rims that tight).

I need you to move it, please. 

I understand this request will be met with little to no mercy. 

Here's Some Good Gardening Advice:

Thanks, Moondancer!

More Gardening Tips for the Modern Earth Goddess:

1) On the eve of the solstice, over a fire of birch twigs and juniper, cut off and burn a single dreadlock in honor of Resplendor, the Spirit of Resplendent Blossoming.

2) Use short strips of cloth, cut from a midwife's apron, to tie an amethyst to each of your spring bulbs. This will protect your bulbs from evil spirits that want to eat their tiny bulb souls.

3) If your plants become sick, treat them as you would your own sick child: sprinkle them with lilac-infused goat's milk while reciting your favorite Wellness Poem.

4) You don't need capitalist blood money to buy garden tools. You can fashion your own from geodes and hemp!

5) Fertilize your perennials with menses.

6) In late June, the seven Ovarian Moons will align harmoniously in the western sky, producing an "O'Keefian Flare." At midnight on this day, cover yourself in mud and loose leaves and howl into the night. Howl for Gaia's spirit, alive in everything. Howl for armpit hair, and the 1991 Jetta. Howl for the fairies, whose haunting, endless dance among the Gardens of Life brings vibrancy to the tulips, perfume to the rose. 

7) If you ever feel a doubt (creeping into your mind like a venture capitalist in the night) that fairies aren't real, that our lives are not guided by the whims of spirits, that we are just people, wandering through life alone and without a net to catch us, just rub your talisman three times and turn up the Bob Marley.

I am not, nor will I ever be, Ernest Hemingway.

I sometimes wish I was one of those Hemingwayian writers who use whiskey to spur their brains to produce resonant novels about terrifying wars, or voyages at sea, and how those things move men to strength and fragility in equal measure. It's a romantic idea.

But there is an insurmountable barrier between me and that vision of the rye-soaked writer. Every time I drink and try to write, this is what happens, without fail:

These are some "ideas" for Brooks running shoes, written at a bar, on the back of a Taco Bell receipt. 

I have not been to a Taco Bell in 3-5 years.

It's nearly illegible, but here's a few choice bits:

"Stargate shoe heads.

laser dog / robot legs"

"lazy uprising --> COUCHES"

"emperor shoe head 

headdress of smaller shoes"

"Shoe-burning furnace

lights dim - back to work"

"Aushwitz soap on a rope"

Apparently, I thought enough of these ideas to TAPE THIS RECEIPT INTO MY SKETCHBOOK FOR FUTURE REFERENCE.

In other Hemingway news, my very first produced ad was for Northern Marine Yachtbuilders, and directly referenced Hemingway in the headline and the (typically long-winded) body copy. Basically chastised him for making the ocean seem so scary in the Old Man and the Sea, when clearly, in a Northern Marine Yacht, the ocean is a wonderful majestic blah blah wonder land of fart fart splendor, etc. It also contained slyish references to Hemingway's drinking problem and subsequent suicide. I regret ever writing the thing, honestly, and I'd take it back if I could, but it did teach me that my idea of clever isn't necessarily everyone else's: