Author: Davis Christopher

Emboldened by national attention resulting from the careful and creative wording of current ballot amendments, the Shelby County Election Commission has committed considerable time and evident talent to improving the greatest works of world literature. While Fly on the Wall has yet to see a completed text, 5 first line samples were leaked this morning, revealing the epic scope of the Commission’s City Council-aided writing project.

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Great Works of Literature as Written by the Shelby Co. Election Commission

Moby- Dick
Herman Melville with the Shelby Co. Election Commission

“Shall Ishmael serve as a common spoken or chirographic signifier not expressly for greeting, but sometimes for gaining the narrator’s attention?”

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Great Works of Literature as Written by the Shelby Co. Election Commission (2)

Gravity’s Rainbow
Thomas Pynchon with the Shelby Co. Election Commission

“Shall the sky elect to not to retain its natural silence, in favor of free expression, horizon to horizon?”

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Great Works of Literature as Written by the Shelby Co. Election Commission (3)

Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury with the Shelby Co. Election Commission

“Shall the combustibility of literature, as it stands with all officers and offices engaging in the combustion procedure, be any reason to limit terms of pleasure?”

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Great Works of Literature as Written by the Shelby Co. Election Commission (4)

A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens with the Shelby Co. Election Commission

“Shall we claim, of the times between 1770 and 1794, that each individual year, and the age collectively, was both better and worse than any other age pursuant to its wisdom, foolishness, belief, incredulity, lightness, darkness, hope, despair, and to the various seasons to which these qualities may be poetically associated?

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Great Works of Literature as Written by the Shelby Co. Election Commission (5)

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream
Hunter S. Thompson with the Shelby Co. Election Commission

“Shall we agree that when the drugs took hold, all persons who had selected drugs, were in San Bernardino, east of Apple Valley but west of Needles and not so far north as to constitute the municipal boundaries of the city of Barstow?”
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Yes, this is a parody. Didn’t you see the orange tab at the top of the page?

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G.O. Ogleimage

Armstrong & Cox

Gunner Armstrong shakes his head, and digs into his backpack to retrieve a freshly purchased bottle of pepper spray. “I don’t know how effective this stuff is,” he mumbles, pulling on his reading glasses and skimming the directions. “I had a friend in college who would get a couple of beers in him and squirt it in his mouth like it was breath freshener.”

Like many manly men today, Armstrong lives in abject terror. “You never can be too careful with women being what they are,” he says, expressing an increasingly common, and deeply masculine sentiment. At least twice a week Armstrong says he finds himself walking a block or more past his house, keys clenched firmly in his fist like claws, because he’s convinced a woman is following him home, possibly to accuse him of harassment. “At some point I’ll find a nice bright street light and stop there to pretend like I’m taking a phone call or something. I’ll just let them walk on past, you know?” Armstrong says. “It’s probably all in my imagination. But like dad always said: better safe than hungover and accused of some bullshit you totally don’t remember doing.”
[pullquote-1] Personal security coach Archer Cox doesn’t think Armstrong’s taking the threat seriously enough. “If you’re not wearing a body cam and packing a taser, you’re not prepared for this fight,” he says. “Look, Gunner’s my bud and I used to be just like him. I took some self defense classes. Got my yellow belt. Got to where I’d take alternative routes home from the bar to avoid running into any of those lady joggers who were always making comments about how I shouldn’t be looking them. Saying things to me. Hurtful things. But none of those things I did to protect myself stopped this one woman from calling me a ‘peeper’ on Facebook, all because I was awesome and surprised her at her window one morning with a egg and sausage plate from down at the Touch & Go.”

Armstrong has a theory. “I’ve heard this is all a kind of revenge because they don’t make as much money as we do. And if things keep going this way I don’t think they ever will,” he says, opening the front door of MacBoobies, a Scottish-themed watering hole in Midtown where Armstrong is having drinks with Cox, and some other friends from work. “It’s gotten to where just having a penis paints a target on your back, it’s practically against the law,” he says, visibly agitated and determined to get hammered.

After several rounds of beer the men settle into playing a drinking game called Devil’s Triangle. “It’s kinda like quarters,” Cox explains. “Only if you cuss at any time you have to call your mother on speaker phone and apologize for being a naughty boy with a dirty, dirty mouth.” A waitress named Tina, who’s been cut from her shift politely intervenes and attempts to close out the table’s check.

“Did you want to put the tip on your card?” she asks.

“Oh, don’t worry sweetie, I’ve got a tip for you right here,” Cox quips, causing everybody at the table to laugh except for Tina, who rolls her eyes and walks away sans gratuity.

“Gonna stumble home now,” Armstrong says, pulling out his pepper spray, and screwing up his courage.

“I’ll walk with you,” Cox answers, holding onto Armstrong’s shoulder to keep from falling down. “I don’t want to be alone right now.”

If there is a war in America’s streets, these two old friends are determined to face the worst of it together. “I’ve got you,” Armstrong says.

“And I’ve got you, babe,” Cox answers. “I’ve got you.”

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*Yes, there is a parody tab at the top of the column.

Astrobiologist Tom Ichbaum opened his Twitter account Monday afternoon and typed out a dire warning about U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and women who seem to wear their hair like U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn. According to Ichbaum the Tennessee legislator’s trademark mane isn’t a mane at all, it’s a brain-eating alien parasite “that’s dangerous and probably self-replicating.”

“Look, I don’t want people to get the wrong idea,” Ichbaum explained. “This isn’t some kind of blonde joke. I’m not the kind of person who’d ever make fun of how other people look or dress, especially not women. That’s a terrible double standard in this country and I would never be part of perpetuating that. But holy shit, have you listened to some of the stuff Marsha’s says?”

Although Ichbaum’s worried about Blackburn for some time, it wasn’t her behavior that ultimately led him to begin his strange inquiry.

“I started noticing all these other women with the exact same hair,” he says. “At first I told myself, ‘This isn’t weird.’ It’s not an unusual look. I’m just being paranoid. There’s no way that hairdo’s really a brain-eating visitor from another planet. That’s crazy. But then I started listening to what all these people were saying. And everything they said sounded like the kind of crazy stuff Marsha says. It’s like they didn’t have minds of their own and were just repeating the most insane things they’ve heard on American Family Radio.”

To illustrate his point Ichbaum played a clip from a CNN segment about conservtive evangelical women who believe Donald Trump’s affair with porn star Stormy Daniels was okay because “God ordained” the President.

“I don’t think I can watch this again,” Ichbaum said, averting his eyes. At that exact moment one CNN panelist with Marsha Blackburn’s hair defended her President saying, “We all have gotten a Mulligan because of Christ Jesus, and so that’s the bottom line.”

Marsha Blackburn’s Hair Identified as Brain-Eating Parasite

“Who talks like that?” Ichbaum screamed into his laptop. “Jesus didn’t play golf! Golf was invented in 15th-Century Scotland for Christ’s sake! What the hell is wrong with you people?!?!?!”

According to Ichbaum there is only one scientific explanation for all this homogeneity: Alien parasites.

“Technically they’re symbiotes,” he says describing an exotic, otherworldly life form that bonds with human beings in order to survive on Earth. “On one hand they take over your brain and feast on your mental energies,” Ichbaum explains. “On the other hand, you do look fabulous.”

Ichbaum believes there’s currently no good defense against this kind of invasion. “But if somebody you know or love just shows up one day looking like Marsha Blackburn stay alert and try not to get too close,” he says. “Chances are very good this person is no longer your friend. It’s possible they never were.”

‘Huey Lewis & the News’ early work was a little too new wave for my tastes, but when Sports came out in ’83, I think they really came into their own, commercially and artistically.’ — President Donald Trump, karaoke enthusiast.

Following a long weekend of golf and golf-related activities President Donald J. Trump decided to blow off a little steam at the Jersey City Karaoke Club where he made a somber dedication. “What is happening is horrible,” he said, holding one index finger aloft as if to indicate this is where his story begins, not where it ends.  “But, in spite of all the things you may have heard, we’ve got this disaster thing under really great control and all the people who have really suffered over this last short period of time with the hurricanes, I want to just remember them.

“This one’s for you Puerto Rico,” President Trump said as the familiar opening to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'” started to play.

President Dedicates Karaoke Performance to Puerto Rico

“This is from the band’s huge, chart-topping 1981 album, Escape,” the President said over the piano intro. “And I think we all know what it’s like wanting to escape sometimes, don’t we? Am I right?”

Watching Trump from the audience Doreen Rustbelt swooned. “He’s got such a wonderful voice,” she said, legs turning to jello. As the junior-vice-president of the Make America Great Again Fan Club, Rustbelt had been invited to  to join Trump in singing the classic Joe Cocker/Jennifer Warnes duet “(Love Lift Us) Up Where We Belong,” from the tremendous 1982 hit film An Officer and a Gentleman.  

“He’s almost as good as the real Steve Perry and way better than that Filipino wannabe,” Rustbelt said before joining Trump onstage for the big finale. “When he sings about South Detroit and  living in a lonely world, you can tell he really understands people. I’m just so happy to have shared this special moment with our President and the ungrateful disaster queens of Puerto Rico.”

By all accounts Rustbelt’s duet with Trump was his best performance since teaming with his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton for a cover of, “I Had the Time of My Life,” from the 1987 box-office-smash, Dirty Dancing.

Modern Masterpiece.

Dolly Salvador says nobody could have prepared her for the raw, terrifying beauty of Memphis’ colorful pedestrian crossings.

“It’s an incredible play on the whole concept of street art,” says Salvador, the longtime critic for Over the Couch Quarterly and founding editor of Fancy Art magazine. “The fact that it was created by “the Man,” as they say, only makes it that much more subversive and so right now.'”

Salvador came to Memphis because she’d seen pictures of the crosswalks posted online and knew she had to see them in person.  [pullquote-1]
“They’re even more magnificent than I expected,” she says. “You can tell that there’s rigid order here if you’re looking down on it from above — that it was imagined as part of some real improvement. Then you drive up on it in your car and BAM, perspective transforms it into something disorienting, and a little chaotic. It creates this instant sense of paranoia, like all the nice, modern things invented to make life simpler are driving us mad. Such a perfect summation of our current techno-political malaise.”

Memphis is hardly the first city to experiment with color coded intersections. “But it’s so visually brutal,” Salvador purrs. “I don’t know how they did that using basic green and white strokes and those variously shaped patches of blue in the corners, but I love it so, so much.”

Kablooie

The world ended Wed, May 17, 2017 when Ima Moran, a part time bartender at Shenanigans, accidentally turned off the TV while attempting to change channels.

“I knew better,” Moran was quoted as saying as she fell deeper and deeper into the endless abyss. “Even though it seems like a distraction and a terrible discourtesy, you’re never, ever, ever supposed to turn the TV off while the band is playing. But I never dreamed something like this could happen.”

Ike Anteven, a regular at the Cordova watering hole, blames himself. “You know, I’m not all that into music,” he explained just before he froze to death. “I thought maybe Ima could see if there was a good game on or something. If I’d just been content reading the FOX news crawler, everything would be normal now and not, AAAARRRRRRGGGHHHH!”

Edianna Crusier, vocalist for the popular Dark Side Band had a more positive spin on the situation: “I always said, just one time — just one goddamn time before I die — I wish they’d turn the TV off while we’re playing.”

Physics professor Barnaby Jones says nobody’s sure what kept the Earth from exploding when bands played in taverns and dance halls prior to the invention of the TV. “It’s a mystery,” he said as his head was sliced off in a sudden debris storm.

Jesus it’s getting cold. I…

Artist’s rendering by POTUS

“It’s just a tremendous thing you can do with these animals,” President Donald Trump told a hastily assembled group of top military officials. “They’re like living dinosaurs, it’s just the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen.”

Inspired by a half-remembered song about former president Andrew Jackson’s victory at the Battle of New Orleans, Trump laid out a plan to expand the American military by rounding up alligators and turning them into rocket launchers.

“It’s an incredible natural resource,” the President said of the threatened species. “What Jackson did with them — amazing really — is he’d fill their head with cannon balls. Such a good idea. One of the best I’ve ever heard. Then he’d take the gunpowder and — well, I’m sure everybody can guess where that went. Little fire. Bam! Japanese never knew what hit them.”

Trump asked an aide to lower the room lights then asked the assembled group to close their eyes and imagine with him. “Imagine you’re North Korea,” he said. “And one day you look up and all you can see is alligators falling from the sky shooting rockets out of their mouths.

“That’s Jackson for you,” the President concluded, admiringly. “Ahead of his time. Fine looking head of hair too.”