Benson Bruno

That streetside tree is obscuring the air. Cut it down. Haul it in for questioning. There are secrets within that foliage. You might want to separate the branches in different rooms and apply some elementary game theory.___uestion a plant?___rees have a will too, just like people. We have to know it__ purpose. Read Schopenhauer.___chopenwho?___e was the only authentic German. You might like him. Being a police officer, you__e undoubtedly familiar with the need to put an end to the lives of the perverse when sex crimes go too far. Now just generalize that necessity to every human being.

The x-ray of your skull shows a large, flobby mass floating inside. I have to consult my colleagues to be certain, but it looks like a long sausage snarled into a lump.

Especially well known around the office is my weakness for dyspareunist women. Most people would find such disparity in unity repelling, but it harmonizes perfectly with my personal tastes.

Just this past summer, I took online courses in introductory logic and law through civilization. Often the weight of history, with its facts heaped upon facts requiring complex chains of inference to sort through _ I mean complex for someone with the soft brain of a tomato merchant; for me the premises are obvious and the conclusions dire and inescapable _ threatened to crush me, and I was ultimately forced to abandon the whole undertaking. By way of recovery, I spent the rest of the summer immersed in a Freudian meditation on some choice tabloids. The mysterious lives of celebrities make for challenging induction. The reasoning process involves navigating many gaps in our knowledge of them. What is certain is that under the iceberg of glitz and glamor lie neurotic, depraved individuals with bizarre habits and hobbies, people who think they__e above the law.

I don__ have any regrets,_ a famous movie actor said in an interview I recently witnessed. ____ live everything over exactly the same way._ __hat__ really pathetic,_ the talk show host said. __re you seeking help?_ __eah. My shrink says we__e making progress. Before, I wouldn__ even admit that I would live it all over,_ the actor said, starting to choke up. __ thought one life was satisfying enough._ __y God,_ the host said, cupping his hand to his mouth. __he first breakthrough was when I said I would live it over, but only in my dreams. Nocturnal recurrence._ __ou__e like the character in that one movie of yours. What__ it called? You know, the one where you eat yourself.___he Silence of Sam.___hat__ it. Can you do the scene?__he actor lifts up his foot to stick it in his mouth. I reach over from my seat and help him to fit it into his bulging cheeks. The audience goes wild.

What do you take me for? That fool Socrates, who upheld the law at the cost of his own death _ just to be ironic? I suspect that act was actually the result of his secret embarrassment of his hideous nose.

While we__e at it, why don__ we add a third emotion to this list: lust. You are probably unaware that Linnaeus lumped the tomato into the same genus as the potato, a food with a reputation for its widespread availability and easy satisfaction of oral needs.

Frosting was his favorite. He liked to eat doughnuts at every meal. Because it was healthier to eat six small meals a day than three large ones, he restricted himself: jellied for breakfast, glazed for brunch, cream-filled for lunch, frosting for linner, chocolate for dinner, and powdered sugar for 2 a.m. supermarket stakeout. Because linner coincided with the daily crime peak, he always ate his favorite variety to ease him. Frosting was his only choice now, and upsetting his routine was a quiet thrill.

Do you remember our first kiss? I do. Not a day goes by I don__ think of the feel of that bicuspid against my tongue. It had such a distinctive feel, neither cuspid nor molar_but I__ not sure it knew that _ that was what endeared it to me so. It was like the blunted tusk of a wild boar.

Dear sirs, The cold war isn__ over. When national borders fail, the epidermis is the last line of defense. We are counting on you.Sincerely,Patriot

Don__ believe what you hear about those penguins. A species of lazy waddlers. Their extinction is immanent.

If the law can be broken it will. Anyone who breaks the law is a risk. You can break the law. So you see, I have to take you in for questioning. This produce stand has an ominous future.

A customer facing crucial decisions: What should I wipe myself with? What should I brush with? His personal hygiene was deteriorating rapidly as he stared at the rows of possibilities, sweating profusely. Would he ever bathe again?

I don__ dwell on the fact that I may have ridden on planes. That which I can__ remember having needed, I simply accept. It is the most preferable kind of self-insight: one that does not require any accompanying change in behavior.

Afternoon experience: autographing exposed legs, outstretched in lines like matchsticks. Afternoon epiphany: Those with smooth, hairless legs would soon lose all evidence of my contact when the sweat causes the ink from the marker to run. I am ephemeral. Skepticism would be the reaction to those with thick leg hair, as their curls frazzle the lines of my name outward illegibly. Among the scaly-legged, I flaked off immediately, like I never was at all.

When a lack of white blood cells exposes the horizon of being, one has to make a choice. To cloister yourself away in a germ-free environment, alive but alone, or to embrace the woman you love and catch your death of cold at the marriage ceremony? What a great show. It__ inner-directed script was unmatched by any other soap opera.