humor – Mitchell Pluto

The Hidden Evolution of Racial Epithets Richard Gessner

Before the dawn of language, when all utterance was Gibberish, words had no meaning; the first racial epithets Were born innocently as ancient spidery cave drawings.

Scratchy jagged lines depicting tiny insulting hand gestures; Flagellum tangents of middle fingers flipped between Protozoa and parasite, bacteria and amoeba—

Dramatic strife of microorganisms mushrooming as Intra species slurs amongst the animal kingdom increased.

The colorful bird of paradise calling a common pigeon A dull grey drone— The majestic king cobra, bold and supercilious, calling The humble garter snake a fraying thread from a bankrupt Farmers’ shirt—

The sleek nimble weasel’s smug indifference to the beauty Of the brindle patterns of big cousin wolverines’ coat— Full of potential for expressive hatred and derisive scorn, Smoldering with bad intent; the early racial epithets long Lay dormant; aging poisons fermenting, Larval words

Clustering into round, red lace doilies; a devil’s needle point.

The forbidden words waiting to be introduced into the Vocabularies of developing homo sapiens. The words Finding their true meaning only after cataclysmic world History played out—rivers of bloodshed flooding 7 continents—casualties of endless wars forming a vast Mass grave of victims and victimizers, reaching beyond Our solar system.

It was then, rising above the transient minutiae of life, The epithets were imbued with power, meaning and Context, having the wide ranging capacity to offend, Cause controversy and discord. The taboo words came of age, and men were struck Dead by lighting bolts of name calling.

Gangs of racial epithets; clusters of rolling red lace doilies Stampede like outlaw bikers or rabid hyenas, across a thin Skinned landscape as vulnerable as a newborn bunny.

The leader of the pack, King Slur, flashy flamboyant, So offensive it can’t be spoken, wears its ugly history Like a badge of honor; King Slur seizes the limelight Having the Alpha status of a fighting word, much Envied by lesser less offensive epithets with fragile Egos.

An epithets’ self worth is determined by frequency of use And maximum offense when spoken. Epithets suffer From neglect when for noble reasons they aren’t in Someones vocabulary.

Pity the wimpy slur, bland as tofu or cottage cheese, Which announces itself with a saccharine greeting Card jingle— Pity the declawed neutered slur, unable to offend, Useless as an old work horse sent to the glue factory—

Pity the obscure, antiquated slur uttered at deaf phantoms In a provincial backwater, not heard and dimly understood By the judgmental ears of a damned civilization—

Beware of epithets that get misconstrued as compliments— Beware of moldy tripe past its expiration date— Beware of sunflower seeds laced with tiny razor blades— Beware of sharks as cuddly as kittens—

If someone calls someone a bad word, and atomic bombs Are dropped all over again, take a vacation and sail to Epithet Isle where a pure slur language is spoken by Litigious masses in perpetual offense collapsing in upon Each other as they speak themselves into oblivion and King Slur is smiling and laughing at them vanish.

“The Hidden Evolution of Racial Epithets” (C) Richard Gessner 2023

Before the onslaught of fat and male pattern baldness, Richard Gessner made front page news during an April snow storm, long ago….

Richard Gessner’s fiction has been published in Air Fish: an anthology of speculative work, Rampike, Ice River, Coe Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Happy, The Act, Sein und Werden, Skidrow Penthouse, The Pannus Index, Fiction International and many other magazines. A collection, Excerpts from the Diary of a Neanderthal Dilettante & The Man in the Couch was published by Bomb Shelter Props. Gessner’s drawings and paintings have appeared in Raw Vision, Courier News, Asbury Park Press, Rampike, Skidrow Penthouse, and exhibited at Pleiades Gallery, Hamilton Street Gallery, Cry Baby Gallery, The Court Gallery and the Donald B. Palmer Museum. Richard wrote The Conduit and Other Visionary Tales of Morphing Whimsy. He lives in Montclair, New Jersey.

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Featured photo: Kaulquappen-Vergangenheitsbewaltigung. Richard Gessner

Reptile Fling by Richard Gessner

Disclaimer. This is a work of fiction, any resemblance to Actual persons or events is Purely coincidental.

I took Maryellen, a lady of leisure, to every expensive restaurant and high end bar, indulged her with gourmet food, fine wine and droll conversation. I spent a lot of $ on her, as a gentleman always pays for a lady. It was my intention to wear down her defenses and inhibitions, to spend a day and night with her, warming her up to strip naked in a luxurious hotel room with a heart shaped Jacuzzi.

Maryellen was a glamorous, statuesque beauty, with creamy platinum blonde shoulder length hair, pale pink lipstick and nail polish. She wore a demure antique white designer dress, shimmering nude nylon stockings, and strappy high heels. Her ample breasts, curvaceous shape and nice ass, were her most noticeable feminine assets.

Maryellen was the kept woman of a film producer who was her sugar daddy. She was useful as eye candy at public events, and made the producer look good. She lived rent free and got a generous allowance for other “services” too shadowy to mention.

Maryellen was a precocious sugar baby, adept at sucking the blood of men with deep pockets. I was also friendly with the film producer who owned two summer homes and drove a Jaguar and a Mercedes. I had business dealings with the film producer of an artistic nature. But having no loyalty to him, I jumped at the opportunity to get his girl if I was lucky.

By chance, I met up with Maryellen, while passing through the producer’s neighborhood, and it was then that she went on several surreptitious dinner dates with me. She welcomed time away from her master who was overbearing, controlling and played power games with money. Threatening to withhold funds from her when he didn’t feel sexually satisfied. But Maryellen was successful at twisting the producer’s arm to buy her a new high end designer purse, not some cheap fake discount.

A giant alligator sex toy swallowed Maryellen whole and pooped her out its butt into the Florida heat, designer handbag and all. A giant alligator sex toy swallowed Maryellen whole pooping her out its butt, soiling her designer clothes, making her sad. A giant alligator sex toy swallowed Maryellen whole, she found spiritual enlightenment in the alligator’s digestive tract, emerging naked from the reptiles’ butt, and in her nakedness, she was most comfortable in the Florida heat.

All erotic, exotic and grotesque epiphanies aside, after many expensive dinner and bar dates, I finally got Maryellen to spend a day and night with me in a luxurious hotel room with a heart shaped Jacuzzi. After she took off her demure designer dress, stockings and heels, I helped her out of her panties and unhooked her brassiere, then she lay naked on the bed and I rubbed eucalyptus oil on her body. Then we entered the Jacuzzi together, in the warm water she blissfully felt my stiff erect phallus entering the prime real estate between her legs.

Richard Gessner’s work is published in Black Scat Review 24, Sulfur Surreal Jungle, Fiction International, Skidrow Penthouse, Seinundwerden, Another Chicago Magazine, Air Fish et al.

Richard wrote The Conduit and Other Visionary Tales of Morphing Whimsy. He lives in Montclair, New Jersey.

The Conduit and Other Visionary Tales of Morphing Whimsy Audible

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Piebald Pandora and the Phantom Self

Piebald Pandora

Multi hued Glory

Sloth Shark face

Palomino woman bites us

and hangs with us

upside down at dawn

selling our souls to 4 legged

Majesty Lemurs on Madagascar….

The Conduit and Other Visionary Tales of Morphing Whimsy Audible

self fee of a phantom self. oil/collage Mitchell Pluto

Afterword

We believe we are conscious but we are continuously unconscious.

The eye is the window to the brain and there sits the optic chiasm. A cross current chessboard of visual information. In ancient China, King Wen changed three lines into six lines to form 64 hexagrams in his book called The Book of Changes. Ironically there are 64 arrangements in DNA and 64 squares on the chessboard.

Synchronicity?

Jesus, all the time I spent believing in a historical Laoz and come to find out there’s no historical race either.

these our the last days of being a primate. Don’t worry we still have cuspids

Everything must be uploaded|

…creating a record print of a finger swipe from phone screen| CHECK

…the gesticulation wavelengths of our voice from phone calls| CHECK

…iris scan captured from viewing screen| CHECK

tell us what’s on your mind| CHECK

This device and artificial Intelligence will marginalize the future of man’s ego. After all man is an animal guided by objects, why not be a primate whose experience is organized and interrupted by the phone?

isn’t it working already?

Who is on the other side of the screen?

A narcissistic shark that feeds remotely on a colony of brains and uses the appearance of a woman as a lure

Now A Word From Our Sponsor

We would like to salute our patron Walt and his 1958 Disney film White Wilderness who graciously staged and contrived the impression of a massive lemming suicide. Now back to our show.

I would like to thank my friend, Richard Gessner for collaborating and creating some writing to interpret my painting

School Chump Memories by Richard Gessner

His mother had a very long pregnancy, gestation period spanning out across decades. Nino was finally born full grown, taking his first breath well into middle age.

Hence he had no childhood, no growth, no puberty, no maturity, he didn’t age. Always a spanking newly minted coin of a boy man with a diminished box of a body.

He couldn’t aspire to being castrati, because he was born without balls to cut off. He didn’t salivate for girls and no girls salivated for him.

Nino bore the distinction of being the prized pet rock traded amongst Egyptian pharaohs, the doorstop of mighty dictators, a paperweight for architects of the timeless eunuchs of future generations.

Baby giants used him for shot put practice. Redefining the lowest level of the pecking order, Nino had been the valet of humble bait boys carrying buckets of worms, following in servitude behind jaunty fishermen.

Some neighborhood Italians, sanded down the four corners of the box boy, playing Bocce ball with him in a local park. The sanded corners grew back, Nino reverting to his box shape when the game was done.

Once, I passed Nino on the street, reflecting that over 40 years ago in school we had sat next to each other in Mrs. Parks’ Spanish class, further reflecting that he’d had the coordination of a stalwart slug on barbiturates in gym class, and that to pin him in a full nelson in the wrestling room was no challenge. That I’d rather shoot fawns with a pea shooter. Or paint phantom polka dots on plastic daisies.

Nino reared up on one corner of his box, self righteously exclaiming

“Richard! You’re living in the past! You have to be a contemporary guy like me!”

The town rock star’s fame cast a very long shadow, a wedge of darkness with a Bermuda Triangle wherein dwelled the rock star’s younger brother castrated and erased by the rock star’s fame.

It was here the unearned “specialness” of being born into rock royalty festered into a canker sore of obnoxiousness, pretense and over compensation. Afflicted with the curse of being ordinary, the rock star’s younger brother asserted his uniqueness by spelling his very common name in a very uncommon way, so you’d never forget he was a rare bird of paradise.

After school, at 4 o’clock, groups of us passed a marijuana cigarette between us, and the rock star’s younger brother, in a haze of smoke, summoned the visage of his famous brother, his fame eclipsing the heads on Mount Rushmore the shining sphinx, the grandiose heads of state in eternity, a mummy of the first hominid preserved at the earth’s core.

Gleaming scalpel in hand, dew drop envy, casually diced up his crucified dissecting frog in biology class. Vandal meat for which he’d receive a D on his report card. Energetically, dew drop envy proclaimed his ambitions to become a pimp or an assassin if he never graduated from High School.

Dew drop envy, a poor kid, who gravitated toward rich kids, is often remembered lounging in lawn chairs, sipping strawberry daiquiris at posh suburban pool parties. On occasion, He’d get lucky with the soft and pliable girls of the upper class shedding their clothes with ease to swim in the moonlit pools of stately mansions.

The mirage of a giant, multicolored phosphorescent dung beetle rainbow appeared on the horizon of my home town. The huge hind legs of the dung beetle forever rolling up a mediocre saxophonist wearing his high school marching band coat in late middle age—a regressive laughingstock—held in limbo for generations, the dung beetles’ hind legs gripping him firmly never letting go as he spins him in circles; an intergenerational curse which can’t be broken as he performs gauche acts, bringing outside food into restaurants, playing tawdry music for chump change.

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Featured photo: Dung Beetle of fate catching up with nefarious classmate. Richard Gessner