Twenty-three Small Disasters

A : He's skantabulous. Spiffledifferous. Shiny as a Fuller Brush Man's pompadour. Slick, wicked, and full of flick. He's the answer to the question. He's the man.

B: He's a Dud.

A: What? He's the fiddler of the fittest. The baddest poppa of the Mommas and the Floppas, eating you up like tapas.

B: He's a schlemiel. A nudnik. A nogoodnik. A headache, without the head.

A: Now why you want to defrost my main snowman like that? He's the top, he's cellophane.

B: More like polyester. In July. With a mosquito going buzz, buzz, buzz into your ear, sweat under your collar, and the ferkakte laundry information tag sticking you between the neck vertebrates.

A: Shoot, what do you know? He puts the pin in spin, the lice in slice, the mad in armadillo, the fusion in confusion, and the dis in antidisestablishmentarianism. He's the signified of every signifier, ripe like a muskrat, wild as a pussycat, bobbing and weaving like an industrial textiles plant; he's the alpha and the on-beyond-omega male, the cryptozooic love child of Willy Loman and the Cat in the Hat-

B: The lice in slice- that I'll buy.

A: He's the meaning of everything, baby.

B: He's Nothing.

Benjamin Rosenbaum's stories have appeared in Nature, Harper's, McSweeney's, Strange Horizons, Asimov's, and F&SF, translated into ten languages, and nominated for Hugo and Nebula awards. He lives in Northern Virginia.

More about Benjamin at http://www.benjaminrosenbaum.com