The Rugburns

Taking The World By Donkey (Priority)
by Jeff Fritz

I parked the disc in its slot, hit play, and ripped one perfectly perforated square of paper from the roll in the bathroom dispenser. On it I wrote with a black grease pencil in a crabbed and illegible script the lyrics to the first three songs I heard. It filled both sides of the sheet. In this paper square I wrapped an overripe cucumber that I placed in a Mason fruit jar beneath the cellar stairs. I sat down in a purple velour beanbag chair and proceeded to pick through the ashtray until I had smoked all of the lipstick-stained butts and soggy clove ends. Then I fired up my computer, signed on to America Online, and wrote dozens of e-mails to people I didn’t know, extolling the virtues of a band I’d never heard of. Maybe tomorrow I’ll shave a goat in an absent-minded sort of way, write some songs, make a nifty au gratin casserole from my toenail cheese, and start a new band called the Rugburns. What’s that you say? It’s been done before? Oh. Right. I knew that. Nevermind.