Bad post I regret it

Here's the next page in my book called 300,000 Drawing Prompts. The last one was "Tacos". Today's prompt was "Alladin's Lamp".

Dear diary,

Let’s say my name is Bryan, and your name is Joan, and you have a spouse named Jen and a baby named Sigismund Street. You (Joan) and your spouse Jen bring your newborn baby Sigismund Street to my house, with the intention of commandeering my latest blog post.

So you bang on my door. You say “Hey asshole, open up,” just like Officer Duke does at Officer Rough’s apartment in the movie Wrong Cops (2013). Now let’s say that I do not hide from you by occupying my bathtub. Let’s say that I open my door and smile and say:

“Jen and Joan! Welcome! What brings you here, to my ugly brown house, all the way from New York!” (For you and Joan have a condo in Manhattan.)

And Jen answers “Joan and I wanted to show off our new baby. We came here in person, via private jet, because we knew that you don’t have a Facebook account.”

And I say, “Ah! this cute little newborn boy is named Tertius Radnitsky?”

And you say, “No, his name is Sigismund Street. We named him after Sigismund Street.” So I say:

“Beautiful name! Great idea! Come inside! Have a chair! Here, I’ll turn on all the lava lamps, to highlight our furnishings; you see, I bought this place because it faces away from the sun: so it rests in gloom all day: the sunshine never comes near it; so it’s a perfect place for a vampire, which I am. Now let me see that little baby of yours! What’d you say his name was—TershyRad? Great name! Ah, look at little TershyRad; he shares your stern aspect, dear Joan and Jen!”

& you answer, “Thank you. His name is not TershyRad. Now please fetch us a plate of gourmet crackers (for we are famished) and kindly explain why you never come to visit us in New York.”

So I retire to the kitchen and shout my reply over the sound of clanging pots and pans:

“I am afraid to travel to Manhattan, because my friend Whitman wrote that sundown poem… Do you know it, by the way?

Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north & west,
          and the heights of Brooklyn to the south & east,
Others will see the islands large & small,
Fifty years hence others will see them as they
          cross, the sun half an hour high,
A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred
          years hence, others will see them,
Will enjoy the sun-set, the pouring in of the flood-
          tide, the falling back to the sea of the ebb-tide.

“So, as I was saying, I never travel to Manhattan to visit you, dear Joan and Jen, because my friend Walt Whitman wrote that poem, and I’m afraid that if I ever reach the actual destination that he is talking about, on a ferry-boat, the place will fail to live up to the expectations that I am now accustomed to savoring for it. Plus I’ve heard that Manhattan is really expensive: your goods and services cost more than seventy times what Science values them at. And is it true that your schools must ferry in their employees from faraway slums, because they’re paid so little that they can’t afford to live in the same region as the children that they teach? Anyway, that’s why I never come to your posh condo to heft your newborn baby. I know that I am wrong to avoid you, dear Jen and Joan, for you are my Immediate Family, and there’s nothing trumper in Moneyland than THE SELF, and the only recognizable extension of THE SELF is THE SELF’s Immediate Family; that is, the children that THE SELF produces with THE SELF’s spouse, and maybe those children’s children too, but nothing further than grandparents should be bonded with: everything should remain as atomized as possible, and we’re already pushing our luck by allowing couples and children and a second generation to enjoy the sin of a healthy relationship.”

And you & Jen speak in unison and answer: “Give ear, O Bryan, and heed the words of our mouth. The actual reason that you do not strengthen our precious family-bond and help us mollycoddle Sigismund Street is that you cannot stand to see the misery that our modern world inflicts upon fresh minds. You know that our child will be tormented in proportion to his genius; therefore the only hope of his having any contentment in this life is if he turns out mediocre. For the current system’s values are askew.” And I answer:

“By Jove, I think you’ve got it, Joan and Jen.” Then I arise from the settee and, in doing so, accidentally knock the silver plate of crackers off the end table, just like one might overturn a playing board after losing a game of checkers, thus sending its pieces tumbling thru the air. — “Which one of you nurses the infant?” I ask, while cleaning up the mess.

And Jen answers, “We take turns. Joan nurses till she gets bored; then I nurse. We go back and forth.”

And I say, “Oh, that’s smart. I bet it helps to share the nursing like that, so that neither of you gets too dry or sore.”

And Jen says, “You know nothing about being a woman.”

And I answer “That reminds me of the ‘Book of Isaiah’ by Anne Carson, where it says:

Isaiah what do you know about women? asked God.

“And also, a little later, it says:

The milk made Isaiah forget about righteousness.

As he fed the milk to small birds and animals Isaiah thought only about their little lips.

“I like Anne Carson. I’m gonna stop writing this entry now and go read her. I wish I had written a better blog post here today, instead of telling this stupid story about Sigismund Street. But you can’t rewrite history, and you only live once; for the rules of automatic prophesying forbid revision. Thus now I bid you ladies adieu.”

& you and Jen stand & salute & declare “We shall meet again”; and our weblog cuts to a series of atomic explosions, like at the ending of Dr. Strangelove (1964).