... at the Drop of a Hat

By Randall C. Von Hartman

Randall Von Hartmans writing is shot through with erie energy, the energy of exhaustion, of rage against injustice, and the energy of a skewed-comic, driven-to the-edge-and-over, vision that is totally unpredictable, and very like how it feels to be alive now, driving to the mall, listening to the news, bitter, and yet enjoying the ride withal, as twere.
~Coleman Barks

Van Hartmans At the Drop of a Hat is as much rollicking, side-splitting, puerile,0 boy-fun as it is evocative, heartfelt and deeply mature art. He demands that you play as much as you think, and gives what seems merely sensation real feeling.

~H G Carrillo author of Loosing My Espanish (Pantheon 2004)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 30, 2008
• ISBN: 9781469120959

Randall C. Von Hartman

Randall C. Von Hartman has written several books, including novels, short story, and poetry collections, and is suffering a penurious existence in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

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… at the drop of a hat

Randall C. Von Hartman

Copyright © 2008 by Randall C. Von Hartman.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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CONTENTS

Ensuing Shopping

Deities

Antidotes For The Cures

The Truth? (MA’AT For All)

The Collectively Recessive Incorporated

It Just Needed To Be Said Again Another Way

Episode at the Public Library

Evening Routine

The Man’s Happy Pills

Hours of Joy in Headwear

The Edge

The Concession

The Local Social Security Office Branch

Eric Dolphy’s Hotplate

Nostalgiaville

The Road to Abysmal Subjectivity

Once in a Fiscal Limbo District

A Capital Idea In Weight Loss

Do You Like Leech Soup?

Stout And Pickled Bar Items

The Visionary

Late Night Diner Sermon

Monkey Puzzle

Determination

Symbolic Meanderings

Cruising The Shoreline’s Passing Lane

Clique Poetry

Bar Song Spoken In Slurred Tones

Tonight’s Drunk (volume: whateverthehell)

Sometimes I am on Fire

Going Down The List

If She Only Had A Different Brain

A Love Kept Alive by Artificial Means

The Conundrum of an Interest

Observe Proper Laws

Smitten By

A Walk Home from the Corner Drug Store

Oconee Hill

The Finest Possible Favor

Curb Appeal

In the Now

On Going Back to School Late in Life

On Reading Directions Before You Begin

The Black Pall Of Nothing At All

Camp sight

Bulb and Foliage

Best Place

Coffee Futures

Industry

Two Vehicle Pile Up

The Ending Is Nigh

The Wobblies Have It!

American Consumption

Tail Gatin’ ala Americano

This Is America, Goddamnit!

Red Head Blues

Be It For Better Or Worse

Sensing My Mortality

Health Management Organization (H.M.O.)

The Brilliant Marketing Strategy

of Imported Bloody Coal

Ever Wonder What It Means

to be Uniquely American?

Olfactory Accommodation

Back Porch (Honey Mama don’t you cry for me)

Waste

Sonnet of the Scorned Stargazer

Auto Pilot Blackout Aftermath

On Sitting Through Church Service

Election Results (Read Title Last)

On Telling Off People

Suffer the Learned Oafs Within Us.

(The primates disdain for buffoonery)

Open Letter to Mr. D.

What Was Happening

Prayer of the Cursed Poor

Opiated Asses

The Relation Circuit

Granted Privilege Denied

John Brown, He Is Of The Stuff

From Which Heroes Are Made

Adorned In Obligatory Attire

Your Snickers

Got To Worm The Burros

Unchained refrain

The Labor

If You Can’t Get a Job

So Always Look For: The Union Label

The 2000-2008 Guideline

The Hypocritical History of a Wicked Dogma

(just the fascist facts mammy)

Leaving Troy?

Andrew Johnson Has Got Nothing

On You, Bubba

Late August/Early September 2005

Go Broke Saving

Children of the Revolution

The Glass Battery Inquiry

Inquiry of The Aftermath

A Photo Of The Eiffel Tower

Having Reservations

Obstipation Of The American Dream

Reality Fatigue

Independent With the Disinterested

Mayor Good Man Brown

Viewing The Situation In High Definition

My Government Is Trying To Kill Me

None of Layman’s Subjects

One Fine Afternoon Just

Outside A Desert Mission

The Rusty Nail Rage

Existing In The Shadow

Of Those Who Have It All

Condition

Same Ol’ Not So Merry Go ’Round

They’re Off!

The Verve We Live

The Pungency Of Now

Milestone Mountain Ramble

Wednesday Morning 7:41 am

Rationalizing the Grit

Written Word Racketeers

Life Takes Us

On Loss and Growing Older

Melancholy

Another Scribble About Life and Death

Mother

Father

Dad

Moral Aptitude

Elapsed on The Road To Passion

Before We Were Who We Are

Karmic Debt, The Beautiful

A Note About igNoble Wolfshield:

What Comes After Words?

Ensuing Shopping

(Like the end is nigh)

A man paraded into a grocery store in search of a quality brand toilet soap. As he traipsed down the aisles, he thought it would make him appear smart and professional. Instead he found a cake batter knife, a package of off-season tree lights, and a bar of lard. As he left the store, he was heard saying, I know what I’m doing tonight!

Deities

A person had an intense interest in technology. It was in the way it affects the world, in the way it changed people’s lives. This person cared about it passionately and wished to become a beacon unto the world which had been so drastically changed by technology. This person sought to have the term ‘technology’ deified and that the capitalization of it in any mention be mandated.

Community centers would be erected on several corners of each neighborhood to pay homage to the entity of Technology. Flags for this new deity would be sewn and flown in the breezes either natural or created by Technology for the expressed purpose of flapping the flag. There was love in the air, for this person sensed that all the wildest dreams of this order would be made manifest.

And as this occurred, the planet imploded, virtually annihilating all life forms within and throughout its very being. All the neighborhoods didn’t even have time to call upon their various sanctified articles for salvation. And with that the whole concept essentially died.

. . .

It laid fallow for an extensive passage of another concept labeled time, which had always ruled over all things (and may have still been in motion). Only to be resurrected and relived by some other entity, who may have also sensed the thick essence of love which once hung in the air, in the manner much like that of greasy food’s residual fumes emanating from the bowels of one who consumed it. Only the unknown cultures of whomever dwelt there would be able to determine whether or not the emissions were deemed offensive or something to be idolized, exalted and consequently worshiped as an omni-present force in the universe with which to be reckoned… time will tell…

Antidotes For The Cures

Some say we got sick and searched for cures. I think we stopped searching for cures, and not because we got sick of searching for cures, and not because we grew sick of being ill. Instead we