Good buds

What's so bad about comfort? It's what humans deserve at the end of the day -- the easy chair, the good book, the pot of tea, the crackling fire. You work to pay the bills so what's wrong with enjoying the life? For the record, nothing.

But comfort and complacency are friends. When they get chummy their stereo enhanced entertainment station almost drowns out their second cousin Ernie, outside banging the door. Ernie's persistent; they let him in and he stands there in a deep green poncho dripping sky all over the carpet, obliterating their view of XTreme Makeover, Disperate Housewives, whatever. They start throwing sofa cushions at him because they know beer cans would wreck the wide TV.

Ernie says, 'let's go make a movie,' and they gape at this joker like he just said, 'let's go wipe out world hunger.' So he says, 'come on, everything's set, I need you lazy bums to be my key grips,' and now he's almost got 'em because they never could firgure out what key grips do -- what is it they grip, anyway?

'Besides,' says Ernie, 'Gertrude's gonna be there and she told me to get you guys rollin'.'

Now there's one of those rare flickers in the space time continuum where the TV goes blank because comfort's remote hand has a reverence for Gertrude his brain has not yet comprehended. Complacency finds herself wading through empty Budweisers, one arm in her jacket, the other hand fluffing her matted bangs.

'Gertrude?' they murmur in unison as Ernie nods and his second cousins' minds whir and click to the clarion call of the ancients and their four hands grip with inconceivable certainty illusions of life they have yet to imagine.