AcmeShorts

“What was the animus for his ‘shorts’?”

“It was all fecal – the humor, the sadness, the wasted centuries of grief, informed by a smelly promise of old, trusty items. He operated within the context of dairy solitude – the intellectual embodiment of constipation from eating too many Cocoa Puffs in late afternoons while watching after-school specials, and the dreary yen of adolescent loneliness.”

“And the obsession with the scatological?”

“A layered candy cane wish, a Christmas cheese wheel. In the early years, a reversed reversion that catalogued a misguided melancholy that sat improperly in his youth. A premature reflective stance.”

“Whom was the character of which he dreamed?”

“A self-referential, back-pedaling solipsistic study. An egg-yolk patina of romanticized selves. Thus the motif of constipation – the self back-fired on itself and became verklempt. An ill-defined smattering of salad bar recollections of a Cracker Barrel in a shadowy, specious place known as ‘Middle America.’

“Was there a more concrete locus that he knew of?”

“The self-loathing of a suburban cul-de-sac.”