Giving Bad News

Tell people bad news
they already know:

Like marauders taking
what little is left,
the days of peak oil
are upon us. We hoard
water and a few precious
cans in cold, dark houses.
We see on the horizon
towers of black smoke,
signalling the death
of the last city.

Repeat bad news
again and again:

The joke is dead:
a man stops walking
into a bar; St. Peter isn’t
waiting at a pearly gate;
the blonde has a Ph.D. now.
Laugh-tracks goad
us to find the humor
in fake-news shows,
wanna-marry-a-millionaire?,
extreme makeovers,
celebrity cook-offs,
and Seinfeld re-runs
we’ve seen a hundred times.

Be sorry about bad news:

With a heavy heart,
I must tell you
That car owners, especially
those who own Hummers,
Dodge minivans
or retro-styled vehicles
and cover them with bumper
stickers, score fourteen points
lower on IQ tests.

Tell people bad news
they’re going to find out
anyway:

When you are retching up
your guts in bloody clumps,
remember that I told you
that seventy-nine percent of
all drugs approved
by the FDA cause nausea.

Tell people bad news
they probably won’t find out
anyway:

Men, while we’ve been busy
killing, pillaging, raping
and causing havoc in the name
of God and country,
an insidious network of geneticists
has quietly spread the word
that the days of the Y
chromosome are numbered.
What makes us male
has recently been described
as “the most decayed,
redundant, and parasitic
of genetic accessories”.

Tell people news that isn’t
bad but might sound
bad to them:

Our eternal dissatisfaction is
a fact of Darwinian evolution.
Soon used to the very
things we once craved—
the sleek new shoes,
the hip new gadget,
the prestigious new car,
the sexy new lover—
they lose their luster,
and we take them for granted.
Their desirability
Wears off, we adapt,
and move on.
Ensuring our survival
for another day,
the thrill of the hunt
returns.

If you haven’t given people much
bad news in the past,
explain the change:

Now that federal agents have
the house surrounded, I want
you to know that one in twelve
Americans over twenty-one
has never paid taxes.


Don’t blindside
anybody:

I have some difficult
news to share with you,
which affects us all, but
I’m confident
we can weather
together,
so here it comes:
The typical kitchen sponge
is home to seventy-five
thousand kinds of
bacteria.

When explaining
the causes of bad news,
consider the stupidity
defense:

By the authority
of the President,
the federal government is
classifying documents
to be kept from the public
at the rate of one-hundred and
twenty-five
a minute.

Alternate Endings

1.

Action painter Jon Blakart died yesterday at the age of eighty five while painting a nude of his wife Valentina in the garden of their Portland home. Made famous by the Reality Nude Series, permanently installed on its own floor of the Modern Museum of Art, in which the artist first painted his lovely wife in Sherwin Williams housepaint on kingsize canvas beds before live reality tv show audiences. His ashes will be mixed in housepaint and sprayed on family and friends at a celebration of his life tomorrow at noon in Portland Riverfront Park.



2.

Fifty year old John A. Blackard checked out on Cinco de Mayo around 9PM at the scene of an automobile accident on Horsepen Creek Road in Greensboro. The beloved middle school media specialist lost his life on his way home from a school event when his VW Fox skidded out of control on the rain-slick road. Authorities found in his home on Percy Street an unpublished manuscript that education experts are now saying will revolutionize the teaching of research skills at every level of learning. A Nobel Prize nomination for Mr. Blackard has also been rumored. Skin from his body will be tanned into leather covers for an undisclosed number of his books before he is interred next to his grandparents at Sedgefield Memorial Park next week.

3.

In his Jesus year, John Anthony Blackard was found poisoned to death by eating home-cooked meals laced with arsenic. CSI forensic experts have concluded that Mr. Blackard had enough arsenic in his body to kill the entire European rodent population responsible for the bubonic plague of 1641. His widow, Genevieve Blanche Blackard, is being held without bail until her marriages to eleven other murdered men around the world have been thoroughly investigated. He had one surviving daughter, Bonnie Raitt Blackard Pitt, who will remember her father for his lawnmowing.

4.

Twenty-two year old Juan Antonio de la Vera, known to his family as John Blackard, has been declared legally dead today. The award-winning poet disappeared somewhere in Bolivia over a year ago while on a Latin American book tour. His meteoric climb to fame in the international poetry world began when he re-invented himself as “Juan Antonio de la Vera”, the illegitimate son of freedom fighter Che Guevara, and began writing political poems advocating the overthrow of all capitalist and imperialist regimes. Even though undocumented sightings in Argentina, Columbia, and Cuba keep his fans’ hopes alive, his business-minded parents filed today for a death certificate in order to begin collecting the millions in royalties his books continue to earn.

5.

Seven year old Johnny Blackard went home to Jesus yesterday when a neighbor’s cat ran out in front of his speeding Western Auto two-wheeler. The animal-loving youth slammed on brakes and was thrown over the handlebars in an attempt to spare Mrs. Vail’s tabby, Mittens. Johnny’s little league baseball teammates have built a roadside memorial out of cast-off construction site plywood and Twinkies wrappers in his honor. Friends of this darling little boy are encouraged to send their donations to his favorite charity, The Three Stooges Pension Fund.