Investigations

The mayor called for an investigation into the amount of horseshit that’s been accumulating on Central Park West as of late. ‘It’s a veritable dumping ground,’ one disgusted resident said.

 

‘It’s a lot of shit,’ the mayor was quoted as saying. ‘I meant caca or crap. You know what I meant,’ he added.

 

Anyway the mayor said they’d be starting a proper investigation. The right agency or investigative body would be called upon to proceed. In this case, the Department of Sanitation, but there were suggestions of a new agency potentially being formed. Code name: the Shit Squad. 

 

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Another Boeing 777 has disappeared without a trace into the vast recesses of the overlap between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The missing airplane is the same make and model as Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared en route to Beijing in March of 2014. An investigation into that prior plane disappearance bore no definitive fruit, and investigators are worried that the similar trajectory of the current missing flight may be doomed to the same void of information. They are, however, trying to stay optimistic. Eerily though, 228 people, including both passengers and crew—the exact number as the ill-fated Malaysian flight—are now missing and presumed dead.

 

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The expiration dates on Puffy Pop popcorn are being investigated for possible forgery or inaccuracy. Over the past several months, too many Puffy Pop foil hats haven’t inflated fully, and many of the brown kernels within have not exploded open. ‘The evidence is that these expiration dates are incorrect or the corn’s just no good. There could also be a manufacturing error exacerbating this,’ a spokesperson said. 

 

The focus, however, will be on the stamped expiration dates themselves, as they’re purplish, not the standard black, and are dubiously printed in Roman numerals.

 

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An investigation into a neighborhood ‘poet’ may be imminent and possibly already underway. There is a middle-aged man who shows up regularly at neighborhood hotspots and sits and acts frigid and still. Sometimes he scribbles in a notebook. He appears to be living in some kind of inward space or trancelike state, but an investigation would, or at least could, uncover a more accurate assessment.

 

‘We’ve never seen a poet in these parts,’ a neighborhood resident said. ‘We don’t like it. The world may be dying—but this guy’s no good.’

 

As a sidebar, a long-ago girlfriend of the alleged poet was questioned in Jacksonville, Florida. She stated that when they’d dated in New York decades earlier, she was the ‘Femme Baudelaire of Brooklyn.’ Unacknowledged in her time. ‘He’s in my footsteps,’ she added.

 

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An investigation into Florida is pending. It seems that some diabolical or horrible entity has that peninsular state by the proverbial throat. Florida’s murder rate is one of the highest per capita in the nation and, therefore, the civilized world. There is more violent death in Florida than ever before, and an investigation has been necessitated by the grim facts on the ground. In addition to the state’s outrageous record of both legal and illegal gun ownership, legal precedents such as “Stand Your Ground” have greatly increased the death rate. 

 

‘People just go out and stand on the corner with a weapon holstered or strapped to their backs. They stand there until someone comes around and enters their orbit. Usually, then, within moments a round or rounds are fired off.’ 

 

Stand your ground—kill or be killed. An orange blossom (the official state flower) by any other name…as sweet.

 

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An investigation into the president’s shoe size is now underway. This is the first president in history whose shoe size has reportedly increased by three sizes while in office. At the outset of his presidency, the president wore (an average) size 10, and now, just three years later, he’s been seen purchasing—or at least wearing—size 13. With one brand in particular, the size reading was 13.5. Some skeptics have wondered if this isn’t just a case of very thick socks or doubled socks or poorly trimmed, clawlike toenails necessitating extra shoe space. Others have suspected real growth due to steroid usage as the president’s jawline also seems altered and more muscular, which some point to as a telltale sign.

 

‘Remember Barry Bonds,’ one commentator put in. ‘He had biceps cheeks. And his cleat size—not to mention his hat size—grew dramatically due to steroid use. Hell, his homerun ‘size’ grew largest of all (chuckle).’

The president’s hat size hasn’t been easily traceable, as the president eschews hats and also dislikes tape measures wrapped around his head and hair in particular. However, further investigations into these size increases will continue with or without the president’s cooperation. Likely without it.

 

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An investigation into 3-K and pre-K graduation rates has begun. The crux of the investigation is that both 3-K and pre-K students are graduating to the next grade level simply due to their getting older. ‘We’ve got pre-K graduates that don’t even know their circles from their squares. A 3-K graduate mistook blue for green. But because they reach the age of four or five, they’re moved to the next grade. It’s a sham—it inflates graduation rates—and it isn’t right. Period.’ 

 

Investigations will be—and in some cases have already been—scrutinizing the testing data on these intellectually teetering tots. More tot-damning information is expected to be forthcoming.

 

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‘Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!’ An investigation into the number of ‘Hol[ies]’ that
appear toward the end of Allen Ginsberg’s famous Beat poem ‘Howl’ is now underway. Sources say a draft initially submitted to City Lights, the poem’s original (and only legal) publisher, may have actually contained only fourteen repetitions of the exclamation ‘Holy!’—preceding the statement ‘The World is Holy!’—rather than the published fifteen. Some Beat Generation scholars are tiptoeing around this finding, and some are simply saying it’s a holy goof on City Lights’ part.

 

Neither Allen Ginsberg nor City Lights’ founding editor, poet, and publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, are alive still to assist with the investigation. However, a manuscript page, supposedly written in Ginsberg’s own hand, shows a slash through the second-to-last ‘Holy!’ causing some scholars to question the poet’s numerically ‘holy’ intentions.

 

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A young child with chocolate on his fingers and mouth was questioned in the (dis)appearance of a torn-through box of chocolates found under the family kitchen table. The child is only five or six years old, and the box of chocolates
contained 20–25 pieces. By the time the child was confronted, the chocolate high had become a raging headache. Strangely and coincidentally, as the child was being forced into his bedroom for a curative nap, he kept screaming that Ferlinghetti was alive and well and still writing at the age of one hundred. 

 

The child’s chocolate-inspired, near-overdose tirade also included a few quotes from ‘A Coney Island of the Mind.’ Chocolate was still being vigorously wiped off his mouth and hands with a warm wet towel. As he faded into sleep, an avuncular family member entered the child’s room and began reading excerpts from Henry Miller’s Black Spring, ‘A Coney Island of the Mind’ section (from which Ferlinghetti’s poem takes its title). Miller remains dead, but an investigation is pending into Ferlinghetti’s status and potential whereabouts.

 

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The term ‘active shooter’ is being investigated for being potentially offensive to an active shooter. ‘The shooter’s rights are delimited, as this term is overly reductive to the totality of the human being holding the gun,’ a terminology objector stated. ‘This is a progressive’s nightmare,’ a stray commentator put in. 

 

Different solutions to the biased terminology are being explored, and one suggestion being floated is to provide the active shooter with a questionnaire listing numerous synonymous terms such as ‘flowing trigger-puller,’ ‘mobile weapon-wielder,’ and the like. The shooter would then check off his top three choices. Being that there are now active shooters nearly every day, if not multiple times a day, useful data could be quickly obtained and an approved alternate term then utilized. 

 

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An investigation into whether this story is true or fiction is dependent on whether Ferlinghetti is still alive and still 100 years old. Once either of those facts has changed, then the story will no longer be true. However, even if those facts hold for the duration of Ferlinghetti’s one hundredth to his one hundred and first year, the story remains fiction. And it’s unlikely any investigation will alter that.

 

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An investigation into the length of investigations is now forthcoming. It has been pointed out that in addition to more investigations than ever
occurring these days, there has also been an uptick in the length of time spent on them. In the trackable past, few investigations lasted for multiple years. Now a multiple-year investigation is more or less the norm.

 

‘And it doesn’t seem to matter whether you’re investigating popcorn or the dead. Everything’s taking longer—at least everything of the investigative sort. Remember that horseshit investigation they used to talk about? Well, the shit’s still there on CPW, and the Shit Squad is still investigating. Hell, I think they’re still being formed. So when is any of this stuff going to be wrapped up?’

 

An investigation into when these investigations will wrap up is pending.

 

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An investigation into the specific words that came out of the chocolate-filching-and-gobbling child’s mouth has revealed that he said, ‘Ferlinghetti’s 100  and something and still writing!’ If this statement meets full corroboration, then the true and false factors of this short fiction may be reevaluated as a result of said investigation. Please stand by.

 

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An investigation into ‘the depth of sadness’ has begun. ‘Even if this investigation has a bit of a pretentious bent, I think it’s worth doing,’ one of the data collectors said.

 

As a measuring tool, sadness has been broken down into a color grid of different shades of blue, gray, and black. Other borderline colors may also make up the utilized color map. ‘I don’t think the data on this will really uncover anything about the depth of sadness,’ a neighborhood philosopher asserted. This same philosopher also stated that he isn’t a philosopher but a local sufferer of sadness. 

 

‘I do have my heavier thoughts at times, but I don’t think they add up to a “philosophy,” he stated, using finger quotes for ‘philosophy.’ ‘Anyhow, depth is depth and data are just data.’

 

When questioned about the phrase “the depth of sadness,” proponents of this investigative survey were hesitant to expound on the exact meaning and said they were ultimately unsure of what such depth could conclusively mean.

 

‘I guess what we’re talking about here is mass depression or something worse even. Maybe we’re trying to investigate our way out of some grand malaise. That’d be a neat trick. But really, all I can say, as far as the depth of sadness goes, is, who knows?’