There is one person who always ruins every

There is one person who always ruins every family event. In my family, I am that person: my name is Joseph Brener -- Black Sheep of the Brener Clan and Middle Son of thirteen kids.

drunk. I think that's because my family is a tawdry crew of loudmouth fat people. This reunion was held at a Steak and Shake.

You know? Sometimes I think I must've been adopted because right there at the Steak-n-Shake my big fat loud family got up & started a flash mob to "MacArthur Park" by Donna Summers

Whereas I am obsessed by Beethoven's late quartets and speak in High German. I don't eat steaks. I don't shake. I cultivate stillness. My family want to put me up for adoption

Inuit-style, which means to abandon me on an ice floe in the thick of night. They object to my Teutophilic tendencies, and my revulsion to raw whale blubber. The 9th Symphony plays

All day and night, which is tolerable. The plasticene flowers liked it too. They begged me to do this. This was going on four years after I started playing classical music.

Four years that snuck up on me with a vengeance when I was asked to contribute to Grand Archon Pflister's renovation fund because the gold bust of Avorro�es Diogenes had conceeded

that it was not truly a work of art, but just a piece of propagandist sculpture. The gold bust would have hung its head, but it was too rigid. Gold tear welled up in its eyes.

"If only I had become a doctor instead!" He wailed. Gold pools dripped into his clothes 'til the cool night air solidified it & he became a frozen masterpiece. Wailing man of Gold.