“Hmm? No,” the
chicken shook his head. “No, I was
raised in the city on fluoridated water.
It’s the only explanation, given the amount of candy I eat.”
Nozregull
checked his watch again. He had just
enough time to run up to the observatory and back. While he was away the chicken substituted the
eggs boiling in the pot with ones purchased from Pier One. The noxious lacquer with which they were
coated steamed away, filling the kitchen with fumes as green as the chicken
itself. Imagined as he was, the bird was
immune to their effect; but Nozregull, returning in happy anticipation of
lunch, was floored.
Flames of the Thirties Ignite the Smell of Christmas
Catalogs
“I wasn’t
aware that chickenlore was among your specialties,” Grimmery remarked as he sat
down. Rubbing his nose with one hand, he
slipped Torman’s book onto the low table between the two sofas with the other.
“Oh, you
can keep it,” Torman offered.
“Oh,
thanks,” Grimmery smiled. He touched the
book with a finger of no social distinction, thereby declaring it as taken.
“What about
these ‘flames of the thirties,’” Shab, documenting the components of Torman’s
liquor arrangement, asked.
Torman
considered. He stared at the cover art
of the book on the table. He had painted
that picture at great personal expense, letting his employment at the Multiphase
Debaclery go to hell in his fevered determination to finish it.
“I guess
there’s no way around it,” he decided.
Taking a
breath, he looked up at the two men who formed his audience and began, “The
smell of Christmas catalogs is, like the lacquer fumes from the green chicken’s
eggs, not only poisonous, but flammable.”
“Aha,” Shab
mumbled, nodding and pouring a glass of Imperial Football Wrapping Paper, a
fine sippin’ whiskey.
“Now, it
seems to me that, under the rules established by the group, the thirties, a
time marked by contrasting images of poverty and glamour, were under the
direction of Grimmery here.”
“Me?”
Grimmery marveled. He picked up the book
from the coffee table and examined the cover as he listened to Torman. He smiled.
The picture on the front of the book was of two men seated at machines
of unknown function, facing each other.
Around them swirled the airborne diatoms of conflict.
“Grimmery
was the one that pushed Mayor LaGuardia to pass out presents to homeless
children at the same time that the limousines of the rich were being stacked in
the hot new nightclub’s coatroom. The
resulting conflagration ignited the smell of Christmas catalogs. And that’s all there is to it.”
Torman
leaned back on the sofa. Had he been
eating peanuts he might have dusted his hands at this point. Seeing the look on Shab’s face he added, “Of
course, the Sears Wish Book wasn’t around back then and if it had been, it
wouldn’t have had that peculiar smell, but—“
“Is that
the best you can do?” Shab demanded. He
drained the last sip in his glass and came around the side of the old telephone
wire spool that Torman had converted to a bar.
Torman
merely folded his arms and looked from Shab to Grimmery and back.
Shab took a seat next to Grimmery.
Browning Cuticles for Black Cherry’s Amended Scheme
After
Torman left Judge Tankard, the latter carefully replaced the half-dozen
biographies of Neil Armstrong that he had taken down. He returned to the story he had been reading
before Torman’s visit. Entitled Browning Cuticles for Black Cherry’s Amended
Scheme, it was only one of four exciting, full-length stories in an old
issue of Clogdick magazine that he
had found among the possessions of a deceased client.
In the
story Danfred Masani, a trooper with the Golden Pupditch Attendants, had taken
responsibility for his contempt and established seven areas in his mother’s
house where he would ritually manufacture satisfaction and acceptance in his
life.
“Why don’t
you try going back to church?” Danfred’s mother begged. She thought the seven altars not only ugly,
constructed as they were from pictures torn out of magazines and bits of junk
Danfred had picked up on the side of the road, but blasphemous in their import. Her son was essentially worshipping heathen
gods!
Judge
Tankard particularly enjoyed the conclusion of the story, in which Lyle Alzado
returned from the grave and had dinner with President Carter’s family.
Three Men Examine Their Master’s Nodules for Signs of
Tampering
With the
aid of the industrial lubricant emeraldease, Torman, Shab, and Grimmery were
able to slip inside Judge Tankard’s throat for its monthly inspection.
“Given the
lack of detectable evidence of tampering during any of the previous
inspection,” Torman opined, “I would suggest that we change to a bimonthly
regimen.”
“It would
be less of a hassle,” Shab agreed.
Grimmery,
painfully maneuvering around his companions, began checking the third and
fourth monocular nodules just below the digressory ridge.
“I don’t
know,” he said, “The judge goes to a lot of banquets and things. Anybody could sneak in here and plant a bomb
or something.”
“Your
sarcasm only strengthens my conviction,” Torman replied. He asked Shab to make room for the toolbox as
he brought it down from his shoulder to the floor of the moist red cave.
“Easy,”
Shab insisted. He had to squeeze hard
against Grimmery to keep the sharp edge of the metal box from cutting into his
belly.
“One of
these days he’s going to hear us talking about him,” Grimmery warned, and not
for the first time.
New Beginning
A Record of Noises Made in the Forest
There were
three men. Their names were Torman,
Shab, and Grimmery. As they made their
way through the forest along a narrow path, they each reflected on the nature
of their relationships with the others.
Torman
considered the other two men to be his colleagues. Grimmery felt that Torman and Shab were his friends.
Shab, it is interesting to note, referred to the others (in letters home
and in his own thoughts) as his companions. These distinctions are not that important,
but they do indicate that there was a lack of unity among the little
group. In fact, when Grimmery suggested
that they come up with a collective name for the three of them, Shab
immediately thought of “the three companions,” alluding to the famous Tales
of the Three Companions, whereas Torman sarcastically responded with “The
Useless Book Characters Group.”
The reason
they were heading into the forest was to check on recording station #4, a
small, automated data collection post.
This was actually Torman’s job, but he was thinking of turning it over
to Shab because Torman wanted to devote more time to his writing.
“So I’m
just along because you needed to borrow my vehicle,” Grimmery concluded mournfully.
“You’re an
integral part of our tightly-knit organization,” Torman, walking in the lead,
assured him.
“Our
original vehicle was stolen,” Shab wrote to his family, which included many
cousins and relations extending out into little anthropomorphized droplets.
Deficiencies in the Beach-Hive
“When did
you first notice these… problems with the structure?” Judge Pancreas Tankard asked the young man.
“Well, I
could tell the structure of the hive was flawed as soon as I saw the
blueprints.” The young man, who went by
the name Drone 64, tugged at his face mask.
It didn’t fit correctly, having been the property of another young man
whom he had killed in order to infiltrate the hive.
“I
see. And when was that?” The judge’s fat
hand held a fancy pen poised for further notation over his legal pad.
“Several
months before construction began,” Drone 64 answered after some
deliberation. “I’ll say January of last
year.”
The judge’s
pen descended.
“Now, Mr.
64, you do understand that I am a judge and not an attorney, although I did
fulfill the duties of that latter office in my earlier career, and as such I,
if this case is to move forward, will not be able to act directly, but through
intermediary agents under the auspices of a legal instrument known as secret denouncement.”
Drone 64
nodded. “I understand,” he said.
“Very
well.” The judge moved his jaw out and
to the side, staring at his notes and considering.
“One more
thing,” he finally spoke, “You mentioned something about the toilet facilities
being inadequate.”
“That’s
right,” Drone 64, who had been cleaning his right antenna with the prosthetic
barbed tongue appended to the bottom of his mask during Judge Tankard’s
silence, answered the older man. “I
guess they figured that since the population of the hive is overwhelmingly
female, the drones wouldn’t need but one restroom, and that just isn’t the
case.”
Tankard
looked into the black, multi-faceted half-domes covering Drone 64’s eyes.
“Did it occur to any of you that,
given the unorthodox nature of your… community’s living arrangements, you might
use the females’ facilities, or even not to have gender-specific toilets at
all?”
Drone 64
shifted in his seat and smiled as best he could, using his wings as tools of
expression as he had been taught.
“Well,
Judge Tankard,” he laughed, “I don’t know if you know it or not, but the
urino-genital equipment of giant bees, as well as their rectal formations, are
distinctly divergent when it comes to males and females.”
The judge
grunted and wrote on his legal pad, “Flightless.”
Persons Interested in Publishing My Book Should Prepare
Themselves for a Shock
Unless
there is a firm promise of significant money involved, I am unwilling to alter
anything in the book, even at the risk of rendering the work more accessible to
the average reader. Also, the front
cover will be illustrated by me.
The Squids Have Come to Settle the Salad
The salad
itself occupied over 80% of the platemass.
Some of the dressing (it was ranch) had slopped onto the bare surface of
the plate, creating a site that would later prove perfect for the creation of
an amusement park. For now, however,
there were arguments about whether it should be excluded from the lottery
determining who got what parcel of salad.
Those squids determined to get the most desirable lots gathered about
the little card table set up adjacent to the macrotable on which the salad
waited and bartered ruthlessly amongst themselves for tickets printed with what
they considered the luckier numbers.
The style
that year was a flat hat and a string tie such as that worn by Colonel
Sanders. Almost every squid about the
card table was dressed in this style.
Kabril Dumontaine was wearing this costume when he was drawn aside by a
squid covered in lavender spots.
“Hey, pal,”
the spotted squid said to him. “How’d
you like to get a prime lot high up on a cherry tomato? The very summit of the cherry tomato.”
Dumontaine
had heard there were speculators illegally offering parcels outside the lottery
system and he assumed this to be one of them.
“Of course
I would,” Dumontaine replied. “But, to
be honest, I had my heart set on a nice garlic-saturated crevice of some
ideally-positioned crouton.”
The spotted
squid, who introduced himself as Phloor the Honest Dealer, laughed and said,
who wouldn’t? As luck would have it,
however, he also had preliminary access to just such a parcel as that which the
cleverly dressed gentleman desired.
“Before the
lottery has been drawn?” asked Dumontaine.
“Isn’t that illegal?”
Phloor looked
down at the tips of his standing tentacles and shook his head slowly.
“Well,” he
drawled, “You see, the thing about that is that it’s a matter of what should
be illegal and what shouldn’t. The way I
see it,” he looked up at his fellow squid, “Bidding on a parcel of salad sight
unseen, taking a chance that what you’re paying for isn’t actually what
you’re going to get… well, it seems to me that that’s what ought to be
illegal.”
(What was being offered was a look at the
site.)
Dumontaine
played with one of the ends of his string tie pensively as he glanced at the
piles of numbered tickets on the card table.
“OK,” he nodded, turning back to Phloor the Honest Dealer. “My son’s coming with us.” He pointed to a young squid standing bored
some feet away.
Phloor
readily agreed and, after slipping through a gap in the fence of carbonated oil
that surrounded the restricted area, the three squids were soon traipsing down
the gently sloping side of the plate towards the salad.
“That’s
genuine space-porcelain, made in a gravity-free environment,” Phloor informed
them, gesturing at the blue and white pattern beneath them. Dumontaine replied that he had read about it
in the prospectus. His son, whose name
was Koksofen, was clearly uninterested in any of this. He kept his tertiary tentacles firmly in the
pockets of his goathide vest and thought about the concept album that he would
like to record if he only had a band. By
the time the trio was surrounded by Phloor’s armed accomplices he had decided
on a fantasy interpretation of Benjamin Franklin’s Parisian sojourn.
Each Grain is Marked with a ‘B’ to Distinguish it from
the Surfer’s Non-Pareil
Such
markings are, for obvious reasons, only visible with the help of a microscope.
“We need to
keep them small,” Fawn Dogwood explained as she led the group through the
factory. “No one wants to buy rice with
stuff written all over it.” She laughed,
thinking to encourage the group to laugh with her. They always did. Yet this group was different: instead of
being composed of dead-eyed tourists from Mitsuschlange or Protoburgh, it was a
group of congressmen and their pet scientists.
“What do
you think the ‘B’ stands for?” Congressman Hawtry whispered to the two
scientists huddled within his protective aura.
Dawson and Linville, each nominally employed by Discoverytime
Funkabulus, a think tank funded by Hawtry’s PAC, quickly discussed the question
in the secret, doubletime lingo of their trade.
It sounded like two insects trading clarinet licks. Dawson ,
the marginally more sociable of the pair, turned to the congressman at the
conclusion and announced,
“It
probably indicates ‘Buttermonk’s,’ the name of the company.”
“Ah,”
Hawtry replied.
“But then,”
Linville countered, looking, not into the congressman’s eyes, but at the
patriotic symbol pinned to his lapel, “It could stand for ‘booger-free.’” He
paused. “That’s an important
consideration for some consumers.”
“Having
trouble with your scientific advisors, Hawtry?” Congressman Whalebore asked
with a partisan smirk.
“We’re
fine, thank you,” Hawtry returned, refusing his fellow legislator’s offer of a
drink from the miniature bar concealed beneath his jacket.
“Gentlemen,”
Fawn Dogwood, tour guide first class, drew the attention of the group back to
her. “Eyes on the gold line,
please; we’re moving.” She gestured at the floor. Four other, differently colored lines ran
parallel to the gold one. Just beyond
the granular impression tower, however, they diverged, running away in all
directions throughout the factory. Where
they went and what their different colors meant were not explained. Some of the scientists speculated about this,
but only for their own amusement, as such matters lay beyond the purview of
their tour.
“When do we
meet with Mr. Buttermonk?” Senator Traplust demanded once again.
“This is
the depooling scoop,” Fawn Dogwood announced, ignoring the senator and his
oft-repeated query. “This is where we
combine the rice with a silica-based laminate that promotes both greater shelf
life and digestive durability. In the
case of our millet and barley products the process is similar, but requires the
presence of a wax catalyst to ensure adequate fungal separation.”
Several of
the science advisors exchanged looks of appreciation. The terminology sounded good.
“Is Mr.
Buttermonk trying to avoid a meeting with this investigatory committee?”
Traplust, one of two senators in the group (otherwise composed of lower-house
members), tried again.
Fawn
Dogwood sighed heavily, fixing the senator with a stare reserved for difficult
tourists, the kind that want to know if any fingers ever get severed. Before she could formulate an appropriate
reply, however, her face broke into a smile of relief and delight.
“Why,
Senator, here is Mr. Buttermonk now,” she declared, holding aloft a hand. The congressmen followed her gaze, turned,
and saw an elderly man in a hydraulic ambulatory walker coming toward them,
flanked by two saturnine attendants.
While the congressional delegation mentally prepared itself, the eyes of
its scientific subset focused on Buttermonk’s mode of transport.
“The neural
interface must be punctually disabused,” Dawson
quietly observed.
“Very
expensive,” Linville responded.
“Welcome,
gentlemen, welcome,” Lawrence Buttermonk croaked. So old was he that it was rumored his mother
had been a Civil War bride. Certainly he
could remember his grandfather, who had founded the company during the days of
hemp seed soup. He offered his hand to
each of the congressmen in turn, stretching the flabby, flaking lines of his
lips into a smile both amphibian and aimlessly lecherous. “I hope this young lady has been adequately
acquainting you with our operations.”
“Indeed,”
Traplust assured the other man. “I wish
I had a half-dozen like her on my staff.”
The senator wondered if the tour guide’s fiery red hair was duplicated
in the crux of her long, high-stepping legs.
“What we
really came to see,” Congressman Hawtry reminded everyone, “Is this surfer’s
non-pareil.”
“Ah,
surfer’s non-pareil,” Buttermonk repeated, chuckling gravely and looking at the
hands of everyone before him, searching for something incomprehensible to those
not consumed by a century’s worth of paranoia.
“Yes, Mr.
Buttermonk,” added Congressman Hooper, the youngest of the visitors. “We want to know exactly what it is and why
its manufacture requires 100 million gallons of water.”
“Oh, I
think that’s a bit of an exaggeration, don’t you, Congressman?” Buttermonk chuckled again, this time bringing
a pulpy foam to his lips that he wiped away with a thumb and forefinger,
transferring it to the floor with the indifference of sovereignty.
“How much
water is involved?” Traplust wheedled, smiling crookedly.
Buttermonk
reiterated that it wasn’t an ocean’s worth, and offered to show the committee
something of the procedure.
“Finally,”
muttered Hawtry.
“I’ll bet
my rectumeter it’s a three-stage process, converting microsauces of retinal
reticence into vertical bioleum,” Dawson
spoke, as much to himself as anybody.
Linville
nodded, taking the bet, even if only internally.
Whalebore
belched adventurously.
It took two
elevator cars to transport the group to the terminal level, the site,
Buttermonk informed them, of the surfer’s non-pareil division. Fawn Dogwood said nothing, not knowing what
she would be allowed to say.
Down a wide
corridor lit by flashing yellow lights on the walls and whose floor was
painted, not with any color-coded lines, but with hundreds of yellow and black
bars, they followed the hissing sound of Buttermonk’s walking machine. The ceiling was lower than before. The pipes and I-beams were just over their
heads. At the end of the corridor they
faced a scuffed wall of sheetrock marked by spray painted admonitions to safety
and security.
“Fawn,” Mr.
Buttermonk addressed the young woman, “You have your key?”
“Yes
sir.” The tour guide stepped forward and
removed a lanyard from her pants pocket bearing a single, small key. This key she fitted into what everyone had
assumed was an ordinary electrical socket low on the wall before them. She turned the key in the hidden mechanism
and stepped back with her head cocked to one side as if listening for
something. The group followed her lead
and, indeed, were soon rewarded with a low rumble that seemed to come from
everywhere.
“What is
it?” someone asked.
“You’ll
see,” Buttermonk had to shout to be heard above the rising noise.
“Any minute
now,” he added as the noise took on a crackling, popping timbre.
Suddenly
there was a great thud that jolted everyone.
Congressmen and scientists clutched at each other. Buttermonk’s attendants caught at the handles
on the old man’s robotic chassis, both to steady themselves and to keep their
employer from falling over. It was over
in a second, however, and everyone quickly regained his posture.
“What was
that?” someone shouted.
“Come
see! Come see!” Buttermonk insisted, turning awkwardly on his
metal leg supports and lurching back down the corridor the way they had
come. He led them to a window just
outside the corridor through which a brilliance like that of a cloudless day
over a snow-covered field could be seen.
Which was odd, thought more than one of them, as it had been typical
junket weather earlier: rainy and drear.
“Ah,”
Buttermonk sighed as he hogged the window.
“Yet another success for our company!
No one else but Buttermonk’s could have dreamed of such a thing!”
“What are
you talking about?”
“Let me
see!”
The group
crowded into the window as the old man backed away laughing.
“It’s
popcorn!” He shouted. “A single, giant
kernel of popcorn! A popcorn kernel as
big as an ocean liner! And now, expanded
to its full size, it’s as big as a town!”
“Damn,”Dawson cursed softly. He turned to Linville. “You should have bet me,” he said.
“Damn,”
“I did,”
came the mousy, almost inaudible reply.
The Stork Receives its Training as a Non-Clerical Puma
“And over
here,” the goat touched a yellow plastic bin at the end of the table, “Is where
you put your miscellaneous screws and bolts and things.” He looked at the stork. “You think you got it?”
The stork,
who, as you may have guessed, was dressed in a rather realistic puma costume,
hastily replied, “Sure!” He nodded
reassuringly at the goat. He just wanted
to be left alone to get his bearings in peace.
In time he would learn the job the way he always learned everything: by
discovering for himself how things worked, how they fit together. He always created his own system, he—but the
goat was still standing there, watching to see that he got underway.
“Let’s
see,” the stork said aloud. “I put the
buttons in the blue bin.” He dropped a
handful of buttons one by one through his fingers into the blue bin. ‘B’ for buttons, ‘B’ for blue.
“That’s
right,” the goat encouraged.
“And these
little army men go in the brown bin.”
“Yes.”
He would
have to remember that the little green army men did not go in the
green bin. They went in the brown
bin. The miniature coprolites, which had
been brown (presumably) when they were freshly dropped, millions of years ago,
went in the green bin, exactly the opposite.
That was the way one learned—mnemonically, creating one’s own
associations. The goat was talking
again.
“Only try
to pick up the pace a little bit,” he said.
“Old Ravenstein likes to walk up and down this aisle and he likes to see
industry and application.
Those are two words you’re going to hear a lot around here: industry
and application.”
“Got ya,”
the stork nodded in brotherly agreement.
Eventually
the goat wandered off to another section of the floor. The stork glanced around, examining the other
workers through the eyes of his puma mask.
There was a large frog, a couple of vicuñas, and a dog of some
kind. All were engaged in various
sorting operations. The stork turned back
to his work with a sigh. He didn’t
really want to do this. Maybe he had
made a mistake. The puma costume was
hotter than he’d expected. He took a sip
of water from the bottle he had concealed in his tail. Suddenly music began blaring from the work
station of one of the vicuñas. As the
stork angrily stared at the two vicuñas, who were nodding at each other, his
attention was just as quickly drawn to the opposite direction by a voice at his
shoulder.
“Food and
drink are not allowed on the workroom floor.”
It was
Ravenstein, apparently, for the stork could not imagine who else it might be: a
short, hunched black bird whose great age could be inferred from the pulsing
red veins surrounding his pupils and the warty, scabby flesh massed about his
talons.
“But that’s
OK,” the stork countered, throwing out a fluffy purple paw towards the vicuñas’
portable stereo.
“What?”
Ravenstein wondered.
“That
music. Forcing other people to listen to
music that they don’t want to hear.”
Ravenstein
turned his head slightly, keeping his eyes on the puma before him. His beak moved oddly as he questioned the use
of the word “people?”
Tourgripping Disputants in the Hold of Febora
“Now, you
have, quite understandably,” Judge Tankard began, clearing his throat and
frowning with the downward movement of the dislodged throat matter, “No idea of
what febora is.”
Torman,
sitting across the desk in a state of expectancy, nodded, urging the judge to
explain.
Tankard
leaned towards Torman. The ancient
cufflinks proclaiming his allegiance to a defunct fraternity flashed as he did
so.
“I assume
you will convey this information to your associates?” He asked.
“Not if you
don’t want me to,” Torman replied.
“On the
contrary,” the judge reassured him. “I
want you to tell them. I want you to act
according to your customary methods.”
Later that
day, therefore, Torman sat down with Shab and Grimmery inside the old pansy
tank and revealed what the judge had told him.
“Febora is
a type of fish that can be worn as a hat.”
“That makes
sense,” Shab’s eyes brightened. “A combination
of fedora and remora. Hat and fish!”
“No, not
exactly,” Torman was quick to correct him.
“This thing is more like a porkpie, like something Buster Keaton would
have worn.”
Grimmery
turned impatiently from the anterior peephole.
“What the
fish looks like,” he insisted, “Is not as important as what’s to be done about
these poor tourists.”
Torman and
Shab laughed. Was he kidding? He had to be.
Grimmery didn’t care about any tourists.
But he did. “My parents were
tourists,” he explained.
“The thing
to do,” Torman answered his friend, “Is to alter the jigsaw puzzle map of the USA .”
Shab’s
eyebrows drew together.
“In what
way?” asked Grimmery.
“Well, as
it is now, the map shows a man waterskiing over much of the lower half of the
state. We’re going to paint over him
with a lightfast acrylic whitewash and, in his place, paint in a large green
blob in a general’s helmet. He’ll have
dust puffing up around his pseudopods indicating strife.” Torman looked from
one man to the other. “This will warn
people away from the area. Or, at the
very least, it will indoctrinate future generations with an understanding of
what to expect if they choose that area for a vacation.”
Grimmery
scratched his nose.
“We are
talking about Florida ,
right?” he asked.
Shab, too,
had a question.
“This is
what Tankard said for us to do?” His eyebrows were still knitted.
Torman
nodded heavily, assuring them that it was.
Fondles the Crater in Puppydog’s Purse
The pansy
tank, mentioned in the previous story as an ideal place to hold a secret
meeting, had started life as a typical, armored, mobile piece of artillery as
used by hippie soldiers of several phony generations during the cinematic wars
of the past fifty years or so. However,
since being abandoned in a field of clover and daffodils some years before, it
had been painted shiny pink and further covered with large, crudely painted
flowers of yellow and white. In the
shadow of its turret gathered the puppydog, the brassiere, and the melonanchor.
“If only we
were strong enough,” the brassiere lamented, “We could open the hatch and climb
inside.” He looked up at the steel beast
and frowned.
“Let’s not
worry about that now,” the melonanchor told his colleagues. “We’re plenty safe here.”
“We may be
secure, or comfortable,” the puppydog retorted, “But safe?” She opened her purse and took out the cards.
“Now how do
you play this game, anyway?” The brassiere asked.
“Well,” the
puppydog began laying out the cards one by one on the flattened grass. “It’s not so much a game as an activity.” Ladybugs and caterpillars explored the edges
of the cards, clambering from a blade of grass or the stem of a flower to a
card and back, ignoring the larger creatures and ignored by them in turn.
The
melonanchor examined the cards.
“They’re
motorcycles,” he announced.
“Not all,”
the puppydog interjected. He laid out a
few more cards. “See, some are
monsters. And some are scenes from that
popular film, Nationwide Ideograms of
Peat-Destroying Cornborn.”
“Never saw
it,” the brassiere confessed, though this made him look like an oddity at the
time.
A Man Forces Chicken Entrails into the Cabaret Peas
Certainly
you will want to know what “cabaret peas” are, given that, as an American who
has never set foot on continental Europe , you
are justifiably ignorant of such matters.
That being said, you have, of course, heard of the cabaret tradition in Germany , and
perhaps think that these legumes are in some way connected with that particular
variety of theater. However, the word
“cabaret” in this case refers to the stage-like structure in which the peas are
compelled to sing and dance in a revue dealing with contemporary political and
social topics. These peas were developed
through the efforts of the Department of Agronomy at the university over the
course of many years. They are a
delicate breed requiring constant attention.
Farmers interested in raising them are advised to educate themselves
about recent trends in the modern musical theater and to practice using a
whip. Knowledge of costume design is
usually not necessary, as the peas can easily be made to resemble almost any
character or concept needed through the use of a “helper vine.” This is a symbiotic organism that slowly grows
around the base of the main pea plant, both taking the place of an audience,
should one not be available out in the wasteland where you live, and also
eventually strangling the cabaret peas to death. This last function is more important than you
yet realize, for it is easy to get emotionally attached to a particular
performer and hesitate in the harvesting, preserving, and consuming of it when
the time comes.
The chicken
entrails were fresh, still wriggling with life as the man tossed them in a
paper sack and started his march towards his neighbor’s hobby farm. His eyes were fixed and bloodshot. As he stumbled over the field on his grim
mission they reflected the late afternoon sky, but giving it a redder cast, as if
Krakatoa had exploded yet again.
“Sending
millions of metric tons of dust and ash into the atmosphere,” he thought
absently as he kicked in the rear entrance to the former goat house.
The peas,
some still in their kimonos, faces covered with cold cream, screamed and lunged
about in a scene from some documentary reenactment.
“Eat it, ya
scum!” the man commanded, catching the peas up in groups of four and five at a
time.
A Man Sneaks into a Cult’s Executive Headquarters
After he
began to feel a little better (“he’d had a cold or something,” said Luise) he
braced his legs inside tall boots with laces seven feet long.
“With these
I can stand and walk,” he thought, looking at himself in the mirror.
(“Do you
look like a marine?”)
As he
stepped out into the contrariness of the summer’s heat he realized how grateful
he was that he didn’t have to have anybody’s permission to take this
initiative. Ever since his debts had
been magically, miraculously, surgically taken away he had been “free from all
those bastards who tried to tell me how to do every little thing.”
He’d
written a poem about it, which, in all honesty, was almost incomprehensible as
an expression of his freedom, his relief, his feeling of independence. Luise told him as much, handing it back to
him with a look of moth-raping-cat. She
reminded him that he was supposed to be sneaking into the cult’s executive
headquarters.
Yes, he
nodded, walking boldly into the lobby.
The building was a former hotel, each room converted to some purpose
vital to the cult’s continued growth and existence. Anyone could walk into the lobby, for that
was where the public relations and recruitment committee had set up their
operations. The man, whose name was
Limbostan, examined the materials on display closely. He attracted the attention of a large,
tail-less beaver in a red vest.
“Do you
have any questions?” the beaver asked.
Limbostan
pretended not to speak English.
“Baa baa
maba baa baa.”
The beaver
smiled politely.
“Is that a
Slavic tongue?” he asked.
“Baa baa
maba baa baa,” Limbostan repeated, gesturing intently at one of the posters. It was an old Calvin Klein ad that had been
annotated thoroughly, arrows and numbers all over.
“Yes? Yes?”
the beaver urged, touching Limbostan’s shoulder and leading him closer.
Later,
having crammed the beaver’s body into an umbrella stand left over from the
building’s days as a place of lodging, Limbostan made his way into the
kitchen. To his amazement the red vest
fit well. For once the legend “one size
fits all” had proven true.
Tiger’s Domestic Arrived and Attempted
In those
days the jungle was, however dangerous, yet a comfortable place. One didn’t labor under a grimy film of sweat
and dirt. In fact, if one (and I assume
there is only one of you and not a whole vanload of loudmouthed young people)
wanted to, one could step into a small, dark pool and bathe. Flower petals floated on the surface. The ground about the pool was soft and free
of particles that might stick to the bottom of your feet. It was like carpet, I suppose, and the whole
of the jungle was like a large, climate-controlled room. But I don’t want you in my pool. I don’t want you in my jungle. Not unless you put on one of these costumes. The tiger one will do. Now you are a tiger. You can balance apples on your head, if you
like.
An Organization of One
As the sole
member of the art movement known as Lo-Proc, I feel a little silly, but, as
silliness is one of the core principles of this movement, I also feel justified
in issuing this manifesto without resorting to proclamations of principles or
sweeping statements of doom. For, as
will be seen, each blog is a hair growing on the monster.
Ah, the
manifesto! It is the expression of my
symbolic suicide. The facts of my daily
life are such that, as Ray Bradbury advised, I really should just kill
myself. But, sitting here in the
bathtub, writing these words, imagining them printed on a big piece of paper in
some Dadaist-era typeface, and passing copies of it out to the dream people
come to pay their respects, I decide to keep on living, at least long enough to
see it all not come true. Symbolically,
therefore, the disease coiling latent in my very DNA takes the place of the
expensive gun, the reckless drive, or the fistful-of-pills-and-bag-over-the-head.
They
stopped me from speaking about my depression earlier by threatening to take
away my family’s livelihood. But by the
time they read these words it will be too late: my livelihood will have mutated
into something else. I want my
livelihood to be my public contempt for the fear of losing a livelihood. I want my manifesto to be that I have no fear
of being silly. The manifesto is nothing
if not a declaration that purism is my enemy and rambling incoherently is my
method. Maybe something of use will come
out of it. It is philosophy by
attrition.
Now, an explanation,
and then we can continue with the rest of the project. Lo-Proc is short for “Loath
Procurement.” The idea being that, as
“Procurement” is the name of my personal philosophy, “Loath Procurement” would
be the theoretical version of that philosophy as tailored for handing on to
other people (should I want to start a cult or something). Lo-Proc also brings to mind Lo-Fi, a musical
movement whose aesthetics and ideals I both agree with and am a part of, whether
anyone ever hears that side of my work or not.
And finally, that leads me into the art which I make now under the
banner of Lo-Proc: most likely you’ll never see it, even if you somehow manage
to read these words. It’s all luck, it’s
all luck. Fifty percent of it is not
your fault.
The Sexual Repairs Will Never Let Me Forget the Date
It was the
first day of August. I was just entering
the last phase of my cold: coughing. I
tried to drown out the TV with early Sun Ra, but the young Blount just couldn’t
compete. So I sat there and dealt with
it—all of it. The pain in my feet, the
despair, the goddamned stupidity. Out of
some vestige of manners or good taste I can’t claim to be an intellectual
exactly, but I can, in all honesty, make a claim to intellectual interests (or
pretensions), which is as close as one can get a lot of the time in an
environment such as this.
The tiny
Marshall Allens entered through my toes, making their way upwards, dragging
expanding cables behind them. A doctor
had recently ordered me to wear a heart monitor, but, given the time already
wasted in his office, I refused; now the cables, lettered and numbered with
appropriate messages of goodwill, sloshing paint everywhere with lively intent,
encircled my heart.
“You spoke
of despair earlier,” the physician recalled.
“Is there no hope then?”
There’s
always hope. Hope is imagining a way
out, plausible or not. The problem is
that someone with a big imagination can conjure up hope from a planet of
chicken shit. Given that I have to turn
out work no matter what the circumstances, I’ll just incorporate my despair and
leave the hope for that blaring TV in the waiting room.
The Parts of the Bomb that Are Indebted to Elder Welder
Torman and
Shab were amazed at Grimmery’s knowledge of the bomb. They listened as Grimmery pointed at the
various parts of its mechanism and explained their functions. Exchanging looks, they smiled at these hidden
depths in their friend.
Even the
bomb, standing semi-narcotized on the viewing pedestal, part of its tin
carapace cut away to facilitate such viewing, seemed amused. Sleepily, the great monster asked the men if
they could guess what the significance of the red paint on a few of its innards
was.
Grimmery
moved his head back and forth.
“I assume,”
he answered, “That those are the parts that were designed by Elder Welder.”
“Elder
Welder?” Torman repeated as the bomb laughed slowly and low. “Who is he?”
There is No Link Between the Plethmethyst and the Sea
Girdle
Brilliant
engineer he may have been, but there was one puzzle that Elder Welder could not
solve. As Grimmery later told his
friends over coffee, the plethmethyst and the sea girdle, each an integral part
of the bomb’s workings, yet functioned inside partially closed subsystems,
interacting with other parts of the bomb (in some cases the same parts), yet
having no connection with each other.
“I’m
thinking of a sexual comparison,” Grimmery grasped for a better word, the right
word, other than “comparison.”
An untitled interlude
There must
be one word that means “similar example.”
Anyway, why not just fake it? Why
not just tell a lie? I have a suspicion
that all great successes are founded on at least one lie, usually an
exaggerated version of the turning point, the great insight, the step through
the right door, accidental or not. Does
it matter if you planned it out? It
might. Look at me. If I had been willing to plan things out,
this might have been a real novel.
A Man Sets Up a Home Inside the Stomach of the Bipedal
Clam Potato
Since there
were no windows the man, who had taken the wrong pills that evening, was forced
to hang his curtains around partially-framed paintings of fictional New York personalities
like Mr. Sleepycrud, the Theory of Deep Itching, and the Epitome of
Leadership.
“You like to
read?” Torman, who visited the man on Friday, asked upon noticing all the books
waiting to be put up on the walls.
“Well,” the
man demurred, “I like putting the contents of books into my brain, but the
actual process of reading—I find it tedious at times.” He ran to the toilet, barely excusing
himself. It was his first time using the
facilities and he was a little disappointed that it had to be in such urgent
circumstances.
Torman
selected a few books that he didn’t think would be immediately missed and
slipped out, heading for the only other significant organ.
A Man Coaches Pink Elastic Reflectors Under the
Exhumation
“Who died?”
Torman asked Captain Ipecac, gesturing with his burrito at the open grave.
Ipecac,
who, as a police officer, was under no obligation to answer Torman, nor even to
acknowledge their common humanity, walked away.
His black tactical sneakers left prints like a trail of circus peanuts
in the disturbed earth. He nodded at the
man with the clipboard as he joined him among the straps and cables hauling the
box full of Pelican Boy into the light of day.
Torman took
a bite of his burrito. As he chewed he
weighed the differences between the man with the clipboard and the man down in
the bunker. Which one would look better
in a sombrero?
Something I Ate Flowering in the Colm Like Long-Stemmed
Clovers
Shab read
over my manuscript as we waited for the next penny to fall from the catwalk.
“You
probably should explain what a colm is,” he suggested, handing the spiralbound
notebook filled with messy, scribbled handwriting back to me.
I glanced
up at the catwalk. I saw a couple of fat
fingers dart out of one of the peepholes, but no coin fell.
“I try not
to explain anything,” I told Shab.
“Besides,” I sighed, feeling weary.
I had taken some unaccustomed pills earlier in the evening. “The whole idea is that the text will be
accompanied by illustrations of one kind of another and maybe they will answer
that question. And if they don’t—well…
it’s probably better that something like a colm is left to the reader’s
imagination.”
“‘Colm’ is
probably a real word—with some definition that’s nothing like what you expect.”
I frowned.
“Come on,
make with the pennies!” I shouted.
The law
enforcement official, dressed as a typical college graduate and amateur
athlete, descended the fireman’s pole and glowered at me.
“I have
every right to kill you where you stand,” he warned.
A Monumental Disregard for the Jellyfoot Jacker
“Urban
legend or not,” Albania
concluded, “The Jellyfoot Jacker is now most definitely a cultural icon.”
A man in a
Jellyfoot Jacker costume nodded forcefully beside the smiling woman. He had just begun to slap Albania ’s upper
arm with the tip of his tail when the
Story
ended, the film image was replaced by that of a roomful of Jellyfoot Jacker
merchandise.
The
truckstops sold three comic books together in a plastic bag. The book visible on either side of the bag
was a Jellyfoot Jacker title, but the unseen one, the one in the middle, was
invariably something like Tiger’s Domestic or Non-Clerical Puma. Most of the kids looked on these latter
titles like an adult would an apple core—inedible and incomprehensible in a
world of seedless grapes. Strunk,
however, eagerly took these rejects for himself.
“So everyone
is happy,” Mother remarked from her seat beside Father, who drove the car.
Mr. Penguinmate is Gaseous
In issue
#16 of Non-Clerical Puma, which
Strunk now opened and began reading, the Stork, having successfully fooled
Ravenstein into believing he was a diligent worker, was finally introduced to
Mr. Penguinmate.
“Mr.
Penguinmate,” Ravenstein addressed the large bird of indeterminate species
behind the massive spectacles, “This is Gummy Puma, from the small item
sortation division.”
Mr.
Penguinmate looked up from the randomly heaped collection of papers and
paper-related items on his desk. He made
a low, wavering noise that the Stork understood was meant to be interpreted as
speech. It sounded something like,
“Uhahohuhhhnnnuhohahhhhmm-hmm…” The eyes
behind the glasses were many times magnified, sleepy, and deceptively
inquisitive.
The Stork
smiled vaguely as he shook the old bird’s wingtip. He stepped back from Mr. Penguinmate’s desk
with a friendly enough smile, but no words of any consequence came from the
Stork’s mouth either. He had merely
said, “Hello.”
Outside the
old bird’s office (which was both cavernous and oppressively ornate; Mussolini
would have been jealous) Ravenstein started to chide the Stork for not engaging
Mr. Penguinmate more. That was not the
way to get ahead.
But
suddenly he began coughing and clutching at his chest. “I’ve only got one lung,” he gasped.
The Stork
later found out that Ravenstein had lost the other lung in Korea .
“Shot out
by the communists,” the Goat explained.
Interrogated About the Celebrity Backwash
He had been
dreaming about his own death for years, only he didn’t know it. No one did in those days. We’re not talking about how one
dies. These dreams weren’t
prescient. No, they were about the state
of being dead.
“All of my
suspicions have been confirmed,” Dr. Phonogist, Physician to the Stars, told Ed
Waker. When pressed, Dr. Phonogist
revealed that Rod Stewart had once vomited into an aquarium.
Were Rod
Stewart’s dreams about death as well?
Dr.
Phonogist considered.
“I’m sure
some of them were,” he decided.
The room in
which the highly paid doctor was interviewed was clearly a hotel room. More than a few viewers noted that the
paintings over the beds were by Asger Jorgdorf.
One was of a sheep/house and the other… well, the other was hard to make
out.
Ed Waker
pointed at the other painting with his pen.
“What would
you say that painting is of?” he asked.
Dr.
Phonogist glanced over his shoulder. He
grinned crookedly, though his eyes remained those of a dangerous, wealthy man.
“Is this to
be an empathy test?” he wondered.
Across town
Rod Stewart met with Andy Summers in secret.
“So you
think that, in a way, you become a painting when you die?” Stewart kept his
voice low. The back room was safe, but
was it secure?
“Well,
that’s a metaphor,” Summers replied.
“But, in essence, yes, you become the visual landscape, the scenery,
if you will.”
Stewart
nodded. He looked at the tabletop and
thought about things.
“But not
just the visual landscape,” Summers added.
“I mean, eventually, wouldn’t you became part of the greater
electromagnetic spectrum? A snapshot of
it, anyway.”
Dr.
Phonogist didn’t tell Ed Waker, but he had developed a cure for looking more
and more like Harpo Marx.
The Imperative Green Will Know Better Next Time
Judge
Pancreas Tankard did not fear his own mortality. He credited this to his personal philosophy,
developed over many years and put into practice every day.
“I have
told you of the expectant high,” Tankard reminded a group of acolytes come to
learn his system. “For those of you who
haven’t been here before, this is a method best reserved for those familiar
with the drug experience. Familiar
enough so that just thinking about getting high, with the sure expectation of doing so later in the day
perhaps, is enough to induce an autovicarious feeling of being high. Chiefly, the euphoric aspects. Sensory distortion is something more
difficult to achieve in this way.”
The young
men sitting about the room listening to the judge exchanged smiles of delight.
“Sir,” one
of them raised his hand to ask a question.
“Are you speaking specifically of marijuana?”
The judge
looked at the young man over the top of his glasses, which had fallen forward
in the animation of his talk. He
chuckled from deep in his phlegm-carpeted throat.
All the Suffering I Went Through Over My Poor Penmanship,
And It Was All for Nothing
For a
couple of years I had been looking forward to learning how to write in
cursive. I saw it as the grown-up way to
write. Of course, my parents, with their
nineteenth century mentality, did not use the term “cursive;” they spoke of
“writing,” as opposed to “printing.” On
a related note, when I began second grade, the year that I would begin learning
cursive, my father said that I would now need a “tablet,” which I thought meant
a pill of some kind. He said it was to
write on, and I imagined an aspirin composed of many flaky layers of paper.
After I
started learning cursive, however, I very quickly lost interest, because it
entailed a lot more work, and a lot more patience, than I was willing to put
into it. My teachers and parents were
always denigrating my penmanship. It got
to the point that my mother would make me laboriously copy passages out of
books at home. I cried the whole time at
the torture. That’s what it seemed like:
torture. It was so unreasonable to me to
try to make my letters look exactly like the ones on display.
Once I got
to fourth grade, however, I started going to a new school. This was a private Christian school. I remember the teacher taking me out in the
hall so as not to embarrass me in front of the other children. She asked me, “Did they not teach you cursive
in public school?” I told her that they
had, but that I preferred to print. I
don’t remember what she said to that, but I do know that, except for my
signature, I never wrote in cursive again.
For the next eight years, however, even my printing was called
“messy.” My father referred to it as
“chicken scratch.”
Knackered by Thrombosis of the Gills
“They don’t
make Blue Horse tablets anymore,” the gravy-colored beast snapped. “In fact, children are issued their own
laptops from day one.”
“Even in
Eskimo territory?” Clumberja wondered.
“We don’t
use the term ‘Eskimo’ anymore,” the beast, in its bra of jungle webbing,
informed Clumberja frostily.
Things
certainly have changed, Clumberja, who was Judge Tankard’s niece, thought. Her t-shirt had a picture of the iconic blue
horse on the front. On the back it said,
“Take One and Call Me After Christmas Break.”
Attention Filth in Brackets
OK, now the
real novel (that is: an extended narrative) begins.
Torman had
been listening to Ministry lately. He
didn’t like the way Al Jourgensen had fucked up his face. All those piercings. It was stupid.
He had a
job inspecting data collection stations throughout the deserted area. His employer, Cleanliness Disconception
Limited, expected Torman to visit each of the twelve stations every month. He had to open up the metal box mounted on a
post and collect the data inside. This
took the form of small organic pods deposited by the Squirrel People.
“So that’s
why the data can’t be transferred electronically,” Torman’s friend Shab
realized.
“That, and
the fact that there is no wireless reception out in the deserted area.”
Shab’s
countenance soured at the mention of the word “wireless.” The world was now a much impoverished place.
Torman had been right about that.
The Strainer Pursuit of Sequester
He was a
big man. Big and good looking. But now he was getting fat.
“You
thought you were going to be a movie star,” Colonel Calculer accused.
“Bionic
feedback makes us whole.”
The holes in the colander—we have improved drainage efficiency by turning them into slots.
The holes in the colander—we have improved drainage efficiency by turning them into slots.
“I thought
that we had determined that wire mesh was more efficient.”
“We’re
taking into account clean-up time as well.”
Hot water,
immediately put into action, takes care of most problems in the kitchen. But who cleans up as they cook?
Doesn’t it spoil
the enjoyment of the meal? The same sort
of people who feel that flossing is a waste of time.
We have
developed a colander floss, but it’s difficult to use.
Selectively
open or closed. Closeted colander
collared.
Duran
Duran’s more experimental work was released under the name Batwingus. Simon LeBon’s voice was electronically
altered. Many assumed it was a witch of
obesity on vocals. The half dozen covens
containing such creatures are well known in the British
Isles , but here in American they are so slow we think they are
concluding.
There Were Four Tigers
Torman,
Shab, and Grimmery had just reached the fourth data collection station. Torman was explaining to Grimmery, who had
joined the party only about two hours before, the procedure for inspecting the
station when four tigers emerged from the surrounding woods.
(Children’s story version)
Torman was
getting tired of his job with Cleanliness Disconception Limited. He invited his friend Shab to join him on his
monthly route to see if Shab would be interested in taking over the job.
There were
twelve data collection stations scattered throughout the deserted area. Torman had to inspect them each month. He and Shab had just finished with the third
one when they returned to where Torman had parked his vehicle…
…but the vehicle was gone.
“Somebody’s
stolen it,” Torman barked. “Now what do
we do?”
Shab had an
idea.
“Grimmery
doesn’t live too far from here. We can
go to his house and borrow a vehicle.”
Torman was
skeptical of what “not too far from here” meant, but he agreed. It was the best option they had.
As it
turned out, it did take a long time to get to Grimmery’s house. By the time they got there it was dark. Grimmery, who had known Torman and Shab since
high school, let the two spend the night.
In the morning all three of them set out in Grimmery’s vehicle to finish
the route.
At the
fourth data collection station Torman opened the metal box mounted on a wooden
post to collect the pods deposited within by the Squirrel People and to read
the special thermometer inside. He had
just begun explaining about these things to Grimmery when…
…from out of the surrounding woods emerged four giant
tigers.
Torman,
Shab, and Grimmery made it into the vehicle before the tigers got too
close. In fact, Torman managed to finish
his work at the station and close up the box before getting to safety. So really the situation hadn’t been that
dangerous.
“But it
sure was scary,” Grimmery laughed.
The Grill is Allergic to False Begumbo
Detective
Matriarch had been sent to Florida
with his assistant Zoominor to follow up leads contained in some old letters
relevant to the Lord Panweefius case.
After a difficult, hot day matching local landmarks with descriptions
made by Aunt Mary (rumored to be Lord Panweefius’ lover), the two men returned
to the hotel. There Matriarch was
appalled to discover that he was expected to cook his own dinner over a
personal barbecue. Zoominor, a man of
working class origins, unlike Matriarch, had no problem with this. As there was plenty of beer and everybody
around the pool was also cooking out, it contributed to a party atmosphere.
Detective
Matriarch disgustedly retreated to the hotel lobby to peruse the brochure rack
and its many local dining and sightseeing options. He had just begun unfolding a brochure about
nearby Fort Picklechip
(site of the Fort
Picklechip
“Souvenirs,”
she explained on catching Matriarch looking at her.
“I usually
content myself with the contents of my room,” Matriarch replied, wondering how
stupid he sounded using such heteronyms.
My Opening Mace is a Gluteal Resin
“So you’re
a detective,” the woman, whose name was Carolingia, wondered as they waited for
their drinks to arrive. The restaurant
they sat in was Ma Gifford’s, the only place in town still open (besides
McDonald’s and similar purveyors of what Matriarch would have called shit were
he not in the presence of a lady he was increasingly desirous to impress).
“Yes,” he
replied with a smile.
“And you’re
here on a case?” Carolingia was younger than Matriarch, but not by too
much. She had rather a large nose and
flat chestnut hair. Her smile was
infrequent and narrow.
“Yes, but
not alone. My assistant, Zoominor, is
with me.”
“Is this
your first time in… Florida ? I was going to say America , but I guess that’s
assuming too much.”
“No, you’re
right,” Matriarch answered with a chuckle.
“I have been to America
before, but never Florida .” He leaned forward. “I don’t like it very much.”
Carolingia
smiled.
“Where did
you go before?” she asked.
“New York and Chicago
on a police training tour. I
particularly—“ His reminiscence was cut short by the simultaneous arrival of
their drinks and Zoominor, who breathlessly announced that Schiffwerfer had
been spotted near the old coal mine.
A Man is Forced to Spend the Pennies in His Loafers
Schiffwerfer,
who found the idea of a coal mine in Florida
highly implausible, yet incorporated the concept into his later thriller, Cling Salt Arrangements in Ordinary Bread
Beards. Once again, in order to get
his book into the hands of his readers, Schiffwerfer was forced to
self-publish.
“No one
will publish anything I write,” he complained to a man dressed as one of his
friends.
“Have you
tried any of the university presses?” the man asked. “From what I’ve seen, they’ll publish any old
crap.”
“What I’m
really concerned with at this point,” Schiffwerfer continued, ignoring the
man’s foolish suggestion, “Is the cover art.
I want a painting by Asger Jorgdorf.
I’ve always had a thing for books with his artwork on the covers.”
“Why don’t
you paint it yourself and claim that Jorgdorf’s ghost psychically directed your
hand?”
As much
money as that idea would have saved, it proved unnecessary. Not only was Jorgdorf not yet dead, but
several weeks later at the Andy Summers Fan Fiction Convention in Sweden,
Montreal Island, Schiffwerfer was introduced to Jorgdorf.
“I’ll tell
you what I’ll do:” the great man told the writer. “Since they’re taking the Rugwa series away
from me, I’ll let you use the painting that was going to be on the cover of the
next Rugwa book.”
“How could
I ever afford that?” Schiffwerfer whined, overwhelmed. “As it is I’m going to have to turn all my
furniture over just to find the spare change to get the books printed.”
“Friend,”
Jorgdorf kindly replied, “Don’t worry about it.
Just assure me that your book’s plot appropriately complements a picture
of a fat, moustachioed warrior in striped pants butchering a giant hornet and
you can use the painting for free.”
Schiffwerfer
smiled. “He called me ‘friend,’” he
thought, “Even though he isn’t dressed as one.”
Traveltalker Reacts to the Spermicide
“One of the
newer products that the Buttermonk people are working on is a spermicide made
from corn syrup.” Rawkintowel, a policy
analyst working for Senator Clacker’s group, discussed recent concerns with his
pet, a transparent tank of alternating layers of sweaty aspic and oil of okay.
“This tank
was connected to a vibrational motor,” Mare’s Wood later explained to Cheap
Victor. “Thus infusing the system with
the necessary energy to understand and respond to Rawkintowel’s words.”
“Through
the neural collective of all the microbes within the system,” Cheap Victor
added.
“Quite so,”
acknowledged Mare’s Wood.
“Thus we
see that Senator Clacker endorses collectivization, groupthink, and, let’s call
it what it is: communism.”
Such an
opinion was not only beyond the purview of the Buttermonk Graineries’ official
spokesman, but also represented a potentially irresponsible leap in
reasoning. It was the position of the
Buttermonk Graineries that only Senator Clacker himself could answer for the
new spermicide’s effectiveness, patriotism, and embodiment of stereotypically
hermit-like individualism.
“After
all,” the spokesman concluded, “The Senator has spent the last year
investigating corn syrup and its supposedly deleterious properties.”
Rectally Indeterminate Contraband
Judge
Tankard filled a glass with giant hornet’s milk directly from the abdomen of a
giant hornet trapped in a special wall-mounted dispenser. He performed this action one-handed, as the
other could not be diverted from the task of holding a book, so engrossed was
the judge in reading.
“And what
was the judge reading?” little Albania
demanded sarcastically.
The judge
was reading a book by Torman, Rugwa
Exposes Sire Moot’s Lie. This was a
continuation of the Rugwa series, which Spanish Jackson had begun fifty years
before. As Torman explained to a
journalist, he had been asked by Jackson ’s
heirs to continue the series. It seemed
that of all the writers working in the Barbarians and Beatles genre today, he
was the most suited to continue the story of Rugwa.
“The only
problem,” Tankard addressed Torman the next time he saw him, “Is that the heirs
who approached you did not have the full legal right to make such an offer.”
“That’s why
I was hoping you could talk to them,” Torman begged. “I didn’t do all this work just to see the
unsold copies pulped as ‘unauthorized editions.”’
The judge
smiled. He thought it far more likely
that the unsold copies would be pulped as unsaleable. However, he said nothing of his literary
opinions. Instead he focused on his
unsuitability for such a task.
“I’m a
judge now, Torman,” he spoke with paternal kindliness. “And even when I was an attorney, my
specialty was those wrongly accused or convicted of murder, especially if the
wrongly accused or convicted was a young, pretty lady. No,” he shook his big, old head. “What you want is an expert in copyright and
exploitation of celebrity likenesses.”
Torman
desperately wanted to press the judge, to get him to help him, but he was far
more interested to hear the judge’s opinion of the book, so he dropped the
matter.
Sire Moot’s Lie is a Mexican Boulevard
Rugwa, for
those of you unfamiliar with the character, was the hero of a series of twelve
books (eight of them novels proper, the remainder collections of stories) by
the quasi-German author Spanish Jackson.
This Rugwa starts off the series as a typical barbarian warrior in
something of the Conan mold. However,
over the course of each volume he not only ages, but goes through many changes,
eventually becoming a space travelling, semi-mechanical musician and poetic
bowler by the final book. Speculations
about what further adventures and learning experiences Rugwa would have
undergone have dominated discussions among fans of the character ever since
Spanish Jackson’s premature death put an end to the series.
Now,
Torman, a minor writer in a fringe genre, had been asked to continue (however
dubiously) the story of Rugwa, the man in the striped pants.
“I took the
striped pants as my starting point,” Torman told the journalist (a younger
fellow attached to the literary review, Dichterischer
Deutung). “I realize he only wore
them in one of the original books, but they’ve become firmly associated with
them in the minds of the fans.”
How Torman,
who was barely known even among the tiny community of readers of these books,
had been chosen to carry on Spanish Jackson’s legacy, would make a good story
in itself. Luckily, he had incorporated
some of that very narrative into his own take on Rugwa, the man whose striped
pants now bore an extra, secret pocket.
The Monorail is Followed by the Suspension of Grief
Rugwa had
not shit in days. As he took his seat on
the train that would take him to the spaceport he reflected that he had better
make one last effort before getting on the ship. He hated to shit onboard; the toilets were
too cramped and, once seated, he only wanted to stay seated. He would immerse himself in a couple of
illustrated magazines. Despite years
among the civilized and highly technologically advanced peoples of the east, he
yet remained a barbarian at heart. The
less he was reminded that he was beyond the comforts of the earth’s bosom the
better.
It was a
good thing, therefore, that the car he was in was empty. Rugwa got up and crouched behind a couple of
seats at one end of the car. He pulled
down his black-and-white, horizontally striped pants and strained at the
blockage that seemed to be just within the confines of his rectal chamber.
He had achieved only minimal results when the train unexpectedly stopped and two
passengers stepped into Rugwa’s car. As
the train existed solely to transport passengers from the terminal to the
various concourses and back, passing completely over the intervening swamp, the
entry of the two newcomers was something that shouldn’t be happening.
Rugwa
noticed that one of the two men was David Spade, the comedian, before either of
them noticed him squatting and taking a shit in the corner. However, this imbalance was not long in being
redressed. Spade glanced around, spied
Rugwa, and punched his companion on the shoulder, nodding towards the ongoing
activity.
“Be done in
a minute,” Rugwa grunted in reply to their stares.
Spade and
his companion, a big man who was obviously in his employ, fulfilling the roles
of bodyguard, minder, agent, and friend turned to the doors as one, but they
were already closed. The train was in
motion. The latter man, later identified
in court documents as Allan Josam, remonstrated plaintively with Rugwa,
stepping forward as if to protect his charge from the obscenity on
display. “What are you doing?” he
demanded, not so much for a description of the act, but more for an explanation
of why.
Rugwa,
meanwhile, had only now realized that he had nothing to wipe with. He glanced around frantically and found a
newspaper not too far out of reach. He
only had to expose his bent, half-naked frame momentarily to reach it.
“Just one
minute,” he repeated as he tore the paper into sections and cleaned his
backside.
“You know,
they have restrooms in the spaceport,” Josam told Rugwa.
“He’s
probably homeless,” Spade said to his friend in an undertone, as if to mitigate
some of the social transgression.
Rugwa
managed both to cover up his pile of waste with the paper and to keep everything
behind the seat. He awkwardly got to his
feet, pulling his pants up as he did.
Standing before the two men he held one last piece of paper in his hand. He looked at it in amazement.
“Hey, is
this you?” he wondered, pointing at an ad that, indeed, promised the appearance
of David Spade at a local nightclub the night before.
“I like
those pants,” Spade muttered, turning away from Rugwa.
The Wraith is Posted in its Entirety to the Alphabet Flag
Being still
a barbarian beneath his layers of painfully acquired civility, Rugwa could not
shake his barbarian’s fear of the supernatural.
Thus, when the old hag warned him that Worm Tower
“All you
have to do,” she told Rugwa, “Is throw these magic beans at its feet.”
Rugwa
stroked his long moustachios as he contemplated the dozen or so grubby old
beans in the outstretched palm. Each had
been marked with a ‘B’ in a suspiciously oxidized pigment.
“How much?”
he asked finally, looking into the hag’s face.
Could that face have ever been that of a pretty little girl?
“Either
three pieces of gold now,” she cleverly bargained, “Or half the treasure when
you return.”
Rugwa,
equally clever after so many years in the world, smiled. It was a good bargain. After all, he reasoned, there probably wasn’t
any treasure.
That night,
armed with the magic beans, Rugwa slipped past two patrolmen guarding part of
the wall surrounding the old city and approached Worm Tower
“It is
possible that it was erected by some long-defunct worm cult,” he
considered. “Certainly there is nothing
in its appearance to suggest a giant worm rising out of the ground.” His thoughts were contradictory and tenuous
from the tension of making his way along disused streets scattered with rubble
and weeds.
To obtain
access to the tower it was necessary for Rugwa to unleash the pressurized foam
in his shoe auxiliaries. This launched
him to one of the windows high overhead, as the street doors were blocked.
“The moon
reveals a creepy vista,” he thought, looking down from his perch. “This tower was built in the days before
glass was widely available.” As he
turned to the interior of the tower his thoughts turned to the history of
architecture and city planning. He
became so engrossed in this, speculating on such topics as sewage, municipal
sectors dedicated to specific professions, and the durability of stone, that
when he came upon the wraith he was more shocked to realize that he had
forgotten about the possibility of its existence than its existence.
“Only he
who salutes the alphabet flag knows whereof Eric Dolphy sleeps,” the wraith
intoned mournfully. Its voice was like
unto an arctic crowbob, if such a creature of avian connotation exists.
“I can’t
understand you,” Rugwa answered. Indeed,
not only were the wraith’s words cryptic, but were spoken in a dialect
extinguished hundreds of years before.
The wraith
repeated its intonation. By the way, it
was ghost-like in appearance: a floating, luminescent bedsheet with vaguely
elephantine tusks and trunks snaking out around the edges. Very scary, especially in the darkness.
Rugwa
frowned, unsure of what to do. Then he
remembered the beans. He scooped them
out of his vest pocket and threw them before the wraith.
“You said feet,”
Rugwa bitterly reminded the old hag (and aren’t all hags old?) as he
threw aside the shabby cloth covering the entrance to her hovel.
The old
woman glanced irritatedly at the big man.
“What?” she
croaked as she turned back to the primitive TV set.
“The wraith
didn’t have any feet,” Rugwa let her know.
The hag
looked again at Rugwa.
“So what
happened?” she demanded, as if suddenly remembering the earlier events of the
evening.
The
barbarian space traveler, disheveled, scuffed, and bleeding from a half dozen
places, grunted in disgust.
“You wanted
half the treasure,” he sneered, “Here it is.”
As the
centuries-old laugh track burst from the TV a sheep’s fetus landed in the hag’s
lap.
What was the other half?
