Remainder of Text

What follows is everything written in the purely literary narrative part of this novel.  It takes us from page 29, just after Rugwa's exciting adventure in the dead city, up to his godson's plunge through to life in a graphic novel, for really, that is what it is...

POONTUKKA- Party at eight

Big Truths for the day:

1.The important thing in soloing is which note you end a phrase on.  Now that mainstream audiences have accepted atonality and free jazz clichés as natural, the only thing you have to worry about when improvising is which note you land on.

           

The Arctic Crowbob Faults His Snow-White Tonsure

“That’s him,” Vanderkeen announced, pointing down at the host of people on the sidewalk below.

            “Where?” Tann begged; he couldn’t see what Vanderkeen was talking about.

            “The one with the mass of white on his head.”  Vanderkeen seemed eager for Tann to spy the lopsided bird creature before the latter disappeared into the old theater.

            “That big thing moving sideways?” Tann was leaning over the parapet now, having just caught sight of Vanderkeen’s target.

            “I told you he’s lopsided; that’s how he moves.”

            Tann looked at the other man.

            “What’re you going to do now?” he asked.

            “Follow him into that theater,”  Vanderkeen resolved, smacking a gloved fist into his palm (also gloved).

            “I wonder what they’re playing,” Tann Turnip said, starting to follow Vanderkeen to the stairs.

            Vanderkeen, however, stopped.

            “Are you sure you want to come along?” he asked.   “It could be dangerous.  Besides which,” he looked at Tann crookedly.  “That theater may not be an actual cinema, but a theater theater.”

            “You mean, like, plays and stuff?” Tann frowned.

            Vanderkeen stretched his mouth into a wry line of possibility. 

            Seven minutes later the two men were making their way down the broad, inclined hallway that led to the auditorium.  The scanned the room for the tell-tale head of hair, but saw nothing.  Soon the film began.

            “I’ve seen this one,” Tann whispered to Vanderkeen.  “Eskimo Solids.”

            As the tragic story onscreen unfolded the crowbob was revealed by his loud sobbing.  Approaching him from either end of his row, Tann and Vanderkeen saw that he had tried to disguise himself by putting his popcorn bag over his head.

Sociology Was a Homo

            After his wife’s death in a car crash, Professor Flawturd felt free to take a male lover.

            “My children are grown,” he told a colleague at the university.  “They’ll understand.”

            “Have you got anybody in mind?” was the question.

            Flawturd pushed his glasses further up on his nose.

            “No.  Perhaps a European.”

           

Mortal Strands of Ohio

            I’ve been to Ohio.  When I was about three years old my parents took me along on a visit to one of my father’s Vietnam buddies.  He had a son about my age.  All I remember about the trip was getting up in the middle of the night to play with this kid’s hockey game.  Looking back on it now, it’s interesting to note that no kid in Georgia would have had a hockey game.

            I also remember being told as we were driving through some urban sector, “This is OHIO.”

His Watery Withholdings Flattery Abed

            Jimmy Page’s Death Wish II soundtrack. What if Led Zeppelin had kept going into the 80’s?  How strange that they are probably the most popular band of all time.  Arguably the Beatles are their only rivals in general popularity.  Who would have thought that thirty years ago?  Why did Page only put out one solo album, the feeble Outrider?  I remember getting to the record store before it opened the day Outrider came out.  The guy at the register warned me it was no good, but I had to have it.  I was a Jimmy Page nut in those days.  He was probably the greatest influence on me as a guitar player.  Today of course I can say I’d rather sound more like Steve Khan or Andy Summers, but, listening to the solo on The Song Remains the Same version of “No Quarter,” I still love Page’s sloppy brilliance.  Why has he sat on his ass for most of the past twenty years?  Is he just so rich that he doesn’t care anymore?  It seems he’s spent half that time waiting for Robert Plant, but when they have worked together, the results are nearly uniformly dull.

Trade the Scepter’s Impending Glare

            Once the King of Gotherama, Bronto Tonsil now drove the tram that took visitors from the parking lot to the entrance of the Comatosery.  This was an amusement park built inside a former Post Office facility.  Tonsil handled the big electric tram well; he had been in the habit of driving neighborhood children around the palace grounds on a golf cart.

            “But that was back when I was a king,” he told an old couple from Tennessee.

            The husband, a retired postal contract station manager at a large university, shook hands with the deposed monarch.

            “God bless you, Bronto!” he enthused, his low, breathy voice dressed in the cloth of brotherly duty.

            Later, Tonsil was summoned to the office.

            “Bronto,” wondered Parker, head of operations, “How’d you like to start driving that tram indoors?”

            “Indoors!  But that’s not safe!” Tonsil insisted in shock.

            “We’ve been having complaints from the visitors.  The park is just too big to walk around in.  They want the same service and courtesy they receive in the parking lot—inside.”  Parker smiled broadly.

            “You’re going to have accidents,” warned the old man.  “Trams running into each other—“

            “Everything will be laid out just like a city street,” Parker assured Tonsil, raising his hands.  “With traffic rules just like the police,” he added.  He caught Tonsil’s eye.

            “As the operator of a ride—an attraction, which this new system certainly counts as, you’d get paid more money.”

            Tonsil only wanted assurance that he could still talk to the people, and to share with them the good news of Jesus Christ.

A Man Expresses Academic Reprisals with the Smell of the Old Laundry House

(relates to drawing Debater’s Hope)

            “I can’t believe you became a chiropractor!” I laughed, but the look in my eyes was of the saddest disappointment.

            He took the measure of me again, glancing from one of my shoulders to the other.  He wasn’t going to bluster me.  Nor fight me, for that matter.

            “I can’t fight.  That’s what attracted you to me.  When we were boys.”  His eyebrows, thin and high and arched symphonically already, rose higher, the tiny black pebbles in their charge betraying nothing.  He had acquired a good, thick neck, like George Lucas, it gave him a fey, compliant bulldog appearance, if you can imagine a fey, compliant bulldog in a blond wig.  Maybe I mean a bull terrier.

A Sandstorm in the Mind of the Obduration

           

            “Nothing was left,” wailed Sire Moot.  “Everything—the oasis, the cultural heritage, all buried beneath the sand”

            He fell back in his chair with a violence that Torman found unnecessary.  The furniture was nothing but the flimsiest of props.  The chair might have broken under Sire Moot.

            Torman threw out his hands.

            “Now, calm down,” he ordered.  We need to discover just who is this obduration.  We need to find out exactly where the sandstorm took place.  Anyone could go out there right now and dig it all up.

            Torman’s mind, ever only one long blink away from disturbing fantasy, now conjured up a life (well, half of one at this point, but oh well) of self-employment as a creator and purveyor of relics and souvenirs of that land of disturbing fantasy.

            “It’s called the Deserted Area,” Sire Moot explained.

            “How descriptive,” Torman nodded.  “Deserted of what?”

            “People.  Habitations.  The evidence or memory of… people.”  Sire Moot, representative of the Cleanliness Disconception Limited company, and recruiter for same, smiled to himself as he observed the classic symptoms manifested in Torman.

Note: the reason there are four tigers is because this is the fourth data collection station.  They have only just now caught up with them.

            Torman knew about the tigers, but had said nothing to Shab or Grimmery.

A Man Suspects that He Will Feel More European if He Watches Soccer

            And so you probably would.  I wonder if Europeans feel more like men when they watch soccer.  They live so closely there.  I should say “football” like the rest of the planet, but, being an American, I have limited perception of the third dimension.  Thus my reference to the planet.

Three Women Consult the Oracle in the Dead Giant’s Belly

            “Obviously, some of you have realized by now that some of this material,” the young, pretty witch in the green sunglasses nodded knowingly towards this here printed page, “Is meant to be imparted over some other medium than the printed page.  Radio—back when there really was radio, and some kind of beautiful pastiche of my memories of PBS the way it was when I was a kid: strange, stark, and sterile.

            “Enough of that,” the second witch, an older woman we’ll call Hazela, snapped.   She took the young witch by the shoulders and turned her back to the crudely torn aperture made in the carcass by the three of them, the three witches of Rabbity City.

            “That sounds good,” the third witch, whose name definitely was Laura, sighed, looking up into constellations unknown to modern day science, constellations which actually look sort of like what they’re supposed to be.

            “Alright, alright,” Hazela brought everyone’s attention back to the situation at hand: pulling the oracle bulb out of the giant’s dead belly.   Hazela pushed her rolled-up sleeves a little further up and looked at her comrades in turn, encouraging them too to take a second’s preparation for the lifting process.

            But then it was done, not so difficult after all, as if the giant had willed the bulb to them, his gift to the world and the reason for his whole existence, ultimately.

            Hazela spat in the empty, ragged socket, followed in turn by each of her sisters.

            “Is that what they do, Mommy?  Do witches spit into the empty cavity they have so ruthlessly hacked into the dead body of a noble… giant.”

            Roadnoise continues for a bit.  It is a quiet country road.

            “What kind of giant?  What kind is it?”

The Business is a Mock Bagel Golden with Pretzel Toughness

            “See those kids over there?” Sheldon Bathrat pointed with his chin at a table far away from where he sat with his two friends.

            “Yeah?” Moxie urged, following the chin.

            “They’re the ones from the last story.”

            “The previous story,” Euclid, the third member of the party, looked up from polishing his boot, and interjected firmly.

            “Yes,” Sheldon sighed, “Previous story.”  He blinked.  “Anyway, that’s them.”

            As the silence grew in the wake of this announcement, the other tables on the grand patio also floated away; they were an island in a calm sea of green.

            “So what are we scheduled to do?” Euclid wondered.  His boots were long since polished and buffed and dried in the glare of a single, hundred-watt bulb.

            “Says here,” Sheldon consulted an index card from his shirt pocket.  “Something about a mock bagel, golden with pretzel toughness.  That’s a quote, by the way.” He flapped the card at them prior to tucking it away, noting as he did so the entry, “Pickup Rx.”

            “Well, let’s have at it,” the nearly narcoleptic Moxie surprised them all by hauling himself up from his slump and directing the action.

            Sheldon reached into a box and brought forth three bagels in turn.  He passed one each to his companions and turned to face whatever unholy travesty of the Christian god’s super camera thing and smiled.  He started to take a bite of the bagel, but he hesitated.

            “I’ve never eaten one of these things,” he told Moxie and Euclid.  “Is it already cooked?”

Here Are the Illusory Pumps Beside the Cabin

            “Now, if I was to say, ‘Here are the illusory trapeze parts,’ would you go aloft in such a dubious bundle of words?  Of course not, and yet you and I are flying blind every day, my friend, when we venture into the unforgiving world of interactive speech.  Our fellow humans demand a certain level of contact through the medium of speech, along with appropriate eye movements, and, frequently, gestural auxiliary.  But you and I are of a special breed.  We don’t automatically accept the blood-red reality of our (seemingly) fellow individuals, maybe they’re robots, maybe they’re fictions, maybe they’re just not worth our time—but, I suppose, inevitably, they must be dealt with.  Even at the loftiest perch on the ladder they must be dealt with.  Because, and you see, here’s the interesting part: there are multiple ladders.  And some, though you may not know it, representing as they do fields of endeavor encompassing only a handful of individuals, stand as tall as others clawed after and hacked at by teeming dreck.

            And, it so happens, that I occupy the summit of just such a ladder as the formerly mentioned one.  This “ladder,” for the sake of extreme simplification, is a symbol (heretofore known as ritual object #16) of all the many complicated decisions that have went into my arrival at this junction, which in turn is made possible only by those decisions.  Ah, they laughed, my friends, they laughed.  They were amused that I had the temerity to assert that I would master the arts of creation.  That I would call myself artist in the first place.  No training, no discipline, no trailer hookup of morality.

            Well, look, my tiny band of followers, look at where I am now.  I sit before you artlessly, aimlessly on this top rung, and from where I sit, I can tell you, that things look a little out of proportion and fake.

Two Nearly Completed Pitfalls on the Old Postal Path

            The professor had enumerated two aphorisms on the, could it be? An old-fashioned blackboard—with chalk!

            “Now, class,” the white-haired gentleman drew their attention to him.  His voice was as calm and demanding as a line of ships on the horizon.

            “These are your fundamental faults.  These are the two areas which you must focus on, if you are to succeed.”  He tapped the two numbers with his index finger.

            “I don’t know, I’d have to make an arrangement,” he looked down at the tabletop.  “And by that I mean a rearrangement,” he added with such an emphasis on grammatical force that I thought for a second that we were going back in time.

            As a child I received a taste of mathematical one-upmanship and wanted no more to do with it.

            Impromptu dirt clod throwing session after summer evening church.  A bunch of us boys, throwing dirt clods into the plowed field behind the church property.  My father walks up, watches for a second, watches me throw, then says, “Is that as far as you can throw?”  Scorn, sneering scorn, and shame, oh, the vicarious shame, for he knows that the other boys heard, but what he didn’t know, is that I didn’t care.

            The class numbered sixteen.   Among them only one puzzled over the professor’s words.  His name was that of the Stork in the Puma Costume.   Perhaps it had been one of his frequent daydreams, but he had failed to grasp something in what the professor said.  As the others diligently wrote down what they heard, he sat there, wiping the beads of sweat under his eyes inside the eyeholes of his mask.

            It would be so much easier just to get out of that costume.  All this ridiculous work could be over with.

            But he had come so far.  By bullshitting Ravenstein that he shared the latter’s views on social issues in a work context he had managed to get enrolled in the management training service, a quasi-separate organization within the Pecker Bait Company.

            “Are you having trouble grasping the dichotomy?” the professor peered closely at the Stork.

            “Well, no, and I understand what a dichotomy is,” the Stork demurred, scratching his beak through an eyehole.

            “But…?” the professor urged.

            “What are the two areas?”

  

Type Begun in Rotational Hiccup Will Blossom Under the Udder

           

            Torman knew there were no fire ants, still he checked anyway.  Anything might be lurking around under the blades of grass.  He knelt down in the sea of grass.  His old metaphor, that of a little jungle, no longer was flexible enough to handle all of his imagined perceptions of the concept “lawn.”  Now it was an ocean, a green ocean.

            This is how one could breathe underwater, he thought.

            “He’s been smoking pot?” Shab asked Grimmery.

            “Yeah,” Grimmery nodded, barely audible.

            “You too?” Shab examined Grimmery more closely.

            “Yeah,” repeated Grimmery.

            “Wow.”

            Shab watched across the room as Torman plotted the completion of his route.

            “I can’t believe you’re going to go through with it,” he called out.

            Torman glanced up from the ping pong table on which he had set up operations.  He met Shab’s eyes, long enough to let him know that no matter how stoned he may be, he was still sane, still writing on the lines, a man of resolution and indifference to its toll.

            Grimmery pushed a pipe into Shab’s face.

            “I forgot,” he said.  “You’re supposed to smoke this.”

            “No, I’m trying to stay clean.”  Shab pushed the pipe away.

            “Pure?” Grimmery sniggered.

            Shab took a big breath and held out his hand.

            “The pipe, Grimmery,” he requested patiently.

The Sun Abandons the Back Room

            Many of the items that Shab saw there might have been heaters.  Actually, they could have been anything, but, given the still, stone-cold air in the back room, Shab begged to know why none of them were heaters.

            He put the gloves, which he had just now discovered in his back pocket, on his hands before reaching for one of the strange objects.  Shab held the toaster-sized thing before his eyes.

            “It has a very specific purpose,” he decided.  Putting it back on the floor, he thought, “It reminds me of something in a small apartment in a foreign city in a life a hundred years ago.  Something I wouldn’t even think of.”

            Two ceramic pumpkins came to the doorway opening on a dark passage.

            “You haven’t touched anything, have you?” one of the pumpkins asked him.

            “No, nothing,” Shab held out his had and passed it over the collected objects.

            “Come with us, please,” the pumpkin (probably the same one, but Shab couldn’t be sure, because both were already turning away), already turning away, disappeared into the darkness.

            Shab looked around desperately for something small enough to shove in his pocket.  He moved methodically to the door, grabbing up a baseball-sized cube at the last second.  He didn’t get a chance to get a good look at it before he stole it, but he got the impression that it was a giant Jimmy Durante lizard wrapped around a squat apple-shaped skyscraper.  Shab kept thinking “skyscraper,” as he followed the two indistinct orange shapes ahead of him, even though he knew it wasn’t right, that it wasn’t a skyscraper, but an old-fashioned office building or something.  Something brick.

Precognitive Commission at Least a Streamer in the Welt

            “Of course, the members of this commission realize that we are only aware that we sometimes know something was going to happen only after it happened.  And this is fully documented by such everyday evidence as diaries, journals, interdisciplinary blogsite projects, and any ongoing literary efforts with even a mild stink about them of the autobiographical…” the witness, a neofictionalist filmmaker from Blue Kothba, faded away.  His name, should anyone wish to follow up later, was Gilbert Nethers.  It’s there, in the file.  Now, does anyone have anything on this data collection station program?  Stalkers, weren’t you supposed to be putting that into some kind of context?

            The one called Stalkers, whose eyes were so far apart that one began to imagine a third, intermediary eye straining to focus on either side of the bridge of his nose.  His collar was high, in the manner of some old soviet functionary.  It made his bulging, top-heavy head only seem all the more unstable, which was probably an accurate reflection of its contents as well.

            But I don’t mean to imply that any of us on the commission were any better off.  It’s funny, isn’t it, how, when you’re growing up, and don’t yet realize that you’re insane, how you imagine what it’s like to be insane, because you equate being sane, or normal, with a checklist of rational beliefs and a more or less homogenously presented viewpoint on the world’s appearance, and yet you can no more imagine what it’s like to be… sane… than you can…

            “There, there,” Raymond attempted both to console Mr. Buttermonk and to belittle his dramatic emotions.  “Gentlemen,” he addressed the others around the table, looking up at each of them, “I really don’t see how we’re going to get through all of our business today unless we stop all of this intruding on each other’s thoughts and futures.” 

            “And pasts,” another Raymond, slightly to the left and strangely shiny, added in the exact pause, or interval, in which Fawn Dogwood would have said something, only she wasn’t on the commission.

Dehydrated Cabbage Bombardment, My Partner’s Parsley is Bartered

            “I’m going to show you something,” Ravenstein called to the Stork from the illuminated doorway.  “Come on.”  He jerked his beak down the hall.  The stork rose from his idlework and followed.

            “God know you haven’t earned this,” Ravenstein continued, as the two ambled down a plywood ductwork that seemed to ramble over and through several fields and small, backyard farms, until they arrived at Quail You’d Man, a commercial establishment dedicated to the promotion of the color green and a style of interior decoration taken directly from the stately penthouse of Henry Cabot Henhouse III.

            “But I digress,” Ravenstein croaked.  He croaked in such a funny sort of way that even he seemed tickled by it.  He began to laugh a little and the feeling was conveyed, as if by telepathy, to the stork that it was OK to laugh at this, together they would laugh, but

            the stork did not laugh.

            Sometime later Ravenstein introduced the Stork to Clumberja, a young lady who ran the boutique at Quail You’d Man.  She sized the stork up immediately.  Wisely waiting until Ravenstein was resting at the cosmetics counter, Clumberja whispered to the Stork,

            “Isn’t that costume hot?”

            The Stork afforded himself the old German trick of staring into the other person’s eyes before answering.

            “I don’t really have a choice anymore,” he told this strange young girl.

            The Stork wasn’t so quick to catch on that Quail You’d Man offered one the opportunity of passing the time in an environment (a whole life experience mall some called it) that was designed for those outraged by nature itself.

            “A novel about a man obsessed with fame, in a world where there is no more fame—and the truly famous live lives of fear and degradation.”

            Clumberja laughed, sort of crushing the Stork’s hand-written manuscript to her chest in a way that the Stork found a little too indicative of a less-than-properly respectful of other people’s property attitude.

            “Don’t crush my book like that,” the chided with just the right amount of room temperature to take the spiralbound notebook away from her without a “tussle.”

            “Go on, take it,” Clumberja snapped, shoving the notebook at him, but then snatching it back with the words, “No, wait, I want to read it.”

            “I want you to read it,” the Stork insisted, “Only don’t crumple it up.”

            Clumberja did not respond.  She was rediscovering her place in the novel.  She found it while the Stork’s eyes jumped around the room.  It was her teenage (she was nineteen, soon to be twenty) bedroom.  Big fluffy bed on which they sat, floor almost as cozy as the bed, the corners of the room made indistinct by an accumulation of the corporate and the individual.

            “Well, as much of one as remained after discounting the corporate,” Clumberja read aloud.  She had an accent that the Stork couldn’t place.  He later found out she was from Germany.

            “Go on,” the Stork urged.  He liked to hear her read.

            “My thoughts,” she read, “Echoed in the manuscript,” oh, this is silly, she thought, putting the notebook aside, face down.

            “What is it?” the Stork asked.

            “This isn’t one of those mindfuck books is it?” she demanded.

            “No, no, I’m too lazy for that,” the Stork replied, rolling over and wondering what was in the girl’s refrigerator.

The Task of Registration is Not Limited to the Mingled Footpaths

            Stretch Gloworm Man was offered an honorary doctorate from Waxing Gibbous University.  Of course, they did request that he make a speech at the graduation ceremony.  Stretch didn’t want to make a speech, but, he shrewdly argued, if they allowed him to register as a regular student prior to the presentation of the doctorate, he would give them a speech both appropriate to the occasion and full of unique Stretch Gloworm substance.

            “Let him do it,” Hades, the capillary movement planning director, decided, pointing with a finger that had not done manual labor in years, connected to a hand that had not done manual labor in years, and so on, down to his thin little socks, and he took the responsibility for this decision onto himself, because it was so obviously the right thing to do, that he didn’t worry about whose name would be on what page of the encyclopedia twenty-five years from now.

            “OK,” Junior Graft, another member of the planning department, although to which arm of that symbiote remains to be seen, acknowledged all this and much more.  He slapped a rolled-copy of today’s Rough and Tumble (the college newspaper) against his thigh and headed out to initiate these decisions.  Once he was gone Hades made a face, quite unexpectedly, at Fawn Dogwood, who sat on a chair against the wall, waiting.  She smiled in exchange, not knowing exactly what the face indicated.  Apparently it was some kind of humorous gesture, as there could be little else that a display of baboon-like gawping might appeal to.

            “He’s a jock,” Hades told Fawn, moving towards her.

            “Ah,” Fawn smiled again, rising to meet the much older man. 

            There were rumors that Hades had been a mercenary in Africa back in the 1980’s.  These were true.  He observed Stretch Gloworm Man flying up to the convenient drive-in service window on the orbiting virtual invisible domo-cile.

He Shall Have His Heidigger Removed

            “I’m sorry, Torman, but the judge isn’t in this afternoon.”  Rebecca was the latest in a long line of young, pretty girls who had served as Judge Tankard’s receptionist.  In all of the judicial complex, it was still seen as a sign of great prestige to be picked for the job, though Tankard had been officially retired for over ten years.

            “Oh,” Torman started rummaging in his bag.  “I nearly forgot.  For you.”  He presented Rebecca with a fairly expensive candy bar, one from England and full of things like hazelnuts.

            “Thank you,” Rebecca smiled crookedly.  She put the gift away in the big drawer and turned back to Torman.  She had to laugh a little.  A little at Torman.  He was a strange one, alright.

            “Do you know where he’s at?” Torman demanded as fair recompense for the candy bar.

            “Yes.  And since you’re on the judge’s list of favorites, I’ll tell you: he’s at a meeting downtown.  That spiritualist club he’s involved with.”

            “Oh, the monthly dinner.”  Torman glanced at the window.  Outside was orange and red.  He was still confused by the time change.

            Rebecca nodded and started taking pencils from one cup, sorting them by length, and putting them into another cup.

            Torman paced back and forth, glancing up into one of those long, narrow photographs from a hundred years ago of the graduating class of some nurses’ school or military camp or something.  Torman suddenly hunted through the rows of faces.  The judge had shown him which one was the judge as a young man, but Torman seemed to have forgotten.  Was it this one?  This freckled kid?

            “Was there something you wanted?” Rebecca asked.

            “I need help, Rebecca.  I’ve been coming to this office for… over twenty years now.  I remember one receptionist here named Rita.  She was really something.  She was about my age, back then.  Now, I’m just an old man of no value to you—“

            “Not true.  You’re one of the judge’s favorites,” Rebecca interrupted.

            “Does he really have a list?”  Torman asked.  “Anyway, Rebecca, I want you to listen carefully.”

            Rebecca, who was determined to show that she did not disrespect Torman because of his age, sat up straighter and arched her small, pseudopod-like breasts outward.

            “I got to the fourth data collection station and was attacked by four tigers,” he told Rebecca.

            Rebecca scratched her forehead.  Or did she rub it?  Torman studied her eyes.  Sometimes eyes gave off signals as to people’s emotional states.  Torman couldn’t read anything.   He hoped he was getting through.

            “I wasn’t able to complete the route,” he erupted, emotional signals spilling out like a split grocery bag.  “I wasn’t able to complete the route.”

            “Because tigers attacked you.”

            “I know it sounds crazy, but—“

            “Where are your friends?  We heard there were three of you out there.”

            “You knew about it?” Torman’s face was agape with shock.

            Rebecca snatched up a piece of paper from the desktop.  She read aloud from it.

            “Torman and two other men were spotted trying to ram a wild tiger near data collection station #4.”

            “Trying to ram...?” Torman repeated.  Had he any emotional reserves left now that he had confessed his failure, he would probably have been furious.  Instead, he collapsed in a chair.  He stared at a staple on the floor next to one of Rebecca’s desk’s legs.  He suddenly realized, the charade is over.  I’m free if I want to be.

            “My friends are safe.  The tigers are safe.”

            Rebecca scratched the side of her face.

            Torman looked up at a framed map of the way things used to be.  Back in… whose grandfather’s lifetime?  Patience, in edible portions, will fall from the sky the day things are ever like that again.

            “The important thing, the most important thing,” he declared, “Is that I complete my route.  That is my purpose in life,” he added, with a pouncing gesture towards Rebecca to mitigate the seriousness of his assertion.  But Rebecca did not react.  She understood the value of purpose and fulfillment in life.

He Stole a Cheese Like a Moon

            Torman troubled no further with official policy.  He drove home to his parents house.  Shab and Grimmery were still at Grimmery’s house.

            “Torman!” Chet called to him from the pump room.

            Torman gasped.  He had forgotten all about his little brother.  For so long he had been the little brother, the last of three sons.  But then his parents had managed one more birth.  He was surprised the boy wasn’t retarded, the way women’s reproductive cells begin to rot after age forty.

            “Chet.”  Torman regarded his brother closely.  He was a fine-looking young man.  He took more after their mother.  That made it two and two, for Torman himself favored their mother.  Interesting development.

            “I’m going on an adventure, Chet,” Torman blurted out.  “I don’t know how much you know about my job, but—“

            “The tigers?” Chet’s eyes grew wide.

            Torman’s, however, narrowed.

            “How’d you know about that?” he demanded.

            “Dad receives the bulletins over the short wave.”

            “Jesus, does he still fool with that thing?” Torman glanced into the living room.  “Are they here?”

            “No,” Chet told him, “They play cards every Tuesday night over at Tom and Judy Arnett’s house.”

            Torman wished they were home.  He would have liked to have made some kind of contact with them before he headed out to face everything that he had to face.

            “What did Dad say about the tigers?” Torman asked his little brother.

            “He just said that you knew what you’re doing.” Chet examined Torman’s shoes for a moment.  “What are you doing here, by the way?”
            “I… came for supplies,” Torman was truthful; that is what he came for essentially.

            “Like what?”

            Torman opened the refrigerator.

            “Like this, for one thing,” he held aloft a circle of cheese.

            “Torman,” Chet sounded confused.  “Who are these other two guys?”

            “One more thing;” Torman put the cheese in his bag.  “Do we still have that long climbing rope?”

Alley Whine for the Application of Sophisticated Wings

            “This won’t do anything,” Hunkerbeck whispered to Anna.  Across the room the candidate was being fitted oil pressure wheel wings.

            “I’m talking to the Pilsner people,” Anna whispered back.

            “Really?” Hunkerbeck frowned.  His eyes searched among the coffee cups and napkins that covered his tiny desk.  Rented desk, he thought tangentially.

            “Why don’t you come with me?” Anna invited.  She thought it would be fun to work alongside Hunkerbeck over at the Pilsner campaign.  After all, none of these candidates was going anywhere.  The winning campaigns didn’t have people like Hunkerbeck and her.

            “No, I’ve got to stick it out.”  Hunkerbeck was thinking about his reputation.  He was trying to create one.  He stared at the crowd of staffers and engineers surrounding the candidate as the latter took his first experimental flaps.  Hunkerbeck joined in the cheering.  So did Anna.

            “Think about it,” she told him, rapping on his desk with her knuckles.  “I can put in a word for you.  I’m sure they’ll take you too.”

            The candidate, the former governor of Macklamona, had been warned that he might have to take his shirt off to get the wings properly fitted.  He was so pleased that that hadn’t been necessary.  Only the top two people on his staff (one of them was his wife Judith) knew about the cactus puncture scars across his chest.  He laughed delightedly as his pompadour collided with the ceiling.  He tried to think of a humorous quip, but couldn’t.

            “I think we’re about ready for the press, what do you think, Governor?” Samwise Snarly advised once they had the candidate back on two feet.

            “Uh, yes, I think so,” the former governor agreed, glancing around. 

            Hunkerbeck caught the candidate’s eye for a second.

            “But let’s do it downstairs,” he added, turning to Snarly.  “Hey, maybe I can fly down.”

            The winning design for the memorial sculpture was submitted by a twenty-one-year-old college student named Barlach Smith.  The sculpture, which, as Smith explained in the letter accompanying his design submission, depicted a bear emerging from a fog, was meant to memorialize the life and legacy of Tomer Kramer, the former governor of Macklamona.

            “But what does a bear emerging from a fog have to do with Governor Kramer?” one man asked.

            “Here’s my question,” a second interjected, “Where’s the bear?  Where’s the fog?  I can’t make anything out of this thing.”  He held the drawing of the design in his hands and comically turned it this way and that.

           

            “But how could there have been six of us?” Grimmery tried to puzzle it out.

            Shab was driving; he started to answer, but Torman interrupted.

            “There were multiples of each of us—“ he began.

            “Duplicates,” interrupted Torman.  “We were accompanied each by a duplicate of himself.”
            “We were.” Grimmery choked back a snicker.

            “You want to know why you don’t remember it.”

            “None of us do,” Shab jumped in, “Remember it, that is.”

            “Are we robots?” Grimmery’s nerves were not camouflaged by this burst of humor, a funny little expression passing over his face.

            Torman glanced at Shab, who returned the action.

            “I don’t think so,” Shab looked at Grimmery in the rear-view mirror.

            Torman threw himself heavily across the top of the seat and looked at Grimmery with a grin.

            “What else do you want to know?” he demanded in a silly hippopotamus voice.

How Could Mary Tyler Moore’s Generation Have Been So Profligate with the Decadence?

While you’re carving this into a Styrofoam rock or tree somewhere overlooking the impenetrable valley of snakes, I sat here accepting more and more indignities.  The heaped layers of reality, wheels within wheels, worlds within worlds.  When I was a child I had boldness.  I would penetrate these different worlds.  But now, one of the things that I have finally accepted, and accepted at great personal loss, is the reality of my existing place within a larger sociological system/structure.  When I was a child I would go on trips and see people who reminded me of people back home and I would say, “There’s only about fifty (or whatever) people in the world.  Everybody is just repeats of some basic type.”

           

Rugwa and His Muchachos

            “I’m not Mexican!” Rugwa would often bark at people who recognized him as the inspiration for the short-lived television show, “Rugwa and His Muchachos.”

            He had been thoroughly sickened by how they had portrayed him film after film.  Eventually, he would become so famous that suicide seemed the only way out.  But that was many years later; this was the Rugwa of the commercial licensing and celebrity likeness years.  He made good money signing off on film adaptations of his adventures.  These in turn led to the sale of posters and t-shirts and things and there, unfortunately, the items were often produced with a picture of the actor who portrayed him, instead of the man himself.

            Soak in the random dialogue, darling.

            “I tell you what I’ll do.”

            “OK.”

            “I’ll do as you ask.  I’ll put my affairs in your hands, I’ll let you guide my career. But in exchange I want one thing.”

            “What’s that?”

            “I want to see your breasts.  I want to see you with your shirt completely off.”

“Hey, it’s a prosthetic.”

The Tigers Prepare to Ambush the Healing Autocrat

            “I say we wait until we get a fifth tiger,” the stirrup-pants-wearing big cat advised his fellows yet again.

            “We’ll see, we’ll see,” Morzeck humored the other tiger.

            “Who is this ‘healing autocrat?’” the tiger in orthodontic headgear wanted explained.

            Morzeck glanced at the fourth and final member of the group, an older, slower tiger named Fred who looked an awful lot like William Frawley.

            “His name is Cyril Dick Mance,” Morzeck told Phosgene.  “Most likely his only companion will be his apprentice.  No information on the apprentice’s name.”

            The cat in the stirrup-pants was named Gule.  He offered to run to the next territory and fetch its tiger.

            “That won’t work and you know it,” Morzeck snapped.  He was getting tired of Gule’s nervousness.

            “Better to wait until more tigers are summoned in the same way we were,” Fred added.

            Gule slammed his tail against a tree.

            “That could take days,” he grumbled.

            “What are you worried about?” Phosgene asked him.  “The four of us can take care of this.”

            “There’ll be more to divide up afterwards too,” Morzeck reminded Gule.

            But Gule wasn’t worried about the distribution of edible parts.  He had heard stories about these “living saints.”

            “You want to be a saint?” Cyril Dick Mance addressed his apprentice.  “Be prepared for the darkness of indifference.  Why it’s dark, I don’t know, but it is slightly counteracted by the spark of hope.”

            “For god’s sake, give it a rest,” Mindy, a young woman in a long robe, begged the saint.

            “There appear to be a young woman with him in addition to the apprentice,” Phosgene whispered as he and the three others watched from atop a hill.

            “I told you we should get a fifth tiger,” Gule hissed.

            “I tell you what,” Fred rasped back.  “You go get another tiger and the three of us will take care of the three of them—without you.”

            Mance’s apprentice glanced here and there among the dense woods around them.  He could smell something, but the young woman’s presence was confusing the scent.

            The one known as Captain Briefly had been Cyril Dick Mance’s apprentice many years before.

            “During my time with Mance I was not allowed to use any kind of artificial grooming aids.  But, as you can see, I now indulge in liberal applications of Duncan’s Intestinal Slickness Pomade.”

            “Liberal!” thought Clomodall, eyes widening and hair standing on end.  He cautiously looked around at his companions to see if they had noticed the word.  They seemed not to have.  Well, he would speak to them about it later, in the van.

            “Yes,” Strassman acknowledged Captain Briefly’s testimonial and looked him over closely.  “It’s a complete cowboy look you’re going for, isn’t it?”

            “What with the bandanna and all,” added Dooflig’s Recorder.

            Briefly smiled.  Soon he would be part of a major corporation’s line of screen-based entertainment products.

A Man Finds Nothing But Hay in the Stall

            “What happened to the horse?” Captain Briefly demanded, throwing his arms out and kicking at the straw that covered the floor of the stall.

            Rugwa checked the number of the stall against the clipboard he carried.

            “Supposed to be a horse here,” he confirmed.

            Captain Briefly controlled his anger.  It wasn’t easy.  Despite years of practicing his “breathe-and-smile” technique, it was still an effort to keep from doing something destructive.  It seemed the world was in a conspiracy to thwart his every move.  First the doctors tell him that one puff—one puff!—of marijuana could kill him (or at the very least wreck his health to the point of complete unemployability), now the goddamned horse that was supposed to be here wasn’t here—Briefly took a deep breath and smiled.  He forced himself to laugh (even if only inwardly) at the absurdity of it.

            “Well,” he told Rugwa, “It’s a good joke on me.”

            “Do you think you are being punished for something?” Rugwa asked.  He tucked his clipboard into a leather satchel hanging from a length of cord about his neck, silently counting the remaining individually wrapped candies in the bottom thereof as he did.

            “It’s possible,” Briefly admitted.  “I have smoked pot while within the jurisdiction of an all-controlling authority that has no understanding of pot’s demands.”

            Rugwa, shorter than Briefly by the span of a hand and yet not a short man by almost anyone’s standards of height judgment, frowned.

            “The spirits are usually not so petty.  In fact, being an herb of the mystical allowance, pot is usually considered a sacrament,” he demurred.

            Briefly glanced out the window of the stall at the camels in the yard.

            “Well,” he sighed, turning around, “I did once fail to contradict this cat-robot-thing when it claimed that Mila Kunis is actually ugly.”

            “Ah,” Rugwa smiled and nodded.  “That’ll do it.”

            Bucket Ruhoy, who, without any formal training or social contact with anyone in the arts community, had established himself as a painter of some note, was walking across the fields of Champiosuma on the first pleasantly cool day in many months when he was verbally assaulted by a stranger.

            “You privileged asshole!” the man, whom Ruhoy had never seen before, bellowed at him.  The man was dressed in motorized trucking pants from Lahore’s Committee on the Future.  His skull came to a disturbing point just behind the crown, making headwear hard to find.

            “What will he do when it gets really cold?” Ruhoy later wondered.

            “These pants have microscopic prickles on the inside that inject opiates into my legs at calculated intervals,” the stranger, named Bronx F. Log, explained to a friend.

            “Does that help you walk faster after you’ve insulted someone?” the friend asked him.

            “I prefer to think that I am helping others recognize their own foibles,” Log mused dreamily.  Another dose of opiates had just entered his legstream.

            For Bucket Ruhoy, however, the encounter with Log had not been a teaching moment so much as an incentive to create what he hoped would be his masterpiece.

            “This will be the fulfillment of one of my deepest artistic desires,” he told himself as he fitted his pickelhaube onto his head.  Although incapable of exactly articulating what he planned to do, Ruhoy yet realized that planning was exactly what he wanted to avoid.

            “Say that again?” chuckled the friend of Bronx F. Log.

            “I’m going to make a glorious mess,” Ruhoy reiterated, much as one might declare one’s intention to buy some cheese.

           

A Man Foresees Himself Following His Host into the Drainpipe

            The walk up the hill to the commissioner’s house was a stone path through minutely detailed landscaping.  As Torman made his way among the precisely placed stones and around bizarre cacti up to the front door he imagined what the evening would be like.  After an awkward dinner of straitlaced conversation and headache-inducing restraint on Torman’s normal eating habits, the commissioner (Abraham Lingam) would invite Torman to join him in spying on the production of the new Rugwa movie.

            “They’re making another one?” Torman would whine.  Or maybe no: perhaps he should just express his doubt that any new production could match the classic films of the Morris Buchanan era.  Yes, say something mature, intelligent, and dispassionate.

            “Through here,” the commissioner would indicate the entrance to a large drainpipe left over from the days of the Civil War.  It would be uninviting: dark, muddy, filled with multi-legged microfauna.  Torman wouldn’t want to go inside, but he would, he just knew he would.  Judge Tankard had assured him that a favorable impression on the commissioner was vital to the struggle between Bucket Ruhoy and Asger Jorgdorf.

            “The one who gets the commission to paint the Andy Summers Memorial mural will be in a position to determine what art movement is dominant for the next twenty years,” the judge had told him.  “We must make certain that Jorgdorf, the proponent of Luxurianism, gets it.”

            Torman could not decide what would happen once they were in the pipe.  Would the commissioner try to scare him?  To make a pass at him?  Would Torman pick up some forgotten piece of metal from a hundred and fifty years before and crush his host’s skull?  The future was unclear.

            Of course, the flipside to being called a privileged asshole was knowing that, in truth, one was a “lucky bastard.”

            “Basically the same thing,” admitted Bucket Ruhoy in a moment of candor. “It’s all a matter of one’s self-perception, one’s knowledge of how one is perceived by others.”

            It came as no surprise, even to those who were opposed to his being awarded the mural job, that Ruhoy was the one chosen to do the mural for the Andy Summers memorial.

            “The only question is,” Ruhoy told himself as he drove out to the intended site of the memorial, “Should I incorporate my ideas for my next painting into the mural?  Should I, in essence, make the mural my masterpiece?”

            “I wasn’t a big fan of the Police,” the construction foreman told Ruhoy as he showed the latter around the immense pit that would contain the foundation for the structure.  “But I appreciate the fact that Andy Summers was ten years older than the other two guys.  Ten years older than Sting, who was the big star in that group.”  He looked at Ruhoy.  “I know what it’s like to get my big break just when I thought I was too old to make it.”

            The painter said nothing, but the foreman’s words had struck a chord with him.  As he drove back to the city, past the monuments to such musical icons as Bootsy Collins, Grant Hart, and Keiji Haino, he determined to eat a bowl of ramen noodles and watch Mystery Science Theater 3000 when he got home.

The Glow of My Sociological Comparison in the Mail

            As requested, I met with Clumberja in a secluded location.  We sat in chairs on the lawn of the Saint Rosenberger Chemistry Set.

            “How do you think the novel is going so far?” I began by asking.

            Clumberja, wearing a pajama-like suit made of black silk embroidered with red dragons, answered thoughtfully.  “Not bad,” she replied.  I later found out that she had taken one or more Quaaludes before our interview, so this thoughtfulness may have only been a perception on my part.  “But,” her voice was relaxed and slow.  I should have recognized the signs.  “Weren’t you going to intertwine the novel with the graphic novel that you’re concurrently doing?”

            “Yes.”  In the distance the rotors on the helicopter that had brought Clumberja to this place finally came to a stop.  “It’s just that I’m having a hard time introducing the cartoon characters into the text.  And,” I quickly added, forestalling Clumberja’s next words, “The idea of actually drawing the characters from the book is a daunting one.”

            “Well, let’s start with the characters from your graphic novel.  Who are they?”

            “There are four central characters: Tann Turnip; Kenner Grantig; Athena Cowl; and Vanderkeen.”

            “I’ve heard that they’re based on the main characters from Seinfeld.”

            “Well, I don’t know where you heard that, but, aside from their being three men and one woman, there is no similarity.”

            “If you say so,” Clumberja smiled.  Her lids were heavy.  She wasn’t all that great looking, but she was sexy enough, I guess.

            “Look,” I insisted, “Kramer never had a cat.”

            “OK.”

            “Vanderkeen’s got a cat.”

Point of Sterility in the Incarcerated Poolhouse

            In as much as a building can be said to be sentient, either through its similarity to a robot of sufficient intelligence or by virtue of its possession by some spirit from the Beyond, such a building may be subject to the laws and judicial system of a given country.  Thus was poolhouse #761, suspected of complicity in the Pipewalk Murders, uprooted from its place by the Frogmounts’ pool (itself the home of a sentient blob of polywater named Edwin) and moved into a police warehouse for questioning.

            “It can’t really be said to be ‘incarcerated’ then, can it?” journalist Heinz Fragrant challenged during a press conference with the band Twenty-Second Century Doors.

            “I’ve noticed that the peculiarity of one building inside another has gone unremarked upon by most of the press,” Windy McClain, singer for the band, countered.

            “Well,” the Chief of Police responded, “It really isn’t that much of a peculiarity.  We have had prefabricated office structures inside police hangars for years and, as far as I know, have always thought of them as separate buildings.”

            “Look at Spaceship Earth,” drummer Blonck threw in.

            Poolhouse #761 hadn’t been secured.  It was free to move about the warehouse.  It struck up a friendship with an old photomat booth that had been confiscated during a drug raid, but this led to nothing more than a stack of correspondence and an exchange of longing looks.

Out Captions the Bolt Sticking Up From the Floor

            “This is all that remains of the office complex that once occupied this floor,” Strassman pointed to a thick metal bolt sheared off about an inch above the concrete.  The members of the tour group looked intently at the bolt, some taking pictures, some glancing about, trying to imagine what it had been connected to.

            “I haven’t come all this way to stare at a bolt,” Captain Briefly announced.

            “I know, I know,” Strassman answered.  “If you’re so impatient, go ahead and check out that little building there.”

            The other members of the group watched as Captain Briefly walked across the litter-strewn floor to a small house inside the large room.

            “What’s in there?” one old man asked.

            “Captain Briefly is here on a sort of inspection,” explained Strassman.

            The Captain, already well known through the pages of Wonderchuck magazine, illustrated with thousands of cartoons each issue, could see that the little house had been recently installed.  The free samples killed hundreds during the course of the next two days.  As he sat down in a threadbare sausage he wondered if Rugwa might be useful in this situation.

            Some called them mothbats, while others called them batmoths.

A Man Assumes the Brightest Gantry with Echoes

            “Who is this man?” Captain Briefly asked, pointing to the painting’s central figure. 

            “Why, it’s me,” Bucket Ruhoy told the captain with a laugh.

            Briefly wrinkled his brows up like a wet towel kicked into the corner of a hotel bathroom.

            “It doesn’t look anything like you,” he complained.

            “You all-American dope,” Ruhoy snarled back, but in a friendly way.  Very friendly, like joshing with someone you’ve known for thirty-five years.  “It’s just a stand-in for me.  You don’t really think I’m a good enough, or patient enough, painter to make a realistic-looking image of myself, do you?”

            Across the room Asger Jorgdorf frowned.

            “I’m a real painter,” he told his circle of companions.  “Look at that idiot.  You tell him, ‘paint this bowl of fruit,’ and he paints a cartoon.  All because ‘the camera has rendered accurate depiction redundant.’  Hmph!”  He swallowed a hearty measure of whiskey, adding droplets of ornamentation to his beard.   

            “Look at that beard,” Rugwa, standing on the gantry (or catwalk, if you prefer) overlooking the room, muttered to his recently acquired (by way of a children’s animated adaptation of his character) sidekick, Pfrango, a robotic snail puppet dressed as a puma.

            “I’d like to try some of that whiskey,” Pfrango mentioned, but his desires were swamped in the lights and sounds that now filled the large room, adding many dimensions of sensation to the art on display, even as financial restrictions demanded that Bucket Ruhoy get two paintings out of each canvas, one as labor-intensive as he could summon the strength for, and the other a sloppy, gestural thing that was what he really longed to do.

            “He’ll never get to illustrate the cover of a Rugwa novel,” Jorgdorf promised those at his table near the disused stage.

            Up on the gantry the subject of just such a novel waved wildly, trying to get Captain Briefly’s attention.

A Man Struggles with the Renewal of His Pawnbooster

            “You’ve introduced me to so many concepts,” Torman, in his capacity as interviewer for Katsumi Chagrin (the drinkable lotion of screen-based entertainment legacies!), began, speaking to Sire Moot and his old friend Schiffwerfer.  “I hesitate to inquire about one more, but what is a pawnbooster?  I’ve heard of a pawnbroker, but never a pawnbooster.”

            Sire Moot and Schiffwerfer, both veterans of the old Javanese Talking Anus, looked at each other, trying to decide which one should speak first.  They laughed as old friends do, but, in the end, it was Schiffwerfer, by far the more famous of the two, who took the first crack at an explanation.

            “I knew that Lost Motorcycle Trading Cards was just a comic strip,” Sheldon Bathrat, a proponent of the mothbat as opposed to the batmoth, wore plaid slacks to show solidarity with the preppies of his youth, “But, for me, it was more a graphic novel.  I hope I haven’t confused you.”

            Torman nodded heavily in understanding.

            “I always identified with Tann Turnip,” he told the other man.

            “You would;” Schiffwerfer commented with a sour mouth, “Each of you being the leading protagonist of a tightly knit group of heroic characters.”

            Sire Moot turned to his old friend.

            “You see Tann Turnip as the leading protagonist of the strip?”

            “It’s a graphic novel,” insisted Sheldon Bathrat.

            “I like those pants,” Torman told him.

            “There was a scene in Lost Motorcycle Trading Cards where Tann Turnip bought a whole preppie outfit,” Sire Moot remembered.  As the series of encounters could be considered a comic book as well, the specter of John Glashan in what the British still so quaintly call trousers began to loom about them like a nuclear shadow burned onto the wall of the old room.

            “It’s more a series of hilarious one-act plays.  He wrote a series of hilarious one-act plays.”

            They all do, when they’re not writing novels and collecting prizes, living free, owing nothing because they pawned their actual debt, do you see?

Video Drydock for the Chloromorphus

            Eventually, the Chloromorphus, a large, multi-legged beast with a tiny independent record store located in the root of the tail, came to see me.  I was working on a visualization of the passage from Liverpool to Hamburg and hadn’t expected to be called upon so soon.

            “You busy?” the Chloromorphus asked from my office doorway.

            “Yes,” I laughed, throwing down my pen.  “Come on in.”

            The beast squeezed his mountainous body through the door and found a seat on an assemblage of sofas, couches, and studio beds under the shampoo monument.  He seemed to sit down with both relief and resignation, giving off a wave of weariness that I could understand like a language of white noise.

            “You OK?” I asked him.  He later told me that he preferred to be called Scarborough, after the rain blister impresario of the late 1940’s, but I continued to refer to him as the Chloromorphus in my letters to the president.

            “No,” he sighed, giving me a crooked smile of reassurance.  He wasn’t going to drown me in self-pity apparently, no matter what his problems.

            “Well, what is it?”  Was I a little rude?  A little impatient?   Maybe.  But I had things to do; I was strung out on green tea and poppy juice; I hadn’t shit in days, or something like that.

            “Lance,” he said to me, “I don’t want to be in the film.” 

            I had to think for a minute.  What film?

            “Oh, yeah, yeah, the film,” I suddenly remembered.  “You don’t want to be in it?”

            “That’s what I said.”

            “Now don’t get nasty and hateful—“

            “I’m not.”

            “—just tell me what’s going on.”

            “I don’t want to be in the film.”

            “OK.  That’s fine,” I agreed.  “What do you want to do?”

            “I want to kill myself,” he said to the Kraftwerk poster on the wall to his left.

            I didn’t say anything.  I scratched my forehead.  It didn’t matter to me if he killed himself.  If he did, I’d put him in the film anyway, whether I was making a film or not.

            “No, I guess not… right now anyway.  Is that going to mess you up?  If I back out of the film?”

            “I didn’t know you were going to be in it.”  I glanced at the cartoon I’d been drawing.  A box of roosters spitting out VHS tapes, each of the latter a Tom Cruise repudiation.

            The Chloromorphus, Scarborough, gaped at me.

            “You said you—“

            “I know, I know, I’m just fooling.”  I turned my attention back to the beast.  “Actually, though, I had intended to use you for the soundtrack, so you wouldn’t have been ‘onscreen,’” I made quotation marks with my fingers, “all that much.”

            “Oh.”  He looked to his right, where the cookies grew.

            “But it’s OK,” I insisted.  “You haven’t messed me up.  The only… change is that, by coming here, you’ve advanced my time table by a couple of pages.”

            “Advanced it?” he wondered.

            I didn’t explain.  A jumble of videocassettes and a tangle of stubbled, disembodied legs and the film was the book and the book was the film and I just didn’t care anymore, as evidenced by this story and my own appearance in it.  But (and) that’s a good thing.

Overt Texan Symbology in the Trailing Edge of the Pallet

            I noticed a couple of the guys from farbendiktat examining a piece of board hanging from a pallet of wax beans.  Probably the only vegetables in the world that I can’t stomach are wax beans.  These were in cans, the cans in cardboard flats, the flats shrink-wrapped; the whole array, as I say, on a pallet.  This piece of board hung from the pallet like some weird growth on the neck of an old woman.

            “What are they?” the blond guy from farbendiktat (one of the operations here at the Redundancy) asked his friend, pointing at something on the board.

            “Scientists have attempted to combine human and chimp DNA in surrogate mother experiments,” I said, stepping forward and giving in, as usual, to the temptation to act like a know-it-all.

            The blond guy and his companion, a brown-haired guy, looked up from their hunched-over positions.  Their eyes registered my approach much as a couple of antelopes at a watering hole would a baboon: non-threatening, but outside their species.  They turned back to the board.

            “It looks like those little space age cowboy pictures on the inside of the second Dwight Yoakum album,” the brown-haired guy decided.

            I took a look.  Indeed, there was some superficial similarity to the images he had mentioned.  I had seen them.  I owned the album.  However, these little figures were not space age cowboys, but cactus people; two-headed truckers; and wild-eyed executives in boots, each seared into the wood as if with a branding iron.

            “They put me in mind of Texas,” I judged with the finality of Ragnarök. 

            The blond guy glanced at me.

            “Do they eat wax beans in Texas?” he asked, returning to the pallet, its contents, the mystery before him just as a dozen supervisors came clawing around the corner, scattering our observations and sending us back into the toil and attention demanded by the Redundancy.

            I began to plot my escape, but for now I must continue to endure.

All References in the Text to Gull’s Pookie Have Been Highlighted

            Having written several books, I felt qualified to tell Clumberja exactly what was wrong with her novel.

            “But it’s not finished yet,” she objected.

            “It doesn’t matter.  Knowing who killed the mayor’s dog and why won’t change my opinion of its fundamental flaws.”

            She was nineteen or twenty, somewhere in there.  This was her first serious attempt at writing a book.  I thought the title was good: Her Womanly Farts.  But the substance of it, political corruption and moral decay in a small rural town, was not to my taste. 

            “Let me ask you a question,” she challenged. “Have any of your books been published?  By a real publisher?”

            “Of course not,” I snapped.  “I’m an underground artist: my work is passed from hand to hand.  Only a small group of people know about it.”

            “That’s my point,” Clumberja argued.  “You’re a completely different kind of writer.”

            “Not so different as you think.”

            “Your work is totally incomprehensible, while mine is deliberately more mainstream in order to reach as many people as possible, to effect change.”

            “Clumberja,” I chuckled at her delusions.  “If only that was true.  You don’t know how I long to write incomprehensible nonsense.   I’m afflicted with a staggering amount of normality.  It’s horrible,” I added violently, wrenching my body to the side as my distress mastered me once again.

            “I thought you longed to be part of a ‘scene,’” I heard the young woman say to me from far away, as I stared into an impenetrable world of hip silliness that seemed buried in the swirls of the wood paneling.

            “Lance?” she tried to get my attention.  “Gull’s Pookie?  Hello?  What was that?”

            I put on my Paul McCartney face and turned back to Clumberja.  I wasn’t in the mood now, but, like a true men’s adventure series professional, I highlighted the similarities (or differences) between her novel and this Gull’s Pookie thing she had mentioned.

            “First of all,” I began, “You’ve got to understand that the mayor’s dog entered the vending machine business before related dynastic elements had been codified.”

            “Codified by whom?” demanded Spanish Jackson, who had been listening in from his perch on the back of a giant snail.  This snail was the same one that appeared on the cover of Rugwa the Bitter, heading up a delegation of giant snails intent on keeping Gull’s Pookie free of men’s adventure series like The Boxwatcher, The Cangrabber, and The Gun Baker.

            “Most likely by Bronto Tonsil, the mayor of Gull’s Pookie,” I theorized later over drinks at the cabin.

            Spanish Jackson nodded, jotting down notes on the back of a banana.

            “I think Rugwa’s sidekick Pfrango should hang out with Tonsil’s dog,” he suggested.

            “I prefer to continue in the tradition of extended narrative,” Clumberja announced, rapping on the table and leaving me to work in something like an abstract mosaic.

           

Now, that’s all you’re going to get from me, banana back.

A Man Decalcifies a Crude Date for the Perihelion

Detective Matriarch speaks:

            “As the date had been sent anonymously to the lab there was no way of verifying the authenticity of the enclosed claims that it had been found in the vicinity of the Salton Sea.”

            “I want something clarified before we go any further,” Nano the Clown piped up from his seat in the florist’s luggage.  “Are we talking about an actual date here, the kind you eat?”

            “Of course,” Matriarch sounded peeved, but then he often did.  “You don’t think they decalcified a date on the calendar, do you?”

            “Or a date with Marilyn Monroe?” added Zoominor with a laugh.

            Matriarch frown at his assistant’s impertinence.  He remembered that first issue of Playboy.  A host of bald people, each one’s brown head garnished with at least one piece of gold jewelry, entering the bridal chamber with threads of crimson silk.

            “Or was it satin?” Nano the Clown wondered.  “What’s the difference?”

            “Who are you really?” Matriarch stared closely at the lines of a manly face beneath the greasepaint.

            “Could he be a member of Kiss?” Zoominor posited.

            The great detective ignored the younger man, whose ovipositor was tucked tightly into a woolen sock knitted expressly for the purpose of controlling the decalcifying process.

            “Otherwise,” explained the knitters’ union president, “You could have a situation like the one you have today, where a nothing band like Wolf Eyes,” he said the name with disdain, his eyes rolling like a ball of yarn, only there were two of them, “Can usurp the place in the heart of a true Rock ‘n’ Roll fan’s heart of a great band, living legends, like—“

            He was interrupted by the arrival of Nano the Clown singing “Heaven’s on Fire” and brandishing a chart showing the exact position of the sun on August 5, 1962.

A Henchman Retains His Oracular Spangle for the Near Term

            “Fingers” Singapore, the one in the red mohair suit with the skinny black tie, was proud of the talking brooch he wore to the bishop’s party.  His mother, who ran with the Gottlob Mob, as you may recall, had found it in the pocket of an elderly fishperson passed out on the floor of a restroom in some booger-besmirched Chinese buffet up in Gainesville.

            “The clientele of this place was overwhelmingly Latino, so much so that there were bottles of Mexican hot sauce on the table,” Hatman related the tale to his accomplice, Ray, as the two sat listening to one of the world’s really great accordionists, Recognizably Feathered.

            “My only regret,” Ray commented, as the feelings of warmth and beard engendered by his presence there, in that place, among such druggy, beardy presences began to seep into even the remotest ends of his elbows and where his wings would have been connected had he had wings.  Strangely enough, perhaps unconsciously influenced by such musings, Recognizably Feathered began playing the old Tony Bennett song, “Bandage Up My Wings.”  His sweaty smile was evidence of his delight at having stumbled into this interpretation.

            “I thought Frank Sinatra sang this,” the bishop (choose one of over 1,000 synonyms for “said”) to the talking brooch.

            “Oh, you think Frank Sinatra sang everything,” the brooch retorted.  Its voice was reminiscent of David Thewlis Warner in a brown suit, but imitated by some other, cheaper David.  “I bet you didn’t know that Sinatra didn’t sing ‘The Editing Makes It Good.’”

            Across the table “Fingers” Singapore guffawed lightly. “Frank Sinatra and me have the same initials,” he told everyone.

Two Women Take the Rector’s Anus Back to the Farm

            The bishop, long a friend of the annual pumpkin oncology, was equally a friend (though not without misgivings due to certain unresolved issues regarding the shape of the henhouse) of the rector, whose band, Missing Anus, was named in tribute to the late viceroy.  The farm, to which our illustration refers with such blueprint-like accuracy, was home to several typical Fisher Price barnyard playset animals.  These creatures, clad in motley and sporting a spool, gathered about the bishop as he passed through.

            “I’m looking for t-shirts with images that reflect my current obsession with noise music,” he told them.  “Does anyone know where I can find something like that?”

            Chickens looked at donkeys, freemasons looked at pincushions, but no one seemed to have an answer to the bishop’s query.

            “Nazi imagery?” one of them (I think it was a puma, but I can’t be sure) needed clarification.

            “Could be, could be,” the bishop admitted, though he was quick to point out that, aside from his preference for the shirts to be brown or black, he wanted nothing overt.  “A numbered skull, or some fusion of teeth and feathers, something like that.”

            Over the hills outside the circumference of the farm two women rolled a large pink and brown anus.  One of them complained to the other, “If only this thing was perfectly round.  These ridges and indentations make it hard to roll.”

            “Well,” replied her companion, the one with the big red hair, “We can take a break. Until the bishop leaves the farm we can’t go down there with this thing anyway.”

            The one with the straight blond hair nodded, taking a seat on a milk crate.  “Good thing we brought gloves,” she said.

            “And condoms,” added the other.

Hold Obscurathon Funnelcake Tightly at Home

            Recently at a writers’ conference in the Marmelade Duchy of Rabbit’s Toll I stood outside the venue where those invited to the conference were reading their latest stories about the emptiness of all existence and discussing ways of incorporating morality into fiction and, as I say, I was standing outside passing out copies of my latest piece, “Hold Obscurathon Funnelcake Tightly at Home,” illustrated on the opposite side with a picture of the King of All Potato Chips hitting Scrappy-Doo on the head with a mightly redwood plucked from the earth like a fallen arrow.  Of course I had more than one person tell me that it didn’t look like Scrappy-Doo at all and, as by this point I was sick of explaining that that was the point, I stuffed all the remaining copies of the “story” into an envelope and mailed them the City of Portland at large, and ambled into a thing very much like a konditorei and sat down.

            “What is ‘obscurathon funnelcake’ anyway?” Torman asked.  He had joined me at the tiny table (just to annoy me, I’m sure) and now he asked me this thing.

            “I will answer in the literary equivalent of noise music,” I told him, cutting into my obscurathon funnelcake with a fork.  This fork, by the way, accompanied me back home to Neoflavor.  Various figures integral to the production of soup in our imperial cheesery rose from the discarded chewing gum mound at the decorative end of the fork, necessarily balancing the inedible confection at the pointy end.  All of this, I snarled in Torman’s face, held tightly at home because, in truth, I have no business mingling among other writers.

Page to Jar the Harrowing Wheels that Recapture the Attention of My Horse

You can listen to some black ambient music while you read this if you want.

            “Or you can listen to a CD of ‘spooky’ Halloween sounds,” thought Cheap Victor, who was now my horse.  As we rode through the Bekonkeral Forest on our way to a meeting with a couple of characters from later in the book, his own headphones were occupied by an album’s worth of unreleased Jimmy Page demos featuring Irene Aebi on vocals and Steve Gadd on drums.  “If only the will had been there to continue:” mused Cheap Victor, “Vital work might yet have been produced.”

            The forest was a penumbrous thicket of milkteeth and mallowpaste; hence the necessity of such music as I have suggested.  Sounds like those of voices heard through plaster walls seemed to come from all around, but I knew it was just a combination of giant insects and the friction of furry leaves.  The path through the forest was wide enough for an automobile.  Good thing, because Cheap Victor and I were riding in an automobile.  He steered for a while and then I would, exchanging control of the vehicle through a complex system of pulleys and spools added to the car’s mechanism by a family of Heineken skunks I knew.  My horse reminded me that this violated the warranty, but do you think I cared?  I didn’t care when the fellows at the library mocked my reluctance to ride my horse and of course I coded Morse on my spores abundantly sprinkled throughout the forced pores.  Sure, this made traveling through this monochrome jungle all the more of a slog, but I knew that Cheap Victor wouldn’t mind.

            “A customized hose rises from the transmission and collects my droppings,” Cheap Victor later explained at the meeting with Wink and Davenport.  “For, as you probably know, being a horse I can’t control my bowel movements.”

            Wink looked at Davenport.

            “Bowel movements,” he repeated meaningfully.

            “Bowel movements,” Davenport affirmed.

The Wilderness Receiver is a Hat Chewing Brace

            “What fine words you use,” Old Scump, the last of the men of weathered rock and cactus, praised Ted Yabbo as they sat in his cabin one desert evening in late fall.

            “Soon the winter will cover this land like a flag draping the coffin of God Himself,” Old Scump remarked.  His beard was home to one of the last colonies of the Pimiento People, who had once sat among the Iroquois and nodded politely.

            Ted Yabbo, our nation’s leading advocate for environmental spirituality, secretly wrote down the old man’s words on a scrap of handmade paper.  He would put them into the mouth of some character eventually, or perhaps have them carved into the tailgate of his steam-driven pickup truck.  Oh, how he longed to kill.

            “I can’t read myself, you know,” Old Scump told the writer, “But the Hendersons’ girl comes by every so often to see if I’ve turned into mulch yet.  She’s read me a good bit of your novel…” he paused, trying to recollect the title of the book.

            “Which one?” Yabbo asked.  “Teach the Burro to Dance or The Puma Is a Deceiver?”

            Old Scump shook his head.  Many Pimiento People spilled their drinks.  “It’s the one,” he recalled, “Where the two men go into the old drainpipe?” He looked at Yabbo questioningly, vitamin deficiencies evident in every wen and buboe.

            “You’re thinking of—“ Yabbo started to explain, but the alcohol mist that preceded the arrival of authority in all its irrigatory ignorance sent him into a panic.

            “We’ve got to get out of here!” he insisted, jumping to his feet and sending the disused TV set that served him as a chair flying into an imaginary igloo.

            “Nowhere to go,” Old Scump reminded his guest.  “Death comes in many forms; as many as Mother Moon may matriculate moreover mostly maudlin.”

            Yabbo wrote the old man’s natural frontier poetry down on a piece of calico, certain that another winter would finish this bipedal page of history off.

Sculpture of Two Men Next to a Film Camera on a Tripod

            Mogden and Mr. Productplacement wandered through the retrospective exhibition of Asger Jorgdorf’s sculpture, each with a different apprehension: the former liked almost all of it, the latter found little that he cared for.

            “What about this one?” Mogden asked his friend as they stood before a piece in the last of the rooms containing the exhibition.

            Mr. Productplacement, a large, lumpy man with glasses shaped like a cat sleeping on a phone and a beard ready to frighten the cat away, answered the phone with a nod and an outthrust lower lip.

            “Yeah,” he expressed approval.  “I like this one.”

            Mogden sighed.

            “Well, at least we agree on something.”

            “Do you think it’s the subject matter?” Mr. Produceplectrum wondered.

            “Two men and an old-fashioned film camera?” Mogden described the piece.

            “Is that what it is?”

            “Sure.”

            “What’s the title?”

            Mogden looked around, found the white sticker assigned to the piece.  “National Jive Bait and Jewelry,” he read aloud.

            Mr. Prolactinplacard frowned.  “Well, that could mean anything,” he objected.

            “I think it’s pretty obvious,” Mogden replied, gesturing at the sculpture, which was a green bronze about six feet tall evidently cast from an assemblage of household items like brooms, buckets, toasters, and tea kettles.

            “I suppose so,” Protracted Mister Plup relented.  “It’s just that: don’t you think the ‘film camera’ looks like it could be another being, a three-legged creature, an even more heavily abstracted companion to the other two?”

            “I thought you liked it.”

            “I do,” the big, round man assured his old friend.  “I’ll tell you this: it’s the best piece in here.”

            Mogden said nothing in reply to this.  He had liked the statue of the conjoined sloths sharing a hamburger far more.

            The old Korean woman serving as docent in this section of the museum stepped forward at this point.

            “Do you think that National Jive Bait and Jewelry is the name of the movie they are filming?” she asked Mogden and Mr. Placementproduct.

            Mogden glanced up at his friend.

            “Now that’s a good question,” he admitted.  “Why do you think this piece is called National Jive Bait and Jewelry?”

            Mr. Plateletductwork, who didn’t like the old Korean woman intruding on their conversation, put forth an alternative question.

            “I think a better question is why, of all the sculpture in this retrospective of Asger Jorgdorf’s work, this is the only one really that you and I both like.”

            Mogden smiled.  “Perhaps we see ourselves as the two men in the sculpture,” he replied, turning to the old lady, trying to negate some of his friend’s rudeness.

            “And she’s the camera?” Mr. Progrockpuptent jerked his head toward the docent.

            “Oh no,” she denied it.  “That wouldn’t work.  I don’t have a third leg.”

The Ape-Man’s Essays

            Strep Toccakus, the only surviving individual from Stalin’s infamous “ape-man” breeding program, had a productive, though much lesser known, second career as an essayist.  Although created to be a mindless killing machine, one of the first of a theoretical army of inhumanly strong, but unquestioningly obedient ape-man soldiers, Toccakus turned out to be rather gentle, a disappointment to the paranoiacs in the Kremlin, and, as amply evidenced in the newly published Collected Essay of Strep Toccakus, far from being the simple-minded half-man envisioned by Soviet scientists, rather a thoughtful and intuitive observer of life both human and “other.”

            His adoptive father, Lem Roberbalski, a test tube washer at the lab in Phlebotkin where Toccakus was born, raised the young ape-man in his own home after the latter proved wholly inept at any of the basic tasks of warfare demanded of him by the Stalinist regime.  It is he that inculcated the qualities of thrift and simplicity in his ward that are displayed in the first essay in the book, “Toilet Paper.”  In this essay, written in 1958, the year after Stalin was killed by two-headed pig-men employed as the dictator’s personal bodyguards, Toccakus realizes that “toilet paper keeps your hands from getting shit on them.”  He also asks himself why we don’t just use gloves to wipe our backsides with, but then, with keen insight, answers his own question: the gloves would then need to be washed.

            Dr. Bulldark Omertang of the University of Felth has written a luminous introduction to the collection.  He has spent the last twenty years documenting the various writings of all nine ape-men born in the Phlebotkin facility.  “Only Toccakus,” he concludes, “Had any real feeling for the essay form… while (other ape-men such as) Smylyakov and Ragnariffic excelled at long-form fictional narrative.”

            In his pursuit of the full truth behind the literary activities of the ape-men Dr. Omertang has found himself in some strange places.  In the fall of 1998, at the suggestion of a cab driver in Glimsk, he visited the attic of a former tire patching business.  There in a corner, beneath a crudely installed bat coop, he discovered a box of nesting dolls made from eggs of the now-extinct lumbago bird.  With trembling hands the retired economist drew one doll after another, each apparently a portrait of one of the greats of South American literature, from inside the previous one, until finally he arrived at a naively rendered caricature of what he assumed was Julio Cortázar.  Pressing a recessed button on the top of the doll, Omertang released a spring-loaded word balloon that read, “Even monkeys masturbate.”  Try as he would, however, he was unable to find the source of this quote in any of Cortázar’s considerable ouvre. 

The Intended Was Stamped Along With the Admission

            As I said before, the elderly railroad man considered the new wigs far too informal.  He waited until lunch for Brown Allen to cut what until then had only been a cigar, but, what with his grandson’s noise generator acting up (“showing its age,” he joked to a cyclist down at the parasite house) and the thin edge of redemption revealed like yellowed lime peelings through his own snapping fingers, started to think that the miswak was just a gimmick, yet another deception arranged to frighten him into some rainbow-patterned afro like a drunken Kink.

            “Showing its age,” he joked again, this time to an ambulatory vending machine out near Brutal Bobkin’s thrombosis of the downs.  He held up his hands to emphasize the irony (was it irony?  He was never quite sure).

            Dispensing sweaty malignancy along with tiny bags of corn chips, the machine, whose name was Corporelli, replaced the fiber on a cap of fours and gave the elderly railroad man a look.

            “What’s your name?” it asked in a series of comic automobile honkings from even before this locomotive lounger’s time.

            “No time for that now!” Captain Briefly interrupted.  His sanity and cigar-cutter-like presence made us all smile and breathe with recognizable breathiness and listen for the sounds of the vacuum cleaner deep in the mix and expect the smell of clean carpet to rise up and obliterate that corn chip bad foot odor similarity making us gag.  We all looked to the Captain like children at a cup of hot black coffee.

            “Repair our noise generators!” we seemed to cry, if cry we did, for Captain Briefly certainly did not.  He was some kind of cowboy.

            “Is your supervisor here?” he demanded in tones of wrung gingham and horse blanket surprise.

Parsec and Partial Swastika

            After the schism the remaining members of the Disposal Greed Collective put all their money into the construction of a spaceship that would take them to the molecular dung comb.  Just before leaving the earth their leader, little Cormig, gave one last interview.  Once again, to his intense irritation, he had to explain how the swastika, an ancient sun symbol, differed from what the Nazis referred to as the hakenkreuz.  And once again, he had to explain his organization’s use of the former, even if in altered form.  He managed to describe their destination and to urge the other disaffected residents of the planet to join them there before the countdown began and the interview had to be terminated.

            “Thank god that’s over,” little Cormig swore as he entered the spaceship and the hatch was sealed behind him.

            “You know,” Ocean Bob remarked, “I’ve just now realized we’re never coming back.”

            “Strap yourselves in,” a voice, probably automated, ordered from a loudspeaker box, wood grained and fronted with gold-flecked nylon mesh.

            Rather than blasting straight up like some crude NASA-era rocket, the spaceship, named The Lucky Ovule after one of the collective’s sacred texts, flew like a conventional aircraft, rising higher and higher until it entered space.

            “Why didn’t anyone think of this sooner?” wondered Bakshi’s mom; she had so recently joined the group that she had no direct knowledge of the schism that had left 75% of the collective’s membership back on earth.  Most of those who had quit had formed the Wax Bean Appreciation Society.  Others drifted into solitary hobbies like peeing on the toilet seat or working for the post office.

            Little Cormig thumbed through a magazine for most of the trip.  The pictures made him think of the music of the White Suns or My Bloody Valentine, “only heavier and more jagged,” he nearly salivated.  “And the text—“ he continued, drawing Ned and Oburger into his extravehicular enthusiasm, “—what little there is of it—is just gibberish mostly, at least when read in conjunction with the incongruous imagery.  For example: look at this picture—it’s a collage of hippopotamus people and fin de siècle architecture and someone’s refrigerator juvenilia; both scholastic exteriors and interior depictions—and here, printed crossways, crookedly, is the phrase, ‘we’re going to need a LOT of ice;’ I mean, what does it mean?  Is it a reference to some rednecks trying to keep a body preserved in the back of their pickup truck in the middle of the night, the legacy of a hunting accident—anything is possible.”

            “I’d like something with a little more text, relatively speaking,” Ned made it known.

            “You got that too,” little Cormig enthused.  “There are supplementals, addenda…”

            Oburger, saintly and sublime in his robes of polished oak, asked little Cormig for the name of the magazine.

The Futility of the Lion’s Hooded Sweatshirt

Intermediate ideas: The Wire (magazine), noise music/noise rock, Wolf Eyes, Nautical Almanac, Controlled Bleeding, prose poems, poppy seed juice, Norm Macdonald, dress all in black and brown, feet hurt constantly, radishes and raw broccoli…

           

            Dinah Shore and Iggy Pop, together in heaven…

            Torman, Shab, and Grimmery, our three heroes, have retreated to Grimmery’s house following the debacle (if you want to call it that) at recording station #4.  As we join them around the kitchen table, Torman is explaining his concept for a magazine that he wants to put out…

            “It will be called…” Torman held up hands in mock drama, “The Lion’s Hooded Sweatshirt.”

            Shab smirked at Grimmery.  (Grimmery is nursing on a beer this whole time)

            “Why?” he asked.

            “Well,” Torman leaned back in his chair.  “It’s sort of a joke.  You see, a lion, male lion that is, has a mane and a hooded sweatshirt would be sort of superfluous or redundant—“

            “You mean like a fringed hood,” Grimmery attempted to clarify. 

            “A what?”
            “You know, not fringed, but uh…”

            “Fuzzy?”

            “Fur trimmed or lined.”

            “No, no,” Shab brought everyone back to his original question, “Why a magazine?  I assume you mean real print magazine.”

            “Yeah.”

            “In this digital tree-loving age.”

            “Fuck trees,” Grimmery swore, recalling the recent debacle (if you want to call it that) in the woods.  The three men grew silent.  Their eyes wandered to every window in the room.

            “How’re we going to finish the route?” Shab asked.

            “Never mind that now,” Torman waved a hand in dismissal.  “This is what’s important.”  He tapped the stack of many-times-folded papers before him on the table.  These were his notes, his ideas for the great magazine project that he now realized would be the fulfillment of a desire he had harbored since, well, childhood, I guess.  “This magazine,” he continued, “It has to be print, it has to be tangible, a real object, not some mass of digital blips that people don’t give a shit about.”

            “Yeah they do—“

            “No they don’t.  They don’t know—“

            “Yeah they do.  Look at Slate or Slant or—“

            “With some web thing you don’t know where it begins or ends—“ Torman held up his hand to forestall any further objections.  “And,” he played his trump, “You can’t collect the issues with some computer thing.”

            Shab shrugged his shoulders, sipped his coffee.

            Grimmery sniggered at the two of them.

           

            “So why is it futile?” Shab asked later.

            “Well, that’s like the text portion of the magazine.  It’s like a department.  You remember when magazines had departments?  Like Mad magazine used to have departments?  Well, the Futility is the text department of The Lion’s Hooded Sweatshirt.”

            “You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you?”

            Torman scratched his head, glanced at the window.  He thought he had seen a tiger.

            “I hate to explain stuff.  It ruins it.”

            “Well, explain one more thing for me and I’ll let you go.”

            ‘“Let me go?”’ Torman thought.

            “What is ‘Dinah Shore and Iggy Pop Together in Heaven?’”

            Torman sipped his green tea, began hunting through the ragged collection of papers before him.  Grimmery looked at his two friends.  He hoped the afternoon would never end.

            Flogman built an empire on tape dispensers.  These gentle devices, which serve no function that a good thumb couldn’t perform, the back of my thumb smelled like shit, performing poorly as it collapsed under the weight of ambition, despair, Dinah Shore, and Iggy Pop.  Maybe it’s just a legend, three things at once or more.  An opium treat.  Ah, the delicious fulfillment of the anti-aesthetic.  Flogman, whose logo was a square-headed, frowning fellow, could have been anyone’s horse, only without telltale ears of vertical or even, as shall be seen in the Martian revelations of the next few weeks or the past thirty years (and it’s always the past thirty years) or so, that categorization, far from being obsolete or rejected outright by today’s randomly-grab-whatever-from-the-pile culture,

            “Is actually becoming even more finely tuned,” explained Iggy, “Much to the disdain of people like Lemmy, whom I actually like and respect.”

            Dinah reflected on this as she glanced at the door to see that it was shut.

            “So you’re saying,” she wanted to make sure that she had it all correct, “That Flogman is both an actual person,” she held out one finger, “A corporation,” another finger, “And a… a… corporate mascot or cartoon character like,” a third finger.  On his side of the sofa Iggy had two of his own fingers out, still practicing the gesture with which he accompanied his “finely tuned” remark.  He mimed the act of turning a tiny knob.  He seemed unable to stop.

            “But he didn’t have a tiny knob,” Dinah later told Dick.

            The latter was skeptical, thinking it might be an illusion created by a regular-sized penis being attached to such a little guy, but he didn’t say anything at the time.  He waited until all concerned were dead.

Tangential Addendum:  The following poem appeared in the first issue of The Lion’s Hooded Sweatshirt

With sideways trim and trip the semester duck

Just too much work to change the outdated vending machine, I’m all in brown and black.  That’s their colour scheme.  The band—the girl immediately flashed a smile, I’d made a good impression earlier—a thousand years erased it all eventually.  They said stupid things in concert.

            “Reeking of perfume,” Solmania told me.  “And not good perfume—there is no good perfume—caught up in a fantasy world, riding in the little boat along the blue water canal—it can be most intoxicating.

Don’t want to be intoxicated.  Want to be high, sure.  Superficial smile—Blue Öyster Cult, Charles Mingus, get Ben Watson on the phone.  The phone?  The envelope?  The rendering plant?  You eat that?

Shoreline’s Compulsion to React

            If the so-called “goat scurvy,” from which the collective members of farbendiktat were supposedly suffering, could be said to have acted upon their lymphatic systems in such a way as to produce these inhabited abcesses we see before us on the screen, then is it not likely that Shoreline’s reaction to the imposition of rent on those inhabiting the abcesses, whether as dwellings or small shops selling music albums to exquisitely discrete cliques, is a compulsory one?  All of this seems to fall under the rubric of nervous infestation, the same that with which a fungus drives an insect to climb to the top of some grassy stalk and await death.  Now, Dr. Omertang has suggested that I don’t know what the word “rubric” actually means.  Ignoring such obsessions with theoretical details for the moment, let us examine the interplay between (or among, from a hermeneutic perspective) these dwellings and shops, for we see, in a small square near the bottom of the image on the screen (let us be precise) that often so-called “hipster-types,” equally suffering from “goat scurvy” as any hard-working anti-hipsters down in farbendiktat, will combine their living spaces with their specialty shops so that their lives can be fully subsumed (like a rubric, one might even go so far as to say) with ART.  I say “ART” like that because I was once a member of just such a collective whose aim was the intermeshing (what the Germans call ineinandergreifend) of art and life and who, coincidentally enough, were called “the Dwellings.”

            At this point in Shoreline’s advocate’s discourse Dr. Omertang, who had sat fiddling with an origami violin, indicated his desire to interject by hitting a large robotic squirrel in the back of the head with an origami abstraction.

            “You were in the Dwellings?” the framed primatologicaliterature researcher asked once his interjection had been acknowledged by the Condition of the Heart.

            Sire Moot, who at this point must be revealed as the one standing by the projector, smiled thinly and nodded at Dr. Omertang, immense satisfaction evident on his countenance.  countenance countenance

            “I played bass with them during the recording of The Means of Goat Spray Reunion album and the subsequent tour,” he answered. 

            At one time goat spray was considered an effective means of combating “goat scurvy” (Tool’s Polka), but, since the advent of the New Outlook and its apprenhension of the manifestation as a benefit rather than an icky disease, it was now relegated to the pages of some book of historical jokes such as Laughing Panda’s Guide to the Way Grandma Cleansed Herself.  The Peedle, a shop in the Chloromorphus’ fourth intergardine abcess, sold such books.  The authorities had tried to put a stop to the trade, but, since the abcesses were now linked by tunnels leading from their back doors to a community of freaks and would-be hipsters (though they didn’t use that term) (Peedle Deedle Syndrome and its growing-worse-ness), a warren of weirdness, if you will, the book continued to be sold.  Why, just the other day Endo Miso, the owner of the Peedle, was explaining to a customer that he lived in the shop and could easily hide anything of dubious propriety back in the warren if need be.

            “Is that so?” I asked, making sure my copy of the book was wrapped up good and hidden.  “You know, I’d like to be more than just a customer.”  I wondered if I looked pathetic, sounded suspect, or smelled too clean. “I’d like to be part of your… closeted clique.”  It was the best I could do in the anxiety of conversation.

            The hip young Japanese dude looked at me like a beaver staring at a fireplug.

Blanches Fevered in Discus Festival

            “At some point in the show Cheap Victor will take his shirt off.  That’s when we leave,” the Stork, comfortable in his puma costume despite the heat, advised Fawn Dogwood.  The latter, on a leave of absence from Buttermonk Foods Inc., was dressed in a green turtleneck sweater and jeans.

            “I told her not to wear green to the festival,” the Stork later revealed in his memoirs.  “I told her that orange or brown or even black were the colors to wear, that it was earth tones that were acceptable at a festival of that particular kind of noise music, but she wouldn’t listen.  She kept saying ‘I’m a redhead.  I’m a redhead.’”

            Actually, there were many people dressed in black, but these were mostly audience members who didn’t understand that this was a new kind of noise music or noise rock, one not directly descended from goth or dark ambient.  Still, jeans seemed to be nearly ubiquitous.

            “You think my jeans are too blue?” Dogwood demanded of the Stork.

            “They look brand new,” the Stork complained, unease evident even on the features of his mask.

            “What’s wrong with that?” Fawn Dogwood, product of an elite college atmosphere, would never understand the aesthetic here on display.  It wasn’t just the clothes; she interpreted the sounds made by Cheap Victor’s group, Lavadook, as some kind of jazz.

            “Is this what they call ‘free jazz?’” she asked.

            The Stork, however, ignored the woman.  He was watching Cheap Victor closely.  Once he had got a good look at the man’s pecs he would know everything he needed to know about the man himself.  The music was essentially two men throwing electronic noises at each other, supported by a third man who worked independently of the first two, using his own array of synthesizers and gadgets and closely miked wooded boards and kitchen pots to create an arrhythmic foundation for the chaotic duet going on in the fore.  The Stork, an aficionado of the genre, had to admit that it was good, even as his hatred, contempt, and jealousy for Cheap Victor remained steady throughout.

            “How much longer?” Fawn Dogwood yelled in the Stork’s puma ear.

            The Stork frowned.  It was taking a long time.  Could his reading of the man be wrong?

            “Isn’t he worried that the redhead will be attracted to the man once he takes his shirt off?”  Cyril Dick Mance, one of the festival’s organizers, asked his colleague, Bronx F. Log.  Together they observed the performers and the audience from an observation post hidden inside the belly of the giant John Wayne statue.  Now, some in the mainstream music press have questioned the presence of a giant John Wayne statue at a noise music festival, but, as the festival’s organizers pointed out: firstly, the statue was already at the venue, having been put there back when the place was a retrograde roller skating video arcade, and, secondly, as with this particular genre of noise music, John Wayne was no drone.

            “Well, what was he then?” Chet asked.  “A worker?  They’re all females you know.”

            Cyril Dick Mance glared at the journalist, who, if you remember, was Torman’s younger brother.  His mouth had just begun to open, to croak out some threat or insult, when Bronx F. Log checked his partner’s wrath.  He put a steadying hand on Mance’s forearm and with a reassuring sidelong glance assumed the role of interlocutor.

            “The Discus Festival isn’t interested in John Wayne qua John Wayne; we’re interested in promoting Noise Redundancy, an exciting, new offshoot of the noise music genre that encourages a cerebral apprehension of the music.  Besides,” he turned to Mance with a crooked smile, “I think they’re two different species.”

There Are No Freckles on the Taco

            Marty Runcible’s 1975 hit song achieved renewed popularity through its use in a TV commercial for the Mexican fast food chain Heces En El Plato.  Of course, Runcible was dead by then, having been eaten by an alligator not long after Reagan took office, but an actor dressed in Runcible’s trademark leather patchwork tablecloth lip-synced along to the song in the commercial, giving viewers a good idea of the man’s appearance.  The only difference really was that the actor (a young Bronzino Revlon) was much taller than the late singer.

            “How tall are you?” gushed an intoxicated young lady at a Hollywood party upon meeting Revlon.

            “Uh, eight foot seven,” the Romanian nobleman replied.  He was but recently arrived in America and still had to take the time to translate the more familiar metric measurements into the archaic system of feet, inches, and hands.

            “Seven,” the young woman repeated, awestruck, before puking into an ornamental basin near the yarmulke-laden mattress.

            Pilot Ramirez drove all these young women away, entering the scene with clapping hands and the snapping tones of a radish-eater.

            “Alright, alright, everyone,” he brayed, “Out, out, out; we have work to do.”

            Thus did the meeting begin, Bronto Tonsil and his dog Plutongas taking the chair at the head of the table, though the man was but fulfilling a ceremonial role; he said nothing, only sat and fed his dog sausages the whole time.

            “I want to get back to Marty Runcible and his marvelous song,” I announced, sounding petulant, I’m sure.

            “Well, of course you do,” Ramirez replied. “‘There are no freckles on the taco.’  A humanitarian sentiment and a gentlemanly observation.”

            Bronzino Revlon, seated in a specially designed eggcup, impatiently made it known that he yearned to grow his moustache back.

            “How much longer must I continue with these ridiculous public appearances?”  He pounded on his dogeared copy of the script in exasperation.

            “Until we have made it clear to everyone, and I want to emphasize it once again,” I looked into everyone’s eyes in turn, including the dog’s, “There are no freckles on the taco.  No freckles,” I repeated.  “Does everyone understand?  The taco has no freckles.”  I paused.  “They’re age spots.”

            Goldfish swam in the ornamental basin.

Laughing Molar’s Moon Leaning Out to Vomick

            Two veterans of the late eighties/early nineties metal boom sat around the kitchen table talking about music.  The one of the left, with his back to the refrigerator, was named Big Morris.  The other man was Duckbill.  Behind him was the old sideboard, the one Doyle found in the woods.

            “They had the gall, the ignorant gall,” Big Morris related the tale of his indignation, “To compare Uriah Heep with Queen, as if they were nothing more than two sides of the same coin.”

            Duckbill shook his head.  Such stupidity was common among mainstream rock critics.

            “They’ve always hated metal and hard rock,” Duckbill lamented.  “Have you ever noticed, that every time a certain metal era,” he placed his hands on the table in karate chop positions about a foot apart, “A metal phase, comes to an end, you know, like either it peters out or it suddenly comes to an end like when Nirvana came in and ended our metal phase,” he picked his hands up from bracketing the hypothetical block of time and gestured between himself and his friend, “The rock critics always say something like, ‘Well, thank god that’s over.’  Like, metal is finally done for this time; now we can get back to the serious music.”

            Big Morris nodded.  He knew exactly what Duckbill was talking about.

            “And you know what’s funny?” Big Morris added.  “When Nirvana first came out big with the Nevermind album—they were marketed as a metal band!  It’s true, I’ve got the proof.”  He pointed towards the darkened living room.

            “Yeah.”  Duckbill looked away, rubbed his chin.  “I don’t know how they got away with it, making that change.”

            “Well, they didn’t wear metal clothes.”

            “That is part of it.  Grunge started that shit, with the flannel and the plaid.  But you know—“

            “Grunge was just metal too,” Big Morris completed the sentence.  “Or hard rock.  Pearl Jam was really hard rock really.”

            “Look at the band they came out of—Mother Love Bone—they were marketed as metal too.”

            “I know,” Big Morris pointed to that darkened half of the house again.

            Duckbill’s gaze followed his friend’s indicative finger.  He kept staring into the darkness as the two men fell into silence.  Big Morris stared over his friend’s shoulder at the sideboard.  Finally he opened his mouth.

            “Doyle pronounces the word ‘vomit’ ‘vomick.’”

            Duckbill turned back to the light.  He wanted to ask, “Why?” but realized that the universe was full of mystery and that some things had no explanation.  “To know all is to forgive all,” he remembered.

Insect Under the Dome Held by Ernest Man

            “I guess I really shouldn’t get so upset,” I admitted with a sigh.

            “No, you shouldn’t,” agreed the man whose beard I wanted.

            “I really ought to focus on my meditation and let these things… go.” I threw away an imaginary fleet of ships with my outflung hand.

            The man with the mighty Baljo beard couldn’t see any ships.

            “What is it that’s got you so upset?” he asked.

            “Oh,” I didn’t want to tell him, but I couldn’t resist bringing it up one more time, like picking at a half-healed scrape, “I really liked Norm Macdonald and now I find out he’s a believer.”

            Beard man squinted.

            “A theist,” I reiterated.  “Roseanne Barr too.  And I liked both of them.  Roseanne mainly because I thought she was cute.”

            “You thought Roseanne Barr was cute?”
            I looked into a passing car.  The driver looked like James Thurber, if you know who that is.

            “I can see this isn’t going to go well.  Maybe I’ll just leave.”

            “No, don’t leave,” the man with the enviable beard begged.  “It’s just that—they’re celebrities.  People you’re never going to meet—“

            “Because it’s all luck, right?”

            He shrugged.  Out of his beard fell a picture of Kanye West, who I don’t really know anything about, but can’t stand anyway.  Now I knew it was all over.  I knew I couldn’t trust him just like I couldn’t trust anyone.  Later, while carefully shaving I reflected on my jealousy and bitterness, my impuissance and many scars, most of which wouldn’t be scars if I had just left them alone and not picked at them.

Scrabble My Downey

            Moved the seeds the more jealous I became.  Lies that spun around and around like bananas in the contradiction, what grubs back to the first thing I resort to.  So it’s personal relationships now.  Can you name one?  I’m reluctant.  Cheap blinds moved by the fan.   She can’t get them exactly at the height she wants.  These words are playthings.  I won’t betray my wife by bringing her amongst them.  The clock on the stove is always fast, but the pizza or the pie doesn’t get burned for all those minutes rushed.

            Heroes always let you down.  Don’t look too closely at anyone.  The complete works of the Nobel Prize winner include his bowel movements too.

            And thus is my quagmire concluded.  I remember I used to ape Wols in my early days.

You’re Ruining the Plague Tour

            Marlon Brando urinated into an empty spaghetti sauce jar held by two members of the king’s household.  This was in November of that same year.  Filming in Naples had not gone smoothly.  The local press had been critical of the king for serving spaghetti, which is a pasta more closely associated with Genoa.

            “Feed the Americans ziti,” the editorials urged.

            Brando, impolitic as usual, laughed as he filled the jar with his champagne-colored piss.

            “It’s all noodles to me,” he declared.

            The two servants, dressed in costumes that were a parody of standard western business attire, complete with hats like the humps on a Bactrian camel, glanced warily about: Edith Head was somewhere among the invitees.

            A particularly good episode of The Love Boat, the film was about the adventures of a sculptor during the year 1837, when plague ravaged Sharecropper Valley.   Consulting an ancient grimoire, the sculptor, played by Marlon Brando, crept from one narrow, differently colored passageway to another, leaving behind a series of coded messages designed to fool the members of a secret society that he was one of them.

            “I would have preferred to play the part of the rug,” Brando told the local socialist paper, Il Scrotomo, upon leaving the palace.  Strands of spaghetti hung from the big beard he had grown for the film.  “But,” he added to himself, in his own coded thoughts, “Even here in the heart of the European film industry, far from Hollywood, the cinematic aesthetic is dominated by physical types.  After all,” he concluded with bitter humor, “Film is actually a medium of width.”

Demanding Results in One Orange Envelope After Another

            Although Rugwa’s friend had moved away he remained in contact with him through postal correspondence.

            “This was in the days before digital communications,” Dr. Beshafunk explained to the elderly monkeys in his case study.

            “I didn’t know Rugwa had a ‘friend,’” little Monday Bruisit joked from the back of the cage.

            But it was true.  Rugwa did have a friend.  Perhaps Pfrango, his puppet sidekick of later years, was a substitute for this now-lost friend, for each had an almost grotesquely asymmetrical face and a propensity to boast of his accomplishments.  Under normal circumstances, however, Pfrango could not hold a pen.

            The collected letters of Rugwa and Zed Hawtry are now available for all good monkeys to read.  They have been recovered from Rugwa’s coffin by the Department of English Literature at Crooksewer College and thoroughly annotated by the department’s director, Coach Font.  It was he that discovered Rugwa’s last name: Niwab.

            “There is much speculation and debate in the community as to whether Zed Hawtry, who later became a congressmen from the state of Mimsigano, even knew what Rugwa’s last name was,” Coach Font’s wife Chow commented.  “They went to high school together, but Rugwa called himself Doopsy Sheldon at that time in an attempt to make himself into a preppie, so who knows?”

            Of course Rugwa signed his letter to Hawtry with his infamous paw-print logo, but put the letter “R” above his return address on the envelopes he used.  In true outsider tradition Rugwa insisted on making his own envelopes out of reflective plastic strips, not unlike modern day Christmas tree tinsel, woven tightly into an airtight fabric.  His friend, on the other hand, used a series of orange envelopes purchased in bulk through his father’s contacts in the insurance industry.  These latter often contained exquisitely scrawled diagrams designed to teach Rugwa about such subjects as the location of various regions of the vagina, how to play the saxophone, and extremely liberal concepts of the afterlife.  One letter, from Rugwa to Hawtry, contained a small insect smashed into the paper just above the word ‘oligarchy.’  Whether it was killed by Rugwa deliberately is unknown, but to him it looked like one of those long helicopters with two rotors.  We know this because he circled the smashed insect and wrote a note detailing his perception of its appearance.

            “It is rising from the Colorforms Vietnam playset.  Perhaps there is a proto-metal band on board, either kidnapped by the army to provide entertainment for the troops, or themselves the hijackers of the ‘chopper,’ on a mission to bring powerful narcotics back from the war-torn jungle.”

            At this point in our narrative we must acknowledge the objections of various monkeys and hornets who feel that the above passage, along with the bulk of the letters themselves really, reflect an articulation and an eloquence and a visual imagination seemingly at odds with the popular image of Rugwa as a crude barbarian bent on nothing more than violent adventure, loot, and various regions of the vagina.  However, as Dr. Beshafunk has pointed out in his recent monograph on the newly published commentaries on the Rugwa/Hawtry correspondence annotations, it is possible that the author of the Rugwa letters was actually Covay Parker, the first actor ever to portray Rugwa on film.  He would, therefore, have a legitimate claim to call himself “Rugwa.”

            “The real question,” Beshafunk asked Font at this year’s Necronomicomicon Obvioservation, “Is whether the young congressmen Hawtry knew he was corresponding with the real Rugwa or not.”

            Coach Font chuckled.  He was sitting opposite Beshafunk on a dais.  Each man held a microphone.  Some three hundred people had crowded into the room to hear them discuss these matters.  He found the situation amusing.

            “The ‘real’ Rugwa?” he repeated, his smile evident even within the obscuring mass of white bristles around his mouth.  “You might as well speak of the ‘real’ Captain Briefly.”

            A gasp went through the audience, followed by a smattering of applause and even a “boo” here and there.

            “Well, you know what I mean,” Beshafunk countered good-naturedly.

            “Scientifically speaking, no.”  Font chuckled again, though his tone was serious.  “However, in comic book terms, yes, yes, I know.  However, I think it is important to remember the significance of knowing Rugwa’s last name.”

            “Niwab,” Beshafunk intoned for the benefit of everyone, both in terms of information and the thrill of hero worship.

            “Yes, yes, Niwab,” Font repeated.  “Now that we know that, we can correlate the name and all its ramifications through the most pertinent of sources: the Rugwa comic book published by Whitman in the mid-60’s.”

            “I disagree,” Beshafunk shook his head.  In appearance he was very much alike to Font, except that his t-shirt bore the image of Clark Gable in a Santa Claus costume.  Font’s t-shirt picture was more relevant: the classic movie poster for Rugwa Meets the Noisician.  “I see the original novels by Spanish Jackson as the most pertinent of sources.”  More gasping, clapping, and booing followed this exchange.

            Later, during the question-and-answer session, one young man (well, young to me, anyway) in glasses and something approaching a white boy’s afro, asked about the helicopter image formed from the smashed bug.

            “Well, that about it?” Coach Font demanded, getting irritated.  He was tired, hungry, and a little upset with Dr. Beshafunk, so perhaps he wasn’t the best person to ask about that helicopter.  But neither was his counterpart, Dr. Beshafunk, now busy autographing copies of the graphic novel based on his research.  It fell to me to do justice to the subject, which I did in a story entitled,

Never Got the Poncho

            Now, since the helicopter, which was a CH-47 variant known as a PCH-47B, with extensive modifications to its stereo system and lounging facilities, could hold up to twenty or so people along with all of their gear, it was ideal to transport the band Half Nigger Baby and its road crew and management team on its tour of South Vietnam and the surrounding islands.

            “There’s one problem,” lead guitarist Columbo Manmucus revealed.  “That’s square army green color: that’s got to go.”

            “Yeah, yeah,” the rest of the band agreed.  The dual rotor whirly bird had to be repainted, both inside and out, with psychedelic graphics befitting the band’s pro-mind expansion aesthetic.

            Coach Font, the band’s manager, sighed and ordered that it be so.  He contracted with noted German artist Asger Jorgdorf to get crazy with the colors and, for good measure, bought some bead curtains to divide the interior of the helicopter into several vaguely-defined zones, such as one for sex with admirers, one for smoking the best quality weed, and another for enjoying the latest Rugwa or Captain Briefly comic books.  It would cost a good bit, but nothing was too good for the band that created the anti-war anthem, “Cross Your Legs, My Kangaroo Compatriot.”

            As these and other vital preparations were underway, the band’s singer, Glavin Integer, went shopping for a poncho.  Of course, being a rock musician in the late 1960’s, Integer had in mind a poncho very much like something worn by Clint Eastwood.  Trawling for trinkets for Troubadour Street, he ran into Fragrant Sam Applepooper, singer for the rival band Goddamned Nigger Lover.  Each band had the word “nigger” in its name, an obvious source of friction.  However, Half Nigger Baby had little to worry about: most of the members of Goddamned Nigger Lover would be dead within a year, trampled under the hooves of migrating wildebeest.

            “You don’t want that,” Fragrant Sam advised Integer as the latter fingered the material of a Chihuahuan poncho. 

            “You think it’s low quality wool?” Integer wondered.

            “Brother, the quality of the wool’s got nothing to do with it,” Fragrant Sam countered.  “You don’t want wool at all; you want a space age polymer, something that’s going to last all the way to the moon and back, man.  But besides that,” Fragrant Sam added, moving closer and adopting an almost conspiratorial tone, “The hip ponchos now, I mean absolutely contemporary, are these.”  He led Integer to a rack of shiny red and black garments bearing the seven-pointed star of the Egyptian snake god Pissis.

            “These?” Glavin Integer’s eyes grew wide.  A remarkable feat in itself, as he was heavily narcotized at that moment.  Impressed by Fragrant Sam’s enthusiasm and evident expertise, however, he tried one of the new style ponchos on.

            “Look in the mirror,” Fragrant Sam urged.  As Integer stood before the mirror, Sam stood behind him and declared, “You’re a space cowboy.”

            Yeah, Integer thought, involuntarily smiling, yeah, that’s what I am.

            On board the band’s helicopter, now christened the Holistic Crisis, Coach Font was lecturing the band on the importance of treating the local people with respect once they landed in Vietnam.

            “Avoid using words like ‘introduction’ and ‘economist,”’ he warned.

            From behind one of the packing crates full of guitar picks emerged Glavin Integer, dressed in his new poncho, a leather helmet, green suede pants, and boots of braided whale baleen.

            “What are you supposed to be,” drummer Seth Hooper asked, “A superhero?”

            Integer put his fists on either side of his pelvis and announced, “As of o-seven-hundred hours I am assuming command of this starship.”

            “It’s a raincoat thing,” Columbo Manmucus articulated his surprise as he touched Integer’s person, while Coach Font rubbed his chin and turned the word “starship” over and over in his mind.

Because of Your Proximity to the Combo

            On the last day of the convention Dr. Beshafunk interviewed Coach Font about his days as the manager of the long-forgotten proto-metal band, Half Nigger Baby.

            “Now, let’s get one thing out of the way, right here at the start,” Dr. Beshafunk, sitting opposite Coach Font in a hotel room with only a cameraman and a sound engineer in attendance, began his interview.

            Coach Font thought that Beshafunk was going to clear the air following their contentious discussion earlier in the week; it never occurred to him that Beshafunk was talking about the necessity of using the word “nigger” multiple times in the course of the interview.

            “Well, obviously,” Coach Font argued, “We can’t repeatedly euphemize ‘Half N-Word Baby’ over and over.  It would be awkward, inaccurate, and insulting to the truth.”

            “Agreed.”  Beshafunk nodded in reply, much to Coach Font’s surprise.  “Although,” Beshafunk added, “I have to say that I repeat the name of the band only because I believe in the truth, and not because I get a thrill out of saying the n-word over and over.”

            In the interests of moving forward and harmony itself Coach Font merely raised his eyebrows and sighed.

            “But just to be clear about everything,” Beshafunk continued, “Why did the band choose that name?”

            “Well, first of all,” Coach Font recalled, “You have to remember that this was a different time.  People weren’t so touchy about the word.  True, blacks had not yet ‘reappropriated’ the word for their own ironic use, although some did, admittedly not openly, but also, and this is the main reason, the name’s origin is in a story that actually happened to Columbo Manmucus.  Back in high school he dated a black girl, much to his parents’, especially his mother’s chagrin.  His mother made some disparaging comment against the relationship, saying she didn’t want him getting married to a black girl and bringing home a ‘half-nigger baby’ for a grandchild.”

            “Really,” Beshafunk despaired at such intolerance.

            “Yes, so the name was both a joke and a protest, an ironic one, at those sorts of attitudes.  Remember, this was a band with an aesthetic of ‘ugly beauty’ or ‘beautiful ugliness.’”

            “That’s interesting,” Beshafunk admitted.  “Still, the name is probably why they’ve been forgotten, whether intentionally or not, by rock history.”

            Coach Font smiled and shook his head.

            “Rock ‘n’ Roll never forgets,” he said.

            The cameraman and the sound engineer exchanged glances full of pity, amusement, and disgust.

            “Now, moving along,” Beshafunk continued, “You, Coach Font, because of your proximity to the combo, are in a unique position to relate the whole story behind the band’s ill-fated effort at making their own, hippie-era space opera take on a Hard Day’s Night-type film.”

            “Ah, yes, the reason we’re here,” Coach Font smiled, leaning back, getting comfortable.  He referred to the imminent release of the restored DVD version of the heretofore unreleased, unfinished film, Poocher’s Mill and the Fellow.

Poocher’s Mill and the Fellow

            In the film the members of Half Nigger Baby portray exaggerated versions of themselves thrust into a series of situations in which they battle an extraterrestrial adversary known as Suedge.  The titular Poocher’s Mill is an isolated piece of property which the band has rented with the intention of recording their next album there.  As for “the fellow,” it is left unresolved whether this appellation refers to the character of Wink, a fictional record company executive dreamed up by the band, or Davenport, the band’s eccentric, comic relief bus driver, played by veteran British comedian Jake Oates.  Remember, this is an unfinished film.  The DVD’s special features include extensive commentary regarding the unfilmed portions of the screenplay, but, as that latter document was largely a collection of improvised scenes and chemically influenced notes scrawled on whatever paper was at hand, many plot points remain a mystery.  In order to give you a taste of the film, we now join the band as they arrive at Poocher’s Mill.  Bear in mind, however, that several scenes are missing, even in this literary version of the action.

            Davenport, dressed in a repeatedly belted and zippered leather jacket and a cloth cap pulled down over one eye, emerged first from the old, repurposed bus.  He flipped a cigarette butt onto the thinly graveled driveway and proclaimed,

            “Let me be the first to desecrate this holy ground.”

            One by one the band descended from the bus.  Columbo Manmucus coughed into his hand just like Jimmy Page stepping down from the airplane in The Song Remains the Same.  He even wore a colorful silk shirt, only this was filmed three years before the Led Zeppelin film.   So who copied whom?

            “What a dreary spot,” Seth Hooper, the band’s drummer, remarked, looking up at the gray building that dominated the little glade.

            “I’ll bet you there’s not a woman within ten miles of this place,” Glavin Integer guaranteed.

            “Women are nothing but a distraction,” the band’s manager, dressed in a fuzzy white coat, joined them.  This was an actor.  The real Coach Font was thousands of miles away, dealing with the attempted suicide of his other major client, Alex Theory.  As such, the character of the manager was referred to throughout the film only as “Coach” and not “Coach Font.”  “You’re here to work.”

            “What about drugs?” Columbo demanded.  “That’s a necessity.”

            “Columbo,” Coach substitute clasped the guitarist by the arm and gestured about them.  “My sources tell me that these woods are full of secret pot patches.”

            “We have to harvest our own pot?!” Columbo was incredulous, borderline outraged.  

            Next we see the band sitting around an enormous rough-hewn wooden table in the millhouse’s kitchen.  Davenport enters, carrying two guitar cases.

            “That’s the lot,” he said, pulling a red handkerchief as big as a pillowcase from inside his jacket and wiping his forehead.  A phone rang somewhere.

            “Can you get that, Davenport?” requested Integer.

            The other man gaped.  He shook his head and stamped out.  After a montage of quick cuts showing Alex Theory onstage; signing autographs among a crowd of fans; and puking into a toilet, the driver returned.  He jerked his thumb towards the hallway and announced,

            “Wink sends his regards.”

            “Ah, Wink!” the band members cried, holding aloft cans of beer or joints.  “Wink!  Wink!”

            Coach rose halfway from his chair, his eyes on Davenport.  The latter nodded in return.  Coach exited.

Jams from the Ogre by Mail

            Suedge, the name given to the monster lurking in the woods surrounding Poocher’s Mill, fancied himself both a composer and a musician.  As he was a multi-corporeal entity; that is to say, he had several interconnected bodies controlled by a single intelligence, it was easy for him to put together a band.  I know from personal experience how hard it is to find a group of people willing to work as a unit on a common musical goal.   Suedge was lucky in this regard.

            “What I don’t like,” he said to one of the local farmers during a chance encounter at Bill’s Barbecue restaurant, “Is this name, ‘Suedge,’ that’s been foisted on me.”

            “But what else are we to call you?” demanded the farmer, picking up his takeout order in a big paper bag.

            Suedge didn’t know how to answer that.  Despite having a single controlling intelligence, it seemed that the various parts of his gestalt were at odds over the choice of a common name.  All of the good names were taken.

            “I wish I could be Led Zeppelin, Miles Davis, Wolf Eyes, Gang of Four, Can, Black Sabbath…” Suedge trailed away, mentioning ten or fifteen names, some of them not exactly musical in origin.

            “I like Led Zeppelin,” the farmer agreed.

            Suedge tried doling out different musical personalities to his different bodies; for example, being Led Zeppelin in the guitar-playing part and Miles Davis in the horn-playing part, Wolf Eyes in the electronic noise-maker body and Gang of Four in the propaganda leaflet-writing body, but, despite creating some interesting results musically, this left him no closer to a better name that Suedge.  He decided to start sending some of his recordings to the hippies staying in the old Poocher’s Mill place.  Maybe they’d have some insight into the direction he should take.

            “What’s this?” Seth Hooper asked one day on opening a padded envelope addressed to the band.  The envelope contained a small plastic rectangle with a tiny window on either side.

            “That’s a tape cassette,” explained Coach. “That’s the way of the future.  One day all music will be released on cassette.  I learned about them a couple of weeks ago at a meeting in New York.  As a matter of fact,” he added, rummaging about his bags, “The record company gave me a prototype cassette player.”

            The band gathered around to listen to the new technology.  Nothing contained on the cassette interested them so much as the cassette itself.

            Glavin Integer brought up a good point.  “This is what I want to know:” he wondered, “What will be the point of producing a great big piece of cardboard to go along with this tiny cassette?”

            “There won’t be any more record sleeves.” Coach told him.

            “What?”

            “That’s right.  Half the expense of producing an album is the packaging, the artwork.  The cassette will free artists to create pure music, unencumbered by an accompanying visual vision.”

            Integer and Barlach Smith, the band’s bass player, looked at each other.

            “I don’t like the sound of that,” growled Smith.

            “Neither do I,” Integer agreed.  “Looking at the album cover while listening to the music is half the fun.”

            “This Suedge,” Columbo Manmucus read the name on the envelope, “Is nothing but an ogre.”

            Of course, all of this got back to Suedge somehow and he thought, aha, at last, I’ve found my collective name.  “It’s serendipity; I’ll call myself the Ogre.”  But then he found that there was already a band from Arizona called Ogre and his mind snapped.

           

Chips of the Backpack Radiator

            During a particularly intense jam session Suedge went into a feedback-laden bass solo that damaged his backpack radiator.  Pieces of the radiator were chipped off by the fury of sound and fell into a dark pool of shampoo water.  Small forest animals and butterflies, sniffing at the edge of the pool after Suedge tromped away in disgust, were themselves equally disgusted (although far less self-consciously due to their more primitive brains) at the smell of the radiator chips growing into bizarre creatures under the influence of the magic black water and psychedelic bubbles.

            “It frightens me,” one of the bunnies declared, running away to barf into one of nine segmented holes.

            “Emotion of revulsion level three,” a butterfly signaled, using the rudimentary fingers to either side of its food intake orifice.

            Many days later, having gone through the three stages of infancy, the radiator chips emerged from the pool and dried themselves on towels provided by the Governor’s Council on Literacy, Mustard, and the Arts.

            “Thank you,” Regurgitron told one of the Council volunteers.

            “You’re welcome,” replied Andy.  He was a clear-eyed youth with a thin beard and glasses from the dawn of America’s industrial might.

            “You can get glasses like these from the online reproduction Sears 1900 catalog,” Andy later told a fellow volunteer as the group sat around a fallen log and ate their lunch.  In the distance the radiator chips marched into town, pillaging only when driven into frenzies of rage.

            “I didn’t think Sears did mail order anymore,” the other youth expressed his doubt.

            “It isn’t Sears; it’s Reproduction Sears,” explained Andy.  “It’s a totally separate company based in Guacamole Town.”

            “Ah, Guacamole Town.”  The name conjured visions of sleepy palm trees and adobe huts, all beaten down by a horde of red-eyed mechanibbles, of goats gone crazy from fear of beans.

            “Say, I noticed you’ve got a Wigsaway sticker on your van.  What’s up with that?”

            “Well,” responded Andy, “It’s an ironic statement, given that the surrounding stickers are of a liberal bent, as you know.”

Even Uglier Shrimp in the Blind Man’s Parade

            High overhead in the aquarium suite of Ben Dixiecrat, the discussion revolved around liability.

            “I think the real problem,” Justin the tire washer opined, “Is that shrimp look like they’re wearing sunglasses.”

            “Good.  That’s good.  If we get sued we can use that,” Jimmy mused was he fiddled with his slide rule.

            There is a gray felt sheriff’s badge that spins parallel to the ground.  It is not a sheriff’s badge, but it does have five points.  Each point is connected to an event happening as it passes through the zone in which the event is happening.  Thus, one fifth of a certain baloney slice of the earth is connected with each point of the spinning indicator at any given time.  Ben Dixiecrat, a large humanoid shrimp whose criminal empire extended into the manufacture of Braille paper, was reminded of Movement Detected Beyond the Fence as he slowed the sheriff’s badge with an angry jet of anal fluid.

And then:

Movement Detected Beyond the Fence

            Anyone who has seen the film will know what we’re talking about.  You can talk about these things in the third person passive as if the subject isn’t even in the room with you.  I’ll give you an example: One day I stumbled onto a field in the middle of the woods.  It had been deliberately cleared to provide a killing ground for deer.  Tall stands like lifeguard roosts stood on each side of the field.  No one was there.  It was the middle of the day.  I got the feeling I was somewhere I shouldn’t be.

            Now, should we confuse the veterinarian with an English professor, it will be no more than what the blind men did as volunteers from the Governor’s Council on Literacy, Mustard, and the Arts described the floats to them.   Each float bore a representation of several shrimps.  Each shrimp depicted embodied a cliché of governmental secrecy or pop star panache.

Money Spilling out of the Old Man’s Wallet in Amber Colored Lights

            After being forced to retire from the Comatosery, Bronto Tonsil moved into his son’s house, which was located inside the tiny forest of Straintilyableed.  Already broken by the loss of his throne years before, Tonsil had been unable to bounce back from this latest blow.  All he did was sit in the window of his upstairs room and mutter, “Pieces of feces, pieces of feces,” over and over.  Even Wilhelmina, his little dog, had given up on him.  She ran downstairs just in time to see the UPS man hand a package to Tonsil’s daughter-in-law, Cardene.

            “Interesting place you have here,” the UPS man commented.  “I had a hard time finding you.”

            Cardene nodded.  “Yeah, but once you know where it is, you won’t have any trouble finding it again.”  She glanced at the package.  It was addressed to her father-in-law.

            “This forest is so tiny,” continued the UPS man, “I bet you could count every tree in here.”

            “As a matter of fact,” Cardene informed him, “It’s been done.  As of last November there are 102 trees bigger around than the president’s left wrist, which, as you probably know, is the defining characteristic of a mature tree.”

            “But how far up from the ground though?” The UPS man was cautious.  He had been taken in by dazzling rules of thumb before. 

            “It depends on the tree,” Cardene explained.  “I’m not convenient with all the details, but, I think, on average, it’s one tenth of the tree’s total height starting from the top of the ground or the highest exposed root.”

            “Not the lowest?” the UPS man questioned, which angered Cardene.  She was getting tired of the conversation and only wanted to open the package.

            Wilhelmina provided the necessary distraction.

            “Barky barky,” she yapped.

            “Oh, that’s my father-in-law’s dog,” Cardene identified the creature.  “She probably has to shit or something.”

            The UPS man excused himself and climbed back into his van.  The Straintilyableed forest was so tiny that the rear end of the van protruded several feet from the encircling trees.  He opened the rear doors of the van and looked into the face of the sun itself.

            “The package has been delivered,” he reported.

            “Good,” the sun, or something very much like it in these sad times, replied.  “Who took possession of it?”

            “A woman.  Presumably the wife of the owner of the house.”

            “She may be the owner, Schiffwerfer,” the sun-like entity reminded the driver.  “Never assume the nature of property rights.”

            The driver, apparently named Schiffwerfer, wrote this down on the back of an envelope.

            “Now,” continued the sun, glowing like a freshly spanked bottom, “Did she mention the monarchy?”

            “No.  But she did reference the presidency.”

            The sun rolled backwards an inch or two in its trough of gold.  “Did she?” he mused.  “Interesting.”

            Back in the house Wilhelmina stood on the kitchen counter sniffing excitedly around Cardene as the latter opened the small parcel.

            “Oh my god!” Cardene exclaimed.  She had pulled a vacuum-sealed transparent bag from the parcel, but now dropped it in disgust.  She had been hoping it was prescription painkillers, but it was some variety of shit.

Lake Governor—In Case the Phone Rings Again

            The rowboat was a rental.  Someone had left sticky rings on the seats.  Mare’s Wood and Cheap Victor refused to clean them off.  They sprinkled tiny feathers from a can onto the rings until they were obscured enough that the two men could sit down.  Out on the lake they compared their situation with that in the movie Master and Commander, Mare’s Wood observing that there were no women on board to unnecessarily complicate their outing, while Cheap Victor felt a cozy insularity in being a microcosm of the larger world.  By the time that Sir Kenneth Clark had been mentioned their primitive equipment indicated that they had reached the center of the lake.

            “OK,” Cheap Victor said softly, turning his head toward the dock whence they had come.  “Can you hear anything?”

            Mare’s Wood listened carefully.

            “Yes.”

            “You can?” Cheap Victor’s eyes grew wide.

            His companion nodded.  His eyes were on the feathers that had fallen off the seat to join the dead leaves around the two men’s feet.  “I hear an atonal guitar yammering away.”  He looked at Cheap Victor.  A person of great sensitivity might have detected the memory of pain in the face of Mare’s Wood.  But Cheap Victor only answered, “No,” after slowly turning his head about.

            “Well, at least it’s not the phone,” Mare’s Wood assumed an optimism he could not rationally defend.

            The other man nodded.  “Let’s not talk about it,” he requested.

            They unfolded the refrigerator from their supplies and removed a lunch of egg salad sandwiches and potato salad.  While they ate Cheap Victor corrected his friend’s misconceptions about the origins of the lake’s name.

            “I always heard it was named Lake Governor because it’s not technically a lake at all, but a natural-edged canal providing flood control for Lake Mildred further north,” babbled Mare’s Wood.

            “Not at all,” Cheap Victor tried not to smile.  He remembered their disagreement of many years before when Mare’s Wood had insisted that Jamie Lee Curtis had been named Jamie Lee Curtis because her parents wished to pay tribute to her supposed hermaphroditism.  Only a phone call to Smudgecutter castle in Wessex had finally satisfied Mare’s Wood that this ancient rumor was completely unfounded.  Now the two men were doing all they could to avoid any calls from either Curtis or Carrie Fisher.

            “They say powerful interests want them to make a film starring the two women,” the rowboat rental man explained to his wife.

            “Well, they are each the daughter of a famous couple,” the old lady expressed her understanding as she put her saxophone to her lips and began calling to the one called Mr. Octopus.

Wrasslabix and the Elders

            It had rained for two weeks without relent.  The backyard was a spongy mess.  Wrasslabix got his shoes soaked reaching the shed.

            “Do you think he’ll bring back the correct garden implement?”  The voice was that of one of the silently drifting bags of essentialist plasma known as the Elders.

            Ms. Brown, who had only recently joined the Elders, frowned, the splayed toes lining her purple gums winking like distant mansions on fire in the Hollywood hills.  Her lips were like an old vinyl sofa dredged up from a flooded basement, cracked, swollen, and peeling.  She listened with growing outrage as those about her calmly discussed the man Wrasslabix and the possibility of his fulfilling the assignment.

            “I estimate,” another Elder, this one weighted down by years of sheer ponderousness accumulated in partially vestigial scrotums dependent from the hem of his corporeal envelope, “That he has a ninety percent chance of success.”

            Much nodding and analytic croaking followed this reply.

            Ms. Brown, however, would have none of it.

            “If the man can’t do the job one hundred percent,” she yapped, “He should receive corrective action!”

            “Brownelia,” one of the Elders addressed Ms. Brown by her new name, “Do you not understand that this task we have set the man Wrasslabix is not remunerative or functional in nature, but a test, designed to reveal his inner worth, both to us and to himself?”

            “I understand that if he don’t bring back the shovel like we told him to, he should be written up, sent home, and reported to the internal security enforcers.”  Ms. Brown sounded like a wind-up toy whose only purpose is to flail about on the kitchen table until it knocks over a glass.

            The other Elders used their meaty, smoothly shaven legs to exchange glances among themselves.

            Out in the backyard shed Wrasslabix was confronted with not only a choice of garden implements, but a choice of shovels.  He knew he had to get a shovel, but which one?

            The Elders’ cryptic instructions were of little help.

            “Select the one that most nearly resembles the progenerative organ of a xiphoidal sea snake,” they had told him.  But which gender?  Wrasslabix had been too intimidated to ask any questions; he had only rushed out into the waterlogged backyard and gotten his feet wet.  Now he stood before a jumble of rakes, shovels, mattocks, and a pickaxe or not, scrunching up his toes inside what had been a new pair of shoes.

            “You’re not being paid to goof off!”  The voice of Ms. Brown exploded from the shed doorway like that of a large, flightless bird defending a nest of unfertilized eggs.

            “I’m not being paid at all,” Wrasslabix retorted before he could stop himself.  After all, he reasoned incorrectly, his shoes were ruined. 

            “If you don’t like it, you can just go home!” Ms. Brown snapped.

            “Really?”  Wrasslabix sounded surprised and pleased at the offer.  He started for the doorway, making sure not to brush against the ugly old windbag.

            “Stop!” commanded the collective mentality of the other Elders.  They were now present in the shed, but not in any physical sense.  They were merely there, not there merely. 

            “You, Brownelia,” the voices were ominous, laden with the dread of eons.  “You are not ready for the company of the Elders.  Prepare for Divestiture of Inflation.”

            Ms. Brown, for perhaps the only time in her existence, was rendered speechless.  Her mouth stood open, but no words were forthcoming.  Each separate toenail-like peg rising from behind those pneumatic lips served as a counterpoint to the lowered eyebrows, which remained lowered no matter what emotion was contorting the rest of her withered countenance.  Slowly, before Wrasslabix’s shocked gaze, the old woman shrank smaller and smaller until only a wisp of discolored material, like a discarded condom, lay on the ground.

            Wrasslabix glanced around.  He was alone in the shed.  Summoning his courage and good humor, he began to step over the remains of the demoted Elder when a voice, like that you might hear in your head when rereading a page from last year’s diary, told him to dig his own grave.

Feedback Baguette

            “What does a real Rock and Roller eat?  Why, hot, fresh bread—made in the traditional French manner, of course!  Such things are possible, now that automated baguette kiosks stand on every corner of Paris.  Treat yourself to the latest slab of heavy Rock music while hygienic hands of stainless steel turn relatively lifeless dough into a crunchy, steaming loaf—all in a matter of minutes!  Now, I know what you’re thinking--“  the man in the capillary beret continued, “The French have never been known to be particularly crazy about Rock music.  Why should they be the source of two such disparate passions coming together?  Why not serve up those long sticks of bread with some typically accordion-based tune?” 

            The answer to this question, if it ever was forthcoming, was drowned out by the arrival of Tiger Beater, the biggest band in all of Taiwan, landing on the roof of the museum.  Their superhero hovercraft, emblazoned with the band’s stylized whisker cat logo, dropped them off and then retreated into the skies over the city to flash colored lights down on the makeshift venue.  It also served as an omnidirectional loudspeaker system, receiving signals from the band’s instruments and playing them for all to hear.

            After Tiger Beater had played their current hit, “A Collection of Tired Yeasts,” the singer, Yuan Leung, addressed the crowd below.

            “Hello, People of Mortality!  We’re Tiger Beater, world-class rockers from Taiwan!  We want you to know that bread rocks!  Eat some enjoying bread today!  Thank you to our sponsors, Taipei Rice and Bean Assembly of Jesus the Christ and Bushmills Irish Whiskey Distilleryship—drink some enjoying Bushmills today!  And now,” Leung held his fingers out in claw-shapes, “We will fight and defeat evil—with the song of love!” 

            The band then played “Apostolic Dimensions in 1984” while costumed actors pantomimed an attach by diabolical monsters around them.  Down on the sidewalk people dressed as yeast cells passed out small packaged samples of dinner rolls to passersby.  The man in the capillary beret, momentarily overwhelmed, put on his platform shoes and remounted his portable stage.

            “Don’t be fooled, ladies and gentlemen!” he cried.  “Real bread, today’s bread, is apolitical, made by machines, and sends a Heavy Metal message of hope!”  He pulled a lever on a box beside him, releasing a fog of scented carbon dioxide.  Observing these events, I wondered what kind of music lent itself to fasting, a practice which, as I’m sure you know, is gluten-free.

Filtered through the Jacket’s Material, the Laser Warms His Meat

            By coating his legs with Vaseline, Mr. Millens was able to get his pants to remain in place while he climbed up the scaffolding around Gwen’s brassiere.  Mr. Millens had picked up a takeout order from Waffle House on his shopping trip to get the Vaseline.  As he climbed he ate his scrambled eggs and waffles using auxiliary feeder limbs attached to his choker-and-chest unit.

            “I knew Torman, Shab, and Grimmery,” he told Mr. Arruldeo, a researcher who collected ancient styluses.

            “That’s a funny word, the plural of ‘stylus,’” noted Torman to his friend Shab.  The third member of the gentle team, Grimmery, was standing in the back somewhere, looking at a cabinet full of untouchable teacups and nonfunctional thimbles. 

            “Somewhere in there is a miniature mason jar full of pond water and a dead salamander,” Shab warned Grimmery.  The latter only grinned and waved away such concerns.

           

And now, for a while, I’m just going to write gibberish.

Wrought Clock Concerns

            I remember black iron implements mounted on red velvet—the rooms in those days were bullfighter motif—leftover abstract expressionism by minor artists indeed.  Weapons you could play with, but they weren’t anywhere near real—other people’s houses—pants full of shit, left a stink on their fuzzy white mushroom stool.  Always imposing on people—but damn sure made to feel bad about it.  You’ve hurt other people’s feelings with your requests and your sense of entitlement—spoiled, that’s what you are.  My mother read a Josh McDowell book and told me: “I’ve read this book and now I know the truth: I’m a giver and you’re a taker.”

Large Postcard Sent from Maine

Unfortunately the postcard, along with the rest of Aunt Merlota’s correspondence, was sold to an antique shop in a neighboring town.  As badly as Clumberja’s mother wanted to obtain the postcard and compare it to the photograph over her microwave oven, she wouldn’t go into the antique shop because the owner smoked a pipe.

“It’s a violation of state law,” she complained.  “But they won’t do anything about it.”

            “Who won’t?” Clumberja asked.

            “The police.”

            Clumberja nodded in acknowledgement, but kept her thoughts to herself.  She volunteered to visit the antique shop and find the lost postcard.

            “Don’t pay more than ten or eleven dollars,” her mother advised.  “I don’t want it if it costs more than that.”

            Clumberja could smell the pipe as soon as she stepped inside.  The old man that ran the place sat in a rocking chair smoking and watching the dozen security monitors next to him.  The store specialized in small items.  There was no furniture in the place.

            “What can I show you?” the old man asked Clumberja.

            “Postcards.”

            The old man showed her where they were and explained the filing system.

            “Don’t you have any oversized postcards?” Clumberja asked.  “I’m looking for something that came from an estate sale in Roggle about a week ago.”

            “Already sold it,” the old man knew exactly what she was talking about.

            “You did?” Clumberja frowned.

            “But,” the old man took the pipe from his mouth and pointed its stem toward another part of the store, “I’ve got a print over there with the same picture.”

            “Really.”  Clumberja followed the old man to a section of the shelving running all around the store.  His pipe didn’t smell all that bad to her, but it was a little overwhelming.

            The old man thumbed through a stack of posters and things until he found the picture he was looking for.  How did he hold that pipe between his teeth all day long?  That’s probably what gives you cancer—that constant pressure on the jaws.  He handed Clumberja the picture.  It was of a lobster the size of a dump truck climbing up the side of a barn.  Several farmers stood around looking at the situation.  Evidently there had been a caption, probably humorous, at the bottom of the picture, but it had been torn off.  Only the word “hardware” remained.

            The farmer nearest the viewer was a typically porcine American.  His hair was white and cut as close to the scalp as possible.  He wore a straw hair that had done nothing to prevent his bright red neck from being carved into multiple X’s by a lifetime of servitude to the sun.  He spoke of the Bible and the End of the World to his fellows, all of whom were overalls-wearing clones of himself.

            “Reckon he’s after the rye?” one of the farmers, this one wearing an “I Like Ike” button on the left-hand strap of his overalls, wondered aloud.

            “How would he know there’s any rye in the barn?” another asked.  “Unless he could smell it somehow, but lobsters don’t have noses.”

            “Neither do catfish, but they can smell,” pointed out Old Puice, the makeup artist from Dodgem’s Porridge.

            “Yeah, but they do have olfactory glands.”

            Clumberja’s mother, named Dawn after the circumstances of some victorious sea battle, explained that in her photograph the lobster smoked a pipe and the farmers all voted Democratic.  “That barn was the site of the first Ronald McDonald House,” she added.

Strengthened Like a Candle or a Drill Bit

            Dr. Beshafunk, now working at Buttermonk Laboratories in Demester, Wooftenshire, knew personal sacrifice.  His thumbnails were permanently deformed from repeated accidents during the development of the new finger-stiffening agent he and his team were working on.

            “See how they are now oddly shaped?” he asked his girlfriend, Louisa McBarnowl.

            “The right one looks like the lower half of Michigan,” Louisa gasped.  “While—while the left one looks like the upper half!”

            “Indeed, “ Beshafunk agreed.  “Only in real life the upper half is much smaller in proportion to the lower.”

            Miter Peteropolis, standing on the other side of the aquarium, posed a question.  “Can either of you name the so-called ‘capital of upper Michigan?’”

            Beshafunk stared blankly at Miter, while Louisa kept her eyes fixed on the hundreds of spoons cluttering the worktable before her.

            “I doubt it,” Beshafunk stated flatly.

            Miter took a deep breath.  Any hope of a smile withered on his face.

            “It’s Mondofisk Bay,” he mumbled, more out of a sense of obligation than anything else.  He reminded himself again, like a man whipping a kitten, that he would never be accepted by these people; never, never.

            Now Beshafunk took a deep breath, ridding himself of unpleasantness.  “However,” he returned to Louisa and the lecture at hand.  “It has all been worth it.  If you will hold out your finger.”

            Louisa’s brows came together like a bus and its reflection.

            “Any finger,” Beshafunk encouraged his lady.  “It’s perfectly safe.  Trial and error and the eventual triumph of achievement have assured us of that.”  He flexed one of his thumbs as a symbol of science, while keeping the other in abeyance, possibly to reflect its brother commerce, although I often read too much into such things and could very well be wrong about which thumb represented what and/or whether they symbolized anything at all other than a general thumbiness.

            Miter sulked at this good natured semantic display and idly watched the teeming catfish in the tank while Beshafunk carefully painted Louisa’s right index finger with the substance (named kovis ka dovis in patent applications).

            “Now what?” Louisa asked.  She held up her glistening finger and sniffed at it.  It smelled like wet rye flour, only stronger and more briny.

            “Once it dries you’ll plunge it into the rind of this watermelon and suffer no ill effects,” Dr. Beshafunk told her. 

            The drying process took some time and involved sitting under a modified hair dryer dome from the days of the Kennedy administration.  While she waited, Louisa looked through a scientific journal about geriatric literature.  She was just getting engrossed in an article about the conflicting messages of conservatism and liberalism in the collected writings of Erma Bombeck when her boyfriend turned off the finger dryer.

            “Are you ready?” Dr. Beshafunk asked.

            “I guess so.”

            “Then jab your finger into this watermelon!” the fat, bearded scientist gestured at a large green watermelon with black stripes.  “Pretend you’re poking a lump of dough.”

            Louisa shrugged and obeyed… and was amazed that her finger made holes in the rind of the melon as easily as she would holes in wet sand!

            Obviously she was stunned and her face reflected that fact.  Equally stunned was Miter Peteropolis when he involuntarily blurted out that her finger should work just as easily on other melons like cantaloupes and honeydews—and was not reprimanded, but actually seconded by Dr. Beshafunk.

            “That’s right,” Beshafunk smiled at him.

            Miter smiled back, but then mastered himself.

            “They grow honeydews the size of engine blocks in Mondofisk Bay,” he snapped.

Empress of the Barracuda’s Ramrush

            In the lake was a small island.   On the island was a camp.  To me the most interesting feature of this camp was a rack of used books for sale or trade at the camp’s general store.  I was going through this rack when the old lady’s replacement arrived.

            “The boat’s here,” the old lady told another customer, an old man in a red baseball cap standing at the counter.

            I glanced out a nearby window, but couldn’t see the dock.  How did the old lady know?   Did she have a light or something behind the counter that flashed with the boat pulled in?

            “My replacement will be on it,” the old lady added.  The old man showed some interest in this, but I didn’t.  My attention was on the books.  I had found two volumes from two men’s adventure series, The Destructor #21, Watching in Wichita and The Funeralist #42, Deadly Penetration.  I loved collecting these numbered series.  Their discovery had brightened this trip to the island camp as there really was nothing to do there except sit around a fire waiting to eat or swimming and I was much too pudgy to go swimming.

            “Your replacement?” the old man repeated.  “You’re leaving?”

            “It’s time for me to go.  Twelve years I’ve been here.”

            “I’ll be sorry to see you go.”

            I took my books to the counter.

            “You have any books to trade?” the old lady asked me.

            “No,” I shook my head and smiled.  Books were precious.  I had none that I didn’t want to keep, certainly none with me.

            “You get about double for your money if you trade,” she told me.

            The old man put his finger on The Destructor.

            “I read that one,” he announced.

            I smiled in response, but kept quiet, waiting to be told the price.

            “Two dollars,” the old lady determined, having figured it out.

            “Didn’t want any of the westerns?” the old man asked me.

            I waited until I had handed over the money before telling the old man “No,” with another smile, this one thin and flat, like a fault line.  His hat had a patch that read “Trucks Bring It.”  I had found no other books of any interest.  These two seemed to be anomalies among the romance novels and supernatural thrillers and political capers and, yes, westerns.

            Two days later it was time for me to go.  I stepped into the general store just before departing to get a packet of ibuprofen.  Behind the counter was the old lady’s replacement.  She was a clean-faced, slim woman in her mid-to-late twenties. 

            “I was told you like to read,” she said to me as I fished in my pocket for my money.

            “Yeah,” I nodded.

            “I’ve got something here you might like.”

            She reached under the counter and retrieved a hardback book with a dust jacket that showed a two-headed astronaut holding an ice cream cone.  Next to him was a short, buxom woman in some sort of mechanical suit.  Together they faced a bear-like monster holding a TV.  Dick Cavett and Lester Bangs were on the TV.  The name of the book was Empress of the Barracuda’s Ramrush.

            “Wow,” I blurted out.

            “Take it.”

            “What, you mean free?” I asked, already tearing open the ibuprofen.

            “Yeah.  I’m cleaning out and rearranging and…” she went on, but suffice to say that I took the book, read it when I got home, and let me tell you: it was the greatest book I ever read in my life!

Clasper in Suspicious Containment

           

            The contractor had been so certain of his calculations that he allowed for the procurement of only one extra brick.

            “Just in case one of you breaks one,” he joked to his men.

            “This is an old Chinese legend,” thought Nancy.

            As it turned out, the contractor was right and, indeed, there was one brick left over after the family container was built.  This extra brick was put to use in later years by the family as a doorstop.  It was wrapped in hopelessly outdated Christmas wrapping paper and shoved against the door to the living room, the door that wouldn’t stay open and was never closed in any case.

            “Ought to just go ahead and take it off the hinges,” Old Fred grumbled on many on occasion.

            Many years later a subset of the family moved into a new container, this one made of metal and fabricated in a factory in a distant land.  Among the many things the subset took with them was the brick.  Old Fred was long dead; the door had been taken off its hinges soon after the funeral.

            “What are we going to do with this brick?” Mrs. Jones, Nancy’s daughter, wondered aloud during the unpacking.

            “Well, in an open-plan container such as this, there are no extraneous doors,” Rupert noted, “So we really have no need for a doorstop.”

            “I’ll take it,” Homodus declared, stepping forward from amid the stacks of magazines.  “I know just what to do with it.”  He turned the brick over in his hands.  It startled him to see how much brighter and more colorful was the side that had faced the carpet all those years.  Santa Claus and his Merry Men looked as vibrant as the latest characters from “The Booger Eaters.”

            “What’s he going to do with it?” Mrs. Jones asked; she and Rupert watched Homodus going to the far end of the container.

            Rupert shrugged.  He stole a couple of magazines and entered the toilet area.

            “I’m creating a shrine,” Homodus explained.  He cleared away a space on top of the occupancy meter and put the brick in the center of this space, vibrant side down, to preserve it.  On either side of the brick he placed an urn.  One held old Fred’s ashes, the other was full of cumin, but no one could remember which.  Around these objects Homodus set up a ring of small plastic cavemen that somebody’s grandfather had played with as a child.  In time, as Homodus came to be called “Old Homodus,” he added things like Hello Kitty stickers and a large poster of Jimmy Page in full Nazi regalia to the wall behind the shrine and it became a focal point for family emotions during celebrations and a backdrop for group photographs.

            Of course, over time new members joined the family.  As children they were not as respectful towards the shrine as their elders.  They didn’t know the history of the shrine and how it came to be.  Sometimes people put trash into the urns: gum wrappers and cigarette butts.  The cavemen were taken down, played with, lost, broken, replaced with painted spools or religious figures.  One day, little Terry pulled the brick down and unwrapped it.

            He told his grandmother, “Look what I found,” but she only snapped, “Well, it wasn’t lost.”

            “What is it?” his mother asked.

            “It’s that brick that was on the occupancy meter,” the old woman replied, taking the object in her hands, “But look what he’s done, he’s torn off the wrapping paper.”  There was real regret and remonstration in her voice.

            “Brick?” Little Terry’s mother questioned, leaning forward and examining the object in her mother’s lap.  “Mama, that’s not a brick.  You mean that’s what was inside that wrapping paper all this time?”

            “What is it?” another woman, sitting with them in the summer sun, wondered.

            “It’s a brick that came from the family’s old place in Zwischenpaste,” the grandmother explained.

            “Mama, that’s not a brick,” repeated her daughter.  “That’s a squirrel coffin!”

            Little Terry’s eyes grew wide.  Later he would wonder that a dead squirrel would weigh so much, but for now he felt only confusion and shame.  Did his grandmother not realizes that there were more uses for the word “found” than her sarcastic reply would seem to indicate?

Tape Up the Bat for the Coffee Cake

            “Do you remember Happy Days?” Cyril Dick Mance asked that week’s guest, Congressman Hooper.

            “I remember happier days, certainly.”  The congressman revealed both his basic conservatism with this remark and the fact that he was retired from active politics.

            “No, I mean the TV show.”

            “Oh,” Hooper nodded.  “Yes, yes, of course.  Fonzie, Henry Winkler, Ron Howard, all that.  Although I believe there was a show called Happier Days, wasn’t there?”

            “If you mean Happy Days Again, then no.”

            ‘“Happy Days Again?’  What was that?” Hooper toyed with a jar of cold cream.  The two men sat in one of the studio’s dressing rooms.  Production assistants and studio personnel came in and out with the regularity of children in the summertime.

            “It was the name given to the syndicated version of Happy Days while the original show was still on the air, to avoid confusion.”

            “Like Laverne and Shirley and Company,” one of the makeup artists threw in on her way out the door with a bag of cotton balls in her arms.

            “Right,” Cyril Dick Mance agreed.

            “Well?” Hooper urged him along in the direction of actual conservatism.

            “Well, anyway, the thing about Happy Days, and other shows of that era, but especially Happy Days, that bothered me, was how at the beginning of the show, somebody, in this case Tom Bosley, would announce ‘Happy Days is filmed before a live studio audience,’ in order to fool you, the home viewer, into thinking that the laughs were real.  But they weren’t.  Sure, they had a studio audience, but they still used a laugh track.  99% of the laughter you heard on all those shows was added later.”

            “99%?” the former congressman was dubious.

            “99%.” Mance was firm.

            A woman came into the dressing room.

            “Time to get your wig on,” she told Mance.

            Hooper watched Mance, the host of The Booger Eaters, face the mirror while the woman fitted a bright orange wig on his head.

            “She’s getting paid fifty dollars an hour to do that,” he thought.

            “Of course, our show has no laugh track,” Mance told Hooper, “But then, on the other hand, our ‘audience’ is just a couple of sofas where the families and guests of the cast and crew can sit and watch the taping if they happen to be visiting the studio.  If they laugh, they laugh.  If it’s caught on the soundtrack, great; if not, it doesn’t matter.”  He turned to Hooper, transformed.

            The congressman smiled.

            “It’s a kids’ show,” Hooper commented, “And yet you don’t have any kids in the audience.”

            “Yeah, our model was the old Flack and Slack puppet show.  How do I look?”

            “Suitably silly, I guess.  What do you want me to do?”

            Cyril Dick Mance explained the premise of the sketch that Hooper would be participating in.  He showed him exactly how he wanted him to hold the baseball bat.

            “This is a twenty-four-hundred dollar suit,” Hooper informed Mance.

            The host of the kids’ TV show thought for a moment.

            “Maybe we can get you into the British cow costume,” he suggested.

The Man Called Flap is Preparing to Explore the Tiny Neighborhood

            “I heard you have a shower in here,” a young Captain Briefly (then known as Chet Marimbus) stated, looking around Cyril Dick Mance’s office.

            “I do,” Mance replied.  “In here.”  He showed Chet the mechanism for opening the door hidden in the blond ash paneling.

            “Wow,” Chet gushed.  The hidden room also contained a toilet and a sink.

            “This also serves as a secure hiding chamber in case of danger,” Mance let Chet know.  He didn’t tell him about a further secret door within the small bathroom that opened on a passageway leading out to the Gavoindak Depression.

            “Now, remember,” Mance told Chet, snapping off the light, “You’re in charge while I’m away.  Don’t take any shit off anybody.”

            Chet blushed at the use of the vulgarism.  In later years, after adopting the Captain Briefly persona, one of his defining characteristics would be the G-rated language he employed both on- and offscreen.  He looked around the office.  It was a 1970’s era dentist’s dream.  Blond ash paneling throughout, as I have mentioned; a blue vinyl chair and a yellow vinyl chair for visitors; an orange settee; a large, bulbous, standing, chrome lamp that gently arched from its place behind the desk, beside a potted jade tree, to an intrusive position between the person seated at the desk and his visitors.  Framed paintings in the anyone-can-do-it post-abstract expressionist style were on the walls.  Metal blinds covered the large windows, admitting nothing in the way of natural light.

            “You don’t drink,” Mance noted, “But here’s where the liquor’s kept anyway.”  He showed Chet another hidden door and the well-stocked pantry within.  “I wouldn’t advise taking it up in my absence, but occasionally you might have to entertain someone.”

            “I understand,” Chet nodded.  He looked down at the run, which was thick enough and soft enough to sleep on.  If he was a child he would have loved to crawl around on that rug, pushing teams of plastic soldiers though its burnt orange grasslands.  In fact, he determined to do so, just as soon as he was assured that his employer and mentor was gone on this bizarre excursion of his.

            “I’ll be gone at least a week,” Mance told Chet.  “You’ll be able to handle things for that long, surely?”

            “Oh, surely.”  Chet nodded seriously, brow appropriately wrinkled. 

            Mance looked the young man up and down.

            “OK,” he pronounced.

            “One thing:” Chet added as Mance was hefting his travel kit to his shoulders.  “Can I let Amanda use my office while I’m in here?”

            Mance opened his mouth to speak one thing, but instead said, “You’re in charge.”  Then he was gone.

            Chet returned to his regular office and sat there for nearly ten minutes before returning to Mance’s with a toy car and some dolls.

A Trellis of Corndogs My Academic Response

            I went under the name Flap for the duration of my time in the Gavoindak Depression.  Secrets and new beginnings.

            The tiny neighborhood that I visited was truly tiny.  It consisted of eight or nine buildings scattered about the periphery of the belly of the depression.  The town was so small that it didn’t have a name.

            “What do you call this town?” I asked one old man.

            “Town?” he replied, briefly glancing up from the aimless whittling that consumed him on that dark morning.

            The Gavoindak Depression is like a valley, located in the heart of an intertwined compound organism known as the Bekonkeral Forest.  The abovementioned belly of the depression is a soft, partially penetrable field that covers perhaps a half a square mile, crossed with a grid of dark lines.  The field is green, composed of downy growths that sometimes admit passage through to another place, a place from which apparently no one has ever returned.

            “Have you ever been out in the belly?” I asked one of the townspeople, this one a lean, dirty-faced woman standing in the doorway of her crude wooden shack.

            “Hell no,” she spat.  I glimpsed small, ragged children behind her, like tarsiers in a hollow log.  “Sometimes deer, chased by hunters, fall down from up there,” she pointed at the tangle of pale blue flowers and enmeshed vines overhead, “And fall into the belly.  They sink like stones in a pot of water.”

            “But people have waded out there and come back,” I suggested, relying on what I had read.

            “Sometimes,” she admitted, “If you’re real careful, you can tiptoe through it.  I’ve seen it done.  But only a fool would try it.”

            I wondered how big of a fool I was.

Fumigation Lunches Fill the Interesting Gap

            Flap asked the woman to wish him luck, but got nothing from her but a look of incomprehension and aversion.  He walked forward into the edge of the belly.  The sparsely set buildings of the tiny town occupied a thin, rocky strip that ran around the belly, separating it from the pink and purple tufts of the surrounding jungle.  He stepped gingerly as he waded into the moss-like substance.  It was like walking on gelatin.  He saw that it was possible to cross the expanse, if one took care.  The question was how much pressure it would take to fall through to the other side.  He was almost to the middle of the belly by the time he decided to try it.

            He jumped up and down.  When he landed he seemed to bounce as if on a trampoline, although no waves or ripples of energy from his feet moved through the belly.  He jumped again and again, each time landing a little more violently, until finally he

            fell

                        through

                                    the

                                    green fluffy stuff

                        and found himself

                          on a blank page.