Page 169

Tingle with Unrelenting Bowel Pressure

            “Try to hold it as long as you can,” Colonel Trask pleaded with Brondo.

            “I’m doing my best,” the muscular young man replied, his voice betraying the great strain he was under.

            “The closer we get to the center of the Queen’s syrup containment well—“

            “I know, I know,” Brondo interrupted.  His impatience was equally evident.

            “Did you bring paper?” Irene asked from the back of the atomic-powered cart.

            “I thought it would be appropriate if he wiped with this,” Colonel Trask answered, holding up a long, yellowed document that flapped back into the woman’s face from the force of their great speed.

            “What?” Irene chirped, grabbing the tail of the document and holding it steady.  “What’s this?  The Founders’ Compact?”

            The Colonel grinned in reply, glancing back.

            “This is it,” Brondo groaned.  “No more—I gotta go!”

            “Hold on, we’re almost—“

            “No, now!”  He began undoing his belt.

            Irene stared up at the jeweled roof of the syrup channel as Trask eased off on the accelerator.  He wanted to control the spray as much as possible.  A hundred hours practicing the bootlegger’s turn in the simulator would serve him well…

            Upstairs, in the Queen’s scorched and water-damaged boudoir, Inspector Flegrim tucked his notebook into his coat pocket and turned to one of the uniformed officers.

            “Where’s the bathroom,” he asked.

.

Page 168

Page 167

The Trickster of Legend Has a Brother-In-Law

            Promosutis, the hero of many folktales in the Astrophobic tradition, was often plagued by the appearance of his brother-in-law, Glamogoose.  Some of these tales present Glamogoose as being married to Promosutis’ sister, Erase, while others claim that he was brother to the wife of Promosutis.  However, as Bird Landry of the Department of Linguism at the University of Flapjhack has attempted to prove using parallel soup-and-soup techniques, Promosutis cannot possibly have had a wife, given that he is clearly described as having been an initiate of the Fuzzy-Things-in-the-Meadow Society, which did not allow its members to be married.

            Thus we find Glamogoose once again abandoning Erase in order to hunt for so-called “brain cheese” on the fourth elder warming of Boelaam.  The most famous example of this story is “Promosutis and the Raven’s Droppings.”  In it Erase goes to her brother and claims a wedgeright upon his fists as her sisterly privilege.  Promosutis must go and bring back the wayward husband.  Instead of doing so, however, Promosutis wraps a duck in “rags of gluish construction” and tosses it into the ethereal conveyance tube leading to Boelaam’s fourth elder warming.  Having thereby successfully deceived all into thinking he had undertaken the trip on behalf of his sister, Promosutis swims out to the island of Beclock in the middle of the Lake of Parenthetical Congress to sleep for a hundred years.  This is another reason we know he wasn’t married, for any wife worthy of the name would surely have awakened the legendary trickster to change a lightbulb or join the family for the Feast of Bonkers at least.

.

Page 166

Page 165

Stack the Blocks So that They Form a Freeku

            The group of employees chosen to work on the project were all this close to being suspended for their “poor attendance.”  They had been led to believe that participation in the project would forestall any disciplinary action.  This was not true, of  course; they were still in trouble, but the people running the study behind the project had convinced their employers that enthusiastic cooperation yielded much better results.  So it was that the group of six employees entered training room #3 with high hopes on both their part and that of the people secretly watching them.

            “I don’t remember there being a window in here before,” Todd commented on entering the room.  The door was shut behind him and the project was officially underway.

            “They’re probably watching us,” Greta told him, not taking her eyes off the pile of blocks, some big, some little, heaped up in the middle of the floor.  “Let’s just get started: we’ve only got an hour.”

            “I can kind of make out something in the other room,” Todd announced, peering into the glass with his hands cupped around his eyes.

            “What’s a ‘freeku?’” Melissa wondered, studying the sheet of instructions handed to them moments earlier.

            “Wasn’t this the engineers’ locker room?” Todd asked, still focused on the two-way mirror while the others sorted the blocks.

            “Todd,” Ramon barked, “We’ve got to get busy!”

            “I can see somebody!” Todd shouted.  “He’s looking right at me!”

.

Page 164

Page 163

Crusading Defoliant Weaselcourt

            Once the trees had been denuded the forest animals, the squirrel people and the crud spontaneously exuded from each hexagonal stoma surrounding the surface of his overwhelmed sensory apparatus, now he feared to take LSD, whereas previously he had felt that, under controlled conditions, perhaps.

            “The key, I think,” O’omash postulated gravely, gravy linked to residences of his “Is that you can’t think of a way out because there is nothing you can think of that would be outside the totality of the experience.”

            “Given that the experience if, for the purposes of the experience, the totality of the experience,” Mosberg threw in.

            “What happened to the leaves?” Mulberina demanded, steering them back on track with a mighty wheel of the legs and arms and tubes of the absorbed individuals feelable just beneath the grass and roots of the backyard between the satellite and its outbuildings.

            “The leaves fell among the grass and roots, completing the cycle.  No, only symbolic of the greater cycle.”

            “Wheels within wheels,” a Bertie Wooster once said more than once.

            “Wheels to steer us, wheels to reference ourselves against relatively speaking.”

            I never want to talk about the             squirrel people again.  It’s strange how I can’t get the salvia experience out of my mind, while at the same time I can’t quite recall it.  Not exactly anyway.  I feel like a great truth was revealed to me through it, but at the cost of a broken neck.

.

Page 162

Page 161

Compassionate for the Logmint

            Only one mint lozenge from the bag remained.  This was the notorious logmint.

            “Goddamn the TV is loud!” complained Morton from his perch on a triangular piece of plywood nailed high up in one corner of the room.  No one listened to him.  No one heard him.

            “Does it have to be that loud?” he screamed.

            “Could it be that because his band never went anywhere that he has been marginalized?  That his opinions no longer matter (if ever they did) to the other members of the community?” Sally wondered to her fellow psychology students as they watched these proceedings through the two-way mirror (also called “one-way glass”).

            “I think a better question is, ‘since the report of this incident will be posted online, but not any follow-up material, will the inevitable digital world-mind hunt down any such follow-up material, seeking answers and/or novelty?”  This was Donny, dressed in overalls and beaver mask, reaching into and grumbling that all the mints were gone.

            “No, there’s one left,” Morton told him.  “The logmint.”

            “The logmint?” whined Donny.  “I don’t want that.  It’s so big and all those little edible ornaments all over it.”

            “I like the logmint,” Sally announced, looking at it as if at a baby fumbling helplessly at a catcher’s mitt.  It lay there on the platter attended by a candy lumberjack and marzipan elk.  “But I’m not saying I’d eat it.”

.

Page 160

Page 159

Easy Brushing the Flowers, Grunts, and Eyes

            “This new product enables you to perform your daily dental duties—“

            “‘Daily dental duties,”’ Heffie Oibur interrupted, repeating Dr. Gingrotto’s words.  “That’s good,” he judged.

            The study of tools and implements from extraterrestrial cultures, designed for the use of beings whose bodies are extremely dissimilar to our own human ones in called Xenogeratology.  This term has been criticized by some linguists, who object that it is not wholly Latin in origin.  However, as the term “dessinophrenic,” used to describe person obsessed with doodling, has been widely accepted within the macrographic community, we here at the Fank o’Bengland feel that other, cobbled-together terminology should be acceptable.  After all, even our top executives now listen to “beat” music and openly long for the days when they were relatively powerless youths.

            It is speculated that, just as Sean Connery quickly sickened of the role of James Bond primarily because of the foolish conflation by the public, especially reporters (they really should have known better), of his own person with the character, that the Beatles became equally sickened of their roles as “the Beatles” because they, in fact, were not those caricatures of themselves presented in films and, yes, on albums.

            “Strange that you should have chosen the Beatles and James Bond as the initial subjects of your tests,” Oibur commented.  “For those two things represent the United Kingdom’s primary contributions to the pop culture explosion of the 1960’s.”

.

Page 158

Page 157

Why Nutpear Are Not a Viable Concept

            “The combination of the nut and the pear just doesn’t suit,” Dr. Hambora’s mother shook her head and made a sour face.

            “Mama, we’re not talking about a literal combination of a nut and a pear.  We’re not even talking about a nut or a pear in the way you normally understand them: an edible nut or pear.  We’re talking about nutpear, a symbiotic disco adhesive that acts as a sponge in transluminal environments such as, say, the streets of some really old village in Europe, streets too narrow for use by automobiles.”  Dr. Hambora sounded exasperated, as well he should: it had been three days since the aquacouncillor manbot had escaped from Larry’s penthouse and in all that time Hambora had not taken a shit.  There just hadn’t been an opportunity.

            “I would imagine that this nutpear would make you bookie,” the old lady posited, using a euphemism from the doctor’s childhood.  He reflected on his mother’s use of the word “imagine.”  There was very little evidence of her ever having had an imagination, except for the crazy, boring dreams she retold almost every morning, eventually driving Hambora’s father to leave home and wander the Grand Canyon, searching for the hidden chamber wherein the Pubic tribe maintained an orchard of so-called “nutpear” trees, totally unrelated to the concept currently being investigated by the committee to which Hambora was attached in the capacity of scientific advisor.

.

Page 156

Page 155

Trash Wrinkle Almost Pledge for the Sour Cream

            While enjoying a baked potato in a desolate spot behind the Enrichment Promenade shopping center, Travis was approached by amateur photojournalist Frank Orbiter.

            “What’s that, a baked potato?” Frank asked.

            “Yep.”  Travis was holding the potato much as one would an apple or an ice cream cone, depending on one’s devotion to an image of health.

            “Just eating it plain?  No butter or sour cream or anything?” Frank continued his interrogation, for that if what it was quickly beginning to feel like to Travis.

            Travis nodded.

            “Say, do you mind if I take your picture?” Frank gestured with his camera.

            “For what?”

            “I’m a photographer,” Frank told him.  “I’m documenting this time and this place.”

            “This now,” Travis interpreted.  He was sitting on an overturned shopping cart beneath a warped and stunted pine tree on the edge of a steep hill covered with kudzu that dropped down to the bypass somewhere below.

            “That’s right,” Frank nodded happily, readying his aim.

            “Document this,” Travis urged, squeezing the uneaten half of his potato into a collection of white ribbons.  As he did so the store immediately across from his seat, an Old Navy, exploded like a distant star, sending out a colorful cloud that took many thousands of years to make itself known.

.

Page 154

Page 153

A Parcel Received from the Libellant

            The country in which the following narrative takes place was still at a moment in its development as a society when the mail was delivered twice a day.  Primitive and unnecessary by our enlightened, up-to-date standards, this arrangement yet allowed persons arriving home to find valuable packages on the entry table to ask of their servants, “Esmeralda, did this arrive by the first post?”  To which the servant named Esmeralda would look closely at the particular package being held aloft by the young master and reply, “Why, no sir, the second.”

            The young master, an avowed hater of television named Arthur Poplin, nodded his acknowledgement and began tearing open the package there and then.  To his anger, but not his surprise, he found that it contained a severed gibbon penis.

            “They did it again,” Arthur informed his solicitor, Dr. Krumbekak, by means of the telephone in the parlor.

            “Perhaps it would be best just to apologize and be done with it,” suggested the elderly attorney, who had served the Poplin family for the extent of his professional career.

            “Perhaps it would be best if I retained the services of a lawyer who specializes in litigation,” Arthur snapped, tossing the package and its contents into a rubbish bin made of an elephant’s foot.

            “Now, now,” Krumbekak urged soothingly, “Try to keep a cool head.”

            Arthur took a deep breath, but the stupidity of the “entertainment news” program he had spoken so disparagingly of still filled him with the fires of hate.

.

Page 152

Page 151

Safe as a Gift from the Aircraft Razorburn

            Many more head lice building behind the crash as Treemanor and his compatriots, riding in comfortable depressions in rings worn on each of Treemanor’s fingers (except for the left thumb: this was reserved for the ultimate Stoner Rock album, which Treemanor hoped to acquire before next Tuesday).  The tomato that the men’s mother had a seventeen-year veteran of the municipal police force, was missing pieces from the old, overly complex boardgame about real estate and the building contractor profession.

            “My friend Bob became a contractor,” Treemanor asserted during a respite in a ditch.  Columns of fresh troops marched by, exchanging insults and warnings with the big wooden house entity and his finger-borne sidekicks.

            “He’s not your friend,” snapped Alton Henry, whose seat was on the pointy finger on Treemanor’s right hand.  “You haven’t spoken to him in over twenty years!”

            “No, but I’m sure that, if we were to meet today, by chance in the middle of some field of wheat in the midst of silent harvest,” Treemanor’s gaze drifted into the cloud-freckled sky over the distant horizon as he conjured up the vision, “That we would share a hearty handshake and then begin laughing over the mutual follies of our youth.”

            “I hope you don’t shake hands too hard,” Wilmer Goop, clinging to a bandage around the stub of a pinky, “We might be crushed.” 

            Later Treemason’s words were misquoted with reference to a “mutual youth,” though there was a gap of five or six years to be pissed away.

.

Page 150

Doubts About the Mosquito Paste Option

            For years the only medically approved treatment for bwieoufics was the swallowing of small clown stones—up to ten a day—over the course of two to three weeks.  This remedy, known since the mid-1600’s, usually proved effective, but had the drawback of inducing false labor pains, even in male patients.  Also, with the continued exploitation of the oceans for commercial gain, clown stones have been increasingly hard to find.  In recent weeks, therefore, the news that an alternative course of treatment for bwieoufics had been developed has been greeted with much anticipation.

            This new treatment, involving the topical application of a paste made from tens of thousands of mashed mosquitoes, is not without its naysayers.  One of the most prominent, Jed Fischer of the Unsolved Crossword Puzzle Society, made his doubts known in a much-talked-about interview with Starkum Stonewing.

            “In the Renaissance there was a thing called epidermal malaria,” Fischer claimed.  “Who’s to say that we might not be inviting the return of such a malady?”

            “No there wasn’t,” Stonewing, dressed as a child’s idea of a domestic robot, countered.

            “Talking mattresses?” Fischer suggested.

            “No,” Stonewing shook her cubical, cardboard head.

            “Flightless violinists that ate only cheese?”

            “No, no.  No such thing.”

            “Come on, you can’t deny that it’s possible.”

.

Page 149

Distracted Vikings

            As Tomas sat in the back of the boat working on a crossword puzzle, he didn’t feel much like a Viking.  The week before the team leader, Blargo, had made them all stand in front of a full-length mirror, everyone dressed in full Norse raiding party attire, hold aloft their weapon (either a broadsword or an axe), and shout, “Elifi kar Bligeldgarn!”  Tomas liked the way the horns on his helmet diminished the relative size of his ears, but otherwise he felt stupid.  He glanced up from trying to figure out a nine-letter word whose clue was, “homosexual rapist of note,” and wondered how much longer it would be until they reached the shore where the monastery was located.

            “Come on, guys,” Blargo encouraged the team, “In the old days the Vikings would spend a couple of weeks at sea sometimes, eating miserable food and sleeping in their seats, all for the chance at plunder and glory!”

            “I’m still waiting to see a sea monster!” Phil, who had taken time off from his job as a barber for this trip, called out.

            “You will!” Blargo promised.  “Let’s try to keep up the motivation here!”

            Phil turned his gaze to the horizon.  He had to “go to the bathroom” again, as he still euphemistically phrased it.  But he was trying to hold out.  He was tired of hanging his naked backside over the edge of the boat.

            Tomas shut his crossword puzzle book with a deep sigh.  What was the point, he asked himself.  Without a firm belief in the existence of Valhalla, how could he be expected to die for the cause?

.

Page 148

Page 147

Root Arrange with Triangular Frosting

            Despite being annoyed by the slanting surface of his camp table, the Old Naturalist managed a smile as he looked down at the day’s work laid out in a pie chart before him.  Clearly, he thought as he swatted away a bug, the cake trees that once covered these hillsides must have borne such dense foliage that the earth immediately around their trunks was barren except for tiny communities of shade-loving toadstools wherein the university maintained its Flounder Balancing Program.  What a wonderful birthday present.

            For indeed it was the Old Naturalist’s birthday.  Julie and Andrew entered the tent with a guacamole replica of the now-extinct cake tree’s fruit.

            “As well as we can conjecture it, of course,” Andrew added unnecessarily as he and Julie brushed pie charts and bugs and pictures of Cate Blanchett off the table and placed their gift before the older man.

            “Well, well,” the Old Naturalist declared, inspecting this eminently edible model from one side and another, finally getting a dab of green paste on the end of his long, warship-like nose.  The laughter that greeted this accidental adornment was prissy and staccato, like the eggs of some captive passerine birth that knows exactly how to open the door to his cage, but lacks the proper tool for the job.

            “Poor old bird,” my mother commented, shaking her head.

            “Poor old naturalist,” I countered with a stern wag of the finger.

.

Page 146

Page 145

Always Remove the Seasonal Hog Expressly the Legends Unveil

            Wodred stepped into the TV room.  There were so many branching corridors and turns to the left and right in the building that he had no idea where he was.  Of course it was reassuring to find not only a TV, but a group of people watching it, but this reassurance was quickly subsumed by his irritation at how loud the TV was.  One man among the group had glanced at him as he entered, but otherwise the remaining half dozen or so had remained transfixed by the ephemeral images on the screen.  Wodred slipped into one of the sofas scattered about and soon purposed to fart as strenuously as possible, gambling with himself that no one would hear it above the blare.

            Cooking up the stinker, Wodred studied the backs of the men’s heads.  They seemed to be lifeless except for occasional twitches, like the unconscious movement of a lion’s tail.  He presumed they were—wait, here comes the fart, he thought.  He rode the release like a man on a bicycle with no brakes.  The fart must be violent, but controlled.  He kept his eyes on the man who had seen him enter as he cut loose.

            As he had predicted, the sound could not be heard.

            On the screen, two fashion models were laughing at how easy it was to save money on car insurance.  The men, none of whom could possibly own a car, seemed spellbound by the contrived discussion.  Suddenly, Wodred was struck by the expanding wave of corruption.  It was a bad one.

            In his haste to exit the room before his secondary presence became known, Wodred attracted the attention of the one man, the latter offering to change the channel for him.

.

Page 144

Page 143

Placard’s Post-Voted Almonds

            The interior of the building was completely dark except for isolated zones of limited illumination from single, oddly-placed lights or a string of yellow fairy lights around a framed poster of some magician or hypnotist from the days before television.  Examining one of these posters, Clifford noted that the walls were painted black, to promote the penumbrous atmosphere, he theorized.

            He paid his entrance fee at a window behind which a woman sat, barely visible from the glow of a couple of disassociated Christmas tree lights, probably set into a failing control console below her side of the window.  She mumbled something to Clifford as she passed him an illegible, grimy stub of pasteboard.  Her voice sounded as if it was passing through a primitive electronic filter.  He didn’t bother to ask her for clarification.  He only slipped the stub into his pocket and made his way to the right, passing through a heavy drapery that covered a tall, wide passageway leading downward.  Cold air met him as he entered.  He could see much better now, as light filtered up to him around a distant corner.

            “What were you expecting to find here?” the bartender, dressed in a red vest, elbow propped on the bar, head in his hand, asked.

            “Something more than just liquor,” Clifford mused.  “Entertainment, I guess.”  He looked around.  It was dead quiet except for a faint scramble of pop music 1,000 years inbred coming from an unknown other room.

            “You could try one of the video games,” the bartender suggested.

.

Page 142

Page 141

Fifty Little Men in Training

            All fifty of the trainees arrived in a converted limited utility bus (the short bus, you might have called it in school).  Stepping out on the gravel-strewn dirt lot, their first impressions of Camp Social Realism were not ones to engender expectancy.  Likewise, those who watched them disembark could conjure little hope that they would fulfill even the baseline requirements of the camp’s program.          

            “They’re little,” explained Obed to a waitress in one of the diners in the neighboring town.

            Laura wrinkled her nose as she poured the coffee.

            “How little?” she wondered.

            Echoing sounds of Swedish, normally humorous on some puppet show or documentary about the clown settlers of the Great Lakes region, were now perceived as threatening and psychedelically ominous, perhaps because of the fact that they did echo, and also perhaps because of the insistent, clashing beat that accompanied their sinuous movement through the town’s empty streets.  The old McRose’s discount store building, abandoned for years, had been informally taken over and converted (bekehren) into a strange nightclub of sorts.  Two of the little men, on an off night, ventured out of camp and out to the dark parking lot surrounding the building.  Only a couple of vans of distinctly stoner and/or hippie appearance stood among the burgeoning maze of weeds.

            “You think they’ll card us?” Cliff asked his companion with a chuckle.

.

Page 140

Page 139

A Night in Tight Pants

            Just as the 1980’s did not begin exactly on January 1, 1980, or January 1, 1981 (according to variously picky persons), but rather with the inauguration of Ronald Reagan or the advent of MTV or, (my personal choice) the first episode of Late Night with David Letterman—the night in question did not necessarily begin with sundown.  In the opinion of those who were there, the night began with the arrival of clean laundry.

            “Finally I have something to wear!” remarked Ruben, laying aside his copy of Wooly Space Arachnid, rising from his bed, and taking the laundry basket from his wife’s arms.

            “This is an enlightened household,” Manya, the wife, perorated, watching Ruben dig through the freshly folded clothes.  “I’m a modern woman, a feminist; you, my husband, agree with me on just about everything political and social.  Why is it then, that I’m the only one around here who does the dishes or the laundry?”

            “Because if I was to do it,” Ruben answered, selecting a pair of black jeans (his only pair of black jeans, it so happened), “It wouldn’t be done to your satisfaction.”

            “It wouldn’t be done at all,” Manya asserted.  She was on the verge of correcting Ruben’s use of the word “was” in the previous sentence when she noticed the man struggling to get the pants on.

            “Aren’t those too tight?” she asked.

            “No, it’ll be alright,” Ruben grunted, fastening the button.

            “Won’t you be uncomfortable?”

            “They’ll stretch out.”

            Manya imagined Ruben running from the police.

.

Page 138

Page 137

The Insects Like to Feed on Wolf Feces

            The way the old naturalist Edwin Morang explained it, the wolves, in turn, seasonally fed on insect feces.

            “However,” he chuckled over his pewter stein of mead, “Not the same species of insect which feeds on the wolf feces.  That’s significant,” he continued, “Because if it was, then what we call the ‘cycle of life’ would be recapitulated in a narrowly localized microcosm.  As is,” he sighed, swirling the last swallow’s worth of mead around preparatory to putting it where it would do the most good, “It’s merely another example of bugs eating shit.”  He tipped the stein up over his beard and downed its contents.  As he did so, Lucas was surprised to see that the bottom of the stein was transparent, probably made of durable plexiglass.   Lucas, a younger man wearing a pullover bearing a stylized picture of a poppy seed pod, pondered the possible reason for the difference in materials, but his speculations led him to the wrong conclusion. 

            “Excuse me, Mr. Morang,” Helena interjected.

            “Dr. Morang,” Prosore the Kantiges Gesicht, sitting at the west end of the table, corrected her.

            Helena glanced like a would-be saint at the metal man before continuing.  “Dr. Morang, shouldn’t you have said, ‘because if it were then the cycle of life’ and so forth?” She rolled her hand to punctuate her paraphrase.

            “No,” the old naturalist (who looked like Ben Kingsley in costume for his role in The Old Naturalist) shook his head in dismissive deliberation.

            The robot later reported this as “deliberate dismissal.”

.

Page 136

Page 135

Dust is Not the Same Thing as Dirt

            No miniaturization was required for us to enter the vacuum cleaner.  Over the portal was a bronze placard declaring this to be the Staubsauger.  Whether or not this explained our ability to enter the machine is unknown.  I suppose it’s possible.  Science works in strange ways.  I put the tip of my big toe into the glowing hole and was quickly pulled through into the chamber beneath the bag.

            “Did you see that?” Daniel raved once he and the others in our party had followed me inside.  “It was just like an energy drawing by Jack Kirby!”

            “I kept my eyes closed,” I admitted.

            “That’s not surprising:” Joel replied.  “Some of the best vacuum cleaners in the world are made by Kirby.”

            “There may be something in that.  It’s possible that he was exposed to vacuum cleaners as a child.”

            I was thinking about Frank Frazetta, however.  And then I was thinking about Dr. Johnny Fever and Howard Hesseman back and forth.  By the time we were climbing into the bag through a hold made with a sword of geodesic construction I had moved on to thinking about Shaun Cassidy; he had so much makeup on his face.  Vincent Gardenia was worried about his family back home at the foot of Mount Etna.

            “How will we know what we’re looking for?” Daniel asked as we began clawing through the dust.  We looked like refugees from the apocalypse in our gas masks and clown suits.  I had already solved the crossword puzzle.

.

Page 134

Page 133

Try Another Can of Brandied Yamboats

            Full as I was, I yet went looking for something else to eat.  I hadn’t so far eaten anything that really connected with me.

            “It’s a matter of aesthetics,” I explained to anyone who would listen.

            The problem with the way that a store like 2cd and Charles displays its CDs (and all of its CDs are used, as far as I can tell) is that they emphasize the covers.  There are two kinds of CD purchasers: the casual one and the serious one.  The casual one purchases CDs mainly by the cover art (or name recognition), but the serious one needs only the name of the artist and the title of the album, printed on the spine of the jewel case, to make his decision.  For a store like 2cd and Charles the CDs are only there to suck you into the store in the hopes that you will buy a new book (that’s why they’re really in business.)  This whole situation points to a fundamental misunderstanding in the music business: yes, sales of big-name, mainstream artists by mush-minded customers are going to be a big part of your bottom line, but if you really want to sell a lot of the lesser known artists, you need to focus on the serious music consumer.  Of course, we mainly purchase used CDs anyway.  Only a chump (an Adele fan, say) pays full price.  All of this to say that the way 2cd and Charles displays their CDs makes it hard for a guy like me to shop.  And I’m still hungry, dammit, still searching for the next thing to satisfy me, if only temporarily.

.

Page 132

Page 131

Everywhere the Rhinoscerene Persons Gather

Imagine a photomat with a tall, thin, fishing-pole-flexible flagstick protruding from its roof into the once-happy-and-inviting sky, bearing, yes, a flag—signaling to all persons of rhinoscerene quality that there, whence the flag finds its grounding, is a place for them to gather.

            “What is a photomat?” asked Brenda, younger than the others.

            “It’s a relic of the seventies,” replied Mrs. Oatsmeal, laughing and smiling and not looking anyone in the eye, but keeping her gaze on the waving, dipping and bobbing purple flag in the distance.  “A tiny building where one would drop off camera film to be processed into prints.  Just thinking about one, standing lonely but self-sufficient in the middle of the liquor store parking lot, brings to mind images of long lines of people waiting to see the original Star Wars or thin people eating at McDonald’s.”

            As Brenda’s eyebrows rose in amazement, old Roger grumbled, “I’d be far more interested in finding out what ‘rhinoscerene’ means.”

            “It means you’ve got a big nose,” Mrs. Oatsmeal told him. 

            Old Roger gaped, his emotional center (a photomat of a nodule, located in the empty parking lot of his cerebellum) torn between indignation and fear.

            The middle-aged woman gestured at the crowd around them, all moving towards the flag over the trees.  “We’ve all got big noses.”

            Brenda began her own protest, but quickly relented, admitting to herself that, before her surgery, she had indeed had a big nose.

.

Page 130

Page 129

Psychopredation in Dormitory Tubes

            It was fun to sleep in the tubes.  Randy took the fun so far that he hung up a couple of pictures of Fee Waybill, but none of the other residents knew who that was and when it was explained to them they started putting up pictures of their own: pictures of Darth Vader and Shaun Cassidy and Ace Frehley and Cher in her Martian batwoman costume.  One guy even put up a picture of Elvis Costello, but it wouldn’t lay correctly against the curved interior wall of the tube and had to be mailed back home to Monster Island.

            “You think you’re so goddam smart, don’t you?”  This was the usual accusation made against those who publicly denounced the tube system.  Even I, who had at one time championed the arrangement, now was charged with ironic “smartness.”  I had a t-shirt printed up with the slogan, “No, I think I’m so goddam cute,” just to counter these encounters.  I would jerk my coat open, exposing the phrase and dare my accusers to chase me back into the tube of my choice.  The back of the shirt bore a picture of Godzilla in a zoot suit just in  case I was too tired (or loaded on pain medication) to run very fast, but, again, this image was either misinterpreted or utterly incomprehensible to many of my fellow residents.

            “These tubes are no substitute for the foam tunnels inside the Chloromorphus,” I complained in the pages of Lo-Proc Croc, the newspaper I cofounded with my friends the Pharmacists for just such complaints.  Little did I know then that the tubes would one day lead directly into the labyrinthine innards of that great beast whose form was riddled with tiny independent record stores.

.

Page 128