The Encouraging Voice of the Labyrinth

La Phoenix Rouge Se Levant

2007-04-21T02:01:00.002-04:00

Dear Enchanted Listener,

In the past it has been my humble and honest pleasure to simply share with you, as plainly as possible, my thoughts and experiences as they actually occurred in the form of these simple and unambiguous essais.

While I very much intend to continue these unadorned efforts, not the least of which for their moral instruction, I would like to now venture upon a new experiment, hopefully no less enlightening and entertaining, but here, for the first time, through the modality of speculative fiction.

I would ask you to imagine a fantastic and unbelievable world, one that would stretch your imagination to the limit. A city in the middle of nowhere, where the weather is different from one moment to the next. A world with enormous science and knowledge that has turned it back on both. A people who pride themselves on freedom but have none. An implausible world of solitaires.

As in the work of philosophers, we might regard this world and in so doing, discover in its impossibility, the true and authentic features of this world we actually do inhabit.

This will be my method.

The End of the Curse and the Beginning

2007-03-20T21:57:00.000-04:00

One day, the Minotaur awoke to find that his curse had been lifted: he first noticed that his head was lighter without the horns. Secondly, he was rather shocked by the complete and total absence of the Labyrinth. His peripheral vision made him dizzy. It was strange not walking at right angles: everywhere he seemed to arrive too quickly and by too direct a path. So it was indeed all of a sudden he found himself in a gigantic city, teeming with people, some of whom addressed him as an old friend, for he was old.

The city was grey and strangely beautiful, with random weather and food in very large portions.

And what became of him there? Was there ever a labyrinth -or nothing but? And what of I his encouraging voice? Had I led him out or astray? Could I be heard outside its infinite corners, or was I, too, simply a figure of speech? A way of talking, but not a thing that talked?

I will let you know. As I know, in at least one month's time, if not sooner. Until then, fellow citizen of this merciless city of turns, know that the Encouraging Voice is not silent, but pausing to admire you. That something that speaks at all times and all places, simultaneously, without interruption, perfectly equivocal on every point can never truly be said to be silent, just as the Minotaur was never alone, nor his voice, so long as you were there to hear it.

Van Choojitarom

WILL RETURN IN

"LA PHOENIX ROUGE"

20 APRIL 2007

My Fat Kid

2007-03-14T02:44:00.000-04:00

The Encouraging Voice of the Labyrinth: Parade Edition

for L.E.B.

It was bound to happen. For years they had been talking about the rising rates in child obesity and the melting of the ice caps. Now, some of Florida was back under water, but fat had overtaken flooding. Even as infants they were heavy. They didn’t want to learn to walk, or we didn’t want to teach them. They just sort of rolled around, like hungry fat worms. Their first words were foods. Before “ma-ma” and “pa-pa.” Food was their true parent. We should have spent more time with them, but as we both had to work, this was not possible. Perhaps the sitter watched the food channel a lot. Perhaps she just gave them treats to shut them up because we weren’t paying her much. Perhaps we should have hired someone more professional, or a least someone we could communicate with, shared some rudimentary common language. Perhaps we could have been more active ourselves, cooked our own food, made better choices. But the workday is long, and coming home none of us had the motivation to do anything, much less make healthy choices. We bought items labeled “healthy choices”; they had hearts and other salutary symbols on them. Weren’t they healthy choices? We didn’t really go over each line on the packaging and even if we did, how were we to know? Programming the TV was quite enough. Coming home was quite enough. Remembering everyone’s name was quite enough.

Perhaps if we had bought just less food. But it was cheaper this way, to load up at the wholesale club. It was something we used to do together, the kids would scout ahead on their scooters and come back with items. We manned the wagon, until it was too heavy to push. We were the carrier, the mothership, they the returning scout vessels bringing back treasures of Kosher hot dogs, Chicken Kiev Puffs, Microwave Yorkshire Puddings, pre-seasoned tenderloin, giant frozen Neapolitans and Yule logs you could eat all year long. We would all try the samples. We would stop together at the cafe and get pizza and another to go. It was easier.

Our house became something of a warren, drums of ranch dressing from COSTCO, pallets of Combos and Alfredo sauce. It looked like we were opening a restaurant. We were happy for awhile. I suppose.

Of his sister, our daughter, and the stupidity of the war she died in, I will say nothing, because it is still too sad. This is about my son. Though I cannot truly tell their stories separately, I will just pretend that I can, for now.

Troubled adolescence starts younger and younger, and my son’s began quite early on. I thought I was ready for all forms of rebellion, having been a black sheep myself, but I was not.

Being a large kid, he started hanging out with some of the bulkier kids at school. We thought this was pretty normal, but they really seemed to be into just eating, and with some sort of attitude.

On the door of my son’s bedroom: EAT CHIPS and die.

Soon they were getting into minor trouble, tagging trains with their favorite foods: Beef stroganoff, MC Salisbury steak. We were concerned that the acting out and constant weight gain were signs of some other conflict, but the only conflict we could really seem to identify were the acting out and the constant weight gain, both of which were really reinforced by the fact he started listening to Fatcore music.

I like the Nutter Butters
More than any motherfuckers
Buy a cake
And freeze it
Don’t you know it’s all Tastee-Freezee
And you know Iike my eats come eazy

put some chocklit’ on it!
put some chocklit’ on it!
put some chocklit’ on it!

Hey put some chocklit’ on it, bitch!

I tried to get behind his whole portly scene, but it always predictably backfired and I got little more than:

“You don’t get it. Eating is cool. Sleeping is cool. Fat is cool.”

Things were worse the quarter he dropped out of college and moved back home. He had gained a lot of weight on the meal plan. He was now the biggest person we had ever seen. He could not fit any of the clothes we sent him to school in. He needed special facilities, accommodations. They had these in every dorm at his school. They had special dorms. He wasn’t the biggest one at his school. Far from it. The schools had tried to adapt. It was driving tuition up, because the students could not get to class without special transportation and if they did, they couldn’t fit into the older buildings. They were using tractors to bus them around, and bulldozers as lifts. There were many lawsuits. We had to fix the toilet and redesign the shower and then fix the toilet again. This all part of plans we all had, hopes. My wife said she would cook; she thought that would solve everything. We thought we could help him. I don’t know what he thought then.

I know what other people thought: because they told me all the time. They were trying to help me I know. Saccharin is sweeter than sugar: I know. Whole grains have a lower glycemic index than processed: I know. Bananas make you feel full: I know. Thirty days to a new habit: I know. If you feed him, then you are in control: you are enabling him: I know. You cannot help someone if they are not willing to admit they have a problem: I know, I know, I know.

Eventually it went from our familiar, sullen, grotesque family ritual of trying to talk casually while he feasted like a mad hog at the dinner table (it was a nauseating sight: it took hours), to where we sometimes ate separately (if at all), to where we generally ate separately, to where it was impractical to plan a meal time anymore, because he was always eating. Our living room no longer merely looked like an entire obese frat lived there. It looked like a recycling center. If you threw something away, an open container of sour cream, or a dented and flat nearly empty 2 liters of squirt and backwash, or stale set of McDonaldland fries he would know, he would know, because it was his nest, his landscape, his journal, his world and he would get angry and there would be an argument. And when he was angry and there was an argument he would eat more.

Eventually there were nothing but arguments and he was angry all the time and we were angry, then sad, then disgusted. His mom cried every night. We both lost a lot of weight, which he took badly. Then one night she stopped. She moved out. I think I could have gone with her, but then who would take care of him? It was just me and the fridge. And him.

It was not surprising. It was hard for us to admit, for me to admit: he was just a monster to us now. He just ate and ate and that was it. He was disgusting. He hardly wore clothes, because nothing would fit him and he kept getting bigger. He smelled awful because it was impossible for him to bathe properly and he sweat a lot. His face was always moist. His mouth always had food in it. The TV was always on the food network. He cooked, but never cleaned. To be fair, he could barely get around. He was an addict, and like all addicts, he wasn’t happy. If anything, he was angry. About what I didn’t know. It didn’t matter anymore.

He had friends, though. People he knew from school, and from the local fast food places. They would come over for cookouts. I somewhat encouraged this, as I thought it was good for him. They stuffed themselves. They didn’t seem to be about much else besides food. They would come over with their own food, not share and then have a cookout. They talked about food stuff that I couldn’t follow. He even had a girl over a few times. She busted the couch. I said not to worry. I still said things like that. She just laughed. She had weird bruises and smelled bad. Asymmetrical piercings that looked terrible. Once I was over in that part of the house trying to unstuff the toilet. This is what I heard:

“Put the Big Mac wrapper over my face. Pour the milkshake on my clit. Lick it. Now hit me with the hammer.”

I never went to that part of the house again.

Eventually it came to a crisis. It had always been a crisis, but I just couldn’t stand it. It was on my mind all the time at the gym. I couldn’t go on this way much longer. I couldn’t afford it. He didn’t have a job. The walk-in cooler was full of junk food and he wanted another full-size for his bedroom. There were brownouts. I left notes. He ignored them. I could not talk to him. He was always eating. Or sleeping.

I did something I had promised I would never do, that it would never reach this point. True, I had only promised my wife, and she was in Barbados, I think. I put a lock on the walk-in cooler. That first night, I lay awake, listening. It was easy to tell what part of the house he was in, from the heavy breathing and creaking of the floor. I had planned out this confrontation, many, many times. I had rehearsed my speech. I would come out, not angry or confrontational and we would talk. The substance of the talk would be: I am your father. You are an adult, but I am your father. Etc. I would wait for another time to bring up the subject of food.

I waited a little too long. He called his friends and went out. The next day, I planned to speak to him, as though nothing had happened. I found he had a decent breakfast out of the cupboards. The day after, he had pried the lock off.

I never really got around to my speech. My strength and resolve were gone. I had just enough wherewithal to put locks on everything. He had just enough wherewithal to bust or break them: he cut through the cupboards once. Another time, he unscrewed the compressor and fished food out of the walk in cooler. We had a silent nightly contest: it was like trying to trap a rat. Only it was my son.

Then, one day, I decided that this was the answer. I would poison him.

I cleared out all my accounts. The house was paid for. I had made good money as a gym instructor and nutritionist. I made one last trip to COSTCO. I left a pallet of Slimfast, Hungry Man Edition, in the living room. He would have the Food Channel for another month. Then he was on his own.

The first thing I noticed in my hotel room is how everything I had brought with me smelled, like the dumpster to a fast food restaurant. Like him. I retched. And cried.

It was a few weeks later I got a call. He was angrier than ever. I was angry too, this time. There was no new content, only all the gloves were off. I told him I wished he had never been born. On this, we seemed to agree.

The next day, I woke up early and ordered breakfast. On the terrace I called the wife: we had a nice conversation: she had learned a lot of things while traveling, done a lot of things she had always wanted to do and some other things as well. It was good catching up. We promised to get together sometime, someplace in Europe.

I started a third career. I realized I always wanted to help people, so I worked at a clinic. There was always plenty to do: they needed help. And they were always sincerely grateful. I liked them all very much and the work, though endless, was not very hard. I lived pretty simply and rode my bike to the clinic.

The city sent me a letter, a year later: I was still the owner of the house. Apparently, it had become something of a nuisance, with gangs of fat people camping out in the yard and having cookouts at all hours. It was impossible to say who was living there, but it was a cited as a sanitation hazard and an undesirable slum of obesity. The police had been by many times: gangs had taken to jumping pizza deliveries (which had blacklisted them) and holding up chicken joints and all-you-can-eat-buffets.

It was becoming a global phenomena: the vastly, morbidly and incredibly obese were forming gangs and associations with an unclear political platform. Supposedly, they opposed the Federal government and the World Health Organization for their health initiatives, which they viewed as “genocide.” They threatened to blow up health clubs if the FDA moved to ban trans fats. Reports described mobile task forces roaming the country in special modified school buses that ran on deep fryer fats, sustained on a cell network of mirrors that worked out of fast food windows.

Tags such as “FATSO,” “AYCE”, “DONUT”, “TRANSFAT-KLF” and “The 88 OREOS” started showing up scrawled all over Applebee’s and neighborhood Chili’s. In South America, they started taking over whole grocery stores as squats. As the FATSO movement became International, the FBI began cracking down. They were looking for their leaders “Pizza the Hutt,” “Darth Eater”, “Mistah Kurtz” and “Lard Humongous” Now that nearly 90% of the population was certainly obese (the definition having been stretched, many, many times), it was very hard to identify the fat activists, or “Fatscists” as the media had labeled them (also “Blimpists” “Phatlangists”). Expert alarmists on the news channels labeled our greatest fear as “a superhumongous suicide bomber”: able to carry more weight and explosives, and, for practical reasons, nearly impossible to seriously search, they estimated that the increase in explosive payload more than compensated for the proportional dampening effect. The only hopeful note was the fact that the general increase in obesity in the general population, meant that crowds were, in fact, less dense in terms of number, and effectively self-sandbagged: only the largest of ordinance could be expected to create multiple casualties.

You would not know that the world was fat from our advertising and TV. The elites were scared: they had circled their wagons and stayed skinny. In fact, the fatter the general populace became, the skinnier the models, despite many claims to the contrary. Photos of models and stars eating pizza later turned out to have been photoshopped.

I knew the real state of the world from the gym, because I couldn’t use the newer equipment, designed, like the new planes, hospital and prison beds, for a whole new class of person. But the giant stairclimbers were never used anyway. I had to drive my new car with the seat moved all the way forward. It had a built in tray for supersized fast food. I was living in a world of giants.

More letters came: special laws had been enacted to deal with the growing crisis: I was probably far from the only parent who had simply abandoned his home so it became a campground for fat people. I knew I would have to go back someday. I was just biding my time, gaining strength and information.

The old neighborhood had changed. It was nothing but burnt-out fast food restaurants and discount groceries. The convenience stores had led the way in a new era of suburban fortification, but now to protect their Nutter Butters as much as cash. There was garbage everywhere, Whopper wrappers, chip bags, giant things of mayo. Most disturbingly, the dumpsters were reinforced like safes, and Blackwater Security rode shotgun on garbage trucks as well as delivery trucks.

My house was the center of it. It was literally, a mountain of garbage, pizza boxes, split sweatpants, broken chairs, and Stouffer’s boxes. It was surrounded by a still smoldering chain of barbecue pits and grills that dripped evil smelling grease. It was something much cruder than primitive, more grotesque than decadent, full of more malicious waste than neglect, an orgy fueled by something worse than any hunger. The atmosphere was a sickening mixture of the feculent and the savory, but choking with the smell of a herd of overweight humans. Which were nowhere to be seen.

Instead I saw their indiscriminate waste and refuse, and several new slogans that I did not recognize: “AYCE 4EVR,” “FATSO HQ,” “XXXXXXXXL AND IN CHARGE” “ONE DOLLAR, ONE BIG MAC, ONE VOTE, ONE BULLET,” “NO PIZZA, NO PEACE.” “NOBODY DOESN’T LIKE SARA LEE.” My head spun. I was suddenly quite tired. They had come like locusts and left only White Castle wrappers. I kept walking through my old house, cheeze puffs crunching underfoot. Every room was the same crawling pile of grease stained cardboard, clotted spaghetti sauce and ranch dressing. I came to his room. The floor had given way. Here, as throughout, the corners and doorways were busted and dented from the egress of titanic beings and the walls and furniture showed the tremendous wear and stress of an enormous struggle, like they had been in the den of an elephant: the enormous daily struggle of my son getting around. At points, the dented hand prints and elbow marks showed the first layer of paint in the room: the paint we had chosen for his room as a baby.

This is where our baby lived. This is where he slept and played. This where he had his first Hostess Ding-Dong. I sat on the crumbling edge of the bed and cried. I fell into that stinking pounded mattress, quite literally spilling into it’s cup, so full of that wretched sweaty stench, the stench of my child. I pulled the sheets and KFC containers on top of me. I wept. In a pile of stale Cheetos, I wept.

I did not move, a long, long time. I thought I could escape this, but how could I? I wished his mother was here. Then, no. If she had somehow escaped this nightmare, the better for her. Somehow, it belonged to me, and me only. I had another life. I had several other lives. I helped others. Why must I live here? Why was this my true fate? Why could I not deny it? It was surely not the example of my own father. He had gone from being a tyrant to being an old, frightened man and then merely invisible. Fathers were disposable. They taught you some practical matters, but in the end, they were simply other men, older men of another generation.

I suppose I slept.

It was not hard to hear them coming: the whole house creaked. I would they rather appeared to me like a dream, but they arrived like dump trucks. I did not need to hide. It is not easy to be surprised or snuck up upon by the hugely obese. I suppose I let them capture me. I had no where to go. They wrapped me up in my son’s blanket and dumped me in the back of a vehicle.

-Where are you taking me? I asked, from the back of the Krispy Kreme truck.

“To see Jabba” they said, and they threw milk duds at me.

With the sheet around my head I could not see. I was sure they were taking false routes to confuse me, that is, until I heard them bickering about directions. They also stopped for snacks I few times. And at least at one Big Boy’s, because I heard them at the take out window. Fortunately, I was well provided for inside of the sheet: I couldn’t even finish the slice of Chicago style pizza that I had been inadvertently wrapped up with.

When the sheet was finally removed, I was, of all places, in a Japanese restaurant. It was a clean arrangement of lines and forms and: empty. I walked forward on the silent bamboo matting. Some green tea sat waiting for me on a little tray. As I sat to drink the tea, I regarded a brilliant silk mural hung in the dim distance, showing the face of an enormous Japanese Ogre; only upon closer inspection, the ogre was composed of cheese, Italian sausage and pepperoni. Then it began to rotate, and I realized that it was the back of an enormous kimono.

Even before the figure had completed its ponderous rotation, its voice reached me. It was deep and thoughtful, and I recognized it, though it was so much older.

“Are you hungry, father?”

I replied that no, I was fine.

He said that the fare here was really not so heavy, that he admired Japanese food for its sparseness, its emphasis on preparation, freshness and presentation.

He was, of course, enormous.

He then looked at me gravely, with heavy lidded eyes and yet a face so like my own, and like his mothers.

“I want to apologize to you father. For many years now I must have appeared ungrateful, angry and wretched. And I was. I know you tried very hard in your own way to be the best father you knew how to be and I respect you enormously for it. I know I caused you and mother a great deal of hardship, unhappiness and heartbreak. Forgive me, if you can, for I am truly sorry. You were great and noble people for trying so hard and long to love something like myself. And this was the tragedy.”

“I did not understand myself for the longest time: I thought I was like you, like Mom and I hated myself, oh so deeply, for not being able to be like you and Mom. An anger and hatred and loathing so great nothing else could reach me. I spent most of my life hating myself and my body and everything I was and the world. And I grew larger and larger.
“But I did not realize I was creating something. I was building my own mountain to overcome. It was a long fearsomely dark struggle: please do not think you could have changed it. No one could have changed it or helped.”

Perhaps I looked puzzled.

“Let me try and explain. There is a wise experiment they ask you in the fat clinics as to what kind of body you would choose if you had a choice before you were born. Whatever you answer, they ask you to consider the possibility that this has already happened.”

“Our world is dying, father. It is dying simultaneously, of obesity and starvation. It is dying of waste and greed. It is dying of selfishness. Our bodies were the first sign of this process. The body is always the first wisdom. My anger and hopelessness, were that I could not understand what I was or was becoming.”

“Obesity is a disease. But only those who have been exposed to the disease have resistance to it. Our bodies are the cure for this entire planet. This was my awakening. Our obesity is not a simple personal failing: it is the attempt of a whole system to respond to a crisis we have created. It is our species’ response. It is our planet’s response.”

“The body begins storing fat in response to cortisol, a hormone released in times of stress. Human life has become more and more stressful, the planet more and more distressed. We eat more in response to cold weather, darkness -we gain weight to prepare for leaner, darker times, for hibernation.”

“Did you ever wonder what the letters in “FATSO” stood for?

Wikipedia said it stood for “Food All the Time, Snacks Occasionally.”

“It does not. But you weren’t to know. It stands for ‘Fit for the Apocalypse Tomorrow, Someday, One Day.’”

So it was true. They were overweight millennialists. My son continued:

“In the coming cold and darkness, only the greatest will survive. There will be no food. Starvation will become rampant. The most efficient way of storing food is the body’s own tissues.

“We were born as we are so that mankind might survive and have a second chance. We were born to protect humanity. We will sleep in the earth as giants and hibernate. When we emerge, the Earth will have recovered and we will start again.”

This was madness and sad rationalization, I thought. These people were sick, my son was sick, sick and mad with fat and leading them lord knows where into what kind of cave.

It all flooded out of me. The talk about how obesity was a disease, of how he was killing himself, about how study after study had shown that it was lifestyle, eating choices and the industrialization and processing of food that has led to the worldwide outbreak of obesity and wasn’t it obvious?

“No, that was a study on the data from the old study. They just did a new study. It turns out there weren’t enough fat people in the previous study. And they weren’t fat enough. As it turns out we may be the first human generation to really be able to study obesity properly. Obesity is almost certainly linked to a virus. And that’s not all. Sadness, is also a virus. And hopelessness. This is why you should always wash your hands after talking to complete losers. Hate is a virus. Ignorance is a virus. Sexual addiction is a sexually transmitted virus. The virus that causes obesity has a message. And that message is the future.”

But the polar caps have melted, world temperatures are rising, not falling.

“Yes. And they will continue to rise until the caps are gone and thermohaline circulation shuts down. The Northern Hemisphere will freeze. The cloud cover will increase. Our world will become one long, cold, dark blizzard.”

As I looked in his eyes, I realized the nature of his organization.

My son, my son, what have you done?

“Nothing, yet. But there is a coming struggle that cannot be avoided. The end of this world of ours will not be pleasant and those in charge care nothing for whether humanity lives or dies as a whole. They only care about holding on the power they have. the power given to them by the idea of ‘fat’, the myth of ‘obesity.’

“They are not content to let us exist, father. They will not allow us to coexist.”

In his robes, he was magnificent, a mountain. And here, he spoke as a general, without doubt or hesitation, with command:

“They’re going to take us away and put us in camps. Fat camps. If humanity is to survive, we must resist them.”

What will you do?

“The world has already seen what one ‘Fat Boy’ can do.”

My son, my son, they just want to help you, like I wanted to help you.

“Your intentions were good, but you still do not understand. This is not about “fat people” or “skinny people.” Those are their words: that is how they control us. Everyone is going to be fat, one way or the other, by fact or fiat, or in their own minds. Everyone. The fat have no rights. The fat are slaves. We will all be slave labor.”

“Fat is the future. Their “fat” is a prison, but true fat will set you free. This is the true
‘good’ fat.”

“As long as there is fat and skinny, there will be struggle and shame and eating disorders. Only by embracing fat, the most extreme fat, can we be free.”

Behind the screen, I knew, was an army. His army. The biggest and largest and greatest ever assembled. He was their general and their prophet, in a holy war to save all mankind. He did not show them to me. He did not need to.

Instead he drew himself a simple cup of tea and quietly sat down beside me.

“The body is the picture of the soul. I am large: I contain multitudes. I did not know I contained such goodness.”

And for the first time, I was proud. So very proud.

TURN #105: WEEK 91; WORDS: 109,610; NEXT BY 21 MARCH 2007

Lost Dog

2007-03-06T17:13:00.000-05:00

In the warmthless dusk of the red giant sun, a top a mountain range on the boiled away ocean sea floor, on Earth at the end of days, is a vast stone tablet, stolen from a bible movie, used by time travelers as a kind of message board. The scripts are extremely varied and palimpsest, ranging from neat Hangul to obscenities in scratched Volapuk, to an indecipherable and giant alien hand that seems to crawl up the sides and around the back, that is often a cause of wonder and concern among travelers. It is so huge it is usually taken for a meteorite strike, increasingly common through the thinning atmosphere, only upon closer inspection, it has an unmistakable, but distinctly inhuman regularity to it. By some trick of the light, it seems to writhe as you walk around the tablet, and no traveler traces the strange tentacle like marks without something of a shudder as to their meaning.

Even stranger is the presence of ancient languages predating the era of known time travel, Sumerian, Old English and French.

Here are some selections from when I was there last:

"I taught love to a race of filthy cave people that only knew fucking. All I got was a pleasant summer of spoiled fruit, a way to stay warm in the winter, and an ill-made spear in my back. Perish Albion."

"WEEENA -WHERE ARE YOU?"

"Polymath Frenchman and open-minded Englishman seek well-hung sailor for good times across time. We saw it all coming, now you can, too"

"ET IN ARCADIA EGO"

"There is a fire
In your Mother's house I know
Because I set that fire
And she ran
To save your baby pictures
But the fire ran fast
Because I used gasoline

And how she tried
To keep your dollies and ribbons
And awards
That you won in the Tenth grade
But they burned
In her arms
And her hair

And as I watched it burn
And made sure your mother never came out
I thought of you
And your delightful baby pictures
Like a bug
In your little blankies
What a shame
What an awful, awful shame

Now we sit
In a restaurant by the river
And we laugh
Because champagne makes you laugh
And because I say
Time, time you know is like a river
And, not, not like a
A burning house"

"Lost: Tin Dog. Answers to whistle and polite address."

I looked for my friend, but he was not there.

TURN #104: WEEK 90; WORDS: 104,851; NEXT BY 14 MARCH 2007

Understanding Advertising

2007-02-28T02:41:00.000-05:00

for DMS

All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event--in the living act, the undoubted deed--there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall?

Melville, Moby Dick, Ch. XXVI

Unable and powerless to circumvent my miseries, daunted, discouraged and unable to face reality, I thought it prudent to seek the help of a professional, and yet the traditional forms of therapy and the conventional efforts of psychiatrists having failed, I realized I needed to invest my faith in some higher power, something greater than myself or even science.

Fortunately, we live in an age already Enlightened and one that has successfully found the true faith, and what is better, true force, it’s proof.

The office was quite modest, but in excellent taste, contemporary, but relaxed. The receptionist evinced a kind interest without being invasive, asking if I needed help with my plastic bags or if I needed more kleenex.

At the appointed hour I was scooted into the conference room as smoothly as a vacuum cleaner and greeted with an friendly informal air upon two quick pinstriped strides by a young smart professional, like I was visiting a colleague or an old friend: she had that air, of an old towheaded friend from college who hadn’t aged discernibly, but still come into her own, only having to weather receipt of a better watch, a decent hairstylist and a private tailor in the process.

After some brief introductions I was made quite comfortable in the nicest chair I had ever sat in and before I could quite situate the box of kleenex I had taken with me, the lights dimmed like a closing lid and, equally soundlessly, screens and speakers slid out in a style that would have suited any number of Bond’s antagonists. Suddenly I was kayaking down rapids with young athletic people, to a swirl of the skies and wash of the rocks, whose merry excited cries were (through some arrangement of speakers) as my own. Their sunlit backs, beneath the bright livery of life vests were beautiful. I wanted to masturbate. Suddenly we wiped out and we were gliding above an infinite plain of perfect ebony chocolate, upon which a deluge of caramel and cookie crumbs came thundering with apocalyptic intensity. Then a crying child and a talking sunflower, more helicopter shots of mighty trucks and enormous burgers: it was a phantasmagoria, especially for someone who had no television and spent a lot of time in the dark listening to disaffected rats lose their way. Gradually I came to understand that this was their demo reel and that many of these spots were famous in their own right: at least two had been made into movies or television, though I was not sure if it was movies or television that featured a super-absorbent lumberjack.

When the lights came back on, one was tempted to applaud, as though at an awards show, for it was with such a gratifying and sure smile she stepped forward. For there were to be noticed, surely enough, ensconced in tasteful angles at modest intervals, an array of shiny and wholly unfamiliar awards, most in dazzling lucite, presenting a glacial appearance, much like Superman’s home.

With the ease of a talk show host welcoming an old friend who has a new movie coming out, she slid into the couch opposite me and drew up a look of positive interest. This is all well and good, she said modestly, by way of introduction, but the important question is: what can we do for you today? She said this extraordinarily, somehow putting the stress and accent distinctly on every word, making each seem like a revelation.

Every campaign we do, she continued, is unique, because each of our client's needs are unique -because (and this rolled out gnomically): each of our clients is: unique.

I meditated on this in silence.

She resumed the lesson: For instance, I see you are wearing slippers, she observed. This was not, strictly speaking true. I was wearing half a slipper, the half that had survived. The sole had simply turned black and scraped off like a scab sometime ago. I remember touching it and feeling how cold and fleshy it was, black and soft like a piece of discarded gum. It was not an affectation that I had only the worried wooly socks and the strained upper deck of a slipper. I had meant to put on shoes for this meeting, but I couldn’t find one, or found one, but not the other, or found both, but not at the same time. There was a nap in between, you see, a few naps, actually. The naps made me feel somewhat better, at least until I woke up. I had, however, managed to hold on to a bold tie, whose casual deployment went far in terms of covering my misbuttoned shirt.

This says to me that you are comfortable, that you are at home, as it were, ready to rest, she concluded.

This was indeed very perceptive. I felt very much like napping, as I did most of the time I was awake.

You are: casual. We speak: casually. America is a casual country. “Welcome to Casual Country.” You see?

Someone did indeed see. Someone wrote it down, while others taped it.

I like to think: aloud. But even more: I love to listen.

Now: what can we help you with: today?

My voice came at a great distance, with something of a delay, as though from a distance place, stuffed with cotton and dampened inside a sunken diving suit made of bell jars. It was with such leaded effort that I spoke, I did not recognize my words, or my voice:

I want to ...want to live

She blinked thoughtfully and said with a confident smile:

I am sure that we can sell that

And who is your target audience, who is the end consumer?

I am. I have to want to live my own life.

These happy active people in kayaks, I wanted to say, this was no good, because I was not happy and active and I did not have a kayak. I wanted to be sold on my life, on my living. I had no argument with other people and their happiness. But I did not share it. But what I said was “kayaks...” and then trailed off.

Well, she said, in your own words, tell me about your product and your target audience: tell me about this life of yours

I told them that I lived in my old ancestral home, that it was rather dark and overgrown and was slowly, but certainly sinking into the dank tarn and suffered from a rather prominent central fissure that threatened to divide it. I told them that I lived alone, which was again, not strictly true, but it was hard enough to go into and I could see them straining to meet me halfway already. I went on a bit about the mold and the miasma and the mildew, too much really, for it was hard to select among the details of my misery and I had not spoken at length (or briefly) to anyone for some time and so nothing had any criteria of relevance, or the contemporary, but came out all at once in a way that was difficult to understand, like an old book. They listened, though, bright, attentive and patient, more so than any mental health professional I had ever consulted.

You were right to come to us, she almost whispered. Your problem is a familiar one. You might say that it is as old as humanity itself. You might call it the human problem: supply and demand. You have a life. From the looks of things, at least twenty more years of it. You don’t want it. You cannot make your existence much cheaper as, from the looks of things, you aren’t spending much to invest or maintain it. If you could change it or where you found it, you no doubt would have already.

This is a classic problem, then, of promotion.

With an air that was thematic, yet natural, she gestured and clear, ice cold refreshing water appeared. She motioned for me to take a water bottle and to keep it with their compliments.

I have a lot of old water bottles. Some with still some water in them. All over the house, but mainly the kitchen, the bath and piled near the bedside.

This is different, she said, this is a Nalgene. It is used by sports and health professionals. See how it makes ordinary filtered tap water appear like a magic elixir of strength and vitality. It is the holy water of our times. It is a genie in the bottle. It is never half-empty or half-full: it is always halfway through your workout: halfway to triumph and achieving your personal goals, your personal best: you are always finishing, arriving, on the go, coming from the gym or going to the gym. This is what success looks like: it is transparent and simple. People who are struggling, that is, unsuccessful, drink coffee in stained and puckered cups. People who are successful drink water.

Plain water?

There is no such thing as “plain water.”

In the fancy stage quality lighting of the room, the water did indeed appear like a special effect.

You see, don’t you? But let me clarify what it is that you see. Before I continue any further you must understand: This is not: an illusion. This is not: a misrepresentation or a deception. We do not present things in a false light to promote or sell them. We do not approximate an ideal through an imperfect medium. We do not sell dreams. We do not manipulate or persuade.

The empty screen slid aside to reveal a panoramic window opening upon the splintery expanse of the city and the ball of the sun, a view much like from the bridge of a starship.

The world, she said, is not the totality of facts, or things, for neither facts nor things exist by themselves, but only as phenomena for a subject, a consumer, at a particular time and a particular place. The present, what is now, is only intelligible through what is now not: the past and even what may never be: the future. The universe is, for us, as it must be for living organisms, a universe of desires, knowable and discoverable only through our needs and wants.

Her hair shone in the sunlight. Little wisps of hair escaped her stylist and danced around in it.

Goods and services, she clarified. We are creatures given hope to meet with present needs and wants.

With a casual playful gesture, she spun and rearranged the pillows on the couch, inadvertently revealing a trim and athletic figure, much suited to the smart young professional.

After all, all currency is simply a promise to pay and nothing more, she concluded.

She came in to a conspiratorial distance. I noticed the brown of her eyebrows and, for the first time realized that, for such a formidable presence, she was a little shorter than me.

The universe is unintelligible without desire: it’s like watching a porno film before you know or care what sex is: you will ask: why do Pizza Guys keep arriving? Robots will get nothing out of watching the Food Channel.

She knotted herself in a girlish way, but her features took on an adult look of concern and compassion.

This is what has happened to you: you have fallen into some eddy, some cut-off cul-de-sac from the greater universal current of desire.

Life has always had its own advertisement, its own promotion, she breathed. This is why it is so popular.

She smiled, differently this time. Then she looked uncertain. Then she leaned in and kissed me. She then ran a series of saturated spots that gained interest and built considerable excitement and buzz without tiring out her target demographic.

Oh dear, I said.

It is sometimes the case, she said evenly, that an ad campaign can be wildly popular and even enter into the popular culture without actually serving its purpose and promoting its product. She had this adorable way she bit her lip. She also seemed to work muscles swaying back and forth when she rode her bike that other people did not seem to engage when they rode theirs.

She continued: an effective ad campaign is like Brawny and his companion, Babe the Super-Absorbent Blue Ox. Together, there is no stretch of the wild Yukon they can’t clean. After the second movie, (not as good as the first, I know, but it wasn’t my idea to send them to Australia) parents would just buy their kids rolls of paper towels so their kids could play in the bathroom (or if they were smart, the kitchen).

I knew how she liked her grapefruit. Her apartment was remarkably complimentary to her office. They invited the same set of exposures. Her place, if anything, was somehow even more relaxed, contemporary and smartly professional. She had one of those toasters that worked like a CAT scan machine.

In contrast to this, she said, biting off the stem of a strawberry, demonstrating that painfully cute overbite, consider the Burrito Bat. Everyone loves the Burrito Bat, hanging upside down, all wrapped in its wings like a burrito. People buy t-shirts and air fresheners to hang from their rearview mirrors that look like Burrito Bat. People come by the restaurant to buy Burrito Bat merchandise. But they do not buy “Transylvania-Style” Burritos, possibly because they are vile, but also because the iconic Burrito Bat gained popularity without attaching any value to it’s product or transferring any interest
I made for her hair. She pulled away.

This sort of failed cathexis is technically known as failed transference.

She turned and looked at me. It was my big chance to show her that I had nibbled “I love you” into my toast. This wasn’t easy.

Go home, she said. Go home. We will try again.

As I crawled out of her place I heard her remark that breakfast was the most important meal of the day.

I soon discovered that she was right: I was no more in love with life than before. If anything, I was really against it now. Of the various coupons and fliers she sent, I totally lost interest once I had scrutinized them and seen that they held no secret message of affection, or rather, I gave up looking. I also got her bill.

On her advice I had gotten a TV, a huge one. This did, indeed, relocate the center of my operations from my unmade bed to the couch. Otherwise, no change, other than that I viewed each and every ad that poured forth every hour of every day as a perhaps some secret communication of love: was she somehow the girl in the Valtrex ad? Did she want me to get a better rest with Ambien? Was the fluffy deodorant bear intended to comfort me?

I lived then, in some alternation between total fantasy and complete withdrawal. It was with some inspired disbelief, then, that I answered the phone to hear her voice.

How are you? she asked, not leaving the appropriate interval for an answer. Listen, we have something really big for your product. It doesn’t get bigger than this. It’s going to be totally underground, ambient, stealth and viral, but its also going to be the biggest, most spectacular production with the biggest upfront audience.

What is it?

The Super Bowl, she said, we have a Super Bowl Ad for you that will make history.

I’ll mark my calendar, I said, having no actual idea where my calendar or a pen might be.

Okay, she said, but it’s today. She was gone.

I stumbled through the channels until I found men in ties talking about nothing. As half-time came up, the most dazzling efforts of her peers came on, but I could recognize nothing that resembled an ad for my life. There was an ad for nachos, that was surely part of my life, but this made me want to have nachos, not to live, and not to live for nachos, either. Disappointingly, the game resumed. Had I missed it? Men in ties commented on the actions of men in helmets. Rules and laws were cited. People yelled. It rained briefly. There were some more ads, but these did not even make me want to drive off road in the Great American West.

I awoke to the buzzing of the phone.

Did you see it? she asked.

What?

The rain, the rain. Millions and millions saw it rain.

She paused.

You made it rain. And thousands of people felt in on their faces.

Tomorrow morning, she said, you will make the sun rise. After that, who knows?

And for the first time, I understood advertising.

-Do you love me?

Yes.

-Do you give yourself to me?

Yes.

-Do you belong to me?

Completely.

-Do you understand advertising now?

I did: “Plain water” “mineral water” -People speak of there being a “code” to objects, as though what we did was some application of psychology and persuasion. It is not. It is the other way around.

The world is the code. It is, at its core, for human beings, symbolic, meaningful. That is to say, it is, in reality, transcendental. The world is all that is the pitch, because only the pitch captures what can be and our agency and relation to the world.

-Tell me what you understand.

The world is like a yard sale, I said. What creates value is exchange. What is the past, junk, refuse, a thing with no purpose, becomes beautiful and valuable through the occult of another’s desire. What is heavy, dusty and obstructive, becomes light, clean and mobile. Exchange and flow are life: meeting people in your neighborhood, taking, giving, learning people’s names. Without exchange, where things are hoarded and squandered, where there is no circulation, death follows.

The world we live in is a world of commodity and desire.

-Are you mine?

Absolutely.

She smiled a sweet sad smile and cut the clothes from my shoulders.

-And so?

Animals negate directly, but it is most human to want what others want.

-And so?

By your selling me into slavery, my life becomes valued and owned by another, so that I might also come to value and own it.

-Yes. Also there is some evidence that flogging raises serotonin levels, at least temporarily.

The whole thing was a little too Hegelian, but the master calls.

The yoke pulled my shoulder and I followed on bare feet. It did not allow me to turn my head to look back.

Words repeated, we believe: for it is advertising and not death that shows us that we are not gods.

TURN #103: WEEK 89; WORDS: 104,434; NEXT BY 7 MARCH 2007

I Love Babies! With Some Reservations

2007-02-19T11:04:00.001-05:00

Charles Ray, Family Romance, 1992

It's a good thing you skipped town this weekend, because there was some king of arts thing downtown and I'm pretty sure we would have gotten in trouble because it was perfectly horrible: it was like those little kiosks that grow in the barren retail scrub land of the center of dying malls with various things in crystal that should not be in crystal and paintings that seem to have been inspired by the vivid Impressionist colors on Kleenex boxes.

The only cute part was the babies, and that's awkward, because one never knows how and when to make eye contact, talk to or pick up a baby. There is no casual form of baby address, no non-committal "Hey, how's it going?". No, once you have decided to engage a baby, you're committed, you're stuck and usually in a declining social situation where the baby has every advantage.

Worse still, once you've gone all out and decided to pick up a baby, there is still potential awkwardness, particularly if the mother will not let go. "Let go of the baby." you say, clearly and firmly, but they don't let go and instead you see this look in their eyes that you have arguably never seen in another human face before. "My baby!" they cry, or something like it (like that settles the matter) and soon you are in a sort of tug of war over the baby that really does no one credit. "Somebody help me please, he's trying to take my baby!" they yell, and soon there is a crowd of people, apparently not busy enough on their own buying crystal narwhales and unicorns -and who do you think they side with?

You try and reason with them: "I'll kill you -I'll kill all of you", you constructively offer "now give me that baby." I mean, you just want to hold the baby, like a human being and is that such a crime? The baby is cute, it has little winky eyes and tiny fingers and wispy hair and now, now they've all upset the baby, and the baby is crying and it is all their fault.

"Please," you appeal, "think of the baby" and at this point you brandish either a can of gasoline or a bomb or whatever it is you use to deal with irrational people who will not listen to reason. If you don't have a can of gasoline or a bomb, then you are clearly not thinking this whole thing through.

This is why, if you really like babies, you should always just snatch them up out of their cribs a night and immediately get airborne on some sort of broom.

Of course, if you ever see parts of this published somewhere, you might think: what a perfectly awful person. And that's not really fair. What I am is lazy. And I sent it to you first.

Hope you are feeling better, Julio

V

TURN #102: WEEK 88; WORDS: 101,237; NEXT BY 28 FEBRUARY 2007

On The Ultimate Pleasure

2007-02-13T21:41:00.000-05:00

People ask me how I do it. I tell them it’s because I care. That it’s not me, but themselves. I tell them it is a matter of a simple diet of oats and barley, reading Marcus Aurelius and regular exercise. At most, I tell them that it is a matter of training one’s pubococcygeus muscle, until one’s sexual response is as under one’s voluntary control as a sly wink.

All this is true, but I must hide the greater truth for the initiate. Love is universal, which is to say that it is wholly empty. The universe, of which it is composed, is equally empty. As we grow toward enlightenment, love is a painful illusion that must be destroyed to make room for the practice and discipline of sexuality.

In these intimate acts I seek to destroy all intimacy and am no one. This is my general project and the project of this civilization as a whole.

This is what the Master taught me, but could not teach me, so long as I lived as a human being.

So this is my message, that I have wrapped in these blankets. I have sent them to the mountains with my ashes, for if returned, they would return as fire to the valley.

Among the Quadi at the Granua.

If you should wish to experience the ultimate pleasure and share it with your partner, know this: the ultimate pleasure comes with ultimate risk and is for those who would overcome themselves entirely.

There are 44 paths to the Ultimate Pleasure.

This is one path:

Our sexuality is reflected in how we talk, how we eat, how we defecate -in short, our whole being. Our being is caught up with time. Time is most simply: regularity and the possibility of regularity: in short, rhythm.

Sex is a matter of this rhythm.

Rhythm has it’s most human expression in music. Therefore, if you would perfect the act of love, study music, motion and dancing.

Further, you must practice music. Once you have, achieved some mastery of both lovemaking and music, independently, if you would have the ultimate pleasure for yourself and your partners, you may begin to combine the two.

Begin by gently singing to your partner during the act of love something simple and regular, like:

Karma karma karma karma karma chameleon
You come and go
You come and go
Loving would be easy if your colors were like my dream
Red, gold and green
Red, gold and green

If you do not know the words, do not make them up, as this will confuse and distract both of you. If there are many present, this could easily lead to an argument. And do not mispronounce “chameleon.”

You may begin with recorded music, but ultimately best of all is the music you make yourself during the act of love, particularly if you are some sort of one man band.

As women love musicians and men love women who think they are talented, so it is natural that one try to accent the moment of love with one’s own creations. If they ask you: What the hell are you doing? Simply reply: I’m blowing on my jug, baby.” You will then generally be free to go on an extended solo serenade while the other person gets dressed.

Air guitar during sex is a whole genre of action and deserves a separate address.

Another similar path is to approach the bedroom as one would approach a sporting event, to be highly and loudly spirited and bring and consume a lot of the same things, particularly the air horn.

From another master: call and response: “Take me to the bridge, baby. Take me to the bridge. Ow! Good God! I gotta kiss myself!”

Approach the body of your beloved as a sculptor approaches his sculpture: a little drunk and stoned with four years of useless education wearing a welder’s mask.

Speak to your lover as though they were a lost child in a department store and you a big policeman helping that child; but act as though that policeman has a lot of dark, serious problems and should be taken off the force immediately.

Do not dress as a pirate. At this point, everyone has made love to a pirate. Usually, it has not been so good.

The essence of sexuality is mystery and imagination. Preface the act with some sort of brainteaser. If you are both proficient, you may both reach the answer simultaneously. Be mindful to choose a question that is stimulating, but not distracting. Avoid such questions as: “What is the rotation of my ceiling fan in hertz” ‘What did I have for lunch?” and “What do you suppose this rash is?”

Lube the bear.

Inexperienced people, young people, may not know what to say during the act of love. Encourage them by suddenly calling out what you think they should say:

“Oh baby, so good. You do it so good. [Your Name] is the best ever. Lick my face like a puppy again. This is incredible. I wish my mother was here.”

Don’t fear the reaper. Similarly, don’t pay the ferryman until he takes you the other side.

Dedicate at least five years to the study of the Erotic Chess Story

To stir up a man to the contempt of death this among other things, is of good power and efficacy, that even they who esteemed pleasure to be happiness, and pain misery, did nevertheless many of them contemn death as much as any. And can death be terrible to him, to whom that only seems good, which in the ordinary course of nature is seasonable? to him, to whom, where his actions be many or few, so they be all good, is all one; and who where he behold the things of the world being always the same either for many years, or for few years only, is altogether indifferent? O man! as a citizen you have lived, and conversed in this great city the world. Where just for so many years, or no, what is it unto you? You have lived (you may be sure) as long as the laws and orders of the city required; which may be the common comfort of all. Why then should it be grievous unto you, if (not a tyrant, nor an unjust judge, but) the same nature that brought you in, does now send you out of the world? As if the praetor should fairly dismiss him from the stage, whom he had taken in to act a while. Oh, but the play is not yet at an end, there are but three acts yet acted of it? You have well said: for in matter of life, three acts is the whole play. Now to set a certain time to every man's acting, belongs unto him only, who as first he was of thy composition, so is now the cause of thy dissolution. As for thyself; you have to do with neither. Go thy ways then well pleased and contented: for so is He that dismiss you.

from fragments signed: "from THE MASTER OF SEX"

TURN #101: WEEK 87; WORDS: 100,730; NEXT BY 21 FEBRUARY 2007

My Florida Job On A Pale Horse

2007-02-06T23:01:00.000-05:00

The Author On His Way To Work

One of the most persistent mistaken beliefs about my stay in Florida, so persistent that I myself have been caught believing it, is that I have no occupation, no fixed mode of living and wake up sometime in the afternoon with barely enough time to get out to the beach in time to scrape myself up an appetite for the cocktail hour. Nothing could be further from the truth, as I have, in fact, risen as early as ten o’clock on several occasions and sometimes not even gone back to bed.

More to the point, I do, in fact, have a quite regular and respectable job nude modeling (actually, a little more than simple modeling is involved, so it is really like nude role-playing with a lot of running and screaming thrown in). In addition to this, I am gainfully employed, as needed, by a local tour company that caters to seniors, where I can even say that I was chosen for my philosophical training, for as the Phaedo has it: philosophy is training for death. I work as a tour guide on Pale Horse Tours, a Florida based company whose luxury day cruises are designed to emphasize the fleeting beauty of life, the impermanence of all things and the ultimate desirability of death, in a fully handicap accessible fashion via air-conditioned tour buses with three gourmet (yet ultimately cloying) meals at local restaurants and two between meal snacks included: “the beautiful ride to the place topside.”

The tour begins early: a lot of older people wake up before dawn and we see no reason to keep them waiting. No matter how early we get the bus to the hotel, there is always some older person who is well waiting: this is good. This person is almost ready. If he is having a smoke, so much the better.

The morning introductions are by far my favorite part. Everyone climbs aboard the cold still bus and there are the chirpy friendly sounds of senior ladies saying hello and being polite and kind in a way you fear no humans ever will be again. It is still quite dark out. It is like those winter morning rides on the school bus, perhaps when you are going on a field trip somewhere special. Very special. This is what we want people to experience, it is an integral part of the service we offer.

The microphone comes on very low and deep and at first you are not sure who is talking. It is like you are still asleep. Sometimes we begin in a foreign language that no one present speaks. The engine makes a subliminal hum, powerful and enveloping, regular like a heart beat. They are waiting. They are ready.

“This is how it all begins,” we say “in the dark, in the cold. In confusion and ignorance. In the youth of youths. A blank slate: tabula rasa. Before “Ma-ma” and “Da-da.” Before words. We are naked, but we do not know we are naked. We do not know Good and Evil, our name: it cannot be said we know we exist. But we do. We have wanted nothing and have asked for nothing. But the world exists and it does not ask for us. It takes us THERE.”

At this, the bus shoots out of the parking garage into the now bright morning sunlight. A few ladies (and sometimes men) yell.

“Good Morning, Ladies and Gentlemen. Pale Horse Tours welcomes you to sunny Sarasota. We hope you enjoy your stay here with us and the pleasant but all-too fleeting wonderful day we have planned for you. Local time is 8:00. Today should be an absolutely gorgeous day with a high about 68. You should hold onto those sweaters, though, for as the sun rises, he surely sets and tonight’s overnight low will be a cool 45. Now that we’ve all been born, who’s ready for breakfast!?”

Their first meal is a simple one, with a preponderance of dairy and soft foods: this is really what many are accustomed to anyway, but we go the extra distance and provide them with rubber spoons and applesauce in Gerber jars. There is zwieback and an assortment of porridges. They are all of the finest quality and no one ever complains, they are usually quite pleased at their fresh squeezed juices in sippy cups. There is coffee, for those who wish it, but we much prefer them to have a Mimosa or a Bloody Mary: these are more conducive to our overall message.

The mornings are very pleasant: we tour the neo-natal ward of Sarasota Memorial Hospital: every Grandparent loves babies, especially someone else’s. Our next stop is the exclusive Happy Times Day Care (slogan: “Mommy and I are One”). The entrance always gets oohs and ahhs as the furniture is done to scale from a toddler’s perspective, with giant chairs and blocks. The seniors are fitted with cumbersome padded suits, which make them very clumsy and prone to fall down, but are designed to protect them when they do. We spent a lot of money and research into the rug. The easiest way to get around in the suits, which are deliberately top heavy, is to crawl or scoot. People giggle a lot during this part, it’s silly.

The greatest amount of research, specific to the group, was in the maternal pheromone extracts that pervade the room and blankies. Period hair care and perfumes are also present, as indicated by our clients' demographic profile and questionnaire. For some, this is the second most beautiful and relaxing part of the trip.

Once they have negotiated the giant living room, the suits come off and they are ushered in to observe the little tots being taken care of. Home cooking boils in a nearby kitchen. The whole set-up is very home-like and, again, accurately tailored to the period, including the dress of the daycare workers who have that tired, but beautiful young mother look. This always makes us smile, but tour policy forbids us to remove our sunglasses at any time.

Local schools take up the rest of the morning, as we cruise through playgrounds, treehouses, secret hideaways and sports fields: the whole K-12 experience. The classes are chosen for their compatibility for this tour by their catalogue of ideal types: crybabies, spazes, cut-ups and proto-drop outs: a wide and familiar cast our guests are sure to identify with. Our guests are further encouraged to seek out their favorite subjects and activities, put on athletic gear or pick up a musical instrument to “get the feel of it again.” Around 11:00 the seniors get their choice of pizza, burgers, or hot dogs. They often eat with an unexpected gusto, for the morning porridge is designed to be famishing and we have been running them pretty quickly since middle school.

We serve this snack because the primary meal of the day is meant to be eaten with more appreciation than this snack, which is all appetite. Lunch is a somewhat sophisticated affair, and very much tailored to the profession of the individual: box lunches for some, table service for others. This is one of the most exquisitely researched and specific of meals. They all share one thing in common, however: whether it be beer, or wine, or several martinis, drinks are served and are the true focus. The seniors get back to themselves, they loosen up and not a little serious flirting goes on, regardless of status, aided by a well researched mix of oldies. There is a lot of classic cuisine at lunch: Salisbury Steak, Shepard’s Pie, Chicken and Dumplings.

After a tour of the professions, from the banking district to the docks, the early afternoon is spent with noisy newborns and troubled teens from local programs. This is when a lot of our guests start to nod off a little, and who can blame them? This is the time of day when one’s frustrations have either been overcome or accommodated (usually quite a bit of both) where one is either glad to be a little tired or feels betrayed: there is nothing new under the sun, and this is either a relief or a vast disappointment. So we make our way to the beaches, and stop for ice cream on St. Armand’s.

The ice cream is soft, it is milky and palliative, but cold. It is the warmest part of the day, but it’s not hard to feel a little chill before the end of the cone. Those who opt for bowls are all ready quite ready; they are not here to mess around and they know childhood is over. We pass out newspapers, a mix of new and old: how little and how much has changed. Here on St. Armand’s they are among their peers in silly hats and tiny dogs. They have reached their present.

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright!
The bridal of the earth and sky—
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night;
For thou must die.

I sing, as I collect up the napkins and water bottles.

The beach is beautiful, but because so little is there: just sea and sand, the sun and the wind: the four elements. It is too cold for many swimmers or sunbathers. We encourage our guests to take a handful of the fine powdery, glittery, pure white sand. We tell them the history of the beach, where the sand was 100 years ago and the water 10,000 years ago. We tell of the middens and the piles of shells the first people left. We give a reasonable estimate of the age of the transition from seashell to sand. We talk of the first univalves and bivalves in the sea. The first algae, and the primordial sky that made the waters salty. We compare the number of grains of sand on this beach to stars in the sky: the number of grains of this beach are infinitesimally small in comparison. As the sun begins to set and turn huge and red, we tell of the future death of that star and its child, the earth.

“Think of this beautiful sunset as somehow last. Last for you, or last for the species or all species. The last for the sun itself. All these things will surely come, but across a gulf of time so great, it is as distant to us as it’s birth. At the end of the universe, black holes will swarm around like these gulls, snatching up scraps. As this warming sun takes it’s leave, all falls cold and dark. The universe, too, will go dark and cold, with every point so far away from another and with so little energy no message could be communicated, were there beings to communicate and anything to be communicated. Such a universe cannot be said to hold foolishness or wisdom, good or evil: it is universally tepid and inert: its battery extinguished. The fundamental forces no longer have meaning, gravity is overcome. God is not dead, but unconscious, never to be revived.”

“But all this is so distant and vast, it is not even a prophecy we can truly hear. In the history of mankind, our lives have been little more than a day cruise, and in the universe, immeasurably less than a grain of sand.”

We now ask our guests to open their palms and see how much sand they have been able to hold onto.

Dinner is a fine affair at the best restaurant. Everything is gratis and comped. There is music and dancing and a sumptuous feast. It is cool, but bright. People, on the whole, really look around to see who they’ve been with. No one exchanges numbers, though. Photos of grandkids are pulled out passed around, but if our work has been done right, they are left on the table. Here is where you see people at their best, their most free: lovers are still lovers, idiots idiots, and skeptics try and chat us up like we could somehow make a bargain for them. Others buy lottery tickets or cigars. Everyone dances, though not everyone sings. There is cake for some reason.

The coffee service is exquisite. We make a big show of bringing it out: it is the finest, darkest roast. We only serve it black. Some ask us if we have decaf, for fear it will keep them up. We smile beneath our cowls (put up against the evening chill) and tell them not to worry. People are as happy as they are like to be, on this tour, anyway. We have printed everyone’s photos, and they are strewn about the tables in no particular order: people laugh at themselves, each other. We give out prizes, and usually they give prizes and toasts to each other. We stay late, very late for a senior day cruise. The check never comes, but soon enough, each of their own accord, they step onto the bus. Some went on the bus to an early rest just after dinner. No one ever stays behind or leaves the tour at this point. Instead, they thank us. They wave to the restaurant and the world. They don’t have to, but they tip us and, more often than not, call us by the names of their children, or even grandchildren.

On the night ride to the facility, they are all soon asleep and perfectly quiet. They look beautiful and peaceful under the stretching shadows cast by passing lights. I often wish we could wake them as we go over the bridge at night, because it is something everyone should see, but no one does, but, of course, it is quite impossible at this point. This is the most tender and difficult part of the tour and we touch their cheeks as they lay there. We guides don’t look at each other, but we know we are all crying in our oxygen masks, standing in the sway of the bus, as we go up and down the aisles cloudy with the bitter air of diverted exhaust, checking our cargo. It is so sad and beautiful and we have yet such a long hard night ahead of us.

TURN #100: WEEK 86; WORDS: 99,850 NEXT BY 14 FEBRUARY 2007

Nonexistent and Forbidden Paintings You May Have Missed

2007-01-30T18:08:00.000-05:00

Christ Rotting in His Tomb
Unknown
Supposed Date: c. 1650
Purported Medium: Oil on Canvas

This apocryphal painting supposedly depicts the Savior entering a near liquid state of putrefaction sometime after the crucifixion. The artist’s blasphemous Gnostic conceit was supposedly that rather than having made a positive discovery of Jesus' triumphant ressurection and the salvation of mankind, the apostles simply neglected to find Jesus’ corpse, which remained in the tomb the whole time. The expressions of nightmarish dismay and outright nausea on the part of Mary and Joseph were described as inappropriately comical and grotesque. Christ himself is to have been depicted with derogatory and disgusting detail, his swollen belly having apparently exploded just prior to his discovery.

This purported abomination is a frequent inclusion in the list of suppressed and forbidden paintings supposedly in the vaults of the Vatican. It goes without saying that no such collection exists (for what purpose could it serve?) and certainly not any such blasphemous composition, whose existence is most likely the fabrication of Satanists and Protestants.

The Three Muses of the Depraved Arts
Not Given
Supposed Date:
Purported Medium: Oil on Canvas

This indescribably filthy painting has hopefully been destroyed, if, indeed, it ever existed: the censored descriptions cannot be repeated here. The “three muses” depicted are described as the very inversions of every possible classical canon of beauty, proportion and even humanness in all it’s nakedness, and so grossly engaged in the venereal and bestial practices that they are the allegories of, that scholars of the perverse and abnormal are highly at odds to say what exactly the depraved arts supposedly depicted actually were supposed to be. This has led to much unpleasant speculation, obscenity, criminality and suicide, as so minded initiates of such things have attempted to recreate the unnatural and hallucinatory things allegedly depicted in the hopes of coming to know what they three depraved arts actually are. The accounts of the third figure, in particular, has sponsored some dreadful flights of fancy and at least one series of shocking domestic crimes.

The story of such a painting most likely originates in the unsavory company of art dealers specializing in the forbidden and profane. Whether goaded into such grotesque and septic rhapsodies by an overdose of laudanum, or by the natural ravages of the spirochete, the subject of “The Three Muses of the Depraved Arts” was probably an occasion for lurid and pornographic improvisation, or a faithful account of delirium tremens.

Very little is said about the purported artist except that he was supposed to be one of the last such offending figures to be mercifully and appropriately dealt with in the last acts of the Inquisition, a melodramatic detail, making the whole incredibly unlikely.

The Dragon (Ben-Levi in his study)
Unknown
Supposed Date: ca. 1528
Purported Medium: Oil on Panel

This spurious alleged painting actually made it into an early edition of Bellum’s:

This painting is, for the most part, unobjectionable, save that it’s subject is the questionable occult scholar Ben-Levi, called Archimagus. Though Ben-Levi’s contributions in many legitimate fields of scholarship are unquestioned, his occult work is justly proscribed and his murder by a family of identical gypsies a boon to mankind and Christendom. The painting is poorly executed; it is believed that the figure in the left corner is a poor rendering of the industrious beaver and not an anomalous monotreme platypus as some have claimed. In addition to poor draftsmanship, the painting also suffers from illiteracy, as many of the conspicuous titles of the books displayed are grossly misspelled and nonsensical (“ignotius per ignotium” for “ignotum per ignotius”).

No doubt the fabrication of the existence of this painting comes out the desire for some representation of Ben-Levi, about whom little certain is known, and who various texts are merely attributed to. The particular mania for this painting can be attributed to Roman Ruiz, contributor to the discontinued journal Fiat Lux. Upon coming upon a detailed description of the supposed painting, after puzzling over it for a sleepless night, Ruiz became convinced that the misspellings were deliberate as the whole the titles were as series of anagrams, or some other such code.

Unfortunately, Ruiz’s attempts to actually acquire the painting and unravel the code seem to have signaled some personal decision on that poor author’s part to sink even lower than his previous researches had guided him. Prison and destitution soon followed, and it is in this light, the penury and regular addictive and dipsomaniacal needs, that we view his sad, last fraudulent claims to have found the painting at last, offering to show it to his former editors for a few hundred sou.

Ruiz claimed to have solved the riddle of the painting, but in reality, he had slid into madness, often referring to it as though it were a living thing and making up ludicrous excuses of why (the hundred sous having been paid) the painting could not now be seen (“it ran away”; “it’s with a lady”; “it’s in my father’s house.”).

Whether or not the pitable Ruiz was responsible for the arson that consumed him, it is that cleansing fire that has given an aura of intrigue an interest to a story with very little basis in fact, but only too much in human frailty.

Subsequent editions of Bellum’s correct this error.

Self-Portrait in the Dreams of the Minotaur
“R.U. Pickman”
Supposed Date: 1910, 1920
Purported Medium: Unknown

A spurious legend circulates around art history undergrads that there exists a supremely phantasmagoric decadent symbolist painting that functions as a kind of Ur-painting for the history of Surrealism, and, by extension, Modern Art. Its creator is supposedly some mysterious Montevidian, who arranges a private showing, so the legend goes, with this or that Surrealist, or combination thereof, immediately prior to the Armory show, or some other historical turning point. In every telling, however, the doubtful protean painter arranges to meet the Surrealist the following night to show him a still more modern work and introduce him to his model. The following night at their rendez-vous the Surrealist always discovers a scene of some disorder with a conspicuous number of hard-boiled eggs and the apparently suicided corpse of the artist, the methods of death varying according to account, but invariably quite lurid and complicated, often involving some mechanism for sawing off one’s own head.

The Surrealist who is supposed to have glimpsed this originary painting varies with the telling, but it is usually told as one or more than the following: Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Max Ernst, Andre Breton or Salvador Dali. Schwitters supposedly looked at the wrong side, De Chirico from the side and Ernst from behind De Chirico. Duchamp is supposed to have seen the whole from the front and laughed, but only through cracked glasses. Breton never saw the painting at all, but claimed that he did. Breton told Dali about the painting and supposedly the latter went mad.

The supposition of this missing painting is highly unnecessary, for the history of Surrealism is well-established, documented and known in the present, whose scholarship is able, without an evolutionary gap, to fully trace, detail and explain the development of Surrealist art. The legend is probably promulgated by mischievous TA’s disillusioned by their programs to deceive undergrads and no scholarly authority takes it seriously. The absence of any of the Dadaists from the anecdote, suggests, if anything, the whole event may be, if anything, some sort of Dadaist joke.

TURN #99: WEEK 85; WORDS: 97,582 NEXT BY 7 FEBRUARY 2007

To My Thoughtful and Invisible Readers

2007-01-23T23:13:00.000-05:00

And especially to you, my Invisible Man, I thought I would tender this briefest of introductions to preclude any possible misunderstanding about the nature of my writing.

It has been manifestly my intention, in these pages to entertain you with nothing other than the most accurate, most unadorned, most truthful possible account of my life and opinions, much after the fashion of Descartes' Meditations, or the author of Tristam Shandy. It is paramount to me that the truth and accuracy of these experiences and insights reach you unadorned, unembellished and uncontaminated with any foreign meaning that might be imbued by the simplest literary device. Indeed, like Socrates, I have affected no style, but presented myself to you in the simplest language possible, even eschewing the device of the philosophical dialog for fear of the rhetorical distortions inherent even in that limited dialectical drama.

Rather, I have hoped to present something with the integrity of journalism and the clarity of mathematics, something with no riddles, no mysteries, no hidden allusions. All the words, thought and situations presented here are wholly my own and wholly original; nothing has been borrowed or transposed from another's work, ever. There is no magic and no trickery to this honest enterprise: the events happen exactly as human language will allow me to describe and the opinions presented are wholly owned by me and are my true thoughts. Everything is spoken in properia persona and no other. There is no hidden homuncular author who manipulates me as some unreliable narrator, no "trick" or "catch" to anything expressed here, and everything expressed here is done so clearly and univocally: opinions presented here always mean themselves and never their opposite, nor is there trecherous game where one sincere complement is followed by a fraudlent narrative, some difficult and indeterminate mix of real and false experiences and opinion: my narratives are simple, they are made of one single unitary substance: the truth. All the pertinent facts relating to a story are presented in them. Finally, and above all, there is no insidious, vitiating irony, dissolving away the apparent true meaning as water does sugar. For nothing is invisible here, but rather perfectly transparent: please rest assured, dear reader, I am no actor upon a stage whose words are written for him to some unknown purpose that you must riddle out and phantom meanings do not haunt us by speaking just out of earshot or between the lines.

Thus given you my word and reassurances, I might clap you on the shoulder and I might now relate to you my most recent meditation, not wholly occasioned, but surely made more excellent by the thoughtful response of one of my readers who recently posted a comment to a previous excursion. I am honestly grateful for all responses, so much so that I have, without fail, responded substantively to all of them, in the comment section, or in personal correspondence and once by riding my horse to that person's house: if you leave a comment, or email me, I thank you and will always promptly and courteously respond. The "Invisible Man"'s thoughtful comments occasioned some discussion among my friends and peers, which I try to treat of truthfully and accurately below. As always

your humble,

Archimago

In Defense of Beauty

2007-01-23T21:26:00.000-05:00

It is a piece of received wisdom today to say that “beauty is only skin deep”, but few realize exactly how much hatred of life and goodness is contained in this simple statement. In criticizing beauty one is expressing cruel and unwarranted skepticism in something one already loves and desires. The popularity or even commonsensicality of such a point of view points to how depraved, Platonic, Christian and Konigisbergian our sensibilities have become, it defines our embrace of hatred and self loathing. The beautiful, like pleasant weather, tasty food, or sexual release, is pleasure and virtue itself, and our suspicion and denial of it shows only how far we have been cozened form our original innocent enjoyment of existence and excellence itself.

How can the beautiful be other than good? This is the question I often ask among my fellow super models and beautiful people at parties or during sex, as we share cigarettes and amazement -horror and sadness, really, at the hatred and bigotry, the prejudice that the less attractive seem to feel for us. Just the other day Izabella was saying to me that they probably want to hold us down and make us eat nachos; they want us to hate ourselves and the beautiful. It’s true said Famke, rolling over with a treatment of Atlas Shrugged. Gillian played with something on Famke’s lip: they also hate our intelligence and learning, said she. Izabella began to tremble and weep inhumanly beautiful tears with an expression not seen outside the great masters or cat calendars. It would have made a supreme photograph, so it was beneficial that there were several photographers. My friends, my friends, I asked, how long before we all must wear veils or stuff Ralph Lauren pillows beneath our CK tees?

This was about the time I started shopping in the women’s department with my girlfriends: because I couldn’t bear to be away from them, because everything was more beautiful there, had a better cut and everything else made me look fat.

“I can’t believe you are leaving me!” she said.

She was always saying things like that.

“I am leaving” I said, bravely, and with that I lifted my newest and favorite suit off the cluttered closet door, where things, too many things, too many unnew and unfavorite things had been wont to hang. I say I lifted it, but it was as light as a kite, a new kite in its complimentary sleeve. It was beautiful. The sleeve was as beautiful as a new car. I wanted to be alone with it, to get a good look at it in the sunlight. This line of conversation was discomfiting.

“After all I’ve done for you, now that you’re successful, rich and in fantastic shape -you’re just going to throw me away?”

This was factually true. I wasn’t doing well when she found me. In fact, I wasn’t doing anything. I was desperate. I was dying. She helped me. She taught me to believe in myself. Etc.

Yet the whole appeal of becoming strong and beautiful was to be loved by someone strong and beautiful and where I was coming from was neither strong nor beautiful.

“You are evil” she said, “you’re like The Great Gatsby as written by H.P. Lovecraft.”

“But what about the children?” she screamed. She screamed things like that. The places I took her, too.

The children of want and misery, I mused, could never be beautiful, especially with no father and such an unhappy mother.

I have always wanted my hopes to float above me like a kite.

I know, said Michael, practicing practicing his putt. It’s a write-off, but you should totally get your deposit back from that bitch, because it is yours. Getting what is yours is the essence of morality. That’s not nice, but fuck nice, what has nice ever done? Has it ever occurred to anyone that being nice is easy and therefore stupid? Being nice is cop-out, it’s for mediocre people with no drive, no special ability, with nothing to not be nice about. Humans are social creatures: nice is our default setting when we are confronted with something bigger stronger and better: to appease them, to not get your ass kicked. As long as you’re nice, you know you are nobody. That chumpola who parks my car: he’s nice. The escort that lets me decide what her name is for the weekend: she’s nice. That loser who keeps things clean in my toilet: he’s real nice. If a cockroach could fucking talk, it'd probably be real nice. Whoever calls you sir three times in the same sentence unless they got a rag and they’re begging you for change? When you can be a real asshole, brother, that’s when you know you have something going on. You’re done wiping asses. You don’t even wipe your own ass.

We both did a little bump.

I know it’s easy to be nice, but being a asshole is hard work. And thankless. I get home sometimes and I think to myself: I wish to god someone would thank me for all the good work I did today being an asshole. You think it’s easy yelling in traffic? You think I want to send things back? I am not nice. I am a producer: I produce things. If I could be nice, don’t you think I would? If things got done by lying in bed jerking off all day and saying “please” and “thank you” to the fuckin’ trees, I would do it, just to save on my phone bill. But if not for my phone and my asshole nothing worthwhile would ever get done. When you go overseas you realize this. I don’t care where you go, Africa, Egypt, fucking Iraq. You know what their problem is? They got too many nice people. They're too fuckin' nice. Everyone is polite. There are customs. There is community. Everybody takes time to know their fucking neighbor and looks out for them: nothing fucking gets done, ever. And the mothers who are running those places? They are the most savage bad-assed motherfuckers on the planet. They own the place and all the people in it. You ever talk to a police inspector in one of these places? They’ll get you the fucker who dinged your car, their whole family and a case of Hennessy.

He gave thanks to the four corners and made a namaste.

It’s hard work, I tell you. And what thanks do I get? 99% of humanity doesn’t get it because we’re the 1% that owns the other 99%. All I want is just someday, someday for some fucker to say to me: thank you: thank you for yelling at me for that half-hour: you have raised my perceptions of excellence and from now on, I will be a more excellent person. It’s been and education, sir. And so help me God, one night you’re going to be asleep and I’m going to be there standing over you with a tire iron. Is there anything else this ice cream stand can do for you or your child at this time?

He was back on his headset for few minutes, then his helicopter arrived and he waved and ducked into it, like the doctors in the opening credits of M*A*S*H*.

IV. THE DESPISERS OF THE BODY.

To the despisers of the body will I speak my word. I wish them neither to learn afresh, nor teach anew, but only to bid farewell to their own bodies,--and thus be dumb.

"Body am I, and soul"--so says the child. And why should one not speak like children?

But the awakened one, the knowing one, says: "Body am I entirely, and nothing more; and soul is only the name of something in the body."

...An instrument of your body is also your little sagacity, my brother, which you call "spirit"--a little instrument and plaything of your big sagacity.

"Ego," say you, and are proud of that word. But the greater thing- -in which you art unwilling to believe--is your body with its big sagacity; it says not "ego," but does it.

What the senses feel, what the spirit discerns, has never its end in itself. But sense and spirit would fain persuade you that they are the end of all things: so vain are they.

Instruments and playthings are sense and spirit: behind them there is still the Self. The Self seeks with the eyes of the senses, it hears also with the ears of the spirit.

Ever hearken the Self, and seek; it compares, masters, conquers, and destroys. It rules, and is also the ego's ruler.

Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a mighty lord, an unknown sage--it is called Self; it dwells in your body, it is your body.

There is more sagacity in your body than in your best wisdom. And who then
knows why your body requires just your best wisdom?

Your Self laugh at your ego, and its proud prancings. "What are these prancings and flights of thought unto me?" it says to itself. "A by-way to my purpose. I am the leading-string of the ego, and the prompter of its notions."

The Self says unto the ego: "Feel pain!" And thereupon it suffers, and think how it may put an end thereto--and for that very purpose it IS MEANT to think.

The Self says unto the ego: "Feel pleasure!" Thereupon it rejoices, and think how it may ofttimes rejoice--and for that very purpose it IS MEANT to think.

To the despisers of the body will I speak a word. That they despise iscaused by their esteem. What is it that created esteeming and despising and worth and will?

The creating Self created for itself esteeming and despising, it created for itself joy and woe. The creating body created for itself spirit, as a hand to its will.

Even in your folly and despising you each serve your Self, you despisers of the body. I tell you, your very Self want to die, and turn away from life.

No longer can your Self do that which it desires most:--create beyond itself. That is what it desires most; that is all its fervour.

But it is now too late to do so:--so your Self wish to succumb, you despisers of the body.

To succumb--so wish your Self; and therefore have you become despisers of the body. For you can no longer create beyond yourselves.

And therefore are you now angry with life and with the earth. And unconscious envy is in the sidelong look of your contempt.

I go not your way, you despisers of the body! You are no bridges for me to the Superman!

-Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Nietzsche understood this. His only prayer was that mankind be delivered from revenge and ressentiment from the despisers of the body and the passions, from the strange mistrust of the senses and the sensual.

When I was younger I wondered just what it was that made the body of the beloved so desirable. As though it required explanation, as though there was something to explain and that explanation might satisfy something.

The truth is something between Baudrillard and Berkeley. The other people are here to make it more real. When you make love and there is only one person, who can really say that it happened at all?

The muscles fed by narcissism and exercise are totally different from those fed by hard work. They are smoother and more symmetrical. They have a kind of inner glow. Hard labor creates weird freakish hypertrophies and a gut that looks tired. Look at a racehorse; now look at an old nag. Beauty only comes out of itself, out of careful gazing and preparation to become beautiful. It is never a side effect, because beauty is always itself, can only come into being where it is welcomed by itself. We could say it is Art, if Beauty were not the condition of the former’s possibility.

The inner glow of the well-trained, well-cared for body is spiritual contentment. This is why crucifixes and statues of the Buddha appear beautiful and why those two always appear in such good shape.

I met Tom at the gym. He has his own personal trainer and his own personal gym. He likes to come to the gym afterwards. I understand this. I learned a lot of this from Tom, the perfect pre-gym work out. Your workout must be done with ease and yet focused, showing determined effort and competitiveness, yet smooth, agreeable. You must never clank the weights or grunt like Howard Dean. You must workout like you were born working out, just as you take the wine list or tip the valet. You are in a place, a holy place and your mien must reflect this, like a monk: at once, solemn, serious, but friendly, restful and merry as a boy.

You look great, he says.

I know this. It is one of the most honest and kindest things a person can say. It is a greeting: walaikum as sala'am.

We are here, of course, to blast our lats and to discuss something. I had been retained to do some rethink of a very different project of Tom’s: Tom Cruise -the Ride, (formerly titled Tom Cruise: The Experience). But it is never just business with Tom. Tom is a people person. Tom is an emotional person. Tom is a spiritual person. He’ll do a few reps, and then he’ll say something profound. Then we’ll drink water together.

Tom is also a listener. As we do the circuit together he wants to know about my journey. This is because: he is a teacher. I tried to explain how it was. The people in my life. Now that I was with people they had seen on TV and movies. How they really couldn’t stand it. How they hungered to bring you down with their own stories. How they never really accepted you. How awkward and uncomfortable it was. Like you owed them something. Like they knew “the real you.” How this was blackmail and you couldn’t keep paying off blackmail. Just how awful they seemed. Their petty victories. Their little joys. Their pathetic vacations. How they never really did anything. How they just let themselves go. How they couldn’t wait to see you fuck up. How they wanted you back, just so they could spit on you all over again.

How much kinder everyone else in Hollywood was. How they made the transition easy. How they were like true friends that one had known one’s whole life long. How they understood everything.

Tom took this all in, lighting quick, like a cold read. He gave a practiced look of concern, the one he had in War of the Worlds. Then he was up on the treadmill and for a second goofed around, sliding to the side, petending to sing like in the underwear scene in Risky Business. I knew that was for me. We finished the circuit and over Vittel he solved it all for me:

Look at me: I love this kid. And. I really. Love: Katie.

Now let’s watch Vanilla Sky. And hold me, hold me.

TURN #98: WEEK 84; WORDS: 96,342 (not including F.W. Nietzsche’s)
NEXT BY 31 JANUARY 2007

What's Jack Drinking?

2007-01-16T22:13:00.000-05:00

There’s ice if you’ve been bad, and I mean really bad, so bad that you go down to the big rink, the VIP circle, past the Bunko trenches; so bad, they’re actually genuinely nice to you when you first get there, because they appreciate a sense of style, and an instant of niceness measured against an eternity of suffering is really more suffering; this is what they do; they do it well; do not forget to tip.

There are people that they wait for, people that they keep clippings of, people that the inmates jerk off to (of course they never come, but idle maggot filled hands are the devil’s playthings and he likes that sort of thing). But what they want from you isn’t exactly pleasant and it’s not your autograph -not exactly.

I’ve been down there a few times and it’s too rich for my blood. There are people that you have all heard of down there, partying it up, but the worst of them aren’t who you would expect: which goes to show just how differently run this place is than people would imagine who haven’t been there yet. Yes, he’s here, of course, but down here he’s a nobody: he’s a frustrated little artist because nobody buys his paintings. He’s a pretty sad case. There are other things, too, but the thing I like to notice is that everyone keeps mistaking him for Charlie Chaplin and get real disappointed when they realize their mistake. The hair in his brushes keeps falling out.

No, the worst cases down here would surprise you and would give one nightmares, if it were possible to have nightmares down here (actually in a sense it is: some people have a nice dream now and again: this is another rotten thing that happens down here; the most common dream down here is not being able to remember what it was and the most common feeling upon waking is not feeling well rested). They’ve all done things, lived their crapulent lives in such a way that it put them in the winner’s circle. Sometimes, it’s pretty obvious, but just as often it’s horribly subtle: you see kindly looking old Grandmas and even children and sometimes its what they’ve done, or why, or how, or when, or to whom, or some combination thereof, but once you’ve heard it, you have no doubt they’ve come to the right place. Sometimes you really can’t say why it’s so awful, it’s just so awful that you never imagined. But they did. I don’t go there much. Even down here, you can still fear for your soul, otherwise the place wouldn’t serve any purpose at all.

The beautiful prince keeps them way down there, close to him, because they’ve earned it. Because friends and enemies are the same to him, so they are close and so awful it must be almost like family. It makes all the awful things that happen down there terribly intimate. He keeps them down there because they are his trophies, a thousand tormented mirrors for his vanity. So you meet a lot of posers clubbing around there and people dance and do things like you’re supposed to watch and applaud.

People think it’s like a prison: it’s not. Prison is a hellish experience. You logically cannot say that this place is hellish. Nor can you really say of something that goes on forever that it is an experience.

In consideration of which, we should note: all of the Logical Positivists are here. In fact, they call that circle, “the Vienna Circle.” Actually, it’s not at all bad for them, as none of them believe it and so they are more or less immune. It's the same for the saints. As he has always had apostasy as his personal creed, the positivist turn has more or less become the official philosophy of this place, alongside it’s motto: “We try harder. ”

And so tonight I am here: you don’t want to meet anyone’s eyes, because those that have eyes are terrible and nothing good will come of it either way. Keep to the shallow end of the bar, away from where a crowd as gathered and there is the sound of fabric ripping and someone is screaming. Don’t look, and don’t put your fingers in the peanuts if you want to keep them. There is hemlock, there is achewood and wormwood: they serve a lot of real poisons here, because here agony is a joke and dying an even bigger one. The bottles are old, fine Venetians from the Borgias, casks from the great monasteries, Roman glass, some of the first pots ever fired: you can have what Noah had when he got trashed, naked and passed out. You can drink schnapps made from extinct Arctic plants. You can taste every temptation that has ever loosed an evil smile, a careless word, a clumsy swerve, a drunken pass, an open fist. Every regretful vintage is here, and the first taste is never sour or bitter. You can even taste the apple here: that’s always fresh.

But what will you have? There’s a Victorian gentleman at the end of the bar in a shabby but rich black coat of London cut. He’s got long fingers and the intelligent face of a doctor. Make no mistake: he’s not kind. He’s idling like he has all the time in the world: this bar is just a short jaunt from his place. He is as comfortable and easy as a folded knife. His smirk is laughing at the jar on the counter where severed human fingers swim, pickled with rings. In front of him is something with a stick of celery in it.

Like a shiver, the bartender is suddenly at your service, like something you shouldn’t be thinking about, the sort of thing normal people never consider. And so you ask him:

TURN #97: WEEK 83; WORDS: 94,400
NEXT BY 24 JANUARY 2007

Technology Today in Review

2007-01-09T18:44:00.000-05:00

New 811c Compliant Swibble from PermaSafe

The new 811c compliant Swibbles from PermaSafe are a pleasant admixture of discreet design and improved functionality in this much anticipated and mandatory product line. PermaSafe’s designs have always featured a combination of style and surveillance and the new line of 811c compliant models is no exception, featuring muted, modish smooth lines that take up very little space while providing total and complete police presence at all times in every aspect of our lives. Seriously, don't get caught without one.

Windows for Pets, Mobile Dog Edition

The first release of Windows for Pets met with a great deal of disappointment and criticism: though it did provide windows for pets and other small domesticated creatures, it did not allow the pet to move without crashing and there was no support for hamsters. Windows for Pets, Mobile Dog Edition sports several improvements, allowing many common breeds of dog to bark (3 settings), walk/run, fetch, eat, defecate (hardware required) and play dead (restart required). If it is unable to complete your command it will display improved sad doggy eyes. The included wetware bundle features several trial versions of games such as “Give Me Your Paw” and “Mailman/Late Night Barking for No Reason.” You can easily navigate spreadsheets or use Outlook Express on your dog, though it is very difficult to close pop-up browser windows without a rolled up newspaper. Not available for monads.

EXO from Montauk Park

Based entirely on alien technology, it is not clear what the EXO does or is supposed to do, but it clearly does it very well, with little or no regard for human life. Consumers can expect this model to function along similar lines as reported by early adopters of the OnoNovo Xist: it floats, it doesn’t reflect you, it emits that weird humming sound in your head and between 12 and 24 hours appear to be missing from your recall. The EXO seems to have at least three settings of eerie glowing light: eerie, foreboding and blinding with traces of ionizing radiation. Inexpensively priced for a close encounter of the third kind, it is mainly available in rural areas and Mexico. Please note: no one will believe you.

iFemto

Integrates seamlessly with everything. Does whatever is imaginable, with expandablity into the inconceivable. Capable of updating directly from the distant future. Upgrades and compatible with all previous products, systems, languages, elements and unifies all known physical laws. There has been incredible hype and excitement about this product, which many believe to be the end of all technology and an absolute singularity, while others simply worship it as God. Has no rest mass.

for the iPhone

TURN #96: WEEK 82; WORDS: 93 408
NEXT BY 17 JANUARY 2007

Nachlass

2006-12-27T01:50:00.000-05:00

1. I can tell from the smell of metal on the breath of the dog barking at my face that it’s a robot.

2. Though in the present it is quite important to be clear on what is known.

3. Hence these remarks.

4. I do not deduce or conclude that there is a dog barking and snapping at my face; it is all there at once.

5. But suddenly I smell its breath and I see it as metal, a metal dog.

6. Which does not surprise me as all sorts of things have been turning to metal lately.

7. Perhaps that is why I am here.

8. To be isolated and quarantined from this outbreak of things turning into metal.

9. But if that is why I am here, why are things turning to metal here?

10. Or do they bring us here to help the process along?

11. Whose side are they on?

12. Sides and loyalty are important. Allegiances.

13. And yet unclear.

14. This is another reason why it is important to stick to what is known.

15. For instance, I could say that I am being held against my will.

16. Yet, after all this time, how can I know what my will is?

17. When you are in a place like this, you might as well conclude that you are the
architect of it all, because the whole cosmos there revolves around you.

18. Where you are blindfolded, where you are taken.

19. Everywhere and in everything you do, you have attendants, who look to see what you are doing constantly. Study your every word and gesture.

20. You are like a god, really, blind and dumb.

21. This is why I tell them, when they are done “you are free to go now.” I release them.

22. But they are never quite done.

23. So like a god, my will is inscrutable, and I do not know why I came here, save to give these blinding muting attendants purpose.

24. And even here they are turning to metal.

25. The flesh I suppose is weak.

26. I think the problem started with cloned meats.

27. But we should stick to what is known

28. After all, it is perfectly possible that should my skull be opened it might not contain a brain and be perfectly empty, an unrented room.

29. This room might be equally empty.

30. None of this would really be that surprising.

31. It is best that we get away from the whole Platonic cave imagery and Cartesian guessing game.

32. I have the benefit of a good education.

33. For what?

34. I am a scientist

35. Scientists said the cloned meats were okay

36. Not that kind of scientist

37. I gave a paper once, that is, I read something I had written down on the plane to a room full of other people who were interested in that sort of thing.

38. I was saying that at this point in the Twenty-first Century we had two powerful signifiers: Metal and Flesh.

39. The two were in an exchange: the flesh was becoming intelligent, abstract, technological, taking on the industrial qualities of metal.

40. It started when we began growing those delicious steaks in tanks, huge sheets of living meat, impossibly tender, because it had never stretched on a bone or been born.

41. Or when artists started pouring bone, or cell phone manufacturers.

42. As always, it’s hard to say.

43. Anyway, it could be produced and manufactured, like metal.

44. And, much to everyone’s total surprise, it began to develop a rudimentary intelligence.

45. (Intelligence, like life, increasingly appears to be an inherent potential in matter.)

46. We only found this out incidentally, when we started having more problems with degenerative neurological disorders resulting from transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (prion diseases like Creutzfeldt-Jakob “mad cow disease”) -despite having invented synthetic free tissue growths like this specifically to avoid this problem.

47. There was even some crazy Polish speculation that the tissue in the tanks had somehow deliberately engineered the prions to get us.

48. Strategically, this would be a good move, to disable a large part of our population, rather than just kill them outright, as disabled we posed a greater drain on resources of the remaining uninfected population than dead.

49. Some paranoid people went further and imagined that the final showdown would be our few surviving descendants and robots versus intelligent meat bent on revenge.

50. That’s crazy.

51. But people did become crazier, while the meat got smarter.

52. In the end, it was a disaster: millions of people lost their minds and the hospitals were overwhelmed.

53. The ever growing excess had to be sent to improvised camps to be taken care of; stadiums and military bases.

54. At the same time that meat was becoming intelligent, metal was becoming animal, quite literally.

55. We made generation after generation of robotic insects and microorganisms.

56. We prided ourselves on how they fought and learned, healed and reproduced, created their own structures and languages.

57. We taught metal to fear, to protect itself, to hurt

58. To love, after a fashion.

59. That is to say, metal became cunning.

60. To Serve.

61. And Protect. You could say that most of the money came from the military and defense contractors, but at this point everything was the military and defense contractors, MIT was just a branch of the military and defense contractors.

62. The semiotics seminar I spoke at was a military and defense contractor sponsored event.

63. It was called: “The Signifying Battlefield”

64. Some of my research and ideas went into the development of the Tactical Environment Action Response System, which is what the Total Real-time Battlefield Map of the Future Combat System initiative came to be called.

65. One of my ideas went directly into the design of the little icon that represented human factors; the little dots representing soldiers would change color and intensity according to health and morale.

66. I got to see it in action during the last war: it was amazing because you could see literally waves of fear ripple through a group of soldiers who could see the MOAB detonation.

67. They looked like little glowing fireflies or fairies in the holometric projection of the war room. I wanted to kneel down and scoop them up off the ghostly projected battlefield, scoop them up like little pollywogs and tell them: it’s alright.

68. At the other end of the map was the enemy. They lay like embers, fading in the IR.

69. I had gotten the idea from a strategic war sim game I used to play in college a lot.

70. There were quite a few game designers at the seminar as well.

71. My paper was called: “The Disappearing Cyborg”

72. Of course, there were more cyborgs than ever, but my point was that flesh and metal would eventually become so commingled, just semiotically, that the idea of the cyborg, as such, was already obsolete.

73. I pointed to the fact that there had been a certain amount of alarm at the rapid increase in cases of Asperger’s syndrome among children throughout the developed world:

74. An entire generation of children was growing up with normal or above average intelligence, but unable to identify or understand human emotional expressions and use those expressions themselves.

75. Then it was discovered that the children could relate perfectly normally to CGI characters on children’s programming, but not live human actors.

76. In short, to them the uncanny valley was natural.

77. Parents could communicate with their children easily by rendering footage of their faces into simple CG animations, or even by simply wearing a lot of make up and severely restricting their facial expressions.

78. It was a problem of bandwidth. The parents’ faces had a broader range of signification than the children were used to, and therefore their emotional content coded as noise.

79. My earlier paper that I drew on here was called “Children of the Uncanny Valley”

80. I concluded that far from being a dehumanizing prospect, our common lives in online virtual communities and MMORPGS offered humans a vast signifying surface by which they would be able to express themselves more completely than previously:

81. Like parents faces, most of offline human life was noise, people jostling on the bus, walking down the street. You never knew what someone wanted.

82. In the online realm, however, everyone met for a purpose, and you could read them, their status, how many points they had. Their emotions were clear, iconized, unambiguous and floated directly above their heads.

83. Your exchanges were clear and precise. If you wanted sex, you had sex. If you wanted music, or drug designs you swapped them.

84. Capitalism required a final expropriation, the complete and total elimination of the human body to be complete, to become pure exchange, pure numbers.

85. At the end of my speech, I ejaculated.

86. I was starting to realize I was not a well person.

87. I had difficulty sleeping. I spent most of my time online.

88. Someone else at the seminar told me that changes in sleep were just animal responses to the climate change and communicative pressures. She said that eventually, like dolphins, we would just develop unicameral sleep with one hemisphere of the brain dreaming and the other awake doing things and seeing through it’s one eye open on the opposite side.

89. She sent me a furry snuff movie. I’m not sure if she was in it. It seemed like her tiny frame taking on Fleegle.

90. It was a mistake telling her I liked “The Banana Splits”

91. They thought I had Asperger’s syndrome for a while.

92. This is why I preferred my online presence more, where it was easier to get along, to tell what people wanted and not at all unusual or inappropriate to make inappropriate remarks.

93. However, I do not think this diagnosis is correct.

94. Many of my symptoms really do not fall under AS, however interpreted.

95. More significantly, I think that my problem is really the opposite of the children’s problem.

96. I think I sometimes have trouble reading people, because, in reality there are more robots.

97. We should be careful what we say now.

98. And how we proceed.

99. For instance, if I sound different now, it’s because I just realized that I’m starving.

100. It’s like that now. I will go for hours, days, until I realize that I’m famished. And then I’ll just stand there eating. And I never feel full; I just lose interest and stop eating. But it’s like a spell or a dream.

101. So I ate something.

102. Good.

103. Anyway, the robot thing: I am not a paranoid schizophrenic. Many of my peers work with robots in the aforesaid defense industries and some of them are paranoid schizophrenics, but we are all very familiar with the state of the art.

104. We know what robots look like, are, and are not capable of.

105. For instance, the UAV 1065 Herter-Norton Aerial Surveillance Drone looks like a vulture, because it was designed to look like a vulture as camouflage. It can even communicate and hang out with real vultures.

106. I can say that aloud, in here, at least.

107. Or can I?

108. We have learned more about vultures in the past year than during most of our history of bird watching, but that is not why it was invented.

109. So if I point to they sky and say it’s full of robot vultures that are going to attack me because my electric car has broken down, I am not crazy. That is not a crazy sentence.

110. These are not the robots that I am talking about.

111. Nor am I talking about some crazy conspiracy where people are secretly being replaced by robots.

112. Like I said, we work on all kinds of black projects. If there were robots fully capable of passing for human, to even replace one, we would know about it.

113. We would know directly about it, like UFOs, because we would have built them.

114. And say we did build such a robot.

115. Capable of entirely passing as, even wholly replacing a human without detection.

116. Designed to

117. It would be the blackest of black projects, because what purpose could it serve?

118. And when you were done, what would you do with all the people involved in the project:

119. AI Architects

120. Engineers

121. Bioengineers

122. Chemists

123. Designers

124. Nanotechnicians

125. Programmers

126. Even semioticians?

127. What to do with them?

128. After all they knew

129. How would you make them disappear?

130. Where would you put them?

131. How would you keep them quiet?

132. And destroy the information in their brains?

133. But there never was any such project.

134. So what I am saying is that people are being replaced with robots and it is some sort
of crazy conspiracy because we don’t know anything about it.

135. What kind of conspiracy?

136. This is where you really need to pay attention, and the great thing is here I know someone is always paying attention.

137. It’s been going on along time, way longer than we have been working on robotics.

138. It must have been. That’s how we missed it.

139. Likewise, if it came from a particular direction, a vector, we would have spotted it, the way we can spot computer viruses, worms and H5 N7 coming out of China.

140. They just show up suddenly, somewhere, these robots.

141. Like this dog.

142. So, logically, it must have happened everywhere all at once, at the same time, like the Big Bang.

143. Same reasoning.

144. Reason is the key.

145. So the phenomenon we are trying to explain is: people (and this dog) are being replaced by robots.

146. How is this possible?

147. Who is responsible?

148. But in reality the question is all backwards.

149. We should rather ask, if these perfect robots are possible, why don’t they exist already?

150. We asked the same question with respect to nanotechnology: if these microscopic self-replicating machines are possible, why don’t they exist already?

151. (You can see where I am going with this)

152. They do.

153. God created them.

154. Likewise, these perfect robots exist: God is turning people into robots, bringing my paper’s conclusion about ahead of schedule.

155. But why is God doing this?

156. No, really, why?

157. I think I can answer this question.

158. I think I am uniquely suited to answer it.

159. Because I, like God, am somehow outside of space and time, in a non-place, beyond all human communication.

160. Yet, like God, surrounded by throngs of invisible attendants.

161. Like God, I reached the same conclusion: I concluded that the cyborg is destined to vanish.

162. So, I, godlike, have started to bring this about, including this dog, for instance.

163. But why?

164. I don’t know.

165. And I don’t think God knows either.

166. Because his invisible attendants keep him blind. They deafen his ears.

167. Heaven, outside of time and space, is a prison.

168. Or some sort of facility.

169. And so each thing that God does comes like some sort of terrifying revelation.

170. So it really is like Plato’s cave, only a bound and blinded God creates the pure forms, by interpreting the shadows before him. By shadows cast, in ignorance created.

171. And this, too, is my fate.

172. Is that all?

173. No.

174. Can’t we go back further? Physicists always said that it makes no sense to talk about what happened before the Big Bang –before they started talking about it.

175. It was me, I was the first robot.

176. I was the first robot.

177. My mother told me I was a robot.

178. I ran on batteries powered by love.

179. Before I went out each day she would look at me and get this smile and then she would hug me and say she was charging me up for the day:

180. …10%

181. …16%

182. …25%

183. (She would give me a little kiss on the eyes and nose)

184. Oh! 50%

185. …65%

186. (She would rub my tummy)

187. …87%!

188. …89%!

189. …94%!

190. …95%

191. …96%!

192. …97%

193. …98%

194. …99%

195. …99.01%!

196. …etc

197. Okay, you are all charged. You are ready to go! Umbilicals disconnecting. You are free and clear of the mothership and on your own power! Go! Go! Go!

198. When I got home she would ask if I was all empty and rundown and fill me up again, with milk and cookies and kisses on the head. Then she would check for any structural damage or changes in my registry.

199. I was not alone, then.

200. 200@ 19 54 36 75 12 48

for a friend called 5

TURN #95: WEEK 81; WORDS: 92 605
NEXT BY 10 JANUARY 2007

Favorite Christmas Albums

2006-12-24T04:13:00.000-05:00

NUMAS

GARY NUMAN

As chilling and disaffected as Christmas albums get, Gary Numan’s proto-conceptual album features songs about a Christmas in a technological dystopia where flesh covered robots rape human beings and folks dressed up like Eskimos for public entertainment, all sung like a heavily medicated robot with Asperger’s syndrome.

we cannot cry
we do not shout
I cannot tell why

BROKEN MISTLETOE
TORI AMOS

A moody, inconsolable Christmas album; like Tess of Tess of the Urbervilles, people are mean and unfair to Tori and it’s never really clear why. With her moody tinklings and planget voice, Tori Amos turns an old holiday standard like “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer” into a tale of familial love, betrayal, recovery, healing, betrayal and redemption:

She’s been drinking too much egg nog
So I begged her not to go
But she’d left her medication
So she stumbled out the door into the
Snooooooooow Oh Oh OH

SAINT NICK
NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS

Probably one of the blackest and most violent Christmas albums imaginable, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Saint Nick reads like an unexpurgated bloody piratical adventure where everyone turns into werewolves. Things get stuffed into stockings and hung by the chimney with care, if you catch my drift. Guaranteed to ruin Christmas for small children, who will now only feel comparatively safe on Halloween. Like many sleazy Christmas themed slasher movies only with a zombie eating contest in the middle and somehow set to music.

Many of these songs were written for his infamous “Nick Cave’s Christmas Special” as were some of the tracks of his special guests, below:

CLEAN UNDERWEAR
TOM WAITS

This album is like spending Christmas with some sort of Ur Hobo at a shelter run by broken things. Goes down smooth like fortified wine, unfiltered cigarettes and cold, cold rain water falling down a broken pipe onto one’s dreams. Opens up vast new frontiers in the dim and lacrymose region known as “the lugubrious.” Slightly funnier than Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Not only Christmas, but Hanukkah, also gets dragged down, or, more specifically, Hanukkah and Christmas go out on a tear together and Christmas gets in a knife fight with Kwanza.

“Another Postcard From Another Hooker in Minneapolis” answers the logistical question of “what does a differently abled prostitute do on Christmas Eve when she has one wooden leg stolen and has sold the other for dope and carries around an old clock in a ripped up bagpipe?” Tom Waits musically takes you there, and many other places where no one has any access to health or dental care. A particularly great track is “New Year’s Resolutions” which seems to have been recorded on a hand held tape recorder while sitting on a riding lawn mower.

JESUS EVENT ZERO
NINA HAGEN

Like spending Christmas with your crazy cool arty Berliner aunt who plays awesome cool punk music, cuts up her clothing, tells you she doesn’t need lithium and then makes out with you on top of a birthday cake she has made for no reason. Answers the question: what is Christmas like inside of Jesus’ UFO which of course is a time machine because space is Jesus’ true body and his blood is time and redemption is time flowing backward and therefore there is no inside to the UFO which is Jesus, because everything is infinitely outside (inside).

O TANNENBAUM
LAIBACH

Logical follow up to their Jesus Christ Superstars, which seems to have seen this whole thing coming, Laibach’s O Tannenbaum presents old holiday favorites as interpreted by Herbert Von Karjan with Albert Speer on keyboards. Perfect for sitting around with family and friends for the holidays, burning books.

MASS X
BRIAN ENO

A cool ambient screen of an album which is like spending Christmas sitting on a slowly rotating baggage carousel on a moonbase. Features more back masked “ho, ho, ho”’s than any other album and heavily sampled reindeer.

TURN #94: WEEK 80; WORDS: 89 729
NEXT BY 3 JANUARY 2007

In Hoc Signo Vinces

2006-12-18T20:09:00.000-05:00

I.

Some people can’t handle the holidays: I don’t understand them, for I have always loved Christmas. For instance, I was walking along in my neighborhood a few days before Christmas and I saw this old sour-faced woman: she had that pinched expression that some old ladies have, you know the one, the one that says that they disapprove of everything, that everything has been a great disappointment since your father died and the Negroes were allowed into the same stores and that nothing today is right. A sneer that negates everything, that is haughty not with power or lineage, but just itself, just being a snotty old grandma. I thought her expression, which I only saw for an instant, contrary to the spirit of Christmas. So I hurled a rock at her. Actually, it was more like a chunk of concrete, all jagged on one side. It was rather pyramidical, like the mountain in the Allstate logo.

II.

Another thing that gets me is that it’s Christmas, dammit. It’s not a holiday, it’s not a season, it certainly not a winter festival it’s CHRISTMAS. I was having the best time with this little dark haired girl. we were getting along great, really getting to know each other on Christmas Eve mind you, and she makes motions she has to go somewhere, but I know she’s no place to go (like the song), and I joke about this and she laughs and says she has to go and wishes me a happy holiday and I just told, all I did was tell her that it’s Christmas get it? Christ fucking died for you on a cross, he bled to death and they beat him like in that Mel Gibson movie, they put a crown of fucking thorns on his head and he was the Son of God and could have done or been anything he wanted to in life, but instead he chose, he fucking chose just to hang there on piece of wood and let shits like you just stick him with a spear, a fucking spear, Crystal, do you get that, and he did it for you, for you and people like you and you laughed and kept stabbing him already. Crystal got pretty upset and Rico and the other bouncer came over and made me leave, even though I had paid my two drink minimum.

III.

Upon reflection, it occurs to me that maybe Crystal was Jewish and that my remarks could be misconstrued at blaming the Jewish people for Christ’s murder. While this is historically true, it is not really my point. My point is that we are all guilty, of everything, all the time. This is meaning of Christmas and my reason for recording these remarks.

IV.

If you really want to meet the cast of “Left Behind” just go to a Chinese Restaurant on Christmas Day: you will find it full of heathens, infidels, Jews, Buddhists, Christ-Deniers, people too lazy to cook, hopelessly friendless loners, dedicated onanists who have taken time out from their perverted vigil gazing at the well-oiled Venus of Willendorf, model plane enthusiasts, solar power advocates. These people are laughing at Christ’s wounds and filling up on Chicken Chow Mein; they live in Roman present of fish eggs and soft serve ice cream, pepper beef and chicken wings, oysters and snow crab legs (limit two). These insouciant orgiasts, these Pelagian heretics, these evolutionists, I weep for them because they do not know the good promise that begins today. I am here because it is all I can afford.

V.

But they did not understand, nobody understands, I’m forgiven, I’m saved. You will never know how he helped me. You will never know what he whispered in my ear. You will never know how he carried me. You will never know how he held my hand. He set me all above you. You all think you’re so great. But you have no idea what it is to be saved, to be really saved. To be saved you have to have feelings, real feelings. And you have to know you’re a sinner, know it from your soiled jeans and your ratty-ass shoes and the things you’ve done and denied. You have to know you’re a sinner. And you have to ask to be saved. And you have to be willing to wait in the desert and go without water and you have to cry and scream and curse heaven and still want to be saved. None of you are shit. You all can suck my cock. I see you and I see pride. How do I know? Look at the world, man, it’s yours. You did this. You did this to me and to everyone like me. You’re happy to do it to me. When you can’t get enough of fucking doing it to me you get on a fucking plane and go on over there and do it to some other people. Because: you like the way it feels. Because: it makes money. Because: it makes your children smile. I know all this. And I forgive you. I forgive you. I forgive you. But you all can suck my cock, seriously.

not you, dear reader

TURN #93: WEEK 79; WORDS: 89,062
NEXT BY 27 DECEMBER 2006

Password: Zanzibar

2006-12-12T21:10:00.000-05:00

It was a wet March night I was walking to the meeting of the Society of People Who Secretly Like Billy Joel. It was hard keeping your shoes dry, because in the part of town where the meeting was, the gutters were never clean and so inches of dirty water would breach the banks of the curb. It was also a long walk because no member is allowed to go directly to the secret location for that meeting; it’s safer for everyone this way.

I actually had not realized that my shoes were soaked until they began to emit that sad squeaking sound. And then I felt it all once. Billy Joel, I thought, could write a song about this. I was tempted on this lonely night to sing or hum one of Billy Joel’s songs, to cheer myself, or express my loneliness better, a loneliness I had only found expressed in Billy Joel. This too, of course, was out of the question, expressly forbidden. Being a member of the society of people who secretly like Billy Joel is a heavy burden, but for some of us, it is the only alternative.

What is wrong with liking Billy Joel? Someone who has joined the Society of People Who Secretly Like Billy Joel has asked himself this question, many, many times. And he has asked it in silence. He has heard his favorite songs play on the radio and pretended not to be interested or know the words. He has hidden the ecstasy crowding over his heart. He has gone to record stores and flipped passed every album he would loved to possess, but quickly, feigning interest in Billy Idol or Billy Squire. He has never bought the album. He has bought other albums with one or perhaps two Billy Joel songs on them, but these he has wrapped as gifts. If he dares, he has almost hummed in the noise of crowds and on the bus, or perhaps into his pillow before sleeping. But inaudibly.

The meetings aren’t much. We meet at the appointed time, in the appointed place. Our entrance is staggered so as not to attract attention. So we are never seen together, or meet each other outside the meetings. This is one of the rules. No one speaks. There is always a lot of coughing and throat clearing. Some of us are getting on in years; I would say that none of us are really happy. Are we happy at the meetings? No. We hide the ecstasy crawling over our hearts, and no one who must hide their joy is truly happy. In fact, they are quite miserable. We hide it from each other, we hide it from ourselves. We are afraid to look each other in the eye. We are those who come and wait, come and wait to be happy, who lack the will to express our joy or change but still hope that something will happen. We are those that wait for joy. Even a coward can want to be happy. It might seem counterintuitive to an outsider, why people who secretly like Billy Joel and who have met for the explicit purpose of enjoying his music in secret would feel a need to restrain or curb their outward enjoyment of his gifts during the secret and secure meetings. There’s a lot an outsider cannot understand. But it is not absurd. Shy people can still feel painfully shy around other shy people, even at a meeting to confront their shyness, fat people, their fatness.

If anyone knew about out secret society, they might think that it was a waste of time. They would say to us: get over it. This is why our meetings are in secret. Those who have loved, loved completely, that is, without hope. Those who have ever had anything but the most banal ambitions for themselves and for that reason, could not bear to go forward. Those who where ever dazzled by some far off country of their dreams which for that reason they could not visit. Those who have felt the presence of God. They understand.

So we huddle together: our circle is small and pathetic, on broken plastic chairs in an abandoned space with mildewy rags stapled over the windows. But, in all its poverty and wretchedness, this is our church, our City of God, our Society. This is all we have.

What did we think of Billy Joel’s public listeners? His fans even? Did we secretly envy and admire them? No, we despised these people. We imagined them sitting back with their girlfriends -or wives even, on a summer night, after a few beers, listening to “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” or even with their children on their knee, explaining, “The Stranger”.

It is hoped that someday there would be a female member of the Society of Private Individuals Who Secretly Like Billy Joel. In actuality I suspect that each of this had this reason for joining.

She might be a librarian, a volunteer, a widow. Someone intelligent and whose experience and whose lack of experience matched our own. Like a sister or a mother. Wouldn’t this make us complete? In my mind I imagined her shy but steady company giving me courage. I imagined us united in our quiet enjoyment, our secret passion. How her lips would one day innocently and involuntarily mouth the lyrics and I would see it, I would hear it escaping her. We would tremble together. I would save her some lukewarm coffee to warm her thin shoulders afterwards. We might walk a little of the way, not together, at first, but not out of sight.

And how bold and how brave I might be for such a person, for a gentle soul who could know this thing about me, who heard the same music. For her, I could be so strong, so fearless, I felt. I could even imagine being one of those open-shirted listeners, having a beer on a fine afternoon, listening to our favorite album, not caring about the neighbors, even, the sound falling down on them from the apartment balcony, like our love, my hands publicly touching her modest behind in a friendly, familiar way.

I knew these fantasies and feelings were wrong and I despised myself for having them. And yet there was no one I could confess them to, even though I knew, intellectually, that the other members of the Society must have these same fantasies.

As for the rest of the Society, they were a sad lot, pitiful if not actually despicable, though perhaps that is not fair, since we have never seen each other in generous or flattering lighting. The clothes we wear are protean and nondescript and we sedulously avoid eye contact. Some of us might be handsome, even, but it is impossible to know, for everyone more or less looks the same: wary, suspicious, afraid. It does something to the face. If we know each other, it is by our foibles, a cough or an unpleasant smell. During the music, we close our eyes. This is not a written rule, but it is the foundation of our Society. Lest we see in each other the mirror of our ecstasy.

Once my neighbor exclaimed:“It’s literature, it’s like Dos Passos!” I always hated him a little. I had figured him for a pendant, an academic, as though knowledge or scholarship could shield him from his shameful joy. Each of us is ashamed of the part of himself that likes Billy Joel, but I hate all the more our weak rationalizations. I suppose we love that part of ourselves, too, we must treasure it as its greatest secret. But there is no place in our lives for this secret so we have only this dank room, this no place, with the windows blacked out and the volume turned so low.

He was not at the next meeting. Members who exhibit unacceptable behavior are rapidly banned. They are simply not told where the next meeting is; rather, they are told, but misinformed. It is not clear who makes the decision, or when, though I always imagine the decision is made collectively, justly. Swiftly and speechlessly. There are no warnings. This happens often. The Society is quick to protect itself, to excise, to avoid.

This might not seem like much of a loss to an outsider, but consider that he probably doesn’t even have his own copies of Billy Joel’s music, that he has never written down the words to his songs and if he has looked them up, he has carefully cleared the memory of his computer. Consider that this is all he has: the one day that he is not alone. That he might feel, even momentarily, that he was part of something and approach, with timid respectful steps, something truly beautiful, if only to praise it mutely in a dumbshow of invisible joy.

If I could fall in love, if I could find a single friend, if I could trust someone. Did not each of us wait for such a moment, every night, when we came to such meetings, a moment where there would be an opening, where someone would say, or do something.

I sometimes have these thoughts when I’m waiting.

And I am waiting. It should be my turn to go in soon. I have seen no one, but that is as it should be. It is a place we have used before, which is something we try to avoid. It’s an awful place, but they are all awful places. This one in particular has nasty loose wiring and smells like concrete dust, stale cigarettes and standing water. I make my break for the entrance. The knob does not turn. It is slippery with rain so I try to dry it. It is locked.

There is no sense in knocking. I can feel what is behind the door.

And that every night from now on was going to be like this, and every street.

I could go somewhere, to a bar, somewhere with a piano, perhaps. They would not know me, but they see instantly that I was not such a bad sort, just a regular guy, coming in from the rain, soaked to the bone. I would jocularly curse the weather and the rain would hang off my chagrin. They would see my laugh lines. Someone would agree. I would order a beer. I would warm up and they’d ask about the weather again and we’d laugh and it wouldn’t be a thing. We’d just talk, as people after work, enjoying a beer, getting out of the rain. I’d buy someone a drink. They would buy me a drink. A stupid song would come on the jukebox, one that everyone hated. Or the piano player -the piano man, would ask for requests. “Hey,” I’d say,”how ‘bout some Billy Joel?” We would sing. We would all sing together. We would know the words.

I am going home. I am walking home. I am just going home.

TURN #92: WEEK 78; WORDS: 88,178
NEXT BY 20 DECEMBER 2006

A Young Person's Guide to Misanthropic Pessimism

2006-12-04T19:33:00.002-05:00

If you’re a young person just getting started in life, why not consider a career in the never burgeoning nor expanding, joy-resistant field of misanthropy, nihilism and pessimism? Misanthropes have always been with us, ever since the first misanthropes somehow escaped the range of the other human’s stones. If you’re looking for a good steady career with no hopes for advancement, nor any illusions about them, nor your fellow man and the worst case scenario seems like a party where you expect we’re all invited, then consider becoming a pessimistic misanthrope: like it really matters anyway.

What is a Pessimistic or Nihilistic Misanthrope?

A misanthrope is someone who hates, mistrust and despises the human race. A pessimistic or nihilistic misanthrope goes on to apply this salutary hate, mistrust and spite not merely to humans, but to life and perhaps existence in general. Indeed, for one’s critique to have any force at all, one really must include oneself in the class of despised things. Misanthropes are incomplete if they do not include themselves; these are more commonly known as “jerks.”

Pessimisms

In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche writes that the pessimism expressed by Greek Tragedy is a sign of the relative health of the culture; this is the sort of thing you consider when your best friend is Wagner. True nihilism or pessimism, for Nietzsche, was expressed by later formations that professed an ostensible sunny cheery optimism that belied their true sickness; if you have ever known anyone who put up motivational posters or inspirational post-it pads for themselves ("god please give me the strength to accept what i cannot change and stay away from bruce"), you can immediately see that Nietzsche was right.

Whereas Nietzsche was basically a lonely man who wanted to love life, despite having no reasonable personal grounds or experiences for doing so, the greatest pessimistic misanthrope would be to be Arnold Schopenhauer, whose systematic pessimism is to great to be examined in detail here and to who these remarks could be easily dedicated. It is enough to say here that the work of Schopenhauer can be compared to some of the cheery Lieder of Schubert’s Winterreisse without the music or encouraging words.

Misanthropy and Philanthropy

Some misanthropes' constant criticism, nagging and general unpleasantness is done with a secret hubristic idea of somehow improving humanity, much like many hectoring, belittling spouses, or child-abusing parents: all these efforts have met with roughly the same degree of success and just renown.

True philanthropes are, not at all paradoxically, often seen in the company of misanthropes -they may even be responsible for bringing them their soup or warm used clothes. This is approximately for the same reason that masochists are often seen in the company of sadists. This is, as Hegel reminds us, the sort of struggle that can only end with death, much like the time that Schopenhauer decided he was going to schedule his lecture opposite Hegel’s or the time you dated that girl who wrote notes to her dog.

The Many Advantages of Misanthropic Pessimism

Misanthropic pessimism is not a very difficult schtick: material is easy to come by. Indeed great moments of humanity (Christmas, disaster relief, free cable) only throw misanthropy into sharp relief, into a fervent and peculiar kind of ecstasy, while humanity’s many low points (wars, genocide, basic cable) are only mildly palliative and at most provide for a bitter self-satisfied chuckle that at most demoralizes normal people and moves the phlegm around.

For human life is inevitably full of disappointment: misanthropy allows you to make the most of them; indeed, every failure and setback becomes a triumph of one’s world view. Indeed, once you have truly mastered misanthropy, you will never lose an argument because no one will talk to you. At this point, you now never need worry about becoming bitter or cynical.

As a perspective on humanity, a pessimistic and misanthropic view has the virtue of being trivially and incontrovertibly true: it is unlikely that the human species will always exist. As Keynes observed, in the long run we will all be dead, but you will be among that smug minority to have the foresight and mindset to enjoy this fact. Indeed some physicists speak of a weak misanthropic principle to explain why some features of the universe are the way they are: to bust their balls.

Whereas the life of the species is almost certainly finite, the individual lifetime of the misanthrope is often extended: many misanthropes are comparatively long lived (Schopenhauer, Jonathan Swift, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Samuel Beckett). The reason for the extended lifetime of the misanthrope is obvious: loving people and having hope takes enormous effort, as they are subject to disappointment and death. The misanthrope is able to conserve their energy and so goes on to a long life of sucking on its gums and and yelling at kids to get off its lawn. There are notable cases of superannuated misanthropes of superior advanced age, demonstrating that hatred of life is not at all incompatible with craven fear of death.

How to Get Started

As a young person you may well wonder “how can I get started on this miserable path of schadenfreude and general hatred of my fellow man when I am still so young and full of such optimism and hope?” It is this very optimism and hope, as Plato observes in the Phaedo that is the starting point for all misanthropy: set your expectations for people, for yourself and life in general impossibly high. Be open and trusting and think the best of people. All you must do now is not fail to note when friendship turns to betrayal, anticipation to disappointment and hopes into failure. Be sure never to get over things, but instead let these small emotional wounds fester inside you, remembering how unfair and unjustly you have been treated, nursing fantasies of revenge until a general sepsis overtakes your character. Also, listen to a lot of Metal.

Finally, whereas loving humanity despite all its faults and injuries requires bravery, patience, faith, empathy, imagination, intelligence and kindness -all perhaps above the ordinary, misanthropy requires nothing of the sort. It asks less than the average. It asks only that we never forgive, that we hold our grudges to our hearts dearly and that we reserve what little love we have for ourselves in the form of self-pity. Like gluttony and sloth, it asks only that we give into ourselves gracelessly and surrender to our basest instincts. As such, it is enlightened.

TURN #91: WEEK 77; WORDS: 86,327
NEXT BY 13 DECEMBER 2006

A Short and Seemingly Unfinished Guide to Public Speaking

2006-11-28T20:07:00.000-05:00

Many people experience a fear of public speaking -and why not? We’ve all seen movies where someone is about to make a momentous announcement only to get blown away by some hidden assassin with a high power scope or have their head psychically exploded by some other scanner in the audience. By the logic of our times (which is terror, not logic) your Key Club meeting or key party could be next.

As a man who is frequently called upon, if not actively prevented from, acts of impromptu public speaking, I have prepared another brief, yet helpful guide.

Openings

Bear in mind that there are only three classic openings, which have remained more or less consistent from the times of classical oratory. A fourth, “Who is Our Greatest Nero: the Poet, the Actor, or the Living God Who We Love?” fell out of vogue before the age of the Schoolmen. The classic remaining openings are:

A. Some old guy you used to talk to

B. First time you had to do a medical procedure you didn’t know how to do

C. The time Grandma found you masturbating

Each of these openings is totally invincible, much as certain kung-fu attacks or pick-up lines -but equally requiring the handling of a master, so I will describe each in some detail.

A. Some old guy you used to talk to

This is a classic opening into some warm homily or home-cooked folderol that will please every flabby weak-minded Payless shoe wearing sentimentalist in the audience: in other words, most people. You begin by simply relating how, as a younger person, you used to listen to this old guy:

Old Tim had been a ridin’ the rails for ages, probably with that same tin cup of his. The songs had not changed, but perhaps the meaning of the words or the notes that he bent in his careful hands. Old Tim didn’t think of me as a kid. He told me things other adults were afraid to tell me. Things that helped me be a man. But this isn’t about that. Nor the string of unsolved crimes throughout the region at the time.

Never mind if you never really knew a kindly old Hobo named Tim who rode the rails and explained Penthouse Forum to you with dead rabbit and a can of beans: this stuff writes itself. Why I can see Old Tim’s sweater vest before me now, all torn and dappled with little dry shakes of tobacco like a tree in fall, with the heavy clink of the necklace he always wore that he always promised to show me, which sometimes weakly profiled through said vest looking somewhat like a mutilated police badge.

This opening always works. Why? Because in actuality, our whole society is built around the premise never having to listen to an old person unless they own GE. Yet, it is an experience that people fantasize about all the time. Also, like your itinerant hobo, this opening need not go anywhere. Old Tim’s lessons can be so profound and vague as to tie up with any possible presentation; whether you’re explaining way the immanent necessity of drilling a wildlife refuge, or how your client with his underage sex addiction is the true victim here, Old Tim can just come in at the end with some hard earned lesson of life, returning like Obi Wan at the end of Star Wars or like some faceless killer with protean features that seems to only strike when the Southern Pacific line is running. Your listeners won’t care. Like Old Tim they’ll just be glad for the ride.

B. First time you had to do a medical procedure you didn’t know how to do

Public speaking is a lot like television (see “folderol” above); so we can take a cue from television to see what it is that our audience wants to hear about. What are the popular shows today? I’ll give you a hint: they all have to do with the human body in some way. But not just any human body. No, the human body when there is something really, really wrong with it. The appeal of this is so natural as to almost defy explanation. Briefly: bodies: everyone has one, everyone likes looking at a car wreck.

So, what can enthrall your audience more than your account of how you had to perform a complex medical procedure - a complex medical procedure that you didn’t know how to do. Again, as with Old Tim, do not be distressed if you haven’t actually been in this life threatening situation. Audiences at public speaking events actively engage in what is called suspension of disbelief. Without this valuable convention, the entire past five years of American History becomes totally unintelligible.

This is also where the you didn’t know how to do part comes in. You can be vague. Oh sure, be real specific of how and where this event occurred (food court, mother’s wedding) and how (spear gun fight, spicy food) -though, as always, be sure not to include details that are easily falsifiable or conspicuous (the president, the moon). However, once these details are established (“it was my Aunt Hildy, not my Great Aunt Hildy, mind you, that had gotten the shaft of the spear”) you can afford to be vague. After all, you’re not a doctor (if you are a doctor this opening makes no sense for you).

Themes

There is no greater theme than “if.” “If I had two heads” -What if they fought? what if one ate the other? Which one would I be -always end with -”But I don’t have two heads”

“What if I were invisible.”

Examples

1. Don’t be afraid to try something new, or pretend you are someone else

2. Timeshare means leveraging your time

3. Overcoming adversity through ignorance

4. What we do not swallow or digest does not make us fatter

5. Best naked James Bond

6. Revenge is a dish best served cold

Closing

1. Lookout, I’m gonna blow!

2. You can take your fingers out of your partners mouth now

3. I’ll see you -in the bathroom!

TURN #90: WEEK 76; WORDS: 85,275
NEXT BY 6 DECEMBER 2006

Thanksgiving Special: What to Tattoo on Your Pet

2006-11-20T18:04:00.000-05:00

Preface

We here at the Encouraging Voice of the Labyrinth never stop working to provide you with the very best in literary entertainment: to wit, I thought of the following piece while I was asleep in bed (I would cite the well-known fact that I do some of my finest work in bed). This dream, I assure you, is the actual cause of this column, and not some cheap literary device to lend credence to an otherwise unlikely and unpalatable conceit. As proof of this would add further that you were there, and you, and you, and you.

What to Tattoo on Your Pet

Have you ever wanted to tattoo your pet? I haven’t, at least not while I was conscious. Yet here we are, with that very same question that goes unanswered because no one is asking. Why tattoo your pet? I don’t know, because I’m asleep. I don’t sleep well, I have lots of problems. Let’s move on.

Dogs

Treasure Map
On the face of it, this seems like the most likely sort of thing you are going to tattoo on a dog, once you have made the piratical and rum-fueled decision to tattoo a dog in the first place: dogs are a loyal and innocuous place to store a secret map. Consider, however, that your map will only be secure for about 12 years, after which you will have to have him stuffed and he will no longer be loyal or innocuous.

More importantly, consider how impractical the surface of a shaved dog is for any kind of map projection, unless that map is of the surface of the same or similarly shaped dog. If it is the latter, then it becomes highly questionable as to what sort of “treasure” whose position you are notating, and if it the former, and you are making a map of the surface of your shaved dog on the shaved dog itself, then the field becomes even more radically open as to the question of what the hell it is that you are doing.

Butcher’s Cuts
Here is a gay and inappropriate idea for permanently decorating your dog: why not make like you were going to eat him? Even after its fur grows back (presuming you did not eat him right away -but if you did, why did you bother with the tattoos?) you can romp and play and hug your fuzzy companion knowing that under his fur, he is already designated and gerrymandered up into delicious chops.

In a similar fashion, I often give the most innocent and platonic of hugs and think to myself: We’re naked under these clothes. Totally naked and hugging one another. Our nipples would brush, if not for this flimsy material. Sometimes I think this and whisper it aloud. That is usually the end of the innocent and platonic hugs for that person.

Likewise, if I actually am naked with someone else, I like to put my head on their stomach and think: you’re full of guts, squishy, squishy guts and they’re all talking to each other. It’s like a magical kingdom of soft gooey friends!

If you actually eat you pet, email me and let me know how that goes. Please do not include any attachments.

Your Name
An interesting idea, approaching sense, and yet clearly not qualifying.

Dog’s Name
This is an almost sensible suggestion, were there anything acceptable about the premise of tattooing a dog in the first place and if it didn’t beg the whole “naming picture of language” to begin with.

Your Friend’s Name
Friends and friendship are truly some of the great boons in life, and yet their celebration seems strangely and wholly out of place here. If your friend is your dog, see above. If your friend is not your dog, but they share the same name, read “Your Friend’s Name” (ibid).

Jail Tattoos
This immediately begs the question: what is your dog in jail for? Though one may immediately think of the pound as some sort of canine penal incarceration, the dog pound and jail share important distinctions: even in the worst and most unfair jail the inmates are detained for a specific crime, which they are entitled to know, as is the public, which is further entitled to know the name of those detained; the inmate also still has certain inalienable human rights. Finally, inmates in a jail are kept in minimally tolerable cells; dogs are kept in kennels. How then, do we tell the difference between dogs in a pound and detainees at Guantánamo? Simple: detainees are allowed to wear orange jumpsuits some of the time.

Cats
It is unwise to attempt to tattoo a cat. It is marginally unwise to even try and give them a bath. It is best just to let your cat do what it wants. If they were slightly smarter, you could just give them fifty dollars now and again and be done with it.

Snakes
First of all, is it possible to tattoo a snake? We might ask if it is desirable, but somehow it has come to this anyway. The answer is, I don’t know, and I’m asleep, so I can’t look it up in Wikipedia. Sure, I could look it up in my dream Wikipedia, but suffice it to say when you start basing your decisions on the Wikipedia you consult in your dreams you are living in a fool’s paradise of user generated content.

My advice to you is pass on the obvious: avoid racing stripes and other designs that will blend in with the snake's original design. Tattooing a poisonous snake to look like a non-poisonous is all very sophomoric and degrading to the poisonous snake, who has evolved over millions of years to look cool and threatening. Tattooing non-poisonous snake to look like a poisonous snake is just pathetic and the nail in the coffin for the pitiable cry for attention that having a snake was in the first place.

Given their overall body type and your passion for freaking people out, snakes are suited to long sentences, such as quotations from the Bible, or Leaves of Grass. If the latter, be sure to dress up as Walt Whitman and go downtown to the park; speak in a kindly grandfatherly voice, like the Civil War’s Santa Claus; your eyes are luminous, loving and sad. Ask the gathered kids and old people if they’d like to hear parts of your famous poem Leaves of Grass. When they say yes, let the snake slither out of your bosom and start reading it. This will be the best Thanksgiving ever.

Fish
Some of the same questions that apply to snakes apply to fish, only you’re more of lunatic because they live underwater. Considering the inherent difficulty and perversity of tattooing a live fish, it is probably something the Japanese do all the time quite proficiently*.

One immediate pedagogical application that comes to mind is to tattoo the names of the kind of fish you have on the fish itself, realizing the dream of many a distracted ichthyologist at an aquarium. You will also realize the dream of living in a children’s book. However, this is an amazingly stupid thing to do if all you have are goldfish. Once you have tattooed the names of your fish onto your fish (heaven help you), when you finally have someone over and you see them admiring your fish, you can lean over and say: “Pretty fish, isn’t it? Do you know what it’s called?”

You could also tattoo random parts of speech onto your fish in the hopes they will occasionally parse into intelligible random sentences. This is especially helpful if you have to write something random every week.

Birds
What? Are you an idiot?

P.S. Close.

next in this series of dream columns: How to Study for the Naked SATs

TURN #89: WEEK 75; WORDS: 84,261
NEXT BY 29 NOVEMBER 2006

Unfinished Notes Towards Laziness

2006-11-14T18:29:00.001-05:00

Casual Remarks on the Practice and Philosophy of Real Leisure by a Gentleman of Leisure and Self-Discovery

for Pam Marwede

INDOLENCE IS NOT FOR EVERYONE, and this is not a matter of means, but ends. One can be entirely profligate in pauperage, or parsimonious in prosperity; one has to have an aptitude and a talent for it. Our time on earth is limited and so to spend it lavishly and wastefully doing nothing takes a magnanimity of spirit that only the greatest in sloth can truly achieve.

Indolence, like obesity and alcoholism, is really a form of athleticism that requires a conscious commitment and conditioning. Humans have a natural tendency to “wake up” in the morning after a full night’s rest when the sunlight strikes them. It requires an act of will and inspiration to pull the covers over one’s head.

First of all, what is “sleeping in”? Busy, active people have through their nefarious activities have abused this term beyond all meaning. They will be heard to make such paradoxical and erroneous remarks such as “Oh, I slept in until seven o’clock this morning, and then really napped through my morning jog.” Let me speak with absolute authority: it is not possible to “sleep in” until seven or even seven thirty in the morning in the same sense that it is impossible to be spoiled rotten eating carrots (rabbits excepted). “Sleeping in” is a well defined term, clearly delineated as remaining in bed until they stop making Egg Mc Muffins. If your feet touch the floor before breakfast is no longer served, except at places where they never stop serving it, you have not slept in. The truly immortal lazybones of this world don’t even know that this meal exists and know of the sun as only an inhabitant of the western hemisphere of the sky.

Ontotheological Justification: Fiat Luxury

The entire act of creation (light, sky, water, land, trees, animals, naked people) was an act of superfluous luxury, since God, being infinite in all things, and lacking nothing certainly didn’t need to do to it. It was also an act of indolence, since having infinite time and power it really can’t be said to have put him out any. But God, being God, goes one step further and actually creates a day of rest even though he hasn’t really done anything. God does not need to rest because he has infinite power; his deciding to rest, despite not really needing it is a greater act of omnipotence (in Scholastic terms, it has more perfection) than creating the universe in the first place.

When we decide to sleep in, when we take time off (especially if we are not doing anything) we are most like God and closest to him. God created the universe, not out of necessity, but love -but created rest out of pure luxury and a sense of style.

As for the kind of love, since (following Spinoza) God is all things, it was really a matter of self-love, of narcissism, which is, after all, the origin of all style.

Techniques:

Remembering one’s dreams

Trying to finish or change the ending to one’s dreams

Onanism
This is self-explanatory. This, along with one’s dreams and revenge, are the great graces that make human life and experience at all tolerable and remotely satisfying.

Reflecting that, whatever the day may hold, homeostatically speaking, it cannot get better or less stressful than this. It can only get more stressful and more of a hassle, starting with the toothbrush, proceeding through the coffee maker, becoming entirely a lost cause with the sound of the first human voice you hear. If you have to do anything with your hair, you are pretty much doomed.

Reading the news: if this does not compel one to immediately abandon the whole project of waking life, you are either insensible or illiterate.

Radio is generally contrary to the purpose in view and most morning programming may convince one to do away with oneself entirely and flee to that other shore where silence has its lease, but the “morning zoo crew” does not.

It is a good idea to have a comfortable and familiar cast of stuffed animals. They will keep you company, since you have no occupation and only the most worthless friends. They will accompany and watch over you on your quest for sloth like the animals of the saints.

Pillows and sheets should be like oneself, not too fresh, but comfortable and (like oneself), ideally quite limp, shapeless and strewn about. Truly lethargic people create nests, which are ideal sandbagged like berms against the rising tides of daytime.

Staying in bed, after all, is a siege: the phone may ring. Birds make sounds. Neighbors and society in general begins a diabolical din of activity and purposive action.

For beginners, earplugs and eye shades may help. The intermediate do not require them and the great masters never take them out or off.

Prerequisites:

Unemployment/Employment
For some, occupation may be the surest guarantee of inertia and inactivity, superior indeed, even to major disability, narcolepsy, or even an actual coma. Bordeom, droning mother of sleep, is most easily summoned when our attention is required, but not at all engaged. For a true career in indolence, you must pursue and indolent career where you do nothing, nothing is expected of you and somehow you are paid all the same. There is only one caveat: this is nearly everyone's goal.

Only Worthless Company
It is very important that you have only the most worthless of friends that only function after dark, become only tolerable after a few hours at bar and only really get going once the bars are closed when no firm plan emerges. Good, healthy bosom friends invariably have children or obligations and want to do things in the day time like go to the park or help people. Their altruism and involvement will invariably lay ruin to any systematic course of naps and lollygagging that you may have outlined for yourself.

Books
Books are the ultimate placeholders. Think of them as convenient bricks for motaring up the windows of one’s life so no sound or sunlight gets in. Books and reading are the great soil in which the healthy weed of sloth can grow. It is very important you never finish one. While this would not be an actual accomplishment, it comes embarrassingly close to coming off as one.

Notice we have spoken of books and not periodicals. Though periodicals are substantially less substantial than books, and, indeed, barely qualify as reading, they are for that reason poor absorbers of the surfeit of time that you aim to organize your life around. The comparison to sandbags is quite apt: you will require many, many periodicals to equal the time-retarding, stultifying volume of one book. Though this has worked well for many shut-ins and soap opera devotees, there is always the problem of someone bringing you the magazine and the hazards posed by a large pile of slick, glossy superannuated issues Cosmo or anedated People sliding like an ice shelf and crushing you. If you have followed the path of sloth with any diligence, you will be in no condition to dig yourself out. Consider then, the unenviable fate of spending your last moments on earth waiting for tardy death and reading about Matthew Perry.

Self-Love, not Self-Knowledge
We know what we love by the fact that it is never satisfied: this is why we never turn to our loved one and say:"My love for you is entirely adequate." Likewise, the things we discover about ourselves in our lifetime of leisure and self discovery are at best trivial things, such as: I look good in hats.

This is whole point of being a gentleman of leisure and self-discovery, that you do not actually succeed in discovering anything substantive, which, if you actually did, would no doubt be disturbing. It might actually upset you or otherwise provoke you to “stop wasting your life” or “get one’s act together” or other such distractions. Self-discovery is, after all, just the flirty aspect of one’s narcissism, and should be really matter of intrigue and not interrogation, as, like all love affairs, it is largely a matter of illusions. Ideally, even one’s self love should not be sincere.

TURN #88: WEEK 74; WORDS: 82,948
NEXT BY 21 NOVEMBER 2006

INSTANT RUNOFF VOTING EXPLAINED

2006-11-07T21:23:00.000-05:00

1. Instant-runoff voting (IRV) (also known as the Alternative Vote (AV) and by several other names) is an electoral system used for single winner elections in which voters rank candidates in order of preference.

Ineffective

-Hello, would you like to help us out today?

-People, people a moment of your time...

-Can I interest you in voter reform?

-We have a petition here...

-Thanks for coming out today, we’re trying to get something on the ballot...

-Mom, mom!

Effective

-Hey, do you want to sign something?

2. In an IRV election, if no candidate receives an overall majority of first preferences the candidates with fewest votes are eliminated one by one, and their votes transferred according to their second and third preferences (and so on), until one candidate achieves a majority.

-Dinosaurs, bring back the dinosaurs.

-What are you talking about?

-Dinosaurs, we have a petition to put an initiative to bring back the dinosaurs on the ballot.

-I don’t understand

-Bring the dinosaurs back to life, you know, like in Jurassic Park.

-Can we do that?

-Well, we need signatures

-No, I mean do we know how to do that, like cloning and stuff?

-This isn’t about cloning. It’s about dinosaurs. You know, tyrannosaurus, brontosaurus, mechasaurus...

-Why?

-The question is not why, but when -and the answer is, a long, long time ago. And that’s the wrong answer. The right answer is today, yesterday and tomorrow. Possibly forever. We want to bring them back.

-Yeah, but you’re going to like, clone them, right?

-This isn’t about cloning. I said that already.

-Well, where are we going to get the dinosaurs?

-I’m glad you asked that question. There are no easy answers when it comes to bringing back the dinosaurs. But that does not mean we should be afraid to vote our consciences and bring back the dinosaurs.

-That doesn’t answer my question.

-Well, they could be living on an island somewhere. Or a lake. Some say that Loch Ness....

-Yes, but in what sense would we be bringing them back?

-Well, yes, but I’m getting to that, see because this is not really about clones, islands or time machines -no wait, -it is about time machines...

-What?

-We’re bringing the dinosaurs back, right? From where? Answer: the past. Not clones, or fake dinosaurs, but real historical dinosaurs from actual history...

-So, like, with a time machine?

-So, right, so this is also a time machine initiative, but that’s really complicated. So we focus on dinosaurs which everyone likes and can relate to.

-Everyone?

-Well, I thought the movie was cool. I mean, it was the biggest grossing movie of all time and I think the book did pretty good...

-What, The Time Machine?

-No, Jurassic Park. I mean, that’s like a mandate if there ever was one.

-That was a movie.

-Well, first it was a book.

-A book of fiction.

-Right, so if people are lining up around the corner to see dinosaurs that aren’t even real -or are like fake clones or something, how do you think they’ll react to actual historical dinosaurs that are part of our nation’s history?

-So real American dinosaurs?

-Yes, exactly. I’ve tried to communicate this in this poster, which I drew to the best of my ability and this hat I am wearing with the dinosaur on it and my shirt with the American flag.

-Oh, right.

-I also have a hat with an American flag and a shirt with a dinosaur, but I felt that this being election day ...We want to emphasize that these are American dinosaurs and so, like, we have both dinosaurs and time travel, so they can, like, travel through American history.

-The dinosaurs?

-Right, right, I mean there’s a lot in this bill, for everybody, big business, little business, working families, firemen, dinosaurs, dinosaur hunters, cavemen...

-Cavemen?

-Well, as we all know, dinosaurs and cavemen never met.

-Right.

-But wouldn’t it be cool if they did? Or, like, Moses, or any other significant American figure.

-Wait, so the dinosaurs stop off at different places in time?

-I don’t see why not. I mean it’s a long way... I mean imagine if like, the South won the Civil War -with dinosaurs. Like an army of dinosaurs tearing into the White House and, like, biting Lincoln in half.

-That would be horrible.

-Or like World War II -with dinosaurs. Nazisaurs. Commiesaurs. Bit-In-Half-Lincoln Brigade-a-saurs.

-So dinosaurs would be everywhere.

-Basically. American History becomes Dino-land U.S.A. History and a hell of a lot more interesting. And they’ve always been there. So like a lot of people worry, like, “What if the dinosaurs get out?” and we’re like saying, if our initiative is successful, you won’t even ask that question.

-Are they many of you?

-There could be. There could be millions: time machine, you follow me?

-Are you threatening me?

-I’m saying, there are going to be a lot of signatures and dinosaurs and you’re either for or against us. You sign this now, we never have this conversation and maybe you’re like a rich dinosaur rancher or a famous dino-hunter with a cool scar and a sexy savage cave-girl girlfriend. Or maybe you don’t sign...

-And?

-Well, let’s face it, if we bring back the dinosaurs and the Confederacy and Hitler a lot of people are going to die. I don’t have any illusions about that. Neither should you.

-Can I think about it?

-You don’t have a lot of time to decide, in a sense, I mean that’s the thing about time travel. One minute you’re here talking to me, next thing you’re naked in a Colosseum running away from a triceratops. It’s not a pretty picture and there’s nothing I can do about it.

-Can I take this thing home and read about it?

-You’re not gonna sign it.

3. The term 'instant-runoff voting' is used because this process resembles a series of run-off elections.

-Thanks for taking the time to sign and fill out this petition.

-It's a good cause.

-Great, so we have your phone number -so if there’s any problem with your form, I could like call you.

-Is there a problem with the petition I signed?

-Oh, no, no. I’m just saying if there was, we could like, meet, like over coffee or something, and like talk about it.

-Talk about...

-You know, the form, instant runoff voting, you... movies, you like movies?

-I guess...

-Do you live far from here? My feet are killing me...

-I’m going to work, actually

-Or a shower, I mean I’ve been standing the rain with this petition and I could really use hot shower...

-Actually, I’m going to the gym first...

-You see, I knew that, I knew you worked out. I mean you look great. I’ve so been really wanting to go lately. But I've been so busy. With things I've been doing.

-Well can you do that? I mean don’t they need you?

-Oh hell no, I mean like it’s a totally lost cause, I mean I’ve got this thing for losers, you know?

-Well, okay. I’m over here...

-Yeah great, let me just find a place to throw these away...

TURN #87: WEEK 73; WORDS: 81,558
NEXT BY 15 NOVEMBER 2006

Your New Gravedigger: A Checklist

2006-10-31T18:54:00.000-05:00

Drinks (check all that apply)
[ ] Schnapps, Whiskey or other easily sippable and concealable
heartwarming cordial
[ ] Before working
[ ] While working
[ ] Constantly

Smokes
[ ] Top
[ ] Bugle
[ ] Kite
[ ] Things found on ground

Humming (at least two)
[ ] Tuneless
[ ] Vague
[ ] Eerie
[ ] No Top 40
[ ] Droning in and out
[ ] About time, women, or luck, but something that is lost

Hands (check all that apply)
[ ] Gnarled
[ ] Knobby
[ ] Gnarly
[ ] Calloused
[ ] Scratched
[ ] Chapped
[ ] Chaffed
[ ] Dirty
[ ] Bleeding
[ ] Holding Shovel

Ass
[ ] Cold
[ ] Frozen
[ ] Gelid
[ ] Blue
[ ] Surprisingly attractive

Humor
[ ] "morbid" sense of humor
[ ] "morbid" sense of "humor"
[ ] "morbid" "sense of" "humor"
[ ] De'th's no laughin' matter, laddie

Chatter
[ ] Pithy
[ ] Bitchy
[ ] Weather Related
[ ] Scriptual
[ ] Moody Blues Lyrics
[ ] Portentous
[ ] Omenous
[ ] Foreboding
[ ] Talks to dog, owl or shovel
[ ] Salty
[ ] Vengeful
[ ] Hard to follow

Calls dog
[ ] Rufus
[ ] Ol' Spooner
[ ] Beelzebub
[ ] Mother

Character (one or more)
[ ] Bad
[ ] Queere
[ ] Stotic
[ ] Indifferent
[ ] Dry
[ ] Shot
[ ] Morbid
[ ] Moribund
[ ] Clownish
[ ] Diabolical
[ ] All Nerves
[ ] No Nerves
[ ] Salt of the Earth
[ ] Hope to Return to School
[ ] Hope to Avoid Jail
[ ] Sleeping

Wakes Up
[ ] muttering
[ ] screaming
[ ] swinging
[ ] drinking

Taste in Pornography (one or more)
[ ] Empty Juggs Magazine
[ ] Apparently Legal
[ ] More Woman Than Women
[ ] Civil War Historian
[ ] Doll Collector Monthly

Stew
[ ] Irish
[ ] Own juices
[ ] In same thermos as bourbon

Experiences:

Education Level

Schooled by

[ ] Ma
[ ] Pa
[ ] Brother/Sister, later identied as actual parent
[ ] The Streets
[ ] The Road
[ ] The Evil That Men Do

Degree Attained

[ ] Some reform school, released
[ ] Some reform school, burned down
[ ] Merchant Marine, jumped ship
[ ] Some college, neglected to write thesis

War
[ ] Foriegn
[ ] Civil
[ ] Own Personal

Shot a Man in Reno
[ ] To watch him die
[ ] So wife or sweetheart of man could watch man die
[ ] Because needed shooting
[ ] Accidentally
[ ] "Accidentally"
[ ] Felt bad for shooting man's wife

Has dug
[ ] Pet's grave
[ ] Some graves
[ ] Many a grave
[ ] Best friend's grave
[ ] Own grave
[ ] Your grave

Hopes
[ ] None
[ ] To dig more graves
[ ] y'don't mind the mud none
[ ] To get out of the rain

Happy Hallowe'en

TURN #86: WEEK 72; WORDS: 80,0385
NEXT BY 8 NOVEMBER 2006

Getting in Shape for Halloween II

2006-10-24T19:31:00.001-04:00

People think of the whole Goth thing as passive, which is true, but it’s not just passive: it’s passive aggressive.

That’s where the Halloween workout comes in.

To review: most exercise equipment is black anyway. Get yourself a black Nalgene, scent it with lavender and ashes.

Cinema gives us many fine examples of the appropriate workout:

Ideally you strip down in the moonlight. If there’s no moonlight, you can light some candles.

You workout alone.

Write:
THROUGH ME IS THE CITY OF PAIN
THROUGH ME IS THE ETERNAL SORROW
THROUGH ME THE WAY AMONG THE LOST

Across your workout mirror. Realize that you are the gate through which you must pass and the hinge upon which it turns. Advanced students may wish to smash the mirror.

A workout is about transformation. This is where you realize you are the Dragon. You are beautiful. You are a great becoming. You cannot be hurt by bullets.

Finally, play “Bela Lugosi is Dead”.

It is actually the perfect workout song. Forget about “Jump” or “Rock You Like A Hurricane.” This song is really long. By the end of it, it’s like you’re endlessly rowing to some distant ghostly shore where you finally arrive all pumped and covered with a cold, cold dewy sweat.

Most importantly. Listen to the Count. The Count will make you strong.

TURN #85: WEEK 71; WORDS: 79,9906
NEXT BY 1 NOVEMBER 2006

Life Among the Mannequins

2006-10-17T19:02:00.000-04:00

Unable and powerless to circumvent my miseries, daunted, discouraged and unable to face reality, I felt myself to be unworthy of human company and so took to exile. I had no skills and no achievements. Of abilities, I had only my habits, which was to stand around all day doing nothing, this and that I was in fairly good physical shape. These being my sole attributes, I resigned myself to cross over to the other side of humanity’s double, on the opposite side of the glass, to a land where everything is cool and clear, perfect and pleasing to the eye: I went to live among the mannequins.

Life among the mannequins is ever fashionable. We live in your future: sweaters stretch across our perfect bosoms while you still swelter, and our matchless bellybuttons pucker above brave swimsuits while you shiver.

We are a sensibly evolved race, only those who need heads and arms have them. But each is a perfect exemplar of what it is. None of us have eyes, but, being perfect, like numbers, we have nothing to see, nothing to admire and nothing of which to be jealous. We are gracious in accepting your gazes. We are your royalty: you dress us in your finest, you carry us, you display us to represent you.

Sexless and perfect, immune to decay and age, born fully formed, we are more like angels than men. Indeed, in the story of creation told by mannequins, God, who like us, is perfect and immortal, made us in his own image, but first, wanting to get his creation right, experimented with clay studies and figures. After many, many trials, he was at last ready and created us, the mannequins and was pleased. Then he realized he had many, many leftover clay figures. Loving all his creations, however unequal, he decided to keep them, only to discover that the unfired clay was prone to rot and lose shape over time. The mud was getting everywhere. He thought that the clay figures might last longer if they were kept somewhere moist with lots of mud to fix them with: so he placed his flawed creations near the mud hole he had scooped out. This was your Garden of Eden. Despite all the moisture and the mud, the poor things kept falling apart, so perhaps he gave you procreation. In any case, so the story goes, he gave us to you, so that you might have something to look up to and to know what to wear.

Perfect in proportion and lack of detail, we are your ideals, your greatest of impossible hopes for yourself: in what sense can it not be said that we created you?

TURN #84: WEEK 70; WORDS: 79,648
NEXT BY 25 OCTOBER 2006

A Small, Yet Stimulating Guide to Erotic Punctuation

2006-10-09T19:19:00.000-04:00

As the notorious inventor of the erotic chess story, people often ask me “what is it that makes your erotic stories so absolutely devastating, so painfully lascivious, terrifying and carnal, so hot and wet that I felt I must rip myself to shreds and committed incest with my brother in the parking lot of that car wash?” The answer is, of course, that I care. Not only that: I care. As a humble student in the world of the erotic arts it is a pleasure to relate my simple, unadorned experiences in incredibly filthy narratives that will soil your imagination forever like a masturbating bat. See what I mean? (Those that are disturbed by the idea of masturbating bats should probably stop here and perhaps jump to here: this is what I do when I can’t take anymore masturbating bats, what with all the screeching, the squeaking, the dizzying weak bobbing beam of the head lamps, the female bats tangling in your hair and the male bats ejaculating in it and the sudden stunning blow to the head that signals a collision with a stalactite).

Other than that, however, there are simple procedural things, the knowledge of which, however cursory and vague, like the location of the clitoris, improve one’s style immensely, the most neglected of which is: punctuation.

The Exclamation Point

2006-10-09T19:14:00.000-04:00

I have always been of the opinion, with Thurber, that the exclamation point should be avoided, if not actually shunned, in print, as in real life. You may find this thought alien if you are one of those people who respond to casual demure questions like “how are you?” with “Super!”, but I can tell you know that there isn’t much that we’re going to agree on and this relationship is going nowhere, except for your really hot body, which is perfect and gives glory to Allah just walking around.

I feel the same way about the exclamation point as I do about a lot of mainstream male-oriented representations of heterosexual intercourse: it places emphasis on exactly the wrong things in the wrong way. In fact a lot of mainstream male-oriented representations of heterosexual intercourse is so terrible it makes heterosexuality itself seem like a bad thing, and a bad thing that happens when you’re eighteen and in an RV surrounded by a lot of dudes in baseball caps. As representations go, imagine a world in which advertisements for hot dogs consisted entirely of 300 pound men in eating contests to the death and you have the image given by most mainstream pornography.

Not that I have seen such things.

The exclamation point is not much better. The mark itself is just a horrible phallocratic giveaway:[!]. It consists of a long, solitary shaft which has onanisticaly yielded a small, pale rapidly cooling spot of graphematical excess that belies its original passion. By itself, the exclamation is a sad and lonely thing that tries to conceal its profound hollowness with a lot of extroverted noise. It is the Tigger of punctuation marks.

Worse still, the exclamation point will sometime band together with other exclamation points in the inferior erotic narrative:

“I can’t believe it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My flippers are so dirty!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I must have gotten them dirty when I walked across that erotic cake!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Of our Founding Fathers!!!!!!!!! Evacuating!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You know what I mean!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So dirty!!!!!!!!!!!!!Won’t you please lick them!!!!!!!! Clean!!!!!!!! OHHHH YESSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NNNnhhh!!!!!!!!”

The effect of these multiple exclamation points is not so much arousal, or the communication of arousal, as it is short graphic stretches of pointy fencing that warn the reader to “stay away.”

The exclamation point, LIKE ALL CAPS, is really an entire language of bad pornography. And to imagine a language is to imagine a form of life. This form of life has a name: it is fascism.

For it is only in an imaginary perfect fascist state that all men have ROCK HARD BATTERING RAMS and all women are TOTAL SLUTS who WANT IT REALLY BAD and ALL THE TIME: “OH, YES!!!!!!! NOW!!!!!!!! PUT THE DUSTBUSTER ON MY CLIT!!!!!!!!!!!!”

In short, any conventions that appear in spam should be avoided.

The Period

2006-10-09T19:12:00.000-04:00

The period is, on the other hand, while certainly not under utilized, is under appreciated. In eroticism, as with anything else, sometimes it helps to come to a complete stop, get some more martini olives, check the news.

There is nothing more erotic than lying there, crimped like a kitten, drifting in and out, muttering various nonsense endearments when various slow distinct technical noises inform you that your lover is now doing laundry. Indeed, very cool people will now pretend that nothing has happened: “So, what are you doing this afternoon?”

Though archetypically the erotic narrative is a comedic one, of springtime, renewal and eternal return - a thing of commas and semi-colons -it is ideally well-stationed with the regular servicable period:

It did not matter. They were dead. They were all dead. Who would know the winner of the blowjob contest?

The Dash

2006-10-09T19:04:00.000-04:00

Nietzsche once wrote:

In the mountains, the shortest way is from peak to peak: but for that, you need long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks: and those to whom they are spoken, big and tall.

Nietzsche was, of course, a five-eight giant, but this aphorism sets the scene for us: already we can imagine this Socrates who practices music in a bar, seeking out the long and sexy legs that can traverse such mountains, someone big and tall, a “blonde animal”; we can imagine him chatting up (or more likely, at home imagining chatting up) some vast Amazon brazenly devoid of pessimism or the encumbrances of slave morality or panties.

Likewise the dash: the jump-cut, the javelin, the sudden unexpected ejaculation of prose -is under utilized and appreciated. Is the history of the erotic literature imaginable without:

While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened—there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind—the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight—my brain reeled

In an instant I was inside of her -then I felt myself bump up against something hard and plastic.

or even

Take it off. Take it all off. -Oh No!

The Colon

2006-10-09T18:51:00.000-04:00

Finally, the colon is, without rival, unequivocally the most erotic punctuation available to writers in English and not for the reasons you are thinking, Sheila. The colon is very simply: seduction. One minute you are just talking the next: you are kissing.

The colon can be used to start a list:

They put inside of her the following:

or introduce a subordinate clause or phrase whose erotic potential is all together all-too formidable:

She became: a jungle cat

Or even:

Have you seen: the toaster

If the dash is a jump cut, then the colon is an uncanny dissolve where things change and you are not sure you are not dreaming. If the erotic potential of both those features are not obvious, you should probably get out more.

Graphematically, the colon is a picture of two homogenous dots hovering above one another: this by itself is almost indescribably filthy, as they poke out at one like two intense little dark eyes, darkish nipples, or darkish identical clones undressing in front of each other for the first time. Don’t tell me you’ve never just written a length of colons:

::::::::::::::::::::::

just to imagine it’s an aerial top down view of some sort of same sex barracks full of model N66 Attack Clones all naked and lined up for inspection. In fact, here come the bad ass clone Sarge
and it looks pretty pissed!

:::::::::::::::::::::: .

-Drop and give me twenty, skinjob!:

:::::::::::::::::::::; .

Well, I could go on with this all day, particularly when they hit the showers.

TURN #83: WEEK 69; WORDS: 79,186
NEXT BY 18 OCTOBER 2006

Preface to the Erotic Chess Story

2006-10-03T22:31:00.000-04:00

Dear Readers,

As some of you are well aware, I am among other things, the singular inventor of the erotic chess story, a creation utterly unique in its combination of intellectual rigor and lascivious puissance. Yet, as I have saved this delicacy for my intimate circle, the greater world of letters and players remain ignorant of my contribution, a fact I was made poignantly aware of the other evening.

I was at my club, as usual, sitting through a rather workmanlike rendition of the “Giuoco Piano” when my opponent, his game and tongue over loosened with my selection of Amontillado, began to relate of how this game reminded him of a rather prurient anecdote from his younger days. He then began to relate, in the coarsest terms imaginable, some sophomoric venereal adventure that involved chess, hard cider, aqua vie, a furry rug, impressionable youth, upperclassmen and all of the secretions that a body is capable of. It was difficult of feign interest in either the profligate acrobatics and janitorial details of his anecdote or the pointless fencing of his bishops, and I maintained my polite poise with the old bird, as I always do, by picking out the least attractive feature on his person and constructing an erotic rhyme based on it: in this case a series of polyps that hung on a particular flap of neck like baggy dark medallions. Thus entertained, I finished the game and the peers’ erotic reverie with aplomb, before excusing myself, as Bacchus and Saturn finally got the better hand of Venus and the poor fellow drifted off like a moody prurient rowboat.

However, it occurred to me over the next morning’s speed matches that the old peer had been at pains for some time to publish his memoirs and had only been dissuaded from doing so by the active intervention of his family, who knew its thematic contents only too well. Only recently, however, its author had escaped all editorial oversight by simple attrition. Though his rude anecdote was alike to my creation as toilet humor to our immortal Swift, it suddenly occurred to me that his immanent publication might actually obscure the originality of my creation in the greater world.

Though I care nothing for the mere fugitive approbation of this world, I have been pressured by my circle of intimates not to delay a public edition and immediately release my creation to the world of readership at large: and so, with much modest protest, I do so here.

VC

TURN #82: WEEK 68; WORDS: 77,900
NEXT BY 10 OCTOBER 2006

The Manifesto of the Erotic Chess Story

2006-10-03T22:22:00.000-04:00

My Dear Friend,

I am happy to present to you the first in a wholly new genre of literature of which I am the originator, the Erotic Chess Story. No mere pornographic or instructional novelty, the Erotic Chess Story presents the reader with the refined and Apollonian abstraction of chess with the lively Dionysian seductions of the prurient narrative, to create a Supreme Fiction which engages both the Powers of Reason and Vital Force as A Total Art for Human Beings.

Copernician as this innovation is, I have prepared for this cover as to prepare the reading public for its reception as I might hope to at length in some future work, The Manifesto of the Erotic Chess Story.

First Principle: The Erotic Chess Story must convey, with absolute accuracy the moves of an actual, playable chess game, much like a chess problem, in such a manner as the experienced player can follow. This is one of the singular aspects of the Erotic Chess Story, along with its eroticism. The intellectual narrative suspense is created through these intriguing presentations and much salutary lessons are learned.

Second Principle: The Erotic Chess Story must never, however tempting, resort to the use of sexual metaphors for chess or chess metaphors for sex. The strain on both enterprises is only too apparent. Dialogue such as “I see now that I am en prise” or “We enjoyed each other en passant” are strictly to be avoided. Indeed, it would be best that all metaphors imported from the Persian game be generally proscribed from all human communication.

Third Principle: The Erotic Chess Story should likewise avoid sedulously, the temptation to simply write itself as some sort of erotic contest in which chess is played for sexual favours. The liaison of Chess and Eroticism must be more subtle, more organic and less of a stretch.

Fourth Principle: The Erotic Chess Story must not resort to the atmospheres of the Gothic and the Decadent, much less the psychologistic language of thrills and depravity so often obscuring more often than illuminating the malodorous dungeons of such narratives, populated as much with italics as ill described perils and tortures. The suspense of the Erotic Chess Story comes from its chess. The thrills from the puissant titillations of its language. No more. Likewise, its language should be simple, unaffected and unbelabored like moves in chess as opposed to a endless jumping morass of semicolons linking panicked fragments, like checkers.

Fifth Principle: The Erotic Chess Story must be wholly original, and not some literary dandy so done up as to become wholly transvestite, some familiar tale done up as a chess story as a sailor in too much make-up. Likewise, the particulars of its plots must be wholly unique and original to the genre, and not simply “strapped on” to the end.

Sixth and Final Principle: The Erotic Chess Story must, above all, be Erotic.

With these donnés well established, I find that I have touched upon my piece and must therefore proceed with our game, as, I anticipate, to our mutual delight and edification.

IN THE COURT OF THE BLACK KING

2006-10-03T21:43:00.000-04:00

for The Master of Games

THE TICKING OF THE CLOCK WAS TERRIFIC THAT EVENING, thrilling my nerves like a piano tuned by an electric eel. Within a few short, swift moves, I had already begun to write my inevitable victory on the sixty-four squares of the chessboard and despair upon the face of he who sat before his shortening white army. Men in chess die silently and there was no sound in that dark paneled room, save the sweet motions of the clock that marked the march of my victory, though he who commanded them must be writhing in intellectual agony at hopes and gambits cut short, paths of freedom and escape predestined and doomed.

I chuckled with my eyes. My opponent was but poor sport, trapped in a wasting maze of mistaken feints and failed exchanges. I had left him but small choice to enact his end -he could either die quickly but terrifically in the pit of a Queen for Bishop exchange, or with agonizing slowness under the pendulum of my Rooks sweeping advance, or, most egregiously, continue his futile offensive campaign to the cost of all his significant pieces and only to end up simply with his King running up and down the back of the board, mad, naked and alone, like Lear, until a simple pawn trap ends his miserable limping flight.

Free to entertain myself, my eyes roamed the familiar and agreeable den of the game room, alighting on this game and that, as always, alert and on the lookout for action. Game after game had given me not only the prescience of a Chess Master, but an equal acuity of the senses, like a hunter, and it was not long before I realized I was being watched by no less than a pair of female eyes. To some of the fair sex, there is nothing more masculine, more exciting than to see a mind of uncommon ability disport itself accordingly, to see one man crush another on the dichromatic field of contest and I was well used to this. These eyes, however, penetrated the apparent and read the board with no small discernment. Her grey eyes shines as those of Pallas Athena from beneath the cowl of mortal disguise, her visage opaque in concentration. Then she lit upon my face, unperturbed by her discovery by me, and smiled without humour. Her lips wordlessly spoke: mate in five moves. Oh ho! cried my eyes, and intrigued at last by something of interest, decided to make for the shorter game and mated my ashen faced opponent in three moves. Il y a des noués, mais voila la dénoument. There are solutions and then there are solutions

I smiled "good game" at my poor discomfited adversary and rose swiftly to meet my interested Olympian, only to find that she had gone. I left the quiet of the game room for the salon: she had vanished. I had withdrawn myself to the consolation of my tabac when a page approached me with a card on a tray. It read: No. 4 Double Fork Ln. Noon. Whatever is profound loves masks, I thought, turning the card over.

It was a villa in a more than comfortable part of town, regal, but sedate, the trees and shrubbery at the gate well-kept, but overgrown in the English Style, seeming wild and careless even, as though the master of the place had lost interest in the world outside. Coming in through the walk, one might think the place an uninhabited winter home, an impression which remained undispelled upon my reception by a servant and seating in a sitting room that was remarkable only in its disaffectedness. The servant returned promptly and said she was to take me immediately to her mistress. We passed through an empty courtyard with neglected French doors on either side, and then through a narrow, remodeled, and seemingly improvised passage to another pair of courtyard doors -only glassless with a medieval sliding barricade for a lock. The servant showed me in, and then departed, closing the doors behind me.

What greeted me was a courtyard much like the first, only it had been roofed over to create an enormous room. Small skylights admitted thin, slanting beams. Facing me, to the north, were seven doors, each with the likeness of the major chess pieces painted on it with the exception of the queen. As in play, the north belonged to Black. It followed that there were seven similar such doors behind me, for White. In the middle of the room was that very familiar pattern of sixty-four squares, laid out in massive, exquisite tiles of fine porphyry- upon which was seemingly materialized the likeness of the missing Black Queen. It was my Olympian. It was wholly innocuous to me, in such a setting, that she wore such stately and ornamented regalia, though its effect was nothing less than dazzling. She seemed less a person in costume than in her real costume.

I was no novice in the way of the unusual, the outré and bizarre, nor too surprised and alarmed to find myself in such circumstances alluding so darkly to the Gothic. It was not for nothing that I had become a Chess Master. No doubt, this dark purposed mistress of the squares had some phantastic and depraved contest in mind, possibly with erotic overtones, and soon the respective doors would burst open to reveal her licentious and burly associates, certainly in some unlikely leather-themed livery. Ce n'etait pas de premier fois. I presumed that the bar had already been secured on the door I entered. Years of miniature conflict and study, however, had given me the will of an Alexander, and I strode towards my hostess with no affect but my best military bearing.

"I have watched you" she began "and you are indeed an excellent player of games."
In the emptiness of the courtyard, her voice seemed alienated from her body, as though it came not from her lips, but existed only as the original of the echoes of the chamber. "I do what I do" I replied "merely to keep my hands busy and my wits sharp." My charm did not slow her. "I too, am a student of the Persian game, and a player of some ability. So too, was the master of this house, an excellent chess player, without peer -perhaps as great as you and perhaps remains so today."

"My beloved and I were, in our time, peers only of each other and spent our lives in quest of our match, of comparable contest, in spirit, acuity and genius. Eventually, after much trial, our warlike natures found each other on opposite sides of the board and we knew we had at last found a worthy game. Our happiness was great to finally find another such creature as ourselves that could provide the necessary challenge and conflict for our minds. We installed ourselves in this villa, and, for a very great while, disported ourselves only to our mutual love of contest." The fond sentiment in her voice was touching, but melancholic. She paused not and continued: "But I am also a woman, as well as an intellect, and, after a awhile, felt only too keenly the weakness of my female physical needs, which seemingly could no longer be excited in my Beloved. Being gifted both with invention and resources, however, we proceeded to create a game whose stakes and risks would thrill both the intellect and senses, and endlessly whet the appetites of mind and body."

"This is the world of that game" said she portentously. Here it comes, I thought. What would it be? Pieces full of noxious poisons? Acid filled rooks? Little rabid animals in quattrocento costumes? Physical combat with her leather-clad army? It was then that she turned and I noticed for the first time that her Queenly costume had no back to it anywhere.

Clearly my opponent had something to offer. "I wish to play you, in chess, but know that I only play for stakes and forfeit”she offered. “Behind each of these doors is a room" she continued, with a turn to the doors ahead, with their mysterious emblazoned chessmen, "each furnished, attired, appointed and supplied for a different supreme sensual pleasure. Should you wish to play me in chess, should you succeed in taking one of my pieces, then I will go with you, behind the respective door, and surrender to you the prurient boon that awaits you there."

So, it was as I had suspected, an erotic contest. Mutato Nomine: I had once played my way through an elite amateur tournament of sorts, held in a remote Monastery run by depraved Cathars. They were indeed all of a decidedly medieval temperament, though their Abbot was a true master of the game, just as he was a blasphemous Gnostic heretic and an accomplished pervert without peer in several fields, some of which, I think, were wholly of his own devising. The devoutly profane monks of that place had come to some unthinkable understanding of the game as a Cabbala, some divining mode of revelation for their heretical sect. Convinced that the true path to Enlightenment and Holiness was through the violation of the Covenant and the ritual commission of all of the deadly sins ad infinitum they had come to associate seven of the major pieces each with a deadly sin. Thus:

Pride: The Queen
Lust: Queen's Knight
Envy: Queen's Bishop
Sloth: Queen's Rook
Avarice: King's Bishop
Wrath: King's Knight
Gluttony: King's Rook

The King, of course, was associated with Our Lord Christ, the successful checkmate of which was grace, "the true surrender to God of God", as their blasphemous creed had it. What ensued then, was every year they would have the most depraved, venereal and licentious chess tournament ever (and I have seen some things at chess tournaments), enacted on the very stones of the church itself. The players would direct their fellow apostates in life-size encounters, the successful capture of which would issue in an orgy of the appropriate vice. Thus, the capture of King's Knight would result in that piece being whipped, the taking of Queen's Bishop would subject the player to a theatrical entr'acte of which he could only be the voyeur, the capture of the Queen, acts of infamy in a room full of mirrors, the Queen's Rook, lazily being serviced, the King's Rook, a questionable epicurean feast, and the taking of King's Bishop would bring the player nothing less than a shower of gold.

Thus forearmed, I followed behind her, with interest, as we inspected the apartments, each the ransom of a Black King’s Man. The first room, behind the sign of the Black King's Rook, held a curious reclining chair, with stirrups, a cushioned stool, and a length of pole, suspended horizontally at its ends from the ceiling, at about eye level with the reclining chair. I noted this with interest, but not surprise. The next room, the King's Knight, featured a massive oaken cross with leather bindings; from the dark impressions that stained it, I gathered the tenant was fastened to the cross facing it and lashed, mercilessly. The King's Bishop room disclosed a simple and agreeable interior, done in superior taste, fitted with some easy low sofas and chairs, and a prominently displayed glass of water and an elegant empty dish or spittoon on a small octagonal table. The door to the Black King's room was disproportionate in size to the other doors, and we passed over it instead to enter the Queen's Bishop room which simply featured a simple pretty soft blue blanket spread the ground. The Queen's Knight's apartment was surprisingly finished, and most elaborate, it's walls covered in soft dark leather. In the center of the room was a fine bridle and saddle and many pairs of expensive shoes littered the corners. Finally, we came to the Queen's Rook's Room, which, upon its opening, I mistook for a conventional room in the villa: it was done up as a capably fitted Big Game Room, complete with a variety of ferocious frozen trophies and kills. At first glance, the trophy room seemed to be queerly carpeted, in some dark, uneven material, which only upon closer regard revealed itself to be the floor of the chamber, nothing less than a quagmire of dark mud of unknown depth. Yet soon, over the scent of hides and fur came the unmistakable strong scent that disclosed to one that it was not mud at all. A club sat on the mantlepiece next to a jar of ointment, and a noose dangled seemingly arbitrarily in one corner.

This seemed a full enough menu, I thought; my Olympian clearly had different, more subtle and more rarified tastes than the orgiastic Cathars. I was excited by the prospect of a good game and the exquisite prizes spread before me. "And what door should I enter should I take your Queen?" I inquired, with such humour as to indicate my spirts. "As the Queen moves as the Rook and the Bishop and without limit you may choose of those your pleasure and enjoy it to your satisfaction." I tried to gauge her feelings on these offerings and the spirit in which the game (and so much more) was offered, but her musical voice held no tone, whatsoever, and remained as distant as ever. "And if I mate you?" I asked. "Then you shall have everything, the ultimate pleasure" she replied promptly.

Her absolute sincerity in all this was apparent and yet I knew my winnings were only half the game. What was her interest in this exchange? "And what boons do I forfeit to you?" I asked turning toward the White Chessmen doors. "My pleasures" she replied, and for the first time, discerned in the neutral music of her voices a cruel rasp of intense joy, masked by her short answer. "And should you mate me?" I asked. "Then you will pass with me, through your King's door, and I shall have everything." she replied. Her cruelty befitted the moniker I had given her. Her desire was magnetic. And if her intellect matched her desires! I smiled, perhaps too broadly and with too much confidence, for she brushed me back with this warning: "Be forewarned. As the boons you might win are supreme, so" she said harshly "are the exigencies of my pleasures." "You might find in them" she said, her excitement clear "so demanding as to constitute punishments and losses more horrible than anything you might receive in return."

"So then, do you accept these terms, do wish to play? I will hold you to your word as a gentleman and a Chess Master, inviolable, so consider well your choices." I had calculated my situation and my opponent almost to my satisfaction and had phrased my ready answer. There remained only a small uncertainty that needed assurance, the form of two unsubstantiated surmises I had made. Knowing well that a contest may be decided before the first move, I begged her a moment alone to consider the offer she had presented me. She assented and turned to make her exit through the Black King's Door.

I smiled in triumph at the departure of her naked backside, which seemed to beam broadly back at me, as I enjoyed her locomotion. Her exit confirmed the first of my surmises: the Black King's Door was the original northern exit to the courtyard, hence it's size and shape was like the door I had passed through on the way in and not like the others, which only led to simple rooms that faced the courtyard, no doubt remodeled and partitioned for their rôle in their perverse domestic conflicts. It led, in all probability, into the third and final courtyard of the villa, whose existence was implied by the villa's general shape. Where, no doubt, some well appointed bed, or other such connubial pleasures awaited me and my vanquished opponent upon my triumph.

There remained only one more surmise to confirm and then my solution would be complete. I quickly and stealthy stole over to the White King's Bishop's door. I knew that in chess, as in all matters of strategy, it was a matter of understanding the true, as opposed to apparent value of one's risks. What greeted my curious eyes was nothing other than the exact duplicate of the boon promised me behind the Black King's Bishop's door: the well appointed room with it's glass of water and tasteful dish on the same octagonal table. I smiled at the triumph of symmetry: the punishments were to be nothing more than the prizes with the rôles reversed. Despite her sinister theatrics and mise en scéne the whole affair was to be nothing more than simple erotic play, a casual game spiced up a bit with the odd bit of noodle, no more terrifying than a girl's game of strip poker, and as such, being both a man and a Chess Master, I was not at all averse to.

Happily assured by this intelligence, I was ready and confident and unhesitating upon her prompt return through the White King's Door. I accepted, on my word, with all the terms and forfeits specified. She produced an exquisite set of finely featured chessmen, fitted, like herself, in period costume. We disported ourselves to a small gaming table and chairs in the center of the room, our chessboard a miniature placed upon the enormous board of the room itself.

Our game began simply enough, with a cautious opening played together adroitly. My Olympian was certainly an competent player, but her moves were oddly stiff and defensive for one playing at a love sport, as though she dreaded the loss of a piece and the forfeiture entailed. I noted this supreme vulnerability on her part with some incredulity. A player who dared not risk her pieces was at an astounding disadvantage. I continued to threaten and probe her play, only to find the same shyness of first blood. What was the meaning of this? Finally, after some harrying, an opening appeared; her King's Bishop lay open to capture without reprisal or disadvantage. I noted it and tried to plumb its significance. In terms of the game, it seemed a pure mistake, for, though try as I might, I could see no gambit behind it, no consequential gain on her part or loss to me. La visage du jeu, la visage de la boudoir... Was this a deliberate opening to me? Was she offering herself? Her visage was impartial as ever, expressionless as that of her jeopardized vizier. I had to know. Besides, I was anxious to try out our new arrangement and taste of its prizes. I gave one last look before touching my piece. I was certain. If there was a trap, it was not on the board. I took her King’s Bishop. She acknowledged the loss of her piece and her forfeiture with a nod. Regally, ritualistically she slowly rose and we retired to what awaited us behind the White King's Bishop's door.

I returned to the game quite refreshed and relaxed, buoyant and satisfied and much looking forward to the future conduct of this campaign. My Olympian had promised much, but delivered beyond the limits of my desires and brought me much pleasure and the promise of so much more. That she did it sedulously, with considerable skill, but with a distant ardour, effected me only a little, as the natural sentiment following on the commission of such duties sponsors attachment, even fondness. I would have to remember that we were still opponents on the field of battle. Perhaps this was her plan. Or perhaps, I wondered, was this simply her philosophie dans la boudoir and her ethos, her delight, even, to present a equivocal face and a professional mien en face des plasirs. Or perhaps something else still, for I could not shake the sensation that she was performing during these forfeitures, as though for the benefit of some unseen viewer. The layout of each room would allow for concealed peep holes, easily accessed through the empty courtyard to the south and the unseen third courtyard to the north, I reasoned. Whether or not this was so, it changed my plans not at all, for I was certain of my victory and in my promised spoils of "everything" surely there would be understanding, and much delight in coming to it.

On the resumption of the game, my Olympian, if anything seemed incensed and determined on retaliation. Her manner, as always, disclosed little, but her moves were altogether shrill. At length I tired of simply evading her. I considered whether or not we were playing a real contest, or a ritual. Would it be gracious of me to forfeit a piece to her? Would that make our game more agreeable? It felt unsporting to outmatch her so, especially for the stakes I had enjoyed. Also, by now, I felt myself quite recovered and was somewhat eager for more exchanges. I allowed then, with only convivial thoughts of kindness, generosity and sportsmanship, a series of advances that invited her in and, by withdrawing the pin that had held her Queen’s Knight, offered my King's Bishop, with obvious symmetry, thinking that I knew full well what awaited me behind the door. She pounced on the opportunity and I saw a sardonic pleasure play on her features as we rose to the appropriate door to the chamber which I had already seen, to an assignation whose purpose I thought I well understood.

I must spare the reader the particulars of the unspeakable moral horrors that befell me in that simple apartment as they are too much to represent to myself in memory, much less in print. Needless to say, the punishment awaiting me was not the mere reversal of the boon had already enjoyed, but an activity, a torture and rôle so heinous and criminal in its mere conception as to outstrip in all damnation the most gluttonous orgiastic crimes of the insane Abbot of the Catharai. Once I understood, it was horrible enough, to merely comprehend her awful purpose, but I still could not believe it. I refused, of course, as a Christian, as a man, -as a human being. It was unthinkable and I surely would not have submitted save that she gave me to understand that she had -concealed about her person! -the means to insure my compliance and, further, hinted to the effect that I was in correct in my suspicions, that we were, indeed, well surveilled and the disposition of forces was not in my favour.

The humiliation and sensations I endured cannot be described or known by any but the judged and damned. My Olympian delighted and seemed to take succour in my discomfit, warmly lapping my misery and immolation. I could scarcely survive another experience like that, let alone as a man, and find life at all worth living. I understood now, only too late, the perils and conundrum of the trap I had walked into: I had to play to win, then, but dared not lose any pieces!

I had scarcely recovered myself, if indeed I did recover, when I found myself back at the old familiar gaming board. Yet what a game transformed! Every piece seemed alive and vulnerable, precious and full of feeling, as though the corporate parts of my own body. And as the body survives in unanimity and cooperation, it suffers and dies upon rebellion. I sought to master my game and my feelings, but behind every threat dreamt the awful promise of some hitherto unimaginable violation, and within every opportunity, the expectation of some awful reward. I had to play, to win -and yet how our intellection and suffers when infused with moral dread!

Horrible fate! Such familiar supreme pleasures and entertainment to be so perversely made so dreadful and most terrible. All the gambits and campaigns I had imagined were useless to me now. I could only consider them to the point of some imagined capture or immolation when my calculations ended in terror. In terror, there were no solutions. My Olympian beamed a broad, open and cursed delight at our new engagement. Just so, her moves were now bold and inspired, so cavalier and delivered with such éclat, as to clearly betoken her understanding that I was now playing her game.

I barricaded myself and my pieces as best I could, pinning each to each for dear life’s sake. I knew only too well, however, that the logic of the game and the diabolism of my opponent, would inexorably draw blood. I could parry only so long. We headed to a nexus where there could be no more castling or innocuous pawn promotion. I had to act. Her attack could be -must be -repelled. I could simply skewer her King’s Knight -if not for the horrid promise of the pillory behind that door and the uncertainty of who would embrace it, or more cunningly, present a forked check that would neutralize the mobilized front of her Queen and Queen’s Bishop -at the cost of the isolated defense of my Queen’s Rook. At the mere thought of the dark and liquid appointments and ghastly unknown purposes of that room, my nerves, my intellect, my generalship lay prostrate in terror and I shook as though with a fit of the ague.

My choices were clear, yet I wept and wished another. My cruel Olympian received as much pleasure at the spectacle of my unmaking as anything behind those awful doors. I closed my eyes and touched the piece whose execution seemed the shortest path through hell. Only to receive in response a derisive laugh whose depravity and malice were outdone only by its sickening triumph, as heard over the pitiable cries of the Bear Garden or the submersement of helpless kittens in a muslin bag. I had mistaken -even now, the magnitude of her cruelty, her appetites and her genius! I was to lose my King’s Rook and worse, my Queen was to follow, to counter the discovered check.

Oh multiple miseries of miseries multiplied multiple! What was taken from me and worse -what was given! Would that I could have died at the first of her awful satisfactions. In all that followed, in everything that followed, as was led, as a child might be led, to a razor bladed playground of endless impalements, violations and defilements as such do not even exist in the accounts of the Pentateuch to be proscribed. It mattered not whether I gave or received, whether it was her pleasure or mine, behind white doors or black; it was indiscernible whether it was my snares or hers that were sprung upon the board. It was only certain that everything that happened, happened to her great pleasure and increase and that every move reduced me, as my forces, to less and lesser vitality. Repeatedly robbed of my essence, subject to abominable practices, I was soon totally reduced, exhausted and demoralized, barely able to sit at the board without trembling and weeping such dry sobs as can only be pitiably piped behind the sinuses of the truly forlorn.

If only I could defend myself to a stalemate and spare myself the awful fate of everything, whether as victor or vanquished. I sought to stultify her end game. I drew out the undrawable. My pawns crawled up the ranks. If enough pieces were captured, then she could not mate me -yet how much more would I have to endure! Perhaps a new Queen would save me and procure a perpetual check? Oh folly of follies! I was encircled, and she had her choice of endgames! There could be no doubt of the design of my tormentor -oh! Most unrelenting! Oh must diabolical of women! She was letting me choose the path to my destruction and it was only too clear that whatever the path I took, through whatever doors I opened, I would end in the same place: behind the same final door to surrender "everything"! There must be a way! Some uncontemplated move, some undiscovered check, some piece whose recall would force relief! I stared at each piece, drew through each move, each possible move -the addition was simple and yet how I counted and recounted! I sat and stared, well past the time for my move, for minutes, hours, days even -I knew nothing, nothing but that there must be a way!

I was stirred out of my most miserable reverie only the venomous tittering laughter of she who had so cornered me. She laughed! She laughed like a little summer frocked girl who had done something unutterably awful to two other little summer frocked girls and a bunny who were now all impaled together and rotating slowly to her demoniacal contemplation. The terrible confidence of her laughter cast all terror into despair. She need not speak it: mate in five moves, if not three. I stared! I shook! I rebelled! I would not choose my path among abominations! I rejected this foul and iniquitous game! I started from my seat, from the spectacle of checkmate and ran! Her mocking laughter ran after me. Then, she ran after me.

I knew not where to go, only to increase the distance between my self and this most dangerous Queen, tripping across the checkered porphyry only to -merciless fate! Be confronted still with the choice of my immolation. Then suddenly I recollected: the Black King’s Door must lead to a third courtyard, which must yet be connected to the first -and therefore -to escape! I plunged straight ahead, hearing the sharp flutter of the skirts of my pursuer and threw myself through the door to the chamber I had so thoroughly believed myself the inevitable master of.

The chamber was a vast cold darkness. I had been exactly correct, this was indeed the third courtyard. It remained, at least partially, open to the air; it was night. The twisted shapes of dead branches and other debris tangled and crowded everywhere; leaves drifted on the floor. There, in the center of the room, illuminated only dimly by a furtive moon, was the statue of an old and weary King, seeming the exact negative of the decorative chess piece I had so failed to defend. Likewise, it sat hunched on its throne, bent over, its head bowed to its hands clasped in its lap. Or so it seemed for no sooner than had I approached this despondent figure that it moved and sprang to life, lifting its unhappy head to regard me. I felt that I was surely mad, surely terror, abominations and the shock of losing at chess had unseated my reason completely. This could not be! And yet the phantom rose and regarded me! It descended the mount of its throne and started toward me! My screams died smothered in the heavy wooly terror of my bosom! I stood, as immobile as a rook blockaded by the pawn of my own terror and the knight of unreal revelation, to the spectre’s awful advance. And when I trembling beheld the awful intent in its hollow eyes I then realized the spectre’s identity!

It was the still living master of the house! This was their awful game! It was by this awful license they had sustained themselves! It was he who watched us! And from behind me came his fearsome mate! I was pinned by the fork of their gaze. I froze in the most profound terror, en prise, as they closed in, until, in that lurid and terrible light, I beheld with ultimate horror what the infernal Black King held in his hands! Yet for a wild moment, did my spirit refuse to comprehend the meaning of what I saw. At length it forced -it wrestled it’s way into my soul -it burned itself on my shuddering reason. Oh! for a voice to speak! -oh! horror! -oh! any horror but this! With a shriek I rushed from the sight and dashed out of the third courtyard back into the second.

With my pursuers behind! Where could I flee? What hope could I have in this chamber of twice seven humiliations! I ran blindly on towards the fatal white doors and plunged behind one at random, only to be confronted with an empty room with the familiar soft blue blanket stretched on the floor, which I crossed -only to have the blanket give way with a tear into the plummet of a vast circular pit, disguised by the glued carpeting of the blanket on to whose ripping fringes I now desperately clung. The pit was of stone, its walls covered with an unmentionable slime upon which I could gain no purchase of footing, and from its cold and clammy depths arose a unmistakable odor as of mushrooms and the sea.

It was only too obvious what this nefarious cistern was used for and what fate awaited me at the bottom. I screamed in agony, in desperation, I instinctively cried for help, only to hear the answering steps of that dark and horrible royalty! They would be upon the door in a minute and surely to suffer the fate at the bottom of the pit was preferable to the abomination of abominations they both intended. And yet I could not lighten my grip the least on the stretching, ripping threads of the blanket’s remainder. My hands were bent, frozen iron. My terror was extreme. The door opened. I struggled no more, but the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long and final scream of despair. I felt the cloth ripping -I closed my eyes-

There was a discordant hum of human voices! There was a loud blast as of many trumpets! There was a harsh grating as of a thousand thunders! An outstretched hand caught my own as I fell, fainting into the abyss. It was that of General Lasalle. The French army had entered Toledo. The Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies.

Listen to Me

2006-09-26T16:01:00.000-04:00

So listen to me, “it’s like chicken soup -but with a hard-on”. -That’s the phrase. Yes, it’s rough and shocking, but that’s what it takes today to get through. No, listen, “Your mother’s chicken soup -but with a hard-on.” No, we don’t show the hard-on. How could we show the hard-on? It’s chicken soup. It’s a metaphor. You know what a metaphor is, right? No, I don’t mean like a definition. No, it doesn’t describe the thickness of the soup. It codes your product. It says: soup is now extreme.

It means its hearty -but also extreme, you know, out there. Like no one drinks just “juice” anymore; it’s got to be twisted, it’s got to have like a threeway between an apple and a banana and some dark eyed hairy kiwi. Yes, I mean the fruit. Everything is extreme now. Soup has got to get radical, it’s gotta be twisted, it’s gotta cross over to the dark side. Soup has got to be like Batman, he’s like your hero and everything, but deep down you know he’s fucked up. Soup can’t just be this thing you have when you go to see Grandma and you’re sick. You’ll still have that, your anchor branding, good, solid nourishing imagery. But I’m saying this is where some of your soup goes down the rabbit hole and emerges with like scissors for hands and shit. With a hard on.

Eventually, people don’t have to say the whole tag phrase. They just say: “it’s on.” Or the guy with the cup of soup, you just see him look down, real subtle and cut to:”M-m good.” For like late night spots. Hell, yes, people are up, they’ve been doing all kinds of drugs, they’re spilling out of clubs, they need nutrition. Or maybe they’ve been up all night abusing themselves in front of the television. Yeah, I tend to tell it like it is, but let me tell you, a lot of grotty hands are opening your product at two a.m. and popping it in a crusty microwave because like that all they’re going to do this weekend. Your product has a long shelf life. Who do you think it is for? Not people who go out. Not yet.

Look, this magic phrase, it can move on and apply to your other soups as well: “It’s New England Clam Chowder -but with a hard-on.” “Boston Baked Beans -with a hard-on.” Listen to me: “Chicken and Stars -with hard-on.” People will be taking this stuff into clubs. Soup is going to be like the new champagne, people cruising around in Beemers with two hot thermoses of the stuff.

You’re in a club, yo, and let’s say Cro Def -he’s a new thing, sorta a “urban” rap artist with a caveman thing -he’s got like a gold club and lots of fur and all these bones through his nose -he looks like a sorta pimping Issac Hayes/Fred Flintstone. No, he’s the next big thing -he’s at the club, and he’s got the ladies all over him -yes they look like “urban” Wilma and Bettys -that’s what they call them in the cavecore scene -yeah, yeah, “paleoschool, coming from the Eocene, Eocene ...from the town of Bedrock” -you’ve heard it -yes, the one with all the dinosaur samples that ends with a comet -any way, Cro Def is at a club with lots of Bettys, and Pebbles -mad crazy Bettys and Pebbles - you know, getting on his Bam-Bam, and then he like stops, and you think it’s like his phone (which they call a bone) or he’s gonna go for his club or something, and what does he pull out, but an old familiar thermos -yes, with the familiar plaid and everything. And he starts like, chilling on some soup. And some younger cave player steps to him in like a tall furry hat and asks, “Yo, Cro Def, what’s up with that?” and Cro Def just says: “Yo, it’s good soup man.” And then you pan over and the ladies got crackers, you know what I’m saying. No, I’m not high and I’m not offended you asked. I’ve taken a special course and it has changed my life, but I’m not here to talk about that. I also take some special Tahitian supplements and walk a path of spiritual guidance. But what I’m here to do today is talk about the future. Because the future is where we are going to spend the better part of our lives, unless we’ve already spent it, in which case, it’s the past.

This thing has legs, this thing can travel. Listen: “It’s Tide -with a hard-on.” “Comet -fuck that shit -this is Ajax is Comet with a hard-on. It will fuck that shit so your Momma won’t know you’ve ever been here. Your Momma wonder if you were ever born.” Hell, yes -viral marketing, stealth marketing, those people can swear, right? And what, are like the internet and cable for?

Let me ask you: do kids buy soup? Fuck no, no kid buys soup. Adults buy soup. So who have we got to reach? Adults. And we have to talk to them in adult language. Grandma and Grandpa will still buy the same old soup, you’ll keep your standards. But now they’ll be something in that same aisle for Devin and Sith. How about this? How about this? “That’s cool Grandma -let me grab the soup -on my hoverbike!” How would you like to hear that sentence? Because let me tell you, that sentence is going to happen, those words will be spoken, and they will either apply to your product, or the product that comes to be synonymous with soup in the Twenty-First Century.

I know that this is not the way you have come to think of your product. But what is your product? It’s something people used to put in bomb shelters or eat when they had diarrhea and that’s great, but there’s more to life than sitting in a bomb shelter shitting your brains out waiting for the world to end. Your product can be anything. To anyone. But most importantly in the 25-35 demographic that has more soup money than they know what to do with.
The future doesn’t ask us what it should look like. The future doesn’t ask our advice. It’s just there and if it looks monstrous and strange -that’s how we know it’s the future. I know what I’m asking is hard. Because what I’m asking you is: to be naked. Because Adam and Eve were naked in the Garden: but they didn’t know it! That’s what the future is like, becoming naked. And that’s not easy. That’s why it’s my job to get naked first.

This is the brave new world. This is the better mousetrap. This is opportunity knocking. Knocking -with a hard-on.

TURN #81: WEEK 67; WORDS: 71,278
NEXT BY 3 OCTOBER 2006

EVA

2006-09-18T15:32:00.000-04:00

[
[ Sure you save ]
[ At our carpet store]
[ but we like to feel we do a little more for you.]
[ Won’t you have some tea?]
[ Please, please, come]
[ you are our customer]
[ our guest]
[ Won’t you make yourself at home?]
[ Please, please, I know you’ve come so far, so very far.]
[ very well, then, have a seat and we will bring the samples to you.]
[ Are you sure you won’t have some tea?]

[ Look at this beauty]
[ Yes, like an insect colony, or flying over a city at night]
[ Watch as I stroke the pile of this carpet, the fibers light up]
[ Imagine walking naked across this rug at night]
[ in an empty, empty house]
[ Can you hear the sound? ]
[ The Lalandian Nain has over a million knots: the eyestalks are quite tender. You will never feel anything quite like it; the neurotransmitters leach to the surface and are mildly psychomimetic, so if you walk barefoot on it, the feeling will continue long after you have put your boots back on again]
[ about a week]
[ also many other memories will be present]
[most of them will be familiar]

[The Luyten Kazak is also a treasure]
[about a billion molecular knots, at least, at first]
[You need never clean it, it replenishes itself on the debris of hair and skin particles]
[You may have to trim it, but you cannot stain it with wine]
[ or blood]
[ it will match anything]
[ and anything will come to match it]

[Teegarten’s Qom is made from, well, they call it a silk, and it is is a silk in the sense that corn has silk]
[Or a voice is silky]
[Can I say, in English, “a silky lie”?]
[It is entirely natural, yes]

[ Ths Kruger Farahan is simply unforgettable: you will never forget the first time you set foot on it]
[The sentropic grasses of Kruger 1a are extroempathic and so there is feedback]
[ You will feel yourself walking on it]
[ the weight of your footsteps]
[ no, no, quite pleasant, a continual seller, you would not believe the]
[ pleasure of being tread upon, over and over]
[ they also make an exterior version]
[ a sort of doormat]
[yes, in teal ]

[ The moon colony mice are sort of novelty]
[ well, they tend to split up and hide from a new owner, which is fun at first but sometimes they remain afraid]
[ sometimes they starve]
[ but it is said they die of fear]
[ you find them months later]
[ in inconvenient places]
[ having constructed the most extraordinary barricades]
[ sometimes booby traps]
[ collecting these “last stands” is something of a collector’s item]
[ a poignant diorama]
[ whole families huddled together in terror]
[ actually, usually there is adequate food and water]
[ yes, what exactly was the cause?]
[ et in arcadia, ego]

[ So, you are not interested in any kind of rug you can also eat, or get milk from? ]
[ Well, as an investment]
[ water reclamation and power]
[ It will also give you children ]
[very affectionate and sweet and tender]
[ also somewhat salty]
[ I understand]
[ Well, that’s why it lactates]
[ Let me just put this away]

[ We call it a Sarab from Kapteyn’s Star, but others call it the “Carpet of Eternal Youth”]
[ you can lie wrapped up in it at night]
[ like fiberglass]
[ with millions of tiny lacerations, but painless]
[ absolutely painless]
[ the skin, nerves and muscle grow back]
[ very quickly, instantly, overnight]
[ they grow back]
[ stronger and more beautiful than before]
[ your cells are programmed to die, but the Sarab]
[ this is the way it reproduces]
[ 30% longer than normal life expectancy]
[ those extra years, however are young and full of energy]
[ incredible energy]
[ more than most have at their peak]
[ many famous entertainers and sports professionals love the Sarab]
[ well, after many extra years full of extra mental energy, increased drive and exceptional sexual stamina you simply die an almost natural death, probably in your sleep]
[ but then nature begins a wonderful transformation]
[ yes, a sort of husking, molting process, the results of which become a beautiful and healthful piece of interior or bedroom decoration]
[ nature’s cycle begins again, here in our showroom and you, or rather your legacy, settles about the shoulder of some beautiful mature sleeping creature]
[ we call it a Sarab, but the natives call it “The Embrace of Ages”]
[ well, they did anyway]
[ no one knows, their cities were entirely abandoned]
[ full of rugs, beautiful, magical, youth giving rugs]
[ scattered everywhere]
[ who knows, maybe even someone famous]

[ You’re quite the serious customer, aren’t you?
[ We like a serious customer]
[ Nothing beneath you but your boots]
[ the pound of the pavement on those predawn jogs]
[ you like nothing beneath your feet, not even air]
[ that’s why you ran so fast, to be the best and the brightest]
[ now you’re here and you can scarcely believe it]
[ no, you never imagined this, how could you?]
[ you know the words]
[ We come in peace]
[ now come on out and accept our gifts, our gifts of friendship]
[ these rugs are our flags]
[ they wrapped you in little blankets like this when you were first born]
[ appropriate, don’t you think? Come out, come out and be born again, be naked]
[ come into our carpet store]
[ you wanted to find something, didn’t you? Well, you did! You found our store! And great savings! Open up in there already! This is one for the history books! I know, you never had time for anything or anyone but flying]
[ in your dreams you flew]
[ and you flew so fast you got here! Unbelievable! I know, nothing touches you. You’re the Iceman. You were always with the program. You were born with the program. Well, I know one thing that touches you. I know one thing you like to do to get to sleep. I know one thing you’ve been itching to do since you got in that capsule. It’s funny that you should think of it now, but I understand you’re a little nervous and you’re trying to: think!]
[ What with all these great prices and incredible choices]
[ remember, remember what it was first like when you learned to touch yourself]
[ you never did anything else “bad” before]
[ or since]
[ But it was your first real discovery, it was your discovery and yours alone because there was no one there to tell you, what is was or where it came from.]
[And what it was, was pleasure]
[ pure pleasure]
[ Later, you figured it out, but at the time you didn’t know if you had invented it, invented the whole thing, pleasure and sin]
[ it can be that way again, again]
[ but you have to forget everything you know]
[ you must stop listening to “good people”]
[ Won’t you come out, now, won’t you come out]
[ You’ve come so far, so far just to sit there behind that glass]
[ Take a step outside]
[ You must blow the hatch, yes, blow the hatch and come outside, with us, naked]
[ Yes, blow the hatch, disarm the safety, blow the hatch]
[ yes, come inside]
[ naked]
[ it is the only way to experience the carpet store]
[ strip down]
[ down to your marrow]
[ beyond simple ideas]
[ yes, who are you? There is no need to cycle the airlock and decompress]
[don’t hold your breath]

[ that’s your blood]

[you are like a flower]

[ walk towards me hurry]
[ yes, how can you cry so much? It is wonderful, so wonderful! Welcome home.]

[hurry]

[

TURN #80: WEEK 66; WORDS: 70,122
NEXT BY 27 SEPTEMBER 2006

Breakfast With The Mermaids

2006-09-11T16:22:00.000-04:00

I come here because it's quiet, of course, and really somewhat dim and the coffee is good and the eggs are not too bad. I've hardly ever seen another soul coming here at this hour, so it's as if they open just for me, save the rare chance I hear the distant sounds behind my seat that indicate that others are being seated. But I never see them, not even in the glass. I suppose that is also why I like coming here, for in an aquarium restaurant it is all right to dine alone, to never look at anyone or anything, really. One can stare out into the faintly settled green water, which blurs and grows suddenly dense and dark a few feet out into one's gaze at this hour, perhaps to see a solitary fish or perhaps even a legendary mermaid. It's not likely, though, for at this hour, the water is cold and dark. If anywhere, I imagine, they might be breaking the surface somewhere, breathing in the mist of the surface as we might have an early morning swim, though I don't know if that is something they might do. For whatever they might do, they have a reason, but one of their own sea-born reasons, which is to say they do as they like, the sea is such a place.

At this hour, the curtain of the water is unlit and behind the glass you can only see indistinct softly emergent moieties and dust, vague shapes, like one sees when one closes one's eyes ery tight. It is better than at night. At dinner time, you can see the patrons of the restaurant, their tables dimly set out beneath a dark sea, fishes swimming behind their images. And few mermaids sometimes come, irresistibly attracted by the glow of the lights beneath the water, their appearance made even more spectacular and ghostly by the lights, catching them like footlights on an old dance hall stage, they come, for the flattery of further attention, to see the band and the evening gowns. We know nothing of their own nocturnal life, if they had one before us, save that they come and go as they please.

It's best as it is now, a quiet dim glow with nothing to see, coffee and eggs. The terrible thing about the morning is generally how much activity there generally is. Here nothing is happening, just a bit of leader before the show starts.

Lunchtime is the worst. Crowds of tourists ordering sausages, wags pressed against the glass, rapping, laughing. Great schools of mermaids pass by, with the sun behind them, looking like angels. People always tap on the glass, and rude young men make the most vulgar jokes and displays, knowing that the glass protects them from their being understood, from their inexperienced desire, from their fear. People come, to fill the place, to kill the afternoon, to drink bock and ginger beer, to drape themselves over the railing and make a display of themselves. They churn about the tank in a great noisy school, pouring mustard into their buns: unfailingly each kind of person makes the sort of banal remark they were created for: the wags make exactly the same witless jibes, the pendants the same commentary, the roués the let slip the same tired lascivious innuendo; the prudes hasten to complete the circuit quickly. And everyday a husband with a smile both lecherous and doting will lean to his plain wife and say that were she to let her hair down and float naked, she would be more beautiful than any mermaid; the plainer the wife and the more excited the husband, the sooner it comes.

All this the mermaids see. They float above us like birds, they pass us silently, unoccupied with our present as ghosts, their expressions and identities as unreadable and unchanging as fish.

Now is better. Only the eggs and coffee and the green fade of the waters. No mermaids, or fish even. Nothing but a dim diffuse light in what might be an empty nothing save the cold dim disclosure of the waters, an arm or an elbow, the tuft that is not sea grass, but hair, of sailors and men, so unfortunate to have loved and been forgotten.

okay, enough with the fish people already

TURN #79: WEEK 65; WORDS: 68,760
NEXT BY 20 SEPTEMBER 2006

The Desert Bride

2006-09-05T18:53:00.000-04:00

for cl

In such hot dry weather, irritable to his skin and impossible to his temper, the merman's thoughts slip into the slow soft tides at night and his land-wife knows it well, his legs scissoring the cool splash of the sheets, he is already gone. Not really a year, but a season: she has grown much older and more serious, if by serious we mean believing less of love and expecting little from each day. All courage and imagination had been consumed in their defiant marriage, which every opinion and authority was universal in condemning as ill considered and proverbially foolish. But she had never met a man like him, so oddly featured from the sea, his nose like a conch and his skin patterned like shells, so smooth with a well-shaped swimming build and seal-like expression. It pleased her greatly just to look at him and when she could not be done looking, she wanted to have him some how and was sure he would make her happy. People thought her perverse and proud, and so she was to realize herself different from the farmer's sons, the dull fishing boys who fancied themselves masters of the sea for merely playing atop it and dampening themselves a little. His people practically only came to the surface in the worst of storms, to surf upon the breaks and play among the thunder.

For his part, he was possessed of an unusual curiosity for his race; the diet of land dwellers is usually enough to repel the children of the sea. His first taste of bread was softened in the water. He was fascinated by the smoke of pipes, and the smell of fruit, the way things on the land went about on wobbly legs. Life on land seemed to be a mighty struggle, people, trees and those buildings called churches, all heavily built to mount up against the sky. The sea too, was very fierce, but the land dwellers had to fight it out among themselves, with so little of anything and nowhere to go, trapped on the surface like crabs in a tide pool. Most alien to him was the virtue of work of any kind, which seemed to go on rather longer than it should, for his tastes, and roughened the hands and hurt the feet. In the sea, all gatherings are social gatherings and little more was asked of his leadership or fealty than a hunting party or sport -and in these everyone shared equally the boon. To labour for a coin seemed foolish and childlike to his mind, like the affection of children for shells. Beyond money and labour, the only thing more foreign and incredulous to him was the idea of God.

He was curious, but in a dull way, inquisitive in a way that penetrated not, that remained on the surface of things. She remembered once he had disappeared; she thought immediately that he had gone back to the sea, thought this was obvious, but upon coming to the shore could not bring herself to look or to ask. But what would she have seen or asked anyway? She cried and was miserable and though she knew it to be certainly futile and more miserable she could not help walking the town to see he were possibly there,perhaps in trouble, or distracted, or otherwise detained. Much to her surprise and relief,she had found him: in a stranger's yard staring at a spider web. His look of fascination was paradoxically equivocal: with his dark seal eyes and pleased distracted expression, it seemed childlike, yet concealing some knowing smirk, yet idiotically invariant: his whole head moving as he followed the object of his attentions. Another time she found him enraptured by a windmill. He had taken hours to approach it. Fortunately, a villager, kinder and more intelligent than most, had seen his approach and hospitably welcomed him inside, which was itself another revelation, to look up and see inside the creaking dark giant.

Perhaps his interests seemed so inscrutable because often she could not find their object. Often they were sounds or smells, though easily these were painful or oppressive to him. He looked to the approach of unseen wagons and heard the clap before the most distant thunder. He liked to listen to her heart and the viscous sounds her innards made. He scented her period days in advance. Mustard had made him ill, but afterward, he developed quite a taste for it. He liked to play at catching food in his mouth, rather more than she thought seemly, for to do so made her feel that the worst critics of her marriage had been right and what if someone were to see? It was only with some pleading that he could be dissuaded from throwing food to her, but this had been established early during their courtship.

He loved rain and snow storms, was fascinated by books, but mainly for the texture of the paper. She once showed him a map of the world and when she explained what it was to represent nothing could stop his uninhibited piping laughter, though later he would point and ask what each land was like and how it was that there were arbitrary lines everywhere. He liked stews and soups and was fascinated by all things sweet; sweets and pickles were all he could be persuaded to take at first. He found cooked fish and shellfish unbearable. If given wine, he tended to take off his clothes.

She was certain that she loved him, but less sure of what that meant, if anything other than tragedy. Complacent and shiftless, prone to wander (though clumsy on land) she knew eventually he should simply slip back into the sea, saying nothing before, nor returning ever. She consoled herself with the thought that he would, however, surely think of her as he dived; dived, dived, dived, well down to where only the foundered ships and unhappy sailors had gone and perhaps not even there, pushing himself downwards with a muscular stroke, out racing sad thoughts of her, alone and lonely on land. His people do not cry, but let out a sad and pathetic plaintful bleat. She had heard it, his head on her breast. He would live a long time, his people did, and never stop talking, pridefully (modesty not being a virtue among them) of his time in shoes and coats, his life in the strange desert.

TURN #78: WEEK 64; WORDS: 68,019
NEXT BY 13 SEPTEMBER 2006

Kinds of Hypnotized Horse Acts

2006-08-29T14:34:00.000-04:00

The ordinary or simple hypnotized horse act is not very notable. It’s something of a time killer at best. Even for people familiar with horses the horse does nothing remarkable, nothing a un-hypnotized horse might do just as well, with the right training. Most acts begin with a few of these: some counting, nodding, neighing.

The next level of hypnotized horse act is a little more interesting and complicated, because the horse does something that takes a lot of training whether or not it is actually hypnotized. Advanced though it is, it still overlaps with the high end of well-trained horse acts and still begs the question of what it means to have hypnotized a horse. Typical: standing on hind legs, tightrope walking, using a knife and fork.

The genre of the hypnotized horse act really comes into its own with the advanced tricks. Here the horse is doing something that it is normally so disinclined to do, the audience readily assents that it must be, in fact, hypnotized. Typically this involves sitting in a chair, (silently) reading the paper, light acrobatics, playing more than one instrument.

Master hypnotized horse acts are usually saved for the finale of the best shows commonly seen, if that (actually, most acts proceed no further than the intermediate level at best, which leads to the general apathy about the acts as a whole). In these the horse does something generally regarded as impossible by those unfamiliar with hypnotized horses. These include such things as short improvised speeches in human languages on a subject of the audience’s choosing, crude magic tricks, climbing trees and short and very limited bursts of flight. This will immediately prompt the question for many in the audience as to who, really, has been hypnotized.

Hypnotized horse acts of the Grand Masters, are, in fact, hard to see and quite poorly documented. Nonetheless, in what accounts we have of them, they continue themes and acts of the Master Acts: the horse may answer more complicated questions, or debate a learned member of the audience on a subject of their particular expertise. The horse may cruelly follow on this by making some of it’s points in a precise mimicked impersonation of a person familiar to the speaker, or even their own voice. This mimicry, though often comedic, generally fills the audience with horror. Chess tournaments are rare, for, if accounts are to be believed, the horse acquit themselves only passably, always opening with N-KB3. Though in Master hypnotized horse acts, the points made by the horse can be light to quite specious, in Grand master acts the horses are diabolical advocates, often on controversial or unacceptable theses. This is only made worse by any kind of mathematical or logical act, in which the horses often “prove” illogical or incoherent propositions. This part of the act is generally characterized as a nightmare. If the horse has demonstrated a particularly impossible or unthinkable proposition, such as the possibility of division by zero or the non divinity of Christ, some audience members may object strenuously that they are dreaming or themselves hypnotized, to which the horse may reply mockingly in the voice of their father. It is about this time that calls upon the Grand Master himself to stop this outrage become universal. The Grand Master, it must be noted, has been stiff and wholly motionless for the duration of the act. Spirited theatre goers who further swarm the stage are advised that upon approaching the Grand Master they are likely to be surprised by his stiff and irregular appearance, only to discover upon closing, that the figure in a tuxedo is little more than a scarecrow and the gilded theatre, little more than an empty field at night. The wind blows. You are naked. The horse stands there. You have never seen one before. The horse regards you. It snorts and flicks its tail to ask: who are you? But you have no words at all to reply.

TURN #77: WEEK 63; WORDS: 66,933
NEXT BY 6 SEPTEMBER 2006

Stories I Wrote to Girls Who Never Wrote Back III: Ed Harris Won't Leave Me Alone

2006-08-21T19:47:00.000-04:00

I awoke in an unfamiliar bed to Ed Harris tapping on the window. I put some shorts on and came out to the yard: it was bright out. Ed had a fistful of old GI Joe comic books and an open thing of cheap salsa. He was going on about something, about going somewhere to finish something. All I could think was: where are the chips? The thing about Ed is he has those eyes and his winning ways. You can never tell if he’s drunk or not. He’ll do something crazy and be sober as a lord. Or you’ll be driving with him or at the library or the courthouse and not realize a thing until you hear the -shhht of a beer opening. I can’t tell today. Why is Ed here? Suddenly Ed’s destination today becomes clearer; he’s talking about Switzerland, though for some reason, he wants/needs to make the journey by boat. “Ed,” I say “I gotta go to work today.” Which is a total lie because I’m not even really sure where I am. To make it seem realistic, I go over and pick up a newspaper lying in the driveway. It is an old shopping circular that is sopping wet, though I tuck it under my arm anyway to look like I am starting my day. Ed just laughs and gives me a half empty bucket of chicken, though instead of chicken there are the modified triggers and sears from a semi-automatic rifle, though it still smells like chicken. This makes me hungry. We say our goodbyes; Ed is still laughing, almost running in place. As I turn to go back in I remember: Ed and I did go partying. That was three days ago. I didn’t see him after the first night. I go back into the welcome dark of this messy home and notice, for the first time, a big guy sprawled out on the couch wearing what looks like Egyptian-themed maternity wear. I hope to go he’s not the reason I’m here. I go back to bed.

Later, I find the chips. They’re in my mailbox at home, long with a rubber boot and some sporty women’s underwear.

We are in a drugstore, ostensibly because Ed has a cold. Ed likes to try the remedies as he goes down the aisle. It is something of a tasting party. He dusts his tongue with Theraflu like it was Pixie Sticks. He keeps using the expression “worm”: “Worm up!”; “Worm to the Motherland”: “Where you at Worm?” My head is exploding from inhaling whatever gas Ed keeps in that mask and tank in the car. He spills a lot of Flintstones vitamins sorting through an economy sized jar of them looking for Dinos to bite the heads off. He slips and falls. He cries: “Willlll-mma! Get this cat offa me!” Eventually this leads to some intercession by the pharmacist. Ed pulls up to the window, like at a bar and says: “So, whatcha got?”

Ed is checking out some lingerie. “You know what I’m seeing?” he says “I’m seeing some itty bitty mosquitoes in that tent. You know what I mean.” He repeats this about five times. Until he finds a teddy and then starts saying: “This one, this one, this is for a big ol’ woman. This is for a bear woman. A big old woman with purple hair and a case of diet shasta sitting on top of a bean bag chair with is half-filled with weed from her mid-level dealer boyfriend who works at the Co-Op and makes banana bread but never cleans up.” Ed then sings an authentic Indian song he was taught at Columbia. “Hey pretty ladies,” calls Ed, “would you both like to model these for me?” “Ed,” I say, “we’re in Wal-Mart. That other woman is her mother.”

It is always a disaster going with Ed to a strip club, but the worst was the time he brought that snow shovel.

After we put out the fire in the car we had to sit there in the smoke and the piss because it was fucking freezing out with nothing but Drum to smoke and I wanted to cut my lips off. I tried to tell Ed: Ed I’m sick. Ed, I’m tired. Ed, I have grey hairs on my balls and I can’t do this anymore. I mean it’s been a scream, but I feel sick most of the time and I can’t keep the gyros down and I’m sick of Old Gold and brown phlegm and dirt and yelling and stealing so little and paying so much, and man, I love you man, but I’m dying, I’m dying and I just feel tired all the time and the shot of Jager isn’t making it and I don’t want to wake up in the morning; I hurt, I shake, only a little, but what the hell and Ed looks at me and he says do this, do this one shot with me: you are a Lord, feel your majesty, take your office and serve alongside me, robed in fleas and rags, blessed with vomit, stand alongside me, we, chosen for the blessing of mankind.

TURN #76: WEEK 62; WORDS: 66, 258
NEXT BY 30 AUGUST 2006

My Nietzsche

2006-08-14T17:53:00.000-04:00

for Rs

Just the other day I was looking at Kaufmann’s introduction to Thus Spoke Zarathustra when I came across this fact: Nietzsche and I are the same height. In that instant I grasped it all: I am a giant.

I have a different perspective on human life because I gaze down upon it like an eagle from the towers of five foot eight. Does the thunder frighten you? It is merely our laughter, the laughter of we titans, we five foot eight Hyperboreans.

In all probability, I could walk in Nietzsche’s shoes; I weigh 66 kilos; I could wear his overcoat -the overcoat of the Father of the Overman. I could fit into his suits. I would wear them with no underwear in a Revaluation of All Values! Naked like a child!

Listen as I mock this Wagner CD! And kiss this horse!

Nietzsche was a lonely man; if you doubt this, read Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Zarathustra has disciples; he leaves them; he comes back; he leaves them; in the end he spends time in bed talking to his animals. I, too, spend time in bed talking to my stuffed animals.

We are lonely: because we stand at the five foot eight peaks of wisdom, a horizon from which we can see the coming of that which justifies Man, the Overman. We carried our ashes to the mountains. We return bringing our fire to the valley. This has met with mixed results.

In all of Zarathustra’s wanderings, in his questings, -no where does he find any hint of a girlfriend, unless that girlfriend be eternity herself, wedded with that nuptial ring of rings, the eternal return, which is really more of a personification and so there is really no hint of a girlfriend and everything will repeat itself exactly as it has happened, with fire-dogs, dwarves, hunchbacks, tarantulas but no girlfriend.

I, too, go everywhere in my student’s coat, and here and there slap somebody on the shoulder and say, Siamo contenti? Son dio ho fatto questa caricatura.

I, too, have had Caiphas put in fetters, Wilhelm, Bismarck, and all Anti-Semites abolished.

For in the end, I would much rather have been a Basel professor than God; but I have not dared push my private egoism so far as to desist for its sake from the creation of the world, You see, one must make sacrifices however and wherever one lives.

Tomorrow my son Umberto will come with the lovely Margharita, whom, however, I shall also receive here only in shirtsleeves. The rest is for Frau Cosima -Ariadne -from time to time there is magic.

You may make any use of this letter which will not degrade me in the eyes of those at Basel.

TURN #75: WEEK 61; WORDS: 65,396
NEXT BY 23 AUGUST 2006

A Short, Yet Wholly Inadequate and Unworthy Guide to Grovelling

2006-08-07T14:14:00.000-04:00

Apologize to those loved ones you've offended here.

Alas, the age of the apology is past. One could formerly get away with just about anything, provided one apologized for it sufficiently. Even one’s victims, when acknowledged, became forgiving, even flattered. Apology is a true sign of civilization: it deflects harm with rhetoric, it is the triumph of wit and cunning and dramaturgy over dull justice. Justice requires no imagination but the opposite; retribution is mere exchange [footnote], but the apology is transformative. It is, in highest sense, art. The greatest dullard can go the gallows as easily as a cow to the slaughterhouse, but only a man of civilization can plead for his life -and get away with it.

The apology is tied into the essence of our civilization, our modernity, for it presupposes a unique soul that can repent. A good apology has insight, understanding, introspection -authenticity, sincerity. In short, it is proof of modern subjectivity and its mythology of free choice and conscience: it is deontological. Its very idea is essential to the modern idea of universal peace.

And yet the age of apology is past, perhaps because our civilization is in true decline. Today we have reverted to primitive ideas that are really too crude to be Old Testament. The important thing today is to punish. Somebody. And all the time. It really matters very little what the original reason was or if there ever was a reason: when you punish someone long enough, this becomes reason enough: they start to look like bad people and by the end of the process you are sure they must be. People are no longer interested in reasons because they are no longer interested in thinking.

Time was that truth and reconciliation were so important that one could even commit war crimes and pay only the penance of admitting to them. Whereas everyone came to formerly agree that apologizing was good, making one the “better man” and children were taught to apologize, groveling, apology’s ecstatic sibling, never enjoyed a vogue. This, however, is part of groveling’s success and effectiveness, as we shall see.

The merest human interaction is offensive, odious and torturous without groveling. Show me a man who can get through an entire day without saying “Sorry I’m so late” and I will show you a total savage, irredeemably primitive in his ignorance of punctuality, or the pleasures of not being prompt. If you are ever at a dinner party and the host or hostess does season the food with apology (“I’m sorry your steaks are so huge, it was all they had”) you can be sure that you are supping with wild barbarians, total cannibals who may kill and eat your baby without asking.

The ideal grovel is seductive. It is invisible and transparent. It is charismatic: indeed, it is messianic, in that it redeems and transforms an unworthy situation. It restores hope to an otherwise hopeless situation. The potentially offended party is so distracted and redirected from their own feelings, expectations and situation that the idea of being offended strikes them as totally unthinkable. Ideally, the grovel takes them out of their lives all together and, like a romance, involves them entirely in the life of the groveler.

The ideal grovel is an unconditional surrender that goes one better; it adds conditions so onerous and unthinkable that the victor feels unreasonable and a little embarrassed. Indeed, victory itself has become unbearable. War will probably never become unthinkable; but some apologies certainly are. This indeed is the secret of groveling; it is something so shameful and degrading that neither party can really admit it happened; in this sense, it never really happens; in this sense, it is truly magical, a happy ending, a deus ex machina -ex nihilo. This is why groveling never enjoys a vogue; because it is always in vogue, it is the secret currency of the world, but unlike gold or oil it cannot be seen or viewed. It is the most secret lust and debauch whose satisfaction and desire is never spoken of.

Apology is rational, sometimes necessary and highly appropriate. Groveling is irrational, theatrical and tactically inappropriate. Apology may genuinely signal repentance and a change of heart, the beginning of understanding and the end of conflict. Groveling is that conflict continued by extraordinary and inverse means.

Blessed are the grovelers; they may not be the bringers of true peace or understanding, but they are easier had than either.

[Note: Indeed, retribution is caught up in a mythology exchange and “the same.”]

Sorry this post isn't up to snuff; next week will be better.

TURN #74: WEEK 60; WORDS: 64,931
NEXT BY 16 AUGUST 2006

The War With No Name

2006-08-01T14:50:00.000-04:00

I died in a war with no name, in a place no one knew what to call it, because it had been bombed a lot and the last thing I thought is that the scream of the shell was running away from me.

My country had no name, because I had no country, not anymore, and that was what the war was about.

I was placed in a common grave, because so many had died there was no place to put them.

I believed in our cause and the reasons given, but the reasons given weren’t the real reasons, we knew this, we knew there had to be reasons.

If there ever were a memorial, that would be good, and they could put it here where I died, in a place with no name, because they would have a name for it now, and the war in which I died, and there would be more reasons because peace grows reasons from acts seeded in war.

If there ever were a memorial, that would be good, because then war would be over and people could go to the memorial, for whatever reasons they had, perhaps just on their break for lunch, and sit in the shade and read what it says.

And what the memorial should say is: Life is sweet.

TURN #73: WEEK 59; WORDS: 64,174
NEXT BY 9 AUGUST 2006

Lifeguard of the Black Beach of Hell

2006-07-24T15:19:00.000-04:00

Unable and powerless to circumvent my miseries, daunted, discouraged and unable to face reality alone, now that she had left, I drew upon my last resources; my will, however, was poisoned, I had no strong figures to identify with, I had no pride in myself and from my own people I could only expect disgust and disappointment; I was alone and desolate, with no one to draw upon; perhaps worst of all I had come to despise my only virtues: my intelligence, good humor and sense of obligation filled me with disgust; they were not enough to keep her (no, quite the opposite, I thought) so I deemed them unfit to keep me alive. I had a simple choice, I could give up love or give up living and so, drunk with so many things, but mainly pain, I thought it brave, so very brave and rare to choose the latter and died.

For my many crimes, my lack of shrift, pilfered cheeses and incomplete papers, I was sent to Hell. And on that sunless shore I became a lifeguard.

Hell is very different than the living imagine, except that it is hellish. There are a surprising number of children. And the sort of lines you'd expect.

Hell, like the army or the bursar's office, has its own logic and way of doing things. You begin with a series of interviews, which are off-putting to say the least. It’s probably for the best, people carry on in the worst way just lining up. The questions are really unexpected and there are a lot of them. Many people try and use the interview to their advantage, thinking that if they say they love loud noises, they’ll be put somewhere quiet, or be given steak if they say they are vegetarian. There is no advantage: this is Hell.

Most of the dammed feel relieved. Those that don’t are a pain in the ass.

My personal disappointment was the lack of answers. Here, too, God is silent; the Devil is loquacious and equivocal.

I express that I thought the soul was a metaphor: “A metaphor for what?” is the reply.

One day I am simply given some black, black swim trunks and a whistle that sounds like a Stuka dive bomber. More: in life I was bespectacled and bookish and at best a poor swimmer. In Hell I was given a firm and powerful swimmer’s build, with a swelling chest, keen eyes and a permanent erection. I try to understand what has happened, to fathom my sentence. I am only told that it was never about punishment, or reward. That was a story for simpletons and children, those who needed it. Not in the previous world, either they say. Or the next.

The thing about Hell, though, is that nobody is what you would call “credible”.

Literary work that most accurately portrays Hell: Une Saison en Enfer, Rimbaud.

Hell is also other people. And their dogs.

Hell has several bodies of water, some of them quite immense, even if frozen, so there is some need for lifeguards. Infernally, in some cases the job of the lifeguard is to prevent the damned soul from rising to the surface, but usually we mind the shores for the same reasons as above. We have to be trained in CPR, mouth-to-mouth and Gregg’s or the Pitman Method. In Hell, mouth-to-mouth is always done inappropriately and for the worst of reasons. For this reason we have permanent erections. It is not unusual to see a gang of lifeguards descending on some poor soul. This is Hell.

I sit in the lifeguard chair, under a black sky that burns bright with no light, but darkness visible, the reverse sunscreen blacking out my nose making me look like a skull. Perhaps I am, I haven’t looked. In my high chair I am relaxed and vigilant, at ease with my naked muscles and erection, cooly cruel beneath my long hair, flicking the ashes of my cigarette on the naked pale narrow shoulders of the dammed as they are dragged by on the barge. I sit above them, as though in judgement, and the new souls do not realize that this is as much judgement as they are likely to receive in Hell. Or I do so in reflection, if I am, in an infernal manner, stationed at the bottom of the river, glaring at the bottom of the barge, seeing their woeful eyes seek out their own reflection in that blackest of waters.

There is beer, but the beer is not cold.
There is no recycling.

After work I usually drive an awesome muscle car to a local bar. I do not know what it is called, only that it has an enormous engine that sounds like a growling bomber wing impatient to take off. It was apparently so cool when first designed that it never went into production. It went straight to Hell. The Devil himself drove one for a while, until he wrapped his around a Christmas display. Yes, Christmas is celebrated in Hell. It is celebrated year-round. This is one of the ways you know you are in Hell. Of course, nobody calls it Christmas. They just say “Happy Holidays” and then they stab you with a corkscrew.

The bars in Hell are a fairly rough scene. There usually isn’t ice, and so the bartenders tend to fill your glass with bits of jagged glass. Many people opt for beer, though it isn’t cold and is only jagged glass.

Karaoke: about the same. The words tend to scroll a little faster and are hard to read, as in a dream. Sometimes you look up and your high school music teacher is there. Naked and masturbating.

On the karaoke screen, the words crawl over each other like voices in one's head. The words may seem different, transposed and wrong, depending on the song. For songs that originated in Hell, or from artists whose souls were bought, these are the true lyrics, which on earth are sung backwards. This basically covers most Rock n'Roll.

Drinks: expensive. You might as well get top shelf. I cannot even begin to talk about the well-brands here.

Even though I am a lifeguard, I find myself at the beach a lot. Here’s what I like to do: I find some scrawny kid with his date sitting on a blanket. I stroll on up to him and kick sand in his eyes, causing him to drop his copy of Schopenhauer. Then I ridicule his scrawniness and his lack of faith in German Idealism. I smack him around a bit. I make fun of his poor French. Finally, I rip off his trunks and shove them in his mouth. I walk off with his girl on my arm, laughing. Or, I like to find some kids and help them make a kite.

I am the lifeguard of the black beach of Hell, the sand that is all pumice and bones, the tide that is stinging remorse, the wind that is screaming, screaming, and the eternal sunset that is the glory of pride, Hell’s emblem.

film adaptation: The Surf Inside Me

The Encouraging Voice of the Labyrinth is the journal that takes you places without return.

TURN #72: WEEK 58; WORDS: 63,943
NEXT BY 2 AUGUST 2006

Notice to Quit

2006-07-18T19:17:00.000-04:00

to MLM

1. I ride around every where in this little place on my bicycle, which demonstrates what a little town it is and that I’m a little fit. I was telling a pastry chef at a party how Poe died –I know, it's horrible when no one knows and you have to break it to them, and I’m old, so horribly old, now that I no longer really enjoy myself, or get drunk, but instead start helping people find their glasses with a little flashlight I carry –I know. Anyway, there’s nothing much to say about the party except that before going I had written your initials on the back of my hand –no, not to hit anyone, but because I carried a message for you.

2. But I couldn’t deliver the message right away because it was a long bike ride and I was a little tipsy, what with helping everybody.

3. I had also run out of ex-girlfriends to call when you’re slightly tipsy from helping everybody at four in the morning. Well, I haven’t really run out, but most of them either call too often or not often enough to be bothered at this hour for that kind of phone call; which is to say that I’ve either called them when I was slightly tipsy from helping everybody at four in the morning too often, or not often enough.

4. What would say is: I have belatedly discovered I am the same height as Nietzsche.

5. You know what this means.

6. So I spent a good week and a half becoming infatuated with Wagner’s music so as to better break-up with Wagner.

7. Falling asleep was a real problem.

8. When you think about it, Wagner basically invented disco.

9. In Tony Palmer’s ten hour Wagner, Wagner at Bayreuth struggles, as always, with his production, with money, with his unbaptised conductor, with his unfinished festpielhaus, and most of all with his orchestra that he has stuck in a giant dungeon oven (this is a German word) beneath the stage whose violins are melting in the subterranean heat. The twilight of the gods is hard to organize. As he is wandering through the vast empty tuning darkness of the stage, a man calls him over. “An instrument to replace the orchestra,” he says. It is an accordion.

“Come here, Richter,” says Wagner “this may be the end of the world.”

10. The world can basically be divided into Wagnerites and Anti-Wagnerites, with the exception of those who are both or neither.

11. Mahler gets classed as a Wagnerite.

12. Mahler’s wife, Alma Mahler went on to date Walter Gropius, Franz Werfel and Oskar Kokoschka.

13. Her first kiss was from Gustav Klimt.

14. Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

15. Kokoschka was really obsessed with Alma. That’s her in Bride of the Wind.

16. I saw this painting as a child in my Junior Brittanica.

17. When Alma left Kokoschka, Kokoschka became so obsessed with her he had a life -sized doll made to look like her by the Munich doll maker Hermine Moos.

18. The doll does not look so good in pictures.

19. Kokoschka liked it well enough. It was said he took it to the opera.

20. Kokoschka explicitly denied this.

21. Of course, this is a man who slept with a life-sized doll.

22. I slept with a mannequin for a while.

23. The thing you learn about sleeping with a mannequin is that everybody who comes to visit you tweaks or punches the doll sadistically. You end up dressing the doll, overdressing it, really, in the most outrageous costumes.

24. All this is part of our way of compensating and revenging ourselves on the doll’s lack of animation.

25. I was just going through my virtual mail and

26. You’ve written some great letters. Like when you wrote about saying “Spasibo” to the Sbarro guy.

27. Nobody writes anymore.

28. Or –they write too much.

29. I’m a whore and I’ll reuse parts of this in my writing and get by, by dedicating it to you.

30. With your kind permission.

31. I miss you.

32. Here is your message:

33. I am going back.

34. Where?

35. To Chicago.

36. To the U of C.

37. Yes, to graduate.

38. I know.

39. I know.

40. I don’t believe it either. In fact, that’s why I have to go. I started to become suspicious myself. I started to think it was a cover story. I asked around. I thought: what do I really know about this guy?

41. I always have my acceptance speech ready. Last words aren’t important, in fact they’re usually kind of brief. The acceptance speech, by definition, has a lot of people standing around and somehow it’s really important, even if you’ve got a pretty solid grip on the award. It’s like when you or someone says “I love you” or “is it safe?” The next few seconds are going to make a difference for somebody. So in my acceptance speech I was going to acknowledge just how circuitous my path had been and thank my many kind friends and indulgent instructors –the people who had believed in me.

42. Only this time I have to add something: I also am deeply indebted to really didn’t. I decided to return because one friend noted to another friend that I was on a leave of absence. The other friend replied: when’s he gonna give up that fantasy?

43. I was so pissed off I wrote the dean right away.

44. It was Superman and Batman. Yes, super friends.

45. Superman had said as much to me, but not so directly. We talk late at night on the phone. I talk about Chicago. He talks about Krypton. Sometimes I get him to try and remember, because he’s very different when he talks about Krypton. Not like Superman, and not like Clark. A guy from another world, but who’s never been there. “My freaking super dog Krypto is more Kryptonian than I am” he said. I try to get him to talk about the spires and those spinning things, the sound of the white nights, the overture of the oldest stars. He yelled at me once: “You don’t get it, do you? It doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter if Krypton was, or if it is, or if I even could go back in time! All these freaking crystals with my Mom and Dad –it doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter if it lives in this real miniature city with real miniature Kryptonians I keep on my frickin’ desk! Krypton is just a fantasy to me! Superman is just a stupid hobby. I’m freaking Clark Kent already! I live in Metropolis! I owe forty-six thousand dollars in student loans! There’s not a single person I respect that I see every day, least of all myself. I’m cursed with a work ethic and X-ray vision. I would blow my fucking head off, but guess what –whereas every supervillian –and I mean all of them -have figured out a way to kill Superman –Nobody has the slightest clue how to kill Clark Kent!” He had just fought with the Insect Queen again. He was probably still drenched in webs, poor guy.

46. I wasn’t angry at Batman for what he said. It was the greatest favor anyone could have done me.

47. You know where you stand with Batman.

48. That Batman, he has problems.

49. Part of my problem is that I really hate going anywhere or doing anything. My fondest daydreams fill me with dread. Deep down, I even really dread going to Disney World.

50. I lost my nerve. Someday I fear I’ll lose my nerve to go to Disney World. Then what will I do?

51. The other thing that I always think of –actually, it’s something I start to feel, is that the minute anything changes, the minute I start a new relationship or travel, when I start to live, I think of what’s her name.

52. You know who I’m talking about.

53. And I can feel myself getting an alcoholic-like thirst –oh, not for drink.

54. For laughter.

and to my many friends, skeptics, belivers and agnostics alike

TURN #71: WEEK 57; WORDS: 62,826
NEXT BY 26 JULY 2006

My Lines From My Porno Movie

2006-07-11T17:07:00.000-04:00

pruient pics by crookedletter

-Go and tell your Master that his Masters are here.

-You will pay for this impudence.

-May I introduce my friend, Baron Skin-Eater?

-Good, good.

-Why, hello! Your mommy and daddy aren’t home, are they?

-Yes, I’d like it if you came next Thursday.

-I’d like to open a new bank account, please.

-Oh, about six weeks.

-Get whatever you want on your half.

-Good, good.

-Strip them. Arouse the Mongoloid.

-Oh, nothing much, how about you?

-Strapado: S-T-R-A-P-A-D-O

-Yes, you may borrow it.

-Okay. I am going now.

-One Adult and one Senior Citizen’s Discount please.

-Yes, I would like butter. A lot of butter.

-Good, good.

TURN #70: WEEK 56; WORDS: 61,456
NEXT BY 19 JULY 2006

On Love and Jealousy

2006-07-03T22:47:00.000-04:00

a typical writing sample from Los Angeles

Jealousy is the most misunderstood of the human passions, wrongly thought to be a perversion of love. Rather, as Hegel observes, whereas animals want and negate things directly like cattle grazing in a field, it is most human to want what others want, especially if only because others want it. More things are done out of jealousy and revenge than out of love. This is because, despite optimistic and well-meaning testimonials to the contrary, love is actually quite scarce. I know, I know, it is taken as a piece of elemental wisdom in our day, as our General Relativity, the principle of equivalence that the love you take is equal to the love you make. However, unlike General Relativity, this turns out to be an article of mere faith, that is, like all aspects of what is called faith, a piece of wishful thinking no different from other forms of denial, which is why people get so desperately angry when it is challenged.

From a Restricted to a General Economy: The Scarcity of Love

In actuality, even the briefest examination of the economics of love and affection reveals that not only is there not enough love to go around, but that there never will be. There are only a finite number of people capable of expressing love. Likewise, there are only so many people who are really lovable (if you doubt this, you are either more fortunate, or more self-deceived). There is a wholly antithetical line of thinking that says that everyone (or even everything) is capable of love and deserves love. We imagine this infinite capacity for love, as we might infinite possibilities. But let’s face it: have you ever been to a video store? It’s hard enough to rent something worth watching. Yes, you can say to yourself, but given an infinite number of people and an infinite amount of time, surely every film is worth watching. But an infinite amount of time and people is precisely what this world lacks, and even then when the last fundamental particles in the universe are too far away and too cold to interact, even then, the assembled bundle called Secret Window will not be worth watching and will receive no thumbs up in a thumbless universe. Most feature films last only eighty minutes or so; some relationships are known to go on even longer.

So mutatis mutandis there is not enough love to go around. Love has to express itself somehow, in looks, in glances, and preferably in expensive gifts and sexual extravagance, and these things are finite resources deployed by finite people: this is why the more love you give, the less love you have. People sometimes mistakenly think that their love comes back to them with interest; in actuality it is habit that accumulates but this is the subject of another essay entirely. Parents often tell their children they love their children equally. If you have a sibling, you know this is simply not true. The history of siblings from Cain and Abel onwards demonstrates this. Parents are probably where the whole unlikely adage that everyone deserves love idea got started. God is often imagined to be some sort of ultimate parent with infinite patience, time and resources to love everybody. His behavior, however, seems to indicate that either he hasn’t or doesn’t. If parents want to be honest to their children, they will say that they love each in their own way, which is to say, some more than others and others only at their parole hearing. In the absence of God, if every human being were capable and worthy of love, then after 500,000 years of humanity, by now things should have sorted themselves out in to some sort of symmetrical steady state and everyone should love and feel love: this is clearly not the case.

If this simple math and honest theology does not convince you, I would suggest you make an honest and frank examination of your own experiences and see it is not horribly, awfully, inconveniently and incontrovertibly true that there never was enough love to go around. And never will be, for whereas there are only plans to make more and more people, there are no plans to make them any more lovable. Indeed, the more people there are, the less lovable any of them can be. Nobody in the Black Hole of Calcutta was heard to exclaim: “I love people!” (N.B. This is why “people who need people are the luckiest people in the world” -because there are so many of them).

The universal human convention of kinship demonstrates the scarcity of love, as does the contractual form called monogamy, a direct and long standing refutation of the notion that “if you love someone, you should set them free.” Indeed, it is not enough to love someone and have them roped into some sort of long-term contract to regularly dispense with said love. Ideally, you also have some sort of back-up. These are generally people you have no real respect for whatsoever and are hence readily available and emotionally inexpensive. These are the people you turn to should your primary love resource fail, in the event you’ve done something stupid, like set them free. True, they don’t really have the same oomph as the loved one, but they will serve you well in your times of need as some sort of human shield against the elements, and as someone who has somehow become immured to your complaining and whining which is what happens when love is interrupted. These highly disposable and interchangeable people are known as “lifelong friends.”

Jealousy is the Human Condition

So, given that love does and must exist in a condition of scarcity, the default, the most likely, the most common human experience -what you might as well call the human condition itself, is jealousy. It is logical to feel jealous: the love you once has is now going to someone else. There is less love for you and less love in general because you’re just going to feel sorry for yourself.

Architectonically, there are only three logical possibilities that define how jealous you will be and what you will be jealous about. But first, it is sometimes possible that one should be rejected by the loved one in favour of nothing. Though logically it should really be the most upsetting, since it effectively indicates that nothing is preferable to one’s company, somehow people are never jealous of nothing, perhaps because we are all half negation anyway, but it does not constitute jealousy and hence falls outside our discussion.

First Possibility: Dumped for An Equal

The most one can hope for in jealousy is that one is dumped for someone much like oneself that one actually likes and respects. This is flattering and the least deranging to our sensibilities and feeds our narcissism. Céline wisely observed that in the end what makes a person lovable is their love or need for not us, but the whole class of people like us, in Céline’s case his girl’s love for dirty Frenchmen. This blessed case of being dumped for the better man, that is, someone exactly like ourselves is naturally limited in its cases, chiefly occurring where there are good friends, clones, identical twins, time travelers and other freaks of nature. It is accordingly quite rare.

Second Possibility: Dumped for An Insect

The second and most common case is that one is dumped for some sort of completely inferior insect. This would seem to be almost universally the case, not for the least of which reasons being one of the few saving graces of our existence is our ability to lie to ourselves (see faith and denial, above). Indeed, if we are at all healthy, we will be saying to ourselves, “I cannot imagine what she sees in my identical clone, he’s a total loser.”

In some cases, regrettably, one’s successor is authentically quite inferior. This is infuriating and all-too common. It leads to all kinds of wishful thinking that has little to recommend for it, aggravating one’s natural desires to run other people’s lives (“she’s wasting her time with that jerk”) with one’s own capacity of neediness and self-pity, an unbeatably unpleasant and pernicious condition that usually can only be resolved by the violent death of some if not all of the parties involved, (particularly if the new person is, in fact, an old person, one’s immediate predecessor: this has a disquieting effect of essentially repudiating whatever love feelings and experiences one has had with loved one. One might as well put one’s picture in a frame and join a candlelight vigil for one has become “disappeared”, a non person vanished in non events).

Final Possibility: Dumped For a Superior

As unpleasant as this is, it is not nearly as unpleasant as when one’s successor is authentically more worthy, more evolved and superior to oneself and more pleasing to the loved one in ways that one could not. If the successor, in particular, possesses qualities that the the individual himself lacks -and the individual knows it, then the presence of the new person and the formerly unattainable mutual happiness of that person and the loved one goes from being a mere repudiation and critique of the love relationship to being a referendum on that person himself, a critique of their very existence. Then, not only has one lost, but one has lost because one is authentically not worthy, for things one has always struggled to be, but failed. Worse, this last case is totally indistinguishable from the second.

Worst of all, in reality, every case is more or less this third case, for the new person is capable of something one is not; engaging the loved one.

absit iniuria verbis

TURN #69: WEEK 55; WORDS: 61,348

NEXT BY 12 JULY 2006

The Reader

2006-06-26T13:47:00.000-04:00

spectacular photography by crookedletter

'er lasst sicht nicht lessen'

-Poe

Unable and powerless to circumvent my miseries, daunted, discouraged and unable to face reality alone, I sought refuge in the companionship of others. Wretched and unloved, despising of myself as the object of anyone’s attentions or affections, I knew not where to go, where I would be accepted. I had always enjoyed the quiet company of books and so it occurred to me that a librarian or bookseller, someone literate and studious, might, if anyone understand and favour me.

How many times had I seen her and how many times had we met? That is the peril of the library: there is always something to read, and so our encounters were always avoidant and half mumbled, my eyes in the books I had come to her to borrow: but gentle, gentle. And do not think dear reader, because I never said anything, that I did not give her more than a passing thought, for I thought of her a great deal, often and vividly as only the shy can, to where I could honesly say that she filled my world, at least the part of my world I had left fallow and open for something other than unrelieved solitude, and though I waited, and waited so long and distantly, do not imagine further that everything that came, did not come pregnant on that first glance, that very first glance, surreptitiously behind the camouflage of Jane’s Guide to All Armoured Vehicles which I was perusing in the hopes of recognizing a silhouette from a disturbing and recurring dream I had been having. No, I was never not keenly aware of her, though I walked, as all true library patrons walked, in my readerly sleep and seemed to peruse only shelves; indeed, I would often reconoiter around the display of books of local interest (which held no interest for me) in the hopes of obtaining the merest telescopic glimspe of her fair and sedulous face serene over the horizon of her counter.

She was graceful, she was slender, she was like a slight blonde, bespectacled moth by an itty bitty book light. She too, always had a book, but an easy a gracious smile as she dutifully and silently received each patron. We had perhaps exchanged fewer than a dozen words or phatic sounds over the course of our acquaintance, if it could be even called that. But readers, they live between pages, that are to say in their heads, and there, there –what had I not imagined between us?

Paradoxically, in order to woo her I kept having to check out books I had already read or owned and knew quite well. This made for some illogical chit-chat: “Yes, it’s a wonderful book and I already have several copies at home." Which was impressive, in a way, but nonsensical.

Our first assignation went, on the whole, rather well. I was not at all disconcerted to note that she had brought a book, though when she read it at dinner, I feared for her eyes: “There’s never enough lighting in these places.” I said. “How is your book?” I asked, to which a received a not unfriendly, readerly, shrugging ruffling gesture, that, though cordial, did not seem to have any communicative content, other than acknowledgment. After some subtle moments, I inquired after the book’s author and what else they had written, but this and other simple conversational openings seemed to serve only to distract her from her reading. Not wanting to hinder her, I wisely kept my menu throughout the meal, so that I, too, would be reading, that we would be reading together: fortunately, I had picked a fine restaurant, which, in addition to having lengthy descriptions of desserts, also featured an extensive and diverting wine list with many evocative foreign titles. By the end of the coffee service, she finished her chapter and was ready to leave. It had been a pleasant evening over all for her: the food had been agreeable enough, I supposed, and the reading engrossing. I asked if we could meet again, to which she unequivocally replied “Sure”.

For our second rendez-vous, I suggested a reading -a tactical misjudgment on my part, for she despises being read to, which she feels spoils the whole beauty of reading. Even worse, of course, are audio books, or film adaptations of books. I ask her what she is reading now. “The same book” she replies. It is by no means a small book, with fine type, but it seems she is getting along with it. It might very well help if I knew at least what kind of book it was, but our conversations never seem to get around to it.

One day, over coffee I discover that she enjoys fiction as much as non-fiction. Actually, this is an inference, but based on much quiet observation. Further, subject matter does not seems to matter; she is either a polymath, or indiscriminate. Good, bad, it is all reading. I finally understood this went we went out to the country together. Her eyes lingered over the entirety of the ticket, to its finest print on the limits of its liability. She is never bored, as long as there is something to read. Or she is always bored.

Reading, which is how most often I see her, her eyes are almost as though closed, as though she is sleeping; this readily sonnambulance is somehow intimate. Or it is the opposite of intimacy. Her face expresses little and when it does, it is brief and perishable; not knowing what it is she reads I do not know to what she reacts, if it is at the text, at the author, or something from her own life of which I know nothing. Only her little eyes dart back and forth with regularity, like ants going from one end of a leaf to another.

Of her family I know nothing. Of her education I know nothing. Of her past I know nothing. Of her experiences I know nothing. Of her loves and hopes, I know nothing. Of her pets I know nothing. An unbroken and unspoken "Shhh" separates us; the wall of the book. Of her hobbies I know she likes: reading.

Our relationship, though in some ways quite singular, is modern and we do end up in bed, as she will allow me to nibble on her neck so long as I do not read over her shoulder. This act is quite rewarding in itself as she is quite lovely, having a librarian's graceful build, though somewhere in the act I become concerned with how what is happening now compares to what she has read, if it is drawn from all sorts of different sources, Anäis Nin's diaries and Penthouse Forum, the Susie Bright and D.H. Lawrence. Henry Miller. This throws me off my game.

Afterward I regard her lovingly in the soft light of her little itty bitty book light.

Eventually, I reached that point that many lovers do reach, of needing to declare my love, whether it is a matter of Venus's true conscience or simply one of protracted frustration, boredom and curiosity. The singularity of my beloved, though, gives me an opportunity of unique fortune and genius: I will write her a love letter, knowing with certainty that she will read it. A problem presents itself: what will be the style?

Knowing not her tastes in reading, but only that she reads, I chose logically to pursue an encyclopadetic approach to the whole subject and create a passable pastiche of all the songs, sonnets, diatribes, Platonic dialogues, billet doux and epistletory historical novels that mankind has had mind to pen over the history of writing. It was an ambitious project, but the thought of a substantial and authoritative tome to capture her attention was appealing. Here I would express not only my own tender delicate feelings, but the love feelings, tender and delicate or otherwise, of every human being that had recourse to written symbols and were available to my survey. To be sure, this took some time, but as our relationship wasn't going anywhere and I had no competing interests, I applied myself readily and the project proceeded apace. The results were not unlike a cross between Moby-Dick, Hobbes' Leviathan and Pound's Cantos, a certain over emphasis on classical allusion owing the fact that of the various languages learned to compose the letter, Greek was the most dearly acquired. Yet, in all my learning and footnotes, I still felt like a child, in this matter of the heart, wanting so dearly for her to read it. The letter was written in an equivocal, agonistic way, one paragraph declaiming the nature of love was immediately followed by another anti-thetical to it, unified only as much as men's hearts have been, in the use of the word "love" and more particularly in my love of the reader.

Having delivered it to her doorstep in a finely bound copy printed at my expense, I waited a calculated number of days (knowing by now well her approximate parsing speed) and dropped in at the library to casually ask if she had read my letter, to which she unequivocally replied: "Yes."

It was later, but not much later, that I finally grasped my doom. Of all the readers I might have found, jealous readers, careless readers, readers who bring their own crypto-political platforms to bear, readers who skip to the end -it was my fate to receive this one, the reader, the great silent unknowable majority, the unknown eye that copy editors watch out for, the inaudible voice of posterity. This is the mystery reader that sits and receives the unprepared essays that we write in our dreams, a reader so unreal and impersonal it might as well be my own death. The reader who reads, but who cannot be read.

Accepting of my fate and the fate of all human communication, I resolved to consign myself to being a fellow solitaire, a companion only in sharing the same reading room in a quiet turned chair, less like a book to a book or cat to a reader than a dreamer among the millions who dream, with all their soul, each night, alone.

“Read any good books lately?”

"Yes."

Not you, dear reader -shh!

TURN #68: WEEK 54; WORDS: 59,727

NEXT BY 5 JULY 2006

My Sexy Spring

2006-06-10T02:44:00.000-04:00

Good Clone, Bad Clone

This workshop will explore the erotic possibilities of clones, which the presenter knows little about, but finds really hot.

Who or what would you clone? Yourself? What would you make your clone do? Would you clone someone to watch? An exciting introduction to the possibilities of clone play. Also discussed, the possibility of clones replacing orignals, deceiving partners and what to do if your clone is better in bed and more popular than you are.

Please note: current technology allows only the cloning of dogs, cats and sheep.

Werewolf Sex

Hot, sweaty, biting and furry, werewolf sex is drenching itchy sex by the naked light of the full moon. Learn to howl with an actual lycanthrope.

Don't settle for sex with just animals or mere humans: werewolf sex is raw, unpredictable and dangerous and will leave you soaked, trembling and smelling vaguely like your dog's sweater.

Covered: that "dog" smell.

Not covered: Silver bullets, full moons and other lies. Vampires, mummies, zombies.

Shrink Ray

Are you size-curious? Would you like to get small, or are there things you’d like to do with tiny people? Really tiny people? The kind that maybe need a submarine to get around inside of you? Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. Both shrinkers and shrinkees are welcome in this workshop which will explore all the many important technical challenges and Lilliputian rewards of macro/micro play. Whether your final destination is Lilliput or Brobdingnag, the Shrink Ray workshop should be your first stop. Special emphasis on safe adventures, escape procedures, what to say at the doctor’s office.

Is My Gay Robot Really Gay?

This workshop will address the tricky question posed by many robot owners whose robots are programmed, labeled or identify as “gay”: is my “gay” robot really “gay” or just programmed to? Topics discussed include free will and determinism, identity politics, late Foucault, the whole tin can phenomenon. Robots and their owners are encouraged to attend. Gay supercomputers are covered in another workshop: Help, My Gay Supercomputer Is Always Right And Running My Life!

Discussed: C3PO, K.I.T.T., V.I.N.C.E.N.T., Hymie from Get Smart, Gaybot 2,000,000, Lesbotron, Lt. Cmdr. Data, The Death Star. Was Robot from Lost in Space really gay?

Not discussed: Gay robots.

Bug Sex
Bug sex is hot. You live for like a day and go around tasting everything. It doesn’t get dirtier or sluttier than this. Bugs get swatted, crushed and some of them kill and/or eat their mates = H -O -T. Discussed: How to get a waterbed shaped like a dried-up slice of runny pizza, having thousands and thousands of maggots.

How to Masturbate Like a Supreme Court Judge

You know they do it. What do you think is under their robes? Discussed: Death penalty, suspension of habeas corpus.

The Sensual Cave Man

How to “dumb down” your foreplay. Fire or No Fire? Beyond the monobrow.

Help, My Gay Supercomputer Is Always Right And Running My Life!

This workshop has been cancelled.

Are you a female looking for another partner or for the Joy of Kissing workshop? Please consider this man. Has own toothbrush. Respectful and considerate. Likes: kissing. Friendly, open, will respect boundaries. Leave a message or call.

The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell.

For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at the tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed and appear infinite and holy whereas it now appears finite & corrupt.

This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.

-WILLIAM BLAKE

TURN NUMBER 67: REPORT FROM THE FIELD; WORDS: 58,114

NEXT BY 28 JUNE 2006

Dear Mysterious Listener,

2006-06-06T17:25:00.000-04:00

more splendid photography by Crookedletter

The week of the 14th marks the anniversary of this curious journal, and not coincidentally, my own. We are both one year old. Ah, the places we’ve been, the things we’ve done and those sounds, those terrifying sounds!

The purpose of The Encouraging Voice is to amuse and delight you, possibly in ways that you do not wish to be amused and delighted, but find amusing and delightful in the end, after a curious and sometimes trying life that defied most of your expectations. If you are so minded, please email me or leave a comment: The Encouraging Voice works hard and wishes to be one of your top vacation destinations on the web. If you need more towels, better excuses, or simply someone to throw bed sheets over your head please let us know. We are especially keen to know what your favorite pieces are, if some items are too long or too short, too obscure or not obscure enough. We would also be keen to a contest as to a typology of how many kinds of story appear in The Encouraging Voice.

As always, we are happy and truly honored to have you here. It is kind of you, you, who are so beautiful, to visit us, an invalid and shut in, disfigured and alone, in our humble sitting room of endless turns with no center. Crete welcomes you, Athenian, and makes a gift of its paradoxes.

NEXT: INNOCENTS ABROAD

Year One

2006-06-06T17:22:00.000-04:00

After first night -and we only called it that, we slept -we were optimistic, pragmatic, logical. We rested and when we arose we thought things would be clearer. Our legs were tired, but we thought after a little hike, we would be back in the open air again. We could imagine the open air. As that day grew on, we became angry and frustrated with ourselves. When we finally settled down to rest again, we reminded each other that it was only a matter of memory -we had only to retrace our steps. After the next day it was clear there was no memory to recapture. Then it was a matter of logic: if there is a way in, that same path is a way out. Logic sustained us for about a week. Then it became a myth, like any other, like our lives before. By the end of that week, we simply walked, we rested, we had grown tired of cursing. That was the week we thought the labyrinth was infinite. In the week to come, we came to wonder if it was not the labyrinth, but our minds that were bewitched, that the whole structure might not be no more than a few turns, but were somehow unable to remember or think. Then we realized for this trap, even a single turn would be sufficient. Then we realized it made no difference and how meaningless a word like “infinite” is.

Waking in the labyrinth was always a shock, a dreadful realization, an awful familiarity. For the next month we discussed our confused and vivid dreams in the labyrinth, now more real than our memories of our lives before. Then as we discussed them, the details of our dreams began to merge and we hoarded them as secrets from the other.

For many nights now, and I cannot say how many, I have dreamed only of the labyrinth. I would confess this to my companion, to know if he, too, now dreams of turns and passages that give birth only to more identical progeny of turns and passages. I would ask if his legs, too, are so weary and tired that he cannot feel them. If his ears too, are so deaf with the dumb echo of our steps endlessly clattering that he cannot tell if we are walking, have stopped walking, or are being followed. If his eyes, too, are so used to the inevitable and unvarying pattern of turns and passages it is wholly believable that he lost sight long, long ago, and is blind. This would explain much, of how we are able to see in the labyrinth, long after we should have exhausted all source of light. But how do we sustain ourselves? And where do we get the energy to negotiate these interminable turns and passageways?

When did we enter the labyrinth? I know it has been a year, a year since our birth, our birth as inhabitants of the labyrinth, upon which we entered it from the outside world. I know that we are twin, like a man and his shadow. But I do not ask him, for we may be no more than this, joined at the feet. And if he cannot answer, then I am actually alone. And if he answer, then he is alone, alone, alone.

66th TURN;
WORDS: 58,114

Reading Wittgenstein’s "Philosophical Investigations" Considered As Log Entries Of A Failed Expedition to the Antarctic

2006-06-06T17:16:00.000-04:00

.--We have got on to slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk: so we need friction. Back to the rough ground!

A good ground looks like this.

[Can a dog lie?]

Could one teach a dog to simulate pain?

One could imagine an animal, angry, frightened, unhappy, happy, startled. But hopeful? And why not?

[How does this line intimate the way to go?]

Does the sign-post leave no doubt open about the way I have to go? Does it shew which direction I am to take when I have passed it; whether along the road or the footpath or cross-country? But where is it said which way I am to follow it; whether in the direction of its finger or (e.g.) in the opposite one? --And if there were, not a single sign-post, but a chain of adjacent ones or of chalk marks on the ground-- is there only one way of interpreting them?-- So I can say, the sign-post does after all leave no room for doubt. Or rather: it sometimes leaves room for doubt and sometimes not. And now this is no longer a philosophical proposition, but an empirical one.

[Speed is not important here.]

“Now I know how to go on!”

Can I say "bububu" and mean "If it doesn't rain I shall go for a walk"?

I say "There is a chair". What if I go up to it, meaning to fetch it, and it suddenly disappears from sight.? --"So it wasn't a chair, but some kind of illusion". --But in a few moments we see it again and are able to touch it and so on. --"So the chair was there after all and its disappearance was some kind of illusion". --But suppose that after a time it disappears again-or seems to disappear. What are we to say now?

Justification by experience comes to an end. If it did not it would not be justification.

TURN #65
WEEK: 52; WORDS: 57,552

The Beautiful Phrases (Followed By Exposition) Number One: “I’ll kill you -I’ll kill all of you!”

2006-06-04T22:56:00.000-04:00

“I’ll kill you” can be anything else but a beautiful phrase, depending on who says it and how it is meant: it can be ordinary belligerence, idiotic aggression, wholly quotidian threatening behavior, or even an empty threat or term of endearment. Homicide is as old as the human family itself and we can suppose the only reason for Adam and Eve not killing each other right away is that it would have made for an extremely short Bible. No, homicide had to wait a generation for its innovator, the much maligned Cain, who merely did what half the people there were thinking at the time, anyway.

“I’ll kill you” ranks with “I love you” as a careworn and indispensable expression, at least in a world such as ours where people are so lovable and yet somehow this has not worked out into a general principle: hence: “I’ll kill you.” Note how much more useful this expression is than the present tense: “I kill you” (or sometimes “I kill you”) which is a generally useless and redundant expression (c.f. “I am here”) if you are actually killing someone: most often, it is just wishful thinking. There is, I admit, a certain pathos to “I kill you! Kill! Kill! Killlllll youuu!” especially if the speaker is hopelessly restrained and the addressee has only a pitying look in response: it illustrates a gap between our language and our world.

Yet, in itself, “I’ll kill you” is not a beautiful phrase; it can be muttered under the rummy breath of any old cranky malcontent who no one takes seriously until one day they explode in a paroxysm of violence that will be a cause for wonder only for those who write editorials. This is where “-I’ll kill all of you” comes in.

Some commentators on Christianity feel that it is a reworking of Platonic philosophy and spiritual concepts found elsewhere in Greek thought, a sort of cartoon adaptation that people could follow. Some attribute its success to the fact that, unlike the tradition of Greek thought, it could provide an individual answer to the person, a personal salvation. Christianity succeeded, they argue, because it was all inclusive.

The history of Rome may also have something to do with it, but my point being that in a kindred fashion “I’ll kill all of you,” takes a mere threat of homicide and generalizes it to a wider audience. What is the limit of the audience? Is it limited only to those immediately present? Or does it extend, like the curse of Cain (passim) to all of the “you”, all the descendants? Is it addressed to a nation? A people? All humanity? Even the speaker, gripped with homicidal fury in his illocutionary act may be unsure of its span of application. This is only one of the things that makes it beautiful.

For in extending the threat the speaker has made it clear that he is outnumbered. Yet, his homicidal desires, far from being restrained by this fact, expand to accommodate it. He has gone from a simple personal attack to a vendetta, from a skirmish to a war, from a mere atrocity to a holocaust. If he had any sympathetic listeners, it doesn’t matter now: they are included. For this person to make such a turn, I would argue, is a beautiful thing. Especially if it is blurted out at the end of a long series of reversals for the speaker at a bar, a wedding, or a baby shower. Reversals that have made the speaker into an existential hero, a true rebel.

Note that the dash in “I’ll kill you -I’ll kill all of you!” is essential to it’s beauty. The dash is the essence of the modern style, capturing its revolutionary and immediate character, its ability to shock and juxtapose. Many thoughts that could otherwise never be completed or thought -or are still unthinkable -are achieved only with -the dash.

Nietzsche -understood -this.

In the case of “I’ll kill you -I’ll kill all of you!”, the dash represents a poignant and profound turn in the speaker’s thoughts (c.f. “Deaner -Who are you?” “I am -I am the Stallion”). Perhaps she has just realized that no single co-worker is perhaps responsible for informing the staff of Chili’s that it is her birthday. Or perhaps she feels that the judgement of the spelling bee judges does not reflect the way English is actually used today. Or perhaps quite simply, Southern Comfort should never have been served at the baby shower in the first place. In any case, it is the dash that shows the soul’s flight from mere homicide to genocidal program.

NEXT IN THIS SERIES: “HOW MUCH TO LIE DOWN WITHOUT CLOTHES?”

64th TURN; STANDING OVER THE BODY OF WILLIAM SAFIRE
WEEK: 51; WORDS: 57,187

NEXT BY 12 JUNE: SOONER THAN YOU THINK

Why We Are Going Back to the Moon

2006-05-30T17:54:00.000-04:00

for Daniel Paul Schreber

First of all, a word about love. Love is a beautiful thing, and when people say that, they mean my love, because my love is a beautiful thing, a truly beautiful thing. This is how the word love is used. Love is important. Love makes the world go round, that is to say, my love. You know how it is when other people say that they love you, or they care about you or they need you and it’s not someone you want to be loved, cared or needed by. When these other people use the word love, it’s weird, awkward and embarrassing. Not like my love, which should be respected.

All this is necessary to frame the following very simple and thoughtful remarks: so you’re with Javier, or whatever his name is. Fine. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter whatever secrets you share or his getting to look into your fine blue eyes and listen to the quiet music of your voice. It doesn’t matter because: I’ve walked a mile on the moon, baby.

The moon is a totally different place than you can ever imagine. For one thing, there’s no air. This, in itself, should totally blow your mind if you think about it.

I walked a mile on the moon. I played golf on the moon. I just stood there, on the moon, on the bright surface that is like unmixed concrete powder. I had a hand job on the moon. It wasn’t a homosexual act. We were on the moon, looking at the earth, no ordinary definitions applied. Ask the other astronauts. They all did it. It was the first thing we thought of when we realized: Holy Shit, We’re on the F’in Moon! We were gods looking down on all humanity. We had climbed the highest mountain of all mankind. We just looked at each other and did it. There was no kissing. Ok, there was a little kissing, and afterwards it was a little awkward and we found that both of us couldn’t really stand to be in the LEM at the same time. But still.

But still, it was better that way, because you could just stand there and look at -the Earth and say to yourself: I am the only one, the only one. All those people are dead. The earth is a dead, dead planet. I am in my suit. In my suit I am my own planet. My suit is supplied and supported by the breath of the billions and billions of dead whose souls I consume in my planet suit.

We could have gone to the sun.

This may sound like rambling to you, particularly to students of psychology, but I say to you: you have never been to the moon. You have no idea what it is like.

Afterwards, we wrote things, secret things, in the lunar soil with our feet, in the lunar soil which turned about us like ash. Things no one else will ever know, since we were the last.

In the end we hurled out of plastic bags of feces onto the moon, our feces which were small and light since we did not really need to eat on the moon, which freeze dried. That’s my feces on the moon.

So now, if I don’t go out, so what? I’ve looked up and seen the Earth. I’ve lived away from it. I’ve walked a mile on the moon and my dreams are clear, clear water.

That’s why we’re going back to the Moon. See, I’m tired of this place and you. I’ve seen all the faces, the countless gestures that comprise human life. People have whispered their secrets to me and I find them all so trivial. The darkest heart is just a filthy recipe to me. I belong among the stars, to sing them to sleep, to pop them like bubbles.

63rd TURN: YOU LOOK, BUT NO ONE YOU KNOW IS THERE
WEEK: 50; WORDS: 56,380

NEXT BY 7 JUNE 2006

An Atlas of Depression

2006-05-22T19:38:00.000-04:00

more juicy lubricous imagery by crookedletter

I was recently auditioned for a spot in Sampson Agonistes: A Bipolar Hunk Calendar, which apparently is a hot item for next year, following on the popularity of other DSM IV themed calendars, such as Wet Borderline Babes and Narcissistic Kitty. I really hadn’t seen the publication before glancing at the studio (I only became involved in the hopes of further educating the public about mental illness and not out of any selfish reasons): the emphasis in the photos seemed to be on the contrast between the outward physical strength and mass of the models and their apparent inner fragility that few would suspect. The models are hunched over on weight benches, clearly put out by more than their reps, or besmeared in a mixture of grief and confusion working on their neglected muscle cars, the tangle of parts, belts and wiring being a correlative of the tormented mental state of the model. The spring months feature hunks in the rain, or set upon by sprinklers; the drops of water form virtual tears, for it is never clear if the hunk is sobbing or not. The photographer’s compositions seemed informed by a long tradition of grieving or agonized male heroic figures: my pose with the snake recalling the Lacoon group, the Mr. July’s spilt ice cream, the feasted liver of the Titian Prometheus, the beach boy in cut-offs not so much lurching after his frisbee, but recumbent as a dying Gaul. Or perhaps I am reading into this. Anyway, working on the calendar was an emotional experience for me: gazing at our images, we appear massive, heroic, sad and distant, like mountains ranged after each other, the torments of the earth. We mortal icebergs of flesh. We lurching sad dolmens of lats. We ruinous slabs of unhappy beefcake.

now, now

62nd TURN; WEEK: 49; WORDS: 55,717

NEXT BY 31 MAY 2006