The Bride of Chocula Stripped Bare

...the most important meal of the accursed day


Owing to my recent success in reviewing Newton’s alchemy and my work in emergent genres, General Mills’ advanced CARPA Expermental Marketing Division reecently asked me to sit in on a “catalysistic synergy session” concerning new cereals for extreme narrow band emergent demographics (XNARROWBED). Though “all intellectual property rights to notes, images, exchanges (verbal, or written) and experiences” are entirely retained by the General Mills Corporation, and, strictly speaking, we are not supposed to release any information, I have decided to reproduce my notes here as some of this material is already out on the web and my suggestions in particular were universally classed as “thinking endpoints”, so I do not believe that any of them will be employed, adopted or any way enter into production.


First of all, it’s a dark cereal. And when I say, dark, I mean DARK. It’s way darker than Count Chocula. It turns the milk black and ideally, little things that you didn’t know were in the cereal come floating to the top, like dead rats after a flood. It's like having a bowl of toner; when the spoon goes in you can’t see it. When kids show each other their tongues, they’re black and cold, like they’ve been dead a long, long time.

This is the sort of cereal that David Bowie would eat if David Bowie ate anything.

What should it taste like? Ashes. Mildew. Very faint traces of old, papery flowers. The mildew is important, because Bride of Count Chocula as a signifier is never really fresh, yet never really old. It’s ageless, like dried bones are ageless. In fact, can it have dried bones? Not like you don’t use them anyway in Sugar Crisp -yeah, right, tell me why there’s a bear on the cover.

I know you’re thinking of the Elvira thing for the cover: forget it: your cereal will look like an off brand of dildos and get pulled from the shelves in a week. Think Wednesday, the little girl in the Adams Family. It will fit better next to Chex and at the same time, it is infinitely more disturbing in its ramifications. In fact, I think there should be several Brides of Count Chocula. Because he’s that kind of guy. Sure whatever, I’m sure that the Bride of Frankenberry becomes Mrs. Frankenberry (or does she?), but I’m telling you, Chocula ain’t like that. He’s got like a stack of coffins, each with a different beautiful village girl, each with a different moral failing that let him in. Check the novel, or the movies. And he’s still looking for that perfect bride. This is all implied in the cereal.

So each Bride is different. One is blonde: this one tastes like stale cornflakes. One has brown eyes and a long neck and tastes faintly of pepper. Another is has sanguine red hair: It tastes like grape nuts and wine. But the best one has the deadest eyes and curly black locks. It tastes of nettles. It cuts your tounge. It’s got fiberglass like Skoal.

On the back of the box there is a mirror; kids watch as their reflection grows fainter and fainter as they consume the Blood of the Bride of Count Chocula -Count Chocula’s Bride Blood Feast -yes I’m going with that -they slurp up the cereal and their image vanishes as their soul withers away. I don’t know how it’s done. Something with mylar or computers, or their souls withering away.

It opens with a creak, and agonizing creak: this cereal is not going to give up its secrets easily. It’s the only cereal that does that, because it’s the only cereal that comes in a coffin shape. Because it’s the only cereal that comes in an actual wooden coffin from Romania. Like for a baby.

You want something that people are going to remember? Or do want some crap like “Yummy Mummy”, “Sir Grapefellow” or “Waldo the Wizard” that no one is going to remember? The Quaker Oats guy? Yeah , everyone remembers him. Trust me, people grow up just to get away from that guy. They stop eating breakfast entirely and starting lighting up and having a cup of black coffee, just get away from the complacent face of the Society of Friends.

This is sort of cereal people will scratch into their arm. This the sort of product that will be the only thing that somebody eats for a week before they shoot the president. This is the sort of cereal that will replace stolen eucharist at the Black Sabbath. This is the ceral that DEA agents are crunching underfoot when they raid Meth labs. Brand loyalty? This is like Fugazi or David Koresh. People won’t buy or steal anything else. Because they know they’re already dead, but cannot die.


NUMBER 56, WEEK 43; WORD COUNT: 47,922
NEXT BY 19 APRIL 2006

My Rowlf the Dog Entry for Muppet Wiki

Rowlf the Dog is the loveable floppy brown-eared Muppet dog who plays the piano. He is usually found in the Muppet Theater's orchestra pit. He can play in any style, from classical to honkey tonk. He often tries to upstage others by giving the keys a bang with his fist or barking out a witty remark. He also plays the silly surgeon Dr. Bob on the recurring The Muppet Show sketch Veterinarian's Hospital.

Rowlf is always cool and relaxed, and his sense of humor often revolves around his dog-like nature. He is a big fan of Ludwig van Beethoven.

Anthropomorphic, but not in a creepy way. Brown and shaggy like a familiar towel. Rowlf would always be good for ride home. So it’s late, so it’s closing, time, so what? Even if he drank, he wouldn’t drink that much, and on the way home he would stick his head out the window. Rowlf would let you have as many of his cigarettes as you needed then. He’d find something good on the radio. He’d take care of you, but he wouldn’t make a big fuss over it or screw it up like Fozzie. And he wouldn’t guilt trip you on it like the K-man. Man, being driven home by the K-man is worse than jail. And takes twice as long.

No being driven home by Rowlf the dog is alright, you’ve both got your heads out the window dragging in the night air: he’s singing a good song, you’re puking your guts out. It don’t bother Rowlf: he’s a dog. Later you’re back at his place, and you can even have a beer if you want, but if you’re too drunk to open it, he’ll gently slip it out of your hand and slide a little bowl of crisp, buoyant puppy chow in front of you, in cool, cool tap water. You’ll talk about whatever in his comfortable bachelor’s kitchen. If the paper’s there, he’ll read a bit, looking at the editorials and checking the dog track for anyone he knows. He keeps musician's hours.

Sooner or later he’ll roll out a little blanket for you on the comfy sofa. There’s a lot of dog hair on it, but so what? He’ll be sure you have a lot of water. You’ll hear him humming when he hits the can (it’s funny, because there’s a little fire hydrant in there). You’ll smile a little and it’ll be nice to drift off and only a little spinny.

Best of all, all the things that you tell Rowlf, all the stupid things you say and do, he’ll never bug you about it or mention it. And if you cry a little, or a whole lot, it’s okay, because Rowlf is brown and shaggy like a familiar towel. And he won’t be weird about it and you won’t remember. He’s been around. He knows what it’s like.


NUMBER 55, WEEK 42; WORD COUNT TO DATE: 47,126
NEXT BY 12 APRIL 2006

The Focus Group of Doctor Moreau

for Stanislaw Lem

I really hate doing it and some people around here have gotten the wrong idea, but I really hate doing it, it’s the worst thing about my job. But I have no choice. Otherwise they will never be men. So I have to place myself in the position of holding my charges in that bath of pain in order to remake them. I’m up to my ass in it, actually. Of course the screams bothered me at first, but this is science: the science of cutting up various animals while they are alive and conscious and making them into funny creatures that walk on two legs, talk and worship me as a living god.



-You know, Montgomery, I think I’d like to get another cat

-What kind of cat?

-Something big and aggresive.. maybe you could pick up a puma...

-A puma, huh?

-Yes.

-Moreau, those things are a pain in the ass to ship...

-The hell you say. You’re just going to get another case of Tanqueray anyway. I bust my balls every day in the “House of Pain” every day -for science, cutting apart living flesh and...

-I know, Moreau, I know. We’ll get a Puma.

-Don’t say it like that.

-Like what?

-Like that. I mean, what’s the point? I don’t want to just do it, if, if you’re just going along with it. This is science. It used to be something we did together. I’m not going to do it if you don’t really have any enthusiasm for it, though I can’t say when the last time you came up with a new animal (Pause) You hate my Puma Man idea.

-The Puma Man idea is fine, Moreau

-What’s wrong with Puma Man?

-Well, we’ve already got, Leopard Man, Tiger Man and Panther Man. It’s like you’re kinda doing the same thing over and over. It’s bad enough that you’re playing god without plagarizing yourself. What about that little sloth thing?

-I’m not making another one of those.




Montgomery writes in his diary:

Moreau seems to have taken my critique of “Puma Man” very badly. As usual. He just sulks in his apartment for the most part, doodling a tiny “mini-comic” based on his creations. I’ve seen it. In the comic, most of his creations live together on a houseboat and talk a lot better than they do in real life. They don’t seem to solve crimes or anything. It doesn’t have much of a plot. I think it’s like one of those Japanese romance comics. This makes me shudder when I consider that it might show some insight into Moreau’s true motives.

Moreau still sullen, depressed. Can barely get up the energy to torture the living hell out of Wallaby Man, usually just to get to sleep.





-WHAT IS THE LAW? SAY THE WORDS.

-NOT TO GO ON ALL-FOURS; THAT IS THE LAW. ARE WE NOT MEN?

-NOT TO SUCK UP DRINK; THAT IS THE LAW. ARE WE NOT MEN?

-NOT TO EAT FISH OR FLESH; THAT IS THE LAW. ARE WE NOT MEN?

-NOT TO CLAW THE BARK OF TREES; THAT IS THE LAW. ARE WE NOT MEN?

-NOT TO CHASE OTHER MEN; THAT IS THE LAW. ARE WE NOT MEN?

-NOT TO PUT THE PENIS ANYWHERE OTHER THAN IN VAGINA OF LAWFULLY MARRIED SPOUSE; THAT IS THE LAW. ARE WE NOT MEN?

-NOT TO LICK GOD’S FACE; THAT IS THE LAW. ARE WE NOT MEN?

-IF IT IS YELLOW, IT IS MELLOW; IF IT IS BROWN, FLUSH IT DOWN; THAT IS THE LAW. ARE WE NOT MEN?


His is the House of Pain
His is the Hand that makes
His is the Hand that wounds
His is the Hand that heals

His is the lightning flash
His is the deep, salt sea
His are the stars in the sky

(this is sort of to the tune of "Shoo-fly")
Montgomery misses a chord change. His playing has gotten sloppy.


He is a five-man, a five-man, a five-man—like meeeeeeee! sang the Ape-man.


As soon as this is over, thinks Montgomery, I am going to get so wasted so help me God.



Later

-So my friend, what did you think?

-It’s incontrovertable, Moreau. They are regressing.

-I admit, the writing is no where near as subtle as last year’s but I think they’re just playing to the audience

-Moreau, Lady Windamere ate Lady Windamere’s fan. We nearly had to shoot Mrs. Cowper-Cowper.

-I thought I heard tears in the audience

-It’s a comedy Moreau. That wasn’t tears. It was drooling.

-What about the ending?

-That’s where they really lost me. Were we watching Wind in the Willows or Animal Farm?

-You can be so goddamn mean when you’re sober.

Pinkerton does not return.



Montgomery’s diary:

Bad Signs:

Eating things that are not cereal in bowl with a spoon like they are cereal, like potato chips or pepperoni slices.

Related: Any kind of similar breakfast meal with an alcoholic beverage replacing milk, worse, if the beverage is clear.

Perhaps if I only drank on the weekends. Oh migod who am I kidding? I need to keep drinking just so I can look at the staff.

SLEEP IN TONIGHT. LOCK YOUR DOOR IF YOU HAVE TO.




Montgomery, returning, drunk and scratched up

-M’Ling! M’Ling! M’Ling! M’Ling can I get some fuckin’ ICE?

-Montgomery I have to work in the morning.

-Sorry, Doctor

-You know Montgomery, I have never said a word to you about your indulgences, but ...are you using ...are you taking the right precautions?

-What, you mean like tetnaus?

-You know what I mean?

-Oh you gotta be shittin’ me. What are you worried about?

-Well, though the traits don't seem to carry... they are completely fertile and though we’ve never ...the offspring might be an abomination

Montgomery collapses laughing

-What, Mongomery?

-I’m relieved. I was afraid you accuse me of doing something unnatural (laughs) You’re a funny man, Moreau. What do you think you’ve been doing?

-Science, of course.

-Frankenstein was science, you ass. This is like Pliny the Elders’ fan fiction. What have you been working on all day? Look at it! Whoever heard of a Doberman Mini Lop?

-You think I’ve made some sort of a Faustian bargain...

-Faust got something in return for his soul, knowledge, chicks, something. What have you got? A rabbit that licks its balls.

-What are you saying, Montgomery?

-Doc, they don’t have a name for what you’ve been doing, nor, strictly speaking a law about what I’ve been doing. Do the words rum and bugger mean anything to you?

-So you’re saying that we’ve lost our way...

-It’s been almost a decade, Moreau, of snips and snails and puppy dog tails. What have we got to show for it? A bunch of fucking dog-snails!

-What if I made an oversized beaver that had like smaller beavers for hands?

Thank god I’m drunk, Montgomery thinks, this is the worst research assistant post ever.



In the morning, at the beach dock

-I always appreciate you taking these little trips, Montgomery. I know you do, but I also appreciate, well, I appreciate all you do do around here.

I can’t manage it all by myself. I’ve given everything, you know, to science.

Someday, Montgomery, your name and my name...

I think this Puma, is really going to be the breakthrough we’ve been looking for, I really do. All evidence points toward it. What we have needed is a bigger, more aggresive, deadlier creature.

This is my last trip, thinks Montgomery. I am only going to print out my CV at the Kinko’s in Arica.

-Knowledge, especially of creation’s deepest secrets, is a heavy burden. Our wisdom is in a race with catastrophe. None of this is easy for me to bear. It is not easy to be a creator. Mistakes have to be made. It's the experimental method. If I knew then what I knew now, by god, Montgomery, think. If I only had a machine that could travel back in time...

You know what you can do with that.

NUMBER 54, WEEK 41, WORD COUNT: 46,619
NEXT BY 4 APRIL 2006

Affective Disorders Common Among Time Travelers and Other Sad Notes

Typical Symptoms

You feel dizzy.
You feel disoriented.
Nothing seems to have any point.
You have no appetite.
You cannot really tell if this has happened before, or, how many times it has happened before.
You feel so sad it feels like physical pain.

Time Travelers strangely often feel anxiety or discomfort upon revisiting the same event over and over. This is the primary reason for avoiding returning to the same event: it becomes increasingly creepy.


It is the Second Time Traveler Convention. No one came to the first because: no one came to the first. You are coming out from beneath a red and white striped tent. You are blinded by your emergence into full sunlight. As always, you feel dizzy and distracted. Your steps to the refreshment tent are clumsy like you’ve been sitting, a long, long time. You feel anxious crossing the lawn. You scan the crowd anxiously, as though looking for someone, though you are not sure who. Fortunately, this is the campus of MIT so it is nearly all entirely robots. Robots are tolerable. Except the ones that wear bow ties.

The dizziness only gets worse, so you consider lying down, but you do not want to appear unseemly and lie down just anywhere. There could be dog poop in the grass and this seems like a silly worry and you remember it as a concern from your childhood. You haven’t seen a dog in ages. You lean against a tree, trying not to attract attention to yourself. You don’t want to appear to be one of those homeless time travelers who keep coming back to the convention for more cake. You don’t want anyone to help you, but you are afraid people will notice. As you slump against the tree, you spill some peanuts off a little dish onto your leg. It seems you made it to the refreshment tent, after all. A band plays distantly. The whole thing has the feeling of a college graduation where you are not graduating. But every time traveler feels this, feels like an interloper, wherever they go. Time travelers are sentimentalists, wanting the pleasure of a feeling but not the lifetime of cost. You would really like to lie down now. You wonder if you are at all allergic to peanuts. You wonder if you have had any. You smell something awful, a stale personal smell, a sort of body rot. You worry that perhaps you smell bad. It has taken you a long time to travel here. It was interminable, really. You slept when you could, which is to say, a lot. Other times you just lay there.


Insomnia is the second most common complaint of time travelers.

Dreams in a time machine are often disturbing, but not for any special or technical reasons. It often has to do with the time machine itself (noise, motion) or the time traveler himself: Where is he going? Why? Time travelers who are traveling through time expressly to kill themselves, their parents or grandparents have the worst dreams of all. But these are not well people.

Time travelers often dream of their destination. These dreams are usually the fulfillment of a wish. In the dream, they arrive at their destination and it is sunny and bright and has the feeling of a college graduation. People they were not expecting to see there are there: fathers, mothers, friends they haven’t kept in touch with. Distant music plays from a band. Conversations are emotional, and yet irrational. The scene jumps around. The time traveler awakes inside his or her time machine. They look at the clock. They are nowhere near their destination. They try to go back to sleep, but they can’t. They are also too tired to really get up and look at the time rotor or whatever and get any work done. Often they try and masturbate to get back to sleep, only their masturbation has a distracted, jerky quality that doesn’t focus on one thing. This happens more often than is generally admitted, in fact it forms a near universal trait among chrononauts.




There are people that you dread meeting. For one thing, nearly any time traveler whose time travel device is some sort of other vehicle, like a plane, a spaceplane, or worst, some sort of hot car or superbike. These people are the second worst, and they are almost always traveling through time for the wrong reasons, like they joined a club or they want to bang their mom. The worst is anyone who has a really tiny time travel device, like a bracelet, or god forbid, a time belt. These people are sneaky. They are never who they say they are. They act like you’ve met before or they know what’s going to happen and wear designer shirts that are well cut. They finish your sentences. They are always the ones to end the conversation. You want to kill them, but they might be you, or your son or something so you are just left standing there, steaming. You big phony, you think, I bet you don’t have a time machine. You’re a fraud. There is no such thing as time travel.




The Time Traveler’s Convention is conceptually flawed: everyone would logically be from someone’s else’s future and this would be extremely socially awkward, worse than trying to score at your kid’s (or progenitor’s) high school reunion. In fact, it is pretty much the same thing. This is what later scientists came to call an Attendance Canceling Socially Catastrophic Event (ACSCE).It is for this any many other reasons that the Second Time Travelers convention is considered by many to also be a failure. This, and the psychic dinosaurs. The first was a moderate success (read: total failure) because no one came, because: no one came.



“Extraordinary, My dear Wells, Extraordinary!”

“Look at those monoplanes! And motorised ordinaries!”

“And that young lady! Why she’s practically naked!”

“Look those children and that dog are playing with a spinning disc! It’s made out of some brightly colored artificial rubber!”

"Try the Roasted Peanuts!"

"Do I like Pea-Nuts?"

“Why the future is fantastic!”

“Isn’t this better than staying in London and perpetrating all those ghastlty unthinkable Whitechapel murders, Doctor?”

“I’ll say. What do you think Monsieur Verne?”

“Ecoutez-Moi. Now that we are in the future I can tell you: I am totally gay.”

Avoid these three in wool. Avoid, avoid, avoid.



Typical Behavior of Time Travelers

Finishing other people’s sentences, but not your own.
Lack of interest in seeing a new movie.
Tendency to sit toward the back at public events.
Irrational purchases.
Fits of crying and outbursts of emotion.
Not rising for the National Anthem.
Scoffing.
Insufferable or unaccountable familiarity with strangers.
Talking to oneself
Talking to inanimate objects
Wanting to meet certain people, really really badly
Dressed in Groucho glasses
Dressed as giant hot dog.



Rules of Time Traveling

Wear a disguise
Scholia: No one who has time traveled will question the wisdom of always wearing some sort of disguise.

Wear a cheap disguise
Scholia: For reasons that are unclear, the farther you travel in time in either direction, the cheesier and more unlikely your time travel costume needs to be. Some attribute this phenomenon to some unquantified fashion law. Plastic noses and Groucho Glasses, if available, are highly recommended. Travelers who are going any great distance are advised to rent (not buy) a full body Halloween costume, preferably some sort of talking animal or giant hot dog.

We’ve been through this, it is manifestly taboo, unwise, unethical and unsavory and I don’t know how many times we have to stress this, but don’t bang your Mom.

If you must bang your Mom, wear a condom.




Bear in mind: Nothing is as demoralizing as time travel; it’s either like a remedial history class with period plumbing or Abe Simpson going to a "rave". There is no happy medium in time travel. This is because there is no happy medium in human life, history or civilization. Humans experience a quotidian form of time travel called aging. Talk to an old person; the effects are nearly the same.




Scoring as a Time Traveller

Where ever you go and whatever scenario you encounter, the manifestly unwise, unethical and unsavory practice of trying to score comes in two varieties: the imprudent and the catastrophically imprudent. Even the most cursory survey of human history and customs gives clear indications why this is generally to be avoided. The farther you go in time, the differences in customs, mores and ages dooms nearly any relationship. This, and the continual disorientation and diachronic nausea experienced by most time travelers.

Despite this, scoring, or attempting to score, is surprisingly common among time travelers: first of all, because it is one way of learning the local language and customs, but mainly because of the supreme loneliness and sense of overwhelming personal loss associated with time travel. It is this sense of entirely deserved existential despair that drives many time travelers to extreme and unwise behaviors, such as hitting on their mom.




Did you sleep? You’re not sure. You feel as though someone has changed your name tag, though you cannot tell. You wonder why you picked this name. You wonder if it is your name. You adjust your Groucho glasses. Overhead, you hear a sound, but unlike any sound you’ve ever heard. Looking up, you see nothing. It is neither darker nor cooler, which is good because you were hoping to wash yourself a little in a public fountain. You think to get up. You hear little sniveling sounds, close by. You look around, but again cannot find the source. It is a grotesque lonely piping, like a child’s, but longer and deeper, full of adult misery. It’s quite strange and disturbing. A robot regards you. At this point, humans still exist, and they still believe in helping them. You want to say to the robot: find the one that is crying. Help him. But before you can say this the sound stops. You have risen to your feet. The day is still bright and dazzling, perfect. If you focus on the leaves of trees, you feel a little dizzy. There is no point. There was never any point in coming. You think to leave, before anyone recognizes you, though you cannot remember who that would be, just now. You feel you’ve seen it all before: the striped tents, the distant music, the fountain a block to the east, the robots, the landing pad, the giant hot dogs hitting on somebody’s mother. But you know you will not wander the party any further. No matter where you look, or how far you go, you will never find the band.

be brave, time traveler

NUMBER 53, WEEK 40, WORD COUNT TO DATE: 45,312
NEXT BY 29 MARCH 2006