Listen to Me

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

[
[ 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

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

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