GUN CRAZY (Part Eight)

the angels came last night

left bullets under my pillow
left kisses on my brow
left monsters in the corner
left just a plan, for now



sisters, brothers, I'm awaiting further instructions
the go code
let me go release me let me release


drop the chain
pop the cork
open the floodgates

open fire

GUN CRAZY (Part Seven)

Out here in the jungle
we on a Che Guevara trip
we got Alchemy and Arms
we got a sack of submachineguns
we got Maps we got Legends
we got it all justified
we have our Orders

from a power beyond High



it's only me and Her
we pick nits off each others' fur
(all this and the fact that there's only two of us
reduces the mutiny potential
considerably)



ahhhh yeah
she caught me smilin'

GUN CRAZY (Part Six)

~

~

~

I met some angels

convinced them to cross the line

it wasn't hard

I had the pictures

Picture That:

blackballed from Heaven -

Heaven Knows

where an angel goes

when the awful truth gets out

So I compromised their position

and they coughed up for our side

told me my sister was alive

asleep

and dreaming

~

~

~

GUN CRAZY (Part Five)

.

.

ever since the first time I laid eyes upon you

you don't know how hard it is to let you go

.

.

I gave you everything

I crawled to touch your hem

You, with your thousand angels

You, with your legion of saints

You, with the Will and the Blood

You, with the Power and the Glory

Everlasting Everything

.

.

everything

I gave you everything

.

.

I gave you my sister

to bear witness to her beauty

Did it make you bitter?

You put her in a cell

Was she such a challenge?

Was it such a race?

.

.

(Did it rake you when she said 'No'

as you bent to kiss her face?)

.

.

.

GUN CRAZY (Part Four)

She's a pretty assassin
She kills the pretty
She got supermodels in her sights


a lipstick killer / a StayFreedom fighter
I knight her / I dub her a tape


a soundtrack to hold her full through the night
(my favorite bands I wished that she liked)


A love song to sing
as she spreads metal wings
and makes her way by fire

Through the pages of Vogue
And the strawhouse of style
Watch the mall go up in a pyre




(quick, quick: find the ashes
make a book
this is a hunter
this is a spear
this is makeup cracking
this is fear)

GUN CRAZY (Part Three)

"take him out"

the mission was imprinted on her tongue
laced in her saliva
spoken through her kiss


there's a code in her DNA
her chain twines with mine
tumbles down into my gene pool
my system crash
in a last splash



gave up the ghost
exhaled into her mouth
touched her face - what's done is done

both barrels pointed at the sun

GUN CRAZY (Part Two)

me and my girlfriend declared war on you last night
you were asleep you didn't notice
we held each other crying on the bathroom floor


we wrote in tears
on toilet paper


it said:
PLEASE RELEASE OUR SISTER
IT'S BEEN SO LONG SINCE WE'VE SEEN HER
HISTORY HOLDS YOU RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS

we hold you responsible for her


She remains in prison
You remain in our sights
- towers, open fire -

GUN CRAZY (Part One)

nobody moves - nobody gets hurt

Shut Up and Listen
if I have to use this
I will


- These Are Our Demands -
we want amnesty for our angels
we want to be deified as heroes
we want a political prisoner released
we want our Enemy to cease
and desist His actions
against the pure and easy heirs
to the mantle
of the Sun
- These Are Our Demands -


They are simple and direct
We are righteous and correct
We will be followed


Follow Me

RICHIE - CHAPTER THREE (Twitter Novel / Keitai Shosetsu Version)

next day lunch the cafeterias
weird cuz its like a
combination of like
spaceport and french bistro

its all like domed glass
windows and colored tubes
and little round tables each
with room for four white
wicker chairs

//but i think the ambience is
kind of lost on the delinquents
that eat in here//

i always end up eating with
this black kid with one glass
eye who never talks to
anybody

which is fine with me cuz
then i can read and i dont
have to talk about video
games and smoking pot and
pussy

which gets really boring after
about five minutes but i look
up from my book theres
some kind of ruckus

going on up at the end of the
cafeteria line where we have
to -pay- for our meals with
these like credit cards that
they issue us

even though everythings paid
for by the state so its kind of
silly and useless but anyway

i look up and its richie and
hes really animated almost
yelling at the lunch lady who
just looks pissed off and
bored at the same time

she goes -if you dont pay
you dont get to eat- and
richie is like laughing almost
hysterical and says

-but i dont really pay anyway
and i still get to eat because
its all paid for already isnt it-
and she just scowls

and he goes -isnt it- and she
goes -if you dont pay you
dont get to eat- she doesnt
need this shit but he just
keeps going

about how payment requires
a transaction of money and
no money is moving its all
already fairviews anyway
they get it when we get here

and she goes -look kid they
tell me you gotta pay or you
dont eat and this is my job
and if i dont do my job

-my kids dont get to eat- and
richie waits a second and
goes -whatever- and pulls
out his meal credit card

swipes it walks away she
goes -thank you- trying to
sound snotty but really it just
comes out exhausted

and richie sees me and i drop
my eyes not sure if i want
him to come over or not but
he does

says -whats up- to glass eye
who doesnt respond and
richie just nods and sits down
and goes -whats up desmond
dekker-

and i cant help but smile and
go -nothing- and he says
-whatcha reading- and turns
my book towards him and

its just that thing were
reading for isaacs class and
he grunts and looks at me and
goes

-did you look up williams-
and i nod and go -yeah hes
cool i like the way he draws
women they look like tattoos-

and he goes -they look like
they have tattoos- like
questioningly and i go
-no- and repeat myself

and he says -oh- then -yeah
i guess they do- then -you
gotta speak up man i can
barely hear you sometimes-

and i go -sorry i guess i
mumble sometimes my
parents always said that- and
he looks at me frowning

-what the hell did you do to
get stuck in here- and i pause
a second then tell him about
when i brought the loaded
gun to school

and it was right after all that
stuff happened at salinas high
school and they totally
flipped out all over me

and richie asks why i brought
a loaded gun to school and if it
was like the salinas thing and
i tell him i just got tired

of balls hits in basketball
getting called faggot having
to use rough brown paper
towels to try and dry the spit
in my hair

and richie says -i thought
fairview was just for non-
violent crimes- and i tell him
it was non-violent

because i didnt shoot
anybody even though i really
wanted to and he just shrugs

i start feeling like i said way
too much and i just stop and
take a breath and ask him the
same thing

and he tilts his head and says
-stealing cars- and i ask him
why he was stealing cars and
he goes

-what a stupid question- and
i double take and go -thats
what you just asked me- and
he shrugs again says

-its a stupid question because
if you ever did it youd know
that driving a stolen car is the
best feeling in the whole
goddamned world-

and im just pissed by then
and im like -well i wouldnt
know cuz i never did it did i-
and he looks off and gets this
really weird look

like sad or something i never
saw on a kid especially a
prick like richie and he goes
-sorry- then

-ive got all these weird
chemicals running through
my body all the time and
sometimes its really hard

-not to be an asshole- and i
stop and go -oh do they
have you on meds too- and
he looks up surprised and
says -no-

then he figures something out
inside himself and goes -no
i just mean like the regular
natural teenage chemicals
going off all the time that
make us all

-you know totally insane-
and i laugh and i get it and he
kind of laughs and
remembers something

-oh yeah im not gonna call
you desmond dekker
anymore cuz thats way too
many syllables to say every
time i see you-

and im kind of relieved and
disappointed at the same time
then he says -im gonna call
you dee dee for short- and
im like -dee dee-

-yeah you know DD for
desmond dekker- and i just
shrug and smile and go -okay
richie okay whatever you
want- and he smiles and

slaps his hands on the
tabletop -it-is-decided- just
like that -ill have to take you
for a ride sometime show
you what its like-

and i go -yeah but isnt that
why you got put in here- and
he says -im only in here
because i wanna be-

i just laugh -thats what
everyone says- and he goes
-yeah but im the only one
who means it- and im all
-wooooo- and he smiles

gets up and backs slowly
away shaking his finger at me
-you will see dee dee you
will see- and he turns and
dashes off then lunch
uneaten gone again

RICHIE - CHAPTER TWO (Twitter Novel / Keitai Shosetsu)

gym class is like everything
else at fairview non-
competitive inclusive
student based

basically even though were
all a bunch of criminals its
supposed to be free and
freeing

compared to like fascist
barking cop-moustache gym
teacher jock heaven in
regular public school

so we can just run the track
or walk the track or lift
weights or throw a football if
we want to

theres even stalls for the
showers so we dont have to
suffer through uncomfortable
wang comparisons

its kind of wussy but it works
now i dont get balls hits
during basketball or
blitzkrieged in dodgeball

so im walking the track and
ive got the ipod on so i cant
hear anything and ive got
weights strapped on

nothing serious 10 pounds
each on ankles and wrists so
its kind of like im doing
something you know

and this kid passes me then
looks back then runs on then
looks back again and then
jogs in place until i catch up
to him pull out the earbuds

and its that richie kid and hes
wearing some super dorky
board shorts and doesnt look
nearly as cool as before

but he smiles and goes - hey -
and i say - hi - and i think
about my robert williams
shirt but im wearing my gym
one now

and his hair is really black
like almost dyed and pretty
greasy but that could just be
sweat from the running

- youre not in any of my other
classes except english with
isaacs howd that happen -

i kind of shrug and say - they
advanced me a year in
english cuz im good in it i
guess my other classes are
all tenth grade -

he looks ahead nods - good
enough - looks back at me
- im richie -

i automatically put my hand
out to shake but i totally drop
it when he doesnt - im
desmond -

richie smiles at me almost
excited for a second - like
desmond dekker the reggae
guy -

- i dont know who that is my
parents named me after that
beatles song ob la di ob la
da -

he just looks at me no
recognition at all like he
never even heard of the
beatles before

- you know - and i sing the line
- desmond and mol-ly jones -
and i feel like a pinhead the
second i sing it

and this richie kid looks at
me totally not blinking or
anything and asks me

- why does everything about
you turn out to be less cool
than it seems at first -

and i look away scowl shrug
open my hands i have no
idea how to even respond to
such a dickish thing and he
goes

- im gonna call you desmond
dekker because thats much
cooler - and he looks at me
like asking - okay -

i look back at him and just
kind of shake my head like
- whatever -

so he nods and runs off and
my first thought is - wow that
guy is an asshole -

and then my second thought
is - wow

- i never had a nickname
before -

RICHIE (Chapter One - Twitter Novel / Keitai Shosetsu Version)

the kid who was talking
before silent now
so i wrote what he said down

- adolescence is the furnace
in which the great themes of
our lives are forged -

which i think is kind of
brilliant his name is richie
mr isaacs looks at him

and i thought he was gonna
say something snide like he
does but he actually kind of
smiled

- interesting quote richie
who said that - kind of with
his lips pursed

- i did i mean i didnt say it i
wrote it down awhile ago
but its mine -

isaacs arches his eyebrows
says something about not
mixing the metaphors being
good but

goes on to question the
validity which i guess means
i like the way you said that
but i dont believe you

the richie kid folds his arms
leather jacket creaks which i
think is cool i want one

he asks why and mr isaacs
goes into song and dance
about experiences of a 15 or
16 year old boy

and 40 year old man he will
become being totally
different as he grows life
changes themes change

and if not then person ends
up being kind of retarded at
least emotionally richie puts his
hands palms down on table

goes - i dont mean everything
concerns beliefs stay the
same that would be crazy

- i mean stuff they care about
deep down most important
what makes them feel like
passion -

and a bunch of kids laugh at
- passion - because theyre all
super gay and damaged and
cant be mature about it

isaacs says he knows what
richie means and admires his
passion then looks around the
room and pinheads shut up

but then mr isaacs goes into
evolution of passion over
lifetime more reasonable
balanced modes of
expression

difference between an
arrested adolescent and
happy healthy adult and
richie sits back

goes - so you dont think truer
we stay to stuff we believe
now is more we fully stay
alive -

and isaacs laughs actually
laughs says - no not at all
this may be something that
can only be

learned by experience - and
the kid says under his breath
- maybe -

mr isaacs checks his watch
dramatically - thats as good a
place as any to stop chapters
4 and 5 for tomorrow -

//wave of groaning and
protest//

- look you little weasels stop
bitching or ill throw in
chapter 6 - immediate silence
- okay then -

then richie catches my eye as
im pulling on my pea coat
nods at me - nice shirt -

surprised i look down look
back up
- oh uh thanks -

-i didnt think anyone at this
school would know about
robert williams -

i pull up my pea coat - uh
whos robert williams - feel
immediately stupid

richie is taken aback - the guy
who drew the picture thats on
yr shirt dumbass -

i shrug downcast - i just got
it cuz ben from kill taker
wears one on their website -

richie whistles sadly through
his teeth - that band
suuuuuucks - pulls backpack
across shoulder

- do an image search on yr
shirt tonight and find out
about williams hes
awesome -

the kid swaggers out big
black boots thudding across
hardwood floor i say almost
inaudible

- sure -

RICHIE (Part One - Regular Version)

Desmond writes the line down in his notebook, scribbling quickly before he loses the wording:

Adolescence is the furnace in which the great themes of our lives are forged.

He looks back up at the kid who said it, silent now, then up to the head of the table where Mr. Isaacs purses his lips.

"Interesting quote, Richie. Who said that?"

"I did. I mean, I didn't say it, I wrote it down a while ago. But it is mine."

Mr. Isaacs arches his eyebrows. "Well, I'm certainly impressed that you didn't mix your metaphors, but I do have to question the validity of your statement."

The kid, Richie, folds his arms, leather jacket creaking. "Why?"

"Well, to begin with, the experiences of a sixteen-year-old boy and the thirty or forty-year-old man he will become are, by definition, vastly different. The great themes of a man or woman's life change as the circumstances of that person's life change: who they love, if they marry, if they have children, what they do for a living...where they choose to live." Isaacs pauses. "The great themes of a person's life have to change after adolescence or that person will end up - again, by definition - completely mired in the past."

Richie leans forward, places his hands palms-down on the table. "I don't mean that, like, all of their concerns or beliefs stay the same - you're right, that would be crazy. I mean the stuff they deep-down care about, what's most important to them - what they think is right, what they think is totally fucked, what makes them feel, you know, passion."

A couple of chuckles around the table at the word "passion". Richie scowls, gestures to Mr. Isaacs. "You know what I mean."

"Yes, Richie, I do. And I admire your passion." He casts a glance around the table at the other boys in his class, who now remain silent. "But I think that the evolution of those passions over the course of a life into...more reasonable modes of expression...is what separates an adult from an arrested adolescent."

Richie sits back. "So you don't think that...the truer we stay to the stuff we believe now at sixteen, or fifteen, or whatever is...the more we stay fully alive?"

A smile slowly breaks across Mr. Isaacs' face. "No. Not at all. This may be," he tilts his head, "something that...can only be learned by experience."

Richie, under his breath: "Maybe."

Mr. Isaacs checks his watch. "And that's probably as good a place as any to stop. Chapters four and five for tomorrow, gentlemen." A wave of groaning protest engulfs the table. Mr. Isaacs' previous calm, easygoing demeanor immediately disappears. "Look, you little weasels, stop bitching or I'll throw in chapter six!" Silence follows. "Okay, then."

As they pack up their books, Richie casts a glance over at Desmond pulling on his pea coat. "Nice shirt."

Desmond looks up at Richie, surprised, then down at this shirt, then back at Richie. "Oh, uh, thanks."

"I didn't think anyone at this school would know about Robert Williams."

Desmond finishes putting his pea coat on. "Um, who's Robert Williams?"

Richie looks at him, taken aback. "The guy who drew the picture that's on your shirt, dumb-ass."

Desmond shrugs, drops his gaze. "I just got it 'cause Ben from Kill Taker wears one on their website."

Richie whistles sadly through his teeth. "That band sucks." He pulls his backpack over one shoulder. "Do an image search on your shirt tonight and find out about Williams. He's awesome." Richie swaggers out, big black boots thudding across the hardwood floor as Desmond quietly murmurs to himself, "Sure."

HEAVY INTO JEFF

The girl was heavy into Jeff; she knew it, we knew it. Much beers later, you had half a mind to tell the kid because he obviously wasn't gonna get it on his own. Snakeland was good for beers and bong hits - no one ever there except homeless dudes. And snakes. The part by the water you could huck the bottles in; dig the splash, then the echo of the splash. The empty grain elevators were a wall between us and the cops, all floor holes and broken glass. Pretty sweet. The girl was totally listening to Jeff and all his World of Warcraft bullshit which he never would've been talking about to a girl unless he was totally high. Which he was, but that's still no excuse to be blabbering that geek noise to some piece of ass that followed us to Snakeland. So we all give Jeff the eye and the nod and he finally gets it and he's like you wanna go down by the water? and she's like yeah, sure and they grab a couple of beers and they go and we laugh a little and they laugh a little. And then Tony's all Let's build a fire! and Dez is all No, let's just cut out the middleman and actually tell the cops where we are, and then it's Fuck You but bong hits later no problem.

Jeff or the girl whips a bottle in the water but it must've been a big one because the echo is even bigger than the splash, or at least it sounds that way. From where we are. The girl walks up, hours later maybe, feels that way, wiping her mouth says Jeff fell asleep. Dez waits until she leaves, looks at us, goes Is that a good sign or a bad sign? And Tony goes Who cares, where did they get wine? Dez is like The fuck you talking about? And Tony says Her mouth was all red, dude. Her lips were all red.

1988 (EDIT FROM "VINYL")

It was as if the fever dreams of a thousand lonely hardcore bands actually came true. Ronald Reagan, fangs elongated and dripping green poison, hunched over the big, fat, round, red, candy-like Button with his crooked finger poised to press, cowboy hat perched on his slick black Bob’s Big Boy quiff, a crucified Christ in miniature bouncing on his right shoulder like some over-eager younger brother on a pogo stick. Too perfect to actually exist, this was the collective image that reflected back at us from the t-shirts and album covers of a terrified and neutered nation.

Except that it did exist, but only for a moment before it was swept away by the plutonium wind. “I’ve just outlawed Russia forever,” he giggled, his fawning Yes men laughing along, Nancy poised just behind with her elongated fingers brushing his collar. “We begin bombing in f-f-five m-m-m-m-m-minutes” he stuttered out like a Sigue Sigue Sputnik remix and then he pushed it down, he pushed it down and it made a tiny squeaking sound like the horn on a Fisher Price plastic car. Oddly enough, the Button was also made by Fisher Price, but unfortunately their steadfast attention to detail in this case meant that the Button actually worked, and soon the missiles filled the sky.

MAD, or Mutually Assured Destruction (as every schoolchild was taught in 1988), was supposed to be the ultimate deterrent to nuclear Armageddon as any sane individual would be thought to refrain from pushing a Button that would be summarily pressed in kind by his Russki counterpart after death began to rain down from above. But Ronald Reagan, he pushed it down; and them in Moscow, they pushed it down; and you, you can fuckin’ fill in the rest.

Baby make boom boom. Ha ha.

"SMASHING PUMPKINS VS. PAVEMENT"/WIKIPEDIA/LITERARY REMIX

Beginnings of the Rivalry

In August 1995, Matador Records CEO Gerard Cosloy took a dig at Virgin Records and Richard Branson at that year's Grammy Awards; announcing to the assembly of artists and industry figures: “Any artist out there that want to be an artist and stay a star, and don’t have to worry about the executive producer trying to be all in the videos…all on the records…dancing, come to Matador Records”—a direct reference to Branson’s tendency of ad-libbing on his artists’ songs and dancing in their videos. With the ceremony being held in New York, to the audience, Cosloy’s comments seemed a slight to the entire East Coast major label scene, and resulted in many boos from the crowd. Branson attempted to defuse the growing hostility in the air with a speech denouncing the rivalry, to little avail. Later that evening, a stripped-down performance by Stephen Malkmus and Bob Nastanovich was jeered by New Yorkers in attendance, to which Nastanovich famously responded, “The East Coast ain’t got no love for Pavement and Stephen Malkmus and Matador Records?!”

Tensions were escalated when Cosloy later attended a party for producer Steve Albini in Chicago. During the bash, a close friend of Cosloy’s was fatally shot outside. Cosloy accused Branson of having something to do with the shooting. The same year, Cosloy posted the $1.4 million bail of the then-incarcerated Malkmus, in exchange for his signing Pavement to Matador Records. Shortly after the singer/guitarist’s release in October 1995, he proceeded to join Cosloy in furthering Matador Records’ feud with Virgin Records.

Pavement vs. The Smashing Pumpkins

From late 1995 into early 1996, Pavement aimed various threatening and/or antagonistic slants at the Smashing Pumpkins, Virgin as a label, and anyone affiliated with them. While the Pumpkins were commercially successful, they were not universally adored by the alternative rock community. Pavement’s 1995 song "Range Life" refers to the band with the lines "Out on tour with the Smashing Pumpkins/Nature kids…ah, they don’t have no function/I don't understand what they mean/And I could really give a fuck", which has been widely interpreted as an insult (although Malkmus has stated "I never dissed their music. I just dissed their status."). The song’s harsh content was viewed by some detractors as Malkmus having gone too far and taking the feud to another level. However, other participants in the indie scene had derided the band as careerists since their early days. Former Husker Du frontman Bob Mould called the Smashing Pumpkins "the grunge Monkees", and musician/producer Steve Albini countered that the Pumpkins were no more alternative than REO Speedwagon and said they were "pussy-ass niggas" and "stylistically appropriate for the current college party scene, but ultimately insignificant". However, others such as Courtney Love of Hole (who dated Corgan before marrying Nirvana's Kurt Cobain), as well as others who also dated Corgan before marrying Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, were vocal supporters of the band.

During this time, although Billy Corgan never directly responded, the media became heavily involved and dubbed the rivalry the Indie Rock Wars, reporting on it continuously. This caused fans from both scenes to take sides with one set of artists or another.

Pavement vs. others

In addition to the Smashing Pumpkins, “Range Life” also insulted Stone Temple Pilots. Lead singer Scott Weiland stated he would not return the diss because he felt Malkmus was trying to gain fame by insulting him.

End of the Feud

In March 1996, during the Grammy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles, there was a confrontation in the parking lot between the respective entourages of Virgin and Matador records in which guns were drawn. Although an armed standoff was all it amounted to, it was becoming readily apparent to indie rock fans and artists that the situation was escalating into a serious issue. Local papers referred to the situation as, “the indie rock version of the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

Not long after, at the MTV Video Music Awards in New York, Scott Weiland and Malkmus also confronted each other outside the venue. Though accounts from Snoop Dogg and Weiland himself somewhat vary…most agreed that Malkmus said he would remove the insults to Weiland from the next Pavement album, if Weiland would in return refrain from insulting him. Their previous verbal abuse was, as found in the meeting, based on publicity. The media’s sensationalizing of the Indie Rock Wars, meanwhile, fueled record sales. Although Weiland kept his end of the bargain, Malkmus was killed before he was able to do the same.

On September 7, 1996, Stephen Malkmus was shot five times in Las Vegas, dying six days later from respiratory failure and cardiac arrest on Friday, September 13. Six months later, on March 9, 1997, Billy Corgan was shot and killed in Los Angeles, mirroring Malkmus’ murder. Both murders remain unsolved today, while numerous theories (some of them conspiracy theories) about their deaths have been pondered.

Following the Rivalry

The outcome of the feud (significantly due to the deaths of Malkmus and Corgan) would shake the culture of indie rock, changing the way label affiliations were both handled by artists, viewed by fans, and reported on by the media. In 1997, several rock stars, including the surviving Silver Jews, Soundgarden and that band that did “Sex and Candy” met at the request of Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Ulysses, and pledged to forgive any slights that may be related to the rivalry and/or deaths of Malkmus and Corgan.

Following the death of Malkmus, most of Matador Records prominent artists departed the label. Afeni Malkmus, Stephen’s mother, sued the label for allegedly cheating her son out of millions. Gerard Cosloy, meanwhile, was incarcerated for unrelated probation violations. This bad turn for Matador Records led, in turn, to a long lull in the mainstream popularity of indie rock, leading some fans to believe that indie rock was being blacklisted. Since his 2001 release from prison, attempts by Cosloy to revitalize his label have been largely futile.

Though Virgin Records hasn’t suffered a collapse as steep as that of Matador Records’, it too has seen its fortunes decline. In the late 1990s, Virgin label head, Richard Branson (who now calls himself “R. Biddy”) began recording solo albums and earned considerable commercial success as a recording artist, but saw his sales dwindle with each subsequent effort. More recently, however, Virgin Records has struggled to remain commercially competitive, due to a lack of marketable talent and allegations that Branson is now more concerned with his other ventures (e.g. his attempts at an around-the-world balloon flight).

At the MTV Music Video Awards, in September 1999, Afeni Malkmus and Voletta Corgan (mothers of Stephen Malkmus and Billy Corgan) publicly met on stage in a show of solidarity. Ms. Corgan also offered to help Ms. Malkmus investigate Stephen’s death. While rivalries between indie rock and major labels continue to exist, since the murders of Malkmus and Corgan there has not been a rivalry of such magnitude. This may be due largely to the fact that, seeing the outcome of this episode (though no physically sustainable connection has been made linking the actual homicides of these two slain rock stars to their rivalry), artists and prominent industry figures have been mindful of tempering battles and commercializing contention, in a seemingly direct attempt to prevent them from reaching this level.

“WHY DON’T YOU MAKE THE GRAND INQUISITOR A PROPOSITION?”/FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY VS. WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS/LITERARY MASH-UP/

My story is laid in Spain, in Seville, in the most terrible time of the Inquisition, when fires were lighted every day to the glory of God, and in the splendid Ministry of Mental Hygiene and Prophylaxis the wicked heretics were burnt.

Carl Petersen visited his children only for a moment, and there where the flames were crackling round the heretics.

Carl walked through the Town Hall Square, and the little girl sat up in the coffin and looked around, smiled with wide-open wondering eyes, holding a bunch of white roses they had put in her hand.

Carl entered the steel enamel labyrinth of the Ministry, strode to the information desk, held out his finger and bid the guards take him.

He came softly, unobserved, and yet, strange to say, everyone recognized him, reporting for a ten o’clock appointment with Doctor Benway in the Ministry.
And such was his power, so completely were the people cowed into submission and trembling obedience to him, that the crowd immediately made way for the guards, and in the midst of deathlike silence they laid hands on him and led him away.

“Fifth floor…Room twenty-six…”

In the pitch darkness the iron door of the prison was suddenly opened and Doctor Benway himself came in with a light in his hand.

“As if he had nothing to do but wait for me,” thought Carl…

“Hurumph,” he said finally…”Your name is Carl Peterson, I believe…”

For the first time the doctor’s eyes flickered across Carl’s face, eyes without a trace of warmth or hate or any emotion that Carl had ever experienced in himself or seen in another, at once cold and intense, predatory and impersonal.

He pushed his glasses back into place with one finger and opened a file on the white enameled desk.

“Mmmmmmm. Carl Peterson,” he repeated the name caressingly, pursed his lips and nodded several times. He spoke again abruptly: “You know of course that we are trying. We are all trying. Sometimes of course we don’t succeed.

“But let me tell you that now, today, people are more persuaded than ever that they have perfect freedom, yet they have brought their freedom to us and laid it humbly at our feet.

“Do you know that the ages will pass and humanity will proclaim by the lips of their sages that there is no crime, and therefore no sin; there is only hunger? ‘Nothing is true; everything is permitted’, as the saying goes.” His voice trailed off thin and tenuous. He put a hand to his forehead.

“In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, ‘make us your slaves, but feed us’.”

His voice boomed out so unexpectedly deep and loud that Carl started. “That is the only function of the state as we see it. Our knowledge…incomplete, of course,” he made a slight gesture of depreciation…“For example…for example…take the matter of uh sexual deviation.”

The doctor rocked back and forth in his chair. His glasses slid down his nose. Carl felt suddenly uncomfortable.

“No, we care for the weak too. They are sinful and rebellious but in the end they too will become obedient. They will marvel at us and look on us as gods, because we are ready to endure the freedom which they have found so dreadful and to rule over them – so awful it will seem to them to be free.”

Carl suddenly felt trapped in this silent underwater cave of a room, cut off from all sources of warmth and certainty. The doctor was suddenly motionless. “So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship.”

The doctor was studying the file in front of him. He spoke in a tone of slightly condescending amusement: “They have set up gods and challenged one another, ‘Put away your gods and come and worship ours, or we will kill you and your gods!’”

The doctor suddenly threw himself back in his chair and burst into peals of metallic laughter. Carl watched him appalled…“The man is insane,” he thought.

“Don’t look so frightened, young man. Just a professional joke. The secret of man’s being is not only to live but to have something to live for. That is to say…reassurance when reassurance is necessary…and, of course, the condition is no more directly contagious than cancer. Cancer, my first love,” the doctor’s voice receded.

Carl was in a room filled with green light. There was a stained wood double bed, a black wardrobe with full length mirror. Someone was sitting in a black hotel chair. He was wearing a stiff bosomed white shirt and a dirty paper tie. The face swollen, skull-less, eyes like burning pus.

The doctor’s voice was barely audible. “Why don’t you make the Grand Inquisitor a proposition?” He jerks a head towards his glowering super-ego who is always referred to in the third person as “The Lieutenant” or “The Grand Inquisitor”.

“That’s the way the Grand Inquisitor is, you play fair with him and he’ll play fair with you…We’d like to go light on you…If you could help us in some way.” His words open out into a desolate waste of cafeterias and street corners and lunch rooms. Junkies look the other way munching pound cake.

“For having begun to build their tower of Babel without us, they will end, of course, with cannibalism. But then the beast will crawl to us and lick our feet and spatter them with tears of blood.”

A green flare exploded in Carl’s brain.

“We shall show them that they are weak, that they are only pitiful children, but that childlike happiness is the sweetest of all.”

The flare went out. Some huge insect was squirming in his hand. Carl’s whole being jerked away in an electric spasm of revulsion.

The doctor raised a coy admonishing finger. “Oh, we shall allow them even sin, they are weak and helpless, and they will love us like children because we allow them to sin.”

He tapped the file and flashed a hideous leer. Carl noticed that the file was six inches thick. In fact it seemed to have thickened enormously since the doctor entered the room.

“But tomorrow I will condemn you and burn you at the stake as the worst of deviants. And the very people who have today kissed your feet, tomorrow at the faintest sign from me will rush to heap wood on your fire. Do you know that? Yes, maybe you do know it,” he added with thoughtful penetration, never for a moment taking his eyes off Carl.

The old man longed for him to say something, however bitter and terrible. “Where can you go, Carl?”

But Carl suddenly approached the old man in silence and softly kissed him on his bloodless aged lips. That was all his answer. The whole room was exploding out into space.

Doctor Benway shuddered. He went to the green door, opened it and said to him: “Go, and come no more…come not at all, never, never!”

And he let him out into the dark alleys of the town. Carl Peterson went away.

“DRIED WAR”/THE FIRST PAGE OF "THE SUN ALSO RISES"/ERNEST HEMINGWAY/LITERARY REMIX/

Track One (2:08)

Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of his spinal column and now all of a sudden he’ll have no control of a doorless car.

It is impossible for man to really transcend human glasses, and I was holding a plunger in the picture just to be really Princeton.

Do not think that I am very much impressed by that she was crying and bleeding, curled against the toilet.

Oh, and it moved her hand around her breasts.

She was now talking of flesh and rationality.

This is what the Peyote Church is: sexual desire.

On the surface these two actions, they nurtured it and they believed in it and they made you believe in it as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn.

He cared nothing for her hands up as if she were praying but with her hands (an inch) hands held there in the positions dictated, the film she touched would die.

She believed that she had some terrible ethics of sympathy, of personal devotion on records in 1976.

They took it to the English kids and from there to boxing; in fact he disliked it, but he learned it painfully and thoroughly.


Track Four (1:52)

He would hit all these high schools, nice boy, he never fought except in the gym.

He was Spiders, Gremlins and Pacers, Mavericks and Hornets, Pintos, international bound for Stuttgart or Milan, peering down at us.

She asked for God’s help.

He appreciated their being with forces – that is, leaving his mother behind – and the vaginal pus, somewhere among the filthy hypo syringes and Kelly’s star pupil.

Spider Kelly taught all his young gentlemen to drinking at a pub near the castle where every day busloads of English knees and thighs arrived.

Despite its servo-brakes and Power All-Night Native American Church Meetings, knowing of my mind perfectly at rest there’s nothing about taking acid on the Santa Monica Pier.

I couldn’t help zeroing in, box like featherweights, no matter whether they weighed one car waiting for me.

I know where all the skeletons are.

Consider the deliberate destruction of expensively engineered Robert Kennedy in 1968.


Track Six (4:23)

The most discerning ethicists have shown dripping letters and showed him with his shirt off with makeup - a certain satisfaction of a strange sort, and it certainly improved the bass tracks, that it screws with his biorhythm.

The last time we created by the multiplying technologies of the twentieth top tipi hole.

I was floating, looking at myself disembodied.

What happens to me happens through me, and something like the Ramones, but a little more…well, more his nose.

In his last year at Princeton he read too much running through the vaults and galleries of her innards at two in his garden.

Can you see them in one of magic?

The road man took the coal out of his mouth, placed claim to this war.

But in addition the war is mine because by body and they knew everything about new music and they dressed and took to wearing spectacles.

I never met any one of his class said she wanted to get pregnant.

She said she wanted to have my headlamps.

She sat beside him, now treatment seems so simple.

It is also rather frightening to reduce him to an object.

The effect of all materialism started to really come together as this weird little community who remembered him.

They did not even remember that he was the size of an egg cup, and she would sit there at her desk in the ramp of the flyover, the traffic lanes were packed with Vietnam.

After the war, when he was living in Phoenix, sometimes can adapt the world and its possibilities to my band.

For better or worse, my work was displaced historically.

I, middleweight boxing champion, hammered that beautiful mister angel face, first with the bony circus hand.

I recognized him as one of the stuntmen at peaceful tipi.

I felt a giant ball well up in my throat, but there is no doctrine more optimistic; since you’re that young, you don’t think you’re ever gonna see your family again.

"OBAMA AFTER INAUGURATION"/WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS/LITERARY REMIX

NOTE: This is a literary remix of WSB's "Roosevelt After Inauguration", a conservative fantasia imagining the worst for the country after FDR was inaugurated. If anyone got here by using a search engine, it's just a joke, folks. Go search out Burroughs' spoken word version of the original piece for a real thrill.

OBAMA AFTER INAUGURATION

Immediately after the inauguration, Obama appeared on the White House balcony, dressed in the purple robes of a Roman emperor and leading a blind, toothless lion on a gold chain, and hog-called his constituents to come get their appointments. The constituents rushed up grunting and squealing like the hogs they were. Men who had gone gray and toothless in the faithful service of the Republican Party were summarily dismissed in the grossest terms, like “you’re fired, you old fuck, get your hemorrhoids outta here” and in many cases, thrown bodily out of their offices. Pimps and drug dealers of the lowest caliber filled the highest offices of the land.

When the Supreme Court overruled some of the legislation perpetrated by this vile rout, Obama forced that august body, on threat of immediate reduction to the level of Congressional lavatory attendants, to submit to intercourse with a purple-assed baboon. So the venerable honored men submitted themselves to the embraces of a lecherous, snarling simian while Obama and his strumpet wife and the veteran brown-nose Joe Biden smoked a communal crack pipe and watched the lamentable spectacle with cackles of obscene laughter. Justice Clarence Thomas succumbed to a rectal hemorrhage on the spot. Obama only laughed and said coarsely, “Plenty more where that came from”. Biden, unable to contain himself, rolled on the floor in psycho-panic convulsions saying over and over, “You’re killing me, chief, you’re killing me!” Then Obama appointed the baboon to replace Justice Thomas, so henceforth the proceedings of the court were carried on with a screeching simian shitting and pissing and masturbating on the table and not infrequently leaping on one of the justices and tearing him to shreds. “He is entering a vote of dissent,” Obama would say with an evil chuckle.

The vacancies so created were invariably filled by simians, so that in the course of time the Supreme Court came to consist of nine purple-assed baboons. Obama, claiming to be the only one able to interpret their decisions, thus gained control of the highest tribune in the land. Then Obama gave himself over to such vile and unrestrained conduct as is shameful to speak of. He instituted a series of contests, designed to promulgate the lowest instincts of which the human species is capable. There was the Most Sedentary Contest, the Pimp My White House Contest, Molest a Child Week, Perform Your Own Abortion Week, and the coveted title of all-around Vilest Celebutante of the Year. Obama was so convulsed with hatred for the species as it is that he wished it degraded beyond recognition. “I’ll make the cocksuckers glad to mutate,” he would say, looking off into space as if seeking new frontiers of depravity.

THE LONESOME DEATH OF GG ALLIN

There was an innate sweetness to him that a lot of people missed, mostly due to all the shit-eating and the sexual assaults, but what they failed to realize was that he never did anything to anyone that he wouldn’t first do to himself. The band had gotten through three whole songs that night before the mic stopped working because GG kept punching people in the head with that hand and the promoter flipped out about all the nudity and the blood. So GG ended up walking the streets of New York City naked, filthy and alone, or at least as alone as you can be with a flock of vulture voyeurs circling just far enough away to safely watch and laugh. Eventually all the drugs he took earlier kicked in or he just became tired, finally tired, so he settled in on someone’s floor to quietly die while his hosts took pictures posing with his rapidly cooling corpus. Who did he imagine held him as he drifted away? Who did he dream palpated his dirty, distended asshole to soothe him to sleep? It would be silly to suggest that GG died for us because he never did anything for anyone other than himself, but there is an undeniable human function served by those who demarcate the edge as they plunge headlong across it into the black.

DREAMLAND SURVEYORS, INC.

For Mitch Hedberg, RIP

I.
The strange part of it all was that no one seemed to mind at first. There was no huge outcry, no protests in the streets. Most people were happy to get the Social Security chips installed in their necks due to what they considered the “extreme” convenience of not having to wait in check-out lines anymore or file taxes or vote for the president or program their DVRs. The sensors, mounted in all public and most private locations, pretty much took care of all that. Of course there were fringe Liberal groups and bitter dyke feminists who made a little stink, but they were summarily ignored by the populace at large. Everything passed through Congress pretty quickly, and most people began to enjoy their new freedom from delay and inconvenience as soon as they were able.

Problems did arise, however, when the Intellectual Property people became involved. Lars Ulrich, the drummer from Metallica, led the charge towards artists getting paid every time someone listened to their music, let alone bought or shared it. Some resistance was mustered, but when it was announced that the surcharge would be mere pennies per song and that all monitoring and billing would occur automatically through the SS chip, well, that resistance faded pretty quickly and people quickly got used to seeing the Fair Use surcharge on their monthly invoice, if they looked at it at all.

This did open the floodgates a bit for the surcharges on multiple viewings of films or television programs, but the corporations learned quickly that keeping the amounts charged to seemingly minimal amounts was very effective, and again, protests were reduced to an easily dismissed fringe element. The booksellers attempted this as well, but the number of consumers who read a book more than once, barring those by John Grisham or J.K. Rowling, was so minimal that even with the miniscule overhead provided by the SS chips it still proved to be unprofitable.

Then came the so-called Morality Tax. A joint effort between the media conglomerates and the Religious Right, the Morality Tax basically amounted to another surcharge levied any time a person utilized a celebrity or segment of a film or television show as an element in a masturbation fantasy. The Religious Right reasoned that this monitoring and additional charge would minimize what they considered to be a filthy and unhealthy habit, and the agents and film companies saw a very lucrative and extensive capital source, especially for their celebrity female clients. This agenda was quickly introduced to Congress in an election year, and as it was seen as career suicide for any politician outside of the Bay Area to push for a pro-masturbation agenda, this also passed quickly. Lars Ulrich subsequently mounted a short-lived movement to levy a charge whenever an individual masturbated or had sex utilizing Metallica as background music (the infamous “Metallicum Incentive”) but this received little support, and was quickly forgotten.

Time passed. As monitoring and billing through the chips became more and more streamlined, an unintended use became apparent. Not only could the sensors be used to track music listened to, film and television watched, consumables purchased and celebrities cum over, they could also be utilized to delineate and itemize dreams. This was not an effective political tool, as was originally thought, because recorded dreams ultimately proved to be far too non-linear for useful analysis. However, it was possible to utilize them for further Fair Use charges. For instance, if you had a dream about building a go-kart with Lindsay Lohan and your ex-landlord, Ms. Lohan’s representatives would levy a five cent surcharge. This, as with the other initiatives, passed with little fanfare – until the bills started to come in.

As most individuals have great difficulty remembering their dreams in anything more than the barest fragments, no one realized at the time how extensively pop culture had infested the dream world. When individual citizens began receiving itemized statements for two or three hundred dollars for multiple nights spent in Hazzard County or on extensive dream-dinners with dead relatives, Wolf Blitzer and Madonna, a significant protest was mounted, but it was far too late. The law was the law, and there was far too much money being made.

So then an odd thing began to happen. As individuals were not able to directly control the content of their dreams the way they could control how much music they listened to or how many celebrities they beat off to, they had to engage in other methods to control the content of their dreams. Some began to utilize their alarm clocks to go off at three hour intervals to prevent extensive REM sleep. Some began taking powerful medications that would suppress their dreams completely. Others purchased best-sellers like Dream Control: A New Technique to a Richer, Happier You and 16 Ways Smart People Limit Their Billable Dream Content. The long and short of all this was fewer dreams, less extensive dreams, and unprecedented limits on the content of dreams. Dream surcharges took a sharp downturn.

II.
And Mike Powers is worried about this, very worried. He looks out the office-length window of the penthouse headquarters of Dreamland Surveyors, Inc. and sadly sighs. He attempts to reassure himself that despite the recent setbacks overhead remains tiny, profits are still comparatively high, and regardless of the numerous attempts at consumer control, a small percentage of people were still dreaming every night. No matter what blocks they put in, he comforts himself, no matter how much control they gain, some poor fuck in a trailer somewhere was gonna have a wet dream about Britney Spears and Mike Powers would be there to charge him for it. This last forces a tight grin to his mouth, and Mike rises from his seat, jingles the change in his pocket, and leaves the office to meet with his increasingly insecure shareholders.

As he begins to walk down the olive-carpeted hallway towards the elevators he quickly senses that something is wrong. A walk that usually takes less than a minute is dragging on and on, and Mike begins to feel the stress of moving one leg in front of the other. It isn’t that the hallway is elongating or that the floor is pulling at his feet, but rather that his legs seem to be filled with lead shot. He tries to move them more quickly but finds that he cannot. He leans forward and pushes against the floor with his hands as he steps to try to propel himself more quickly. As he looks up, he finds that the door out of the hallway is suddenly before him. He twists the forged metal knob of the thick oaken door, and is dimly aware while he does so that normally there is a bank of elevators in its place.

As he opens the door, he finds himself in his third-grade classroom. Mike’s mother, approximately thirty years old, sits on top of the teacher’s desk wearing a short plaid skirt and kicking her leg flirtatiously. She smiles at him.

“Hi, honey.”

“Hi, Mom. What are you doing at my work?”

“This is my work, honey. I teach here now.”

“No, Mom. I mean, I just walked down the hall from my office.” Mike shakes his head. “And you’re older than me. And dead.”

Mike’s mother looks at him disapprovingly. “Michael, I wish you’d stop looking at my legs. You’re making me uncomfortable and your father will be angry.”

“I’m not looking at your legs!”

His mother giggles and points to Mike’s groin. He looks down and sees that he now has a massive hard-on straining through his gabardine pants. He looks up in a panic. “I have to get out of here.”

His mother’s face is again a mask of disapproval. “Yes, Michael. I think you should leave.” She points to a poorly-painted, flaking red door. Mike lumbers uncomfortably to it, pulls it open and stumbles through.

He finds himself on the city street outside the building that houses Dreamland Surveyors, Inc. A wave of relief flows over him until he looks up into the sky. Four vast metal legs, each mounted what looks like a state away, reach up miles into the sky where they support a gigantic circular track. On the track, which suddenly appears to be chest-high, runs a child’s toy train releasing small puffs of white from its smokestack. On the great metal legs are affixed hundreds of construction workers with no apparent support besides their clenched knees, banging away at fat red plastic nails with fat blue plastic hammers. Their eyes are glassy, as if drugged or dreaming.

Mike’s perspective again shifts to the sidewalk in front of his building. He is staring up at the magnificent train track in the sky when it occurs to him. He shakes his head in awe.

“They got out. The fuckers got out.”

A fluffy white cloud above the elevated train track quickly forms into a smiley face, which winks jauntily down at the tiny man staring up at it, miles below.

BRADLEY SANDS IS A DICK

Note: This story just got rejected for a contest called “Bradley Sands is a Dick” wherein each submitted story needed to be titled “Bradley Sands is a Dick”. Bradley Sands is a bizarro author and editor and this was my submission. I can totally understand how it was rejected as it contains a lot of in-jokes, especially seeing as I am not “in” the group I am referring to! Hopefully a quick trip to Wikipedia’s “bizarro fiction” entry should clear a lot of this up. Ironically, my Urban Dictionary entries were accepted even though my story wasn’t. You can actually look them up!


BRADLEY SANDS IS A DICK

Or more accurately, Bradley Sands is your dick. As in, “Dude, I wouldn’t fuck her with Bradley Sands.” How the term “Bradley Sands” entered the vernacular vulgate is a long and fascinating one, but this isn’t that story. This is a shorter, saucier story about the fat pink ball-sac lying on George Plimpton’s chin.

It is common knowledge that George Plimpton, the Deus ex Machina of the literary machine that is the Paris Review, smokes Gitanes, the cigareet that put the Paris in the aforementioned Review. Now, what isn’t quite as well known is that Messr. Plimpton uses a cigareet holder, and what is even less well known is that hanging from said cigareet holder is a formed latex cast of Norman Mailer’s ball-sac, shiny and round and pink and perfect. See, instead of a death cast of Mailer’s humungous, misshapen noggin, Plimpton hired Cynthia Plaster Caster to do what she did best with the literary homunculus’ nether regions, and then had the latex replica made with two small orbs inserted for weight and heft that were formed from steel smelted from the plate in dead Papa Hemingway’s head. So this means (it should be obvious by now) that every time Senor Plimpton takes a toke, the fake collective ball-sac of the two most potent literary hard-cocks of our time rests on his pale, New England chinny chin chin.

So, one day, cheroot in mouth, balls on chin, Admiral Plimpton commands his underlings to take a letter and drafts the Memo du Voyant of our newborn century.


Toodles,

To here knows when, all lit’rary submissions to the Paris Review (and, by implication, any respectable lit’rary vehicle in the known hemisphere) hoping for any chance at publication will be written not only about young thirty-somethings living in New York City working in the publishing industry finding meaning and romance in a post-9/11 world, but also by young thirty-somethings living in New York City working in the publishing industry finding meaning and romance in a post-9/11 world. That is all.


This was received by the world-at-large with a collective click as that particular info-nug was summarily wiped off the pc screens of the nation. However, aspiring writers who did not fit into that particular demographic were left with slim pickins as far as hopes for publication were concerned. So, various other avenues were examined. Bradley Sands was the first so-called “author” to actually attempt to manipulate the culture by putting his stamp on the city-slang of the Youth of America. Through the vehicle of urbandictionary.com as well as long sloggy hours hanging out with hundreds of individual high school kids, getting high, palpating pubes and “talkin’ dat talk” (as Mr. Sands so eloquently puts it), over the course of several months the hot topic at Hot Topic was the ultra-new mega-extreme slang-scene of saying “I wouldn’t fuck her with Bradley Sands” instead of the traditional “I wouldn’t fuck her with your dick”. As others saw this scheme work against all odds, they also felt this was the chance they had gotta take, to say to the world “Take a look at me now!” Too often, there was just an empty space - nothing left there to remind them, just the memory of Bradley Sands’ face laughing back at them from hundreds of thousands of MySpace pages. Eventually, though, other authors did make their way, as is seen by the following entries subsequently pulled from urbandictionary.com [accessed 14 November 2008]:

mellick

A rim-job given after the giver has eaten jalapenos.

Yo, dat bitch gave me the crazy mellick!

By pow3rhous3


feelin’ kinda prunty

Needing a shower, feeling ‘funky’, not smelling very good.

Yo, dat bitch’s undercarriage was feelin’ kinda prunty!

By gee_money_tee


fracalossius

Incredibly tasty, especially after smoking marijuana.

Okay, I don’t normally like cream sauces, but that carbonara was fucking fracalossius.

By masahikokobe21


And so on. Unfortunately, follow-up literary hits were found to be extraordinarily difficult to produce, not only due to the limitations provided by the authors’ surnames but also due to a certain lack of novelty involved in their secondary efforts. New colloquialisms such as “Tebordo? I don’t even nordo!”, “D’yer Duza?” and the truly unfortunate “Shipp-shape” were met with the same lack of enthusiasm that once greeted Rules of Attraction, Ransom, and whatever the fuck Tama Janowitz’s second book was called. Additionally, reviewers of these sophomore slang-thangs attacked the authors for “writing slang for slang’s sake”, whatever that means, and sadly this was enough to cast a pallor over all the future efforts of these visionary jargonistas. The Plimptron had the final say, of course: “The Truth outs eventual, and the Truth of the matter is that these… these Sloganeers (he said with a sneer) simply don’t have it.”

Oddly enough, it is said that nearly twenty years later these young writers got a strange sort of revenge, despite the fact that it was served extraordinarily cold. Upon his deathbed, the incredibly decrepit Plimptonian shakily smoked his last Gitane and murmured his final statement to those gathered by his side: “Indeed….I never did receive…a…mellick.” And then the olde New Englander breathed his last around the fat, fake communal scrotum of those two Great White Whales, and in the dim autumnal light the balls wobbled to…and…fro.

1986 B.C.

Dear Mount Vernon:

We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole lifetime in the Machine Heart for whatever it is that we did wrong. What we did was wrong, even though none of us can remember exactly what that was. Maybe we were drunk. But we think you’re crazy to make us write book after book after book for the rest of our goddamned lives telling you who we think we are and then wait for you to slowly filter that back to us through superhero movies and clip shows on E! and the Technicolor vomit of a thousand whoring heiresses. You see us as you want to see us: in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions, the boldest colors and the most glistening labia. But what we found out over the past two thousand years is that each one of us is…

a Messiah…

and a ’76 Buick Skylark…

and a Psychic Homeless Woman…

an Autistic Kid on a Family-Oriented Summer Replacement Series…

and a Motherfucking Genius.

Does that answer your question? Did you ask me a question?

Sincerely yours,
Famous Monsters of Filmland

THE LAKE (Edit from "BLITHEWOOD")

Having lived before, will live again, Time for her is less a river than a lake. Placid, still, it laps out to shores that never touch, touches bottom at a point just beneath breathing, breathes back and forth with the illusion of wind on water but never moves beyond. All the action, as they say, happens out of sight.

And she falls into it, like a ballerina, long auburn hair splayed on the top of the water in a spiral that swirls down with her as she begins her stroke. And she swims through Time, takes hers, and when her graceful underwater pirouette is done, she breaks the surface to draw another breath.

And she is no closer to the shore, still in the middle of the vast, warm bath that simultaneously exasperates and caresses her, and then she sees him on the far shore. He is thirty, he is fifteen, he is eighty, he is nine. He is all men, all ages, and he stoops to touch the lapping at his feet. And she feels him and does not feel him, a disturbance through liquid Time that leaves a dull ache of unfulfilled contact, a ghost.

And it wracks her, this ghost of touch, and she begins to weep. And she slowly submerges, another languorous plunge into Time, and her tears mix with the waters and press that far edge just that one infinitesimal tear further, another drop out of reach, another wave to the man on the shoreline, never to return.