“‘A Black, basically euclidean abyss’, that is what the fatman once told me it was”. The Scotsman tried in futility to convey to an operative of the Coast Guard his reasoning for retreating to such a remote place as the far-flung depths of the submarine domain. Unfortunately for our trans-temporal retrospecting friend, this particular member of the coast guard had recently ceased to exist in any meaningful way after the very boundaries of time and space themselves had been altered by an anomalous quantum event orally transmitted by the time-traveller in a desperate attempt to avoid pneumatic mutilation at the vacuum-nozzles of a small army of marauding apemen.
This particular Coast Guard operative seemed somewhat unusual to the Scotsman’s sensibilities; not only due to his peculiar temporal fixation, but also due to the simple fact that, instead of a human body, the officer’s corporeal form seemingly consisted of little more than a system of hollow tubes of nodular insight immersed in a conspicuously lime-green aura. The sea the Scotsman looked out upon was not any earthly water-sea, but instead a boundless sea of syrup, energized by pleasant silhouettes; for he had arrived in a section of an alternate plane of reality known as Austral Hyperspace. The officer with whom he had failed to communicate with was, in-fact, a lightcomber; a member of a breed of transdimensional entities who rely upon optic-waves leaking into their home realm from other parts of the multiverse in order sustain great cities of two-dimensional, balinese shadow puppet-like buildings...
After what should have been several months of travel-- if months had still existed-- the Scotsman finally arrived at another ocean somewhere else in the cosmos; this one, it appeared, actually contained water...
Far, far below; hidden amidst the eternal gloom of the watery abysm, lay the deepest oceanic trench in all of existence; known by a name which could easily strike fear into the hearts of even the bravest of hominids...Curtis’ Folly.
Surely such an inaccessible location could serve as the perfect place for the Scotsman to seek asylum from...whatever it was that he was fleeing from in the first half of the story...honestly it has been like three weeks since I wrote that part and I have seriously forgotten what it was about but anyway; moving right along then...
The Scotsmen couldn’t actually be left in peace in Curtis’ Folly; this was primarily because this stretch of seafloor had already been laid claim to by one bad dude. The Trenchmaster, beset in fiery, intricate clown-makeup; he lives in a bubble of green light and forever travels liquid space in search of overly-self-assured schmucks like the Scotsman, for whom a worthy comeuppance would sometimes be given.
Several ∅ays later; our protagonist arrives in an undisturbed colony of sea snails, Neo-Disco Snails to be exact. The colony was a peaceful place, completed unspoiled by the ravages of war or capitalism; it had eerily beautiful fields of bioluminescent seagrass in the endless night of blue glow and greenish darkness; and wild, raging, hermaphroditic orgies fueled by a cocktail of blind lust and psychotropic isopod venom. The Scotsmen spent what should have been a very long time with those hedonistic mollusks; but ultimately, an event of immense singularity brought him into upheaval once again. A submersible from a far flung realm arrived in Curtis’ Folly, catastrophically meeting it’s end just beyond the Disco Snails‘ village; Its pilot--a frogman--emerged from the wreckage with a copper valve embedded in his skull; a valve through which the shimmering, ethereal essence of all his thoughts dreams ebbed away silently into the lightless sea; truly a tragedy for all those involved. The only survivor of the crash was a chrome-plated hydrocollection robot named Siegfried; who emerged from the gloom to lay claim to the undersea world.
The Trenchmaster, refusing to accept the robotic newcomer’s unwavering bravado, challenged Siegfried to a game of Ketchikan Pickup (a form of solitaire); but, as Siegfried pointed out, solitaire is not a particularly appropriate sport for more than one persona at a time; so the Trenchmaster settled for a brawl instead.
When the Scotsman finally found the two surreal morons two μonths later, they had ended up reconciling over a slice of ambient cake; no epic battle, no universe shattering struggle, this just isn’t the time nor the place for such things. The Scotsman begged the duo to help him return home, to banish the sinister jibblymen back to the hellish future from whence they came and to aid him in regaining his own forgotten past.
“You say many wise things for someone so small, my caledonian comrade; but truly, your journey has barely begun, reach inside your heart and I am confident you shall find all the answers to every question that you ask.” said the Trenchmaster. Reaching inside his heart the Scotsman pulled out a large, parasitic abyssal isopod larger than his head; and looked about himself regarding his surroundings with some confusion; for where once had been the dark chaos of Curtis‘ Folly now instead lay a well appointed country manner on the better side of the astral plane.
You see, as it so turns out; the Scotsman is in fact none other than the Superintendent of Dreams--a character that I ripped off from Mark Twain and somehow made scottish--and the whole life he thought he lived; with the whisky plantation, and the cabin, the psyberwoods, and the jibblymen, and the trench were all nothing more than an elaborate dream-within-the-dreamworld triggered by the psychoactive secretions of a baneful crustacean that had grown in the Superintendent’s hot tub because he didn’t use enough chlorine...
Problem solved...
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
Curtis' Folly (Part 1 of 2)
You should have seen this scottish time-traveler’s cabin, it was just glorious; neon-green textured totem poles of dense agar as far as the eye could see. He had one of those trampolines with near-infinite tensile strength, and a pit of foam rubber polyhedrons in a wide range of colours. I had once heard he had an asymmetrical disco-ball; the whole works. He’d have friends over sometimes, but all he’d ever want to do is play round-after-round of skittles. He once refurbished his walls to consist of little more than thin sheets of rubber between sandwichboard-like materials. He had a fish tank in the corner containing specimens such as no one else could ever imagine; coldfire gobies and yellow filtration-rex sharks as well as a clown kangaroo catfish all sat there in their lurid brilliance under blacklight in the house of the time traveler. On the walls of his room lay an assortment of advanced purkinje light-inspired imagery arranged into a fleur-bedecking of parapornographic imagery that allowed the scotsman’s syrup soaked brain to take solace in the proper workings of it’s host through the undignified transformation of primatoid digits into those of a twisted bird through the application of autoerotic stimulation. It was located in the depths of this place called “Psyberwoods”; a vast woodland of twisting chrome, fake trees, and nonsensical lights that is rumoured by many to have grown up from temporal contamination from future times. Many of the trees in this forest can be tapped for their bright purple sap, which can distilled into a vile-tasting syrup well known for facilitating tetra-dimensional retrospection; in layman’s terms, time travel. And that’s why this scottish time-traveler fellow was so interested in making his home in such godforsaken country; as it seems that in his homeland in the past, he had once committed some felonious-yet-forgotten deed that had landed him deported from the british isles; and now he planned on regaining his missing past through all the means that he currently had available. This time-traveler’s story reaches a frightening crescendo as he is forced to face down a vast horde of terrifying, feral beings known as Jibblymen, eternal guardians of the Psyberwoods. With no proper weaponry at his disposal; and the Jibblymen well armed with horrifically powerful shop-vacs of war and enshrouded in a mind-numbing haze of marzipan-flavoured fog; the time-traveler should have--logically speaking--been absolutely terrified. Instead, the time-traveller merely started to tell his attackers a story:
“A long time ago, I owned a fine double-malt scotch plantation in Aberfeldy. It was glorious...I think; I don’t actually remember much of my time spent there. In fact, I have almost no memory of my past life or how it was that I was even able to make it to the Psyberwoods of the great state of Mainesota. I spend my days harvesting the peculiar purple syrup that accumulates within the types of “trees” that grow in this forest; I say “trees” in quotes because these monstrosities are a lot less woody and more robotic than what most tree-identifying experts are probably used to. Here in my cabin it’s usually just me and my dog, Bo--he’s a deerhound who just came to my porch one day as a whelp and never left my side since then--, sometimes I think I can almost see the soul of a 6th century buddhist monk behind his eyes.
One day not long ago, Bo started barking over a mysterious shape out there in the woods. Upon investigating I could not believe my eyes! I was looking straight on into the face of one of the dreaded Jibblymen, legendary wildfolk of the psyberwoods. Exuding a sweet, amygdalic scent to entrance would-be opponents; these wirehaired semi-cousins of the sasquatch armed their terrible shop-vacs (strong enough to suck the prints from a man’s fingers even!). I told the Jibblymen how I had used the violet syrup of their forest to facilitate time travel, having lost my own past I sought to regain it; but I also told them how I had used it to see into the future just as well. As I told this story to them, Bo suddenly spoke up for the first time ever; claiming himself to be the true reincarnation of Bodhidharma, founder of Zen Buddhism.
Bo told the Jibblymen that by me telling them/you this story about their/your own future; I am collapsing the waveform of their/your timeline and effectively stranding all of them/you in the present with no discernible past or future to escape to; the ultimate zen state. Problem???”
...But now it seems that our protagonist has indeed backed himself into a corner of sorts, for he too has rendered himself unable to escape from the absolute present moment. Bewildered as to what to do next, he resolves to flee to the bottom of the ocean.
“A long time ago, I owned a fine double-malt scotch plantation in Aberfeldy. It was glorious...I think; I don’t actually remember much of my time spent there. In fact, I have almost no memory of my past life or how it was that I was even able to make it to the Psyberwoods of the great state of Mainesota. I spend my days harvesting the peculiar purple syrup that accumulates within the types of “trees” that grow in this forest; I say “trees” in quotes because these monstrosities are a lot less woody and more robotic than what most tree-identifying experts are probably used to. Here in my cabin it’s usually just me and my dog, Bo--he’s a deerhound who just came to my porch one day as a whelp and never left my side since then--, sometimes I think I can almost see the soul of a 6th century buddhist monk behind his eyes.
One day not long ago, Bo started barking over a mysterious shape out there in the woods. Upon investigating I could not believe my eyes! I was looking straight on into the face of one of the dreaded Jibblymen, legendary wildfolk of the psyberwoods. Exuding a sweet, amygdalic scent to entrance would-be opponents; these wirehaired semi-cousins of the sasquatch armed their terrible shop-vacs (strong enough to suck the prints from a man’s fingers even!). I told the Jibblymen how I had used the violet syrup of their forest to facilitate time travel, having lost my own past I sought to regain it; but I also told them how I had used it to see into the future just as well. As I told this story to them, Bo suddenly spoke up for the first time ever; claiming himself to be the true reincarnation of Bodhidharma, founder of Zen Buddhism.
Bo told the Jibblymen that by me telling them/you this story about their/your own future; I am collapsing the waveform of their/your timeline and effectively stranding all of them/you in the present with no discernible past or future to escape to; the ultimate zen state. Problem???”
...But now it seems that our protagonist has indeed backed himself into a corner of sorts, for he too has rendered himself unable to escape from the absolute present moment. Bewildered as to what to do next, he resolves to flee to the bottom of the ocean.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
A Story About Ants
The following story has a moral in it somewhere, I am not entirely sure at which point or when; but it is in there. For this reason, it will be told in the form of a medieval fable with approximations of the personages involved allegorically approximated as small animals and such according to a set of psychometric algorithms and personality tests far too elaborate for me to go into in any significant depth at this time. For the sake of comprehensibility, I will introduce the characters of our fable as such: The Molerat, a peculiar figure possibly suffering from chronic mercurial intoxication or some like disorder and greatly enjoying caves; The Prairie Dog, a skilled artist; The Yorkshire Terrier (hereafter referred to as “Yorky”), an unskilled artist who suffers a horrific fate; The Jackrabbit, sort of the athletic type; The Ermine, a supposedly cynical musician; and The Towering Egret, physically and most-likely intellectually greater than those around him.
This ersatz menagerie had just arrived at a remote but surprisingly luxuriant lodge in the limestone cave-riddled wilderness of north Siam on the eve of the ants. The caretaker of this pleasant establishment--an antipodean mountaineer and one-time autobiographer by the name of John--was pleased to allow our protagonists to stay at his lodge and explore the surrounding geological situation for several days, all the while consistently enjoying a wide range of blended fruitshakes and the occasional kangaroo curry. Making plans to explore a cavern large enough to potentially house much of The Vatican and filled with enough swift’s nests to feed the entire Khmer Empire, everyone left the comfort of their two-level bungalow to wander the gloom of the subterranea for a few hours. Shortly before leaving, Yorky ascended the ladder to the second level in order to strike up a brief conversation about the physics of djinn-induced exocrine abnormalities with Egret while finishing a banana shake:
YORKY: What if someone was a profuse sweater, but only had one sweat gland on their entire body? would it be like a powerful, concentrated stream whenever they sweated?
EGRET: No, they would sweat the same amount but only out of that one pore; most likely causing little more than a truly grotesque case of prickly heat.
YORKY: But what if that didn’t happen...what if there was like, genie magic or something involved.
EGRET: No, you see Yorky, there are some things that are simply mechanically impossible. For instance, St. Anselm conceived of God as a perfect being, but failed to ever lay out any sort of logical basis for how an entity could be a perfect being in every way without also, contradictorily, being perfect at being imperfect...
YORKY: Yeah, but subjectively...
And the argument went on and on and on; until finally both parties had to leave for the caves. Yorky absentmindedly left his mostly empty fruitshake mug sitting on the edge of the upper floor floorboards; this simple detail would soon come back to haunt everyone involved.
Later that night; Egret, Ermine, Jackrabbit, Molerat, and Yorky returned to the bungalow (Prairie Dog was temporarily off on a prior engagement). Yorky almost immediately retreated into the bathroom in order to use the small, Japanese-branded cleanliness device in there in order to rinse himself of accumulated mud and sweat from his hypothetical single sweat-gland. Meanwhile, Molerat couldn’t help but notice a few small black ants scouting around the edge of his sleeping mat. Anxiously pulling up the surrounding bedding materials, the ‘rat’s seemingly irrational fears were confirmed by an almost mechanically circulating swarm of both small black, as well as considerably more intimidating largish black-and-red ants. Almost immediately, the entire common-room of the bungalow was whipped up into a grand frenzy of panic and disappointed rage. Toweling himself off at this time, Yorky was terrified to hear nearly all of his roommates making claims upon his life and continued well being. Perhaps standing out most among these threats was Molerat’s simple, concise, and to the point utterance of “Yorky is dead!” as he spasmodically rocked back and forth in the grips of predatory excitement.
Ignoring primal adrenal messages to climb out the lavatory window and flee through the depths of the nigh-impenetrable teak and camphor woodlands--maybe crossing the Burmese border and starting a new life as a low-level government informant on the off-chance he wasn’t reduced to canine gruyere by the border guards--Yorky chose to take the high road and bravely face whatever it was that was coming to him.
It seems that our menagerie decided likewise to show a modicum of mercy toward the unfortunate terrier; allowing him to suffer no worse than verbal abuse so long as he removed the offending glassware from the now ant-infested bungalow as quickly as possible. But suddenly, Jackrabbit called out from the bathroom with a terrible fury; YORKY...HAD...LEFT...THE...TOILET...PAPER...IN...THE SHOWER!
This second incident proved only supplementary to the rapidly growing pandemonium consuming this small two-level dwelling in the jungle. But Jackrabbit now had a plan; unzipping his backpack, he unveiled several bottles worth of pure, 100%, all-american, low-calorie, sugar-free, Atkins-approved and maybe even probiotic N,N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide (i.e. DEET). Armed with a warrior’s arsenal of potentially very unhealthy volatile chemical agents; Ermine, Jackrabbit, and Molerat set to work eradicating the insect invaders on the upper floor while Egret worked below. It was during this time that Egret requested the return of a bottle of glycerine that Ermine had been using to create an impenetrable ring of poison around the vertically advancing swarm ascending the side of the ladder. Unfortunately, Ermine absentmindedly took Egret’s request to “drop the bottle down” to him all too literally; shattering the fragile plastic bottle and depriving Egret of an unreasonable amount of hand sanitizer, much to his chagrin. But the worst was still to come; as the distinctive sound of shattering glass sent a shockwave of stupefied silence rippling throughout the bungalow; a silence broken only by Ermine and Molerat’s sardonic laughter.
YORKY: It’s okay guys, it’s okay. Nothing worth panicking about, really. It’s just that glass is sometimes slippery; and I guess this was just one of those times. It’s fine! It’s fine! I’ll clean it up! I swear!
EGRET: No, you have caused enough mayhem tonight. I will clean it up.
And so Egret, risking unnecessary bleeding and embedded glass injuries, thoroughly cleaned up each and every splinter of broken glass in the bungalow doorway while everyone else finished drowning every last ant that could be seen in a chemical bath. Prairie dog made his extremely inopportune reappearance around this time; but after a quick update on the madness that had transpired, almost immediately turned tail and left. Finally deciding that they had basically rendered their sleeping area safe--save for a few ambient toxic fumes--everyone else decided to call it a night and deal further with the entire situation in the morning.
But then, just as the lights go out and everyone is settling in; a sudden, raucous stream of phantom profanity came tearing through the night air. Despite initial concerns that he was just faking Tourette’s Syndrome for attention; a panic-stricken Yorky could now be seen dancing to-and-fro erratically, trying to shake off the worker caste of a new and unseen swarm of ants. A second, even greater, mechanically circulating insectile menace lurked just beneath Yorky’s mattress. The apparent attractant not a fruitshake but a generic, locally branded milk-flavoured wafer. And if I had space for the things that now wizened and withered wreck of a cookie had been through...you wouldn’t even believe the stories I could tell you about it...your eyes would pop out of you’re sockets with indignant shock...you would never be able to comfortably eat melon again...you’re perspective on nylon clothing-items would be soundly rocked...you would...Alright, never mind, enough about the wafer back to the main story.
So with the real source of the infestation revealed; the wafer along with all of Yorky’s bedding materials were swiftly removed from the room and tossed into the surrounding jungle. Soon; our entire crew of intrepid, small animal-themed allegories decided that the interior of the bungalow was no longer inhabitable on account of the dense miasma of insect repellant and hand sanitizing-product fumes currently building within. As they opened the doors in order to allow the room to vent it’s toxic payload; everyone noticed a large number of exotic insects of all descriptions fleeing the bungalow in much the same manner as swifts from a thai cave. As the flocks of phasmids, bush crickets, katydids, beetles, shieldbugs, cockroaches, and perhaps even a flower mantid or two all made their escape from the diethyl-toluamide gas chamber out into the surrounding teak. Egret, Ermine, Jackrabbit, Molerat, and Yorky were left with no choice but to stand helplessly outside their domicile, silently pondering the quixotic chatter of the jungle universe around them and waiting for the gas to clear. As everyone waited, Prairie Dog returned again; and hearing of traveling companions plight, invited them all to head down to the river and do some frog-hunting; everyone obliged except for Molerat. Molerat instead chose to silently wander the night, perhaps searching for and pondering that ancient, lost truth “everything is a mouth in one sense or another, everything is food in one sense or another, now is the time to eat”; it is very difficult to determine what is going through the mind of such a strange creature at any given time.
Later that night, after everyone had decided it was safe to return to the bungalow...
PRAIRIE DOG: I think it would, perhaps, be a good idea to start a fast food chain; it could dominate all of the the universe. It could serve french fries as one of the menu items, only these fries would be covered in cocaine rather than salt; and would be titled on the menu as “FRIES!!!”
ERMINE: Would you like some “FRIES!!!” with that?
PRAIRIE DOG: Exactly! Also, have you ever thought of the idea of a device that could clone any person, from anywhere in history, at any given time‽ What if you had a restaurant that served dishes composed of famous historical figures as their main ingredient. You could have like...Roast Shank of Henry VIII or George Washington a la King, or maybe even Hitlerwurst.
JACKRABBIT: Country Fried Jesus!
MOLERAT: Lenin Kiev, a dish who’s extravagance serves as bitter poetic justice for a notable marxist leader.
EGRET: Edgar Allen Poe’s liver would likely be of similar quality to a fine foie gras.
ERMINE: Any dish made from Nietzsche would have to be garnished by his moustache.
YORKY: Mother Theresa Nuggets!!!
JACKRABBIT: I think this may be the worst conversation anyone has ever had in history.
PRAIRIE DOG: Now consider this; what if you were to use this same sort of hypothetical cloning technology on yourself? You could create and eat an exact doppleganger for the exclusive purpose of the culinary arts.
MOLERAT: But then, can you imagine this; consciously comprehending in the deepest depths of your brain that you are eating your brain.
YORKY: That is far out!
PRAIRIE DOG: Okay, now I just had an even weirder idea; Imagine that same kind of cloning used for a brothel.
This ersatz menagerie had just arrived at a remote but surprisingly luxuriant lodge in the limestone cave-riddled wilderness of north Siam on the eve of the ants. The caretaker of this pleasant establishment--an antipodean mountaineer and one-time autobiographer by the name of John--was pleased to allow our protagonists to stay at his lodge and explore the surrounding geological situation for several days, all the while consistently enjoying a wide range of blended fruitshakes and the occasional kangaroo curry. Making plans to explore a cavern large enough to potentially house much of The Vatican and filled with enough swift’s nests to feed the entire Khmer Empire, everyone left the comfort of their two-level bungalow to wander the gloom of the subterranea for a few hours. Shortly before leaving, Yorky ascended the ladder to the second level in order to strike up a brief conversation about the physics of djinn-induced exocrine abnormalities with Egret while finishing a banana shake:
YORKY: What if someone was a profuse sweater, but only had one sweat gland on their entire body? would it be like a powerful, concentrated stream whenever they sweated?
EGRET: No, they would sweat the same amount but only out of that one pore; most likely causing little more than a truly grotesque case of prickly heat.
YORKY: But what if that didn’t happen...what if there was like, genie magic or something involved.
EGRET: No, you see Yorky, there are some things that are simply mechanically impossible. For instance, St. Anselm conceived of God as a perfect being, but failed to ever lay out any sort of logical basis for how an entity could be a perfect being in every way without also, contradictorily, being perfect at being imperfect...
YORKY: Yeah, but subjectively...
And the argument went on and on and on; until finally both parties had to leave for the caves. Yorky absentmindedly left his mostly empty fruitshake mug sitting on the edge of the upper floor floorboards; this simple detail would soon come back to haunt everyone involved.
Later that night; Egret, Ermine, Jackrabbit, Molerat, and Yorky returned to the bungalow (Prairie Dog was temporarily off on a prior engagement). Yorky almost immediately retreated into the bathroom in order to use the small, Japanese-branded cleanliness device in there in order to rinse himself of accumulated mud and sweat from his hypothetical single sweat-gland. Meanwhile, Molerat couldn’t help but notice a few small black ants scouting around the edge of his sleeping mat. Anxiously pulling up the surrounding bedding materials, the ‘rat’s seemingly irrational fears were confirmed by an almost mechanically circulating swarm of both small black, as well as considerably more intimidating largish black-and-red ants. Almost immediately, the entire common-room of the bungalow was whipped up into a grand frenzy of panic and disappointed rage. Toweling himself off at this time, Yorky was terrified to hear nearly all of his roommates making claims upon his life and continued well being. Perhaps standing out most among these threats was Molerat’s simple, concise, and to the point utterance of “Yorky is dead!” as he spasmodically rocked back and forth in the grips of predatory excitement.
Ignoring primal adrenal messages to climb out the lavatory window and flee through the depths of the nigh-impenetrable teak and camphor woodlands--maybe crossing the Burmese border and starting a new life as a low-level government informant on the off-chance he wasn’t reduced to canine gruyere by the border guards--Yorky chose to take the high road and bravely face whatever it was that was coming to him.
It seems that our menagerie decided likewise to show a modicum of mercy toward the unfortunate terrier; allowing him to suffer no worse than verbal abuse so long as he removed the offending glassware from the now ant-infested bungalow as quickly as possible. But suddenly, Jackrabbit called out from the bathroom with a terrible fury; YORKY...HAD...LEFT...THE...TOILET...PAPER...IN...THE SHOWER!
This second incident proved only supplementary to the rapidly growing pandemonium consuming this small two-level dwelling in the jungle. But Jackrabbit now had a plan; unzipping his backpack, he unveiled several bottles worth of pure, 100%, all-american, low-calorie, sugar-free, Atkins-approved and maybe even probiotic N,N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide (i.e. DEET). Armed with a warrior’s arsenal of potentially very unhealthy volatile chemical agents; Ermine, Jackrabbit, and Molerat set to work eradicating the insect invaders on the upper floor while Egret worked below. It was during this time that Egret requested the return of a bottle of glycerine that Ermine had been using to create an impenetrable ring of poison around the vertically advancing swarm ascending the side of the ladder. Unfortunately, Ermine absentmindedly took Egret’s request to “drop the bottle down” to him all too literally; shattering the fragile plastic bottle and depriving Egret of an unreasonable amount of hand sanitizer, much to his chagrin. But the worst was still to come; as the distinctive sound of shattering glass sent a shockwave of stupefied silence rippling throughout the bungalow; a silence broken only by Ermine and Molerat’s sardonic laughter.
YORKY: It’s okay guys, it’s okay. Nothing worth panicking about, really. It’s just that glass is sometimes slippery; and I guess this was just one of those times. It’s fine! It’s fine! I’ll clean it up! I swear!
EGRET: No, you have caused enough mayhem tonight. I will clean it up.
And so Egret, risking unnecessary bleeding and embedded glass injuries, thoroughly cleaned up each and every splinter of broken glass in the bungalow doorway while everyone else finished drowning every last ant that could be seen in a chemical bath. Prairie dog made his extremely inopportune reappearance around this time; but after a quick update on the madness that had transpired, almost immediately turned tail and left. Finally deciding that they had basically rendered their sleeping area safe--save for a few ambient toxic fumes--everyone else decided to call it a night and deal further with the entire situation in the morning.
But then, just as the lights go out and everyone is settling in; a sudden, raucous stream of phantom profanity came tearing through the night air. Despite initial concerns that he was just faking Tourette’s Syndrome for attention; a panic-stricken Yorky could now be seen dancing to-and-fro erratically, trying to shake off the worker caste of a new and unseen swarm of ants. A second, even greater, mechanically circulating insectile menace lurked just beneath Yorky’s mattress. The apparent attractant not a fruitshake but a generic, locally branded milk-flavoured wafer. And if I had space for the things that now wizened and withered wreck of a cookie had been through...you wouldn’t even believe the stories I could tell you about it...your eyes would pop out of you’re sockets with indignant shock...you would never be able to comfortably eat melon again...you’re perspective on nylon clothing-items would be soundly rocked...you would...Alright, never mind, enough about the wafer back to the main story.
So with the real source of the infestation revealed; the wafer along with all of Yorky’s bedding materials were swiftly removed from the room and tossed into the surrounding jungle. Soon; our entire crew of intrepid, small animal-themed allegories decided that the interior of the bungalow was no longer inhabitable on account of the dense miasma of insect repellant and hand sanitizing-product fumes currently building within. As they opened the doors in order to allow the room to vent it’s toxic payload; everyone noticed a large number of exotic insects of all descriptions fleeing the bungalow in much the same manner as swifts from a thai cave. As the flocks of phasmids, bush crickets, katydids, beetles, shieldbugs, cockroaches, and perhaps even a flower mantid or two all made their escape from the diethyl-toluamide gas chamber out into the surrounding teak. Egret, Ermine, Jackrabbit, Molerat, and Yorky were left with no choice but to stand helplessly outside their domicile, silently pondering the quixotic chatter of the jungle universe around them and waiting for the gas to clear. As everyone waited, Prairie Dog returned again; and hearing of traveling companions plight, invited them all to head down to the river and do some frog-hunting; everyone obliged except for Molerat. Molerat instead chose to silently wander the night, perhaps searching for and pondering that ancient, lost truth “everything is a mouth in one sense or another, everything is food in one sense or another, now is the time to eat”; it is very difficult to determine what is going through the mind of such a strange creature at any given time.
Later that night, after everyone had decided it was safe to return to the bungalow...
PRAIRIE DOG: I think it would, perhaps, be a good idea to start a fast food chain; it could dominate all of the the universe. It could serve french fries as one of the menu items, only these fries would be covered in cocaine rather than salt; and would be titled on the menu as “FRIES!!!”
ERMINE: Would you like some “FRIES!!!” with that?
PRAIRIE DOG: Exactly! Also, have you ever thought of the idea of a device that could clone any person, from anywhere in history, at any given time‽ What if you had a restaurant that served dishes composed of famous historical figures as their main ingredient. You could have like...Roast Shank of Henry VIII or George Washington a la King, or maybe even Hitlerwurst.
JACKRABBIT: Country Fried Jesus!
MOLERAT: Lenin Kiev, a dish who’s extravagance serves as bitter poetic justice for a notable marxist leader.
EGRET: Edgar Allen Poe’s liver would likely be of similar quality to a fine foie gras.
ERMINE: Any dish made from Nietzsche would have to be garnished by his moustache.
YORKY: Mother Theresa Nuggets!!!
JACKRABBIT: I think this may be the worst conversation anyone has ever had in history.
PRAIRIE DOG: Now consider this; what if you were to use this same sort of hypothetical cloning technology on yourself? You could create and eat an exact doppleganger for the exclusive purpose of the culinary arts.
MOLERAT: But then, can you imagine this; consciously comprehending in the deepest depths of your brain that you are eating your brain.
YORKY: That is far out!
PRAIRIE DOG: Okay, now I just had an even weirder idea; Imagine that same kind of cloning used for a brothel.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
William Everest's Dream
Seconds after I fell asleep; I had already returned to the interior of that strange, monolithic church of ages past. It seemed to me, for the most part, to be an ordinary day, peaceful even....and then we all heard the noise.
A noise like a raging herd of bull elephants--only demonically mechanized--came roaring in from across the valley; peppered with the sound of violent explosions and tempered flames; and then amid cacophonous screaming and rising plumes of smoke, the engines of destruction themselves appeared. Glimmering jet black in the crimson, smoke-choked afternoon sun--like some diabolical futuristic brand of combat tank--the death-machines surrounded the academy as they finished what appeared to have been a fairly thorough rampage across the entire city. Their automatically-controlled hatches disengaged. And flooding forth from the metallic monsters came a most terrifying army, like nothing of this world; sheathed in ivory-coloured armour and bearing distressing white gas-masks; nearly as terrible as that of their leader. The leader was caped in gold and armoured entirely in the blackish-maroon of pure violence. The leader bore a hideous, avian-looking mask, and brandished a funerarily bejeweled staff. As the hellish nightmare army stormed their way into the building; they immediately began herding hordes of terrified occupants into the display room; except for me and a few others, who were subjugated to the north foyer instead. And there we sat, watching helplessly as the soldiers sealed the doorways to the auditorium with tape; and then we heard the horrid screams of crazed humans whose mind was being hopelessly destroyed by a gossamer white mist sprayed from hoses of the death machines, followed by their poisoned death cries. Yet the crowning moment of horror was soon to follow, when the dark-shrouded leader of the infernal army entered the foyer and gleefully removed his mask.....and my own face, ravaged by untold years and unspeakable evil, stared back at me.
After I awoke, I spent the rest of the day fearing my own future, permanently tormented by a surreal premonition. And to make matters worse, it was my birthday.
-----
I was once a member of a very important planning committee... okay, so maybe it was technically a day class. We spent our time trying to come up with new, exciting destinations for enlightening journeys; although to date, only one suggestion (Antarctica), has ever been used. I myself typed up no less than six journey-information brochures, made to give details about the program to potential customers; despite the amount of effort I put into them, they were apparently written in a format that did not do justice to that of the others; and were therefore never used. The venture was all and all a failure, hence the reason there has never been a similar program since.
-----
Whenever I look down upon The Valley, I find myself feeling slightly disappointed and saddened when I think what The Valley apparently looked like before the ravages of settlement. I imagine dense tracts of cottonwood spotting an otherwise open scrubland, creeks running undisturbed, and uncarven mountainsides still bristling with sub-alpine vegetation. Nowadays, all you see is scores of buildings, roads, car-parks, and suburban neighborhoods shrouded in introduced, overly-green trees. Parks, which would normally show what the land looked like before the city, are too unnaturally irrigated in The Valley to give a window into the landscape’s past. None of this, of course, is inherently bad; cities are built, terrain changes, and I ultimately can’t personally complain that much about the results (although I will admit to having an exclusive hatred of glass and metal buildings for aesthetic reasons).
A noise like a raging herd of bull elephants--only demonically mechanized--came roaring in from across the valley; peppered with the sound of violent explosions and tempered flames; and then amid cacophonous screaming and rising plumes of smoke, the engines of destruction themselves appeared. Glimmering jet black in the crimson, smoke-choked afternoon sun--like some diabolical futuristic brand of combat tank--the death-machines surrounded the academy as they finished what appeared to have been a fairly thorough rampage across the entire city. Their automatically-controlled hatches disengaged. And flooding forth from the metallic monsters came a most terrifying army, like nothing of this world; sheathed in ivory-coloured armour and bearing distressing white gas-masks; nearly as terrible as that of their leader. The leader was caped in gold and armoured entirely in the blackish-maroon of pure violence. The leader bore a hideous, avian-looking mask, and brandished a funerarily bejeweled staff. As the hellish nightmare army stormed their way into the building; they immediately began herding hordes of terrified occupants into the display room; except for me and a few others, who were subjugated to the north foyer instead. And there we sat, watching helplessly as the soldiers sealed the doorways to the auditorium with tape; and then we heard the horrid screams of crazed humans whose mind was being hopelessly destroyed by a gossamer white mist sprayed from hoses of the death machines, followed by their poisoned death cries. Yet the crowning moment of horror was soon to follow, when the dark-shrouded leader of the infernal army entered the foyer and gleefully removed his mask.....and my own face, ravaged by untold years and unspeakable evil, stared back at me.
After I awoke, I spent the rest of the day fearing my own future, permanently tormented by a surreal premonition. And to make matters worse, it was my birthday.
-----
I was once a member of a very important planning committee... okay, so maybe it was technically a day class. We spent our time trying to come up with new, exciting destinations for enlightening journeys; although to date, only one suggestion (Antarctica), has ever been used. I myself typed up no less than six journey-information brochures, made to give details about the program to potential customers; despite the amount of effort I put into them, they were apparently written in a format that did not do justice to that of the others; and were therefore never used. The venture was all and all a failure, hence the reason there has never been a similar program since.
-----
Whenever I look down upon The Valley, I find myself feeling slightly disappointed and saddened when I think what The Valley apparently looked like before the ravages of settlement. I imagine dense tracts of cottonwood spotting an otherwise open scrubland, creeks running undisturbed, and uncarven mountainsides still bristling with sub-alpine vegetation. Nowadays, all you see is scores of buildings, roads, car-parks, and suburban neighborhoods shrouded in introduced, overly-green trees. Parks, which would normally show what the land looked like before the city, are too unnaturally irrigated in The Valley to give a window into the landscape’s past. None of this, of course, is inherently bad; cities are built, terrain changes, and I ultimately can’t personally complain that much about the results (although I will admit to having an exclusive hatred of glass and metal buildings for aesthetic reasons).
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Clog Introduction
This is not a blog...
This is a clog...
A consciousness log, a literary distillate of the very basis of sentient perception filtered through a fine screen of heavy allegory, pointless rambling, and overly-ambitious sentence structure. This is not a place where you will find someone writing about what they bought at the nearest convenience last Tuesday, or voicing their opinions about their local government representatives or how Linux will bring about world peace any day now. No, this is a place where symphonies are composed of drunken ramblings, where intellectual plankton blooms from each and every interrobang, where long and pleasantly deranged narratives about moles, aether, and ancient seas, and even the occasional Adolf Wölfli-style comic strip all find their home together in one grand cognitive object d’art for all the family. In other words, this website is either an experimental attempt at creating the most pretentious thing ever known to man; or a post-modern first step in discovering the true nature of reality. In any event, the following is best read in the most enjoyably preposterous voice you’re mind/preferred text-to-speech program can manage; and also feel free to copy-and-paste any portion of this text, creatively alter it using Burroughsian text-cut-up software, even use it as a seed to start a clog of your own (it’s a way of life!).
(all spelling/grammatical mistakes in the following have been left in intentionally for authenticity.)
-Part I: Dionysian Litany in 5 Parts, Allegro-
1) Badly Derailed Biblical Commentary (or something)
It all works if you own a guitar. This is all a mistake, writing that was a mistake too; but oh well. Isaac made a discovery. Aaron is insane. Syrup of noodles! This is the first post! this is the ultimate experience. Everything is fine, everything is at peace, this is a clog in the collective mind of the universe itself. It is great. it is not a blog. we read this in the morning, we read this in the evening. ‘tis good, ‘tis good. His toenails are painted. this is like The Untitled Document. She was just not cool about any of it. I garden the collective mind of the universe itself, for that is why I am called The Wayward Gardener. Arrest the the Pope!
2) The Driving Suite (beginning to lose coherency)
She may be haggard, but all is well. The Conciousness log. This can totally be edited. That is so stupid....Maybe too much so. It is okay. Ley mwe drive. If im not aliv. oh well. Tammy was like 32!!! This is whatnot it is....This is the first post on the clog. Editing may be required. Note to self; don’t fall in the pool. th. DRIVE. THIS is just tooo much. Let Madison drive. THIS is the driving suite. I’m still alive. but if not. Oh well, suavè. Maybe too far. I don’t think I canm drive right now.
3) The Chlorinated Quinine Retrospective (totally unhinged)
This is so good. EVerything is happening as it’s sposed to be!!!! The water makes people normal. Everythin is a mouth in one sense or another. This is the masterpiece of conciousness. A turning point. Aweake fro the dream. But is it really clogged or just broken‽ awake from another dream in Costa Rica,,,I have emerged, don’t forget the triple comma. “Awaken from the dream, my son, And you will have a new sense of everything”.
4) Doubting Integrity (regaining composure)
Billy Everest was right, this was too weird. What will be usable from this disaster? But truly it is an epic in it’s own right, is it not? Shouldn’t apologise for you’re iPhone, it’s alright.
5) The Hedonist’s Revelation
With Dave Brubeck in the background, he realizes the purpose of his life is that one should not mostly not care about it. Pleasure is the ultimate good, pain is the ultimate evil; Practical Hedonism. Just watch out; this is important, don’t forget to ask for the phone numbers of you’re revelation! What is to be changed...what is not! This should be truly groundbreaking. You will never forget! so don’t worry about it!!! The tune of the Spider!!! Alot of exclamation points!!! This is important. This is The Power... That’s right!!! + ∞ happiness.
This...
Is....
A...
Clog!!!!!!!!!
-
Consider the barren, empty lots of your imagination tastefully gardened...
This is a clog...
A consciousness log, a literary distillate of the very basis of sentient perception filtered through a fine screen of heavy allegory, pointless rambling, and overly-ambitious sentence structure. This is not a place where you will find someone writing about what they bought at the nearest convenience last Tuesday, or voicing their opinions about their local government representatives or how Linux will bring about world peace any day now. No, this is a place where symphonies are composed of drunken ramblings, where intellectual plankton blooms from each and every interrobang, where long and pleasantly deranged narratives about moles, aether, and ancient seas, and even the occasional Adolf Wölfli-style comic strip all find their home together in one grand cognitive object d’art for all the family. In other words, this website is either an experimental attempt at creating the most pretentious thing ever known to man; or a post-modern first step in discovering the true nature of reality. In any event, the following is best read in the most enjoyably preposterous voice you’re mind/preferred text-to-speech program can manage; and also feel free to copy-and-paste any portion of this text, creatively alter it using Burroughsian text-cut-up software, even use it as a seed to start a clog of your own (it’s a way of life!).
(all spelling/grammatical mistakes in the following have been left in intentionally for authenticity.)
-Part I: Dionysian Litany in 5 Parts, Allegro-
1) Badly Derailed Biblical Commentary (or something)
It all works if you own a guitar. This is all a mistake, writing that was a mistake too; but oh well. Isaac made a discovery. Aaron is insane. Syrup of noodles! This is the first post! this is the ultimate experience. Everything is fine, everything is at peace, this is a clog in the collective mind of the universe itself. It is great. it is not a blog. we read this in the morning, we read this in the evening. ‘tis good, ‘tis good. His toenails are painted. this is like The Untitled Document. She was just not cool about any of it. I garden the collective mind of the universe itself, for that is why I am called The Wayward Gardener. Arrest the the Pope!
2) The Driving Suite (beginning to lose coherency)
She may be haggard, but all is well. The Conciousness log. This can totally be edited. That is so stupid....Maybe too much so. It is okay. Ley mwe drive. If im not aliv. oh well. Tammy was like 32!!! This is whatnot it is....This is the first post on the clog. Editing may be required. Note to self; don’t fall in the pool. th. DRIVE. THIS is just tooo much. Let Madison drive. THIS is the driving suite. I’m still alive. but if not. Oh well, suavè. Maybe too far. I don’t think I canm drive right now.
3) The Chlorinated Quinine Retrospective (totally unhinged)
This is so good. EVerything is happening as it’s sposed to be!!!! The water makes people normal. Everythin is a mouth in one sense or another. This is the masterpiece of conciousness. A turning point. Aweake fro the dream. But is it really clogged or just broken‽ awake from another dream in Costa Rica,,,I have emerged, don’t forget the triple comma. “Awaken from the dream, my son, And you will have a new sense of everything”.
4) Doubting Integrity (regaining composure)
Billy Everest was right, this was too weird. What will be usable from this disaster? But truly it is an epic in it’s own right, is it not? Shouldn’t apologise for you’re iPhone, it’s alright.
5) The Hedonist’s Revelation
With Dave Brubeck in the background, he realizes the purpose of his life is that one should not mostly not care about it. Pleasure is the ultimate good, pain is the ultimate evil; Practical Hedonism. Just watch out; this is important, don’t forget to ask for the phone numbers of you’re revelation! What is to be changed...what is not! This should be truly groundbreaking. You will never forget! so don’t worry about it!!! The tune of the Spider!!! Alot of exclamation points!!! This is important. This is The Power... That’s right!!! + ∞ happiness.
This...
Is....
A...
Clog!!!!!!!!!
-
Consider the barren, empty lots of your imagination tastefully gardened...
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