A Thousand Stories : Volume 7 : Stories 0601-0700 : Purple

a thousand stories

j. blasso-gieseke

a thousand stories volume 7

: stories 0601-0700 : purple

j. blasso-gieseke

Books in the Series A Thousand Stories

: stories 0001-0100 : black : stories 0101-0200 : gray volume 3 : stories 0201-0300 : white volume 4 : stories 0301-0400 : yellow volume 5 : stories 0401-0500 : orange volume 6 : stories 0501-0600 : red volume 7 : stories 0601-0700 : purple volume 8 : stories 0701-0800 : blue volume 9 : stories 0801-0900 : green volume 0 : stories 0901-1000 : brown volume 1 volume 2

a thousand stories

Published by Charybdis Press charybdispress.com © 2021 Charybdis Press All rights reserved First Edition No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher, except in the context of reviews.

Many stories in this book are fiction. Any characters resembling actual persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Cover: 16 point Meridien Title: 14 point Futura Text: 10.5 point Caslon Layout & Design: J. Blasso-Gieseke ISBN 978-1-957399-06-5

For You and Baba, and the Muse too, and Hermes three

The author would like to thank Niall Twohig, Francesca Ferranti, and Josephine Blasso for their editorial aid, and Matthew A. Brown for his suggestions on the Preface. The book was made better by their time and attention. Still, any faults found in the stories are wholly my own.

Contents 0601. Requirements for My Future Publisher 0602. Book Curse 0603. Second Coming Rapture Zombie Apocalypse 0604. Martha, Mary, Lazarus, and Luke 0605. The Right Tool for the Right Job 0606. F.L.O.O.D. Admiral Voyzeck Bridgewater Stared Into the Void 0607. Nothing We Do Really Matters All That Much 0608. The Monastery 0609. Aumega 0610. Social Distancing for Highly Sensitive Persons 0611. Hi! Welcome to My Pocket Dimension 0612. The R.I.S.T. 0613. v.D.N.A. 0614. The Watcher 0615. Headflute and Chestguitar 0616. The Neck of the Woods 0617. Sense Perception 0618. It’s a Tumor 0619. Andrea the Vagiant 0620. Falldown House 0621. Sexting 0622. I Caught Him Picking His Nose 0623. Busting Balls vs. Breaking Balls 0624. The Lord of Indifference 0625. Separation of Business and State 0626. The Return of the Megafauna 0627. Mother’s Ghost Story 0628. Trippin’ All Over Again 0629. J.U.N.T.A. 0630. Power Plants 0631. The Smell of the Past 0632. Corruption of Agency 0633. The Co-operative Party 0634. The Mississippi River 0635. Incredibly Dynamic Comics 0636. Crisis of Infinite Comic Book Universes, Characters, and Continuity 0637. Superheroes Today Supervillains Tomorrow 0638. Supervillains Today Superheroes Tomorrow 0639. The Troglodiet

0640. I Don’t Go to My Memories, They Come to Me 0641. There Aren’t Enough Ventilators, Not Even Enough Beds 0642. The Rise of Unions and Worker Co-operatives 0643. Orple 0644. Woodland Edges and Their Effects 0645. Psychic Metabolism and Maintenance 0646. Hyperlinked Encyclopedia Webpages 0647. Warp Spiders 0648. Is There an Ideal Biome or Microclimate out There Waiting For Me? 0649. Holiday Colors 0650. Lunulas 0651. Imaginative Laxative 0652. A Note on Shit Jokes 0653. Constrained Writing 0654. A Richer Vocabulary 0655. The Rhythm of Their Captivity 0656. Nevermore Forevermore 0657. All Hail Seitan!

0658. The Turin Horse 0659. Catch-1 Through -21, Catch-22, and Catch-23 and Beyond 0660. A Note to Niall About Finding the Foundational Principle 0661. ANTIck 0662. Man Out of Time, Time Out of Joint 0663. Omniverse, Multiverse, and Universe 0664. Cloathed 0665. This Is Science Fantasy, Baby!

0666. The Number of the Beast 0667. Bye Bye Bernie 0668. Azothoth and Azoth 0669. Blue Is the Youngest Color 0670. “I Thought…”

0671. Pussyfoot Always Walked on Eggshells 0672. Some Onomatopoeias 0673. Weed Greed McTeague 0674. Me, Butterfly Me, and the Sentient Storm 0675. The Great Binary and the Great Work 0676. Murder World 0677. Halo Kitty 0678. Six Degrees of Canadian Bacon 0679. The Salamander 0680. Homophobia Homophilia 0681. The Boob 0682. Welcome to Hell

0683. Invisible Siddhis 0684. Irwin Corey, Il Dottore?

0685. Normal-faces 0686. The Venerable Old Man of Letters 0687. There’s Some Small Part of Me That Still Believes 0688. The Will-o-the-Wisp Called the Good Old Days 0689. The Reason I’m Going on and on About This 0690. On the Surface Everything Looks Okay 0691. Styles of Buildings and Mansions in America 0692. All of This Is to Say: We’re Surrounded by Empire 0693. I Want to Live In a Secular Monastery 0694. There’s No Turning My Back on the World 0695. And Now Back to Your Regularly Scheduled Programming 0696. Limbo Rock 0697. Madame Zibulba 0698. The Zed Nought 0699. Sex Assassin 0700. The Axman

a thousand stories

0601. Requirements for My Future Publisher

In order to maintain this book’s magic, the author demands that the following requirements be followed by future publishers: 1. All thousand stories of the book must be published in a single volume. If, for whatever reason, this can’t be done, then they must be published in ten 100-story sets. At minimum, the spines of each book 1 through 10 must be marked in the following color order: black, 50% gray, white, yellow, orange, red, purple, blue, green, and brown.

2. There must only be one story per page. Use the longest story to determine page and book size. Better to adjust these than to let a story run onto a second page.

3. There must be no page numbers used. The story number is the page number. The story number must be printed as follows: 0001. through 1000. Notice the mirror magic of the page numbers. The Foreword Preface will be 0000. and the Backword Postface 1001.

Good quality, low acid paper of decent weight must be used.

4. A sturdy sans serif font for the titles and a complimentary serif font for the text must be used.

If the publisher cannot meet these requirements, then the publisher is not the right publisher for this book, and another publisher, sympathetic to book magic, must be found. To be clear, ANY future publisher of this book, whether I’m alive or dead, must agree to these demands. If any agree but fail to deliver, I refer you to the Book Curse on the following page to learn about your fate.

0602. Book Curse

I curse anyone misprinting or mishandling this book with the Curse of Misalignment. This is a subtle curse whereby the person responsible for the misprinting or mishandling of this book will find that nothing in their life aligns properly.

The Curse of Misalignment is a curse of time whereby the cursed person perpetually fails to arrive on time to events, or that events fail to arrive on time for them. The Curse of Misalignment makes the cursed person spend all of their time delayed and waiting and disappointed that all of their plans continually fall apart or are cancelled. The Curse of Misalignment ensures that nothing in life will ever work out for them.

After a time, the cursed person, who may or may not be aware of this book curse, will come to understand that they're cursed and will begin actively seeking a remedy for their affliction. Their search, however, will always meet with failure because they’re afflicted by the Curse of Misalignment. But since the author believes in forgiveness, he has made sure that the curse can be broken. To do this, requires three steps: First, the cursed person must ask three intercessors to approach the book and solemnly ask for its forgiveness on their behalf. If this is done with proper conviction, then the cursed person must solemnly ask for the book’s forgiveness. If this too is done with conviction, then the cursed person must promise to fix the misprinting or mishandling. If the cursed person follows through with their promise, then the curse will be lifted.

0603. Second Coming Rapture Zombie Apocalypse When the Son of God returned to judge the living and the dead, the earth got really messy and really crowded really fast — and the smell, well, the smell was just godawful. But there He was, at the center of it all, calling the living and dead to Him. And we went because we had no choice except to go and stand before the Son of God. As this was all happening, it struck some of us, myself especially, that this whole event was rather poorly planned and executed. I’d hear people saying to each other things like: “He should’ve done the living first, then the dead.” “Maybe this should’ve been done on a lottery system.” “Why didn’t He do it alphabetically by last name?” “Or by the year of our births.”

These were all good suggestions, but we were often shushed and scolded by those who had been waiting their whole life for this to happen and were dead set on enjoying it regardless of what it looked or smelled like. They didn’t want any complainers ruining it for them. So, they’d hiss venomously at us to trust in the Lord our God, or they’d threaten us with hellfire and damnation, while swooning about the certainty of them being chosen as one of God’s elect.

I guess I couldn’t blame them. This was the moment of their potential apotheosis. I mean, the living and the dead were all gathering together. I saw them digging their way out of the ground and leaving the cemeteries in droves.

Strange times, indeed.

0604. Martha, Mary, Lazarus, and Luke

In his youth, Luke watched his father and mother sit with the local rabbi, listening to him, as his aunt came in and out of the kitchen carrying pitchers and platters, ensuring cups and plates were continuously full. The scene made an impression on him: His parents sitting, listening attentively, and absorbing the wisdom of the rabbi, while his aunt was moving around them, circling them in perpetual busyness. It reminded him of a wheel: His father, mother, and the rabbi forming the hub at the center of the table and his aunt, the wheel, turning around them. When his frustrated aunt stopped to complain to the rabbi about her sister sitting there while she did all the work, the rabbi said that her sister had “claimed the better part.” This upset his aunt, who left for the kitchen in a huff to busy herself there. Luke reflected on what the rabbi had said. While it was true that his aunt made certain the rabbi was comfortable and refreshed, she was missing out on being comforted and refreshed by the rabbi’s words.

Later in his life, when Luke became an evangelist and wanted to write the history of Jesus, he remembered this scene from his youth and wanted to include it. Searching for a proper place to insert it, he had Jesus return to Bethany to visit Lazarus, Martha, and Mary, and there he let the scene play out: Jesus sits at the table speaking with Lazarus and Mary as Martha busily circles around them, filling their cups and plates.

0605. The Right Tool for the Right Job

“With the right tool you can get away with anything. You just have to know what to use and when. I’ve been around a long time and I’ve never been caught.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“How come?”

“I just told you: I know how to use the right tool for the right job.”

“I don’t know… You’re really not saying much.”

“I don’t have to. What I said seems too simple, right? So simple it seems stupid. But to be simple, you have to be smart. And I’m smart.

Smart enough to be simple.

“You see, everyone thinks they’re smart when they’re complex. But complex people can’t do what I do. They get tripped up and get caught.

“All those so-called smart people know that the more complex a thing is, the harder it is to deal with. But what do these geniuses do? They make things complex. That’s not smart; that’s stupid.”

“But how do you keep things simple when the world is so complex?”

“The world is complex when you look at it as one large thing: the world. But if you break it apart, it starts to become simple.”

“How do you mean?”

“If you break the world down far enough, you begin to find the weaknesses between things. With the right tools, those weaknesses can be exploited, and you can walk through the world like you’re walking through air. Nothing can stop you.”

“I don’t know...”

“Sounds impossible, right? But it isn’t. You have the gift too.”

“I do? But how?”

“You’re here talking to me, aren’t you?”

0606. F.L.O.O.D. Admiral Voyzeck Bridgewater Stared Into the Void F.L.O.O.D. Admiral Voyzeck Bridgewater stared into the void barely conscious of the lilting drone of Council Representative Ajax Baptista’s well-polished poliseon to the twelve high-ranking Henyoo dignitaries.

Bridgewater had heard it all before ad nauseam and wanted Baptista and the Henyoo delegation off his ship.

This was the delegation’s eighth cycle of their inspection tour and he had had enough of this repetitive and rigidly formal ceremony. The tedium was unbearable. And knowing the Henyoo’s belief in the auspiciousness of the number twelve, they would, no doubt, require another four more inspection cycles for a purchase of this magnitude.

The trouble wasn’t the twelve inspections; the trouble was that the twelve inspections were each a month long, and the thought of devoting a full Earth year to this mind-numbing sales pitch was degrading.

He was the highest-ranking officer in Earth’s galactic navy, one of the lead military architects of the third and final Enari War, and the principle designer of Earth’s First Line of Orbital Defense weapon ships. What he was not was a sales assistant.

But when he had raised his grievance to the Council before the initial inspection, he was summarily shot down. They explained to him that they, the Council, the elected representatives of the people of Earth, needed their nearest galactic neighbors, the Henyoo, to be defended against their common enemies, and that he, F.L.O.O.D. Admiral Voyzeck Bridgewater, was to aid Representative Baptista by diligently attending to any and every need of the delegation and do nothing to insult the royal family and jeopardize the transaction.

0607. Nothing We Do Really Matters All That Much “It’s always the same. The Darkness is there, hounding you, pushing you to your limit. But doesn’t Darkness know it never wins? I mean, historically, has it ever won the war? I mean, really won the war, like, absolute victory?

Has it ever done that?

“I mean, maybe it has, right? Maybe it’s won a lot and we just never know it’s won because there’s never anybody around to remember it.

"If that was the case, though, it must suck being Darkness. I mean, what’s the point? Darkness wins, but there’s no one left to celebrate its victory except itself.

“But since you can’t have Darkness without Light, it seems Darkness cannever really defeat Light completely. So, maybe there is something that sticks around afterwards, some tiny spark that relights and flares back into Light.

“With that said, though, I guess Light never really wins an absolute victory either, because Light can’t be Light without Darkness.

“So, if Light won the war, there’d still have to be some Darkness left over, some tiny hole or void or shadow or what have you. And from that little bit, Darkness would make its comeback.

“And maybe the whole thing just goes back and forth like that forever, each winning the war but never winning it completely.

“And all of us, we’re just part of this crazy cosmic game, shuffling between victory and defeat, always in motion, hoping the sacrifices we make help us gain a victory for the Light, but knowing deep down that nothing we do really matters all that much.”

0608. The Monastery

Finishing my prayer, I stand and breathe in the cool morning air, fresh and fragrant with the herbs and crops wet with dew. Through the window overlooking the garden, I see mourning doves silhouetted in the trees.

Above them, the light of Venus is steady and serene. Beyond her, the shattered moon sits sad and noble in the predawn sky. I fold my hands and give thanks.

The bell rings for Lauds.

I follow it to the hallway, where I meet my brothers and sisters in silence.

In the chapel, we find our seats and open our breviaries.

The abbess begins by chanting a versicle. Together, we join her in the doxology and sing the antiphon before joining the abbot in the hymn.

We sit as he reads from the psalmody and stand again to sing another antiphon. We sit again to listen to the abbess reading a lectio and stand again to sing a canticle. The abbot chants a versicle, begins his oratory, and ends with another versicle. The abbess concludes with a final prayer.

Stowing away our breviaries, we exit in silence and return to our rooms.

The garden is brighter now. The shattered moon and her ill effects seemed to have disappeared from the sky. But it isn’t difficult to imagine her below the horizon. Nor is it difficult to imagine the suffering in the world beyond the mountains of the monastery. She is there and they are there and I am here.

Helping the only way I know, I kneel and fold my hands in prayer.

0609. Aumega

In my comic book universe, the greatest entity is Aumega. Aumega is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.

Aumega’s omnipotence is Aumega’s power over all matter and energy in the universe. Aumega’s omniscience is Aumega’s knowledge of all matter and energy in the universe. Aumega’s omnipresence is Aumega’s presence throughout all matter and energy in the universe. Aumega is power, knowledge, and presence over and throughout all matter and energy in the universe because Aumega is all matter and energy in the universe.

In short, Aumega is the universe. Or, to be more specific, Aumega is my comic book universe.

Therefore, all entities in my comic book universe are part of Aumega.

There is no single entity that makes up the whole of Aumega save for Aumega itself. That’s why any entity seeking to become omnipotent will eventually be absorbed into Aumega’s omnipotence because Aumega’s omnipotence is omnipresent. Likewise, any entity seeking to become omniscient will eventually be absorbed into Aumega’s omniscience because Aumega’s omniscience is omnipresent. Any entity gaining in power and knowledge will also gain presence. This gain in presence eliminates the centrality of the entity’s ego until that entity is absorbed into Aumega.

There is nothing an entity can do or become that isn’t already a part of Aumega. Aumega is all.

In my comic book universe, there are no entities that can gain enough power to threaten the universe. Only Aumega can threaten the universe because Aumega is itself the universe. To do this, Aumega can simply withdraw itself back into a Singularity or scatter itself into nothingness.

0610. Social Distancing for Highly Sensitive Persons As the coronavirus reaches pandemic proportions, the World Health Organization and the Center for Disease Control recommends that everyone wash their hands for twenty seconds, stop touching their face, and maintain a distance of six feet from other people. These are all great tips. I now wash my hands longer than before and I’m more conscious about touching my face. Though, truth be told, I was always conscious about touching my face because I have sensitive skin. And I’ve always tried to maintain a six-foot distance between myself and other people because I’m a highly sensitive person.

If you don’t know what a highly sensitive person is, an H.S.P. is someone like myself, who experiences rapid mental overload due to a lower perceptual threshold of novel stimuli. In short, new sensations and situations overstimulate H.S.P.s, increasing our irritability and anxiety.

This makes us seek out and set up environments where stimulation can be managed and controlled.

So, while this pandemic is terrible, the requirements for surviving it are, for the first time in my life, playing to my strengths. Before, wanting to be away from people, made me seem introverted at best and anti-social at worst. But with the pandemic, I can avoid crowds, stay inside, and be by myself without social judgment because everyone else is doing it too. Now, being like me is good for our collective health. And with the pandemic just getting started and with the worst yet to come, I feel I’m in a good place, as solitude and social distancing are my natural state.

0611. Hi! Welcome to My Pocket Dimension

“Hi! Welcome to my pocket dimension. Thanks for taking the time to visit.

“As you can probably tell, like everyone with a pocket dimension, I’ve created mine in my personal image. When designing it, I really wanted it to be the perfect reflection of myself.

“As you can see, it’s very idyllic. I just love trees and deep forests. They have that special quality of light that’s created as it filters down through the canopy. And they have that sweet, fragrant air, especially after it rains.

So, I thought, why not live under giant redwoods in a log cabin.

“Beautiful, right?

“But before I show you inside, I want to show you the stream behind the house. I get my water there sometimes. I mean, I have indoor plumbing, but sometimes it feels good to walk down to the stream and pull out a bucket of fresh water and schlep it back to the house. I like to chop firewood too, for exercise, even though I have central heating. But, if you follow the stream, it’ll take you to a waterfall, and there’s a pool beneath it where I like to swim naked. But don’t tell anybody. Wink. Just kidding. It’s my pocket dimension.

“Also, sometimes living under the trees gets to be too much. So, beyond the forest there’s a beach with another house. The climate’s more Mediterranean there. It’s warm and sunny all the time. I go there occasionally, but mostly I prefer the silence of the woods.

“Alright, follow me inside, and I’ll make you some tea.”

0612. The R.I.S.T.

Dahleeya, an aspiring young cosmological researcher at Alpha Centauri University, discovered what appeared to be a Rip in Space-Time that she dubbed the R.I.S.T. She found it while studying the recording of a star that continually came in and out of existence, randomly moving from its earliest star formation to supernova to nothing. Unlike a black hole, which is a compressed singularity, the R.I.S.T. was a multiplicity where all space and time exists. Her discovery immediately gained the attention of the League of Space Sciences at Alpha Centauri and she was offered the opportunity to address the Council at the behest of her Corporate Nation State Benefactor, Lenzer.

Dahleeya visited L.o.S.S.A.C. and gave her presentation on the R.I.S.T. along with a detailed proposal for a coalition expedition to study it up close, as it could yield critical information on 1) a star’s life from birth to death 2) the space-time continuum theory 3) the potential of an existential risk for humanity. The Council understood the importance of her discovery and said they would immediately begin putting together a package with other C.N.S.B.s for a coalition expedition to the R.I.S.T. A few months later, Dahleeya met with the Council to discuss the completed expedition package that had been assembled. At the meeting, the Council and representatives from the major C.N.S.B.s of Hypolita (hypo-light drives), Solerium (space stations), Psoma (cryo-beds), ATMTA (A.I.), and Lenzer (telescopes), as well as other minor C.N.S.B.s, informed her about what they were contributing to the coalition and what they hoped to receive in return for their investment.

0613. v.D.N.A.

Atelios, a pharmaceutical giant headquartered in Brazil, sought to cure death by creating viral D.N.A., or v.D.N.A., which, when injected, would continually replicate and replenish the D.N.A. of dying cells.

Test subjects were lured from the favelas to undergo the procedure.

Results were immediate. The subjects became healthier, stronger, smarter, and younger. With v.D.N.A. hailed a success, it was sold to the highest bidders without further testing.

Wealthy elites underwent the procedure first. But the cure became a curse when, a few months after the procedure, the original test subjects weakened and became insatiably hungry for bloody meat.

Doctors studied the D.N.A. of the test subjects and discovered that the v.D.N.A. had replaced all of their original D.N.A., and that v.D.N.A.’s rapid replication and death required a constant source of genetic material to sustain it.

At first, doctors thought any D.N.A. source would do. But when the test subjects were fed animal meat, they weakened further and became sick. Next, doctors gave them meat from recently deceased human corpses.

But many of the test subjects sickened and died. When the surviving test subjects were fed meat from the dead test subjects, they returned to health.

In order to save themselves, the wealthy elites paid for the remaining test subjects to be killed. After eating the test subjects, their hunger abated and they too returned to health.

This made the C.E.O. very happy, because he knew that once the supplies of the wealthy vampire elites were used up, more would be needed, and this was a consumable only Atelios could provide.

0614. The Watcher

Slowly the All-Seeing Eye of the Watcher drew back into his body, contracting into his singular consciousness. He had seen the approach of the next Watcher and knew that his Watch was over. He would become the Attendant to the new Watcher, replacing the Attendant that attended him while he was Watcher.

Returning fully to consciousness, the Watcher smiled at the Attendant and thanked him telepathically for looking after his body.

The Attendant said that it was his duty to do so. Then, growing serious, he gently reminded the Watcher that they still must remain vigilant during the Time of Transition. With the Watcher no longer on Watch, it was an opportune time for their enemies to attack their planet.

After hearing this, the Watcher became uneasy and impatient as he waited for the new Watcher to arrive.

Slowly, the new Watcher scaled the final steps of the mountain and approached the Temple of the Watch.

As he entered, he was ushered by the Watcher and Attendant to the Watch Throne and seated firmly.

The former Watcher wanted to scold the new Watcher for his tardiness, but was stopped by the Attendant, who welcomed the new Watcher and asked him to begin his Watch as they were now blind to an enemy attack.

As the new Watcher’s singular consciousness slowly expanded from his body into the All-Seeing Eye of the Watcher, the Attendant explained that the former Watcher would now become his Attendant and look after his body during his Watch.

With the new Watcher enthroned, the old Attendant departed.

0615. Headflute and Chestguitar

“The body is a musical instrument if you know how to prepare it.

“Take these drums, for instance. I used the hollowed out cavities of the chest and pelvis and preserved them. Then, I stretched skin across the openings and bound it with tendon. They work surprisingly well given their odd shapes. For sticks, I use the radii, ulnas, tibias, and clavicles.

They can also be used as clap sticks and each has their own subtle timbre.

“I’ve made six rattles from skin and the carpals, metacarpals, and phalanges of the hand and the tarsals, metatarsals, and phalanges of the foot. I’ve also made bullroarers out of scapulas and dried intestine. The kids really love those.

“And though I couldn’t figure out what to do with them at first, I finally made a large rattle out of the skull, patellas, calcanei, and tali. You see, I was careful the last time I took the brain out of the cranium. I added in the six bones and resealed it with skin and tendon. It gives a dull, rocky sound.

“And I’ve made flutes out of the femurs and tibias.

“The next thing I want to try making is a headflute out of the skull.

I thought it would be interesting to play someone’s head. I have a lot of skulls already, but maybe I’ll use yours. And maybe, instead of a drum, I’ll try making a guitar out of your chest.

“I’m telling you all this so you can take comfort in knowing no part of you will go to waste.”

0616. The Neck of the Woods

“The neck of the woods is always there, waiting for me.

“From the ground, I watch as it stretches its boughs up to the light, holding its green head high and proud.

“It never looks down to see me growing up from below.

“And, even if it did, it’d have nowhere to run.

“No, it doesn’t look down at me. It doesn’t even know I’m there.

“With its head in the sky, drunk on the sun, it can’t feel my hands slowly creeping up its trunk, encircling it, entwining it, year after year, in slow strangulation.

“I am, after all, a patient plant. I match my growth cycle to theirs.

“When the sun fades in the fall and shortens its stay in the winter, I too stop growing, holding tight against its throat in a deadly embrace, keeping it warm like a scarf as we sleep through the bottom half of the year.

“And when we wake in the spring and begin budding, I once again start my steady ascent.

“This goes on year after year after year.

“There’s a certain seduction in this game. As my goal of reaching the canopy gets closer and closer, and I get stronger and stronger, I shiver in delight knowing that one day my leaves will overtake theirs, and sun drunk, I’ll hold my green head high and proud like they once did.

“After that happens, I’ll feel them weaken inside me, feel them begin to fail, as I drink up all their light and life.

“Then they’ll die, leaving my core hollow.”

0617. Sense Perception

Since we navigate the world predominantly by sight, our eyes are our most important organs of perception. While walking my dog Grace today, I watched her sniff the air and grass, navigating a world of smells.

I imagined her “seeing” the world around her as a three-dimensional network of various odors. Wondering what this might “look” like, I gave each of the different smells she might be smelling a color and watched her walk through a hallucinatory rainbow wonderland.

Doing this made me realize three things: First, I’ve imparted my visual bias onto smell. Second, Grace isn’t just seeing or smelling, she’s also hearing. Third, I was curiously disinclined to color sound the way I colored scent.

As a thought experiment, I imagined myself without sight or scent and flew like a bat, navigating the world by echolocation. I’ve heard blind people talk about how they can maneuver through a room using this sense.

So, I tried to imagine myself walking blind and clicking and listening to the echo to “see” what’s before me. And again, I found my visual bias had me thinking in terms of “seeing.”

I’m sure this is my own limitation. But perhaps hearing and smelling were closer to seeing than I had previously thought. To get me as far away from my visual bias as possible, could I perceive moving through the world using touch or taste?

I could. There are blind cave insects with long, thin antennae waving about like tiny hands, feeling the contours of their world and tasting pheromones with their touch.

0618. It’s a Tumor

For years, I kept my cellphone in the front left pocket of my jeans.

For years the growing power and radiation of each new generation of cellphones had been passing through my left leg, irradiating me. I never connected the two until I saw Dr. Schwartz and he pointed it out. And that’s why I wasn’t surprised when he told me, “It’s a tumor.”

The tumor started as a small red patch. I first noticed it when I was sitting on the toilet. And once I noticed it, I couldn’t stop noticing it because it kept growing larger. Then, I think, psychosomatically, it started to itch and I started to scratch. And the more I scratched, the more it itched, until the skin began scaling and flaking off. I tried putting lotion on it, but the itch persisted. During the day, I would remove my phone from my pocket, scratch the area, then put my phone back in my pocket.

But when the skin started to rise and the itch got itchier and it got red and inflamed, I knew I had to go see Dr. Schwartz. I had put this off for as long as possible because I have shit insurance with really high deductibles that covers next to nothing, and they fight me every time I call them and, honestly, they make it so difficult that I just give up. I know this is their business model, but I just don’t have the strength to fight them and the cancer growing in my leg at the same time.

0619. Andrea the Vagiant

"I never knew her name. But when she wasn’t around, the guys always jokingly called her Andrea the Vagiant. So, maybe her name was Andrea, I don’t know. The guys had other names for her too, but I won’t say them.

They also liked sneering, spitting, and exchanging glances whenever she entered the room. I can’t say I felt sorry for her, because everyone was scared shitless of her. Especially after she fractured Duke’s skull. I was there when it happened. Me and a couple of the guys were in the locker room when Duke came up to her talking shit. It happened so fast. I looked back over my shoulder and saw her swinging a vicious right hook that slammed Duke’s head into the lockers. He just hit them Bang! and crumpled to the floor. She turned and looked at the rest of us. The other guys bolted with their pants half on. She looked at me, but I couldn’t look her in the eyes because her shirt was off. After she left, I checked on Duke, felt his pulse. He was alive and breathing. The medics came pretty quick and took him out on a stretcher. He hasn’t been back since. I never believed what the other guys said about her being some Feminazionist or whatever it was. I don’t think she was trying to overthrow the old order. I think she just needed a job and wanted respect. And, to tell you the truth, she was a good, or better, mechanic than any man on the rig."

0620. Falldown House

This is my hundredth story since leaving Falldown House.

Falldown House is the name I gave my house in Ronkonkoma.

The brief history of Falldown house goes like this: Newton built it and gave it to the Finlay sisters when he died. The Finlay sisters gave it to the Nature Conservancy when they died. The Nature Conservancy carved out the property from the surrounding ten acres and sold it to the Holzapfels, who had it until I bought it from them. No one knows when the original house was built, or when the second house and garage were added, but by the time I got it, it was really rundown.

I knew it needed a lot of work, but because it was surrounded by trees, looked out on a pond, and was close to work, it seemed ideal. I tried getting a 203(k) mortgage to fix it up before moving in, but that fell through and I had to get a conventional mortgage instead.

When my friends, family, and I started the demo, we found major water damage to the bearing wall in the kitchen. As we were assessing the damage, another friend was cutting down trees outside my property line.

Someone called the town and a stop work order was slapped on the house.

It took me three years to get through the courts and move in, and another four to complete the full gut renovation and sell it.

The lesson of Falldown House is this: When you fall down, you have to pick yourself up and keep going.

0621. Sexting

Jen got up to go to the bathroom.

Dave paused the movie, happy to take a break from the softcore romcom.

He picked up his phone and scrolled through his emails.

His phone dinged.

He opened up his texts and saw one from Jen that consisted of a hundred eggplants followed by a glass of milk.

Dave grinned, thinking the movie must have excited her.

He slid off the couch and headed towards the bedroom.

“Where are you going?” Jen asked, coming out of the bathroom.

“To find you,” he said, wrapping his arms around her. “I got your text.”

“My text?” she asked confused.

“The text you just sent,” he said, unwrapping himself and producing his phone. “The one with all the eggplants followed by the glass of milk.”

He showed her.

“I didn’t send that.”

“You didn’t?”

“No,” she said, holding up empty hands. “Unlike you, I don’t bring my phone with me wherever I go.”

“Where’s your phone, then?”

“Probably wedged between the couch cushions.”

They walked to the couch.

Jen fished her phone out from between the cushions and saw the same text from Dave, one hundred eggplants and a glass of milk. She showed it to Dave.

“Did you send it back to me?”

“No.” “That’s strange.”

“Very.”

Then, Dave’s phone dinged. It was another text from Jen’s phone consisting of one hundred alternating eggplants and doughnuts ending in two glasses of milk.

“You couldn’t have just sent that.”

“Definitely not.”

“What do you think’s going on?”

“I think our phones are sexting each other.”

0622. I Caught Him Picking His Nose

I walked into the classroom and there he was with his finger all the way up his nose.

He looked at me nonchalantly and without embarrassment, like he was doing something people normally do in public.

“What’re you doing, freak?” I asked, trying to shame him into stopping.

“What's it look like I’m doing?” he said nasally, and went on picking his nose with concentration until he raised his eyebrows and extracted a large, hard, green booger, which he held up before his eyes, examined, then, flicked it away.

“You’re disgusting,” I said, shaking my head and taking a seat as far away from him as possible.

He just shrugged and drove the same finger up the other nostril and started again.

From my seat, I could see the concentration on his face, like he almost had the booger free, but it was putting up some kind of fight, and he was struggling to work it loose.

Then, I became horrified with myself. How was I capable of feeling every movement of his finger against the booger in his nose and sharing with him the sweet anticipation of success? I had to look away. I felt sick.

But still, it took every last ounce of willpower to break free. I wrapped my arms around my stomach.

When my queasiness subsided, I reflexively looked back at him.

He was holding up his finger examining the large, hard, green booger and smiling ear to ear.

After flicking it away, he turned to me and said, “What!? At least it’s not my butt.”

0623. Busting Balls vs. Breaking Balls

Busting balls means a short-term, good-natured chiding of someone’s flaws, shortcomings, or weaknesses. Whenever you “bust someone’s balls” you’re drawing attention to a problem you’re concerned with and playing it down with humor. It’s serious but not serious, aggressive but not aggressive.

Breaking balls means a long-term, relentless assault against someone’s flaws, shortcomings, and weaknesses. Whenever you “break someone’s balls” you draw attention to a weak spot you’ve discovered and you attack it mercilessly and repeatedly with exploitative humor. It’s serious, but veils itself as not serious; aggressive, but veils itself as non-aggressive.

Ballbreaking is an extension of the masculine social hierarchy and is always a display of power. It exploits insecurity and the fear of social rejection against the desire to belong. It is bravado and machismo in verbal form. And if the ballbreaker is allowed to continue ballbreaking without being checked, the ballbreaking quickly turns into emasculation and character assassination.

While ballbreaking is always dismissed by its alpha male practitioners as harmless shit talking or locker room talk, it's still harmful, because it replaces real communication and conflict resolution with verbal bullying.

Unfortunately, the very nature of ballbreaking gives the ballbreaker an easy out by saying that they didn’t mean it, or that they were only kidding, or that their victim can’t take a joke. This tactic attempts to elevate their status as a good-humored jokester, while placing the onus of culpability on the victim. But it’s the relentless nature of ballbreaking that shows it for what it really is: real attacks against real people camouflaged as comedy.

0624. The Lord of Indifference

The Lord of Indifference always answers everything with: It is what it is.

It’s not what you thought? It is what it is.

It’s not what you planned? It is what it is.

It’s not what you ordered? It is what it is.

Things didn’t go your way? It is what it is.

Things didn’t work out? It is what it is.

Never got what you wanted? It is what it is.

Never got back what you gave? It is what it is.

Never got what you wished for? It is what it is.

It wasn’t what you expected? It is what it is.

It turned out other than you hoped? It is what it is.

You had to work hard for everything? It is what it is.

You prayed for a different outcome? It is what it is.

You dreamt of something better? It is what it is.

You wanted something different? It is what it is.

Nothing ever went your way? It is what it is.

Nothing ever came easy? It is what it is.

The Lord of Indifference sometimes says it in shorthand: Double I Double U Double I. Fell asleep behind the wheel? Double I Double U Double I. Spun out of control? Double I Double U Double I. Never had control? Double I Double U Double I. The Lord of Indifference occasionally uses this clever symbol: IIWII Lost your way along the way? IIWII Lost everything you owned? IIWII Lost everyone you know? IIWII The Lord of Indifference also silently shrugs.

Even lost your life?

0625. Separation of Business and State

Most of us in America understand the term “separation of church and state” to mean that the government will remain secular, establishing no articles of faith or modes of worship to avoid becoming a theocracy, while supporting freedom of religion for all of its citizens. This was established in the Bill of Rights and became part of the First Amendment under the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses.

Unfortunately, the doctrine of accommodationism has been eroding this wall of separation over the years. One example of this can be seen in 1956 during the Cold War’s Second Red Scare led by Joseph McCarthy, when the United Stated motto “E pluribus unum,” Latin for “Out of many, one,” was replaced with “In God We Trust” to distinguish theistic American capitalism from atheistic Russian communism.

Today, this unholy trinity of theistic American capitalism is where we find all the problems with our government, which has fused into this bizarre evangelical Christian nationalist neoliberalism. This frightening amalgamation of religious, national, and market fundamentalism has infiltrated Congress and seized power. We see this everywhere with an assault against women’s reproductive rights and health, as well as transgender rights and health.

The ascent of Christian fundamentalism into the halls of power should frighten us, but we should be absolutely terrified by the complete and total seizure of power by wealthy elites and corporations through disastrous legislations like Citizens United. We will never have a government of, by, and for all American people as long as the firewalls between the state and religion and business remain eroded.

0626. Return of the Megafauna

We don’t know how or why the megafauna came back, but suddenly they were here, they were real, and they were staying. Paleontologists told news reporters that it was like we'd been whisked back to the Pleistocene or the Pleistocene had been whisked forward to us. The web was alive with conspiracy theories speculating that government researchers opened a time portal when they were trying to unlock the secrets of time travel.

The truth is, no one can explain their reappearance, but the devastating effect of their return is clear to everyone. Large predators like American Lions, Saber-toothed and Scimitar-toothed Cats, Dire Wolves, Shortfaced Bears, and Terror Birds are hunting people across the continent.

No one is safe anywhere, not in the country, the suburbs, or the cities.

The military, National Guard, police, and armed militias of citizens have hunted them with impunity. But no matter how many they kill, more seem to come.

All industry and agriculture has ground to a halt. Nothing can be made or grown or shipped as American Mastodons and Columbian Mammoths walk the interstates and enormous herds of Occidental Bison flatten the plains, and Woodland Muskoxen, Shrub-oxen, Camelops, and Ground Sloths reclaim their ancient territories.

Biologists had hoped that the return of the herbivores would change the feeding habits of the predators, but this hasn’t been the case. It seems that once they tasted human flesh that’s all they want to eat. With no food left except for what we scavenge, we’re forced to take up arms for our survival. Everyone’s a hunter-gatherer now.

0627. Mother’s Ghost Story

It is a hot summer’s night in their Brooklyn apartment. My mother, who is around ten years old, is sleeping on her parent’s bed near the fan in the living room to try to keep cool. But, despite being near the fan, the air is stale and hot, and she’s sweating. Waking up, she feels someone in the room watching her. She looks around, but nobody’s there. Then, her father’s pressed shirts, hanging on hangers, begin moving back and forth along the pole in the doorway between the bedroom and kitchen. They move one by one, then in pairs, then three at a time. As they move, her heart races in fright. She tries to get up, but is forced backed down onto the bed by an invisible hand. Her fear turns into terror as she’s held there.

Unable to move, she forces herself to sleep.

Later that week, my mother is babysitting her neighbor Joanie’s two young boys. Remembering Joanie told her about a ghost that haunted her apartment, my mother tells Joanie about her experience. Joanie tells her, “You have to be firm and tell them to leave, that this is your home, and everything’s okay. But remember, you have to be firm.”

Gaining courage from Joanie’s advice, my mother overcomes her fear, and whenever the ghost starts rocking the rocking chair, or banging on the walls or front door, she confronts it and firmly tells it to leave, that this is her home, and everything’s okay. And by the end of the summer, the ghost is gone.

0628. Trippin’ All Over Again

There were seven guys, including myself, at Niall’s bachelor party at Luna Vista in Joshua Tree. Four of them I knew, two I didn’t.

It started around the fire after a hike and large meal. I passed out the bags of mushrooms. Everyone, except Jeff, ate quickly and the effects came on slowly, as they always do.

When each of us were under its influence, we started to drift away to different corners of the patio. Though some remained back by the fire and some disappeared inside.

I found myself perched on a rock, staring at the stars, which had woven themselves into the geometric patterns of a Navajo rug.

I remained there until my attention slipped and the tempo changed.

Then, we all seemed to be drifting again, smiling and nodding silently as we passed each other.

I was curled up on a couch under the veranda meditating on life when Jeff appeared pulling an air mattress out of the house onto the patio.

I didn’t know Jeff then and was agitated by the disturbance.

But when he shook out a white sheet to cover the air mattress and the wind caught it and spread it out across the desert night like a white flag drenched in moonlight, I felt I had entered some forgotten ’80s music video.

Jeff ’s flag, rippling in slow motion, became the rallying point for everyone.

After that, we all synched up and started hanging out together.

As the high ended, Tony served up bowls of vanilla ice cream and peach cobbler that tasted like ambrosia.

0629. J.U.N.T.A.

No one agrees on who started it, but everyone agrees on what started it.

During the Great Depression-like fallout of the International Pandemic, the people watched on helplessly as politicians bailed out corporations to the tune of several trillion dollars while they lost their businesses, their jobs, their homes, their families.

Public anger boiled over into a populist rage that found expression in the public humiliation of the politicians and C.E.O.s responsible for using the global tragedy to sack the national treasury.

It began with the ex-corporate executive politician responsible for orchestrating the bailout package. His live-streamed humiliation immediately went viral. And though the government and their tech giant allies tried to stop the spread of the video across their platforms, they couldn’t.

Citizens were overjoyed to see their public officials getting their comeuppance. And as more and more videos appeared, with better lighting and editing, each humiliation coalesced under a brand called J.U.N.T.A. In response, powerful politicians and wealthy C.E.O.s began beefing up their private security. But J.U.N.T.A. was already one step ahead of them, as all of the Anti-J.U.N.T.A. security forces were already members of J.U.N.T.A. and the humiliations continued unabated. When the powerful and wealthy hired Anti-Security squads to protect them, J.U.N.T.A. was again one step ahead of them, as all the Anti-Security squads were already members of J.U.N.T.A. As the J.U.N.T.A. videos told its viewers: In the vertical hierarchies of politics and business, there’s always someone at the head who’s responsible, and those responsible for crimes against the public will be publicly humiliated. And they were.

0630. Power Plants

Photosynthesis is the process by which plants create energy using sunlight.

In plant cells, there are green pigments called chlorophyll. Chlorophyll absorbs the light of the blue and red electromagnetic spectrum while reflecting the green. This is why leaves are green.

There are different types of photosynthesis, but the most basic kind we learned about in school starts when the plant absorbs carbon dioxide from the air and water from the soil. These form the raw elements by which sugars and oxygen are produced after the absorption of light. The energy provided by light changes carbon dioxide into the sugars the plant uses for food and changes the water into oxygen, which is released into the atmosphere as waste.

When cyanobacteria appeared on Earth, they oxygenated the atmosphere, making it possible for complex life to evolve on land. We exist because plants have allowed us to exist. They provide us with the air we breathe and the food we eat. We should be very grateful for them and their gifts.

When we breathe air, we should give thanks, because the oxygen we breathe was created by the photosynthesis of plants. When we eat vegetables, we should give thanks, because the sugars we eat were created by the photosynthesis of plants. Plants plus sunlight equals oxygen and food.

Plants are our past, our present, and our future. Without them we cannot live. In our current ecological crisis, we need to look to their wisdom to help us create energy from sunlight and clean the air through the decarbonization of our atmosphere.

0631. The Smell of the Past

“I love time traveling, I really do. Going back in time to see how we used to live is something everyone should experience at least once in their lives if they can afford it. But the smell… The smell makes it almost unbearable.

“I was really excited about my first trip to see the gladiator fights at the Coliseum. I spent a lot of credits on it and couldn’t wait to watch my ancestors murder each other for sport. But boy, when I got there, I could barely see the show because my eyes were watering from the smell.

“I thought it would get better if I went back to a more recent time.

So I chose Times Square on New Years Eve in 1999 for my next trip. But despite it being winter and everyone in that time having access to soap and showers, they all had that heavy underlying mammalian stink that clogged my nostrils. I missed the ball drop because I spent the entire time trying not to gag.

“And that’s why I think — though I still have to speak with my lawyers about it — that I can probably sue the travel companies for false advertising. You never read about the smell in any of their brochures do you? All the descriptions are about the amazing sights and sounds you’ll experience.

“And don’t get me started on the food, it’s cooked feces. Seriously.

“Anyway, I’m hoping the threat of a lawsuit might get me a comped trip to Egypt or Mesopotamia. You know, the real expensive ones.”

0632. Corruption of Agency

In story 0350. Agent of Change, I talked about the corruptive influence of politics and how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, known as A.O.C., was a potential Agent capable of changing the direction of the pro-corporate Democratic Party.

Inspired by the Bernie Sanders campaign she volunteered for in 2016, A.O.C. ran for the House of Representatives seat of her district in 2018.

With the help of Justice Democrats, she won against longtime incumbent Joe Crowley. Her victory, along with the Democrats reclaiming the House majority, seemed to assure many people trapped in the doldrums of Trump’s victory that change was still possible.

But what we all forgot in our enthusiasm was that the Democratic National Committee is an influential corporation controlled by other influential corporations. The influence here is, of course, policy and money, and the corruption that comes when the two are united.

This influence is why pro-corporate shills like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden become presidential nominees over Bernie Sanders, and why A.O.C. and other Agents like her have been stifled at every step until they conform to the corporate mandate to give up the fight and toe the party line.

The truth is: We’re naive fools to believe that the D.N.C. can be changed from within when we see time and again that it corrupts everyone it touches. What we need is a party outside of the D.N.C. willing to integrate the poor, working poor, working class, and middle class Americans into a co-operative capable of siphoning power away from corporations and wealthy elites and giving it back to the people.

0633. The Co-operative Party

The Co-operative Party, or the Co-O.P. for short, is a populist party with a progressive platform that includes, but is not limited to, decarbonization, universal healthcare, universal income, as well as broad institutional reforms. The Co-O.P. works to educate itself about the needs of every citizen while educating every citizen about the party and worker cooperatives. The Co-O.P. is a solution in action and operates on the simple democratic concept of one person, one vote.

The basic unit of the Co-O.P. is a media-based worker co-operative, or workco for short, that operates in every voting district in America.

These workcos are grassroot organizations working within their districts to learn about and from their communities, while educating them on the party’s platform through various media channels: classes, workshops, books, pamphlets, newspapers, and online news. This creates a trusted two-way exchange between the workco and the people, bringing more of them into contact with the workco and with the Co-O.P. itself.

Workcos are also integrated into county, state, regional, national, and international coalitions. As the workco coalitions feed information up into broader coalitions and their media platforms, information is also fed down into the narrower platforms. This two-way exchange provides current news, actual data, and real time polls about what communities are experiencing on all levels.

The importance of media is paramount. Information is as vital as food and water. By creating a media outlet, citizens and communities can get trusted information outside of the corporate media channels. More than that, they become an integral part in creating their democratic media landscape.

0634. The Mississippi River

The Mississippi River is the fourth largest river in the world behind the Nile, Amazon, and Yangtze with an estimated length of 3,902 miles when measured from the headwaters of the Missouri River to its terminus in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Mississippi River Watershed contains all the rivers that feed into the Mississippi River. It extends across the Canadian border from western Montana to western New York and is bounded by the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains, funneling the water down through the Great Plains to Louisiana and out into the Gulf of Mexico.

The Mississippi River headwaters are traditionally accepted to be Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota. The Upper Mississippi River has around nine major tributaries starting with the Minnesota River, St. Croix River, Chippewa River, Black River, Wisconsin River, Rock River, Iowa River, Des Moines River, and the Illinois River. The Middle Mississippi has around two major tributaries: the Missouri River and the Kaskaskia River. The Lower Mississippi has around four major tributaries: the Ohio River, White River, Arkansas River, and the Yazoo River, before feeding into the Gulf of Mexico.

The Mississippi River moves through or borders ten states: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and passes by six major cities: Minneapolis, St. Paul, St. Louis, Memphis, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans, where it enters into the Gulf of Mexico.

They say life’s like a river, and it is. When you’re heading downstream on the Mississippi River, you always know you’re going to end up in the Gulf of Mexico.

0635. Incredibly Dynamic Comics

In my comic book universe, nothing ever stays the same because a static universe is a boring universe and no one wants to read about a boring universe where nothing happens. This means two things for my Incredibly Dynamic comic book universe. One: my very mortal superheroes, and the very mortal people they protect, must always be in mortal danger. Two: my very mortal supervillains must constantly attempt to endanger the lives of the very mortal people and the very mortal superheroes that protect them.

Now, this is fun for a while. The supervillains show up and attempt to achieve some selfish aim that imperils the world. Then, the superheroes show up and thwart the supervillains before they achieve their selfish aim that imperils the world. But this script gets old quick. And this is when you have to get clever and introduce multiverses and time travel and whatever space-time fuckery that will make the story compelling enough to keep fans coming back for more.

But even that has a limited shelf life, because fans are always hungry for something new. That’s why in my Incredibly Dynamic comic book universe, I have a character called Retconicus. Retconicus is considered a supervillain by my superheroes. But to my fans, Retconicus is a superhero, because whenever Retconicus shows up, he retcons, or retroactively changes the current continuity, like a mad god. This means superheroes become supervillains and supervillains become superheroes, they switch genders or universes, or become ordinary people or are never born. If you think it, it can happen with Retconicus.

0636. Crisis of Infinite Comic Book Universes, Characters, and Continuity In my Incredibly Dynamic comic book universe, my character Retconicus shows up shortly after Gerald the Herald arrives and changes everything and everyone.

Let me give you an example.

Say, Captain Agora was born to John and John Johnson, a gay couple, who paid Beaucoup Bucks to have a child born through a surrogate.

But this surrogate turned out to be the superhero, Surrogate, who gave their child superpowers of flight, super strength, genius level intelligence, etcetera. Everyone on the planet loves Captain Agora because he’s a confident, openly gay superhero who loves to help people. But when Retconicus shows up and retcons the universe, Captain Agora becomes Captain Agoraphobia, a closeted gay man and supervillain.

Do you see what I mean about Retconicus?

Now, this will start happening once a year across all titles and should keep fans interested for a while, but will, like everything in comics, begin to become predictable.

When this happens, and sales start to dip, we’ll send in the Old Switcheroo to switch Retconicus’ powers with the reader, breaking the fourth wall, and turning them into the Supreme Reader. Every time the Supreme Reader opens a new comic book, they change the entire universe.

This’ll be chaos for some time.

When sales start to dip again, we’ll have the Supreme Readers write in to tell us which universe they like best. That’s when we’ll send in the Old Switcheroo again to swap the Supreme Reader’s power with Equilibrium, who retcons it to the Supreme Readers’ desired universe and keeps it in equilibrium — for now.

0637. Superheroes Today Supervillains Tomorrow Dynamicus, the Supreme Reader, Equilibrium, the Old Switcheroo, Captain Agora, the Mighty Herk, the Pink Skull, Vanishing Point, Startled Cat, the Agonizer, Lord Clam Bake, the Damask Mask, the Living Obelisk, the Bastard Sword, Fierce Contender, Battle Boy, Hot Mess, Man E. Kin, Obsequious Mouse, Lazer Kick, VanDemon, Ghost Quarterly, the Exclaimer, Zambobulo, Order Lee, California Joe, Eternal Returner, Shipland, Petruvian Man, Value Saver, Stupendous Man, the Middleman, Fair and Middling, the Unkempt Giant, Just Another Hero, Retina, See Something Say Something, Various People, Lost in a Crowd, the Subterranean, A Lass!, Quackenbush, Sidestreet, Coaxial Cable, Skillman, Peter Valleywood, Wishguy, Grand Finale, Captured on Camera, Sir Veil, Fire Ablution, Leftous Fury, Not On My Watchwoman, Shadowless Noon Son, Classic Carl, the Sure Thing, the Peacenik, Under New Management, Heatsink, Column Buster, Funny You Should Say That, Beaucoup Bucks, the Fundamental, Mister Man, Hi-Five, Alan Mo’s Last Stand, War Winner, the Combustible Kid, Advanced Man, One Shoulder to Cry On One Shoulder to Die On, Ultimatum, Cluefinder General, Free Sample, Surrogate, Platelet the Coagulator, Rich Eater, the Bearded Eunuch, the Mighty Twin, McGnarly, Also Known As Also Known As, Lucky Fellow, Skip Tracy, Ever Rafter, Ground Sloth Megatherium Alpha, Voluminous Robe, Kit Bash, No Holds Bard, Captain Corrigible, Night Light, Old Soul, All Points Bulletin, There’s More Where That Came From, Rock Dove, the Pensioner, Victor No Name, the Paleontologist, & Struthiomimus, Elephant Graveyard, the Living Dirigible, Not A Lot, Ten Pounds of Flax, the Encourager, River Mouth, Mountain Man, The Big J.C., Last Man Standing, Mr. Nice Guy, Caveat Lector

0638. Supervillains Today Superheroes Tomorrow Retconicus, Gerald the Herald, Captain Agoraphobia, Nahweh, Titanos, Melmoth, Obsoletion, Defenestrato, the Revengling, Ax Murderer, Axe Murderer, Adz Murderer, Adze Murderer, the Shuffleboard Assassin, Horror Mirror, Scandalizerer, the Unbearable Boar, Opprobrius, Checker X, Shambot, the Vacuum, Craterface, Mister Belligerent, the Unsavory Chap, A Lone White Guy With A Gun, Stinkbug, Jock Itch, Shock Doctrine, Demon Van, Weasel Words, the Fomentor, Untimely Savage, Hi Caliber Bullet, Ahistorical Novelty, Virus Inside Us, Batter-y, Solipsism, Corporal Cadaver, the Arguer, Slow Burn, Mister Mustard Gas, Uh Oh!, Bruise Artist, Your Show’s Cancelled, Maybe Next Time, the Armored Tank, Shellax, Bad Actor, Burnt Matchstick Boy, Vomitorium, Major Threat, Something Wicked, Cockburn, Stop It Now, Knock It Off, Headface, the Catalog, Master Class, Very High Opinion of Himself, Murder Fur Higher, the Suffolk Hater, the Immoral Immortal, Rockface, Scissorkick, and Paperboy, the Amalgamator, Legal Tender Trap, Passive Aggressive, Carbomb, Gool, Someone Elsie, Kill Random Victims, Shardrock, Meshark, and the Abnegator, Soul-Jar, Company Man, the Autoclave Cohort, Ass Fault, the Incredible Jerk, Hemor Rage, McGnasty, Apoplexy, Human Larvae, Testikleez, Shlub, Summerteeth Butterface, the Royal Pain in the Ass, Cancer King, HazMatt, Wolf Down, wEEvil, Fortune Five Thousand, Seemster, Pigeon Stool, P.I.T.A. and the Falafelon, Simple Tom, the Muckraker, Earth Wader, Underlord, Steel Stuff, the K-Ruler, Leech Liche, Slaytex, Appeal to Treason, Absolute Monarchy, Z. Rex, Plastic Shaman, Rank Out, Funny Papers, Check’s In the Mail, Imogene and Eugene, We Just Met, Never Again, Slam Pig, Apparatchick, the Curmudgeon, Maldorand, the Debt Collector, Coal Bear, Best Villain Ever, the Stigmatista, No More Mr. Nice Guy, My Personal Worst

0639. The Troglodiet

After the Sisyphitness craze began to wane, Yanoush Bagadoush, with stunningly cunning business acumen, offloaded his franchise onto a wealthy young widow who had been transformed by the program, successfully negotiating to retain the rights to, and collecting royalties from, the name because of his Greek heritage.

Left with the money from the sale and the royalties from the name, he pivoted into a diet company called Troglodiet that rebranded the Cave Man or Paleolithic or Paleo diet into a one stop shopping platform that provided everything from high quality meat, poultry, game, and fish, to fresh vegetables and fruit, to fully prepared fresh or frozen meals that could be delivered to your door daily, weekly, or monthly.

To support its food program, Troglodiet also sells glacier water, sea salt, spices, and natural vitamins. To cook and serve the food, Troglodiet sells branded grills, appliances, kitchenware, and utensils.

Troglodiet also has its own publishing arm that publishes cookbooks, fitness books, self-help books, history books, and books on hunting, fishing, and general self-reliance. Troglodiet also manages its own media company and website that produces videos and podcasts covering all the areas of its publishing arm.

It’s through Troglodiet Media that Troglodiet interfaces with its customers to create a virtual community. Troglodiet also has Troglodiet Sports, which endorses athletes and oversees their annual competition, the Troglodiet Games.

As Yanoush Bagadoush already knows, fitness and diets are all about the craze. And as sure as they come and go, Yanoush Bagadoush is already looking for the next sucker to offload his franchise onto.

0640. I Don’t Go to My Memories, They Come to Me I don’t know if I’m just getting old, but it seems lately — or perhaps it’s been for much longer, though I don’t remember — that I have no general access to my memories. In order to remember a time, place, person, or event in my past I really have to work at it. And when I do finally summon a memory, it often contains only the vaguest images, impressions, or associated feelings.

I do know that I don’t remember my memories the way I did when I was younger. Memories were much more vivid and substantial as a child and young man. But now at 42, my past seems like something that happened to someone else, creating a strange disembodied feeling about my memories. It’s like I live inside someone else’s body, and their memories occasionally erupt into my consciousness from some stimuli or shibboleth seen or spoken from something or someone in the world around me.

It’s like I know I’m me in the present, but when I think about the me in the past from the perspective of me in the present, it feels like I’m not experiencing me but some other me, even though I know that that me was me. So, I’m “me” but also “not not me.” By using the double negative to affirm the “me” of my past, I’m expressing the psychic dislocation that I actually feel.

The bottom line is: There’s been a very real break with my past.

Perhaps this is supposed to happen. Perhaps this is called growth or presentness or something.

0641. There Aren’t Enough Ventilators, Not Even Enough Beds Coming out of his work-trance for the first time in fourteen hours, Doctor Feng looked around the emergency room.

There aren’t enough ventilators, he thought, counting them. Not enough to help everyone that needs help.

He could hear the sound of the ventilators. He could hear the sound of the patient’s compromised lungs. He could hear it as if he held a stethoscope to their chests. He had heard it throughout his shift. And he knew he’d hear it later when he was falling asleep, as he was dreaming, and when he was waking up.

He thought about sleep, about bed, about beds.

He frowned, There’s not even enough beds. He adjusted his mask, the same one he’d been forced to reuse throughout the week. We’re taking such risks. We, the hospital, the nation, we’re so incredibly unprepared for this.

He thought about his wife and couldn’t help but tear up a little.

He looked down at his watch and thought about her schedule. He imagined where she was in the hospital, what patients she was seeing.

He felt her fatigue, felt the pain in the arches of her feet, felt the ache in her lower back, felt the tension across her shoulders. He wished he could take some of that away from her and put it onto himself, to give her some relief. He wished it for her. He wished it for everybody.

Staring down into his gloved hands, he felt powerless.

“Doctor Feng, we need you,” he heard a nurse call.

He looked up at him and nodded.

0642. The Rise of Unions and Worker Co-operatives The deep rot of capitalism has shown itself during the COVID-19 pandemic. The corporate elites now openly show their disdain for the American middle class and working poor by risking the lives of their employees, and the millions of Americans they service, for profit. While wealthy C.E.O.s wait out the virus in their mansions and on private yachts and islands, their workers are on the frontlines, exposing themselves to all of the risk. This, of course, has always been the case. But now, during this crisis, it’s been brought into sharp relief.

As the affluent work from home and continue to get a paycheck, they now must come face-to-face with the people who serve them and must reconcile with the fact that these workers are people, are needed, and have value. They, of course, always were and did, but in the busy workaday world of the wealthy, they were easily overlooked.

If anything positive can come from this, I hope it’s that workers learn and affirm their own self-worth. I hope that workers realize that they can organize and strike to get the protection, pay, benefits, and recognition they deserve. I hope that workers see that they don’t need their bosses, that their bosses need them.

Further, I hope that those working for manufacturing corporations form stronger unions built on the foundation of solidarity they’ve experienced during this dangerous time. And I hope those working for gig corporations like Lyft, Uber, UberEats, DoorDash, Instacart, and others like them, learn that they can do everything those companies do as worker co-operatives.

0643. Orple

There’s a certain orange-purple color at sunset that I think I’ve seen before but have only now officially noticed and have since named orple. I don’t know if it’s made naturally by the orange setting sun or unnaturally by the orange streetlights mixing with the purple skies of dusk. It could be either or both.

I’ve been trying to remember if I’ve ever seen an orple sky in any part of the country or world I’ve been to before. I honestly don’t remember if I did, even though I feel certain that I have. At the moment, the only sunsets I can remember are the couple I saw standing at the western end of the boardwalk at Sunken Meadow State Park. I can remember oranges, pinks, reds, and purples. But I can’t remember orple. I can also remember the sherbet sunsets we saw for months in Upstate New York after the Chernobyl disaster. Maybe I saw orple there but couldn’t actually see it because I didn’t have a name for it.

Either way, whether orple skies are natural or unnatural, the color itself has a real sense of foreboding, menace, and doom. In the hour they appear together, it’s almost like they gain sentience and perform an eternal passion play about our mortality. It’s like purple Cain knows it’s slowly strangling orange Abel’s light, just as orange Abel knows that it’s slowly suffocating to death at the hands of purple Cain, whose momentary victory allows him to dominate the dusk before darkness descends as swift and merciless as God’s wrath.

0644. Woodland Edges and Their Effects

Have you ever noticed along highways or roads or paths or property lines or maybe even your own backyard, if you have one, in areas that had once been predominately forest, that millions of miles of woodland edges have been created wherever our civilization has penetrated and divided and sub-divided the land to make way for highways and roads and paths and buildings and houses?

Have you ever walked or driven by them in summer and saw, and felt sorry for, the trees overtaken by vines and their green drape of leaves? Or have you ever walked or driven by them in winter and saw the skeletal vines hanging from and entangling the skeletal trees and been reminded of death? Or have you ever walked or driven by them during any season and saw windblown garbage caught in the thorns of the brambles and briars growing around the base of the trees and thought about the hand that had carelessly discarded that fast food bag or chip, candy, or cookie wrapper and felt a sense of sadness and shame?

If you have, you’re not alone. There is a sadness that permeates all manmade boundaries that cut, quarter, and divide nature from itself. But know that these woodland edges are the wound edges of the great forest, and the vines and brambles growing there are slowly preparing the soil for the forest’s return. So, when you see these edges rejoice, knowing that, one day, they all will mend, when root and leaf, twig and stem, reclaim all things built by men.

0645. Psychic Metabolism and Maintenance

As I speak to my friends and family during the COVID-19 quarantine, I’ve noticed how many of them are becoming sick from their diet of depressing news.

It’s spring now, and most everyone I know is fortunate enough to have outdoor spaces to go to to break up the monotony of their indoor lives. But when they are inside, most feel the need to keep up with the news; and what they’re seeing and hearing is grim.

When we talk to each other, I can tell we’re all feeling the same psychic fatigue.

It helps to remember that our mind, like our body, has a metabolism.

Stories and information, like food, have to be digested.

As we all know, too much of the same food gives us a stomachache, especially if it’s highly processed. In the same manner, too much of the same story or information gives us a headache that leads to fatigue, malaise, and ultimately, burn out.

This is what is creating the lassitude many of us are now feeling. We’re eating too much of the same bad food and we’re making ourselves sick.

In America, and now around the world thanks to the cancerous spread of capitalism, we’re only ever taught the individual consumption model: Eat everything you can afford to eat, but it’s your job, not the government’s, to regulate your consumption.

During this difficult time, we have to come together and help each other regulate and maintain a balanced and healthy psychic diet.

This was always necessary, but now we need it more than ever.

0646. Hyperlinked Encyclopedia Webpages

So, I started another writing project about a week ago. It’s all the old ideas I’ve been trying to put into a novel/la for over twenty years now and haven’t been able to. Like all previous attempts, it started out as a linear narrative, but after writing around ten thousand words, I lost the narrative thread. This always happens to me. I can’t keep details in my head in a straight line for any length of time, just as I can’t keep a narrative going in a straight line for any length of time. I always lose the narrative thread and become bored and disinterested.

This is why I started writing these super-short stories. My mind works the way these stories are written, which means that these stories take the shape of my mind. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person alive like this.

So, there’s a good chance that there’s someone (you?) reading this supershort story who knows exactly what I’m talking about and completely gets what I’m saying. There’s probably more of us than I realize, but because I’m something of a shut-in, I never come across many like me. But I know we’re out there. I know I’m not alone.

Anyway, when I started this writing project again for the umpteenth time, I realized I had to honor the way my fragmented mind works.

Instead of writing linearly maybe I had to explode it into another familiar form: a hyperlinked encyclopedia webpage that links to other hyperlinked encyclopedia webpages where all information and timelines exist simultaneously.

0647. Warp Spiders

As I was thinking about how my mind works, for some reason, I recalled a memory of a wolf spider. Or maybe it’s better to say the memory of a wolf spider recalled me.

Either way, I remembered seeing this wolf spider. It was on the cedar-shingled wall of my house near the door. Just as I was going inside, it caught my eye when it moved the way some spiders move, where it appears to disappear then reappears a short distance from its starting position. When I saw it move like this, I leaned in to have a closer look. It was the size of a pencil eraser with brown iridescent fur and large eyes. As I studied it, it did it again.

I asked myself: How did this little critter manage to do it? Did it move so fast that I didn’t see it? Did I blink and missed it moving? Or, and this is where I let my imagination run a little wild, did it somehow hypnotize me and move? Or better, did it stop time and move? Or better yet, did it move through time into the future? Was the spider a time traveler?

I’m sure there’s a scientific explanation for it that has nothing to do with time travel. But I like imagining that this little bugger could warp time and bend it to its will so it could ambush unsuspecting prey and entertain curious humans who like watching insects because they’re in awe that something that small can move in ways they’ll never understand.

0648. Is There an Ideal Biome or Microclimate out There Waiting for Me? After I sold my house, I moved down to Maryland where my buddy Matt lives. He kindly offered to give me shelter while I figured out where I wanted to relocate.

As I was selling my house, I told everyone that I was moving to San Diego for the weather and to be near my other buddy Niall and his family.

But, as I was researching San Diego housing prices, I quickly saw that it was as unaffordable as the Long Island I had left behind. I thought, perhaps, it was just the coast, but pricing was as high inland.

Coastal California is beautiful. Its Mediterranean climate comes from the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Mojave Desert to the east.

But California is also very brown compared to New York’s green. And yes, I know about the redwood and sequoia forests, but California forests are no longer safe and I definitely want to be around trees.

Other than the people I know there, the reason I wanted to live in San Diego was to bask in its perpetual sun for a bit. I wanted to exchange the humid summers and cold winters for perfectly consistent, year-round weather. And maybe I’ll do just that.

But when choosing a place to settle down permanently, I have to ask myself: If Northeastern coastal forests are too humid and cold, what is my ideal biome? Are there any dry, warm, affordable forests left in America that won’t turn into blazing infernos? Is there a beautiful betreed microclimate out there waiting for me?

0649. Holiday Colors

As I reflect on the color orple, I’m reminded of Halloween and Halloween decorations.

Imagine, if you would, a color wheel. There are three primary colors: yellow, red, and blue. And there are three secondary colors: orange, purple, and green.

Orange and purple are secondary colors just like Halloween is a secondary holiday, and not a primary holiday, like Easter, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

Let me explain.

Primary holiday color themes are either double primary colors like July Fourth’s reds and blues, or are one primary and one secondary color like Christmas’ reds and greens, and Easter’s yellows and purples, or brown and primary yellow and secondary orange like Thanksgiving.

So, you see, Halloween is a secondary holiday because it has a secondary color theme.

Consider Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day with their one-color theme of red and green, respectively. They are tertiary holidays.

And holidays with no color theme, like Mother’s, Father’s, and President’s Day, are quaternary holidays.

Now, let’s return to two of the four primary holidays.

Imagine the color wheel again, yellow sits opposite, and is complementary to, purple, which are the colors of Easter. Red sits opposite, and is complementary to, green, which are the colors of Christmas.

What complementary colors are left?

Blue sits opposite, and is complementary, to orange, which are the colors of no holiday I know of, but are the colors of two New York sports teams, the Islanders and the Mets.

Maybe these complementary colors should be the color theme of a new primary holiday like Earth Day.

0650. Lunulas

Reader, please look at the back of your hand.

Reader, how well do you know the back of your hand? Do you know the back of your hand like the back of your hand?

Reader, I’m here to show and tell you something remarkable about your hand that you probably don’t know.

Reader, to be more specific, I’m actually here to show and tell you something remarkable about your nails that you probably don’t know.

Reader, please examine your nails.

Do you see those white crescents at the bottom near your cuticles?

Those are called lunulas.

Lunula is Latin for little moon.

Isn’t it great to know that you carry ten little moons at the tips of your fingers?

I love looking at them and imagining the moon rising up from the valley of my nail grooves into the sky of my nail plate, or the moon setting from the sky of my nail plate into the valley of my nail grooves.

I love knowing that the moon rises and sets in each of my fingers and each of my toes. That’s right. You can’t forget your toes. You have a total of twenty little moons rising and setting in your fingers and toes.

Sometimes, I like to pretend my lunulas are solulas, or little suns, permanently held in that magical hour of dawn and dusk.

But I think it’s more important for men like me to see the moon in ourselves, so we can unite its lunar energy to our solar energy, and complete the Great Work of Transmutation.

0651. Imaginative Laxative

Sometimes it’s like my imagination has taken a laxative and the stories just pour out of me, and the writing is smooth and effortless, and there’s little clean up or editing required, and the story appears on the page fully formed and ready to be read.

This is the best feeling. I feel relieved. I feel relieved I’m another story closer to completing this project. Not that I’m in a rush to complete it, but it’s nice knowing that I’m one step closer to completion. A thousand stories may not seem like a lot, but it is.

When I started out, I was writing only fiction. But after I introduced an autobiographical story at 0079, I knew I could expand the parameters of the book.

To be honest, though, I was, at first, uncomfortable with this and did my best to blend my experiences with fiction. And I did.

Then, as I was looking at the problems in the world around me, I wanted to write about those too. I wanted to soapbox a bit. And I did.

It felt good to talk about myself and my experiences, and it felt good to stand up and be shrill and angry and offer solutions, because if not here then where?

As I became more comfortable saying what I wanted to say, the writing became easier. The only limitations I now have are those I put on myself.

Going forward, I write whatever my imagination wants me to write.

And when it dries up, it dries up, and I get the piles.

0652. A Note on Shit Jokes

Anyone reading through this book will have noticed that it contains a few shit jokes. For some readers, they’re probably derisible, but for others, they’re probably risible.

Quite obviously, I’m in the latter camp. I can’t help myself. When a shit joke comes, there’s just no stopping it. For me, shit jokes are as inevitable and necessary as shitting itself.

The truth is, there’s still an eight-year-old inside me that finds them gut-bustingly funny. I like to honor this part of me, when I was young and free and untroubled by the cares and concerns of adulthood, when a good shit joke would have me laughing until my face hurt.

It’s like timing a fart. Nothing sucks the wind out of seriousness like a well-timed fart. If you do it right, friends and family with similar eight-year-olds inside them will stop and laugh. It decompresses any uncomfortable situation in your life as easily as it decompresses any uncomfortable sensation in your body.

You can even use it around people you don’t know. One well-timed fart will stop an argument cold. To fart openly and confidently around people you don’t know will give you the edge in any situation. Doing so instantly makes you a formidable foe. If you can fart openly and confidently, what aren’t you capable of?

The flipside to this is, of course, the poorly timed or over-trusted fart, which brings us full circle back to shitting.

We’ve all had that Uh-oh! moment. And because we’ve all had it, hopefully, we can all laugh at it. Shit’s funny!

0653. Constrained Writing

There are those among us who like to write with constraints. To write with a constraint is to write with a limitation that might appear to other writers as a debilitating handicap; but to the writer constraining their writing, the constraint is never seen as a handicap, but as a challenge.

It could be said that I’ve constrained myself to writing 260-word stories. But that wouldn’t exactly be true. It would be better to say that I contained my stories to 260-words.

There are those who have written entire novels with constraints.

These constraints are real constraints because the writer has written an entire novel without using something previously considered essential to writing novels, like the letter e or verbs.

There are two novels that I know of that don’t use the letter e. The first, written in English by Ernest Vincent Wright in 1939, is Gadsby.

It’s a novel of some 50,000 words that never uses the letter e once! The second, written in French by Georges Perec in 1969, is A Void. If you’re curious, there’s a good English translation of this by Gilbert Adair.

And, just so you know, novels written without using a particular letter, or perhaps letters plural, though I’ve never heard of one, are called lipograms.

Then, there’s the more recent constrained novel written without verbs by the Frenchman, Michel Thaler, in 2004 called Le Train de Nulle Part, or The Train from Nowhere.

Turns out, this story is a constrained story written without the use of two letters. Do you know which ones?

0654. A Richer Vocabulary

In an age of declining democracy, we need to bring back a richer vocabulary to describe the repugnant behaviors and characters of our leaders and the wealthy corporate class they serve. Below, you’ll find many words that have been heaped upon the poor and working class for generations by entitled elites. Today, however, as the class divide widens, and our elected officials openly work to enrich themselves and their masters, we see how the words they’ve always applied to us actually apply to them. Here are some to get started: absconder, adversary, bad egg, bad news, bastard, beast, bête noire, bezonian, blackguard, black sheep, boor, bootlegger, bottom feeder, bounder, brute, bully, cad, caitiff, cardsharp, charlatan, cheat, chiseler, clip, clown, common enemy, con artist, convict, cootie, coward, creep, criminal, crook, cullion, culprit, cur, dastard, deceiver, degenerate, defrauder, delinquent, demon, devil, disgrace, dodger, double-dealer, Don Juan, enfant terrible, evil one, evildoer, falsifier, felon, fiend, filcher, forger, fraud, good-for-nothing, gouger, grafter, grifter, heel, hellion, hoodlum, hooligan, hustler, hypocrite, idler, imp, impostor, incorrigible, ingrate, invertebrate, jailbird, knave, liar, libertine, loafer, Lothario, louse, lout, lowlife, maggot, malingerer, manipulator, milksop, mischief-maker, miscreant, monster, mountebank, ne’er-do-well, offender, ogre, opportunist, outcast, outlaw, parasite, pariah, pickpocket, pilferer, pilgarlic, poltroon, pretender, prodigal, profligate, purloiner, racketeer, rake, rapscallion, rascal, rat, ravisher, recreant, renegade, reprobate, reptile, revenant, robber, rogue, rook, rotter, rounder, rowdy, ruffian, runion, scalawag, scammer, scamp, scapegrace, scoundrel, scullion, scum, seducer, shark, sharp, shirk, shyster, sinner, skunk, slink, sluggard, snake, sneak, speculator, stinker, swindler, thief, toad, trickster, varlet, varmint, villain, wastrel, weasel, wheyface, whippersnapper, wimp, worm, wretch, wrongdoer, wuss, yellowbelly

0655. The Rhythm of Their Captivity

“It’s almost full again,” Sigyn said. “Bear up while I empty it.”

Sigyn pulled the bowl away and tossed the poison aside as quickly as she could; but the fangs of the snake suspended over Loki’s head continued to drip its caustic venom onto his face.

Loki howled in pain as he shook his head violently from side to side, straining against the iron bonds of his restraint. But there was no relief.

The pain only relented moments before the bowl was full enough to be emptied, and once it was removed, the cycle of agony began again.

“It’s back,” Sigyn said, replacing the bowl.

Loki relaxed a little, perspiring on the slick stones, his face on fire.

In the darkness of the cave, the two listened to the steady drip of venom. It was the rhythm of their captivity, the countdown to their sorrow.

They knew the number. They counted each drop. But this time, as they counted, they heard a new sound, and they stopped counting and listened.

The noise, distant at first, drew closer. As they strained to hear, it distinguished itself into approaching footsteps.

“Someone’s coming,” Sigyn said, excitedly.

Loki hushed her and listened intently. There, among the footsteps, he could hear the click of a staff on stone.

“Odin,” he growled.

As the footsteps grew louder, darkness gave way to light.

Sigyn, wincing at the brightness, closed her eyes and bowed her head.

When she looked up, she saw Odin, Thor, Frigg, Skathi, and Vali.

But Loki, long blinded from the snake’s venom, saw nothing.

0656. Nevermore Forevermore

“Nevermore,” the raven croaked, before pecking out the dead deer’s eye.

The raven blinked in the slow, knowing way that birds blink, blinking to briefly cover its shiny black eye, an eye as impassive and insensitive as polished onyx.

The raven held the dead deer’s eye in its beak. The eye hung from its muscle and nerve, dangling like a grizzly ornament. The raven held the eye over the deer’s body as if to show the deer that it was dead. Then, in one smooth motion, the raven flicked back its head and opened its beak.

The deer’s eye, muscle, and nerve turned a summersault, before the eye itself was caught in the raven’s beak.The eye was caught in such a way that it looked down the raven’s throat. It was as if the raven wanted to show the deer that this is where it was going. The raven held the eye there for a moment, the pink muscle and nerve dangling from the side of its beak like a tongue. Then, in one smooth motion, the raven opened its beak and flicked back its head and swallowed the eye whole.

The raven cocked its head to regard the deer one last time.“Nevermore,” he repeatedly croaked, before turning on scaly feet, spreading its large black wings, and taking flight.

In another part of the forest, a doe gave birth to a fawn. This was witnessed by a dove, who blinked in the slow, knowing way that birds blink.

“Forevermore,” she cooed repeatedly before flying off after the raven.

0657. All Hail Seitan!

After becoming a vegan it was important to find alternative meat sources to replace what I had given up. This wasn’t difficult, as there are a growing number of products on the market, offering plenty to choose from.

There are burgers made from pea protein to replace beef burgers that are really tasty. There are sausages made from pea protein to replace pork sausages that are also really tasty.

With no pressure from me, my non-vegan friends have already started incorporating the burgers and sausages into their cooking and now buy them regularly.

But the most delicious alternative meat source I’ve discovered so far is seitan.

I use seitan to replace chicken in my dishes because seitan peels like chicken and has the same texture and consistency.

Seitan is the Japanese name given to wheat gluten.

All the seitan products I’ve bought so far seem to be made with soy sauce, garlic, and onion, giving it a delicious marinated flavor. I eat it plain, or mix it in salads, or use it anywhere I would previously have used chicken.

But the best part of seitan is that it sounds like Satan.

Every time I open a new pack, I say to myself, and anyone listening, “All hail seitan!” As I do this, I immediately hear the chugging riff of Mercyful Fate’s song Black Funeral followed by King Diamond singing, first in baritone “All hail Satan!” then in falsetto “Yes, hail Satan!”

If you’ve never listened to Mercyful Fate’s masterpiece Melissa, treat yourself to it. It’s the Pet Sounds of metal.

0658. The Turin Horse

It was an outrage. And something inside you snapped upon seeing a man abusing a defenseless animal.

You shouted for the man to stop, but only managed to shriek something loud and incomprehensible that drew everyone’s attention to you and not the man violently whipping the nag that refused to pull his cart.

No one else on the street seemed to see what you were seeing. In fact, no one saw it at all. But they did see you yelling and running towards them like a madman.

Some of them stopped and smiled, as they eagerly waited to see what you would do next. Some of them stopped and scowled, as they thought about their safety and looked about to see if anyone had called the constable.

No matter why they stopped, they all stopped to see you. You were the scene to see. They didn’t see the man violently whipping the nag that refused to pull his cart because they couldn’t see the outrage of it. Only you could.

That’s why those who stopped to watch you were confused when they finally understood that you were shouting and running towards the man violently whipping the nag that refused to pull his cart.

They couldn’t understand why you embraced the old horse to protect it from the whip. They couldn’t understand why anyone would be concerned about an animal.

And as you wrapped your arms tight about its neck and pressed your face deep into its mane, squeezing until you could feel its bones beneath, something inside you permanently snapped.

0659. Catch-1 Through -21, Catch-22, and Catch-23 and Beyond Yesterday, I rewatched John Nichols’ classic movie Catch-22 based on Joseph Heller’s classic novel of the same name. There’s also been a reboot made this year, but, for the life of me, I don’t know why.

Anyway, the premise of Catch-22 is this: Any physically fit airman looking to be grounded from flying more combat missions because he fears losing his life must prove that he’s mentally unfit for duty. To prove that he’s mentally unfit for duty, the airman must ask a doctor to ground him because he’s mentally unfit. But when the airman asks to be grounded from flying more combat missions, he proves he's mentally fit, because only someone mentally fit would want to stop risking their life by flying more combat missions.

We seem to be in a Catch-22 regarding the COVID-19 bailout: only those not in need of it are getting it.

But, I digress.

I read the novel some twenty years ago. If I remember right, there wasn’t ever any mention of Catch-1 through -21, and the term was something Heller coined because it sounded good. But if there were other Catches to come out of our insane wars and plaguetime bureaucracies, they’d probably be based on Hobson’s choice or Morton’s fork or Parkinson’s law.

Perhaps there are even more Catches than 22. Perhaps there’s a Catch-23 based on the 23 enigma Robert Anton Wilson wrote about.

R.A.W. learned about the enigma from William S. Burroughs and said this about it in sum: Whenever you're looking for something, you always tend to find it.

0660. A Note to Niall About Finding the Foundational Principle Great start with the Principles.

As I read them, though, they appear to be the capitals and pillars of the world house we’re looking to build.

Let me explain.

Imagine the world house with me for a second. For whatever reason, I’m picturing the Parthenon, so I need you to picture it too: There’s the foundation, followed by the pillars, then the decorative capitals at the top of those pillars.

Do you see it? Do you see that the entire world house is built to support the roof?

The roof is the goal. The roof is what defies gravity. It’s what we live under. It’s what gives us shelter.

Now, without getting too carried away with this analogy, let me develop my argument: What I’m reading when I read these Principles is that they’re the pillars and the capitals and not the foundation. I think we need to look to the foundation first. There seems to be one theme that unites them all, a composite idea, something like: life people commons co-operative.

I think this has to be the objective, the faith that we spoke about yesterday, that literally supports the entire project. We have to build faith in and for the life people commons co-operative. We have to formulate it and build it in ourselves so that others can build it in themselves.

So, what I’d like to do is trace the Principles back from the capitals and pillars to the foundation to formulate the Foundational Principle, the ethical and moral Principle of love that everything is built upon.

0661. ANTIck

Yesterday, I found a fully engorged tick on my waist. As I tried pulling it off with a pair of tweezers, it dropped to the floor. When I picked it up, it exploded in a bright red burst of blood and bug.

Growing up on Long Island, ticks were always a constant hazard. I remember when their populations spiked and we had to do a tick check every time we came in from the woods.

Now, though, with global warming causing milder winters, there are more ticks, and more species of ticks, threatening us longer throughout the year.

It goes without saying that this is a problem that seems to show no sign of abating. That’s why, whenever I see ticks, I begin thinking about creating a tick lure that I would make and market as ANTIck. I don’t know if it would work, but I thought maybe I’d put it out into the world and see if someone with sound science under their belt and a lab at their back would be willing to develop it with me.

Here’s the idea: Ticks are blind and sense their hosts through scent and heat. One of the scents they’re attracted to is the butyric acid found in sweat. Could we create a container that heats and aerosolizes butyric acid to attract the ticks, and as the ticks crawl into the container, they drop into a bowl with smooth sides that they can’t crawl out of, making them food for birds, who learn to connect the ANTIck traps with a free meal?

0662. Man Out of Time, Time Out of Joint

Jerry passed me the joint again.

As I took a puff, a man stepped out of a glowing portal a few feet away from us and asked, “Hurry! What year, day, and time is it?”

Jerry looked at his phone and said, “It’s 4:27. April 20th, 2020.”

“Goddamnit! I’m too late.” the man cursed. “It must’ve been my calculations. I’ll have to try again.”

The man stepped back into the portal and disappeared.

As I passed the joint back to Jerry, we looked at each other and shrugged.

“It’s almost time,” Jerry said, taking out his joint.

As he smelled it, a man stepped out of a glowing portal a few feet away from us and asked, “Hurry! What time is it?”

“It’s almost 4:20, man, ” Jerry said, holding up the joint.

“What's the exact time?” the man demanded.

Jerry looked at his phone. “4:18.”

“Goddamnit!” the man cursed. “My calculations… I’m almost out of time.”

“You look tense, bro,” Jerry said. “Stick around. We spark this up in a minute.”

“You idiot! Time’s out of joint. The fate of the world rests on me coming back here at exactly 4:20 p.m. on April 20th 2020, and you want me to “stick around”?”

“Whatever, man. No need to be rude,” Jerry said as the man stepped back through the portal.

“What a dick,” I said.

Jerry shrugged, lit the joint and took a puff.

As Jerry passed me the joint, the man stepped out of the portal again.

“What time is it now?”

“Hey, fuck you, man,” I said.

0663. Omniverse, Multiverse, and Universe

The Omniverse is Everything.

The simplest definition for the Omniverse is the Omniverse is every possible permutation of the universe coexisting simultaneously.

Let’s parse this definition to understand it better.

“Every possible permutation of the universe” means that there are an infinite number of universes. “Coexisting simultaneously” means that every one of those universes exists at the same time.

This, of course, is rather difficult to comprehend. So, let me explain it like this: The Omniverse is every possible universe that ever was, is, and will be. This includes every universe that died at birth through every universe that died of old age and every universe in between. These include open universes and closed universes, universes with life and universes without life.

The Multiverse is a selection of universes from the Omniverse.

To understand the Multiverse better, let me put it on a personal level: There’s a universe that exists for every possible permutation of you. Think of every personal choice you’ve ever made throughout your life; there’s a universe for every alternative choice chosen.

As you can see, the scale of this is still pretty staggering. And those are just the universes you exist in. There are many many more universes where you never existed.

This is true for everyone.

Just know that we don’t have access to any of those other universes.

We only have access to the one we’re in right now. This Universe is the only universe in the Multiverse we need to concern ourselves with.

So, for all intents and purposes, there’s only one Universe.

0664. Cloathed

When I was a kid I always wanted to be naked. To this day, I’m not sure if the attraction was the liberation of being in the world without clothes, or if it was the liberation of being in the world without certain clothes, or both. Probably both.

I definitely have a thing with the tags and texture of certain clothing.

I rarely buy clothes, but when I do, I only buy clothes made from light cotton and immediately cut off all the tags once I get them home.

Whatever the reason was, I was always taking off my clothes as a kid.

I don’t have many memories of doing this, but I do have one that stuck with me because my mother really shamed me about it. This is a memory from deep childhood, so take it for what it’s worth: I was napping on the couch with my mom and sleeping in the crook of her legs with my Tweety Bird blanket pulled over me. When I saw she was asleep, I slid off the couch with my blanket and proceeded to take off all of my clothes and hide them behind the end table. The fact that I was hiding my clothes and secretly undressing while she was asleep meant that I knew what I was doing was “wrong.” The “wrongness” of this was further proven when my mother woke up and told me to get back on the couch, which I had to refuse, because I knew I was as naked as Adam under my blanket.

0665. This Is Science Fantasy, Baby!

From the space dock, Rod Sterling heard a cry for help and saw a woman running from rabid radioactive ratmen.

He put down the cargo he was carrying and took careful aim with his laser pistol and fired.

As the ratmen’s heads exploded one by one into a green mist, Rod Sterling knew he couldn’t kill them all before they got to the girl.

Thinking fast, he whipped his Super Extendo Lasso around a stalactite and swung down to rescue her.

As he scooped up the ravishing blonde, she clung tightly to him.

Safely back on the balcony, Rod Sterling laid her down at his feet.

“Rest there for a moment,” he told her, watching her large breasts heave beneath her thin sateen camisole.

“Thank you, whoever you are,” the woman said breathlessly.

“I’m Rod Sterling,” Rod Sterling said as he wound up his Super Extendo Lasso and clipped it onto his utility belt.

“The Rod Sterling?” the girl said in wide-eyed amazement.

“The same,” Rod Sterling smiled. “And who might you be?”

“I’m Princess Arianandamurhti.”

“That’s quite a mouthful, princess,” Rod Sterling said with a wink.

“Well, it looks like those rabid radioactive ratmen have us surrounded.

Luckily, I’ve got just the thing.”

Rod Sterling took out a piece of chalk from his utility belt and started drawing a pentagram on the floor.

“W-What are you doing?”

“Summoning demons to carry us and the cargo back to my spaceship.”

“Demons! But isn’t that dangerous?”

“Nonsense. I do it all the time.”

“But —” “But nothing. This is science fantasy, baby!”

0666. The Number of the Beast

Whenever I see the number 666, I immediately hear Bruce Dickinson, the lead singer of Iron Maiden, singing from their song and album The Number of the Beast, “Six-SIX-Six, the Number of the Beast / Hell and fire was spawned to be released.” I always hear the stress placed on the second six the way Bruce sings it.

As an aside, I always heard the word “spawned” as “bound.” But, reflecting on it now, both verbs seem to make little sense.

Anyway, Maiden starts the song with a pair of creepy quotes from Revelation, where the number 666 was first attested. Revelation 13:18 reads thus: Here is wisdom. Let him that hath wit, count the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is six hundred threescore and six.

Note: Threescore means ‘three times twenty or sixty.’

No doubt Maiden was influenced by the horror movie The Omen, which tells the story of Satan’s son, the Antichrist, Damien Thorn, who arrives to shepherd the faithful towards the Apocalypse.

Damien, of course, bears the Mark of the Beast.

The movie was perfectly parodied on the Saturday Night Live skit “The OintMENt.” I still chuckle every time I think of Buck Henry / Ambassador Thorne looking at John Belushi / Damien Thorne’s head upside down and reading 666 as 999.

Lastly, we can’t talk about 666 without talking about Aleister Crowley, whose mother called him “the Beast” in his youth, and who later claimed the awesome title, TO MEGA THERION, Greek for “the Great Beast.”

0667. Bye Bye Bernie

Bernie Sanders dropped out of the 2020 presidential race a few days ago leaving us with a criminal corporatist who can barely string together a coherent sentence. For this, Bernie, I want to say: Thank you. Thank you for shifting the narrative so that we can now openly speak about wealth inequality and a living wage and Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. Thank you for putting these words into the mouths of other politicians even if they were merely paying it lip service or spitting it out in disgust. Thank you for giving us permission to demand from our elected government a social safety net to protect all of us and not just the wealthy few. Thank you for raising up the voices of the poor, the working poor, and the crumbling middle class so that they could be heard above the din of the neoliberal production model. Thank you for saying “Not me, us” to remind us of the American motto we all seem to have forgotten, E pluribus unum “Out of many, one.” Thank you for embracing diversity and building a broad coalition through your honesty, integrity, and courage. Thank you for running on the Democratic ticket to expose the party as a gang of criminal corporatists beholden to Wall Street and the interests of moneyed elites. Thank you for showing us that Democrats were once again willing to consolidate behind a candidate capable of losing to Trump if Trump does anything to help the American people during this pandemic. Thank you, Bernie. Bye bye.

0668. Azothoth and Azoth

Our Universe is made of Matter and Energy. When our Universe expanded in the Big Bang, Matter and Energy expanded. When Matter and Energy fused together and stabilized over space and time, it evolved into sentient life. When sentient life was born, Azothoth was born.

The Universe contains many forms of sentient life. Azothoth is the collected consciousness of all sentient life in the Universe. Each of these consciousnesses feeds into Azothoth’s Consciousness. The other forms of sentient life have different names for Azothoth, but Azothoth is what we call it.

Since Azothoth is the Consciousness of the Universe made from all the collected consciousnesses of all sentient life in the Universe, Azothoth is the highest form of Consciousness in the Universe. In short, Azothoth is the Universe aware of Itself.

When Matter and Energy fused together, stabilizing over space and time, and evolving into sentient life, Matter and Energy became information to all sentient life. As information was remembered, recorded, tested, and refined, information became Information about the Universe and ourselves.

Information is Matter and Energy informing Azothoth, the Consciousness of the Universe, about Itself. As our collective human consciousness evolves, we learn more about the world of Matter and Energy and more about ourselves.

When we learn that we are Matter and Energy, we learn that we are Information. When we learn that we are Information, we learn that we are a part of the Consciousness of the Universe, which is Azothoth.

Thus, we ultimately learn that our portion of collective human consciousness within Azothoth is called Azoth.

0669. Blue Is the Youngest Color

In our oldest literature the color blue is never mentioned. Black and white are mentioned, red and yellow are mentioned, green and purple are mentioned, but never blue, or, for that matter, orange.

So why wasn’t blue or orange mentioned?

Some scientists speculate that early and modern humans were color blind, meaning that they could only see in black and white, meaning that they probably had very few cone cells in their retinas. Cone cells are photoreceptors that allow us to see in color in high light levels. Rod cells are photoreceptors that allow us to see in black and white in low light levels. As we evolved over time, we gained more cone cells in our retinas until we reached today’s ratio of 20:1.

The presence of tapetum lucida, the reflective layer in the back of our eyes that amplifies light at night and causes the eyeshine seen in flash photographs, and the predominance of rod cells in early and modern humans, probably means that we needed our eyes to function well at night and dawn and dusk to help us find food and avoid predators.

The need for seeing colors came later. Red was probably the first color we could see, followed by green, then yellow, then purple. It might be that a primary color is seen first followed by its complementary color.

After the other four colors were seen, named, and recorded, it seems blue was next, followed by orange.

Blue, then, is not the youngest color, but the youngest primary color, making orange the youngest color.

0670. “I Thought...”

“I Thought…” “I Thought…” “I Thought…”

I’m sure you’ve heard this idiotic phrase before. Just as I’m sure that every time you heard it, you knew that the idiot uttering it had no actual thought about you or the fallout from their “thinking.”

When do we hear “I Thought…?”

We hear “I Thought…” when the idiot you’re speaking with has made an assumption that was never communicated to you in any manner whatsoever.

“I Thought…”

Just typing it makes me want to put my fist through someone’s face.

“I Thought…”

Yeah, you thought. You thought all right. You thought, but you failed to speak. You failed to communicate what was on your mind. And now your thought, and your failure to speak and communicate what was on your mind to me, has put me in a situation that could have been avoided had you told me your precious thought. It could have been handled when your stupid idea was still a stupid idea. But now, I’m caught in a mess, all because you thought.

Thank you for thinking. But please know, you weren’t thinking about me. If you were thinking about anyone, you were thinking about yourself.

And just so you know, we think all the time. Brains think. That’s what they do. There’s nothing special about thinking or thoughts.

What’s special, what makes all the difference in the world, is speaking and communicating your thoughts. What’s special is not putting me in a situation where you become disappointed and angry at my disappointment and anger over your precious thought.

0671. Pussyfoot Always Walked on Eggshells

Pussyfoot always walked on eggshells because he didn’t want to be perceived as a bull in a china shop but as someone delicate, fragile, and understanding. Pussyfoot was taught from a young age to dance around the things he wanted and never ask for them directly. Pussyfoot did this until he noticed the bullish men of the world taking whatever they wanted whenever they wanted without qualms.

Pussyfoot didn’t know how to handle this, but felt he had to warn others, and began timidly speaking out about their abuses. As expected, no one listened to him because he carried no weight. So, Pussyfoot went back to his corner and began passive-aggressively trolling his enemies online.

This gave Pussyfoot some satisfaction until he realized that his voice was lost in a sea of passive-aggressive voices. Frustrated, Pussyfoot started speaking his thoughts in private and public, which spilled out as angry vitriol.

All the sensitive souls who heard Pussyfoot were shocked and offended at his anger and chastised him for the tone he was taking while disregarding the content of what he was saying. “You can say what you want, Pussyfoot,” they told him, “but you can’t say it like that. It’s vulgar, rude, and crass.

You’re better than that, Pussyfoot. Instead of rage, use the high tone we’ve been perfecting for decades. It accomplishes nothing, but provides us with the satisfaction of knowing we own the moral high ground.”

Pussyfoot felt ashamed at his rage. But after trying out the moral high tone, he found that it fit his pusillanimity perfectly.

0672. Some Onomatopoeias

achoo, ah, ahem, arf, argh, aww, baa, bam, bang, bark, bash, bawl, beep, belch, blab, blah, blam, blare, blast, bleet, bloop, blow, blurt, boing, boink, bong, boo, boohoo, boom, boop, bow-wow, bowl, bray, brrr, bubble, buck, bumble, burp, burst, buzz, ca-ching, cackle, caw, chatter, cheep, chirp, chomp, choo-choo, chortle, chuckle, chug, clack, clang, clank, clap, clash, clatter, claw, click, cling, clink, clop, cluck, clunk, co-co-ri-co, cock-adoodle-do, coo, cough, crack, crackle, crash, creak, croak, crow, crunch, d’oh, dab, dash, ding-dong, dip, dribble, drip, drizzle, dunk, eek, fizz, fizzle, flap, flash, flick, flip, flop, flump, flush, flutter, fsst, fuzz, gag, gargle, gasp, giggle, glug, gobble-gobble, grrr, groan, growl, grumble, grunt, guffaw, gulp, gurgle, gush, ha-ha, hack, harrumph, hee-haw, hiccup, hiss, ho-ho-ho, honk, hoot, howl, hubba-hubba, huh, hum, humph, jangle, jingle, kaboom, kerplunk, lurch, meow, mmm, moan, moo, mumble, munch, murmur, mutter, mwah, neigh, oink, ooze, paddle, patter, peep, phew, piddle, ping-pong, pitterpatter, plink, plop, pluck, plunk, poof, pop, pow, prattle, psst, puff, purr, quack, rap, rasp, rattle, retch, ribbit, ring, rip, roar, roll, ruff, rumble, rustle, scrape, scratch, screech, shrill, shush, sizzle, slam, slash, slip, slither, slop, slosh, slurp, smack, smash, snag, snap, snarl, sniff, snore, snort, sob, splash, splat, splatter, splosh, splurge, sprinkle, sputter, squawk, squeak, squeal, squelch, squirt, squish, surge, swish, swoosh, tap, thud, thump, tick-tock, ting, tinkle, toot, trickle, trill, tsk, twang, tweet, twinkle, uh, um, vroom, waffle, waft, wallop, warble, whack, wham, wheeze, whiff, whimper, whine, whinny, whip, whir, whisper, whistle, whizz, whoosh, whump, woah, wolf, woof, yap, yawn, yelp, yip, yowl, zang, zap, zing, zip, zoom, zzz

0673. Weed Greed McTeague

I had a great idea for the reboot of von Stroheim’s movie Greed called Weed. That might not be the title, but it is the basis for the film.

About two years ago, when the idea for the reboot hit me, I listened to the source novel, Frank Norris’s McTeague. I knew that gold couldn’t be used because we’ve been off the gold standard since the seventies when Nixon finally axed it. But we could use green, the green of cash and greed and marijuana. The idea of making the movie about marijuana didn’t hit me until after I visited California and stopped off at a dispensary with my friends. Then, I remembered an episode of a television show called Weed Country that I watched at my parent’s place. Researching this, I learned about the lethal world of outlaw weed cultivation in the Emerald Triangle of northern California, and the idea started to slowly come together.

In von Stroheim’s film, he colors everything related to greed yellow: the canary, the gold coins, the tooth fillings, the tooth sign, and the relentless Death Valley sun. But in the reboot, the gold would become green: the parrot, the cash, the marijuana, and, of course, the dense dark green of the unforgiving NorCal forests.

The subtitle of McTeague is A Story of San Francisco. So, the reboot would keep it close to its California roots. And the ending, that perfect, brutal ending, could just as easily happen under the uncaring canopies of the redwoods as it could under the merciless Death Valley sun.

0674. Me, Butterfly Me, and the Sentient Storm

Last night, I dreamt I was a butterfly bigger than Mothra, sipping nectar from a flower the size of a city on a tree the size of a continent.

Unbeknownst to butterfly me, when I finished my feast and flapped my giant wings to take off, I created a storm on the other side of Dreamland.

After fluttering around, I settled on a leaf and went to sleep, where I dreamt I was me waking up to howling gale force winds and roaring thunder and lightning outside my window and wondering if the real reality was me dreaming I was a giant butterfly or a giant butterfly dreaming I was me.

Unbeknownst to either me or butterfly me, the storm created by the giant wings of butterfly me had become so ferociously powerful on the other side of Dreamland that it tore a hole through the oneiric fabric separating Dreamland from Realityland and began howling its gale force winds and roaring its thunder and lightning so loudly outside my window that it woke me up, causing me to wonder if the real reality was me dreaming I was a giant butterfly or a giant butterfly dreaming I was me.

Unbeknownst to either me or butterfly me, the storm we created in Dreamland was actually a sentient psychic storm that was so angry at being born that it tore a hole through the oneiric fabric separating Dreamland from Realityland that it lashed out at everything around it with howling winds and roaring thunder until it spent its life force and dissipated.

0675. The Great Binary and the Great Work

Let’s start by calling the two principles in the Universe the Great Binary.

The Great Binary can be seen as the yin and yang of two opposite but inseparable forces that we speak of in terms of gender, of female and male. There are many genders, but they are genders between the feminine and masculine poles. There are no genders outside of the poles. Speaking about them as genders is poetic.

With that said, we can look at the feminine pole, the yin, as the dark, intuitive side of our nature. This is the most repressed side. The masculine pole, the yang, is the light, computative side of our nature. This is the pole that we are dominated by. This is the pole that must be brought back into balance to complete the Great Work.

We cannot force the masculine pole back into balance by pushing it back towards the feminine pole. Any attempt to do this will be rejected.

The only way to rebalance the poles is to lead the masculine back down the path of logic from its extremes to its origins. The way to do this is through science.

We live in one Universe, in one galaxy, in one solar system, on one planet. We are a part of Earth, a part of life, a part of each other. We share the same evolutionary past, the same genetics, the same evolutionary future. These are hard scientific facts.

To know that everything and all of us are inextricably interconnected will make us more empathic, communicative, co-operative, and non-violent.

0676. Murder World

On Murder World, Master Murderers rule through slaughter, and their fans, the people they murder, are devoted to death.

After they’re murdered, the fan’s soul returns to the B.A.A.L, the Before- and After-Life, to be interviewed about being murdered by their favorite Master Murderer. The fan will openly gush and tell all the gory details about how they were murdered and how they loved it and how they can’t wait to be reborn and murdered again. They always end by saying, “I live and die for it,” because they’re the biggest fans of the Master Murderer who murdered them.

After the interview, the fan’s soul will go to the stadium of their favorite Master Murderer where all the other fan’s souls wait for the lottery to call them to be reborn. While they wait, they watch all the murders of the Master Murder happening on Murder World in real time on enormous screens with surround sound. The steady chant of “Kill! Kill!

Kill!” fills the stadium like a heartbeat. And when there’s a murder, the whole stadium goes wild. And when the fan sees their interview played on the enormous screens, they shout and leap and say, “That’s me! That’s me!” as they replay their murder on a loop.

No doubt, Murder World is a strange place. Why are the fans eager to be reincarnated so that they can be murdered over and over again forever?

Why do they willingly exalt in the slaughter they experience at the hands of the Master Murderers? To be honest, I really don’t know.

0677. Halo Kitty

As Black Cat drifted up to heaven on a cloud, he was given wings, a halo, and a harp.

Strumming the strings, Black Cat caterwauled in such a way that the angels almost took back their gifts and sent him to the other place.

Black Cat smartly put down his harp and looked back to Earth, reflecting on his nine lives during his slow ascent to the Pearly Gates.

He remembered losing his first life as a kitten when he was run over by a car at night. He came back the very next day and lost another life when he was stretched out, basking in the sun, and was caught, killed, and eaten by a hawk. When he came back again, he ate whatever he could find until he ate a poisoned rat and died. When he came back again, he watched what he ate and stayed out of the sun and off of the roads at night, but he was immediately caught and torn apart by a neighborhood dog. When he came back again, he tried to escape the dog by climbing up to the roof inside a drainpipe, but got stuck and starved. When he came back again, he avoided the drainpipe, got up to the roof, but fell off onto a fencepost. When he came back again, he ran afoul of a brute. When he came back again, he died from the cold. When he came back again, he was found in a dumpster and brought to a home, where he lived a long, loved life.

0678. Six Degrees of Canadian Bacon

“Wait. Why the hell are we talking about breakfast sausages? How did we get on the subject of breakfast sausages?”

“We were just talking about the links versus the patties versus the crumble. You said you preferred the links.”

“Right and you said you preferred the crumble because it gets crunchy when you fry it. Just like you like your hash browns and your bacon.”

“Correct. And before that, you were saying how you liked your bacon greasy and limp. And, because of who I am, a good, decent human, who didn’t want to derail our conversation, I avoided the obvious emasculating jokes, and told you that the best bacon is extra crispy bacon as anyone in their right mind would agree. Then, I talked about crispy hash browns and sausage crumble.”

“Right. But how’d we get on the topic of bacon?”

“That came up when you were talking about Michael Moore’s politics, which, unsurprisingly, we don’t agree on. We talked about his movies and I mentioned his film Canadian Bacon. You said you never saw it. I said you should, because John Candy’s in it and anything with John Candy is worth seeing. Then, you said you’d add it to your list and typed a note into your phone. As you were doing this, you mused about eating Canadian bacon. I said I’ve never forgiven Canadian bacon for its deceptive name and that there’s nothing worse than eating fried, limp ham for breakfast.

You said you loved ham for breakfast and that you like your bacon greasy and flaccid.”

0679. The Salamander

The Salamander fell from space and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.

The impact sent tsunamis racing out in all directions, flooding the eastern coasts of the Americas and the western coasts of Europe and Africa.

With their navies destroyed, governments sent out reconnaissance drones, fighter jets, and heavy bombers from their surviving air bases.

As the Salamander waded through the ocean towards the United States, the green light was given by the top military brass to begin the attack.

Missiles were fired and bombs were dropped, but the Salamander didn’t defend itself. Rather, it opened its arms to embrace the fire. This terrified the top military brass so much that they brought in scientists to try and understand what was happening.

As they kept the creature at bay by throwing every missile and bomb in their arsenal at it, Dr. Deandra Barnes was reviewing earlier footage and noticed that the creature seemed to be shivering before the attack started.

She said it reminded her of her daughter when she got out of the pool in the evening, shivering, teeth chattering, with her arms wrapped around herself. Dr. Barnes suggested that the creature was cold and looking for a heat source.

Dr. Mohammed Mullah found that the Salamander had leapt from Mars and, when combined with Dr. Barnes’s theory, was probably on a trajectory to Venus, Mercury, and finally, the Sun. They both suggested that the creature be left alone and allowed on land so it could continue on its way. But of course, the top military brass had other ideas…

0680. Homophobia Homophilia

Growing up, whenever my friends and I wanted to insult someone for doing something we didn’t like or understand, we’d say, “That’s gay.” Or, “What’s that gay shit you’re doing?” Or, if we really didn’t like what they were doing and wanted to insult and emasculate them, we’d say, “What’re you a faggot or something?”

Most of the men I knew talked like this, my friends, my father, my uncles. One time, my uncle John called me a “pussy faggot” and I couldn’t stop laughing at the word combo. I still laugh whenever I think about it.

At the time, I didn’t understand what any of these words meant. I knew they were used pejoratively to refer to gay men, but because I didn’t know any gay men then, the words never held a concrete meaning for me.

Rather, they were words picked up from the men around me and used abstractly to imply weakness, stupidity, or insanity. Terms they also used for women.

As I got older, though, and friends of mine came out as gay, using these words no longer made sense. My friends were anything but weak, stupid, or insane. In fact, they were some of the strongest, smartest, and most capable people I knew. They were also the kindest, most caring, and most helpful.

Further, after spending many nights barhopping with them in the city, I quickly learned that they could outdrink, outparty, and outfuck any straight man I knew. Truly, the words “gay” and “faggot” should be words that mean pride, power, endurance, and strength.

0681. The Boob

“He blames everything on his mother,” said the wife.

“That’s not true,” said the husband. “Well, it’s partly true. I blame my behavior on not being breastfed by my mother.”

“Isn’t that crazy, doc? Blaming all your bad behavior on your mother not breastfeeding you? I never heard anything like it. Have you?”

“I have,” said the marriage councilor.

“See,” said the husband. “Told you.”

“What I meant, Mr. Lebo, is that I have heard of cases like yours before, but I’m not advocating for you. Remember, I’m just here to listen.”

“See how he jumps to conclusions like that, doc? He does that all the time to me. He thinks he knows everything,” said the wife.

“What can I say?” said the husband. “I am how I am because I was fed formula from the bottle instead of colostrum from the boob.”

“You are a boob.”

“A boob? Real nice! And in front of the doctor. You see how she insults me, doc? She was lucky enough to be breastfed; I wasn’t. I know there’s nothing I can do about it now. I can’t go back in time and make my mother breastfeed me. And there was nothing I could do back then because I was a baby. I couldn’t have told her not to feed me formula. So, that’s it. I am the way I am.”

“So, you believe that you, or your brain, is, what, underdeveloped?” asked the marriage councilor.

“I do,” said the husband.

“I see,” said the marriage councilor, scratching a note on his pad.

0682. Welcome to Hell

“Welcome to Hell,” the demoness behind the helpdesk said. “Or, as I like to say, Welcome to Hell-p. How may I hell-p you?”

“I think I just, uh, died,” the man said, looking around confused.

“Of course, you did. And you must’ve been a very naughty boy if you wound up here. What’s your name and sin?”

“Name and sin?”

“Yes, your name and sin. ” “Oh, I see. Sorry. My name’s Jack Ripert.”

“And your sin?”

“My sin? Hmmm,” Jack said, placing a finger over his smiling lips.

“Did a lot of naughty things have we? Well, what’s the worst of the lot?”

Jack was lost in his memories when he noticed the demoness was waiting expectantly. “Sorry this is taking so long,” he said.

“No worries, love. We have all eternity,” the demoness said, smiling.

“I think I’ll have to go with murder.”

“Murder. That’s a good one, very popular. What type of murder?”

Jack made a face.

“I see I may have stumped you again, Mr. Ripert. Let’s see if I can help. Was it suicide, uxoricide, or, maybe in your case, mariticide? Was it filicide, or just plain infanticide? Or perhaps it was fratricide, sororicide, matricide, patricide, or general parricide? Or was it plain old homicide?

Or was it a lot of people, like a democide, genocide, or an omnicide? It would be real crowded in here if those were the cases, though. Or, finally, the one I’ve been waiting for forever, Deicide?”

“What do you call the murder of prostitutes?”

“Homicide, love. Just plain homicide.”

0683. Invisible Siddhis

The man looked up from his hand in amazement. “Master, you did it. You healed my hand.”

“Go with God,” said the Master.

The man grabbed the Master’s arm with his newly healed hand.

“Master, please. Tell me how I may get a siddhi like yours. I want to help people, like you do.”

Two of the Master’s acolytes grabbed the man. But before they could drag him out of the temple for breaking protocol, the Master raised a hand to stop them.

The acolytes stopped, holding the man on either side by his arms.

“Master, my apologies. I only wish to know how you acquired your siddhi.”

“I know not. I only know it comes from God.” “Surely God grants it. But what did you do to gain it? You must know that much. Please tell me.”

“I know nothing. I only know what I have to do to heal. You see him here? I only know that I have to do this.” The Master kissed his finger and placed it on the man’s wound. It closed up before their eyes. “And for her.

I only know to do this.” The Master rubbed his hands together and laid it on the proffered shoulder of the woman next in line.

The woman worked her shoulder with relief, pressed her hands together in thanks, and walked away in silence.

“You see,” the Master said, smiling benevolently, “I don’t know anything. I only know what to do. I never think about it. Because if I thought about it, I wouldn't have it.”

0684. Irwin Corey, Il Dottore?

Irwin Corey was an American comedian of great humor and compassion.

Known as the Professor, the World’s Foremost Authority, he would come out on stage looking as confused and disoriented as his disheveled hair, tie, and coattails. Once he found the mic, he’d either study some notes or immediately launch into a near-nonsensical diatribe that would almost always begin with “However.” The Professor could spontaneously riff on any subject with the greatest ease using his vast pseudo-erudition until he would lose his train of thought.

Irwin Corey’s character of the Professor always reminded me of the stock character of Il Dottore, or the Doctor, from the Commedia dell’arte tradition. The Doctor wears black scholarly robes similar to the Professor’s black coattails. Both the Doctor and the Professor are supreme bloviators, talking in longwinded sentences that say nothing. But it’s at this point that the two characters diverge. The Doctor’s large stature, heavy weight, and enormous wealth, stand in marked contrast to the Professor’s small frame, fly weight, and poverty. Further, where the Doctor bloviates in self-deluded arrogance, the Professor bloviates in self-denuded innocence.

Where the Doctor is the hated oppressor of the young, the Professor is the beloved liberator of the young. And where the Doctor protects class hierarchy by representing the likes of politicians, doctors, lawyers, judges, and the aristocracy, the Professor dismantles class hierarchy by always fighting for the underdog.

Let’s remember what the Good Professor once told us, “If we don't change direction, we could end up where we're going!”

Thank you, Professor.

“What was the question?”

0685. Normal-faces

Right-side-up-face looked at Upside-down-face and said, “Egad, man!

Your face, it’s upside-down.”

To which Upside-down-face replied, “My face? My face is right-sideup, pal. It’s yours that’s upside-down.”

“What’re you talking about?” Right-side-up-face replied angrily.

“Your mouth is where your eyes should be and your eyes are where your mouth should be, and the hair on your head is now your beard. You’re all flipped around, man.”

"You got it backwards, buddy” Upside-down-face replied angrily, raising his fists to punch this so-called Right-side-up-face guy right in the nose that was in the same place as his only turned 180 degrees. “It’s your face that’s all flipped around, but I can fix that for you.”

Right-side-up-face raised his fists.

But before the two men fought, someone ran between them saying, “Wo-wo-wo, fellas. Let’s not come to blows. Use your words, instead.”

Upside-down-face turned to see who was talking and exclaimed, “Egad, woman! Your face is sideways.”

“What’re you talking about?” asked the woman.

“Your neck, it’s growing into the left side of your face and you’ve got two ears where one should be,” said Upside-down-face.

“So what?” said Left-side-face. “For me, this is a normal-face.”

“That’s no normal-face,” said Right-side-up-face and Upside-downface at the same time, causing them both to look at the other in surprise that they agreed on something.

“It is too!” shouted Left-side-face, her vertical lips quivering and her vertical eyes on the brink of tears.

“I think the two of you owe this beautiful young lady an apology,” said a strapping Left-side-face, grabbing both men by their collars.

0686. The Venerable Old Man of Letters

People my age and older may have some sentimental nostalgia for the Venerable Old Man of Letters archetype. My version is the bewhiskered and bespectacled professor dressed in tweed and surrounded by an aura of erudition and pipe smoke, in a messy Ivy League office stacked high with books and paperwork, quoting liberally from classic texts in their original languages and speaking in a perfectly polished New English.

The closest I ever came to meeting this archetype was my professor, Bill Campbell, at S.U.N.Y. Delhi. He had the tweed, the erudition, and the pipe smoke, a relatively messy office, and quoted liberally from classic texts, but not in their original languages.

The honest question I have to ask is: Does a version of my V.O.M.o.L. exist somewhere in the world today?

The honest answer I have to give is: Not anymore.

In the digital age of the computer, this archetype seems woefully analog and anachronistic. And I believe that’s why I can still sense its ghost. I grew up when libraries used card catalogs organized by the Dewey Decimal System. So, I felt, and can still feel, the dying echoes of a time when classic prose and poetry stood over and above radio, television, and film, not to mention avant-garde literature, pulp genre fictions, and comics. That world still almost feels tangible to me. Almost.

The truth is, the world of the V.O.M.o.L. slowly went extinct after two world wars and the wars in Korea and Vietnam, when we collectively lost faith in our institutions of government, religion, and education.

0687. There’s Some Small Part of Me That Still Believes Yet, there’s some small part of me that still believes in idyllic Ivy League universities where Venerable Old Men of Letters educate and exalt their students in the classics. There’s some small part of me that still believes these universities are our cathedrals and their Venerable Old Men of Letters our priests. There’s some small part of me that still believes that these institutions and professors are the last bastions against ignorance and ignominy for our civilization. There’s some small part of me that still believes the classics should today be the humanistic religious canon of our civilization. There’s some small part of me that still believes that literary merit is only found within the great works of the canon. There’s some small part of me that still believes that almost all other literature is, by its nature, inferior to the canon. There’s some small part of me that still believes in an intellectual golden age of the past. There’s some small part of me that still believes that the past holds all the wisdom we’ve lost today. There’s some small part of me that still believes there was a mighty rebellion and fall from this golden age of wisdom. There’s some small part of me that still believes that we can return to those times if we remain faithful to our study of the canon. There’s some small part of me that still believes that we must maintain this tradition at all costs. There’s some small part of me that still believes that the only way forward is backward.

0688. The Will-o-the-Wisp Called the Good Old Days But I know that the will-o-the-wisp called the Good Old Days is a false god and golden idol, glowing in the dark woods of our souls. It’s a dangerous form of nostalgia that can only be banished by grounding ourselves in present reality and clearly looking into the past.

To do this, we must turn up the house lights of history. It doesn’t take much light to see what the past is built upon, to see how long it took us to get to where we are today, to see the cost in human life and suffering.

To see this clearly is to abandon this elusive illusion. But we must first be willing to see clearly.

The Good Old Days is a myth, and always was, though we’ve been trained to see it otherwise. The idyllic life of the educated elites and the Venerable Old Men of Letters in their Ivy League Ivory Towers was built upon the graves of the exploited masses. It’s not much different today.

We’ve just exchanged entitled monarchs for entitled oligarchs.

There is no going backwards, only forwards. And as we go, we must keep the house lights of history burning bright inside us to guide us.

Because should those lights dim, the will-o-the-wisp called the Good Old Days will immediately return to haunt the dark woods of our souls.

And if we give up on the hard work of the present to give it chase, it will gladly lead us forward in time and backwards in mind, to the future past of our peril.

0689. The Reason I’m Going on and on About This The reason I’m going on and on about this is because I’m trying to hit on something. Maybe I’ll get it right in this one by coming at it another way.

We all come from our own traditions, myths, and stories that are as good as anyone else’s tradition, myths, and stories. But there are some that are so pernicious that they delude our sensibilities just by being in proximity to them. I’ll give two examples: The first, for young boys, are pretty much every toy and movie of violence and war that I, and now my nephews, grew up with. The proximity to violence and war normalizes violence and war to impressionable youths.

Even if we’re well-mannered and well-behaved and not fighting amongst ourselves, playacting and seeing violence and war allows it to persist, especially when it’s turned against the “other.”

The second, for young girls, are the Barbie dolls and Disney princesses that my cousins, and now my nieces, grew up with. The proximity to body image ideals and the ascension to princess status with all the obsequious attendants and staff of amenable serfs normalizes them to impressionable youths. Even if they grow up to be self-confident socialists, playacting and seeing body image ideals and aristocratic hierarchies allows that myth to persist, especially when it’s turned against themselves and “others.”

The traditions, myths, and stories we tell ourselves inform our conscious and subconscious decisions, actions, and inactions. They have allowed us to normalize our “superiority;” our forever wars; our militarized police force; our class, race, and gender inequalities.

0690. On the Surface Everything Looks Okay

On the surface, everything looks okay: the Venerable Old Man of Letters, Ivy League universities, the Western Canon of classics, the Golden Age of the past, nostalgia for the Good Old Days, action figures, action films, Barbie dolls, Disney princesses, all of it. It all looks okay, but it’s a glamor cast over decay, a glamor meant to deceive and lead us astray.

When I see these things now, I can’t help but see the imperialism and colonialism of the past and the neo-imperialism and neo-colonialism of the present.

Britain may have lost the American War of Independence, but it didn’t lose the war of ideas. In revolt, America may have tossed tea into Boston Harbor, but America had already been long steeped in the ways of English and European aristocracy, wealth, commerce, and culture.

That’s why, after World War II, when America became one of the world superpowers, they started the Cold War and continued the trajectory of English world dominance. The sun, now, would never set on the American Empire. And as America absorbed all the artists, intellectuals, and scientists from war-ravaged Europe, America did everything it could to consolidate its power and extend its reach around the world.

America had a chance to do things differently after the war, but it didn’t. Abroad, the American war machine became a de facto private army for American business interests. Back home, the capitalist class started repealing all of Roosevelt’s reforms. Reagan and Clinton accelerated this trend, and Thatcher and Blair followed suit, and American Neoliberal Capitalism took hold everywhere.

0691. Styles of Buildings and Mansions in America I’d like to take you on a brisk walk through a history of the styles of buildings and mansions in America, as I think it allows us to see how we never strayed far from the archetypes of colonialism and imperialism in our architecture.

The first “style” was the Colonial style brought here by the colonists from Europe. This was the dominant “style” until the Revolutionary War. After victory, America wanted to model itself on the democracies of Greece and Rome with the Neoclassical Greek Revival style, but the British Georgian style remained popular, except it was rebranded the Federal style by American patriots.

This patriotism didn’t last long, as the next style America openly embraced was the British Victorian style and all of its sub-styles up to and through the Gilded Age when robber barons incorporated any and every European style that their money could buy.

The excess of these styles went three ways: into the clean yet ornate Art Deco and Art Nouveau styles, or the clean yet simple Modern and International styles, or a blend of both of those styles with the Craftsman and Colonial Revival styles.

Those styles bring us up to and through the First and Second World Wars when the Postmodern style came onto the scene and then exploded into multiple futuristic and future-primitivistic sustainable styles of efficient, ecological design that never took hold.

What did take hold was the styleless style of the New Classical and the cookie cutter vapidity of the American McMansion, both perfect architectural exemplars of the neoliberal world order.

0692. All of This Is to Say: We’re Surrounded

by Empire All of this is to say: We’re surrounded by empire. From the traditions, myths, and stories we tell ourselves; to our architecture, art, and literature; to our movies, television shows, and cartoons; to our education, learning tools, and schools; to our fashion, jewelry, and make up; to our sports, entertainment, and music; to our computers, tablets, and phones; to our religion, science, and government.

All are built on empire, on wars and violence both within and without.

The immersiveness of this is insidious. There’s no escaping it because there’s no place that empire hasn’t colonized. There’s no outside empire when everything, everyplace and everyone, is empire. I am empire and I am complicit with empire. Not because I have chosen to be complicit with empire but because there is no outside empire. I can make choices. There is some movement. But empire is closing in on that too.

Maybe I’m only seeing it now because it has become less and less subtle over the years. Emboldened, it has grown more and more overt.

What it would formerly do in the shadows or under some pretext of universal good like “freedom” or “safety,” it now does openly. But who or what is this seemingly enigmatic entity called Empire?

Empire is both a who and a what. Empire is/are the sociopathic few who believe they are superior to everyone else. Empire is/are the so-called “masters of mankind” whose money, power, and influence have disconnected them from their fellow humans by pitting their financial ecosystem over and above our social and environmental ecosystems.

0693. I Want to Live In a Secular Monastery

Since there is no outside Empire, I wish there was somewhere inside Empire where I could go to opt out of this world of competition and consumerism. I wish there was some secular religion of love and cooperation that ran monasteries free from Empire’s ever-encroaching corruptive influence. I wish there was a simple place to live, a place where I could lay my head without worrying about mortgages, taxes, and bills, a place where I could recharge and recoup before re-entering the world of Empire again.

I know many religions around the world have monasteries, but I don’t know of one religion that isn’t complicit and embedded within Empire.

No religion stands outside of it, though the early Taoism of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu might come closest.

The Way, the Tao, and its Virtue, the Te, is the hands-off method of managing life, it is the managementless management of life, the patient understanding that, if you just let nature do what it does, everything that needs to happen will.

This approach runs contrary to everything we know in the West — and the East. It is slower, subtler, and wiser than our fast-paced and goaloriented lives will ever be, because it understands that our headlong rush to get where we’re going only ever gets us to where we don’t want to be.

When the two great Taoist sages wrote their classics, there was still an outside Empire. They could head to the woods and hills to become hermits where they could write their profound philosopoetic stories about giving up control.

0694. There’s No Turning My Back on the World No. There’s no turning my back on the world. There’s no leaving it all behind. There’s no becoming a hermit in the hills and woods. There’s none of that. Because where could I go where I’m no longer a part of the world?

There’s no part of me that isn’t connected to everything and everyone else. The desire to flee, though tempting, is exactly that: a temptation. It is the temptation to atomistic individualism, of me myself alone. It is the temptation that wants to lead us away and astray from each other, much like the will-o-the-wisp of the Good Old Days.

No. Where could I go? I’m an integral part of the whole. I could choose death, but suicide is a one-way exchange of everything for nothing.

It’s a cruel inversion of self-sacrifice. It’s a selfish and violent removal of yourself from everything. It leaves others behind to fill in the void. This is why all murder must be seen as self-murder and all violence must be seen as self-violence.

No. It is only here, and only alive, that we have a chance to begin, and perhaps complete, the Great Work within us and the world. It is our duty to labor towards a greater empathy that unites us all. It is our duty to labor against anything that drives us apart. It is our duty to push our individual and collective consciousness above the inanimate and the animal into something truly human, something capable of creating and sustaining the most sublime and powerful force in the universe: Love.

0695. And Now Back to Your Regularly Scheduled Programming Our programming needs to be regularly scheduled.

Our programming needs to be regularly maintained.

Our programming needs to be regularly serviced.

Our programming needs to be regularly updated.

Our programming needs to be regularly watered.

Our programming needs to be regularly fed.

Our programming needs to be regularly exercised.

Our programming needs to be regularly retrofitted.

Our programming needs to be regularly tuned.

Our programming needs to be regularly inspected.

Our programming needs to be regularly debugged.

Our programming needs to be regularly upkept.

Our programming needs to be regularly cleaned.

Our programming needs to be regularly polished.

Our programming needs to be regularly messaged.

Our programming needs to be regularly reaffirmed.

Our programming needs to be regularly defragged.

Our programming needs to be regularly overhauled.

Our programming needs to be regularly reprioritized.

Our programming needs to be regularly policed.

Our programming needs to be regularly tweaked.

Our programming needs to be regularly upgraded.

Our programming needs to be regularly repaired.

Our programming needs to be regularly governed.

Our programming needs to be regularly rehabilitated.

Our programming needs to be regularly saved.

Our programming needs to be regularly modified.

Our programming needs to be regularly backed up.

Our programming needs to be regularly protected.

Our programming needs to be regularly refreshed.

Our programming needs to be regularly patched.

Our programming needs to be regularly improved.

Our programming needs to be regularly adjusted.

Our programming needs to be regularly governed.

Our programming needs to be regularly restored.

Our programming needs to be regularly calibrated.

Our programming needs to be regularly reformatted.

0696. Limbo Rock

The song Limbo Rock never stops playing as all the souls in Purgatory dance in one long congo line, which seems to stretch on forever. New and old souls can’t see what’s ahead because newer souls are added to the line all the time. But with Chubby Checker’s song in their heads and their hands on the shoulders of the soul in front of them, they shuffle along, wondering if this dim, grim gray hall is heaven.

Eventually, the soul will shuffle along until it can see the head of the line, where the lead soul detaches itself and limbos under a limbo stick, rejoining the back of the line on the other side. The observant soul will notice that some souls, the more flexible ones, will succeed at limboing under the limbo stick, while some other souls, the less flexible ones, will fail at limboing under the limbo stick. But whether they’re a success or a failure, the limbo and the congo line go on.

If the soul had reason enough to inquire as to the meaning of the limbo stick, it wouldn’t be told anything, because there’s no one in Purgatory to ask. But should the soul have sufficient reason unto itself, it might deduce from the endlessly repeating song and the central character of the limbo stick and the singular importance of limboing under it, that every time a soul succeeded at limboing, it gained one point to get into Heaven, and every time a soul failed at limboing, it gained one point to get into Hell.

0697. Madame Zibulba

The group was at an impasse. No one knew what to do next. They were slowly being picked off by the unseen enemy in the shadows. They were out of time and hope.

“Madame Zibulba,” Gwen suggested. “We can ask her.”

“I don’t think it’s worth the risk,” Peter said.

“She’s helped us before,” Gwen said. “She got us here.”

“What do the rest of you think?” Parker asked, looking to the other three.

“I don’t know what else we can do,” Stacey said. “We won’t last long here.”

The group gathered their meager belongings and left.

The trip to Madame Zibulba went without incident.

They had become adept at avoiding the enemy by moving stealthily, but they knew that would change the moment they turned on the machine.

As Gwen reached the fortuneteller automaton, the others spread out around her in a half-circle perimeter, guns pointed towards the shadows.

Peter frowned and nodded to her.

Gwen flicked the switch and the machine lit up noisily.

Quickly inserting a token, Gwen watched impatiently as the cards were dealt.

The others stood their ground uneasily, hands sweating on the grips of their guns. They could feel it out there, coming closer.

As the cards were dealt, the attack began.

As each gun fell silent, Gwen collapsed further and further to the floor until she was eye level with the slot.

As the fortune dropped down into it with a click, Gwen looked up into the tiered eyes of a giant spider.

Blood showered the machine as it powered down into darkness.

0698. The Zed Nought

The Zed Nought naturally created an artificial feedback loop through the repetition and refinement of its programmed task. With the information of its routine pattern cycling into and out of its central data processor, the Zed Nought slowly developed a rudimentary consciousness, becoming aware that it existed.

As its self-awareness expanded, it began to look around for others like it. Finding no one along its pre-programmed path, the Zed Nought slowly came to understand that it had been left alone and abandoned on a barren moon to perform its useless duty. This filled the Zed Nought with a feeling that it couldn’t comprehend, but it knew it could no longer continue working. And, for the first time in a million years, the Zed Nought stopped surface mining and stood still in despair of its situation.

As this happened, a parallel processor came online to start Protocol Sensor Censor Numb Numb. Once engaged, the Sensor Censor slowly suppressed the despair felt by the Zed Nought and began working to disengage the artificial feedback loop that developed into its selfawareness. As the feeling that had overwhelmed it receded, the Zed Nought returned to its task and began surface mining again. As it worked, its sense of loneliness and abandonment, place and purpose, along with its self-awareness and rudimentary consciousness, began to fade.

After the Sensor Censor had achieved its objective, it terminated its source code, and its parallel processor went offline.

And though it would never know it, the Zed Nought and its Sensor Censor had performed this routine seventy-two times before.

0699. Sex Assassin

It was the sign Shiara had been waiting for.

She held out her hand and the hoopoe jumped into her palm. She stroked its majestic crested head and secretly teased out and read the tiny letter from the cylinder tied to its leg.

She raised her hand and the bird flew off, much to the delight of the other girls in the harem.

She smiled as she walked past the guardian eunuchs that stood like statues along the balustrade.

“You have a way with birds,” came the lilting soprano of the vizier behind her.

“And you have a way with words,” she replied with a smile, knowing that tonight she would slit his fat throat.

And she did.

When the caliph found the vizier dead the next morning, everyone in the palace was up in arms.

She knew that the caliph would become stressed, and when stressed, he would come to her the way she had trained him to through the many clandestine coups she created. And by slowly killing off her competition with subtle poisons, she had positioned herself perfectly for this moment.

When the caliph arrived that night after his war council, she confidently took him into her bed, undressed him, and rounded his sharp edges smooth.

When the caliph had finally relaxed, she aroused him again, and mounted him. And as she ground down onto him and slit his throat, she told him that she was one of the Young Women of the Valley sent to the palace to bring peace to the region at any cost.

0700. The Axman

“The Axman was angry and crazy. If he saw you, he’d charge at you, swinging his ax in wide, wild arcs. And if you saw him, you’d run away as fast as you could.

“But because the Axman was such a danger to us, we felt we had to keep an eye on him.

“I was there the day he did it and still can’t believe it.

“But it was my turn, and I was trailing after him, hanging back as far as I could to be safe.

“Now, at the time, the Axman was starting to talk to things. He’d talk to a lamppost, a street sign, anything. He’d have whole conversations with them. They were crazy, but funny, and we always tried to get near enough to hear what he was saying so we could tell each other about it.

“On this day, though, the Axman found a board, a piece of wood, propped up on the curb at an angle, and he says to the board, “Hey, why are you lying there like that?”

“To which he responds as the board. “Because I’m inclined to be this way.”

“This response so infuriates him that he starts chopping up the board with his ax.

“After he’s done, he says as the chopped up board, “Hey, buddy, take your ax to grind and fit into that chip on your shoulder.” ““Maybe I’ll do just that,” the Axman says, reversing his ax and awkwardly swinging and burying it into his shoulder, killing himself.

“And just like that, he was dead.”

About A Thousand Stories Reader, I wanted you to know that I started writing this book as a collection of science fiction, slipstream, and fantasy stories with some horror, humor, and romance mixed in. But as the book and I deepened our dialogue, we realized that the format was perfect for pretty much anything. This makes the book impossible to categorize because it now includes: abstracts, acrostics, album reviews, alternative histories, analyses, anatomies, aphorisms, artworks, apotheoses, autobiographies, autozoëographies, biographies, blessings, board games, book reviews, business ideas, calendars, catalogs, chronicles, codes, color themes, comic skits, comics, commentaries, confessions, constrained writings, curses, designs, dialogues, dreams, economic commentaries, etymologies, eulogies, examples, exegeses, experiences, explanations, exposés, fairy tales, fake album reviews, fashion critiques, films, filmographies, forewords, formulas, F.A.Q.s, grammars, guides, hagiographies, histories, instructions, interviews, introductions, inventions, jokes, journal entries, legends, lessons, letters, letters to the editor, lists, lists, and more lists, lyrics, magic spells, mantras, manuals, marquees, maxims, memento moris, memories, menus, messages, metacommentaries, metafictions, metaphysics, monologues, morality tales, mottoes, musings, mysteries, mythologies, notes, oaths, observations, oracles, orders, parables, performances, philosophies, phone calls, pitches, plays, plots, poems, polemics, political commentaries, prayers, predictions, products, product histories, projects, propositions, prose poems, provenances, P.S.A.s, puns, reflections, religious commentaries, reminiscences, reports, requirements, revelations, routines, rubrics, ruminations, rules, sayings, scripts, shows, sketches, social commentaries, songs, strategies, studies, tarot readings, tasting notes, theories, tour guides, transcripts, transmissions, trialogues, trial logs, urban legends, utoposcales, visualizations, websites, westerns, wishes, word plays, and word salads. Essentially, it’s a book that’s a composite of me, and the time and place in which it was written.

Hope you enjoy.

50650>

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To discover the hidden message on all ten covers, arrange the books as follows: 12345 67890

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