*************
“How am I supposed to get anything accomplished at all living next to maniacs like this?”
“Look mam, I need you to calm down okay?”
“Calm Down? I AM CALM GODDAMN IT!!!”
“No mam, you are not. Now listen, we’re here to help you, my partner and I, but first you gotta calm down. We understand you have complaints with your neighbor, but if you keep acting like this its going to have to be you we haul off down to the station.”
“WHAT? WHY?”
“Because its part of every police officer’s job when responding to situations like this that we assess the true threat and neutralize it. Now, we’ve heard your complaints about your neighbor, BOB, but I for one have not seen a single sign of any disturbance of the peace since arriving here. What I have seen is you standing on your front lawn and screamin and carrying on to the point that you’ve got all your neighbors out of bed and calling to complain about you. You here that squawk box my partner’s been responding to for the last ten minutes? Those are calls concerning your behavior. Do you understand now?”
The woman would continue to go on complaining for the next five minutes, finally making irritating the officer enough for him to react by handcuffing her. As you might imagine, this did not go over very well and as such his partner had to help him subdue her and cram her more than ample frame into the tiny back door of the police cruiser, finally slamming shut the door that only opens from the outside.
His partner was concerned.
“You think there’s anything to her story Luke?”
“I don’t know Randy, its not like I’ve had time to think on it much since getting here.”
Behind them the woman continued to bark and scream in the back of the cruiser. Officer Randy was becoming visibly distraught by the noise.
“Look, you stay here and make sure she doesn’t eat the fucking apolstery and I’ll walk over and talk to the neighbor, okay?”
“You sure that’s a good idea? Why don’t I just radio for backup?”
“Naw, that’ll take too long. I don’t wanna be here all goddamn night. It’ll be fine, I’ll just go over and let him know we were called.”
“Alright, call me on the walkie you need anything.”
“Will do.”
A tiny rumble of indigestion found its way up from Norton’s belly and overtook his attempt at delicate speech for a moment.
“BURP. Sorry, something we ate definitely isn’t agreeing with me. Anyway, where were we?”
Norton 0 paced, and as he did so he took another tiny treat from the pouch on his belt and popped it into his mouth. He looked at his audience, the Mayor, slouched against the pristine linoleum wall, the egg-shaped bruise still throbbing out that painful red glow that freshly split flesh always seemed to resort to. His eyes were on Norton, but his mind was elsewhere, perhaps with his family.
“LOOK! None of the rest of your party has been harmed. Shit, we didn’t even mean for you to get hurt, but the boy is always over reacting, especially after one too many Charlie Bronson movies, if you know what we mean?”
He could tell by the cold and confused stare that the Mayor most certainly did not.
“Why…why am I here?”
“HELL-OH!!! You are here our dear public representative, to inaugurate the first phase of gentrification set to sweep through the city, an outward wave of demolish, polish and abolish from our P.O.V.”
Norton gesticulated the letter “P”, “O”, “V” with three sharp jaggles of the index finger on their left hand. The fact that they were favoring left instead of the much more common right did not bode well for Mr. Fancy Pants here. It meant Leon or one of the Irma’s was back in charge. Not good…
“Not good at all…”
“Huh? Stop it, you keep trailing off, its like listening to a ransom note.”
“Oh, were we speaking aloud again? My dear…”
Norton’s eyes flaked again but this time they seemed to flip, or perhaps more accurately ‘spin’, like the motion of a slot machine, when you watch and try to follow the cherry through the whirlwind of the interior mechanism. The Mayor watched this with a new kind of fear, and when the motion behind the maniac’s eyelids stopped the blue-gray orbs that turned to re-address him were softer somehow; kinder.
“Are you… are you alright?”
“Me? Oh yes, heavens yes. The question is, are you alright? This nasty little welt on your head, oh my…”
Norton reached into another pouch at his side and after a moment of digging through things (the only somewhat decipherable article the Mayor caught was what appeared to be but he prayed was not, a finger) until finally producing a ratty old handkerchief.
“No, no really, I’m okay…”
“Oh don’t be silly, let’s clean you up a bit, shall we?”
The Mayor consented, the soft padding motion of the suddenly rickety hand, combined with that strange sheer in the eyes made him feel better about his current situation. SO good in fact, he felt he should discuss some things with his attacker.
“So you said I’m here because of the developments…”
“Well heavens yes, aren’t choo? We mean, we certainly didn’t ask you to come here…”
Suddenly the pressure of the disgusting rag against his forehead increased and he looked up to see the eyes had changed once more. Now they were… harsh.
“…we merely took advantage of the situation in order to gain a little bit of an audience with an otherwise busy man….”
The Mayor flinched but Norton did not respond to his new horror, they merely continued to speak.
“It’s really this simple. We live here. A lot of others do as well. It might not look like ‘living to you, but you are not from where we are from, and as such, you do not understand the spatio-temporal intricacies of this plane the way we do.”
“What? What the devil are you talking about?”
“It is people like you, giving open contracts to all of these GODDAMN land perverts {I think you call them contractors} that are destroying all of the sacred spaces of the city-states.”
The Mayor had become distracted. The tiny voice that had interrupted the overall diatribe had seemingly slipped through some possibly exploitable ego-crack in the Universe currently accosting him.
“By god, what the hell am I talking about now? Is your madness contagious?”
“Madness? Oh no my dear,”
The eyes were spinning now like a roulette wheel strapped to a rocket engine, and as a result the voices coming from Norton’s mouth were whipping back and forth through a disturbingly varied plethora of tones and timbres, accents and cadences.
“Madness is what you people suffer from, always walking around with your ‘I’s’ and ‘me’s’. SACRED is what we are talking about, and maybe you’re finally getting the gist of it!”
Suddenly the Mayor began to shake violently. His tongue grew cold and he wet himself. Somewhere deep inside of him a commotion of personalities had broken out. In the few seconds left before he felt the ego-scaffold he long ago declared as his ‘Self’ slipped forever off the edge of stability and liquefied amidst a horde of other, long denied personality statutes, the Mayor realized what a horrible mistake he had made in declaring gentrification this years Magick word.
He began to cry for his mistakes.
As Randy walked the short distance to the woman’s neighbor’s door he lamented briefly on the task of keeping order amidst such a volatile and willful population.
“Oh well, plenty of room for all of ‘em in this Universe I guess.”
The object of his inquisition before him now Randy knocked out three soft, polite rasps on the large iron door.
“Iron? Don’t see that very much anymore…”
Suddenly the door shot upward, some air-fueled track and tech mechanism no doubt employed. Beyond the threshold was a man, hunkered over with twisty spine, three cigarettes hanging from his lips at varying intervals and what appeared to be a Magick wand in his hand, complete with a sparkly star at its terminus.
“WhAt?”
“Ah, good evening sir. Officer Randy of the department of peace and freedom. Just wanted to let you know we received a complaint on this residence earlier this evening…”
“sO wHaaT? wE’Re fAr tO busy fOr ‘Ese iNter’uPtiOnS’”
“Sir, we just wanted to let you know, BURP, oh, excuse me… ugh, sorry, anyway, we just wanted you to know, BURP, ugh, sorry, uh, sir, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you if I could use your restroom…”
“Oh be quick about it, would you.”
Either something in the man’s demeanor had changed or… oh it didn’t matter. Officer Randy had just enough time to run into the house through the door of the room the man had pointed to, throwing open the strangely shaped lid on the toilet before excavating the contents of his stomach into the dank and cavernous device.
Still at the door the man had disappeared and now there was a large talking turtle occupying the space he had formerly held.
“Well, that’s one down. Now, if the council was right, we should be able to round up the rest of the entirety of the Nortonverse really rather simply. His partner should be along shortly.”
The turtle spoke to no one in particular, and as it turned to approach the door behind which Officer Randy’s screaming emanated from, it passed before a large, ornamented mirror. The reflection, to anyone who might have been watching, was initially that of the old man again, but then it continued even after he had passed before it, as if now a massive single file line of people were passing before its reflective surface. There was the turtle, a tiny blond midget woman with a hockey stick, a midget with a bad comb over and a large, bearded man in a chef suit eating from a crinkled bag that said ‘FINGERS – NEW ASIAN RANCH BAR B Q’ just to name a few of the dozens of images that flashed by while the man quietly slit what was left of Officer Randy’s throat and then consumed his entire frame in .02 seconds, the resultant burp running forward and backwards in time, and up from the microcosm and out into the macrocosm.
The man’s mother-hive had always told him, if you eat too fast you could choke to death from an air bubble.
Norton cradled the other man’s weakened head and whistled a tune that would not be written for another twelve years.
“The author was as you, mistaken and confused by his own sexuality. Make love to each other, but don’t make hate to the world around you by erecting these armies of giant concrete dildo’s to house your EL-EE-VAD-DOORS and ROOMS. These are atrocities of the eleventh degree and as such, as enlightened peoples, we must fight their spread and keep the sacred, mysterious spaces of our cities clean and dark. Like the underpass at 87th.
Forever more a changed man the Mayor gazed into Norton’s eyes and wept openly.
“We… will… put things… right. We promise.”
His eyes closed and beneath the thin, leathery membrane of his lids Norton 0 could see the same spinning motion performing its obligatory shuffle.
They smiled, but the smile was cut short by another burst of gas.
BURP
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Election Reflections...
I’d like to put down now how, exactly, I feel about the 2007-2008 presidential campaign. Some folks won’t like it. Oh well, this is reality as I see it, feel free to write me back and tell me how I’ve got it all wrong, same as people have been trying to do for years when I say America is coming to a wriggling, kicking, screaming close as the #1 head honcho.
Before I begin I'll provide some voter background for myself. I was born in 1976. I remember turning eighteen in 1994. Clinton was elected two years before so I didn’t vote for the first time until 1996, and for all my presidential voting experience B.C. (Before Cunt, how I delineate the Bush Jr.-era) I made it a point to vote third party. My thinking in this was if a third party could get that measly 5% then we would have a debatable alternative to the two party system which has gridlocked A LOT of progress in this country for a long time. Many people told me I was throwing my vote away, but I saw it as the only logistical way within the system to really herald change.
Then came The Cunt.
Once it was down to The Cunt you’d better believe I was voting for the Democratic candidate. But this isn’t voting, it’s Emergency Voting, a further example of the sad but true nature of this two party system, where many of us find ourselves voting for the lesser of two evils.
Now two terms later I am finally ready to cast a non-emergency vote again. And you’d think I be ready to go third party again, but look, it’s all but completely disappeared. Essentially Barrack O’Bama has taken that spotlight, almost a third party idealist running in one of the two major parties. So you’d think I’d be voting for him, but I’m not. Here’s why.
Time for the terrible truth the way I see it, please hold your tomatoes until the end.
I’m fine with Barrack O’Bama as president – in maybe four or eight years. The shame of the campaign is that the way Hillary and he have picked on one another my initial hopes that he might bow out and become her running mate is pretty much in the trash bin (unrealistic expectation fostered by those campaign years of West Wing). Fine, I’m a realist, and if not that scenario then I just don’t want him to win. I want Hillary Clinton. Barrack is a revolutionary candidate to a degree, and there is a lot about him that would do wonders for this country, internally. However, what we are looking at in the next 5-10 years is the beginning of a new world paradigm where America is no longer going to be the #1 world power. We’ve got China and to a lesser degree India engaging the world market with more of a presence, and this is only going to continue. Don’t believe me? Ask any economist who has a thing about oil prices and they’ll tell you the reason our oil prices are going up is because these two countries are adding demand for the product. Eight years ago there were 6 million cars on the road in China, today there are 20 Million, with their oil consumption in recent years increasing by as much as 30%* annually, and expected to increase 150%* by the year 2020.
However, while both China and India are entering more of a manufacturing domain as well, with industries such as automobile production and export vying more and more for dominance in the world market for China and things not too far behind for India**, China is the encroaching new economic powerhouse on many levels. A recent study by Georgia Institute of Technology suggests that China specifically may soon rival the U.S. in terms of being the principal driver of the world's economy, a title the U.S. has held since World War II.***
So what does that have to do with Barrack O’Bama? Why should changes in the global paradigm have anything to do with him as president? Wouldn’t his charming, think fast and never abandon hope persona fit like a glove in this new world arena?
The president-to-be is not necessarily the object of the issue here. We all know it’s the people the elected surround themselves with that really make the difference, whether just by supporting their campaigns or actually doing the brunt of the work. I still think, to some degree, President = Queen in a figurehead sort of way.
Will O’Bama be able to surround himself with the right people? I’m not so sure. Would Hillary? I can’t say for sure, but I think someone in her position, with the hundreds of favors I’m sure Bill would be able to call in, she’d have a better shot at it. She’s from the institution. It’s not the individual’s experience per se, it’s their contacts. It’s their abilities to be able to handle the rising shit storm even at this moment bearing down on this country like a Tornado on a trailer park (RUN JED RUN!!!).
And there’s another, really nasty reality I see as well. With this flux of power going on America is going to act like it almost always does when it’s interests are threatened– we’re the biggest kid in class and you better believe we’re going to beat up anyone within range just to ‘set the record straight’. On our way out of the head of the class we are going to kick and scream and carry on. Would O’Bama help this? I have no doubt he could stem the tide of some seriously ugly political strategies or dealings, but how would that go over? I’m not talking about with the rest of the world but with the myriad of covert and not-so-convet agendas that comprise the enormous python that is the political reality of this country? I’m sorry, but I think ‘not very well’ is the realistic answer here.
And just what happens to people in places of power and spotlight that don’t ‘go with the flow’? They die. They die the kind of deaths that occur at the end of high-powered sniper rifles. Shit for that matter, just to come right out and say it, O’Bama is black. Now, this means nothing to me, and I hate to treat it as an issue, because it shouldn't be, but to pretend its not is to ignore history. What happens to strong, insightful and revolutionary black leaders in the U.S.? See the above statement.
Now think about what would happen if this country was already struggling through a difficult re-alignment in the pecking order of world economy/politics and then the first black president gets assassinated? I’d call it the worst thing that’s ever happened to this country; an event that would add momentum to the out of control nose-dive we’re already seeing the beginnings of. Is that worth having such a breathe of fresh air in the White House right now? Or is a solid, no surprises, probably slightly mundane 4-8 years of stabilizing and nurturing what this old sick dog needs to be able to sit back up calmly and start thinking about learning some new tricks? A revolution of hope is a good thing, and it is exactly what this country needs, but first we need to have some synapses repaired so we can recognize hope for what it really is: a ladder that simply must be placed on a solid surface in order to be climable without a premature tumble back to the lower floors from whence we’ve traveled long, long ago.
So yeah, I guess I finally understand what it means to be a Democrat. Now I just have to be careful not to get stuck there like most of them do.
References: You can find this stuff anywhere on the internet enws and science sites. These are probably the most basic articles and thus hte ones I directly reference. Georgia Institute of Technology grad. I am not. Take them for what they are, but if You look, its common knowledge. That being said...
*http://www.voanews.com/tibetan/archive/2006-04/2006-04-04-voa8.cfm for the full article
**http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/07/in-india-more-cars-going-faster/
***http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080124103159.htm for the whole article on the study.
Before I begin I'll provide some voter background for myself. I was born in 1976. I remember turning eighteen in 1994. Clinton was elected two years before so I didn’t vote for the first time until 1996, and for all my presidential voting experience B.C. (Before Cunt, how I delineate the Bush Jr.-era) I made it a point to vote third party. My thinking in this was if a third party could get that measly 5% then we would have a debatable alternative to the two party system which has gridlocked A LOT of progress in this country for a long time. Many people told me I was throwing my vote away, but I saw it as the only logistical way within the system to really herald change.
Then came The Cunt.
Once it was down to The Cunt you’d better believe I was voting for the Democratic candidate. But this isn’t voting, it’s Emergency Voting, a further example of the sad but true nature of this two party system, where many of us find ourselves voting for the lesser of two evils.
Now two terms later I am finally ready to cast a non-emergency vote again. And you’d think I be ready to go third party again, but look, it’s all but completely disappeared. Essentially Barrack O’Bama has taken that spotlight, almost a third party idealist running in one of the two major parties. So you’d think I’d be voting for him, but I’m not. Here’s why.
Time for the terrible truth the way I see it, please hold your tomatoes until the end.
I’m fine with Barrack O’Bama as president – in maybe four or eight years. The shame of the campaign is that the way Hillary and he have picked on one another my initial hopes that he might bow out and become her running mate is pretty much in the trash bin (unrealistic expectation fostered by those campaign years of West Wing). Fine, I’m a realist, and if not that scenario then I just don’t want him to win. I want Hillary Clinton. Barrack is a revolutionary candidate to a degree, and there is a lot about him that would do wonders for this country, internally. However, what we are looking at in the next 5-10 years is the beginning of a new world paradigm where America is no longer going to be the #1 world power. We’ve got China and to a lesser degree India engaging the world market with more of a presence, and this is only going to continue. Don’t believe me? Ask any economist who has a thing about oil prices and they’ll tell you the reason our oil prices are going up is because these two countries are adding demand for the product. Eight years ago there were 6 million cars on the road in China, today there are 20 Million, with their oil consumption in recent years increasing by as much as 30%* annually, and expected to increase 150%* by the year 2020.
However, while both China and India are entering more of a manufacturing domain as well, with industries such as automobile production and export vying more and more for dominance in the world market for China and things not too far behind for India**, China is the encroaching new economic powerhouse on many levels. A recent study by Georgia Institute of Technology suggests that China specifically may soon rival the U.S. in terms of being the principal driver of the world's economy, a title the U.S. has held since World War II.***
So what does that have to do with Barrack O’Bama? Why should changes in the global paradigm have anything to do with him as president? Wouldn’t his charming, think fast and never abandon hope persona fit like a glove in this new world arena?
The president-to-be is not necessarily the object of the issue here. We all know it’s the people the elected surround themselves with that really make the difference, whether just by supporting their campaigns or actually doing the brunt of the work. I still think, to some degree, President = Queen in a figurehead sort of way.
Will O’Bama be able to surround himself with the right people? I’m not so sure. Would Hillary? I can’t say for sure, but I think someone in her position, with the hundreds of favors I’m sure Bill would be able to call in, she’d have a better shot at it. She’s from the institution. It’s not the individual’s experience per se, it’s their contacts. It’s their abilities to be able to handle the rising shit storm even at this moment bearing down on this country like a Tornado on a trailer park (RUN JED RUN!!!).
And there’s another, really nasty reality I see as well. With this flux of power going on America is going to act like it almost always does when it’s interests are threatened– we’re the biggest kid in class and you better believe we’re going to beat up anyone within range just to ‘set the record straight’. On our way out of the head of the class we are going to kick and scream and carry on. Would O’Bama help this? I have no doubt he could stem the tide of some seriously ugly political strategies or dealings, but how would that go over? I’m not talking about with the rest of the world but with the myriad of covert and not-so-convet agendas that comprise the enormous python that is the political reality of this country? I’m sorry, but I think ‘not very well’ is the realistic answer here.
And just what happens to people in places of power and spotlight that don’t ‘go with the flow’? They die. They die the kind of deaths that occur at the end of high-powered sniper rifles. Shit for that matter, just to come right out and say it, O’Bama is black. Now, this means nothing to me, and I hate to treat it as an issue, because it shouldn't be, but to pretend its not is to ignore history. What happens to strong, insightful and revolutionary black leaders in the U.S.? See the above statement.
Now think about what would happen if this country was already struggling through a difficult re-alignment in the pecking order of world economy/politics and then the first black president gets assassinated? I’d call it the worst thing that’s ever happened to this country; an event that would add momentum to the out of control nose-dive we’re already seeing the beginnings of. Is that worth having such a breathe of fresh air in the White House right now? Or is a solid, no surprises, probably slightly mundane 4-8 years of stabilizing and nurturing what this old sick dog needs to be able to sit back up calmly and start thinking about learning some new tricks? A revolution of hope is a good thing, and it is exactly what this country needs, but first we need to have some synapses repaired so we can recognize hope for what it really is: a ladder that simply must be placed on a solid surface in order to be climable without a premature tumble back to the lower floors from whence we’ve traveled long, long ago.
So yeah, I guess I finally understand what it means to be a Democrat. Now I just have to be careful not to get stuck there like most of them do.
References: You can find this stuff anywhere on the internet enws and science sites. These are probably the most basic articles and thus hte ones I directly reference. Georgia Institute of Technology grad. I am not. Take them for what they are, but if You look, its common knowledge. That being said...
*http://www.voanews.com/tibetan/archive/2006-04/2006-04-04-voa8.cfm for the full article
**http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/07/in-india-more-cars-going-faster/
***http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080124103159.htm for the whole article on the study.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Bedlam in Goliath...
Jesus Christ!!! The production on the new Mars Volta album is as insanely textured and schizophrenic as the music it relays. This is a break-neck pace musical hallucination the magnitude of which we don't get to see very often in the days of the disappearing musical giant. Usually music like this drowns under its own heavy-handed nature. But this... this is like watching the etheric waves feeding your senses shatter and roll back to you across a lime green limoleum floor, only to induce racks of cultured seizures showing offering your left and right hemispheres a glimpse into the future of sound as we know it.
Nearly three decades ago electronic music began its bid as the evolution of creative music, but oddities like The Mars Volta, well, they're one of the good guys taking that aesthetic and re-applying it to the good old instrument-rock long ago flounced by ignoramous egomaniacs like Yes and Dream Theatre.
Nearly three decades ago electronic music began its bid as the evolution of creative music, but oddities like The Mars Volta, well, they're one of the good guys taking that aesthetic and re-applying it to the good old instrument-rock long ago flounced by ignoramous egomaniacs like Yes and Dream Theatre.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
title sleuth...
Hanging out in the elecrtric air, nightime, the substance of the work I choose to do. 'What the fuck does that mean?' You might ask. Well, what does any of it mean?
Here's a magick spell. Consume half a quart of your favorite poison, tap out three notes on a guitar or keyboard or whatever, employ some system of looping and let that fucker drone on. Could be a delay pedal, I use Ableton live a bit, but that's costly and not very practical, unless you already have it (so maybe make the focus of intent acquiring a free version of ableton live and then start going to their website and entering any number of contests out there to win it). Shit, I even use a nice analogue metronome from time to time. This is real nice in emulating the visual of descending a staircase or any other montonous image you can employ. But I'm getting slightly ahead of myself.
The Monotonous Imaging (or MI) is a sort of grid you want to work to affix your consciousness to. The idea is, you wind your 'here and now' apparatus around this image so tightly that as it advances the 'pretend' also advances the submersion of your 'conscious' into your 'subconscious'. Once this fully takes its toll you won't be able to implement anything else without breaking your null state, so have everything ready.
What you want to have ready is whatever you are working for. I got into this whole kind of thing with Austin Osman Spare-influenced authors talking about the sigil method.* But what I'm proposing here is my own twist on that method. You can turn the desire into the path that you walk down in order to access the lower depths of the mind, thus makign the journey itself the 'charging' of the desire, masked enough by the performance to not have the actual outcome in mind at the time (bad. Lust of result will thwart even the best laid magickal plans).
So whether you click on a metronome and stare at a giant painting you've made to represent what you want or you mathematically turn all the letters left into numbers and the numbers into notes, then record them, loop them and sit back and zone on it, you too can penetrate the inner workings of your subconscious, use them to access the Universe, and adjust the odds in your favor.
But heed the old adage: be careful what you wish for. Always contemplate the ramifications of any desire, as they might destroy others lives, or even your own.
*At this point the sigil thing is fairly popularized so I won't try to explain it too much here when others do a far better job of it elsewhere (Peter J. Carrol and Grant Morrison come to mind, as well as Spare himself, but good luck finding his writings and then,. if you do, good luck decoding them). In a nutshell write out what you want, eliminate all vowels and repeating letters from the words, then take whatever is left and put it together into a single image, bending and twisting the letters into a picture of sorts. That's a sigil. Popular method is to then mediate on it until the mind reaches vacuity, or perhaps more popular still and far quicker and more practical, jerk off (or even better, do like I do and map out the sigils in advance and then call one up days or weeks later while in the throws of ectasy with the one you love) and at the moment of climax stare at the image. The blank state the mind is in at that moment, same as where its at when zonked out in trance through meditation, is the state at which we are no longer just on the island of our mind but also in awash in the greater sea of the archetypal/collective unconcsious/kung fu wonderbread. That's how it works; its as if at that moment we've just hacked the grid on the Universal computer and have but a single instant to upload our virus/program into it, making it perform the task we ask of it.
Here's a magick spell. Consume half a quart of your favorite poison, tap out three notes on a guitar or keyboard or whatever, employ some system of looping and let that fucker drone on. Could be a delay pedal, I use Ableton live a bit, but that's costly and not very practical, unless you already have it (so maybe make the focus of intent acquiring a free version of ableton live and then start going to their website and entering any number of contests out there to win it). Shit, I even use a nice analogue metronome from time to time. This is real nice in emulating the visual of descending a staircase or any other montonous image you can employ. But I'm getting slightly ahead of myself.
The Monotonous Imaging (or MI) is a sort of grid you want to work to affix your consciousness to. The idea is, you wind your 'here and now' apparatus around this image so tightly that as it advances the 'pretend' also advances the submersion of your 'conscious' into your 'subconscious'. Once this fully takes its toll you won't be able to implement anything else without breaking your null state, so have everything ready.
What you want to have ready is whatever you are working for. I got into this whole kind of thing with Austin Osman Spare-influenced authors talking about the sigil method.* But what I'm proposing here is my own twist on that method. You can turn the desire into the path that you walk down in order to access the lower depths of the mind, thus makign the journey itself the 'charging' of the desire, masked enough by the performance to not have the actual outcome in mind at the time (bad. Lust of result will thwart even the best laid magickal plans).
So whether you click on a metronome and stare at a giant painting you've made to represent what you want or you mathematically turn all the letters left into numbers and the numbers into notes, then record them, loop them and sit back and zone on it, you too can penetrate the inner workings of your subconscious, use them to access the Universe, and adjust the odds in your favor.
But heed the old adage: be careful what you wish for. Always contemplate the ramifications of any desire, as they might destroy others lives, or even your own.
*At this point the sigil thing is fairly popularized so I won't try to explain it too much here when others do a far better job of it elsewhere (Peter J. Carrol and Grant Morrison come to mind, as well as Spare himself, but good luck finding his writings and then,. if you do, good luck decoding them). In a nutshell write out what you want, eliminate all vowels and repeating letters from the words, then take whatever is left and put it together into a single image, bending and twisting the letters into a picture of sorts. That's a sigil. Popular method is to then mediate on it until the mind reaches vacuity, or perhaps more popular still and far quicker and more practical, jerk off (or even better, do like I do and map out the sigils in advance and then call one up days or weeks later while in the throws of ectasy with the one you love) and at the moment of climax stare at the image. The blank state the mind is in at that moment, same as where its at when zonked out in trance through meditation, is the state at which we are no longer just on the island of our mind but also in awash in the greater sea of the archetypal/collective unconcsious/kung fu wonderbread. That's how it works; its as if at that moment we've just hacked the grid on the Universal computer and have but a single instant to upload our virus/program into it, making it perform the task we ask of it.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Vinyl and Cocktails...
“It’s too late, Baby, now it’s too late, though we really did try and make it…”
Words from a Carole King song, released in 1971, five years before I was born. Unimaginably they have been haunting me all day*. Haunting because I remember the somber musical arrangement and regretful vocal melody from what seems like lifetimes ago. I have discussed this before, many times before as I have tried to grasp something beyond the experience of the casual music listener. Songs like this, from this particular era trigger a freefall into memory for me. Not memory as a verb or as a passive noun, no. This is Memory as a proper noun, a place that exists; a thing that I can touch with some, if not all, of my currently recognized and categorized five senses.
This is not a place of a childhood gone by or lost love or anything like that. No, even though I have a vested, nostalgic interest/bias in this stuff, because it impacted with me, I heard it, late 70’s/early 80’s and that was indeed my childhood, but these ‘memories’ are just a spring boards; a chaotic succession of windows into what I have come to think of as a aural time machine, somehow bringing me to a place I could only just barely understand as a child, but feel so enamored with now; life as a coming of age process for people my parent’s age in the that time.
My parents had not been hippies or participated in any of the sense of revolution that engulfed the world of many western 20/30 something’s in the 1960’s. No, they had worked and entertained friends and moved in and started a family, and their musical tastes reflected this. When I was growing up and subjected to my parents’ music it was always easy listening: Linda Ronstadt, Johnny Mathis, Burt Bacharach. Why? Because this particular time was the era that the singer-songwriter became a commodity for the ‘new age of consumer’. The hippie-psychedelic-folk-protest engine, a four-sided square cube of the 60’s brought on horrors like the eagles, where all of those elements met with cocaine and gin as a buffer, a filter if you will, and were squeeze-strained into the California, Laurel Canyon, milquetoast singer-songwriter ‘movement’ which basically brought all the soft, concerned Earthy-protest of the hippies back into a stable and marketable commodity for the newly re-charged, post World War II baby boomers. This was music for those who had been just slightly too old to be drawn into the short-lived and in the end disappointing thrill of revolution that cast iconic careers in the Woodstock generation and had instead seen the motifs of that era as the next marketable romance to hold each other at night and think about how the only reason to live through and look past atrocities like Nixon, the Vietnam war and the rise of the serial killer was to settle down in a home, with a factory or dock job and begin raising children to try and move the population yet another generation past the greed and terror that had eeked in around the edges of the American dream and begun corroding it.
On the surface there was nothing wrong with this. Its what people do: carry on living regardless of the loneliness and adversity that permeates the world as we have defined it for ourselves as a culture. Raise babies, seek the future… how was my father or your father or grandfather or whoever most closely links you to this time I discuss here, how were they supposed to know that the jobs would devolve to the point of extinction (and as well, how were the computer programmers who replaced them a decade and a half later supposed to know that they too would suffer the out-dated, out-sourcing death-knell)?
…………..
I found another killer record today. Sara’s been really into thrifting, finding stuff in thrift stores and then selling it on ebay. When I go along I comb the records, and I mean vinyl records, for all those IPod generationals who think I might just be using an archaic word for CD’s. We have our old turntable (Sara’s; I had several but all of them were in those all-in-one stereo combos from the 90’s and they weren’t worth moving) and between the two of us we have quite a bit of vinyl. Everything from Roy Ayers to the Misfits to Miles Davis, Johnny Cash, Billy Joel, James Brown, etc. I like to dig through the piles of discarded memories that is a record pile at a thrift store – it in and of itself is a way to climb back through time. You always get staples like Ray Cunnif, Brahms and Herp Albert and the Tijuana Brass, and those alone are enough to take you back. But then there’s stuff that I find, like these quirky records from the dawn of the Stereo Age, with bold cover notes boasting the ‘Brand New Technology’, ‘A New Way to Listen to Music’, etc. They’re awash in these trippy designs and insignias that are supposed to emulate, I guess, multi-faceted sound waves, frequency oscillation and a head start in a new and better direction and quality of life for the music listener. I imagine its because I was born during what could still be considered the early segment of the Stereo Age that this stuff appeals to me so much. I remember the dark lacquered book case that was just inside my family’s front door, in what people then called the ‘Den’, with its many shelves for books and records and even a drop down liquor cabinet, where things like Clan MacGregor Scotch, Tom Collins mix and, the holy grail, an always replenished plastic bottle of my Grandma Baker’s (Dad’s mom) Grasshopper cocktail mix hung out and waited for me to hit the age of curiosity when I would one by one drain them all of their assorted contents and replace with water to keep up appearances (my folks were never big on liquor so it wasn’t something that ever got noticed). That was another throw back many of these records played to, this idea of the cocktail party as some new and space age ideal one must always be prepared to fully stock at a moments notice. The sixties-bleeding-into-the-seventies was full of this new age, chic social agenda that included Fondue, Roasts, cocktails of seemingly exotic nature and a ‘Hi-Fi’ stereo system upon which either Linda Ronstadt or Herp Albert could whisk the merriment into a delighted frenzy at a moments notice.
These are the records, not just records as in vinyl but records as in a documents of people and the way they lived, so different but not so distant from today…
Listening to Stereophonics: Language. Sex. Violence. Other
*Although posted today this was actually written several weeks ago on a day off.
Words from a Carole King song, released in 1971, five years before I was born. Unimaginably they have been haunting me all day*. Haunting because I remember the somber musical arrangement and regretful vocal melody from what seems like lifetimes ago. I have discussed this before, many times before as I have tried to grasp something beyond the experience of the casual music listener. Songs like this, from this particular era trigger a freefall into memory for me. Not memory as a verb or as a passive noun, no. This is Memory as a proper noun, a place that exists; a thing that I can touch with some, if not all, of my currently recognized and categorized five senses.
This is not a place of a childhood gone by or lost love or anything like that. No, even though I have a vested, nostalgic interest/bias in this stuff, because it impacted with me, I heard it, late 70’s/early 80’s and that was indeed my childhood, but these ‘memories’ are just a spring boards; a chaotic succession of windows into what I have come to think of as a aural time machine, somehow bringing me to a place I could only just barely understand as a child, but feel so enamored with now; life as a coming of age process for people my parent’s age in the that time.
My parents had not been hippies or participated in any of the sense of revolution that engulfed the world of many western 20/30 something’s in the 1960’s. No, they had worked and entertained friends and moved in and started a family, and their musical tastes reflected this. When I was growing up and subjected to my parents’ music it was always easy listening: Linda Ronstadt, Johnny Mathis, Burt Bacharach. Why? Because this particular time was the era that the singer-songwriter became a commodity for the ‘new age of consumer’. The hippie-psychedelic-folk-protest engine, a four-sided square cube of the 60’s brought on horrors like the eagles, where all of those elements met with cocaine and gin as a buffer, a filter if you will, and were squeeze-strained into the California, Laurel Canyon, milquetoast singer-songwriter ‘movement’ which basically brought all the soft, concerned Earthy-protest of the hippies back into a stable and marketable commodity for the newly re-charged, post World War II baby boomers. This was music for those who had been just slightly too old to be drawn into the short-lived and in the end disappointing thrill of revolution that cast iconic careers in the Woodstock generation and had instead seen the motifs of that era as the next marketable romance to hold each other at night and think about how the only reason to live through and look past atrocities like Nixon, the Vietnam war and the rise of the serial killer was to settle down in a home, with a factory or dock job and begin raising children to try and move the population yet another generation past the greed and terror that had eeked in around the edges of the American dream and begun corroding it.
On the surface there was nothing wrong with this. Its what people do: carry on living regardless of the loneliness and adversity that permeates the world as we have defined it for ourselves as a culture. Raise babies, seek the future… how was my father or your father or grandfather or whoever most closely links you to this time I discuss here, how were they supposed to know that the jobs would devolve to the point of extinction (and as well, how were the computer programmers who replaced them a decade and a half later supposed to know that they too would suffer the out-dated, out-sourcing death-knell)?
…………..
I found another killer record today. Sara’s been really into thrifting, finding stuff in thrift stores and then selling it on ebay. When I go along I comb the records, and I mean vinyl records, for all those IPod generationals who think I might just be using an archaic word for CD’s. We have our old turntable (Sara’s; I had several but all of them were in those all-in-one stereo combos from the 90’s and they weren’t worth moving) and between the two of us we have quite a bit of vinyl. Everything from Roy Ayers to the Misfits to Miles Davis, Johnny Cash, Billy Joel, James Brown, etc. I like to dig through the piles of discarded memories that is a record pile at a thrift store – it in and of itself is a way to climb back through time. You always get staples like Ray Cunnif, Brahms and Herp Albert and the Tijuana Brass, and those alone are enough to take you back. But then there’s stuff that I find, like these quirky records from the dawn of the Stereo Age, with bold cover notes boasting the ‘Brand New Technology’, ‘A New Way to Listen to Music’, etc. They’re awash in these trippy designs and insignias that are supposed to emulate, I guess, multi-faceted sound waves, frequency oscillation and a head start in a new and better direction and quality of life for the music listener. I imagine its because I was born during what could still be considered the early segment of the Stereo Age that this stuff appeals to me so much. I remember the dark lacquered book case that was just inside my family’s front door, in what people then called the ‘Den’, with its many shelves for books and records and even a drop down liquor cabinet, where things like Clan MacGregor Scotch, Tom Collins mix and, the holy grail, an always replenished plastic bottle of my Grandma Baker’s (Dad’s mom) Grasshopper cocktail mix hung out and waited for me to hit the age of curiosity when I would one by one drain them all of their assorted contents and replace with water to keep up appearances (my folks were never big on liquor so it wasn’t something that ever got noticed). That was another throw back many of these records played to, this idea of the cocktail party as some new and space age ideal one must always be prepared to fully stock at a moments notice. The sixties-bleeding-into-the-seventies was full of this new age, chic social agenda that included Fondue, Roasts, cocktails of seemingly exotic nature and a ‘Hi-Fi’ stereo system upon which either Linda Ronstadt or Herp Albert could whisk the merriment into a delighted frenzy at a moments notice.
These are the records, not just records as in vinyl but records as in a documents of people and the way they lived, so different but not so distant from today…
Listening to Stereophonics: Language. Sex. Violence. Other
*Although posted today this was actually written several weeks ago on a day off.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
NEW BAUHAUS!!!
And I'll be damned, it is AWESOME.
This is the ONLY instance of a band I love who, after 20+ years (probably 30 actually) decide to do another studio album and it 100% fits in with what they 'were'. It's as if You gave David J., Haskins, Ash and Murphy a rip van winkle potion, and they woke up with 1983 still in their heads, then sat down for a couple months in a studio and went about making their next album.
Plus, the production is wonderful. I received an advance copy of this but make no mistake, I will be buying it the day it comes out to support one of my favorite bands.
Now the only thing I can think of that I am REALLY looking forward to is the next Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album. Check out their myspace for a new track that rules.
This is the ONLY instance of a band I love who, after 20+ years (probably 30 actually) decide to do another studio album and it 100% fits in with what they 'were'. It's as if You gave David J., Haskins, Ash and Murphy a rip van winkle potion, and they woke up with 1983 still in their heads, then sat down for a couple months in a studio and went about making their next album.
Plus, the production is wonderful. I received an advance copy of this but make no mistake, I will be buying it the day it comes out to support one of my favorite bands.
Now the only thing I can think of that I am REALLY looking forward to is the next Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album. Check out their myspace for a new track that rules.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Norton 0 (I assure you its edited)
The bar was cold and dark, pretty much exactly what we expected for this type of situation. We sat alone, sipping merrily on a Tom collins, pretending to enjoy the poorly made cocktail and looking at the waitress' ass. She was somewhere on the other side of forty, dark-haired and pretty, in that 'I'll be your waitress and maybe give you a blow job in the service elevator after my boss leaves for fifty-bucks and or a night out on the town and away from my three kids' way'.
We were not having that. One of us would have to silently stay behind and incorporate a poltergeist spell that might persuade her to re-think her life [seven days later she would leave her abusive 'boyfriend' and move the kids to Portland, where her mother lives].
It's always funny to me how people resist change until they think God has sent them a message.
"God doesn't talk to assholes..."
"Huh? Look buddy, I just came to bring you your bill. Fuck off jerk!"
We're speaking out loud again. Hmm, we all smirk to one another, amused that she apparently considers herself an asshole.
We think about it and then leave a twenty on the table (not because there's any one of us in here that feels bad about what was accidentally said out loud but because we can't stop thinking about the children she will soon be taking care of sans any help from a prize-fighting boyfriend) and maneuver through the dingy crowd to the bathroom in back where we take a stall, bust out two Vicadine, crush them up in my hand and arrange them out on top of the back of the toilet in order to snork them down with a half-straw we created while at the table. The lines go down rough, like prescription dope always does, but we all know that in ten minutes that beautifully peaceful feeling will ring in from around the edges and cause the world to once again seem like a much nicer place than it really is.
So, the connection was not made and now it is up to one of us here to go and make the report. The child is chosen, as he always has the most refreshing ways to deal with responsibilities.
Fifteen minutes later, beneath the overpass of Northeast highway, where it rises up over Harlem. Rumours have circulated for years about the secret caves which supposedly were built into the foundations of the structure by unknown entities more than a lifetime ago when further development at the end of the fifties pushed more and more people in search of homes to the south suburbs, which were largely at the time forest preserves. Norton knew all about these rumours, and it had been his discovery of one such tunnel that had forever changed his world.
He moves through a stagnant moat of collected rainwater and to a small hole apparently taking unsubstantial residence at the foot of one of the large concrete support pillars holding the elevated highway above this, one of the last remaining sacred places of the city. Norton, as well as the people he now associates himself with* use these caves as homes and operating headquarters, from where they silently, invisibly observe the city around them to better work to inoculate the social and psychic virus which seems to flitter around fucking up the natural order of everything. Today a new virus had been added to the list. A virus named Rufus who used to be best friends with as many as twelve of the respective character roles Norton had long ago written for themselves. "In every man a thousand, in every woman a thousand more, wear the mask, raise the curtain, the world, a stage to adore." This poem ran constantly through the collective's head, often changing its mood and thus, its operative representative.
Burrowing silently like a snake the adventurers make their way through the inhuman tunnel and out into a wading pond of more stagnant rainwater (this area collected and filtered for human use), from which they eventually emerge into the anti-chamber where the others would no doubt already be assembled.
They were there.
Three scruff and bearded men sit waiting, lounging around bizarre rock and concrete formations, sculpted from loose or stolen concrete that makes its way down from botched roadway repairs and excess dumping (both of which occurs more than anyone would really like to believe). Three men, but a council of dozens lay eyes on the adventurers as they make their way to their feet and prepare to present their findings.
"Brothers and sisters of the Norton-verse, what have thee to report to the council?"
"We would prefer to take a casual application to this meeting, as the news we have uncovered begs for further, regrettable action."
"Very well, everyone, remove your pants. You too ladies."
Information is exchanged and deliberation with the gods begins.
In the end the council cannot take his outpost from him and for this he is glad. That pederast, gandolf mother fucker Zoo-mani has a favorite 'nephew’ he wants to appease with the gateway outpost for the supermodel dimension, but Norton wasn’t about to go for that. Three twenty-something aged frat boys walked by him in the street just in time to overhear part of his internal conversation and think him crazy.
Hah! He’d show them.
“In another coupla’ hours I’ll be nailing the girl who you’ll be drooling over in next years swimsuit issue so pISS oFF young upstarts!”
Later
Norton sat in the corner booth of the little cafe...
....
All of this happens without severe incident and eventually they decide to retire. The funny thing about being on the clock in a parallel Universe that just so happens to overlap with this one is no matter what you plan or what you want, you always wind up asleep at the wrong time and awake at the wrong time. Explain that one.
“So here we are, another night in front of the delicatessen. What shall it be?” As they asked themselves the question for the three hundredth and sixty fifth day in a row (this was their one year anniversary as an enlightened being, awakened from the soup by a baseball bat to the head on Easter last year) a tiny rat ran by, trying oh so desperately to avoid the inevitable. Sure enough Norton’s arm shoots out like lightning and WHAMMO!!!! Dinner is served!
Several hours later he wakes as the door to the dimension of super thin fashion models opens and the next BIG THING comes through, naked and hungry and looking oh so desperately for her precious dog, a half-breed Shit zue named Malcom-cum-Malco. Norton gets up and puts on the customary coffee (not really coffee at all, but something closely akin he picked up in the stimulant-verse, heated and ready with only a lighter and a prayer for better rib meat). For several months now, ever since he moved to this underpass, he has acted as the chauffer into this world from the legendary supermodel-verse, where food is scarce and sex is ridiculous. Nineteen or twenty years of eating rock cocaine and fucking finger puppets their parents arrange for them to marry leave these girls ready to explore, and when they finally become thin enough to sense the portal in their labia they come through the door ready for the first man they see, hence Norton’s dedication to fending off anyone who moves in on his territory.
Of course, three hundred and sixty five days ago it was not his territory and the only reason he ever got it to begin with was the ass backwards result of yet another devious if not poorly planned and misguided attempt to take over the Universe(s). Stop playback and select fuck-off if you’ve heard this one before.
“So there we were, all twelve at the council and none of the mofo’s appreciated the risk and responsibility we had decided to take on by taking up arms against the true coffee terrorists, starbob-squishpants. We mean here was a chain where everything cost, like, thirty times more than even the most rudimentary flavour could demand, and our whole boycott and our whole poopy-pokey-I’ll-slap your-disgusting-coffee-traitor-face extreme gymnastics routine was getting absolutely no press. We mean, how many upper middle class upper class middles do you have to poke in the bung hole before someone at good ol’ fashionably reliable channel 1,111.29 takes notice and puts you on as the next regular guest star of Baywatch 18 B.C.? This isn’t a fucking hard equation, knowhatimeanthen?”
STOp!
This new one with the pretty black hair has just come through and suddenly we’re seeing where this is going. On our previous adventure, out there in the inexplicable backwaters of time, we learned the real-time inconvenience of trying to cube all the various dimensions of time into a single, mathematically valid representation of that which is singularly unable to be cubed into standardly mathematically valid points of representations. In the Norton-verse we have come to call this Poo-uvering.
So here’s Norton sitting directly across the shopping cart from this six foot five, ‘hundred and twelve pound mutant foreigner, knowing full well that an agent for Pipsi or Nubisoy is nearby, scanning for the new arrival, trying to convince this poor piece of meat that the only good thing that is going to come to her is him, if she lets him. and based on the foodless, orgasmless equations she’s been raised on he’s not really wrong.
1000x
“After we finish Britany asks me what this world is like and if she will ever see a purpose beyond garden. We try to tell her that the underpass/overpass at NE Harlem needs a guardian veterinarian, to put down the bums and jerk off the strays, but in the end her eyes roll back and forth looking for the corporate lawmen to swoop in on their web-like dossiers and take her to the land of fake breasts and Grammy award show performances. Oh well, we got our rocks off.”
Later that night the whole population is asleep, even the late-night watchmen personality named Mavis when an intruder arrives and shackles the physical vehicle to its shopping cart.
They awake alarmed and quite unhappy with Mavis.
“Who are you and why have you endangered my mission? I Norton 0, prototype Universe for the post pre-age of no modern command that thoust answer me!”
“No! No! You have us all wrong comrades. We are here with a message from the council and bind you only out of fear and respect for the, ah, legendary violence of some of the members of your vehicle. We mean no offense!”
“No Offense?! No offense?! BlahHh! You, have your best and bravest get off his balls and deliver the council’s message, then put your biggest coward at the wheel and get from my sight before I find one of my carnivorous poodles and use it to flay the flesh from your grill!”
'That damn council,' they thought when it was all over. Never too smart.
It was back to the café to wait for the waitress to get off work and then follow her home. Word of her true form had found it’s way to them and it was now believed that she had smuggled here with her a canister or two of some grade A toxic material from the expensive slag mines of the cavernous world of intelligent rocks.
It all sounds so strange and cheesy, the skeptic in him, Marlowe Thought. But damn it if it wasn’t all also true. There were strange little twists to the physical world everywhere one could look, it was just modern society trained their young to be concerned about pointless oddities like situation dramadies and low fat tofu bars instead of the invisible world that exacted itself on their lives everyday. How many of these glue-sniffing squish heads would believe that if they just lit a candle every morning in the southeast corner of their mansions they would never have to pay taxes to their overblown god Comercé. Fools! In this day and age it was always about what everyone else was doing, especially those pointless tarts from the tribe they call Cele-britee.
It took only hours for Norton 0 to work his way out of the cuffs, not realizing the entire time that the kid had been so nervous that he had actually left the keys in the lock.
“Now, one quick scuttle inside to the hall of ancients and we’ll be on our way!”
He closes his eyes and a tidal wave of inner movement cascades over them.
"Seething! SEE-THINGS!!!"
........
1965 (whoops? Wrong direction!!!)
There is a jazz guitar amp that we oh so desperately want to send to ourselves in the future, but we don’t know quite how to do this because we no longer hold access points to the vocal stabilities and techniques required to make this hole on the front of our faces do anything other than slather as imperceptibly astute examples of living erotica dart and sketch by in various stages of dilapidation. Cough syrup and rubbing alcohol will do that to you sometimes..."
"Eh? Do whut to yew? Ey canNOT follow a goddem word yer sayin'"
""Were we speking aloud? Oh dear? How much does he know? How much did you say?"
"I DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING"
"LOOK, is it that cough syrup and rubbing alcohol will induce various degrees of dilapidation in a body? Or were you referring to yourself and your ridiculous ability to hold twenty-seven different conversations with yourself all at once and in different dialects?"
More questions. Damn, we want that guitar.
That Norton was sure he had not said aloud. And the simple fact was it would not have mattered if he did, now that the other man's kidnet hung from the silvery edge of his curved carving blade.
"Shit, I guees that means KIP, the psychotic personality has garnered control again. GETREADYFORANOTHERWHITECHAPELOHYOUPERILOUSANDUNSUSPECTINGWORLD!!!"
.................
*Or rather, they now associate themselves with, as Norton and their comrades subscribed to the para-psychological view that in every person there is a collective and to regard people as one single 'I' was at least half of the reason the world was awash in terrifying situations (wars, rapes, murders, etc.) created by too many reinforced and hopelessly selfish egos
We were not having that. One of us would have to silently stay behind and incorporate a poltergeist spell that might persuade her to re-think her life [seven days later she would leave her abusive 'boyfriend' and move the kids to Portland, where her mother lives].
It's always funny to me how people resist change until they think God has sent them a message.
"God doesn't talk to assholes..."
"Huh? Look buddy, I just came to bring you your bill. Fuck off jerk!"
We're speaking out loud again. Hmm, we all smirk to one another, amused that she apparently considers herself an asshole.
We think about it and then leave a twenty on the table (not because there's any one of us in here that feels bad about what was accidentally said out loud but because we can't stop thinking about the children she will soon be taking care of sans any help from a prize-fighting boyfriend) and maneuver through the dingy crowd to the bathroom in back where we take a stall, bust out two Vicadine, crush them up in my hand and arrange them out on top of the back of the toilet in order to snork them down with a half-straw we created while at the table. The lines go down rough, like prescription dope always does, but we all know that in ten minutes that beautifully peaceful feeling will ring in from around the edges and cause the world to once again seem like a much nicer place than it really is.
So, the connection was not made and now it is up to one of us here to go and make the report. The child is chosen, as he always has the most refreshing ways to deal with responsibilities.
Fifteen minutes later, beneath the overpass of Northeast highway, where it rises up over Harlem. Rumours have circulated for years about the secret caves which supposedly were built into the foundations of the structure by unknown entities more than a lifetime ago when further development at the end of the fifties pushed more and more people in search of homes to the south suburbs, which were largely at the time forest preserves. Norton knew all about these rumours, and it had been his discovery of one such tunnel that had forever changed his world.
He moves through a stagnant moat of collected rainwater and to a small hole apparently taking unsubstantial residence at the foot of one of the large concrete support pillars holding the elevated highway above this, one of the last remaining sacred places of the city. Norton, as well as the people he now associates himself with* use these caves as homes and operating headquarters, from where they silently, invisibly observe the city around them to better work to inoculate the social and psychic virus which seems to flitter around fucking up the natural order of everything. Today a new virus had been added to the list. A virus named Rufus who used to be best friends with as many as twelve of the respective character roles Norton had long ago written for themselves. "In every man a thousand, in every woman a thousand more, wear the mask, raise the curtain, the world, a stage to adore." This poem ran constantly through the collective's head, often changing its mood and thus, its operative representative.
Burrowing silently like a snake the adventurers make their way through the inhuman tunnel and out into a wading pond of more stagnant rainwater (this area collected and filtered for human use), from which they eventually emerge into the anti-chamber where the others would no doubt already be assembled.
They were there.
Three scruff and bearded men sit waiting, lounging around bizarre rock and concrete formations, sculpted from loose or stolen concrete that makes its way down from botched roadway repairs and excess dumping (both of which occurs more than anyone would really like to believe). Three men, but a council of dozens lay eyes on the adventurers as they make their way to their feet and prepare to present their findings.
"Brothers and sisters of the Norton-verse, what have thee to report to the council?"
"We would prefer to take a casual application to this meeting, as the news we have uncovered begs for further, regrettable action."
"Very well, everyone, remove your pants. You too ladies."
Information is exchanged and deliberation with the gods begins.
In the end the council cannot take his outpost from him and for this he is glad. That pederast, gandolf mother fucker Zoo-mani has a favorite 'nephew’ he wants to appease with the gateway outpost for the supermodel dimension, but Norton wasn’t about to go for that. Three twenty-something aged frat boys walked by him in the street just in time to overhear part of his internal conversation and think him crazy.
Hah! He’d show them.
“In another coupla’ hours I’ll be nailing the girl who you’ll be drooling over in next years swimsuit issue so pISS oFF young upstarts!”
Later
Norton sat in the corner booth of the little cafe...
....
All of this happens without severe incident and eventually they decide to retire. The funny thing about being on the clock in a parallel Universe that just so happens to overlap with this one is no matter what you plan or what you want, you always wind up asleep at the wrong time and awake at the wrong time. Explain that one.
“So here we are, another night in front of the delicatessen. What shall it be?” As they asked themselves the question for the three hundredth and sixty fifth day in a row (this was their one year anniversary as an enlightened being, awakened from the soup by a baseball bat to the head on Easter last year) a tiny rat ran by, trying oh so desperately to avoid the inevitable. Sure enough Norton’s arm shoots out like lightning and WHAMMO!!!! Dinner is served!
Several hours later he wakes as the door to the dimension of super thin fashion models opens and the next BIG THING comes through, naked and hungry and looking oh so desperately for her precious dog, a half-breed Shit zue named Malcom-cum-Malco. Norton gets up and puts on the customary coffee (not really coffee at all, but something closely akin he picked up in the stimulant-verse, heated and ready with only a lighter and a prayer for better rib meat). For several months now, ever since he moved to this underpass, he has acted as the chauffer into this world from the legendary supermodel-verse, where food is scarce and sex is ridiculous. Nineteen or twenty years of eating rock cocaine and fucking finger puppets their parents arrange for them to marry leave these girls ready to explore, and when they finally become thin enough to sense the portal in their labia they come through the door ready for the first man they see, hence Norton’s dedication to fending off anyone who moves in on his territory.
Of course, three hundred and sixty five days ago it was not his territory and the only reason he ever got it to begin with was the ass backwards result of yet another devious if not poorly planned and misguided attempt to take over the Universe(s). Stop playback and select fuck-off if you’ve heard this one before.
“So there we were, all twelve at the council and none of the mofo’s appreciated the risk and responsibility we had decided to take on by taking up arms against the true coffee terrorists, starbob-squishpants. We mean here was a chain where everything cost, like, thirty times more than even the most rudimentary flavour could demand, and our whole boycott and our whole poopy-pokey-I’ll-slap your-disgusting-coffee-traitor-face extreme gymnastics routine was getting absolutely no press. We mean, how many upper middle class upper class middles do you have to poke in the bung hole before someone at good ol’ fashionably reliable channel 1,111.29 takes notice and puts you on as the next regular guest star of Baywatch 18 B.C.? This isn’t a fucking hard equation, knowhatimeanthen?”
STOp!
This new one with the pretty black hair has just come through and suddenly we’re seeing where this is going. On our previous adventure, out there in the inexplicable backwaters of time, we learned the real-time inconvenience of trying to cube all the various dimensions of time into a single, mathematically valid representation of that which is singularly unable to be cubed into standardly mathematically valid points of representations. In the Norton-verse we have come to call this Poo-uvering.
So here’s Norton sitting directly across the shopping cart from this six foot five, ‘hundred and twelve pound mutant foreigner, knowing full well that an agent for Pipsi or Nubisoy is nearby, scanning for the new arrival, trying to convince this poor piece of meat that the only good thing that is going to come to her is him, if she lets him. and based on the foodless, orgasmless equations she’s been raised on he’s not really wrong.
1000x
“After we finish Britany asks me what this world is like and if she will ever see a purpose beyond garden. We try to tell her that the underpass/overpass at NE Harlem needs a guardian veterinarian, to put down the bums and jerk off the strays, but in the end her eyes roll back and forth looking for the corporate lawmen to swoop in on their web-like dossiers and take her to the land of fake breasts and Grammy award show performances. Oh well, we got our rocks off.”
Later that night the whole population is asleep, even the late-night watchmen personality named Mavis when an intruder arrives and shackles the physical vehicle to its shopping cart.
They awake alarmed and quite unhappy with Mavis.
“Who are you and why have you endangered my mission? I Norton 0, prototype Universe for the post pre-age of no modern command that thoust answer me!”
“No! No! You have us all wrong comrades. We are here with a message from the council and bind you only out of fear and respect for the, ah, legendary violence of some of the members of your vehicle. We mean no offense!”
“No Offense?! No offense?! BlahHh! You, have your best and bravest get off his balls and deliver the council’s message, then put your biggest coward at the wheel and get from my sight before I find one of my carnivorous poodles and use it to flay the flesh from your grill!”
'That damn council,' they thought when it was all over. Never too smart.
It was back to the café to wait for the waitress to get off work and then follow her home. Word of her true form had found it’s way to them and it was now believed that she had smuggled here with her a canister or two of some grade A toxic material from the expensive slag mines of the cavernous world of intelligent rocks.
It all sounds so strange and cheesy, the skeptic in him, Marlowe Thought. But damn it if it wasn’t all also true. There were strange little twists to the physical world everywhere one could look, it was just modern society trained their young to be concerned about pointless oddities like situation dramadies and low fat tofu bars instead of the invisible world that exacted itself on their lives everyday. How many of these glue-sniffing squish heads would believe that if they just lit a candle every morning in the southeast corner of their mansions they would never have to pay taxes to their overblown god Comercé. Fools! In this day and age it was always about what everyone else was doing, especially those pointless tarts from the tribe they call Cele-britee.
It took only hours for Norton 0 to work his way out of the cuffs, not realizing the entire time that the kid had been so nervous that he had actually left the keys in the lock.
“Now, one quick scuttle inside to the hall of ancients and we’ll be on our way!”
He closes his eyes and a tidal wave of inner movement cascades over them.
"Seething! SEE-THINGS!!!"
........
1965 (whoops? Wrong direction!!!)
There is a jazz guitar amp that we oh so desperately want to send to ourselves in the future, but we don’t know quite how to do this because we no longer hold access points to the vocal stabilities and techniques required to make this hole on the front of our faces do anything other than slather as imperceptibly astute examples of living erotica dart and sketch by in various stages of dilapidation. Cough syrup and rubbing alcohol will do that to you sometimes..."
"Eh? Do whut to yew? Ey canNOT follow a goddem word yer sayin'"
""Were we speking aloud? Oh dear? How much does he know? How much did you say?"
"I DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING"
"LOOK, is it that cough syrup and rubbing alcohol will induce various degrees of dilapidation in a body? Or were you referring to yourself and your ridiculous ability to hold twenty-seven different conversations with yourself all at once and in different dialects?"
More questions. Damn, we want that guitar.
That Norton was sure he had not said aloud. And the simple fact was it would not have mattered if he did, now that the other man's kidnet hung from the silvery edge of his curved carving blade.
"Shit, I guees that means KIP, the psychotic personality has garnered control again. GETREADYFORANOTHERWHITECHAPELOHYOUPERILOUSANDUNSUSPECTINGWORLD!!!"
.................
*Or rather, they now associate themselves with, as Norton and their comrades subscribed to the para-psychological view that in every person there is a collective and to regard people as one single 'I' was at least half of the reason the world was awash in terrifying situations (wars, rapes, murders, etc.) created by too many reinforced and hopelessly selfish egos
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