HE TALKS TO ME HERE

“The revolt from the inside didn’t work. I played your games, bought your albums and wore your fucking t-shirts. The only solution to a circleis a straight line, a straight beeline out, over, beyond! The Mother HiveBrain syndicate must be the line, beeline! and hit them where it counts.I…triangle!” the boy exclaimed, leaning back, his eyes bugging out.“Triangle!”

“Beep! A beep it goes!” He looked around suspiciously as he linkedthree paper clips together in a triangle, dipped it in nearby imitationmaple syrup, and stuck it to his forehead regally, as if it were a crown.“This is where… This is how I contact them. Jam the signal! Ha…”Banging on the table with his fist, he continued, “Their transmitter device, which transmits its insipid reality to the masses, receiving messages from the hidden brain of the system, must be removed. DevonLenny’s must be destroyed!”

ketchup & fried circuitry

Agent 139 suddenly rose. “I am the monkey flower!” he proclaimed. The waitress grunted and began ambling his way, prepared to tell him to sit in his seat and be a good patron. The Agent gave her such a withering stare that she stopped in mid-stride.

“Hear me out!” he screamed. Even the suits in non-smoking stopped, their forks dangling in their suddenly limp hands.

“Fuck it all. Thirty million years of evolution for ‘Singled Out,’ the Spice Girls, and sublimated brutality. Thirty million years and Eminem is the most forward thinking artist on the air? Come on and come off it, you fucking disappoint me. You’re letting your religious iconography be populated by the likes of DMX and Pepsi Cola? I’ll have another hit off the joint and continue to be mindfucked by the boys on the major networks. I mean, I am, after all, nothing more than a product of this…rightright? That my consciousness is not congruent with the agreed upon world view—that is a fluke, a minor mishap, an inconvenience at my expense? A country based on the rights of the many at the expense of the one—who ever thought that the many consists of the one?—and we expect to have individuality? Individuality is itself a trap, a sham. What does this strip-mall of insecurity, this plethora of sensory overstimulation lack? To use the terminology of our late syphilitic friend, a will to power, a will to meaning.”

At this Frederick looked confused. “Late?” he asked. The Agent did not pause, however. He had a far away, highly ecstatic look in his eyes. The tone of his voice had changed, it was now deep and powerful. Johny could see that he was brandishing a curved hunting dagger behind his back.

“Why do you call yourself 139?” Johny asked suddenly, completely spoiling the mood.

139 looked over his shoulder at him. “Top of mind awareness… branding and marketing haven’t you been listening?”

It Is Learned By Walking

"Nothing on the face of this earth—and I do mean nothing—is half so dangerous as a children’s story that happens to be real, and you and I are wandering blindfolded through a myth devised by a maniac."

— Master Li Kao (T’ang Dynasty)

My first waking impression this morning was a hazy glance through frostbitten glass at an overturned trash can. The sound of a dog rummaging through the garbage. The gentle pattering of sleet on the roof. Doppler shift as a car turns on slick asphalt. Sentence fragments, thoughts bisected in a 3 x 3 set of windowpanes on the far wall. If you’re really intent on a decent reproduction of the event, lie down and close your eyes. Imagine a chill sensation, a hazy image of a toe with overgrown toenails sticking out of the bed covers, and then a camera pan to the rusty trash can outside. Not a dramatic opening for a book, but it’s all this day has given me.