In a bold sign of thawing relations between the countries, Presidents Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez announced today that the state of Texas would be traded to Venezuela for Jesus Moronta, a slick-fielding, hard-hitting 14-yr-old shortstop phenomenon, cash considerations and an undisclosed amount of raw, premium coca.
Milwaukee, WI 3/22/09
A middle-aged Milwaukee man cannot stop saying fuck after hitting what he claims to be his thousandth pothole. “I am fed up with the fucking potholes in this city,” Raymond Smith said today. “Paying over one-thousand dollars for new shocks, a tire alignment and new brake pads was the last fucking straw.”
Ray claims that he has tried to dodge countless potholes, but because “they are fucking everywhere, your odds of not hitting one is fucking slim.”
After sending letters to his alderman and mayor with no response, he feels helpless to this unnerving situation. “Screaming fuck every time I run over a pothole is the only thing that calms my nerves anymore,” Ray said.
He recommends that all Milwaukeeans give this method a shot before they seek other, possibly more harmful forms of dealing with this “fucking bullshit.”
Raymond Smith used to be an alcoholic.
In an effort to conserve scarce resources in trying economic times, President Obama has issued an executive order to alter the centuries-old tradition of addressing a joint session of Congress. Both branches of Congress will, instead, be issued only one-hit bongs, marking the first time the joint session has been changed since Theodore Roosevelt’s hookah act of 1905.
Nothing is quite as appalling as the choosy eater. A grey and white and yellow plate— well done mush, in essence, drives me to spasms. My patience blanches watching a young woman carefully pick every green pea from her tiny platter of airplane provisions. Once at a museum reception I watched a man take a bite of a blueberry. Picky is icky. I wanted to smack the chopsticks out of her hands. I wanted to slap the fruit out of his fingers.
*
Why does a dog yawn when nervous? Does the canine brain require extra oxygen to process anxiety? Then why does the human feel the need to stuff some food substance into his regurgitation route whenever a television isn’t nearby? Is it the same reason given for the human who cannot but fiddle incessantly with a piece of plastic wrapping when sitting in a crowded but otherwise quiet public place? I prefer dogs.
*
Who was it allowed the man who sneezes and coughs without covering his mouth to continue living? That mother and father should be shot by a thorough-going firing squad. Shot until dead, shot until the dirty germs of snots and spits, snivels and snorts no longer hinder the sweet, silent, innocent air around him. Which begs the question— how long till an idiot’s diseases die? How long after the dumb-shit goes does his blood cease its efficacy in sickness?
*
How can the public announcement voice in an Asian airport requesting the presence of a dozen American passengers at the desk of the departing gate never have spoken a word of English in her life? Is it somehow a pre-requisite that the entire universe be so inconsiderate? When one is American, one thinks it’s just Americans who are idiots until he crosses a border. Any border, any time. We are not alone.
*
Any human activity requiring a ticket automatically shaves off half of the bearer’s intelligence quotient. PhD’s disappear into thin air. Watch a seasoned, well-traveled, well-dressed man board an airplane, for instance. Once he’s licked the sickening syrup of anticipation from his sweaty face and stuffs the nearest dead animal into his gaping maw, he’ll drift toward sleep and snore all the way to Detroit, Phoenix, Dallas, Anchorage— burping his dreams in his only bliss.
*
Excluding present company (I’m alone), one isn’t particularly concerned with education, lest he call the smallest human decency, the sparest courtesy and dignity, the basest etiquette or the simplest animal shame an education. Cross your enormous legs you fat, stupid fuck and tuck that pudding-stained sweatshirt into your thread-barest sweatpants. You’re in public now; you should have left your diaper-wear at home today.
*
There is something to be said for the human being who understands how to carry himself in the public world. To wit— when you are walking in a crowded, narrow passage, don’t stop stock still. Step aside, and turn your head and then your body around and away to look for or at whatever you’re looking for or at. If you are passing in heavy traffic, don’t slow down. If human beings were automobiles we’d all be dead. Then animals would reign again and murder would be crucial to survival. The world could eat its own annoyance.
*
The poor soul borne of a moron becomes another moron. This is not advocacy for murder or cannibalism (mind you, the Lord knows we have enough to eat if simultaneously thrifty and generous)— but if horses are glue and frogs become ink, can’t we find a way to make idiots into bullets? Can’t we find a double-duty, fool-proof way to protect ourselves from ourselves?
*
It seems all Americans in the airport are military today. Nothing against them— they too need to feed their spawn with the dead by killing sanctioned from on high. They will grow fat as saints, healthy as basketball billionaires. Someone strong needs to protect us from China when they come calling for payback.
*
No, really, we revel in eyeballing your extra 60 pounds of belly fat as you take up five seats for a nap at the overcrowded airport gate. We understand your sleep is needy, both beauty and brain, we’re tired too, but it must be exhausting for you eating that many inhuman meals in a single day. Please, snore a little bit harder for us, we can’t hear you clearly enough, can’t smell your rancid breath on our ways to Los Angeles, Stockton and Guam.
*
Women are more important than men. In Tokyo— no cows, no fruit, no dirt and the old cigarettes teach the new cigarettes about flowers. In Seoul traffic cops wear helmets for good reason. I’ve never been to Norway, but when their sneeze is a Snorri Sturluson. We are told it is America’s fault for the globe’s demise. Until we witness a Lithuanian king drive through his reckless, crooked night, or a Mexican president sink like a shit-sack, or watch the Chinese learn how to drive. The world devours itself like the ancient symbolic snake— spineless, unaware and unscrupulous.
*
One who gets wise by way of Schlitz and macaroni and cheese can easily grow accustomed to comet vintage Veuve Clicquot and crepes galettes. Why does it not work backwards? The stronger specimen, accustomed to shark’s fin soup, cannot, somehow, get used to a sardine tin. The weak link tortures the high priest with his incompetence. The strong sort tortures the weakling by way of the temper’s tribulations.
*
Pity the unpardonable sot who can’t sit still for more than a minute with only his thoughts, the poor, tortured troglodyte who must fuss with the vacancy in his overhead compartment for fear of the shifting contents within. The unforgivable cluck with no peace in his naked soul, no parcel of understanding of the joy of difference, unaware as we prepare for our initial descent. I am not an angry man. Brace for impact. We are all exactly the same. Everybody’s empire is empty.
“Human, All Too Human,” a new mega-multiplayer, role-playing game, was recently released by Nietzsche End Games, LLC.
The game is wildly addictive and takes many months, even years, for players to complete.
In the end, all players fail to kill anyone or complete any defined mission.
Then each player dies. Alone.
Since Barack Obama came into the political picture, he has reminded me of somebody I looked up to when I was a little kid. At first, I thought he was a combination of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, both sadly and momentously taken away when I was eight. But, after more reflection, I’ve finally figured out who he really reminds me of. He is Spock and Shaft combined in equal measure. Maybe a successful gene-splicing experiment?
That’s illogical. Shut yo mouth.
Since posting this, I see several sites have made the Spock comparison some time ago. But Spock alone doesn’t do it. You gotta have Shaft’s tough chill to complete the Obama Cool.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Special Collections Librarian Max Yela writes:
[The Colonel's Portentous Cat Unsays] is perhaps the most recent and remarkable of invisible books. It follows a long tradition of dream books and stories, from biblical citations of dream-state narratives, to the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and Shakespeare’s Mid-Summer Night’s Dream, to Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Eyes of a Blue Dog and Lane Hall’s Dream Snake. Until very recently the book’s existence was known only from an email correspondence between two friends:
Charlie Huenemann to Rick Krause on Aug 25, 2006:
Last night I dreamt I was in a coffeeshop in Chicago with you, telling you about a fabulous book I read. I explained it as “what you’d get if Kafka showed up in the village of Garcia Marquez’s ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE….” The title was “The (something) (something) cat (something).” I woke up, and was disappointed to find there is no such book. Still, it’s a great title.
Rick Krause to Charlie Huenemann on August 26, 2006:
In my dream, if I remember correctly, the title of the book you described to me was (and probably still is) “The Colonel’s Portentous Cat Unsays.” The title contains a hint as to why the book cannot be found upon awakening and why it can only be vaguely remembered, much less recreated. As the book is read by the dreamer who stumbles upon it, the text unsays itself. Word by word, sentence by sentence, the text disappears after it has been read. Pages, too, disappear as they are turned. Every dreamer who begins reading “The Colonel’s Portentous Cat Unsays” is compelled to finish it in one sitting, for it contains exactly what the dreamer had hoped or feared it would contain. But there is no looking back, no retracing the narrative path, no returning to the book once it has been read. Waking dreamers are left with inchoate memories, ill-defined longings, poignant regrets . . .
——————
The Colonel’s Portentous Cat Unsays is one of nine invisible books on display in Max Yela’s exhibit:
Invisible Books from the Library of Babel
January 10-February 30, 2008
Main Floor, West Wing
UW-Milwaukee Libraries
2311 E. Hartford Ave
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
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I know the alphabet. Of course I know the damn alphabet. Nevertheless, I was recently surprised by M’s close proximity to K.
I am the court jester, the maxim molester,
sardonic magician deriding tradition.
My scepter is a cattle prod.
I know my job. I unmask gods.