Yakety Sax

I've lived so long I've run out of faces.

In every face I see I see traces

Of friends half-forgotten or TV shows'

Actors or movie stars even; I suppose

It has to come in everyone's life

When repetition is the everlasting rule.

I was in church this Christmas with the wife

And up ahead, a woman there for yule

Looked like Alanna herself in the flesh.

(Last week the wife went solo and spoke

To this woman; in fact she was Alanna's sister.)

I suppose I myself look like some other bloke

To those I meet, some other mister.

 

*

 

Jamal al-Jamal, the Palestinian Authority ambassador to the Czech Republic, died yesterday when he triggered a booby trap in a safe which had been transferred from A PLO mission only recently.

In related news, 'Yakety Sax' was composed by James Rich and Boots Randolph in 1963 and recorded by Randolph in the same year. In 1965, Chet Atkins recorded a cover version entitled 'Yakety Axe.' Finally, Ronnie Aldrich and his Orchestra recorded a version which was used on 'The Benny Hill Show' starting in 1969 to accompany tableaux in which Hill was caught in silly predicaments of his own design.

-2 January 2014

 

*

 

I slumped against the wall as R- was walking towards me. I pointed out my new boots. "They're heavy, and they're tiring." She said, "You'll get strong thighs. You know what they say about strong thighs." I said, "I'm just worried about wearing out my hipbones."

A minute later, alone, I realized I didn't know what they say about strong thighs. They say something, but what?

Should I ask R- tomorrow? What if it's something sexual? (It must be?) I could check the Internet....

What do they say about strong thighs? My God, what do they say about strong thighs?

 

*

 

"I'm only going to tell you this once, so listen up.

"This bucket here contains all your subjects. Start small, just pick one. If you pick two you need something from the conjunction bucket.

"Then reach over here, right beside the subjects, this bucket, right, pick out a verb, doesn't matter which one yet.

"There, now you got the frame. But it might not make a whole lot of sense, so you'll want to add some adjective at the beginning and maybe an adverb penultimately.

"That's about it for now. Slap them together. Make me some sentences. One hundred sentences."

 

*

 

Thomas Mann at Niagara Falls

 

I remember, when I was eight, my parents took me to Niagara Falls in the winter. The first evening, we went down to look at them. It was very cold, and across the way, the American falls, were very frozen. Long and gigantic icicles hung down with water running over them. Even from a distance you could see it all happening. Lights of all colours moved across the ice of the falls. I stared out at this phenomenon, cold running through my coat. And I remember thinking: Is that all there is to a waterfall?

 

*

 

Two couples over twenty years. Formerly fine friends—whole plot having a good time somewhere—now bitter enemies for economic reasons. Whole society has collapsed because of debt bubble. Murders. Huddling in freezing buildings. Recriminations, regrets. One of those post-apocalyptic thingies. Horror at the universe, knowledge of death. No chance of reconciliation. One couple has goods, the other doesn't. Wrap it all together in a New Yorker style, but only in the second half. First half a rip-roaring comedy in the vulgar excess mode. Carnival. Then, cannibalism. The thin veneer of civilization gets stripped away. Not to animals, but close.

 

*

 

Note on 'Personality'

 

A little before eight the next customer was that guy with the messy red hair. He's looking at me funny. He says, "Could I have a pack of ... oh, geez, I, I thought I was ordering cigarettes, confusion, it's a matter of habit, right? um, what? bagel with, sesame seed bagel with ... butter, and a ... large coffee, please."

I joked, "We sell drugs too," but he seemed too self-absorbed to understand. And then I was confused getting him change.

You see all kinds here, I guess. But that's one messed up guy, for sure.

 

*

 

"Oh Goodness yes, goodness is important, for instance I saw on the news just two weeks ago, maybe three I don't remember, I saw on the news the idea that using salt on your sidewalk was evil, truly evil! to the environment, not good for the grass or somesuch, and I said to Bill, Bill, this year: no salt on our sidewalk!

"Well I'm sure you know what's happened since then—the sidewalks are crazy with ice! All of them! Not just ours! Very comforting isn't it to know your neighbours agree with you!

"But—poor Bill. Visiting hours 3-4."

 

*

 

Note on 'Personality'

 

Everyman speaks.

I cannot see myself without external aid. My heart beats: how many—other than me—have heard a single beat? I see my nose, my hands, my feet—but never my eyes: I cannot view the windows of my soul. Why does Everyman feel Everyman is not what Otherman sees when Everyman makes a single gesture? Everyman is stupidly sad because Otherman is no more reliable than a glass plated with dumb silver and mercury. Remember always that mirrors (common knowledge) pull objects inside-out. I, the Everyman, can't even breathe out without simultaneously breathing in....

 

*

 

In Heaven

 

In heaven are God and all the angels. God is a trinity. The angels have nine orders. The angels are adored by people who have managed to get there after they died. How they are chosen is God's doing, but it's safe to say you have to have been at least a good person to wind up there. It all spins around at a great distance from us. Once there was an angel who climbed down by a ladder from there but that was a long time ago. Everything's in circles because circles are perfect. That is heaven.

 

*

 

Metaphysics

 

Consider a circle radius one. The point at the centre let's call Hell. The infinite points one away from it let's call Heaven. Imagine a force, a miraculous force, which could instantly exchange singularity and infinity. What would happen then? Well, Heaven would become a point and Hell would become all points one unit away from Heaven. (Yeats called this a gyre. [If I'm wrong it doesn't matter because I'm fictional and allowed mistakes.]) This is how to imagine in three dimensions two opposites always equidistant yet not give precedence to one over the other. This is one solution.

 

*

 

In Hell

 

In Hell are Satan and all his devils and demons. They don't have ranks or degrees because it's pandemonium. They hustle and bustle in constant conflict because Satan likes it that way. Beneath them all in a matrix of infinite hatred are all the people who failed in some way when they were alive. They can't stand anything. They can't stand Satan, the devils and demons, or each other. Plus they've got nasty punishments going on. It beggars the imagination. I have to mention that it's really hot and full of flames. Life's not very pleasant in Hell.

Two or More Logic Puzzles

The critics hailed my first book. They called it "an astounding masterpiece," they called it "greater than the Bible and the Oxford English Dictionary both," they called it "a book that redeems humanity for ever and ever amen."

My second book came out a year later. The critics called it "so like the first, we in retrograde call them both failures," they called it "a repeat performance that diminishes his previous work," the called it, "a repetition that can only lead to a vast disappointment and despair on par with an intelligently sympathetic reflection upon Masada, the Titanic, and Gallipoli."

 

*

 

He plucked her from the streets and made a star of her. She married a billionaire who took her in even though she didn't have a penny. Her thesis advisor saw she outshone him and did everything to have her hired and tenured. Her best friends pooled their money together and bought her a thoroughbred.

She was the envy of everyone. Best seats in restaurants and theatres and ball games. She couldn't say anything not witty. One year she won an Oscar, an Emmy, a Grammy, a Tony.

When she killed herself, all agreed it was the greatest suicide ever.

 

*

 

Top of the tower, through a door, light-people coming, I shut the door, opened, shut, opened, still the same distance every time I opened the door regardless of how close they'd been last time I'd closed the door; in the chamber someone at the tower stairs, I couldn't hear them, but whoever was there was there, I opened the door, shoved him off, turned out he was a delivery boy; something else was wrong there, it was the cats, one I sent out onto the landing, the other I lit a fire under, cat in flames, didn't seem to care.

 

*

 

Personality

 

Been thinking recently

"I don't get a fair shake;

"I'm a nice guy

"Underneath it all;

"An attractive guy

"Underneath it all;"

Been thinking recently

Why the discord between what they see and what I see?

If only they knew the real me, I'd be utopial.

But now I've come to realize that what they see is the me that's more real than the phantastic self-image I've invented solely in my head with no external reference whatsoever, an idea cooked up from trauma and armouring,

I am what people say I am,

Rotten,

Crippled,

Cold,

Silent,

Heartless,

And cruel.

 

*

 

MEMO re "GET"

 

In a communication dispersed recently, the verb 'get' was employed in a critical position. This is obviously not acceptable.

As a governmental organization, scion to the medieval clerisy and grand-scion to levitical authority, we cannot tolerate a lingua franca. An amalgam of senatorial vocabulary and the cant of the agora is a diminished potency. The hoi polloi may furthermore begin to question the relationship between our sapient dominance and their brute force, which would be deleterious and untenable.

Hence, from this day forth, substitute in all situations the proper Latinate verb 'acquire' wherever 'get' is vulgarly purposed.

 

*

 

Jihad Hee Haw

 

Got the crates in the cave, all ready for some

Crouchin' an' a-prayin!

We got special guests Jabal Jabal Jabal and Sons, performin' "Blowed Up With Your Faith, Lord."

Comedy provided by 'Heavenly Hassan,' bitin' the heads off some good ol' Jew-snakes.

We gonna bang some good ol' rocks together for a spell.

Sermon provided by Imam 'Grandpa' Jones, only two hours long, then we got some riotin' against ol' Great Satan.

We gonna stone the pertyest girl we can find!

Hymn 6, "Killin' the Ungodly Ones Today."

G'night everbody! Keep away from the blue Datsun outside!

 

*

 

I didn't have time to burn every painting I intended to burn because it takes time to rip paintings to bits and the bits take time to burn. Combustion is a chemical process. I estimated that two hundred or so Picassos, Rembrandts, and Van Goghs would remain, so as a last resort I tore them to shreds and stuffed them into cardboard boxes marked GARBAGE. It was all I could do.

That I had actually purchased them in the first place was a great shame; not my greatest shame, admittedly, but a significant shame.

The end of the world beckons.

 

*

 

I bought Genesis's record Abacab some time in the third week of September 1981. James was with me when I bought it. Then record in hand, we went over to his house; I had to go home immediately for dinner. He said, "Lend it to me so I can tape it." I said, "No way. I want to hear it first." "You can come get it in an hour!" "You don't get it. It's my record. I should hear it first!" In the end I took it with me. I had to. You understand this? Stop reading if you don't.

 

*

 

So I've been hearing a lot about this "Are Men Obsolete?" argument going around. Seems Maureen Dowd is in on it. (Some wag remarked, "Civilization would last until the oil needed changing.") But it got me to thinking, Maybe it's women who are obsolete.

Why not put women in barns, for breeding purposes? (This idea is based on something by James Tiptree, Jr., God rest her soul.) Kill off the excess; raise them like sows.

Then us guys can get on with the business of inventing stuff and creating works of art.

Just kidding, you know I love you, bitches.

 

*

 

Jane goes down to the riverside and sees a man with one high boot.

On the planet Earth (a planet being a celestial body orbiting a sun), a creature homo sapiens (i.e. capable of cognition) known to others of her species by the cognomen Jane used her two motive legs (lower limbs) to move to a river (which is a stream of water running from high altitude to low) where she saw (meaning employed her visual sense receptors in the past) a creature with a penis who was wearing (among other things) one high boot (no need for explanation there).

 

*

 

Our house was on the out of a corner. A basement, a ground floor, a second floor, and an attic. My father cut the garage in half to create another room on the ground floor. He walled it in wood and installed a fireplace whose aluminium chimney rose through the room above and out. An antique non-operational candlestick phone hung from a wall. The second television was in one corner. A lamp hung from a beam over the couch and I could lie there reading. The windows rattled in the wind. That's what it was like, once upon a time.

 

*

 

What is the heart of Chicago?

The heart of Chicago is the Stock Exchange.

What are the veins of Chicago?

The veins of Chicago are the railroads.

What is the stomach of Chicago?

The stomach of Chicago is the Union Stock Yard & Transit Co.

What is the brain of Chicago?

The brain of Chicago is City Hall.

What are the lungs of Chicago?

The lungs of Chicago are Aurora, Elgin, Joliet, Kenosha, and Napierville.

What is the anus of Chicago?

The anus of Chicago is the Drainage Canal.

What is the soul of Chicago?

The soul of Chicago is.

 

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TRIGGER WARNING

 

Contains peanuts, peanut by-products, peanut dust, eggs, gluten, dairy, dairy by-products, alcohol, tobacco, firearms, soft drug use, hard drug use, effects of tragedy, effects of comedy, rape imagery, incest imagery, bestiality imagery, homosexuality imagery, heterosexuality imagery, objectionable signifying, heavy objects, objects that appear larger than they are in reality, melancholy, bitter foolery, poetry, prose, theatre, film, music, architecture, drapery, bodily functions, reproductive functions, gustatory functions, trigonometric functions, allusions, litotes, sarcasm, mock shock, physics, chemistry, too much biology, too much information, too much geometry, familial strife, marital strife, moral strife, intertextuality, in-jokes, optical illusions, impossible objects, zero, and infinity.

 

*

 

Two Logic Puzzles

 

I may have related the first already. Neither is original. Oh well. Here goes.

The cops go to raid a criminals' den. The building turns out to be much larger than they expected, with more exits than they can possibly guard. So they surround the house beside it, which has fewer.

A particular stretch of highway has DEER CROSSING signs all along it. Every couple weeks or so a deer is hit. Locals are disturbed. How can this all be prevented? Then they solve it. They move the deer crossing to a less traffic-heavy highway stretch nearby.

 

*

 

I came home from work today to find eight lesbians holding a birthday party in my kitchen.

The cake said, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY JANYCE." I looked at each lesbian. I had no idea who Janyce was, and I couldn't ask.

You see, they were too busy talking and laughing. Not a one of them bestowed upon me even a glance.

I moved around behind their circle to get to the fridge from which I took some bread and luncheon meat. I was so frazzled I forgot the mustard.

I moved over to the cutting board to make a sandwich.

That's life.