A Chinese Character

Wednesday is Friendsday. That's what we called it in Personnel and Personality Testing, because on Wednesday we had the fewest number of issues to deal with. So I was a bit put out to have two long-winded messages waiting for me at nine that morning. Two employees had written, each one complaining about the other. Funny thing was, I knew from gossip they were an office romance, a long-term one, which everyone expected to blossom into a marriage.

I brazenly sent them the same message: Can I get you both of you in my office together?

He replied immediately: That would be great!

She replied after an hour: I'd rather not, but okay.

The two of them entered separately. I could hear him laughing before he entered my room, while she slinked in silently. They sat down in the available chairs.

I won't be revealing any confidential information if I tell you that "Don" worked quietly, and shyly, in the mailroom, and was something of a failed poet, while "Trudy" was from the advertising department, with all the noise that that entails. On their Meyers-Briggs, he was strongly an I, and she was strongly an E, so neither was acting the correct 'type'.

I was still annoyed at having to do any work, so I boldly announced: "Drugs? (to Don) Stimulants? (to Trudy) Depressants?"

Trudy quietly said: "Not interested," and looked shyly at her fingernails.

Don said: "You got any good ones?"

"No, I don't have any drugs. Not that kind of councillor. Do you know you complained about one another?"

Don looked at Trudy and cried: "What? What would you have to complain about?"

Trudy fidgeted. "I don't want to talk about it."

Her behaviour was odd for an advertiser, see? I decided to go further outside the book, hoping they didn't know how far outside of the book I'd already gone. I told her: "Trudy, you have to tell me. Your complaint is part of Corporate Records now. So spill it."

She avoided my eyes and examined the ceiling. She checked her nails again. Two minutes later, she said: "It's Vegas."

Don jumped from his seat. "What do you mean? You don't want to go anymore?"

With a pained expression she said: "I don't think it's such a hot idea anymore. I just want to be left alone."

"It was your bloody idea! And now‑now that I'm totally into it, you're not interested?"

"Vegas is noisy‑and so crowded."

"You bought tickets for Elton John!"

"You can re-sell them somehow. Probably for lots, since he's retiring soon."

I felt we were stuck in a time-suck so I interrupted. "This all looks personal, not personnel. Ha. How is this any of the Corporation's business?"

They looked at me blankly for a moment. Then Don said: "It's because this place brought us together." He laughed loudly. "If it wasn't for this place, I'd be a happy man!"

Trudy muttered: "Happy."

I said: "If it's not impacting on the day-to-day operations of the company, I can't see how it is possible for me to get involved. I'd be held responsible for matters that are not my business."

Don shouted: "Something must be done!"

"If it starts affecting your work, let me know. For now, I suggest you co-ordinate your arrivals and departures such that they don't overlap."

Trudy sighed: "This was a bad idea from the get-go."

Don snorted. "Tell me about it."

They got up to leave. As they left, Trudy turned to me. "And he's started a blog," and rolled her eyes and shook her head.

They left; out in the hall I heard him shout: "And I'm gonna monetize the shit outta my content!"

Maybe I laughed to myself, thinking the course of true love never runs smooth. I returned to my inbox. There I found, oddly for a Friendsday, another crisis for me to resolve. The message was signed by three engineers in our research and development department, and it said they had a serious complaint about their manager "Donald." I found the phone number of the first signer and called him up. He said, We have to get organized a bit, feel things through, then we'll be up.

Thirty-five minutes later they sauntered in. With Donald were "Heather" and "Gerald." They stood there looking around like they had to get the mood of the place.

I said: "Could one of you shut the door?"

Gerald laughed and slowly closed the door.

"So what's the problem with 'Ann'?"

Heather said: "She's just‑just I dunno. She's making all these charts and stuff. Organizational charts. Time-and-motion studies. She's really interfering with how we like to operate."

Gerald said: "She wasn't like that, like, a month ago. Back then, in the 'glory days,' she let us do our thing. Now it's like she's going through our codes and schematics with a fine-tooth comb."

Donald said: "We ourselves got shot down just because we wanted to start a little study group, just an hour a week."

I asked: "What did you want to study in that time?"

"Spinoza's Ethics."

"That's an unusual choice for engineers."

"We needed a broader view."

"Holistical."

"God and nature, time and being."

I was taking notes all this time, and I told them I'd contact Ann and let her know their concerns. They thanked me for listening, and Gerald said: "Namaste," on the way out.

I looked up Ann and telephoned her. She said: "I'll be right there!"

In less than a minute she was in my office.

"Sorry I'm late," she said as she pressed a button on her phone. "I've de-bugged and stream-lined this PDA, but there's still room for improvement."

"Very good," I said. "That's not a very N thing to do, however."

"N?"

"Intuitive."

She laughed. "Bullshit, all bullshit. You should see my team. They've lost focus. It's like they're enjoying wasting time on dead ends. 'It's a dead end!' I tell 'em, and they say, 'There's still lots to learn, there's no such thing as a dead end.' Can you believe it?"

"Perhaps they're going through a creative period; maybe‑go easy on them for a bit? Group psychology always looks odd to someone outside the group."

"They've gone cult."

"Mmm?"

"Touchy-feely."

"That's not a cult."

She looked around, angry, cornered, by HR (which she was! ha). "When were they in?"

"Mmm?"

"They made complaints of a particular kind. When exactly were they in?"

"I don't know; eleven-ten?"

She pointed up. "Ah! They said they were going off for coffee! and they'd never done that before! all together!"

I made some gestures of consolation. "Ann, they're worried about you. Your personality has changed."

"Their personalities have changed."

"I'm not going to make the distinction. Look, they want you to let them do some exploration. So‑let them."

She gave up the battle. "Okay. I promise to give them the space to do ... whatever. But I tell you: this isn't going to last long! I've got schematics to look through."

She left my office.

I made notes, drawing more question marks that day than any other day.

It was lunch, and in the elevator I met our visiting researcher Dr. Chang Ling. He nodded and nodded, so we had lunch together down in the food court.

Chang Ling had come to our organization solely because‑so I'd been told‑of our size: twenty thousand employees worldwide, in a multinational corporation. He was researching personnel and spatiality, or some such intersection. (It was all somewhat beyond me at the time.)

We chose to dine on samosas, and we sat down and dug into them. He asked how my day was going.

"Two odd situations, neither of which I can resolve. Tell me, what do you know about the malleability of personality? How quickly can it change?"

He nodded and blinked. "That is an interesting question. A ninety degree rotation turns the moon into the sun and the sun into the moon, you see."

I nodded like I knew what he was talking about. I said: "I'm thinking more about how characters can change their types."

He said: "Character is not type, and type is not character. Each is formed by the other, as yin creates yang and yan creates ying."

I nodded again. I said: "A character has to be set in a type, and each type consists of many characters." Why was I thinking book-historically and print-culturally? I suppose I had nothing else to go on.

I went back up to my office after dining with our inscrutable researcher only to find, lo and behold, the company's Chief Executive Officer ("Patrick") sitting at my desk, in my chair, doing something to my computer.

"Oh," he said. "I fixed your email inbox to sort your mail efficiently."

"I thank you. What are you doing here?"

He got out of my chair, saying: "We'd both be better off with you sitting here." He moved to the chair opposite and continued: "I'm having problems with my Chief Operational Officer. She seems to have fallen in love with me, quite irrationally. I have evidence."

I sat myself down, saying: "You mean 'Becky'? I never thought of her as an emotional sort."

He pulled a sheet of paper from a folio and showed it. "She's written me a poem. It's in proper scansion, and it appears to be full of feeling, I don't know."

I looked the poem over. Yes, it was a love sonnet that even used the real name of 'Patrick.' (N.B. I am using pseudonyms because we are our nation's military's sole suppliers of advanced rocket fuels.)

"This is authentic?" I asked.

He leaned onto my desk and looked me intelligently. "She gave it to me herself."

"It borders on pornography."

"She appears to have little control over her juices."

I put the sexy verse down on my desk. "I think you should take this to the Board of Directors. You don't answer to me."

He put up a thoughtful index finger. "That could jeopardize our entire operation, putting thousands of jobs at risk."

"When did you get so thoughtful? You're the CEO. You're supposed to be the emotional core of the whole operation."

(Who was I to talk to our blessed CEO like that, you are probably wondering. Fact was, I knew his sister very well, and we'd met at her wedding.)

He said: "I've deduced a change has come over me recently. The cause I cannot figure; but the change is self-evident to those who can reason through such matters."

"Meanwhile," I said, cluing into something interesting: "Our erstwhile reasonable COO has shed her functionally useful reason and become something of a slave to her emotions."

"Precisely. Why, I know not."

I gave him back his poem. "I have to think about this for a while. Stay cool to your associate, and I'll contact you in a day or so."

"That sounds logical to me."

And thus did our CEO depart.

I checked my email, expecting some similar matters because I could see the pattern that was forming, though I didn't know why it was forming to begin with. There was an email from one of the legal team‑"Anne". I phoned her and she told me she had some other matters to attend to, and that she would come to see me as soon as it "worked" for her. Of course I'd never heard such language from a lawyer before‑neither have you‑so I guessed that she was having trouble with someone who had suddenly become a person who had to have matters settled.

An hour later, Anne came into my office. I let her decide where to start‑in accord with her new type.

She began: "I'm hosting a conference with some of the lawyers of our sub-contractors‑steel producers, oxidant generators, kerosene makers and so on‑and our in-house caterer is demanding too much information. He won't let it go with the flow!"

"What sort of information?"

"He's demanding to know the number of attendees! I tell him: I don't know. He tells me: Be as exact as humanly possible. I tell him: Just give us food and we'll eat it. He says: I have to use complicated tables with demographic breakdowns to make any step, even the first one. His demands are making me crazy!"

Chang Ling.

I asked: "Before now, he was, as a caterer, always able to improvise and do things at the last minute?"

"Yes, always very accommodating."

"Because I suppose it should be in his character to be like that?" (I nearly added: to be P?)

"I suppose, if you want to go that way, sure. It's his type."

"However, shouldn't you, as a lawyer, want things to be as accurate as possible? Shouldn't it be in your character that way?" (I nearly added: to be J?)

"I seem to have loosened up in the last week or so, I must admit."

"Do you see what I'm getting at?"

"Be as vague as possible, and perhaps I can."

"The two of you‑you and the caterer‑have traded characteristics."

"Is that possible? I suppose it is. That could be the case. Oh well. Anyway, he's still driving me crazy with his demand for accuracy."

I wanted her out of my office as soon as possible. I said: "I'll look into this. I'll have a talk to the caterers, and we'll work things out."

She appeared to weigh her options, and finally she left.

Alone at last, I decided to find more information about Chang Ling. You see, he was a recent arrival, just a couple weeks engaged, and I knew nothing about him. He had been parachuted in, more or less. So I took a look at his résumé, which was called his "C.V." as the highfalutin academics called it. I noticed a hyperlink to Hong Kong University, and I followed it. Much of it was in Chinese. A list of publications was there. Reading from the bottom up, I saw three (anglicized) publication credits, then a half-dozen in Chinese, then, at the very top, in English, a credit for a graduate-level essay called "Sixteen Lives to Live: The Consolidation of all Types Into One Character." Clicking around (I'm a pro at finding dirt on people) I found an abstract that said that the research concerned the mutability of type that could potentially allow an individual character, under the influence of the right sorts of drugs, to experience all possible types.

With more than just a hunch I looked up Chang Ling in our company directory. He had two phone numbers, and I reverse-look-upped the second one to discover that we had LABs on B-6, six floors under street level. As far as I knew, all our elevators bottomed out at B-4. How to get there?

I took the elevator down to B-4 and wandered the halls. Huge machines were rumbling behind thick iron doors. "I am closer to Hell than I have ever been before," I thought. I passed rotten cardboard boxes filled with who knew what sort of Cold War relics and finally I came to a door marked S for stairs. I went into the stairwell and sure enough there were stairs‑clean, well-maintained‑going down. So I went down two floors.

I heard distant music: Led Zeppelin. I followed the music down a hall and then another hall, to a door marked PSYCHOLOGY LAB. I opened, and went inside.

The music was very very loud. The atmosphere was suffused with a mellow blue-tinged light in which vast mainframes hummed and chemistry sets burbled. I found the stereo‑on a shelf at the far end of the room‑and turned down the LP of "II". There was a door beside the stereo and it opened and in walked Chang Ling wearing an orange kimono. He shouted with glee seeing me and slapped me on my shoulder, saying: "Miss Anderson! How good it is to see you! Care for a drink?"

"Mr. Chang‑"

"Call me by my first name!"

"Oh. Mr. Ling, what is the nature of your research way down here on B-6?"

"Please, have a drink! I've got a per diem!"

"No thank you; it's mid-afternoon."

"Well, shoot your shelf! A little martooni never hurt anyone."

He hopped over to his chemistry set and poured himself, from beaker to martini glass, a drink. "So what brings you down to my lab?"

"I want to know about your personnel research. I've had several unusual meetings with people today, and I have a hunch it's got something to do with your research."

"Come over here, sit yourself down on my couch."

There was a couch in the lab. I hadn't noticed it. I sat down, saying: "I looked up some of your research abstracts. Is it the case that you are 'messing around' with personality types?"

"Ah! So you've noticed!"

"Yes, I've noticed."

"Would you like a demonstration? It's a real breakthrough for humanity, if I do humbly say so myself."

"I'm curious," I said. "So go ahead, show me what you've got."

He darted to a drawer near the chemistry set, opened it, pulled out some sheets of paper, grabbed a pen, and darted back to throw the papers and pen in my lap. "Non-disclosure agreement! Everything I'm doing is hush-hush!"

I looked over the legalese. "I can't sign this. My office has to know fully what's been going on with our employees."

His eyes bugged out and he turned away to chew his thumb and think. He was also hopping a little. He turned back to me and said, "I can risk it. I'm so close to the end! Would you like to see the chemical or electronic version?"

"I'll leave that up to you."

"The electronic version is fast-fast-fast."

He darted into the room beside the stereo and re-emerged with a contraption of circuit boards, wires, and what looked like a megaphone, which he proceeded to plug in (via a wholly pedestrian USB) into a CPU tower that in turn attached to the mainframes.

"Hah!" he cried. "Now watch and learn!"

His device in hand started to burble and spark. On the screen attached to the CPU he clicked a GUI toggle and the device's pitch got higher. He turned the funnel to his face and his eyes glowed green as he smiled crazily. Thirty seconds later the unit went silent. Chang Ling heaved a sigh and calmly set the device down beside the screen.

"There," he said. "My personality is now different."

I looked at him closely. He did in fact look different. His eyes were droopy with tiredness. "So what's changed?" I asked.

"I have retreated from fire and I have entered the xing of metal." He sat down calmly. "Would you like to give it a go?"

I laughed nervously. "I wouldn't know what would happen. I mean: What have you done to yourself with that machine?"

"I've changed my personality by changing my types."

I got up to stretch my legs. He smiled indulgently. I said: "How long has this been going on? Is this what you're here to do? Is this what all your research is about?"

He laughed lightly. "For my entire life, I have wondered about the causes of personality. Why is one as one is? I read all the psychological theories, about 'armouring' and so on, and Jung of course, but it all seemed so second-hand and just-so. Behind it all, I had a pressing desire for just one thing. Tell me. You must have had some regrets in your life. Name me one."

I thought for a moment and said: "I never learned how to play a musical instrument."

"There we are," he said, gesturing for me to sit down once again; which I did. He continued: "That is a trait of your personality. Now imagine if you could have changed your personality, even for a short while, don't you think you may have been able to be more of a person who wanted to play a musical instrument?"

I countered: "But what if, all things being equal, I would rather be a person who regrets not playing the piano than a person who doesn't regret not playing the piano and plays the piano?"

He thought about this for a moment. "You're arguing for slavery."

"Oh now come on."

He continued: "If you want to be a slave to your contingencies, be my guest. I, on the other hand, wish to free people. Pick an LP."

The music had stopped. I got up to simply turn it over to side one. "Whole Lotta Love" started up.

Chang Ling sighed. "Imagine being unshackled from your character to experience botany one day, sky-diving the next, sculpture the following, and finally an orgy. And all that can be ours if we only break away from the cursed shackles of type."

I said: "Give me a straight answer here. Are you experimenting on our employees?"

"Oh, yes."

"Isn't that ... unethical?"

"The Board of Directors gave me the go-ahead. Read your employment contract. You agreed to being experimented upon on the penultimate page."

"This sounds worse than Facebook."

"That's not for me to J."

"I'm going to take this up with the board of directors."

"With what? A conference call between London, Singapore, Adelaide, Dubai, Los Angeles, and Buenos Aires?"

"That's where the directors are based?"

"I'm mostly guessing. I think Berlin and Tokyo are in there too."

We would have continued our argument if Hell on Earth had not broken loose at that point. The fire alarm went off, and we waited for the preliminary ten blasts to stop. They stopped, and I opened my mouth to speak, but instead the real fire alarm went off. It was a real alarm, and we had to get out of the building along with everyone else.

Chang Ling said, "I think we would be safe if we stayed. The fire, if there is a fire, must be above us."

"Then we'll suffocate."

"A valid point." He went to the stereo and shut it off. "Then let's be off."

We opened the door to the hallway. The alarm was deafening against the concrete walls and ceiling. A sudden explosion rocked the ground, fortunately coming from the direction we didn't have to go. I yelled: "Don't tell me. There's a rocket fuel lab down that way."

"Five, actually. A to E."

Chang Ling hurried down one hall, then down another hall, with me in tow (for he knew the best way out). I couldn't take my eyes off his orange kimono. He turned suddenly and opened a door; something exploded seemingly quite near to us, lighting up the walls around and the pressure on our ears made me wonder if we would be able to hear anything outside of outrageously gigantic explosions ever again. We got through into a stairwell and pushed the heavy pneumatic door closed.

The alarms and explosions seemed relatively far off. We started up the stairs‑six or so floors‑following signs reading THIS WAY OUT.

Finally we got outside. Sirens blasted everywhere. We got to a safe distance and watched smoke billowing out of the building from the left and right.

I asked: "So‑this is all your fault, right?"

He said: "The fault in nature was already ready."

"What did you do to the rocket scientists?"

"Maybe too much. In my terms, I changed metal to earth, and water to fire. In your terms, I changed them from being INTJs to ESFPs."

"From microbiologists to ... bartenders."

"More or less."

"That was extreme."

"I research."

Another explosion rocked the earth. The firehoses blasted the building, useless against the rocket propellants we had in use in the lab. I saw our CEO Patrick trying uselessly to take command of the emergency vehicles. Trudy was there, sitting in a euphoria, watching the burns and blasts. Donald was standing with Patrick, egging him on. I seemed to myself to be knowing everyone. Maybe I had had my personality changed? I asked Chang Ling: "Did you use your thing on me?"

He said: "I never got close enough."

 

***

 

Six scientists (or bartenders) died in the tragedy. The whole operation got shut down. We may never recover. Everyone went elsewhere, and Chang Ling, due to a pretty bizarre relationship between the Chinese government and ours, wound up disappearing. I myself am now working for a publicity organization.

The effects of Chang Ling's experiments eventually wore off, and everyone got back to ... normal.

Why hadn't he gotten close to me? Could he not have done it on the day after Friendsday? Why did the explosion have to happen on Friendsday? He should have changed me. He didn't change me. I'm tired of this.

Maybe I can find him on LinkedIn.

Seven Short Satires

1

 

I'll be explaining later, Jack, exact-

ly why we grow curmudgeonly with time;

for now, let's look at education trends.

Remember being locked in public schools?

Remember how assigned you were to rooms,

to do assignments point- and endlessly?

Be locked into that cookie-cutter script

to build you to a 'model citizen'?

(Which never worked correctly since a school's

a marketplace of contraband, in word

and deed.) The Principal a kindly man,

Vice Principal unprincipled and mean

with blood-shot eyes from some addiction,

and teachers who could barely stand up straight.

You got some learning, sure, but stupid kids

were always there retarding everyone,

a true contagiousness intentional

(as anyone who understands the ways

of commie educrats who get their friends

to vote them onto education boards

can easily attest; that smarter eggs

are only smarter eggs because of class

and race and x and y and on and on).

But Jack, by chance you managed to escape

the prison ere the brainwash really did

begin: now all the kids are being dumbed,

especially the ones who started thick.

Their teachers (who, as everybody knows,

are intellectually challenged in themselves,

who chose to go to teaching 'cause they could

not do a useful thing and thus resent

the folks who, you know, have productive jobs)

because they do not understand nor art

nor math instead instruct the clayish minds

in how to hate successful working folks

by turning each impressionable charge

into a little Maoist moppet set

against our argent one and only CIV.

"We're teaching them to fight hegemony

and also that patriarchal Order

of Things‑I skimmed through the introduction‑

besides, grammer is really difficult

and math is hard."

                                   I think it's safe to say

That this is why the world is going to end.

Adorno and Marcuse wanted it

(for such a Freudish couple not to see

their own death-drives in action is a tell!),

and now‑hurrah!‑it's on its way. So say

your prayers and be prepared. (Relatedly,

compare the Robert Nozick article

in Cato, JanFeb 98, about

how teachers over-estimate their worth.)

And so return to here once you have read

the later bit about the wisdom per-

sonal and wisdom general, my proof

of why it seems the world gets dumber as

the individual gets older, assumption

being the world increases knowledgably;

that assumption does not hold when kids

get stupider and stupider every year.

The world with all its wit has won again,

by foiling an assumption I had made;

and nobody's to blame for the decay

that's seen these days so many ways;

it is to shrug we had an okay go

and now our age is coming to an end.

Yet education shall plunge dumbly on,

destroying decency on every front

and making relative what's known, let's say,

of maths; it's known that no-one's talented

enough to write a decent book these days,

and as for painting, all the skill's been lost

because (I think) we've set the inner world

as that which is of paramount import

while everything external to the self

is denigrated; where's lush description gone,

the type we saw in Zola and in Balzac?

Sure, Philip Roth did carry on the mode,

but all that craftsmanship is at death's door.

The reason for decay is obvious:

effects are all around, like, just today

At King and John I saw some photographs

enlarged to ten by six (in feet, I mean)

each picture of a hooded thug with face

occluded by the hood (so profile "eighth").

Not only did the pictures cut the walk

by some four feet, the pictures were a sham.

Who wants some urban threat presented them?

What beauty's there? Of junk exclusive it's,

and here I am immortalizing them,

immortalizing a photographic farce.

A five will get you ten the clown who thought

these photographs were valuable was taught

in public school, and taught that beauty sucks

in that same school, that naught but power exists,

so give it up on trying the present day

for any goodness lifting up the soul:

the rot's so deep in all the sundry arts.

And wouldn't you know the snaps are sponsored by

a bank: The Bank of Nova Scotia. Natch.

 

2

 

"At KAUST[i], the modern runs on Saudi oil,

for which we thank Allah. The clerics aren't

allowed upon our thousands-hectare campus,

we're thoroughly co-ed, with clothing codes

relaxed (so leave your veil at home!), we've won

awards for architecture, our endow-

ment from the state is twenty billion bucks.

We're English speaking, totally, so skip

enrolling in an Arab-language class.

Remuneration? Rest assured we pay

our academics and support staff well

about the international average.

Apply today, and ask us for a tour.

We're in Thuwal; the Red Sea asked for you!"

I'm thinking the above, while I myself

am stuck inside a streetcar in Toronto,

with elbows shoving elbows, knees on knees,

the noise of grunts and auto horns and filth

assaulting everyone without respect

of persons; going home to rented house

that costs me somewhat thirty bucks a day

for just a roof aside the roofs of noi-

sy noisome neighbours always on the make

(as I suppose I also am, for why

would I be suffering this man-made hell

and also causing suffering to fellow man?)

The sirens blast each street four times a day.

A guy uptown mowed down pedestrians

a couple weeks ago; you'd think the edge

of city life would dull, but no, next day

a Dundas streetcar guy screamed at a girl

to "Get your smelly ass out of my face!"

She answered "What'd I do?" to which he yelled

"You dirty cunt!"

                              Not even murders have

effect for any but the briefest time;

it's back to fighting cheek to cheek and nose

to nose for space enough for dignity

to stand.

                 And so I dreamed Arabian,

where people are, to most extents, polite;

I dreamed about a campus small, with peace

and quiet, in their library, away

from madding crowds not caring if you live

or die, not set to laugh whene'er I fall.

When I got home that day I checked the web

to see if any openings were there;

so sad to see there were no bookish jobs

to have;

                 so: so much for the towelheads.

 

3

 

Jack Jones, discard the heavy bags

you're carrying to curry crumbs from Lords.

You believe they'll say: "O vassal, I reward

your labours with magnificently large

estates, from Patagon to Surrey-of-the-Sea.

Keep loyal and your real estate and traps

will blossom mightily!" But, Jack, you must,

somewhere inside your soul, be sure instead

the words will be: "Have we been introduced?"

Don't bother banking on your what-you-will,

integrity, or honesty, or loyalty,

for that's a game for fools and genii.

A genius could (I could be dreaming here)

break through the locks the rich have made

around their monies and demesnes; a fool

will ragged run and be rewarded with

stiff mockery. (Perhaps that's why the two

cohere in many minds: they both attempt

to scale a greasy pole by accident

or by design: but I'm digressing here.)

Are you a genius? Your IQ may surpass

the norm yet still: see below. A fool?

If so, I doubt I'd be addressing you.

A measure of what makes elites elite

is how they get forgiven their missteps,

while you, you dog, need only mess the rug

a single time then out you go! into the rain,

and don't expect a meaty bone again.

For former xamples check the paper. Look.

A party leader caught trespassing has

been charged and faces time in jail. Now think.

How likely do you think that outcome is?

You see an orange jumper in her future near?

Then make a sketch of something, and I'll sell you what it's of.

Remember sketcher Vincent? You think he got

what he deserved? Or Proust who popped his cork?

And Kafka comes to mind‑and those are just

the arts. See drama laugh when lowly ones

attempt to crack the door of naked fame.

In any case you'll not escape the bells

and empty words that gather round a grave.

There's nothing beats a sad and funny tomb.

It's not the modern melting into air:

it's everything you ever thought was true.

Remember back when we were kids, when all

the grownups seemed so smart and permanent:

the teachers were magicians with their minds,

and cops were powerful and to be feared.

Today we laugh at our naivete because

we've seen our moron friends decide to teach

because they suck at doing something real,

and cops are only in it for the drugs

and opportunities for battery.

A dog at least sometimes escapes the leash,

but you? so socialized and proper prim?

Your only way to make effective change

round here is with a scabbard and a sword

to cut them down with tasteful prejudice;

but hear what Michael noted years ago,

in anecdotal form: A teen goes to

his guidance councillor and wants, he says,

to be the greatest murderer of all.

The councillor remarks to him that if

that is his wish, his only option is

to enter politics, "and then you're set!

If history's to judge, your slaughters will

be praised in quarters some‑if not them all!"

But see, my friend, that politics is not

for everyone (though sociopaths are good

at it). Instead, you get to vote for them!

A rainy day, you trudge to drop a slip

of cheap into a box that's also cheap

while watched by temps employed for just that day.

Then watch the votes get counted through TV

and notice that your vote made little diff.

It seems the reason for democracy

lies not in what we all assume, that is

to say we'll choose, as if by Sorcery,

a person suited to the leader's task.

Instead, the purpose of the vote is most

to make a scapegoat wholly blameable;

a sacrifice you'll blame most readily

when things go non-scanningly tits-up.

For otherwise why bother with the trudge

to temporary stations made for polls?

This circus called democracy's a trick

disguising what Rene Girard is all

about; it's for to choose a victim prime

for history's reckoning. It's not to pick

a person who's got some important point

to make; there's never any point to make.

The point to voting in elites is just

to let them know they can be voted out;

but never think that they're superior

in any but a superficial way;

because they're sacrificial goats to kill

without regret: they're pharmaceuticals.

Fortune turns the wheel forevermore.

Remember what the wiser people said

about the ever-changing structure of

the world, with starts demanding ends of all,

(the Stoics I am going on about,

like Cicero accepting of his fate,

or Cato when he saw his public fall,)

there's no predicting when or even why

your fortune comes or leaves you at the gate.

The king is but a thing of motioned earth

no better than you are, and monuments

like Ozymandias' waste of barren sand

can never come again: forevermore.

But keep your health in check, a golden mean's

the best of all, not to extend your life

but rather to bequeath you peace of mind,

and laugh not always, for it chills the spleen,

and cry not oft, for livers leak their juice:

The bar of passions should be various.

So keep your head above your heart, Jack Jones,

and think before you strive the smallest bit

for fleeting riches or for feeble fame,

since in the end the only plot you'll get's

your little plot of land: the land you need:

the six feet down and three-four feet across.

 

4

 

Mimesis is a funny thing; keep that

in mind. "I played Miss Blanche Dubois

in Little Theatre, so I went to try

my luck in Hollywood, oh pretty me.

I'm very good at faking everything,

and all us girls can fake surprise at cock;

'Producer man, it's big, too big, I think

my cunt's too narrow for its massive girth!'

Exchanging this for that is how it's played

across the world and ever so it's been;

you vomit later, brush your teeth, and see?

A role appears, a little one at first,

but then another cock presents itself

and so you fake desire again, again,

and then you're Marilyn Monroe, or so

the story goes. But then there came a call

to tell the truth‑half-truth‑‑about the means

they used (poor you!) to take virginity

away from me the dozenth time! 'Abused

without reward' I was; and so I dress

in black (which shows my tits to best regard).

I said my piece as more than just a piece,

and wrecked some lives, so what? Come see my pool.

It's kidney-shaped. I think Dean Martin used

to live around the block. It never rains,

and not in Kansas any more I am.

In fifteen minutes Cosmopolitan

is coming here to interview me for

the me too spread they're publishing this fall."

Don't gawk at me, you know it's roughly true;

er, no, let me correct that: satire, so:

it's literally true. We know these guys;

we all know hams, and how we shouldn't trust

them, because they lie and well they're paid

to lie; the better paid, the better lies

they've made. Endorsements that they make we laugh

about, because we know it's just another cheque;

you think that Taylor Swift's a giant fan

of Diet Coke, that Britney Spears just loves

her Pepsi Co? (Do catfights come about

when both vacation on the same feng-shui-

curated and designer rich-folks island?)

So when these thespians emote a fuss

about ill-treatment at the hands (and such)

of big producers, who can possibly believe

their tears are not of lucent glycerine made?

Abuse endemic in itself runs through

the show-biz world; its phoniness a thing

so rich that one can only silent gawp;

betrayal is the standard practice; if

you want a friend in Holly, get a dog.

However, note bien-pensants, don't talk

about these facts: we must not doubt the girls!

And here we have again that poison pill,

created in the eighteenth century:

since women are more 'natural' than men

(the latter being the yokes of 'cultural'),

they're obviously superior to men

and thus must not be doubted. Saying else

is unRomantic, not to be allowed,

and grounds for being sent to Coventry;

and if you want more trouble, merely say

it's telling: all these floozies imitate

each other's plaints because it's known their sex

is vastly more mimetic than the male.

Prepare the torches and the pitchforks now!

 

5

 

They say you can't write satire any more;

"The world's too crazy, with the President

we've got, and also look who's in the P.

M. O.! Dunno about the prez of Mexico‑

if he's a bozo too, the continent's

a joke from sea to sea to sea to gulf!"

I'm not about to disagree, but see,

who ever said that satires were not fact?

The secondary meaning of the word

is not the one I'm using in these songs:

The modern usage (like all modern things)

is thoroughly decadent, as if the truth

of what we see is something built for doubt,

and so in fiction only is the truth.

Describe the world with any accuracy

and what'll you have will be satirical

as sure as garbage in is garbage out.

The downhill race of our immense decay

substantiated thus would make one squirm,

and looking all in honesty does make

the pederast and necrophile et set

ra gain respect because at least they're not

all hypocritical about the foul

and loathsome world we're in; the glut

of evil which we swim within creates

small islands (or mirages) here and there

of virtue that we'll never reach because

confession of our sins would be the cost.

So think not satire's partly fictional;

it's rather fact.

                           Rousseau.

                                               The woof and weft,

romantic fabric, beauty natural,

where everyone is innocent ere how

our culture creeps in like a mangy mutt

and wrecks us with its chains conven-

tional! Oh how we'd be at play all day

if not for these false social images!

With these beliefs utopias are built,

if only in imagination's ken!

A little work, and labour would be naught!

The breaking of some eggs of fecal rot!

Begone, all tragedy! Some say that death

will never come again if only we'd the will

to be like happy birds in forest trees!

His Solitary Walker for a class I read,

and noted how his book but differed small

from schizophrenic ramblings I had heard‑

and paranoid at that, what with his plaints

that everyone was out to get him, and

his enemies were altering time and space

(if not in fact, efficacy). He lived

his life in phantasy, not in the real.

((I need not mention how he threw away

at least four children, maybe more, into

an orphanage; yet he was good at heart!))

And so I recognized he was a goat,

a loser (just like Marx!) ressentimental,

who couldn't just admit his worth was slight

and thus inverted values to make himself

in all his vile and savage ways a king.

"Why bother I to be of value to

my fellow man when doing so makes me

(because so doing I so doing make

myself less nature and more cultural,

and thus more alienate) entirely false,

and thus (myself so innocent and good!)

I disobey the cosmos when I do

obey the needs of any but my self-

ish self."

                 And here's the kick, with which

I'll end this song: I didn't hear a peep

from any of my fellow classmates who

had read the book (assumed they read the book)

about the utter awfulness Rousseau

presented; I alone made comment that

the man's an utter nutter. Thus my proof

(I know it's not a valid vigorous proof)

Rousseau's destructive tenets thus had made

the minds of mush my satires try to slag;

my fellows' tepid waters were so steeped

with bags of first-rate poison bought in bulk

by "educators" from the Jean-Jacques shop

that they (my fellows) couldn't even see

(as fish do not see water, though I seem

to mix my metaphors) that they had been

corrupted from the day they first drew breath.

 

6

 

The media! O media! Consent

by you gets manufactured so!

Some dozen years ago there was a land

called Venezuela that you all so praised,

where people of United Bolivar

deposed the moustache-twisting oligarchs

and love was in the air and in the oil.

But now it seems the country's fallen off

the map, so little do we hear of it;

or did an earthquake wreck all that's between

Columbia, Guyana and Brazil?

Another failure of the Rousseau dream

you'd think would make the New York Times wake up

and smell the bitter coffee of its fraud:

But no! Litella: Never mind. (To use

two ready tropes from one nine seven eight.)

The wagons circled; cover-up began;

Maduro used familiar Marxist twangs

of "speculators" (always read: "The Jews");

ignore the comedy that always comes

when it's ignored that resources have limits;

forget the yucks when cash itself is worth

a fraction of the cost of its own paper!

(The utter awfulness that comes from Socialists

cannot be spoken of in cocktail class;

"No enemies to the left!" 's the battle-cry.)

Collapse is coming soon, but not before

the Orinoco Delta's dead of AIDS;

Maduro will escape to, say, Iran,

with bags of Yankee dollars in his purse,

enough almost to pay for all the graves.

Collapse it will, but nothing shall be learned;

for due to ideology, always we

shall have some Soros-level Nazis running 'round.

 

7

 

Success is easily done while failing well's

the best revenge. Let's see your family tree.

You've drawn it rather wrongly obviously:

you're just the trunk of your own tree

and everything else is root and root alone.

Compared to what? is what the question's here.

A panther, once, was born in Pantherland,

and she grew up so quick with biting strength

and panther roar that made her dangerous

(or so she seemed) to every cat around.

They'd fly in fear or leastwise look from trees

whenever her mighty panther self passed by.

Her world became too small for her to lord

in satisfactory joy and so her men

and she adventured past the bounds of hers.

In leaving Pantherland she thought the World

itself would be renamed a Pantherworld,

but that was not to be; because adjacently

existed Lionland: I think you know

where this is going; thus it came to pass

she's fabled evermore in Pantherland,

yet quite unknown in every other one.

It's painful to admit there's nothing past

the limits of your limbs in any real way.

Atomic theory, how's it go again?

The universe is laughing up its sleeve

when we attempt to measure anything:

it's always orders bigger than we think,

and evermore shall be, hubristically;

because the Mind's more vast than Matter is

we'll never get caught up for all

eternity! The guests in your hotel

are numbered infinite and then another in-

finite arrive? Don't fret! I'd do the math

(by transfinition) for you but I'd hate

to spoil your fun in working out a solve.
The reasonable act (if act you must)

is go to worship (pointlessly)

Cxaxukluth, Kaajh'Kaalbh, Ycnàgnnisssz,

and all their dark and light relations.

But back, my Jack: we should consider more

about the mundane world and what's to do

inside the steaming cesspool of the mod.

We've got great apps and everything's a breeze.

We're making our connections to the now.

The only prejudice we have these days

is of such cowardice it makes you blush:

we hate the dead because they're not like us.

"They're icky, they owned slaves, they built

the car, they used bad words, they dressed in ties

and hats, they conquered both Americas."

And meanwhile, look: the dead are rising up

to say we're ignorant about their lives

and can't imagine plagues or Spanish flus

or how in William Shakespeare's period

but half of women managed to survive

four children borne; but wait! They can't! They're dead!

How brave we are attacking those who can't

respond! How wise is this? What wisdom's here?

Yet time will have revenge, in time, for just

as we excrete upon our yesterdays

so on the morrow they on us shall shit.

Let's raise a glass to great unworthy us!

We'll prove ourselves as garbage-heads through our

dismissal of our history! and all

the standards we could ever have are gone!

So open wide the brothels and the 'safe

injection sites'! You maggots want to live

forever?

                What's the worth of fortune, fame,

when in this place where values are so skewed?

Let's say you fill arenas with your songs:

What worth is it to please a trashy mob,

especially one that's pocked with sick tattoos?

Why seek the praise of such a world debased?

"I love you cuz your filthiness agrees

with my ill-thought opinion of my self,

and how I think my parents worse than Hitlers."

When bad and good reverse polarity,

where's virtue going to lay its dreamy head?

She'll probably find a cave in which to sleep

while all around her madness takes control;

no reason to believe she'll ever wake

again for ever and forever till

the end of time itself, for Death's the mate

apotheotic of our filthy ways.

Well, maybe it's just part and parcel of

the deep divide, if not a paradox,

that human life is simultaneously

both cheap and dear; (though cheapness oft's applied

to those we do not know, while dearness is

the concept used to talk of those we love,

I think this opposition is in play

whenever we have regrets about the waste

we've made of hours - with garbage cable television shows).

That wisdom doth increase progressively

is something I have argued in the past;

I've even got it plotted out, with axis X

and Y, with X presenting time and wisdom Y

(abstracted), and two lines diagonal:

one running from the origin to right

(this represented individual 'smarts' from birth

to death, increasing mathematically);

a second line that started halfway up

along the Y, and ended slightly high-

er on the right which represented know-

ledge general; in ending, it explained

the reason why one finds the world to get

more stupid as one gets as old ... as me.

---

[i] King Abdullah University of Science and Technology.