Prelude to "Fuck"
1. We
all got stories that no-one could ever have as much interest in as we do.
ESPECIALLY we got these stories ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY about love.
2. I got
this love you can't care ever about just as much as you got some love I can't
ever care about.
3. Given
that.
4. I'm
listening to Led Zeppelin right now, and I am again thinking about Yolanda
Mulder. You know she was nuts, and you know I had the hots for her, and you
know my sister told my mother, and that my mother told me to stay away from
this crazy girl Yolanda, and you know I didn't stay away but instead LIED TO MY
MOTHER in order to take her to John Walkaluk's
basement where I kissed her like mad and almost touched her nipple, and she was
panting in my ear when Mrs. Walkaluk stopped us
because she thought Yolanda was Ellen Calder.
5.
Where's it hurt?
6.
Where's the solar plexus?
7. How
can we be so perplexed about old loves?
8. Where
did Yolanda go? She would have ruined me, bitch witch she was, but now I'm
ruined anyway: forever loving Yolanda.
*
"Every
technology creates a fresh set of potential disasters. There's no question
about it. Invent the plane, and you are also inventing the plane crash. Invent
the ship, you're inventing the shipwreck. Invent the automobile, invent cars
driving off cliffs. Invent the telephone, and now you've got crank calls.
Invent the shoe, you'll get bunions. Edison invented the light bulb, and also
the ones that explode when you least expect them to. The invention of marriage
resulted in the invention of adultery and also the invention of the key party.
Whoever invented Post-it Notes invented I don't know how many
production-sucking practical jokes. Invent the CNCCANEN SSR-25 DA 25A 3-32V
DC/24-380V AC Solid State Relay, and you're inventing an annoyed listener.
Invent a painting, say, of a landscape, and you're also inventing the low-circulation
community college arts journal that generally concerns landscapes. Invent the
razor, invent the goatee and the neck-beard. Invent cartography and you're also
inventing the tourist trap ... and also, consequently, hills and motels teeming
with hungry desert cannibals. Invent the Sharpie, and you're also inventing
millions of drawings of dicks. Invent heterogeneity, and you're inventing
something else. Invent writing, and you also invent me."
‑Paul
Virilio
*
On a Mouse
I
circled around the beast, from hind to muzzle and back to hind again as she
eyed me warily with her little beady pink ones. The rope I gently tussled and
tossed in the well-worn hypnotist's fashion that had served me well all my
years of mouse-busting. She was watching my left hand
swinging while meanwhile my right reached out to pat that filly's hindquarters.
She squeaked feebly at the feel of my fingers, and that's when I knew she
finally trusted me.
I
dropped the lasso and picked up the harness in a careful way so as to not break
physical contact. We were staring eye-to-eye and I was careful enough to have a
gentle and kind look on my face. Slowly I passed the harness over her nose,
eyes, and ears; I was murmuring all the time: "That's a good girl; you're
a good mouse, aintcha?" I swung my right
leg over her back and hopped up and she fidgeted a bit at the unfamiliar
sensation then ran in a circle till she stopped. I knew she was broke. "Hie!" I cried, and off we went, in the direction of
the cupboard under the sink.
*
The
Oxford Union Society formed in 1823 because Oxford lacked a quality comedic
troupe. The founders had knowledge of things hidden since the foundation of the
world. They were well aware that every question worthy of debate would carry
with it assumptions that wore masks on two sides of
its head and from there would come the comedy. Whenever there was a debate
proposal‑for they'd formally compose the term's schedules at a series of
board meetings‑they would not laugh though all felt like laughing. They
didn't have to conspire because they all knew what was really going on beneath
the surface. They understood that, since the value of anything is absurdly
worthy and worthless at the same time, that since life itself should
simultaneously be affirmed and denied, and that but for ad hoc assumptions
truth is neither absolute nor relative, every debate possible would inevitably
carry contradictory valences with no middle ground. All this reasoning is plain
to see though one would invariably get pilloried for stating that certain
axioms are required for a person to function in society and that said axioms
are formally unprovable. The Society is constantly laughing inwardly, since all
formal debates are intrinsically theological.
*
The
Emperor of China, in the year 4717, reigned supreme over a ceremonial unboxing
of Deutsche Grammaphon's massive Anniversary Edition,
catalog #0289-483-5268-5, in front of a crowd of his highest nobility. Four
eunuchs carried the collection in on a bamboo litter and set it down before his
augustness; they then kowtowed, and backed out of the chamber. The Imperial
Wizard presented to his sovereign a box cutter on a poisonless
silver salver. The Emperor took up the cutter and, after a dramatic pause,
sliced across, in three directions, the top of the Amazon box. Four flaps were
folded down, in the four compass directions, only to reveal a second box
within. The nobility gasped. This had not been expected. Four earls came
forward to assist, but the spell had been broken. The royal chronicler held his
quill aloft. The scenario was ruined. He had been prepared to write of the
difference between generic classification and chronological classification, in
reference to Luis Borges, for he had dreamed of the situation the night before.
The Emperor was to kick over a table and dismiss the court; however, the
existence of the second box had upset the universal scheme. The court was
naked.
*
The
police had the building surrounded, with sharpshooters, rifles, tear-gas: the
works.
From
behind a squad car Sergeant Mick yelled through his bullhorn: "Okay,
Lucky: come out with your hands up!"
A voice
came from the building: a shout: "I'm not here!"
"Say
again?"
"I'm
not here!"
Mick
looked around, thinking. He called to a cop: "Get me Prof!"
'Prof'
wasn't a real professor; rather, he was a cop who had read some books. He got
beside Mick who told him: "He says he's not there!"
"Where?"
"In
the building!"
It was
Prof's turn to think. Then he took Mick's bullhorn and called: "Lucky! If
you're not there, where are you?"
"I'm
not telling!"
"Can
you give us a hint?"
"No!"
"Just
a little one?"
"No!"
After a
moment, Prof called: "What city are you in?"
No
response.
"Aw,
c'mon! What city are you in?... Fine, what country are you in?"
"You're
the cops. You figure it out!"
Prof
puzzled; it was a poser.
"Lucky:
Does the name of your country start with one of the letters in the first half
of the alphabet, A through M?"
"....Yes."
Prof
shouted to the rank-and-file: "For God's sake someone fetch a
gazetteer!"
*
When, on
Friday, the news hits that Pete Davidson died on Thursday, no-one will believe
that I said on Tuesday that it would happen. They may believe, on Friday, that
I had been staying in a Manhattan warehouse from Sunday to Wednesday, and they
may also believe that several dozen others had passed through the warehouse
also from Sunday to Wednesday, but still they will not believe that I said on
Tuesday that Davidson would be dead by Friday. Even if they knew I'd said such
a thing, they will not believe, on Friday, that I knew because I had already
been to the future of tomorrow and tomorrow's tomorrow and tomorrow's tomorrow's tomorrow, i.e. Wednesday and Thursday and
Friday, to dispatch to my earlier self a narrative of where I would be, who I
would meet, and what I would be doing in the near future. Finally, this marker,
this proof, of what would be past history in three or four days, will be
discounted as having been something of a lucky prognostication made by someone
who has barely heard of said Davidson and who had spent a hallucination of a
Manhattan warehouse through which had passed spectral personages.
*
"When
Cupid ope'd my soul so like a lock
"She
called on all to try their slotty keys;
"And
tried they all, for weeks, around the clock,
"Till
one‑that's you‑proved termisangalese."
She
looked at me and said: "Pretty good. Who's it for?"
"You.
It's for you."
"I
think Cupid's a boy, isn't he?"
"Not
always."
"Well,
if you say so. I'd have to look it up. Anyway, is it true that everyone tried
their keys in your lock around the clock?"
"It's
an allegory, of an internal experience. It's what I feel."
"So you think I've done something, I don't know, special to you."
"Yes.
That's it. That's it entirely."
"Is
it? I proved ... what is it ... 'Termisangalese'?"
"Yup."
"What
the hell does that mean?"
"It's
Greek. It refers to the mysterious one-off squiggles or squibbles
that you find in manuscripts. That can't be reproduced typographically. Termisangala,
someone called it."
"I
guess I have to believe you. So you think I'm
unique?"
"Yes."
"Isn't
everyone?"
"I
suppose so. I think you're reading a bit too closely."
"I'm
just reading like a normal person. In any case, it's nice. You're sweet
sometimes. I don't really like proper poems anyway."
*
"There's
something hiding under my bed, Daddy."
"Oh?
Something hiding under your bed?"
"Yeah.
It's a boy."
"There's
a boy hiding under your bed?"
"Yeah."
"Have
you talked to him?"
"Yeah,
but he doesn't answer."
"Why's
that?"
"It's
'cause he's working on the
cloud, and computing in the cloud, and he's an Aspie too."
"My
oh my! No wonder he won't answer! Just go to sleep, darling."
"It's
too scary, Daddy. What he's doing, I mean."
"What
is he doing?"
"He's
building something only his kind can control, something big and dangerous, and
no-one's stopping him."
"Why
aren't they stopping him?"
"It's
'cause he and his kind have
trained everyone to accept what they're doing. They're enslaving us and we
don't know it."
"Oh,
for heaven's sake!"
"I
know what he's doing, 'cause I'm three, and in a lot
of ways he's three too."
"How
old is he really?"
"Twenty-eight.
He's building a monster."
"It's
going to eat you up?"
"No.
Not really. I'll just be its total slave."
"Don't
worry about the programmer under your bed. Just keep saying: 'He's gone,' and
he'll be gone."
"Okay
Daddy."
"Good
night."
"Night."
He's
gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's not gone.
*
It's a
little four corners where once stood a hardware store, a grocery, city hall,
and a bar.
Other
streets got grown there, just a stone's throw down what came to be called the
cardinal points, though north is actually north-north-north-west. Some houses
grew up there, along tree avenues made to look like a postcard of Paris. There
was only one cross-street to the west, though, 'cause
that's where the river got put, to monetize the sugar mill.
It's
there at the central corners of Main and Spruce that the winds blow through, kicking
up snow or shoving around leaves. The snows I piled up one year were taller
than Charlie MacCaulay's stovepipe hat, and that's
pretty tall.
A fire
got set down there and burned up one of the places I was letting them build a
bunch of newfangled bungalows. By the time extinguishment took place it was all
a wrecky mess. The culprit's still being sought and
fingers are getting pointed at some local kid.
The
little town might find itself getting tiresome to think about, rather more
sooner than later; already there's grumblings that nobody's doing much of
anything there, and maybe it's a waste of river.
*
I didn't
have this dream last night wherein I was in the future, with all of its marvels
and miracles; I walked through the city streets and all the windows reacted to
my presence by slowly changing their colours to my favourite colours; and I got
closer to the tallest buildings in the city around which flew little space-cars
held aloft by nothing; the building I was walking to looked like a cathedral
greater than GaudÃ's:
hard to believe, even in a dream; and I went inside and clumsily crossed myself
with illuminated water before proceeding up the centre aisle; there was music
playing like Bach's music but it wasn't anything I recognized; and I found a
priest at the altar reading a novel; and I asked him who made all these
miracles and he said it was the programmer who'd made all the miracles and I
asked to meet the programmer; and the priest laughed and told me the programmer
was locked in a room and noöne could get into it; and I asked why and he said
that it was because over the years the programming of the programmer's security
system had become far too difficult to decipher.
*
If I was
a better doctor, I'd enjoy the sight of blood.
If I was
a better reporter, I would push people into temptation.
If I was
a better cook, I'd manipulate all the food guides to add 'foods made by me' to
the basic groupings.
If I was
a better dentist, every day would be Hallowe'en.
If I was
a better adulterer, I'd practice the encouragement of matrimony.
If I was
a better musician, I'd "clean the shit out of my ears", as my sister
use to say to me.
If I was
a better thief, I'd form a Magna Carta Awareness League.
If I was
a better stepmother, I'd own more buckets and mops.
If I was
a better electrician, I'd assign valences to acids and alkalis.
If I was
a better carpenter, I'd be hammering 25/8.
If I was
a better father, I'd sire a bairn.
If I was
a better prognosticator, I would have finished writing this an hour ago.
If I was
a better fruit, I'd be more seedy than you can
imagine.
If I was
a better socializer, I might be able to love my neighbour.
If I was
a better writer, see below.
*
I came
into the dining room and everything went suddenly quiet. I cast my mind back to
discover who had been speaking before I'd entered the room. Without a doubt it
had been my mother and Linda. Additionally, my mother had looked away suddenly
upon seeing me enter the room.
I said:
"So what were you all talking about just right now?"
Many
heads got to shaking (dare I say it?) vociferously.
I
stepped up to the table, nearly slipping on a spilled piece of chicken étouffée. "Come on. I deserve to
hear it."
My
mother said: "We were talking about you, and about how you could really
amount to something if it wasn't for your damned pigheadedness and virtually
solipsistic belief you can be as lewd and crude and skewed as you want to be
without there being any repercussions to speak of."
I
climbed onto the table and said: "YES, I CAN. I INSIST ON DOING THINGS MY
WAY. I AM GOING ALL THIS ALONE. I AM AIMING AT SOMETHING TRUE THAT I APPEAR TO
BE THE ONLY ONE CAPABLE OF SEEING. IF THAT INVOLVES CRUDENESS, SO BE IT;
LEWDNESS, LIKEWISE; PLUS, IT CAN ONLY BE DONE SKEWEDLY."
*
In the Hive of Bees
It was
election time once again in the beehive. Mr. Bee answered his buzzer.
The bee
on the stoop said: "Good evening, Mr. Bee, I am Mr. Bee, running for City
Council."
Mrs. Bee
came up behind Mr. Bee to say: "Hello, Mr. Bee. How's Mrs. Bee?"
"Mrs.
Bee is fine."
Mr. Bee
interrupted: "Do you know Mrs. Bee, Mrs. Bee?"
Mrs. Bee
said: "Yes; we're in the same quilting bee."
"Ah.
So, Mr. Bee, what's your platform?"
"Simple.
We want to give each bee a number so they can be told apart."
"Number?"
"You
know, one, two, three, etcetera."
Mr. Bee
puzzled. "Are those like a few, a bunch, a lot?"
"No.
It's a whole new system. It's called quantification.
Us bees will be ordinals, identifiable and unique. No more fuzziness about
who's who!"
"Hmmm,
so ... who will be 'first' among us 'equals'?"
Mr. Bee
scratched his right forewing and said plainly: "I believe I could step up
to it."
"Very
good, Mr. Bee. That's all I need to know."
The door
shut.
To Mrs.
Bee Mr. Bee said: "As. If."
Mrs. Bee
quizzed him with a look.
"Typical progressive," Mr. Bee
elaborated.
*
He
reached into his pocket for a five for his girlfriend and since a key was
caught in the pocket lining he had to tug and as he
tugged a quarter popped out of his pocket and landed on the roulette table on
seventeen. He reached for it but the croupier put his hand out to stop him from
touching the table. The wheel landed on seventeen and so he was given he didn't
know how many chips all on that seventeen. Impulsively he shifted the chips and
the quarter over to eighteen and snapped his fingers boldly. The wheel spun and
spun and it was eighteen this time. To break the pattern
he shoved the huge pile over to seventeen again and he was the only player. The
wheel spun and landed on seventeen. A security guy showed up to witness. The
chips and the quarter went to sixteen this time and more money stacked up. This
was some kind of lucky streak and this is a true story. The wheel spun.
Sixteen. The crowd grew. He knew there was a pattern, so seventeen it was
again. The wheel spun and stopped at fifteen. This is the oldest story.
*
Ah, I
remember the good old days. We were all terribly excited by anything that
needed batteries.
A page
in the Consumers Distributing catalog featured electronics learner kits, with
diodes and buzzers and resistors and such glued onto a board, with springs at
either end. Yellow, blue, and red wires could be attached to the springs, and
voila, you pressed a switch and a light went on.
He
walked across the fields to the Five Points Mall, spring 1978, ready to buy
one. He was going to invent wonderful things one day. In the store he carefully
filled out the form, being especially careful with the six-digit catalog
number.
Out of
stock, said the lady at the counter. We can call you when it comes in.
‑How
long will that be?
‑A
week, probably.
‑I'll
come back in a week.
‑It
may be more than a week.
‑Okay.
He went
out into the fresh air and onto the path through the fields. He noticed the
birds chirping and tried to differentiate between their songs. And there were
the crickets.... Cicadas? He wondered what that word meant, and was he
pronouncing it right?
A week
later he went back.
‑Sorry,
we don't have it in yet.
‑Oh.
Soon then?
‑Maybe
another week.
To the
fields he went with pleasure. He could see insects in multiplicity in the
grasses. He stopped to sit down. Chaotic life was everywhere around him,
crawling on him even.
A week
later, and
‑Sorry,
still not in.
‑Well....
Can I cancel the order?
‑Sure
thing. The customer's always right.
The sky
was big and cloud-mottled. He watched them come and go. The water went up, and
the water came down. Trees also went up, and down, to sky, to soil. One big
ball.
God
bless Consumers Distributing.
*
Now is
the time, seeing as we're almost halfway through, to dim the lights, at around
midnight, put on a sensitive pop song about loneliness, and survey where all
the characters are.
Tom is
sitting at his kitchen table, smoking a cigarette and staring off thoughtfully.
Through
a window we see Pat and Jessica in their bedroom. Pat is reclining with a
magazine; Jessica's face is lit by he laptop computer.
Here's
Anne blandly naked in her basement apartment as some gigolo is pulling on his
pants.
A door
gets slammed‑who is leaving?‑who is
leaving Henry all on his own? staring into the cushion of his couch?
Tabby is
snuggling safely in bed with Mr. Dopey her rabbit doll. Troubles await her
tomorrow, you betcha.
The
fight seems to be continuing between Tanya and Geoff. Tanya is screaming
something, but the pop song is louder than she is. I guess the content doesn't
matter.
Out in
the woods there's little Marcel with his flashlight in his tent. He's reading a
vintage Batman comic. POW!
And finally there's Betty who is staring at herself in her
mirror. She sticks out her tongue, then leaves the frame.
Now back
to our narrative.
*
Joe
Pesci was out on his veranda one morning, drinking a rare fortified wine, when
he glanced across the valley to his brother's barley fields and noticed there
was something decidedly wrong going on. The barley plants weren't precisely
aflame, but rather they were turning brown and ashen as if they were in flames. Whatever the phenomenon was, it was
spreading. He got out his phone and phoned up his brother.
"Hey,
brother. There's something going on with your barley. It's like it's all
burning up. Naw, I don't smell anything either. Go
out and check."
Joe
watched his brother come out of his villa and walk into his barley field. They
made eye contact. Joe's brother shrugged. Joe gestured to his phone. "Hey,
brother. You see it? You don't? Well I see it. Oh my God!"
Joe
dropped his phone. His brother was disintegrating before his eyes. He watched
his brother's face silently blacken and burn away. Very soon his younger by
twenty months was but a skeleton holding a phone. Joe picked up his own phone.
"Hey,
brother? You're just a skeleton now. You don't notice? Maybe I'll get used to
it. I can get used to anything."
*
Massive Parliamentary Orgy Turns
Charnel
Canadian Colony's Descent into
Madness
Just
weeks before a federal election, the legislature of the tiny nation of Canada
last night turned into what one witness described as "a site of orgiastic
bloodshed never witnessed in the world before."
Said
Page Stephan Lamontaigne, "I left the floor of
the House to attend to my thrice-raped anus, and by the time I returned, fewer
than a quarter of the celebrants were left alive."
Casualties
number in the seventies, according to sources, with most of the remaining party‑all
save four who escaped into the Ottawa night and are considered extremely
dangerous‑behind bars and awaiting their arraignments before the bailiff.
"These
types of sadistic and masochistic free-for-alls are held regularly during the
Sessions; politicians need to blow off some steam, you see, but never before
have more than two murders been committed," said one Officer of the Mace
who preferred to remain anonymous.
According
to reports, several cabinet and shadow-cabinet ministers are also among the
deceased, or are escapees. Some forty of the dead are so-called backbenchers,
and the parties are expected to scramble to present fully nominated rosters for
the election scheduled for the 22nd of October.
*
Hello there Mark Zuckerberg. How are you? I am fine. The reason I
am writing to you is because there's a whole lot of talk about all this
"Fake News" stuff, and I'd like to turn your attention to something I
saw on your website that really you should take down because we're in a
democracy I hear. This is the thing
https://www.facebook.com/john.skaife/posts/10162514275740106 that's so
upsetting. How can you allow this to happen? I should report you to the
Canadian government. You see, it's obviously deceptive in that though it's
almost entirely accurate, and I can say that because I know Page Stephan Lamontaigne and I know what he's been through this year,
the third-last word‑is "22" a word? it counts as a word in Word‑is
"22" and that's like a phony date because I know (and I have the
Wikipedia links to back it up, so: no fooling) that that's not when the
election is. And so that makes the whole thing phony-phony-phony, at least
that's how things work nowadays or something. Anyway, Mark, unpollute
your website pronto and no hard feelings, just that I have red hair like you so
I know what it's like to be ugly.
*
Why are
we giving hurricanes human names?
I think
it's terrible the way we personify these bloody awful storms with the names of,
like, our brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles.
Why did
we think we should call these calamities friendly-sounding names?
People
are killed by these things, and yet we call them with neighbourly handles.
It
doesn't make sense to me.
(Perhaps
it has to do with the Freudian death wish....)
I think
it's time to put a stop to this habit of being the potential friends of
hurricanes.
If we're
going to personify them, why not insult them at the same time?
I'm not
talking sophisticated insults; I'm talking juvenile sophomoric taunts.
Insult
them!
"Alabama
this weekend suffered $10m in damages from Hurricane Moron...." (That
moron! That moron of a hurricane!)
You can
come up with your own juvenile sophomoric insults; here I offer up a starting
list:
Hurricane
Arsehole
Hurricane
Bastard
Hurricane
Cretin
Hurricane
Douchebag
Hurricane
Edumacated
Hurricane
Fuckup
Hurricane
Goofus
Hurricane
Has-been
Hurricane
Ignoramususususus
Hurricane
Jerkoff
Hurricane
Kiss-my-ass
Hurricane
Lame-o
Hurricane
Monit
Hurricane
Nincompoop
Hurricane
Obnoxious
Hurricane
Prick
Hurricane
Quimbot
Hurricane
Rat-fuck
Hurricane
Shit-for-brains
Hurricane
Twit
Hurricane
Ugly
Hurricane
Vomit
Hurricane
Witless
Hurricane
Has-been-drip-under-pressure
Hurricane
Yahoo
Hurricane
Zuckerberg
