NODE$AZABUA ESC: INV CONNECTED ENTER AUTHORIZATION CODE: vx1w3~bda ENTER AUTHORIZATION PASS: _________ WELCOME TO THE VIRTUAL NOISE EXCHANGE. YOUR MANTRA IS ESC. SYSTEM _COWSENGINE__________________ USE EXISTING? N USER _GUESSED_____________________ VERIFY? N MANTRA NONE VOL VI SYS$TERM: VT314 SYS$EXT: 159 CONTINUE (Y/N) ? Y =============== the undisc. ct. =============== editors: sven ("cblanc@pomona.claremont.edu") prozak && l.b. ("rm09216@academia.swt.edu") noire %ls -bfd total 33 drwx--x--x 4 abraxas 512 May 29 19:21 ./ drwxr-xr-x 7 other 512 Mar 15 14:39 ../ -rw-r--r-- 1 abraxas 0 Aug 16 19:09 .link -rw-r--r-- 1 abraxas 512 Jun 6 00:31 .cshrc lrw-r--r-- 1 lbnoire 111 Jan 28 19:21 push lrw-r--r-- 1 chaos 113 Feb 4 11:02 poets lrw-r--r-x 1 mstutz 131 Apr 11 05:31 fav_comics drwx------ 11 pazuzu 512 Jun 6 04:11 death_metal lrw-r--r-- 1 bambrose 121 Mar 5 04:12 mantra lrwx-----x 1 srprozak 132 Jun 6 04:06 stoner_adventures % push [l.b. noire] The burning in my quadriceps tells me that my legs are nearing exhaustion but I have to keep pumping the pedals to reach the crest of the hill. I've always prided myself on using that bit of long-suppressed rage to carry me through situations that require extending yourself beyond your capabilities. This time, I'm not sure if I can summon the anger to surpass my physical limits. The anger is no longer there. I feel as if my best friend since I was ten has now betrayed me and left me at the time I need him most. My limit is reached and my leg muscles withdraw in terror from the imminent pain. My mountain bike slows to a crawl during the climb and I shift to the lowest gear. This does nothing to help the situation because I am now just spinning the pedals while inching forward at an intolerable rate. I jump from my saddle without even bothering to use the brakes. Gravity is enough to bring the bike to a stop. As usual, I didn't think about the consequences of my actions so my now-useless legs give out when I put my full weight on them. I fall first to my backside. This undignified position is made worse when my bike, lacking a kickstand, cannot stand on its own and sprawls across me sending me to the ground on my back. I lie there for a few seconds wondering if my heart, now pumping at 180 beats per minute, is going to rupture. I usually take my heart for granted and barely give it a second thought. However, right now I can feel it as another aching muscle in my body simply wanting more oxygen and a brief rest. I look down at my bike before I push it off my chest and to the side. Then I put my hands behind my head and decide to rest here for a few minutes. I look at the sky and observe the dissipating clouds dancing through the setting sunlight which gives them colors ranging from a light hue of purple on their western sides to a bright shade of orange on their eastern sides. I can feel the sunlight on my face which makes me look over to the setting sun on my right. I suddenly realize I had reached the crest of the hill and start laughing out loud. For once, I had actually accomplished something without having to rely on a spirit I dread to summon. Adolescent energy has dissolved into the past taking with it naivete, innocence, ignorance, and haste. Emerging in its place is a maturity bringing with it wisdom, experience, awareness, and patience. After resting, I move my bike to the side and stand up, brushing the grass and dirt off my shorts. I look around to assess my situation: The sun is beginning to set; I am almost fifteen miles from town on a ranch road in the middle of the hill country; the temperature is starting to fall from sixty-five degrees to Dog-only-knows what in the thirties with a slight southwestern wind adding to the drop; and, it doesn't matter that I am nowhere near a phone because I have no money. I decide to continue to my destination instead of turning home because I am so close. Although it would be easier at this point to turn back, I need to finish this ride. I lift my bike and straddle the seat. One more look around reinforces the fact that I'm in the middle of somewhere: Trees, hills, rocks, shrubs and cacti stretch to the horizon in every direction. The only synthetic interruption to this blanket of green and brown is the solitary ranch road waving over the hills until it disappears in a valley between two large hills which actually resemble small mountains. I shiver at the temperature and the thought of having to cross this distance to get to my destination, but it is something that simply has to be done if I want to get there. The thought of using the full potential of my mountain bike crosses my mind. I had recently become more skilled at off-road riding when a friend had to teach me the vast difference between road cycling and off-road cycling. It took me several weeks (and numerous cuts and bruises from falls) before I learned the basics of crossing rough terrain. However, since it is getting dark I decide not to do this right now. I'm not too familiar with the countryside of the Devil's Backbone to attempt its crossing in the dark. There are a few of ravines and cliffs that could put a quick end to my ride if I didn't see them in time. Also, the idea of hitting a rock and being thrown onto a cactus isn't very thrilling. This trip will have to be finished along the road. I push off with my right foot and begin coasting down the hill. Acceleration. Within seconds I have reached the bottom of the hill and must begin another climb on another hill. However, the climb is made much easier by using the momentum from the previous hill. The funny thing I discovered about myself and cycling is circles. The word "cycling" alone holds much meaning. If I were to look at the long distance of a ride I was about to make, I wouldn't even start. However, I simply start without worrying about the distance. It's not an ignorance of the distance for I have to know my own limits. Instead, it's a way of not becoming overwhelmed with the trip ahead. I simply look down at the ground and concentrate on where I am with an awareness of my destination. Concentration. Concentration on little circles. I look at my feet and concentrate on the little circles I'm making with the peddles. They seem to be moving in a continuous cycle never moving anywhere and never accomplishing anything. A large dualie pick-up truck passes inches from my left side at a speed which is surely much higher than the posted speed limit. The suction of the passing truck nearly rips me from the bike and onto the road. I momentarily consider shouting some form of obscenities at the shrinking truck, but restrain myself because it won't accomplish much more than emptying my lungs of much needed oxygen. Besides, I'm not adequately armed to fend off an attack from Joe Bob and Bubba who are probably carrying an ax handle and a shotgun. Cycles. My feet continue to circle endlessly like gerbils on exercise wheels. They seem to never move more than the few inches back and forth, but it is this motion that drives me forward. The motion of the cycle that gets me to my destination. It's at this destination that I look up and realize that I have passed between twin hills and into a large valley. The sun has completely set by now and I'm following the road partially through feel and partially through the faint moonlight illuminating the center line. I cross the bridge over the river. I can't see the river since it is too dark, but I can hear the water flowing over the rocks below. I coast for another two hundred yards before stopping at the only light along the main street of this small town of a few hundred people. I pull up to the small gas station and get off my bike. I lean it against the wall near the door and bend over with my hands on my knees to catch my breath. After a minute, I stand up straight and walk inside. An elderly couple are running the place tonight. The man is sitting at an old wooden desk going through receipts. The woman had been reading a magazine but came over to the counter when I walked in. I ask her if there is a phone I could use. She tells me of the payphone right outside the door. I thank her and walk out feeling foolish because I now realize I had leaned my bike against the wall right under the payphone. I pick up the handset, punch in a carrier access code, a telephone number, and my calling card number (which I had memorized after repeated uses). Ring once. Ring twice. "Hello?" my fiance answers with a sleepy voice. "Hey, I'm sorry to bother you. Were you asleep?" "No," she lies, "I had just laid down." "I'm sorry. I was wondering if you could do me a favor." "Yeah." "I'm kind of stranded twenty-five miles from my apartment. I was wondering if you could pick me up." "Where are you?" "I'm at the first gas station in Wimberly. I rode here on my bicycle, but I'm too tired to ride back and it's getting cold and . . ." I trail off. She giggles. "Okay. Let me get dressed and I can be there in about thirty minutes." "Thanks. I can't tell you how much I appreciate this." "It's okay." "All right. I'll see you in a little bit." I'm getting ready to hang up the handset. "Hey!" I managed to hear her yell before I hung up. "What?" "I love you." I laugh a little at my forgetfulness and say, "I love you, too." "I'll see you soon." "Bye." I hang up the phone with a smile on my face. I look up at the moon. It has risen to its zenith and is throwing its full light on the ground. I smile again and walk inside to the warmth to wait. % bolgia of poetry "I do not know myself and God forbid that I should." J.W. von Goethe. I am I am what I am a man(iac) Am I evil? yes I am because I am man What am I? A(n) Philosopher Mathematician Artist Poet Lover Monster None of the above I am what? I my eyes, my eyes the burning in my inseyedes pebble on a shorelessea rocked to and fro for all to see I CrI ng the tears from my eyes _. . ._ lost the motherland waif forever despeyesed dI ng i AM soldier of fortune student of wisdom vampire in the night cloaked from vision shade shadow am I [-thumper: kkim@pomona.claremont.edu] "what a foolish mailer" then they lie it's the truth in the skin paradise it's the lie in the skin subvert the soul denied forty shrikes and leeches clawed out the soul of the misbegotten man blasted by the sand of the dunes and the sun of the lie, finally screamed fuck it and shot sixty grams of pure street smack into his aorta. somewhere in chicago, an E string broke on a secondhand guitar. label the guilty forgive the label thymotic sense denied decision which deride in turn confusion at the thought a choice is isolation [-sven: cblanc@pomona.claremont.edu] "clay figurines" While clawing my way through this maze I find myself in a daze The man without a heart Clay figurines blown apart The twilight mercenaries grind on Eliciting an undulating cry by dawn The dream ends the night gone Yet the cry persists to echo on Oh-how I live a secluded life Striving to break free of all this strife Let the masquerade end The masks torn off, the smiling faces descend Spiraling downward into the madness, never to mend [-thumper: kkim@pomona.claremont.edu] "line tension" ahhhh damnit gotta go atm. just had 40 eating out too much where're my keys? desk no dresser no pocket light lock it lts go. sunglasses! forget it ahh no ticket sweeeet twenty thousand! god getting old new oil shit that's 20. maybe 60 new sonic youth newyork dark shades black old vans jeans t go! please go! the trees! spring grass orange poppies more ya roses? na daisies thats 12 ahh hell gotta get a job [-altars of madness:dsaltarelli@alphie.claremont.edu] "ground", A.Y.8 I put my face to the ground and scream there is no sound echoed back but what originates with me the ground is silent I climb on a rock and scream at the ground the sound flies free for a moment before the ground swallows the vibe the ground is silent I climb to the top of the tree and scream there is nothing to see, but the absence of vibrations is startling the ground is silent I climb a hill and lay on my back the sky observes my rest and reflects my nature; it carries it downward the ground is silent I remove myself from the earth there was no one to talk to, no one to converse the ground was silent. [-lbnoire:rm09216@academia.swt.edu] "unknown" What am I? I am the fuel I am the fire I am the burning desire I am the nightmare of your life I am the fear that keeps you up all night I am the shadow that you cannot see I am all there is, you are me. What am I?. . . a dream I Dream into reality I Become the basis for morality Actions become words Mimes make sense Acting out the silent pain of death [-thumper:kkim@pomona.claremont.edu] "suffer" Pyrogenesis Cleansed by your clarion call I breathe and I scream [-bambrose@pomona.claremont.edu] "nocturne" beet poetry at its best poq whoq whaq slaq smaq wow--way-0, man, that's sofuckingheavyyonder... scary like a bogeyman's abandoned gauntlet in a small car by a side rd. scareful like children- unleashed from adultish thinking. scary again like all them out there a million eyes waiting, watching, whispering, & scorning us of distant- minded absentness.orare we all them moons? left skyward, eyesome, alone monolithicrantingpraise "signal noise" (wave) sort of like in the morn of it all my hand is wrinkled beneath salt water waves pass smoothly over skin eyes pass slowly down the beachline horizon moving like a slow nun. and then the breeze soft slapping wind water stops to brush the shore people turn to stare and stare water curses those who live youthful in the stunning sun in the ocean of my latent birth my hand once more passes through a wave catching single golden hairs passing through the growing wrinkles the aging of the sun defies the day begin again insurgent thing cleft leave me dawning shimmering riplets like wrinkles scar the sky. [-sven:cblanc@pomona.claremont.edu] % favorite comics I hear somebody. I guess that there's someone else on the line; Mitch had said that the lines were open, and so I called, and I didn't expect anybody because I'd never really done this before, but somebody was talking. I did this a couple times, calling this shit late at night, and it was real cool -- this night, there's a voice, a guy, talking to someone else, a whisper. The whisper kept saying, "Yeah," and "Okay," and not much else, like it was trying to avoid waking someone. So I said, "Hello?" And the voice talked. He said, "Hello?" So I said, "What's up?" And the voice said, "Not much. Listening to Mitch's show." Mitch had put some music on, and I didn't like it all that much -- I thought that the talk show was better, so I turned down the volume a little. Then the voice said, "So what are you doing?" "Me?" "Yeah." "Listening to the show." "Yeah. I don't really like this shit." "This music?" "Yeah." "Me neither." So we both listened to the silence on the telephone for a while. The whisper was even quiet. "My neighbors are asleep," the voice said. "Shouldn't they be?" I asked. "It's three a.m." "Yeah, but they're kind of weird." "Why? Where do you live?" "Euclid. Where are _you_ calling from?" "North Royalton. I've never been to Euclid." "I've never been to Royalton. I don't even know where that _is_." I couldn't imagine anyone who lived in Cleveland and who hadn't been to North Royalton. I mean, sure, there's East siders and West siders, but North Royalton? I mean, come _on_! "Yeah, but I have weird neighbors." "How so?" "This guy next to me worked for the post office. He sold cocaine and he got busted, now all he does is sit around and play loud music -- loud soul music. "He likes it that he's suspended -- he likes to sit around and play music. When the weather's cold he invites everyone over that he knows and has a barbeque -- with like sixty people." I turn down the music on the radio a little more; I can't hear him all that well. But he's still talking: "Then you know it's time to leave -- you hear the thumping." I hear a busy signal in the background, behind his voice. He says, "Do you hear a busy signal?" "Yeah," I say. Then, I say, "Hey -- is there someone else on here, someone who was whispering?" "Yeah," says the whisper. "Oh." The voice says, "I have to take off my socks -- hold on." I hold on. I have nothing better to do. Sockless, he says, "I want to go ice skating. I only went once, but I want to go." I say, "I went once. It didn't work out very well. I fell all over. I was in Boy Scouts." The voice is quiet to that. I listen to the music; it's still pretty lousy. "My neighbor asked me if I believe in God, and I said, 'No.'" This is what the voice says, out of nowhere. I wait a second, and then I say, "Oh." I say, "So, tell me about your crazy neighbors." He starts to talk. "There's two old people, the post office guy and this old lady across the street. They're the only old people in the neighborhood. Everyone else is young suburbanites: 'Hi, I work at Tower City during the day and watch rented movies at night.' The old people are the interesting ones. They're the ones on the medication. "The old Alzheimer's woman is crazy." "Why?" "She's this old lady across the street and down a couple houses. My window's on the side of the house and when she turns her porch light on it hits my wall and it keeps me up -- you know how a little light at night keeps you up? Well, she does this all the time . . . I wish I knew her phone number because I'd call her up and say, 'What are you doing?'" He sounds like he doesn't believe that she's got her light on, like he sees it but he just doesn't believe it. He's quiet for a second, like he's reviewing what he just said, like he's talking to himself. He says, "She'd probably say, 'Is it 1930 again?' "She's crazy . . . she'll turn it off and on all night, at weird times. I really wonder what she's doing." "It's the disease," I say. He is quiet to that. Once, I wondered about that disease. I wondered what it would be like, to not remember the things that you want to remember. To have to have everything, all your good memories and all the noise, the stuff you filter out, all go together. I think it would drive me nuts. He is talking again. "I saw these pictures -- it's for a little kid's coloring contest . . . most of these things were supposed to be red and green, you know?" "Christmas stuff?" "Yeah. Well, most of them were okay, except this kid's, who was color blind -- Santa was green, his nose was green -- it was pretty funny. "I like the coloring contests. I always like to turn them in and falsify my age . . . then they come and verify it." We both laugh, and we hear the whisper laughing a little. The voice says, "Family Circus has never been funny. I saw this thing in the bookstore, they had all the Family Circuses ever, these thick books. If you add up all the space he's been in newspapers, for the past sixty years, it would probably fill up the space of the earth. _Marmaduke_'s funnier than that. "And Ziggy -- for a week, the guy that does it just does those vending machines, and you wouldn't see Ziggy for a week." The voice sounds really irritated, so I keep quiet, and listen. "And B.C. -- _that_'s not funny. "Calvin & Hobbes is strange: Calvin sends his pet _mail_ -- it shows how schizophrenic he is. "Born Loser -- I think there's a _computer_ that makes it. He draws so bad, I don't think _anyone_ could draw so bad." I laugh, but the voice sounds really pissed, and the whisper is quiet. "Not many people put work into their things," the voice says. "I don't know about Shoe. I think the guy's got _arthritis_ from the way he draws. Herrman's okay sometimes. Kinda that sadistic humor. And Bizarro is okay once in a while. "Cathy: you have to be a forty-year-old person to like it. And I guess the real person is just like this -- she depicts her life in it. "Beetle Baily is bad too -- I think the same computer draws that that draws Born Loser. One box: 'Hey Sarge, what's going on?' and on the next one: 'ZZZZ'" "Yeah," I say, and I'm laughing. "He's dead," says the whisper, and it suprises me. "What?" asks the voice. "He's dead -- the guy who does that comic." "Oh, so then it _must_ be a computer that does it. Far Side is good but it's too hard to find. They put it like in the Arts section or something, away from the other comics. You have to look for it. "Every publicized comic -- there's like two hundred of them in this paper -- it would be okay to see, but most of them would are like Family Circus -- the computer drew it, and they just put in different words. "I cut out these stupid things, bad comics, just to remember these stupid things. I thought they used to be funny, but they're not anymore -- they're not! After fifty years, it's not funny! I think the Family Circus guy just turns in the same things." I never read comics anymore, but I know exactly what he is talking about. I mean, I read all that stuff before. He says, "I'm thinking of writing to this newspaper and complaining." "Do it," I say. He probably won't. "They should have a comic that makes fun of other comics." We're both quiet for a while, and then I ask him about his neighborhood, if the crazy lady turned her light on again. "No," he says, "but there's this other crazy lady about five houses down that has an alarm on her house, but it's not a normal alarm -- it's like a buzzer from twenty years ago. And she's got one that when you touch the house or anything it goes off . . . she sets it off by mistake all the time -- but she hasn't done it lately. "Once she locked herself out of the house and she called the fire department to let her in. They were pissed when they got there and there was no fire. "She's crazy." "Old people are crazy," I say. I once had this old man who lived next door to me when I was a kid. He used to steal candy bars from the store and give them to me. Then he would steal tools from our garage. His fingers got cut off from his lawnmower once. "I wonder if this lady sleeps during the day so she can turn the light on all night." The whisper says, "Send her a letter in the mail." "Yeah -- maybe I will." I put down the phone for a minute and go to the bathroom. In the hallway, I'm extra quiet, so that I don't wake up my parents. I use the downstairs bathroom for good measure. "Okay, I'm back," I say, when I get back. The voice says, "I got a Skippy jar full of urine, and another time I got four pairs of women's underwear, menstruated -- all in the mail." "_What_," I say. "I got it in the mail. I sent about five thousand catalogs to my friend's P.O. box at his dorm. They couldn't even fit it all in his box, so he sent that shit to me." "Why did you send him all those catalogs?" "I was bored, and my mom has all these catalogs, and from the back of mags like Cosmo I sent away for shit for him -- a free contact lens cleaning kit (he just got arrested for trying to steal it) and a pair Depend underwear." "He got arrested?" "He got arrested because he needed it and he didn't have any money. And the place he got it from only prosecutes if you steal over $4, and it turned out to be $4.06. He got pissed . . . he got so pissed that he sent me underwear in the mail that his roomate found in the garbage." "Oh." "His mom hates me -- she thinks I degraded her son . . . she just _hates_ me . . . he goes to Kent -- what other college would people have no work, and they get so bored that they send shit in the mail?" "I don't know. Do you go to college?" "No," he says. "I did -- once. Whenever I go back, I'll probably major in Art. There's all sorts of things I could do but probably never get a job in, unless I come up with a bad cartoon and put it in the paper -- but there's no room for anyone who does anything interesting." "Yeah." It's hard to find work in the field you want. There just doesn't seem to be as many opportunities as there once was, like on television, on old t.v. shows where everyone has cool jobs. "My neighbor just got home. There's this guy, his name's Nuna, he sells cars for a living -- but at night, he'll leave at 3 a.m. and come back around 4 -- I think he joyrides the cars. I've never seen him during the day; I think he sleeps or works or something." "Bye," says the whisper. He hung up; went to bed, probably. I'm tired of all this -- the music is the same crap, so I shut the radio off. Until next week; same time, same station. "I'm tired, too," I say. "I think I'm gonna go." "Yeah," the voice says, with no inflection. He just says the word, and then says this one: "Bye." "I'll talk to you later," I say, no knowing what else to. "Yeah," he says, this time with a smirk. "Bye," I say, and hang up. It's still dark out, but it won't last for long. I get ready for bed: shut off the lights, pile in with my shirt and pants still on, and let whatever's left of the dark hang over me. [-michael stutz:mstutz@rs6000.baldwinw.edu] % interment in measured tones [death metal reviews] In the name of the father, of the son...from the parallelograms of heat muted to light I modulated into the darkened room smelling of stale bread and eroded grease odors. Above the thick skin of checkerboarded red and white tablecloth the face of my friend Ed caught the fractured triangle of reflection, closing his eye to a squint. "Barf christ," he scowled. "Hasn't been a great day." These were the days when we could view days individually, before they began to integrate into patterns, progressions, marriages, jobs, or various cycles of decay that we learned to dread our way through. Right then it was finding a place, staying, finding a job, moving on. "So what's new on your mind?" The flies clustered like broken petrified logs in a corner, odd angulars into a society. "Not that much. Some crisis at the radio station, transmitter melted or something under the force of our air conditioner, they finally fixed it. With the condition of most of that stuff I'm just glad nothing blew up on us. Almost got a ticket, but - I saw this in the cop's eye - he saw a black Mercedes pull an illegal U, and damn, I was off free and he was turning, a bulking steel shark, off down the street after him." "Lucky." My experiences had been less pleasantly resolved in recent memories of that area. Through the suffocating static smother of the store speakers a hard bluesrock tune came on under the enthusiastic voice of the female DJ, who had trouble pronouncing the phrase "coming in concert" over the sound. Ed looked up annoyedly at the speakers. The front of a woman ducked in front of us to put a couple glasses of ice tea on the table, and then, folding back the battered paper of her pad, asked us to give her orders to write down on green and white thick bond. Ed looked at me a bit quizzically. "Chile relleno," I said starkly. More silence for Ed to read the bareprinted words above his finger. "Two enchilada, dos equis," he said, folding the menus into her hands. In her absence of sudden: "So what's new on your end?" I separated the four-ply napkin by twisting a corner with some sweat from my thumb. "Um, not much. Sending in some reviews of the past three months or so in death metal." Took in some ice tea, remembering someone telling me that's it's good for the throat when you do the hoarse distorted shout most of the death vocalists prefer. Ed drank from his as well. "It hasn't been a bad few months, actually. The problem with death metal is the same thing that initially protected it: the extremity of it. When you listen to something where the guy is vomiting on the mike and the music is all extreme, disconnected, nihilistic, everywhere, you're initially pulling back somewhat. That's what most of the world did. But at the same time that began as a mark of death metal's exclusivity, that also became its primary point of recognition, leading to a generation of fans who went for anything that followed some rhythmic and vocal elements, namely percussive and low, respectively." Ed nodded. I didn't sense that he cared any more that day than normal about death metal, but he gets into it sometimes, and besides, I was rolling steady. Also, he had just taken a large mouthful of enchilada and couldn't protest. I love a captive audience. "For a while there, as a result, it was all the same goo, guys meeting those qualifications and adding some gimmick, whether name or appearance. It got pretty gross, and I was about to throw in the towel, but couldn't give up my show, couldn't give up Morbid Angel." Ed knows how much I like Morbid Angel myself and seems to enjoy it thoroughly when I play it in his presence, and has also been a supporter of my show from the beginning. "But two things happened: the fan base got huge, but also spread out the available resources, leaving the smaller labels that signed crap bands heading for financial consumption, and labels began getting choosier. The smarter edge of the fan base got much more careful about what they bought. For a while it looked good again, but soon more of the commercial element came in, with bands like Sepultura and Entombed selling out, and big bands like Cannibal Corpse making it big in the mainstream United States. The only thing that saves us from these people is that their music remains fairly insipid and unsatisfying. Too many fans are buying tons of music, really digging the aesthetic but unable to deal with the simplicity and uninventiveness of the music. A whole lot of them bailed the scene. But at the same time the older bands began to get acquainted with their instruments and starting putting out better metal. And the newer crew looks pretty good. Originally, death was concept music, of brutality and a heaviness nothing else could touch. The philosophy's expanded, and a lot of stuff has come in, but not much from the dangerous side of things, the so-called 'alternative' scene. When bands want to sell out they tell us how they're putting in some 'alternative' influences." I gulped ice tea with an expulsion of air. "But most of the stuff has just gotten more serious on the musical end, which is fine by me. For a while there, it was getting as bad as the punk bands: we play with more 'feel,' etc. I think there's feel in music, but I think that feel comes from the odd collusion of intellect and emotion in a discipline, like making music. It's rock, sure, but it's art too if it's serious. Varathron was the band that first impressed me. It's pure black metal, but the older kind, which is more musical and more like older heavy metal. It's harmonic in nature; they play chords and don't just stream notes at high speed. It still has the death vocals, and uses some modern metal elements, but at heart it's tonal rock, pretty basic but not simple at all. There's a lot of variation in riff structure and in song layout, as well as some interesting experimentation with harmonics, and an ability to harmonize riffs without them sounding cheesy (a lot of this black metal stuff makes me think of giant lumps of Swiss cheese descending on a block of fresh asphalt in a New York summer). This is one of the first black metal releases I've been really enthusiastic about. It's not Scandinavian at all, from Greece actually, but it's well-played, not messy, and comes across as having real thought and intent behind it. They don't try to be scary, but the cheesiness comes in the names: Necroabyssious, Wolfen, Mutilator, and Necroslaughter. Whatever. At least they kept it out of the music." I lifted my glass and got a brief wisp of sip of ice tea, and then felt ice cubes against my upper lip. I put the glass down. "Next thing that I thought was hot shit was Mortuary, from Mexico. Really unique stuff, really powerful and fast, an earlier style of speed metal. I don't think this is new, but I don't know. Got it from J.L. America as they folded into decay. There's an obvious Slayer influence in this stuff, but it doesn't sound like Slayer. Just sometimes a similar way of thinking about things, although the approach ends up different in the end. Playing is pretty competent for underground metal, and the album overall is great. Moves quickly, songs vary, quite a bit of musical experimentation. This is far from the norm and the second release from Mexico to impress me, the first being Cenotaph. Another band that blew me away was Doomstone. I played you Deceased, right? The drummer for that band, King Fowley, started up a side project called Doomstone that recorded this album about a year ago. It's called "Those Whom Satan Hath Joined" or something along those lines. Pretty pro-Satan overall, but I don't think it's serious, that is, it's mainly to have some fun with the lyrics. There's some serious bagging on the black metal people in the liner notes. Fowley's always been a nut, though. Deceased is great stuff that makes its way by being tight and musical, technically challenging while not forgetting the idea of the listener, of making cool music. Half of the problem with death metal comes in that label, technical. For one thing, it doesn't mean jack, since 'technical' means music lessons to most of these people, and since underground metal isn't known for musicality anyway. For another thing, the bands that are spend most of their time trying to prove that they are because they're so used to people considering them inferior players and because, un-amazing as they are, they're better than most of the crowd. A few stand out ahead, starting with Morbid Angel and Atheist, but stuff like Deceased really belongs in the same category, that is, being reasonably competent or better musicality without being braindead. Playing songs to make great songs and to make them artistically challenging, but not just to try to prove that in a pond full of nobodies you're the best- trained nobody. Almost as bad as glam metal in the late eighties, when the guitar solos started getting long. But Doomstone is 'technical,' if we have to use that term, getting most of its influences from older metal while bringing a new style of noise- and atonality-influenced music into the mezcla. The end result is great. You can't really sing along, but the songs move, each is distinctive, and the whole album doesn't have a bad track. There's a Grim Reaper cover on here, but I never knew that band anyway. A lot of goofy references to cheesy movies about the occult, including one tune called "Rosemary's Baby." I have no idea who the other band members are, but they all have stupid names like "Urinator of the Holy Graveyards." I like this one a lot but most people have no clue it exists. Some of the stuff from the Midwest just blows me away. I heard about their scene a year or two ago when stuff like Accidental Suicide, Morgue, and Afterlife was coming out, all of it pretty musically interesting and technically evolved. The new stuff takes this further, with more technical detail (nothing amazing, but impressive for underground) and power coming in, and more advanced song structures. Lyrics have gotten away from the once-dominant American ideal of proving something, whether anger or sickness, in the lyrics. They're demented in their own right, but with a self-aware humor that's refreshing. The main act leading this scene is Oppressor, whose demo I really liked when I received it about a year ago, for my show. The power of this music isn't whatever technical standards it hails to, but the ability to integrate disparate elements into a working and interesting format. There's heaviness in here to compare with the most extreme American acts, but there's also cool musical workings and internal structures that support themselves well, producing an aesthetic of complexity with a percussive speed grind that smears you against a wall if you catch it at volume. Gutted impress me as much but in an entirely different vector. The obvious technicality of Oppressor isn't here; this is a straight-up rock format with stuff well-encoded into it. This isn't even death metal, but speed metal with a death voice. The songs aren't as catchy as the more mainstream stuff, but they have a grasping appeal that's not so much easily understandable as reflective of coherent assembly. Some stuff makes your ear listen, but this stuff gets you involved and then takes you with it. There's heaviness to spare here, and some goofiness in the lyrics, with songs such as "Kickin' the Corpse" leaving me to laugh. But it's self-aware, and not stupid, so I have no complaints. This is one of my favorites of the year. Not from the midwest but from Florida come two of my other finds. Neither are that new, or new at all, in the case of Ripping Corpse, who are one of the few metal bands who could legitimately wear the label progressive - interesting musical ideas expanded interestingly, not necessarily as intricate in their song structure as most bands but exceptionally coherent, in that songs are completed works and not streams of riffs. Lead guitar is not often this well done; for pure musicality this is one of my favorite works. Resurrection have a similar approach, taking Florida metal and making it technically-challenging, rather than just adding technicalities. The songs work and are enjoyable on several levels, leaving the technical work to be assumed and not be the focus of the entire album. The only band even close to this is Monstrosity. Both of these albums, Ripping Corpse's "In the Forest of the Dreaming Dead" and Resurrection's "Embalmed Existence," are first-class death metal. The former is probably out of print, Kraze records being defunct in a serious manner. From Britain come Malediction, one of the few death metal bands to legitimately remind me of Morbid Angel, and not through aping, as their sound is far from the atonal masterpieces of Azagthoth. Malediction play intense, not necessarily super- technically powered, but well-assembled and intriguing death metal. The album I have is a live EP, "Chronicles of Dissension," which is exceptionally well-produced for a live album, with the only clues to it being live being the pauses before each song where a drunken British voice talks. The music is fast, but slows when strategically necessary; it has a voice that encompasses the song, and doesn't restrict itself to occasional exposure during a riff or a solo. There is a full-length album that I don't have, but if it's of the same caliber of this material, it should be incredible. This is the only British band that's really brought my respect since Carcass or Repulsion (not forgetting the classic gods Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, but gods of a previous era, although timeless in their musical vision). Sweden has for the last few generations of death metal bands lead with innovative and potent metal. Seance and Fleshcrawl have released the best albums in recent memory from that area, with the notable exception of Therion, who, although technically brilliant and musically exceptional are nowhere in the same league of heaviness: both of these bands deliver impact power and suffusing brutality. Seance produced a guttural, mechanical and distorted masterpiece in "Saltrubbed Eyes," in which they learned to drop the many dissonant riffs approach of their first album in favor of a cohesive approach to song structures which emphasizes bringing out what is put into the song, instead of stringing it in linearly. On their first release they reminded me of a Swedish Malevolent Creation, but here the sound is much more Seance's own. The final track, an instrumental, gets special mention. The primary work here is the guitar tracks, which are experimental for death metal, especially eurometal. There's a lot of work with shorter but more definite riffs, and some experimentation in the noise of the lead guitars, which seem competent although they often choose to be content with half-noise solos. Smearing notes and all of that work. The distortion on this album is grating to a maximum, a new height of abrasiveness in guitar. This is one of my current favorites from Sweden. Fleshcrawl have always impressed me, but "Impurity" outdoes itself. Where their first was slow this has achieved a balance, realizing an aptitude for tempos in different components of the songs. Song structures are spread out and varied, although they don't seek to emphasize these varieties but an overall impression. There is a track from Finnish gods Demigod (Slumber of Sullen Eyes, their one album, is one of my favorites from Scandinavia: heavy but harmonic stuff, a unique sound that builds itself from out of the songs, instead of carping songs to follow an aesthetic) covered on this album, but more innarestin' in the track which isn't a cover, Inevitable End, which seems to be right out of the book of Bolt Thrower, albeit speeded up. The remaining songs are heavy and satisfying, excepting an instrumental by Dan Swano of Edge of Sanity. You can't sing along but who needs to? this is the descending blade of heavy metal that's not afraid to be technically competent, compositionally intriguing, or image deficient - it's the hardline straight up with no gimmick, and consequently both of these albums seem to be overlooked in the United States. (Possibly in favor of Entombed's terrible "Wolverine Blues," which would be a travesty of the first order.)" Ed put down his empty glass, and flipped two fingers toward his palm to gesture for more. With it came our food. I dug in, heavily, starving and aggressive. Ed ate more carefully but with equal rapidity. Surprisingly, he wasn't intimidated by my spew about a genre he could care less about, but was sort of interested. Through the corner of a mouth: "So things are looking up except for the sellouts? I remember you ranting about that some time ago, that and Christian metal" (Christian metal being my favorite oxymoron to pick on, as metal is beyond Christianity and really should have nothing to do with it - not saying, however, as every Christian misinterprets this argument, that it needs to go running to Papa Satan - it just was founded and designed outside of Christianity and doesn't work with it) " - are there more of those?" I poked more chile relleno into my mouth. "Well," chewing, "I think more are coming, as it gets easier to throw a little Alice in Chains into your music. And that's the band they'll all ape, that or Helmet, maybe. Alice is easy because it's one of the heavier bands in the so-called 'alternative' range, and because with the complexity of that sound, a band can work a lot in without being seen as what they'd otherwise be: a metal band suddenly going heavy bluesrock on us. Plus, they share a lot of roots, Alice in Chains and death metal; those people heard Black Sabbath and Motorhead, too. Entombed tried the Alice in Chains thing with Wolverine, and it sucked, but it wasn't a bad shot for a first, from the eyes of the mainstream, who seem to buy suck music any chance they can get. It's a safe sound to assume. I haven't seen too much of that lately. But I've been staying far away. It's amazing how sometimes the most obscure stuff is the best. You'd think more people would catch on, but it doesn't seem so - take Obliveon as a case in point. If you can get past the dumb name, this is spectacular progressive death metal from Canada. For once the bass is used as a lead instrument in metal without becoming cheesy - it makes its presence felt, but without being either a leading pop element or an attachment for the sake of additional hooks. Integrated structurally, the bass-guitar interaction of this band is incredible, nailed to a precision drum track to make this a tight setup, with incredibly players lending to the tightness with the right-on instrumentation that any fan of speed metal would love. But this is death metal, albeit a very unique interpretation of the genre musically. It's not particularly heavy in the original sense, but cool - in the way that a jazz or progressive band would be. But it's heavy, and it's amazing, and not effete like "progressive metal" acts like Dream Theatre. It stays true to the core of metal. More obscurity in the form of Alastis, one of the few "doom metal" bands worthy of the title. There is real musicality to this, good tempo variation, impressive drumming and cool riffs to package a slowing majesty of falling darkness. Vocals are a subdued version of the death/black metal voice, and fit well into this music, which has elements of both the modern and the older styles of metal. Impressive at the least. With an entirely different sound but a musically impressive output is Demilich, who are Finns playing harmonically-intricate death metal; it reminds me of the sounds of a funk band without the annoying elements in the way Demilich slide and cycle through the castles of tones they build on "Nespithe." It's not musicianship showing off, either, but a unique look at metal with a real experimental eye to it. This is one of my favorite releases of this year. But the core of metal remains the heaviness, and the emphasis that places through its rhythm and timbre. Loudblast fulfill this with the musicality quotient that any lover of the above will enjoy. Heavy, with real death and speed metal elements demonstrating the band's superb songwriting. Not superb judgement: this album has a fourth track of some of the most annoying female vocals ever to hit vinyl. But the music is outstanding. Another harder to find but brilliant band is Goreaphobia, who despite the stupid name create impressive death metal, with intense variation and a preservation of well-conceptualized mood and vision pervading throughout all three tracks on this album, "Omen of Masochism" (one of the nicely cheap Relapse underground releases). The cover illustration is a bit annoying (half-clothed woman consorting with devil) but the music is phenomenal, and heavy, having a lot of the better elements of death and grindcore musically while remaining so. A good sense of energy to this as well. Stupidity has always been a part of metal, and the silliness continues. Demented Ted caught my ear despite misgivings about the stupid name; this is good stuff, solidly heavy and technically intricate, although not as progressive and experimental as it could be musically. That would be the greatest failing of this album, but it survives it as good speed/death metal. The greatest area of foolishness, while we're on the topic, would have to be black metal, and one of my current favorites, Sacramentum, is a proud member of that arena. Yet it's phenomenal music, with a good melodic sense (this is modern black metal in its stream of notes incarnation) and a more conventional than usual adherence to sound, although without being cliche or uninventive. Highly recommended to black metal fans. Actually," I said, wiping my upper lip on disposable napkin, "all of this stuff is, and I'd have trouble deciding what to leave behind, but that's just because this is what I've found after listening to tons and tons of this stuff. We're not out of the deep water yet. There's a lot of crappy metal out there, as there always will be. But I think a lot of the stuff I see coming up is great, especially as bands learn that learning instrumentalism doesn't mean they've sold out, or that they suck. The greatest underground today is in the growing category of progressive or near-progressive metal, as it's too out there for most of the mainstream death metal fans and too musically subversive to ignore." Ed wiped his mouth on a similar napkin. The sun had set and the air hung almost liquid in through the cold glass. The stillness of daysend and the fullness of our stomachs slowed our thoughts, but soon we paid, and left to wander between pedestrian and building alike, stretching our thoughts through the networks of modern life without particularly attaching to anything. [-sven:cblanc@pomona.claremont.edu] % mantra Past the small hamlet of Gnihton, across the orderly layers of gently nodding fields, there lay, well, yet another field. This particular field was quite like its surrounding brethren in most aspects, complete with dirt, weeds, corn, and of course loud, noisy, wheezing monster-thingie (apparently cornfields tend to attract to an alarming degree the likes of such). However unlike the other fields around it, each too having its own wretchedly belching blob-creature, this field was singular for its location. Admittedly the other fields had locations too, but they unfortunately were not located in the correct place. To put it simply, the field lay next to a path. Like the field that squatted next to it, this path was rather unremarkable in most aspects in comparison to those of its kind, and although it did not have its own personal monstrosity, it did have large tangles of briars and an absurd-looking strain of mutant cauliflower that it could call its own. Reportedly, the cauliflower in the aforementioned region has been known to bluster and babble quite indignantly when called absurd, but the fact remained, and even the cauliflower knew this deep inside, that it was pretty funny looking. The exact origins of the plant have indeed never been pinpointed by historians or biologists, but the current theory en vogue proposes that the thing was the result of an asteroid strike. Nothing that ridiculous could ever have developed on earth, or so ran the argument as originally published in Modern Botany. The species apparently spent the next thousand or so years entrenching itself in an area measuring fifteen feet across and eighty or so miles long. The natives, being a practical lot, had simply marked off their fields around the ground in which sprouted the cauliflower, and so the path was born. When scientists first discovered the strange phenomenon, they found to their utter astonishment that no one in the memory of the natives had ever attempted to taste or even pick the vegetable. "No chap in their right mind would ever think of mussing with one of the bloody things. Anything that silly lookin can't be good for anything now can it?" said Henry Blankenship, a ninety year resident of Gnihton's successor, Cornwall, when questioned by dumfounded Men and Women of Science. Even more surprising were the results of the scientific community's endeavors to excavate the now beleaguered plant. Despite its wobbly, lopsided and shockingly pink appearance, the Cornwallian Cauliflower (as it soon became known worldwide) was resistant to all attempts to uproot it from its favorite locale, even the heavy and persistent use of a bulldozer was to no avail. Neither could anyone discover any sort of seeds, so in the end one exasperated biologist brandished a pocket knife and proceeded to saw off and consume a small portion of the Cornwallian Cauliflower. To no one's astonishment he dropped dead on the spot, but not before uttering the now immortal phrase, "Mother of God, but that's a foul taste." Needless to say, from then on the plant was left alone, which was a bit of tragedy considering that though the plant did contain a deadly poison, it also cured cancer, AIDS, herpes, and tasted quite yummy when served steaming hot with a light cheese sauce (all in all an interesting tradeoff). The foul taste that the doomed biologist found so repugnant was not a property of the cauliflower itself; it most likely had to do with the fat, aging wampus that had used that particular cauliflower as a urinal just several hours earlier. Through all of this the poor plant endure in a most noble manner, hoping that somehow evolution would translate its phentoype in future generations to one with a smidgen of dignity here and there. Nature had a bit of a sadistic streak in it though, and so the Cornwallian Cauliflower would go on being brazenly pink, lopsided, and bloated until it was the last thing left alive on the earth, waiting patiently for evolution even as the superheated gases of a sun that had gone nova engulfed the planet Earth, leaving behind only a thin and decidedly pink plasma. As a result, even more sobering than the passing of the earth, the Seattle Mariners would never win a pennant, let alone a World Series. Celestial historians reply to this by saying that despite the lack of a pennant, on the plus side the team would finish over .500 three times during its four billion year life span. We digress, however. What is most important about this path that was refuge to a strange strain of cauliflower was not the hubbub surrounding its flora, but rather a single event that took place there around one thousand years before the Great Cauliflower Catastrophe (as the incident became known). When considering this event, one must think hard to discern the proper scope of what is being discussed. Forget the Big Bang; forget the emergence of Homo Sapiens; forget Hitler; and realize deep down inside that what happened on a small dusty track outside of the peasant village of Gnihton that day in 998 AD was the single most important event in the History Of The Universe. Admittedly, the incident itself eventually panned out in a semi-swell manner, but simply the enormously terrifying, mind- boggling, spine-chilling, skin-shivering, vomit-releasing possibilities that it offered were so tremendous, so namelessly deep and primal, that even God was so startled that he let out a rather loud belch while napping near the Deneb system. The electromagnetic radiation from God's Belch would later be received by Earthbound dishes and interpreted by puzzled scientists as "Greetings Earthlings. Have you any cheeseburgers?" Nothing much could be made of this enigmatic statement and so astronomers dismissed it as chance, though to the public's chagrin, the interpretation of God's Belch spawned a whole new series of "Where's the Beef?" commercials. Back to the path, though. The path was dusty. It had no qualms about this, and would go so far as to get right in a travelers face and jaw with him or her in a rather ornery and persistent manner if the traveler expressed verbally any beliefs to the contrary. Combine this fact with that of the cauliflower, and one might argue that it would be altogether easier simply to walk through the corn fields. It could quite easily have been much better going through the towering rows of corn, but corn on the whole is an intimidating lot, and besides, the lands on which the corn grew were owned privately by His Majesty Ferdinand III (often called Ferd III behind his back), and trespassing except by those peasants assigned to work the fields was a criminal offense. The punishment for trespassing on the King's lands never became common knowledge. Ferd III's people were naturally stoic and accepting, the luckless recipients of the monthly royal beheading accepted their lot without a fuss or protest, but no one ever observed a trespasser heading to their fate and not screaming and fighting for all he or she was worth. Rumors of the name of the exact instrument of torture floated around hither and thither, but they must have been some sort of secret code word, for the words "Richard Simmons Videos" are rather cryptic, and so they must have instead stood for some terrifying device of pain and suffering no less. In the end, rather than risking such a nasty penalty or such a tedious and dusty journey, most people stayed away from Gnihton; it was a lousy excuse for human habitation anyway. On the path rested a rock. While there indeed were other rocks on the path, six to be exact, seven if you count the small pile of petrified dog excrement, those rocks tended to be sedimentaries for the most part, all in all a very boring lot. Happily for the pile of dog excrement, called Herbert by others of its kind, its life purpose was fulfilled when Baron Horace Von Stepovich accidentally trod on it. Despite the pile's formidable carapace, it's soft internal consistency nonetheless forced the legendarily snobbish man to spend several hours cleaning his very leather, very black, very new boots. Of course all of this depended on the fact that the standard definition required a rock to be at least walnut sized and no less. The rock's name was Bob. Why it was called Bob and not some other equally impressive name such as Binky, Ferguson, or Bartholomew, is a mystery. As for appearances, Bob was rather plain, a dusty gray countenance that only in the best of lights could be called dull silver and numerous scars and pits from past struggles with others of his kind as the only distinguishing features. Bob stood out instead with his intelligence and cunning. Bob disdained the stupid, boisterous ignites that spent all their time bragging among themselves about their recent exploits, what volcano they'd been spit out of, how hot it was, how many other rocks they'd beaten up, how much they could bench press, and so on. Bob similarly despised the plodding and ever-stupid sedimentites too. It was always the sedimentite who didn't get the joke, it was always the sedimentite who told the most amazingly boring and lengthy stories (some might argue that the author of this is a sedimentite), it was always the sedimentite who drank too much spiked punch at a party and ended up getting pounded into the ground by the ignite whose girlfriend the tipsy sedimentite had made a slurred comment to. On the whole, the sedimentites were a rather sorry bunch, but luckily they were too dull to realize this, and went right on with their plodding, victimized ways. Bob was a metamorphic, and for the most part metamorphics did their best to distance themselves from their "lesser" brethren. Most metamorphics secretly believed that their race was destined to rule the world someday, but they usually kept this conviction to themselves, fearing being beaten up by an ignite or blubbered at by a tortoise-like sedimentite. Bob's specialty was physics. More precisely, Bob prided himself in his ability to gauge the gait, stride, and distance away of an approaching human and use his extraordinary mental powers to position himself in such a way as to send the offending two-legger sprawling on its face when the toe of its boot collided with Bob. Nothing pleased Bob more than a good trip job, and his love for the sport had made him into one of the world's best. What this all boiled down to for Bob's situation at the time was unhappiness, plain and simple. The disheveled path to Gnihton was not frequently traveled, leaving Bob with few people to trip, and even worse, when someone did come along, the cursed cauliflower had a tendency to make Bob burst out laughing and thus lose track of his complicated calculations, botching the job entirely. "I was much better off back on the King's Highway where traffic could get so heavy that I sometimes had to be calculating the results of 47 differential equations simultaneously just to keep up," Bob reflected bitterly at one time. Without a doubt, the highlight so far of Bob's rather young life, a few measly million years, was when through a stroke of pure brilliance he managed to trip the notoriously watchful Baron of Ebert, one Horace Von Stepovich by name. By great fortune, the snooty baron's retainers, toadies, and personal guard had all been following him at a very small distance, and thus when he fell to the ground, his dimwitted servants stumbled over him in turn, resulting in many curses, numerous minor scrapes, four beheadings, and a broken pancreas. It would go down as one of the greatest coups in rock history; to humanity it would simply be known as International Toe Jam Day. The meaning of this day has unfortunately been a bit perverted with the passage of time. Unfortunately for Bob, despite his smashing success, he soon found himself hurtling over the corn fields as propelled by the strength of the irate baron's left arm. Bob landed not far from one of the large and bulbous creatures, huffing and wheezing in a most noxious manner while squatting amongst its cornfield. Only later was it discovered that the creature was a distant ancestor of Ted Kennedy. Now Bob might have simply lain in that cornfield until the end of time if it hadn't been for a small, grimy, little peasant boy who had the ill luck to be named Olaf by his unconsciously sadistic parents. Olaf's parents worked on the field where Bob had the misfortune of being tossed into, and Olaf, who was rather lazy, spent most of his time looking the source of the mysterious burbling noises he often heard emanate from the field just before he drifted off to sleep. Poor Olaf never did find the source of those strangely compelling noises, but one day in his searches he quite literally stumbled over Bob. Not content with just chasing after some unseen noisemaker, Olaf had recently taken up rock collecting. With the addition of Bob, Olaf's collection reached three, but unfortunately, due to lagging attention span and lack of deep-set interest, Olaf's collection would grow no bigger. When Bob found himself picked up and stuffed into the dark and fetid pocket of a dirty sweatshirt he was naturally overcome with panic. In vain he tried to free himself from his newfound confinement, but only succeeded in entangling himself with the loathsome corpse of a hairless rat, a tenant for nearly two months now, and most probably the cause for much of the pungent aroma that permeated the air. At this point there was a small thonking noise, and thus Bob realized that he was not alone in his imprisonment. The rock's name was Gerald, and the other one's name, for there were two others total, was Ophelia. Bob soon discovered that though Gerald was an ignite, he possessed the worst qualities of both the ignite and the sedimentite. Not only did Gerald want to discuss whose volcano was bigger, whose volcano was hotter, and apparently whose volcano's eruptions had killed the most humans, he also did it in an annoying, boring, and toneless manner that even the most diehard sedimentite would envy. Of course the fact that Bob had not originated from a volcano never even occurred to Gerald. The end result of this nasal, droning soliloquy was a loud bonking noise as Bob rapped Gerald quite the nasty blow to the temple in frustration. Gerald lapsed into a wounded, very short, and very self-righteous silence, sure that all others of rock-kind would see it his way and unanimously condemn this rash and violent metamorphic's actions. However this thought quickly left his mind, and trying a new approach, he changed the subject to one even more riveting with excitement if such was possible: that of the aches, pains, and life- threatening injuries that he had suffered and still continued to suffer from. Bob's response to this discourse was of course rather predictable, and so Gerald and his aching noggin gave up, and sulked off to the side. Through all this the quiet Ophelia had sat rather wide-eyed, and altogether unsure of what she had gotten herself into. Now Gerald did indeed have quite a few aches and pains, 476 to be exact, and though normally very slow to anger, Bob's second blow to his forehead had pushed Gerald over the proverbial edge, though this didn't immediately show. In fact it only showed when Ophelia wacked into Gerald from behind, quite by accident, the collision actually being the fault of the clumsy little boy who had very unskillfully tripped over a cunningly camouflaged log that sprawled shamelessly across the entire breadth of the road the boy had been running along. It was all very unfortunate, all very tragic, a simple case of accidental bonking, but it happened to happen to the wrong cranium at the wrong time, for good or for evil the damage had been done and there was no turning back. For a small moment Gerald lay stunned, as did the boy, both of their rocky skulls having been addled by the terrific blows they had received respectively. They were both of sturdy stock and back to speed quite quickly, but what this implied was very different for the two beings. For Olaf it simply meant picking his scrawny body back up, wiping away a few tears, and resuming his unwieldy gait. For Gerald, though it was completely different. With a long and acidic string of expletives, Gerald soared into the air to crash against the cowering Ophelia with a resounding and extremely solid ker-thwack. Ophelia loosed a yelp of pain, and quite unlike her normal serene and laid-back self said a very naughty word and pounced in return upon Gerald. This went on for quite some time, and Bob watched on with the smug and self-satisfied air of one who has started a big ruckus yet has somehow avoided the consequences of such. This couldn't last forever though, in fact Bob's smirk only lasted until one of Gerald's wild and uncoordinated leaps went amuck, and resulted in the bonking of all three combatants. Few things can make one more angry than when one is just sitting and enjoying a good spat between others only to be pulled into it. So it was with Bob, and though he didn't have any feathers to speak of, if he did they would certainly have been quite ruffled. Now it was Bob's turn to screech in pain, and in time, jump with an insane and incomprehensible battle cry that struck fear in the hearts of all those involved in the fray, unfortunately including Bob himself. But Bob was already in midair, so all he could really do was roll his eyes rather nervously in a surprisingly cowlike gesture. Regardless of eye-rolling or not, the blow turned out to be the last of the day, for the shoddy and cheap fabric that Olaf's sweatshirt had been constructed of gave way, and all three combatants plus the dead rat tumbled towards the hole and the eventually on out as if devoured by some sort of burlap vortex. All four former tenants of the sweatshirt landed with a minimum of trouble upon the dirt road that young Olaf had been racing along. Meanwhile, the boy Olaf continued his rapid journey over dirt, gravel, and pink cauliflower. He was quite excited by now, and so he ran exuberantly, arms flailing at seemingly anatomical impossible angles, legs firing in comical disarray, and greasy, matted hair twitching uncomfortably in the wind, all the while oblivious to the fact that not only had his precious rock collection deserted him, but also so had Bucky the Rat. And while Olaf would not take the loss of the rocks too hard, a few sniffles here, new hobbies involving mummified reptilia there, the loss of Bucky would be one that would haunt him for the rest of his life, causing him to lose his job, ruin promising relationships, and eventually drive him to hurl himself off a cliff and into a roiling pool of toxic goop left by the environmentally irresponsible aliens from the Sirius system. But young Olaf could not know the tragic life that lay in store for him, so for now he ran on. Back at the point of breakthrough, three dazed rocks, and one very dead, very ripe rat lay strewn about what the reader has already recognized as the path that led amongst the cornfields to the village of Gnihton. Though Bob wasn't sure, he could swear he had heard the rat emit a very squishy "Oomph" as it had hit the road. When he finally could bring himself to take a look at his surroundings, he discovered that Ophelia had already fled, while Gerald had taken refuge under an exceedingly ugly cauliflower plant. The rat meanwhile, seemed quite content where it was, and had not moved one bit. The sun loomed directly overhead, and Bob found the heat so oppressive that he scurried under the nearest cauliflower, which unfortunately happened to be the same one that Gerald was under. Feeling the heat of the day, the humidity in the air, and the whining of Gerald's nasal voice, Bob slowly found himself overcome by the oddest sensation. He found himself closing his eyes and letting it wash over him, wrapping him up, dragging him down with its hypnotic undertow. His only complaint was the periodic bonking noise that occasionally cropped up in the background. When he came to from the most pleasant dreams, he found himself stooped over a small hole in the ground from which emanated the occasional yelp. Bob wasn't sure how Gerald had managed to fall down and become thoroughly wedged in a hole that hadn't been there just a few hours ago, but not wanting to here the explanation, Bob used his sharper side to scrape dirt into the hole, quickly filling it up. So that in a nutshell was how Bob found himself languishing along the lonely, nameless road to Gnihton. Bob was determined to make the best of the situation though, and so nary a traveler passed the area without tripping and falling face first into a cauliflower at least once, sometimes more if Bob was especially on top of his game. After a couple centuries of this, Bob was surprised to find himself growing quite happy, despite his initial discontent. Maybe he was just getting old, but nonetheless he no longer felt the compulsion to trip human beings at all hours of the day, in fact, two or three a month was all that he seemed to need anymore The only trouble Bob ever suffered was derived from the cauliflowers. Several of the foppish things had actually tried to ingest him for nutrients, of all things, and only quick thinking and a well timed kick had saved him from a nasty death at the hands of a particularly lithe and quick plant. Bob's father had been killed that way, and his mother had lost a chip, all due to a large rosebush that had sprung up on the side of Bob's childhood mountain home for no apparent reason. At the time of his father's death Bob had vowed his revenge upon all of rose-kind. Bob had also vowed never to be broken up and ingested by a plant, and he certainly wasn't about to have this done to him by a cauliflower, especially a floppy pink one. The year 1187 began like any other, cold to be exact. In fact 1187 was so cold, that even the corn-monsters were silent for the most part, emitting only the occasional snort for warmth. Traffic was especially light during the winter months, it was only in the spring and summer, when men and women would venture out to visit their distant relatives, that the fun really began. However, before this could happen in the year 1187, Bob had a visitor that would change him forever. It was early February, and Bob's first glimpse of the traveler was not a particularly good one. Between the cauliflower and the light mist, all he caught was an exceedingly long and well- groomed beard. As the unsuspecting fellow drew closer Bob made out in addition to the beard, heavy velvet robes, a large conical hat, bushy eyebrows, and a penetrating stare. There was a staff somewhere too, but Bob would remember this later only if he was explicitly reminded of it. The chap's name was Merlin and he was a wizard by trade. Why Merlin would ever want to go to Gnihton of all places is a mystery, perhaps he had had a bit too much to drink. The fact that he was singing a rather brazen song concerning a saucy barmaid named Josephine and a handsome satyr name Geoff supported the theory that he had a few too many mugs of the King's Finest. Regardless of the reason just why the wizard Merlin was staggering his way in the general direction of Gnihton, the fact remained that in his path was a rock named Bob, and Bob wasn't about to let Merlin off, wizard or not. Somehow, though, Bob calculated wrong. Instead of a slight bump, a yell, and a great thumping noise as was the normal procedure, he found himself suddenly tumbling along the path away from the advancing wizard. Now nothing annoyed Bob more than being kicked. He didn't mind being stepped on, didn't care if he was thrown, polished, or fetched or perhaps swallowed by a slobbering dog, but when it came to being kicked he drew the line. Snarling in anger he performed some near-miraculous calculations, dug himself deep into the earth, and waited. The results were rather predictable. Merlin may have been the world's most powerful wizard, but the fact remained that he was outrageously drunk, and upon contact with the glowering Bob, he pitched forward, caught himself on his staff, lost his footing again, and fell backwards quite squarely on his behind. The curses that followed were by remarkable coincidence the exact incantation for a rather nasty fire spell that unfortunately incinerated one of the slobbering, hooting corn-monsters that happened to be sleeping nearby. Now a remarkable thing happened when Merlin's boot connected with the braced form of Bob. Normally, Merlin's boots were endowed with a protective spell to guard against what had just occurred, apparently he had a few run-ins with other rocks too. However, the spell had degenerated in recent days, and being in the state he was, Merlin could not readily be counted on to go about renewing and restoring such things. So instead of repulsing Bob away with a magical force field, somehow Bob ended up tripping Merlin and absorbing the magical power of the failing protection spell. Later, Merlin would remember none of this. He would in fact, even conveniently forget the fact that he had later woken up with a terrific headache, stark naked, in the middle of a cornfield, with a large and particularly foul-breathed wampus cautiously sniffing him, apparently pondering his integrity as a urinal. Luckily for Merlin, the wampus finally decided that indeed he would work quite well as a urinal at precisely the same moment that Merlin magicked himself far away. As for Bob, he fell into a deep and unassailable coma for several years, even the passing of the Baron of Ebert didn't rouse him from his unnatural slumber. When he awoke he was a changed rock. The magic from Merlin's boot had woken something very deep, vast, and powerful within his mind. With the slightest effort of will he found himself hovering several inches above the roadway, and cautious experimentation soon had him zipping about as a bumblebee might do. One might wonder how the meager magic from a failed protection spell might bestow the power to fly, among other things. This is result of a minor corollary of the Law of Conservation of Magic-mass which states that quite simply, smaller masses needed smaller amounts of magical energy. Effectively, a spell that couldn't even protect a boot made Bob a wizard-king of his kind. Bob's time had not been idle while in the coma, for he had been visited by dreams of the most wondrous kind. In these dreams he would sit at a great table filled with the most wondrous kinds of food one could imagine, pebbles from the far off beaches of Mexico, quartz from only the purest of deposits, and of course bowl after bowl filled with the diced root of the wild rose. As he helped himself to these exotic delicacies, he would be revered and cooed at by ravishing young rock-girls. Later he might sometimes retire to his throne room where vast legions of the barbaric, uncivilized humans would bow down, grovel, and worship him as their new god. Those were Bob's dreams as he lay so inert upon the dusty road to Gnihton. Later, as he sped away into the crisp, chill night air on the wings of a magical breeze, those thoughts replayed themselves again and again inside his head. He had a vision, a dream, and none could stand in his way. He would have and stop nothing short of one thing, and one thing only: world domination. (to be continued) [-bambrose:bambrose@pomona.claremont.edu] % stoner adventures: "ston" I Suspension in or of sounds running through my fingers and hair, past closed eyes, through slow-breathing mouth and nose, the energy of life with its superfluous sonic insignia of existence asserting itself against the cold of the conscious night, the serpentine erraticity of signals tearing through the night air. The sounds of water almost: the birthdream of the wide and explainable beach, the place to lie lulled on the warm sand, sleep like ocean foam filling first ears and then mind. The blue sky the depth of an honest eye for miles above, around. The horizon pushed back by the potential, the expanse of it all. Sleep flooding. Green skeins of light from the terminal wash over the waves of sheets, through the greyed sectors of the apartment. Anaesthetic morphing. Day beyond the walls of sleep, the inverse of the function, through gentle rollings of a green light, or fluid, a medium to move through. Sleep takes the eyelids, the walls assemble. On my back in the feverish suspension of restless sleep. This house owns its dead and those of many other houses. I hear the bug-killer. Its resilient fluorescent halo throws rainbow concentrics into the warm damp night. The frequent frying of its deterrent noise reveals the fallacy. Somewhere exploded carapaces land smoking on concrete. From here they are electronic impacts, a grating signal shearing of life. A car clatters by, a scrabbling insect of falling pegs and levers, cogs abrading gristle steel, integrated motion of percussive perturbation. An abstraction of the man selling newspapers in the debris corner of Westheimer and Montrose: "You didn't have to create your own consciousness: this one already comes with a sense of an encompassing substance called air that moves into empty spaces from all directions, a conception of liquid solid and gas, a gravity, a visual interpretation, and a sense of death in language." A six-second pause; then rainfall like an exhalation of finality, resigned. The dream starts in the stainless steel numbness of cold contact, a birthing onto polished concrete. The sensation of being suddenly a point in a vast space overwhelms me, but then it fades out to the brittle throating of an engine, and the cold numbness turns to the concentration whiteness of knuckles over knuckle-molds on a steering wheel. The freeway fires straight ahead, laid down evenly, permanently, upon the spinning earth; from there the perspective spans at lightspeed, covering ground in every direction, stretching reaching stretching the eyes in each way toward the horizon. Black road, tan earth, with shades of brown rising from it in waves of dry desert plant. Dust floats serpentine over the frayed edge of road. The rest is slick, black, uniform - racing toward the horizon. My eyes ache from hours of road. Indetermination reflects every angle. But forward it goes. At the wheel my mind sees through shifting waves of time myself, sixteen, faster along some road, lonelier. But not as empty. There is none of the lonely determination; press on to the resolution. The road is empty. Coalescent fading, a sensation of a gathering consciousness, a brief vertiginous halt, and fall. Carcass bus borne and worn by the sunlight of long hours travel departs gate three real soon now. Rushing, groaning tearing symphony of collision within the headcage witnesses its departure. Sweat and a wet sheet drawn close in my fist: resting hard white knuckles on my cheekbone. Thick-drawn paste invades my consciousness of mouth, moved by a languid tongue alerting itself from a clench. Absolute desire to return to sleep which is only marginally less intrusive than reality. Can't fall asleep here and rise to sweep sweat and grime from me in sheets of spit-warm water. It is the fourth day of investigation, and things have become hirsute. The legal implications of computing follow the political implications of religion: those that understand grab as much power as they can, even taking it from those that fully understand. I leave the shower doorway to stand shivering in an apartment where fading floodstains reach from the pipeburst decay in the ceiling to the erased linoleum floor, living under a benediction of legal complications and consequences I didn't catch the first time around, a series of jobs that would insult any halfconscious primate, two relationships which now in time feel like the rise of phlegm and vomit in a monday morning cough. Supine. Between tiny isolated tiles water coagulates as I use the battered payphone in the closet strewn with aging longleg spiders: a wiring jury-rig takes pleasant advantage of the chaos of this ancient building to defeat the taps that can't not be there. Spike stoner buddy and friend of years comes on the line, stilted in a distorted answering machine message, projected in a sense of unreality as if mimicking the abstract echo of the tape: I recede from the phone, almost, before realizing that Spike's intoxicated warning of possible troubles had realized. Left a message for rendezvous. In the alley across the street the pureness of blue sky above his head made wino (567-68-0515) turn left and see a diagonal fill of darkness blueness at end alley, where a no parking sign seemed suddenly very white and shock red. I take my rig, a folding slimline laptop, and duck through the the barely-believable boarded door of an abandoned motel, concertina wire rising above me and around me, as if mimicking the barricaded signs of the freeway. These signs always become diluted, however, with the graffitti, and no amount of wire or light can save their reflective messages. Inside there are no signs: even the bank informational tabs have been ripped from the cash machine in what was once the lobby. I prop a plywood slab against the machine, and activate power with a few jump-transfers in another part of the building. I had scouted this before, readied it somewhat, and now used it. The cash machine has a full netlink, and could be exploited: soon I am connected, with borrowed numbers and code, and shortly afterward begin plumbing my sites. The crisis of being hackerminded is your inability to relinquish the attack. You find something, you explore. If you can't you become irritated, angry, frustrated. The impotence of suburban life falls upon you, and you rage in your box. Curiosity is the drive; it is built so highly like a muscle that it must be resolved, or taken to its inverse: fear, where you let the various curiosities of the universe operate on their own if they let you operate in the illusion of your own. The knowledge must be had, but the process is almost more important than the knowledge. The striving. And the net is an open land: there are few rules and many sites. So into it you go, hacking it as you go along, and in the end you have built a network into it of yourself: places you've been, code you've written, hacks you've accomplished, ideas you've set forth, all terminating in the variety of entities you're allowed to live, to create, with the skill of forging identities or borrowing them or even straight away faking the work of an identity, implying a human in the negative space. None of it verifiable. Into the abyss, a mess of nodes and data and security bulletins, and something can be pulled from it. Away from the abyss and you wonder the depths: you wander a representation of the virtual in your mind. Soon you are almost there. The idea takes you in, as the abyss of life promises less, sometimes, or as it promises more. In the representation there are answers; it is another world, but a mockup of this one. I enter this world hypodermically (immediate appearance of a fishing net let fall upon itself) and link through a few nonfavorite sites, requiring some work. Sweat has penetrated the lobby with its wet smell. Some hours have passed. Another link acquired: a security pattern which carefully traps all incoming protocols (divided into their packets: small blasts of information encoded) and rejects the nonlegit ones, but fails to check within the legit ones, to see if there's another protocol running under them. An older emailer graphic compatibility succumbs easily to this manipulation, and soon I have legitimized a link to the indexer machine within their pattern, an older workhorse which serves information to the more current machines (which are guarded as hell). The emulsion of air from a car door impact. Time: should go soon. Incomings, and on parole, there is no room for error. Breeze through the main file area, like a large square room, layout is sloppily absolute order and predictability. Hmm. People on the machine: sublimate this account to a running process, mask the human nature of its operator. There - wait, new directory. An oddity of systems are the more slight-of-hand security jury rigs, which use unused bits to place concealment restrictions. What kind of daemon am I running? So far just thought this was a timeserver protocol - another car door. Time to get out - anything left? this file, that file - one there, the resource. Append it to the active objective file, download. Linked, closing. Out of this personality, into the physical world to the sound of a window seal breaking with a pocket knife. Cash machine off, and through another but now physical array of linked rooms, dashing through the remnants of the motel. Overturned trash cans, furniture piled into obstacle courses. Through a newlywed suite: out the window. Up onto the hot punched metal of the air conditioner, and a brief moment of insurgent fear in midair, then the gritting foot- adherence of concrete. Away in a flurry of pebbles, over the fence, inverted to the phalanx of some form of law enforcement outside. & invoking one new crypticity. I find Spike on the way out of his apartment, carrying a box hurriedly from what had become a boxlike gap in the block of small wooden boxes stuffed however predictably with cheap televisions, plastic flamingos, dead Presley paraphrenalia and thin skein-cotton checkerprint curtains, all of which are flickering out a window in the wind (in a vision tempting of flame). In some rooms the muddled chalky bark of a news program could be heard. On walking into the park we ruminate over the conditions of Spike's arrest, as we had ruminated many times before over trivial items in the now: deals, days, loves, decay. "So what happened?" I mumble to the crunching of Spike's feet pushing gravel into itself on the path. White-grey gravel, petrified clay. The trash of centuries paves the futures of today. The trash of today paves the centuries of future. The future of today paves over the trash of centuries. "I bought from Sherman" (a complete stoner, a last resort when jonesing hard, in a stupor from days' abuse of potent Calgary Cross, a golden variety of dope from the middle east, shove with some force a floppy disk into an older Macintosh computer sideways, destroying the disk drive) "who's been selling to a fed for some days, and is too hosed to notice the difference, who then smokes me out with this guy" (sacred stoner ceremony: the transfer of trust in a paranoid world, the sealing not so much of doors but of complicity, good honest complicity and trust) "and I figure, well, he's okay. A little geeky though - I think I should have been more sober, or just thought more. I was either too stoned to think or too stoned not to realize I wasn't. Anyway, fed's in the bag, finds a sample, and Sherman and I are taken downtown, papered, wiped off, shelved, and given streetwalk with some costly bail. I used my fund at the antiocean" (Perpetual Life of Antioch County: fund he'd had some years) "because I don't care what the cost, I'm not going back in. Out here I can move, even if I'm living in shit. In there, I'm trapped in the fields of Hades, and I suffocate." A pigeon gawks past us in jerking mock gesture of surveillance, white-walled eyes flapping up and down past us, a thrusting of rhythmic terror. Spike shrugs a tired abstraction of apathy from his face. Birds wander across wide wet grass amidst crushed cups stenching of soft foamy lager, rich in taste as the dingy water from the city, paper plates smeared with browning lasagna, crumpled beer cans, and three sheet clumps stained uneven grey by time and water. Empty anger of being gut-punched and flat out fucked with what the child's world prescribes as an ultimate evil, the utterly "unfair," if that term ever had any meaning before obliterated as useless in itself by adulthood. A resort in the passive expedient of present. The trash can a shocked city mouth with its cutting rim against a morning felt, wetted newspaper, soft drink cups, a broken umbrella, a marriage notice, a divorce letter, a full roll of toilet paper, an empty pack of cigarettes or candy wrapper, a standard desk pencil sharpener, one blunt corner dented with blood, against a rotting B.L.T. Television screens light a row of suburban homes where children kick a liver down a street. Overhead the sky burns red at midday. "Smog," Spike sidesquints back at me, turning from above. The federal courthouse awaits us; also the court recordkeeper who can tell us what we need. At the window: "Hello. I'd like to check up on charges pending for a friend," then names given, which always makes me nervous, even though I live under many different names. Something about naming an object makes it known; looking into eyes naming you suddenly ties you back to everything. The animal jolt of being ID'd by a fed: "Good evening, Burr," and suddenly a shock of sweat up the spine. Instead smile: "Good evening, officer" and then show shoes how to shuffle. Through the window the swirling of the angry godseye around the sun. "Ok, I've found two records, one for each, and both are scheduled to be tried in Meekin County" (where the hell? it's a courthouse, we'll find a way to get there) "but the dates have run past, so there's a global warrant. I'd warn your friends." "Thanks. Why Meekin County? Isn't this federal jurisdiction?" Her glasses lower to reflect the form in triplicate. "I don't know," drawn cold voice, but not cold toward me, just lost. Glasses now reflect themselves. "Let me find someone." And so we are let into a back room, a small conference room turned office, in the federal building, where a small man with round glasses peers at us from under a sweaty brow. "God it's hot," he greeted us. "We're just here to check up on some friends." The obligatory of-course-you-are follows; if he asked for ID he could verify, but there is a sense of compartmentalization to this office, of ineffective efficiency. "Only 5 Too Many Days Till The Weekend," reads a wall sign, with interchangeable numbers. Today's Wednesday. His keyboard banging retrives me to the present. Papers stack in leaning collages of chaos toward each other; from three stacks he pulls cliplets of text from varying levels, collating in his roughened hands with short pugilistic fingers. "These are the files...wonder what they were thinking...well, you've been relegated to Meekin County, which is" (and a pause, in which we aid him in drawing flat a state map over the marker- textured table, battered with coffee rims from years of frustration past, stained with chocolate from morning donuts and any other enticements to bring one into a dark square barely within three dimensions at the end of the line in the courthouse building) "...not here...well, we are federal, so" (a return to the keyboard to look it up) "judas priest - they put you in kentucky." Kentucky? "I don't know," he giggles, a placed mask of flexiplastic over his mouse and nose (airline drill). "I don't know why they did it, but the only person who can change that is a judge. And" (reaching down to a cannister beneath him, twisting the knob with a tight blast of hiss) giggling, "I don't think you want to see a judge. I don't think you want to see him at all. Your friends might be in trouble, then. Wouldn't want to see them in trouble, would you? So what I'd do is go to Meekin County, and see what you can do with federales there. I'm just a small federale here, and I can do no more - even if I wanted your friends convicted, all I can do is inform you and perhaps take a confession - do you want to confess? I doubted not that you wouldn't. I doubt with a bold chin, because it's my job to doubt." Nitrous, christ I hadn't done that for a while. "Can I bum a hit?" Spike shanks a steel corner of elbow to my rib, but all he gets is a funny noise, and laughter from the little man. "Sure, sure," he says, handing it over. I inhale a bit, but not too much; littleman takes a hit. "You don't have to worry," he says, handing over a sheet with our pictures on it. "The clerk out front identified you." "So are we arrested?" Spike's voice straight up from behind me. "No, we can't do that, until you identify yourselves, which I doubt not you will not do. We really couldn't do much there except point you to another office, which is six feet past the exit from this building. No, we file you, if we wish, but we really don't expect much. Computer crimes, hmm? Problem is you won't be able to quit it. You'll be back in six months." "Well, we're not even convicted yet," Spike says. "So we have to go to Kentucky if we wish to be convicted?" "Your friends would, yes," eyes straightening to blue, recently tinged with laughing wetness. Ours with redness. Sky confining, hot, like the walls and foamtiled ceiling of this place. Artificial cave for dog. And another inhale. "But they might just want to go there and make an appearance." "Why?" this time I'm curious, moreso than Spike, who's already planning to blow it off. "We're allowed to dispense information and so I will. There was a recent addition to the lastest gangbuster bill, the one about custody? that says that if you can find local authorities to arrest you and sentence you, then the feds can't do so - so you get a lesser sentence. Local authorities are much more lax about computing crime. This was designed for gangs, so it'll have to be a two of you - you have to agree to dissolve the gang is the only catch." Dissolve the gang - that's not that hard, rotating in mind. "Problem is if they catch you working together again, there is a small matter of felony." This time we all - Spike, I, littleman - take a hit. "So we could cop a plea, lesser, inform on each other, dissolve the gang, and walk out with - what?" "Oh..." the littleman's smile gets larger, a big grin, with the moisture of his oilysweat and his eyes mixing along his cheeks over the moving orifice. "Well, our lawmakers are trying to patch this one, but they haven't yet. If you get there in time." "What happens?" Spike is unusually alert. "It was a little element we didn't think of. It was put in to appease to prison overcrowding people, and requires the attachment to the gangbuster bill for the ahem more stringent elements. If you were to inform on each other, and then dissolve, the legal system would give you one year's probation, by mail." "By mail?" Spike and I looking awry. "Yes, that being the one federal agency that always comes through. And they don't but it makes more sense to say they do. So you would have to mail back a statement of existence including proof of gainful employment back to Meekin County once every six months, total twice, for a year." Quizzical incision of perspective: "I don't suspect that will be difficult for you, seeing as how documents can created by those with access to the necessaries." Into my hands came the paper, flecking skin from my inside thumb and leaving blood on the edge of the page (no crime in that). Two previous arrests, one a community service dodge (non-malicious hacking: a faked bill in email to our state senate which declared a repeal of all sodomy laws in case of nuclear attack, caught by an alert local CO who found my line making too many calls "for human fingers to dial" at the court; I was dialing by hand, but i can dial like a banshee, still didn't know what I was doing) and one an offhook with the help of a good lawyer my father hired (when I was still tight with the folks - I wonder what they're doing now, after divorce and children gone - probably still alive, even, oddly I hope so, afterall), but then the ugly part: three pending cases, the most recent two days old, with noshows in various courts. I hadn't known what to do about these. Two of them were legit; the second one was not, an attempt to pin a local computer crime on me because I was known to associate with two of the personalities, but the truth was that I bought drugs from them. One of them went down with Sherman, too, and that probably blew the whole mess. Poor Spike. His cases were further complex: an ancient warrant for arrest for a decade-old drug-dealing case, and then the recent charge, which was growing in credence the further time receded the former case. Fuck. He's hosed. And a federal file already opened to resume investigation of the first, which means that we can't just delete files - there's human contact that must be made. A heavy chestheaving to reduce the stress, the impact coming on with the pressure of the air conditioning, like hands suddenly grasping the temples of the skull. "Thanks," I say to the little man, shaking his hand. You didn't have to tell us that. He smiles up with a brightness I hadn't seen. Spike shakes too. Over the cheesy office speakers plays another moaning womn pop song, an r&b washout with occasional highlights in the solo. I imagined some rented-warehouse studio somespace where a studio musicians, full of dreams both live and buried, gathered to help put out this cheeseball dreamer music, perhaps edging in where they could a personal touch, something done well in a flood of mediocrity, not as much to tell us they exist but to prove to themselves that they had. At least in potentiality. We walk through the gaping office doorspace while behind us inhalation sucks wind. The plaque reads "Joseph Smallish" in bold artdeco, and beneath it "Assistant Executor of Documentarian Confluence" in an uninfluential roman font. We walk into a thick brush area: bending live oak shelter with a floor of smooth cracked nuts, a shifting surface. Spike removes a scarab from his pocket, a bright fakery of imitation. He pushes the head aside to give access to a simple bowl in the aluminum. "THE CURSE OF KING TUT" is engraved in the metal. A small bag of thick green emerges into his hand. "Some Berkeley purple-assed kind," Spike says, explaining the origins of this plant in the mountains of Northern California, where graduate students had planted some dope within walking range of an observatory, and gradually mutated their strain to create naturally hideous marijuana plants: thick, ratty, weedy, close to the earth, but extremely potent, with heavy fat clouds of bluegrey smoke announcing its consumption. Last time I smoked this expresses Spike with his hands, quickly fastly surely loading the bowl, I was a void in myself, an oblivion of temporary incapacity. Our smoke fills the leaves and branches of the oak, netted with the tight- stretched canopies of the caterpillars. Persistence of a species made stubborn by its irascible will to live (a truck parked sometimes up the street from our house which had a glove inserted on the stalk of a running light, a spear tipped with a warning glow, with the end of the extension running up the middle finger, giving the characteristic expression of human will and resistance, a life-giving irreverence). Night lurked in the bruised air above the trees. Spike gave me a glance: we were not out of the city, had not yet removed our stuff: the heaping belongings roughly linked to provide a structural life, had not found any cash of note: a vehicle needed, dope needed, some time to lie low, needed, had not found a destination: some resignation, fatigue in it. We were to stay in this city, this swelling humid despair, where the rain and mold left dark streaks down the buildings and cars rushed back and forth from air conditioned monoliths to preserve their occupants from the incessant sun, for the night. This city. Aging of occupants current by occurrences, past events involving despair and expedient thoughtlessness by others disciplining the intellect to diminution and the fear to acerbicism, ages of solitude spent examining the affect of a place so much imbued with the spirit of decay. In the moisture of the air anything rotted, and the instant decomposition allowed anything fixed to soften in the center, a swelling contusion of sweetness and failure. Stark acidic the air swelling around the cab. Hot a fetid breath of some creature, the residue of exhaust in moisture adding a burning sensation to the air's touch. Spike a series of yellowed reflection lines against the burnt fading of the sun. Red malevolent, impotent orb, drowning in a melting slide into the dense horizon of the city. Nightfall: to stand hard against the lapse of daylight's safety, of the ability to have eyes. The dusk moments before the rules change. Must find a line to the unexplored cities of the net. In time. I cup a hand to slide into my pocket, pulling out a roll of bag and dope. Grand Rapids kind clears out the brain and sinuses. Called rapid for its onset and the day-following deterioration of the digestive system, grown in thick leafy bunches hanging on the sides of the mountains framing the rapids into the genitalia of a sleeping god. Noone would think to look there, tired hands holding the thick sticky bud. Squeeze not crush into a bowl. Tired energy. Our bowl the small virgin mary plastic figurine Spike had bought on a whim from a machine next to St. Vinyl's Cathedral which molded the figure while we watched. Before it cooled, Spike and Swiss army knife added some modifications, doubled and sealed when we returned: a thin steel tube bent and widened at one end, inserted from expanded mouth of virgin, a thick smile as if painted stubbornly with layered makeup, cracking like drying mud beside a road painted with the afterimages of whipping-past cars. In the interstice of her legs lies buried a bowl; on her lips mine go, sucking in the hot but sweet smoke, a curling warmth in the lungs like a hot shower in midwinter as a child. Before winter wasn't a season: before the air heaved through me with great cold emotion, in darkened silhouettes of apartments, watching the endless city race away from me in its expanse. Under a similarly large but infinitesimal expanse which reached from me to before my birth, a darkening blue stretching past the microcosmic planet, into the cycling of the stars and seasons, the flaring and dying of figures too large for me to even perceive them. Dwarfing our earth. Blocked-out patches of glowing purple recede and the smoke mutters from my lips, handing the virgin to Spike. "Kiss her," I say, laughing, the bitter rind of sunset growing on the edge of my mouth. He shrugs, and lowers the feather flame. The light moves down the spine of the statue, a bronze warrior bent to task in the center fountain. From our bench under olive trees we watch the shine fade, lapsing into the water, the closing peaceful darkness. We smoke more than our fair share of inscrutable crushing marijuana: our eyes blear, our fingers numbly tread, our giggles muted by our mumblevoices. Our hunger is another blank echo as we move down the greylined streets, talking above the fading hum of grime: about Less Than Zero, Spike's recent read. I abstract: "E. Ellis writes in the current to express the utter disconnection of his characters; they don't relate to what is happening, it goes by as if onscreen; they don't relate to what they are doing: they are either putting drugs or bodily fluids into themselves, but each is an experience entirely in the present, with no connection to the events of their actions or present or future; they have no use for memory, and never will; they have lapsed into a dissonant abstraction whereby they don't need to reach, to touch, other than as objects: reminds me of Catcher in the Rye, where he ends collapsing as he tries to reach however pathetically his sister with love, something he doesn't know from family where he is a liability or school where he can't interact between his actions and his self, barely aware of either, only of what is occurring, effects which he can't predict and connections to himself he doesn't understand. In the end his reaching takes him beyond the catcher; he falls; fall from grace. In the end of Less Than Zero nothing happens, the present continues, and the action doesn't matter, as it is a monotone going past anyway, the self disconnected." He refines: "That book sucks. They babble, because they have nothing to say. They have money and they exist. Fuck 'em. What do we need for that shit? Holden Caulfield tries his hardest, but fuck him too: who wants to erase all of the fuck you signs in the world? He tries, but he's just young. Soon he'll find a way to cut it off, to get back into life." I abstract: "He ends in catatonia." A bus passes with schoolchildren faces pressed to windows, mouths open in suction to mock us, but no laughter. A hallucination. Passing a bookstore window: a bible flips two pages open, and hangs listless in the window, the drool of boredom leaking from its binding. "Fuck them too," Spike drolls, and we pass laughing into the night, aware of the bus passing us in time, the aging of lives we would never encounter again in a city of numbers uncountable by human fingers. Stopped at a convenience store somewhere north of the turn we need to take. Freeways course by, sidestreets break for entrances to greater flows, which in turn flood larger roads. Much empty street under the noise of cars tearing the night in random patterns, but discernibly pulsing, with pauses between groups infecting the air with their abrasion. Over the rim of the freeway streetlights spread their punctual halos into the night, pulsing in turn with the crushing impact on the light of passing cars. The convenience store standardized: fluorescent spill through the gated burglar bars, windows stuffed with as much promotional poster and warning sign as can obstruct the outside world without suffocating the inside in cramped darkness. The inside light is also processed: neat curtains of fluorescence shade the aisles in quantified representations of each shade of light, giving a darkish hue to some of the packaging, a feeling like day-old eyeopen on speed, a false freshness of suspension. Smooth fat sharkskin of cop cars lowslung cruising past, smooth motions between lanes, quiet turns into parking lots. Behind the windshield sunglasses and relentless eyes. Almost as if hoping their randomness would create a new system. Spike and I get a sixpack of Miller Genuine Draft, with its updated apparel of quality appeal masking only the musky murmurs of decrepit flavor. We approach the boarded chain store across a wide lot, and watch shadow figures spread stalky legs from windows and run soundlessly across broad asphalt plane, overseen by the polytheism of halide lamps stretching firmly into the sky before the larger mass of stores. Our empty bottles, back into the sixpack, point to a decision: where next? We leave the bottles boxed and bagged against a sentinel halide eyestalk, to be discovered whenever society returns to that fragmentary praire of pavement. Feet often know when the mind is confused. We walk boldy, the way each can knowing not much will happen of consequence to the world, knowing that image defers the realization of the tight box one must turn in. Loud conversation. As if they have anything to take from us, or us from them: we're moving through. I could think of anchors, and ways to stay, but there's no real point. Dawn comes to the city eyes open or closed on the human. So move now, reach out, feel the freedom of having a life one can toss so easily onto the pyres rising as if from 55-gallon trash drums in the corners of the city that constitute its consumptive lurch at warmth. Open house on sixth street: a grey wood enclosure with each board sucked dry inward on itself, drawing back from those that surround it. The impression left is more fence-dwelling than house. Spike and I enter, paying folded bills to a mime with bowler hat in the door. He smiles at Spike, grimaces like a monkey, cheeks drawn back strictly, at me. Inside punchbowl and walking dim rooms of people. Punchbowl: I park at it, draw a saucer-cup of guava-tainted alcohol, incognito. Very much the sucking dry corners of mouths the alcohol, beverage. The starch abstraction of fruit hovers in the aftertaste, the foreground taste devised like most to conceal alcohol not accentuate a flavor, being several smokescreens of citrus simultaneously. The most important thing to remember about the universe is that it is infinite enough for all things to end in paradox. Even the repetition is excessively recombinant, misapplied in parallel. I once called upon a friend from a previous shade of life, another time when we'd been closer in proximity and mindset, our divergent paths having us diverted, and then left, sad, lonely in alone motel cubicles. He leaned back against the grain of the wood stained, its fibrous structure rising upward toward the fading kitchen light above him. His eyes were closed. The door had not been locked, and I had turned the handle to go in. Clicking of the bolt whisked from lock. (We have sublimated nihilism into being the structure, instead of dictating the structure above nihilism: refusal of relativism). The mind pulled clean from its fabric. "Ray?" "Abstract yourself. Quiet. Close the door. Close your eyes. Close your ears. Think of the focus." "Ray?" "There's nothing in here. A big open space with nothing happening. Nothing to clutter, nothing to order. No permanent dispensation to disrupt. Listen to the silence - or the lack of even that, the absence of silent sound. The absence. There is nothing. It is beautiful." "Ray, you're a burner." "Keep an open mind. In my space this is what I want. And this is the life! There's nothing goin here, kid, and I couldn't be happier." I made Ray a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and put it on his knee. Washing the knife off, I sighed: that week there had been many casualties of consciousness, such as Ray. On the back side of the door, which I closed as I left, was nailed a fluttering pink paper petal, crinkled, and a collection of coupons. What nailed them there was a knife. I went into the hall, and left Ray to his silence. I thought about Ray on the way back, through the graffitti-splashed bus, through the aisles of lighted signs, through the rows of parked cars, through the crowds suffocating in unison in their massings. Good luck peace Ray. At summer camp I'd felt like that: shut off the world, shut it shut it let me stay here. In the shade on my bunk: nothing much is happening here, if I be quiet, I can hold this, maybe. Then nostalgia for all else going by, for friends growing up, for lives moving onward. Of course my reticence was popular: one less incompetent kid to be a liability on the baseball team. Count off, go. I stand in the shadow of the treads of their feet racing forward: a dream of some fear later, that of the world tracking ahead suddenly, leaving one the only anomaly in a flat, empty landscape. A hard summer. The solace I had was riflery: we didn't shoot real guns, they weren't loud, and they'd let you practice on free time. Cheap Red Rider BB guns with rust filigree. BBs aged, copper turned dark. Blasting away at cans: Old Milwaukee, Pearl Light, Lone Star, occasional Budweiser. At first I had no grasp of the difficult short too-light rifle; I propped it with my head and then tried to eye through the sights. "Look, that's not it," from one of the counselors. I look up eyes rolling back to see him, unsquinting. He smelled often of cigarettes, was tall, with a flattened body and tightly rolled limbs sprawling out from it. "You're moving your head so you see the target. No matter what you want to see through the sights, they still line up at something, and that's what the gun's pointing at." I tried again, compliant, silent, moving in a fog of ideas, wondering if that's what I had done, and wondering often where I looked. "That's still not it," and then a firm but not mad hand on my scalp, moving my head still. "Move the gun. Whatever you want to see, you have to make it see." Kindness in his stumbling speech, hidden behind a few decades of conduct guidelines for teen males. Wonder where he went to; hopefully out of that place. Assholes running it: "Maybe that's not how Jim saw it, Burr. You think that he meant to provoke you, but maybe that's just his way - and then you hit him. If it were you saying that, I'd believe you, but it's just him." - from a camp leader, about Jim, the guy who would come up and take your shit from your footlocker, and then lie about it. If I were Jim, asshole would make sense. Camp didn't make sense: even the sports which had tons of rules had those rules modulated into the wishing intent of the players while I was there. I disliked games where you couldn't take the ball off of the field (past the out of bounds lines and into the forest, maybe) and had so many rules that didn't make sense, that held back - but I thought there were moments of brilliance, like the one time I hit a soccerball, and it was a good pass, a good solid one, once. For anyone else there a daily occurrence; for me a triumph. But the game goes on, and I saw that. My triumph led to someone else's score, someone who was of no mind to speak to me anyway. I got in a lot of fights at camp. Headshaken. Eyes fully onfocused on that, feeling of the muscles pulling back to focus. A door closing. Entry to a movie. This party is an echo of others in the splayed light on the wall, different colors deemed festive. Calorous. Wandering the drinktray. Going back to the punchbowl; Spike is armsaround cutely talking to a quick whiteblond-haired artist from the district over, a reach of grey houses with neon signatures lining angular windows. Racing after processions of characteristicisms with the same ambivalence I follow these drinks, cheap brittle-shell plastic cups with fluid that glows resonatingly to the dissonant lights: our conception of modern, our modern parties. How cultured adult we have become. Sodden. Fuck. Spike takes her off into the night, doors swinging shut like a shattering of saloon. Alone. The cringing damn of banging tables with shut fists and impotent anger. Drinktray. Like most other urban attachments this party holds to the icon of halfbuilt houses decorated sparsely, as if the lack of completion holds excuse for the lack of overdecorating. As if we can't throw out our own excesses, excuses. Wallboard shreds away to reveal the fish spines of structural housing, wood aged without fading grey, hidden by the staid bulk of the house. Posted against the skyline, posited against the night. Through these rooms half made servers tuxedoed and shortskirted women (torpedoed: Spike) wander in predetermined paths, implying a destiny over the past in their topheavy desertion, carrying drinks. I take another, cheap plastic drink a stem imitation of flower in its simple cupping, easy crunching as the empty pop-shatters under my heel. I've left a trail. I see them slick with the residue of beverage, spit, sugar, distinctively pungent (sharp smell like fresh cheese mold) alcohol: a hall trashcan with slack sides of reflective black plastic, the pilings of detritus inside, all lit with the neon surgings like one's cheeks inflate with light in the final moments of a decisive suicide. Into the void. Spike gone and I am left standing in antiposition to the wall, the slouch I should carry with my age gone, the dramatic uptightness in my stomach abstracted by the flood of artificial blood. Addiction begins when the reaction to the substance as foreign ends. Slurping something icy, cold with the seething warmth that spreads from impact points in the tongue outward to the mouth, the spine, afterwards. Aftereffect the impact of the image, afterwards. Time becomes disconnected like the body: the arms move as the legs should follow in a normally coordinated movement, the top half of time sliding forward on a meltingness not unlike the slurring of my vision. Wander into the next room, the arches of the doorway passing over me like a reflection of my cold, bent and wanton spine. Tables here, beetles clustered up close against the walls, disposed away from the doors. The stiffening smiles of quick glances of verification; my UPC code is read. The laser flashing across my body like the light in their eyes. Quick blonde faces, heart-shaped like I'm told they should be. You go for the objective, accomplish, and then get out. You go in, talk their talk, and then they let you in. You gotta play it rough, straight up just don't work. Cheap novels, detective. Dicktalk rough and tongue. Move into a chair shatterable plastic like the cups, two people on the other side. Antithesis of comfortability until eyes of Sean and Corporal catch me (Corporal is AWOL from position in some branch of the military, has been for some not sure time now, but he's kept the name, as it's the biggest joke in the world around here, probably except for him (quick sharp black eyes, dark roughcut close hair, bluntish nose and soft short fingers in handshake) who works daily as a computer tech of good repute although I've never seen him, nightly creates wild animated art, interactive figures that crawl in invisible boundaries of imaginary worlds superimposed upon fragments of this one, a buck fifty museum tour the best thrust of his heart-shaped hands; Sean is a stoner, came from some college, fairly wealthy I suppose although nowhere heading rapidly now) and then open their faces, those spreading like the backward overexpanding and whitening, breaking cup-top I will step on in the glowing pool of iridescent black water outside, sheltered from darkness with the licking lights of immensely breakable decorations from inside. I greet, salute and start talking, pausing briefly to be introduced to Nitcha and Heresia, two bright-faced too unabashedly pretty blondes. Neither real, but in this place -- talking about some structure of political imagination found in movies and architecture, enjoying the ability to make deconstructionist spaghetti and easily ripple off latinate obfuscatory language, complex intricacies, as a thumbsuck against the fact that for whatever brilliance I have, there is nothing that will thrust me past that wall of genius, now. Or keep hope and move on toward it, life is a learning process. So is talking with Sean; Corporal having moved in on one blonde, other is something of drawn back from Sean, but probably not aware yet that he's gay. If this were a cliche modern youth novel I'd have Sean take me out back and fuck me in a trashcan, us both young dissonant bisexuals, but Sean wouldn't ever give a damn about me except as a stoner. He's cute though. Sipping drinks, I of course pour more on, only then to run into the good virgin in my pocket -- not that, please. Too sacreligious; anyone have a rolling paper? Second woman takes out Bible and hands it to me, a small Gideon's, and motions tearing. I smile at her and she explains, a clear voice like white liquor, vodka. Vodka? Apparently it works very well, make sure lick it gently, laughing at my quizzical-doubtful expression, and then -- but it rolls well, a thick conical wad of my best Oregon Dark Recollections bud, a thickly purple swelling of coiled THC that wanders from the oblique corners of the darkness of the room to collide heartily with your brain. All hail at the altar of sacrifice. I pass it lit to her first, where it moves to the one next to her, Dutch name I think, maybe German. She tokes politely but also gets a stuffer hit; giggles at number two: wanted to stay sober to seduce Corporal, who should if he can. Back to that youth novel. Corporal must have been thinking vaguely in the receding corners of his mouth about the same thing, but with a shyish opening toothgrits the fatty and inhales thickly, his practiced lungs opening like the distant light of an overpass, from the depths inside. Depths inside: I am next, and shrugging smoke again, taking a large hit with a blink, causing laughter in blondes, and a grin from Sean. Corporal vaguely blows smoke in a dissipating trail over a group of young potentialities moving recombinant to the dance music. Next to Sean. My hand extends, and the depth of consciousness reaches out from beyond him to the walls, the filling of the room with an awareness of the sounds, the movement, the hot backs of dresses warm under spread fingers. Awareness before perception? Perception before conception? Erection. The second blonde (whitish blonde again) takes it in red nails, again stoking the end, pointing fire at me. I laugh. First blonde is afraid, but after the Corporal takes a hit, and laughs over retreating blue smoke that he's going to be nonfunctional immaculate, as he says (did you leave a word out? no, I am the king lizard, of cold blood and lust for heat), and then hands back to her the flaming end, she takes it and charges her pulse with its thick smoke. I pass the thick joint to Sean with an explanation that he didn't get a large enough hit, but the truth is I did, vague recession of. He tokes, smokes a drawn-out, and then takes more air into his lungs, socketing the curled smoke in the base of his lungs, filling his eyes with its redness in a slideshow of progression: I'm forgetting time, letting it pass my fingers past as I zone, staring out into moving legs, orphaned smoke and the soundless slosh of clear liquid in cups left on tables. Sensation of utter lack of movement, and absolute movement of everything not in motion. Luckily this way I can tell what's moving by the negative space, by what's not, that is, the stuff in motion not appearing to be. I've confused myself: my friends and I, not in motion, but sailing over the city and its alleys and streets gutters lined with tricolor rags of president's departure or notable noteworthy's demise; televisions color the streets with their bluish glow, sending flashing beams of it from quartered windows in time to the attackado bravado of machine gun fire glittering on other screens. Confusing consumption. Conspicuous lack of my presence on the laughter of the two blondes, stoned shoulder to shoulder backreeling. Possibly paranoia: accepted as a pattern of life by stoners, accepted more so in the houses they've left: aversion of the head, a quick turn to the world, invert the cheek. Accepted without question whenever said; options change, heads turn, motive to new sensations of stability. Usually on the basic level, as stability is only temporal when worlds flow past and are thrown away on a daily basis. Sounds very newspaper. Flourishing of the hand of one blonde as she throws it back, cocking it on her wrist to gesture something, eyes brightly red, the other almost sullen in her quieter, acquiescent stoniness. The bible joint long since burnt, memories introduce themselves of smoking the rest of it with Corporal, the others nonstoners with no ability to withstand the serpentine blast of that potent dope. Table circular spins in abstraction, sliding each face into focus when their turn to speak is taken: not in the life giving turns, but in the taking back of the turns from a sky that would otherwise allow them to dissipate. The passing of years. Life is many days, he said. Another drink lands in a lap. The party is breaking up: people are fragmented, drunken, stoned, and falling in and out of focus, their own predominance. The party is flourishing: more people dock in the doorway, move into the house, confront anonymous serving personnel, address nearest acquaintance and slide into rooms as if into mailslots. Thin, beautiful people: the classing is heating up. I am allowed in as an example of what I do, or maybe just for amusement. Paranoia: people are fragmented, drunken, stoned, unconscious. Network. Stretching miles of wire, stringing filaments of fiberopticism like fingers of nerves, reaching into and inserting, infiltrating, moving throughout the brief flesh of the society on the land. No conception of real location, brief reminders if wanted -- not at all. Yearning for the detachment: too much of people hung like smoke on clothes, hung on us, hung on tables, hung on ideas or connections, eyes bulging in glee as chemicals shatter the brain. Insertion of nerves, needles, wires. Wired. Still talking to the blondes and Corporal. Sean strikes a scenario profile against the darkened glass, a skein of mist laid over a corner of it. Stoned, stoned. Corporal is red-eyed and charming: bastard, wish I could be, inequitable ascension. Blondes in alliance, a similarity consolidation. C