**********************************************
Original Week One post (from January 18, 2009)
"Punk rock dating" is a project I'm working on. This year I decided to finally finish the book I'm always talking about writing (and sometimes even start writing) . I always run into the problem that I get the idea, do a bunch of research and then get so bored with the subject I stop writing after 10 pages. On this one I'm saying "furk it" to all research, writing conventions, paragraphs, grammar, plot, and planning...
I keep my mind blank all day and make sure I don't even think about my novel and then set aside the half-hour to an hour each night and just write whatever comes to mind at that moment, the theory being that the chapter I write everyday would be completely different if I had written it at 5 p.m as opposed to 12 a.m. Just splilling out whatever interests me at that exact second, being influenced by who's in the room, what's on t.v that exact moment, the conversations I had earlier in the day, etc. . So bear with me,
I'm posting it a chapter a day, and to make sure it gets done I promise at the end of each one to come back tomorrow. Cos' who likes to break promises? Once or twice so far I've said "ah, I'm not gonna write a chapter tonight" but Amy and Jens pushed me to do it anyways and I'm appreciative.
When Amy says to me,"See? That's how it starts. you miss one day and then it's a few weeks..." my blood freezes and I get cracking...
so I'l need yer help too, if you see me slacking push me. This may sound terrifying (especially if yr one of the people who have taken the time to read it everyday, or even once...) , but I'm slotting this off at exactly 300 chapters. So at the end of the year the whole thing should be (WILL BE,) finished, to hell with sleep! Every Sunday I'll post all the chapter's I've written during the week here. So feel free to leave comments, criticisms, or just swap recipes! -Jamin
*******************************
2013 :
Obviously, I was a little off in my one year estimate.
A lot happened and I ended up dropping everything in my life and touring with my band. When I was done, I moved to a different city and basically started over again...So I didn't actually finish it until 2011...and the 300 chapters was pretty off too...God, I'd still be writing it!
I finished at 76 chapters, I believe... You know, I didn't actually complete the story...There was originally supposed to be 3 parts...I finished 2, but the end of part 2 seemed like such a perfect place to stop...and it's not like people were demanding more...I think everyone lost interest in it by that point...But who knows, maybe someday I'll write that final section... Maybe I'll even go beyond that...But either way, I think I stopped it at a good place and I think it's a fitting ending.
I did a ton of revising since the original posts... I re-ordered the entire book, added and removed sections, which was necessary, cos I really was just winging it the entire time...No planning, just blasting off one chapter a night in the alotted 30-60 minutes...So as expected, there was a shitload of editing to be done. My editing process probably took waaaayyyyy longer than the writing process...but here it is...The entire "Punk Rock Dating" epic... It's a brief epic but I hope you enjoy it anyway...
**************************************************
Friday, February 8, 2013
Punk rock dating chapters 1-8
**********************************
Olde Country Pork and Rice
**********************************
2 Cups of Rice
3 Skinless, Boneless chicken breast (also known as Pork, in the olde country)
2 cans (14.5 oz each) diced tomatoes and liquid
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Spray a large casserole dish with non-stick spray.
Arrange chicken pieces in order of median household income per year.
Cover and place head in oven.
Cook from 20 to 45 hours or until chicken is thoroughly satisfied.
Tasty tip: Garnish with lime wedges, sweet onions and a bride's bitter tears.
****************************************************************
There are certain things man was never meant to know:
1. The day and manner of his own death
2. The face of God
3. The origins of the Universe
4. The Skipper's real name...
Unfortunately, I know all of these things...
*********************************************************************
Punk rock dating. Chapter 1: I don’t know where to start…
How I became Orion: Disco Ambassador to the United Nations:
My name is Orion.
I was born in a slimy corner of 1958. The spare change of my youth spent in the slow, slow South: Tire swings, cupcake Earth, sick lemonade, rolls of moist green carpet...Bloated summers devoted to Flannery O' Conner paperbacks...
A recently published medical study has proven that Flannery O' Connor is, scientifically speaking, the greatest of the southern writers. Doctors have found that patients who read "The Violent Bear it Away" were 67% more at peace than readers who read William Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" and almost 98% more well-adjusted than test patient's who were given a placebo novel. This evidence was conclusive enough for me.
Of all the southern writers, I was the worst... I didn't know "Thomas Wolf" from "Teen Wolf Too..."
The proudest moment of my life was the day the House of LIBRA appointed me Disco Ambassador to the United Nations... I can still recall my coronation...
"Congratulations, young man," said the Commissioner. "You are the sixth lizard to be appointed to this position..And the best I'm sure..."
My Five Reptilian Predecessors were largely passionless Northerners whose idea of recreational reading consisted, mainly, of instruction manuals, cookbooks and other such unimaginative fare. Their regional genetics simply prohibited them from appreciating the feverish dramas of Tennessee Williams or the muscular poetry of Clement Allsworth.
Yet here I stood, a southern gennulman whose warm whiskied heart might not be hardy enough to withstand these unforgiving East Coast winters.
At first appearance, the Commissioner was your standard loud, stout, foul-mouthed Yankee, but after getting to know him I could clearly see him standing on the front steps of Berkeley Plantation in a white suit, thumbs deep in his lapel..
"Y'know, Orion...I've always had this pesky feeling that I don't belong here...Like I should be somewhere else..."
"We've all had this feeling," I reassured him.
"Yes, but have you ever had this feeling that prostitutes are the only one's who truly understand you?"
...That day I hung my head in shame. For I knew exactly of the feeling of which he spoke.
See the excite-y answer to all life's nagging questions tomorrow in part 2 where werewolves wear horse costumes and we describe the south in lusty detail..
Chapter. 2: too low for the office...
The coded codex:
Manhattan 1979:
I pulled up to Studio 54 in Car 54. Where was I? Disoriented. Disillusioned: This wasn't the place I had once loved. Allegations of tax fraud? Relaxed dress codes? This was too much.
When people ask me what the dying days of the discotheque were really like, I often point them to an especially evocative novel by Clement Allsworth entitled, "The Disco Dustbowl."
However, I often warn prospective readers that the book is notoriously difficult on first read since it's written in a code that once cracked reveals the name of the only woman Clement ever loved.
Hidden meaning. This is where most artists get it wrong.
You see, if Clement had been more direct and simply printed the girl's name in the book; the letters M-A-R-I-E in the typeface used for the book (Constantia) would form a mystic sigil so each time someone cracked the novel's spine Marie would swoon...
Clement's greatest literary achievement occurred when he did, finally, decide to set aside the literary devices he had hidden behind for so many years, and just simply laid out all of life's answers in a simple tome called "Breed."
But, why go on? After all, I'm not Clement's biographer, or at least I wouldn't be for a few more years...
I was focused on the job at hand, bringing down the base chemists who were responsible for the death of a lifestyle. In the alley behind Studio 54, I was all trembling fingers on hungry triggers. Outfoxed, hiding behind boxes. But, in truth, there was no hiding from the psychic werewolves of SCORPIO...
The House of SCORPIO had always prided itself on the superiority of its psychic warfare. Me, I was almost entirely deficient in the telepathic arts. In fact, I wouldn't even have my first psychic premonition until the fat half of 1985...
But here in 1979, I could hear the werewolves closing in for the kill.
The wolves who looked at death and saw dollar signs. The cowards that built the bombs and watched the ensuing genocides at home on their widescreen TVs. The Ushers at the Autopsy Slideshow. The unimaginative blokes who put perfectly meaningful "Beatles" songs into adult diaper commercials.
"Beware these men of no integrity," the Commissioner, warned me during my LIBRA training, "For these are the men who construct societies and nail yer wife when yer not lookin'!"
I jumped at the chance to be the one to euthanize these dogs...
I had one shot at this! I sprang from my hiding place....
SCORPIO ammunition buzzed harmlessly past my head...Sure, these SCORPIO wolves might have been psychic aces but they were piss-poor shots...I watched them fall one after the other while my .357 magnum blazed off shot after shot after shot....
Hollow-points shredded thick lupine hides... Cold, empty Manhattan night filled with cracking
revolvers...Death rattles...Dog howls...When the smoke cleared and the gutters had clotted with blood and dead leaves, I was the only one standing...
...Or so I thought.
In the distance I could smell the sulfurous stench of a newly struck match and the thick ammonia stink of an el cheapo cigar.
The Commissioner slowly sauntered toward me, his face a shattered tombstone, "Orion..." he said, "They're asking you to resign."
"Who?" I who-ed.
The answer would haunt me for the remainder of my days....
Join us tomorrow for Orion's pulse-pounding tea-party with none other than the flesh-eating ghost of Mark Twain!
Chapter 3: The Tropic of Pineapples...
Drawings of Clocks:
Starlite Cafe 1980:
The Quiche Lorraine had just arrived. As I sat across from Clement Allsworth he explained to me his theory on writing....
"Anyone can do it...You just have to cut yourself off from the endless distractions we're bombarded with everyday...Television...Radio...Reproductive urges...Once you have absolute silence you can finally hear it..."
"Hear what?" I asked.
"The voice of God...All a writer's gotta do is shut up and dictate..."
This was the most articulate anyone had ever heard Clement speak. He had obviously given this subject a lot of thought.
"Interesting," I said. "So you just set aside a couple of hours each day and let the Good Lord do the work for you?"
Clement violently shook the ketchup bottle, "Yea...But you gotta be careful...A few hours a day makes you an artist...a few days a week will make you a clergyman...but keep at it for a few years and you end up a monk..."
I poured a packet of artificial sweetener into my instant coffee.
"Hmmm...Nobody needs that..."
My favorite writing of Clement (outside of the towering "Breed") was a simple, violent haiku:
"I struggle to hold
the Tiger in a headlock,
all my tendon's snap..."
The appeal of this particular piece (and of all haiku's, I believe) lied in the inherent struggle of wanting to say more but having to boil the entire sensation of battling the tiger into 17 syllables. Clement would endlessly count and recount the syllables on his fingers, restructuring the sentence into every possible configuration, just to find a way to fit the word "fierce" into the poem.
Finally after 30 years he did it! Behold! It was a perfectly balanced haiku and felt spiritually complete, until a fellow colleague pointed out that "fierce" was actually one syllable and not two.
"Fear us," argued Clement.
"Feers," his friend corrected.
I mostly agreed with Clement's theory, however, I've found that drowning out the static is a two way street... On one hand, God's whispers can give us divine inspiration which can inspire great works of art. On the other hand, when all is truly silent the voice of God often reminds us, in no uncertain terms, that one day the hours do finally run out...
Luckily, there is now a wide array of medication available to fall silent the ringing voice of God.
This is why the purest and most honest form of art is drawing clocks. No amount of medicine can kill a drawing of a clock. Science hasn't gotten us that far yet.
............................................................................................................
Enter Dr. Coorgan, the man of Psychic medicine: The only other occupant of the Tropic of Pineapples:
"Theez decadent modern writing you zo admire...Ptui!" he raved, "Life eez not measured in paragraphs! Eet eez neither een present nor past tense! Ptui! Ptui! Ptui!" He vigorously wiped his ass with a first edition of "Breed."
I disagreed. After he finished wiping his ass I could feel the paragraph shift...
Ah, the plotlessness thickens in tomorrow's installment as Clement Allsworth appears on the Today show and explains "improvisational literature" with Matt Lauer and the lack of "common sense" in today's world finally tears a rift in time and space.
Chapter 4: I finally say your name (insert name here)...
O, Buffalo:
Ever since I viewed my own death, I've slept in a coffin...stirring my coffee...breaking it in.
In my mind I have visited my dying day a million times...
This is what it looks like:
1986: I chaperone my daughter's first dance, I stand proud as she left-right-lefts with some roast-beef-faced small-town foot-ball star...
The soothing sax-soaked strains of Richard Marx swell in the background...
Death taps me on the shoulder, skull-faced, his tiara matches the mirror ball perfectly...
"May I have this dance?" asks the Reaper.
...ah, "Endless Summer Nights."
Now, I understand that song didn't come out until 1987, but In 1985 I decided to time-slide forward into the year '87 and pick up a copy. I felt on that inevitable day when Death would hold my waist and sway, we both deserved a good laugh.
Death knew as well as I did that no summer night is endless.
Not even for Richard Marx.
The summer night ends for all of us. Eventually, we are each dragged, kicking and screaming, into the autumn of our lives... Which, in turn, always gives way to the eternal winter...
...but I don't mean to bring you readers down…
Here’s a joke someone told me a long time ago:
So Jack says to Joe, “Hey, my old lady’s been driving me crazy ever since she saw this ad on TV…”
“What ad would that be, Jack?" asked Joe.
“I dunno, Jack... Something about donuts,” replied Jack.
“Why did you just call me ‘Jack,' Jack?" asked Joe.
“Oh Thhbbbppptttt…I made a mistake!" said Jack.
Sorry, I’m not very good at telling jokes.
“Orion, why are you telling me all this?"asked the Commissioner.
I had no easy answer, just the long complicated one I usually roll out from time to time..
Come back tomorrow to discover what horrors await us in the tenement of hightop fades and faded dreams...
Punk rock dating: Chapter 5: Breeding essentials...
The Good Book gets better:
Clement Allsworth was pretty confident that at some point he had discovered the secret of life.
He had always harbored a deep passion for unobtainable things. He loved the chase and always felt a deep disappointment in the catch.
Like many existential types he once grappled with the question, "Why are we here?" He agonized about it day and night and wrote many essays, novels, poems and letters on the subject.
Then one day he woke up and found out that he no longer cared.
How could this be?
After spending many years and several wives thinking about it, the only possible answer he could come up with was that at some point he had figured it out! He had obtained the answer, and now was simply bored with life. Disappointed. Ho-hum.
Like the Rolls-Royce he had once lusted for, once he was finally able to buy it he no longer wanted it. Clement parked it in the garage and never drove it again.
After the car, his affections turned to flight: there was nothing he wanted more than his own personal airplane. A few bestselling books later and he had his own 1976 Beech Baron B58.
He flew the Beech Baron once and discovered that flight was too much work: overly technical, too many rules. Soaring high above the Earth wasn't quite as liberating as he had imagined. He flew it once, landed it on the roof of his house where it is parked to this day.
After the plane, his next obsession was the secret of life; He spent the aforementioned time on that and one day he realized his new obsession was Marie...
But wait a second, why did the secret of life no longer matter?
When he thought about it he had that same empty feeling as when he looked at the plane parked on his house.
Huh.
But which one of his theoretical answers was the accurate one? After all he threw about so many.
It was then he decided his next work was going to be dedicated to pinpointing the answer.
Clement did the usual extensive research: re-reading the theories of the classic philosophers, contemplating nature, tossing and turning in bed..
A total of 5 years had passed since his last major work, "Confederate Drive," had hit the bookshelves. After much anticipation, on May 16th, 1989 (3 years after my death), Clement sat down to pen his latest masterwork...
He knew this was going to be the longest, most laborious work of his career and made all the preparations to spend the next 10 years indoors. Cans of pork ‘n’ beans, spare candles, 30 kegs of beer...but imagine his surprise when the entire book was finished in five minutes!
The cover of "Breed" had a photo of a vagina.
Page one: chapter one: Why are we here? Breed.
Page two: chapter two: What's it all about? Breed.
The book went on like this for some 500 pages. The back cover had a photo of a tombstone. He momentarily thought he should throw something in there about eating and sleeping and making the world a better place but he felt that would be redundant. All of that stuff was already implied in the word "breed."
The odd thing was Clement never reproduced. He was able to obtain every girl that he ever fancied and once he got them he was no longer interested. He never touched a single one. The only girl he ever truly loved and wanted to start a family with was Marie. And Marie owned too many Melissa Etheridge albums, and watched "The 'L' Word " one too many times.
She was gay as a loon.
...a very gay loon.
The only means of obtaining her were completely supernatural! And he blew that by not printing her actual name in the complex word labyrinths and arcane literary puzzles of "The Disco Dustbowl."
Her elusive nature actually made her the perfect companion for Clement. Marie was the only thing he still felt passionate about on the day of his death (April 8th, 2025).
Join us tomorrow when we look at the stars: See...************...pretty stars....
Chapter 6: Orion's Future Memoirs....
"Yea, but who ELSE are we?"
If you casually glance at my tombstone you'd get the impression that I died young, but that is actually not the truth. My tombstone lists my consecutive years on Earth up to that point in time (1958-1986), but it doesn't take into account the 3 months I spent in the summer of 1987, the one day I spent in 1863 (to view Lincoln read they Gettysburg address, my lone journey to the past...I'm more of a futurist), and the 30 years I spent in the future (2070-2100).
In the year 2100, I had seen first-hand, the horrors SCORPIO had created..
The H.O.T Bomb...a psychic weapon that transmits "Mind Death" into its victims, instantaneously killing all brain function in a radius that includes 3/4th of Earth...Destroying civilization as we know it...
The plan was simple: travel a hundred years in the future, spend eight years in college and earn a ph.D in Engineering physics to become a leading expert in 22nd Century psychic weaponry, and then go back in time and work with the scientists of the 1970's to develop a top secret counter-weapon to stop the dreaded H.O.T. bomb...
But it wasn't quite as easy as it sounded...
Initially I was able to stay focused on the job at hand but the distractions became increasingly innumerable. Even though it was against LIBRA code, I found myself falling in love and starting a family.
Once LIBRA funds ran out, I started working minimum wage jobs to support my family... Eventually school just didn't seem like a priority or even a possibility.
Before I knew it 30 years had passed, and the end was nigh...
I can still vividly remember the moment...
January 8th, 2100:
There I was...watching "The Fall Guy" when the H.O.T bomb detonated and destroyed the dinner I had so lovingly laid out for my wife and daughter..
Behold! The H.O.T bomb! Destroyer of Dinners!
I grind my false teeth and set the time-slide back to my departure point of 1979 and always looked back...
Read tomorrow's installment to read the true-to-life cinder-fella story of Unca Bill$, the world's first soul-less accelerated-particle-physicist-rapper
Punk rock dating chapter: 7: What I really think about you...
The Nexus Whores:
Clement Allsworth wrote novels that were stunningly poetic. Forests of balanced detail, rhythms like a mother's heart: Hymn-like calm in the passages where he sensuously summoned the holy glow of love eternal but also capable of clangorous cacophony when visiting the skull scattered landscapes of our modern inhumanity.
However as a Person, he was as unpoetic as a man could be. Speaking in grunts, shuddering half-sentences, and hoary clichés...
Los Angeles, 1993:
"Hello, Welcome to 'Book Talk...' This is your host, Raymond Newbury. Our guest tonight is esteemed novelist Clement Allsworth, author of the best-selling book 'Chemical Engine.' Good, Afternoon, Mr. Allsworth..."
"Uhhh...Hello..." Clement was sweating profusely. His Polyester leisure suit was the worrisome shade of a very sick liver...
Raymond got down to business, "Now Mr. Allsworth...In your new book you tackle the complex field of quantum mechanics and its fascinating juxtaposition with primal human emotion...Now, how did you become interested in quantum theory? Was it something you studied prior to writing the book or...?"
"Hmmm...Quantum theory? I'm not sure..." Clement tugged at his rayon neckerchief and its vertiginous paisley swirl, "I mean...I watch 'Quantum Leap' pretty regularly so I know a lot about that...but..."
"Ha-ha," the Host chuckled, demonstrating his phoniest laugh. "But seriously. Based on your writing you seem like a pretty bright guy...Now, what were your acedemic days like? I mean, what is your alma mater?"
"Ummm...I am an alumni of Hamburger University..."
"Hamburger University? Now, I'm not familiar with that school...Is that an East Coast college or...? "
"Yea...They have 'em on the East coast... I'm sure they have them here, too...I believe it's a prerequisite if you're gonna work at McDonalds..."
The audience exploded with derisive laughter.
"Now, Mr. Allsworth..." Raymond smiled. "Please assure the audience that you're only joking..."
"Joking?"
"Yes. I'm certain that you must have obtained a diploma from a higher institution than a burger joint..."
Clement shrugged his shoulders, "If I have, nobody's told me about it..."
His shocking lack of eloquence made him look like a complete illiterate fraud. Once the Literary community caught wind of the interview there were loud whispers that Clement's novels must have been ghost written. This allegation was completely untrue, for God is not technically a ghost.
What most people didn't understand was that Clement's life was largely lived inside of his head.
When Docteur Coorgan finally got around to reading his mind he was stunned by it's blinding iridescence. He ate his earlier words about the man's "crude" novels with an especially french-y bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.
Clement's love interest (who wasn't interested), Marie Lansing, was a master social manipulator. She had a shrewd, calculating mind that always seemed ten steps ahead of everybody else. She made sure everyone admired her yet didn't want anyone to get too close.
Like Clement, she was a writer. Her big breakthrough was a fake blog where she assumed the role of a character named Julie Hales. Marie wrote an imaginary life for Julie that was so real, most people assumed she really existed.
The fake posts were anthologized in print and called "Finnegan's Blog." The book drew the unanimous praise of critics everywhere. Soon Marie had a very lucrative book deal... None of this really surprised Marie. She had already figured that this was going to happen and simply bided her time until it did.
Her next work was another fictional biography called "Pieces of Christine."
The novel was a coming-of-age story featuring a relatable teenage girl. It proved to be another immediate success. The sentimental sops who read it felt like every page was a mirror, reflecting their very souls.
"This is a book about me," thought 100 million readers.
Pretty soon Marie was face to face swapping sisterly truths with Oprah.
This was where Clement first saw her...
...Marie, not Oprah.
Even though they shared the same profession, Marie was everything Clement was not. Self-confident, satisfied in her work, Marie had an eloquent answer to every mundane question. No one ever accused Clement of any of these traits.
Unrequited love was good for Clement's work at first, he churned out poems and novels so dizzying drunk with love they'd put butterflies in Ol' Iron Joe Stalin's stainless steel stomach.
After it was pointed out that Marie was his muse, she quickly wrote a scathing review in "Book Review Monthly"about Clement's latest love letter, a warm novel entitled"Portland Memories."
"Mr. Allsworth's latest work is a romantic sham. The book does go to great (and often overwrought) lengths to fool us into thinking something of note actually occurs, nonetheless, 'Portland Memories' ultimately fails to convince. The modern reader demands more than the flowery poetry and the vacuous pathos that Clement offers here..."
After he read her review he became so afraid to write, in fear of displeasing Marie, that "Portland Memories" would be the last thing he ever wrote. Not counting "Why, oh why?" which he scrawled in permanent marker on every surface he came in contact with.
Oh, and as a side note, it turns out there was a girl named Julie Hales, whose life did pretty much follow the path laid out in "Finnegan's Blog." But Julie was so busy letting an Ouija board plot out every aspect of her life she never really found out about it. When people told her they loved her blog she assumed they were talking about her real blog, which was kinda dull. Not nearly as compelling as Marie's. But we'll get to that story another time...
Join us tomorrow as we take a deeper look at the maps of television and the lighter side of celebrity sidewinds...
Chapter 8: Strawberry Forever....
The Sudden Nostalgia for Freedom:
January 1st, 2009:
The Starlite Cafe:
"I don't know..." said Julie Hales (the real one), topping off the abyss that was the customer's bottomless cup of coffee.."I feel paralyzed by choice..."
"MMMM-hmmm," the customer nodded, disinterested.
"If you think about it, every split-second there's an infinite amount of possibilities...I mean, with those kinds of numbers how do I know for sure the choices I'm making are the right ones?!"
The customer squirmed uncomfortably. He only wanted a cup of joe...maybe a donut. It was too early in the day for existential dilemmas.
"I just don't feel that during the course of my 21 years on Earth that I've received enough information to make well-informed decisions..."
"Maybe you could get some advice..." the man offered. "Everyday I read the paper and there's a column where folks ask 'Abby' how to solve their problems..."
"Yea," Julie countered, "But I need 'Abby' to be there for me all the time!"
The customer and "Abby" were unwilling to take on this responsibility. Everybody else had lives of their own (however sad and meaningless those lives might have been), so one day Julie decided to turn to someone who literally had no life...
She bought an Ouija board at the local Wal-Mart and consulted the spirits about every last detail: What to wear, who to talk to, what to say when she did talk, what to buy at the grocery store, etc.
Julie found this was the most liberating decision she had ever made. The spirit she often spoke to was none other than the ghost of Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge.
Marie made the fictional character of Julie a lesbian because Marie, herself, was a lesbian and sometimes a creation can't help but resemble it's creator. The real life Julie was a lesbian because that's what the spirits told her, Marie was a lesbian because that's how God made her and I'm a lizard because that's what my parent's made me.
January 18th 2009:
Princess Mary had perfectly laid out the day for Julie.
Make toast for breakfast at 8:15 a.m.
Take the toast out the toaster at 8:20 a.m..
Butter it at 8:21 a.m.
Sit on the third chair counter-clockwise from the head of the table and eat the toast from 8:22-8:25.
Put on shoes and leave the house for work.
Take first step on the sidewalk to work at precisely 8:28 a.m.
But on her way out the door something on the television caught her attention. It was a television show she used to watch as a kid called "Strawberry Forever".
It took her back and made her remember carefree Saturday mornings spent wide-eyed in front of a television. Her loutish father yelling "TURN DOWN THAT GODDAMN TV!!!" didn't even bother her. She would then go outside and pretend she was Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge or some other silly make-believe game for the rest of the afternoon. She hardly ever played with the other kids or had any real friends. They didn't matter to her. When she was young she believed everyone else was just scenery in her Saturday morning cartoon.
Julie had forgotten this sensation existed. She was so shaken by the memories that corny old show brought back, she couldn't look away no matter how hard she tried...
Unknowingly, Julie had momentarily chosen free will...
This didn't really sink in until she was thirty minutes late to work...
Join us tomorrow to hear Unca Bill$ thesis on slamming 40's and smashing atoms.
Olde Country Pork and Rice
**********************************
2 Cups of Rice
3 Skinless, Boneless chicken breast (also known as Pork, in the olde country)
2 cans (14.5 oz each) diced tomatoes and liquid
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Spray a large casserole dish with non-stick spray.
Arrange chicken pieces in order of median household income per year.
Cover and place head in oven.
Cook from 20 to 45 hours or until chicken is thoroughly satisfied.
Tasty tip: Garnish with lime wedges, sweet onions and a bride's bitter tears.
****************************************************************
There are certain things man was never meant to know:
1. The day and manner of his own death
2. The face of God
3. The origins of the Universe
4. The Skipper's real name...
Unfortunately, I know all of these things...
*********************************************************************
Punk rock dating. Chapter 1: I don’t know where to start…
How I became Orion: Disco Ambassador to the United Nations:
My name is Orion.
I was born in a slimy corner of 1958. The spare change of my youth spent in the slow, slow South: Tire swings, cupcake Earth, sick lemonade, rolls of moist green carpet...Bloated summers devoted to Flannery O' Conner paperbacks...
A recently published medical study has proven that Flannery O' Connor is, scientifically speaking, the greatest of the southern writers. Doctors have found that patients who read "The Violent Bear it Away" were 67% more at peace than readers who read William Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" and almost 98% more well-adjusted than test patient's who were given a placebo novel. This evidence was conclusive enough for me.
Of all the southern writers, I was the worst... I didn't know "Thomas Wolf" from "Teen Wolf Too..."
The proudest moment of my life was the day the House of LIBRA appointed me Disco Ambassador to the United Nations... I can still recall my coronation...
"Congratulations, young man," said the Commissioner. "You are the sixth lizard to be appointed to this position..And the best I'm sure..."
My Five Reptilian Predecessors were largely passionless Northerners whose idea of recreational reading consisted, mainly, of instruction manuals, cookbooks and other such unimaginative fare. Their regional genetics simply prohibited them from appreciating the feverish dramas of Tennessee Williams or the muscular poetry of Clement Allsworth.
Yet here I stood, a southern gennulman whose warm whiskied heart might not be hardy enough to withstand these unforgiving East Coast winters.
At first appearance, the Commissioner was your standard loud, stout, foul-mouthed Yankee, but after getting to know him I could clearly see him standing on the front steps of Berkeley Plantation in a white suit, thumbs deep in his lapel..
"Y'know, Orion...I've always had this pesky feeling that I don't belong here...Like I should be somewhere else..."
"We've all had this feeling," I reassured him.
"Yes, but have you ever had this feeling that prostitutes are the only one's who truly understand you?"
...That day I hung my head in shame. For I knew exactly of the feeling of which he spoke.
See the excite-y answer to all life's nagging questions tomorrow in part 2 where werewolves wear horse costumes and we describe the south in lusty detail..
Chapter. 2: too low for the office...
The coded codex:
Manhattan 1979:
I pulled up to Studio 54 in Car 54. Where was I? Disoriented. Disillusioned: This wasn't the place I had once loved. Allegations of tax fraud? Relaxed dress codes? This was too much.
When people ask me what the dying days of the discotheque were really like, I often point them to an especially evocative novel by Clement Allsworth entitled, "The Disco Dustbowl."
However, I often warn prospective readers that the book is notoriously difficult on first read since it's written in a code that once cracked reveals the name of the only woman Clement ever loved.
Hidden meaning. This is where most artists get it wrong.
You see, if Clement had been more direct and simply printed the girl's name in the book; the letters M-A-R-I-E in the typeface used for the book (Constantia) would form a mystic sigil so each time someone cracked the novel's spine Marie would swoon...
Clement's greatest literary achievement occurred when he did, finally, decide to set aside the literary devices he had hidden behind for so many years, and just simply laid out all of life's answers in a simple tome called "Breed."
But, why go on? After all, I'm not Clement's biographer, or at least I wouldn't be for a few more years...
I was focused on the job at hand, bringing down the base chemists who were responsible for the death of a lifestyle. In the alley behind Studio 54, I was all trembling fingers on hungry triggers. Outfoxed, hiding behind boxes. But, in truth, there was no hiding from the psychic werewolves of SCORPIO...
The House of SCORPIO had always prided itself on the superiority of its psychic warfare. Me, I was almost entirely deficient in the telepathic arts. In fact, I wouldn't even have my first psychic premonition until the fat half of 1985...
But here in 1979, I could hear the werewolves closing in for the kill.
The wolves who looked at death and saw dollar signs. The cowards that built the bombs and watched the ensuing genocides at home on their widescreen TVs. The Ushers at the Autopsy Slideshow. The unimaginative blokes who put perfectly meaningful "Beatles" songs into adult diaper commercials.
"Beware these men of no integrity," the Commissioner, warned me during my LIBRA training, "For these are the men who construct societies and nail yer wife when yer not lookin'!"
I jumped at the chance to be the one to euthanize these dogs...
I had one shot at this! I sprang from my hiding place....
SCORPIO ammunition buzzed harmlessly past my head...Sure, these SCORPIO wolves might have been psychic aces but they were piss-poor shots...I watched them fall one after the other while my .357 magnum blazed off shot after shot after shot....
Hollow-points shredded thick lupine hides... Cold, empty Manhattan night filled with cracking
revolvers...Death rattles...Dog howls...When the smoke cleared and the gutters had clotted with blood and dead leaves, I was the only one standing...
...Or so I thought.
In the distance I could smell the sulfurous stench of a newly struck match and the thick ammonia stink of an el cheapo cigar.
The Commissioner slowly sauntered toward me, his face a shattered tombstone, "Orion..." he said, "They're asking you to resign."
"Who?" I who-ed.
The answer would haunt me for the remainder of my days....
Join us tomorrow for Orion's pulse-pounding tea-party with none other than the flesh-eating ghost of Mark Twain!
Chapter 3: The Tropic of Pineapples...
Drawings of Clocks:
Starlite Cafe 1980:
The Quiche Lorraine had just arrived. As I sat across from Clement Allsworth he explained to me his theory on writing....
"Anyone can do it...You just have to cut yourself off from the endless distractions we're bombarded with everyday...Television...Radio...Reproductive urges...Once you have absolute silence you can finally hear it..."
"Hear what?" I asked.
"The voice of God...All a writer's gotta do is shut up and dictate..."
This was the most articulate anyone had ever heard Clement speak. He had obviously given this subject a lot of thought.
"Interesting," I said. "So you just set aside a couple of hours each day and let the Good Lord do the work for you?"
Clement violently shook the ketchup bottle, "Yea...But you gotta be careful...A few hours a day makes you an artist...a few days a week will make you a clergyman...but keep at it for a few years and you end up a monk..."
I poured a packet of artificial sweetener into my instant coffee.
"Hmmm...Nobody needs that..."
My favorite writing of Clement (outside of the towering "Breed") was a simple, violent haiku:
"I struggle to hold
the Tiger in a headlock,
all my tendon's snap..."
The appeal of this particular piece (and of all haiku's, I believe) lied in the inherent struggle of wanting to say more but having to boil the entire sensation of battling the tiger into 17 syllables. Clement would endlessly count and recount the syllables on his fingers, restructuring the sentence into every possible configuration, just to find a way to fit the word "fierce" into the poem.
Finally after 30 years he did it! Behold! It was a perfectly balanced haiku and felt spiritually complete, until a fellow colleague pointed out that "fierce" was actually one syllable and not two.
"Fear us," argued Clement.
"Feers," his friend corrected.
I mostly agreed with Clement's theory, however, I've found that drowning out the static is a two way street... On one hand, God's whispers can give us divine inspiration which can inspire great works of art. On the other hand, when all is truly silent the voice of God often reminds us, in no uncertain terms, that one day the hours do finally run out...
Luckily, there is now a wide array of medication available to fall silent the ringing voice of God.
This is why the purest and most honest form of art is drawing clocks. No amount of medicine can kill a drawing of a clock. Science hasn't gotten us that far yet.
............................................................................................................
Enter Dr. Coorgan, the man of Psychic medicine: The only other occupant of the Tropic of Pineapples:
"Theez decadent modern writing you zo admire...Ptui!" he raved, "Life eez not measured in paragraphs! Eet eez neither een present nor past tense! Ptui! Ptui! Ptui!" He vigorously wiped his ass with a first edition of "Breed."
I disagreed. After he finished wiping his ass I could feel the paragraph shift...
Ah, the plotlessness thickens in tomorrow's installment as Clement Allsworth appears on the Today show and explains "improvisational literature" with Matt Lauer and the lack of "common sense" in today's world finally tears a rift in time and space.
Chapter 4: I finally say your name (insert name here)...
O, Buffalo:
Ever since I viewed my own death, I've slept in a coffin...stirring my coffee...breaking it in.
In my mind I have visited my dying day a million times...
This is what it looks like:
1986: I chaperone my daughter's first dance, I stand proud as she left-right-lefts with some roast-beef-faced small-town foot-ball star...
The soothing sax-soaked strains of Richard Marx swell in the background...
Death taps me on the shoulder, skull-faced, his tiara matches the mirror ball perfectly...
"May I have this dance?" asks the Reaper.
...ah, "Endless Summer Nights."
Now, I understand that song didn't come out until 1987, but In 1985 I decided to time-slide forward into the year '87 and pick up a copy. I felt on that inevitable day when Death would hold my waist and sway, we both deserved a good laugh.
Death knew as well as I did that no summer night is endless.
Not even for Richard Marx.
The summer night ends for all of us. Eventually, we are each dragged, kicking and screaming, into the autumn of our lives... Which, in turn, always gives way to the eternal winter...
...but I don't mean to bring you readers down…
Here’s a joke someone told me a long time ago:
So Jack says to Joe, “Hey, my old lady’s been driving me crazy ever since she saw this ad on TV…”
“What ad would that be, Jack?" asked Joe.
“I dunno, Jack... Something about donuts,” replied Jack.
“Why did you just call me ‘Jack,' Jack?" asked Joe.
“Oh Thhbbbppptttt…I made a mistake!" said Jack.
Sorry, I’m not very good at telling jokes.
“Orion, why are you telling me all this?"asked the Commissioner.
I had no easy answer, just the long complicated one I usually roll out from time to time..
Come back tomorrow to discover what horrors await us in the tenement of hightop fades and faded dreams...
Punk rock dating: Chapter 5: Breeding essentials...
The Good Book gets better:
Clement Allsworth was pretty confident that at some point he had discovered the secret of life.
He had always harbored a deep passion for unobtainable things. He loved the chase and always felt a deep disappointment in the catch.
Like many existential types he once grappled with the question, "Why are we here?" He agonized about it day and night and wrote many essays, novels, poems and letters on the subject.
Then one day he woke up and found out that he no longer cared.
How could this be?
After spending many years and several wives thinking about it, the only possible answer he could come up with was that at some point he had figured it out! He had obtained the answer, and now was simply bored with life. Disappointed. Ho-hum.
Like the Rolls-Royce he had once lusted for, once he was finally able to buy it he no longer wanted it. Clement parked it in the garage and never drove it again.
After the car, his affections turned to flight: there was nothing he wanted more than his own personal airplane. A few bestselling books later and he had his own 1976 Beech Baron B58.
He flew the Beech Baron once and discovered that flight was too much work: overly technical, too many rules. Soaring high above the Earth wasn't quite as liberating as he had imagined. He flew it once, landed it on the roof of his house where it is parked to this day.
After the plane, his next obsession was the secret of life; He spent the aforementioned time on that and one day he realized his new obsession was Marie...
But wait a second, why did the secret of life no longer matter?
When he thought about it he had that same empty feeling as when he looked at the plane parked on his house.
Huh.
But which one of his theoretical answers was the accurate one? After all he threw about so many.
It was then he decided his next work was going to be dedicated to pinpointing the answer.
Clement did the usual extensive research: re-reading the theories of the classic philosophers, contemplating nature, tossing and turning in bed..
A total of 5 years had passed since his last major work, "Confederate Drive," had hit the bookshelves. After much anticipation, on May 16th, 1989 (3 years after my death), Clement sat down to pen his latest masterwork...
He knew this was going to be the longest, most laborious work of his career and made all the preparations to spend the next 10 years indoors. Cans of pork ‘n’ beans, spare candles, 30 kegs of beer...but imagine his surprise when the entire book was finished in five minutes!
The cover of "Breed" had a photo of a vagina.
Page one: chapter one: Why are we here? Breed.
Page two: chapter two: What's it all about? Breed.
The book went on like this for some 500 pages. The back cover had a photo of a tombstone. He momentarily thought he should throw something in there about eating and sleeping and making the world a better place but he felt that would be redundant. All of that stuff was already implied in the word "breed."
The odd thing was Clement never reproduced. He was able to obtain every girl that he ever fancied and once he got them he was no longer interested. He never touched a single one. The only girl he ever truly loved and wanted to start a family with was Marie. And Marie owned too many Melissa Etheridge albums, and watched "The 'L' Word " one too many times.
She was gay as a loon.
...a very gay loon.
The only means of obtaining her were completely supernatural! And he blew that by not printing her actual name in the complex word labyrinths and arcane literary puzzles of "The Disco Dustbowl."
Her elusive nature actually made her the perfect companion for Clement. Marie was the only thing he still felt passionate about on the day of his death (April 8th, 2025).
Join us tomorrow when we look at the stars: See...************...pretty stars....
Chapter 6: Orion's Future Memoirs....
"Yea, but who ELSE are we?"
If you casually glance at my tombstone you'd get the impression that I died young, but that is actually not the truth. My tombstone lists my consecutive years on Earth up to that point in time (1958-1986), but it doesn't take into account the 3 months I spent in the summer of 1987, the one day I spent in 1863 (to view Lincoln read they Gettysburg address, my lone journey to the past...I'm more of a futurist), and the 30 years I spent in the future (2070-2100).
In the year 2100, I had seen first-hand, the horrors SCORPIO had created..
The H.O.T Bomb...a psychic weapon that transmits "Mind Death" into its victims, instantaneously killing all brain function in a radius that includes 3/4th of Earth...Destroying civilization as we know it...
The plan was simple: travel a hundred years in the future, spend eight years in college and earn a ph.D in Engineering physics to become a leading expert in 22nd Century psychic weaponry, and then go back in time and work with the scientists of the 1970's to develop a top secret counter-weapon to stop the dreaded H.O.T. bomb...
But it wasn't quite as easy as it sounded...
Initially I was able to stay focused on the job at hand but the distractions became increasingly innumerable. Even though it was against LIBRA code, I found myself falling in love and starting a family.
Once LIBRA funds ran out, I started working minimum wage jobs to support my family... Eventually school just didn't seem like a priority or even a possibility.
Before I knew it 30 years had passed, and the end was nigh...
I can still vividly remember the moment...
January 8th, 2100:
There I was...watching "The Fall Guy" when the H.O.T bomb detonated and destroyed the dinner I had so lovingly laid out for my wife and daughter..
Behold! The H.O.T bomb! Destroyer of Dinners!
I grind my false teeth and set the time-slide back to my departure point of 1979 and always looked back...
Read tomorrow's installment to read the true-to-life cinder-fella story of Unca Bill$, the world's first soul-less accelerated-particle-physicist-rapper
Punk rock dating chapter: 7: What I really think about you...
The Nexus Whores:
Clement Allsworth wrote novels that were stunningly poetic. Forests of balanced detail, rhythms like a mother's heart: Hymn-like calm in the passages where he sensuously summoned the holy glow of love eternal but also capable of clangorous cacophony when visiting the skull scattered landscapes of our modern inhumanity.
However as a Person, he was as unpoetic as a man could be. Speaking in grunts, shuddering half-sentences, and hoary clichés...
Los Angeles, 1993:
"Hello, Welcome to 'Book Talk...' This is your host, Raymond Newbury. Our guest tonight is esteemed novelist Clement Allsworth, author of the best-selling book 'Chemical Engine.' Good, Afternoon, Mr. Allsworth..."
"Uhhh...Hello..." Clement was sweating profusely. His Polyester leisure suit was the worrisome shade of a very sick liver...
Raymond got down to business, "Now Mr. Allsworth...In your new book you tackle the complex field of quantum mechanics and its fascinating juxtaposition with primal human emotion...Now, how did you become interested in quantum theory? Was it something you studied prior to writing the book or...?"
"Hmmm...Quantum theory? I'm not sure..." Clement tugged at his rayon neckerchief and its vertiginous paisley swirl, "I mean...I watch 'Quantum Leap' pretty regularly so I know a lot about that...but..."
"Ha-ha," the Host chuckled, demonstrating his phoniest laugh. "But seriously. Based on your writing you seem like a pretty bright guy...Now, what were your acedemic days like? I mean, what is your alma mater?"
"Ummm...I am an alumni of Hamburger University..."
"Hamburger University? Now, I'm not familiar with that school...Is that an East Coast college or...? "
"Yea...They have 'em on the East coast... I'm sure they have them here, too...I believe it's a prerequisite if you're gonna work at McDonalds..."
The audience exploded with derisive laughter.
"Now, Mr. Allsworth..." Raymond smiled. "Please assure the audience that you're only joking..."
"Joking?"
"Yes. I'm certain that you must have obtained a diploma from a higher institution than a burger joint..."
Clement shrugged his shoulders, "If I have, nobody's told me about it..."
His shocking lack of eloquence made him look like a complete illiterate fraud. Once the Literary community caught wind of the interview there were loud whispers that Clement's novels must have been ghost written. This allegation was completely untrue, for God is not technically a ghost.
What most people didn't understand was that Clement's life was largely lived inside of his head.
When Docteur Coorgan finally got around to reading his mind he was stunned by it's blinding iridescence. He ate his earlier words about the man's "crude" novels with an especially french-y bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.
Clement's love interest (who wasn't interested), Marie Lansing, was a master social manipulator. She had a shrewd, calculating mind that always seemed ten steps ahead of everybody else. She made sure everyone admired her yet didn't want anyone to get too close.
Like Clement, she was a writer. Her big breakthrough was a fake blog where she assumed the role of a character named Julie Hales. Marie wrote an imaginary life for Julie that was so real, most people assumed she really existed.
The fake posts were anthologized in print and called "Finnegan's Blog." The book drew the unanimous praise of critics everywhere. Soon Marie had a very lucrative book deal... None of this really surprised Marie. She had already figured that this was going to happen and simply bided her time until it did.
Her next work was another fictional biography called "Pieces of Christine."
The novel was a coming-of-age story featuring a relatable teenage girl. It proved to be another immediate success. The sentimental sops who read it felt like every page was a mirror, reflecting their very souls.
"This is a book about me," thought 100 million readers.
Pretty soon Marie was face to face swapping sisterly truths with Oprah.
This was where Clement first saw her...
...Marie, not Oprah.
Even though they shared the same profession, Marie was everything Clement was not. Self-confident, satisfied in her work, Marie had an eloquent answer to every mundane question. No one ever accused Clement of any of these traits.
Unrequited love was good for Clement's work at first, he churned out poems and novels so dizzying drunk with love they'd put butterflies in Ol' Iron Joe Stalin's stainless steel stomach.
After it was pointed out that Marie was his muse, she quickly wrote a scathing review in "Book Review Monthly"about Clement's latest love letter, a warm novel entitled"Portland Memories."
"Mr. Allsworth's latest work is a romantic sham. The book does go to great (and often overwrought) lengths to fool us into thinking something of note actually occurs, nonetheless, 'Portland Memories' ultimately fails to convince. The modern reader demands more than the flowery poetry and the vacuous pathos that Clement offers here..."
After he read her review he became so afraid to write, in fear of displeasing Marie, that "Portland Memories" would be the last thing he ever wrote. Not counting "Why, oh why?" which he scrawled in permanent marker on every surface he came in contact with.
Oh, and as a side note, it turns out there was a girl named Julie Hales, whose life did pretty much follow the path laid out in "Finnegan's Blog." But Julie was so busy letting an Ouija board plot out every aspect of her life she never really found out about it. When people told her they loved her blog she assumed they were talking about her real blog, which was kinda dull. Not nearly as compelling as Marie's. But we'll get to that story another time...
Join us tomorrow as we take a deeper look at the maps of television and the lighter side of celebrity sidewinds...
Chapter 8: Strawberry Forever....
The Sudden Nostalgia for Freedom:
January 1st, 2009:
The Starlite Cafe:
"I don't know..." said Julie Hales (the real one), topping off the abyss that was the customer's bottomless cup of coffee.."I feel paralyzed by choice..."
"MMMM-hmmm," the customer nodded, disinterested.
"If you think about it, every split-second there's an infinite amount of possibilities...I mean, with those kinds of numbers how do I know for sure the choices I'm making are the right ones?!"
The customer squirmed uncomfortably. He only wanted a cup of joe...maybe a donut. It was too early in the day for existential dilemmas.
"I just don't feel that during the course of my 21 years on Earth that I've received enough information to make well-informed decisions..."
"Maybe you could get some advice..." the man offered. "Everyday I read the paper and there's a column where folks ask 'Abby' how to solve their problems..."
"Yea," Julie countered, "But I need 'Abby' to be there for me all the time!"
The customer and "Abby" were unwilling to take on this responsibility. Everybody else had lives of their own (however sad and meaningless those lives might have been), so one day Julie decided to turn to someone who literally had no life...
She bought an Ouija board at the local Wal-Mart and consulted the spirits about every last detail: What to wear, who to talk to, what to say when she did talk, what to buy at the grocery store, etc.
Julie found this was the most liberating decision she had ever made. The spirit she often spoke to was none other than the ghost of Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge.
Marie made the fictional character of Julie a lesbian because Marie, herself, was a lesbian and sometimes a creation can't help but resemble it's creator. The real life Julie was a lesbian because that's what the spirits told her, Marie was a lesbian because that's how God made her and I'm a lizard because that's what my parent's made me.
January 18th 2009:
Princess Mary had perfectly laid out the day for Julie.
Make toast for breakfast at 8:15 a.m.
Take the toast out the toaster at 8:20 a.m..
Butter it at 8:21 a.m.
Sit on the third chair counter-clockwise from the head of the table and eat the toast from 8:22-8:25.
Put on shoes and leave the house for work.
Take first step on the sidewalk to work at precisely 8:28 a.m.
But on her way out the door something on the television caught her attention. It was a television show she used to watch as a kid called "Strawberry Forever".
It took her back and made her remember carefree Saturday mornings spent wide-eyed in front of a television. Her loutish father yelling "TURN DOWN THAT GODDAMN TV!!!" didn't even bother her. She would then go outside and pretend she was Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge or some other silly make-believe game for the rest of the afternoon. She hardly ever played with the other kids or had any real friends. They didn't matter to her. When she was young she believed everyone else was just scenery in her Saturday morning cartoon.
Julie had forgotten this sensation existed. She was so shaken by the memories that corny old show brought back, she couldn't look away no matter how hard she tried...
Unknowingly, Julie had momentarily chosen free will...
This didn't really sink in until she was thirty minutes late to work...
Join us tomorrow to hear Unca Bill$ thesis on slamming 40's and smashing atoms.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Punk rock dating : chapters 9-12
Punk rock dating chapter 9: The days of dark poetry….
Funeral-Eyed Blues:
Finally, (some of) the Secrets of Punk Rock Dating...:
1. Mutual disinterests.
2. You want to be held at knifepoint, I want to be held at knifepoint...let's (not) dance.
3. Elaborate boots. A flannel strap, black and red laces, a bicycle chain, several band logos, a switchblade taped to the toe, etc. An explanation for every feature (e.g.: if ever you spot a pack of exceptionally well-dressed Billy-boys, it's in your best interest to always have a weighty bicycle chain...)
This is the one everyone always overlooks...
4. Vinyl records...no turntable. The residual psychic vibrations of that "Exploited" vinyl are powerful enough.
5. Your anti-establishment haircut is charming but you had me at the "Lady Gaga" on your iPod.
Well...We can't give away all the secrets this early...After all we don't know who might be reading this...
...................................................................................................................
The vaguely connected story of how Julie Hales actually met her Phantom:
January 21st, 2009...
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," said the opening line of the book Julie was reading. She never read past that line, but that line was enough.
Julie, disillusioned with choice, looked over at the person sitting next to her at exactly 3:30 p.m. Now she understood the command to "sit in stunned silence" from 3:31-3:32 p.m. There was no mistaking it, in flesh and blood, here sat Princess Mary Adelaide, talking on a cell phone to her literary agent.
"M-Mary?" stammered Julie.
"Yes?" answered Marie.
"You- you're really here?"
"Yes. I'm currently on a five city promotional tour..." Marie was used to people recognizing her, since she had become a world-class novelist, however Julie had no idea that Marie was famous. She had never seen her on 'Oprah' and had never read any of her books. "I'm going to be at Blake's Books in Midtown...You should stop by..."
"Oh," oh-ed Julie.
Julie's "Oh" came across as "I see. That's all the information I need. Thank you."
But that's not what it meant....the "Oh" was in response to a look Marie gave Julie that resulted in some sort of "cosmic bond" or some such thing...
Electric silence. Clashing blue eyes. Lowered jaws swinging to find any word at all. Was it the ring of familiarity? A love so white-hot passionate it could only burn for a second?
Only one man knew and he wasn't telling...
Join us tomorrow when "the one man who wasn't telling" tells us why the cosmic bond happened and also "The Skipper’s” full name, and who are these “Billy Boys?”
Punk rock dating chapter 10: SCORPIO vs TAURUS...
A Brief History of The Billy Boys:
Planet-Bill was born in the death rattle of a red rectangle nebula. An interstellar greaser, he fell to Earth sometime around 1975 (the same year 'Lady Marmalade' became a number-one hit, there are no coincidences in this story) , he crawled from the icy-grey depths of the Detroit River and declared himself the "Emperor of Zug Island."
He ruled the rusted ghost factories and frozen blast furnaces with a pig-iron fist. His followers would burst through the fog and raid Southern Detroit: emptying liquor stores, stealing women, and causing property values to plummet.
The fearful locals began to describe Planet-Bill's gang as the "Billy Boys." The easiest way to spot a Billy boy is his Military issue M-1 helmet emblazoned with a backwards "B" in bright red and the look of desperation in his ashen face.
The Billy Boys originally got into turf wars with the Detroit division of SCORPIO, who had mid-to-lower Michigan in it's death grip since the late 50's (immortalized in Dennis Coffey and the Detroit Guitar Band’s 1971 smash "Scorpio").
In 1977 SCORPIO and The Billy Boy's set aside their differences and joined forces to destroy rival gang TAURUS (immortalized in Dennis Coffey and the Detroit Guitar Band's 1972 hit "Taurus"). To this day The Billy boys are technically part of SCORPIO but still maintain their own unique culture (including 'knife parties' and homemade rockabillyboy records (vinyl records with Xeroxed covers usually printed on red paper containing a peculiar strand of threatening rockabilly music).
So as the decadent 70's gave way to the conservative 80's, SCORPIO now had two street gangs patrolling the avenues...The white collar psychic mafia of the Werewolves and the Billy Boy's flamboyant thugs...All under the watchful eyes of the diabolical Escorpion.
Tomorrow we discuss the sordid history of the Werewolves not to mention the mP3's of Orion's soul....
Punk rock dating no. 11: The Boss of Us...
All Exposition, All the time:
Manhattan, 1979:
The Libran (Supreme Commander of the House of LIBRA ) was asking for my resignation. This had come as quite an unexpected blow. I had always looked up to the Libran and he was like a father to me.
"But why?"
The Commissioner took a deep inhale of his cheap cigar, "Orion, I understand the trip to the 21st century was a goddamn failure...I'm willing to take responsibility fer that...I tried to explain to LIBRA the telepathic complications that time-slide can cause but try explaining 'Time Dilation ESP 101' to those morons..."
"So they want me to resign?"
"'Fraid so, Orion...Now that the 'Punk rock dating' papers have fallen into SCORPIO's hands, the progress we've made on project 54 is as useless as tits on bacon..."
"Yes," I defended. "They do have the plans, but that doesn't mean they're going to crack Clement's code...Let me at least go back, I can still prevent all this..."
"No, no, no...We can't afford any more time travel... Accept it, the projects over..."
I couldn't accept it. We had come so far. True, I hadn't become the professor of psychic engineering I had set out to be, but that didn't mean we didn't gain important knowledge. With what information I had, the scientists were able to start work on project 54, which was a very plausible way of stopping the H.O.T bomb.
Inspired by Clement's brilliant coding system in "The Disco Dustbowl," we sent Dr. Coorgan to the year 2009 to recruit Mr. Allsworth for our mission. We had Clement hide the research in a clever editorial on dating advice. I considered all of this progress, although the Libran must have seen things differently. Dismantling of our secret headquarters, hidden deep in the decadent velvet V.I.P rooms of Studio 54, had already commenced. I had screwed up one too many times and LIBRA could no longer afford to have their names attached to the project.
I was now on my own...
Tomorrow's adventure promises more unwelcome surprises, confusing twists, and muddled characterization...
Punk rock dating no. 12: The Supernatural Proctologist...
The Ghosts of Old Detroit:
Walking through the haunted art-deco landscape, it was not uncommon to see the supernatural proctologist fingering the cracks in the crumbling walls, with his dowsing rod in one hand, flashlight in the other.
With a long history of violent and bloody gang wars, Old Detroit was a hotbed of poltergeists, ghouls, gay vampires, and possessed shut-ins.
The famous 1977 battle between SCORPIO & TAURUS alone was responsible for the untimely demise of 577 innocent bystanders, which the Detroit News reported as a staggering 45% of that years ghosts.
This night in 1979, however, the Supernatural Proctologist was hired to fly to the glittering gutters of New York City. He stumbled to the long line in front of the door of Studio 54, where he was instructed to meet me.
"What's your sign?" asked the doorman.
"Excuse me?" huffed S.P. He had no time for discotheque formalities.
"Your SIGN. What is it?" the doorman insisted.
"Uhhhh...Libra," S.P remembered.
"Ah, house of LIBRA. Yes, you are expected..."
The doorman parted the red velvet rope.
S.P wasn't used to seeing such extravagant orgies in sallow Detroit. Maybe a couple copulating in a bathroom stall in the men's room. The sight of a tangle of perfect bodies writhing in a mountain of cocaine to the rhythm of "I Will Survive" was a perfectly alien sight.
This was when "I Will Survive" still had meaning, before the ironic days of karaoke bars. In 1979 the Drag Queens and Dancefloor mavens still gritted their teeth in defiance and welled up with tears of determination as they sang along.
A song that just might save us all.
S.P was even more surprised when he saw my reptilian face approaching him. "You must be the Supernatural Proctologist!"
"Errr....yes. And you are Orion, I take it."
"Yes, does my appearance startle you?"
"No, no...I just figured for a secret agent they would have chosen someone a bit more...discreet in appearance, maybe..."
"Yes, but the best kept secret is the one hidden in plain sight."
"I-I guess," S.P I guessed.
"You do know why I brought you here?" I asked, my scaly eyebrow arched.
"Something about a possible phantom?"
"I believe SCORPIO has a spy in the house of LIBRA. They have thwarted every plan, cracked every code. The only possible explanation is a hired apparition or a maybe a psychic spy, which may explain my frequent nosebleeds," I explained.
"Woah! The ghost maybe...but the psychic spy?! You're going to need to hire someone else! Telepathy is not my specialty..." S.P's insecurities were slow motion pipe bombs at this point.
"Your resume showed you studied the telepathic arts at Wayne State..."
"No," he interrupted, "I minored in Telepathy, my degree is in Phantom Proctology. I'm a terrible psychic!"
It was time to be honest, "Look, you're all I can afford. LIBRA didn't hire you. I did! I am still technically an agent of LIBRA but they're going to force my resignation any day now...I need your help. The entire future of mankind needs your help..."
"Ahhh, what the hell," I-could-use-the-paycheck-ed the Supernatural Proctologist, once again pulling out his dowsing rod in public...
The next exciting chapter promises the grim findings of our new friend S.P and also the abstract algebra of chance encounters...
Funeral-Eyed Blues:
Finally, (some of) the Secrets of Punk Rock Dating...:
1. Mutual disinterests.
2. You want to be held at knifepoint, I want to be held at knifepoint...let's (not) dance.
3. Elaborate boots. A flannel strap, black and red laces, a bicycle chain, several band logos, a switchblade taped to the toe, etc. An explanation for every feature (e.g.: if ever you spot a pack of exceptionally well-dressed Billy-boys, it's in your best interest to always have a weighty bicycle chain...)
This is the one everyone always overlooks...
4. Vinyl records...no turntable. The residual psychic vibrations of that "Exploited" vinyl are powerful enough.
5. Your anti-establishment haircut is charming but you had me at the "Lady Gaga" on your iPod.
Well...We can't give away all the secrets this early...After all we don't know who might be reading this...
...................................................................................................................
The vaguely connected story of how Julie Hales actually met her Phantom:
January 21st, 2009...
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," said the opening line of the book Julie was reading. She never read past that line, but that line was enough.
Julie, disillusioned with choice, looked over at the person sitting next to her at exactly 3:30 p.m. Now she understood the command to "sit in stunned silence" from 3:31-3:32 p.m. There was no mistaking it, in flesh and blood, here sat Princess Mary Adelaide, talking on a cell phone to her literary agent.
"M-Mary?" stammered Julie.
"Yes?" answered Marie.
"You- you're really here?"
"Yes. I'm currently on a five city promotional tour..." Marie was used to people recognizing her, since she had become a world-class novelist, however Julie had no idea that Marie was famous. She had never seen her on 'Oprah' and had never read any of her books. "I'm going to be at Blake's Books in Midtown...You should stop by..."
"Oh," oh-ed Julie.
Julie's "Oh" came across as "I see. That's all the information I need. Thank you."
But that's not what it meant....the "Oh" was in response to a look Marie gave Julie that resulted in some sort of "cosmic bond" or some such thing...
Electric silence. Clashing blue eyes. Lowered jaws swinging to find any word at all. Was it the ring of familiarity? A love so white-hot passionate it could only burn for a second?
Only one man knew and he wasn't telling...
Join us tomorrow when "the one man who wasn't telling" tells us why the cosmic bond happened and also "The Skipper’s” full name, and who are these “Billy Boys?”
Punk rock dating chapter 10: SCORPIO vs TAURUS...
A Brief History of The Billy Boys:
Planet-Bill was born in the death rattle of a red rectangle nebula. An interstellar greaser, he fell to Earth sometime around 1975 (the same year 'Lady Marmalade' became a number-one hit, there are no coincidences in this story) , he crawled from the icy-grey depths of the Detroit River and declared himself the "Emperor of Zug Island."
He ruled the rusted ghost factories and frozen blast furnaces with a pig-iron fist. His followers would burst through the fog and raid Southern Detroit: emptying liquor stores, stealing women, and causing property values to plummet.
The fearful locals began to describe Planet-Bill's gang as the "Billy Boys." The easiest way to spot a Billy boy is his Military issue M-1 helmet emblazoned with a backwards "B" in bright red and the look of desperation in his ashen face.
The Billy Boys originally got into turf wars with the Detroit division of SCORPIO, who had mid-to-lower Michigan in it's death grip since the late 50's (immortalized in Dennis Coffey and the Detroit Guitar Band’s 1971 smash "Scorpio").
In 1977 SCORPIO and The Billy Boy's set aside their differences and joined forces to destroy rival gang TAURUS (immortalized in Dennis Coffey and the Detroit Guitar Band's 1972 hit "Taurus"). To this day The Billy boys are technically part of SCORPIO but still maintain their own unique culture (including 'knife parties' and homemade rockabillyboy records (vinyl records with Xeroxed covers usually printed on red paper containing a peculiar strand of threatening rockabilly music).
So as the decadent 70's gave way to the conservative 80's, SCORPIO now had two street gangs patrolling the avenues...The white collar psychic mafia of the Werewolves and the Billy Boy's flamboyant thugs...All under the watchful eyes of the diabolical Escorpion.
Tomorrow we discuss the sordid history of the Werewolves not to mention the mP3's of Orion's soul....
Punk rock dating no. 11: The Boss of Us...
All Exposition, All the time:
Manhattan, 1979:
The Libran (Supreme Commander of the House of LIBRA ) was asking for my resignation. This had come as quite an unexpected blow. I had always looked up to the Libran and he was like a father to me.
"But why?"
The Commissioner took a deep inhale of his cheap cigar, "Orion, I understand the trip to the 21st century was a goddamn failure...I'm willing to take responsibility fer that...I tried to explain to LIBRA the telepathic complications that time-slide can cause but try explaining 'Time Dilation ESP 101' to those morons..."
"So they want me to resign?"
"'Fraid so, Orion...Now that the 'Punk rock dating' papers have fallen into SCORPIO's hands, the progress we've made on project 54 is as useless as tits on bacon..."
"Yes," I defended. "They do have the plans, but that doesn't mean they're going to crack Clement's code...Let me at least go back, I can still prevent all this..."
"No, no, no...We can't afford any more time travel... Accept it, the projects over..."
I couldn't accept it. We had come so far. True, I hadn't become the professor of psychic engineering I had set out to be, but that didn't mean we didn't gain important knowledge. With what information I had, the scientists were able to start work on project 54, which was a very plausible way of stopping the H.O.T bomb.
Inspired by Clement's brilliant coding system in "The Disco Dustbowl," we sent Dr. Coorgan to the year 2009 to recruit Mr. Allsworth for our mission. We had Clement hide the research in a clever editorial on dating advice. I considered all of this progress, although the Libran must have seen things differently. Dismantling of our secret headquarters, hidden deep in the decadent velvet V.I.P rooms of Studio 54, had already commenced. I had screwed up one too many times and LIBRA could no longer afford to have their names attached to the project.
I was now on my own...
Tomorrow's adventure promises more unwelcome surprises, confusing twists, and muddled characterization...
Punk rock dating no. 12: The Supernatural Proctologist...
The Ghosts of Old Detroit:
Walking through the haunted art-deco landscape, it was not uncommon to see the supernatural proctologist fingering the cracks in the crumbling walls, with his dowsing rod in one hand, flashlight in the other.
With a long history of violent and bloody gang wars, Old Detroit was a hotbed of poltergeists, ghouls, gay vampires, and possessed shut-ins.
The famous 1977 battle between SCORPIO & TAURUS alone was responsible for the untimely demise of 577 innocent bystanders, which the Detroit News reported as a staggering 45% of that years ghosts.
This night in 1979, however, the Supernatural Proctologist was hired to fly to the glittering gutters of New York City. He stumbled to the long line in front of the door of Studio 54, where he was instructed to meet me.
"What's your sign?" asked the doorman.
"Excuse me?" huffed S.P. He had no time for discotheque formalities.
"Your SIGN. What is it?" the doorman insisted.
"Uhhhh...Libra," S.P remembered.
"Ah, house of LIBRA. Yes, you are expected..."
The doorman parted the red velvet rope.
S.P wasn't used to seeing such extravagant orgies in sallow Detroit. Maybe a couple copulating in a bathroom stall in the men's room. The sight of a tangle of perfect bodies writhing in a mountain of cocaine to the rhythm of "I Will Survive" was a perfectly alien sight.
This was when "I Will Survive" still had meaning, before the ironic days of karaoke bars. In 1979 the Drag Queens and Dancefloor mavens still gritted their teeth in defiance and welled up with tears of determination as they sang along.
A song that just might save us all.
S.P was even more surprised when he saw my reptilian face approaching him. "You must be the Supernatural Proctologist!"
"Errr....yes. And you are Orion, I take it."
"Yes, does my appearance startle you?"
"No, no...I just figured for a secret agent they would have chosen someone a bit more...discreet in appearance, maybe..."
"Yes, but the best kept secret is the one hidden in plain sight."
"I-I guess," S.P I guessed.
"You do know why I brought you here?" I asked, my scaly eyebrow arched.
"Something about a possible phantom?"
"I believe SCORPIO has a spy in the house of LIBRA. They have thwarted every plan, cracked every code. The only possible explanation is a hired apparition or a maybe a psychic spy, which may explain my frequent nosebleeds," I explained.
"Woah! The ghost maybe...but the psychic spy?! You're going to need to hire someone else! Telepathy is not my specialty..." S.P's insecurities were slow motion pipe bombs at this point.
"Your resume showed you studied the telepathic arts at Wayne State..."
"No," he interrupted, "I minored in Telepathy, my degree is in Phantom Proctology. I'm a terrible psychic!"
It was time to be honest, "Look, you're all I can afford. LIBRA didn't hire you. I did! I am still technically an agent of LIBRA but they're going to force my resignation any day now...I need your help. The entire future of mankind needs your help..."
"Ahhh, what the hell," I-could-use-the-paycheck-ed the Supernatural Proctologist, once again pulling out his dowsing rod in public...
The next exciting chapter promises the grim findings of our new friend S.P and also the abstract algebra of chance encounters...
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Punk rock dating :chapters 13-19
Punk rock dating chapter 13 : Read it here! The long hidden formula for true love!
The “A-HA!” moment contrasted with the “Cosmic” moment:
"A-HA!" shouted the Supernatural Proctologist, his dowsing rod in hand, erect at the hint of paranormal activity.
"What is it?" I asked.
"A spirit to be sure!"
"But whose? Is it the spy? Like I suspected?"
"Ohhh, Spirit...give us your name?!"
The Supernatural Proctologist nodded his head serenely. "Yes...I see. ..."
"Well? What did it say?" I demanded.
"She is claiming to be...” The S.P searched for an answer, eyes closed, attempting to eavesdrop into the hereafter, "...Princess Mary Adelaide of....Cambridge? Oh, Great Spirit! What is this Cambridge of which you speak?"
"Never mind that, ask her about Project 54! What does she know?!"
"Ummm," ummed The S.P, "She says she's not interested in anything like that..."
"Well, what is she interested in?"
A look of bewilderment came across The S.P's face, "She says she wants to be an....advice columnist...?"
"Bah! Just what we need now! More advice columnists...Ask her if she's noticed any spies in the house of LIBRA?"
"Uhhhh...She says there have been traces of psychic reconnaissance..."
"E.s.p.ies..." I said, biting my bottom lip...
The Abstract Algebra of chance encounters:
the formula for soul mating:
6,756,000,000= 6,756,000,000 (1+1) = Cosmic Moment (2(6,756,000,000=777))
Of all the fields of abstract algebra, Love was possibly the most abstract and the most algebraic... Few mathematicians ever fully comprehended the complex system of relationship...The formulas seldom made sense and just when a leading "expert" in the field boiled it down to the perfect mathematical unification ("breed" as in Clement Allsworth's book of the same title, or Marie Lansing's "the consolation prize for the absence of God" in her fascinating study "Pieces of Christine") some new dewey-eyed moonfaced kid or some bitter-down-on-his-luck reject would come along and debunk the latest accepted theory.
Scientists of the day feel love had something to do with the release of dopamine or something ...
Dictionaries defined love as : "1 a (1): intense affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties(2): attraction based on sexual desire : affection and tenderness felt by lovers (3): affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests b: an assurance of love 2: warm attachment, enthusiasm, or devotion 3 a: the object of attachment, devotion, or admiration b (1): a beloved person : darling —often used as a term of endearment (2)British —used as an informal term of address4 a: unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another: as (1): the fatherly concern of God for humankind (2): brotherly concern for others b: a person's adoration of God 5: a god or personification of love6: an amorous episode : love affair 7: the sexual embrace : copulation"
Maria Sharapova defined love as a score of zero.
These were all completely correct and dead wrong.
Marie Lansing later revised her definition of love as, "the absence of indifference."
"What about hate?" asked Clement Allsworth.
"Love = Hate," said a controversial Mathematician.
"Let's see some hard evidence on that..." her secret admirer asked.
"The two sensations are both products of basically the same region of the brain, " calmly explained the errr...Brain-ologist.
When Julie Hales looked at Marie at the bus stop, her brain lit up like Sirius. Marie wanted to start a new world with Julie.
She felt she must have had everything in the universe in common with her.
She wanted to spend the rest of her life unraveling Marie's infinite mysteries.
She wanted to fuck her sideways for no reason.
She wanted to protect her from the rest of the sick world.
She wanted to put her among the stars and worship her.
Marie hated the fact they might never be together…
...and she was pretty sure her tennis score was zero.
So most of the above definitions were fairly accurate in this particular case.
They were also totally inaccurate in the sense that what she felt could never be explained or reduced to a few billion sentences, let alone a single one.
That's why since the dawn of mankind roughly 100,000,000,000 people have spent an average of 65.23 years trying to come up with the answer. The cosmic joke being that there wasn't one.
The Cosmic moment was answer enough...
Tomorrow: an abstract algebra pop quiz and a 500 word essay on how the E.S.P.ies were responsible for the fall of The Berlin Wall...
Punk rock dating chapter 14: The Lunchroom Linguists...
Backstage at the 2008 Literary Choice Awards:
Marie Lansing stepped off the stage after presenting the "Binding of the Year" award and found herself face to face with a middle aged man. His eyes like a closed casket, eyebrows like a great horned owl, clothes like an unmade bed, the physique of a Christmas pudding, and tendrils of hair reaching high to the heavens.
"Uhhh...nsspch....," he murmured.
"Excuse me?" Marie asked sharply.
"Errrr...NICE SPEECH," he repeated loudly, attempting enunciation.
"Thank you," she said with a false warmth and started to walk away.
The man grabbed her by the arm, "No, wait..."
Marie looked back with her most offended "how-dare-you" look.
"Wait...let me introduce myself...ummmm... my name is Clemmen Allzzrthh." he mumbled, staring at the floor.
"Who?"
"Clement Allsworth," he Clement Allsworth-ed.
"Oh."
"No, no...I'm a writer too, I wrote some stuff too...Awhile back..."
"Oooookay." She felt no artificial kinship with this wreck.
"Sorry if I'm coming off kinda weird or something... I'm just kinda nervous...I'm a big fan of yours and..."
"Would you like an autograph?" Marie offered, pulling out a copy of her latest book, "Who should I make it out to?"
"Ahhhh... sure...sure. I never read one of your books before. I'll check it out, let you know what I think..." Clement, now sweating profusely, felt around in his pocket, looking for a few bills to pay for the book, there was nothing in there except a handful of change, a few pieces of lint, and his cock.
"Wait. You're a fan of my work but you never read one of my books?" she asked, becoming more and more sick and suspicious with every halting new sentence.
"Your...ahhh...TV work.. I saw you on....What's the girl's name...'Oprah', I think it was...I don't know...I try not to watch too much T.V...I try to keep it under 10 hours a day..."
Really, Clement shouldn't have been so nervous. Even if Mr Allsworth had been the most charming man who ever walked the face of the Earth, he couldn't have had Marie. At bare minimum he could have been friends with her. But she pitied this ineloquent creature. Little did she know in his mind the gorgeous blossoms of his next book, "Rhododendron Door" were beginning to bloom. The geysers-of-rose-petal imagery wouldn't have impressed her really either.
She felt flowery poetry was manipulative and questioned the shaky foundations that romantic love was built upon. Clement thought he felt this way too but he found himself mid-sonnet dead ass wrong. I don't mean to give the impression Marie never felt love. On the day she met Julie Hales, for instance, she felt love with the same fiery, soul-scraping, cry-yourself-to sleep intensity as Clement.
Normally, Marie's love felt like an especially warm, firm handshake that ended with a cigarette.
Dr. Coorgan was pleasantly surprised with the endless variations of love produced by the human mind. Looking at the brain-scan, you would see the same area of the brain light up, but when Dr. Coorgan entered their minds each experience was unique and each one was correct...
"Here," Marie said, handing Clement the book, "It's yours," and walked away.
Clement knew he had blown it. He wanted to hide and wanted to prove himself to her all at the same time. She was a bright, beautiful, young, successful girl, and he was a shambling old ghoul who had drunk himself into a premature middle-age. Clement felt his hand twitch. Somewhere deep in his mind he had the urge to write "Why, oh, why" all over the walls with his Sharpie.
Dr. Coorgan sat deep in the Tropic of Pineapples with his pencil and paper out, taking note. Clement had become his most fascinating case...
Tomorrow! The origin of the Tropic of Pineapples and the "All-Star Puppet Show"
Punk rock dating no. 15: 502 Bad Gateway
The Guided Tour Bus of the Mind:
It's a well-known fact that directly before a medium has a psychic flash he smells oranges. This was how I knew Dr. Coorgan was different; he was a telepath of a higher order. He explained that directly before a psychic encounter he caught the strong scent of pineapples. Dr. Coorgan was able to transport his soul-self beyond the "orange grove" and into an island in his mind that he referred to as "The Tropic of Pineapples."
I can still recall the day when he showed me how to access the Tropic of Pineapples:
1. Close your eyes.
2. Repeat your mantra (usually the name of your first love sung in the tongue of the indigenous dialect of the astral plane, a sort of psychic pidgin English.)
3. Descend the spiral staircase of the mind.
4. Rinse, repeat.
As you step barefoot into the sands of time and look up to the pink eye in the black sky it will invariably rain pineapples. This is a sign that you are not ready to wade in the deep end of the Basal Ganglia. But do not despair, dear reader, let the reassuring voice of the memory of your mother be your lifeguard. There will be times in the deep dark jungles of the Medulla Oblongata that you will forget your mother, but you will still feel the tingle of her life lessons in the pit of your stomach. Hold on to this; not what she said, per se, but what she meant...
This will be your currency in the Tropic of Pineapples...
Join us Tomorrow when the coffee cups fill themselves and the number 1 hit in the nation is the cries of the lonely...
Punk rock dating chapter 16: The Golden Age of Channel Zero...
The Waterfall:
Clement Allsworth wasn't kidding when he said he tried to keep his television watching less than 10 hours a day.
Ten hours was actually a light day. If Clement was feeling ambitious he could squeeze in a good 18 hours. He never actually watched one particular channel or even one particular program. His favorite show was just endlessly flipping through channels.
When Clement did spot something he liked, he'd watch it for 5 seconds and then realize that there might be something more important on another channel. He would then panic, change the channel, and continue to repeat this ritual for 10-18 hours straight. When people would ask him what he watched on T.V last night he would reply, "Everything."
"Everything?" asked the Limo Driver.
"Yes. I watched everything that was on T.V last night. Was a hell of a night..." said Clement
wistfully.
"It must be hard to watch everything. There's so damn many channels these days. When I was a kid we only had three! Can you imagine? Only three Channels?!" the Limo driver shouted incredulously.
"Yes... The world was a much smaller place then," Clement mumbled looking out the window.
"You're telling me! I have at least three hunnert stations on my TV and all the kids do is bitch about there being nothin' on! Can you believe it? That's when I tell 'em to go outside. It's good for 'em to get air. Hell, my old man made me play outdoors all day. Gave me a real appreciation of nature, y'know?"
"Ummm, yes, nature...there's a station dedicated to that too, I believe..."
Clement looked out the limousine window at all the people walking down the sidewalks, preoccupied with their own lives. Clement wished he could hear all their stories, observe all their lives.
"They should give all these folks their own shows..." he mumbled to himself again, "I'd watch it..."
Come back tomorrow to hear the dread secret of Propaganda Channel Zero and Uncle Bill$ kicks it old school like a slide rule...
Punk rock dating chapter 17: Soft Revival...
Common Astrology:
E.S.P.ies are the telepathic assassins of the House of SCORPIO. The evil manipulators behind such mass mind control as Channel Zero and the 2000 Election. The fact that they were here told us that SCORPIO and their leader, the Escorpion, already knew about Project 54.
O' Escorpion:
Escorpion, seven headed beast,
Seven lying mouths and the barbed sting of a scorpion,
Crown bearing the sign of Mars Rigonemetis...
SCORPIO: aligned themselves with the equally insidious House of CANCER, united enemies of the other Zodiac houses (even alienating the other disgraced sects, such as the Divided House of GEMINI and the shadowy House of CAPRICORN).
Escorpion addressed the werewolves, Billy Boys, and the chitinous-shelled horrors of the House of CANCER:
"As the Glorious House of SCORPIO rises, the sickness that has infected this world burns away...So it has been told...in the pages of the eyes that have seen it... Our rivals shall go the way of the house of OPHIUCHUS... Behold, the new age of the Sacred Grove..."
Fists and armored claws pumped the air in exaltation...the Houses chanted in thundering unison....
"Escorpion! Escorpion!"
The Escorpion lowered himself back onto his throne and in a bliss-induced trance, slowly closed his fourteen eyes.
Join us tomorrow for a very special episode of "Strawberry Forever" and 15 signs that he's a good kisser...
Punk rock dating chapter 18: The Shuddering Impact of Love at First Sight...
The Knife:
My Wife and I met August 23rd , 2085...
I was at a Love's truck-stop just outside of Amarillo when I saw a face that made the sweet science of poetry obsolete...
Black tar eyes ... Strawberry on the tip of her tongue...Gun in her pocket...Reading a now-vintage copy of "Breed," flush with the meaning of life...
"Clement Allsworth," I pointed out the obvious, obviously in love....
"You know him?" she asked, looking up from the book.
"He's kind of a hard person to get to know, but..."
"Ummm, he died, what 60 years ago? I know you don't 'know him' know him...I meant do you know his work?"
I smiled, "Yes. That's what I meant."
"Oh," she owed.
"I'm actually his biographer... I wrote Clement Allsworth: Between the Unmade Covers."
The title of the book was a play on a well-known quote from Clement. Shortly after the 2008 Literary Choice awards Mr. Allsworth called Marie, trying to invent questions just so he could have an excuse to talk to her.
"Hi, Marie...This is Clement ..."
"Who?" Marie who-ed.
"Uhhhh...we met at the whatchacallit..the 'Literary Awards' or some such thing..." he attempted to explain, half-drunk/half-high.
"Oh, yes. I remember you, Mr. Allsworth. How may I help you?" she asked with the the icy tones of a frigid telephone operator.
"I wanted to know how you got on the television. I saw you on Oprah or whatever her name is and I saw you on the Today show this morning...I wanted to know how you do it...Y'see I'm kind of a T.V buff, and I was thinkin' about promoting my book on there or..."
"Well, you might want to start by showering...A haircut maybe..."
"I'm a writer...You're not supposed to look at me...Just read me..."
"I'm afraid that doesn't work with television, Mr. Allsworth...People are going to look at you and they're not going to think about your book or the things you're saying. They're going to be distracted, thinking; 'That man needs a shave, some nice clothes...."
"You can't judge a book by it's unmade covers..." shrugged Clement.
At the time Marie had no idea what the hell Mr. Allsworth meant. After Clement's death she revisited his work and figured it out...
Tomorrow we meet Bob Lewitz, the mute Speech Coach and other broken promises...
Punk rock dating chapter 19: "Nail me to the wall, distant friend..."
The day I found out all the jokes were pointed at me:
Amarillo Texas 2085:
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Bernadette Peyton," she said.
This was not to be her permanent last name. When we were later married she took my last name: Which happens to be five seconds of silence.
In my profession it was frowned upon to take a mate.
Think of it! Silent Societies secretly responsible for the course of civilization! Hooded U.N. Peacekeepers! Presidents consulting zodiac street gangs! Reptilians walking amongst us, holding positions of unassailable power! Hidden tracks on compact discs!
Secrets are paramount to the existence of a hidden agent.
Having dedicated my life to surreptitiousness, I had become quite used to girls not knowing I existed. Marie was different. One look from her and all my secrets disappeared. She read my face like an open book.
She had her face in an open book. My favorite, actually. It was too perfect. Me, being Clement’s biographer. I couldn't yet tell her that I did actually meet Clement Allsworth in the prime of his life...
Me, Clement, Julie Hales, Marie Lansing, Dr. Coorgan and the Supernatural Proctologist all together in a cheap late-night diner. Travelers from various points in time, meeting on a balmy summer night in 1980.
"Hmmm, my cellphone's not getting a signal...." Julie pondered....
Meet us in the same place tomorrow for the historic conference and the breakdance of the spheres...
The “A-HA!” moment contrasted with the “Cosmic” moment:
"A-HA!" shouted the Supernatural Proctologist, his dowsing rod in hand, erect at the hint of paranormal activity.
"What is it?" I asked.
"A spirit to be sure!"
"But whose? Is it the spy? Like I suspected?"
"Ohhh, Spirit...give us your name?!"
The Supernatural Proctologist nodded his head serenely. "Yes...I see. ..."
"Well? What did it say?" I demanded.
"She is claiming to be...” The S.P searched for an answer, eyes closed, attempting to eavesdrop into the hereafter, "...Princess Mary Adelaide of....Cambridge? Oh, Great Spirit! What is this Cambridge of which you speak?"
"Never mind that, ask her about Project 54! What does she know?!"
"Ummm," ummed The S.P, "She says she's not interested in anything like that..."
"Well, what is she interested in?"
A look of bewilderment came across The S.P's face, "She says she wants to be an....advice columnist...?"
"Bah! Just what we need now! More advice columnists...Ask her if she's noticed any spies in the house of LIBRA?"
"Uhhhh...She says there have been traces of psychic reconnaissance..."
"E.s.p.ies..." I said, biting my bottom lip...
The Abstract Algebra of chance encounters:
the formula for soul mating:
6,756,000,000= 6,756,000,000 (1+1) = Cosmic Moment (2(6,756,000,000=777))
Of all the fields of abstract algebra, Love was possibly the most abstract and the most algebraic... Few mathematicians ever fully comprehended the complex system of relationship...The formulas seldom made sense and just when a leading "expert" in the field boiled it down to the perfect mathematical unification ("breed" as in Clement Allsworth's book of the same title, or Marie Lansing's "the consolation prize for the absence of God" in her fascinating study "Pieces of Christine") some new dewey-eyed moonfaced kid or some bitter-down-on-his-luck reject would come along and debunk the latest accepted theory.
Scientists of the day feel love had something to do with the release of dopamine or something ...
Dictionaries defined love as : "1 a (1): intense affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties
Maria Sharapova defined love as a score of zero.
These were all completely correct and dead wrong.
Marie Lansing later revised her definition of love as, "the absence of indifference."
"What about hate?" asked Clement Allsworth.
"Love = Hate," said a controversial Mathematician.
"Let's see some hard evidence on that..." her secret admirer asked.
"The two sensations are both products of basically the same region of the brain, " calmly explained the errr...Brain-ologist.
When Julie Hales looked at Marie at the bus stop, her brain lit up like Sirius. Marie wanted to start a new world with Julie.
She felt she must have had everything in the universe in common with her.
She wanted to spend the rest of her life unraveling Marie's infinite mysteries.
She wanted to fuck her sideways for no reason.
She wanted to protect her from the rest of the sick world.
She wanted to put her among the stars and worship her.
Marie hated the fact they might never be together…
...and she was pretty sure her tennis score was zero.
So most of the above definitions were fairly accurate in this particular case.
They were also totally inaccurate in the sense that what she felt could never be explained or reduced to a few billion sentences, let alone a single one.
That's why since the dawn of mankind roughly 100,000,000,000 people have spent an average of 65.23 years trying to come up with the answer. The cosmic joke being that there wasn't one.
The Cosmic moment was answer enough...
Tomorrow: an abstract algebra pop quiz and a 500 word essay on how the E.S.P.ies were responsible for the fall of The Berlin Wall...
Punk rock dating chapter 14: The Lunchroom Linguists...
Backstage at the 2008 Literary Choice Awards:
Marie Lansing stepped off the stage after presenting the "Binding of the Year" award and found herself face to face with a middle aged man. His eyes like a closed casket, eyebrows like a great horned owl, clothes like an unmade bed, the physique of a Christmas pudding, and tendrils of hair reaching high to the heavens.
"Uhhh...nsspch....," he murmured.
"Excuse me?" Marie asked sharply.
"Errrr...NICE SPEECH," he repeated loudly, attempting enunciation.
"Thank you," she said with a false warmth and started to walk away.
The man grabbed her by the arm, "No, wait..."
Marie looked back with her most offended "how-dare-you" look.
"Wait...let me introduce myself...ummmm... my name is Clemmen Allzzrthh." he mumbled, staring at the floor.
"Who?"
"Clement Allsworth," he Clement Allsworth-ed.
"Oh."
"No, no...I'm a writer too, I wrote some stuff too...Awhile back..."
"Oooookay." She felt no artificial kinship with this wreck.
"Sorry if I'm coming off kinda weird or something... I'm just kinda nervous...I'm a big fan of yours and..."
"Would you like an autograph?" Marie offered, pulling out a copy of her latest book, "Who should I make it out to?"
"Ahhhh... sure...sure. I never read one of your books before. I'll check it out, let you know what I think..." Clement, now sweating profusely, felt around in his pocket, looking for a few bills to pay for the book, there was nothing in there except a handful of change, a few pieces of lint, and his cock.
"Wait. You're a fan of my work but you never read one of my books?" she asked, becoming more and more sick and suspicious with every halting new sentence.
"Your...ahhh...TV work.. I saw you on....What's the girl's name...'Oprah', I think it was...I don't know...I try not to watch too much T.V...I try to keep it under 10 hours a day..."
Really, Clement shouldn't have been so nervous. Even if Mr Allsworth had been the most charming man who ever walked the face of the Earth, he couldn't have had Marie. At bare minimum he could have been friends with her. But she pitied this ineloquent creature. Little did she know in his mind the gorgeous blossoms of his next book, "Rhododendron Door" were beginning to bloom. The geysers-of-rose-petal imagery wouldn't have impressed her really either.
She felt flowery poetry was manipulative and questioned the shaky foundations that romantic love was built upon. Clement thought he felt this way too but he found himself mid-sonnet dead ass wrong. I don't mean to give the impression Marie never felt love. On the day she met Julie Hales, for instance, she felt love with the same fiery, soul-scraping, cry-yourself-to sleep intensity as Clement.
Normally, Marie's love felt like an especially warm, firm handshake that ended with a cigarette.
Dr. Coorgan was pleasantly surprised with the endless variations of love produced by the human mind. Looking at the brain-scan, you would see the same area of the brain light up, but when Dr. Coorgan entered their minds each experience was unique and each one was correct...
"Here," Marie said, handing Clement the book, "It's yours," and walked away.
Clement knew he had blown it. He wanted to hide and wanted to prove himself to her all at the same time. She was a bright, beautiful, young, successful girl, and he was a shambling old ghoul who had drunk himself into a premature middle-age. Clement felt his hand twitch. Somewhere deep in his mind he had the urge to write "Why, oh, why" all over the walls with his Sharpie.
Dr. Coorgan sat deep in the Tropic of Pineapples with his pencil and paper out, taking note. Clement had become his most fascinating case...
Tomorrow! The origin of the Tropic of Pineapples and the "All-Star Puppet Show"
Punk rock dating no. 15: 502 Bad Gateway
The Guided Tour Bus of the Mind:
It's a well-known fact that directly before a medium has a psychic flash he smells oranges. This was how I knew Dr. Coorgan was different; he was a telepath of a higher order. He explained that directly before a psychic encounter he caught the strong scent of pineapples. Dr. Coorgan was able to transport his soul-self beyond the "orange grove" and into an island in his mind that he referred to as "The Tropic of Pineapples."
I can still recall the day when he showed me how to access the Tropic of Pineapples:
1. Close your eyes.
2. Repeat your mantra (usually the name of your first love sung in the tongue of the indigenous dialect of the astral plane, a sort of psychic pidgin English.)
3. Descend the spiral staircase of the mind.
4. Rinse, repeat.
As you step barefoot into the sands of time and look up to the pink eye in the black sky it will invariably rain pineapples. This is a sign that you are not ready to wade in the deep end of the Basal Ganglia. But do not despair, dear reader, let the reassuring voice of the memory of your mother be your lifeguard. There will be times in the deep dark jungles of the Medulla Oblongata that you will forget your mother, but you will still feel the tingle of her life lessons in the pit of your stomach. Hold on to this; not what she said, per se, but what she meant...
This will be your currency in the Tropic of Pineapples...
Join us Tomorrow when the coffee cups fill themselves and the number 1 hit in the nation is the cries of the lonely...
Punk rock dating chapter 16: The Golden Age of Channel Zero...
The Waterfall:
Clement Allsworth wasn't kidding when he said he tried to keep his television watching less than 10 hours a day.
Ten hours was actually a light day. If Clement was feeling ambitious he could squeeze in a good 18 hours. He never actually watched one particular channel or even one particular program. His favorite show was just endlessly flipping through channels.
When Clement did spot something he liked, he'd watch it for 5 seconds and then realize that there might be something more important on another channel. He would then panic, change the channel, and continue to repeat this ritual for 10-18 hours straight. When people would ask him what he watched on T.V last night he would reply, "Everything."
"Everything?" asked the Limo Driver.
"Yes. I watched everything that was on T.V last night. Was a hell of a night..." said Clement
wistfully.
"It must be hard to watch everything. There's so damn many channels these days. When I was a kid we only had three! Can you imagine? Only three Channels?!" the Limo driver shouted incredulously.
"Yes... The world was a much smaller place then," Clement mumbled looking out the window.
"You're telling me! I have at least three hunnert stations on my TV and all the kids do is bitch about there being nothin' on! Can you believe it? That's when I tell 'em to go outside. It's good for 'em to get air. Hell, my old man made me play outdoors all day. Gave me a real appreciation of nature, y'know?"
"Ummm, yes, nature...there's a station dedicated to that too, I believe..."
Clement looked out the limousine window at all the people walking down the sidewalks, preoccupied with their own lives. Clement wished he could hear all their stories, observe all their lives.
"They should give all these folks their own shows..." he mumbled to himself again, "I'd watch it..."
Come back tomorrow to hear the dread secret of Propaganda Channel Zero and Uncle Bill$ kicks it old school like a slide rule...
Punk rock dating chapter 17: Soft Revival...
Common Astrology:
E.S.P.ies are the telepathic assassins of the House of SCORPIO. The evil manipulators behind such mass mind control as Channel Zero and the 2000 Election. The fact that they were here told us that SCORPIO and their leader, the Escorpion, already knew about Project 54.
O' Escorpion:
Escorpion, seven headed beast,
SCORPIO: aligned themselves with the equally insidious House of CANCER, united enemies of the other Zodiac houses (even alienating the other disgraced sects, such as the Divided House of GEMINI and the shadowy House of CAPRICORN).
Escorpion addressed the werewolves, Billy Boys, and the chitinous-shelled horrors of the House of CANCER:
"As the Glorious House of SCORPIO rises, the sickness that has infected this world burns away...So it has been told...in the pages of the eyes that have seen it... Our rivals shall go the way of the house of OPHIUCHUS... Behold, the new age of the Sacred Grove..."
Fists and armored claws pumped the air in exaltation...the Houses chanted in thundering unison....
"Escorpion! Escorpion!"
The Escorpion lowered himself back onto his throne and in a bliss-induced trance, slowly closed his fourteen eyes.
Join us tomorrow for a very special episode of "Strawberry Forever" and 15 signs that he's a good kisser...
Punk rock dating chapter 18: The Shuddering Impact of Love at First Sight...
The Knife:
My Wife and I met August 23rd , 2085...
I was at a Love's truck-stop just outside of Amarillo when I saw a face that made the sweet science of poetry obsolete...
Black tar eyes ... Strawberry on the tip of her tongue...Gun in her pocket...Reading a now-vintage copy of "Breed," flush with the meaning of life...
"Clement Allsworth," I pointed out the obvious, obviously in love....
"You know him?" she asked, looking up from the book.
"He's kind of a hard person to get to know, but..."
"Ummm, he died, what 60 years ago? I know you don't 'know him' know him...I meant do you know his work?"
I smiled, "Yes. That's what I meant."
"Oh," she owed.
"I'm actually his biographer... I wrote Clement Allsworth: Between the Unmade Covers."
The title of the book was a play on a well-known quote from Clement. Shortly after the 2008 Literary Choice awards Mr. Allsworth called Marie, trying to invent questions just so he could have an excuse to talk to her.
"Hi, Marie...This is Clement ..."
"Who?" Marie who-ed.
"Uhhhh...we met at the whatchacallit..the 'Literary Awards' or some such thing..." he attempted to explain, half-drunk/half-high.
"Oh, yes. I remember you, Mr. Allsworth. How may I help you?" she asked with the the icy tones of a frigid telephone operator.
"I wanted to know how you got on the television. I saw you on Oprah or whatever her name is and I saw you on the Today show this morning...I wanted to know how you do it...Y'see I'm kind of a T.V buff, and I was thinkin' about promoting my book on there or..."
"Well, you might want to start by showering...A haircut maybe..."
"I'm a writer...You're not supposed to look at me...Just read me..."
"I'm afraid that doesn't work with television, Mr. Allsworth...People are going to look at you and they're not going to think about your book or the things you're saying. They're going to be distracted, thinking; 'That man needs a shave, some nice clothes...."
"You can't judge a book by it's unmade covers..." shrugged Clement.
At the time Marie had no idea what the hell Mr. Allsworth meant. After Clement's death she revisited his work and figured it out...
Tomorrow we meet Bob Lewitz, the mute Speech Coach and other broken promises...
Punk rock dating chapter 19: "Nail me to the wall, distant friend..."
The day I found out all the jokes were pointed at me:
Amarillo Texas 2085:
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Bernadette Peyton," she said.
This was not to be her permanent last name. When we were later married she took my last name: Which happens to be five seconds of silence.
In my profession it was frowned upon to take a mate.
Think of it! Silent Societies secretly responsible for the course of civilization! Hooded U.N. Peacekeepers! Presidents consulting zodiac street gangs! Reptilians walking amongst us, holding positions of unassailable power! Hidden tracks on compact discs!
Secrets are paramount to the existence of a hidden agent.
Having dedicated my life to surreptitiousness, I had become quite used to girls not knowing I existed. Marie was different. One look from her and all my secrets disappeared. She read my face like an open book.
She had her face in an open book. My favorite, actually. It was too perfect. Me, being Clement’s biographer. I couldn't yet tell her that I did actually meet Clement Allsworth in the prime of his life...
Me, Clement, Julie Hales, Marie Lansing, Dr. Coorgan and the Supernatural Proctologist all together in a cheap late-night diner. Travelers from various points in time, meeting on a balmy summer night in 1980.
"Hmmm, my cellphone's not getting a signal...." Julie pondered....
Meet us in the same place tomorrow for the historic conference and the breakdance of the spheres...
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Punk rock dating : chapters 20-28
Punk rock chapter 20: Ze Meeting...
Dr. Coorgan's First Meeting With Clement Allsworth:
February 1st, 2009 : Tucson, AZ.
"Can I help you?" Clement asked opening his door.
"Oui, Monsieur Allsworth... I am from ze futur!" exclaimed Dr. Coorgan grandly.
"The...uhhh... future?"
"Oui! The futur!"
"Oh, then come on in..." Clement opened the door and let the good doctor in.
"Sacre Bleu! What a fantastique hovel you have here, Monsieur Allsworth," Dr Coorgan sneered looking at the leaning tower of dishes, the army of cats, the living room decorated in a rotting trash motif.
Clement scratched his head, "I...uhhh....wasn't expecting guests..."
"So, you are a writair..."
"Yes, yes...I've written a few books..."
"Oui. I HATE your writing."
"Oh."
"But my confidant, Orion...He loves eet! He sent me in ze time machine. We need your help..."
Clement was skeptical but he had watched enough reruns of "The Time Tunnel" and soon warmed to the idea of a traveler from the future. I first met Dr. Coorgan when I traveled from 1979 to 2070. He taught advanced Parapsychology at Texas State University and I quickly became his star pupil. I shared with him the knowledge of Special Relativity and Quantum Psychics that I picked up from my apprenticeship with Professor Patina (inventor of the time-slide). In return he taught me practical E.S.P and how to locate my inner passport to the Tropic of Pineapples.
I had the Libran approve an expensive time-slide to 2009 for Dr. Coorgan. Because of his telepathic abilities, I figured Dr. Coorgan would make a better recruiter than I. He was able to ease Mr. Allsworth's mind and also implant a psychic suggestion to clean his house. This was where Dr. Coorgan first entered Clement's mind...
"Incroyable..." he incredibled. "So complex...Such white hot light.... Such poetry..Such love...Us French, we know much of love...But not like theez..."
Clement was equally stunned by having his mind intruded upon.
Dr. Coorgan's psychic surgery implanted the details of Project 54 and soon Clement Allsworth was ready to start work on his most challenging literary puzzle yet... "Punk rock dating". Clement spent the next few months encoding the information in the document . When finished, Clement hid the manuscript for "Punk rock dating" in a safety deposit box where I picked it up upon my arrival in the year 2070. As I flipped through it's pages I was so taken with how ingeniously the information was hidden! I couldn't help but gush and embarrass poor Mr. Allsworth when I later (earlier?) met him in the year 1980 at our historic summit at the Starlite cafe...
The cosmic dramedy continues tomorrow when we discuss the tragic rise and fall of Professor Patina and the spiders from Mars...
Punk rock dating no. 21: Girl on Ghoul Action...
The Spectral Day-Planner:
Julie Hales had a long day at the Starlite Cafe, standing on her feet for eight hours, getting belittled by asshole customers, taking shit from her cretinous boss. The only way she could unwind was by kicking back in front of her PC and writing some especially dark poetry. Oh, what ravens would haunt her blog tonight...
After a bout with "the black reality of meaningless existence" and some time spent with "Nazi-father figures," she felt like a shiny relaxed time bomb. Luckily, Princess Mary was kindly enough to decide Julie wanted a beer.
"You're so good to me Mary..." she sighed into the brown bottle.
"I'm glad I decided that you appreciate me so much," purred the spectral princess.
"I wish you were still alive... We could hang out for real...Not that I don't appreciate the kind of hanging out we do now...but....I ...I think...No, I know I love you..."
"You know that it can't be like that, Julie," the ghost booed.
"I know, but...Hey! What if I kill myself? We could hang out then! In heaven or ghost-land or wherever you are..." Julie was suddenly animated.
"Noooo, Julie. It's not yet your time..."
"Hey, Princess, if you were, like, y'know...Still living and I was around in the 1700's..."
"1800's," corrected Princess Mary.
"Sorry. The 1800's...do you think I would’ve stood a chance with you? You think we might have gone on a date or gotten married or...?"
"I don't think so, Julie. Such things weren't proper in my time..."
Julie's heart and eyes sank...
"But.." the Princess continued, "If I was around in...say, the 2000's...Well..I think you would have a fair shot, young lady."
Julie lit up, "It's nice to hear that someone loves me...even if you are long dead royalty."
"Lots of people love you..."
"Not really. My Mom loves me sometimes...I think...and my creepy boss and some of the guys at work hit on me, but I don't count that as love. Love is different, I think..."
"Go on," prompted the spirit.
"Love is like, when everything and everyone in the world knows it can't happen... Like, say one person is a ghost and the other person is like this girl... and everyone, even the ghost and the girl say it can't happen...but it does anyway...."
"Now...Julie. Would that ghost and that girl, by any chance, be me and you...?"
"I dunno...maybe..."
"You know that's impossible..."
"Yea, love is impossible..." Julie took another deep pull off the beer, "Hey, y'know, I saw a girl at the bus stop that looked just like you! She was beautiful. At first I thought it was you...but I realized that was impossible."
Which meant it was love.
"Yes. I know you saw someone who looked like me, and I know you're going to meet her again," said Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge...
"Tell me more..." Julie demanded, but as she moved the planchette across the Ouija board, it spelled out "10:31 P.M: Time for bed...."
Join us tomorrow where all the folks say "How-do-you-do?" and all the roosters crow , "Cock-a-doodle doo..."
Punk rock dating no. 22: The Tight Chain of Freedom...
Even when she was free she had no real choices:
The SCORPIO code: "When all has gone wrong start over..."
"She's a writer," gasped Julie over her bowl of cereal.
On the television Marie Lansing discussed her latest book "Pieces of Christine."
The book was called "Pieces of Christine" because the book starts with the main character, Christine, sitting in her bedroom looking into a handheld mirror.
Christine's Mother opened the door.
"Christine. I don't know how to say this..." tears welled up in her Mother's eyes, "Your Father...His plane...It crashed over Charleston, South Carolina."
Christine was so shocked by this awful news that she dropped her mirror onto the floor.
It shattered into a hundred pieces.
Christine never cleaned up the pieces.
Every morning from that moment on, she would look at her myriad reflections, cast back from the scattered shards strewn across her hardwood floor.
She imagined that each one was a different person and everyday she chose one of those people to be....
100 Million people read it but Julie wasn't one of them. She loved books and had a huge library but she only ever made it about 10 pages into any given book. Sometimes she'd just read the dust jacket and the first page and the last page and tell people she had read it. She used to imagine what could have possibly happened in-between and how great and exciting the book must have been... but she'd never really know. The stories she wrote in her head were usually better anyway.
Julie looked at her schedule:
8:58 a.m. : Consult Ouija board in great shock.
This was what she did.
"Princess! Princess!" she shouted moving the planchette wildly. Soon the ectoplasmic face of Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge floated above the board.
"Your Highness... I've found her! The girl from the bus stop! The one you said I'd meet again!"
"Marie Lansing?" asked the ghost knowingly.
"Yes!" shouted Julie, "You KNOW her?"
"I know of her dear child. You really ought to read more. Maybe I'll schedule you a long, good weekend with 'War and Peace'."
"When can I meet her? Where is that TV show filmed? I'll go now..."
"No! You'll meet her eventually. Do not rush things, I have already planned it..."
"I don't care! I gotta go! I gotta know more about her! We were destined to be together! You said it yourself! We're gonna meet and fall in love..."
Mary's ghost corrected Julie, "I never said..."
"I don't care what you said, I don't HAVE to listen to you! I can have free will if I want!" Julie shouted uncontrollably.
This was a lover's quarrel that spanned many dimensions, including life and death...
Julie suddenly decided she didn't need to be told what to do every second of her life! She was getting on the next bus to New York and was determined to find Marie. She scraped together what little money she had, stormed out the door and didn't look back. She was finally free of the tyranny of fate.
However, if she had looked back she would have seen a sheet of paper on the floor, in hand writing half-florid/half-scrawled....
9:15 a.m : Renounce me and walk out the door. Buy a bus ticket to New York and meet Marie Lansing against my wishes...
Tomorrow we take a closer look at the months that lead up to the writing of "Pieces of Christine" and watch in horror as Oprah walks the blurry line between book club and death cult...
Punk rock dating no. 23: The Finish Line...
bite-sized journeys and wide-eyed journals:
1979: Studio 54:
"Those WEE-JEE boards you see in those movies and comic books...They don't do a damn thing," explained The Supernatural Proctologist.
"It doesn't summon ghosts, spirits, demons, cheap dates...Doesn't summon a damn thing!" he continued, "It's a registered trademark of Parker Bros. There's some assembly line somewhere in China shittin' them things out along with Trivial Pursuit boards. I'd estimate it's equally if not MORE, trivial than Trivial pursuit! Sheer want! Unbridled need! That's how I summoned the spirit of Princess Mary to the physical plane! This dowsing rod I use..It's just something to get the ladies all worked up..."
"I had suspected as much," I said drinking a Manhattan in Manhattan.
"Ohhhhh, yea, total B.S., " The Supernatural Proctologist scoffed as he loosened his tie and did a rail off a nubile roller-discoing ass...
"What do you call this stuff again? Cocaine? Not bad," he sniffed, eyes watering. "Kind of gets the ol' juices flowing..."
.......................................................................................................
2009: A bus halfway between Ohio and New York:
Julie's perpetually cheery face looked in deep concentration as she scribbled her darkest poetry into a pink notebook:
"Death haunts my every step,
black breath on my white neck,
I run so fast to fill my life,
the finish line's still in the same place..."
She was feeling cold. She put on her Strawberry Shortcake hoodie. She felt free. The chains were sufficiently invisible at this particular moment....
At that exact same moment in Tucson, AZ, Clement Allsworth picked up the copy of "Pieces of Christine" Marie had given him. He placed page one of "Punk rock dating" just so over page one of "Pieces of Christine"...
Tomorrow holds the answers to the questions that keep the mothers worrying about the children who stumble in the dark...
Punk rock dating no. 24: How Television Works...
Julie in New York:
New York City 2009:
Julie walked past the Roundabout Theatre Company building and around the corner to the television studio where "The Book Club” was filmed. After a 15 hour bus ride she couldn't believe she was going to finally meet Marie Lansing.
She stridently walked up to the door of the Television Studio.
"Excuse me, Miss...Where do you think you're going?" asked the Security Guard.
"My name is Julie Hales and I'm here to see Marie Lansing!"
"You're not going in without a pass and it doesn't matter...Marie Lansing hasn't been here in a week."
"I-I just saw her on TV this morning. She was here...."
"Heh," heh-ed the Security Guard, "That show wasn't live....She came here last week and filmed it."
For whatever reason the fact that television shows were filmed in advance had never crossed Julie's mind. "Huh," was all she had to say.
She thought it over a little longer and decided it was time to explain, "You see, the ghost of Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge said I was going to meet her today and..."
"The ghost of WHO? " asked the Security Guard.
"The Ouija board I have at home... It summons this ghost... I can see it...hear it...and in its ghostly voice it tells me what to do everyday..."
"So you do whatever the 'voices' say, eh?"
"Well, yea...I was tired of making my own choices but I think I'm tired of being tired of making choices now... I wanna see Marie and fall in love with her...and I thought of all this! This was all MY decision!"
The Cop silently dialed the police.
Soon Julie found herself in the back of a police car....
Punk rock dating: Chapter 25: Mizz Understandings...
you know the type:
Manhattan, 2009:
The phone rings in the luxury suite of the Captain Hotel.
"Hello?" answers Marie Lansing.
"Ah, yes, Mrs. Lansing..."
"Mizz Lansing..." she corrected.
"Oh, yes! Mizz Lansing... Sorry...This is Officer Moore at the Police Station, we picked up a suspicious character downtown and we don't know how long we can hold her. She didn't technically do anything wrong outside of attempting to trespass. She's responsible for a very minor disturbance...."
"Why are you telling me all this?" asked Marie impatiently.
"Well, Mizz Lansing...we're afraid it might be a stalker..."
"Oh, dear," She whispered in horror.
"She goes by the name Julie Hales and her I.D says she's from Michigan and..."
"Excuse me. Did you say Julie Hales?"
"You know her?"
"It's hard to explain...That's the name of the lead character in my first book, 'Finnegan's Blog'...Have you read it?"
"Not much of a reader, Mizz. I'm more the 'Monday Night Wrasslin' type."
"Yes. I suppose you would be."
"But yea... I just wanted to make you aware before we let her go...."
"Thank you Officer..."
Marie gently set the phone back down.
She could feel the world slightly turn.
Join us tomorrow for more fast-paced crime drama...hell, maybe we'll be able to pencil in a jaywalking offense or two...
Punk rock dating: Chapter 26: Police Story...
Bail bonds that last a lifetime:
Marie stormed into the Precinct. "I'm here to see Julie Hales..."
"Right there Ma'am," a friendly Officer pointed to a disheveled girl sitting in a chair,
handcuffed, grinning ear to ear...
Time stops.
(queue the break-dancing music of the spheres...)
Marie was visibly rattled.
"I know you," she said in an awed whisper. "I created you."
"Yes," swooned Julie. "You created me... I was nothing before you!"
Keep in mind she still hadn't (and never would) read "Finnegan's Blog."
"I'll be taking her home now, Officer. Thank you very much for holding her," said Marie, as she regained her considerable composure.
The kindly Officer was generous enough to remove Julie's tight handcuffs...Physically and spiritually speaking....
In 24 hours: Big questions and Small answers...
Punk rock dating no. 27: The Shadows we cast in the Faces of Others...
The Continental Breakfast of Discovery:
Marie took Julie Hales up to suite 80 at the Captain Hotel.
"Hey! A hot tub!" noted Julie as she walked into the posh suite.
"Yes. Maybe later. But, tell me... What is your real name?" Marie asked, attempting to get down to business.
"I told you...I'm Julie Hales. Is this where you live? I can pack all my stuff and move in here with you...We'll cuddle every night...Make cocoa...watch 'Strawberry Forever."
Marie's heart swelled at Julie's innocence, she wanted to protect her, embrace her, break her.
Julie must have only been a few years younger than Marie but she carried herself so much differently. When people met Marie they were usually surprised to find out she was so young. When people met Julie they figured she was just some dumb high school girl. Regardless, Marie had to break her infatuation and get some real answers...
"Julie Hales is a made-up character from one of my books...Did you change your name?" Marie grilled. "Is it a fake I.D? I mean, what's going on?"
Julie opened up a complimentary bag of pretzels, "Hmmm. Never read that book. I didn't know you were a writer until I saw you on TV this morning. But I am a big reader...I just started "A Tale of Two Cities" actually; I love that first line...."
"So, you had no idea about the Julie Hales character I invented?"
"Huh? No. But I would say that's just fate, knocking on our door..."
Cue knocking on the door.
Marie opened the door only to come face to French face with Dr. Coorgan:
"Bonjour, Miz Lansing...There is no time to explain...You muzt come with me right away, Oui?"
Dr. Coorgan grabbed Marie by the arm and Julie grabbed a hold of Marie.
"Wherever you're going I'm going too!" Julie said defiantly.
"Quelle horreur! We have no time for theez! Whatevair...Let us go now..." Dr. Coorgan prepared the time-slide for three people and transported them all to a certain summer night in 1980...
Tomorrow be prepared to face the Man with your face, not to mention, FINALLY all in one place: Orion, Clement Allsworth, Marie Lansing, Julie Hales, Dr. Francois Coorgan and The Supernatural Proctologist , sitting down for a thrilling quiche!
Punk rock dating no. 28: The Conference Act 1
Ancient Grease:
The Starlite Cafe, 1980:
"What? You brought me to WORK?" Julie shouted.
"Relax," reassured Docteur Coorgan. " Orion eez buying..."
Chipped Plates, dirty spoons, air slicked with grease: Dr. Coorgan , Julie Hales, and Marie Lansing walked into the cheesy 50's diner. This retro shit was getting old...even in 1980...
"Booth # 83 is Sarah's booth, " said Julie knowingly. "Hell of a waitress, courteous, attentive...nice ass..."
"Sarah won't be born for a few more years, I'm afraid..." I said, putting down my menu... The Quiche was especially tempting on this humid June night.
"Hmmm, my cellphone's not getting a signal..." Julie pondered.
"YOU!" Marie shouted in surprise, astonished to see Clement Allsworth.
"It's...uhhh... hard to get good vegetarian cuisine this early in the 80's," he replied, pretending to ignore Marie.
"Now that everyone's here and the Quiche is arriving, I believe we should start the meeting," I announced, "Sorry about the hasty preparations. I wish I could have given you more notice, but me, Dr. Coorgan, and The Supernatural Proctologist had to sneak into LIBRA headquarters and initiate an unauthorized time-slide. So unfortunately we must make this brief...."
Marie had started to lose her composure again. Where was she? What was happening. Who are these people? Marie had to face facts. She had somehow lost control.
"Relax, ma'am. Some blow? Take the edge off?" The S.P offered her.
"Stay away from me..."
It was time to start: "I understand time travel can be upsetting. Do not be embarassed... Most do not handle it well... Except you Mr. Allsworth. You seem to be taking this in stride..."
Clement saluted and swallowed a large spoonful of peas....
"But," I continued, "I wouldn't have brought us all here if it wasn't important! We are the key players in a losing battle...A hidden war between secret Zodiac street-gangs that is eventually going to end in the destruction of civilization as we know it...Except you Julie...I don't know why you're here, actually."
Dr. Coorgan shrugged.
"Wherever Marie goes I go..." Julie again insisted.
"Whatevair!” Dr. Coorgan frenched loudly.
"Hey, Orion..." said Clement hoisting his spoon high, "I'm already around in 1980...Why go through the trouble of time-slidin' me back here...?"
"In 1980 you had not yet started work on 'Punk rock dating.' As a writer you were not yet prepared to take on such an important work," I explained.
"The 80's were kinda gay," philosophized Julie.
"Okay. I'm going to pretend that everyone here isn't completely and utterly insane. But in your own twisted minds...What could I possibly have to do with this?"
"Well, Marie," I well-Maried,"Unfortunately, you have been dragged into this unwittingly, due to the machinations of others. Most notably my daughter Dorothy....Whom I believe you have already met."
"Yes," said Marie solemnly, "I have met Dorothy."
"Yes. I know you have. I regret that I could not have been a better father to her."
"You mentioned 'others.' Who else involved me in this insanity?" demanded Marie.
"Well... Mr. Allsworth, I'm afraid."
Marie shot Clement a look so cold every thermometer in the city instantly plummeted ten degrees... Subsequently a cold front moved through Lawrence, Logan and Pike counties, eventually making it's way into Holmes, causing the great Holmes County Tornado of
June 7th 1980...
"Who's Dorothy?" Julie asked herself.
Join us tomorrow for more small talk and the arrival of the COSMIC QUICHE! Also watch in horror as Orion forgets to tip his waitress...
Dr. Coorgan's First Meeting With Clement Allsworth:
February 1st, 2009 : Tucson, AZ.
"Can I help you?" Clement asked opening his door.
"Oui, Monsieur Allsworth... I am from ze futur!" exclaimed Dr. Coorgan grandly.
"The...uhhh... future?"
"Oui! The futur!"
"Oh, then come on in..." Clement opened the door and let the good doctor in.
"Sacre Bleu! What a fantastique hovel you have here, Monsieur Allsworth," Dr Coorgan sneered looking at the leaning tower of dishes, the army of cats, the living room decorated in a rotting trash motif.
Clement scratched his head, "I...uhhh....wasn't expecting guests..."
"So, you are a writair..."
"Yes, yes...I've written a few books..."
"Oui. I HATE your writing."
"Oh."
"But my confidant, Orion...He loves eet! He sent me in ze time machine. We need your help..."
Clement was skeptical but he had watched enough reruns of "The Time Tunnel" and soon warmed to the idea of a traveler from the future. I first met Dr. Coorgan when I traveled from 1979 to 2070. He taught advanced Parapsychology at Texas State University and I quickly became his star pupil. I shared with him the knowledge of Special Relativity and Quantum Psychics that I picked up from my apprenticeship with Professor Patina (inventor of the time-slide). In return he taught me practical E.S.P and how to locate my inner passport to the Tropic of Pineapples.
I had the Libran approve an expensive time-slide to 2009 for Dr. Coorgan. Because of his telepathic abilities, I figured Dr. Coorgan would make a better recruiter than I. He was able to ease Mr. Allsworth's mind and also implant a psychic suggestion to clean his house. This was where Dr. Coorgan first entered Clement's mind...
"Incroyable..." he incredibled. "So complex...Such white hot light.... Such poetry..Such love...Us French, we know much of love...But not like theez..."
Clement was equally stunned by having his mind intruded upon.
Dr. Coorgan's psychic surgery implanted the details of Project 54 and soon Clement Allsworth was ready to start work on his most challenging literary puzzle yet... "Punk rock dating". Clement spent the next few months encoding the information in the document . When finished, Clement hid the manuscript for "Punk rock dating" in a safety deposit box where I picked it up upon my arrival in the year 2070. As I flipped through it's pages I was so taken with how ingeniously the information was hidden! I couldn't help but gush and embarrass poor Mr. Allsworth when I later (earlier?) met him in the year 1980 at our historic summit at the Starlite cafe...
The cosmic dramedy continues tomorrow when we discuss the tragic rise and fall of Professor Patina and the spiders from Mars...
Punk rock dating no. 21: Girl on Ghoul Action...
The Spectral Day-Planner:
Julie Hales had a long day at the Starlite Cafe, standing on her feet for eight hours, getting belittled by asshole customers, taking shit from her cretinous boss. The only way she could unwind was by kicking back in front of her PC and writing some especially dark poetry. Oh, what ravens would haunt her blog tonight...
After a bout with "the black reality of meaningless existence" and some time spent with "Nazi-father figures," she felt like a shiny relaxed time bomb. Luckily, Princess Mary was kindly enough to decide Julie wanted a beer.
"You're so good to me Mary..." she sighed into the brown bottle.
"I'm glad I decided that you appreciate me so much," purred the spectral princess.
"I wish you were still alive... We could hang out for real...Not that I don't appreciate the kind of hanging out we do now...but....I ...I think...No, I know I love you..."
"You know that it can't be like that, Julie," the ghost booed.
"I know, but...Hey! What if I kill myself? We could hang out then! In heaven or ghost-land or wherever you are..." Julie was suddenly animated.
"Noooo, Julie. It's not yet your time..."
"Hey, Princess, if you were, like, y'know...Still living and I was around in the 1700's..."
"1800's," corrected Princess Mary.
"Sorry. The 1800's...do you think I would’ve stood a chance with you? You think we might have gone on a date or gotten married or...?"
"I don't think so, Julie. Such things weren't proper in my time..."
Julie's heart and eyes sank...
"But.." the Princess continued, "If I was around in...say, the 2000's...Well..I think you would have a fair shot, young lady."
Julie lit up, "It's nice to hear that someone loves me...even if you are long dead royalty."
"Lots of people love you..."
"Not really. My Mom loves me sometimes...I think...and my creepy boss and some of the guys at work hit on me, but I don't count that as love. Love is different, I think..."
"Go on," prompted the spirit.
"Love is like, when everything and everyone in the world knows it can't happen... Like, say one person is a ghost and the other person is like this girl... and everyone, even the ghost and the girl say it can't happen...but it does anyway...."
"Now...Julie. Would that ghost and that girl, by any chance, be me and you...?"
"I dunno...maybe..."
"You know that's impossible..."
"Yea, love is impossible..." Julie took another deep pull off the beer, "Hey, y'know, I saw a girl at the bus stop that looked just like you! She was beautiful. At first I thought it was you...but I realized that was impossible."
Which meant it was love.
"Yes. I know you saw someone who looked like me, and I know you're going to meet her again," said Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge...
"Tell me more..." Julie demanded, but as she moved the planchette across the Ouija board, it spelled out "10:31 P.M: Time for bed...."
Join us tomorrow where all the folks say "How-do-you-do?" and all the roosters crow , "Cock-a-doodle doo..."
Punk rock dating no. 22: The Tight Chain of Freedom...
Even when she was free she had no real choices:
The SCORPIO code: "When all has gone wrong start over..."
"She's a writer," gasped Julie over her bowl of cereal.
On the television Marie Lansing discussed her latest book "Pieces of Christine."
The book was called "Pieces of Christine" because the book starts with the main character, Christine, sitting in her bedroom looking into a handheld mirror.
Christine's Mother opened the door.
"Christine. I don't know how to say this..." tears welled up in her Mother's eyes, "Your Father...His plane...It crashed over Charleston, South Carolina."
Christine was so shocked by this awful news that she dropped her mirror onto the floor.
It shattered into a hundred pieces.
Christine never cleaned up the pieces.
Every morning from that moment on, she would look at her myriad reflections, cast back from the scattered shards strewn across her hardwood floor.
She imagined that each one was a different person and everyday she chose one of those people to be....
100 Million people read it but Julie wasn't one of them. She loved books and had a huge library but she only ever made it about 10 pages into any given book. Sometimes she'd just read the dust jacket and the first page and the last page and tell people she had read it. She used to imagine what could have possibly happened in-between and how great and exciting the book must have been... but she'd never really know. The stories she wrote in her head were usually better anyway.
Julie looked at her schedule:
8:58 a.m. : Consult Ouija board in great shock.
This was what she did.
"Princess! Princess!" she shouted moving the planchette wildly. Soon the ectoplasmic face of Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge floated above the board.
"Your Highness... I've found her! The girl from the bus stop! The one you said I'd meet again!"
"Marie Lansing?" asked the ghost knowingly.
"Yes!" shouted Julie, "You KNOW her?"
"I know of her dear child. You really ought to read more. Maybe I'll schedule you a long, good weekend with 'War and Peace'."
"When can I meet her? Where is that TV show filmed? I'll go now..."
"No! You'll meet her eventually. Do not rush things, I have already planned it..."
"I don't care! I gotta go! I gotta know more about her! We were destined to be together! You said it yourself! We're gonna meet and fall in love..."
Mary's ghost corrected Julie, "I never said..."
"I don't care what you said, I don't HAVE to listen to you! I can have free will if I want!" Julie shouted uncontrollably.
This was a lover's quarrel that spanned many dimensions, including life and death...
Julie suddenly decided she didn't need to be told what to do every second of her life! She was getting on the next bus to New York and was determined to find Marie. She scraped together what little money she had, stormed out the door and didn't look back. She was finally free of the tyranny of fate.
However, if she had looked back she would have seen a sheet of paper on the floor, in hand writing half-florid/half-scrawled....
9:15 a.m : Renounce me and walk out the door. Buy a bus ticket to New York and meet Marie Lansing against my wishes...
Tomorrow we take a closer look at the months that lead up to the writing of "Pieces of Christine" and watch in horror as Oprah walks the blurry line between book club and death cult...
Punk rock dating no. 23: The Finish Line...
bite-sized journeys and wide-eyed journals:
1979: Studio 54:
"Those WEE-JEE boards you see in those movies and comic books...They don't do a damn thing," explained The Supernatural Proctologist.
"It doesn't summon ghosts, spirits, demons, cheap dates...Doesn't summon a damn thing!" he continued, "It's a registered trademark of Parker Bros. There's some assembly line somewhere in China shittin' them things out along with Trivial Pursuit boards. I'd estimate it's equally if not MORE, trivial than Trivial pursuit! Sheer want! Unbridled need! That's how I summoned the spirit of Princess Mary to the physical plane! This dowsing rod I use..It's just something to get the ladies all worked up..."
"I had suspected as much," I said drinking a Manhattan in Manhattan.
"Ohhhhh, yea, total B.S., " The Supernatural Proctologist scoffed as he loosened his tie and did a rail off a nubile roller-discoing ass...
"What do you call this stuff again? Cocaine? Not bad," he sniffed, eyes watering. "Kind of gets the ol' juices flowing..."
.......................................................................................................
2009: A bus halfway between Ohio and New York:
Julie's perpetually cheery face looked in deep concentration as she scribbled her darkest poetry into a pink notebook:
"Death haunts my every step,
black breath on my white neck,
I run so fast to fill my life,
the finish line's still in the same place..."
She was feeling cold. She put on her Strawberry Shortcake hoodie. She felt free. The chains were sufficiently invisible at this particular moment....
At that exact same moment in Tucson, AZ, Clement Allsworth picked up the copy of "Pieces of Christine" Marie had given him. He placed page one of "Punk rock dating" just so over page one of "Pieces of Christine"...
Tomorrow holds the answers to the questions that keep the mothers worrying about the children who stumble in the dark...
Punk rock dating no. 24: How Television Works...
Julie in New York:
New York City 2009:
Julie walked past the Roundabout Theatre Company building and around the corner to the television studio where "The Book Club” was filmed. After a 15 hour bus ride she couldn't believe she was going to finally meet Marie Lansing.
She stridently walked up to the door of the Television Studio.
"Excuse me, Miss...Where do you think you're going?" asked the Security Guard.
"My name is Julie Hales and I'm here to see Marie Lansing!"
"You're not going in without a pass and it doesn't matter...Marie Lansing hasn't been here in a week."
"I-I just saw her on TV this morning. She was here...."
"Heh," heh-ed the Security Guard, "That show wasn't live....She came here last week and filmed it."
For whatever reason the fact that television shows were filmed in advance had never crossed Julie's mind. "Huh," was all she had to say.
She thought it over a little longer and decided it was time to explain, "You see, the ghost of Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge said I was going to meet her today and..."
"The ghost of WHO? " asked the Security Guard.
"The Ouija board I have at home... It summons this ghost... I can see it...hear it...and in its ghostly voice it tells me what to do everyday..."
"So you do whatever the 'voices' say, eh?"
"Well, yea...I was tired of making my own choices but I think I'm tired of being tired of making choices now... I wanna see Marie and fall in love with her...and I thought of all this! This was all MY decision!"
The Cop silently dialed the police.
Soon Julie found herself in the back of a police car....
Punk rock dating: Chapter 25: Mizz Understandings...
you know the type:
Manhattan, 2009:
The phone rings in the luxury suite of the Captain Hotel.
"Hello?" answers Marie Lansing.
"Ah, yes, Mrs. Lansing..."
"Mizz Lansing..." she corrected.
"Oh, yes! Mizz Lansing... Sorry...This is Officer Moore at the Police Station, we picked up a suspicious character downtown and we don't know how long we can hold her. She didn't technically do anything wrong outside of attempting to trespass. She's responsible for a very minor disturbance...."
"Why are you telling me all this?" asked Marie impatiently.
"Well, Mizz Lansing...we're afraid it might be a stalker..."
"Oh, dear," She whispered in horror.
"She goes by the name Julie Hales and her I.D says she's from Michigan and..."
"Excuse me. Did you say Julie Hales?"
"You know her?"
"It's hard to explain...That's the name of the lead character in my first book, 'Finnegan's Blog'...Have you read it?"
"Not much of a reader, Mizz. I'm more the 'Monday Night Wrasslin' type."
"Yes. I suppose you would be."
"But yea... I just wanted to make you aware before we let her go...."
"Thank you Officer..."
Marie gently set the phone back down.
She could feel the world slightly turn.
Join us tomorrow for more fast-paced crime drama...hell, maybe we'll be able to pencil in a jaywalking offense or two...
Punk rock dating: Chapter 26: Police Story...
Bail bonds that last a lifetime:
Marie stormed into the Precinct. "I'm here to see Julie Hales..."
"Right there Ma'am," a friendly Officer pointed to a disheveled girl sitting in a chair,
handcuffed, grinning ear to ear...
Time stops.
(queue the break-dancing music of the spheres...)
Marie was visibly rattled.
"I know you," she said in an awed whisper. "I created you."
"Yes," swooned Julie. "You created me... I was nothing before you!"
Keep in mind she still hadn't (and never would) read "Finnegan's Blog."
"I'll be taking her home now, Officer. Thank you very much for holding her," said Marie, as she regained her considerable composure.
The kindly Officer was generous enough to remove Julie's tight handcuffs...Physically and spiritually speaking....
In 24 hours: Big questions and Small answers...
Punk rock dating no. 27: The Shadows we cast in the Faces of Others...
The Continental Breakfast of Discovery:
Marie took Julie Hales up to suite 80 at the Captain Hotel.
"Hey! A hot tub!" noted Julie as she walked into the posh suite.
"Yes. Maybe later. But, tell me... What is your real name?" Marie asked, attempting to get down to business.
"I told you...I'm Julie Hales. Is this where you live? I can pack all my stuff and move in here with you...We'll cuddle every night...Make cocoa...watch 'Strawberry Forever."
Marie's heart swelled at Julie's innocence, she wanted to protect her, embrace her, break her.
Julie must have only been a few years younger than Marie but she carried herself so much differently. When people met Marie they were usually surprised to find out she was so young. When people met Julie they figured she was just some dumb high school girl. Regardless, Marie had to break her infatuation and get some real answers...
"Julie Hales is a made-up character from one of my books...Did you change your name?" Marie grilled. "Is it a fake I.D? I mean, what's going on?"
Julie opened up a complimentary bag of pretzels, "Hmmm. Never read that book. I didn't know you were a writer until I saw you on TV this morning. But I am a big reader...I just started "A Tale of Two Cities" actually; I love that first line...."
"So, you had no idea about the Julie Hales character I invented?"
"Huh? No. But I would say that's just fate, knocking on our door..."
Cue knocking on the door.
Marie opened the door only to come face to French face with Dr. Coorgan:
"Bonjour, Miz Lansing...There is no time to explain...You muzt come with me right away, Oui?"
Dr. Coorgan grabbed Marie by the arm and Julie grabbed a hold of Marie.
"Wherever you're going I'm going too!" Julie said defiantly.
"Quelle horreur! We have no time for theez! Whatevair...Let us go now..." Dr. Coorgan prepared the time-slide for three people and transported them all to a certain summer night in 1980...
Tomorrow be prepared to face the Man with your face, not to mention, FINALLY all in one place: Orion, Clement Allsworth, Marie Lansing, Julie Hales, Dr. Francois Coorgan and The Supernatural Proctologist , sitting down for a thrilling quiche!
Punk rock dating no. 28: The Conference Act 1
Ancient Grease:
The Starlite Cafe, 1980:
"What? You brought me to WORK?" Julie shouted.
"Relax," reassured Docteur Coorgan. " Orion eez buying..."
Chipped Plates, dirty spoons, air slicked with grease: Dr. Coorgan , Julie Hales, and Marie Lansing walked into the cheesy 50's diner. This retro shit was getting old...even in 1980...
"Booth # 83 is Sarah's booth, " said Julie knowingly. "Hell of a waitress, courteous, attentive...nice ass..."
"Sarah won't be born for a few more years, I'm afraid..." I said, putting down my menu... The Quiche was especially tempting on this humid June night.
"Hmmm, my cellphone's not getting a signal..." Julie pondered.
"YOU!" Marie shouted in surprise, astonished to see Clement Allsworth.
"It's...uhhh... hard to get good vegetarian cuisine this early in the 80's," he replied, pretending to ignore Marie.
"Now that everyone's here and the Quiche is arriving, I believe we should start the meeting," I announced, "Sorry about the hasty preparations. I wish I could have given you more notice, but me, Dr. Coorgan, and The Supernatural Proctologist had to sneak into LIBRA headquarters and initiate an unauthorized time-slide. So unfortunately we must make this brief...."
Marie had started to lose her composure again. Where was she? What was happening. Who are these people? Marie had to face facts. She had somehow lost control.
"Relax, ma'am. Some blow? Take the edge off?" The S.P offered her.
"Stay away from me..."
It was time to start: "I understand time travel can be upsetting. Do not be embarassed... Most do not handle it well... Except you Mr. Allsworth. You seem to be taking this in stride..."
Clement saluted and swallowed a large spoonful of peas....
"But," I continued, "I wouldn't have brought us all here if it wasn't important! We are the key players in a losing battle...A hidden war between secret Zodiac street-gangs that is eventually going to end in the destruction of civilization as we know it...Except you Julie...I don't know why you're here, actually."
Dr. Coorgan shrugged.
"Wherever Marie goes I go..." Julie again insisted.
"Whatevair!” Dr. Coorgan frenched loudly.
"Hey, Orion..." said Clement hoisting his spoon high, "I'm already around in 1980...Why go through the trouble of time-slidin' me back here...?"
"In 1980 you had not yet started work on 'Punk rock dating.' As a writer you were not yet prepared to take on such an important work," I explained.
"The 80's were kinda gay," philosophized Julie.
"Okay. I'm going to pretend that everyone here isn't completely and utterly insane. But in your own twisted minds...What could I possibly have to do with this?"
"Well, Marie," I well-Maried,"Unfortunately, you have been dragged into this unwittingly, due to the machinations of others. Most notably my daughter Dorothy....Whom I believe you have already met."
"Yes," said Marie solemnly, "I have met Dorothy."
"Yes. I know you have. I regret that I could not have been a better father to her."
"You mentioned 'others.' Who else involved me in this insanity?" demanded Marie.
"Well... Mr. Allsworth, I'm afraid."
Marie shot Clement a look so cold every thermometer in the city instantly plummeted ten degrees... Subsequently a cold front moved through Lawrence, Logan and Pike counties, eventually making it's way into Holmes, causing the great Holmes County Tornado of
June 7th 1980...
"Who's Dorothy?" Julie asked herself.
Join us tomorrow for more small talk and the arrival of the COSMIC QUICHE! Also watch in horror as Orion forgets to tip his waitress...
Monday, February 4, 2013
Punk rock dating: Chapters 29-34
Punk rock dating chapter 29: The Conference Act 2...
Short skirts and peppermint twists:
I explained to Marie that when Clement hid the code in the pages of "Punk rock dating" that the only way to crack the code was with a copy of her book,"Pieces of Christine" (the only other book Clement ever owned due to the fact that Marie gave him a copy at the 2008 Literary Choice award).
If you put page one of "Punk rock dating" just so over page 11 of "Pieces of Christine" and read downward, new seemingly unintended sentences would form. Once the books were combined our scientists could read the secret instructions on how to build Project 54.
"Punk rock dating" had already fallen into SCORPIO's hands but they were still unaware a copy of "Pieces of Christine" was needed to solve the puzzle. The E.S.Pies had picked up stray thoughts that Marie was involved but they did not know to what extent ...
"...and that is why you're going to be captured and tortured to death by SCORPIO agents somewhere in the year 2027," I explained calmly.
"WHHHHAAAATT?!?!?!?!," shrieked Marie.
"Oh, dear...She's not taking this as well as we had hoped," The S.P. snorted through a dollar bill.
"Oh my god! They can't kill, Marie!" Julie panicked. "If Marie dies then I die too!"
"Relax, I am working on a plan to dismantle the H.O.T bomb. Hopefully by the year 2027 their reign of terror will have ended. If not I'll simply write down the time and location where Marie is captured and all she has to do is be someplace else."
"Orion, uhhh...When do I die? Can we prevent that too?" slouched Clement.
At this point in his life Clement was getting nearer and nearer to his final day. I did not have the heart to tell Clement that his death would be by his own hand. He could prevent it quite easily...by not taking his own life.
"I'll..I'll do everything I can..." I replied, the knife in my heart twisting the night away like an old Chubby Checker record.
"You prose writers and you're avoidance of death cracks me up," cracked up Julie. "Us poets know that everyone dies eventually. The story of our lives ends with a funeral on the last page."
"That's true. There does come a day when we must all accept our final fate," I agreed-but-disagreed. "Nonetheless, I died before you were born, Julie Hales! And yet here we are! Drinking tap water from dirty glasses! Contemplating the mechanics of life and death! Yes! Somewhere in time there is a place we all yet live!"
"I guess," Julie guessed.
Clement took another mouthful of peas, "Hell, kill me now."
Clement Allsworth was half frothing-at-the-mouth-in-animal-love/half suicide calm.
Julie had already been hanging with a ghost...Time travel and lizard-men were a nice way to punch a hole in her day.
Marie couldn't believe she was surrounded by such lunatics.
Life and death had never crossed Marie's mind. She had other places to be...
Come back tomorrow for another relaxing conversation at the Starlite cafe, the special will be "Olde Country Pork and Rice", ladies get half-price cocktails and the live entertainment will be Unca Bill$...
Punk rock dating chapter 30: The Conference act 3...
The Guts of Goodwill:
Clement asked Marie, "Hey, uhhhmmm...when we, ahhhh,...get back to 2009...me and you should ...Maybe...if you don't mind...get together some time...Talk about writing or something..."
Marie gave Clement her weakest smile, "I don't think so, Clement. I have a lot to do when I get back...Sorry. "
"Oh, ahhh, oookay." Clement traced "Why oh why?" in the grease spattered on the table.
Dejection filled his unblinking eyes. He sat biting his lip momentarily then he slowly shuddered back to life....
"Orion, " he asked, "If the Psychic spies got your secrets from probing your mind, how do we know they're not doing that now?"
"The brilliant mind of Clement Allsworth! I love it!," I raved, "Our good friend the S.P. has set up a telepathic shield...He is quite the advanced student in E.S.P!"
"I actually, only minored in it...I'm not that good, actually." The Supernatural Proctologist's dowsing rod was limp from too much coke.
"God! I need to get out of here!" Marie shouted as she got up to leave...
"Yes," I agreed. "I suppose it is time we go our separate ways...Dr. Coorgan?"
"Oui?"
"Can you see Ms. Lansing and Ms. Hales home?"
"Ah! Avec plaisir," he bowed gracefully.
"Clement, do you mind staying a little longer? I believe you and I still have much to discuss...."
"Uhhh...Sure...I got nowhere to be..."
Spoonful of peas.
O ESCORPION II:
I see the torches burn from the top of the hill,
Strewn through the valley are the guts of goodwill,
Escorpion gets what he wanted...
He who speaks of gardens and intends burning lands,
Bodies and bones bleaching in faraway sands ,
Escorpion gets what he wanted...
The half-eaten corpses fix their glassy grey eyes,
As Fourteen spiral horns tear open the skies,
Escorpion stares into the black hole....
We stare at broken clocks, the end of time standing still,
Scattered through the cosmos are the guts of goodwill,
Escorpion stares into the black hole...
In 24 hours we take a closer look at the chemical that bonds families together and the forces of nature and nurture that tear them apart, not to mention who are the League of Assassin Stuntmen?
Punk rock dating chapter 31: Stems, hands, faces...
Behold Chronos:
Dr. Coorgan, Lion of Lyon, adjusted the mechanism on his belt and the lotus in his mind. Time-slides are 75% physical, 25% mental. Julie Hales, all short skirts and peppermint twists, adjusted the hem of her skirt, 75% cotton, 25% polyester.
"Theez will work bettair if you all think of home," Docteur Francois Coorgan advised.
He was talking to the wrong crowd; the word "home" didn't mean a whole lot to these girls.
"Say Au Revoir to 1980." The good Doctor pressed the button on his belt.
I will attempt to explain the sensation to you, dear reader...
If time can be thought of as a river flowing downstream toward the ocean of forever (albeit a rather turgid river, which is natural, explaining the phenomenon of being caught in different time streams (e.g. Jack: "Today is going by so slow..."
Joe: "That's funny, I thought today was going by quick!"), then the only way to explain time-slide is the mentally, physically and sexually exhausting task of swimming upstream though the hurricane of history's horrors. Mating with the moths that eat the outdated clothing in the cluttered closet of Chronos.
Behold, Chronos: Shake his hand; the hand that is continually dying and being reborn at the same time. One eye on the day I was conceived, the other eye on the day I'm laid to final rest, the other eye on the infinities in-between.
The landscape: a city of clocks, roads paved with possibilities, mountains of unused minutes. "How long is right now?" is all you can ask yourself. Is it a second? A spit-second? Forever? Only Chronos know the answers, and all Chronos can do is simultaneously laugh and cry....
Then the smell of home, not literally the home you necessarily live in, but the archetype of home we're born with: the smell of sweet belonging, mother's milk, the smell of cologne as your father gives you a hug, the home in our hearts that never has and never could exist...
Then the dull reality sinks in as you stand in your living room, that all points in time look basically the same... Sure, the Earth looks a little more dead than you remembered it, but the way its eyes light up to see you return...That much is always the same....
"I want you OUT of my house! NOW!" Marie screamed at Dr. Coorgan.
"Au Revoir! See you both again very soon," Dr. Coorgan waived and disappeared into the river of time.
"I suppose you want me to go too?" asked Julie.
This is the moment where possibility and inevitability meet...
"No..."
Marie leaned slowly in and kissed Julie deeply. Loud clashing of tongues, cloudy eyes, storms between breaths.
In a parallel moment in 1980, I was still sitting in the Starlite Cafe with the S.P and Clement Allsworth.
"I try not to interfere with history...That is never my intention," I explained, "but I have to say Clement, I really do worry about you."
Clement looked up from his plate of food, "Nahhhh, don't ever worry about me...I know how all this ends..."
I thought of my daughter. I thought of my wife....
Tomorrow Chronos turns everybody's clock back an hour...juss ta mess wit' ya, shawty...
Punk rock dating no. 32: Precession of the Equinoxes...
The double bodied sign:
As any musical will tell you, the late 60's were the Age of Aquarius. The pacifistic guru space men of AQUARIUS passed the torch somewhere in the early 70's (somewhere between the stabbing at Altamont and the release of the final Beatles album) to the house of PISCES, ushering in the introverted age of pre-apocalyptic slumber.
The age of white houses. The lazy lion, disintegrating in his hibernation. Only opening his eyes once it’s way too late.
The man and the woman, in bondage, so as to not lose one another in the murk...Only they've been in the dark waters so long they've completely forgotten about one another.
We walked through the crowds feeling lonely.
August 23rd, 2085:
"We should get together sometime. Discuss literature. Philosophy. Astrology..."
"Oh my god," laughed Bernadette, "you are so cute."
I don't smile often but in this particular instance I felt I had no choice. "Let me get you my number."
I had no paper on me so I tore out a page from my book,"Clement Allsworth: Between the Unmade Covers" and wrote my number on it.
Bernadette studied it.
"I don't need this..." she handed the page back. "Me and you...we're gonna go out right now..."
I folded the page and put it in my pocket....
Who knows what tomorrow will bring...some predictions: Flying cars by the year 2048 and the return of Planet Bill!
Punk rock dating no. 33: Bell-bottoms, Prophylactics: an All-Weekend 70's flashback...
Night on Disco Mountain:
Somewhere in 2004:
Julie, 16 years old, was cleaning the mothball-ed attic of her grandmother's house when she came across an old "Ladies Living" magazine from the late 1970's.
She spent the afternoon pouring through news stories and articles so long-forgotten that they may as well have been from Venus.
A vintage cigarette ad caught her eye.
"Tarrington Menthol Lights: Step into the 70's" it said. Some glamorous modern disco lady, empowered under the mirror ball: All birth-control and brown polyester, she pushes away a leisure-suited suitor. Cigarette burning between her long fingertips.
She stared at this picture for hours.
The silence in the attic was suddenly broken by the shrill voice of Julie's Mother.
"Julie, we've got to go... Are you finished cleaning up here?"
"Ohhh, yea..." answered Julie, tearing out the ad, and placing it in her jeans pocket.
At home, Julie sifted through her Mother's old records. She found a weathered copy of the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack and took it up to her room. As she lied on her bed, she pulled the piece of paper out of her pocket.
Julie spent the entire evening listening to the music and gazing at at the cigarette ad.
This became somewhat of a ritual; After school the other kids would all go to the local hangout, to their after-school job, or maybe to a friends' house to smoke pot... not Julie.
She would go to a certain anonymous nightclub somewhere in 1977, "Staying Alive" pumping out the sound system in all its falsetto glory; the man in the leisure suit would always approach her and give her a come-hither look. She would coolly puff her menthol and give him the go-tither look. Her long fingers grasped his greasy face and she cruelly pushed him away.
One day after school she hung out in front of the local convenience store.
Some wide-faced tool approached the door, intent on buying a 40 and a skin mag, when Julie stopped him.
"Hey!"
"Yes?" asked the man.
"If I give you some money will you buy me some cigarettes?"
"Sure."
Julie handed him a wad of bills she took from her Father's dresser drawer. She would most likely get the shit beat out of her for this, but it was a risk worth taking.
"You gotta make sure you buy the right kind though! They have got to be Tarrington Menthol Lights! You got that?"
"Yea, sure. Tarrington Menthol Lights."
He took the cash and went in. Julie fidgeted with her sweater until she heard the "Ta-ting" of the bell on the door.
"Did you get them?" she asked excitedly.
The man reached into his pocket and gave her back the money, "Naw. The old coot in there said they haven't made that brand since about 1983..."
Her heart sank.
She walked home and went straight to her room.
That night when she stared deep into the photo she felt a nondescript ache. The ad was now a good time she would never know. The "Saturday Night Fever" record was all scratched up too, she now noticed. She would never hear it like it was meant to be. The Sharp, fresh, plastic smell of a virgin copy. The exciting shock of the needle first hitting the groove. The deep throbbing bass, recorded mere weeks prior, rising from the still fragrant black vinyl. Sharp cardboard cover. John Travolta, finger pointing to a better way of life.
In her dejected state she went through her Mother's old magazines.
There were a few from the 80's.
The magazines were full of attractive cigarette ads but the glossy photos were plastered with warnings of birth defects, cancer, and other grim fates.
She ripped one out and took it to her room.
Lying on her bed, Julie stared at the puffy neon shirts and the headbands.
On the turntable played a pristine copy of "Thriller."
Looking at the photo and listening to Michael duet with Sir Paul was certainly evocative...
It captured the vibe perfectly! She got it!
"The 80's were kinda gay," she philosophized and crumpled the ad in her fist defiantly and snapped the copy of "Thriller" in half with her bare hands...
February 13th, 2009:
The Captain Hotel:
Julie lied on the bed in Marie's hotel room, television flickering silently. She could hear Marie humming a tuneless tune in the shower. Julie felt alone, she looked over at the nightstand and noticed a half empty box of Marlboro's.
She lit one up and said to herself...
"Hmmm. I should've picked up a box of Tarrington's in 1980."...
Tomorrow, it's two-fisted action as we eavesdrop in on Julie's long discussion with her counselor in 2004.
Punk rock dating no. 34: Blurred Polaroids of Love...
Fate: That Wonderful Two-Faced Sonuvabitch:
February 14th, 2009:
The Captain Hotel :
"It's been a coupla weeks, Marie...are you ready to talk about 1980 now?"
Marie gave Julie that pre-lover's spat look. Her eyes a bright yellow "Do Not Cross" sign.
"I don't know who that Clement Allsworth thinks he is! Playing his games with me? Two-bit writer...I ought to call the police on him..."
Julie took a drag from her cigarette, "No, I don't think it was Clement. I think he was taken there like we were...It was that lizard guy...Orion... I wonder if all that stuff he was talking about was true? I think it'd be cool to be part of a secret society! Imagine! Having a secret life nobody knows about!"
Julie's life was exactly that: a secret life nobody knew about...
"I know all that mystic stuff fascinates you," Marie attempted to calm down, "I don't think it's wrong for anyone to have a fantasy life but let's think about this for a minute, Julie. Time Travel?"
"I dunno..." she rolled over in bed, "I've talked to ghosts before...Why can't something like time travel exist?"
"Look, I believe you believe you've seen ghosts. But, me? I need scientific proof before I believe something I've never seen exists..."
"Hmmmm," Julie hmmmed, "I used to think that about love. I believed in ghosts and fate but love seemed kinda unrealistic. After spending all this time with you, I think you might of renewed my faith...Besides, what more proof do you need? We were physically in 1980! I mean, you saw how gay it was!"
"Excuse me?" said Marie, truly offended.
"Oops...I'm sorry...I meant 'how LAME it was!'"
Marie smiled, crawled into bed with Julie and gave her a birdy kiss....
.....................................................................................................
Clement Allsworth paced his living room alone. He didn't notice he was alone, he was so preoccupied with the fireworks in his mind:
"Mary raging storm.
Arithmetic proving perfection.
Running myself to death,
Trying to please her until I am bones.
My final gift: a gleaming skull,
A pearl for her necklace.
Icy: staring at the the field of skulls, other men who were denied her company.
Everything is calm."
Mary was a fictionalized version of Marie. Mary was the lead character in a book that was in the process of being born, called "Portland Memores."
This was too indirect. The letters M-A-R-I-E had to directly follow one another in order for the sigil to work.
Marie would never be his.
He was amazingly accurate about the field of skulls and the men she had denied. Long fingers grasping their greasy faces, cruelly pushing them away.
He walked to his cupboard, poured himself a rocks glass of Ballentine's, and unfolded a piece of paper from his pocket. As he stared at it, the roman candle in his head pissed out.
"That sonuvabitch Fate has played a cruel trick on me," he washed the lump in his throat down with scotch.
He folded the piece of paper back up and put it back in the front pocket of his stained Dockers.
That sonavabitch fate has played a cruel trick on me too...
You too, probably...
Tomorrow: More pages, more pockets, more poems, more Dockers...
Short skirts and peppermint twists:
I explained to Marie that when Clement hid the code in the pages of "Punk rock dating" that the only way to crack the code was with a copy of her book,"Pieces of Christine" (the only other book Clement ever owned due to the fact that Marie gave him a copy at the 2008 Literary Choice award).
If you put page one of "Punk rock dating" just so over page 11 of "Pieces of Christine" and read downward, new seemingly unintended sentences would form. Once the books were combined our scientists could read the secret instructions on how to build Project 54.
"Punk rock dating" had already fallen into SCORPIO's hands but they were still unaware a copy of "Pieces of Christine" was needed to solve the puzzle. The E.S.Pies had picked up stray thoughts that Marie was involved but they did not know to what extent ...
"...and that is why you're going to be captured and tortured to death by SCORPIO agents somewhere in the year 2027," I explained calmly.
"WHHHHAAAATT?!?!?!?!," shrieked Marie.
"Oh, dear...She's not taking this as well as we had hoped," The S.P. snorted through a dollar bill.
"Oh my god! They can't kill, Marie!" Julie panicked. "If Marie dies then I die too!"
"Relax, I am working on a plan to dismantle the H.O.T bomb. Hopefully by the year 2027 their reign of terror will have ended. If not I'll simply write down the time and location where Marie is captured and all she has to do is be someplace else."
"Orion, uhhh...When do I die? Can we prevent that too?" slouched Clement.
At this point in his life Clement was getting nearer and nearer to his final day. I did not have the heart to tell Clement that his death would be by his own hand. He could prevent it quite easily...by not taking his own life.
"I'll..I'll do everything I can..." I replied, the knife in my heart twisting the night away like an old Chubby Checker record.
"You prose writers and you're avoidance of death cracks me up," cracked up Julie. "Us poets know that everyone dies eventually. The story of our lives ends with a funeral on the last page."
"That's true. There does come a day when we must all accept our final fate," I agreed-but-disagreed. "Nonetheless, I died before you were born, Julie Hales! And yet here we are! Drinking tap water from dirty glasses! Contemplating the mechanics of life and death! Yes! Somewhere in time there is a place we all yet live!"
"I guess," Julie guessed.
Clement took another mouthful of peas, "Hell, kill me now."
Clement Allsworth was half frothing-at-the-mouth-in-animal-love/half suicide calm.
Julie had already been hanging with a ghost...Time travel and lizard-men were a nice way to punch a hole in her day.
Marie couldn't believe she was surrounded by such lunatics.
Life and death had never crossed Marie's mind. She had other places to be...
Come back tomorrow for another relaxing conversation at the Starlite cafe, the special will be "Olde Country Pork and Rice", ladies get half-price cocktails and the live entertainment will be Unca Bill$...
Punk rock dating chapter 30: The Conference act 3...
The Guts of Goodwill:
Clement asked Marie, "Hey, uhhhmmm...when we, ahhhh,...get back to 2009...me and you should ...Maybe...if you don't mind...get together some time...Talk about writing or something..."
Marie gave Clement her weakest smile, "I don't think so, Clement. I have a lot to do when I get back...Sorry. "
"Oh, ahhh, oookay." Clement traced "Why oh why?" in the grease spattered on the table.
Dejection filled his unblinking eyes. He sat biting his lip momentarily then he slowly shuddered back to life....
"Orion, " he asked, "If the Psychic spies got your secrets from probing your mind, how do we know they're not doing that now?"
"The brilliant mind of Clement Allsworth! I love it!," I raved, "Our good friend the S.P. has set up a telepathic shield...He is quite the advanced student in E.S.P!"
"I actually, only minored in it...I'm not that good, actually." The Supernatural Proctologist's dowsing rod was limp from too much coke.
"God! I need to get out of here!" Marie shouted as she got up to leave...
"Yes," I agreed. "I suppose it is time we go our separate ways...Dr. Coorgan?"
"Oui?"
"Can you see Ms. Lansing and Ms. Hales home?"
"Ah! Avec plaisir," he bowed gracefully.
"Clement, do you mind staying a little longer? I believe you and I still have much to discuss...."
"Uhhh...Sure...I got nowhere to be..."
Spoonful of peas.
O ESCORPION II:
I see the torches burn from the top of the hill,
Strewn through the valley are the guts of goodwill,
Escorpion gets what he wanted...
He who speaks of gardens and intends burning lands,
Bodies and bones bleaching in faraway sands ,
Escorpion gets what he wanted...
The half-eaten corpses fix their glassy grey eyes,
As Fourteen spiral horns tear open the skies,
Escorpion stares into the black hole....
We stare at broken clocks, the end of time standing still,
Scattered through the cosmos are the guts of goodwill,
Escorpion stares into the black hole...
In 24 hours we take a closer look at the chemical that bonds families together and the forces of nature and nurture that tear them apart, not to mention who are the League of Assassin Stuntmen?
Punk rock dating chapter 31: Stems, hands, faces...
Behold Chronos:
Dr. Coorgan, Lion of Lyon, adjusted the mechanism on his belt and the lotus in his mind. Time-slides are 75% physical, 25% mental. Julie Hales, all short skirts and peppermint twists, adjusted the hem of her skirt, 75% cotton, 25% polyester.
"Theez will work bettair if you all think of home," Docteur Francois Coorgan advised.
He was talking to the wrong crowd; the word "home" didn't mean a whole lot to these girls.
"Say Au Revoir to 1980." The good Doctor pressed the button on his belt.
I will attempt to explain the sensation to you, dear reader...
If time can be thought of as a river flowing downstream toward the ocean of forever (albeit a rather turgid river, which is natural, explaining the phenomenon of being caught in different time streams (e.g. Jack: "Today is going by so slow..."
Joe: "That's funny, I thought today was going by quick!"), then the only way to explain time-slide is the mentally, physically and sexually exhausting task of swimming upstream though the hurricane of history's horrors. Mating with the moths that eat the outdated clothing in the cluttered closet of Chronos.
Behold, Chronos: Shake his hand; the hand that is continually dying and being reborn at the same time. One eye on the day I was conceived, the other eye on the day I'm laid to final rest, the other eye on the infinities in-between.
The landscape: a city of clocks, roads paved with possibilities, mountains of unused minutes. "How long is right now?" is all you can ask yourself. Is it a second? A spit-second? Forever? Only Chronos know the answers, and all Chronos can do is simultaneously laugh and cry....
Then the smell of home, not literally the home you necessarily live in, but the archetype of home we're born with: the smell of sweet belonging, mother's milk, the smell of cologne as your father gives you a hug, the home in our hearts that never has and never could exist...
Then the dull reality sinks in as you stand in your living room, that all points in time look basically the same... Sure, the Earth looks a little more dead than you remembered it, but the way its eyes light up to see you return...That much is always the same....
"I want you OUT of my house! NOW!" Marie screamed at Dr. Coorgan.
"Au Revoir! See you both again very soon," Dr. Coorgan waived and disappeared into the river of time.
"I suppose you want me to go too?" asked Julie.
This is the moment where possibility and inevitability meet...
"No..."
Marie leaned slowly in and kissed Julie deeply. Loud clashing of tongues, cloudy eyes, storms between breaths.
In a parallel moment in 1980, I was still sitting in the Starlite Cafe with the S.P and Clement Allsworth.
"I try not to interfere with history...That is never my intention," I explained, "but I have to say Clement, I really do worry about you."
Clement looked up from his plate of food, "Nahhhh, don't ever worry about me...I know how all this ends..."
I thought of my daughter. I thought of my wife....
Tomorrow Chronos turns everybody's clock back an hour...juss ta mess wit' ya, shawty...
Punk rock dating no. 32: Precession of the Equinoxes...
The double bodied sign:
As any musical will tell you, the late 60's were the Age of Aquarius. The pacifistic guru space men of AQUARIUS passed the torch somewhere in the early 70's (somewhere between the stabbing at Altamont and the release of the final Beatles album) to the house of PISCES, ushering in the introverted age of pre-apocalyptic slumber.
The age of white houses. The lazy lion, disintegrating in his hibernation. Only opening his eyes once it’s way too late.
The man and the woman, in bondage, so as to not lose one another in the murk...Only they've been in the dark waters so long they've completely forgotten about one another.
We walked through the crowds feeling lonely.
August 23rd, 2085:
"We should get together sometime. Discuss literature. Philosophy. Astrology..."
"Oh my god," laughed Bernadette, "you are so cute."
I don't smile often but in this particular instance I felt I had no choice. "Let me get you my number."
I had no paper on me so I tore out a page from my book,"Clement Allsworth: Between the Unmade Covers" and wrote my number on it.
Bernadette studied it.
"I don't need this..." she handed the page back. "Me and you...we're gonna go out right now..."
I folded the page and put it in my pocket....
Who knows what tomorrow will bring...some predictions: Flying cars by the year 2048 and the return of Planet Bill!
Punk rock dating no. 33: Bell-bottoms, Prophylactics: an All-Weekend 70's flashback...
Night on Disco Mountain:
Somewhere in 2004:
Julie, 16 years old, was cleaning the mothball-ed attic of her grandmother's house when she came across an old "Ladies Living" magazine from the late 1970's.
She spent the afternoon pouring through news stories and articles so long-forgotten that they may as well have been from Venus.
A vintage cigarette ad caught her eye.
"Tarrington Menthol Lights: Step into the 70's" it said. Some glamorous modern disco lady, empowered under the mirror ball: All birth-control and brown polyester, she pushes away a leisure-suited suitor. Cigarette burning between her long fingertips.
She stared at this picture for hours.
The silence in the attic was suddenly broken by the shrill voice of Julie's Mother.
"Julie, we've got to go... Are you finished cleaning up here?"
"Ohhh, yea..." answered Julie, tearing out the ad, and placing it in her jeans pocket.
At home, Julie sifted through her Mother's old records. She found a weathered copy of the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack and took it up to her room. As she lied on her bed, she pulled the piece of paper out of her pocket.
Julie spent the entire evening listening to the music and gazing at at the cigarette ad.
This became somewhat of a ritual; After school the other kids would all go to the local hangout, to their after-school job, or maybe to a friends' house to smoke pot... not Julie.
She would go to a certain anonymous nightclub somewhere in 1977, "Staying Alive" pumping out the sound system in all its falsetto glory; the man in the leisure suit would always approach her and give her a come-hither look. She would coolly puff her menthol and give him the go-tither look. Her long fingers grasped his greasy face and she cruelly pushed him away.
One day after school she hung out in front of the local convenience store.
Some wide-faced tool approached the door, intent on buying a 40 and a skin mag, when Julie stopped him.
"Hey!"
"Yes?" asked the man.
"If I give you some money will you buy me some cigarettes?"
"Sure."
Julie handed him a wad of bills she took from her Father's dresser drawer. She would most likely get the shit beat out of her for this, but it was a risk worth taking.
"You gotta make sure you buy the right kind though! They have got to be Tarrington Menthol Lights! You got that?"
"Yea, sure. Tarrington Menthol Lights."
He took the cash and went in. Julie fidgeted with her sweater until she heard the "Ta-ting" of the bell on the door.
"Did you get them?" she asked excitedly.
The man reached into his pocket and gave her back the money, "Naw. The old coot in there said they haven't made that brand since about 1983..."
Her heart sank.
She walked home and went straight to her room.
That night when she stared deep into the photo she felt a nondescript ache. The ad was now a good time she would never know. The "Saturday Night Fever" record was all scratched up too, she now noticed. She would never hear it like it was meant to be. The Sharp, fresh, plastic smell of a virgin copy. The exciting shock of the needle first hitting the groove. The deep throbbing bass, recorded mere weeks prior, rising from the still fragrant black vinyl. Sharp cardboard cover. John Travolta, finger pointing to a better way of life.
In her dejected state she went through her Mother's old magazines.
There were a few from the 80's.
The magazines were full of attractive cigarette ads but the glossy photos were plastered with warnings of birth defects, cancer, and other grim fates.
She ripped one out and took it to her room.
Lying on her bed, Julie stared at the puffy neon shirts and the headbands.
On the turntable played a pristine copy of "Thriller."
Looking at the photo and listening to Michael duet with Sir Paul was certainly evocative...
It captured the vibe perfectly! She got it!
"The 80's were kinda gay," she philosophized and crumpled the ad in her fist defiantly and snapped the copy of "Thriller" in half with her bare hands...
February 13th, 2009:
The Captain Hotel:
Julie lied on the bed in Marie's hotel room, television flickering silently. She could hear Marie humming a tuneless tune in the shower. Julie felt alone, she looked over at the nightstand and noticed a half empty box of Marlboro's.
She lit one up and said to herself...
"Hmmm. I should've picked up a box of Tarrington's in 1980."...
Tomorrow, it's two-fisted action as we eavesdrop in on Julie's long discussion with her counselor in 2004.
Punk rock dating no. 34: Blurred Polaroids of Love...
Fate: That Wonderful Two-Faced Sonuvabitch:
February 14th, 2009:
The Captain Hotel :
"It's been a coupla weeks, Marie...are you ready to talk about 1980 now?"
Marie gave Julie that pre-lover's spat look. Her eyes a bright yellow "Do Not Cross" sign.
"I don't know who that Clement Allsworth thinks he is! Playing his games with me? Two-bit writer...I ought to call the police on him..."
Julie took a drag from her cigarette, "No, I don't think it was Clement. I think he was taken there like we were...It was that lizard guy...Orion... I wonder if all that stuff he was talking about was true? I think it'd be cool to be part of a secret society! Imagine! Having a secret life nobody knows about!"
Julie's life was exactly that: a secret life nobody knew about...
"I know all that mystic stuff fascinates you," Marie attempted to calm down, "I don't think it's wrong for anyone to have a fantasy life but let's think about this for a minute, Julie. Time Travel?"
"I dunno..." she rolled over in bed, "I've talked to ghosts before...Why can't something like time travel exist?"
"Look, I believe you believe you've seen ghosts. But, me? I need scientific proof before I believe something I've never seen exists..."
"Hmmmm," Julie hmmmed, "I used to think that about love. I believed in ghosts and fate but love seemed kinda unrealistic. After spending all this time with you, I think you might of renewed my faith...Besides, what more proof do you need? We were physically in 1980! I mean, you saw how gay it was!"
"Excuse me?" said Marie, truly offended.
"Oops...I'm sorry...I meant 'how LAME it was!'"
Marie smiled, crawled into bed with Julie and gave her a birdy kiss....
.....................................................................................................
Clement Allsworth paced his living room alone. He didn't notice he was alone, he was so preoccupied with the fireworks in his mind:
"Mary raging storm.
Arithmetic proving perfection.
Running myself to death,
Trying to please her until I am bones.
My final gift: a gleaming skull,
A pearl for her necklace.
Icy: staring at the the field of skulls, other men who were denied her company.
Everything is calm."
Mary was a fictionalized version of Marie. Mary was the lead character in a book that was in the process of being born, called "Portland Memores."
This was too indirect. The letters M-A-R-I-E had to directly follow one another in order for the sigil to work.
Marie would never be his.
He was amazingly accurate about the field of skulls and the men she had denied. Long fingers grasping their greasy faces, cruelly pushing them away.
He walked to his cupboard, poured himself a rocks glass of Ballentine's, and unfolded a piece of paper from his pocket. As he stared at it, the roman candle in his head pissed out.
"That sonuvabitch Fate has played a cruel trick on me," he washed the lump in his throat down with scotch.
He folded the piece of paper back up and put it back in the front pocket of his stained Dockers.
That sonavabitch fate has played a cruel trick on me too...
You too, probably...
Tomorrow: More pages, more pockets, more poems, more Dockers...
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