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State of unBeing 56
Living in such a state taTestaTesTaTe etats a hcus ni gniviL
of mind in which time sTATEsTAtEsTaTeStA emit hcihw ni dnim of
does not pass, space STateSTaTeSTaTeStAtE ecaps ,ssap ton seod
does not exist, and sTATeSt oFOfOfo dna ,tsixe ton seod
idea is not there. STatEst ofoFOFo .ereht ton si aedi
Stuck in a place staTEsT OfOFofo ecalp a ni kcutS
where movements TATeSTa foFofoF stnemevom erehw
are impossible fOFoFOf elbissopmi era
in all forms, UfOFofO ,smrof lla ni
physical and nbEifof dna lacisyhp
or mental - uNBeInO - latnem ro
your mind is UNbeinG si dnim rouy
focusing on a unBEING a no gnisucof
lone thing, or NBeINgu ro ,gniht enol
a lone nothing. bEinGUn .gnihton enol a
You are numb and EiNguNB dna bmun era ouY
unaware to events stneve ot erawanu
taking place - not iSSUE ton - ecalp gnikat
knowing how or what 6/30/99 tahw ro who gniwonk
to think. You are in FiFTY-SiX ni era uoY .kniht ot
a state of unbeing.... ....gniebnu fo etats a
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
CONTENTS OF THiS iSSUE
=----------------------=
EDiTORiAL Kilgore Trout
LETTERS TO THE EDiTOR
STAFF LiSTiNGS
[=- ARTiCLES -=]
REFLECTiONS ON KOSOVO Crux Ansata
RHAPSODY iN D MiNOR Clockwork
SUNDAY, DESERT WASTELAND I Wish My Name Were Nathan
DOCUMENT 04.25.99 Kilgore Trout
GUiLTY BRAiN (EROTiCK-TOCK) I Wish My Name Were Nathan
[=- POETRiE -=]
THE THOUGHT OF iSLANDS Robert James Berry
STONE CRADLES Robert James Berry
[=- FiCTiON -=]
EVERYBODY LOVES A FOOL Kilgore Trout
OFF WiTH THE BLiSS Clockwork
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
EDiTORiAL
by Kilgore Trout
I should have figured out by now that I always have lots of stuff to do
on the day that the zine comes out. It would be nice to just get up after a
good night's rest, mosey around the house for a bit, and then sit down and
finish up the new issue for publication. But no. Today I've taken a summer
final, gotten an oil change, gotten my car inspected, washed my laundry, and
now I'm finishing up the zine on a laptop at a coffeehouse waiting for
Clockwork to get off work because his car is in the shop and he needs a ride
home.
It's not really a problem, unless the half-charged laptop battery decides
to die on me in the middle of editing. That just would not be kosher. I
think if that happened, I would scream and yell and get kicked out. At least
the Guy Who Plays Only Swing Music Or Johnny Cash isn't working tonight. He's
a nice guy, even though he iced my vanilla chai last night while I wasn't
looking, but he needs to vary his music rotation.
But that's okay. The zine's almost done, and Doorway just sat down and
said that he locked his keys in his car and would like some change to make a
phone call so someone can get his keys back for him. So I'll help Doorway
out, go pick up Clockwork, and finish up the zine.
* * * * *
I am home, and it is now much later than I expected it to be. Getting
Doorway back to his car set me a bit off schedule, and some dunderhead decided
it would be a good idea to send out the streetsweepers onto the upper decks of
I-35 in downtown Austin at 9:45pm. Nothing like having only one lane of
traffic when you've got somewhere to go. I'm supposed to be there at 10:00pm
and arrive at 10:15pm. Clock is nowhere to be seen. He recently changed
buildings, and I knew that, but I wasn't sure if he knew that, so I circled
the large campus of the large corporation, going from building to building and
hoping that he wasn't wandering around looking for me. By 11:00pm and two
unanswered pay phone calls to his cell phone, I decided to go home and see if
he got a ride. I get home around 11:15, and he calls me and says he was on a
call since 9:45pm. I'm sure he got that call since I had to pick him up. At
least I got to listen to that old Robyn Hitchcock tape I forgot I had. And
Clock got home fine, cuz, dammit, this zine is all about family. </stump>
So, as you can see, issue release days are always interesting and a tad
bit hectic. Cha cha cha. And tomorrow, I don't have to do anything at all.
That's kinda nice. I think I'll go scratch my dog's belly and watch her legs
twitch and twirl like she's riding a bicycle upside down. Entertainment at
its finest. I mean, after all, isn't the world supposed to end pretty soon?
That's what the People In The Know keep saying. I'm not In The Know, so I
wouldn't know. But if this is the last issue you ever get to read of SoB (and
I'm not really counting on that), then you should remember that I told you so.
If the world doesn't end, then just be grateful that you'll get some more
zine. Or maybe you're pining for the end of the world.
Join the damn club. In the meantime, be content and keep plotting.
First person to blow up the world and/or extinguish the sun: drinks are
on me. I swear.
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
LETTERS TO THE EDiTOR
From: Bob Clark
To: kilgore@eden.com
Subject: My Yahoo Page
How do I add the "state of well being?
Keep It Simple!
[i'm not exactly sure what you're asking here. do you want to add a link to
the zine from your home page? That's simple enough. Just put some goofy line
like href=www.apoculpro.org in your html code. if you're talking about your
own personal well being, well, it gets a bit more complicated. there's
christian salvation, buddhist satori, or the ceremonial magician's knowledge
and conversation of the holy guardian angel. of course, we here at the zine
think that total fanaticism to the zine will solve most of your day to day
problems. for one, it gives you a reason to live. you get a cause to fight
for, and you can propagate the zine to all of your friends (and strangers,
too). tell them the zine changed your life and showed you inner peace.
absorb the text into your inner child, and allow it to blossom and grow into
the multiheaded gargantuan that it wants to be. leave flyers advertising the
zine in local punk clubs, pass out multicolored pamphlets to passersby with
reasons why you think they should read the zine. and most of all, get local
tv coverage. and then, when your day is over, and you're tired from a long
work schedule, you can relax in your easy chair, meditate on life, and know
that you have the answer. and when your dog starts talking to you, and your
silverware begins to arrange itself in hieroglyphic patters in your drawer,
then you'll know that you are blessed and that the zine gods have found favor
with you. after all, when your utensils actually mean something, then
everything else is pretty simple.]
--SoB--
Dear Editor:
I was appalled -- appalled! -- to read the hateful attacks on Jar Jar
Binks and on all symbols of the coming post-gendered world in a recent issue
of State of unBeing (#55; May 1999). The challenge to traditional, bourgeois
gender roles that this obviously transheterosexual -- even transmonosexual --
entity presents could only seem "irritating" to the archaic, homophobic mind.
Such thoughtless attacks lead to the mood of rage and hate that condone and
promote homophobic assaults on and killings of homosexuals. It is such
invective as yours that leads to vicious gay-bashing assaults in our
supposedly advanced, tolerant society. I hope it will not be repeated. It is
unfortunate such an affront to all victims of hate crimes exists, and it is
hoped such enlightened publications as the Texas Triangle and the Village
Voice, which have exposed the hateful reality of Jar Jar opposition for what
it really is, will prevent an upsurge of gay-bashing episodes.
In tolerance and solidarity,
Crux Ansata
P.S. -- I find myself in need of an emaciated, pale little urchin of a French
girl to wear a short, thin, tattered dress, stagger in a hunger-induced haze,
and sell cigars and cigarettes in faltering English, because I have a Zippo
and hence minimal need for matches. (In the event I move to a place where
absinthe is legal, this will, of course, be added to her wares.) If anyone in
the SoB audience can arrange for one at a moderate price, or is willing to
play the role, please put them in contact with me.
C.A.
[see, bob? ansat's an SoB fanatic, and look how he turned out!]
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
STAFF LiSTiNGS
EDiTOR
Kilgore Trout
CONTRiBUTORS
Clockwork
Crux Ansata
I Wish My Name Were Nathan
Robert James Berry
GUESSED STARS
Bob Clark
SoB OFFiCiAL GROUPiES
crackmonkey
Oxyde de Carbone
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
[=- ARTiCLES -=]
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-
REFLECTiONS ON KOSOVO
by Crux Ansata
A hundred years ago, the United States made a mistake.
It had already allowed itself to be fooled by the capitalist media. This
was, of course, not the first time the media had been used in the furtherance
of war, not even in the United States, where the founders of our Revolution
had skillfully used the media to whip up public support for freedom. But, to
the best of my knowledge, this was the first time an explicitly artificial
situation was created by the media so as to further the goals of those who
stood to gain financially from it, utterly fooling a people who had too much
of a naive faith in the inherent virtue of journalism. It is a classic event
of propaganda and United States history, to the point we all studied it in
school, even though many or most Americans never took home the obvious lesson:
The media is not infallible; men are not always honest. It also set the
pattern for similar media manipulation to fool naive Americans into going to
war, from the spin on the Luistania to the possibly staged and certainly spun
massacres in the Balkans. We like to pretend the government has been
deceiving us; the truth is we have allowed ourselves to be deceived, and by
the media and corporate power mongers much more than a government that
honestly could do no more than request the shots that were called.
Nonetheless, this is not the mistake I refer to. Allowing a naive trust
in journalists -- who, like everyone else, have vested interests; and who have
a financial interest and power interest in preserving the capitalist state --
was a mistake, and unfortunately not one that even the insights of
contemporary philosophy, literary criticism, and contemporary history have
purged. But I refer to a mistake that happened after the war. While it may
have been the motivation of those who caused the war, the American people's
acceptance of this event caused America nothing but pain for decades.
In 1898, following a somewhat chaotic and almost farcical war with Spain,
the United States found itself occupying foreign peoples. These were not
peoples the United States ever intended to make Americans, but they also ended
up not setting them free. American public opinion supported this government
mistake: accepting the burden of empire. America shifted from a nation of
liberation to a nation of imperialist oppression.
This was not, of course, the first time an element within the United
States had exerted force for territorial purposes, but this was a very vital
change from what had gone before. Manifest Destiny and expansion to the west
was never meant to be an occupation of other peoples. The west was always
seen as being opened to an expanding nation of Americans. The bloody Civil
War was not intended to be an imperialist occupation of one half of America by
the other; it was meant to be a -- forced, granted -- preserved union of
Americans, by Americans. These were people meant to be represented in
Congress, extended Constitutional rights -- indeed to be, if only in the
future, as much Americans as those in Boston or Philadelphia.
Even the Monroe Doctrine, which admittedly asserted to Washington the
ability to dictate actions in other parts of the hemisphere, was nothing like
the results of the Spanish-American War. The Monroe Doctrine was not intended
to dictate to other peoples what they could do, and was not meant to make the
Western Hemisphere a Greater America. This was a strategic policy to keep
European interests -- that is, the interests of imperialist aggression -- out
of the Western Hemisphere. While the annexation of the Philippines in 1898
was an act of oppression, subverting a national people to a will not their
own, the Monroe Doctrine was a liberating policy, disallowing other nations to
be oppressed, by force if necessary.
But when the United States government annexed -- and the American people
permitted and approved the annexation of -- the Philippines, the United States
ceased to be a republic and became instead an empire.
* * * * *
Republics do not have colonies. Republics do not have protectorates. The
republic called the United States was meant to be a nation of free people, by
free people, and while we have bungled our own freedom, this should be more
argument to leave others' alone. But at the end of the last century we forgot
this, and at the end of this century, we are forgetting it again.
The United States has no intention of making Kosovo the fifty-first
state. This is not contested. However, some think this is reason to believe
the action in the Balkans is not imperialist aggression. Nothing could be
farther from the truth. To make Kosovo a state, with the full rights and
privileges thereof, would be stupid. It would be expansionist. It would be
aggression, and it would be wrong. It would not, however, be imperialist.
Making Kosovo a protectorate, of the United States or its NATO proxy, is
imperialist. Unlike Serbia's position of retaining its heartland, and even
unlike the efforts of those fighting for a Greater Albania, the United States
does not in this action seek to reunite a people. As America expanded
westward, she brought together -- even brought into being -- one people, one
nation of Americans. In the Philippines, in Cuba, in Kosovo, the United
States had and has the intention of ruling another people. The original sin
for which America defeated the British Empire, in the first anti-colonial
peasant war of modern times, is now again being committed by a resurgent
American Empire.
* * * * *
To understand what is happening, it is probably best to understand what
has happened. For, in a real sense, Kosovo is not the beginning of the Second
American Empire, but the continuation thereof. The United States has just
finished fighting an imperial war. Unlike the imperialist aggression in the
Balkans, fought by one empire against one nation, the Cold War -- America's
only true imperial war -- was a battle between two empires.
A brief note on why I discount so many apparent wars as not imperialist.
The Spanish-American War was not a long term war. In a brief span -- less
than four months -- the American Republic seized some lands from the Spanish
Empire. It was not a long term conflict to consolidate imperial gains, but a
brief battle in which the occupation of some other countries was nearly an
afterthought. Empire resulted from, but did not cause, the Spanish-American
war. The First and Second World Wars, which were imperialist for many of the
nations of Europe -- France, Britain, Austria-Hungry, Germany, the Ottoman
Empire, the Tsarist and Stalinist empires -- was not entered into by the
Americans as an effort to reshuffle and consolidate her empire. This may have
been the intent of some unAmerican elements within our boundaries, but the
people of the United States rallied to block other empires and fortify our
allies -- and then go home. Our imperialist war was different.
Over the course of the Cold War, generations came and went. Few people
alive today remember a time before the onset of the Cold War, and even those
that do lived most of their lives under it. George Bush -- the last president
to remember an America before the Cold War -- was a Cold Warrior through and
through, even if he also fought in the last imperialist war where America
intended to go home.
I do not necessarily condemn the United States for fighting the
imperialist Cold War. In the shattered ruins of the post-Second World War
world, where the previous empires were collapsed or collapsing, only two
empires survived, the Stalinist empire and the American empire. The Stalinist
empire had already shown itself to be expansionist and imperialist, and would
do so in increasingly explicit ways. Poland, 1920, for example.
Czechoslovakia of 1948 and 1969. Hungry, 1956. This does not contradict the
Soviet Union's Marxist heritage, though it may show a misunderstanding
thereof. The Soviet Union did not consider itself Communist, of course.
Lenin, and especially Stalin, saw that the world of the Tsars was an
imperialist world, and the Soviet revolution was fought against an imperialist
state. Unlike the postcolonialist actions in early America, the Soviets
inherited not only an empire, but an empire's heartland, the circulatory and
nervous systems. The Soviet Union thus was brought into the world an empire,
and under the Marxism Stalin understood, the socialist stage of world history,
where the Soviet Union would be battling the capitalist empires, the Soviets
would have to create an empire to survive, and to export the revolution.
"Socialism in one country," therefore, despite the name, was an inherently
expansionist doctrine.
It is perhaps the most unfortunate of ironies -- or perhaps the results
of a revolution whose time had not yet come and evil forces whose faces
history has yet to expose -- that the U.S.S.R. acted on these assumptions
under Lenin and Stalin. Not only did the Soviet Union become the enemy
through its attempts to defeat it, but the United States did, too. Only the
United States was in a position to struggle against an expansionist Soviet
imperium, and this was the Cold War. In a constant struggle for land, the two
last empires battled for supremacy through economic manipulation and proxy
warfare, until the Soviet Union became the first empire to collapse.
But then, America made another mistake. A new world was being born. When
the wall came down in 1989, the birth pangs of this new world were just
beginning. The new world order Bush proclaimed was inevitable, but which
world it would be was uncertain. We will never know -- though many of us
suspect -- how much hegemonic power Bush would have fought to hold under the
American Empire. We do know that Clinton -- the first American president who
knew Cold War and only Cold War -- has increased troop deployment three
hundred percent, acted to preserve U.S. hegemony with various degrees of
success from Haiti to Somalia, from the Balkans to the Middle East, and acted
for the same effect through proxy in all the Cold War killing fields, from
Columbia to Turkey. No pacifist -- by which I mean a lover of peace, rather
than merely one who fears military service -- can support Clinton, any more
than any true socialist could.
When the Wall came down, the United States should have said, "We won,"
printed up a few million blue ribbons or little silver stars, and gone home.
We should have dismantled the American Empire, from its secret police to its
occupation forces.
We didn't. For a number of reasons -- preserving economic dominance,
preserving an international respect even now many Americans think we are owed,
inertia, and the greed of those who saw the Second World as just more markets
to exploit under Globocop America -- we didn't go home. And now we reap the
whirlwind.
* * * * *
The United States and the Soviet Union, like any two empires, were in a
state of constant aggression. Lenin explained this very clearly decades ago,
even before there was a Soviet Union. Like two sumo wrestlers, the United
States and the Soviet Union slammed against each other over and over again for
half a century. While each tried to defeat the other, each also depended on
the other. When the Soviet sumo was gone, the American sumo started slamming
into the air, and falling on his face. In political terms, this was imperial
overreach. If one leans something too far without any counterforce, it will
topple over. Every empire eventually does so. Like the capitalism of which
it is a form, imperialism survives by consuming. The imperialist world, and
imperialist wars, were sustainable because they consumed other empires. Today,
there is one empire, and not even any utterly undeveloped nations to prey
upon. There is no darkest Africa without any modern civilization, no soft
underbelly of the Pacific Ocean. There are any number of nations that, had
they existed a hundred years ago, could have taken their places as imperialist
nations. On a regional level, some are empires: China, Indonesia, Great
Britain. While our current botched foreign policy is rapidly pushing new
empires to form -- the E.U., Russia, China -- we still live in a world with
only one global empire.
Thus far, I have said nothing new. These are predictions and analyses
that have been known for a century at least. Under this model, barring an
utterly unforeseen global revolution, there are two possibilities: New
empires form now, and enter into a new Cold War of imperialism, or the one
empire utterly collapses, and we enter into a time of many smaller nations,
until empires reform. The unipolar nonsense about one American Empire -- or
one superpower -- being self-sustaining is utterly unbelievable, and I
personally don't believe even Clinton believes it. If he ever did, the
utterly botched way he has handled Russia in these past couple of years must
have disabused him of the notion, unless he is as insulated from undesired
information as Nixon had become.
There is a fourth possibility, though, and this the one I see most likely
to occur. Imperialism presumes the nation-state. In the minds of some, we
have already transcended the nation-state. I don't think we have, but I do
think we have a new entity in addition. This, too, may only exist in the
minds of some, but I tend to see the efforts to make it a reality well
underway.
An American Empire cannot survive, and those who now occupy the White
House, who grew up under the Cold War and cannot conceive of a state in any
but totalitarian, police state terms, seem to know that. They seem no longer
to view their foreign policy in terms of the nation-state. As Marx predicted
-- and as, in my opinion, Lenin failed to take sufficiently into account --
Clinton has come to have a global class-consciousness. Clinton sees the world
-- or acts as if he sees the world -- in global terms, and seems to think this
global ruling class has the right to oppress those who oppose it.
Or do they even see this in terms of oppression?
Chicago of 1968 was a police action. Whether a police riot or the mere
imposition of law and order through the barrel of a gun -- because Mayor Daly
understood Mao more than he might want to have admitted -- it was seen as a
police action. Waco of 1996 was a police action, even if conducted with
military material and possibly troops. Both were within our borders, and
means of policing the "peace" -- which is to say submission to authority --
that preserves the state. When one sees the world in its imperial terms, one
sees that, indeed, Vietnam was a police action, at least in the way the Cold
Warriors understood it. Vietnam was within the borders of the American
Empire, and putting down a proxy insurgency by the expansionist Stalinist
state was a means of preserving the law and order in Indochina. Korea was a
war -- a civil war, granted, but a war nonetheless. Vietnam was a colonialist
police action.
The disturbing thing today is how Kosovo is viewed.
There is no doubt that, for Serbia, the actions in Kosovo were police
actions. Ethnic cleansing, perhaps. (Genocide? No one who has followed the
events can reasonably believe so.) But ethnic cleansing in the context of a
police action. Why, then, do the members of the Clinton junta act as if we
are in a police action? Why are we imposing law and order in the Balkans, and
not acting to preserve a national interest? The thing I see, and that should
scare anyone who does, is that the Clinton junta, viewing themselves as
masters of the world, see the actions in Kosovo as means to preserve the law
and order within their empire, which is to say, they consider their new
"empire" to be the planet. For Clinton, and those who think like him, one
world necessarily implies one government, one state, one force oppressing all
other people. For Clinton, the absence of a counterforce, of another empire,
is ideal, and allows the one, ideal government to police the entire world.
* * * * *
The republic Jefferson struggled for is, at least for the time being,
gone. But perhaps the republic America has transformed into is not Weimar.
After all, like Hitler, like Mussolini, we have a leader who rose to power on
a declining, "Leftist" movement, working towards reformism to stave off
Marxism, mouthing working class slogans never manifested in his policies. Like
Hitler, like Mussolini, our leader embraces big capitalism whenever it is
politically -- or personally -- expedient to do so, and especially whenever it
preserves the state, which our leader, consciously or no, feels must be
defended above all else. Like Hitler, like Mussolini, for many he has
appeared as a near Messianic leader of authenticity -- through skillfully
manipulated press, propaganda, and political theater. Like those who went
before him, he has achieved the love of his people by claiming to identify
with their suffering. Like Hitler, like Mussolini, Clinton has risen on an
emotional, irrational wave of desperation, of a sixties generation who doesn't
want to admit they failed, and a rising generation trying to deny it never had
hope to begin with. And this irrational hope may be the reason why when
Clinton carries out his genocidal policies, either directly (Allied Force,
Serbia 1999), by proxy (Storm and Flash, Croatia, 1996; Turkey and
Turkish-occupied Kurdistan; Columbia) or through passivity (the Sudan), the
people cannot bring themselves to admit what is happening. Perhaps it is true
that Clinton sustains himself on a wave of senseless optimism, because for all
their cynicism, the American public won't admit not what America has
degenerated into, but what Americans have. And perhaps we, too, will have our
1945, when even the dupes and the collaborators will be faced in stupefaction
amidst the smoldering rubble of America with the physical proofs of the
anti-human and genocidal policies and the madness of a maniacal tyrant.
But perhaps Clinton, too, and perhaps the whole so-called Left cannot see
their racist oppression. Unlike Hitler and Mussolini, who were riding on the
wave of a recently consolidated nation which was rising on a jingoist euphoria
well suited to oppression of others, where the humiliation of Versailles could
be seen as an aberration, Clinton presides over a party and a state that have
spent so long on divide and conquer pandering to political and special
interest groups that perhaps he truly believes there is no -- even was no --
American nation. Perhaps Clinton really believes he rules a multi-national
empire, and to invade another nation is just an extension of his despotic will
to power.
Yet, we cannot blame only him, or even primarily him. The spirit of the
American nation -- distinct from the American state -- is flagging. As is
true in most any society, most citizens are apathetic and reformist, lovers of
slavery. In this current historical-critical moment, most tend to fascism and
anti-humanism. The many should, and the few must, keep alive a love for
freedom, in spite of the many and against the state. Complacency is
complicity. While America remains a nation in degeneration, it is all of our
fault.
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB---
"These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth's foundation fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead."
--A.E. Housman, "Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
RHAPSODY iN D MiNOR
by Clockwork
This whimpering plate iron gate has been opened, unlocked and tossed
aside with clatter and ruffians, and it has all been sweeping through, the
rising Nile, fertile and flooding, mirrored sky and Orion. A monstrous
gnarled barrier has been broken, tipped over and scuttled into red clay earth,
shoved and bulled beneath the earth. Hemingway and his bulls, so tired of the
reference, scamper, drive through the gaping wound, purple glowing mantra
speech, all from one simple, deliberate act. Or perhaps not, for what
occasion has arisen from a single act? Are not all occasions and events the
result of a chaotic weaving orgy of influences and facts and conceptions and
perceptions? Temperature, humidity, wind speed, dissolved solids, butterfly
windfluence, solar sonic flares, pardon me, quarks, neutrinos, the federal
interest rate.
Nonetheless, the point is the rapture and rhapsody that has arisen,
pushed high by the bulls and big H., pushed up and forth, chest open and arms
out, open. Open is the theme, open eyes and ears, no stained filtered
nether-regions in the way, filtering, as they are filters, as filters do, and
how pure can we get? More likely the act was an effect and not a cause, swept
and burrowed with the other Spaniards.
Here I am now, walking like a sheltered boy, dazed and entranced by
reflections in the window, hearing a grating electromechanical buzzing
strobing constant from every corner, seeing the neon trance advertising -- 45
ft. tall men with horns, beer cans and tacos -- eighty-two worlds of
twenty-four hour screaming sex act prescription pictures, in wonder,
bewilderment, of how these others can live beneath this. I can feel again,
ideals or no ideals, false ideals, I can feel, weep to illiteracy news reports
and painted death in Europe, moved and driven by a six-year-old girl in a
sunflower dress spinning with grins amongst a room of adults who ignore her,
inspired, leaping, screaming passion from Shakespeare and three lines from
Joyce, two hours of Timothy in New York, unmistakable uncounterable passion
seething whipping up within my gut, jutting forth and frothing over, you make
me want to feel, and you make me feel. If you know who you are, if I know who
you are, a clue for me and you to know who might be me or you, I wish you to
see this passion and emotion as it rises -- oh, the critics, with their
handbooks of defunct sexual devices, have your way and burn with Freud -- and
know you are held, opening and offering, creating something unsaid.
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-
"Burning burning burning burning
O Lord Thou pluckest me out
O Lord Thou pluckest
burning"
--T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land"
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB---
SUNDAY, DESERT WASTELAND
by I Wish My Name Were Nathan
"So, when's the Sunday wasteland going to begin?"
A typical question. We, the roommates who rent this place, have an
understanding about the Quake II LAN parties that have become a habit for us
and our friends. What good is a high-speed network if not used at least once
a week?
For me, the amusement always wears thin around the eighth hour -- having
started around three in the afternoon -- and develops from there into one of
three tonal emotions: anger, disgust, or loneliness.
Anger is associated with a low score and jealousy at the ones who play
freely and laugh all the way through the night. Perhaps it is being cooped up
in my bedroom with the computer that leads to this sense of alienation. This
anger begets a short temper, evaporation of humor, and a high degree of mental
chattering, the underdog common-sense defense struggling for composure and a
voice in a river of leaching battery acid. Upon closer insight, it resembles
the seething fury I experience while driving to work, trying to maintain a
sensible speed while my life is being threatened from all sides by metal
caskets on wheels.
(Look in your rear view mirror some day -- the grilles, headlights, and
bumpers of cars, and trucks especially, are designed purposely to look like
people with expressions corresponding to the personality of the vehicle.
Sports cars resemble the squinting eyes and pressed lips of racecar drivers in
their helmets; trucks resemble bulldogs or bulls snorting their way to a
matador's blanket; Volvos and station wagons look like grandmothers with
square glasses inching their way up the sidewalk to ring the bell for a
donation; and all the rest are the apathetic and bored faces of the herd.)
This anger I speak of has no rational roots, none at all. It is the kind
of emotion which ceases to exist once a person sits in the passenger seat: it
is purely solitary. In fact, it is expressed in opposition to all other
individuals, perceived to have some advantage I can't comprehend or hope to
grasp. The specific pattern in Quake that triggers it is being fragged right
after spawning, six times in a row. Senseless unfairness. Whether or not it
is one person's specific goal to exploit my weakness and rack up an easy
score, I seek to avenge myself upon only one person, whom is the high scorer
in the game. Here charges in the utterly driven and pitiful rampage of the
bruised ego, running kamikaze into firefights to demonstrate the fearlessness
and brutality of a mind untinged by compassion. Death -- the enemy's or my
own -- is greeted with a twisted smile and sense of accomplishment. This
sense of accomplishment is akin to that one derives from seeing a plan
executed to fruition, or more plainly, from "seeing a job well done," but in
my frenzied state, it is merely the reflexive joy of having accomplished
anything at all. Do any of the people controlling these digital enemies see
my rage? Do they personally feel the humiliation I hoped to bestow upon them?
I doubt it. I am a pissed-off boy alone in his room punching buttons.
Frivolous.
Disgust visits me too. Perhaps I am playing well, perhaps I am in
next-to-last place -- doesn't matter. The only requirement is eight hours.
Playing a game like Quake, on today's still limited technology, doesn't afford
the opportunity to be disgusted by carnage. There might be the occasional
surprise of seeing someone gibbed right in front of you, or revulsion at a
grotesquely appropriate sound effect, but the imagery itself does not cause
the disgust I feel. This disgust is purely emotional -- though often
associated with physical exhaustion -- and grows solely from the affliction of
taking the game too seriously. My present analysis of the cause, of course,
is detached and rational, but after eight hours of continued play, the mental
context is utterly different.
During the onslaught of disgust, after I kill someone or am killed and
jump right back into the carnage, my passive mind remarks something apt like,
"Wow, life sure is expendable." Were I detached one hair's breadth from that
state, I would see that this is the only point of the game, but inside it, the
comment demoralizes me. How many places on earth are people playing this game
in real life? And how close to them am I?
Is the comparison worthwhile? Listen: in the game, we have two basic
classes of players -- individuals and teams. As an individual, I am as likely
to fall into a pit of anger as of disgust; my ego could not stand such
one-on-one brutality anywhere more real than the shopping market or the
highway. The goal is nonetheless simple: kill anything that moves. In
Quake, it is remarkably easy to abide to this goal due to the lack of
non-player characters. One does not have to make any decisions but must only
be armed and well-defended. In team play, the burden of politics becomes
clear. Who just came into my line of sight? Good guy? Bad guy? Is "friendly
fire" on? Do I care? Or do I just want to kill something? And, why do "our"
guys suck so bad? Are "they" just lucky? How can "we" regain our composure?
"Let's" teach "them" a lesson.... Is there any real camaraderie here, or is
it just my ego lashing out against a subset of the players?
Disgusting!, seeing how I react. Disgusting, seeing how we all act, yes,
freely fragging the guy who just spawned, laughing at the guy who died right
before he reached a decent weapon, treating it all as if it really were *just*
a game. But see how well we play the roles, how comfortably we fit into the
molds? Is this the highest expression of humanity? Is this the skill am I
forging for the future, to adapt to any game where I can wear a uniform and
carry a weapon and have no accountability?
Being a human, I am privy to the secrets of human nature: this lust, or
desire, or need, for unrestrained violence has a place in everyone's heart --
mustn't it? Maybe not expressed in the same way, and certainly channeled into
a limited number of acceptable outlets... but what the hell am I doing anyway?
Why do I only think about this after eight hours, after the blood has been
shed? The weight of the oversight is small in terms of the damage caused, but
in extension, in projection, to the burden of realization heaped on the
perpetrators of actual murders once they come to their senses? The jaw drops,
the heart sinks, a vast suffocating infinity of understanding and compassion
-- tainted! spoiled! It must be so! Is the threat of reprisal, the snare of
the law, really the only barrier a human has against killing? See us small
time hoods -- cables a'gathering, computers a'packing, what do we get out of
our transgression into that realm? "Whew, I'm tired. See you next Sunday."
Finally, I am lonely to see everyone leave, even when angry and disgusted
at it all -- especially then. Did I really just spend all that time lashing
out and the shadows of my friends? Couldn't we have done something more
constructive? I can see their faces: they are tired, angry, or disgusted too
-- or is that a projection? Didn't this happen last time? It did! But we did
it again. Every time, it ends the same....
And that's the basic reality-bending facet of the game itself -- you come
back to life, good as new, with the click of a button. Is there an endgame
here? A limbo? Any moment to think it all over? Legends say you can remain
dead as long as you want, but I am rarely conscious of my death long enough to
notice and stop firing, which serves to thrust me right back into the action.
This mindless, constant action opens wide the floodgates for the currents of
antipathy. Who of all the jungle guerillas, street criminals, or Texas state
governors experiences so much killing, both of others and of oneself, in one
lifetime, that I experience in eight hours? Is there any better way to clarify
the laws of nature -- endlessly turning cycles, spinning wheels, marching
ants, flowing rivers, circulating moisture, orbiting satellites, expanding
universe? It goes on and on and on, in the same patterns, over and over
again! What about it changes? The strategy? The order of events? The
quantized reactions? All details! All circumstance, lost in the grander
scheme of living and dying. This is the cycle of life -- not a happy
disneyfied African safari tour of multicolored dancing animals -- but a happy
little boy walking to school and being run over -- an old man meeting death
with fear and regret -- two lovers drowning the spark in stale routine -- a
girl scout being raped -- a college graduate entering the work force and
blindly feeding the cancer in his soul -- all decay, all downward spirals; but
all erased and forgotten in time, all reorganized and reinterpreted in a
context of freshness and youth, old paths trodden again, the failures of the
past illuminating the Way into the future. This is where we lose it -- the
path, the lessons, ourselves -- lost in the happiness of movement and of
pumping blood and of calculating mind, where the self expands into the
generals and specifics of the entire universe, repeating the cycle, honoring
the cycle, enriching the cycle with the glory of experience, the glory of the
hunt, the glory of the fall. This continues; this too shall pass; this is an
illusion; this is eternal.
Oh God, it's time for me to be committed -- I love this game!
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
"'O frati,' dissi, 'che per cento milia
Perigli siete giunti all occidente.'"
('O brothers,' I said, 'who through a hundred thousand
Perils have reached the West.')
--Dante, _The Divine Comedy, Canto XXVI, ll. 112-13
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
DOCUMENT 04.25.99
transcribed and edited by Kilgore Trout
[On June 1, 1999, I was sitting around at Mojo's Daily Grind, a local
coffeehouse, trying to write. Apparently inspiration was elsewhere, so I was
about to go inside and find a magazine to browse through when I saw a
magazine lying unattended on one of the outside tables. The covers were
ripped off, but the first page was covered in writing, so I picked it up and
figured I'd get a quick glimpse of a handwritten note to someone or a personal
reminder. What I found was a magazine full of paranoid ramblings and
cryptical dates and places.
The text below is the full transcription of what I found in the April 25,
1999 issue of _The New York Times Magazine._ The writing were scrawled in
the margins, across the text, and across pictures. Because the writing was
hard to decipher at times, and parts of sentences would be scattered across
pages, I have attempted to reproduce the sections as they appeared by
breaking the text up according to how it was found on the page. Naturally, a
faithful reproduction in ASCII text is not possible, but I have done my best.
The interpretation is left to you.
I'd like to thank I Wish My Name Were Nathan for going over about half of my
transcriptions and helping me figure out some particular nasty handwriting
sections.]
page 3
The cars they were out there -- bearing us then between Ivanhoe Circle. And
us 2 began and arrive and drive the 3 friends (teen girls) home to whichever
alleyway they lived and were born. Almost.
Received me at her mother's and father's and brother's home for the afternoon
with her friends. At home were telephoned by her mother.
A natural born grid of Oklahoma and this deed not last.
Here Margaret has approached us and over one of her own age group leeched by
this nigger man. She sweared it's her real address, since 1961 or 1960 on
Ivanhoe Circle or Lane house. In the later afternoon removed us by 11 or so.
Only other sister reselling and reselling and reselling us, the then youngest
Hopkins. Her friend's daughter appearing as one. There were 4 in 1960 and in
1962 with and of herself.
page 4
He appeared that afternoon to work with horses in a stable in Houston, Texas.
The month year 1999 around 1960 year -- it looks about like 1961. A colored
man drove mischief on about a covered car, I believe a compact, with her.
In 1960 and in the 1961st year. The one friend, youngest of these or the
older of these 3, had far far to go to Albightdnonded, Texas to sleep at home
and by 10 or 11 o'clock midnight by 11 or midnight hour. Margaret said then
she might her or her mother -- maybe herself -- to do it -- drive her home.
page 5
The second child-youth, she had to return to one orphanage -- or there on
Ivanhoe Circle -- was the second orphan at the home-house in 1960 or as in
1961.
The girl was an attending student, my friend of Zachary Lanier Junior High
School or whatever on Duval Road and at Westhauser Street on the corner,
remember.
The telephone of the family house Ivanhoe Circle was listed in the Houston,
Texas directory.
The year the district 13 or 33 or 30 or 39 or 31. I think it's Zone 7.
page 7
There in the 1960-61 year. The young girl drove her own car with two other of
older youths year 12 2 the house on Ivanhoe Cir. southside about the fourth or
fifth home on your right.
I believe they said they were 12 years old youth. Houses, too, in westside
district 21.
There another car arrived, and I believe Gerald Hopkins is there, the name of
the telephone listing of his family home in Ivanhoe Circle.
Then -- its driveway to the home's garage of 1 story was on the and in the
(4700's) or 4600's or 4500s.
The 4600's were used there properly, I believe. 50. 49. 48. 47. 46 or
4500s.
East on West Kettering Circle, then 1 street southward in 1 direction from
Westhauser Road it then traveled.
page 10
She said they are high and hiding narcotics use, but one told of the colored
chauffeurs appearing from the rear west -- oppose his own the side when one
drove the girl (person)
to which dwelling she lived. When he reached Houston said and over is
Sharpstown with around the Westbury School of an area angled south vs. west.
The other friend of mine -- friend's younger or little sister -- attended or
visited Westbury Junior High School in Longfellows Sharps Sharpstown, Houston,
Texas and Bellaire, Texas.
All niggers in Houston, Texas, my hometown, live east of us, behind and of us.
Nearer downtown's heart. And where that the colored schools are, also.
page 11
For the 1961 fall football there in Houston, Texas, in the 8th grade (7) or
1960 throughout 1961. Then my friends and I ran elected and nominated for
cheerleader there at Zachery Lanier Junior High School. His name, very Shelton
pretty, and rhymed with the 1 story brick home. The colored man was in the
street.
The older gal person in the family was the brother. The other girls -- little
ladies -- lived with her most of the time. I agreed after school. The more I
question up along the home's north and front curb, she had said in jest and
earnestly -- whence she was taken into the car on the front house's south
side.
I did have a decent front lawn, I remember. The home had a front north
sidewalk to the curb.
page 12
They have done this since some preceding year other than 1962. Strangers they
are to us. The colored peoples, they believe.
page 13
They too work at servant jobs, bartending, and some at private enclosed club
buildings. They come to work at differing places in town, such as a senior
high school cafeteria or a senior high school hall. There in the city and in
hotels they also work, too -- delivering our milk at home and to our front
doors, and delivering our newspapers and our telephone books -- each year or
so. They too work construction, and park our cars downtown
page 15
and out of the city, also.
Garney, Texas, Oklahoma.
The young lady's name was Garney, or she so announced that she lived there in
page 18
repeated published article.
page 19
Grand Prarie, Texas. Abilene, Texas area, area (a county). Albightdnonded,
Texas. Then the colored slave carried this magazine with him. I thought was
interesting. Those young people were enclosed in a home.
1960. 1962. 1961 year.
The three men ran through LaGrange at Smithsville, Texas afterwards, only an
hour or two in the one afternoon during the week after junior high school.
In the 1962nd year, during the day, they ran eastward on foot -- walked very
quickly much alikened to police officers on a man -- on a man hunt. man's
trail hunt. Was at an end one of those days by and of 3pm.
page 21
And we took Patty home. How it is 1980, and she is back this Margaret getting
into the car with one of her 4 friends that did drive cars, took the car over
from her mother.
(3) + (1) = 4. That's his name: she said. Or Willhite.
My mother never pays for anything. She leans on this other family member whom
she lives with, this other family -- their name and something Willheist, she
said.
Jim, Shelton, Patti, Kathie, and Mr. and Mrs. and Mr. and Mrs.
The oldest and the older male. The older female believed her mother.
[Not losing my mind, I begin.]
page 22
In first grade, too. NAME.
page 23
Snatched from my daddy's car. Then he stood from me.
The colored car driver there on Kettering Lane Circle. THIS IS PLAGERIZED
ALSO.
I began repressing in 1984 and went on into 1984 deeply. Withdrew in 1985.
She is, so as I, to speak, is no longer at Johnson, no longer at Lee, is no
longer at Dotter, and is no longer at Iverson.
page 25
Notice: it is not a practice of mine -- sitting on the bathroom or
downstairs' other toilet reading smaller contrasting compared points to grunt
better. [deficate.]
This was noticed since yesterday evening at the El Patio Mexican Foreign Food
Restaurant on Guadalupe Street. HOSPITAL SHIT.
page 26
To me, Jacob's the real Margaret. Goodbye! She -- is beautiful and unreal.
page 27
I found it -- the automatic pistol belonging to a Mrs. Ros Bankespoole, born
either in Birmingham, Alabama, south of Johnnesborough, Arkansas or
Hawkinsville, Arkansas, or Hawkins, Alambama, the USA -- in the 1976 1977th
year over on Wordsworth or Shakespeare or Dryden Street near the [wherever]
Boulevard Village.
2 streets on its south side. The streets are some of them some of the time,
one way. One way or the other way.
In Houston in Bellaire, I did drive a sports jeep -- brown it was and was with
an open top -- in Sharpstown, Texas in 1976 and 1977. In the Capitol and to
it in 1978 and 1979.
page 28
Some Chinese food, some work, some $75.00 home out of town, 40 miles.
page 29
Rapollo's (pizza). Downtown. Burger with poppyseed buns. Some T-bone steak
with fried potatoes. Closed. And roast beef -- cafeteria 5 slices, rare. And
mashed potatoes and butter and broccoli at the cafeteria and butter.
Mr. Martin owns and rents. Nor do I want to live in it. If he owns Lawton I
don't want to rent it.
page 31
It's nearer Texas. The crisis -- is American. This is 1999, they say why and
do they know TODAY is off the air?
In this Southwestern state, some have married illegally, some mothers haven't
married illegally. This is good.
The criminals are kidnappers, kidnapping and going to work for regular money.
My own daddy is one exclamatory remark! of Houstonians, I have heard.
Since 1960 and the 1960first year. Rah-rah.
page 32
In 1980, we have proof and saw helicopter flyers, men flying them over in Asia
and Iran, get dizzy and ill--
and incessantly demanded and announced they were dead because of then the
same.
In the Abilene, Texas area, across central north central Texas, since the 1960
year.
The [bastards] -- it is obviously the howl of the colored
person-man-perverted-one making money on a grander, complex scale.
1999. In the Houston, in the Austin Capitol and in the Dallas areas. This is
a public dirty drive, of pastime socializing party drinkers, who have decided
on their own to do what we see.
page 36
Then he went into Germany and flew a jet off a large ship afloat, and the
newspaper published the action as an everyday accident transpiring since some
year in the late 19sixties and 1970s.
Filling with narcotic -- charging money -- trying to (proof) prove of innocent
subjugation. Prosperity: making a real heart filled and dishonorable time of
America, in foreign nations, on foreign soil and of foreign countries. Fools.
Fools of grown men, fools of more intelligent men and their families, fools of
their grandchild, fools of their granddaughters.
page 37
Buying time in the United States, time of political professions, sitting out
and trying to run it to their fullest. And fathers they were, and Lincoln
Continental car drivers they were, and psychoanalysts they were, and Private
General Doctors of medicine they were, and husbands of psychiatrists, married
2 or 5 or at sometimes 9 times.
Posterity. And an American citizenship and here on American soil, of German,
Austrian, Swiss, French heritage. And Slavic he was thought or in the
newspaper in Austin read about as part of the antidereleased.
Sunk down in my hometown, Houston, Texas.
page 40
And he flew over some part of the Mediterranean Sea or some sea over there and
cursed the baby again with his pure, democratic citizen professional.
page 41
And then too he was in this newspaper article characterized or described as a
possible crazy adult or a convicted crazy adult, to be caught and assimilated
by
page 42/43
telephone. In 1971 spring he also visited and lived in Vicenza with a woman
and entered the back door of an Italian home in one of the Vicenza
neighborhoods -- because I saw him carrying three infants.
There in the article, there was no discussion of him being an American citizen
nor of it, truthfully.
But over in Europe, well, Italy, in 1971 and 1965, part of 1967 and 1969,
January. For facial expression, dearly there in Houston, Texas. Our year was
1966.
These 3 women approached an Austin shopping house in the Texas Capitol area
and demanded the infants -- 3. From Brackenridge, carried in a car directly
from Brackenridge or directly from where in 1970 the infants had been born.
The newborn was not taken at Brackenridge Hospital. We saw them. We do not
believe at all one of these at least.
A professional, charging money, and activating criminal kidnapping with a
funny little outlet end to his personality. The sigh of he himself at close
proximity -- 6 feet.
Then, too, I recognized the man: a NASA aeronautical space corporal in the
United States of America's southwest. He was then televised to be in the year
1984. Austin, Houston, and Dallas, Texas. He was the criminal partner in
this LSD injection drive flurrie via
page 44
a Houstonian. Born there in Houston, Harris County, Texas, in 1947, at Herman
Hospital, Jean A. Area.
They need addresses on buildings since 1970 -- on 501 E. 8th street.
U.S. female patient. Unmarried. Adult. White. Wt -- 185lbs. 5'7" ht.
Light colored skin. Blue blond.
page 45
We believe they stopped over there at, then, the Dover building -- the Ramis
Club or New Elks Club building -- and put on a floor up against a wall, in
August and in September of 1970, but he saying part of October. 1970.
page 46
Are then, and has repetitiously been with the policemen and police department
and law enforcement authorities, and examined for almost the purposelessly
clad. Idiots as narcotics users. To repress people with an overall lever
because illegal dope is pharmaceutically affiliated.
page 47
By in large finding the northerners her cousins (3), aunt, mother's sister,
and uncle not kidnappers in 1956 nor in the following year. Finally, in 1998
and in 1999.
Circumstantially, admit -- that it is hard to deny these 5 peoples -- there in
Kentucky no. However, one does the kidnapping.
page 48/49
Cold Hinoc Fleece cargo vessel. 1927-28 November.
False conjured passport books, false name. False physical descriptions.
False home addresses. False country nationalities. False autopsies. False
records. Numbers and falsely reliant faces -- data -- facts = lists --
addresses -- numbers. False photographs.
Jewelry -- and pearls. Theft. Stolen. Then -- if you took yours, talking
about at the photographs -- snapped Houston County Jail in and of 1959.
page 51
1998-1999 year. and we telephoned him and he threatened our lives -- then
what are you going to do about it -- he so as to speak entailed.
1968-69. By in large Time Magazine coverage. He told us by magazine he had
won a modern gunman.
page 52
Alikened -- my personal identification papers. Love Transporting and Storing
Company. Houston, Texas. International Interstate 10.
Stolen 1976. 77-1979 years off San Antonio street in Austin, Texas.
Miss (my first name) Martina (the first name) Church (my maiden name) Lee
(Last Name)
Lain down -- somewhere in the town, in the county. My identification papers
stolen one year to the next -- privately and publicly -- in Travis County in
Austin, Texas.
page 7a (insert)
I, cannot read (funny joke)
page 65
Bradley Bailey Square claims only 6 flours.
(KKK) office Johannesborough, Arkansas.
page 67
Pa -- Ma. Dr. Bass. Male -- Female. Female -- Male. Male -- Female. Male
-- Female. 1952-1954 -- Houston 1954. 1952-1953-1954-1955. 47. 1st grade
class 1956-57. Had mortuaries, funerals, Texas. 1958. Listed 1959. Beeler
Leece.
1966-1968. Lizeze, Italy. Geneva -- Weerne -- Berne, Switz. With Luxemborg
in mind, I thought. Brussels, Belgium. For car rent Hertz America. Austria.
Innsbrook. Salzburg.
Italy. From Venice, Vicenza, Vienna, and Vicenza. Distance and whereabouts
of these two cities. As distant as drives to Ireland, and with Pesci in the
rearview mirror -- leaving Florence and prior Rome & Riornie, Italy. And a
Venician found there set up in Turkey and Athens, Greece and in Southeast
Italy, a central town. And teaching in Italy, 1968s Italy in 2 places-towns.
page 69
Wanted from Greenland and sought in America since the outbreak of World War I
-- 1928 November. Found out on the Atlantic Ocean at 11:56pm at night with his
143 men, was sentenced with kidnapping and charged with it -- and his men and
sentenced (again) as 2 have the weather to Haitian Revolutionary National for
life in southwest Indies.
By those names, other preposterous named of criminal, criminal gatherers.
Dickson. Larry Laurence Edwards.
With a fuller and a broom I wandered and arguing for 4 harmonial affairs
illegally gesturing on appearing parties, some teens as many as 9 parties.
Some very small children with an age to question. Usually appearing single to
a 1st grade in Houston, Texas district 19. And a student not secured in a
class for their study room.
page 71
A self-supplied boyfriend and earlier vagabond, a prominent son of oiling
company in the 1980s, on a cargo vessel. Then caught -- and found supposedly
free of syphilis venereal germ.
Since 1966 has advertised outside of the Houston telephone directory (book).
1928th year, 18th to 23rd November at 11:56pm at night.
All and are they found then by 3 or 4 other men in the Houston area. He has
been ushered and bribed in uptown Austin in Texas on East Seventh Street on
its north side.
page 75
And leading as a televised Houston, Texas man and TV star -- Donn Mahoney.
And via askance photographic developments and illegally employed and aliased
as D. Mahoney. Since this Donn Mahoney's death in the 1960's in America, I
believe. Howdy Doody will have to go, and I will have to be taken away.
Drunk on liquor and alcoholic beverages and on, he says, America's stupidity,
especially those of and its teenagers.
In 1966 hence he is in illegal charge in touring "this visitor" by the poor,
deceiving the public by dining. Eating out is a crutch, isn't it? He has
infringed our public by stolen up Texas streets, usually clueless -- married
to a first-rate neighbor -- and drunk on dope in Houston, Texas.
page 77
To excuse spastiasms from the public view and to create study of its relief in
Texas capitol towns and university area.
Also proposed to the United States of America its Federal Plan. He was a
Herculean Randolph Hearst, and for all of his money invested in Texas created
wealth and buildings.
page 80
4 years here in this USA. 1926 year -- Oklahoma. 1927 year -- Texas. 1928
year -- unrecovered year. 1929 year. 1930 year. 1931 year. 1932 -- turned
up, then not ever again.
page 81
Hearing a (1980) Orwellian view -- and without assurance of to us. Studying a
thing and earlier -- even a missing person. They have found her now, I
believe, hanging out in the Austin Capitol, student of the University of
Texas, in temporary homes they use while in college, and too, in a house w/ 2
story level.
And too as STOP drunk called a trusting STOP at Lake Granger underneath Houston
Lake east and was west on the side from the streets of Houston downtown --
with a house in Harris county. Lying address the other funeral River Oaks
area.
And why would he not be feeding you?
Now why wouldn't this man be dangerous?
page 83
Then he was found supposing in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in 1950 and in 1951.
A joker entering questions and leaving the prison a helper. Now he is found
asking questions.
Once again overcharging and too a private patient earlier whilst in Granbury
-- and lying farther to his legal uncle in Houston Texas and Lexington,
Kentucky and in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Ohio found him in the telephone
directory.
The Brutish Queen in of 1968-1969 caught him at the Austin area downtown
uptown police station trying to fortune and replicate disaster in favor of
becoming another character with another face and wickedly resought him.
1 son living out of Switzerland side out of Austria side. Out of Italy side.
Out of Greece side. Out of Germany side.
A daughter-girl out of Scandinavia.
page 86
The man has been announced the same man caught in 1990 through 1991 years and
1992 running -- a pilot over Germany and Austria with a suggestion of facial
acne -- and Sebringk is his name.
page 87
Then you hear, while
you had such exclaimed words in the student area, a real
woman.
[and courageously] Found another lived right here uncorrectly.
I would not think you would want any food. He had touched melee.
page 90
By which how they always were before. That adult is too criminal and is a
dangerous joker. See -- they have found out a cover to use -- that they are
adults and were by and with adults -- adult care, adults brought around by
criminal and professional pay, of criminal pay.
A public waver of stripteasers in and out of the USA -- NOT NORMIES -- of
older and older women since 1957 in Houston's publicity world.
page 91
In a white undershirt, trousers, belt, socks, shoes. A Leo, Leonard,
Leonardo. Or it (ahead) of us, I swear.
Before being found in this Federal Building and that -- a private FBI
officeman in San Antonio and in Austin, Texas.
Say, as example, in something you have seen, in a magazine, hearing this job
is not -- a joke -- "Get up, boy" you guys!
Who has paid for this discouraged course of life -- 2907 Ferndale Street,
2905? Ferndale Street, 77006 in Harris County, Houston, Texas. He is trying
to list -- and sits on an ottoman in 1984 and swears he is listing others.
page 92
(Whom) (Who) is varied of on and sometimes about -- the American use of
assumed presumption -- is the way and manner in that he began his illegal
escape and that he is still living closely with them.
page 93
Relax and extend a hellish hand.
1926-1999. 1926 -- 73 years. 73 years.
2708-2710 Guadalupe Street.
I swear he cannot be of any use. I swear he is of no use no further use -- can
he be. Of which he can't be.
Should you see them -- every one of these out here -- in a penitentiary.
page 96
This bird full of syphilis and venereal disease -- gone inside deeper. Over
these years unfeasible that he should live.
He says -- of 1967 -- "Picked it up -- the teenager -- the young adult female
with are -- pocket full and filled with narcotics."
page 98/99
Out of Fort Worth's prison. The loose and toothless say he is an American --
and a prominent official of Texas since 1972. Greek. Greece.
Swore then he told us as the norm or this stuttered gal -- overnight -- north
or from the western -- "I might be -- but who knows -- he might be from the
United States of America.
The United States of America. 1893-4-5-6-7-8-99. They took him as prisoner
away. 1900-1-2-3-4-5-6-7- 8. 1908-09-1910-1911 -- the 1920 year. In talking
to her -- that my dad died and was buried in his home -- in Mississippi.
Earlier in 18something9 in Mississippi locked up and arrested in Austin, Texas
away from people like herself and his 142 men. The woman was his employee --
may have been. For a long time and housed there, they are been -- injured
children -- and infants, outgrowthed.
page 102
Riskship -- constitution, life, money, blood, and mindless mental fraud. Rent
or lease. In texas since 1980 and 1979. In Houston, Texas and 1969 and 1970.
In Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas since 1962. And since January of her and
December of 1962 -- hence falsify your television, (telephone), and some radio
and kidnappers.
Is it the big yellow page beach or not! For emphasis.
page 102b
These are just some facts about him -- reasons for staying away from him. I
saw you with that lawyer man down at the Burger King, Joe. Away from him too,
Joe. You might say thank you.
Skipped up 2710 Guadalupe Street, Austin. Lee -- 1998-99.
page 104
The homeless Austinite and Texan understand change.
1998-1999. From Lexington, Kentucky have never been mentioned and they are
not going to do me any good.
page 105
West University's village, a guitar teacher, also.
It was no help. He worked with the different "psychiatrists" there in Harris
County, Houston, Bellaire.
page 117
He met, see, other large criminals here in the United States after me.
Myself. My other dad with his 142 men.
Since 1965-66 Lykes Line Shipping, Delaware. In 1970 job. Is. It. Not.
Italy. Air. Etc.
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
"The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die."
--Thomas Hardy, "Neutral Tones"
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
GUiLTY BRAiN (EROTiCK-TOCK)
by I Wish My Name Were Nathan
The guy at work who sits in the next cubicle worries too much. He says
he feels constantly guilty about being unfaithful to his wife. I ask him, are
you cheating on her? He says no, but that he finds other women attractive,
albeit unconsciously, like a mental reflex to the images he sees. So, I ask,
there's nothing more than a patterned firing of neurons? I guess not, he says.
There's no fantasizing going on? No, he says. Then I say, that's nothing.
That's normal. You're a male, you're programmed to react to women. Would you
rather be blind to beauty?
I think *I* should be sometimes. Whenever I see a woman, all the neurons
go off. I mean, it's really pathetic. I see her posing erotically, for
instance. Then right afterwards, I see her naked. The neurons shift that
quickly. And then, I see her masturbating on a bear rug. Then, we're making
love. I see us having wild, passionate sex. I see me on top, I see her on
top. I see us getting married. I see us buying a house and paying high
interest. I see her giving birth. I see our child grow out of diapers. I
see our family happily walking through a park. I see our child grow up and go
through adolescence.
Say it's a boy. I see him masturbating and fantasizing about women. I
see him dating. I see him getting laid. I see him getting married and
feeling guilty about being attracted to other women, albeit unconsciously. I
see him fantasizing about women he sees, to whom he makes love and gets
married to and then has children with. I see him having a daughter, and see
him fantasizing about her fantasies. I see myself as his daughter. I see
myself going through puberty and entering the menstrual cycle. I see all
sorts of biological clocks ticking in my body demanding that I have children.
I see men fantasizing about me, albeit unconsciously. I see myself having sex
with several men but feeling unsatisfied. I see myself getting married and
having children. I see myself giving birth and splitting into two. I see
both halves continue on, each having fantasies and sex and getting married and
having children and all of them growing up and procreating.
Pretty soon I recognize the pattern and can implicitly fill in my family
tree going backwards in time, where I see myselves coming back from their
graves and children coming back to their parents, serially morphing into them
and restoring their youth until they're adolescents growing younger and
younger and dissolving into their mothers and fathers; and sensing the decay
as less dead rise from their graves and fewer mothers and fathers are left
until that one moment when I am no longer human but pre-human and at that
point it's a bit difficult to describe, but past that it's just more rising of
the dead and feeling and merging and splitting on up the line until I'm not
even a mammal (and then I start to get confused wondering where these children
came from since they left so shortly after hatching) and on and on until,
well, it gets really mechanical and I just feel like the world's biggest jerk.
The guy in the next cube has it easy.
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
[=- POETASTRiE -=]
"In the East poets are sometimes thrown in prison -- a sort of compliment,
since it suggests the author has done something at least as real as
theft or rape or revolution. Here poets are allowed to publish anything
at all -- a sort of punishment in effect, prison without walls, without
echoes, without palpable existence -- shadow-realm of print, or of
abstract thought -- world without risk or _eros_."
--Hakim Bey, _T.A.Z._
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
THE THOUGHT OF iSLANDS
by Robert James Berry
The despairing song of waves
The echoing thought of islands
Brings me where dusty winds whirl like dervishes,
Where Allah commands 'Thou Shalt Nots'
From sun-stricken minarets.
The women in purdah I know,
Dry as Old Testament verses,
The idle, burned street vendors
Who keep faith with only their flied produce,
and the foundered ships off Quay Street,
Like desecrated carcasses in the stinking mud
Bitten by sand flies and tides.
When God has swept the furnace of this sky
and his sun haemorrhages over the sea,
Only then the betel palms shall sway slowly
And the final remains of a dead empire
Pedal its trishaw down Beach Street,
Waving generous good-byes.
Tonight an unlikely rainbow has settled over home.
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
"You don't know what you're going to get, simply because of the
limitations of the human mind, any more than the average person
can plan five moves ahead in chess."
--William S. Burroughs Interview, 1969
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
STONE CRADLES
by Robert James Berry
I am thinking of the cemeteried dead
Who fill the hillside.
Always I am aware of their broken homes
slumping but not quite effaced by the high hedges.
Even in blackness empty as widowhood,
There is a vulgarity in death,
The discomfort of their silence.
In more articulate starlight
Headstones show their best profiles,
but still all their grand sentimental words
resemble each other.
New bones erode over old blood.
That is the culture, the tongue
of death.
As first snowflakes
Settle on the long lashes
of the gravedigger's starlit eyes
and the mourners ebb off, divide like
tributaries, into the living
I am left standing, clutching the
lonely, sad hands of my dead.
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
[=- FiCTiON -=]
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
EVERYBODY LOVES A FOOL
by Kilgore Trout
I glimpsed the dark ebb of the event horizon briefly flicker in her right
eye. when she blinked, her eyelashes sheared the image of her still pupils,
and I heard her softly inhale, getting ready to speak.
"I know," I said. "I know."
She exhaled through her nose. A drop of sweat formed above her bare
upper lip. I watched a mosquito land on her neck and crawl inside her blouse.
"Yes," I said. "This is Byzantium."
Leaning back against the granite column, she absently brushed the rough
surface of the pillar with her callused fingertips. I pulled the map out of
my pocket, unfolded it, and let it flutter to the ground. It landed face
down.
"No," I quickly said, anticipating her question. "We can't leave.
This is what we came for."
It had taken me a decade to realize that I had passively watched the
world end ten years earlier. The fallen wall marked the end of the way things
were, and I sat in the grass, following the clouds with shoeless feet, while
it passed me by. I grew up after the world was over.
She was the one who brought me the map and said that we should leave,
that we should go back to the way things were before. She talked about a
golden age with golden birds atop golden trees, and she whispered the magic
word into my hollow ear that night which made me decide to go. I woke up that
morning with strands of her hair in my mouth.
"We have to burn it," I said, lighting a match and setting fire to the
paper. The thick, purple smoke began to fill the large room. She tried to
manage a smile but ended up walking outside. The etchings in the walls were
barely visible.
I left the broken temple and joined her on the craggy outcrop looking
over the sea. Our rowboat was moored below, halfheartedly rocked by dark
waves. I turned around and surveyed the island, its ruined buildings, the
dead wood, and the crumbled stone.
"We have to burn it," she said before I could stop her. I solemnly
nodded and looked up, seeing two clouds moving closer together. They were
slowly spinning in opposite directions on their horizontal axes, and when they
intersected, I thought I saw a cracked crown.
I heard her stepping on twigs as she went to gather wood.
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
"Hiegh ho, hiegh ho."
--dwarves numbering seven
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
OFF WiTH THE BLiSS
by Clockwork
Kerr answers the phone all day, at this plastic desk. No, not quite a
desk at all, really -- an artificial construct unit, modular, made in a
blazing slave shop in Singapore for multi-billion dollar companies in
economically viable countries. The floor is plastic and hollow -- Kerr can
hear his feet pop within the four foot plastic cavern with a plastic echo,
plastic tank, plastic sound, holding together a plastic building. Plastic
chairs, with artificial thin-layered thready plastic covering. The ceiling,
fifteen feet above him, is not plastic, but cement -- gray and splotched,
plastic-looking rendered flat cement. Cold and hollow like the plastic floor
beneath him, spewing forth air.
When his phone rings, it sounds like plastic -- incalculable strands of
plastic slapping against each other to give a plastic applause, pause,
applause.
"Thank you for calling, this is Kerr, can I have your name, please?"
Monochromatic.
"Hi. Yes. What do you need?" in a twangy male voice, fumbling, classic
twisting squeaks of a twirled benevolent phone cord.
"What is your name?"
"Oh. David."
"And your last name?"
"Gulkathasticki."
"Could you spell that for me?"
"G-L-O-W-A-C-K-I."
"And do you have the serial number of the system your calling on?"
There's always silence after that question.
David obviously was flipping through the drawers of photocopied and
paper-clipped paper world at his knees. "Uh, the what?"
Kerr is prepared. "The serial number. Should be on the back of the
system on a white sticker with a barcode -- seven digits."
More pausing, the drop and dissipation of papers, sliding grating metal,
grunts, groans, office phones, stampeding giraffes. "Oh, okay. LK0H21N."
"Are you with the New Jersey Department of Public Safety, David?"
"Yes, New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety."
"OK. And what can I do for you?"
"Well, uhmm, I was trying to hook up this scanner, and it says it goes to
COM1, and I think I hooked it up right, to the back, there's a connector that
says COM1 on it, and I plugged it in there, but it won't find it."
"It won't find it?" Kerr has this habit of repeating the last phrase
said to him in the form of a question -- he wasn't sure if this was
condescending, annoying, or reassuring proof he was actually listening.
"Right."
"OK. And did you run the install program that came with it?"
"Uhm, yeah, I put in the CD that came with it," thicker paper being
rustled, "the one that says UMAX 7391b Scanner Installation CD, and it came up
and I clicked on install, and... well, I'll do it now."
"OK."
Kerr had flashes of visualization when he spoke to people, concoctions of
facial structure, hair color and style, complexion, posture, gut, what kind of
phone they were on, the room they were calling from, what they did in moments
of silence.
"David, are you wearing a hat?"
"Uh, no. Is that alright?"
"Oh, sure that's fine. Did you put in the CD?"
"Yes, I did, and now here it comes. It says UMAX 7391b Scanner
Installation, and it has a button that says Install, and I click on that,
right?"
"Right, go ahead."
One must really be quite careful in this kind of situation -- if someone
is asked permission to click on a button for eight hours a day, an array of
psychological tomfoolery could easily develop, power issues, God complexes,
the belief in gnomes.
"OK. So now it says it's going to put it in sea program files youmax, is
that alright?"
"That's fine, click on next."
"OK. And now there's this bar, it says it's copying -- oh, well, it went
too fast, and now it's something else. Says it is trying to detect the UMAX
7391b scanner, and it's sitting there."
"That's fine."
"OK. And now it says it couldn't find a UMAX 7391b scanner connected to
the system. And to check the cable and try again."
"Alright, David. Have you done that yet?"
"Done what?"
"Check the cable?"
"The cable?"
"Right, the cable that goes from the scanner to the back of the computer
-- the one you said you plugged into COM1."
"Oh. No. Well, I plugged it in there after I took it out of the box."
"OK. Go ahead and just unplug the cable on both ends -- unplug it from
both the computer and the scanner, and just go ahead and plug it right back in
there. And make sure that it is all firmly connected."
"So, unplug the cable and plug it back in?"
"Right."
"I'm going to put the phone down for a minute, is that alright?"
"That's fine."
More plastic clopping noise.
"Are you there?"
"Yes, David, I'm always here."
"OK. I unplugged the cable and plugged it back in."
"Great. Now, let's go ahead and run that same installation program again."
"So. Should I take out the CD and just put it back in?"
"That will work fine."
"OK. The light is coming on. And now it says UMAX 7391b Scanner
Installation, and should I click on the Install button again?"
"Right."
"And should it go to the same place?"
"Right, that's fine."
"OK. And now it's that bar again, and -- it's gone now, and is...oh, it
found it."
"It said it found the scanner?"
"Yes, it says it found a UMAX 7391b Scanner on COM1."
"Alright, great, David, than that should do it."
"So now I can use it?"
"Yes, once you go through the rest of the installation, you can use it."
"Oh, wow, that's great. And what was your name again?"
"Kerr."
"Well, thanks, Chris."
"You're welcome. Have a -- sure you can hang-up before I tell you to
have a good evening, that's fine. Just trying to spread joy to the world, but
that's alright."
Kerr didn't think Chaucer had anyone hang-up on him. Did anyone hang-up
on Galileo? The church didn't count, so no, nobody hung-up on Galileo.
Perhaps God hung-up on Galileo. Though, this is difficult to believe -- one
would think if God hung-up on Galileo, God would not allow Galileo to be such
an all important figure in the history of the globe. Kerr was a human, too.
Simple respect for another being is all that was necessary here, nothing more
was being asked. He finished summarizing the phone call he just took for the
benefit of the Great Customer Database and anyone who chose to read through
it, disregarding the fact he wasn't technically supposed to help the gentleman
at all, according to the Great Company Policy, and was misidentified
immediately after he told the man his name was Kerr. All just a simple case
of misunderstanding, really, nothing to become irate and disheveled over.
Sixteen emails an hour flew into his mailbox: 8:12am - Policy Change
Regarding Absences, 8:19am - UPDATE: Policy Change Regarding Absences, 8:29am
- Installing Windows 2000 on Windows 98, 8:29am - Installing Windows 2000 on
Windows 95, 8:31am - Uninstalling Windows 2000, 8:40am - New Monitor Serial
Number Tracking Policies, 8:49am - NOTICE: Disregard Previous Policy Change
Regarding Absences, 8:50am - $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$, 8:52am - Linux Support Policy,
8:54am - One-on-One Meeting with Manager, 8:54am - Team Meeting in Conference
Room Three, 8:55 - Team Meeting in Conference Room Twelve, 8:55 - Friday is
Shorts Day!, 8:58 - Team Meeting Cancelled. Not quite sixteen at the moment,
but one can always count on someone replying to everyone on a mailing list in
error, and then a flurry of reply-to-alls in response to the original
reply-to-all and the social ramifications of replying-to-all. All easily
mounting up to at least sixteen separate emails an hour.
Kerr sat at the end of a row, at a high-traffic corner -- the majority of
those who entered and exited this floor had to at some point in time traverse
past Kerr's cubicle. The elevators were fifteen feet behind him, and the
carpet gap was a mecca for travelers. In the past forty minutes, he has
continually glanced back as eighteen separate people walked by, coming from
the elevator, back into the building, back to their homeworld geometry. Of
these eighteen people, sixteen have been carrying food, food in square paper
bags, grease-ridden and plastered with logos, Styrofoam cups, colored straws
and carbonated darkened drinks. One after one they flew by, toting fast food
icons behind them. None were together -- they did not journey in a group to
the miniature concrete adventureland a few blocks away, taking no mercy upon
the costumed folk that served them their bags of faceless food, then returning
triumphant to the camp, sitting in circles to celebrate their plastic hunt.
All separate, individuals, different food, different bags. Processed,
unappreciated, this is what is deemed triumphant and beautiful here.
"Kerr." It was that echoing voice of managerial authority, piercing
through the thin anti-cotton fabric of the walls, reverberating in plastic.
"Come talk to me when you have a minute." It was strange, being a disembodied
command, originating from the larger cubicle twelve feet from his own. How can
he disregard such a call from the self-righteous aristocracy, stuffed in a
collar?
Kerr appeared in the one gap of his manager's cubiclized office, gripping
a pen in his hand. "Yes?"
"Kerr, come here, sit down." His manager looked as though he was the 2nd
string center from a nomadic high school football team, perpetually attending
a post-game social event, Josh's parents are out of town, and they left the
liquor cabinet unlocked -- Suzy is going to be there.
His manager stared at him with complete blankness as Kerr moved his body
into the chair in front of this man -- a single sheet of paper was slapped
down on the table. "Do you see those numbers there, Kerr?"
Kerr saw the numbers there. "Yes."
"Do you know what those numbers are, Kerr?"
Kerr knew what the numbers were. "Those are my stats."
"Right, Kerr. Your stats. And Kerr, your stats are horrible."
Kerr just stated at the rows and columns and lines and decimal places
brimming over on the page, nodding his head slowly. "OK."
"Kerr, do you see this one here? Logging rate? This is the only decent
thing you are doing. What that shows is the percentage of calls you put into
the Great Customer Database, which as we know is very important. And here, it
shows -- look here, yesterday you logged 148% of your calls."
Kerr looked at his manager. Blankly. "148%?"
"Yes, 148%, and that's great," his manager was beaming with some sort of
thoroughbred racing horse smile.
"How is it possible for me to log 148% of my phone calls?"
"Well, Kerr, it happened -- says it right here, and that just shows how
good you are doing there. But. Look at this one -- call time. Do you know
what that is?"
"Y--"
"That is how much time you spend on each call. And if you look at your
call times for yesterday, they are really poor. You took, uhm, 24 calls
yesterday, right. And, the shortest amount of time you spent on any of those
calls was 38 minutes. 38 minutes! The longest call you had yesterday was,
uhm, 72 minutes! Most of the calls were between 45-48 minutes. That is
horrible, Kerr! Simply outrageous. Do you realize that you were almost the
poorest in this department? On my team? The poorest in the department, Kerr!
That's inexcusable."
Kerr wrinkled his brow a bit, moving his eyes back and forth from the
sheet of paper in front of him to his manager's swollen face, attempting to
calculate what exactly was necessary to perform his job function. "Does it
seem odd to you that, well, alright -- I was here for eight hours yesterday,
right? Eight hours here at work. And. Those call times. I took 24 calls --
let's just say that all of them were ONLY 38 minutes--"
"But they weren't, Kerr, they--"
"That's fine. Let's just pretend. I took 24 calls, each one of them
lasting 38 minutes. And so, that would total 912 minutes. Right? 912
minutes. Which equals how many hours?"
"Well, uhm, I'm not sure."
"That is over 15 hours. Just on those phone calls. Not counting any
other projects I was working on, lunch, breaks, talking to you -- whatever.
Does that not seem just a bit impossible to you?"
"Now, Kerr, it's not impossible -- it says right here, right on this
paper in front of you."
"You don't think the numbers on this sheet of paper are inaccurate at
all?"
This man remained calm, strong, and convinced. "Kerr, numbers don't
lie."
How does someone argue against this kind of logic? Kerr was a baffled,
stammering, drooling mess. One-way gates and the meaning of cause and effect,
simple mathematics, flow charts, the measurement of time -- all were suddenly
deemed worthless and unusable. Kerr wondered if this man used a pre-Civil War
map of the United States when he went on vacations -- reaching the Midwest and
questioning why the Missouri Territory did not exist as it said so on his map,
proceeding to declare all nine present day states in that region to be
mislabeled. Or perhaps reaching the eastern coast of the United States,
peering over the edge of his Pangean map, and stating, "There can't be an
ocean here. There must be more land."
* * * * *
"Thank you for calling, this is Kerr, can I have your name please?"
"Look. I've called you six times today, and I have gotten nothing fixed.
And I have been working on this for 14 hours." An angry, middle-aged,
post-middle-aged women, gritting teeth and smoking.
Kerr closed his eyes and leaned back into a plastic chair and plastic
darkness. "Ma'am, that certainly is frustrating. Do you have the serial
number of the system you've been calling on, so I can pull it up and see what
has been going on?"
"Christ. You mean I have to give this to you again?"
"Yes, please, so I can see what has been done to the system."
Inhales, exhales, mumbling, "Christ...you people... what... tired...
this... what is this... VL3W11C. Alright?"
Kerr sprung back into an bolted upright position, flooded with
fluorescent lights, stating over typing, "Yes, ma'am, thank you very much."
The United States Marine Corp.
"Are you with the United States Marine Corp?" Kerr asked.
"Yes," was the response.
Usually, Kerr did not encounter much strife with members of the United
States military, which may or may not be an odd thing. Usually, those who
called were Privates, or Private First Class, or something of that sort --
they and them sat low on the handle of the country's ordained peacebringers,
and have been bred to take orders from others, cooperate with any and all, not
to act outside their bounds as a starter peaceboy.
Kerr continued with questions while he had the chance, "And what is your
name?"
Sighs and pride, "This is Sergeant Richards, United States Marine Corp,
Birmingham, Alabama."
Kerr jumped up. "Hoohaa!"
"Excuse me?"
Kerr sat back down. "Nothing. What is your first name?"
"Why do you need to know that?"
"It is purely for our records. I would also need a first name if to
issue any kind of service on the system. And I'd just like to know who I am
talking to."
"Well, I am not going to give you my first name," pant, pant, grunt. "I
don't think there is any reason why you need my first name."
There is a magical red button on the phone Kerr uses to speak to all
those who call, and on this magical red button is the word MUTE printed in
slanted dark text. This is certainly a beneficial feature to have on the
phone -- hit once when the technician must cough or sneeze, take a drink or
perform other strange involuntary functions, then hit once again to unMUTE.
This button is also somewhat of a sanity protection device.
Kerr hit MUTE and sighed heavily. unMUTE. "Alright. That is fine. So
you are having problems with Windows NT?"
"Goddamnit, I can't believe I have to go through this again--"
"I just wish to verify--"
"Look. I'm getting all these errors. All kinds of errors with blue
screens and memory codes and computer numbers all over the place. I've tried
to install Windows NT, Windows 95, and Windows 98 and they all do the same
thing: give errors and computer codes and memory numbers, bit-errors and
things like that."
"Do you know exactly what the error message was?"
"No. But I've seen this all before, and I know it's not the memory
because I've seen what memory does and it's not this. And I've had enough --
you guys better fix this now."
"Well, ma'am, this is what we are trying to do."
"You're not doing a good job."
"I'm trying t--"
"You haven't done anything."
"Ma'am, if--"
"You better fix this."
"Ma'am?"
"It is your responsibility."
"Ma'am?"
"What?"
"If you will let me speak, I am going to try to get this fixed for you."
"Alright, speak, go ahead."
Kerr sighed again. "Have--"
"I don't hear you."
"We--"
"I thought you had something to say?"
"Ma'am?"
"Go ahead. Speak. I'm waiting."
Kerr sat there and did not respond. Sergeant Richards went on about
speaking and listening and fixing and such, and it all smeared into a droning
noise. Kerr took off his headset, placed it on his desk, and walked around his
cubicle for a minute, doing a few quick hops into the air, few quick rollings
of the head, and then flailed his arms around wildly. He picked the headset
up again, placed it over his head, and the droning reformed into coherent
words.
"...I don't think that's too much to ask."
Kerr picked up with a plastic voice, "You're right. Have you tried
swapping out parts in the system?"
"No. We--"
"So you haven't tried removing any cards, disconnecting peripherals,
swapping out the memory?"
"No."
"Do you think that would be possible?"
"Look. What's your name?"
"Kerr."
"What's your last name?"
"I can give you my location number."
"Location number. And what is that?"
"PF-2FL-J02922."
"Pea-eph-2-eph-elle? Jay-oh-to-9-tutu?"
"Yes."
"And who is your manager, Care?"
"Eric Blankenship, number 37505."
Sergeant Richards was silent for a moment, and began again with a
superior tone. "Care, we are the United States Marine Corp. Do you know who
we are? Do you know how much money we spend on computers? I am in control of
purchasing for all of the Unites States military -- I tell them what to buy.
And I will -- I don't want to, but I will tell them to stop buying your
computers over this. Do you really want to be the one responsible for losing
the business of the United States Armed Forces?"
Kerr laughed openly. "No, of course not. What I am trying to do is
troubleshoot a bit here to find out what is causing the problem. If we do
no--"
Sergeant Richard's voice became an ominous, thundering Oz noise, "I am in
the United States Marine Corp, and I don't have to do any of these things. We
are much too important, my time is much too important to be wasting it working
on this. This computer is not the United States Marine Corp's responsibility
-- it is your responsibility! We have hundreds and thousands of computers and
they all work fine except for this one, and that is not acceptable! You have
to fix this now!"
Kerr hit MUTE and tried to use the Weirding Way on his phone. It didn't
work. unMUTE.
"Ma'am, I can send a technician out there with one or two parts, but I
would be completely guessing as to what parts to send, and could not guarantee
it would solve anything."
"I don't care, that is not our fault, that's up to you -- it's your
responsibility."
"Ma'am. Might I point out some fallacies in your arguments here? You
state this computer we are speaking of is our responsibility, and not your
own. Well, I am afraid that is incorrect."
"How is that?"
"It is like any other good -- once it is purchased it really becomes the
owner's responsibility. As you are the legal possessor of this good, it
surely has becomes your responsibility. Now, of course, if there are defects
in this good, the manufacturer of the good can and should be held responsible.
However, it must be determined whether the fault lies in the hands of the
manufacturer or elsewhere. Which is why processes such as these are used."
"Whatev--"
"Furthermore, if you own hundreds and thousands of computers that were
purchased from us, and only one is not functioning properly, I would state
that is a phenomenally low failure rate, and you should be overjoyed. To
expect absolute perfection out of hundreds and thousands of systems is
certainly being unrealistic, and yourself, being an employee of the United
States Armed Forces, should certainly understand this."
"Now ho--"
"Not to mention your cartoonical overreaction to one problem with one
system -- threatening to cancel the entire account the United States military
has with us over one problem. This, ma'am, I find to be immature and somewhat
out of line. Perhaps you should look into why you chose to state such things.
The attitude of 'I am in the military; therefore, I am superior,' is in fact
incorrect and horribly egotistical. Though, this is to be expected and
understood, coming from a member of the military -- this is what you are
trained to be. However, it does not change the fact that you are a human, I
am human, and this is a machine."
"Well, I--"
"And, finally, at this point in time I would like to inform you that I am
not going to provide you with any further support, nor am I going to provide
you with any service, because I am now calling into play my own moral code and
personal view on the United States Armed Forces. And, ma'am, I simply cannot
condone the vast majority of military actions taken in the past ten years or
so. In fact, it sickens me greatly to imagine the atrocities brought down
upon the citizens of the world, good or evil. I realize that you are not the
decision-making individual in these events that have come to pass, but one
must start somewhere."
There is a functional gray button on the phone Kerr uses to speak to all
those who call, and on this functional gray button is the word RELEASE printed
in slanted dark text. This is certainly a beneficial feature to have on the
phone -- hit once to disconnect the phone line when finished with a call, or
when tired of waiting on hold, or if one reaches a busy signal. RELEASE is
somewhat of the equivalent of hanging-up the phone.
Kerr removed his headset and hit RELEASE.
* * * * *
Kerr arrived 47 minutes early the next day, a fairly easy thing to do
since he doesn't usually start his shift until 2pm. On his keyboard sat a
yellow square, asking him to "See Me Immediately!" Who was he and what did he
see? Not everyone left mis-capitalized yellow notes on peoples' keyboards.
This was most certainly a managerial tactic, taught on the third day of the
Great Managerial Training Class, the same day they are taught to sacrifice
themselves for the Great Good of the company. The void left is stuffed full
of small yellow notes.
Kerr appeared in the one gap of his manager's cubiclized office, gripping
a pen in his hand. "Yes?"
"Kerr, come here, sit down." His manager was fixated on the piece of
paper sitting between them. Six minutes passed, eleven minutes passed.
"Kerr. Do you know what this says?"
Kerr glanced quickly at the sheet of paper. "No."
His manager now fixated on Kerr, grinding his jaw, red dragon pulsations
whipping through his back. "This paper... tells me what happened yesterday."
"What happened yesterday?" such an innocent schoolboy voice.
"You not only refused service to one of our largest customers, but you
hung-up on them. Did you do that? Did you refuse service AND hang-up on a
customer?"
"Well, I would not say that, exac--"
"Did you or did you not hang-up on the customer?"
"I would like a definition of hang-up."
"Well. It means to disconnect the phone line, I guess."
"Is there an alternate definition?"
His manager looked perplexed.
"Can the word 'hang-up' have more than one meaning?" Kerr offered.
His manager blinked a few times. "Why, yes. I guess so. Perhaps it can
be defined as having an emotional preoccupation. Or maybe even an unforeseen
obstacle."
Kerr sat a bit straighter. "An unforeseen obstacle? Such as a hitch, or
a snag?"
"Right. That is correct."
"And this paper here," Kerr pointed down at that paper there, "states I
hung-up on this customer?"
"Yes," his manager pointed down at that paper there, "that is what that
paper states."
Kerr lifted his hands. "This is accurate -- I did get hung-up on this
customer. The customer was an obstacle, a snag, a hitch, for various reasons,
and I was hung-up. But shortly afterwards I overcame this hang-up and
proceeded on. As for me having an emotional preoccupation with the customer,
well, I do not believe it is within the rights of this company to pry into
such realms."
"Kerr." His manager could only loosely look at Kerr, leaning back in his
chair, cocking his head from one side to the other. "I guess so. I can't
argue with that."
Kerr nodded a few times, grabbed the piece of paper between them, made
some long scrawling, covering scribbles with his pen, and placed it back down
on the table. His manager leaned forward and fixated once again on paper.
"My. Oh my!" His manager leaped up with paper in hand. "Yes, yes, go,
please do. Amor! Amor! Excuse me!" And out of the cubicle his manager ran,
waving this paper above his head, not waiting for the elevator doors to open,
heading straight for the stairs.
Kerr walked to the elevator, waited briefly for the doors to open, and
stepped in, on his way home.
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
State of unBeing is copyrighted (c) 1999 by Kilgore Trout and Apocalypse
Culture Publications. All rights are reserved to cover, format, editorials,
and all incidental material. All individual items are copyrighted (c) 1999
by the individual author, unless otherwise stated. This file may be
disseminated without restriction for nonprofit purposes so long as it is
preserved complete and unmodified. Quotes and ideas not already in the
public domain may be freely used so long as due recognition is provided.
State of unBeing is available at the following places:
World Wide Web http://www.apoculpro.org
irc the #unbeing channel on UnderNet
Submissions may also be sent to Kilgore Trout at <kilgore@eden.com>.
The SoB distribution list may also be joined by sending email to Kilgore
Trout.
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
