Hard scrabble

 

JAN: What should we do should we make it so the genders are a grab bag that one can assign oneself in any combination, or are we saying these were assigned divinely, not by choice, that it's the Body that came out wrong. Or not that at all. How shall we know. What can I ask that doesn't put me at a disadvantage. It's supposed to make me vulnerable. That's so I can understand. I who don't understand. The understanding stands in the soul of the haver of the identity. We know from years of being referred to as it/ that that it seems maybe to us petty demanding the gender after you are already distinguished clearly from other classes of ambulatory sentients like the grasshopper. 

PEG: It sounds like you've been thinking deeply. Why? 

JAN: ...

PEG: I was listening. I agree you're vulnerable, but not because of the new gender directives. They are only asking that you be sensitive and thoughtful. If you're already that, you'll have to do shiv all day. 

JAN: They're asking for more than that. To get a W.A.S.T.E. I have to say that I've earned nothing if everyone didn't have the opportunity. That obviously counts out all K blood because as enormous soaring reptiles there are gigs necessarily exclusive to us only. 

PEG: What's really lame is the whole premise that we're included now since we're not going to kill hunt or eat so what have we really gotten in return.

JAN & PEG TOGETHER: Friends' Service Hangers! 

JAN: I feel a lot fresher in general. I focus on the day to day. There's some good kibble and fruit snacks. 

PEG: Tell me in a thousand years. How content you are. They think we're vampires just because of our lifespan is long and theirs is short. Because you're a seroconversion, you're not all K, and you're new anyway. I don't want to bring you down. K's fly spread eagle. 

Peg and Jan have been lying back sunning their tummies with their elbow spikes holding them up with their dorsal flaps unfurled in the wind. It's an ancient river bed. Their spines have broken through the outer crust of sediment and leave canyons of shadow and dust behind when they each roll to the right pull up their left spike and slam it in again way up pointing toward the cliff face. It looks like they're about to ski, or fly, but instead they leap at the rock horizon with their toe claws and scoop the air behind them and scrabble craning their necks up the cliff to their hangout. The rock has been hollowed out and boulders pile up at the base, which is also where they drop the extra bones. 

JAN: Is it because you're a lesbian you try to discourage me? I have joy thinking of my husband and wish we will be together? You want me there under your dark cloak? 

PEG: Haha bitch shut the fuck up. 

PEG & JAN: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

JAN: They is some mens around here an my nose is open.

PEG: There is no mens. Just more gender question marks either being ported by pharmsupply or coming in wild like you through The Crack. Now go back and read the directive. This is your life now. Jan is far too small to have a meaningful relationship with you anymore. That's all in the past. He's tiny; you're big. Doing this is not about that. You have to represent the boundary-lands. 

JAN: No I get it it's not even about like I'm here with you or you with me or we're here together. It's more about this rock shelf and some snacks and the open air and the mist and what we mean and what we can do but don't do. 

PEG: But also what we did do history and what we do do because of our air skills and gravitational importance and in terms of fertilization to all the chank communities.  

PEG & JAN: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

per Phyllis (embedded)

Sports N' Sex Crimes Bugle

Tonight's dog walk

 

flashback three days it was a

half moon with a blade on the flat side

then came the self-imposed blur

an off angle of mismatched crescents

suggests a circle but

now it's joined up with other forces

also in their glory if for an evening

Toris, the horoscope lady in her fort

her tense prophecies about the weather

the lottery is now our widest belief tent

into the dark is where we went

passersby were spooked and silent 

we could only hear them in the grass

when they were already up upon us

pedaled fast because it's become dry

i produce a plastic bag from Pharmsupply

and pick up lala's shit

by Jan

Better psych care

At some level they all knew they were bad and that the only good would be to wipe each other out and to enjoy doing it. 

There was also thanks to the shiv an intense respect for the individual spirit in each putrid violent body, sprites who were challenged to but could not become angels and were unavoidably and irredeemably sucked into the gravity of their hollow pelves, long fingers, and tiny manus.

"List of lists, I've lost my license." Jan spoke with her mind only, but it was real language. 

Peg: "You funny."

"I mean I really los... oh, damn."

"Ya they make them so thin they can get lost in a clump of pycnofibes on your ass."

Both: "Hahahahahaha!"

Jan: You know, Peg: I could just swoop around with you forever. 

Peg: That's what this is, this moment.

Their wings were on slow beat two, three times. There were no peaked or valleyed panoramas, just some yellow mist and greenish floor which both stretched out and curved down as if over a globe through all the angles they could see out of. 

My dorsoventral flap is really chafed. 

I like the vet-mix salve down at Friends' Urgency Hangar. It's practically a spa. 

Ya, I need to get my W.A.S.T.E. stamped soon anyway. I'll get the lavender. I know which one you mean. 

The day they started giving out Waiver and Acceptance of Social Toxicity Estimates to K's was the day they say we got our freedom. 

Better psych care anyway. 

I say volca to that. 

K's fly spread eagle.

 

Trans. by Phyliss (embedded)

Hot Ukrainian Grave Diggers

1.

the skin on his outer back across the ribs is so white, while the back of the neck is shiny, shiny coffee.

2. 

the sexiest one with his ornery chest and beard hairs

lines of words on his forearm and the tats the

south-pacific islander/ celtic/ native american/ burning-man tribal symbol don't make sense

the saint's medal hung from the neck and jutting chin claim his earnestness

the snarl as if he stands just pre-coitus before you naked

the squared-off nose as if he had been born to shovel

high tight titties

the funeral chrysanthemums appear to be there for him not the dead

3. 

but then they all have these chains

the little one, with little black socks and trainers, his jeans cut off

his abs a blueprint or map in soilure and creases

if you hold him close, any point of his body or being could be within reach

if you are much bigger, he could have strong feelings about you

if you are the same size, he may not like you or you will be brothers

i love sitting in a barber chair, like a king on a pyramid

there's a special vestment and i feel like my appeal is concentrated

4.

our experience with sodomy has been overwhelmingly positive

though it's much more fun when it's illegal

and would be better if you could top each other at the same time

i think it's impossible but keep trying to figure it out logistically

he's not porn or a doll that you're humping but 

another human being working with you and against you wholistically

and if you're weaker than him that's hot and if you're stronger that's hot

you might try to guess what he's thinking but it doesn't matter

sodomy supersedes thought law reproductive excuses for fucking

fear of death wrath of god precedent history science cocksucking

for some it's got to be the logical choice when bombs are falling

by Jan

From DDT

[To Jan]

1. It's always interesting negotiating meaning with you. 

2. So you are saying that you have bpd?

3. I'd forgotten, maybe out of politeness, to ask you about it. Or a little out of not seeing a reason or a problem to solve. More information is better than less? 

4. Here's a sample of my ignorance on the topic: I really don't see how pd's in general are much different than symbols of the zodiak, numerological principles, or multiple-choice industrial-psych tests for HR departments. 

5. I once took a test that said I had all the disorders. What is my treatment? Maybe I should be locked up.

6. Some multipurpose drug. Of my choosing after months of chemical torture trying out different brands. Or none. What had brought all this on? 

7. Other drugs. Life. People go to shrinks when we have discomfort of mind and/or behavior. Or cops, but that's not us let's face it, not yet. Some of us come home stigmatized and traumatized by the pharmacological drug-testing spree and resulting stresses on normal life which was already fragile which is why we came in to talk about our problems. 

8. That's why I began the Institute for Talk-Therapy Apologists right down here in Chukka-Chank. Our Journal of the Institute for Talk Therapy Apologistics circulates into hundreds of libraries worldwide. We have a BS program that was first in the Lower Chanks to be approved for Common Mirror delivery while operating a motor hooptie. 

9. Another thing I like about us, even though as you say no one can ever know you, I have to grab at some likeness, like a toddler trying to distinguish myself from the wall even? --what I like about us is our tendency to make unsolicited comments. No? 

10. And for parsing out ideas/ sentences, sorting speech as one would if they were being critical in the everyday sense. 

11. The results of all that are, indeed I guess those of a personality. If you see yourself and seek to know yourself better using the template of X set of symptoms in order to better predict and watch out for unwanted tendencies, how might that process apply to my thinking about you going forward or our correspondence? I am ok knowing or not knowing the answer to that question.

12. This is all my grasping, and it's for you darling. 

To the volcano, 

Donna

PS: Oh please just indulge me: fun game. Find at least five signs of personality disorder in the text above. I can do it: 1) #1 could be taken as sarcasm/ irony though it was not meant to be so. 2) #5 Takes a stance like all politicians are corrupt, so I won't vote, you know? An abdication of responsibility disorder. Doesn't have to be all or nothing. But I've read that's a bpd thing. 3) #6 Was it really "torture"? Is that like it was devastating that their grandmother died? Self-pity disorder. Or it was really torture. 4) Same with #7: traumatized-- really? Experiences are relative to other experiences in an average schmuck's life. That's how being yelled at on a patio at a cocktail party or a pig roast can be "traumatizing." Folks show up to Shiv Days fully armed and ready to do damage for.. less? More? No reason-- that's the point. Some signs of the zodiac might be more driven toward heinous crimes. One would always hope it's passion somehow but no, much creepier. Like ignorance. Should they widen the scope of topics children encounter in public schools from an early age? Let's talk. 5) #9 & 10 cross a line into aggression-- there's little doubt now that some suppressed interpersonal issue is percolating. Life is short. Let's not let it boil. And these are not to mention the potential pathology of any number of the other statements made here, including the non-statements and especially this very exercise of picking through it all. What is that about. Ok and have to say, #7: Hopeless Circle disorder. DDT

Gritty, dark

There's a basement sure, but it's gutted. To the bricks, he says. 

Soon after we bought the property my wife and I were a little drunk and decided to check out the basement with candles. We saw the ghost of a youth and a phantom locker. 

And there was the shovel. The working end was raw wood but machine sanded, tapered to the hand. 

The youth is pulling up his pants, a joint hanging from his lips, when a very tiny journalist, a friend of the family on furlough, also a ghost, enters the scene. She says she was looking for the locker. All her stuff's in there. Instead of looking down at the locker, the boy's eyes dart up to the handle end of the shovel. He thinks it looks like someone dipped it in a lake. 

And being a journalist, the other ghost follows the boy's unexpected glance up to the tip of the long wooden handle of the shovel, widened slightly for about nine inches at the end, and makes her own conclusions. She then adjusts her concentration towards creating a privacy bubble with her tiny body (although she wore a large military jacket) around and over her army locker while she rustles through it, obviously planning to leave it there in the gutted basement permanently, making that entire gutted room into her own cheap urban pied-a-terre. 

We didn't know what to say. To the ghosts. Could they see us? To each other. It wasn't threatening, but we'd never seen anything like it. 

Jan, I think that was when we started healing. You know?

You're right, it wasn't traumatizing or re-traumatizing at all. More of an affirmation. A cartoon!

To me though it was also disturbing, sad. 

I don't know. It depends on what mood I'm in. It can make me hot sometimes. 

Nope, we've never had sex down there but we know that we could. 

Witness statement (frag.)

Mr./Mrs. Jan Jansdaad

there's no we here

i includes all that i am including

aspects you surely cannot think of

when you look up my output or feed

cork, at the ports of local cacophony,

appears to take up words when i 

try and

speak

words

you, for me, includes all that you 

are excluding prospects for knowing

you better which may preclude our

ever getting together the way we 

should i mean assuming what's hidden is

way

more 

good

 

those who are not we are they, grammatically,

and it's cozy being exclusive that way

unless it, to you, means claustrophobia

and they equals the only ones who can free ya

i the parasitic twin enjoying too much of us

you and them, they

and me, I and 

you, not we

[loop]

Jan Jansdaad

Bothsidesism

to the poor or persons in the past i suppose 

i live the luxury of a most debauched king

while to my peers i seem a pitiable thing

 

the afflicted find fault in my astonishing 

complaints; the threadbare really seem 

to care about the level of my waste

prejudice, from the right and from the

left, from every gender camp and 

disinformation factory, theme, caste

 

 

by Jan Jansdaad 

(Jan's dad)

Paroxysms of sincerity

Jan Jansdaad is driving along and thinking what if I lost this hooptie. What if anything happened to it at all. We'd be on our way to the next lower rung of economic class hell... 

Wait a minute. I'm back. All the while La Chama must have been leading me towards a hole to The Crack. She knew I'd have to return, at least for a moment, just to see. I see I've been to pharmsupply-- I've got a live bag of hopinaskippina. I'm headed home, for whomever I find there. But what about my daughter-- will she take my place? I just wish we could be all together and safe with descent health insurance. 

Then there is a prick near the dew claw. Lloyd? You're drawing my blood. 

Not at all, Mrs. Jansdaad. I'm just cuddling here next to you while you nap. 

Jan? 

I know, Mom. He's from pharmsupply just like daddy said. 

Now wait just a minute, ladies. 

You're only here to steal our genes and spy.

Oh I'd say it's been quite a lot more than that. I can take you back. Get you reformatted. You'll be an in-between type, like La Chama. Small enough to fit in human structures. Strong enough to

To power one of your slave K's with my brain, as your slave. 

It's not like that anymore. We're finding new ways to

To use our natural bodily processes for the greater appetite. Our suffering is inconsequential. 

Ok, you know what, you guys? I am getting really sick and tired of walking around with a completely open heart to each of you as persons, and you know I kind of feel like that Begging Rajah, with so much, so much to give, and... no hands. You just scheme to cover up or push your strong identities. What about my purpose? Who am I?

Both Mrs. Jansdaad and Lloyd avert their eyes and tighten their lips. One concept they can agree on is the adorability of Jan and her paroxysms of sincerity.

Sixty times I circled

sixty times i circled

casualties mounting

watched from every angle

my sisters' teeth were flashing

in blood and spittle

history was attacking

virgins stood on balconies

sharing the dread

of my own abilities

by Jan

This is to document, for you, the life you're missing from

and then there's the guy across the street

between me to the east and Jan on the corner there

like he's ushering his bitches through a man canyon

he turns all purple round about sunset

the nice wife and their scary female pit

are never permitted to get a word in

by Jan

"Until you come back, alls I can do is keep track."

The Crack is home to a billion holes

They say The Crack is home to a billion holes. Pilgrims, daredevils, and lost hikers alike will never be able to predict when and where they will come out. 

The Community College of Cement's entire Chang K. Chang Chank campus is dark except for a few pools of security lighting-- and the strong yellow bug lamp which illuminates the Crack Door Event area. Jan's mom Jan Jansdaad's steaming underwing fat flap is all that's keeping Jan and Lloyd from falling hundreds of feet into the parking lot below. 

Jan lands as close as she can to the bug light, which is there for the air conditioning unit attached to the bookstore next to temporary mobile classrooms B-D. Most campus employees, students and visitors walk around the air conditioning unit instead of trying to duck under it, which could cause them to end up in sudden Crack-related peristaltic shock (SCRPS), and besides now being invisible, their associates quickly begin to forget they ever existed. In this respect, SCRPS can affect an entire community from one instance only.

Lloyd is trying to keep up with Jan and her mom. As the odd group rushes across the moonlit baseball fields, plumes of white chalk dust spray from below Mrs. Jansdaad's three-clawed feet. And then they have crossed a short span of black top, and then they have reached The Crack. 

They might sound a little like disco when they're running, but when they stop there's nothing but funk, says Lloyd.

Lloyd and lady

Feeling tired, Lloyd lays his head down in a gaggle of bras and closes his eyes. 

Lloyd: Now I could be anywhere, in bed. I wish I could wake up. I can't look anymore. God it's a gorgeous view, but far too terrifying. Some perspectives are meant to be set aside only for those who choose them. I could understand if I were a mouse, but come on it's a different level of consciousness. 

Lloyd's mother, Lady Brentridge de Modena Chank, appears in an impressive burst of optics.  

Lady Brentridge: Son why did you take my name. 

Lloyd: Because you have a title, and dad was a... where are you?

Lady Brentridge: I've been waiting all this time for you to reach a certain altitude else I cannot get through the Filter of Loathing. 

Lloyd: So the dead can... Mother?

Lady Brentridge: Yes, love.

Lloyd: Can you save me?

Lady Brentridge: No, darling. 

Lloyd: I

Lady Brentridge: Don't speak. You've got to act fast. As soon as you wake up from this nap, fashion a weapon from the wood in the nest. Look for maybe some scrap metal for a blade. You'll have the element of surprise when she gets back. Good luck, my little lord. 

Oh, and uh, by the way I just wanted you to know that while my intention always was to guide and protect, and to do that with my heart full of love, at the same time, however, I was paying so much attention to my role that, well, I recognize that during some moments I neglected to respond to the nitty-gritty contents of your life in a lucid or humane manner. 

Now when you're ready, go for the eyes first.

All up in the nest

Lloyd is violently shaken awake in time to see the cause of the shaking: the taloned feet, the size of small automobiles, having pushed free from the nest, pointing backward and curling majestically. The feet have  all but disappeared into the distant hazy clouds above the cliff when a tiny K shape comes into focus, soaring purposefully through the mists.

Lloyd: God, no. 

Mrs. Jansdaad has done a brilliant job with her first construction. She has carefully chose the trunks and major branches of young smooth-barked laurel trees, still pale yellow and gummy to the core. There must have been an entire grove of them nearby to create a structure with roughly the same footage, yet more depth, than a large built-in backyard pool. As for the downy padding, she has obviously raided a child's  party and emptied the colorful contents of a plastic ball pit into the bottom layer. On top of that were perhaps the contents of several Mthyuh Preservation Society clothing drive dumpsters. Then packing peanuts, shredded bamboo fencing. 

Law Offices

Door trimmed with a rose trellis. Brass plaque on door: LAW OFFICES

Lloyd Brentridge, Esquire, was always dressed in at least one part of a suit and often had the shirt open to a dark, furry chaos.

Lloyd doesn't actually work for Pharmsupply, and Mr. Jansdaad has already gathered that it is all bullshit when he nevertheless shows up at Law Offices as promised, trembling. 

Mr. Jansdaad: Jan! 

Jan Jansdaad: Daddy!

After a silent moment, Jan explains that she's working for Lloyd now as the receptionist. Also a fact that her dad has already gathered. It is the way she said it that is chilling and familiar. As if under a spell, and not in a good way.

Jan: He will see you now.

Jan's Dad: Thank you honey.

Open the deeper, inner door. Where Lord and Lloyd will either blend or clash.  

Lloyd: Shut the door behind you. 

Jan: I've brought in the records you requested. 

Lloyd: You see your daughter is now under my auspices. 

Jan: Yes.

Lloyd: You probably know I'm not Pharmsupply, that it's all bullshit.

Jan: Yes.

Lloyd: Yet you came anyway. You haven't even taken a seat because I haven't offered you one.

Jan: I

Lloyd: Don't speak. Your wife is turning into a K, isn't she? You don't have to say a word. She missed the second shingles vaccine and she seroconverted. She has to have had a disposition, and I think you know some history on that. Mrs. Jan Jansdaad is not just any old Jan Jansdaad. She had a history before she met you and she has one now. And that history has been as repressed as it is mysteriously irrepressible, like ecriture feminine. A code only a genetic member could translate or inscribe. 

Lloyd starts abruptly, as if he has just heard a hilarious noise behind him.

Lloyd: What is that. What is that Jan. Do you 

Jan: It's disco. 

Lloyd: Don't you think I know what it is? Why? Why, Jan?

The thumping and whirring become louder: Mrs. Jansdaad's now gigantic foot pads and breath become louder: the dreaded disco-like sound of a K on the ground. 

The glass in the window crashes impressively, but all Mrs. Jansdaad can fit through it is the very tips of her beak bones, which she can barely get open wide enough. But she is hungry. 

Because Lloyd Brentridge has his fingers in his ears, Jan's tongue is able to restrain his arms and squeeze around his neck at the same time. 

Mr. Jansdaad [arms outstretched]: Oh, Lord!

Jan and her dad Jan Jansdaad then stand very still as they watch their mother and wife suck Lloyd, their sadistic lover and bully crush, by the neck through the window and then high up into the air in a single, otherworldly burst of power. Father and daughter alone began to look around them there in the breezy office, medical records still floating leaf like to the floor.

Back at Jan's

Jan: You didn't even ask if you could come in. 

Lloyd: We just ate with your parents. I don't have to ask you anymore.

Jan [letting go of his tie]: Lloyd you know I feel very strongly for you but sometimes you scare me a little. 

Lloyd is feeling tired and sits on the sofa. Jan comes back with two beers and joins him.

Jan: I think it hits me in a primeval place when you try and order me around or raise your voice to my dad, but it might be just genes or hormones and not good decisionmaking. 

Lloyd [to the ceiling, as he rests his neck]: What if you didn't have to make any decisions. 

Jan [in a fetal position next to him without touching]: I don't think I would like it at all. [She scoots over and rests her head in Lloyd Brentridge's lap.] But then, that's your choice, isn't it?

 

Daughter of La Chama

Jan arrives home with scales covering 98% of her body, unable to even get the key out of her purse much less use it in the lock. Her fingers were claws.

We should never have mingled with their species. 

She kicks the door by way of knocking, gouging it with her toe claws. For Jan, as he opens the door, the sight of his wife at first presents as deja vous. Then horror, then caring. 

Oh baby look at you please come in... [looks at door] What...?

I should have paid cash for Hopinaskipina. It's not as painful as they say. 

God you look like the Daughter of La Chama. Let me hide my shiny coins!

Heh that's cute Jan. How am I going to make dinner. 

You're so old fashioned. Let me do it for once. 

[Jan sighs and shakes her head, which causes the sounds of knuckles popping.]

The hell

tonight a crust forms around me, a

fluttering, gummy placenta

the muscles are locked from 

pleasure.

last night i was trying to drive a

car on a building ledge

i was steering pretty well

until.

they say never go to sleep afraid

or stay awake either

the body will win you over

the hell. 

by Jan

Lord Bentbridge

Why, Lord Bentbridge? Why have you come at such a late hour. Come now sir, come right in. You're getting wet. 

Lord Bentbridge, with a tip of his hat and apologetic smile, steps across the threshold, adding in so doing a beleaguered flourish of his half-cape. Jansdaad my friend. My presence here is as puzzling to me as it is to you.

I hope it's bad I mean I hope it's not bad news. 

Fear not, only my wife out late again, and I thought why not pop over to Jan's place for some of that excellent sherry, which I suspect he might be enjoying already on his own!

Come Lord, lean on the mantle with me and raise a glass. [They walk over to the mantle, where there are glasses and sherry.]

I say puzzling because

Yes, why do you say puzzling?

Well, let's not be dour. Cheers to you!

Cheers!

Suddenly, the door opens. 

Jan? I'm home with... who's here?

Nobody.

Well you've got your arm up on that mantle like an orator, as if you're entertaining.

Ha! 

[Putting away groceries, yelling from the kitchen.] Say have you heard from Jan?

Jan our daughter?

Who else? Your father is dead darling.

You know how many Jans it could be. 

Well have you heard from her? Pharmsupply won't pay out for shingles.

You mean Hopinaskipina? That's the most annoying commercial. 

She's been hanging around with that sadistic lawyer. You should call. 

Do you mean Lloyd? Lloyd Bentley. 

Yes, he's an esquire.

No second shingles shot

Jan liked watching a little tv in the afternoon, or rather she didn't like it, but she was hypnotized by it when her husband Jan had it on, which was most of the time, because it soothed his nerves. She kept it on mute when he wasn't in the room, but then he'd start to notice there was something off, and he'd come back and take the mute off, and that would inevitably be when they were having commercials. The commercials were even more transfixing because of their special audio qualities, which had been outlawed for a while, and then they just seemed to creep back in. The volume and frequency alterations were probably still illegal, but someone was lying about it. Then it would take years of legislation or court processes to get them to stop doing it again even though it never stopped being illegal, and it never stopped being wrong. Only lying had stopped being wrong. The acceptance of and mass participation in lying and religion was the most brilliant social phenomenon of the moment. 

Jan would be out in the hooptie to pick up a prescription, and she'd try to read or imagine the faces of the other drivers. The ones in the nicer cars seemed to be gloating. They'd have a wry smile. The guys in the elevated trucks and campers were smiling too, but it was a mean smile. Minorities in crappy cars often seemed pissed off or trying really hard, squinting, to get around. They would be getting tailgated by a guy in a jacked-up 450 with a mean smile. Jan imagined how she looked to other drivers. I look like a freak. I look like a birth defective person with a caved-in head and a flabby, skinny white neck who is trying to cover it all up with a big fluffy beret, a cowl sweater, and giant over-the-glasses sunglasses. I give them all a target to look down on, except the minorities, who don't seem to be paying attention. 

The pharmpro is grotesquely obese. His eyes are enormous behind thick glasses. Do you know if Pharmsupply covers the Hopinaskipina vaccine. Let him check. Not. Ok. Rather, it isn't okay, but is it this poor man's fault? Wouldn't shingles itself be much more costly? Not if you die. Right. Shit I am speaking aloud. It's just a thought experiment, doctor, says Jan. I mean pharmpro. I know you don't run the health system. Jan remembers back to her days with the pharmpro boyfriend. I know what they do to get shiv for themselves and how they cover it up. This man has a generous smile. What does he make, 120? 150k? I want what he's having. Jan gives the pharmacist a little wink. That behavior and lots else is why, in her personal opinion, she can only be regarded as total freak material. 

The riots at the Mthyuh Preservation Society were on the radio. I should have been there. Had I known, were I more well connected. Of course I know we can't live without the Filter of Loathing. But it's all we have to unfocus on. It's a symbol of our systemic bastardization from society, whatever that is now. They could use a few good old fashioned fleke oaths to start getting their stewardship straight. But most are bought off by Pharmsupply blah blah. It would be fun just to get out. Next time the filter is down I will try and get in with radicals. Maybe even Jan would come along. Who am I kidding. How would I make him stonecakes in the hooptie. They are his life. Baby we've got to get to Highchank and stand up for the original shiv. They have stonecakes. Might work. 

Then the chant, with another not infrequent para-informational MPS interruption came on. The chant is accompanied by a distillation of all the free world's favorite music remastered to praise La Chama. Apply brake now. Stop in the moment. All future days are at the state's discretion. I am entitled to the following poisons and schedules. It was annoying how they read the schedules like circus barkers, in thrilling growls and whispers.