W.A.S.T.E.

Kug was busy trying to beat himself into a slumber chemically. He had full pharmashiv, so he was well stocked. What he really wanted was to just talk to someone, but he'd have to sign a Waiver and Acceptance of Social Toxicity Estimate to get the vouchers, and it just wasn't worth it. But when would they all be able to relax. There was always something coming at them. The funny stuff, then some spooked attention, and then the dereliction.

Three beautiful dogs lounged all around him. One was fluffy and soft, with a crazy look in her eyes and a very high pain threshold. Another was gingery, spotted, danced for chicken. Finally, Juniper was just naughty. Half of one eye was blue, the other a quicksand of sentiment. La La's toe had been taken by a gopher, yet she hadn't flinched. M'Lady's passion was birding, and they sometimes called her Dog Bird or Pickles.

He hid his watch in a drawer when he realized the ticking had been driving him mad. He stared at the glass of water serving its second night on his bedstone. Dust, including a hair, lolled on the surface tension. "My own story twists like a question mark on the skin of my tomorrow," murmured Ted. "I cannot rest while I want so badly to act, to pierce that membrane. I want to tell the story so that I do not end up in prison," he wrote in the themebook next to his water glass. There'd be plenty of time the next day, though, to tell the story. He'd have a cement mine to tell it to. All day long.

daily bag [the Mp3]

daily bag

studdening

JUNK-A-LISHUS!

Is the changing of hats legal as evasion?

Emotional cosmetics is
what you would call
keeping a good
variety of
feelings in your daily bag.

If the charging party
cannot prove
which one you were wearing
and when, vindicate you.

For an insuring corpus
would be absent,
and when corpus is absent,
no fault is found, stud.

It is clear how the walls
could come crumbling down
and nothing could be done
because there wasn't even
a name for what you had.

Everyone just took
off their hats and bowed,
waited for you to
float away
like Lady of the Lake.

It's a method actor's
face exercise
that starts from within.
The focus is on
emotion.

The faces it creates
are not the exag-
erated masks of mime,
but rather a knot in a
jaw or a drooping eye.

It creates the shadows,
imprints of emotion
projected through the
lens of the
mind.

20. Time is a Liar

leper king

Peggy thought about how people from other places often seemed deformed. But then at other times she herself seemed more deformed. At times like now, she decided, it was her immediate society, which included her, that seemed deformed.

It was not only the rashes and funny growths. Everyone's reaction to the invasion or whatever it was had become way more disfiguring than the sum of the symptoms. Moms used to tell kids that if you frowned or looked cross-eyed too much, you would become stuck that way. Turns out faces actually do get stuck in the twisted palsies of fear, disbelief, and self-recrimination.

Emotional cosmetics is what you would call keeping a good variety of feelings in your daily bag. It's a method actor's face exercise that starts from within. The focus is on emotion. The faces it creates are not the exagerated masks of mime, but rather a knot in a jaw or a drooping eye. It creates the shadows, imprints of emotion projected through the lens of the mind.

She'd been assisting Dr. Donna Thong in her lab of late. There was a walk in, a local high school teacher. He'd asked to be put down.

"But why...? Ted, isn't it?"
"Because you are my doctor and that's what will cure me."
"Oh Teddie. Where did you come from? Don't you have a home tonight?"
"I'm no good for anyone. It's no good my being here. I want to take responsibilty for this."
"I can give you something to help calm you down. What's your pharmashiv?"
"I got ProLabique ProLab. 5k deductible."
Dr. Thong was opening his shirt, and some disco music was rising. His face became more and more distraught as he watched her undo the buttons. He was in no physical pain, but for what it hurt his eyes to see.
"Oh. Oh Teddie. Is that real?"
The disco music pounded hard and Ted A. Azir wept and soaked his wide cheeks, his ears, and the hard, blue-green scales growing beautifully across his gym-bought abs. The anomaly pulsed irridescently, armor like with his sobbing contractions.

B-an/ Kor-ible #1 [New Queen Version]

There is neither
Jew nor Geek,
slave for fee,
male nor she,
for inside
Christ's warm
ass, we are
one with Him.

Gayrelations 3:28
NQV

Crystal Rimprint

Rare rainclouds made even rarer moves now above. A donut cloud, but with a center a hundred miles wide, crowned the valley. It was grey, the center was brightest blue sky, and the wind howled. Shiv Sack Day-- but that was everywhere.

Ted and Mike say what the fuck and hold hands all the way to the model homes district. They let the gale half sail them past the BurmaShave-style signs on the long, barren connector road to the construction sites. 100% Financing. Community Parks. Zoned No Sex Offender. Optional Items Now Included. Planned Activities.

The models are garage-first, neo-classic rectangles, breadboxes full of soaring heights. All interior doors have been removed to give more airiness. They are little movie sets, interrupted lives of hypothetical citizens, full of books bought quaintly second hand, but deliberately placed. Below the coat rack at the front door: Supreme Court Proceedings. You are living the lifestyle of lawyerness. On the overstuffed couch in the kitchen wing: The Carbohydrate Addict's Cookbook. Glass decanters of raw macaroni line the counter tops.

In model #2, Asian mother and daughter prospective buyers stand chatting in the 200-sq.-ft. kitchen. Mother appears to be slipping some of the props into her shoulder bag. Wooden spoons. Every model also has a counter top cookie oven to create a cookie smell which is said to have psychological power over buyers. One thinks one must be on camera.

They've sacrificed back yard space for the community security parks. They want everyone out where everyone can keep an eye on everyone. Bathroom fans are running.

The back sliding glass door of model #3 has been smashed into thousands of safety glass chunks and replaced, but not cleaned up. The broken pieces are on the outside. One of the his/ her walk-in closet doors in model #1 has been forcefully ripped from its tracks. The rubber rollers had begun to burn against the metal and left streaks before being replaced. There is an iron fence disallowing exit directly to the street.

Passers through in these model homes, especially for Shiv Bowl, feel as if they are left to their own fantasies, with no sales personnel present to face scan you. They do that efficiently enough before and after. Guy, a sales VP and owner, scans Ted carefully for honesty before refusing to show the place. He needs to be home for Bowl and the Shiv Sack. It's only once a year, and he likes to participate in Payment of Blood.

Strolling over to the other models, Ted and Mike can tell the donut cloud has gone nowhere, and the wind is just the same. The model home promotional flags are getting their ultimate test and looking like faded historical salvage already. This is some kind of land hurricane but where the center is fast and big, and the edge is thin with a bright lining, a crystal rim print right above them.

donut cloud

It had been especially difficult for Peggy to quit smoking because she thought of herself as an artist, and most artists have a smell of their media about them. Spandex and rubber, propane, clay, absinthe. Even laptop writers sometimes smelled dusty and grimy, from books. Computer graphic artists, to the contrary, just smelled like their own bodies, tasted like their own mouths. Or sometimes new carpet or airplane food or baby food. Peggy felt exposed without a cover, or at least a veil, and took to burning incense with her Pro-Labique Nico-Chews.

The question wasn't being a mother or not; it was how responsible would she be, really. She thought those girls were great. But taking a step back, would they be better without her?

This was either a sick train of thought or a healthy train of thought, but it was a familiar train of thought.

Their Military Recruitment Hymns Lie

Their military recruitment hymns lie;
but they have a voice that's so soothing.
It would be obscene to dance to one of them,
so what accounts for the desire to soar and
fly?

Dog Med [the Mp3]

This post has been erased by the Muthyuh Preservation Society.

Dog Med

Dodi get is cheezie sometime
fo bed, sometime with is supper.
Dodi lick is wrist knuckles
fo sleepie, joyin da crib ah
definid f'heeum.

Dodi gotta condition an it
ain't not gettin inny bedder
but neethuh izit gettin whurs
cuz ah hide sm dog mayud
in he cheezie.

Shirley v. Dodi al Fayed

Here's how Shirley get Dodi out his privilege rug and pillow for illin pets:
She come up with a bone, drop it right there nex his head,
start growling like he gonna take it;
he's lying there like what?
she get so scary he get up and leave.
she lie down on da pillow saying I'm da top bitch now.
Po Dodi sleep on da wood flo.
He got a condition and he her elder. It his dogbed.

19. Time is a Liar

"It's like you climb in bed one night, and you wake up, open your eyelids, and then you get up, and then another set of eyelids pop."
"Pop?"
"Just about everybody reports the same feelings, uses the same metaphors, including calling it a pop."
"That's a new one."
"What they report is that their universe starts to feel like a big, largely empty high school gymnasium."
"I know. With merry-go-rounds."
"And gravity and everything else like before except the..."
"Time seems stupid to you."
"That's right, Sylvia."

* * *

"Do you feel heartattacky right now?"
"Oh please."
"I'm serious. Last time you tried this... and you weren't even bloody. What happened to you?'
Tom was solemnly opening the package.
Sylvia's vocal intensity was diminishing. "It's just you know how I feel about... I don't understand why it hasn't happened to me, so I'm naturally..."
Then the two of them sat quite still at the round kitchen table in Sylvia's dining room.
They peaked over the edges of the wrapper as kids before a glowing cake.

17. Time is a Liar

"That's good-- only a couple of hours past p-a-t promised arrival time. What's the FedEx?" quizzed Sylvia.
"Hiya. It's Cheap n' Simple. They do mail now," was Tom's answer.
Sylvia stood back to see what Tom would do, where he would go, once across the threshold. He seemed to be wondering as well. He carried his package as some would an excremental urgency; it was what clearly mattered to him at that moment. Sylvia wondered if possibly a digit or other flesh fragment had been sheared off during an accident and he had it on dry ice or...
"Sylvia, come and sit down with me here at your table. Come. Please don't argue."
Sylvia felt odd walking toward him. Did he just order her? It was a physical weirdness. In her legs.
"Remember suit guy at our closing night Herpes for Christmas? Adam's apple. You said his eyes were dead, like Huckabee."
Sylvia thought about that man. She had felt a strong, silly urge to ask him to hold her. Just hold her. But why... "But why..." Sylvia began, sitting down on the high-back stone across from Tom.
"Listen. They sent me this pharmashiv. It's supposed to be someone in the community. I'm just a distributor."
"They..."
"I'm a rep now. First one. They know what I know. I don't want to say I told you so, but even they think it might be evolution, plain and simple."
"And that you are the latest model! Oh, Tom. You are so full of shit! These people will tell you anything, and now you think I'll buy the same fucking bullcrap."
"I told you all along there wasn't anybody. I kept clean and you abreast of all my love needs. All the way up until the day it happened to me."
Sylvia cocked her head in sarcastic interest.

16. Time is a Liar

"...yes, anyway, I'm of the school that says the female orgasm does indeed have a locus, yes, centrally... but.. but just listen. 'Tired of breaking ziplocks and the fancy-schmancy stretchy stuff? Just open, fill, and twist! Cheap n' Simples don't even need a wire tie.'"
Sylvia kept smiling up at the box, which she was holding to the light over the kitchen sink. Finally, as if responding to a dead silence, she added, "So, I just saved a bunch of money on these bags. And I'm delighted. Yes. I'm fine. OK then. Sure. No doubt I'll be here. Bye-bye."
Then she burst to life and was glancing at the dusted-over vcr clock on her way through a brightly lit livingroom. She wasn't sure how long she'd been standing there letting the meat fibers loosen when the doorgong rang. It was Tom.

15. Time is a Liar

I'm walking around in a fairy land, thought Sylvia.
She finished her promenade through the kitchen at counter's edge. She and some new yorks were marinating in Chateau St. Jean cabernet.
"It's a beautiful wine," she murmured, having memorized the back label.
"Not accepting pharmashiv is like just being your cranky self, except that everything is more surprising. And you feel that there is no choice but surrender to certain adversities. Certain thoughts simply must be blocked." She was speaking to an old friend on the phone now.
"Last night, I was suicidal. This evening, with dinner ready to go, I'm just floating, like flotsam. The disaster has occurred, and there's nothing left but calm, seagulls. But life has shortened. Just that much. And however much I added to my free radicals, you know, from the stress."
Her interlocutor, unknown, must have spoken for some time then, giving Sylvia a chance to sip some more and press the bottom of her glass like a stamp against the steaks in the Cheap n' Simples.
"How did you know? They're cheap... and they're simple!" Sylvia mouthed, reading the box of plastic bags.
"OK, okay..." she seemed to be getting hooked back into the conversation now. "Dephallocentralization, sure, but Cixous wanted to castrate men-- it's not just implied. Sure; escriture feminine is a penknife. But wait. Listen to this. Are you ready for me to blow your mind?" Sylvia leaned into one hip and pulled out a baggie.

Wasn't it...?

i can hardly
apply my lipstick
for emotions
running free

i see visions
of our union
and the sad
state of society

i feel guilty
when i think of
all the times i
pressed my personality

i get sick of
these ruminations
when i could be thinking of you
it's all about me.

I can hardly
put on my makeup
'cus the gal that's in the mirror
is not the guy i should be nearer
and no matter how i preen
i find he's nowhere to be seen
I can hardly
remember his name.

scratched on cave wall (translation)

when i lost my babies
my society started in
on watching me for signs
of depression and mania

apparently i got so down
that i sang in tongues
and laughed at my tragedy
pulling out my hair and an eye.

now they make me lick
pharmashiv from a low
stone and run ceremonial
volca shiv. i can't vote.

Fire Shore

Fire Shore (the Mp3)