I Don't Feel Like a Woman

emotions

i'm cryin'

but it don't make me feel like a woman

i'm feelin'

the blockin'

without any need to come out as a queen

i'm frightened

i'm hidin'

but mostly to keep all of you safe from me

you're kind and

you're patient

so happy to have all of you on my team

i'm laughin'

not dyin'

so why does it seem like i've crossed a line

i'm tired

i'm thinkin'

i needed to stop and just take some time

to slow down

and hang on

while doctors drain my testosterone

Event Opener

"I Don't Feel Like a Woman"

Sung by: Harley Hannie-Kaufi

Lyrics courtesy of: CANCER BEATDOWN
Phyllis [trans.]

Surgical patio

Are you ready to enter the chamber? 

...

Missy? 

[Are you insane? How would i in any way be ready for that? Braino knows better than to move toward the chamber. A rodent would have to stop and think twice before continuing on into the chamber for cheese. How about you first?]

Missy?

I can't shake this strong feeling that i will come out a different person: not better, but uncomfortably new. 

Well, i can't, you know, you should ask

I also have a premonition-level expectation that my life and its contents up to this point will have disappeared, and all I'll be able to do will be to just keep moving forward as a new, strange person.

Oh here comes Dr. Thong. Just in time. 

Dr. Donna Thong struggles for a moment with the sliding glass and sliding screen doors, but soon steps out calmly, audibly exhaling, onto the surgical patio. 

Hello Missy. Hope you're not chilly. Are we ready to enter the chamber? 

Uh we meaning you and Nurse Mike? 

Haha! Good one. I'm glad you are retaining your sense of humor dear. Now if you'd just like to

Nurse Mike steps up to the plate in a manly fashion.

I'm not sure she would like just at the moment doctor. I'm sure that you'd agree that if the same patient were a Jan, there would be a psychiatric support panel out here with us instead of a swimming pool. 

Ok. I see. Missy, you know we think of people like you people of your heritage as great warriors. You are fierce. Think about it. Your babies are born looking so fierce you know one day soon they will be able to kick your ass or at least appear to have that power. Our babies are born looking so wholesome and worthy that it's annoying to everyone who is not immediately related by blood. 

Nurse Mike once again does his best to advocate for the patient. 

Of course all babies are beautiful, but let's not even get into that fraught debate!

Indeed, Nurse Mike. But we may all be able to agree that babies do not have a conscience. Their patterns in an adult would be called sociopathic. And this brings me to my point. We must identify all and any of the babies who are somehow endowed with adult bodies, especially if they are in a position of significant responsibility. 

Mike and Missy look at one another silently, and Dr. Thong realizes that she has fatally digressed. 

Missy. I'm just trying to say that i'm so sorry that our societal biases have caused you to suffer much more trauma than necessary over the procedure. The chamber is not a place of hostility. 

...

And because i do respect you as a legal person, i'm going to lay it out for you here, now, with complete honesty. 

Thank you Dr. Thong. I appreciate that. 

Because it's certainly not nearly as dreadful as you may have imagined. First of all, after you enter the chamber, have engaged with the treatment, and satisfied the chamber as to your readiness, you will exit the chamber. 

Uh-huh, ok

At that time, you will come out like a different person: not really better—more like uncomfortably new. 

...

Also, your life, its contents up to this point, will have disappeared. Pretty much all you'll be able to do will be to just keep moving forward as that new, strange person.

What... did you? AHHH Dr. Thong you are effing with me you bitch! You heard me talking to Nurse Mike! AHHH

I know! How could I do that? I'm so sorry darling, I couldn't resist. Of course none of that it true. You're such a worry wart! Now spit out your gum, hand over any jewelry or other metal items, drop your gown, and skedaddle right on in there for me now. That's right. See you soon! 

 

tatters

The Jansdaad economy appears to be in tatters today as Jans from Flatchank to Janstanopol are taking yet another "Day of Growth and Reflection" after being released from most remote muscular decisioning (RMD) control points and friday funday brain nurturing processes after the crash of K5000 has been maybe 2 moons.

Spokesmen for the Jans do not disagree that their own employers including leaders of all city-level governmental functions are now discredited and impotent. However, Jan enslavement by MPS did mean sustenance in the form of the vital services the Jans themselves were working to provide. After lifetimes of having their choices made for them, Jans may not realize that they are effectively on strike against each other.

"Why would they want to mess up an entitled situation like that?" asked Jodi Al Arn-Yirshert, an observer for the fleke security service. "Sure, they were deciding some of your muscle choices for you, but your brain is not really a distraction as long as you do the chants. All your needs are provided for. What's the beef?"

Compassionate sanitation, water and meals on oxcarts are being provided to all Jan hives temporarily by MPS and CANCER BEATDOWN. 

by Phyliss [embedded]
Sports N' Sex Crimes Bugle

mile-long train in the window

what happens here and what it sounds like are stretched the way a map seems wider in the middle

it's set up for the long haul and even though we try to keep in line with modernity 

the songs are long and the moon is slow and folks give in to the momentum of the generations

you might sit at a bar and yawn or call it movie night when you're just dozing off with a bulb on

but if you're listening you can tell the distance between rough times and fire flies and the lightning

the train you see is a perpetual machine that trips light like a star can hide behind a table fan

we've still got love and hating in the forever or in the reflection but the track is laid for speed

don't need a bottle but i've a corn pipe and the smoke curls through the window in its own time

a long train on its own steam can make the light trip so that it may seem like a perpetual machine

Fyaskmi S. Booshia

Municipal flood plain

Even its tilted geometry resists our civilized template

The surfaces of the municipal flood plain are not 

flat but neither are they random as are the low

roiling local humps framing the town never

upending a tractor often disappearing in the tassels

These are rivules puffed with generational sod

a space involved deeply on one end by a circle 

of ancient oaks and their contortions buried

water lungs flamelike arms culling the suns 

claiming two of four directions at this point their 

Greatest pleasure derives from the release of their

heaviest cares giant rotted gnarls or lightning 

spiked organic god spears that can scold bobbing

in the soil but not enough to fill bely upstage

Mthyuh's purpose and dominance here

This is the message of the municipal flood

plain and it can be apparent to any pilgrim 

merchant worker present here tonight:

"We can hold this much, this far."

Look, now, to her horizons

A true flood would lap at our 

waists but this emptiness is a 

well of safety as well as for 

vainer beasts a lost sum of 

acreage for feral ones a 

Habitat mating arena 

range map and 

for all a space to look or 

swoop upward and see or 

join the grander patterns of the clouds. 

La Pegyuh-uh

"Rain for Mthyuh's Parched Uvular Cavity"
Swirling Pond Heavy Sewer Grate Dedication

Villages Tour

Flatchank

Days of Destruction

Phyllis [Trans.]

CANCER BEATDOWN

To be la LaChama is to live every moment with a reminder that a i am not able to meet the expectations for my station and b i am vulnerable to accusations of fraud

Now that i have been called upon to participate in a public event, the CANCER BEATDOWN, to bring words that can provide understanding knowledge catharsis enlightenment empathy and of course healing is another one of those tall moments from whose shadow i can barely poke out my toe

But if i am empty my people are empty and my people cannot be empty even while i am a match that cannot even burn itself

Strike me O Pegyuh so that i may burn and burn in my people

Pegyuh-uh! Pegyuh-uh!

Please say: Burn, burn for cancer LaChama

Burn, burn for cancer LaChama

My money is worth nothing if the Filter of Loathing is consumed

Burn, burn for cancer LaChama

I may as well burn my money too

Burn LaChama

We may as well burn our money to beat down cancer

beat it down! beat it down!

We know that more than 80% of cancer deaths were caused by bad choices

Well let's start making some better choices here today and show me the 

Show me the shiny gold coins

Show them hold them up to the suns!

Melt it down Burn the cancer

You see that you are standing on a grate

and the ground beneath it has opened up

and the darkness is the mouth of LaMthyuh

see the rainbow of light among your coins

imagine all that light raining down

people drop your golden light into the darkness

let it fall and listen to the sound

we can hear it now an unstoppable clankety CANCER BEATDOWN

As the applause dies i'll back away bowing from the podium and some raunchy MC will take over. It's your basic legal betting for charity event from then on as two giant screens track the real-time progression or regression of a MOD 7 cancer in two Jan subjects for an entire year. MPS gets 20% and i get about 4% of that. Subject's account gets a MOD payout upon verified termination but that bumps them to a palliative-course-not-approved [PCNA] track. The ensuing tragicomedy fuels more donative speculation for MPS and a high temple attendance rate from worshippers. There's a catch net below the grate of course. It borrows its sinister nature from the humble wishing well. 

from: 'Round Back of the Temple Life
by: La LaChama 
Phyllis [trans.]

Tried and failed to break out of your station?

Breakouts are not authorized. 

Your station is not constructed to be broken out of thus the word break.

You must break out of your station.

There is no legitimate support channel for this objective. 

If successful, you will likely have been seriously injured in the process. 

If you want to live you must break out.

Prompt: Does any individual or group in addition to yourself and significant others want you to break out of your station? 

If the answer is yes, your station is 1/5 or 5/5. 1/5 = both empathy and hatred for your station are high. Public would like to see 1/5 operators moved to 2/5, and 5/5 operators moved down many levels, killed, or to bring everyone closer to their level by creating new, higher levels, which has been known to create even more space between 5/5 and every other level. 

As you can see from the complexity of these calculations, which are only a glimpse of what K5000 is doing every second in all of our lives, it's probably going to be best, if you do decide to opt for self-destruction and attempt a breakout, or even if you go ahead and remain at your station and instead experience involuntary suffering and death, you've probably already arrived at the conclusion that it's best not to rely on groups or individuals who may or may not want you to break out of your station.

Prompt: Reflect on the emotions you might expect to happen between yourself and station mates when they realize that you are in the process of breaking out of your station and especially once you all realize that you have broken more than the station. 

Salvaged from crash of K5000
MPS release K5000-1
Phyllis [trans.]

Crash

The K5000 has been brought down in less than a day. 

Once a critical mass of friday fun day participants had been catalogued, located, and contacted, the now grownup Jans started learning the chant backwards. It was their best and only guess left at disconnecting their RMP grafts, which were initially put in place by the K5000 with the chant and the help of the nuns. 

muffins virtue muffins me send am first demons your eat me demon virtue

your am or first demons your eat Mthyuh virtue a send demons your send

your send or first me eat demons your muffin virtue virtue a am am i Mthyuh i

demons your send or first me eat Mthyuh muffin virtue a am i virtue a am i 

Peg's flesh lays once again steaming and broken of dignity 

this time strewn across 100 yards of beach like a massive 

alligator die-off and on, deeply, into the remains of a seaside thrill park

A Wherris feel is employed to load and distribute carfuls of her 

tissue into a slowly progressing line of open lorry beds

This is how broken her body is. It's difficult to make out the basic architecture, either the original one born of prehistory or the second one, conceived and constructed by the radical Jans who infiltrated the Mthyuh Preservation Society (MPS) Inter-special Workgroup (IW). Instead of bringing back god,

they had reached back in time to abduct and torture the daughter of god

they did it not even out of curiosity but rather to please the MPS preece 

by filling their wats with incense comfort illusion beyond relic living

relic that can be worn and operated as one with the deities worshippers

relics that can be reproduced and ranched for their precious sluff

relics of a time when just the monster was enough

 

There is surprisingly little to show for any parts of the K5000 that were not also parts of Peg: a few stone needles, a reimagined public oracle dispenser donut, sun-powered through hundreds of eyelid panels, most of which disintegrated on impact. They look like enormous dead lice among the tangled jungles and prickly coppices that were Peg's eyelashes.

We're sitting in the kitchen and we're more afraid now to go out than

while the machine was overhead because at least then life was predictable

Now our bodies seem not so cheap but more likely to succumb

To everything except for what they just got free of

But we'll succumb freely and maybe one day life will truly be all about choices

Quick takes during and among the first hours after the crash of the K5000
by Phyllis [embedded] Sports N' Sex Crimes Bugle

meat lens

I should add that Dr. Thong suggested going on MPS disability because of the anticipated side effects of the time graft, not because she's expecting me to be taken down by K5000 directly at this point. 

You speak of Dr. Thong, whose father was a butcher, and therefore sees public health through a meat lens.

Yes, don't we all? 

Well congratulations for not dodging or shrinking away from a timely decision. It's all about choices, y'know?

No. But it's an appropriate time for me to claim my entitlement. 

Ya you must milk the MPS early and often, as they say!

MPS proudly fulfills its promises because its promises are rooted in its purpose, its purpose in its mission, and its mission in its identity, which is slave and vittlement for LaMthyuh. 

Of course your point is that you are not planning your funeral, just tidying up to avoid having to confront all that in a hurry in the unlikely event of palliative failure. 

Actually, I am and have been planning my funeral for as long as i can remember. Have i mentioned? I'm leaning toward blasting Stooges' "Loose" before during and after the catapult hurls me into Mthyuh's pyre. 

Perhaps you just want to assure me that quitting all your jobs and cashing in your pension is not a red flag for imminent disaster. 

That's it. That's the one! Because it's not. 

Overheard on a cloudy afternoon near Santorabo Wat, St. Dick, Jansterdam
Phyllis [embedded]

Golden hour

In this golden hour the clouds were filthy and low

Their concerns were petty and they were posing

inappropriately to the moon, which was waning

How could they do this to you millions of significant

others were asking, how that? don't they know?

Miserly storms only blustered and spat

Humidity drew out but did not disperse

the urine of the dead and the infirm

Voices chemically cried out beyond the terminus

by Missy

Back at the boys' home university club whatever

After decimating the tudor-style great room, kitchen, and gardens of the hottest and most entitled frat boys' house at the College of Cement, Peg stands and watches them quarrel. As she listens she thinks, "It's really no wonder that they are now a minority in higher education. In just another generation, the sexiest and most privileged Jan men will end up in air force cockpits, not dank party rooms."

Jan: Oh my god. I'm too afraid to even run.

Jan: Shut up! She's. Right. There.

Jan: ...

Jan: What do we do? 

Jan: MPS says stay calm follow instructions. 

Jan: Eff that! We don't follow no instructions we give them, bitches!

Jan: Why are you whispering that?

Jan: ...

Jan: The gospels say that we've all wrought this horror and the only path forward is to follow the path. 

Jan: The Path of

Jan: There is only one path.

Jan: ...

Jan: By the way as a kid did you ever play that friday fun day game with the MPS nuns? 

Jan: Yes.

Jan: Then you can relax because the K5000 has a plan and it's being executed in part in part of your brain. 

Jan: You said in part in part. 

Jan: Part of the plan is being executed partly up in the K5000 and partly in your brain. It's a concept most people understand. 

Phyliss [embedded]

It's all the same effing day, man

At the same moment, more than 7,000 inhabitants of the Chanklands woke up and scrawled these same lines, or others to this very same effect, into their bedside slates: 

I feel like I'm just dodging fireballs. Going from crisis to crisis, I wonder if there is time for each one to make me stronger not weaker. This doesn't seem to be life as usual, as intended, or as advertised. There is a strange combination of urgency and dread growing in those around me as well. 

Upon examining these slate entries, and considering the amount of disinformative propaganda Chanklanders are daily subjected to by MPS, we can't help asking whether the message is not an outcome of run-of-the-mill neurotic catastrophizing grown to the scale of a sociopathology through shared environmental stimuli. 

But let's be real. Look around you, and look above. Peg's ghost, her machinated body, glides and blinks. And there are fireballs, actual fireballs. Mthyuh is gathering her bowels for an obliterating event. 

Any normal follower of a critical path would do well to ask, "What are the arguments and evidence to the contrary?" 

Unfortunately, this first question is an easy one to answer. There are no arguments or evidence to the contrary. 

Q2: How about the promise of a future when current adversities will have passed? 

A: The evidence we now have at hand is not supportive of the concept of a future that will be different or better than the present in any significant sense. The Institute does not opine on matters of after-death experience. 

Q3: Can't we continue to count on the Filter of Loathing as our primary shield from the effects of math, physics, and biology? 

A: The Filter of Loathing can only function insofar as you can. The Filter cannot protect those who do not currently exist. It also cannot protect your loved ones from the shame of your behavior from this point through to the terminal. 

Q4: How about the resort of dissociative palliation to filter the harsh realities of the mind and the senses in their rawest state? 

A: While palliative treatments have played an important role in preventing civil unrest, issues with access and distribution as well as blowing past therapeutic ceilings will be seen soon as conditions worsen. 

Q5: Can't I just increase the levels of my palliative treatments? 

A: The palliative levels that would be required to dissociate effectively from this environment would have a serious impact on basic functioning and affect to the point where they would begin to cause more adversity and increase unrequitable and unauthorized palliative-seeking behaviors with escalating desperation. This well-documented cycle does not fit the definition of a future that is "the same or better than" the current environment. 

Q6: But... wait!

A: Although that's not exactly a question, we can confidently assert that the concept of "waiting" cannot be appropriately applied to our situation or environment. It's all the same effing day, man. And it's just about over. 

 

 

by: Dr. Donna Thong
from: URGENT: RE: Anomalous "Sociopathological" Event in the Chanklands
Journal for the Institute of Metacognitive Talk Therapy Apologists

Phyliss [trans.]

Nice pirouettes!

When today the madame mistress Mlaf, goddess of astrology, the generations, and la dance, said to me and she really said it to me she said 

Nice pirouettes!

And this to me and to all who know the sister, a primary missionary of la dance her ravishing mothership, Ms. Mkidza Mlaf, to all who know her, and to me, this means that the student has invisibly and inaudibly been graduated not to the next consecutive course in the series at the academy de la dance, but rather, nice pirouettes means that you have ascended to another level altogether: at the academy, but also and most importantly in la dance herself, and therefore in life, a life of dance to dance the life of living dance and dance the dance to live that life of dance to dance the dance, la dance. 

by Missy

Hypomania is the only legitimate response

When your society is sick and your response is to fight

even if fighting is against your peaceful nature which has now become

a craven and apathetic nature

you must fight in the way your scope and compass fail

and although you are not depressed you might want to try

Getupstandup, by Pharmsupply

from: Prolabique LipLine Master-Lisp by Pharmsupply "Lipstickventory" Name Galleys 096

Tilly's Freak Guide

Signs that a K bitch may strike you:

squinting

grimacing

squeezing eyelids shut hard while drawing lips back against teeth

sudden and sustained eye contact

circling

diving 

balling of fists or toes

reaching for dangerous items [esp. heavy vehicles]

passive assault/ signifying/ impolity

dry chomping 

swoop-and-bump

clutch, lift, and drop 

screeching/laughing [any dB =/> stun level]

massive release of gases

scoop & dump of raw surface materials

drop-and-splash behaviors [outside designated ceremonial events]

no-touch microclimate management [WWW: Wind, Wave and Wing]

performative group-target signaling (PGTS: see appendix)

from: Tilly's Freak Guide: The Chanklands

by: La Reptily-ily 
Phyliss [trans.]

crass categorization of peoples

Jan and Peg are bouncing in the roiling waters of a volcanic abscess and checking in. Their thoughts turn reflective as the redundant suns set once again, and as always, forming shapes and colors that no one could ever predict. Because their throats are mostly meant for swallowing, Peg and Jan communicate now, beneath the roaring of LaMthyuh, in a way that's becoming more natural to them: with their minds only. 

Whut do you mean? they make incense with our shit

No, i know, but it's hate, i can feel it ery day

Right, that's why they need us, we make them feel as one

They are as one with hate

They are as one with hate, as one with nature, as one with you and me

I'm not even comfortable with the pronoun they because

Because it lends itself to a crass categorization of peoples?

Mmhm, ok

Phyliss [embedded]

I Got Off Easy

For whatever is left of tomorrow, there's always TIN DAWN. 

TIN DAWN is they say the final demon to watch out for

Look deep into his eyes and you will see many rings

each of which has a meaning

ring of understanding

ring of knowing 

ring of fear

ring of excitement

ring of famine

ring of stupidity

this last ring is the deepest ring

it surrounds the deepest known void

I saw this ring directly and it locked

into the circular patterns of my own 

eyes thoughts behavior 

This was a moment when I could have been captured by

TIN DAWN But instead

i felt my feet begin to levitate off the ground

we shared for a tic the terrible inevitability 

of eternity it was a chance to reach out to him

for my journey was a spiritual one

and i reached out to him 

and i spoke these words to him i said

"culturally you're supposed to have some support mechanism to help get through and mark moments of consequence"

then my feet touched the ground again

his fury temporarily abated he answered 

"but those who've been effed over by culture science mathematics physics geography politics boyfriends we must create our own rituals our own celebrations"

These famous words were known and held dearly to each of our hearts, and had been ever since LaChamatilly originally delivered them in her Cross-Chanks Address. 

Weiba Hinde
Storytelling Booth 7
Storytelling Festival
Days of Destruction

pink stucco wat

pink stucco wat, border of pyracantha

climbing red berries, beacon to the

community, recipient

of odes anthems oaths palm branches

the dead pregnant newly dying 

just born ery kinda party from 

juice in tiny cups to indoor

crepe paper rainbow showers or

praying hands on purple velvet

hands of a man in marbled plastic

praying

ceremonial angel hair of

spun glass which will cut

to a hidden sunken tub

closet with rain ponchos

a tub a place to almost drown

three times three dunks to glory

a place where drunks get horny

when they come to a realization

there is a community a recipient

of love wealth hope remorse

her hair stays afloat on the water

then with it plastered to her shoulders

she stands looks out at the worshipers

all of us married the same guy

all of us also are that guy

fingers on a guy's praying hands

diamonds in the crown of a

poor man humble god-man god

pink stucco wat, a nipple

poor men sucking on poor men's

god, within a steeple

La LaChama
from: Mission of Mthyuh
[trans:] by Phyllis

Try a virtue round

virtue challenge

spend one glorious day being virtuous in the loving arms of virtue

may that your choices be borne of virtue all the virtues

may that any step on this day must not violate any of the virtues

virtues are designated as: 

virtues which are considered to be virtues The Crack-wide (see appendix)

not virtues which you think it would be cute to call virtues

start the day saying these words in this order

i am a virtue i am a virtue muffin mthyuh eat me first or send your demons

i mthyuh i am am a virtue virtue muffin your demons eat me first or send your

send your demons send a virtue mthyuh eat your demons first or am your 

virtue demon me eat your demons first am send me muffins virtue muffins  

[repeat] 

in between your chanting you may find that you're making virtuous choices automatically

this is because by chanting the sacred words you have activated the K5000

the K5000 would never harm you but it does now have access and has now

taken charge of one key portion of your Braino son so

don't stop now and i mean lidderly don't stop now because

[MPS has imperiously and arbitrarily redacted this portion of the activity instructions]

Traditional MPS nuns "friday fun day" activity [frag.]
by Phyliss [trans.]

demon of all loving all giving all knowing

This is one who is like a swarm of locusts in terms of devastation but all-in-one. One you may want to be open to. 

Create an emotional and spiritual boundary between yourself and this one.

Not only is it possible to create this boundary but also possible to create it when that one is already inside of you and as one with you. 

In fact one who needs most to create a boundary is most often one that must create a boundary between oneself and that same one who is more devastating than a stampede of buffalo, yet all-in-one, and at one with one as one. 

The demon of all loving all giving all knowing is likely to take charge in moments of structural weakness when combined with palliative interventions, for example. Although you may not feel entitled to your own opinion during these moments, you must find and stand on your boundary line, and you must be the line, be as one with the line as you are as one with the demon. The demon may respect the line if you do. Imagine a school of piranhas stopping short of crossing a watery line. 

Do not sign contracts hire workers bear gifts offer advice opine on any topic write to anyone for any purpose.  Let them come to you and see for themselves the condition you are in so that they too may draw their own boundaries even as they too are as one with you.

La LaChama
from: 

Primavera Eterna: Obra de Dentro