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RODAN
Allah Mixed Media
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Lahilala Mohammed Do Rassoullila
Lahilala Mixed Media Rassoullila
Allah Allah lala lala lala
Allah lahilala Mohammed
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Doctor Alvin Weasley
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This story begins in the faraway Atlantic on a tiny island atoll just off the coast of Jersey and used for testing atomic and hydrogen bombs. Inside an unimposing looking shelter, such as this, is housed the mightiest theory of destruction known to man. Focus groups composed of the finest military and scientific minds are finalizing their plans for Mission Gigantic, the explosion of this new twentieth century philosophy. The most complicated and sensitive instruments yet devised are brought into play for this all important mission.
Countdown
And now on a battleship in the East River from which all shipping has been banned, the moment of command approaches. The seconds are running out.
And there you see it
the release of the mighty ad campaign. Buildings disintegrate. Concrete is reduced to powder. Steel vaporizes. Solids turn liquid and liquids change into gas. Destruction is total and complete.
Sound effects of a Nuclear Blast
And then, the downward shockwave, like some gigantic and murderous hammer, pulverizing all that remains. The shock is recorded ten thousand miles away, as the angry mushroom cloud advances toward the stratosphere, baby.
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On a another portion of the globe, the Truth and Soul advertising agency is engaged in the testing of a second campaign, even mightier than the government advertisement. The bomb bay doors are open. The 30 second spot is in position
target: a clustered semicircle of modern battleships. If all calculations are correct, in less than two minutes there will be no ships at all below; nothing but boiling sea and the sullen fire filled sky.
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Maggie: Dont look at the light!
Erin: What?
Maggie: Dont look into the light.
Erin: Why not?
Maggie: Just dont. Its like Dont drink soap. Just dont, thats all.
Erin: But thats where the fun is. |
Blast
On target! The kill is complete. But what are these tests done to Mother Earth? Can the human race continue to deliver these staggering blows without arousing somewhere in the depths of Earth a reaction, a counter attack, a horror still undreamed of? There are persons in the Japanese Islands who believe that the horror has already been seen. What is the aftermath? This is the story of such an aftermath
Scott: Beautiful.
Maggie: We paid for that?
Erin: Twenty Eight Thousand
and we got off easy.
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Kyoja del Wowee Wowee 1
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These are the glass and steel mountains of Manhattan, the Westernmost of Japans great island provinces. Here, except when I went away to school, I have lived all my life. My name is Kyoja del Wowee Wowee, and this is the village of Madison Avenue, where I was born. Madison Avenue is an advertising community. Almost all of us who live here are dependent upon the ads for our livelihood.
It was in our Harveys Cerebral Edema Tequila account that an unusual horror began, on a day that started much like any other day
with the men coming to work as always, the roll call as always, and everything normal.
Yet, somehow, you knew it wasnt normal. There was a feeling of
uneasiness in the air.
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Why Go Out?
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Darkness in cold water
Darkness in soft silence
Invisible Sweet Nothings
Imbued in sweet soft humidity
A word here
Nothing in brown bag nothing
Blackbody bloodshot backslide
Into cold water
Into soft smother
A phrase there
Dredge deep dark
Drop thin reeds in radio
Displace damp infinitessimae in
Infinitely dense sweet water
Innuendos
Maggie: Whats he doing?
Erin: I dont know. Hes having delusions of adequacy, or something.
Clear clean darkness in
Sweet nothing swelling
Cold water beatings with
Blackbodies in silence
And subtleties
Sleep eluding soft smother
Into radio silence with
Dreaded dry dawn
And when the time is right, we move in for the kill, man! No mercies!
Harveys Cerebral Edema Tequila: A subliminal tremor throughout the land.
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Kyoja del Wowee Wowee 2
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I had known him for a long while; his sister and I were planning to be married, or whatever. It wasnt like him to freak out on the job. It was just another example of that strange tension that was affecting us all. Each time the men boarded the subway you could almost see it working in them. He and the others suddenly seemed afraid of the darkness. One thing that disturbed them was the fact that the campaign was going too deep
far deeper than any ad they had ever worked. It was becoming
dangerous.
On this deep level the subliminal influence of the campaign had lately been creeping.
I analyzed the problem in the drafting room and we knew that a creeping pitch occurs when too much dialectic contiguity has been removed from between two strata of cultural influence. We had to take up the pressure.
Maggie: Introducing Miss Eugenie Furlinger.Maggie: Introducing Miss Redneck, New Jersey, Eugenie Furlinger. Eugenie is twenty three. Shes five foot four and weighs a hundred and seventeen pounds. She has blue eyes and blond hair with matching cuffs and collar. Eugenie is a graduate of the Sawbone / T-bone Steak diner in Redneck, where she majored in philosophy. Shes a social worker and her favorite hobby is emasculation.
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Schrodinger's Cat
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Maggie: I have this box.
Eric: How big?
Maggie:
this big. Theres something in the box.
Eric: When you say the word, box, what, exactly do you mean?
Maggie: Doesnt matter. Anyway, there are an infinite number of points inside the box.
Eric: If the box is only as big as you say it is, how can it have an infinity inside it, if were out here?
Maggie: Dont be stupid. Lets say theres a point at one end of the box and another point at the other end of the box. Then theres a point halfway between those two points. Theres also a point halfway between the halfway point and each end of the box and four more points halfway between the five points we already have, and more and more halfway points, halfway between all the other halfway points, and on, and on, and on. Its pretty simple; its just a box. Its not like were talking about the universe, or anything.
Eric: So, you have this box filled with points, and
Maggie: Well, the points dont really take up any space, so I wouldnt say the box is filled up with them.
Eric: So, theres something else in the box, too?
Maggie: Dont jump to conclusions. I didnt say the box was full, but, yes, theres something else in the box. A cat.
Eric: A cute, furry cat? A kitten?
Maggie: A very small cat. A kitten, if you like.. It doesnt matter.
Eric: I hope the box has holes, so the kitten can breathe. Its not scared is it?
Maggie: First of all, I'm afraid the box has no holes in it. That would defeat the entire purpose of this conversation. No holes. As far as whether or not the cat is scared, it really doesnt matter, but I will say that that cat just cant stop moving around inside the box.
Eric: Youre not doing anything mean to that cat!? Torturing it with electric shocks?
Maggie: No, nothing like that. Its just a simple law of physics that keeps the cat from standing still.
Eric: Laws of physics? That doesnt sound like justice to me. I think you should let the cat out of the box.
Maggie: OK.
I'll make you a deal. Are you a gambling man?
Eric: Well, I've never really won anything my whole life. I guess I'm not very lucky. Whose cat is it, anyway?
Maggie: It belongs to some guy. Do you wanna get the cat out of the box, or not?
Eric: I guess so. Whats the contest?
Maggie: Well, this
I told you there were an infinite number of points, and a cat in the box. I wasnt lying, so the chances that the cat is somewhere in the box are pretty good, one to one , in fact.
Eric: OK.
Maggie: It follows that the chances that the cat is in the left half of the box are one outta two, and that the chances that the cat is in one of the front quarters of the box are like one to four, and the chances that the cat is in one half of one of those quarters is one in eight. Get my drift?
Eric: I think so. Let me see. Youre saying that the odds of finding the cat are directly proportional to what size the part of the box I guess the cat is in is. Do I understand you properly?
Maggie: How should I know? All I'm saying is: if you want to get the cat out of the box, all you have to do is tell me what the chances are that the cat will be at any given point you choose, should you be allowed to go looking for it.
Eric: How big did you say the box was?
Maggie:
this
big.
Eric: OK. Let me think about it for a minute.
Maggie: Take all the time you like.
Get Fresh Pussy- Even on your busiest day!
Scott: POONTANGTM Powdered Pussy- the pussy the astronauts use! Thats right. When the astronauts go to the moon, theyll be packing POONTANGTM. Nothing else goes down as smooth. Nothing else has that morning-fresh taste. Breakfast pussy keeps your head clear and your reflexes keen- whether youre hurtling through space at eleven times the speed of sound, or just trying to beat the traffic downtown. With a little POONTANGttm in the morning, all systems are go!
Eric: Here kitty, kitty, kitty
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Kyoja del Wowee Wowee 3
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He was dead when they carried him from the boardroom, but he didnt die from heart failure. He had been killed
more than killed; he had been slaughtered like an animal. Even in death there was a look of horror on his face, as if in those last moments he had seen something dreadful and terrible beyond words. We were all stunned.
Maggie: Smells
musty down here.
Scott: What is that?
Erin: Shall we go
see?
Scott: Oh no! Horribly mangled! Three of them!
Maggie: Look! Down there!
Scott: Oh! Look!
Maggie: Human bones
Erin: Yes, and a pink slipper. The killer cant be far away.
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to be taken
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To understand where Im at youve got to dig it that Ive been into this very heavy political thing for a long time. In some ways this has done strange things to my head. But Ive always felt that when youre really into something you shouldnt cop out on it. To be really out front, I get off on ego trips, power games. Its a speed freak sort of trip, I admit it. But,like, thats where Im at
I mean you can put me down for kicking your ass, but dont put me down for being an ass kicker, cause thats my movie. Thats , I got to do my thing. I just want to make that perfectly clear.
Id always been into this kind of riff, but I never meant to get as strung out on it as I am now. It was in 52; I was out on the coast to get my head together when Ike calls me on the phone. Dickey, he said, You wont believe the job offer I have.
Tell me, I said.
Dickey, he said, theyre going to make me president.
Far fucking out! I said, but he sounded troubled.
Dickey, he said, Im troubled.
Whats the matter, Ike? I said.
Dickey, he said, if someone were to find out, Time magazine or someone, that all these years Mamies been in drag
I told him about the operation in Sweden. I guess Ike could see I had my head together about politics, because several days later he calls again and asks me to be vice president. I told him I wasnt up for that; I was just ready to split for Mexico City with Jack and Alan and Niel. But he came on strong and vibed me out on the whole thing- Ive been into it ever since.
So like one thing led to another and I got to be president myself. Now being president is a really heavy thing. Its like being a very big dealer, like doing deals for like 5 or 6 hundred kilos every day- guns out on the table and briefcases full of hundred dollar bills. You have to deal with really heavy cats. This redneck that held the job before me had some fucked up war going down. First thing I did was I called the Pentagon and said,This is the president. Off that shit! I want everyone back in California by Friday night. Fifteen minutes later the chairman of the board from GM walks in with this weird cat in a sharkskin suit and sunglasses.
Well, theres a time to stand and fight and a time to cut and run. Being president is a bummer.
Not only heavy cats like that to hassle with all the time, but for a vice president I get a Yippie infiltrator who runs around the country saying the most outrageous possible things- trying to discredit the entire government.
I was getting freaked out. All these frustrations and anxieties building- bad vibes. Like the Supreme Court. The whole countrys making an ass of itself, pasting up American flags everywhere, shooting kids and spades, saying things like, Leave loose the dogs of war! So I figure they must want a Nazi for their Supreme Court. Give them what they want, I say. Two Nazis I give them, but no, no, they dont want Nazis; they want a liberal. A liberal! There are only eleven liberals left in the United States. I had a hell of a time.
Like I said, when I first got into this trip I couldnt dig the war. But then I started getting to know Westmoreland and his buddies. Theyd be walking up and down Pennsylvania Avenue wearing their colors and looking really bad. We got close. Theyre good guys once you can dig where theyre at. I started going out on runs with them in their choppers, drinking beer. When I got behind it I understood they arent really violent. Theyre for peace and love and everything; they just like to stomp gooks. They gave me a set of honorary colors- a cutoff Eisenhower jacket with script lettering in an arch across the back saying, Joint Chiefs of Staff with USA down at the bottom and a big mushroom cloud in between. Id got very tight with Westmoreland, Wes the Axe, so I laid it on him about the vice president and all that shit. Wes said, Yeah, you got to be a badass in this world or you just aint gonna make it. I thought about that, and when I found out Cambodia was hiding those gook Viet Cong I said to myself, Im gonna trash that country! Jesus, I never thought anybodyd get all that uptight about it. But soon as I told Wes to do a number on the Cong the shit really hit the fan. I felt bad about it. I really did. First thing you know there are thousands of people planning to gather outside my house to vamp on me about it. Night before they were all to come I dropped a tab of sunshine and thought it over. I went through some weird changes. Early in the morning, when I was coming down, I decided to go outside and rap on it. Hardly anybody was there and I had to wake this cat up to find somebody to rap to. Wake up! I said Im the president. Want to do some boo?
Oh yeah, far out, hey, Fat Freddy, wake up. Its the president.
Abbie?
No, their president.
Oh yeah, far out, said Fat Freddy. So they got up and blew some of my dynamite Laotian shit and I sniffed some coke they had and laid it on them what I said here.
Wow, man, said the first, wheres your head at? He told me my thing was really bad Karma. That Id be reincarnated as a Gila monster. I could dig what they were saying. Thats the way people should be with each other, really out front. This is what Americas about.
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when we said, we followed you, we immediately recognized at least three of the possible meanings implicit in that statement
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what we most want to do
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what our ultimate aim
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our driving goal
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our whim
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is to make you see, however
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by any means necessary
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that of all these possible meanings
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inferences, if you like
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and its very important to us that you are not so much happy as comfortable with the format of this discourse
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only one of them will really suffice to satisfy us that you really know what we are trying to tell you
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it is of the greatest importance
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it is a matter of life and death
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mine or yours?
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ours or yours
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we can see that you do not quite understand
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where we are coming from
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what we mean to say
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how is it we say
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why it is necessary for us to impart
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who we mean to represent ourselves as
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we can see that
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you shake your heads in confusion
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you nod your heads in mistaken agreement
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lost behind clear receptive eyes
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behind a thin veneer of skin
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that protects you
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that prevents your mixing with us
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that prevents your assimilation
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that keeps you from understanding
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dont be mistaken
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we are aware that when we say, a thin veneer of skin
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we are fully cognizant of the fact that skin is only
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a sign
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a metaphor
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an arrow
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we know that what you signify with your flesh is your desire
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your desire to remain outside
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your flesh is a line drawn from what we most want to the truth
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we follow you
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we follow your flesh
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we carefully follow that maps instructions
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and
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when you're in my arms, its
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Quittin' Time!
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(On video): Get on out! You aint no more eatin tofu and bean sprouts with skinny leg broads with stockings on em! Get on out a here! We gonna have some greasy fingers and some cheese steak and all the beautiful things that people have who have it, and you aint got it! So get on out, you understand!? Were not gonna take anymore a yo jive! Cause were the Casa del Cheesesteak! You understand!? cheese and meat! Cause we got it, and we got a short order cook whos gonna make it right!
The Casa del Cheesesteak, 193 Delancey Street, New York, New York
Erin: After study of all the relevant data, I can now state that the unidentified flying object is a giant banner advertisement, closely related to the extinct highway billboard. Although related to the billboard, this creature is in low geosynchronous orbit, visible in the night sky, and belongs to a species called Rodan.
Maggie: Excuse me
Oh my god, I dont mean to rock the boat, or anything, but
Erin: Uh, do you know the secret handshake?
Maggie: No.
Erin: OK.
Maggie: A question.
Erin: Of course.
Eric: Um, you guys, theres something Ive always wanted to do
but it can wait.
Erin: OK.
Eric: Um, oh my god! OK, Im going to tell you anyway. Oh my god! Maggie? Are you naked back there?
Maggie: No.
Eric: You guys, Im going all the way to level 13 tonight.
Erin: No ones ever made it to level 13 before.
Scott: I heard about a guy out in Jersey who made it twice.
Maggie: Were gonna make it tonight.
Erin: How do you know?
Maggie: Because we have the power on our side. But, anyway
If this thing you call Rodan is extinct, how come it is still alive?
Erin: Thats a good question.We can only advance theories, so far, so Ill advance a theory of my own
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Toward Rodan
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Erin: Rodan, approaching 3,000,000 years of age, and through (for lack of a more insightful analysis) a lack of imagination, imagines that his life is more than half over; is exactly nobody. Naturally, he's just a bit embarrassed by this fact and makes sporadic and rather unfortunate attempts to leave his mark on the world.
Maggie: You are older now.
Eric: You smell terrible.
Erin: Devoid of creative insight, but blessed with hypersensitive critical faculties, Rodan is acutely aware of his disappointing and diminishing potential. After fits and starts of prodigal childhood talents, Rodan succumbs early to a mordant cynicism that (though warranted) fails transcendence at every juncture.
Maggie: Thats what age does to you. I know from experience.
Erin: Turning his satirical aspect on his own fledgeling attempts at satire, Rodan's scope narrows in a series of concentric rings, which, given the finite resolution of human perception, blend and blur into a darkened, singular sphere of personal influence.
Scott: This inability to have anything that anybody wants is killing me.
Erin: His contemporaries, branching their pursuits in expanding networks of social/political/whatever type arcs, only enjoy the increased ratio of infinite scale to finite resolution.
Scott: I feel very terrible.
Maggie: Its OK. Were gonna make it tonight.
Erin: The macroscopic, at the expense of fixed and identifiable identity, affords a reprieve from the perils of ennui brought on by an integral, yet stagnant microscopic solipsism.
Scott: This chicks from nowhere, so its up to you. Improvise. Do something. Ive seen your work at Jones Beach with Guy Lombardo. I know you can pull it off. Say, why dont you girls go upstairs and play cards or something?
Maggie: Sure, man, Im no hero.
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Rodan, on Poststructuralism
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Eric: This is how things look from my perspective.
Scott: OK.
Eric: There is a difference between the person who is a poststructuralist and the poststructural person. The poststructuralist is the person whose focus is turned inward toward the workings of its mind, and with total skepticism , attempts to isolate and break down the learned order of the mind, believing it to be based on arbitrary (and erroneous) assumptions. The natural progression of this inquiry, having broken down the constructs which define the individuals reason, is to then examine the constructs upon which society is based, as it (society) is composed of individuals, each with their own flaws of consciousness, to see if societys constructs (and this is assumed to be the case) are merely the aggregate sum of its components flawed constructs.
Erin: Jesus
you know so little, but you know it so remarkably fluently
Eric: As a result of this inquiry (the poststructuralist having debunked the constructs upon which nonpoststructuralists base their rational decision making processes), we see the rise of the poststructural entity. This being, bereft of any sort of construct upon which to base reason, is left adrift in the world, unable to take decisive action, but rather taking indecisive actions and being subject to actions (indecisive and otherwise) of others, a hapless victim.
Erin: You know
you have the lucidity that is the by-product of a fundamentally sterile mind.
Eric: The way I see it, understanding all boils down to a matter of probability. The probability of you understanding anything I say are some extremely high number to one, against (though I will admit that anything is possible).
Scott: OK.
Eric: See, language (and its meaning) are hopelessly tied to constructs within each of our individual minds. Since, even if we all started life as identical beings (which we dont, though its possible, if improbable), once removed from the void, we cant physically occupy the same point in the space/time continuum, our experiences outside of the void are going to be differently shaped into different constructs by our differing perspectives on things which are, decidedly, nonvoid (though probability does allow for homogeneity).
Maggie: Oh, fuck off, bert.
Scott: OK.
Eric: So we can formulate words and apply them to things and actions outside the void, but on a very basic level, the word is not a substitute for the thing it signifies, because each of us will more than likely have a different experience of the thing or action to which the word is applied. On an even more sophisticated note, each of us is going to have (or will probably have) a different experience of the word (as a decidedly nonvoid thing, the word) used to signify a thing or action.
Girls: Oh Golly!
Eric: This results in a misapprehension, raised to the second power, which we will symbolize here with the character ?2.
Erin: Thats the stupidest thing Ive ever heard.
Scott: MmmmHmmm
Eric: Confusion Squared, being a very difficult condition to operate under, can be reduced to confusion of a primary order, simply by eliminating language from the equation and simply sticking with the original signified object or action, for instance, an actual can of Coke, instead of the phrase Can of Coke, or slapping somebody in the face, instead of threatening to do so.
Maggie: If I took that same can of Coca-Cola and I shoved it up your ass
then what would you have?
Eric: There are certain situations, of course, where this solution is not practical. Substituting a real elephant for the word elephant, in casual conversation is not advised, particularly if you are in the dark about the care and feeding of elephants.
Maggie: Like how your mind
Ooops
do you have one?
Eric: Likewise the substitution of your deceased mother for your loving, bereaved memory of her challenges contemporary notions of good taste.
Maggie: IM TRYING TO REACH YOUR MIND! WHERE IS IT CURRENTLY LOCATED!?
Scott: Do you have this problem? You do have this problem!!!!!!
Eric: The thing Im really struggling with, right now, is that even an action or a thing will have significance, according to certain constructs, which will (probabilistically speaking) be obscure in meaning, in the same manner as language.
Erin: OK, anyway
if I have to listen to you for one more second, I think Im gonna puke.
Eric: For example, to the symbolist mind, a thing or action is itself a sign of some other thing or action (or even nonmaterial concept), giving rise to a situation in which confusion is raised to a secondary order unprecipitated by traditional signifiers.
Maggie: We are going to agree that when men have eaten too much rich food they can lose their and act like pathetic dweebs, but other than the gluttony, we really have no better explanation.
Eric: Let me show you what Im talking about. Say I kiss you full on the lips with tongue, like this
Erin: Stupid white man.
Eric:In the state of primary confusion, under which the rational mind operates, you should be able discern that your lips are now wet and that I ate a light luncheon of Paté de Fois Gras and nonpareil capers on toast points with a bordeaux of the St. Estephe vintage prior to the start of this discussion. To the symbolist mind, the action of a kiss is interchangeable with the concept of my deeply felt love for you (though this concept, being of a vague void/nonvoid status, is beyond the scope of this discussion).
Scott: Uh
Im sort of confused. I feel funny.
Eric: Sprobably just nerves.
Scott:
Yeah.
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The Deal
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Erin: Youve, uh, got something I want.
Maggie: Do I?
Erin: Well, I mean we, uh, cant be certain, can we? But thats my hypothesis. Lets do Newton proud.
Maggie: The chance exists that you will find exactly what you expect to.
Erin: What more could I want?
Maggie: Truly a case where less is more, I guess.
Erin: Are you saying my sphere is limited?
Maggie: Itd have to be, by definition. But theres always a chance, isnt there?
Erin: So the experts would lead us to believe. Weve got a whole paradigm, a history to support.
Maggie: Or contradict.
Erin: Whatever.
Maggie: The probability of either extreme is equally slim. The odds favor the synthesis.
Erin: The middle of the road.
Maggie: Whatever.
Erin: So youll let me have it?
Maggie: Have what?
Erin: You know.
Maggie: Do I?
Erin: Theoretically.
Maggie: I guess that never stopped anyone from taking practical steps.
Erin: Indeed. Theory seems to be heating homes, chasing away the darkness as we speak.
Maggie: I cant deny it.
Erin: Not without a certain amount of anxious trepidation. Theory can be no more than this: a trap set in the hope that reality will be naïve enough to fall into it. To capture such strange events, theory itself must be remade as something strange: as a perfect crime, or as a strange attractor.
Maggie: Nevertheless, one generally aspires toward a certain greatness, a rising above the odds. It would imply a requisite radical streak, it would seem.
Erin: Dont start with that narcissistic saw.
Maggie: Its just the evidence suggests
Erin: Yeah, yeah
if, then. But your scope ignores the obvious tertiary factors.
Maggie: My point, exactly.
Erin: Or approximately, with a trifling margin for error, easily attributable to the imperfections of the measuring apparatus.
Maggie: Whatever. Doesnt matter.
Erin: The envelope, please.
Maggie: And the winner is
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Cushy Bathroom Tissue Spot
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Eric: You probably won't believe me when I tell you that new Cushy-brand bathroom tissue is the softest, most absorbent bathroom tissue you'll ever try. Heck, I was skeptical at first, too! But, Wow! When it comes to getting your butthole clean, Cushy just can't be beat!
Whether you've got a thin, runny liquid, a huge, bulky chunk, or even one of those hard-to-wipe, viscous-sludge-type defecations, Cushy is guaranteed to wipe your ass as clean as a whistle.
Cushy not only has the absorbency needed to wipe your ass completely free of sticky, after-shit smears and stains; it's lightly perfumed and softened with soothing aloe-based moisturizing lotions make your puckered butthole feel like the King of Siam, reclining on a mound of the finest silk pillows in all of Asia.
When it comes to making sure my asshole's been wiped right, I trust Cushy. As the commercial says, "With Cushy, I Know My Ass Is Clean!®"
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Kyoja del Wowee Wowee 4
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The rear stairwell of the Truth and Soul Building led to the office where I believed I had seen that monstrous advertisement break open. I felt unsure
tortured with doubt. Was it shock that did these curious things to my mind? Slowly, relentlessly, we pressed on. We felt we were entering the giant grave. How much of it did I believe? How much of it did I imagine? One thing I did know: there was no doubt about the existence of that horrible advertisement, which had led so many of my friends to death. My colleagues agreed: we could not stop now. There was no turning back. We acted as a group, but individually we were afraid. Yes
fear. It was inside the minds and hearts of all the men. Fear of something we couldnt see. The Muzak in the dark hallway added to the eerie atmosphere. Awful stillness gave us a shudder, but we continued on and on. We had to find out, even though the answer might be death to us all. We felt hemmed in, confined
deep in the bowels of the Earth. We could feel the strange echo of our footsteps as we kept on
no one of us daring to say a word. Single file, we walked, all of us searching
searching
we were seeking a monster
a monster who had been hatched from a television and an acute sensitivity to popular culture. How could prehistoric monsters stir from their long death to move about upon the Earth again? The only answer to that could be that they never really died
they only slept. We had clamored too hard for our entertainments, our convenience
and had awakened them to destroy us all. We looked around us. I could remember the smell of the thing
a , an evil smell, that sent your flesh crawling.
Maggie: Its OK. Were gonna make it.
Eric: Why do you say that?
Maggie: Because we have the power on our side.
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Trial
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Erin: Who is this guy, anyway?
Eric: I dont know. Some friend of Wigners.
Scott: Where am I?
Eric: Somewhere between something
and nothing.
Scott: What day is it?
Eric: That question betrays a level of presumptuousness that I am not prepared to operate at.
Scott: When is now?
Eric: Easy. A short time after all the events of the past hour.
Scott: Why am I here?
Eric: How do you plead?
Scott: What are my options?
Eric: Irrelevant, but for the benefit of continuing this conversation verbally, lets say
empty or full.
Scott: I remain an optimist.
Eric: We were prepared for that.
Erin: A woman knows all the vectors of a falcons approach. The falcon flies away. The egg is too white, the vectors too familiar.
Maggie: A Studebaker is travelling at the speed of light. Its whitewall tires quickly wear out. An identical automobile remains parked in a garage. Its tires merely go flat.
Erin: A man has been wandering in the desert for five days and nights. Suddenly, he sees another man selling water. He proceeds quickly in the direction of the water vendor, but the coins in his pocket become so heavy, he dies of a hernia.
Maggie: An arrow travels halfway to its target, but before it can travel half of the remaining distance, the archer opens his eyes to see that the deer has run away.
Erin: Some brimstone baritone anticyclone rolling stone preacher from the East, he says,Dethrone the Dictaphone.
Maggie: Hit it in its funny bone. Thats where they expect it least
Erin: And now young Scott with slingshot finally found a tender spot and throws his lover in the sand
Maggie: And some bloodshot forget me not whispers, Daddys within earshot.
Erin:Oh Christ! Save the buckshot, turn up the band
Maggie: Two young girls are sitting on a pier beside the ocean. One of the girls kills a butterfly. The next day the other girl notices the postman forgot to wear his raincoat.
Eric: Thats the most incredible thing Ive ever heard. Whos your shrink?
Scott: Did somebody hear applause after the amputation?
Eric: You couldnt have known about that. You stand accused. I'm afraid that all your negligible errors have proven quantifiable and cumulative. The only problem remaining is our inability to imagine a suitable punishment
Scott: OK. Lets just keep going.
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Rodan, on Prophylaxis
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Scott: I woke up and I was annoyed. If I were asked to characterize the present state of affairs, I would describe it as After the Orgy. Everything is dry and I have the peculiar taste of sickness when I sleep.
Now all we can do is simulate the orgy, simulate liberation. I was still annoyed.
Someone was knocking on my door. The possibility of metaphor is disappearing in every sphere. This is where the order
Erin: or disorder
of metastasis begins.
I calmly got up and opened the door. There is no longer an avant garde, political, sexual or artistic, embodying a capacity for anticipation.
Outside the door, Im standing on one corner of an impossibly tiny, filthy white plane. A dusty, smeared rectangle. This society now produces only ill defined events whose ultimate clarification is unlikely. The whole countrys making an ass of itself.
I tower over the plane- a thousand feet tall. Im the president, goddamnit. My feet: specks. No more than the rest of this filth on this plane. Fucking fly specks. I think Im going to puke.
Mine is rather like the situation of the man who has lost his shadow: either he has become transparent, and the light passes right through him or, alternately, he is lit from all angles, overexposed and defenseless against all sources of light.
On this white, filthy shadowless plane I can see for miles across to the opposite corner. Something moves. There is a shift. What is it?
What is constant is an immense uncertainty. This is what gets me so uptight. The uncertainty to which we are subject results, paradoxically, from an excess of positivity, from an ineluctable drop in the level of negativity. We are doomed in consequence to a whitewashing of all activity- whitewashed social relations, whitewashed bodies, whitewashed memory- in short, to a complete aseptic whiteness.
Something begins to move. A ball of string. A tiny, filthy, shit eating, wadded up ball of string at the opposite end of the plane is rolling toward me and I step forward.
An artificial sterilization of all environments must now compensate for faltering immunological defenses. Once we get this mess cleaned up and all infection- whether social or bacillary- has been driven into the fucking sea, then only the virus of sadness will remain in a mortally clean and a mortally sophisticated world, if you get my drift.
I move to meet the string, its outline vague and tiny and mostly inseperable from its shit specked surroundings. Things are changing.
Its very important to us that you are not so much happy as comfortable with the format of this discourse. You are lost behind clear receptive eyes, behind a thin veneer of skin that protects you. That prevents your mixing with us. That prevents your assimilation.That keeps you from understanding what the fuck Ive been sitting here trying to tell you.
The perspective has shifted. As the string approaches, I see my misapprehension. That filthy string is not tiny. That fucking filthy phlegm soaked sphere is towering: a goddamned monument. The plane is vast, extending to the imaginations limit on infinity. I am a child.
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It is true in a sense that nothing really disgusts us anymore. In our eclectic culture, which embraces the debrisof all others in a promiscuous confusion. Nothing is unacceptable. But for this very reason disgust is on the uptake. The desire to puke up this promiscuity, this indifference to everything, no matter how vulgar or worthless, this viscous adherence of opposites. To the extent that this happens, what is on the increase is a disgust over the lack of disgust. Its a stone drag.
We know that what you signify with your flesh is your desire- your desire to remain outside, enclosed in a crystal sphere, a transparent envelope in which you have taken refuge and where you remain, bereft of everything, yet overprotected, doomed to artificial immunity, continual transfusions and, at the slightest contact with the world outside, instant death.
I move to meet the string.
I woke up and I was annoyed.
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Eric:Give me your tired, your poor, your clichées, yesterdays fashions, your nostalgia, your sentiment. |
Give me classic rock, classic Coke. |
Give me red wine and barbiturates, April in Paris, tears before bedtime, therell be trouble tonight. |
Turn me on to something strong
some song with funky breaks
is it safe outside? Is it? |
Remind me of the feeling of romance. |
I got down, but I never got tight. |
Erin: Its OK, were gonna make it. |
Maggie: Because we have the power on our side. |
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Kyoja del Wowee Wowee 5
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As he turned to weep on my shoulder, I realized that Rodan was only a chimera. We had staked our time, our resources... We spent all our money (but it was worth it) to investigate the nature of our own monstrosities to find that the ground had shifted, that there was no ground, no reference for ourselves, in relation to the other. We could see where we were going, but not where we stood, or was it the converse? The brightest minds of our generation, the strongest, swiftest creatures that had ever breathed were unable, at last, to save themselves, so we sank against the earth like weary children. I wonder whether you, a twentieth century audience, could ever hope to fail so well. We stand here, staring with a strange fascination. I realize now, that by the narrowest of margins, society had proved itself the stronger. But will it always be so? May not other and more terrible monsters even now be stirring in the darkness? And when, at last, they spring upon you can we be certain you shall beat them back a second time? The answer lies in the future. Your fears, for now, have faded into darkness.
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