Remixed Metaphors

This last weekend I had the opportunity to hear a long-time lover of the herb valiantly attempt to repeat the line "Why drink and drive when you can smoke and fly" to a group of people. Having just learned the phrase five seconds previous, and being very much under the influence of the herb whose qualities it espouses, our hero earnestly squeezed forth this delightful nugget of wisdom:

"Why drive... when you can smoke?"

This is now my new motto in life.

Mo'

The Land of Nod, Pt. 2

I arrive at the park to find a group of young children sitting there playing instruments under the guidance of my father. Good thing I have this small guitar, even though I have no clue how to play it.

The sky is getting darker and there are quite a few people milling about. As I sit down and prepare to be idolized by the children for pretending to know how to play a guitar (I plan to tap the wooden panel rhythmically a lot), a blood-red World War I-era biplane swoops in from the west. Set against the dark and cloudy sky and flying low, it would be an ominous thing even if it weren't approximately five times as large as a commercial airliner and fifteen times as large as a regular biplane. With a deep and horrible drone it passes us by and vanishes into the east.

As I prepare to start faking guitar chops, a military helicopter is seen in the east, hovering just above the apartment buildings across the street. It, also, is grotesquely oversized, and it has dark smoke-lines coming from its underside and extending horizontally into the distance, like it just fired off a couple of missiles. It hovers unnaturally backwards to the north, in the process firing off missiles which leave dark trails of smoke but never seem to impact on anything.

No matter. I begin playing the small guitar, and to my surprise find that I am rather adept at it. Maybe it's because it's such a small one. All the children stop playing and start looking at me wonderingly. My father beams with pride. I suddenly become aware that there are quite a lot more people in the park than I realized at first. One of my best friends sidles up and gives me that look, half-jealousy and half-admiration, and I sense that the next words out of his mouth are going to be "Well, you multi-talented motherfucker." In spasmodic anticipation of the compliment, I fuck up the song and accidentally break the guitar.

As if to save me from the feelings of humiliation sure to follow, the dream at this point treats me to an ellipsis, the duration of which I do not know. I am immediately aware of the facts of the present situation, though; there is a nuclear world war on, it is being fought with grotesquely oversized aircraft, and there is a gigantic bomb on its way here to obliterate everything.

I step out on the back porch. This is a house I lived in as a child. There is a giant, endless field across the street from our back yard, and it is on fire. Behind it, in the distance, my city burns. A sense of almost joyous finality lies in the air. This, then, is it. Here's where it all ends. I have vague memories of having said goodbye to everyone. There is a strange, bittersweet glory to the whole situation. We are all going to die, but we will be remembered. History will mourn us.

Somewhere amidst the wash of dramatic thoughts, I am aware of the blinding flash, the burning up of the film, and I see myself from a third-person perspective, arms outstretched, embracing the end. Whatever lessons there could be had from the whole thing are completely negated by its intense thematic similarity to the movie Deep Impact. I am aware of this even as I am vaporized by the bomb.

Waking up in my bed this morning, with drool on my pillow and my left arm asleep, was a bit like going to a Limp Bizkit concert and learning the entire band had been wiped out in a freak embroidering accident. You know; an anticlimax, but a good one.

Mo'

The Jolly Dickhead

I know this guy. He is unique. He is probably one of the most unique characters I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. This is not to say that I necessarily like him (though I certainly don't hate him). It's more to do with the fact that he occupies a certain social role I've not seen anyone occupy in the same way before, and that role is the "man-about-town." It's all he is. It defines him completely. And it's funny as hell, because in and of itself, it's not quite enough to make a complete person. As is so often the case with people, it's the deficiencies that make him interesting.

He possesses a sort of bouncing bluster that, inexplicably, manages to make him hip and childlike at the same time. Occasionally he'll say something so grossly, out-of-the-ballpark inappropriate that people instinctively gloss it over and act like the words didn't just come out of his mouth, because to accept their existence is to accept the creation of a social H-bomb that will wipe out not just your conversation but most likely the entire party, and quite possibly some of the shindigs in the immediate area. I've seen this happen on a number of occasions, and it always strikes me as hilarious. He gets to say whatever he likes, and people don't just ignore it; they simply don't hear it.

He very overtly adheres to the kind of personal meritocracy that I wish more people were honest about. It's very simple, really: in the universe according to him, people's personal importance is strictly dictated by their social stature. If you're Johnny Well-Known, then you're automatically and inflappably more important than John Q. Public. If you're Jack Famous, then Johnny Well-Known can go fuck himself, at least for the time being. I suspect a lot of people go in for this mode of thinking while not owning up to it, perhaps not even to themselves; he, meanwhile, displays it proudly on his sleeve.

Since he's the guy with the connections - the guy who cuts the deals, the guy who fixes the problems - he's always on the move. There's always someone more important than you that he could be networking with at this very moment, and that person needs to be found and networked with. This means that whenever you're in conversation with him, there's a strict limit imposed on how long you can make your sentences. I amuse myself sometimes by counting the number of syllables I'm able to get out before he starts looking away (roughly 12), spots someone else (roughly 20) and is gone, like a fart on the summer breeze (30, if you're lucky).

But he's real jovial about it all. And here's the funny thing: even with all that, his joviality is completely genuine. It isn't forced and it isn't faked. He doesn't hate you, it's just that you're not as important as some of these other people, and he has no gentle way of easing you into that fact. It's that man/child dichotomy thing. He's the only person I know who could carry the title "Jolly Dickhead" pinned to his lapel, and it would make immediate and obvious sense to everyone who knows him. "Oh," they'd say. "That makes immediate and obvious sense."

I bumped into him the other day. Roughly paraphrased and liberally time-stretched, here's how our conversation went:

JD: (smiling ear-to-ear) Heeey man, you going to the thing tonight?

Me: Oh, I dunno, I haven't really been feeling all that great. Still...

JD: (begins skimming the premises)

Me: ...sorta recovering from that flu, not sure if I should be partying yet.

JD: (fixes his gaze on a point somewhere directly behind my head) Yeah, you probably have ball cancer.

Me: Plus, I hit the bottle pretty hard last weekend, sorta want to stay away from that for a couple weeks. So what about...

JD: (walks away)


It's probably a good thing there aren't many more like him, but the birdwatcher in me is nevertheless glad that his particular breed exists.

Here's to you, Jolly Dickhead.

Mo'

Simian Disco

Here's what I did: I searched everywhere. I went on beyond all reasonable limits of common sense. I searched under every rock. I peeked into every cranny. I explored all the nooks. And here's what I came up with:

We are one crazy bunch of monkeys.

This may not seem like a profound truth to those of you familiar with the basic facts of biology. This was, however, a source of endless amusement to me this evening, as I maneuvered myself through a variable set of scenarios in which my completely arbitrary standing towards other monkeys in my immediate surroundings thoroughly dictated the way I was able to communicate with them.

If there's anything homo sapiens will be remembered for in the trackless depths of Time Itself, I suspect it will be our monumental capacity to build walls around ourselves. The lengths to which we go to craft shells which carefully describe exactly what we want the other monkeys to see will, I suspect, continue to amaze me for as long as I live. I vividly recall a particular moment tonight where I was completely overcome by the silliness of it all; this fantastic congregation of simians, all gathered for no greater purpose than to gawp at each others' flashy clothing and confirm the "individuality" of every monkey present, as if there was a greater meaning to each ridiculous haircut or pink t-shirt or nose ring.

This is not to say that I consider myself excluded; to the contrary, I am as much a member of this monkey discotheque as the next guy. I carefully guard my image, I make reasonably sure my turf isn't trod upon, I litter my surroundings with artefacts designed to reinforce my sense of separateness from the next monkey, and I create things which - in my wildest imaginings - are destined to set me apart, apart from all these god damn monkeys.

Every once in a while, in the process of doing so, I slip up and fall flat on my face.

I'm pretty sure this is where that whole humanity thing goes and happens.

Mo'

The Life And Times Of Count Fnoonf Du Fnoonf Fnoonfburgh The Fnoonfth, Vol. 1

I was born on an unspecified day in the last quarter of the last century, in the quaint capital of a quaint country.

Just like most people not blessed with eidetic memory (and not presently two years or younger*), I have fairly few memories of my earliest years. I think my first memory is of the time I unwittingly simulated a repetitive sex act between a male (the lamp plug) and a female (the wall socket), and I think the jolt I received as a reward is probably the reason why this is my first memory. To this day, I have a vague, nagging fear of being electrocuted every time I have sex.

Another early memory revolves around fire. I was playing around on the living room floor near my venerable grandmother, who liked nothing better than to sit in her wicker chair, read philosophy and smoke Winston after Winston after Winston, like she had something against them and wanted them exterminated as fast as possible (they won out in the end, but she'd had a good run and accepted her fate with dignity).

So I'm playing near her and I smell something weird that I've never smelled before, so I go in the kitchen and tell mom about it, and then she takes me back out to the living room and notices that one of grandma's cigarettes has started a small blaze on the lamp shade. I remember my mother's alarm, and I remember the smell; dark, heady and chemical, so frighteningly rich with un-nature. I also distinctly recall being aware of my mother repressing some of her alarm in order not to frighten me. Since then I've smelled plenty of burning things, but nothing has ever quite come close to that particular acrid, synthetic stench.

There is also one very powerful memory that I'm inclined to chalk up to youthful confusion between dream life and waking life, because I am fairly certain it couldn't have happened. I was standing in our living room looking out over the neighborhood (we lived on the third floor and the view was rather decent), and I was watching this, I dunno, maybe 200-foot panda blustering around, trying to make a seat for itself on one of the buildings about a block or so away. I think this is a dream because, dude, we totally don't even have giant pandas where I'm from.

It was apparent from very early on that I was a pretty weird kid. Irrational fears began to manifest themselves very quickly; I lived in mortal terror of the vacuum cleaner (which became utter panic whenever the thing was turned on) and it soon became apparent to me that the lamp posts outside my window were, in fact, planning on reaching inside and snatching me while I was asleep, presumably to eat me or sell me for halogen or whatever it is that disturbed lamp posts do with small children. For this reason I flatly refused to sleep, play, or in any way subsist inside my room; the living room became my turf instead. I imagine it must have been fun for my parents, explaining to visitors why the main room of the house had been annexed by a neurotic two-and-a-half year old tyrant.

"It's the lamp post cabal thing. Your... your child has that too, right?"


Next up: Thunderous oratory, banana tragedies, early DJ chops and my first video game. Ta for now.


* Those who are two years or younger should stop reading right now, because there's some totally racy stuff coming up. Thanks.

Mo'