Jarvelbert Humpercochran, thou art punk'd

Pulp Shatner. Yikes.
   The man himself didn't hear the half of it. The other night, after she drove me out of the barl with her Punchi Barru attack (a signature move, really, along with the Spectacle Slapoff) the brides ran into the young Ms. Matthews, young Belknap hoods in tow. She said, Hey, I saw that guy the other night. No, it was a different black guy. (She said that second sentence. End quote.) The girl said ya, we got it all sroted out adn shit, so blabbedy on with excuses and likely lies, and the brides said, Mother Nursure shining through, Sure you did, hon, and stroked her arm. There is a woman who spends too much time with the elderlies.
   We accidentally got drunk last night and I got angry at her for getting change for a $ten and then putting an entire sten into the jukenet. It seemed... insane. I have only so much sad affection to give for these (drunken or not) vignettes, these one-scene one-take zero-script plays of hers. And when I run out of sad.
   But supplies are coming in... CDs and secret provisions for the 9/18 apolitical party, thematically Because-911-is-too-soon-and-what-kind-of-bastards-do-you-take-us-for-who'd-cynically-manipulate-a-national-tragedy-for-our-own-political-gain. Secret secrets, secret even from those old ooze-secreters himself and the biodroog-one-million.

A striking curl of events

I have often wondered whether, in spite of their general fulness of shit, whether the hippies' claims of synchronicities- scoring a free bag from the dude they gave a ride all the way up 66, meeting that one chick again from the Dead show in Tulsa who was, it turns out, the daughter of his mother's best friend, the two of whom went to a Dead show in Tulsa- have anything to them. Cynical I may be, and a skeptic, but I, too, want to believe. The hippies would have one believe that belief alone is enough to tighten the knots in the karmic web, albeit in words less succinct.
     A few days ago, a colleague of mine asked whether I'd seen a Mr. Nevin Dexter lately. Old N___ had disappeared for about nine months, after as many months of constant drunkenness, yells like one brain-damaged, and general asininity. (One presumes that the arrest following his fore-ending of a convenience store dumpster whilst U.I. might have some relevance.) Your man, too, knew of N____; the last time they crossed paths, the latter and his woman gave your man a ride home, where he gave, by way of thanks, N____ a punch in the throat, and his lady a shoved-against-the-fridge kiss. I can vouch that they had it coming; N____'s woman is tempting and he himself is a nimrod. Not that he's all a rotten apple; his behavior was largely caused and affected by his father's recent passage and inheritance-leaving. I can't justify his oft-claimed claims of intention to work in some chemical capacity for The Terrorists. But I bear him no ill will, nor, after reading, might the reader.
     N_____ had been sighted recently by the colleague, and indeed by myself as well. His sighting was of the old legume loping along the street, and I myself spied him briefly in an old haunt of drink of his. As it happened, I happened upon him again that evening, wobbling down the sidewalk. That might have been the end of it, in an uninteresting way, but I gave your man's brides a ride home later.
     At the foot of a hill, we came across two young men pushing a large Bronco-type rig across the street and up the hill we'd come down. Rarely too stingy with a good deed, if it's not overinconvenient, I pulled over to push along. The leader of the twoman rubberleg band thanked me, explained that some girl had asked him to move it, and that the keys were in the backseat, which they weren't. I said, Oh, and looked at the other pusher, who was Mr D___ himself. He said, I remember you, and then lomped away, nary a lookback. I was struck by it all. One tries to do a good deed... That might have been the end of it, but I picked up your man's brides the other day.
     I walked into the clinic, and the receptionist motioned for me to wait whilst she finished her- doubtless pressing- telephony. I quickly realized that she was talking about the brides herself, and then she used my name, and spoke of "pushing it". Well. She wrapped it up with a truism: Small world, and turned to me. I agreed with her, and explained why.
     Apparently, this Mrs. David Matthews and her husband had gone to see Lynrd Skynrd this wednesday last. While the cats were away, their mousy daughter allegedly played Old-Enough-To-Drive. Allegedly, she drove their truck away, lost the keys, and asked a young skinny black kid to move her thousands of pounds truck. Mr. N___ D____ happened upon him just as I did on the two of them, and the tangled web was woven complete. And one tries to do a good deed.
     I am left with the tentative hypothesis that if one attempts to do good, then interesting things will happen. I rather doubt it, but it is a starting point, and in any case, there's no less for me to lose than society by experimentation with it.

Belate

Apparently, July has arrived, and only a month or two late. The cicadas have been doing their thing now that the contemptibly massive contemptible masses of freshmen have arrived here on campus. I saw one of their exoskeletons today, abandoned, hanging by the hookhands on an ash. A cicada's, not a frosh's. I would happily switch the two species' mating seasons, to hear the drunken WOOOOOS! only during the dog days, and the others' soothing buzzes, clicks, & whistles for the rest of the year. The only thing to do now is wait for natural selection to take its toll. What reckless drivers don't cull from the hordes, alcohol poisoning, STDs, and harrowing two-page term papers will. Harrowing.

I (no longer) hate you, Blogger

And I hate Avantbrowser worse.
"- Cannot Find Server - The web site you typed in could not be found on the internet." Have you tried looking off the internet, or maybe around its corners? What a fucking stupid insulting 404 error message. I'm a big boy; I don't need such a concrete image of the goddamned internet.
And as for the world, let it be bereft of one of the awesomest posts that OTHERWISE would have been made.
Apparently that did go through. Blogger's OK, I guess. But I still Fing hate Avant's aolspeak "PROBLEM DETECTED WITH YOUR COMPUTER! FIXING PROBLEM!" retardspeak. What's wrong? The populace doesn't understand computers? Well, let's talk down to them like mongoloid toddlers! That'll help! Ooh, and let's make more oversized and cartoonish buttons for them to push. That's sure to help them relate.
Most retarded common denominator.

Your man Wedsworth

So the Brides' friend herself became a bride this weekend, and we were invited to the littlest state in the union. It's a strange place.
     Everyone there drives like the assholes in VT, but there are so many more of them. Every other car with a dent in the side of the rear from parking two feet from the curb, and the rest dented in the front from parking against traffic, without, needless to say, signalling their intention. Rless sons of bitches.
     The wedding itself was mercifully short, but the organist's warmings up left a hard act to follow. This was in the oldest holy roman catholic and apostolic church in the state, all fresh-refurbished with shinybusy stainedglass- behind the altar was the standard crossifiance, but with what looked to be a volcano erupting in the City of Angels or something such. Anyway, the organist- whose piece took up probably 30 sqft- started off, a halfhour early, with some typically slow and brooding piece befitting the occasion. But then. And then.
     Remember the aliensong from Close Encounters? I do, and all the fresher now. Eventually, as he plaid, the dearly beloved gathered there that day started exchanging browslanty looks. As usual, the tardile vulgus was way behind my lead, my elbow-clutching giggle-stifling advanced reaction. The music symbolized, I reasoned, the otherworldly descent of God's blessing spirit of fecundity on these two of his children, and also that God prefers simple tones overlaying- or should I say underlain by- writhing arabesque weirdness. And lo! the LORD did hear, and He was pleased, and also didst He fire up His Holy Bong of Awesome. I only wish I'd thought in advance to do the same.
     Stained glasshattering highs and pewrumbling lows. The brides speculated that such rockery was the first meaning of 'pulling out all the stops.' That was awesome. Eventually, though, like all trips, it had to end and a brief bit of Pachelbel's beloved Kanon in D with a quick (but slick) segue to the wedding march, and that's the day the music died.
     And then wine while we waited to eat, and then wine while we ate, and then wine while we waited for the wine to run out. And then it was two-thirty and I thinkt, I'm drunk at 230, and then the wine did run out, and then napping. Alarm set for six, but it seems not to've gone off. The brides woke me at 648, saying, Look at the clock, look at what time it is. I was surprised.
     She went about her refreshening, dazed, and then mused, I can't believe we slept all night! I said, We didn't. It was still the same night, not. It was funny.
     We went to a thing, something like a gargantuan mall. On its sixth floor was an even more gargantuan ...place. It was as if Chuck E. Cheese collided with a casino at such a speed that not only were the animatrons and strippers thrown out, but a hole was torn in space- in the space six mall-storeys above Rhode Island. I swear to God, that place was bigger than the state that contained it. Earl and Bangers? Bucky and Mashed? Some two guys. Video games (among which exactly TWO had joysticks) and flashing lights, fake gambling and skeeball, every coin-op entertainment imaginable- paradoxically, they were all NWO paycard operated- stretching off into the horizon. And a cloying gauze of unreality pervading throughout. It was a fitting end to a day that started with a musical prophet rending asunder the upper firmament to let flow the holy low-pH waters of the Lord.

Lady Chafferly

The nerve of some people.
   In getting into my cups this monday last, I was joined by a few so-called friends. Words were exchanged in the light and congenial publically housed banter characteristic of such ale saroons, and eventually, in a manner characteristic of such places, lines were crossed ere they were even scratched in the sand. Some lines should go without drawing.
   She called me a Chigger.
   One may imagine how this stroked me; I immediately disclaimed my offense at that, that my heritage is Chafrican American, and I was rather chafed by the of-color slur. And the pot calling the kettle home for tea! She's one to talk, the cross-eyed Guinnese trollop-cream tart bastard of an itinerant Quebec harelop sired of his uncle and aunt with a pathologically parochial highland McDago. She "passes gas," not farts, and yet can pass such judg(e)ment against my people and me and expect it to pass our standards of propriety?
   For shame and forsythia tea to soothe my abraised pride.
   This rubs my delicate sensibilities, and not in the right way.

Voice clamorous

Life is harsh in the desert. It's a constant struggle against the elements: the sun's relentless bake, the night's biting cold, periodic sandstorms, and the constant search for scarce food and water. To survive, one must become as harsh as the terrain itself. In the special case of human desertdwellers, individual traits are not all that's informed by the desert. It creates its own culture. And religion.
&nbs;&nbs;&nbs;Who would create such a harsh and brutal world but just such a harsh and brutal (the religionists in question euphemistically call these traits Just) god? So it went with the hebrews, with Yahweh smiting more often than he blessed. They, though, eventually became civilized- building cities, trading with their (admittedly unclean) goyish neighbors. Notably, this process was greatly accelerated by their captivity by the worldly old persians. Compare Isaiah with Elijah- the god of the earlier prophet slaughtered his rivals, and that of the later merely subjugated them to his people (in promise, anyway). Then, of course, they were eventually diasporized across eurasia, and, being always in the minority in their new nations, developed rather a softer interpretation of God's will.
&nbs;&nbs;&nbs;Hundreds of years later came Mohammed, with a similarly dry sense of divinity. Early Islamic history is as vicious or more as the early jews'. And again, we have a harsh desert people, nomads. Again, we have a harsh desert god with ONE goddamned way of doing anything. His way or the highway to hell. Although the Koran contains mixed injunctions on dealing with other 'people of the book,' their treatment in the early days was generally on the worse side of better. And but at the peak of Muslim civilization, during Europe's dark ages, the more urbane realms of Islamdom treated its religious minorities better than Christiandom treated its own jews. With city life, with trade with diverse peoples, intellectual intercourse bred ideas that could flourish and soften in ways impossible for desert wanderers.
&nbs;&nbs;&nbs;With the senescence of islamdom, and the rise of the secular west, much of the progress made in islamic philosophy was lost. Again, in Arabia and mountainy old Afghanistan, the old tribal ways and short brutal nastiness of life have always precluded liberalization. Hence we have movements the like of Wahhabism, which is essentially anglo puritanism without the funny hats, but with turbans and burqhas. I've actually done cheated the afghans there; Rumi, for instance, with his divine love poetry was one of them. The sufis always stain the tablecloth. Anyway, sufism, with its focus on one's own relationship with the divine, has always pissed off fundamentalists, who are more concerned that everyone else is doing exactly what they should according to Abu Shaikh Whomever's interpretation. I read recently about Taliban having shut down some sufi's tomb, where young people would gather at night and sing. No fun allowed. 'tsays so right in the koran.
&nbs;&nbs;&nbs;So again, the One True Pathers are fucking up shit for everyone else both inside and out- of islam. It's not just freedom that they hate.
&nbs;&nbs;&nbs;Actually, barring most of the physical attacks and open suppression of women, this all seems somehow familiar. A semi-civilized race of desert people, obsessed with the law of justice over compassion, hold the One True key of interpretation of the holy words. They seek to destroy their rivals, the impostors who purport to have a key as well, and to assure that everyone follows The One True Rulebook.
&nbs;&nbs;&nbs;Ah, Texas Christians. If you could only focus on all you have in common with the terrorists. A similar alliance worked wonders in Afghanistan, helping Taliban against the commies. Obviously, supporting secular dictators doesn't work; look at the tattered remnants of the Shah of Iran, and of Mr. Hussein. Maybe a dialogue would help them see the light. Unless the terrorists are converted to Republicanism, the terrorists have already won.