You may be a 90s kid if you...

Remember when Michael Jackson used to go on tour in his Land-Leviathan, sit in the back, and drag two pool sticks along the roadway because he liked the way it sounded.

Remember when they expanded the Eiffel Tower and built Desert Storm: the Rollercoaster inside of it.

Remember "Dad's bringing the helicopter around" or "Inferior men have more fun!"

And another thing: how come people don't make lasagna for their lovers anymore?

Hawktopus

Hawkland is the perfect place for hawks. So much so, in fact, that it didn't take octopus, that had migrated across the river from Octopusland, too much time to evolve into hawk-like creatures, the males being octopus at birth, and perfect replicas of hawks in adulthood.

And hawktopus are born live, directly from the body of the mother, in isolated birthing pools. I make it a point never to eat or harm something that is born in this way. It is an indication of great intelligence and sacredness.

When I was young, another boy tried to kill one of the octopus mothers. I would not help him, but each time he dived into the pool, he would drown before he got to the bottom, and I would resuscitate him.

Would you say that makes me an accessory to the crime?

Good Churches, Good Horses

I asked my little woman, the flower of my heart, "do you respect your father?"

She shook her head.

"Do you respect your grandfather?"
  
She nodded, "he was the one who first introduced me to the works of Richard Phillips."

"Will you live with me as my wife?"

"Yes."

I am not a true believer as she is, but I love organ music and churches. That is the architecture of the good world, the final victory world. And protection is there found that follows in the mind always. The sweet musty cathedral world built of chords and kind intervals.

And the loving of a noble woman is a horse who has been very important to us, a good animal, with a heart, a brain, a fine skeleton and good strong flesh.

We got stopped in the hotel hallway by a group of people.

"Don't you know she's wanted for multiple counts of first-degree murder?" These people were bounty hunters. I had to think of a way for us to evade them, and quickly. I took the leader aside and in hushed tones admonished him.

"What are you trying to do? I'm from the home office. You're going to ruin this for all of us. Leave it to me." I left him bemused and hustled her into the room.

They didn't buy it, I'm sure, but it bought us some time. I'm sure they're still out there, only momentarily unsure of how to proceed.

What do we do now? Do we dress up in funny outfits? Do I sling her limp body over my shoulder and act as if I had killed her?

It's no use. We won't be able to grow up and the grown-up world is not safe for us as we are, with such equipment as we have, only kitsch and slogans from advertising campaigns to define what struggles we can attempt. The bounty hunters must be allowed to have their way.

The time of the mamas and papas is over. We will remain little boys and girls, exactly until the day when things begin to happen.

Dwarf

There is a homicidal dwarf out in the hall. Actually, he doesn't want to kill me so much as he wants to fuck me. Just now, when I went out there, he rushed me and pinned me to the floor. I just barely held him back from satisfying his desire.

I thought, before I managed to get free of his uncanny dwarf strength, "I've had a long and beautiful life, and here I am, about to be fucked by some kind of an evil dwarf."

I tried to go up into the attic, but he was already there, grinning down at me. It's safe in here, though, in my parents' bedroom. I already checked under the bed and he wasn't there.

You know, I think I've got the solution to this whole dwarf problem. He can only be killed by being stabbed through the brain. I've got a pair of scissors here, and pretty soon, I'm going to go back out there and try to summon him.

"Come and get me, dwarf," I'll say, "come say goodnight."

Victoria's Secret/Mini-Golf

I wandered into Victoria's Secret.
They said, what size are you?
I said, I'm just looking for a friend.

 * * *

I found the letters you left at the mini-golf place. You were hiding out there when you were on the run. It's a good place to hide, even though there's a camera. I know because I've hidden there, myself.

The things I found that pertained to me:
     
     -A picture you had drawn of us in twin beds
     -A picture you had drawn of me with a guitar

You must have dropped the love words into the whirlpool feature.

Mr. Kiriyama

Mr. Kiriyama was my hero. He sold dead fish at his fish market and living fish at his pet store. He helped me when my brother put a "wolf fish" in my room that kept biting me, even after its head had been cut off. The wolf fish came from the deepest trenches of the ocean, where primeval creatures untouched by millions of years of higher evolution still dwell. Mr. Kiriyama came from Japan.

He was bald, with long hair on the back and sides, and he had a high, bony forehead and a mustache.

He gave me a betta in a plastic box of water, once and told me the fluttering and floating creature was a dream that had been extracted from someone's head, even though we both knew it was just a fish.

The Village of Sorrows

The Village of Sorrows is located on the sea. Not on an island, but on an imagining of flatness. This is the place where all the evil thoughts live. If you have a thought that scares you, and you are within the boundaries of the Village of Sorrows, it immediately comes true. If you imagine that thousands of spiders live in your stomach and that they pour out of your asshole at night and come home in the morning, and that you can feel them, moving around in there all day, then that will become your reality.

I suppose your relationship with the spiders could become, over time, quite companionable. You would always be able to count on them, leaving every night and coming home every morning. You might even begin to welcome them home, the way a housewife welcomes her husband at the end of a long day's work.

Chronicles of the Tales of Legend, Book 1

The kingdom was in disarray. Our finest warrior had been transformed into a cat, and wandered off into the suburbs. Just when I thought I had cornered the little tortie on a twilit street, another, nearly identical cat padded up and stood beside her. I couldn't tell which one was, in fact, the Amazon Captain, and which was just an ordinary alley cat.

Carrot Farm/Aquatic Pets

The Carrot Farm exists on a sloping, hilly piece of land by a river, surrounded on the other three sides by forest.

If you are of a mind, you can rent a plot of land, buy your seeds from the Carrot Farm, and try your luck. Different sections of the farm have better or worse soil, or sunlight, so the quality of the carrots varies pretty widely. All of the different farmers are there, hawking their goods.

One of the more successful farmers was selling, in addition to carrots, carrot cake cupcakes with icing, he informed me, also made entirely from carrots. I said, no thanks.

I was more interested in the two huge aquariums that comprised one of the long sides of his rectangular stall. They were both full of all kinds of sea creatures. Cephalopods, Ammonites, tiny metallic sea-horses, and many other things I couldn't identify. All cavorting around in a realistic undersea environment.

A hand-made sign hung above and between the tanks. It read, "AQUATIC PETS for sale".

A long, sleek creature, like a hybrid of seal and cetacean, swam out of a pseudo-coral formation and regarded me, through the glass. It was man-shaped, with flipper-like limbs, a whiskery face, and expressive black eyes.

Presently, a smaller creature of the same species appeared in the left-hand tank. It was then that they both began to communicate with me. 

"Help us," they reverberated in watery near-speech, "let us out."

* * *

The farmer was counting money.

"Those creatures-- you've got to get them out of there!"

"They're just animals."

"But-- they can talk! they can think! They're not pets!"

The farmer sighed and looked up, "They're my parents."

"What?"

"They can't survive on land. And I've got to keep them separate. Otherwise they'll mate and we'll just have more people like me walking around. I provide a suitable aquatic environment and plenty of fish-flavored flakes for them to eat, and that's all the law stipulates. If you've got a problem with how I take care of my parents, I suggest you take it up with Social Services, but they won't tell you any different."

There wasn't anything I could do. And that was the story of the Carrot Farm.

The Brain

The brain is a squishy, gray organ we keep all our important memories in. And all our hopes and dreams for the future.

Autumn Water

Autumn water, tidal pool.
Autumn water, clear and cool.


There are still rusty blooms beneath
and limpet beds like fields of fallen
trampled panicles of white
hydrangea.

The ocean world is getting colder.

Brought to You by Secret

"The old man was called, in the language of Persia, Hassan-I-Sabah, and his people were called the Hashishin. He had caused a valley between two mountains to be enclosed, and turned into a garden, so large and beautiful his people believed it was Paradise. And there was a fortress at the entrance, strong enough to resist all the world. Now the old man caused those of his young men whom he had chosen to be his Hashishin, his assassins, to be given a potion which cast them into a deep sleep, and to be carried into the garden, so that when they awoke, they believed they were in Paradise. And there were damsels and young girls there, who dallied with them to their hearts' content, so that they had what young men desire. Thus it was that when the old man decided to send one of his assassins upon a mission, such as to have a prince slain, he would send for one of these youths and say, 'Go thou and kill, and when thou returnest, my angels will bear thee into Paradise; and should'st thou die, nevertheless, I will send my angels to carry thee back into Paradise.'" --from The Travels of Marco Polo via Turner

"Prove you're not a robot" -ReCaptcha

"Look, you've got to try this. Trust me, you'll love it." My friend practically dragged me up to the counter where a number of handguns were laid out.

"Fuck you." Came the standard greeting of the service sector, from the red-haired woman behind the counter, whose attention we had attracted. Ubiquity has dulled the fight-or-flight frisson this phrase, and most profanity, used to carry. "How can I help you?"

"OK. Let's do this. Let's shoot some guns." I managed to lather up some superficial enthusiasm for the idea of gun-shooting. And why not? I had nothing to lose. At the very least, trying to be enthusiastic was something with which I could occupy myself for the time being.

My friend handed me a revolver. Carbon alloy. Knuckle duster grip. I opened the cylinder. Not loaded. "Where are the bullets?"

"You ever fired a gun before?" said the counter lady, "you sure you know how to do this?"

I clicked the cylinder back into place. "Sure, like this, right?" I pulled the hammer back, aimed it straight at her heart, and pulled the trigger click

"Bang," I said.

She was unimpressed: "before I can let you shoot any guns, you have to memorize three poems."

"Poems?"

"Poems." She slump-sighed slightly, suggesting that my blankly bemused response was nothing new to her, and offered me the boiler-plate. "It's a safety precaution required by law. Studies have shown that familiarity with poetry increases empathy and reduces the likelihood that someone will use a firearm in the commission of a violent crime."

I looked at my friend who assured me it was absolutely worth it.

Before I knew it, the red-haired bitch had gathered up a stack of forms and I was following the truculent, competent swish of her retail-sector haunches into the complex of corridors and glass-windowed offices, store-rooms, and workshops at the rear of the store.

"Have you ever even read a poem before?" she asked over her shoulder, in a way that would suggest that she could no longer contain her irritation and resentment toward me.
  
I tried to think of a poem. "Two roads," I said as I followed, "converged... in a... holy... wood?"

"That's pretty good. Let's see how you do with these."

"Fuck you," I said.

"Fuck. You." she said, loudly, in the other direction.


* * *

I went into the room I was supposed to go into. They strapped me into a big dentist's chair surrounded by all kinds of apparatus. A round-faced, bored-looking man in glasses unceremoniously inserted an IV needle into my arm.

"What is this?" I asked.

He said, "just relax" and flipped some switches. Machinery hummed and the chair, which was connected to a pneumatic lift, rose nearly to the ceiling until my face was level with a machine that looked like a TelePrompTer crossed with an eye-exam machine from which a microphone-tipped tendril extended toward my mouth.

Glowing green text began to scroll down the screen.

     nasia of swine may be a one- or two-step process. A one-step pr
     ig permanently insensible and results in death. A two-step proce

     rs the pig insensible, but requires a secondary step to achieve its 
     d step is typically achieved by exsanguination or pithing (see pa
     tant to understand the di erence between the two processes. 

Before it had finished scrolling he asked me. "What is this about?"

"...Euthanasia?"

"NO. Read it again." He started it over.

Heat and sickness surged inside. They were pumping something into me.

* * *

I was sick and weak.

I couldn't tell how much time had passed. It could have been days. I couldn't turn my head, or look away from the screen, but the steady stream of God-knows-what chemical kept me awake in a never-ending near-dream of scrolling green text.

     n dioxide (CO2) replaces oxygen in the
     and causes rapid onset of anesthesia
     subsequent death due to respiratory
     t. Although unconscious, pigs may
     ience involuntary vocalizations and
     ents when carbon dioxide is used 

     ctly. 

"What is this about?" he asked.

"Fuck you is what it's about." I felt hollow.

"Read it again."

"Pig... fucker..." I spat.

"Again."

"...monster... trucks." I felt something stir in me.

He perked up, "what?"

I was surprised too. I tried again, "superhero characters."

The battery-acid flow immediately switched to pure milk- and-honey, flooding my veins: a huge handsome sigh, an untying, a tangle of knots sliding gently undone, leaving my perspective transported into psychic weightlessness; the state of ataraxia; vitality and awareness blooming out of every branch of my nervous system. The chair had come completely off its track and was floating in midair before I realized that it was my intent that had broken it free. I could go wherever I wanted, do whatever I wanted. Laughing and hollering out of the euphoria that was building like a buzzing storm in the core of my body, "Do the Dew!" The whirring from the machines picked up. "I'm the Best a Man Can Get!"

As I began the joyful work of dismantling every piece of machinery in the chamber, using only the musculature of my will, I was dimly aware of the operator's voice reporting excitedly into the intercom, "...you'd better get down here... he's having a bit of an, ah... reaction?"

What are my values? I wondered as I regarded the technician who was currently getting in touch with his inner prey-animal, glancing at me intermittently with increasingly terror-stricken eyes as he jabbered into the intercom. And I couldn't shake the sense that this was all part of "the experience" so to speak.

I chambered my intention and struck home, as if with a pulsing, distorting sword mounted on the fulcrum of my mind. A sudden crack and a shower of sparks sent the young man sprawling, as the circuits and plastic casing of the intercom box withered into bitter smoke.

* * *

Later, I stood with the red-haired woman in a vast warehouse. The rapture that had possessed me during the poetry test had become dormant again, but I found the formerly diffident whelp of gunlust, the urge to get my finger on a trigger, to hold the deadly weight of a pistol in my hand, had grown into a slavering, growling hound within whatever span of time and distance separated me from our first meeting.

"Before you can shoot a gun, there's just one more thing you have to do and that's learn how to use a knife."

We were standing on a big rug that had all sorts of medieval weapons on it. I shrugged and stifled the childish pout my face wanted to fall into. How many other frustrated young men have been ensnared in this fashion, I wondered.

"Time for another poetry session? Well I don't like your sense of aesthetics, lady. Final Solution, sponsored content... what's my next lesson -- are you going to have me -- cutting people up? in the name of Pepsi-Cola...?", I near-spluttered.

Calmly, she intoned, "Do you want to shoot a gun or not?"

I sighed and nodded. A gentle knot of tension passed through her body and the rug started scudding along the concrete floor, carrying its metal and human cargo easily along with it.

I happened to have a super-advanced Swiss Army knife in my pocket. Might as well get started, I thought. I pulled it out and used the built-in blue silk handkerchief option to wipe the sweat off my face.

"What's to stop me from putting an axe into your back right now?" I said. "Fear of punishment?"

She ignored me and navigated our terrestrial magic carpet through a portal-like opening, and into a long, winding corridor.

I wasn't satisfied. I was an important person, or at least I had been before I became imprisoned here. "I'll tell you what. I have a lot of irons in the fire, you know. I can't go down for just..." I grabbed her shoulder. She turned suddenly, and I noticed that she was beautiful. 

Her eyes were clear and wide, and brilliant blue. Her long kinky red hair was thick and healthy, and only slightly frizzy. Her skin was fair and freckled. She was soft like a girl, but well-built, athletic-seeming.

She was strong enough for a man, but fully a woman.

My heart quailed and a single jangling chord resonated through my whole body, "one... person..."

     Who are you?

     My name is Sophia

     Where did you come from, Sophia?

     Somewhere else


The little mind-flames leaped up again and reached toward her.

"Isn't it wonderful," she said, as I touched her hand and she smiled, "to go from young and beautiful, to transparent and free?" We lay down among the cutlery.

"Yes. It's wonderful", I said and held her close to me, breathing in her scent that was as a fresh as a spring morning.

Scorching awareness began to coalesce into a single stream that flowed into her vastness. We started to go transparent. The rug kept cruising along.

"There's so much living to do," she said. We had nearly disappeared. "So much living."

We rolled on, transparent.

Where do babies come from?

It's quite simple. When a person dies they turn back into a baby. We got you after your grandmother died. When I die, I will turn into your daughter. This is the reason death is so celebrated in our culture: it is the means by which our race is continually rejuvenated.

Dear Penthouse

The other day, I dropped by my place of employment, even though I wasn't working, with my girlfriend, whom we'll call Linda. An older woman I work with, whom we'll call Carrie, was there, and she was really perturbed with me, as if she were only then beginning to fathom the depths of my moral depravity.

"He can't be trusted!" she said "check his pockets! He's probably going to steal everything he can get his hands on!" I turned them inside-out to show that they were empty. She was not impressed. 
"He has no home inside. His heart is empty."

Suddenly she grabbed Linda by the hand and led her off somewhere. I knew the room they would be headed to, though I wasn't sure if they knew that I knew it.

Listening outside the door, I could hear Carrie, still faintly declaiming to the doll-silent Linda. I whispered magic words into the keyhole that sounded like a mouse skeleton being crushed. The lock heard and relaxed, the bolt slid back.

At the other end of the room, in the moonglow of the night window, was a bunk bed. Upon the top bunk, a slow double shape was making small soft noises. The smell of sex was very strong, almost caustic, like ammonia.

I approached the bed and peeled the sheet off. They were sixty-nining each other passionately, skin sweat-slick and fingers threaded through tangled, saturated hair.

I watched them as long as I could. And that's all.

Ecology of the Joyful Beasts

In that South Sea region known as Pelagu, often referred to as the "eighth continent", on the slopes of its eight vast misty landmasses, in the rainy season, the owlbeasts return. They dodder like drunken babies in the highlands, alone and in groups, with owl heads and stout teddy-bear bodies.

I saw an owlbeast in a rainstorm once, through my window, scampering in perfect obedience to whatever whim possessed it in that moment, often stumbling and struggling mightily to right itself, before flinging itself headlong into its next adventure, considering no past and hardly any future.

They have survived in some numbers, despite deforestation, largely because no one has yet to determine a use for an owlbeast carcass. They have nothing to offer humankind but the example of their blithe, idiotic joy. They do nothing but play, they know nothing else.

Several times, I thought this one might drown as it floundered in the torrent, but I stopped myself from rising to its aid. Better to let life and death take their courses, as they have for so long before humanity arrived here.

When I was a child, I used to save the worms I came upon, frying on summer pavements, moist and alive, struggling to reach nowhere in particular. Their failure moved me, I conducted those I could into the cool amnesty of the grass. I knew I was on the side of the worms, on the side of life.

I abandoned this habit after I asked myself, what does a worm do, after its ordeal is over? Does it settle down in a nice house with its worm wife and worm children, grateful for the chance to start again? No, it is led by instinct into some inevitable misadventure, shrivels on a sidewalk, drowns in a rain puddle, is fed to a baby bird by a mama bird. Worms are ordinary creatures and worm-death is ordinary.

So it seemed with the creature I then saw before me. It didn't seem afraid or worried, even though it was clearly in some danger. It's a mystery to me how they ever thrived, even in an ecosystem where predators are few, being as clumsy and hyperactive as they are. Yet, I don't think I've ever seen one dead that hadn't been rifle-shot.

It wasn't until after the rain stopped and the 'beast found its way into the open door of the laundromat across the green sward of invincible Pelagu grass that I was moved to defend it.

I shot to my feet when a group of settlers emerged from among the washers and dryers and set upon the oblivious creature; headed for the door and grabbed for the Stick I Thought Might Be Good For Something I had brought in from outside, thinking it might be good for something.  Immediately, it broke in my grasp, into three pieces. I chose the largest, and stepped outside.

There were four of them. I remember distinctly, the foremost, a black woman in her forties or fifties, in a rumpled beige raincoat, grinning at me as she saluted.

The Stars and Stripes appeared behind the last noble defenders of the Pelagu Center Settlement Laundromat.

Zee German Part II

The German man came into the store again a few weeks later.

"I am looking for a book about American music. I would like to learn more about American music, since I live in America."

I showed him where the books about music were. "Uhh… this one is about Jazz… and this one is about Blues."

"No, no. I need a book about all of American music."

There was a huge book on the shelf entitled MUSIC. I got it down from the shelf and opened it.

"This is a book about all music, from classical to the present day."

He took the book from me and looked through it, rapidly shuffling the pages. "No, no. I need a book about just American music."

"I-- uhh, guess we don't have what you're looking for."

He sighed, irritably, and slumped his shoulders.

A round hippie lady with close-cropped, bleached hair, who had been browsing nearby, offered her own suggestion. "How about that?" pointing toward the Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll.

"Oh yeah," I brightened. "How about that?"

He frowned, "Rock and Roll? No. I want a book about American music."

"Well, it has all kinds of music in it, not just Rock. Jazz, Blues, Folk, Country, Electr--"

"No, thank you." He trundled toward the front entrance.

I shrugged. "Thanks," I said to the hippie lady.

"Oh, no problem," she smiled over her shoulder as I started back for the register, and went back to looking at whatever it was she was looking at.

Mama Tell Your Babies They Live In Real-Time (2012): a review of the greatest movie ever made *SPOILERS* *ENTIRE PLOT REVEALED IN EXPLICIT DETAIL*

It was touted as the greatest film ever made, a multi-media experience that went beyond film into the realm of something not completely understood. I was skeptical.

The curtain comes up. A man staring out to sea. He is about to say something.

Flash back to his childhood. A skinny, sad kid who is going to a snobby school. He has to deliver a speech in front of the whole class, even though he suffers from spasms that afflict his arms and legs, the result of a congenital neuro-muscular condition. He practices day and night to get everything right, but still, he is afraid. To be contorted by his disease, to have his limbs turn to serpents, his tongue to inert clay, in front of the whole class, would be devastating.

He begs the headmaster to let him do something else, anything else. The headmaster, slowly and sadly, shakes his head. His mother finds him crying underneath a desk, his arms and legs are strangling him. Finally his mother tells the headmaster that he cannot give the speech because it is killing him. (The music is very sad during this portion.)

They do eventually let him graduate and he grows out of his condition. He gets a degree in some kind of advanced biochemistry which enables him to get a job with the military. The young scientist is put to work in an underground bunker, testing cultures that have developed over thousands of years in huge vats of milk.

He wanders off from the lab one day into a hallway he never noticed before. Sculptures of the heads of aliens and monsters from the movies hang on the walls. He meets a tall alien who takes him to the "magic workshop" where the movies are made. He meets "the wizard" who shows him, step-by-step, the craft of creating special effects. Finally, the wizard shows him a montage of his greatest films. Of course the boy has seen all of this footage before, but it is suffused with new meaning because he understands the magic that went into its creation. It all culminates in the scene from "King Arthur" where the Great Tower rises into view.

I start crying because it's so powerful. An actor comes from behind me and takes me by the hand and leads me to another section of the audience where I am spoken to by old women about small town gossip. They whisper into my ears and I close my eyes because I don't know what else to do.

Spotlights come up on several people scattered throughout the audience, myself included. We are accused of crimes and told to rise. I come to the front of the theater and stand next to Lewis, a local celebrity. Lewis is accused of pandering to his audience and sentenced to sit in the dungeon for the remainder of the film. Grinning, he saunters off to serve his sentence and nudges me as he goes past. "This is great, huh?"

The light falls on me. "Ian Smith, you are accused of Incorrect Opinions. We sentence you to sit in... The BALCONY." I am led through a side passage through a baroque series of stairways built in the adjoining theaters, hollowed out and rebuilt for the occasion, above the theater, below the theater, spiraling all around it, finally emerging in the balcony.

I am ushered into a side area of the balcony that faces not the movie, but the entrance to a kitchen. Someone says "Look! it's all six of the hot nurses from TV's 'Dream Hospital'. They're getting a burger at Nick's!" I look to my right and, sure enough, all six of the "Night-Shift Girls" are sitting next to me. They look at me suggestively, simultaneously bending to reveal their similarly proportioned breasts.

"Oh waiter! We want to order six similarly-proportioned burgers!" 

Nick, the Greek, himself, comes out of the kitchen and buttonholes me. "Ian! what the hell man, you've got to refill the ketchup bottles dude! We've got the Night-Shift Girls here!"

"But Nick, I don't know where the ketchup is!"

"Jeez, I don't have time for this. Come with me. I'll show you the way to the pantry."

Nick goes out the back of the theater, back into the baroque maze. I follow him through all of the twists and turns. He is like a father to me. He moves really fast and it's hard to keep up. I lose track of him. I hear his voice calling to me, but the wood-paneled hallway turns into a dead-end. 

Just then, I notice a passage about half my height to the left. I bend over and venture on until I come to another dead-end. Again, I hear his voice calling. After examining my surroundings I can only conclude he wants me to follow him into the half-inch gap between the molding and the floor. I hold my breath and walk into it, while my height somehow adjusts itself.

>>walk forward

"I walk along for a while until I come to yet another dead-end. After examining my surroundings, I can only conclude he wants me to follow him into the half-inch gap between the molding and the floor. I hold my breath and walk into it, while my height somehow adjusts itself."

I hear him calling, from behind me this time, and look back out into the vastness of the passage I came from and see a proportionately vast Nick looking down at me. He wrings his massive hands in frustration, his incomprehensibly slow and gigantic voice booming plaintively, but I can't return to my previous size, no matter how hard I try. I am filled with the sense of a deep loss.

Someone changes the channel. They cycle through a variety of different situations. Some of them are domestic dramas, some of them are screwball comedies, some of them are news reports, some of them are advertising situations. I am dismayed at being taken away from my movie experience. The people who stage the situations fine-tune them to create an ambient feeling of longing.

They settle on a documentary about the Caballero Boys, a rock band from Texas. They are rude, they are crude, they are overweight. They languish for years in the bar circuit, banging out their particular brand of loud, crass rock noise. The ups and downs of the careers of bassist/vocalist Don Caballero and drummer Jon Caballero are chronicled. Finally they make a breakthrough and move to Paris.

They stride down quaint, old-world streets as the opening chords of their first big hit "Tex-Mex Mama" blares. They ransack a cafe and steal all the wine and cigarettes. A neon sign: NO BUSKING. They kick over a table.

It's revealed that they're just filming a video.

The channel changes. Apparently the movie has been playing out this whole time and is nearing the end. The melancholy scientist is walking on the beach. I'm a bit disappointed that I have to leave the fun atmosphere of the Cabs' video, but soon, again I'm captivated as he begins to speak.

He gives the speech he was about to deliver all those years ago, alone, to the crashing waves, and it's a knockout. It ties all of the themes of the film together really well and is a suitably emotional finale to the immense experience that is this movie. Though there are a lot of allusions I didn't quite get, and I don't remember exactly what was said all that well... I guess I'll have to see it again on video. I can't begin to imagine how it will suffer with the interactive portion taken out.

His final line is, "if you leave it alone, it will go away."

The credits crawl to the strains of The Caballero Boys' ballad: "Mama, Tell Your Babies They Live in Real-Time."

The curtain comes down.

The Professor Universe Store

Whenever things slow down at work and no one's around to notice, I slip off to the supply closet to sniff the purple marker. That is where I find her.

When my head is full of fumes her face appears very close to mine, faint freckles swirled across her cheeks and over the bridge of her nose, like stars in the day-time. She kisses me.

"Come to the Professor Universe Store with me".

"But-- I'll…" I sigh, trying to think of the word, "… be shy."

She smiles and takes my hand, "Come on, they have every Professor Universe toy ever made."

The Professor Universe Store does have every Professor Universe toy ever made. It's set up like a vending machine, the little figurines and vehicles sit in clear compartments, you just choose the one you want and press the button and out it comes.

"Look they even have Roscoe's tank from the Ice Planet story." She says as she takes the tank out of the open compartment. But I'm not really interested in Professor Universe anymore.

"That's great, hey can we go somewhere else?"

She is always fascinated by the toys, and cannot be coaxed into leaving the Professor Universe Store before the fumes fade and leave me back in the Merry-Go-Round Vault.

My job is to test the horses, to ride each one in turn to make sure they're safe to ride.

Sometimes my wedding ring falls off (my fingers are getting skinnier all the time) and in order to retrieve it, I have to dismount and walk past where the sad-eyed man stands and watches me all day. 

Everyone calls him "the Boss".

Zee German

A middle-aged man in a windbreaker came up to the counter and asked in a German accent, "do you have a book of 1000 things every guy must know?"

"Uhm, I don't think so…"

"You know: clothes, music, what stories to read. That sort of thing."

"No, I don't think we have that."

"I know, it is a book only a tourist would ask for. Where can I find it?"

"I… don't know…"

He sighed, "well, you are just useless then, aren't you?"

"I- I guess so."

He slunk out the door, disappointed.

My Chronic Decapitation Experience

The first time I got my head cut off, I thought I was going to die.

I was thirteen years old, and there being not much else to do, I had allowed myself to become absorbed in sexual thoughts, ignorant of what the consequences would be. So the killer from the movies came over and chopped my head off.

The experience of having my head separated from my body scares me less each time it happens. There is impaired breathing and vision for a time, but the knowledge that, most likely, I will not die as a result of such an injury has made it easy for me to sublimate the original terror, gradually, into mere frustration at having my routine disrupted. Only the faintest clinging ghost of death-awareness remains.

Adjusting to the reality that we will all occasionally have our heads cut off is just a process that everyone has to go through in today's world.

Lately, whenever it happens to me, I just heave a sigh, pick up my head, tuck it under my arm, carry it up my left nostril and into the passageways of my sinuses, where I set it down on the proper shelf, and wait for it to fix itself.