The False Blogger

Why and When the World Ended

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 14:13:12 -0500

Of course,it was long anticipated. The funny thing being, who would be left to experience the aftermath? Well,by definition, no one.

So, imagine my surprise when I was. Surprise, slowly, stutteringly morphing into confusion, with each insight, each observation.

The yawning gap at the center of the world was nothing new. I had lived with it, near it, in it long enough to think of it as home. But a void is well-defined by its substantial surroundings; by contrast it derives its empty nature. So, as you, dear reader, may well imagine, a void surrounded by a void is, perhaps, not recognizable as a void at all! When emptiness is everywhere, it is the something that forms the backdrop for, well, anything.

Thing1 and Thing 2 were pretty much heart and mind. The former was really over-activated, at the point of expansion, collapse, transmutation or infarction. And the latter? That, dear reader, is where we are. What is in that mind?

Humans are role-players. Life is theatre. No role is comprehensive: form, by nature,is circumscribed, limited to an enclosing membrane. And yet an actor may say, "I see all!" It is a popular, a legendary, a favorite role. Certainly popular as a defense against the void, which yawns unerringly and without cease, adjacent to all things, all actors, all roles. "I see thee not!", saith the One Who Is Right. "Because I am not", saith the Wraith. The dance of existence and non-existence, of being and non-being,is a bore and a matter of indifference to such an actor. Up until the penultimate scene, of course, where it becomes the subject matter itself.

Which issue, in fact,is our subject matter: The actor awakes from her role; The actor awakes from his role; the actor awakes.

And lo: the void is the background,the context, the challenge and the question.

voidable catastrophe

Sat, 12 Feb 2011 19:01:06 -0500

If one were to imagine an alternative scenario, the imagination would fracture. The split between the worlds, usually of such a subtle hue, now inflamed with heat.

It's not as if this were avoidable; would that it were voidable. But, my friends, nay!

Peering up from below the internal formation, light shivers through the shards. With what velocity does light fly, while the detritus of composition and habit congeal.

Pray for the motile! Abandon the formed.

Stigmata appear to the fallen, but the risen are blind.

May the sun blind you! May you thrive.

So spoke the squirrel.

Jesus Visits Congress

Sun, 12 Dec 2010 06:46:55 -0500

Jesus burst into the Senate chamber and strode down the aisle, scattering papers and ledgers from the desks on either side. The astonished Secretary rose and fled from his seat as Jesus seized the lectern.

"Woe unto ye, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices--mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law--justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former." He surveyed the Senate floor, steely-eyed. "Woe to you, blind guides! You say, 'if anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.'

"Know ye not that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter heaven; yet ye clamor for the rich, they who have every voice and who sit with great power and rule all; and the lowly poor you silence and cast out upon the parched earth of want; yea, you increase their want as ye wax the riches of the wealthy!!"

The C-SPAN cameraman repositioned for a better angle; already the Senate video servers were straining from the massive demand.

"Do not exploit the poor because they are poor and do not crush the needy in court. Do not rob the poor, because he is poor, or crush the afflicted at the gate!

Know ye: He who oppresses the poor to increase his wealth and he who gives gifts to the rich--both come to poverty. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. In your hearts do not think evil of each other.

" I will come near to you for judgment. I will be quick to testify against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive aliens of justice, but do not fear me."

A lawmaker, trembling, approached the microphone, wiping the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. "But Master, must we not protect all without exception in this time of difficulty? Shall we give, or shall we not give?" He was using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus, knowing his hypocrisy, said unto him, "Why tempt ye me? For you have the poor with you always, and whenever you will you may do them good. There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land." When the lawmaker heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth; and he shrank from the microphone.

And with that, Jesus swept up his robes and stormed out of the chamber, leaving perplexity and shame burning on the brows of those within. He went into the House of Representatives and threw out everyone who was buying and selling there. He overturned the moneychangers' tables and the benches of those selling influence.

And when the lawmakers and the scribes saw the amazing things that he had done, and heard the people shouting in the streets and on the blogosphere "Hosanna! You tell 'em Jesus!," they became furious and asked him, "Do you hear what these people are saying?"

Jesus said to them, "Yes! Haven't you ever read, 'From the mouths of the infants and the bloggers you have created praise'?" Then he left them and went out of the city to Bethany and spent the night there.

A Hole in the Middle of the World

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 02:22:31 -0500

I discovered that there's a hole in the middle of the world.
Like so many other things, I stumbled upon this - or into this - accidentally.

One day, feeling a bit put out, I just looked up and saw, much to my astonishment, the walls of the hole ascending far above me - and there, far away, at the top, a blur of light - the surface, from which I had so precipitously and unconsciously fallen.

Holy shit!, I thought, this is the same thing that happened to me yesterday! And the day before. And the day before that. Oh, wait - no, not the day before that - I don't think I fell into the hole on that particular day. The sense of displacement, disorientation, disconnection - entirely absent that day. Well, la di dah. What a great day that was. Yeah.

Anyway, not to be flippant, but... really - I was stunned. This explained so much! Why hadn't I noticed this before? Surrounded by walls, steep, clammy, unscalable - and I moseyed along as if everything was straightforward, a-ok, copacetic... No wonder things just haven't seemed to add up lately.

Quiet

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:12:16 -0500

As quiet as the wind whistling through the hollowed shell, as quiet as the grave
as empty as that hope has proved to be, as vacant as an abandoned vow
the hollow in your cheek, untouched, the wind across our faces
as we turn our backs on the day

but what tomorrow comes? more voidal entropy, sagacious, potency unused
sorry? to whom? flesh razor-sliced, crimson so deep there is no recalling
we join there, the distant shore. it's too bad,
it's how it is. the sun
an amber disc.

A New Day, a New Way

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 09:23:09 -0500

There must be a simpler way to tell this story.

Here, on the other side; here, where it is quiet, so very quiet.

The chaotic, colored forms and masses, so dense, so undeniable, so unavoidable: I see them from here. As if through a veil. Not that they are obscured or indistinct: I can dial in, focus, magnify down to the last detail, even to the level of pain - which is the herald of any sensation, of any flavor ... at least from here... (Hey, celebrate sensation: go ahead! It is no skin off my back - ouch! - uh, maybe it is - oh, wait, sorry - that was discarded, too. I forgot... phantom limb syndrome, as pertains to feelings... )

But why? Where? I have asked that, too. I will try to answer, do my best to articulate what it is to be here, what the other side looks like from here ... but I am resigned to failure in such an attempt. If it could be described, you would already know - as would I. And perhaps I wouldn't be here at all - there would be no necessity for that. But such speculation is drivel, chatter of the idlest kind. As if, what if there had been no snake? What if there had never been a name - not a single one? What if there was no knot? Just an endless string, undifferentiated into infinity, beyond the reach of gaze, the naught, not the knot ...

If you will forgive me: I think not. Negation is the assertion of the fact of existence. Don't you agree?

Not that it matters. I am no less likely to be relieved of my perceptual burdens than you are of your physical ones. I may have escaped the envelope - OK, perhaps through no will of my own, admittedly, but, nonetheless - you stand there, and I stand here, and so it is.

And I am empty, empty as a clam, or at least as silent as one.

Or not.

I hear a quiet sound. I will try to describe.

Moratorium on Lust and Fear/ The Morning After Death

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 12:30:05 -0500

Quiet. Desolation of the plains.

A faint wind, whispering more than rolling; I am privy to its ministrations if I don"t move a muscle.

My appendages are carefully removed, piled in a neat heap on the floor alongside the cot - well, as neat as a heap of appendages resulting from dismemberment can be.

The excessive occupation of my mind seems to have abated. Or should I say, the visitations have ceased. As silence builds through me, the last of the visitors seem to ooze away, as if they were jelly dripping from a sloppy jar. And sloppy jar I have been - but no more. The stakes are too high: my existence depends upon it.

Not that I am one to place value upon my existence, per se, or an existence in the abstract, one as microcosm for the all... No , this is far simpler. Custodian of my fate, whether errand-boy or master, it is unseemly to say the least to abandon one's charge, however compromised, however pain-saturated. Gosh, unseemly is a ridiculous descriptor - it is downright wrong to do so.

Dear Reader, you have suffered along with me to some extent - perhaps cursory, perhaps deeply - so I owe the debt of honesty to you in the sweet recompense that is voluntary commerce, Simply: I no longer had the option to, so to speak, dick around with my existence; when the fates brought their ticket in, it was time to put up or shut up. And, I am sure it will not come as a surprise to you - I was a few quarts shy of a full tank. Insufficient fuel for the trip. Dead in the water, if one took the even-slightly-more-long-than-the-short view. And embarrassed, forgetful, ashamed, unrepentant, and disoriented all at the one.

And so across the Great Water we go. Into the voidal quietude. A silence as vast as - well, as vast as is. A flicker: presence. The mind, astonished: not numbed, but - not inverted, but freed. No objects. No size. Time is a vacuum, into which abhorrence disappears. Incapacity. Subluxation. Ready the cartoon music, which plays silently.

Twice Lightning, Blood, and the Nerve Meridians

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 21:14:20 -0500

It's not the easiest thing in the world to write when you have no body.

No, I'm not asking for sympathy. No offense, but what would your sympathy do for me? Staunch the flood of thick serum from the razor-licked lines running down my arms, my trunk, my face, my legs? Stabilize the spasmodic response of my corporeal envelope to this patently fatal disruption of its homeostasis? Notify my next of kin, especially the dead ones? (Why would the living ones care? As Tricky Dick said, you won't have me to kick around anymore.)

No, I am simply observing the quandary i which I find myself. I do take it on as a personal mission, a personal challenge, to record the war raging in our souls. My little battle is but a grain of sand on the beach of the Great Struggle, but as a microcosm it holds the war entire within its angsty boundaries. So: care to give me a break? Get this body over to the desk, or else get me the fuck out of here! If I can't write, I can't live - I just can't stand it, and neither should you.

That being the case, pass the scalpel, please? Yes, I know I cannot take it from you, given the immobility of my arms; I'd like you to pass the scalpel across my windpipe, or other ready access to the carotid artery. You're my ticket out, pal! God, can't you see it: you are the freedom rider! the giver of the gift of life - or, perhaps, from life, but whatever - you get the drift. Cut me loose, goose, I gotta talk to an angel about a leviathan...

OK, OK, I will stop complaining. But please, please turn off that wretched music! It torments me more than the sick ache in my extremities as my blood seeps away from its original mission, and, looking as awkward as any out-of-place performer, flows to no place in particular - as long as it is away - in a deliberate if motive-free Dance of Death. Bring it on! You think I can't stand this? You think I am unwilling, or unready, or unsuited to die? Fuck You, Mr. Rosewater! This is what I was born to do - get it? This is my hour, my task, my elevation, my release, my exhausted mistake in the wake of cascading misapprehensions and wrong turns which dot my recent past like pox run wild on the face of a child. I'm ruinning wild. I'm running out. I'm out.

Two strikes, and I'm already out. Where's Rockefeller when you need him? Now let's not have any jejune jokes about lightning my load, or striking when the iron is hot - I am the iron, goo-goo-g'joob - the irony of which is too much, really, really too much. Shut up! Don't you hate this? I do.

But do help me out, OK?

Just one thing:

Who was that man with the mask? Did the lightning come from inside? Are you listening to my thoughts? Can't you please send my friend? I really need her, really really .... it would be more than an act of mercy: it would be a boon. No, not a boom - a boon! No, I wasn't threatening to blow you up! Why would I do that? Are you mad? Wait - that's crazy! No. For God's sake!

zap!

Strike Three.

Hmmm.

Dark in here...

Nelson?

A Contract Out

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 21:05:42 -0500

I would like to start this entry on an upbeat note, but I am incapable of that right now. As if coming to grips with my recent ordeal was not enough, what should re-emerge into my realm of quandary but the legal attack of my corporeal entity. It's not that I am unhappy, or angry - both of which are in fact true. It is that I am weighed down to the point of incapacity, so overwhelmed do I feel. I must warn you, reader, that this entry is plagued by distress, irresolution, and even some plain-old pretty gross reportage. So, if you are looking for amusement or edification, you may well wish to consider skipping this one; I feel badly enough without having to think about its negative impact on you. But now I continue - as I must.

No sooner had I taken a brief respite from my relentless inquiry, returning to my above-ground pad in search of nutrition and protection, when I noticed the paper tacked to the outside of my front door. Was it precognition that froze my heart with apprehension? Or am I just becoming a trained animal, ready to halt, tremble and slather at the slightest sign of unfamiliar approach? I thought I was at least somewhat resilient; if you have, in following my story, deemed me worthy of any appreciation in terms of strength of will, mind or character, I regret that I must disabuse you of such a notion. Apparently I more closely resemble a slug , or perhaps a slime mold - which, ironically, lined the walls of my cell in the oh so recent past.

"Suffer and Die!" read the bold print across the top of the legal-sized paper. Well, actually it simply addressed me by name, and continued to inform me that I was no longer required to appear in court to defend myself against my corporeal entity's charges. To the contrary, I was to be invited to a holiday party on its behalf! "Let bygones be bygones!", exclaimed the note, as it subtly emitted odorless viral material into my respiratory system, carried by the heavy breathing which my confusion and fear had induced. Clever, no? Soon I was dead.

Is this why the floor of my room is covered in blood? I was not aware blood was so sticky - I find it difficult to walk, to lift my feet. Long strands of maroon viscosity festoon the gap between my foot and the floor - and the sound: not a screech, but a far-off awful moan of some kind. Oh wait - that is me. I am afraid. As I might be. I cannot control my locomotion, feeling as if I was drunk from some illegally stimulant-saturated beverage, and my gyroscope teeters alarmingly off to the side, as if I were perambulating gravity-free on the outside of a space station. I tumble to the ground, as if in slow motion. The sticky blood is apparently quite deep, because I feel it course down my throat, choking me in an orgy of plenitude, as if a giant wave, virile with moon gravitation, had sucked me under and stolen my footing. I am gone, again.

Rainbows scrape my face. I hear a clatter of birds' wings, and my ears hurt from the percussion. An invisible doctor and his elongated associates tower above me, tools gleaming cold silver in their hands, I sense blades everywhere. My arms are sliced along the vertical meridians, deep red emerging like a generous tide, rising from the open flesh, then running in swift and sickening rivulets down, down... Unconsciousness, greeting me, would be welcome; but it is the doctor I must face. God spare me! Oh, that's right, I offended the Supreme One last time by talking cheek. Oh well, too bad for me. The doctor has white teeth - impossibly bright. What is that, glinting light into my eyes from behind his head? Sleep? Fainting? No such luck. You shall be awake.

Poison, Poisson, Passion

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 16:54:03 -0500

The Passion of the Fish is a lost film by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Set in a small medieval village on the coast of Italy, it documents the steady and relentless erosion of the narrator's faith as he attempts to endure virtual imprisonment and social isolation. Unusual for its use of documentary footage in the service of fiction, it hadn't previously come to life, as shooting just completed yesterday. When I left the hole. Because that's what Pasolini was shooting. Even though he's dead, at the hands of a roadside pickup. Or the mafia. Or political enemies. Or in an enactment of his own script. When his body was discovered in the trunk of the car, the cans of undeveloped film were found with him. Even though that was 33 years ago. The film couldn't be developed, since it had been exposed to three decades of changing climatic conditions in the car's trunk. Even though shooting was just wrapped. He wasn't entirely happy with it, as I understand. But then again, my perceptual faculties were severely compromised at the time, and he had been dead for quite a while. You can see the difficulty in all this.

But it pales next to the difficulty of the poison, which followed the fish; even though the word "passion" is in the title (translated from the original "la passione dei pesci") when distributed in the States through Godard's association with Janus Films (and released straight to DVD as "la passion des poissons" - although both Godard and Janus deny any participation in, or knowledge of, this release), the real passion came later. But we will get to that, because, although the fish was present from the start, the transitional point - the so-called "plot pivot" - came via the poison.

Have you ever found yourself lost in a forest, with no hope of finding your way out, and no food supplies remaining? I'm sure you have. Like me, you probably looked for something - anything - to eat: roots, berries, small animals, insects, tasty leaves, and so on. And, like me, you probably didn't find anything. And, like me, you probably sought a soft bit of earth on which to lie, on which to wait patiently for sleep, and then, for death - inevitable, the only question is how long - either by starvation, exposure, or, best of all, at the hands - or teeth - of a predator.

I am so sorry - I did not mean to awaken unpleasant memories! I know you did not travel all this way - across the many, seductive and varied Internets - to be accosted by such memories - even though they are yours, and you cannot escape them - you know you should stop trying to escape them - look, even here, where you expected to find nothing, or less than nothing, they have found you! Don't you understand? Really, it is completely futile to even imagine escaping them - not to mention actually doing so. I'm sure you see that now.

I'm glad that we have that settled. Does your neck hurt? I think I must still have some poison in my system, but no worries - it's not contagious. I, on the other hand, don't know what you might be carrying, but I put my trust in you, and I hope and pray that you will not violate it by exposing me to some deadly virus or impulsive murderous impulse. OK? I mean, give me a break! We haven't even met! Let's, uh, just slow things down a bit, OK? I don't feel so well, you know.

In fact, it evokes feelings of great sadness in me to let the sick sensations bubble up from my veins, forever compromised by the extremities to which I have been subjected. You may feel sympathetic; you may be indifferent; you may think I am a fool. And you would be right. But it is not my fault. Sucking the bones seemed such a simple pleasure; who would have known what it would lead to? God! I'm not religious, but, please, God: save me! It's your fault: you put those bones there, and made them what they were. Oh, they just got that way by themselves? A likely story. You can't expect me to believe that. I know you wouldn't. Uh, I guess I am not supposed to speak that way. Apologies - or something.

I need to lie down for a bit.

Take a Chance

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 10:56:00 -0500

I have been underground for some months. Trolls - or perhaps Dwarves, or Republicans - tricked me into their darkened, sun-deprived lair with the promise of release from pain. It was, of course, a shameless lie, but I was desperate, and gullible enough to pursue it. As a reward, I drowned five months of my life in some sticky fluid - lost forever, or so it seems.

Actually, not "lost": I gained much knowledge, almost all of it unwelcome. However, a beam of light penetrated the density of my increasingly sluggish perceptual apparatus, and, as a result, I crawled out of my self-inflicted hole. Of course, I prefer to call it "their" hole, and to blame "them" for my being in it, but that would not only be disingenuous - it would also put the lie to whatever insight I have gleaned by virtue of said bolt of lightning which snapped my fog. So: my hole, my fault. Mea culpa and all that.

So here's the story, faithful reader. Or unfaithful - or faithless - what do I know? What do you know? What do any of us know? Which, in fact, is the point I was trying to get to...

Whilst (homage to the long history of the language which I so freely mangle) deep in the lair of darkness, the following chain of events transpired:

I accepted the "obvious truth" than my pain was unnecessary, useless, and preventable (must I cut to the chase and presage the plot pivot? the necessary, the needed, the irrevocable?)...
Shortly thereafter, I noticed that my perceptual apparatus had spawned a comforting, distancing cushioning layer... a feeling as if I had descended into a sensual bliss characterized by some randy flavor of attractive unconsciousness...
Which cushioning and opacity continued to deepen until I no longer had my bearings...
And I found myself enthusiastic about truly horrible and reprehensible behaviors and perspectives...
But as I noticed the extreme growth of my fingernails and toenails, and watched with fascination and a covert horror as they, graying and striated, curled back upon themselves...
and then: zap!

OK, I know what you are thinking (actually, I have no idea! presumptuous, deluded, myopic, self-referential...) - that I squirreled myself into a cocoon of protective ignorance and decay, fueled by fear, vanity and delusion - only to be awakened by a luminous random or willful intercession - and you only need read further to be privy, to identify what brought this gift of release, of awakening... but you would be wrong.

No, dear reader (don't you hate that?) - I was not released, awakened, by a gifted intercession. To the contrary, I was poisoned. Self-poisoned, if you must know. And this I will further describe, haï lecteur - as soon as I can rub the sensation back into my wrists, scarred, chaffed and bruise-pocked as they are...

Dead People Walking

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:58:04 -0500

Caveat: this entry is a complaint. Skip it if you are looking for appreciations. In fact, you are likely in the wrong place altogether if that is the case. Happy trails.

As you may know, if you have meandered down the breadcrumb-laden trail of this narrative, I am fixed in a discomfited dispute with my corporeal entity, which has accused me of abandonment, neglect and mistreatment. Fair enough: everyone - or everything - has the right to their opinion, to their perceptions. But what about all those dead people walking around?

I am not talking about the discorporate souls, those semi-transparent spheres of colored light, or their full-fledged counterpart images of human form (if partially transparent and often lacking in gravity - or even feet). I'm talking about incarnate beings, steering their genetic entities around like sleepwalking geriatrics or dead-drunk fratboys. It took me a while to realize what was bothering me, but I finally hit upon it: Death on feet! Nobody home! Vacancy within, but the front desk is closed! The room is rented, but unused. What a waste.

Now, far be it for me to assert that there is a better way, I can barely navigate the occupation of my envelope, as evidenced by the current dispute in which I find myself entangled. But, for some reason, it infuriates me to see these half-occupied vehicles being driven about with seemingly little purpose, intention or self-awareness. I bet I could herd them all to the cliffside, and over, in a lemming-parade of joyous purposiveness! But what would that accomplish?

Just do me a favor: do your part to wake these poor buggers up. It makes me sick to see how pervasive this condition is, and I must not be the only one. As for me, I confess that such an awakening task is beyond my present capacity. If I can emerge from unconscousness at the start of each succesive day, that is probably as much triumph as I can acheive currently. But hopefully you are less afflicted, and can act with a sense of purpose. I sure hope someone can - for the walking dead surely cannot.

A Legal Dispute

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:39:05 -0500

What?

Apparently the contention between me and my corporeal entity has progressed to an extreme state. I awoke to a relentless pounding upon the door, where, to my shock, I was served with legal papers: a suit brought by my genetic envelope against me, claiming mistreatment, neglect and abandonment! My own corporeal form! Not revenge - betrayal. I am red with rage.

Actually, that is a misstatement, since the corporeal wrapper is required (as far as I know) to manifest the flushed colors of rage. And, to my knowledge, emotion sits in the body - so how can I be accused of abandoning it? If I had, surely my experience would be free of the confusing, distracting, intoxicating and tormenting parade of emotions which characterize physical life. But I am far from that - and thus, far from abandoning my earthly form! So, what about that, R. J. Llellewyn, Esq.? Huh?

So now I enter into the earthly hell of legal disputation. This is where Kafka was born! Better I had awoken with antennae and spasmodic tibia than with a neat sheaf of legalisms veiling a vicious emotional counterpunch. Sure, I am having second thoughts. Should I have been less aggressive in my complaints as to the torpidity and opacity of my envelope? Perhaps I could be more understanding, patient, kind - make amends, go forward anew?

Yes, that sounds like a good idea. As soon as I have found a way to migrate to another envelope altogether, I will flood my former domicile with loving waves of appreciation, in which it can awake to find its resident departed and its higher centers unmanned. I'm sure that will be a much improved situation - Right, Mr. Llellewyn? If you want me, I'll be in the bar, adjacent to - or hovering above - my slumped and disfunctional form.

Death

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:48:04 -0500

My best friend died. No, it wasn't me, wasn't due to the termination of my corporeal entity; while I was bemoaning my personal condition, word came that my friend was dead. Totally unexpected. Well, not really; he had been dying for months, I just didn't know about it. How close could we be, you might ask, for me to be in such ignorance? That I cannot answer; I can only report that I learned of his death, having been unaware of his illness. Best friend? What kind of friend am I?

While I reflected on such things, we hastened to prepare for his funeral. No way was he going to be subjected to the American Way of Death, with its embalming, waxing, cosmetic retouching of the corpse; no, a traditional, ritualistic burial was in order. We decided to burn him at sea, as exemplified by our misconceptions of the East Indian tradition.

We were a ragtag group - six of us all told, each one more maladroit than the next. Logs - we needed logs! We had the foresight to put the body on ice - don't ask how, it's too weird. Well, OK - we "borrowed" a refrigerated meat truck. Any pangs we felt about our friend's corporeal envelope lying in wait where top-grade Angus steaks had recently dwelt was not long in our minds, as we were overwhelmed by our logging quest.

I won't bore you with the laborious details; sufffice it to say that we found ourselves struggling near shore, neck-deep in water, attempting to strap together half a dozen enormous logs with unsuitable materials and a striking lack of know-how. If the quest were not so serious, it would have been laughable. Well, OK: it was laughable. Sarah broke her thumb, and Wally skinned a goodly portion of his side, as we scrambled to control the logs in the admittedly mild current, certainly appearing as remarkably inept fools to any observer - although, to my knowledge, there were none. Eventually we achieved our goal: a six-log raft, surmounted with a bier of twigs and roots, atop which we placed our dear friend, wrapped foolishly in a plastic shroud.

Lighting the bier, as you can by now surmise, was similarly inept; we succeeded finally by dangerous overkill, and were lucky that Friedrich escaped with no more than first-degree burns across his hands and arms. And then: magnificent! The bier abalze in glory - although, in short order, the acrid stench of the burning plastic shroud dampened our spirits.

Nonetheless we commended our friend's soul to the afterworld, wherever and whatever that might be. The remains of the bier drifted off, and we returned to our mundane and, in most cases, tormented existences with welcome tokens of our efforts: broekn digits, seared bodies, confused and gladdened hearts. May he dwell in realms less deceptive than this one.

Departure of the Corporeal Entity

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:59:43 -0500

Talk about revenge.

Apparently miffed to the breaking point by my unconsidered comments, my corporeal form has shut down and appears to be on the verge of termination. This is extremely inconvenient. For example, I have to telegraph these keystrokes to the keyboard via some unexplainable telekinetic phenomena which would surely be mocked and dismissed by my more physically-oriented species-mates if I mentioned it - which is why I will not. All that being said, much water under the bridge, many moons to Chicago, etc., nonetheless: it would be really crippling to lack a physical vehicle, so I am going to attempt to make amends and repair the damage to our - uh - relationship. This is not my strong suit, so any suggestions are most welcome. If I fail, I will be seeking another vehicle, so if you know of one available, or even partially so, please notify.