Fringe Magazine » (de)Classified

My Life Minus You

Heather Falconer — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 04:00:34 +0000

I have become a turned chair, a chair that sits pretty in the corner, a piece of furniture, ignored. I am somebody’s ghost, haunting preferred to a holding, I am no longer tactile, invisible. I am a headless flower, dried out in a scum filled vase; I have become next week’s mulch, unbelievable. What has become of me? I cannot disclose any personal information. I am a bank teller’s vocal chords and I scream in monotony. I cannot talk of anything of any importance. What is your account under? Don’t slip on your mistakes. Unbalanced, probably. All unbalanced and anxious, alone and gone. It’s not that you are gone, it’s that I am here alone. Can you sign here please? Point of wastes; do not slip on your way down. Please take a ticket and be seated next to the lady who lost her face. A beating heart that has stopped is not that bad in comparison. Bee-like waistcoat, dreamboat. Dire throated dick. I wear cherry lip balm because the real thing tastes like aluminum on my tongue. You have a question? When all the answers are in a foreign language, write them down and kiss your knees for a translation. Unperfected, imperfected – unaffected. That is your number. In all my ineffectiveness I see you’re lost too, a little cra-zee. Don’t mean maybe, yes I’m crazy too. Nobody’s woman, nobody’s girl, take me away to somebody again. Close the door, close the window and drain the bath that beckons me with razor glinting with hope and all my happy endings, soak in the hope and myself too. Take me away, sweet chariot, coming to lock me in a hearse, drive me away to hell or worse, nobody’s girl is dead and gone. He told me the bank closed at five, five in the afternoon, it’s still light outside and the cars have faces that zoom at the approaching moon. I lie in bed and watch it swing around me, as if it were rotating and not this big chunk of greasy sludge we try to save everyday. I write for you, and me and all those that need to too but it drinks me up and swallows me, turns me into the worm at the bottom of the tequila bottle. I’m consumed and starving. I built a pyramid of fire and lit it before you, drew out SOS seven times in the sand, breathed for you every time the clock ticked over to 11:11 and still I am soaring out of control. I stare at a person’s imperfections, concentrate on a small anomaly in order to block out the voice telling me the door will be shutting soon. Welded over, my hands they burn alive and dream of a time before nails bit to the quick never sting again, before treacherous feet dripping, knees kissing, melting tears can stem all those feeble feckless fears and begin a new dawn in a night of moon watching. I am only a moonbeam I tell myself; don’t dare to turn my head to the faceless woman, whose body echoes my own, who wears clothes like mine. Who is me, alone too. I take what is left of everything and run before there is nothing left at all, run faster than the cars that zoom along like metal beetles, run faster than your provocative shadow that never forms a real body. I run before everything I ever had is gone for good. And scratch off my wrinkles before a musty mirror in a bathroom that smells of cat.

Two Monologues of Mrs. O'Reilly

Heather Falconer — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 04:00:43 +0000

Mrs. O’Reilly, Children’s Theatre Director, Implores her Young Lead to Heed the Voice of Experience

Couldn’t you just turn and flee?

I asked you to flee – not dart, not dash, not make a clumsy run for the wings like a hound with heatstroke and a thorn in its paw.

Do you know what it is to “flee”? Perhaps not, since all of your ilk are transfixed by screens and it’s doubtless difficult to animate a first-class flee, though I suppose some brainy little git is even now adjusting his quadrants and trying. You have no range yet, nor do you have the historical reach essential to the finer aspects of theatrical flight. Flouncing you do well enough. I’ve admired your overblown, hand-to-forehead imitation of Jo March’s triumph of overacting. The trouble is, you don’t know that it’s a parody. Pa.ro.dy. A kind of in-joke that you’re not yet in on. Jo didn’t know this either, of course, but she’s a fictional character and so can be excused. Now, look: the villain is coming at you – you know, like a stranger going to pull you into his car. You spy him. He’s creepy but he looks like your brother. You let him approach, though you’re a tad dubious. Du.bi.ous. Oh, it’s my cute teenage brother. I wonder why he’s wearing that sinister cape. Sin.is…. It means icky. And scary. Icky-scary. Closer, closer… Hi, Older Brother, what’s going on? Why is your face so white? Why do you have such a sin.is.ter aspect? Such a glint in your eye? (And, yes, we’ll be rehearsing the theatrical glint, you can be sure, Ryan Koplik, don’t be looking so smug. Smmm.ug). Closer…. And Wham! Bam! Thank you, ma’am! Oh, my, this isn’t my brother. This isn’t my brother at all…. but someone DISGUISED as my brother, wishing to do me in. Do. Me. In. And before you can whisper, arched eyebrows, you’re off the stage, Missy, and into the arms of Miss Jeannie, who will give you your apron and bucket and cue Mr. Dee for the musical interlude while Ryan completes his hideous transformation. Hid…. forget it.

Yes, this was better, but when you flee – don’t hurl yourself chest forward, legs lolloping as if they belonged to different behind. And make sure you face the audience when you flee. Let’s try that again, shall we? No, no, no. Don’t sidle like a palsied peekytoe, just, for Lord’s sake, flee. A crab, Liam Capelli, a species of crab. And there’s nothing to titter about, Mackenzie Gottleib and the rest of you royal undead. Your turn will come. TIT.er. Er….. Ryan Koplik, please speak to Miss Jeannie about your fang problem. Those of you playing household items, on stage now. Plates, cups, and cutlery, stage right. Miss Jeannie is waving from the wings. Footstool, rug, armchair and the rest of the furnishings, stage left. Miss Jeannie is not waving from stage left. Tristan C., are you a spoon? Do spoons belong with furniture or dishes? One of these things doesn’t belong. Thank you, Miss Jeannie. Ok, now, enchanted domestic objects, start your dance. Mr. Dee? Angelique Z. and Jaxon Ramirez, stay in character! That’s it, forks and spoons make way for the knives. Now, you enter, unwittingly, intent on your routine cleaning tasks. Don’t you ever dust and de-clutter your room? Help tidy around the house? No, of course you don’t. Well, you are still a little shaken from seeing your murderous un-brother, and you are trying to solace yourself with routine. So.lace. Like having cookies and milk after a bad day at school. It doesn’t matter that you’re lactose intolerant. The milk and cookies aren’t mean to be literal. LIT.ER.AL. Just like you’re pretending to be frightened of Ryan who is pretending to frighten you by pretending to be your brother. Yes, and by pretending to have fangs. Now, drop your bucket, lift the corners of your apron as you curtsey to the armchair. Show a modicum of surprise. Mod….You find yourself – think about it – forced to do the cha-cha with the furniture. This isn’t an everyday occurrence. A certain show of surprise is called for. Miss Jeannie, I think Kacey with a K needs some help with her snaps; she seems to need the rest room. Tristan W., Angelique M., and the rest of the Hounds of Heck, start howling offstage. No, you’re not to sound like a raggedy troop of flatulent baboons…. Flat….Must we really practice howling? The moon is out – Casey with a C. will be holding the eerily bright full moon over the backdrop with a long stick – Eer….Just hold a pretend stick up for now, Casey with a C, Miss Jeannie still has to finish painting the props. The hounds come closer…. Closer….Who meowed? Miss Jeannie, who was that who meowed? Whoever that was who meowed is going to lose his speaking part. No, at this juncture, you are not going to attempt to flee. Actually, fleeing will be futile at this juncture – Junc – since you are completely surrounded on all sides and there’s really no earthly way out.

I've Decided to See the Physician and Other Poems

Heather Falconer — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 04:00:15 +0000

I’ve Decided to See the Physician

Where I am, sky pumps light like seeds through a thresher—

all bathed in the rusty colors of grain. Hard

to distinguish myself from this desert

that arches over my head and

recedes like the song

of Seraphiel.

Where I

am, a

constant

perdendo plays.

I don ’t want to disappear.

I want to feel my mouth on a hot

edge—to taste and know dark flavor—

separate from prayers spoken in genuflect against

you. Say, good-bye Pigeon. I’m taking off our bones.

More Adventure Comics

Heather Falconer — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 04:00:31 +0000

Panel 1: Captain Lightning holds Professor Spiralmind by the front of his lab coat, dangling the villain’s body over the ledge of his observatory hideout, as lightning flashes in the background. Rain has matted Captain Lightning’s black hair against his forehead, but it doesn’t obscure his eyes, which are round and focused.

CAPTAIN LIGHTNING: You’ll never learn, will you, Spiralmind?

PROFESSOR SPIRALMIND: C-C-Captain Lightning?!?!

CAPTAIN LIGHTNING (thinking): The bastard, he’s shaking, I think he’s really scared this time. Is it the rain?

A Collection of Glimpses and Two Other Audio Pieces by Michael K. Meyers

Heather Falconer — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 04:00:04 +0000

This month’s (de)Classified is a selection of audio pieces by Michael K. Meyers. If you enjoy these, check out Meyers’ previously published work with Fringe.

A Collection of Glimpses

Aut

Doubleback

The Bob Ross Underground Tape Exchange

Heather Falconer — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 04:00:42 +0000

http://www.brutexchange.org/tradeandsale

Welcome to the

BOB ROSS UNDERGROUND TAPE EXCHANGE

THREAD: trade and sale postings LIST: oldest to newest

—————————————————————————————————————————-

S31 E11 LAKE ON THE RIDGE. dvd$. A+. Trade for like, no q. a. Or US$10 CONTACT.

THRD SEASON JOY OF PAINTING CLIFFHANGER FINALE: This is old VHSx5+ C- but high vocal resonance (about 9-10, Quidd). Im not into zen meditation but my bf. says its hot shit, a BR classic. like delayed male orgasm he says! ; o Will trade or sell. CONTACT. PS thanks everyone this site saved my life. looking forward to many more trades!!! <3

STRAIGHT 8: uncut season w/ guest spots, unaired blooper clips and transcendental meditation buzz at finale (unlike season 1-7 . . . don’t waste your money, trees). Solid B VHSx2. CONTACT.

UNAIRED EPISODE, SEASON 11! “The Hanged Man” (officially untitled). 45 min., DVD fr VHS fr TV B+, tape cuts 1-2 min. early. Notes: Bob’s subconscious take on this tarot archetype, rendered mostly in green and brown junglescape with overtly symbolic reference visible in lower left corner, famous “Ross’s Cross” image. Super-rare, quality OK. Bob’s voice is 6.5, conducive to various exercise and botanical care esp. basil, tomatoes, cannabis, long-leaf tobacco, nightshade sprouts. Visit my site www.edsworld/websacrawlwithurbansprawl.com to check out other rare steganographic media (more BR, too!)

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: Please do not solicit alternate sites. See LINKS to request we post a link to your site. Thanx!]

SEASON 14, Steve does “Saturn Devouring his Children” 33 min. season 22 outtake VHS only (VHSx3 fr. TV). C-. Poor qual. but wild perform., + dueling banjo o.dub c/o BR fans Tenn. Fiddle Pickles. Steve holds it down, knocks out Goya in about 22 w/ time left for banter (”we can’t air this one” clip), brief academic sojourn at the easel. Vocal res. solid 8 orig., 6 or 7 VHSx3. Good for light naps, some ppl. dont love banjos. Would like 2 exchange 4 late season 19 “overcast” series sing. or set. CONTACT. RIP BR.

HIGHEST EVP PROBABILITY SEASON, BEST FORMAT!!! VHS straight fr. TV, watched ONLY ONCE for quality assurance: Season 7 (i.e. “thunder: perfect mind” period by Gibson chronology) high speed dub. apt for ajna chakra meditation, w/vocal res. 7-8. Will trade full set for similar s9, 10, 11, or specialty item, otherwise CONTACT for pricing.

“SGRAGGY CRAG” episode on DVDx2. Season 23. Famous J. of P. episode Bob uses Scottish accent and 65-70% Scotch-origin English (see 06 Harris report LINK). Conducive to whiskey, scotch, or just beer. Some marijuana if you’ve got some. A+. Will trade for almost anything, digital or tape, not picky. Looking for man-on-the-moon sequence, embedded or un, esp. with Steve overlay from Season 15 (rather not have to run my own but beggars can’t be, etc.). Much love, BRUTE–second year member and lovin it!!! CONTACT.

“JOCUND DAY STANDS TIPTOE UPON THE MISTY MOUNTAIN TOPS” S7, E4. entire episode 57 min. plus about 10 outtake stuff, A+ DVD fr. $DVD. A+. I took the Luther algorithm coordinated it with 256 RBG and generated a chromatic modulation background and ran it alongside episode (Mac Final Cut Exp.) synching it to saturate/de-sat. overly on keyword triggers (the BR ten-most-common, see Gibson). See JOCUND DAY as Bob intended! Limited offer: only going to press 100, reasonable prices: CONTACT today!!!

[comment: SCAM SCAM DO NOT CONTACT!!! all heads no jocund day trick only works on the vhs directs. DONT BE A SUCKER. COME TO WWW.BRHEADSEXCH.COM FOR THE REAL REAL REAL.]

[comment removed dd/mm/yyyy]

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: For disputes contact facilitator HERE. Please do not solicit alternate sites. See LINKS to request we post a link to your site. Thanx!]

E12 S2 BALM IN GILEAD, tv to tape to tape. solid B. 55 min +/-. Classic JOP from 83. Vocal 9/9.5. This is the straight 83 TV cut, vtPBS. All tapes previous wear. Served me well during my divorce and subsequent foray into Zen Buddhist med. Good for pets, girlfriends, pizza guys who are willing to get high with you and watch a quick hour of classic Bob. I have four copies. They are good tapes, lightly used. remember: used means loved. Also, tape is forever!!! Peace to all the happy trees, and peace to the soul of Bob: thanks for the memory retrieval, play-therapy, hours of us time. Good homes only, no noobs. CONTACT.

“GRASS IS HIGH, SKY IS LOW”, s11, e4. VHSx3 fr. TV B+. Trade for e6 s5+ or specialty items. Sale US$10.00. CONTACT.

AVOID SCAMS!!! TRUE CHROMATIC OVERLAY SERIES!!! TRIPLE THREAT: MISTY MOUNTAIN TOPS & WE HAVE COME TO BELLY I MEAN BURY, plus unaired Bob-wearing-nixon-mask blind-and-timed exhibition round (just some trees, but still mega-awesome!! Dude is incredible!!). We run classic patterns by the big boyz! SUPER SUPER DEAL, all DVDs are 1st gen., LOW PRICE BLOWOUT. visit us at WWW.ROSSHABIT SOURCE.COM/STORE.

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: Please no outside soliciting. See LINKS to request we post a link to your site. Thanx!]

15.99 BR NOVICE STEGANOGRAPHER STARTER KIT: Good for the newb or garage tinkerer, BR fan, or anyone into metaphysics, art-theory, or postmodern cryptography in general. Great for Xmas, anniversary, students of religion. Easy-bake kit for basic digital overlay and technographic revelation, includes DVD tutorial and Season 1-5 clip-bank for easy sampling (comp. with either Mac or PC. CONTACT for faq). Starter prayer rug included for +2.99. CONTACT. CONTACT.

VHSx2 Season 10.5 set. B/B+. This is the full missing set from S10 (most slept on, son!) to fill even the truest headz BR library lacuna. 20 tapes, all hand-dubbed, none of that digi-shit. raw dog BR mysticism, true on floor in prayer position, holding it down for all my happy treez out there on BRUTE. PS what happened to my TAPE exchange site, dog? All these dot corp norbits, lookin to clock $$$ from our community (watchout B4 we make yall some dot-corpses!). This set NOT FOR SALE: I’m strickly cuban linx on this one: trade for undubbed season so-called season 6.66. daytraders: that’s nacho cheese, nube. find a new body you leeches. Peace. CONTACT.

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: Please keep language PG. no threats. For disputes contact facilitator HERE.]

OVERLAY DOWNLOADS: for digital manip. mapped for season 1-30. algorithms by/based on Luther, Deadheaddog, Harris, Gibson, and many many more!!!) Open the door to a whole new world of Bob Ross!!! CONTACT.

TRADE OR SALE: X11, Episode 1-2 double-feature: DVD. CONTACT. Plu$: EVP enhance programs for all you digi-transfer newbs. (happy trees: money talks . . .sorry ; )

HEAVEN IN HELL’S DESPITE SUPER RARE!!! fullmoon dub from 84, played once! A/A+ VHS. dubbed @ high speed to capture full spectrum EVP and flashcuts so you’ll need an old vhs head. needless to say noobs need not apply! Will trade but must see quality offer. no games. CONTACT.

BR MEDITATION IS NO JOKE: Do not be fooled by the digital so-called revolution. They offer you easy keys into a complicated labyrinth–who will be YOUR Ariadne? the trees will not be happy to see you, save you, newbs. Desist with your petty computer games and learn the way. CONTACT for trade in: instruction manuals, analog kits, blueprints, bells and rugware, and WIDE SELECTION OF TAPES, most VHSx1-3, B- to A+ range. LOVE TO TRADE. Old trees welcome, saplings inquire first. We OPpose DECEPTION. RIPBR, LLBRUTE.

[posting removed dd/mm/yyyy]

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: Please confine topical postings to appropriate pages of forum. Thanx! Click here for BR THEORY AND DISCUSSION.]

<<
>> OVER 3 HOURS OF NOTABLE AND verified ajnamoments from season 1-25. Witness the Bob Ross you’ve only heard about. All DVDRs are viewed only once (for quality assurance) and packaged in slim jewel cases. Shipping varies. CONTACT.

[comment: DOG COME OFF IT thats ill to try to take a nubes $$$ like that. ANJA CAN'T BE BOUGHT. DO YOUR HOMEWORK NUBES. VS. DIGI 4 LIFE. ll tha ghost of bob ross!!!]

[comment: let the newbs eat cake.]

[comment: umm, where's my online tape-trading COMMUNITY? How about a little solidarity, ppl! we were all saplings once!]

ITEM: KINGFISHER FALLS outtake, S.31. Late era Bob Ross intimation of mortality, encoded for VHS only. Full moon, peppermint, fool-card recommended, not included. VHSx5+, B-. No newbs please. Trade only Season 1-5. CONTACT.

BUY OR TRADE I HAVE THE SEASON 16 KEYSTONE META-EPISODE on DVD trans. from VHSx3 or 4. You haven’t seen season 16 until you’ve seen the keystone. Superimpositions by Harris, Gibson, and custom (www.bobrossmyticrhythms.com) for additional 1.99 per add-on. CONTACT.

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: Please do not solicit. See LINKS to request we post a link to your site.]

SEASON 31 OUTTAKES, dvd fr. vhs fr. tv. Good voc. res (8.5 by Quidd), 2 EVP, a veritable cornucopia of watermarks and flashcuts (good transfer to DVD, too). Buy cheap or trade for any I’m missing (see my link on contact page). CONTACT.

FULL LIBRARY ON VHS ALL MUST GO!!! Divorcing astral plane once and for all from this vegetable world by end of month and peeling myself with it off to Bob knows where so PLEASE HELP this is PRISTINE collection of VHSx2-5, well used, high-speed dubs. Canon + 10-15 metaepisodes and outtakes. Prayer rug included. TRADE ONLY: Need vitals for burial bier, symbolic objects to serve as sustenance for excruciating ordeal/journey into the ether. Important historical EVP/Steg. moments noted by counter-time ON SEPARATE TABLET!! PAINSTAKINGLY ACCURATE TO THE MILLISECOND!!. this is VG+/EX stuff, the ultimate score for the true happy tree in your family tree. Don’t let such a find fall into the hands of NEWBS bearing gifts!!! CONTACT ASAP!!!

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: Please confine topical postings to appropriate pages of forum. Thanx! Click here for BR THEORY AND DISCUSSION page.]

THE MASTER STROKE. Easily the most famous episode. Out of astro-phsyical consideration, I can only TRADE with serious collectors who can evidence more than 66 percent of gross BR output. NO JOKES NO THREATS. CONTACT for further consultation, consideration, probable physical meeting and exchange. This is VHS mastercopy from TV, viewed once, Voc 9.5-10.00 (Check Quidd if you don’t believe) with blow-your-mind sub-sonic potential re: user psyche, chi of viewing-space, growth-potential of resident plants and animals.

[posting removed dd/mm/yyyy]

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: Please do not list fictitious items or materials widely regarded as "unsuitable for trade/sale." Visit RESOURCES page for link to 06 Harris report. Thanx.).

BOB ROSS DVDS!!! THOUSANDS OF EPISODES AND OUTTAKES, HOURS OF TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION!!! All our DVDs are priced at or below market standard. All episodes come fully tagged, with easy-to-use menu and overlay-activation toggle. Thousands of algorithms!!! A new pattern, a new chakra, a new sensation, a new show every time!!! Buy one get one free!!! Don't miss out on the BR trip!!! Visit us at WWW.SHOWMETHEKEY.COM/ DIGITALMYSTIC/ LIBRARY/STORE/BOBROSS.HTML.

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: DO NOT solicit. THank you.]

WE HAVE KEYSTONE EPISODES FROM SEASONS 1-30!!! LIMITED OFFER!!! BUY NOW BEFORE THE WINDOW VANISHES!!! Also episodes and outtakes, canonical and rare. Go to WWW.THROUGHAGLASSDARKLY/STORE.COM for full listing.

[listing removed dd/mm/yyyy]

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: NO outside soliciting! People, PLEASE!]

FOR TRADE: one Mitsubishi HS-U52 VCR used to dub thousands of hours of Bob Ross from all seasons (am upgrading to DVD JOP). Heads are totally saturated in Bob-chi: good for Bob-infused alternative viewings or simple boosted BR viewings. Occasional tape disturbance–seems to coincide with heavy VocRes episodes and with EVP spots–never ate a tape, though. CONTACT.

[comment: son the shit makes no difference, trustatree. Send that ole bishi on a slow electronic-trash boat back to Japan and you can go with it if you fixin to "upgrade" to DVD. Take that ish off the BRUTE, dog.]

[comment: Actually, studies have shown that with proper training, a true acolyte can attain advanced states through integration of improved digital technology (See Deadheaddog, "report on digital BR interface 2010" LINK . . . but you wouldn't know anything about that, would you, snoopy dog dog? . . . too busy ripping bongs and trying to come up with clever put-downs. Grow up.]

[comment: He's wrong, don't listen to him. Been bamboozled. Turned heresiarch. Check Gibson's most recent post for a full refutation: LINK.]

[comment: look i may be a NOOB but i dont think this hole vhs/dvd thing even makes a dif. i get a crazy buzzz off my dvds and i just think its all a bunch of CRAP!!!]

[comment: yo the word is "nube" as derived from "nubile" meaning of legal age, marryable, or in your bumclot case, ripe for gettin F****D by the dot com Bob Ross charlatans. OH SNAP, BIATCH!!!]

[1 posting, 5 comments removed dd/mm/yyyy]

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: Please confine topical postings to appropriate pages of forum. Thanx for NOTHING, jerks. Click here for BR THEORY AND DISCUSSION page.]

FOR SALE: position as thread facilitator. Will abdicate for any of my most-wanted items listed on my personal page. And if I don’t hear from one of you losers inside a month, expect every post on this whole damn thread to be removed by dd/mm. What’s up now? Stick that in your super-infused 1983 Mitsubishi VCR and smoke it. CONTACT. CONTACT. CONTACT. Newbs need not apply.

http://www.brutexchange.org/tradeandsale

Welcome to the

BOB ROSS UNDERGROUND TAPE EXCHANGE

THREAD: trade and sale postings LIST: oldest to newest

—————————————————————————————————————————-

S31 E11 LAKE ON THE RIDGE. dvd$. A+. Trade for like, no q. a. Or US$10 CONTACT.

STRAIGHT 8: uncut season w/ guest spots, unaired blooper clips and transcendental meditation buzz at finale (unlike season 1-7 . . . don’t waste your money, trees). Solid B VHSx2. CONTACT.

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: Please do not solicit alternate sites. See LINKS to request we post a link to your site. Thanx!]

[comment: SCAM SCAM DO NOT CONTACT!!! all heads no jocund day trick only works on the vhs directs. DONT BE A SUCKER. COME TO WWW.BRHEADSEXCH.COM FOR THE REAL REAL REAL.]

[comment removed dd/mm/yyyy]

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: For disputes contact facilitator HERE. Please do not solicit alternate sites. See LINKS to request we post a link to your site. Thanx!]

“GRASS IS HIGH, SKY IS LOW”, s11, e4. VHSx3 fr. TV B+. Trade for e6 s5+ or specialty items. Sale US$10.00. CONTACT.

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: Please no outside soliciting. See LINKS to request we post a link to your site. Thanx!]

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: Please keep language PG. no threats. For disputes contact facilitator HERE.]

TRADE OR SALE: X11, Episode 1-2 double-feature: DVD. CONTACT. Plu$: EVP enhance programs for all you digi-transfer newbs. (happy trees: money talks . . .sorry ; )

[posting removed dd/mm/yyyy]

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: Please confine topical postings to appropriate pages of forum. Thanx! Click here for BR THEORY AND DISCUSSION.]

[comment: DOG COME OFF IT thats ill to try to take a nubes $$$ like that. ANJA CAN'T BE BOUGHT. DO YOUR HOMEWORK NUBES. VS. DIGI 4 LIFE. ll tha ghost of bob ross!!!]

[comment: let the newbs eat cake.]

[comment: umm, where's my online tape-trading COMMUNITY? How about a little solidarity, ppl! we were all saplings once!]

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: Please do not solicit. See LINKS to request we post a link to your site.]

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: Please confine topical postings to appropriate pages of forum. Thanx! Click here for BR THEORY AND DISCUSSION page.]

[posting removed dd/mm/yyyy]

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: Please do not list fictitious items or materials widely regarded as "unsuitable for trade/sale." Visit RESOURCES page for link to 06 Harris report. Thanx.).

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: DO NOT solicit. THank you.]

[listing removed dd/mm/yyyy]

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: NO outside soliciting! People, PLEASE!]

[comment: He's wrong, don't listen to him. Been bamboozled. Turned heresiarch. Check Gibson's most recent post for a full refutation: LINK.]

[comment: look i may be a NOOB but i dont think this hole vhs/dvd thing even makes a dif. i get a crazy buzzz off my

http://www.brutexchange.org/tradeandsale

Welcome to the

BOB ROSS UNDERGROUND TAPE EXCHANGE

THREAD: trade and sale postings LIST: oldest to newest

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

S31 E11 LAKE ON THE RIDGE. dvd$. A+. Trade for like, no q. a. Or US$10 CONTACT.

STRAIGHT 8: uncut season w/ guest spots, unaired blooper clips and transcendental meditation buzz at finale (unlike season 1-7 . . . don't waste your money, trees). Solid B VHSx2. CONTACT.

UNAIRED EPISODE, SEASON 11! “The Hanged Man” (officially untitled). 45 min., DVD fr VHS fr TV B+, tape cuts 1-2 min. early. Notes: Bob’s subconscious take on this tarot archetype, rendered mostly in green and brown junglescape with overtly symbolic reference visible in lower left corner, famous "Ross's Cross" image. Super-rare, quality OK. Bob's voice is 6.5, conducive to various exercise and botanical care esp. basil, tomatoes, cannabis, long-leaf tobacco, nightshade sprouts. Visit my site www.edsworld/websacrawlwithurbansprawl.com to check out other rare steganographic media (more BR, too!)

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: Please do not solicit alternate sites. See LINKS to request we post a link to your site. Thanx!]

[comment: SCAM SCAM DO NOT CONTACT!!! all heads no jocund day trick only works on the vhs directs. DONT BE A SUCKER. COME TO WWW.BRHEADSEXCH.COM FOR THE REAL REAL REAL.]

[comment removed dd/mm/yyyy]

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: For disputes contact facilitator HERE. Please do not solicit alternate sites. See LINKS to request we post a link to your site. Thanx!]

“GRASS IS HIGH, SKY IS LOW”, s11, e4. VHSx3 fr. TV B+. Trade for e6 s5+ or specialty items. Sale US$10.00. CONTACT.

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: Please no outside soliciting. See LINKS to request we post a link to your site. Thanx!]

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: Please keep language PG. no threats. For disputes contact facilitator HERE.]

TRADE OR SALE: X11, Episode 1-2 double-feature: DVD. CONTACT. Plu$: EVP enhance programs for all you digi-transfer newbs. (happy trees: money talks . . .sorry ; )

[posting removed dd/mm/yyyy]

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: Please confine topical postings to appropriate pages of forum. Thanx! Click here for BR THEORY AND DISCUSSION.]

[comment: DOG COME OFF IT thats ill to try to take a nubes $$$ like that. ANJA CAN'T BE BOUGHT. DO YOUR HOMEWORK NUBES. VS. DIGI 4 LIFE. ll tha ghost of bob ross!!!]

[comment: let the newbs eat cake.]

[comment: umm, where's my online tape-trading COMMUNITY? How about a little solidarity, ppl! we were all saplings once!]

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: Please do not solicit. See LINKS to request we post a link to your site.]

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[posting removed dd/mm/yyyy]

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: Please do not list fictitious items or materials widely regarded as "unsuitable for trade/sale." Visit RESOURCES page for link to 06 Harris report. Thanx.).

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: DO NOT solicit. THank you.]

[listing removed dd/mm/yyyy]

[comment, THREAD FACILITATOR: NO outside soliciting! People, PLEASE!]

[comment: He's wrong, don't listen to him. Been bamboozled. Turned heresiarch. Check Gibson's most recent post for a full refutation: LINK.]

[comment: look i may be a NOOB but i dont think this hole vhs/dvd thing even makes a dif. i get a crazy buzzz off my dvds and i just think its all a bunch of CRAP!!!]

[comment: yo the word is "nube" as derived from "nubile" meaning of legal age, marryable, or in your bumclot case, ripe for gettin F****D by the dot com Bob Ross charlatans. OH SNAP, BIATCH!!!]

[1 posting, 5 comments removed dd/mm/yyyy]

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dvds and i just think its all a bunch of CRAP!!!]

[comment: yo the word is "nube" as derived from "nubile" meaning of legal age, marryable, or in your bumclot case, ripe for gettin F****D by the dot com Bob Ross charlatans. OH SNAP, BIATCH!!!]

[1 posting, 5 comments removed dd/mm/yyyy]

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The Tamiami Trail (Mix): U.S. Route 41, Miami to Michigan

Heather Falconer — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 04:00:44 +0000

Two alligators pass each other and flash a secret greeting, like bikers.
They stop for gas in Big Cypress Swamp.
The woman who owns the station dishes about the best location to spot a panther.
(Photo of old timey gas station)
Supreme Unleaded is stuck at $1.95.
Alligators fly across the land:
Between two lungs, the alligator plants a star seed, a Starburst.
Atlantic to Target: 4 miles
Target to Casino: 13 miles
Casino to panther: 5 miles (Don’t feed.)
Swiss army knife. Cigar wrapper. Belly up, like a municipal bond (trader)
Mr. Alligator slumbers or lolls or floats in the River of Grass.
Acres are lost to suburbia. Reptiles war.Panther to Lake Superior: 1990 miles
Alligators sing lullabies to Fords and other vehicles.
Signs are (not) harbingers.
Turn left.

Under Joe's Volcano

Heather Falconer — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 04:00:45 +0000

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was the light that would shine in the darkness, even to the ends of the Restaurant,

but the darkness did not comprehend the light, nor the Restaurant the Word

nor I the Restaurant, and I couldn’t speak the Word.

Through the loading dock’s night-shadows, my steps clocked weak percussion to the traffic’s thrum. I saw seven garbage bags stuffed with sauces, cheese, brownie, ice-cream, caramel scum, ketchup, swirled potatoes, blackened grease, French fries, your gold locket, chunks of chicken, burgers, steak, sodden napkins, stray utensils, melting ice;

I saw silhouetted forms, hunched before floating embers, beneath smoke curling skyward in the semblance of a face:

and the pavement shuddered—crackling, rose, breaking as pebbled foam over the crest of a great gold whale. Its eyes were rubies; its tail rose from under the earth and thrashed up at an orange moon—

Those who had gathered for smokes or cocaine now broke into opposing camps: the cheering and the afraid, or so I am told.

(And, within, the telephone rang.)

I ascended the stair—to the landing with the abandoned register under dusty photos of Volcano Joe’s once-favored surf spots.

Fear rimmed even the leaky tea-vat, trickled out over plains of cracked and unswept wood toward me; it was also my job to mop and sweep.

They will wonder how much I could have seen.

This should suffice:

We know that when the warriors swarmed naked from under the upended canoe that had hung from the wall between the yellow crossroads-semaphore and old Trystero’s horn, the night was not yet far along and we who were living were not free, either to shrink or disbelieve,

even as the canned sauces and torpedoes fell from wall-shelves like aluminum rain.

And that ancient maple choir—velvet-robed, viscous-voiced, spangled with flower and ice, studded with points of wet silver light, stuffed into the Restaurant’s old-time telephone booth, mouths splayed howls against cracked amber glass (as I’d always pictured them)—revived:

and wept and prayed, wept and prayed.

It was then that I, small in my voluminous apron’s soiled black, thought I saw you at the glass table, eating eggs, which we both know are not on our menu, from a silver bowl that could not have been ours, either, opposite a fat man with a wooden sled on his lap and a newspaper dividing the space between you.

“Those roses,” I shrieked, pointing for the table-center’s tin vase: “those will never bloom!”

But you saw or heard nothing; my demon, idiot love;

the spears began to fly.

Company tanks came down the spiral stair. Volcano Joe Himself, wild-browed, sinistral, skin a cruel leathered tan, grinned at the procession’s head—

he was goofy-foot on a gun turret beneath The Restaurant’s colors of Red, Black and fun, the raised standard whipping high above his head.

Only the glass that was already his eye, deactivated by a turret of surface-breaking reef in ’68, spared him lost sight

when a stone-arrowhead struck, spraying glassblood down the wreck that had been his face,

but there was no time to exult or to grieve;

blood of an impaled Guest’s rare rib eye steak juiced from a Section 30 2-top’s checked plastic tablecloth, puddling with the floor’s gentle decline

and I got the mop again.

From the telephone booth, a creaking banshee hymn:

I am the Truth and the Light concealed between stacked clipboards cataloging clean dispensations of tasks—

A trapdoor opened beneath the storeroom’s floor, and, Lo, a crystal tide swept out along the channels, flooding the graveyard behind our Store, where the dying whale flopped on cracked asphalt, its great golden tail carving swaths through re-gathering tourists who crowded, relentless, for photos.

A scroll pinned by arrowpoint to the alley-wall unfurled

and I read off the Enemy’s objections:

Who is our narrator?

Do we reject this whale?

What the fuck’s going on?

You gave me your job, or something like it; they called you the “hyacinth girl,” a sobriquet I could not understand, but which revived my suspicions, particularly when I saw the leers on certain swarthy Servers’ faces. I hated them then, I hate them now.

I should have taken you away somewhere; I should have trusted no one—

In the parking lot one night not long after the event, when I came to pick you up from a double shift so that you would not have to take the bus, we discussed:

—I’m so sorry.

—So am I.

([Sung]:

“As the deer panteth for the water

so my soul longeth after thee.”)[1]

In the storeroom I saw the Devil, eyelids stretched over his face, crouched between halflit shelves, wheezing a Word I couldn’t bear to hear; I covered my ears with my apron, closed my eyes—

worse.

Over intercoms and hollow spans swollen with grief, my inbox chimed—

but I was forbidden to go or even to think of you, Sweetness, Lover, Womb.

“From the heart of the parking lot next to the Restaurant at the end of nearly all things, I write to you, my love. Stop.”

In a vision of wet limbs and carfog I saw your hair grow damp, rope-like, and swing between sweaty faces, one perfect, one

I hate.

“Stop!?!” I typed, in a rage.

<* Stop *>

Here is a joke that T-Rex, our bartender, told—a tasteless, insulting, unfunny, racial slur that I will now reproduce without emendation or irony:

What da local boy wen tell da haole when he wen take one giant lead off third base?

What?

What, you give up? You no more one guess?

Nah, brah, what he wen say?

“Das right, haole: go home!”

Ha ha ha,

Shit, brah, I fucken hate haoles.

Yeah.

<* Stop *>

In the women’s bathroom rumor holds a ghost but I have never seen her.

O, Honolulu night.

In dreams I walk with you, in dreams I talk with you, in dreams it’s me alone that gets to peel your shimmering skin away and swallow what’s inside.

“How now,” she said, “How now? Have you lost the sense with which you were born?”

(The ringing phone rang ringing, ringing it’s ringing ring,

I couldn’t help a single Guest, not one)

Enough, quoth the Happy People Greeter, who was studying to be a marine-biologist and who would shortly be dead, and who also pole-danced at her uncle the Viscount’s dive, down Sand-Island way, but it was too late:

warriors stormed back through through the heavy wooden doors that I and Tommy, the balding ex-shift-leader (caught doping down pre-shift; demoted) held open most Friday nights—

“We need a sub-HPG asap, folks.”

In dreams I have your body.

In dreams I have your touch.

Your warmth, your toes, your sweet embrace.

It’s you I love so—

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

We watched them recede into the night as they chanted traditional war chants—with some irony, I thought—and hefted our Greeter above their heads.

I saw seven shot-glasses empty at the bar’s four corners,

tiny contests on television screens,

a wrinkled regular,

withered limes,

dust—

You, my only love, my cherished, alone, in candlelight (but the Restaurant does not provide candles!), the book I wrote of proverbs quips and psalms, proverbs,

clutched open in your hand, frail white fingers quivering, as you remembered me—or else the fat one, my enemy, cheap devil.

“Unto thee, oh Lord, do I deliver myself up.”

After we’d collected the blue-books and tallied up responses,

after we’d sent purple taro-mash tonics (complimentary) to the tables that hadn’t fled, after we’d listened to the squashed sparkling choir sing the usual midnight anthem (penned by Corporate [i.e., Joe, before he was offed]),

after a certain amount of sighing lamentations (more or less assumed at that hour after any busy weekend night),

after all of these things,

the Finale descended as a cloud of sweet-potato light:

1) At the center of the bar-pond, the geese became swans and T-Rex fell into the trough of ice I myself had brought in buckets.

2) Trick-or-Treaters swarm the gates!!

Third):

From The Restaurant’s far corner I heard a voice, crying out of our Store’s own wilderness:

I don’t love you anymore, you said, and I need my check.

Beneath bins of dirty plates, utensils, cups, sizzle platters all acrust with cheese, I dumped our offal into more plastic bags, dragged these out for the whale-shattered dock, glittering now with golden innards, and slick quivering chunks of what had been within

(plankton, puppet, harpoon, Jonah, rust),

sifting through which (with spears, canoe-paddles, a palm-switch) the warrior Chief and certain of his men to whom he called out (in a tongue I interpreted by pitch alone):
“Men: relieve him of his brain, his heart, his balls, his eyes,” indicating, with an outstretched arm: me.

And they moved as if to obey, so that I foresaw—and in truth embraced—

the end.

But your voice—

Your voice, Sugar, Plum-Lip, Honeyfuck, Balm of my Life:

You sang in a voice so sweet that even the rocks cried out, and cracked themselves and the warriors sheathed their spears in their own black and crumbling hearts and I saw the whole of that monolith collapse, suck itself down into a sinkhole of cement and wood and glass and food (cooked and un-) pulled down into pooling cess—

Over an incessant intercom the voice of one Store-Manager breaking as through stone:

WE HAVE SEEN THEM SMOKING BATU FROM THE GLASSPIPE

THEY ARE GONE.

HERE ARE THEIR APRONS, ONLY THE WIND’S HOME NOW.

And it was as if I’d never had you to lose the memory of the last time you traced the troughs of tear-drenched hollows beneath my eyes, as you leaned in to kiss me goodbye.

(This was before the war.)

A horn’s blast; radio; cries.

Do we meet them at the gates? Are there gates to meet them at?

The list of those who died a thousand bloodless afternoons in our Restaurant’s
wilted gloam:

T-Rex, Tony, Justin, Heather, many more (the names go just before the faces.)

How I needed you the night the ice vaults cracked and yielded glaciers, solid as bone,

the night the hoards spilled from the opera-house across Ward Ave

and I could not Greet them fast enough, could not, could not . . .

O city city I sometimes hear the yowl of waiter-wraiths

who bear platters down boneyard alley

where the dead men lost nothing

only the mops’ home—and also buckets and sanitizer—

In the grill-smoke, where the men who have no words cook sterile food,

the secret notes in gesticular code,

the scents:

tomato, lemon, oil, garlic, meat, coffee, tropical tea, cigarette, vodka, ganja, batu, mushroom, powder, needle, pillcrush, sweetness, lover, home,

o, god, release me from regurgitated air

(Your name the Word I no longer dare—)

In cold steam we lock the vault behind us and waltz down cellar-stairs

to the treble thump of a lavender heart

that glows at the basement’s core,

our aprons stripped from our bodies,

round the bathing light we dance

a duet of shadows dispatched from the body’s thudding chorus

of thunder and fried heat, fear.

Here is what they can take from me:

A highball shatters—

The rest is silence.

[1] c.f., Jon 7, 33-31: Pain.

Little Bombs of Heaven: Aphorisms

Heather Falconer — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 04:00:54 +0000

Since unlimited suffering is caused by limited knowledge, it must be directed to the library.
Let those who do not stop talking talk amongst or to themselves.
For virgins, each moment is unprecedented.
You cannot truly obey if you don’t understand what you are obeying, and if you don’t understand what you are obeying, and you still obey, you are insane.
While drugs may assist the evolution of the mind, they extinguish the dim mind quickly.
Sin is waste. Waste is recycled until it is sinless earth and air.
Silence is to music as balance is to power.
The French are nothing if not frank.
Some farmers count breaths, not peas.
When humility is not burdened by its valuation or used to balance pride, it is purity. It is a petal of Buddha-hood.
I don’t hate you, but if you were me, you would hate you.
If you might as well go out, it might as well be on a joke.
Innocence becomes the old, tattered darkness of electricity.
An old dog needs few tricks.
Archetype is the sublimation of identity.
The flower is not blind to its root.
There’s nothing wrong with nudity, but there is with some of the people who view it.
Burgers make the cow holy.
The heart is where the mind and body meet for coffee.
Love is not biological.
Ruthless + tender = ruthlessly tender & tenderly ruthless.
Love wears an albatross of shame.
The most determinant story is that in one’s own mind.
Love pulls your soul through your heart.
Ennui makes boredom beautiful.
The main difference between any two stories is how long each lasts in the mind of the living.
Achieving transcendence is a job. It is Job.
People cry gems after God throws sand in their eyes.
Provided with certain conditions, Eros can be part of any relationship.
Suffering is to dignity as time is to eternity.
If you “can’t” accept any one thing or person, you reject yourself.
Truth can be sexy.
Imagination links feeling and thinking to cause behavior. So, imagination causes behavior.
Compassion is without judgment.
Sanity can be an insane mask.
If you deny others music because you want it for yourself, may you be blessed to die in silence.
No one can be everything to someone, except in short, controlled bursts (of tears).
Don’t get off on yourself getting off – just get off.
marry + t = martyr.
evaluation = value + evolution
tequila = la + quiet
People make it worthwhile when they’re not screwing it up.
Those whose perspectives tacitly nourish death are likely to have Goth children.
Knowledge is the great slave-master.
God is self-indulgent.
Becoming aware of balance is the job of the saint. Protecting it is the job of the parent.
Civilization is only a mold.
Also in the eye of the beholder are ugliness, glory and evil.
Existence is not a right, but a privilege.
Love is a pencil sharpener.

The Cherry Tree

Heather Falconer — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 04:00:20 +0000

Everyone knows the story, but no one knows how it actually happened. The story is that George chopped down the cherry tree and said, “Father, I cannot tell a lie, it was I who chopped down the cherry tree.” Here is how it actually happened:

1. ESTEBAN

George said, “Esteban cut it down,” which was a total lie, because George cut the tree down himself and just blamed it on Esteban.

“Who is Esteban?” his father asked.

George drew a line on the ground with the handle of his hatchet and said, “Esteban is everyone on the other side of this line. What side of the line are you on?”

His father was on the opposite side of the line from George, and didn’t seem to be moving, so George said, “You’re either with me or against me.”

And when his father refuted this basic premise, George repeated himself for emphasis.

And when his father walked away, George threw a little temper tantrum on the other side of that line. George would have just killed his father, but his father had an axe, which totally trumped his hatchet, so George had to settle for the tantrum.

A. SOME FACTS ABOUT GEORGE WASHINGTON

We elected him President, because he could not tell a lie.

We elected him President, because his face was on the one-dollar bill and we wanted to save paper.

We elected him President, because he held us at gunpoint, well, the British at gunpoint, while we cheered.

We elected him President, because he crossed the Delaware in the middle of winter and somebody painted it.

We elected him President, because Benjamin Franklin was on the one-hundred-dollar bill, which made him sort of snooty.

We elected him President, because someone had to be first, and he volunteered.

We would have kept electing him President, but he refused to serve more than two terms: “The last thing we need is another King,” he said.

Zuhitsu: A London Cypriot Perspective

Heather Falconer — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 05:00:09 +0000

March 22 – 28

March 22: Went into the office today hoping that I would receive some news about my salary — hoping that it would have been banked by now. I hear a fellow peer decided to commit suicide on a Sunday. I instantly forget about the salary. Awkward how death makes one forget. I can’t seem to get the tragedy out of my head. Nonetheless, I don’t want to intellectualize the situation.

Should we all be nihilists/Nietzscheans? To decide that morals have no value; wouldn’t that make me an animal?

The birds, picking twigs and leaves to build a nest for their newborn. They find Snickers wrappers and chip packets (Lays, in particular) to make the nest sturdy.

Nietzsche says: “as soon as you feel yourself against me you have ceased to understand my position and consequently any arguments! You have to be the victim of the same passion” [1]

The Manifold Dimensions of z (or Methuselah’s Voice-Over)

Heather Falconer — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 04:00:25 +0000

ACT I [The voices contained herein are self-contained and non-differentiated but are unique like crystals or fractals, which are neither unique nor practical. As you will find out, or have already discovered, Meta and I were in love and somewhat obsessed with magic and the manifold dimensions of z. This final act, which is really the first act, takes place in 2-space and 3-space, which are like parallel worlds that are unaware of the other but are layered on top of each other like minks or foxes wearing stoles and fur coats. The characters are characters. The stage is a court and the lighting is up to you. ]

Billy: Champagne, Dear?

Meta: Yes, Dear.

Billy: I’m not at all hungry.

Meta: I am, Dear.

Billy: Will a pickle hold you over?

Meta: Yes, Dear.

[The Boy and z enter stage right, or left, or are lowered from the ceiling. The minks are foxes wearing stoles, and the two boys are real boys insofar as two real coordinates can co-exist on the same space and time axis.]

Boy: z, do you feel the painful wounds of history in our genes?

z: Boy, I’m not privy to things below the ionosphere. I’m tired, my little frog. I just want to go home.

Boy: Then why hang around?

z: My wings are wet; slick as oil. I don’t enjoy the weather.

Boy: Did you imagine an egg would prosper into Big Bird?

z: And find its way into the hands of noble humans.

Boy: who couldn’t speak without cursing to Kingdom Come?

z: Fuck, ya’!

Boy: z, with a little help I think we can correct the polarity of the earth.

z: It’s possible, my friend, but the past is without solace.

Boy: Slice me a pickle.

ACT II [The four characters converse over each other in the room that is located furthest from the audience. A Chrysler station wagon may or may not be honking in the distance.]

Billy: Meta, dance with me. Come on, dance with me.

Meta: I will only dance with the boy of my dreams, not you, nor little green men.

Boy: z, are you the boy of her dreams?

z: Boy, I am the boy of our dreams.

Boy: Be serious with me man. Are you the boy of her dreams?

z: Boy, why did you decide to write little play plays?

Boy: For sea lions and subatomic things, whales and the impossible bees.

z: For the powers that be?

Boy: For the impossible swimming.

All: And for the cyclopedia of ancestry.

Boy: When I was sixteen, Meta died and left us big debts and worthless trinkets, knickknacks and things that went click clack. Dentures.

z: Do you still have the dress you wore to Kmart?

Boy: No, but I have her pocketbook and the pink barrettes.

ACT III [Act III takes place just before Act IV goes missing. Note: I am aware that something that is missing can't go missing until it's gone, like the boy who was lost (or will be lost again) in a future memory.]

Billy: Meta—(exclamation mark)

Meta: Yes, Billy.

Billy: Meta—(exasperation mark)

Meta: What, Billy, what do you want?

Billy: Will you marry me? Meta, marry me now—

Meta: Not a fucking chance, Billy.

Billy: Hold the shovel, Meta. I have to pee. It’s Sunday.

Meta: I know, Billy. What do you mean?

Billy: I have to pee. That’s what I mean.

Meta: Sometimes I sit when I pee.

Billy: Be serious Meta, what do you mean?

Meta: Sometimes I pee when I think about z.

Billy: When will you be done with this whole cartography? I’m tired of z.

Meta: When you stop digging, Billy, I will be done.

Billy: Meticulous woman, get over your son’s bones.

Meta: Billy, what is the nature of my cartography?

Billy: My Dear, may I borrow your knuckles. I want bones to crush.

Meta: Here, my Dear.

[The sound of bones crushing.]

ACT IV [This space is intentionally left speechless.]

ACT V [We've skipped Act IV because it's been said before and will be said again. (See the “Ars Magna for the Manifold Dimensions of z” and “Vireo gilvus”.) In this Act, Meta attempts one last act of resistance by converting action into language or the metempsychosis of geometry.]

z: Craps, just like the cartographer’s map, is a vast gene pool.

Boy: None of the above, my Little z, will make sense to pelicans.

z: I am a pelican.

Boy: And the scattered bones of my ancestors.

z: The bones!

Boy: The bones!

z: Of pelicans?

[The sound of bones crushing.]

z: I didn’t have a fucking chance, did I?

[Meta enters the body of the Boy and speaks for him.]

Boy: My little z, whole transports were women and children of all ages. It wasn’t a circus or a gathering of alien spaceships.

[The Boy reenters the body of the Boy. ]

Boy: z, listen to her.

[Meta reenters the body of the Boy.]

Boy: z, it was the real deal and there was nothing I could do to stop them. Not even swim. It was human behavior.

Boy: Hundreds of thousands of Billy’s fought against his manuscript. They came from the worst type—sadism.

(The audience whispers from the audience: sadism.)

Boy: Many of us climbed onto white busses with red crosses. They locked and loaded, aimed for our heads, but it was too late. The watchmen uttered not a word, they didn’t even whisper—not even Methuselah.

[Methuselah enters stage left and enters the body of the Boy whose body is already occupied by Meta. The three of them—Methuselah, the Boy, and Meta—wear Meta's wig. Since they can't literally enter each other's body, they stand in single file. Methuselah first, Meta second, and the Boy third. They pucker and make a fish face.]

z: And then—?

Boy: I wish I hadn’t seen with my own eyes how my own child was killed. I wish Billy would’ve dug and dug and dug and flushed me down that fucking rabbit hole.

(Don’t say fucking, Methuselah says.)

(Fucking, Meta says, is how it felt.)

z: And then—?

Boy:     I wished upon a stone.
             I wished upon a firing squad.
             I wished for an assortment of Icarian wings.

z: And then—?

Boy: With my own ears I heard my little blond boy tiptoe on the ledge of something big.

z: You did?

Meta: I did.

Boy: Now let go.

A Sail

Julia Henderson — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 20:57:19 +0000

Thor never got used to those Norwegian winters. Months of half-light and soft bark. But his fire smoldered on, year after year, until one fresh June day brought a breakthrough in Thor’s plans to float away from the steely fjords of his homeland and never return.

He had just turned twenty-five, officially becoming a senior citizen, and his friends were throwing him a party at the local chieftain’s hall where he ran into an old raid mate from his youth named Soren. During a diplomatic mission that winter, Soren met a merchant who wandered north on a journey of discovery (and possible suicide), and who sold Soren a sail salvaged from a fallen navy off the coast of Salerno. And Thor, leaning on Soren’s friendship and pity, was able to trade for the sail in exchange for his pit house, a barbed javelin, his favorite long-muzzled hound, his ex-wife’s collection of whalebone combs, and a complete set of Erik the Red commemorative rune stones.

For it wasn’t the ship that Thor was worried about. Oh no, he could find a ship. He could build a ship. But there would be no one to row it—no band of warriors chanting at the oars, burning into the night, fueled by the anticipatory fear and lust of combat. with a sail Thor could travel alone, as he surely would.

But a sail cost more than a ship itself. And he couldn’t make one because he didn’t have any sheep, which meant a wool sail was out of the question. So was flax, since Thor didn’t own any land and spent most of his money on ale and home brewing supplies like malted wheat and elderflower blossoms.

And so, the sail.

That first evening he unfolded it in the meadow where his tent was staked. Besides a bit of mildew in the creases, it was flawless: An empty canvas. A ruffled wing.

Later that summer, Thor set out in an old but sturdy longboat. The hull was patched with tar and the traditional dragon’s head out in front had splintered off years ago, but the boat didn’t sink. His friends loaded him down with carrots, and garlic, dried herring and eel and perch, pots of honey, crab apples, soda bread, and salted pork, and his daughter gave him a bag of coriander and thyme and a cinnamon stick. When he was out of sight they clucked their tongues and shook their heads and mourned briefly, thankful to be spared the effort of an actual funeral, and quite certain that Thor was, for all intents and purposes, literally and figuratively dead.

But Thor made it all the way to the Caliphate of Cordoba, where he lived well as a frequent guest and sometimes military advisor to caliphs of the Umayyad dynasty. The caliphs, in particular Hisham II, were quite charmed by Thor’s yellow hair and his impressive battle scars.

Thor, for his part, thrived under the naked light of the Iberian sun—his seasonal melancholy dissipated quickly and he became a successful businessman, embracing the relatively new market for imported Persian cosmetics like toothpaste and deodorant. He also played percussion for a local music group that laid the groundwork for a kind of traditional Andalusian music that can still be heard today.

Thor died during the skirmishes that marked the transition from the Umayyad to the Hammudid dynasties. He was buried in a tomb near the top of a dusty hillside west of the city where 972 years later he was unearthed by a team of French archeologists who were dazzled by the quality of his burial shroud, a perfectly preserved piece of sail cloth with no markings whatsoever. The team was also puzzled by finding evidence of this ancient mariner’s tradition so far inland, under the lucid blue skies of Cordoba, the Pearl of Moorish Spain, rather than at the bottom of the vast and infinite sea.

Cake it!

Julia Henderson — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 04:01:56 +0000

Thea Zimmer’s decades of employment in an increasingly “feminized” corporate America provides the fodder for Cake It! In the vignettes that make up Cake It!—the jottings that bring together the real life, the overheard, the imagined—Zimmer presents an unapologetic work in progress. The women of Cake It! freely tell their tales, in offhand comments, in whispers behind the walls of cubicles, in self-aggrandizements expressed so readily and anonymously into cyberspace.

Designed exclusively for the Web, Cake It! interweaves the insights of writer Thea Zimmer and new media artist, Joey Bargsten. Its design draws the reader, along with the fiction’s personae, into a central confrontation that emerges from the randomness of its narrative fragments. This collage of characters and events culminates in the segment of the piece that takes place at a national editors convention.

Bargsten—having received numerous awards for his digital innovations—has found the ideal collaborator in Zimmer, whose dystopian tale can only be so compellingly realized via digital means. Cake It! fully dimensionalizes Zimmer’s meditation on women in mid-level corporate-America—immersing the reader in the office, the cubicle, the screen.

Please click on the thumbnail below to launch Cake it!

In a Car, Quickly, on Cape Cod

Julia Henderson — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:40:01 +0000

In a Car, Quickly, on Cape Cod

A note from the author:

[In a Car, Quickly, on Cape Cod] is a selection extracted from a much larger work, a 33,000-word prosodic novella based on an 1,800-mile New England roadtrip adventure, written in the immediate calm of returning home, having gone out ostensibly to recreate and pay heartfelt tribute to the big Jack Kerouac, Al Cohn & Zoot Sims “Blues & Haikus” session — now this time with Kerouac’s friend and musical collaborator David Amram and his quartet, at the Caffe Paradiso in the Beat heart of Lowell, during the October “Lowell Celebrates Kerouac” festival, and with brand-new original on-the-road composed haiku too — but also to drive the entire coastline of New Hampshire, explore on up to Maine, seek out lost and faded tiki-bar relics in Boston, haunt roadside diners, grasp the mystic heart of old Cape Cod in one long moonlit evening, and so on.

It seems eminently true that certain prose literature has a voice and is literally meant to be heard — not just frozen words on a screen but sounded out, in time, laying down its lyric human rhythms, like good music, all rich and colorful, almost like a great symphonic tone poem — that’s my approach to writing, anyway, and this particular spontaneous recording was made in a single take, with no overdubs or fancy editing, keeping blemishes and all, and afterward I’d felt that it was an honest, intimate presentation of the original text, just two and a half minutes of timing and breath.