Carbonic Energy

By Dr. Gonzo Kablaa

Eddie sat at a cheap vinyl-covered card table, ashing his cigarette into a cheap plastic astray, and blowing second-hand smoke into the cheap motel room he was currently sitting inside.  Sitting across from him was a black man in his late 20’s, his appearance almost diametrically opposed to Eddie’s own.  It seemed to incorporate every significant fashion trend of the last 50 years:  dreadlocks were slightly draped over Aviator sunglasses, a significantly form-fitting Chicago Bulls jersey was covered by a shiny yellow puffy jacket, and a massive belt buckle in the shape of a banana fastened the belt looped around his acid-washed bell bottom jeans, all capped off with a pair of immaculate 1987 Air Jordans.  Almost anyone in Blacktown would instantly recognize him as Stevie Jam.

“So what you got tah say, Pip?  My time be short, can’t be wastin’ it all in here.”

Eddie took a drag on his cigarette before answering.

“Speech as colorful as your attire, Mr. Jam.  What have I got to say, then?  It seems your patriarch is deceased.”
“Patriarch?”  Stevie Jam smirked.  “I assume you talkin’ bout Nigga X.  Yeah, he dead.  Dead as dead ken be.  Muthafuckin’ cop Shitface peel off all his skin.  I ain’t seen the body, but they sayin’ it was a mess.  What about it, then?”
“Well,” Eddie said somewhat expectantly, “now that Mr. X has been removed, there may be room for new civic authority.”
“Civic authority?”
“Yes. Let me put it this way.  Who’s the next in command?”

“Next in command?”  Stevie Jam laughed.  “Seem like Shitface ain’t start an’ end with ‘ole Nigga X.  Most the high-ups dead as he is, least the ones around that day, ones still alive mostly gone.”
“Gone where?”
“GONE, muthafucka.  Disappear.  See what they see and decide they ain’t wantin’ it.  Feel me?”

Eddie thought for a couple seconds.

“Has anyone made a move to take charge?”

Stevie Jam laughed again.
“Take charge?  Of what?   Blacktown?  You seen Blacktown?  Niggas and nougat, that’s all they be in Blacktown now.”

Eddie nodded.
“Exactly my point.   Right now, there’s a power vacuum, and either someone rises to take the place of Mr. X or Don Puncinello moves in to fill the void.”
“Punchy?  Yeah, he be real taken with claiming Nougatville fo’ his own.  Sho’ he wants that all for hisself.”

Eddie sighed impatiently.

“Even if he doesn’t, someone else will.  Chaos is a powerful ally for anyone keen to leapfrog the status quo.  Blacktown needs new direction, and you,” Eddie pointed to Stevie Jam, “could be it as well as anyone.  You’ve got the clout to claim the prize, and with my help, you could do it.”

“Your help?”  Stevie Jam laughed even harder than he had before.  “From you?  This bein’ the same cat who kill Johnny Hall to make eryone think Negrosun the one to do it.  That’s why we here in this motel, ain’t it?  Your building’s all blown up.  Least the first floor.  Rest supposed to be.  I’d say Nigga X ain’t trustin’ his own to be settin’ bombs no more, ‘cept he too dead to trust no one no more.”

“So it would seem,” Eddie said through clenched teeth.

“I still ain’t see where you come into this. How you gonna help me take over?”

This was a good question, considering that all of Blacktown was a nougat-coated chaos.  No one had been able to figure out where the nougat had come from yet.  They’d discovered the container it came from: it still had significant amounts of nougat in it, but the pipes had been clogged up with “Avatar” plushies.  All in all, the whole neighborhood was a disaster area.  But Eddie had always flourished in these kinds of situations.  He had a plan, and all he needed was an ally to back him.

“I’ll tell you exactly how.  Killing Detective Shitface.”
“Shitface.”  Stevie Jam looked incredulous.  “Yea.  Real cake walk, sound like, being that Nigga X already tried and got hisself skinned for the trouble.  I ain’t see how doin’ the same gonna end betta for me.”
“That’s exactly the point.  If you WERE the one to do it, your claim would be unquestionable.  Shitface has already gone rogue, more or less, and his demise won’t cause the shockwaves it might’ve before, IF it can be done quietly.  Mr. X never appreciated quiet. Too much of a penchant for grandiosity, even where the opposite would’ve been prudent.”

Stevie Jam waved a hand dismissively.  “Talk straight, Pip.  Enough with this shit.  How you gonna kill Shitface?”
“Correction.  How are YOU going to kill Shitface?  My part is more subtle.  I’ve got the snake in the grass to make it happen.  An inside source who assures me he can provide all the information we need to take out Shitface.”
“Who?”
“A police officer,” Eddie said as he ashed his cigarette again.  “A newly minted detective, actually.”

*****

The atmosphere in the lobby of Panness, Inc. was languid.  It was late afternoon, and rays of intense sunlight pierced through the front windows.  A receptionist named Melissa, relatively young and attractive, sat behind a counter applying nail polish.  Her primary job was to tell people that everyone in the offices above were busy.   An ever-present security guard sat in a stool in the corner, equidistant from the reception desk and elevator.

Three other men were in the lobby: Antonio, Benito, and Carlo.  Antonio and Benito were sitting on a leather couch and Carlo was leaning against the wall next to it.  Unlike the security guard, these men were not a consistent lobby feature.  They were only there because Don Puncinello was there, in an office on the top floor of the building.

Panness, Inc. had been one of Puncinello’s larger front operations for years.  Puncinello generally did not spend much time in any one building, but in the aftermath of recent events in the city, most notably the Blacktown Riots, Puncinello had moved most of his operations to Panness, Inc.  Antonio thought it was a waste of time.  He didn’t very much like spending the entire day sitting around in a lobby, and in Antonio’s opinion, just twiddling their thumbs gave the impression that they didn’t have any balls.

He was thinking about going outside for a smoke when the lights went out.  This elicited no panic: the riots had caused a fair share of chaos in the city, and a power outage wasn’t out of the ordinary.  Antonio looked at Benito, who just shrugged.  He was about to take out his cellphone to check in upstairs when a man walked into the building.  He was wearing blue dress pants, a white short-sleeved button-up shirt, and a grey tie.  The badge on his belt made his affiliation clear.

“Can I help you?” Melissa inquired in a monotone.

The man ignored her and walked straight up to the couch.  Antonio didn’t know what purpose he had, but he figured he must’ve known Punchy was there.

“You got a problem or something?” Antonio asked the man, not bothering to rise from the couch.
“I’m here for Puncinello.”
“Yeah?” asked Antonio in a scornful tone.  “I ain’t know nobody by that name that’s here.  Elevator’s down anyway.”
“Stairs aren’t.”

Antonio stood up.  He was a large man, 6’7 and around 280 pounds, solid and well-muscled.  He had worked his way up from bouncer at one of the strip joints owned by Puncinello to one of Puncinello’s primary enforcers.  He looked down at the cop as his face broke out into a condescending smile.

“I’m sorry, officer, but we can’t allow you further into the building without a warrant.”

At this point, Benito also stood up, moving himself next to Antonio.   The man said nothing, reacting only by reaching into his right pocket and taking out a pen.  An impressively thick fountain pen.  He then stood there impassively.

Antonio was about to break the silence when the man suddenly drove the pen into his jugular vein with considerably impressive force, and then sent him flying back onto the couch, blood spurting out of his neck.  Just as quickly he plunged the pen into Benito’s chest, impaling him directly in the heart, and then thrust him upwards and off his feet before removing the pen and letting him drop to the floor.

Carlo, who didn’t have the quickest reaction speed, began to draw his pistol.  He fully intended to unload his entire clip into the man, to show him a thing or two about doing such things that he’d done, but with the same uncanny speed with which he’d dispatched Antonio and Benito, the man glided across the room and stabbed the hand Carlo had just placed on the handle of his gun with the pen.  In one fluid motion, he disarmed Carlo and sent him crashing into the security guard.

As Carlo started to get up, the man fired a shot at him using Carlo’s own gun, hitting him in the head and killing him instantly.  He then walked up to the security guard and cracked him across the jaw with the butt of the pistol.  After briefly looking over the room, he nodded and started walking toward the stairwell door.  Melissa began to scream as he went through the doorway, but he didn’t seem to notice.

For years afterwards, Melissa would never forget the abject terror she felt that day.

Or the impressive mustache that had adorned the man’s face.

*****
Marco Caparelli stood against a wall next to the doorway, his heart thumping against his chest. He held his .38 revolver with two hands, both shaking.  He had tried to radio Luciano shortly ago, but he wasn’t responding.  He thought that the screams and gunfire that he’d been hearing for the past couple of minutes likely had something to do with that.

Marco had barely ever FIRED a gun before, much less killed anyone with one.  He mainly stuck to things like smashing people’s kneecaps with a bat or cracking people’s ribs with a bat. This was entirely different.  The gunfire was getting closer, and it was a time to shit or get off the pot, however much he wanted to get the fuck out of there.  In fact, Marco WAS contemplating hiding under a desk or in a closet, but then he heard the door at the end of the hallway open.  He knew this was it.

Mustering all the courage he could muster, Marco spun out from against the wall and into the doorway, his .38 raised in front of him.  He unloaded all five of his rounds into the man in the hallway, hitting his mark every time.  This accuracy was unexpected, and for the shortest moment of time he was on the brink of elation.  Then the man he had shot was thrown aside by another man that had been standing behind him, a man unscathed by any of Marco’s bullets.  His face was a dark fuchsia color.

Marco began to run toward the doorway at the other end of the hall, the one to the office containing Don Puncinello, but just before he got there a shot rang out.  It was hard to say whether Marco’s body or his brains hit the door first, but it didn’t matter so much in the end.

*****

Shitface stood in the office, covered in blood.  The bodies of Don Puncinello’s bodyguards were strewn about the room.  Puncinello himself lay kneeling in front of his desk.  His shattered skull rested on its surface, ruined by the mini refrigerator Shitface had used to repeatedly bludgeon it.

Nigger X and Don Puncinello were both dead.  Thoroughly dead.  Two of the greatest threats to the long-term health of Shitface’s family.  He knew his next target.  Negrosun would be more of a challenge, if only because Shitface didn’t know who or what or where Negrosun was.  But he aimed to ask someone who might know, someone who had managed to elude him thus far.

Nickasun.

Day Six

In Japan, the symbol on the ladies’ restroom is an egg.  The symbol on the men’s restroom is a chicken.  At the Kentucky Fried Chicken near my apartment complex I asked various Japs what this meant.  Few of them could speak English, which was disappointing, but it made me remember my English-teaching duty I have while I’m here.

One of the more coherent Japs told me, “Chicken excrete egg.  Man excrete woman.”  I didn’t think he had that quite right, but I could look into it.

I’ve used the word “Japs” a few times now and it has probably offended you.  I’m not sure why.  It’s simply a shorter version of “Japanese”.  At some point the ethnic nickname became derogatory.  That point was World War II.  Can you imagine that there was a time when Japanese people were considered ferocious and reckless?  I can’t.  The stories of kamikaze fighters are hard to believe.  Especially when I feel like I could tear the clothes off of random Japanese people and nine times out of ten they’d politely ask to receive their clothes back.  What happened to them?

“What happened to you people?” I asked my class.

Blank stares.  I was so fed up with blank stares.  I was fed up with a lot of things.  They weren’t learning English as fast as I wanted them, too.  I know how to speak English – why can’t they?  I went to the virtual chalkboard and picked up the laser chalk.  On one half of the board I wrote, “This is an R”.  On the other half I wrote, “This is an L.”  Then at the bottom I wrote, “Got it?” and stormed out of the room.  Maybe this is the kind of no-nonsense teaching they need.  Simple, and straight to the point.  I was gonna go get drunk or something.  The front doors of the Language Institute were locked, so I returned to the classroom.  I thought maybe my Jap students would be mad at the linguistically insensitive remarks I had left on the virtual chalkboard, but they had the same expressionless faces they always have.

“WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU PEOPLE!?” I shouted.  Some of them flinched.  Most of them continued to stare.

I went from cubicle to cubicle, throwing all their books and writing materials on the floor.  None of them tried to stop me.  Then I went to the upper story of the cube and started pushing a small child out of his cubicle. The kid latched onto my arm with his teeth and wouldn’t let go. Finally!  Some resistance!  I applied minimal pressure to his eyeballs and he finally let go.  Then I carried him down with me and brought him to the front of the class.

“The innocence of children,” I said.  “It took someone with childhood innocence to show you all how to behave properly.”

I hoisted the boy above my head, trying to evoke the Kunte Kinte birth scene from Roots, but I think it was lost on my audience.

“For the rest of the class period, Kunte…um, Akira…will teach this class.  I think everyone in this room could learn from him, including me.”

I placed Akira on the kneeling post behind my desk and gave him the c’mon gesture to urge him to complete the day’s lesson.

After a few minutes of silence I thought it my logical imperative to step in.  The rest of the class period I rehashed the plot of Roots, as best as I could remember it, instead of lecturing about English.  I don’t think they noticed the difference.

This evening I asked my roommates what happened to the Japanese people?  Why are they so lame?

“They had two atomic bombs dropped on them sixty years ago, each killing over 100,000 people in a manner of seconds,” said Adrian.  “If your people had that kind of history, you’d probably feel a little defeated by the world as well.”

“My people?  My people are the Norwegians, who were killed by Nazi Germans in World War II.  My people are also the Nazi Germans, who were slaughtered mercilessly by the Americans and the Russians in World War II.  Remember Dresden?  My people took quite a beating there, you god damn liberal bastard. Don’t lecture me on pain.”

Chris, who had been sitting on the television, slipped off, pulling the TV down onto its face.  The alarm went off.  The glow of the TV was reflecting on the carpet, and it sounded like an informational video on how to operate the television properly had started playing.  Chris muttered some expletives and set the television upright.  The alarm stopped but the video kept playing. He tried to turn the TV off but that didn’t work.  Then he unplugged it, but the video continued to play.  He pried off the battery power on the side of the TV and then red lights flashed “Emergency Batttery Power Engaged” on the side of the TV, and the video continued to play.  Chris seemed angry, and I didn’t like where this was going.  He delivered a roundhouse kick to the TV screen and his foot bounced off as if it were made of superball material. The ricochet sent Chris to the floor.  He picked the TV up over his head and walked to the window.  Part of me wanted to object, but part of me wanted to see where this was going, so I remained silent.  He threw the TV at the window of Main Area and it bounced off, landed on Chris’s toe and tumbled into a corner.  The screen was facing the wall, but it sounded like the instructional video was still playing.

Chris’s rage had no choice but to turn into amazement.  “Well ain’t that the damnedest thing?”

“Yes,” I said.  “The Japanese make durable products.”

Day Seven

In class today, everyone presented a skit on Where the Wild Things are.  They didn’t understand all the words in the book, but they were able to pronounce them (besides the obvious problems with two letters).  They were instructed to make costumes of all the monsters, but there seemed to be some confusion here.  The monsters looked more like people.  And those people looked like stick people.  And those stick people weren’t costumes, but were drawn on sheets of paper.  None of the students in the class deviated from this artistic lameness.

I held up pictures of the monsters from the book side by side with some of the pictures the students had drawn and I asked them if they honestly thought that they looked similar.  Their responses were mostly indifferent.  They didn’t know or they didn’t understand the question.

I told one of the students to draw a picture of me.  The drawing looked exactly like one of his drawings of a Wild Thing, but it had a stick in its hand, which I assumed was a ruler.  This attention to detail notwithstanding (and, in fact, it is highly commended) these people were really shitty artists.  I’m not that good of an artist, but I understand the basic concepts of shape and proportion.

It was in the midst of demonstrating how to draw a Wild Things monster that a thought occurred to me.  This Wild Things projects was exactly the kind of pointless distracting busywork that I remembered doing in foreign language classes.  I didn’t articulate this revelation out loud, so my students probably wondered why I started viciously slapping my ruler hand until it bled.  They might have also wondered why I started banging my head against the wall.  I had behaved illogically, and illogic should always be punished.  That is a categorical imperative.

So what if the Japanese didn’t understand art?  They could make slick, aerodynamic cars, thermonuclear microwaves and pristine computer programs.  This was an English class, not a faggy arts class.

I spent the rest of the class period writing out 60 IOU’s to my students for wasting their time with such childish nonsense.  The IOU’s were good for one free sake at Sake Joe’s (a Japanese restaurant modeled on American Japanese restaurants).  I don’t know if there is a legal drinking age here, but I didn’t discriminate when handing out the IOU’s.  I haven’t tried sake yet, but from what I understand it’s not a far cry from warm pisswater and it has a low alcoholic content.  So it probably won’t damage the young kids’ brains too much.

I sat (kneeled) at Sake Joe’s and waited for my students to show up.  Three of them did.  They were all named Hiroshi and they were all in their twenties.  I was kind of disappointed with the turnout.  The IOU’s expired after this evening, so tough shit if they didn’t look at the fine print.  I bought three sakes for the Hiroshis and bought a bottle of Suntory whisky for myself.

“For relaxing times, make it Suntory time,” I said to them.  “That’s something Bill Murray says in Lost in Translation.”  They didn’t understand.

I asked them how they thought class was going.  They weren’t sure what I was saying.  Conversation seemed to be pointless.

There was a small TV behind the front counter playing a Japanese baseball game.  I had learned a few things in the past few days about Japanese people and about Japanese televisions so I figured I’d employ logic to achieve my desired end.  I got up and walked behind the counter as if I owned the place.  Two workers were watching the television, but I knew they wouldn’t pose a problem.  I grabbed the TV and pulled the cord out of its outlet; the battery power kept the TV on.  I brought it back to my table so that I could watch the game.  Most of the players in the game were non-Japanese.  Those that were Japanese all had the same characteristics: they were short and they hit for high batting average and low slugging percentage.

“I dislike baseball,” said one of the Hiroshis.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I replied, not looking away from the screen.

This may seem like one of those moments where I’d do a comical double take, since I had just casually acknowledged one of my students speaking flawless English for the first time.  But instead I continued to stare at the screen for the next several minutes, watching Americans who aren’t good enough for Major League Baseball pound the piss out of our tiny Asian friends.

“Don’t get me wrong.  The game appeals to me mathematically.  I just happen to think that it’s really damn boring,” said Hiroshi.

“I like football.  I wouldn’t know about mathematical appeal,” I said.  And that was when I did a CLASSIC double take.

“You speak perfect English!  It’s not even Engrish!” I said.

“Yes,” said Hiroshi.

“How long have you been able to do that?”

“Ever since I learned how to speak.”

I looked at the two other Hiroshis.  “Can you two speak English as well?”

They shook their heads.

“Engrish?”

They shook their heads.

“So your parents are bilingual?” I asked the first Hiroshi.

“No.  They only speak English.”

“Well, isn’t that something.  I didn’t think there were people in Japan who don’t speak Japanese.”

“Americans,” Hiroshi said.

“Well, yeah.  People like me don’t speak Japanese.”

“Or like me.”

“No, it is you who is wrong.  Japanese people speak Japanese.  A lot of them do.  Look around you?  Hear that sound all these people are making by flapping their tongues?  That’s Japanese.”

“No, that’s not what I mean.  I’m American.”

I had to think about this for several moments and then I remembered back to my days in the states and struggled to convince myself that there were indeed some people over there who looked like Hiroshi.  Next I had to consider the implications of this new development.  I just wasn’t sure what those implications those were.

“So what are you doing in my class if you are American and you already speak English?”

“You’ll remember that you are in the employ of the Naga Corporation, which is based in the United States.  Because you are far away from the United States right now, you might have forgotten this fact.  It is probably the reason you have decided that you can do whatever you want on the Naga Corporation’s dime.  You are like a small child who thinks ‘out of sight, out of mind’.”

I wasn’t very fond of the way he was talking to me.  I thought about throwing my glass of whisky in his face and running off, but then I remembered that, despite appearances, he is not Japanese.  He is American, and he would run after me and want to fight me.

“What are you saying?” I asked, doing my best to sound innocent.

“You’ve behaved in a manner that is not befitting of a Naga employee.  Yesterday in class I observed you throw the students’ objects about and even try to knock a small child out of his sixth story cubicle.”

“I…” I began, but couldn’t think of a way to finish that sentence.

“Naga is willing to tolerate some deviant behaviors.  We understand you are operating in a culture you don’t fully understand.  However, Naga is in a precarious position financially, and some of our employees will likely lose their jobs.  I’m giving you fair warning that you could be one of those employees if you don’t stop this abominable behavior.”

He took something out of his pocket.  It was a bunch of IOUs.

“Don’t ever give coupons for alcohol to young children again.”  He slapped them onto the table.

With that, Hiroshi stood up, grabbed the TV and brought it back over to the employees, who hadn’t moved since I took it from them.

“Are these two Americans, too?” I pointed to the other Hiroshis as he was walking out the door.

“Maybe you should ask them.”  He closed the door and was gone.

I asked the other Hiroshis if they were Americans in disguise, but they seemed confused by the question.  I wasn’t sure though.  I didn’t know if I could trust anyone anymore.

Day Eight

The sign had a yellow happy face and it read: “Are you smile?  Try it and see!”

I didn’t see much to smile about.  Neither did the hordes of Japanese who were walking around downtown Tokyo.  It was raining and I didn’t have an umbrella.  I didn’t care.  The weather suited my mood.  Let me be clear.  My mood was not wet, but rather it was sad and depressed, which are common mood associations for rainy weather often seen in movies.  There was no thunder or lightning, but that would have suited my mood, too, for I was also very angry.  I had a God damned Japanese-American spy in my classroom.  I was willing to put up with the Naga Corporation’s spying on my private life.  Their identity card tracers didn’t reveal anything that I did anyway, just the places I went to.  I had a little more trouble with the idea that they were watching me work, too. Employers should place their trust in their workers.  Constantly monitoring them is like they’re just waiting for them to fuck up.

It was Time 3-1/4 and I was contemplating skipping the day’s work and maybe opting to look around Tokyo for a bit.  I hadn’t been outside of the same four or five blocks since I got here, and I thought maybe I had been wasting my time.  One thing I had on my to-do list was to stop by Chris’s dojo, but with my work, drinking and pot schedule, I hadn’t been able to find the time.

I could see a massage parlor down the street and I started walking in that direction.  A handjob would do me good right about now, I thought.  Then I thought of my students sitting there in my classroom with no teacher there to teach them.  They wouldn’t be getting handjobs like I would be.  They’d be having significantly less fun.  I turned around and started back toward Language Institute.  Then I thought to myself, what about me?  What about my needs?  Fuck those Japs in my classroom!  I turned back toward the massage parlor.  But I had a categorical imperative to do the job I was being paid to do.  Plus, if I didn’t show up, it had been made clear to me that I might lose my job.  Back toward the Language Institute.  I could probably find another job, though.  Tall Americans could be hired to get stuff off of high shelves at stores.  Massage Parlor.  This went on for a while.  I made all kinds of hesitations and reversals in my directionality.  The feeling I’m trying to express here is “inner conflict”.

Eventually, I went back to work, because I couldn’t convince myself that there was any demand in all of Japan for Americans except for their ability to teach the English language.  Logic proved itself a powerful ally once again.

When I checked in at Hattori’s window, I noticed my pay had been docked significantly for the previous day.  That is, it was docked 70%.  Instead of arguing with him, I figured it would be best if I just sucked it up.  This place is non-negotiable, unlike the United States, which likes to make compromises through negotiations on every single human right that we have.  These negotiations take the form of frivolous lawsuits by people who think their rights were violated but weren’t and Congressmen who make motions for laws that put more controls on people.  Anyway, I sucked it up and went to my classroom.

Hiroshi, that worthless scumsucking turncoat, was in his desk and ready to learn, along with all the other students.  I sneered at him to make sure he understood that I was not his friend.

“Professor Kablaa, it would be in your best interest to teach the class and not focus on your negative personal feelings toward me.  You’ll be more productive that way.”

“Well, don’t you just have an opinion about everything.”

“Yes.  And, please, no more recaps of famous television mini-series.  I expect that this won’t happen again now that you know there is someone in the class who understands what you’re saying.”

“Any more demands?”

“Yes.  Try to incorporate some of the students beyond the front grid for once, too.  The Japanese are a modest, unobtrusive people, but they do like to be involved in mentally stimulating exercises.”

On this last point, Hiroshi was correct.  I had mostly forgotten about those students behind the first vertical grid.  I had also made a gross miscalculation as to the number of students in my class.

The cube of cubicles was not a 10 x 6 arrangement as I previously stated.  It was a 6×6x6 arrangement.  I had forgotten to add a dimension and to count the length of one dimension correctly.  I told you I’m not that good at math.  So I did not have 60 students like I previously thought (though, I did multiply 10×6 correctly here, you’ll see), but rather I had 216.

Maybe there was some truth to Hiroshi’s comment that things that are out of my sight are out of my mind.  The last five 6×6 grids were definitely out of my sight and I really didn’t consider them very much.  I decided not to ponder any longer about the things Hiroshi might be correct about.  He is a douchebag.

I began class by handing out a pop quiz from a few days ago.  Students were supposed to put the name beside each picture of an animal: cow, fish, squid, etc.  I even threw in a picture of a Pikachu so that the test wouldn’t be culturally biased.  Even so, test results were really shitty.  I must not have been clear in my instructions, because every word they wrote on the quiz was in Japanese.  To add to my amazement was the fact that the question the students got the most wrong was the Pikachu one.  Most students left it blank; and one student wrote a sad face in the blank.

I was so frustrated by these test scores I didn’t feel like being very devoted to the act of returning the tests to the students.  I flicked them about, this way and that; in some cases they landed in the student’s cubicle, in others they did not – I didn’t worry about it too much either way.  For the students in the upper stories, I just kind of dropped their tests on the floor.  It’s pretty hard to throw a sheet of paper 30 feet into the air.  I didn’t care.  I was pretty casual.  The exception was when I got to Hiroshi’s cubicle.  I pressed his test into his face, acting like I didn’t notice that it was causing him discomfort.

“I know what you’re doing and I want you to stop.  It’s very uncomfortable.”

I dropped his test.  “You will be made less uncomfortable to know that you got the highest score in the class.  100%.  Do you feel like a big man beating all these Japs on an English exam, you lousy American?”

“I resent that remark.  Again, I’d like you to focus on how you are going to make these students learn, not on the malice you have for me.”

“One thing that would make it easier would be if I knew some Japanese.  It’s hard to translate things into English if you don’t know the word it’s translated from.”

“You have visual aids for translation purposes.”

“Fuck you.”

“Hey.”

“I need an interpreter or something.  Do you speak Japanese?”

“No.  I know English and I learned some French in college.”

“Ok, I don’t need your life story.  It was a yes or no question.”

Something about Hiroshi’s answer got me thinking, though.  If he didn’t know Japanese, perhaps I could learn Japanese and talk to the students without his knowing what I was saying.  His spying would be useless.  I could lecture about V or Shogun or Stephen King Presents: The Stand, and he would be none the wiser.  I rubbed my hands together in a way I hope evoked the malicious glee of an old dirty miser.  I had practiced this gesture often enough in the mirror for the occasion it might come in handy.  Barring any unforeseen circumstances, now was that occasion.

After school, I acquired a Japanese-English/English-Japanese book and I vowed to use all my free time to learn the stupid language of this country.

Day Nine

I’ve decided to give up learning the Japanese language.  It became really difficult really quickly.

This morning I received an email from Crag Dakkins:

“I advise you to stay out of the Little Edo district of Tokyo.  Seriously.  Doug Willis informs me that that is where his white slave operation ‘recruits’ members.  I’ll sum it up this way: unless you want to end up in Mongolia mining for precious metals and being sodomized by wealthy Mongolian slave-owners for every day and night for the rest of your lackluster life, steer clear of Little Edo.”

My reply?

“Hey you.  Fuck you.”

Crag Dakkins was always telling me about what a supervillain this Doug Willis is.  I didn’t see it.  The one time I met Doug at Buffalo Wild Wings in Rochester, he seemed like a regular enough guy, maybe a bit more intelligent than the average person.  We did get into a minor scuffle over something I can’t remember, and were both asked to leave.  We didn’t though.  We continued to eat our wings.  Minnesotans are about as impotent in their authority as the Japanese are.

Speaking of the Japanese, I’m in Japan right now, so I don’t want to think about stupid Americans like Crag Dakkins and Doug Willis.

Today I had finally earned enough “credits” to get a day off from work.

Chris, Adrian and I walked over to the Games Plaza to see all the latest in videogame technology.  You see, in Japan they are always one videogame generation ahead of the United States.  They have the Playstation 4 and the Nintendo Butterfly over here.  When the latter system comes out in the states it will likely have a name that’s not so gay.  I shouldn’t speak so soon, though.  The Nintendo Wii kept its INCREDIBLY gay name when it hit the US market.

The Games Plaza is packed with videogames.  The arcades here have more than your standard arcade machines.  They also have the home consoles.  How do they prevent theft of these easily stealable devices?  Well, the PS4 I saw had a clear box on top of it that was emitting a faint orange glow.  There were warnings next to it written in Japanese and English:  “Hands on console machine and eyes forwards – HANDS OFF FOR BURNS!”  I decided I wouldn’t challenge that cryptic warning yet.

There were several videogame rooms.  The room I was currently in had videogame machines on all six sides of the room.  People used ladders to get up to strap themselves in to play the games on the walls and ceiling, and chutes were used to get down. It looked a lot like the game Chutes & Ladders.  (I realize I didn’t try to hard with that analogy.)

I began playing a game called InterStar Fight Warrior 3.  It was a sidescrolling beat-em-up like Double Dragon.  You don’t usually see classic games like this anymore.  I miss them.  After defeating level 4 of the game, I received the instruction “QUICK – Advance to Console #27! to continue play!”  I looked at the side of the machine I was playing and saw the number “342” was printed on the side.

Well, this was going to be annoying.

I left my game machine and started running around wildly, looking at the numbers on all the machines.  When I first had entered Game Plaza, I had seen a lot of Japanese people running wildly from room to room with giddy smiles on their faces, but I didn’t think much about it.  I figured they were in their TRUE environment and doing what they like, whereas I usually see them where they are doing what they don’t like – English.  I climbed one of the walls and strapped myself in to game machine #27 and continued playing InterStar Fight Warrior 3.  After three more levels of this I received the message ‘WHAT HAVE WE IN STORE FOR YOU – Transport you to machine #119 – QUICK!”  Before leaving, I noticed a hatch on the wall next to my machine.  I revolved it open to see what was inside.  The small room was in darkness and all the game machines and children inside had fluorescent blue and green glow-in-the-dark labels of various sizes and shapes all over them.  A yellow glow-in-the-dark Buddha sculpture was in the center of the room.  The children stared at me until I closed the hatch.  Then I went on my way.

Machine #119 was one of those Dance, Dance Revolution machines.  Adrian was on one of the dance pads and I think the idea was that I was supposed to get on the other one.  This didn’t appear to be the logical consequence of defeating level 7 on InterStar Fight Warrior 3.  I walked up to a Japanese person who appeared to be in charge and was about to ask for my money back when he took out a microphone and started speaking English and Japanese into it.  I guess he was an emcee or something.

“We see you and your friend come in to pray our superior games systems.  Ret’s watch dem pray!” the emcee shouted.  “We enjoy American very much and would rike to make you see Japanese hospitah-rih-tee.”

The crowd of children and young adults cheered.  Some of them walked away from their machines to watch the proceedings.   I tried to do the opposite, and walk away from the proceedings, but the crowd and the emcee pushed me towards the Dance, Dance machine.

“Come on, Gonzo.  It’ll be fun.  Loosen up a bit,” said Adrian.  “I was playing a car driving game that led me here for whatever reason, but I figure we should just roll with it.”

“Fuck that.  I don’t have to roll with it.  I don’t dance, and I sure as hell don’t do dance simulations.”

“I think you’re just afraid that I’ll kick your ass.”

Normally, I don’t take the bait, but for the last couple days Adrian has been the only person I’ve been able to effectively lord power over.  I was not going to give him an opportunity to beat me in anything.

“I am going to beat your God damn brains in at this game.  Afterwards, you’re going to buy me whisky.”

Adrian accepted the terms, assuming that the latter had as a prerequisite the condition of the former.   He didn’t understand that he’d have to buy me whisky whether I won or lost.

I didn’t notice the rotating platform we were on until a fresh breeze hit my face and I saw that the crowd, me, Adrian, the emcee, many of the videogames and most of the room that used to be inside was now outside.

The emcee shouted “BEGIN!” and Adrian and I started jumping on the pads with the corresponding symbols that flashed on the screen in front of us.  The crowd cheered.  Then they didn’t cheer as much.  Then they stopped cheering.

Crowds were apparently quite fickle in Japan.  Nobody was watching us any longer.  Even the emcee had migrated somewhere else.  I got off my machine to see where everyone went.  They were around the corner watching a 100-foot TV monitor on the side of a skyscraper.  Famous Japanese Person Kobayashi filled the screen.  He was standing street-side in some Japanese city getting ready to compete in a hot dog eating contest.  His challenger was a 7-foot-tall 400-pound shirtless man from Poland.  I noticed that the fickle crowd had now stopped watching the giant TV screen and were looking at something else.  I didn’t care what they were looking at; I wanted to see Kobayashi eat 50 hot dogs.  When the emcee from the Games Plaza walked onto the 100-foot screen, I realized that maybe I should be interested in what the fickle Japanese were now watching.  I moved my eyes from the screen to the side of the street and I saw the Polish guy standing high above a sea of five-foot-tall people.  I knocked several Japanese people out of the way so I could get up close to watch Kobayashi do his thing.

Let me tell you this: Kobayashi can really eat hot dogs.  He can eat 54 of them in ten minutes.  The Polish guy had 38 and was gasping for air afterwards, pork meat probably clogging his lungs.  Kobayashi was standing erect and proud. However, here’s something you may not know about these eating contests.  After the camera went off, Kobayashi keeled over and spewed an endless stream of hot dog bits and hot dog water out of his mouth onto the street.  The Polish guy did the same, except he was in a seated position and the vomit just sort of slopped out onto his naked belly.  It didn’t have the projectile coolness that Kobayashi’s vomit had.

Adrian came running up to me, out of breath, telling me that he won the Dance, Dance game.

“Congratulations,” I said.

“So that means I don’t have to buy you whisky.  Also, I’d like it if you and Chris would pitch in for groceries once in awhile.  I think I’ve bought them every day so far.”

I patted him on the back.  “Sure thing, buddy.”

“Thanks, Gonzo.”

He walked away and I looked at my hand – the hand that hadn’t patted him on the back.  That hand now had Adrian’s wallet in it.  I had the idea that I’d use it to go buy some whisky and maybe some groceries.

Day One

I arrived in Japan today.  I must say I’m overwhelmed.  Never in my life have I seen so much Japan-ness concentrated in one place.  I’m so God damn happy I don’t know where to begin.  The happiness has filled my head with love juices, the kind that make you all mushy and sentimental.  This sort of behavior is atypical of me, and against my better interests, but I don’t care!  I’m in Japan!  Hooray! It’s the home of my hero BRUCE FUCKING LEE!  Why is he my hero?  He kicks ass, that’s why!

Crag Dakkins has been critical of my recent feminine attitudes.  I recently sent heartfelt messages on Facebook to my Winona friends about how much I love and miss them, and I also indicated that my being in Japan says a darn lot about my personality.  I’ve received scornful admonitions from Crag Dakkins for each of these things, because he is the unhappiest fucker on the planet – probably because HE’S NEVER BEEN TO JAPAN!  I did enjoy this message from him regarding his inability to see what my living in Japan says about me:

“That you live in Japan tells me nothing about you except that you live in Japan. I guess it also says that you like cultures that are painfully logical, lacking in sense of humor but for the broadest physical comedy, lacking subtlety in emotion (see: their RPG videogame melodramas and hyper-giddy colorful television shows), obsessed with subservience, duty and honor, and extremely self-loathing and sexually repressed. Does your affinity for this kind of culture say something about you? I hope not.”

Crag Dakkins is usually pretty correct in his observations, but I don’t like to tell him so.  It is a mark of strength to disagree with someone and a mark of weakness to agree.  Let him think what he thinks.  I might have some of those characteristics.  I am “painfully logical”, but show me someone who isn’t and I’ll show you someone who’s going to die a peasant’s death!

Anyway, I better get to bed.  It’s been a long day.  I’ve arrived at my apartment in Tokyo and I don’t have the energy to discuss much more.  That will have to wait until tomorrow.  Until then, FUCK YOU, CRAG DAKKINS!

Day Two

My apartment is efficient in ways I didn’t know existed.  Have you seen The Fifth Element?  My apartment is like the one Bruce Willis has in that movie.  It is an apartment that makes full use of the “foldout”.  The washing machine and dinner table both fold out to occupy the same space.  Just for fun I tried unfolding them at the same time.  A red alarm flashed and beeped, my television turned on, and an informational video on how to properly fold out the foldouts started to play.  The man on the video looked like every other Japanese person I’ve ever seen: pale white of face, short in stature, oily black hair, giant eyeglasses, and big buckteeth.  He spoke to me as if he were in the room, addressing me as “American Patron of Human Warehouse Building”.  He said a bunch of other stuff in his mangled “Engrish” that I didn’t care to listen to. I was still busy forcing the foldouts together.  After a while, the TV screen went black and the speakers emitted a voice:

“Prease to remain stationary for Warehouse Manajuh.”

And that’s when all the lights went out.

My roommates had just woken up…did I mention I have roommates?  Yeah, they’re two morons from the U.S.  Chris is a big guy from Iowa State and I think he’s a queer.  Adrian is a skinny environmentalist from Yale and I think he’s a double queer.  The siren woke them up and they walked out into the room labeled “Main Area” on the ceiling.

“What’s going on?” asked Chris.  “I heard noises.”

Figures a fag would state the obvious.  “Never you mind,” I said, trying to press the table into the washing machine.  “I’m just conducting an experiment.”

A knock came on the door.  Adrian made like he was going to go answer it.  I bolted for him and slammed him up against the wall, my hand around his throat.

“Are you crazy, man?  You don’t know who that could be out there!  Answering doors can be a very fulfilling activity, IF YOU’RE GOOD AT IT!”

“You’re thinking of gambling,” said Chris, his hand now around my throat and pinning my body against the wall perpendicular to the wall I had Adrian pinned to.  It was sort of a Mexican Standoff.  A Mexican Chokeoff.  No, that makes it sound gay.  Let’s let the Mexican Standoff comparison suffice.

Chris dropped Adrian and me to the ground and ordered me to settle down.  As he answered the door,  I curled in ball on the floor, hands over my head, fully expecting a hail of gunfire to raze Chris to the ground as punishment for any damage we had done to the apartment’s foldouts. Instead I heard some quiet Oriental chatter.  Chris waved to us that it was ok and we went over to the door. I unclasped my interlocked fingers from behind my cowering head and got up.

OK, so I may have seemed a little paranoid. I can explain that in the only sentence that I know how to: I was smoking dope. It makes me paranoid sometimes, but usually not. I plan on smoking a lot of dope over here to heighten the experience.

A tiny Japanese person not unlike every other Japanese person I’d ever seen was standing there.  In his tiny business suit, he looked like you could put a bullet in his brain and he’d be the most dapper guy at his own funeral.  He had his hands folded in front of him and his head bowed as he spoke softly.  Since he was speaking in Japanese I didn’t understand a word of it.  But at the end, he smiled and pulled out a vial of some substance.  He squeezed the rubber bulb at the end of a dropper to siphon up a small amount of clear liquid and then let a single drop fall to the carpeted floor in the hallway.  The floor immediately dissolved, like the blood from the Alien movie.  Then the man pointed at two things: first to me, second to the hole in the floor.  The message was clear.  He backed away, bowing up and down all the way down the hallway.

“I don’t know how long I can last here,” I told my roommates.  My head was swimming and I was full of fear and loathing, like the name of a movie I like.

I told you I’d give more background info on why I was in Japan on day two, but what can I say, I got sidetracked.  If I stay in Japan, you’ll get the full account eventually.  Until then, go to hell.

Day Three

Ok, so I’m here to teach English to Japanese people.  Language is logic in its purest form so I figured it would be a field in which I’d find success.

My feeling is that we should start off with nouns and build to verbs.  After all, you can’t understand the concept of “suffocates” if you don’t first know the noun subject “cat” and the noun direct object “infant”.

Eventually, I’m going to be a lawyer, and I’m going to make a shitload of money with my superior logical abilities.  This training of English to foreigners will keep my mind sharp as a tack and I’ll eventually be able to mix it up with any of the big city movie lawyers who strut so confidently around courtrooms, snapping their suspenders.

My Japanese apartment is 88 stories.  It is the only American-only apartment complex in Japan.  Over here, they prefer not to mix the mystical Americans with the logical Japanese more than they have to. Americans aren’t as clean or as shameful as the Japanese are and we are seen as a corrupting influence.  Fortunately, the Japs are logical enough to see that we should teach them English, The Language of the World. They would teach the language themselves if they didn’t mix their r’s and l’s up as much as they do.

Two blocks away from “Human Warehouse Building – American” (that’s my apartment building) is an 84-floor building called Language Institute.  Each floor is devoted to a different language, yet the only language on the outside of the building is Japanese.

Every day I must report to work at EXACTLY Time 3. They run their clocks on a decimal system over here. Time 3-1/3 is 8 o’clock – do the math if you want to Americanize my starting time.  At Time 10, the clock goes back to zero and a new day begins.  There was some controversy among the Japanese Mathematician-Senators over here regarding whether a system like this was actually a decimal system since the time is never Time 10.  It goes from 9.9999 to 0. Math-Senators were divided.  Some said everyone should quit being so stupid; for cyclical time purposes, considering 0 as equal to ten 10 wasn’t a problem.  This, of course, riled up the mathematical purists who knew for certain that 0 never equals 10.  Fists were thrown and eyes were gouged on the floor of Parliament.  Eventually they had a truce, essentially concluding that “neither was right or wrong and it doesn’t matter anyway”, which is never an acceptable compromise for a logical race.  Every now and then buildings with large decimal clocks will get blown up in Japan’s larger cities.

Hattori Matamusha is my boss.  He looks sort of like every other Japanese person I know.  He doesn’t do anything but sit behind a glass wall and check my identity card every day.  This card keeps track of everywhere I’ve been the previous day and he decides how much my pay should be docked or raised based on his interpretation of my off-work locations, whatever that means.  So far, I haven’t spent much time outside of my apartment or the Language Institute. Based on what I know about the Japanese attitude toward mingling with Americans, my hermitic life-style shouldn’t hurt my salary.  As a Libertarian, I don’t approve of this prying into one’s private life, but as a man who is in Japan, the greatest country in the world, I’m willing to tolerate this inconvenience.  I’m a little confused as to why I can’t show up early for work.  I showed up two minutes early today and Hattori unleashed a stream of gibberish on me until I went back outside.  Later, a fellow English teacher with a skateboard punk haircut told me Hattori was so upset because we have like a five-minute window to enter the building starting at Time 3. Reasons were unclear but I’m sure they are valid. I’ll adapt to the circumstances.  I’m good at that sort of thing.

Tomorrow maybe I’ll explain more about my job, unless something cooler happens.  One of these days I have to visit the Bruce Lee Museum.  You can bet your balls that my balls are going to blow man-goo that day!

Day Four

This morning I woke to the Rising Sun, noticing for the first time that the sun in Japan is not, in fact, the color it is depicted on the Japanese flag.  I flipped my bed up into its compartment and took out my laptop to check my email and I found that Crag Dakkins had reached his quota of at least ten emails for yesterday.  I don’t read most of these.  One of these was a link to a wikipedia entry on Carl Panzram.  Apparently he was a Minnesota-born serial killer who described himself as “rage personified”.  As I read on, I learned that Panzram had a penchant for sodomy, claiming to have raped some 1000 boys in his lifetime.  I guess it doesn’t surprise me that Crag would find this guy interesting.  Sodomy this, sodomy that – Crag must be gay.

Speaking of gaylords, I think some of my comments in my Day Two entry might have seemed homophobic.  I have to remind you that I wasn’t in a rational state of mind, because I had been smoking marijuana.   Yes, I think gaylords are comical, especially the flamboyant ones.  Yes, I think most of them are pretty stupid, but, really, I think most people of all ethnicities and orientations are pretty stupid, so I just want to make clear that I’m not an intolerant prick.

Wait a minute.

Fuck that.  I don’t need to offer the qualification that “I think most people of all races and ethnicities and orientations are pretty stupid” every damn time I single out some group of people for derision.  Gaylords are a silly people that I don’t understand, so I will mock them, especially when I’m in a mind-altered state.  Everybody mocks people who are different.  There is a difference between ridicule and intolerance.

No, strike those last two sentences.  I don’t need those qualifications either. I don’t need to explain myself to you.

My two roommates are not as gay as I once thought.  In fact, both of them have been engaged to their girlfriends back in the States for over two years.

Big Chris is marrying his high school sweetheart from Mason City.  He showed me her picture and she looked fuckable enough.  Slim Adrian showed me his fiancee’s picture.  She looked pretty smoking, too.  In his picture they were marching in a gay pride parade with unsmiling seriousness expressions. That was the best photo he had of her. This made me conflicted about Adrian’s fagslaggerishness.

Anyway, I’ve dwelt on gaiety too much today.  Let me talk about my work.

My room on the 42^nd floor of Language Institute is a perfect cube.  If you think about it, this might not seem to be an economy of space.  Lowering the ceilings and making the rooms into rectangular prisms would save you money on building materials and seat just as many students.

Don’t underestimate the Japanese.

They stack the students to fill the space in each room.  There are ten rows of desk cubicles that are six cubicles high.  Each cubicle is equipped with a computer monitor which displays the teacher, a necessary accessory for the cubicles in the back.  Expensive, you say?  Not at all.  In Japan, a pound of computer materials costs the same as a pound of Krispy Kreme donuts costs in the United States.

The students in my class range in age from 5 to 117.  The 117-year-old is older than anyone living in the United States, but only the 52^nd oldest person in all of Japan.  Her name is Miko Atachi.  On my first day teaching, after learning about her age, I called her up in front of the class so that the students could gaze upon her and be as impressed with her age as I was.  I spun her around so people could see her from all sides.  Nobody looked very impressed.  They must be used to seeing old people.  The Japanese live long lives of constancy and forbearance.  They eat meager diets of rice and vegetables.  Kids, this is the recipe for a long life. But maybe they WERE impressed – their blank-slate faces don’t convey emotions very well.

Miko’s eyes appeared to be more slanty than most Japanese people’s.  The years had caused her skin to fold and collect in large wrinkly deposits above her eyes, probably making it hard to keep them open.  When I reached out to shake her hand and publicly congratulate her for her longevity, she didn’t extend her own hand.  I felt slighted, and I aimed to throw her over my shoulder and carry her back to her seat like the uncivilized trollop she is.  When I leaned in to do this, I noticed a strange sound emitting from her mouth.  It was then I learned that her eyes were not as slanty as I originally thought.  She was actually sleeping on her feet, and snoring.  Well, I was in mid-motion, so I decided to follow through.  I threw her sleeping body over my shoulder, hauled her back to the tenth row, climbed up to her sixth floor cubicle and deposited her there.  I figured I’d let her sleep, even though I loved the prospect of yelling my brains out at a student who had the temerity to sleep in my class.

At the end of the day, the soothing closing time chimes sounded, and my students and I made a mad dash for the front exit.  We were on a two-minute countdown, and we didn’t want to be locked in the building overnight.

When I got home, Adrian and Chris were stocking our fridge with groceries.

Earlier in the day, I had told Adrian to go to an American-themed store and buy me a Raoul Duke hat.  I told him I forgot my Raoul Duke hat in the States and wearing it helps me think.  And when I’m able to think, everyone wins.  I’m good at delegating responsibilities to other people.  It’s one of the things I do best.  Adrian was a suitable candidate for delegation because he is altruistic so it’s easy to convince him to do whatever. He’s also smaller than me, so if push came to shove, I would win.  Chris was not a suitable candidate for delegation because he is big, and if I pushed him, he’d push me back harder and hurt some of my bones.  Delegation is a logical process.

“Did you pick up my hat?” I asked Adrian.

“I couldn’t find the one you wanted, so I got you this one.”

This wasn’t what I wanted to hear.  He handed me a box wrapped with Japanese efficiency.

Flipping back one of the box panels, I saw the edge of the hat poking through tissue paper, and that was all I needed to see to know what it was.

“You got me a Huckleberry Finn hat.”

“No it’s not.  It’s a sombrero.  Open it up and look.”

I opened the box all the way.  It was a hat made of straw.

“You got me a Huckleberry Finn hat.”

Adrian set down his groceries and took the hat.  He put it on his head and sang La Cucaracha.  If I got out of this situation without destroying him for his cheesiness alone, this was going to be a miracle.

He handed the hat back to me and said, “This is a Mexican hat, señor.”

As he turned back to his groceries I grabbed him by his shirt collar and yanked him back.  I put the hat on his face so that he could read the label inside that clearly said “American Adventure – Huk Fin”.  He said it was too dark to read it, so I pulled his face out of the hat somewhat, so he could read it better.

“It’s a Huckleberry Finn hat,” I said with a pompous air of finality that I felt was appropriate.

I put on my Huck Finn hat, grabbed a bottle of Suntory whisky and lay on the floor with my lap top.  I turned on my iTunes and wrote up my journal entry for the day. The one you’re reading right now.

Day Five

I came in to work a few seconds early today.  I was kind of hung over, so the Japanese language thrashing I took from Hattori Matamusha was particularly grating.

“You shitslagging assboy pudknocker,” I responded in monotone.  He couldn’t understand English, so I figured I was in the clear.  However, his eyes grew wide(er) because I think he assumed that I had mad fun of him.  He took a small cassette-player-sized object out of his pocket and pressed a few buttons, motioning with his hand like a traffic cop for me to stop and wait there.  He turned to his video monitor and replayed the cassette for an audio input device below the monitor.  The machine spit out some Japanese gobbledygook. Hattori read it and his face, as far as I could tell, expressed confusion.  He analyzed the text for about a minute, then let me on through.  Maybe it was lost in translation.

Speaking of Lost in Translation, I like that movie, because I’m a Bill Murray fan.  Someday while I’m in Japan, it would be nice to recreate that movie’s scenario.  I’d like to meet a Scarlett Johansson while I’m here.  Of course, I’d prefer the arrangement to be completely sexual, without the platonic friendship they had going in the movie.  And I’d prefer that the woman be more attractive than Johansson.  Make no mistake, Johansson is one of the most attractive females around. I just think it’s important to always strive for better. Also, I would like it if at no point she put on a pink wig like she did in the movie.  That just doesn’t do it for me.

I asked my class what they thought of the movie Lost in Translation.  Blank stares.  Probably because they hadn’t seen it, but more probably because they didn’t know what I was saying.  They still had a lot of English to learn.  In fact, almost all of it.

Many of my students reused notebooks they had from other classes. I had poked my head into the cubicle of a kid in the front row to see what all the fuss was about. He was frantically erasing physics equations and formulas from a previous year’s class as fast as he was writing new notes, such as the words “cat”, “infant” and “suffocates”, the very subjects I was lecturing about.  You should never consider the Japanese to be a wasteful society.  I patted him on the head to evoke approval.

I liked to slap a ruler in my hand as I walked back and forth during my lectures.  This made me look like an authority figure, like one of those nuns who turn Catholic school students into docile cows.  The sting of the ruler slapping my hand also gave me a sufficient amount of pain to feel alive.

Kenji Ibe, a ten-year-old in the front row, pointed toward my mid-section.  I thought maybe he was making fun of me in some obscure Japanese way.   I thought maybe he wouldn’t think it was so funny if I jammed my ruler into his thorax. When I looked at the floor, I determined his look was rather one of concern, not of derision.  I had dripped a lot of blood onto the floor and my pants.  My ruler hand was bleeding.   I thanked Kenji for his vigilance, but I don’t think he knew what vigilance meant.

Finding no paper products to clean my blood-soaked hands, I found a twenty-something woman in the second row named Kaede and wiped my hand on her dark skirt.  Logically, I knew that the bloodstains wouldn’t show up there.  Only an irrational buffoon who understood nothing of color contrasts would wipe his bloodstain on her white shirt. I bowed several times before wiping because I wanted her to understand that my intentions were honorable. She didn’t appear to be too inconvenienced.

The blood situation had been traumatic for everyone, especially me, so I decided to call it a day.  I told everyone to go home and read Where The Wild Things Are and be prepared with interpretations for next class period.  When we got to the front doors and found them locked, we all returned to the classroom and silently waited out the next couple hours for Time 6, when we could legally leave the building.

That night I wanted to sit back in my reclining chair, drink some whisky, smoke a joint, and maybe strike up some conversation with my roommates, who actually had some grasp of the English language.  This plan was immediately impeded by the fact that I did not have a reclining chair.  In fact there were no chairs in the apartment at all.  Furthermore, when I went to look for a chair store and came up empty, I ascertained that THERE MIGHT NOT BE ANY CHAIRS IN THE WHOLE COUNTRY OF JAPAN!

The Japanese kneel.  Something about kneeling before their shame.  Kneeling wasn’t for me.  When I got home from work, I pressed my back tightly into one of the corners of Main Area and just let my body drop to the floor.  I found comfort in the resulting slouched position.

I drank whisky and chatted with my roommates.  Adrian was lying on his back on the foldout dinner table and Chris was sitting on top of the television.

“Have you guys met any of the other Americans in this building?” I asked.

“No,” said Chris.  “I’d probably just end up wanting to fight them.  I got away from the United States because of some of my anger problems.  I didn’t like the way a lot of people worded things to me.”

“What is it that you’re doing here?”

“I work in Tetsuo Origami’s dojo in the Battle Building a few blocks away from here.”

Intriguing.  I wanted to learn to fight just like Bruce Lee, and perhaps here was an opportunity.

“Yeah, I work at this botanical garden where we–” Adrian began.

“Tell me more about this dojo.  How do I sign up?  I want to be a street fighter, perhaps like that depicted by Bruce Lee in the movie Streetfighter.”

“Well, first off,  Sonny Chiba was in Streetfighter.  Not Bruce Lee.  If you bring that kind of ignorance to the dojo, you will likely be punished severely, probably by me.  And I won’t be easy on you just because you’re my roommate.  In fact, I’ll probably be harder on you because I have to see your sweaty face and stupid straw hat every day.  Other than that, all you need to do is go to the dojo and sign up for whatever combat style you wish.”

“I threw that in the garbage.”

“What?”

“That straw hat. I threw it in the garbage last night.”

Adrian shot up off the table.  He dug around in the garbage and pulled out the smashed, torn, food-stained remains of the hat, looking astonished.

“I PAID FOR THIS, YOU KNOW!” he screamed, tears forming in his eyes.  He ran into his bedroom, slamming the door.

“Yeah,” I said.  “I bet you know some pretty kickass moves, huh?”

“Oh, you better believe it.  I’m a level 35 black belt.  Only nine people in the world have that kind of rating.  At level 34, you have to battle your way through a narrow 60-foot corridor full of gorillas in heat to advance to the next level.  I’ve never suffered such rapings and beatings, but it was worth it.  Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.”

I went to bed that evening thinking about all the cool moves I was going to learn.  I also thought about what a cool guy Chris was.  I felt sorry for him that his hot fiancée was probably having sex with other guys while he was so many miles away for such a long time.  I thought Adrian’s fiancée was probably doing the same thing, but this made me laugh instead of feel sorry.  Despite appearances, I assure you that these seemingly contradictory attitudes towards the same basic premise were arrived at logically.  I liked Chris, and I thought Adrian was a stupid.

By Nickasun (a character from ATBE and a real person as well!)

Sitting in a diner, Crag Dakkins and Dr. Gonzo Kablaa anxiously waited for their meal to arrive. It was a Sunday afternoon. After the killings in the hospital, Crag and Gonzo celebrated their victory by stopping at Nickasun’s Diner. The Diner on 8th street was a typical hangout for the 2 men. The toasted sandwiches were a personal favorite for Gonzo Kablaa while Crag preferred the meatloaf, don’t ask why… don’t know, don’t care. Anyways, Nickasun owned the Diner and has ran it for 12 years now. His restaurant has been pretty well known around the cities yet today was a pretty slow day. Nickasun didn’t mind however. He liked slow traffic days. His foods were priced well enough where he still made some profits, not that he cared about being a millionaire. He lived in a small apartment attached to the back of the diner. With the small staff size (himself, 2 cooks and 4 part-time waitresses all on their day off by the way), he was managing himself pretty well. It allowed him to have more loyal customers, for example, Crag Dakkins and Dr. Gonzo Kablaa. Nickasun known Dr. Gonzo Kablaa for years. They met back in their college days.

Nickasun handed the guys their food. Dakkins and Kablaa were pretty silent through out their meal. “Hows the food guys?” Nickasun asks in order to break the dead silence within the diner. A simple nod was all the men gave back. Nickasun was happy with their approval of his cooking but still unsettled with the lack of responses from the guys. “Is there something wrong?” Crag swallowed his food and finally answered back. “Oh, no, sorry Nickasun, the food is great. Just exhausted… its just been one of those weekends”. “Yeah, I got it, sorry to bust your balls. Its just been a slow day. It’s nice to see ya guys. Heard about your business at the arcade place and the hospital. Just wondering what is your next move? I mean, what you did isn’t exactly legal. Are you going on the run?” Gonzo quickly finished his last bite and calmly answered “Nickasun, we are going to do what we always do. There is nothing else to discuss.” “But what if…” Nickasun tried to finish his statement when he heard the diner’s doors open. In walks in 4 trashy hoodleums off the streets. These thug wannabes must have been 16 to 18 years old. None of them have finished high school. Their sluring speech pretty much proved that. The lead gangbanger knocks some salt and pepper shakers off a table. His clones laughed hysterically behind him. The man approached Nickasun without even noticing Crag and Gonzo in the background. Before Nickasun could say anything, the lead punk kid pulled out a concealed bat and went straight for Nickasun’s head. CRACK!!!! Nickasun crashed to the ground, knocked out from the blow. The gangbangers went straight for the register. A bunch of thieves is what these no good cocksuckers are. Two of the gangbangers circled around the diner to get a count of all the customers in the joint. Besides Dakkins and Kablaa, only 2 other girls were at the restaurant. Younger women, in their mid-20s, they panicked right away. The Polish girls from 2 blocks away always came to the diner. They loved the food, but mostly they loved being sweet eye candy to Dakkins and Kablaa. The gangbangers might have other plans for these ladies later. Crag and Gonzo knew that they must take control of the situation fast. When the cash registered opened, all eyes of the criminals were locked on to the prize. The distraction is just what they wanted. It was at that moment when the shots were first fired. Crag killed the leader and the clone next to him while Gonzo quickly manhandled the other two men. One of the cowards tried to use one of the women as a shield. Little did he know that Dr. Kablaa’s aim was always dead on. The girls screamed when their captors fell to the floor. The heroes here checked on the women to make sure they were okay. The women were flabbergasted while also turned on by their vigilante life savers. Unaware of one of the gangbangers barely alive and trying to aim his gun at the heroes, the wannabe shooter was thwarted by a recovering Nickasun pulling out his butcher knife and taking it down on his gun hand cutting it clean off. Gonzo and Crag grabbed for their guns but the women grabbed the guns from the guys’ holsters and blew the final criminal away. The boys helped Nickasun up to his feet and called an ambulance. With the police on their way, Gonze and Crag needed to escape. The girls told them their place wasnt that far away. With a silent nod, a goodbye between Nickasun and the four was all but forgot as soon as the sirens were heard approaching.
The cops arrived to Nickasun’s Diner. As he was being treated by the medical staff, an officer started asking questions. “Where are the two guys that helped you out? We believe they are wanted criminals as well”. “Well officer, I don’t recall where they were heading to next. I assumed somewhere out East. They wanted to flee town as quickly as possible.” “Set up road blocks all over town, I want these two bastards in jail!” The lead officer shouted loudly at the other cops. He wanted these men caught. It would make his dream come true (yes, Hall and Oates pun intended), but also get his ass out of this Midwest town. Officer Peter Simpson wanted the big leagues… FBI, CIA, NSA…. (we will get to his story later on in the series). The cops exited the trashed diner Nickasun spent his whole life restoring. Glass shattered, appliances broke… bullet holes… this will be a crazy ass explanation for his insurance. The final medic gave Nickasun a clean bill of health and mentioned that he will be okay. The only thing Nickasun was really thinking of was the rack on this hot medic lady. “Say listen…” Nick eyeing away from her breasts long enough to glance at her badge “Claudia is it? I appreciated your help very much, but could you do me a favor and hand my walking stick? It got lodged under the table there and with my bad a little bruised up, I would hate to injure myself some more.” Claudia smiled and said “sure thing”. She bent over and reached back for the crooked walking stick when she sort of caught on that Nickasun wasn’t really interested in the walking stick. Her back side facing Nickasun brought a smile to his face. Claudia quickly grabbed the stick and with a grin on her face, handed it back to Nickasun. Oh, how will this story go? We will soon find out. As Nickasun tried his best to win his medic’s attention, Gonzo and Crag finished up a second round of sex with their now new girlfriends from the diner.

By Crag Dakkins and Dr. Gonzo Kablaa

Nickasun’s story has had the top position on this website for far too long. Since Gonzo is lacking inspiration for Chapter 23 of ATBE and Crag is busy playing video games, we decided to produce some content by conducting a search of our Facebook conversations for the terms “tits” and “dick”. Some of the better results are posted below. There weren’t any good “vagina”/”vadge”/”vag” results. A LOT OF “DICK” ONES THOUGH! I guess that means vaginas aren’t as funny…or maybe it means we are the gays! LOLOLOLOL!

TITS

“The woman’s tits were in a nightmarish state of disarray.” – opening line of an upcoming chapter

“HERE, HAVE SOME TITS, SANDWICHED RIGHT BETWEEN THIS WELL WRITTEN DIALOGUE!” -HBO
“HERE, HAVE SOME TITS!” -Showtime
“NO TITS AT ALL FOR YOU! LOL!” -AMC

“The plaintiff has agreed to drop all charges if he can, quote, ‘Have ten minutes with the defendant’s tits.’”

“Salma Hayek nude” search yields a photo of her with her tits wrapped around a dick. I bet that’s real!

He had tits at one point, which might make you feel conflicted.

“Stannis’s jaw clenched tightly around Melisandre’s red rockin’ tits. He broke the flesh and a shadow came out.”

“Darren had yearned for this moment. There was a great burning inside of him, a passion that he had kept in check for the past ten months while working beside this woman that he could not have. And then, so, whatever, he slapped his dick against this lady’s coocher walls and it made really wet sounds and it kinda looked kinda silly when Darren reflected on it. He wondered why he had built it up to be so much. I mean she wasn’t all that, and he could pretty much accomplish the same thing with his hand, but he powered through, pulled out before exploding, and then dumped jizz all over the girl’s tits, cuz he had heard that’s a thing guys do sometimes.”

Every now and then I meet a European who reacts incredulously when I tell them American TV can’t show tits.
“Time to take more money from you! But it’s not all bad. Tits can be on TV now.”

Tell her to unwind her tits. They must have become entwined around each other.

“Here, here’s some tits. Enjoy that for a little bit.”

Gay guys generally love tits as much as straight men, they just don’t want to rub their dicks in between them until jizz squirts out of them.

DICK

“Bet you got a really small dick! LOL!”

“My dick is, like, FLIPPING OUT from all the butt-sex with men it’s missing out on! LOL!”

“Why is his face here, his intestines over there, and his…what is that – his dick? – here? Where’s the rest of him?”
“I don’t know. I don’t keep records of everything. He broke in my place! Whattya want?”

“Here, stick your dick up this vagina. Just watch out for the semen left over from the last guy! Just kidding. It’s not in my vagina at all, just all over my face.”

Right now he’s hiding under a table sucking Assock’s dick. They did a lot of dope and somehow got the idea that you remove AIDS by sucking it out, like a snake bite.

“So what am I suppose to do here? Just kind of stick my dick in your poop hole and wiggle it around for awhile?”

Just wait until the scene where Stannis slaps around Tyrion with his dick.

Yeah, I certainly wouldn’t object to sexing her up. As long as I could avoid thinking “Russell Brand has wiggled his dick around in this woman” while it was happening.

“Stannis strode into the room, clenching his jaw. Ser Gregor either did not notice Stannis or chose to ignore him, and continue to viciously rape the screaming Sansa, even with a spear sticking out of his gut. Stannis drew his sword. “RECOGNIZE MY CLAIM!” he screamed at Ser Gregor. Ser Gregor removed his dick from Sansa and turned around. He was about to charge at Stannis, but just then, Melissandre walked in. She squirted a shadow out of her vag and it started to viciously rape Ser Gregor. “HOW THE TABLES HAVE TURNED!” said Stannis, while clenching his jaw. Sansa continued to cry. Later, while Stannis watched shadow rape Ser Gregor to death, Walder Frey showed up and starting raping Sansa. Then Ser Niggerfaggot showed up and killed everyone. “I’M KING OF THEM ALL!” he shouted after he was done, right before some dragon or something burned him to death. Then one million more people fought over who was the king.”

“Ser Dontos stumbled off his horse cuz he was drunk as shit. Then his pants fell down and his dick was jiggling around and he farted some. Joffrey did his typical Queen-of-Hearts-off-with-his-head-BS but his ginger wife told him to chillax. Joffrey responded by ordering two of his Kingsguard to twist Sansa’s nipples, one man per nipple. Sansa cried and dreamed about the songs she had heard in the halls of Winterfell about valiant heroes, flowers, and such, when she was younger. She wished that one faggot knight of flowers would rescue her or something.”

“Let the Right One Jizz: And By ‘One’, We Mean Dick” – porn title

Probably dick in the boob, too, like, inside of it. Or boob in the dick. I could go on with other examples.

Nickasun went to bed at 7:21 p.m. today. He must be depressed. Here’s a comment I wrote on his blog: “Write a blog about that dream you told me about, where the big, throbbing, veiny dicks were flying at you from all directions, and the one Leader Dick said they’d stop only if you ate an entire wedding cake, YOUR wedding cake, for the wedding between you and your Green Eyed Lover, who was going to divorce her new husband and marry you instead if you ate the entire cake. Weird dream, buddy.”

“OH COOL!” – how I generally feel about getting lap dances after I’ve drank a shit-ton and my dick doesn’t work.

How lucky can one guy be!? I kissed her and she kissed me! Like a fella once said, ain’t that a kick in the DICK!

Jeez, all this pomegranate juice I’m drinking makes my dick want to fuck! LOL!

“Johan Valkryries was the fattest Mexican Deputy Grutch had ever seen. He had a Fu Manchu beard and had a tattoo on his chest saying ‘I like dick!’, which anyone could see since he walked around shirtless. For some reason his name and his ethnicity didn’t match much, but that’s life.”

Next week on ATBE: [Dick jiggling]

“GLAAD, why do you have such a bug up your butt? I’m sorry, dick. Why do you have such a dick up your butt? That’s the correct term, right?”

It farts AIDS from its dick.

Yes, my address is 225 Niggerfaggot Way NE, Butt-In-The-Dick, Piss-Coming-From-My-Assesota, 5432Fart

“Panzram’s life is astonishing I feel for him deeply.” – comment on the trailer for movie about Carl Panzram. I bet Panzram would have felt deeply within him or her as well. With his dick if it was a man, with a knife if it was a woman.

“Let’s cut up boys’ dicks. I mean, why not?” – Society

He ate all the dicks! Why did he eat all the dicks!?

Gonzo and Crag at Dave and Busters
By Nickasun

“Fuck! I died again, got anymore quarters?”  Gonzo exclaimed.  “Yeah, I just cashed out my last five, we will finally kill these fucking zombies for sure” Crag said.  Gonzo and Crag had already cashed out their first 5 bucks on trying to beat the House of the Dead 4 arcade game.  The employees at Dave and Busters have never seen this kind of devotion in any customers before.  I guess it would be a little weird seeing that these guys are 27 and 35 year old males.  The 12 year olds are in shock and awe…. not at the sight of the video game, but of the sight of these men shouting and screaming after every zombie they shoot and kill.   “FUCK, 2 zombies and your right”, “There’s a zombie 10 o’ clock of you”  “RELOAD! RELOAD!” “Die in hell you monkey cocksucker!”.  The intensity in the building was centered around this machine.  The intensity is easily centered around the machine because it’s a Tuesday morning just before 10am.  Dave and Busters opens at 9am, which is odd because no one really comes to an arcade on the weekdays…. let alone in the morning.

On the final boss level, the evil magician fires all sorts of shit and weapons at the guys.  Gonzo and Crag usually follow a game plan to the T, but the adrenaline was too much for both boys.  Bullets were firing everywhere.  There was no organization… Their eyes were lock into the eyes of this evil zombie creature.  Instead of shouting and screaming, there was silence except the clicking of the light guns.  After 15 minutes and the final quarters in the machine, the monstrous zombie was finally defeated.  The lights of the machine lit up like fireworks in chinatown.  The sweat off of Gonzo and Crag was dripping off their brows.  Their cheers and exclamations of joy and happiness were heard throughout the building.  Yes, after 3 days of creating a strategy and plotting, their just rewards were finally served to them.  Perhaps their celebrations got the best of them as they both ripped the light guns from the machine and started shooting around the arcade as if there was some type of doomsday outbreak.  By the time the manager noticed what was going on, 4 of the arcade staff members were bleeding and unconscious on the floor.  Gonzo and Crag took their love for killing zombies and decided that video games were not enough to satisfy them.  Their light guns have become blunt heavy objects that is sending people to the hospital.  When the manager fell by Gonzo’s hand, Crag saw an opportunity to continue their fun.  Across the street… very inconvenient for the population but convenient this plot line, there was a 24-hour pawn/gun shop which was short staffed.  Crag burst through the doors and ran to the back of the store straight to the automatic weapon.  Gonzo finished off the rest of the customers in the Dave and Busters.  The last employee tried to make a stand and attack Gonzo with a broom.  Unfortunately, Gonzo’s martial arts came in handy and Gonzo ferociously broke the employee’s arm and fatally dropped a Sonic Pinball machine on the guy’s head.  Gonzo successfully disconnected all the gas lines in the kitchen and slowly walked out of the building as the building exploded.  Crag finished taking out everyone pawn shop and loaded up his Mom’s station wagon with bullets for the machine guns.  Gonzo jumped in the passenger seat and started loading the newly obtained weapons.  Their first stop was the laboratory downtown.  They knew its places like this where zombies are created.  It is destroying these places that can only bring an end to zombie outbreaks.  As they approach the last intersection before the lab, 3 cop cars pull up and create a line in front of them.  Gonzo and Crag knew this would be the first line of enemies.  As most of the pedestrians saw 2 crazed lunatics firing rounds after rounds at these cops, Gonzo and Crag saw themselves as survivors fighting their way through flesh-eating zombies.  Unfortunately, Gonzo and Crag’s fantasy of killing zombies brought innocent on-seers to their doom.  They were just infected zombies to Gonzo and Crag and all zombies must be killed.  Even though neither man has ever fired a real fire arm in their lives, Gonzo and Crag looked more like SEAL team six.  The art of movies and video games have mystically given Gonzo and Crag the abilities of seasoned soldiers.   “These zombies are a joke, lets get into the facility, work our way to the top floor and take down the boss” said Gonzo.  “Perhaps we should start down in the basement level.  We can enter through the parking ramp.  We’ll make sure to take out ALL the undead.” exclaimed Crag.  With their bags full of ammo, and their hands full of automatic assault rifles, Crag and Gonzo entered the building.  The receptionists at the main desk had very little time to react to the sights of 2 men aiming large assault rifles at their faces before the carnage started.  Each receptionist was slaughtered with bullets thanks to Gonzo and Crag’s shooting.  The security guards couldn’t even get their guns out of their holsters before the guys blasted their heads off.    Everyone in the building was alerted by the sirens.  It was a stampede to the door.  Unfortunately, for the employees and guests, it was the path to hell.  With the crowds, it didn’t take Gonzo and Crag long to realize that a couple grenades can clear the hoard of zombies.  The building shook with the explosion.  The boys took each floor slowly to make sure not a single zombie would get by.  The screams of terror from each of their victims sounded like Zombie screeches.  The blood splatter on the walls only encouraged the guys to fight harder.  Both men had lovers they needed to protect (learn more in part 2).  As they reached the top floor, Gonzo and Crag saw the end in sight.  The CEO’s head office was in there eyes, the final boss.  With the CEO destroyed, Gonzo and Crag knew the would be known as the saviors of Minnesota… of the World.  The upper management’s decision to hide in their office turned out to be a terrible mistake.  The big suits left big puddles of blood on the floor.  The CEO’s failed attempt to throw a bottle of Scotch at the guys was the only real offensive by the “zombies”.  The only real damage taken by either guy was Gonzo slipping on a puddle of blood and Dakkins ripped his sleeves while grabbing some chips from a broken vending machine. The death of the lab’s CEO was the end of the game for Gonzo and Crag.  Their illusion of surviving a zombie apocalypse has ended.  The carnage of their bloody massacre was left right in front of them…. before their eyes… they realized that this was only the beginning.

By Crag Dakkins
Rain began to sprinkle on the afternoon streetwalkers in North Town. Men put up their jacket hoods and women unfurled their umbrellas as they moved mechanically back from their lunch breaks to their jobs. Year after year of education and numerous degrees, at least one of which reflected high-level computer literacy, had set them along the Path of Production and made them the employable in future years such as these. They were trained to block out all peripheral phenomena and solve a specific task set before them. They were not trained to stop and smell the roses…unless said rose-sniffing happened to produce measurable gains at work. It was this state of affairs in the North Town business sector that would explain why 90% of the people striding off to work outside of Pasta Diego’s Food Emporium didn’t give more than a passing glance to the fat man kneeling in the rain or to the balding, bearded, bespectacled ginger man who appeared to be knighting him with an actual longsword. The ginger wore a vintage 1970s grey sport coat with a bolo tie, and at his waist Admiral Ackbar’s fishy visage stretched over his paunch on his “It’s a Trap!” t-shirt. His glasses, with their unnecessarily thick black frames, were covered in beads of precipitation, but not enough to hide the giddy enjoyment in his eyes for his current activity.

“I dub thee Murdersun the Triumphant, liege lord of House Nickasun. An Overman henceforth, one possessed of Will to Power, and a relinquisher of the Will to Sad.”
He patted the sword twice on Nickasun’s right shoulder, then the same on the left. Nickasun flinched every time, from the fear he would be cut, but more because the light glinting off the polished blade, even under the cloudy sky, was hurting his retinas.

“Rise, Ser Murdersun,” Valkyries said. Nickasun did so, happy to be back on his feet and done with this dumb ceremony. The knees of his jeans were soggy, which Nickasun did not like at all.

“This blade is Ravenwood Steel. It is not for gloops or Sads. He who wields it must be true to his nature. He must not resist the pull of the universe; he must Be Where He Is and must not wish for The Land of Somewhere Else. Can you do that, Murdersun?”
Nickasun was unable to look Valkyries in the eyes. “Yeah, probably. But I don’t know how to use a sword.”
“Then be true to your nature and, verily, do not use it.” Valkyries raised the sword high above his head. The passersby, still having some vestigial human reflexes, were drawn to movement. They looked at the balding ginger briefly, their eyes passing over the sword and absorbing the visual data and computing that it was irrelevant, and then moving onward, their minimal curiosity pushed into abeyance.
“The sword is my gift to you. When I heard your name on the news and saw the trouble you were in, I thought you could use a pick-me-up.”
“Thanks. I really could.”
“I hired a sacred blacksmith to make it for you. He resides in the Forests of Tritanicula. I had to cross the Sea of Ulsilvidor to find him.”
“What?”
“The blacksmith is not a human, but rather a quartz golem designed to make swords. The only way to activate him is to answer 99 questions about past kings. If I had answered any question incorrectly, I would be dead right now.”
Nickasun accepted the longsword in its violet-striped, black sheath. “What? Not really, though, right?”
“Correct. A friend in Iowa made this for me. Guy’s a car mechanic. Read the blade.”
Nickasun pulled out the sword. The movement bounced light into his eyes. He squinted and decided to hold the sword still to prevent further temporary blindness. Engraved from hilt to point in a fancy, fantasy font were five words: “ENJOY WHAT YOU LOVE DOING”.
Nickasun smiled for the first time in many days. “Oh sweet! This…I said this one time! I meant to say ‘You got to do what you love’ on Twitter but it came out all wrong. Dakkins made fun of me for it non-stop. I was all messed up back then.”
Rain pattered on the blade. “I know all that. This is no coincidence. But you will keep these words in mind, right? You WILL enjoy what you love doing?”
“Uh, yeah. I kinda have to, don’t I?”
“That remains to be seen. Let’s go to the police station and get everything straightened out. No more of this fugitive hullabaloo.”
The short, fat Filipino and the geeky, uncoordinated-seeming ginger headed toward the latter’s early-model electric car, which appeared to be positively filled with cats.
Nickasun nervously tried to squeak out words of objection to entering a vehicle filled with such a substance, but Valkyries continued speaking. “I will represent you as your attorney. Pro bono, of course.”
“What?” Nickasun replied. All he could think of were Sonny Bono, Chaz Bono, Bono from U2, and boners of the dick. He thought about cats, too. Cats writhing on him…under him…in him.
“It means you won’t have to pay me. I know about your money troubles with this Negrosun guy. We’ll see if we can settle his hash, too, in the next few days. Nickasun and Valkyries, together again! Just like the old days!”

A new voice said in mid-sentence, “…and so I says to the guy, ‘You can do it my way or the highway. Which’ll it be?” Nickasun was so focused on the horrible nightmare of the car full of cats and the beautiful daymare of Valkyries’s free lawyer services that he hadn’t noticed he was walking in an opposite direction than before. A man in an enormous military-green rain jacket was escorting him by the elbow back toward Pasta Diego’s Food Emporium. “Guy sees my gun pointing at his face. I’m driving my Harley with no hands at this point, y’see. I got my one hand on my six-shooter, the other pinning down this clown. We’re tearing down the interstate, his body hanging over the back of my hog. He knows that ‘my way’ means the gun, so he says he’ll take his chances with the highway. Fair enough, I says. All I do is tilt his body back ‘til his head is down in the stream of speeding asphalt. You might say that’s where his part in the story ends.”

Nickasun recognized Deputy Grutch when he got a look under his hood. He was clean-shaven now, but he still had those distinctive Groucho Marx glasses. The rain changed from a sprinkle to a moderately harder drizzle at that moment. Nickasun was the only person in the area who saw a causal link between this and the sudden appearance of Grutch.

A hand set on Grutch’s shoulder accompanied by a “Hey, what are you doing?” The response was swift. Grutch backhanded the bottom of his fist into Valkyries’s chin. It made a dull “Boof!” sound and Valkyries skipped backwards on one foot, making tiny splashes on the sidewalk for a few steps before coming to a rest. He seemed dazed but unhurt.

“That was a warning shot, son. Next time I come at you fists a-pumping, like famous semi-retarded pugilist Primo Carnera. Never sneak up on a man when he’s storytelling.”
“You just fucked up bad, buddy.” Valkyries took out his cellphone and dialed a number with three digits.
Grutch scanned the man. His face soured when he saw the Star Wars shirt. “That reference was tired fifteen years ago, son. You being ironic or what?”
“Yeah, we’ll see about that.”
“See about what? You flustered, son?”
Valkyries held the phone close to his ear, using his other hand to cover it from the rain. Nobody was paying attention to this exchange except a black hobo who sat outside the alley behind Pasta Diego’s. He was wheezing with laughter at the violence he’d just witnessed.
“You’re going to jail, asshole,” Valkyries said.
“No asshole here. Call me deputy.”
“Ha! A cop – that figures. Well, I’m a lawyer and I’m going to sue your ass for assault.”
Grutch leaned back, smiled, and looped his fingers through the belt loops underneath his jacket. At least, that’s what it looked like he was doing. Presumably, he could have been doing anything under there.
“Hey, good for you! You lawyer types are lovely this time of year! What I really like about you guys is your knowledge of the law.”
“You bet. I got that blind justice bitch wrapped around my finger. She does what I say, and what I say is that you’re going to pack-me-in-the-ass prison.”
“Keep your story straight. You said jail the first time. Prison’s different. Don’t get flustered, son.”
“Keep wise-jacking, man. We’ll see who laughs last. Once 911 picks up the fucking phone, we’ll get you stowed away in a jail cell in no time flat.”
Grutch straightened. “Oh, that’s you? My apologies. I felt my phone vibrating, but I thought it was the wife bugging me again.” Grutch opened his phone. “911 Emergencies. How may I direct your call, son?”
Valkyries’s jaw dropped. Not like it was hanging loose cartoonishly or anything, but enough to show that this was an unforeseen and disappointing development.
“Hello? Are you there? Are you there, son? Tell me – are you in any danger of being a hipster? Any danger of that at all? Hello?! Hello?!” Grutch hung up. Then he put on his serious face (as serious as he could get, anyway, with the Groucho glasses and comically large jacket enveloping him).
“You’re in over your head here, fella. You see that now? Turn around and go back to your books and Magic the Gathering. Your time with the Samoan is done.”
Valkyries considered this and said, “I can’t do that. I promised Nickasun I would be his lawyer.”
“What does he need a lawyer for?”
“To absolve him of any wrongdoing in the Avaterrorism, the murder of Muhammad X the X, the Dakkins suicide and whatever else he’s implicated in. After that, we start handing out lawsuits to various police officers. You will be one of the lucky recipients of those.”
Deputy Grutch ruffled his arm loose from his flapping wizard robe of a jacket and pointed behind him at a vehicle parked on the street. “I repeat, you’re in over your head. Do you see THAT now?” The hot dog stand was no longer attached, it was covered in thousands of indentations and mottled with a spectacularly lousy, multi-colored paint job that appeared to be washing away in the rain, but the vehicle was unmistakable. National news broadcasts, in conjunction with the combined efforts of dozens of amateur filmmakers, had blanketed America with footage of it speeding toward the Zinc Enterprises building, blasting through a police barricade, and slamming into the building, causing it to collapse and killing dozens of people, not all of them perpetrators of the terrorist attack.
Johan Valkyries was normally of pale complexion but seeing the vehicle blanched his skin a fewer octaves lower than usual.
“Oh. You’re THAT deputy,” he said. He seemed to take the hint, turning around as he did toward his cat car.

Nickasun briefly entertained the idea of shouting out to Valkries, telling him he could stay, that it’s a free country and he can go wherever he wants to, but he didn’t want Grutch to hurt him again. Things were looking sadder now. “Why does shit like this always happen to me?” he thought, clutching his scabbard tight to his chest. He wondered if he should use the sword on Grutch when he’s asleep. The problem with that, though, was that Nickasun had never seen Grutch sleep and the idea of killing even a fly made him as sick as donuts did.

The catmobile took off down the street. “And there he went. The savior of Samoans, the shoulder to cry on, the hope for tomorrow – gone, just like that. The lawyer later opened a practice in a small town outside Hartford, Connecticut, married a girl, Jane Collinsworth was her name, a nerd with a fetish for film references just like him. She was the daughter of the mayor and heir to a decently sized fortune. So the couple weren’t wanting for money. The lawyer never again sought out the Samoan to help assist with his trifling problems. Not for a billion years, narrated Deputy Grutch,” narrated Deputy Grutch. He drove the point home by giving Nickasun a big smile through his Groucho Marx glasses. Nickasun looked at the sidewalk. He was a sopping wet mess.

“Don’t be so glum, compadre! That guy was nothing but trouble. This police force needs fixing, I’ll give you that, but litigation isn’t the answer. You don’t cure a stab wound by stabbing it harder, do ya?”
“I guess not. But I’m a fugitive and I didn’t even do anything. He was going to help me.”
“You’re safe with me now, little buddy!”
“If the cops see me with you, they’re going to kill me.”
“You let ME worry about that!”
“You don’t care about me. Why do you park that thing on the street? Somebody’s gonna see it!”
“They’ll see it, but they won’t see it, if you get me.”
“No, I don’t get it! I don’t ever get what you’re talking about! Or why you do what you do! Why did you shave your beard? There are wanted posters EVERYWHERE with a drawing that looks EXACTLY like you! Weren’t you saying that we needed to take precautions!?” Nickasun was yelling now and it frightened him.
“I say a lot of things. Something about the duality of man. Let’s get out of the rain, talk things over, grab a bite to eat, simmer you down. Shall we.” There was no question mark on that sentence because it wasn’t a question. Grutch rotated Nickasun toward Pasta Diego’s.
“I just ate a calzone ten minutes ago.”
“Terrific! Have another one! The more the merrier!”
Nickasun tightened his grip around his sword as he was casually forced inside the restaurant he had just left.

*****
“Ahh, those calzones hit the spot, didn’t they?” Deputy Grutch said forty minutes later as he drove his Dodge Traffic through the rain. On the way back to the vehicle Grutch had told Nickasun to put his Groucho glasses back on. When Nickasun lied and said he lost them, Grutch produced another pair from his giant coat pocket. He propped it on Nickasun’s face and said “Beep!” after pressing Nickasun’s nose like a button.
“All I wanted was a Diet Coke. Why do you always order food for me?”
“All part of the game, yo. All part of the game. Omar from The Wire. Remember him? He had certain respectable qualities.”
“I gotta lose some weight. Three calzones for lunch isn’t going to help me.”
“Of course not. Why would the calzones, or anything other than yourself, help you? Only you can help you, son. Stay positive. You’ll get there.”
“You’re missing the point.”
“You want to talk about missing the point? Let’s talk about your paint job. I’m at a loss for words.” As if to illustrate this lack of speech functionality, Grutch rolled down his window, wiped his hand on the door’s exterior and showed Nickasun the clumpy, yellow/purple/green/brown mess he took away from it. “Seems broken,” Grutch said.
Nickasun nodded in agreement.
“What did you do with the paints I gave you? There were several fine paints, as I recall. All of them yellow. Have you developed an alchemical process for transmuting yellow into all the other colors of the rainbow? Various artisans’ guilds would pay highly – dearly even – for your secret.”
Grutch had never hit him before, but as a precaution Nickasun shrunk against the door and braced for impact before revealing, “I…lost those paints. I had to hide when the old impound lot guy came by. I accidentally left the paints out and he took them.”
“Capital! And the new paints? What’s the origin story on those?”
“I went to an arts and crafts store for supplies. The impound lot left the gate open a lot.”
“The lot left the gate open a lot? That’s equivocation, son.”
“What?”
“I’m beginning to see the root of the problem, and I think you’d see it as well if you flipped down your mirror.”
Nickasun’s eyes dropped to his sword.
“So you bought watercolors and fingerpaints and Cray-Pas? Stuff of that nature?”
“A lot of stuff. Paint is paint, isn’t it?”
“I reckon so! The differences are as negligible as the differences between Guinness and Mich Golden Light…or between you and me!”
“Some paints didn’t work as well as others. I got lots of kinds just to see what would stick best.” Nickasun reached into his pocket. “I got something called ‘MacPaint’, but it turned out to be a computer game, I think. My computer doesn’t open disks like this.”
Grutch took the thin box from Nickasun and examined it. An anthropomorphized computer was painting a rainbow stripe and smiling gaily. Copyright 1984.
“Macintosh?!” said Grutch. “I wouldn’t paint my dog’s butthole with this, let alone my car!” He tossed the box back to Nickasun. “Well, if you’re going to paint my car like a kindergartner, the least you could do is stick to one color. A kindergartner would have that much sense. Why this whole rainbow of fruit flavors?”
A question was niggling at Nickasun and now was as good a time as any to change the subject.
“How did you do that thing with the 911 call?”
Grutch was seemingly game for abrupt subject changes, too. He grabbed a black suitcase-like object from the back seat, mounted it on the dashboard, and unlatched it to reveal a computer console. “Got this soon after I came to town. While navigating the terrain I came across this brilliant Oriental fella in the police department who doesn’t much care for the abuse he’s taken from his cohort. He wasn’t averse to selling secrets to a man who intends to change things around here.”
Nickasun examined the computer and its knobs, low-res maps, and blinking lights. The clunky apparatus looked like it was taken from the type of cheesy sci-fi movie that Board James Rolfe reviews on the internet. Nickasun wished he was watching a Rolfe video now, not talking to this crazy cop.
“This little darling has all police and FBI records and monitors all their current activity. I know what they know. One nice perk is that it redirects all cellular 911 calls to my phone whenever the calls are made within about 200 feet of it. My mission here walks a thin line between what your lawyer friend would term ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’. I can’t very well have the Keystone Kops chasing me all the time, so I had to take precautions.” He tapped his Groucho glasses, these continuing to be Grutch’s primary symbol of “precautions”.
“What if you get a call about a real problem, like a fire or a bank robbery?”
“I respond to the call and offer my assistance.”
“I see. What if it’s a bakery fire?”
“Again, I respond. In the back seat I got a fire extinguisher. If the fire’s too strong I’ll cut the interference signal and let the call reach the fire station.”
“What if it’s a guy beating his wife or a kidnapping? What if it’s a car accident?”
“Jesus, son. Don’t you understand underlying principles? For 911 calls that aren’t about me, I’ll do my duty and help if I can. If I can’t, I’ll let the others handle it.”
“I see.”
Grutch leaned into the Nickasun’s face and said, “DO YOU?” He was so close that the Marx mustache scratched his nose.

“SEGUE!” Grutch said, miming the pulling of a big rig horn as he made a sharp turn. “Open the glove compartment.”
Nickasun popped it open and a silver, cylindrical canister rolled into his lap. “What’s this? Coffee?”
“Another gift courtesy of Operative Chang. No sense hiding his identity from you. You’re not going to be talking to the cops. Open it.”
Nickasun handled the canister delicately, proceeding cautiously. A leather patch on one end had a design: a transparent shape with twelve sides. He twisted the cap. The instant it was removed, spring-loaded snakes shot out in all directions. Nickasun shrieked girlishly.
“Our friend Crag had this in his possession before he died.”
Nickasun waited for his heart to drop below 200 beats per minute and then said, “Make a mystery package and put joke snakes in it? Yeah, that’s a stupid thing he would do.”
“I put the snakes in there, son. Are you saying I’m stupid?”
“No, sir. Only it DOES seem like one of his tricks. I bet he would give me this can and say it was left to me in my grandma’s will or something. He’d write a bunch of fake documents with fancy signatures to back this up. They’d be hundreds of pages long and look real legal. If I ignored him, he would hire actors to call and convince me. Then when I finally opened it, I’d get snakes in the face and he’d laugh and try to think up another trick to play on me. It would never end.”
“You’re aware of his process. What’s your excuse for getting tricked?”
“I guess I would like to believe that grandma left me something special, you know? Something to remember her by.”
“Grandma wouldn’t want to raise no fools.”
“Grandma didn’t raise me.”
“Odds of raising fools drops appreciably then.”
Nickasun traced the outline of the 12-sided shape with his finger. “If you put the snakes in here, what did Crag use it for? Coffee?”
“No! What is it with you and coffee?! Why would that make the canister worth discussing?”
“What makes Tommy Gibbons or Clete Buckaloo worth discussing?”
“If you don’t know, I can’t teach you. 52 PICK-UP!” Grutch swiped the canister out of Nickasun’s hands to the floor. Nickasun picked it up pretty easily.
“Well played!”
Nickasun smiled at the rare compliment.
“Crag stored ‘termites’ in there. That’s ‘termites’ in quotes, son, because, y’see, they weren’t ACTUAL termites in the living, breathing sense of the word. I can’t do the air-quotes right now ‘cuz I gotta keep my hands on the wheel at ten and two. I violate this rule on occasion, such as when I showed you my computer, but you pick your battles. I’d rather get into a crash showing you my computer than showing you air-quotes.”
Nickasun didn’t care. “He wrecked Club Blue Balls, my home, with termites. You’re saying the same termites were in here?”
“Basically. These creatures resemble termites in shape and movement but are much smaller – invisible to the naked eye – and they don’t have any metabolic activity. Also, they are robots.”
“Robots? Like Johnny-Five?”
“If that helps you.”
“Why would he make invisible termite robots and then challenge me to fix the termite problem? Even if I had called the exterminator he wouldn’t have seen them. There’s no way I could have fixed the problem!”
“Now you’re catching on! Crag apparently had access to some nanotechnology. His robots were programmed to carve designated shapes out of designated materials. Wood, plaster, and concrete at Club Blue Balls were some of those materials. Human flesh obviously wasn’t, otherwise you would have been diced into cubes a thousand times over. Imagine what would happen if this technology fell into the wrong hands.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I said, IMAGINE IT!”
Nickasun leaned back, closed his eyes, and silently imagined Lex Luthor unleashing a swarm of tiny robots to take over the world. A group of Superman’s friends were hiding in the basement of a square building next to triangle trees, and Luthor used the robots to carve out the surrounding earth so he could enter the basement and take Lois Lane for his mating purposes. The imagination produced a headache when Nickasun couldn’t decide what Lois Lane looked like. So many women had played her over the years in countless reboots of the franchise. Images of Margot Kidder, Teri Hatcher, Kate Bosworth, Amy Adams, Blake Lively, Miley Cyrus, Evangeline Lilly, Selena Gomez, Alyson Stoner, Carmelita Sandoval, and Nadine Cookman went through his head. This rotating catalogue of females vying for his attention, not unlike Nickasun’s masturbation fantasies, must have had the effect of canceling each other out, because a completely unrelated idea popped into his mind.
“If the termites were programmed to eat dirt, what would stop them from eating the entire world?”
“Now you see what I was going for. As far as I know – and I’m no nanotechnician – nothing would stop that. Dakkins, however, confined his termites to the boundaries of his targeted buildings. Detailed blueprints were written into their computer code. If our sample is any indication, the termites have a default setting to expire seven days after activation.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Chang is a whiz with computers and studied nanotechnology in college. He said the code wasn’t encrypted, and in fact was seemingly designed to be discovered by your ordinary, every-day guy with years of experience working with nanotechnology. He found that the termites work as a collective, so if you program one of them to do your bidding, you program the entire swarm.”
“Like the Borg?”
“Sure. The unactivated termites we have form a silver block about the size of a domino. If it were activated it would disperse into a gray mist and then vanish completely as it filled out the volume of the area.”
“Like dry ice.”
“Yes! You’ve noticed that some things resemble some other things! Way to go! So, anyway, carved into the side of the robot block it says ‘Mitty Klorians’. [Grutch spelled this variation on the term for Nickasun.] It’s a reference to the components of The Force in the Star Wars prequels and, moreover, a comment on the unsatisfactory nature of explicating something that derives a great deal of its appeal from its mystery.”
“Mr. Plinkett had some good reviews of those movies. You should watch them sometime.”
“I’ll watch them when I’m good and ready! Anyway, Crag felled four buildings with his termites. The termites meant for New Frontiers never crossed the threshold of the building, and therefore haven’t been activated. Chang says that the computer code is so user-friendly that the settings on these termites could easily be changed to destroy any number of substances, over any volume of space, over any period of time, up to and including infinity. Once they are activated, they cannot be unactivated. Again, imagine what would happen if these fell into the wrong hands.”
This time Nickasun didn’t need to be told twice. Since he had already imagined that scenario, however, he used his imagination-time to think about the stripper Khandee and her boobs and vagina. He wondered what she was doing these days now that Club Blue Balls was gone.
“I’m sure you will agree that it’s a good thing I’m the one with the termites.”
Nickasun didn’t answer that.

*****
It stopped raining shortly before Deputy Grutch brought the Dodge Traffic to a halt outside the hospital. He managed to park as conspicuously as possible, in a “No Parking” zone and with the front right tire planted on the curb. Nickasun again worried aloud that he was going to get caught and killed and Grutch again replied that Nickasun should let him worry about that.

Outside the hospital entrance Grutch looked over several newspaper dispensers. He walked past USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times to a wooden news box with a saluting-soldier engraving and a small American flag attached to it. The Monitor. At the side of the box was a rusting iron cup where payments were made on The Honor System. Currently there was no money in the cup and all but two of the newspapers were gone. Deputy Grutch deposited two quarters and took one of the remaining papers from the stack. After a moment’s hesitation, he took the flag, too, and set a couple cigars in the cup.

Before Grutch crammed the newspaper into the pocket of his gargantuan jacket, Nickasun caught a peek at the front page photo: Buildings in flames. There was a lot Nickasun didn’t know about the events of the last few days in this city. He had been busy attempting to drive to Pittsburgh and occupying the hot dog stand and impound lot. He meant to ask Grutch for a look at the paper later, but for now he wanted know, “What are we doing here?”
Grutch stared vacantly off into the horizon, which was blocked by all the tall buildings in the way. “We’re here to pay our respects to the fallen.”

Grutch stopped at the hospital gift shop to buy some flowers. The plump brunette woman working there smiled when she saw the men in their masks, making Nickasun nervous. Beads of sweat rolled down his face as he clutched his sword tightly in front of him.
“Whatcha got there?” the lady asked cheerfully.
“Uh…nothing,” Nickasun said, hiding his sword behind his back and sidling out into the lobby.
“You’ll have to forgive him, my dear,” Grutch said. “He does not know where he is.”
“Ha! Looks like he’s in the lobby now. You should tell him that!”
“To be sure, he knows he’s in the hospital, but it goes much deeper than that: He does not know where he IS.”
After silence for a moment she said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I think we’re ALL sorry to hear that, and I’m the one who said it.”
Grutch paid for the flowers and rejoined Nickasun in the lobby. He was cowering behind a plant and appeared to be hyperventilating.
“What’s the matter, son? How can your Uncle Deputy make it all better?”
Nickasun showed him his sword. “The lady…she saw my sword. I can’t carry a sword in a hospital, can I? One time at the airport, security stopped me ‘cause I was carrying mica sheets. Someone – Crag, I think – told them I was gonna use them as a weapon and I was questioned for about six hours. I should’ve left the sword in your car. Let me go out and put it in your car. Please?”
Grutch patted him on the shoulder. “There there. We move forward now, not backward. The Dodge Traffic is backward. Trust me, son, nobody is concerned about you carrying a dangerous weapon of any kind. After all, this is the first I’ve noticed it, and I daresay I’m the most observant guy in the tri-county area!”
Grutch helped Nickasun pull himself up by his bootstraps and then they entered the elevator. At the third floor Grutch stopped outside one of the rooms and addressed Nickasun. “Now, real heroes are in here, so let’s keep the MacPaint moments to a minimum. Understood?”
Nickasun nodded sadly.
The curtains were drawn and a heart monitor was beeping. In one bed a man was unconscious and didn’t look like he’d be waking any time soon. A heavily bandaged man in the other bed woke up as soon as Nickasun and Grutch entered. The dark room was significantly darker in his vicinity. A black aura seemed to exude from his flesh as if it was made of a material from which light could not escape. Nickasun recognized Eye Patch immediately and almost deposited a nugget of shit into his pants, but at the last second his sphincter overruled this motion. Eye Patch smiled a wide, toothy smile when he saw the Filipino.
Grutch, being observant, noticed this silent interaction.
“You two know each other?”
Eye Patch saw Grutch for the first time and ditched the smile. “No, suh. I neva see dis foo’ in all my life.”
Grutch set the flowers on the windowsill. “Well, officer, my name is Deputy Grr..Grumps and this is my associate, a rock polisher named Nickasun. He’s not much to look at or listen to or abide by, but he means well. On second thought, he doesn’t necessarily mean well, but he does mean, and that counts for something in this world.”
“Proper.”
“We’re here to pay our respects to good men who have fallen in the line of duty.”
“’preciate it, suh. Why y’all wearin’ them masks?”
Nickasun was inching his way behind Grutch, but Grutch pushed him out into the open where those floating white eyes of Eye Patch could not fail to see him.
“Getting close to Halloween. We thought it would be appropriate.”
“True, true. Well, I sho’ is glad ta be back in civilize society where such as yoself can celebrate Hallereen. I were torture fo’ many days by Nig–I mean Mistah X gang. Make me enjoy da little things in dis world.”
“You said it. Well, we won’t bother you for long. I just have one thing to say to your police chief and then we’ll be gone and let you rest.”
“Troof.”
Grutch pulled Nickasun over to the side of the coma patient. He set the miniature American flag on the nightstand beside the bed and lowered the hood of his jacket. He put his hand on his heart and forced Nickasun to do the same. Then he recited the Pledge of Allegiance, the unabridged version. When he was done, Grutch turned to Eye Patch. “It was good to meet you, officer. God bless you for all you do.”
“Same ta you. Nice ta meet you, Nickerson.” Eye Patch smiled again, and Nickasun couldn’t get out of that room fast enough.

****
On the outskirts of town Deputy Grutch parked the Dodge Traffic by a farmhouse of the old and abandoned variety. He turned on his dashboard computer and adjusted one of the knobs. Nickasun watched with a feeling that was somewhere between disinterest and wonderment.
“What are you doing?”
“I left a bug on the flowers in the hospital room. That guy Eye Patch is no hero. Don’t let that show I put on fool you.”
“He works for Negrosun. I don’t like him. He scares me and I thought he was dead.”
“Yeah, we think that about people sometimes. Anyway, now we’re going to sit here for as many hours at it takes before we hear something interesting. Sound like a plan?” Before getting an answer, Grutch said “Good!” and flung his newspaper at Nickasun. “You can read that while we wait.”
Nickasun started reading the long article on the front about the Black Town riots, but all the mentions of nougat made him hungry so he looked for a different article. “More AIDS Cure Alpha Subjects Relapse” was an interesting story concerning the AIDS cure of a few years ago. Apparently 339 of the original 743 people who had received the treatment had, within the past two weeks, been hit with a much stronger strain of the virus. 220 of those 339 were already dead. From the start, the AIDS cure had been a controversial treatment. It required the removal of the genitals and all other reproductive organs, and involved a series of injections that left about half the patients with crippling short-term memory loss. Most people with AIDS preferred taking the AIDS cocktails for the rest of their lives, thinking the cure was worse than the disease, and this new information would likely mean that even more would take that route.
For the next few hours Grutch and Nickasun didn’t hear any sounds from the hospital room other than beeping of the heart monitor and the occasional cough. Nickasun read a few more articles – one about the planned reconstruction of the old city hall building and another about a wholesome bakery that was going out of business – but these stories lacked pictures of hot celebrity girls so he got bored pretty quickly. Grutch sat silent, still, and staring for the whole time. About eight hours later, in the early hours of the morning, as Nickasun’s stomach was growling and he was tired and he was about to suggest they go get a bite to eat or ask Grutch where his rock-covered car was, the sound of a door opening emanated from the computer’s speakers. Grutch and Nickasun listened intently.
“Ha ha! My nigga! What-cher ugly-ass self doin’ in hurr? Ain’t ya suppose ta be babysittin’ dat marshmallow man?”
“Just bringing you the word on the street. I’m done with Asscock. Durand fast-tracked my promotion. I’m an official detective now, with the paperwork and salary to prove it, so I’m not gonna watch that tub of shit anymore.”
“Legit dick now? Proper. That’ll help out Negrosun fo’ damn sho’.”
“I earned it. Hockley gave it to me. We all heard him.”
“Yeah, yeah, not right ta be no Indian givah. Anyway, whatchoo got fo’ me?”
“Big news and little news – which do you want first?”
“Less start small an’ work our way up, baby!”
“OK, here it is. You’ve been transferred to our precinct. Schneiderman has been assigned as your new partner”
“Sheeeit! Wha’s dis – 48 Hours or some shit? Why they hook me up with dat Jewboy? No mo’ niggas on da po-po?”
“Actually, Schneiderman is black now. He might even be blacker than you.”
There was a pause.
“Dat allergation remain ta be seen.”
“You’ll see it soon enough, once you get outta here and black on the street.”
“Watchoo say?”
“Oh, sorry. BACK on the street.”
“Yeah, nigga, I knew whatchoo meant.”
“I think ‘Unlucky Rat’, as they’re calling Schneiderman now, on account of his accidentally falling into a vat of disfiguring chemicals, could be persuaded to join our side. Sure, he’s a Jew, but I just have a feeling about him.”
“What’s da big-ass news?”
“Well, Detective Shitface has resurfaced. He came in to the station a few hours ago.”
“That muthafucka ain’t no big news.”
“Now hold on. That’s not the news. You’re gonna like this.”
“Aight.”
“So I was hanging out at the front desk with Rolfman, talking to Janine and Sally. It was just us and a few of those FBI guys at a table playing cards. The front doors burst open and cracked against the wall. At first I thought it was a naked man standing out there, which turned out to be only partly true. Eye Patch, I’ve seen Shitface do some incredible things over the years, but he was always nonchalant about it. This was different – this was showmanship. More your style.”
“Boy is growin’ up.”
“We knew it was Shitface because he had cut a face-hole into the suit he was wearing and we could see his shades and mustache. Otherwise the suit was intact but it had numerous stitches where it had been sewn back together. The hollow dickskin flopped around as he approached the desk…”
“Wooo! Ha ha!”
“…and you could tell that he was wearing his boots inside the feet. Deflated toes stuck out from the end of them. When he reached the desk he coolly flipped a human skull up in the air and Janine caught it. He said, ‘Case closed’, and walked right back out the door.”
“Tight. But I don’ get it.”
“After he left, we examined our HD security camera footage of his visit and studied the arrangement of tattoos on the skin-suit. The patterns EXACTLY match the testimonial evidence we’ve gathered from witnesses. DNA tests are still pending, of course, and we’ll have to talk to Shitface himself, but it certainly looks as if Shitface was wearing…Mr. X.”
“DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNN! Ha ha!”
“Yeah.”
“Nigger X, he done.”
“Unequivocally and irreversibly, it would seem.”

By Dr. Gonzo Kablaa

Johan Valkyries sat down at the table across from Nickasun.  Nickasun was glad to see him.  Very glad.  He would’ve been glad to see any familiar face that wasn’t trying to kill him or yell at him or drag him to some interrogation room, and it was especially good to see an old friend.  He had known Johan for years, all the way back from college.  Nickasun hadn’t seen Johan in over two years, and he was about the furthest thing from his mind, but after he had finished painting Grutch’s car, he had found the gate to the impound lot open and walked out.  Not ten minutes later, a familiar voice had started calling his name: Johan. It was an amazing coincidence, especially since Johan didn’t live in this city, but given everything that had happened recently, Nickasun didn’t spend much time dwelling upon it.

They were now sitting at Pasta Diego’s Food Emporium.  Johan looked much the same as the last time Nickasun had seen him.  As far as he knew, Johan’s job was still being an attorney.  He worked in legal damage control.  That is, when things were shitted up well and good, his specialty was manipulating the law to mop up that shit.  Johan smiled.

“Nickasun.  I haven’t seen you in forever.”
“Yeah, it’s been awhile.”
“Too long.”
“How long are you in town for?”
“I’m not really sure.  A day?  Three weeks maybe?  But enough about me.  How’s your life?  How’ve you been?  And why are you wearing those ridiculous ‘Groucho Marx’ glasses?”

Nickasun took off the glasses.  “It’s a disguise,” he responded, though he didn’t seem convinced of that fact himself.  “Anyway, I’m alright, I guess.”

Johan rose an eyebrow at this.  It would’ve been obvious to anyone from Nickasun’s tone that his statement was far from accurate.  “No,” said Johan, “I mean, how have you really been?”

Nickasun shook his head.  “Not that good.  My life is a mess.”
“What’s wrong?”
“There’s a lot of things.  I think the cops are after me.  I’ve spent like four days in interrogation rooms.  I was in the same room that two cops and a cab driver got killed in.  Another cop stole my car.  I think it was a cop.  I was stuck in a hot dog stand for another couple days.  Then this other cop got me out and made me paint his car.  I probably don’t have a job anymore.  And my apartment is fucking gone.  Everything is gone.”
“Tell me what exactly happened.”

Nickasun talked for awhile about everything that had happened: the termites, the Dakkins suicide, the interrogation room confinements, the blackops, the shoot-out, the circular road trip, being trapped in the hot dog stand, everything.  Johan nodded thoughtfully as he listened, and when Nickasun was done, Johan spoke.

“Sounds like you’ve had a bad time of it.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, don’t worry about it.  This dinner’s on me.”

Nickasun narrowed his eyes.  “You don’t seem very surprised by all this.”
Johan shrugged, responding casually, “It’s not really much more bizarre than that whole Rock Island thing, is it?”
“I guess not.  I just need to sort this stuff out.”
“Yeah.  It sounds like your life hasn’t been going all that great the past couple weeks.”
Nickasun shook his head.  “It’s mostly Negrosun’s fault.  He’s basically ruined my life.”
“Negrosun?”
“Yeah.  Like with the whole Rock Island mess.  He keeps doing everything to ruin my life.”

Johan got a serious look on his face.  “Listen, Nickasun.  I have to tell you something about this whole Negrosun thing.  I’m telling you this as a close friend.  And because you need to know this.  The truth of it is, Negrosun hasn’t done one damn thing to ruin your life.”

Nickasun gave Johan a confused look.  “What?”  He shook his head.  “What’re you talking about?  Negrosun has done EVERYTHING to ruin my life.”
“No, he hasn’t.”
“How can you even tell me that?  He’s made the last five years of my life miserable.  He makes me play saxophone in his stupid club.  He calls up girls I know and tells them lies about me, so they won’t talk to me anymore.  He makes me do pointless things like paint furniture, strip the paint off that furniture, and then paint it again.”
“I’ve done some research on this, Nickasun, based on what you’ve told me before.  I found out you don’t play saxophone in Negrosun’s club.”

Nickasun started sounding annoyed.  “Oh, yeah, am I imagining it?  Am I imagining being humiliated every time I have to play the saxophone in that stupid club?”
“No.  You’re not imagining playing a saxophone in a club.  Legally, though, it’s not Negrosun’s club.”
“Who’s club is it then?”
“Well, Nick, it’s YOUR club.”

Nickasun was taken aback.  That was absurd.

“MY club?”
“Yes. The deed is in your name.  I did the research.”
“I’m pretty sure I’d know if I owned a club.”
“Not necessarily.”
“What?  What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m saying that you own the club you play saxophone in, and that you DON’T know about it.”
“That’s stupid.  How would that even work?”

Johan looked thoughtful for several seconds.

“How do I explain this…?  You’ve seen Fight Club, right?”
“Yeah, I’ve seen it.  What does that matter?”
“What’s significant about the ending?”
“They blow up that building.  And it turns out that Brad Pitt and Edward Norton are the same person.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“Think about it.  What the main character found out about Tyler Durden.”

Nickasun did think several seconds, however much the idea of thinking troubled him.  “Wait…wait.  Are you trying to tell me you think I’M Negrosun?”
“Bingo.”
“That’s just stupid.”
“Why?”
“Well…” Nickasun looked exasperated.  “For one thing, Negrosun is black.  I’m not.”
“IS Negrosun black?”
“Uhhh…yeah.”
“Really?  Have you ever seen Negrosun?”
“I think I’ve seen pictures of him.”
“Have you ever SEEN Negrosun?  In person?”
“Well…no.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Other people have.”
“How many people do you know who have seen Negrosun?”
“Plenty!”
“How many people do you know who you can say with absolute certainty have seen Negrosun in person?”
“I don’t know.  There’s some.  This is ridiculous.  I can’t be Negrosun.  Those black cops worked for Negrosun.  They wouldn’t have bossed me around if I was Negrosun.”
“They probably had never seen Negrosun before either.”
“This is stupid.  I work three jobs!  I barely have time to play guitar anymore.  I don’t have TIME to be another person!”
“Unless you’re an insomniac.  You know, like the main character in Fight Club was.”
“This is ridiculous!  Negrosun…why would I ruin my own life?”
“I don’t know, why WOULD you ruin your own life?”
“I wouldn’t!  So I’m not Negrosun.”
“Incorrect.”
“What?”
“Incorrect.  You WOULD ruin your own life.  That is, your subconscious self would ruin the life of your conscious self.  In the interests of your conscious, your subconscious and your existence as a whole.”
“Wait, what?  You’re not making any sense.”
“Look at your life, Nickasun.  You’re 41 years old.  No relationship right now.  You don’t like your job, if you still have it.  You didn’t like your apartment, when it existed. You’re not happy.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“You have no Will To Power.  You have what the philosophically inclined call the Will To Sad.”
“Will to Sad?”
“Yes.  You direct your life to sadness.  Each year, you become more sad.  Do you know why?”
“I’m not sad.”
“Do you know why you direct your life to sadness?”
“I don’t direct my life to sadness or whatever.”
“Should I repeat the question?”
“No, don’t bother.  I don’t give a shit.  This is all stupid.”
“Because despair is the path of least resistance,” Johan continued.  “It is easier for a man to Despair than to Accomplish, Nickasun.  Accomplishment requires sacrifice. Accomplishment requires risk.  To pursue accomplishment is a most difficult thing, because to pursue accomplishment is to pursue glory.  Glory is uncertain.  Despair is certain.  Do you understand?”
“No.”
“Achievement is uncertain.  The pursuit of achievement is the antithesis of a guarantee.  It is the edge, Nickasun.  To pursue glory is to stand on the edge, uncertain of whether you’ll plunge to the greatest depths or soar to the greatest heights.  When famous Norwegian Roald Amundsen set out to reach the South Pole, he didn’t know whether he would achieve his dream and live in glory as the world’s greatest explorer, or fail spectacularly and die horribly as his English peer Robert Falcon Scott did.  Do you see?  Only Amundsen achieved.  But despair, that is certain.  It is safe.”
“What’s safe about despair?”
“To despair, you need only to stand back and curse the world.  It provides an easily obtainable and perverse sort of gloopy satisfaction.”
“But why would I want to ruin my own life?  You know, even subconsciously or whatever?”
“You’re not REALLY ruining your own life.  You, or Negrosun I should say, is doing everything in his power to IMPROVE your life.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?!  He’s made my life miserable!”
“Yes.  Exactly.  Negrosun has made your life as miserable as possible.  Why?  To make your life Unbearably Miserable.  To make your sadness UNBEARABLE.  To despair is normally a very simple thing to do.  It requires no great effort, and despair can be maintained indefinitely with relative ease.  But sometimes, to despair is not such a simple thing, such as when a man can sink no further, and has pushed the limits of what can be endured.  ‘Rock bottom’ can act as the genesis for change.  A rebirth, so to speak.  To create your Will To Power, Negrosun has endeavored to force you down into the greatest depths, further and further until the darkness and the sad are beyond bearing, so that the only way left to move is UP.  Negrosun wishes you to Achieve, Nickasun.  To ACHIEVE is to escape.  Do you understand?”
“You’re saying Negrosun, or my subconscious or whatever, wants to make my life so bad that I want to make it better?”
“Yes.”
“But I’ve always wanted to make my life better.”
“NO.  You have always desired a better life.  This is much, much different than desiring to MAKE your life better.  Do you see?”
“Not really.  Basically, you’re trying to convince me that I have like multiple personality disorder?”
“No.  It is referred to as dissociative disorder now.”
“But…you’re saying I’m like two different people?”
“Yes, in a manner of speaking. Negrosun is a manifestation of your long dormant subconscious Will To Power.”
“That’s just stupid.”
“Examine the evidence.  Is Negrosun a powerful man?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Yet, he focuses so much of his time and energy on you.  Why?”
“I owe him money.”
Johan rolled his eyes.  “Money?  Isn’t Negrosun a wealthy man already?”
“I guess.”
“Money is a simple thing for him to attain.  Why does he focus on you so much?”
“I don’t know.  Maybe he just gets off on making my life miserable.”
“It’s simple to curse the world, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“It is simple to curse the world.  It is much more difficult to accept the Truth.  Part of your subconscious has rebelled, and taken charge in whatever way that it could, to direct your life in whatever way it could.  Negrosun hasn’t been sabotaging your life.  You’ve been sabotaging yourself, for your whole life.  Negrosun is doing the opposite of sabotaging your life.  He has been salvaging your life.”

Nickasun was quiet for a time.

“But I can’t be Negrosun.”
“So you say.  Why not?”
“I don’t…” Nickasun seemed at a loss for words.  “This whole thing…this whole thing is just so ridiculous.”
“So you’ve said.”
“This is a lot to take in.  This is messed up.”
“Yes.  It is not easy to come to terms with Truth.”
“So…Negrosun isn’t even real?  All this time, I’ve been Negrosun?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“No, not really.”

The waitress arrived to take their order.

*****

MEANWHILE, on the Blacker Side of town (in Blacktown)…

Everything was in flames.

But more on that later!  First, what happened the night before!  That night, a lot of officers had gone out drinking at the Blue Rascal, a bar often frequented by police, paramedics, and firemen.  Most police generally didn’t need much of an excuse to get hammered, and the recent hospitalization and comatose state of Chief Hockley was definitely enough of an excuse.  Enormous amounts of beer and shots and Bom Diggity Bombs had been consumed.  Officer Rico, in particular, had seemingly thought it paramount that he drink more than any other two officers combined.  Things got even more interesting when Officer O’McTally had started a brawl with the local firemen: he had absconded with a bottle of bourbon they had purchased for their table, and then spewed the contents of said bottle at the firemen when they asked for it back.

Actually, no, never mind.  Back to the riots.

As was previously covered, everything in Blacktown was in flames.  Well, maybe not every single thing, but there was a lot of flames and smoke from flames.  Intense rioting had begun earlier that day, and showed no signs of dissipating.  Just the opposite, in fact: things were getting worse.  The sidewalks in front of various shops were filled with broken window glass, the shops themselves having been emptied of goods, one in every four cars or so had been overturned, and at least six buildings were burning down.

Standard police procedure for dealing with riots was a strategy called “Contain, Corral, Conciliate,” enumerated in Police Procedural Video 10, Episode 4.  This involved first setting up barricades to prevent riots from spreading (contain), then slowly advancing the barricades until the rioters were more or less in one place (corral), and finally having professional counselors specializing in emotional empathy and ethnic sensitivity speak to the rioters and attempt to pacify them (conciliate).

“Contain, Corral, Conciliate” wasn’t all that effective as a tactic, but higher-ups in the police force and local government were loathe to use methods that required any higher level of force, due to the inevitable lawsuits that followed.  Juries had awarded millions of dollars to rioters who had been subdued with tear gas, truncheons, high pressure water hoses, rubber bullets, or just about anything other than words (and even then, a jury in one case had awarded $750,000 for emotional distress caused by the “unduly loud and excessive yelling” used to stop a man who was applying a sledgehammer to an ATM).

The strict limits placed on police riot-response tactics had generated significant problems back in the 2010’s, when violent flash mobs sprung into existence with increasing regularity.  They became incredibly unpredictable and destructive.  For a time, the city’s bus transit system had been entirely shut down after eleven buses had been attacked and destroyed and their occupants beaten and robbed.  No one could explain exactly why or how the flash mobs started, since they appeared to be unorganized and spontaneous, and so coming up with a solution to prevent them proved to be impossible. Since many of the flash mobs were composed largely of the city’s disadvantaged minorities, any use of force by the police to quell these riots was immediately and vehemently denounced as racist.  Newspapers reported the incidents as “demonstrations,” although no one was sure what the flash mobs were demonstrating, other than their desire to loot stores and set things on fire.

Heavy police presence in the financial sector of town and self-help vigilantes in the Italian sector of town helped keep these areas relatively flash-mob-free, but the rest of the inner city, and sometimes even the surrounding suburbs, were prone to violent flash mobs at any time.  Things had finally started to quiet down around the time Mr. X rose to power.  He seemed to keep the flash mobs in check. Many believed there was an arrangement, spoken or unspoken, between the city authorities and Mr. X, wherein Mr. X contained the flash mobs in exchange for the city authorities largely leaving control of Blacktown to him.  Some though Mr. X had been causing the flash mobs all along (nope).  Whatever the case, flash mobs had once again become rare and isolated incidents.

What was currently happening far exceeded a mere “flash mob,” since almost all of Blacktown seemed to be rioting.  The police had thus far managed to cordon off Blacktown to contain the riot, but they weren’t doing much to quell the chaos within it.  Earlier, the rioters had managed to spread into Frogtown, and had succeeded in reducing most of the neighborhood into a smoking ruin before the police were able to push them back into Blacktown.  For the moment, though, things were contained in Blacktown.

The genesis for the riots seemed clear enough.  Earlier that morning, Deputy Commissioner Ford had ordered a police raid of the Jigaboo Lounge and the Banana Tree.  It was the culmination of mounting tensions between the police and Mr. X: the bombing of the ad agency had led to interrogations, the interrogations had led to semi-violent retaliation against police, and the cycle had progressed further until an unconscious police officer was found, bleeding from the head and with a banana painted on his chest.  Two anonymous witnesses had said the culprits had split off, one fleeing to the Jigaboo Lounge and the other to the Banana Tree.  It wasn’t clear why the witnesses would have followed the two culprits the 17 blocks or so to get to these places, but no one really asked either.  Ford meant to find these suspects and interrogate them thoroughly.  So, the raids were ordered, and police swarmed into Blacktown.

These raids had produced significant resistance, and things had started to become particularly heated in the Banana Tree, where (among others) Officers O’McTally, Rico, Schneiderman, and Campbell had been assigned. Under an ongoing mandate to use minimal force when conducting raids that could involve disadvantaged minorities, the situation got difficult to control when people started shoving and verbally abusing the police.

Officer Campbell had brought the whole mess to the boiling point.  Apropos of nothing, he had walked over to a particular patron in the bar, grabbed him forcefully by his shirt, and loudly demanded “DID YOU SHIT?!”  After being momentarily stunned, the patron quickly shoved Campbell off of him, angrily responding, “The fuck you mean did I shit?  Crazy cracker-ass poh-lice asking if I shit, the FUCK?”  This further infuriated the unstable-looking Campbell, who drew his gun and started waving it around in the air, screaming “YOU SHIT!!  YOU SHIT YOUR PANTS!!”  The other officers tried to restrain Campbell, but it was proving difficult.  They weren’t quite sure what was wrong with him, or with Rico, who had begun laughing uncontrollably.

Campbell’s actions were poorly received by the rest of the civilian crowd assembled at The Banana Tree, and soon glasses and bottles were being thrown, which caused the police to start backing toward the exit.  As they were nearing the door, one of the glasses hit Officer Schneiderman on the skull.  Consumed with anger (he might’ve turned red with fury if his skin wasn’t as black as used motor oil), he drew his gun, cocked it sideways, and started firing into the crowd.  Somehow, Schneiderman managed to unload the entire clip without actually hitting anyone, though it did surprise the club patrons enough that they stopped throwing things temporarily.  The other officers managed to drag Schneiderman and Campbell out before the shit really hit the fan inside the Banana Tree, but unfortunately for them, the shots had drawn other Blacktown residents.  And they all seemed to be mad as hell: attempts to control the assembling civilian crowd had failed miserably and the whole thing had snowballed into a full-scale riot.

Pursuant to standard “Contain, Corral, Conciliate” protocol, various barricades had been set up on the border of Blacktown.  Lieutenant Marsh was the ranking officer at one such barricade, which included the Banana Tree raid team.  He was doing what he could to maintain order, which was no simple task.  The police hadn’t dealt with a riot anywhere close to this scale for years, and the vast majority of the force was wholly inexperienced with this sort of thing, even though they had all been required to watch Police Procedural Video 10, Episode 4.

To make matters worse, the precinct and overall department’s hierarchy had largely collapsed, since it sorely lacked anyone who could effectively take charge: Commissioner Zybdek was attending a cultural sensitivity conference in Orlando, Deputy Commissioner Ford was grossly incompetent, Chief Hockley was in a coma, and Commander Bryant had been suspended two weeks ago on charges of corruption.  Detective Shitface and Detective Davunk, both of whom could have stepped in as de facto leaders, were missing and exploded, respectively.  Leadership of the precinct had fallen to Captain Durand, who was definitely not known for his crisis management skills.  As a result, each containment barricade manned by officers of Durand’s precinct was acting largely without orders or guidance.  Lieutenant Marsh wasn’t an idiot, but he wasn’t a natural leader either, and while being tall, meticulously groomed, and well-spoken had helped him rise in the police cop ranks, it wasn’t going to help him stop this riot.

Compounding the situation, he had to deal with Officer O’McTally, who was currently screaming that everyone was going to “DIE, FUCKING DIE,” unless they immediately evacuated the area.  O’McTally did not look well: his eyes were bulging wildly, he was missing a shoe, his shirt was half torn off, and he was continuously flailing his limbs all about.  For the past hour he had divided his time equally between cowering in a fetal position and violently shaking officers near to him while screaming into their ear, in an attempt to convince them of the need to leave urgently and without delay.

This was odd behavior for O’McTally, who usually took any crisis as an opportunity to exhibit his superior manliness.  For example, O’McTally was famous for having subdued a violent pit bull by bashing its skull in with a brick rather than using other available means because, as he said, “Fuck it.”  And there was also the time O’McTally had, while off-duty, thwarted an attempted gang rape he’d happened upon by incapacitating three men, also with a brick.  Given his reputation, no one was quite sure just what the hell was wrong with O’McTally, or with Officers Rico and Campbell for that matter, who were also acting in decidedly strange ways.

Unbeknownst to anyone, the cause of their behavior was directly linked to the previously mentioned night of drinking that had resulted in so many of the officers’ raging hangovers.  Five officers had initially called in sick that morning, but since the precinct was so short-handed, these officers had been offered double pay to come in anyway.  When word of this arrangement got out, almost every single officer on duty that day called in sick.  As a result, the police force that was operating at considerably less effectiveness than normal were getting paid twice their regular pay to do so. Chief Hockley wouldn’t have tolerated this kind of nonsense, but he didn’t have much to say about it, since he was currently in a coma.  Captain Durand had decided he had bigger fish to fry than figuring out how to get his men to do their jobs without a bonus (for example, the absence of Shitface was of notable concern).

Officer Rico, happy to be receiving twice his normal pay but not so much so that he wasn’t still in considerable pain from his hangover, had grabbed every pill bottle in his medicine cabinet before stumbling to work, in the hopes that there was some cocktail of medications and drugs he could take that could alleviate his suffering.  Officer O’McTally had joined him at his desk, carefully studying the various piles of pills arranged on it.  Rico and O’McTally were two of the braver officers in the precinct, often competing in man-offs that involved things like arm wrestling, beer chugging, and spraying their genitals with pepper spray in order to determine who was made of tougher gumption, but they were certainly not above heavily medicating themselves to make hangovers more tolerable.

After careful study, Officer Rico had selected one from a particular pile of little white pills.  He told O’McTally he was pretty sure it was tolfenamic acid, which he said was a proven hangover cure.  Since they had particularly bad hangovers, Rico and O’McTally both took three of the pills, along with a Vicodin and various over-the-counter pain killers.   Rico had also given Officers Campbell and Jackson some of the small white pills.  As it turns out, the little white pills were acid-coated MDMA capsules that Officer Rico’s girlfriend had left in his bathroom after a night out clubbing. Officer Rico didn’t remember she had left them there, but he remembered his girlfriend had talked about trying tolfenamic acid, and the pills did have “T-Ac” inscribed on them.

So while their fellow officers might’ve been confused as to why O’McTally was currently screaming about the “fire negroes” and “smoke ghosts” his drug-addled brain was absolutely convinced would kill them all, or why Rico was sitting cross-legged on the street and very intently examining his police badge, oblivious to all the surrounding pandemonium, even a full explanation of what was happening to them probably wouldn’t have helped things much.  As it stood, every officer was busy trying to keep the Blacktown riots from spilling out every which way into the city, and no one had the time or resources to extricate O’McTally, Rico, or Campbell (who was at that moment furiously masturbating in a nearby alley) from the area.  Despite not having ingested any drugs, Schneiderman had proved to be a distraction too: they had been forced to disarm him after his repeated attempts to fire into the crowd.  Officer Jackson had only taken one pill, and was handling his inadvertent drug trip well enough that he could function on a basic level.

Due to lack of effective manpower, lack of strong direction from competent leaders, and the combined distractions of O’McTally, Rico, Campbell, and Schneiderman, the “Contain, Corral, Conciliate” strategy had been limited to just the “Contain” part.  Marsh had given the go-ahead for one of the counselors to speak to the rioters, even though the “Corral” step had been skipped altogether, but a large rock had struck the counselor in the temple and rendered him unconscious.  It was taking the officers present everything they had to prevent their barricade from collapsing.  The rioters were keeping their distance for now, since officers were allowed to respond with force if directly attacked in close quarters, but Marsh wasn’t so sure how long they’d continue keeping their distance.  They had already sent four unmanned cars accelerating into the barricade, and were relentlessly throwing whatever projectiles they could find at the assembled officers.

Marsh was wondering just what the hell he was supposed to do when he noticed a canister of some kind land close to him.  As the rioters had primarily limited themselves to throwing rocks and bricks, he wasn’t absolutely sure what the canister was about.  This uncertainty was eradicated when the canister started emitting a heavy white smoke that Marsh immediately recognized as tear gas.  “Hmmmmm,” he thought.  More canisters began to land behind the barricade.  He quickly put on the only gas mask available in the barricade, though it was over two decades old and didn’t work properly.

This was a bad turn of events.  And maybe even a little bit ironic, if you thought about it.  Back in the day, a police riot response team would’ve had plenty of gas masks on hand, but since the use of tear gas was now limited to the point of effective prohibition, the city hadn’t seen much of a point to outfitting the police force with gas masks.

“FFFUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!” screamed O’McTally, swinging his fists wildly at the cloud of gas that was approaching him.  He wasn’t going to have his intestines ripped out of his body and devoured in front of him.  Not without a fight.  Officers everywhere began coughing and stumbling wildly, trying to escape the clouds of gas, though Officer Rico seemed unfazed by it.

“Where the hell did they get tear gas?” Lieutenant Marsh wondered to himself.  If the other barricades were also being attacked with tear gas, Marsh knew the whole situation could turn completely FUBAR very fast.  If this mob got into the rest of the city, it would be almost impossible to stop without bringing in the National Guard.

“KEEP YOUR POSITIONS!” Lieutenant Marsh screamed uselessly, his eyes starting to water from the tear gas leaking into his gas mask.  He knew nobody was going to listen to him, because Marsh wasn’t sure he was going to listen to himself.  Maintaining any air of authority required considerable effort for him in calm situations, and it was impossible in stressful situations.  He wasn’t sure staying would make a difference anyway: abandoning the barricade would allow it to be overrun, but it wouldn’t do much good to stick around if they couldn’t see or breath.

“GET IT OFF, GET IT OFF, GET IT OFF!!” O’McTally shrieked frantically as he ran in circles, trying to beat the cloud of gas off of himself with his fists.  As with Rico, O’McTally seemed less physically affected by the tear gas, although he was much more mentally affected by it: the only thing he could feel at that moment was complete terror.  The other officers had to worry about breathing and seeing, but O’McTally had to worry about his flesh being torn off his body and his eyeballs being melted in their sockets.  O’McTally ran as fast as he had ever run before to get away from the smoke.

Other officers followed O’McTally’s lead and began fleeing the barricade en masse.  “SHIT!” though Marsh.  He had no clue what to do.  He wasn’t sure there was anything ANYONE could do, unless more gas masks could be made to magically materialize.  Tears were pouring down his face, and it was getting increasingly difficult for him to see anything, though he could tell the barricade was quickly being abandoned.  He thought the most he could do at this point was grab Office Rico and drag him out with him, as it seemed apparent Rico was going to do absolutely nothing of his own volition other than rub his police badge against his cheek.  Marsh started stumbling toward Rico when he saw something intensely black out of the corner of his eye.  When he turned, he saw it was Officer Schneiderman.  He had once again armed himself with two pistols he’d acquired somewhere.

“WHAT IT IS?” asked Schneiderman.
Marsh didn’t understand the question.  He also wasn’t sure how Schneiderman was dealing with the tear gas so well.  “EVERYONE’S GONE!” shouted Marsh, his voice hoarse from all the yelling and the tear gas.
“ANY FOOL SEES THAT!” responded Schneiderman.  “CAME DOWN TO ME AND YOU NOW!”
Marsh doubted he would personally make any difference, since he could barely see or breath at this point, but Schneiderman seemed more confident.  He was standing behind the barricade, both pistols raised and pointed toward the location of the rioters.  Though none of the rioters could currently be seen through the smoke, Marsh could hear them getting close.  It wouldn’t be much longer until they were there.

He was pretty sure he was going to die, or at least be horribly beaten, when the ground suddenly started to shake.  This went on for a couple seconds and would have been strange enough by itself, but then Marsh heard a series of loud, strange-sounding explosions.

“What in Christ’s name is going on?” he thought.

What “it” was ended up being the very thing that stopped the rioting dead in its tracks, and none to soon, as it was just in time to prevent the vigorously churning Blacktown mob from pouring out into the rest of the city.  Neither Marsh nor Schneiderman could see what was happening, but they noticed that rocks and bricks were no longer raining down on them and the sounds of rioting no longer seemed to be advancing forward.  People were still screaming, but now they seemed to be screaming in terror or confusion rather than anger and rage.

After several minutes of sitting in the smoke and listening to the turmoil, Marsh started crawling toward the other end of the barricade.  He decided he had to see what was happening, and he figured he could be in no more danger on the other side of the barricade than behind it.  It took him awhile to navigate his way through the barricade and toward where the rioters were, since he couldn’t really see anything and he was coughing violently the entire time.  Slowly but surely, though, he progressed forward.  Right up until the point where his hand landed in a puddle of something soft and thick and sticky.  “What the fuck is that?” Marsh wondered out loud.  Though he had stopped, the gooey liquid was oozing forward and had reached his knees.  Straining to see through the haze, he thought the stuff was coming from a nearby fire hydrant. He brought his hand up to his nose and sniffed, but the tear gas had inhibited his ability to smell.  As he had limited sensory options, he cautiously stuck the tip of his tongue out to taste the thick, viscous goo on his hand.  And what he tasted was nougat.

Sweet, delicious nougat.

By Crag Dakkins and Dr. Gonzo Kablaa (We took turns typing in every other word – LOL!)

Disclaimer: Hey, everybody! (LOL!) Here’s the latest fake chapter! A real one’s coming soon! Promise! LOLOL!

Dedication: This fake chapter is dedicated to Ser Gregor.

Detective Asscock fell fatly onto his back, the part of his body with the most jellyfish-like consistency. He squirmed and flailed his arms around, trying to salvage some dignity out of this mishap by regaining a standing position without asking any of the nearby officers to help him. Looked to be too late for dignity, though, as the officers were busy pretending not to see what was happening and were doing their best to hide their snickerings from the higher echelon officer who was currently lower than them in a true physical sense. “Like a beetle,” said Officer Rico, “an upturned one.” Asscock’s face went red, furious that Rico would act as if he wouldn’t understand the comment. “No, more like a turtle,” said O’McTally, Irishly. The other officers were trying to conceal their laughter. Asscock farted in anger and shit in his pants. Christ, he thought, this just keeps getting worse. He considered his situation – his short stubby arms and legs and their repeated circular movements, the shit in his pants, the fat on his body – and decided that none of the comparisons so far had been accurate. What he most resembled was a baby. A fat fucking baby. When this realization hit him, his mind went blank for a moment, and then fact suddenly aligned with thought, and he realized he WAS a baby, and all the other people weren’t really officers but were his uncles and other relatives looking down on him in his crib. They had been imagined into other roles in some sort of Wizard of Oz type shit. All his years as a police officer had been imagined and he’d have to live through it all again. This was too much for Asscock to take. Emotions overwhelmed him, and he proceeded to “WAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!” at the top of his lungs like some effeminate liberal. Snot dribbled all the way down to his chin as his wailing increased in pitch and volume. Everyone looked down upon the baby in disbelief or disgust and moved awkwardly away. A couple hours later he had calmed down somewhat. Nickasun walked by and noticed the fat detective quietly sobbing, half asleep and sucking his thumb in the gutter. Fearing that the cop might get bounced around by a street sweeper if he didn’t do anything, Asun pulled the detective to his feet and tried to wake him up. “You OK?” Nickasun asked. Asscock looked through his teary, bloodshot eyes at the man before him. He pinched a handful of Nickasun’s belly and said, “This – you’ll want to lose this. I realize that now.” Nickasun tried to get away, but the detective’s grip was too tight. He felt handcuffs snap in place around one of his wrists and then another around the other. “Alright,” whimpered Asscock. “Let’s take you in for questioning. We’ve been looking for you.” Asscock wiped away his tears and snot and tried to regain his composure. Accolades would likely be forthcoming for the apprehension of the fugitive Samoan.

Detective Shitface fell flatly onto his back, the part of his body that was as well muscled as the rest of him. Not wanting to waste any time getting back up, he slammed his fists into the ground in an attempt to propel himself upright again, but the force he utilized was too much. Upon contact with the floor, both his fists and his arms when through it and became trapped. Shitface decided to try and get up by bending his legs back to his shoulders and then springing them forward, but once again he used too much force, and his feet and legs crashed through the floor, and were now as stuck there as his hands and arms. “Might as well go for the hat trick,” he thought as he slammed his head backwards and put that through the floor too. The only part of him above the floor now was his torso. Shitface lied there for a time, pondering his situation. After awhile, he died of dehydration.

Officer Eye Patch fall blackly onto his black, the part of his black that was the blackest black. He gracefully jive-turkey his way to his feet with such fluid rhythm that it look as if he had planned the fall all along. But he hadn’t. And this worry Eye Patch. He be trippin’ a lot lately, and not trippin’ in the way them crazy-ass hoes do, cryin’ and screamin’ and scratchin’ and waggin’ fingers and axin’ where the money at, but in the regular fall down way kind of trippin’. The white man’s trippin’. Also, his swagger not as confident as it were before Unlucky Cat were killed. Most crazy, he become silky smoove at math on a sudden, like that fool-ass white boy Travolta in the movie. Eye Patch ain’t tryin’ ta hear that. Schneiderman walk in wif paperwork just then and the two officers’ eyes meet. Schneiderman look black as hell lately, Eye Patch thought. For a Jew especially. Eye Patch think some shiftin’ going on, everything good n’ proper switchin’ places. As he think this, he notice blackass Schneiderman fall Jewly on his back, the part of his body that weren’t circumcised.

Detective Jenkins fell painfully onto his back, the part of his body that was currently among the most injured. Waves of intense pain shot through his entire body, and Jenkins gritted his teeth to stop himself from screaming. He started to get back up, but his previously injured shin decided it had tolerated enough already and snapped completely. Jenkins attempted to break the fall with his right arm, but the impact shattered his wrist. This time Jenkins did scream in pain. He knew this behavior was unbecoming of a detective, but he couldn’t stop himself. Officer O’McTally and Officer Rico stood above Jenkins, shaking their heads in disappointment. “How did a sissy like this ever make it to detective?” asked O’McTally Irishly (not in an Irish accent, just in a way that thoroughly exuded O’McTally’s top-notch Irishness). Rico shrugged, responding, “I don’t know. We lose Davunk and here’s the new crop to replace him. Pathetic.” Their words stung Jenkins, and hurt him perhaps even worse than consecutively breaking his shin and wrist had. He pushed the searing torment from his mind, stopped screaming, and got back up. He couldn’t let down the force, not when they needed him so very much. He breathed in, placing almost his entire focus on thinking coherently through the breathtaking paroxysms of debilitating agony. “Detective Jenkins,” he said in a forced effort, “reporting for duty.” O’McTally and Rico both nodded approvingly. It was at this moment that a rushing freight train violently smashed into Jenkins and sent him flying through the air.

Detective Shitwaist fell imaginarily onto his back, the part of his body that was a parody of the corresponding part on other more real people. “Like preseason games,” was the thought that went through his head during his fall. It was a thought that had gone through his mind a lot lately, and he wasn’t sure what it meant. “Nothing at stake,” was another mind-worm wriggling around in his more-non-existent-than-most-brains brain. What the fuck was going on? Or not going on…whatever the case may be. Why did he feel less real than other people? Why did he feel less real than some fictional people? Why did it seem that the reason he fell onto his back – hell, his entire reason for existing – was to make a comedic point about another person whose actions and thought patterns were similar to his own? Why did it feel as though he were the subject of mockery, the victim of a God who found malicious glee in forcing him to make actions that had no intrinsic value except as commentary on some other reality? A reality he couldn’t even see? Shitwaist figured he better get some work done around here, so he got his fat ass back up on his feet, blew the 75 grams of powdered sugar out of his nose, pulled his belly around from the back of him to the front of him (it had been misplaced in his fall) and walked confidently into his office…only to find Chief Cockney waiting there, fuming, obviously upset with Shitwaist’s job performance. “I saw you fall down out there,” said Cockney. “Yeah, I…” but that was all Shitwaist could get out before Cockney split that fatass’ head in half with a ditch-digging shovel he had carefully concealed behind his back the entire time. And that was when Cockney shit his pants for real. He could help but think (the “he” in this case is Cockney, as Shitwaist is certifiably dead) that the pants-shitting wasn’t so much a real action as it was an inside joke about someone else who shit their pants one time, somewhere, possibly in a fictional universe.

Sergeant Nozick fell unimportantly onto his back, the part of his body that was as particularly not distinguishable as the rest. Detectives Dover, McCracken, and Chang all followed Nozick, indistinctly tumbling to the ground and landing on their backs in a forgettable spectacle that no one was inclined to waste much time thinking about. In fact, the only person who noticed their fall at all was Sergeant Jankowski, who stood sneering over them. “You think you’re better than us?!” Nozick demanded. “I don’t know, but at least I’ve been featured in more than one chapter,” Jankowski taunted back. “Oh yeah?” Detective Dover or whoever chimed in. “You’re so unimportant that NO ONE even remembered you had a broken jaw, additional chapter or not.” “Ha!” snorted Jankowski. “You’re one to talk. You and McCracken were only ever introduced as detectives because your names were an inside reference to a joke that was never even developed!” “You leave Ben and Phil out of this!” said Detective Chang, the throw-away Asian stereotype character who’s only claim to ATBE fame was having his nose obliterated by Detective Shitface. “What happen here?” asked Office Kinoshita, although no one had even noticed him appear. You stay out of this!” yelled Detective Chang. “There’s only room in this department for one throw-away Asian stereotype character!” “So sorry!” said Kinoshita obsequiously. “I commit seppuku immediately.” And he did just that, pulling out his gun and blowing his brains out in a disappointingly non-thorough manner. “What was that gunshot?” Officers Winter, Larson, Stewart, Grossman, and Detectives Dugget, Milbury,  Richardson, and Eastman collectively asked. But no one heard what they said since they were all imaginary characters from a fake chapter within a fictional story. Actually, Officer Denson heard them, since he had (barely) graduated from mere Fake Chapter existence to Real Chapter existence. But even Officer Simmons, who drowned in a puddle of shit way back in Chapter 11, was infinitely more distinguishable than the hopelessly indistinguishable Denson. Just then, Officer John Doe indiscernibly fell onto his back, but nobody gave a shit, even though John Doe, born in Anywhere, USA and standing at 5 feet and 9.2 inches, had graduated in the middle of his class from College University. “This is STUPID,” Jankowski proclaimed. “Wasn’t the preposterously POINTLESS and UNDEFINED nature of many police cop characters already discussed? At least in Fake Chapter 18—” But Jankowski wasn’t able to finish his sentence, as a bunch of retard gerbils suddenly exploded from his throat. “He’s right,” said Nozick. “What about all the other dumb things? Like when Taggert was an officer in one chapter and then a detective in another, but then an officer again? Or what about that whole thing about Detective Asscock having AIDS , but it turns out it was curable? This entire goddamn story is undermining itself. And did ANYONE ever figure out just where the hell all the places in this story are in relation to one another?” And all the collected police cops who didn’t matter went on with this conversation, talking about out all the inconsistencies and stupidities of their fictional universe in a fake chapter within a story that pretty much no one read. Ernest V. Stockton reported about it all on his Twitter account, but nobody read that either. A good time was had by all.

A TMC3 Review By Crag Dakkins
Trailer:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De3vaUPPrOo

“Hi, Mom!” are winner. I loved it for its disjointed structure, its goofball performance by Deniro, its unusual-for-DePalma self-aware comedy, and all that race-related material that I’m such a sucker for. Unfortunately this isn’t Facebook and I can’t give it a “Like” and move on. I now have to verbalize my “Like.” I find it much harder to justify my love than my hate. Director-I-Have-A-Boner-For Stanley Kubrick was the same way. When he and Malcolm McDowell were figuring out how they should shoot the rape scene in “A Clockwork Orange” Kubrick, after wading through a flood of subpar ideas, said he “doesn’t know what he wants, but he does know what he doesn’t want”. For more on Kubrick’s infuriating inability at giving constructive criticism, I recommend reading Frederick Raphael’s book “Eyes Wide Open” about the screenwriter’s frustrating ordeal working with the director, whom Raphael still grudgingly concedes is the Greatest Director of All Time.

“Hi, Mom!” is a series of vignettes loosely tied together by a fast-talking goofball played by Robert Deniro.  Performances today rarely get more one-dimensional and mannered than this, out of the current trend to go for “realism”. Deniro is not so much a character as something for DePalma to shoot a comical scene around in his usual way that calls attention to the filmmaking process. Like the Jersey Shore douchebag, Deniro could be called The Situation, because that’s what he is. He becomes whatever the scene demands of him. As such, it’s pointless to dig into the psychology of the character. This is a movie about events, not characters.

After watching “Righteous Kill”, “Hi, Mom!” served as an excellent palate cleanser (even though I watched “Hi, Mom!” first – FUCK ORDINALITY!). This was one of Deniro’s first movies. He was still an artist at this point. His name hadn’t yet caused movies to form around him; he was one of the pieces that formed around a movie. Celebrity status can kill art. If it were up to me, you wouldn’t know anything about actors’ lives or off-screen personalities. Filmmakers would choose the most appropriate actor (or non-actor) for a part, without regard to their name recognition. This is how HBO does it, and look at the amazing series they produce (True Blood can go to hell, though). My hope is that with increased growth in population, and the corresponding increased growth in the population of supposed “movie stars”, and the heightened visibility of everyone’s lives in the coming years, that the magical sheen on these actors will wear away and people will lose interest. My hope is likely in vain, though. With every “nigger” and “faggot” that a celebrity is caught uttering we are reminded that they are held to a higher standard than us normals, regardless of how many times these utterances occur.

DePalma presents the life of the struggling artist in “Hi, Mom!”; in particular, the artists on the fringe whose shovels full of bullshit are the most voluminous and stinky. Deniro gets a job as a pornographic filmmaker hired for his innovative idea of zooming his camera in on his neighbors across the street to document their illicit deeds. The problem is, their deeds turn out to be incredibly boring. To solve this problem Deniro injects himself into the mix. He sets up his camera and crosses the street to seduce one of the ladies he’s had his eye on, thus guaranteeing some interesting footage. By becoming a participant, however, he destroys the peepshow authenticity he was going for. It’s as if DePalma is criticizing Michael Moore twenty years before he first fatted his ballcapped head in front of a camera. A lot of this movie seems to be about pretending and its relation to success and being accepted.

Unfortunately, the camera Deniro set up in his home dipped downward after he left and pointed at the floor, resulting in unusable footage, resulting in an irate employer who fires Deniro. But he ends up dating and later marrying the girl he porned around with, so there was a silver lining, to use an expression whose origin I don’t understand. It is in his relationship with this woman that Deniro’s performance gets very actorly and exaggerated, which must be DePalma’s way of saying we wear different masks for different social roles.

Deniro gets another job, the part of a policeman in a performance art play called “Be Black, Baby”. This segment is prefaced by a man-on-the-street query conducted by NATIONAL INTELLECTUAL TELEVISION on THE BLACK REVOLUTION. In a faux documentary format, several blacks ask people on the street if they know what it’s like to be black in America today. A lot of the responses are funny, and some who were asked seemed like legitimate non-actors. At least one was staged – the one where people got so deeply involved in a heated discussion of race relations that they don’t notice the mugging and murder that takes place behind them. IT’S CALLED SATIRE!

Soon after this we get the most interesting sequence in the movie. Deniro’s character disappears for about twenty minutes while we are treated to grainy, black and white, pre-show footage of “Be Black, Baby”. Spectators are guided by blackricans through hands-on activities designed to teach them what it’s like to be black. They learn how to feel black (the black afro feels softer and less like a brillo pad than expected, a woman remarks), dance black (a woman’s white hips feel awkward and uncomfortable while doing black dance moves), and eat black (a man finds black cuisine so repulsive to his white mouth that one angry black basically force-feeds him). The final step was to paint all the whites in black. With the preliminaries finished, they’re told that the show is about to begin. On their way up the stairs to the theater a black woman asks a white woman for her purse so she can store it in the appropriate place. The white woman reluctantly gives it up and then naturally becomes quite concerned that she’s been hornswaggled. She’s assured by several others that it’s all part of the show.  A white man then mentions that the money from his wallet is missing. He, too, is told that it’s part of the show, but the whites are becoming increasingly anxious. In conjunction with all the white whining, the blacks become increasingly hostile. They start ordering the whites around and the scene gets pretty intense and my eyes get glued to the screen. A confusion of violence erupts as a white man and a black man get into a scuffle. The whites are escorted into an elevator and they descend. When the doors open, Deniro reappears, playing the part of a cop. He and a bunch of blacks starts harassing all the “blacks” (that is, the whites in blackface), throwing them up against walls and cracking them, quite sincerely, with his baton. The “blacks” try to persuade Officer Deniro that he is searching and beating the wrong people, that the black blacks are actually the ones who done misbehavin’, but their appeals are ignored. All is chaos, and the officer doesn’t seem to mind that the blacks are having their way with the “blacks”. I had to rewind my DVD around this point because an unbelievable action seemed to be taking place in the background. My eyes didn’t deceive me – a screaming white woman was being held down and raped with a broom handle. “Tragedy is a funny thing,” as Deniro said earlier in the film. In an abrupt segue, the white attendees of “Be Black, Baby” find themselves outside the theater building. Their black tormentors become amiable as they hawk their show to passersby. The whites, realizing now that the pre-show WAS the show, give glowing reviews about the the experience. Even the broom-raped woman was smiling as she said she would recommend it to all her friends.

Did DePalma intend for “Be Black, Baby” to show, albeit in a exaggerated way, what the “black experience” in America is like, or was he mocking the exaggerated notions put forth by blacks and PUSSY WHITE LIBERALS about the “black experience” at that time? My guess is that the “or” in the previous sentence should be an “and” and the answer is “yes”. That’s the great thing about artists like DePalma – they occupy an aesthetic plane of existence where opposites co-exist in harmony, where yin and yang 69 each other for eternity. I could be totally wrong about this, and DePalma could have been a shallow man caught up in the political movements at the time (or the crushing of such movements), but if so he failed to get his message across clearly. It looked to me more like he was showing us behavior, as one would a community of gorillas, and letting us decide if we want to wrap our political biases around the chest-beating and feces-slinging. In particular, it looked like he was showing us the facades of these human behaviors.

Another comment regarding false divisions: The “Be Black Baby” sequence is the sort of thing that usually sparks modern genre-minded film critics to disparage a film for not knowing whether it’s a comedy or a drama. Parts of “Hi, Mom!” are clearly supposed to be funny, such as the opening scene where Charles Durning (“Durham” in the credits for some reason) gives Deniro a tour of Deniro’s new apartment and everything falls apart in front of them. Then we’re treated realistic racial tension and scream-filled broom-handle rapes later. “Comedy or drama? Tell me, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!” I don’t see why it has to be one or the other, or why it would be satisfying if it was.

The blacks and Deniro think “Be Black, Baby” was good, but BITCH, IT AIN’T ENOUGH (3:13). They decide to take it to the streets. They break into people’s homes, with the intent to gun and to violence everyone. The whites were tipped off, though, because the blacks end up getting ambushed and killed in myriad ways. One confusing death occurs when a black man with a machine gun knocks on a door and is gunned down by a wholesome white family that answers, despite no apparent gun in the white hands. THE REVOLUTION IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION!

Is DePalma showing us the hopelessness of the Black Man’s cause? Is he showing us that the blacks have become as bad as their oppressors and are now reaping what they rapefully sowed? Is he giving black viewers a warning about what will happen if they should ever think of starting a race war with the whites? I don’t fucking know. Who cares?!

Deniro seems disappointed about the failure of the annihilation of his own race. He had been watching the events unfold on his radio or something. Yes, WATCHING. I really don’t know what was going on during much of this sequence, to be quite honest. I want to be done with this review.

With another pretentious failure under his belt, Bobby D goes back to the other one of acting as the husband to his annoying wife. He’s had about enough with that role, possibly because he found out she was pregnant. Can’t have a kid tying him down, am I right, fellas? Can’t bring up baby with all those weird porn jobs and black revolution performance art roles out there just waiting to be filled. Figuring he better put some stank on his break-up so there are no misunderstandings, he loads the first-floor washing machine with Looney Tunes Acme brand dynamite and blows his wife and everyone else in the apartment complex to kingdom come.

A news reporter covers the aftermath of the explosion and talks to people on the street. Some of the responses are very funny, so I won’t give them away here. Deniro is among the interviewees. He talks about being a military veteran and such, and then we come FULL CIRCLE when he utters the titular line of the film into the camera. Is saying hi to Mom in this public forum another disingenuous act meant to garner favor, this time by showing everyone what a loving son he is? Is it similar to the people who say goodbye to their dead grandparents on Facebook or wish happy birthday to their computer-N00B parents who wouldn’t even be able to read it? Is he continuing to “sell out” by aiming for mass appeal rather than intimate personal appeal. Could be, but I think he must’ve lost his mother’s contact info and decided that the best way to get ahold of her would be to film porn, get involved in the black underground movement, get married, blow up a building, and send out a message to her in the resulting local news broadcast. She’d have to follow similar steps to get in contact with him, since his address and phone got blowed up. I SEE SEQUEL POTENTIAL!

5/5 stars