Mikey Art #1
Mikey Art #2
Opus 64
(a black & white gnovel for film)
Wehrmacht refugees struggle out from gloom.
Step from the desert into Las Vegas Game Show.
Flip into numbers and cross time as compucard data in bubble memories.
Information transfer and retrieval.
Home viewer (nuclear unit head) enters desired program. Pushes PLAY.
Hendrix at Monterey Pop.
Stutterframe transition to a pompous greed-head telling us Jimi was an anarchist bent on the damnation of America’s children through LSD and drugs and other forms of immorality! / quick cut of Majors and Generals looking real scared / That each and every one of us has sin in his heart / quick cuts of man’s furtive shoplifting; rack focus from leering man to tart / That we are damned to Hell eternal.
Home viewer (nuclear unit head) exercises his option. “You go to hell, Preacher!” and he switches to another channel.
“Rob!” Laura’s shocked reply.
He, laughing: “Come on, Laura, that’s all just social control bullxit to keep us in fear and servitude.”
“Wha— Rob! What’s gotten into you?”
“Laura.” says he, “I denounce you for a witch! Fall on us oh Wrath of God!”
And the screen erupts as nuclear annihilation renders New Rochelle, NY, uninhabitable for 2.4 million years.
A brief period of snow. Then the signal resumes. Nature sequences and pastoral music.
Network Sign-on.
A harried reasoner struggles before a microphone. Order has prevailed. There is a central Authority. Steps are being taken. Stay in homes. DON’T MOVE!
Home viewer (nuclear unit head) switches channels.
Close-up of car radio. Sound over: “This has been a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. If this had been an actual emergency, you would have been told—/
Bruce Dern; a man just struggling to make sense of his own two feet, driving.
A white-sheet soldier stands in his way.
“I’m sorry, Sir. You can’t come this way.”
“Well, what route can I take? Where are the detour signs?”
Soldier moves uneasily: “Sir—”
“I’ve gotta be in New York in an hour. How do I get around this?”
“Uh, Sir. You can’t Sir.”
“What?”
“New York City’s off limits, Sir. All the roads are closed.”
“Well, what the Hell’s gone wrong?”
“You don’t know, Sir?”
“No.”
Soldier breaks down completely: “N- Neither do I …”
Actually, nothing. Life as always, goes on in the Big Apple. People meet, have lunch, even enjoy themselves. Death, where is thy sting?
Fade to grey and exuent all.
Circle-O-Fear
Base: X-ray Papa Victor raising Echo Romeo Foxtrap, do you splinter?
Airborne: Patch—
Base: X-ray Papa Victor vectoring Echo Romeo. We have you cresting and You’re all the way.
Airborne: Number two and climbing. Haven’t got there yet, Big Papa.
Base: Stop thinking. Don’t concentrate. Your brain will start oozing out your ears like the sewage they take it for. Take it from us. We’re dissembling, over.
Airborne: Negative crest, sir.
Base: Inalienably. You’re drooling, sucker.
Airborne: Negative. Repeat, negative crest.
Base: Affirmative! Noodles with rice and chicken chow mein. Come off, come out wherever you’ve been!
Airborne: Uh—
Base: Like you’ve just slurped milk, or you’ve chased a squirrel into a vicious corner, or they say you’ve chased squirrel, which is all the same, then up come the sheriff with a shotgun bam. Don’t do these things, all right?
Airborne: I got no right.
Base: That’s right. Ease her down. Slowly now. Slower.
Airborne: Coming, Big Papa. Uh.
Base (over whooping and cheering): Really deece, really deece.
– Cmdr. Remington Murphy
[original samizdat]
Magic Bullet Volume 2, Issue 3
Ambition #2
Beat Poetry
by Jack
Motivations come and go like waves, washing me lifeless and breathless over the rocks; over and back again. In the deepest recess of memory I have an inkling of light. A suggestion, or a hint, of love. Little else. Once, when I was riding across New Mexico, I had an illumination: Satori. And I’d had them before, great ones and small. But this one was different, because this one, it seemed clear to me, came of itself and not as the sublime result of some other contingent phenomenon. Here, in the midst of the vast alkaline waste, chanced an arrival. Like all the friends you ever loved and lost come walking in the front door with smiles on their faces and music in their voices. And it’s just like you’re home for the holidays. Home from the awful wars. And telling fabulous stories that have no basis in fact, but thrilling the hearts of all those assembled. Of sharing that blissful moment on the porch in the dark with all the crickets chirping. Of peace on earth.
Consider, here, a moment, how truly sacred such states of ecstasy are. Think, for a moment, how privileged we are as animals, to enjoy such happiness, if just for a moment’s time. To feel one’s senses opening up: fears and defenses exploding like a fiery ball out to light the firmament, while all sanguine atoms bombard your very fiber. And for a moment, issues of life or death, of profit or loss, die completely away and you see a glistening kernel of objective truth. And even the rocks are vibrating; everything—you, the terrain, the sun, the sky—everything is flashing, or blazing or gleaming; babbling harmonious noise. Truth, at such times, shows itself as a little girl, laughing and rolling in new-mown summer grass.
This, on the occasion of finding a thistle, wedged last October into the pleats of one’s wool slacks. And holding it up to the light, to examine it, seeing two thousand individually barbed seed cases, clumped perfectly together. Nature’s thistle, sharp missile of genetic pioneers. Hard-shelled shuttles across time and space, starships from one generation to the next. I turned to Neal and I said:
“Plant a seed and save the future.”
He took the thistle and crushed it to powder between thumb and knuckle. “Ain’t gonna be no future, pard’,” he said grinning. “Just one long commercial.”
Breeeee #1
What’s that smell?
Food and Whine by Mr. Verbose
While we are all aware that most Americans get their B vitamins and protein from animal sources, in Southeast Asia it is quite a different story. In the countries of Laos, Kampuchea, Thailand and Vietnam, it is fish sauce which is an important source of these nutrients. To the uninitiated, fish sauce or “Nuac mam,”can smell quite nasty; and with good reason.
Fish sauce is made by taking small sardine-like fish which are native to the sea, lakes and rivers of Southeast Asia, leaving them out in the sun to dry, and then placing them, with enormous amounts of salt, into huge wooden vats. The combination of hot tropical sun, salt and fish produces a thin brown extract which collects at the bottom of the vats. This liquid, the product of fermenting fish, is then diluted with water and bottled as fish sauce.
Fish sauce does taste better than it sounds, though. Use some in stir fried vegetables instead of soy sauce; or in place of anchovies in your next Ceasar salad. Or, you can try this recipe and see if you don’t become an avid convert to that nasty stuff you thought you’d hate.
Mr. Verbose’s Special Sauce
3 or more cloves garlic
2 or more dried chili peppers
2-3 tbsp. sugar
2 or more tbsp. fish sauce
3 tbsp. chopped fresh coriander leaves
Juice and pulp of one lime.
Start by crushing the chilies, sugar and garlic into a paste in your stone mortar and pestle (if you insist, you may try your Cuisinart). Next, add lime juice and pulp, continuing to work the paste in the mortar. Finally, add the coriander leaves and fish sauce and dilute with water to taste. This sauce tastes great on rice, or plainly prepared fish, meat or poultry, but alas, not cornflakes.