Category: Uncategorized
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Before the Music
The concert hall shimmered, a metallic womb pulsing with fluorescent hum. Musicians, faces pale smudges in the harsh light, drifted in, shedding winter coats like molting insects. A cacophony of coughs, greetings sliced by the metallic screech of oboe tuning. It was the pre-symphony symphony, a chaotic ballet of individual voices yearning for cohesion. The…
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Manifest Destiny
The US of A, baby, a chrome-plated behemoth sputtering on fumes of Manifest Destiny, and nostalgia, clinging to the delusion of its military-industrial phallus. A great power, it wheezes, chest puffed with ticker-tape parades and fighter jet ballets. But the circuits are fried, man. The real juice, the green, that’s the current coursing through its veins.. A great…
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Man with an Answer Will Sell You Out For A Price
In the flickering neon canyons of Tangier, sweat slick and fear-laced, you find Frankie “The Answer Man” huddled in a roach-infested doorway. His eyes, bloodshot marbles trapped in a creased leather face, flicker with a reptilian intelligence.He’s got the answer to any question, for a price. But the price ain’t always greenbacks, baby. It could be a vial of that sweet junky nectar, a whisper…
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B Traven
They say the jungle holds its secrets close, whispers them only to the wind and the watchful eyes of the caiman. That’s the tale you spin, my friend, the yarn that sells. Here’s the real trick: forget the sweat and toil of hacking through the undergrowth, the fevers that sap a man dry quicker than the sun. A man with a smooth…
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Who Is Sovereign?
In the cold meat grinder of any system, be it the chrome-plated monstrosity of a corporation or the byzantine labyrinth of bureaucracy (both tentacles of the same squirming control machine), glitches inevitably erupt. These are the burps and hiccups in the program, the malfunctions in the meat. They can erupt with all the messy glory…
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Revisiting Vietnam
Research Grant Proposal: Revisiting Vietnam: Exploring the Parapsychological Labyrinth of a Humphrey Triumph Over Nixon, Impeded by Kaleidoscopic Counterculture and Fellow Travelers in the Fog Authored by: Mortimer M. Muddle Sponsored by: Abstract: The specter of Vietnam looms large in the American psyche. This proposal seeks to revisit that pivotal moment in history, venturing into the…
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Airports
No fiery pits, no gnashing of teeth. The architects of control opted for fluorescent purgatory. Steely intestines crammed with shuffling, harried proles, all glazed eyes and TSA grope anxiety. Muzak drones, aural wallpaper to mask the frustrated bellows of the eternally delayed. Miles of stained carpeting that reek of despair and spilled Cinnabon. US airports. The security checkpoint. A cattle chute…
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Foster Wallace vs Burroughs/Pynchon
Back in the day, before the American Empire went full-blown batshit crazy, Foster Wallace – bless his tortured soul – was all high and mighty, scoffing at Burroughs and Pynchon’s warnings about a fractured, paranoid future. He was yapping about some kind of manic-depressive hedonism that would outsmart Burroughs and Pynchon. They were prophets of doom, raving about a schizophrenic,…
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You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.
Scratchy vinyl of reality spins a warped melody. You clutch a deuce of queens, heart sinking like a stone boot in a fever swamp. Chalk it up to rotten luck, another cosmic raspberry. But hold on, insectoid tendrils of possibility start to writhe. You think you’re beat, flatlined by misfortune. But the gremlins of fate, those bug-eyed tricksters with joy buzzer…