Pale Blue Auto-Mobile
You need no ticket to make a place for yourself here where humor, black and otherwise, comes to you from the stage where the human comedy itself is being played, its performance trumping the things dark and tragic and found in the world of literature.
Friday, August 15, 2008
 
Radio Free Europe -- REM

 
Monday, August 04, 2008
 
General Wankery

"Our top story tonight -- Generalitsimo Wankery is still dead."

You will remember that it was not so long ago that the general choked to death on his own bile and vitriol while excoriating his fast-departing unfaithful "followers". It was a sad day indeed for his fighting force Wanks Cranks, even though it was they, nearly to a man, who left him bleeding and naked on the Parisian Plains Of Eatin', without a groat to put a down payment on a meat pie, nor a ticket to anything but the final edit by the man with the big blue pencil in the sky.

Still some of his face soldiers (they start out on their feet, but in no time fall flat on their faces), who still ache for their leader, made a grand attempt to contact the decomposing Wankery in the spirit world. One of their ranks, Freddie D. Reamer, claims to have actually gotten a message from him, while favoring the deceased parts of Wankery (for his death took the form of a true Bacchanal, with both followers and enemies joining together in a wine-flowing celebration where The Wank was yanked to pieces. The party really got going when the dreaded Newshounds of Murderoch showed up to turn the man of many parts into dinner at eight (for he had been drawn and quartered twice)) with selections from his favorite zines at his tomb.

"I was reading him some stuff from The Rural Hobbit..." Reamer (barely) remembers. "And right after the part where the RH rhymed Kerouac and heart attack I heard his unmistakable voice, though sounding poorly miked as if by some celestial AV guy who really didn't know what he was doing. He said," whispered Reamer, pausing pregnantly for effect. "'Judy, Judy, Judy.'"

"I wasn't quite sure what it meant, but I figured it must be something, because the General always had a cause, whether it was to take toddlers' Golden Books away and replace them with his Wankozine, or go into the corporate bookstores like Buns And Noodles or Hoarders and dishevel the books on the bestseller list shelves. Well, I was musing about that when all of a sudden I had a vision -- and no, it had nothing to do with the Absinthe I was drinking the night before," said Reamer growing a bit agitated. "That was for contacting the spirit of Poe -- strictly research you know...And in fact we had a nice conversation, me and The Poester, as he likes me to call him. He asked me what that song 'The Heart Of Rock n Roll Is Still Beating' is about."

I told him I understood and bid him continue with the meat of his entertaining, if veracity-lacking, tale of Wankery.

"So anyway, this big guy appears. He's got a white beard and his fingers are swollen to twice their size -- he said it was because he types so much. He's wearing a dead alligator head as a codpiece and has live baby electric eels as earrings and a tee shirt saying Bayou Thoreau on the front and Simplifyin Simpleton on the back. Imagine what Doctor John would look like if you took the brown acid...which wasn't all that bad, truth be known. I never met anyone it hururururururururururutatatatatehehehehehehe...Oh shit mama! Umm, anyone it hurt, that is."

I nodded my understanding and readied myself to dial 911 if it became necessary.

"So all of a sudden his face turns into a billboard where it says 'Now Playing -- Bringing Up Baby'."

"So you think this was a clue of some sort, about how to reach Wankery in the spirit world?" I asked, now truly curious about the event being described.

"Yeah, probably, but who gave a crap at that point? I realized I was probably just having a flashback and not a vision after all. Besides, how much trouble do you expect me to go to to find old Wankery's ghost? I've got a life to get on with, boyo."


To be continued (maybe, maybe not)...
 
”I