Estelle Getty is in Gangster Heaven TUE 22 JULY 2008

&here is my tribute verse:

sweet comedienne Jew-y, you were my boo-ey
why'd you have to have body dementia by Lewy
by which your life was cut tragically short
like mines while I was eating Eggos and waiting for Night Court
my timepiece was a Golden dimepiece
Sophia saying "Picture it" was my only release
and I hope the reruns do never cease
and I hope you join your fat gay son in peace
speaking of, was it wrong to want a piece of Sicilian?
even after the makeup is off and you're swissin' in heaven
third box set after Sex and the City and Designing Women
I hope that the clothing line is making a killin'
I want mad dividends for your family and children
with some smart ass remark I know at God you'll be illin'


RIP EG

Don't Panic: A Step-by-Step Guide To Doing Some Last-Minute Taxes TUE 15 APRIL 2008

So you waited until the last god damn day to do your taxes. That's why he'll never love you!!! -- I mean, let me help you get organized and put together your stilo before the feds take your cable away.

1. Combine your W2s. You should have 2 W2s for each W -- earned and promised -- as per the name. Make sure the boxes are well-drawn and that the name "W2" is in a sans serif typeface: Singapore has been scamming a lot of the less-savvy auto-taxers this way!

2. It's easy to figure out which form you need to file:

• single, one job, lonely: 1040-EZ
• single, one job, has 'rocked the Casbah' in the past 10 days: 1040A
• married, has no rights, cries in the shower: 1040
• awesome: 940
• from Sewickley: 1040 with supplementary 1099
• pre- or post-op transsexual or person of gender: 1040-ACDC (Male-Female)

3. You'll also need: a pen; chocolates; $200 cash in a light-brown "bribe" envelope; prudence; a white or neutral-toned robe; calculator/abacus/spouse; your bald-eagle-written letter of reference.

4. Begin by totaling columns A-BF, paying attention to ledger averages, altitude and azimuth. Have an adult or two children spot you while you calculate the final total, which you will put in Column BG. This is your Earned Residual Average (ERA) and is a simple function of how much you are worth, spiritually or sexually if you prefer.

5. Now apply that average to your deductions, claims and external revenues. You will need to "pass" these figures "through the middle," which includes renouncing former claims and applying a spend/growth differential to your deductible earnings.

6. Make sure everything is amortized at this point.

7. Make your final totals, sign and date all forms, and attach ancillary documents. Examples include: Application for a Class D Bingo License; Biennial Coin-Operated Device Application; Tankwagon Importer Schedule of Receipts; and Credit Memo for Damaged Civilian Beer Destroyed by Wholesaler or Returned to Manufacturer.

8. Empty shot from a shotgun shell, fold your form up very tightly and pack it over the powder. Load the shell, find your local tax representative and you're done!

From Legends of MacCourd Legerdaire (Type 16A: mammalian fear/sword of Damocles/alternate planes) MON 07 APRIL 2008

In the dark of June that year, in the town of Market-Jew, in the back room of the Inn of Three Doors, commonly known as 'the Summit,' made infamous through the genesis of any number of the town's adventures and arrangements: Dr Minnock, Reese the Entertainer, and Joseph Mahogany were meeting in an ostensibly casual manner. After the want for drinks tapered sufficiently, the men moved their steins to the table's core and fixed themselves in their chairs.

'Legerdaire -- I have come to my fill of him,' said Dr Minnock, the great baron of private development in the area. They all exhaled with great pressure. 'Tell me, men, if it is so with you, what has brought you to this aggregate?'

After the crimes of Legerdaire, circumstantial and magnified by association to the unspoken allegation that Legerdaire was more or less than human, were laid, a sentence was brought to table.

'We will destroy him -- first, his character as largely known in the towns and outlying, and then his filthy, meandering body.'

'Memory while alive and then spirit while profaned -- delicious,' said Reese. 'Our varied stations and abilities suit us to carry out this task with all due discretion and diligence.'

'Quite,' said Joseph Mahogany, drawing a black buckram volume and pencase from his vest. 'Nothing would please me more.' With no further formality, they commenced planning.

The weeks wore on and the consequences of that day were slowly made known. Thefts and bovicides began occurring on the various cooperatives and farms on the Hill, where Forest's Edge formed its heart, while a figure with seeming not unlike Legerdaire began napping babies and innovatively dropping slops on men of high station in the dark streets of Market-Jew. Most of these crimes in addition bore some further sigil of Legerdaire, or at least indicated another that did.

Alongside their relations and general staff, who were as easily coerced of their opinion as proverb would have it, the consortium of Dr Minnock, Reese the Entertainer, and Joseph Mahogany began a sort of process-verbal against Legerdaire, calling in suggestions and half-convictions that he be brought forth to at least produce a log of his recent exploits for comparison, if not subjected to outright imprisonment or poling. At first an item of interest among the people of Market-Jew, the three quickly found obstacle to their inquiry.

For example, a visit to Mergranger House, the estate of Farmer Tyree, by Reese the Entertainer elicited the following dialogue:

-Have you seen the individual who calls himself MacCourd Legerdaire about your land?
-Why, yes, he came by with fresh mushrooms and talk of a new type of bridge that will join the road on both banks of the Okanee. Quite fascinating, the family found it.
-When was this visit?
-Three days past, I should say.
-And what of you losing five head of cattle to mysterious circumstances that same day?
-Why do you ask? Who told you this?
-Common knowledge in town, Sir Tyree. We lament your loss, emergent as it is within a proliferation. You don't find it strange that the occasion of a visit from a starving vagabond would coincide with the broach of your sole provender?
-You think that Legerdaire was responsible for some deed, clearly misreported, that you have arrayed before a greeting and brought to me with dispatch borne of a lack of propriety?
-Your anger, sir, is --
-Fault lying where it may, until you wear brass buttons on your chest or a baton at your waist, I'd prefer you pass over our hearth until you are duly invited.

Further inquiries on the Hill were met with similar indignation. Indeed, even men who had been known to profess a distaste with Legerdaire, such as the Division Street Army or old Farnsworth, could not speak against him with more than flat affect.

Interestingly, though Legerdaire made himself known to the general populace during this period, the trio of conspirators could never manage to bring the topic to his face, as he was never of clear location. Indeed, whenever recommended to his position by spies or lackeys, Legerdaire would not on one occasion manage presence at their arrival -- a development the trio found unnerving.

The indifference of the populace, and their willingness to chalk the crimes up to a general depravity that descended on the world of their latter years -- a place where hungry ruffians, neglected juveniles and less knowable horrors dwelt -- rather than the sudden psychosis of Legerdaire, sorely vexed the three. For several weeks the coalition continued meeting at the Summit, tracking the vagabond and formulating further schemes. And though their schemes scorched the heights of human enterprise, as could only the zeal of men desperate beyond all means, they began to lose confidence in their devices, and the weekly meets descended into bawdy fests rich with brandy and local women.

It was on a certain evening thereafter, when the three were deserted by well-wishers and slumped down in their places at the Inn of Three Doors, that Legerdaire parted the curtains of the Summit for the first time in decades and approached the round table.

'Hello, my friends,' he said, and the three sat up, suddenly as sober as birth. 'We dwell in a fine time, joined yet to the vine but ripe until almost rotten.'

'Legerdaire,' Minnock, who was worth in excess of twenty million reales and kept a staff of eighty-three, managed through a shudder.

'You fellows have exercised these old bones thoroughly in months past,' Legerdaire continued. He smiled. 'I confess it has bequested to me vigor long forgotten, and pushed me to locales beyond that which I once knew.' He looked at each of them in turn. 'You deserve my thanks.'

Reese, searching for a horrible joke in the posture of this broad-shouldered marvel but finding none, replied ingeniously, 'You are quite welcome, Master Legerdaire, and your duties are dispersed at their mere mention. For we have done nothing to merit them.'

'On the contrary,' said Legerdaire.

'Reese speaks truth!' squeaked Joseph Mahogany, in a manner unbecoming a man of such prolific leverage. 'Accept our sentiment, equal to your own, and deign no further to our company!'

'I am still unsatisfied by the lack of equipose in our relationship,' said Legerdaire, and an involuntary shudder visited the three men all at once, though they were armed and Legerdaire not. Legerdaire gazed up at the glass blocks, which filtered the burgundy light of the setting sun. 'I prepare now for a great journey. There is path enough for us all, provided we walk in file. Do you care to join me?'

'Nay, nay,' stammered Minnock. 'My affairs would no doubt fall to ruin.'

Reese spoke on the heels of the Doctor's sentiment: 'Alas, my wife would have my head.'

'No, I simply could not,' Joseph Mahogany admitted.

'Just so,' said Legerdaire, reaching within his coat. The three men, formerly of such and such a stature, quailed for what seemed to them an eternity. In Legerdaire's hand were three coins, each bulkier than a tuppence and minted of the mild gold of his glittering eyes. 'Take these tokens, then, of my appreciation,' he said, pressing each down before its new owner. 'May you live no longer than you wish to, and find yourself in wonder of the simplicities of life.' And then, with a rush of spring breeze that abated just that quickly, he was gone.

In their last act as a coalition, the three went to Jacob the numismatist with their gifts. Jacob turned them over and over, and was at first remiss to give the details that were parcel of his trade. At last he admitted that the coins were partly of an alloy called electrum, from an era so far-flung that some ancestor-germain of Legerdaire was lord or wildgrave of the land, and worth an amount few collectors could muster, even were they to combine their wherewithal. Jacob then named a price which many of the town's money-holders would have contended to exceed his own collection, in addition to the value of his gabled manse.

Either unafraid of a glamor, blinded by greed, or bleak of forecast, each rejected the offer outright, took up his treasure, and departed with nary a glance at the other. Meanwhile, the citizens of that town on the riverside noticed something peculiar -- the seasons were reversing and the equinox was beginning to turn on its tail.

From Legends of MacCourd Legerdaire (Type 54C: canine empathy/neglect-emancipation) MON 17 MARCH 2008

The Highhill Punks were a load of twats who lived on a property that one of their sorry number inherited in a neglected will. They were a menace and the whole of the borough couldn't much stand it. Because not one of them had any kind of job, they chiefly concerned themselves with defending their property and committing acts on it that skirted the edge of legality, and moreover trod rampant over propriety. Because they were at the furthest waft of Marigold Flats, they sighted many a wayfarer, and word in Market-Jew is that they accepted lodgers, and took to killing them in their beds for whatever stipend they held.

Among their array of defenses, the punks kept a pit bull on their porch who they named Daisy. Now, not only is the issuance of a human name to a pet the first word in cruelty, they in reduction rarely fed or even countenanced the bitch. So there she stood, feral and befuddled: coat unturned by human hand, ears unperked by the joyous cadences of animal speech, tongue left panting after the tastes she had been bred to live within. Though young, her fur had lost most of its lustre, and unaltered as she was, she had lost many a neonate to the summer heat in an unmentionably pitiable and ugly manner.

Legerdaire was as accustomed to the ceaseless ravings of Daisy upon his approach as he was to the ill-will of the Highhill Punks, who hurled half-empty milk-shakes at him and reserved unmentionables for his association. The day came, however, when Legerdaire, rather than walking on by their estates, stood, in his inimitable way, squarely in the litter-strewn front yard of Highhill Court. Two of the punks emerged from the rat-house they called their manse, and Daisy stood up at once in stark defiance.

'All right then,' said Legerdaire, 'This one's worked for you long enough,' indicating the hound.

'Not for you to say, pig,' one of their scarred, malnourished lot replied. 'Now be off, before we set upon you with bats.'

'Rather, for the dog. She's as free as you, after all,' said Legerdaire, and the punks noticed with some trepidation that Daisy no longer wore a chain around her blood-caked withers. But in that moment, rather than turning on her abusive regnants, she leapt at once off the porch, and shot for Legerdaire as if his crippling was all her world required.

Legerdaire, unblinking, shifted his pointing hand into a disfigurement.

Daisy stopped on an axle. She looked up at the glimmering man in wonder, as if of two minds about the gospel she had erstwhile devoted herself to.

Legerdaire then seized his right sleeve with his left hand, and tore off in a single motion that which had served him for many a wind-fraught country mile, hurling it onto the pale grass. As if that decided matters, the great hound tamely trotted to Legerdaire's side and nestled against the token on the ground.

Imprecation and violence spoke in the punks' every twitch, but there they stood, transfixed, on their porch, suddenly feeling the weight of a shame that had been collecting for decades. They looked at the setting sun, then beyond wolf and man to Forest's Edge, and finally lowered their gaze to the ground. Legerdaire stroked the length of the pit bull's fur, as if he was brushing away the remnant of dog-years of neglect and maladjustment. Together they retired to the wood.

Postscript. From the river crone Mrs. Cannty I have heard that the bitch now answers to Bragye, presses herself to Legerdaire's side as if he were good fortune itself, and is of the gentlest soul one could expect in an animal of such leverage.

From Legends of MacCourd Legerdaire (Type 77D-F: transformation/petrifaction) MON 10 MARCH 2008

Old Farnsworth complained to the Custom that he saw Legerdaire walking on his property early mornings. But because his land couldn't have amounted to a country hectare, and because Legerdaire was a man of stature and Farnsworth was widely considered to be a whiny cunt, they ignored him. Finally Old Farnsworth worked up the ire to confront the great MacCourd Legerdaire one morning as he strode through the narrow passage between Victory Hill, where Farnsworth tended his miserly crop, and Forest's Edge, Legerdaire's own demesne, at first light.

Farnsworth emerged from his hovel and declaimed, "What do you think you're doing, vagabond, striding so wilfully across my land?"

Without pause, Legerdaire pointed to the ground with his poetic hand, where deer tracks lay in the snow. "I'm sure you wouldn't object to the deer doing the same?"

"Are you a deer?" Farnsworth spat.

"I'll become one, to shut your mouth," Legerdaire replied, and walked away without another word.

And sure enough, a great man-buck with the semblance of Legerdaire was soon seen leaping about Victory Hill, brandishing a magnificent 21 points and mingling his majestic beauty with the panorama that is the Shanglestone Hills. His spirit rippled amongst the unreadable communiques betwixt stag and turkey what dwelt in the wood, and his hoof-prints lay, untarnished by inclement, as sigil of a mystical metis. And of course this sigil would be oft seen on the narrow pass between Victory Hill and Forest's Edge.

This began to fill Farnsworth with horror, and out of a mixture of fear and bloodthirst he gave up his dotage and began searching out the horizon all day long from behind his 10-gauge. Once again his nature betrayed him, as he would on occasion sight the great manimal from a suitable distance, but never bring forth sufficient stones to pull the trigger.

Finally one morning, as light rolled across the clifftops like Petler's Creek over ice, the beastial was so close and defiant that Farnsworth had no recourse but to stalk down from his ill-painted porch and engage the creature. How its fetlocks shone in the morning glow, how it tossed its head and pranced with a grace beyond nature!

Farnsworth leveled the shotgun. But he looked into the eyes of the deer-man, and realized that he gazed into the eyes of Legerdaire, who was not to be approached thus. And he thereupon paced stiffly back to his house, and found occasion to complain no more.

Stick That Chick & Taste My Steel Through Your Last Meal WED 13 FEBRUARY 2008

It's been a while since we last spoke and there's a few things you should see before we go any further.

The roman candles in Germany are serious business -- they in every way resemble a Tumbera. Our beloved Arash came into full-tilt culture clash when he fired spheres of light up the spiritual pant-leg of a drunken Germanischer on New Year's. The resulting discussion is one for the ages, I think you'll concur.

Now I know everyone is talking that Pittsburgh Slim shit lately. But if I want a ambigu-race pretty-boy rapper who's proud of what he came up from and knows exactly where he is located in the game, I choose the Steel Town Dough Boy. He's been tipping bricks for mad years, but just found out about YouTube because of the Battle at Kruger, so now it's that storyteller thing. Also, he just put in some time at the studio, so how about this biscuit:

Steel Town Dough Boy - Girls Look (right-click and 'save link as...')

I'll end on my best material. I really never get sick of watching this. It makes me feel safe, and loved, and like I do truly belong in this universe after all.

Of Beluga and Narwhal FRI 23 NOVEMBER 2007

I spent the weekend previous visiting with noted amateur linguist/oceanographer V.A. Northrup, who set out a great deal of information about his work to me over tea and Korean pancakes. It seems he has busied himself with learning dolphin speech, as exemplified by pods of dolphins he has studied in both Funnel Island (territory of New Zealand) and Sea World (Sandusky, Ohio). He claims to have unraveled the 'Enigma machine' of intra-dolphin communication, and the following constitutes his oral defense to my immediate skepticism and calls of 'bullshit':

Utilizing a small set of trills, toots and whistles, with fine gradations of color and tone, dolphins are able to communicate to each other in what could be called a single tongue, severely corrupted by dialect and comparable in scope to a limited constructed language, such as Ido and Basic English. 'Dolphinese' has a simple SVO syntax, a vocabulary of roughly 7,200 'words' with nearly infinite adjectival variations, and many additional complexities best outlaid in translation.

More interesting even than gutteral rolls and underwater/overwater coloration is the patterns in which dolphins communicate. Dolphins mostly parlay in insult and curse during their daily competition for pod dominance and attention. But when this feuding slackens, their conversation achieves an occasional richness.

During these rare periods of fraternal community, dolphins rarely disagree, unless it is in a manner that contributes to general levity. Mimicry infects nearly every discussion, as they are excellent at imitating each other and even mustering bizarre renditions of human speech. They also tend to speak in iterations, slightly modifying others' previous assertions until they meander to another topic. Often a refutation will consist of repeating another's statement with pitch-perfect imdolphination of the speaker -- this always garners laughter, which in turn serves as a sophisticated form of aspiration.

Conversations rarely stray from a limited set of subject matter (coral reefs, slurs against less intelligent aquatic neighbors, recent interspecies rapes, humans) and are extremely vulgar. To wit, a snippet of dialogue between five dolphins of Pod F-107:

-Humans are dicks.
-They all think they're that fucking Jesus.
-They all think they're... Rambo.
-"Adrian!"*
(tittering)
-Yes, when they are all really Prince Porpoise.
(tittering)
-They can suck a beech nut**.
-Fucking humans.
-I will slap a human in the face with my dolphin dick.
-It will already be red -- with shame.
-As well it should be.
-Their women are skeletal and look like strips of tattered baleen.
-My dick would saw one in half.
-As would mine!
-There's not a human yet who could take my dick.
-Do they make the buildings and docks upon which they live? They are so stupid that I will venture that they have.
-No sense of organic aesthetic***.
-Could they not at least emulate us in this regard?
-They don't know a reef! It is a score of feet below the water, and thus inpenetrable.
-They see and hear nothing.
-They labor without feeling.

&tc.

From thousands of hours of translation, only slivers of dolphin society have been exposed, and these are mostly drawn from references to other species, who dolphins tend to heap scorn on. Most interesting is the suggestion of a privileged class of dolphins, best described as royalty.

Much like the British, dolphins speak of their royalty sparingly and with bland praise, though it is obvious the concept haunts their dreams. The royalty of lesser species, apparently, are fair game, if they indeed exist as anything other than a straw man for dolphins' intellectual cachet. The aforementioned Prince Porpoise -- whose electrum circlet, abnormal intelligence and haughty airs seem to single him out for special ridicule -- may be mere archetype.

Indeed, they seem to have a great level of disdain for porpoises, utilizing epithets that resemble our ''tard' and 'paste-head.' In fact, in dolphin society, it is considered carte blanche for a dolphin to hurt a porpoise, given a rationale such as, 'his retarded ass had it coming.'

*- bizarre imitation of Sylvester Stallone's iconic, if incorrectly cited, phrase. I found myself wondering: how could they possibly have learned of this?
**- Dolphinese euphemism for the glans.
***- 'organic aesthetic': a complex concept of choosing functional places based on harmony to pre-existing natural formations.

Bees! Bees! Bees TUE 29 OCTOBER 2007

C. W. L. Whitacre, the legendary drunk and process theologian, met me over immense steins of beer at Pizza Rome's 'Black Culture Evening' earlier this week, and began discussing his intention to formalize the natural universe, with the assistance of his intergalactic Potentate.

'Propitionary prayer has been rewarding as of late!' he half-shouted in my ear over the jabbering of nearby 'street soldiers' and Akon's quavering falsetto. 'I have been given the Key of Dreadful Judgment by the great Hebrew I Am! The bequeathment has straightened my back and quickened my gait! And it came to me in a most unexpected way -- on the pot!'

'Truly!' I ventured dubiously. I had heard such assertions before -- indeed, they were brought to table nearly by the month.

'All my work before that blessed day seems so crude, so childishly mannered! I thumped books in vain, sought sages who proved inferior to even my own mean achievement, paginated countless web-sites as if I were the very software I was coding! I see now, with lenses of spiritual diamond, that I was a fool!
Wasted years!'

'Well, my friend, what does this revelation consist of? And how shall you now apply yourself?' I asked.

'To the former: unexplainable,' the bearded, unbelted maestro replied. 'The reversal of a seemingly indispensible applique or filter -- a stripping-down, a new clarity and focus which informs all previous perception. As for the latter...' His steely gaze searched the water stains on the ceiling panels. 'I will begin... my theory of accumulation!'

'Ah!' Time began to slack across the tavern's backlighting, which shone a dull amber through the myriad spirits encased in glass above our heads. 'Another theory! One would think, given the nature of your epiphany, that you have transcended the language of
predicate altogether!'

'No, no!' he whispered. 'Here is a platform from which we shall spring into all available futures -- which, indeed, even now we are transversing, beneath its blessing and aegis. I will now disfigure it into words for your edification.'

Expecting a more or less contiguous exposition, I waited patiently as Whitacre danced a merry little jig around the bar's perimeter, giving a 'how fares it?' or a knowing smile to each drinker. When he had arrived back at our bench, he inhaled deeply, sighed, inhaled deeply again, and began with stout rhetoric:

'Let "substance" be that allotment of thing which has been made by a non-limiting Hierarch, possessing perfect Craft but imperfect Temporal Presence, who may be revelated by a series of likelihoods ranging in accuracy from Need-Immediacy to a lengthy, multi-intentioned God-Novel; let "layers" be any observed conglomerate of any substance for any period of time that is decided to be "organized," and let "lines" be any border that separates one organizational layer of substance from another.'

'We then have the binary property of "high-pure," in which substance is classified "high-pure" or "not-high-pure" based on an assessment of the substance-presence of an arbitrarily chosen de-lines-eation. And finally, there is the designation of "essence," which spurs substance into differentiation simply by its presence relative to lines and layers, and by its mere concentration and location confers attribute and, finally, quantifications of high-pure. I have long deliberated the theory of "essence," which you can easily see is the most important of this brief list of essential qualities. And, due to my shit-revelation the evening hence, I have decided that the primary constituency of "essence" is broad and biological, symbolic and actual. It is that of bees.'

'Bees!' I exclaimed, pounding the table involuntarily.

You see, my break from pleasant disregard was warranted. For I had been having recurring dreams of yellow streams rippling and coursing throughout every strata of existence. I suppose, utilizing Whitacre's theory of 'scale,' that what I had guessed was a grand universe of flowing urine could, in fact, be these metaphorical (actual) bees! Yes! On the second approximation, it must be so! The universe was aburst with bees! Flying through reality, perception, dimension -- our golden guests while here, our miraculous messengers into whatever
lies beyond!

'Yes,' Whitacre continued. 'The level of bees in a given substance, its "accumulation," is a determinant of its ultimate importance of study. Poets have called it vitality, soul, and the not-uncommon "life," but you (I must assume) and I know all to be bees.' He sat back, hummed a T-Pain chorus tunelessly, and blew several smoke rings -- the last done without the apparent aid of tobacco.

I pressed the seemingly-spent Whitacre further on the matter, but to no avail. Now at a third tankard, his aspirations had devolved from describing the bees that validate our entire existence to devouring a tureen-full of Rome's famous
fried cheese.

Quarterly Update from Obol Iyidirli, the Turkish Copyright Lawyer who Manages My German Affairs (Enclosed in a Heavily-Inked but Sparsely-Labeled Envelope) MON 01 OCTOBER 2007

Mr Christy Hallo Hallo ,

City so quiet with out you! Boys who tuant you outside office untie all noose for rope for just homemaking use, special Amirican 'pork fat head' fried donut discontinuted in Beckerei. My wife not making the four kilo of kebaps on holy day no more so I threaten her with very thin dagger that you bring from Szech as payment :(

See, my Amirican Inglish improves for the Amirican buddey! Crank that Soldier Boy! Say, when you make journey back to awesome Berlin, do sure that you bring some of things we not say too loud? And also Nerd Rope, I never love so much such a thing ever in my life EVER.

Some questionen:

- Ben attack you with pen. He publish long arcticle describing your 'cock head' in Morgen Post. It go through history, many kind of helmet, Hussar, Pickelhaube, World Wars, and on. Now everyone think you 'making butt' together all that time. Chidlren take up wood and stones again. I no understand every liddle thing but here it is for you. Make Ben pay! and get me Euros he owe while at it.

- Bad lawsuit over 'baby repurposing' keep rearing it beak. Damnit German special interest groups getting in there and calling for you be example. I do not want to go against Herr Volker this time -- I still mowing lawn and fix furniture from last settlement. Make this: pay Amirican friend to say 'he not do anything and love kids but never "that way"' but do not say 'that way' German.

-Groups also not like you put horses on water tower. Commercial they do with you picture very well-made.

- What name of girls you bring around office again? Ulrikka and Svenly? I totally fix payment schedule if you bring them again - or, I tell you what, for just apartment number. They what Attila use to call 'Hammer Schnitte'! (I put lortion into basket ha ha)

Polizei know about driving failure and not let you wheels when you come back. Well, you consider it -- If not, we 'Hood Event' you! That Joke.


Be real,
OBoL

Explosions Shatter the Sky MON 06 NOVEMBER 2006

Guy Fawkes is shelling the city as we speak. Cricklewood, to the north, is getting the worst from the sounds of it, and all I’ve got is a serrated knife and internet access. I’ve heard a train of freedom fighters is heading for Parliament via a tube train routed through the disused Down Street station in two days. Gonna blow it up…

An initial review of London, cribbed from a bit of foolscap:

S-H-I-T-H-O-L-E. Shithole.
Hong Kong minus charm, plus chicken. Plus! (It costs a pound.)
Oh yeah: bird flu cesspool.
No intrinsic centre of social order.
Worms crawl all over her rotten carcass and she loves it.
A word from London: "Son I feel like a dried-up pile of shit, I'm wrapped in worms like a dead mummy, it's mommy."

So, yeah! Welcome to the smoke!

Monthly Update from Obol Iyidirli, My Turkish Lawyer and Man-At-Arms MON 17 JULY 2006

Hello to Christy ,

Congradulatations for making your visa! Freinds that I have never in their lives could make like you do -- all freinds! They fight dog and have unemployment and listen to music on eighteenth floor that all can hear. Also soory to hear you lose job. Now you know what it feels!! Heh heh was a joke. You know Cecu ( brother) need someone to clean meat spindle for shop? Even children will not do. Let me know.

-Mister Volker call me fourty times last week, he finding your behavior unreasonly. He request €16.50 for what you do to window. Also, neice. Was originally €18, I do it for you.
-When you stealing bicicles for me again? Come, now, welfare! You know his name!
-Can you DeeJay goddaughters Fairuza wedding this Tuesday? She 15, so hip hap music and rappers -- I think Amirican guy right aways! But exersise care -- if father meets with disapproval he says he hang you by own trachea. She also suffer.
-You are duel two men while wearing footpad garment. " Ninja " style fighting. You win and no pay for me this month. DO'NT LOOSE!!!!! Very important for both, what?

Tell Ben he fat! I have some bricks he will lifts. We make him man like us.

-OBoL

Affirmation SAT 20 MAY 2006

Old people live in environmental geriatric clinics like Phoenix and [South] Miami. It's always hot and arid there, and they can go about their business largely without incident. Incident sucks, to them. They have forgotten what it is to want wind against them, to see soft-focus cities looming against the horizon, to smell the new perfume in an embrace. In short, they have given up on seasons.

That's not for you. Don't listen to them, whoever they are. Those first few days, when the temperature is over 70 and you find buying lemonade and striking up conversations with passersby, you'll realize what you've been waiting for all those months (you always forget, well before). The grayer the winter, the more freedom is now exploding in your heart, and that's your Starman. Savor the flavor, because it's passing through your fingers as we speak, and even that will last longer than next year.

Destined To Bear the Jewelled Crown of Aquilonia on a Troubled Brow MON 13 MARCH 2006

If you want some blockbuster shite like Tomb Raider, the whole film downloads in like a long trip to the bathroom, but just try and pick up the Special Edition of Conan the Barbarian, and -- I better stop before my tears short out the keyboard.

You should start getting alarmed when it jumps to something like the 12th of the month without you noticing. Bret Easton Ellis came to the Deutsches Theater yesterday. For the signing, I totally fanned out and couldn't articulate a sentence. He guessed our nationalities, gave us carte blanche for our book signings (Inger requested he write down a phrase from the Q+A, "Writing is not painful," that he didn't remember saying) and thanked us genuinely for coming to the signing.

Ben gave us the tickets, but do you think I could have been bothered to take his dog-eared, Post-it-addled copy of American Psycho and gotten BEE to write something about how all of Ben's theories about him were wrong? What a fiasco. Ooh, plus, my minidisc ran out of batteries and I forgot my digital camera. I at least got this:

"If you don't like writing, and all you do every day is complain and moan about it, maybe you should be a waiter or something."

The Policy Of Truth MON 01 JANUARY 2007

I woke up and thought immediately, "Films." It was like the last episode of Nathan Barley when Ashcroft wakes up and says "Idiots!", or when Bob Newhart woke up one Monday morning in 1978 and thought, "What is this mannered, gently flippant scarecrow they've stuffed me into?" Time to return to the simple things -- for Newhart, a return to the "thought form" he called "fetishtecture." (Then the squares got through to him again, this time with oversized
novelty checks.)

The problem with films is that the impulse is sporadic, because you have to be in the mood to do 30 things at once. The problem with seeing good short films is that they awaken a sensibility in you, rather than inspire you. They spawn imitation. We watched Miron Zownir's films tonight. They have a raw alacrity, a sort of Pokey the Penguin in mobius get-up-and-go that make you want to try your hand. But the filmmaker takes stock and bides his or her time. We have to do a 30-second spot for Anglofritz soon, which could fold kinetic for a new film for the spring. How does one manufacture a feeling?

Lines Written Under The Influence of H5N1 WEDNESDAY 07 DECEMBER 2005

Okay, I just backspaced about 5k of "X-ing a Paragrab"-style prose that actually seems quite lucid to me in my state. Which is: infected! I got me what is surely the bird flu.

Let me tell you something about my father: he is made of horsehide and bent nails. He is negotiably less resilient than Superman. A typical summer day would see him burning poison ivy and nitrous in an oilcan in our backyard while smoking a spliff of roofing tar. He can tear a pack of cards in half. Cancer wants a piece of him, but can't seem to schedule a title bout.

Anyways, what I am trying to say is, although there is some Leonardo pedigree, I am not my father. This failing divinity means I can, about once a year (Poisoner's Eve), be hurt or sickened. And events confluenced on Saturday to make this holiday.

(Ben don't do it. Ben don't do it.) "Make out with an Asian bird, get the Asian bird flu." Thanks a lot, Ben. Anyways, I have to get better in 24 hours, so's I can fly to England tomorrow afternoon. Here are some folk cures I've tried this evening:

• Hot shower, plus rinsing the throat with high-pressure steaming hot water: definitely soothing, for a few minutes at least.
• The following concoction -- .3 L hot water (two cups) with 3 tablespoons each lemon juice and apple cider vinegar, 2 tablespoons honey, 1/2 tablespoon cayenne pepper: tastes, feels, goes down like fire. I am limited to thimble-sized draughts. Some choking and gagging. Let the healing begin!
• Applying iodine to the throat (externally): feels probing, weird, kind of nice. Wonder if iodine feels the same way about me.
• Finally, the Italian folk remedy proscribed by my grandma -- boiling wine and diced garlic, putting a towel over your head and inhaling the fumes, then drinking the wine and going to sleep: the vapor is gaseous sandpaper. I can only pull in so much before I cough spasmodically. I feel like spirits are climbing in through the holes in my face and I am being changed. The wine tastes pretty gallmatic. I am lost in a world of lore and legends. Morpheus, heal me!

p.s. if you get on a plane with an ear infection, does your head explode?

Advice Given to Me by my Turkish Copyright Lawyer, Obol Iyidirli, Regarding Intellectual Properties Contained in This Website FRI 25 NOVEMBER 2005

Hello to Christy ,

About the new disgiging of the web site you are me asking? That is so simply put. Give me a few bullet-ed points to digress on.

- There is orginal contents that you must hide under your own afghan. Even in China , without running water in house , there is internets. So fuck if you can't be chasing all thiefs left and right.

- Maybe a point-by-point system making do. If there is blow-up , Kreuzberg go deep for county division. I am on the months first often dispaching men with long knifes. They are not registereds heh heh.

- Why d'you flash and complex names for fictional things make? With in the story only is fiction, not in personal life to leak. "Lair is lying to himselfs only ," Gandhi say this. Except I hate Indian , who saying five and giving two.

- Where are breasts? You promise me 7 looky magasines for winning you for ape stealing case.

Tell me again if your frind wanting to rent that room. If not that, an other recomendable room is available, also mine brothers.

-OBoL

Day of Anger TUESDAY 22 NOVEMBER 2005

I'm cut out to be a real winner. Waking up at 6:00 am to get to my residence permit hearing across town at 7:00, I find that I haven't filled out the four-page form. Or gotten the Euro 60 in cash I need to process the form.

Ben and I work things out while negotiating the U9. I am lucky to have Ben with me, even though making him act as my interpreter for this thing is sort of like O.J. hiring Porky Pig as his defense attorney for the Trial of the Century. "If the glove doesn't BE-DEAH BE-DEAH BE-DEAH BE-DEAH fit..." And it plays out thus: I get a three-month extension, rather than the three years of judicious levity I was hoping for.

But a lot can happen in three months, y'know? One could become organized with a beautiful Berlinette, replete with scarf, knee-high boots, Handy, and characteristic diffidence. A Smart car could knock one off their bike. One could start a Turkish sweatshop in their expansive living room ("Ahmet Apparel"?). Lots of things. I'm thinking about all this on the way home when the whip comes back and I am finally caught, for the first time in my many trespasses, riding the rails without a ticket.

There is a ticket patrol in Berlin, consisting not of police or even security guards, but plainclothes citizens, who make commissions on each acquisition. It's a gimme job from the government. If you, like me, prefer to ride the Bahn schwarz, or "go commando," you must learn to track these urban predators and be one step ahead. Overcome by citizenship reverie in the fulcrum of the nunchuck that Godzilla, given proper timing, could wield in his battle for Berlin, I hear, "Hast du deine Karte?"

Getting nabbed by the ticket patrol suxxx, anyone can tell you that. If you cannot evade the detection phase of their procedure, you are in for it and you know it -- the cold sweat, etc. This guy is sneaky too -- he travels alone where there is supposed to be a pair -- so I resign myself to the situation. 40 Euros. Costly day so far.

So I promptly lose the ticket on the way home, and promptly get caught again a few hours later coming back from Warschauerstrasse. One stop. How could the same shit happen to the same guy twice? I am resigned to Germany at this point, hanging my head in capitulation and muttering toneless vocables to gods I haven't the energy to curse. I am dragged off the train with another violator, who is arguing with the takers, a middle-aged couple. She asks to see credentials and, as they fish out their badges, she takes off! Butter shit. After a bit of posturing and releasing moths out of my wallet (not even enough cash for a bribe), they let me go, preoccupied as they are with coordinating Polizei to come down hard on this rogue citizen.

Man, I was skipping down the street right down the middle, which in this case was under the U-Bahn track itself. Make it home, some tea with cookies in the easychair, point at the ceiling, start scheming again. BERLIN! I AM COMING FOR YOU!!!

UPDATE: On the way home from work ~19:00 on my bike (mindful of the threat the old German dude made before dismissing me), I passed a police checkpoint. My blood ran a bit cooler because it was the same guy that I had escaped lest week -- he had summonsed me "Halt und something something" over the bullhorn as I passed him and cut through a park, because I had, again, just been stopped by police for a faulty light the day before. And his head turned, in slow motion, to regard me... and of course, there was a glint of recognition in his eye -- German as they come, a clear marble in a void. I pedaled faster and took back roads all the way home. My provincial and legal concerns seem to have begun in earnest.