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Double Conscious Reinforcement NOTE 1: The following text was originally a series of public transmissions and notes intercepted by the author from short wave radio, undelivered letters from 1978 that were purchased at a garage sale, improperly addressed emails, and scraps of paper found in a six block radius of a large city park. The author then heavily revised and edited the material to create a loose narrative framework that is found below. NOTE 2: Note 1 is fiction.
-demanding a slightly less shittier dream is something that [REDACTED #1] is being pressured into by their rapidly aging parents, a perfectly adequate couple set in their ancient ways who spend much of their time flipping channels by day and reusing stamps by steam ironing off the postage of all incoming mail by night
-"believing in blacker lungs for a edgier tomorrow" is a slogan that [REDACTED #2] offers to [REDACTED #1] over tequila shots at four in the morning on a moonlit night soaked with impossibly heavy sweat, with the sweat being the key, since it runs like machines, over their bodies, the bottle, even the makeshift bar counter in the middle of a charitable farmer's field
-[REDACTED #3] is lucking out after the hushed up wealth of the world keels over and dies three feet away from them, its gold bars tumbling across the ice ripe for the taking, just as [REDACTED #3] puts on their discount rubber gloves and opens their burlap sac to make it rain in a powerfully proverbial sense
-Poor quality submarine divisions suggest the time of empire is about to run aground in suddenly boiling water, so Vice-Admiral [REDACTED #4] pulls out all the stops and makes a sudden run to the surface to give the message to newly crowned President [REDACTED #3]
-[REDACTED #5] defaces a billboard on Tomei Expressway just outside of Nagoya, so it now reads, "Accept no more than three substitutes", and bus passenger [REDACTED #1], having spurned the advice of their parents and shot down the advances of [REDACTED #2], reads this on their way to Kyoto, their 21st stop on their round-the-world-find-myself-or-lose-myself-forever tour
-While shitkicking novel ideas in a dilapidated Old England barn, [REDACTED #2] and [REDACTED #2A] pick up some rusted horseshoes and play a quick game until the weather turns sour as milk and they're forced to seek shelter in their unremarkable beige sedan parked inside
-the time getting to be what it is, [REDACTED #5] makes it to work only three minutes late, and after careful inspection of their aged and infirm employers, finds, looking over said employers personal belongings, that yes, this is the colour of the agoraphobic's tongue, a confirmation from which a complete portrait of the mentally ill individual's insides can begin in earnest
-a hope against the pale moon head means nothing to those not properly versed in gibberish pantomime and dog skull reading, an art practiced by the mother of [REDACTED #1] while she was carrying on a rather predatory from both sides friendship plus drunken taboo benefits with Vice-Admiral [REDACTED #4] which could certainly hurt the latter's career if word ever got out
-In a more exciting moment, [REDACTED #6] was knocked into solids from out of their watery almost grave, since no longer could [REDACTED #6] depend on the patrol of seas from the aforementioned once elite submarine divisions to protect them from giant squids and hydrothermal vents spewing supercritical fluids
-being given a detailed, classified report on the situation, President [REDACTED #3] stop their philandering and stepped outside for a bit of air that was mostly fresh thanks to the pioneering work of [REDACTED #6], where they composed a brief couplet detailing the gravity of the situation, which is as follows: "I find a damaged sea/Wanting revenge on me"
-Because it's never from the knees, [REDACTED #2A] eventually decided to find power in the wrists, eventually prying themselves out of the damaged trunk of the overturned beige sedan in the cool morning sun, quickly limping to the driver's seat to find a near comatose [REDACTED #2] in a compromising, the-steering-wheel-is-lodged-in-my-chest-cavity position, their fingers clasped but rapping on themselves, looking for an answer to a prayer that should have come about ninety eight minutes ago
-Ambling through a crowded Bangkok market, [REDACTED #1] catches a smirk three faces in, shattering the brief sense of superiority as they bask in the regular non-threatening sun, finally accepting that everyone truly knows everyone else except for [REDACTED #1], meaning they are the true island, the unmoored, the disconnected, the single broken link for reasons not yet clear
-Vice-Admiral [REDACTED #4] waits patiently in a room with no numbers, playing solitaire in silence, planning out candid observations that could make for a political treatise that makes The Prince look like the work of a pauper, since [REDACTED #4] is bone chillingly close to the movers and shakers, whose faces change but intentions stay the same, so much so that one can see the way they twist the reasons of this and that into an ironclad defence that covers their ass alone, since this is a knee-deep pool where an admission of guilt makes their opponents stronger
-One would never think it for such a character that seems to be morally bound to the metropolis, but now [REDACTED #5] finds themselves in a rough setting, on a waterway that takes to the hills at the first sign of trouble, a horizon that shiver constantly when sun goes down, their feet sinking into a dirt that never dries in time, trying to orient themselves under a sky that goes too quickly from blue to depressed, and just when it seemed like [REDACTED #5] might have to flag down a taxi, the rejuvenated [REDACTED #6] appears with a tray of local cuisine
-A wee bit later, stuck on a press junket meant to hype the wonderful decision to dye the oceans yellow, President [REDACTED #3] addresses a crowd of handpicked prisoners and admits to them that while both good and evil are stuck wallowing in air thick and stale like a forgotten bowl of last week's porridge, and that despite the fact that even the trees bluster and moan that you aren't listening, and we haven't even mentioned the endless flames swallowing the city whole, at least we don't have to worry about judicial advocacy, what with chief proponent [REDACTED #1] staring at themselves in the proverbial mirror on the other side of the planet
-with nothing left but a plea for specific illness, [REDACTED #2A] assumes the life of [REDACTED #2], whose sac of organs has burst in such a way that is best to leave them where they are since at least they are sitting down in a unexpectedly demolished car in an english countryside ditch, a fate that is like a question for the small cut across the knuckle that reminds you it's there with each flex
-[REDACTED #1] is on the move because it's always easier that way when all you're doing is fleeing yourself, suffering from having nothing worth fighting against, a sort of carpal gunner syndrome, the plight of all those who had worked so hard to get a well pickled christ onto the mountaintop, but Dubai is all sand meets water, where the future is an anteater cracking the earth open to feast on black insides, where impressions are only miles high, where [REDACTED #1] busies themselves with orchestral flair meant for the only military authority figuring themselves in this tale ([REDACTED #4])
-the clock on the wall of [REDACTED #6]'s quickly built shack reminded [REDACTED #5] of a painting that meant half the world to them in their disinformative teenage years, full of ill-fitting feelings that were not terribly different than from what [REDACTED #1] is currently dealing with, admitting to each other at different moments on the temporal plane that life is the primal inconvenience
-after watching military footage of an aerial attack on a rebel training camp, President [REDACTED #3] excuses themselves and heads to the airport bathroom, giving their advisor a chance to bitch and moan about the long hours and theorize that the President's marbles are cracked and quickly being reduced to a fine dust that can be snorted for no discernible chemical reaction, not realizing that [REDACTED #3] is in fact now addicted to penning quick little rhymes whenever they have the chance, as in the stall they scribble, "I refuse to look away, holding it to your dying day"
-Vice-Admiral [REDACTED #4] misses their giant dick-shaped undersea boats, laments the way their contraptions and career floated so quickly to the top to never plunge again, and worries that the next movement will be the streamlining of mundane bureaucratic candour terms, that [REDACTED #4]'s hands and face will be assimilated into flights of fancy, and in reaction to such concerns wanders the streets of the capital in perpetual mental darkness with mostly drained bottle of whisky on their belt, waiting to give President [REDACTED #3] a piece of their mind and maybe even a bit more than that
-[REDACTED #5] is wringing the terribly polluted seawater out of [REDACTED #6]'s ears, filling them in with everything they've missed in the last while and how so much of the trials by careful fire went the royal wrong way, and it didn't take much for [REDACTED #6] to find their tongue and hatch a plan that involves fast and bulbous shadows dismantling and a flood of playful misrepresentation
-[REDACTED #2/#2A] feels the funk of dreaded receivership as they are forced to combine the possessions of their two halves and informational filth and defective decay, and while cleaning out the nearby farmhouse panic room [REDACTED #2/#2A] finds a series of hardcore pressed letters meant to really stick it to the men in charge with plenty of footnotes and sources not so much buried but only trapped underground and undersea
-the call to prayer gets all garbled and [REDACTED #1] has to hatch a plan quickly, since being careful with such on the blink minarets is the only way to keep oneself free from harm in Lahore, especially since [REDACTED #1]'s previous enterprises makes them a familiar and punchable face in such a city, although it's a risk they find themselves having to take when the fate of [REDACTED #7]'s bank account is up in the thick smoggy air
-President [REDACTED #3] dons an extremely clever disguise and escapes his security detail so the meeting with Vice Admiral [REDACTED #4] can go off without too much of a hitch, but it's all just a ruse that both of them fall for, arriving at what is supposed to be an abandoned warehouse but is actually the opening of [REDACTED #5]'s newest anti-artwork, and no one gives [REDACTED #3] a second glance because of the wig and ping pong eyes, which is the moment they realize that when no one is forced to reach for the skies then we are truly all equal
-when pressed for better ideas by [REDACTED #6], [REDACTED #5] makes a pitch into the loud obnoxious wind and lets the words sink like hollow plastic bottles so they don't sink at all and just hover in the air and so the two of them just stare and wait for something else to come down the mental pipes to inspire them and that's exactly when they catch accidental smoke signals in the distance which happen to be [REDACTED #2/#2A] burning now empty envelopes
-an epic party line phone call between most major players and equipment managers is so full of drastic and incendiary potential that Vice-Admiral [REDACTED #4] notes in their undergarments that if sleep comes any slower we'll have to get out and push, forcing [REDACTED #1] to roll their eyes at exactly the wrong moment, since that's when a runaway garbage truck jumps the curb and plows into the oldest phone booth in Lahore mortally wounding [REDACTED #1] and flooding the street with blood and coins
-when informed of [REDACTED #1]'s tragic demise, [REDACTED #2/#2A] remained morosely sane, admitting to recently met associates [REDACTED #5] and [REDACTED #6] that success at all costs somehow had to include a good person's beating heart and pulsating brain, and so the three of them jumped a plane with hot knives and a decent chunk of hash, plotting an exhibit that could exonerate the rest of us from crimes our superiors were committing on our behalf for their benefit
-with slick vomit style President [REDACTED #3] pens [REDACTED #1]'s obituary, lamenting the loss of such a distinguished albeit very private civil servant, and with [REDACTED #4]'s help the both of them crack open the safe that holds the rest of [REDACTED #1]'s secrets, including their complicated relationship with [REDACTED #7], the mysterious parasite through whom all disingenuous plots seemed to tunnel through, if only because [REDACTED #7] owns the proverbial rolodex of the world, which happens to be located in the entorhinal cortex of their brain
-waking up on the tarmac of an abandoned desert airfield, [REDACTED #5] admits that the drugs lead to sunken pillows full of superficial dreams and clutching their own head [REDACTED #6] agrees profusely, with [REDACTED #2/#2A] chiming in that at least the two of them only have one person each living inside their skulls, a situation which the three or four of them did not have time to elaborate upon, as the 11:30 sun couldn't help but remind them that time was of the essence so they jogged to the two lane highway and put out their thumbs
-stuck on the wrong side of sunrises, [REDACTED #7] picked up on nitpicking spook chatter that their existence and activities were once again going under the magnifying glass just because of the most recent example of the never-ending bad luck that befell their not-so-old drinking partner, [REDACTED #1], which is forcing [REDACTED #7] to pick up the phone and call in loose wire favours from all corners of the globe, to protect the sort of complicated investments and infrastructures that too many powerful people take for granted
-and with that impossible scandals and terrible bombs bubble and burst across the globe, a demented hallmark of [REDACTED #7]'s creative feats that have trouble dribbling out of the eyes, ears and mouth of the victims, who even with their last breath don't see it as such, confusing the end of their role in the world as the end of the world itself, so that when President [REDACTED #3] are implicated themselves, the strategy is to deny A and accuse B, although right now [REDACTED #3] and Vice-Admiral [REDACTED #4] are not quite ready to go public with the individual they are sure is trying to orchestrate their downfall
-two hours outside of the capital, [REDACTED #5], [REDACTED #6] and [REDACTED #2/#2A] are hard at play, the only true antithesis of work, a joy that comes with childlike wonder, an ethical purity, and the consumption of anything grown in two feet of rich fertile earth, which is not too far off from the mantra that is helping construct their work of art that will place much of the rarely considered global by-product at centre stage for all the world to see, just in time for important speeches, voting drives, fundraisers, and video game premieres
-barricading themselves in rhetoric and trying to figure out a strategy to make them look slightly less like the bad guys, President [REDACTED #3] and Vice-Admiral [REDACTED #4] introduce a second level of commentary that place the blame of domestic and foreign problems at the feet of a straw man spun with gold, of greed and control personified through six pairs of impeccably shiny shoes, of a cabal of indiscriminate size grabbing the drawers of this country's desk and overturning them, papers and pens tumbling to the unkempt floor
-[REDACTED #5], [REDACTED #6] and [REDACTED #2/#2A] unveil their masterpiece upon a cult that's petitioned for ages for recognition in the halls of power, and their many millions are so inflamed with possibly righteous passion that they march upon the capital and the defenders can only reload so many times before they're swept up in body and maybe even in mind by the hordes, so the flames rise high in buildings important, and advisors roll their eyes as the helicopters they're crammed in scream away into the night, and as they carefully follow the news dripping back to them, [REDACTED #5], [REDACTED #6] and [REDACTED #2/#2A] high five themselves tentatively, preferring credit carefully mingled with outright blame
-since President [REDACTED #3] has retain power long enough that it's legitimate even in failure, Vice-Admiral [REDACTED #4] was at first wary of bribing some of his own men to make sure [REDACTED #3] tragically slipped down the bunker stairs three or four times, and allayed only by the knowledge that at such times like this everyone could use a good fleet of submarines to keep the peace below while terrible shit flies above
-pouring another glass of cheap brandy, [REDACTED #7] calls off their dogs, their yacht drifting in sight of soft Hawaiian shores, confident in the knowledge that while all might not be right with the world, 46% right isn't chump change, and as long as you keep the pot boiling and the broken eyed sociopaths in charge for seasons instead of years, the chance for making things an inch better than a yard worse is semi-decent, which explains why President [REDACTED #3] is in a pine box and Vice Admiral [REDACTED #4] is suddenly finding themselves facing a firing squad
-[REDACTED #2/#2A]'s headaches are becoming too much to bear and they intentionally put themselves in a weeklong coma to rest and recuperate as [REDACTED #5] tries their hand at spray-painting a new constitution on the ruins of a government building as people come from all over for food, fuel, and inspiration, which worries [REDACTED #6], who remarks that there's too much of the old follow follow these days in the first place
END
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The afterlife is none of the living's business | |||