Ilaniowear pushes the gag reflex

This has to be the most terrible combination of everything imaginable.

songs thrown in #1

Just figured what the hell, got the youtube. I might as well throw together a mix of songs.

Dr. Octagon -- Blue Flowers
www.youtube.com/watch

Screamers -- The beat goes on
www.youtube.com/watch

Butthole Surfers -- who was in my room last night
www.youtube.com/watch

Cabaret Voltaire -- Nag Nag Nag
www.youtube.com/watch

Saul Williams -- list of demands
www.youtube.com/watch

Poster Children -- 21st Century
www.youtube.com/watch

The Birthday Party -- Nick the Stripper
www.youtube.com/watch

Black Heart Procession -- (?)
www.youtube.com/watch

Elvis Costello -- lipstick vogue
www.youtube.com/watch

Bob Log III -- String on a Stick
www.youtube.com/watch

Dick Dale -- Nitro
www.youtube.com/watch

No Trend -- Teen Love
www.youtube.com/watch

Talking Heads -- stay hungry
www.youtube.com/watch

Handsome Boy Modeling School -- the truth
www.youtube.com/watch

A bit of work

Attempting to tie up loose ends at this point since the thread has become a sort of spread out brainstorming session on how to end war by addressing the larger problem of conquering the reasons why we are at war.

The main reason of course is oil and the attainment of resource from other countries by force. The solution is to develop resources that are renewable and can be completely supplied within the borders of the US.

Our main commodity, arable land, (3000x194 miles of total surface) is currently being wasted, with 60% of all grain used to feed livestock, which in turn feeds us at the cost of almost a complete energy loss at the end of the chain for a resource we don't need for survival.

Here's a list of proposed solutions.

uspolitics.tribe.net/thread/...58f5d4e7

The solution for problem 1 -- working at home to reduce the demand for fuel.

uspolitics.tribe.net/thread/...b920a58e
uspolitics.tribe.net/thread/...b2bbb41d

Problem 2 -- the mass production of electric cars --

This is currently unresolved simply because the real problem is getting the amount of electricity required to supply 180 million cars requires massive infrastructure changes. Electric cars must be abandoned until the US develops a reliable alternative fuel source to oil.

My layman's explanation of the problem

uspolitics.tribe.net/thread/...ad7238ad

-- and I'd be very happy to have a real electrician prove me wrong.

Problem 3 -- the removal of international tariffs on energy efficient products is pretty self-explanatory. I say 'remove them'. Say otherwise if you want. Feel free to discuss the economic reprocussions of that move. I'm sure that would be an interesting and heated political debate.

Problem 4 -- supplying biodiesel or alternative fuel necessary to keep trucking and supply lines moving. This is pretty much the only realistic answer to the problem.

uspolitics.tribe.net/thread/...855916de

with a funding schematic and cost breakdown . . .

uspolitics.tribe.net/thread/...c1be5b0a
uspolitics.tribe.net/thread/...f74c104d

This is a summary so far. There are many other ideas are sprinkled throughout the entire thread, from developing arcologies to the use of fission, hydrogen, and geothermal as an energy source.

Any other ideas, feel free to jot them down or attack any flaws you might see. I think that overall, this might be a realistic political platform for a 2008 presidential candidate or political party.

Thanks in advance,
Mike C

Job interview failure

Excerpt from a question and answer session I undertook to gain admittance to a marketing think tank. I didn't get the job but figured I might as well post the interview and the answers (for good or ill)

Question 1. YOU ARE WALKING DOWN A TRAIL AND A ROCK SLIDE STARTS IN FRONT OF YOU. NOTHING YOU DID STARTED IT AND IF YOU STOP WALKING IT WON'T AFFECT YOU. IF YOU THROW YOURSELF IN FRONT OF THE ROCK SLIDE YOU WILL STOP IT. IF YOU DON'T STOP IT THEN IT WILL BUILD UP AND CRUSH A VILLAGE OF A 1000 PEOPLE. IF YOU DO STOP IT BY THROWING YOURSELF IN FRONT OF IT NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW. YOUR LOVED ONES WON'T KNOW WHY YOU DID IT. NO ONE WILL KNOW. STOP IT OR NOT -- GIVE REASONS WHY?

If a rock started to slide in front of me I would get out of the way and I wouldn't think of it harming a village or killing thousands because if I could actually stop it with my body, it would seem insignificant and unable to cause that much damage. Also if I were able to stop it with my body, I should be able to do it without it killing me. I'd be more likely to lead with my feet and kick the landslide rather than stop the landslide by placing my head in front of it.

Question 2: HOW DO YOU RESPOND WHEN YOUR IDEAS ARE SHOT DOWN BY A GROUP?

If it's a group I respect, then I would probably consider it a bad idea or I would simply try working on it myself to see if there really was some sort of potential to it. If there was promise, I'd polish it up some and suggest it again. If it didn't take, I'd then move on to building something else with the group. But in general, I expect ideas to be shot down.

If I don't respect the group and feel they are deserving of scorn, and by this, I usually mean a group that expounds on their own misery in order to create more of it; I often develop ideas that bludgeon them with solutions to their reoccuring problem until the group either fragments, throws me out of the discussion, or recognises the essential hypocrisy and creates their own interesting ideas . . . in which case I pull back and listen -- with respect for the discussion and the group.

Question 3: WHAT IS YOUR FEELING ABOUT NUDE IMAGES SHOWN IN ONLINE FORUMS? DO YOU FEEL A NEED TO SHUT DOWN YOUR COMPUTER WHEN TABOO IMAGES ARE DISPLAYED IN A PUBLIC SETTING?

I don't get offended by the images themselves but I do get offended by the reactions of the public that might surround me. I feel that they would be a distraction from whatever I was doing. However, I might just be overreacting because I am generally a private person and don't like it when people look over my shoulder uninvited.

Question 4: WHAT SORT OF RISKS HAVE YOU ENDURED TO PROMOTE AN UNPOPULAR IDEA?

I got fired from a theater group for refusing to take down a 3' high painting of a hand holding a gigantic Lichtensteinian style penis superimposed over the word POW! in a Batman-style thought bubble. My rationale for doing so was to preserve respect for the artists in the group show and my respect of the art itself, which was the individual expression. I didn't necessarily like the painting but I did respect the skill with which it was done and the risk that the artist brought on himself by the expression. In the environment, (a show called Return to Normalcy that sought to 'define normalcy through a catalog of extremes') it was shocking and thought provoking and within the context, art in itself.

As was the divided reaction from the theater group. A puzzling combination of respect and scorn measured by creative types and bureaucrats, and as I think about it, not all that much risk was involved considering the lesson received and the shit job I actually lost.

Question 5: HAVE YOU OR A FRIEND EVER BEEN A VICTIM OF RACISM OR SEXISM? DISCUSS THE INCIDENT AND HOW IT WAS RESOLVED.

I don't know if I've been a victim and feel I can never actually call myself a victim because I call my own shots and risk when I know the risks. But have I felt racism . . . yes. I like playing the dozens game because it is a complicated intellectual exercise and I am very good at beating down your mother. Is this sexist? Probably, but it is extremely abstract. Saying to someone that their 'mom's face is their mother's pimp and johns pay her to keep her bag on' or that 'yo moms so fat she had to get her Parachute pants designed by Christo' simply can't be taken seriously on any level, and to my experience no one has. For Dozens, I am always on. Now free-style rap is another game I've been known to play. This sport I consider doubly respected because not only are you forced to be innovative with ideas and theme, you also have to rhyme, be quick with your designs and keep it all to a beat. It takes a ridiculous amount of hard work and discipline to even have a smidgen of talent with the art and there are times when I get so involved with it that my regular thoughts end up rhyming and hitting beats in a trance-like effect. The game is highly addictive when you are in the right state of mind.

In a free-style rap forum, my participation led to one of the contestants saying free style was domain of the streets, which is fine. But after I had sufficiently trounced him in competition he (the moderator of the group) completely abandoned style and rhyming and basically devolved into calling me a wigger for getting into the game and probably because I was persistently good at it. That is the incident of racism. Is it significant? I don't know . . . all I know is the situation surprised me with it's novelty and made me take a step back and think about it.

It's a limit I feel impossible to resolve to my satisfaction within the style of rap since using the language only reinforces my difference, which isn't language. The difference is skin. And after much thinking, I'm seeing that the limits racism creates is not only the limit of potential in a human being; it is also the refusal to call someone an asshole based on the merit of their thoughts without having those thoughts attached or justified by a stereotypical grouping. My immediate impression of being called a 'wigga' because I participated (and did it well) automatically limited the potential of the group and reversed common stereotype. It showed me a black man calling himself whitey by relying on racial expectations instead of simply talent at verse.

Now the group, once relatively active, has been dead for two months. The situation is not resolved. Resolution if anything hinges on my participation but at the same time, that spirit of participation is pretty much destroyed by the action. There is no real freedom to being there as there is a reaction. It derailed the discipline by throwing away the joy of it. And rather than waste the thought required to throw verse, I've ended up turning my attention elsewhere. I guess that is a resolution of sorts . . . it just nags sometime. Possibly the one validity I can give my antagonist is that I can drop out of it at any time, whereas it would be naive to assume the moderator of the group would be able to just do the same . . . which is probably the extra effort needed not just to fight racism but fight dirty when cornered.

I cornered him with my talent and he lashed out in a way I didn't expect. I shouldn't have lost respect for him but I did anyway. Now to express that feeling in verse, strung along a beat that rhymes? I guess you just have to throw out the timing when considering your response. Or just not consider your response . . . which would be the ultimate goal of abolishing racism or sexism, that it is the individual's response right or wrong that defeats it and not allegiance to the group or stereotype.

Question 6: WHEN ANGERED, HOW DO YOU EXPRESS YOURSELF? BE HONEST. ARE THERE ANY DEFINABLE LINES THAT ONCE CROSSED LEAD TO VIOLENCE?

I usually withdraw from the conflict and everything else associated with the person involved. I consider my input, experience and ideas valuable as I am both a good conversationalist and a decent audience. Disappearing is in a way it's own punishment. Now cornering me, that's something different. Backing me into a corner justifies killing a person by any means necessary. Not hurting but killing since to my ethic, fighting with the intention to hurt, dominate or increase suffering in any way is more distasteful than simply fighting to kill and it's also less practical since fighting to hurt just ends with me having to look over my shoulder for retaliation. Since retaliation is inevitable, I fight with the intention of killing and with all the desperation of someone who is scared shitless because I know if I have to kill one person I'll have to kill several. Realistically this is impossible . . . so I don't fight. In addition, I'm smart enough find escape routes so I am rarely cornered as a result.

If I see an objective or a way to turn a balance in a mob situation, I will fight to keep it from exploding out of control by seeking the source and stopping it from going crazy, hopefully through discussion. I've done this before as a bouncer and to my credit, I've been able to talk people out of knife fights twice after knives were drawn. The motivation for interfering in any of this drama is usually social embarassment that a group would let a situation go this far without acting on it . . . so I act. It is violence sometimes, but in a way it's violence to a rational end. But this isn't anger . . . it's actually violence fueled by embarassment, which is different.

Question 7: TELL ME THE STORY OF YOUR LAST BREAKUP.

No.

Question 8: TELL THE STORY OF YOUR LAST BREAKUP FROM THE OTHER POINT OF VIEW.

A screaming hysterical terror that cannot form words.

Question 9: WHAT DO YOU KNOW HOW TO DO? WHAT SPECIAL SKILLS CAN YOU BRING TO THE THINK TANK?

I can forcast trends and define uses for new technology before anyone else. I have done collage art in the past with a subgenius/industrial feel. I know how to edit film effectively. I can write plays, short stories, screenplays and commerical scripts pretty much on demand. I can proofread and edit written work, layout a magazine or website page with dreamweaver, photoshop, InDesign, and illustrator programs. I know how to do my own taxes and have been known to find loopholes in the laws. I work well with others and know when not to impose myself on the flow of someone else's ideas. I am polite, honest. I can be a very persuasive salesman as long as I have a product worth selling.

Question 10: WHAT CRITERIA WOULD YOU USE TO EVALUATE THE WORTH OF GIVING ONE PANHANDLER MONEY AND NOT ANOTHER?

The old and the injured get money. The rest don't.

Question 11: WHAT SECTION OF THE NEWSPAPER DO YOU READ FIRST?

I read leftover newspapers. Usually the front page if I can get it but if it's predictable news I move off to editorials, sports, and entertainment sections.

Question 12: WHAT WAS THE LAST SHOW YOU PAID TO GET INTO (MUSIC OR ART)?

Blowfly and Bob Log III at Sabala's, 10/15/06

Question 13: HAS THE DEATH OF A POTTED PLANT EVER MADE YOU DEPRESSED?

No. Other than maybe some weed I was growing . . . but I think I was more depressed about getting caught with the plant before I could kill it and smoke it.

Question 14: HAVE YOU EVER LOST SOMETHING (AN OBJECT OR POSSESSION) THAT WAS OF VITAL IMPORTANCE TO YOU? WHAT WAS IT? HOW DID YOU DEAL WITH THE REPERCUSSIONS?

I lost half of an X-files screenplay I was writing when my Smith Corona word processor crashed. Fucking bitch! . . . that's pretty much all I said for the next two months before I rewrote it. By the time I was done, the connection I had over at Fox studios ended up having a mental breakdown and moving to Australia. Fucking bitch! Fuuuuccccckkkkin Bitch!!!

#15: WHAT TYPES OF BOOKS DO YOU READ?

Lately a lot of philosophy and essays by Montaigne and Emerson. I've also been on a sort of Phillip K. Dick binge and otherwise picking up lots of stuff on deconstruction (Derrida, Ronell). Occasionally I try to read Ouspensky and fail at it, finding better success with Gurdjieff's more humorous style in expressing the same ideas.

#16: WHAT IS THE BOOK YOU HAVE READ MOST RECENTLY?

Grant Morrison's 'The Filth' and surprised myself by understanding it the second time through.

#17: WHICH CHARACTER WOULD YOU BE IN FIGHT CLUB: EDWARD NORTON'S, BRAD PITT'S OR MEATLOAF'S?

I'd be Edward Norton if Edward Norton's character was Meatloaf.

#18: IF YOU EVER HAD TO MOVE OUT OF YOUR LIVING SPACE, WHAT THINGS WOULD YOU THROW AWAY TO MAKE THE MOVING EASIER?

Living space?

#19: WHAT IS YOUR LEAST LIKED TYPE OF MUSIC?

Covers! I hate cover bands. Make your own music or fuck off.

#20: HAVE YOU EVER BEEN IN A FIST FIGHT? WHAT HAPPENED?

I've been in several and I have about a 50/50 rate of success. I got beat up by three people when I was young. I would have been beat up by four people but I broke one of the kid's legs with a chunk of concrete after warning him to back off. I felt guilty about that sort of stuff when I was young. Now I don't.

#21: HAVE YOU EVER DONE DOOR TO DOOR SALES OR TELEMARKETING? WHAT WAS YOUR EXPERIENCE? ANY FOND MEMORIES?

I did door to door sales for about four years, selling landscape service. I ended up getting pretty good at that and ended up averaging about $300 in sales for every day I went out. The only reason I was any good at it was because I realized you had to sort of suck as a salesman in order to sell anything so I didn't lie about anything, didn't pressure anyone and didn't care about not selling anything. People ended up telling lots of stories about whatever was going on in their lives far more often than people told me to fuck off, which was practically never. It was also the first time I felt like I'd actually earned something since I didn't have to rely on anyone else to make my money. That was satisfying.

Telemarketing on the other hand sucks. You are talking to the phone, not the person . . . and as a voice I sort of suck. Person to person I do much better.

#22: IF YOU COULD INTERVIEW ANY PERSON ALIVE, WHO WOULD IT BE? hOW WOULD YOU GO ABOUT LOCATING AND ASKING THIS PERSON FOR THE INTERVIEW?

Avital Ronell, the feminist philosopher and deconstructionist. I'd figure out which college she taught at (pretty easy since she's google friendly), then send her an e-mail with a few quick questions. I'd probably ask her to deconstruct feminism at some point and hopefully we'd get into one of those arguments that sell magazines. My suspicion throughout the interview is that the feminist label is attached to her by feminists because she is intelligent and a woman, and that she herself doesn't really believe any of it and may actually resent it on a certain level. Furthermore, as a deconstructionist, she is basically a virus of the feminist system, and that her system of philosophy could be construed as an attack on the group or an attack on any philosophy in general. I'd ask if deconstructing feminism would hurt her career as a feminist philosopher. If deconstruction ended up causing the invalidation and destruction of feminism, would she still end up defined as a feminist because she is a woman? I'd also ask if the definition mattered at all if she didn't accept it. Then I'd ask how this could be applied to other gender or race based philosophies.

#23: WHAT QUESTIONS WOULD YOU ASK?
See above.

#24: IF YOU WOKE UP IN TIJUANA, MEXICO WITH ONLY ONE DOLLAR TO YOUR NAME, HOW WOULD YOU GET BACK TO PORTLAND?

I'd walk across the border and hop a trolley into San Diego. Then I'd phone my mother and ask her to loan me money for a bus ticket . . . or I'd just walk to one of the jobs I'd worked at and work there for a month until I had the money if that ever happened. But that would never happen. I try to always keep $1000 as my ace in the hole. $500 if I'm extremely pushing it.

#25: DO YOU LIKE TO HUNT AND FISH?

I like fishing if I'm fishing for food. I've done that before when I was broke and it was very satisfying to be able to cook my catch over an open fire and feed myself. Fish I don't really care about. I sort of think of them as plants that swim with the exception of Octopi and Squid which have cognitive ability, have language with up to 150 signs via color change, and are able to problem solve.
Hunting animals is disgusting but I'd do it if I had to face starvation. I wouldn't hunt and eat humans if I had the choice to hunt animals -- but if I did have to kill a human in the post-apocalyptic world, I'd probably end up eating it. I'm practical that way.

#26: IF YOU HAD TO DO ALL THE WORK AND SOMEONE ELSE TOOK CREDIT FOR IT, HOW WOULD YOU DEAL WITH IT?

If they did it intentionally, I'd smile to their face and cause them misery every chance I got. If they just didn't know . . . if they were absolutely too stupid to figure it out, I'd let it go but warn others there's the possibility of theft.

#27: HOW WOULD YOU DEAL WITH AN IRS AUDIT?

I'd have all the receipts and have the rationale for making deductions ready. If the rationale was wrong, it would be so thoroughly complicatedly wrong that the auditor would have to decide I didn't know what I was doing and impose either leinient fines or none at all, but odds are everything would be done correctly and would end up coming down to a question of my word against theirs on what was a legitimate business expense. If fined I would also investigate other tax law to see if other businesses had managed to get away with the same things I did, then call them on the hypocrisy and create further headaches . . . if the dollar amount was substantial enough to contest.

#28: HOW MUCH MONEY WOULD IT TAKE FOR YOU TO PARADE AROUND TOWN IN A CHICKEN OR GORILLA SUIT?

$500 a day. I was going to put $300 down. Then I thought about it and decided $300 ain't worth it for eight hours in a chicken suit.

#29: HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT MONEY?

I like having it but I don't like having to be an asshole in order to earn it. More often than not this is the case. Since being an asshole goes against my nature, I don't really find money all that useful and choose instead to limit my needs. I guess you can say I prefer sleep over money; but since I am a pragmatist, I get up at 6AM every day and go to work.

#30: WHAT MAKES MONEY WORTH SOMETHING?

The opportunity it provides and the time it allows.

#31: WHEN IN ROME?

Do as the Romans do. But when in Jonestown run the fuck away.

#32: WHO BOMBED PEARL HARBOR?

Japan.

#33: IF YOU COULD CRAWL INTO ANY PAINTING AND IT'D BE YOUR NEW WORLD, WHICH ONE WOULD YOU CHOOSE AND WHY (SPECIFICALLY)?

Sinibaldo Scorza's 'Orpheus and the Animals' or John Martin's 'Figures entering an Extensive Valley'

www.wga.hu/art/m/martin/deluge1.jpg

I couldn't find a good image of Sinibaldo Scorza online, but the one by John Martin above gives you a potential of the type of worlds he might create.

A LITTLE STORY ABOUT THE MEANING OF EASTER

It was ninety minutes on the good side of midnight and Y2K was a monster looking to kill the lights. Survivalists wandered through the aisles of the local supermarkets for last minute items, purchasing substantial quantities of canned goods and trail mix. Others shrugged off the doomsday rumors with the help of a cold beer, watching for the ball to drop smug with cynicism to wall over the doubts. The tabloids had made numerology a hot topic all year; leaching off the paranoia with double issues of dread and prophesy. Now in this final moment, a demographic chewed fingernails over pop up angels and brimstone calendars, awaiting the rapture as the clock struck midnight. Five minutes after midnight, the magic number rolled past. The gullible emerged from their bunkers and tittered nervously. They brushed off the khaki and drove mini-vans back to their desk jobs. Great expectations fizzled and the spin doctors went back to steady earners, the drug wars in Colombia and viral epidemics in Africa. The tabloids sent Nostradamus on a six month vacation and killed the angles on tech rampage, the staff settling on gimmicks bent toward reviving Princess Di as a gentle Elvis; Osama a rampaging Bigfoot. Wars waxed and waned; the coke wars of the jungle became meth labs in the suburbs, people had it rough or great somewhere else, and generally, the world shrugged it's shoulders as it returned to business as usual.

Somewhere in this futuristic muddle of slow news days and reality television lurked the seeds of some really bad news. The Earth, at first; trembled and spasmed at slight events, minor deformities given little notice at first began to multiply, then multiply in multiples and expand to all corners of the Globe. Horrified, we watched as Chernobyl's second generation of conjoined twins turns hardened Soviet census takers into sniveling anarchists. We watched as forests steeped in decades of industrial waste bloom with tye-dye flora drew America's dreadlocked youth and vestigial hippies into vast migrations, psychedelic dreams of world peace realized, then dashed as aggressive pancreatic cancer flared up to harsh the mellow. The earthquakes piled up everywhere: LA, Buenos Aries, Tokyo, and New York. There is a volcano rising out of Wichita; a rain of frogs in London, an ice storm in the Gobi. When the Ganges catches fire, it sinks in.

The group mind has a blowout. Preachers and Gurus everywhere begin liquidating their inventories; the portents and omens flooding what is already a white-hot market. Tabloids cranked out the old hits, upping the costs of ad space as a grateful public grabbed for every plastic relic and pint of noumena they could afford while the true believers cried out in pain, crashing down on their knees with dramatic gestures and appealing to god or gods to rescue them from the fouling nest that was the Earth. The cold stars paid no attention to their mumbling astrologers and rolled out every night with constallations recalibrated; and soon unknowable. Children grew restless and old before their time. Liquor stores everywhere ran out of antacid. No one knew what to do.

There were rumors of a messiah. Then it was 'the' messiah. And then there was the day that Jesus actually appeared on Oprah to transmogrify a low salt cracker into a sumptuous seven course meal for the studio audience. That was the day He was here, finally, He was here and He was ratings dynamite! A throng of network wranglers and press agents waited after the show and sought attachment to the Lord. There was talk of a series, a reality show; a fashion show. Blackwell criticised the robes and thongs and pined for Simon LeBon until someone hit him with a rolled up newspaper and told him to shut up. After that, there was nary a word of dissent for everywhere; in every corner of the world, the holy war became yesterday's news as the ratings war began.

Jesus was fair and just. All the daytime talk shows would eventually have their turn, with each trying to up the ante. Rosie had an entire studio audience filled with the crippled and blind, and under a barrage of Rosie's terrible jokes about the lame Jesus endured, strolling through the aisles until he had healed all. Jenny Jones asked if He and John the Baptist had a 'thing' going and Jesus politely declined to answer. Sally Jesse Raphael filled an entire soundstage with three feet of water and brought in Gregory Hines to teach Him how to tap dance. Jesus danced like Fred Astaire, doing the moonwalk and the smurf. Dr. Phil brought up Christ's latent abandonment issues and Jesus performed the miracle that was a full head of hair. Jerry Springer assembled a panel of dissatisfied transsexuals looking to regain their penises. Jesus snapped His fingers like the Fonz, then miracle concluded, rolled on the floor in a fit of hysterical laughter. The critics began throwing around words like 'amazing' and 'life affirming'. Jesus was making every bland and tragic day into something to root for and everywhere the Earth seemed to breathe a collective sigh as He waved to the crowd, flashed victory and exited stage right.

Of course, not everyone in the world was smiling. In New York, high up in a penthouse apartment, Ricki Lake was not smiling. Already having a chip on her shoulder after his first appearance on Oprah, she was only further peeved by His refusal to bring John back from the dead to reunite the Beatles. Jesus had smiled, gently reminding Ricki that Lazarus had only been in the ground four days the last time He'd worked that trick and expressed doubts that conjuring up a pile of dust to sing Strawberry Fields would be an uplifting experience for anyone. That went ditto for reuniting Nirvana. He 'did' offer to give Paul his talent back but by then it was too late. Fuming, watching as the frogs pelted against the window of her penthouse apartment, she felt like secondhand goods. Ratings were slipping after all. She needed to have the most spectacular Jesus daytime talk show ever. And so, when the time came for Jesus to appear on her show, she did the most spectacular thing yet. Ricki Lake pointed to Jesus and a squadron of tall black suited gents walked on stage. With cameras following, the Son of God was quickly herded through backstage and outside into an unremarkable black sedan, the national audience watching as Jesus rolled down the road toward his next gig.

John Waters was shocked for five seconds. Many Hollywood insiders considered this a new record.

With the cameras turned off, the talk of press agents and three picture deals quickly went sour for the Son of God. The CIA needed the facts and they needed miracles right quick. They wanted miracles that would erase the trade deficit, miracles that would make Iraq the fifty first state in the union, miracles that would create a nice PR package for the international press or give them an anti-ballistic missile system that was more reliable than 50/50. And they thought He'd get the hint when they began hitting the strobe lights, the heavy metal music and administering the not so gently inserted toothpicks under His fingernails. But no, all they got was loud and breathless talk about brotherhood, love, world peace, and tree-hugging commie crapola. And after several days of this continued uselessness on the part of Jesus, an OK was given to perform other extreme measures of persuasion.

So they took Jesus to a small room. There they bound Him to a chair with padded restraints and attached the oxygen mask to His face. When all was in place, they gazed upon His face from behind quarter inch glass and leached the oxygen out of the room. Once they had the room sufficiently pumped with carbon dioxide, the doctors began ceasing the flow of oxygen to Christ's mask and began asking questions. As they watched cyanosis blush His lips and cheeks by degrees, they asked Him to make an effort, to clarify his position on the meaning of life. And as they continued to see nothing but more of the same gasping offers of goodwill toward men, they decided it was time to switch off the oxygen for ten minutes and ask Jesus to save Himself. The notes were meticulous, the scientists watching every flutter of the cardiograms and the spiking EKG's. Then they waited. When He went flatline, they sent a team of interns in to jab Him with a spear. They found none of the old scars, no marks other than the marks they'd made. He was quite conclusively dead.

So they dissected Him.

The indignities of the cross were tame by comparison. Lab techs, lacking the imagination to crown Him with thorns, cut off His head and split His skull. The brain was pulled out, dyed, bombed with radioactive markers and sliced into slides. Hands planted electrodes in His dead flesh and ran varying currents. Muscles twitched and they analyzed the results. They removed long bones to scrape His marrow. They centrifuged His DNA and spit it into marked tubes. Motor neurons were pulled from His arms, hoping to reveal where the Duck a la' Orange came from and how He made Cherries Jubilee without a chafing dish. And there was more. They yanked His eyeballs, squeezed His organs, analyzed His bile and blood gases, tapped His spine, searched His ass with gloved hands and scraped His stomach for the contents of His last supper. Jesus was pinned to a board. Dipped in agar. Preserved in polymers. Jesus was flash frozen and sliced into longitudal sections. Jesus was cut and tested, cut and sliced, burned and pulled, boiled, stretched and insulted with every diagnostic machine in the menagerie until there was nothing but a lot of little piles, each nametaged and numbered and catalogued in triplicate.

They found nothing.

The lab tightly screwed the lids down on three hundred formaldehyde filled jars. The bigger chunks of Our Savior were cryogenically frozen and placed in a vault between the Roswell Aliens and Aldous Huxley. Then they tidied up the dissecting tables and wiped down every surface, making sure to forget who He was as they continued the business of prodding, pestered and analyzing the loose samples remaining in the petri dishes.

Two days passed.

On the morning of the third day, three tired researchers ending the overnight shift watched as the frozen visions beneath their microscopes began to move. They looked at each other from across the room, puzzled expressions changing rapidly to horror as the knowledge took hold.

In the legend, no one moved the great rock.

The scientists looked at the door of the walk in freezer and heard the latch jiggle. They wanted to run but all they could do was remain locked in place as the door opened and the anatomical parade that was Jesus slid into the room.

One researcher had a heart attack and flopped to the tile. The other splashed half a beaker of cyanide on his face and quickly died. Only one scientist remained conscious for the entire procession, standing on his desk and yelling as parts of Jesus scurried across the floor like blind rats, making kissy grandma noises as they collided with one another. Several parts of His head began to make more of an conserted effort than the rabble and began crawling toward the desk on their formaldehyde slick. Underneath the desk of the hysterical scientist, His eyes jumped into the sockets like trained poodles and rolled to take a look.

The scientist screamed.

"Oy Masugena, enough of the noise already." Jesus said, looking around and attempting a smile with reattached lips. "What's with these shabby accommodations . . . please don't answer right away. You want edgewise you better wait a bit. I already had it up to here with hell, all that kibbutzing with all the souls of the damned and if that wasn't bad enough I get this as a thank you? Oy vey, you're all a pretty bunch of petunias! It's enough I gotta forgive the Hitlers, Roy Cohns, Stalins and Pol Pots-- oy a list, enough of a list! What sort of batch were you people brewing down here -- don't answer, please! I mean Malachi and Saul were pretty bad guys but youz guys . . . youz guys make the Romans look like pussycats."

The scientist stared from on high and closed his mouth, watching luncheon meat swirl around the legs of his desk.

"Well?" Jesus said, "Why are you waiting like such a putz. Get a bucket. Let's get this show on the road. You must have a bucket somewhere, smart guy?"

The scientist pointed a shaky hand underneath one of the desks and stammered.

"What, you don't have a bigger bucket than that?"

And that's the story of how the Resurrection Tour became the biggest hit of the Summer.

Downtown at Baboonsasshole

City hall gets involved -- there's a flock of dirty sensualists on the veranda, smelling their fingers and commenting on the strung out, dew-crusted minions rolled up in chains of bedloused mexican blankets. Cheap garbage diving trash, humans fighting a pitched battle for real shoe leather -- not polymer substitutes. Chaplin flicks flash across their racial memory, once, a long time ago, and the bombardment of cheap medicine finally does the impossible for one paint huffing junkie -- within him the gall bladder has mutated to make plastic edible! Down in the pit of being, they are testing quantum theory, social experimentation has taken collateral on intestines. The cud chewers rip out the bucket seats on an old Volkswagen like pirahnnas flipping through the guts of a Capybara, the carcass is stripped to it's frame; bloody fingernails exchanged for a dirty needle filled with cut-down horse. Gnashing their teeth, the young ones. The old move their tongues over their slippy blackened gums, on walkabout; wild eyes hungry for a cheap cigar, half blind; thoughts pegged at three am in the middle of the day.

It's rush hour traffic. The city moves like blood, antibodies flock around their dealers as the windows shake.

Newsflash! Injections of speed at city hall. Somewhere downtown, a roll up garage door opens and the department of transportation blunders out like backstage extras at a Troma film, circling aimlessly, covered in glitter for unnamable reasons -- they gesticulate to one another slowly, the weakness of muscle slack pretends to be the mudra for a revolution. When it hits, their obese sandbag flab will suck up bullets like a pillow fight. A headshot from a Cabana Boy Che Guevara does no good, the old politicos have adapted to snipers in this bleak future of designer genetic alteration; they now have their double brain lodged in a mutated tailbone that has the slop consistency of crawfish innards and the reaction time of a Stegasaurus. John Kennedy bleeds all over the guests and a waiter stuffs a terrycloth version of the regulations in the hole to act as temporary forebrain while the mouth works and the hand makes spastic gestures with it's martini glass.

"Tourism must not suffer during this protracted conflict."

A roar goes up from the crowd outside and these civil serpents open their garden windows upon a scene filled with casual knife fighting transsexuals, dealing ritualistic death with vicious swoops of air guitar. Their dignity hand: a stylized withered faux thalidomide arm, snakes out to pay tithes to stunted radioactive midgets that erotically pluck at each other's keltoids; the impromptu circus bathed in the orange glow of cut down tire swings. The acrid smoke wards off the superstitious dread of the hoi palloi as privilege tosses shit flecked dollar bills into the game with calloused hooks; reaping tax deductions.

"You cannot beat the internet for perversion." John Kennedy says, his bloody dishtowel pulsating like a zit you can't help but look at. "You stare at 1955, where some teenage johnny's jerking off on the end of a noose and go 'ho-hum', meanwhile in present day Baboonsasshole, there's some Russian pedophile staving off a prolapsed rectum with greased up German foreheads, collecting kudos by making a glass bottom boat of himself and giving the inspector more than a first hand glimpse at the greasy piles of spinach from the inside. Yeech! No one in this damn town tells a good proctologist joke anyway." He says, spilling his Martini.

Ol' Burroughs spins in his grave and attempts to get a better look.

An official inspector says, "This asshole's clean as a whistle" but no one hears the results, you can only gauge the disappointment by a shrug of the shoulders-- a puppet show made up of anti-virtual goggles. Apparently, someone went in there looking for some old reruns of fraggle rock and never returned. "It was a quest!" says an anonymous voice on the Veranda "Who says there isn't socialized medicine here in Baboonsasshole?" says another. With blind corpsish waves, the inspector improvises a mudra to alert the media "Nothing but greek salad as far as the eye can see."

Upstairs, the taxpayer has had enough of the show and has resorted to gulping down spoonfuls of flaxseed and attempting to wriggle loose from the mayor's video game. All of them demand a measure of cleanliness above all else, as a glistening spectre to dredge more spare change from their moth-eaten coat liners. Despite it all, the inspector continues to rasp away at the Russian's loose orifice like it's art history month at the Guggenheim.

A passing alcoholic, saner than the rabble, flies back against the wall like he's been hit with a concussive blast. Exclaiming, "there are brains in there, where's your light source?", he stares at the shoulders leaking out of the Russian's ass and smelling the rank sewage of downtown as a background, he vomits up his cheap steak dinner; swearing off liquor to complete his nightly ritual. He wanders down the street, plucks the megaphone out of the street preacher's hand and staring wildly, pregnant with cognition and awareness, he drenches the circuits of the megaphone with yellow bile. His wet arm conducts an electrical charge and he stands there locked in place, bathed in an aura of tertiary syphilis. Looking alive, he gawks at the spectacle while his heart smokes, trapped in the cage of a day-beggars chest.

He'll wake up tomorrow in the afterlife, lips tasting the dirty concrete and the back of his neck singed by cigarette butts . . . if he's lucky. Charred by travelling sadists if not, a hot fireplace poker sticking out prison style from his virginal confines -- a yellowish mascara caked transvestite covered in synthetic hair extensions stops, clicks her heels to attention and salutes the flag of Baboonsasshole before stumbling her powdered donut to her morning shift at the gloryhole.

From the morning's dark corner, high above; thick lipped groupers line the office windows of the city's derilict ship, and sharpen their teeth.

The long version of a four letter word . . .

There is a lethargy that sets in when someone knows they are about to push against something immovable. To just stand in view of the stone is depressing, let alone to lay my hands upon it and push only proves the expectation of a wasted effort. Because I know the effort will be wasted, I have already conceded that the letter you are reading is an exercise in futility. I know this because the wall has opened it's mouth and told me that 'it is a brick wall' and that any content, any meaning and effectiveness of conveying my situation is about to be negated by an automatic system, the system which my Bank of America credit card depends on.

The problem I have with Bank of America is this. I brought in a monthly payment of a hundred dollars for my November statement. I paid this to the teller at my local branch, received a receipt and left, just as I have for the last eleven months of regular payments prior to this one. A few weeks later, I received a bank statement showing my payment on November 29th and then a late charge applied to my balance on December 6th of $39. Additionally, the promotional interest rate on my credit card was raised to a default rate of 21.49% from 7.99%. In addition, the original interest rate of 14.99% has been raised to the default rate.

Reduced to simplicity: I have been charged a late fee and additional penalties for paying on time.

As soon as I recognized the mistake on my statement, I called the customer service line. Bank of America looked at the information on my statement and said the payment I had made was a 'credit' to my account, not a payment. I asked them to explain the difference. They did not explain, they only repeated the statement again. I told them I made the same payment the same way every month for the last eleven months. I walk into the bank and hand the teller my card and my cash, getting a receipt saying the date of payment. Telling me this month's payment is different doesn't explain how or why it is different.

There was no explanation for the shift in definition, nor reason why it happened. Calling the customer service line became a wasted effort.

I began going into the bank office to ask questions. It took two visits to the bank and numerous calls to the customer service hotline before I knew I was at the end of the line. The realization came while asking when was the right time to make a payment on my credit card. At first, the employee didn't even want to answer, and didn't even want to acknowledge the seriousness of needing to know. Finally, after some eye rolling, she definitively answered that 'paying the bill on the due date' was required in order to be absolutely sure I wasn't going to receive a late charge, except on weekends, when I would need to pay a day in advance. So, in conversation, I naturally asked if paying two days in advance is all right? Yes. I got a definite yes on that one.

Then I asked if I'd be safe paying seven days in advance of the due date.

"Mr. Coppolino, I'm not going to go over that with you again."

Yes, I realize the style of argument is pedantic. It is also an amazing effort to get to plain speaking around a simple idea that everyone takes for granted, the due date on paying off the contract. In relation to the error, it's monumental in determining if I've done something wrong and whether the bank justifies itself in raising my interest rate. Watching a bank employee refuse to pick up the phone and correct the mistake in the interest rate on my credit card, or even attempt to look at my account, leads me to conclusions that the question was not important.

It may be stalling. It may be because the employee couldn't begin to figure out how to do such a thing, or even if, a mistake has been made, and was essentially afraid for her job because I was bringing the problem to her and asking her to define it as a bank error. If so, she should have refered me to someone who could help with the problem. But because the employee 'knows' that the system is automatic and cannot be adjusted, there was no point in doing this.

This makes the need for further explanation or argument worthless because nothing is at stake. No one is listening because a machine cannot listen to an argument. Therefore, the problem becomes immaterial because the bank says it is.

Dismissing the real problem, the error and the inability of the bank to correct it, by belittling the person who asks for a solution is not an answer. In the world of real credit, the way people relate to one another is what business is all about. To make a system that cannot correct itself, as the employees of Bank of America have claimed, would be the height of irresponsibility. The only way I feel that I could raise that bar would be by accepting it, or as several employees have advised, transfering the balance to another credit card (at substantial penalty), thereby transfering their mistake and their responsibility for making it elsewhere.

Since Bank of America must avoid the issue and do so in such an obvious manner; they must believe that an error never recognised means they never will be culpable. Yet on the issue of contracts, having a variable due date is like watching someone say red is blue, especially after the precedent of having made 11 monthly payments in exactly the same way.

The answer can only be . . . 'we have hit a brick wall'. The logic of this argument is saying, plainly, that a mistake isn't a mistake because I am unimportant. My stature honestly is immaterial; I know this. But the problem with relying on an automatic system that cannot repair itself is of major importance. The real financial damage caused by the error, beyond the violated feeling of the bank reaching into my pocket and taking dollars they aren't entitled to, is minor. The record of a late charge attached to my TRW and the collection notices being sent to me is not: that effects me beyond the scope of Bank of America and affects how I do business with everyone else. That is 'real' financial damage.

Watching a bank employee tell me this credit card error isn't going to affect my credit rating; while not having picked up the phone once or even having taken a look at my account, isn't doing much for my confidence.

Even as I was attempting to make this case, this same employee actually asked me 'why I didn't 'do internet banking like everyone else?' That actually made me pause to consider what 'not' to say. I could have said that my being there to discuss the problem was paying her salary, just as my insistence on making payments at the bank was my way of making sure the tellers weren't downsized quicker than expected. The only real thought I had was to keep from saying this because I was embarrassed, both for myself and for the employee. For myself because I was naive enough to believe I made a difference, however small. As for the bank employee that is essentially arguing for the obsolescence of her job, how could anything I say be anything other than insult? The conversation was officially over at that point; and anything further would be engaging in another useless effort.

As a customer and a businessman, this is something I dread. the need for having to overexplain myself. And I'm pretty sure the bank employees I'm talking with know I don't have the time to make a Quixotic search through Bank of America's office staff to find someone with the appropriate level of knowledge and responsibility, especially if I did find someone who did understand what went wrong here. For that, I'll leave it up to the branch manager I am handing this letter to. I really don't care enough to follow up. The amount of money at stake here is not that important since the two of us are only really arguing about the interest rate on a $2000 balance.

What this argument does provide is a warning for someone who invests more than they can't immediately pay off: like a mortgage or car loan, when Bank of America decides to make automatic changes. That person, whoever they might be, should be asking how a customer can feel safe when a system making automatic decisions makes a mistake no one is able to repair? And in the wider sphere, how does this arbitrary mistake affect their ability to finance any large purchase in good faith?

The answer obviously is that it can't. Automation is an excuse to avoid effort, and in the context of the conversation, it must be a machine 'invented' to avoid responsibility. This is not something I value. This is not something anyone I know values since everyone I know values effort and productivity.

This is what the people I work for value and how they justify what I get paid. More importantly, it is how I justify on a personal and ethical level what I get paid. If the tables were turned, I would in turn value my employees based on their effort and productivity, enough to pay them well because I as employer would choose my clients based on that set of values, 'which includes credit rating'. That is how an economy should run. That is how the real value of credit and credibility is defined and most everyone knows this.

Real credit, real credibility, is not defined by the ability to make excuses.

Bank of America's inability to address the problem directly and repair it directly is a more telling error than the initial one. It reveals an entire institution that has chosen to render itself incapable simply because the process is 'automatic'. Every time anyone at the bank tells me something is automatic, I know an excuse is being made. Any time I accept that as an answer, my credibility is diminished. It says that my argument, though valid; cannot mean anything because the process it's been subjected to is 'automatic'. It shows me that the only thing reliable about Bank of America is their ability to reduce a customer's argument by making an 'accurate' assessment of their real value, which is negligable in the face of automation. Any arbitrary changes in the contract are allowed as a result because an automatic system cannot be fixed without making an effort which any single customer simply is not worthy of. Because of this automation, the interest rate can never be reduced arbitrarily, it can only be raised arbitrarily.

Now in case anyone is wondering, mistakes only be considered arbitrary if the result is arbitrary. The ability to choose the mistake that is and isn't repaired is not arbitrary, it is a planned part of the system. Since the interest rate is automatically set to never go down and as the bank employee said, 'cannot be adjusted', the system is automatically set for a degree of villany. That setting is an allowable 'profit' Bank of America earns by breaking their word. The real automatic system in this case is Bank of America's abiding belief that they cannot get called on it.

That might actually be true on the bank's side of the wall, so long as the wall exists. But in the language of real credit and real credibility it is a monstrous error.

Credit and the real worth of money, labors under the principle of good faith. When an 'arbitrary' decision the machine is making, based on a single mistake, is set to ruin financial lives at a single automatic stroke, with no possibility of ever restoring the credibility that is lost other than a doubling of effort that was already sufficient, how should that effect the worth of what a bank employee says? That is the automatic process of devaluing effort.

Now, because the economy is interconnected, what happens on one side of the wall necessitates a change in what happens on the other side. Devaluing of the people who bank with Bank of America automatically devalues their promises and when these employees are forced to say 'nothing more can be done', it only indicates a complete disdain for the process of making a meaningful effort. Because of Bank of America's mistake, I have lost points on my credit rating. That means the ability to get low interest loans on necessary tools for my business is diminished, which effects the amount of money I can command for a job, effects the speed with which I can complete a task and, in general, keeps me from being able to bid larger jobs in good faith . . . remaining fair to my customers. That means a lack of income -- and a lack of income 'is' a loss of income.

That should mean 'the bank' losing interest on the investment. That should mean the bank loses customers and solvency. The loan that would have provided me with more work and you with more earnings on your investment (the interest). Not that that relationship means anything other than what banking is founded on. Definably, this isn't money. It is our good word that the bank stands for. It is a stable relationship that the bank stands for, the relationship between the lender and client that is signified by a contract which is the ultimate goal. The process of maintaining the value of this contract defines the value of this transaction. And the value of this transaction, and of all transactions, be they cash or credit, is faith -- The product of which has a known worth signified by the dollar. Without that faith, the money itself is just a piece of paper with a poor reputation. The same goes for a credit card, which is nothing more than a substitute dollar created by a bank.

By this standard, arbitrarily changes in the rules of the contract mean that Bank of America loses credibility as a result, but because the basis of the system rests on the dollar, the real value of the dollar goes down as a result.

This is real economic damage we're talking about, all resulting from the acceptance of a simple error and their unchecked ability to excuse or redefine the error. Bank of America can even say that the direction of the error is so entrenched and prevalent throughout the entire credit system that it must be exploited in order for Bank of America to remain competitive. This myth, of course, would be self-perpetuating and another perfect excuse to justify Bank of America's unspoken desire to make money without earning it. The basis of this is the ultimate evil of banking and the ruin of economies; that being the practice of printing money that doesn't have any real worth.

It is economic irresponsibility. But for the sake of a meaningless argument, we'll say that it is arbitrary.

Against such a mechanism, how can my argument be valid? The bank knows I cannot afford the luxury of pacing out the labryinth of bank employees needed to correct a error. As a result, Bank of America's credit rating goes down. It goes down every time I have to walk in or call the customer hotline to discuss the matter, only to have the prearranged outcome be a meaningless effort. And from what I see, my having run through the circle four times means my 'credit' has been damaged not by the error but by my waste of effort in trying to repair it.

That makes me pull my money out of the Bank.

The lingering damage remains. My credibility, the reliability and responsibility with which I live my life, will not be annotated on my credit report. My financial record will not be adjusted to the level in which we started because Bank of America made a mistake. The system is 'incapable' of doing so. Credibility in this case can only be restored by an overall awareness of bank policy; a general alert of a core problem with Bank of America which it is unwilling to recognise.

This is not the overreliance on automation. It is the overreliance on assumption, the basic flaw that allows automation, and ultimately, insolvency.

If this error is known about and nothing is done about it, then the only possible conclusion is that Bank of America's credit system has become too centralized and has lost the ability to repair itself at the local level, the business level and the level of the customer. And for all this, it is receiving a monetary award as a reinforcement.

Again, let me repeat myself. Money is a piece of paper.

Making money off of error destroys the value of money. Making money off a lack of effort destroys the value of money by destroying the signifigance of the work it stands for. And by saying this error is not a mistake, you have destroyed the value of the interest you have received from the error in my account and ruined your credibility by breaking your word. That is the sum of your worth as a person, an employee, and an institution; and that has nothing to do with money. That has everything to do with pleading irrelevance as a solution to your problems . . . and being accustomed to doing so.

I don't value that.

A person made the error in processing my credit card payment. A person filed my payment as a credit. A person will restore my interest rate to what it says in the original contract and a person will restore my credit rating to the level it was prior to this incident. That, from my side of the wall, is the only thing Bank of America can do to rectify the situation, and these are the steps I am asking you to take.

1. I am asking that you return to me the amount of interest you have collected off my account since the mistake was made.

2. I am asking that you reduce the interest rate on my existing credit card to a competitive rate of 11.99%, the same rate that I can get on a Washington Mutual credit card.

3. If this cannot be done by the person who receives this letter, I am asking that it get passed up the chain of command until it finds someone who can repair the damage; or at the very least, understands the signifigance of it.

Not that this will restore my faith in Bank of America. I am in reality, not that complete an idiot. I will always on some level resent the amount of effort you have put me through in having to explain the mechanations of responsible banking. Believe me, the aversion at having to do so is not only automatic, in addition it is signifigant because it keeps me from doing other tasks that actually have 'real' meaning.

The only signifigant real action I have taken is paying off the balance on my Bank of America credit card. I have used the money I usually hold on reserve to do this, not for any actual emergency, but to simply correct what I feel is an injustice, and one my bank shouldn't reap the benefits of. That is the 'real' consequence of the error, a run at the bank to remove what is ultimately an insignificant amount of money from it. That, despite a personal measure of financial suffering and lost economic potential, is an act of social responsibility which has no meaning since the content cannot be accurately symbolized by dollars anymore. It is, in a sense, summed up by our automatic disregard of one another.

That removes the meaning of this letter. The letter becomes just another piece of paper, the value of which solely rests on those that read it and understand it. Based on my experence I cannot help but doubt that anyone at Bank of America will ever read this, let alone act to address my grievance. It is only an exercise and an essential glimpse of my definition of credibility and my way of recovering an integral self-worth and dignity that I value and do not give up automatically. And if writing this reminds me of the reasons why I won't be doing business with Bank of America now or anytime in the near future, I can say there is some tangible worth, even if it is only the price of wisdom.


thanks for your time,
Mike Coppolino
dissatisfied customer

Happy New Year

*Ack*

A house by storm drains

Started writing yesterday and the post got too long to finish in one sitting. It was a story about a flooded house and a dead man hanging from the rafters in his garage.

Now even though the dead man is no longer there, or ever was there, the house still stood with it's backyard to the flood channel and the mud swam up one day until it filled the bowl the house sat in, curling around the garage door so that excavation was tough, the effort of ridding the neighborhood of that smell costly, with no one to send a bill to.

It was all about the detail that comes with decay: The collection of thorns and sticks leaning underneath the window, the browning curtains with dead blooms of mold, the decapitated sprinkler heads on a dirt lawn. A new house. A tract home made haunted when the water rose too high.

And the thing in the house and what it does, it's really unexplainable. All it is is a purple light that creeps along the walls and ceilings and I'm trying to convey that the thing is malevolent but there's no real way to explain it. It hangs out over people and they are stuck frozen as if caught in an electrical current. But the person who is there remains alive. When it moves away, they seem unchanged -- and I'd really like to believe that -- except that the person caught in that light seems to disassociate from everything.

She sits alone at lunch and no one wants to sit with her anymore, even though she was once popular. And he wants to sit with her but he knows the change is abstract and confusing. The reason is gone, the attraction a repulsion, a bubble of force inside her that is curling up and turning brown like the house.

The change cannot be seen but it's visible. I know it's there. To deny it is to deny that the event ever happened and so the main character begins to lose their sanity. He begins to think the person who got caught never actually existed; that wandering into the house was all just a bad dream.

While he was watching, he didn't know what happened. He didn't do anything. He was paralyzed and he thinks maybe he couldn't see one of those things hanging over him. Maybe he was infected without knowing since he has no idea how they got out of the house. He doesn't know where his bicycle is. He begins to think it's still on the lawn and thinking that, it's a logical step to thinking he's still in the house.

Meanwhile, the house still sits there, drying; the color of the drapes creeping like a dead rose. And he rides his bike past it knowing he has to go in there again, just to prove that what he saw was a dream.

And he's still sitting in that house, staring out the window as the cobwebs grow around the edges.