THINGS NEVER SAID #65:

“I went to the place where all the chess guys play chess . . . but I didn’t know how to play chess. I never learned. What I told people in those days was I only ever learned checkers. The idea was that I would lull the wannabe Bobby Fischers into a false sense of confidence. And then, at the last moment, I’d hit ‘em with checkers stratagems injected into a chess context . . . but that didn’t ever work, because those chess guys were all over my ass as soon as I ever started moving those chess pieces all wrong, just started shouting at me, ‘Stop! You can’t do that! The hell is wrong with you? Get outta here!’ . . . but, actually, things were even crazier than I just told you . . . because I didn’t even know checkers. I told people I was a checkers guy to trick them off guard . . . but then when I sat down to play I hit them with my Axis and Allies skills-boy, did that piss everyone off! I’m slapping down playing pieces for tanks and bombers and munitions factories-the chess guys are like, ‘The fuck is this? Get your shit off the board!’ I’m even making the battlefield sound effects of guns and cannons and explosions and heavy bomber engines. You’d think that would’ve won people over . . . but it gets worse. After pulling this kinda shit on the chess guys for a few years-oh, I traveled from place to place all over the country to outrun the bans on my ass-I went home one evening only to find that my Axis and Allies board game had left me a Dear John letter. Right there on the shelf where it used to be . . . if there was ever a time I wished I couldn’t read . . . I had become such a relentlessly irritating person that I ended up pushing that Axis and Allies board game set into spontaneously manifesting consciousness, literacy, and the power to levitate itself right out the door. That’s how irritating I was back then. It was something . . . I look back on all this . . . and I’m impressed. Because, in recent years, I haven’t done anything like that. Got married. Had two kids. I got a pretty good job. Money in the bank. Diversified investment portfolio. I have a mistress. I got a woman on the side. I play all kinds of tennis. My joint health is spectacular. My cardio’s next level. I never get dizzy in the sauna. I meet up with my boys two nights a week for Texas Hold ‘Em. I’m loved. I’m respected. I’m viewed as a rock solid adult type of guy. My mother’s so happy I stopped being a massively weird fuck-up. My father shook my hand . . .and I tell you . . . I can barely stand any of it . . . Look . . . back then, with my antics, I got to the point of inducing consciousness within a bunch of inanimate board game components, okay? Who does that?! I did. I was like unto God with my powers and shit once upon a time . . . and then I got scared . . . gave it all up to do what a million other people do . . . honestly . . . I only ever played Axis and Allies like . . . once? It takes so long to set up, and then it takes forever to actually play-and the whole time I’m like, ‘Dude. This is just fighting World War II all over again. We could’ve already fought World War III!’ . . . we’re always re-fighting the last war, I guess . . .”

THE NEW PARADIGMS IN BRAGGING RIGHTS #29:

I’m so nonsensical I make Neil Breen look like Sidney Lumet.

THE NEW OBVIOUS #53:

There’s no bridge to the future.

It’s not even there.

I assume it collapsed from lack of maintenance.

Or maybe it was bombed? Lotta that going around these days.

I think I saw something on the news about some giant monster? Did that wreck the bridge? That’s kinda cool.

I guess it could’ve been abducted by aliens. Which is also pretty cool. It’s always cool to get a ride somewhere out of the blue. Even cooler when it’s from out of the pitiless void of space. 

Or maybe it quit? Fuck yeah if it did. If I was a bridge I’d quit.

In any case . . . the bridge is gone.

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #264:

OPINION/COMMENTARY: THE TIME IS NOW. THE PLACE IS EARTH. AND MITCH MCCONNELL MUST SHARE HIS NO DOUBT HARROWING YET ENLIGHTENING NARRATIVE OF ALIEN ABDUCTION FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL HUMANKIND.

THE NEW DREAM #62:

Catastrophe quit us

We created it, it comes from us

But no

It walked off the job site all the same

We’re left churning and twisting and boiling and ranting and bubbling in place

We try, “How dare you!” and “Ingratitude thou marble-hearted fiend!” and “You’ll come crawling back!” 

But it isn’t interested

Catastrophe doesn’t even give us the final blowout yelling thing

There it is, striding towards the vanishing point

That’s all we get

FANTASY MASHUP FORCE #43:

Somebody assembles the “Griffin Dunne Super Saga Cut.”

You have After Hours. It’s basically the whole damn movie. It’s a good movie. No reason not to include the whole thing. 

You get to the ending of After Hours . . . there’s some weird distortion . . . you get some clips from some old mummy movies, like the mummies rising from their tombs . . . ZAP! We’re at Lip Service. That was that made for cable movie starring Griffin Dunne. The way I see it is that in After Hours you have the wild, adventurous days of the Dunne character . . . and then in Lip Service you have the Dunne character trying to settle into a more professional groove. It works well enough right up to the moment when he gets punched by a clown-

SOCKO!

Our man gets knocked right into Search and Destroy . . . and this movie depicts the sinister and hungry years of our hero, as he finds himself displaced by shifting economic tides into a no man’s land of paperback crime thriller schemes’n’antics. We’ll maybe splice in some Peter Weller sequences from The New Age to provide a juxtaposition with the Dunne character. Weirdly enough . . . Search and Destroy has a happy ending. Kinda . . .

Montage of Mulder and Scully just saying no to the Cigarette Smoking Man & Blade the vampire hunter cleanin’ up the bloodsuckers & true Godzilla fans rallying to reject Hollywood’s Fakezilla & Frank Black vs. Y2K serial killer hysteria & 2000 election controversies starring Brooks Brothers rioters & 9/11 & Dubya’s “Mission Accomplished” 2003 & Billy Joel still just shrugging at the fire & Oh Dae-su enduring captivity in Oldboy-

Boom. We’re in Game 6. Well, just the scenes with a down’n’out Dunne. We’ll edit it so it seems like he’s alone, just talking to himself-fantasizing about being a younger, richer Don DeLillo protagonist-cut to Robert Pattinson riding in the back of the super limo in Cosmopolis-

Suddenly, we’re back to the ending of After Hours . . . Peter Weller reincarnates as Robocop . . . Oh Dae-su comes howlingly awake from his hypnosis . . .

After Hours is strong stuff. You can’t walk too far from it, y’know?

SIMPLE PLEASURES #32:

Submitting to the official continuity . . . but then you burrow down deep into its most obscure quarter, extend your antennae, and proceed to amass tremendous power that subtly and irrevocably steers the mainline-via occulted, radiative influence-towards giddy catastrophe.

You never take credit.

You never take responsibility.

You’re a total unknown.

You did it just for the sake of doing it.

You did it so you’d have some worthwhile entertainment for a change.

Beats hell outta Must See TV!

FUN YOU CAN HAVE #32:

Use cakes and pies as vehicles for your action figures.

Take a bunch of spring loaded rocket launchers, embed them in a carrot cake, and now you’ve got yourself a deliciously lethal new war machine.

Worried about that growing pile of casualties and dead bodies? Send in a red velvet cake to gather them up as a flavorful style of ambulance.

Slices of key lime can be launched as rockets.

Ornate wedding cakes can be deployed as heavy bombers.

You can have brave fighter aces chase each other through the skies inside flying tiramisu.

Do your plastic fighting men need to get to the battlefield in a hurry? Just have them merge with a pumpkin pie, and then toss it like a frisbee towards the front line. Think of it as a new, experimental vehicle straight out of the R&D division. If it crashes or lands weird then that just gives you an opportunity to roleplay a crash or mechanical failure scenario. Time to send in a bunch of figures merged with a firetruck themed birthday cake to deal with the emergency. And there’s nothing stopping you from putting that cake on top of a skateboard to put it in motion.

There’s no limit to what you can achieve once you start incorporating cakes and pies into your action figure adventures!

PLACES YOU CAN GO #16:

This is that place you’re just passing through . . . but you kinda wish you could stop, get out’n’about, really explore it, soak yourself in it, buy a souvenir, dig through the dollar bins of the local comic book stores, try the coffee, sample the cuisine, get lost in the nightlife, sample the local varieties of home cooked designer drugs, break some hearts, get your heart broken, wake up with a stranger, wake up with a bunch of strangers, hunt down an obscure secret boss fight, expand your customer base, get lost in a primeval dark forest where everyone clandestinely gathers to ritualistically invoke faceless gods of avarice to deputize the true secret masters of this region, become the mysterious figure in the nightclub who offers people various Faustian bargains, establish an underground monster factory on behalf of your evil organization, actually visit the museum, actually visit a local art gallery, grow to enormous size and destroy the military while knocking down all the buildings, make some friends, wake up with all the strangers-

But you can’t.

You gotta stay in motion.

You got somewhere to be.

Fortunately, you’ll forget about the alluring places you just breezed through once you get where you’re going.

Unfortunately, you’ll start thinking about ‘em again whenever you next get on the road.

One of these days this will tear you in two.

One of you will stay on target for your pre-determined destination.

The other one of you will get lost in all the sidejaunts. 

You’ll start having a lot on your mind.

In fact, your brain will likely start to output a third entity that somehow mixes the experiences and perceptions of these two yous-it’s that whole “never ending quest for novelty” thing. Brains do this to you. Be prepared.

But, also . . . start thinking about how much damage you can do once there’s three of you out’n’about in the world . . .

YOUR DRAWING PROMPT #113:

A breeze consisting of a spirit of innovation that scarcely distracts you from the oppressive broil of the Heat Dome.

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #263:

WHEN I WAS PUTTING ON MY JACKET, OKAY, IT FELT WEIRD. IT FELT IMPOSSIBLE. WHAT DO I MEAN BY THIS? IT’S LIKE . . . I FELT THE DANGLY BITS OF LIKE A FRINGE THING, YOU KNOW? LIKE A FRINGE JACKET? LIKE THE LITTLE FRINGY THINGS-I FELT ‘EM, BY CHRIST, I FELT ‘EM! BUT THAT’S THE THING. I DON’T WEAR A FRINGE JACKET. MY JACKET IS TRIM TO THE LINE, SQUARED OFF, TO THE BASICS, TO THE ESSENCE, DO YOU UNDERSTAND? SO, WHAT IS THIS FRINGE I’M FEELING? IT’S NOT EVEN THERE! YET I’M FEELING IT ON ME-HOW IS THAT, UH, UH, HOW IS THAT-HOW COULD IT BE? THE WAY I FIGURE IT IT’S EITHER ONE OF THOSE ‘GLITCHES IN THE MATRIX’-LIKE THERE’S THIS OTHER REALITY THAT’S TRYING TO INTRUDE ON MY BASELINE, RIGHT? AND THAT’S CAUSING ALL SORTS OF NONSTANDARD EFFECTS . . . OR . . . OR . . . IT COULD BE A PHANTOM FRINGE. LIKE A PHANTOM LIMB. BUT IT’S A PHANTOM FRINGE. NOT A PHANTOM FRIDGE, THAT WOULD BE A WHOLE DIFFERENT THING-IT’S A PHANTOM FRINGE. BUT HERE’S THE THING: I’VE NEVER REALLY BEEN INTO FRINGE JACKETS. THEY’RE JUST NOT MY THING. SO IT’S NOTHING I’VE EVER WORN, NOTHING I’VE EVER PURCHASED, NOTHING I’VE EVER LOST. YET, HERE I AM, EXPERIENCING PHANTOM FRINGE. ‘TIS A MYSTERY . . . BUT I THINK I’VE SOLVED IT. LIKE THIS: SOMEONE ELSE’S PHANTOM FRINGE HAS GOTTEN LOOSE ONLY TO LAND ON ME. SO, BASICALLY I’VE CAUGHT SOMEONE ELSE’S HAUNTING LIKE A GODDAMN COLD VIRUS. IT’S THE ONLY THING THAT MAKES SENSE . . . STOCKS ARE UP . . .

LOADING SCREEN WISDOM #52:

DURING THE INVESTIGATION PHASE, DO YOUR BEST TO NOT GIVE CIGARS TO THE PERAMBULATOR-BOUND OLD MAN BABIES NO MATTER HOW MUCH THEY CRY. USE OF TOBACCO PRODUCTS IS A KNOWN CAUSE OF CANCER. WINNERS STAY TOBACCO FREE FOR THE WIN.

BURNING QUESTIONS IN A UNIVERSE OF MYSTERY #101:

Wait . . . did I never own Genocyber on DVD in reality? 

Was it just in a dream?

SIMPLE PLEASURES #31:

Letting a cruising funk-rock orchestral theme spiked with soaring jazz trumpet solos play as you ravage the enemy country buffet.

FUN YOU CAN HAVE #31:

Have your most favorite action figure mediate a conflict between drive thru fast food items and a box of microwaveable doppelgangers of those drive thru fast food items.