NOTIONAL HEADLINE #250:

GET IN, LOSER, WE’RE GOING HEADLINING: WELL, IT'S THE END OF DEMOCRACY AS WE KNOW IT AS JIM CROW REVIVAL FEVER SWEEPS THROUGH U.S. SUPREME COURT AND REPUBLICAN PARTY . . . THE SMASH BOX OFFICE SUCCESS OF THE MICHAEL JACKSON BIOPIC THIS WEEKEND HAS UNLEASHED A STORM OF RUMORS OF BIG STUDIO PITCHES TO RESURRECT THE BELOVED POP STAR ON-SCREEN. ONE SUCH EFFORT ALLEGEDLY INVOLVES A PROPOSED ALTERNATE HISTORY CROSSOVER WITH THE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE IN WHICH THE KING OF POP WOULD BE CALLED UPON TO LEAD THE PRE-TEEN SUPERHERO TEAM THE POWER PACK. ANALYSTS SAY THE LICENSING FEES ALONE WOULD DWARF THE GDP OF THE USA AND EU COMBINED . . . TRUMP ANNOUNCED AN ESCALATION OF IRAN WAR HE NEVER DECLARED SHORTLY AFTER DECLARING THE UNDECLARED IRAN WAR ‘TERMINATED’ EVEN AS HE ALSO COMPULSIVELY SPEWED A BUNCH OF OTHER INCOHERENT LIES, NONSENSE, AND ASSORTED MUSINGS DURING A TRULY GRIM RALLY AT A SEPULCHRAL FLORIDIAN RETIREMENT COMMUNITY POPULATED BY HEAVILY ARMED SWAMP MUMMIES, A CORE G.O.P. CONSTITUENCY HEADING INTO THE MIDTERMS . . . A NEW STUDY SHOWS PEOPLE WHO MAKE AN EFFORT TO SPEND LESS TIME ON THEIR MOBILE DEVICES DOOMSCROLLING END UP DEVELOPING AN OVERWHELMING TENDENCY TO HOLD THEIR HAND UP TO THE SIDE OF THEIR HEAD-WITH PINKY IN FRONT OF LIPS, THUMB AGAINST EAR-TO RECEIVE CLUES ABOUT WHERE TO LOCATE COBRA COMMANDER, CARMEN SANDIEGO, SKELETOR, AND/OR DR. CLAW . . .

THE NEW SUPERSTITIONS #3:

Dip your earbuds in strong coffee so you can hear faster.

EDITORIAL NOTE: Don’t actually do this.

F.A.Q. #28:

Q: How do you think the manga One Piece will end?

A: I think Monkey D. Luffy will keep on searching for the One Piece until Disney has some sort of financial meltdown that forces them to sell the Marvel Comics IP to Eiichiro Oda, who will then proceed to write and draw a decades long story arc in which Straw Hat Luffy and friends recruit every Marvel character of all time into their pirate crew. Once that story arc wraps, DC Comics’ corporate overlords will have some kind of financial meltdown that will require them to sell the DC Comics IP to Oda who will then spend decades incorporating all of those characters into the crew. At that exact moment-I imagine Luffy has just finished welcoming Ambush Bug aboard-the manga will go on a hiatus so abrupt and indefinite that it induces a mass pop cultural whiplash that not only causes everyone to instantly forget One Piece, Marvel, and DC-but then that whiplash will rubber band back with such vehemence-fuelled by unconsciously repressed fan rage-that it will actually erase One Piece, Marvel, and DC from the fabric of reality itself. At that exact moment, television soap operas will surge back into pop cultural relevance, and everyone’s dead parents and grandparents will rise from their graves as unliving hipsters to chide us by saying, “We were into soap operas way before they were popular.” All this will happen . . . and we won’t even remember how we got there . . .

LOADING SCREEN WISDOM #49:

IF YOU FIGHT THE BOSS INSIDE AN ELEVATOR YOU EARN EXTRA EXPERIENCE POINTS BECAUSE ELEVATOR BRAWLS ARE BADASS, DUDE. AND IF YOU END UP FIGHTING ON ONE OF THOSE HUGE AND OMINOUS UNDERGROUND CARGO ELEVATORS THAT LOOK JUST LIKE THE ONE FROM AKIRA YOUR EXP BONUS WILL GET EVEN MORE BONUS, BIG DAWG!

BURNING QUESTIONS IN A UNIVERSE OF MYSTERY #98:

No, seriously-do you have my Genocyber DVD?

Also . . . shall the moth impregnate the viceroy?

YOUR DRAWING PROMPT #101:

The thing that you fear the most.

THINGS NEVER SAID #57:

“I really miss Terminally Online Thigh Gap Discourse-remember that . . .?”

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #249:

THE HEADLINES ARE HERE! REJOICE! . . . A CONFIDENTIAL SOURCE HAS LEAKED A PLAN BY THE IRANIAN ISLAMIC THEOCRACY TO FORM A SECRET COVEN OF PAGAN WITCHES TO SPOOK THE NOTORIOUSLY WITCHCRAFT FEARING CHRISTIAN NATIONALIST ACTING SECRETARY OF THE NAVY HUNG CAO INTO TOTAL MATERIALIST REAL WORLD SURRENDER. ANALYSTS SAY SCHOLARS OF RELIGION WILL BE UNPACKING THIS ONE FOR DECADES TO COME . . . IN A TELL-ALL INTERVIEW, PRESIDENT TRUMP DESCRIBES BEING HAUNTED BY THE GHOSTS OF CASINOS PAST . . . ONLINE DISINFORMATION RESEARCHERS HAVE NOTED A PRECIPITOUS UPTICK IN CLAIMS THAT NELSON MANDELA, IN ADDITION TO HIS HEROIC WORK TO END APARTHEID IN SOUTH AFRICA AND PROMOTE ANTIRACIST SOCIAL JUSTICE GLOBALLY, IS ONE OF THE GREAT SPECIAL EFFECTS ARTISTS OF THE 1980s ALONGSIDE SUCH CINEMATIC LUMINARIES AS STAN WINSTON, ROB BOTTIN, AND DOUGLAS TRUMBALL. HOWEVER, MANDELA NEVER WORKED IN THE SPECIAL EFFECTS INDUSTRY IN ANY CAPACITY BEFORE, DURING, OR AFTER THE 1980s, AND IN FACT MANDELA WAS IMPRISONED DURING THAT TIME. THE MISUNDERSTANDING IS BEING ATTRIBUTED TO A BIZARRELY INACCURATE INTERPRETATION OF THE MANDELA EFFECT . . .

MONDAY'S THRESHOLD #8:

I am waiting . . .

In Atlantis . . .

The time has come. You saw it in a dream. You must squander the fortunes of a venerable major studio to fund your boondoggling vision of a future-antiquity super-city where the forces of Utopia and Dystopia battle mightily for the soul of a lost age. 

Much like the fabled sunken megapolis, your movie must be fabulous and lavish and doomed to burn brightly for a shining instant only to sink forevermore into depths of infamous obscurity.

But down in the depths . . . something called to you . . . 

Deep inside your mind . . . you heard the voice of the Tyrant . . . and a terrible fate bears down on you . . . for you realize . . .

You are the last descendent of the sadistic aristocrats of Atlantis!

Now, you must set sail to hunt down the Atlantean puppeteers who have established secret bases all over the world!

Use the bloated Hollywood budget at your disposal to defeat the Tyrant of Atlantis and his soldiers.

Your movie is destined to bomb, but at least you have a chance to save the world . . .

1.Millennium/Claudio Simonetti

2. The Long Goodbye/John Williams & Jack Sheldon (The Long Goodbye OST)

3. A Mind is Born (256 Bytes)/Linus Akesson

4. Theme from Zardoz/Castle If (Zardoz Unofficial OST)

5. What Day Is It?/Brak (Andy Merrill) featuring Zorak (C. Martin Croker) with scatting by Space Ghost (George Lowe) (Space Ghost Coast-to-Coast OST)

6. Good Day Today/David Lynch

7. Night Drive/Giorgio Moroder (American Gigolo OST)

8. Dungeon Theme/Yoshio Hirai & Takashi Kumegawa (Zoda’s Revenge: Star Tropics II NES OST)

9. GTR Attack!/Hiroshi Kobayashi (Contra Hard Corps Sega Genesis OST)

10. Battlefield/Keiji Yamagishi & Ryuichi Nitta (Ninja Gaiden NES OST)

11. Irena’s Theme/Giorgio Moroder (Cat People OST)

12. Da Hurricane 1/Da Twinky Man

13. Organization Man (Unused song from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying)/Frank Loesser

14. Moonshine Serenade/Toru Fuyuki (Ultraseven OST)

15. Sombre/Alan Vega (Sombre OST)

16. Demon Seed/Hidenori Maezawa, Jun Funahashi, Yukie Morimoto, & Yoshinori Sasaki (Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse NES OST)

17. Here’s the Dream/Franco Micalizzi (Stridulum OST)

18. Internet Dream/Tay Zonday (Audio from music video.)

19. Hard Habit to Break/Jordana (Audio from music video.)

20. Torgo’s Theme/Russ Huddleston & Robert Smith, Jr. (Manos the Hands of Fate OST)

21. Serenade of Lora/Seiji Yokoyama (Future War 198X OST)

22. Four on the Floor/Derek Austin

23. Boogie Wonderland/Earth, Wind, and Fire

24. Stayin’ Alive/Siobhan Lynch cover of the Bee Gees (Supercop OST)

25. That’s obese!/Arpy G.

26. A Spirit of Bushi/Hiroshi Kobayashi (Contra Hard Corps Sega Genesis OST)

27. Battlefield/Ryuichi Nitta (Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos NES OST)

28. The Legend of Babel/Giorgio Moroder (Metropolis’84 OST)

29. Char is Coming (Human-Powered Live Cover)/Yasushi Mori and the Best (Audio from Youtube video uploaded by Yasushi Mori and the Best.)

30. Raid Blue/Toshiya Yamanaka (Sin and Punishment N64 OST)

31. Something Wonderful/Hiroshi Kobayashi (Contra Hard Corps Sega Genesis OST)

32. I Can Hear the Sirens Singing Again/Lucy Monostone (MPD Psycho OST)

33. The Foggy Cave in the Darkness/Hiroshi Kobayashi (Contra Hard Corps Sega Genesis OST)

34. La Serenissima/Rondo Veneziano (Audio from animated music video.)

35.The Dark Emperor/Ryuichi Nitta (Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos NES OST)

36. Area 1/Naoki Kodaka (Blaster Master NES OST)

37. Toys Inc./The Cybertronic Spree

38. Nitrogen/Alberto Baldan Bembo

39. Sadness Theme/Franco Micalizzi (Stridulum OST)

40. Machines/Giorgio Moroder (Metropolis’84 OST)

41. Satori Part 1/Flower Travellin’ Band

42. Crazy Clown Time/David Lynch

43. WAR! It’s Good for Me!/Thundercleese (Carey Means) featuring Brak (Andy Merrill) (The Brak Show OST)

44. Bargain with the Devil/Franco Micalizzi & Warren Wilson (Beyond the Door OST)

45. I Like to Do It/K.C. and the Sunshine Band

46. Kiss the Future/The Human League

47. NEW AGE/Sleepazoid

48. Gangland/Iron Maiden

49. Hits Like a Drug/Charity Cult

50. Ballade of Lament/Yuji Ohno (Proof of the Man OST)

51. Area A/Yusuke Takahama & Nobuyuki Shioda (G.I. Joe: The Atlantis Factor NES OST)

52. Yoru no Nikusyokujyu/Hiroshi Kobayashi (Contra Hard Corps Sega Genesis OST)

53. Neckbrace/RATATAT

54. Cage of Freedom/Jon Anderson (Metropolis’84 OST)

55. Strange New World/Lucy Monostone (MPD Psycho OST)

56. Zephyr/Hiroshi Kobayashi (Contra Hard Corps Sega Genesis OST)

57. Battlefield/Hiroshi Miyazaki, Kaori Nakabai, and Rika Shigeno (Ninja Gaiden III:The Ancient Ship of Doom OST)

58. Crash the Car/Knower

59. Op. 92, Switched On/Castle If (Zardoz Unofficial OST)

60. The Long Goodbye/John Williams & Clydie King (The Long Goodbye OST)

61. Leopard Tree Dream/Giorgio Moroder (Cat People OST)

62. A Better Tomorrow Main Theme Mark’s Theme/OXEN93.5 live studio cover of Joseph Koo’s score for A Better Tomorrow. (Audio from Youtube video uploaded by Carl Park Records.)

63. Last Night in Chickentown/The Paranoid Style

64. Symphony No. 7 (Allegretto), Beethoven Mega Man Style 8-Bit Remix/ChipsNCellos (Audio from Youtube video uploaded by ChipsNCellos.)

65. The Final Battle/Hiroshi Miyazaki, Kaori Nakabai, and Rika Shigeno (Ninja Gaiden III:The Ancient Ship of Doom OST)

66. Victory/Masatomo Miyamoto (Godzilla Monster of Monsters NES OST)

67. Allegretto Abridged/Castle If (Zardoz Unofficial OST)

68. Spider on the Highway/Kevin Murphy (Rifftrax OST)

69. The End of Millennium/Claudio Simonetti

. . . sure enough, your movie goes nuclear with the critics and at the box office.

But . . . you saved the world . . . right?

You read the newspaper.

You read about out-of-control climate change; war-mongering presidents, dictators, and theocrats; avaricious capitalists and tenacious communists; bewildering multigenerational civil strife; water wars; and high tech oligarchs amassing trillions of dollars selling everyone’s data to secret police agencies of all nations.

You start to wonder what you really won.

You think to yourself, “Maybe the Tyrant of Atlantis is always hiding inside the souls of men . . .”

In Atlantis . . .

I am waiting . . . 

SIDE OVER.

TO BE CONTINUED . . .

NEW MERCH #8:

CONGRATS SMACKER

So this thing is a Congrats Smacker.

Swings the Smacker about lazily.

Looks like an oversized novelty fly swatter that you would buy at the Stuckey’s gift shop.

Passes the Smacker close by the face a few times.

I’m impressed.

Brings it up in a two handed grip.

It’s heavy as hell, yet somehow swings easy. 

Fences with it like a swashbuckler.

And when you do swing it you can feel the damage you’re about to inflict.

Pantomimes bringing it down like an executioner’s ax on the back of someone’s neck.

Very satisfying.

Holds it upright before the torso, one-handed, ceremonial, other hand makes a mock salute.

Maybe too satisfying?

Spins ‘round and ‘round and ‘round with the Smacker out like some scything blade thing.

Like what I mean, I guess, is that it’s really only supposed to be used in certain situations against certain targets.

But it just swings so easy, uhh, it’s really hard, y’know, to abstain from off-label uses?

Yeah . . .

Look at it go!

Bam! The gleaming structures of the financial district go down in fractured ruins of glass, twisted steel, and broken concrete.

Wa-ha-ha-ha-haaaa!

Oh, that action works so easy . . . yeah . . . as you can see I’ve broken all my action figures, and flatscreens, and smashed the books all to shit, knocked down all the walls and the ceiling and ripped up the floor and foundation and wrecked all the sewage pipes which is why there’s all these arcs of liquid shit fountaining all over, and you see how the neighbors are in pieces out there ‘cause they’re trying to come on the property and I had to shut that down-and that brought on all the cops and the SWAT teams and I had to shut that down-and then you’ve got all the National Guardsmen and I had to shut that down-so then they send in the regular Army, and then they send in the telekinetics, and then they sicced the wizards on me-I just shut it all down, and then, and then they brought in the negotiators, and the reverse child psychologists, and the pretty lady with the machine that lets her enter my mind so she can speak directly to my inner child, and then other nations started to take an interest in my action, so they start deploying drones and robot attack dogs and online influencers-gotta shut all that down, just swat it all into submission-but then someone launches a giant cyber attack which takes down the entire power grid, but my Congrats Swatter is totally offline so I’m good.

You may have noticed that there’s a bit of a wind blowing so there’s this, uh, like, uh, a tornado? 

Made of all the book pages?

Yeah, like, uh, Nature’s really gettin’ at my ass for wielding all this power, I guess.

Fair enough.

But, like . . . this Congrats Smacker isn’t just supposed to be a general use weapon, you’re supposed to employ it for a specific purpose.

This is all explained in a lavishly illustrated instruction manual. 

I’ll just read the relevant passage for you.

I quote:

“In the course of your days, you may, in the fullness of time, find that you have achieved all of your dreams. All of the people gather to praise and congratulate you. This should be your finest moment . . . so why do you feel such emptiness? ‘Tis a mystery, isn’t it? Well, no philosopher or theologian or soothsayer can truly answer why you feel such emptiness . . . but Congrats Smacker Manufacturers Consortium United has a tool which embodies a sublime methodology that can clear away the symptoms! The tool is Congrats Smacker. Swing the tool to clear away the chattering masses that, in their foolishness, presume to know the Mind of Victory-your mind-and thereby clear the path before you that you may march forward to ever more total triumphs and ever more severe expositions of supra-genius! Did not the rock fall from space to clear away the decadent dinosaurs of yore? Did not homo sapiens learn cunning rhetorics of coordination to outflank the stolid neanderthals of yesteryear? Have we not-in all our chemical genius-persecuted the noisome stinging bees to the point of final death that we may recreate ourselves out-of-doors in a peace free of pricks? Let Congrats Smacker be your weapon of Ultra Expedited Evolutionary Paradigmatic Change-nay, Transformation! All orders must fall. In the ruins of every fall stands the True Final Champeen, ready to will the New Era into existence. With Congrats Smacker in hand, you can battle your way to the Top Spot, by battering away the trifling fools who would dare to confine you and your glories in a prison of praise-for are they not daring to render you and your works comprehensible and thereby limited when you know yourself to be limitless by such specious pronouncements?! With Congrats Smacker in hand you can bash and bash away every last tiny-brained fan who would presume to parasitize your visionary vitality to the pathetic purpose of pretending to proximity to the Prime Mover-you, Dear Purchaser, you!!! Settle not for the comforts of a supine fan base-just smack it all away, drop the space rock upon the doofus dinosaurs, let your assassin’s hands speak lemniscates round and round and round the grunting neanderthals, write the formulas of chemical violence to bestill the last of those oh-so-bumbling bees, BE THE OLYMPIAN EMBODIMENT OF THE WILL AND WORKS OF AN UNRELENTINGLY OBLITERATIVE NEW ERA!!!!! SMACK, SMACK, AND SMACK AGAIN UNTIL ALL THE IDIOTIC CHATTERINGS OF NONSENSICAL NONENTITIES CEASES FOREVER!!!! SMACK AND SMACK AND SMACK . . . ‘TIL THE SUBLIME MOMENT IN WHICH THE SMACKING BECOMES THE ONLY PRAISE YOU’LL EVER SEEK OR NEED . . .”

Not gonna lie: not sure what the fuck that’s all supposed to mean . . . but it’s kinda inspirational, right? 

And then, uh, after the text you get some diagrams and illustrations.

I mean . . . I think . . . you’re supposed to use Congrats Smacker if you’re already some kinda great person or whatever. 

I don’t know if I measure up to all that, though, so, like I said, I did the whole off label use thing . . . I can live with that.

Looks up.

Huh . . . I wonder if I could smack away that big space rock . . . or am I just another dinosaur guy?

Looks down and around at all the rubble’n’ruins.

Hmm . . . things are quiet now. That might get to me. Might have to try smacking the quiet.

Regards the Congrats Smacker somewhat grumpily, face scrunching up like “trying to be into this,” face scrunching down like “not really into it,” already getting bored with the new toy.

7 out of 10.

A tornado of pages attacks, gets smacked into defeat, the pages flash igniting from some fearsome friction.

Ha! There it goes. Nature’s a loser. Ha, haaa . . .

Swings it about this way and that. It starts to just feel like a novelty oversized fly swatter again. 

Really . . . it’s just like everything else. Buildings. Money. Soldiers. Books. Neighbors. Dogs. Cats. Criminals. Politicians. Viruses. You. Me. Them. People. Ghosts . . . just mass produced junk.

Stares at the smacker real hard. 

You think you’re special?! Is that what you think?! I’ll just buy another Smacker and smack you with it! How do you like that?!? Smack you, Smacker! HAW! HAW! HAW!

Idly smacks self under the chin, goes flying into space, maybe even destroys the big rock . . .

PLACES YOU CAN GO #10:

There’s a war you can slide right into, my friend . . . especially if you’re deeply stupid, totally dishonest, and always on the lookout for opportunities to commit crimes to distract from other crimes.

Of course, once you go there you may not be able to come back . . .

Fortunately, the American public is all too eager to forget all of this if they get told enough times that the economy’s doing just fine even if most normal people are working harder than ever with nothing but ever dwindling wages/savings/squishy subjective feelings of happiness to show for their trouble.

So, really, once you get to where you’re going, there isn’t any reason to go back, is there? Because if you do go back . . . you might start to remember things you’d rather not-yikes!

Scary stuff.

Best stick with the one way ticket.

It can be comforting to know that everyone’s on a big, loud ride over the cliff all together . . . leaving all those pesky damn memories in the dust-whew! What a relief . . .

“Let’s not make any more memories ever again, everybody!” you declare to the nation.

The ensemble cheers with wild abandon.

THE SECRETS OF FINAL TOWN 99

YOUR DRAWING PROMPT #100:

Powering through the ecstatic tedium of a decades long Starbucks Basic economic downturn involving a recurrent dream of being pursued by the long abandoned empty lot that used to be an Elk’s Lodge but has served as an illegal dumping ground for seventeen years and your own complicated feelings of admiration for such devotion to a cause while also wishing it would leave you the hell alone.

MANDATORY RULE #20:

If you’re listening to the Peter Gabriel album So you are required to listen to the album all the way through from beginning to end at least once before you just put “Sledgehammer” on infinite repeat.

This I command!

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #248:

OPINION/COMMENTARY/PROFOUND INSIGHTS FOR THE AGES SPECIAL LIMITED EDITION: WALLET. KEYS. PHONE. THOSE DISCOUNT CARDS ATTACHED TO THE KEYRING. THAT LITTLE SQUIRTLE GUY ALSO ATTACHED TO THE KEYRING . . . WHAT AMERICA LOST IN THE WAR.