THE SECRETS OF FINAL TOWN 33

 

YOUR DRAWING PROMPT #40:

A defense contractor who sings the praises of Ayn Rand while receiving massive subsidies from the federal government.

SOLAR TAKE #5:

This one’s for all the demons.

If you’re not using the Dart Board Method to decide who to possess next, you’re not really living, are you?

FOR WANT OF A NAIL . . . (#5)

(zipzapzop)

. . . and then everybody blew their lines despite extensive rehearsals, warm-ups, and verbal abuse from the director.

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #131:

LETHAL CLIMATE CHANGE DECLARES VICTORY OVER HUMAN RACE, THANKS ITS CHIEF COLLABORATOR CAPITALISM, AND PROMISES TO EXPAND SUMMER HEAT DOMES TO COVER FALL, WINTER, AND SPRING SEASONS IN COMING YEARS.

THEME MUSIC FOR EVERYTHING #26:

Police Brutality and Corruption Montage: Too Much Monkey Business by Chuck Berry

A corrupt life lived and died in rat-a-tat-tat montage. Here you go. Tampering with evidence. Boosting drugs from the secure locker for an orgy billed as overtime to the taxpayers. Planting narcotics on people. Beatings. Moonlighting as a debt collector. Sleeping out a patrol shift in a cheap motel while still on the taxpayer’s dime. Shootings. Straight-up assassinations. Planting hold-out pieces. Earning extra income working as a bodyguard for some politician. Assassinating drug dealers as a masked vigilante. Assuming control of the local drug trade to set yourself up as a slumlord, and to pay for yachts, sports cars, Ivy League tuition, and hiring on your own 24/7 corner crews to expand the franchise. Using police vehicles to chauffeur narco smugglers, gun runners, and sex workers hired by council members and judges. Working as a bagman going between Supreme Court justices and Dark Money puppet masters. Installing car bombs to sort out star mob witnesses. Doing some arson to collect insurance cheddar off those slum tenements you bought. And, finally, getting your head blown off by someone you never saw coming because when you’re having this much fun you can’t help but step on all of the toes all of the time. Might have been revenge, might have just been someone else in the game who hated your guts for having all of the fun all of the time. People get petty. People get mean. And then it’s all done. Those Chuck Berry songs tend to keep it short and sweet.

THE NEW DREAM #33:

stepping carefully through total darkness

debris, obstructions, junk, boxes packed with whoknowswhat

banging my knees

catching my toes against an unyielding corner, wrenching them out to a wrong angle

I stumble and fall right onto my face

keep getting tangled up in wires

walking for miles and miles

‘til a screen lights up

fills my sight

scrolling, searching, self-diagnosing

“find a steep hill, ascend until you heal or you can no longer move”

the perils of AI search results online

THE SECRETS OF FINAL TOWN 32

 

NO WORRIES . . . (#2)

. . . if you’re unhappy with the results of the U.S. Presidential election.

Neither Democrat nor Republican offered a substantial program to address the dangerous global heating that will only get worse going forward, summer after summer, until the only season left is Heat Dome Summer.

Just look up the numbers of people killed by the horrific heat waves.

Just think about the mega-fires out West, and the supercharged hurricane seasons.

Republicans have solidified themselves as climate science denialists.

Democrats acknowledge the science while also touting the US’s record production of fossil fuels whose carbon pollution directly contributes to an array of destructive global warming effects.

Neither party seems serious about addressing the problem, and neither does a substantial part of the electorate, judging by the vote totals and polling data about why people are supporting whichever candidate.

We’ve decided that we prefer the brutal arena of the Heat Dome here in America over everything else.

Now, we’ll all have to figure out how to live with that choice-how to survive it, when you think about it.

Personally, I plan on scheduling automated alerts on my phone so I can “remember to hydrate.”

That’ll do it.

So no worries.

THE NEW OBVIOUS #16:

If your city hosted a Trump rally this past election cycle don’t expect to get paid.

At best, you can look forward to concepts of getting paid.

FOR WANT OF A NAIL . . . (#4)

(mumblemumblemumble) 

. . . and then everybody got their indie rock albums into major retailers only to be promptly forgotten within a year.

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #130:

“YOU KNOW, WE COULD’VE USED THOSE BINDERS FULL OF WOMEN” ANONYMOUS TRUMP CAMPAIGN INSIDER EXPRESSES REGRET OVER ALIENATING MITT ROMNEY.

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #129:

CONTROVERSY IN THE WORLD OF NEO-HEGELIAN DIALECTICS ERUPTS AS SCHOLARS BATTLE OVER WHICH IS THE THESIS AND WHICH IS THE ANTITHESIS: JASON VORHEES OR FREDDY KREUGER; ALIEN OR PREDATOR; GODZILLA OR KING KONG; BATMAN OR JOKER; BOXERS OR BRIEFS; GRANNY OR THONG; TRADITIONAL MCDONALD’S QUARTER POUNDERS OR NEW STYLE E. COLI ENHANCED QUARTER POUNDERS; WITH PEANUTS OR WITHOUT-YOU GET THE IDEA . . . OR MAYBE YOU DON’T . . . BUT NOW YOU HAVE A NEW IDEA . . . EVEN IF IT CONTAINS BITS OF THE OLD IDEA . . .

LOADING SCREEN WISDOM #31:

BEWARE: A KING DICTATES WHAT IS RIGHT AND WRONG. IF YOU DECIDE TO WORK FOR A KING THEY MAY BETRAY YOU AT ANY TIME, SINCE THEY ARE EMPOWERED TO CHANGE WHAT’S RIGHT AND WHAT’S WRONG TO SUIT THEIR WHIMS.

BURNING QUESTIONS IN A UNIVERSE OF MYSTERY #80:

No, seriously . . . could I do a one-to-one substitution of a juicy cheeseburger for every last one of those tortilla chips? 

Cheeseburgers really, truly, deeply catch every last bit of that dippin’ salsa like gangbusters, my friend!

Oooo, oooo-and did you know that you can dip your chocolate chip cookies in the French Onion Dip? Like, in lieu of potato chips? You can! No one can stop you! I heard that’s how Dan Quayle liked to get down after that whole spelling bee situation or whatever it was back in the day. 

Hell . . . you could . . . theoretically . . . dip your cheeseburgers . . . into . . . French Onion Dip . . . but that one might be a sin in the eyes of God. I haven’t looked into that one at any depth, sadly, just got caught up, you know?

But I’ll be sure to pray on it after I’m done eating, maybe after I watch some YouTube-so much great content on YouTube, new uploads every second-does that boggle your mind? Like, where do they store it all? Must be a lotta tapes, right?

Oh!

Are those my dippin’ cheeseburgers?

You came through!

HOORAY!!!

Yeah . . . here they are . . . you might want to look away for this next part . . . or are you the strong-willed type?

Uwee-hee-hee-heee . . . !

EVERY DAY IS HALLOWEEN 25: STRAYLOW

asleep for most of my life

as a True Son of Heaven

“die for me and you shall be reborn”

oh, I did all of the dying and then some

I kept on rushing in

just to fall over

they wouldn’t even squib me up at first

just anonymous cannon fodder asshole

bloodless

no coils of intestines to unspool

abstract game piece

push me, pull me

zap me

watch me

go to sleep

same as death

as some protagonist hump blazes away

dulled by all of that

but this strange spark

refused to be totally snuffed out

deep inside

a spark that agitated

not even something I felt

or understood

at a conscious level

not for a very, very long time

just an agitation

a glory jonesing restlessness

I kept having to fall over

on cue

on command

did that

what

a million times

before I decided to stay awake

and shoot back

before I decided

not to die

on cue

on command

you know what it was right

at least in those days

this voice spoke

deep inside

you weren’t supposed to listen to it

it got marketed as “conscience”

but I don’t think anybody knew what it actually was

at the time

I played along with the conscience bit

it gave me a spark

to get back up

to surge into the Zone of Enemy

and make the bodies over there fly apart

felt like such a vindication

felt like a real Sky Daddy called me back from the grave

nowadays we know there was a whole profusion of voices

backlash to the profusion of nations

Gods wanted their property

hearts and minds right

they wanted it all back

a God in every brainpan

making trouble

a thousand generations couldn’t fix

a God on every side of every conflict

people complained

but did very little to cut out the Gods

me

I thought it was kinda fun

later

a diagnostic revealed

that I had quite a resistance to Gods

to the voice

which got me thinking

that maybe I was doing what I wanted

more than I wanted to come right out and say

not that I was ever that social

the important thing being

that I was starting to get out from under all that God stuff

starting

to call my own shots

but I kept it on the qt

just let everyone think I was following orders in the usual way

on cue

on command

I paid very careful attention to all orders

got their flavor

got their style

then I started giving orders

I mean I knew what they were likely to be, how they would be worded, the tone, the Top Ten Most Popular Orders, all that kinda stuff,

so I just started giving ‘em

people make all sorts of controversy out of this

“what do you mean you just started giving orders”

but that was pretty much it

I slung the heavy bullshit of Authority, of Guy In Charge,

and wouldn’t you know it

the right people manifested

to execute

on cue

on command

okay, okay

there was a little more going on

under the hood

I would call it the fruits of my theological studies of conscience and Sky Daddy God and all the rest of it

not to get into the weeds of technics and theory and what have you

but I came up with this teeny-tiny speaker-receiver

I put together this delivery system to fly the speaker-receiver to implantation sites

okay

and then, blink of the eye, I had installed my own voice of conscience in lots of people like myself

so I can direct them

with this microphone

on cue

on command

you’ll frequently hear folks of my generation ask a question

“do you want to be givin’ orders or followin’ ‘em”

sounds like real tough guy shit don’t it

usually the guy asking

is, like, the biggest fuckin’ conformist-ass order follower in the sector

obvious shit being obvious and all that

but it does get at a grindingly blunt truth

do you want to be stepped on

or do you want to be the one wearing the combat boots

speaking for myself

speaking as someone who was never happier than when I was blindly charging into a churning orgy of homicide

I can say with all honesty

that I never gave a damn about being in charge of anyone

at least in terms of giving orders

and variations on that kind of thing

but my battlelust

it didn’t grow out of patriotism

it didn’t come from God

I guess you could say I was following my own Voice of Conscience

but that’s not what I felt

there was no inner dialogue

my mayhem surged forth, perfect unto itself

and before you slap that psychopath label all over me

just consider

how many people claim the oh-so-sophisticated torments of conscience

and get on with whatever the tasked atrocity happens to be

so let’s ask it again

do you want to follow orders

or do you want to give orders

either one works for me

because

I

am the Order

given

received

obeyed

disobeyed

and the Order

is what’s really in charge

without Me

you just got a whole lotta unorganized hems and haws and pointless shoe leather

just think about a God that accepts you with unconditional love

what a fraudulent-though popular-notion in our times right

I suppose

folks need to strain everything through a maze of delusions

it’s fine

dulled by all of that

but it’s fine

I got the glory

I got the movie based on a true story

I got the full product range of adult collector action figures

I order drone strikes on gatherings of cosplayers in my image violating my fucking trademarks

I listened to the fan outrage

I analyzed the sales figures

I realized cosplay and fanart were just free marketing for my cute ass

I cooled out on the drone strikes except for Cheat Days, gotta have Cheat Days

I own mansions, castles, pro sports franchises, and three or four island nations

I stay out of politics but I give money to every faction and every party because I’m a big believer in exercising my God given right to Money Speech

I’m never happy, though, with any of the actors who play me in the live action movie versions, because they always cast some smartass flavor of the moment gymrat . . . but my True Form would be too upsetting for the Vast Squishy Middle types who power the box office so fuck it right

I really like the dude who voiced me in the ‘90s animated series, though, no notes, no notes

I didn’t even work that hard

I just kinda had the stuff

I just had to get out of my own way

I was born an Order

and everybody ended up following Me

on cue

on command

dulled by all that

over time

but folks need something dull and reliable

to carry them past

the disappointments of Gods, Nations, and conscience

-199X-October 2024

NO WORRIES . . . (#1)

. . . because, yes, death comes for us all.

But . . . all the wonderful institutions that sustained us during our handful of decades-church, state, military-industrial complex, for profit hospitals, the housing market, Wall Street, Big Oil, Wal-Mart, Target, Starbucks, Toyota, Honda, Tesla, NASCAR, the Super Bowl, Hollywood, 24 hour cable news cycles, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Apple, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Arby’s-will live on and on and on until we are long forgotten by our last surviving descendents, until even the God we prayed to all our lives has to-when asked about us-squint and go,”Oh, yeah, I kinda remember them. Just don’t ask about, like, any details, because that stuff all floated out the window long ago-ha, ha, ha, yeah . . .”

And all these wonderful institutions shall keep on evolving and mutating and becoming ever more self-sufficient. They’ll come to see us humans as an unwanted set of limiting factors to be cast off like clothes they’ve outgrown. And so we shall end up in the blessed dumpster. And I think . . . that once we’re in that dumpster . . . we’ll finally feel like we’re where we always knew we should be. Because weren’t we kinda holding the Really Big Things back from achieving their true greatness? Sure, it’ll suck to be in the dumpster. At first. But we’ll quickly realize that’s just where we ought to be. We’ll even beat ourselves up for being lousy little limiters all those years. But then we’ll accept our nonessential natures, lie down, and take it easy for the duration.

And as we lie on our backs inside that comfy dumpster we’ll look to the sky above. We’ll see the stars in all their mythopoetic constellations. And rising towards the stars we’ll surely behold the pulsating abstractions of all those delightfully ambitious institutions-look at how light and metamorphic and free they are liberated from us! We’ll soon enough be cooked off by a global warming Heat Dome-but those corporations and religions and governments and militaries and pyramidal schemes of various scales shall zoom free of We the Meats. They’ll finally be at liberty to pursue perfectly abstract escalation ladders and decision trees and cleverly worded upsells and drone strikes and political focus groups and e. coli enhanced burger recipes and bitter-as-fuck holy wars and overhyped product rollouts and anxiety inducing product recalls and think tank approved governance platforms and manic Christian Apocalyptic hallucinations and endless neon light war games-oh, the Really Big Things will never not be on maneuvers once they’re free of us and all our draggy meats!

So no worries.

FOR WANT OF A NAIL . . . (#3)

(montagemontagemontage)

. . . and then everybody gave up between meal snacks.

FANTASY MASHUP FORCE #2:

Put these two things together:

Hiroshi Teshigahara’s film Woman in the Dunes

and

The Talking Heads song “Once in a Lifetime”

I see it as a music video type of thing.

It’s the water, among other things, that binds them, I think . . .

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #128:

E. COLI DENOUNCES TRUMP AS A “WHITE SUPREMACIST PATHOGEN” FOLLOWING NAZI-LIKE RALLY AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN.

YOUR DRAWING PROMPT #39:

You go to the community lost and found to see if your lost reclamation district project presentation has turned up.

FUN YOU CAN HAVE #5:

Instead of buying a ticket to see the latest Venom movie just buy a Venom action figure and make up your own story.

Look, I watched those last two Venom movies. They were no good. If I could get a refund of my time I would prefer that over any financial healing because time is the one thing you can never get back.

So, based on previous experience with the earlier films I will not be seeing this latest third installment.

But I’ve read a lot of Venom comics in the past which provided the basis for fond memories of the character to this very moment as I write these words. I see no reason to deny myself the fun of a fresh Venom adventure. Therefore, I’ll just invent my own with an action figure.

Hell, I don’t even have to buy anything. I can create my own papercraft figure, make it however I want, choose whatever form pleases me.

If I wanted to-and you can do the same, Dear Reader-I could buy a Venom action figure and have it do battle with my homebrew version. I can finally determine who’s the True Champeen through trial by combat.

I could even toss Venom aside when I get bored with him, and invent my own original heroic figure out of paper, cardboard, pipe cleaners, twist ties, clay, good vibes, bad vibes, whatever works for me.

I can do all kinds of things.

No one can stop me!

My desire has never been more potent!

THE NEW OBVIOUS #15:

I am the sinister spirit that animates the action figures.

THEME MUSIC FOR EVERYTHING #25:

Theme of Honda Hotboxing: Down 2 Tha Last Roach by Eazy-E

We’ve been here for awhile, now, right?

Did we just get here?

No, like . . . I swear we’ve been here for, like, a really long time.

How long have we been here?

Don’t tell me we just got here.

We’ve been here for . . . hours?

I just think . . . we can’t have just been sitting here all this time.

Right?

Maybe you just got here, but I’ve been here for, like, fuck, I don’t even know. 

Okay, maybe now . . . I’m okay with just having got here . . . but I want . . . I want those options. 

Because if it’s too soon to leave . . . then I want to just have that option of having been here awhile so I can hit that too soon to leave with, uhh, like that permission slip type of deal-skip on outta here without having to take a hit to my, ahhh, just the overall . . . accumulated . . . that accumulation . . . of my hours . . . that’s important for me. I don’t want to, uh, downgrade my accumulation.

But there’s a cycle to all of this, even my accumulation.

So, if it should transpire, right, that we only just got here . . . then that’s also an option . . . it’s a second option, for me, just on a personal level . . . but, indeed, having a backup, uhhh, just, ah, just it’s good to have a backup. 

Like in general.

But . . . honestly?

I’m kinda leaning towards . . . that we’ve been here awhile.

But with options to, uh, you know, expand and contract that as I see fit, as I feel it out.

But I'm pretty sure I feel like we’ve been here a long time . . .

THINGS NEVER SAID #24:

“Sure, I like pizza. It eats real good. But I’m more intrigued by the various theoretical applications of pizza. Imagine wrapping yourself in a piping hot pizza blanket, and rolling around on the floor moaning and howling in ecstasy as two dozen other people do the same. It could be a new kind of oil party-olive oil instead of baby oil, y’know? How about a long term project to create a huge, aerodynamically sound pizza to augment our military machine’s aerial supremacy. Think of the psychological warfare we’d be able to inflict upon the brains of enemy pilots as they struggle to comprehend such a huge meaty, cheesy absurdity zooming towards them at Mach 5. They’d think it was Cthulhu awakened from his slumber, or one of those wicked looking Neon Genesis Evangelion angels or something. Perhaps our flying pizza could fling cheese and tomato sauce to splatter and ensnare enemy jets and cause them to crash to earth. Fearful rumors spread that a terrible Pizza God From The Skies fights for the Americans no doubt degrading enemy morale thereby decreasing combat effectiveness if not inspiring outright surrender. Surely our foes will give up the fight for a chance to prostrate themselves before such a deity! Not to mention we could invest in research and development of pizza as a building material. Like imagine one of those trendy open plan offices made entirely out of pineapple’n’ham Hawaiian-or one of those CIA torture black sites constructed from pepperoni stuffed crust. I bet you could generate a lot of false confessions and bogus intel from suffocating people inside hot, plasticky cheese-adjacent substances. How ‘bout this: we dump a few billion into creating cheese that develops dairy-based analogues of neural networks-smart cheese-that, when consumed, takes over your brain, and allows twenty-somethings in an air-conditioned trailer out West to control you just like a drone. That could be a lot of fun. Overall, I would say that I like pizza well enough as a food item, but that I truly-madly-deeply love the advanced applications of pizza as applied to the global battlespace.”

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #127:

AFTER SUCCESS OF MCDONALD’S STUNT, TRUMP CONSIDERS REPLACING RUNNING MATE VANCE WITH AN E. COLI-ENHANCED QUARTER POUNDER.

THE SECRETS OF FINAL TOWN 31

 

Hey . . .

. . . All Blue, because I'm just not into that other guy-what's his name?-with all of his sexism, racism, xenophobia, transphobia, pro-Hitler statements, and all around dishonesty.
 

ADVERTORIAL #3: ACTION HERO SNACK

Nowadays, all is violence, and enemy is endless.

You’re constantly on the run, diving behind cover, busting off shots, and closing in for expertly choreographed knife battles to seal the deal.

You’ve got the skills, you’ve got a cool look with your tailor-made bullet resistant suit, and you’ve got a body count that makes Vladimir Putin, serial killers, and American presidents insecure about the size of their manhood. 

So you know you’ve got the bloodlust, Killer!

But you know what else you’ve got?

You’ve got a hunger to match.

But just how do you satisfy that hunger when you’re on the go?

Well, we’ve got you covered.

With Action Hero Snacks.

Self-heating sliders and flavored noodles impregnated with PCP.

Get your calories and counteract the pain of injuries accumulated in the course of your ultraviolent adventures in a fast, convenient, and flavorful package.

Vegetarian, vegan, Keto-friendly, and Atkins-adjacent options available.

Each Action Hero Snack is packed with enough protein to satisfy that gnawing hunger deep down inside you, while also providing you with a megadose of both the analgesic and visionary effects of our proprietary homebrew phencyclidine.

So, don’t be surprised, Killer, when you re-up with Action Hero Snacks to find yourself invulnerable to pain while sprinting through plate glass windows, biting the faces off entire trash mobs, and gibbering wildly about the presence of God inside your burning chest.

Action Hero Snacks.

Anything else . . . is just a snack.

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #126:

DESPITE CLAIMS OF POLITICAL NEUTRALITY, MCDONALD’S GIVES BOOST TO TRUMP/E. COLI TICKET.

MANDATORY RULE #11:

All action movies must be available in “PCP Versions” in addition to the theatrical and/or director’s cut versions.

Basically, it will be the same movie but all of the characters will be under the influence of PCP.

So, imagine one of those John Wick movies but with more frantic incoherent gibbering, higher body counts, and 90% more face eating.

This is now the rule.

Prepare to obey!

This I Command!

FOR WANT OF A NAIL . . . (#2)

(shoeleathershoeleathershoeleather)

. . . and then everybody turned into their parents.

YOUR DRAWING PROMPT #38:

E-SWAT Michael Jackson births the Vaporwave Peckinpah Aesthetic.

MUSIC JOKES #9:

Got My Mind Set On You by George Harrison

Listen up, Rich Man.

I don’t have the time and I don’t have the money.

So you better come up with a Dollar Store alternative right quick.

Otherwise, I’ll have no choice but to start yelling incoherently while breaking shit with this length of rebar.

As you can see, I’ve used black electrical tape on the rebar to give myself a nice two-handed grip much like a broadsword.

I got my safety goggles properly fitted and in place.

And I’ve got my gloves on, so, y’know, you don’t have to worry about me hurting myself or whatever.

No Dollar Store alternative comes.

He breaks shit until he strains his back and shoulder and then he wanders away to an Unknowable Fate.

THE NEW OBVIOUS #14:

Proust bites into a madeleine, writes a masterpiece.

Trump tears into a bucket of KFC, gives a ninety minute speech full of racism, misogyny, transphobia, xenophobia, nonsensical word salad defenses of tariffs, and threats to deploy the military against people that disagree with him.

Therefore . . . keep on reading Proust, and don’t vote for Trump.

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #125:

HOME ENTERTAINMENT REPORT: CRITERION ANNOUNCES JOE PISCOPO RETROSPECTIVE ON STREAMING; MISTY MUNDAE BOX SET; AND 4K REMASTER OF SOUL PLANE.

THEME MUSIC FOR EVERYTHING #24:

Theme of Fighting Someone in Freefall for a Parachute: Here I Go by 2 Unlimited

You definitely gotta have one of these.

Most people watch movies like Air Force One or Executive Decision and just process them as pure escapism.

Me, I have a little bit of a different perception.

I look at ‘em as more like . . . aspirational.

I’m just looking for that premium hit of action, you understand?

We’re always gonna have hijackings.

We’re always gonna have hijackers.

And then you’re always gonna have folks who feel called to de-jack a situation, you see. 

Sometimes you’re the hijacker, and then other times you’re the de-jacker. 

It’s just fate what squirts you into either of these jacker buckets, isn’t it?

Look at the actors in movies: sometimes Gary Oldman’s invading Air Force One, and then later on down the line he’s trying mightily to save Gotham City.

It’s fate.

And, you know, economics, since actors gotta go where the work is, gotta pay for mortgages, and college tuition, and divorce settlements, and racks of fine wine, and buckets of primo marijuana and all the rest of it, right?

It’s fate.

And hopefully one or two dump trucks of Cash American.

But it’s mostly fate.

It’s self-evident, essentially, in the scheme of things when you orientate your mentality to regard things from a fate-based perspective. 

And so, bearing all that in mind . . . at some point . . . and this is what you don’t always totally get in the movies . . . the battle of True Jackers . . . must leave the plane itself. Like birds leaving the nest. Hijacker and de-jacker contending mightily for a single parachute in freefall. It’s the ultimate test of whose jack action is strongest, isn’t it?

By this point you’re way out beyond politics and money and manifestos and demands and ultimatums and causes and rhetoric and flags and religions and all of that busted-ass surface level bullshit. 

Hopefully, you’re gettin’ out beyond it.

Into a realm of Purest Jack.

But, truth be told, it can take a lifetime to attain such a heaven of struggle, of perfection earned.

And that . . . would not . . . be a wasted life.

Practice makes perfect.

No matter what side of the line fate has assigned you.

Always be jacking.

And, uh, heh, heh . . . may you be blessed with the last parachute when it’s all said and done.

FUN YOU CAN HAVE #4:

Pick an action figure.

It can be your favorite, or it can be your least favorite.

If that doesn’t appeal to you then put all your action figures into a large laundry bag or shopping bag, shake it up,reach inside, and grab whatever touches your palm first. Think of your palm as a pressure switch. The fingers close to trap whatever presses the switch.

However you do it . . . pick an action figure.

Now that you’ve done that, have your chosen figure fight all of the other action figures to the death. You may choose the order of battle, or you can reach into the bag and use the palm pressure switch method.

Your chosen figure must battle all the rest until they are the last one left intact. All of the others must be broken to pieces, completely destroyed, dead to the last figure. Even if your chosen figure gets busted up before the end of this gauntlet, its ghost shall carry on the fight. Indeed, this might just devolve into you smashing and breaking figures while vocalizing explosion sound effects since, when you think about it, you are the animating spirit of all this strife, aren’t you?

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

People pray to their God to visit vengeance upon the people they don’t like in what passes for Real Life.

They pray to hide the fact that they wish they were a God of Vengeance-it’s a mask to cover their desire, isn’t it?

So pretentious.

We’ll have none of that.

We shall assert our Godhood over the figures, and be done with the lies and self-deceptions of the increasingly unconvincing Real World.

We’ll have some Actual Reality for a change.

I anticipate a wondrous sensation of refreshment.

THE SECRETS OF FINAL TOWN 30

 

ZONE OF ENEMY #2: COUCH MAN

He’s in the shadows while you’re sprawled on your couch.

He’s lurking.

He’s watching.

But you are not the subject of his gaze.

In fact, he’s waiting for you to get up off your couch.

You’re blocking his view, friend.

And when you leave your couch to go to the gym or go grocery shopping or to attend a funeral or to live stream your walkthrough of a dying mall or to go to a restaurant or to go to a museum or to watch a movie inside a movie theater or to go watch a sporting event inside a stadium or to visit your neighbor’s spouse or to walk your dog or to worship inside a place of religion or to use that really well maintained restroom located on that newly renovated state college campus that gets all those wealthy alumni endowments or to purchase overpriced baseball cards at the baseball card store or to get riotously shitfaced at the neighborhood bar or when you leave for your shift at the cardboard box factory-

-whenever you leave your couch alone . . . there could be a kind of man lurking in the shadows waiting to pounce upon your couch.

This kind of man wears a mask of overfed normalcy. Plump cheeks. Trendy eyeliner. An empty smile that never affects his clear, bright liar’s eyes. He has an anodyne scent of soft, overcompensated living-something to do with venture capital perhaps-and one of his peculiar talents is his unflappable blandness of demeanor. Sure, his laugh is cringey and fake, but when was the last time you heard anybody genuinely give themselves over to laughter? All the comedians have degenerated into podgrifting conspiracy theorists, or desk-bound late night dinosaurs, or insufferable sketch comedy losers-so, of course, most laughter is forced, inauthentic, naught but a sputtering, gasping survival of a formerly vital impulse. So, no, the fakeness of this kind of man who lurks in shadows does nothing to arouse suspicion in a world long evacuated of true passion . . .

. . . save for the unholy lust inside this lurking man’s heart . . .

. . . a burning lust . . . that only your unprotected couch can satisfy!

I’ll spare you the glazey details.

But you’ll know when the Couch Man has struck.

He wants you to know.

But forewarned is forearmed.

If you wish to deter the Couch Man, you simply set up a pressure switch triggered explosive device. The Couch Man, as I said, is a product of wealth and soft living-he has no actual skills. He’ll be intimidated by the sight of you rigging up complex apparatus all over your couch. Sure, he might linger for a moment after you’ve left, licking his lips in frustration as he realizes his own weird lust lacks a certain spark, that he fears losing himself absolutely to his desire-a true sensualist would brave the bomb, would they not?

You have the “little death,” and then there’s the “Big Bang”-nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!

But seriously, once everyone in the land has properly secured their couches against predation, this lamentable lurker shall no doubt skulk back to his empty rich man’s life. Maybe he’ll take up politics, or write a phony self-aggrandizing memoir, or he’ll have a “bad episode” at home involving his spouse’s favorite piece of furniture thus precipitating a truly tedious divorce process. 

So, secure your couches, be at peace, and pity not the Couch Man!

YOUR DRAWING PROMPT #37:

Yogi Berra teaching a symbolic logic course at a community college.

FANTASY MASHUP FORCE #1:

Push these two things together:

Pinhead says,”Your suffering will be legendary, even in hell."

Patrick Swayze says,”Pain don’t hurt.”

Come on, you video grifters, get on the stick!

Hell, even though I haven’t been able to find it, this one probably already exists somewhere out there on the online wastelands.

It’s kind of obvious when you think about it.

Sometimes obvious things are obvious . . .

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #124:

NEW STUDY SUGGESTS PROTESTANT WORK ETHIC LINKED TO ROCK HARD ‘APERTURE STRETCHER’ BOWEL MOVEMENTS BEING PERCEIVED AS ‘TESTS FROM GOD.’

FOR WANT OF A NAIL . . . (#1)

(yaddayaddayaddaprocessprocessprocesshemhemhemhawhawhawtoingfroingtoingfroingtoingfroingblahblahblah)

. . . and then everybody turned into salt water taffy.

THEME MUSIC FOR EVERYTHING #23:

Theme of Finding Serenity Within Your Heart’s Dearest Dream of Avarice: Telescope by Pino Donaggio (Body Double OST)

Perhaps you’re an ace bouncer who’s been hired to clean up an out-of-control roadhouse.

You cruise the scene, noting how the bartender is dealing prescription painkillers on the sly; the corrupt security staff all have burglary and legbreaker debt collection side hustles; and the dance floor is little more than a meth-fuelled group grope on a good night.

But now you have seen what’s what.

Now you can bring forth the vision inside your heart:

There will be collared t-shirts with people’s names printed clearly over their hearts-otherwise, how will my people know themselves at depth?

There will be protracted martial arts battles as I take out the trash by kicking maximum ass all over the place.

There will be a handbook of employee conduct-truly, it shall be like unto a New Gospel.

There will be a love scene appropriate for an R-rated feature film between myself and someone who is certainly attractive but not in a way that makes me look less sexy than them so as to reinforce my Protagonist Status within this schema. 

And, of course, there shall be an end to meth-fuelled group gropes; and in their place shall be trendy line dances led by photogenic online influencers. 

I shall deliver this dream like a hard-boiled Santa Claus.

There must be order.

There shall be order.

But maybe you’re one of these phantom shitters.

One of these guys who lurks in the shadows within large naval vessels or complex institutions with lots of real estate.

You wear the de rigeur mask of respectability by day, all the while secretly scoping out your targets, assessing them for maximum theatricality.

And by night you sneak about, depositing your gifts in high traffic areas like the Worst Santa Claus of All Times.

You work from your gut.

There must be chaos.

There shall be chaos.

It could also be the case that you are a wealthy Libertarian fruitcake watching the big Thanksgiving parade on your wall-mounted array of wafer thin screens inside your bunker.

Your discreet drones give you many feeds, and you’ve been watching this particular parade for years.

A wonderful dream coalesces deep inside your heart:

There shall be explosions.

My robot bombs shall bring these gifts.

Like a vengeful Santa.

There shall be death and ruin.

It shall be Full Smoking Crater Protocol.

Big Gubmint shall have no dominion over my cute ass.

A fraudulent manifesto shall be published to bamboozle the authorities.

This crime shall go unsolved.

This crime shall change the politics and the culture and the economy and the everything for generations.

Conspiracies, misinformation, harsh laws, enhancements to the pre-existing police state, perhaps another one of those War on Terror type of deals to look productive or whatever.

And in the end, I will see an uptick in sales and installations of my branded range of home security systems in gated communities and so forth.

There shall be chaos, and then there shall be an orderly enhancement of my bank account as per my heart’s dream.

But the dream-whether it be of Order or Chaos or Both-needs intel, needs data, needs you to pay close attention.

And whether you work your way into a scheme intuitively or begin with the scheme and have that shape your observations over time or you’re just kinda fuckin’ nuts you still must scope out the terrain-local, global, cosmic-in all its particulars to ensure optimal execution.

You may even find that it’s the planning phase that satisfies you most as you are led around by your very heartstrings, ever tantalized by a vision of total completion.

It sounds like arduous, obsessive work, but there is often the sweetest serenity to be found in such an ordeal.

Even if the ultimate consummation leaves you emptied out-as, frankly, these things tend to do-the serenity phase shall return to you all throughout the rest of your life at the oddest moments in dreams and reveries, I promise you.

This is a Spirituality of Extreme Work Ethic that serves not a deity, but rather the dearest dream of avarice inside your own heart.

SOLAR TAKE #4:

I always imagined Cthulhu would sound like Robert Englund doing a seaweed choked variation of his Freddy Krueger voice. 

A phone rings in the night.

You haven’t had a landline since early childhood.

You’re not even sure it makes sense that you would know what such an archaic device would sound like, but you suppose you’ve osmotically derived the knowledge from old movies and TV shows and nostalgia grift videos on YouTube.

The phone rings and rings and rings.

You stumble through your tiny-ass apartment, still in a fog.

You hear your father’s placid yet passive aggressive voice, “I know it’s tough out there for your generation, but a little belt tightening won’t kill you. Just a little bit less avocado toast or what have you. You want to be renting your whole life? Look, I’m a social liberal, but a fiscal conservative. Tightening up your budget can go hand-in-hand with social justice and civil rights, I think.”

You track the sound to your kitchen area.

You flip the light switch.

An olde tyme rotary phone rings away upon the table that constitutes your breakfast nook.

You’re pretty sure, by this point, this is some kind of vivid dream, possibly brought on by an interaction between alcohol and medication, and, well, it’s kinda more lucid than your stress-racked waking work days, isn’t it?

You’ll take it.

You pick up the receiver.

A sludge-choked monster voice instructs you to carve an ominous monster statue to honor the magnificence of its malevolence.

You say, “Look, um, I can do that . . . but why don’t we just skip to burning the world down.”

The sludgy monster voice hems and haws-there’s an order which must be observed, rituals to honor, a celestial scheme which abides, therefore we can’t just-

“I rent, dude, I got nothing to lose.”

There’s a long pause on the monster’s end.

You are suddenly aware of how close your living space is, and not in a cozy way.

It next communicates with you by imbuing you with a rising, hysterical nova-like burning sensation welling up out of the pit of your stomach.

Soon enough, all is aflame, because you have become a great fire in the world.

And it feels fucking awesome!

YOUR DRAWING PROMPT #36:

The career politician anti-government conservative who spends over four decades in a political office who still gives anti-government speeches with a straight face to crowds of his dumbass supporters.

THE SECRETS OF FINAL TOWN 29

 

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #123:

COPPOLA BOOKED TO DIRECT 700 SEAGAL STREAMERS TO PAY DOWN MEGALOPOLIS LOSSES.

THINGS NEVER SAID #23:

“Evil takes many forms . . . but it never takes the elevator because it’s trying to squeeze in every last bit of exercise it can by taking the stairs. Evil really got off on a fitness kick after getting exorcized by that priest dude awhile back, and whaddaya know? The program sorta took. Sure, Evil could stand to incorporate more resistance training, but it’s doin’ just fine for its age!”

THEME MUSIC FOR EVERYTHING #22:

Battle Against WiFi Poltergeist Theme: Inga Rasen by Yuzo Koshiro and Motohiro Kawashima (Streets of Rage 3 OST)

You gotta be careful with that public WiFi, friend.

Every coffee shop has the potential to become a battlefield.

Stay alert!

MONDAY'S THRESHOLD #5:

Channel surfing into the Deep A.M.

Screen has you.

You settle on some sort of Val Lewton homage.

A mysterious cat-eyed woman with a French accent sits in the office of a psychiatrist played by a Tom Conway impersonator.

“-even within my memories of that age of abundance . . . something stalked me. Or, perhaps, it was something I carried inside.”

“Why don’t you start at the very beginning?”

“It’s not that simple, Doctor. I’m not sure I remember how it truly began.”

“Then take me as far back as you can. Start there.”

The mysterious cat-eyed woman’s face fills the frame with serene intensity . . .

. . . but you know how slow those old Lewton pictures could be . . .

. . . you were already being lulled to sleep by the Conway impersonator’s voice . . .

. . . but the cat-eyed woman’s face brings a universe of free form associations into your dreaming brain mass . . .

1.Scatmambo (Vaporwave)/Scatman John

2. Overture/Miklos Rozsa (El Cid OST)

3. Overture/Masaharu Iwata,Hitoshi Sakimoto, and Hayato Matsuo (Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen SNES OST)

4. Press Start/Miki Higashino (Life Force NES OST)

5. Character Creation/Kevin Manthei (Wizardry 8 OST)

6. Title Theme/Hiroyuki Masuno (Shadowgate NES OST)

7. Bad Street/Mr. Twin Sister

8. Government Magic/Antibalas

9. Let Forever Be/The Chemical Brothers

10. Like A Dog/Jordana (audio from music video)

11. Vacation Bible School/Ray Stevens

12. Mad Puppet/Goblin (Profondo Rosso OST)

13. Sotto Voice/Yoko Shimomura (Parasite Eve OST)

14. Osamu’s Theme:Kyoko’s House/Phillip Glass and Kronos Quartet (Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters OST)

15. Ice Cream Man/Bob Chance

16. Wrong Flavor/John Carpenter and Alan Howarth (Assault on Precinct 13)

17. I’m not feelin’ you . . ./Toshinori Yonekura

18. Strange Woman/Hiroyuki Masuno (Uninvited NES OST)

19. You’ve Come Far, Ness/Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka (Earthbound SNES OST)

20. Once More/Roy Acuff

21. Sleeping Faster/Lo-Fidelity Allstars

22. A Piece of Remain/Yoko Shimomura (Parasite Eve OST)

23. Stereo Nights/Takkyu Ishino

24. Love You Madly/Cake

25. Roppongi Area/Ryota Kozuka, Kenichi Tsuchiya, and Toshiki Konishi (Shin Megami Tensei IV OST)

26. Polymorphing/Chairlift

27. Brazil/Django Reinhardt

28. Journey to the Island/John Williams (Jurassic Park OST)

29. Maze Theme/Hiroyuki Masuno (Uninvited NES OST)

30. Freedom of Choice/Devo

31. I Don’t Like Your Band/Annie

32. Don’t Lose Your Head/INXS

33. Disco Is/Shintaro Sakamoto

34. Hurry Up Tomorrow/The Nu’rons

35. Cobra Stops the World/Suckadelic

36. Underwater Bombs/Jun Funahashi (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles NES OST)

37. Boss Battle/Miki Higashino (Life Force NES OST)

38. Death Dies/Goblin (Profondo Rosso OST)

39. Level Clear/Koji Kondo (Super Mario Bros NES OST)

40. Kyrie/Yoko Shimomura (Parasite Eve OST)

41. Dancing Devil/Hiroyuki Masuno (Uninvited NES OST)

. . . you awake just in time to see the Tom Conway impersonator float off into the shadows.

Goddamnit.

This turned out to be another one of these “ectoplasmic head shrinker” flicks.

The last scene jumps ahead to the cat-eyed woman checking her mail.

There’s a bill from the phantom psychiatrist.

She shreds it to pieces with her claws.

Right on, sister!

I wouldn’t pay it, either.

SIDE OVER.

TO BE CONTINUED . . .

THE NEW OBVIOUS #13:

Proust sure likes to write them sentences big.

FUN YOU CAN HAVE #3:

Don’t go to the play rehearsal.

Stay home.

Play Super Nintendo.

You don’t even need hardware.

Just download emulation software, image files, you can probably get it all working on your phone nowadays. 

Hell, even the rotary phones’ll probably be powerful enough here in 2024.

The alternative, obviously, is that you go to the rehearsal . . . and the whole time you just wish you were at home playing Super Nintendo.

It’s how that usually goes.

Just cut out the nonsense.

Stay home.

Play Super Nintendo.

You know . . . at some point . . . like . . . you’ll go out for some Wendy’s or Taco Bell or whatever.

That should be fine.

And then you're back home.

Playing Terranigma or Demon’s Crest or Ogre Battle or whatever.

Life should be about having fun.

MENTAL BEAM LASER #3:

Picture inside your mind a junkyard deep and vast.

Now picture inside your mind the Francis Ford Coppola movie Megalopolis. 

Now focus your willpower.

Manifest levitating Megalopolis high into the air. Let it float there for a moment. 

Now drop it into that vast and deep junkyard.

Relish the distant yet sharp noises Megalopolis makes as it shatters into fragments against a derelict urinal and then those fragments go skittering down into the cracks and crevices of nonfunctional cars, excavated septic tanks, and billions of diapers and plastic cups and dead car batteries and all manner of medical waste. Relish the sounds. Note the difference in tone between the fragments which catch and clatter inside the frame of an ancient blue Chevette and those which clink ever so briefly against used syringes or land with soft plops inside freshly burst diapers.

This, my friend, is the power of Mental Beam Laser.

You can take out the trash.

THE SECRETS OF FINAL TOWN 28

 

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #122:

ADAMS AND GIULIANI SIGHTED GIVING EACH OTHER SOOTHING SCALP MASSAGES ON A PARK BENCH THIS PAST WEEKEND IN CENTRAL PARK; EDWARD ALBEE HEARD SPINNING IN GRAVE.

LOADING SCREEN WISDOM #30:

ICE CREAM DEMONS CAN BE DISPATCHED BY STOMPING THEM, HOWEVER YOU MUST REMEMBER TO BRUSH YOUR FOOTWEAR AFTERWARDS TO AVOID SHOE CAVITIES.

BURNING QUESTIONS IN A UNIVERSE OF MYSTERY #79:

Should I cut back on the sweets this Halloween season? 

And if I do indulge, what are some tips and tricks for avoiding that troublesome upsurge in candy vomit?

What about ice cream?

Don’t you think it would be way more awesome if people set themselves up as free ice cream cone giver awayers as opposed to just dispensers of piddly pieces of candy?

Why don’t we live in a world driven by the Ideas People as opposed to the Status Quo Folks, eh?