BURNING QUESTIONS IN A UNIVERSE OF MYSTERY #83:

If I let you keep my money could you at least give me my time back?

THE SECRETS OF FINAL TOWN 44

 

THE NEW SIGNAGE #7:

ARRIVE ALIVE DON’T DRIVE.

THE NEW OBVIOUS #22:

If you vote for anti-government extremists who campaign on promises to destroy your government from the inside once elected . . . don’t be surprised when they end up destroying your government from the inside once elected.

YOU (DON'T) KNOW #6:

You think you’ll have a better time with the subscription version. 

The one without the embedded ads.

But actually . . . you end up missing the ads.

Missing ‘em hard.

It’s just like the Super Bowl, isn’t it?

Would you want to watch the Super Bowl sans ads?

Without the ads . . . things just become desolate. 

You’ve got nothing to look forward to, no consequential purchases to stoke your desire.

Without the ads . . . your experience is a bit post-desire, isn’t it?

And that’s no fun at all.

THE FATE OF AVARICE: LITTLE EDDIE DEPLOYED TO GUARD THE TREASURE . . .

 

THE NEW DREAM #36:

car crash dream

dislodged from physics

flailing metamorphosis

car crash repeating unto eternal recurrence

accepting total appetite

a passion for crashin’

movie deal inked

dump trucks bust cash all over me

i'm doing irresponsible things with a Zippo

Cash American Inferno

dontcha know

it’ll be the best scene i guess

The Passion of the Crashin’

stumble charging into traffic

Christ of the Fifty-Seven Vehicle Pile-Up

my martyrdom is gory unto comedy

my hair looks amazing

you’ll hate me even as you worship me as you hate me as you worship me

make it stop

make it start

compromised theatrical cut

extended director’s cut on two disc DVD

Internet rumors of a sixty-nine hour workprint

the you-know-what of tape trader Captain Ahabs for a generation

make it stop

make it start

FUN YOU CAN HAVE #6:

If I don’t get enough hot sauce packets after hitting up the Taco Bell drive thru, I always allow myself the luxury of parking my car, entering the dining area of the Taco Bell location, grabbing great fistfuls of hot sauce packets from the self-service area well beyond what I could reasonably use in a single meal, and then striding back to my car suffused with the ecstatic full body titillation that accompanies supreme avarice.

I am empowered to do this thing-and more-by the intensity of my desire!

F.A.Q. #7:

Q: What’s your favorite David Lynch film?

A: Inland Empire.

For a while there it was Twin Peaks: The Return.

For whatever reason Inland Empire was something I really started going back to during the COVID-19 pandemic. Every time I watched it I didn’t feel like my time was being wasted . . . but you know what?

All of David Lynch’s movies are great. 

Yes, even Dune. It’s not even a proper adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel. It’s totally wrong. And it’s still great. It doesn’t even work as a conventional sci-fi flick. Doesn’t matter. It still has that spark that only Lynch could bring. 

Yes, even Lost Highway . . . a movie I don’t actually like. I’ve watched it so many times-more than I’ve watched The Godfather or Citizen Kane. I could watch Lost Highway right now, still think it’s irredeemably silly, and have zero regrets. It’s got that Lynch spark to it.

And, yes, I know Mulholland Drive is the “official” best Lynch film. And I think it’s great, too . . . but Inland Empire is the one as far as I’m concerned.

Lynch at his worst is still the best. 

Inland Empire was a low budget affair shot on prosumer cameras as a quasi-improvisational exercise in narrative surrealism originating in a set of internet videos . . . but the tools are only as good as the human beings that wield them. The technology follows the human artistic intentions. The human is in command, not the technology. That matters.

Inland Empire is a film to be experienced. That’s what’s most important.

SOLAR TAKE #7:

Crunch . . .

Eating twenty-seven dollar tortilla-adjacent chips with a heated cup of nacho-style cheese analogue product in a plastic service container makes me feel at home inside the movie theater.

Crunch . . .

That’s a mouthful of truth.

Crunch . . .

Especially if I’m watching Ingmar Bergman.

Crunch, crunch . . .

Because I’ll be honest with you: Bergman’s a little intimidating for my ass.

Crunch . . .

I hate to say this . . . but I don’t feel like I’m as smart as Bergman.

Crunch . . .

But if I have my comfort food right there on my lap . . . well, you know, I can sorta cope.

Crunch, crunch . . .

I can more easily come to terms with my lowly place in the scheme of audience, you know?

Crunch, crunch, crunch . . .

Yeah . . .

Crunch, crunch, crunch . . .

It’ll be alright.

Crunch, crunch, crunch . . .

YOUR DRAWING PROMPT #48:

Bolted-on sex appeal.

THE SECRETS OF FINAL TOWN 43

 

FORTRESS Y2K #3:

COMMAND CENTER MENTALITY

The weight of Millennium smashes down upon your brain.

You feel ill at ease within your casualness.

You need to get serious.

You need to get into uniform.

You need to get ranked up.

You need to go straight to the top of the chain of command.

You need to be surrounded by huge telescreens showing satellite feeds full of zoom and enhance and targeting reticles and coordinates and vital statistics and heat signatures and eyes on every arsenal and troop maneuver and world leader.

You’ve got to have a nuclear option. Preferably a bunch.

You need to feel like the Most Consequential Person. 

You need an ergonomically sound command chair.

You need a dramatic countdown.

You need sweat on every brow, every upper lip-save yours, you magnificent living statue you!

You need to get beyond body.

No meats on you, Now.

You’ve gone Full Notional.

The Human displaced by the Rank, by the Power.

Let it all work.

Telescreens and staff and State and citizens and nukes and soldiers and tax revenues and every last thing merges into the Higher You-the Grandiose Champeen who shall punch Millennium’s lights out!

. . . every dream fades into a lonely room, a pile of dirty laundry, fading vital signs, brippity farts under cover of dark, eyes glazing, Girls Gone Wild infomercial occupying the deep A.M., the thudding mediocre continuity of the No Clearcut Apocalypse Timeline . . .

THE NEW SIGNAGE #6:

ETERNITY BRIDGE AHEAD. FUCK THE GAS. EXIT VEHICLE AND WALK TO ACHIEVE ULTIMATE LIMINAL FUGUE STATE.

THINGS NEVER SAID #29:

“You’re on the Jumbotron, but I’m just a jumbo shrimp!”

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #139:

TRUMP ANNOUNCES PLAN TO ALLOCATE BILLIONS IN FEDERAL FUNDS TO EXPAND THE LABYRINTH OF LIES IN WHICH HE IS FOREVER TRAPPED.

SIMPLE PLEASURES #1:

Reading the manga Akira while listening to the soundtrack from the anime Akira.

FOR WANT OF A NAIL . . . (#10)

(Burning!Blazing!!Nova!!!)

. . . and then your signature transformation sequence goes nuclear, wiping out the rest of the series prematurely-but what a way to go!

THE SECRETS OF FINAL TOWN 42

 

THE NEW OBVIOUS #21:

Dude, like . . . diarrhea has a serious public relations problem!

F.A.Q. #6:

Q: Dude, like, do you know if they still serve those Swedish meatballs at Ikea?

A: I don’t work at Ikea. I haven’t set foot inside an Ikea in years. I can’t comment directly on your question. However . . . I will tell you this: what truly matters most is that you hold a Swedish meatball deep inside your heart. Cherish it. Venerate it. Then, once you’re done with all that, find yourself a crackerjack thoracic surgeon.

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #138:

FACEBOOK, A KNOWN CESSPOOL OF DISINFORMATION, ABANDONS BOGUS FACT CHECKING OPERATION IN AN ATTEMPT TO BREAK BACK INTO THE NEWS CYCLE.

DISSOLVING CONTINENT

 

THE NEW DREAM #35:

-snatches of a rambling podgrift interview with a Phantom Litter Master . . .

“-you just drop it in bits and pieces all over. Like in a prison escape movie where the guys are sneaking out the excavation debris in their pant legs as they dig their tunnel. Don’t overthink it. As you get out of your car you just toss some food packaging or a soda can off to your side. Don’t follow it with your eyes. Keep your head up, eyes front, garbage out to your side. Move away from the direction you tossed your trash. Don’t look back. You can also simply drop your trash from your hand as you walk. Just keep your trash hand down by your side. Don’t get all cocked about it, don’t telegraph anything. It’s not something that requires all of you. It’s supposed to be tossed off. It must needs be a trifle-a tic. You work it into your day-in-day-out. It’s not an event. You’re not on a mission. When I started out it was an event. I was on a mission. I was, I dunno, I guess I convinced myself that I was mad about environmental degradation. I was on a mission to strip away the pretense of sustainable consumerism. I kept a diary. An online confessional thing. I wrote about greenwashing and the insidiousness of neoliberalism and how it was impossible to recycle our way to sustainability and I got deep into the literature to the point it was like a serious academic research project. Like there was an advanced degree waiting for me at the end of the line. But that wasn’t what I was doing. This was all just online blogging, posting, strictly white text on a black background-loooong after vlogging and podgrifting had nuked literacy in the general potential audience. But I didn’t want to look at that head-on. Especially because I kinda knew all of that. On some level I understood that what I was up to wasn’t really about activism or politics or right-and-wrong. It was simply something that I enjoyed doing. That’s all it needed to be. Everything else was still true. Our consumerism isn’t sustainable. Recycling will not save us. No politician has a program or a policy or even a sincere care. The only free speech that matters is money. That was a pragmatic reality pre-Citizens United. After Citizens United it became metaphysical, axiomatic, may as well write it into a general survey of the hard sciences alongside thermodynamics, evolution, and entropy. The entities with the Big Money make this world. And I didn’t have Big Money. Then or now. So, if I decide I want to spend time doing something I can tell myself it’s going to make a difference, and I even found people willing to pump me up, willing to play along with a sort-of collective make believe scenario that what I was doing mattered in the sense of having a consequential impact. And that was enjoyable. It didn’t feel bad at all. Playing pretend is fun. We all play pretend to one degree or another. I’ve played some rather involved games of pretend my entire life. I incorporated a lot of that fantasy material into the blog, actually.”

“Oh, yeah, I read some of that stuff.”

“Frankly, it’s some of my best writing. Plenty of people have told me directly that all the phantom litter stuff’s kind of a snooze, but the Sunsoft Extended Universe posts were the highlight of their week.”

“Like, dude, your version of Batman-I mean that was the sickest, dude!”

“Sure, all I did was put Batman in the tank from Blaster Master and sprinkled in Journey to Silius-I just saw myself as a narrative flower arranger, you know? I was just doing what everything does now. All those comic book movies are just expensive cut-ups of comic books, right? And just like comic books it doesn’t matter if you love ‘em or hate ‘em. People love to love ‘em, and they also love to hate ‘em. People surrender to mad obsessions with the minutiae of lore and continuity and casting rumors and thereby dissolve their tormented egos in a warm bath of trivia-or they feel superior to the vast squishy middle types by tearing it all down. The IP holders can’t lose either way.”

“Oh, okay, so like . . . is that what you see yourself as doing as well?”

“Sure. I’m a villain for littering up the joint and/or a hero for exposing the nonsense of our way of life. Love to love me or love to hate me. It’s a win either way.”

“But like . . . getting back to your Phantom Litter Master crusade-”

“Sure.”

“-like . . . you were littering up your town because . . . like . . . you wanted people to realize that they can’t escape the trash-is that what you were-?”

“My main inspiration was First Blood. That’s the novel that gave the world John Rambo. Rambo comes home from the war and ends up unleashing the war on American soil. Because his home isn’t really a place of peace. His home turned him into a killing machine in Vietnam. And then his home wants to pretend he doesn’t even exist, that there never was any war. So Rambo flips out. Storm and stress ensue. It’s a great book. Way better than all those derpy movies they made out of it. So . . . I decided to be the Rambo of trash, of litter. Our society hides the trash. Our society tries to trick us into thinking it isn’t there. It tries to convince us that it has ‘taken out the trash.’ But I reveal the truth. I bring the trash on home.”

“Huh . . . but like . . . Rambo was super-aggressive . . . whereas you’re super-sneaky with your shit . . . how do you square that?”

“I was inspired by Rambo. Maybe I’m exaggerating to say I am the Rambo of littering. Fair enough. But there’s an element of destruction in what I do. I’m not using guns and bombs, but I am making a mess of a kind.”

“True that, I can dig that.”

“Rambo has to make a mess to get his message across. I make little messes on the sly to get my revenge in my own way. That’s the narrative I’ve evolved over time at any rate.”

“You say it’s a narrative-is it true? Or is this all a put-on, a, uh, uh, a prank, an act?”

“I definitely would say that looking back that the impulse to be sneaky with littering was the first thing. It preceded any sort of conscious program or message or political stance. I’ve come to believe that such an impulse is core to much of what passes for our politics here in America. And people go for it. Even if it gets us into wars of adventure or accelerates Climate Inferno-we gotta have action, gotta feel important, gotta constantly be trying to scam and jam even if it’s our own allies-whatever it takes to keep on cosplaying as the Most Consequential Nation. Fake it ‘til you make it type of deal.”

“Dude, like . . . this Heat Dome . . . I don’t know if it’s worth it . . .”

“Worth it or not it’s year-round, now, isn’t it?”

“Dude . . . it’s just . . . can’t we have a few days without it?”

“Not now, no.”

“Ugggggghhhhhh!”

“And, yes, I’m fully aware that my Phantom Litter Master crusade changed absolutely nothing. But I had fun.”

“Dude . . . don’t you think . . . and I’m not trying to criticize you . . . but don’t you think you were being a little superficial?”

“Sure. But I was having fun.”

“Like, damn, I get it, I get it . . .”

“That’s why I was willing to go on the record with you. I think we’re both impulse based. You once had a mid-range comedy career. But at a certain point you realized all you wanted was just to be the center of attention-that was your core impulse. Not to craft a really great joke. Not because you got a charge out of a live audience. Certainly not because you had some cutting satirical vision of existence. You just wanted to cosplay as the Most Essential Person. Running for President was too difficult, too expensive. Moreover, no one who is paying any attention has any actual reverence for the Office of the President. It’s just another bogus, corrupt authority, has been since forever, but, in the popular imagination, most people would say Nixon’s to blame. But people still trick themselves into trusting overpaid entertainment figures. So, you opted to become a podgrifter. You talk, therefore you must have something important to say. I chose litter.”

“Dude, but like . . . we’re the same.”

“I’ll play along.”

“I chose talking to people, just asking people questions; but like that’s its own kind of litter, right?”

“Sure, I’ll play along.”

“Because, like, conversation’s so . . . disposable, isn’t it?”

“Sure.”

“Like, isn’t it?”

“Sure.”

-at this point, the conversation becomes an endlessly self-iterating marathon of ad reads for mattresses, underwear, home security systems, virtual private network subscriptions, crypto dog coins, pay-to-win online gaming scams, raw liver home delivery services, red wine enemas, anti-food meal replacement powders, tiny plots of land in Ireland, royalty certificates in which each ad is performed in an increasingly manic tone of jubilant insincerity . . .

BENIGN AND/OR INANE CONSPIRACY THEORIES #13:

People who walk out of movies early are just jealous that they’re not the center of attention.

YOUR DRAWING PROMPT #47:

All quadrants fully integrated product line metamorphosis.

THE SECRETS OF FINAL TOWN 41

 

THEME MUSIC FOR EVERYTHING #28:

Theme of Relentless, Fruitless Searching Montage: Vampire Hunters by Seiji Yokoyama (Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned a.k.a. Tomb of Dracula OST)

You’re wandering an endlessly self-iterating shopping mall. You’re slightly cut out, apart from the world even as you move through it-hell, at one point you’re just full-on walk cycling as the larger reality rolls past you. 

You pause in the food court. You light a cigarette. You stare down as many people as you can. You’re in the mood for a brawl. A ridiculous looking mall cop rolls up to you on a two wheeled conveyance. You flick ash all over their phony badge. A staring contest ensues, a battle of wills. You win. The mall cop motors off. You manage to look both psychotically mean and pathetically forlorn even in victory. 

You’re blowing cigarette smoke through your nostrils. Relax. You’re a fictional character. Fictional people never get cancer. And even if you do, well, you know, it’s just, like, fictional cancer. For fictional people. So it works out. There’s probably even, like, an equally fictional miracle cure out there that’ll fix you right up. Depend upon it!

We get a steady, ominous zoom into your staring, pathological face from all the way across the food court. Your face is obliterated by a searing white light. The white light blazes like the sun. For a moment we get a full-on shot of the noonday sun itself but then it fades into a painted sun that’s an element of a tacky mural depicting the complex of mall buildings in a festive, prosperous relationship with the rest of the city. We cut to a reverse angle of the mall cop motoring straight towards the camera. The two wheeled conveyance is smoking and sparking. We cut to your deranged laughing face in close-up. We get a majestic slow motion shot of the mall cop getting engulfed in flames while still racing along. And then we’re looking at the mural again as the burning mall cop crashes into the mural. Spectacular explosion optical.

Jump cut to your dour face. And then we see the mall cop totally not on fire, puttering along, rack focus to the mural. Go to a close-up of your dour face. And then we go wider to see you grabbing up a paper plate with someone’s pepperoni pizza slice. Extreme close-up of you stubbing out your cigarette in the cheese. A distraught father’s face. An angry mother’s face. A confused daughter’s face. The paper plate with the ruined slice drops onto the table where the family unit sits. We get a shot of you stalking away into the vast mass of shoppers. 

Jump cut to an empty food court. It’s like everyone just got blinked away to a most distant lost and found. 

Close-up of a painted sun.

Not even a memory of a single battle fought. 

Never mind the fact that you found no glory that day.

Surely a great lie would’ve worked itself into the fabric of things . . . except it didn’t.

End with a shot of a long abandoned arcade and then a long abandoned kiosk and then a blazing noonday sun inside of which we see the sketchy outlines of your angry face . . . and then a full cosmic blackout.

F.A.Q. #5:

Q: Why do people choose disgusting potato salad or repugnant coleslaw when delicious mac’n’cheese is pretty much always available?

A: Dude! I was just about to ask you the same thing!

THINGS NEVER SAID #28:

“My punchbowl puncheth over!”

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #137:

JOKER SEQUEL BOMBS SO HARD IT DESTROYS FABRIC OF REALITY AND BECOMES #1 AT THE BOX OFFICE.

BENIGN AND/OR INANE CONSPIRACIES #12:

They weren’t killing robots in Voltron . . . but you didn’t hear that from me . . .

YOUR DRAWING PROMPT #46:

Self-sharpening clown waves.

THE SECRETS OF FINAL TOWN 40

 

LOADING SCREEN WISDOM #33:

CAST OUT THE GODS AND TRY ANSWERING YOUR OWN PRAYERS FOR A CHANGE. YOU MIGHT LIKE IT.