Labyrinths (That Suck) by Mark Linzee Rudolph

HYPERLOOP TO NOWHERE

The Transatlantic Hyperloop was financed by the great quantitative easing of 20XX and funded by a consortium of sovereign funds, investment banks, and the EU. The visionary planner was Elon Musk, a South African con man who got lucky once with PayPal. The undersea tunnel promised to travel from St Johns, Newfoundland to Clifton, Ireland in just 90 minutes! This was the same transatlantic route taken by aviators Alcock and Brown in a modified Vickers Vimy bomber in 1919. A slightly thinner and less drunk Winston Churchill greeted them with a ten thousand pound prize.

Quite a challenge! The Atlantic Ocean is as deep as four miles. 1890 miles of tunnel need to be drilled. The cost of a relatively modest California hyperloop was estimated to cost $13 million per mile. They said it couldn’t be done! And…… Predictably, the venture went bust after 100 miles. A platform above the ocean was installed. The Hyperloop’s final destination is now the middle of nowhere, surrounded by rough sea. The bag holders who own this disaster are rumored to be ‘a secret group of Libertarians,’ (possibly the very same charlatans who created this disaster in the first place.) They are attempting to make bitter lemonade out of this lemon. The result is the world’s most depressing combination of a casino, a money-laundering haven lacking the Swiss charm, and a huge, airport-like waiting room — a Sartrean Huis Clos in the middle of a windy, rainy hellscape.

Libertarian propaganda is the only decoration to be found in the dark, concrete train stop. The train to nowhere takes 4-5 hours because, of course, the train does not travel anywhere close to hyperspeed due to

what is euphemistically known as “construction flaws.” Once you arrive at the quixotically named Rest Stop No. 1 you walk upstairs to a waiting room. You immediately notice horrible aching sounds echoing throughout the tunnel reminiscent of the Titanic as it slowly broke apart. Your tour guide unconvincingly assures you these sounds are “normal,” and that you are, in fact, standing in one of the greatest engineering marvels the world has ever seen (save for the fact that it is a failure). The crowd herds into the dull, undecorated waiting room with the cheapest, epilepsy-inducing fluorescent lighting available. A sad sign says, “Welcome to Alcock Island!” (The project was once called Alcock & Brown, in honor of the aviators, but eventually, Brown was given the boot from that honorarium in the service of brevity.) The world’s only artificial island nation! This is a bit of a stretch since the “island” is merely a modified oil-drilling platform. Another sign claims, “The Transatlantic Hyperloop, COMING SOON!” This might be plausible If your definition of “soon” is sometime in the next 10,000 years. A disturbing alarm sounds. It is time for an even worse hell ride: the elevator trip to the top of nowhere. Since the elevator shaft is ten times higher than the tallest skyscraper, the elevator resembles the cut-rate airplane cabin of the future. Rows of uncomfortable “standing seats” four inches deep leave just enough room to park half of your buttocks. Nonetheless, you must wear a seatbelt. Vomiting appears to be a regular occurrence, as your elevator attendants brusquely hand out not one, but two stomach distress bags for each person. Also, there is this reassuring announcement: “Our guests who have a history of incontinence are

encouraged to wear complimentary adult diapers OVER their pants!” The twenty-minute ride to the surface is like circling LaGuardia, only the compression on your body is ten times worse. Your kishkes feel like they’re being microwaved. Your ears feel like Blofeld’s headphones with spikes are attached to your head. Despite assurances that the “elevator cabin” is pressurized “for your comfort” (as if they are doing you a huge favor) you still feel like Chuck Yeager testing an X1 at high altitude. Upon exiting, the group splits into two factions. Those who “lost control” (and boy, you can smell it every time) are ushered into the bathrooms where they are given brown paper towels with the texture of sandpaper. More humiliating, they are given identical crimson adult pajamas with heart prints to wear, marking them with the scarlet symbol that they crapped their pants. (No laundry service is available. The soiled clothes are unceremoniously wrapped in plastic bags.) The other faction of tourists head to the casino bar where they can smoke and get a drink. The casino is as depressing as an Idaho gaming room in a strip mall. A dozen or so “regulars,” all of them elderly, all wearing the scarlet pajamas of shame, languidly pull one-armed bandits, fully expecting to lose. A few prostitutes lazily cruise the scene. They are mostly Eastern Europeans and Russians, and a few are Thailanders recruited from some Wanna Hump-Hump bar. They are conspicuous because they appear to be wearing several pounds of makeup and seem to bathe in moderately priced perfume. They wear tacky mini-skirts (that reveal some disturbing bruises) and imitation fur coats––not because

they are PETA members but rather, as “Natasha” puts it bluntly, “Easier to clean come off poly-blend.” Once your festinating gait has subsided, you walk out of the casino and notice the only other populated establishment: “The First Bank of Alcock.” You see, the Alcock, the artificial island in the sea is an independent, wholly corporate owned island-nation. That means money laundering and tax evasion are a major source of revenue. Arabs in white thwabs and garishly dressed, overweight Russians file in and out of the VIP lounge, suitcases in hand. You never see these people with the rabble on the train; they are flown in by helicopter. The rest of Alcock resembles an empty, dying mall.

Congratulations, you now have twelve hours to kill. The train makes only one round trip daily. There are only two restaurants, possibly the only Tony Roma’s that exists anymore, and a Burger King that cannot make any burgers,

only a variety of fried chicken sandwiches and their vile “Veal Parmers.” Despite the installation of a tuned mass damper (a counterbalance device used in steel skyscrapers to prevent those on the upper floors from feeling seasick), there is a feeling you are not on terra firma. One can perceive mini waves that slowly ripple in your gimlet and in your gut. As you walk, you can feel drunk while otherwise being sober. You notice that there are very few windows. This is because gusts can regularly sustain 60 miles per hour. You can hear the wind whistling angrily. Also, there is nothing to see but grey, wet fog. TERMINAL HOTEL Oh, did I mention there is a hotel above the mall? There is a floor for workers who must remain on this godforsaken rig. A few banking customers and tax dodgers bed down when they are doing multi-day transactions. Then there are the tourists. Suicide tourists. These are not the cancer-ridden patients who fly to Switzerland. These are a peculiar type of Russian Roulette player. Welcome to the world’s premier strangubation tourist site! Autoerotic asphyxiation is very popular on Alcock Island. A bellboy explains: “All of them are men, middle-aged, many elderly. They are always alone. They buy some meth at the pharmacy, then go to their hotel rooms, snort up, strip down, and hang themselves partially on the closet rod until they either come or come to Jesus. The death of actor David Carradine in Bangkok highlighted this rather depressing variation in sexual mania.

The bellboy continues, “The thing I don’t get is that men travel these far distances, just so they can jag off while partially hanging themselves, all alone in a hotel room closet. Some of them try to hire hoo-ers to watch them, but that’s one kink the ladies won’t do. They don’t want to get involved.” Sometimes the swingers blab their unsolicited and unwanted confessions to the bellboys and staff. “They say that oxygen depravation releases endorphins. They say it’s the ultimate high,” claims a Porter. Well, whatever floats your boat, but if you “drown” in your pursuit of the ultimate freak, the staff of the Alcock has a procedure down pat. Bizarre legal notifications decorate this Libertarian dystopia. At the hotel front desk, a large disclaimer notes “Attention visitors, all suicide tourists who expire on the territory of The Alcock will be buried at sea. Absolutely no

exceptions. Thank you for not dying! Sincerely, The Management.” “We got a blue-baiter” or “we got a cold roper in room 66” are common expressions radioed into the corporate police force, which is overwhelmingly staffed by menacing Malaysian men with thin mustaches. Mechanically, the police bring a stretcher to the room, cut down the cold-case (rope still attached to the neck). A blanket is tossed over the failed thrill seeker. The body is taken to the same overworked doctor who performs the world’s fastest autopsy. The doctor checks for lack of pulse, observes the noose and the swollen priapism. Bored, he stamps papers in triplicate. “Suicide chump,” growls our Dr. Benway. He toe-tags the stiff. Organs, tissue and bones are harvested and put on ice. Lickedy split, the body is wheeled to the garbage dump. A special ejector device catapults the naked body unceremoniously into the sea, providing nourishment for the bristleworms below. The Alcock’s health clinic is unusually busy for such a short stay crowd, and with good reason! All substances, controlled or otherwise, are available. The doctor never looks at his patients, just presses buttons on a computer pad. The time from “diagnosis” to pill bottle in hand takes five minutes. You’ll probably need something extra to combat the desolation of Alcock Island. In the name of Libertarianism, assorted quack cures are also available: Botox injections; live rabies; anti-aging procedures such as the Voronoff xenotransplantation (grafting of monkey balls onto humans); ‘young blood’ transfusions from eager teens seeking cash; human tissue and organ 8

transplantation from unfortunate Chinese prisoners; male enhancement-- saline testicle injections and penis enlargement grafts from ‘volunteer’ donors–are also available. The resulting phallus could be attractive--that is if your partner is the bride of Frankenstein. All modern day Sophists are allowed the free exercise of their beliefs. All religions and therapies are really the same thing: variations of the Hindu money burning ceremony. (The cash is counterfeit and symbolic, your real assets are quickly wired into the Alcock’s many bank accounts.) For women: rib removal, anal bleaching, wrinkle cauterization, lifts, tucks, and foot binding are available; all to please the ideal of psychologically disordered fashion editors and designers who, themselves, hide behind wigs and snowgoggle sized sunglasses. Finally, it is time to take the elevator to the train, to return to the green grass of home and the comfort of family. There is no elevator. There is no Hyperloop. You are already on Alcock Island. We are already here.

XENOARCHIEOLOGY OF EARTH: A SEMI PRIMATIVE CULTURE

Eye-uh-rus (IRS) was a capricious birdgod who demanded confessions of “incoming” invisible money from a late-era earth people known as the ooh-sey (USA). Millions of these confessions have been found on earth. As depicted by its priests, Eye-uh-rus carries a scale from its huge jowl. The right side of the image promises the "swift wing" of vengeance for scofflaws; the left side offers the olive branch of peace for those who confess fully. The significance of the scale is not known. Some note that the ooh-sey believed they needed to “balance” the invisible money they issued. Other speculate it represents the capricious nature of Eye-uh-rus. Like the Inca, great importance was placed on astrological events. A date near the spring equinox was known as “The Line of The Dead” which could not be crossed without confessing to eye-uh-rus. Hundreds of different four-digit labeled forms were created by the priests. Similar to the Egyptians of the pyramids, complex spells were created to ward off the wrath of Eye-uh-rus while conveniently entrenching the power of the priesthood. -10-

Similar to Catholic theology, the ooh-sey could receive indulgences for good works and charity. Other "credits" were more obscure and weren’t even understood by the people of earth (such as “depletion allowances” and “intangible drilling rights”). HARMONIC DISCOVERY CAUSED RECONSIDERATION Earth was considered to be a primitive culture until a wandering spacecraft with a crude audio device was discovered. The performance of the earth muse called “Throw-Away Little-Fruit” (also known as “Chuck Berry”) was found to have the resonant a-a4-d-e-e7 chord progression venerated by higher civilizations. We now believe earth was only semi-primitive and was technologically advanced in some areas; however, blood sacrifice was still practiced and promoted by the cult of Nero (NRA) and many others.

Xenoarchaeology of Earth

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CHARLIE, THE SACRIFICIAL TUNA

Blood sacrifice appears frequently in Earth cultures. The Mayans considered it an honor to undergo open-heart surgery atop a pyramid. A Roman cult believed that a crucified prisoner transubstantiates into flavorless bread to consume. The USA (ooh-sey) simply flooded the population with weapons and “allowed” human sacrifice to occur. While much is known about highly selective universities and the advantages they would offer concerning social status and invisible money earning potential, less is known about the practice of highly selective blood sacrifice. One of Earth’s myths by the ancient poet Leo Burnett concerns a Scombridae named Charlie. Charlie has acquired the human language organ and articulates his desire to sacrifice himself. He longs to be speared, decapitated,

eviscerated, chopped into pieces, boiled and canned for human consumption. Charlie augments his application with cultured extracurricular activities such as painting and reading French philosophy. Nevertheless, he is rejected by the elite institution Starkist with a form letter, “Sorry CHARLIE.” An omniscient voice announces this tautology: Starkist doesn't want tunas with good taste, Starkist wants tunas that taste good. Two themes are present here: Anti-intellectual, antioutsider bias, and the tradition of “legacy” admissions. Clearly, Charlie is suspected of being from the “wrong tribe,” possibly a crypto-sardini. An additional, unverified myth suggests that a vengeful Charlie later contaminated his brethren with mercury so that no human could ever partake in any tuna sacrifice.

STRIP MALL MAN A play in one act.

(PR NewsWire) FENIX REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT TRUST Announces the suspension of its dividend to concentrate on the revitalization of its properties. FENIX operates “Strip Malls” in six states. Its visionary founder and CEO Sam Sell Jr. is committed to revitalizing the community strip mall that he relished as a young boy. FENIX. It’s just like the bird Phoenix that rose from the ashes. Except this company is spelled FENIX! Legal warning: this release contains forwardlooking statements (SNIP). CONSULTANT #1: “Don’t even ask why it's spelled that way. Do you know how many LLCs in Delaware are called Phoenix? The owners are always surprised; they truly think they’re the first to have this idea.” (Sam Sell Jr. sits at the conference table in front of the third consulting agency he has hired in two years. Slamming the table top with his fist, he exclaims,) SAM SELL: DAMN, WE GOTTA REVITALIZE THESE MALLS, TOOT-SWEET! Who is this creative destruction guy? CONSULTANT #2: Joseph Schumpeter. SAM SELL: Well, I’d like to creatively destruct his endocrine system, blood vessel by blood vessel!" CONSULTANT #2: Too late, died in 1950.” SAM SELL: Yeah, all of the so-called geniuses are dead. Me also. Inside. SAM SELL: (Bragging and bemoaning) How do you like this timing, February 20th, 2009, I went all in. March 6 was the stock market bottom. I said America is too big to fail; the Fed will just print more money loan it out and get those animal juices flowing. Jeez, if I’d just bought a

stock index fund, I would be a rich-rich man but noo. I said distressed malls, and you know why? Because people are always going to need STUFF. Now…give me credit, I stayed away from the mega malls. I bought up strip malls. ‘In. Out. Stuff.’ That was my sales pitch. We met a couple of times with that shyster Eddie Lampert, the hedge fund wiz who bought K-Mart and Sears in bankruptcy. He was good at engineering short squeezes, but I don’t think he fundamentally understood retailing–or being human for that matter. We said, “Sears is the anchor tenant of most large scale malls. Mr. Lambert, what are your intentions about turning your stores around. Why should we buy these malls? He would just say, “Oh, I have a few tricks up my sleeve. In ten years they’ll be calling me ‘Eddie Buffet.’ But my ideas are the proprietary intellectual property of ESL investments.” Then he would recite three paragraphs of Ayn Rand bullshit; then he would end the meeting with, “You watch, Sears’ stock will be up 3-4 percent in the pre-market tomorrow. We’re going to bang the shorts with a preannouncement that we only lost 2/3 of street expectations and please don’t call your broker in Frankfurt. That is, if you have a broker in Frankfurt! So, next day he was right, but I never believed his pitch. I don’t think he ever had a plan B for Sears. He advertised it as a real estate play, but he forgot to sell to a bagholder. One thing I’ve learned in 40 years, if you don’t know whom the bagholder is sitting there in the board room, then that bagholder is. . .your own self. -18-

Then Eddy re-bought the bankrupt Sears from himself. He shuffles paper and assets around, but there’s no there-there. Retailing ain’t high art like Heaven’s Gate. Bad analogy, I know. AutoZone, that was a good investment. Sure, you can order a pair of pants on Amazon. You try them on; they don’t fit. You throw it in a pile and think, “I can always mail them back and return them.” Ten years later you are a featured sickie on “Hoarding: Buried Alive.” But with a car, if you need a new timing belt for a 2002 Toyota Camry, you need the right part to make the car go. DAMN, WE GOTTA REVITALIZE THESE MALLS, TOOT-SWEET! When I was a boy. . .

CONSULTANT #1: (whispering) Here we go again. SAM SELL: I used to walk, walk mind you, to the Frigid Queen just to slurp a cherry phosphate with soft serve ice cream. Don’t people want something creamy and red anymore? Don’t people WANT anything anymore? Lyft? Uber? IN MY DAY we loved cars. We couldn't wait to drive–into a wall! ‘Bobby couldn't go fun truckin'–till he got THE VAN.’ In my day, there wasn't one wrecked Chevy Camero that didn't have come on the dashboard. Everybody was doin' it! The fuck and smash. Driving, pants pulled down, getting a handjob, driving on the on the wrong side of the road with the lights off. Getting a Garp job. On warm. Leatherette. The winner of the game would holler chicken. And cum. Innocent times indeed! We thought we were ahead of our time. Cutting edge. Avantgarde. Turns out, we were OF our time — no ‘ride sharing’ for us. 'Up next on Eyewitness News, a dangerous new teen trend inspired by an obscure British writer, what every parent must know. Film at ten!' Monkey see...monkey GOO! Innocent times indeed. CONSULTANT #2 (interrupting nostalgic tangent): Mr. Sell, are you really taking the money from the suspended dividend to revitalize Main Street?” SAM SELL: Hell no. Do I have a ‘kick me’ sign on my ass today, or is it just me? We hired lobbyists to get Federal money to revitalize, to bail us out!

See, when a spook gets a section 8 to live on Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard in some concrete tomb, that’s socialism. When a corporation sinks 2 billion into buying up strip malls, that’s an empowerment zone! Do you think I’m full of beans? Things were finally looking up when the headlines blared that Amazon was buying Whole Foods from John Mackey, another Ayn Rand retard; “My scales and I can calibrate them any way I want to because freedumb.” Penny ante stuff. Overpriced ‘organic vegetables’ which really means more fecal matter and E Coli because they aren’t irradiated. Next thing I know AMZN is ripping and ALL other retail is going down. Okay, I get it. People are lazy and want pallets, I mean pallets, of Wesson corn oil delivered to their front door for some unholy reason. People talk about “The Gaming Community.” Ha! Unemployed fat young men playing video games all day. Screw ‘em. My Mexicans work harder and don’t give me any guff. So—Amazon is now the Sears catalog in 1925. Fish swallow fish, regurgitate, etc. What does it mean? Answers, consultants, answers, please? CONSULTANT #3: In the ’20s, America was more rural. The Sears catalog delivered to Hicksville what you could only get in Chicago. SAM SELL: Okay, so history doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes with ‘OY LET,’ which is what we are all in now. So—what happened? What’s diff? CONSULTANT #3: The Great Depression happened in the 30s and, shall we say, dampened consumer spending. Big Keynesian spending

programs like World War II pulled us out the nosedive. We got to produce the products for all of the cities we decimated in the war, and programs like the FHA (guaranteed mortgages for white people) and the Eisenhower Highway program created suburbia. Pent up consumer demand facilitated Malls and superstores and those empty strips you now own. SAM SELL: Well, I can’t click my heels like Dorothy and summon Great Depression II and World War IV, and even if I could, I don’t have the time! This isn’t history! It doesn’t even rhyme. It’s like one of those Bob Dylan songs that don’t even bother to rhyme, and you can’t make out what the putz is singing about. GOD DAMN It, WE GOTTA REVITALIZE THESE MALLS! See the bullet? See the powerpoint demo? Stay on point! CONSULTANT #4: You could try Urbanism. You know, where people live and work in the same building, same neighborhood, like New York? The whole Jane Jacobs thing. Eyes on the street. Relaxed zoning ordinances? SAM SELL: Where I come from, only poor people live in the same building where they work; for instance, those prostitutes in the massage parlors, like the one Robert Krapp got caught in. They slept on the same massage tables. I don’t have time for your Urbanism. That’s Commie talk. CONSULTANT #3: Actually, it’s more Libertarian. A relaxation of zoning laws so that a city can grow organically and re-purpose through the years… -22-

SAM SELL: -23Let me say this about that. Everybody is for Libertarianism, until it comes to their own backyards. Suddenly, theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re all for zoning ordinances, covenants, police patrols, etc. People want rigid segregation of activities and interaction, or lack thereof. And they want their tax credits, Social Security, Medicare. Libertarianism is the unused exercise machine of ideologies; consigned to the garage sale of history. I will say this, thank God for cancer! Oncology centers are our biggest and most reliable clients. When we need business I say, squeeze me some more cancer juice! I love cancer juice in the morning! Payday loan centers are terrific unless some do-gooder re-enacts usury laws. Speaking of Libertarians: massage parlors. Rub n tug. Steady business, but if they get busted, goodbye lease. **** THE SON ALSO RISES (FINALLY) BOARD STENOGRAPHER: Mr. Sell, I hate to be that person, but a quorum of the board is not present. SAM SELL: Oh, I thought my worthless son had passed out on the floor? HAL FLAXMAN: 'Fraid not. INTERCOM: Mr. Sell, we have a situation outside. Your son just landed the helicopter in the parking lot, and the county police want to search the cockpit for drugs. Should I send your lawyer Ms. Polk to talk them out of it?

SELL: (conflicted) Any other time, I wouldn't save him, but that would mean my ex-wife would have to attend the board meetings. Yeah, send her out. Moose, could you accompany her with the "donation suitcase?" FLAXMAN: Sam, I don't like getting involved in your family affairs, but why do you let a young man with a history of abuse, of uh, recovery, why do you let him fly a helicopter? SELL: Because, as Freud would indubitably say, I hope he does a John John in the river. Moments later, a disheveled Sam Sell III walks in and collapses in a seat. SON: I think the helicopter needs, fuel, or something. Hiya Hal! Cleaned up any interesting murder scenes lately? SELL: Samuel, you have one job, and one job only: that you appear in person four, four times a year at the board meetings and be conscious enough to raise your hand present. SON: Present! Look I was shitposting online and reached level four in Active Shooter. How am I supposed to know what day it is? I lost my iPhone, and I don't have the time to do that 'find my iPhone' shit, that's nigger work! Wait, I meant to say, that's curry nigger work. It's Indians on HB-1 visas who do your I.T. shit? Right? See how correct I am? SAM SELL: Samuel, we talked about this. Daddy has changed his living trust. I'm giving away all of my money to Autism Speaks and The Cato Institute.

SON: Doubt it. Not with Mom owning 50% of the voting stock. Suck on it. Hey Dad, your royal board-members, I've got a great idea how to, uhh--monetize these malls. Step one: Insure the fuck out of them. Step two: Find some patsies, put ISIS shit on their phones. Step three: Blow them all up! SAM SELL: That's not funny. SON: Oh? It was pretty funny when you did the exact same thing in Camden! SAM SELL: That wasâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;â&#x20AC;&#x201C;Homeland Security declared that it was an act of terrorism. A disadvantaged African American man was radicalized online, and he chose our mall... SON: Yeah, sure. SAM SELL: He chose our mall because there was a Catholic Supply store in it. A nun was killed, and tens of thousands of communion wafers were desecrated. It was horrible! SON: Horribly profitable. SAM SELL: Samuel, your presence has been duly recorded. Now, if you can't maintain a civil tongue, I would suggest you take one of your legally prescribed sedatives and lay down on the couch. SON: Now that's the best idea you've had all year. I am present! Whatever the genius Sam Sell says, I am for it. Goodnight sweet prince.

***** SAM SELL DESCRIBES ASS CAR WASHES SAM SELL: Senior daycare. You know what that is? Those are nursing homes for people who are too cheap to put their mother in a real nursing home and are counting down the days that they can inherit the family house. They’re car washes for senior citizens. The adult children bring in their 300-pound mothers and say, “Here you go, she can take her giant morning dump here, and you can clean her ass while I go to work.” Then she gets to play good daughter by feeding her 2 for 1 Little Caesars pizzas at night. The staff trusses the grandmas up in slings, have them defecate in a toilet the size of a wading pool, then they crank them over to the bathing pool, immerse them and bring out the cleaning brushes, dry them off, put ‘em in diapers and robes, set them in front of TVs showing Matlock and Match Game reruns, then wait for the dear daughters to pick them up. Day in. Day out. It’s a good business, but we need more government subsidies so people can pay for these places. SAM SELL: (pensive) So, if I may cut to the chase, what you learned gentlemen from elite consulting firms, what you are saying is we need more government cheese? We need to lobby for more programs like Senior Daycare, and a museum of skateboarding or God knows what; because there aren’t enough things that people want to go out and buy at a strip mall unless Uncle Sam is supplying the dough—correct? (mad) -26-

You all blow. You make me want to sneeze. I’m the firecracker, and you’re the wet match. Are the beautiful people in the sewers now, and the turds on the cover of Glamour? Dammit, I'm paying you people to CON-SULT, not to IN-SULT. Dammit, WE GOTTA REVITALIZE BLAH BLAH BLAH! Strip owners don’t have the ammo to band together and lobby. We’re not Boeing, you know. Hell, they’re all cheapskates, and I ought to know. We need to sneak some pork into a highway appropriation bill; otherwise, we’re toast. We need a 3 AM hick congressman to warble "I may just be an ole country lawyer, but a comma looks misplaced on page 561 of this here 'propriation bill. Let me slip a corrected draft which I jus' happen to have for such occasion." In 2009, oil was cheap. I could have bought the sure thing. Everybody needs energy. But no, I bought the sure thing that people no longer want or need. Now I’m just another whorehouse owner at Mar a Lago. I’m just another schmuck looking for a handout. If I went with energy, all of the pork and intangible drilling expenses have already been lobbied for and signed into law. I don’t even get a thrill anymore slapping a late payment surcharge on a tenant. I no longer dye my side hair to match my toupée. I mean ‘hair system.” I could have been classless. I could have been nobody, instead of a rich bum, which is what I am, let’s face it. (The consultants nod their heads.) SAM SELL: Well don’t agree with me too much!

Premise Substitution Two forms of (now fading) writing, sports reporting and commercial pornography, described physical interaction on a moment-by-moment, play-by-play basis. By 1970 the two genres seemly intersected. In short: pornography became more like sports reporting, and sports reporting became more like pornography (not intentionally prurient, but rather florid in its description and pretentious metaphors) Tender Was The Huddle augments, only slightly, the repressed homoeroticism of sports reporting. Juanita's Wild Substitution Activities cuts up the "action" from the ludicrous adult book store novel It's Donkey Time! and substitutes the pornographic premise with events concerning psychotherapy, city real estate speculation and fast food. The result is both G Rated and wildly absurdist.

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Tender Was The Huddle November 25, 1971 Heavens to Omaha if Rodgers didn't make it with Greg Pruitt down on him. He took the blow, spun around on his own 30-yard line, and planted his left hand on Pruittâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s turgid manhood to keep from falling. Strangely, Pruitt's licks only turned Rodgers away from the grasp of another lunging Oklahoma top man, Ken Jones. With that, however, he set hanky to the right. But just as quickly he then darted back to the left, through a whole cluster of aroused team members. There the minuet ended. Rodgers was open and close to the flow of primal urges that had developed, heading for the left sideline. The ref inserted the red handkerchief in his back left pocket. The huddle was tender and orgiastic, a celebration of masculinity and liberation. 29

Juanita’s Wild Substitution Activities!

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…Juanita had turned full circle, letting everyone admire her from all sides. Now she turned toward the Freudian analyst and rose up onto her tiptoes. He placed his mitts on her checkbook and her slim discretionary income parted. The Freudian analyst stuck his snout into her financial affairs and sniffed; then his long, red tape contract slid out, and he begged her for obligation. Belinda squirmed in vicarious excitement, all soft and feminine under that raincoat, but no one was looking at her because she was wearing the death mask of Oliver Cromwell. Tom Carvel was happy to see his Ice Cream was selling well (its main ingredients were high fructose corn syrup and Soylent™). Tom, despite himself, was getting pretty interested in the proceedings on the stage, too. Juanita was riding slowly up and down, rubbing her Immanuel Kant against the Freudian analyst's muzzle. Her lithe hips shot out from side to side and she displayed her groin injury to Whipple, Lipschitz, Polk & Beins for possible litigation. They could all see the overpriced Freudian analyst's heavy-handed collection agency slip into her open postal-slot, gliding through her rubber-lips and into her inner folded laundry-folds. His nostrils flared, and he slobbered Jungian lingo into Juanita's cochlea. His Barbisol lathered her crotch, mixing with the creamy seepage from Tom Carvell's Cookie O'Puss ice cream. V8-juice pooled onto the beast's questing tongue and dripped from the upcurled edges as Herbert Marcuse slurped a 7-11 Slurpee. "Ummmm," Juanita purred, playing to the audience of but obviously enjoying it as well.

"Lucky girl?" Belinda sighed. Tom rolled his eyes. "What could a guy do with a girl like Belinda?" he wondered. Moist sounds of soft rock drifted out of the transmitter in Juanita's groin as the Freudian analyst plied her with invoices. His tongue slurped pedantic phrases, and her Kant squished Cranapple-juice from Ocean Spray. She lathered, rinsed, and repeated her dark Australianâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;bush with her Head and Shoulders. Ribbons of the pearly nectar ran down the insides of her Playtex Living Bra. The Freudian analyst ducked his head down and reminded her of the overdue invoice, then wedged his snout into her credit rating and her fulsome assets again. Gripping him by his long ears, Juanita ground Immanuel Kant against her passbook savings account statement, her brokerage account churning. The Freudian analyst was responding to her windfall profits. The stock market bulls heaved and panted, and his Morgan Stanley account was swelling steadily. Belinda bit her lip in suspense, watching the Freudian analyst's net worth swell to gigantic proportions. His hairy hairbrush drew slowly back, unrolling from his block-head. His naked slab of rhetorical toothpaste came squeezing out. His doorknob was dark gray, and a few flecks of pre-war lead paint were falling from his Manhattan townhouse, lowering his property values. His ego looked big, swollen so huge that John Wayne was standing bowlegged around it. Belinda had one hand dipped inside her raincoat. Tom could see the coat moving and realized that she was playing with her Bloomingdale's charge card. But he couldn't really blame her. His interest rates were starting to lower, too. Juanita, jerking her restraining order in the Freudian

analyst 's face tilted sideways and looked into the financials. She saw that his Philip Johnson was almost fully erect now, and knew that it was time to add the finishing touches to the dull glass skyscraper. [WLP&B legal notification: This is not an offering which can be made by prospectus only.] The girl was truly enjoying his tongue and pastrami from Katz's and was reluctant to stop that juicy action but Maria, the star of the show – whom Juanita both admired and envied and hoped, in due course, to replace – would be waiting to come on. She worked her lathered Head and Shoulders on Eric Burdon & the Animals' egg cream streaked wah wah pedal for another moment, then pulled her Prune Smoothie away with a slurp. Albert Einstein's tongue shot out for a last parting photo op but, well aware of what the next part of the show would be, made no attempt to chase after Juanita's Grand Unified Theory. Juanita turned and tilted her crotch up, letting the fascinated spectators see how her open textbook was all drenched with Lacanian drivel. She ran one hand up the inside of her thigh and then stroked her Cookie Puss cake, massaging the slobber into her manila legal envelope folds and pulling on the stiff, pulsating express mailbox. Colonel Sanders appeared with a bucket of extra crispy. She brought his hand up to her lips and licked at his greasy fingers. Several men groaned. The transmitter in Juanita's groin announced "101.9 WPIX. Your ‘X' wants you back!" then transitioned into Air Supply's Making Love Out of Nothing at All. The rasp of a few zippers could be heard, as flies were opened by a dipterist and Hummers were produced on an assembly line in Shreveport, Louisiana. -33-

Belinda glanced around, interested. But those were mere men's Hummers with poor gas mileage, and she looked back at the Lacanian Analyst and clutched her pocketbook tightly under her raincoat. Belinda was really excited by this time; her Immanuel Kant action figure nite lite was glowing between her shapely thighs. It was too bad that she had come with Tom, she thought. It would be fun to strip him naked and finger-lickin' good Kentucky Fry Tom to critical yet stable condition right there in the barn. But she knew that prudish Tom would not approve. The situation built towards climax. The galactic rooster appeared. "That is a big cock," said Belinda. However, it is not so much the thickness as it is the authority of Lacanian metaphor. Steve rammed his pretextual theory into the groin of the subdialectical slot that was oozing with surplus jouissance and stretched his hungry inviting analysis towards a penetrative construct of post-prick class theory that invites the reader to tickle a pretextual metaphor to reconsider epistemology in light of her Kant and her sandwich of love, that is, her jouissance, by means of subdialectical theory. **** The previous morning Juanita was driving down Main Street and pulled into the "Beatific Burger" restaurant. Juanita moved up the fast food car lane for her xtra large coffee light w/ Sweet n Low. Gracefully she parked the cup between her knees. The animal at the window handed her the change with interest. She squeezed the cup and the lid that claimed, "The beverage you are about to enjoy has a thermal temperature of the surface of Venus" flew off and a spray of boiling java scalded her groin spectacularly. Her thighs felt like General Westmorland had ordered a napalm strike inside

her pants. Her groin throbbed red with agony. Her veins and nerve receptors sent a message to her hippocampus that she was in extreme pain. She arched her neck. "Moron!" she shouted in shrill shrieking terror. "CALL 911!" BUTâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;â&#x20AC;&#x201C;she should have also called Whipple, Lipschitz, Polk & Beins. We are a white-shoe law firm who are not afraid to get our wingtips dirty! Have you been injured in an accident? Have you been psychically injured in life? Did you suffer irreparable harm by virtue of mere sentience? Did you enter into a consensual contract to have been born in the first place? We can help. We are Whipple, Lipschitz, Polk & Beins. Our Lawyers love lustily. Our summations are rhapsodies of consensus facit legem! Your arguments against our advertisements are deficient! There is "no objection" to the consensus that Whipple, Lipschitz, Polk & Beins quantum meruit their weight in gold! Call for a consultation, and we will recite to you all the Latinisms we know of, free of charge!

ORANGE IS THE NEW IVY -36ÂŠ 20XX, UrbanBaby Ambitious helicopter mothers no longer try to get their special snowflakes into Harvard, Yale or Vassar! America's top prisons and penitentiaries are the new institutions where the elite come to network. Cheating scandals, sexual harassment, and financial crimes have caused a reconsideration of the traditional metrics of achievement and status. Parents of privilege and connections are now having their congressmen write appeals such as this: Dear Honorable Judge Thelonious T. Betts, I'd like to introduce you to a vicious young hoodlum by the name of Channing Philpot IV. He is certainly a discredit to his community; he has excelled in all forms of crimes and is certainly unworthy of continuing to be allowed amongst the general population. At the tender age of 7, he was discovered whipping his goldfish with an improvised cat oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; nine tails. By age 11, he had graduated to vivisecting the family dog while making references to Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea. By age 15, he had nearly succeeded in starting World War III by hacking Pakistan's defense computers. The world can be grateful that A.Q. Khan didn't quite have the "I.Q." to make the fuel boosters on Karachi's rockets fully operational. While attending Horace Mann (under probation!), he texted a bomb threat and upon evacuation, irradiated the library, leaving books unreadable for the next 3000 years. Hazmat teams discovered his calling card, a conspicuously opened

Jean Genet book with an underlined passage that stated, crime affirms existence! Certainly, it is time to teach this ruffian a lesson! I would recommend he be sentenced to Sing Sing for no less than four years. Yours truly. Representative Eliot L. Engel U.S. Congress, 16th district, New York (P.S., while I strongly advise the above, the secondary preference would be the "safety prisons" of Auburn, Attica, or Danbury.)

The Lively Arts Reviews In Brief

THE GODZILLA ADJUSTER Predictably, Thomas Pynchoff’s long-gestating previously unpublished novel about an insurance adjuster who is sent to asses the damage done by Godzilla sounds more interesting in concept than execution. In his research, Pynchoff had over 300,000 pages of Japanese actuarial tables translated for him and is reluctant to spare us the details! Godzilla’s burn victims allude to Hiroshima, but by the 700th page the reader tires of the minutia of iodine inventory supply chains in Kamakura. Pynchoff’s interest in the Japanese S&M underground of the 1950’s provides comic relief when the American insurance adjuster (the lazily named ‘Bob Funnyname’) must determine if a death was caused by erotic strangulation or Godzilla’s foot crushing the victim. When a method for killing Godzilla is discovered, Japan rejects it and allows him to live—so as to give the Japanese people a sense of purpose. As always, Pynchoff proves he is the cleverest Cornell grad who never understood what Nabokov was saying, but the joke is entirely on us.

I find dreams to be idiotic pieces of drivel, full of ludicrous dialogue and improbable situations! Also, some of the women in my dreams are spiritually and physically repellant, particularly women with bulbous noses and blubbery lips. These criticisms are, I believe, valid. If these women were in other people's dreams, one could argue I criticize ad hominem. However, these women are in MY dreams, ergo, their lack of ease on my (closed) eyes is fair game. Only the early work of a few Swedish and Italian dreams I had a half-century ago showed any promise of being true art. But what since then? Dime store Freud and shabby surrealism. Hans Richter insisted that there were dreams that money could buy. Personally, I wouldn't pay two cents for them. Dreams are a prank of nature, produced by Timothy Leary and written by Harold Pinter. Their seeming profundity is only due to the psychedelic drugs fulgurated by the brain during REM sleep. They are tales told by a middlebrow, signifying only platitudes. -41-

Space Cat Visits Bergen Belson challenges humanityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s propensity for sentimentality and brutality; that the same species can imagine both death camps and cute kittens exploring outer space is an enigma of the human condition.

COMICS

Hyperloop To Nowhere

10. Xenoarchieology of Earth IRS birdgod / Charlie the Sacrificial Tuna 14. Strip Mall Man, a play 30. Juanita's Wild Substitution Activities 38. Fake Reviews 43. Comics