Two walks, a train, one thot, and a tape

Here’s the next page in the drawing book that I was recently gifted (can you tell my interest is waning? the last try was last week) – each blank page has a prompt written in the corner; this one’s is: “Looking through a keyhole”. (I will sell it for six-six-six dollar sign upside-down.)

Dear diary,

It’s been almost one full day since I talked to myself here. What have I been up to?

Well I’ve been feeling annoyed at various things. I felt annoyed when I heard my neighbors shut their door. I felt annoyed when I saw a parked car with a woman sitting inside who was staring at her phone, and she was using her two big thumbs to swipe the screen, and her car was running and it was loud because it lacked a muffler. And I felt annoyed that someone stuck a “Help Wanted” sign in the snowbank by our apartments’ mailboxes so it’s the first thing that you see when you leave the driveway – I wish I would’ve gotten out of my car and snatched that sign and thrown it in the fire, right when I saw it yesterday; I feel like I committed an act of immorality by letting it live.

Or I should enlarge this entry’s obligatory image above, and print it on a big piece of paper, and staple it over the top of the sign, so that everyone in my complex can become as annoyed as I am.

But re: “What have I been up to, since the last time I weblogged?” – I also was able to enjoy a couple strolls outdoors. I don’t mean that I went out into the woods and navigated myself to Japan using only the zodiac. Nor did I swing my rifle over my shoulder and invite my 40-year-old hunting companion along with me to shoot grouse.

To follow the Daughters of Albion as the hound follows the scent / Of the wild inhabitant of the forest…

(That last sentence referred to Turgenev’s tales, but the quoted lines are from what I happened to read in Blake’s Jerusalem this morning.) No, in Minnesota, if you so much as open your front door to pick up your newspaper, you risk freezing to death. It’s often too cold to maintain your vital signs, even if all you do is look out your front window – especially if you happen to spot some lady in a parked car gawking at her phone.

But what I’m trying to say is that the last couple days were mild enough, temperature-wise, for me to visit, simply and comfortably, two local parks:

The first walk was uneventful, so I’ll record the details that I remember. The path goes in a circle around a sizeable lake, and there were snowmobile tracks everywhere—very ugly. Snow looks better when it’s smooth, untouched by anything other than the wind.

The children from the homes on the far side of the common ground between our duplexes also came out and played in the snow on Sunday and ruined the landscape, like mini snowmobiles. ...But this is a diversion; let’s return to our Park Stroll One of Two:

We encountered a lady who was walking her puppy without a leash, so the dog saw us (meaning me and my sweetheart—not the imaginary middle-aged pockmarked sportsman who accompanies me on hunts for blackcock, no, but my smooth-skinned ex-Baptist helpmate), I say, the unleashed puppy saw us and got excited and ran to greet us. Dogs do not understand that we’re no longer in paradise but now we live under the system of…

Dogs do not understand that to express this type of free love, of any creature for any other creature, is strictly forbidden. Only the Holy Market’s invisible hand must be placated ceaselessly, and ceaselessly licked… UNLESS the hand begins to favor foreign corporations unrelated to one’s own: then it’s bomb time.

Anyway, this woman yelled to her dog and said no, no, pup, and said puppy come back. And the dog didn’t listen, because dogs never do, although owners never learn this. And the woman caught a hold of the dog’s collar as we passed, and she latched the leash to it, and she faced us and smiled and explained “Sorry I wouldn’t have let her run free if I knew you were coming!” And I said, “No: you’re lying: you don’t give a fig about whether your dog jumps up and splashes mud on passersby.” Actually I didn’t say that, but I wish I had – my life is becoming a string of regrets: first the yard-sign that I neglected to destroy, and then this woman whom I smiled at instead of berating. Oscar Wilde writes as follows, in The Picture of Dorian Gray:

We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself…

& here’s the most (purposely) shockingly worded of William Blake’s “Proverbs of Hell”:

Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.

But I keep interrupting myself, and now I forgot what I wanted to say about the rest of that first walk...

Oh yes, now it comes to me: We eventually witnessed, in action, one of those snowmobiles that contributed to the unsightly tracks that marred the landscape surrounding the lake: This vehicle, this motorized culprit, was lime-yellow in hue, like a sick honeybee. And it sounded like an electric toothbrush when you remove it from your mouth. Not a very powerful motor; a whiny, puny sound, in fact. I wish misfortune upon the head of its driver.

He was speeding across the lake, whose surface was ice, and at first my prayer was “I hope he falls in,” but then I thought, “No, scratch that—cuz then I’d have to rescue him.”

Walk 2 of 2

And then our second walk was at a place called The Vermilion River in Farmington. It’s a beautiful scene. The water is outer-space black when viewed from a distance; then when you draw nearer, it becomes so clear that you can see straight down to the bottom. In the 2013 film Wrong Cops, when Officer Duke accidentally shoots one of his neighbors, his mother helps him lift the man into the trunk of his patrol car, after which he shruggingly announces: “I’ll dump him in the river.” (Spoiler alert.) I mention this detail only to point out that, whenever I end up meeting my own Officer Duke, I hope he’s able to dump me in THE VERMILION.

And we passed two guys on the trail there, and they didn’t look at us or wave or nod; even though we (they & us) were the only four people visible in any direction, out there in the tundra walking by the riverside, these guys didn’t acknowledge our existence. They were talking in hushed tones about something and gesturing carefully with their hands. They both wore square-shaped glasses with mega-thick frames; both were very young—I mean in their early 20s—and both sported rich, sable hairpieces that were styled like movie stars: slick but not greasy; very healthy looking, as if they’d been blow-dried and then given extra shine and body via professional beauty products. So my conclusion is that these fellows were CIA operatives.

The train

When we were walking on the long, straight part of the trail, which has vast cornfields on one side and a train track on the other, I heard a whistle in the distance, and I remarked to my sweetheart about how insistent it was: it kept whistling and whistling, over and over – so I said, “I wonder what the problem is,” and my sweetheart said, “That’s just a train whistle,” and I said, “I know it’s a train whistle, do you think I’m a fucking idiot!?—what I meant by my question is: I wonder why the whistle is blaring and droning so persistently, more than eight hundred million times total, rather than just twice or thrice,” and my sweetheart said, “That repetitive whistling is normal—my grandparents used to live by a train track—it was as close to their manor house as the opium den is to our apartment—and whenever we heard the whistle blaring like that—eight hundred million times, yes—grandma would say to us: ‘Do you kids wanna run out there and count the trains?’—so we’d go dash outside and watch the trains pass—that was Will’s favorite thing in the world, counting the trains.” (Will is my sweetheart’s little brother.) So I said:

“Counting the trains? You mean counting the cars of the train? That sounds like the stupidest idea ever. That sounds like a JOB rather than fun. Why wouldn’t you rather just look at the different cars as they pass: enjoy the varying sights, and marvel at all their colorful contents—one unit might contain wheat or hay bales... the next has a cage full of snakes... now here’s a bunch of odd mechanical devices for heavy-duty construction heaped in a pile... then comes a unit shaped like a giant soup bowl having a transparent dome for a top, and it’s filled with orzo pasta in bajan pepper sauce... lastly, just like in that film The Darjeeling Limited (2007), the caboose contains an entire life-sized jungle, with real rain droplets on the leaves, but everything seems to have been re-fabricated or synthesized by the painter Henri Rousseau (A.K.A. Le Douanier), and there’s a fuzzy tiger haunting the expanse, like the Devil.”

And then, just as I voiced that final word, the actual train that we’d been hearing came clanging by on our right, and we were maybe an hundredth of a verst away from it, so we could see each car clearly as it passed. First the engine: there was a man in a bright yellow vest who waved at us slowly—this reminded me of the fireman at the start of the movie Blue Velvet (1986)—& he wore a blue and white striped engineer’s cap, and he looked well-fed. The remainder of the cars were all identically bean-shaped: each one was pitch black and had the exact same label—CANADA petroleum DANGER keep away—this was printed on the side of all of the thirty-three units (I didn’t really count—that’s just an estimate, based on the number of malevolent beings who own our universe). Then, after the last of the cars had passed and the clamor died down, I turned to my sweetheart and quoted Officer Shirley Holmes from Wrong Cops:

Gary and Gary? That was boring.

(In the film, Holmes utters those words while leaving the aftermath of a crime that she and Officer De Luca were summoned to investigate. They’ve just finished visiting a house whose purported owner claims that the bloody corpse found on the floor is his next-door neighbor, whom he says used a spare key to enter the abode, while he, the homeowner, was taking his dog for a walk: “I can’t imagine why he had to come into my living room to kill himself.” And when questioned about the identity of his late neighbor, the guy replies: “His name’s Gary, just like me.” So I thought it was apt to echo Holmes’ complaint above, in my own case, since all of the train cars contained the same forest of the night… yet no burning Tyger.)

Thus I have fulfilled my obligation to the self-reminder that I wrote on the back of my hand after this event, which says in permanent ink now-blurred: “The endless hoot, & the train shipping oil up north.”

Closing thot

Beholding this majestic locomotive made me think about travel. I wish I were more of an adventurer. All I do is sit at home, hunched over a book all day. People who are imprisoned get to see more of the natural world than I do: that’s how scared I am to budge from the floor of my living room. I never take aeroplanes cuz I’m convinced they’ll crash. Altho I know that planes are statistically safer even than automobiles, I’m certain that my presence is anti-magical and will instigate malfunctions: I’m followed about by an aura of bad luck, my own personal thundercloud: wherever I’m at, all things go wrong. And I’ve heard horror stories about the passenger trains of my homeland – our infrastructure and public transit is worse than that in the country of Dystopia. So if you take a train from anyplace in the U.S.A. to anyplace else, say, from plaza A to plaza C, you won’t even get halfway to plaza B before the train screeches to a halt and a gang of stormtroopers stomps forth to inform you that you’ll have to hire an armored tank to lug you the rest of the distance.

But I’ve heard that in advanced (outlandish) nations they’ve utilized ultra-magnetic technology to engineer transport salons, or lounges that are shaped like freedom. And these new trains can easily travel faster than light. So, if I could ride in one of those, I would.

*

Now I’m getting tired of writing, so I’ll just tell you about one new film that we watched, because it flipped my lid; and then I’ll share the last track from my more-than-a-decade-old rap demo that I’ve been doling out piecemeal in the postscripts of my recent blog entries (it’s last in the sense that it’s the final track to be shared publicly here, but it’s actually the first with respect to its position on the album—for the first shall be last); so I’ll share the whole tape; & then I’ll leave you in peace.

Actually, instead, I’ll save my movie news for the next entry, because I predict that I’ll not be able to stop myself, after dropping the film’s name and offering you my semi-thought about it, from droning on into multifarious political opinions and further boring nonsense. So I’ll just stop this present post right here, and paste my rap demo. We can then have a modicum of blandness to look forward to tomorrow. Thank you for listening.

P.S. (a tape)

So here below is the full demo album that resulted when I asked my friend to use the cheesy “rap presets” on the music editing software of his 2004-model supercomputer to produce a masterwork for me. There are seven tracks, in all. And that same friend, whom I generically title “MCB’s producer,” also made the cover art (very quickly) by taking a photo of me on that day while I was rapping, and then adding the first background that appeared when he typed the phrase “enthusiastic audience” into an image search engine.

The first track ends with an ad-libbed chorus, which gives the album its name: it is purposely uninspired, because a lot of the rap albums that were released around this time had similarly mediocre titles, and I always like to follow the fads of the masses.

I uploaded the thing on both Bandcamp and YouTube. I’ll embed them both here, since it’s easy to paste the code. And I’ll copy the lyrics in full, because it pleases me to view text in Georgia font.

For those who prefer the tube:

For those who prefer the camp:

LYRICS:

1:
Back in Town

So who’s the best rapper of the universe
Wearing a star spangled shirt with a striped skirt
Oh that hurts cuz that’s your outfit too
But I have a better figure, dude

Here is a nice rap I wrote by hand
And that’s one thing I can’t understand
Why other rappers don’t write their verses down
They just go off the top of their head like clowns
Write your verse down before you rap
Cuz otherwise it’ll sound all wack
Don’t try to rap off the top of the head
Cuz that’ll sound wack like I just said
Cuz then your rap will lack form and structure
And it will not sound smooth and buttery
Like this rap I wrote by hand
Big shout out to the Wu-Tang Clan

Now I come in the party and start swinging my sword
Cuz this R&B music is making me bored
My beauty is uncomparable
I have terrible flaming auburn hairballs
Coming out of Faribault, North Dakota or those whereabouts
Now it’s time to pull a chair out
Cuz I’m tired of standing around and just rapping
Where is my paycheck I’m calling my daddy
Oh who left open the back gate
Now our slack jawed donkey escaped
Now I’m on the Dog Star aiming a moon at your house
Making you shout because I pulled your spouse
Into orbit using a tractor beam laser
Hold on a second yo that was my pager
OK and then I put your spouse back down
But that’s a mistake now she’s in the wrong town
So you try to shoot me with a magnet beam
But you accidentally hit a poplar tree
So I maneuver with skillful steering
And that’s how I stole your spouse’s earrings

MCB back in town
Holding the mike up and down
Back and forth people keep dancing
This is my chorus so make romancing

2:
Standing on My Two Feet

MCB
Standing on my two feet
Rapping with my one mouth
Making raps come out

Here I am the wedding planner with a knife
Traveling faster than the breed of lice
If I don’t get to be black when I play checkers
Then I’ll prune the feathers from off your fake leather
Now who’s the boss of the saucy rap
With a style that’s awesome but oddly wack
I’m riding my bicycle around at night
Fighting crime with a battery powered flashlight
Now I’m the cosmic androgyne forethought
Hanging Descartes by his rocks off the dock
Getting really mad cuz you spilled my ice cream
I’m like Whitesnake and he’s like pipe steam
Now I’ll end this off with a story
Once upon a time me and my friend Maury
Went to Africa where we found a beetle
Then we both got AIDS and killed some people

MCB
Standing on my two feet

If you steal my rap I will smack you
Then I’ll make you go clean my bathroom
Now I’m coming at you
Waving a mattress over my head
Looking for a place to rest
So I can lay my bed down
I’ve been awake for twelve moons
Running from hell goons and red clowns
Now I’m back with the real rap
Clamping my mouth shut like a steel trap
Can you feel that
Ah yeah that’s that funky stuff
That is ever so dainty like monkey fluff
This flower I picked for you out of my neighbor’s garden
Is smelling more better than garbage
Now I’m like a partridge
Which transformation was necessitated by the rhyming
          word I encountered

MCB
Standing on my two feet
Rapping with my one mouth
Making words come out

3:
Untitled (Skull Sucker Lollipops and Other Raps)

Skull sucker lollipop good to eat
They are nice and tasty plus juicy sweet
They look like a skull but taste like a sucker
And when you eat one you soon want another
Cuz they’re grape flavored with a paper pole holder
Purple on the back and white moreover
On the skull part that is super scary
I like skull sucker lollipops very
Much, they are so good to suck
Because they taste like sugar and grapes and stuff
Oh boy fun for the family
Real nice treats that are still yet manly
Because they look like a skull but they really are a sucker
These good lollipops are like no other
They are cool so come and try one
They are so scary they made me cry once

Don’t you ever try to rap with us
We will just burn you into dust
Then we will make you meet our boss
Who is Zostrianos the Thrice Male Aeon

Now I’m back rapping hard and pulling everyone’s hair
And I’m riding a pale white mare
Cuz I’m MCB yeah scowling
Looking really mean onstage and howling
Up at the full moon transforming into a robot
Godzilla King Kong Voltron and Rodan
Perfect timing real good rhyming
Here is your ice cream now please stop whining
I’m MCB crushing cities beneath my shoes
And crowds with hissing and boos
Come following mocking and telling me stop
MCB you’re wack and you’re gonna fall off
But then I tell them no I won’t
So then they repent and they say I’m dope

Don’t you ever try to rap with us
We will just burn you into dust
Then we will make you meet our boss
Who is Zostrianos the Thrice Male Aeon

Everybody listen it’s time to rap
And I drive a Fiero with flames in back
And every time I make another funky beat
I totally loop it and make it repeat
My hand has a switch that when you flip
Some knives come outside from out of it
Now I drive a helicopter called the Death Chopper
Weapons and bombs and a giant ice auger
Laser beam shooters on both of the side fins
And the windshield is made of pure diamonds
Oh now I’m bling’d out flying all fast
Landing in the ocean to fill up with gas
At Kwik Trip OK now I’m ready
And the propeller is made of machetes

Yo I’m MCB
Rapping with a laser beam
Shooting at your girlfriend
Cuz she got in the way when I was drivin

4:
Untitled (Two Raps and an Ad-lib Rap)

I went to Hell and got all mad
And threw a tantrum and called my dad
And he got me out and now I’m here
But I realized something weird
I think I like it better down there
So I go try to find the stairs
When I found them they locked the door
Now I’m mad I’m like shouting roar
Somebody open up down there, fools
You’re gonna make me blow my fuse
I’m so mad I’m kicking boots
Against the door and going boom
Then the door breaks and fire comes out
So I go down and start to shout
How come nobody let me in
Now the door’s broke and I’m all pissed
But they just all stand and stare
When I come near they all run scared
Now I find my usual spot
And grab my pickaxe and shovel rocks

Here is my thesis on why I’m so cool
First it’s because I totally rule
And plus I am really smart and well read
And plus I am cool like I just said
I have a flawless flow
Plus I carry a cute purse that glows
I am the anti-ghetto all-metal
Producer of organic vegetable
Toothpaste, with a waist that is size 8
And one foot stuck in the grave
Having an avalanche crush your cattle ranch
Waving a rattle and doing the avalanche battle dance
Now I’m back with a funky rap
Now you’re caught like a frog in a monkey trap
Who put this pumpkin pie in my sunken lap
That made me spill my Blatz
I have a Porsche 911
That I souped-up and transformed into a Honda Civic
You have a brand new wig
That you used to gain access to the Jane Fonda Clinic
Whoa now I’m spaced out with a gaping mouth
At the steak house hanging out

[freestyle ad-lib outro]

5:
Chorus by MCB’s Producer, Part 1

I am MCB’s producer
I produced this tape for him
I made the beats and all the music
And I did this chorus for him

I have a spaced-out robot flow
That is really endearing once you get to know
Me better. Superimposing my own head
On a dress and now on a space cadet
Superimposing the dress over the helmet
And placing the whole mess inside of a shed
I’m MCB and I’m ready to rap
If I have to fly all I do is flap
But yo if I have to cheer I will clap
I will stretch my arms and spell go yeah
Go team score rap king dot com
Rock bomb waving a pompom
Now I’m back on the sand in my Land Cruiser
With some change in a can: filthy lucre
I am the root of all bad rap going flap flap
And flying out of the sand trap yeah yeah
Go team score come on make it
But now let me go, the day breaketh

I am MCB’s producer
I produced this tape for him
I made the beats and all the music
And I did this chorus for him

Here I am rapping in an oxygen can
MCB with a grocery scanner
I’m always wearing my trousers on backwards
Cuz I’m playing for the Green Bay Packers
I am like a shark attacking an aardvark
I have a new tattoo of stretch marks
I am the trendsetter
I have a vendetta
Against all my so-called friends
That used to call me the bed wetter
In spite of the fact they knew I was the trendsetter
And hence the vendetta
MCB makes the party spin
With a gigantic posse that’s guarding him
And his entourage is so large
That you can’t even tell who’s in charge
When they’re wrecking your car
I like space laser light beam disco balls
Cuz they help to illuminate pistol brawls
Every time I go to San Francisco y’all
I never sit down without a towel

6:
Chorus by MCB’s Producer, Part 2 (Spinach Rap
and How to Soundproof Your Room)

S - P - I - to the NACH
No not ish it’s like mmm yes
Good stuff real nice
Real good with rice
Real good with milk
Texture like silk
Entwined with a strange combination of wool
And it tastes like cabbage until you’re full
Plus it is possessing many vitamins
Riboflavin vitamin C cytoplasm
I like to eat my spinach, fool
Cuz I know that it’s good for you
Spinach yeah that’s my theme
Squishy soft leafy green
If I wouldn’t have previously ingested
Two cans of delicious leafy spinach
This song probably wouldn’t be made
And I probably wouldn’t be rapping in it
Thus now you know the deal
Spinach is awesome tasty feels
Like seaweed, good for fast growing babies
Also helpful for fighting slavery

I am MCB’s producer
I produced this tape for him
I made the beats and all the music
And I did this chorus for him

If you like to play music loud
Or bang your furniture on the wall
Or scream and prophesy death and doom
Then you should probably soundproof your room
Here is how to soundproof your room
First you need to sweep with a broom
Then make sure your doors are shut
And now I’ll school you and tell you what
Go buy some soundproof board from Knox
Or if Knox doesn’t exist I’m shocked
Then go to Menards and buy it there
Buy it now don’t stop and stare
Nail the board on your walls real good
Now go put on a cloak and hood
And summon the Rain God to make some thunder
You won’t hear it but do not wonder
That just means your room is soundproof
Now make a sound like a dying goose
Now call your neighbors and ask if they heard you
They will not say they heard no bird, dude
Then you can tell them what you did
And they’ll be so happy they’ll split their lid

I am MCB’s producer
I produced this tape for him
I made the beats and all the music
And I did this chorus for him

7:
Pony Trophy

Here is a song that you might like
When I wrote it one Friday night
It came to me in a waking vision
I was practicing nuclear fission
When all of a sudden what is this
It was roughly the size of my fist
And made of half gold half baloney
Oh look it’s a pony trophy
I think it came down out of the sky
And whispered to me Bry Bry
Then I said yo here am I
Come on down now out of the sky
You pony trophy; then it came down to hold me
And tenderly kissed me and told me
I am the half baloney half gold trophy depicting a pony
If you will hold me closely and never scold me
I will be your true one and only pony trophy

Pony trophy
Hold me closely
I’m your one and only
I’m your pony trophy
I’m half baloney
Hold me closely
I’m your one and only
I’m your pony trophy

Ever since that Friday night
When I experienced such a fright
And all my hair stood up all tight
And I went blind in my left eye
I’ve never since been so ecstatic
Not even when I cleaned my attic
And all asbestos flew up drastic
Which thenceforth aggravates my asthma
Never again will I be sent
Any portent to such end
That my half golden half baloney
Pony trophy won’t betroth me

Pony trophy
Hold me closely
I’m your one and only
I’m your pony trophy
I’m half baloney
I’m your pony trophy
I’m golden
And I’m ready for love

---

A NOTE FROM THE RAPPER: I Bryan do hereby pledge to continue uploading my old rap demos onto Bandcamp and YouTube (I still have a half-empty wastebasket of cassettes that I need to archive), because I understand that my artistic output constitutes important evidence, which might aid futurity’s alien historians in determining what went wrong with humankind.