A junk-ad image is taped atop a "Happy Holidays" postcard that I received from the company that picks up our recycling.
(Fun fact: the superimposed image's other half appears in the lazy-collage from my Jan 31 entry.)
Dear diary,
Why is global solidarity undesirable to so many people? Why are country borders necessary, and why do people want to strengthen them? I just don’t get it; that’s not the way my mind likes to think.
I mean, I know that we can’t just freeze reality like the frame of a film, eliminate the concepts of countries & borders, and then allow reality to proceed again as an open, free, friendly, global community, and expect everything to operate smoothly, right off the bat. I understand that we live in an age where things are structured to be national and non-cooperative, so there would need to be at least an interim of adaptation — say, a montage sequence, or at least a dissolve transition — if we were to change from this current setup to my own preferred setup; that is, if we were to go from a war-based world of allies and enemies to a diplomacy-based world of siblings and lovers. But if making amendments to our existence will require us to adapt to better norms, even drastically, this fact should not be used as a reason to give up striving for a more humane civilization — let us rather die trying than live inhumanely!
No, even tho I agree with what I’m saying here, I’d rather write from the opposite perspective. It’s no fun being a moralist. Text is custom-made for villainy.
So let me give you an unfair, binary choice: Would you rather live in a nation where everything is commodified, or one where nothing is commodified?
I myself would prefer the latter, as I’m sure is obvious. You, however, look like someone who’d like everything to have its price — even the displays of affection that you receive from your pet dog, when you walk in the door after a hard day at work:
The pup stands frozen in the corner of the apartment; he neither approaches while wagging his tail, nor licks your face; you must first pay the price, and the cost of a tail display is five caesars per wag — that’s one instance of swinging from side to side — and a face-lick is extra. You dig in your coat pockets and find that you have only 600 popes and 66 caesars; so you skip the face-lick and order fourscore tail-wags. That’ll leave funds sufficient for you to pay the corner-store clerk for your order of caviar and dog chow, which you’ve just been notified is ready for pick-up. You can make a few caesars back when you sell the food to Zeek (that’s your dog’s name; it’s short for Ezekiel) — for he doesn’t yet know how to operate the can opener.
But I like the thot of being a villain for a while. The idea of property theft attracts me. Thou shalt not steal: that’s a good commandment to break (Exodus 20:15). So let’s become a standard burglar tonight:
First we put on our latex cat-suit… Or, actually, first we shell out a couple popes to Zeek, so that he doesn’t bite us. Then we suit up and climb out the top window.
The window of our apartment opens out onto the roof of the general complex. From here, we can see all the windows of the neighboring units. It happens that six of the nearby rooms have their lights on. Those are the places we shall avoid. (When you’re catburglaring, it’s important to rob only places that are obscured by shadows and shrouded in gloom: that way, it’s harder for the cops to spot you when you’re in there snooping around.) But the nice thing about all six of these well-lit rooms that we can see from our position on the rooftop is that there are various scenes taking place inside each apartment — so we can stand at our leisure and observe them for a spell, before beginning our thieving spree.
In the first window is a beautiful woman reclining on a sofa. This sight should really be costing us some banknotes, but since we’re standing out here spying unawares, our feast is free — yes, come to think of it, we’ve begun stealing goods already: this is some sort of intellectual property, I think… or whatever the lawyers label it: aesthetic nourishment, something like that...
Anyway, we watch the woman on the sofa for a number of moments. She does many things, which I will describe for you if you pay me.
Then we turn our head and peer thru the eyes of our cat-mask into the next room’s window. Inside is a family of four at a dining table. We adjust our pointy ears so as to hear what the family is discussing. The conversation is too muffled to make out precisely, but we do learn that their names are as follows: Bryan and Paul are the little boys, aged four and two respectively — they seem to be brothers. And the adults, a man and a woman who are apparently the lads’ parents, are named Douglas and Rita. Suddenly the elder son rises up from his place at the table, grabs the steak knife, and plunges the blade into the chest of the dark-haired father; and the younger does the same unto the mother. Then they take their seats again, and the brothers finish their meal. They eat beef sirloin with baked potatoes and fresh green peas. The boys appear calm; whereas we ourselves, poised in our cat-suit outside in the night, are now trembling and dizzy from witnessing such an unexpected attack. We crouch down, there at our lookout place near the window, to avoid falling over — for we feel faint, and we don’t want to draw any attention to our presence by causing a racket: this would expose us to the parricides, who would doubtlessly present us with a bill for services. And even if we tried to claim that we needn’t pay, as we were dissatisfied by the way that they entertained us, our argument would never hold up in court.
I’m gonna neglect to reveal, at this moment, what we saw in all the other illumined windows. Descriptions of those sights are scheduled to be published in a collection of reports that shall be meted out in installments. You can subscribe to the series, if you’re interested, thru my crime syndicate: the vignettes will appear bi-monthly in the “Fact” section of Thug Mag (an e-zine that Zeek reads).
Now let’s go robbing.
First we break into a house that has a large bay window in front. We use an aluminum bat to smash the glass, which sets off an alarm. We quickly grab the flashlight from our belt and find the wire that leads to the sensor. We use our machete to cut the line. The alarm is muted. We step thru the window into the house’s living room, being careful not to touch any of the jagged glass. Directly before us is a large bookshelf filled with volumes. Spotlighting the spines with our flashlight, we search until we find the one we want: The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka. But when we pull the book toward us, it tilts at an angle and snaps and locks in place: for it is no book at all but a toggle-switch lever, which triggers the bookshelf to rotate physically, bringing us into a secret chamber of the house. Turning round, we behold some sort of scientific laboratory; blinking lights of all colors adorn the computing devices that cover the walls of the perimeter. Beakers with brightly-hued liquids billow misty white smoke over the glass top of the lab table, while a dozen women in crisp blue mantles keep pacing back and forth between the beakers and the computers, jotting hieroglyphs on clipboards. They show no sign of noticing our entry. Perhaps they are accustomed to being catburgled.
Over the bonks and buzzes and zaps that are being emitted by the laboratory’s machinery, “Excuse me,” we shout.
Suddenly all the women freeze and look our way.
“Sasha,” sez a voice from the back, “call the exterminator — it seems that another bat got in thru the chimney.”
“Wait! Hold on!” we say: “I am no bat; this is a latex cat-suit, for I am here to burgle you. However, when I tried to take the Kafka volume off this bookshelf, it triggered the floor crucible to rotate, thus here I am. What is this place, some sort of science lab?”
“Yes, it is,” sez the tall, bespectacled blonde, stepping forth from the darkness (she had been occupying a corner of the room that was shaded by a canopy, which we only just now notice). “Welcome to Greenland. Yes, the country. Everyone thinks the place is a mass of land on the map, but it is actually a vast laboratory inside of Krissy’s ranch house. Take a bow, Krissy.”
The brunette standing closest to us bows solemnly.
“My name is Lucy, by the way,” continues the blonde. “The purpose of Greenland, as you might have gathered from its title, is to instigate breakthroughs that will help to improve Earth’s plant-life. So we installed all these computers and mechanical contraptions that you see around the circumference of this realm, and the beakers with their rainbow potions that are effervescing at the center table, to your left there, contain wild new profiles of nutriment. We also make cytoplasm and various jellies; lime plasma; and a type of tobacco that is, at once, non-addictive yet fully potent, and which does no harm to one’s lungs.”
“That sounds fascinating,” we say.
“But I’m sure you’re in a hurry. You said that you came to burgle us — is there any way we can help? Any particular thing that you want? I’m sorry about the Kafka; we had to choose a book on the shelf which we would not forget, to serve as the activating lever. He’s one of my favorite authors.”
“Mine too!” we say.
“Mine too,” sez Krissy. “And I’m sorry for scaring you earlier with this tennis racket. We really did think that you were a bat.”
“No hard feelings,” we say. “All’s well that ends well. But now that we’ve become acquainted, it’s hard for me to want to steal from you. Tho I really like the look of all this equipment. I think that if I were on my own, I’d maybe take a computer or two — I keep eyeing that one with the flashing orange rectangle and all the ‘judgment’ knobs.”
“That’s HAL-33; please take him — we need to replace him anyway. He’s served us well for more than two millennia, but there are much better options on the market now. I’ll have Marsha and Stacey help you move him.” Then she presses a button on the console at the side wall and speaks into the grille above it:
“Will someone in the Shipping Department please have Marsha and Stacey report to the Green Lab? We’re gonna swap out our thirty-three model with an enlightened one.”
So we ended up using a flat cart to haul the tower unit, and then the two assistants put the generator and the storage drives on separate dollies, which they cheerfully help us wheel home. We offer them two popes apiece for their service, but they refuse, claiming an allergy to finance; but we think they were simply being perverse.
At this point, it’s nearly sunrise. We have lollygagged the night away. If we want to get more thievery accomplished, we think to ourselves, we’ll have to work fast.
So we step out our front door, and there is a police car parked right in our communal drive. The officer in the driver seat looks up briefly and then goes back to sleep. This gives our heart a jolt. We begin to tiptoe southeast, in the direction of the gated community, because they have mansions there with lots of cool stuff that’s easy to burgle; but just as we are almost out of sight, the cop in the car sits bolt upright, as if some important idea has just struck him. He reaches out the window and shouts, while waving:
“Hey! Hey you, in the catsuit — are you Mrs. Evilman?”
“That’s me,” we say.
“I have a message for you, from the government.”
“The government?”
“I mean your husband.”
“O, the Prez?”
“Yeah, the Prez,” the cop nods. “He sez: The tomatoes growing at the side of the house are poison. DO NOT eat them. They taste awful. They’re real metallic and they have a fishy scent.”
“Ah, that’s good to know,” we say. “Thanks; how much do I owe ya?”
“Well my son needs 666 popes to get thru seminary.”
We dig in our pockets, “Here: it’s all I have.”
“I thot you said you get paid every Thursday afternoon,” the cop eyes us suspiciously.
“I do,” we say. “But that dog of mine drives a hard bargain. No matter how much I bring home, he finds some new service to make available; and I cannot resist — even villains like affection. What’s more, my wages have been stagnant for roughly twoscore years; but his prices keep rising.”
“Alright, alright. We’ll make do. Move along.”
“How about yourself,” we ask the officer “—you own any pets?”
“No pets; just this one son that I’m trying to push thru seminary. Want the boy to be a priest; that’s where the real money’s at. But, like they say, ya gotta have bank to make bank: cuz education’s expensive, especially these religious schools. Kinda makes you wish Nietzsche was right, and that God was really dead.”
“But he’s not,” we say. “And that was Zarahtustra who said that.”
“Said what? That God’s not dead?”
“No, that God IS dead,” we explain. “Everyone always blames that on Nietzsche, but those words are spoken by his character Zarathustra.”
The cop looks incredulous. “But didn’t Nietzsche write the story?”
“Well, yeah,” we admit; “but God also wrote a story; and we all know that there’s a Devil in the Bible.”
“Your point is...?”
“Ya can’t blame the author for the crimes that his characters commit.”
Here the cop ponders a moment, then sez: “Wait. Why not? Isn’t an author unveiling his intentions, by putting them down in the form of fiction? For every aspect of a tale necessarily stems from an aspect of its teller.”
“No one knows the actual aims of an author,” we say; “perhaps the author himself doesn’t even truly know his own intentions, let alone what his text wants to mean (scripture cannot exist without a reader, who has a mind of her own which completes the work; for, alas, scripture cannot read itself). Think about it: If you were to write a short story where the protagonist, who resembles your son, gets slain by a deity from heaven which comes down from outer space and performs a fly-by lasering from his mobile throne-craft, and one of the beams pierces the boy straight thru the side, should you yourself, who are but the tall tale’s scribe, be arrested and thrown in prison for first-degree murder, as if you did this crime yourself?”
“Abso-LUTELY,” sez the officer of the law. “For it proves that I am premeditating filicide.”
“But,” we argue, “then you’d be stealing Almighty God’s divine right to sacrifice life for the sake of salvation.”
“Hmm,” ponders the cop, “you got a point there. Stealing is wrong. OK, you win the argument. How much do I owe ya?”
“Take a look at one of those caesars that I just forked over.”
“Just one caesar? Wow, that’s a bargain…”
“No, that’s not the price,” we explain; “I’m just trying to convey a bit of wisdom to you, before I tell you my price. Now look at the caesar in your hand. Tell me: who’s image is graven upon it?”
The cop squints and stares hard. Finally he answers: “Is that YOU, Mrs. Evilman?”
“Ya never noticed that?” we say. “Alright, now here’s the rate that I charge for debate-winning: Render unto Caesar the things that look like Caesar, and render unto God the things that look like God. That means, by right, I could just take all your money, here and now. But since we both are made in the image of God, if I steal back from you everything that I donated to your son’s schooling fund, I’d only be loansharking Paul to bankrupt Peter, so to speak. So I say: keep the change. You and I are even. Now I’m off to go catburgle.” And we slink away.
The officer, astonished, blows us a kiss.
Now, climbing over the gate of the wealthy community, we approach the entrance of an extravagant mansion: its entire exterior is painted hot pink. But there’s a vicious dog in the yard which begins to bark & lunge at the end of its chain, & snap its jaws at us threateningly. So we reach into our purse and retrieve two fish and seven loaves of bread. We set these offerings on the ground in front of his forepaws. He accepts our gift. He is quiet now, eating his supper with gladness and thanks; although he does not wag his tail.
With the dog now occupied, we approach the house. On scrutinizing the entryway for any signs of a security system, we note that the front door is ajar. Apparently whoever last used it did not shut it tightly; they just left it so that its latch bolt is barely touching the strike plate. A gentle push and the door swings open, revealing an enormous foyer with a butterfly staircase and crystal chandelier. Typical — we’ve seen this type of interior in countless movies.
We retrieve a small silver pistol from our purse and aim upwards. One shot, and the chandelier crashes to the floor. Then we strike a match and set fire to the staircase, using an aerosol spray-can, which we also had in our purse, as a makeshift flamethrower.
Now we proceed to the adjacent room. It looks like a funeral parlor. There are, in fact, two coffins displayed on oversize plinths, side by side. Both caskets are closed. We approach the first and cautiously open its lid. It is brimming with emeralds. We then close it, and open the other. It is filled with sapphires. We now look about the room for any sign of an exit. There is a half-sized door in the west-facing wall. We go to see where it leads. We try the knob, but it won’t turn — it must be locked. So we take out a crowbar from our purse and lodge it between the jamb and the slab, and pry the door open:
The view revealed is of a garage, in which there is a strange vehicle parked: it appears to be some sort of hybrid — a custom-designed combination of various luxury cars: it is an Audi, a Porsche, a BMW, a Cadillac, a Mercedes-Benz, and a Jaguar, all at once. It’s like the mobile-throne of God.
So we head to the driver-side door and try the handle. This triggers an ear-piercing siren to begin to sound. (Alarm systems are so annoying.) It’s like the trumpet of the apocalypse.
In desperation, we scan the place for a way to escape. Our eyes soon alight upon a rectangular panel mounted on the wall at the back of the garage: there are hundreds of hooks protruding from it, and these miniature hooks all have sets of keys hanging from them. It reminds us of the lobbies in old hotels where you would ring the silver bell on the front desk to wake up the receptionist, and he then would ask you how he can help you, and you would tell him the number of the room that you reserved, adding that you called earlier — your name is Mrs. Evilman; also you’d like an extra king-size bed for your canine Zeek — then the receptionist would turn around and grab the set of keys matching the number of your room, and hand them over to you with great formality. Do you know what I’m talking about? Well this section of the back wall in the garage looks just like those room-key organizers that predate the advent of magnetized door-cards.
So we dash over to the storage area and desperately seek for labels that might indicate what a given key corresponds with. But there’s no titles or identification of any of the keys, which all appear identical.
Meanwhile, the luxury vehicle’s alarm is still blaring. So we snatch a key at random from the array, and hasten back to the driver-side door. The key fits! The alarm shuts off! (The resultant silence is almost harrowing.) We then hop in and start the engine. Checking the rear-view mirror, which presents us with the sight of the mini door that leads to the room with the gem-filled coffins, we shift into reverse and hit the gas:
The tires screech loudly on the concrete, and the sedan flies back and smashes thru the wall. We stop about a hairsbreadth from the coffins. Now we press the “pop trunk” button. The trunk pops open. Leaving the engine running, we get out of the car and take a look: the trunk is deep and very roomy. We’re able to slide both coffins off their plinths and into the vehicle with ease. However, the lid of the trunk is unable to close all the way now; so we take some bungee cords out of our purse and secure it; this way it won’t keep flapping in the wind or bobbing up & down with every road-bump, which could end up scratching or denting the coffins’ exteriors; and these are really nice mahogany sarcophagi, smoothly finished, with a glossy clear-coat: we wouldn’t wanna damage them unnecessarily.
Now we drive home and park our new luxury hybrid at the side of our building. Marsha and Stacey are in the yard playing frisbee with Zeek.
“Y’all came back again, just to hang out?” we say.
“Yeah, our shift ended at six... Whoa, you want help with that?” They see us struggling with the first coffin; we assumed we could carry it by getting beneath it and hauling it on our back, but it’s heavier than we thought.
So Marsh & Stace give us a hand with the delivery; and Zeek dashes to and fro between all our legs constantly as we’re working, almost tripping us. But we manage to get both coffins into our home.
“What do I owe you?” we ask the women.
After settling up, when we’re alone again with Zeek, we open the lids of the coffins and stare at the brilliance of their contents for a while.
Eventually we hand some caesars to Zeek & say “Hey, boy, run and get some tea.” (We trained him to make and serve tea, from a special dog-ready tea set that we stole from a rummage sale in Woodgate.)
So Zeek leaps off the sofa in excitement, & after some moments he returns carefully balancing the tray on his snout. But while passing before the coffins, he klutzily bumps into both of them, causing their contents to spill to the floor. Our front room is now an ocean of sapphires and emeralds. But the cups don’t spill from the tray: Zeek makes sure of that — he’s really good at serving tea.
“O my gosh, Zeek!” we shout; “take a look at THAT!!”
Zeek lowers the tea tray cautiously onto the side table and then turns around to see what the fuss is about:
There, protruding from the lake of precious stones, is what appears to be the form of a human limb.
“Help me clear away all these sapphires and emeralds — I think the coffins were actually being used to store bodies! and the gems were merely used as packing material.”
Sure enough, once this sea of jewels is parted & swept to either side, leaving bare the floor in the midst of the room, it reveals a pair of glorious nudes: they are not flesh, however, but marble: for they are statues — we now recognize one as the Venus de Milo, and the other is Michelangelo’s David.
Later, when we get the results back from the appraisals, they certify that both pieces are the authentic, original masterworks.
So we ended up with a pretty good score on this occasion, all things considered. We got some decent computer gear from that lab team over in Greenland; we got two classic sculptures — one from the Renaissance, and one from the Ancient World — also a fair amount of sapphires and emeralds; plus a custom-built hybrid sedan with a sizeable trunk.
No comments:
Post a Comment