Dear colleagues,
In order to gain the affection of women who are standing behind me in line at a fast-food restaurant, I pay the cashier with a million-dollar bill, ostentatiously. And I don’t even get any change back, because I order hundreds of thousands of items of food.
I was born in dire poverty; but I worked hard, so the American Dream made me rich. (Reading an essay about how to give a proper speech, it was suggested that I start out with a joke; that’s why I said the thing above about fast food — I don’t really eat fast food, ever; I only eat fine cuisine, like pasta with white sauce or green sauce.)
I believe in traveling. I can’t stay in any one place for long. I like to see new landscapes, meet new people:
Every country has its own personality. War with one city is different from war with another. The farmers of Area X, for instance, will fight you with pitchforks, all in a phalanx, so the best tactic is to create a great gust of wind that pushes them all into the ocean. In contrast to this, the farmers of Land Y will come at you from all angles — they’ll hop down out of the palm trees overhead, while their friends are popping out of trash cans; & a certain type of citizen will stand stock still all day, in the middle of the town square, imitating a statue depicting a man on a rearing horse, until the moment you approach: then this imposter will snap into action and stab at your heart with his knife; & his horse will tread on your corpse if you’re not vigilant — thus it’s best to fight the folks of Area Y by blinding them with a big flash of light.
The food is different in every town, too. I like to experience strange new customs. One country will eat hot dogs for breakfast, another country will eat hot dogs for dinner. Most countries eat hot dogs for at least one meal of the day; & some eat them multiple times thru-out each day. The funny thing, however, is that the countrymen who eat hot dogs for luncheon cannot be tempted to eat hot dogs for supper, and those whose custom is to enjoy hot dogs daily at suppertime will never willingly eat them for lunch.
Do you think I’m joking about this? This is no joke: I’m in deadly earnest. I really love different cultures.
I once sprained my ankle while sneaking around one of the huts in a place called Mud Land, since it’s really slippery there after it rains, and I was aiming on climbing in thru the back window of this particular hut; cuz the hut owner’s wife was waiting for me there, reclining on a straw mat and wearing a camisole, while her husband was guarding the front entryway. So, like I said, I slipped in the mud; and the hut owner heard the sound of me falling and writhing upon the wet ground, because I was in intense pain; thus the guy comes over & sez: “What’s the matter?” And I yell: “Ow! my leg.” And he sez: “Here, let me take a look at that,” and he hefts me into his hut.
He lays me down upon the straw mat next to his mock-sleeping bride (she opens her eyes and winks at me once, when her husband isn’t looking), and he chants a loud spell over my injury — I suppose it was a healing poem, cuz my ankle suddenly feels tingly and the pain increases. Then the guy sez: “How do you feel now?” And I fib, saying: “It’s perfect! How’d you do that?” And he sez: “Go in peace.” So I left. And that’s why I walk with a limp, to this day.
Yes, as I’ve explained in many past entries of this journal (I carry this e-book everywhere I go, so as to jot all my steamy affairs in it), I’ve fathered children in every dimension I’ve ever visited. And I’m proud of this, because, when you successfully impregnate someone, your flesh-line continues indefinitely, into the future: cuz children are often able to beget further children of their own.
Carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its belly…
[from “Song of Myself”, sec. 33]
You yourself will die, of course; but it’s a genuine comfort to know that your line will live on. — But if you’re one of those competitive chumps who thinks you can best me by pulling out your wallet and showing me pictures of all the hundreds of children you’ve fathered, so that if I claim I’ve fathered, say, 100 kids, then you’ll say you’ve fathered 101 — and no matter what number I choose, you’ll just add an extra digit to the total, plus you have the photographic evidence to prove it — I say, you’ll never truly win against me, because even if my brood is slightly less populous than yours, the fact that counts is that all of my children were begotten exclusively upon princesses. I won’t go to bed with anyone else. Thus each of my boys is a prince. (I only beget males.) And, if I’m not mistaken, the advantage of princes is that they eventually become kings. So your thousand-&-one-child army remains subservient to the Ray Kings of the Orient, on the one hand, and the Ray Kings of the Occident, on the other. (My name is Bryan Ray the Father of ALL Nations, in case you didn’t know.) — So that’s the story of my life.
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