Dear diary,
A lot of stuff has been happening in Real Life recently. Today my second volume of this here journal — The Public Private Diary of Bryan Ray: Book 2 — arrived in the mail. I’m collecting all these entries into physical books to preserve them, and since, instead of abandoning the obligatory images (even tho I’m sort of an anti-image type of guy), I decided to print the pictures right along with all the text, & this requires the printer to print the paperbacks as full-color affairs; thus they’re so costly that I myself can’t even afford to buy proof copies to help me expedite my bookmaking duties: instead I just buy a single “author’s copy” of each volume after I finish it, and hope for the best. (Once the physical book arrives, if I see changes that need to be made I implement them directly; which is possible because the volumes are created using an on-demand system that manufactures each newly ordered codex by referencing a remote print-file that I can update at any time; therefore whoever purchases a book in the future will receive the best version — that is, the corrected version — but my point is that my own set of my own books will be the most error-prone.) I haven’t found anything problematic enough that needed changing, however, so I guess I’m either getting good at bookmaking, or else I’ve chosen templates and paradigms that are foolproof.
So after Book 2 arrived, I flipped thru it and looked at all its pages very carefully; then, since I found no problems, I was able to press the “GO!” button on the next few volumes. I had been waiting to unleash them because I wasn’t sure if the layout decisions that I’d established from this second book onward were good enough for Bryan-level work. And it proved passable, so, in just one day, I went from having only the first single volume of the projected twelve-book set officially published, to being just shy of halfway done with the labor. — It takes forever for the books to be printed and sent to my house, because of the pandemic-influenced pace of production; but it’s still nice to have all this bookwork off my psyche. I feel like Christian from The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) when his backpack slides off his shoulders and lands on the mosaic floor-tiles. All that proofreading & cover-construction is out of my control now. Such a freeing feeling.
And what else has been happening in real life? I started out saying that “a lot of stuff” was happening. Now I’ve forgotten what else I meant by that phrase. I guess, after all, not much has been happening. That’s why I’ve been writing so frivolously as of late — I mean, instead of simply leveling with the reader about the events of my daily existence, I’ve been dreaming up aimless tales recounting adventures in tire-tossing and bringing goats to my workplace. But it’s also because the times are getting scarier. We’re under a curfew again in my city, for at least a couple days, because of the threat of further social unrest. And I never know when Nighttime next shall jolt me from sleep with the sound of another breaking window. (See my entries “A smash hit” and “No more smash hits”.)
So, to anyone who’s currently pregnant, I recommend miscarrying. The future of humankind looks bleak. If I were an infant, I’d rather be slain and eaten by my loving parents than to have to live thru the coming generation.
Am I being too negative? No: I’m not nearly negative enough. — In fact, here: Since I am a certified soothsayer, let me tell you what to expect from the near future...
MY PREDICTION OF YOUR FORTUNE
(I’m talking to you, gentle reader)
First, you’ll go to the park with your family to have a picnic, and there will be a strange scent in the air. You’ll never figure out what it is, but you’ll secretly suspect that this foul aroma is the cause of all your ailments. Every morning you’ll wake up with a slight pain in your hands, and you’ll have a slight headache every once in a while.
If you own a pet, the pet will run away. And you will never be able to find it. For it will be vacationing somewhere in the tropics. It will have found a chair that it enjoys reclining upon. And it will do nothing else, forever after. It will take great pleasure in the act of sunning itself.
And your children will not visit you anymore, not even if you throw a big party. You can serve french fries and beer — a vegan meal — but they still won’t attend. You’ll need to send your servant out into the woods to ask the forest dwellers if they’ll please attend your party, since your family declined. And these woodsmen will come, thus you will make a whole new class of friends. But then your children will grow jealous when they learn that your Rolodex contains so many fresh contacts, so they will burn down your house. (A Rolodex is “a desktop info index used to record names and addresses, in the form of a rotating spindle to which removable cards are attached”.)
Also lightning will strike very close to your workstation while you are working. You will be engaged in writing a very important paper for a prestigious magazine, thus you will be lost in thought; when suddenly: BAM! you hear thunder. So this will cause you to leave your desk to go look out the window. But you will see nothing amiss — nothing’s burning that shouldn’t be — so you will return to your task. This type of mildly irritating event will happen more and more frequently.
Your automobile will begin to leak some sort of fluid. That’s for sure.
Certain members of your extended family will start acting weirder and believing in stupid theories that you could easily debunk — but they won’t listen to you: they won’t listen to REASON PERSONIFIED. The whole world will seem to have gone mad, from your perspective.
Paint will peel and chip away, wherever it seems that it should not be doing so. The siding of your house will start to rot.
Dogs will bark when you are least expecting it. Crows will fly into a tree not more than twelve meters before you — 3 fat crows… or make that FOUR! — and they will perch on a branch and start cawing.
More crows from your neighborhood will answer this call-to-arms, and they will land all over the grass in your front yard. This army of crows will find a dead frog in the street, and their leader will approach the frog and lance it with his beak. Soon the second-in-command among the crows will swoop down and land right next to the leader and push the leader out of the way, extremely rudely; and this vice-regal crow will bite a little bit of the frog for himself. And so on and so forth.
Your little girl, your firstborn, your beloved daughter — do you know the one I’m talking about? — I say: she will begin to wear clothing that makes her look attractive to men. This will irk you.
Now your political views will move you to put a sign in your front lawn which reads “BRYAN RAY FOR WORLD PREZ 2024”. — Little did you know, there will not even be a 2024. The world shall end in the year 2022, on December 22.
So, anyway, someone will steal your political yard-sign because they are a supporter of your favored candidate’s opponent. And you will never know exactly what they did to your poor sign, or where it ended up. But you will imagine the worst.
Local gangsters will acquire bigger and better weapons, despite the anti-weapon regulations that your small town’s legislature continues passing. And the weapons that are available legally to you homeowners, to protect your family with, will be puny in comparison to these gangster-guns. Plus wherever you decide to keep your suburban-grade firearms will be easy to access for your children; and they will therefore probably end up snapping photographs of themselves posing while holding various items from your arsenal, and they shall share this evidence on their favorite social network, and you will never be able to erase it. When you get your day in court, the prosecuting attorney shall click thru pic after pic on her pic-projector while shouting at you: “You say that you are a good parent to your children? Then what’s THIS? and THIS? and THIS?” with each “THIS” signifying yet another embarrassing photograph. And you will blush for shame.
But the good news is that a chameleon will befriend you, and he will teach you how to blend in with your surroundings. So if you meet fascists, you will become like a fascist, to save your own hide. And if you meet anarchists, you will take on the culture and behavior of a certified anarchist, in order to fit in with the group and perhaps earn a few new customers.
For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more. Unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews. To them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law. To them that are without law, as without law, that I might gain the outlaws. And to the weak I let show my true colors, to win my own kind. I am made all things to all men, that I might by means of half-truths outmanoeuvre ALL truth. (I Corinthians 9:19-22)
So you will have lowered yourself to the level of Paul the Apostle. Look at yourself: you’re a quisling of the Creditor Class. You’ll need to get yourself reborn as a postmodern artist in the most evil year of all, 1977, roughly half a generation before the Earth flips its channel, to expiate your spiritual faux pas.
Moreover, from here on out, whenever it rains, it shall pour. Never again will you get those charming days of precipitation so light that you can go outside and dance in the street wearing a camisole, so that the contour of your bosom becomes apparent even to those who are not trying to notice; and then you win your neighborhood’s damp-smock contest without even trying, cuz you didn’t even know that such a thing was going on. NO: you will be terrified of the outdoors, for it’s heavily storming. Then, pretty soon, there will be lava falling from the sky. Fire and brimstone upon the Twin Cities.
And those who hate homosexuals will find out that they themselves are homosexual. They will gaze upon a person of the same sex, fully intending to hate them, and they will find themselves romantically aroused instead.
Also, contrariwise, anyone who claims to love gay people and aspires to become gay themselves will find out that they secretly loathe gay behavior, in their heart of hearts: They will disrobe and try to embrace and caress their gay comrades, but the act will fail to please them: neither party in this consensual entanglement shall receive any benefit. Both will tiptoe away dissatisfied. And they will give each other’s online profile low ratings.
Lastly, once and for all, the phoenix will remain in its ashtray. It will not rise again after burning to death. It will just stay put.
But, don’t worry: At this point, I’ll set in motion a whole nother world; and, this time around, there won’t be any gravity.
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