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Pataphysics Research Laboratory 2.0

"God damn," you quietly swear to yourself. Just like all the other blogs, this one died too. No more qualities reviews, rants, essays, etc to waste your time. AU CONTRAIRE, my budding pataphysicist! What was once this, is now being slowly moved here, the new Library where fresh content as well as old favorites will be added daily (or weekly, depending on sunspot activity, procrastination, and the DT's). So, come on over, post some reviews for the approval of the Editoral Staff, or skip over those bastards and go straight to the new add free discussion board where there is no editorial meddling by the incompetents who run the PRL. I'm sure you must have something to say with that big mouth of yours.

Temple Of Bon Matin Rant Finalists

Though the winner has not been chosen yet, that person to be announced at the grand opening of the Pataphysics Research Laboratory website, here are the three finalists being considered . . .

familytrain

the trouble with buttons is...oh, god damn it what am I doing to myself again...setting myself up...well it's like this and you know it you know it because you someone just like you or you YES YOU YOU'VE FUCKING DONE IT A MILLION TIMES AND YOU FUCKING KNOW IT just like when you know you've gone too far ("what is too far?", oh I can hear you asking that right now and it proves my point so perfectly: sneering, and at the back of your mind knowing full well how far too far is, precicely measuring the boundaries and skirting them expertly every time with that sneer--that precious upturn of your lips at one edge--and taunting the feathery rage that tickles me, lightly, at the back of my eyes...) and you go just one increment over too far to see what I can take..."what is his threshold today?" you ask yourself and do the one thing to test my patience the thing you know to do the word that will catapult me into a frenzy the touch that will make me shreik the look on your face that will agonize me and make me want to pull my hair out and chase you around the house and swear that I will kill you this time...so am I revealing too much this time? do I see you nodding over there with a mischevous look on your face and the other one over there with her hand so coyly placed over her mouth so that I cant see her laughing but I know she is laughing because of the way her shoulders are moving up and down...so clever, you two, and I am such a fool for giving myself away again...just like the time before when I issued so clear a warning--like an idiot--and it only served to give you just the ideal opening for your little game. the trouble with buttons...of course I know what the trouble with buttons is...I know just exactly what the trouble with buttons is because who ever heard of a button so cleverly concealed that nobody could use it, press it, hit it except for in extreme cases when the button is so precious that it is only accessed by a special key or code but isnt that really exactly what I'm talking about anyway? the way you or the two of you or the three of you get together and maybe wait for me to come home from work or some other time when I am vulnerable--after a couple of drinks, maybe--and sit together huddled like a little cabal and discuss, decypher the way to access the button I'm hiding? and oh, the dread I feel when I see all you together with your particular way of hiding but not hiding what you are doing so that the anticipation builds in my and I find that my hands are shaking as I go into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water and I want to scream, "GO AHEAD GO AHEAD GO AHEAD AND GET IT OVER WITH AND LEAVE ME ALONE LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE OH, JESUSCHRIST ALL I WANT TO DO IS REST AND SIT DOWN ON THE COUCH AND TAKE OFF MY FUCKING SHOES YOU EVIL BASTARDS YOU SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF BITCHES!!!!" and the dread moment of electricity as the delegate you've chosen walks up to me, hand reaching out to mine for a handshake, that sneer, the opening line "hello, how was your day?" and I know and you know and you all know that the problem with buttons is that they can be pressed and my problem is that you know how to press mine too well...

Cameleopard

The trouble with buttons is all that damned hole-to-scary-following-eye-protuberance alignment! I fumble madly and frantically, quickly and fearfully, with these sharp-edged plastic monstrosities suspended in warning to any rival button fiends my soft, soft flesh might encounter in the streets of this untruthful existence, this mockery of reality only a charade, a drug-induced hippy, happy grin thinly coating the grime of the truth behind the deepest evils suspended even on the tips of our unwitting nipples. The deleterious mould made resin glimmer of light shining back up at me on each button like the reflection on an eerily wide; wet grin of shiny, sharp teeth on some post-industrial chemical killing creature lab coat’s creation. The random inclusion of shirt-collar lies! I could cold-cock the slander machine’s latest self-noticed atrocity utilization if only I didn’t have to keep my shirt in neater array. It’s like waking up in the disarray of calamity, when all my hands are shaking in the wetness of dewy morning. My Alma mater is redbrick and crumbling into the icy waters. Even the long, slender leaves of moist plantation is pointing at my diluted wound-stains and twining the envelope strata of recent ruination. Before the unseen mallet strike and cold-air waterlogged skin wrinkling for the few merely unconscious you seemed so precious that my varicose vein striated leg lumps pulsed with warmth at the merest intimation of your grueling visage on bulletin board or in magazine ad. I am nothing but a fawning love-grifter slunk limply in the wading pool of this city. I am a malfunctioned semi-autonomous unit for undesirable labor incapable of fighting even the injustices perpetrated and propping together the cloth twine of shirts. A fizzing mouth, a lump, with an ever-light birthday candle heart. But you, you’re the elevated visage of all the action as I’ve never seen it. You’re the bloviation in every dry-spell’s rain dance chant or disinterested safety talk on the concrete floor’s slightly divoted gathering pool. Your spilled juices are costlier than the specious joint lubrication and plastic replacement discs and sockets for my slump-conditioned worn carbon unit! How could I have saved you? It took so long just to remember what happened under the blue flicker of the moon’s mischievous child-like on and off Morse code subliminal deity warning. A scoop-full of the surviving in post-chthonic fugue are digging post-holes like mad farmers on a holy mission to delineate the boundaries of waste and more waste but this time asleep on a bench. Without further adieu I compress her comely headdress under duress of not being able to suppress my lust for redress from the dry-pressed compartmentalization intended plastic bag saved for vacationary travels and cheap garment wear cast sundry into the folded pants darkness of small closet ingenuity. I ought to slit my wrists for the entire nameless gristmill product consumption product placement I wistfully horded from the pissed on denizens of sluice-factory nations. I want my trombones and I want my listing palatial rocking chairs in the garden to bow before the slumbering lumber gods and gilded breast enhancement advertisements complementing the blotted blue of the sky. I want my fucking dodged photograph kava tinkerers to control the crippled aerospace comptroller and bludgeon the comely mutations living by the malfunctioned and melted-down radiation power remnants. I want the ever-winter’s chilled blanket of water covering the shamelessly broken and crumbled streets to re-electrify briefly enough to burn holes in the black pits of what humanity remains wandering aimlessly, wounded and battered, on the former avenues. I want you to see me naked in the moonlight plundering the living and foraging new avenues along the grime-stained and broken glass flora and fauna of death’s jutting infringement on this world! I want to scream like some semi-deaf drill sergeant in your flabby flabbergasted face! I want to drain the blood from your meandering sheep-eyed ingot-less barbell needing flaccid toned thin-skinned body-sack! Maybe I shaved those armpits too much after all; there is gummy blood oozing down my sides like rust stains at the base of a gutter’s main outlet. As it was prophesied:

Kerouac, Jack Kerouac in Bhopal
Be known he smoked pipes of crack
Afforded by selling his own offal
As panacea to the lung-collapsed in shacks
A ploy to trick the local yokels
While hoarding his take in gunnysack

And now there’s a surmounting radiated “blessed be the dead” ceremony on the drier part of the streets. The harpsichord ‘plink’ of strung barcode instrumentation undulates for hours in their ears until all the little hairs lay down and die like massive redwoods sending vibrato postcards to all the feet in immediate vicinity. Hear me now! Hear me now! Combat John is burning your new and tasty viagra crops with gasoline and accompaniment of neo-Indian Nautch dancers! There’s suddenly the odd dodge of burning feet in disintegrated leaf juice bringing forth the gusto of smoky winds blowing the remnants of what photo-synthesizers may be found - religiously under-lit trees like unto the dusk-time perturbation of an oncoming hurricane. Auscultative commitments and pardoned arduous arbitrators of sleepy garnered apartments. Elbowed frat bean cookeries for the slip and slide approach to manly bonding and ne’er-budding conflict resolution. There’s a long fingered parade rubbing noisily against the opposing tectonic shifting of motorcycle endurance tests. Grating high school band and foreign bike whir vacillate together as if seeing a fan blade going slowly and apparently in the opposite direction by the culmination of its rapid rotation. Papal investigations and sorely attempted recreations will fail to simulate the low-tone shriving of priest to priest in confession booth geographically caused by puffs of boiled oil, rubber to tarmac and faux gold tassels bouncing in tune to off-key horn blows and ill-timed drum beats. Secrets and lies, secrets and lies; modern favored delicacy glass splinter pie. Brandywine blandishments cajole the cotton-eared into murky oceanic slow-mo sublimation! Scaffolding on the floating bark carpet! Enervation of eye-blur mutilated mutated wrinkly waterlogged hands fumbling on the evil detruded razor resin overwhelming shirt pulley button callers; just one more step in the apocalypse of frustration and semi-conscious leaderlessness!

msp

the trouble with buttons is that through the hole light a skipping is produced in which are largess demands repayment for the attachment of the stitched otherside, exciting a rambling actor under the pretense of a vision of floral loveliness, urge, and commitable travesty. action is the skating bit under which this dirigible begins it's best flighting light. i can describe this under so many words, but would never fully complete the printable edge over forth understanding brings forth it's tiny right hand and scolds us for the visions of a lovely leg excitingly understated, overridden, leftly to right, through the whipping of a prenatal pre-eternal natural overarching vessel, a cavern, a pussy, a vapid afferance of foldable ogling lumbering at which we can only begin to squint. i sign for a waiter. he walks into the water. i find a fashion. we scribe the diction. the sword into blindly light is given unto the masses, and for fallen vacuous claims of crib dialect, i enunciate a new word for the vital little polyp from which springs a tribe of sixteen hordes having beneath them a plymouth to ride unto the dunnos and donuts and undoings of various femalities and formalities and fragilities and of the six sanguine -ties throughout the counties and states, we know of a destitute continuous conundrum amounting to the consequence of a two dollar hoar, this abbhorance umbilically collecting our entrances from the working world, the fine combs and protocols, the mommy memos, the pizza vendors, and squallor opening effortless over and over and over again. the trouble with buttons is the word under. it places itself inside my lips in side pockets over my fingers and we divide our devices into skin types, we claim to begin and end the fractured tops of our insides undoing our wholes into finite fabric and practitioning participles into past tense foresight and fickle divisions under which, and under her, and under them, and under the moon we grimacing like little boys without fathers at a baseball game begin to aspire to be the natural aspect. the vapid lack, youth and trap, and before so and before on and before so there used to be a prime number from which all the parties in the world could build a successful tent to sprint and spring forth two weaponless women. time isn't a bottle. magic wasn't a word. we didn't describe ourselves. the chiming of a september evening is supposed to decide the vibe under which we being begin to blightly bely the truth tucked and woven on wednesday to bark into friday at moons and such. these platitudes are but the quiver unto the arrow of the crotchless panties and without the wyvern we are but phallic rackets in the hands of athletes plugging soft drinks about image and invitations. we are a yack. we are a yellow act. an action in which the letters ion are replace by i've and we show ourselves that nouns are adjectives and the ships that display our bounties are empty. we are pirates of the fraction and we farcefully fancy freely wheeled are smiling into spinning sideways grinds over the jumping hordes of capsule higantes and this is a splendid thing. the truth table about buttons is that false and false yields six bales of sexiness when she begins to bring them down and through the jumpiness of an internal photo real hidden behind the eyes, we'll always have a really bad photo of the elusive sasqu and always hunt for her blurry beauty with stones and chisels only to realize that under the braque and brick, she is the untrying light. the vacuum nudge and for biting birching below i peeling am a certain unveritable truth ecstatic to be behind door number one. the trouble with buttons is that cut off, they can't be iced and reattached in quite the same way. i type with my buttons and play guitar with my buttons. they attach me to many actions and we close together to form a cloth around a small child who rides their bicycle all over the universe, smiling at the sounds, excited by colors, and over gravity, we'll go up trees and be torn. over time we won't fit anymore and we'll become useless, action and i will. we will sit in very few places and just absorb the sounds of the inside of a box until one day, i'll be taken and used for quilt squares. i'll sit atop a baby and soon be a party to sights and sounds again. the good thing is that i won't need my buttons anymore. they weren't really so much a part of me anyways, just a husking plastic action attachment.

REVIEW
msp
review: pixeltan 12"
Tue Feb 12 06:30:54 2002
68.52.0.9

dual
erecting
beats
captured
on
kodak
under
synchronization
like bastards
in heat
the
cells divide
and boogie
inside themselves,
under the DNA
of a practical
laxative called
the five folding hands
of elective electronics.

they do it nyc well. the punk disco funk of carving rhthyms, cat calls, and tremors. a seizure of the beat. time travel into the early 80's no wave scene and you'll see they opened for james chance and the static.

m.

LIVE REVIEW

jack cole

Mon Jan 21 16:18:47 2002

Casiotone For The Painfully Alone
The Curtains
Young People
Cass McCombs

01-18-02

The Basement of It's A Beautiful Pizza,
Portland, OR

Cass McCombs, with Owen of Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, opened the evening's show with their popstrum built around the lead singer and guitarist's high pitched Bejaresque voice, the organist's elongated 2 chord melodies and Owen's suitably sparse drum kit skittering. Though nothing that would completely makin you stand back exclaim, "Wow!", admittedly Cass McCombs producesthe sort of primitive melancholy pop that I'm always a sucker for, be it them or the latest two chord pop band that fell off the VU/Cannanes bandwagon. Next up was the Young People, containing the drummer of Pink & Brown on guitar (I can't remember if he is Pink or Brown -- mea culpa), a woman who sang and occasionally scratched away on her violin and a drummer with more ethusiasm than talent (and that is not meant as a slight, either -- ethusiasm at its best always trumps technical proficiency). Soundwise, think slow two chord guitar splunk and retarded drumming (with occasional
violin sawing) coupled with the singer's voice breaking on the high notes as she sang. On stage it didn't all seem to congele together and methinks this may be caused by their newness as a group and perhaps a lack of practice. On their CD-r, which they sold at the show for five bucks, the components congeled together much better -- nothing earthshaking mind you, but nice. After their short tour with the Curtains and more time as a group, the Young People are definitely a group to watch out for in the future if they can pull together live what they have on tape (or silicon, if you prefer). Before the Curtains came on Arrington Dionysus (of Ol' Time Relijun) and another guy whose name I did not catch, cleared part of the crowd with their saxophone duo skronking -- imagine the sounds two mating jabberwockies might make. Soon following their brief set, the Curtains set up and began playing, arriving after having their transportation towed all the way from Olympia, WA to Portland, OR only to discover that the cause was an empty gas tank. To be fully candid, it was to see and listen to them that had propelled me to the show in the first place, my curiosity piqued what the two members of Deerhoof had going with their new bandmate in the Curtains. At the first band seemed to struggle a little bit with their equipment, perhaps disoriented from their tow truck trek down I-5. Soon enough, though, the pieces feel together, a line up consisting of keyboard, guitar and drums producing elliptical and minimalist Beefheartesque minatures. Though I enjoyed it, by the conclusion of the second song at least a third of the audience had fled. The Curtains' set finally sort of fell apart completely, ending quietly under the cloud of band frustration. Unfortunately, Casiotone For The Painfully Alone continued under the Curse of Equipment Disorder (and disappointment what with the vanishing portion of the crowd). Probably not until his third or so song was he satisfied with the sound mix or was able to get his sequencers working satisfactorily with his Casios. Once he was in gear, though, Owen provided another set filled with distorted keyboard melodic loops and his own bittersweet but comical lyrics. All in all, a satisfying show -- listening to good bands having difficulty is far preferrable to hearing mediocre bands kicking out the jams. Moreover, I have high hopes for the Curtains and the soil they are tilling.

LIVE REVIEW

msp
review: sun ra's arkestra at 12th and porter, 1-20-02
Tue Jan 22 08:24:04 2002

the first group played jazz while artists painted. the music was elsewhere in my head.

schvilkus was next. they do this medeski and martin but weird thing and it doesn't work. i don't like it. we sat outside in the 40 degree weather to avoid it.

the third group, something "mutex" was actually pretty decent. another jazz ensemble. some free elements. some coleman in there for good measure. i don't know anything about jazz.

tumbling, rocket number nine took off for the planet

to the planet!

venus!

i can't shake the giddiness that began to creep in while some of the still living arkestra members descended onto the stage to get their gear out and arranged.

reflective costumes and antennas urged us on. we'd been standing for 4 hours waiting for the spaceship to land upon us and like a beacon of light dancing in the sky-like stage, they they freakin were.

the 12th and porter was a packed landing strip. it was annoying at first, and the aliens would've never known, but 8 or 10 tables were placed at the front and taking up the majority of the space directly in front of the stage. the masses were packed in around the perimeter of the table area while those lucky enough to arrive early sat comfortably in their seats. we strutted and strained in ever combination possible.

what a difference can age and authenticity of legitimate otherminds can make. i can't say the bands before were awful. they obviously are talented people and could play far better than most, but when the inhabitants of the craft descended upon us, the games and illusion were over.

these were the inhertors of an order of saturn's racey elliptical parting gaseous march. slipping in and outside of eachother. proceding in order without and with humor. they laughed and beseeched us a new order; a higher intelligence and mindstate was ours to receive.

space was the place.

everything was possible.

skronk here. pop there.

reflecting cosmic rays in gowns, reflecting the necessity of individuality and it's infinite undirected beeping, as earthlings, we too could be bestowed the honor of extraterrestrial-ality.

the genuine antics of the real deal.

sun ra or no sun ra incarnate, the cosmos continues on. his matter and energy flows on.

and by the end, we are all invited.

we all chanted and hopped. the initiation was complete.

awake and alert, blessed to pop it out for all and spread the space into the hearts of everyone.

there's no limit to the things that you can do,
m.

Experiment
Jack Cole & Cameleopard
The Periodic Table of Routine
Mon Jan 14 00:49:38 2002

One
On Tuesday, the Mary Kay representitive crashed her pink Cadillac into a yellow fire hydrant. On Wednesay she had the Diet Plate at Moonky's Eats. Her choice consisted of a scoop of cottage cheese, half of a canned pear, an iceberg lettuce leaf and a lean hamburger patty. On Thursday she watched TV for four hours straight. On Friday she went out to Slim's Tavern to linedance with her boyfriend, Pat. On Saturday she visited her paraplegic sister at the halfway house. On Sunday her alarm did not go off. She cried when she realized she had missed church. On Monday she made only one sale -- some lipstick to an elderly lady with blue hair who felt sorry for her.

Two
On Tuesday Sabrina got an order of restraint on the man, "Mark Chalmers", who has been showing up at the tv station where she works, always with flowers and always yelling, demanding to see her. On Wednesday she arrived at work late because she had trouble sleping the night before; Mark left thrity-nine messages on her machine, slowly escalating his tone and rheoric as they progressed. On Thursday Sabrina went home early when she found out her apartment had been vandalized. On Friday she woke up to the sound of smoke alarm and the smell of smoke; her apartment was on fire. She was busy at the police station for most of the day and didn't get to deliver the weather. On Saturday she testified at the arraignment hearing for Mark Chalmers (up on charges of stalking, harrassment, and arson in the first degree). On Sunday, despite Mark being in the county jail, Sabrina got a series of strange messages and was scared. On Monday Sabrina was found dead by the coworker with whom she normally carpooled in her kitchen, nude and bludgeoned.

Three
On Tuesday Tim Maples slid out of bed and stumbled in the bathroom, slipping in a puddle on the floor. He head hit the toilet, a large lump appearing soon afterwards. On Wednesday Tim sat in a booth at Wendy's eating a square hamburger. Between nibbling french fries, he read in Popular Mechanics an article on a scientist who grafted a small child's head on a donkey. With a loud slurp, he finished his soda and rushed back to work. On Thursday Tim thought a dust mote was trying to communicate with him. Excited, he rushed to the drug store to buy a maginifying glass, but when he returned the mote was gone. On Friday Tim took his wife out to the movies. They watched a documentary on the mating habits of starfish. On Saturday Tim swore that some someone winked at him from the TV set while he watched his video of The Beastmaster.
On Sunday Tim blacked out. He couldn't really say what happened. All knows is that he became conscious of being Tim again around midnight. A few moments later the phone began to ring. On Monday, Tim Maples called in sick to work. He drove his car to the hobby shop and bought 200 hundred dollars worth of balsa wood.

Four
On Tuesday Dr. Bobalowcrodwert squirted wd-40 in his eyes by accidentally trying to put a can of the aforementioned on, blearily, instead of his glasses as he awoke from his slumber. He fidgeted with his robot horde until he realized his eyesight was too damaged from the mishap to go on. On Wednesday he visited an eyedoctor with whom he had scheduled an appointment the day before (he forgot the set of eye doctors kept snugly in his dungeon/basement). On Thursday Dr. Bobalowcrodewrt received a ticket for screaming obscenities and threats at the driver in front of him, who happened to be driving the wrong way on a one-way street. He was en route to pick up his new prescription and hear the prognosis of the docotr after having had time to analyze his eye x-ray slides. On Friday he initiated the AI units in his robotic horde. On Saturday he accidentally turned them back off when he thought he was reaching for the light switch. On Sunday Dr. Bobalowcrodwert met a talking cat in a tree but later realized he had actually just read that. On Monday he was comitted, by his family, to a mental institution, the secrets of his robotic horde with functioning AI to be left in the pits of his mansion along with his collection of forsaken eye doctors.

Five
On Tuesday the toaster oven short circuited, sparks setting the draps ablaze. On Wednesday the toaster oven found itself in the trash can, snuggled in with table scraps and plastic. On Thursday it was unceremoniously dumped into the landfill. Its claustrphobia made it shake as it became buried underneath soiled diapers and empty mustard bottles. On Friday the toaster oven thought about the cramped darkness surrounding it. It also briefly considered the fact that it did not remember ever thinking before the accident on Tuesday. On Saturday it was dragged out of its grave by scavenging derelicts who dragged it back to their cardboard box underneath the overpass. On Sunday one of the homeless men rewired it. On completion they made toast from a loaf of bread they had swiped from Albertson's Supermarket. On Monday the toater oven dreamed of not thinking and the peace those unthinking days were.

Six
On Tuesday Heather fell downthe steps outside her school, much to the delight and audible amusement of her classmates. She broke her new adult tooth, obtained one incredible fat lip, and incurred a significant amount of conversational wrath from her mother. On Wednesday she lifted her head from her pillow only to find it was stuck to her face due to a nocturnal emission of pus, blood, and saliva originating from her large, large lip. She was spanked by her mother for such inconsiderate sleeping and later, at breakfast, received much sibling taunting (all ignored by her mother). On Thursday Heather cried because she was sent to the principle's office for talking back to her patently cruel English teacher. She tripped again on the steps of the school at dismissal, this time by the boy she had a crush on. On Friday Heather stared wistfully out of the windows in each period, relishing the time away from her tormenters to found in the trappings of visiting her kind grandmother. On Saturday, on the way to her grandmother's house, Heather was smacked across the face in the back of her car by her mother for asking what was for dinner (her lip began to suppurate and bleed again). On Sunday Heather was back at home with her evil sibling, absent father, and mean mother waiting for visitors sending their condolences over her grandmother's sudden death. On Monday Heather was thankfully dismissed from school; she wished more relatives would die off like this.

Seven
On Monday the Lazian Embassy was forced to call Chuck's Extermination Services to deal with an infestation of pillbugs in the ornamental garden. Ambassador Grumplink was none too pleased to have insects crawling up and down the pantlegs of his 1000 dollar trousers. On Tuesday the secret phone rang off the hook. The secretary quickly delivered the message to the Ambassador, who was napping in his leather easy chair in the study. She gently tapped him on the shoulder, startling him. One minute later he was dead from a heart attack. On Wednesday the deputy ambassador, Umbilak, became the new Lazia's new ambassador to the United States, replacing his predecessor, Grumplink. Umbiliak was considered by some to be too young for the position. They would whisper that he poisoned Grumplink or that his father had pulled strings in the Capitol. Everyone knew that the Umbiliaks had certain infernal connections. On Thursday Umbiliak was invited to the Ratta Embassy for the annual Winter Sword Swallower's Ball. While there he drank too may of the Ratta specialty, the Iglo. This had to explain for the inappropriated gropping he performed on the Ratta Ambassador's wife, Cheefa. On Friday Ratta declared war on Lazia, firing its nuclear arsenal at the capitol, Cumb. Three second neith Lazia or Umbiliak's job exist anymore. On Saturday, Umbiliak, in desperation, took the mailman hostage. He would not give up the embassy or his swizzle stick collection. On Sunday the S.W.A.T. team shot a bullet in his head from the top of the golden arches of a fast food restaurant. On Monday the work began to convert the Lazian Embassy into an Old Navy story.

Eight
On Tuesday Leroy was waked at six in the morning by the deputy on duty. He was given a cup of coffee and released. On Wednesday he met with Senator Corzine over lunch to discuss his progress on drafting a financial stimulus package to be proposed later in the year, around election time. On Thursday Leroy was paid a clandestine visit by some of his bookie's henchmen. Already soused, Leroy did not remember the "conversation". On Friday Leroy missed an important conference call with his co-drafter of the stimulus package. In fact, he wasn't even awake or at home. On Saturday he was reported missing by his seven year old son's nanny. On Sunday Leroy was pulled over by a police in another Sate because of his erratic driving. On Monday he was indicted on charges of vehicular manslaughter because of the blood and dents on his car and the location of a dead homeless man back in his home State.

STORY

Cameleopard
An impromptu collaborative effort betwixt...
Thu Jan 10 23:38:18 2002

Doctor Faustroll and Cameleopard.

doctor faustroll: the door opens, the Jehovah's Witness quietly slipping in and burying his victim under an avalanche of pamphlets.

Cameleopard: The undercover Mormon counterattacks by pulling his Holy Book from the womb of a virgin on the couch and thrusting forth scripture.

doctor faustroll: The Jehovah's Witness dodge the Word, pressing the crufix tie-pin and transforming into a Acolyte of the Third Withered Appendage.

Cameleopard: Giant cyclops Mormons burst through the low hung ceiling to rescue their downed man by confusing the Wintess with a multiplicity of wives. Then, they combo this maneuver with the powerful "Jesus dick slapper".

doctor faustroll: Flabbergasted, the Acolyte of the Third Withered Appendage claws out his eyes, tossing them at his attackers. The optical nerves explode, trapping the song, "The Old Grey Mare" in each of their heads, reverberating over and over again.

Cameleopard: The cyclops fall to the floor, their bare legs touching and ensuring no passage to heaven. The rescued Mormon cries out in angst over his cyclops brethren and crosses denomination to strangle the Jehovah's Witness with a rosary.

doctor faustroll: The JW's head pops off like a Barbie. From his torso and out his neck hole a million tiny pink, fluffy chicks with bright button eyes jump out, pecking away at the mormon until he falls to the floor sobbing.

Cameleopard: The Mormon, desperately clinging to his life, pulls out his faithful travel edition of "Mormon Monopoly" and searches frantically through a discombobulated array of chance cards strewn on the floor until he finds and grasps gingerly but eagerly between his finger the "Get Out of Hell Free" card. He licks it generously, smacks it against his forhead, and looks up to the broken low hung ceiling with hands clutched tightly together in front of his mauled torso.

doctor faustroll: A face appears in the red haze. The Col. Sanders smiles reassuringly until the pink chicks leap up and tear out his tongue, turning it into a teeter totter that entertains them for hours, giving the Mormon the chance to slip away.

Cameleopard: The black and white striped wallpaper wilts in Sanders' red haze until the pitch stripes can break free of their barcode separation imprisonment. They coagulate together and form the UPC and ISBN to a mighty dancer and corporate product to be born three years from now in Utah from a whore, one of the many wives of a certain Mormon that had accidentally set in motion irreversible events by infiltrating an enemy camp.

(the)ater of b(end) over

EXPERIMENT
Cameleopard
Experiment...
Wed Jan 9 02:23:53 2002

Experiment Number 2819476212048726155384950032827261538505002387272748465068387372738434945006968473222822094398257598759287549875484010129339348475838439091750843157598791517349384398761687934187469437610367847609834766768170967483.5

“They spit and flame.”—Anonymous arsonist commenting on his family, recently relegated to the chthonic under-realms.

I had been sowing a recently obtained bevy of nails collected, presumably, from some sort of monstrously large bird in the fertile soil on the southern end of my butte. Suddenly I was stricken with a pressing question that needed immediate answering. I gathered up the remaining giant bird-nails (numbering around 1618 or so) and set off for my favorite testing grounds—the bitingly cold reaches of planetary surface. Upon reaching an unnamed section of frozen earth I stopped and sat upon a snowy stool to massage my aching feet. But this is neither here nor there. I set about building a square cabin and had in fact finished such quite quickly. Once shielded from the weather in my new cabin I dragged the hefty box inclusive of the large bird-nails into the interior and set about the second phase of my work. I dug a hole, slightly less wide and long as the cabin, deep into the frozen ground. In fact, the hole was extremely deep! After digging what I estimate to be seven hundred feet into the ground I hit an engrossingly large cavity. The further depth of the stumbled upon cavity is unknown to me. Notable is the fact that a deathly chilly wind was blowing strongly enough to blow me and my harness against the rock side of the depth to which I had dug. Also notable is the distant gurgling noises and what seemed like screams but was probably just conflicting air currents or winds being parsed by jutting rock. I then lowered my box of enormous bird-nails into the hole, slowly, via a hardy rope and wood-constructed winch. (To those interested in such things, this particular type of winch was actually patented by a certain eponymous Isador Ducasse a notable number of years before his alleged birth. The patent has long since fallen into disuse and even the winch under said patent’s purveyance has not been constructed by any species other than us spurious giraffes in a considerably long time. Indeed, this type of construction is falling from popular consciousness amongst even giraffish dimension owners!) I let the bird-nails descend at a steady rate for three and one-quarter hours, until I guessed they must be deep into the windy cavity I literally fell upon. I then sat about, keeping a daily log of the enormous bird-nails’ state (I laboriously drew them up once a day to examine them). Following are the unedited log entries:

Day 1. Nothing notable to report. The bird-nails are exceptionally chilled, even to the point of accumulating and maintaining a frost even through the long haul up to the surface. (The interior of the cabin had become rather balmy due to an emitting of mirrored and reverberated body heat.)

Day 2. The carton containing the giant bird-nails seemed heavier than I remember it being until about fifteen minutes before surface arrival. The frost is this time even more extensive than the last. This caused much conjecture amongst myself about changing air currents, where the currents were originating from to begin with, and speculation, some of it wild I admit, on what caused the extra weight of carton.

Day 3. I have decided to now record events outside the mere scope of bird-nail status. Last night I heard the same gurgling and semi-screaming as upon the first breach of the deep cavity. Perhaps this was due to some unusual updraft in the wind. In fact, that is likely. I had more difficulty retrieving the carton of bird-nails suspended in the cavity. It was as if their weight had been multiplied, again until the last fifteen minutes of retrieval. They were extensively frosted and comparison of their layout-map from previous days has shown the individual pieces of bird-nail are in a different position.

Day 4. The gurgling-screaming noises were much louder, much, much louder last night. I had trouble getting rest for the next day’s haul. What is most odd is that the gurgling and screaming noises, of what I had thought was assuredly the wind, were also coming from the stillness of the wintry and moonless night outside. Upon wearily dragging up a once more heavier, until the last fifteen minutes, carton of gigantic bird-nails I discovered an even thicker layer of frost covering the bird-nails but also extending partially down the sides of the carton. For the purposes of creating my daily map-layout of the bird-nail positioning I had to chisel away the thick layer of chaotic whiteness since even the outlines of the large bird-nails were obfuscated. And once again their positioning was different. Could the cavernous winds really be so strong as to move AND freeze the bird-nails in different positions? The mystery of the added weight is getting to be quite vexing now too. Why is it that the weight is lifted every day in the last fifteen minutes of hauling?

Day 5. Events and/or my imagination are getting out of hand. I spent the empty hours of my yesterday in utter vexation over the oddness of my situation. What started out as experimentation on a collection of bird-nails is now extending into the sanctity of the observers realm! I was once again restless in my bed, now moved to the far side of the cabin—as far from the portals to either the outside or inside worlds I exist between. The gurgling-screaming has reached ear-piercing levels, I think. Or am I imagining it all in some schizophrenic fugue? It was once again no longer confined to just the inner world wherein my experiment is taking place. And at any rate, imagined or not, the loudness of the screaming has given rise to a certain level of distinguishableness. I am certain the screaming cannot be the wind because I was able to separate with my ear a chorus of voices. The inimitable gurgling still escapes any classification my mind may put upon it. And I accept that the distinguishing of screaming is possibly nothing more than an idle mind inventing a harrowing reality for itself. At least, that’s what I hope. The long haul of bird-nail carton was made extremely difficult due to my lack of sleep (and consequent lack of energy) and the odd enormity of the weight of the carton, until the last fifteen minutes of course. There was, as I had come to expect, a thicker layer of frost engrossing the bird-nails and carton which I had to chisel off once again to map, as I expected, the wildly different positions of the bird-nails. I am greatly dreading the next step in what I have noted is a gradual progression of unsettling events, no longer possibly the cavernous wind unless my starved imagination has taken control of my reality.

Day 6. I am living in terror. My night started off as restless as the others, with the gurgling-screaming progressively getting louder as dusk came about until settling into an ear-piercing level with the murkiness of what has been lately moonless night. However, this time as I lay with only the top of my head obvious above the mildly reassuring cover of blankets the churning screaming reached an hurtful level and the latched wooden doors, one to the outside and one on the floor, to the depths of the earth, blasted open with unnatural fury. The screaming predominated over the gurgling so loudly that my ears actually bled and the cold let in from the open doors could have killed me. Even so, I did not have the courage to move even one muscle and endured, somehow, the screaming and cold. I dared to venture outside once day had broken but found nothing but a patch of frozen strawberries jutting from the snow. I hastily melted some snow and cleaned my ears as best as I could. I debated with myself for a long while but finally decided to attempt a retrieval of my precious cargo, upon which I had been experimenting (perhaps it was experimenting on me?), before resorting to a final departure from this accursed place. The struggle to haul it up was monumental; the difficulty of moving the extra weight was compounded no doubt by my regrettable lack of sleep and terrorized exhaustion. The last fifteen minutes, as in all the days before, were as if the weight had suddenly lifted. I chiseled off the excess frost and this time noted with intense fear peculiar marks on the enormous bird-nails. I mapped their new positions and sat the carton upon the sled so I might haul them behind me to the safety and recuperation of normal circumstances. I started walking in the direction of my butte, hastily.

Day 7. I did not make it to my butte as planned. I seem to have somehow gotten lost. I found myself navigating a stunted forest in the night. The treetops are only maybe three feet above my head! There is no gurgling and screaming. I built a fire beside a large rock wall and slept between it and the wall (for warmth in this winter landscape). Despite the lack of screaming and gurgling I awoke to find my carton of enormous bird-nails frosted over. I chiseled away the frost and mapped their curious new positioning. Also, there were new marks on the bird-nails; I did not care. There were a number of frozen strawberry patches jutting out of the snow. I set off again in hopes of finding my butte.

I made it to my butte that day, thankfully. However, it appears that my experiment was not to be terminated just yet. Now every morning, no matter temperature (though it is admittedly usually fairly cold here), my carton of bird-nails is engrossed in a large ball of frost. And also every day these giant bird-nails are in a new position with new markings. Even when I let the carton go un-chiseled, which I do most of the time now that my experiment has been terminated, the frost chisels itself off at a certain time of day. I have tried to watch the frost accumulate on the carton but cannot see it do so as the progression is like noting from second to second the change in tectonic plate positions. The conclusions of this experiment are obvious enough in their lack of abundance that I leave them up to the reader. Perhaps the most interesting result of this scientific inquiry has been a daily progression of red patches dotting and filling the formerly barren and frozen landscape around my butte.

LIVE REVIEW & REVIEW

jack cole
live review & review: Vaz
Fri Jan 4 14:23:56 2002

Vaz

LIVE REVIEW
1-4-01
Disjecta
Portland, OR

REVIEW
demonstrations in micronesia
Load

Curtailed by a cold, I rolled into the venue, Disjecta, just as Vaz, the headliner, was setting up. Apparently the 4 band line up had withered to 3, Glass Candy and the Shattered Theater cancelling due to illness. I had already missed (on purpose) Die Monitor Bats and Growing. Entering I wasn't even sure if we had arrived in time due to the fact that no one was taking money at the door anymore. But all was well, the duo readying their drum kit and amp. 2/3 of now deceased Hammerhead, Vaz seems to have adapted well to losing a limb. Apollo Liftoff's distorted guitar swoops interlocked quite nicely with John Moordian, Jr.'s thump and cymbal shimmer, occasional clear melodic fragments bubbling up out of the thrash. Unfortunately, five songs in the cops showed up to call an end to the decibel deployment, cutting off the Vaz. Sadly, Disjecta is part of the recent rise in "illegal" clubs in Portland, unlicensed and usually in N.E. or N. Portland neighborhoods.

Guilty that neither Jane or I had paid to get in, I made sure I bought a CD from the band, their recent album, demonstrations in micronesia on Load, which has finally gotten good distribution after the IMD collapse. 2001 was quite the year for distribution implosions, gravestones popping up for not only IMD, but NAIL (who deserved what they got) and DNA. One should thank one's lucky stars that in this day and age distribution for independent music is far more spread out between companies than in the past. One shudders when one recalls Rough Trade's demise and the damage it created in its wake, small lables being sucked under for all time. But enough of indie business theory and history -- Vaz's premier LP is a solid selection. The ex-Hammerheaders have progressed well, tightening their attack. Apollo Liftoff's switch from bass to guitar is enlightening. He effectively uses his effects pedals to supplement his playing as opposed to suffocating it as so many other bands do. Moreover, Liftoff's voice has developed nicely, his vocals turning from hoarse shouting to precise melody lines on a dime. Moordian, Jr.'s percussion perfectly compliments Liftoff's axe strum. His range has expanded greatly, holding together the songs with his rhythm choices. I'd have to say that Moordian, Jr. is one of the few drummers I've heard who knows how to use the cymbals without abusing them. All in all, demonstrations in micronesia is welcome return from the two, who have been sorely missed since Hammerhead went under.

PRL Archive

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