Online

(to the tune of Petula Clarke's Downtown)

When you're alone and you know you've got no life
You can always go - online
You're a fat pizza face with no social skills
But your zits won't show - online
Just listen to the parrot-screeching rhythm of the modem
Chicks are getting wet down there, dudes scratching at their scrotums
And there's no STDs

The fights are much louder there
You can say "Fuck your mother," and nobody cares
So go online, everyone's waiting there
Online - some masturbating there
Online - everyone's waiting for you

Middle-aged artist sexual fulfillment foundation

Open on photo of CARL. Craggy looking face, receding hairline. That !@#$ lost little boy look in his eyes.

NARRATOR: (posh British accent O.S.) Carl is an artist. Carl is represented in some of the nation's finest museums, galleries and collections, but Carl is unhappy. He is goatlike and 45 years old. Carl is tired of his wife. His wife is tired of Carl. Sadly, other women don't like him. Well, young women.

Young women are Carl's inspiration. The reason he creates.

Won't you help?

You can. Some of you. If you're a young woman between the ages of 18 and 27, three weekends a month is all it takes. Simply submit to Carl's voracious sexual needs. Tell him he's a great artist. Listen to his tales of woe and take him seriously. The transformation will begin.

Carl will begin painting again. You are his muse, the light in his eyes. It takes so much and means so little. He might even paint you.

Operators are standing by.

No, Mr. Bond, I Expect Ya'll to Eat Pork Lard

Why does James Bond always get assigned to casinos in the French Riviera, five-star hotels in Hong Kong, etc.? By the law of averages, one of these days, he should wind up in a shitty location. Like, say, the more depressing suburbs of Atlanta.

So, the villain would be the morbidly obese Pork Finger; Good-n-Plenty, the Bond girl, is even fatter; Bond's car is a battered Chevy Nova (patched up with Bondo, natch). Narrowly escaping death, Bond burns a path of death through auto demolition derbies, garbage dumps, meth labs, trailer parks, depressingly cheap strip clubs and sneaks into a hog fat rendering plant -- Pork Finger's secret HQ.

At the climax, Pork Finger captures Bond and prepares to funnel a vat of pork lard down his throat. At the last possible second, Good-n-Plenty puts a bullet in his brain and rescues Bond. After some quick sabotage; the rendering plant explodes in apocalyptic pyrotechnics, scattering snouts, hooves, and various hog fragments all over DeKalb County. Good-n-Plenty drags Bond back to the Motel Six, jump his bones and crack his spine.

Bond spends the next film in traction.

The Unabomber's High School Year Book

EVERGREEN PARK COMMUNITY HIGH SCHOOL "SNAPSHOTS" 1957

THEODORE "TED" KACZYNSKI—Honor Roll. Marching Band. Woodcarving Club. Forensics Club. Track. Rifle Club. Math Club. Fireworks Club. The Rocketeers.

John...maybe you should've tried Sleep Club! Eight hours a day keeps the nuthouse away. That goes for Brainiacs too!

—Craig

Watch out Russkies! "Cherry Bomb" is closing the math-science gap faster than YOU can say "Kaputnik"!!!!!!

                                                            —yer pal, Joey

When is a straight not a square? When he's you, man. (I won't tell.) Like, good luck at Berkeley...dig?

—Maynard G. Krebbs

MEMORY LANE

Hero on the Spot: Ted Kaczynski. First on the scene when the School Records Room burst into

flame. Put out fire and contacted school authorities at great personal risk. Way to go, Ted!

I'll bet you started the fire dipshit.

IMPRESSIONS

Intense...self-motivated..."the thinker." Gentle giant, but don't bug him

when he's doing those linear equations! Neat handwriting!

Forgot to mention: Pretty smart for a pollock. Queer of the year, freak of the week, and creep of the century. 

Role Model: George Matetsky.

Favorite Cartoon: "Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land"

Favorite Book:  Werner Van Braun's "I Aim for the Stars."

Favorite Movie: "White Heat." ("I love a happy ending!")

What's shaking, Cherrybomb? 

Hey, I know your the guy who boobytrapped my locker.

But it's OK! I want to stay on your good side!

—Jeff

Personal Glimpses:

Vivian Gleans, English Teacher: "It's unusual to see the level of philosophical insight and attention to detail such as I see in Ted. Constructive criticism? A 3,000 word paper for a 500 word assignment is "too much of a good thing!" 

PS: Your copy of "Walden Pond" is now six months overdue!!!!

Simon Ethridge, Advanced Math Teacher: "Brains+drive+ambition=success! It all adds up, Ted! I'll be looking forward to reading about your accomplishments in the New York Times!

I'll look forward to reading your fucking obituary. 

Fuck you commie. Have a short, unhappy life.

And stay away from my sister or it'll be even shorter.

The Jack Getz Instant Poetry Workshop

Aw c'mon. Let's not beat up on the poets...it's just too damn easy, with the possible exception of those angry Dylan Thomas-types who, in the initial "angry drunk" phase can be dangerous for at least five minutes before they fall over. Instead of beating poets up....why not become one?

Now you can, thanks to the JACK GETZ INSTANT POETRY WORKSHOP!

It's easy! And the first workshop is free!

[Insert Susan B. Anthony dollar to continue.]

Thank you!

For your first lesson, please select from the three following poetypes:

Attack of the Diarrheic Thesaurus with a Phony English Accent (Guys! The phony English accent is a BABE MAGNET!!!!)  Latinate words always a plus here, stick with the abstract, avoid anything that might create a word picture.

Do your best William F Buckley imitation and follow the bouncing ball ...

tenuous diffidence

betrays the interstices of confusion

parallax of incidents

detained

in unreliable memory

Metonymy of monotony

[Continue to make shit up. You get the idea.]

Find a suitable coffee shop for your first practice exercise. Read slowly, hypnotically. Keep it up for another 15 minutes or so and they'll be so glad you're done they'll call you a genius and you can start giving "Poetry Workshops" and charging money for it. (And be sure to bring pen and a pad for those phone numbers!)

If you have not been laid or been giving a college fellowship, please choose from one of the two remaining options:

Is it Charles Bukowski...or is it Memorex?

Think "angry young man." If you're no longer young, "angry" still works. Are you angry? Good! Now tuck in your scrotum and approach the mic. But first ...

If you're doing a live reading, remember not to shave for at least two days beforehand (I know this doesn't work for chicks...but there's always burnt cork, right?). Stick to walk-on-the-wild-side urban references (get a "Village Voice" and you're in business!), mumble, and make sure to say "shit, piss, fuck" every three lines or so. (Extra points for white people if you throw in a few lines of bad rap.)

This kind of thing works great in yer basic Barnes &Noble reach-out-to-the-community poetry readings. The embarrassed pencil-neck Manager will come up and whisper in your ear that you have to stop. You can tell 'em to fuck off. He or she will throw you out, and you can tell the town how they censored you. Edgy, huh? Just remember to talk louder than the deafening cappuccino machine.

Intrigued? Good!

Now do your best Tom Waits imitation and read the following poem ...

shit, piss, fuck

drunk whores fucking dogs

in alleys of broken glass

a junkie screams like a needle

up the ass

in the black dead vein of the city

New York Post newsprint

mixing with blood and semen

in the back of a taxi

message scrambled

like another new retrovirus

mutant RNA

that will fuck you

you, you, you

fuck you

Shit piss fuck

Ah. Judging by your black eyes and your tape-swaddled nose, your initial bad boy poetry reading was not a success. Yeah. About that. I forgot to mention that you can't do badass poetry without actually being a badass. Or the audience will hurt you. I did mention that your deposit is nonrefundable. But one more option remains ...

Pretentious College Poetry Workshop and all that Shit

Explaining this is like explaining how you wipe your ass. It seems self-evident, but I'll spell it out anyway.

The trick is, write a personal essay but set the line breaks like a poem. Tug on the heartstrings with weepy incidents of childhood trauma, "I remember mama" anecdotes (no one will dare to say it's a bad poem if it's about your mama!) and Cliff Notes Joycean epiphanies that even YOU don't have to understand. Because it's poetry.

Try to talk like in the singsong tones of an undertaker. As a visualization exercise, imagine you're speaking to the inhabitants of a nursing home. Chances are, you will be.

Be sure to read slowly....

There were different colors

Then

The refrigerator

Was avacado

The countertops

Were screaming orange

Mother your hands were

Flesh-colored

Without the spots

They didn't shake

Your hands I remember

Them always

Holding and folding

Towels

Turning the pages

Of

The Wild Things

Putting a compress

On your eye

O cold, cold, comfort

Where the bruise was

Blue and red and mottled

It's all right you said

I ran into a door

The color of lying!

I did not know

I did not know

I did not know

The door was Father!


OK, if they still hate you, here's one last option. This one's free. Don't call again.

The GUMBY poem.

Bandage your head. Hold one brick in your left hand. Hold another brick in your right hand. Then scream ...

violence is bad because it like hurts people its bad if you see a violent person make them stop take two bricks and bang them on the side of their head and shout at them STOP IT STOP THE VIOLENCE STOP STOP THE VIOLENCE STOP STOP STOP VIOLENT PERSON VIOLENT PERSON that makes them stop but it gets the bricks messy

Hit yourself in the head with the bricks until the audience applauds.

Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, lovely spam

Evidently, the spammers have me confused with an unemployed, bald, fat guy with a small penis and no girlfriend.

In the year 2045

OK, here's my answer to Newt Gingrich's alternate history novel, 1945. Here's an altered future. If not a neutered future. Pun intended.

The United States of America is now the Divided States of America. There's a rump government in the old industrial northeast, but nobody pays it much attention.

Most of the old Confederacy (except for Texas and all of Florida, south of Disneyworld, which is now owned by the WaltDisneyCorp) has been reconstituted as the Christian States of America. More orderly than other places; think Singapore with neon crosses. They stone witches, adulterers and drug addicts to death, and it's not a good place to be a black person, Jewish, or one of them secular humanists. But the mag-lev trains run on time.

The Southwest, at its best, resembles Northern Ireland during the troubles; at its worst, its a dead ringer for Bosnia in the mid 1990's. There's a strong Hispanic separatist movement, an almost equally strong nativist movement,resulting in mild to severe parades, bombings, kneecappings,when the two hatefronts clash. Aqui...aya...y yanquis mortidad or For California will fight:f or California will be right. You pays your money, you takes your shot.

As to the heartland, the Midwest is a hodgepodge of overlapping, militia-controlled entities, Aryan Nation this, Middle America that. There's a decidedly Germanic cast about it all: speeches, boots, bombs, and military haircuts. In most of these regions, it is illegal to show The Blues Brothers.

From Midwest to Farwest, the sagebrush-rebellion-wise-use people have had their way, which means there's no west left at all, only stripmines and stripmalls. In Nevada, the last Native American reservation still survives. They are fighting for their land, even today. A noble people.

Most of the rich people live in the Pacific Northwest, from northern California up through Washington, Oregon, and on to Alberta. They consider themselves more a part of the Pacific Rim than they do the rest of America -- which they regard with liberal disgust, as they have the money and security forces to afford such sentiments.They feel very guilty. Really. They feel sorry for the Native Americans and they're angry at what's happening in the Christian States and the Midwest, the atrocities, all those horrible things. Someone should really do something. They give money to charities and hold benefit rock concerts and wear t-shirts with slogans, while making sure that the borders are secure.

Speaking of money, Alaska and Hawaii have been sold to Japan to cover interest charges on that ol' debbil the national debt (which was also the reason the national parks were sold off). Much-needed hard currency is also supplied by shipping American prisoners off to forced labor camps in the PRC. Helps out with that balance of trade thing.

Social security, medicare, welfare, and most of the other trappings of the evil welfare state have collapsed leaving...nothing, zippo, nada, not even workhouses or poor houses. Government is off our backs forever. Road, rail and mail have been privatized, which means you get what you pay for, or you don't get.

The popular vehicles of choice (for those who can afford them) either fly or go on almost any kind of terrain. Most of the so-called confederacies, alliances, and coalitions don't mean very much. The former United States of America (like the rest of the world) is divided into DWorlds and Lebanons--the DWorlds meaning Disneyworlds: artificial walled-in communities, sort of like Seaside, except for the guys in guard towers with automatic weapons. White flight to the suburbs has been reversed; the central cities are all now nicely gentrified, surrounded by rings of people living in cardboard boxes selling garbage, themselves, or pieces of themselves.

In 2045, the former United States of America resembles Brazil -- both the country, and the movie. The cities are surrounded by areolae of suffering campesinos; in the soft, chewy center are a very few people having a very good time. But people have adapted. The ability at which they accept these things and go on is amazing. Just the way it is...

Libertarians will be pleased to note that the radical principle of self-ownership now extends to dueling, suicide parlors, organ harvesting. Drug use and abortion are illegal in most areas though. A philosophical inconsistency, but nobody points it out too much (except for sob sisters in the PacificRim) It's a bad age for dialectic.

In addition to convict labor, our leading exports are organs, entertainment, military hardware, and thugs. To the rest of the planet, we're Hessians, Irish cops not afraid to use the beat stick--and our bombs and missiles are just plain better. It's a source of pride that there are still some things Americans do better than anybody else. A commitment to excellence!

Newt Gingrich, amazingly enough, is still alive, floating foetus-like in a spherical bubble, filled with amniotic fluid, his brain and nervous system hardwired to an AI interface. Old Newt was always into that kind of thing. The net, the future. Just loved that gee-whiz-sense-of-wonder thing.

The wires leading out from Newt's head go into a computer, and out again to an audioanimatronic simulacrum of Howdy Doody, a pure freckle-faced synthesis of Newt's forward-into-the-past urge to leap into Tomorrowland and a Happy Days 1950s at one and the same time.

Way it works: you speak to the puppet and you speak to Newt; it sees you, thru luxvid eyes, talks back. Eerie. Kind of like Magic, though the puppet has never really hurt anybody. Kids think he's cute, write him postcards...

So, 2045 and all that -- my how time flies! It's the 50th anniversary of the publication of Newt's book, and the reporters are all flocking around his freckle-faced Doppelganger. One ballsy reporter looks Newtie Doody straight in the eye and asks, "What the hell you were you thinking?" The puppet turns its head. Dead serious (as far as Newt's imagineered user interface can register emotion), the puppet speaks.

"It was necessary to destroy the country to save it," he says.

102 years old, and Newt still comes up with the perfect sound-bite.