What is it, Bond?

Broccoli and what's-his-face knew how to write a screenplay. Do you remember when James Bond enters the undersea lair of Dr. No? (If you don't, turn away from this blaring screen and get yourself to a video store immediately.) And do you remember how Bond, after admiring - and astutely commenting upon the degree of artificial light within - Dr. No's magnified fish tank, proceeds to ascend the stairs to the dinner table and then pauses, just briefly, to admire a painting of the Doctor's? That very specific painting was a reproduction of Goya's "Portrait of the Duke of Wellington." What is most intriguing about the appearance of that painting on Crab Key is that its original was stolen from the National Gallery (in London, I think) in 1961. "Dr. No" was made in 1962, while the painting was still missing from the eyes of the real world. A brilliant reflection on the evil genius of art museum caper-ism, do you not think?

It would be a shame if a certain someone was correct in telling me that Dr. No was a capuchin in the first draft of the screenplay.

an email i wrote to an old friend of mine.

m to the c,
i rolled out of bed today at one o'clock. i had been awake since nine.
i think this is what they call post-grad ennui. lying around, staring
at the ceiling, the stack of books i could read, if i could read. i
feel like "the graduate."

when i finally did roll out of bed at one o'clock, it was not for
me. it was for the mailman. the thought of him slipping to his death
on our ice-covered front steps because i didn't roll out of bed in
time to throw some salt down, made me feel ill. actually, the thought
of whether or not i would be able to get out of bed once he did slip
in order to call an ambulance made me feel ill. i couldn't let him die
because i felt hopeless. he always brings my mail on time.
love, e.mae

in the early 1970s, there was a sign posted on the Santa Maria della Salute church in Venice that read, "Beware of Falling Angels." it literally referred to the marble pieces that had not yet been restored.

for some reason, i can't seem to get the phrase out of my head these days. it has so much potential to be filled with more meaning. like, the mailman who got me out of bed where i might have languished away in a puddle of my own torpor - no, that's too dramatic. something better will come.

Do you hear the frog?

Since working as an art museum security guard requires such attentive care to the masterpieces (or as one of the museum tech refers to as "messterpieces") on the walls, i feel a little guilty about one recent discovery of mine.

i make noises.

not just any noises. frog noises. blackbird noises. cat purrs. i can even do a hummingbird with my tongue on a good day. the ethical dilemma that i find myself caught in when it comes to these noises is that a) i don't realize that i am even making them and 2) clearly i'm not paying attention to all the grimy fingers rubbing up against the monet(s) or the rouault (one of my fav's) or even the degas'...

how do i solve this dilemma, dear abby?

Here’s a funny little factoid from the archives.

The word “assassin” originally derives from a medieval order of Muslim fundamentalist hit men – the Assassins - whose chief object was to assassinate Christian Crusaders. Al Salih, the twelve-year old ruler of the coveted Mediterranean coastal city of Aleppo and another mysterious murder attributed to the ruthless Saladin, called upon the Assassins when he felt the Christian army breathing down his city’s neck. Though religious salvation was the uber-ultimate prize for doing Al Salih’s bidding, the hit men demanded one other, shall we say, “perk of the trade…”

“Assassin” is derived from the word “hashshashin” – literally, “eaters of hashish.” The Assassins were so gangsta’ that they absolutely refused to go into battle without getting drugged out of their skulls first.

After protecting Aleppo from seizure, the Assassins crept into the sleeping quarters of Saladin in the early hours of the morning in order to leave him a note, notifying him that it would be his blood sought by them the following day. Can’t you just imagine it? This group of Assassins, passing the hookah, stoned out of their gourds, rolling on the floor with laughter, poking at each other’s ribs, screaming, “I can’t wait to see the look on his face in the morning!”

Man, I love history.

“History is little more than the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.”
-Edward Gibbon

"Press Upon the Hop-Frog for Nauseating Wonders!"



A dear companion of mine, a certain Professor Pille at the Mount Palomine Institute of Mysteries, has just contacted me via other-worldy satellite to notify me of the recently erected "Planetary Panopticon" - a veritable log book of the inner-workings and jerkings of his most fascinating Echo World. I, as your dear friend, feel compelled to pass along this exciting discovery simply because we - here on, what his people call, "Urth" - are losing our literacy (as well as other questionable senses) in the unremitting, yet often delectable, tides of techno-media-logical stew.

This way to the Egress...

:The Portal:

But - if I am not already too late - beware Slow Children At Play! And please proceed with caution friends of all types and persuasions, for though it is natural for one to feel as a Coelacanth might feel when blinded for the first time by the fluorescence of a second millenial laboratory, one need not forget that this is, in less-than-dubious fact, an Echo World - complete with its own Autistic-Horrorists, Absurd Futility Vehicles (AFVs) and "explosive devices of astounding power." But, let this not be my final word! Marvel at their inventions! Allow their histofactoids to captivate you! Mein Gott! Take a moment to understand the worlds around you!

Jello Biafra busted up my face.

But that’s not even the point of the story. The point of the story is that I just had the most spectacular birthday party imaginable.

At first, my roommate Lloyd and I were a bit worried. We had prepared a mouth-watering banquet for the event – chicken and snow peas on skewers, sweet potatoes with a soy ginger sauce, asparagus with a lemon-tarragon dipping sauce, cocktail shrimp and, of course, pigs in a blanket. We had set up the ultimate feast for kings. But, a cocktail party without cocktails….?

Then Sean showed up with the box o’ booze.



Though Ian and I have clearly turned into mushy drunk blurs, that’s Lloyd in the blue blazer, holding down the fort in the background.



Stackhouse thought that he could outdo the “oh no, I wasn’t ready for a picture” ugly-face by beating the flash to the punch.



Further proof that he was doing this on purpose.



Mike and Mike playing bartenders. 2 legit 2 quit.



Everybody was having such a rambunctiously good time that the order of the evening was only the most fool-hearted drunken honesty.
Kristin (with the blonde hair): Hey Erin, see that girl over there?
Erin: Uh, yeah?
Kristin: That’s my girlfriend. I’ve been dating her for two years. She’s fucken beautiful…you know something, Erin? (voice rising)…I’M NOT EVEN A LESBIAN!



This is Kate. She’s trying to slyly snag a candle from the coffee table so that a jillion drunks could scream the happy birthday song at nearly one in the morning. Surprisingly, the noise complaint didn’t arrive sooner…



Liz and I, looking like guppies.
I don’t remember if this was before, after (or during) the moment when Lloyd dropped the scorpion into the betta fish bowl. Earlier the scorpion rose from the depths of a bottle of vodka. I have never in all my years seen a betta come to life like that.





Courtney. Or, ‘figure study with white Russian.’



We danced. Milt slept. When the police showed up later to ask us ever-so-sweetly to quiet down, they forced me to shake Milt awake. “I don’t know, he’s a pretty heavy sleeper…” and move him from one chair to the next. Upon waking, he promptly responded to those four refrigerators mulling about in my living room, “Shut up. I’m movin’. I’m movin’.” I thought it was a fantastic idea to whip out my Smith I.D. when they demanded my license so when they asked me, “Oh, Smith. Are you faculty or staff?,” I hardly choked down the impulse to blurt out ‘Faculty!’



These are just a few snippets - it eventually became too crazy to even capture on film. As a birthday present, the next night we went to see Jello Biafra and the Melvins. I couldn’t stand watching the whole show from behind the back of a grimy six-foot-six sloth, so Alissa and I pushed our ways up to the front. The show was mind-boggling until Jello Biafra decided to stage dive from a standing position, just inches away from my nose. After his massive knee slammed into my face, the Melvins’ famous shaggy roadie pulled me out and brought me back stage. From there, I got to watch the rest of the show - dizzied from excruciating pain and sheer excitement - from the best seat in the house. So I guess I’ve escaped my birthday with just one visit from the cops and a swollen face. Not bad, eh?

(another installment in the saga of Mirror girl)

Mirror girl had a feeling that she wasn’t telling the truth. At times, it is true that one can really be unsure. In our world, there exists a rare person every now and again that can bury the truth and rewrite it. Some might call them compulsive liars but they are not simply that. For their own sake, let us consider them to be the “truth re-writers.” Their powers are really quite notable for they are able to erase the truth, yet keep the facts, and write a whole new story of their lives. Many excel so much at this task that they do not even recognize it themselves. Most seem only able to revise happy memories, to make them even happier for, even as a truth rewriter, it is impossible to forget one’s own faults. This is why they are not liars. They are simply natural-born storytellers that often keep their best stories for themselves. Though this sparse crew might seem quite powerful, it is a sad fact of their lot that they often do not know that they are, in fact, a truth re-writer. This is why Mirror girl was so unsure. She believed that there was never an absolute truth, for we are all human beings with different eyes and many kinds of ears and we all see and hear things differently. It is the old philosophy: Imagine if there is an object and everybody calls it a “red object.” When one looks at the object, he sees its color and when another does, she sees its color. When the two look at other “red objects,” they see the same or a similar color. But, who is to say that the two are seeing the same color? Now, imagine if one saw a “red object” but looked so quickly at it that she forgot how it appeared as soon as she turned away. These are the things that Mirror girl would often think about when she was alone. Now, what if this person glanced quickly, turned away and then someone later told her that what she saw was in fact a “red object.” The truth, as well, can also mingle in such a hazardous way with perception.

One more thing about our friend: Mirror girl loved words and the challenge to string them all together in the most perfect order. Like beads on a necklace, if one were to fall off, it would look like a different necklace. It would certainly feel like a different necklace and then perhaps whoever was the owner of the necklace might not like it anymore, so they would throw it away. The truth is such a string of words and, to the rewriters, they are at times unknowingly tempted to take it all apart and string it up again, creating a new necklace. The tricky thing about the rewriters though, is that they never lose the pieces.
Here are some of Mirror girl’s pieces: a tiny kitten, a squeaky screen door and a brown paper bag. It wasn’t her kitten - or her paper bag for that matter - but it was her screen door. It wasn’t the kitten’s business to have anything to do with the screen door but Mirror girl had thought, It is small and needs more space than a paper bag to play in. She did recall in her fuzzied memory that somehow, and it might as well have been by magic, the screen door had allowed the cat to escape.

Now Mirror girl was being asked to tell the story of how the young cat escaped. As the pieces of truth fell into a heap on her tongue, she said, It was an accident…of the postman’s. He opened the door and the paper bag – so close to the screen – went tumbling out. Surely, the cat went after it, like all kittens would, she said. Soon enough, she said, the kitten was gone and we could not keep up to catch him. At that point, her companion was worried about the small kitten, dreaming up nightmares of screeching cars, garbage dumpsters and mountain lions. As she wished and wished for the small kitten to return soon, Mirror girl reviewed the details of the rewritten truth and had completely forgotten the original. It really does happen much like this for the truth rewriters. So fast, so undetectable and, as it should be repeated, so unknown to the rewriter herself. As they always say, A mirror never lies. In the blink of a grasshopper’s eyelash, Mirror girl wound herself fully around the new truth and it was then impossible to recall the moment that she picked up the brown paper bag with the little kitten nestled inside its cave, opened the screen door with its metallic squeak and tipped the little one out into the world.