A Children's Tale

Once there lived a man named Tom. Tom worked hard and one day Tom worked so hard that his employers gave Tom a promotion - they sent Tom to work in freezing Antarctica. In time, Tom would get all sorts of promotions and his employers would send Tom all over the world, to places like Cambodia and Mexico. Far-off places for an Englishman, but Tom just saw it as more work to do. Tom was very happy, for with work would come the satisfaction of achievement. Tom was a good man and worked still harder every single day - harder than anyone had a right to expect. Tom was always traveling in those days.

Tom was meticulous and kept a successful routine. No matter how cold or wet it might be where Tom would be working, Tom would always wear a blue denim overalls and a red flannel undershirt and a tan straw hat. Tom wore boots and a scarf if it was colder - but Tom would never be seen in one without the other. Tom would scarcely sleep in those days, but when Tom would sleep, care would be taken to fall asleep and wake exactly on the hour. That made Tom's wages easier to figure out and Tom's life easier to make sense of. Indeed, routines made Tom's life feel easy and Tom rarely felt burdensome on anyone. Tom ate what was given at such time as it was given. "Life is like pudding," Tom said, "Routines and manners take my mind off the spoon and let me focus on the pudding." Tom would sleep in his outfit. Life was satisfying and no hour felt empty. "When the clock precedes the man," Tom once quipped, "the man precedes the clock."

Professor Sarah Allottedness

Professor Allottedness and I sure had some battles over the story I'd written, on the spot, earlier in the writing class. Yes, she was impressed that I did it in one sitting, but she was rather annoyed by the mode of writing it contained. I was in the front of the class when I asked her with polite irritation to elaborate.

"The God of your story - ," she said, "is as paranoid as all the characters in your story. Your God," she continued, "is just another petty phobic without a sense of direction, ever on the lookout for a usurper to cling to." Growing agitated, she moved forward, "I think you are one of those people that hear voices because you print the sheet music for it every day."

"So what if it is so? So what if I am as you say?" I defended myself against the whole room and nothing would stop me. I didn't know if it was vertigo or anger that made the world blur and spin as I spoke.

"Professor," I continued, "I felt the weight of your criticisms as I wrote it, and that made me stressed and made me say all those things. The net result is a stressed text about stressed people and God help me if stress and claustrophobia is not the impression it produces."

Something Big Will Happen. . .

. . . in 2010. For Liston will reemerge.

True Eyes 4

Past, present, and future are simultaneous in the eyes of one that looks with True Eyes upon the world. Or, rather, because time is an illusion, there is no past, present, or future to arbitrarily separate. Phillip K. Dick, speculative author and mystic, once had a vision of circular time, one in which the Crucifixion is at all points not only an event that is remembered, but also an event that is in our futures. No, I claim the world looks to me as a nested, *single* experience of all sensations. What fantastic things I can experience without the veils of illusion and abstraction weighing me down. I see myself as planning to write this, as having written this, and in the process of writing it. All at once, I experience the difficult autumn of death and decay, along with the spring of youth.

The decay of the spiritual world before the Skotianth is experienced as a single event. Not from blossom to death, but a single experience of the spiritual world in blossom, in death, and in transition. It makes me wonder if I can't reinvent the Skotianth delusions more palatably, so that I can look, one day, to a time when the spiritual realm will be cleansed. Perhaps PKD is right - perhaps time, at least in my already-substantial delusions in the certain time hence when I will be robbed of the True Eyes, is circular. And perhaps what is seen is what is seeing, and that I might conquer the Skotianth, as my ancestors, the Ferrianth, had repeatedly failed to do.

True Eyes 3

The Buyer's Remorse Lamentation

...Not only extant, not only visible, but also biological. In a house, which is transparent to me now, I see a relationship of wires between people that has failing organs and coughs up blood. I walk on the roads, that are apparent manifestations of spirituality and truth, and are paved with rotting flesh. Is this the paradise the parchments of millenia had promised? Or are they what spirituality and truth really have become today, in this decayed, Skotianth-dominated world? The merchant will not want a refund though, and so I must learn to adapt if I am to preserve my sight.

True Eyes 2

Anti-Skotianth manifesto, 2500 B.C. stolen from the caves in France.

Antarctica, China, Malaysia, Rwanda, Cambodia, Nunavut...Their homes are as manifold as our beliefs, and their habitats are as sharp and ruthless as our minds. They are not men, but men they were. Reproductive barriers between two colonies of ants, like the displacements of a natural disaster, after enough time will completely halt any future interbreeding between the two groups once of the same species. This is the terminal stage of our depature between their and our kind. They are not like ants, or like idiots, or like geniuses. No; the horrifying thing is that they are exactly like us, with certain of our understandings repressed, and certain of our repressed traits pushed to the forefront of their own understanding. Their language is unfathomable to us, coming as it does, from a completely different understanding of the world. They have their economy, and their conquerers, and their roughness, and their leisure. They take women as we do, and their women provide for them the same as ours. But their homes are in termite-like houses, and anthill-like structures, and their bodies are very odd, with another section between the abdomen and pelvis. Their legs are much shorter but their chest is massive, and their arms are skinny and appear to allow for the formation of webs and appendages. We are worried because we have grasped their genetic capability and deemed it identical in biological power to our own intelligence. Jutting out hundreds of feet and sometimes into the Earth, their sharp, mantis-like arms reach out and cast webs to bring other life to them.

They fuse and absorb with and control all life on planet Earth, slowly marking this planet as their own. We have been fighting them and winning, but the defects of birth are so concerning, and the children chase clouds that do not exist and worship new and terrible gods. We begin to think that they will speak, one day, the tongues of the terrible Skotianth. If that is so then this world, with oceans made of love, and harsh skies made of truth and power, will surely perish, or perish from view, soon enough. Our love is a many-flowered plant, and our society is an tree, with its fruits available to everyone, and which everyone is invited to cultivate. If it is to perish let it at least be known.

True Eyes

From a discarded parchment found in Munich...

It is the year 1402, in the month of March, who knows what day exactly, and I have sold my last extra pair of True Eyes to some Phoenician and Jewish merchants for the gold to buy a sword with which to end my life. For I have seen worse fates than death, and I have seen where the power flows, and I have known the footsteps of astonishment and grown weary. April is the cruellest month and I will not live to see it again this year. All of the drops of poisoned sustenance breed eternal dependence in all new life on the Earth, dependence to the Skotianth. There is indeed pure life in some aging trees that even today predate the malicious Skotianth, trees alive during the Roman period. But within a few hundred years, even those Roman fortresses, like myself, are doomed to fall, their trunks doubled over in pain and despair.

We don't really live in a spatial realm, you know. From the True Eyes it's easy to see that. To understand what is going on, you have to step back from the reality you had trusted, and try to get yourself to see its falseness. You have to trust yourself, if you can't trust anything else. I can't give you the whole picture right now, and the horrors of April prevent me from giving this vision more light, but others have preceded me, and others will follow me. Let me try to do what little I can do.

Unlearning Basketball.

There's a cutesy little question sometimes asked about addition: "Why is it that when you add a cloud to a cloud, you get one cloud? Does one plus one equal one?" On the face of it, this is radically stupid populism: You are applying the definition of "adding" far beyond its definition to integers, to imply some sort of willful oppression on the part of mathematicians to restrict your thoughts. But going a little bit deeper, why *can't* we add clouds? The answer is a radical conspiracy on the part of mathematicians to restrict your thoughts.

Adding the addition of clouds to the addition of numbers not only unsettles our intuition for adding, but also improves our understanding, and I believe, only moves us closer to the day when we can aggregate people correctly, without distorting the particular; that is, without distorting the individual. And it is for this - this addition of people - that I have spent 38 years on the lam from the mathematical establishment, hoping only, through the grace of God, that they will hear me out. My experiments with adding people have yielded some fruit, though they are ultimately indefensible. Only a real, scientific community can truly address this great problem. Is it schizophrenia if God really exists? But that is neither here or there.

In this modality of thinking, both in abstraction and paranoia, let's un-remember basketball. All you know and all you have dreamt about it - let's un-remember it for the purpose of this write-up. Let's take what we currently remember about basketball, and... un-remember that aspect. Let's... forget. That's right; Commissioner David Stern is making you forget. He is waving his hand in front of your face in ways the human hand can't and shouldn't move, and you are tripping out on the motion of his hands, and you are feeling dazed. On this day of his awful, grotesque hands and their motions, you are forgetting basketball, and quickly. All of the players, all of the coaches, all of the details, even "Space Jam" are all being forgotten. Now you're passing out. Fade to black. Stern's laughing accompanies your fall and your sudden amnesia. Finally you forget David Stern, last of all.

The Cavs are losing again.

The Cavs have lost two straight to teams that they should have beaten. Evidently Mike Brown's brilliant stunt has begun to wear itself out. Let me explain.

You see, when Mike Brown maliciously benched Big Z, giving him a DNP-CD on the night he was to break the franchise record for games played, Brown also gave the other Cavs a motivation for positive action. Lebron famously looks on Big Z as an older brother, so Mo Williams and Jamario Moon look up to Big Z as a beloved uncle. So we have that the Cavs played with the fire of family scorned. They fought like insurgents in a brutal quagmire. Of course, because of this, the Cavs won a number of games consecutively, even trouncing the Suns in his glorious return to action.

New NBA Rule: Players can't talk to coaches

In the wake of the sordid Ilgauskas-Mike Brown fiasco, in which Mike Brown somehow managed to be as evil as Big Z is mediocre, David Stern has passed a new law: Players are no longer allowed to speak to coaches, on or off the court.

"We just want to prevent, you know, that *element* from coming into our league," Stern moaned, through opaque membranes of apparently organic chambers, in between the sound of a woman babbling in French. "If Mike Brown had not had the chance to engage in malicious drama with Z, and probably with management as well, I am certain Brown wouldn't have benched Ilgauskas on the day he was expected to break a franchise record for games played with the only DNP-CD of Z's career."

The new rule forbids a coach from talking to his players, as well. It is this aspect that has unsettled many coaches.

"When they are playing bad, I want to tell them that," Lakers coach Phil Jackson said, "Or when they're good, or when they need to guard passing lanes better, or tighten up on offense. Or even just tell them that this hellish rule of silence will someday be lifted."

The Wheels Fall Off

From Spurs Media Day, 2009 at about 2:00.

Interviewer: Does Tim talk about or give the impression to you that, he doesn't have a lot of years left - he now needs to make these seasons count?

Richard Jefferson: No, I've seen him, and you can tell. His game is pretty much trash right now and I've told him that multiple times, that that's why they brought us all in here. Because of his deteriorating body and so, uh, it's one of those things that, you know, I tell him he should be thanking me more than I should be thanking him being brought into this situation. No, all kidding aside, Tim is a person that's gonna - I asked him when we were in the Olympics five years ago and he said he was gonna play until the wheels fell off. So he's a guy that's very passionate about this game - loves to play and so he's gonna play pretty much until they make him stop. Who knows how long he has?

2015

Richard Jefferson: I have called you all here for a press conference, to discuss my future in basketball.

Reporter 1: Are you retiring?

Kevin Garnett at an AA meeting

Counselor: Please be courteous and respectful. We have a new member today.
Everyone say hello to 'Kevin', our newest member.

Kevin Garnett: Hello, my name is Kevin, and I'm the best alcoholic.

All: ...Hi Kevin.

KG (pointing to chest): No, I'm not alcoholic really. I just like being around people that I'm better than, and telling them so to their face.

Counselor: Kevin, tell us about...

KG (thumping chest): About what? About basketball? I won the finals once, did you all know that?

All: ...

KG (thumping chest): Dave Berri says I'm the best player of the last 15 years.

KG (clutching chest): AAAHHHHH

"My Eyes Bleed Just Thinking About it"

Dear LeBron,

I've been watching your post game and I think you could improve. Enclosed are a bunch of pictures of Kevin McHale to inspire you.

--Alex, age 20.

Dear Alex,

Thank you for the pictures of Kevin McHale. I was certainly inspired! But I am on a progress fast, because Mike Brown has benched Big Z indefinitely. He is a chipmunk, Alex. Anyway, because he is a chipmunk, he is jealous of Big Z's longevity. As you may know, the lifespan of chipmunks is typically less than 10 years, and Big Z has been a staple of the roster since 1997, over 10 years ago. It is physically offensive to Mike Brown, as a chipmunk, to allow Big Z to outlive him in the history books, so now Big Z won't break the Cavs record for most games played.

I know how you feel about Ilgauskas, because I read your blog. But he means a lot to me. You know how some people are lunks, but are dependable and do their jobs pretty decently every time? I know that Big Ilgauskas never made a lot of points. But attention could be paid. And so, I will turn in totally mediocre performances until Mike Brown apologizes or retires. I will be the worst best player in the world to honor the best best worst player in the world until the worst coach does the best thing.

My Eyes Bleed Just Thinking About It,
LeBron, Age 25.

Inspired by: LeBron’s Annual To-Do List, Part 1: The Post Game

ζ

Okay, now just a nice little highlight film.

You know, some nice alternative rock over a highlight film of Big Z.

Nothing special at, say, :52, that you might want to see.

I would start at the beginning to get the whole effect, but after :52 or so, it's pretty mundane. Come on, Z doesn't even make any passes here. I counted none. It's all slightly impressive post moves and easy dunks. It doesn't get more exciting than that the whole video. Wow, he dunked on Shaq. Wow, once he had hair. LeBron creates a lot of the plays anyway. Alright, fine, I admit it: I ineffably hate Big Z and that's clouding my judgment. My hate is ineffable. If I could speak its name then I would have its power. If I knew why I disliked Z, I would know why I like myself and being alive. It's like with the sun. If you know where the sun goes when it goes down, then you know where it will come up. I mean, suppose you thought the sun were just...a lightbulb in the sky. That sort of thing. Anyway, Big Z is just fine in the video.

Of course, there's :52 that you should keep in mind.

Yet Another David Stern as Lovecraftian Figure Blog

Have you ever been in a room with a lot of bad vibes, and just thought, "Everyone is looking at me"? And then, of course, you realized that if they weren't looking at you before, their telepathy had certainly picked up on that thought, and were now focused on you? That's sort of what being in a league overseen by David Stern is like. I've seen NBA headquarters, behind the office building fronts on every continent: I've seen how they all connect below the surface of the earth. I've seen the snakes in the tunnels, David. I have wept in underground tunnels in terror but like Lot fleeing, dared not avert my gaze.

By order of the Commissioner (Владимир "David" стярн), you can only view the true underground headquarters through a special "context visor" full of mirrors and lenses and distortions. Stern says that those without the visor are susceptible to attacks by rabid former players. I know he's just concerned with the image of the NBA, but it seems excessive. No doubt the visor was rigged by Stern to increase my fear and marketability, but there is simply no way to know for sure - whether the snakes I saw were real - without removing the visor and risking a fatal encounter.

Oh yes, there are hundreds of snakes.