Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2001 17:36:20 -0500 From: Tom Emerson Subject: Creative Camp 25 Welcome back, scrollers. New readers, look for a short column of asterisks. The reader is responsible for the contents of the title page. Creative Camp -- 25 by Feather Touch Chapt. 25 Twenty-five chapters. Who knew? I didn't have much idea of twenty-five pages. Fortunately, social misbehavior has been cantering along at a brisk enough pace that half the time it's pretty much watch the Samsung and type. For awhile. All things being equal, which socialism renders an oxymoron, Hollywood is about to have its throat cut. Film and television, right down through the jugular vein, with perhaps a nick out of that good-old life-sustaining carotid. I don't know what Chauvin saw in whoever it was, Napoleon?, but what I see in Sir William of Redmond is the man that's going to gill net all those crummy Jews, and haul them out of home and office. Gut and flay them and their kith and kin The big cable show has been on the last few days. What a bunch of bull, to quote the guy in the automotive finish-restorer ad. Bandwidth, front end, set top, DSL, Direct TV, C-Band, On-Demand, and last and absurdly least, HDTV. In all, more tech than you could fit under the 405. For what? Rosie O'Brooklyn? Hollywood, read `em and weep. Mad Magazine sales are down eighty percent. Already mentioned. Comic book sales, including X-Men and other pop titles, are down to twenty percent of what they were a year ago. You will follow. Your schmoes, oops, I meant shoes, are hard and diligent to the path. I've been searching the Net for remedies which might prevent my death by laughter when you make your journey's end. Gentle Jesus, how you deserve exactly what you're going to get. If you remain adamant in treating writers like script-typing nuisances you will go broke, and, in all probability, wish you were dead if you don't have the guts to murder yourself for what you've done to your industry, and your country, with your loathsome Jenny swill and slimy Jerry gurry. Bill Gates, the true and grand Superman, is going to release his X-Box and cut you to ribbons. If he likes "grow Pedro," your death will be quick, if he doesn't, other writers will be more along the line of the famous piano wire when it comes to finishing you off. A case in point is "Atlantis." Why does the guy have to have a pair of coffee-table lensware? Is it some weird tribute to Swifty Lazar? Don't you know what ugly is? Ugly is the giant muffin in "Night Court." Ugly is the facial garage of some weird apparatus that makes "Spin City" unwatchable. Ugly is every character and every situation in every daytime drama This material makes our country uglier. Ricki Lake can make a day ugly in less than ten seconds. Imus, in less than five. And the ugliest of all? Well, there are two. The floor of the Knesset and Time's `Square. The latter is classic Jewry. Obviously, Broadway and 42nd Street are, ahem, in the neighborhood, so to speak. So let's take a look. Now, first of all, let's be fair. On a rainy, misty night, or, with millions of dollars worth of confetti flying, for example, on New Year's Eve, the place looks good. But most of the time? And all the time in daylight? It looks like some crazy kid had walked down the streets sticking giant plastic doodads on the front of this building and that. Plastic doodads, the size of barn doors.. It's so ugly, even the Jews won't show it on television, except as noted above. Watch any interview in Time's Square, and the camera angles are always selected to hide all that dumpster plastic and their hep-cat squalling. Of course, the centerpiece of this tacky mess is Nasdaq, and, truth to tell, it managed to provide some droll moments over the first months of '01, and every instinct tells me it will provide many more. The X-Box is going to slice and dice; chop, pound, salt and grill. Who in the world is going to watch "Matlock" on WGN, for the one-thousandth time, when they can play a ripping game of Bingo on their trusty X? A small splinter audience, that's who, and one that shrinks by the hour. It is a terror now, it will soon be a holocaust. Film and television. An Anglo's come to town: lo, he has a brain. He is a dozen Goliaths to your pathetic David, and he knows every trick of sling and stone. He will grind you and mash you and crush you and devour you; it has started, his teeth are at your ankles. Underneath, there is every chance he nurtures a fire of hatred of the eel-like Hebrew and his big rubber face full of clever poison. A more likely attitude is indifference, which is the coolest there could be. I just want to tell you up front, and thus do my bit in bringing to you the suffering part and parcel of your creed since the dawn of known mankind's story. The journeymen socialists you call writers didn't push through their strike, did they? A Jew that turns his back on labor unrest is a scared Jew. Just somebody leave a light on, would ya? We wouldn't want any nice Anglo boys to trip on your wreckage. Oh, bye-bye! Manners. Its good to be back. I had a funny e-mail from Jerry. I'm not of a quick mind and also fail at the salient one-liner. The zinger, as it was called awhile ago. Anyhow, when Jerry alluded to picking my work out the asparagus bed, I didn't get it for two days. Not cool, because my Gran always had a few hundred stalks in her garden. Six to eight inches long. Get it? Laugh, because any hip-ness you find on these pages is a crafted illusion. Interesting idea. From France. Put plastic tabs on the road. When a vehicle passes over at the correct speed, the tabs create a pleasant four-note tune. Too fast, and they produce an irritating buzz. Just plastic and asphalt. Very cool (where there is no snow). On revision, I would note that this same effect of a tuned buzz-strip, so to speak, could be achieved by detents in the pavement, and thus not interfere with plowing. And speaking of good ideas, and, incidentally, snow, I would like to give a nod to the State of Main, by god, for posting attractive generic signs to guide strangers to business and other facilities that are located on side roads. The value of these signs is even more psychological than practical. They seem to say someone actually gives a hoot, and are indicators of intelligent life. Thanks. There's old Kurt on the Samsung. His son wrote the most backhandedly devastating indictment of the whole Sixties trip ever penned. His name is Mark Vonnegut and it's called "The Eden Express." Read it and laugh. David writes to say he'd not keen on posting "The Penisitos" under Boy Bands. I wouldn't mention it, except it's a situation of nearly perfect equilibrium. He doesn't want to post essentially similar stories under different categories, because it would be clodhopperish to do so. On the other hand, the writer believes he is not being exposed to the great mainstream of Nifty and would like to put out a little link. Of course, the simple answer would be to separate the last chapter, delete it from this work, and send it as a one-off. That's where loyalty kicks in, so you get Cliff, Baby and the gang. It causes me a problem because it was intended to be another novel. After all, there might be as many as six or eight kids in Rockin' By Baby. If I were a judge I'd say let the writer post with an all caps caution that this individual story appears in one other place. Of course, this begs an essential issue, and that is whether my copy is appropriate for a boy-band audience, in the first place. I find myself half-agreeing with this point of view. Thrill rides are fine and all, but the million-horsepower engine unleashes itself with a ferocity that might unsettle Knots Berry Bellies. The air is thin and way sub-zero where I cruise, and, while the view is sensational, the climb can be an enduro. Beware the fun house. Personally, I think readers of an age to read Band stories are precisely the audience that needs to read me the most if for no other reason than to improve their reading skills and come to learn that you are not what you eat, nor what you wear, nor what you dance: you are what you read, and that is all. "Quarterlife Crises." That's a book and website about the trauma of the twenty-somethings. When I was a twenty-nothing 450 of my exact age group were being killed, every week. Yet, I understand. If the teens are largely unspeakable, the twenties are hardly much better. Don't worry guys. The X-Box is on the way. You can live in the back of a short cave and be happy, with one of them. You don't need big digs and a bigger car, all you need is this game system and you'll be happy. No big job to support living large. Strictly yesterday's news. Rather, something smaller, more stable, and with more free time. Your employer will soon maintain a swap library of games and programs. Your unions will be empowered to negotiate issues related to playing time, under otherwise idle-time work circumstances, finally, after all these years, proving themselves of some value to mankind. You've got your Microsoft miracle, what is it, number three? And Nifty. Your future is golden and should make you very happy, especially if some wise old head reminds you that kings and princes of even a decade ago did not have anything close to what you will have, though you end up driving a truck or shop keeping in a mall.. In five years, this device will utterly change the American lifestyle as practiced all over the world. The weeding is going to be spectacular, and, if we survive the transition, which is a big `if,' indeed, we will emerge a smaller, cleaner, happier culture. Why? Because all the entertainment you can handle will be accessible in a sleeping bag. Best of all, once this platform becomes the be-all, end-all, the age of hype, tinsel, and Moe-The-Schmoe crud will be over, forever. The door will be open for a few writers who will render the platform absolutely invisible and make you happier than you can believe. Another chip shot, seeing as were out before the crowds gather. More socialism. Employers mandated to provide birth control pills. How long until swaddling cloths and caskets? There is a fundamental philosophical question involved here. Is it the entire objective of society to provide medical care? One hundred million people visit the emergency room, every year. That's one third of the population, each year. The question is philosophical, because it goes directly to the animal world, where we look, in vein, for any species, grand or microscopic, that obsesses over its old, while neglecting its young. There's a pretty obvious reason for this, or there seemed to be until the muddy-slime eels came along. Now ga-ga granny and her walker rule the roost. All brought about by the nature loving, tree hugging liberals. Images like this reinforce my opinion that the Jews are a fundamentally insane race, and, to an astonishing degree, are no more connected to the human condition than are those bobbing freaks at the wailing wall. (At least they are exactly where they belong.) Oh! There I am again. "Rockin' Instrumentals." Starts with "Red Rive Rock." Then a song called "Sleepwalking" by Santos and Johnny. And it's me. My doppelganger. The boy, about thirteen, in a light brown knit shirt, slow-dancing with the girl on the right of the screen. He looks exactly like I did at his age. Even has the same shirt. The commercial has been off the air for several months. Anyhow, hi, young dude. Keep you weight down and you'll end up as cute as it gets. Just don't go spoiling it all by getting a fat head and then going around telling everyone you're some kind of prince or something. You're the most beautiful boy in the world. If I could, I'd get you together with the adorably refreshing grandmother's grandson's dance partner. That there, bucko, is a pretty girl. Cool! Alfred Hitchcock marathon next weekend. Don't ask me why, but I think that's some of the greatest writing there is. "Superman," and "The Lone Ranger," too. Like Houdini, these writers had to work in a tight box of formula. Couldn't do it. When I moved to Los Angeles, from Mexico, in 1987, I was just off "The Pirates of Rickety Pier," hot, but I never even thought of working for an agency or any form of media. No can do. So, for this reason, I doubly respect those that toiled out one-hour set pieces. In fact, the best of these writers tell a story you can watch several times a year, simply because they are so forgettable. "Perry Mason," "Murder She Wrote," "Matlock" and a dozen more. I mean you read me, it's over. You'll never forget a character or situation, in twenty years. For all my braggadocio, I actually view myself as one of the artists I used to see on CCTV or of Beijing One particular fellow painted tiny snuff bottles, from the inside, using a small brush with the tip bent at a right angle. Another, carved the brown outer layer off eggs, leaving a superb engraving in the delicate shell. These artists do not work for money, they simply display their works in a window somewhere. Nifty is my window. It doesn't cost you a dime and I don't make a dime, but the art, it lasts forever. Larry King presenting an encore of his interview of Linda Tripp. The Jew in the Chair. By his own admission the king of talk spends one hour each day being ministered to in a salon. He's runner-up schmoe after Hoffa, Carson and Sinatra. Come on Larry, you're literate. Drag out the old typewriter. I'll peel you from your toes up, sort of a Mohawk in reverse, leaving only the yuck at the top of your head. I wouldn't sit for Larry. My opinion is he needs two hours a day in his salon, and I'd hate to take up his time. I've only watched him, for more than a few seconds, once in my life. When Jay was on. Anglo-type slowly backstroking circles around the chair. At one point The King of Talk actually mentioned tailfins. Well, they were talking about cars. Awhile ago in this book, I was dissing Jewry for choosing herring over lobster, while listing faults that seem all but genetic. I forgot to say that its possible they just aren't very bright. Being forty-five years out of date on tailfins is not very bright. Oh, there's someone I want to say hi to. Former dean of Harvard Divinity. Ousted for porn on his campus haaad drive. Hi, dude, you going to just sit there? Whatever, but, in the meantime, here's my humble offering: There was a dean of the yaad, Who packed his disc with the haad. The admin found out, Which led to his rout, `Cause freedom's not a line, but a plaid. Another quickie. E.B. White reminds writers to set down everything they have to say. Good advice, it's easy to leave something out. Of course, in the various projects and concepts sketched herein, a lot is left out for a variety of reasons, but, by the same token, there's one thing I want to be sure to include, and that's a reference to the original 38,000 version of "The Flyyy." Anyone reading this and wanting some fleshing out, politically speaking, should write and request a copy so as to complete their collection of moi. I cut ten thousand words out of the story, as it's posted now. Shouldn't have, but there you go. (I have to acknowledge a mistake once in awhile, because if I don't that leaves immodesty as my only imperfection, which is oxymoronic.) The History Channel's doing another Kennedy rerun. Let me put this very simply. When Honey Fitz and Old Joe were doing with schmoes and liquor and Hollywood and such, my ancestors were establishing Bell Labs and the Burlington Northern. Go ahead and say So What. Your death warrant needs signing, and you'll oblige the clerk by affixing your moniker with your own ignorant hand. Again, I refer the reader to the unabridged version of "The Flyyy." My favorite story of "Lottacum," of course I really mean "Camelot," is that Old Joe never spoke a single word after Teddy told him about Mary Jo. To prove I'm the balanced, fair minded, flexible and honorable prince that I am, I will give Ted credit for one thing. For decades he's been trying to get Naushon into the public trust. These islands, ranging some twenty miles south of Woodshole, are as beautiful as it gets on this planet. Fantasy-size trees and extensive coastal moorlands. Private Property. Home to more tree hugging, granny-glassed liberals than you can shake a bra at, but when it comes to popular access to their vast back yards, it's not no, but hell no. Ask Ted Kennedy. They wouldn't even let him stay over night, because he's a mick. All our houses are at one end, and they have scads of acreage and miles of shorefront, in their own right. Public access should be allowed on eighty percent of The Elizabeth Islands. So let it be written, and so on. Of course, when I'm famous the entire chain, Monsod and Hadley's Harbor to Cuttyhunk, will be parklands because I used to ride Merlin, Zel, Cadence, Dart and Starfire all the heck over the place, and picnic on the Weepeckets. Since we were going on about the Kennedys and royal families and so on, here's something you can do at home. Pull out a map of Massachusetts. Try to find the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port. If it looks okay, don't be fooled. The water is shallow, the bottom is rough and muddy, and it is most unpleasant place, any time of year, though very suitable for a liquor merchant. Now see if you can find Naushon. Well, good for you. Now you know the difference between a real prince and the watered down kind that the Jews want to sell you. And having spoken of pleasant, find Pleasant Bay (just past Chatham). Now, locate Sipson's Island and The Narrows. The house on the mainland bluff belonged to Gran, and is the second most beautiful property on the cape. I mention these, I'm sure trying the patients of pervs from other regions, because millions and millions of people live in the area. It is the homeland and breeding ground of the only prince you've got, so study your geography. Watched PBS's presentation on Queen Victoria last night. I am very, very anti woman. A perfect example of the reason why is the total destruction of the Indian experience with the introduction of English women into the East India Company culture. They abused their servants, clattered and gossiped like the insufferable bitches there were up, down, and especially in the middle. (Perfectly exemplified by Hyacinth Bucket it the British offering titled "Keeping Up Appearances.") Without them, India would undoubtedly be a massive world power, very mixed, very rich, very beautiful, and very happy. As it is, they suffer the migrations of up to seventy million people at a time in religious frenzies and their idea of a Martha Stewart Good Thing is to ride on top of a train. Can't be much fun. I think women should be known generically as bessies after Bess Truman, who had to have been the worst American, next to the Rosenbergs, who ever lived. A quick shot at IBM for false advertising. The commercial where the Turkish business group calls the American teen, who relays their massage to dad and his answer back to them. The product advertised, instant voice translation, not only does not exist, it never will in any way close to how it is portrayed in this advertisement. All it does is encourage people to buy bigger, more power hungry computers because even primitive voice recognition takes enormous processor speed. The only difference between what IBM is offering, and the Elixir of Egypt in "Oklahoma!," is the cost, minus the buzz off the elixir's opium and alcohol. What's all this privacy stuff? Seems very Jewish. Every person a bit of a king wringing his or her hands over someone getting ahold of their personal information. Aside from obvious fiduciary considerations, what in earth is the problem. It seems to me to be a Yiddish variation of Fear Itself as in The only thing we have to sell you, is fear itself. Charles Lindberg said a few Jews added texture to a society but a significant number resulted in chaos. This is a perfect example. Everyone fretting about privacy, Web sites adding expensive, bandwidth-consuming layers of nonsense, for what? Remember Y2K? As long as you understand that these non-people will kill you, that's the thing. That you go willingly to your death in their jittery upside down world. I insist on no less for my subjects. Ford's in the news. Probably on the way out. They've used their CAD programs to maximize profits to the extent their transmissions fail if not perfectly maintained, and they had to buy back eight thousand cars for total engine failures. Who would ever buy one, new or used, with so many other choices? The irony of the situation is that these stories are on at three in the morning, and the tire thing is in prime time. How can anyone be responsible for a tire which can be under-inflated, overloaded, and driven at excessive speed on 120-degree pavement? I say no one can, but the operator, and would add that it is an oxymoron to mention safety, and RUVs (Rollover Utility Vehicles), with their lousy brakes, in any context. Women at Wal-Mart. Thirty percent of management versus about fifty percent at Sears and K-Mart. I don't like Wal-Mart for the damage it's done to the classic American town, and would scale it out of existence in twenty years, but now I see how they got where they are. Some NASCAR circuit race in Kentucky was on the other day. Seventy thousand fans. If memory serves, the downfall of Rome and its empire was caused, as much as by anything, by gladiatorial obsession. Vaudeville, I was just thinking earlier today, was much the same thing. In other words, a life around the house that is so boring, you will spring for any take-in available, at almost whatever amount on your credit card. This comes from not reading. If you read, you can get a stack of books from the library, free, and have the weekend of your life, perhaps even educate your kids a little, and get to bed at eleven Sunday night, healthier, wealthier and wiser than your neighbor with his five minute water-cooler story. It is flat-out impossible to be lonely with a good book. And these days you have Nifty, to boot. Count yourself lucky, stay home, and get a freaking life. .Too much freaking sex. Those last two chapters, especially. I haven't mentioned Emersonia, nor The Projects Party, for hundreds of pages. This is the only blueprint you're going to get, and though you don't deserve it, I happen to like typing on Word XP, so you're going to get it anyway. For you veterans of these 464 pages, and 185,000 words, trust me. I don't want to try David's patience any more than I think I can get away with. You folk who have joined along the way, well, you can trust me, too. The engine has been repeatedly demonstrated at one million horsepower (some readers say more). Enough to send you straight up, babe. Yes, Brad has a secret, and all will be revealed in this chapter, in spite of not one single letter on the manuscript so far. Your problem, not mine. But for now I'm enjoying a morning work out, so we'll chip a few more. Para medical teams. These would be task-trained technicians who would perform a large percentage of routine surgery. Answer this question. Who would you rather have do your by-pass, an eighteen year old who had done several hundred in the preceding months, or a board certified cardiac surgeon who'd done a dozen or two? The is a perfect avenue for so-called troubled kids because the only skill required are reasonable intelligence and a fine touch. Who knows what kind of touch a physician has, just because he or she was able to pass Neurology. In my major novel, I describe a culture in which kids sit around the lunchroom crocheting Irish linen into doilies. Of course, in Emersonia they're competing for fifty-million dollars in prize money, but that's then, and this is now. Emergency rooms would be, to a large extent, a place you go to die in comfort. If you show a legitimate degree of vitality, as an overall person, heroic methods may be used to save you, but if you're old, sick, fat or otherwise in bad shape, you will be given comfort care, only. Not all the time, there are exceptional circumstances, like Gran, when she broke her hip at a hundred and two. Since she was in excellent overall health, mental and physical, she should be given a chance and her hip should be pinned. Of course, having been married to an RN for five years, and having numerous relatives in medicine, I realize the populist tripe served up on "E.R." is not the way it is, but rather a Jewish ideal. Still, vast billions of tax money are wasted on extremely low value treatments, which result in terrible suffering, often for months or years, in a hundred patients for every one who is cured, in any humane sense of the word. Again, is the sole purpose of our national experience to clobber the diseased and elderly along, to keep premies and coma victims alive, at a cost, per day, that would put a kid through a year of college? If you believe this for a minute of your life, skip the e.r., you're already dead. (Trouble is, you're killing off the whole species, daddy-o). You kind of get the drift, eh? We must largely eliminate socialism and use our surplus to refurbish the bleak mess left by our ancestors. That's all there is to it. No insurance, no warranties, no unions, no welfare except the helpage centers. My cousin, Bing, was killed in Vietnam shortly after I left the country. He was the third William Emerson, and, if anyone is interested, was featured in a piece of leftist trash titled "Hearts and Minds." In the Jewish world in which we live, it won an oscarmajigg. Anyhow, the unit of currency in Emersonia is named after him. The bing. It is, irrevocably, the pay for one hour of unskilled or semi-skilled labor, with semi-skilled defined as any task that can be learned by the average person in a week. Punishment for paying or receiving more than one bing per hour is one-thousand hours of detention. To hit a few way points, a teacher would make B1.50 to B1.70 and a doctor, B2.50 to B5.00. An airline pilot might work up to B2.00. In this life you walk into a store with a bing, and come out with a modest bag of food, for centuries at a time. That's conservatism. The real kind. The kind that says we will allow you the best of everything, according to what you produce, but we will not allow you to make pigs of yourselves, ruin the environment, and run the country to ruin, at this point, it appears, through diabetes, alone. Because of Sir William, there is a tiny light in your tunnel. As the X-Box truncates the media, vast resources will become discretionary. People will live in smaller houses, travel less, save more. He's pulled you from the brink once, but can he do it, again? If I write for him, yes, if not, no. Some questions have very simple answers. Carpal tunnel has been back in the news, off a Mayo Clinic study downplaying its existence. I think the dead must be glad they are that way, because surely weavers of old, type setters, of old, blacksmiths, of old, and all farmers, of old, would laugh themselves to death if they could see how limp wrested we've become. It's a fad, as well known to true doctors as a number of others that have appeared all over the world. They come, they go. Asthma, for example. What's that about? I drove the freaking bus in Los Angeles for three years and I never saw anyone have an asthma attack. I've never seen one in my life. In a way, I feel like a hypocrite writing this. When my computer was stuck in Safe Mode for a few days, I didn't write a word because the screen was so ugly. Nonetheless, I stick to my guns. Work is work, I've done loads of the stuff. Buy your own keyboard, or whatever, and count your blessing you're not softening sandy buffalo hide for your brave, with your teeth. (Our bunkers at LZ Sharon were located in an arroyo. No breeze. Sixteen degrees north of the equator, in August. Sandbagging. If anyone can come up with a more stringent arena of toil, drop me a line so I can avoid the place.) Marijuana. This entire novel, as well as everything else I've posted, was written when I was stoned. I smoke two very average joints a day, and have for the last seven years in a row. Plus, other times in my life, for years on end, then stopped, for years on end. The only time I stopped here was when the price doubled, to a dollar a joint. Then I quit for a couple of weeks, not in protest, but simply because on my income it wasn't worth the price. I almost laugh out loud when I see a pink cheeked David Crosby, and a twenty year old practically dying in her shoes because the junk food industry has bloated her to three hundred pounds. If you underpin your social structure with Jewry, this is exactly what you get. Anyone who gave a shit would outlaw gratuitous food products for at least ten years. So let it be written, so let it be done. About the most interesting fact in history is that the divorce rate in Paris dropped from forty percent, to forty divorces, in the first years of Napoleon. Suddenly, people had something to think about other than their relationships. As I started to say some hundred or more pages ago, it's time we tricked this bird up and made her ready for our final letdown and inbound routing. It's been nice flying with you, and perhaps there will be time for a few words at journey's end. In the meantime, we've been cleared out of our last holding pattern so I'll get off the intercom and see what approach control has up their sleeves. Fare thee well. . . . * * * * * * * Brad was looking more mischievous as the delightful afternoon wore on. Mysterious. Anticipatory. Nothing up his sleeve. His naked arms stretched so John could see. No. It was in his eyes. With whole other worlds, yes, but nonetheless distinctively something up; something in the wind. John lay to the eleven year old, and couldn't help whispering, "What?" "You've got to be ready," the boy replied. That seemed to lead nowhere. Who cared? Let him dwell in his land of mischief. Touching his bare chest, fondling him, kissing him, molesting him, was to die for. John could do it in a snow bank. Start a flood, so what?, there was nothing unnatural about a flood. While silence in this young male was a hundred times more lucid than the prattle of most boys, his actions bent John's mind entirely. Louder than his beautiful silence. Louder. Oh, god, what's he doing with my belt, my zipper, and so fast. Well, he isn't a virgin, after all. But still, he's just eleven. Should he be so sure of what he's after? Well, never mind. Boys will be boys. "I want to tell you a story." His actions had been so decisive and, jeez, complete, he was due his words, but if he keeps it up, it better be a short story. Fortunately, Brad changed his rhythm, stroking the naked thirty year old's big penis in a more lingering manner, and using his mouth only to verbalize. "This happened to one of Uncle Brad's friends. He was visiting a mechanic's shop in a town not far from here. He hung out there quite often, and one Saturday morning there were some other customers watching the mechanics work on their car. He, his name is Allen Reynolds, had thrown a case of Bud on the back of his bike, and he offered one to the man, Kit Anderson, whose car was being worked on. They chatted and kit introduced Sandi, his wife, and Samantha, ten, their daughter. . . . Kit pretty well had to introduce the little girl. She was flirting with the handsome stranger. Allen chuckled to himself when she pulled her shirt half way up her tummy and her dad yelled at her not to show her boobs in public. The girl obeyed her young father with a grin, and sashayed off to another part of the shop. At this point Al, the owner, came in and introduced Allen. Kit was glad to find out the visitor was well known, and when he caught his daughter's eye he managed to give her a quick wink. An all-clear. The child chortled happily in response, and took off after the shop cat, which she'd been stalking since her arrival.. The talk went along the usual chillin' over brewskies lines. Good routes for Allen's bike. Prices. Rain. Since it was June, how lucky to have any sun, at all. Sanki chatted about a series of auctions whose funeral rows of cars parked on the roadside were a part of rural life. At one point the young wife excused herself and Kit whispered to Henry that she liked to play with herself all the time, and couldn't get enough of it. Sandi returned and the conversation returned to conventional themes. At twelve thirty, Kit invited Allen across the street for a beer. It was filling out as a very mellow Saturday, and the twenty-five-year-old biker accepted with a happy smile. The bar was known simply as The Corn, though it's sign read: Corn's All Squeezed. Half a dozens patrons were seated in the main dining area, leaving the back of the room free. That's where Kit guided Henry, picking up a pair of tank-n-tonics on the way, as well as napkins and a plastic basket full of chips. They talked more about bikes and cars, then Kit changed the tone. It was subtle but unmistakable. "Sammy Song really likes you," he said to the new arrival, three years his senior. "She's cuter than strawberries, hold the pie," he replied, blushing slightly because the girls young breasts had shown through her T-shirt as just finger size, and he hadn't meant it that way. "She's not normally into crushes and on-the-spot notions," the young farmer mused. "Well, she's a doll," Allen said. "You're totally lucky, dude." "So you're from the Northeast," Kit said, seeming to want to say more. He continued after a moment. "There's a lot of rural country out your way?" "Most of it's that way," Allen explained. "Even up along the Hudson you can get lost and die in the woods, practically in sight of Manhattan, if you could climb a tree." "So then, a lot of farming.?" "Huge," Allen agreed. His new young friend was trying to get somewhere. The journalist was somewhat new to interviewing, so decided it was time to order up lunch and another round. On top of two beers each, that should do it for both of them. When he returned to the table -- he was a lively type and liked to bus his own table if the staff didn't mind -- he felt the same feeling he'd experienced in the artillery unit where he spent his weekend each month. A hang-fire. It can explode instantly, or never. Creates considerable tension, especially when one goes to unlock the breech. Why was this handsome and impossibly young father licking his lips. Had he said something. And what was all this about farms. I mean, sure, it was Iowa, but.. "So," the young man finally began, jeeze he looked like a boy himself, "like on the farms, is, there, you know, maybe like a little different lifestyle than in the city and suburbs, you know, where there are people around and a girl like Samantha would have a bunch of friends?" "I think rural societies, farmers, shepherds, ranchers, all of them are probably closer, or more distant, as the case may be." the writer replied, thoughtfully. "I guess it must intensify things by default, if for no other reason." That was as well as Allen could do for the moment. He really preferred to listen, always assuming he was too young to be a real journalist. Kit smiled and seemed to blush again. "You said I was lucky, and you were right. We happen to be a closer family." Allen waited him out. "They joke about stuff, you know, Arkansas, you know, How do you circumcise a Kentucky boy?, kick his sister in the chin. We're not like that, you know, creeps. It's just stuff that happens. I guess you could say, if you were of a mind, that we earn it by a fool's amount of hard work, and pulling the world along behind our tractors." "In olden times," Allen said, "they had to be careful." "That's it, exactly," the young father said, "I mean think about it. If everyone just did what they felt like doing, that would be a mess. Like the kid in the book." Allen was thrilled at the reference, to Dicke's book. Kit smiled broadly at the quick look of respect in the biker's eyes. Maybe twenty-five wasn't over the hill. "Anyhow," the young father continued, "that was then, and this is now. Now we have money, lots of it, and genetic profiling, and, well, what used to be antisocial and dangerous, isn't, anymore." "In a way it's ironic," Allen said, a vocational strata to his logic, "the older timers who worked so hard with so little had to toe to the straight and narrow, and now, when it's all diesels and air-conditioning, a wider field is opened. He almost added "to the plow," but he'd already let one berry-size allusion escape, and that was more than enough. "That hits when we go to Sandi's auctions," Kit said. "But this is Iowa, so they did live in heaven..." "Whatever relationship they had with their angels," Allen broke in, abusing the first tenant of journalism by finishing off they next guy's sentence. The lunch crowd had dispersed, and Sandi poked her head in to say she was taking Samantha out to a nearby farm that had some spare kittens. The girl blew a kiss from behind her mom, it seemed wide enough to cover two, and was off, in tow. Kit pulled out a small notebook from his shirt pocket and lay it on the table. "Look, Allen," he said, "I think we're kind of talking about the same thing; would it be okay if I came and sat beside you? We can use the notebook to pretend we're dickering on something." Once again, there was an opportunity for the suggestive comment. Allen let it ride, and moved to the opposite side of the booth, where both could spot an intruder fifty feet away. `Intruder'. The word ricocheted in Allen's mind, and he wondered if even war could be quite this exciting. He pulled out his pen. "She really likes you," Kit half whispered. "And Sandi, too. I though I knew all the signals, and there were some new ones the moment she laid eyes on you. Both of them, in fact." "I'm like absolutely, totally flattered, dude," the biker said, "but I like all three of you, and I wouldn't want to be a..." "Fourth wheel?" This time it was Kit who interrupted. The analogy was cute, that was for sure. Almost diabolically subtle. You didn't have to own a Porsche to appreciate the fundamental validity of the concept. "All three of us want to invite you for the weekend," Kit whispered, as if he were discussing an important deal. "Don't get the wrong idea," he added, "we don't just lie around in a stupor all the time. We play cards, I read to Sammy Song, mostly sports bios, Sandi reads her one little girl story and a couple of big girl stories. That's a whole hour, seven nights a week. Then we manage to one-up even the Brady's, because we jump rope for nineteen minutes, racing to see who can do the most spins. "But," the boyish young dad said, with a trace of wit leaking from his eyes, "that's pretty much It, in the healthy-family-evening department." "Yes," Allen agreed. "By the time you're done, you must be ready for a..." "Shower." Christ in the Mountains, what was this with finishing each other's sentences? They both giggled so close to fucking children they tripped themselves into near hysteria, Allen, the more mature, having the presence of mind to scribble something on the little notepad. There was a place in the corn, Where friends could chill of a morn'. If the conversation broke down There was no need to drown, But only to talk of the horn. When Kit read it his eyes simply blazed. Thirty seconds. While giggling. It was a display of raw talent that, of and by itself, would have been key to a lifetime of friendship. More than. "You really are a writer," he whispered out loud. "Limericks are the province of the Irish, you must come from the sod." "No, English, nothing but, unless you include lords and ladies from Scotland. Not always wise in the provinces." "You're secret's safe," Kit responded, still shaking a bit and wiping the tears from his eyes. The counter girl looked in, but they hardly needed more to drink and waved her off with a smile. "Where were we when we were so crudely interrupted?" Kit asked. "It begins with s-h-o-w and ends with..." "e-r," Kit added, immediately finding his place in his story, and thinking he could have just well supplied t-i-m-e as a suffix.. "Is that what really happens?" the writer quizzed. "Most every night from 7:49 to 8:00 p.m." "So you start with the jump roping at seven-thirty?" "Those are the dues we pay. Live like machines, take care of business, twenty-two hours a day. Tivo from four to six, dinner, never more than an hour on homework, and that gets us to the reading and the exercise, or," and here he could not restrain the residual cough of a giggle, "at least some of the exercise" Kit sensed a reluctance in Allen to ask more personal questions. He felt comfortable enough with his new friend, to take some exploratory initiative. "It started back just when she turned eight with that ad for the family cruise ship," the young farmer whispered. "The one with the little cruise director girl leading her parents around. The hula-hoop." Allen remembered the ad. The company allegedly ran parks that were extremely exciting for virile young males, and he remembered having his feet swept almost off by a nice boy with pimples. Regrettably, he'd been there with his brother, and unable to respond. Well, he supposed, if you analyzed it, there was nothing non-carnal about the gyrating pixie in her dance skins. "Sammy-Song recorded that on the Tivo. Made a loop, all by herself. That cute kid, swiveling her hips for, I swear, five minutes." "I like her mom," Allen said. "Dyn-o-mite," Kit agreed, and they high fived. The actress playing the mother epitomized the awesome potential of woman as girl, leave out the fork and trough. (Even professional dancers get fat if they eat too much.) "Anyway," the farmer continued, "Sandi got the biggest kick out of it. Thought it was cute..." "Because they look like sisters?" "She was taller and leggier, being older than the little actress, but, you've got a point. Strong resemblance, but then she's a pretty common looking cutie. "It's nice talking to someone who's actually present," Kit added with a trace of a sigh. "Sometimes I wonder if I'm raising a freak. She's ten now, and she's read a dozen books for every book her teachers have read. Since most of them have never read anything off a list, and notes for them, maybe, that's not saying very much. "The other day," Kit went on, "I called her teacher on some school business, and happened to mention Garrison Keillor [sorry, tall dude, you didn't make the dictionary]. Clueless. Never heard of him, and this is freaking Iowa. I said Lake Woebegone, and she said the last time she saw Lake, he seemed fine. She must have thought I was nuts." Elvis came on with "Suspicious Minds." It fit the mood. Suspicion of ignorant union teachers and sterile classes. The haunting opening of the song seemed to promise more, then the varying rhythmic themes seemed to get their act together and set off. "So with an old friend I know," a new song starts, comfortable in its business. Relaxed. What the young writer prayed for, every day of his life. Catch his readers in a trap, don't let them walk out. But could he do it, so beautifully, set thrumming passages marching on, seemingly in disarray, then magically synched, in cadence and in step? As the record, the lovely, scratchy record, ended, he suddenly realized the arrangement was flawed. Lord, that stupid limerick. What had that been all about? Now was listening to the closing shots of Elvis's masterpiece, and faulting the ensemble, for, well, using horns. "Do you think she's pretty?" Kit was asking. "Not like a model," Allen replied, "but yes. She could almost be a sister to the girl in the cruse-ship commercial if..." "She lost a few pounds. That's on purpose. She doesn't want to be a barrel girl and we don't want a paper doll. Too much work on a farm, among other reasons." "She's not even half-way..." "To that? Thanks. She'll be pleased. We..." "Downplay it? The cutie-pie thing? I won't..." "It goes without saying." Both the young males thought this was pretty funny. Allen was thrilled with the assumption he would see the girl later and his brown eyes glowed with anticipation. Between school, work, and the Guard he hadn't found time for much pursuit of any kind. He'd covered abnormal psychology in various courses, and knew he'd lingered a little longer and scored a little lower than a committed scholar would have. His subtle mind nagged at a possibility of detecting perversion through an algorithm based on substandard academic scores. He had a sneaking feeling it might prove accurate. Their most recent comic interlude concluded, the young men resumed whispering. "So Sandi had a talk with her," Kit said, "about the little dancing redhead. She told me about it that night." "What did she say?" Allen asked. "Sammy Song asked Sandi if the girl in the scene ever danced for her daddy. Sandi asked her why, and she explained that the girl really seemed to like her dad, and maybe he'd like to watch her dance in her bathing suit, with her arms up so he could see her. "Sandi said she was sure the girl's dad would love to watch her. Then she asked why she wanted to know. Sammy-Song replied that she'd had a really big dream about dancing for me. `So she could show me how much she loved me,' unquote." "Girl after my own heart," Allen said. Kit blushed, but did not look away in any special manner. "Anyway," the boyish dad continued, "she went on to say that she'd seen Betsy Ferguson, she's a nine year old, showing her new bra to the younger girls, and she dreamed that's what she was wearing when she danced for me. She asked Sandi if that was a bad dream, and Sandi tweaked her nose and said, `It was a dream, wasn't it?' "'That made her giggle,' Sandi said, and then Samantha started asking questions, which was unusual, because usually she's more the egghead type; likes to look things up for herself. How much did I love her, did she have to be just a little girl, always, did the little girl in the ad ever get to do things all alone, just her and her dad? "I guess I don't have to say by this time Sandi had pretty well retreated into a daddy's little girl mode, herself, and I counted myself quite a lucky pops, indeed." "Were you inside her?" Allen whispered, picking his permission from Kit's tone. "More than I had ever been. I swear, I was twice the size, of, you know, normal." "She's gorgeous," Allen whispered. "Oh, god, that night, she was all sweaty and totally out of this world. I'd cum off in her, and she'd tell me more about my little girl; how obvious, if unformed her little eight-year-old questions were. She'd heard on television that girls in Iraq get married at nine, and asked what it would be like for a little girl to have a man for a husband. Sandi explained the mechanics; that a normal girl was able to be with a normal, full-grown man, when she was six or seven. That, of course, was a magic number with the resident princess, who was all of that and even a little more. By the time I'd quizzed Sandi on everything I'd come in her nine times. The last time, she screamed, I mean all-out; she's usually very quiet because of the things she did with her father had to be secret, but she howled and cried out, then broke down mewing. From the other side of the wall we heard Sammy-Song. `Thanks for telling him about me, Mommy," she said. "Always a clown, eh?" Allen quipped. "You had to have been there," came the retort, with a shy grin. "The next week was unbelievable," Kit went on. "Sandi and I agreed to wait until the following Saturday night. First, to be sure it wasn't just a passing notion with Sammy-Song, but, just as much to be sure, ourselves. The torment began as early as Tuesday night. Sandi wanted to make her daughter's first time special, so we'd fool around and whisper to each other for a couple of hours each night, you know, eight to ten, farm time, then we'd take pills to sleep, only time in our lives, and repeat the process. Sammy understood something was in the wind, and laid off pestering her mom. Being good about that kind of thing had earned her a horse when she was seven, so she stuck to the course she knew. "Never can tell when there might be a stallion in the offing," Allen commented, glad he didn't have to dodge possible double entendres, not any more. "The only debate," Kit continued, "was that I wanted Sandi with us, and she wanted it to be private between the two of us. She reminded me it had been very private when she told her twin, Adam, about what her dad was doing to her, and he'd kissed her and said it was okay, that a lot of girls on farms did things like that, and then took her camping for a week. They were twelve at the time. She's sure that's when Samantha was conceived. Their dad was thrilled, whoever's child it was, and the whole family ganged up on my aunt, and finally she changed her mind and even came to get turned on listening to Sandi and her twin when Adam was making love to her, which he began doing very often. "Did Adam continue his affair with your wife?" Allen asked. "Yes," Kit whispered. "But they kept being super secretive, that's why she loves it when I take her really slowly and gently. We can't get past the hickey part, but she used to send them as signals to her mom and her brother. It was all so deliciously shameful it might have been English. You know, Mr. Wick." "How did Sandi's dad start with her," Allen asked. "He raped her. Coming home from Riverfest. She was wearing a dancing costume. Pink satin. Cut really low in front. And pantyhose and a garter. She'd just turned twelve. He said he wanted to check some gates, and apparently had come out that morning to open one, so when he `found' it with Sandi, he had an excuse to check more. After the third one, he apologized, and tried to explain to her, but she was scared and confused. He had her with him on the front seat of the pickup for over an hour. He came inside her twice, and the first time, all over her bare chest. He begged her to forgive him, and she sort of spaced it off. Awhile later, she told Adam, they went on their trip, alone together, she came back pregnant, Joan, that's my aunt, had no choice, and as soon as she saw how happy everyone could hardly help being, all the time, like the Bradys, she threw out the towel and hijacked her daughter and her husband into the shower, and Adam watched from the door as she placed her little girl onto her husband. That was the only time they ever did anything together. After that, it was the hickey telegraph that spread the word that the little girl had been with her dad." "When did you meet her?" Allen asked. "She'd been dating Adam for about two months. That's what we call it. We were friends, more than, and one day we got stuck under a tree, rain, for a couple of hours. She told me and let me feel her belly. She was just starting to swell. She said she wanted to date me, but we had to wait for a week so we could be sure of our feelings. She advised me against falling in love, because she was going to bear either a daughter and sister, or daughter and niece, and that might be too weird for some people. "That was the first of my super weeks. Her dad and Adam let me take her camping, for a week, just like she'd gone on with Adam when he got her pregnant. Start of a happy marriage. Two twelve year olds, and all those woods. Now Sandi's twenty-two, Sammy-Song is ten." "How does she feel about following in her mom's footsteps>" Allen asked. "She wants two, I mean two children. No way. One while she's with us, the second has to come from her husband and under her own roof. Sand's just ready for her second, now." "How many are you going to have?" "We can afford five, now, and we hope by the time the sixth is here, we'll be able to afford seven. We want some normal kids. Just because we farm doesn't mean we harvest our whole crop of daughters. It's not real complicated, but there is an informal formulae, a first daughter for this, and the rest, for that, so to speak. Honor among thieves, a skeptic might call it." "We believe . . . "Talent does what it can, genius does what it must." George Eliot. Well, that seems like a good place to interrupt, now that things in the little cafe are cooking along at a goodly rate. My illustrious ancestor said When duty whispers lo, thou must, the man replies I can. He didn't use `man' as he wrote in obscure English, too close to the Greek and Latin of his education. Whatever his synonym for man, I would substitute genius and dip my hat to Ms. Eliot. She'd be glad to know her name is on the spell checker. And I bring the whole matter up because not only is it germane to an overall imperative to attack you and drive you, like stupid sheep, off the lemmingesque route to the cliffs you are now on, but I also must deal with practical realities, which, to a writer, is getting published. Starting out superficially, my present situation is suddenly fraught with intellectual and philosophical significance. I have tried to dwell in the land of the common man. As I've mentioned numerous times, this is the reason I chose Nifty. It is also the reason I live in a very poor Caribbean city. It is the reason I drove a bus in Los Angeles. I left an S2 deferment with dean's list enhancements to join the army. I knew I was a prince at five, and made every effort to live commonly amongst my subjects and to learn of them, from them. That I have trained myself virtually perfectly in my fantasy job, being a prince, may be clearly seen in my parallel field of endeavor, which is operating the alpha/numeric keyboard. This is all well and good you're undoubtedly saying, but what's the point. The point is genius does what it must and in this case criticizes the monarch, himself. He tells me that I'm nuts for sticking with Nifty. More is less. So much, means no one can find anything. I acknowledge I have never received a letter on C-Camp, but remind him this is what I want. To write the book just the way I want, with no thought in the world that anyone will read it. He says the issue is deeper. He says I've been swallowed by the very populism I attack. I ask him, how so? He replies that for all its populistic opportunity, Nifty is, in, fact just what I claim: arbitrary, regimented, inflexible in a system of laws over a system of men, sense, and, in the end, another example of a technician ending up with extraordinary power, like Ellison and hundreds of others, by the simple expedient of being exactly in the right place at exactly the right time. Every passing day reaffirms an absolute truth and that is that many of these blessed techies are simply not very smart. I ask him what makes him so sure of himself and he points out that David adamantly refuses to post even a single chapter of my work on the mainstream of his site. Cites technicalities, procedures, policies and formalities. Makes not the least distinction between the writer who has submitted a little story or two, and one who has posted five or six hundred pages; the teen scribble, versus script that takes a minimum of five hours a page, just to edit and half-way proof. That's why I said it's intellectual and philosophical. Everybody is exactly the same, no one is special, no matter what. As precise a definition of one size fits all as it is possible to conceive of. So, the short message is I'm outta here. Genius does do what it must, and it must not support the bedrock of arbitrary socialism that Nifty hides under a veneer of inclusiveness. If I'm lucky, neither of the other principal sites will want to deal with my ranting and raving, and I can use the bolus of cash that just came my way to head out to Tobacco Caye and see what our local, and very superior, Temptation Island has to offer. If you want Brad's secret, or for one second in reading this now truncated manuscript thought it wouldn't be all I claimed, e-mail me and I'll send you an outline. For my fellow writers I can't help feeling a bit of envy. David has made you as good as I am, and most of you have done less than five percent of the work I did. Populism treats inferior people extremely well, and surely that must be a wonderful thing. In fact, in suggesting that David give me a presence in boy-band land I used the phrase It's way no issue. It was ironically correct. When the dedicated and the casual become equal, the future is exactly that. Way, way no issue. So, I may see some of you over on other sites. I guess Ed Bangor has the right approach, after all. Submit everything, everywhere. And mind you, I'm not complaining, just doing the `must' of genius. Nifty gave me a calm and receptive outlet with none of the heavy volume of reader mail I used to get. I couldn't have written this massive work without that tranquility, and also the peace of mind that came from seeing each chapter posted the day I sent it. I change horses in mid-stream with reluctance, but I've got over a thousand hours in the saddle, over half bareback, so who knows. Another factor here is that I've pretty well said what I have to say. Undoubtedly thousands of readers have found C-Camp, even though it's hidden in the sf-fantasy alcove. The word is out, to the public, in however flawed a manner. The short way of summarizing this whole manuscript is to simply point out that there are 281,000,000 of you, and one of me. You live or die by accepting or ignoring the precepts outlined herein, and you know it. You are getting your marching orders by way of child pornography as a symbol of my contempt for the greedy, superficial, Yiddish nature of your overall lifestyle. If you die because of the embarrassing nature of message, you are still dead, and it seems at this point that's the best outcome. Weed the garden, one way or the other.. After all, there's a writer named Mutchnik on "Dawson's Creek," and eleven screenwriters couldn't feed Lara a single line. What on earth do you have to live for? (Okay, besides feeding your gigantic kids.). And a final thought for you comedy buffs. I'm thinking of reprising those old Hope/Crosby pictures. My script delineates the life of the happiest Roman who ever lived. Full of grace, charm and wit his excitement with and love of life are greatly enhanced when he is entrusted with the most special and rewarding of assignments. He is a builder and the name of my script is "Road to Massada." Interestingly, the were a group who preferred to lose their lives than anything else. I feel the same way, only being a king, I prefer to lose your lives than anything else. In the meantime, try The Wisdom Channel. I call it stroke-you-silly television, which should be right up the alley of Nifty readers and a generation whose reality is D in its four-letter implementation. Charisma is the ability to get people to do things their mothers told them not to. Posted by Thomas@btl.net. xxx