for Mister Miracle

"Why are you trying to watch Houdini performances?"

One nice thing about having a living Mister of Mastery like Flynn O-Brien around--you'll have a hyper-hacked ansible around, allowing you to cast your receptions thru time and space alike. Hard work, controlling and focussing, but then controlling and focussing one's attention is always pretty tough. Billy Trelawney has interrupted the singing of a shanty# to ask Charles Stolichnaya a question.

"Cuz I don't get it."

"Stage magics?"

"Naw, that makes sense, that hunger to see the world behind the world,* a struggle towards the transcendent 'n' 'nexplicable. What I don't get is this escape artist nonsense."$

"What's not to get?"

"...the appeal?"

"Don't most follks feel...chained, restrained, trapped? Are not most people truly confined in this history they inhabit and inherit but surely never chose? These little men and women--chickens and pigeons--herded about with fence and club, constrained to think the way a savagely few demand they think...dozens of iron prisons gerrymandered and always already refortified..."

"So they're tacitly responding to the metaphor, hn?"

"Yah. Explains the appeal of this stuff to (only) the masses. Rich folk neither need nor want their worlds mystified/enriched...they know how things work, they see their place clearly, and they're fine with it. And they don't like the escape metaphor either, for obvious reasons."

"Prolly, yeah, they'd prefer to continue to weigh like a nightmare on the bodies and brains of the living."

"Prolly. Not to change the subject, Beat, but if yer done watching the Tube..."

"Yah?"

"Potatoes has intercepted some of the TT's communiques, plucked direct from the--"

"Luminiferous ether. Gotcha."

"Mostly--again--about milk...and moustaches."

"A potent totem, Jew. We best step lively 'til Mars, and e'en there, our backs best not remain unwatched...but then, you do know more'n yr share, eh?"+

Trelawney merely grunts an acknowledgement, attending in the main to his cigar. "What you think? Consult with Potatoes, try an' figger what the sororal order of sinister oddities's up to?"

O-Brien, who dislikes being bothered at home, has already dispatched a...dispatch, sorta a bluffer's guide to TT messages and their characteristic eldritch imagery. It goes like so.

MILK
'Milk is pretty xparent: a product made by a body that another body may grow. Physical analog of soul. May actually carry, xmit soul, as electricity may carry a message, or as stone might carry magnetism. Tied for importance with lesser blood and semen; more important than tears, or sweat, or any production of lung. Probably less important than greater blood. Or lensed breath.

MOUSTACHE
Moustaches are the greatest symbol yet discovered for authority. Think on cops, firemen, politicians, performers in the erotic theatre. 'Nuff said.

Possibilites of combination? Fucking...spooky, lads. I mention only a few spacklings of potential.

1.
Think on the nature of an authority rooted in soul-food. What resistance might we muster? Beware any mug sporting such a 'stache. I fear the new whiteness of Fu Manchu's eponymous face-fuzz may reflect his co-optation by the TT. --Leave that fucker to me.

2.
All collocations entail simultaneous combination, as above, and contradiction, so below. Clearly, we must exploit and thrive upon the clash between healthy, nurtured souls and the nature of authority, so anathema thereto. Our keyword of resistance must be:
No Gods; No Masters; No Dairy.

#Shanty goes like so:
I walked the sands of time, and I loved and lost
They give their bodies to two time whores
They gambled every thing they got
A greedy mind cut out the cards

They even loved with another man's wife
They even loved her with other men
They've also drank a lot of wine
Some men have even had a good time

My life is natural, hey, hey, hey
My life is natural, I said, I said, I said
My life is natural, whoa, whoa, whoa
My life is natural
Maybe tomorrow a change in the life
Of the man in the street's gonna come
Maybe tomorrow--hope it's tomorrow

You got the sands of time and got 'em high
They've done their best to wreck their mind
Instead of joke they told a lie
They started wars so men could die now

To try to suss out what is evil
And what is good will take a mind wiser than mine
To start to setting the world to right
Is gonna take another Christ now

My life is natural, hey, hey, hey
My life is natural, I said, I said, I said
My life is natural, whoa, whoa, whoa
My life is natural
Maybe tomorrow a change in the life
Of the man in the streets gonna come
Maybe tomorrow--hope it's tomorrow

My life is natural, hey, hey, hey
My life is natural, I said, I said, I said
My life is natural, whoa, whoa, whoa
My life is natural, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon
My life is natural, hey, hey, hey
My life is natural, I said, I said, I said
My life is natural, whoa, whoa, whoa
My life is natural

*Talking cars, train stations to magical ghettoes, streets where cats all fly...

$Also he doesn't get the urge to 'understand the trick'. By constitution and long experience, Stolichnaya loves to know just that it's magic.

+Billy Trelawney, years before, had bestrode the canals--and annals--of Mars, negotiating that rough-hewn frontier with panache and a deft violence discussed there to this day. It's an oral tradition: the only written record details only the aftermath of that period, when Throckmorton= had retired to open a tavern. He wholly inexplicably had written a moderately-popular memoir: The Barrooms of Barsoom: How the Toughest Cop on Mars Retired and Opened a Saloon.

Which Stolichnaya thinks is just a terrific little book.

=As he was then known.

Tableau Vivant, a letter

The letter, most often read in the kitchen, is archived along with six sleeves of cheesecloth shaped into effigies of the EI: three are Collision/Stolichnaya/Sayonara (only one of whom looks black), followed by Trelawney, Brofather Flynn "Potatoes" O-Brien, and one unsigned. This letter is usually cataloged under "Privates" or "Puppets" or "Pocket-sized poems," but has been misplaced under "Passions" for many many reasons.

200
Postcard: damask tablecloth
[Space, August 1933]

My beloved Mutt,

We all arrive safely by dream. This morning we took our podiums to a point on the map that faces Earth, and declared things. I wore a scrap of damask tablecloth, a flask inscribed TT, and a diabolical grin which would recall, I believe, the grins of 1924 and 1925, when we were continuously milky, and often in front of that fireplace less than civilized. It did not take long for Stolichnaya and Trelawney to catch wind, and mistake us for party members, and bring us onto the deck where we danced and replicated animal delight. In our guest quarters we were given seven squares of cheesecloth to “study” for tomorrow’s activism. I enclose six here for the archive, all but one, which I retain in my privates for housekeeping. I have replaced the contents of every EI flask with milk, and hope to report new mustaches soon.

All my stiff love,
Rows

Trudy Einstein is a blue-eyed brunette--striking!!

Trelawney communes with the EI's alcoholic theologian, Brofather Flynn "Potatoes" O-Brien. The Kalamazoo Jew has some time to kill, waiting on Charles Stolichnaya (AKA BEAT SAYONARA) to emerge from his cluttered quarters, wardrobe freshly primped. (The man invariably Dresses For Adventure, and it takes him like forever to get his pants-cargo transferred and distributed, should he change his trousers.) Trelawney and Potatoes have been contentedly occupied in speculations as to the meaning of the word "caul", Trelawney puffing on a foul stogie, Potatoes equally smoke-cowled, in his modestly-appointed Santa Destroy cottage. Around O-Brien's left wrist is a bracelet of indifferently braided rats' tails; around his right ankle is a length of bike chain. His familiars lurk about the room--his hawk Pretension, the dove Sulky, a couple snakes, his large, fragrant coop for his cockfighting...cocks.

Trelawney hasn't told anybody about the aftereffects of the Sun War. His bones now frankly resonate with energy. They thrum. He now exists as a sort of...living capacitor for Emotional Inertia, and the man once known as the irasciblest Enthusiast of them all is, now, tragically, a cynic and overuser of commas. Incapable of committment, investment-averse, he nevertheless has fixed the airship.

"Flynn, would you drop in on my wife? You know how she worries."

Stolichnaya emerges from his stateroom to a pint-sized fanfare issuing forth from his phonograph. Resplendent in brown, his creaky leathers smell of coffee roasting and three-in-one oil. Banners flutter gaily in the breeze. Potatoes utters a benediction, idly stroking one of his razored cocks.

Trelawney primes the electro-chemical diesels; there is a failsafe such that they mayan't be started unless the tribal flag of the Enthusiasts' been hoisted. Thus, Stolichnaya has clipped a rope to his belt, and is prancing about the deck, shadow-boxing whilst humming along to a popular record of the day. The rope yanks the flag up up up, by means of a pulley.

The diesels, like Trelawney's skeleton, thrum with the power of history and science. From his many-pocketed belt, Stolichnaya (deftly) produces (with a practiced flourish) a scrap of tablecloth. "Jew, I hope yer a-feelin' curious, 'boy!"

Trelawney displays an ironic grin. A jarring look on a simian mug.

Stolichnaya's disconcerted, but loves Trelawney 'way too much to press the issue. Therefore it's no way a selfish nor ignorant act that Stolichnaya forges ahead. A self-made showboat, it's no feat at all to go through the motions of total absorbtion in his plan while the main of his mind worries at the new character traits of his friend. "We've simply got to get out frumunda those six probing eyes of the Thorn Triad! Never can we pursue this plane's effable mysteries whilst we scuttle about, progress visible to prying unfond eyes!" Is it simply the depression of victory, the martial equivalent of orgasm's sadness? Bad news from home? Poor diet and little sleep? (Swap meets, sticky green, and bad traffic.) "However! From their base on the dark side of the moon, they can use the lunar body as!--a!--lens! Therefore! They and any companions they may have attained(1) can monitor anything/everything they wish on this green-girdled, storm-adorned globe. Whom I adore(2)." Will he forgive me? Too often in our dealings with the Triad, I've either ignored him or used him simply to further my own goals. Friend...I will make this up to you. "And that! Is why! We depart...for MARS!"

Trelawney grins again, less unsettlingly this time, slaps the vertical throttle to MAX. The ungainly craft lifts implausibly quickly. The Enthusiasts produce iron flasks from beneath their bulky leathern garments and toast one another silently(3) before Trelawney applies Zippo flame again to cheroot.

Once in the vaccuum of SPACE, the propeller-noise will cease, and Sayonara plans to force some old-fashion bro-time with Trelawney: phonograph and plenty of libations.

0.
The Enthusiast of the Inscrutable formerly known as "Chris Collision" is actually named Charles Stolichnaya. His nickname is Beat Sayonara. He's still black, and Latvian, though. Apologies for the sort of authorial laziness that left him named after the author and one of his pseudonyms. I hope no confusion resulted.

1.
He's probably not aware of that noted blogger. He feels a little rejected by the TT, after their battle, and like most spurned men, he's of the opinion that the scorning parties are prolly sluts, a little. And he wonders why he doesn't do better with the ladies.

2.
He thinks essentially in parallels, both structural and sonic. Makes him prolix, but at least you can't hardly miss what he's on about.

3.
The noise on the craft is epic and wholly unconducive for conversation. Trelawney's flask contains cheap brandy; Stolichnaya's, gin. An only child, he hates to share. The flasks are Enthusiast standard issue, personalized via inscription.

A time-travel romance: Paradox by the dashboard light!

It's always now, but not everything happens all at once. The following events do all take place at the same time.(1)

In River City, year 2XXX, Chris Collision wafts thru a Goodwill thrift store. He's drunk in the afternoon, shopping before work. His headphones blare hideous racket. He lives in a warehouse, and generally declines to interact with those others who live there. He's reaching out to grasp a used jigsaw puzzle. Later--already happening, but not exactly happening now--he'll stiffly sit crosslegged on a concrete floor, 2 walls, 2 sheets hung as curtain-walls, in low light, and he'll assemble the bulk of the puzzle.

As he reaches for the shelf, it's the 30s, and 1 of the Roses of the Thorn Triad struggles with her locket. Half-lavish, partly opulent, this room of her own. Her roll-top desk is TITS. Somewhat pretentiously, she will write only with a fountain pen carved from the feather of a Space Eagle she has hersef caught. (Tiny pin-feathers speckle her mouth area like a scraggly beard of poultry offal.) Ink is blood and ash. She spits in it now and again, to put the means of production in their place.

Her goal for the night is to write that noted blogger. Her sisters fume elsewhere in the palatial manor. Outside of Paris, Collision reads to his friend Trelawney a postcard sent him by Gertrude Einstein:

digging a way
the moments that make up a dull day
fritter and waste the hours
in an offhanded way
dicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown
waiting for someone
(or something)
to show you the way

Trelawney wonders why all the second person? B/c she loves those imperatives, Jew, she surely do.

2 Roses fume, still. Constancy not exactly their strong suit, nevertheless do they feel not a little blown off & fucked over by their compatriot's obsession. They polish slivers of bone, and glue them cunningly. They, the slivers, form savage tips for crossbow bolts filling quivers on the quarterdeck of their ornithopter. Keys to the doors of the afterlife, motherfucker.

Collision is talking to a stripper named Beruit. He uncasually drops the phrase "sad satisfaction". She rolls her eyes and grabs her vast heels, looking for all the world like a giant, closed W. Before he does his puzzle, he'll fuck his fist for a quiet half-hour, picturing not Beruit sexually, but domestically. They get coffee and read the paper, he defends her at the bar, they watch afternoon tv stoned on the couch. Then he comes on her face.

The writing Rows-3, incidentally, looks much like Beruit, only with facial tattoos and more of a Stevie Nicks fashion sense. Trelawney stacks dominoes idly, mulling in his mulish way how to deliver his Fetich Flechettes. Modified blowgun, he thinks. Powered by defensively-maintained misconceptions.

Because there's no tradition of artistic perspective on the moon, the noted blogger can bust forth frothy from Rows-3's locket fully fullsized. Without visual contradiction. As in many endeavours romantikal, upon the attainment, the blogger and Rows-3 are flushed with a complex, multifaceted loathing. Both are phlegmatic sorts, though, real dance-with-who-brung-ya types, and their long history has surely bound them together more thoroughly than mere affection-might might could. Collision doesn't figure in this, any of this. He's sorta color. Filigree, distraction. Plus you write what you can while you try to learn how to write what you must.

Trelawney learnt to harness the nigh-limitless power of pigheaded futility early on. He's married to a woman he patently doesn't deserve. As often happens, she's addicted primarily to his shortcomings. She literally needs him to be simultaneously distant and needy. All 3 Roses are voiced by Tress MacNeille, behind the curtain. This is only a fraction of the reason this writer adores them.

Collision finds strange fulfillment in the process of assembling a likely-faulty puzzle. I'M TALKING ABOUT MAKING ART PIECES! PLEASE GET IT! UNDERSTAND, LOVE ME!

Collision bends to his task: replying to Gertrude Einstein. Unaware that he's simultaneously boring a coked-out, damaged stripper. He's ripping off Pynchon, stranded in a farm outside Paris, waiting for Trelawney to stop mooning over new techniques in confusion. And fixing the fucking airship already. (He's HAD IT with this pomo literary horseshit and craves a return to fev'rish lurid escapade! Plus his plus-fours really make him feel like a tool.) He thumbs the cheek of his chrome-plated guardian angel and wishes he could pull off wistful, or anyways winsome. Win some, loose the dogs of war.

Collision retires as Rows-3 and the noted blogger go to brace the other Roses. Meanwhile, Collision continues to plagiarize. Trelawney puts the dominoes back; their dots map exactly the structure of this story. The other Roses, unfairly marginalized this time around, quietly admit they kinda like the way the blogger twirls his mustache.

Collision pops in another plug of chew. This is a puppet show, but he got neither from Foster Wallace, nor Pynchon, nor the writer of Riddley Walker.

Collision's reply to Gertrude Einstein:

game, set, 'match'
A knotty, clotted nap. Weird scenes inside the goldmine. Tip the beret, twirl the mustache, adjust the champ paunch. Another mascot for minor failure. Caught on the cot (not homophones) amidst more mediocre dreams.

1.
Mainly. Unless otherwise noted.

Walter Benjamin’s Mustache, a letter

The letter, most often cataloged under “Walter Benjamin’s Mustache,” is secretly archived in the Autobiography of Rows Selavy.

199
Postcard: doronicum handlebar
[Paris, late June/early July, 1933]

My beautiful thorny triad,

Here’s one of the mustaches. I have wrapped it in milk, and put it on the mouth of every child in Paris. I’ll send the other when I have news of you and Collision and the Inscrutable. Your last letter, in which you describe Trelawney's difficult labor, brought me private pleasure. We last heard of the ‘thopter’s miraculous manifestation seven Saturdays ago. Can you please send more recent news? My memories of TT, the animal parts, the kinky grooming, come back to me as a Jack-in-a-box, the fastest bar of our song, after endless winding. We all develop smudges. Even the mustache grows a mustache in your absence. Please send me three doses of the cure as soon you receive WBM. The children haven’t washed their mouths since March. I remain,

yes yrs frvr
R. Mutt*

The mustache appeared in Brussels eight months later, worn, along with a new style of animal delight, by the ubiquity in the upper classes.

*The noted blogger concedes it germane that Our Mutt, who here signs himself as R. Mutt, did not obtain the legal right to change his name until after the Beloved War, eleven years after TT returned from the South Seas.

The Sun War! --Forward! To the MOON!

Set the scene(1): it's a tuesday night in 1931. In the balmy air of the South Seas, the deadly, battle-equipped 'thopter of the deadly, battle-equipped Thorn Triad banks, lurks, wafts. (TT, pronounced "tut tut" or "tsk tsk".) Unbeknownst to the kelp nor plankton below, the TT await(s) merely the rising of the full moon. Under its second-order light, third-power thinking--aloft in the night's brisk breeze--will blot!--out!--the!--sun! Anyway, that's the plan.

But! Hark to that choppy thrumming. Such an eldritch pulsation could--and does--only belong to the potent thirty-three-cylinder chemo-diesel motors bolted madcap to the dirigible of those noted questers...the Enthusiasts of the Inscrutable!! Billy "Kalamazoo Jewboy" Trelawney (nee Throckmorton) squints, oddly, thru his pilot's goggles, joggling levers and spinning the two great wheels controlling the ungainly craft. Collision perches magnificently at the bow of the airship, lensing the gorgeous ornithopter ahead, above. Slamming closed his kaptain's spyglass, he bellows.

"Not far off, now, my kinky kike! Clap open the chemo-diesels' throttle, whilst I try an' bring online the electro-lone generators!"

Trelawney complies. Collision hitches at his jodhpurs and clambers toward the gravidish underbelly of his beloved conveyance. Using a combination of spanner, hex key(2) and cheat sheet, his tetra-starred left hand manages to fire the generators, hanging from a spar, boots and wang waving in the wind. (With his poet's acumen and his engineer's emotional cast, he's decided to void his bladder 'pon the briny deep even while he works.)

He then repairs to his cabin to ease himself and contemplate a wardrobe change. A jaunty flapping white shirt proves Just the Thing, an' he doth not resist leaving open to the midriff, exposing a brawn of white flesh and dark tattoos.

Trelawney, as usual, manages most of the craft's operational heavy lifting. He's hyper-hacked the electro-lone generators into the new-fashioned Emotional Inertia Field Actuator Device (EIFAD, pronounced "eye-fad"). The airship, being possessed of a seriously stunning degree of Emotional Inertia, lurches into a hurtle, at the cost of any discernible subtlety. As a semi-intended consequence, there is now No Backing Down. There's an event on the horizon, and the hand-crafted Inevitability Gauges (IG) are totally redlined.(3)

Therefore, the Thorn Triad's mystical senses, uh, sense the approach of the Enthusiasts of the Inscrutable! The TT mobilize(s) for pitched battle! This, natch, takes the form of the three of 'm taking to their tasteful deck, spread out, facing inward, bare arms outstretched an' like diaphanous gowns and eerie wagglings the order of the day.

Under the hoarse supervision of the unkempt, cigar-munching Kalamazoo Jewboy, Collision activates the Emotional Inertia Cannon (EIC, pronounced "ike"). A strangely inward WHOOSH attends the initial volley, which proves as withering as a mother's sullen withdrawal. The TT's 'thopter's wings tatter.

The TT--who, incidentally, would literally Never Dream of calling themselves this--deploy much magic. Rose's eyes,
covered with the dead skin of another, Reach Out and Touch the pursuing craft.(4) The effect is like being molested by a shadow cloud. Trelawney slumps. Overwhelmed. Conveniently for the narrative, his prone form lies 'cross the power coupling which, uh, couples the EIFAD to--with?--the EIC.

Collision, oblivious, unleashes another torrent of a-energy. That which is only potentially power floods the unmute frame of the hapful Kalamazoo Jewboy. An event sure to have Consequence of Moment on down the road.(5)

Collision's barrage rends asunder the bonds of friendship 'tween the Thorn Triad. Renders them sundered. Their familial ties only remain. Rows-3 determines the figure in her locket must now be written into existence. She decides to move to the moon, and as for the noted blogger? She'll write him when she gets there. (Thus will she complete her entree into being--having been herself invoked, and provoked, by the blogger she seeks now to create. Rereading those kinda gross passages from the Symposium would clarify matters here, prolly.)

Rows, ever alert to the turn of the tide an' blow o' the wind, growls "Let me slip into something relatively spiritual.". Time passes. The ornithopter lists, abused; the airship remains at a hurtle, shambolically.

Rows steps onto the deck. Tan Rose's touching eyes flap creepily. Rows-3 doesn't wanna know from this shit, and slides out of read/write focus in a structurally appropriate parallel to Trelawney's fall. (See...She'll Be Back. And all like that.) Rows is wearing black tights, white deck shoes, and a concert t stolen from an ex-boyfriend. A big belt, gold hoops cocked over her full hips.

"Collision!" she keens. "Stay your hand! Hold! Let us (inc.) depart this battle in our several ways! No more seek we (exc.) to dark the sun. An' you allow our retreat, we all, us three, will bugger off to the Moon, on errands which need not confront you."(6) You know that song? "Ain't to proud to beg"? Rows doesn't--it's fucking 1931, remember?--but if she knew it, she'd hate it. She's WAY too proud to beg. And if Collision doesn't back the fuck down, she's gonna get to a degree of anger usually reserved for boyfriends who take your sister's side.

Collision, an enthusiast, is intrigued. His imperfectly-absorbed Warrior's Code is unclear on this point. He offers a gracious shrug, an effect offset by an unconscious adjustment of the half-hard 'neath his jodhpurs. "Have it your way." "Bitch." he adds, wholly unacceptably. The ornithopter sways, exactly like a moth pursuing the moon. Collision bends to attend Trelawney, currently glowing with an actively unpleasant grey featuring yellowish tinges and fringes. Not at all unlike this writer's irises.

Stay tuned! For more episodic semi-fiction, composed in a nigh-epistolic manner!

Notes:
(1) It's not infrequently desirable to allow one's enemies to define one. You appear then in a high-contrast way, with intriguing misapprehensions and odd attributions your own cohort'd never cognize.

(2) Hewn, the both of them, from the living rock of an iridescent meteorite.

(3) IGs made by Kathy Collision during:
(a) her tryst with Jonias Spicer;
(b) her reverse-steampunk phase.

(4) Don't make me spell it out.

(5) "The road" here standing-for 'the future' in a metonymy for a journey, where "journey" is related to 'a series of events' as either a metonym or a metaphor, depending on the level of granularity of your analysis. I'm in love.

(6) Rows deliberately mispronounces "concern" as "confront" for obscure reasons.

Zen and the art of the mixed message

Chris Collision comprises a collocation of niche vices. Back left pocket chew can ring attests to this. Four stars adorn the fingers of his left hand, that he may leering declaim "Four-star fingerbang Right Here, bay-bee!!" He's business cards. Of an evening, he'll take to the boulevard to hawk homemade tshirts reading "Every father is a motherfucker."

A lumpish, beary man; yet does he pull trim (now and again). He shan't refrain from slipping into singing a shanty's refrain, and despite their long acquaintance, you noted blogger, he's 'most No Idea who Rose Selavy might be. Hark!

Collision (upon noting a misunderstanding potentially leading to a conflict, attempts a Joak): Hey, can I help it if I'm the most interesting person I've ever met?

Selavy (characteristically gratuitous with the flatness of her affect and the lightness of her tone): Chris. You're the only person you've ever met.

He seemed to be thinking to the third power

On a Tuesday in 1931 Rows claims to have spent the night in her ornithopter. A tear in its wing took on the shape of another Rose, who was much more tan (much more, for Rows this close to the sun took on the pitiful shade of a mouthful of pear), and whose eyes against the wind wore the most exquisite black leather gloves. The noted blogger submitted the aforementioned questions to Tan Rows, but in the form of a third Rows, who printed off a nude photograph of himself, and hung it around their necks like a charm. Even though Rose could not see the picture through her leather gloves, she touched it softly during the interrogation. The noted blogger about this was aroused to think to the third power, surmising to Roses in a subsequent interview: “Where will you go in the ornithopter? Do you have your passport? Give my regards to Collision?” Rows, Tan Rose, and Rows-3 stalled, until the noted blogger winked at them a magical number of times, and disappeared into something relatively spiritual. For years after, until around 1935, a plea to “write me when you get there” was heard pinging in all of Roses new poems. The noted blogger can be seen from the vantage point of Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 2PM, dressing the nude picture of Roses in words that made sense to mostpeople.

[from] Roiling the Nite 'Way (a musical for several persons)

[band vamping jauntily]

Collision: If I remember correct, when we met, you sported supported a pencil mustache, and you went by the name Ross Cellabee.
Rose: You don't. Viz., remember correct. Sic.

[band kicks in jazzily]

C: I was trawling, late of the merchant marine--
R: I was drawling, mate to a purging regime.
R & C (firmly): Let's stall the whole thing, boss!

[band backs off]

C: Aw, come off of it. You were building orreries that spring...to life under the full moon...that summer...in the Hamptons.
R: Me? Or the orreries?
C: Don't be ornery. You learned me the difference b'tween flowery talk and the distant instance(s) built into longing for the brambles.
R: Are you drunk?
C: Naturally.
R: Setting you straight would go something like this.

[band strikes up again, insistent]

R: I had just begun to learn
that my own attempts to earn
a living--in civill service...
would hardly last a year
now let me bend your ear
with its inherent contradictions
C: You were not civil nor did you service--
R: The talk was drivel and the acts were worthless!
C: Hating peons writing poems
is no way to be of use
R: I was pressed into the position
depressed if you want the truth...

[the dance over, they face one another, 2 arms lengths between 'em]

R: I was not civil
C: Their talk was drivel!
R: I did no service
C: Those acts are worthless
R & C: Let's stall the whole thing, boss!

[nice fanfare, curtain, band wheezes]

R (offstage): Wanna see a neat design for an ornithopter?

An iconoclastic debut

The noted blogger had the serendipity to find a blog dated 1923 debuting a personality called Chris Collision. Collision, it seems, recalled his introduction to the in medias sneeze Rows Selavy, writing "If I remember correct, when we met she had a pencil mustache, and was calling himself Ross Cellabee, to which Rows replied, 'You do not. Viz., remember correct. Sic.'" The mustache, also known as Our Mutt, had no comment until 1925, where in one of his famous interviews he erased not only himself, but Rows, who was much relieved as she had developed a pesky allergy to lead. The role of Collision in this happy end becomes clear in later blogs, when Collision discovers a cure for Rows and Mutt. But this is not their story. It is the story of the noted blogger.