Louey Saves the Civil War

Starting to go stir crazy out here in Sherwood Forest. Living with parents is almost as bad as living with roommates. Anyway...

Possibly the last of my old writings saved before "the purge" - another anticlimactic relic from the 6th grade, this time with an apparently anorexic protagonist. I think I was into H.G. Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle at the time:

LOUEY SAVES THE CIVIL WAR

In the year 2062, there lived a man named Louey Jameston. He was a famous astronaut and scientist about the age of twenty-five. He lived during the second Civil War. The war was against high taxes. He was a well-known inventor of the Twenty-first Century. Louey was about six feet, eight inches tall and weighed about 130 pounds. He had fair skin and black hair. His voice was deep and he was very smart. Had he a beard? No, nor a mustache on his clean face.

One day he decided to visit his mother to see how she was doing. When he had reached the small house, he knocked on the door. No one answered. He got his key out of his pocket to open the door himself. He went straight to the dining room where she usually played cards with her friends. She wasn't there, but her friend Vivian was. She was knocked out and laying on the floor. When he woke her up she said, "Where's your mother? Oh yes, I remember."

"What happened?" he said.

"We were playing cards," she began stating, "when we heard the door open. We thought it was you so we remained calm. When I had just finished shuffling, two men came in. I yelled for help but they knocked me out before anyone came. They must have taken her for ransom or something."

"Maybe they left a note," he suggested.

They looked around until they finally gave up. On the way out Louey fell down. He noticed that there was a piece of paper under the table. He picked it up and it read:

Dear friends and relations of Mary Jameston,
We know you would like to see Mary again.
If you do, send her son,
Louey to Baskville Fort on
Sunday or you will never see her again.
Signed,
The Weasel

He immediately drove his hover car to Baskville Fort and hovered about 300 feet above it. He smelled the gunpowder of the enemies' base. He used his X-ray vision beam to see if she was inside the fort. He hoped its hypnotic sound would not let the soldiers sense his presence.

He saw her inside the fort guarded by five men.

First he attached a stun gun to the front of the hover car so when he rammed into someone it would knock them out for about fifteen minutes. Next he lowered the hover car and shot a hole in the wall, just large enough for the hover car to fit into the fort.

He surprised two of them and stunned them. he would have stunned the other three but the car wouldn't start. The other three guards started firing their laser beams right away. One of them might have shot him, had he not ducked and put a bullet-proof bubble over the top of the hover car.

He then started the car and charged the three soldiers.

After he had taken his mom back home, he went back to his house and thought about other inventions to work on to help the Civil War.

Philosophy

I was looking through unsent drafts in my email and found this, dated 09/30/2004:

The toughest part of being a ninja is paying the bills. The art of killing has been ruined in recent years by the influx of wholesale killers, blokes who do the exact same thing I do – but much cheaper, and minus any sort of guile or craft. In truth, a ninja shouldn't even be bothered with things like grocery shopping and vacuuming. He should wear a ninja outfit all the time and hack up any foo who gets in his way, devoting all his time to Ninja-tek, honing his ability to chop skin off the backs of the loathsome.

Ninja-tek Archive: October 2, 1999: Walnuts

[Larger]

The Softening

[I wrote this story about 1997 or 1998 (exact date uncertain). I don't know if I was familiar with Android's Dungeon in the Simpsons at the time or it was just a coincidence.]

THE SOFTENING

I was heading to Android's Dungeon to see if the new annotated hardback edition of The Hobbit had yet arrived - my old copy was withering due to thousands of readings - when a thirst hit my throat. I pulled my bike to a water fountain to take a guzzle. This was in York Park. There are many hills in York Park, and I imagine that curious little hobbits live in the hills. I wrote a story about it for the school newspaper once, but the fools wouldn't print it. The editor called me unkind names and spit on me. I would've fought back (and probably slain the rogue), but I asked myself how Bilbo would've handled it: a peaceful retreat.

There's so much wisdom in those books.



Anyway, so I'm drinking at the water fountain (I like to pretend it's a well), and this girl comes up to use it after me. She's about my age, maybe ten or fifteen years younger, and I start to wonder if I can enchant her. Make her my comrade.

I have a theory that girls would be normal if given more opportunities to fight dragons. I haven't seen many dragons around, but constantly reading Lord of the Rings is a good substitute.



As I step back to let her guzzle some water, I say, "If you start reading Tolkien now you might have magical powers by the time you're my age. Then we could go on quests together and purge the world of evil and moral degenerates. Think about it. Here, let me give you a copy of The Hobbit. I always keep one in my backpack for occasions such as this."



But before I could give the little imbecile the sacred work, she ran off, looking at me as if I was the weird one. She went off to a woman, probably her mother, and pointed at me. The little girl was snared already, caught by the deviance of an unwise generation.



I rode on.

I tried to figure out what Bilbo might have done to rectify the situation - but found no answer. Some people just don't like wisdom. I had done my best to save an infidel, but had to conclude that this society likes evil.



When I got to Android's Dungeon I started to calm down. That little girl had been quite an ordeal for me, but I was now in safe territory, among my own. The smut of this foul orb had to battle the forces of Good to enter Android's Dungeon.



"Hello, Steven," I said. "I bet you know why I'm here. Can you guess?"

"Oh yes, Chester. Every day it is the same. And I can't really blame you. Anyone of the faith would do likewise."

That's what I mean. Steven understands The Way. My younger sister believes that Steven says what I want to hear so I'll buy stuff from his store every day. If she only knew.



"So has it arrived?" I eagerly implored.

"Alas, no. But it will surely show up tomorrow."

My loins let out a sigh of disappointment. No, that's bad, Chester. Learn patience. Strength. Wisdom. Good, calm yourself. "Ah well, guess I'll have a look around to see if anything can hold me over for another day."

"You do that, Chester."



I looked at some D&D supplements and some neat pewter figurines, but I'd seen them all before. I liked to imagine filling my mansion with dragon statues and elf posters when I was rich, wise, and old. That is my dream, to live in a hill-shaped mansion called "The Burrow" and spend my afternoons writing fantasy novels to purge the world of evil. I will use a quill and ink bottle and write on vellum in strange runes, sipping apple juice between chapters. The publisher would sigh when he saw my manuscripts, knowing the labor involved in translating my texts, but be enticed on by the wisdom I would unveil to the wicked world.



When I got to the magazine section of Android's Dungeon, I read an article on the pros and cons of Druid spells. It made some good points. Why isn't the rest of the world interested in important things like this? Instead they think about economics and war and end up killing each other. It's just not a safe place for a hobbit to live in.



And then I saw her. She was on the cover of Dungeon, staring right at me. Holding a flaming staff laced with mystical runes. Chanting a powerful incantation to ward off evil, no doubt.

She was wearing a filthy robe over glistening gold armor. Her face was rugged and elfish. I could see her pointed ears and imagined them poking into my belly. I don't know where that thought came from.



And then I was in the magazine cover with her, just above the UPC code, ready to battle whatever monsters might come our way. But there are no monsters! Not even one golem. What are we to do now?



She looks into my wise eyes and understands me. She knows why we do what we do - why we must not cringe from the dark battle. She begins to take off her filthy robe. What can she want from me? My blood churns in my boiling heart. I think I'm getting an erection. Why am I being tempted?

And now she slips out of her shiny armor to show me her perfect body. Me, me alone. Her skin is hard and smooth and she licks her lips. She comes closer to me. Closer.



She reaches into my pants and grabs my penis. Her mouth eats it like a sleeping bag, and she doesn't make fun of it like the guys in the locker room at school. I begin to bump and grind. It's like riding a horse toward buried treasure. I feel it squeeze and rumble.



This is magic! I've discovered it, Gandalf! It's beating a path through me. This is just what they said it would be like. Will it be an ice spell? Or levitation? Invisibility? No, I feel the heat like never before - it must be a fireball!



I explode against the magazine rack and bang my head with grunting. Has the spell backfired? I'm drooling on the latest issue of Mage. My penis is chafed. The magic power drains away from me. I've failed.



"What the hell are you doing, you little retard? You got cum all over my magazines!" Steven kicked me as I zipped up my pants. I grunted like Bilbo in the animated version of The Hobbit.



"Hey, Steven, there's no need for that. I'm a paying customer. We know The Way. I'm not evil."

"You clean this cum up right now, you little bastard, or I'll call the cops!"

"All right, all right," I tried to soothe him. "There's no need to get nefarious."

After I wiped off the magazines with my shirt, Steven rudely knocked me out of the store. He told me never to show my face in Android's Dungeon again or he'd kill me. That was fine by me, now that I know he's not one of us. I'm only angry that he won't give me back my $50 deposit for the new Hobbit. I didn't damage that many magazines.



Anyway, my big problem now is to find a new store. After going to Android's Dungeon for six years it's not going to be easy. This must be what it's like to get divorced.



I would never get divorced. It's not a good idea. When I find my perfect sorceress girl and we're living in "The Burrow," nothing will tear us apart. She'll soothe me and bring me apple juice and I'll teach her new spells. We'll live like that forever, slowly spreading goodness to Earth, slowly spreading the magic.

THE END

Famous Men

Tonight we crack open the Ninja-tek archive to uncover portraiture of famous gentlemen from a sketchbook of the late 90s era:

DARTH VADER ~


JAMES JOYCE ~


MICHAEL JACKSON ~


WILLIAM BURROUGHS (OR FREDDY KRUEGER) ~


GREGORY HINES (OK, I DON'T REALLY KNOW FOR THIS ONE) ~

African Adventure

Today's episode features an oft-requested short story from the Ninja-tek archive, "African Adventure". Composed in the 6th grade (1991).

AFRICAN ADVENTURE

Hello. My name is Joe Clydesdale. I am a millionaire who lives in Washington, D.C. I own many great museums in the country. One of the greatest is the Marine Museum in Chicago. I often go on trips around the world looking for newer attractions for my museums.

I flew in my privately owned 747 to Lake Victoria to catch a rare fish for my Marine Museum. The name of the fish is the Fireblue fish. There are only forty-six known worldwide.

As I flew over the country of Zaire, I soon realized that I would be landing in Jinja, Uganda, a city north of Lake Victoria in less than three hours. I decided to take a nap to pass the time.

I woke up at 3:32 P.M. and my captain told me that we would be landing in just a few minutes.

By 4:45 P.M., I was in a taxi heading for the coast of the lake. We were going down the road at eighty-five miles per hour when the driver suddenly put his foot on the brake and came to a sudden stop.

I was about to ask the driver why he came to a halt, but I looked ahead and found out for myself. Hundreds of people were dancing, marching, and singing in their native tongue. There was a festival blocking the whole street.

I decided that the lake was close enough to walk the rest of the way.

I got out of the cab, paid the driver, and got my luggage out of the trunk. I had two pieces of luggage and realized that it was about half a mile to the lake.

I was about to get started when a boy about the age of ten said to me in Swahili, "I will help you carry your luggage if you pay me a dollar."

I decided that my luggage was pretty heavy, so I said, "Sure!" I responded in his native language.

After he had helped me carry my luggage to the coast, I took out one dollar from my pocket and handed it to the kid. When he was about to take the money, he kicked my chin, grabbed the dollar, and ran away as fast as he could. He did it all in one motion.



I started to yell at him in English, but I realized that he wouldn't understand and he was already too far away to hear me anyway.

I never trusted another African from then on.

The kid had taken all of my clothes and two hundred dollars, but I still had nine hundred dollars left.

At least the kid had not taken my diving equipment. I knew that I could not replace that equipment here in Africa.

After I had set up camp and had a dinner consisting of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I decided to go to bed early because it had been such a long day.

The next morning, I woke up at 6:12 A.M., to search for the Fireblue fish. I decided I was going to search for him so early because he glowed a bright red and blue color in the morning, and it would be easier to catch.

I went down into the lake at 6:30 A.M., with a diving suit, mask, air tanks, and a large net to catch the fish.

I was starting to get bored after about fifteen minutes with no sign of the Fireblue fish, when a big black cloud of gas got in my vision. Then I felt a fish bit me in the side. I hit it on the head three times, but I realized that it would not let go!



I decided to try to swim to the surface. I was about twenty-five feet from the surface of the water when the fish released another cloud of smoke. I had to do something quick!

I took the air hose out of my mouth while I held my breath and shoved the hose up his nose. He released his grip!

I netted him quickly, put the air hose back in my mouth and swam to the surface. I would have just let him go, but he had been such a nuisance and I had never seen this type of fish before.

After I had put the fish in an aquarium, I looked him up in my fish guide to see what type of fish he was. He was called the Smoke Fish because of his color and the smoke he discharges to capture and eat his prey. It also said that it was only found in the Sea of Japan and that there are only eighteen know worldwide!

This would be even better than the Fireblue fish. I decided to pack up and take this fish instead of the Fireblue fish.

After I got back home the fish made a fortune for me, and I lived happily ever after.



NOTES

* What's with the OCD use of numbers?

* Every paragraph seems to start with "I".

* When the African boy kicks Joe Clydesdale in the "chin" I think I meant to say "shin".

* Jinja, Uganda is a real city.

* I made up both the Fireblue fish and the Smoke fish. They're not real.

* I don't see how the Smoke fish (only known to be found in the Sea of Japan) made it to Lake Victoria. Lake Victoria is a fresh water lake anyway.

* My favorite line is: "I never trusted another African from then on."

New Coke

"Simplify, simplify." - Henry David Thoreau

If Thoreau had taken his own advice he would have just said, "Simplify."

So in the spirit of Thoreau I've created another blog for no apparent reason and given it the same name as the old one to ensure my fan base is thoroughly confused. Whether I'll miss Livejournal lots and return like the prodigal son is quite possible. Already there are things about Blogger I don't like. But the main thing is having my own page that won't be sliced onto a collaged "friends" page.

There will be no LJ cuts here! (because I don't know how to do them)

It's 100% Mr. the Cutup all 100% the time! 100%! (except for the adsense ads)

We begin with an episode from the Ninja-tek archive (laziness): My first experience with "psychedelics". And tomorrow I will review a book I haven't read. Tally ho.

July 17, 1999

Let's try to recall it (don't expect a chronological account):

At about 9:15 last night I consumed all mushroom specimens (P. cubensis) that I had picked off my closet stock at that point. Most of the mushrooms were very tiny. I didn't weigh the exact amount that I consumed, but estimating based upon the weights of certain foods in the cupboard, my guess is that I consumed somewhere between 35 and 65 grams (undried). I had been storing this in my fridge until ready for consumption.

I had napped for a few hours in the day so I wouldn't fall asleep at night. I woke from my nap @ 7:00 P.M., watched an average movie called Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow, taken a shower, and then ate the shrooms.

Here's a chart of how I'd rate the strength of the hallucinations. Time is hard to estimate, but it's okay I think.



Period 0 --> lasted from @ 9:15 to 9:30 - 9:45. No activity really.

Period 1 --> After about 20 minutes I would see the occasional light flash of white (like lightning generalized). I also began to begin making out patterns of shapes and colors. These patterns varied from colors to black and whites to Escheresque, Gigeresque, arabesque, 60's swirlies; infinite walls of checkerboards mirroring the flush inside of a See's candy story. Some moved. They all moved actually, constantly changing. Any attempt on my part to get a strong bead on a pattern proved fruitless, as it shifted and bubbled away into a new one. Fractals were present. Chaos was there, for nothing would allow itself to be pinpointed. None of the patterns seemed identical to one simple art style, as if the artists who had brought similar designs into our world had not been able to retrieve that complexity (or the vision was combining various art styles in my head, and this was all my subjective experience). As time passed the dimensions seemed to increase, and I moved into...

Period 2 --> This is where the experience became the most intense. This is where the scenes became actual landscapes. I don't think I'll ever be able to describe them all. Scenes from Japan, 60's mod, outer space, scenes similar to Escher's Other World in which I could see my arm as I moved it on somebody else; my brain seemed to grow a few extra minds and I was able to move my arms on my body and feel as if my sensations were a few seconds ahead of or behind the actual movements. I would have thoughts and instantaneously step out of the brain that produced that thought into another brain which could observe the first brain. Like Hofstadter discusses in Gödel, Escher, Bach: mind observing mind observing mind... infinite fractal regressions that speed your thoughts up very very fast.

I didn't see any elves as [Terence] Mckenna described them, but at one point I was in a room of white in which I felt like I was being observed by aliens just outside of the room. I wasn't strapped to a table or any X-Files stuff like that, just standing.

When Mckenna says that the mushroom teaches you stuff, I thought he was bullshitting; but now I'm not so sure. I came out of my body at several points, and I seem to recall converting into the body of some woman named Cheryl. That might not be her name, but I distinctly remember entering down into her form/body. Whether this was a version of me in another universe or a person in this universe I do not know. (San Francisco seemed relevant to her.)

I left that body eventually and seemed to have no strong connection to any consciousness, and I was really kind of afraid I might never get back to this body; I could feel my bed underneath me if I paid attention, and Kim [my stepfather] typing in the next room, but I was still disconnected from it all. It just seemed like another form I had entered in to. I kept thinking of many authors who wrote about stuff like this, and Moorcock's idea of the Eternal Champion suddenly seemed to really make sense. The universe felt empty, like I was the only consciousness in it and it was all just a struggle and I would never die, not my consciousness. I seemed to understand why Hemingway killed himself, an attempt to achieve oblivion and escape the endless conflict of existence (he was probably just a drunk sod, but that's what I felt in the vision).

It seemed to go on for the longest time. I heard a symphony that sounded a little like Wagner, and I hummed it. I laughed and couldn't stop smiling for the longest time.

At some point in all of the landscapes, my stomach began to feel like a black hole. I wasn't nauseous or diarrhetic, but it just felt like this big weight was in there. I didn't like that at all. Also, the only other sucky thing was the gross taste of the mushrooms. Bitter. Next time I'll use mouthwash right after eating them.

Near the end of period two, all this language began to assault me from out of nowhere. The visions were leveling off, and I kept seeming to recall that I was thirsty, and yet too far away from my body to need a drink. Part of me was kind of afraid I was going to die of a ruptured intestine or something. I slowly arose to the contorted dimensions of my room and stumbled to turn on the light.

Phase 3 --> I turned the light on and looked at the clock. It was exactly midnight. I laughed out loud to ease the spookiness of it all. My head was swimming. Words kept coming, as if I was directly tapping into the language well. This is the point when I wrote down all that jibbery writing a few pages back [hardly legible scribbling, nonsense]. That was as clear as I could write. I wrote down those author names and things because they seemed to understand this stuff, especially Mckenna, Morrison, Moorcock, and Crowley. As I wrote the words my hand seemed to move over the page at fast Super 8 film speed, like at the beginning of the Wonder Years.

I then bent over to my bed and got down on my knees with my head on the mattress. Underneath my sheet I have a bumpy foam pad, and my right hand was resting on this. I looked at my hand and was mildly surprised to see the foam pad warping up, the bumps becoming elongated - as if the mattress was a living creature inhaling a deep breath. I pulled the sheet back, half expecting to find demons under there.

No such luck.

Indeed, all of my hallucinations that occurred with my eyes opened consisted of warping and stretching of dimensions. Perhaps if I had opened them in the more intense period two I'd have seen things not visible at all under "normal" circumstances.

I moved to the right a few inches on my knees and was surprised to find I had moved a few feet down the length of my bed.

Then I went to the living room. I unlocked my bedroom door and slowly stumbled down the hall, Kim's snoring intensely stentorian in the dark hall. I tried to keep quiet; the last thing I needed would be to confront mom or kim while I was zonked out.

In the living room I left the light off at first. I could see my cat JC sitting on the couch in the moonlight, a ghoulish Cheshire of the midnight. Turning the light on and approaching him, JC's eyes were large black discs that indicated his excited state. he knew my state of mind. I let him sniff my fingers to relax him, but he had that feral look on his mug that he gets when he can smell another animal on you. He looked more like a wolf than a cat. I thought he might attack me or start talking so I went back to my room.

I lied down until my head settled down.

Phase 4 --> No more hallucinations. Language still strongly flowing. I was exhausted but it took me quite a while to get to sleep. When I finally did, I only slept 4 1/2 hours. Before I went to sleep I let out this atomic fart that had been building since Creation, and that seemed to get rid of most of the "primitive charcoals of the eschaton, rumbling in my belly". What a night.

[Later]

Since I've woke up I've still felt kinda wobbly. Not dizzy, just not completely straight in it all. Should clear up completely by tomorrow.

Based on this initial experience with the psilocybin mushroom, I'm not convinced any of the hallucination material had to be anything outside of my own mind. Especially considering the amount of personal mythology of individual experience that gets packed into the visions. It seems to face down your own personal demons and gods, scouring the brain at an accelerated speed.

However, I'm also aware that my own interests into these things has led me to authors who have already been there. I mean, if someone knew nothing about magic mushrooms and read my account of my experience, would any similarities in their first voyage to mine be caused by their knowledge of what I'd told them to expect?

I don't know; it just seemed like the mushroom worked in details on things I had experienced in the day before consumption. Both [William Burroughs'] Junky and the parallel realities of Sliding Doors worked their way in. Is this because there is a "real" connection between those stories and the mushroom, or is exploration/"science" going where imaginative writers want it to?

I don't know. Perhaps I'll never know; not in the sense that we "know" there's an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. I just know, (and perhaps this is the only knowledge that can be known) that the mushroom is the most profound self-examination I've ever encountered. The only thing I've seen come halfway near it are dreams, and dreams have never been as clear as this was, not even the lucid ones.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this (and I'm sure I'll remember more details in the next few days): In Phase 3 I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Very scary. I got my face to slightly morph into gorilla and then wolf characteristics. I also seemed to see the devil hiding behind my eyes, laughing with me. My face was plastic. I passed my hand in front of my eyes rapidly, and each time I got a new look at myself I looked just a little different than I had a second previously. I was obviously jumping through dimensions and I'm now in a different universe than the one I was in yesterday (am I joking?).

Then I took a piss and the water level seemed to jump up and down like a choking well.

I had the Invisibles #21 out and was attracted to the Barbelith material in that issue.



When I first began seeing patterns and shit I felt like I was falling backward through the bed.

24 hours later I feel dandy.