i hope jesus used a condom.
Wednesday, April 15, 2026
this is good.
small businesses contribute to inflation and retard wage growth. they're horrible for the economy.
sometimes, small businesses are the only way to do things, and independence is particularly important in the creative sector. but, broadly speaking, the goal should be to scale as much production as possible and unionize as many workers as possible, and that means driving small businesses to bankruptcy is progress in the technological development of social productive capacity.
this is progress.
don't be misled by teachers' unions or media propaganda on the topic.
the purpose of introducing participation marks into high school is to inflate the marks of under-performing students and push them through, so they aren't repeating years, or bringing down averages. it's not intended to improve student outcomes. it's meant to manipulate results.
the purpose of participation marks is to inflate grades and reward people for effort instead of for aptitude. the logic is that you shouldn't fail if you try real hard.
i had huge problems with this when i went to university, as i found myself consistently graded down by 10% or sometimes 20% because i didn't think sitting through somebody reading me a textbook was a valuable use of my time when i could read it myself with a substantively higher retention rate. i also had an undiagnosed severe social anxiety issue that i didn't fully understood until i was much older that prevented me from leaving the house, and still does, for weeks at a time. i'd get 95% on the tests and assignments, and end up with a B+ in the course because my attendance was low, or sometimes even non-existent. that happened something like 10 or 15 times. it severely soured me on the education system.
i had straight As in high school because there weren't participation marks to grade me down like there were in university.
people don't tend to learn very well in classroom settings. that's science. most people learn better when they read in quiet rooms by themselves, but some people with learning disabilities do better when they touch things with their hands. absolutely nobody learns things optimally or even at all by listening to teachers; you forget 80%, 85% of what the teacher tells you five minutes later, because your biology doesn't allow you to retain it. holding to the classroom model is working against biology and against science. the classroom setting is literally the absolute worst way to teach people things and should be being aggressively abandoned in favour of more scientifically demonstrated learning models, which include online learning. those online learning models were developed with decades of science. they aren't just holding to some debunked conservative prussian model of learning out of backwardsness and stubborness.
eventually, i just started dropping courses with participation grades and avoiding teachers that included them. the ubiquity of participation marks in university was ultimately a large factor in my abandonment of the university as a career option; it wasn't the only factor, but it was a big factor.
i would argue for the opposite approach - there should be a drive to completely abolish participation grades from the post-secondary system. students should be evaluated entirely on their aptitude, and not on how hard they work. some students will fail; some wealthy students will fail. it's good for society to identify them, so they don't end up as prime ministers.
the education minister should be consulting scientists on what the best way that children learn is, and not asking teachers, who have their financial self-interest as their primary goal, and of whom many have no discernible science credentials. but the latter description - no discernible credentials - also describes paul calandra, who is a legitimate grade A fucking idiot. you would have extreme difficulties finding a bigger dumbass than calandra if you made a strenuous effort to search for one. he's going to fuck up anything at all he's assigned to and certainly shouldn't be in cabinet.
we're all trapped in capitalism, we're all slaves to capital in varying degrees, with absolutely no way out. the more money you have, the more you're enslaved to it. we can try to minimize the amount of capitalism we're forced to consume, but escaping capitalism is virtually impossible. the best hope to escape capitalism today is via automation and artificial intelligence, but it's a long ways away.
for that reason, having some level of education about all of that boring capitalist bullshit is definitely in an individual's self-interest, but only to ensure they can interact with it as little as possible. a truly free person would essentially never interact with capitalism at all, but true freedom is an abstraction and an ideal and something nobody can achieve.
the goal of a free individual should be to minimize the amount of time they waste on capitalism and maximize the amount of time they spent creating and enjoying art, reading, learning, debating, engaging in politics and whatnot.
so, when the issue is regime change in iran, that interests me. when the interest is the environment, that interests me. but when the issue shifts to finances and economics, i'd rather read about something else.
trump is continuing to tell media he's going to make a deal with iran any minute and that this is winding down, even though the reality is that it never started. fucking idiot.
so, i'm changing directions and altering my focus. this was a giant disappointment brought on by false expectations. i insist that regime change in iran would have already happened by now if the president wasn't working so hard to maintain the state in place, and what's happened just makes it more inevitable now than ever.
there is no alternative to regime change in iran.
but trump does not want regime change in iran, and in fact pretty clearly actively opposes regime change in iran. the situation is going to have to sit frozen, in place, for the next 2-3 years, until somebody else takes over and gets it done.
i'm not interested in what donald trump has planned for iran, which is some kind of business venture that allows him to profit off their depravity and oppression. whatever. boring.
Tuesday, April 14, 2026
i have a thing for jesus renaissance paintings in my cover art, but it's a giant sacrilegious joke. it's intended as satire, and it's very heavy-handed. you could miss it if you're retarded, but you can't miss it if you're not.
that likely wasn't trump's intent, but i actually dig his meme, on that level.
i might use it for cover art if the right circumstance arises.
i mean, that's why people like podcasts, right?
they're for very lonely losers that can't find any friends; it gives them an opportunity to participate in a conversation, which they normally lack. their popularity is a consequence of growing cultural and social alienation.
put the device down.
go get a beer and meet some people, instead.
if i want to listen to losers that don't know what they're talking about babbling about nothing of substance, i'll go down to the bar and get a beer. i would prefer to pick more substantive media options when i have the choice to, at home.
of the functionally infinite options i have available to me, i'm never going to choose the format. i could listen to an awesome record, i could watch a documentary, i could read a book, etc. podcasts are the absolute lowest brow form of entertainment possible. there's no excuse to waste your time with stupid bullshit like that when you could spend your time learning something, or enjoying art, instead.
podcasts are so low brow that they're neck hair.
i've been asked by a few people what podcasts i listen to.
the answer is that i don't listen to podcasts because they're fucking boring. i would rather listen to music, and i'd rather watch the news, or watch lectures.
some loser talking about his opinions or feelings into a microphone is about the worst delivery format imaginable. borrrriiiiiing.
Monday, April 13, 2026
if this was a real war, that's what you would do - you would put the port under siege. you wouldn't keep feeding them as you try to defeat them. that's irrational.
trump actually campaigned on not doing this, and while i didn't endorse him or support him, i did agree with that part of his platform. if you're going to fight a war, you shouldn't do so half-assed and with one arm tied behind your back. war is war. you do it with your whole ass, or you don't fucking bother at all.
this has been america's problem for years: it starts wars, then restrains itself from fighting them.
trump has indicated that the blockade will allow food into iran and is intended to force iran to make a deal, indicating he's continuing to hold to the delusion that running a government is like running a business, and he can force iran into a business deal, and he can negotiate with a psychotic terrorist death cult.
that's not what i called for and not what i support.
the uprisings in iran have been about civil rights, which do not exist in iran, but they've also been about food shortages.
i was calling for a naval siege of iran. i called it a blockade, but i was suggesting a siege of the port of bandar abbas to ensure no food can get in, with the purpose of triggering an uprising. this would have to be done in conjunction with concrete support for opposition groups on the ground.
i don't expect that merely cutting off oil revenue is going to force iran to negotiate. they're not going to negotiate. they'd rather die because they neurotically think they'll go to heaven if you kill them. they're completely fucking insane.
that said, i don't exactly oppose an oil blockade, either. i just don't think it will work.
the haphazard use of carbon in asia is devastating to the environment and needs to stop. they use oil for cooking, for electricity and for practically everything. it's 2026. this is unacceptable, at this point. these countries in the indian cultural sphere, including most of southeast asia, need to upgrade their grids. if this "blockade" creates incentives for them to do that, it's a net positive. reducing carbon emissions should be the number one priority goal when it comes to any kind of carbon fuel policy, including this. it is countries in this area that are going to suffer the brunt of climate change and need to make the most extreme adjustments. they're long overdue, for their own sake.
and, as mentioned, increases in the price of carbon in the west should help to undo some of the effects of extremely damaging subsidies to the oil industry and help make better sources of energy more competitive, as they struggle to scale. it could be the final push that carbon transition needs to tip over. i will support any policy that increases the price of oil.
but iran is not going to sign a deal without regime change, and an oil "blockade" is not going to trigger that. a complete siege type blockade that prevents bandar abbas from engaging in all trade will, if enforced long enough, succeed in toppling the state, which should be the american (and canadian) government's stated purpose, not trying to negotiate. you can't negotiate with irrational actors.
the basic point is that if somebody uses language with the intent to be offensive or harmful, that is their decision, and if it works in offending somebody then that means that the person was successful in expressing themselves with their choice of language. that is entirely valid, and there's nothing wrong with that. it's healthy to seek to express yourself as clearly as possible.
there is something wrong with and something extremely unhealthy about censors, government agencies or self-appointed language police trying to prevent people from a full range of emotions, or from freely expressing themselves. that is reflective of a sick society and a sick culture that needs help learning how to express their emotions freely.
if somebody's angry or frustrated or just descriptive, they have a fundamental and basic right to express that and nobody has any right to try to stop them. if you take some offense and get angry or sad, that's your problem and not theirs, and you should react by venting, yourself.
i never stopped using words like retarded or nigger and when people told me to stop, i started using them more, and especially around the people that asked me to stop. they would generally give up.
the basic point is that it doesn't fucking matter if you're offended and, often times, that's actually the intent. i have a pretty big vocabulary. i get to decide what words are appropriate in how i express myself, not you. and you have a lot of fucking nerve thinking that your feelings are more important than my free will. you can go fuck yourself.
the word is best used to express a certain kind of extreme stupidity. stupidity exists in a hierarchy. something that is only a little bit stupid can be described using a term like dumb. then, there's something moronic, which is more stupid than something dumb. that which is utterly fucking completely retarded is at the very top of the stupid hierarchy.
it shouldn't be used haphazardly, admittedly. it should be reserved only to describe the most stupid of the stupid.
it really has nothing to do with having a genetic defect like autism or down's syndrome. people with genetic defects may act retarded sometimes, and sometimes they may not. generally, that description, to the extent that it may be accurate, would come without the contempt directed at somebody that does not have a genetic defect. you would generally not use the adjective retarded to describe somebody with a genetic defect, unless they are being retarded, which they might be.
but i'm not going to be prejudiced about my hierarchy of stupid or assume that somebody is a retard just because they have a genetic defect.
the term is used most appropriately and most accurately in english usage to describe behaviour that is at the top of the stupid hierarchy, by people that do not have genetic defects, and therefore should be expected not to behave that way, and can be fairly treated with derision and contempt for doing so.
the word's etymology is latin, likely french, and means slow, delay or late - initially, as in dim-witted, or unable to keep up. it was adopted for medical usage, but the use of the term in english long predates that. i could use the latin verb or translate it. there's no logic in yelling at me for using the latin, and thinking it's ok to translate it, but that seems to be the convention amongst the ingsoc newspeak language police.
people that have genetic defects shouldn't assume the word is targeted at them. it generally isn't, and the history connecting the use of the word to the specific context of genetic defect is rather recent. it's just a latin translation for "slow witted".
people that believe that language is something for individuals to decide on, and not something to be determined by centralized bodies, will rightfully push back on any entity trying to remove an adjective from the dictionary. to best express ourselves in the widest variety of contexts possible, we need as many adjectives as possible, and should always be expanding our individual vocabularies, never restricting them.
Sunday, April 12, 2026
eliminating oil subsidies would also be helpful in using government to forcibly mandate a return to recycling.
right now, government subsidies for oil make it extremely difficult for recyclers to compete. high oil prices, consumer carbon taxes and the abolition of oil subsidies would be a boon for the recycling industry.
the reality is that housing prices - i mean mortgages - never really come down much in canada because there's a purposeful government policy to keep them high. the government goes way out of it's way to stop prices from falling by buying up mortgages. that's the actual reason that we had interest rate hikes in the pandemic, as the fear was that old people dying would lead to their kids selling their house at below market prices.
for that reason, we can actually have falling rents and increasing property values at the same time, by cutting immigration and buying up canada housing bonds. and, frankly, that's fine with me.
when i talk about housing costs, i'm concerned about my class interests, which means i'm talking about rent. a sufficient supply of new housing is required to keep rents and mortgages down, but i really otherwise don't give the slightest fuck what the cost of buying a house is. from a renter's perspective, i want to minimize the amount of competition i have in the market, meaning i want to keep the population low, in general - i want low birth rates and low levels of immigration at the bottom of the market, so that the supply of housing outstrips demand for it. i am in direct class conflict with property owners on this point, who want to increase the number of renters to increase competition, increase demand and increase prices.
nonetheless, this is the reason why property values in canada, which are not the same thing as rents, are unlikely to crash:
and i don't really give a fuck about that. i just want low rent.
an extended period of extremely high oil prices is exactly what the renewable energy and circular material economies need to get kick started into carbon replacement, rather than merely as supplement.
i'm in strong support and favour of hiking the price of gas through the roof, and in bringing back consumer carbon taxes to give the shift that extra kick.
do you know what will bring down inflation in a renewable energy economy?
recycling. remember that?
when oil is very expensive, recycling will become a competitive source of new plastic, which is far better. it will create an economic, not just an environmental, case for a truly circular economy. further, you can actually convert plastic into fertilizer, we just don't.
we need to stop burning it, first. that's stupid. it's valuable.
listen.
if you're a status quo liberal or a "progressive democrat" or a christian republican, i understand why you're upset about this. you're not getting what you voted for, and this is probably not in your short term self-interest.
but i'm not one of you.
i didn't vote for this, either. i can't even vote in the united states at all. but, this is unfolding like a fever dream for an eco-anarchist, evangelical atheist, revolutionary socialist.
we've tried everything to get you fucking idiots to consume less oil and you won't fucking listen.
let's try hiking the prices. maybe that'll work.
and let's see how long the iranian regime lasts for when it's people begin suffering from bread and meat shortages. we know the regime will tell it's people to eat cake. good. it's in the people's self-interest to rise up and fight.
i didn't expect any of this, but i couldn't imagine or ask for something better than this. the americans just need to follow through on it, now. i certainly hope that they do.
the rest of the world should be reacting by rapidly shifting to renewables, including to electric vehicles.
however, i want to discourage bombing desalination facilities. iran does not rely on desalination, but the gulf states do. that's not a good idea.
meanwhile, there needs to be concrete support for opposition groups on the ground.
there are some situations where you want peace, and there are some situations where you need war.
a smart person should be able to comprehend that war in iran is necessary - perhaps not immediately or imminently, but soon and eventually. now is as good a time as any time. it will be less costly and less deadly if it's done sooner than later.
regime change in saudi arabia and egypt, as well as democratic renewal in turkey, are also on the near horizon. these things are necessary and must occur. they may occur peacefully, but iran cannot be dealt with peacefully.
you can align with appeasement if you insist, but history will not be kind to you.
this is necessary. if you didn't see that 6 weeks ago, you should surely see it now, or you're blind and can't be helped. they have to be defeated and vanquished.
iran's decision to try to control the strait of hormuz was actually incredibly stupid, for the reason that it invited a catastrophic blockade on itself. i immediately realized that and called for the americans to force them to eat their own shit. the americans seem to have been slow to process it, but they figured it out.
meanwhile, the media's been framing it as a stroke of genius and it's not. it's a noose around their own necks. it was a foolish mistake that amounts to them digging their own grave.
the western media has been focusing on how important the strait is for everybody else and has missed the obvious: iran relies on the strait both for imports and for exports, and they import almost all of their food.
an american blockade of the strait will lead to starving iranians very very fast. but they walked into it, it's their fault, and they can fix it by fucking off.
hungry people are also more likely to attack their government than well fed people.
the delicious irony is why i liked this approach and immediately jumped to it. i'm not sure why it took them so long to get to it, but better late than never.
this will work. but i can't predict exactly how. be patient.
iran walked right into this.
they can hardly complain that it isn't fair, when essential goods are prevented from getting to iran, or their own oil exports are prevented from getting to asia.
the world needs some patience, here. you're going to have to make some short term sacrifices while this gets resolved. the plan tehran was trying to implement is a non-starter.
what was winter like this year in southern ontario, according to the data?
it was cyclothymic. we've had a early and warm spring that is about to break out into full summer today, in the second week of april.
november was actually pretty warm. there were 0 subzero days here in november, and 22 days with above normal highs. there were some cold mornings, but it was pretty warm, overall.
december was colder than average, but it was also split in half. a cold front came in over the last few days of november, but then there was a warm front for the last two weeks. the last four days and the first 16 days of december were below average, for an almost three week cold snap, but then there were 13 days in a row above normal, then two more below it. overall, that's 13 days above normal, all in a row, and 18 days below normal.
january was also colder than average and also had 13 days above average, mostly consecutive, and 18 days below average. there were some very cold overnights, as a result of the solar activity breaking up the polar vortex.
but, february and march were actually warmer than average.
february had 15 days above average and 13 days below average. march had 19 days above average, including 7 above 20, which canadians consider to be summer, and only 12 below average.
so far, we've had 6 above average days, including 3 above 20, and 6 below average days in april, but the forecast has a solid 7 days of 20+ degree weather, so april is looking to come out as warmer than average as well.
you will note that the weather network's forecast was wrong, but they always seem to forecast that it's going to be cold. i don't think it's a serious forecast anymore, but is being manipulated for clicks and ratings.
but i'm not quite sure what the media is talking about when it complains about a cold spring that won't warm up. it's been above average here, which can sometimes be misleading, but we've also had several summer days here in february and march, which is not even spring, it's winter. it's legitimately been a warm spring in southern ontario, and it's tripping over into summer very early.
there's been some concern that iran didn't map where it put the mines, which is going to make it hard to find them. that's probably not true; they're probably just refusing to divulge the information. it might also be why they were shooting at people to stay out.
while this may have been a hard problem not too long ago, i don't imagine it would be so hard now. the americans have incredible satellite technology at their disposal. they should be able to write a simple program to find the mines in the satellite data. i don't know why they would send ships out, unless those ships were getting gps co-ordinates from the satellites.
it might be a novel problem.
it shouldn't be a hard one.
for supposed critics of capitalism, the fake left nowadays seems unusually interested in fashion over substance.
listen.
smart children understand that knowledge is more important than popularity. you cast your nets out and you get what you're fishing for. don't say nobody told you to think it through.
i don't think that leftist politics is getting anywhere by adhering to fashion trends.
Saturday, April 11, 2026
i would call on the crown in ottawa to publish a letter indicating that ms ghamari was within her rights and for the ottawa police to publicly apologize on behalf of their officer.
in fact, i would suggest to ms ghamari that if that officer contact her again, she should attempt to have them charged with harassment.
i fully agree that the mosques in iran should be bombed as a part of a regime change process. i have repeatedly called for the complete elimination of the entire class of clerics, the entire judiciary and all of the police, along with all of the ruling infrastructure. i don't believe i explicitly called for the bombing of mosques, but it would have been due to brevity, in not wanting to list all of the desired targets.
i would like to explicitly state that the mosques in iran should be bombed, in response to the takedown request.
i will not be deleting my post. i will not be intimidated. i will not abandon my rights.
if the police want to charge me, i will fight them in court and have the law amended or revoked, or the case law otherwise clarified.
i'm fucking sick of this bullshit.
commentary on foreign affairs, of any type, is not within the scope of the law being cited, which is restricted to direct foreseeable harm within canada.
the purpose of the law is to prevent attacks on minorities in canada. like, in real life - actual real attacks. it was used here to attack free speech by a minority about events in a foreign country.
this is the problem with these kinds of laws and why liberals are supposed to be opposed to them - they are rarely used the way they are supposed to be, and give too much power to authority with too high a likelihood of it being abused by the depraved and the ignorant.
canadians are constitutionally free to comment on foreign wars in any way that they choose.
she should file an oiprd report and have the officer disciplined for being a terrorist thug.
this is an interesting question without a clear answer.
i would assume that, upon any expression of albertan sovereignty, they would be expected to assume the role of the crown. it would not be fundamentally different than patriation, which would be the precedent. however, it's worth noting that some indigenous groups have never accepted patriation and consider their agreement to strictly be with the british crown, and not with ottawa.
this would have no effect in quebec, because quebec was not added to canada by treaty but by conquest. there are no underlying treaties for quebec, except with the inuit in the very far north, in the parts of quebec that were in the hudson's bay company (rupert's land) at the time of conquest.
Story oF BYRON THE BULB
Byron was to’ve been manufactured by Tungsram in
Budapest. He would probably have been grabbed up by
the ace salesman Géza Roézsavélgyi’s father Sandor, who
covered all the Transylvanian territory and had begun to
go native enough to where the home office felt vaguely
paranoid about him throwing some horrible spell on the
whole operation if they didn’t give him what he wanted.
Actually he was a salesman who wanted his son to be a
doctor, and that came true. But it may have been the bad
witch-leery auras around Budapest that got the birth of
Byron reassigned at the last minute to Osram, in Berlin.
Reassigned, yes. There is a Bulb Baby Heaven, amiably
satirized as if it was the movies or something, well Big
Business, ha, hal But don’t let Them fool you, this is a
bureaucracy first, and a Bulb Baby Heaven only as a sort
of sideline. All overhead—yes, out of its own pocket the
Company is springing for square leagues of organdy, hogs-
heads of IG Farben pink and blue Baby Dye, hundred-
weights of clever Siemens Electric Baby Bulb Pacifiers,
giving the suckling Bulb the shape of a 110-volt current
without the least trickle of power. One way or another,
these Bulb folks are in the business of providing the
appearance of power, power against the night, without the
reality. bi
Actually, B.B.H. is rather shabby. The brown rafters
drip cobwebs. Now and then a roach shows up on the
floor, and all the Babies try to roll over to look (being
Bulbs they seem perfectly symmetrical, Skippy, but don’t ©
forget the contact at the top of the thread), going uh-guhl
uhhhh-guhl, glowing feebly at the bewildered roach sitting
paralyzed and squashable out on the bare boards, rushing,
reliving the terror of some sudden blast of| current out of
nowhere and high overhead the lambent, all-seeing Bulb.
In their innocence, the Baby Bulbs don’t know what to
anake of this roach’s abreaction—they feel his fright, but
don’t know what it is. They just want to be his friend. He’s
interesting and has good moves. Everybody's excited ex-
cept for Byron, who considers the other Bulb Babies a
bunch of saps. It is a constant struggle to turn their
thoughts on anything meaningful. Hi there Babies, I'm
' Byron-the-Bulb! Here to sing a little song to you, that
goes—
Light-up, and-shine, you—in-cande-scent Bulb Ba-bies!
Looks-like ya got ra-bies
Just lay there foamin’ and a-screamin’ like a buncha
little demons,
I’m delivin’ unto you a king-dom of roa-ches,
And no-thin’ ap-proaches
That joyful feelin’ when-you’re up-on the ceilin’
Lookin’ down—night and day—on the king-dom you
sur-vey,
They'll come out *n’ love ya till the break of dawn,
But they run like hell when that light comes on!
So shine on, Baby Bulbs, you're the wave of the fu-ture,
And I’m here to recruit ya,
._ In mi great crusade,
Just sing along Babies—come-on-and-join-the-big-
pa-radel
Trouble with Byron’s he’s an old, old soul, trapped in-
side the glass prison of a Baby Bulb. He hates this place,
lying on his back waiting to get manufactured, nothing to
listen to on the speakers but Charleston music, now and
then an address to the Nation, what kind of a setup’s that?
Byron wants to get out of here and into it, needless to say
he’s been developing all kinds of nervous ailments, Baby
Bulb. Diaper Rash, which is a sort of corrosion on his
screw threads, Bulb Baby Colic, a tight spasm of high re-
‘sistance someplace among the deep loops of tungsten
wire, Bulb Baby Hyperventilation, where it actually feels
“oe his vacuum’s been broken though there is no organic
asis. ..\. §
‘When M-Day finally does roll around, you can bet
_Byron’s elated. He has passed the time hatching some
really insane grandiose plans—he’s gonna organize all the
Bulbs, see, get him a power base in Berlin, he’s already
hep to the Strobing Tactic, all you do is develop the knack
(Yogic, almost) of shutting off and on at a rate close to
the human brain’s alpha rhythm, and you can actually
trigger an epileptic fit! True. Byron has had a vision against
the rafters of his ward, of 20 million Bulbs, all over
Europe, at a given sychronizing pulse arranged by one of
his many agents in the Grid, all these Bulbs beginning to
strobe together, humans thrashing around the 20 million
rooms like fish on the beaches of Perfect Energy— Atten-
tion, humans, this has been a warning to you. Next time,
a few of us will explode. Ha-ha. Yes we'll unleash our
Kamikaze squads! You’ve heard of the Kirghiz Light? well
that’s the ass end of a firefly compared to what we're
gonna—oh, you haven’t heard of the—oh, well, too bad.
Cause a few Bulbs, say a million, a mere 5% of our num-
ber, are more than willing to flame out in one grand burst
instead of patiently waiting out their design hours.... So
Byron dreams of his Guerrilla Strike Force, gonna get
Herbert Hoover, Stanley Baldwin, all of them, right in the
face with one coordinated blast... .
Is Byron in for a rude awakening! There is already an
organization, a human one, known as “Phoebus,” the in-
ternational light-bulb cartel, headquartered in Switzerland.
Run pretty much by International GE, Osram, and Asso-
ciated Electrical Industries of Britain, which are in turn
owned 100%, 29% and 46%, respectively, by the General
Electric Company in America. Phoebus fixes the prices
and determines the operational lives of all the bulbs in the
world, from Brazil to Japan to Holland (although Philips
in Holland is the mad dog of the cartel, apt at any time
to cut loose and sow disaster throughout the great Com-
bination). Given this state of general repression, there
seems noplace for a newborn Baby Bubb to start but at the
bottom.
But Phoebus doesn’t know yet that Byron is immortal.
He starts out his career at an all-girl opium den in Charlot-
tenburg, almost within sight of the statue. of Wernher
Siemens, burning up in a sconce, one among many bulbs
witnessing the more languorous forms of [Republican dec-
adence. He gets to know all the bulbs in the place, Benito
the Bulb over in the next sconce who’s always planning an
escape, Bernie down the: hall in the toilet, who has all
kinds of urolagnia jokes to tell, his mother Brenda in the
kitchen who talks of hashish hush puppies, dildos rigged
to pump floods of paregoric orgasm to the capillaries of
the womb, prayers to Astarte and Lilith, queen of the
night, reaches into the true Night of the Other, cold and
naked on linoleum floors after days without sleep, the
dreams and tears become a natural state....
One by one, over the months, the other bulbs burn out,
and are gone. The first few of these hit Byron hard. He’s
‘still a new arrival, still hasn’t accepted his immortality.
But on through the burning hours he starts to learn about
the transience of .others: learns that loving them while
theyre here becomes easier, and also more intense—to
love as if each design-hour will be the last. Byron soon
enough becomes a Permanent Old-Timer. Others can
recognize his immortality on sight, but it’s never discussed
except in a general way, when folklore comes flickering in
from other parts of the Grid, tales of the Immortals, one in
a kabbalist’s study in Lyons who’s supposed to know
magic, another in Norway outside a warehouse facing
arctic whiteness with a stoicism more southerly bulbs be-
gin strobing faintly just at the thought of. If other Im-
mortals are out there, they remain silent. But it is a silence
with much, perhaps, everything, in it.
After Love, then, Byron’s next lesson is Silence.
As his burning lengthens toward 600 hours, the monitors
in Switzerland begin to keep more of an eye on Byron.
The Phoebus Surveillance Room is located under a little-
known Alp, a chilly room crammed full of German electro
hardware, glass, brass, ebonite, and silver, massive terminal
blocks shaggy with copper clips and screws, and a cadre
of super-clean white-robed watchers who wander meter to
meter, light as snowdevils, making sure that nothing’s
going wrong, that through no bulb shall the mean operat-
ing life be extended. You can imagine what it would do
to the market if that started happening.
Byron passes Surveillance’s red-line at 600 hours, and
immediately, as a matter of routine, he is checked out for
filament resistance, burning temperature, vacuum, power
consumption. Everything’s normal. Now Byron is to be
checked out every 50 hours hereafter. A soft chime will
go off in the monitoring station whenever it’s time.
At 800 hours—another routine precaution—a Berlin
agent is sent out to the opium den to transfer Byron. She
is wearing asbestos-lined kid gloves and seven-inch spike
heels, no not so she can fit in with the crowd, but so that
she can reach that sconce to unscrew Byron. The other
bulbs watch, in barely subdued terror. The word goes out
along the Grid. At something close to the speed of light,
every bulb, Azos looking down the empty black Bakelite
streets, Nitralampen and Wotan Gs at night soccer
matches, Just-Wolframs, Monowatts and Siriuses, every
bulb in Europe knows what’s happened. They are silent
with impotence, with surrender in the face of struggles
they thought were all myth. We can’t help, this common
thought humming through pastures of sleeping sheep,
down Autobahns and to the bitter ends of coaling piers in
the North, there’s never been anything we could do....
Anyone shows us the meanest hope of transcending and
the Committee on Incandescent Anomalies comes in and
takes him away. Some do protest, maybe, here and there,
but it’s only information, glow-modulated, harmless, noth-
ing close to the explosions in the faces of the powerful
that Byron once envisioned, back there in his Baby ward,
in his innocence.
He is taken to Neukdélln, to a basement room, the home
of a glassblower who is afraid of the night and who will
keep Byron glowing and on watch over all the flint bowls,
the griffins and flower-ships, ibexes in mid-leap, green
spider-webs, somber ice-deities. This is one of many so-
called “control points,” where suspicious bulbs can be
monitored easily.
In less than a fortnight, a gong sounds along the ice
and stone corridors of the Phoebus headquarters, and faces
swivel over briefly from their meters. Not too many gongs
around here. Gongs are special. Byron has passed 1000
hours, and the procedure now is standard: the Committee
on Incandescent Anomalies sends a hit man to Berlin.
But here something odd happens. Yes, damned odd. The
plan is to smash up Byron and send him back right there
in the shop to cullet and batch—salvage the tungsten, of
course—and let him be reincarnated in the glassblower’s
next project (a balloon setting out on a journey from the
top of a white skyscraper). This wouldn't be too bad a
deal for Byron—he knows as well as Phoebus does how
many hours he has on him. Here in the shop he’s watched
enough glass being melted back into the structureless pool
from which all glass forms spring and re-spring, and
wouldn’t mind going through it himself. But he is trapped
on the Karmic wheel. The glowing orange batch is a taunt,
a cruelty. There’s no escape for Byron, he’s doomed to an
infinite regress of sockets and bulbsnatchers. In zips young
Hansel Geschwindig, a Weimar street urchin—twirls
Byron out of the ceiling into a careful pocket and Ge-
sssschhhhwindig! out the door again. Darkness invades the
dreams of the glassblower. Of all the unpleasantries his
dreams grab in out of the night air, an extinguished light
is the worst. Light, in his dreams, was always hope: the
basic, mortal hope. As the contacts break helically away,
hope turns to darkness, and the glassblower wakes sharply
tonight crying, “Who? Who?”
Phoebus isn’t exactly thrown into a frenzy. It’s hap-
pened before. There is still a procedure to follow. It
means more overtime for some employees, so there’s that
vague, full-boweled pleasure at the windfall, along with an
equally vague excitement at the break in routine. You
want high emotion, forget Phoebus. Their stonefaced
search parties move out into the streets. They know more
or less where in the city to look. They are assuming that
no one among their consumers knows of Byron’s immortal-
ity. So the data for Non-immortal Bulbsnatchings ought to
apply also to Byron. And the data happen to hump up in
poor sections, Jewish sections, drug, homosexual, prostitute,
and magic sections of the capital. Here are the most logi-
cal bulbsnatchers, in terms of what the crime is. Look at
all the propaganda, It’s a moral crime. Phoebus discov-
ered—one of the great undiscovered discoveries of our
time—that consumers need to feel a sense of sin. That
guilt, in proper invisible hands, is a most powerful
weapon. In America, Lyle Bland and his psychologists had
figures, expert testimony and money (money in the Puri-
tan sense—an outward and visible O.K. on their inten-
tions) enough to tip the Discovery of Guilt at the cusp
between scientific theory and fact. Growth rates in later
years were to bear Bland out (actually what bore Bland
out was an honorary pallbearer sextet of all the senior
members of Salitieri, Poore, Nash, De Brutus and Short,
plus Lyle, Jr., who was sneezing. Buddy at the last min-
ute decided to go see Dracula. He was better off). Of all
the legacies Bland left around, the Bulbsnatching Heresy
was perhaps his grandest. It doesn’t just mean that some-
body isn’t buying a bulb. It also means that same some-
body is not putting any power in that socket! It is a sin
both against Phoebus and against the Grid. Neither one is
about to let that get out of hand.
So, out go the Phoebus flatfoots, looking for the snatched
Byron. But the urchin has already left town, gone to Ham-
burg, traded Byron to a Reeperbahn prostitute so he can
shoot up some morphine—the young woman’s customer to-
night is a cost-accountant who likes to have light bulbs
screwed into his asshole, and this john has also brought a
little hashish to smoke, so by the time he leaves he’s for-
gotten about Byron still there in his asshole—doesn’t ever,
in fact, find out, because when he finally gets around to
sitting down (having stood up in trolleys all the way
home) it’s on his own home toilet and plop! there goes
Byron in the water and flusssshhhh! away down ‘the waste
lines to the Elbe estuary. He is just round enough to get
through smoothly all the way. For days he floats over the
North Sea, till he reaches Helgoland, that red-and-white
Napoleon pastry tipped in the sea. He stays there for a
while at a hotel between the Hengst and the Ménch, till
being brought back one day to the mainland by a very old
priest who’s been put hep to Byron’s immortality in the
course of a routine dream about the taste of a certain
1911 Hochheimer ...suddenly -here’s the great Berlin
Eispalast, a booming, dim iron-trussed cavern, the smell of
women in the blue shadows—perfumes, leathers, fur skat-
ing-costumes, ice-dust in the air, flashing legs, jutting
haunches, desire in grippelike flashes, helplessness at the
end of a crack-the-whip, rocketing through beams of sun-
light choked with the powdered ice, and a voice in the
blurred mirror underfoot saying, “Find the one who has
performed this miracle. He is a saint. Expose him. Expedite
his canonization. ...” The name is on a list the old man
presently draws up of about a thousand) tourists who’ve
been in and out of Helgoland since Byron was found on
the beach. The priest begins a search tol tain, footpath,
and Hispano-Suiza, checking out each of the tourists on
his list. But he gets no farther than Niimberg, where his
valise, with Byron wrapped inside in an alb, is ripped off —
by a transsectite, a Lutheran named Mausmacher who
likes to dress up in Roman regalia. This Mausmacher, not
content with standing in front of his own mirror making
papal crosses, thinks it will be a really bizarre kick to go
out to the Zeppelin field to a Nazi torchlight rally in full
drag, and walk around blessing people at random. Green
torches flaring, red swastikas, twinkling brasses and Father
Mausmacher, checking out tits ’n’ asses, waistlines ’n’
baskets, humming a clerical little tune, some Bach riff,
smiling as he moves through the Sieg Heils and choruses
of “Die Fahne Hoch.” Unknown to him, Byron slides out
of the stolen vestments onto the ground. He is then walked
past by several hundred thousand boots and shoes, and
not one so much as brushes him, natch. He is scavenged
next day (the field now deathempty, columned, pale,
streaked with long mudpuddles, morning clouds length-
ening behind the gilded swastika and wreath) by a
poor Jewish ragpicker, and taken on, on into another 15
years of preservation against chance and against Phoebus.
He will be screwed into mother (Mutter) after mother, as
the female threads of German light-bulb sockets are
known, for some reason that escapes everybody.
The cartel have already gone over to Contingency Plan
B, which assumes a seven-year statute of limitations, after
which Byron will be considered legally burned out. Mean-
while, the personnel taken off of Byron’s case are busy
tracking a long-lived bulb that once occupied a socket on
the porch of an army outpost in the Amazon jungle,
Beatriz the Bulb, who has just been stolen, mysteriously,
by an Indian raiding party.
Through his years of survival, all these various rescues
of Byron happen as if by accident. Whenever he can, he
tries to instruct any bulbs nearby in the evil nature of
Phoebus, and in the need for solidarity against the cartel. -
He has come to see how Bulb must move beyond its role
as conveyor of light-energy alone. Phoebus has restricted
Bulb to this one identity. “But there are other frequencies,
above and below the visible band. Bulb can give heat.
Bulb can provide energy for plants to grow, illegal plants,
inside closets, for example. Bulb can penetrate the sleeping
eye, and operate among the dreams of men.” Some bulbs
listened attentively—others thought of ways to fink to
Phoebus. Some of the older anti-Byronists were able to
fool with their parameters in systematic ways that would
show up on the ebonite meters under the Swiss mountain:
there were even a few self-immolations, hoping to draw
the hit men down.
Any talk of Bulb’s transcendence, of course, was clear
subversion. Phoebus based everything on bulb efficiency—
the ratio of the usable power coming out, to the power put
in. The Grid demanded that this ratio stay as small as
possible. That way they got to sell more juice. On the
other hand, low efficiency meant longer burning hours, and
that cut into bulb sales for Phoebus. In the beginning
Phoebus tried increasing filament resistance, reducing the
hours of life on the sly and gradually—till the Grid noticed
a fall-off in revenues, and started screaming. The two
parties by and by reached an accord on a compromise
bulb-life figure that would bring in enough money for
both of them, and to go fifty-fifty on the costs of the anti-
bulbsnatching campaign. Along with a more subtle attack
against those criminal souls who forswear bulbs entirely
and use candles. Phoebus’s long-standing arrangement with
the Meat Cartel was to restrict the amount of tallow in
circulation by keeping more fat in meat to be sold regard-
less of cardiac problems that might arise, and redirecting
most of what was trimmed off into soap production. Soap
in those days was a booming concern. Among the con-
sumers, the Bland Institute had discovered deep feelings
about shit. Even at that, meat and soap were minor inter-
locks of Phoebus. More important were items like tungsten.
Another reason why Phoebus couldn’t cut down bulb life
too far. Too many tungsten filaments would eat into avail-
able stockpiles of the metal—China being the major world
source, this also brought in very delicate questions of
Eastern policy—and disturb the arrangement between
General Electric and Krupp about how much tungsten
carbide would be produced, where and when and what the
prices would be. The guidelines settled on were $37—$90 a
pound in Germany, $200-$400 a pound in the U.S. This
directly governed the production of machine tools, and
thus all areas of light and heavy industry. When the War
came, some people thought it unpatriotic of GE to have
given Germany an edge like that. But nobody with any
power. Don’t worry.
Byron, as he burns on, sees more and more of this pat-
tern. He learns how to make contact with other kinds of
electric appliances, in homes, in factories and out in the
streets. Each has something to tell him. The pattern gath-
ers in his soul (Seele, as the core of the earlier carbon fila-
ment was known in Germany), and the grander and
clearer it grows, the more desperate Byron gets. Someday
he will know everything, and still be as impotent as be-
fore. His youthful dreams of organizing all the bulbs in
the world seem impossible now—the Grid is wide open,
all messages can be overheard, and there are more than
enough traitors out on the line. Prophets traditionally don’t
last long—they are either killed outright, or given an
accident serious enough to make them stop and think, and
most often they do pull back. But on Byron has been
visited an even better fate. He is condemned to go on
forever, knowing the truth and powerless to change any-
thing. No longer will he seek to get off the wheel. His
anger and frustration will grow without limit, and he will
find himself, poor perverse bulb, enjoying it....
Laszlo Jamf walks away down the canal, where dogs
are swimming now, dogs in packs, dogs heads bobbing
down the scummy canals... dogs’ heads, chess knights,
also may be found invisible in the air over secret airbases,
in the thickest fogs, conditions of temperature, pressure
and humidity form Springer-shapes the tuned flyer can
feel, the radars can see, the helpless passengers can al-
most glimpse, now and then, out the little window, as
through sheets of vapor... it is the kind Dog, the Dog no
man ever conditioned, who is there for us at beginnings
and ends, and journeys we have to take, helpless, but not
quite unwilling. ... The pleats in Jamf's suit go weaving |
away like iris leaves in a backyard wind. The colonel is
left alone in Happyville. The steel city waits him, the even
cloud-light raising a white streak down each great build-
ing, all of them set up as modulations on the perfect grid
of the streets, each tower cut off at a different height—
and where is the Comb that will move through this and
restore the old perfect Cartesian harmony? where are the
great Shears from the sky that will readjust Happyville?
There is no need to bring in blood or violence here, But
the colonel does have his head tilted back now in what
may truly be surrender: his throat is open to the pain-
radiance of the Bulb. Paddy McGonigle is the only other
witness, and he, a one-man power system with dreams of
his own, wants the colonel out of the way as much as
anyone. Eddie Pensiero, with the blues flooding his shak-
ing muscles, the down, mortal blues, is holding his scissors
in a way barbers aren’t supposed to. The points, shudder-
ing in the electric cone, are aiming downward. Eddie
Pensiero’s fist tightens around the steel loops his fingers
have slid out of, The colonel, with a last tilt of his head,
exposes his jugular, clearly impatient with the—
These pine limbs, crackling so blue and watery, don’t seem
to put out any heat at all, Confiscated weapons and ammo
lie around half-crated or piled loose inside the C-Company
perimeter. For days the U.S. Army has been out sweeping
Thuringia, busting into houses in the middle of the night.
A certain lycanthropophobia fear of Werewolves occupies
minds at higher levels. Winter is coming. Soon there won't
be enough food or coal in Germany. Potato crops toward
the end of the War, for example, all went to make alcohol
for the rockets. But there are still small-arms aplenty, and
ammunition to fit them. Where you cannot feed, you take
away weapons. Weapons and food have been firmly linked
in the governmental mind for as long as either has been
around. .
On the mountainsides, patches will flash up now and
then, bright as dittany in July at the Zippo’s ceremonial
touch. Pfc. Eddie Pensiero, a replacement here in the
89th Division, also an amphetamine enthusiast, sits hud-
dling nearly on top of the fite, shivering and watching the
divisional patch on his arm, which ordinarily resembles a
cluster of rocket-noses seen out of a dilating asshole, all
in black and olive-drab, but which now looks like some-
thing even stranger than that, which Eddie will think of
in a minute. .
Shivering is one of Eddie Pensiero’s favorite pastimes.
Not the kind of shiver normal people get, the goose-on-
the-grave passover and gone, but shivering that doesn’t
stop. Very hard to get used to at first. Eddie is a con-
noisseur of shivers. He is even able, in some strange way,
to read them, like Siure Bummer reads reefers, like Miklos
Thanatz reads whip-scars, But the gift isn’t limited just
to Eddie’s own shivers, oh no, they’rd other people’s
_ shivers, too! Yeah they come in one by one, they come in
all together in groups (lately he’s been growing in his
brain a kind of discriminator circuit, learning how to sep-
arate them out), Least interesting of these shivers are the
ones with a perfectly steady frequency, no variation to
them at all. The next-to-least interesting are the freqency-
modulated kind, now faster now slower depending on in-
formation put in at the other end, wherever that might be.
Then you have the irregular waveforms that change both
in frequency and in amplitude. They have to be Fourier-
analyzed into their harmonics, which is a little tougher.
There is often coding involved, certain subfrequencies, cer-
tain power-levels—you have to be pretty good to get the
hang of these.
“Hey Pensiero.” It is Eddie’s Sergeant, Howard (“Slow”)
Lerner. “Getcher ass offa dat fire.”
“Aww, Sarge,” chatters Eddie, “c’mon. I wuz just tryin’
ta get wawm.”
“No ick-skew-siz, Pensiero! One o’ th’ koinels wants his
hair cut, right now, an’ yer it!”
“Ahh, youse guys,” mutters Pensiero, crawling over to
his sleeping bag and looking through his pack for comb
and scissors. He is the company barber. His haircuts,
which take hours and often days, are immediately recog-
nizable throughout the Zone, revealing as they do the
hhair-by-hair singlemindedness of the “benny” habitué.
The colonel is sitting, waiting, under an electric bulb.
The bulb is receiving its power from another enlisted man,
who sits back in the shadows hand-pedaling the twin
generator cranks. It is Eddie’s friend Private Paddy
(“Electro”) McGonigle, an Irish lad from New Jersey, one
of those million virtuous and adjusted city poor you know
from the movies—you’ve seen them dancing, singing,
hanging out the washing on the lines, getting drunk at
wakes, worrying about their children going bad, I just
don’t know any more Faather, he’s a good. b’y but he’s
runnin’ with a crool crowd, on through every wretched
Hollywood lie down to and including this year’s big hit,
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. With his crank here young
Paddy is practicing another form of Eddie’s gift, though
he’s transmitting not receiving. The bulb appears to burn
steadily, but this is really a succession of electric peaks
and valleys, passing by at a speed that depends on how
fast Paddy is cranking. It’s only that the wire inside the
bulb unbrightens slow enough before the next peak shows
up that fools us into seeing a steady light. It’s really a
train of imperceptible light and dark. Usually impercepti-
ble. The message is never conscious on Paddy’s part. It is
sent by muscles and skeleton, by that circuit of his body
which has learned to work as a source of electrical power.
Right now Eddie Pensiero is shivering and not paying
much attention to that light bulb. His own message is
interesting enough. Somebody close by, out in the night,
is playing a blues on a mouth harp. “Whut’s dat?” Eddie
wants to know, standing under the white light behind the
silent colonel in his dress uniform, “hey, McGonigle—you
hear sump’nP”
“Yeah,” jeers Paddy from behind the generator, “I hear
yer dischodge, flyin’ away, wit’ big wings comin’ outa th’
ass end, Dat’s whut I hear! Yuk, yuk!”
“Aw, it’s th’ bunk!” replies Eddie Pensiero, “Y-you don’t
hear no dischodge, ya big dumbheaded Mick.”
“Hey, Pensiero, ya know whut a Eye-talian submarine
sounds like, on dat new sonar? Huh?”
“Uh... whut?”
“Pinnnggguinea- -guinea-guinea wopwopwop! Dat’s whet!
Yuk, yuk, yu KI”
“Fuck youse,” sez Eddie, and commences combing ths
colonel’s silver-black hair.
The moment the comb contacts his head, the colonel
begins to speak. “Ordinarily, we'd spend no more than 24
hours on a house-to-house sweep. Sundown to sundown,
house to house. There’s a quality of black and gold to
either end of it, that way, silhouettes, shaken skies pure as
a cyclorama. But these sunsets, out here, I don’t know.
Do you suppose something has exploded somewhere?
Really—somewhere in the East? Another Krakatoa? An-
other name at least that exotic... the colors are so differ-
ent now. Volcanic ash, or any finely-divided substance,
- suspended in the atmosphere, can diffract the colors
strangely. Did you know that, sonP Hard to believe, isn’t
it? Rather a long taper if you don’t mind, and just short
of combable on top. Yes, Private, the colo change, and
how! The question is, are they chan according to
something? Is the sun’s everyday spectrum being modu-
lated? Not at random, but ae by this unknown
debris in the prevailing winds? Is there information for
us? Deep questions, and disturbing ones.
“Where are you from, son? I’m from Kenosha, Wiscon-
sin. My folks have a little farm back there. Snowfields and
fenceposts all the way to Chicago. The snow covers the
old cars up on blocks in the yards .. . big white bundles...
it looks like Graves Registration back there in Wisconsin.”
“Heh, heh... .”
“Hey Pensiero,” calls Paddy McGonigle, “ya still hearin’ .
dat sound?”
“Yeah uh I tink it’s a mouth-organ,” Pensiero busily
combing up single hairs, cutting each one a slightly differ-
ent length, going back again and again to touch up here
and there...God is who knows their. number. Atropos
is who severs them to different lengths. So, God under the
aspect of Atropos, she who cannot be turned, is in posses-
sion of Eddie Pensiero tonight.
“I got your mouth organ,” jeers Paddy, “right herel
Look! A wop clarinet!”
Each long haircut is a passage. Hair is yet another kind
of modulated frequency. Assume a state of grace in which
all hairs were once distributed perfectly even, a time of
innocence when they fell perfectly straight, all over the
colonel’s head. Winds of the day, gestures of distraction,
sweat, itchings, sudden surprises, three-foot falls to the edge
of sleep, watched skies, remembered shames, all have since
written on that perfect grating. Passing through it tonight,
restructuring it, Eddie Pensiero is an agent of History.
Along with the reworking of the colonel’s head runs the
shiver-bome blues—long runs in number 2 and 3 hole
correspond, tonight anyway, to passages in the deep
reaches of hair, birch trunks in a very humid summer night,
approaches to a stone house in a wooded park, stags
paralyzed beside the high flagged walks. ...
Blues is a matter of lower sidebands—you suck a clear
note, on pitch, and then bend it lower with the muscles of
your face. Muscles of your face have been laughing, tight
with pain, often trying not to betray any emotion, all your
life. Where you send the pure note is partly a function of
that. There’s that secular basis for blues, if the spiritual
angle bothers you.... :
“I didn’t know where I was,” relates the colonel. “I kept
climbing downward, along these big sheared chunks of
concrete. Black reinforcing rod poking out... black rust.
There were touches of royal purple in the air, not bright
enough to blur out over their edges, or change the sub-
stance of the night. They dribbled down, lengthening out,
one by one—ever seen a chicken fetus, just beginning? oh
of course not, you're a city boy. There’s a lot to learn, out
on the farm. Teaches you what a chicken fetus looks like,
so that if you happen to be climbing around a concrete
mountain in the dark, and see one, or several, up in the
sky reproduced in purple, youll know what they look
like—that’s a heap better than the city, son, there you
just move from crisis to crisis, each one brand-new, noth-
ing to couple it back onto. ...”
Well, there he is, cautiously edging along the enormous
ruin, his hair at the moment looking very odd—brushed
forward from one occipital spot, forward and up in great
long points, forming a black sunflower or sunbonnet
around his face, in which the prominent feature is the
colonel’s long, crawling magenta lips. Things grab up for
him out of crevices among the debris, sort of fast happy
lunge out and back in, thin pincer arms, nothing personal,
just thought I'd grab a little night air, ha, hal When they
miss the colonel—as they always.seem to do—why they
just zip back in with a gambler’s ho-hum, well, maybe
next time....
Dammit, cut off from my regiment here, gonna be cap-
tured and cremated by dacoits! Oh Jesus there they are
now, unthinkable Animals running low in the light from
the G-5 version of the city, red and yellow turbans,
scarred dope-fiend faces, faired as the front end of a *37
Ford, same undirected eyes, same exemption from the
Karmic Hammer— /
A ’37 Ford, exempt from the K.H.? C’mon quit fooling,
They'll all end up in junkyards same as th’ rest!
Oh, will they, Skippy? Why are there so many on the
roads, then? ai hy
W-well gee, uh, Mister Information, th-th’ War, I mean
there’s no new cars being built right now so we all have to
keep our Old Reliable in tiptop shape cause there’s not too
many mechanics left here on the home front, a-and we
shouldn’t hoard gas, and we should keep that A-sticker
prominently displayed in the lower right—
Skippy, you little fool, you are off on another of your
senseless and retrograde journeys. Come back, here, to the
points. Here is where the paths divided. See the man back
there. He is wearing a white hood. His shoes are brown.
He has a nice smile, but nobody sees it. Nobody sees it
because his face is always in the dark. But he is a nice
man. He is the pointsman. He is called that because he
throws the lever that changes the points. And we go to
Happyville, instead of to Pain City. Or “Der Leid-Stadt,”
that’s what the Germans call it. There is a mean poem
about the Leid-Stadt, by a German man named Mr. Rilke. ©
But we will not read it, because we are going to Happy-
ville. The pointsman has made sure we'll go there, He
hardly has to work at all. The lever is very smooth, and
easy to push. Even you could push it, Skippy. If you
knew where it was. But look what a lot of work he has
done, with just one little push. He has sent us all the way
to Happyville, instead of to Pain City, That is because he
knows just where the points and the lever are. He is the
only kind of man who puts in very little work and makes
big things happen, all over the world. He could have sent
you on the right trip back. there, Skippy. You can have
your fantasy if you want, you probably don’t deserve any-
thing better, but Mister Information tonight is in a kind
mood. He will show you Happyville. He will begin by
reminding you of the 1937 Ford. Why is that dacoit-faced
auto still on the roads? You said “the War,” just as you
rattled over the points onto the wrong track. The War was
the set of points. Eh? Yesyes, Skippy, the truth is that the
War is keeping things alive. Things. The Ford is only
one of them. The Germans-and-Japs story was only one,
rather surrealistic version of the real War. The real War is
always there. The dying tapers off now and then, but the
War is still killing lots and lots of people. Only right now
it is killing them in more subtle ways. Often in ways that
are too complicated, even for us, at this level, to trace.
But the right people are dying, just as they do when
armies fight. The ones who stand up, in Basic, in the
middle of the machine-gun pattem. The ones who do not
have faith in their Sergeants. The ones who slip and show
a moment’s weakness to the Enemy. These are the ones
the War cannot use, and so they die. The right ones sur-
vive. The others, it’s said, even know they have a short
life expectancy. But they persist in acting the way they
do. Nobody knows why. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could
eliminate them completely? Then no one would have to
be killed in the War. That would be fun, wouldn’t it,
Skippy?
Jeepers, it sure would, Mister Information! Wow, I-I
can’t wait to see Happyvillel
Happily, he doesn’t have to wait at all. One of the
dacoits comes leaping with a whistling sound, ecru silk
cord strung buzzing tight between his fists, eager let’s-get-
to-it grin, and just at the same moment a pair of arms
comes up out of a fissure in the ruins, and gathers the
colonel down to safety just in time. The dacoit falls on his
ass, and sits there trying to pull the cord apart, muttering
oh shit, which even dacoits do too.
“You are under the mountain,” a voice announces. Stony
cave-acoustics in here. “Please remember from this point
on to obey all pertinent regulations.”
His guide is a kind of squat robot, dark gray plastic
with rolling headlamp eyes. It is shaped something like a
crab, “That’s Cancer in Latin,” sez the robot; “and in
Kenosha, too!” It will prove to be addicted to one-liners
that never quite come off for anyone but it.
“Here is Muffin-tin Road,” announces the robot, “note
the smiling faces on all the houses here.” Upstairs win-
dows are eyes, picket fence is teeth, Nose is the front door.
“Sa-a-a-y,” asks the colonel, taken by a sudden thought,
“does it ever snow here in Happyville?”
“Does what ever snow?”
“You're evading.”
“Tm evading-room vino from Visconsin,” sings this boor-
ish machine, * ‘and you oughta see the nurses run! So what
else is new, Jackson?” The squat creature is actually chew-
ing gum, a Laszlo Jamf variation on polyvinyl chloride,
very malleable, even sending out detachable molecules
which, through an ingenious Osmo-elektrische Schalter-
werke, developed by Siemens, is transmitting, in code, a
damn fair approximation of Beeman's reeiaie flavor to the
robot crab’s brain.
“Mister Information always answers spittle
“For what he’s making, I’'d even question answers.
Does it ever snow? Of course it snows in 1 Happyville. Lotta
snowmen’d sure be sore if it didn’t!”
“T recall, back in Wisconsin, the wind used to blow
right up the walk, like a visitor who expects to be let in.
Sweeps the snow up against the front door, leaves it drifted
there... . Ever get that in Happyville?”
“Old stuff,” sez the robot.
“Anybody ever open his front door, while the wind was
- doing that, eh?”
“Thousands of times.”
“Then,” pounces the colonel, “if the door is the house’s
nose, and the door is open, a-and all of those snowy-white
crystals are blowing up from Muffin-tin Road in a big
cloud right into the—”
“Aagghh!” screams the plastic robot, and scuttles way
into a narrow alley. The colonel finds himself alone in a
brown and wine-aged district of the city: sandstone and
adobe colors sweep away in a progress of walls, rooftops,
streets, not a tree in sight, and who’s this come strolling
down the Schokoladestrasse? Why, it’s Laszlo Jamf him-
self, grown to a prolonged old age, preserved like a °37
Ford against the World’s ups and downs, which are never
more than damped-out changes in smile, wide-pearly to
wistfully gauze, inside Happyville here. Dr. Jamf is wear-
ing a bow tie of a certain limp grayish lavender, a color
for long dying afternoons through conservatory windows,
minor-keyed lieder about days gone by, plaintive pianos,
pipesmoke in a stuffy parlor, overcast Sunday walks by
canals... here the two men are, dry-scratched precisely,
attentively on this afternoon, and the bells across the canal
are tolling the hour: the men have come from very far
away, after a journey neither quite remembers, on a mis-
sion of some kind. But each has been kept ignorant of the
other’s role....
Now it turns out that this light bulb over the colonel’s
head here is the. same identical Osram light bulb that
Franz Pékler used to keep next to in his bunk at the under-
ground rocket works at Nordhausen. Statistically (so Their
story goes), every n-thousandth light bulb is gonna be
perfect, all the delta-q’s piling up just right, so we shouldn’t
be surprised that this one’s still around, burning brightly.
But the truth is even more stupendous. This bulb is im-
mortal! It’s been around, in fact, since the twenties, has
that old-timery point at the tip and is less pear-shaped
than more contemporary bulbs. Wotta history, this bulb, if
only it could speak—well, as a matter of fact, it can speak.
It is dictating the muscular modulations of Paddy Mc-
Gonigle’s cranking tonight, this is a loop here, with feed-
back through Paddy to the generator again. Here it is,
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