August 1997 mystery date by Wiley Wiggins |
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Wiley Wiggins is a movie star (Dazed and Confused) and the
publisher of Unhappy, the online version of the print Zine he's also in
charge of: "Happy."
Die
Televised image:
Surplus elderly are siphoned off from retirement homes in overlong black
trucks and taken downtown to chewing gum factories to be processed into
little pink cubes.
Tainted pet food is deep fried and coated in thirty year old macaroni &
cheese "cheese" powder and resold as "the hottest taste you ever put in
your face."
The latest in a string of tattooed, nose-ringed, acerebral oligophreniac
rock bands launches into a bland, obnoxious, ironic pop-punk cover of the
'Brady Bunch Theme' which has already been covered by thirteen bands this
week.
Suddenly there's a 3-D pink explosion and a cavalcade of "Stars" leap onto
the screen, shaking their aging, surgically-modified genitals in your face;
what's the movie that they're advertising? A film version of whatever
sitcom was canceled last month. Hmmm ... Perfect Strangers the movie,
directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Jack Nicholson and the
disembodied anus of Adolf Hitler.
Focus on a shopping mall the size of America, a million snotty teenagers
stand slump-shouldered and pose, griping about how "malls suck, dude," even
though they've been standing in the same spots for several days now,
constitutions maintained by surgical-tubing pipelines of Taco Bell food,
ground into a paste and pumped directly into their stomachs. A young man
runs his jet-powered motor scooter through a plate glass window with eighty
syringes hanging from his arms, one is stuck directly in the center of a
bright red and blue tattoo of the Pepsi logo, which covers his mainline
like a bullseye. Over the mall's PA system there are a couple of college
kids spinning the latest indie rock album by "Joe the Venereal Hopscotch
Cat," and guffawing like rabid hyenas as they pelt one another with compact
disc inserts and complementary tie-dyed condoms.
"Dude," drools one of the DJ's as he tries to extricate a stray dreadlock
from his mouth, "We sure are hella cool."
"Yeah," affirms the other, "Hey, why are we cool again?"
"Because we're white and we've got funny hair."
Freeze frame, video static hovers like white hornets, listening ...
The 90's are even worse than the 80's
(A twenty-something jerks his head up from a Details magazine "Totally
80's" CD compilation and disagrees with a smug twitch of his skin-cream
stenching upper lip).
Well, Die.
Whatever force moved the stupidest portion of the population into a
position where they seem to speak for everyone, I don't know. Whoever it
was that convinced us that there were no new ideas left and we had to all
start eating our own cultural shit, I don't really care. The fact is
something better be done to remedy it or I'm going to destroy the world.
That's not a threat, it's a promise. How is it that medialand has worked
itself into such a smug self-referential circle jerk? Was it always like
this and I was just too young to notice?
As a good friend of mine once said: "If it came down to a choice between
what we have today and Nazi Germany, I'd have to start goose steppin'."
Of course that was before he drove his RV off a cliff while masturbating
with a handful of fish guts and an Entertainment Weekly magazine.
History is grinding down on itself like a rusted pocketwatch.
Culture is lapping at its own rectum like a flea-bitten dog.
Future generations will laugh at us if they even choose to remember.
The days seem shorter and it's getting harder to think.
Dreams are starting to be supplanted with commercials, you wake up at
night in a cold sweat thinking about McDonald's.
Youth culture somehow got supplanted with stupid culture, drenched in
acrid snot and attitude. Style without substance and even the style is bad.
Alanis Morrisette is more popular than Elvis.
Kevin Smith is put on the cover of Time.
MTV acquires its own army of shock-troopers to storm into peoples' homes and
make sure they pay their monthly Microsoft-Cola bill.
The world groans on its axis and fragments of the crust start to fly out
into space. No one notices, it wasn't featured in an episode of the X-Files.
Customers look up horrified at the cracking ceiling of the "ska department"
at Sears as a blimp comes crashing in, trailing an advertisement that
reads, "Abandon cliques! Abandon cliques! It's time to die and your life
never meant anything!"
The image of the dance floor, refracted, warped, and distant, stared back
at me from the lens of a camera as it craned smoothly up to get a view of
the crowd. I know I wasn't supposed to look into the camera's eye,
pretending I was just bopping around having fun. Not looking like I had
been doing the same set of moves on command over and over for hours. All
this work and all anyone would ever know of me was a split second glance
into the camera, and maybe my hairdo. That was going to be my whole life
for the rest of the world.
Hi, mom.
It's me, hairdo.
Your little hairdo is all grown up now.
Shaking her tits like a goddamn whore.
"Alright, cut, cut... bring in the elephant."
"Floopy the rockin' elephant" entered the studio on a large iron chain. He
wore a large lime-green afro wig. Tired gummy eyes stared out through giant
plastic sunglasses. Hundreds of bouncing, dead-eyed teenagers are mirrored
in the lenses. The music comes back on, synthetic thump and synthetic
voice, the animal handler gives Floopy a smack on the ass.
"Dance, you stupid fucking elephant!"
This is the last smack that the trainer ever administers. The tusk that is
thrust with an explosive roar through his chest makes that certain.
The dancers scream, but they are packed in too tightly to evade the
sweeping tusks and trampling feet of Floopy. The pool begins to fill with
blood. Bloody bikini's, leather jackets ... The fashion consultant runs
out screaming to try and save the merchandise but Floopy throws him to the
floor and skewers him ...
One day it rains cans of Budweiser and millions are bludgeoned to death in
the streets. Blood and beer run down rain gutters to fatten and eventually
drown rats. The combined blood, beer and rat corpses back up sewers and
overflow toilets in a Kentucky-Fried Chicken piercing and sky-diving
accessory shop and smash out the doors, full of chicken grease, body parts
and surgical steel. A passing group of vegetarian psychic friends see the
tidal wave of meat, blood and beer, and begin to vomit in horror as they
are swept up in it.
And today on "The Dating Game", meet Sara. She's a twenty-three year old
administrative assistant, she likes horses and gardening and once helped
catch a purse thief in Paris!
Sara, let's meet your potential dates!
"Hi, my name is Frank. I'm a six-thousand year old duck who's worshipped
as a god in parts of Wisconsin."
"Hey, Sara. My name's Eddy and I like to surf!"
"HELLO SARA. I AM THE DARK LORD LUCIFER. I HAVE COME TO CONSUME YOUR SOUL
AND SHOW YOU A GREAT NIGHT ON THE TOWN."
Image warps, a nest of plastic hornets falling out of the air like
novelties from a bubblegum machine. I'm still screaming, turn the goddamn
thing off but televisions don't have off switches any more and now they
follow you around your house on little duck legs making sure you watch,
quacking, "McDonald's: we're the new Bob Dylan!"
They're called the "laxative hunks," and these sizzling-hot soap opera
stars are helping sell laxatives like never before with their sexy
commercials!
"I think we're communicating the essence of the product ..."
A tsunami of stupidity, videotapes melting, compact discs shattering,
buildings fall, screams, lights go out around the world.
The Church's chicken restaurant was jam-packed with children in formal
dress, squirming and itching from long hours of Sunday school. Eyeing each
other suspiciously, the students made their orders (The children from St.
Mary's Catholic ordered no. 1 meal deals and the children of Greensdale
Baptist ordered no. 5's) and sat separately. Pre-teen snarls of hatred.
"Idolaters," comes one hissing voice.
"Blasphemers!" shouts another.
An explosion of chicken. Trays fly and mashed potatoes hit the walls. Ties
flap like flags as gravy-blood is spilled. Dress shoes sail like rockets.
Little girls pull each other's pig-tails screaming in the
extra-tasty-crispy fires of Jihad.
A mall explodes and millions of children die.
in the junk drawer:
July 1997
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·feature·
·net worth·
·bumping uglies·
·smoking jacket·
·ear candy·
·feed hollywood·
·target audience·
·three dollar bill·
·compulsion·
·posedown·
·the biswick files·
·mystery date·
·and such and such·
·blab·
·kissing booth·
·contents·
·freakshow·
·fan club·
·junk drawer·
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