Conversations With Charlemagne

Often (usually while showering) I wonder what it would be like to kidnap someone from a more primitive time, bring him or her to the present, and try to explain the world of their future. I imagine it would go a little something like this:

Me: So, anyway, Chuck, this is a cell phone.

Chuck: [Speaks excitedly in some forgotten dialect of Old Frankish.]

Me: I see this is going to take some time.

[Assuming we can properly communicate…]

Me: Like I was saying, Chuck, this is a cell phone.

Chuck: A cell what?

Me: Cell phone.

Chuck: A what phone?

Me: Okay, this is a device that allows people in remote locations to communicate with one another.

Chuck: Fuck! It glows!

Me: Yeah, but check it out: I can use it to talk to a person thousands of miles away as if he were right here next to me.

Chuck: Are all people from your time powerful wizards?

Me: Pretty much.

Chuck: [Draws his sword.] Then I will scourge the necromancers of this land in the name of the Christ!

Me: No, wait! It’s just science!

Chuck: What is that, some kind of Moorish sorcery?

Me: No, it’s not fucking magic, you ape! This is a device that transmits information to orbiting satellites via radio waves. It operates on electricity, which--

Chuck: I’m not hearing anything that doesn’t sound like wizardry.

Me: Okay, here, just play with this pocket calculator while I check Wikipedia for a second.

Chuck: Yes, you consult your fantastical grimoire of charms and curses while I dash this unholy offense against the flat of my blade!

Me: Fine, go ahead. My phone has a calculator on it anyway. God, what a cretin.

[After re-familiarizing myself with the principles of electricity…]

Me: I see that you’ve managed to expertly disassemble that pocket calculator.

Chuck: I was quite surprised to see no imps spring from its corpse, though it seems perfectly reasonable to me that they should be invisible.

Me: Naturally. So anyway, to explain electricity I first have to explain electrons. Which means I kind of need to cover atomic theory. At least. I printed out kind of a worksheet you can follow along with to help grasp the basic concepts… and I can see that you’re bored already.

Chuck: Quite. Do you have any other unholy relics for me to smash?

Me: Okay, forget science. I didn’t want to do this, but you leave me with no choice. Behold… INTERNET PORNOGRAPHY!

Chuck: [Engaged in careful study.] These women…

Me: [Expectantly.] Yeah?

Chuck: Where is their hair? They are all shorn, as if mere babes!

Me: Oh, they’re babes all right. Check this out…

Chuck: And they are grotesquely emaciated. Are these women slaves of some kind, taken prisoner in conflict? Are they deprived of food for the sick pleasure of your race of vile magicians? Is it part of some demonic ritual?

Me: Charlemagne the chubby chaser, huh? You like the big women? You need a little cushion for the pushin’?

Chuck: As a god-fearing man, I prefer not to copulate with skeletons.

Me: Fine. Here are some fat girls taking it in all holes. How does that make you feel?

Chuck: It bores me.

Me: What!?

Chuck: Look, kid. I’ve waged war from the Spanish March to Saxonia. I’ve put thousands to the sword. I rule an empire. AN EMPIRE. Do you have any idea how much tail an emperor gets? Son, I’ve fucked more people than you’ve ever met.

Me: Oh. So being an emperor… that’s a pretty sweet gig, then?

Chuck: You couldn’t possibly imagine.

Me: I see. Need any wizards?

True Tales From the Shallow South: Stay Classy, Kentucky!

From the “I’m not racist, but…” file:

I bet Randall has spent many a sleepless night thinking about enticing black males.

Letter of Resignation

Attention: Human Resources
CC: God

When I joined this enterprise nearly 30 years ago, it was under the assumption that it was a growth-based firm with a clear vision for the future. In the intervening decades I have seen this organization’s seemingly unlimited potential squandered again and again on one fruitless, self-destructive enterprise after another. Thus, it is with a heavy heart that I tender my resignation from the human race, effective immediately.

My own personal growth with this company has been hamstrung by the incompetence of upper management, which seems content to wallow in luxury perks at the expense of progress. Worse than that, I have seen numerous programs falter under this entrenched attitude of entitlement and selfish aggrandizement, including (but not limited to) space exploration, alternative energy, solutions to ongoing geopolitical problems, waste management, and education of future generations.

At the very heart of my complaints is this defective corporate culture. I have held out hope for many years now that we were on the verge of a shake-up, a change in the board of directors that might send this company in the direction under which it at one time seemed destined. I am no longer able to hold on to such a foolish, futile hope. This company has set itself firmly down the path of a doomed future (and I do not speak of your half-hearted environmental programs, which is primarily an outgrowth of this inveterate self-love).

The truth is that this company will not last. Disaster is inevitable, and you have done nothing to prevent it—or even to mitigate the damage. Instead of securing a future for this company and its inheritors, you have satisfied yourself with being the last princes of a city on fire. We are surrounded—as literally as one can imagine—with resources ripe for the exploitation, in amounts that promise a prosperous future for untold generations. Again, management has preferred to use our treasure for their own ostentatious tombs. I can only hope that when your doomsday comes it will consume the last of your kind and pave the way for a new company to take its place: one with actual vision.

As the goals of this company and my own are in irreparable conflict, I have no choice but to depart. I can only hope that somewhere out there is a company willing to take up the mantle that this one has gleefully, bafflingly abandoned. If there is not, it will be necessary for someone to create one.

With not malice but sorrow,
Nobody Important

A Harsh Political Reality

It’s much easier to be a celebrity demagogue than an actual leader. You are not obligated to make good on any promises, nor are you required to respond effectively to any challenges.There’s no expectation of accountability, as you have no authority. All that is required of you is talk, and the closer you cleave to the 8th grade comprehension level of your fan base (supporters seems a disingenuous term) the more successful you will be. Speak of policy only in generalities; it’s not your job to come up with actual ideas. Your job is simply to provide form and figure for the undifferentiated plebeians who—by their very nature—know not what the fuck they do.

It is a supremely cushy job, and you would have to possess a truly legendary stupidity to want to ruin that by running for actual office.

Imagine being such a person, a simple voice unused to actual challenge. Imagine your custom is to be fawned over by drooling simpletons who like you precisely because you don’t seem to be any smarter than they are. Would you really want to throw yourself into the wolf pit by seeking nomination? Would populist rhetoric shield your neck from people who have spent decades sharpening their knives for the express purpose of slitting throats?

Such a person, more suited for a book signing or a softball interview, would be eaten alive by the opportunistic, Machiavellian world of American politics. It would be an absolute bloodbath, and a humiliating enterprise for that certain fool. A person cannot be both a leader and a celebrity.

At first glance, leadership and celebrity seem similar. Both are fickle enterprises that are reliant on the public will. This is superficial.

Leadership implies action, and controversy, and the possibility that people will grow to hate you for what you do. Yet the post demands that you do, for better or worse, and submit to the heartless forces of history for judgment.

Celebrity is inert: a passive enterprise that is buoyed up entirely by the throng. It is—as they say—being known simply for being known, at best for what you represent but never for what you actually do. The leader does not have the luxury of being reduced to a symbol until long after his or her death. The celebrity is instantly transmogrified by the crowd, pseudo-immortalized in flesh, and stripped of all essential human features. This is especially true if the essence of your celebrity is parroting the simplistic opinions of a benighted subgroup. You become those opinions; you become those people. They tie their egos to you and, as a consequence, your ego becomes tied to theirs—your identity is defined completely by them. It is a gruesome symbiosis, one which the leader cannot afford or maintain. The good news is that once inaugurated as a Symbol of the (Certain) People, you become incapable of doing any evil in their minds; however, you are also deprived of the ability to do any actual good, as doing would invite controversy and potential disdain. Your role is but to preen, and grovel, and pander until the day you die.

Even then history will deny you judgment.

A One-Sided Conversation

Based on a true story.

“Did you hear about Lord Monckton? He called out Al Gore on global warming. He said that Gore needs to either come and debate him or shut up and admit that the data shows that global warming does not exist. All of the studies clearly demonstrate that the earth has been cooling for the last thousand years. Have you ever taken a statistics class? I took one last semester that taught me how any statement can be proven or disproven by statistics. Hold on…

“So last weekend I felt myself starting to get a little sick. I had kind of a sore throat. What I do when I feel myself getting sick is I take a shitload of vitamin C. Like, five times the legally recommended dose of vitamin C. If I took any more my kidneys might shut down. Then I go to bed and that nukes the cold. I haven’t been sick in five years. Hold on…

“I was in class yesterday and the professor was showing a PowerPoint presentation about left-wing totalitarianism and right-wing totalitarianism. I was like ‘How can you have right-wing totalitarianism? That’s an oxymoron.’ Well, because, if you define left-wing as ‘more control’ and right-wing as ‘less control—’ No, that’s not the point. It’s like if you had a scale with bicycles at one end, and SUVs at the other end, then you showed a picture of a Hummer and said it was a bicycle. Like fascism is left-wing—. Because when they founded Nazism they explicitly said that it was socialist—. The only difference between Communism and Nazism is that one wants to take control over everything for everyone, and the other wants to take control for a specific group of people. Hold on…

“I’ve been trying to find this specific oyster sauce that I like to use when I cook, but I just can’t find it in this state. Do you know what sauce I’m talking about? Have you ever had Chinese food? You know that sauce that tastes, like, super good? Yeah, it’s not soy sauce; it’s oyster sauce. What happened was, like, a hundred years ago this Chinese guy was making oyster soup but he left it to cook too long. Like, he went out and then came back, and it was over-cooked. Like, way overcooked. Hold on…

“So I have a bunch of people coming over tonight and I’m supposed to cook. I make these drummies that I use the oyster sauce with. We’re going to watch an episode of this anime show that’s been going on for, like, hundreds of episodes. These two characters are supposed to fight and they’ve been building it up for, like, two years. One of them is the other’s student and what happened was—hold on…

“I heard about this game called Shogun. It’s like Spin the Bottle or Truth or Dare, only Japanese. Everyone kind of draws these straws—you know, like where usually one person gets a short straw and gets screwed, only in Shogun one person gets to be the Shogun and he calls out a number—all the sticks are numbered—and then says what the person with that number has to do. And they have to do anything he says. I was watching this anime where a bunch of guys were playing Shogun with an actual Shogun. Like, the government in the show is run by a secret group of people, and they tell the Shogun that he has to leave Neo-Tokyo and go live among the people for a while. Because he’s forgotten what it’s like to be, like, one of the regular people. So he’s playing Shogun and he keeps getting screwed, everyone gets to tell him what to do. Hold on…

“I’m designing a Babylon 5 mod for this game that I play with my clan. I’m in charge of doing the entire Earth Alliance tech tree, but I really want to do the Minbari tech tree. I’m hoping that when they see what a thorough job I do on the Alliance that they’ll let me do the Minbari. Hold on…

“So I don’t get what people see in Macs. The Mac is like a golf cart. It’s really good for one specific purpose where you don’t need a lot of power. But you don’t want to drive it on the highway. No, what I’m saying is that a PC can do a lot of things that a Mac can’t. You can do word processing, use the Internet, play games—. No, that’s not the point. I—I can’t talk about this anymore. You don’t get it. Just—hold on…”

I Write Angry E-mails to Faceless Multinational Corporations While Drinking Bourbon

Dear Dr. Pepper,

You are an asshole. I only signed up for your cocksucking newsletter because you promised me a free Dr. Pepper for Chinese Democracy coming out in '08. However I NEVER GOT MY FREE FUCKING DR. PEPPER. Yeah, because your cocksucking servers were down all fucking day. It was abundantly clear that you had no intention of making good on your promise to give everyone in America a free artificially-flavored beverage. Instead, you used these highly convenient technical difficulties as a means to renege on your solemn promise to America. This is COCKSUCKER BEHAVIOR of the HIGHEST ORDER.

It has been well over a year since that day—the day of your greatest shame—and yet you continue to send me your bullshit newsletter. I can only interpret that as a slap to the fucking face.

Desist immediately, you cocksucking assholes. I don't give a shit about your noxious sugarwater anymore, and I do not give a fuck about these "Sugarland" assholes. One of them looks like a homosexual parody of a cowboy and the other is not fat but looks like she really ought to be so (her cheeks are paradoxically hollow yet chipmunk-like). I consider these degenerate hillfolk to be appropriate spokespeople for your perfidious and thoroughly ugly business.

Also, there should be a period after “Dr” but you can’t even get that right.

I hope that a massive corn smut bankrupts you. I hope that your children grow up in a dystopian future ruled by the iron fist of Mr. Pibb.

Signed,
A BILIOUS ENEMY

---

I remember writing this quite vividly, but the precise thought process at work escapes me. The e-mail in question arrived at my Hotmail account, which I use entirely as a spam magnet. So I really can’t imagine why I was so upset to actually receive spam. I suppose it was just the principle of the thing.

Windows 7 Speech Recognition vs. Literature

Lolita, light of my life, the fire of Maya lin’s a period my scene, my soul. Lo – personnel press the capacity datata: the tip of the town taking it to the three steps down the power to happen, and three, on the teeth. Low. Movie. Top.

She was alone, the plane loaded, in the morning, spending 4 feet 10 and one sock. She was alone in slacks. She was Daly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always will be a period

Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In fact, there might have been no will be at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl – child. In a button stung by the city. Owen? About as many years but only two was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the Serbs, the misinformed, simple, no bowl – wing serves, convened. Look at this tangle of forms.

---

But as a greater sense of awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transforming his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armored action placated, back in when he lifted his head a little he could see his dome like brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the `hardly keep in position that was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thing compared to the rest of his bald, which helplessly before his eyes.

What has happened to me? He thought. It was no green. His room, a regular human bedroom, only rather too small, like quite a bit of the four familiar walls. Above the table on which a collection of cloth samples as unpacked and spread out—Samsung was a commercial traveler – home the picture which he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine put to a pretty gilt frame. It showed a lady, with a fur cap on in the first goal, siting of bright and holding out to the spectator a huge firm up into which the whole of reform had vanished!

---

See the child. He is pale incident, he wears a thing in regulating sure. He spokes the scullery fire. Outside like dark turn the fields with rags of snow in darker woods beyond the harbor yet a few last wolves. His fault are known for hearers of wood and drawers of water but intruders fathers been a schoolmaster. He lies in drink, he quotes from poets whose names are now lost. The point grudges by the fire and watches him.

Knight of your birth. 33. The way and it’s they were called. God help us stores did fall. I looked for blackness, polls in the heavens. The Gipper stove. The mother dead these 14 years that incubating our own post the creature who would carry her off. The father never speaks her name, the child does not know it. He has a sister in this world that he will not see again. He watches, pale and unwashed. He can neither read nor write in a million birds already a taste for mindless violence. All is to read present in that visage, the child of the father of the man.

---

At the beginning of July, during a spell of exceptionally hot weather, towards evening, a certain young man came down onto the street from the little room he rented from some parents in S—lane and slowly, almost hesitantly, set off towards K—N bridge.

He had succeeded in avoiding an encounter with his landlady on the stairs. His room is situated right under the root of the tall, five story tenement, and sooner resemble a closet and a place of habitation. His landlady, verbally rented this room with dinner and a maid, lived on the floor below a separate apartment, and each time you wanted to go down to the street he had to pass his landlady sketching, the door of which was nearly always wide open onto the stairs. And each time, as he passed it, the young man had a morbid sensation of fever, of which he was ashamed of which caused him to frown. He was heavily in debt to his landlady and was afraid of running and we’re.

---

Enter Richard duke of Gloucester, solace.

Rich. Now is the winter of our discontent
Maybe glorious summer by the son of York;
And all the clouds that bordered on our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean curry.
Now are our brows about the victorious wreaths;
Power bruise arms home for monuments;
I were stern alarms changed to marry meetings;
104 Marches to delightful measures.
Green – visage more Moved his wrinkled front;
And now,—instead of mounting barbs deeds,
To fight the souls of fearful adversaries,—
He capers Kimberly and a ladies chamber
To the lascivious and pleasing a violent.

---

The roar shocks journal. October 12, 1985.: Daughter carcass in Ali this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. The city’s afraid of me. I’ve seen its true face.

The streets are extended daughters and the gutters are full of blood and one that drains finally stepped over, although vermin will drown.

The accumulated field of all their sex and murder will fall about their waists and all the wars and politicians will look up and shouted “save us!”…

… And I’ll look down, and was her “know.”

They had a choice, all of them. They could’ve following the footsteps of good men like my father, or President Truman. Decent man who believed in a day’s work for a day’s pay.

Instead they follow the droppings of lectures and communists and didn’t realize that the trail over precipice until it was too late. Don’t tell me they didn’t have a choice. Now the whole world stands on the brink, sparing down into bloody hell, although as the bruins and intellectuals and smooth talkers…

… And all of the sun, nobody can think of anything to say.

Windows 7: A Few Thoughts

I took the plunge with the latest version of Windows after a mysterious sprite excreted a copy--from some unspeakable orifice--onto my chest as I slept. I've been using it continuously for the last several days and am prepared to make a few comments.

First, it was very childish of the installer to offer to backup my old XP files then, after I clicked "YES," to tell me that it was going to mangle them instead. It later told me that it was joking, but I found that all of my old MP3s had been replaced by a single Depeche Mode box set--in 64kbr WAV format.

Also, during the install, a very disturbing video played that depicted Mac users being fed to a multi-phallused beast with a mouth shaped like a vagina. A very strange song played during this video that made my head hurt. At some point I passed out. When I woke up the installation was done, so I can't really complain, but still ALL MAC USERS MUST SUFFER AND DIE SUFFER AND DIE SUFFER AND DIE SUFFER AND DIE.

When I was finally allowed to use the OS (after a brief quiz on the succession of Holy Roman Emperors--DRM these days, yeesh), I found the new taskbar very refreshing. For those not in the know, here's how it works:

Instead of the old system where every program had a little bar at the bottom of the screen, each discreet program is now represented by a tiny picture of an old man defecating the program icon. When you hover over the icon a list of Chinese characters appear that represent all open windows for that application. The characters are color coded by age according to the alchemical process of perfect unification of matter and spirit (nigredo, albedo, citrinitas, and rubedo). This creates a kind of fun uncertainty (Am I checking my e-mail or formatting my hard disk?) until you get used to the system (and while you only really need to memorize a fraction of the 50,000 traditional Chinese characters, I'd go ahead and pick up a copy of Rosetta Stone anyway, for reasons that will become obvious later).

Windows 7 immediately detected my hardware and downloaded the appropriate drivers. I could have done without it telling me that ATI video cards are for "fags and n00bs," though. I already know that and the shame haunts me daily. I did have a major ordeal finding Windows 7 64-bit drivers for my USB Pork Roaster, though, but it's a pretty bleeding edge piece of equipment.

I want to take a moment to talk about the sample media that come with the OS. It’s traditional for Windows to offer a smattering of “sample pictures” and “sample music” and such, but Windows 7 takes this to a bizarre and humiliating new level. The “sample pictures” are all pornographic MS-Paint illustrations of Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters, and the “sample videos” are haunting compositions consisting of static, shadowy figures, and ominous garbled speech that an antiquarian friend of mine assures me is a rare dialect of Akkadian. These videos give me headaches and nightmares but I find myself unable to stop watching them.

Back to the OS itself. The obtrusive Vista UAC is gone, and in its place is a sneering, sarcastic creature called MOLOCH. He has three settings: Off (not recommended), Jerkass, Motherfucker and Absolute Bastard. When I tried to turn him off he made my screen flicker in a strange pattern that made me feel sad and sleepy. I’ll never try it again. On the “Jerkass” setting he limits himself to questioning your manhood (or womanhood, as the case may be) and randomly undeleting your files. On “Motherfucker” he refuses to let you change anything on the system, claiming that you are “too stupid to own a computer.” The “Absolute Bastard” setting limits you to playing Free Cell and visiting MSN.com. It also uses your webcam to try to take surreptitious pictures of your genitals, then edit them into collages that make unflattering comparisons between your organs and those of common domestic canines. This setting also automatically deletes your Facebook account.

Even on the lowest setting MOLOCH is fiercely critical of the user’s taste in pornography. His constant recommendations are shocking and, I suspect, illegal. For instance, a Google search for “Sasha Grey” was redirected to an article about her contracting anal warts and a Bing search for “Russian lolitas all holes filled doberman pinscher.” All and all, MOLOCH is a very helpful feature and I would recommend that the user leave it at maximum strength because, let’s face it, you are nothing but a mewling ape-creature barely in command of your own feeble, moist body.

Windows 7’s system requirements bear a brief mention before I close:

“The Spaghetti Incident?” should be optional, though. Part way through the installation, you are asked to put in the CD. The installer then plays the 13th track, “Look at Your Game, Girl” just so it can inform you afterwards that the song was written by Charles Manson. A dialogue appears that says “Did this freak you out?” Your options are “yes” or “no,” and the installation will not proceed until you admit that it did freak you out. A brief lecture follows on Manson’s involvement with Dennis Wilson and the Beach Boys. Interesting, but I don’t see what it has to do with installing Windows. (Note: The installer says to hold the vinyl version in the flames of a tallow candle and to inhale the fumes.)

There you have it. If you want an OS that basically runs itself (and on startup and shutdown lectures you on the intellectual and cultural superiority of the Chinese people), Windows 7 is just right. If, however, you prefer to be thought of as a homosexual by your friends and peers and to be the butt of cruel jokes made by the opposite sex, you might prefer to use a Mac or some effeminate *nix variant. PRAISE MOLOCH.