Author: jae

thanks to everybody who’s given me feedback so far on the story and the website. i appreciate it!

finally seeing some progress on the new prototype. i’ve got the engine which drives the thing and makes it work underneathwise better fleshed out.

it’s so flexible, but proportionately complicated. the more flexible this thing gets, the crazier it’s gonna look under the hood.

right now it can do a lot though. more than the last incarnation of mars could, even. and that was a pretty spiffy little site. doesn’t look like much, but the sheet amount of control, for both author and visitor, is definitely nifty. the beauty of it is that at a glance, it looks like any other better-than-crappy site. you’d never know how cool it is. unless you ran it for yourself. but it takes some degree of being able to comprehend what all the wires and cranks and hoses and nozzles are for. which, i think, is exactly why mars has gotten 400 downloads and generated zero revenue.

the main thing about this new engine is that it:

uses ?page= instead of ?p= for URLs (which looks prettier) (as opposed to /path/to/some/misc_file.html)

supports a splash page (an intro page with a totally different layout)

has a config file with settings for up to 5 add-ons per individual page (like, say, pop-up scripts, for certain pages only)

more boxes!

plus all the usual mars stuff like browser-specific code (such as translucent boxes), changeable layouts, etc.

mainly, though, i just need something a little cleaner and more, ahem, standards-compliant for when people look at my piss-poor resume. look, i love laughter and all, but i’m sick of being the only one not doing any laughing in interviews.

oh, and i would honestly love to hear something… anything… about that story i wrote.

it’s the first story i’ve written in years, so help me out here, huh?

last night i dreamed that i was part of a bug revolt at some sort of college/theme park. we were like these huge, fist-sized beetles or something. plot twist: at the end, it turned out that we were of the same, slightly smaller insectoid race as those we were trying to oust; we were just wearing suits. i and some of the others also were human-sized humans at various stages.

between classes you had to ride in a sort of two-seated rail shuttle.

also, at some point i remember seeing a field full of moose. they were all moving strangely, and they had bizarre antler formations that looked like haircuts. one moose caught my attention: his antlers were leafy and stuck straight up, giving a distinct impression of a haircut very like Christopher Reid’s (Kid, from Kid N Play – the House Party movies, remember?). he was on his back and spinning.

the muhfuggs was breakdancin, yo.

breakdancing moose.

The County Dog was an old grey mare who wasn’t what she used to
be. But She was all we had.

It was a lonely world that we had created for ourselves. From the
beginning of time, Humankind had sought to communicate with an
Otherkind; at one time S/He had other species of humanoids to
converse and trade with and among; but these the early modern humans
killed, for reasons that are as unfathomable as they are no doubt
appalling. So humankind felt alone, and ever more lonely, even among
the lower orders of animals which still thrived alongside us for
hundreds of millenia.

Yet we scarcely could ever be said to have been good stewards to
these, our stupid cousins. We beat them and enslaved them; and for
untold thousands of years, we even ate them. For sport, we
killed them, and we mutilated their bodies afterward.

And when one day we decided that we were sick and tired of living
among so many dumb creatures, none of which we held out any hope for
communicating with to any remarkable extent, we started the wholesale
slaughter of them. Just because we wanted to be alone, to live at
peace, and in quiet solitude. We humans had thought we knew what we
wanted, and in our desperate, lonesome misery, we got it.

It had been years and years ago, after the last great Depression,
that Humankind finally put an end to the vast majority of all those
other pesky species they found themselves sharing the planet with.
What was left now was mostly a collection of stragglers and
has-beens, plus a few true, hardy survivors. Of those, only a few
people had ever been granted access to see them. Of the rest, well,
most people saw them from time to time. Or one of them, anyway.
Usually on the weekends, and sometimes after dinner on
weeknights.

One time a group of people who called themselves
"the sciencists" announced that there were only about
35,000 non-human fauna left. These were scattered across the globe,
put on display in various regions, districts, counties, and states
(depending on where you happened to come from). And they represented
roughly 9,000 species.

What humans missed most about all those
extinct, or nearly-extinct Animals, was the Dog. This most sacred of
all the creatures was so scarce that only about 130 existed in all of
the United States of Amerigo (for instance).

The thing about Dogs was that they had for thousands of years
provided humans with a very special kind of companionship, one that
few other Animals could claim to give. Monkeys could sign crudely,
and dolphins could follow fairly complex commands; but it was the
lowly, wordless Dog that Humankind communicated with the best of them
all.

So, what we had left, we simply called
"Dogs."

In my state, Ohia, in the USA, we had
80-some counties, and in each one of those was a County Dog. Most of
these were a variety of other creatures, such as snakes, elk, some
bugs, a chicken or two, zebras, bull elephants, ostriches, one camel,
and assorted sheep. There was one Dog, up near Cleaveland. Most of
the states had at least one. One state, New Hampster, had none.
Californ Yeehaw had three; so did Texis and Al-Axa.

Needless
to say, the Real Dogs were the most popular of the County Dogs.

---

So there was Merissa and Kyle and me. My name’s Davij. We were all
sitting around on a Saturday night, trying
to think of things to do. Last weekend we did practically nothing,
just sat around and ate pretzels and played racing games on the video
console. This time we were even more desperate, Merissa having smashed
the gaming block in a frenzy just Wednesday evening. She could be a
little aggressive like that at times.

Kyle said that he heard somewhere that there was a new Dog, a real
one, at a fairgrounds in Mary Land.

"So the fuck what,
Kyle? We got one up in Cleaveland!" said Merissa, looking
uninterested and in fact barely looking up from her mag-o-zeen
article.

"But this one’s different. They say it’s the
first new Dog ever. As in, there’s no others like it anywhere
else in the World!"

Kyle was known to believe just about anything he heard. The
problem was that about half the time, what he heard turned out to be,
inexplicably, true.

I’d previously been having a better time,
as usual among these two (when we weren’t having sex), staring at the
dust on the blue-green walls of our little dingy 14^th-floor
walk-up apartment, but I just had to put my two cents in. "Just
what the hell you think that means, anyway? And where did you hear
that from?"

"Chat."

"Chat doesn’t
know shit," I screamed, at no one in particular. I think we all
knew the story there, and if not, I didn’t feel like going into
it.

"So says you," said Kyle, indignant. "But
everyone at work always asks him first about this kind of stuff. They
say his dad used to be one of the Sciencists!" He was picking
his nose and fooling around with the pale red plastic cap of his
raspberry ice-drink.

"And…?"

"He was.
I heard the same thing myself, from Emersin," claimed Merissa.
Whatever. Yeah. Alright, whatever. So what? That makes him an
expert?

After a pause: "Whatever. Yeah. Alright,
whatever. So what? That makes him some kind of instant, automatic
expert or something?" I was fuming.

It made no sense. A new dog? Like, a new breed? But how? There
were too few Real Dogs left to take any chances at moving them. The
last time it was attempted, the poor thing – a nervous little
cocker spaniel – died in transit. Things were getting
desperate, but there was, at least, just a little frozen spermatozoa
left with which to artificially inseminate the females that were
left. But in just a couple more generations, that would be the end of
that.

I had thought I’d heard that some “alternatives”
were being looked into. In theory, at any rate. But no idea that
anything had been carried out.

"Hey, you dumbasses. Why
don’t you look it up on the news?" (From Merissa, who always was
the real brains of our little outfit.)

So we looked it
up. It was true, all right. They had assembled a team of Sciencists
together to come up with a way to keep the Dog Race alive somehow.
What they had done was engineered a brand new Dog! Whatever

that means. The thought just creeped me out… but just like a
bad skycar wreck, I couldn’t just ignore it.

We scrambled like
eggs to get together all our gear: prayer hats, robes, and boots. I
threw on my cape and out we went. We jumped into my car, an old
Benz-o-matic Creeper. It was ancient; ran on wheels, like most
people’s cars still did. It was mostly rust and melt, but it still
ran, generally speaking.

We knew where we were going from the
news machine. It was at the fairgrounds outside of Beth’s Da. It
would be about 6 hours from Klumbus, where we lived.

The drive
was long, and between radio stations we sang old-time rock-songs and
tried to remember the names of all the Celebrities. Kyle won, with
26. I had 17, and Merissa had 19. Kyle watched a lot more teevee, so
that’s why he was only 6 away from naming them all.

Somewhere
outside of Beth’s Da, we crossed Route 671. ("That’s five worse
than the Devil’s number!" shrieked Kyle, ever the panicker.)
There was a line of cars crossing under the road. I knew from when I
was a kid and came this way that there was a fairgrounds around here.
If memory served, then those cars were, the way I figured it, about
five miles’ worth of screaming, kicking kids, drunk uncles, flummoxed
fathers, and sleepy girls. Five miles! It was about 10
Clockings-A’Night, though, which was pretty much the evening
primetime, since most people tended to get off their day shifts about
8N, ate at about 9N, and then went to see the County Dog after
dinner. Still, that was an awful lot of fucking people!

About
a half hour later, we were there. We pulled into a Changing Station
to change into our Dogging Clothes. Kyle and Merissa started getting
all frisky until I elbowed Kyle in the ribs. "Remember where we
are, dipshit," I cried. Merissa looked slightly embarrassed, and
we continued changing in silence. The air was stifling. It was
mid-summer, and it was humid out. I swatted a gnat from in front of
my face. Gnats and a couple other insects were among the only other
"common" animals left. They were dwindling, too, to be
sure, but some things never change. Human nature being what it is and
all.

On our way back to the car, we noticed something
peculiar. Under the lemon-yellow of the parking lot lights, there was
nothing but blacktop and those phosphor-green lines that tell you
where to park among the other vehicles. And that was it. There were
maybe 15 cars in the whole lot, and doubtless at least ten of those
were employees’ cars. Let me tell you, that was spooky to see. Even
on an off day, the lots are always pretty full. Go figure! With only
one County Dog every few hundred square miles, that’s the Place To
Go. But why was the lot so empty? This was supposed to be something
special, was it not?

It was so quiet that we could hear each other breathing as if our
lungs were great bellows in some ancient cathedral in the middle of,
I don’t know, wherever they had cathedrals at. Spain or whatever.

You have to remember that we didn’t have things like birds or
crickets and stuff in those days. So any noise had to come from
either people, or machines. And neither category was active on this
night, in this place.

Merissa looked nervous and pale. “Whaddya suppose things
just didn’t work out for some reason?” she warbled.

“I don’t know. Something different is going on, that’s for
sure,” I replied. It really didn’t matter what I said at that
moment; I only wanted to fill the air with something.

“Davij, that’s it! We’re at
the wrong place, I bet! That’s why the other fairgrounds were so
busy… duh!” cried Kyle. But we all saw the screen.
Three different news sites all specified the exact same location. And
they were all confirmed to the last 30 minutes.

We were standing by the car by
this point, staring around and trying to decide what to do. Across
the parking lot (Kyle pointing out), someone was coming out and
leaving. We watched the car speed off. Whoever was at the wheel was
driving like a maniac.

“Stupid fucking drunks!”
screamed Merissa, nervously cracking open a half-pint of Old
Mountaineer’s Apple Rum, right before swigging about half of it right
down and passing it blindly to me and Kyle.

I took a good swig, and started
the car. The path from the Changing Station was well-worn and long.
It felt like ten minutes before we came out and into the mouth of the
main lot. Only the car’s wheels over the gravelly road kept us
company for that short eternity.

For some reason I will
never be able to explain, we parked at the end of the lot anyway,
rather than up front. Hell, I don’t know, maybe it was just a force
of habit. We walked the whole way to the entrance, about 200 meters
or so of empty silence. We didn’t say a word, either; just walked,
hand in hand, staring in crazy-eyed wonder at the heavy blankness of
the parking lot.

We got our tickets, 235 credits each (about
30 more than back home, I noted), and went inside. Unsurprisingly
(considering the state of the empty lot we’d just walked through,
otherwise yes, very surprisingly), there were no lines inside
either. A beeline to the traditional green-and-orange County Dog tent
got made that night.

What I saw when we got inside stole away
my wonder and left me with some pretty clear answers. How often does
that happen to you?

There were about a dozen or so
people in line. The air smelled of stench, but it was a little bit
different from the normal hay-and-shit, County Dog variety of stench.
In a cage to the center of the tent was the Animal. It was a Dog, all
right, but not a natural one. This one was made of the parts of other
animals. It had a pig’s tail, a fox’s snout, the top of its head and
ears were some kind of fat deer or something, and most of its legs
looked like they came from some kind of large cat, like a cougar or a
puma or something. The body was definitely wrong. It looked like it
might have been a goat. Except that it also looked as if somebody had
forgotten that real Dogs don’t actually have wings, and made a
rather hasty adjustment. It was the shoulder blades – they just
seemed wrong somehow, like they were too high or something. It looked
like they may have forgotten about installing a neck to the poor,
wretched Thing; although up close, there may have been something
there after all. The whole thing was a melange of different shades of
oranges and browns and grays. It was striped, and it was spotted, and
it had disturbingly mottled hair in all the weirdest places.

But
the line kept going, and people went up to Pet the creature, and to
offer it gifts of beans, simulated meats, jellies and breads. Each
client carried their little votive candle up and blew it out at the
right moment, asking the County Dog for its blessings and advice,
then spitting into their prayer hats and stomping them with their
shrine boots, bending over in a bow toward the creature’s head; and
each left with the same astonished look on their face.

Nobody
in line was speaking, not even us. By the time we got to the front of
the line, we were all visibly quite distressed. I am not ashamed to
admit that Kyle even had tears in his eyes. Maybe I did, too. I
really don’t remember that.

I will never forget what that
County Dog said to me that night.

i’ve been feeling this sense of foreboding lately, like i’m in some kind of final chapter of something. i think that sort of explains the despair i’ve been feeling late at night, all alone in the darkness. i guess it doesn’t help a whole lot that i’ve been listening to Joy Division and watching Donnie Darko.

i’m hoping that it’s not something bad; that it means that a) i’m going to be over this nicotine addiction soon, and/or b) i’ll be getting that job in Yellow Springs.

outside of that, i really don’t know what to say about it. i really don’t know how to feel. i’m just going to sit back and wait to see what happens next.

i’ve also been seeing a giant, murderous bunny rabbit named Frank.

i’m not crazy. i’m NOT crazy!

Wesley Willis is dead.

rocks. there are always rocks. ships crash on rocks; whole fleets of them have been culled from history as a result of the participations of rocks.

but rocks wear down. especially when they are in those types of environments, and doing those types of things.

i had a good look at the stars tonight.

there were so many of them.

i am so alone.

someone?

no. i know. you’re busy.

nevermind. again.

Q: if the light from a newborn star hasn’t yet reached you, does it exist?

A: yes.

we are folded in time. our little lives – indeed, everything – is played out within the creases and wrinkles and crevasses in the fabric of spacetime. something that does not yet exist, which will eventually come into being, simply exists outside of the perceivable range of our tetradimensional senses.

i am, have always been, and shall always be.

does this negate Death? does this confirm an afterlife? not at all. where my body ends and the air around it begins, so my consciousness ends, and nothingness begins. the quantum fuzz is all we have to look forward to, and even that will likely be far too small to detect; just like when we are conceived, we have no memory of coming into being. we do start, and we do end… but our existence, our “in-between” state, will always be a part of the cosmos. just because we may be dead does not mean that we don’t still exist, somewhere back down the road, in the direction we came from. but we drift through this Space, and likewise we float across the vast spans of Time, and we cannot stay in one “place” for long.

“We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it’s forever.”
–Carl Sagan

“For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.”
–Carl Sagan

pope_guilty gets it right.

---

also:
STOP THAT QUIVERING DORK ASHCROFT

oops. i took too long screwing around.

the CDR was recording backup data from the multitrack… y’know, audio stuff and whatnot. it was taking forever, so i hopped online and made a sandwich and hopped online again and had a fag in the garage. i checked it a few times, and the last time it said it was verifying (a crucial thing, because what good is it if you’ve just made a coaster and don’t know it?) …but verifying took so long. i went back and it was done. i THINK it verified. now i hafta actually pull the damn thing’s dick and see if it squirts goo. i’m pretty sure it’s alright. i should NEVER leave equipment when i’m trying something out for the first time.

---

my friend Tony told me he got a Nintendo 64 the other day. it was sitting out with a bunch of other stuff, with a sign nearby proclaiming “everything’s free… isn’t life great?” (or something very like that).

and that’s the second time this month that he’s had a story just like that.

THAT’S the real Yellow Springs. that’s what they don’t show you on a map, or in a flyer, or in the back of the local free left-leaning “arts & opinion” weekly.

all those bleak posts i wrote the other day? the Night of a Thousand Posts? not feelin’ it. just… not feelin’ it.

this confirms a suspicion that i’ve had for quite some time now: that i write my way out of the dark holes i stumble into.

i think: other people see a glimpse, a flash of light in the midst of their despair. i’m just the opposite. i see a hole in the middle of all the light sometimes.

so that’s… nice. it’s good to know i’m not as fucked up as i thought i was after all.

---

music: 10 minutes
lyrics: still working on them, but it’s coming along nicely.
it’s my first balls-out hard rock song in a very long time. fairly standard heavy rock, borderline metal. kind of like Taproot or Alice in Chains. (ok, not exactly standard…) and definitely very dark stuff, about an undead creature that crawls out of the mud at night to torment its living doppelganger. sort of an analogue for mental illness.

---

i forgot what the rest of this post was going to be.

i forgot to post this. my dear, dear friend Melissa turned me on to SARK several years ago. i think i found the link on Rob Brezny’s site. check it out, especially those of you who are healing from wounds. a little bit touchy-feely for even my tastes, but definitely good for reclaiming your inner 10 year-old.

since i started rolling my own cigs, i have DEFINITELY cut way back. today, i counted about a baker’s dozen of butts, from yesterday and today. just a few days ago, that would’ve brought me up to about half of ONE day.

i’m definitely craving a Camel Filter, though.

i should get some cloves. i can lick the sweet, sweet butts of those fags all day long. *hand over mouth* hee hee hee!

---

looks like i’m finally able to back up my audio. i think i’ll just keep the old tracks as archives and start over. i can’t keep doing that, though. sooner or later i’m just going to have to commit to some music.

---

my remote is busted. so is my VCR (which may or may not have cost me preciously that night). so no more TV, period. i’m done.

---

all i really have time to say right now about the two books i got from Word Riot Press is that they were well worth buying. absolutely wonderful writing, and vastly superior to most of the other thoughtless dreck and drivel that’s being put out these days.

i just deleted an assload of communities, so if i’ve deleted you by accident, let me know.

i don’t remember much, but last night’s dreams were all related to Dave Brubeck’s classic Time Out album, most specifically his stellar, breakthrough hit “Take Five”.

(there’s an allegory here, but i’m not going into it; after all, it seems way too obvious, given Brubeck’s famous history, and yet too lengthy to explain for those who don’t get it already.)

the precursor to math-rock, Time Out was an album of highbrow “cool jazz” songs played in less common time signatures (7/4, 5/4, etc.).

so anyway, i think that this all somehow qualifies as definitive proof that i am not, and have never been, an intellectual.

so. my ex-g/f Ria (who’s in Mali working with the Peace Corps) has malaria. somehow, i knew that would happen. she seems to be better now. i hope so!

and i’ve got “Bob”-knows-what. i am covered with splotches, mostly around my midsection. probably some godforsaken… INSECT… (yes i am prejudiced against them, tho’ i try very hard not to kill any living things ever no matter what) …got into my pants the other day while i was playing with Matty in the backyard. yeah, it’s hilarious. so i jumped into the shower and boiled my skin almost off trying to get the poison out. i don’t know if it worked, because now my whole body below the chest matches that vivid salmon color.

---

yeah i got a little over the top last night, and so what? i vent. i Write The Worm Out. it’s not how i feel all the time, it’s just what the deepest, darkest recesses of the inside of my head look like under light. the rest of it is actually pretty okay with things. even the things i usually tend to whine about.

and so i keep it, every last word, unedited. i did take the liberty of at least temporarily re-filtering a post of two, however. hey, i’m not THAT stupid.

anyway, if you knew me in real life, you’d know that i’m actually fairly happy (all things considered).

---

i’m putting the new story on hold for just a little bit. i’ve decided that i MUST write short stories first, to warm up. i haven’t written fiction of any length for about ten years now. it used to be My Thing, too. i don’t know what happened, or where i lost my muse (probably it was replaced by alcoholism; i used to be pretty gone, not at all like now), but i know that i must make a return, and it will be a triumphant one, even if it goes nowhere, because i won’t keep anything that isn’t what i consider good. so, short works it is, for a little while. i will probably relegate the new story to being a short piece also, and possibly go back and flesh it out more at a later date.

anyone wanna play Editor for me? i just need another eye; preferably one that is not actually attached to my own peculiar (not to mention subjective) brain.

---

i am going to write a few “regular” hard rock songs, just because i haven’t done that in a long, long time. at least, nothing diesel-fuelled. probably not since “monster.” and i wanna rock, goddammit!

i don’t know how in the hell i’m ever going to put together a cohesive album out of all the different genres i always work in. i’ve been avoiding doing so-called “crossover”-type stuff, because it’s really hard to make that work and not seem pretentious or contrived.

and still, i really do need 1) a decent pair of nearfield monitors, 2) a decent condensor mic, and 3) a decent mic pre. i hate to keep hearing muddy, boomy shit. it’s really hard to mix crap into something listenable; you really have to get it sounding good right at the source and do as little as possible to it later.

---

i’m smoking handrolled cigarettes from now on. that way, i smoke a lot less, out of sheer laziness and the fact that my handrolled smokes suck and taste like hell.

---

seriously, i don’t mind one bit if you defriend me. i wouldn’t, and couldn’t, blame you for not wanting to see me vomit up my clockwork stageblood all the time. it DOES get annoying. i know.

maybe i’m at my best when there is tension.

somebody! rattle my cage!

(i need a Shriekback Device.)

never paint a stranger.