Disclaimer:
This is a dark journey. With jokes.
This is a work of fiction, and a satire – especially pertaining to those ‘famous’ peoples mentioned, none of whom actually posed for the writing of this book.
There is sex and violence in these pages, as it is about adults, mostly. If you like your books expurgated, I don’t know what the hell you are doing here.

This book is about the collapse and potential salvation of humanity. There are no fucking gods anywhere. There will also be cussing.

1. Black Helvetica on White Bond
COLLAPSITY – YOU’RE BATHING in it. You hear me, America? You are bathing in it.
You are in it up to your skullcaps. You developed schools to make good factory workers and then you shipped all your factories overseas. You gave the keys to your society to the corporations and military-industrial-congressional complex and you have been thusly, richly raped. Blood and sweat and deformed semen are streaming down your legs and you are oblivious to this, swatting instead at fictitious enemies from the land of make-believe.
The money is gone and is not coming back. It is overseas now, guarded and lost. Your population has been left to crumble. You have been divided into two colors while your real overlord laughs and counts the cash.
Either shoot yourself or shoot each other or rebuild from the bottom up.
Face your collapsity.
Then decide what to do next.

Collapsity: a serial novel – here is the first of 3 installments. 75 pages for 2.99 on your Kindle.

We need a new John Steinbeck in America. Who else is putting class issues into fiction today?

From the Wikipedia entry on “The Grapes of Wrath”:

When preparing to write the novel, Steinbeck wrote: “I want to put a tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are responsible for this [the Great Depression and its effects].”

Who caused the current Great Recession or NeoDepression? From the world’s greatest intellectual:

And there’s been a wave of propaganda over the last couple of months, which is pretty impressive to watch, trying to deflect attention away from those who actually created the economic crisis, like Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, their associates in the government who—Federal Reserve and others—let all this go on and helped it. There’s a—to switch attention away from them to the people really responsible for the crisis—teachers, police, firefighters, sanitation workers, their huge pensions, their incredible healthcare benefits, Cadillac healthcare benefits, and their unions, who are the real villains, the ones who are robbing the taxpayer by making sure that policemen may not starve when they retire. And this is pretty amazing, like right in the middle of the Madison affair, which is critical.

The CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, got a $12.5 million bonus, and his base pay was more than tripled. Well, that means he—the rules of corporate governments have been modified in the last 30 years by the U.S. government to allow the chief executive officer to pretty much set their own salaries. There’s various ways in which this has been done, but it’s government policy. And one of the effects of it is—people talk about inequality, but what’s a little less recognized is that although there is extreme inequality, it’s mostly because of the top tiny fraction of the population, so like a fraction of one percent of the population, their wealth has just shot through the stratosphere. You go down to the—you know, the next 10 percent are doing pretty well, but it’s not off the spectrum. And this is by design.

So we know who caused the Great Recession: the financial markets. Who gave the most money to Obama’s presidential campaign? The financial markets. From the same interview: “Take a look at the 2008 campaign spending. Obama way outspent McCain. He was funded—his main source of funding was the financial institutions.”

So who is putting ‘the tag of shame’ on these ‘greedy bastards’? Certainly not Obama. Chomsky fingered a ‘wave of propaganda’ that I noticed on another end: the new meme that ‘Obama was anti-business his first two years and now needs to make up with them.’ And this was on NPR, as of a few months back. I heard that and I was like what the hell? Did I turn on Fox all of a sudden? Where did this meme come from? NPR ombudsman? Memetracker Mike? Anyone? Did it come out of the White House itself which would not be surprising, and NPR just aped it?

So not only is Obama not putting the mark of shame where it belongs, he is participating in a fictitious narrative that has him previously fighting the business sector, and who now must sweet-talk them with tax cuts and such so they will ‘create jobs’ which is just more trickle-down, con meme nonsense.

The idea that Obama was anti-business his first two years is just laughable, absurd, against all known notion of the facts. First off, as previously pointed to, it was the financial institutions that contributed mostly to Obama’s campaign. And how many people from Wall Street went to jail for causing the Great Recession? No one did. Not one. Obama’s ‘Wall Street Reform’ was watered down at best and even all this bankster-favoritism didn’t stop Wall Street from launching and financing the completely astroturf and never grass roots Tea Party.

How many people on the high end of Obama’s staff came right outta Wall Street? When Obama gave all the money to the banks so that they would forestall mortgages – there was no strings on this money whatsoever. They didn’t use the money to help homeowners – and Obama didn’t do shit about it.

Not to mention Obama has done jack shit about climate change- at the behest of the corporations that own his ass. (When quarterly profits have become your society’s God, mentioning world destruction is just impolite.) Why hasn’t Elizabeth Warren – an angel sent from heaven if ever there was one – yet been given a position with actual teeth? And I could go on.

Obama’s no-turning-back moment was the ‘tax cut compromise’ of late 2010. For one thing, when Obama had the house and senate and didn’t need the Republican vote – he still ‘compromised.’ When the Republicans in the lame duck Senate took the poor hostage until tax cuts for the rich were extended, Obama didn’t just bend over for them – he threw in some estate tax goodness as well. This is not even befitting the word compromise. When you keep giving in, and giving more than in – and the other side gives nothing – this is not even the word ‘compromise’ anymore. Orwellian word-flipping did not subside when Bush left town. Barak Obama: change millionaires can believe in.

And now – or lately – NPR reports Obama is on a mission ‘to win business back.’ It is one of the most grotesque pieces of propaganda and factual chicanery I have ever personally witnessed in about fifteen years of assiduously listening to NPR.

Where are the politicians attaching the ‘tag of shame’ to the ‘greedy bastards’? Where are the artists? The writers? We know where the politicians are – they are controlled by Goldman Sachs et. al – and they mince a show for the corporate media increasingly led by number one liar Fox.

So who else will talk about class in America? Who else will talk about stratification? A report comes out months ago stating that 1 in 7 Americans have slipped into poverty, and then it disappears down the memory hole. While most Americans who tune in to ‘news’ hear messages like this over and over: “Unions are the enemy. Bankers deserve to make billions because they are worth it. Some Americans deserve to die or suffer because they are worthless. Defense will not be touched or broached because of the bogeyman. Boo!”

Americans need a new John or Joanna Steinbeck. Until then they need to read The Grapes of Wrath, or watch The Grapes of Wrath. They need to be woken up from the chloroform blanket of self-defeating mind poison that is Fox News. Somewhere in our collective unconscious there is a memory that being American means more than being sodomized on a regular basis by Goldman Sachs.

And perhaps, as Chomsky opines, a little Egypt will sprout in Wisconsin.

2. is cleaning my front door of all these pesky notices with words like “auction” and “foreclosure” on them.

3. is scraping resin.

4. is shopping at Goodwill for a disguise to wear to the food bank.

5. has reached such an all-new low credit score, FICO has a hit man looking for me.

6. is thinking maybe those Nigerians in my IN box can help me after all.

7. is checking my EBT balance.

8. is selling all my cds and records because I have them all backed up on my iPod, anyway. And then I’m selling my iPod.

9. is saving money on toilet paper by using my shower as a bidet.

10. is thinking of eating horsemeat . . . and I’m a vegetarian.

Charming French famille slice-of-life with a shot of Charlie Kaufman.

One day it occurred to me.  It came over my spine like a leaf and tightened suddenly like a vise.

I don’t know if there was some trauma that brought it on.  I can’t remember.  Maybe I have amnesia.  I don’t care.  All I know is, I can no longer do any bullshit.  I have to avoid it like an allergic dodging bees.  If you are allergic to bees, which I am not.

Ahem.

I came to this satori while sitting in an office.  Well, that’s where I was born, anyway.  I couldn’t tell you what my name was.  But I had some kind of personality, all right.  I was sitting ramrod straight, my spine as if a rigid antenna, suddenly tuned to new notes.

I turned my head slowly.  Cubicles.  Cardboard.  Paper.  Ennui.  Paper clips.  Pencils.  Printers.  Fakery.  Hell.

I stood up, looking straight ahead.  There was a door there, a few cubicles down.  My  mission was interrupted by a chirp to my left.

“Where you going, Louis?  You gotta go to the bathroom again already?  You got 4 more hours on the clock.”

I didn’t know where this voice was coming from and I didn’t care.  But it was definitely directed at me.

Still looking at that door, my eyes fixed on it, I said, “Who the hell is Louis?“  And I stepped out of my cubicle and went to the door.

There was a longer, narrower space there, I would later learn was a hallway.  I went through it.  Another room.  Double-wide doors which opened with a thunk. People stepped into them.  The doors thudded shut.  More doors opened.  People piled out. Paralleled with pings and lights.  I studied the formations for a while, trying to decide.  Eventually I followed a short blond woman to my right.  Luckily for me, the box went down.

I followed the herd into the sunlight. And then I smiled.

Unidentified voices kept popping up in the back of my head: “But where will you go?  What will you do for money?  What will you eat? What are you leaving behind?”

I pushed them aside and followed my nose.  There was a bus. I tried to get on, but an angry man told me I had to  buy a ticket.  “So where do I do that?”  I asked. He pointed.  I went up to this window but someone said, “Hey buddy wait your turn!”  I asked him what that was.  He asked me if I was ‘retarded.’  I said no, I thought my name was supposed to be Louis.

After some more confusion and a  little scuffling, I noticed my chest seemed to be more alive somehow, and my senses more alert, and another man came up and led me by the elbow to the ticket counter when it was my turn.

“This man is retarded and he would like to buy a ticket.”

Eventually I exchanged some green paper in my pocket for a ticket.  Suckers.  I got on the bus.  I had no idea where it was going.

7 hours later I was starving and deposited in Arizona.  Something was telling me this was going to be a painful journey, this new departure of mine.  But there was also some kind of rocket juice expanding at the back of my head, spurring me on.  This was the drug I was now addicted to – this rocket juice.  Adrenaline plus endless novelty plus crack pump from another dimension.  I couldn’t stop moving now.

Soon I was on my stomach in a desert, talking to a rabbit.  For a while, I thought he was my soul mate, but then he said something most unlikeable, and I told him I was going to take a leak, and never came back.

I ended up throbbing red and half nekkid except for a loincloth fashioned out of shed rattlesnake skin in a town called Palimo, and this is where our story begins.

[Wait I can’t say that because I already started the story - in my office with the satori.  I will change much of this later, scribbling in notebooks as I go.]

“Well, aren’t you the neotribal fashion plate,” purred a voice to my right.  I looked over and it was a beautiful blond lady wearing a green headband driving a black convertible.  I tried to gigolo her but she wanted to be my nurse.  She took me back to her cool adobe and bathed me and fed me and watered me and removed dead skin and bad vibes.  She spread aloe over me and soon I was glowing.  “No bullshit” I grinned. I would print it on t-shirts and make a lot of money.

Serotonin flooded my groove pools and I lasciviously heralded sensuality graduating into sexuality. She dressed me in pajamas and took me to bed. She got out a big red book and started reading. It was gospel. Seemed some guy found the original version of this book etched in braille on flattened spam plates superglued together and turned into pages, bound by 3 iron rings and tossed into a ditch. It would turn out to be the Book of Jeb. Now, if you followed the story he found, and followed his proscriptions, you, too, could sleep with underage girls and one day run your own planet. My nose pulled me to the window and leaped through it, yelling as I went, “No bullshit!” I landed in sand and guano, unnerved the bats hanging from under a great wooden beam above me who flapped and fled north. I followed.

The moon was out. Eventually I lost the bats. They were too quick for me. I bent on my knees under the dark blue sky and starlight and awaited my next sign. Nothing came and then I was reminded to open my eyes. The lens cap was on. I was in the middle of a road and headlights bore down on me. Screeching, honking, they managed to swerve around me in time. I ran down the street in my satin pajamas with a big J stitched across the left breast. For “Jeb.” Another car whizzed by and someone yelled out the window, “Goddamn Jebbite sleepwalkers!”

I soon came to a denser urban area and noodled into an alley. An alley seemed a place of comfort. Perhaps I was turning into a dog.

“Uh . . . ” Oh what the hell. “Gotta be honest here, buddy. That’s not a trick mirror. Your cranium suffered some kind of . . . malady.”

His eyes widened. He ran off to the bathroom.

I shook my head and considered my frozen captives. Sheila was the current name of my infosys. “Sheila?”

“Yes,” she purred, in vintage 50s earthling sex bomb voice.

“Put me through to Boyd’s please.” Boyd’s Farm was run by Goddess Mila, who ran a huge hydroponic greenhouse on the other side of the orbital. She also had a small amount of livestock, more for their excrement and eggs than for eating. One of these creatures, the Voladant, so-named from some intrepid traveller who had come back with that thing in a cage and who had then promptly fallen over, suddenly dead.

It was a purplish, starfish-looking creature with 7 sticky legs and no eyes. It sprang around its cage and occasionally blew out yellowish loogie-esque balls of offal. This offal turned out to have many uses, one for superglue. But the smell was particularly offensive.

Mila came on the vidscreen. She was kneeling in one part of her garden, her right hand whisking away dead leaves from her plants while her left hand held already a bushel of them. She was wearing orange tech socks and nothing else, being a modern day nudist. It was humid in the green house. Probably felt nice.

“Hello, Berynek,” she said, not pausing in her work as she glanced over her shoulder at him. “What can I do for you today?”

“Uh, hoping you can send over a vial of that Voladant offal?”

“No problem. Is that all?”

I had spaced slightly, watching her pendulous breasts move back and forth with her movement. I caught myself and brought my gaze back up quickly. “Uh, no good on all other fronts, thanks.”

“How’s your home garden doing?” she asked. “Did you automate it yet?”

“Ahm, not yet. Still trying. Thanks, Mila.” I smiled at her and broke connection. It would be so easy to automate my garden. Just saying it out loud would get the system up and going. But it irked me I had a purple thumb. I was good at everything but that. I was determined to keep trying, no matter how dead plants it took.

Soon a small flying globe entered the premises, landed on my bar and delicately extracted from itself a small vial of the Voladant offal. Once unloaded, it used its mini hand to tip its imaginary cap at me before whirring up and out again.

I retrieved a small wood stick from a drawer, put on my air mask and plastic gloves, picked up the offal and got to work. About ten minutes later just when I was dropping the vial into the biohazard slot, Lt. Johns walked in. He looked sideways at the frozen men and chuckled. “Oh, they’re gonna love that.”

“Red room?” I said.

He nodded. I went out from behind the bar and followed him down the hallway, past the bathrooms and to a door on the left, painted conspicuously red. It was the place I took guests to when we wanted a private convo, free of any subatomic listening devices. The whole perimeter of the Red Room was a working e-wall, pushing out all pulsations, constantly updating its OS with new nanotech updates, coming in from earth and all parts between and beyond at many gigabytes a second. (Technology moves exponential, after all.)

The actual physical space of the Red Room was rococo, somewhat resembling the parlor room of an 19th century western US cathouse. Me and the Lt. took opposite chairs.

The Lt. was about six foot tall, pretty good build. Ordinary middle-aged white military face: jagged, squinty, hard. No warmth escaped it without going through numerous checkpoints. He slipped a hand into his uniform jacket and brought out a printed photo, slapped it down on the dark oriental coffee table between us. It was the goddess I had ogled in my bar earlier, who told me her name was Naomi.

I pretended to study the pic. “Hustler, 2054?”

Johns smiled, licked his lips. “That freezing tech–” he started.

I stopped him. “Come on now, Lt. I’m a civilian now.”

“You can’t share?” He said, trying to look boyish.

“My hands are tied, you know.” I said. Hand up, palms facing him, as if to show.

He motioned to the pic. “You never saw her.”

“I see a lot of people. That pic doesn’t ring a bell. Maybe from another angle.”

He picked the pic, punched the back with his fingers, then set it back down again. Now, a hologram sprang up from it. It was her, getting off a spaceship. Right here, at Orbital 109, it looked like. It followed her sultry hips straight to Berynek’s.

“Huh,” I said. “So I guess I have seen her.”

“That was this morning,” Johns said. “You must be getting old. Got mem-rot.” He grinned.

“So what, is she some kind of . . . killer?” I asked.

“No criminal record.” he said. “Just a traveling housewife from Canada, New Earth.”

Married, shit. Just my luck. “So what do you want with her?”

“Not me, my man.” Johns said. He picked up the pic again and played with the back of it. “Watch what happened when she left.”

We watched.

We held our breaths.

It held blue.

I hit the button for the jazz mix and the sounds of trumpet filled the air. Breathing returned to the room and my patrons returned to their drinks.

The front door swung open and a man who had some serious interdimensional damage to his headframe stood there, looking in.

He was human from chin down, but the top of his skull had not been exploded or even blackened by any burns, but elongated and twisted up and over like a bagel roll once pointy and now dejected. His own head curled over him. He seemed dazed.

The lady who works at the hotel was feeling the most gives-a-shit among us and hurried up to put her motherly arm around him and lead him in. He was speechless, mouth ajar, staring ahead expressionlessly. She just led him over gently to a table in the corner and sat him down.

She come over to me, eyes worried. I pulled a glass of water and handed it to her.
Her eyebrows raised.

I went to my variety snuffbox and pinched a here and there, mixed it into the drink and stirred.

She brought it to him gingerly, as if cupping magic tea (which in fact, some of it was). She put it under his nose and his head shot back and his eyes got wide. He looked around as if for the first time. He then looked down at himself, possibly searching for blood or other sign of wound. He patted his torso with his hand as if just to make sure.

Patti set the drink down in front of him. He noticed she was looking at him strangely. “Uh . . . “ he said. He didn’t remember how he had got here, or how he had ordered this drink.

She didn’t feel like explaining. “On the house.” she said, smiled, and went back to her seat where she had half a drink left.

The couple businessmen paid their tab and left and soon the motel lady’s lunch hour was over as well, so it was just me and curlicue in the corner. He had taken a couple sips of his drinks and gone back to staring off into the distance – probably the best thing for him at this point.

Then they walked in.

Four suits, all bulging. They moved swiftly and stiffly, heads pivoting as if on feather triggers, inspecting all angles of Berynek’s. Backs to each other, yet forward, they sidled up to the bar.

The one on the right addressed me first.

“Bartender,” he called. I noticed in his right hand he now held a USB connection. “Plug me into your establishment’s infosys, stat.”

He waited there after barking to me what must have seemed like an interminable amount of time, as I squinted my eyes and considered him.

“Hey you,” he said, banging the bar with his free palm. “Get cracking with the connection or we crack you, get it?”

Lucky me, suddenly in backtalk heaven. I started off old school: “You talking to me?”

If only I had a toothpick to remove from my lip before I said it.

“What are you, some kind of star hippie?” he asked. “Do we look like we’re fucking around today?” He jerked his head to his men, who were still all backed up to each other, craning their heads around regularly for flankers.

I stood up from my leaning position, facing him. “This is my bar.” I said. “I am Berynek. Normally at this point I would say, ‘Welcome to Berynek’s’ – but I cannot say this to you and your men today, I am afraid. Because you are most unwelcome. Please leave now before you force me to grimace.”

My peripheral vision told me that curlicue was still motionless, looking off into the distance. I hoped at least his eyelid reflexes were working, otherwise his eyes were gonna get awful dusty.

The guy on the right made a swift motion with his open hand and shot out a badge into my face: UP. Universal Police.

I said: “You have just arrived to Orbital 109 and, I am assuming, have not yet had a powpow with the local military commander, Lt. Johns, I take it?”

He tilted his head at me and curled his lip, “Not that I have to tell you shit, but yes we did just get here, and I don’t need to reconnoiter with no local fuckin’ gruntard to push around the locals when doing our righteous investigatin’.”

“Orbital 109 is under your purview.” I acknowledged to him, nodding my head in assent. “Excepting my building.”

He screwed up his face. “No way.”

The man on his right and on my left who was also facing the bar and had said nothing up until this point, suddenly joined the discussion. “It’s true.” he told his companion. He evidently had some inner uplink. He was looking down to the bar as if reading. “Berynek’s is not under our jurisdiction.”

The man on the right made a hawking sound, then faced his left and spit it out. “Well, usually we have the law on our side.” he said. “But pending that, we act as a gang. Now give us access to your infosys before we beat it out of you.”

I retrieved a towel from under my bar and gave it to him: “Go pick up your loogie you dirty bastard.” I said.

His face went apoplectic and he swung at me. I flicked my thumb on the dial it had been holding and all four men froze.

“Lt. Johns please,” I called out to my infosys. The call was made. Pretty soon Johns head appeared on my vid screen.

“Berynek. What can I do for you?” he asked.

“I’d like you to come retrieve four space pigs, please.”

He chortled and glanced over my shoulder. “Hey, that fist got a little closer than the last one.” he noted.

“I think he would be appreciative of a new mustache when he wakes up, what do you think?” I asked.

Johns guffawed. “We’ll be there shortly.” He signed off.

When I turned around I almost gave a bit of a start because curliecue was standing there at the bar, staring straight at me.

Enter the Reality Network. Enter the Reality Network. For fuck’s sake, please enter the goddamn Reality Network. You have an island with 6 survivors. All 6 are needed to build a raft to get to the next island, but 2 survivors went off to worship toads and 2 others went off to worship dead skin. 4 out of 6 humans there have diverted their human resources to nonsense, diverting precious time and energies away from real human problems and real human solutions. The raft is not built and all 6 are eaten by ginormous giza lizards who swam in from a radiated part of Japan. You see what happens when humans get diverted from the Reality Network?

What if a planet-crushing meteor was en route to earth and we needed all of humanity to pull together and work on technology to kill that meteor or duck! But you had millions of people who belonged to cults – their brains have been colonized by bullshit. They aren’t going to help. They are paying taxes to their bullshit propagators. Their mind is decorated with details that would make most fiction writers blush in embarrassment – and they deny the tools that indicate this meteor, and they deny the trajectory of the meteor . . . they refuse to help. All of those who refuse science are largely fucking useless in humanity’s greatest hour of need.

And then there is pollution and global warming. Still the corporations are in charge. Still, their main focus is this year’s profits. Still, they fund media campaigns to stall, subvert, deny all global warming science or proposed solving tactics. For their own pockets, they actively work against the health of our planet and our very human race.

The Atheist Interlocuter Brigade assemble. Their bellies are full and their minds are charged. They have been doing the back and forth. They are shuffled into vans and shuttled to locations predetermined by HQ maps. Public corners they take up. Some go on foot and travel to heckle any proselytizers of cults they come upon. When a Scientology hive is discovered, i.e., the word will go out and interlocuters will converge, shout and point ‘cult, cult!’ Different tactics of various degrees of aggression and pacifism, obviousness and subtlety, art and non-art are attempted, documented, tried. But the A.I.B will engage. What they want is converts. To the worldwide reality network. You give your email and you will get updates. In the struggle for science against the current cancers of the human race: corporatism over humans, fictional worlds masquerading as religions and demanding taxes, etc. Truth will out. Fanatically, this.

It is OK to be fanatical about some things. When these things are good. And fair. And benefit your fellow man. The Atheist Interlocuter Brigade has been dispatched to your block and to your internets. They will not talk to you if you don’t talk to them. They will just stand there with a sign that says, ‘Pro-Science.’ Throw a nod or thumbs up if you can muster.

We are working on anti-cult and anti-corporate juju which you can take in pill form. This would be easiest, obviously. Until then – ahoy with the reality network netizens!

Homer is walking along a road atop a hill going “La-la-la-la” when suddenly a cloud in front of him balls itself into a doughboy shape and points to him, “Hello, Homer!”

Homer starts drooling and faints to the ground.

Marge is shaking him.

The drool has nearly reached the bed. Outside, in the hallway, Maggie floats by, manically doing the doggie paddle.

Kitchen – morning
Homer sits at the table while Marge busies herself at the counter. There is still wetness dripping down cabinets, pooling on surfaces.

His head lolls back and he starts to do it again when she slaps him across the face with a mackeral.

She puts it back into a container mounted on the wall.

Enter Lisa.

His head lolls back again. Bap! goes the mackeral.

Closeup of Good Housekeeping cover: “How To Control Your Man in 5 Easy Steps! Now with Added Mackeral!”

Sidewalk – Day
Bart is walking down the street when Milhouse catches up to him.

And this point the ground rumbles and a horde of people rush by. Camera pans up to the branches of a tree and there hang Bart and Milhouse.

We follow the hordes and they cross over a hill and there, bequeathed by a ray of super-sunshine: the gates with a sign over them reading, LARD COUNTRY.

A man in a beige suit and cowboy hat with a big belly standing in front of the gates takes up the microphone:

One citizen turns to the other.

A roar goes up.

The crowd cheers.

J.T. stands aside and the gates open and the cheering crowd goes in.

One person stands in front of a mirror which makes him fatter, he turns and admires himself, then goes to a vendor standing nearby selling hot dogs: “2 please!”

On the ferris wheel, the cars stop at a vendor on a crane.

In front of a ride is the sign (with wooden scale): “You must be this wide to ride.” In the sea of lard, people swim around with snorkels, get chased by giant donuts. And everywhere, people eat. An incredible, giant orgy of gastric consumption.

A man stops at a building advertising the film: “Why Fat People are Smarter!” He goes in. Comes back out, goes to hot dog vendor: “2, please!”

Homer’s workplace – day.
Homer is sleeping at work with his feet up. He snaps to. Sniffs the air.

He follows his nose to the cafeteria. As he’s looking around, he eats all the donuts there.

He leaves building. Follows nose, arms outstretched like a mummy. Comes to the top of a hill and sees a long distance down there to the town, runs back to his car. Drives car with his head sticking out.

Int. Simpsons basement.
Marge in on her hands and knees scrubbing the remnants of the drool from the floor, wringing her sponge into her bucket. Her eyes rest on: a drain in the middle of the concrete floor, where, as she looks, a stream of drool escapes to.

Int. Sewer Underground.
A mutant is at a podium.

He bangs gavel. There is a roar and they all look up as a shower descends. They all open their dry mouths hungrily.

Homer is driving, comes up to Lard Country. His eyes widen.

He jumps out of the car as it’s still moving, not having time to park, and runs to the gates. We hear the crash of his car and a cat’s ywroar. He runs up to the ticket counter.

He has his ticket ripped, gets his map, and runs up to the large standing map, jogging in place.

He runs over, under the Atkins Ride sign and onto a conveyor belt. There on the conveyor belt running adjacent at stomach level, plates are set down with bacon, steak, cheese, pork rinds, etc. He gobbles them all up and gets off the conveyor belt at ride’s end, pats his stomach:

INT. Homer’s Office – Day
Burns is walking by Homer’s office and stops. No Homer.

Ext. Lard Country
The loudspeakers on poles quiver.

Homer shrieks. Starts eating faster. Above him is the banner: WWII Simulation: Eat Your Way to Victory!

Homer is one of several eating a breaded replica of an SS tank.

Bite, bite, bite.

Ext. Lard Country Exits
A line forms.

A couple engineers hurry out, each takes one end of the metal posts through which you exit and push down the bar and pulls. The metal posts are expanded. The people can now exit. The engineers hurry off.

Comic Book Guy exits the theatre with the marquee: “Why Fat People are Smarter!”

He puts a monocle on.

Simpsons Dining Room – Nite
Homer pats his stomach.

His head starts to loll back, then he snaps to. Marge’s hand is on the mackeral container.

We see Bart, who now looks curiously bloated.

Shot of a trailer park with the sign: “LARD COUNTRY ESTATES.”

Cletus is sitting on the porch to a trailer now, massaging his enlargened belly.

The scientist Frink standing in front of the white board with marker:

Kent facing the camera holding his mic.

Int. Springfield Waste Facility
Two men stand in front of a vat.

Int. Springfield Country Club
Rich people are having tea, wrapped in dead animal furs, etc., when the floor burst open and a steady stream of brown muck shoots out. A big lady holding tea cup with pinkie curled looks aghast.

Ext. Springfield downtown
A car is going down the street when another brown stream lifts off a manhole cover and turns the car on it’s side.

Int. Kwiki-Mart
Homer is at the counter and both him and Apu have their head turned to the melee outside: brown explosions, people running by screaming. They turn to look at each other.

Homer’s mouth and pockets are bulging.

Int. new house.
A fresh-face couple face the realtor.

The man puts his arm around the woman.

He jumps up and kicks his heels together. At that point the brown explosion shoots through the floor.

The couple runs out. Gil is left, getting soaked in the stream.

He kicks the floor, gets promptly knocked over by another stream
which shoots up where his foot hit the wood.

Int. Town Hall.

Mayor is making the placating movement with his hands.

The crowd is still loud, murmuring, panicky.

Immediate silence.

We see Lorna: twice the size of Comic Book Man. She is quietly crying into a tissue.

He sits.

Mole man is stuck into the side of a wall, with only his head sticking out.

The audience looks to see who has spoken–it’s J.T. standing at the doors to the town hall, in the back.

Crowd cheers. Start for the door.

Crowd pauses, looks betwixt.

Quimby lets her take the podium. J.T. watches, too and the crowd files back to their seats.

Apu enters.

He rushes off. Paul McCartney pokes his head in.

Lisa sighs again. Cue Violent Femmes, “I Hope You Got Fat.” She starts walking, walks outside past a carnivorous feast in progress. Slomos of food to mouths, food dribbling down the side of faces, stomachs popping out of shirts, etc. She walks past restaurants, pro-junk food billboards, more fat people. Song stops. She reaches home.

Lisa is in bed. It is night. She looks at the wall at her picture of the Dalai Lama, then at Richard Gere, then at her Grandma, then at the little boy from Brazil whom she had sent money to in a previous episode, then a pig, a cow, a chicken . . . she turns to her left toward the window and there is a new face, framed by the moon with wavy blonde hair.

ACT THREE

Lisa is still screaming.

Int. Rod and Todd’s bedroom.
Both are in bed with Ned sitting next to them reading a bedtime story. We see the hovercar exit their window view and the two boys turn to Ned, who also watched it go by.

She goes to the kitchen and pulls down a bottle of wine and a glass, sits at the table and pours herself half a glass.

Int. Ned’s
Back at Ned’s, Ned closes his book.

Int. Sleazy Motel, room 6.
Quimby stands in front of a king-sized bed, shirtless.

Int. Patty and Thelma’s.
We see a door and hear a flush. The door opens and there stands Patty, sucking on a freshly lit one. She blows out the smoke slowly, enjoying it.

The hovercraft is flying. We’re in the cockpit with all the lit up dials.

Int. Cockpit

Int. Moe’s.
Homer, Barney, Carl and Lennie are sitting at the bar. Moe is behind the bar. He is standing in front of something with a tablecloth on it which he whips off in a flourish, revealing a large ceramic donut with a tap on the end.

Ext. Lard Country
The car carrying the men drives up to the gates with the hovercraft following at a distance behind, keeping out of sight. The place looks locked and dark.

Int. Cockpit.
The assembled crew watch as Homer gets mauled.

Lisa blushes.

The hovercraft flies over the fence and heads to the Big Building.

Ext. Back at the gates.

Int. Big Building
It is dark. We see them inside-barely.

Int. Simpsons Dining Room – Nite
The whole family is assembled. Marge is dishing out the pot roast.

[originally published @ Gimmicky April 05, 2004, April 06, 2004 and April 07, 2004]

I heard them talking above me and kept my eyes shut.

“What’s he got?”

“I dunno, dunno if he got anything.”

“You know him?”

“Seen him around.”

“Think he got something?”

“Well, he probably got something. I mean, most of us got something.”

“Not me, man. I ain’t got nothing.”

“I know you don’t, loser. But this guy, he looks like he ain’t been on the street long.”

“How can you tell?”

“Dumbass, anyone can tell if they didn’t start their day off with a 40 and can think straight.”

“You mean me, right? It was only half a 40, man. And that’s rare. Rare that I had it still from last nite after I passed out. Usually it spills or someone takes it.”

“Or someone pees in it.”

“What?!”

“Nothing, hey man, we gonna roll this guy or what?”

“Depends, well, what’s he got?”

“Well neither of us are gonna know until we put our fucking hand down his pants, are we?”

“But what if he wakes up?”

“Well, you wallop him, don’t you?”

“Why me? Why I gotta wallop him?”

“Because you had the 40, didn’t you! Beer makes you strong, dumbass!”

At this point I thought it best to open my eyes: “Hey guys.”

They both looked at me, startled.

“I got nothing.” I said. “If I did, I’d gladly share it with you.”

“Well, you must got something,” said the one closest to me, with long dark hair. His friend stood a little ways off, chubby, open-mouthed and staring.

I sat up. “I ain’t got nothing.” I said, looking at him level. “And on top o’ that, you two are in no condition to roll me, guys.” I stood up. “In fact, if you try it, I’ll pound your motherfucking asses into bone.”

The chubby guy: “How can you do that? Into bone, I mean? Flesh don’t turn into bone, no matter how hard you pound it.”

The long-haired guy looks at him. “He’s just saying, dumbass. He’s just trying to act tough. Maybe he even is tough, hell I don’t know.”

He looked me up and down, appraising.

“You don’t wanna know,” I said. “And you know what, I don’t want to make you know. We’re all out here together, why not make an alliance?”

I stuck my hand out. “I’m Warren.”

The one closest to me looked at my hand warily. “This ain’t a trick, is it?”

“No,” I said. “Not a trick.”

“I mean, if I take your hand and all, you’re not gonna pull me in and knee me in the balls, right?”

“Uh, no,” I said. “I wasn’t planning anything like that. I’d rather make friends than enemies. Because I’m smart. That’s what smart people do.”

He looked down at his hands. “You probably don’t want to touch these hands, man. They haven’t been washed in a while. And last couple times I used the Porta-potty, they was out of toilet paper.”

“Ah, oh.” I said, lowering mine. “Well, thanks for letting me know. What’s your name then?”

“Roy,” he said, “And this here’s Apeman.”

Apeman jumped up and down and went whoo-whoo.

Roy: “No, man that’s a monkey. You’re an Apeman, not a monkey. An Apeman growls, in a really deep voice.”

Apeman came forward extending his hand. “I’ll shake your hand, Warren,” he said.

Roy put his hand out and pushed Apeman’s arm down. He looked at me.

“You don’t want to do that,” he said. “He doesn’t use tp even when it’s available.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Well, nice to meet you both anyway.”

There was a pause.

“Say uh,” I said. “You guys know any place around here where a guy like us can get some work?”

“Work?” said Apeman. “Guys like us don’t work, that’s why we’re guys like us.” He threw his head back and let out a huge guffaw.

Roy laughed, too. “Yea, right,” he said, eyes crinkling at the sides. He turned back to me. “Well, nice to meet ya, Warren, but we gotta be on our way now.”

They walked away. As they went, I could hear Roy say to the other, “We shoulda walloped him while he was asleep.”

Up then came the rosy fingers of dawn.

[originally published @ Gimmicky April 04, 2004]