Caligula would be remiss if he didn’t personally praise the Disney Company for all the taboos it has seen fit to engage, which is why I’d like to present it with the very first Incitatus Award, named for my dear, departed and willingly subjugated horse.  In a world of corporate soft-pedaling, old Walt’s magic kingdom brought unspeakable images into the hearts and minds of millions of unassuming children, stirring that first “weird feeling” which, with a little luck, can blossom into outright depravity.  We fondly remember the “Priest Boner” moment from The Little Mermaid (1989), of course…

And that tradition of uncomfortable sexuality continued with a magnificent portrayal of a squeamish moment in The Lion King (1994):

THE FACE OF PREMATURE EJACULATION

And of course, with the way things are trending at Disneyworld, we’ll soon be able to enjoy the antics of those once-annoying costume entertainers swarming about the place.

I commend you, oh prophets of the profane.  Incitatus would be proud.

—Caligula

That’ll be the title of Caligula’s finest book of poems, the fourth and final volume of my masturbation collection—damned be the metacriticism of “pseudo-intellectual masturbation over masturbation itself.” Currently, however, I’m stalled on that masterpiece, and so I thought I’d clear out the cobwebs by trying some good old-fashioned non-rhyming Jap-limericks, or Haiku, as I politically correct thugs would probably insist. No matter. The images speak for themselves!

1.

Flaws in creation:

My summer-kissed fist does not

Quite fit up his ass

2.

Wilting leaves expose

Each soul’s private hurt and loss

I’ll kick your teeth in

3.

Beaten, bloodied by

McDonald’s purple Grimace

It is winter now

4.

Cutting blossoms off

Reborn trees, make hippies choose:

Nature or free speech?

—Caligula

Um: hello?  It’s chilling enough that goose-torturers as infamous as the French could take a break from force-feeding their future pâté de foie gras to slap an image of their victims on a brand of vodka that only became popular because it’s overpriced.  But that’s neither here nor there.  Now, do you see anything wrong with this picture?  Hint: it’s fucking obvious.

It could have to do with their use of the respected color “grey” (elitist slang for “gray”)—a color that all we Canadian geese wear with pride—in conjunction with illustrations of no geese of color.  I mean, this is as bad as casting Tom Cruise as Genghis Kahn! Out of the six geese portrayed here, five are the classic WASP-white shitheads, I suppose to match that eyesore bimbotini glass, and the sixth is an improbably large transparent monster.

I’m on to you, France.  If you ask me, Remy from Ratatouille looked suspiciously like a mouse in ratface…  

—Nero

Dear “Kristen”—

No, the title of this post is not a reference to one of the many positions you and ex-governor Eliot Spitzer lovelessly copulated in.  Or at least I don’t mean it that way.  

I’m breaking this thing off.

That’s right.  You squandered your gift.  You had all the makings of the Top 40 pop star I’d been waiting for my whole adult life, a diva that could make me molt with nothing but her sultry voice, an oversexed club beat and ugly—gloriously ugly—synthesizer riffs.  And you threw it all away.  Instead of being a record industry whore, you were a regular whore.  Instead of reminding us “What We Want” and to “Move Ya Body,” you chose to be a jizz jar at the VIP club.  Well, you forgot who the real VIPs are: the fans.

How can I think of peace when those fingers have been in a governor’s asshole?

Oh, I defended you when the news first broke and threatened to overshadow your singing career.  I said when the dust settled, you’d be touring with Kanye and the Dixie Chicks and get around to responding to my MySpace messages.  But the weeks went by, and I got knocked off your top friends list.  I couldn’t afford tickets to “Glow In The Dark,” but I know you sure as hell didn’t make a guest appearance.  And I won’t let you hurt me any longer.

You could have been a goddess, girl.  But the world will always remember the day Eliot Spitzer fell as the the day the music died.

—Nero 

The emptiness of this city.  You feel it with every issue of the New Yorker—that piece of fiction about a family trip to the beach in 1973 simply too boring to finish, the glossily eroticized spreads of Swiss watches that are unfashionable by the time you’ve caught a glimpse.  In every Sotheby’s auction where they theorize that Rembrandt himself probably painted only the nose on this particular portrait, apprentices responsible for the rest.  At the seal show in the Central Park Zoo, these pathetic creatures squirming about for the amusement of mentally stifling families with no grasp of contraception—

Wait a minute.

Those seals are kissing!!  

That is SO FUCKING CUTE!!  

I LOVE SEALS! I LOVE ALL GOD’S CREATURES WE ARE MEANT TO LIVE IN HARMONY AND ONLY AT THIS MOMENT HAVE I REALIZED ALL THIS PERVADING MELANCHOLY WAS A SELF-INFLICTED WOUND THAT I NEED NOT

Hold on.

What the hell is that?  Did that thing get all its face skin torn off somehow?  UG. LEE.  And it’s eating a twig it just pulled off its own butt.  

What?  How dare you!  I didn’t evolve from this piece of shit!  He’s crass! He’s a slave to his appetites! He—oh, well, that temper tantrum is something I might—and using a rock to masturbate…OK, fine!  I’m no different from this brute.  Are you happy?  

Because I could not be more depressed.  Again.

—Caligula 

I have a Pinkerton tattoo under my left wing. I lost my virginity to “El Scorcho.” I wish I looked like Buddy Holly, even tried wearing non-prescription glasses. Rivers Cuomo is a friend of mine.

None of this saves their comeback—the so-called “Red Album”—from being a little disappointing. But how fuckin’ DARE Pitchforkmedia give it a 4.7?!! SHOW A LITTLE RESPECT YOU OVERLITERATE LES SAVY FAV-FELLATING COPYWRITER SCUM

Don’t kick someone when they’re already mustachioed

4.7. Seriously. 4.7: less than exactly mediocre. 4.7: the equivalent of Pedro the Lion’s “Achilles Heel”. 4.7: One-tenth of a point below Two Ton Boa’s self-titled EP. I have no idea who these bands are, but they’re no company for the chugging 90s power-pop that soundtracked flight academy for me. They should have broken the 9.0 ceiling on nostalgia alone. But I guess some critics are hankering for the end of culture and civilization. You hipsters go have fun handjobbing each other to Vampire Weekend—I’ll be rocking out “In The Garage.”

—Nero

]]> http://caligulaversusnero.wordpress.com/2008/06/02/seeing-red/feed/ 0 nerodownfeather http://caligulaversusnero.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/with-enemies-like-thesen/ http://caligulaversusnero.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/with-enemies-like-thesen/#comments Thu, 29 May 2008 17:58:46 +0000 nerodownfeather http://caligulaversusnero.wordpress.com/?p=110 ]]>

Who needs friends?  I can barely keep my enemies list updated, what with all the backstabbing and douchebaggery and constantly revised revenge plots. Here’s who’s currently getting my dander up—and consequently making innocent dander-allergic third parties suffer.  HOW MANY NASAL PASSAGES MUST YOU INFLAME

Nero’s Enemies List

(in order of who I would punch hardest if I had fists)

—————————————————

1. Edith Wharton (lingering English class antipathy)

2. Maxie (does not deserve to live or, barring that, be more popular than me)

3. Willie Randolph (he knows why)

4. Google Inc. (for reporting my gosling pornography searches)

5. Exterminators (bedbugs didn’t ask to be born, buddy!)

6. Richard M. Nixon

7. The Kingdom of Denmark (enough visa rejections will drive you to violence)

Also, how bout you learn to spell in American

8. Hank the Bullying Hawk (“sharpens” his talons on my back)

9. Fortune cookie fortunes (is it me, or have they gotten more threatening?)

10. The Honorable Judge Winston Busby of the Delaware Court of Chancery (whose title is long and boring)

Q. What’s worse than a plagarist?

A. A time-traveling plagarist.

Close friends have been reading countless drafts of my nearly-complete debut novel, American Emperor, a pseudo-pornographic odyssey through the last years of the 20th century with an effortlessly awesome Manhattanite postmodern Caesar, Baligula (too obvious?  constructive criticism welcome), at its center.  And well they should re-read this manuscript in its myriad incarnations: it’s a burgeoning, blood-spattered masterpiece. The deposed and down-on-his-luck emperor resurrects himself as high society’s most divine pillar by establishing cutthroat professional “friendships,” ensconcing himself in über-expensive fashions to the point of obsession and gruesomely torturing those who may or may not have slighted him in the past, recording every tedious detail along the way.

Intellectual thievery, thy name is Bret.

All this work only to have the hacks at Random House tell me they see unmistakable echoes of a book published 17 years ago and want no part of the inevitable legal hoopla I’m inviting.  I suppose they mean my pending lawsuit against Mr. Ellis, who is recklessly abusing his apparent ability to hopscotch through history and, frankly, flattering himself by passing off my fictions as his.  I say: “fine!”  I will take this cad on by my lonesome.  How dare he re-write my happy ending!

Just the same, I have the feeling we might hit it off. 

—Caligula

What up bipeds.  I’m actually in a bit of a good mood today.  My mange has really cleared up, and I snagged a date as a result!  As you may or may not know, geese mate for life because monogamy is what God intended.  Ha!  Not really, it’s just easier.  Fuck, if I could organize a harem, you bet your naked baboon asses I would.  

Anyhoo, this total babe—let’s call her “Roscoe”—I picked her up at the dog run.  We were both taunting the mutts on the inside of the fence, honking, waggling our tail feathers just out of reach, and the next thing you know, we’re daring each other to take flying shits on traffic cops in Times Square.

Then Roscoe had the saucy idea of going to Manhattan’s “Sex Museum.”  I liked where her head was at but grumbled over the ticket price.  Still, I couldn’t very well ask my new lady friend to sneak in through an open second floor window or help me bully the front desk peon into a comp entrance as I normally do in these situations.  I was even more distraught when I realized what I’d shelled out cash for.

Um.

Roscoe wasn’t too shaken.  We ended up having a good laugh.  I’m just lucky I didn’t spring for the audio tour.

Also, normally I never preen and tell, but she did totally let me preen her.

—Nero

I confess to having LOLcat fever, despite my mixed feelings on the phenomenon. On the one hand, these pictures usually play up a cat’s alleged cuteness, and as a member of the avian community (often exploited for “hunting practice” by sociopathic felines), I can’t condone any sympathetic portrayal of said monsters. Stand together, flying V!

At the same time, I love the intimation that cats can’t spell correctly and can only string the most retarded of sentences together. I guess that’s what keeps me looking for new pics pretty much any chance I get at my temp job—this perpetually sweaty guy on the other side of the office is the only one with a computer, and when he gets up, for any reason, everyone starts bickering over whose turn it is for Internet. Usually a lot of honking and biting on my part is enough to put the rest of the underpaid white-collar mob in their place.

Well today I snagged a 3-minute block when Sweats (we don’t know his real name) was in the can. And I saw something on MySpace I never would have expected.

Too soon.

I guess the honeymoon is over … doesn’t feel too good when the shoe is on the other foot. Or drumstick. Thanks, world wide web users, for the LOLgoose. One more pointless diversion I can no longer enjoy.

You just had to take it too far.