The Labyrinth 2.0

What brutal sprawls of twisted deathmaze encroach on our precious isle of Manhattan!  What beast-infested nooks and crannies where taxis dare not roam!  What great food-trapping beards that outgristle and outgrease any post-coital Minotaur!  What cheap and chokesome wat’ry beers!  What uninspired zombie throngs that barely conceal contempt for opening bands that aren’t half bad!  What bony, unwashed sternums unearthed by plunging V-neck collars!     

Sign marking the condemned’s entrance to their existential Inferno

To think, that even I, Caligula, could find myself in that phantom world of non-dreams and overshopping at Trader Joe’s, merely by falling asleep on the B train en route to Urban Outfitters, is too hellish an ordeal to dwell on. The human disease, thy name is Brooklyn. I shall have to put the episode behind me if I stand any chance of recovery. But the memories of clove-breath and misappropriations of irony, the gnarled syntax and pizza parlor stabbings, will haunt me for a lifetime, nay, into the afterlife.  

To say nothing of the short stories that hold together about as well as a fistful of diarrhea.  

—Caligula

Standing Up For Yourself

Is the dumbest feckin’ thing you can do—you think this is some old school WB sitcom where the bully can be won over by your “courage” (read: dumbassitude)?

This nerdwad crow in particular could have used my advice.  Mad ignant.  Hank the meathead red-tailed hawk is not to be screwed with in this manner.  He’s not gonna be impressed.  He’ll put up his nictating membrane to shield his razor-sharp eyes—so he’ll barely be able to see what’s going on—and he still won’t give a shit that you’re pecking him stupid.  He waited till this poetry club spaz tired himself out, then casually ripped his bowels out with, like, a single toe.

So the next time you think about challenging an illegitimate regime of oppression and fear-mongering because you listened to the Les Mis original cast recording a few hundred times?  Just cower and worship like you’re told, ya beasting cunts.  And stop singing.   

—Nero    

Why Couldn’t It Be A Sex Tape

Oh, fuck me. This is just my luck. You live your whole life, spend years in flight academy, do the goddamn migrations, eat the moldy bread, preen, kill countless hours drifting on the water, stand around in the rain, flee from cartoonish and badly-camouflaged hunters, molt, go everywhere in a giant V. You do everything expected of a goose.

Maybe then you go through a messy divorce. That’s all too common, man, nobody’s gonna knock you for that. Maybe the rent shot sky high on the one side of the lake you could still afford. Not your fault, buddy. And maybe you finally have no choice but to sleep in someone’s boat for a few nights. Hell, nobody’s used it in months, what’s the big deal?

Then, say you get up in the morning to piss and came back to find some good ol’ boy and his ugly mutt trying to make off with your improvised shelter, the one thing you have left in this world. At a certain point a bird has to spread his wings and say: “Nuh-uh. Not today. Not my crappy makeshift nest.”

Well, what the fuck was he doing with a camera, anyway? “Doggone goose”—wish I’d pecked his bastard amateur filmmaker’s eyes out.

The YouTube comments? “You should have broke its neck.” “I would have ate that goose.” No, you wouldn’t have, you feckin Capri Sun-drinking web-rat virgins. You’d be dead if you tried that. I took these rednecks to school, and that joker would be at the bottom of that lake with his pooch for grabbing me by the neck if I hadn’t been so hungover. Jesus. A guy tries to preserve his dignity and the wired community takes a steaming dump on him. Real classy, Internet.

—Nero

The Gay Aughties

Caligula, for one, could not be happier with how the gay marriage situation is unfolding in California.  Of course in principal I’m against the extension of human rights to any oppressed minority—still hoping someone has the courage and malice aforethought to overturn Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka one of these days—but when such disgraceful civility advances my own sick ends, it’s hardly worth resisting, is it?

Ha!  No, this is not a Caligula-coming-out-of-the-boudoir confession, no matter what my Uncle Gaius says.  Those slave boys are mere sex toys, nothing that could sustain the hellfire of my matrimonal devotion, nor indeed survive it.  Rather, gay marriage, as our prudish GOP friends will remind you, heralds the decent down a long and slippery slope, the base of which must be reached at all costs if I have any say in the matter.

IT BEGINS

First, you see, is the establishment of boring heterosexual marriage.  Then little cracks begin to appear in the institution’s sanctity—polygamy is the next logical step, followed by same-sex couplings, with all attendant tax breaks.  By now quite a few leaks have sprung in marriage’s fortified dykes (ha!), and all manner of minor deviants trickle through.  Soon people can be wed to mundane inanimate objects, chairs, toasters, unicycles.  Then the big one: bestiality sweeps the nation!  It’s not uncommon for a man to take a harem of squirrels at this point.  The bar is raised for object-marriage as well: people wed hydrogen bombs, oil slicks, Ikea, the Sahara desert.  Eventually the door is opened for hostile marriage—yes, you can marry people and things against their will, and it’s all 100% legal!  From there it’s a hop, skip and a jump to blood rites and accidental marriage via fleeting eye contact.  

And just as the fabric of space-time is starting to tear from all this immoral stress, my fantasy achieves fruition: interdimensional marriage.  Yes, if I can’t fuck beings in other universes, I can damn well be symbolically bound to them.  Till death do us part, hive-minded sentient gas-clouds!

It’s a long and twisted road ahead, but even the journey of a thousand perversities begins with a single unholy union.    

—Caligula

Chexmate

The indignities just keep coming.  

My temp job is so dull you couldn’t cut a blade of grass with it.  And since I don’t enjoy the comforts of my own computer or a desk to display bobble-heads on, I have only one pleasure: a daily 75¢ bag of transcendently salt-infused Original Chex Mix from the break room’s vending machine.  

Oh, believe me, I’d like more than one bag a day, but the machine isn’t restocked very often, and if I indulge my Chex addiction too much, I’ll be left deliberating whether trail mix or Juicyfruit gum would be the less vomit-inducing alternative.  Not a great selection in that machine.  But I have a system, and it works.

Usually.

The avian community agrees: Chex Mix is worth risking your life for

There are some days, however, when the ever-sadistic machine decides that you can’t have anything from Row C.  Row C, C as in the row Chex Mix calls home.  Put in a dollar bill—or exact change, which I’m always prepared with—and push C-3; a light goes on next to the phrase “make another selection.” The Chex Mix is there, begging you to free it from its coiled metal prison, but the machine thinks you might like something in another row better.  Either that or its playing dumb.  You press your forehead to the plexiglas and sigh, defeated.

And then there comes a time when you can’t let junk food-dispensing robots win.  

You see where all this is going, don’t you.

I’m still in the neck brace.  And I’m pretty sure I got fired, but who knows—after my head had been stuck in the slot for 20 minutes I sorta blacked out.  And I couldn’t pay my hospital bill, so they kicked me out a little earlier than is customary in these cases.

But not before offering me trail mix.

—Nero

 

 

 

 

Brand Subconsciousness

Facebook community, Caligula is so sorry.  Sorry I coded an application so special, so visionary, so geared to your fickle yet stunningly limited 18 to 25-year-old imaginations.  An application you should have loved, god damn it.  But now I’ve heard your whiny voices, and I’ve gone and pulled the plug on HotLists.  Just too ahead of its time, I guess.  No, you shut up.  You Generation Y-ers turned out to be nothing but Generation Why-ers.  No, worse than that: Generation Liars.  Um….Generation Criers.  Generation Pli—whatever, you get the idea.  You were not the high-concept hedonists the mainstream media led me to expect.  You must be in denial: deep down, you don’t even care about branding, do you?  Disgusting.

If you’ve got a better idea, you probably stole it    

Someday soon you’ll understand what I was trying to accomplish, but by then it will be too late.  ”How can we identify ourselves without invoking Jessica Alba and Starbucks?”  Here’s a hint: you can’t.  Good luck getting through life without telling people you’re all about Family Guy…Generation Die-ers.  

Get it?  because…I’ll kill you?…ah, fuck it. 

—Caligula

What Is The Sound Of 290,000 Veterans Rolling Over In Their Graves?

To The Caretakers and Groundskeepers of Arlington National Cemetery:

Do you always assume that someone standing around the JFK Eternal Flame with a fire extinguisher is up to something?  Sheesh.  Just trying to lighten the mood—it’s Memorial Day Weekend, not Fat Tourists Pretend To Be Moved Con 2K8!  

You know, I’m glad I was banned from the premises for a year.  Make it life!  I would never have made the trip down to Virginia in the first place if I’d known you’d make American military history so boring—I expected friezes of huge gory battle scenes, maybe a few naked statues representing Fortune and Victory, for eye candy’s sake. Instead I get unimaginative tripe like the “Tomb of the Unknown Soldier” and “Visitor Center.”

All I can say is, any self-respecting risen-from-the-dead soldier would take the curators of this blandarama and render them FUBAR for making their final resting place such a bore.  Sleep, you damned curs, and dream that zombie Robert E. Lee is coming to settle your grits.

 

Mortified,

Caligula

P.S. I want my coffin exhuming equipment back.

 

 

This Is Going To Sound Crazy

But hear me out.  It’s all true.  A goose has been following me.

No, you shut up.  I’m not insane.  Well, of course the encyclopedia is going to say that, but look at the facts! What?  I don’t have encephalitis, or schizophrenia.  Epilepsy?  I don’t even know what that is, but you can bet I’m free of it.  Do I look like an invalid to you?  Once in a very, very long while, I’ll have a spell and faint, yes, but that’s just the Falling Sickness, my Uncle Gaius says.  I don’t expect you to understand—it’s part of the regal temperament.

If I were crazy, would I mind being called crazy this much?  Would I protest so much against that characterization, or so strenuously?

Think about this: I don’t live in a psychiatric asylum of any kind.  Show me a schizo who has his own luxury condo on 105th and Central Park West!  Fine, alright, that’s true: the chateau style building I live in was once an insane asylum, but that doesn’t mean anything.  Straitjackets were bound to get left behind in the conversion!  I’m not necessarily forced to wear them whenever I foam at the mouth!

When have you known a mentally unstable person to be holed up in a Gothic castle like this?

 

Please, just listen.  I was walking in Morningside Park, which I can do alone, without assistants, thank you very much, and without raving so loudly to myself that people take pains to get out of my way.  I was blending in just fine, not that I have to make a conscious effort to “blend.”  I was feeding whatever you normally feed the birds (it certainly wasn’t sharp metal can lids or gravel or anything like that), when I noticed a goose bullying the smaller sparrows and ducks around and snapping up every tasty morsel of the very edible stuff I was tossing out.  I shooed it away politely, because only a whacko would use something as drastic as firearm to scare it off.  

AND NOW IT WON’T LEAVE ME ALONE.  All he does is stare.  But it’s horrifying.  He’s at the window right now.  Oh, God, if only the doctors—er, tenant association—would let me have curtains and drawstrings.  It’s not as though I’d use them to hang myself, if you can even do that with curtains and drawstrings, which I never even wonder about.

I fear I’ve made a powerful enemy. 

—Caligula (Sane)

Public Disservice

I woke up in the Fortieth Precinct’s drunk tank again this morning, and you know what that means: community service.  Judge said I could do it in the form of a public service announcement regarding belligerent geese. Thought that was real funny.  Originally I figured I’d just copy-paste eHow.com’s rules for surviving a goose attack, but most were way off the mark, so I’m gonna do you a solid and bust some myths along the way.  Let’s get this over with. 

•  Pay attention to the actions of the male goose when you enter his territory. If he sounds a warning, that is your signal to leave the area.

It’s funny how many people take that sound to be friendly.  Sometimes it is!  In fact, think of all goose body language as an invitation to inspect our carefully hidden nests.     

• Show no fear. Geese are particularly attuned to body language and a show of fear may increase the intensity of the attack.

Unless you’re Sir Ian McKellen or another knighted actor, we’re going to see right through this ploy.  You’d better just lay down and submit by leaving your face, stomach and genitals exposed. 

• Maintain eye contact. Geese have excellent vision and interpret loss of eye contact as an act of fear.

Also, you have nothing better to look at.

• Stay calm. Don’t yell or try to hit the male goose. The female may join the attack and then you will be in real trouble.

No kidding.  Note the dual attack points on a victim of husband-and-wife serial peckers Tawny and Flyde:

• Keep your body facing directly toward the goose. Never turn your back on an attacking goose.

This is actually wise.  A glimpse of your backside will invite the equivalent goose reaction of “Oh-No-You-Di’int!”

• Walk slowly backwards if the goose hisses at you or spreads its wings. Use your peripheral vision to avoid tripping over obstacles.

Really?  When trying to escape a threatening bird, you should not fall on your ass like it’s a 1920s silent film?  Thanks, Internet!

• Continue facing the goose and back slowly away at a 90-degree angle from the goose if he flies up at your face.

The time it takes to figure out the geometry of this move will cost you at least one eyeball.

• Make your escape and exit the area through a gate if possible. Geese rarely fly over a fence.

WHO THE FUCK TOLD YOU THAT

—Nero

 

Caligula’s Dreamlog #3: The Ritzy Underbelly

How quaint! I dreamed I was a man of moderately less power and stature, which is to say, some obscenely wealthy and naïve fauxhemian metro with a Gucci axe to grind. It was an odyssey of Homeric—er, maybe Spielbergian—uh, small quirky Sundance film proportions. Who knew how perfectly ridiculous it was to see the world through the reductive psyche of the modern aristocrat wannabe?

The Dream:

Steve Forbes had lodged one too many hasty wagers at the Hampton Classic, and I grew altogether weary of his delinquency in tendering the final—and rightfully beloved—Fabergé egg. This was no slight tiff: my Segway had been sitting sans worthwhile hood ornament in my spare closet since I first finagled a prototype of the awkward thing, waiting patiently in a cocoon for the embellishment that would transform it from gauche scooter into chariot-fit-for-Apollo.

The price of Forbes’ weakness for long-odds horses

Setting out towards Steve’s on that gyroscopic claptrap, my valet Bernard driving, I gripping his pelvis for dear life, I was suddenly struck with a profound craving for vitals, i.e., bourbon, in some unfamiliar ghetto or other. A Xanadu of Oriental delights awaited: We wandered into an establishment staffed by the largest and most muscled women one could care to gaze upon, who, after plying us with saccharine libations and cuisine apparently fused in Asia, went about joshing and lightly embarrassing various patrons in the middle of their meals, occasionally bursting into inspired song. All this was executed with a wit so barbed and bawdy Oscar Wilde’s pallid cheeks would burn. I assumed these mercurial hosts had absorbed rumors that suggested this tastemaker’s penchant for entertainment of the decadent and bacchanalian sort until one turned to Bernard and inquired whether I was his boyfriend, sending my poor manservant into a dreadful stutter, which only served to magnify his discomfiture and mine. The rest of the ride to Steve’s and all the pelvic contact there entailed came bundled with a silent tension I won’t soon forget.

Analysis:

Apparently my nocturnal alter-ego had never been to a drag restaurant. Oh! The innocence of it all! Which reminds me, I haven’t been to Lucky Cheng’s in ages.