Hold On A Sec

22 07 2008

Wait … did you just say ‘war’?  War?  What war?  Where?  No, man, that happened already, like—wow, must have been almost seventeen years ago now.  Hm?  No, jeez, yeah, I know it’s confusing in that region, what a fucking hellhole, but trust me, we got out of Iraq like almost two decades ago, so no need to—you really believe what you’re saying, don’t you.  Buddy, there was no reason to go to—okay, so you agree there was no cause to start a war with them, so how would—Huh?  They knew that and they declared war anyway? No, who would be that retarded?  Hah!  Okay, now I know for sure you’re talking about 1991—Bush hasn’t been president for a long time, you know.  Yeah, yeah, Saddam and all that.  I think you’re just a little mixed up, because lately Saddam hasn’t been doing anything, really.  You know that for a fact, do you?  How’s that? Dead?  Hm, first I’ve heard of it.  Ah, those dictators, always dying comfortably on their beds of old age. Hanged?  What the fuck, seriously?  When did that happen?  It’s on fucking YouTube?  That’s not funny, dude.  The troops are in Afghanistan, where the Taliban were based—hello, we’re trying to get the scumbags responsible for 9/11.  America thinks what?  Nobody is that stupid.  Well, maybe some people, but—god, put the pie charts away, I can’t look at those numbers.  You are goddamned sick.  This isn’t possible.  It would have been on the TV news.  President Clinton would have been impeached.  What?  He was??  For WHAT??  And he’s not even president anymore??!  What do you mean we live in a mostly benevolent but deeply fascist state???!! CAN A GOOSE GO OUT DRINKING FOR A COUPLE OF YEARS WITHOUT THE WORLD CRUMBLING DOWN AROUND HIM I MEAN FUCK

—Nero





Standing Up For Yourself

2 07 2008

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    





How To Succeed In Birding Without Really Flying (Not Possible)

16 06 2008

So yeah, I’ve got something against penguins.  Who doesn’t?  You?  You hate them more than anyone!  You think you’re their friend?  Why? Because you saw that movie where they all march around in circles and are really brave about the cold since when you live in Antarctica (aka the world’s biggest no-fly zone) there’s really nothing else to do?  Because you cried every single time Morgan Freeman changed his voice slightly and went, “at this stage of the journey, many penguins will perish”? Well, I hate to break it to you, nature groupies, but the plane that carried all those reels of penguin footage from gay old France let loose enough greenhouse gases to shrink the radius of their natural habitat another foot.  All so you could watch them fall on their bottoms for an hour and a half.  So good job.

Stop acting like you feel sorry for these dumbass walking disasters while continuing to ridicule them daily:  

   

Tuxedos were bad enough, but a fucking Members Only jacket?!

If you need proof that penguins don’t want your misguided fawning interest or vicious “clumsy” jokes made at their expense, go to the Central Park Zoo exhibit.  They all stand sadly with their backs to the crowd, taking turns shitting on the shit-stained rocks and each other.  That’s it.

Jesus.  I mean, I can’t stand those dirty pengos, but its not like they hide their feelings.  You guys are just in straight-up denial.    

—Nero 

 

 

 

 

 





Vintage Verbiage

28 05 2008

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





This Is Going To Sound Crazy

21 05 2008

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)





Worked Stiff

12 05 2008

So it’s come to this.

It took defaulting on student loan payments for Flight Academy for me to seek gainful employment, if you can call it that. The temp agency sent me to what has to be the dumpiest PR firm in midtown—we’re in the basement of T.G.I.Friday’s (not a client, by the way). Forget about natural light.

Thus far nobody’s even told me what I’m supposed to be doing. All I can glean from my workspace is that I’m expected to sit and produce copious amounts of garbage:

And because they refuse to give me a building ID, the front desk security guard/T.G.I.Friday’s hostess tried to shoo me away when I came back from lunch break.

Also, it turns out I don’t get a lunch break.

On top of that, my boss, Arnie or Ernie, whatever, got up in my beak about getting feathers on the water cooler nozzle. That buttwipe can’t prove anything. He probably doesn’t even know that I lost my last job by blogging about my buttwipe boss.

—Nero





Uncanny Valley

25 04 2008

Dear Scientists,

OK, so you’ve been making fairly realistic humanoid robots for a few years now.  I assure you, we’re all impressed.  I’m sure, however, you’ve got some impatient auto-eroticists eager for more pliable orifices, the fuckable “2.0″ models, if you will.  And while I can’t really fault the desire to see things move in that direction, I must beg for attention to one simple detail as you become the pornographers of this brave new century, without which sex is cold and meaningless to me:

Make them capable of humiliation?

Addicted to sadism,

Caligula





Anecdotal Proof Of 7 So-Called Myths

7 04 2008

Allow the divine light of Caligula to brighten the shadowy cesspools of your mind:

New York’s Sewers = De Facto Alligator Habitat

Ambrose, my juvenile Alligator mississippiensis, slid graciously down the toilet last week; I have not heard from him since. Obviously he has assumed a role in an alligator colony or established one. Either way.

Spontaneous Generation

According to my mother—and mothers cannot lie, as mom says—she has scrupulously avoided consummating her union with my father in preparation for its “inevitable dissolution.” When she and dad were ready to have a child, she explains, they showered (separately) in our luxurious bath house, dried off, and wedged their damp towels under a pile of hot stones for a period of incubation. Thus from abiotic elements did I spring, pre-swaddled, and hence my rather incongruous looks, moldy scent, etc. Haven’t you wondered at the meaning of “baby shower”? You didn’t really think there was a cloud that rained babies, and that women nurtured whatever they caught?

Correlation Implies Causation

Nearly all published correlative data sets cause me to yawn.

Prometheus & Pandora

Inconsistencies notwithstanding, I believe Robo Jones, our neighborhood’s resident hard-luck panhandler, when he ravingly declares himself protagonist of this Grecian narrative. Frankly, the story adds up; his survival despite unlivable conditions bespeaks his immortality, and the liver problems are a dead giveaway, not to mention less-than-oblique references to a “bitch” who “unleashed all worldly evil.” While investigating the probable titan’s claim of gifting mankind with fire, I encountered a police officer who confirmed Robo had “done a little time for that stunt.” Of course—bound to a rock by petty Zeus, all for some spoiled eagle’s convenience!

You Can Marry Mr. Darcy From Pride And Prejudice, He Is Somehow Real

This past November I had no choice but to roost in a cheap Las Vegas motel (forgetting yet again to book a room months in advance for ConCon (our national conspiracy theorist convention)) and, upon realizing the suite next door was the site of raucous celebration, drilled a discreet glory hole near the ceiling to facilitate more thorough surveillance. It was a bachelorette party, I discovered, complete with literate, highbrow entertainment: amongst the ladies strutted a striking if dandyish gentleman decked in early 19th century British garb. When shamelessly pressured into removing his costume, the cad rebuffed his audience with perfectly caustic parlor wit. He had these drunk women swooning over put-downs! It could be none other than distinguished society’s original bad boy, inexplicably made impeccable flesh. I made note of his flawless left hand:sans gold ring.

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Geocentrism/The Ptolemaic Solar System

Apparently some people can’t be bothered to watch a sunset. I pity those who’ve abstained from such damning beauty by choice, and to the blind, I say, trust me—the uncanny fact of the matter is staring you right in your unsettling faces.

The sun completes yet another irrefutable orbit around our planet.

That Faint Scraping Sound Is A Hook-Handed Maniac

My uncle Gaius, who likes to tease me by saying I was ripped from the womb and not born of random, inorganic chemistry, unwinds by “parking” with women at selected spots along the Hudson River. On one such jaunt, he recounts, his lady friend became aware of a faint scraping noise at the passenger-side car door, and rolled down the window to find a quavering old man with a handheld video camera standing just outside. “Then,” Gaius says, “the guy told her he’d just scared away a hook-handed maniac who was trying to jimmy his way in and kill us!” “Thank goodness for that brave filmmaker,” I was given to exclaim at the tale. My lucky relative could only hang his head sadly, as if disbelieving how narrowly he’d escaped a malicious laryngectomy.

The Word “Gullibility” Isn’t In The Dictionary

The public library’s trusty old Miriam-Webster corroborates. Also conspicuously absent: “gully,” “gullet,” “gulag,” and three dozen more alleged English signifiers, a whole page’s worth of words I’d always suspected were fake.