So…sluggish…heat killing off brain cells ten at a time…losing subtleties of thought…same high temperature today in New York City as Middle East…the terrorists win…saw leaf wilt and fall off tree…vanished in puff of smoke when it touched asphalt…can’t even make it to bank…to cash economic stimulus check…was gonna get an XBox…terrorists win…feathers sticking to keyboard…becoming more racist for some reason…sudden horrible empathy with the south…unfounded suspicion of Barack Obama…

New York City (courtesy of NASA)

…stream of consciousness dwindling to a trickle…capacity for figurative thought shutting down like an aardvark stalks sex predators…I mean, like coma fruit takes a ride on…nevermind…terrorists win…choking on humidity…oxygen depleted…sudden urge to buy lotto tickets…just a lil bit of luck…need to bash my head on something to pass out…don’t have the strength to injure myself…God please blow up the sun…foot melting onto dirt…total swamp-ass right now…thirsty….hot…is someone gonna crack this fire hydrant or what…yes!…fuck they’re just using it to put out an apartment fire…go Mets…but terrorists win.

—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 

You nerds have some explaining to do.  And don’t come at me with all this L337 5p34k, for the love of Jove.  I never even bothered to learn Roman numerals, so what chance do you have?  

Here’s the thing.  When I had Sextus, my head intern/slave boy, describe the conceit behind Second Life, I reeled at the idea of a world without heinous physical bonds, something out of cyberpunk lit that would virtually eliminate the need for these sweating, stinking bodies we lug about from day to day.  Taking into account the proliferation of depravity the Internet invites, I was sure my God-king status would only inflate once my inner space alter-ego was born, and that heresies and cruelty only feverishly imagined till now would follow as naturally as colonization does conquest.

Only to find out that Second Life is duller than an Uncle Gaius story about exporting figs.

My avatar considers another boredom-related suicide.

After accidentally wandering into an online college lecture, haggling with some designer geek for a Louis Vuitton suitcase knock-off, being thrown out of a United Nations meeting for indecency, getting lost in a hedge maze programmed to have no exit and searching in vain for a black market chimpanzee liver, I concluded that Second Life is of no use to anyone and run by a distinctly vision-lacking shadow junta. When I started saying as much, I was banished to an endless corn field of some sort.  Sigh.  I should have known, of course: of all the liberties I tried to exercise, freedom of speech was bound to carry the greatest risk. 

—Caligula

What’s all this about poor people having allergies too? Last I checked, such elitist immune systems were the pride of the nobler class; they made your body a gated community unto itself, setting off all sorts of biological alarms when an outsider grazed the perimeter fence. Why, everyone knows that the Qing dynasty in China had the first peanut-related death on record, and that Imhotep of ancient Egypt would sooner free the slaves than think of wearing a latex condom.

Emperor Maximillian I of Mexico was famously allergic to firing squads.

The point is, the underclass isn’t supposed to resist infection, but quickly succumb, decreasing the surplus population. That’s the point of A Christmas Carol, as Dickens was at pains to argue. But the sneezing, the watery eyes, it all signals an intent to fight back! Sure, today it’s only pollen and cat dander—soon they’ll be rebelling against visible matter, a designation even I (unfortunately) fall under. For now.

Proof of how we see the average 21st century allergy sufferer?

Oh my god.

Are you telling me I have to wait in line, at a pharmacy, behind a bald person wearing part of a common toolbench on his head, all for a $20 box of Claritin or the generic equivalent? I’d have to already be high on NyQuil. Which I am.

Call me what you will, but Caligula is no tax cheat.  I know perfectly well that I’m welcome to wallow in my moral degeneracy in this country only so long as I tremble before the IRS.  Try telling that to Wesley Snipes!  I bet he wishes he’d listened to me now.

So this nonsense of mailing my economic stimulus check out a month later because I used the “fund transfer” option when direct depositing my rebate on TurboTax…oh, this really is too boring.  Just give me the damn blood money now, you swine!

It was bad enough they raised an eyebrow at the input of fourteen dependents on my return.  If a supple young slave boy doesn’t count as dependent, what does?  It’s not like they have a part-time job on top of that, and if they did, you could be sure they’d be getting beaten more often, making them frailer and thus all the more dependent on me.  Or haven’t you heard of the circle of life?

I’m not gonna lie.  I need the money to get a gift for myself.  The whole household, really.  I saw one demonstrated at a convention in Las Vegas this past winter, and really, how is a man of taste to resist—

If I didn’t know better, I’d swear it was designed with the hedonist Roman emperor in mind.       

—Caligula

Being sick is a bitch. What’s worse than not being able to chase pigeons away from your slice of pilfered human bread? And today could scarcely have been more cannily chosen as the day for my illness: a cold, rainy day in Morningside Park, and my stomach feels like it’s hosting a Civil War reenactment with laser rifles. I tried soaking in the pond, preening myself, standing outside the fence of the dog run and taunting the dogs inside, but nothing picked up my spirits. I decided to sleep it off somewhere inside—the subway. That’s where I saw this ad.

Oh, so suddenly specist propaganda is considered OK.

First of all, I shit as much as any other animal. I mean, when your pet does it, you fucking pick it up without so much as a squint or snort. Secondly, YOU STRAIGHT UP POISONED ME. What Flight Control Plus does? Since you never bothered to read the fine print before using it, can I tell you? It laces the ground with a chemical that attacks our digestive system so bad we’re “forced to find an alternate food source.” Or starve. So much for the Greatest Generation closing the book on fascism.

So those are the two reasons I’m nauseous. Flight Control Plus makes me sick. Also, it made me sick.

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

Caligula has to know: what’s all this hand-wringing and hullabaloo about the side effects of sleeping pills? They’re the best part!

Why choose? Combine!

Experience as a manic-depressive, hyper-paranoid, Godlike emperor with insatiable appetites had instilled in me a rather blasé attitude towards extended memory gaps (cf. the absinthe post below). But now I have the peculiar delight of waking up in the middle of various heinous deeds, from funneling poison into public drinking fountains to messily devouring a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Puttin’ on the Ritz in a tree. It’s a chance to see what my depraved ego won’t let my even more depraved subconscious get away during daylight hours, and—as you might expect—it’s always a forbidden, morbid delight.

Numerical data: nobody cares.

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.

-–

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.