I’m Gone For Just Two Millenia…

And look what happens to my precious Rome!

Oh sure, to you it’s some neat touristy diversion, minor ruins, a chill place to sit around and get high with the Australians from your hostel.  But that was my temple!  In 40 A.D., man, the blood ran down those steps and people recognized me for the various gods I undoubtedly am.  And today when I peeked in the archway the Danish teenagers fucking inside wouldn’t even let me take a Polaroid.  When did I lose my touch?  When did my palaces of torture crumble into desrepair?

The rest of the city was likewise depressing; I was run over by two taxis and a ten-year-old on a vespa.  Yet I did catch a glimpse of an opulently dressed man on a balcony—from what the locals say, he seems to have taken up my mantle of narcissism and  eccentricity.  Sealed away in an untouchable private country (imagine the hidden/forbidden pleasures!) and essentially equating himself with the Creator, his word is law; he commands unconditional worship.  It’s good to know Rome is still under the sway of a man so made in my mold:

—Caligula

What Have You Done For Me Lately?

As a flight academy grad used to people trying to shoot me out of the sky, I’m glad General Wesley Clark had the cajones to take a huge steaming dump on John McCain’s military experience malarkey.  Basically, he said, crashing your plane into a lake in Vietnam doesn’t qualify you for the presidency. *ZING* 

After I cackled over that envelope-pushing takedown, though, I got to thinking maybe Clarky didn’t go far enough.  Remember that McCain crashed his plane twice before the war even started.  Oh, don’t worry about avoiding those power lines, John, the taxpayers will be happy to shell out a few million to buy you another A-1 Skyraider.  

Also, if McCain was such a war hero, why did he get caught by the bad guys?  

McCain didn’t even use his shattered limbs to fend off Charlie

Why, when McCain could have been released early due to his father’s position as a top U.S. admiral, did he choose to hang around for five years in the Hanoi Hilton?  Hiltons are posh, swanky, luxurious places—Christ, I’ve never even been allowed near one.  If he’s such a super soldier, why didn’t he opt out of POW status and hop back in a new bomber and lay waste to Cambodia and Marlon Brando and turn the tide of the whole feckin’ war?

Speaking of which, if McCain’s such a military genius, how come we lost in Vietnam?  In fact, John McCain’s war record is 0-1.  Every war he’s fought in, we suffered a humiliating defeat, which he unequivocally accepted.  Not inspiring a lot of confidence there, buddy.  

No, John, if you want to be commander-in-chief, you’re gonna need Rambo as VP.  Hell, you might even learn something …quitter.

—Nero

 

Whatever It Is You’re Looking For

Folks, tomorrow is the 12-week/3-month anniversary of Caligula vs. Nero.  And in that short time, we’ve amassed a lot of fans for a furious goose and a batshit crazy retired politician, as the hit counter demonstrates.  It saddens us, though, that we don’t know our readers very well, being that we so rarely receive comments on our posts, presumably because everything we write dumbfounds you.

But never fear: thanks to wordpress’ data collection system, we can make all kinds of assumptions about you based on the search engine input you used to find our site.  And so, without further ado, here are the search terms that have brought people into the Caligula vs. Nero family, spelling and sequence preserved. We sure hope you found what you were looking for.  Enjoy, and tremble in fear.

“vlad the impaler”

“sex robots”

“absinthe dreams”

“scalia”

“caligula gay”

“goose computer”

“humilliation sex”

“sex humiliation”

“zer vs nero”

“‘pro-tec’ shorts”

“dickhole”

“being big bird the muppet”

“bradley trout”

“allergy”

“vlad, the impaler”

Vlad “Dracul” the Impaler Transylvanian Castle Set™ sold separately

“pet goose”

“absenth spoon”

“the imagination is a dying animal”

“sex while clothed”

“absinthe robette”

“ben and jerrys pint”

“pegging”

“pegging preversion”

“canada goose attack”

“sadism”

“sadistic sex”

“form fitting shorts”

“children fucked”

“christopher mullan , goose beating”

“vlad dracul”

“history of absinthe”

and, of course,

“dumpster fuck”

—Nero

Caligula’s Dreamlog #5: The Nightmare

Ordinarily, waking to the drab world around us is a bothersome chore—how horrible it is when one’s bladder brings about the end of sleep at noon and demands access to one’s carved marble water closet—but this morning I could have kissed even the toilet lid with gratitude.  And I did, because I woke up with my face in it, right as this nightmare reached its happy conclusion:

THE DREAM

It begins, innocently enough, with me using pliers to extract my own teeth while the Supreme Court hands down a delightful decision: no death penalty for child rape.  So far, so good.  Hordes of beautiful trusting children start filing into the murky basement the justices and I have selected for this gleefully macabre affair: time to celebrate the rule of law!  

I dig the pliers into my gums to pull out a bloody tooth and make the children cower in reverent fear, but what’s this?  I pull out a piece of candy instead.  A laughing child snatches it away.  I try again: more candy. Soon the children are clamoring all about me, and individually wrapped candies are pouring out of every orifice I hold dear (all of them).  I try to beat the ragamuffins off, but every would-be blow turns into a hug by accident.  They love it, and smother me with that love.

“Scalia!” I cry out to the bench, which seems to grow ever more distant in the brightening room.  ”Help!  You owe me!”  Scalia also looks concerned with this state of affairs, as the murky basement has finished turning into—gods preserve me—a Whole Foods supermarket, with hippies wearing nothing but hemp vests streaming through the aisles, studying the nutritional information labels on every item they consider.  But even as the other judges fade from sight, Scalia tramples over the children to hand me a beautiful gleaming handgun before falling off the dogpile and turning into a …it gives me an awful warmth to say it…

…a unicorn.

OH, FUCK

Sobbing, I fire the gun repeatedly, but it’s already too late: the once proud weapon is just a rainbow in my fist that emits only sunflowers and Mozart sonatas.  All the pristine civilization man has achieved in spite of my work raises me above the children and hippies, and I soar, riding clouds of of high culture, love, peace, innocence, respect, and compassion, never to find my way back to the nadirs of humanity I had so proudly pioneered.

ANALYSIS

Judge Antonin Scalia is all that stands between us and a nightmare world of pure harmony.

—Caligula

 

Designated Flyer

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

Happenstance

Moviegoers!  Caligula begs you to cease your pop-culture assassination of M. Night Shyamalan.  True, he is no Hitchcock, as he is unable to chill the nether-regions of the loins and soul, but being bludgeoned by his stilted messages and cring-inducing cameos provides the sick thrill of blunter abuse, a heady mix of mockery and condescension.  He’s like a boyfriend that beats you until you cry and laugh with gratitude and acknowledge that he has every right to assume he’s the Messiah.  And “The Happening” will be his greatest triumph of audience flagellation yet.  SPOILER ALERT: a description of the film’s ending follows below this delicious custom Mark Wahlberg desktop.

Buzz about “The Happening” would have you believe that the twist is: there IS NO TWIST.  But the false prophets of Hollywood do not have the augury training of your favorite Roman sadomasochist.  I have read the signs (ha! get it?) of sparrows and bluejays in the sky, and I have learned what torture Shyamalan has in store for us.  The twist is that there IS a twist when everyone thought there was NO twist.  That glorious, swarthy bastard!  

The climax unfolds thusly: Just as Mark Wahlberg and his terrified family are about to be devoured by the King of Trees (it will make even less sense when you watch it), all will go black.  Slowly, Marky Mark wakes up out of a fog and finds himself on a couch in a room strewn with gauche costumes and hair products. The New Kids on the Block stand around him, and his brother Donnie leans down to speak: “Marky, buddy, wake up!  You were having some kind of terrible nightmare!  Now let’s go out there and ROCK!”

“Go out there?” Marky asks.  ”But I quit the New Kids.  It’s over.”

“Yeah,” says Donnie.  ”But this is our 2008 Reunion Tour!”

Marky looks at the camera with pure horror in his eyes: “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

And his wail crossfades into the sounds of a sold-out arena show by the New Kids on the Block. The last half hour of the movie is basically a low-quality concert DVD, and one of the most brilliant cross-promotional hackjobs you’ll ever see.

 

The New Kids on the Block need be neither New nor Kids to strike fear into your heart

Yes, Shyamalan could have really outdone himself this time.  Viewers would have found a new nadir for cinema.  The critics’ faces may have melted off when this ending rolls into focus.  

Unfortunately, even they will have vacated the theater in disgust by then.  

—Caligula

 

Heatwave

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

 

Vintage Verbiage

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

Honestly…

Yeah, I’ve been following this toga-wearing Upper West Side douche around, tapping at his windows, puffing out my chest plumage. Seems to freak him out.  Shouldn’t have gotten up in my bidness.  Why do you ask?

—Nero (With Nothing Better To Do)

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)