Journal of. Published under the auspices of the HiSky* Trust, founded 1957 to promote disorder. (*Hiss-Key)
David Raffin (postHumorist, poet, Metaphysicist)
(*Metaphysics : Branch of philosophy dealing with first principles: abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space.)
I am worried about the line of succession from the jolly green giant, who is king, king of the fields. I assume the heir apparent is his Bastard “nephew“ sprout. But he has been hanging out with bad actors, Excuse me, poor influences, like Kurt Cameron.
Now, why am I telling you this? It is because there are rumors the jolly green giant has played fast and loose with his pollination. And it is conceivable, conceivable, mind you, that he is the father to many (mini?) bastard cartoon mascots. Please help me determine them. Rule Vegittania!
And remember: There are no birds eyes in Birdseye brand frozen vegetables. It just says there are in an effort to log-in brand identity so the consumer will ask for something by name and accept no substitutes. And it’s working. Because here we are talking about frozen birds eyes.
A lector had been hired for the next day. To read both light entertainment texts as well as news of the day. The job was to read on the factory floor, a service to the workers, who often paid by cobbling together out of their own meager pay, collectively. A passing of the hat. To escape drudgery. People will pay for escape.
It was a hot day. Oppressive.
Birds ducked into crevices of buildings seeking respite. Shade.
It is quiet. No one wants to expend the energy. Stoke the fire dwelling inside.
The nearby library branch is full of people trying to beat the heat by reading it away. A process of illusion.
Inside the factory the sound was that of the clatter of machines. Adding to the heat of the day.
The factory manufactured waist-shirts, a fading fashion for women.
A man leaned out a window on the ninth floor. He filled his lungs with the warm air. The outside air. It is often a problem in cities, man-made shelters, cages, the matter of inside/outside air. Free circulation. The bird looked at him. He looked at the bird. There was a knowing. It passed between them.
The man looked up. The bird looked at the man. The man looked down. The man looked at the bird, wistful.
There was smoke coming out of some of the windows. There were sirens. Someone had noticed the smoke below. They saw the smoke above. Rising. There were people exiting the building. It was being evacuated. Emptied. Abandoned. Like leaving a sinking ship. They could not communicate with the ninth floor, only the eighth and tenth. There were fire trucks below, and men. And people were filing into the street from both directions, away from the building as well as toward it.
“Ladders!” And the ladders were set up. And they only reached to the sixth floor. A dead stop.
And it’s interesting because, if they had gone higher, people would have talked about the time they went down a ladder without ever having to climb up. Over tea. And people would be slightly amused. By the casual chatter. A tea-time observation. Quickly forgotten.
And there were more people at the windows. Breathing the warm air. Warmth being relative. And the birds saw people had gone to the roof. Unable to go down, they chose to go up instead. A few of them looked down. Among them were managers and they looked down at the people. Oddly, they were safe. But they did not feel safe. They would not feel safe for a long time after. They tried not to think of it, to shift their attention.
And they looked down at the street. And those on the street looked up at them. And the man at the window looked at the bird. And the bird looked at him. Knowing.
Not many people got to the roof that day. The stairwell leading to the roof became impassable right after the stairwell leading to the street. It took three minutes. There was another. Another stairwell. But it was chained shut. The supervisor who held the key had already left the building and was looking up from the street. Helpless.
There was a metal fire escape to the side, people climbed out onto it. So many tried to escape onto it that the metal structure groaned, and quickly, but in shocking slow-motion, failed catastrophically. Poorly constructed, as cheaply as possible, to save money, to increase profits, it gave way, crashing full to the street with screams from above and below. There were no survivors.
The elevator operators made three trips back up and down, through the heat and the smoke. They could not make a fourth. Between trips some of those left above had tried to slide down the cables to the top of the elevator cars. The weight of their bodies made the elevators inoperable. Human error. The heat melted the cables.
The fire licked out some of the windows, tasting the outside air.
The man looked at the bird. He jumps, defenestrating himself onto the street below. The bird watches from his perch. The man’s place at the window is filled by another. She will not be the last. In as much as a factory hand is replaceable.
The child found the bird dead. The child looked at the bird. Put it in a box. With some grass. Do birds eat grass? Looked at its beak and feet. Stiff bird. Relax. Things are well in hand. The child says a few words over the bird and makes some motions. A budding magician. Cigarette butts. Children believe in magic. Not magic as entertainment, but magic real. Trying to bring the bird back to life.
“Get away from that Nasty Thing!”
And it was left on top of a stacked square of bricks, salvaged from an old building. There was also a bucket of doorknobs.
A woman falls through the air, alight. Still burning on the street. A man and woman kiss before they jump together, holding hands. A courtship. A courtship beginning and ending. Still, on the sidewalk.
Blood flows down the gutter. To the sewer. Underground.
There is the sound, unforgettable. Of a body hitting the pavement from above. Onto other bodies preceding. An unsteady rhythm. A syncopation of the heart.
They tear right through the nets held by Firemen below.
Greenwich time. In the mean-time. They worked fifty-two hour weeks for seven to twelve dollars a week. The youngest were fourteen. Most were women between fourteen and twenty-three. The oldest was forty-three.
The owners had a history of suspicious Fires, after a product goes out of fashion, and with it the workforce. A matter of insurance, pending.
Louis Waldman, having followed the sound of sirens from the reading room said, years later, that being on the street at that time was a mad frenzy. An agonizing eternity. Hysterical. Men wept.
“Were the bricks from the Triangle building?” asks the attendant.
“Nah. Still there. Call it the Brown building.”
“But what of the Lecter?” asks the attendant. “The one who was to come the day after.”
“He was left to read on his own time,” says the Storyteller. “But was left much poorer for it.”
The Buddha sat under a tree. An apple fell on his head. It was the wrong tree. He ate the apple.
The Buddha sat under a tree. An apple fell on his head. It was Buddha-nature.
The Buddha sat under a tree. An apple fell on his head. He said, “I am not looking for gravity here.”
The Buddha sat under a tree. An apple fell on his head. He laughed. And said, “You have the wrong man here.”
The Buddha sat under a tree. An apple fell on his head. He said, “let’s not make a big deal out of this here.”
The Buddha sat under a tree. A fig Newton fell on his head. Followed momentarily by an apple Newton. Then, Isaac Newton. Who was quite out of sorts.
The Buddha sat under a tree. An apple fell on his head. He said, “Seriously?”
I would not joke.
Then he laughed.
At the end of the day, the Buddha had so many apples.
“How many apples did he have?” You may ask, in unison. This is crowd work. He is building a following now.
He had so many apples he gave most of them away.
He planted one. And it grew into a legend.
If an apple falls from a tree, and neither the Buddha nor Isaac Newton are there for it to land on, does it make a sound? What is that sound? Asking for one who seeks.
Every time I see an apple on the ground, I miss Isaac Newton, as did, likely, that apple. On the ground.
Every time I let go of my sadness regarding the apple and the absence of Isaac Newton, I see the Buddha.
With an Apple, you can see the world.
An apple sat under a tree. The Buddha fell on it. This world. Is upside down.
Every time I time travel, I do nothing. Because I did nothing the first time I time traveled. Now I have to do nothing. Otherwise I put everything at risk.
Something Might Happen. This Time.
An apple sat under a tree. The Buddha fell on it. Applesauce. Applesauce.
Spiritually enlightened applesauce. Can’t put a dollar value on it.
I was a member of the street party but now I am a member of the house party. We are going to have a Civil War. Between the halfs and the half Nots. Who can bring us back together from these times of radical severance? Now we are all members of the street party. It is quite a racket. Tennis, anyone? It falls on me to remind all of you that cheese danish is a derogatory term. And don’t make me laugh. It’s too soon. Politicians love prisons so much they insist even college students have to pay their debt to society. To pay for more prisons. Everyone in the street party is in lockstep. Cloud technology put me in the fog. Cloud technology put you in the fog. I own a home in the URLs. A commercial property. If you know the password. Come the end of winter one should remove any systemic chains left over from the cold. Please differentiate hanging up the towel from throwing in the towel. Is it wrong to just toss the towel off? Rub or pat? Dry humor? Children lose arms because of data mining. They used to say war is good for the economy but they’ve worked on The problem and fixed it. Good.
The duck billed the platypus three dollars and forty-seven cents.
“Cents? cents? Don’t make no sense,” said the irate duck billed platypus, waiving the bill in the air.
“You say it ain’t fair?” said the duck. “I say it ain’t square!” said the platypus.
It was quite a confrontation hanging in the air.
Now, the duck billed platypus, he was no fool. He had done and gone to finishing school. He knew what was what, and the meaning of is, he was not new to this turnip truck biz.
“If you don’t like it,” said the duck to his prey, “why don’t you just up and fly away?”
“Mayhaps I will,” said the platypus. “Mayhaps I will.” Because the duck billed platypus had finally had his fill. Of the duck and his quack, of the thumb and it’s tack, and he was not prepared to say when he would be back.
“Now see here,” said the duck, but the platypus didn’t hear quack. He had flown to New Zealand, Jack.
The Duck double billed the platypus over a plate of flapjacks. It was a society flap. The stoolpigeons saw to that.
A man came into a bar. It was dark inside because the proprietor had failed to pay the bill. Coincidentally, the proprietor was a duck. The bar was called “the duck billed platypus“ which was often a point of confusion. But what’s in a name, anyway?” the proprietor quacked. Just a moniker. Quoth the Raven, “nevermore!”
“No one asked you,“ said the duck. Then the raven lobbed a projectile toward the duck. Who failed to duck. And was thusly taken out in an untimely manner. The projectile was a cuckoo clock which had stopped.
Even though it had stopped it made quite an impact upon the duck, effecting the disposition of the bill. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day regardless of the impact upon the bill. Hospitality isn’t all it’s quacked up to be. Remember to duck when the time comes because time flies.
Wherever one can find a goose one can find two ducks.
“Just got out of the chuckle hutch,” said the duck. “What did I miss?” “10 whistles are made of 10,” said the duckbilled platypus, still angry about the sum. No quantitative easing. For sneezing. Quacks, said the duck. Quacks, said the duckbilled platypus. “Don’t make me laugh,” said the duck. “It’s too soon.”
After we seize the means of production we’ll set all those duck statuettes free. No more to be lined up in neat little rows, no more ducks placed in order wading on duck row. All the duck statuettes fly away home, wherever those good eggs may nest. On the corner of wild and sycamore street, or a mantle if that’s what the duck thinks best.
And so I asked the mathematician how to slice a pie. And she said she wasn’t into division. Then our pies did multiply. At this point we were up to our ears in pie. And we were in arrears on pie. And that’s a sweet conundrum no matter how you slice it. We ducked out on the bill.
Using star ratings to rate stars is like using emojis of an avacado to rate avocados. I rate this avacado three and a half avocados. Flip it. I rate this star four avacados. I rate this avocado two stars. It’s apples and oranges.
Drizzle
Couple of years ago avocado toast was a hot commodity. But this year it’s going to be toast. Because minimalism. A cartoon I don’t like is cinnamon toast crunch kids. Because of the terrible squeaky little kid voices the mini cinnamon toast crunch squares speak in when they are about to be masticated. But the ASMR really turn some people on. Because something to do with frequencies. Yum. It is a shame about the chocolate donut mascot. We are losing our cartoon mascot history. I do not mean to imply that the founder of general post sugary cereals Warren G Friendly was not a complete amoral monster who does not deserve to be remembered. This is a children’s sugar cereal. And we have to let some things slide for the sweet love of freedom to crunch by gum. Dentists are taking candy from babies. The law is applied unevenly. Chocolatiers are heroes no matter how many children disappear into their factories. As workers or what have you. If we did not use children as workers how could we clear the tubes to drain the candy swamp? Did you ever think about that? No, you don’t think. Keep it down the ASMR people are listening. Be respectful. It is only by pushing candy to the extreme that we can enrich the Candyman and sweet nectar will trickle down from on high nourishing those who toil. With sugar rushes. Sugar burns. Mbop. Avocado toast candy. For the masses.
And the dawn was of television. In the beginning with static. For all was artificial. A window upon the world. Reimagined. For into your own home now came horses. And train stations. The clanging of bells.
And thus the broadcast day did begin. And the people said. We cannot afford that. And they looked up upon it. Up. Through the store windows. At the Chevy show. The modern showroom. Where a man dressed as a woman. For a gag. And the people did. Rejoice.
For he was everyone’s uncle. For even at that time the people did know. They were in every family. And the people saved their pennies. So they could look up upon it. Yay. And it was the beginning of a new commercialism. Lifestyles. Of the rich. And famous. 
And the people said broaden this menu. For we desire entertainment. In the luxury of our own homes. For the pleasure in this country. Is self. And the programming did diversify. But not much. For the people wanted what they saw to look like them. But somehow it never did. 
For they were held back by the family hour. And broadcast decency. And standards. Which were set in dark rooms. And controlled by powerful monied interests. Who ruled the community airwaves. For the people. Buy the people. And they gave it to the people. And did they.
And they said give us cowboy shows. An artificial past. And give us family shows. With children. And perhaps a dog. And that is the limit. Except for church music. On Sundays. A form of sports programming. And people did watch. For they had little choice. In such matters.
And so it was the dawning of Camelot came. For because of Dick sweat, the president of the United States became the head of a dynasty. Which would one day act to bring back viral pestilence upon the land. But today. They called it. Camelot. For now the Americans finally had their king. what fools.
And the people were happy. And the programming became gay. The airwaves filled with fantasy. Witches. Djinn. Martians. Hillbillies. And the rest. Anything. To not address inequality or Vietnam. Racism. Or the blacklist. Which besmirched the reputation of LBJ and his entire Democratic Party. Doggone it.
And then the people arose and sang great protest songs. Such as puff. The magic dragon. Which had little to no effect upon the leaders of the country. Who were heavily involved. Yay. In the military industrial complex. A Ponzi scheme. A Freudian concept. Like the Id. Or super ego. It is situated mostly in the mind.  And it is hard to change someone’s mind when they are being paid to never consider the matter. Which is deemed inappropriate. At this. And all times. For matters of safety. And hygiene. And the greater wealth of the body politic which is mostly held by its hedge fund managers. 
And when military involvement collapsed upon itself creating many casualties at home and abroad then at last the people said. At least we always do the right thing in the end. And then began the me generation. And greed became. Good.
And Ronald the clown did arise. And he said get the government off my back. And he meant it. For his stated goal was to make the government so small it could be drowned in a small tub of (privatized) water. And the people said. Thou art a great communicator.
And when he died even the other side said. Lol he was a great communicator. But we have our own. In hopeless Bill. He came. And he came. And he came. From humble beginnings. And he came. And he came. And he came. Until he came to the White House. Where he also came.
And yay. It was around this time there was no more fairness doctrine. And while the channels did multiply the owners did shrink. To next to nothing. For there can in the end only be one. As said the profit. Marx.
And the people said. Productivity abounds. But we are starving. And the leaders said. Are there not snack cakes plentiful in this land? And the people said we cannot afford them. We cannot afford the product of our own labor. And the politicians laughed. They said thee must get a second job. Budget. Abstain from luxury such as food and warmth. For this is called austerity. And it is good. For the people. For do as we say and not as we do is sacred among the owning classes.
And the people said we are tired of you false prophets. You are a blight upon this land. Corrupt. We cry out the ancient cry. Corruption! Take thee heed. And the politicians did laugh. For they said that people had no choice but to support either their one or their other. No choice. For if not the one they would get the other, and vice versa. World without end. 
So then the people said we will have the buffoon then. Bring on the buffoon. And the owner and managerial classes said no you will not take the buffoon. And the people said yes. We will have the buffoon. And the buffoon did wreak havoc. As the buffoon does. For that is the purpose of the buffoon. A terrible thing. A curse.
And the false prophets. Cried. For they were. Without words. At last. And they said do thee sinners not repent? And take us back no questions asked. No changes made. And the people said have thee come down from thine own high horses? And the answer was clearly nay. Nay.
In class. Civil war week. There was a sub and that meant days of watching civil war movies on a television wheeled into class. A few minutes of fine tuning and then the lights go out. We sit together in the darkened room as brother fights brother. The smell of bubble gum. The pop of the muskets. A kid suddenly farted and other than that silence. I mean, He launched up out of his seat. Hovered. Landed. Quiet. Laika or not.
First animal in space,
Gory Gory Hallelujah.
Frank had the mother of all boners.
And that was a problem.
There was just something about her, the girl one row over and one up. Don’t judge, something anatomical. Frank couldn’t put his finger on it. This thing he felt. It was ineffable.
He felt like an ass.
Don’t we all.
And at the end of the class the grades for the semester were posted to the back wall. And he had to go look at them I guess. And he was stiff as a board. And kids were milling around. Hereto-therefore. And he was making deals with the devil which always have un-intended consequences. Trying to get things down. In control. He thought about brother fighting brother in a war to free Jefferson’s slaves and the smell of gunpowder and violent death, and Simon says, and nothing worked. The flesh is stronger than the will sometimes.
Thrice daily or more.
So he put his book in front of his pants, as Simon had done years before, and made his way to the back of the room. Casual. And he got his grade. And this kid named Chance, a jock, he sides in and says, in a loud whisper, “Hard times, bud?” And three or four people nearest sniggered away.
David Raffin
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