Confessions, Part 6

-- Wednesday, 21 August, 1974

The following is the transcribed version of a script of a broadcast which occurred after our press deadline, repeated here in its entirety:

“How I Spent My Summer Vacation”

Act III, Scene I, Take 600

To whom it may discern:

I shall begin at the beginning. I could start at the end, but then you, the reader, would have to stand on your figurative head to divine any semblance of logical, rational meanings from this, the most recent of a series of pompously verbose expostulations and subjective truths.

It all began innocently enough on Monday, 1974, in the restaurant of an average metropolitan airport in San Diego, California, the world’s finest city. It was eight o’clock in the morning, and although I had seemingly recovered from a nocturnal attack of phlebitis (a rare sub-tropical disease of the interior vena cava indigenous to San Clemente and Whittier), I had to wipe the sleep from my eyes as I studied the depleted breakfast menu. I had been awakened ninety minutes prior to this point in time, Senator, by seven short bursts of sonic energy from Mommy Fortuna's mechanical wind-up chicken.

But we digress. I ordered myself a first-class: eggs, orange juice, coffee, muffins, and the killer, sausages. These feisty little red-hot dachshund wieners did an about-face in my digestive tract into a doggy bag just as we were about to land at Los Angeles Airport, in the heart of smog city.

The airline, TWA (who could forget their famous tea?) illegally, immorally, and fatteningly left us with only thirty (count 'em) minutes to catch our connecting flight. The TWA terminal was more than a stoned throw away, so we arrived ten minutes late, amid tram/bus/taxi/feet and handbag confusion. Fortunately, page 76 of the script called for some generator problems, so we reached our goal.

The flight went smoothly. It was 9½ hours (in the centimeter, gram, second system) from L.A., so I had ample opportunity to program my bio-computer with such contemporary literary artifacts as "Goodbye Columbus", "Man and His Symbols" (heavy!) and a complete rendition of a recent issue of Time magazine. Did you know that General Morons and the Nixxon Corporation rank primary and secondary, in this and the other remaining cosmos? These googols of U.S. Imperial Dollar Credits could be put to much better use on urban renewal programs on the moon.

As usual, I had already seen the airline's Channel One flick "Sugarland Express" starring Goldie Hawn, so I had to be content with self-initiated brain teasers and pumpkin seeds while the retinas of the rest of the airborne anxious androids were glued to the silver screen.

Because of the extended time distortion ratio which occurs when the Earth revolves around Neptune, we arrived in “jolly old” about 7 a.m. the next morning, with a loss of eight hours somewhere in there. I'm sure we'll get back this lost time on the way back to the United Snakes, so Great Grid hasn't really cheated us out of our due.

It was a beautiful grey-green English dawn when the intrepid travelers touched down at London's Heathrow Airport. The signs that lined the moving walkway proclaimed "Welcome to Britain." I did indeed feel welcome. To me, it was just like coming home.

There are many cars in England, most of which look understandably foreign. These include Cortinas, Volvos, Vauxhalls, Datsuns, Minis, Hillmans, Volkswagens, Mercedes, Fiats, Capris, Triumphs, etc. etc. ad infinitum, ad nauseum. I have been here two days (and that's a long time in this end of the biosphere) and I have yet to see a Cadaverlac Eldorado or any other species of the dinosaur of the future. I have not seen Elton John or Mr Heath.

1974 Vauxhall Viva

Welcome to "The Era of the Age of Epic Proportions" – Top of page 17

Flat 5 of #6 Roslyn Hill in historic Hampstead is just charming. There are four rooms, including a kitchen, water closet, bedroom, and living room. Physical therapists and other religious ecstatics will be pleased to note that an invigorating climb of 2½ flights is required to reach the abode where we dormicide. This morning, through the bedroom window, I watched the sun Helios arc on his axis over the verdant foliage which surrounds us, tastefully interspersed with superannuated Victorian or Edwardian (only your geriatrician knows for sure) mansions and pillar boxes. 98.6 degrees to the south-southeast is the world's largest hospital, rising like a sixteen-story bedpan over (ironically) the Vale of Health.

I will write more after the painful removal of the ovarian cyst that has engulfed the kosher pickled pig's knuckles of my writing hand.

Remember, "There are no small actors, only small parts." (that's a line from something, I can't remember quite what).

See you on the other side of the record as we slip through the hole of life. Groovy.

Confessions, Part 5

London, Thursday, 5 September, 1974 (continued)

I have seen several shows during my stay in London. Last week we saw the Low Moan Spectacular (comedy theater co.) version of "Bullshot Crummond". This was a satire of the Bulldog Drummond TV and radio series (which, incidentally, was the inspiration for the Firesign Theater's "Nick Danger") - complete with suave, handsome British detective Crummond, arch villain Von Brunno, and a bewildered butler (remember Catherwood?). In all, it was a pleasant evening's entertainment.  Also saw "Bringing Up Baby", the 1938 Howard Hawks comedy classic, starring Cary Grant (Archie Leach) and Katherine Hepburn in their younger days and filmed in glorious black and living white, for those of you in our studio audience who hate hullabaluses.

 We also saw a trite but well-formed version of "Sherlock's Last Case" in which, in a bizarre twist, Dr. Watson finally kills Holmes because he is tired of being nothing but a second fiddle banana lackey dormouse. Play it again, Sam.

 Have been watching quite a bit of British television (TV, telly), which I think doesn't have the emotional stranglehold that it had on the American pop culture. There are three channels (two BBC, and one commercial) and the quality is, on the whole, quite good. I remember back home in the United Snakes that any BBC production shown on American TV was good simply because it was British. (I’ll admit, “Upstairs, Downstairs” was great.) However, I have seen some tripe over here, particularly several of the half-hour supposed comedies. On the positive, though, “Steptoe and Son” (the cockney forerunner of “Sanford and Son”, which was brought across the Big Ditch by Norman Lear.) Did have its moments of hilarity. The coverage of the European Games (one step short of the Olympics) was superb. The British athletes came through in jolly good (to paraphrase the vernacular) form, and my conscious retinal being was riveted to the squawk box as the spartan sprinters and heroic harriers kicked up the cinder dust. I have always hoped for a career as an Olympic javelin catcher. The commercials on British TV are more subtle and lower-key (Ab harmonic minor) than that of the by now moribund mediacracy that comprises the post-hypnotic American airways.

-- Saturday, September 7, 1974

Dear Friends,

I have been in London for nearly two weeks and am enjoying myself immensely thanks to my mother who is putting me up, buying and cooking good and nutritious food and taking me to the theatre and in general being a jolly good sport, not to mention the perfect hostess. In addition to these activities, I am reading, writing and studying the form and esthetic merit of the intrinsic artistic and historic intricacies of Victorian, Edwardian, and Neo-Elizabethan architecture. 

(Refer to Part 4, paragraph 7)
Rain...

"You're not getting younger, you're getting worse. Welcome to the past." - inverted TV logo

I hope all you anxious androids in the clinical psychology biz enjoy the forthcoming holiday season and fit those nuts and bolts together before we all go crazy.

"Sanity is getting away with it." - Anon.

Pax, Luv, Brotherhood, and Good Karma.
Yr. Obt. Svt. etc., etc. [FIN]

Confessions, Part 4

London, Thursday, 5 September, 1974 (continued)

Take a moment...relax...now that you're comfortable, think back, way back, to those antediluvian times before the dawn of pre-recorded history, when everything – including milk –was good for you. Yes, that was before the beginning, before they changed the water. That was before instantaneous alchemists on both sides of the big ditch developed that now familial process of mind-overdub. That was years (in the antiquated English system of weights and measures) before Hanna Milhous Nixon had her hysterectomy and put Whittier on the map. That was before the world’s fossil fuel supply trickled inexorably through the ventricles of modern motor media madness, giving birth to generations of insecticides and other small dying creatures. That was before the four lads from Liverpool dropped their great load on the compost heap of human knowledge.  As official Paisley House pornographer David Hume Kennerly once said, “Those were un-groovy times.”

But enough metaphoric mouthwash, hypodermic hogwash, and bicarbonate brainwash. The president and I both thank you for the insurrection. Please join us for Act III of “A Slice of Life”, starring the Reality Players, which is already in progress.

Warning: The Sturgeon General has proven that money is hazardous to your wealth.

Note: This lifetime and others like it are dedicated to St. Richard Milhous-Nixxon, the 37^th resident of the Subdivided States of Unconsciousness, without whom none of this would have been necessary.

To continue…Yesterday we had to clear the flat for the maid, so we took a motor trip (in Mother’s friend Pat’s Mini) through the winding cobbled streets of Hampstead to the old English mansion, Kenwood House. Originally Caenwood House, this example of Adam architecture was built in the early 1600s and was owned in those fallopian times by such dignitaries as the second and third Dukes of Argyll, the Earl of Bute, and the Earl of Manchester, among others. The many, many rooms which have hardwood floors, and are generously hung with fifty or sixty (at least) paintings from Old Masters, including Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Sir Joshua Reynolds. The Vermeer, “The Guitar Player” (alone worth millions) was recently stolen and held for ransom by a band of displaced desperados.  However, it was returned in good working order after its perilous journey around the tip of the Cape of Good Horn in South Armenia.

We visited Kentish Town and Camden Town (some of the poorer sections of London, which resemble Brooklyn), Golders Green (where the people of the Jewish persuasion hang out), and Hampstead Garden Suburb, whose three-story brick mansions make Bel-Air look like the slums. These palatial dwellings are inhabited by the noble aristocratic families of the capitalist ruling strata which go back many spontaneous generations. Hampstead, it turns out, has the most expensive land per acre in the world (probably excluding downtown Newark and Burbank).

Rain, the tears of the almighty grid, comes almost every day, bringing with it multitudes of umbrellas, macs, anoraks, and other vestments of garb, which prohibit the incursion of insipient precipitation. This is why the English countryside is so green. (That’s lucky for us, because if it were red, all the Chinese would fall off.) Now and again the shining face of the sun Helios pokes through the veneer of clouds, bathing the emerald hills in a sea of photons. This variable climate, though gloomy at times, is perhaps a welcome change from Southern California’s standard temperature and pressure (STP) Celsius monochromatic sameness. The staccato of thunder punctuates the magic bowl movement of life’s magnum opus.
 

Confessions, Part 3

London, Sunday, 25 August, 1974

Little Danny Diggs had scarcely finished his platinum-plated polystyrene Popsicle when his harried mother appeared like quicksilver in the doorway of their freeway-modern American suburban complex apartment. It had been raining in San Diego ever since the top of the charts as I lifted the obese obsidian door knocker. For the past two years, ever since urban renewal facilitated the arrival of all those geeks into our previously off-white neighborhood, we have had to keep our doors and windows tightly bolted. Then it happened. The Church of Jewish Scientists moved in and the place became infested with trichina. Our babies became the target of severe Kosher circumscription. Oil depletion allowances made deep frying poignantly obsolescent. A cool winter's breeze shattered the morning silence as star-crossed lovers locked in energetic consternation.

London, Monday, 26 August, 1974 “Bank Holiday”

Gerald Ford's “confidence of his conservatism is like an amiable Tory backbencher from the Shires.”

“It is evil to fart during Beethoven's Ninth” -- Anthony Burgess

The gospel according to St. Fudd states that molecules with a valence of greater than three times the circumference of the Earth's midriff will expand when heated. Others reproduce quadraphonically, without benefit of conjugal byplay.

Thursday, Sept. 5, 1974

The lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer inexorably relinquish their hold on the consciousness of mortal man and give way to the tepid dog days of September memories. English schoolchildren wend their weary way back to the folds of educational dogma and try to learn their reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic (and to keep a stiff upper lip, stand in queues, sip tea, spend a penny, take the tube, go to the loo, pip pip, cheerio, and all 'at) whilst the cosmic seasonal cycle plays its never-ending game of Bulgarian roulette with the holy grid outside their two-way perforated windowpanes. All the masses (are asses) of multitudes of hitherto ignominious royal subjects prepare to cast their predetermined lot with the Labour, Conservative (Tory), or Liberal (birthday) parties in the forthcoming Parliamentary elocutions. The young liberals want to eliminate the need for compulsory jobs for all citizens and like good social democratic commie fascist jew bastards, seek to eliminated the armed forces which after all are only the corporeal manifestation of the pointless ego-trip of a war oriented economic inflationary nightmare of the body politic of a push-button no deposit no return throw-away automotive smog-ridden computer punch-card televised society.

Scene 3 – Welcome to the future. It's just starting now.

Our society has no classes, except in the collage or multiversity of your choice. The means of production are held by all the people. Yes, we have them all – uppers, downers, beaners, boogies, all in living colour 'cuz everything looks worse in black and white. At last the binding shackles of the by now moribund mediacracy have been recklessly cast aside and the anxious androids of both remaining planets can live in harmony, melody, and various contrapuntal intonations. Methodists and religious ecstatics of all indoctrinations can rest their retinas daily on the channel of their choice, both commercial and educational.

One organism, one vote!
All power to the pimple!
Up with megahertz!
Ché lives!
Free Morton Kaiser!!
Fold, spindle, mutilate!

Yes, dear friends out there in Medialand. The biosphere is awash with maxims, slogans, flying, bouncing and ricocheting like McLuhanian ping pong balls off the Van Allen belt which shrouds our multiverse. Pharynxes, larynxes, epiglottises, eject sonic microwaves by the score. Blackboards, bathroom walls, car bumpers – every centimetre of available space – graffiti (the writing on the wall, for both of you non-Italians) proclaim the good word, once heard only by a small band of evolutionaries but now by that ever-increasing number of zealots who march to the beat of a different drummer.

The medium is the massage. (Medium, hell – I'll take an extra large.)

Welcome to the Age of Epic Proportions

Confessions, Part 2

London, Saturday, Aug. 24, 1974

Now that you are comfortable, let me continue. I spend most of my time walking the heath and the streets of Hampstead. The streets curl and swerve as if they were dropped from a high-flying dirigible. A right. A left. A right. A left to the body and into a petrol station (Texaco or Blue Star. No Nixxon.) Small shops spring up in rows on both sides of the narrow cobbled streets. High Street, Pond Street, Heath Street have changed very little since that infamous time in prerecorded history when they changed the water. I can imagine some famous writer from a now-forgotten era sipping a shot of grog in the gloamin' outside historic Freemasons Arms public house. Keats, an amateur extinguished poet, lived in one of the small Hampstead houses, and a contemporary restaurant bears his name.

Q. “What's a Grecian urn?
A. “About 3.14 surnotex a week.” Classic!

The shops sell everything from soup to nuts, including mock turtle soup and Beatle nuts. There are Mac Fisheries (a chain), trendy boutiques, fruiterers, chemists, supermarkets (much smaller than their American counterparts), camera shops, schlock shops, record shops, etc. etc. To shop, you pull a small two-wheeled trolley behind you as you make a purchase at one of the shops. [Illiterate – Ed.] Dogs and cats line the streets and have free access to the stores. It is not unusual to stub a prehensile toe on a misplaced mongrel upon reentry or possible splashdown.

For the first time in many a gibbous harvest moon, I have been looking at life through the 55 mm dilated aperture of my camera. Somehow life seems more reel that way. Silver nitrate breeds two-dimensional relativity. As the ambient light is reflected continuously between the polar coordinates of the focal plane, the phase shifts from the real to the imaginary. This is the natural scheme of things. It cannot be changed.

I will continue if and when my left ankle returns from hibernation in the Isle of Wight, if it's not too dear, honey. Groovy and out. Ten-four Eleanor.

Dept. of Psychosomatic History
Dept. of Psychoanalytic Predetermination

Confessions of a Lactobacillus Bulgaricus Eater*

(* or How to Cultivate Yoghurt in Your Spare Time for Fun and Profit)

London, Saturday, Aug. 24, 1974

This is England. At this very instant in that ghost-written script that is our lives our insipid explorer sits at a small neo-plasticine table outside a pub in the same subterranean nation that spawned such postoperative luminaries as Shakespeare, Keats, Dickens, Drake, Churchill, Newton, John, and McCartney.

The spiritual and creative implications of this intellectual climate are too numerous to enumerate.

The sands of time slip inexorably through the treadmill of my day-to-day existence here, and before I know it, I've been here a week.

Of the many cars which dot the arteries of organic England, I have only seen four which have borne American brands: a Pontiac Firebird 400, Corvette Stingray, Chrysler, and last and certainly not least, a baby-blue Lincoln Continentalac. These bicarbonated behemoths belong here as much as a lady wrestler at a Girl Scout cookout. Mother is debating whether or not to rent a Mini (or generic equivalent) to take a tour of the North Counties and maybe Scotland. This would be fun if I could ever get used to driving on the wrong side of the road. (And the Hebrews do it backwards, which is absolutely frightening.) Damned clever, those Chinese.

The weather has been brightly sunny and in the 70s (using the antiquated Farenthold barometer) for the past four days. Nobody here can believe this. They tell me that it usually rains with great regularity and frequency even in the summer, so the benign benevolence of our maker the mad molecule is indeed welcomed. (As these very words leaked from the barrels of my quadri-colored pen, a torrential downpour of wisdom erupted, washing out the cosmic contact lenses of our infant king and his uncle the adenoid.)

“Trite but urbane, trenchant, and enlightening.” -- The California Independent Observer

To revert at once to the student idiom: Reject the recording, fold, spindle, mutilate. Then (if all else fails) reverse directions.