Codename Prague (16 page)

“Wha—?” Stunned, he marched up the aisle. “Who are you? You are not my assistants. You are imposters.”

The Truth/Untruth monster frowned. “How can you tell the difference?”

“I know the difference,” snapped the doktor. “Difference is the payload of identity…”

20

In Outer Space, a Ceramic Mannequin without Arms & a Cracked Foot

tumbled into a Disnified black hole.

And Dr Hans Reinhart said, “Something caused all this. But what caused…the cause?”

29

Passagenwerk

[EDITORIAL NOTE: This chapter should be deleted from the book. Or this chapter should be the whole book. Don’t fuck with your readers, moron.]
^[3]

*

“The nonexistent text is the subject of the present study.” Susan Buck-Morss,
The Dialectics of Seeing
(1989).

*

“The figure of wax is properly the setting wherein the appearance <
Schein
> of humanity outdoes itself. In the wax figure, that is, the surface area, complexion, and coloration of the human being are all rendered with such perfect and unsurpassable exactitude that this reproduction of human appearance itself is outdone, and now the mannequin incarnates nothing but the hideous, cunning mediation between costume and viscera.” Walter Benjamin,
Passagenwerk
, trans.
The Arcades Project
(1927-40). Ref. Dorian Huckster’s
The Man Who Lacked Digits
(4,501 AR) in which the protagonist wears viscera on the exterior of his costume after replacing his internal organs with “dire plumes of indecision.”

*

 
“Under the strange nebulous envelopment, wherein our [Doktor] has now shrouded himself, no doubt but his spiritual nature is nevertheless progressive, and growing: for how can the ‘Son of Time,’ in any case, stand still? We behold him, through those dim years, in a state of crisis, of transition: his mad Pilgrimings, and general [dis]solution into aimless Discontinuity, what is all this but a mad Fermentation; wherefrom, the fiercer it is, the clearer product will one day evolve itself?” Thomas Carlyle,
Sartor Resartus
(1830-31).

           
*

“A poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence, because he has no identity, he is continually in for—and filling—some other body. The sun, the moon, the sea, and men and women who are creatures of impulse, are poetical, and have about them an unchangeable attribute; the poet has none, no identity…[image of a flaccid penis]…If, then, he has no self, and if I am a poet, where is the wonder that I should say I would write no more?…But even now I am perhaps not speaking from myself, but from some character in whose soul I now live. I am sure, however, that this next sentence is from myself. I feel your anxiety…” John Keats, Letter to Richard Woodhouse (1818).

*

To what degree does sexuality figure into the narratives of Dr Seuss? Note how virtually all of his characters resemble sex organs that have been hacked or ripped off of their host bodies. (Ref. Jean-Luis Sçrapenut for a discussion of genital mutilation rep. comic/cartoon humanoids.)

*

 
“Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity, / There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity. / He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare: / At whatever time the deed took place—MACAVITY WASN’T THERE! / And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known /… Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time / Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!” TS Eliot,
Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats
(1939).

*

 
“iFFFFPFP.”
^[4]
Adolph Hitler, Obersalzberg (1942).

*

 
“Since Hitler’s day the armory of technical devices at the disposal of the would-be dictator has been considerably enlarged. As well as the radio, the loudspeaker, the moving picture camera and the rotary press, the contemporary propagandist can make use of television to broadcast the image as well as the voice of his client, and
can record both image and voice on spools of magnetic tape. Thanks to technological progress, Big Brother can now be almost as omnipresent as God. Nor is it only on the technical front that the hand of the would-be dictator has been strengthened. Since Hitler’s day a great deal of work has been carried out in those fields of applied psychology and neurology which are the special province of the propagandist, the indoctrinator and the brainwasher. In the past these specialists in the art of changing people’s minds were empiricists. By a method of trial and error they had worked out a number of techniques and procedures, which they used very effe[k]tively without, however, knowing precisely why they were effe[k]-tive. Today the art of mind-control is in the process of becoming a science. The practitioners of this science know what they are doing and why. They are guided in their work by theories and hypotheses solidly established on a massive foundation of experimental evidence. Thanks to the new insights and the new techniques made possible by these insights, the nightmare that was ‘all but realized by Hitler’s totalitarian system’ may soon be completely realizable.” Aldous Huxley,
Brave New World Revisited
(1958).

*

The pop culture apocalypse inculcates endless unspoken certainties. But the real problems stem from the uncertainties that onanistic talking heads articulate without possessing a mature enough historical, epistemological or linguistic character. Singing like a caged bird is for evolved drag queens. One must speak before one can sing. A bleached white wiggerization of the human condition usurps all forms of erudition. Popsong dreams + juvenile scenarios/episodes/dialogue/ant(I)gyros + high modernist mxyzptlk. The only cure is Liquid Panic. Thus the cry of the Wichita Lineman: “I can [only] hear you through the [wine]…”

*

 
“
But how many solar anuses does a clockwork man require to achieve the perfect fulguration? One likes to at least approach perfection in this regard. As Georges Bataille writes: ‘Yakety yakety Français blah blah blah Français blankety blank Français Français
nom de plume
et
mise en abyme
et cock-a-doodle-do etc. etc.’ This passage effe[k]tively illustrates the
Dieselmotor
of all written, imagistic and oral texts and the authors that produce them. More importantly, Bataille provides us with a schematic for a healthier form of suicide. One doesn’t like to kill oneself in an unhygienic fashion. One likes clean hands, empty bowels, and so forth.” Betty Lomax, Inventor of the Somethingorother Machine (1,490 AR).

*

 
“Upon my asking what the word
urinate
reminded her of, she replied:
terminate
, the eyes, with a razor, something red, the sun.” Georges Bataille, trans. Joachim Neugroschel,
Story of the Eye
(1928).

*

 
“No more than three glasses of wine or three beers per week.” Jørgen de Mey via ghost writer Scott Hays,
The Action Hero Body
(2005).

*

Apropos L. Ron Hubbard in
Dianetics
(1950): “the scent of turkey might not only smell good to everybody, it might smell good on the same olfactory wavelength to everybody, assuming that everybody has dianetically rinsed (and thus optimized) their minds of all fruitless aberrations (e.g. neuroses, phobias, psychoses, etc.) and become
clears
. The
^[5]
problem
^[6]
with
^[7]
life
^[8]
is
^[9]
the
^[10]
noncleared
^[11]
individual
^[12]
or
^[13]
aberree
.
^[14]
” Ref. Hubbard’s incl. of footnoted “words that are sometimes misunderstood…as an aid to the reader.…Other definitions can be found in various dictionaries” (ix).

*

Sound of a Revving Motorcycle. Sam Waterson,
Law & Order
(1994-2033). Recall Waterson as Nick Calloway in
The Great Gatsby
(1974) and his contention that “the role was demanding. I’ve never had to try on so many white suits in my life. And they all itched something terrible. That’s why I refer to 1974 as the Year of the Itchy White Suits whenever 1974 pops up in conversation.”

*

 
“Laughing with increasing animation, I turn on the faucet, dampen a washcloth in warm water and begin to remove the makeup. The mascara, the lipstick, this powdery white mask—I wipe it from the skin of my face. THE END.” DH Anonymous,
I, Alex
(1996).

*

 
“THE WIDE WORLD NO. 1. Mixing with the thousand pursuits & passions & objects of the world as personified by Imagination is profitable & entertaining. These pages are intended at this their commencement to contain a record of new thoughts (when they occur); for a receptacle of all the old ideas that partial but peculiar peepings at antiquity can furnish or furbish; for tablet to save the wear & tear of weak Memory & in short for all the various purposes & utility real or imaginary which are usually comprehended under that comprehensive title
Common Place Book.
” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journal (1820). Emerson had an asymmetrical face.

*

 
“The question mark is what’s interesting. The answer is stupid.” Hampton Fancher,
Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner
(2007).

*

 
“Within its alkaline walls I uncovered deserts of vast paternities. They stood in a circle and fucked one another. I was taken aback. I wasn’t expecting this. Outside the scream of a hog unseated the smalltalk of birds. I remembered the Netherlands. I remembered the afterlife. Furniture is an adequate means of reposition—that’s what I told myself. I wanted to know why they were so hotly engaged in sexual congress. I placed a megaphone to my lips and asked them. My question unseated the scream of the hog. Then I felt the kiss of a tire iron on my exposed, pulsing, purple cerebellum.” Danny Ikea,
The Psychic
Ramparts of Trailer Fantasies
(1,700,025 AR)

*

 
“It’s dark.” Figure from the Dark Ages (c. 475-1000)

“I just shake the buildings out of my sleeves.” Frank Lloyd Wright, Source and Date Unknown.

*

 
“Everything went to [expletive] when the Greenbergs came home and caught me taking a nap in their bed. <
Laughs.
> My freezer door was halfway open. I tried to close it, but gravity wouldn’t let me, and a pack of fudgesicles was in the way. Anyhow the gig was up. <
Sighs.
> They beat me with sledgehammers, ate my internal organs, and threw me in a dumpster. After that it was life on the streets. <
Swears.
> <
Swears again
.> I hope those [expletive] eat [expletive] and [expletive] and burn in bleeping hell. <
Swears again
.>” Sentient Refrigerator,
My Life as a Sentient Refrigerator
(2207).

*

The production of writing is the production of a code. That goes for any production. To produce something is to encode it. Everything else entails an act of decoding, denuding,
deleuzing
…

*

 
“And a rinky dinky do to you!” Hong Kong Phooey voice-over perf. Scatman Crothers,
Hong Kong Phooey
(1974-76). Crothers passed away in 1986 at the age of 76. His name has nothing to do with feces or scatology but is a ref. to scat singing. Jack Nicholson nailed him in the chest with an ax in
The Shining
(1980). Hammer blood surged from the wound. Crothers played the drums in a speakeasy. He appeared on
Sanford & Son
(1972-77) and did a ski-dat-ba-bi-ba-dop-pop-pop with Redd Foxx. He appeared in
Zapped!
(1982), starring Scott Baio, and
Coonskin
(1975), starring an animated African-American rabbit. He reified yet problematized African-Amerikan stereotypes. He didn’t watch cartoons. He shaved his head with a machete. He looked askance at himself in the mirror. Vietnam troubled him. Indiana and traffic and nicotine fits troubled him. But he was happy. But he was sad. He was the saddest asshole in Amityville.

“The dark hole of meaning punctuates The Unobtainable like a misplaced comma splice.” Britney Spears-Mahmood, Interview with Kalypso Shadrach,
The Red Sky at Morning Show
(2040).