A Memo Concerning: Penguins, Anthony Keidis, and war heroes.

Last week I woke up on my kitchen counter. Considering it is a small surface area this was nothing short of a miracle. The fact that I was not on the counter was even more stunning. At the time though, I was just glad that I had exited a dream. I had gone to sleep that night with one simple question resonating in my head: Do I really want to put my fate in the hands of a child surrounded by wise men, or in the hands of an adult surrounded by dumbasses? I passed out hard that night, and so we have: A Memo Concerning: Penguins, Anthony Keidis, and war heroes.

I came to at what can only be described as the opening of a network newscast: a flury of bright shapes, key terms flashing, lines extending in opposite directions and stale, self important music. Once the myopia ended I realized that I had ridden Kate Moss’ tapeworm out to Vegas, listening to Mercedes Sosa and Anthony Keidis sing duets on my WalkMan the entire way there. I believe it was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert when we slithered past a heard of fluttering female bats and I put out my cigarillo on one set of flying pudenda. I caught some heat for that but my comrade Edward Signaigo, now revealing himself on Ashley Olsen’s tapeworm, reminded me that we had business in the City of Sin. Apparently our beloved haven of debauchery and libations had been invaded by a swarm of Alaskans, and if it is one thing we know about Alaskans it is that they belong in Alaska. There is a reason they live all the way the fuck up there folks and it is because we have a mutual agreement that they belong on the fringes of society. We need a place for the freaks to go, so that freaks can be freaks rather than risking that they may attempt to make the rest of us a nation of freaks. But when the freaks come down the mountain and into places I love, well that’s when dudes gotta ride out the bounty on tapeworms, throwing peyote buttons at evangelicals and singing Manu Chao to Neo-Minutemen. We were doing god’s work I’d say.

The next thing I knew I was in a crowded auditorium staring at a stage anxiously covered by paisley curtains. A midget dressed as Oprah (how one dresses like Oprah is beyond me, but the impression the dream left was that she was dressed as the John Rockefeller of female consumer masses) was walking up and down the aisle selling vampire novels written by a Mormon. My dropped jaw quickly snatched up tight again to see a childhood acquaintance descending from a series of wires down on to the stage as the curtains quickly opened. She was a magician proficient in such pagan skills as psycho-analysis and curing the mentally handicap via embryonic stem cell Satan worshiping. The stage soon revealed a crescendo of ivory stairs. On each step, packed tightly like patriotic cumshits in SUVs dropping F-bombs in stop and go traffic, there stood a quorum of penguins ready to perform with my dancing friend. They began to dance synchronized and it was of course the most kick ass thing that has ever happened on stage. As for my fire-breathing, national debt disappearing friend? She preformed miracles. What miracles? I don’t know. She valued education, and this of course was most peculiar during a dream such as this. The only vivid thing I remember is when she made us disappear.

This is usually when the cowards say, “Pinch me when it’s over.”

I came to again at Circus, Circus. Once again a member of a restless crowd anxiously holding sheets of paper with nothing on them, crinkling them tightly as if to pour the last drips of something out of an abused and dried up teet. We watched a grizzly bear getting its ass kicked by a series of foam letters straight out of a Sesame Street episode. I looked to the right and saw two infants shitting their pants in the seat next to me. They looked like Benjamin Button, aging strangely and smoking fat cigars. From the end of the stogies I could see the feet of their children—or maybe just the idea of them—wiggling helplessly in the air. They blow fat plumes of smoke at me, the wee feet at the end of their stogies swinging more frantically. And then they spoke to each other, waving their infant hands in grand platitudes.

“Mortimor, I still got my money on the Bear. It’s still doin alright. That beast is a quarter horse, lets wait this shit out.”

“Agreed Randolph, I hear Jesus the Christ still is backing the bear. Did you hear that some people still question Jesus the Christ?”

“Oh the horror! The man gave his life for us! Imagine the sacrifice! He is a true hero to all mankind. How can you doubt him? If anything we owe him this debt!”

And with those fatal words the letter Q delivered the death blow to the poor bear. There was outrage in the crowd, the masses reaching up and over banisters trying to seek revenge on the foam letters. But the letters soon dissipated into a gaseous ghost, rising up and over the crowd and raising one finger to their lips, whispering: Martyrs have no say whether or not marbles fall from the counter.

I soon blacked out again consumed in the smoke of their burning progeny. The smoke disappeared and I found myself as an infant looking up at the kitchen counter. There is the crack and pop of hot oil from the frying pan, and I see it falling to me. I try to move but I can’t. I pray that this is just a shitty dream that I will wake up from with a raging boner and dry throat. But I look down and my knees and hands have turned into roots, plunging deep into the kitchen. I follow the roots and see wise men holding on to them, they are forgotten and chained, just as I am chained to them. The oil will soon fall and burn me and Julia Child is fucking pissed.

I woke up that morning and stumbled out of my residence, thankful that it was all just a dream. But on the front porch was…goddamnit…yet another love note from Kate Moss’ tapeworm asking, ugh!, when I want to ride again…