TMIT: THIS SHOULD BE THE NEW EMOJI FOR LOVE ON INSTAGRAM

and alien love, too

1. love is made of many components. what are your top three components of love?

like this last week's Hunter x Hunter, aye? the globules that make up all life. the koala at first thought it all meant nothing, no afterlife, life was dust, dust to dust. but then he met a strange ginger girl...

1. Triscuits, cos everyone should experience at least one Summer of Triscuit before you die.

2. self-sacrifice. only when you allow your partner to be the best version of herself do you really love her. of course then she'll realize she's been saddled with your broke ass her entire life and leave you to become the Oprah of the Toronto Raptors. denying yourself love so she can love is the greatest love of all.

3. speaking of Whitney Houston, you need a good love song to keep you company. you need to hear "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out" on one hot summer night with your maybe-beloved under a cobblestone bridge by a lake in London. and as the oncoming double-decker bus swerves to miss you two you realize the bus was all in your head---it was really a plush double-decker-bus souvenir keychain---and that the bus was really the manifestation of your anxiety.

then you and her walk uphill to her house in the shandy shanties which is just a hostel on a European map with no parents nor adult supervision ever, and constant screaming. you go upstairs by the creaky case to watch another Morrissey video: "The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get".

she bemoans the insanely-long song titles, tho she says she does admire the music. you kiss her, she kisses you, and you both bemoan the little kid girl in the video with the crown who really gets treated poorly by Morrissey.

2. for you what is good sex and what is great sex?

good: facial
great: swallow

3. in long-tern unions do you:
a) expect love to grow over time as the union unfolds?
b) need to have immediate attraction, infatuation, and feelings or excitement in order to enter into a long-term union?

take it from me, the excitement game never works out in the end. you try every day to top yourself, do something bigger than the trick you pulled yesterday, and you get deflated and exhausted and burned by the marriage's first year. when you start getting bored with each other, you realize you were just a pain to put up with from the start and get even more depressed.

or take it from Alice from Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore or the tv show Alice. people found Ellen Burstyn grating and Linda Lavin engaging, but only one won the Oscar. can you believe Linda Lavin was 40 when that show started in the '70s? now THAT's a milf, even though she never had children in real life. second-chance love is real, just don't choose the cowboy who fills bullets for a living.

i thought all my unions would last forever: The UK, the European Union. or EU as i liked to call it, my pet name for it, i'd send it money by wire through Western Union. i thought i'd unfurl my new Union Jack and wave it with two hands in my room. but alas everything changes, everything eventually breaks apart. anyway the scientists say human extinction in 2050, right? so, you know, watch old tv on tape and have a good time while you still can.

4. you are away on your dream vacation…

are you alone with someone? who?

yes. my cock. my pet chicken Filbert. and the Trivago Guy.

do you want to have a hookup with a sexy stranger? is the sexy stranger female, male, gender-fluid, bigender, transgender

it's Carmen Sandiego. she's always been bisexual---a true bisexual on tv---she just couldn't reveal that when she was on The History Channel. she wants me to drink her fluids. the thing is, she's not exactly physically sexy anymore, the wear and tear of constantly being on the road has turned her face into a giant prune, but the drive and mystery are still there in full force, she deliberately lost her own corded-telephone number. she still wants to rule the world. i take the brim of her long snakey fedora and throw it down into the Pyrenees, which upsets her very much. a crocodile hands it back to her. i tell her going forward she's got the best 30 years of my life...

would you rather spend all day doing your favorite vacation activity OR spend all night having kinky sex?

Carmen wants the kinky stuff now more than ever at her age, and i ask her if she likes to watch. so I masturbate, that's my favorite activity all-time. and then we watch Alice reruns on Nick At Nite as Carmen regales me under the covers with tales of her Nickelodeon days...

5. is hot steamy all-your-wildest-fantasies-come-true sex more likely to happen with your current lover or a sexy, no-strings-attached stranger??

a stranger, but my mom always says a stranger is just a friend you haven't met, so that cancels that out. take it from me, actualizing a Hollywood ending is EXTREMELY hard. my current lover, she's the best. but you can't have hot sex in a tropical climate, that cancels that out, you can only have hot sex in Iceland. Bjork told me that once...she then proceeded to go all Coyote Ugly on the bar countertop, dancing till dusk turned to dawn. you know how many shots she had that night? zero.

BONUS describe your hot steamy all-your-wildest-fantasies-come-true sex: CLICK HERE

and yes, that IS Princess Di

CLICK HERE FOR TMI TUESDAY

LOOKING AT WATER AGAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME

notes:

* it's essential...i mean...it's the name of a territory out of Conan the Barbarian

* narrator: you know that thing?
Phoenix: who, me? i'm in the car now.
narrator: buckle up or you'll have to pay a fine with the bad cop with the mustache grilling you under his pen flashlight and then you'll have to move back in with your mom cos you can't pay the costs and have to make an embarrassing call to JG Wentworth to get your damn money now while your mom is doing your smelly laundry with pink curlers in her hair and she slides the laundry basket under your bunny-slippered feet.
Phoenix: that sounds like a nice life to me.
narrator: you'll never get another date again...

* that girl would have been Beyoncé...she looks like Beyonce, too...

* i'm a white dude with long blond hair, so i'm either a Cobain-wannabe guitar-player or a surfer

* narrator: what is the thing you want to do forever?
Phoenix: write. i've discovered that writing is my thing. for better or worse, it's the only thing i care about, it's my therapy and my curse and my weight around my neck. it's hard and satisfying at the same time. i fear it and embrace it and love it and hate it. it's prevented me from having normal relationships yet that is the very thing which enriches my writing.
narrator: sounds like you got it all figured out, you don't need me, why am i even here?
Phoenix: you should do anime with that voice. there's gonna be a lot of work opening up with the whole Vic thing.
narrator: you know the one thing humans can't live without?
Phoenix: a passion for something.
narrator: no, water.

* narrator: what keeps you up early? and late for that matter?
Phoenix: masturbation. it's like coffee for me, can't start my day without it.
narrator: *double take* oh. i heard you had given up coffee, i thought you were gonna say you switched to tea.

* narrator: what would make you sick if someone else did it first?
Phoenix: Choose Your Own Adventure. i swear i came up with that first but i was born too late and RA Montgomery stole my glory. i hear he's a nice guy tho and is in his own feud with Edward Packard so it's all Essentia water under the bridge. Drake made Canada cool, like United-States-level-cool, which isn't easy to do. also, Elon Musk. at first everyone wants to be Elon Musk but then you realize Elon Musk is a complete asshole but then again he wouldn't be where he is if he WEREN'T a complete asshole so therein lies the tradeoff and the rub of irony.
narrator: the correct answer is lozenges.

* narrator: what do you want to do forever?
Phoenix: blog.
narrator: what scares you?
Phoenix: me.
narrator: eventually that thing that's yours will be done by someone else.
Phoenix: yes but there is nothing new under the sun, don't you read the Bible?
narrator: i'm an atheist sci-fi nerd, the only bible i read is the ALF Season 2 bible.

* narrator: do you have a permit to create steampunk on this NYC roof?
Phoenix: chill, dreams don't need permits. no, like i said i've never met Cuba. no selfies.
narrator: don't sing opera while driving.
Phoenix: hey, you already admonished me for texting, can't a millennial have any fun anymore?

* narrator: someone's gonna be first.
Phoenix: but i shall be last.

* Steph Curry: i ruined the game.
KD: and i ruined my Achilles.
Mahomes: i got robbed. it should have been me, not more Tom Brady. the Brady thing is too much, it's quickly turning into a Winklevii situation, you know?

* only marathons run at night count, there's swimming and then there's Gattaca swimming, but can you do an onion volcano?, the electric violin is not a real violin, bulls like red they just don't like you, boxing is dead and makes you dead and only counts if you get into the Boxing Hall of Fame

* narrator: someone's gonna stop time.
drummer: Time doesn't exist. anyone can stop Time.
narrator: …

* all kidding aside, this motivated me more than any commercial before or since. this was a Nick-Nurse-level pep talk. it really got me going, made me want to do good, write something brilliant, eat a whole pizza in one bite, something bold. I AM BOLD!!!

CLICK HERE RIGHT HERE AT THIS LINK

happy weekend, my babies

NEXT TWO DAYS: i REALLY need for Rory to win. to be good while Tiger is good, too, you know? both good at the same time, we need that real matchup again. you can call Rory Irish Phil, he doesn't mind, he told me. besides, all Irishmen are called Phil anyway.

TOMORROW: okay, so McDonald's is offering McDuh from all around the world, which saves on frequent flyer-miles so i appreciate you MickeyDee's, good lookin' out. not everyone can be an Instagram Traveler. cheesy fries from New Zealand i'll save for Zealand Hunk from Ballykissangel's dying-ember years, the Spanish Quarter Pounder is just a quarter-pounder with a different cheese, the Chicken Sandwich from Canada has bacon but no maple syrup---and a tomatillo is just a tomato. Stroopwaffel McFlurry, that's the kind of dessert you have just before 18 holes of miniature golf.

GINGER BREAD: CALLING BACK MY CALLING

Cotard: BROTHER! unhand the girl!

Codrus, who wears the exact Cotard robe of everything Cotard is wearing, laughs head upturned.

Codrus: more more! more mores! *laughs*

Cotard: why must you follow me all around the galaxy? why can't i have my own solo adventure?

Codrus: cos it wouldn't sell, it'd be like Arya's sail voyage. oh brother, it pains me to know you hate me so, i can't stand to be away from you for an extended period. Mama would be so cross with us, she just wants to see her boys get along, for the sake of reality.

Cotard: you have crystallized anger in the universe, made it a sharp-pointed comet. you come to this one place in the boondocks of space where all yout shit will be tolerated and you will be hailed as a god.

Codrus: well why not? we ARE gods after all. what's the fun if we don't throw our wondrous weight around. if we don't constantly bop these pathetic paltry measly humans on their puny heads---like ice goalkeepers---with all their stupid smallminded soulsucking rules. it's our job nay duty to keep slapshotting pucks their way till one of their artificial saline tits bursts. pressure bust pipes. it pays to be selective. what is a taboo if not the ultimate excitement.

Cotard: life isn't only about pleasure.

Codrus: of course it is. we deities neeed to stretch our legs and blow to keep the universe spinning. we are too static on high, we live too much in our extraterrestrial towers, we need some terra-firma powers every once in awhile, live like the Romans did! you remember that time. we need to experience everything, not just know everything,

Cotard: you have it wrong, as you've always had: we don't know everything, we are everything. and as such we have a rapturous responsibility.

Codrus: it's time for me to have some fun. break the reins, bite them off. gods remain to break the rules, such as they are, and make new rules, for then to break. we're gods, we can do whatever the fuck we want *smiles suspiciously*

Cotard: you have too much fun. you're always having too much fun.

the ginger girl stays quiet, eyes lowered, kneeling, but she is not mute. her mouth trembles and her lower lip quakes with unspoken words of mutterance.

Cotard: have you named this poor innocent soul of the fairer and more-just sex?

Codrus: Sinphony. get it? *laughs* sin is phony. i rebranded her to suit my current needs.

Cotard: she trusted you like a father. she was an orphan at the whim of your strong hand. helpless and alone, abandoned and more vulnerable than a pygmy fox. her magic could have gone in either direction, but of course you squandered her last bit of sunshine under your juicer arm. you could have had a valuable traveling partner for life and lives, an altruistic asset on your journey of self-discovery, a person to show you another way, the female way, the softer way, the loving way, not the dirty way. but you were all too male.

a gale of grievous gravity blows the large windows down and open for all the townsfolk to peep inside.

Cotard: with her always being younger than you, she could have made you see the world and universe with fresh fanciful wondrous eyes, she could have been the drops for your languid cynical viewholes.

Codrus: my eyes are black holes. they saw it all. the people. her bounce and her filled mouth on top of the caterpillar of pillows. that sound wasn't the wind. i love how there's a bed in the middle of this church where the pews should be. it's even more fun in the Temple let me tell ya. this is the assertion of true power.

Cotard: *teeth and cara and carriage cringed* disgusting. shameful. Mama should throw you in the vortex of Hell RIGHT NOW and throw away the skeleton key. how can you live with yourself? she's only 12!!!

Codrus: i live eternally within myself. love is love. i'm showing her the way of the spirit. this town lives in an age when this sort of thing was frowned upon but acted upon impulsively behind closed moat doors all the time, the stone grey castle was quite the carousal carousel when the heavy gates were upturned. there are too many beige scrolls nailed onto heavy doors here to count. what's the big deal? see, brother, i know what humans really are: they're trash. you seem to want to constantly ennoble trash, like you're a weak-willed servant eunuch. learn from my Sinphony and get a better-smelling hand, a hand that wafts of perfume.

Roger Federer: what. it wasn't my fault. did you see those red winds? it was fucking Dune out there! red clay got right in my eyes, i need my precious eyes to make pasta! why the hell didn't they reschedule? i missed my opportunity to give Nadal a beatdown on dat ass! i'm pissed off about this, this will be my last best chance to actually beat that banana-shorts-pickin' baboon at his own game! don't get me wrong, i love the man, he's like a brother to me, but NOT when he's 2 AWAY from my record! my precious record! that's too hot to handle in the kitchen! i mean what will happen to me when i eventually LOSE this record!!? what will my identity be? it was all wrapped up in 20. i will be shattered into a billion pieces of eggshell. i'll just be---GASP!!!---another tennis player.

Djokovic: i feel your red pain, bro. same thing happened to me. i've actually defeated Rafa at the French Open and you know what i got for that? nothing, big fat zero. didn't get a trophy or Grand Slam Medal The Size Of An Aztec Wheel or nuthin'!!! nuffin. don't worry, even if, i mean WHEN, Nadal surpasses you you'll still be considered the best. i mean when you think of the best player of all time, you just don't think of Rafa, despite him having the numbers, he'll always just be the clay-court specialist. some like me still consider Rafa the little boy from the isle of Majorca like he's Gon from Hunter x Hunter or something. now when I beat Rafa's record, okay THEN THEN, I will take the rightful place at G.O.A.T.!!! and it shall be legit!!!

Fed: thank you. people will forget about Rafa…

Djoker: ...and they'll forget about you, Rog...*Djokovic laughs The Joker Laugh*

Kevin Durant in a black hoodie: that's Kevin with an I not a O, i'm not Looney. so i patented my dance move---that ballet-toe tap breakdancing move---and i've been performing it on basketball courts around the world. but it just isn't the same. i'm on the basketball court i so dearly clearly love, but it's during the halftime show only. i've become a During Durant. i've opened up a chain of urban theatres---following in the footsteps of everyone's mentor Magic Johnson---to provide arts and culture to the inner city. to scare the youth into acting. you should see the inside: we have nice stone stools of red circles for all y'all butts to sit on, each spaced evenly the same amount apart.

in the audience: Jalen Rose: YOU WANT TO FUCK DRAKE!!?
Molly Q: shhhhhhhhhhhhhh! not so loud!

Durant: i play the part of Shylock each night. the kids get Shy-Guy Fry-Guy Pac-Man McDonald's toys if their parents can prove the kids went the whole show without peeing their pants. went without wenting. i play off a roving Antonio i pick out of the audience different audiences each night different towns. i want to experience how the other half lives, you know? fate dealt me a devastating hand, a blow that was not pleasurable. i am fucked, my career is over. i was played by heels, i was strung up and along by my heel, i just wanted to play. i am a Greek tragic figure, i listened to the Chorus online, got up all in their mentions, i couldn't control the chatter. now what am i? what is my identity? i'm just another bumhead like Drake. there are some things which money cannot cure. like love. a mother's love. love of the game.

Jack Dorsey in surfer cargs shorts: love is a game. hey Kevin, yo Kevon, i saw you in those Google commercials and you were great! mind doing a series of ads for us at Twitter?

Durant: sir the answer is no and you betta back the fuck away from me right now don't get in the path of my crutches cos imma cut a bitch. hey, when you think of the name Antonio, is it an Italian name or a Spanish name to you?

Ray Liotta: THE FUCK! a FUCKING TURKEY replaced me! yeah that's right, an animated turkey replaced me for the smoking ads! are you fucking kidding me. i'm bout to get Harlem-gangster in this bitch, that wasn't acting! let's go to the Bronx right now to settle things. they told me i couldn't act out of a paper KFC bag. i was counting on this campaign to refinance and eventually buy that white Hollywood Hills mansion you see in my smoking commercial! i was an actor playing an actor! where am i gonna get work now? i haven't auditioned for anything in 20 years! they said my face was rubbery like a chicken's. i thought that was a good thing, like Jim Carrey. i'll show you chicken! who's the chicken now!!? *knocks over the fish tank in his office* that goldfish got bumped off mob-style!

professor at Obec College: today's lesson: repeats. you know? i don't mean the repeats when there's not a new show and the season is over, i mean i've never ONCE in my life ever seen a film or a tv show i have already watched TWICE. never. never ever. once i see it i see it, you know? i feel it's offensive to my brain if i told it i was watching this thing AGAIN, like my brilliant mind couldn't intake it the first time, it was too difficult to deduce, catch, comprehend. there's so something dreadfully wasting-time about watching something twice.

Gladyce on the phone: Jill what spell shenanigans have you been nose in? i see your hidden hand everywhere out there in the world controlling things, i see your imprint bending world events to your whim.

Jill: Conan the Barbarian will, pashaw.

Gladyce: now dear, what are you doing? up there at the Homecountry Headquarters? what Motherland mischief are you pussy-deep in?

Jill: what. Brexit is now on Halloween, *cackles* i love it. i made the first match England vs. Scotland, heeeheeteehee. and the U.S. women beat Thailand 13-0. 13? hmmmm?...my favorite number, that entire U.S. Women's team are full of such nubile tasty-morsel babes ripe for the picking, i mean that's a readymade coven waiting to happen right there! two covens! such soft flesh on green-stained knees. we got the next three generations of witches on that one team to fill out our supplies, be our attack-and-defense army, carry things on when we're in our 300s.

Doryce: never trust a recruiter who's TOO into her job.

Abby Wambach: my head has been responsible for more deciding four-year-winning goals than any woman in history. and yet they wanted me to get a "more respectable" haircut for the photoshoot cos they said my shaved-sides punk-long-bangs was "too gay" and they needed to sell me to Middle America.

Jill: *smiles surly* pashaw! hogwash! what is this, the Middle Ages? you the lover of classical music, you who would never sell her country out to North Korea. my dear Abby, i for one LOVE your hairstyle! i want to write you a letter sometime, you give such great advice. i love that you expressly shaved your head to show off that skull-n-crossbones tattoo you have planted right in the middle of your shaved head there, that is so beautiful. your head is so gorgeous, so nice and dome. we need to take back our cuntry. come, my dear, this way...

Doryce: well there's a lot of excitement here locally in Obec Woods this week. The U.S. Open is going on but i've been banned from ever setting foot on a golf course again after that golf-ball lake incident i did. and of course the final season of Big Little Lies is filming here and in Monterey and in Monterrey, Mexico but i've been banned from stepping foot on any film set involving hot nubile Hollywood actresses even those in their 30s, cos of what Jill did and my guilty-by-association. thanks, Jill! you're doing a bang-up job, hon. i stepped on the message. i HAVE been asked by my agent Taki to take the part offered to me in Little Big Lies, which is the porno of Big Little Lies, i'm thinking about it, mulling it over like Mueller.

Doryce: hey, dirtbag!

Dirg: *points at himself* me?

Doryce: quit napping, you lazy bum! you heard what i said!? i'm banned, we're gonna be living here with you two numbskulls now, it's four roommates all under the same roof, what could possibly go wrong!

Gladyce: dear, can we move to Britain before it's too late? i mean i want to be able to breathe fresh air again, i'm too old to have a compromised respiratory system...

Doryce: DIRG! the gardeners are coming over to fix the leak. it's a huge job, big bucks, they're going to be here awhile long time, it's a massive leak in the bathroom which will require taking apart a part of the corner and banging on pipes all night long. NOT your kind of sick banging you think every night when you masturbate alone.

Dirg: hey, if the Mexicans don't get in my way, i won't in their hair, we're cool like dat.

Doryce: the cats are getting squeamish from all the worms which slime their way from holes in the leak onto the bathroom tile at night, slug stomachs all slimy, the cats screech and try to eat the slugs, which is toxic. our poor kitties.

Gladyce: yes, dear, remember what i told you, we need to protect these kitties as if they were our very familiars, which they are.

Doryce: in the meantime, i'll try to distract myself with Woodies on the Wharf, which i'm also banned from. o what i would have had there, scoping all the surfer hardbodies! but one i miss the most. Bama. he told me in his recent intergalactic planetary interdimensional letter that he was a shaper now.

Gladyce: he lost the weight and is getting back into the gym?

Doryce: no, dear, Bama's a pro surfboard-shaper now. perhaps i will spot him on the beach from a tower among the crowd like a Gidget romcom. that would make this lonely girl's heart skip a beat from all the way back in the '50s. spying with my glass from the attic. that would give me a woodie.

Gladyce: i want to see you in your Gidget grass skirt, babes.

Dirg: want the rest of my leftover Chinese food?

Laertus: no. see the tears in my eyes? i'm putting a moratorium indefinitely on all Chinese food entering my belly.

Dirg: i want that 7-Eleven umbrella at the protest tho.

Eye Luggage: okay, anime roundup, go.

Laertus: OMG i got hearts in my eyes! did you see that move inward between the two mouths of Konan and Yahiko on this week's Shippuden last week? that was such a tantalizing scene! cos they go in for the kiss but the actual kiss isn't shown.

Dirg: and that pervert with the weird eyes Nagato is listening in the rain from outside, a man after my own heart. if you can't get some, film it and post it online for revenge.

Laertus: very filmic. it's so provocative cos it can imply many things: perhaps it's not just Konan's first kiss but her first sex.

Dirg: i like the gender roles, Konan the nurse bandaging up the real warior Yahiko, good. it's like Scott Baio always says proving Biden's a dirty rotten plagiarizer: women are the downfall of men. they've been laying the trap for us since the dawn of time. always trying to trick us, get us in trouble with our employer, when all men want to do is get laid. they're always out to ruin men's careers and lives, jealous of their power, success, and hard-won years of professional hard work.

Laertus: especially the pretty ones, right? the tv starlets. the untouchables, the unreachables? the ones Scott Baio personally himself laid the red carpet out for, er, well a blanket in the studio for...you think Nicole Eggert ever wanted this? her fatness is the proof, she wouldn't be fat today if not for all this stress. something happened to Scott Baio, he wasn't like this in the '80s...

Dirg: Eggert's got egg on her face.

Eye: SPEAKING of pure love, i now take the floor for a long time to discuss my hard-won inner spiritual growth and nostalgia. Ballykissangel. i experienced this week two of the greatest days of my life, two days which could only be experienced by waiting decades to see these specific episodes of Ballykissangel back-to-back. there's something about marathoning a long-running show, you know? you experience all the momentum and inner-hard-work and script-counseling and story-bandaging and lovepaths and character arcs that built up over years in one fateful sitting that your mind explodes. i experienced the concentrated entirety of the innocent Nineties in one fell swoop of a messenger pigeon. the passages and the bangings. that first episode which sets the stage, oh my the scenery…

Laertus: Assumpta. what a lovely name, you remember that unique name forever, never to be repeated before or since on television, strange-pretty name for a once-in-a-lifetime beauty, a truly one-of-a-kind soul of a woman.

Eye: the show is very much the Irish Northern Exposure. the quirks of a small town hidden away from the rest of the world dropped into a secret location, a beautiful isle on Earth cut off from society. looking back on that first episode---the one with the flying confessional---i mean the townsfolk are having a heart attack over the FAX MACHINE! the fax machine is the height of modernization in these times which they curse. they want to always retain their quaint buttermaking farmer's appeal at Ballykiss, you know, real folk, Bally butter, without all those wires and buttons and flashing blue lights.

Laertus: my pop talked about this show all the time, it was broadcast on tape on PBS on Sunday nights.

Eye: yes yes! this was SUCH a PBS show! i fastforwarded to the LAST episode and it's just not the same---as the classics tend to be. the show should have ended when Assumpta dies and Father Pete looks achingly back at the town he now must abandon and fade to Playmobil credits, that should have been the series finale. i mean NOW you have this other priest-transfer who's built like Arnold, a New Zealand hunk calendar-model who would never in a billion years become a priest with a chiseled face and Viking locks like that. and Susannah Doyle clearly is meant to replace the irreplaceable Assumpta. that female cop might as well be Janine Turner herself.

Dirg: did you see Arnold get drop-kicked by that dude at the convention? Arnold got flashbacks to when he was in that fighting ring in Conan the Barbarian. that's his Vietnam. Arnold was at that moment contemplating life and thinking life and death were the same to him. i like how the Ballykissangel parish priests and cardinals are villains, they're all portrayed as grumpy old misers, very Pope Benedict Darth Sidious.

Eye: think about the innocence of that last Ballykissangel episode in 2001, just months before 9/11 when the world changed forever and would never be the same. the two topics in that episode which got the townsfolk in a twist on the edge of moral heart attacks were DIVORCE and MEDICAL CANNABIS. seriously, those were the two, those were giving the community fits and dividing them along blue and black lines. can a divorce remarry back into the Catholic church? even on a mountain when nobody was looking? is it okay to grow pot in your backyard for pain? and the sex.

Dirg: there never was any. the thing's called Ballykissangel and there was never once any shown kiss! some soap opera! just a lot of Mulder/Scully-esque UST season after season.

Eye: true. the New Zealand Power Ranger Priest and the Assumpta-wannabe are on the couch in a compromising situation---meaning fully-clothed sleeping near each other reading dueling books by the fireplace---when the parents come in to find them this way. the father remarks about how randy the priests at Ballykissangel are and always seem to be and that's it. THAT's PBS sex!

Dirg: Dervla Kirwan was everyone's first masturbation model, she certainly was mine...

Eye: Assumpta Fitzgerald: A Life Of Tragedy. she was THE walking embodiment of the Irish Goodbye, she WAS Irish Tragedy Herself in the flesh, the personification of a grand Greek James Joycean epic of sorrow. i mean here you have this beautiful young woman---a galactic green Gem sprung from the Green Land itself---with the whole world in front of her and she gets stuck in the dead-end job of tending pub at a small gem town. she has the smarts for anything, she could travel the world, she's University-educated and trained up for combat by the hard cobblestone streets. she's an atheist who fooking despises the Catholic Church, hates all it stands for. i later read the books to find out more of Assumpta's backstory never shown on the show, stretch out her bio a bit more. she as a little girl blamed the Church for the divorce of her parents who argued all the time and made her homelife childhood miserable. and that stuck with her as she blossomed into adulthood.

Laertus: always read books, and any underlying evidence.

Eye: she is an alone soul, lonely, she wanders this world aimlessly and angry. her sarcasm keeps others at bay, but the goofy lanky priest cracks through her armor. she FINALLY finds love, a man who is her soul mate, and the bloody man...…...is a fucking Catholic priest!

Laertus: talk about irony!

Eye: and then right before he is to be defrocked cos she's too hot for him to keep his vows and they are to be married in a memorable pricey drunken ceremony on the mountain the whole town's invited to, their whole lives in front of them in love and nasty sex, this lovely complicated young woman DIES YOUNG by pricking her spinster finger like a godsister from a fable on the faulty wiring of a fuse in the basement of the bar she keeps! ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME

Dirg: basements are dangerous places, believe me on this. see? modern technology, too many wires in the world, get back to American values. that really sucks for him, he's about to give up on his career for her---not to mention his eternal soul---just to be a good househusband. and he doesn't even get to pick the fruits of his betrayal to the Church. that tasty sin. the only way this would have been MORE of an Irish tragedy was she gets electrocuted smoking dead BEFORE he confesses his feelings for her so she dies forever alone and unloved. magnifiying the strange arc of her life cos she's such a babe.

Eye: exactly. you know, i don't know how this is possible, but i remember being in college when this episode of her death was going on, it was all the buzz in town, under breath, i remember people talking in faint bursts about Assumpta and her death and the faulty fuse. all inbetween drowned out by the new Star Wars, but it was there in the irish background in bars and coffeeshops. the sound came in murmurs, everyone gossiping and in shock over the episode of her death. i imagined what heaven would be for me then, Heaven for me then would be me in that pub when the lights go blinking flickering and warning Assumpta NOT to go downstairs and instead enjoy the Chinese food festival inside her pub with the alive lively townsfolk. i also remember something i wrote back then---again, i don't know how this is possible---it was on a webpage, one of the very first websites on the internet, when all you could do was type on crude weblog diaries, my feelings over this character of Assumpta, how it was crazy to be so obsessed with her life, but she was more real to me than my own family, i felt her struggles in life, i related to her on so many levels. i had to write about her RIGHT after the new tragic rain-soaked episode aired, her death shook me to the core. it was the most beautiful essay i've ever written before or since, my schoolmarm would never believe me cos i never did any of this stuff for her class eyes. it was on a green page with pink print on that screen, and i added a few pictures of Assumpta through the years on the show. i explained in great detail and fancy words just what Assumpta meant to me, how she taught me a young girl just starting out the hardships of life, of NOT finding love, of being denied happiness, of NOT being given a fair shake at life, of NOT assumpting up to Heaven, it should have been a rooftop pub, of dying too soon, of dying unfulfilled. i signed it with my real name and the year: 1997.

Gladyce holds the printed-up paper of the weblog in her bony hand and smiles sincerely at Eye Luggage.

Gladyce: you're making great strides of progress, my dear, i'm proud of you.

Cotard takes Velvetta by the hand around the back of the church bush for privacy.

Velvetta: my lord, are we in a competition with that other god and her acolyte? i want to win, we should win, and i hate her red hair!

Cotard: never hate, Vel, only love. please, call me Cotard. don't call me daddy, that's too weird, especially now. here, take this.

under his robe he hands her a tape.

Velvetta: *cringes* sick.

Cotard: *closes his eyes* no no, you don't understand. i am NOTHING like him. i'm the exact opposite of him. by design. i will protect you from my sick brother's clutches, from Codrus's diseased reading of infinity, from his powerful powermad abuse. i won't let him touch you or your blonde hair with his bony finger. believe me, he wants to, you're the ultimate prize to him with your blonde hair. till my dying breath of the breadth of the universe. i want what's best for you. that's why i'm advising you NOT to become an acolyte! DO NOT ENTER THE CHURCH! don't become a nun, sister, or anything else! break free and free to roam yourself on this town's green hills and be a girl and be happy and become anything you want, a thing which will make you smile internally and want to make you get up everyday from your hay barn pillow, just help people!

Velvetta: i don't understand, sir, this is my very reason for being.

Cotard: no it's NOT! i thought that, too, for many many years, for my entire life. i thought all roads paved my consciousness the path to the priesthood, the religion road, i thought i'd become a monk in a secret ceremony and be happy as i gave my freedom away and my freedom to ever enjoy a mint again over for a nebulous concept always just beyond my reach, give up sex and happiness and purpose for a cold ideal in the clouds. i was WRONG, don't you see? i'm trying to teach you a hard-lost lesson here, learn from me, this piece of my life i can never get back in pursuit of a false spirit, all that time wasted away on pointless prayer. i'm handing you the lesson of me, so you don't make the same mistake. be free as a blue butterfly, fly! don't glide on an empty path.

Velvetta: what happened to you?

Cotard: it hit me like a ton of stone when i was walking slowly up that satanic layup line to get confirmed and banished from the outside world, the acolyte stepping in to become a man and a permanent monk, in that temple Codrus talks about. it all hit me when i watched myself on this VHS tape, please watch it yourself.

Velvetta: where's the Temple?

Cotard: it's a secret, i'll tell you at sunbreak when we discuss the tape. see?, tv shows can lead you astray, when i saw how happy Stephen Tompkinson was when he arrives at Ballykissangel and sees the grandeur of the church cathedral steeple spire and the untamed wild countryside of the Irish landscape, he becomes dazzled and actually thinks it's gonna be a good time being a sexless priest with Assumpta's ass there tempting him everyday when she bends over to find the shandy bottle to fetch him a drink and he has to kill the passion inside him with more and more mint drinks of scotch, that never works! he sees her ass! nay he sees the very arse of Irish lore and yore! at least not for long does the drink help. not for Final-Vows Forever!!! that smile of his was SO damn deceptive!

Velvetta: yeah, that wake scene on the mountain after Assumpta's death didn't strike the right note chord for me. Stephen Tompkinson should have been crying the whole time, reddish-than-normal cheeks, eyes burnt, unable to get any word out when trying to explain what Assumpta meant to him, deep-down, that ineffable inducing insight. he turned out to be an unfulfilled vowbreaker. sound familiar?

Cotard: wow, you really are progressing quite rapidly, my dear, i'm happy to see. that's nice, stay nice. Goddess Bless you.

YOU CAN TELL NANCY O'DELL WANTED TO DO CMT INSTEAD OF ET

notes:

* kept her divorced man's last name, made it her own show-business stage-name, you go girl!

* full disclosure: this is the only country song i've ever liked

* the whole world singing in unison: we're walking in Memphis...well no we're really typing in Memphis looking at our screens not looking where we're going and we ...JUST!...barely missed that steel maypole in May hidden by the weeping willow

* American people: are you running?
Mark Zuckerberg: *sweating* i'm not running from anything! how do you mean?
populace: no, are you running for President?
Mark: well yeah, it's a good way to hide things. that's what power is all about, right?
publis: we want a tri-ticket with you, Oprah, and The Rock, we will vote for that. THAT is change.
Mark: facebook groups is kinda an oxymoron.
people: facebook made everyone get back into their groups?
Mark: no, being on facebook makes it painfully obvious you are alone in the universe.

* college roommate: i've never had a roommate before, i'm scared. lie down on this carpet with me and take off your shoes.
other: what exactly are blue-suede shoes anyway? like shoes with blue polish?
roommate: yeah. we have a final early tomorrow morning but let's put off the unpacking and just sing together, it'll bond us the rest of the semester.
other: i don't do unboxing, i do the Dew. oh yeah, like those shoes the Smurfs wear which are really just extensions of their bodysuits.
roommate: hey...wanna huff shoepolish with me all night?
other: bond?
roommate: no, i'm broke.

*California Motel: hey stranger, we don't take kindly to your kind in these parts. you in California now, patna. where the ganstas live. take your cowboy hat and your touchdown and get out of my country.
Sam Elliott The Stranger: is it a creamsicle or just an orange-flavored popsicle?
California Motel: it's called Popsicle Pie, you'd know that if you were from around here, the artists won the election, hop the wall and neevr speak of this again.
The Stranger: fine i'll leave, but you have a bear on top of your sign, fair warning.
California Motel: hey, The Stranger is The Dude's father, right?
The Stranger: a horse is a horse of course of course...unless it's a Belmont horse or a Santa Anita horse in which case it's an invisible horse...

* there is nothing, and I mean NOTHING more filmic than a too-brightly-lit gas station at 3AM in the morning. right? it's like ANYTHING could happen there, the dramatic possibilities are ENDLESS

* piano player: it's just not the same, a synthesizer ain't a baby grand.

* truck driver: girls can be truck-drivers, too.
God: who says? what are you delivering, Cabbage Patch Kids with beads in their hair?
truck driver: sure, that's how you get credit for all the kids, i deliver them!
on the side of the truck: STORK SERVICES

* Miami Bail Bonds: we're ALWAYS open

* Demi Lovato: i'm okay, fam. i'm doing my Britney exercises inside the asylum. i have one hour to drive around Rodeo Drive. to get an ice-ceram cone and whatnot. Wilmer will realize he made a mistake and beg for me to take him back. why is it a downpour?
soaking-wet cop: who knew that simpleton foreigner was actually a cool suave dude underneath in real life. ma'am, you're in Miami! how the hell did you get here?
Demi: Noah's Ark…

* hi, i'm Mac Culkin's younger brother. Kieran. i'm like Mac without all the stuff. i won a regional bowling trophy. i haven't had as much to say on pop stars, but i do want my Asian babe, too. i like Charleston jazz...

* Prince lives in dance. dude was a unique singer, but nobody danced like Prince. like imagine Mick Jagger holding a guitar...

* hi, i'm Pokimane...three years on after the whole youtube-culture thing collapsed. i keep myself buoyed by memorizing the comforting lyrics to the Red Hot Chili Peppers song "Under The Bridge", i hum it to myself each night under the covers. i sleep on a park bench. hey, remember in the '80s when all the corner markets would cover all their windows with huge rolls of white paper advertising in red letters all their half-off meats, cheeses, and fish? paper over with prices. like you couldn't see through any of the windows, the windows WERE this white wall-to-wall wallpaper of sheet-papers of savings.

* watch the sun rise on a porch, watch the sun set on a porch, but never have sex on a porch...

* i can't sing unless the car door is open

* Irish pubs will never be the same

* hey, if the other side can have the Naked Cowboy, i can be a man in a Statue of Liberty dress.

* group man: hey thanks for the homesickness, i miss Memphis.
group woman: what are you doing in Times Square?
group man: i'm crazy. so i figured i'd come here...don't worry, i won't steal any of the jewelry, i already got my tiara.
group girl: thanks, i miss home, and this song helps.
group woman: what are you doing in college? how old are you?
group girl: isn't it obvious?

CLICK HERE RIGHT HERE AT THIS LINK

happy weekend, my babies.
TONIGHT: Warriors go down 1-3, Durant comes back and leads them all the way back to 4-3, promptly leaves for the Knicks, kicks Dolan out, becomes President, and bans Drake from entering the country for life.
Commissioner Adam Silver: banned for life, i like your style.

TOMORROW: Carl's Jr Western Double Bacon Cheeseburger...AND the Western Fries which taste EXACTLY like the Double Bacon Western Cheeseburger...overkill?

GINGER BREAD: MONASTERY MONSTER

there had been rumblings for awhile now. strange sightings here and there night and day round town. except this was the smallest villages of a town, the last vestige of venal before the time-skip, a town tight as a timpani tiptoe drum, a place of purple purveyance. this was a village, a city-state, an area at the very edge of the universe, the nonleading edge of town. where anything went, cos its residents had long been forgotten.

it was a people as pure as the driven grass and needing to be led. they were brand new, new to law, new to order, new to religion, new to god. they were at the mercy of the etching teachings of the next entity who showed any signs of being above them who happened to stroll down into town at this very moment.

these stirrings were causing quite a concern among the inhabitants. they were terrified of getting sick. cos they knew once they got sick, once they got stung, pierced, bitten, it was all over, they were done for, they would get sick, get sicker, and die and there was nothing anybody could do about it. they were always too nervous to think clearly, always looking over their shoulder, suspicious of their fellow wandering neighbor, wondering what was up the sleeve of the town tailor. always waiting for the worst to happen, for a blight to befall the village and wipe out existence at any moment. thus, they were frightened to death of strangers to their town, even tho they knew in the back of their heads that the term savior meant different things to different people.

they knew they needed help. just not what kind. what of.

the people were hard to distinguish from each other, the men wore brown bonnets and the womenfolk wore the brown pants in the symbiotic relationship. only the tailor wore the cut trousers, secretly behind closed doors and closed pubs. and closed suds. this stranger first presented himself as a messy homeless man, no socks, bruised callouses, dirty, meticulously unkempt, cantankerous, irascible, ready to throw down with any villager at any time, especially around 3AM. a shadow, a ninja, no one saw his face but knew it was filthy, muddy mouth, and the swear words which came of it, too. he was a blight, he was THE blight all by himself, his hair was like a caveman's, and he always wore that dirty rotten rainbow Pink Floyd black T-shirt, the only one in existence where the prism was facing backwards and actually produced a rainbow of black.

townsfolk: *waving fistbumps* GET OUTTA HERE! NEVER COME BACK! LEAVE OUR ACCURSED VILLAGE AND CURE US OF DEATH!!!

the man spoke in precise English tho it was roughly-spoken.

man: who are you? why are you here? what is this place? i have come here because i need to be here. i don't know why. you speak of a cure for death? it's all in the mind, it's all in the way you think. you must align, when the vibrations of your brain align with the vibrations in your heart.

townsfolk: we see you skulking around all our caves and stone walls, you're scaring the raccoons! you knock all the crushed beer cans on our streets, sweep them away with your legkick, causing a commotion and loud noise in the middle of the night when we're sleeping avoiding death. we should have you arrested for public indecency and public urination and public intoxication and loitering because you don't drink and we don't have a jail. what can you offer us all the others who came and went and failed here couldn't?

man: i'm a man of the cloth. i know my cloth is torn and ripped at the moment, i'll get a better shirt. please, all i want to do is help. not cos it helps me. let me lead you, i want to be a sheep someday.

all the townsfolk can smell is the air of death permeating the provinces of their little home. a 12-year-old girl with blonde hair steps out of the mob crowd and places her sweet-smelling delicate hand in his. the crowd gasps in horror.

girl: finally i found you, been waiting all my life for love. you are the man of my dreams, which is to say i shall be your acolyte, sir.

town: IT'S HAPPENING!!! it's already started! the novitiate program! he's pressing our young, reelin' them in like fetid fish, he's an influencer!

man: please, my dear, put on my shirt off my back, wear that until we can get you fitted for a proper robe. let's get you in from the cold, both colds.

the girl curtsies in front of him.

girl: how shall i address you, my lord? i just mean *she's red-faced* like for official purposes.

man: please, call me Cotard.

girl: and how shall you address me?

Cotard: i was thinking Velvetta as a name for you...i got inspired from the sensation of touching your hand just now...

Velvetta shoots a puzzled look at her new holy father.

Cotard: i know, it's cheesy...sorry for being a dad with the dad jokes.

President Bump attends the D-Day Ceremonies:

Bump at the mic: i'm so glad all of yous got together and defeated the Nazis. hey you think all that Naziism stuff could be revived nowadays? how would that look today? asking for a friend. okay, i'm gonna spend the rest of this trip holed up in my hotel room curtains drawn watching Beaches with some Urban Bourbon Ben + Jerry's ice cream staining my bed.

Mueller steps up to the mic back at home for a speech which lasts 3 seconds:

Mueller: impeach the motherfucker. thank you.

Wolf: sir, what did you think...?

Mueller: *hand up* no questions...well, okay, for you, Wolf, one.

Wolf: what finally made you speak? like this. in your heavy New York accent?

Mueller: it was that Jim Carrey Twitter cartoon caricature of me, that convinced me, that really hit me deep-hard. finally spurned me to action.

at the French Open:

Laertus: go Jo! Jo Konta, Johanna.

Jo: me?

Laertus: no, the other Jo, the other British Jo, the Jo from not around there. i have a soft spot for her, she's doing it for the suicides!

Dirg: come on, Maddy! do it, Maddie! it's Madison's tourney, tunament, tournie to lose, she has no excuses now, prove your worth, Madison Keys. she's related to and can put in a good word for me with Alicia Keys, right?

Gladyce: i love the wisdom of the French. they started this Grand Slam a day early on Sunday cos they knew there'd be one day cancelled cos of rain, they're sages and presages, sagacious fortunetellering prescients. precious. we got a plant in there directing weather. got one in Britain, too, steering the Brexit thing.

Doryce: the only way to save Theresa May is to make her a witch, she's been wanting that all her life, she's got the look, she's got the chops, but i'll leave the final decision to the wave of the spellhand of Jill at Home Country headquarters. Motherland. the French just always want to be special, that's why they're the only ones holding on to the no-tiebreak tradition, they MUST have their tradition, it's in the song!

Gladyce: after Notre Dame, they're doing any and all things to get their traditional identity back. they're desperate, they'll go WAY back if they have to.

Tiger Woods: WHAT THE FUCK. i mean i STILL have to work at Buffalo Wild Wings. i can't get out of my contract at B-Dubs cos of the TERRIBLE decision to move the PGA Championship, what were they thinking! this tournament got ZERO views this year cos they were competing with B-Ball. come on, even I know that! they weren't gonna win!

Bald Bull: turrible.

Bump: no one, and i mean NO ONE, will be watching the Women's World Cup, cancel it right now days before it starts. unless it's beach soccer, if you know what i mean saying, wink wink.

Pence: no bikinis.

at the hospital, Alex Trebek is hanging on by a thread, a prayer, a science, and a salt line. he is tired and sleeping, not his usual alive self. he is growing colder than the room. or the non-touch of a Jeopardy! signaling button.

Holzhauer and Ken Jennings are by his side, conversing. there is a mystery person in shadow sitting in the corner of the room by the plant.

Holzhauer: i've got a solution. it's a holistic heal. in a way.

Ken Jennings's hair glows gold.

Ken Jennings: yeah, sure you do, smartass! Alluka isn't real, dumbass! you and your cartoon cures. stop grinning, you look like a woodchuck. don't play me, bro, i invented you before you were born. as long as you meet my demands, Shug, we can work together to save him.

Dirg: that whole Holzhauer thing was suspicious. it was odd, it was off. why did he bet so low on Final Jeopardy? it was like he was trying to lose, he threw the game. like a Vegas gambler in trouble with the mob. if you're gonna go out, why not go down with the ship and bet it all? bet the farm, bet the bank, go out with a bang, all in, blow your entire wad.

Laertus: you're just jealous that the two super strongmen of Jeopardy were eventually bested by women.

Eye Luggage: anime roundup, go.

Laertus: what the fuck was Kisame thinking!!? instead of having a family with the babe ninja who has a thing for you, you kill this girl?!! for what, tradition?!! NO tradition is worth that! i don't care what the theatre says! the Titans from Attack on Titan apparently drink sweet black tea. i never pictured that they would need to drink or eat at all till now.

Dirg: Leorio from Hunter x Hunter talked openly on mic about masturbation. jackin' it. playing with oneself, he didn't play himself. you don't see this sort of thing mentioned in anime much, direct confirmation and acknowledgement of its viewership, but in Leorio's case it's okay cos he's a doctor, it's healthy for him.

Laertus: Leorio was named after me.

Eye: Being There.

Laertus: the strangest movie i've ever seen. seriously. and i don't mean special effects or character paint or anything, i mean this is the strangest PLOT to a movie i've ever seen. first of all, the title doesn't do it justice, there's GOTTA be a better title than that. here's one off the top of my head which sums up this movie:

Life Is A State Of Mind

the first half, it's going well, i can relate, i live my life structured strictly through the mores and vagaries of television, too, i perceive like Chauncey. i wonder how many gardens were sold after this film?

Dirg: Wonder Showzen.

Laertus: speaking of, love the New York '70s urban look of all the tenements, and the music, it was a very poppy jazzy Sesame Street hood projects sound. that all worked, the gang calling him honky was a bit awkward and forced but it was okay. Brent Spiner patterned his Data performance on Chauncey, they look alike. but here's where it gets bonkers and goes off the ski rails. it veers offtrack when it suddenly wades into politics. like why would Chauncey suddenly enter the Washington, D.C. stream and be up there palling it around with the President? what would motivate that? it makes a sharp right into politics. or maybe left. the script makes this hard turn into the political realm for no reason, it's INSANELY forced, obviously the writer wanted to make a political statement, but why? Chauncey was meant to free the other inmates from the other popular '70s picture One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.

Dirg: i don't mean to make fun of a disability, but it would have been better if Chauncey got run over by that limo and the movie ended there. oh Shirley MacLaine!!!...

Laertus: don't get me started on her!

Dirg: Shirley MacLaine has always been a bitch on every set she's ever been on, starting with her very first job as a pixie-cut ingenue. she gets along with no one, and believes in aliens, she rips others to shreds, sleeps with three men in one day, and i love her, i absolutely am in love with her. she's not a prima donna, she's an actress, she's the true definition of an actress. she's a real woman, i would love to have fucked her in the '70s when she was hot. i want to be her illegitimate child whom she abandons at the house to make more Hollywood movies.

Laertus: i mean that masturbation scene? i don't use this word often---for obvious reasons---but that was CRINGE!!! i mean as forced as can fucking be, it is embarrassing and truly difficult to watch, it made me genuinely uncomfortable. Shirley MacLaine rubbing one out on that large wooden raised bedroom post, i mean come on! this is ridiculous! it was so out of-place, they just suddenly start talking about masturbation! i did like the meditation on death in bed, tho. and of course the ending is Chauncey is revealed to be Jesus as he walks on water, do they really want Jesus portrayed as being that simple?

Dirg: Peter Sellers would have won the Oscar if not for that blooper-reel tacked on at the end which broke the illusion of the Chauncey character. can't have any cracks in the autistic armor. broke the fourth wall and that wall bled buckets for the audience. after that of course, the blooper-reel became a Hollywood staple. this proves real Americans want comedy, only the elites want drama. we want to laugh when we go to a theater, not be all serious.

there's a tap at the door.

Doryce: hey! so you okay here at the Treehouse? you'll watch over it while we're gone on our continuous many diverse and varied time-consuming and seemingly-random adventures? i moved the cinder block.

Dirg: cinder block?

Doryce: there was a cinder block lying there on the front lawn. it's Dirg we're talking about here, the entire world wants to take that cinder block and crash the Treehouse front window. you know how many want a crack at you? i moved it to the back lawn.

Dirg: great. that doesn't help. the gardeners will just get me from the back.

Laertus: great. threat. great threat.

Cotard holds Velvetta by the hand as they stroll up the paved circular embankment to the tailor's. he is not so much washed but his arms and legs gleam with his new inner light. his hair is kempt in a pontyatil covered by the hood he wears. he wears a black non-torn shirt of Syd Barrett on the front and a magic sparkly purple fortune-ball emoji on the back. he wears brown pants instead of brown short cargs. he wears sandals on his barefoot feet.

Cotard: ring ring! postman!

townsfolk person counter-clerk: this is the tailor's.

Cotard: no i'm delivering the mail, i'm the tailor. and btw this town also needs a regular trash-man, this town stinks! is her robe ready and done yet?

an angry swirl emanates from the church, rumbling the doors, nixing the naves, shattering the glass of all the windows, turning the white glass stained. a perfect erect ninja-star swirl of furious fire, egregious electricity, sadistic spark, salacious sparks, disturbing decadence. air whooshes into the open church like never before, allowing all the scared townsfolk to peep inside. and behold their new sacred.

the man inside the church holds the hand of a 12-year-old girl with red hair.

Cotard: no. no. NO. god mama no.

Cotard turns to the town, inside the tailor's and outside, the crowd outside moves in a swarm, swallowing up poor Scott Van Pelt---glassesless, sucking his thumb, holding his Linus blanket clinging onto it for dear life by the fingertips---in its center.

Cotard: you were right. you have a problem. you have a town bum. but it's not me.

TMIT: THE LAST POST THAT NEVER COMES

1. when you post on your blog, whis is your main goal? to find a wife.

2. what are some questions your blog readers should be asking you but they are not?

am i real?

are they real?

wait, i have blog readers?

3. what is a great blog post that you have read lately? (leave a link of the post)

CLICK HERE FOR A POST WHICH EMPTIED MY VACUUMS, MADE ME STEP BACK STOP WRITING FOR A WEEK AND THINK ABOUT DISTANCE

right? i've always admired my friend the German Spanish writeress seductress, admired her from afar. this seems to be her swan song, if it is, WHAT a way to end it! right? i mean this is the post to drop the mic with, to allow her readers to really reside and contemplate from on high her typed words on a cloud, make you think about what really is important, realize that it's not about followers, it's about the dark truth that your friends---not your followers---are never coming back...

it is stark. it is final. the meditation on loss is neverending…

ALSO, ANY AND ALL POSTS FROM THIS BLOG

to this day, the blog with the BEST name of all time. she is the writer i imagine, envision, the writer i yearn to be, infused with mischievous mystery and delicious desire, she tempts with her pen and allows no one in. her words are catapults into slight cracks in Dove chocolate mega-caramel bullet ice-cream square bars of yore and sexual elicitation and problematic philosophies of Greek and Roman long ago not suited for this world.

she is what i aspire to, SHE is the very definition of FREEDOM, she is what writing IS. unfortunately, she is a dying breed. blogspot used to be littered with lit literature, with those of her kind, her species, a certain wonderfully slanted view of life and hope and wisdom and vire and documentation. we were treasured and blessed with many of her ilk, but sadly, she is the lone, the only one who survived the Meteor. so appreciate her while you and she still can, may she continue writing into the afterlife, and hope your afterlife is the same as hers...alignment...so you can finally meet and go over all those askance references she cheekily littered throughout her work...to confirm...

may her long journey bear fruit, may she find what she's looking for, fondly, even if it ends up elusive, may she find love, and may we be her fruitflies along for the hay ride.

i know, it's a summer bummer, no one's around anymore, everyone's moved over to Instagram...for better or worse...

the love here is hard-won and hard-earned, battle scars from a society that will never fit her grandeurous insight, revealing and rapturous...

4. how long have you been blogging? i'm like Ray from The Promised Neverland, i can't remember a time i WASN'T blogging. i blogged before i was born, when i was but a speck of sand that got caught in the glinting eyeteeth of my Father Jesus H. Christ, the stuff dreams are made of.

speaking of, Mom from The Promised Neverland, now THERE's a milf!

5. considering your current blog, what are the top two most popular posts you have written?

Jade McCarthy is my ALL-TIME most-popular post EVER. i can see why, but at the same time, she is a rather random babe. she was on ESPN for a minute till she got pregnant. ain't that always the way...

also there was a post of mine that was QUITE popular judging from their own built-in stat machine and vigilant cos it had links to a lot of weirdness, this was back in the day when i was weirder than i am now. i have since learned a lot of restraint and control when it comes to my emotional off-the-cuff writing in the interim. BlogSpot stepped in and threatened to hold up my entire blog unless and until i got rid of this particular post. it wasn't the weirdness they objected to but rather all the links littered throughout like the spaghetti strings of a hurricane map. Maria LaRosa, please come back to The Weather Channel!!!

nowadays, this blog really serves one purpose: to keep me sane. nobody comes round no more, it's more of a personal diary i write out in the open. not to say that that's a bad thing, in fact it can be quite therapeutic, and it's the only therapy i will ever be able to afford...

until i learn not to have a coffee fit over my tea-fit tea mailed to me in bulk and brown tape. until i learn how to project my feelings onto the Medieval-era castles i used to work in in my past life as a Medieval page like the Brits do when strangers come to town.

CLICK HERE FOR TMI TUESDAY

THIS IS NOT A VIDEO GAME

notes:

* they turn to watch her spin, the entire room, and she's not even a ballerina...

* the ONE thing any woman can do to seduce anyone is to fence. a woman who fences beats back all the centuries of phallic symbols in Civilization with one thrust of her spear.

* as you know, i abhor violence in film, but what i most appreciate Natural Born Killers for is the aesthetic it promotes, this thing is pure pulp through and through, and it maintains a sense of wanderlust that i think all humans strive for. you know the one, where you're a couple of outsider outlaws with no city to belong to, aimlessly driving your life away with the top permanently up on lonely desert highways, never anywhere to be and always causing trouble cos you're eternally bored. your very identity is the Road.

* where the hotel beds always have brown-cinnamon heavy linen, and you watch wildlife videos on your cross window pane, not on a screen. hey have you noticed that we wouldn't be the same people if we didn't have the remote control? the remote control is the singular item in history which has shaped culture more than any other. even Nutella.

* Scarface: it's a snake, like all women, i mean penguin, pelican.
Lana: you've just met the wrong women, you got hurt by one and never got over it.
Scarface: what's your real name, Lana Del Rey?
Lana: does it matter? I'll never be as famous as the Archer one. they said you doing Scarface was a blow to your career.
Scarface: it was blow alright.

* Jared Leto: whatcha reading, ma'am? and can i borrow a roller for my beard?
lady: can you believe Elvis is really dead? like ALL those sightings were bogus! and why do you look like if Salvador Dali were hot? i'm using this rag here to dry my hair.
Jared: oh, the National Enquirer, that's still a thing? oh i get it, Elvis married Bigfoot and assumed a low profile in the Florida Everglades after that.
lady: no that's the Trump wedding. can you believe he won again?

* Jared: that's not an ankle tat, that's my zigzag sock.

* where the best arguments happen at a too-brightly-lit gas station by the side of the highway at 3AM

* ostrich: i'm the baddest motherfucking bird there is! i was the ONLY one who said FUCK YOU NATURE I'M NOT FLYING!!!

* no ostriches were harmed in the making of this picture...but i'm sure the crew rode them.

* ostrich: these aisles remind me of the desert sand-dune races back home in Saudi Disneyland, only difference is THESE rows are filled with water bottles...

* Lana: i only wear this spiffy retro-olive '50s green jumpsuit when i go someplace special. the only place special any human goes anymore is the grocery store! it's so fun!

* Lana: got any Kraft Dinner? go Raptors!!!

* Jared: i'm standing as hard as i can as a counterweight on the other side of your basket, Lana, but it's not tipping over, this makes me sad.
Lana: music thing didn't work out?
Jared: i'm trying to get back in sad mode to compose more music. and new lyrics, it's a valing balance measure kinda thing, my next album will be about voting.

* Lana: a little dab'll do you. why at these specific points in the body? the wrist delicately and the back of the earlobe, two subtle dots?
Jared: that's where your chakras are, thanks Naruto. as for me, i just splash a whole grid-glass bottle of Gucci Extremely Guilty all over my face Joker-style.

* Jared: a flower is especially red at a cemetery.
Lana: where the only thing we eat as a couple on the run is fast food. oh who are we kidding? we don't have time to stop at a grocery store to eat, get thee to a diner!
Courtney Love: coffee?
Mueller: leave the pot.
Courtney: Mueller?!!
Mueller: i'm Robert De Niro.

* Courtney: i invented the whole Alice waitress pink-poodle outfit, pink is my color. see this isn't a waitress outfit, it's just grunge.

* i swear to goddess, when i first saw this commercial, i was thinking to myself: that waitress sure looks an awful lot like Courtney Love. Courtney Love looks GOOD, she gets better and better, she's aging like a fine wine, she's growing into her starlet face, the starlet who refuses to fade, the brassy Lauren Bacall-type. Courtney's more the White Dwarf Starlet.

* where the laundromats are the only neon for miles. there's something about laundromats, right? cos they've all but faded from our collective street consciousness. they're eerie and entrancing. this is the place you go to have that impromptu life-changing conversation with that stranger you'll never forget---or meet again---the one you had whilst flipping a quarter. where you meet your soul mate searching for her lost sock behind the fern. you met her butt first before you met her face. these are places to meet up at night where mystery, not just the laundry, unfolds…

* Lana: dahlin do i look sundrenched by this lake here?
Jared: splendid, my dear. this picnic is to die for! but you know we're really supposed to be at a lecture now at that grey-stone lecture hall in the background, i mean we ARE students enrolled at this university!
Lana: i love how there's no dress code but we're dressed in matching corduroy suits anyway.
Jared: are those your red panties or a flower you threw at my head?
Lana: in the end it's all the same thing. that BETTER be a Polaroid camera!

* Lana: smoky eyelashes, like a tiger.
tiger prowls the laundromat.
Bindi Irwin: TOO MYSTERIOUS!
tiger: i have laundry business needs to conduct here, too, ya know. my leopard-print panties.

* Jared: but i HAVE to jump on the bed, it's European and artistic.
worldly European director: springs broke, you're too heavy for a man. next time, get a Serta.

* god i loved those days in the '80s when the sun would wheeze out its last dying breath of light for the day, the yellow fades and the blue just peaks interest, everyone pushing their carts along down the impossibly-angled windy hilly sidewalk somehow not spilling all ther groceries all at once. you never knew if any of these people ever returned the shopping cart to the store after they got home...

* Lana: are you playing video games?
Jared: uh, no, it's wine.
Lana: i know a joystick when i feel one. that corsage you're wearing better not be that owl we saw at the cemetery earlier, that's a bad omen. why do yo wear a smoking jacket to bed?
Jared: those are MY CHIPS!
Lana: i'm kicking you out of bed for eating crackers.

* where the only food we eat is diner food and the only drink we drink is diner coffee...
Courtney Love: coffee?
renegade couple: no thanks, we've had five clinking cups already.
Courtney: as you can probably surmise, there is no bathroom here.
Jared: let me pay for the coffee, Lana, i need this.
Courtney: want some oat-milk coffee?
Lana: is that a euphemism for a cum snowball or something?
Courtney: you're right, all coffee tastes the same. all coffee tastes like coffee.

* Jared: is it wrong to eat a loaf of bread while still in the supermarket?
Lana: not if you pay for it.
Jared: whoops. my mother always said i was an unseemly child. what's that plastic jug you're chugging?
Lana: i'm finally drinking the Kool Aid.

* Jared: take off your shoes.
Lana: kinky. this is my kind of dancing, not knowing when it will end, i have callouses on my feet now.
Jared: i don't want the laundromat floor to get dirty. that stone statue at the cemetery? that's me in a life yet to come, trippy, huh?

* this is LIFE. not the supermarket cereal. this is LIVING. this is the WIND. on your back and on your front. and on your fuzzy lapel. this is the true American Frontier: Hollywood.

CLICK HERE RIGHT HERE AT THIS LINK

happy weekend, my babies.
TOMORROW: the Taco Bell nacho boxes. BOTH boxes, the beef and the shredded-chicken-variety one, BOTH delivered to my house by GrubHub...that's my dream anyway, it's probably too expensive in real life...hot sauce, not the fire sauce, the hot sauce...okay maybe one fire sauce...

THE TALLEST WOMAN AND MAN ON EARTH

notes:

* o to be that piano bench...

* we've all agreed the name sounds more filmic as Gal GaDOUGH, right? if it's more French New Wave, it's more filmic.

* bamboo: now i'm thinking about that scene near the start of Roma where the housekeeper's boyfriend starts doing his Bruce Lee impersonation for her stark full-frontal naked flips and twirls and chops and flops all after removing by force the motel shower bar! i love Cuaron and all the New Wave, i'm all for equality, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, if it's accepted that all babe movie actresses will be nude onscreen showing everything, have the MEN show everything, too, right? have that beautiful penis flopping around with each martial art right in the audience's face!

* this is what Bob Dylan would have sounded like if he hadn't had that cold...

* just think, no Nobel Prize...

* this is a mathematical commercial, and a commercial about time travel, and alternate dimensions: like imagine a shape cookie-cuttered out of your section of reality that is exisiting in the same spacetime as you right now but in an alternate dimension. have you ever imagined what's going on in your frame of reference but in another dimension RIGHT NOW? like instead of the live Norman Lear Broadway shows there would be the 100th season of the ACTUAL Jeffersons going on right now over there...

* neon signs: they don't have to spell out that they're OPEN, the lights are already bright electric red. in fact all you have to do is have a pole of that glowing red electric light and that's enough to indicate openness. I CHING at the therapist's office...or barber pole...

* see, the business people in smart suits in the rain on the right of the business meeting held at the son's cool high-rise silver futuristic bachelor pad with the Tron blinds drawn will not get served the first martini, the people on the beach on the left WILL think they've been served the first martini cos they'll wake up at night with a mouthful of beach-sand and unemployed.

* was that heart-shaped red bikini bottom shot a little too extra and up-close-and-personal from the audience's point-of-view?...i mean not as much as Gal Gadot's bare bottom on that piano bench but...

* you want to get laid? come on a horse to prom...that came out wrong...

* what's the theme for this year's prom?: Endgame...…...as in Endgame for all of us humans, 2030...

* this is a before and after shot that is not porn- or filter-related. but it is cool to see the chauffeur bellhopboy man usher the lady in red out of her Crookedest Street in San Francisco while she's simultaneously making out hotly and voraciously and tearing-clothes-off on a CW teen cliff with her baby sister's hunky heartthrob bully...or is that her baby sister? no, that would be too weird, even for The CW. cool lighthouse tho, i always think of a barbershop pole whenever i think of a lighthouse...Lovers' Point sure ain't what it used to be...

* Chemical Brothers' "Swoon" music video trees forest woods

* that looks like that hacienda ranch that was the setting for all those episodes of Destinos which taught every gringo like me how to speak Spanish cos Raquel Rodriguez's eyes were diamonds. Liliana Abud is most responsible than any other human for bringing us together in multiculturalism, and she's all the hotter for it.

* exact lyrics: in the valleys, where lovers whine…

* ironically, The Tallest Man On Earth isn't even that tall. the tallest Swede who ever lived was Ingmar Bergman, tall as in stature.

CLICK HERE RIGHT HERE AT THIS LINK

happy weekend, my babies, it finally feels like summer now, right? no more tv shows.

NEXT WEEK: let's tackle all those sumptuous gorgeous Gucci commercials...it's not like we have a Triple Crown to look forward to...

TOMORROW: the Burger King Parmesan Italian chicken sandwich...which is just like their '80s Italian Chicken Sandwich---still an all-time classic---but this time with a hamburger bun instead of a seedy French roll...

THE PURPLE HOURGLASS: LOVE IN A VACUUM

it was nearing the end.

the battle. the war. the war against women. this thing which should have been solved ages ago, litigated in the courts, not by lances on a field. which grandmothers should have knit over, pinochled not punched over, switched partners over over hard coffee, not hard punch. yet somehow, as the new tech emerged, these battles were waged once again, as if nothing mattered, as if they would always be new, as humans in a digital iron age find it a hard time redefining themselves, wondering if they ever existed at all, if all the past blood was a river in the sky, all the past treasure after all bitcoin.

somehow, these heady weighty matters were handed over to the well-manicured and soapy hands of one Madame Pons: skinny frame, oversize Robe. she didn't want this, but she loved too much, too greatly, too passionately, that she could never let one of her girls go without her first giving up her life, that was her lifeblood. it wasn't sacrifice, it wasn't sanctimonious, it was sanctioned in her soul, it was Pons's instinct.

she was doing the best she could.

she, as she always does, answers the phone at LUSH. her body is racked with pain but not guilt. she is a bloody corpse but she's alive, cornered but pliable, she has survived the war unscathed in her ideals. her side of ideas won. as it should in a just world. she is too hurt to triumph, to raise her fist, she can barely hold the receiver:

Pons: hello. yes, sis. i love you, too, got me. we did it. we won the war. the other side was decimated, their stupid ideas blown to the wind like an atom bomb. the pitch battle was fierce---the Woodstock tents were all blown away when their spikes were thrown---the college campus is meant to be a place where philosophies clash, not cannon and copper armor, it's not exactly a place for war, not many trees to hide catapults, but we got it done. the enemy is defrocked and defeated, all of them killed, murdered doesn't matter which label you use, all those stupid alt-right Purple Boys never saw it coming, they thought they had an army, but WE had the army. where did they go? dunno. they disappeared, out of sight, out of kind, out of mind, i don't care, it's over. turns out they were scared to actually drop blood, they talked a big game tho. see we women are glad to give our blood to the cause, we birth all the children after all. the last one looked at me with his surly puppy-wolf-eyes and begged for his life, told me he actually liked Elton John, but it was too late for him, his cause and his bright star. time to dim the din. you should have seen my sisters out there, they're resting comfortably now here, but they were fucking giants. bruised but unbowed, tho all of their bows were broken. we're having a light snack to recover. oh who am i kidding, WE ARE FUCKING EATING!!! we are eating EVERYTHING, there's nothing left to do, no man to dress for, no boss to impress/promote, we have slain the patriarchy and are the goldcap at the stone of the temple. Prince, who was Jimi Hendrix Reincarnated, came back but even HE didn't help the Purple Boys, he was on our side and played that funky guitar---funky-shaped guitar---to keep our troops' spirits up. and other things up. yeah we're eating some nice cheeses to whet our diaphragms, waiting for The Meal, dialing that dot all the way to decibel. no more dimestore abortions, we are free to control Goddess's Fate.

Gladyce: Fuerza would be so proud of all you! dears, brava! Fuerza has ALWAYS wanted the decision to fall on Her creations, not for God to have it.

Pons hugs the crones wth decorous abandon.

Pons: mi lady-sisters, i am honored! i shall bend the knee only to bow to you! how are you? safe travels i hope?

Doryce: i don't know if this gets you in the witch club, but you sure have become one badass childless mama since we left you, Pons. you're a babe now, cos you're a leader. boss babe. you're fucking Olivia Benson!

Pons: please, have some cheese. we're all waiting for the main course. Uncle Tetsu cheesecake and Beard Papa cream puffs, these are my men, i never had father figures growing up.

Gladyce: no you did, dear, but you rejected the strongmen as everyone should.

Pons: AND HERE IT COMES NOW!!!

Doryce: i always say that. in bed, when i first wake up.

The Mooch, dressed in a red anklelength robe and white bonnet, wheels in a huge tray of burgers wheels greased with all the grease from said burgers. the women army, and some men, and some forest woodland animals, dive in and devour the pile of hamburgers as if they had been invited to one of President Bump's rallies/sports-event congrats. they munch it all down their dirty gullets with glee and gratitude and grace. Pons raises her finger joint in the air with steel:

Pons: TO THE VICTOR GO THE MEAT WHICH SPOILS US!

Doryce: better than spoiled meat.

Gladyce: why do you keep freezing the bacon? why preserve that death food?

all the burgers are swallowed in .3 seconds…

Doryce: that's even faster than i swallow cum.

...and the glorious army of valkyries and amazons and heroines have had their full, they rub their bellies---food this time---and sit around the tavern table all their body parts on the table cajoling and telling each other their tales of valorous battle which they all just went through together so it's kind of redundant cos they've seen everything but they're drunk off mugs of frosty brew. coffee.

Laertus storms in---as much as he can---to LUSH to interrupt the party flow---as he always does, he's a disruptor. he wears a sorry look on his face as if to say sorry beforehand.

Pons: what up, my child.

Laertus: i'm afraid my lover, who's a goatman, has some bad news for y'all.

Llywarch trots in behind Laertus and takes down his pants.

Llywarch: that was to break the ice. women, valiant female warriors, my sisters-in-arms, i'm afraid you have fallen victim to the changing reality as we all have. but you are no victims, no matter what. all those burgers you just ate? that meat was the alt-right Purple Boys. alright? you're cannibals now.

the girls are shocked for .3 seconds, but they don't scream. and are resigned to it after awhile. that meat just tasted so good! it was full of so much sauce and tawny tang and blue rage and red peeper pepper and computer tears and gigantic generational grief, a gigabyte of grief. that meat was made in a millennium, had to season for centuries.

Pons: fuck me. is it deepfake?

Llywarch: yes, it has infected everything.

Pons: wait, that gives me an idea...sis, you still on the line? i was getting a strange message throughout this whole thing in my ear from an unknown source, but i clarified it. it sounded like a boy, but not one of our boys. then i was sure. it was Takahashi! he's been trying to reach you, his mother! this whole time! ouija, séance, salad, whatever works. i'll connect you two.

Pons connects the two lines...with her mind.

Takahashi: mom? i peed my pants! not cos of you!

Taki: oh son...

Pons: it turns out Takahashi WAS willing to help but could never get through. but it wasn't a Bermuda Triangle situation, the barrier which supposedly everyone thought was separating you and Melbourne from the outside world was simply deepfake. once you realized that, you could pierce through.

Taki: i figured that out once you did. we really are connected. but i didn't have a name for it so i decided not to run with it for the 6 o'clock deadline.

Melbourne: i am sorry for all the mess and confusion, i just want to be your good husband, your goo husband, your husband which provides you goo, i don't want to own you like a bloody body double, i want you to be free, i want to give you away. and a stepdad to Takahashi. i just want to ride my airplanes---the way men just want to ride their motorcycles---my Auster, cos Australian. and my Vampire Jet cos i have some goth clients who like a little bloodletting with their lovemaking.

Pons: cool. i was gonna deepfake as Taki if all else failed---and especially if push came to shove---and entered your bed, Melbourne, to keep the marriage fresh. and together. but now that everything is out in the open, are we still on for the real threeway? that always spices up a marriage after it's been awhile standing still stale dormant and worried.

Melbourne: it's true, you lose all sense of time when you're in here.

crones: well, now that that's been settled as gold dust, we shall take our leave. good luck and good lovin'. (Gladyce actually says lovinG.)

the crones entrance out and into the Clearing, where they soon approach All Gardens Great and Small. a mother-and-daughter actress team are there diligently planting the posies. one is heavyset and has a huge tattoo on her arm bigger than her whole body but not her head.

Doryce: she's obviously the comedienne, the other seems the sober one.

mother: nope. i birthed an actress, she has all sorts of weird ideas about marriage, she's keeping all her boyfriends secret, i tell her she needs a strong tall fellow to uproot the weeds but...well...her imdb and wiki has no Personal section so i'm worried she's a dyke.

actress: well this is a show about dikes.

Doryce: nonce. come here, dearie, and have a Tank Boy! suck on that lemon popsicle. right? it's a frozen plastic soda bottle! it's impossible to get the lemon ice out without a knife! you have to wait for it to melt! but it's oh so worth the wait! it tastes like Liquid Heaven!

actress: Haitai? me like.

mother: *shakes Doryce's bony hand* thank you. from the whole family. we thought she was just weird.

Gladyce: you can't grow those, you know, dear, send the rest in a box with airhole slats to the LUSH afterparty and keep it lemon squeezy Japaneesy.

Doryce: all's well that ends well. at a well dressing. and alchemy. where to next?, my eternal love.

Gladyce: i hear Theresa May's in a right pickle.

Doryce: she needs a pickle up her shaft to relax her. Jo's my trainee there, she's doing a bangup bangers-and-mash job. whaddaya say we double-team May in May so she switches sides before it's too late?

they both laugh and chuckle and red and hold each other's hands as they bounce into the sky.

Maria LaRosa: slight chance...

Goody Paul: of me getting some tonight?

Maria LaRosa shakes her head, which causes an E5 tornado in the alley. which creates Heathcliff.

the Red Circle Table is a free-for-all fracas ruckus smorgasbord where all voices are heard thus none are heard. it has combined with the podcast to form all tech. it has a season-finale feel to it.

Jada Pinkett Smith: i was addicted to porn. Will is nowhere to be found.

Bump: now see? if it's a woman it's okay.

Jada: hey man, this is my original show, this is a real show with feeling, not one of your crude game shows, get outta here! you're banned here for life!

Bump: but yous see, i'm not the President. i'm a god. i'm everywhere, and nowhere. that's how gods govern.

Snoop Dogg: i hated being the bad guy on SVU, i don't do well playing the bad guy, i've always been the happy-go-lucky gangster. i have an image to maintain, i have to always be calm, have a soothing jovial joking demeanor, like i'm high, cos i am, cos i'm always on the weed, cos i get paid to smoke weed on tv, i'm the only American who has this contract, President Bump is jealous of me.

Martha Stewart, with butter in her mouth: you know why i invested and started to become interested in marijuana, right? to be closer to you, Snoop, we are OTP, we are soul mates you and i. we fucked in prison without the guards or the cameras catching it, that's how magic we are. and it's the old VPN concept, you know? you get the VPN to block any snoopers from accessing your internet, but what if one of those snoopers had been your soul mate and you blocked him. what if i had blocked my snooper who was Snoop? heartbroken and crying thinking of the possibility i'd be.

the two hug, Snoop is tall so his face reaches right at Martha's tits.

Snoop: i still watch UPN.

Jokic: where's my Award, Chuck? we learn basketball the right way, in Europe. were you a fan of my buttery passes in the playoffs?

Bald Bull: eat some more bread, whitebread!

Tiger Woods, with a bigger grin than normal on his face, growls:

Tiger: RAWWWRRRRR!!

Dirg: was that for Chewbacca?

Tiger: no, Buffalo Wild Wings. i'm their sponsor now, i signed, this was back when when i truly thought i'd never win another Major, never play golf again. i like this bar, it's a bumpin' bar, it's jointing, i like the waitresses.

Stephen A Smith: sorry, my man Scott Van Pelt, but i'm kickin' you out of your own chair. go kick rocks and pound sand! get yo ass outta my chair! I am the new Sportcenter Host at the 8 o'clock hour, it's a long time DAMN coming! i had the personality to pull this off WAY before four-eyes here. now let's get started with...what does that say?...Justin Bieber won Game of Thrones!!? sorry for spoilers, black folk aren't into this show, it's all over the internet anyway. i mean Grey Worm? come on, seriously?, that's a disrespectful name...

Scott Van Pelt, wearing one contact: that's Bieber the MLB pitcher.

Stephen: HEY! SAS beats SVP. sass beats Second Valuable Player. why isn't Jalen Rose here to talk about Juwan Howard's going to coach Michigan? where is Mr. Q? Mr. Molly Q?...oh, Molly's not here either? ...gotcha...

Eye Luggage: okay, the two big ones the same week. let's tackle Big Bang Theory first. now, here's the thing...

Dirg: that show was terrible. sorry. that's not how we are at all.

Eye: exactly! thank you for convincing me i'm not the one crazy one out on the island. right? yeah, i mean, like i'm watching the series finale and this show is as basic as it comes. it's completely and utterly boilerplate, it's as standard three-camera sitcom as it gets! i don't get the appeal. is it the subject matter? am i crazy?

Laertus: understood. Jim Parsons is a good actor, has good instincts, really made the character, and we all know why he's allowed to hang out with Genie Bouchard. Sheldon wasn't just about bazinga. yeah, there was a disconnect with the show cos it was the most popular show on tv for quite a while during its long run, had the most viewers for a very long time. people conflated its ratings with it being a GOOD show. but if i give it credit, it's this: the show came around at the exact time when the whole millennial adulting thing was concepting, you know? so this show speaks to that generation, it's as if EVERY one of our fellow millennials---except us three apparently---watched this show around the world globe, EVERY SINGLE ONE, contributing to the astronomical numbers. these characters speak to them, they were nerdy, bright about the world and tech and the speed of science and the gigabytes of knowledge we all must intake instantly if we are to have an intelligent conversation online. it spoke to the fragmented nature of nobody touching each other anymore, communicating solely through keystroke, a generation brought up and weaned on awkwardness, socially inept, unable to talk to each other face-to-face. how do these social cocoons find love in such a world as ours?, this world of interaction. not everyone can be a floor flower. for most, the struggle WAS real.

Eye: Game of Thrones, okay, here we go, the big one. the first episode i ever watched was this last episode, that was an experience! okay, i'm sorry, but this whole thing is ridiculous. i mean WHO THE FUCK CARES who wins the Iron Throne. you know? i mean this entire thing is wholly inconsequential, it doesn't mean a damn thing. i get it, the visuals are filmic, the dragons are real...

Dirg: this entire last episode was 100% deepfake, i hope you know this...

Eye: ...the babes are hot, the men are real, it's an excuse for hardcore pornography and real killing in the guise of "keeping things historically accurate", i get the appeal of all that. the there-is-no-age-limit-everyone's-related-to-each-other-we-fudged-the-numbers ethos. back in the good ol' days when anything went. but it's sex and violence, pure and simple. what of this Iron Throne? even i could see that was a slap to the fans who after all this decade, they BURN the fucking damn Throne thing to the ground!? are you kidding me?! so if Daenerys can't have it, nobody can!? take your ball and go home?! no spinning wheel of fortune? i thought i was watching Terminator there with the liquid metal.

Laertus: i thought it romantic and sweet, Drogon was protecting her mother on Mother's Day.

Eye: i mean all the fan theories through the years, the nitpicking and pasting and second-guessing each movement, each motion, each line each actor made, each way they said the line, each sway of the dress or the mace, all for the choice to be made randomly? i get it, the Iron Throne was really the wheelchair we all must sit in in life, that constricts us from achieving our dreams.

Dirg: …

Eye: don't be a fucking ableist, Dirg!!! you enable enough!

Laertus: i like Bran. if you don't have a storyteller, you got nothing. get it, GOT?

Dirg: you would like Bran the beta male. Daenerys had to go, she would have become an irreplaceable tyrant.

Eye: oh you think really? talk to me next time the Impeachment Hearing starts. yeah, misogynistic much? i mean they kill the woman in power. it was Hilary all over again. to break the wheel society must break the spinning wheel of hay. prick their thumb on its point.

Eye: i get it, the breathtaking vistas, the windy landscapes, the tall rocky pillars of Wales crag, and Spain, and inside the studio, postcard-picture-perfect. but all those comments, all 1800 of those AV Club comments, that tells you something, about society.

Eye: in the end, i just don't get it. what did it all mean? i get it, the Brexit shade, the comment on democracy and American democracy, subtle points in the writing, the Scottish angle of independence, all laid on in that final council meeting with the waterbottle. and what's with the Dothraki language? what's the POINT of the Dothraki language? at least Klingon has a purpose. Dani's speech would have made more of an impact had it been in English. as it stands, it's just a lot of gibberish.

Dirg: now you're sounding like me! Dani's Hitler speech, Hitlery. standing the whole time. with dragon wings for wings.

Laertus: of course the guy with the best idea was shamed cos he was the fat guy nobody took seriously.

Dirg tries to reach for Eye's hand but she snaps it back out of him.

Dirg: now tell the folk listening patiently without causing a ruckus on radio the real reason you hate this show so much. it's not the number of followers.

Eye: okay, fine, my Harley Hammer ran off with Arya Stark's sword Needle. her thin sword. thinner than me. happy now? i need to go on a long sea voyage and empty myself and find myself. maybe a second honeymoon. alone.

Laertus: it was weird watching something with no commercial breaks, i always felt something was missing. i would recommend it to those who like puzzles. and pop-up books, the intro opening. is this really the last collective mythos we humans will experience together on tv? well it sucks i missed all of it. o the sin of streaming. but wasn't that supposed to be Lost? see i was a Lost boy.

Eye: one thing it did get right was as we women finally assert our power, REALLY own ourselves and our magic, the need for men will be nullified and there will be a bunch of eunuchs running around this dusty planet. a wounded world. major pent-up penis prevalence. hey, did Tyrion ever get naked on the show, anytime during the series? that would be the only sex i would be interested in.

Cecily Strong enters her Manhattan brick apartment with her key-chain fob which is just a card. she ascends the stoop stairs inside and enters her room. there, foaming from his mouth, eyes glazed and rolled back, stands a monkey-looking and monkey-like Chris Kattan. he is lain across her kitchen table motionless, legs and arms dead and not swinging no more. he is a plant with no more brain, his head is completely bandaged-up tight with white ties. he is a house plant, he might as well be another of Cecily's hanging ferns.

Cecily, carrying three brown bags full of The Store groceries: what's for dinner you say? no, not beef. vegetables. haha...

Kattan: …

Cecily: i can't leave my family. my SNL family. i can never abandon my family, even tho you are a man. you're a man so you're the most vulnerable. and valuable to tame. i pledge to take care of you till the end. but no sponge baths. here i'm gonna place this banana in your mouth now...i know...i know you would think this is funny, too...sorry for laughing...

Cecily tosses her keys around Chris Kattan's neck. she tousles her tits, ass, and voice on her HRC Red coffee table hard. she reads the vice news in her newspaper with a straight voice. in a temperate tone.

Cecily: my mom wanted me to be a nurse like her. this is what i had been preparing for, i was gonna be a serious dramatic actress, i had the chops. and the insane body, i was bred for this, i had the talent, i could sing and actually impersonate celebrities unlike that bleach-blonde who gets all the attention and steals my thunder cos she and thunder are both blondes but she can't seem to make it in movies. i could make it in movies...i can act...really act...

at the sitting-room hallway corridor which connects Congress with the Cream House, purple-velvet hollow-point stools rule the day, oversat on, and oil paintings of squares. Nancy Pelosi in a purple plaid dress and a rose in one of her eyes takes off her kerchief from her dress pocket, spits into it to wet it, and wipes away some schmutz from Bump's lippy cheek jowls. Bump slaps her hand away.

Bump: stop that, Nancy! i'm not a baby! i'm not a baby-man!

Nancy: come here, Mickey, give me a hug. give me a kiss. you need a vacation, want me to hook you up with a Perillo Tours?

Bump: okay. it's like kissing your grandma with big tits but that mouth-kiss was nice.

Nancy: you know i love you, right, Mickey? but you can't get away with all that shit. you thought you could actually get away with all your shit you're doing? do you need a coat? you need to cover up, it's cold in here, let granmama help you put it through the holes.

at the Clearing:

Llywarch: you ready? which side will you choose? which side will you live for?

Laertus: i was born ready, ready to die. i'm scared. i don't understand. you know it's like Instagram, lifetimes in one day.

Llywarch: how do you mean?

Laertus: on Instagram. you see a stranger's Instagram page for the first time. you will never see this person again. today is your ONE DAY to talk to this person, so that comment you leave on her pic post better be the best, most-insightful, least-inciting comment you've ever typed, a written poem which in a few lines represents your character, humor, and personality. that DM you slide into a hot-babe celebrity's Instagram better be a damn good joke. this is THEIR and YOUR ONE CHANCE, one chance to make a first impression, the ONLY impression throughout all of space, time, and bandwidth, you'll never see them again, leave them with a message which they will remember…

Llywarch: am I your hot-babe celebrity?

Laertus: you're better. what do i need to do now?

Llywarch: turn your head to face the horizon. see it? you can't see all of it. the reality you've been living all your life---what you thought was real your whole entire existence---is what is the deepfake, The Clearing is reality. do you choose to live a life of love and truth with me? or finish your finals over there at your fake college?

Laertus has his hand to his face in a karate-chop like he's at the starting line of some Olympics track event in the 1910s.

Laertus: over there at Obec. no wonder Obec University never got accredited! i don't know. i dunno. i don't know if this is real. Dirg is as real to me as you are. it can't be, and yet i can sorta feel it is, there are strange untraceable irreplaceable tingles down the spine of my elbows. damn tech! i don't know what to do, where to go. i just don't want to think about this anymore. i want my head free from flies. i just want to wake up.

Llywarch: this is something you must do, something you have to do, there's no turning back: you must GO NOW!!! TAKE that leap into the unknown...