DELIBERATE FORGET

flippin' between channels

Atalan at the lanes.

Atalan: i love coming here and dunking my head under. i can escape this crazy world. until you need a breath again to survive. that is so cruel. can't escape the connection. perhaps it's my namesake but i feel more comfortable in the water than on land. i am so bummed i wasn't able to continue with the free-throws thing, the next locale would have been in the middle of the ocean, that would've been bonkers. but it seems the good-intentioned always leads to ruin. coming together, uniting, comes at a price. if it's not interesting, it won't get the ratings and will be dropped like anything else. the medium is the message and the message is the tv show. but enough of this edgy blabber, i'm here to show off my silly side. time for some butt bubbles.

Atalan jumps into his lane, making sure to always stay in it, and contemplates the show in a few hours. time stands still underwater, and you tend to think serious thoughts, you contemplate cos you're seeing a whole blue perspective, it's not really the time for a fart joke. not even the silly foam duck webbed-foot flipper paddles that crowd the bottom of the pool is good for a long chuckle, just a short one before more air is needed.

before Ata can make his first reverse-dolphin-kick-flip-pushoff-turn manuever at the wall of his first lap,

AN EXISTENTIAL MOMENT ENTERS HIS MIND THAT IS BUOYED BY THE BEAT, SCATTERED BY ALL THE COLORFUL POOL FLAGS OVERHANGING AND BACKED BY A BLUE BACKGROUND, CLICK HERE, RIGHT HERE AT THIS LINK.

Atalan: i'm tired of thinking for myself. i feel my talents are being put to waste. what if i lose? what then? i wish a businessman in a nice suit would swoop down and offer me an offer i couldn't refuse cos it would be my only offer. i want someone else to tell me what my life is for.

JUST THEN Ata sees what seems to be a bulky husky haughty man with square shoulders and a stern maw and the weirdest wet hair extend his hand where he holds a retro phone with a coil cord out to Ata. the cord is a bit off as it seems to have a mind of its own and slithers out past where you would think it could go without an extension cord.

all of this is of course happening underwater

-------------------------------------------------------------

on their phones of course

Kenyatta: girl i'm speaking to you with just the speaker, that's all that's left of my phone. did you get all that? the lion spirit? could be useful down the line. spirits are suckers of drama. gods tend to be grandiose. wait, which one am i speaking to?

Binny: the one that doesn't call trouble.

Kenyatta (wet): just call me for dinner. man o man i love to eat even more now, i don't take it for granted, no more twig and berries for me. yeah i'll eat anything to get my butt all nice and big, it's getting more attention than me.

Binny: so each word we come across at work or at play we are to learn, look up the wiki article and in the wiktionary, see if there are any attendant youtube videos, look it up on the map, and memorize. and then we are to deconstruct each letter of the word to see if it'll form other shorter words, put those through the ringer, look up the urbandicitonary definition, on google type "means" after the word and see what pops up, go to google translate to see if it makes more sense as a foreign word, and finally write it down on a piece of paper in case we forget it. Codrus says there is so much more paper in the world now that everybody does everything online.

Kenyatta: that's why i became a workaholic, eliminated one whole half of the work i have to do.

Binny: Quinny and i are scared of the market. whenever we go get groceries on Wednesdays we make sure to deliberately not look at The Store sign as we enter or any other writing on shelf cans, pasta pouches, gum packets, 2-in-1 mop buckets, hammocks, Solstice cards, tulip displays, farm-fresh family food, illegal drinks, cigarettes both under and over glass, frozen meat, liquid eggs, chips and crackers, dried-out cereal and dry cereal, big water jugs, periodicals at checkout, not even cool designs on customers' T shirts for fear of clever words being underneath. if we happen to glance and catch a word we pray to god that we happen to forget it. and large awkward cardboard beefcake musclemen trying to sell us the latest enlightened unisex flavored mineral water, that's the hardest one. we simply steer clear of the foreign food aisle, that would be a nightmare. we don't want to learn any new words or new phrases for food and drink cos that's just more work for us.

Kenyatta: you're saving the rainforests, dear, proud o' u. catch you later, the preliminaries are about to start, the lights have been hushed.

Binny: yes, oatmeal, too. and the coffee always with those beautiful Swedish brand names. it's such a shame, i hear Swedish spoken more than english, the head grocer is from Sweden, headed the only Swedish branch, came back here cos business was bad, they wanted to hear more english, but i can't get involved, i have to shy away and not look, whatever you do, DON'T LOOK AT LABELS. i'm too busy learning world culture to get cultured with a sample of cultured Swedish yogurt.

_______________________________________________

Alex: the category is "F"UCK THIS HOLE THING.

Yayray: 100, keep it 100

Ata: inb4 my signal thing is bad, i can't lock in.

Alex: this F is a group of folk who take liking a tv show WAY too far.

Yayray: what are freaks, fans, con booth people, fandom, folk

Alex: we'll accept any of those but watch your language.

Yayray: i fucking hate nerds.

Ata: brah-

Yayray: well no, i hate what nerds have become. a nerd used to be cool and beat-up, now it's the nerd- industrial complex.

Alex: is that like the prom-industrial complex? i didn't go to prom, have always been a fan of the prom.

Yayray: i don't hate the Player 1 or the Player 2, i hate the system. fuck the system. please get rid of all the online, all the messageboards, the events and the forums for people to pay for something and then that gives them the right to force the author of that something to write it exactly as they say.

Ata: that's why i don't have original thoughts anymore. i have all sorts of ideas for sci-fi/fantasy miniseries in my mind but i realize the end result will be having to cater to a group of seven-year-olds who shouldn't even be watching this mature content instead of my original origin story. and worst of all i'll have to speak to these children on twitter.

Alex: will you be my Player 2? that's what i would have said to my prom date.

Yayray: let's make it a true Daily Double. if i get the next one wrong, i forfeit my 100 to Ata.

Ata: i'm looking at my tally board at my station and it doesn't seem to be working. it just registers nothing. 0. it's black not bright blue. i am unable to accept money.

Alex: for 500: this is where and when doughnut holes were first invented.

Yayray: Kepler about a million years ago give or take a parsec. in the original Branson at a hotel made of Ancient Egyptian stone. the real Ancient Egyptians. who were really aliens. they took over their bodies. this is where they are originally from.

Ata: i knew that.

at Final Jeopardy, Ata tries to manuever his magic light pen to write his answer but his screen goes blank. but it's not just him this time. Bump's majestic face takes over the transmission as Codrus, who was secretly in the darkened audience next to Kenyatta, was about to get up and announce himself and clap one time to wish everyone good luck on this most momentous of occasions to determine the right-hand man of a philosophy that will drive humanity for eons and aeons to come.

Mickey Bump glows, his moneyed teeth are never shown, he seems to be frowning all the time but it's just his resting face, confident and steady, a yellow radiance steadily emanates from that most beautiful mane of flowing hair of his that seems to draw everyone from what they are doing to him. he looks like a lion. the look on Codrus's face says it all: he is not amused.

Wolf: alright, let's get this shit over with. welcome to the first debate.

Bump: thank you, Tiger. you're the moderator, right? i know i slipped under the door an envelope for someone this morning. there are so many unused envelopes in the world now. have you noticed that America's name doesn't get mentioned when it comes to world events anymore? i'm about to change all that.

Codrus: you defy me, little blond man?

Kenyatta: chill, dude, get some water, i know i'm not your favorite person right now but i see it from both sides. he'll do all the damage himself.

Codrus: how did he manage this? i have all the drones.

Kenyatta: he made a phone call.