Llywarch and Laertus huddle together on the heath. they have become closer these weeks as Dirg is off doing devil-knows-what and not caring where Laertus is, Laertus is studying his ass off and needs a break, and Llywarch is always there, always there on that field marsh, whenever Laertus seeks him. they hug as a matter of course now.
Laertus: *quietly* i'm whispering cos i don't want Dirg to hear. even cyberspacially. but...i love you...
Llywarch: *laughing smilingly silently* heehee, yeah, i love you, too, my friend, not like that, i mean more. but why should we keep this hidden and suspicious? isn't it perfectly reasonable our love?
Laertus: well, not really, not yet in my world. i'm sure yours is far-superior cos it's been accelerated by the one-touch of a simple button.
Llywarch: uh, something like that.
Laertus: i think the omg-fall-in-love moment came for me when you declared that you would dedicate your life to activism. i fell in love with your civil civics. and your ears. you don't know how anathema that is to Dirg, he holds it as a sign of weakness.
Llywarch: well i do have three lives......that was a joke.
Laertus: you are a noble beast, in both ways. are you ready for tonight? there's gonna be a big freedom rally at LUSH. you gather all the animals of the forest who are your friends, and i got just me but i'm brimming with spirit! all of us---soldiers, friends, reporters, and allies---will turn back the tide of this salty scourge on the Earth of revenge porn. scorched can only get so hot.
Llywarch: i'm not exactly sure how to conceptualize these horrible images of which you speak in my mind, seeing as all of your images are taken from my land. but i agree with you that it must stop. you've been spending a whole lotta time here, are you sure you're not slacking off on your studies?
Laertus: i'm good as long as i don't sleep and don't sleep in the dorms and eat only coffee for meals. don't worry, i'm still really into and have time for my slacktivism.
Llywarch: hardly, most of the computers i know don't care like you do.
Laertus: i'll be there! we'll be there together!
Barr steps up to the microphone:
Barr: remember rainbows? i'm not telling you what to think, i'm thinking you what to tell. okay so i'm gonna keep it all to myself. the Report. it's just so interesting, i read an unredacted portion of it to myself every night right before i go to sleep to keep me awake. it's more lorey and magical than the best of Tolkien and more action-packed than
Goodnight, Moon. come on, the President's a good guy, he's doing a good job. so i'm never gonna release it, it's better this way. easier for the country, let's everyone just move on. this isn't a scuttle, this is about the true definition of asylum. okay? thank you, bye. oh...here's the principal conclusions of what i just said:
Fuck you, world,
hands off, it's mine!
Wolf: you got that, Cuomo? the handsome curly anchor, not the ugly flat-haired governor.
Chris Cuomo: no. i don't care about that stuff. what we're gonna do on my show is for the next year we're gonna dissect the Notre Dame fire. front to back pew. the nave, the candles, and those apostles with their heads cut off. both the statues and the real people. come on, people! where's your faith!? aren't you more upset by this? this is why Catholicism is dead. you can't have two Popes! you can't have one pope strangely in the corner like a quiet mouse who pops his head out for cheese and whiskers every two years. it died in the Crusades, it's just nobody ever recovered the Body. the Church is the Body, not a building...except THIS building! my idea: the Pope celebrates Easter-Sunday Mass at the site of the Notre Dame burn, that would be a powerful symbol of Renewal and the Resurrection.
The Pope: yeah i was planning to...if it had been a large pile of black ruinous dust. but as it is, as it stands today, and as it stands, i think imma gonna skip Easter Mass. got some frequents to Fiji i've been thinking about using, i need to get out more, use my miles. and mileage. yeah i'm gonna be missing this Sunday on vacation.
a large red double-decker bus screeches onto the grey stone cobbles in front of Parliament and the Tower and the Palace. a confab has been assembled, all the brightest minds from all over the world, to solve this Brexit thing once and for all:
Jeanie Buss: everybody get on the BUSS! MY buss!!! all aboard! this is more romantic than a train.
a radio program is being conducted while the bus drives around corners. the famous Naked Girl with BREXIT spraypainted on her chest by Banksy is carrying on as all Brits are trying to do with their lives but getting a million followers a minute, more than the fledgling station has ever seen. they especially like it when she wears the headphones with the snake-coils and sits on the radio seat completely stark-naked and the GOT throne trolls make that known in the live-comments.
Dirg: you can't choose your followers...
Jo from
Real World: San Francisco and her ex are on opposite sides between glass in the non-soundproof room both with mics countering each of the Naked Girl's points for their own side's benefit:
Jo: as we all know Brexit Is Impossible. i love your fashion sense, love, but i'm afraid the listeners aren't listening very well to your cogent points. you are for...some things and against others.
ex: no, I love her fashion sense! that is owned by me! the proof is in the callers. I have a cause. I am the eaglehead of a revolution!
Jo: oh shut up! you're nothing but a loser! and you're taking the country down with your loserness ever since you declared for Brit citizenship.
ex: what can is say? i love British telly.
Jo: just sign up for BritBox in the States! stop ruining everything you touch! it's all cos of you! we had the votes, i voted Remain in the 100th general election---the one to break the stalemate---and it was looking good, the country was up by one, then you had to come along and cast your secret ballot which was livestreamed on Facebook and you voted Leave and it was a god-save-the-queen-damned tie again!!!
ex: okay i'll make you an offer deal: you sleep with me again one more time, and i'll break the tie and vote Stay, like that song with the girl in glasses. watch out for those feminazi girls with glasses.
Jo: in the summary words of Barr: fuck you.
Jim Hill: hey, family, keep the faith.
Chris Cuomo, microphone up everyone's nose: i like you, Jim Hill.
Julian Assange is dragged out of his home and is nearly run-over by a stray double-decker bus. a home a place he treated like a hotel room, trashed it like an undeserving rock star. he is muttering gibberish that only online trolls can hear.
later at the bobby box, he's telling the police and Doctor Who all about it:
Assange: i will assuage you. want some nuts? nevermind, you millennials will never get a Michael Keaton joke.
Officer Pete Davidson:
SNL is the arbiter of pop culture. officers can be firemen, too. so what's the deal with you and Pamela Anderson?
Pamela Anderson in a red blouse: i honestly thought he was Santa. i mean Santa is the ultimate fuck for a girl.
Avenatti: let the record show, i do not sound like Telly Savalas...
Assange: i'll tell you everything if you promise not to tell Pammy this: well i kinda vaccinated her without her knowing, just to prove a point and my theory. that explains her balloon boobs. they didn't pop with the introduction of the needle so that's a good start.
Pete: come on, you can do better than that, you're a conspiracy-theorist for satan sake, your stories are better than the reporters'! don't YOU tell ME, i know who did 9/11 personally.
Assange: what i provide is 100% truth, and it's also 100% illegal. truth is illegal. look, truth is, i'm trying to get out of a jam. i looked up to Tony Hawk and always wanted to be a skateboarder. unfortunately that drew a lot of young fans to me and my various hostels. so i jumped at the chance to have THE Pam Anderson teach me extreme sports! to do with water i gathered. she was more into surfing and bodyboarding and the like, and i'm deathly afraid of water, i won't even drink the water in my diplomatic shack.
Tiger Woods has entered the chat and the world and takes off his red shirt, throwing it down on the meadow as it forms into a red circle which provides the Red Table.
Tiger: *on his Nike phone bugged by Avenatti* Roger? those back exercises you lent me were fantastic! i DID it!
Federer is at the mountain receiving the holy robe from Zion. Chris Evert is by Rog's side looking at him beatifically and zombie like Pence looks at Bump.
Roger: and now, my dear, it's time to make the Collezione spaghetti! with Giant Meatball!
Evert: oh, it's really food. i thought that was a euphemism. after munch, let's go check out this 4-hour-long tennis anime i unearthed from French Open soil while accidentally pushing the wrong button on twitter...we'll have to travel to Machu Picchu...all mountains are connected...
Federer: i look forward to next week when i'll join The Breakfast Club at the Red Circle Table to discuss my red logo and hats and that famous tennis movie. i'm happy for you, my friend. what are you gonna do now?
Tiger: i'm never gonna give up and imma continue my yoga with pancake-house waitresses! Jack? is that you on the other line?
Jack Bauer: i'm kinda busy...coming up with a new idea...
Tiger: no, not you, Nicklaus. hi-yo Jacko! how do you feel now, old man?
Nicklaus: come on, Tiger, i praised you, i congratulated you from the heart of the desert. i'm genuinely happy for you. but here is where this ends. you've had your moment, now don't you come any closer to 18 or there will be trouble. i'm warning you. you wouldn't like me when i'm angry. you wouldn't like me when i haven't had my Arnold Palmer drink at 6AM. old man, i'll show YOU old man! you want to end up like your old man, Tiger? and what's with that weak fish-kiss to your girlfriend?! come on, give her a real man's kiss like i will!
Bump: i was offended by what Obama said. i'm a divorced dad, you know, all my voters are.
Tiger: you're shaking in your loafers, Jack. hit the road. there's bourbon in your Arnold Palmer, not iced tea.
Jack Nicklaus turns into a huge golden bear and eats the clubhouse until it turns into a huge 19th hole.
President Bump: Tiger, can i...?
Tiger: no, sir. you see the difference between you and me is i make my crazy dreams come true for good.
Bump: you should be grateful to be here, Tiger. where you are. i provided the hurricane which delayed that Sunday up for you to win.
Tiger: what up, Russ?
Russell Wilson is filming himself naked in bed with a naked Ciara. as per his new exciting announcement. he twitters that spicy vertical vid out into the world.
Molly Q: Rus already won by locking down Ciara. whooo-eeee! well that's hot. that's intimate in the good way. why don't we ever do that, Max?
Max: Molly, are you EVER gonna visit my boxing show? it'll get canceled before you come.
Molly Q: i am known as a late-comer. i will be there, son, maybe next week...
Nipsey Hussle is inbetween the two lovers in blue hologram:
Nipsey: ahhhh. knew it. hustle to nip it in the bud. now i can just lean my arms back, build another foster-care home in the clouds, and rap to the God of
Lazor Wulf.
Eye Lugagge: i love that show. slightly less than
Wolf's Rain. i love how the wolves talk then stop talking and their tongue comes out of their mouth and drops right after.
Nipsey: i'm naked cos i'm an angel. this is my eternal reward.
Aisha Moodie-Mills and her wife are also in this bed made of redwood, both naked.
Aisha: straight from the Golden Bear of Berkeley.
Ciara: don't get any ideas, baby.
Russell: that's crazy. i thought that other Moodie-Mills on tv was your sister! but here you are the both of you!
Bump: i had no idea, either. Aisha, dark darling, what a waste for us men!
everyone: get out!
Bump: okay i'll leave the sheets, tho. no i just meant her as an in into the black community, that's all. to learn her ways. in the bedroom, for political purposes.
Russell: this is crazy! have you seen me in the new EA football video game? i look so realistic...TOO realistic. i mean the lines and dots in me are not vectors anymore, they're pores and freckles! when i blink with my game-me's eyes, real human glass is stained with tears. there's an air of disquiet when i play myself, during the silent moments when the crowd in the game isn't cheering in the back.
Ciara: *eating cereal in bed* i honestly couldn't tell you apart, your character in the game looked MORE real than you do right now staring me in the face (and head) in this bed next to me and my sexy eyes.
Eye Luggage: okay i don't get all this
Game of Thrones hysteria! why is it such a dire situation? i mean except for those cute wolves. why are there guitars and RISK board games being made of this show? i don't give a fuck about Game of Thrones. i don't give a fuck who wins! who the fuck cares?!
Dirg: is that why your screen name is Dragon Keeper?
Eye: hey how'd you know about that? watch it, buster. no that was for before. that was when i was kid and had a crush on
Dragon magazine and Tom Cruise. none of that iron beats the iron in my Harley Hammer. and fuck Opening Day! who cares about baseball anymore? that bat will NEVER compare to my Harley Hammer. but my Harley Hammer DOES give me wood.
the crones ride their brooms to Ronnie's Sex Shop after making a wrong turn at Colesburg in Cape Province, Doryce thought she was tracking down a Nat King Cole she resurrected with her spell.
Doryce: thought it would be providential.
Gladyce: you know better than all that malarkey, dear.
Ronnie is there dusty and with a toothache. he directs the ladies to their usual rooms, large beige-colored sandpaper/sandstone rounded interior desert huts that look like
Star Wars. or Burning Man.
Ronnie: *with a peculiar accent* have you vrous been here before? i don't remember, i can't tell. want our Blockbuster's Video lifetime-membership card good for any Ronnie's around the world?
Gladyce: there's only one, that's why we come.
Doryce: oh sure, love, we come here all the time, i think. now get on the bed and hatch out a dozen eggs through your anus-hole. come on, hurry, it's Easter! you'll miss it! that's how you lot celebrate, right? i don't want to know how you color them. here, see? even the bed is hay so it looks like a straw basket. or nest if you like.
Gladyce snatches 4 of Ronnie's forced eggs and eats them whole.
Gladyce: *burp* sorry. missed breakfast.
Doryce: FOUR EGGS!!? who eats FOUR EGGS for breakfast!!? what a waste! i'm never talking to you again, Gladyce! fuck off and you! stuff it! stuff your straw!
Gladyce: i tried to think of the brown as chocolate, not poo. they were good.
Doryce storms out.
Gladyce is left with a hangdog look. so is Ronnie on all fours.
Gladyce: *sigh* huh, i guess she's still mad about the meatball, and me.
Ronnie: don't blame yourself. i created this sex shoppe to help women, it wasn't a man thing, i wanted women to bloom and flourish and nature-noble and be sexually free. there are still good men out there in this world, you know, with nothing to gain and everything to lose. how may i help?
Gladyce: i know, love. know any good world-famous buffets?
Ronnie: there's the Wicked Spoon buffet court. in Vegas, i think.
Gladyce: no, no more to do with Boston accents.
Ronnie: Cocoputt in the off Cook Islands.
Gladyce: that's better. she needs to work on her golf game. a tad. and her cooking. and her chocolate-eating. and the isles still fall under Her Majesty's stewardship, old witch blood. i plan to go next week. for next week's adventure.
next week happens now.
at the world-famous Cocoputt Buffet, the carpets are diamonds and the gold squares are filled from above with all manner of food...that has been replaced with nothing but dozens and dozens of eggs not from Costco cases...per Gladyce's spell. this makes Doryce smile through her teeth and she eats ALL the eggs.
Gladyce: all of these eggs you see before you came from my butt.
at LUSH the meeting is about to begin, there is an air of political-naughtiness in its spark. the white sheet is draped over the how-low-can-you-go pole outside on the back-lawn.
Madame Pons: the film is about to begin. this isn't a summer blockbuster with superheroes, this is an important film which every sentient being MUST see. it will change the calculus of how we nourish ourselves forever. mind body spirit suds interconnectedness and multiculturalism with animals. nothing regressive about dying for food, Americans without left thumbs do it all the time.
all the forest animals from Obec Woods and neighboring Wythenshawe and the young female college-students with bows are gathered side by side each other, some squatting, some standing up to watch it together. Llywarch's hen Yoricka acts as a kind of Green Day Ernie puppet crowdsurfing on top of the crowd.
Madame Pons: this will be our battle cry. this will unify us, make us a collective, stick us all to the cause with celestial and ceramic Fixodent-and-forget-it glue.
Llywarch and Laertus arrive fashionably late but no one notices cos this is serious.
Laertus: sorry, traffic on the information superhighway. what'd we miss?
Pons: hey, guys. oh, you can have the leftover food in those pink boxes over there. some justified desserts i picked up at Beard Papa's. cream puffs.
Llywarch: for us cream puffs.
Pons: these puffs seemed friendly enough, they were smiling at me under glass at the store. i mean Beard Papa is revered as Santa in Japan.
Laertus: there is no Christmas in Japan.
Pons: or, like, Beard Papa is Julian Assange to them then. you know, a folk hero either way.
Llywarch: can you more deeply explain deepfake, Madame Pons? i saw it online as i looked up at the sky on the way over here.
Pons: a virulent form of revenge porn we must extinguish from society. i've received threats from them mailed to my place of worship---my place of work, i worship the soaps here at LUSH---with pictures of college students i've counseled here at the University, young newbie women new to the adult world, freshmen and sophs wading into the world, trying out being sexually-free for the first time. it's not all pleasure and proactive pain, it can be daunting and danger. threats about taking their virginity not the way they want or exposing them as sluts when clearly they are not. the pictures have my girls performing the disgustingest of lewd pornographic sex acts on and in video but it's not them, it's their faces photoshopped onto other bodies but it looks so realistic---hyperrealistic---that you cannot tell the difference. in fact it looks MORE real than if the actual person was filmed doing these things. they tried this first with celebrities but moved quickly on to civilians. we must put a stop to this shock shop slop.
everyone waits in the crisp night air bottoming on their temples. with trepidation in their hearts and trepidation in the tumbler waiting for the movie to catch fire all staring at the sheet screen.
Pons turns on the reel, which turns slowly. spark of rebellion. which will lead to fire across the sky. she uses the turning light from her tiny tv below the counter, as the light turns...