The Audio Book of the Dead, Chapter 1 SUBMISSIONS

[The Good Reverend Roger]

The question as to whether Gods of men exist is answered, at least for me.  

I know that they do, because I've met one.

The God was drunk as hell, back at a party in 1987.  He was talking to three friends of mine, all up-and-comers in the new computer technology of networking.  He was jabbering to my friends - let's call them Larry, Curly, and Moe, and making very little sense to me...though that was a function of jargon and not his colossal inebriation.  

I was kind of left out of the conversation, and my three friends seemed to come to an agreement with him.  The party broke up about an hour later, and I really didn't think much of the conversation, at least for a while.

My three friends, though, all quit their jobs and dropped out of sight for a while.  When they came back, they were all fairly big names in the industry or, in one case, a government organization.  All three were huge into assembling what would later be called "the internet".  

I spoke to Larry a couple of times over the years, and at first he seemed excited as hell.  They were doing big things, and they were going to change the world.  Curly was happier than I'd ever seen him in his life, and he wore a big grin, just like the character I've named him after.  But the second time I saw Larry, he wasn't so happy.  He looked a little worried, and muttered a bit about Moe being in the pocket of all the wrong people.  He brought up the famous Stanislav Petrov incident, and said that Moe had said something about "having the cure for that sort of thing"...and then asked me - with a weird look on his face - what I thought the worst thing I could do with the internet was, if I had unlimited access.  About this time, Curly was still grinning, but it looked more like a rictus.

Two weeks after that conversation, Moe was killed in a car accident.  Funny, though, I thought I saw him years later, but I was probably mistaken.

Larry stopped talking after that, and kind of dropped out of the crowd I know.  Curly went a little nuts (or so it seemed at the time), and started buying into conspiracy theories here and there.  Not all of them, but enough.  He talked about CARNIVORE a lot, and PROMIS, and a few other conspiracy theories that are related directly or indirectly to the computing industry, particularly where it meets up with DARPA and other government organizations.

There's more to tell about Curly, and that will come, but suffice to say that Curly was on the wrong side of the police line on That Day.  He said he knew how to turn "the machine" off, which didn't make much sense.  I was so busy gagging on tear gas that I never heard the last thing he yelled to me, before the demonstrators - with me trapped in their midst - were swept away by cops that looked like something out of a dystopian science fiction story.  Curly has never, to my knowledge, been seen again.

I didn't see Larry for years after that...then one day he pulled up in front of my house with the God (who was just as drunk as the first time I'd met him) wearing a depraved grin, in the passenger seat.  Larry handed me a box of flash drives (which maxed out at about half a gig at the time), and told me to load them.  He said it would allow me to move into or out of websites by hijacking accounts, among other things, and to have fun with it while it lasted, and maybe to pass it around to people I trusted.  He said there was a lot more to it, but he didn't have time to explain.

I've never seen him since.  I did see the God once more, but that's a story for another time.

- As told by Robert _____

(To those of you who recognize what this was derived from, PM me.)

[Richter]

You'd never know it, these days, if you met a god on the road.  Well, you MIGHT know if they were driving a police car or a semi truck, but those are specific incidents.  The gods these days don't advertise themselves as gods so much.  They slink around in other guises, clever costumes thatwould never clue you in you're dealing with a deity, demi deity, divine messenger or demon, until you've had your interaction with them and gone on your way.  Their cults and temples probably don't even know what they are anymore. 

They have us surrounded, if not outnumbered.  As simple as a bit of unexpected aid, as complex as a fceless, ineffable dictate, look around and ask yourself how many times something not human is dictating what humans do.  the box in the wall that tells you what to do, the voice on the phone instructing you through a procedure, that camera that catches you commiting a VIOLATION, and capturing fine resolution evidence to be sent to your doorstep.  You can see the old archetypes and paradigms and question whether that was Loki, Tiamat, or Hastur that you just ran into, but it really does no good.  When you walk into their realms, step into something covered by their portfolio you better know the things you cannot do, the words you cannot say.

These are the obvious ones, the basics.  They get more convoluted and obtuse,and human reason doesn't always apply.  Be careful not to offend the gods.

[Lord Quantum]

They have us surrounded, if not outnumbered. 

Surrounded by Gods? Now there's a book title. Yoink. Are you saying that large numbers of people in the recent past have ascended to Godhood or simply that technology has given the Gods of Old greater power? As for cameras being Gods, sounds more like Odin's two ravens to me, but eh.

[Richter]

Offices should be populated by men and not gods. 

It started awhile back when I got a job in "Business".  I'm still not entirely sure what "Business" is, other than my degree from college wasn't in it.  That meant I had to start at the BOTTOM, and not be ushered immediately onto the upper floors with spacious offices, high salaries, indefinite lunches, perks, and bonuses. 

It was the first job that was offering pay in money, so I took it.  Near as I can tell, I did things, and worked for people who did things.  I talked down irate customers, smoothed over misunderstandings, and got new things set up, while looking for a way to rise higher.  I watched what my supervisors and managers did, and they did things too.  They kept an eye on everyone, training informing, hiring and firing.  Middle management was where the people STOPPED.

The layer above them, they did less.  They spent their time, near as I could see, overseeing the overseers.  They floated around the upper floors, agreeable and reassuring when they came down to our level.  Their days, it seems, were entirely composed of floating around like this.  No one was quite sure how many of these overseers (To the whatever - th degree) there were between us and the CEO.  The step pyramid of the company, the ziggurat of "Business", had no clear SIZE. 

Asking who did what led to that strange babble, the double speak of every good deity in their trainer robes.  The assurances that everyone who seems to be doing less REAL work and more work RUNNING things, was really a highly trained individual.  They'd go on about their responsibilities, sidetrack about their last bi - monthly trip to St. Thomas, and swan off to another of the seemingly endless series of meetings. 

The Salesmen, they were advocates of the babble in the strange tower too.  Ask them, and they go on and on about how to sell, and how things worked in sales.  Then they'd head off to wine and dine a client as deftly as any Casanova, all on the company card.  "To facilitate business", they'd say. 

See, these are the fucking ants of the god world, the black carapace businessmen, and the red tinted salesmen.  Scuttling around convinced that without them, nothing would happen.  The cohabitate their strange hives, built higher into the air, worshiping and bringing in scrap for their queen, Ceo.  Every little man aspiring to be more a god himself, and hop up another step on that useless mastaba. 

When the whole world took a downturn, and business wasn't quite so good, WOW did those fuckers sing.  Hosannas of how bad things were.  Hymns of layoffs and cutbacks.  Always to the people who actually DID things.  Then they turned around and spoon fed each other fat bonuses like always before, doting as a pair of obese, flaccid lovers. 

"We need to retain our good people!", they whined as better workers than they shuffled of for unemployment.

These are gods that die frequently in vain, but their collective action, their buzzing cloud of demigod flies, carries on feasting and maggoting on the carcasses of those who actually DO something.

[Doktor Howl]

Oh, yeah.

[Richter]

Needs editting.  More CONSPIRACY too, I think, than jsut the allusion to the bailout

[Richter]

Big Bird's nose fell off too.  His handlers never could put their foot down about his paint huffing and blowing lines of bathroom cleaner.

And Bert & Ernie?

Well, let's just say we don't want the kids getting the wrong message, right?

Just the kids?  I mean Bert was a freak, we all knew that.  Purtanical guilt written all OVER him.  No one ever took off "Penitent Pillgrim"'s hood at the club, but I mean, with a head shaped like that it ws no secret.

Ernie though, he was a good egg.  He clued in eventually, he just couldn't get it RIGHT.  You come home, and your orange roomate has bought a sex swing, gallon of lard, an 30 lbs of assorted root veg, you're shocked no matter what you're into. 

Veggie monster gettign into it didn't help either.  Legitamate missunderstanding there.  Must have been sad, Ernie all well meaning, and his grand reveal is sullied by a broken, obsessed eating dissorder incarnate slathering down everything.

They had to hush them all up and shuffle them off.  None of them were working together ever again.

Except for Veggie, they jsut beat him with pipes, threw a bag of shredded carrot in his face, locked him in a closet and told him to pull his shit together.   

[Doktor Howl]

Oscar didn't see it coming. 
Of all them, he was the only one who was REAL about things.  I have to say, he was the best of them too.  Asshole, sure, he was a GROUCH for fucksake.  No drugs, no women, no kinks that got into everyone else's shit though.  Oscar was just happy being Oscar, doing his thing and dispensing his caustic wisdom to anyone who stood in his airspace for too long.  He was the counterpoint, the voice of reason, and the agitator all in one.  Once they dumped his ass on the bus though, they'd just sent their thanatos away.  Things went on after, sure, but sticky gummy sweet.  Nothing to provide the counterpoint that made it all WORK.

They missed that though.  They only saw the lawyers hemming and hawing, the angry letters from soccer moms who've never SEEN a trashcan in their suburban sheltered lives.  Jim defended him to his death, but once he was gone Oscar just didn't have the patience to network and keep above the office politik.  The office politik didn't see Oscar's whole front was his way of showing how much he cared.

Then the executive produce slipped him a bottle of Jack D at the season wrap party.  Oscar had been off the sauce for years.  No AA or anything, he just decided to stop, and stopped.  The stuff must've hit him like a freight train. 

After he was out for an hour, they told Bruno to haul his can onto the next bus out of town.  He refused of course, Oscar was his buddy.  Then they shoved $3k in his pocket, and told him to find a bus for the can, or find another job.  What else could Bruno do?  His wife with the cancer and all. 

Oh he cried the whole way, his tears making the cleanest streaks on Oscar's can. 

and

But what are we to do without the reality check that Oscar and his friends imposed on society?  The gift they had for gently preparing children for the harsh realities of life wasn't passed on to anyone.  Our children are coddled from birth to age 18, with nothing but unicorns and rainbows, and the assurance that they are just as good as the next guy, by virtue of being the special people they are.

By age 22, of course, they've been blown to cat meat in the Green Zone, if they're lucky.  If not, you'll see them staring blankly across the Arby's counter at you as you place your order, lost in the thoughts of how badly life has fucked them because they were never really prepared for the way things actually work.  They were a special flower for their whole childhood, and now they can use that specialness to get your damn order right when you ask them for extra Horsey Sauce™.

And the same parents that demanded urban renewal on Sesame Street will spend their whole lives wondering what went wrong with their children, as they gaze down their perfect, trash can-free streets.

[Dysfunctional Cunt]

You know, with all of these issues, Big Bird, Bert & Ernie and especially Oscar, I blame Elmo and Kermit.  Let's take a closer look at the seemingly sweet little monster everybody loves....  And that backstabbing green slimeball.

Elmo, he's the only red monster.  That should tell us something.  He's the first one that was brought on as a child, Oscar, Cookie all the rest were grown ups just trying to pay the rent.  Elmo, he's a diva trying to take over the whole operation.  He's the whiny annoying equivalent to a muppet Hannah Montana.  He's got some talent, but he ain't all that.  

If we look closely, didn't the "Tickle Me Elmo" insanity occur about the same time Big Bird fell off the wagon?  Then a couple years later, the new and improved Elmo toy hits the market  and bam, Bert and Ernie are calling it quits after over 30 years?  WTF?

And where is Kermit in all this???  Why is he not helping his friends hold it together?  I'll tell you why, the shit sold everyone out.  He saw the change in the monkeys before anyone else did.  He knew that with each generation the monkeys were being born stupider.  He was well aware that he had to provide mindless entertainment, instead of the intelligent humor that had worked so well on the first few Sesame Street generations of kids.  So what did he do?   He created a bright shiny fuzzy high pitched annoying voiced muppet and let him run his friends into the gutter where they got hopped up on drugs...  while he, Kermit, hopped his money to the bank.

Frog legs anyone?  

[Richter]

Jim Henson was the vision, the drive, the sense of veracity behind Sesame Street.  No to say he was goody goody, he just knew a few things.  First, Sesame Street kept it real.  People had disagreements, injuries, accidents, quirks, mistakes and hang-ups.  Muppets or human alike, everyone was a person.  That's what gave it value

Jim kept it up as long as he was around.  When he passed things went for the worse.  There just wasn't the cohesion he lent.  Inevitably, the hemming, the hawing, the political correctness began to set in.  There are no gas pipes, no utilities actually running under the Sesame Street stage itself, so if you hear a vauge chugging, its Jim rolling in his grave.

It started with Cookie Monster. 

Saying Cookie was a method actor would be a mistake.  Cookie was ALWAYS that way.  Never got on in life with job or school really, but he was always that friendly, boisterous guy who'd be around and help out with anything.  On good terms with everyone, he always had a spare room or empty basement to crash in.   Ask him for a hand, give him a couple cookies for helping out with the kids, the cleaning, or unloading a shipment at the store, and ask him back for dinner anytime.  That's all he was after.  He never had any use for money, or big words or explanation either.  "No love in it." Was all he'd ever say.

Well, Jim met Cookie and offered him the job on the show.  His salary?  You guessed it.  (A trust got set up for him too, but Jim never told him about that.)  He was a natural at it, never minded cameras or got attitude.  He ambled back home every night to talk with a few people in his neighborhood or help out somewhere.  Always back on time for the next shoot, "Me said we would be.", he said, when a gaffer was surprised that he was always on time without a watch.

Anyways, after Jim passed, Cookie's was one of the first characters that had to change.  Concerned people with nothing better to do than be concerned pestered and pestered.  Apparently they never understood Cookie's thing for cookies was satire.  He loved them sure, and faked a binge once or twice (his only "Acting" ever.), but never really got bad.  Still, had to change they told him, and passed him new scripts. 

He wouldn't play along.  He just didn't get it.  Told them (in his own words, which would take awhile.) that if they didn't want cookie monster being cookie monster, then he'd leave and they could find someone else.  He was like that, no bad words, no fuss, he'd have gone right back to doing his thing around his old neighborhood. 

The new production staff realized it wouldn't do.  No one could replace Cookie.  Cookie wouldn't change himself.  So the only solution was to change Cookie.  His consent wasn't a concern.

They had him nabbed and tied up in a basement for a week.  Threw bucket after bucket of cold salt water on him and tasered him over and over, force feeding him cookies the whole time.  When Frank Hebert wrote "Thou shalt not mutilate the soul.", it was crap like that he was talking about. 

They broke him.  Cookie couldn't even be in the same ROOM as a cookie after that.  The brain is an odd thing, though, and whoever they hired to work him over had specific instructions.  It was as if the kicked up his thing for cookies, but redirected it onto vegetables.  That's how they got him to "be" Veggie Monster.

He could still perform, sure.  The old Cookie though, he'd do the performance and go back home to life.  For Veggie, it WAS his life.  He just couldn't deal with the outside world anymore.  They'd have to eventually lead him off set, give him some more veggies, and set him down for the night in a back room or closet.  Smacked him around when he wouldn't cooperate.

No one was surprised, after having his brain washed like that.  Veggie was an addict, a mindless will to consume vegetables.  He'd practically inhale shredded carrot, scarf cucumbers whole, plow through cheap cabbage and lettuce like he couldn't stop himself, and I doubt he could.  It was sad, he ate like that, but he was still so THIN, a hollowed bag of fur, desperate behind it all like a missguided vegan.  The producers had to make sure no more than one pound was in his sight at any time, they were afraid he'd hurt himself.  Not that they cared, he was an investment, mind. 

[Doktor Howl]

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[LMNO]

Perfectly Scripted Heartbreak.

[Richter]

Dok - A bit derailed from the original ABotD, but a chapter on the fall of Children's Tv may not be out of place.  Your call how we organize it.

Khara - you need to do more.

[Doktor Howl]

Dok - A bit derailed from the original ABotD, but a chapter on the fall of Children's Tv may not be out of place.  Your call how we organize it.

Khara - you need to do more.

1.  Oh, I fully intended for this to be disjointed.

2.  Yes, Khara needs to do more, on that subject or any other.  I like her writing.

[The Wizard]

Bump for making being both very good and very sad.  At the same time.