Now I don’t think at this late juncture even a half-blind Javanese pre-teen, wearing a Shaq jersey and sipping a can of R.C. Cola through a Spongebob shaped twisty straw, would sit through his newest bootleg DVD and afterward feel compelled to praise Hollywood for its imagination. We locals know this, we see more of the reheated narrative slop than anyone. But this “writing on walls” thing? Sheesh.

Do rational minds have such a very hard time conceiving of ways to portray irrationality? Is this obsessive convoluted scrawl the only visual metaphor we can come up with for the interior of a troubled mind? Is the act of defacing that most comforting of spaces, the one within 4 shelter-giving walls, the most poignant non-lethal transgression we can conceive?

Tell me- Is it that unstable personalities are inordinately difficult to portray or is it simply that tame minds are ill-equipped to visualize the fruits of wild ones? When such a staggering percentage of the populace, though not exactly lunatic, differs substantially enough from the imaginary mental “norm” to require therapy and counseling and annually quadrupling dosages of anti-depressants, I find it hard to believe “the other” is quite so inconceivable.

From a creative standpoint, someone involved in the perpetuation of this goofy trope has to realize that the use of an instantly recognizable visual shorthand in the portrayal of abnormality is something of a contradiction. Also, from a functional standpoint, this fictional maniac is generally a killer or stalker or rapist, or some such horrible thing, and the desired reaction to the revelation of his/her insanity ought to be: “Holy shit! That persons insane! Yikes. Creeeepy.” Seeing something as familiar and comfortable to your psyche as the ass-groove of your own couch cushions, something like say a tired old cliche, does not inspire this reaction. Does it? I have to chalk it up to a simple lack of imagination. Which is ironic, ‘cause you know who seem to be extremely imaginative? Crazy people.

-

I hereby decree that if this cliche must be used then one of more of the following 3 items must be adhered to-

1. The individual who created the room covered in scrawl must be either a 13 year old (and at least 65% of the scrawl must take the form of band logos and song lyrics,) a graffiti artist (in which case the writing must be applied with something other than plain black ink / white chalk / blood,) or a set designer (who curses under his breath at the director continuously for making him create such a lame set.)

In emergencies when scripts must be turned in within 24 hours the individual may also be a disgruntled typographer, novelist, graphic designer, illuminated manuscript restorer, stenographer, or naughty grade school pupil.

The exception here is an individual who lives in a Lower East Side dive bar bathroom.

2. The handwriting must be neat and finely executed rather than angular chicken-scratch. Someone who spends hours every day writing screeds all over every surface of their room, no matter how batshit crazy, has had plenty of practice and ought to be able to lay down some readable handwriting. (A few storiated initials at the beginning of paragraphs, or some handsomely proportioned looping script would be nice.)

The exception here is if the individual doing the writing is limbless and holds his sharpie in his mouth or between stumps. The individual may also be blind, but in such a case the writing should be in neatly composed braille.

3. Police officers must canvas neighborhoods, going to apartment landlords, motel managers, and concerned parents, carrying not a suspect sketch but the image which began this post. “Have you come across any rooms that look anything like this?” they must ask. “Because if you have… that’s our man.” Clerks at the local art supply store should also be questioned.

If these guidelines are ignored filmmakers must be charged, post haste, with “aggravating assault on a deceased equine” and have their equipment impounded while they await trial… and atomic-wedgies.

-

Lastly, since I fully realize my edicts over the film industry do not carry as much weight as they should, I’d like to take this opportunity to announce my new venture:

Are you too busy scouring the earth for creepy porcelain doll heads, rusty farm tools, 18th century family photos, broken mirrors, and over excitable kittens to really get your wall-scrawling crazy on? Well breathe easy set designer, because we’ve got you, and you’re murderous lunatic’s walls, covered!

Introducing Scrawlpaper®©™ the finest collection of dingy scrawl-covered wallpapers available on the market today.

Have You got a loony whose interior struggle needs to made painfully obviously clear to your brain-dead audience? Kidnapper? Religious nut? Obsessive masturbator? Repressed sister-lusting rapist? Multiple personalitied self-flagellator? Satan worshiper? Rouge Priest? Brilliant but morally bereft doctor? Cannibalistic asylum escapee? Hey, we’ve got the pre-crazied wallpaper just for you!

Scrawlpaper®©™

(Coming soon.)

This would point then to in-between periods as well, when cumulative chemical reactions allowed colors to begin making their entrance en masse, when the Earth might have appeared in very tight, limited color palettes.

Perhaps from a vantage point in space it would have appeared grey and black and ivory with some smatterings of super-saturated volcanic orange? (A bit like a certain much-beloved website now that I think of it.)

Or maybe the entire surface appeared as a sort of liver colored mixture of grey and brown and purple which, as if moving a slider in a photoshop effects panel, smoothly brightened and became more saturated?

Maybe the coloring of the earth proceeded outward from relatively distinct areas, some green, some yellow and ochre and copper with a few bursts of wild vermillion? Maybe these grew and blended at their edges like a watercolor on grey paper?

Maybe for a million years or so, when viewed, from say the distance of Mars, Earth might have appeared as a pointalist-like body with small “dots” of color creating the illusion of a smooth continuous shift?

Maybe the color was built up like layer after layer of semi-transparency, deepening and becoming more rich, until distinctly colored shapes emerged that looked, from afar, like moo cows or Victorian courtesans or 1973 Dodge Charger’s with their hoods popped- life forms and objects that wouldn’t exist for a few billion years yet?

Perhaps for a million years or so, when looked at from just the right angle, the entire surface looked like the face of an unshaven tramp clown, with sad dark grey eye sockets, a down turned ashen-grey mouth, and a giant red volcano nose?

Could have been any damn thing.

Over time, obviously, with the evolution of bacteria and algae and parrots and gay pride parades down 5th Avenue the Earth transformed into the spectacularly rich and varied Technicolor extravaganza we love so well today.

Which brings me to my final thought- 

If there were indeed Creators, (or alternately, infinitely patient alien entities looking on, waiting for a life form to evolve advanced enough to invent pitless mangos and a cure for herpes) they might very well think back to that grey Earth of yore in the exact same way we moderns look back on our black and white movies, just a bit mournfully, sentimentally, with an aching nostalgia for a “simpler” time.

(Chromatically at least.)

That last part is what’s interesting. In finding a planet around a star so old and far along its path to red-gianthood, a first, the implication is a glimmer of hope for our own planet’s survival, 5 billion years or so from now when we will shake hands with our own red giant, Sol 2.0. Of course, “survival” in this context is a silly sort of word because though the actual ground beneath our feet might not be vaporized and molecularly mingled with our sun, there won’t be any feet at that point to appreciate the solid footing. Which is simply to say there wont be any “survivors” in terms of life as we know it. 

I can hear you asking- “If our civilization is headed for a nasty and ultimately fatal sunburn regardless then why exactly are the implications so interesting? Scorched rock floating through empty space beholden to cold dispassionate forces for near eternity is interesting? Further more,” You continue, a bit snarkily for my liking, “If there is no mind left to be interested then surely the term ‘interesting’ ceases to apply?”

True enough that we won’t be around to see how it shakes out, but honestly… do you think we’ll be around 5 billion years from now, red-giant or no? Hahaha. Fat chance. In any case it’s not the prospect of human survival on a scorched Earth which interests me… quite the opposite. These observations essentially hint at a possible second option for our eternal rest. Previously cremation was the only game in town, now we have the prospect of burial as well.

Personally, in terms of my own meat-sack, I will opt for, nay, insist on, cremation. But for the remains of human civilization at large I think the prospect of burial is a happy one, and for a couple of reasons-

1) “Life” does not equal “humanity.” Extremophiles may yet survive on a scorched Earth, and perhaps long enough even to evolve convertibles and ray-bans and sun-block.

2) It would be a damn shame if another race of sentient beings, blind to their own origins and terrified at the apparent lifelessness of space, caught some lingering radio signals and came looking for the source, only to find a big fat nothing. They might be tempted to attribute C-span broadcasts and Who’s the Boss re-runs to the lips of Gods. That at least, I’d like to spare them.

The truth is attaching significance to a mortal life is difficult enough, to your own tiny place in a mortal civilization even more so. But finding a way to soldier on when you know every last scrap of evidence that humanity ever existed will be vaporized? Well that’s just fucking unreasonable.

-

P.S. the image which accompanies this post was adapted from the first plate of The Outline of Science, A Plain Story Simply Told from 1922, which is available at Gutenberg.org

There is, it would seem, a solitary archetype by which we can (and do) judge all else. When we seek to make a comparison, be it in the human particulars of mental state, physical prowess, emotional weight, or indeed in the broader strokes of the metaphysical, we can, without fail, single out this entity and be sure that any comparison drawn will be understood by our audience as suitably pointed and dramatic. This archetype would seem to represent the extremes of anything and everything. It is, essentially, the purest, most extraordinary, most weighty point of comparison available in human discourse; the pinnacle, evidently, of all namable qualities: the Muthafucka.

The Muthafucka has many names- the Mother Fucker, the Mother Fucka, the Mothafucker, the Muthah Fucka, the mutha fuck, and even, to those well acquainted with this monolith, the casual- Mutha or Mother.

Time and time again, in the mouths of the man on the street, the Muthafucka’s name is bandied about and celebrated as the be all and end all of experience. The Muthafucka far outweighs pretenders to the throne like “the witches tit,” “balls,” “the bag of hammers,” “hell,” etc. Muthafucka outweighs these and the rest of what I call the “hopelessly specific” by a sizable margin.

In the verbal coin of the land the Muthafucka is king.

Q: Is it cold out? Ask yourself, “how cold is it?”
A: Why it’s “Colder than a Mother Fucker!!”
Of course.

Q: Was that person you met attractive? 
A: “She/he was hotter than a Muthafucka!” 
Obviously. It doesn’t get any hotter.

Q: I wonder, how did you feel about Firefly being cancelled?
A: “I was madder than a Muthah Fucka!”
I’m sure you were but you’ll get over it.

Q: Did that movie frighten you?
A: “It was scarier than a Muthafucka!”
Indeed it was. I almost shat myself.

Q: How affected were you by that marijuana cigarette?
A: “I was higher than a Muthafucka!”
Fo’ real?

Anyhow, you see where I’m going with this.

The basic formula is as follows:

(Comparative adjective) + than a Mutherfucka!

It seems to work every time, without losing a whiff of its power. As a matter of fact, and this is a true oddity, even incorrect grammar works well. I might go so far as to say, if pressed under threat of physical harm, that the more glaringly wrong the word choice the more effective the Muthafucka comparison is!

Example:

Q: How was that yak testicle sandwich?
A: “It was gooder than a Muthafucker!”
Oh word?

How this “mother fucker” character, who would seem to be the manifestation of one of humanity’s last remaining powerful taboos, came to be so well regarded as to qualify as a unassailable counterpoint to every exclamatory comparison is truly a mystery. Perhaps the greatest mystery of the modern age. But I, for my part, am not too proud to offer kudos where kudos are due.

Whatever this entity’s true proportions, to rise so meteorically, against such seemingly stiff odds, this “Muthafucka” must be… well…
badder than a Muthafucka!

This, however, is not a history lesson, and the particulars of each of these items does not interest me as such. What I’m interested in here is rather a result of their intersection, a confluence of forces, which though set in motion way back in the 1870’s, is as near to we moderns as the ground beneath our feet or the sky above our cities. I’m speaking, of course, about Ground Stars.   

Let me explain.

The proliferation of electric light, typified by our big cities, has created a phenomena called Skyglow. Essentially Skyglow is simply Rayleigh scattering of artificial light, which is to say its the same atmospheric effect which makes the natural light of the daytime sky seem blue, only in this case diffusing and redirecting the light of our cities back down at us. The ultimate effect for we urban earthlings is, lamentably, a starless (though not bible-black) sky.

In the relative-dead of a New York City night, looking up (and in this city to see a patch of sky you need to look damn near straight up) is an effort with precious little reward. You can count yourself lucky to see the lights of a passing plane, or the underbelly of a helicopter, because even the brightest stars are washed out and absent. Forget about connecting the dots in your minds eye and seeing a giant scorpion, or bull, or lion. There are no dots. 

As I’ve said here before this strikes me as a real shame. Especially in a city such as New York where where all manner of dreamer, goofball, curbside philosopher, and artistic-minded lout have chosen to congregate. We are effectively as divorced from our universe as we are from the suburbs and geographical armpits most of us fled from. We are people who could use the sense of natural scale a few trillion super-massive nuclear reactions in the sky would provide. We need something bigger, more crowded, and more charged with energetic possibility than ourselves. 

Which brings me to Concrete and Chewing Gum.

While electric light was proliferating and radiating outward to blot our stars concrete and chewing gum were quietly spreading throughout the city as well, exhibiting their own unexpected side effect. It seems concrete and chewing gum have a natural attraction to one another. They stick together and stay together. Whether it is love or just a physical thing I can not say but their century old union offers us a solution, of sorts, to our star poverty.

When a piece of spit-out gum takes the gravity-assisted leap to the ground it gets rolled over, and stepped on, and compacted, and stepped on, and compacted, and stepped on, and compacted. We sometimes curse at getting its sticky guts on our shoes, but more often than not we don’t even notice. Over time what was once a chicle-based, flavor infused, treat becomes nothing so much as a single dark point in the firmament of sidewalk. Now multiply this by millions, perhaps billions, and I think you’ll see where I’m going. 

A century of this process has provided us with something huge and ambiguous we can call our own; if not a moody sparkling light by which to worship our lovers and unsheathe our knives, an endlessly shifting menagerie of single points all the same, between which we might string the iconography of our hopes and fears.

Think of it! Anti-Stars: small points of light-absorbing darkness dotting a reflective silica-mixed concrete field. Billions of DNA enriched points, all of indeterminate, time-lost origin, waiting only for the connecting lines which would infuse them with meaning; waiting always at perigee to feel the press of human imagination upon them rather than simply that of our boot heels. Look below your feet at any time while walking the 301 square miles of the city and it’s likely you trod upon a constellation, just waiting to be recognized and named. 

In short what electric light hath denied concrete and chewing gum hath supplied. Ground Stars, Urban Constellations, a galaxy worth for our interpretation, in which we can do what we love best- see ourselves reflected.

“Sounds all very well in theory” I can hear you mustache-twirlers harumphing, “but does it work in practice? What might such replacement constellations look like?”

I’m glad you asked. I have taken it upon myself to explore this embryonic field of research a bit. Trips into the field have yielded some promising observations which I’m all too happy to share with you.

Below you will find a small cataloging of my findings thus far. I will name, describe, and illustrate the 10 Urban Constellations I’ve identified, and will even offer some slight illumination on each in the form of related quotations. What being born above these signs, or what their position in relation to your own may portend for you, your character, or your future, I will leave to the “geologers,” “odologers,” “topologers,” “despuologers,” or “humusologers” who will surely follow.

Behold!

Status Somnus (The Standing Sleep)

You see them, standing in the road, nodding, body never quite toppling, never quite standing straight. It’s like slapstick and tragedy mixed. You wonder, “Where can he/she be right now that’s so compelling it overrides the innate need to stave off death? Are they on a planet without cars? Are they floating weightless through space? Are they balancing on a pile of white spaghetti? What are they seeing?” You wonder, but are not curious enough to prick the skin and stand asleep in the road yourself.

Mercator Pudor (The Shame Trader)

You spot them from a block away, if you’re lucky. The fresh-faced guilt-trippers. Their questions like a slap. “Do you care about the environment?” “Do you have a second for gay rights?” “You don’t support animal cruelty do you?” “The children’s ribs are showing!” You look at them and despise them for trading in guilt. They ask every loaded question but the honest one you hear in your head instantly.

Sepulcretum Umbellae (The Umbrella Graveyard)

The wind howls, the sun is gone, the rain hammers your brow. You turn a corner and see it. Mangled, torn, broken, abandoned. It’s a graveyard and you know it, even with your head down and your eyes half-blinded in the storm. You shiver to spite yourself.

Dissaepio Indocilis (The Rude Barrier)

The sidewalk so wonderfully wide. Room enough for street gangs to dance their grudges away. And yet here he/she comes. Straddling one edge, dog straddling the other. Between is a leash, strung taut across the entire walking width. You look at the leash and you yearn to tear it apart with your hands and stuff in his or her mouth, yelling, “Choke! Choke you self-involved misborn ass!” They must know you hate them, but they come ever closer. “So it’s a game of chicken is it?”

Porthmeus Odiosus (The Hateful Ferryman)

You see it’s yellow flank flashing in the traffic. The light is on. You are about to be scooped up! You imagine the seats cradling your tired ass. You raise your hand, perhaps whistle through your teeth, or call out, “Taxi!” But the ferryman rejects you and rolls right by. “Why?” you wonder. “WHY!?” You swear, you doubt, you raise your fists to a deaf God, “Bastard!” Then shuffle on.

Belua Cloaca (The Sewer Monster)

And what is under there anyway? Is it a filth-encrusted albino playground? Is it a dark orgy of disease and blindness held over the sewage-soaked bones of our forefathers? Are the stories true? Is it all alligators, and giant rats, and mole men? Walk a little faster and avoiding the wobbly grates.

Mendicus Beneficiarius (The Privileged Beggar)

Young and sound of body. You look at them and their sign, scrawled with pleas for beer-money or bus fare. You look at their clothes, their accessories, their hair. You make a snap judgement and far off, on some tax sheltered-island, their trust funds accrue interest.

Aquatoris Indifferentis (The Indifferent Water-Carrier)

It’s 8 AM. Foot-traffic rush-hour on a weekday morning. No one smiles because making it to your destination is painful enough. Another day of wage slavery is beginning and no one’s exactly thrilled. Everyone knows this. You know it, the old lady you just elbowed knows it, and so does the guy with the fucking hose. He sees you coming. He does not care. The water flows like your own shin-level Potomac.

Cumulus Arcanus (The Mysterious Pile)

It is waiting around damn near every corner. It is horrid and putrid smelling and the color is indescribable. Flesh colored crayons melted over spinach linguini and scabs. It is nebulous and gut wrenching and even the thought of it’s origin makes your skin crawl. It’s a pile and you must not look at it too closely!

Hostis Dementis (The Demented Stranger)

He approaches. Perhaps you smell him before you see him. Perhaps his madness digs into your ear. It’s one of that most feared tribes, the demented ones. What will he do with his grill fork? What’s that poking out of the hole in his clothes? Is something moving in his bag? Nothing frightens the rational, time-obsessed, grid-walking, metropolitan mind like the demented ones staggering toward you.

There you have it my friends. I hope I’ve inspired you to connect the dots, or brought even a sliver of relief to your poor, addled, star-starved mind.

If you identify any urban constellations of your own feel free to pass them along. The adventure continues.

With that I return. Not with a trumpet and throaty throng but quietly, as though by moonlight, avoiding the squeaky step.

“Is that you? (groggily) What time is it?”

“Go back to sleep honey.”

I’ve sprung the trap and survived, and escaped, and so here I am. Home again. The trap is obvious, and in plain sight, but I am forgetful. Each time I look at it I see the glint on the teeth but not the teeth themselves. The glint is bright and shiny and I am a dim, dumb animal.  Probability, or Nature, or Destiny, or whatever you’ve labeled the comically inadequate mason jar in which you hold this concept- things take their course.

What can I say?

You turn your head sometimes, as if hearing a coo or whisper, and looking toward the window, expecting to see some winged thing perched on your windowsill, you see instead your own reflection. You see your life and it startles you more than any winged thing would. It is not what you expected to see, but worse it’s not even what you’d expect a life to look like. Its proportions are all wrong, its color off, its shape odd; In truth it looks like nothing you’ve ever seen before. It looks foreign, and in as much, frightening. But it is your life still, and it’s as if in this unexpected moment you were glimpsing it for the first time.

Of course this is all Balderdash, or Poppycock, or Bullshit, or whatever you’ve labeled your most treasured mason jar- you’ve seen this ugly thing before.

I’m forgetful, as I’ve already mentioned. When I momentarily see past the well-tooled facade, past the fortification of amusements and distractions, over and beyond the ramparts of routine, I get spooked.

More often than not I react to this reoccurring revelation in a predictable way. I cycle through my mason jars, popping their lids in quick succession- Confusion, Annoyance, Anger, Regret, Longing, Sadness. Their smells waft through my rooms, swirling, blending into complex and potent combinations. What began as merely disturbing, through my panic, becomes overwhelming. Like the dim, dumb animal I am I seek a dark place, hidden from predatory eyes, where I can gather myself and think.

Q: “Ever wondered what turns straight-forward drama into melodrama?”

A: “It’s the attempt at spreading a small portion of honest pain over every banal nook and cranny of the proceedings, creating a thin smear, rather than letting it lay, as a thick dollop, just where it naturally landed. That and the bad metaphors of course!”

So where was I?

Oh yes, In my forgetfulness I’d sprung the trap.

There is an incorrect assumption I repeatedly make, which is that through sheer force of will, given enough time and space, I can understand, dismantle, and rebuild existence into something which more resembles the existence of my imagination. Because of this I abandon things in an attempt to carve out that space and create that time. I stop, turn off, take a step back, begin analyzing and over-analyzing. Like a cat with a ball of yarn I smack at my existence with my thumb-less paws and claws and unravel it, only to find finally that my ball is gone, I’m tangled in the yarn, and there is nothing at the center. This is folly but it’s not the trap I speak of, not really.

At the center of life is a terror, a mystery, a question, a void. It is huge, and it has a gravitational pull of sorts, and were you to face it and stare into it every day you would not be able to function. We build a barricade against it with whatever materials we can scrounge because were we faced with it continuously we would not be able to attain even the most paltry scrap of contentment. That’s what Happiness, or Peace, or whatever you label your half-full mason jar really is- moments of distraction strung successfully together. If you can string those moments together for an entire lifetime you are a genius, a giant, a lucky son of a bitch.

So the trap is simply this: forgetting the void. When you do that you are apt to start misinterpreting your own defenses against it as something holding you in rather than something keeping it out. Happiness is being successfully distracted from the void, by projects, jobs, entertainments, passions, dreams… the trap is forgetting the void exists.

I’ve spent many an hour in my life scrutinizing my defenses, becoming dissatisfied with their materials, and tearing them down, only to see the void rather than greener grass, and be reminded why I’d built them in the first place. I’ve spent many an hour rebuilding my defenses from the wreckage of older ones. A real time waster let me tell you.

So the lesson, which my forgetfulness forces me to re-learn continually, is this: defenses need only be judged by a single criteria- their effectiveness. No matter what they look like, no matter from what materials they are cobbled, no matter whether they are the shape and proportions you imagined them to be when you were a mere emotional zygote, they need only work. If they do, leave them alone and keep on keepin’ on.

With that I return. As a cobbler returns to his shop on a grey monday morning.

(The bell on the door jingles. In you step.)

“Hi there. What can I do for you?”

-

Related: Dissatisfaction, Dexterity Puzzle of the Mind.

The word “normal” when used in specific, direct relation to humanity does not have any real meaning unless it is as a marker of a mean value or an average. To think there is a quantity called “normal” which somehow exists outside of the quantity called “average” (in human terms) is obviously silly. And yet the connotations of the words “normal” and “average” are so different.

Everyone hopes they are “normal” to some degree, yet simultaneously everyone hopes to avoid being “average.” Isn’t that odd?

“Normal” is, in nearly all of its shades of usage, a positive quantity. Normality is understandable, reasonable, safe and reassuring.

When we seek to embrace a billionaire, or a “genius,” or a celebrity, we say “But I’ll tell you what, he’s really just a normal guy.” That is almost the highest compliment we can pay. The President of the United States? “Well, I like him, he seems like a normal guy.”

When we wish to distance ourselves from a once familiar murderer or rapist or otherwise ugly personage we say of him, “But he seemed so normal.” That is our alibi, “I lived next door to him, baby sat his children, and exchanged Christmas cookies with him because I thought he was normal.” Everyone can nod at that, and if murderer = bad, then it follows “normal” = good.

On the flip-side there is “average.” Averageness is rarely positive, defined, it seems, by only half of what it is not. Average is not exceptional, not remarkable, not gorgeous, not brilliant, not amazing. This is an adjective which seems to carry with it the limitations of its noun.

- How was the food at Chez Mullah? “Eh. Just average.”
- What did she look like? “uh… average.”
- How was your weekend?! “Average, didn’t do much.”
- “You are a C student and average students just don’t get into good schools!”

So though “normal” and “average” are, in essence, synonyms, in usage they are fairly distinct. Normal would seem to describe what is desirable, warm, and human about the collective “we.” While Average feels colder, more distant, and less comfortable. It would seem “normal” has done a better job transcending its mathematical roots where as “average” still has a strong whiff of the statistical.

When a human life hangs in the balance the choice is clear:

- Doctor how is my wife?! “Her vital signs are normal, she’s going to be OK.”

People’s vital signs are never “average.”

This disparity would seem to cast some doubt, somewhere, and if we accept that “average” feels more mathematical a quantity in common usage and “normal” feels more human a quantity… well, I would aim my suspicions toward “normal.” Math would seem to have the better track record when it comes to matters of precision and clarity.

So what’s with this word “normal” then? I propose the following:

The word “normal,” when used in relation to humanity, is the product of fear. I say this because “normal” seems most often used as a bulwark against it. It is “average” fortified. It is “average” gussied-up. It is “average” humanized. It is “average” pimped-out with comfy cushions. It is the cashmere of “average,” knit into a soft blankey we can hide under when faced with all those things which make us want to go pee-pee in our pants.

Do you disagree?

Last thing I’ll say is this: If you are one of the many people on Earth whose fondest wish is to “just be normal,” to simply attain that coveted, seemingly mythical state of normalcy, one of the… let’s say… awkward, the unpopular, the dissatisfied, the lonely, the self-hating, the confused, the depressed, the unhappy, let me assure you of something- your fear of not being “normal” affirms your averageness, and in as much, your normalcy. So hooray!

By way of setting the scene briefly I’ll just say Duncan Shriek, the protagonist of our story, has been summoned to his publisher’s office a month after submitting a manuscript on a rather controversial subject. When Duncan arrives at the publishing house, Frankwrithe & Lewden, he is escorted into the president’s office, where said president, one Mr. L. Gaudy, “a bearded man of indeterminate age, his gaunt flesh wrapped across his cheekbones” is waiting, sitting behind his desk, staring calmly into the depths of his fireplace. Denied the comfort of a seat Duncan stands there, in total silence, for over five minutes, waiting…

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

As the fire behind them began to die, Gaudy smiled and broke the silence. He spoke in a “perfectly calm voice, level and smooth. He stared at the fireplace as he spoke, and steepled his fingers, elbows on the desk. He appeared not to draw a single extra breath.”

He said:

“You need not sit and thus defile my perfectly good chair because it will take no time at all to say what needs to be said to you. Once I have said what I am going to say to you, I would like you to leave immediately and never return. You are no longer welcome here and never will be welcome again. Your manuscript has performed the useful function of warming us, a function a thousand times more beneficial than anything it might have hoped to accomplish as a series of letters strung together into words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. The fire has purified it, in much the same manner as I would like at this moment—and will desire at all moments in the future—to purify you, were it not outside of the legal, if not moral, boundaries placed upon us by the law and society in general. By this time it ought to be clear to you, Mr. Shriek, that we do not intend to buy the rights to your ‘book’—and I use the word ‘book’ in its loosest possible sense—nor to its ashes, although I would sooner buy the rights to its ashes than to its unblemished pages. However, on the off chance that you still do not comprehend what I am saying to you, and allowing for the possibility that you may have entered a state of shock, I shall continue to talk until you leave this room, which happy event I hope will take place before very much longer, as the sight of you makes me ill. Mr. Shriek, as you must be aware, Frankwrithe & Lewden has a history that goes back more than five hundred years, and in that time we have published our share of controversial books. Your first book—which, by the way, you may be fascinated to know is as of this moment out of print—was the forty-first book to be banned by the various Antechambers of Ambergris over the years. We certainly have no qualms in that regard. Nor have we neglected to publish books on the most arcane and obscure topics dreamt of by the human brain. As you are no doubt aware, despite the fact that many titles no longer have even a nostalgic relevance, we keep our entire, and considerable, backlist in print—Pelagic Snail Rituals of the Lower Archipelago comes to mind, there being no such snail still extant, nor such an archipelago; still, we keep it in print—but we will make an exception for your first book, which shall be banished from all of our catalogues as well. As I would have hoped you had guessed by now, although you have not yet left this office never to return, we do not like your new book very much. In fact, to say I do not like your book would be like calling a mighty tree a seedling. I loathe your book, Mr. Shriek, and yet the word ‘loathe’ cannot convey in even a thousandth part the full depths of my hatred for this book, and by extension, you. But perhaps I should be more specific. Maybe specifics will allow you to overcome this current, potentially fatal, inertia—tied no doubt to the aforementioned shock—that stops you from leaving this office. Look—the last scrap of your manuscript has become a flake of ash floating above the fireplace. What a shame. Perhaps you would like an urn to collect the ashes of your dead newborn? Well, you can’t have one, because not only do we not have an urn, but even if we did, we would not allow you to use it for the transport of the ashes, if only from the fear that you might find some way to reconstruct the book from them—and yes, we do know it is likely you have a copy of the manuscript, but we will feel a certain warmth in our hearts if by burning this copy we can at least slow down your reckless and obstinate attempt to publish this cretinous piece of excrement. Returning to the specifics of our argument against this document: your insipid stupidity is evident from the first word of the first sentence of the first paragraph of your acknowledgments page, ‘The,’ and from there the sense of simple-minded, pitiable absence of thought pervades all of the first paragraph until, by the roaring crescendo of imbecility leading up to the last word of the first paragraph, ‘again,’ any possible authority the reader might have granted the author has been completely undermined by your inability to in any way convey even an unoriginal thought. And yet in comparison to the dull-witted pedantry of the second paragraph, the first paragraph positively shines with genius and degenerate brilliance. Perhaps at this point in our little chat, I should repeat that I don’t very much like this book.”

Gaudy then rose and shouted, “YOU HAVE BEEN MEDDLING IN THINGS YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT! DO YOU THINK YOU CAN POKE AROUND DOWN THERE TO YOUR HEART’S CONTENT AND NOT SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES?! YOU ARE A COMPLETE AND UTTER MORON! IF YOU EVER COME BACK TO MORROW, I’LL HAVE YOU GUTTED AND YOUR ORGANS THROWN TO THE DOGS! DO. YOU. UNDERSTAND. ME??!”

What other rhetorical gems might have escaped Gaudy’s lips, we will never know, for Duncan chose that moment to overcome his inertia and leave Frankwrithe & Lewden’s offices—forever.

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Ha!

I have to imagine that anyone who has ever had a manuscript rejected, which is to say every writer alive, or anyone who ever hopes to have a manuscript rejected one day (like myself) will appreciate that monologue very much. Read it over and over again and the terse rejection slips you receive in future will seem infinitely kind and sweet by comparison, like delicious little form-letter bon-bons. Yum. “Thank you sir may I have another?”

Hope the bookish among you enjoyed as much as I did.

For a broader, perhaps more representative excerpt see: The SF Site or visit Jeff himself at his blog.

I’m sorry you had to absorb that all in one massive dose but as a person interested in design, and more importantly as a proud owner of both a cornea and an optic nerve, I felt it was my duty to drive home this point: Television weather-infographics are pitifully, horribly, inexcusably bad. These are pieces of design which we seek out every single day for their intended functionality, often first thing in the morning, when we are half asleep and most vulnerable, but which hammer at our eyeballs like Schuster conundrums made of broken neon tubes and melted crayon shavings. I ask this, here and now, of all the television weather-infograpic makers– Why?! Why must it be this way?

Television infographics in general are pretty much out of control so far as I can see. Their scrolling, swirling, swooping gloss has at this point far overpowered the meager amounts of information they are meant to shuttle efficiently into our brains. They do not, if I had to put a totally fabricated number on it, contribute in any way to that purpose 75% of the time. They are the gaudy prefabricated ornament on the facade of pure televised information. Howard Roark would dynamite your satellites! Well, were he a real person… who was able to fly… into space… carrying one of those old-timey plunger boxes… Anyway what I’m saying is from sports broadcasts to news broadcasts the infographics are poorly thought out, overused, detrimental to effective transference of data, and did I mention spectacularly ugly?

As for weather graphics in particular I just can’t help but wonder, where did networks get the idea all that crap was necessary? It seems like presenting the weather forecast ought to be quite a simple operation. Temperature and precipitation projections for 5 days. Why all the confused hubbub? Best as I can surmise there are only two possibilities– meteorological hubris or graphical incompetency. Perhaps a combination of both.

If there are any young people out there reading this who are enamored by the glitzy and glamourous life of a television weather graphics professional and are planning on making a career of it, let me offer these few tips:

1) Nothing needs to move. Not raindrops, not snowflakes, not wind marks, not sun-rays. We already know how rain and that other stuff works.

2) Remember there are other colors besides ultramarine blue, pure red, and neon yellow. Use them, but please not all at once.

3) Don’t try to get to clever and “nuanced” with your atmospheric icons. All we need to know is whether it’s sunny and dry or cloudy and wet, the numbers fill in the rest. Having one icon with a single cloud, another with two slightly more wispy clouds, and a third with a darker more rounded cloud does not help us at all. If you want to interpret weather conditions in sensitive and unique ways paint landscapes.

4) Go to design school, take a few courses at the local community college, or at very least have lunch with your highschool art teacher a couple of times. Please?

5) One word: Standardization!

This last would go a long way in cutting down on the eye contusions. If we could just agree on a few simple symbols which would hereafter represent important weather conditions things would be a lot easier. If weather icons were standardized a symbol and two numbers would deftly tell us all we needed to know. No need for interpretation.

Well, hope you feel gratified, my having finally voiced this displeasure which I know was secretely eating away at all of you. Sometimes there is such a thing as too polite you know? That’s how you get ulcers.

Next time: Shampoo bottles!

Language is at once both a banal standardized system which requires work to master and a numinous corpus saturated with abstruse power. Though it lives in our mouths, coils like a parasite in our minds, and though we use it nearly as often as our own lungs, nothing about it seems to encourage intimacy. Scholarship? Sure. Respect? Yes. But a simple and warm familiarity? It wouldn’t seem so. To some degree this makes sense in that its roots are so deeply buried in our past that it might as well be a force of nature ⊕. And yet, be this all as it may, each and every mind is an incubator of language and each household a nursery. In these private places, cut-off from the ears of society, we giddily break the rules and bend language to our whims, compulsively coining new words, and naming things as though it were the first day of creation.

It seems to me that every household has its own private lexicon, filled with obtuse usages, alternate grammars, and esoteric slang. Am I mistaken in this? I know that in my household language is constantly morphing with new words being invented or co-opted, becoming prominent or falling out of use. It’s as if language was a kinky sex act, our enjoyment and particular proclivities something to be kept private and out of general ear-shot. I’ve occasionally found myself using a word or phrase from my private lexicon only to stop myself short or else be met with blank faces. It’s embarrassing somehow when one slips out.

It would appear a quite complex strata actually. There are the notions which float around in the primordial ooze of our consciousness never quite coalescing into words. There are the words so peculiar and intimate that they never actually reach our mouths but which none the less enjoy regular usage in our minds. ⊕ Then there is the language which is shared between lovers, private words, often whispered like incantations, which define in some way the intimacy of a bedroom but hold no power beyond those walls or moments. Then there is the language of family or the language of a household. This is simultaneously shared and private, displaying in its microcosm the same ability to evolve and proliferate as language at large, but which remains cut-off like a Galapagos of wild syllables.

I think great catalysts in household languages are pets. It seems as though every pet owner calls his beloved little friend by a myriad of names, any name, in fact, but the one they initially chose. ⊕ For example my cat’s are named Newton and Henry. What do my girlfriend and I actually call them?

Newton: Newtie, The Newts, The Belly, Lemon, Little Bull, Dew Beard, Dewbie, Ankle-Head, Nappy Dread, The Dust Brother, Chunk, Stankly, The Stink, etc, etc.

Henry: Fluffkin, Fuzzlet, Fuzzy-Pants, Manatee, The Griz, Gristle(e), Gristle-bee, Grozells, Grizbane, Hiney, Heinz, Heinrich, Doodie, The Doods, Martha Washington, etc, etc.

These of course do not in and of themselves constitute anything approaching a secret language, I only share them as an aside, there being a whole shorthand used in place of common nouns, verbs, and concepts used in my household. I’ll share just a couple of minor examples to illustrate-

Stoony

This is a word which is related to the pet names above but is altogether more versatile. It sums up in two syllables any delighted surprise at seeing (usually on the television) some furry creature of interest. So rather than saying, for instance, “look honey! A very cute / strange / noteworthy member of the animal kingdom has made an unexpected appearance on the television, stop picking your nose and take a look for yourself.” Either of us can simply call out, “Stoony!” and the other will know instantly that our attention is required, front and center. Likewise the word can be used in plural form to note the appearance of a whole herd / pride / cete / litter / troup / etc. Dropping the “y” and adding an “s” at the end denotes familiarity as when it’s used for one of our own pets, or on occasion, one another, e.g. “Hey Stoons.” Lastly this word forms the root of further mutations such as the ever popular “Stoonhauser.”

We have a whole gamut of words which can substitute for saying “I love you.” We’ve co-opted three from Woody Allen’s film Annie Hall ⊕. These are–

Lurf
Loove
Lurve

I use all three fairly often. Other substitutions are–

Elephant
Olives

Both of which are shortened versions of longer phrases since “elephant shoes” and “olive juice” are famously observed to so closely mimic the lip movements of saying “I love you.” After 8 years of expressing that sentiment the words can feel almost meaningless, so this little bit of differentiation (both from the norm, and from other instances of its use) adds something. When leaving the apartment in the morning I might say “Elephant” and be treated, in kind, to the response of “Olives.” No more need be said. Our household shorthand accomplishing in two words what would otherwise take 7, and with added value to boot thanks to its exclusivity.

As I said these are only a couple examples. It would seem that in my household at least the language which has emerged was guided by two main evolutionary factors: economy and amusement. If a word makes expressing ourselves simpler it sticks ⊕ or alternately if something makes us laugh it sticks. What the factors are in other households I have no idea.

I have to imagine every home, everywhere, has its own strain of language subtly different from the norm, guided by its own principles. I imagine that when a word or peculiar usage actually makes the leap from a person’s mind into this testing ground of the home that perhaps .05% might make it out into the world and language at large as slang. That leaves a lot of playful and weird wordage which we keep behind closed doors away from the ears of our neighbors. It boggles the mind. If we marched out into the day using these mutated versions of our mother-tongues we’d all look at one another as if we were speaking nonsense, but it wouldn’t be true. Any word which has an intended meaning, agreed upon and understood by even two people, can’t be properly called nonsense can it? What we’d be speaking would be a billion subtly different dialects.

Admittedly I may be imagining all of this. Perhaps every household is not like mine. Perhaps other people put their energy into finding the most precise and perfect existing words to express themselves ⊕ rather than just coining their own willy-nilly. But as monolithic and as much like work as language can feel when we are first introduced to it, as careful and polite as we are taught to be with our words in public, I can’t help but assume that, at home, people are as naughty and playful and weird with their words as they are with everything else.

Am I mistaken? You tell me.