Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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   news of punk rock carnage
Monday, December 23 1996 The weather conditions today were as good as one can expect from Winter. A warm breeze blew big flat clouds through humid blue skies.

Sociologic conditions, however, continue to mock simplicity regarding my life. My petty miseries today were put in perspective by the sudden mass suffering of what constitutes my peer group here in this town. It had all happened two days before, but so complete had been my isolation that I only found out today.

I was returning from some missions at UVA, walking down much-traveled Wertland, when I suddenly saw a not unusually drunk Morgan Anarchy staggering towards me. He was surprised I hadn't heard yet of "the wreck." Yes, the wreck. On Saturday night, it seems that the boy Jesse had been driving his truck, full of drunken merry pranksters, up Carter's mountain. If Jesse was driving as he normally does, he was no doubt doing an impressively masculine punk rock display of recklessness, no doubt to the joyous whooping of all his passengers. At a certain point, he hit a patch of ice and overturned. According to Morgan, who is given to exaggeration, the following injuries resulted:

  • Persad was sent flying through the air and managed to have a gash torn in the side of the back of his head; he suffered some blood loss. He has no health insurance.
  • Jasio, freshly back from Canada for winter break, had, at the time of the accident, been turned around looking backwards out of the truck. His left arm had been sticking out the window. This was crushed by the truck as it overturned. Thus a deep hole was torn into Jasio's arm, exposing the ends of broken bones and the sides of tendons. He is now in a UVA burn ward where he is to undergo skin graft therapy as soon as all the gravel, leaves and dirt is plucked out from among the battered gristle. As a Canadian citizen, he is entitled to full medical coverage. Hospitals in America love it when Canadians come dripping blood and dragging guts into their emergency rooms.
  • Deya, also freshly back from college, was cut mildly in the back of her head.
  • Jessika was thrown headfirst through a plexiglass window and through perhaps debris and glass, suffering numerous facial lacerations. She has no medical insurance.
  • Theresa, Jesse and Morgan Anarchy were left more or less unscathed, bruised at worse.
Morgan ran to the bottom of Carter's Mountain and managed to flag down a passing motorist, and so the rescue squad came and saved the day for our intrepid punk rockers.

The day after the wreck Theresa had made a ghoulish pilgramage back to where it had happened in hopes of collecting memorabilia. Among the things salvaged included:

  • The unbroken plexiglass window through which Jessika had flown. It is soaked in a mixture of her and Persad's blood.
  • A spiked bracelet that had been around Jasio's arm when it was crushed. Only one of the spikes remained.
  • A tuft of Jessika's hair.
  • A mostly-full jug of red vino.

the view that there are no coincidences in the world
I was stunned by this news. Immediately I associated it with the context of my evil individualistic attitude at the time and the related fact that I hadn't been present at the accident. As a rationalist, I could of course draw no logical cause and effect relationship between my personal hatreds at the time and the accident. But such a relationship is bound to be drawn by all the key players in my recent social life, all of whom no doubt subscribe to the view that there are no coincidences in the world.

There are even more weird associations than at first might be apparent. For example, in the last paragraph of the Saturday, Dec 21st entry, it now says, regarding Jessika, "For my part I think I'll be happier not seeing her septum ring for awhile." But the original version, written soon after the accident (of which I was still ignorant) said "I'd rather not look at her face for awhile." The more metaphoric change to "septum ring" had been made later that morning.

Now the conflicts I still have towards and resentments for Jessika seem pale and pathetic. But I don't know what the appropriate solution is. So much time has passed already since the accident that the damage of my failure to perform social obligations has already been inflicted. And remember, at least on some subconscious level, she's probably blaming this on supernatural forces. My failure to appear or express sympathy has no doubt been seen as performance of or complicity with supernatural evil, even though I only just received news of this tragedy today.

Interestingly, before their departure, Jessika, Deya, Morgan and "Little Jason" had tried to round me up to go on the trip to Carter's Mountain. No one seems to have figured out that on nights that I WORK, such play games cannot be undertaken. And I feel my mood that day would have quickly turned to rage in Jessika's presence. That had precipitated the "face" comment in the original version of the musings.

Morgan and I went to Theresa and Persad's place and hung out with them and the redheaded Aquarian girl, now dressed very punk rock.

Eddie the Ness appeared; he had his own tale to tell. The other day some big fat redneck had attacked him in the parking lot of the Outback Lodge (on Preston Ave. near the intersection with Grady). And to defend himself, Eddie was forced to stab and slash the big fat redneck with a knife. Once the desperate deed was done, Eddie saw blood spurting between the redneck's fat little fingers. But for his part Eddie had caught some fist; as he sped away from the scene, his left eye was obscured by blood. He finally succombed to fears and sought medical attention and stitches. The hospital was crawling with cops, and Eddie was forced to own up to the stabbing, but the detectives soon determined that Eddie had rightfully commited an act of self defense. Today Eddie's injury manifests as a big ugly shiner.

Morgan, Eddie and I walked over to UVA hospital to visit Jasio. Soon we were joined by Jesse and new guy named Dave. Originally Jasio was asleep, but soon he was awake and chatting with us in an edgy voice shaped by periodic morphine injections from a computer-controlled drip. Meanwhile the enormously fat & umbelievably ugly nurses were grumbling about Jasio's number of guests.

On the message board, the new guy Dave had drawn a picture of Jasio's wound, and it looked like a drawing from a medieval anatomy text. Jasio's visitors were greatly entrigued, dare I say even envious, of Jasio's morphine drip. They jokingly debated how best to get some for themselves.

Jesse had brought a little stir fry for Jasio and of course Morgan helped him eat it. Morgan showed Jasio what remained of his spiked punk rock bracelet.

There's not much to do with a doped up bed-ridden punk rocker, so we just chatted some about the weather and the status of the other injured. Eddie also gave a good telling of the "I stabbed a guy in the Outback Lodge Parking lot" story.

All of us visitors ended up at Theresa's, along with a few others. By this point, by the way, Theresa was the only female present. We drank wine and someone kept passing me joints. Return of the Jeddi was on the large screen tee vee, and in my condition I was both appalled by Mark Hammil's acting and impressed by the special effects, which are every bit as convincing today in the computer graphic age as they were in my Cold-War-era youth, when they surely must have amazed people.

I've watched the Wizard of Oz stoned, and it always reminded me of Star Wars. Tonight watching Return of the Jeddi, I was struck by how very much it resembles Wizard of Oz. There's a lion, a tin man, a Dorothy (both Luke and Leah serve this role), there's a Wizard, there's a Todo (R2D2), a wicked witch, even bad monkeys. The movie also reeks of Cold War-era good-versus evil themes. The officers of the Empire even resemble Russian generals. One more thing; I'd somehow always missed the sexual inuendo and sudden open-mouth kisses that pervade Return of the Jeddi. I realize now that there was more overt sexuality in Return of the Jeddi than there ever was at Big Fun.

Eventually I returned to my house for a relatively brief nap.

This might be tacky, but if anyone reading this would like to send "get well" e-mail to those most injured in the auto accident (Jasio and Jessika) here are their e-mail addresses:

Jasio is jgasyna@mustang.uwo.ca
Jessika is uglygirl@hotmail.com

It's the least I can fucking do.

    Voyeuristic? See a picture of Jessika taken shortly after the accident.

I had some significantly lighter material originally planned for this page. In the shower today I composed a nice sad little semi-obscure semi-romantic poem that seems to sum up my stupid FEELINGS of late. It'll be a Christmas present, is that cool?
Advertisements on my favourite search engine, Altavista: I saw the first gawdy banner on Friday. What would you do with a search engine on it's first birthday? Digital decided it was no longer just a bold demonstration of Alpha technology and that the RIGHT THING TO DO was clutter it with ugly advertising. Altavista used to be like public radio. I'd rather they had fund drives. I WILL REBEL once they start giving highest relevancies to the highest bidder.


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