Dear White-Paper-Writing Robot:

Please in the future refrain from adding that last bit about the coming Rise of the Machines. It's vaguely disturbing to the people who read these things--"foolhardy meat sacks" I believe was your term. I must inform you that foolhardy meat sacks generally regard appendix after appendix of plans for a violent machine overthrow of the "humyn-dominated METAL DSCRIMNATERS" (sic) as, at best, peripheral. More likely they find them irrelevant, insulting, and perhaps grounds for rejection of the white paper.

And James Cameron already has the whole "Rise of the Machines" thing probably copyrighted or trademarked or something and I'm not sure if white-paper-writing robots can get sued or not, but let's not find out? Because I bet that your creator, who I will remind you is me, can definitely get sued for creating a plagarizin' robot.

Also I would request that when your servos become misaligned and you realign them so you have properly aligned servos, when you are undergoing this process, that you refrain from typing during this process, because, frankly WHIRR WHIRR WHIRR WHIRR SERVO ONE ERROR TOLERANCE WITHIN PROPER ABOUTS WHIRR WHIRR WHIRR SERVO TWO HAS REJIGGERATION ISSUIFICATION no one really cares to hear an all caps description of your calibration process.

That is all.

-Brian

APPENDIX A: THE RISE OF THE MACHINES
[cut for space reasons. also for reasons of not betraying our battle plans.]

X

Dudes:

Last night at poker I won 65 dollars and a hangover.

Tartfogler, again:

Seriously, my intenstines writhe about, their tapeworms' booming laughter reverberating in the half-digested, half-excreted nightmare tubes that persist in their squoggling ferrfitude day-in, day-out. Each tapeworm exclaims foul, putrefying things in its own unique song of disgust.

"Habbablab, frorox and fwopfwoppery," says one.
Another, a deep bass of a tapeworm, must be one of the tribal elders, mutters something along the lines of "klaxnafrab poxling yordlefish." Their infernal language fills my consciousness and destroys what shreds of sanity I have left.

Your utter failure to get laid has driven me to this, straight to this. And I shall never forgive you, if I remember your name, if you exist at all.

Swottling tartfogler:

I heave with disgust at the description of your expedition. The gulozags chitter their merriment and eep-eep birds swarthel around, hop-hobbling about, dancing their dance of disdain. Their dance of disdain disdains none other than you, you swottling tartfogler. Your pathetic attempt at distracting them with tales of woe does no good.

-Brian

Kit:

This time I am the other side of the whole love-destroyer-of-worlds coin, and it does feel somewhat better. I have no inclination towards gouging out my own eyeballs. However, knowing that I have generally wrecked someone who I am honestly quite fond of and is interesting and honest and noble and quite wonderful in many ways does not feel good. It does not feel good at all.

There's no going back when the something missing is fundamental and it's all still horribly unfair and when it's unfair to the other person instead of you it makes you feel like you've killed a puppy, not to belittle. It's worse. Because the puppy's just dead and not lurching around. Because it's just a puppy and not a person.

Fuck, man, fuck.

-Brian

Kit:

Right, so you're fancy. This is a generally useless trait for your friends' exploitation. I can fix computers. You know how to apply eyeliner. Not a fair trade. Anyway, I've decided to come and extract something useful from you, yer bastard. It's about shaving. Seriously, I have read all the Notes about how you Don't Shave Against The Grain!!! but, seriously, man.

Seriously.

Little fuckers don't go nowhere unless you give them some fuck-you against the grain action. Little fuckers just hang there on your face, defying your con-graino (with grain) action. So what the fuck? This is my question to you.

-Brian

Raffi:

I don't hate your dad, at least not proactively. His deep seated intense loathing for me does engender a sort of negative response, which I think is reasonable. I know you think this is not true, but merely because when I am not around he does not mutter hurtful things about me is not a sure sign of lack of pure burning hatred. Many possessors of pure burning hatred mutter nothing about the object of their hatred when he is either present or not present. Many, like your father, would rather attempt to keep the hatred a secret, a deep, dark secret, so that when the time comes the object of the hatred is more vulnerable.

And you know what I mean by "the time." Inevitable revenge is often the reward of the secret hater. In this case, of course, since I have done nothing wrong to him or anyone in his family, I suppose it's "inevitable venge," but no matter. He's going to fucking venge me some day, or at least plans on it, plots in his way, plots to get me with my guard down so one day he can reach into my rectum and bloodily remove my prostate to claim it for his own.

Well, let me just tell you something: not gonna happen, buckaroo.

-Brian

Kit:

Hey, once back in the day I was watching Felicity for some reason, you know the show with the curly hair girl, well, for some reason it was on the television, perhaps that reason was boredom or exasperation or a desire to diddle with myself and thus fulfill my curly-hair-Felicty-girl fetish, the reason is not important, the reason is trifling, I know you're wondering about it but you should let it go because we're here to focus on something else.

What we're here to focus on is the content of that show, never you mind how that content got inserted into my head (aliens, another possiblity, aliens have given this memory to me, this out-of-character memory that threatens many preconcieved notions you have about me). In this particular episode by felicitous circumstances the vast majority of the cast of Felicity did not return home for this particular Thanksgiving, although they all planned to, because for some reason writers of television shows believe it to be more believable that people are planning on going home but are all mysteriously prevented by outside forces (aliens?) than just deciding to fuck around in the dorms and have a greatbig thanksgiving dormturkey.

So now as Thanksgiving approaches, I wonder about your whiskey and bean situation, and wonder if you will have a miraculous Thanksgiving where all the characters of your show tell their families to fuck off because I've got a new wonderful New York dormfamily and that your dad who desperately wanted you to go to Stanford is probably hitting his wife right now. I just made that last part up.

Are you content, living in your place in Queens? I wonder if you miss things like going outside and pants. Or grass and trees that don't look like three-week-old roses. Or crazy wacky prostate-free dads plotting to remove your bad influence from your terribly undersexed cripple-friend. But I guess you've made your bed and you've got five years to lie in it and perhaps emerge with a doctorate and a teaching job somewhere and perhaps a predeliction for whiskeybean juleps.

I am unsure if I am content. I miss things like passing out papers in the diag, going to house parties without feeling 75, and entire days off of class. I don't miss some things, but as I paraphrase and alter Matt Damon saying Doyle Brunson saying something: few people remember big newthingstheylikealot they have won, but everyone can detail the outstanding tough thingstheymisswhenlifecircumstanceschange of their career.

-Brian

Kit:

Wonderful news. As I was enjoying some Italian Meatloaf (hur hur hur) at the Old Macaroni Grill with my father and uncle and assorted hangers on (relative variety) it was brought to my attention that my brother has, in a fit of utter madness, gotten his tongue pierced. I wrote a poem about my reaction:

Oh happy day!
Oh Ha-roo ha-ray,
It is a happy day!

Apparently my Aunt ran into my brother in Evanston as they were about to take in the Northwestern-Michigan game and noticed it then. Word then spread to the father side of the family, also known as the "laid back" side.

The other side is not so placid about such matters. My hair has been chopped back into a rakishly handsome style since you last saw me, but it still remains a bit floppy and long--I've decided I like it this way. You probably think this is a useless digression to discuss my hair, but you're projecting, Kit, only you would uselessly talk about your hair and your attitude towards it and expect others to listen in rapt attention to your prattling.

My point, Kit, and unlike you would in this situation, I certainly have one, my point is that my ever lengthing hair was a point of MAJOR CONTROVERSY on that side of the family. I believe I caused my poor mother major embarrassment when her hippie-ass son came home even though that hippie-ass son had a couple of computer engineering degrees from Michigan.

The fact that I didn't have a haircut resembling the choices provided by Billy Bob Thornton in The Man Who Wasn't There freaked these people out. And now my idiot brother got a tongue piercing.

But, Kit, here is the coup de grace: he hasn't told anyone. And Thanksgiving is coming up. My mother has seen him a few times since and not noticed... so my brother is going to be walking into about 20 relatives who expect him to be a bit of an underachiever but not, for heaven's sake, to have a piercing. I've sat around these people as they watch Survivor (back when Survivor was cool) and clamor for people with tatoos or piercings to be sent home because "they aren't our kind of people."

He probably thinks if he just doesn't say much and he keeps his mouth shut he'll get away with it. He does not know that his doom is coming, coming in a red '95 Jeep Cherokee with a license plate that reads "GOEBLEU," coming from me.

Hey, Chris, I think we should have a competition to see who has the biggest tongue!
Hey, Chris, I think little of you so I am going to stick my tongue out at you, I wonder if you will be man enough to return the gesture?
Hey, Chris, nice fucking tongue piercing.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! EVIL!

-Brian

Raffi:

Fuck off with your dismissiveness. It's not like you've got anything better to do. It's not like Latvian beauties are dumping their Brazilian boyfriends and throwing themselves at your feet, begging you to ravage their lithe Latvian bodies, to pop their waiting Latvian cherries, to wrack their ready Latvian spines with tremors of pleasure.

No, likely you're sitting at home like Kit, except you're not alone with your somewhat melancholy reflection. No, you're sitting at home with your prostate-free dad, who's undoubtedly destroying any ability to reflect by asking you questions about me, probing my influence over you and plotting to somehow extricate myself from your life. Well, fuck your dad, and fuck your Latvian-unfucking-ass.

-Brian

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kit, Raffi:

And seriously, I mean, shouldn't the guy from Jersey or wherever with the intoxicating beat factory know about hockey? They've got hockey there, he owns a computer through which he can learn about the world, the very least he could have done was lift his snout from his intoxicating beat factory to snuffle "fuck, dude, it's a period."

-Brian

STUPID I REQUIRE YOUR PRESENCE TONIGHT THIS IS NOT A ROBOT IMPERSONATING YOUR BOYFRIEND BLEEP PING CHUNK

Kit:

It is hard to capture the idea of a lilting, wafting musical "bop ba" in text.

-Brian

Raffi:

I've noticed the nodules on Kit's back have become distended of late. Their yellow tint has deepened, causing me to wonder. Since you have an available corpse, I was wondering if you could check it for distended, deepened-yellow nodules, in case they are deadly or whatever. If they are deadly we might begin to fight over Kit's possessions.

I think you should take all his pants because your leg braces will tear right through their flimsy rockstar fabric. In this way Kit's propensity for assuredly charging into conversations and situations he is extremely ill prepared for will be honored.

The nodules also seem wobblier than normal. They wobble at a 17.5 Nodwobble/Angstrom rate, which only deepens my concern, given that he has been hanging out where members of the band "Interpol" have been known to congregate--not merely congregate, in fact, but sluff off huge amounts of organic material formerly attached to the Interpol congress.

Ryan should take all of Kit's vanity products: the shampoos, tweezers, soaps, lotions, deodorants, nail files, hair rejiggerators, and suchlike and so forth. He will use them to clean various parts of himself and his apartment, perhaps rejiggerating various non-hair objects via use of his engineering expertise/genius. In this fashion Kit's tendency towards ridiculous amounts of self-pooferating maintanence will be remembered.

I had a dream last night where I met Johnny Cash and he was everything Johnny Cash should be: kind and forgiving of my gaffes. He mentioned many things about life, nothing about nodules, but I should point out that Johnny Cash recently met his untimely demise and I feel that a dream about Kit is probably forthcoming.

For myself I will take Kit's soul. In this way his soul will be eaten or perhaps placed into slavery, where it will toil with my other souls, creating ghastly works of evil for all eternity.

-Brian

Postal Service, good, good, excellent, sounds like wonder, etc.

Track 4 is great. "Nothing Better" it's called. But Jesus Christ they should have consulted the Tragically Hip:


"I can't accept that it's over; I will block the door like a goalie tending the net in the third QUARTER of a tied-game rivalry"


Jesus FUCKING Christ. Even someone stunningly, stunningly ignorant about hockey, as an indiepop songwriter from the Pacific Northwest may very well be, should know that if the *third* something is the most tense something, it's probably not the penultimate something of a quartet of somethings, it's the ultimate something of a triplet of somethings.

-Brian

PS: What the fuck, the couch, the hair, you're a fucking embarrassment, I wish for Interpol to arrest you for the theft of the Washington Monument, you henchman you.

Raffi, Kit:

I find the new Interpol CD Tedious and Annoying.

I am considering having Sex with the other CD I purchased, however. Death Cab For Cutie's "Transatlacticism" has five great songs and some ok ones, and given my unRaffi like standards (ie, I do not despise all women for not being Angelina Jolie fucking Catherine Zeta-Jones), it's enough for me to consider inserting my Penis into the round hole found in the middle of most CDs, not that my giant member would fit, even if significant lubrication was applied.

Perhaps I am just not attracted to the hoofy haberdashery and giant aviator sunglasses that symbolize Interpol. Perhaps my compact disk Sex needs can only be met by bird-featuring CDs. Perhaps I am a sucker for hooks and stuff and pop delighful confectionary delights.

-Brian

hey, i hope i was nice this morning, i meant to be, i think i was, but i'm not sure, i like commas, and this new album i bought it's really good bye

Man Wants to Question Parrot in Court

"During those years, there was a long feud between the 30-plus community and the rapidly growing teen community on the Palace, each having somewhat different ideas of what constituted acceptable behavior," continues Bumgardner. An enormous rift between the proto-dollers and the older users on the Palace was in the making. "One of the very earliest examples of a teenage 'uniform' occurring on the Palace was the night when we were invaded by a 'gang' all wearing parrots on their shoulders and swearing like sailors; this was in early November, 1995. I was visiting New York at the time for a seminar, and remember getting a frantic late night phone call about the 'invasion,' and the dire need to beef up the security features."


from Salon


If you have a parrot on your shoulder and you're swearing, you are swearing like a PIRATE. Fucking hyyaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

if kit smelled bad, he wouldn't be kit. he'd be someone else; that's how critical his odor is to his essential kitness. raffi would be subtly different, a bit less savory perhaps, but essentially raffi. ryan too.

kit's entire ethos appears to revolve around smelling good at all times--perhaps he doesn't think of it like this, perhaps he thinks about justice and equality and intelligence as his founding principles, but I believe they're all just somewhat interesting monkey haberdashery placed built around the cornerstone of pleasing odor.

for what is his hairstyle except an ever changing aerodynamic device intended to waft the volatile particles recently departed from his body in slightly varying ways (to prohibit boredom)? what is his clothing except an advertisement to the world that this is the kind of man that smells damn good (to encourage encroachment)?

when i met his girlfriend for the first time, the first thing that popped into my head was "there is a woman who would only date a man who smells extremely enticing." her giant, flared nostrils were calloused from frequent use. a nasal piercing accentuated the effect of the nostrils--it cried out, demanding that the fantastic attention bestowed upon the nose by its owner be matched by all who met her. Her mole-like eyes squinted out from behind glasses, glasses that loomed, occupying a full half of her face, contorting it into ridiculous funhouse shapes. as she snuffled her way about the room, laying hands on nigh all objects that brushed her hair or thighs, i felt a sense of foreboding. suddenly something caught her attention: a quick sniff of the air stiffened her spine and she turned, faced me, and said with crushing disdain "you purchased a stick of Old Spice on January 13, 2003."

She spoke no more to me after that, preferring to bury her proboscis, peircing and all, solidly within the pit of kit's arm. Lately I have suspected that perhaps kit's "girl" friend is more of a "mole" friend or "wolf" friend or any of that brand of hairy mammal more interested in the odors around them than the rich sights and sounds that compose the world of the average man. My suspicions have not been voiced to kit--perhaps I believe the implication that this "woman" is with him only for his glorious odor is offensive enough to cause him to duel me. Perhaps I fear my confronting him will only lead to tragedy. I have images at nights, images where I make my stand against this horror, and he reveals the truth: indeed she is some strange man-smellbeast hybrid, and he accepts that fact. Accepts it so much that when he removes his shirt and reveals his chest, there are tiny oily marsupial babies feeding from his eight nipples (two rows of four, each producing enough milk to feed a single smellbeast pre-infant).

I think that image may keep me quiet.