Having my way with Ulysses

Mort aux vaches.

Cease cows! Life is short.10:22 pm

Article here about Foot and Mouth disease.  Countless cattle coming down with cow plague and multiplying. How many? Let’s see. Divide by color: white ones, black ones, yellow ones, and the ones with foot and mouth disease. The bulls, let’s separate them out too. The white bulls are equal to a half and a third of the black together with the whole of the yellow. The black are equal to one fourth of the ones with foot and mouth disease and a fifth, together with, the whole of the yellow. Have to take into account the proportions to get this right. Have to. So. The white are equal to the third part and a fourth of the whole herd of the black, while the black are equal to the fourth part of the ones with foot and mouth disease and with it a fifth part, when all, including the bulls are counted together. Keep in mind that the ones with foot and mouth disease are equal in number to a fifth part and a sixth of the yellow herd. And of course it goes without saying, I mean just look at them for Christs sake, the yellow are equal in number to a sixth part and a seventh of the white herd. That one is yellow, that one is white. Hard to tell in this light. And they all belong to Helios so they are a little washed out. Easy to mistake. So the number of the sun’s cattle with foot and mouth disease becomes quite clear at this point. Oh, will you separate out the number of the well-fed ones and the females according to color? Thanks. You look. Are you ok? Do you need a calculator? I’ll find one. Here, use my phone. I’ll make it easy for you to picture. Really there’s as good cattle in the field as ever came out of it.  Now. When the white ones line up together with the black they form a perfect square. It’s really quite marvelous to see. And the yellow ones mixed with the ones with foot and mouth disease (you really should separate them, you do know that don’t you) naturally group together into a perfect triangle. Oh those beautiful triangular numbers! Mooing and chewing their cud. Now who’s hungry for lunch? Sardines?

Why not? Suppose he gave her money?

Her laugh had taken on the tones of an organ, her breasts had succumbed to the tedium of endless caressing, her stomach and her thighs had been the victims of her irrevocable fate as a shared woman, but her heart grew old without bitterness. 8:48 pm

Instructions on how to monetize your body:

1.  Know your market and look to your goods.  You have renewable resources, hair, plasma, words, sex, and the non-renewables: a kidney and a limited supply of eggs. When it comes to hair, plasma, eggs, and a kidney, you have some control of their value in that you can manipulate the quality of your product, but not much.  Mostly you’ll be tied to the market price.  You have much more creative control with sex and words, so best to put your energies there and let the rest take care of itself, keeping an eye of course on fluctuations in the market.

2. Don’t sell in a buyers market. This sounds like economics but I’m talking about art.  Look at me: I’m dripping with skill, due to the maximization of my natural talent.  These things take time to build up so when in a down market, then practice practice, constant practice until the market turns again as all things do. You’ve got all the time in the world, so don’t feel you have to rush to market when a little refinement and fine tuning can mean higher value later.

3. Cultivate an eye for maximizing your earnings.  Start with the basics:  you must have the stage setting, the rouge, appropriate costume, position, music.  And don’t underestimate the earning potential of good stage name,  but don’t paint yourself into a corner being clever.  Dominae Trixie, for example, is a perfectly delightful name.  Brilliant, fun.  But you’ll get a very specific subset of Christian slaves with that one, so be sure your name brings you what you want to get.

4. Now here’s a little trade secret which is what you’re paying me for:  Everything goes down to the strength you give a man.  That’s the secret of it.  That’s what it’s all about.  The men they want to feel power; they want to be strong so be sure to call the boys men and call the men boys.  And don’t call anybody sir, they’ll wish you hadn’t.

5. If you consider the man’s position, and you really ought to do so just this once, the entire transaction much be horribly awkward for them ’till they harden.  The worst is when you find yourself with a man who doesn’t know when to get on with it.  He asks a question, he asks another, and now you are having conversation not excitation. Time is money so move the chit chat along unless there’s dirty talk you have them think they make you say.

6. The words you must speak to get the man to understand you mean “come in, all is prepared” can be the cause of half the trouble, I can’t stress that enough.  So use your instincts.  If you do get stuck in conversation, a change in venue might help and always use experience as your fall back. The men don’t want you to be parrot; none of your press a button and the bird will squeak.  They want a mouth in the dark, honey.

7.  If the man abruptly stops talking but does nothing else, for God’s sake don’t ask what he was going to say.  Such a rookie mistake.  Why give your power to him?  You want him to think he is strong, but you know what’s what.  So this is the moment you go the whole hog, say: I want it, something like that.

8. Flatter them.  What harm?  You can think of somebody else: helps pass the time.  Or even better, and this is my little trick, say things so the man thinks he is taking a woman from another man.  That’s what they enjoy most.  It’s the source of their strength to think they are a bigger man than the last guy.  Oh they’ll pay good money for that.  Ok, little sweetheart, come and kiss me.  Off you go to earn your keep and remember, your cause is sacred.  Now go.

Never know whose thoughts you’re chewing.

But don't forget that as long as God gives us life we will still be mothers and no matter how revolutionary you may be, we have the right to pull down your pants and give you a whipping at the first sign of disrespect.1:43 pm

Why does no one starve in the desert? Because of all the sandwich is there. Had a gorgonzola sandwich with mustard. Easy on digestion. Cheese digests all but itself. Ate it trying not to see the drip from Nosey Flynn’s nose. Davy Byrne quiet, ingratiating. Puts up with Nosey Flynn talking horse racing, money to throw away. A regular is like the roommate you never wanted. Nosey curious about Molly’s concert tour, is Blazes Boylan involved. Well, a free ad is a free ad even if it does bite at the heart. Told him. Word of mouth. Word is he’s covered in fleas, or worse. Scratching in his pants pockets, talking about a fight at Lewis-McChord. That place breeds the worst of them all. Something about the Northwest maybe. The rain? More serial killers here too. Train them up here, make them into murderers. Teach them war is a live action video game. Get them to like it. Then off they go to sunny places, full of power, false authority, prescription drugs and hash. Make the mission vague and change it up so they won’t wonder about why. License them to kill farmers for fun, murder holy men and whole families. Villages. Toss the candy out the front of the convoy and drive over the little ones. Leave behind a Russian gun. Murder staged to look like combat. We were attacked, they’ll learn to say. Then bring them back to Lewis-McChord so they can implement their education. Watch them put their cigarettes out on their women’s skin and don’t forget to torture the children. Waterboard a little boy because he can’t say the alphabet. Another because he wet his bed. Killing each other and themselves and everybody else. War is the safest bet: heads all lose, tails all lose. Easy money. Dark thoughts to chew over. Scars on the anima mundi. A shock to the heart. Nosey’s ambush, unintentional presumably. Collateral damage. Think about something else. Something else. Nice quiet bar, Davy Byrne has. Nice counter wood; like the way it curves. Nicely planed. Look how the light touches it just there. Gentle.

Bobbing a pace a pace a porpoise landword

The first children who saw the dark and slinky bulge approaching through the sea let themselves think it was an enemy ship. Then they saw it had no flags or masts and they thought it was a whale. But when it washed up on the beach, they removed the clumps of seaweed, the jellyfish tentacles, and the remains of fish and flotsam, and only then did they see that it was a drowned man.  11:53 am

I once was lost I’ll soon be found I’m blind I’ll never see.  They will find me at one.  Floating in on the tide.  Bobbing.  Spongy foul flesh salt whitened.  I am a bag of corpsegas sopping in foul brine.  Minnows flash throught the slits of my button fly.  They like me this way.  I am becoming them.  Easy death soft as this hand of mist.  I held my breath.  It was a brief holding.  I knew.  I let go and the water came burning in horrible.  Panic. Oh God. Then I heard the music.  I’ve heard it before.  I recognized it.  Can’t describe.  And then the water voices.  I saw lights.  And people talking close to me, shades.  Then faces; the faces that come in the dark.  It’s ok now.  Let it go.  All done now.  Seadeath the mildest of all deaths.  My head is face up on the bottom.  Nose hole home to billions.  Mouth grinning in my green grave.  And the rest bobbing in with the tide.  There it is, see it?  Hook it quick.  Got all of it?  Pull.  We have him.  Easy now, don’t break him up.  Haul him over the gunwale.  No head.  Well, can’t have everything.

Some say they remember their past lives

And then he saw the child. It was a dry and bloated bag of skin that all the ants in the world were dragging toward their holes along the stone path in the garden. Aureliano could not move. Not because he was paralyzed by horror but because at that prodigious instant Melquiades' final keys were revealed to him and he saw the epigraph of the parchments perfectly placed in the order of man's time and space: The first of the line is tied to a tree and the last is being eaten by the ants.

9:09 am

After thousands of years of people reincarnating, with all the coming and going and waiting in chairs and general foot traffic, heaven’s lobby had become a crumbling old ruin. Indra asked Vishvakarma, who was an archetect along the lines of Dedalus and Frank Gehry, to fix up the place a bit and so he did. It was splendid. Dripping with jewels. Gardens. Towers. There were walls that could sing and there were stairs that rotated to the past. In some rooms you could smell the light just by virtue of the placement of the windows in ratios corresponding to the sacred formula (√5+1)/2. In one room he had squared the circle and in another he had trisected an angle and doubled a cube. I don’t even have to tell you what he did with time. Anyway, it was a ton of work and when he was done he was done and wanted to leave. Get paid and leave. Problem was, Indra wanted more. Wasn’t satisfied with good enough. More building if you please and even if you don’t please. So Vishvakarma had no choice, really. He went over his head to the supreme being. Well, this god in charge, this divine fixer, told Vishvakarma not to worry, be cool, just go back and I’ll take care of everything. The next day a kid all in white with a tattoo on his forehead (what parent is going to let that happen? must have been fake) showed up and marched right up to Indra as if Indra wasn’t The Man. And this kid said look, when are you going to be done with all this construction? No other Indra before you has ever built, well paid to be built for him at any rate, anything half as big or a third as great. And Indra, amused that this kid had what appeared to be the balls of a water buffalo to talk smack to his face just like that, said what the hell do you know about other Indras? And the kid said look dude, I’ve seen it all. I was there when they built the pyramids and that was like yesterday. I’ve seen the bang at the start of the universe and the one before that too. I’ve seen all the universes and all possible moments and the containers of moments and the things those are packed into besides and each one has an Indra, so don’t give me your shit. And while the kid was talking and Indra was turning purple with rage a line of ants marched in like they owned the place, which in fact they did. The kid cracked up to see this and laughed until Indra was nearly apoplectic with fury. Finally the kid took pity and revealed his true form. He was the fixer, the man in charge of the man in charge of the man in charge fifty five times over the whole time. Indra fell all over himself apologizing and in his curiosity which he could not contain even in front of the Supreme One, he asked what was it about the ants that was so funny? And the supreme being said those ants? Every one of them are former Indras.