Club Morono

Dr. Jane Wormsly in Winter

2012-01-30T21:48:00.001-05:00

But receive me, my frensheets, from the emerald dark winterlong!
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake p. 603

I met Lohbado down at the Club Morono Tabernacle the other day. He started telling me all about Dr. Jane Wormsly, a worm specialist. I felt really tired and started daydreaming while he talked. It was pretty cold outside, a quiet cold day, nothing special. I refilled the cup of coffee and tried to concentrate on what Lohbado was telling me. A whole notion about numbers, Lohbado insisted on power in numbers. Yes, it helps to smile and be happy, even though one might sometimes feel sad. It was that kind of late January conversation. I tried to remember what Jane looked like. She's in her forties, brown hair, dark eyes. She also follows the Oogah clock on the wall in the green room where she uses various herbs to stimulate the worms.

Veteran of the Dome

2012-01-25T18:13:00.001-05:00

As he prepared to go out for morning coffee, Lohbado knew he’d been exposed to radiation, but not enough to seriously damage his memory, the way it affected the OOO. The OOO experienced severe memory loss, which is why Lohbado was hired. He was hired as a Trainer, to teach the OOO what they needed to know in order to survive in post-apocalyptic society.

A cold winter morning, Lohbado put on his arctic parka. Don’t fly off the handle. It’s cold outside. Try to avoid empty chatter, the drip of nonsense. Lohbado walked down the icy sidewalk, past a row of houses, ending in a warehouse.

He crossed the street and entered a small plaza, lined with oriental restaurants and a grocery store. Lohbado lived in a neighborhood, not the best, not the worst, the romance of being where you are. Would you like a companion? A woman with beautiful, jet black hair nearly bumped into him at the corner. Without looking at him, she hurried off in another direction.

Lohbado entered Lumpies Donuts in the strip mall. He ordered a coffee and sat at a table along the wall. It’s easy to get carried away, a little too excited. Over the top is a popular expression. In a moment of strong emotion, the night before, during a discussion with Henry, Lohbado voiced an opinion. Henry got angry and scolded Lohbado. It was too late. Lohbado couldn’t retract his opinion. He didn’t even believe what he was saying. It would be better if he didn’t talk nonsense.

dying man

2012-01-18T00:30:00.004-05:00

Even though Lohbado wasn’t superstitious, a dead cat beside the hedge at the edge of the sidewalk, made him stop. He bent over for a better look. He’d seen a few dead humans, but not so many cats. A lot of folklore rushed through his mind, the black cat on a Friday. Six cats all at once meant the devil was nearby. A cat stuck in a tree meant bad weather ahead. If a cat hissed at you from a doorstep, better not enter in.

The dead cat beside the hedge made Lohbado nervous. The word death flashed through his mind and sent a shiver up his spine. The cat had been dead for a few days, judging from the throbbing mass of wriggling white worms busy eating the remains. There must have been about a thousand maggots, pulsating in waves of unison. The pungent odor of rotten meat went deep into his nostrils. Lohbado straightened up and kept going. He had the directions to Gary’s place. He lived on the second floor of a three story apartment block at the top of a hill.

A set of wooden stairs lay directly on the side of the rocky hill. The banister swayed as Lohbado went up the stairs. Some planks were missing. He had to be careful where he put his feet. Weatherbeaten wood, a flimsy set of stairs on rubble, Lohbado took it one stair at a time. When he reached the stop, a plain concrete block building appeared about a hundred paces from the crest of the hill. It was called the Hill Crest Apartments.

The steep set of stairs tired him out. He stood at the top of the stairs and gasped for air. The horizon spun around for a moment and he could see stars, as a wave of nausea swept through his body. That was part of the sickness, from radiation exposure. Lohbado had it mild. It wasn’t debilitating, but it made him tire easily. Sometimes he felt the poison in his blood. As his body weakened, he had a hard time concentrating. His mind drifted away. He sat on the rubble for a moment and gazed out at the plains. Maybe he should have stayed a few days with Alice, at the last hotel. She told him he didn’t look too healthy. He could have taken a few days to rest. It wouldn’t have made any difference. He didn’t have to be anywhere at any time. He was under no pressure. His only instructions were to say as little as possible and to avoid being noticed. For company, he could nod a friendly hello to fellow lost wanderers or veterans of the dome.

Get used to being alone. Make peace with yourself. Ralph told him this. Ralph was a wise man, highly respected in the dome. He would never lose his job. He had guaranteed employment for the rest of his life, unless another nuclear war turned everything upside down again. Ralph was a picturesque, imposing man, with a rich, pleasant voice and a thick head of hair. His natural charm made him a born leader, even if he didn’t feel like leading any one. People would talk to him, as if he were an authority on whatever topic one might raise.

Stop thinking so much!

Lohbado shook his head back and forth to clear away thoughts. He contemplated the rolling gravel plains, brown, a bit of dark green, gray, silver and blue. Ridges of rock and rubble outlined numerous small lakes and streams. Rock escarpments appeared at random, scattered across the plains. According to folklore, spirits inhabited those rock hills. They said it was dangerous to climb them. It would be foolish to go up there in winter. A person could freeze to death in the fury of cold wind. Lohbado had climbed a few hills. That’s one of the reasons the OOO felt he was weird and a bit crazy.

Lohbado got up and hobbled over to the building. He pulled open the heavy metal-framed door and stepped into the dimly lit space next to the mail boxes. He saw Gary’s name and pressed the buzzer. Somebody buzzed him in. He pulled open another metal-framed door and walked up the concrete steps and down a beige hall to Gary’s apartment. Gary’s wife opened the door and led him into the kitchen. He caught a glimpse of Gary, stretched out in bed. A musty smell of sour cabbage and rotten broccoli wafted out of the bedroom.

“Hey, Lohbado!” cried Gary.

Lohbado went into the bedroom. The fifty-year old man sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. His shirt hung open.

“I’m going to pray tonight at the church,” said Gary, who had been a church elder about twenty years ago, before the war.

Ribs poked through his leathery skin. A soft little sagging belly hung over his boxer shorts. Lohbado was surprised to see such thin legs.

“There’s no church around here,” said Ann, “The church got blown to smithereens during an air raid.”

Ann sounded annoyed and a little embarrassed about her husband's confusion. She found it both shocking and embarrassing to watch him deteriorate so quickly, over a period of six months. There was nothing she or anyone could do about it. She couldn't heal his damaged brain. At the age of fifty, he was literally standing in death’s doorway. She feared what would happen after he died. It would be the first time she ever lived alone. She would move to a smaller apartment.

Gary pressed his thin lips together and nodded his head a few times, as if trying to figure out where he was or what was going on. Lohbado listened to the sound of the radiator and the sound of Ann preparing a pot of coffee. Some heavy footsteps tapped out a sequence from one end of the apartment above to the other. Lohbado suddenly felt drowsy and weak.

“Why don’t you lie down next to me,” Gary suggested, “There’s plenty of room.”

Lohbado smiled and said he’d have a cup of coffee in the kitchen. Gary lay down and promptly fell asleep. Lohbado went to the kitchen. Ann served him a cup of coffee and then went to check on Gary. She came back a few minutes later, her face red and puffy.

“Gary just passed away,” she said, “He just took his last breath.”

Lohbado gave her a hug to express his condolences. She grabbed the phone and called an ambulance. She would be busy for the next few days. She had to close his bank account, see a notary about the will, make funeral arrangements and contact his brother to give him the news.

in the Bull's Blood Tavern Parking Lot

2012-01-07T16:16:00.002-05:00

Zed slipped and fell flat on his back. Ice rain had turned the parking lot into a skating rink. Zed wasn’t drunk. He’d been drinking soda, not alcohol.

    Zed brushed ice crystals off his legs and the seat of his pants. He hoped nobody saw him fall. Embarrassed, he walked slowly, sliding his feet, to the Dodge Caravan, parked near the middle of the lot. He had to jiggle the key to get it into the lock, which was already beginning to ice up. The door popped open. Sheets of freshly formed ice tumbled from around the door. Zed started up the van, turned defrost on high. He searched around for the ice scraper and groaned. He’d forgotten the ice scraper in his Ford Focus at home. Zed took an Air Miles card from his wallet to scrape ice off the windshield.
    A few minutes later, he backed up the van and got it straightened around. All he had to do was get it out on to the freshly salted street. Zed gently touched the gas. The van slid sideways and into the rear bumper of a pickup truck. Zed screamed. His arm nearly got wrenched out of the socket when he slipped while getting out of the van to have a look at the damage. He steadied himself and slowly edged to the front of the van. The truck had knocked out a right signal light. The pickup truck was unharmed.
    Zed cursed the weather, cursed the van, cursed the Bull’s Blood Tavern and Lohbado for inviting him there. He cursed the day he was born. Zed tore the baseball cap off his head, threw it on the ground and stomped on it, nearly falling down in the process. Zed’s rage intensified as Jane Wormsly appeared on the sidewalk at the far end of the parking lot. She wore a nylon parka and hiking boots. She snickered at the spectacle of Zed’s rage, which she witnessed after coming out of the pharmacy to call a taxi to take her home. She approached Zed to find out if he was OK.
    Zed immediately felt silly. The elegant woman, about forty-five years old, had seen him lose his cool. A damaged signal light was not the end of the world. But it did mean a couple hundred dollars. No need to report the accident. He’d get it fixed the next day at John’s Garage.
    “Sorry. I just about reached the end of my wits,” Zed explained to Jane.
    Any type of aberrant behavior or minor mishap was of interest to Dr. Jane Wormsly, helminthologist, or worm specialist. Her years in helminthology deepened her understanding of the worm/brain connection. She loved nothing more than to talk micro-biology, how parasites wormed throughout the system and sometimes collided, or coagulated into nodule points, writhing, wriggling mass in dancing pulsation.
    “Wriggling pulsation is awe inspiring,” said Jane, “It’s the cosmic dance, interconnected life forms. If one worm refused to do its part, the whole structure would collapse. Of course, nature accounts for malingering worms by ensuring a plentiful supply, the shotgun approach. Throw enough worms at the problem until the problem goes away.”
    Lohbado emerged from the bar as Zed and Jane continued their discussion. Zed and Lohbado were ex-trainers from the Dome. They had both worked for the Department of Standardization in the Cha Region of the Poh Valley in the State Secret Desert. The department hired Lohbado after his family got wiped out at a wedding celebration during a preemptive strike ten years ago. That’s one reason they hired him, even though he was technically not qualified. He did have a graduate degree in philosophy from Lumpkins University. He received a doctoral degree on condition that he made changes to his argument, under the supervision of Dr. Dhoo. Lohbado was an embarrassment to the department. However, he represented money. Each student brought funding to the department. Lohbado looked more like a moron than a scholar. His long, bird-like body did not inspire respect. His body was not sexy. That’s one reason he went into philosophy. He felt uncomfortable in such a body and couldn’t bear to look at his face in the mirror.
    Lohbado eventually grew out of such adolescent concerns. He saw radiated bodies boil from the inside out. He saw a man’s intestines ooze through the abdominal wall and gray, cauliflower jelly fall out the top of a man’s head. The horrors of war transformed his way of viewing the human body. During the war, Lohbado and Zed drove ambulances and did removals.
    Lohbado met Zed by chance, ten years later, in the Dome, where they worked for the OOO people, a group of top administrators and bankers partly responsible for the Apocalyptic War. The OOO created the Dome as their hide away community during the nuclear disaster. Zed was one of the few Dome workers who owned a Zippercraft. To own such a vehicle was a priority for Zed. His salary went into that expensive machine, capable of zipping across desert sand at high speeds, up dunes and over rock hills.
    Zed gave Lohbado a ride on the Zippercraft, to a prehistoric temple unearthed by a bunker-buster missile. The ancient temple was made out of sandstone and contained a perfectly preserved skeleton in a linen gown, embroidered with gold stars and sun rays. During the decade of chaos after the war, authorities weren’t interested in cultural or historical sites. They followed a philosophy of spilled blood and destruction that went back to the days of burn, pillage and raze to the ground. Don’t leave one stone on another. The temple stood on top of exposed rock, the tip of the iceberg. A civilization lay below the and, waiting to be excavated.
    Lohbado smiled to see Jane, unexpectedly. After Zed carefully parked the van again, the three of them piled into a taxi. The taxi dropped Zed off at home. Lohbado went home with Jane.

The Angel and the Devil

2012-01-03T12:56:00.001-05:00

“Lohbado, you have now been liberated from all responsibilities,” said George Potz, Regional Administrator for the Department of Standardization, “Your services are no longer necessary. You are free to go. You will receive a small veteran’s pension, barely enough to keep you alive.”

    The administrator asked Lohbado to sign a statement saying he was pleased with the Department of Standardization and that he would never say a bad word about anyone. In return, he would receive a minimal veteran’s pension.
    Lohbado had nothing bad to say about anyone. There was no need for him to sign the statement. He wasn’t about to broadcast his wounded condition. Like most inhabitants of the Dome, Lohbado had suffered brain damage. He would conceal his malaise, in status-conscious society, in order to appear respectable. He was a veteran of the Secret Desert. People could relate to the fact that Lohbado worked in the Cha Region of the Poh Valley. Their main concern was to find out his level of financial wellbeing, in order to decide if he was worth talking to, or if he should be insulted and spurned. Lohbado’s small pension meant he was entitled to a polite hello, but nothing more.
    Lohbado went out on to the Plains of Radiation, without any purpose other than the need to exist until his body became a corpse. He planned to live for the rest of his life and to befriend fellow lost wanderers, refugees and those who resisted the Department of Standardization mandate. For the first hour, after leaving the Domed community of the OOO in the State Secret Desert, Lohbado felt a rush of euphoria. He was free, at last!
    Euphoria ran out after about two hours, when his throat burned and he couldn’t find anything to eat or drink. The first community along the bombed out road was abandoned. He met nothing but a wild dog, that snarled and bared its teeth. Lohbado talked softly to the dog and sat on a rock. The dog changed its mind and began jumping up on Lohbado and licking his face. Lohbado resisted the temptation to give the dog a hug. He didn’t want his clothes smeared with dog fur grease and the smell of rancid fish, not to mention the tiny insects crawling on the dog’s nose and around his eyes. The dog followed Lohbado for about half an hour and then got bored and returned to the abandoned village. Lohbado walked for about five hours, to the edge of a viable community. He checked in to the Groggy Inn.

    The previous inhabitant of the room, which Lohbado rented at the Groggy Inn in the contaminated village of Effluvia on the Plains of Radiation, a religious evangelist, impregnated a sixteen-year old chambermaid and refused to allow her to have an abortion. When the child was eight months old, the woman placed him in a bundle and deposited him on a merry-go-round at the carnival. The kid grew up, destined for jail, excess population, which fueled the growing prison industry. The get tough on crime policy helped maintain shareholder value. Prisons offered safe investment, which played a part in keeping a sluggish economy afloat.
    Lohbado was the only guest at the hotel that night. He ended up seated in the restaurant and drinking wine until midnight with the manager, a tall, stately middle-aged woman named Alice Swanson. Alice told him about the preacher and the kid. The kid’s name was Red Gunn. After Red got out of jail, he became a minister in the Church of Snow White, where he preached restraint to the Goo-Goo Underground. Half way into a second bottle of wine, the hostess, Alice Swanson, told him that she had an abortion when she was seventeen. She and a million or so other women had to keep quiet about their abortions, to avoid being stoned by those who fooled themselves into feeling they were in a position to criticize.
    To make up for the abortion, she got pregnant again and gave birth to a son. She raised him herself. The father died of a drug overdose two weeks after Jane gave birth to her one and only child.
    “My son is thirty-two,” said Alice Swanson, “Max is his name, short for Maximum. At the time I thought of it as living life to the full, to the max. I was so naive, I never thought someone could link the word max to maximum security, as in advanced level jail. The word was a bad prophesy. That name came back to haunt me. He went in at the age of nineteen and came out seven years later, seriously damaged, religious damage. Sometimes in jail, when a person gets really bored and there’s no way to get laid, they turn to religion. I don’t mind him this way. He got a job varnishing floors. The doctor made him quit that job. Fumes from the floor varnish damaged his nerves and knocked out brain cells. Brain damage made it easier for him to see auras and to do astral travel. He’s paying the rent as a psychic. I’m proud of Max. He sniffs out dirty laundry and gives it a floral spin. A person walks in feeling bad and leaves feeling good. Max has that ability. He’s my hero.”

    That night Lohbado had a hallucinogenic dream. He woke up moaning in darkness, not sure where he was. For a moment, he thought maybe he was dead, until a popping sound and an explosion of white light ended the darkness. He had a vision of his father, the Reverend Stonehenge Stumps, a preacher from the Church of the Living Monument. His father died twenty years ago, of sudden cardiac arrest, at the age of fifty-five, a week after he found out that his oldest son Tony was addicted to heroin and ended up in hospital with hepatitis, after using an infected needle.
    Stonehenge told Lohbado that he had to choose between the angel and the devil. At first, Lohbado thought it was a joke. It sounded too much like the scenario from the comic book that he read in the lounge area as he waited to receive his discharge papers from the Department of Standardization. Lohbado enjoyed religious adventure stories, the little dramas of good versus bad, between upholders of morality and egotistic fools out to ruin it for everyone. He liked best those comics about megalomaniac villains and their plans to wipe out the world population, so that he or she and a group of friends could enjoy wealth and luxury, undisturbed. At the end of each story, a hero would punish the villains and restore order.
    Instead of replying to Lohbado’s questions, the ghost of Stonehenge sat in the hotel room chair, at the desk and began reading gossip magazine articles about breast implants and middle aged celebrities running after nymphets. It was all wrong. His father was supposed to represent the forces of good, but instead, he was enjoying the fruits of sin. Lohbado knew it was a joke, but not a funny joke. There’s nothing funny about being confused. Lohbado burst out laughing.
    At that moment, Alice Swanson opened the door and flipped on the light. She’d gotten up to look for painkillers in the night and happened to pass by Lohbado’s room just as he began making noise. Ever since the Apocalyptic War, Lohbado slept with the door unlocked, to make it easier for him to escape during a catastrophe. Alice, in a white terry cloth robe, rushed over to Lohbado, who sat up naked in bed, as the ghost of Stonehenge vanished. Alice’s dark brown hair, streaked with grey, fell in disorder about her face as she sat on the edge of the bed and exclaimed how Lohbado was soaked in sweat. She grabbed a towel from the bathroom and gave it to Lohbado.
    He told her about the hallucinogenic dream. She agreed to spend the rest of the night with him, to make sure no ghosts or evil spirits returned to disturb his rest.

happy new year

2012-01-01T07:31:00.000-05:00

Happy new year. I don't know what it means. Take down the old calendar and put up a new one.

High Speed Romance

2011-12-20T16:02:00.001-05:00

    The turbulence of love— first encounter, plane takes off, get high. Plateau. Wake up to the realization that it could be a long ride. Get bored and restless before the descent. Breakup. Get off the plane. Anger, heartache, disappointment, frustration, man and woman go separate ways.

    Love a la mode— meet somebody. Speed, no time. Jump now, talk later. Two weeks and then it gets heavy. When reality catches up, it’s too late. You’re stuck in a relationship, good topic for conversation — “It’s so hard on me. He’s such a jerk.” It happened so fast, like everything.
    High speed relationship: You need to download a good browser and buy fast connection, live streaming.
    Do you like? Yes, I like. Jane likes. Joe likes. Jane and Joe like. Twenty friends like. Pile like upon like. Joe is doing ____. Jane is feeling ___. Joe poked Jane. Jane poked Joe. Topless Jane in G-string video. Drunken Joe guzzles pint through nose video.
    Jane is trending. Joe is oh ho. Jane Babe and Joe Hunk get serious and try to make baby, in utero, adopt baby from Easter Island, baby in a basket. Joe weds adopted babe on her eighteenth birthday.
    Jane on drugs. Joe on booze. Anorexic Jane. Belligerent Joe. Rehab. New look. Jane’s new boyfriend and new life. Joe’s hot romance. This one is for real. He’s so nice. She’s perfect. What could possibly go wrong? She deserves it. He deserves it. We all deserve to love and be loved.
    They get old and spiritual. She follows Guru Salami Pastrami. Jane declares herself wise and enlightened. Joe finds vital potency booster in teaching of Ding Dong Goorichi. Joe angrily proclaims, in all seriousness, the importance of laughter. Jane, hot with irritation and red in the face, tries to get through to you with calm and serene centering.
    Soon get old. Congratulate yourself on making it so far. Time to pamper yourself. Let’s meet at the spa, after the chiropractor, next to the south-sea island herbalist and aura arranger.
    Don’t mention death. Be young again. Do the things you were afraid to do when people were pressuring you with so many demands and so much responsibility, texting, multi-tasking, being ON all the time. It’s a real turnoff. Forever and ever amen.

Lohbado and the bear

2011-12-13T18:05:00.001-05:00

Lohbado was sent to the office of Headmaster Bates after stealing a slice of Lori’s cherry-cream pie. Lohbado was fourteen-years old at the time. Master Bates trembled with rage as Lori led the boy by the ear into the office. He pulled out a twelve-inch wooden ruler and spanked the boy’s hand until it turned red.

This was back in 1968, when teachers and principals were allowed to strap students, a black piece of leather or a ruler. Whack a kid several times on each hand. Lohbado first received the strap for choking Jack Orfski’s pet monkey in the coatroom. The second time it was for stealing a pair of pink mittens knitted by Kitty’s Bunston’s grandmother in the Golden Dale Nursing Home on Side Street.

Lohbado thought of the ruler and the strap, years later, after telling the neighbor upstairs to shut up. Every night the guy, about twenty-five, would drop something really loud, two or three times on the floor, at 3 AM. It really startled Lohbado. The first time, he thought maybe the building was about to collapse. It happened again, the next night. The third night, Lohbado got so angry, he shouted at the man to shut up. The next night, he banged on the wall. It drove him crazy to be awakened by loud banging in the night. He had a hard time falling back to sleep afterwards. He complained to the caretaker, who said he would inform the landlord.

It was really getting to Lohbado. He left work early the next day. He needed to cool down. He didn’t like getting angry. He hated to think what he might do to the guy, if the guy didn’t stop. Lohbado knew it was a good idea to head for the hills. Being in nature calmed his nerves. He drove into the forest and up a steep logging road to the top of an escarpment. He got out and gazed over the water. Spectacular clouds decorated the sky. He contemplated a hole in the cloud, where the evening sun broke through.

He peered into the luminous hole. Rays of sun poured out the triangle until he could see a blazing, golden-white letter A, for alphabet. Lohbado never left home without a copy of Abel Crane’s Abecedaire, a set of twenty-six spiritual exercises to aid digestion.

His sky gazing came to an end with a thundering and breaking of branches. He turned his head to see a black bear crash through the undergrowth and into the clearing. The bear stopped about ten paces from Lohbado. Whoof! The bear breathed hard. It ran about three paces and stopped. Lohbado froze in terror, holding his breath and began softly humming and gazing at the ground to the right of the bear. It stood up on hind legs and swayed back and forth. Lohbado could already feel, vividly in imagination, the sensation of being torn apart and bathed in blood. A few seconds took eternity to go by. Lohbado glanced towards the bear. He avoided eye contact, since eye contact was considered a challenge to fight. The bear huffed and gazed out at the lake. Lohbado turned to see what the bear was looking at, but saw nothing other than sky and water. He looked at the bear looking at water and sky and then looked at water and sky. He suddenly felt at peace with the bear. The bear meant him no harm. They stood there together and watched the spectacular effect of evening sun and clouds.

Lohbado felt a deep connection with the granite under his feet and with the power of the forest. Aggression dissolved as he continued to gaze across the lake, towards the horizon and at the clouds breaking up in the purple, crimson and golden light. The bear leaned against Lohbado’s arm. Stiff bristling fur of the bear pressed against the sleeve of his fleece jacket. The bear looked Lohbado in the eye and smiled. Lohbado slowly reached out his hand. The bear licked his hand. Lohbado stroked the bear behind the ear. The bear nodded and rocked its head, as if to make it clear that he agreed with Lohbado’s friendly gesture. The bear stood up again, stepped towards Lohbado and gave Lohbado a bear hug.

Lohbado trembled and wept with unbearable sweetness of being. To be taken to the bosom of a mighty creature of the forest filled him with great joy. The hug lasted about five seconds, until the bear dropped down on all fours.

As quickly as good feeling welled up in him, it turned to dread and shame. Lohbado noticed fleas and lice on the side of the bear’s neck. His body itched from head to food as he imagined ticks, lice or parasitic worms crawling over his skin and penetrating stomach and intestines. A cold shiver ran up his spine. He felt dizzy and could see stars. A haze spread across the horizon and the treetops began rocking wildly. The bear went blurry and shrank into the gray, almost white shape of a goat, standing on hind legs, with a human face. The goat grinned and galloped around Lohbado three times.

The goat leered through bloodshot eyes. Smoke curled out of the goat’s nostrils in accusation. Lohbado felt sorry about the foolish things he’d done over the years. The goat laughed as Lohbado hung his head and cried. A forked tongue flickered in and out of the goat’s mouth.

“I’d offer to buy your soul,” said the Devil, “But I’m not sure it’s worth the price.”

“What’s wrong with me?” cried Lohbado.

“I don’t know. You tell me,” replied the goat demon, shaking with laughter.

The goat hopped towards the edge of the cliff and started climbing down the steep slope. Goat hoofs had strong foothold in narrow ridges of near vertical rock. Lohbado watched the agile goat hop down the cliff and to the edge of the lake. The goat burst into a ball of fire and then disappeared.

Lohbado threw himself down on the rocky ground. Great sorrow welled up in his heart. His body ached with sadness and regret. He wished he could go back and make amends, start all over again and do it right. His foolish attitude and lack of attention to details sank him up to the neck in confusion. Lohbado didn’t want evil anymore. He wanted peace and love.

Peace and love arrived in an old white Cadillac, a young man at the wheel, his sweetheart leaning against him. They’d bounced along the logging road and made it up the hill in order to play cards and admire the sunset. The man, about twenty-one, got out and ran over to Lohbado, who looked more dead than alive.

“Are you all right?” shouted the young man.

The young woman, long straight black hair, tight jeans and a pullover watched from a distance.

“Maybe he’s a zombie,” she suggested, “We should get out of here.”

“If he tries anything, I’ll shoot him in the head.”

Lohbado rolled over, flailed about with his arms and moaned as he struggled to sit up. The young man grabbed one of Lohbado’s hands and helped him to his feet.

“You look like you got a problem,” said the young man, looking at Lohbado’s pale face and messy black fleece jacket and baggy brown trousers.

“Forgive me,” said Lohbado.

“Did you kill somebody?”

“No, but I messed around with the alphabet in a way it wasn’t intended to be used. If people got hold of what I wrote, it could mess them up. My letter E offended Capital Letter P.”

“You look pretty messed up right now.”

“I need C for coffee and then I’ll be all right,” said Lohbado, “There’s still some left in T truck.”

Lohbado managed to steady himself, after a wave of dizziness passed through him again. He gazed at the reflection of the evening sun on the hood of his blue pickup truck and guided himself towards it. He swung open the door and grabbed a huge plastic mug of coffee. The young man and woman listened as he took three gulps of lukewarm black coffee.

“I’ll be fine now.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Pee was sure pissed off. She’ll get over it. And so will the Chief Poopotski. He raised a stink when I poked him in the eye.”

rosy glow spaghetti

2011-12-12T19:29:00.000-05:00

For inspiration, Lohbado gazed for a long time into a bowl of spaghetti, until a rosy glow spread throughout the bottle-green room. One eye on noodles, the other on strawberry, Lohbado felt oneness of the two. A dynamic tension pulled them together, while maintaining a safe distance.

salt, pepper and false teeth

2011-12-08T11:23:00.001-05:00

Lohbado followed salt, pepper and false teeth into the soft tungsten light of the kitchen.

Lohbado's bite was worse than his bark. Add a little salt and pepper to make it taste better.

Elder Valley

2011-11-29T21:04:00.003-05:00

    A cloud of toxic dust knocked him down. Lohbado collapsed on the Plains of Radiation, after stumbling through hot wind and burning red sand for nearly two weeks. He’d given up hope of ever finding the Valley of the Old, where one could live free from shock and surprise. Lohbado hoped to be accepted into the valley, where he would obtain the food he liked. Valley food left nothing to imagination, no unexpected surprises, no hot sauce or funky herbs and spices. Served at room temperature and with the consistency of tapioca pudding and the taste of saliva, it could be swallowed without chewing. It was easy to digest.

    Guided by sound, Lohbado knew he didn’t have much farther to go. He could almost smell a musty, acrid, plastic dampness indicating he was near. Searing heat and dry wind sapped his energy. Blasts of hot air intensified, stirring up the dust and reducing visibility. Lohbado crawled to the top of a radioactive sand dune and listened to the secret cry from the Valley. He’d been picking up vibrations for the past two days. At first, it sounded like sounds from a brothel, but then he realized, it was the sound of dementia, of men and women lying in bed, or strapped to chairs and gasping for air. It followed a rhythm. Sometimes he picked out fragments of fantasy, coffee, water, why are they fighting, will there be food on the shelves tomorrow? Sets of words punctuated the moaning as elder minds got swept away with fantasy, dream or hallucination, or memory mixtures. Often the person on death’s door didn’t know time of day or season of the year. He or she ceased to recognize anybody. Perception got evened out into a pastel blur and white noise.
    Since the Apocalyptic War, life expectancy for a man averaged sixty and for a woman, seventy. Many suffered lung disease and leukemia. Symptoms of old age began in one’s late forties and early fifties. Lohbado also felt symptoms. He hoped to be accepted into the valley.
    Old man moan and mumbling women in the Valley of the Old had trouble seeing and hearing. They communicated with vibrations. To fit into Elder Valley, one had to make sound vibrations at a minimum of one or two spasms every fifteen minutes: uh, uh, oh, oh, ah, ah, ah. It’s also necessary to move around in order to get the blood circulating and to avoid bed sores.
    Lohbado preferred death in the valley to brain damage in the dome, where he worked as a trainer for the Department of Regulation in a community of five hundred top administrators. Lohbado swore not to give details about the people of the OOO, pronounced oo as in moon, loon or soon. The name originated from the secret code: zero zero zero. Three zeroes entered into the appropriate systems file would erase incriminating data on all computer networks. The administrators, who engineered the outbreak of the Apocalyptic War in a desperate attempt to avoid paying taxes and to reduce the deficit without decreasing military spending, constructed a glass domed community in the Cha Region of the Poh Valley in the State Secret Desert. Service workers at the dome were expected to work until breaking point. There was no such thing as retirement.
    Due to human error, a leak occurred in the dome. Radiation got into the air system, causing administrators to experience memory loss and swelling of the right brain, resulting in heightened religious sensibility and imagination. They hired trainers to come in and remind administrators what they were forgetting. Lohbado worked there for three years, until he too began to experience symptoms of radiation poisoning.
    One day, Lohbado got up and walked out of the office and never returned. It was easy to leave. Nobody dreamed that anyone would be foolish enough to leave the shelter of a glass bubble and to hike across the deadly Plains of Radiation. Lohbado learned about refugee camps for increasing numbers of people fleeing increasing levels of radiation. Radiation became unpredictable, like the weather. One learned to expect the unexpected. Lohbado’s connections with the Goo-Goo Underground made him aware of the Valley of the Old, set up for fleeing dictators and their families, who could afford high rise sealed luxury units in the middle of a nuclear wasteland. Human waste got recycled into food. Urine was the main source of water.
     During a trek into the Rock Hills, Lohbado met a team of Dwarves from the Underground who introduced him to Snow White and the magic powder. They said he was welcome to join them in Elder Valley, once he met medical requirements.
    At the age of 55, Lohbado qualified to be there. All Lohbado needed was a medical certificate in order to be able to retire. Lohbado’s vital force had gone into rapid decline. His teeth began rotting and crumbling all at once. His joints ached. He had chest pains and trouble breathing. In short, he was no longer young and sexy. He was on the threshold of old age and within about ten years of dying.
    On top of the mountain, Lohbado saw the towering white monument, above the clouds of dust. The mighty towers of old dictators. That would be Lohbado’s new home, until death evicted him. Lohbado trembled and wept for joy as he saw the Valley, which he despaired of finding. It lay about an hour’s hike, straight ahead. He checked the direction of prevailing winds and charted his course across the sand. During the final march, Lohbado lost all bodily sensation. Driven by an urge to survive, he moved without stopping until he reached the gates of the heavily guarded valley.
    An armed guard escorted him to the admitting department, where he was told to lie on a red velvet sofa. He smelled the familiar damp, plastic, with ammonia overtones, as elders approached to do a laying on of hands. In addition to a certificate, one had to experience the laying on of hands. The old peoples’ poor vision and trouble hearing made it easy for Lohbado to disguise himself as a sixty year old man. Lohbado lay on an old red velvet sofa while elders touched his face to feel the dryness and texture of skin. Lohbado’s skin was all crusty and dried out from radiation burn, after wandering two weeks on the Plains of Radiation. He lost fifty pounds in two weeks, while living on nothing but one packet of instant cinnamon and raisin flavored oatmeal per day.
    The elders were pleased to note the open jelloid sore on the top of Lohbado’s head and the small growth next to his right ear. Lohbado passed inspection and was given the status of trembling hesitation, because when questioned, he replied without confidence or conviction. They recognized him as being one of the Lost Wanderers, who escaped enslavement within the dome. Lohbado heaved a huge sigh of relief as his name was entered into the register of dying men and women in the Valley of the Old.

pickle rot combo

2011-11-21T20:22:00.000-05:00

Club Morono is proud to add the Pickle Rot Combo to the Club Morono Deli Menu. That dill is in a real pickle. Click here to read the other side of the story.

Worm Research

2011-11-14T08:34:00.000-05:00

    Lohbado in the waiting room of Dr. Mamon, scratched the top of his head. A handful of worms came from the top of his head. He was about to wipe them off on his trousers.
    “Stop!” shouted Dr. Jane Wormsly, who happened to be sitting next to him, “Let me have a look.”

    Jane’s dark shiny eyes and thick hair cast a spell on Lohbado. He could not resist her perky vibes. Jane emptied the contents of a pill jar into a nose tissue and put Lohbado’s worms into the jar. She carefully sealed the pill jar and put it at the bottom of her purse.
    She handed him her card, Helminthologist.
    “I’m a worm specialist,” she explained, feeling self-conscious as other people in the gray waiting room watched the little drama.
    "I’d like to examine your head worms in my laboratory at Lumpkins University. How long have you been infested?”
    “About six months. I was hoping they’d go away. They started going under the skin, right down to the bone. They tickle my skull. I’m afraid they’ll bore tunnels into my brain.”
    “Worm trepanning,” cried Jane, “That’s dangerous.”
    “I’ve been having weird dreams, more like hallucinations, sometimes, even when awake, I get pulled into a dream world that feels even more real than the waking world.”
    “What do you think is happening?” asked Jane, leaning close, so he could smell her dandelion perfume.
    “A group of rogue worms wish to overthrow humanity. They’re tired of worm status and wish to mutate into human form. The worm population is divided on the issue. Most worms say its too much fuss. They want to be left in peace to wriggle and writhe. The rogue worms swelled to twice the size of normal worms. The swollen worms feed on corpses in graveyards. They also attack people like me. They go for the brains. Once they get at the brains, they’re able to absorb elaborate chemistry, which I do not understand, things like synapses, dopamine and endorphins. This gives the rogue worms the ability to think and be aware of their surroundings and their low status.
    “They decided to go human. Once human, they would take control of government and financial institutions and rule the world. The worms know they can’t, in themselves, become human. But they are capable of metamorphic transmutation, in other words, to take possession of a human host and to make it theirs. The king worm actually succeeded in taking a man’s will and making it his.”
    Jane was blown away. She knew Lohbado was hers. She would not let him go until she got to the bottom of the worm situation. She insisted that Lohbado wait for her and then they would go off together.
    “Forget Dr. Mamon. I’ll take you to the lab and run some tests. I’ll free you of those worms.”
    Lohbado waited while Jane went in to see Dr. Mamon. Afterwards, Jane took Lohbado to Chinese Choice Restaurant for chicken with rice take out. When they got to the science lab at Lumpkins University, Jane injected glibbery-goo into his head, forcing the worms to withdraw. Within an hour, the worms left Lohbado’s head and were imprisoned in a glass case, where Jane could study them.

The Hee-Haw Conflict

2011-10-30T23:26:00.001-04:00

Tony and Lohbado were arrested and sent to work as slaves at the great dictator’s palace on the Plains of Radiation. Their job was to polish doorknobs in the mahogany hall. The Dictator had a fetish for knobs of wood, glass, crystal, porcelain, silver and gold. His palace contained a corridor of doorknobs.

Every morning the great dictator Galen would grease the palm of his hand with tallow, hormone Oohaw Cream from the Galen Labs, where experiments were carried out on wounded cows. Most people didn’t take the great dictator seriously. Tony loved Galen. During a brain wash session, Tony was blown away by a video of Galen walking into a room and caressing a precious gold knob with his name engraved into it.

Silk pillows were provided should Galen wish to kneel and worship the doorknobs. In the video, Galen unscrewed a knob, placed it on a chair and sat on it. Galen was wearing a kilt. A look of power and defiance swept over Galen’s face. He shouted orders to have three prisoners brought in to kneel before him and read off a list of Galen’s accomplishments.

Music played in the background, a bubbly wash of soft squeaky melodies, one tune after another, some a little faster or slower than others, in a standardize measure, a doo dah doo, doupa doop mood maker mood machine, hum de dum howdy doody sure is a nice day. There’s talk about doing something. Time to take action, dum de doo dah, howdy doo, how much money do you have? How do you survive? Do you have a job? What do you do dee do dee do? Good luck. Have a nice day.

They also played that kind of music at the Plaza and in the supermarket. It blared in the background as Lohbado tried to remember what it was he went out to buy. Sometimes Lohbado would hurry into the store and his mind blanked out. He’d stare at cans of sardines, jars of dill pickles, tubes of octopus paste, bags of beans and noodles and not remember what he intended to buy.

Lohbado’s going out of the apartment had a motive, or intention, even if the goal was nothing more than to do something in order to break the inertia of doing nothing. Lohbado had a particularity, which ruled out arbitrariness. During the here and now, at the time when he was planning a future to define his presence, Lohbado stood a moment, blank mind, and began slowly wandering the aisles. Soon he spotted a store clerk, in peripheral vision. The clerk followed Lohbado, as if he felt Lohbado was trying to shoplift. Lohbado was tempted to turn and explain to the clerk he was an honest man, who felt it was bad luck to steal.

Lohbado did that once, after setting off an alarm at a drugstore. He showed the clerk the contents of his pack. When he explained how he would never steal, the clerk became more suspicious. Lohbado must be a thief. Why would he be explaining his honesty if he was in fact honest? Perhaps the clerk would like to strip search Lohbado. The alarm went off when the clerk told him to go through the detector again. Finally, the clerk let Lohbado go.

After that, Lohbado gazed in fear at doors with detectors. He walked cautiously into stores and prayed that nothing on his person would set off the alarm. It happened two or three times a year, enough to make him nervous. He saw it happen to other people. One lady discovered it was the magnetic chip on her public transit card that set off the alarm.

Lohbado managed to escape to the city. The city spread out, a set of sentences, streets of text, alphabet storefronts, blocks of ideas, towering concepts and religious steeples scraping the sky in sheer belief. He went to the archive to do research on the Hee-haw conflict and its disastrous impact on the economy.

The Hee invaded Haw. The Hee and Haw were mortal enemies. The Hee believed sex is only permitted on holy days. The Haw scoffed at such an idea. According to Hee morality, sex should take place at breeding centers. According to the Haw, such an idea was preposterous. They got into a big fight in the parking lot outside the House of Paris. A lot of eggs broke against the windshields of people who tried not to get involved.

Who stole the cookies?

2011-10-18T13:53:00.004-04:00

Aaaah! Bad bad bad very bad. Card house collapse, dangerous door electric funk gone humpty dumpty into jelloid k liquid mumble Nomroh ooo P.P. Q.Q. ritual spot touch under viscous water X-rated zoology. What’s going on? Who stole the cookies?

Lohbado worked for a few months in the Cookie Department where he baked muffins according to specification. The idea was to squeeze each human resource in order to maximize shareholder value. Lohbado didn’t work out according to plan. He committed sin against the company. He ate cookies and muffins without paying for them. In other words, he consumed company stock, which was not meant for consumer packaging.

Rex Pazetree called an emergency meeting of the Better Biscuit Bureau to discuss the mystery of the missing muffins and cookies. Each missing muffin, each consumed cookie represented a five cent loss to the company. Twenty missing muffins and cookies equaled a one dollar loss. Muffins and cookies went missing at the rate of two muffins and two cookies per twenty-four hour five day period. That represented a loss of ten missing cookie muffin combos per week, a net loss of fifty cents per week, or a little over two dollars per month. In a year, that could be a loss of approximately twenty-five dollars. In other words, the company was bleeding from within.

The culprit would have to be hunted down and made to pay, not only lost revenue, but also the cost of the investigation, plus administrative expense and photocopy fees. To make the company more profitable, workers would be laid off. Only those prepared to work twice or three times as hard would be retained. To motivate upper management, top administrators would receive a million dollar bonus each. Without the bonus, administrators might lose motivation to do business. Business means jobs. If nobody wants to do business, then everybody loses. It’s in everybody’s best interest for the top one percent to be well paid and for the other ninety-nine percent to stop whining and toe the line of austerity measures.

Rex Pazetree hired an outside investigator, Lohbadin, who advertised himself as Have Fun Will Travel. Lohbadin’s super-hero power was the ability to fall asleep within three seconds. He could sleep standing up, or in the middle of a conversation. Lohbadin believed sleep to be the key to having fun. A good night’s sleep would solve a lot of problems facing humanity. If people would sleep more, they would consume less electricity. Also, people don’t eat while they sleep. The more a person sleeps, the less that person will eat, thus economizing on food. This could solve the world food shortage: sleep more.

It didn’t take Lohbadin long to trace the missing cookies and muffins to Lohbado. A colleague of Lohbado had seen him eating a company muffin and was only too eager to squeal. Lohbado got hauled up on the carpet. They popped the question: "Did you consume company property?"

Lohbado confessed: “I cannot tell a lie. I took the forbidden cookies and muffins and I did eat.”

Lohbado’s legal advisor suggested he make a show of emotion along with a confession. Lohbado rubbed an onion soaked rag in his eyes. Tears flowed down his cheeks as he repented: “I’m so so so sorry. I’ll never do it again.”

They suspended Lohbado for three weeks without pay. And so, once again, quick, decisive action ensured that Pazetree Cookie and Muffin Company remains a sound investment.

door spirit

2011-10-13T22:30:00.003-04:00

Through the open door, Lohbado caught a glimpse of a spirit, imprinted on the rock. The door spirit told Lohbado to eat in order to know. Eat hot dogs. Eat to feel solid, to weigh down the body that felt like a spirit.

The only action of the door is to open or close. One could go through the door, lean against the door, wait at the door. One could even lock the door. The door could also be viewed as a passage between at least two worlds, the world on one side of the door and the world on the other side of the door. There might be obstacles to going through the door.

To get to the door requires a journey, path, pilgrimage, odyssey, depending on how you see it or on what you want. The speed of passage could be taken into account. One might trip over the door step, stumble, lunge, fall or be pushed, trampled, dragged or escorted through the door.

The door itself might become a fetish object. One could fall in love with the door and turn it into an art object. The door could be made of marble, oak or metal and decorated with carvings, or gold leaf. The possibilities are endless.

Great Nomroh Door to Pastry Paradise

2011-10-04T17:15:00.001-04:00

A door, reflected in Lohbado’s living room mirror, provided hope of escaping the infestation of Tunnel Bugs. A mutate strain of bugs, half tick, half roach, burrowed under the skin. The bugs secrete slippery mucus to facilitate the passage of followers.

The lead bug, or propeller bug’s, head will vibrate or oscillate in a bee-wing pattern, enabling the bug to penetrate to the layer of fat tissue. Fat tissue provides a cozy bed for colonies to propagate the species. The bugs are harmless, other than psychological discomfort and the danger of getting into the brain. They go for the right brain, causing it to swell, stimulating visual and auditory sensations. Victims of brain tunnel buggering had visions of great white light and were able to see long forgotten ancestors and to hear contradictory messages, for example:

Please forget your raincoat so you stay dry in the pouring rain.

I will go to Pastry Paradise, where people eat cake instead of bread. Proof of pastry paradise exists in the growing number of bakeries throughout the city, as wise people prepare for the Apocalypse. Holy bread, or donuts, are being sold by the dozen as followers proclaim the pleasures of Pastry Paradise. Yeast rises, oozing over the kitchen table in search of spilled milk. This became known and aggressively defended as the theology of cake/yeast triumph over broken bread and spilled milk.

You can imagine the conflict generated by this soft, puffy belief system, which in spite of being a hard pill to swallow, cried out for respect from non-believers.

In Pastry Paradise, there are no neutrons, protons or electrons, only cake, pie and croissant crumbs, falling softly like snow. All one has to do is open the mouth and be filled.

Every big thing has lesser things. For every slice of toast, there awaits a knife full of jam or peanut butter, waiting to be spread on a willing surface. Each donut is sugar crusted, frosted, dowsed or dunked in syrup, cream, foam, speckled or candy-coated, glazed with honey, cinnamon, melted butter or fruit concentrate.

Revelation occurred in a puff of cherry-flavored poof balls during the morning in which Lohbado leapt off the living room sofa, after being awakened from an elaborate dream, when the phone rang. It was Joe.

“Lohbado, look in the mirror. You’ll never guess what I saw,” cried Joe.

Half awake, confused, dazed, Lohbado reached his feet as blood left his head. The momentum, initial élan or leap ended in a big bang as Lohbado’s head hit the concrete floor covered with a thin layer of very old and damp carpet.

This merits more detailed description, a slow-motion replay. Lohbado was having a nap. Tunnel bugs tunneled a slippery mucus-lined passageway to the right brain. The phone rang.

Joe shouted about something in the mirror and that Lohbado should have a look. In his maniac zeal, Joe committed the fallacy of sympathetic magic, bridge the gap between his mirror, in the world of his apartment and Lohbado’s mirror, in the world of Lohbado’s apartment. Joe assumed that what Joe saw in Joe’s mirror in Joe’s living room could be seen in Lohbado’s mirror in Lohbado’s living room.

Or maybe Lohbado, still half asleep as he picked up the phone, didn’t hear right. Lohbado thought Joe said to look in the mirror and he would find something important. Lohbado leapt off the sofa. The transition from sleep to waking was too sudden. Blood left his head. He felt dizzy, could see stars and hear high-pitched sounds.

Lohbado took two steps and tripped over an extension cord. He fell head first on the floor. As he fell, Lohbado caught a glimpse of a luminous door reflected in the mirror, beckoning him, a light in the darkness, a pleading voice disrupting the heavy gray silence. At the same time, a propeller bug breached a membrane and bored deep into the gray labyrinth of Lohbado’s right brain, to make it easier for tunnel bugs to colonize Lohbado’s skull mansion.

The big bang of Lohbado’s head on concrete floor opened a new kind of door, similar to the door in the darkness of a dusty mirror, the Great Nomroh Door to Pastry Paradise.

May there be plenty of cake, crepe, croissants and cheezies for everyone!

The Garden of Oogah and Oorsis

2011-09-30T21:56:00.001-04:00

Dig with fingers into the earth, hands get dirty. Some flowers have thorns. After a while the pictures form a sequence. It started last week with dumping out some old wine. It made a mess of the bathroom sink. A bar of soap marinated for a few days in a pool of wine and made a good hand wash. Maybe wine soaked soap would make a good gift to give during the winter holiday season.

Lohbado must never lose sight of Oogah and Oorsis, spirits hovering around the thistle garden. Fortunately, as God and Goddess, they weren't too concerned about sin. Sin was an invention of other religions. In Club Morono, original sin did not exist. Sometimes a person behaved like a fool and felt ashamed. The person could confess and make an aspiration not to do it again. Oogah and Oorsis told Lohbado and Jane Wormsly, the original inhabitants of the Great Thistle Garden, that they were free to do as they chose, as long as they didn't hurt each other, harm anyone else or damage the environment. God and Goddess encouraged Lohbado and Jane to know themselves and each other and to drink deep from the well of knowledge.

Lohbado first encountered Oogah on Rock Hill, on the Plains of Radiation, a few years ago when he worked for the Department of Regulation in the Cha Region of the Poh Valley in the Secret Sahara Desert. Oogah haunted the hill. Jane Wormsly studied Oorsis, the spirit of the great bear, who roamed the hills and plains. Together, Oogah and Oorsis took credit for the creation of the universe and provided comfort for several generations of Moronovians, the ancestors of those who currently meet at the Club Morono Tabernacle to commune with The Great Nomroh.

cleanliness next to godliness

2011-09-27T14:20:00.001-04:00

Soft soap works into a good lather and if used properly, won't dry out the skin like abrasive, hard soap. Sometimes soft soap soaks slimy slop and gets slippery dirty. To clean soft soap scum, hold the bar under clear running water a few minutes and it will come out clean enough to place on the altar next to a candle and a comb.

pear peace cake

2011-09-24T09:54:00.000-04:00

So much material goes down the drain during one lifetime. Each person makes a contribution. Sometimes, the sink might get plugged, or back up. It would be terrible if everything one put down the drain suddenly flew back in one's face. To honor the power of plumbing and the mysteries of digestion, Lohbado prepared a pear peace cake and presented it to the sink. In presenting the cake, Lohbado prayed for peace and love.

the miracle of wine to blood

2011-09-23T10:58:00.000-04:00

Blood is a very potent religious symbol, a meme bleeding with significance. So is wine. This all started yesterday, when it came time to wash my hands. Someone asked, are you washed? As a boy, I sang a hymn at church called, "Are you washed in the blood of the lamb." Then there's the turning of wine into blood, during the mass.

I had an old bottle of wine, undrinkable. I decided to pour it down the bathroom sink, kill two birds with one stone. Wash hands, eat a soft boiled egg and pour out a bottle of wine. Wine also served as ritual libation in Greek religion. One poured wine on the ground in memory of whichever dead person one wanted to remember.

This act of domestic multitasking was nothing short of a miracle. Before my eyes, the egg, minus contents, which I'd eaten, blocked the drain. Wine splattered into the sink, as if I'd accidentally cut myself and blood went spurting all over the place. I felt strangely alive, a mess of blood, soap and egg. After taking the photos, I turned on the tap and washed it all away.

Cosmic Gorilla

2011-09-20T18:17:00.003-04:00

Poof! A light bulb exploded in a ceiling socket.

A squirrel tore open a bag of garbage on the front lawn. No sooner did Lohbado go into his apartment, after cleaning up the mess of soft carrot and banana peels on the front lawn, when a man came to cut the grass. Lohbado dreaded having to say good morning. To avoid human contact, he ran into his basement dwelling and locked the door.

A rush of pressure caused the left side of Lohbado’s head to tingle and burn. Painkillers spilled on the floor as his trembling hands grabbed a couple pills.

Lohbado swallowed the pills and a cup of strong coffee. The coffee only made him drowsy. He passed out on the living room sofa. Closing his eyes, it felt like falling backwards, spinning into darkness. He could see stars and hear ringing sounds. The noise of the lawn mower got louder as it mowed the lawn in front of the living room window, set just beneath the ceiling of Lohbado’s basement apartment. Soon, the spirit of Nomroh came knocking on the door of Lohbado’s skull mansion.

Nomroh warned Lohbado to beware of the ape. A cosmic gorilla was on the loose, offering a one week free trip to the Bahamas and a one year subscription to Wolf Network, where one could follow the latest about big fish defending their right to eat little fish and the haves making a virtue of bullying the have-nots. Once assets were safely frozen so as to quadruple investments, the Cosmic Gorilla would teach the way of Bliss. One could ride calm and serene waves to the quivering Pink Pasta Palace on Mount Vesuvius.

In the dream, Lohbado screamed: “I want it all and I want it now, with interest on arrears, plus administrative fee refund.”

The Cosmic Ape said: “Ask and you shall receive. Reach out your hand and feel the grapes. Open your mouth and it will be filled. I will lead you to soft pudding paradise where arms and legs are no longer necessary. You can wriggle like a worm, a long, mucoid, pleasure-throbbing, eating and shitting organism. Instead of thought, you will experience non-stop blissful streaming.”

Lohbado said: “Yes, Great Gorilla, that’s what I want. Give it to me now!”

Suddenly, Dr. Jane Wormsly, helminthologist, came rushing in from a recent episode over a wormlike mass of rotten fish.

“Stop this foolishness,” cried Dr. Jane, “There is no empirical data to support the wild claims of Kolan Bumstuhl. Beware of fibrous thickening agents. They could irritate your mind and inflame the ego, causing it to ooze with a desire for power and zeal to change how things are done. Beware of the Cosmic Ape, who acts in fragrant denial of reality, promising lilacs and rose gardens without thorns.”

The ape was never a creature of words. He blustered and sputtered in attempt to argue. When that didn’t work, he beat his chest and showed his teeth.

Dr. Jane shouted: “Be gone, you foolish creature. Go back to your boiling boudoir. Your empty promises won’t fool those who see through the tissue of lies.”

“Ooo cha, ooo ooo cha! I’ll be back,” cried the ape, “I think we can come up with a more attractive package, no down payment, no interest for the first six months, but if you switch service providers, there will be a hefty severance fee.”

Lightning Strikes Lohbado

2011-09-13T14:54:00.000-04:00

Lohbado sauntered down the street to have coffee at the nearby strip mall. The sky clouded over, a dark dome dividing the sky into light and dark, a saw tooth edge of cloud, moving fast.

Lohbado was too tired and giddy to walk faster to avoid likelihood of sudden down pour. A stab of pain stopped him in his tracks. He paused and took a couple painkillers from a jar he carried with him at all times. The side of his face and back of the neck went numb. He heard a siren in the distance. His chest hurt. Pain shot down his left arm, right to the fingertips.

Lohbado gazed up and realized he’d been struck by lightening, followed by weird rain. Sporadic, fat, sticky drops of rain oozed from a deep rust-colored cloud, a rain of nails. A few handfuls of iron nails tumbled from the rust cloud as Lohbado swallowed painkillers to ease the pain of lightning that shot from the top of his head to the tip of his fingers. A sizzling sound and melted-plastic smell created stomach nausea. He took a deep breath in order to not heave eggs and toast on to the sidewalk.

Lohbado gazed over his right shoulder as a woman, on the third floor of a bleak apartment building under the dark arc of cloud, slid back the window and lifted out a painting done on art-store canvas, a huge purple daisy on garish orange background. The woman dangled the painting out the window and reached around with her right arm and a feather duster and dusted the picture.

Lohbado noticed nearly a dozen rust clouds peeling off the menacing bruise-purple arch of cloud across the tenement building at the far end of an abandoned lot. Trees started flopping wildly. Another handful of nails struck from behind. Power-lines swung back and forth. Street lamps came on, even though it was only 10:30 AM.

A power outage put out the lights. Lumpies Donuts had a backup generator. It glowed at one end of the darkened strip mall. Lohbado laughed at the road rage of drivers in a panic to exit the parking lot and the impatient drivers forcing their way in. Of course, road rage once happened to Lohbado, a surge of irritation, suddenly out of control, flipping into a brief angry outburst of embarrassing and pointless shouting. A group of pedestrians paused in the rusty nail rain to laugh at the comedy of shouting drivers and honking gridlock at the mouth of the strip mall parking lot.

Lohbado scooped up a dozen rusty nails, which were just what he needed to hold together some planks he found on the curb last week. He pissed on the planks to kill any microscopic worms, cockroach eggs or bedbug larvae. He brought the planks inside to build shelves to house the growing stack of drawings and diagrams Lohbado had been making as part of his epic expose on the Apocalyptic War, a survivor’s account, memoir of a wandering man, a fly-like Nomrohic hero abuzz with information, of interest to no one.

He pondered the gesture of the third-story cleaning woman window purple daisy with orange painting episode. He couldn’t wait to line up to order coffee at Lumpies. Standing in line was the best part, the drama of people placing orders, a variety of human emotion, from every walk of life No need to tell you about the wheeler-dealer driver of the Jaguar and his secretary, or the angry father shouting at the waitress, who got his order wrong, as if she was personally responsible for everything that went wrong in his life. There’s certainly no need to describe the foxy woman from the beauty salon above the Chinese grocery store, or the embarrassed mother caught in the middle of texting in line as her two youngsters began crying and whacking each other with plastic, dollar store weapons. Such characters are all too familiar in the stock of, none the less true, types one will meet at any given day in line at any one of the thousands of doughnut shops or supermarkets across the country.

Lohbado stood behind a retired man, a regular recovering from open-heart surgery. They took veins from his legs and used them to re-route blood through the heart. The other day he showed Lohbado the scars.

The waitress took Lohbado’s order and then smiled as she placed the palm of her hand against his palm to give him the change. Lohbado sat down and immediately documented the lightning strike and window dusting picture episode as part of a medical or psychological description of his exposure to dangerous clouds and a mini-boom explosion on the Plains of Radiation during the Apocalyptic War.

Nomrohic Personality

2011-09-07T13:11:00.001-04:00

Nomroh takes hold when you least expect. Nomroh animates discussion. Nomroh is a powerful force. The Nomrohic person is one who acts within the moisturological perspective, walking the fine line between falling into a hamper of wet blankets or floating into a thick cloud. He or she acts on no uncertain principles.

Lohbado's Progress

2011-09-03T18:27:00.003-04:00

Lohbado wandered down the freeway service road. A strong, hot wind picked up dust from the sidewalk and flung it in his face, stinging the skin and getting in the eyes and nose. Paper and plastic tumbled along the curb and out into traffic. During the desolate hour, there weren’t too many vehicles racing around.

The enemy, General Arrogant Leech, would be deconstructed with the analytical gaze. Defeat him via dissection into infinitely divisible segments. Split the segments into atomic and sub-atomic particles. A lot of hot air gets released during the process. Hot air could be the solution to reliance on oil. Hot air and gases from ego-promoting discussion and digestion could be used to heat buildings and to power engines.

Deconstruction, using the OOO principles of Alphabetology would also bring about a new era of long-lasting peace and prosperity. Cha would remain as a peacekeeping army, to contain greed-driven morality and evangelizing Ooze.

After General Leech’s defeat, the Oogah cry of victory was shouted up and down the streets of Yamaville: Ooo Cha, Ooo-Ooo Cha, Ooo-Ooo, Cha and so on. Lohbado respected the big O of zero or nothing and everything and the C-cha-cha container to restrict O-O-ooze.

Viewed in this way, the Arrogant Leech lost his power. The influence of arrogance could only exist as long as he believed the worm in him needed to be expanded, or pumped up to enormous proportions in order to create shock and awe. The moment the Leech abandoned his desire to feel his power over others and to get others to agree with his opinions, the arrogance vanished in a puff of smelly hot air. The Leech could return to earthworm proportions.

Lohbado went to the temple of Oogah and Oorsis for a session of Alphabetology. The alphabet exerted a strong influence on his mind. It shaped words, sentences and paragraphs. Platitudes and self-evident truths could not exist without the alphabet. The words Oogah and Oorsis contained many letter Os, or zeroes. Oorsis rolled the Os and Oogah dug in with the letter G. They put A in the hot-seat H. A on H equals AH or HA, laugh and relief. Ah ha ha ha ha ha, ah!

Ah so, a little surprise of possibility, a glimpse of the huge space of nothing, where anything is possible. Chaos and destruction act as a catalyst. Break out of a stale egg situation. Hatch and live a new form. The pointed peak of capital A pierced the shell and joined H for hatch.

The Temple of Oogah and Oorsis existed in an abandoned warehouse set back from an intersection of freeway service roads. Lohbado took his time along the way to admire texture of weather-beaten walls and decay. He savored the roar of noise and brilliant luminance of the sky as he walked the cracked and broken sidewalk and approached the front entrance. A layer of white dust blocked the sun, diffusing the light. The toxic curtain of dust, or dangerous cloud, was a post-apocalyptic phenomenon. It would take a few generations to dispel the dangerous clouds. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the lesser light inside the quiet, cool room.

Lohbado climbed the stairs to the tabernacle of Oogah and Oorsis, where he would play with the alphabet. In his backpack, he carried a precious Abecedaire inherited from Grandmother Aida. The volume of alphabet games was published in 1910 and filled with decorative font and printers’ ornaments. A whimsical magic alphabet, as interpreted by Isabella Stumps, one of the first humans to discover the mysteries of Oogah and Oorsis, leapt off the page as Lohbado placed the book on a prayer table and sat down to mind his Os and Hs.

Club Morono Lemon-Carrot Cake

2011-08-26T11:22:00.002-04:00

The essential ingredients of this Morono Cake are moldy lemon, wilted carrot and sour milk. Add peanuts. Don't bother cooking. I wouldn't recommend eating it. Such a cake is more for show. Sometimes you can't have your cake and eat it too.

The lower dish is a Morono Oh Cake. It's pretty much self-explanatory.

After taking photos of this and other dum-dum hee-haw delicacies, I served them to the toilet in small portions, so as not to plug it. It looked like vomit. I figured it would be in bad taste to take photos of food in the toilet, although it was picturesque.

Next time food spoils in the fridge, don't waste it. Use your imagination to create a Moronovian Feast for the camera.

Lost Wanderers

2011-08-19T13:36:00.001-04:00

Lohbado wandered in a daze, after a bomb knocked him off his feet, a near miss, during his escape from the renegade compound outside Yamaville. Yamaville remained intact after the nuclear explosions. Life was somewhat stable. The city looked the same. But the inhabitants had been altered. Intense fears and phobias hit people who had previously been calm and secure.

Strange weather patterns added a sense of malaise. During a cool day, a warm current of air sometimes flowed through the city, reminding people of those deadly blasts of radioactive wind, which took place during the nuclear war. Unpredictable, sudden storms roared across the horizon with increasing frequency. Lohbado joined a group of ex-grovelers, those who had been expelled from the Holy Hive or who resigned from the Grovelers Group.

A group of ex-sinners composed the Grovelers Group. They felt that if they repented hard enough, they would be spared nuclear annihilation. They believed the Apocalyptic War was God’s way of punishing them for their sins. Lohbado had violated at least four of the Ten Commandments and had ignored the Five Suggestions: when money loses its value, invest in gold and silver; when people get into a selling panic, don’t sell; a bottle of beer or glass of wine a day is good for you; buy a motor vehicle before stricter emission standards come into effect; get plenty of rest and learn the smile of success.

During the food shortage, Lohbado stole a May West cream cake and a Schwan apple pie. When being sheltered from enemy troops, he committed adultery with a woman whose husband was out fighting. He worshiped several gods, rather than focusing on just one god. And when a spy came to arrest him, he lied about his status. Thus, he committed the sins of worshiping other gods, stealing, lying and committing adultery. He joined the Grovelors Group in order to repent. After a few sessions of Groveling, his knees got sore and he no longer had a bad conscience, so he quit and joined the Goo-goo Underground.

The Goo-goo Underground devoted itself to the overthrow of the Arrogant Leech, who was putting together an army of worms on the pretext of policing the world. The Goos knew direct confrontation with the Leech would fail. They were no match for the Leech and his worm army. They needed cosmic help, from local spirits. Only Oogah, Oorsis or the Great Nomroh could help the Goos overthrow the Arrogant Leech.

The Arrogant Leech was son of the famous billionaire, Titus Bludzuker, owner of Happytime Antidepressants and inventor of the Zee-Smart Bomb, a small programmable explosive able to track down and kill specified victims, while leaving furniture and architecture intact. Mr. Leech’s ambition was to capture and control the world supply of honey and the manufacture of mead alcohol. A vicious parasite had wiped out sugar beets and sugar cane, forcing food producers to rely on honey as the preferred source of sugar. Bees became a precious commodity, creating quite a buzz on the stock market and stinging those whose sticky fingers made it difficult for them to let go at the crucial moment.

Members of the Goo-goo Underground decided to brave the way through the Plains of Radiation to Bear Temple and Brewery, where they hoped to make contact with Oogah, and Oorsis, Grizzly Bear spirits of Rock Hill.

A few words about the bear spirits: Climate change disrupted the migration of wildlife. A group of grizzlies moved to The Plains of Radiation, a treeless area of rolling gravel, scorched earth fenced off by the Department of Regulation. Roaming bandits regularly cut down the fence so devotees of the sacred region could make contact with the spirits. Spirits inspired inhabitants with courage to continue living on the damaged planet.

Grizzly mutates looked like grizzlies, but developed the ability to walk upright for up to a hundred paces at a time. The dexterity of their front legs and paws improved to an almost human level. Such bear creatures were able to use basic tools, such as the hammer, axe, screwdriver and drill. Within the fenced region, the bears built a huge temple out of rock and salvaged lumber. Inside the temple, they brewed mead, a honey-liquor. The bears irrigated a flat region of dung to create a meadow and then were able to raise bees. They gathered wild berries and used the yeasty qualities of bear drool to induce fermentation. Devotees of the Great Nomroh would drink mead and then recite the alphabet in cryptic sequence, while making unusual sounds and surprising movements.

One of the greatest challenges for the Lost Wanderer is the ability to focus. Radiation damage to the brain caused frequent drowsiness and agitation. Waves of thought would take over, usually mental bickering about some minor insult or misunderstanding, followed by a heavy, sleepy feeling. As a result, Lohbado was only able to do fifty percent of what he had been able to do before the apocalypse. At first, this was quite frustrating. He woke up with plans and ambitions, but was forced to let them go as he got out of bed, his head spinning, short of breath and chest pains. Seeing a doctor was out of the question. The medical system had collapsed. Only top administrators, business people and government officials had access to health care. Lohbado had no choice but to simplify his life into a series of easy to accomplish steps. Multi-tasking was out of the question. He could no longer work overtime or skip lunch. He required a full eight-hour sleep each night in order to make it through the following day.

The Goos prayed that a rain would wash the worms on to the sidewalk, rendering them harmless. The worm army was composed of jealous hordes of people. They were jealous against the Alphabetoots who sat around studying the alphabet all day long instead of making themselves busy. The Alphabetoots sold good luck alphabet cards, love incantations, astrological projections and abecedaries.

The jealous hordes were also jealous of each other. Each worm felt he or she was doing more than his or her fair share of work and viewed other worms as being shirkers, slackers or malingerers. Some worms were jealous of the crumbs on the lips of other worms. Some even envied the contents of other worms mouths. Rather than encourage each other, they seethed with barely repressed rage and spread harmful gossip and malicious rumors. The Goo-goo Underground found confidence nourishment from the great mother and decided to free the worms from the can, which had contained them for so long. But first, they had to subdue the Arrogant Leech, which will be described in the next episode.

helping hand

2011-08-08T10:59:00.000-04:00

Platitudes come in handy when one seeks a helping hand after the factory shut down and hired hands were handed job termination slips. Let's have a little hand for the self that likes respect and whatever other selves might be floating around in handy-land. Peter Stumps auditioned to be a singer in a local bar, but his hands trembled too much. Someone handed me a copy of WC Handy's St. Louis Blues, going to fortune-telling gypsy, not liking to see down-going evening sun. The song provided a little much needed inspiration.

garbage day

2011-07-19T10:08:00.001-04:00

I woke up to the sound of a garbage truck. I admire sanitary engineers. They're in good shape, working hard in heat and cold, in terrible smell, slop and filth. I shook off the chains of sleep, got out of the pulpit of dream and stopped preaching to myself long enough to get dressed and hurry out for fresh air. I saw chicken bones on the grass. Small animals and crows sometimes tear open garbage bags. The flies were having a real feast.

To experience the full power of garbage day, take a walk down the strip of small grocery stores and restaurants. The smell is overpowering. Sometimes bags explode, releasing rotten material on to the street. A bag of fish slop exploded, giving off an amazing smell. Liquid pours from the back of the truck and on to the pavement as the compressor compacts the garbage. This liquid is particularly potent in smell. I laughed as a woman came out of a shop and put a handkerchief over her mouth and nose to block out the smell. I felt the vividness of existence in that moment.

I drink, therefore I am.

2011-07-11T16:14:00.004-04:00

Listen to what happened to Lohbado after taking a ride in the cosmic Cadillac across the mighty bridge, over the river of forgetfulness separating the land of the living from the land of the dead.

The Cadillac Coup de Ville picked up lost wanderers. Once in the car, the power of the engine sent vibes into their brains. No, it wasn’t the car. Blame it on chemistry, something not right in the brain. Blame it on radiation poisoning, a meltdown of the central core in his brain, causing flashes of light, short deafening bursts of sound. Sometimes his thoughts got too intense, especially at night.

The Caddy drove people across the river of forgetfulness and into the land of the dead. A small yappy dog guarded the underworld. So much poison in a small jar, the dog spit rage and venom, because it didn’t know how else to show its love. That was the dog's way of showing affection, to growl and ghash its teeth.

In peripheral vision, Lohbado witnessed the arrival of devils, closing in on the horizon, dancing devils, dressed in dollar store lace and jewelry. The devil's dance, St. Vitius Dance, Almighty Ergot, son of moldy rye bread and tuna sandwich, with sliced dill pickle. Dance to exhaustion. Once you put on those red devil shoes, you won't be able to take them off until you collapse from exhaustion.

Lohbado knew the spirits were there. It was easy to be fooled, disturbed spirits came on all sugar and cream, confident, all action. The devils sink in the hook and claw. Too late. Where are you going? The devils aren't done with you. It's just begun.

Lohbado knew the signs: difficulty concentrating, manic surges of aggressive and unwholesome thought, intense huger and craving, out of control, over the top, trembling, agitated, unable to sleep, tossing and turning, hot flashes, giddiness, a haze, see stars and hear the popping, piercing, ringing sound from deep within the skull.

The skull becomes a mansion full of carousing, drunken dancing devils. Skeleton figures, clacking their teeth in loose jaws and muttering psychotic gibberish to disrupt one's way of life and to make a person behave in a way that will break up the happy home, beware.

Once in the back of the car, Lohbado sat up straight and regained consciousness. He watched as the car drove up a steep ramp and on to a huge bridge over a wide river.

Nobody said anything, but Lohbado could sense the driver's thoughts. He knew he was undergoing the big journey from one reality to something strange and difficult to describe. As the car mounted the bridge, Lohbado caught a glimpse of his lifetime in the blink of an eye and realized how much time he'd spent in worry and fear of the moment when he would be driven in the mighty Cadillac across the monumental bridge over untroubled water.

The driver laughed. The crossing of the river would cause passengers to forget everything. Without the reference point of routine, the mind would become blurred. Taken out of the familiar, Lohbado wouldn't know where to begin complaining or what to resent. Suddenly the whole set of daily concerns didn't mean anything anymore. Lohbado and the driver laughed. The man and the woman on either side of him in the back seat smiled. Lohbado's head flopped forward as he blacked out.

He had no idea about how much time had elapsed in the state of blackout. It was like entering another dream, as he emerged from unconsciousness, back into the flow of thought. His first thought was about finding the morning newspaper and a cup of coffee. Did he remember to turn off the stove? It suddenly occurred to him that he was supposed to be somewhere in five minutes. He would be required to answer a time-limited, skill-testing question. He hadn't read the instruction manual. If they asked him to run the big machine, he might have an accident. The thought of an accident freaked him out. Maybe he'd already been in one. He scanned his body and couldn't feel a thing. Maybe he was paralyzed. A pang of mental anguish clouded his mental horizon. He felt mental pain, but without physical symptoms, no pounding heart, no difficulty breathing or trouble swallowing.

It suddenly occurred to him: Oogah have mercy, I must be dead! I'm not ready to die. Forgive me, for I have sinned. I'm sorry for the foolish things I did while running around in a panic, trying to find happiness. I should have spent more time stroking the dog and relaxing the cat. How selfish of me to overlook the needs porcupine, skunk, raccoon and to show so little concern for the birds. I needlessly stepped on worms washed up on the sidewalk during rain. There was no need to kill so many bugs. Now it's too late to undo the things I should not have done or to do the things I should have done.

Lohbado made a Nomrohic effort to pull his mind together. He realized the moment of awareness was fading. Once he lost consciousness again, he might never reemerge. He concentrated hard on the riddle of the universe. He felt like this was his last chance to find the answers he was looking for. So many years he'd yearned for the moment when everything would become clear. He'd reached that moment and felt just as confused as ever.

Lohbado lost all body sensation, except for the ability to see and hear. He was no longer in the Cadillac. He awoke to find himself moving down a shady sidewalk, under tall, lush trees. He couldn't feel the ground under his feet. He walked, or floated down the residential street, old houses with small front yards and huge trees. His trajectory down the sidewalk seemed to take forever and to yet to take no time at all. He emerged from the shade into a brightly lit area at an intersection. He gazed across a vacant lot, towards a three-story apartment block, no architectural decoration, a plain brick building, thin window frames, milky grey blinds.

The blinds moved. Faces appeared in the windows. A head emerged, a bald, angry man shouted: "Every morning I order a Trio and every morning you get it wrong. A Trio is a coffee, one egg wrap and ten Morono Balls. Can't you understand?"

A craving for the Trio seized Lohbado. He thought of coffee, egg wrap and Morono balls. He saw a man walk out of Lumpies Donuts, a Trio in his hand. Lohbado had to have it, even though he wasn't hungry. To be seized with craving for food, but to feel no hunger, Lohbado had no sense of digestion, no taste of saliva, no rumbling stomach or writhing intestines. And yet he had to go into Lumpies and order a Trio.

He hurried to the entrance, but was unable to open the glass and metal doors. Anguish, despair and desolation darkened his mind. Soft round pastry balls and coffee, were all that stood between him and oblivion. If he could sink his teeth into something doughy and soft, if he could swallow a gobby lump of sugar and carbohydrates, that would prove he was still in the land of the living. To eat and drink would prove he existed. He wanted to be able to say: "I drink, therefore I am."

Nobody knows what happened to Lohbado after he ceased to be Lohbado. He was never seen or heard from again, until his appearance in the next episode. TO BE CONTINUED…

cat soap

2011-07-09T13:22:00.003-04:00

With the spread of microbes and harmful bacteria, it's a good idea to wash the hands whenever it seems like a good idea. I saw the bar of "Le Chat" in a store window. Lohbado washed his hands and then made an attempt to tidy up the messy apartment. Each time he attempted to organize a pile of things, another wave of things would wash the pile back into chaos. Lohbado gave up. He sat down on the floor, with a bar of cat soap. He contemplated the wrapper and imagined a vast, ocean panorama.

Canada Day Sausage Celebration

2011-07-01T16:48:00.000-04:00

Actually, July 1 in Montreal is moving day, when many leases expire and new leases are taken on. People move from one dwelling to another. It turned out to be a bright, sunny day, perfect for firing up the barbecue and laying down those sausages on the grill. Ideally, the sausage should be fried slowly, until drips of oil burst or ooze through the skin, in other words, until the sausage sweats. Be careful, when biting into it, that pork juice doesn't squirt you in the eye.

ghost motel

2011-06-24T17:49:00.001-04:00

First, note the similarity in color between the glass of apple juice and peach compote. Note visceral connection of food body sensation. Some foods are heavy and moist, others light and flaky, acidic, sweet, sour and so on. Peach compote, fresh from the fridge, cool, slithery, it could be swallowed with minimal chewing and sits comfortably in the stomach. The apple juice, also cool, but sweet and slightly acidic, doesn’t taste good with peach compote, but makes a good photo, golden juice and peach colored peach.

Lohbado sat in the motel restaurant and ate peach compote and drank black coffee. Jane Wormsly had blueberry pie and apple juice. They gazed warmly into each other’s eyes, after driving a stretch of road, under construction, leading into the city. Jane nearly peed her pants as they got caught in heavy flow, bumper to bumper, freeway turned into parking lot. She talked seriously about having to pee into a towel if they didn’t soon get to the exit ramp. Lohbado offered her the use of his tee shirt. It took an hour to clear one interchange.

Lohbado barely turned off the motor in front of Ghost Motel, when Jane ran for the restaurant toilet, down a little hall leading to the kitchen. A TV set hung above the bar, a news channel, with continuous moving type in a band along the bottom. Police arrest shooting suspects. Images of the police standing next to a man, face down, handcuffed on the pavement in a motel parking lot. Lohbado moved his chair so he wouldn’t have to see the TV. Maybe in an hour, the traffic would be less, so they could drive out of the construction zone and find a motel on other side of the city. That way, they could continue their journey the next morning, without having to fight traffic. They were on a cross-country tour, to promote Jane’s new novel. Jane returned, quite relieved.

“The intensity of waiting increased the pleasure of relief,” she said, with a smile and then picked up the brown vinyl covered menu and glanced at the laminated pages.

“Is everything OK?” interrupted the voice of a middle-aged waitress.

“I’ll have an apple juice and blueberry pie,” said Jane Wormsly.

Lohbado waited for the waitress to note it in her pad and then ordered the peach compote special. The three of them muttered some small talk about road repair and construction, the stress and inconvenience. The city had grown so fast. The motel used to be surrounded by farmland, twenty years ago.

Then Lohbado told Jane about a childhood memory of driving across Saskatchewan, in 1967. In those days, the highway went through every settlement. One would have to slow down, cruise at a snails pace through the community and then speed up on the other size. It was exhausting, two lane highway all the way. It got hot on the prairies. The Chevrolet didn’t have air conditioning. The road went straight and flat. The scenery didn’t change all day. Lohbado was thirteen years old and bored out of his mind. He and his sister played in the back seat. In those days, one didn’t have to wear seat belts. In fact, the car didn’t even have seat belts. Mother sat in the front seat, baby in arms, while Nancy and Lohbado hoped around on the back seat.

July 1967, around noon, Lohbado’s father Stonehenge got impatient and pulled out to pass a slow moving vehicle. The V8 engine roared as the old man hit the accelerator. Bang! Accident! The car didn’t see Stonehenge racing to get by. The navy blue Chevrolet Biscayne blind-sided the baby blue Ford Galaxie and flew off the edge of the road into a field of canola. When the police arrived, Stonehenge said the man didn’t signal. The man said he did signal. Fortunately, nobody was hurt. Some body paneling got pushed into one of the wheels. The Ford Galaxie sustained a dent in the door panel. The family got out of the car. They checked into a motel. Mechanics at the roadside service station said it would take about six hours to make the car drivable.

The children enjoyed being released early that day from the car. A warm wind kept the mosquitoes at bay. They were free to roam the village. Three grain elevators stood along the side of the railroad tracks that ran through the village. Lohbado ran off to have a look inside one of the structures. A young couple, lying in the hay, looked up at him. They hadn’t expected to see tourists. Nobody visited that village. They went to the elevator to escape prying eyes. Lohbado remembered looking into the woman’s eyes, which pleaded with him to not say anything. He quickly went away and said nothing to anyone about it. He felt a pang of jealousy and wished he could spend the afternoon in there with a woman.

The rest, he forgot, until years later, in 1983, during a trip across the prairies, a downpour forced him to pull off the highway in that village. He pulled up at the Jack Pines Restaurant and Motel to take shelter from the rain. Jack Pines was a strange name for a motel in the middle of the prairies. It must have been some kind of a joke. It was about 3 PM with rain coming down in a fury, plus thunder and lightning. Lohbado decided to check in.

Around 11 PM, after he’d finished a six-pack of beer and was getting ready for bed, a woman appeared in the bathroom door. She wore a pink gown and said her name was Esmerelda. Lohbado froze in fear and desire, as he gazed at her elegant body, lit up by tungsten light of the bathroom. She didn’t even smile. He slowly got up to give her a hug and then she vanished.

The next morning he ordered eggs and toast in the Jack Pines Restaurant after leaving the key at the reception desk upon checking out. He told the waitress he’d seen a ghost. Right away the woman said, before Lohbado could even utter the name, Esmerelda.

The waitress told him the story of Esmerelda and said there were quite a few ghosts along that stretch of highway. Although the road was straight, an unusual number of accidents occurred on the nearby highway. The ghosts of road accident victims haunted motels, restaurants and gas stations in the region. Then Lohbado understood how in 1967 his father Stonehenge had been lucky to get off with only a minor collision, when so many motorists had died at that very spot. In fact, that’s where Esmerelda died, in 1969.

She was doing a cross-country tour on her Harley Davidson and got caught in a cloudburst. Visibility was reduced to nearly zero. She was looking for a safe place to pull off the highway when she nearly ran into a crowd of children getting off a school bus. Those children were headed off to summer camp, when the bus stalled in the middle of the highway. The children were in the process of hurrying out of the bus and over to the motel. Esmerelda swerved to avoid hitting those children and flew off the highway and died of a broken neck. Ever since then, especially during rainy weather, Esmerelda’s ghost could be seen in the motel, in the restaurant and sometimes at the gas station. People talked about bringing in an exorcist to release her spirit, which appeared to be trapped in the village. But they could never find anyone interested enough to travel to the middle of Saskatchewan to perform the ritual.

Lohbado suggested he could invoke the spirits of Oogah and Oorsis. He wasn’t in any hurry and if the Jack Pines gave him free room and board for twenty-four hours, he would see what he could do. The waitress, Rachel, a lonely fifty-year old woman, whose husband recently died after he threw a loaded rifle into the back of a pickup truck, said sure. It was a freak accident. The rifle went off and shot him in the chest. Rachel sat down at the table with Lohbado and told him all about it. When she was done she said,

“I hate to admit it, but I feel so free, ever since Ed died. He was not an easy man to live with.”

Rachel phoned Ernie and asked him to work the restaurant so she and Lohbado could do an exorcism. It would take too long to describe the details of the ritual, trips to the local hardware store and supermarket, the donation of bodily fluids from a woman of similar age to Esmeralda when she died. That wasn’t easy. They ended up driving an hour to get the jars of bodily fluids and had to pay the woman fifty dollars and then the soiled, greasy bar of soap and curly hairs. It’s maybe not polite to describe everything.

“This peach compote made me remember all this just now,” said Lohbado, speaking to Jane Wormsly as they ate desert in the Ghost Motel Restaurant, “The key moment of the exorcism occurred when the ghost of Esmeralda went into Rachel. That’s right, total possession. Rachel, possessed by Esmeralda, tore off all her clothes and vomited into the bathtub, a special kind of vomit. It looked a lot like peach compote and then she peed apple juice on the floor. I later apologized to Rachel. She said it was OK. The exhaustion that followed possession was a small price to pay to be rid of a ghost. The exorcism enabled Esmeralda’s ghost to move on into paradise, or dissolve, or whatever may or may not happen in the realm of the supernatural.”

“That’s amazing,” exclaimed Jane Wormsly, setting down her glass of apple juice.

“After that, everything was fine,” said Lohbado, “I still keep in touch with Rachel. Esmeralda brought us quite close for a while. You know how it is with long distance relationships. Esmeralda said she preferred her independence and I wasn’t ready to settle down at a road side stop in the middle of the prairies. And then we lost contact. I haven’t heard from her in over five years.”

“One day I want to visit that village, with you,” said Jane.

de-coding department

2011-06-21T11:25:00.001-04:00

For a while, Lohbado worked in the Decoding Department for the Ministry of Regulation. His precarious career rested on one achievement: he unscrambled a Thermopolite message to the Mayor of Antz. It turned out to be an official invitation to share a liter of apple juice.

This was the peak of Lohbado's career. Everything else he did ended up a disorganized muddle of fragments. His computer microphone picked up sputters and groans. Lohbado insisted the sounds were space-alien communiques directed to a certain Harry Brown, advising him to protect Porcupine Sanitary Tissue company from smear tactics. Politicians from the other party got at Harry Brown via the back door, implying a conflict of interest. They accused him of handing out contracts to the PST, to make them the official suppliers of hygienic tissues in government buildings.

The rest is history, the incident of peach compote, roast turkey and apple juice. Harry Brown was forced to resign from his post as Minister of Tools and Devices.

running Nomroh spirit

2011-06-18T17:52:00.001-04:00

A speck of dust blew into Lohbado's right eye as he reached the summit of Rock Hill. It stung the eye. As he rubbed the right eye, he saw a flash of light. A running Nomroh spirit appeared. It was the spirit that got squeezed out of prisoners during Department of Regulation training sessions. As the process of standardization squeezed the mind into tighter confines, psychic energies erupted into images. Lohbado sank to his knees and thanked Oogah for the vision. He piled up a stack of rocks to commemorate the spot where the speck of dust entered his eye, unleashing the retinal flash of a running spirit.

Morono Man in Chick n Dick

2011-06-12T18:14:00.002-04:00

Chick, fried egg eyes, omelet textured skin, turkey neck, hooked beak of a nose, lived on potatoes, carrots, eggs and coffee. He moved into a hen house after mother’s farmhouse burned down. Mother died in the fire.

For the first few weeks after mother died, Chick ate what was left in mother’s cupboard, mostly noodles, jars of tomato sauce and cans of sardines and peas. He felt that eating mother’s stock of food would help him get over the grief; eat, glub chub yum chum slurp and then let go, phoofff.

Alone in a desolate, flat piece of land near two lakes, rocky land, where one could grow a few potatoes and carrots, Chick only went to the village about every six weeks to buy coffee. The rest of the time he spent alone, communing with nature and clucking hens.

One day, a group of youngsters, marauding, arrogant leeches from a suburb two hours south of Chick’s hen house stopped to have a look. They were on their way to a party at grandmother’s cottage, when they spotted Chick, taking a dump in a ditch. They pulled up next to the ditch, on pretext of asking directions.

Chick’s latrine was quite simple: a fallen tree bough hung over a ditch, the perfect organic toilet. Earth quickly absorbed whatever material he produced. For potty reading, Chick had a glossy magazine, with a cover story about Neanderthal man. The Neanderthal lived thousands of years ago, during the Paleolithic era, without harming the environment. Chick looked at the tall, imposing creatures, did his business and then pulled up his pants, only to see a university student filming with a cell phone camera.

The kid, Dick, was in stitches. Dan grabbed the magazine and guffawed. Chick had trouble speaking. Too much solitude, he went months without speaking a word, without even making a vocal sound.

Dick asked how to get to Boyleton. Chick opened his mouth. Words stuck in his throat. The first sound was a cluck. Sometimes Chick clucked with the chickens. He even kept eggs warm and then let them hatch in the shelter of his armpits, as he lay on his back. Chick successfully integrated into chicken world and was head rooster. Dirt got into cuts and festered into sores on his legs and buttocks.

“Haw haw haw, look at this,” howled Dan, waving the magazine, “A cave man right out of the stone age.”

Chick wasn’t the least upset by the laughter. He watched the man film and chatter to his buddy. After a few moments in front of the phone-camera, Chick coughed up a clot of mucous from his throat and began to speak. He hadn’t spoken with a person since somebody gave him a ride to town six weeks ago. After listening to so much hen cluck chatter, Chick was prepared to deal with whatever humans had to say. Dick looked no worse than the rooster, on a bad day, when he’d had enough of the hens and wanted to fly wild with the seagulls that swarmed the edge of the lake, which began at the end of Chick’s property. Chick felt sorry for Dick and his little electronic device.

“Would you like some eggs?” he asked.

That took Dick by surprise. “I wasn’t thinking about eggs,” said Dick.

“I’m not asking you to think, I’m asking you if you’d like some eggs, half a dozen, a dozen, or a two four?”

Chick launched into a long monologue about eggs and hens and the threat of bird flu and the danger of antibiotics.

Meanwhile, back in the city, a stab of pain in Morono Man’s right eye awoke him from a cat nap. Pain indicated something was not right. Morono Man opened his third eye and gazed into the Psychosphere and saw the arrogant eels tormenting a burrow man. Morono Man ran from his office, changed into his costume and took to the sky. With the speed of a housefly, he reached the roadside scene near the two huge lakes. He landed in front of Dick.

“Put away the phone,” said Morono Man, “Leave Chick alone before I turn you into a plate of salsa and scrambled eggs.”

Dick kept on recording with the phone camera, “Haw haw haw, first Hen Man, now Pajama Man.”

“Will you persist in mocking me and this man who found a nest among hens?” cried Morono Man.

“Haw haw haw,” laughed Dick and Dan.

Morono Man sucked in his breath, creating a vacuum, which forced the men back into their minivan. He sneezed. The force of sneeze shot the van down the highway and out of view.

“That’ll scare those eels. I don’t want to hurt the youngsters. But they gotta grow up and show a little respect. We’re all of Oogah’s creatures. Whoever hurts a follower of Oorsis hurts Oogah.”

Morono Man wasn't finished. He took off, with a cough, into the sky and landed in front of the van as it stopped to make a turn at Dingle Road. Dick let go of the steering wheel and got out to find out what was the problem. Morono Man coughed. Dick staggered backwards and fell against the front of the minivan. Within the space of a few seconds, Morono Man sent Dick to hell, where he had a vision of what was in store for him if he didn't change his ways.

Every day in hell, Dick would be forced to eat a plate of sour mashed potatoes and pork sausages from an infected pig. Every day, parasites would eat Dick's brain, causing him to feel bitter, resentful and horny, all at the same time. That kept his mind whirling. At night, devils would vomit into a hole in the top of his skull. Dick would be tormented with a sense of failure. People gathered around to criticize and to laugh and call him names. His hair and genitals fell off.

A deep voice said: "Beware of hell. It's no joke. Take care of your mind before it's too late."

Dick gasped in shock, rubbed his eyes and looked at Morono Man and at the dirt road and at the reeds and long grass growing in the ditch. He gazed out over the vast grey lake along the road.

"Forgive me, for I have sinned," he said.

Dick repented. He got back into the van and drove to the closest town, picked up a barbecued chicken and a six pack of beer and drove back to Chick's burrow. Chick was out cultivating the little vegetable patch of carrots and potatoes near the hen house. He didn't seem to mind the cold wind blowing off the lake. He cringed as the van drove up. Dick jumped out with beer and chicken. Chick was delighted.

"Bah bah beer! Chuh chuh chicken! Thanks!"

"I'm sorry for laughing at you," said Dick.

"I for for forgive you you you," said Chick.

Dick got back in the van and drove off with a smile. Chick sat down on a stump, opened a beer and dug in to the chicken. Morono Man flew back to Chick to make sure everything was fine. Chick invited Morono Man to pull up a stump, have a beer and peck at the chicken.

"I'm sad to say, but your heroic intervention was unnecessary," said Chick, "If Dick had stayed a little longer, I would have shown him the iPad I bought six weeks ago. I pick up a free internet signal from the other side of the lake. The quickest way to win respect is to show people your pad."

Morono Man scratched his head, "You're right Chick. Maybe I was a little hasty to get involved in something that was none of my business."

"At first, people look at me and think I'm subhuman," said Chick, "Thanks to the ipad, I feel safe. In fact, any status-brand portable electronic device will do."

"Say, you're a brainy guy, maybe you could be my sidekick?" suggested Morono Man, "People would call us, the Moronic Duo, Morono Man and Chick."

"Thanks, but I couldn't abandon the hens."

"You'll be rolling in dough. We'll buy you a state of the art chicken coop."

"OK, I'll give it a try."

And they lived happily ever after.

how much does hell hurt?

2011-06-10T19:54:00.001-04:00

Did you ever wonder, how much does hell hurt? Imagine you're sentenced to burn for the rest of eternity. There must be a limit to the pain. If the pain became too intense, the damned soul would go unconscious, or into shock and no longer feel the pain. Or, if the pain becomes 24/7, then the damned soul might get used to it. In order to fully feel the pain, the soul would have to experience intervals of no pain, to set the torment into relief. What does God think of all this? After all, hell was God's invention. To learn more about this, tune in to the Harvey Christ radio hour Tuesday, June 14, 11 PM Montreal time.

Bathroom messages

2011-06-04T13:25:00.001-04:00

Normality subject to variation, read messages in signs and storefront lettering, messages within this one and only world, it depends what you mean by world. There were suggestions of alternate universes, but this is not fantasy. I’m talking about setting or milieu, for example, the world of Lohbado, the world of ice cream, the world of alphabet and so on. However, there’s really only one world and little settings or worlds within the one world. The Chief Nomroh asked me to make this clear, to avoid misunderstanding.

The Chief Nomroh is cosmic advisor within the Club Morono Tabernacle. He wears various costumes in order to enjoy a cup of coffee or a bottle of wine. He has no spiritual or psychic powers whatsoever. He’s a regular Joe or Jane. Men and women have equal opportunity in Club Morono. However, somebody has to lead the Morono Sessions. The Nomroh is the one who takes on the role.

There may be life on other planets. I’m only concerned by sight and sound of this planet and the messages, variations and activities within the phenomenal world. For example, when I enter the bathroom to floss my teeth, the window opens into an alcove. Directly across the small alcove is the neighbor’s toilet. We could perform bodily functions and chat with each other. However, we’re discreet. We communicate with cough, burp, fumble, running water and various sounds, perhaps embarrassing to talk about in public. When I went in to floss, I heard a neighbor. A couple live next door, I sometimes hear them talking. Maybe they brush their teeth or take showers together.

I just heard the neighbor clear his throat and spit in the sink. As children, we called it hoarking. I found the word hoark in a slang dictionary. As school children, for us the word meant to cough up phlegm and to spit it out.

The neighbor is now hoarking, coughing and blowing his nose. He does that regularly. He coughs like a seal, and then bubbly sounds come from his chest and throat and then he makes a load, throat clearing sound followed by spit. Listening to such sounds is part of the experience of living in this apartment. I got over the grossed out feeling. It doesn’t bother me. It adds a human touch. Maybe a baby in its mother’s stomach hears a lot of rumbling sounds from various digestive or breathing processes. In this pungent, damp, rotting cave, one hears the sound of choking, suffocation, as well as pissing and farting.

Words or messages could be pieced together, or synthesized as one listens to sneeze or sees dust particles or skin flakes. In the bathroom cabinet is a tube of ointment, for sores, as analgesic, hot and cold cream, cleansing and lubricating ointment, antibiotic, uncle neurotic. There’s even a replica of Lohbado’s third eye on the shelf next to the toothpaste, not to mention the smooth, round piece of pink granite and the memory of fly strips in grandmother’s kitchen, to catch those flies that got in through a tear in the screen door and ended up dying on the pillow, yellow from years of head grease. The pillow still bears the imprint of someone’s head.

Grandmother’s pantry contained jars of holy bodily fluids of hermits, who lived in the desert and died of dehydration. She had an amulet of braided nostril hair and fingernails. She taught me to read messages in the clouds and in the trees. Wind blows foliage into word patterns. I heard trees pronounce the words “ointment” and “dream.”

Club Morono Experimento

2011-06-02T23:28:00.000-04:00

Here's how it went from a to b, a being blah, b being OK. I drew in pen a dog, doodle alphabet and words. Next, open a book. A phrase leaped off the page. Refill the cup of coffee. Presto. Blah is gone. I feel OK, until blah comes back. I'll deal with it then. Now is OK. This is a Club Morono way to get going in the morning.

Use newspaper to cover shiny, greasy table top. Spill coffee on newspaper and on notebook. I've used the automotive section of the newspaper for the past eight months, something from the past, to carry a section of newspaper dating October 18, 2010. I didn't realize until recently the value of the experiment, the aging of newspaper and the Blah to OK routine. It involves philosophy, or the nature of time and change, not to mention the religious or spiritual connotations embedded in mortality and living in the here and now. Creation out of tree fiber, news paper printed on news print, who created the news? Did God create the mediate and will God one day judge good newspapers from the bad? On judgement day, a giant bonfire will burn Blah and save OK.

Ok to heaven, Blah to hell. The value of Blah is that it serves as a backdrop to throw OK into relief (gestalt). OK/Blah/OK, Okee Dohkee, a nested chapter of the Grovelor's Group for those who define themselves differently in front of different people. I divide into infinite characters to suit the variety of situations infinitely unfolding.

Sometimes an authority stops you in your tracks and demands an answer. Who are you? What are you? Where do you come from? You're forced to reach into the swirling pot of infinite memory, situation, thought, sensation and on the spur of the moment, in as few words as possible, state the who, what when and where of why you're doing.

I was trying to pull a voodoo doll out of the candy machine at the top of the escalators in the Plaza, but the two dollar coin got stuck next to the jaw busters and small plush pets.

War of the Flies

2011-05-31T14:25:00.005-04:00

Flies, screen door, a little tear in grandmother’s screen door enabled flies to enter her house in the bush. The bush contained rock, swamp, deadfall, underbrush, spruce, fir, pine, birch, as one would expect to find in a boreal forest before the emerald ash borer bored in to lay eggs and choke trees to death.

Lohbado went to grandmother’s house in the bush to hide from enemy agents, after escaping Department of Regulation training sessions. The agent left a message saying it would be a matter of time before things caught up with him. Lohbado knew time was on his side. He had less than half a lifetime to complete. Each year meant one less year to go. The longer he avoided capture, the shorter would be the duration of imprisonment.

The agent said on the answering machine: “You better return to the department, otherwise things are going to get a whole lot worse.”

Fear tactics, malaise after the war, it was annoying. Lohbado learned to not take it personally. The War of the Flies still buzzed fresh in memory.

Lohbado first saw evidence of fly warfare when he went upstairs in grandmother’s house, which hadn’t been inhabited in three years. Ants had licked dirty dishes clean and eaten crumbs off the counter. Shiny, telltale streaks on the windowpanes revealed recent fly activity.

Lohbado checked out the three bedrooms. He didn’t want to sleep in grandmother’s bed. He chose a smaller room, where a bed was jammed against a window. Dead flies lay on the pillow and windowsill and in the space between outer and inner windows. They were old, wooden-framed windows, paint cracked and coming off at the edges. Lohbado recognized the importance of the situation, the non-accidental arrangement of bed against window and flies on the pillow. He gazed out the window, at the huge stump used as a cutting block, and at pieces of split wood strewn about and covered in moss and little mushrooms. Lohbado felt like a detective, reading signs and traces of the last inhabitants of grandmother’s house.

They found grandmother’s corpse, frozen on the kitchen floor, wooden matches spilled out, after her last attempt to fire up the cast iron stove. They took her away. Cousin Harry moved in for a while. Harry had a heart attack shortly after grandmother died and had to move out.

When Lohbado escaped from the Regulation Compound, he had enough money to buy a bus ticket. The bus driver was kind enough to drop Lohbado at the foot of a rut road. He shouldered his pack and hiked into the forest, down two ruts pressed into place by motor vehicles. Long weeds and grass grew between the tire tracks and on either side. Lots of wild flowers and bee and wasp activity, horse flies dove at Lohbado from time to time. He was careful to avoid thistles.

He stopped at a cottage along the road to speak with two men seated in lawn chairs and enjoying beer in the shade. They knew little about Harry and the house. They never heard about grandmother, which told Lohbado they were not locals. All the locals knew how grandmother froze beside the cold stove in February, a few years ago. Lohbado had a funny feeling that the men were fugitives, escaping the humorless, dull, pounding hammer of standardization that captured humans and turned them into products.

“You are the product, which you must promote, advertise and sell,” the phrase still echoed in Lohbado’s mind, after three months of Regulation Training.

“Hello, my name is Lohbado and I’m a product. Let me explain my features, how I work and what I can do for you.”

Lohbado’s main competencies or transferable skills were his ability to sleep and to support the sewage and landfill industry.

Lohbado could tell, when he stopped to chat with Tom and Dick about Harry, in front of the cottage camouflaged in the shade of spruce, fir, pine, larch and birch, those men were in hiding. They talked quietly and avoided eye contact. Perhaps enemy agents were watching from satellites.

An absurd thought, the system was imploding into fragments. Agents had no time to check out riff-raff on the periphery when so much rot was eating away at the core. The call to Lohbado was part of a routine action related to escapees or lost wanderers. If captured, they’d squash him like a bug.

One of the men sneezed and made an OOO Cha sound, a definite signal. The OOO Cha sound is sacred to Oogah and Oorsis. Lohbado put them to the test.

“Were you there when they shot Geronimo Mahlord?” he asked.

“Yes,” they replied together, “Sometimes it causes me to tremble, but yes, I was there when they shot Mahlord.”

They did the secret handshake, which I can’t describe, because it’s a secret. The secret handshake enables members of the Goo-Goo Underground, escapees of the Glass Bubble Communities, to identify each other, to separate friend from foe.

This is a long-winded, round about way of appreciating how Lohbado must have felt, after walking up the creaking, wooden stairs of grandmother’s house in the bush, to a bedroom, perhaps the same room in which his father slept as a boy and saw dead flies on the pillow, traces of recent conflict, disturbance or a cycle of nature.

Goo Goo Underground

2011-05-24T21:31:00.000-04:00

Lohbado heard boisterous laughter from the Bull's Blood Tavern. He went in and a waitress told him the bar was reserved for a meeting of the Goo Goo Underground, but if he wished to become a member, he would receive a free pint of Worker Bee Lager. Lohbado enjoyed talking to the waitress so much, he said he would gladly be a member if she would help him fill out the form. She said she had no time, but he could sit down and she'd bring him a pint. He could take his time. It was an easy form.

Lohbado smiled and nodded. He sat down at a table near the back entrance, where he could smell the overflowing garbage bin and hear men talking and fighting in the washroom, plus a stream of drunken men going to piss. The women's room was on the other side of the tavern. Lohbado sat in an unpleasant spot. A man spat in the garbage can next to Lohbado's table. A guy staggered out of the pisser, blood all over his jaw. He wanted people to see the blood, a drunken trophy. He got drunk and wild and let blood congeal on his face as proof of manliness, until the waiter grabbed the man and told him to clean up or get out.

The guy went back to the toilet. Surprisingly, he didn't argue. Maybe he'd had enough violence for one night and was ready to calm down to another beer before passing out. Lohbado wished he could pass out and get some sleep. He'd been suffering from insomnia, due to big changes in his life. The part of his psyche which clung to old habits, squealed, sniveled and kicked up a fuss about having to leave things behind and to move forward into the unknown. Nobody knew how things would turn out. It could go either way. Even his buddy Joe told Lohbado to stop reacting to little things. Nobody is special. Everyone endures inconvenience, irritation and change. Stop acting like a worm.

Every few seconds somebody is breaking up with somebody, or getting fired, shot, robbed, assaulted, in an accident, or dying of sickness, old age or any one of numerous other possibilities. You're a grain of sand. Each grain of sand has life. It's a problem when one grain tries to stick out above the billions of other sand grains on the beach. Each sad grain person is going through a sand castle door in an endless sequence of before, during and after.

The waitress came back and asked him if everything was OK and if he had any difficulty filling out the form. Lohbado said the form was easy. His mind already felt buzzed under the glow of Worker Bee Lager. The waitress smiled and welcomed him to the Goo Goo Underground. She gave him a card.

"You've successfully experienced the buzz and the glow," she said, "You passed the Goo Goo Screen Test. THis place won't stand up to a cold, analytical gaze. The Bull's Blood tavern won't hold water. But if you can let go of shame and regret and surrender to the way of the bottle, you'll the experience rapturous salvation of mundane friendliness in a warm, but surprisingly unspectacular everyday fashion.

The Story of Oh

2011-05-17T15:40:00.002-04:00

Everyday the background music, plus a typical reaction and set of thoughts, a mind rambling distractedly, blown about like a feather, as people hurried to the subway, lined up at bus stops or piled into cars, Lohbado went for coffee. After a refill, he'd write the same old nonsense, predictable spasms triggered by toothache, indigestion, background music or something in the news.

You could be sure Lohbado would have an opinion. You didn't even need to make out the words. The facial expression, posture and tone of voice said it all, a Lohbado template of mindless reaction. Words rolled under their own momentum, year after year, a pattern of emotion and irritation.

Lohbado was not alone. At Club Morono he met other Lohbadoes and Lohbadahs with similar opinions. This is something the Chief Nomroh talked about during a recent Rapture Session at the Tabernacle of Oogah and Oorsis, anthropomorphic representatives of God and co-creators of the non-evolutionary universe. Out of the many Ohs, OOOs, cosmic circles, portals, concentric, sometimes stretching into elipse, something was bound to pass through. O is asking to be punctuated with concept and goodwill.

Stand O on end and it will roll. O is one of the most powerful letters of the alphabet, almost as important as A. After a hearty throat clearing roar, aahhgrah, one could begin softly mooning Oh. I ask all radio listeners to join in this exercise. First say "moon", slowly three times. Then drop the consonants M and N. Put them in a folder for later. They will prove their point during the Morono Training Sessions, when enemy prisoners have their psyches broken down and then reconditioned into harmonious, socially cooperative group members.

OK, this would take too long, but it's something I recommend you try. I'm not saying you should go out in public and start mooning. But with regards to the rapture, if you've ever studied glossolalia, there's a section delegated to the letter O. In fact, there's even the Story of O.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy. I better stop now. Ooogaaah!

Eepee Corporation

2011-05-16T18:57:00.003-04:00

Eepee Corporation recently released the new Smiley Card, a plastic, electronic card chip devise programed to monitor hunger and desire. Each time a person feels hungry or turned on, the card vibrates in one's wallet or purse. The Smiley Card sends out Morono Vibration into the bearer of the card. The Smiley Card also provides a screen-display of suggestions and a GPS to the most effortless and cost effective way to satiate hunger and desire.

Premium subscribers to the Morono Vibration Plan can log in to the Eepee Corporation Fun Room, where one will experience the highest level of bliss-inducing pleasure saturation. For the weight conscious, the Smiley Card releases stomach-soothing waves, to create a sense of bloatedness, so one feels stuffed, content and self-satisfied.

(Ok, enough of this infantile story, beware of getting sidetracked or conned. Con artists come out of the woodwork when they notice an insecure, porous or transparent person. They come out all beer and pizza, oozing with sauce. They tempt you with appetizers. Before you know it, you're seated at a full-course dinner of roast beef and baked potatoes. The cons wait until you're relaxed and laughing over desert to present you the bill. They know you can't pay. They're waiting for you to say you can't pay. Then, the con springs his plan on you. Too late, you're in the trap. It's hard to escape as they explain the plan, complicated to the point of being hard to understand.)

After one month on the market, thousands of Smiley Cards were recalled, due to a bug. Infected cards gave off unpleasant, erratic stimulation, causing uncontrollable spasms of loud, smelly flatulence, or bad-tasting sulfuric eructation or burping. In a few cases, Smiley Card vibrations created an a-hedonic effect, or marked loss of libido.

Emergency meetings were held at Eepee Corporation. The Smiley Card situation had to be described in positive terms, in order to not frighten investors. To save the company, top administrators gave themselves a pay increase, since the survival of the company depended on the well being of those at the top. Money is the motivator. There's always the trickle down effect, where people on top piss on people underneath in order to instill in them a sense of fear and security, fear that if they don't cooperate, things could get much worse. Security could only result if they worked harder, took unpaid furlough and agreed to no pay increases in the foreseeable future. At the last moment, the government gave Eepee Corporation a multi-million dollar bail out. So once again, Smiley Cards were smiling.

OOGAH

2011-05-08T22:02:00.001-04:00

Turn to Oogah, the huge Oh, a portal, opening, a holy hole in the tissue of daydream. Oogah came in response to the Apocalyptic War of religion against religion, business against business, pill against pill, big fish eating little fish, haves bullying have nots, positive and negative. Lohbado sneaked into Grandmother Aida's boudoir and had a look at The Book of Oogah. He had no idea what it was all about until the age of thirteen, when an elderly woman asked him in for tea and cookies, after Lohbado finished cutting the grass. She asked Lohbado if his mother had told him the facts of Oogah.

Lohbado said the word Oogah was not unfamiliar. One night he heard his parents using the word Oogah, as he crept past their bedroom door. It sounded scary, so he quickly went away.

"Well Lohbado, " said the elderly woman, named Lohbada, "Did you see any worms when you were on the grass? Those worms are caretakers of the soil. They get washed up on the sidewalk when it rains. Robins love them, which brings me to the subject of flies, especially dead flies and how they sometimes fall off a window sill on to a pillow. In the old days, it was quite common to position the head of a bed under a window sill, so that the sound of insects buzzing between window panes would stimulate dream messages. Housefly hair, head top eggs, fingertip bacteria, egg tunnels into the skull."

Lohbado didn't understand what she was talking about. He knew that bacteria from fingertips could cause mold to grow on a block of cheddar cheese. He ate the moldy cheese and immediately a wave of drowsiness forced him to stretch out on the sofa. He went into a coma-like sleep and began to dream. In the middle of a vast, treeless plain, Lohbado dreamed a fire. He approached the fire, which appeared to be burning out of the rock. Then Oogah appeared and grinned at Lohbado. Lohbado trembled and wept tears of joy as the spirit passed through him. When he awoke, Grandmother was wiping his forehead with a lukewarm, damp washcloth.

"I thought you were dying," cried Grandmother, "You lay down and started moaning and groaning. Your forehead was so hot. That's why I applied the washcloth."

Lohbado trembled as Grandmother continued to wipe his forehead and then his face with the beige washcloth.

"I saw Oogah," he said.

"May the light of Oorsis shine upon you!" she replied, "This is an experience to remember for the rest of your life. You should write it down, in order that your children and your grandchildren and great great grandchildren can remember that you, Lohbado, had a vision of Oogah."

Weeping Bean Spirits

2011-04-29T22:55:00.000-04:00

A white haired woman opened a wooden door and invited Lohbado to enter the kitchen, where a pot of beans simmered on a stove. In the steam rising from the pot, he saw dancing male and female demons, each filled with holes. They were holy spirits with many all-seeing eyes, which had watched over Lohbado since he learned to walk, the eyes he hid from during adolescent hormonal disruption and then the eyes he avoided, after his illusions were lost and he found himself in a dull, endless, flat gray plain, welcome to the real world.

Don’t offend the spirits, or they’ll cry. When their feelings are hurt, the screaming, weeping sound is like the sound of steam escaping between the lid and bottom of a pot. Gotta keep a lid on the situation, but not too tight, otherwise the pressure builds and the beans boil over. The bean spirits cry when they realize their attempts to control you are futile, that you are quite capable of turning down the temperature and giving the beans a stir. Do this, but without arrogance. Arrogance could lead to a nasty fall.

You could just say: “Look, this isn’t helping me at all.”

Maybe that would be a sane and wise thing to do. However, members of Club Morono have experienced the hurtful aggression of a man or woman suffering wounded vanity. Don’t wound vanity, unless you’re interested in being stung by a swarm of bees. Honesty could deflate the preceptor’s vanity, causing him or her to punish you. The preceptor of alienation is the master and you are the slave. Be careful. The preceptor even drops little reminders to let you know who is in control of the situation. The preceptor decides if your contract gets renewed or if you get laid off.

Honesty would not only deflate the master, it could lead to panic and embarrassment, which the master would express as moralistic rage, or righteous indignation. Unable to justify or defend his or her unjust power, the preceptor uses aggression and intimidation to silence the slave. The slave doesn’t want to lose his or her job, so he or she backs off and agrees to play the game, to participate in the illusion and to pretend everything is fabulous.

In an ideal world, one would welcome the shock of realizing one was in a bubble. It would be an opportunity to wake up from the stupor. As the bubble bursts, one could enter a larger space and make a contact with the genuine, as opposed to defending the tissue of lies. Instead of bitterness and alienation, in an environment of honesty and friendliness, creativity would flourish. Rigid power-based structure kills creative libido and consigns one to dullness and routine. One replicates one’s experience. One enters the worm-like stupor of endlessly muttering what one already knows, or mindlessly doing what has been done many times and which no longer needs to be done.

Worms on Washcloth

2011-04-26T11:36:00.004-04:00

A spacious room, glaring light, background music, the Chief Masticator served worms on washcloth during the Head Body Lesson at the Department of Regulation. Wipe the eggs out of your eyes. Don't fly off the handle. Buzz through tears in screen door. Bang bulbs. Tear buzz through screen bulb bang lightning light oxygen deprived cells, writhing retina, porous pupil. Tricky thick thinking, ignore intelligence. Don't ask questions. Eat what's on your washcloth.

You are the product. Club Morono, the three Ohs or zeroes. Club market club to club oneself over the head, knock out a few brain cells in order to make hard pill easier to swallow. Plastic frozen meat room smell, to swallow the sugar-coated fat filled pill. One day the pills melt into pools of elephant urine. The urine evaporates, leaving salts.

Old cheese breath pasty mouth, goo in the throat, burning eyes, stiff neck and sore shoulders, grind the teeth, clench the jaw, start weeping and wailing. Welcome to hell. What is hell, other than a state of mind?

Tell us, in five seconds, your achievements and transferable skills.

Oorsis appeared in the form of a goat to Lohbado in a petting zoo at a campground along the winding, hilly highway beside the river to the ocean. She said: "I've had enough of your sadly mistaken lack of contact in your old world of too much time spent not enough with forgotten relatives."

Lohbado replied: "I'm so so so sorry. I will pour musty old sour wine on the ground to lubricate worms in their slithering. Intoxicated worms are easier to gather up in order to put into cans, to be opened when the occasion calls for the opening of a can of worms."

Stay tuned for future Club Morono episodes, which will feature A Man and His Goat; Larry's Lingering Litigation, or Mielo's Mediation.

Lohbado and the Three Beers

2011-04-19T17:44:00.000-04:00

This is another post-apocalyptic tale, after angry factions wiped out over half the world’s population with nuclear weapons, not to mention environmental damage. Life was barely sustainable on planet earth during the apocalyptic century. Horrific loss of life resulted in a shortage of skilled workers to run machines and to operate computer software.

     Computer networks suffered frequent shut down due to lack of personnel. An increase in computer viruses, worms, web crawlers, data miners and keystroke tracers put the computerized infrastructure at risk. This had an immediate effect on water quality, air traffic, the advance of microbes and entertainment systems.

    To fill the ranks of software workers, enemies were put to work. Getting enemies to work for the government created nervousness among top administrators. However, just as drinking water could be extracted from heavily polluted rivers, just so could law abiding, standardized citizens be conditioned from those who previously were the enemy. Take the people who were fighting against you and make them work for you. That was the idea.

    The first step in the rehabilitation process was to send prisoners to Regulation Training Programs run by the Department of Regulation. Even though Lohbado had never been involved in the war and had never even been near a weapon, in fact, he’d spent most of his life barely scraping by as a palm and aura reader, he was chosen as being a potential trainer. It never occurred to him that anyone would be interested in offering him employment. He’d been turned down for so many jobs over the years; he didn’t even bother looking for work anymore. He read the future for superstitious men and women and lived in a bombed out building. He got a little careless, venturing out in broad daylight. He underestimated the speed of change and that someone might be interested putting him to work.

After the devastating wars, every slacker was viewed as having potential. Even members of the Groveler’s Group were forced to enroll in Regulation Training.

Lohbado barely scraped through the Regulation Sessions. Poor attendance, difficulty remembering trivia, a mind that refused to grapple with skill-testing questions, Lohbado got put on probation and sent to the Chief Masticator. Every wing of the department had a Masticator to weed out those who manifested too much apathy and boredom, or psychological resistance.

Every morning before class, Lohbado would report to the Masticator’s office for a fifteen-minute briefing. He would be forced to talk about the proper way to wash hands, how to repair a broken Geiger counter, and the need to collect reusable toilet paper from melted down broken bottles. The Masticator would force Lohbado to spell his name forwards and backwards five times and then to do the forcible breath expelling wind from each nostril, while careful to collect mucoid particles, which could be used to glue labels on nylon toothbrushes.

One day, Lohbado had enough. He stormed out of the briefing session and wandered out of town, to one of the radioactive suburbs. After the mind numbing gibberish he’d been forced to endure for the past six weeks, he didn’t care about danger. He wanderer aimlessly into the lobby of a deserted hotel, filled with charred furniture and gaping holes in the floor. A certain breed of mutates, who had developed resistance to radiation, lived in such buildings. Lohbado felt so alienated from dealing with fellow humans, he almost welcomed the opportunity to communicate with mutates.

He walked up to the melted plastic registration counter and saw a pint of beer on a plastic barrel that had been up-ended to serve as a table. Lohbado, without thinking, picked up the mug and gulped down half the beer and then began burping. It was a soapy, sour kind of beer that sat uneasily in his stomach. He left the rest of the beer and wandered upstairs into the suite at the top of the stairs. On the floor, next to a moldy mattress, sat a large bottle of opened beer. Lohbado thought maybe a few more gulps of that beer would take care of the nausea welling up in his stomach from the beer he drank down in the lobby.

The beer tasted surprisingly OK, but didn’t quench his thirst. There was something weird in the beer that filled his throat with mucous and made him even thirstier.

Lohbado went up to the second floor. One couldn’t go any higher. The elevators were broken and the stair well gave off a nasty odor of ammonia. He went to a small room at the end of the hall where he found a king size bottle of Morono Extreme, 9 % alcohol content beer. Lohbado knew that was the beer he’d been looking for. He sat down on the bed, gulped down the beer and immediately fell asleep.

About an hour later, three mutates got home from collecting bricks, papa mutate, mama mutate and baby mutate. Papa mutate went up to the registration desk and right away noticed beer was missing from his pint.

“Someone has been drinking my beer!” he growled.

Mama mutate went upstairs and noticed beer missing from the bottle next to the moldy mattress.

“Someone has been drinking my beer!” howled mama mutate.

Baby mutate ran upstairs and saw the empty bottle of Morono Extreme. Baby was about to scream, but then noticed Lohbado, fast asleep. Baby crawled over to Lohbado, drooled in his ear. The drool woke him up. Lohbado shouted in terror, ran from the building and never went back to the radiated neighborhood again.

confusion

2011-04-18T12:15:00.002-04:00

In the middle of having a drink and conversation, Lohbado caught a glimpse of his confused mind. To live in a state of confusion, to say and do the same sort of thing, day after day, suddenly felt painful and claustrophobic. He finished the drink and then went outside. He stood in front of the bistro and gazed down the street into the distance. He wished to be free from the hypnotic, mindless stupor of mental chatter.

downhill uprising

2011-04-09T13:12:00.001-04:00

Slippery slope down hill provides opportunity to rise up and climb. Climb to the top of that hill, offering a view of what lies below. Lohbado neither could, nor should, be taken in all seriousness and yet, it’s no joke. Rising up as opposed to falling down, resist the pull of gravity. Let there be resurrection from the bed.

The disturbing factor of a personality resistant to definitive description and a character who could not be pinned down or appear in a serious light might, at a glance, baffle casual contact. To understand Lohbado and Club Morono, one would have to stop, look and listen.

Listening, in this incredibly busy world of time-saving devices and multitasking, is one of the greatest challenges of the twenty-first century. There’s too much pressure to say a lot, while saying very little. To speak or text anything other than the superficial would be considered bad form. After all, this is not about therapy, or dumping feelings. It’s about saying something in as few words and with as little meaning as possible. Get to the point of no point and don’t waste time. Time is being saved in order to invest in ways to save time. After hiding in humor for years, Lohbado painted a pink picture presenting Oogah, the great comic cosmic creator of golden pasts and funny futures.

night crown

2011-04-03T15:50:00.002-04:00

This story does have a happy ending, but it will take some time to get there, perhaps several posts over a period of weeks, months or even years. One has to survive the night, only to stagger through a series of days and nights, repetition. Put on the night crown and have a drink at the nocturnal Sea Breeze Bar.

Six months after the Apocalyptic War, Lohbado was arrested by enemy agents, outside the Sea Breeze Bar.
Lohbado often went to the Sea Breeze, especially after having a worrisome day. In the space of a week, most of the hair fell from the top of his head, in a classic, male pattern baldness manner, receding hairline, bald pate, ring of hair around the ears and back of the skull. He knew it was due to radiation. The only affordable apartment was next door to a contaminated block near the site of a nuclear plant which had been struck by an enemy missile.

Lohbado lost his massage therapy job, due to elevated radioactivity levels in his fingers. He carried a card indicating he was to avoid contact with fellow humans. People who knowingly spread radiation would be prosecuted. For nearly two years, he and a group of unemployed people, obtained contaminated food from condemned supermarkets. They broke in at night. Food expiry dates no longer mattered. Lord Food told Lohbado to eat, so Lohbado ate and drank.

Lohbado sat at the Sea Breeze bar and told the bartender, who wasn't listening, all about it. Normally he held back. It was considered bad form to complain. He was one among millions, struggling to survive in post Apocalyptic society. The good went to heaven and the bad stayed on earth, after the cosmic battle between Baby Jesus and Baby Lucifer.

The bar tender heard Lohbado muttering away and asked, "What's your problem? Are you a man or a worm?"

"I'm a worm," replied Lohbado, "I'm also an honorary member of the Grovelers Group."

"Look, I hear all kinds of maudlin bar talk. How would you like to join Club Morono? Will you persist in your folly?"

"Yes," said Lohbado, "I will."

"Have some Zog Juice," The bartender removed a sea-green bottle from a cabinet behind the bar. "This stuff is illegal. A group of space aliens from Zog, a planet accessible only through dreaming, gave me the stuff."

"Yes, pour me some Zog Juice," said Lohbado.

Lohbado gulped down a glass of Zog. Zog juice was a liquor distilled from the breath and saliva of Zog people from Planet Zog. The breath's main ingredient was nitrous oxide and had an amusing affect on people who experienced a lot of worry, ie. laugh away worry. A rush of heat and relaxation spread throughout his rib cage. Tingling and popping sensations massaged the inside of his skull. Blue smoke swirled in peripheral vision. The bartender handed him a rag.

"You're drooling," said the bartender.

Part Two: Lohbado was sent to endure Department of Regulation Training Sessions, as purification. Before entering Loafer's Land, one must endure Grovelers Group training, given by the Department of Regulation. Do the course and then get out of there.

Lohbado had been taken prisoner during the chaos following the Apocalyptic War. So many people died during the war, there was a shortage of workers. The captors put Lohbado through a series of tests, which determined that he would make a good instructor. In order to be an instructor or trainer, he would first have to be broken down and then rebuilt. Captors forced him to undergo Department of Regulation training sessions. Break him down and then build him up with internalized messages, which he would then use to regulate himself. As a self-regulated zombie, he too would become a trainer, to betray and teach the precepts of alienation to his own people.

"Don't ever freak out," said the Club Morono representative, "You were chosen for your stoic temperament and for your ability to endure lies, contradiction, hypocrisy, abuse of power and absurdity. Should you flinch or show signs of crumbling, we'll pull you from the program and put you on the treadmill for the rest of your life. We're offering you this chance to explore the Agreeable World."

Lohbado got railroaded into the training sessions in a large gray building near the railroad tracks. On the first day, the Preceptor of Alienation walked into the room and introduced himself as director of the Regulation Training.

"I'm here to teach you what you already know," he said, in a friendly tone, secure in knowing no member of the captive audience would dare be rude or contradict what he had to say, "Today's topic is the effect of weather on mood. You must pay attention. No doodling or drooling, except to record figures, diagrams, words or sentences.

"Now, about the weather, it has been proven in a study conducted in 1952 by George and Linda Smiley from the Sunshine Corporation that weather affects mood. On sunny days, people tend to be cheerful. On rainy days, people tend to be sad. I personally once knew a man who would cheer up on sunny days. I also knew a woman who would become sad on rainy days. Perhaps you are familiar with such cases. At the end of this workshop, you will be able to identify and describe how weather affects your mood. Some of you might find you do indeed become happy on sunny days, while sometimes becoming sad on rainy days."

The Preceptor of Alienation then turned on the lap top, hooked to a projector and launched into a Power Point presentation. Participants were given twenty-page handouts to follow along. The hand out contained diagrams of sunny days and cloudy days, five pages about degrees of precipitation and mood variability. The preceptor proceeded, over the next two and a half hours, to read every word of the power point presentation, which was the same as what was printed in the handouts. There was so much material to cover, he begged students to note their comments and questions and save them for the end. They could continue on into lunch hour if necessary. He reminded them about the valuable opportunity of learning about weather and mood. Some people paid a lot of money for such training, whereas the captive audience was getting it for free.

Three hours later, Lohbado staggered out of the hot, smelly room. He went down the street to Bobo's Pizzarhea for coffee and a muffin. He gazed vacantly at the TV screen bolted to the wall. He watched a scene played over and over again about a shootout in Drambue. The image of a policeman with his boot on the back of the gunman, face down on the ground, kept appearing on the screen, every few seconds. He read the moving type at the bottom of the TV screen: another witness describes what happened.

Two women knocked on the Pizzarhea bathroom door. It was locked. A retired coffee drinker told them to get the key to the bathroom from the service counter. Lohbado watched and listened to the high heels click in a hurry to get that key.

The Pain of Lohbado

2011-03-26T11:50:00.000-04:00

After years of turning his eye inward to contemplate his mind, or upward towards the sky, after stumbling into one too many holes and breaking so many bones, until every joint in his body burned and every bone felt like a toothache, until his chest experienced continual stabbing sorrow with each beat, Lohbado threw himself on the ground and didn't move for a long time.

"This pain is more than I can bear," he groaned, as if there were a god or somebody listening.

Nobody listening. If anyone were to walk by and see his histrionics, he or she would likely shake his or her head in dismay, embarrassment and revulsion towards such lack of motivtion and despair. How dare Lohbado lie there like that when there's so much money to be earned. He should be out there working, pulling his own weight, instead of burdening the earth with his unproductive presence.

Lohbado was having a bad day. It's hard to be a superhero when you're lying, face down in the dust, unable to go on.

Lohbado groaned, "Please, may the earth open and swallow me up. I pray for nothing less than complete and total annihilation."

The onlooker, Ruth Winters, got pissed off when she heard him talk this way. "You're displaying a bad attitude. Stand up like a man."

"I'm no longer a man," replied Lohbado, "I'm a worm, forced to grovel before those who have power."

"One day I'm going to become a millionaire, because then I won't have to pay taxes to support bums or the military," said Ruth, "I'll create a giant corporation in order to receive government subsidies and to not have to pay taxes."

Morono Interogation Technique

2011-03-22T20:16:00.002-04:00

I tried to escape by crawling up an air vent inside cement walls. Half way up the crawl space, I panicked, realizing I was too far in to crawl out and too tired to crawl upwards any farther. I could get stuck half way up the vertical crawl space, die and rot. Eventually a vent cleaning person would be called to flush out the vent. This was a case for Morono Man. Read below, if you dare.

I'll tell you up front, in Club Morono, we rarely get a story straight. Frequent pauses for irrelevant digression sometimes make it hard to follow. However, if you feel it's worth reading to the end, you won't be disappointed, if you approach it without expectations other than to read and quite possibly find out what happened. Lohbado, slacker in the public eye, but in moments of psychic danger, Morono Man violated Moronite rules of conduct and was sentenced in the High Court of Morono burn in the fire. This is the outcome for those who sin. Good deeds go into one purse, bad deeds into the other. One purse will burn and melt, the other will glow and rise like a rainbow into the sky.

Here's how it started. Lohbado sat in the overheated corner of a crowded cafe during lunchtime and tried to read a book about reality, since he'd been told so many times to get real. He had a collection of books describing how one could connect with reality and arguments about how such a reality might be structured. He took off his boots to ventilate and dry sweaty damp socks. The cashiers wore white latex gloves. Her fingers tickled the palm of Lohbado's hand as she handed him change. Lohbado watched the four lineups of people at four cashiers and then plunged into the metaphysics text.

Ok, this is no time to let the cat out of the back. When burning up from inside, zip the mouth, stay cool and eventually the flames subside.

The nose is a type of triangle, opening downwards in two tubes. We're going to identify potential stimulants or particles capable of irritating sensitive nasal tissue and blocking passageways. If we look at the tubular nasal triangle, you'll notice how particles get trapped in mucous and small hairs.
It requires a high level of internal management to manage internal matter such as dust, bacteria, microbes and prehistoric flies. I'll elaborate on the flies in a future session. I'll just mention, in passing, the danger of unlimited expansion and the inevitable post implosion.

The main questions to consider: Who are you? What do you have to offer? Has anyone here heard of Socrates? He was a corrupter of youth from ancient Greece, forced to drink poison after he got on people's nerves by asking them to clarify absurd and irrational statements. It's important to know how to present yourself when shopping for lingerie. You don't want to come across as being too eager or intense.

God is Coming

2011-03-20T18:40:00.002-04:00

When the Lord of the Nations get here, you better make sure there's enough oil in the lantern and that your clothes are clean from not having sinned. On the great day, when God gets here, you will be clothed in robes of light. This is no joke. When you're cruising down the freeway of life, sometimes an accident, or police officer forces you to stop and take stock of the situation. When the day of reckoning happens, the little sins add up. They'll prickle the skin like thistles. You'll burn in poison ivy from head to foot with regret. Better stop sinning now, while there's still time. Everybody should be good. There's too much bad going on. People are too trigger happy, eager to drop bombs and shoot missiles. God is losing patience. Don't make God mad. I'm going to go repent over a plate of spaghetti right now.

I'm only telling you what my father and grandfathers told me, about the value of the Almighty Dollar and a hard daze evening. It's time for ladies and gentlemen of the dreaming universe to wake up.

Morono Man

2011-03-13T22:05:00.000-04:00

Morono Man, to prevent progressive decompensation, or downward sinking towards vegetable catatonia, bust up a band of a dozen loafers, who freeloaded or baked in sleep twelve hours a night, only to rise from the bed to be eaten by necessity, or to crumble under pressure. Morono Man appeared as an alarm clock, to awaken top administrators of Eepee Corporation from butter, blueberry biscuit stupor. Eepee Corporation manufactured plastic, electronic card chip devices designed to monitor and satiate appetite and desire.

Each time a person felt hungry or turned on, the card sent out Morono vibrations from the wallet, which could be sensed within a radius of one forearm. The bearer of the device would then pull out the card and read a list of suggestions and GPS techniques to help one experience effortless and effective satiation of hunger and desire. Premium subscribers to the Moronite service could log into sites that give off highest level, bliss-inducing biofeedback, pleasurable waves. For the weight conscious, stomach-soothing waves made one feel bloated, stuffed, content and self-satisfied, without actually having to eat anything.

Pre-release product advertising received good press and a positive public reaction. The government agreed to invest in setting up a corporation to produce the micro-card satiation devices (SMCDs) or Eepee Cards (EC). Eepee Cards shot high on the stock market. However, a group of managers began to mess things up. Twelve loafers ran the company, while marinating in hot, stewed plum offices with soft alpaca wool rugs and silk brocade cushions, luxuriously situated 52 stories above street level, in tall, rectilinear buildings. In fact, things were still in research and development phase. The GPS, or pleasure spot locators and hedonistic applications were filled with bugs.

The biofeedback/bliss vibrations sometimes gave off unpleasant jolts, hot flashes, nausea and sometimes embarrassing side effects, such as uncontrollable spasms of loud, smelly flatulence or bad-tasting sulfuric eructation or burping. In a few cases, the vibes created an a-hedonic effect, or marked loss of libido, even impotence, which could only be restored to default settings after much coaxing and coddling.

Emergency meetings attempted to take the matter in hand. Information about the situation should be released in a positive light, so as to not frighten investors, which could unleash a catastrophic loss of share-holder value. The twelve loafers, eight men and four women, decided to downsize, lay off workers and get fewer employees to do more. Severe cost-cutting measures, such as forced furlough, or forcing employees to take twelve unpaid leave of absence days per year, were undertaken. There would be no pay increases in the forseeable future. The top administrators would, however, grant themselves a bonus payout, since the survival of the company depended on the well-being of those at the top. There's always the trickle-down effect, where people on top piss on those underneath in order to instill in them a sense of security and fear. They experienced fear that if they didn't cooperate, things could get much worse. They would have to work harder in order to avoid having their jobs put on the chopping block.

Things weren't all peaches and cream for the twelve loafers, or top administrators. Their credibility was undermined when Pipi Leak MacFee published secret documents about orgies, fiscal corruption and kickbacks, or misappropriated funds. Pipi Leak MacFee was the thirteenth loafer, who got stung and pushed out of the administrative hive, since they felt twelve was company but thirteen a crowd. Filled with venom, MacFee revealed how the Eepee card consistently gave off bad vibes. Research results had been falsified. To restore confidence, the government handed over more grant money, in return for giant political campaign donations. To avoid a long and complicated description of what went on, suffice it to say, things were difficult for Eeppe Corporation.

Ok, this is merely to set the stage. Stay tuned for the next episode, in which Morono Man intervenes to bust up the band of loafers.

free coffee

2011-03-07T12:59:00.005-05:00

Morono Man has super power of smell. He can smell when people are trying to rip off the system in order to get a free cup of coffee. The other day, he caught a group of men cranking out counterfeit coffee cards. Each card would get the bearer twenty cups of coffee. Morono Man went in to bust up the operation, but he's got a heart of plastic and is a sucker for sentimental platitudes. No self-evident truth is too shallow for Morono Man.

He went into the rented garage, where five men were making counterfeit coffee cards. Morono Man yelled: "Freeze!"

He got them by the bean and freeze dried them on the spot, Columbian roast and put them through the grinder. The ring leader, Joe Espresso, said: "Please Morono Man, hear us out before you brew us up!"

Morono Man said: "Ok, go ahead, percolate, but no more than three minutes. I'm late for coffee and don't want to go into withdrawal."

Joe Espresso explained his sad story, in as few words as possible: "We worked at a pulp and paper mill in Wildzide. They shut down the mill and laid off eight hundred workers. Me and my buddies moved to the city to look for work. I tried to get a job delivering newspapers. They said my pulp and paper experience was not relevant. They said I was not qualified.

"You have to pay $ 15,000 for a six week course on delivery techniques and then you do an apprenticeship, after which you're allowed to purchase a $ 500 license, which permits you to join the Deliverers Association. You get paid minimum wage. The uniform is deducted from your first ten pay checks."

After Morono man heard this, he regretted his hasty judgment and said: "You are not gangsters, you're men in need of a cup of coffee. Punch me in the stomach!"

One of Morono Man's super powers was the ability to cough up money. With three punches to the stomach, Morono Man coughed up enough money to keep the five men in coffee, at the rate of six cups per day, for one year. The punches didn't hurt his soft cushion of a belly. They filled him with revulsion towards the way of the world. He was about to confiscate the counterfeiting machine, in order to break it, but Joe Espresso said: "Don't, don't don't!"

"Why not?"

"It could be used for good purposes. We could set up a plastic credit card-making business. Please don't remove the only remaining possibility of earning an honest living."

Morono Man felt sorry for his hasty desire to destroy the machine.

"You're right," he said, "I misjudged you again. You're model citizens with good business ideas, which will enable you to live the dream of going from rags to riches, from small fries to large corporation."

The men thanked him.

Morono Man stumbled off into a metro, where he changed back into his mundane persona of Lohbado, an unemployed professional dreamer, who survived, thanks to the generosity of Morono Man, who was able to cough up money when needed.

drive in and enjoy

2011-03-01T14:00:00.001-05:00

The miracle of the fish burger happened to me yesterday. I was hungry, closed my eyes and then opened them to find myself riding through the drive-through in a mini-van. I felt like a good citizen, supporting business and good nutrition, encouraging oil production, plus having a religious experience to boot. Club Morono recommends that you smile and enjoy your day!

things

2011-02-28T10:38:00.000-05:00

So many things and so many fanciful, simple or complicated ways of saying the same thing, one never has the last word. Each thing leads to another thing. Each attempt to impose a belief or way of doing things is immediately limited by the nature of belief. Each thing is surrounded, enveloped, contained or dissolving and self destructing, just like fire consuming itself. One ends up with a handful of ashes, a few statements, concepts, policies, codes or regulations which don't apply to everything. There are always exceptions to the rule. What happens to each closing of the door, each time the door opens? Every time the great Moronovian spoke with persuasive conviction, his words had a hollow ring. The intimidating emotional outburst of Oorsis underlined the impotence of strong emotion.

Oogah Drink and Dill Pickles

2011-02-24T15:40:00.000-05:00

Made with the finest, natural ingredients, Oo-Cha, a favorite drink of the OOO is a good source of moisture and is sure to quench your thirst. Using an old recipe of cow drool and liquified hog fat, this drink should be a pleasure. It contains no alcohol or drugs, nothing that would lead a person to sin. According to legend, after his first cup of Oo-Cha, Lohbado saw Oorsis, the great bear spirit. She handed him a dill pickle and they danced around a camp fire. Club Morono highly recommends that if you ever find a bottle of Oo-Cha, please let Club Morono know about your experience.

yin yang weather

2011-02-18T15:07:00.001-05:00

Minus twenty something one day, plus five two days later, yo-yo weather in Montreal, sit comfortably inside and watch the storm outside. A major dump of snow and then melting, yin yang, healthy one moment, a virus the next, grumbling won't help. Be patient. This too will pass. Happy, sad, day dreaming, reflecting, analyzing and dissecting the riddle of the universe and end up none the wiser, how did this come about? Ask all you like, in the past four thousand years, nobody has found an answer that doesn't give rise to further questions. The positive side of unlimited questions is unlimited space for imagination and creativity. I'm happy to be with my children and with friends. On a pragmatic level, it's better to be warm and friendly than the inverse. Dark thoughts and emotions heighten humor and playfulness. They balance each other out, like the weather and the seasons. I'd like to end with a quote from Dogen:

"The whole world, which is not self, has no hidden place; it is a single rail of iron ten thousand miles long which is not anyone." p. 54, Shobogenzo: Zen Essays by Dogen, Transl. T. Cleary. U of Hawaii Press, 1986.

Wolf Spirit Dance

2011-02-15T18:56:00.000-05:00

Wolf spirit dance life death dream, burning up and cool at the same time, lots of space, good day, bad day, wheel of life, keep dancing until the voice that told the creature to dance stopped telling him to dance.

Wolves Who Run Wild With the Women

2011-02-14T14:27:00.000-05:00

Wolf Man made a real massacre of Valentine's Day, dancing up a storm, setting the house on fire. His secret wish is to find Wolf Woman for a bit of romance, a little heat of passion to melt the snow of winter and remind one that spring can't be far off. This wolf follower of Dionysus joined the Maenads, or female followers, during an ecstatic dance to make a love connection between the world of the living and the world of the dead. The dancers refused to be held back. They broke all codes of conduct in an orgiastic revel that lasted three days.

Let's Party

2011-02-13T22:09:00.000-05:00

Wolf Man of the north is on the loose again. You don't want to see him naked. My what big teeth he has. What's with the broken glass? He's dancing the dogtrot. Stay tune for more Wolf to come, an exclusive presentation of Club Morono.

Fire in a Box

2011-02-12T17:36:00.003-05:00

Hot deals on fire in a box, order yours before box turns to ash. Cardboard boxes burning at a dump in the wilderness, is this for real? During the cold months of winter, imagine getting warm beside a fire. It's important to not burn out. A little fire or passion could warm things up, but it's good to contain it. That's when a cardboard box comes in handy. Put the fire in a box and tape it shut until next time you need fire. No wait, don't do it. Fire will burn right through. Putting fire in a box makes about as much sense as trying to put a wolf on a chain.

is snow joke

2011-02-04T11:33:00.000-05:00

It's no joke. Just about every winter, Montreal gets lots of snow. Thanks to an efficient system of snow removal, one is able to come and go unhindered. During the storm, I did the Oogah book, to heat things up a bit. It's a book I've been burning to read. It lies in the fire, but the fire doesn't consume it. The friendly goat and cute giraffe offer hope and useful suggestions. The goat meets things head on. The giraffe extends its neck in order to see things from a higher perspective. I'll elaborate in future posts.

Montreal Snow Storm

2011-02-02T12:07:00.000-05:00

The pictures say it all. It's in the news, big storm from Texas roars all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. These pictures show Cote des Neiges, about 10 AM, in Montreal.

The Fire of an Inspirational Story

2011-02-01T12:36:00.001-05:00

Nobody likes a depressing story. I’m determined to write inspirational stories, to inspire people to try harder. I already told the story of a man who refused to give up after both arms were severed, while working at the slaughterhouse. He literally gave his arms to the company, mutilated himself to be a good employee, who ended up costing the taxpayer on workers compensation. Valuable tax dollars went to help Ned, who gave both arms to serve his company.

This story has a happy ending, although it’s not without controversy. Some people are opposed to the use of cells from aborted fetuses. However, this is no place for moralistic discussion. Stick to inspirational facts and leave out the commentary.

Thanks to cells from a miscarriage, Ned’s arms grew back. A pregnant dancer at a fetish club lost her baby while doing a nude dance. The baby fell out in a pool of burst water. Dr. Armstrong, a fan of burlesque entertainment, scooped up the fetus, took it to his lab, isolated the arm cells, which he then used to implant and clone new arms in Ned’s stumps.

Ned worked at a slaughterhouse. The cow never knew it was about to die as it walked up the ramp to the place where it would be instantly killed and whisked into an assembly line of gutting, bleeding and preliminary butchering. Ned lost both arms at the slaughterhouse. Thanks to a miscarriage and to the skillful work of Dr. Armstrong, his arms grew back.

The only catch, Ned was a short man, while the fetus was from tall parents. As a result, the arms grew too long. They hung down to his ankles. The arms were from a potential basketball player.

He became a celebrity of Internet learning videos and medical research. Dr. Armstrong received a slap on the wrist fine for doing a procedure not endorsed by the government. Religious fanatics felt it was not right to mess with dead embryos and to clone human limbs. That wasn’t the way God wanted it and it certainly wasn’t in God’s plan.

Ned eventually got a job in the circus. His long, powerful arms enabled him to do spectacular gymnastics and amazing feats on the flying trapeze. He was the only human to beat a gorilla in an arm wrestle. He was a potential super hero. With those long, powerful arms, he could scale skyscrapers and leap from rooftop to rooftop. He could reach deep into sewer pipes and drains. He could have been a long arm of the law to cut short those who reached over the limit.

He appeared on talk shows with the fetal mother, Lulu, who retired at thirty from her dancing career, got a PhD in psychology and became a therapist. Dr. Lulu Konzern wrote a book that won a nod from Dr. Jane Wormsly and got on her recommended reading list, The Cosmic Dancing of Ringtones.

Stay tuned for more unusual and inspirational situations, presented to you exclusively from the mind of Lohbado on Club Morono and on Dreaming Man.

Plaza Food Court

2011-01-31T11:48:00.000-05:00

Greenish yellow florescent light bathes the food court in a twilight atmosphere, suspension of daylight, a place where one could stop and rest a moment, or hang out all day. Some people go there every day to relax and socialize. It's about a ten minute walk from where I live. The food is not expensive. There's a lot of variety, everything from dumplings to sushi, with plenty of burritos and hot dogs in between.

metamorphosis

2011-01-28T16:56:00.001-05:00

This main follower of Morono ate too much spaghetti. Starchy flatulence blew him out of bed at 3 AM. He began to worry about the politics of pasta, how in some kitchens, the pot often boils over, while in other kitchens, due to dysfunctional heating systems, noodles barely reach body temperature and don't fully expand into soft, moist eatability. The man in the picture, a circular head injury, or trepanning, cosmic hole in the head to facilitate ooze. Beige matter ooze from the brain room, the place of the skull, origin of religion and monetary systems.

Within the golden pasta bruise on his forehead could be seen the letter A. Why the letter A? That's a twenty-six letter question, going back generations. It evolved from an origin of species attempt to win lovers and scare away enemies. Why did they talk? What caused an eruption into letters, words, and images? The attempt to tell all led to misunderstanding, insults and unspeakable consequences. Shocking secrets revealed, what did they do in the dim light after midnight? By the population of planet earth you can tell whatever they're doing has been done a lot by a lot of people. It's not just an activity reserved for sexy bodies and charming personalities. Cats do it. So do dogs, cows, pigs and donkeys. I've even seen house flies making out on the windowsill.

However, pasta man aged into a funky, tomato sauce consistency, a metamorphosis or inter-penetration of man and material. Eater and that which is eaten makes up the globular process of embodihood in an eatable world, a garden of things to eat. That's the way Zog planned it. According to inhabitants of planet Zog, that's the way Zog wants it.

Zog: Z, distant relative to A and all that A entails, letter Z zzzz put us to sleep. Z: put us to sleep. O: surprise. G: gee whiz, g is like, wow!

A powerful interplanetary force of being and nothing, belief and disbelief, saved and damned, good and evil, for us and against us, cat against mouse, dog against cat, wolf against dog and so on.

Death of Ernie

2011-01-23T14:38:00.003-05:00

Before I describe the accident, it might help to provide a little information about what was going on at the time. Ernie died when people were driving to lunch. I witnessed the car crash, but didn't stop. A lot of people saw Ernie plow the 1967 Oldsmobile into a maple tree on the boulevard. Actually, the police seem to prefer when people don't stop. They shout at you to keep going.

I was driving a van filled with paint supplies. Ed, the paint crew supervisor and another painter were passengers. Ed lost his license for driving while impaired, so I did the driving.

Ed supervised a small paint crew. I worked for him one summer, back in student days, a company called Edwin Decoration and Design, nothing to do with the Ed I knew. Ed did, by coincidence, have a degree in interior design from Lumpkins University and of course, Ed is short for Edwin. Ed never had a lot going for him. After Ed’s violent, alcoholic dad kicked him out of the house at fifteen and after Ed spent a year on the street and nearly became addicted to heroin, until an attack of hepatitis put an end to his drug abuse career.

Uncle Fred took in Ed, when Ed was eighteen. Uncle Fred just got out of jail after doing two years for something he would never talk about. Jail taught him to trust nobody, to avoid company and to say as little as possible. It left him bitter, discouraged and without motivation. To earn money, Fred turned the back room into a marijuana growing room. Ed participated in sales. They made enough to make ends meet and to pay for Ed’s interior design degree.

Uncle Fred liked Ed, partly because Ed was a strange looking kid, a large head, hair thinning out already at the age of eighteen, a potato shaped nose, a kid with no charm or illusions. Fred had no patience with dreamers. He nourished no secret hopes or desires. There was something a little off about Ed, which reassured Fred. He couldn't be comfortable around anyone too normal.

Ed got a degree, got married and had a son. Ed’s brief attempt to stay on the straight and narrow lasted about a year. During that year of marriage, fatherhood and hard work, Ed was in a bad mood. The divorce happened in May, at the beginning of outdoor painting season. A couple times Ed showed up at work, baby son in his arms and a huge smile, radiating that gleam of success, which we all knew would never last. It was too good to be true. How could a guy like Ed rise to such a level of normality? Sure enough, he blew it.

His wife Julie ran off with a real estate agent and took the kid, spitting image of Ed, only cute. With that little potato nose, baby Dick was a cute baby. I remember the last time Ed got out of the Chevy Malibu, baby Dick in his arms and then Ed was gone for nearly two weeks. There were rumors that Ed was in trouble and could go to jail. Ed, that’s another reason Ed and Uncle Fred bonded; their names were two thirds the same.

Their names had an E – D ending. Ed, one day in Henry’s Tavern over few pitchers of beer, Ed explained how his existence felt like ED, something added on at the end of a verb, talked, laughed, loved and so on. Ed described himself as a passive, outmoded man, something added on as an after fact; to push a verb into the past, passé. Ed, half forgotten the moment of his first appearance, Ed pondered the unspoken verb, the never mentioned action to which he was added on, an action he never knew about, a path he never followed.

Ed's way of describing his name added to the depressing vibes of working in his crew as a house painter for Edwin's. The very company itself was on the skids. We never knew from one contract to the next if Edwin’s would make it through the season. Maybe some workers would have to be laid off. We painted the trim of one outdoor walk way at a plaza building overlooking a large parking lot. Then we did two low-income apartment buildings. I remember standing on sixth story balcony rails in order to paint balcony ceilings. I learned to place a forty foot ladder in position and to climb it, canvas drop-sheet over one shoulder, large plastic paint bucket and screen, roller, pole, paint can strapped to the belt, brushes and rags, all this in the sweltering heat of summer. Occasionally a tenant would stick his or her head out to see what was going on.

OK, this story is about how Ernie died and how I failed to stop at the scene of the accident. I felt compelled to say a few words about Ed and how I came to know him. He wasn't a pleasant man to be around. Ed was going through a hard time. He took refuge in alcohol. One night he passed out, head in the fridge. His liver was so damaged from hepatitis and heavy drinking; it took as little as two beers to get him drunk.

Here's what happened to Ernie. I was driving the Edwin company van to lunch, with Ed and a couple guys from the crew. Ed couldn't drive, after three impaired charges. Next time he’d go to jail. Every day, Ed had beer for breakfast and during coffee break. There was no way he would risk driving the company van.

I met Ernie ten years before the accident, during a nine-month stint as a janitor at a hospital complex. Ernie worked as assistant supervisor of the hospital supplies department. He pilfered food and linen, walked around with a grin and loved cracking dirty jokes. He would also down two or three beers every day around lunch time. The accident happened as a lot of people were heading down a six lane street, three lanes on each side of a boulevard.

Traffic was moving slow but sure, lunch hour traffic. Suddenly, in the fast lane, a blur of copper, I spotted Ernie’s 1967 Oldsmobile, with its 455 Rocket V8 engine. When you started it up, it growled like a lion under the hood. He let me drive it one time as we headed off to the cottage for a weekend booze up. I pressed heavy on the gas pedal. Suddenly wooden power line poles zipped past twice the normal speed. That was the easiest way to tell the difference between sixty and a hundred miles an hour.

I hadn't seen that car in ten years, until the day Ernie died. I was driving the van down a busy street to the plaza for lunch. Ed elbowed me in the ribs and said, “Lohbado, there’s someone eager to see you.”

I gazed over into the fast lane and saw Ernie, whom I hadn’t seen in ten years, smile, wave and then a flash of copper, a loud bang. The car flew up on the boulevard and hit a maple tree. Ernie wasn’t wearing a seat belt. Some cars back then didn’t even have seat belts.

Ernie flew head first into the windshield. A spider web pattern of cracking appeared in the glass. Ernie flopped back, a fountain of blood pouring down his forehead. His head rolled over the right shoulder. We briefly made eye contact. I saw the last flash of excitement in his eyes, as he had accelerated in the next lane in order to pull up next to the van and say hello.

I gazed into his eyes. He smiled, as if ready to crack another one of his dirty jokes. His eyes rolled back in the head. By the eye whites and floppy movement and rest, I could tell he was dead.

Ed shouted, “Don’t stop. Keep going.”

It was a fairly busy street. Lots of people saw the accident. I listened to Ed and kept going. I regret not having stopped to pay respects to Ernie.

No Health Coverage

2011-01-20T11:43:00.001-05:00

Admiral Benefice and my buddies would like to announce that many people of the modern world will not be given health coverage. If you want it, you gotta pay for it. I wouldn't want my tax dollars going to help anybody. Nobody helped me. Why should I worry about anyone else? I worked hard all my life to manage money that goes back generations in my family. You get my drift? So if you don't mind, I have an appointment at the Jolly Rogers Lounge down at the Country Club.

Get the Goat

2011-01-16T11:36:00.000-05:00

Whether you let it get your goat or not get your goat, Club Morono, quite predictably, has no ideas, only suggestions. Most of the suggestions won't work. They might even be useless. I just got back from lunch with Morono Man, a modern master of the moronic and he said, "Don't lose face over all that twitter. It's not supposed to be meaningful." Meaning is too academic. It's better to serve something soft, that melts in the mouth and is easy to swallow.

Last Visit

2011-01-09T13:18:00.005-05:00

Manic man Earl lived on the stop floor of a four-story walk-up. I entered the dimly lit building, narrow halls, a bleak set of stairs. My footsteps resonated up and down the shaft as I climbed the stairs to visit Earl. I hadn’t seen him in six months.

Like a fool, I went to his place out of pity. Didn’t I know it would backfire? It always backfires. Every time I get sucked in, out of pity, into someone’s needy condition, it backfires.

The person pretends to be helpless, puts out a grasping web of phone calls and emails. “Please, I need you. Come and visit.”

I go and then Earl goes crazy. He starts yapping and growling, dark eyes bulging as he vents pent up rage and frustration to compensate for low self-esteem and a sense of failure and alienation.

Earl was unemployable. He would get too excited, or else too quiet, either boiling over in your face, or heavy, a wet blanket. Underneath the mania and depression, he was a likable guy. I felt bad that he was unable to control himself. It ensured he would live a lonely, tired life.

Here’s how we became buddies. We met in the far north and agreed to split the costs, with another guy, of a plane trip to visit an Inuit hunting and fishing camp, during the month of April. About half way into the plane ride, Earl spotted a cabin on the ground and insisted that the pilot land so he could take photos and have a closer look. We weren't in any hurry, so Dan and I agreed with Earl's request. The pilot brought the plane down on the ice. We hiked over ice and hard snow to a cabin at the edge of the lake. The cabin was empty. No signs of anyone having been there in a while. It seemed like a dumb idea to land there, but Earl insisted. After about fifteen minutes, we got back in the plane.

The plane took off again, in a light fog and failed to clear an escarpment. The plane bounced off the rock and rolled down the snow and ice covered rock hill. The metal cage of the plane didn’t collapse.

As the plane rolled, a dark haze rushed before my eyes and a loud ringing in the ears. I could see stars and expected to be severely injured or killed. As the plane rolled, I prayed to lose consciousness, before the hurt happened. I didn’t want to feel any pain.

Boom! No time to think. Spun around like a monkey in a barrel, grit and snow crystals stung my face as the plane rolled. Dead silence, I hadn’t lost consciousness. I did a mental scan of my body and smiled. No injury, just a bruise on the forehead.

Earl started to cry. He was in shock, but no injury. I unbuckled the seat belt and crawled out through a space between metal beams, where a body panel had flown off on impact. I stood trembling, on the hard, white surface of frozen wilderness.

The pilot had a broken arm. Earl, Dan and I grabbed newspaper and seat cushions to build a fire and stay warm. Some Inuit fishermen arrived on snowmobile about fifteen minutes later. One of them radioed for help on a satellite phone. The pilot was lay on a blanket, in a daze, as an Inuk gathered snow in a kettle and put it on a Coleman stove. Soon we had tea and bannock to drive the chill out of our bones. The two Inuit men stayed with us until a helicopter arrived about an hour later.

That’s how Earl entered my life. We both fell on hard times. I lost my job. Earl spent all his inheritance. We ended up back in the city. At the age of fifty-four, after two years of being unemployed, I accepted the fact that I would never be employed again. Earl, forty-two years old, was too crazy for the workplace. He lived a thirty-minute walk from my place. I was his only friend. He was so intense, nobody could stand to be around him for very long.

He often told me, “Lohbado, you’re a blessed man. You’re so lucky. Your life is so rich. Me, I have nothing.”

He’d repeat this for about five minutes, how his life was wretched and my life fantastic. At first, it was embarrassing. It quickly got irritating, the mumbo jumbo self-pity routine.

The history of our friendship flashed through my mind as I visited his place for the first time in a little over a year. The visits were exhausting. He appeared oblivious to beauty and indifferent to his surroundings. He could live in a smelly, concrete cell, as long as there was a bed, TV, toilet, fridge and stove, plus the liberty to cross the street and buy jugs of strong beer. He only went out for beer and to buy cheap food, which he rendered inedible in the kitchen.

I learned to be up front about his cooking.

“Earl, I’m sorry, but I can’t eat this,” I said, the third time I accepted his insistent invitation to eat. The rice, he cooked uncovered in a frying pan, iron nail rice and shoe-leather meat. The room-temperature food turned my stomach. Fortunately, he was a miser. I sensed he was somehow glad I didn’t eat. It would cost him less.

His desire to share food was part of the psychology of eating. According to an old ritual, one takes food from the abdominal cavity, a ritual sharing, a mixing of solids and fluids. We bonded to become gastric juice brothers.

He stood there stunned in his tee shirt and pajama bottoms as I pushed the plate aside.

“Sorry Earl.”

“The dinner is a failure,” he said, in a reproachful tone of voice, as if it was my fault that his food was inedible.

His voice implied that a true friend would make an effort. I should try to like his stomach-turning food and eat it like a good sport.

I politely stood my ground. He got the point and never insisted I eat his food again.

“You don’t like my cooking,” he repeated.

“No, I don’t,” I said, calmly.

One time he served sour mashed potatoes and huge pork sausages. When I poked a fork through the thick skin, pork juice squirted me in the eye. The skin had the texture of a rubber band.

At least it was clear, as I visited him for the last time. He would not offer food. I climbed the stairs, paused to catch my breath. The door flew open. Earl, in pajamas, invited me in and then returned to his large bed, offering a view of the toilet and facing a large TV. I asked him to please turn down the TV.

“Ok, Ok. TV too loud. Ok, Ok,” he reached for the remote control and turned off the volume.

Earl liked noise. He talked loud and liked the TV loud. He made jerky movements with his hands and sometimes sprayed saliva as he explained something that needed no explanation. As he belabored the obvious, he would keep asking me if I understood.

I’d say over and over again, during pauses in his monologues, “I understand.”

He didn’t believe I understood. His voice got louder, until my ears hurt. I repeated back his words, in a futile attempt to convince him I understood his simple ideas. He wouldn’t stop until the fury expended itself. After shouting the same thing over and over again, he became drowsy.

Nothing stayed in his mind very long. He was easily distracted and except for his manic outbursts, usually drowsy. His favorite posture was in bed, leaning against pillows propped up against the wall, a cordless phone in one hand, a beer or remote control in the other. Empty bottles filled his bedside table.

I stayed half an hour and then left. He was satisfied. His mania lasted about twenty minutes. During the final ten minutes of our visit, he got tired and bored. Good thing he got easily bored. He never insisted I stay longer. He wanted me to go, so he could roll over and take a nap. The visits were exhausting for both of us. I vowed to never go back. We could communicate by telephone.

Macaroni New Year Seasoning Wishes

2011-01-08T23:09:00.002-05:00

Bitter lemon New Years and Cuoco for macaroni with sardine seasoning wishes to happy travelers on life's long highway, Club Morono wishes you all a wonderful time, with lots of happiness. It benefits nobody to be unhappy, although nobody said life was going to be easy. Maybe a bit of lemon to soften the bitter edge and some young fennel, salted sardines and raisins to transform a lowly plate of spaghetti into gourmet New Years fare.

I found the can of Cuoco macaroni seasoning in a cupboard after moving into this apartment a year and a half ago. The previous tenant left quite a bit of food behind. Since January 2011 was the expiry date on the bottom of the can, I decided to eat the sardine pesto with spaghetti for lunch. It tasted fine, another food adventure, to sample various types of cuisine.

Santa's Gift to the First Comers

2010-12-26T12:12:00.001-05:00

Lohbado went to the annual Club Morono Baby Jesus Dinner down at the Tabernacle, the place of mythology and suspension of disbelief. Strong emotions surged through his long thin body, as he sat in the banquet hall, polluted with pop tunes filtered through the drone machine and compressed by drop-tile ceiling speakers to lower sound to a flavorless, easy to digest sonic consistency, like baby food. All in a positive light, no leaks, only officially endorsed subliminal messages to grease public awareness into swallowing hard pills, as wealthy control groups laughed up their sleeves at how easy it was. Another two years of tax breaks; reduce assistance to sick, poor, unemployed and elderly.

Lohbado sat alone at a table, since he was one of the first to arrive and nursed his glass of cheap, bitter red wine. He tried to read cheerful messages into the dregs at the bottom. He didn't have long to ponder the meaning of a glass of wine. A man, about forty, a thick mop of black hair, waltzed in and said Santa was outside. Santa also came too soon. Where were the people to receive the gifts?

The door burst open, knocking the man aside. Speaking of the devil, there he was, the good old Saint Nick himself, flushed red like a Lucifer match head, a man with a long, flowing beard and silky white hair, the one and only Santa Claus. Holy Mary, Mother of Mercy, it was the saint of gift giving himself, the one who appears without fail every Baby Jesus Day, to celebrate the arrival of the One who brings peace with a sword, to separate mother from daughter, brother from sister, to break up families and cast disbelievers into eternal torture, extraordinary Christmas rendition straight to hell.

Nick said: "I got a little special something to reward the eagerness of early comers and to make latecomers jealous, a little something from the dancing, prancing reindeer. These special little brown reindeer pills are the key to an inner labyrinth. Take these pills and open the door to subconscious delight that would make Freud stroke his beard in approval. I let the reindeer graze one month in the multi-colored meadow of magic flowers. As the reindeer began to fly, I collected their bliss-filled shit and piss and made it into pills to blow your mind, to unleash psychotic visions and escapist fantasies, in other words, a little relief from the human condition, before returning to the grindstone, to earn one's bread by the sweat of one's brow. Swallow two of these pills and enjoy a few hours of fun, thanks to Santa and his little reindeer."

Moronovian Christmas

2010-12-14T14:20:00.001-05:00

Lohbado had Christmas blues, good evil routine, sin forgiveness merry-go-round, the wheel of happy sad, good times bad times, arrogant and on top of the world a while and then at the bottom, afraid, suspicious and discouraged. The blues ended as three wise aliens appeared in the east and communicated with Lohbado via a Zog-voice-de-scrambler.

Lohbado found himself tranported to a park on the side of an old mountain. He entered the iron gates and approached a graveyard, with a temple-shaped granite structure in the middle. The voice of Zog from the de-scrambler entered the temple of Lohbado's inner ear and echoed inside the brain mansion.

This is a Moronovian Door. Enter in, you slackers and faint-hearted, you who have given up on life, after one too many mishaps, failures, accidents, after too many arguments, after damaging words and shameful behavior. You've arrived on the threshold of the Moronovian Room. Or rather, this is the Gangster Mausoleum. Men and women who lived and died by the sword paid a lot to be remembered, in the fearful and quickly forgotten place of death, in a shady grove on the wet side of an old mountain.

Lohbado looked around and saw holy people and good hearted dreamers climbing the magic mountain, while broken-hearted malingerers got lost in the forest or stuck among thick undergrowth. In the middle of the ragged, poorly maintained hedges stood the Gangster Mausoleum, a monument to big egos, mean son of a bitches, who wanted to be remembered.

But the world goes so fast, the only memory of them that remained was a fading bad feeling. The gangsters were to be feared, but not respected or admired. Lohbado was a mental gangster, who spent too long gazing into the sky, in search of space connections. However, his years of sky-gazing paid off. His seeking eyes saw a space ship land in the clearing, among weeds and long grass. Lohbado rubbed his eyes in amazement as the dust settled and three beings got out of the doughnut-shaped space ship.

A trio of aliens, inhabitants of Planet Zog, a woman about fifty, a woman about twenty-eight and a one-eyed man stood before Lohbado. Their mission was to confirm that Planet Earth was still capable of hosting life forms. Lohbado was the perfect specimen. In all zoglihood, Lohbado, as far as the Zogs could tell, was a classic instance of Zogabilly Zobstance. He followed the aliens through the dark, menacing doorway and into the temple of death. The aliens motioned for him to wait at the side of a granite pool.

Lohbado, whose mind had been blown long ago from looking at clouds and stars too long and from falling into one too many holes due to not watching where he was going, ended up alone and forsaken, with no one to blame but himself. As he stood at the edge of a pink granite pool inside the granite mausoleum and gazed into black, moldy sludge and green slime, Zeb told him to accept Zog breath from Zelda, the youngest of the crew.

Zelda placed her hands on Lohbado's shoulders and breathed into his mouth. He held her breath a few seconds. It felt so good, he wanted to do it again. She said, once is enough. It's too easy to get addicted to Zog breath or dependent on Zelda.

Zeb then handed Lohbado a cup of liquified breath, a distilled mixture of nitrous oxide, oxygen and hydrogen with a dash of blood to give it flavor. Lohbado drank from the cup of Zog. His eyes opened to the error of his ways. He fell down on his knees and begged forgiveness.

Zelda told him to get up. The three space aliens got back in the Zocket Ship and flew away. Lohbado's heart overflowed with Christmas cheer.

"God bless us everyone," he cried, as the Zocket Ship roared back to Planet Zog.

in front of a store in Montreal

2010-12-13T23:06:00.000-05:00

What would you like for Christmas? How much is that gray cat in the window, not to mention the golden good luck cat or the red bicycle? The window also features the Moronovian syllable "OR", which means, the great alternative. It's also the French word for gold. In other words, the situation holds rich possibilities. Whether things go one way, or the other, the results will be favorable.

Pickle Jar Paradise

2010-12-07T12:23:00.003-05:00

One night grandmother got really drunk. She stole her grandson's scooter and drove around the village, screaming and hollering in her nightgown. She tried to seduce a man in front of his wife. They slapped each other, pulled hair. Later her husband got angry.

She said: "Don't judge. There's a reason things are the way they are."

Drunk and wild, the confessions of Edgar, don't, don't, don't. Alcohol sometimes makes a man mean, aggressive and violent. I've seen it too many times. I'm telling you what happened to me. Don't turn to alcohol. Use religion or whatever non-destructive way you can imagine, but not booze.

After about fifty times in and out of detox, I met a man who also had a tough time. He said it might help to confess. Confess to a piece of paper. Pick up the pen and write to stay sane.

Very good. Middle aged man, alone, sits down to write. The mind blanks out and yet one is burning to communicate, to ease the pressure. I used to reach for the bottle to calm the nerves, but it only made things worse. Now, without protection, sit down with the mind, as is and deal with it.

Suddenly the basement apartment feels oppressive. The low ceiling pushes down and the walls close in.
It's hard to breathe. Fine, play a game with this. Pretend the pressure is somebody giving you a hug. If you have a lively imagination, call quietly to the great bear spirits of the rock hill, Oogah and Oorsis.These male and female spirits rock you in their arms. Feel the tension drain out of the body. The mind becomes peaceful.

Then let the pen take over. I started writing a memory of being in the Arctic, climbing a snow and ice covered rock hill in the dim light of December. It's about 30 below zero, but I'm wearing parka, down-filled snow pants, felt lined boots, huge mitts and a pair of glasses to block the wind.

Wind roars across the tundra and over the hill. Snow crystals burn the face. It's hard to keep the eyes open as a polar wind cuts one down. Tighten the parka. Find shelter behind a house-sized boulder. Gaze at the transparent streams of dry snow. Open your eyes and your mind to the vast space of northern wilderness. This is the great bear hug of Oogah and Oorsis.

The Product Rules

2010-12-02T12:02:00.001-05:00

Funny smell, is it my breath? Do I have toast and coffee, kitty litter breath in the morning? It takes a couple cups of hot coffee to burn away the slime and muck that coats mouth and throat after a night in bed. The bed serves as a doorway to dreamland. Sometimes disconnected mind appears to communicate with dead friends and family.

After a while, death... OK, I can see it's a grave matter, best left unspoken. I don't want to come across as a moralistic, deadbeat killjoy. I'll stick to dreams and not enter the world of the dead until the final invitation makes it impossible to refuse.

It's impolite to talk about hair loss, wrinkles, tooth decay and body odor, unless in the context of promoting the product. A sure way to be loved and happy would be to buy the product. Keep purchasing updates to render the product more effective in taking advantage of latest developments of the product company. In fact, in case it wasn't already clear: THE PRODUCT RULES.

You are a product of the product. To be a success, you gotta sell yourself, summarize your features, functions and effectiveness in one page. Tell us why you would be the best candidate. Mention, in passing, a harmless token weakness to show you're only human and that you're willing to grow and learn under the direction of The Product. Describe, in one sentence, some of your organizational accomplishments and contributions. Tell us what you would contribute to a dynamic team of youthful ground-breaking innovators. Are you willing to work long hours without claiming overtime? Would you work at home and indefinitely post pone vacation in order to meet ever-pressing, important deadlines?

Anyway, the smell that hit me as I got up to get a free coffee refill was possibly bad breath expelled from my lungs and blown back in my face like a small puff of vehicle exhaust. It could have been a smell from the grill; maybe a meat patty overcooked, or a grease filter hadn't been changed in a while. Maybe somebody threw a diaper or soiled napkin in the garbage. In any case, response was quick and effective. Once I sat down with a fresh cup of coffee, the smell was gone. Either my nose got used to the smell, or the source of the odor removed.

The air vents in that place were able to suck away human aroma. You could park an overflowing garbage truck under one of those vents and not smell it from the next table, thanks to the miracle of modern ventilation. I finished the coffee, put the paper cup in the garbage and returned home.

out of the norm

2010-11-29T16:01:00.002-05:00

Jagged A, neon C, cool purple B and a hot H separate food booth signs in the food court. One booth, red, white and green sells pizza. The next booth, red and white, Chinese food; next, the hot dog bistro, then Halal falafel, Ranchito Latino, dumplings, club sandwiches and so on, enough food to keep a glutton busy for weeks. A steady buzz of background pop tunes filtered through speakers set into the drop-tile ceiling, this is where the remarkable encounter with a space alien occurred.

I sat at a shiny table near a group of men engaged in coffee and conversation. One of the men, in a white linen suit, gazed at me with a psychedelic stare. Something about the man appeared out of the norm, maybe the waxy gray skin, or the large, baby-doll blue eyes or pointy ears. When he turned his head a certain way, fine, almost invisible wires picked up light from florescent ceiling lamps. The fine, filament wires vibrated like toaster coils quivering when one accidentally bumps the toaster while reaching to turn on the coffee machine. Those were unmistakable space antennas.

A wave of biofeedback flowed, like soothing warm water, through my brain and spread in a warm shiver of deep relaxation and well-being throughout my body. A force took possession of my body and had access to memory files hidden in the hard drive of my brain. At the same instant of blissful streaming, a light, popping sound created slight pressure inside my skull. I sensed what was going on, an alien presence from a literal space alien.

The space alien established contact before I was even aware of what was going on. It was almost like his mind and my consciousness merged and became inseparable, like two superimposed monads. The space alien mind and my mind were one. It was impossible, for an instant, to separate space alien mind from alienated human mind.

Fortunately, I remembered the mental event which took place during this extraordinary moment of earth/space consciousness. An understanding occurred, in the form of a thought indicating it might be nice to order a bean burrito from Mi Ranchito Latino for lunch and to wash it down with a one dollar cup of coffee served in a white Styrofoam cup.

At the moment of this thought occurrence, the connection disappeared. I tapped the side of my head to try and find the signal, but it was gone. This dramatic and unusual event ended as quickly as it began, without allowing me a chance to pose any one of the thousands of pressing metaphysical questions that had built up over the years, regarding the mystery of the universe and the possibility of receiving a few illuminating answers to end the darkness of not knowing.

Human/alien contact resulted in nothing more profound than the desire to order a bean burrito and cup of coffee. And so, like many a mundane adventure, Lohbado was left breathless, jaw hanging, as the great white stallion of time and space galloped through the plains of consciousness like a giant burst of warm downward moving wind or flatulence. By the mustard on that wiener over there, I swear this is the truth.

go blow your horn

2010-11-24T09:57:00.000-05:00

To understand this image and the origin of the conceptual universe with its towers of belief, it helps to remember the famous nursery rhyme: Little Boy Blue go blow your horn/ the sheep's in the meadow/ the cow's in the corn./ Where is the little boy tending the sheep?/ Under the haystack fast asleep.

Rather than jump in and say what might be implied, why not step back and contemplate the cornucopia of a French horn? It looks as if a pilot dropped fruit and cereal breakfast from a plane after a period of turbulence. A moldy lemon, sugar puffs, cherrios, cherries, prunes and peach goo thrown up in the air and left to land, like yarrow sticks dropped to allow one to read messages open to interpretation, what does it all mean?

Maybe one should wake up, stop counting sheep and instead, go milk the cows in order to bring home the bacon and put bread on the table like a responsible citizen. It's not right to sleep like a needle in a haystack when one could be out touting one's horn in the cacophony of the workplace. Everyone has a note to play in the dissonant composition of daily life, a furious sound, filled with signification about nothing, which implies everything and also open, indescribable spaciousness.

And if you like it, it tastes great. And if you don't like it, pretend, or at least try to like it and in this way avoid un-likeability.

the apple of my eye

2010-11-20T11:14:00.000-05:00

At this very moment, I'm eating a room-temperature red apple. If the apples aren't eaten, they soften and rot. Such unspectacular moments make up a big part of life. It's easy to space out or be distracted during mundane moments, for example, while standing in line to pay for a four liter bottle of bleach, on special for 99 cents, limit three jugs per customer. The woman at the cash wished me a good evening and then laughed, since it was 9:04 AM. The store had opened four minutes ago. It took four minutes to walk in, pick out a jug of bleach and some nose tissue and then walk to the checkout counter.

This quite ordinary event took place after an equally undramatic moment in the cafe across the street, where I went for coffee before going to the store. I sat upstairs in the uncrowded eating area to enjoy a cup of coffee and read a book. A team of men appeared with ladders, buckets, squeegees and cleaning products and cleaned the windows on the inside, as a sudden squall of strong wind and rain tore down the street. That's all that happened. The men were polite and efficient.

I went home, did a pencil drawing, ate some toast, did a little yoga and while eating an apple, did this post.

Gentleman seeks Lady

2010-11-16T10:36:00.002-05:00

Lohbado gentleman seeks Lobada lady for quiet and discreet conversation about footwear and the dangers of noise. Must be non-smoker, non-lottery ticket buyer, non-TV watcher and non-radio listener (except Harvey Christ Radio Hour or Mannlicher Carcanno). Clacky heels need not apply. Orthopedic shoes preferred. Leather orthopedic shoes, especially cream-colored and white socks to match, could lead to marriage. Wigs are OK, but must be without perfumes or fruit and floral odors.

Like just about every man woman and child on planet earth, Lohbado has been known to go through ups and downs and so has learned the importance of not judging others. Let he or she who is without clogged nostrils have the first sneeze. Lohbado and Lohbada met in the shadow of a tree, where they brought behind-the-door-demons out into the open and then fell in love.

They were generous enough to tolerate each other. They patiently held their tongues when the devil made them forked, when beads of venom leaked from the roof of the mouth and rolled in poisonous beads over taste buds. It takes skill to not wag the tongue and spit venom, to not say what is best left unsaid. Let he or she who is without stone cast the first throw.

Better to shout into an empty yogurt container, snap the lid tight and put it in the recyclables bin than to nag someone like water dripping endlessly. Let bygones be bygones. Shake hands. Be bosom buddies, on good terms, or at the very least, polite and able to refrain from snapping out with harsh remarks or cynical, stinging words that go right to the heart like rusty nails into custard pudding.

Time to make up. Sweep it under the carpet, lock skeletons back in the closet and clean out the attic. Everyone has his or her long sad story of heartache, sorrow and pain. No need to be jealous. There's nothing worth envy. Even a person on top of the world would suffer to see his brothers and sisters of the dreaming universe going through trials and tribulations as they struggle through the valley of the shadow of death, or get lost in the forest of confusion, fall into the swamp of despair, or stumble with uncertainty to the top of rock hills. People are drowning in financial difficulties, relationship issues, ill health, accident or misfortune. To witness the state of the world would be enough to make even the most happy-go-lucky on top of the world individual shed a tear.

As Tiny Tim said: God bless us everyone. And may you find the mate you're looking for and live happily through years of couples counseling, mediation and legal advice.

three ways of walking down the street

2010-11-11T19:32:00.001-05:00

Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil; actually the first man (left to right) has a cell phone clipped to the ear. The second man is texting, while the third man is welcoming cosmic vibes, opening his chakras, or maybe getting a buzz of something or other. This is a colorized version of a black and white image in Issue One of Club Morono zine, which will be kicked off at Expozine this weekend, along with a comic, The Wheel of Lohbado.

Mind Temple

2010-10-31T12:18:00.002-04:00

There's nothing worse than waking up in darkness and having to pee. One time I woke up in pitch black and thought the body had become a corpse and that nothing was left but the thought of having to use the toilet. This absurd thought lasted only a few seconds as I stumbled for the light switch. In Greek mythology, there's a dream temple. The word temple is too obviously loaded with connotations, no point going on about it. In Club Morono, the temple provides a giant container where one could sit and listen to the echo of thought, or maybe even try to catch a glimpse of thought itself.

Echo of thought refers to the effect, or reaction to thought. It's pretty complicated. I'm not an expert and so will avoid confusion that might result if I go into detail. It's simple enough to sit in a room and look at what's going on in the mind.

I enjoy watching the old heaven/earth/hell duality that played such a big part during the first twenty years of my life, before being liberated from the church. In a nutshell, the followers of Nomroh go to Planet Blop Heaven when they die. Morono respects followers of other religions and is not evangelistic. Instead of dogma, Morono presents mythology and suggestions. No Moronite would be arrogant enough to claim to know the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help my God. In Morono, there's nothing to fight about. Planet Earth involves suffering and frustration, where as Planet Blop offers a kind of Santa Claus, tooth fairy place for those who would like to believe it.

When you're stumbling about in the dark, go towards the light bulb. Eva Katz wrote an enlightening book on the subject called: To the Light Bulb.

Chief Priest of Nomroh

2010-10-18T12:39:00.002-04:00

Wearing the three-propeller decorative head dress to symbolize the three zeros or significant Os, this chief priest of Nomroh allowed me to capture his image with pen and paper during a recent Club Morono gathering at the tabernacle above the butcher shop.

After the opening Moronite ritual, Lohbado, after beating his chest with grapes, spoke a few inspirational words about the importance of being organized, using a not too tight, but fairly structured method, based on the time-honored shot-gun approach.

"Pepper the area with buckshot and one is bound to hit the target," he explained, in a low, sluggish voice, "One could meet the challenges of the new economic downturn using a variety of postures."

Posture is one of the pillars supporting Morono Philosophy, for example, the posture of hurrying down the street, while talking into a cell phone, or the slower pace one adopts for text-messaging. No need to catalog the endless series of movements and sounds one adopts in relation to technology, not to mention those bodily changes required by the very nature of existence.

Separating, for the purpose of analysis, gestures and sounds from activities intended fulfill a purpose or objective, Lohbado talked about how one's performance could be enhanced through close scrutiny of physical and mental response.

"The idea is to relax and not get too excited," concluded Lohbado.

Egg Break

2010-10-14T12:12:00.000-04:00

Most people know the meaning of coffee break, however, in Club Morono, one frequently takes an egg break. Eggs provide protein and a connection to the mother of all breakfasts, the hen. What would tempera painters from the renaissance have done without good old egg yolk to bind pigment to the picture surface?

Dusan Makavejev briefly shows egg handling in the famous underground classic film, WR Mysteries of the Organism. To do egg handling, gather in a circle, break an egg, pour the contents into the hand and then pass it around. There are many variations of this exercise.

However, the point about egg break is that it provides a good opportunity for employees to sit around, cackle and have a good chuckle before getting back to work.

Bread O

2010-10-12T10:16:00.001-04:00

Before composing an inspirational homily about the after life heaven on Planet Blop, I went to the cafe down the street for morning coffee. An hour of coffee, prayer and contemplation at the cafe in the strip mall this morning, order a medium black coffee. Sit at a table where a man just got up and left, seat still warm. Waves of chatter from people gathered around tables made it difficult to concentrate, but at the same time, made my mind more fluid and receptive to messages beaming down from the enlightened Planet of Blop, to guide world-wearing beings down the hard road of life.

Lohbado wandered into the forest of his confused mind and found the path to heaven, the peaceable kingdom on Planet Blop, a giant version of life here on earth, but without the shortcomings. In the heaven of Planet Blop, roses were without thorns, one could hob nob with celebrities and have the desired hairdo or set of boobs, lips, shoulders, masculine, feminine, although experts say celestial beings don't have genitals or digestive organs. Perhaps masculine or feminine is an irrelevant distinction for afterlife beings of Planet Blop heaven.

Without the battle of the sexes, one could live in a state of uninterrupted blissful streaming or orgasmic satiation. To appreciate the bliss, images of life on earth are projected on giant video screens, as a reminder of the misery one left behind, after one died and went to the after life heaven of Planet Blop. Lohbado felt pity for those who chose alternate routes through life. He was certain that the Way to Planet Blop heaven salvation was the only Way and that those who chose alternate routes were destined to sorrow, disappointment and in some cases, the lake of eternal fire, or hell, the place where those who disagree with Blop opinions end up.

Grateful to have found the Way, Lohbado beat his chest and shouted: Ooo-Cha, Ooo-ooo-cha and so on. He preached morning proclamations, mind come lose. Coffee worked like a can opener on his brain, letting lose a ball of worms, oozing, basking and wriggling, his voice, loud like a stone rattling around in an aluminum can.

subject to decay

2010-10-01T01:27:00.000-04:00

"All human things are subject to decay/ And, when Fate summons, monarchs must obey:" John Dryden, MacFlecnoe. Peachy last week, ripe for eating, meditating on a cushion of butter, this week, the peach was old, wrinkled and prickly. Did you still want to eat it?