Tentacle Porn: A Lengthy History of The Octopus Diary

FRIENDLINGS!

Happy week before Xmas. I hope your credit cards are all maxed out and the scent of pine has wiped out all traces of pumpkin spice around you!

I just wanted to stop by the Octopus Diary for a nice fireside chat. 2016 will mark the 10-year anniversary of my blogging habit. It has been a wonderful thing for me to have this forum/format in which to communicate and I have no plans to quit, though I would like to make some changes. Upgrade. Renovate. Reinvent.

Octopus Art from 2012

My very first blog was written in 2006 on the hushed aquamarine backdrop of MySpace. It was just an empty shout-out to a galaxy known as cyberspace and it didn't get much of a response. But I kept at it, and soon I had a small circle of bloggers I shared my thoughts with--mostly my take on politics and the social constructs that made me go "WTF??"  Oh, and my morbid fascination with America's Next Top Model!

It was all fun & games back then.

The Octopus Diary didn't get its name until 12-19-08 when I branched off from MySpace and onto Blogger, where you still find me today. I kept to my satirical politics and social commentary, but also added some personal elements, which everyone loved.

Then in 2010-2011, things got really personal. The blog became my therapist and basically I wrote what I now know to be my "Bro Manifesto." [Always ahead of the game] : )))

My manifesto was much more literary and creative than most manifestos I've read, but the spirit of it was there. My fragile male ego was lashing out of its feminine entrapments and making everyone else go "WTF??"

Ahhh, those were lonely times in the blogosphere. And unlike the other bros with manifestos, I actually had a grand epiphany that did not lead to mass murder, but rather to a place of growth & forgiveness.

Octopus Art from 2015

At the end of 2011, as a reward for your patience, I decided to branch out again and include artwork with all the monotonous text I fed you. I tried a Wordpress location for my new venture & made a valiant effort to BRAND myself & become a Blog Emperor!!  [remember how big "branding" was in 2011??]

I renamed The Octopus Diary "The Centipeep Show!" and burrowed deeper into the soft tissues of the internet than ever before. What I found were lots & lots of people doing the exact same thing and doing it way better than I was. 

I was more of a Sultan than an Emperor. But I was enjoying my delusions of grandeur and just kept at it.

It wasn't until 2013 that I asked myself WTF am I doing here? Is this even a thing anymore? Do I have anything to say? Does anyone care? Do I still feel the need to dump the contents of my head onto this phantom platform?

And the answer was No. And Yes. And no. And yes. And…well…I'm still here.

Art from The Centipeep Show 2011

2014-2015 gave me (and everyone else) lots of heavy shit to handle. Lots of new scary things to consider about ourselves and the world. It was hard for me to coordinate my senses into anything resembling communication. It was hard to know where to begin a sentence let alone string a bunch of sentences together into something that made sense.

So I made even more art & put it here between my words just in case my words were big unreadable clots of thought that had no meaning the way I'd arranged them.

Somehow I kept doing that until I felt a little better and could see the meaning in words again.

Now I have begun a new journey that would be very interesting to document. Much more tangible and visual than some of the abstract, esoteric journeys I've documented here before. I'm changing. Upgrading. Renovating myself. It's a little scary to think of sharing this new journey, but I probably will…

…and if I can't muster the courage to do that, well, there's always the state of our world to report in a scathing unsentimental fashion with all traces of humor removed because...

…NOTHING is funny anymore. Not politics. Not cats. Not even dicks are funny anymore.

Will we (I) ever laugh again??

Find out here…

in the OCTOPUS DIARY 2016. 

Art from the 1990s before anyone even knew what a blog was

Art from 2014 when shit got weird

Art from 2006 when I was drunk all the time

Art from 2013 when life was good

TARANTULA VACCINATION

FRIENDS,

I've been threatening to write something serious about mental illness/depression/anxiety for quite awhile now. This is a topic that everyone should have an opinion about, if not a firsthand account of.

I was a person who struggled pretty hard against depression & anger & gender dysphoria all my life. Sure that sucks, but the beauty I now see in it is that I was ABLE TO STRUGGLE AGAINST IT. I fought it on my own with a very determined nervous system, a heaping self-prescribed dosage of alcohol, and ART of all kinds.

On top of (or in spite of) all that, I found someone to be in love with and to share the dreams and disappointments life serves up in unscheduled increments. In other words, I was finally able to feel that thing called "happiness"--the thing I saw other people enjoying all around me for years. The thing my mom practically demanded of me but I could never deliver. Happiness.

I treasured my happiness, and I even took measures to guard it from the world by retreating more into the love & art and backing away from society's noise. 

I believed that as long as I was surrounded by art & love & quietude, the happiness would keep paying its dividends into my nervous depository. And it did for a long time.

Beautiful cherries

Then in 2014…something happened. I don't really know what. I won't even try to describe it, but something in my nervous system went haywire and no art, no love, no amount of positive thinking, no amount of delirious exercising or exorcising could make it go away.

And though I'd sworn off the mental health professionals many years ago (for good reason), things finally got critical enough that I surrendered to those very professionals. I probably surrendered to them in the nick of time too--I couldn't have gone another week without the medication I was given. I wouldn't be here now writing this enchanting & profound piece of bloggery.

[As unserious as that sounds, I am totally serious.]

But here's what I'm seeing & hearing all around me: more people than ever struggling with a degree of depression or anxiety that cannot be conquered in old familiar ways. 

We all struggle. Struggling is what we do most. But we're usually up to the task. We don't like it, but we put one foot in front of the other until we can have that drink, or call that friend, or gaze at that porn video rubbing our gooey crotches until they explode.

All that self-ministration is failing to deliver the needed respite from stress levels that can barely be graphed.

Alien ministrations

Here's another thing--I see men struggling more. More than women. More than I've ever seen men (admit to) struggling. 

I think mental health is something women may have a leg up on because they've historically been allowed to explore it. To be vulnerable, needy, or emotional. To seek help. I see women more able to handle stress in these times because they have done the hard work of evolving through the stigma of it.

I don't want to "genderify" mental illness too much. But in this age of the "internet confessional" I have feasted my eyes on lots of male vulnerability I didn't know was there. I've read your manifestos, bros.

And I feel your pain. I am a feminist who also champions men's rights. Or am I a "masculist" who champions women's rights? I'm not sure yet. But…I've slipped & slidden across the gender divide many times and I get that society places a lot of pressure on both genders to be a certain way. 

I can also see how these enforced, abstract gender roles can easily go from complementary to antagonistic. This is another thing I've seen flying around on the internet too much--lots of rancor in the binary. 

It makes a genderqueer like me very sad. But I'm also hopeful that this is just a big paroxysm of evolution. Women have fought hard to have their voices heard, to be granted the rights and the protections they've been granted. And I have been in that fight from the time I was a small child who was told that girls & women were some sort of "inferior other." 

Gender roles as presented to me when I first arrived on Earth

Now women are tough, bad ass bitches--though there is still much to fight for. 

I think we've reached a plateau where women will not be able to advance until men are able to fix what is wrong on their side of the binary scale. These sprees of violence perpetrated on large groups of people and often ending in suicide, this backlash against political correctness, the abuse of power in business and law enforcement, the fact that we've been at war for 15 years--

--these are all largely "men's issues." And they have grown to monstrous proportions. These things will not change unless men are allowed to let their inner momma's boys be heard. This may be quite annoying until we get used to it. Remember how women were called "shrill" when they spoke up about abuse & inequality? Well…men will probably be called "whiny" if they speak up about what they need…I have heard/seen the word "whiny" applied to men who speak up about…anything.

We don't like a whiny man in our society. Just like we don't like a shrill woman. Too bad. We need to whine & be shrill when the greater good is at stake. So…next time you hear a man whining---listen. Try to respond with something besides "Stop whining & man up."

In the 90s & 00s I remember the benevolent "male feminists" who fought alongside women in their riot to be heard. Sure they may've just been in it for the sex, but I think we've evolved past that insipid pay-off mentality, (haven't we??) I think it's time for women to "woman-up" and be "female masculists" or whatever we want to call it.

Fight for the rights of all of us to be equally tough/ equally vulnerable/equally paid/equally responsible for the human race. Fight for the right of all of us to be sane & healthy & at peace with ourselves so that we may be at peace with each other.

Well…that was my big important blog about mental health, as always viewed from my gendery microscope. All opposition in the world begins & ends with that most fundamental double standard of all…

********

AND NOW!!!! If your attention span is not spent like a $1.97 at Wal-mart…here is some stream of consciousness:

Excessive force from the spirit world. As opposed to a war in the flesh it is appropriate to bare all. To lay all your cards on the bathroom floor and wear your uniform in the shower. Unlike hand to hand combat there is only one mortal in the game---and you're it. In both types of war you must be on high alert, listening for bootsteps, crunching leaves, pindrops or IEDS. But spirits will show you pictures in your dreams, and you must follow their command. There will be no shouting sergeants or practice raids. Only a soggy pillow and the haunting sense of deja vu--you've done this before in broken frames. Now you have to do it in one take. 11-9-15

*****

Yesterday,

I was injected w/ tarantula venom. Those of you who think I always speak in code be gratified for this is code for something. And those of you who know the code--I accept your congratulations. Code is metaphor for code; metaphor is code for metaphor. But it's all imagery to me. And it's powerful & evocative & disruptive & clever & it's not quite as forgiving as political correctness, yet it's not as fascist as blowing hard just because you can afford to get sued by a globeful of people and not be eating from a dumpster.

Hooray for tarantula venom!

XO,

Today 12-8-15

********************

Cecil & Pixel

Bye, folks, bye! bye! bye!!! I'll see you next time in the Octopus Squishery

UNCONDITIONAL BLOG

Friends,

*PLEASE READ THIS BLOG IN SARAH SILVERMAN'S VOICE*

[I the undersigned agree to this term and condition] X______________________________

Well, friends, in about a week or so I will be going through puberty again. This may sound like one of my super-secretive ultra-witchy coded-backhanded attempts at surrealistic realism. But honestly, you can take it at face value. Don't read between the lines (in Silverman's dulcet-electric tones).

Here's another thing--I forgot to worry about polka dots. When I take the time to worry about every tiny thing that could possibly go wrong in any given situation, then usually nothing goes wrong. But it didn't even occur to me to worry about the dots. Now they are here, doing the polka on my flesh. Uh-oh. And it's too late to worry so I'll just have to deal…

Here's another thing: Thanksgiving is all about shopping and football. And gluttony. But for me Thanksgiving has always been a secure place from which to assess the entire year & decide what to be most thankful for.

I saw lots of thankful posts on Facebook yesterday & I loved seeing that even if I didn't comment or hit the 'like' button as many times as I wanted to. I think we really have shifted from being an ego-driven species to being a spirit-driven species in just a matter of years.

I like to say this shift started happening around 12-21-12. But it really started right after 9/11. It has just taken this long for enough of us to get it. And we couldn't have done it without Facebook (or MySpace. Don't forget about MySpace. MySpace is the Mary to Facebook's Jesus). 

And we couldn't have done it without making mistakes. Oh, I've made many mistakes in this life! But I've been watching you & you have made many mistakes too. But I don't feel as horrible about my (or your) mistakes as I once did.

It's all okay. And the millennials will do a much better job at facilitating evolution than any other generation. Once they turn 40, that is. They still have to go through their own generational puberty pangs.

So…yeah…thankful for Humanitor surging ahead in its evolution.

Another thing I'm thankful for is that 2015 was not 2014. 2014 was unspeakable. But I will never forget it. Never bury it deep in my anatomical graveyard. And I will indeed speak about it. Someday soon--

--because I've seen & heard a lot about anxiety & depression going off the charts recently. And I have my little 2 cent contribution to that conversation. But not today.

Today I want to enjoy how thankful I am for many things, not just the date on the calendar ( and in spite of these hideous polka dots!)

*********************************

During our move I found lots of old boxes of stuff. Including some Childhood Art!! Here we see a very old version of Vin & Juliet. In 1st grade I became obsessed with wanting to be Chinese. [This was well before the Michael Derrick Hudson scandal or the Rachel Dolezal fiasco] I was not only gender dysphoric, but racially distressed. I think my yearning to be Chinese had more to do with past life remembrances than any real understanding of race. But all of my artwork from 1st-2nd grade was Asian inspired.

NOW--HERE IS SOME SURREALISTIC REALISM TO SINK YOUR EYEBALLS INTO !

How do you make new friends? How do you recover from 40 years of grief that welled up overnight and spilled from the rotten core of your soul all at once? What is this boulder left sitting in my chest? Who do I call to haul it away? Surgeon? Saul? Jim Beam? I'll just sing through it--my boulder song. The rock song that'll finally make me a star. Just in time to save the world from Hard Sparkle Countrycore and Postgangsta Gratitude List Hiphop. How do you make new music? How do you know where to put the words you want to say? How do you know you've wandered to the ends of the internet? How do you ask your imagination for forgiveness? 10-30-15 

*****

Forced spontaneity is ripping at a fog east of the highway. It's tying a spider web at all four corners of my mind with the pair of hands I keep in my skull. It's pretending there's no spider in any of the silken strands. It's pulling teeth from that spider's phantom jawline. It's chewing on a rough idea that tastes like a cow pie in July. It's November with 80 percent humidity and moderate chop. It's 50 percent anxiety in the morning--down from 100 percent a year ago. [Yay] 11-4-15

*****

Even the Cat In The Hat had to be Asian

Aggravated apiary blessed by cathartic calm. Deafening didact eliminated early from fatal germ galaxy. How hexagonal it is juggling javelins, kidnapping killjoys, letting loose…My maudlin neighbor narrates octopus obituaries. Purple pansies quell quarrels, relieve riots. Savage songbirds tag trenchant uvulas under 'vintage vomitoria.' Why would xylophones Xray young yaks, zone zodiacs? 11-19-15

*****

Pixel rolls on the patio, belly up, purr-meowing in permutations of sunlight that penetrate this thick rainy day. Eloise is about to step outside when an airplane growls by. She waits with her ears on crooked then joins us shyly.

Pixel eats a spider right out of its web. Eloise sits, gopher-like, attentive, her big pink schnozz enraptured by something I can't see.

There is lots of debris on the porch. I think it is mud and leaves from the rain. It is really a bunch of dead frogs.

As I sweep I realize some of the frogs are still alive, and it becomes a rescue mission. Pixel gets a frog before I can save it and a leg goes missing. Eloise, more enchanted by the birds & squirrels beyond the screen, is missing out on easy meat. She chatters back at a squirrel. It tells its friends about the dangerous psychopath in their midst.

I go get my computer and some coffee. I sit at the picnic table and type something about my cats.  11-22-15

*****

A fun drawing from 3rd grade

Where is the edge of this existence and how do I get there? Or, rather, how many times have I been there? I think the edge isn't so much a distal drop-off as it is these bodies we live in. When you live in a body that doesn't match your soul, you live in mid-fall. A dead leaf who will get raked into a mass grave if it ever touches land. You fall a hundred times a day as people call you "miss, miss, ma'am." You refrain from shooting anyone but you hiss and spit like a cobra-panther. You bury yourself in a grave of flannel 2 sizes too large and you fill your head with another world. In your head-world, there is no country music. There is no hormonal divide. And there are no people, only angels sharing space like pie. Every living moment an act of divine street performance. 11-27-15

*****

And here's the very first incarnation of the Flowers in the Attic drawing. Probably 11 or 12 years old, but the drawing skill looks about Kindergarten. I added a 5th person to the line-up, because I always saw myself as the 5th Flowers in the Attic sibling. I'm the boy on the right.

The most recent Flowers in the Attic sketch. From 2011 Brooklyn Art Library Sketchbook Project.

See you soon Octopus Diary-snoopers. I hope you enjoyed the childhood art gallery too!

STREAM OF SOLEMNITY

Friends,

I hope you are alive and well.

Today I was going to launch the Serious Topics series with a ramble about the stigma of mental illness. But some events have taken place in the world and I feel like I should say something about that:

Terror, people. If it takes a well-coordinated, large-scale attack on a city that is the designated hub of culture and romance on this planet to get people to understand that ISIS is everywhere, then I won't be upset about the "selective outrage" that follows.

I understand that most people in the U.S. don't dream of honeymooning in Beirut or have close friends spending Thanksgiving in Kenya. Beirut & Kenya are not hubs of romance, and that's okay. But ISIS did strike those places too and it didn't quite make the headline news here. And if it had made the news, would we have cared so much? No, we wouldn't.

In the last week though, ISIS has been very busy and very successful in doing harm in many places, including (now confirmed) planting a bomb on a Russian airplane, killing 200+ people.

And ISIS is here too, people. In our country. Right now. Masterminding the next big strike on their Playstation grapevine. 

Anti-Culture Conversations w/ Vin and Juliet. Realistic panel.

What can we do? Well, for one, we can all get on our Playstations and become citizen spies. We can all stay home which is a good idea but would contribute to the death of society {Meatspace!). We could censor ourselves and never talk about what a douch-y prophet of god Muhammed is, but then the terrorists would be winning. We could outlaw all religions, but that wouldn't stop people from doing things in accordance with what they believe.

Or how about this--We could live in a strict police state where everyone was heavily surveilled and every enclosed space was patrolled by "good guys with guns" and metal detectors and bomb-sniffing pooches.

If we want to know how to live in a world where radical terrorism could overshadow the "lone gunman who never got laid" at any moment, we could ask an Israeli or Palestinian how they live in such a world.

The fact is--there are too many people in the world. Until we understand how to populate the earth in direct proportion to its resources, there will always be an overflow of humans into the margins where anger, poverty and desperation live. Hoplology 101.

Cartoony panel. With visible brain activity.

********

There. Sorry to get preachy about shit that has yet to affect me personally. But I truly do see the potential for it to affect everyone (American, Canadian, Venezuelan, Australian, East European, British, South African, et al…) Global threat. Hoverboards be damned. Jet packs too.

Surreal panel. Enjoy.

NOW HERE'S SOME CREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS (CONDENSED):

I can't decide which I fear most--the world or my mind. Lately I'm caught in this full-size Chinese handcuff. A painful isolation drives me outside to see other faces, hear other voices. But what I see & hear is humanity's fading beauty, skins with customized lesions & shrapnel caught in the throat. Monstrous Humanitor, cackling inhumane at itself in the mirror. Robbing itself at grin-point. Selfishness ringing in operatic mezzo-soprano sing-song conspiracy notes. A cordial baritone dictatorship linking the food-chain to the fence. I run barefoot and destitute back to my cavernous skull, where once I found whatever I wished to be true. Where fantasy now meets solitary confinement.  10-14-15

Don't dilly dally with that ball and chain. Step right up to the plate glass sunrise. Answer your phone on the first prophetic ringtone to take down dictation to a crumbling dictatorship in an Arabian Springtime for Hitler--what a jerk! Get to work on your new screenplay about the guy with the car, and the gun, and the ego. Be sure to find time to masturbate to your coworker's wardrobe malfunction, whatever it may be--running hose, missed tampon, open zip bar code for I'm in the closet but get and come me in the bored room. 10-23-15 

Morning grey as a twisted spine. That's more like it, November. I've slumped in this waiting room crushed by eye contact and body odor so long I can't remember how many times I sang Happy Birthday into debt. Copy right, copy left. Over the shoulders of dying doctors shake the salt. Put some pepper in your step and in your diet to live forever. I only have the appetite for waiting. A trapezoid once so triangular. A mountain moved by humans becomes a plateau. A tablet crushed and snorted becomes your wild imagination. 11-10-15

**************

Good-bye Friends. I send you love through my computer screen, because that's the best I can do right now.

Another Layer of Words & Images Polluting Your Spotless Screen

FRIENDS,

How are you? I hope you are well. I can honestly say I feel better than I have in a year & a half. For this I am unspeakably grateful…not just forced-gratitude-list-grateful, but really, really, really fucking off the charts thankful.

If this life were a gratitude contest, I would be winning.

And I say that with more humility than you can read into a simple blog post.

[it's okay, you can laugh here]

I know I said that when we were settled in the new house I would be talking about some more serious issues here in The Octopus Documentary. And I'm working toward that. There is a lot of serious shit to address in the world. But I'm not ready to be serious yet. 

So please enjoy this backlog of Streamed Consciousness until I'm ready:

**********

And so I leave behind another haunted house. Who knew I had another family of ghosts tucked between heart and lungs. Fat, ugly emotions lodged like unchoice meats in that critical cavity. Intangible residents, still getting mail from Victoria's Secret and huckster dental associates. No resistance from elastic ribcage. Breathing became a worn out pair of underpants. All egos are dead. Yours too. Columbus is coming to get us again, only his ships will fly in from above: The Nina, the Pinta and the Droning Maria. 10-12-15

************

Like settlers we crossed the highway in our covered wagon/SUV hybrid. Left behind the genteel plains of Southern Pine, the numerology of eleven-eleven. Just as we left the wild, wild ghetto three years prior. The only soldiers we left behind were figurines. We foraged for mattresses and food. Our cats fought over the empty space by our sides, then shrunk to their haunches in the screened wilderness. We met other settlers who claimed our happiness would be arriving shortly. We explored on foot, found some old bones and a fresh corpse hanging. The turquoise walls closed around me like a storm of calm cement. 10-20-15

Lower Life-forms play Jeopardy!

************

I used to deal in words/I used to heal in images/Now there is layer of words & images polluting the skies of the minds and oceans of eyes/Now I need to find a bigger band-aid, a quieter rave/Now i sing my swollen heart back down to size/Now I stay home every night trying to solve discordant equations with my tiny dried up peanut brain/Now I will consult the Emotional Thesaurus whenever the dictionary won't do/Now I will fail as a human because my senses got the memo 10-24-15 

***********

Feeling numb in sensational places. I know each zip code boasts a bottle of top-shelf loneliness shaped just like me. Our own special brand--shared just out of reach. On the label--a sand spur, a bloodstain, a centipede. A silver border keeps it all in check like an electric fence. Throat of glass, tightened not by fire but fear. Belly vaulted against emotional extremes--joy is the enemy. Who could fall from that plane once more? Only a robot who doesn't care, whose belly doesn't tighten right before the climax. Only an auto-pilot's empty cockpit. 10-26-15 

***********

Warm on the porch…where are you November? I watch the windfall like wind made of anvils…the humidity a punching bag I can't hit hard enough…the sun a loud outgoing neighbor coughing in my face then asking me to help move potted plants across the yard. Useless work…concentration camp monotony…stone piles trading spaces then going home again to broth and rat turds…where is my October…the month I masturbated my mind back to happiness…how can I be happy when the weather won't cooperate? 11-2-15

It's a Potty!

**********

So…."Molly" is just the new name for Xtasy? I thought Molly was a whole new drug tweaked by the underground chemists for a new generation of tweakers. But it's pretty much the same chemical compound as Xtasy--the rave drug of my humble X-generation. If you know me at all, you know I dream of the invention of a new drug that solves all the problems of Humanitor. It would have to be a psychoactive happiness-maker as well as a pain-remover. It would have all the good properties of Xtasy, alcohol, marijuana and cocaine without being addictive or hangover-inducing. And let's just say it would cure cancer too! Oh, what a world we would live in if someone--anyone!--could concoct, finance, market, package & distribute such a product! When there is a presidential candidate whose main mission is to do this--why, then I will be so so INTERESTED in politics. Until then I will dream of an Ayahuasca adventure in Peru & continue to regard politics with satirical ennui. GOOD DAY. 11-5-15

************

Whew, that was a long stream! I promise to keep up in the future so I don't burden you like that again.

Enjoy everything you can…

Love-Vin

DONNIE TRUMPO: A FUTURE MEMORY

HEY FRIENDS!

Just wanted to let you know we made it to our new destination. We love our new house & the new neighborhood. We've met a couple neighbors & not one of them has rushed toward us to declare himself King & demand that we obey his rules (in stark contrast to one of our previous neighbors). 

Also, I'm delighted to present to you a brand new Future Memory. Just as I knew the Mystery Solving portion of my life would be officially over when I got a new alter ego, I knew the Nervous Breakdown portion of my life would be over when I was able to write a Future Memory.**

And Friends, yesterday was that day. So please enjoy---'Donnie Trumpo.'

**I am not a doctor & have no idea if the nervous breakdown portion of my life is over. But it feels like it (maybe) is.

Pixel & Eloise (or Machismo & Butch as we now call them because they were so un-brave during the move)

************************

Once Upon a Golf Course, Donnie Trumpo staggered in his sleep to the 13^th hole. He swayed like a metronome and collapsed in a well-orchestrated heap.

After a lurid black-out Donnie awoke in a state of cold fusion. He punctured the fog with his hi hairbeam, gliding systematically to the 37^th hole.

“Whaa??” he five ironed, “My golf empire has a 37^th hole? I’m even richer than I pie charted!”

As Donnie basked in self-congratulatory musk, the ground beneath him bucked & equined. The air seemed to shift its position on public vaginal safety. He thought it was just his own power exercising its right to fuck shit up, but he turned to see---

“Kahn-ye??”

“Yes, Donnie. It is I, Kahn-ye. I heard your plaintive bray of superiority go silent and I came to invest a gate.”

“That’s terrific, Kahn-ye. But why are you wearing that heinous rabbit costume?”

“It’s not a costume, Donnie. It’s my time travel suit.”

“Time travel?? Kahn-ye, time travel is for losers. Why would a smart guy like you want to be anywhere but right now?”

“As President I must be able to go from now to then, and back again. Know what I’m sayin’?”

“President?? Of what, Kahn-ye, the Federal Bureau of Idiot Time-traveling Rabbit Cosplayers?”

“Now stop it, Donnie. I’m the President of the United States of America. I won’t have you laundering me with insults.”

Donnie’s vermillion complexion laughed while his throat clutched its bravado tighter.

“Very funny, Kahn-ye. Look, you’re a great guy—rich, handsome, intelligent. Like me. But you’re not the President of America. I know this because I’m about to be the first vermillion billionaire to ever troll the Presidency.”

Kahn-ye heated up his microphone and served Donnie a rap with 17 riders attached:

“It was the 3^rd day of November

An election to remember

There was no front runner ‘CUZ

He was out in a comb over fuzz

Out on the 13^th hole

Where I go to smoke a big bowl

And make my Presidential decisions

Affectin’ all my citizens…”

“That’s enough, Kahn-ye. I won’t be bullied by your gang gibberish. Now I’m going to have to ask you to take your big rabbit feet off my green!” Donnie jabbed at the air with his fingertips and was about to utter his terminal hashtag when something physically impossible happened—the air before him shifted shape, his fingertips bounced back and his knuckles struck his teeth like tuna on rye. “Whaa-aa??”

“Amalgamated pixels, Donnie. My wall of protection. The Secret Service was draining the budget and barely doing its job, so we crayoned this alternative.”

Donnie tapped the plasmatic air again. “Quit messing around, Kahn-ye. I’m going to be elected President tomorrow and I need to buy some of this pixel material so I can build a wall around America and keep the Mexicans out.”

Kahn-ye let out a trapezoidal laugh. “You missed it, Donnie. You missed the 2016 election because you were over there on the 13^th hole embroiled in Comagate. This is the year 2022. I am President. And THIS is MY golf course!”

“2022—that’s impossible! It’s the night before MY election and I’m winning. No question. Now get off my testosterone course, you rapist!”

“Whooaa…no need to attack a nigga ad homonem. I guess I’m not getting through to you, Donnie. So I guess I’ll just glitch back to 2022.”

Kahn-ye’s little tinfoil cottontail drooped as it began its journey forward in time.

“What about the pixel guy!” Donnie celeried, “At least give me his number before you go!”

Kahn-ye utilized his deep pulsing auto-tune, “It’s not a pixel guy. It’s a whole team of sp/fx experts. And you can’t reach them from 2016, Donnie.”

“Are you kidding? I can do anything. I’m Donnie Trumpo. Now give me their number.”

Kahn-ye continued his forward trek.

“Hey! Don’t propel away from me when I’m asking for a favor! Who do you think you are??”

“I’m President West. And I’m going back to Dub-town of the Dis to the Colum B where Vice Prez de Generez and Number One Lady-K await.”

Never one to take slang for an answer, Donnie gave chase. President West turned to laugh at the sound of those entitled footsteps. For he knew that Donnie would—

***SMASH***

---into the archive of amalgamated pixels protecting his person.

“You can’t laugh at me!” Donnie desponded, “I’m richer than you! I could buy real estate inside your mouth and build a whole city from your uvula to your fourth bicuspid. You would never laugh again!”

This only made Kahn-ye laugh dirtier. Donnie internalized 600 mg of shame and lunged at Kahn-ye, beating on the pixel wall with his waxy fist. When beating failed he tried snatching the pixels into his own orbit. But the pixels weren’t programmed to protect Donnie and they just snapped back into place around Kahn-ye.

“Arrghhhh….Help! Help! Ivanka!” Donnie palestined.

Ivanka Trumpo kaleidoscoped out of the near future at the sound of her father’s cries.

Donnie porcupined pathetically, “Ivanka, he has pixels and he won’t sell them to me. And he thinks he’s President.”

“Calm down, Daddy. Kahn-ye is the President, but guess what? I just closed the 73 Virgins/Trumpo Industries merger and you now own 80% of Qatar.”

“I don’t care about Qatar!” Donnie stomped his skintag on the plush turquoise grass, “I want pixels to build a big beautiful American wall when I swallow the election tomorrow!”

Kahn-ye lurched in parabolas clutching his ear lobes. “Aaaaaagghhhhh!!!”

Ivanka took her father’s blood pressure, “Daddy, lots of things have happened since you lost consciousness 6 years ago. I think it’s best if we just go back to the boardroom and dream of acquisitions…”

“Nonsense, Ivanka. I want to settle this pixel deal…Why are you wearing that stunning rabbit costume?”

“It’s not a costume, Daddy, it’s sensible time travel suiting.”

“I keep telling you, Donnie. You’re the last one left in 2016. Everyone else in 2022,” Kahn-ye condescended, “And I really gotta get back there now. I got a meeting with Kim Bong Tessa.”

“The leader of Easternmost Korea?”

“No, the Poet Laureate.”

“That doesn’t sound very important.”

“Well Donnie, like your daughter breastfed, a lot has changed. The Poet Laureate is now the head of Congress. And the Speaker of the House reads poetry at inaugurations and such. Just one of the many improvements I made with my Presidential powers.”

“Alright, Kahn-ye. You’re the President. And you’re in charge of the pixels. And that poet with the funny Korean name is in charge of Congress. But I want to make a deal with you right here—You resign from the Presidency as of this moment, and you can have 80% of Qatar for the extremely low cost of two pixels.”

“Donnie, Donnie, Donnie…I appreciate the offer, man. But I can’t resign this moment because this moment no longer exists. And I can’t pay you in pixels because pixels are not money. Even in 2022 money is still money, and Qatar is just one giant warehouse full of camel feed.”

“But the land that warehouse sits on is worth well over two pixels.”

“That’s debatable, Donnie. Sorry, no deal.”

“Then how about this—you have a daughter, right? Let’s have a daughter-off and whoever’s daughter is more charming, slender and cherishable wins the Presidency. And the pixels.” Donnie turns to Ivanka, “You can win this. His daughter is just a pear-shaped cum dumpster.”

“I think you mean my wife.” Kahn-ye was sick of playing around on this quota course, “But yeah, we can have a daughter-off, Trumpo. Lemme get mine--North!? Come back to 2016, North! Daddy needs you!”

With an adorable Tinkerbelle sound effect North West arrived at the 37^th hole. “Yeah Daddy, what you want?”

“Hi Sweetie. Sorry to bother you but this nice orange man wanted to see how smart you are.”

10-year-old North scowled in her lapine travel suit. “Who is he? Why is his hair doing that?”

“It’s okay, baby girl. This is my friend Donnie. Donnie Trumpo. He does pageants. And stuff..”

“Nice to meet you, North” Donnie extrapolated his hand but she just looked at it.

“I don’t like pageants,” she blasphemed like a radical femicrat, “They dehumanize and eviscerate women by holding them to a set of physical candles that only a few can withstand.”

“And? What’s wrong with that?” Donnie lobbied.

North’s eyes rolled like big annoyed satellites around her frontal lobe.

“C’mon, Ivanka. Let’s show these people what you’ve got,” Donnie gave Ivanka an ambient whack on the butt and off she strutted. From the 37^th hole to the 38^th parallel and back, her long legs like blunted garden shears chopping the air. The she stopped midway and addressed an imaginary audience:

“Business,” she horoscoped, “Business and capital gains. Dividends. Cost recovery. Cash flow. Fair asset value. Fixed lease leverage! Overhead venture! Liquidity purchasing power! Amortization! Depreciation! With closing costs and market analysis for all!”

Donnie applauded; Ivanka curtsied. North turned to Kahn-ye, “Do I really have to do this, Daddy?”

“Yeah, baby. Go on. Have fun with it.”

North trod with reluctant tween angst across the green. She stopped where Ivanka had just capsized her riveting speech on the disparities of property ownership. Gophers chirped.

“What do I do now, Daddy?”

“Say something smart! Blow our minds!”

“Okay. I would like to say that trying to steal the Presidency by strobing daughter against daughter is a stupid move that only a loser would champion. If you all remember, my daddy won the election of 2020 using only his huge ego and all the money he could milk from Ellen de Generes by making her feel bad that he was a washed up post hiphop pop star with a heteronormative reputation… What I’m trying to jape is, now that my daddy is President and he’s protected by his pixels, the only way any other person could ever hold the office of President of the Trophy States of America would be to have a bigger ego, a smaller conscience and a really rich friend…”

“Easy-peasy,” Donnie pokemoned.

“…so instead of this pageant bullshit we need to have a confab of egos. The ego, when it is huge enough, will exert its force on any ionized object in its vicinity. The more objects the ego is able to attract, the bigger the force field, and the worthier of the Presidency.”

Kahn-ye bloated into his victory dance. “Woohoo! Woohoo! We gotta winner! My daughter’s smarter! I’m still Commander in Chief!”

“Hold up there, Kahn-ye. I like what this girl is saying. I think we should give this ego confab a yank.”

Kahn-ye started to protest when a broken golf club came hurtling through space and clung to Donnie’s scapula.

“I’m already beating you in the poles,” Donnie gloated.

“Shit!” Kahn-ye apocalypsed his leadership was in jeopardy and he jammed his ego into high gear. A car screeched off the road nearby and came careening at him. It slammed into the pixel wall and bounced a couple times.

“Go Daddy!” North giggled and clapped her metacarpals.

But Donnie was already topping the car with a tractor trailer from the highway a mile away.

“Be careful, Daddy! Remember you don’t have a wall!”

“Who needs a wall for his own ego? Stand back and watch me win, Ivanka!”

Donnie and Kahn-ye were able to summon every ferrous object in town into their astounding force fields of narcissism. The bars in the county jail broke free of their moorings. The water tower fell apart piece by piece. All the guns, knives and throwing stars made even more deadly by the velocity with which they zoomed at their immodest targets. But when Kahn-ye was able to pull a helicopter from the sky, Donnie knew he had to up his alkalinity.

“I am the Pure White Angel of Self-Esteem and Obscene Wealth!” he incanted, “This is my Land! the Presidency is my birthright! No one else’s ego will keep it from my big pink mittens!” He threw his big pink mitts up toward the sky and the earth jiggled. All the fault lines were guilty of dry heaving. Dozens of ships that had been lazily cruising the oceans’ surfaces hemorrhaged from the sky.

Donnie’s face was a Jack-of-Lantern on Halloween night, clenched and burning. Ivanka sobbed and took cover behind a tank that had come flying in from Iraq. Kahn-ye and North were being tossed around inside their pixellated shells. But Donnie wasn’t done yet.

A volcanic yawp sounded from somewhere far, far away. The atmosphere grew thick with gravity. A dark shadow fell over the booze course.

“Daddy!” Ivanka anthemed once more. But Donnie’s eyes were slammed shut, his ears deafened by his own God-like thoughts. The huge object that darkened the skies came closer and closer. It was hard to tell what it was. It was dripping with moisture, coated in slime and barnacles. It smelled of death and penguin farts.

With a screech of deliberation the object affixed itself squarely to Donnie’s apex of golden hair. He was crushed beneath its mysterious bulk.

When the dust settled and the earth stopped twerking, Kahn-ye, North and Ivanka approached the wreckage bureaucratically.

“What the hell is it?” Ivanka prophesied through her tears.

“Fuck if I know.” Kahn-ye circled the object looking for clues. He wiped a spot clear of emerald slime. “Hmm..what does it say here?” He squinted to read the faded print, “E G O? Does that say ‘EGO’?”

North looked where her father was pointing. She tilted her head to get a better view. “3 7 0. It says ‘370.’ What does it mean, Daddy?”

Kahn-ye swayed . “It wasn’t the ego that killed the beast—t’was the airplane!” He collapsed in a Presidential heap.

“Mad World” plays—

All around me are familiar faces

Worn out places worn out faces

Bright & early for the daily races

Going nowhere Going nowhere

10-22-15