Thursday, December 28, 2017

Top Music Picks of 2017

Last year I think I had a Top 50—this year I could only come up with a Top 43. I felt all year that the indie music output was a little shy of last year’s spectacular levels. But there was still plenty to love, especially the stuff at the top of the list. While I didn’t get a chance to listen to each & every one of these albums all the way through, the ones that made the list had multiple cuts I enjoyed (unless noted.)




43.  Pond — — The Weather

42.  Adult Mom — — Soft Spots

41.  Tennis — — Yours Conditionally

40.  Los Campesinos! — — Sick Scenes

39.  Male Gaze — — Miss Taken

38.  Surf Curse  — — Nothing Yet

37.  Jane Weaver — — Modern Kosmology

36.  Tiger! Shit! Tiger! Tiger! — — Corners

35.  Lisa LeBlanc — — Why You Wanna Leave, Runaway Queen?

34.  The Last Quokka — — S/T (esp ‘Nazi Scum’ single)

33.  Sleaford Mods  — English Tapas

32.  Roya — — S/T

31.  Goat Girl — — Cracker Drool (single)

30.  Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile — — Lotta Sea Lice

29.  Superet — — Loving the Animal (sing.)

28.  Cherry Glazerr — — Apocalipstick

27.  The Black Angels — — Death Song

26.  Nouvelle Vague — — I Could Be Happy

25.  Death From Above — — Outrage! Is Now

24.  The Horrors — — V

23.  Wolf Alice — — Visions Of A Life

22.  Mammut — — Breathe Into Me (songle) not as thrilled with the rest of ‘Kinder Versions’ album

21.  Tunabunny  — — Incinerate (songle)

20.  The xx — — I See You

19.  Fay Roy — — Heaven At 27

18.  Lea Porcelain — — HYMNS TO THE NIGHT

17.  Vagabon — — Infinite Worlds

16.  The Magnetic Fields — — 50 Song Memoir

15.  Juliana Hatfield — — Pussycat

14.  Priests — — Nothing Feels Natural

13.  girlpool — — Powerplant

12.  CHASTITY — — Chains EP

11.  Alyeska — — Crush

10.  La Femme — — Ou va le Monde

9.  Rainer Maria — — “Self Titled”

8.  Damaged Bug — — Bunker Funk

7.  LCD Soundsystem — — american dream

6.  The New Pornographers — — Whiteout Conditions

5.  Spoon — — Hot Thoughts

4.  Ride — — Weather Diaries

3.  Guerilla Toss — — GT Ultra

2.  The I.L.Y.s — — Bodyguard

1.  Kane Strang — — Two Hearts and No Brain



Here’s to an Indie-licious ’18!

Saturday, December 16, 2017

ROGUE BUB: A Distressica Prequel

FRIENDS,

It's your lucky day, for I have an Adventure in Reality for you, just in time for Chanukah.

In the current social climate, I feel like I'm required to make it absolutely clear that this is a work of fiction. I am not mocking anyone's gender identity or mental illnesses. I'm satirizing my own experiences of being a mentally ill trans person. Also kind of parodying the misconceptions people still have about genderidentity, the gender binary, and Jared Kushner.
Enjoy.

************************ 

ROGUE BUB: A Distressica Prequel


Once Upon A Kitten Fart, a dead body wafted through the universe and landed in the afterworld, teeth-first.

The Body was emblazoned with a striped T-shirt and cloud-stained jeans. It stood in a kitchenesque area next to another body. The Body was uninsured and started to cry. (When bodies land in the afterworld they arrive as their 3-year-old selves from the forelife.)

“Distressica! Is that you?” hooted the other body.

“Who are you? Where am I?” tweeted The Body.

“I’m your aftermother. You’ve died and become a fully subconscious being.”

“Sub whaaaat?”

“Subconscious, honey. Now why are you wearing those grubby comedian clothes? Let’s get you in your tututu so you can help me corrupt dinner.” The aftermother held out a strumpet uniform made of unnatural fibers, crowned at the waist with pink thorns.

The Body trapezed back. 

“Oh Distressica! I know it’s uncomfortable, but it’ll make you look like a 7.3 trillion dollar surplus!”

“But I’m married to stripes, I don’t want to quadruple in value.”

The aftermother heaved a sigh of caviar. “Why am I having a strange sense of dejannoyance? It seems like you’ve been returned to me in comedian’s clothes before. This is so frustrating. Nothing like this happens when my friends’ children die. Why Me? Why us, Distressica??”

“But Afterma,” The Body motelled, “why can’t I be a comedian? I’m really funny!”

“No, honey, you’re not. Comedians are funny because they’re made of wires & hardware & holy water. You are a ballerina made of scrapmeat and kale and battery acid” —and here the aftermother poked The Body’s nose— “now go put on your tututu.”

The Body panicked like a horse jettisoned from a slave ship, then absorbed by savage currents and churned into millions of bite-size seahorses. It put on the tututu and perspired all over it, then vomited inconsolably, but no one in the afterworld would allow The Body to remove the soiled garment.

After a few rounds of being dead The Body—who refused to admit its name was Distressica—was starting to earmark its dilemma. Somehow it kept getting reincarnated as the right make, but the wrong model. In other words, it was a Tesla on a hoverboard budget…no…it was a bicycle without malice….no….it was a stealth bomber that thrived on internet fame…well, quite simply, it was an abomination in the kidneys of Bub.

The Body wore its tututu and did all the choreography the aftermother told it to do. But every episode, The Body felt like something was occult.



In the house where The Body died, there were 7 comedians—the afterdad and 6 postbros. The Body and the aftermom were the only ballerinas; they were outjestered.

Whenever The Body was left alone with the bros, they bullied it into unwanted positions, especially eleventh. Sometimes they shoved it into lotus and ripped its petals off. They forced it to hold posters that read “Tax cuts for the hilarious” or “Bub Hates Tights.” Mostly they told crude, acidic jokes about The Body’s lunchable anatomy.

“Guess what I found in my email this morning? Lots of Distressica!”

After a particularly bad day with the bros, The Body ziplined to the kitchen sobbing, “Afterma, I don’t think I can be a ballerina anymore. This was all a mistake and I just want to be BORN!”

“Distressica! How can you say such pro-life nonsense? It’s unbecoming of a dainty, masochistic ballerina. No one ever said death was easy. But you wanna know what I do, honey? I pretend that death is just a game—I’m playing a role!”

“What role do you play?”

“Well…Afterma to you and the bros. And I’m going for the daytime Emmy, and the kill screen that leads back to The Kingdom of Bub.”

The Body rolled its tongue at the mention of Bub.

“Don’t you roll your tongue at me, tiny dancer. You have a privileged afterlife in a cadaverine tututu, and you should be in a constant cave of rapturous gratitude! It pleases Bub and makes Him want to shower you in curses!”

“I don’t want Bub’s curses, I want to be a comedian!”

The aftermother drew a sharp breath and a photon of horror blazed across her decolletage. “Don’t you ever say that again! That’s the kind of thing bodies with skeletons say. And ballerinas should never have skeletons, Distressica! There is no way to make you a comedian. It’s just not possible. The autopsy-bots only know how to make comedians into ballerinas…”

“They do? How?”

“They snip all their wires and strip them of their hardware…and voila, instant ballerina!”

“Why can’t they add wires and hardware to me?”

Sigh, “It just doesn’t blow that way, Distressica. They could macrame you with wires. They could lodge all sorts of hardware in your various ports, but you would never be a real comedian.”

“Why not?”

“You can’t put holy water in ballerinas—they rust! And that’s exactly how Bub wanted it. If He wanted you to be a comedian, He wouldn’t have made you out of Spam. You must stop harboring these desires that dishonor Him, or you won’t return to His Kingdom when you’re born.”

“Oh Afterma, I don’t believe in life before or after death. I will be BORN and it’ll be NOTHING. Just peace & inertia & indigo…”

“You go to your casket right now, young body! And think about what a monster you are, then beg for Bub’s amnesty!”

The Body stomped to its casket and slammed the lid. It cried and hoziered, enraged by the indelicacies of the afterworld. Why couldn’t The Body just be a comedian, no matter what it was made of? If Bub really wanted it to be a ballerina, why was The Body tagged in a striped T-shirt when it fell? The more The Body festered in its grave alone, the more questions it had. Were comedians really that funny? The afterdad was always umber—The Body had never seen him pull off a good bit. 

And what about the bros? The Body thought of them all, plugged into the couch watching spwarts—Dwightness, Dexteros, Demigordon, Dreckitude, Dubstep and little Dotard—none of them even mildly wireless (though Dotard tried hard to master the most wireless form of comedy ever—punnery. He was just no good.)

Were comedians funny or did they just inhale stripes? Did they really grasp irony on a visceral level, or just skate by on holy water? Suddenly The Body had so many questions and though it was not religious it began to pence—

“Dear Bub,” it clintoned, “if I really am a ballerina why did you bring me here in a hypodermic T-shirt? What kind of supreme being mummifies that kind of mistake? I mean, I know I’m made of scrapmeat, and filled with battery acid, but the vision of me in those brilliant stripes…I can’t unsee it. Please Bub, fix this error immediately or let me be BORN! Even if I’m sent to the brightside of thy Kingdom where the sky is a washed out pastel, where the sea smells of gangrene & old lace, where the bodies are fresh, teeming with lice & URGES, where crotches press together on the dark train between dayjobs, through strobing epileptic claustrophobic traffic patterns into cubical safe spaces, where they stare and stare at an abyss that’s somewhere inside their gonads. Even that must be better than Swan Lake  unedited. Please, Bub, hear my pence.”

Exhausted, The Body bannoned off into sub-sub-post-partum-mortem-modern-pseudo-hypo-consciousness. It floated through 3.14 rhomboid feet of empty skull before it slammed into a vivid dream:

It was Bub Hisself who appeared, offering The Body a maggoty, decomposed handshake. Even thru the maggots a bright light emanated from the hand. The Body took it. A voice like a library echoed from 110 stories above, “Distressica, can you hear me? It’s me, Bub. I know we haven’t spoken since I created you 673 ages ago, but I need to ask for your amnesty. I was so busy helping my many underprivileged and endangered populations that it took me a thousand years to get to the Transbominables.”

“Bub, are you pencing to me? I thought I was supposed to pence to you?”

“A common misconception. It is I who pence to you in the afterworld.”

“Oh. So who are these Transbominations you’re trying to help?”

“You, Distressica. Isn’t that why you called for help? Because you’re Trans?”

“I don’t know that word.”

“You died a comedian but were forced into the chintzy bondage of a ballerina. And you wanted my help fixing it.”

“Oh I thought I was a ballerina ‘cause I was made of Spam and holy water made me rust. I just died in the wrong outfit.”

“Wrong again. Think Distressica—does meat rust? All dead bodies are made of the same materials—salmon puree and corduroy. That little corpsery rhyme about wires & hardware & holy water, just nonsense! Your poor aftermother always wanted a ballerina, but death after death she got only comedians.

All you have to do, Distressica, is first peel that bacterial leotard off. Then you will have to manufacture your own striped shirt, I don’t have any extras. Once it’s made, just put it on and start counterfeiting jokes. If your jokes are good enough, within days people will forget they ever thought you were a ballerina.”

“Even Afterma?”

“Yes, if you pass well enough as a comedian even your aftermother will forget. But you must never slip up, or you could be fucked. Once you turn 33 in the afterworld, you’ll be eligible to return to My Kingdom. There you will have to complete another transition before you’re fully registered in your proper identity.”

“You mean there’ll be another wardrobe apocalypse?”

“Well, sort of. It’s a little more complicated in The Kingdom. You see, there your identity is built right into your skin, not just your clothes. People are born exhibiting symptoms of either ‘ladyitis’ or ‘dudementia.’”

“We’re all born w/ diseases?”

“More like deformities. You, Distressica, will be born showing signs of ‘ladyitis’ even though you’re a dude. You won’t be able to change it without the help of a medical guru.”

“Oh Bub, that’s not good news. I don’t know if I ever want to be born again.”

“Don’t say that, little comic. Since I am the one who caused this perpetual error in your identity, I’m going help you out but you must remember what I tell you—”

“Bub! I didn’t know you were capable of error! What happened?”

“Oh, I do not make mistakes myself, but I am often the cause of mistakes made by others. I’m the phantom in the code. You see, long ago when I needed a new batch of souls produced at my very own multi-million dollar soul-stamping factory and wholesale personality corporation—or WHOLE SOULS™  — I placed an order for 200 souls w/ ladyitis and 371 w/ dudementia and my bots got to work fashioning these sentient beings out of nothing but stardust and gingerbread. You were in this new batch of souls, Distressica!”

“I didn’t know you could make new ones from scratch!”

“Of course I can! I’m Bub! Anyway, there was this sweet looking bot working for me in those days, and right as you were coming down the conveyor belt, I couldn’t resist cupping her left ass-cheek—a gentle curve of the sleekest silica-carbons. It startled her and she mistakenly infected you w/ ladyitis instead of dudementia. I powered down as soon as I saw the mix-up but by then a whole batch of Transplorables had landed in the production basket.”

“Bub, you sexually assaulted that bot!”

“Nawwwwww, cupping a synthetic ass-cheek isn’t assault, It’s just a dick move. Now what I did to that little pixie-wasp Mary—that was sexual assault! Anyway, I guess I shouldn’t have done it, because it really clogged up a fine batch of new souls,” Bub masticated and stroked his sparse parmesan-speckled beard as he fetishized the bot’s fine ass. 

“Your act of entitlement has caused me lifetimes & death sentences of anguish, Bub!”

“Well, that’s what I want from you fools! Why does everyone think I want happiness from them? I don’t! I want anguish! Kushnering! Devastation! Huge crestfallen feelings! However, I did cause a whole batch of trans folks to exist that day and while I love kushnering I abhor the trans identified! It may be among my least favorite transgressions, pardon the pun.”

“I will not”

“I know, sorry.  Anyway, now all these Trans have been leaked into the collective superego, and they’re prancing around on all the tv screens in My Kingdom, making me look bad.”

“Oh I’m not like them. I’m not trying to make you look bad, Bub. I just want to feel all right in my own textiles.”

“Okay, here is what you must remember when you’re born—

—when you turn 19 your birthmother will ask you what one thing she can give you that will make you happy forever…”

“Forever?”

“I know, it’s not possible. But your birthmother is one of those boring clowns who thinks I want dancing & laughter in my Kingdom. I do not! Save that for the afterworld, I say. Since she wasn’t kushnering as much as I like, I gave her you. Don’t let her make you feel guilty for that. When she asks you what you want for your activation anniversary, tell her you want to come over to my house. Do not under any circumstances ask her for a balloon ride with a bunch of skeletons. That will lead you right back to where you are right now—dead in a filthy tututu.”

“How do I find your house, Bub?”

“Here’s the address. It’s not far from anywhere in the Kingdom. Remember what I said about kushnering? There’ll be plenty opportunity for you to please me in that manner. Don’t try to bypass it or your whole transformation will fail!”

“I will remember, Bub. But can I ask you not to call me Distressica?”

“Of course, what would you like to be called?”

“I’ve always thought of myself as Dystopher.” 

“Okay, Dystopher, I’ll pencil that into your file. Now go make stripes! And remember what you learn from being your true comic self! You’ll need it when you return to my Kingdommmm!”

With that Bub was gone and The Body woke up covered in pink thorns and drool. The dream vanished as soon as The Body was fully subconscious, but a tiny maggott scrunched across The Body’s knuckle and it all came back! 

The Body couldn’t rip the leotard off fast enough. It looked around the casket for something to make a shirt from. Nothing but a dirty, stripeless pillow in there. What will I do if I can’t make a shirt, The Body panicked, naked and cold, afraid of botching its alterations. It was about to scream for Bub’s help when the tututu covered in thorns caught its eye.

Thorns for stripes! The Body gouged the thorns into its chest and arms, creating lively red stripes. The Body was pleased with the look and fit of its shirt, and Bub was pleased at how The Body kushnered to make it.

At the mirror, The Body practiced jokes of all kinds, but found it excelled at doorbell jokes. I am Dystopher! The Body soon declared. The deep stripes were freshly healed and very convincing. Dystopher felt confident enough in his comicsculinity to leave his casket and join his bros on the couch.

He squeezed in between Dwightness and Dotard and immediately got clobbered in the face and punched in the angelnuts. This is great, thought Dystopher, I feel like I belong here, in the afterworld, in this family.

Dystopher was way funnier than all the bros, and he started loving death as much as any corpse who hadn’t been messed up by Bub. Distressica was barely missed. One day, the aftermother mused, Where did Distressica go? None of the bros understood the question, but Dystopher mimed ‘I don’t know, but you sent her to her casket about 7 weeks ago…’

“That’s right” tuliped the aftermother. Upon checking the casket, she found no trace of her distorted ballerina and dribbled, “Comedians, your ballerina has been born. Let’s never mention her again.”

“What the #%**^ is she glitching about?,” all the bros virtue-signaled.

Dystopher pretended to know nothing more about it. He loved the idea of forgetting Distressica ever rotted among them.
In fact, Dystopher was enjoying death so much in his permanent striped shirt, that when he reached adulthood, he no longer wanted to be born.

But he knew he had something important to do in the Kingdom of Bub. He knew he had to be born and remember what it was. So shortly after his 33rd bday he drove himself to the arcade where he could suck at Donkey Kong and hit the promised kill screen. Then the autopsy bots would hook him up to birth support and he’d be on his way….

The journey from death to life was more acrobatic than the passage from life to death. It was like fitting onesself through the neck of a ketchup bottle and landing on a ring of fries. Then there was the prolonged period of infancy where all memory was shat out and you had to rely on the kindness of monsters. But Dystopher thrived, and pleased Bub with 19 years of kushnering as Distressica, a wretched sinner w/ ladyitis.

There came a day when his mother, Ms. Insuranceton, took him to a salon where the barbaric beautician desecrated his face with scissors. He was understandably upset to be blinded and disfigured, and it was right there in the salon parking lot where his mother asked the question that triggered an onslaught of wanted memories:

“You're turning Dispassionate Nineteen! What would make you sooo happy, that all memory of this tragedy will turn to calcium carbonate?"

Suddenly Dystopher put seven and twelve together. Nineteen! I was born with 19 mysterious stripes on my torso. It must mean I’m supposed to have some kind of cacophony this year, but what? What is it that I want, that will give me  terminal gleetoxia if I get it?

It took a moment but suddenly he remembered “Mother, I would like to go to Bub’s house for my 19th bday.”

“But ‘Stressica honey, I thought you hated Bub!”

“I do, Mother, but I’m an adult now. I need to go work through it with Him.”

Ms.Insuranceton heaved a sigh of organic dissent. “I’ll never understand you, Distressica, but if you want to talk to Bub for your birthday, I will take you to His house.”

The day came when Ms. Insuranceton dropped Dystopher off at Bub’s house. It was one of those modest Ranch-styles on the outside but on the inside it stretched & yawned, defying the walls of gravity. It boasted some very immodest dimensions, and Dystopher was immediately offended. Who could have such disregard for science?

The altar was a distant horizon blurred by GMO cannabis smoke. Dystopher elbowed blindly through the crowd of worshippers. He found a seat at the head of the chapel; at the cankles of Bub he would blankly stare. He could tell by the din that there were millions if not billions of people in the house, most of them drinking kool-aid in the nave.

Shortly Bub emerged from His vestry and began His State of the Cosmos address:

“We are gathered here today because something happened 673 beaver moons ago and I want to come clean. When I first topped the list of the 1% deities, I was completely strung out on my own fearsome power. One day I groped the exquisite ass cheek of a production bot at my Whole Souls factory and caused an entire line of new souls to be divorced from their deformities. You’ve seen them on the tvs and the sociable nitpicking sites. They’re called Transbominations and I know you hate them. I know you know I hate them too, and wish I’d never reached for that bot’s flawless silky asschamber.

But I must account for my moral debit. And I must ask for your amnesty—for I know you do not want to share my Kingdom with the Transbominables anymore than I do. I must humbly implore you to kushner more. Feel your feelings. Drink in not only the sunset, but the used tampon on the shoreline! Look deep into yourselves and behold the rancid uniformity of your soft tissues! And know that I am disgusted not pleased by your joy. It is your insistence on joy that bored me into behaving like a depraved pig that day. 

I worry that I may not be able to carry out my duties as the one & only Bub in the wake of this polygon. I am not resigning, but I’m hereby handing over omnipotence to someone who has demonstrated the kind of anguish and psychological damage my Kingdom was built for. Please give a warm welcome to Dystopher, who’s turning serene 19 today. And who will be your interim Bub while I go on a flagellation tour starting tomorrow on FOX & Friends.

Now I hand it over to the birthday dude…” Bub stepped away from His lectern and extended a glowing, maggotless hand.

Dystopher couldn’t believe Bub remembered him after all these costume changes. He took the glowing hand and transcended the stage.

Dystopher was about to introduce himself to Bub’s slothful masses, but when he looked he could see no one was earning attention. Everyone talking, laughing, making plans to get giddy after the sermon, chasing puppies down the aisles, crooning the hymns of Bub’s wrath without an ounce of fear. What is this? he platypused, No one even knows that Bub is leaving.

“HEEEYYYYYY” Dystopher namastated, “Shut down, everyone! Is this what you do when Bub is up here? Did you even hear a thing He airforced?”

The congregants looked for a forked second then resumed their chatter. Except one tiny girl with sarcastic braids who kept staring, staring, eyelashing and nosepicking in Dystopher’s corporal direction. 

“Well, hello there little manic pixie dreamlady. What’s your name?” Dystopher tried to be tone deaf.

“Hssss…hssss….” purred the child.

A nearby adult took notice of the child’s purring. “What is it Mary?”  

“Transss…” the child overshared,

“What, child?” More people took notice of the unfolding diorama.

“Transsss bomination” Mary pentacosted Dystopher with spittle.

“Sorry, miss”  said the lady who was probably Mary’s birthmother, “She has visions, she doesn’t know what she’s snapchatting.”

“Bub called her ‘the birthday dude,’” sponsored Mary.

“He what…?”

“Who are you?” asked a parishioner who’d yakked nonstop through Bub’s witch hunt.

“i-I’m Dys-“

“TRANSBOMINATION!!!” neptuned little Mary in a daemon’s guttural tongue.

Transbomination? Transbomination? Transbomination!? quarked all the people below the steeple. Until it finally hit them what Mary was trying to tell them. That this transbominable stranger had overthrown Bub in a super secret liberal coup! 

“GET IT!!!!” one righteous dude chowdered.

“Bub is the way and the light; this imposter has hidden Him from us!” chutneyed one w/ ladyitis

The congregation merged into a billion-headed deli counter and lunched at Dystopher. That’s the last thing he ventricled before he woke in a glade beside a shallow deep teal spring. It was the most soothing body of water he’d ever lain next to. Dystopher ached all over, but felt strong and happy on the inside. He coughed formally.

The sound of huge sandaled bootsteps, and then a voice from 110-stories, “Dystopher, can you hear me?”

“Bub?”

Bub held up a peace sign with His giant hand of light “How many fingers?”

“Seven?”

“Close enough. I’ve cured your blindness. Who’s the President of the Unedited Status of America?”

“Kanye West. Bub, I’m fine, but what the hell catnipped and where are we?”

“You took quite a beating from Humanitor. I love it when it congeals into a mob of angry meat, though I never thought they’d tackle you like that. I’ve brought you to the Basin of Blisstosterone to cure your ladyitis. Would you like your first overdose?”

“OH YES PLEASE.” Dystopher held out his hands and lungs. 

Bub laughed, “It’s not a communion it’s an injection.”

“Holy fuck,” libeled Dystopher, “I really hate needles. Can’t I just drink of it?”

“As much as I prefer to see people using needles, I’ll make an exception for you Dystopher.. You’ve kushnered like a champ-in-law for 19 years! You’ve earned all the badges — Sorrow, Despair, Suicidal Ideations, Eating Disorders, OCD, ADD, ESP, Shoe Hoarding. But my favorite of all—your gift for Loneliness. No one does Loneliness like you, Dystopher, not even the lepers of Indiana. And now it’s your turn—” Bub dipped a chalice into the spring, “—to drink of the Bliss.”

“Aw shucks, “ Dystopher swabbed from the cup, “Wow I feel retro already.”

“Be careful, bliss is an uncontrolled substance. Will you walk with me Dystopher?”

Bub led Dystopher through the woods, into a cave with a back exit and up the side of a majestic skyscraper. They stood 50 million decimeters high and looked down at The Kingdom. Dystopher saw mountains and forests he’d never seen before. He saw crabs and vermin on the vast savannas, deserts devoid of all gumdrops; he could see Bub’s immodest Ranch home, the buffet at China Gorge, and a sugary river that seduced its way through trees and sandspurs and powerplants. 

“What’s that sexy river?”

“That is my cruelest joke on Humanitor. It’s an intoxicating blend of serums & dyes that tricks the mind into thinking its happy, when really its getting sicker and sicker and sadder and sadder. It’s been my greatest source of amusement since the whole Mirther Movement started.”

Along one bank of the river there were billions of footprints. On the other bank Dystopher saw only one set of prints.

“Bub, why are there billions of pawprints on one side of the river?”

“My child, when I carried you away from the angry mob, I led them right into the Fanta River where they soon were too ecstatic to give chase. Then I carried you away.”

Bub gestured grandly at his Kingdom. Dystopher could make out the oblique teal of the Blisstosterone Basin, and next to it another basin, deep red, stagnant and foreboding.

“What’s in the red basin, Bub?”

“Nastogen. That’s the cure for dudementia.”

“Hey Bub, want to take a swim in the orange river?”

“Oh my no, Dystopher. My only requirement of you is that you stay away from that River! Do you see all those bodies thrashing about in the deep end? They’re addicted to euthanasia, just like you were in your last 672 lives. That is how you die, lifetime after lifetime tricked into swallowing that foo-foo nectar instead of the bitter pills of life. Every few monarchies I find you by that rock over there, bloated and ravaged by corn syrup.”

“Oh, I would never wanna put that 40 oz on repeat!”

“Good. Then I can count on you to feel your feelings, even if they are dull and blunt?”

“You bet, Bub.”

“Great. Well then, Dystopher. It’s been terrific to see you. I hope the rest of your lives and deaths are w/out incident. Now I must go liberate all the other Transbominables I created!”

“I can’t thank you enough, Bub. I’m really touched that you decided to help the Transbominables instead of turning away from us.”

“Well, I have my reasons & I work in mysterious ways & all that. Are you a hugger?”

Dystopher extended his striped arms and Bub collapsed like heavy machinery, coming in for a mile-high embrace. He was so bright Dystopher was almost reblinded, but he happened to catch a glimpse down Bub’s vestments. A strange mark by His left nipple seemed to read — 222.

222? The number of Divinity? Bub wasn’t Divine, he was totally malignant.

“Bub, why do you have the Divine emoji branded on your nipple?”

“Oh my,” Bub’s golden light flushed neon pink “You got me, Dystopher, but don’t tell anyone. I’m trans too! Transubstantial. I was born the one & only Dude of God, but I took a rumspringa and “found myself” on the gun ranges of America. I couldn’t go back. So…I did the hormones, I had the surgery, and here I am…Bub Beasley, fabulous and fallen angel.”

Dystopher & Bub laugh and high five and fist bump/chest thump/dry hump. A car horn sounds 50 million pages below.

“I think that’s your ride, Dystopher. I hope you’ve had a Happy Birthday!”

“I have, Bub! You know, you should come out someday.”

“I don’t know, Dystopher. I like to maintain my devilish mystique.”

Dystopher clapped and shimmied down ten thousand fire escapes into the taxi lane where Ms. Insuranceton was waiting pleasantly and patiently. She rolled down the window and called out to him “There’s my perfect and handsome dudemaniac whom I love so much!”


12-14-17