Mini Manhattan

A short experiment in turning Manhattan into a model.

Insta-Vid

Sunday Jam filmed at Kingsgate Gallery.

Lego Demo

Tractor Trike was of two minds

"Ah, the stupid prick hasn't give me plate platform enough stability...it's going to mean slight camera shake", thought the plastic Brick within the Tractor Trike, as it sensed* it's curiously unbalanced design.
The Brick made plans to will it's creator to redesign it.

"R-E-B-U-I-L-D---M-E-!", it thought over and over again, in a solid everlasting mantra, outward.

A giant finger, the finger of it's creator actually, came down from the ether, and pressed firmly on it's bright red go button.
It was still in the testing phase. it might be rebuilt one day. But not yet.

It's many black axles whirred to life.
It's big tractor tyre began to slowly turn. **
At 10 centimeter's per minute.

Just then the motor inside TT awoke, from a dream about sailing to a treasure island.
It's a bit difficult to snooze when someone has just activated your internals with 9 volts of electricity.
But he was used to that. Absolutely. That wasn't it.
Something was different this afternoon.
"Rebuild me?...now, where in the world is that coming from?!" he puzzled.
Someone within the Design was definitely sending an outward mantra. But Hunter was the only motor in the Design, and it was widely known, practically a fact, that while motors were sometimes capable of reason, there was no way Bricks could ever be. Had Hunter gone mad? Or was there an alien on board? Or had a Brick gained higher consciousness?

The End.


*All lego is blind. However, many scientists now believe that certain 340RPM lego motors, may be telepathic.
**Runs on carpet, wood, over gaps no problem. Still to be tested on grass, but I really believe in Tractor Trike (and "No?" it's not making me say that) .

Legolaptic prototypes

Micro motor with 35RPM connected to a Lego Technics turntable for doing controlled video pans. 1 rev per 23 seconds.

Latest design for panoramic time lapsing. Motor has 340RPM which is geared down to 1 rev per 2 hours, or 1 rev per 40 minutes depending on where the motor is attached.. This design works perfectly with a Canon S3 IS, but when wide angle lens is attached the extra weight makes it a bit jumpy.


Designed for panoramic time lapsing. Turntable is a recording head from a VCR. Works perfectly indoors, but rubber band is too slack for outdoor use, meaning wind will shake camera and screw up the smoothness.


Early minimalist design, was a little jerky. Results can be seen here...Tested at Jeff's

Cinderella story

A touch of class, photographed as it was found by Grodin, on Sunday morning, in lower east side, Manhattan.

George’s Wormhole.

How did George Lucas get the effects to look so realistic in Star Wars? The answer is simpler than you might ever have imagined...it was all real.

California 1974.

Lucas is hiding from Amy in his garden shed. He’s meant to of quit smoking, but he likes it too much. So he’s out in the shed, leaning up against the back wall, puffing away on a cigarello, deep in thought, trying to work out how to follow up the success of THX-1138 and American Graffitti, when something catches his eye, through a crack in the shed walls…
He puts his eye up to the crack, and can’t believe what he sees…a cosmic wormhole to an alternate universe! And there’s some kind of Space War going on.
Dozens of Tie Fighters are chasing X-wings and Y-Wings. Shit is blowing up all over the place.
Lucas rips a plank off the shed wall so he can get a better look.
He pokes his head through, eyes wide with wonder, but space is FREEZING. Shivering, he puts the plank back in place, stubs out his cig, and goes back inside, trying to make sense of what he has seen.
Inside, completely oblivious, Amy is making lasagne. George goes to the phone, calls up Harrison Ford, and says “Hazza…you got anything on for the next couple of weeks…I’ve got a pretty interesting documentary/movie thing, and I need an actor to tie the whole thing together.” Harry says “Terrific. When do we start?” George says “Tomorrow.”
George hangs up, then calls his D.O.P. Gilbert, tells him he needs him, a 35mm camera, and enough film to shoot 3 feature’s, and he needs it now. Then he heads down to Spielbergs Jaws lot, to steal a 4 man deep sea diving capsule.

The next day:
Tattooine 4 million BC.

The crash landing in the diving capsule on Tattooine was pretty hairy, but Lucas came out unscathed, and Harrison sustained only a small cut on his chin. Gilbert, still elated from capturing the shot of the Imperial Cruiser chasing the Rebel people carrier, gave George a diehard thumbs up. All 3 men were still tripping on acid as they began trekking to Mos Eisley. Suddenly another pod crashed just over the dunes from the 3 men. Gilbert began filming as Threepio and R-Two clambered out and began bitching to each other.


Day 4.
Tattooine 4 million BC. Skywalker ranch.

After an argument about the lack of hot chicks in the desert, Harrison has left Gilbert and George, to head off to Mos Eisley Space port.
Lucas persuades a young alien of humanoid apperarance, called, of all things, Luke Skywalker, to let him document his adventures.
George’s increasingly beady eyes watch, as a hologram of Princess Leia pleads for Obi Wan Kenobi’s help. Luke is obviously quite taken with the young princess.
“Tell me you’re getting this Gilbert” whispers George.
“I’m getting it…I’m getting it” whispers Gilbert ecstatically.

Day 6.
Mos Eisley Space Port.

Harrison is fending off Chewbacca’s gay advances. The big lug is obviously smitten by the handsome Earthling, and since Chewie’s packing a spaceship full of space hash, Harry has decided to humour him for a while until he can sample to big apes goods. Harry and Chewie get high together, and then, a little embarrassingly, Chewbacca GIVES Harry his Millenium Falcon starfighter.
Harry needs a drink. The two head to the bar, where they run into Lucas, Gilbert, Luke, and the new old guy, Ben Kenobi. Harry is excited to be on camera for the first time, and improv’s a new character called Han Solo. George is a little concerned when Han actually kills Greedo on film, but it fits in with Luke’s mission to get to Alderan, and Kenobi has already cut off a dudes arm, so he lets it go.
Luke mentions that the Wookie is constantly declaring his love for Harrison, in Wookie speak, but George says it’s irrelevant what Chewie is saying, because humans don’t speak Wookie, and won’t get it. Secretly though, George finds the gay Wookie’s intentions pretty beastial, and worries for Harry’s safety. It's also beginning to dawn on Lucas, that giving Harrison Ford a real blaster, and now, his own spaceship, might not be such a good idea. Lucas makes a mental note to acquire his own blaster as soon as possible.


Coming up on George’s Wormhole…the hazardous trip back through the wormhole, to the shed, for more film, acid, and beers.

Grodin critiques Rambo

“You’re always going to be tearing away at yourself, until you come to terms with what you are…until you come full circle.”


WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS

First Blood. 5 stars
John Rambo is on the way home, walking, looking kind of like Frank Zappa without the police respect*, with nice orchestra music playing. He stops off to visit a Raven team buddy, big Delmore Barry. Unfortunately it turns out Delmore is gone, died from Agent Orange poisoning, which cut him down to nothing.
We find out Rambo’s whole platoon of guys with cool sounding names are gone. Barry, Danforth, Westmore, Bronson and Ortega have all bought it. Who were you Ortega? Who were you...
And then in the same day, Rambo gets a double bumoff, and runs into some bully cops, and takes it on himself to teach them a few lessons in how to get killed in a forest, and how to blow the shit out of their cop shop. And that’s it.

Rambo: First Blood Part II. 5 stars.
Rambo gets released from a real hellhole of a prison, to do recon on some missing POW’s in Nam. He gets betrayed by Murdoch, rescues some POW’s, and falls for Mei Ling, who in turn gets killed, which is a pity because she’s hot. Then at the end, JR nearly kills Murdoch but then refrains at the last minute, instead choosing to deliver an awesome speech to his Colonel about how he wants what “every other guy, who came over here, and spilled his guts, and gave everything he had, wants. For our country to love us, as much as we love it.” That’s all he wants folks. Just to be loved by his country. But I reckon he should probably have killed Murdoch, and done some more time, until the Colonel got him out of the joint again to do another mission, because Murdoch was a total asshole.**
And in the middle of the film, there’s about 45 minutes with no talk, just explosions, as Johnny tears ‘Nam a new anus, blowing the shit out of everything. It’s co-written by James Cameron, and it’s one of the underrated classic films of the 80’s.
I firmly believe that if aliens came down here with plans to invade Earth, or farm us or something, and we showed them Rambo: First Blood Part II, they’d probably get out of our solar system straight away. So it’s a smart film in terms of Intergalactic Earth Defense (IED) as well.

Rambo III. About 2 stars on a good day.
This film is the gay/spiritual one, where Sly's got a perm, and he and the Colonel always seem like they’re going to kiss.
Rambo is a bit broken in this one, but seems to have found a peace of sorts, living with the monks, and, doing a little stick fighting for extra pocket money.
Colonel tells him a fable about a stone sculpture, and then the Colonel gets captured by the Commies, and JR goes on a rescue mission to save the only man he trusts, with the help of the noble Afghan cave dwelling Mujahadeen. The irony is so thick you could fall out of a helicopter onto it, and the irony would cushion your fall and save your life.

John Rambo. 4 stars.
The last one. It’s been a wild ride, and now Rambo’s an old man, who looks kind of like a bear. And, he’s still got his demons. In fact, in the early sequences of this film, he’s holding these demonic serpents in his hands, so we won’t forget what a cut up he is. Later, in case we're still not getting it, there's an amazing flashback montage of all his demons, where he tells us, "You didn't kill for your country, you killed for yourself...God's never going to take that away." This is a deeply fucked up guy, people.
This is the one set in Burma, with Rita from Dexter in it, and it’s got the best ending a film can possibly have. The best you can get.
The long shot ending gave me the exact same feeling of anticipation as waiting for Christmas to arrive, as a young man.
I have a hunch that Sly made the whole film just so he could include the final shot, and if that was the call he made, it was a good call. If you left this movie before it faded to black, then...you should be shot, or something, or if they need someone to pull the switch on the electric chair, I will gladly do it.
Also, setting it in Burma, Stallone has pulled off a Clooney moment, by doing something to educate 14-16 year old boys about where to go if you want to be a mercenary soldier of fortune, when you grow up. Go to Burma.

* Police respect = mustache.
**Fuck, I just realised, I KNEW I'd seen Murdoch before...he's in Russ Meyer's Supervixens.

In flight pattern, and looking goo.

A rare glimpse of the increasingly private Grodin Fresson, beaming in to Jeff Cochrane's party, 2007.

He is a transcript of the conversation that followed.

Cochrane (Flabbergasted): Holy shit my Christ! Fresson!! What the fuck are you doing with that? I told you not to try the Transhattan3000 yet! It's still in the early experimental stages...we haven't even had the balls to try it on the monkeys.

Fresson: Ooooh, I thought you said it was through the experimental stage, and ready for the monkeys.

Cochrane: No Grodin, I didn't say that...and you're not a monkey are you?...Thank god it's back...I've been stalling Howard about it's disappearance, and it's been totally giving me the shits...How do you feel? Any temporal displacement, blurring, dejavu? Anything weird?

Grodin(checking in his underpants): All good here Colonel, situation normal.

Cochrane clasps the Transhattan3000, and hurries it back into its refrigerated storage room.
Grodin is already eyeing up a can of Kronie on the table.
Grodin pulls a reefer from his jacket and lights up. Cochrane comes back in and begins lecturing him about how he needs to be studied, and quarantined, in case he's brought germs through time with him, and about how he could wipe out the whole universe...and ya-deda-deda. Grodin walks over the an attractive blonde in the corner and offers her some weed. She accepts. Grodin can feel a Frank the Tank moment coming on. He grabs a can of beer and bongs it in 3 seconds. He's not finished. Pazza throws him another one.
Cochrane shakes his head in frustration, looks around to see that everyone is starting to crowd around Grodin and chant "Beer bong, beer bong, beer bong...," and shrugs his shoulders, bemused.
Part of him wishes Grodin had been crushed in the transportation through time...that would teach him. But the other part of him is glad to have the Transhattan3000 back in one piece, and no harm done...and besides, if Grodin got crushed in time, the whole universe might have freaked out, and there'd be no party.

Seconds later there is a knock at the door. Howard and his wife have arrived. Howard removes his Fez, and hands Cochrane his wifes fur coat to put somewhere.

Two hours later...

Grodin: Cochrane, I just realised, something is a bit different since I transhattered. Now I don't have an asshole.

Cochrane: Well, what do you want me to do about it?


Image documentation by Simon Archer Hurlstone.

White chip, good. Brown chip, bad.

July 1998, Washdyke, New Zealand.

There was a warm nor-west wind blowing. The night sky was a delightful pinkish hue.

A young 27 year old Grodin was on the nightshift at McCains, listening to Friday Flash Racing on Radio Caroline, and singing “On the Nightshift” to himself, when the farmers truck pulled in at the weighbridge.

The driver was a middle aged burly Maori man he’d not met before.

Grodin zipped up his overalls, grabbed a bucket, and started wheeling the ladder out towards the truck.
Atop the ladder, he gazed out over the sea of freshly unearthed spuds, selecting the most perfect 25 within reach.

Back in the quality testing lab, he washed the dirt off them, and cut a single chip from the centre of each potato. He put the 25 chips into the frying cage, and dunked them into the boiling oil, reflexively hitting the 2:00 minute countdown clock above the vat.

The driver, Dave Winiata, had jumped down from the rig and come inside the lab. He stood just inside the doorway, smoking, breathing heavy, eyeing Grodin suspiciously, pretending to be listening to the radio. Both men pretended to listen to the race on the radio.

As the clock beeped 0:00 Grodin withdrew the chips instantly, and spread them out on a paper towel.

25 perfect centre chips.

He reached for the colour testing chart.
The chart consisted of 12 hand drawn chips, all slightly different colours, light to dark, coloured in with felt pens.

Dave inched closer, curious about what the young fella was looking for.

Dave: What are you doing now?
Grodin: Well, we cook them for 2 minutes, and then look to see if the tips are getting too, brown.
Dave: Too brown?
Grodin: Yeah, you see there’s an acceptable level of browning, like the light brown ends on these two here. But these two are getting a bit too dark.
Dave: Too dark eh?
Grodin: Yeah, but it’s ok, cos there’s only 2 here that are a bit dodgy. If there were more than 3, I’d have to call the boss in, and he’d have to decide whether to accept the load. But, I’ll tell you something, I’ve been working here a couple of months, and frankly, we accept the load even if 5 of the chips are too dark.
Dave: Why the fuck does it matter if a chip is brown or white?
Grodin: I think it’s a taste thing, but it could also be an aesthetic thing.
Dave: Aw, yeah. So, when the taties get sent into the factory, cut and cooked…are there people in there, picking out the dark chips and throwing them out?
Grodin: Yes.
Dave: All sounds a bit racist to me mate.
Grodin: Hey buddy, I don’t make the rules, I just grift here…you want me to put them in the vat for another 2 minutes so you can eat them?
Dave: Yep.

Grodin put them back in the vat, hit the clock, and grabbed the salt and sauce from the shelf.

Ebony and Ivory came on in the background.
Dave was now deep in thought.

Gods Fly Part III - The prequel chapter.

This is not the Oerlikon GDF-005

Late in 2007, before the Stubbinhausen saga, before the demise of litle Rudy, before the child genius Walker Schlessinger, had even thought about building self assembling assassin robots that could be mailed to destinations, and triggered remotely, he was working for the military.
Specifically, he built the strangely titled, GoDsFly-005. It was a termibot. And it went ape shit and killed 9 men.
Although he feigned remorse for the incident, Walker got kicked out the the army, judges orders, and was forced to carry out his crazy experiments on the seedier side of town.
This experience lead to a dislike of judges, a desire to be self employed, to never work for "the Man" again, and an obsession with the film Predator, particularly Jesse Ventura's line "I aint got time to bleed."

This is the Oerlikon GDF-005

I call Screen Spanning Doctor, "Friend."

This spanning patch here means you can turn off the mirroring function on your ibook or imac, AND run an external monitor at it's maximum resolution, regardless of your computers resolution.

It's free, virtually instant to install, and easy to operate.

I'm running a 22" Daewoo L2200MD widescreen with the patch, on a 1.33GHZ 60GB G4 ibook, and it is sweet as.

I was a mite apprehensive that the SSD was going to fry my computer, but it didn't. Simply put, this works, and it is totally awesome.*

There is life before the patch, and life after the patch.


*Make sure you check that your computer is compatible before installing. There's a list of compatible computers on the link here.

Kurt Vonnegut enters the Brain River.

Legendary funny man Kurt Vonnegut, took a fall in Manhattan, and he's dead.

So what happens now?

That's a good question.
Right now, his invisible brain juice-

(containing a kind of zipped file of Kurt's conscious brain, and running a little brain player to keep him ticking, with lots of extra storage space for further braining)

-will be flying through space, towards a major Brain River Portal.

He'll get sucked into it.
In just a few seconds "Kurt" will find himself flowing into Brain River, and feeling a lot of good vibes, and crazy new and magical feelings he's never imagined, but mostly just being super stoked, that there seems to be something else.
And that's quite a kicker, when you're as cynical as Kurt.

So he's in this big space river, right?, and after about 2 seconds, just as he's starting to think,

"Fuck me...how big is this river...this better not be like in Second Life, that sucked the ass out of a dead panda...how do I go to the lav in here..,"

...he hears a wave of voices, all saying "Brain. Vonnegut!", "Hey, Vonnegut's here, ...alright!!", "Yo Vonnegut,...we got your six, sir. Brain." And just when the voices are beginning to seem like a bit of a pain in the arse, and Kurt is starting to wonder how much privacy he's going to get in Brain River, the voices become a supportive feeling, and there is total silence, almost as if a pos-emo filter has been applied to Kurt's zip brain, which in fact it has.

It's the darnedest thing really, but the Brain River, can become anything, to any brain juice, as Kurt will quickley be finding out.
And with the massive brain power of Kurt to manipulate the River, definitively, it will be awesome. The hyper excelerated braining of Kurt Vonnegut will be totally awesome.

So, well done Kurt for being a champion of truth, a laughing prophet of doom, whose cynicism was fuelled by war.

Welcome to Brain River. You earned it fella. You'll no doubt be running the place in a few weeks, so, you'll probably end up reshaping the entire universe, so, thanks in advance.

Relax folks, Vonnegut's dead and his zip brain is gonna save us all.*



*Or my name's not Grodin Fresson.

Time Loch

Grodin lay in bed, in little B and B, by a loch, thinking about the giant guest, and the family of Dwarfs who ran the B and B. In Grodin's world these days, Dwarfs were a dime a dozen, but it wasn't everyday he met a giant.

This great big chap had been in the Norweigan navy, at the time when Australian SAS soldiers boarded the good ship Tampa. When Australia did this, it committed an act of war in international waters, and Norway's military went on high alert, prepared for war with Australia.

This giant had been the chef in one of Norway's nuclear submarines. He spoke of the desire of members of the crew to fire a few missiles at John Howards house, and later claim it was a practice drill that had gone horribly wrong, kind of like the bizarre way in which Brandon Lee died, only more believable.* But it was agreed by all in the sub, that in principle, it was an interesting idea, but it was decided that they would get in too much trouble, and it might even start one of those embarrassing nuclear holocausts on the planet. But could Grodin still see the regret in the Giants furrowed brow? He believed so.

Grodin had just assumed it all to be true, but thinking more about it now, he began wondering if putting a Giant on a submarine made any sense. Of course it didn't. Unless the Giant had saved the captains life as a boy or something. This was Norway after all, a place where even the trippiest tripper could be tripped out, on an unusually regular basis. A giant on a submarine was probably like bread and butter to the Norweigans.

Grodin went to sleep to dream about giants, and then giant catfish, and then he basically just dreamt the film Big Fish, except Grodin and Tim Burton were the stars, and the giant turned into a talking dog halfway through the dream.

Grodin awoke to a couple of dwarfs with some scrambled eggs for him to eat in bed. He thanked them, and they left him to read the morning paper and eat his eggs.

Then he got up and got dressed and went out for a walk around the Loch.

Very early in the afternoon, walking across hills and fields on the far side of the Loch, Grodin stumbled across a tiny little patch of meticulously mown lawn, surrounded by a little stone fence, with a little steel gate. Inside the gate, someone had laid out two plates of fresh food, and two hardcover books.

One plate had cheese and gherkin sandwiches. The other had fresh fruit and chocolate on it.

Grodin was amazed to see the first book was The Time Machine, by HG Wells, his favorite author.
The other book was The Book of I Ching.

"This must be someone's secret place," Grodin said to himself as he opened the little gate and reached down to inspect the HG Wells book.

His focus was averted by noises in front of his little picnic spot.
There was another party of trekkers about 150 yards ahead of him. They were all marvelling at the sky behind them which had suddenly become strange shades of purple and blue.

All of a sudden, everything seemed kind of surreal.
Grodin had the Loch to his left, this dinky little fenced picnic area with the crazy books in the centre, and then the valleys on the right, and in the middle, a bunch of trekkers, and a bizarre sky.
So quick as a flash, he pulled out his Sony Ericsson K610i, and went into the camera settings, and set it to take a Panorama shot.
He lined up the first shot, and clicked it. Damn, things were getting weird out there.
As he looked at the screen on his phone, and lined up the second shot, something really strange seemed to be happening with the storm. It was almost above the trekkers. He clicked the second shot.
Just one shot to go.
Grodin lined it up on one of the trekkers and clicked away, hoping to lace in the final piece of the panorama nicely.
But before the cameras shutter could process the image, it had changed.

Grodin looked up. The storm was gone. It was now just a grey day. And where there had once been a group of trekkers, there was now a group of German infantrymen, and some trucks and motorcycles coming up the road towards him.

Oopsie daisy. Somehow he'd just quantum leaped into Nazi Germany.

Grodin astutely realised he looked ridiculous squatting in the fenced off reading area, with Hitler's henchmen heading right for him. He stood up as calmly as possible, and crossed the road ahead of the oncoming troops, and began walking up the hill at a crossroad.
As the Germans passed down below, he heard one of the motorcycles peel off from the group. It was coming his way.

He pulled out his phone again. Maybe another shot would take him back to the present. He ran off a panorama pretty fast. But it didn't work. He was stuck in Nazi Germany. He would have to find that storm again. What a bummer this holiday was turning out to be. He turned off the phone. He would have to conserve it's power.

He listened as the motorcycle got closer, and closer.

And then Grodin woke up. He'd eaten the dwarf's eggs and nodded off again without realising it. Thank god he wasn't in Nazi Germany.

He got up and went to the window. There was the giant, out on driveway hugging a group of men dressed in Norweigan Navy uniform. All was well.



*Brandon Lee, son of Bruce Lee, was shot and killed during filming of the Crow. Instead of using blanks in the scene, the director chose to use emptied real bullets. So they carefully removed the gunpowder from each bullet, leaving enough powder residue in each shell to make them go bang, but not shoot out fast. And either, someone didn't do a very good job of this, or a real bullet got into the mix. But either way,...has anyone heard of anyone else using emptied real bullets as blanks?

Things Grodin’s 3 year old genius nephew said in the last 3 months.

After watching and memorising the animated dross-fest Moses, and contemplating God…
“I don’t think there is a God. I think the planet looks after itself.”

When he ran out of presents to open on Christmas day and went beserk, and then felt sheepish, and various family members tried to console him…
“Go away, I just need some space.”

When his dad tried to put eyedrops in his eyes for conjunctivitis…
“Fuck off.”

I challenge anyone to quote me a smarter 3 year old.

Thief Dog

Grodin was walking in the market with Nurse Whodackie, when they saw the sleek greyhound at the quiche cart, edging slowly ever closer to the bounty.
The dog's long nose was just inches away from the corner tart.
It looked up and around, moving very cautiously, perhaps thinking to itself "...just relax, you're invisible, they can't see you...keep being invisible...nice and easy...", and purposefully licked the tart.

Grodin and his friend both did a little "ewww!", and chuckled to each other.
It seemed like quite a ballsy move by the pooch.

Grodin then imagined how great, dog conversations must be, when dogs are hanging out, and bragging to each other about times when they'd scored magnificant feasts.
Then Grodin began to wonder what the top 10 dog feasts of all time were, in which dogs had stumbled across their dream meals, and no one was ever the wiser. God, some of the doggie paydirt and escape stories would be quite fantastic.
This was a whole genre of dog action movies that NOONE was tapping into. Curiously, apart from Lady and the Tramp, Grodin couldn't really think of a decent Dog action flick where the dog's spoke English to each other.

Simon's owner was paying the man for the tart. Simon was wolfing down the last cheesey chunks off the ground.

God's Fly II. Part 3 in the Stuubinhausen saga.

Irwin Stuubinhausen practically smashed the back door down, as he ran inside, into a spotless open plan dining area.

"VELMA! Some punk just shot off my hand and it hurts like hell! VELMA!"

Suddenly there is a huge rumbling boom in the background, as a motel room a block away is suddenly consumed by flames, and an entire corner of the motel structure disintegrates to the ground. Irwin spins around to see what the hell's going on.

Velma Stuubinhausen came in shaking her head at her husband, "Land sakes! Irwin dear, you're in a state, look at where you're bleeding, on my nice clean floor..."

Over the last few months, Velma had become obsessive about cleaning.

"Velma, I'm dying for Christs sake, please call an ambulance!"

"Irwin, stick your hand in a plastic bag to protect it from infection, and stick it in the freezer to contract the veins and stop the bleeding." It was good advice. Velma liked it because it would stop the old man from spraying her kitchen with blood. Blood that would have to be cleaned up, before it dried, and began to turn brown, bringing back too many bad memories.
Irwin liked it because he reckoned the ice would stop the burning pain he was feeling.

Velma went through to the hall and rang for an ambulance. As she waited on hold, she wondered what the hell was going on, and whether it had anything to do with that Hawaiian idol she had bought in a jumble sale 5 months earlier.

But in truth, it was a complete coincidence, a simple matter of logistics, that Walker had chosen the quite random, Judge Stuubinhausen, as a target that day.

The house was different without the little dog, Rudy. After that day with the neighbor, when little Rudy had looked up in horror to see Velma getting covered in crap, he had felt awfully responsible. It was his crap after all. Rudy fell into a deep melancholy.
A month after the golf strike, Irwin had come home to find that Rudy had suicided, by somehow hanging himself on the front fence.

And now someone had just tried to kill Irwin. These were dark times.

Sirens could be heard getting closer. In just 10 seconds, an ambulance whizzed past outside, on the way to another accident.

Irwin had wet his pants, but he was beyond caring, delirious and giddy with the searing pain.

And then Velma heard "9-11 Emergency, how can I help you?"

God's Fly

"Can I get ya anything? Tuna Colada?"

Ah, word. Caddyshack was playing on the old boob tube in the background, as Walker Schlessinger, codename 5Y9D (Cynide), stood up in front of a large hi definition monitor, tweaking a little joystick on a customised computer operating box.

In another part of the world, a prototype BKD-010, wi-fre linked to Walker, stood up, and moved over to the window of the stinking hot crummy fleapit motel room.
The human sized seethrough robot smoothly knelt down and picked up a Glock P7 HD blaster. The Glock immediately located the robot's guidance comm. Now Walker could control the robots movement, and aim, via the Glock. Walker picked up a plastic gun that was plugged into his computer box.

Out BKD's motel room window, 200 yards away, there was an elderly man, a judge as it happened, out watering some vegetables. They say Ritual's can be dangerous.

Walker was lucky. The judge was barely moving, apart from his arm strafing the radishes. The lack of upper body movement meant the 1 second video delay probably wasn't going to fuck things up, this time, but you never knew.

With the punch of a button on the computer box, Walker activated the Glock's HD telescopic sights, with the sight view springing up full screen on his monitor.
There was the judge, in the cross hairs like a sitting duck.

Walker hit Fire.

But during the 1 second delay, the judge raised his arm, to brush a fly away from his face. The bullet hit the judges watch, then shattered through into his hand, and after the hand, skimming the top of his old head. The old man was shaken, and only had one hand left, but he was alive.

After the trigger had been pulled, and bullet sent, there was a 3 second delay.
And then the Glock sent the message to BKD-010 to automatically self destruct, and it was completely vaporized in a thermite sulphate acid blast, from explosives laced through the robot's frame.

Walker rewound the last 3 seconds and watched it again. He saw the old man running inside, calling out to his wife, before the the video cut out.

"Crap!" Walker thought. He had done 6 hits now, and all of them had been failures.

It was time to find a new application for his labour.

Noone understands this blog, not even me.

You are happening.
Right now.
You're happening right now.

Grodin brings Barb back from Death

"Oh Jeez, not again", Grodin thought, as his lesbian, buddy Barbara od'ed right in front of him. Sure, Grodin and his now "dead" pal, were both well into their Two Hundreds, but fortune had dealt them the hand to afford their own Physiox Command Centre, so things were a little different for them.

The Physiox Command Centre, contains body scanning nanobots that live in the human body. The spend the first two years inside you, just scanning. And once they're done, they got ya. They save you, back you up, continually scanning and recording your total data set. And get this, they can repair cells. Even Brain cells. They kind of Print the perfect cells over top of the damaged cells. It's complicated.
Without wanting to sound like a real bullshit artist, then can actually grow new brain cells for you. And for this, one of the oldest living Brainologists Grodin Fresson, was truely thankful.

The point is really, that this is the year 2199. Grodin and Barbara's lives have been changed drastically by owning a PCC. Lets just say, they can afford to get a little wasted every so often. Because if they wake up with a hangover, they can simply load yesterdays cells back into their system and the hangover is instantly gone.
But death is a little different. In fact, often enough to be freaky, the PCC didn't bring people back.
Grodin went over the the command centre booth, and turned it on. He pulled out Barbara's earlier days scan and began the download. It was instant.
Now Barb had yesterdays body and mind again. But she was still dead.
Grodin went into a Braining.
First looking at the red and yellow cones in front of his eyes, then going into the cones to look at a filofax of millions of names, then finding Barbaras name, then being at a desk, typing her name into an ancient red computer, then putting on white jumpsuit and jumping into the screen, then being inside Barbaras brain, tickling it and telling her to wake up.
And she does.
And Grodin is back in the room looking at his buddy.
And Barbara can remember everything.
G: "So uh, how was Death this time?"
B: "Incredible, you gotta do this."
G: "Nah, you're crazy."

Grodin does Durex

The Pyramid Man

The Pyramid schemes of the early 90's had fooled a lot of crazy people out of their money, for one very simple reason. There were not an Infinite number of people to keep it rolling.
But from the time of the humble Vic 20, and even before, the BASIC code of:

1 RUN
2 GOTO 1

...had shown man the simplicity of an infinity motor, a simple loop, yet one relying on a finite power source, but still, in principle, a kind of infinity.
Mind you, if we're getting into pixel universes, thats edges can be changed according the the arrangements of the pixels, a simple 2 dimensional infinity canvas if you will, then maybe the old television vacuums of the late 20th century were a more interesting infinity concept. But for the sake of this story, lets stick to the computer loop concept.

Anyway, if only this power could be harnessed for good.
And then in the year 2012, after huge advances had been made with brain-reading computers, and organic brain nano-bionics, in the middle of December, such a man came to discover infinity.
It has to be said, that without the nano-bionic brain tweaking units, it would not have been possible for Spaniel Dobson to have done it.
There were unknown dangers of sleeping with the brain reading computer implants. Dangers humans had failed to comprehend.
Without realising it, one night Spaniel created Space Tide.

A Big Idea made a teeny little space in the universe, and in doing so, pushed something that was there, somewhere else.
All Spaniel had to do was think of something. The brain readers would do the rest. They would log that energy placement, record it's exact design, and begin replicating it, thereby creating identical energy placement, and the consequent displacement.

Space Tide was a simple formula.
The energy created by the occupation of an idea, plus 1 copy.

By itself this would cause minute tremor through the universe, before the power source, namely Dobson's head exploded from getting too heavy.
The trick was really to get some of these replicating patterns to happen EXTERNALLY of the power source.
Because ideas were lighter than the space they occupied, but because they had to go somewhere, the universe had little choice but to let them in.
And once in, the idea was so light and prone to existance, that it was able to use the energy around it to make a copy of itself. Essentially, the Idea had the infinite resources of the sub atomic particles around it to run another copy, and another, and another, until so the idea experienced infinite interdirectional continuity.
But with the ifinite Idea, came the infinite displacement. This became known as space tide. Everything was given a booster shot by the fresh idea. Things that have never felt anything, or certainly not much, suddenly experienced a whoosh of Space Tide followed by human inspiration. For some things this was subtle, for others it was big news.
What happened after that is anybodies guess. I'm not even sure any of this makes sense. I just liked the Space Tide idea.

And getting back to the Pyramid Man idea, this story was meant to be about a dude who created uploadble digitable clones of himself, that could somehow make cash for him, simply because they were able to be infinite, but then I realised the little dudes would have been reliant on the internets power, and they would possibly burn out the planets power supply. So maybe Virus: Airborne would have been a better choice. But again, we'll never know.

Wood fights back.

Grodin flicked through Saturday's paper. These days the news just kept on getting crazier.
30% of the North Pole had melted during 2005. 14% of both the Poles had been "liquidated" (yuk yuk).
But what the papers were too afraid to go there, was that Santa's grotto in the North Pole was also in deep shit.
Forget about the polar bears dying out. That was just a smoke screen the media preferred to the images of Elf's drowning as they tried to paddle to safety on rafts made out of rubber duckies tied together using jump ropes and silly putty. And most disturbing of all, noone had seen or heard from Santa in 6 months. Had the big lug gone down with his ship? Would Christmas be a little later than usual this year? Like, about another 100 million years later?
Only time would tell.
As Grodin turned the page he scored a paper cut on his index finger. Oh darn it. "Darn it, darn it, darn it," he thought as he looked upon the lazer thin streak of blood slicing through his fingerprint.

The multiplex lives of Ghee Frasay

In the year 2004, the Entity known as Ghee Frasay (pron;"Ghee Phrar-say"), left the sanctuary of Guy Fraser, and took new residence inside the actor Tom Cruise.
Within days, "Ghee" had dumped Tom's PR woman, and hired his sister in her place.
He started opening Cruise up in public interviews, in ways Tom had never been opened before. But Ghee had a secret agenda.
To promote love and understanding of all mankind.
To warn American's about the dangers of prescribing Ritalin to children, and overprescription in general.
And to get fucked up and have some fun.
But unfortunately the fans liked his old stuff better than his new stuff.
And lets face it people, Ghee got too cocky. Like when he took Ecstacy and went on Oprah. Or the time he smoked Crack and hurt Matt Lauer's feelings. And impregnating Katie with his own cloned genes, but as a female...aye yae yae yae yae. Tom could feel Ghee's control, and he was almost powerless to stop it. Scientology was miles off from what Braining was all about, and Ghee had turned to the dark side of the Brain a long time ago. But Tom was still Tom Cruise, and he'd be Goddamned if some imposter was going to fuck with his shit. So Tom Cruise decided to smoke out the hole. He'd screw his whole reputation up. Some say it's all a man really ever has.
Somewhere deep inside, Tom knew he could outcrazy Ghee. It wasn't easy, melting down in public, deconstructing himself back to a hollow husk,...but it worked. And on August 22nd, 2006, after Cruise's Paramount deal was terminated, and everyone was hocking lugies in his face, Frasay finally decided, the ride was over.
He left the actor Tom Cruise, and went back to his old friend, Guy Fraser.
But Fraser was gone.
There was another living there. He looked like Guy, but his eyes told another story. Grodin Fresson was in the house.

A few nights later, in another wedge of planet, in Galveston Texas, Tom Cruise got up from his bed and went out onto the balcony to look at the rough sea rolling in. It was cloudy and cold, the sea looked dark blue, there was a full moon. And at that moment, Tom Cruise realised, he was free. But surprisingly, a huge part of him missed Frasay terribly. But then he grinned that fucked up fangface grin, because he knew, he nu, that he was gonna come back.*
He felt a little shiver. He watched a cat on the beach for a moment, and went back inside.

*But no, little did Tom Cruise realise, that the Ghee visitations, would continue regularly, throughout Cruise's future comebacks, in a bizarre roller coaster of total mental stability followed by meltdown insanity, for the next 45 years.

Tight is Right

They say that Tight Is Right.
So Tight! You know that it's right.
You do hear it sometimes.
Tite.
And "is", I got no problem with.
But what is Right?
And who can say?
And this has been a Tightening,
By the artist formerly known as
Ghee Frasay x

It happened on the 23rd

On the 23rd of August, at 2pm GMT, Grodin received an important link via gmail.

Press for Truth (full film)

Big things happen in 23's.

Grodin and video compression. Oil and water...

...until now. Grodin had finally worked out more bodacious compression settings. In the past few days, he'd been reloading old specials, and things, onto youtube, so, look out.
It should be noted, that Mr Fresson orignally had these on as fancy video screen grab links. But it was too in your face, way too all over your face. So he cut back to a simple hyperlink. And it worked.

This one's got the Eye in it, innit.

This one's got some planes landing, innit.

This one's got clouds, innit, innit!

This one's all screwed up, innit.


Don't go to work. They know.

Ride into the Sun

Grodin didn't really know why, he'd just taken the Aerospace SE out for three hours, to look at a big orange sun, going down over the ocean.
The ride home, with no lights, or back brakes, was dangerous, and arduous. But he nearly made it.
Until, about 2 minutes from home, he saw an unopened McDonalds curry sauce container, on the road ahead.
"Ride over it." thought Brain.
Fresson increased peddle power. The sleek Aerospace hit the little curry container, with lethal force.
The container exploded it's entire contents, straight up, splattering all over Grodin's jeans and the mighty Aerospace, with dark orange sauce. His Levi's got the bulk of it.
"That's torn it. I just washed these pants," thought Grodin.
But then Grodin was flying up to an intersection, he went for the brakes. Sauce on the front rim somehow totally deactivated the brakes. Grodin astutely realized a cunning Final Destination type scenario was unfolding, right in front of him.
Sure, Grodin probably had a few subliminal death urges that could have sucked him down, but these days, his subliminal life urges, were, so much stronger.
He put both feet down for shoe-brakes, and road-skiied the Aerospace, to a safe controlled stop.

At home, he was feeling kinda psyched. So he put on In the Ghetto, and lay down. Then he watched Rocky III, and worked out his quad's, tri's and ab's.
He wished he had cable, so that he could watch The Contender. But it wasn't to be. Not just yet.

A Scanner Darkly Review by Grodin Fresson

There are few absolutes in this world, when you're as deeply into Braining, or being Brained, as I am. And if you are too, then you probably already share my suspicions, that key players at the highest levels, may in fact be keeping serious Cosmic Secrets of the Universe, from you, and me. Like the Apple Mac logo, an apple, with a bite out of it? What are we, in Eden? Is that why we're all downloading so much porn on our imacs? Subliminal messages via cult symbolism? That's what my buddy reckons. Now, I'm not talking about Bohemian Grove here, or those turkey slappers in the Government. No, I'm talking about the unbelievable stuff, like the creature from the twin dimensions, here now.

In your film A Scanner Darkly ,that was a great moment for me, Mr Linklater. The creature from the twin dimensions, Yeeah.
But, Richard Linklater, at first, I thought your movie was a 4 star, and I reckon it's going to get a lot of 4 star ratings, so I feel a little assholey, but it's a THREE STAR movie! You made a 3 star movie dude!
So let's break that down. First half is slow, and not that engaging. Downey Jnr is great, but the look of it is a bit distracting, and the actors' subtlety and humanity is annoyingly filtered by the rotoscoping. (Like that waitresses breasts? That would have been better in live action hi-res slo-mo, wouldn't it?)
The technique, while impression, makes it harder to engage in the reality of it.
In Waking Life the look made sense, but for Scanner Darkly, I wanted 70's style colour grading, directed by Sofia Coppola, and starring, shit, I don't know, who could play Arctor? (Write and tell me at frasay@gmail.com or leave a comment if it works)
Anyway, sorry, back to the review. So, first half, I was enjoying, but it was a bit boring just cos of the rotoscoping. It looked really cool, but I don't want, just cool, I want humanity. You shoulda done it live action Dick. I would have given you 4 and a half stars.
Although in some scenes, it felt like the mind of Dick was, on the screen, and that was cool (hey, how'd you do that?). It was very exciting.
And the second half did rock. It just got better and better.
And then the seminal moment, when we got that incredible closeup of Winona's breasts, heaving on the bed...
Her cartoon breasts; What the fuck is wrong with you man?
You've got a shot of Winona Ryder naked, are we straight?, and then you think, "Hey hey, I bet the viewers would really like to see what I'm seeing right now,...but, no. I'm gonna put a thick toony filter on the breasts, so only I get to see them." Is that what you thought in the editing room, you selfish bastard! Not right!
Anyways, Donald was unreal at the end. Such a beautiful scene. All the actors were top notch. No doubt. Anyway, is that a review? Are we done? Go see this film. It's a beautiful story.
Ok, getting back to that part in the middle about Sofia Coppola doing this,...after seeing Linklater's version, now I want to see another director do this in live action. And maybe you could use the Charlie Kaufman script? I understand Linklater is a writer/director and he likes to understand the creative vision from the inside out, or something, and I respect that. But there's a Kaufman script for Scanner Darkly out there, people, sitting on some shelf. In fact, it's sitting on my shelf. Maybe I should stop being a frikken asshole critic leech to society, and go out and create something beautiful.
Right after this bong.

Dogs are good

A good old fashioned Shit and Flick

Grodin had been watching the little poodle (Rudy), from over the road, taking a shit on his front lawn, again, as the dogs owner, chain smoking Velma Stuubinhausen coaxed the mutt to "Get it all out."
He'd asked Velma, time and again, to clean up Rudy's shit from his lawn. But she just never did.
Well, Grodin's pleas would end, here and now.
He grabbed a 5 iron and went out to the front lawn.
There was dried up, months old, white poodle shit all over it. Maybe 40 or 50 healthy patches of poop.
Grodin rested his club beside the first piece of shit he saw, took aim, focused, and launched pattercake 1 over the road. It hit the front door.
Fresson launched pats 2, 3, and 4, again all hitting the front door of the Stuubinhausen's house.
Inside, Velma Stuubinhausen was walking through the lounge towards the front door, to answer, what she assumed, was a timid persons knocking.
Grodin was lining up Rudy's freshest and finest crap.
Velma was reaching for the door handle, Rudy peeking out from behind her calves.
Grodin was really focusing his club on pat 6.
Velma was opening the door and pausing, just like a rabbit in the headlights.
Grodin's 5 iron swung mercilously, catching the little poop, perfectly.

Have you ever really looked, at an Aerospace SE Viscount?

It was lucky bikes weren't children. Grodin had always taken the news of another bike being stolen with a disarming nonchalance.
But after losing Number 4, there was a lucky change.
Looking out his window one late afternoon, Grodin spied a disowned bike, lying in the gutter, covered in cobwebs, and crying. He went outside for a closer look.
Brushing back the cobwebs, revealed a silver frame, with bold white and blue lettering reading AEROSPACE SE, and on the bottom frame VISCOUNT. A Milremo stem and very old-school steel gear levers, and denim stripping wrapped handlebars, adorned it's front. The ass end showcased a carrier with blue and white woven ties. It's tyres were both pancake flat, it couldn't be ridden yet, so Grodin wheeled it inside and fixed it up.
And now the Aerospace sat in his huge bedroom, with a fancy new gel seat to protect Grodins ballsack.
Fresson contemplated whether to gaffer tape the handlebars, or whether the denim had it's merits, by showing potential thieves how old it was. No, shiny black handlebars would be like a neon light to thieves, Grodin suspected.
Best of all, it was free, and it was the fucking coolest bike in the universe. So cool that Grodin had already imagined taking it overseas if he ever moved from London. Beyond that, Grodin imagined still riding it as an old man. It was as if a dream gift had become a reality.
He loved his new bike, so much.
Then he started thinking about the 3 quid lock he'd bought to protect this thing that he loved so much.
Brrr. It was very lucky bikes weren't children.

Crappy Huballoo telephones Hackman

Grodin's incidental conversation with the private investigator had got him thinking about death again.
He'd always just assumed that private dicks were a bunch of perverts, getting paid for it. But Doug Hackman had been different, disciplined, determined. God, could Doug's insane tale have possibly been true? It was quite fantastic.
Doug said he worked for a big movie company.
This company had risen to prominence through smart financing of independent features. And then they heard it through the grapevine about an amazing script. Just rumors, fragments of scenes, glimpses of genius, that seemed to drive everyone who heard them, crazy with a lust to get their hands on this script.
All anyone knew for sure, was the scripts name, The Age of Aquarius. And one of the writers was identified, Steven Best. Doug's company had set up a meeting with Best. But then Doug got a call from Crappy Huballoo* Doug kept Huballoo on the line long enough to try and trace the call, but he never got close. Huballoo had one very simple message..."The meeting between your people, and Best will not be allowed to take place. (Name Removed) Films has gotten wind of the potential ownership of The Age of Aquarious, by (Name Removed) Studios, and a decision has been made to whack Best, steal the script and bury it (until things cool down), and clean up any, "remaining residue." Their words, not mine....listen Doug, the writer's behind this film are important to me. I can't let (Name Removed) Films take Best out. I want you to go over there, and protect Best until the script is bought and paid for by your organisation...you do that, and whatever you need in the future, just say the word. I'll hear it. Anything. (click)
Hackman said he felt like he was in some kind of daze after the call from Huballoo. He'd packed a bag and driven straight to the airport, to get on a plane to London.
As fate would have it, Fresson was on the same flight, plopping himself down beside Doug in 23B, and listening to the tale about,
a studio who would kill for a killer script,
and another studio, whose private dick was going to try and save the day,
and a screenwriter in danger,
and a script with magical powers.

It wasn't so impossible to believe really, with all the money the owner could reap, that someone could actually kill for a great script. But Grodin had spent most of the flight trying to work out if Doug was just another pervert, and the significance of the braining had almost passed him by. Of course, shortly the real braining would begin, triggered by the meeting.

Still jetlagged, Grodin lay down and closed his eyes. His minds eye could see a tribal man in a loin cloth, walking with two black cougars by his side. There was an F-15 cruising over the desert, high above the man. Something was following the F-15.

Meanwhile, outsider/writer/genius, Steven Best works at his computer, oblivious to the bad news that, assassin Dirk Vardon, is climbing up the outer wall of his apartment.

Doug Hackman unsheaths his BAER 1911 PREMIER II© SUPER-TAC, flicks on the night sight, and from 150 yards away, fires all 8 rounds at Vardon's deadly sillouette.

Grodin opens his eyes, startled by the shots, seemingly coming from somewhere nearby. He gets up and looks out his window, wondering if it has anything to do with the man on the plane.

*At least, that week, it was Crappy Huballoo. Nobody knew his real name anymore. He'd been changing his identity legally, on a weekly basis for the last 35 years. In hacker circles he was known as /\/0 /\/@/\/\£. He knows everything there is to know.

Le Branleur Noble

Grodin caught the headline -
"Humans to have sex with robots within 5 years."

Hot damn, what a scoop! Grodin's reality travels forward 40 odd years...

...to 2049.
Grodin is sifting through some stoners jumble sale in Dulwich. He can't decide whether 10 Glips is a good deal on a pair of worn 2023 edition Adidas Cobra's. As his old drug addled mind tries to weigh up the purchase, he overhears a couple of kids, no older than 15, nearby discussing an old Angel 3000.

Billy
Hey, a bone fide Angel 3000! Isn't this that model that got banned, because its orgasm girations were too spasmodic and it was ripping guys dicks off? When you go to hell, tell them Angel sent you? Remember?

Todd
I don't know. Anything before the Cherry Cooker, is bad news. This one doesn't even know how to cook and clean. It doesn't even have cell rejuvenation. What's the point?

Billy
The point is, it's romantic. It's about fucking. It's not some, slave droid, with a rec-know chip, it's just a machine. A machine that knows how to fuck so good it can actually rip your dick off. That's exciting. I'm gettin' it.

Todd
You're fucking crazy.

As the two younglings strode off with the sexoid walking along behind them, Grodin chuckled to himself. Boyo, times had changed.
Through the 2010's animatronic sexoids like Angel here, had only been the domain of the rich kids. By 2023, everyone had a sexoid or a Cockbot.
Masturbation was a thing of the past. Kids just went straight into losing their virginity with sexoids, and after that, they were hooked.
As the bots became more advanced, humans feelings for them grew. The first marriage between man and sexoid happened in the late 20's. By then they were like Google with an fanny. They could do everything, except breed. Need brain surgery? You couldn't be in better hands than those of the Sweet Chastity 1969. Need a new extention on your house? Borrow a handful of your mates Harrison Cockbots.
For a while, human to human love slumped majorly, and people spent A LOT more time indoors. But then human to human(H2H) became exciting again, and the human spirit triumphed once more, for a time. But as the manufacturers saw their market begin to slump, they got excitinger sexoids on the market, that could do shit, not humanly possible. Tantric Sexoids. Zero G Sexoids. Mind control sexoids. It got so crazy. It just got soo crazy.
Grodin had always been an old school man. A "wanker." And he'd been proud of that. Proud of his imaginations own power to stimulate his pecker. And proud of his lust for real flesh and blood. Why love a fake, when you can have the real thing? And in the end, it paid off for him too. Bigtime.
Of course, noone thought like that anymore. Grodin was just some far out old man, shaking slightly, as he lifted up the Cobras, at the kid who's sale it was.

Grodin (wheezing)
I'll take these.

Grodin crossed the Cycway. He sat on a park bench watching the monorails for a while, then got up, picked a flower that was growing up through a crack in the pavement, and took it home to his old lady.

The War Against Lightning.

Grodin read, and then reread the figures. He just couldn't believe it.

"300-400 American's are struck by lightning every year. Roughly the same amount of Americans are dying each year as a result of Terrorism."

If our governments could somehow turn Lightning against Terrorism, at least the fight would be fair. And probably far less abstract than the idea of humans fighting terror with physical weaponary. Where were the damn Psychic soldiers, the ones that could actually meet The Terror face to face and show it they weren't afraid, make friends with it, turn it into The Happiness?
Governments just did not know what was who.

Distracted by a bitty mosquito, Grodin looked around, his eyes drawn to this huge bright red rubber mat he was sitting on.

He put on the Rocky IV workout theme, and began to work out to the steady-build syncopated rock beat.

Excerpt from the screenplay: Cobra Forces or Bust.

FROM THE WRITING VAULT OF GRODIN FRESSON

An angry turgid Storeman storms into the offices of Cobra Command, slamming the door behind him.

STOREMAN
Is it true what they're saying? Are you really gonna break up the Cobra Forces?

Cappy turns around startled. He's been downloading "erotica" on the office computer, and wasn't expecting interruptions.

CAPPY
Jesus, don't anyone knock anymore? (regaining composure)...and listen, I ain't breaking shit up! Certain governments of the world, have asked us to go on a dangerous secret mission. Apparently they read Braining Level 1, and assumed we were all soldiers of fortune. They think we're Crack.
Long story short, when the Government approached me, I said Ja. I never told them we're just a social grade soccer team with a cool name. And now, we've got an Apache helibird coming to pick us up in 40 minutes. We're to go uncover as homosexual masseuses at a high class nudist spa retreat. That's where the Bust part comes in (Cappy turns to camera and raises a knowing eye brow to the audience). The spa is just a front for group of crazed scientists who call themselves The Awfully Sadistic Scientists Hellbent On Literal Extinction, or The ASSHOLE's for short. We are licensed to kill these assholes by whatever means necessary. But we can only take in a 10 Cobra team. Probability of us all being killed in the first 3 days is over 65%. You in?

STOREMAN (putting his index finger up to Cappy's mouth)
Shhh. Ya had me at dangerous. Of course I'm in...Who's the ten?

TO BE CONTINUED

The wisdom of the Meek.

As usual, Brain Master Meek had given Grodin something brainy to take home and think about...

"Just get it out there, or your mind may end up eating itself."

Soon after hearing this, Grodin caught the overland train for home, in the sweltering late afternoon sun.
Wind whistling through an open window above his head, glancing over a copy of Gravity's Rainbow he'd just bought at a fair for 20 cents, becoming distracted by an old man nearby him who smelled of poohs, squinting up at a jet stream cutting through the blue sky, as he contemplated the wisdom in his Mentors words.

An idea paused mid stream was a waste of good brain space. Ya see, Grodin believed that Braining was all about constant brain flow. Eventually the small brain stream of a human brainer, intersecting with the giant invisible brain rivers, flowing from the Universal Brain, coursing through all universes.

Or to put it another way, stagnation was death.

But beyond that, the idea that a mind could actually eat itself was frighteningly Scanneresque.

Brrrrain.

Zane's Deliverence, Brandt's Destruction.

Grodin was on a bender, watching Alex Zane talking to A Massive Attack on his television, at some, festival, as Zane was trying not to get drowned by his own unique brand of coolness, by his own unique style of uncomfortable comic delivery. But he DID get drowned in it. And The Massive Attacks were like, "uh, the reason our music reaches so many...wooah shit, Zane is down! We got a Bleeder!- I got this, fire up the ECT!" And 3D is like, "I don't know how it works...O Fuck! We're losing him!" ...
And as fumbling and unco-ness by the Massive Attackers prevailed, as Zane drifted off into a world of bright lights, thinking "Guy's, I can hear you, I'm not dead yet! Give the fucking Heart Booster to a trained professional who can bring me back..." But to the MA, it was just dying gibberish. Grodin could almost sense what he was thinking about as the lights began to dim...
That's right. Zane was thinking about Deliverence. He loved Johnny Boorman almost as much as Fresson did. But they both knew, that beyond the theatrical cock suredness of the long takes, and the pitch point dialogue, Boorman obviously had a deep seated hatred of fatties. He'd thought, hey, I'm going to put Burt in there as Jesus, and Jon Voight can be, sort of like Jake from Melrose, the ultimate decent fella, and we'll throw Ned Flanders in there so we can have a little sing song around the fire about Nature...and I'll put a fatty in there, who Burt calls Chubby Boy, and Chubby gets fucked in the ass like a pig by an inbred hillbilly, yeah that's it! And Boorman made a film about it. And it turned out to be, Burt, Ned, and Jon's best film ever. And I know what you're thinking...what about Chubby? Did he make out okay? No man. Chubby got it worst of all...No, Chubby kicked ass, he went on and played God, or some kind of God channeler in Network. Do you wanna see a good movie? Watch Network.
Suddenly, Zane found a reason to come back. Russell Brandt or whatever that guys name is. Zane's disdain for Russell brought him back from the abyss. And he came back to life with a mission.*

*I like these little asterisk things. They're a Time Out, if you will. Personally, I enjoy Zane's 'man on the brink' delivery. He's a pro, and he's not only a pro, but he's good, because he's so weird. But I agree with my Cobra buddy Sam, Russell Brandt is one of the freakiest things I've ever seen on television, and I reckon he looks like a try hard and comes across like a chronic wanker. But maybe that's what he's trying to do, and I'm just not "getting it."

Sleep paddling

Fresson went to bed contemplating this whole "Creator" idea. The only Creator he'd ever known was Roberta Fresson, his Mother, a mighty fine woman. No, God didn't birth him. God didn't do shit.
Grodin realised pretty quick that Roberta was his obvious Creator, not God. God was a convenient way to take Mother out of the limelight, and put a male formed deity in charge of everything. It's like the prophets didn't know where babies came from. What idiots.
Or maybe the Moon was the creator, the moon that brought the tides, and we were all descendants of the moonmen.*
It was getting late, but Grodin had more thinking he wanted to do before he blacked out.
As far as he could tell only two things really mattered (apart from poontang), or at least, there were two more major good things**,...surfing, and audio visual experiences. A lot of people might not have realised how indebted they were to these two things? Heck no, even Roberta probably knew the importance of surfing and audio visuals in the big plan.
That night as Grodin slept, he dreamt him and his pal Pete were paddling at night, far far out to sea, into a set of huge brown waves. All the while, Pete was saying, "Here's a good one Fresson. It's not too big" But the waves kept pitching up and up and up. In the end, Fresson caught what looked like about a 10-12 foot wave. It was breaking from the top, down its flattish face, so it was actually much easier than he'd thought (good old dream waves). And by God, he rode that wave. And he rode it. He rode it all the way into the beach, and then did a kick flip and caught the board as he stepped onto the sand. And Pete saw this, and grinned and gave him the hang loose sign.
Grodin woke up very tired from the intense sleep paddling he'd been doing. He'd paddled out of bed, and up the stairs. He woke up startled, in the bath tub in a squatting position.

*Anything to do with moonmen, or the moonman, or Mr and Mrs Moonman, is an idea Grodin "appropriated", with the sincerest respect, from Tommy at WROMGCORP.

**He's tired. Arguably every microcell that makes up our universe is equal, be it a man or a bacteria. There is certainly more that counts than surfing, sound, vision, and breasts. There is marijuana, there is Kenny Rogers, there is...

With friends like these, who needs enemas.

FROM AN ACTUAL GMAIL:

Grodin,

I can picture only one thing;

Your head in a skull crushing vice and me heaving out olive, onion and garlic farts deep into your mouth...
If you're lucky, you mite get a bit of solids...

Part on!!! game on!!!

Mikey

Grodin read, and then reread, the gmail from his old Cobra Forces buddy. This was Mikey's reply to Grodins party invitation. It was the best one yet...so poetic, so assured, so strangely sexual.
"Heaving" farts. What kind of fart density were we talking about here? It sounded like a tonnage scale. Why the inclusion of popular olives in the farty mix? It had to be for the alliteration. What genius.
But what the heck did "Part on" mean?
He would have to be on guard for their next encounter.