Ripping Tales

TALES FROM WILLIAMSBURG By Art Fartie Episode 1, Ye Olde Kings Bank Like the Curse of King Tut’s Tomb, any- one who ever owned Ye Olde Kings Bank Building suffered a horrible fate. First built by a wealthy banking family named Scuttle after the Civil War in 1868, things started out well enough. The Bank prospered after the war, as did the community of Williamsburg. As time went on, the farmland gave way to country homes for those Bourgeoisies who wanted to escape the city occasionally. Then the Bridge was built and poor people from the ghettos of the Lower East Side moved for a less crowded and cleaner life. So Williamsburg grew. It was in the mid 1950 s when our story really be- gins, however. For that was when the elderly but gracious Manly Hanover, the President of the Bank, hired a new Assistant Treasurer to replace Arnie Ashtight who had retired after fifty years of faithful service. The new Assistant Treasurer seemed a little odd to the rest of the staff. His name alone, Ladnil Yerret, was unusual to say the least. And that pale, cadaverous look gave one goose pimples when one had to look at him, and so staff members avoided him where possible and when not possible, they did their business as quickly as they could and escaped as quickly as tadpoles from a bloodsucking Hellgrammite. Why Hanover, the President had hired Yerret was anyone s guess. Perhaps he did it as a favor to a board member and Manly knew which side his toast was buttered on. And besides, Yerret was never less than obsequious. It was not long after hiring Yerret that Hanover was called away to the Florida Keys after the discovery of the Great Deep-Sea Pla- narian that was thought to be extinct for millions of years. Hanover was a known expert on the Planarian (perhaps the only expert) and the government quickly appropriated his services before the Planarian could do damage to the secret underwater city the CIA had built during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The missile crisis had been a suitable distraction for the CIA so it could build these cities to move it s own families for protection while it attempted to destroy the communists who would surely retaliate with a nuclear or bio- logical strike against the American continent. The CIA did not really care about the fate of the rest of America as long as their own families were safe and free from the evil of Communism. But that is another story. Back to Ladnil Yerret. As we said, Yerret did seem a little odd. Not because of the way he always wore that hat at work, or the way he spoke like a Latin dictionary. After all most of the Bank Offi- cer spoke in a language that few, including themselves understood using phrases like

“amortization and deferred annualized incidentally declining balances.” What re- ally bothered people most was that he never seemed to be doing any work I his office, and yet the work always got done. Soon he began bringing strange things into his office...

Episode 2, Blackmail and Radiation Sessly Pool was from the Midwest and was the head teller at the bank. Sessly despised the Assistant Treasurer since he did not kowtow to him. If Sessly asked Yerret how much two plus two is, Yer- ret would answer something about the Prin- cipia Mathematica of Russell and Whitehead and digress into a Boolean Transform. This shit is the last straw! YOU RE JOB IS DOWN THE TOILET. I M GOING TO SEE THAT YOU RE CANNED! Sessly would shout when Yer- ret began muttering his incomprehensible jargon. It became clear to Yerret, who took everything literally, that Sessly Pool had an obsession with shit and cans so Yerret re- frred to him as the Shit Can Man from then on, which only made Sessly more angry. Yerret had requested and been given the keys to the Bank so that he could work on weekends. It was after that, which the strange objects began to appear in his office and around the building. The first of these was the radiation suit that was found one morning by Sessly in the vault. Sessly had been waiting for a chance to blackmail Yerret into departing from the Bank, and perhaps now, he thought,” I might have a lead! The suit itself was not something he could black- mail Yerret with...at least not until he found out what it was for...

Episode 2 1/2 The Bank Fails Hanover s discovery of the underwater city placed him in a moral quandary. He felt that he had to inform his congressman of the CIA s use of government funds for personal uses of CIA families. Little did he realize that his bank was being used to launder the money necessary to bankroll this immense secret project. And so his bank went under along with many others around the country. Remember that Banking scandal a few years back that the news reported as inadequately collateralized lending practices. That was a cover-up. Actually it was the Underwater City that sucked the banking industry under. And so, the building at 135 Narrowway was put up for sale...and a beautiful and mysterious lady from Japan appeared like an angel and quietly acquired the property. Ladnil Yerret stayed on and filed papers to create a new organization. A not for profit art center. He knew that an art center in the midst of an art community like Williamsburg would not seem out of place and would blend in while he continued his research on behalf of the Lady from Japan with whom he had been secretly in contact since he had assumed his employment with the bank! Thus was cre- ated the Williamsburg Historical Art Convent Klan (WHACK).

Episode 3, By the Skin of Her

Teeth and The Seat of her Pants. Minute Harmony Montebanke was an entrepreneur at heart. She once owned a health food store on the Rat Tail River in Manitoba. Unfortunately, the only natural grain product the local lumberjacks cared for was Budweiser. Harmony, being quick to catch on and being by nature cheerful and accommodating decided to use her languishing larder of grains and herbs to cook up her own brand of brew which she labeled YAH VOLL! It was a big hit with the men who came to her cabin every night for a little rowdy fun and to guzzle the green- hued brew and eat tofu and granola bars while she belted out songs from Wagner s Das Rhinegold. . The problem was that Harmony had absolutely refused to pay the local constabulary, Mean Joe Green, a kickback on the beer she sold. Even though she had gotten a license to brew and serve her potent beverage, orders went out to close her down for serving food in an unsanitary establishment, even though no such laws pertained on the Rat Tail River. The Canadian Mounties arrived one night, tied their steaming horses outside the cabin and entered just as the bear wrestling contest was in full roar. What with the bellowing of the beer swilling lumberjacks and the frightened snarl of the eight hundred pound grizzly as he galloped around the room trying to get away from Burley one-eyed Johnsen, Harmony barely heard the mounties yell This is a raid! But she did hear, and being as quick witted as she was, she immediately pushed the bleary eyed Handsome Jack LeB- eau (who was nuzzling her neck) away from her while she grabbed her parka and slid out the back door and down to her canoe on the Rat Tail. Next anyone saw of her, she was in the bright lights and bustle of New York City, ready for her next adventure. She read a help wanted ad in the New York Times, Perform- ing Arts Director for New Arty Center Wanted . Harmony laughed to herself, “I’ll Perform & Direct Them! And she promptly stepped into a cab to go apply for the job. Meanwhile another petite schemer also saw the ad...one Robbin Runner, and she too went to apply for the job...

Episode 4, Mr. Potato Anaheim Joe came from California to Williamsburg when the streets were cadav- erously empty with burnt out factory build- ings that stuck up like broken teeth. One took one’s life in one’s hand to walk through the streets, day or night, because the Hispanic gangs roamed in herds through the streets attacking anyone in site out of sense of in- justice that they were misunderstood by the Euro-trash. But Joe had failed as a sign painter in California and he could not afford the rents in any decent neighborhood, so for $100 dollars a month he rented the office in a Hasidic owned building with a leaking roof, and gaping broken windows. With his stack of hack sign paintings and $50 left over after paying his rent, Joe sat miserable and languid on a crate while he pondered his dismal future. “My signs were works of art; It’s just that nobody understood them” Joe thought to himself. To Joe this was just a case of his being ahead of his time. “Just like Van Gogh or Jasper Johns,” Joe thought, “I’m avant garde.” Then it occurred to Joe hat maybe he could open a gallery in this slum. As he chewed on the last of the pierogi’s he had scraped from the bottom of a garbage can near a Polish delicatessen, he said “Yes,... that is what I will do, I will open a gallery, and as God is my witness, I will never be hungry

again.” I will call it “The Polish Po- tato Gallery.” And so Joe opened the Gallery displaying his own pathetic signs. But, you know, the New York Art world is always look- ing for something that every ordinary person with taste finds insipid and dull and meaning- less. So wouldn’t you know it, a curator from the museum of modern Art, Bob Storefront, who was out in Williamsburg looking to buy some crack from the local gangs and get laid at the same time stumbled across the “Pol- ish Potato” and discovered “Anaheim Joe?” Thinking that this was a good excuse to come into Williamsburg once in a while to get laid, he befriended Joe and helped him get other down and out artists with nothing to say. “If you can’t be famous because of quality, try quantity,” Storefront told Joe. I’ll get you a used flat file from the museum and you can stuff it with small works from hundreds of artists. Joe, I will make you famous!” said Storefront.

Episode 5, Hot and on the Trot By now Anaheim Joe was hot proper- ty. Storefront was as good as his word and taught Joe all the tricks. It does not matter what kind of art you show, he told Joe as he puffed on a joint with bleary eyes. In fact the worse the art the better. That way nobody will understand it and with a little flim flam you can make them believe it is IMPORTANT because it is so avant garde it its over their heads. Nobody dares say the emperor has no clothes. And so Anaheim Joe became a suc- cess. Nobody understood why he exhibited the detritus he did, but nobody said a word. In fact the local artists and artist run galleries loved him because they all wanted to rub elbows with somebody who was a friend of Bob Storefront. They hoped that Joe would accept their own artists & galleries into this clique and they would all become rich and fa- mous. Even the writers for the art magazines became enamored of Joe s Polish Potato Gal- lery and wrote glowing reviews. Bob Store- front snickered up his sleeve at the gullibil- ity of the dweebs in the art world. Storefront knew how to bamboozle and manipulate the museum & gallery scene because he knew it was all smoke and mirrors: rich people with no taste had been buying up the crap that people like Storefront had cynically encour- aged them to invest in, and now everybody was terrified about the bubble bursting and leaving the rich collectors without anything to show for it. The museums, of course, had pursued the money crowd and so they also exhibited the same unfortunate art that the rich collectors collected. And the major auction house were hand in glove with the museums and collectors. As long as money, vanity and fear rule, and not taste, we ve got it made,” said Storefront. Then he was off to get laid by a local tail he had spotted on the corner.

Episode 6, The Twain East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet, till thou and I stand face to face at God s great judgment seat. So said the venerable Rudyard Kipling. Perhaps he had foreseen that a hundred years hence that two such interesting individuals as a Shinto Priestess and a failed sign painter cum slum gallery owner would meet in such an obscure local backwater community and that it would mean to humanity a judgment which might have come from the world of God himself, for this was a time and place in the nexus of possibility that would transform human- ity from something of animal to something akin to God himself...or at least would have if something unforeseen had not happened. But

we are getting ahead of our story... Some time after getting that jump-start from Bob Storefront, Anaheim Joe was think- ing very highly of himself. But one thing irri- tated him beyond measure. On the Southside of Williamsburg a Shinto Priestess Lady had purchased one of New York s great landmark buildings and had create a museum called the Williamsburg Historical Art Convent Klan (WHACK). He had always wanted to own a magnificent building like that instead of the little gallery he now ran. Even though his situation had improved immensely and he now owned his own building, nonetheless his gallery, even though famous, looked more like a tiny bakery instead of an important art gallery. The more he thought about it the more angry he became. He thought to him- self, you know, with all of my new influence I can have that Jap bitch blackballed in the community and no art critic will write any- thing positive about her shows and no artist will dare exhibit there for fear of offending a friend of Bob Storefront. Of course the Priestess was totally oblivi- ous to all of this. She had a larger purpose in mind, and so while Joe simmered about the injustice of it all, the Priestess Yoko Koko designed a machine with the help of Ladnil Yerret that attracted artists from around the world. So Anaheim Joe had a hard time pre- venting the WHACK from getting support. In fact it worried Joe that all the time new curators and artists and galleries were rising in the ranks in the community and he would soon not be able to suppress or destroy the one s who did not pay homage to him. None- theless Joe tried his best to create animosi- ties among Williamsburg Community gallery owners and community people, all with the goodly advice of Bob Storefront.

Episode 7 : Critical Mass, The Mighty Pen! Pong Pee was a four foot five inch tall, second generation Vietnamese artist cum journalist. He was determined to make a success of himself, much like the many Vietnamese who came to the USA in the early 1970 s to resettle. I know because I (Art Farty) helped in the Indochinese resettlement programs. It is amazing how determined these new immigrants were. Many former housewives blazed through the universities here to get their PhD s in chemistry and other practical studies. They are an example of the best of the immigrants, while indeed so many Americans, white, black or brown do not take advantage of the gifts of education that America supplies so freely. Unfortunately, Pong Pee was another matter. Pong did not just want to become a successful contributing member of American society. Like Anaheim Joe and Bob Storefront he wanted to belong to an elite of the art world, welcomed into high wealthy social circles. Perhaps this is because of an inferiority complex inspired by his child-like stature or because he was not good enough to achieve his degree in chemistry. He did remember one thing in college from Voltaire, and it was his guiding principle, The pen is mightier than the sword! And Pong knew that although he could not be a great writer by virtue of talent, he did learn one thing from his bout with the university...how to plagiarize! So, he started up a local paper in Williamsburg called the Kings County Rail- road. And he wrote lucid, inspiring

articles on shows in New York, not only in Williams- burg, but Manhattan too. He told everyone, “I only write on major shows like Matisse or Franz Kline. That was because he did not need to be original, but could copy from great writers who wrote frequently about these great artists. Apparently part of his need to be great because he was so small and untalented. He thought himself, ..and I will ride all my competitors out of town on that rail!! The paper was an immediate success because all of the local galleries desperately wanted any press they could get. As Charles Gatewood, the famous underground photographer once said, Once it hits the magazines & papers, the show itself does not matter! You are where you want to be! So the galleries flocked to Pong. A couple of galleries even let him curate a show containing as many local artists as he could stuff into a show, working on the Bob Storefront principle of success told him by Anaheim Joe, “if you cannot offer quality, give them quan- tity. Pong Pee s paper was a vicious political rag to be sure...undoubtedly a need to lash out against people due to that nagging inferi- ority complex. One gallery even gave him his own show. It was a bunch of discarded pieces of unpainted plasterboard, placed together in a meaningless way. Anaheim Joe knew this was the avant garde and admired him. One art critic amused by the show said in New York Artist s Magazine, Just shows what you can do with plasterboard. Pong Pee s greatest irritation was that Jap priestess over at the WHACK Center. Whenever he went to talk to her his gorge rose, although he was known to be so polite and fawning to everyone else. Perhaps it was because she was five feet tall and she looked down on him both figuratively and literally. The priestess was a brilliant philosopher and artist and had admirers in high circles in gov- ernment and the highest social circles...every- thing Pong wanted. And she belonged to art circles he could never hope to attain, having been friends of some of the greatest artists of the 20th century. Pong longed for such be- longing, as did Anaheim Joe. Both therefore had reason to resent the High Priestess. So Pong and Joe admired each other.

Episode 8: HIGH TIMES IN THE BURG! The last episode was entitled Critical Mass because all of the major characters were now in position for a remarkable series of events that would lead to...well, you will find out! So we have: Priestess Yoko Koko, Anaheim Joe (Mr. Potato), Bob Storefront, Pong Pee, Ladnil Yerret...and one minor character, Minute (nicknamed Harmony ) Mountebank. This minor character had one crucial role to play in our story. So on with the tale. Williamsburg attracted the attention of the world as an artists colony. As you know, early on the slum had been discovered by ne er-do-well artists as a place of low rents, cheap drugs...and for Yuppies a place of punk artists who would lay for anybody with mon- ey at their all night parties. New restaurants and bars opened up all over. Limousines would cruise the Burg in the evening with passengers eager to see the sites. Money had arrived!

The Yuppies, after working in the stock market or the law firms, would come into Williamsburg on a Friday or Saturday for a good time. The Yuppies would purchase the cheap art in flat files at The Polish Potato with promise from Joe that the investment would yield millions from these great emerg- ing artists. Bob Storefront helped Joe when he could by showing one or two of Joe s artists at his museum. Since the art that Joe represented was hack imitation of great art movements that had gone before, he told Joe to tack on the name neo to the front of the style of art his artists copied. For example, Bob Storefront took Joe s friend Puce Beerson, a Neo-Pop artist, and gave him a show at the Modern Museum. Bob thought to himself what a bunch of dumb clucks. neo means new and that shit is a second rate rehash. Just what the doctor ordered. Nobody can figure out why I show the stuff, so it is over their heads and they think it is avant garde Yes, Bob understood how the contemporary art world worked: stick a load of shit up in the gallery and thumb your nose at the audience and collectors. They eat out of your hand! Those Artsy turkeys like being plucked! Now, remember Minute Harmony Mountebank? Harmony never did get that position as Director of the WHACK. The High Preistess saw through her immediately. But she recognized Harmony s wiley mountain cat abilities. The priestess preferred to keep Harmony close to her vest, to watch her rather than let such a dynamic and formi- dable person on the loose in Williamsburg where she might cause an uproar that could upset her project to which the Priestess had devoted so much financial capital and psychic energy. So the Priestess hired her as the Executive Assistant. Besides, thought the Priestess, She may prove useful to my plans. Harmony loved the job. She did not have to work hard and got paid a lot of mon- ey. Besides she performed her Das Rheingold regularly in Peter Dizozza s Theater...and she was able to sneak bottles of Gin from the wine cellar on the sly and get laid by local artists who thought she had some influence at the WHACK and might get them shows. Unfortunately the blush was beginning to wear off the rose with regard to Anaheim Joe. Nobody thought any more that they were going to become rich and famous by hanging around him. He was after all, not a major New York gallery, just a third rate tiny gallery in a neighborhood now rife with avant garde galleries. And the uniqueness of Joe s Polish Potato Gallery had had its day. Nothing new here, and the artsy crowd was ALWAYS looking for something new! The butterfly hu- bris of Anaheim Joe was beginning to wear off, and there was nothing that either he or Bob Storefront could do about it. Joe was full of anger and fear. He desperately wanted to hold on to his fame and glory. Although he knew that fame and glory were fleeting, he did not think that this would be true for himself. Why the devil does that Jap Priest- ess become more and more famous while my glory diminishes, thought Joe, I m sure as hell going to find out!! To do this he intend- ed to woo that vicious hell-bent wildcat who worked at the WHACK and who hung out nightly with the Latino Gangs at the Wrong Bank Bar. Dear readers: I told you that I would tell all in spite of threats. I wrote one other true story once about high society in New York. I got the same reaction. One highly placed Society personage, The Duke of Y---, wrote a blistering letter, saying Lurid...seriously lack- ing in good judgment...tasteless, derogatory and disloyal. Subsequently I was no longer

invited to his castle. As of my last episode I am now getting e-mails, the latest one, from an art critic said : ...over the edge. It would be one thing if it weren’t just petty and mean, but I think that this is beginning to show a sense of bitter desperation. Highest Regards, JK Keep the letters coming! Thanks, Art Far- tie, Ed., Williamsburg Chronicles

Episode 9: A Hell-cat finds her Sweet Potato Dumpling Anaheim Joe wanted to impress Har- mony when he showed up at the Wrong bank Bar. Joe was small in stature and had a tendency to fat. He decided to wear his Red striped Zoot Suit that everybody liked when he wore it to an opening at the Modern Mu- seum. It made his shoulders look broad and his waist thinner. So, proud as a peacock he pranced over to the Wrong Bank around 10 in the evening when he knew Harmony would be there singing and flirting with the boys. He walked up to Harmony with non- chalant confidence and whispered in her ear Mind if I sit down Beautiful Miss? Harmony had had one too many and slipped off her stool. The Latino Gang leader Julio thought that Joe had pushed her. He and his boys in a macho gallant defense of a lady s vir- tue (if you could actually say Harmony had any) jumped Joe and started beating on him. Harmony jumped up pulled a couple of her defenders” off Joe yelling NO!! NO!!! He didn’t do anything! Joe was a little bloodied and disoriented, but none too worse for wear. Harmony looked him in the face and...It was love at first sight. Oh, my little Potato Dump- ling she cried are you all right??? After much apology from Julio, everybody made up and had a round of beers. By four in the morning everybody was coked up, toked up, tanked up and tired. And, what’s more, Harmony and Joe were in love...for real! A matched pair to be sure! Episode 10: Interlude - Ain t Love Won- derful “There is a little bit good in the worst of us, and a little bit bad in the best of us, so it ill behooves any of us to talk about the rest of us!” But my people are just fiction. I will send you my treatise on “satire.” Art Fartie, Ed.,Williamsburg Chronicles

Episode 10: Interlude Ain t Love Wonderful Spring was in the air. LOVE was in the air! Anaheim Joe would sneak over to the WHACK before it closed, hide in the men s room and come out when everyone was gone...except for Harmony who lingered be- hind. He would bounce into her lap, both of their hearts afflutter. She would bounce him up and down on her knee like a little boy and they would nustle . To describe the scene, you have to realize that Harmony was a

strapping Germanic opera singer with plait- ed gold braids and big breasts, a Brunhilda ideally suited to be queen of the Amazons, and Joe...well Joe had a charming little boy look when he wasn t seriously focused on getting a leg up on the art world. Now all he wanted was a leg up on Harmony. So they would go out for dinner at the Night Diner down the block or at the Wrong Bank Bar, and then come back to the WHACK for a little hanky panky. Sometimes they would go up to the theater and put on different costumes and play parts, like the milkmaid and the Lecher- ous Baron. Joe always played the milkmaid. Or they would go down to the boiler room where they could get nice and sweaty as they rolled around in each other s arms. One night when they were in the boiler room and had just finished their rut and were lying back to recover, they heard the door to the base- ment open. They peeked out of the boiler room, hearts pounding and saw...Ladnil Yer- ret walking down the basement corridor with a large bag in his hands. Does he come down here often? asked Joe quietly. Yeah, replied Harmony in a whisper, he spend hours down here every day, just not usually so late in the evenings. Falling in love with Harmony had made Joe contented and happy for the first time in a long time and caused him to lose sight of his purpose, but upon seeing that odd and chilling Yerret it all came back. He said to Harmony,” I’ve got to ask you, Harmony. What is the Priestess and that creepy Yerret person up to? This can t be just an art center. Everybody in Williamsburg senses that there is something more. Harmony said, they are both rather strange. She casts an aura over everybody and makes those who talk with her feel that they are in a great presence. When people are with her they feel a sense of well...peace and harmony. And that s her motto, you know,’ Peace & Harmony. Joe thought a bit and said, I want you to do me a favor. Tomorrow....

Episode 10 1/2: WHAT LIES BELOW! So, with the help of Harmony, Anaheim Joe hid himself in the boiler room next day with some sandwiches, boiled eggs and a large thermos of coffee, awaiting Ladnil Yer- ret. Joe intended to follow him and find our exactly what he was doing. Morning passed and no sight of Yerret and Joe was getting fidgety. Then around noon the door to the basement opened and entered Yerret with a large bag. The basement to the Williamsburg Historical Art Convent Klan was a cavernous area, more describable as catacombs than basement. Steam pipes spread across the ceiling, coming from God knows where and going the same way. Cold water pipes caused condensation of the moisture in the hot air and dripped water through the passages. Yer- ret carried his large bulging bag through the passages which began to slant downward in a curve. Joe followed darting like a rat from passage to passage . On went Yerret spiral- ing down until the passage became narrow, the steam and water pipes had disappeared and the air was cooler. Finally Yerret stopped, reached into the bag and pulled out...a radia- tion suit!

Episode 11: The Indian Well of Peter Minuit, a lesson in

the history of Williamsburg We now retreat to the year 1626 in the month of May on an island off the coast of the New World. A Dutchman stands in a grove of oaks with several other men. One of the other men is a Red Indian of powerful stature and in an elaborate headdress. The Indian’s arms are folded across his chest. A chest is opened and several of the chief s braves inspect the contents, holding them up before their chief. The chief nods approval of the treasure and a pipe is brought forth to smoke in the Indian tradition of sealing the bargain. And a deerskin scroll with Indian signs is handed to Peter Minuit from the Chief of the Manhatta Tribes from across the river. Manhattan Island, the land upon which the greatest city of the 20th Century would stand 200 hundred years later was bought for the sum of twenty-four dollars worth of beads. Unknown to historians, this transaction did not take place on the Island of Manhattan, but across the river on a larger island the Dutch called Breukelen or broken land. It was here that this episode of history took place because this was the place of the Manhatta spiritual rituals. Women and children were forbidden. Only initiated men were allowed to visit. And some who did visit and were of unclean spirit contracted a strange wasting disease and bled from their pours and died quickly. It was here where abided the Indian Well, a place of spirits and much manna. It was to be another gift to the White chief of the Dutch, Peter Minuit, to build a fine home. As a final gesture of spiritual release of the lands of their forefathers, the Medicine man tosses an offering of one string of beads into the Indian well, Minuit looks down onto the mysterious well as the beads fall, never seem- ing to reach the bottom where a green lumi- nescence pulsed. Days later, Minuit had this well covered over with a lead hatch from his ship. His men and their families feared the damnable heathen hole, a place of devils, as they expressed it. Minuit had the lead cover embossed with a prayer and a curse in Latin, which translated read, HERE LIES THE WAY THAT OUT OF HEATHEN HELL LEADS TO A NEW CHRISTIAN LAND, AND THAT PLACE THAT HEREIN LIES IS NEVER MORE TO BE UNCOVERED EXCEPT THAT HE WHO DOES SO BE CURSED EVERMORE AND BANNED FROM THE HOME OF MAN. And further in Dutch, HERE PETER MINUIT DID BUY FOR HIS CHRISTIAN KING A HOME FOR HIS CHRISTIAN SERVANTS.

Episode 11 1/2 What the devil?! Back to the present: Anaheim Joe watched as Yerret donned his radiation suit, unhooked an air tank from the wall and strapped it on. What the devil is he up to? thought Joe. Nothing legal... I hope. Yerret took a large iron hook off the stone wall and went over to a large metal cover which lay on the floor a few feet beyond. Yer- ret put the hook under the cover and lifted. An eerie green glow permeated the passage as the cover was slid away. Yerret stepped down onto the hole and slowly disappeared. Finally Joe came out from behind a crate where he had been hiding and peered down. He could see the iron steps leading down,

but could not see the end of the stairs because the green luminescence was so intense. At least I can try to get a picture, Joe thought. He took several photographs down the hole and also some of that metal cover with the strange writing o it. Joe then returned to the boiler room and waited till closing when Harmony would come to get him. A few days later, hands trembling with excitement, Joe opened the photo print enve- lope that had been returned from processing. The prints were all blank! How had Yerret managed to do this? He would have to enlist help to get to the bottom of this!

Episode 12: The Little Experiments of the youthful & fun-loving Grexi Again we go back in time...a little further than the time of Peter Minuit. The Grexi had discovered the little green and blue planet some 30,000 years before our story began. They came from a planet in the Vega system and had discovered FTL (faster than light) star travel some 50,000 before that. You might consider that to be a very old race of beings, but in fact they were a very young race indeed. You could tell they were youthful because they still felt all of the excitement of discovery when they found our primitive little planet we now call Earth, with its apelike creatures living in caves waiting for the latest ice age to retreat. For the Grexi, the apelike creatures were an opportunity. They realized that the intelligence of this species was just slightly pre-sentient. It would be fun, the Grexi thought, to perhaps play around with a little genetic experimentation to see whether they could speed up or alter the process of development of intelligence and civilization of these creatures. They set up an underground lab on an island off the coast of one the continents, shipped in quantities of bioengineering equipment and set up shop. With controlled radiation they could strip off or add on molecules to the DNA helix of selected creatures, and set up isolated populations on various parts of the planets surface to watch the subsequent development. After a few brief centuries they had already created diverse racial types. There were the two basic types, the yellow races of Asia and the black races of Africa. And then there were the genetically regressive whites, the albino offspring of the black & yellow races. The white albino offspring of the blacks and the yellows were unfortunate because they were generally killed or cast out by the black & yellow tribes because they were considered to be ghosts or white dev- ils, and they were certainly ugly to look at with their blue-green or even red eyes and their cadaverous, leprous skin. Generally the whites were driven out to unpopulated areas where they gathered as one tribe and began to breed among themselves creating a pure white race. The albino of the black races on what we now know as the continental land mass of Africa thus began to migrate north. The albino species of the yellow races were driven cruelly westward from the eastern re- gions of

what we know as the Euro-Asian landmass. Thus the regressive albinos of the two main races of man began to congregate in tribes in the region we know today as the Caucasus. Eventually this seething mass of white worms created towns, cities and civi- lizations and spawned one of the greatest of which we know: the Greeks with their won- drous leader, the blond and blue eyed warrior Alexander the Great, as well as many others. The whites always considered themselves de- rived from the gods and treated non-whites with contempt. The whites of the western & northern regions of the Euro-Asian con- tinent were especially fierce. The Germanic tribes defended their territories with fatal- istic determination against the great Roman Empire until their population dwindled dur- ing those years to just around 100,000. Of the tribes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes, the Jutes entirely disappeared, and the Angles and Saxons merged. The albino Vikings ter- rorized the coasts in their days of glory and robbed and plundered and murdered without mercy. Thus came the saying God save us from the northern barbarians! If you think that whites are now tame, remember how the Anglo-Saxons on the little island of England dominated the entire globe with their armies under the name of Manifest Destiny. Their motto was the sun never sets on the Brit- ish Empire. Also, remember the Nazi s, so glorious in their ambition to exterminate the lesser races. That was just fifty years ago. Are the whites finally tame? If you have studied physical anthropol- ogy as I have, you know how to discover which race you derived from: if you have a shovel shaped incisor, you are descended from what anthropologists call Java Man. If you have a blunt shaped incisor, you are descended from Rhodesian Man. Isn t that interesting?

Episode 12 1/2 The Necessary Extermination of that Troublesome White Race The whites were curious creatures. They had suffered much in being driven out and massacred by their black and yellow kin. On the principle that what does not kill you makes you strong; the whites that did man- age to survive had evolved uniquely aggressive and brutal natures. And as their popu- lations expanded, they themselves began to ruthlessly plunder and enslave their neigh- bors. This behavior frightened the essentially gentle and fun loving Grexi. The Grexi had really loved their apes on this planet and thought eventually they might make nice pets or even servants. But this white race was much too violent and resisted domesti- cation to the point of self-destruction. With some commiseration the Grexi had decided that the White race must e exterminated as a dangerous genetically inferior offshoot. Their computer predictions of the future of this spe- cies were that it would shortly dominate the planet and destroy everything. Therefore it was simply mercy to eliminate the problem as quickly as possible. Many people today could wish that the Grexi had succeeded. But then YOU WOULD ALL PETS OR SLAVES OF THE GREXI. Instead you must work with the white race...a violent and self-destruc- tive and self glorified creature to be sure. Can you do it?

Epilogue to Episode 12 1/2: WE SHALL RETURN!! As fate would have it, before the Grexi genocide of the white race could occur, the Amnions of Vega went to war with the Grexi over control of the Vega system. And the Grexi experiment of the little blue green planet had to be abandoned. Their facilities under the island of Breukelen were sealed up pending the end of war and their return to the delights of their experiment. The Grexi Empire fell as they were over- whelmed by the more aggressive Amnions, and the little experiment of the Grexi ended... at least until Ladnil Yerret found it many, many centuries later. Dear Reader, today is August 8th On August 8th many things happened in the history of the world. A few of them are 449 AD The Robber Council of Ephesus met 1673 The Dutch recaptured New York 1765 Joseph II became emperor of Ger- many 1815 Napoleon Bonaparte transferred to Northumberland and sailed for St. Helena 1863 General Robert E. Lee offered his resignation to Jefferson Davis who denied it 1901 Santo Dumont flew around the Eiffel Tower is Paris 1912 Haitian National Palace destroyed by gunpowder explosion 1945 troublesome (according to the Grexi) White Race drops atomic bomb on Hi- roshima seemingly fulfilling their prediction that it would eventually destroy the world if unimpeded 2002 A sack of potatoes with a threaten- ing note is left at the door of Art Fartie of the Williamsburg Chronicles

Episode 13: Old Man, Old Knowledge, and New Ideas The question now comes up, just who was this Ladnil Yerret character? Nobody seed to know much about him, except that he was always hovering in the background of our story and he seemed to have the good graces of the Shinto Priestess. We did a little research and discovered some amazing facts. Ladnil Yerret was over 100 years old. The exact date of his birth can- not be determined because the records of the Lutheran Deaconess Hospital in Minneapolis were mysteriously destroyed by spontaneous combustion in 1943 at a time when flying saucers were showing up in New

Mexico. Ac- cording to old folks in Afton Minnesota where he grew up, Yerret was found in a mailbox by a Scandinavian Farm Family and had been raised by them as one of their own. He was pale and spindly, but there was nothing par- ticularly odd about him except for the four pointed protrusions on his head. In school he was a whiz. It was soon realized that he could assimilate knowledge faster than any- one could and he was soon doing PhD level work in all subjects by the time he was nine. By that time his thinking became too obscure for even the most brilliant people at the Uni- versity of Minnesota who were studying him. They began to surmise that he had gone off his rocker from being too smart. Various tests and x-rays were performed on him. The first x-rays revealed nothing but what seemed to be a double exposure. A second and third x- ray revealed that what seemed to be blurred double exposure was actually brain cells with four nuclei instead of one. This puzzled ev- erybody until the blood samples revealed other peculiarities. Before the professors could get a government order to put Yerret under strict quarantine for his own protection and further study, Yerret wisely decided on his own volition that it would be a good time to join the circus and see the world. Little seems to be known about him from that point on until he appeared as a radon gas inspector at Ye Olde Kings Bank one spring day early on. After inspecting the basement for gas, he talked to Manly Hanover, who mentioned the Assistant Treasurer’s position for which he immediately applied and was accepted. What we do know now since the amaz- ing series of events which had the govern- ment decide to do some restoirtaion on the Williamsburg Bridge ...at the foot of which rested Ye Olde Kings Bank building... was that Yerret had created an amazing network of holding companies, some of which even held each other. He had accounts in offshore banks under various aliases and had created a special research company for neurobiological and genome mapping research. He had obtained billions of dollars in grant monies from the Federal government, mostly sup- plied out of CIA slush funds because of the top secret nature of the research, which would, said Yerret ...end the cold war for- ever. The company was called the Immune Nuclear Corp. and had many beneficial spin- offs which pleased the government, such as anti-rabbit hospital test kits and the like. Ending the cold war was a vague promise, to be sure, and from what we now know it meant something a bit different than what the CIA expected. When Yerret discovered the evidence of the Grexi in the genetic samplings he was studying of racial types at the University of Minnesota when he was seven years old, he also discovered that the Grexi had labeled the mitochondria of the ape cells so they could be traced down through subsequent centuries of development and speciation. So Yerret searched for further evidence of the original experimenters until he realized by radiation samplings that there was a huge artificial source of radon gases which could be found by sampling and vectoring...and he came upon it s source...Williamsburg Brook- lyn and more specifically Ye Olde Kings Bank. After the bank failed, he got in touch with his dearest spiritual mentor whom he met on his travels with the circus in Kyoto Japan. She had explained much to him and filled a need on him in his eternal quest for mean- ing in life...for he was always asking himself the question, Why is there something rather than nothing, since nothing is simpler. That was the question you and I first learned from the noble Greeks in our philosophy classes. It was not the same question asked by Anaheim Joe who mostly asked how could I become rich and famous and get laid and destroy my

enemies, which was also the question asked by Pong Pee. Storefront always asked how could I pull bigger boondoggle on the public and get them to praise me for it. To know who you are, you should think about the kind of questions you are always asking yourself!

Episode 14: The Nefarious Doings Inside The Immune Nuclear Corp. fronted by the Convent Klan! The modification of human behavior, particularly the control of individual behav- ior through modern education began in the middle of the 20th century. Modern educa- tion began as propaganda after the time of De Windt. It sought to induce the individual to attain world socialism. It was an enormous and, on the face of it, an impossible undertaking because it went against the very ge- netic nature of the human animal. But it was supremely necessary that if human civiliza- tion was to continue, that something must be done shortly, noted Yerret in his diaries. Sensual and emotional affection were a waste of energy, he wrote, and undermined the common loyalty. The desire for possessions and the desire for the admiration of others leads to conflict on the small scale and to wars on the larger. In this he thought of the many people in Williamsburg whose only thoughts were to gain fame and wealth and trample others to achieve it. He thought im- mediately of Anaheim Joe and Pong Pee as perhaps the most successful examples of blind ambition. And ambition is a bitter cup that can never be filled, thought Yerret. It punishes itself. Yerret had heard his great mentor Priest- ess Yoko Koko speak of the needs of humanity. She said in a recent meeting of the Con- vent, Although we think we are more aware and more considerate of our circumstance than mere bacteria, the human population continues to expand. We create much refuse by our activities and the cities such as New York are running out of places to dump the garbage. Some of our rivers in the 1960 s could not support life. We have temporar- ily slowed the progress of the poisoning of our environment, but the population con- tinues to grow and so does the refuse. As with bacteria, humans will find themselves held in check by disease or war as Mother Nature comes to make adjustments to bring things back to balance. We work upon our own selves with the hand of nature when we make war! We reduce our populations to make room for those who survive. Most of us think that when we reach a crisis, unlike the bacteria we will figure it out. Perhaps we can, but we should start preparing as soon as we can. But one imagines that this takes a foresight few of us have right now, for we mostly only consider our immediate needs. Imagine this: a world shattering asteroid is passing within 600,000 miles of the Earth right now. You may think that this is not very close, but it is, in fact, very close indeed. And there are many unseen and very large aster- oids out there. It is very likely we will have an event in our future. Who knows when? And as individuals we will die, humanity may die. Eventually the universe will end anyway. But we will all live as part of this incredible uni- verse and the next. That we existed once is a Truth, and what we were is Eternal and in the Mind of the God which creates all universes, an incomprehensible IDEA. Therefore, let us create our lives as works of great beauty since our lives are eternal. This beauty that we should seek is a harmony among

things. I was pleased that people started to call our Center the WHACK Center, because WHACK in Shinto means Peace or Harmony. Some of us claim that we have free will or choice in what we do, others say no, that there is a vast historical will which deter- mines the destiny of all things. I would say that the Big Bang is a EX NIHILO declara- tion of a Will TO BE! (to exist to live) and that indeed all things were willed from that big bang. This really struck Yerret as pointing to an answer to his question of Why is there something rather than nothing. The Priestess continued What choices do we really have when we are but limited by the materials of which we are made and the forces of the universe which determine how those materials will act and interact? There- fore our will is merely the will of our universe, the Historical Will. And yet. intelligent men think that they are freely creating their desti- nies on earth. They look at what nature has provided them and remake it by some vision they intuitively or consciously possess. They think their vision is theirs, but it is rooted in what Mother Earth has made them to be. Mankind is merely an extension of the Earth, the universe and her materials. When a man puts his hand to a task, it is Mother Earth who whispers in his ear to guide him and the One Hand that clapped that holds the trowel! And when great thoughts are thought, it is the will of Word the incredible IDEA that created the universe at the beginning. The universe creates itself anew every second. Creativity comes from the essential nature of the universe as infinitely variable. Yes, every day all things are different than they were be- fore since this universe was born. As Heracli- tus said, One cannot step into the same river twice. Man, in his youthful energy (Homo Habilis is only 30,000 years old) invented the wheel, the automobile, the airplane, and has split the atom. And he considers himself very creative. Our artists think of themselves as Creative. But has not nature already split the atom, have we not merely looked on nature and repeated what nature and the universe has done for billions of years and have we not done so as extensions of nature ourselves? As for the airplane and automobile, and the rocket ship, is this not Mother Earth invent- ing these things, are we not animals of the earth taking the unconscious thoughts of our Mother and applying them? We are all a process of the Will(!) that created us in the first light that was energy becoming matter, the matter of which we are made. The universe can take hydrogen and build from it in it s furnaces oxygen, carbon and the heavier elements. And yet we call these new elements part of nature. But when man, who is part of nature himself, pulls from his furnaces his products of plastic and steel and plutonium we call these manmade. Thus we separate natural and man-made. Language is an interesting thing that divides things that are really one. And now that we have made a distinction between natural and man-made we are deceived into thinking that these things are fundamentally different when they are not. Plastic and steel are quite natural! Nature has made them just as nature through bees makes honey, or nature through birds builds nests from twigs...and do we not consider honey and bird s nests natural? The duality of opposites in our Tree or the Spaceship Earth a goodly shared environment.

Western Man, one imagines, thinks of everything not human as dead material to be molded to his desire for his use. The American Indian and other cultures think of everything as conscious living things, even the rocks of the earth, and that if we do not respect their spirits they will turn on us in fury. These primitives say we should respect nature and take only what we need to live and return something for it s use to honor the spirit of life itself. I very much like this philosophy, for at one time in this world we are user and next time we may be the used. May the user treat us with as good grace as we treat the used! We as a community should also give to our fellow beings as well as take. And we should not hurt others in doing it. Let us treat nature in the same way so that nature will always be able to share it s bounty with us. Let us bless and revere our dear Mother Earth! Ladnil Yerret dearly loved and admired the great Priestess, a revered princess of the Hekii Clan who gave up everything material for her spiritual beliefs. Yerret had brought her here to convince her that what he in- tended was as she said, an extension of the plan of nature...through the accident of possi- bility, that is, Yerret s discovery of the means to modify human behavior by virtue of the gifts of the Grexi. Humanity was on a course of destruction, and only he, Yerret could save it. Thus Yerret gathered the materials under the cover of the Convent Klan and began to exercise his incredible plan!!!

Episode 15: The Man Who Controlled EVERYTHING The Final solution to the human ques- tion had been resolved in Yerret s own mind. The very DNA of the human species had to be altered in ways that would extirpate the base elements of his being. An increase in basic intelligence, a uniform color and physique, longevity, strength, a positive attitude, social responsibility...all these could be engineered into the genetic makeup of man. It had taken Yerret 30 years to translate and absorb the scientific procedures of the Grexi and now he was ready. It took a lot of money. Yerret was faced with the daunting task of getting the kind of equipment and raw material needed to do the viral research and develop a world- wide dispersal of the virus. The only problem would have been the money, since money could buy anything, material and loyalties. Ironically, money was something his new race would eventually abandon. But money was no problem. Over the hundred years of Yerret’s existence he had acquired great understanding of the market- place. He had sold arms to both the Axis and Allies during the Second World War, second in sales only to the Krupp works. After the war he bought up all the bankrupt companies devastated by the war. In fact, under various pseudonyms, Ladnil Yerret now controlled most of the industrial world. Thus, even ac- quiring the restricted equipment or materi- als was no problem since the companies he controlled gave him permits to do whatever he needed to do. The theory was this.: it had been ob- served by scientists that when a flu virus infected a pig and replicated, it would take on genetic material from the pig and when the new mutated virus infected a human, the human cell invaded by the virus would unload pig genetic material into the human cell. If Yerret could design superior human(?) genetic

material that was robust and could be packaged into an unstoppable virus that could invade the human population of the world, the basic gene pool of the planet could be improved to excellent results. It would still take years to have the effect of eliminating emotional responses and the need for aggres- sion, and to increase the basic intelligence of the population - directed toward social re- sponsibility. Hopefully there was time before man destroyed himself. Thus over the past few years, at the Wil- liamsburg Historical Art Convent Klan, Yer- ret had created the virus of all virus’s, an unstoppable robust virus containing robust superior genetic material, which would cre- ate cells that spread throughout the human body swiftly assuming the functions of the cells they absorbed, but with heightened overall activity controlled by a super-mito- chondria. Rather like the movie INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, Yerret mused. There was nothing left to do but develop the method of dispersal.

Episode 16: The Protocols of the Wise Rulers of the Greater Euro-Asian-American Co-prosperity Sphere The Jews have been vilified for centu- ries. They have suffered murder and pillage and rape at the hands of their fellow whites. They have not even been considered white, but a race apart, perfidious, scheming, and subtle. It was they who were blamed for the Protocols of the wise men of Zion. In fact they had nothing to do with The Protocols and Zionism had less to do with it! The problem of blaming the Jews for ev- erything was that in fact that the Jews always considered themselves Special or “Chosen. There is nothing wrong with that since everybody, every race, feels special to some ex- tent. Humans all vilify groups not their own. Unfortunately, once a group is marked” in such blazing capital letters by history as be- ing behind every evil act, it is hard to erase the stigma. The failure of every human financial or social structure requires that there be an outlet to the anger and frustration of the general population. The Jew has always served as that lightning rod in the West. For a couple of hundred years now the Western world, the individual nations that call themselves democratic, have been ruled not by men elected (elections are an illusion) from among their ranks, but by the ever unchanging same type. . Yes, the mem- bers of the political parties change, and new recruits are found. But it is a type , which controls all the political parties, and it is the same type which has existed for centuries... like the Mafia. They were generally men of the noble ranks in European and Eastern Society...well educated, worldly born to rule, as the English would have put it. Very few, if any, Jews were in their ranks...occasion- ally a Disraeli or a Rothschild, but mostly men like Napoleon III or Bismarck, or Tojo. What the Jews did for their own protection was to contribute money to these powerful men, hoping that they could influence them where necessary. Unfortunately, the best-laid plans of mice and men, oft go astray, and the clever German Nazi s gladly took their money and shoveled them into ovens. Still, even today the Jews contribute vast sums, more than any other group, to political par- ties and

charities...for protection, or because they love their fellow man? The Wise Men, realizing that war and the struggle for land and world domination would destroy the world they wished to dominate, invented democratic principles to satisfy the masses and prevent revolutions. It was to be their way of modifying or mollify- ing human behavior by smoke and mirrors rather than though the drastic methods of genetic engineering for which they had no science yet anyway. Recognizing that the only way to survive is to control the world by creating a leader- ship they themselves could control, the Wise Men met in the early 20th century to make a plan. Yerret, when he was very young, at- tended that meeting in great hopes. Look- ing back, he now saw it as a very flawed plan...one that held no hope for the future of man. Here is what the wise men did: by press and propaganda they succeeded in forming the big classical parties in every country. Even then, they formed two or three groups which apparently combated one another, but actually hung by the same golden thread, all attuned to a single trait of the human char- acter, i.e., that a man easily loses interest in a thing and desires something new. So when one party rules, the other carries on the opposition. When the one party makes a mess of things, which it does in the zeal of its greed, the opposition takes control and the government party goes into opposition. And round and round it goes, a clever mill, sapping the energies of a violent race s will, a perfect plan! And then the wise men laid hands upon the fourth estate. With extraordinary dexter- ity they played the fourth estate against the democracies of the West in a cold war that kept the masses hypnotized with fear of total annihilation by atomic destruction. Later, as an opiate for the emotive and sometimes vio- lent urges of the population, they introduced television and movies with sex and violence and sports such as football or basketball in order to opiate the people and keep their minds off matters of state. It all worked like a charm, until the Soviet Union fell and upset the equilibrium and then Israel could no longer stem the tide of an aroused Arab world, a world of seething hatreds and a willingness to sacrifice their own lives and those of their children to defeat their oppressors. Before this, the Arabs could look to the Soviets to eventually win them back their land. Now they had nothing but their balls! The Arabs are very much like the Ger- mans, who, humbled and enslaved to interest bondage by the greedy French & Western Pow- ers after the first world war, finally achieved their “great idea.” Armed with nothing but their “balls in hand,” since the Western pow- ers controlled everything, they took back a vast chunk of what they lost and had a good chance of taking it all, losing not because of lack of will, but because of a lack of natu- ral resources, oil mostly. They knew that if they were willing to confront their oppres- sors, willing to sacrifice anything, they might achieve freedom. Can you imagine the great- ness of a people willing to do unthinkable things, such as methodically exterminating an entire race of people to cleanse the earth of a problem? Many Arab peoples think this now. It is frightening indeed!

The Jewish people have always consid- ered themselves intelligent. Yes, they are, but no more so than any other group of peoples. They have one great gift of their culture: they respect education. Also, they are practiced propagandists and salesmen. But if you look at their creative genius, it is no more than any other group. The great discoveries of science, mathematics, the building of great machines, like airplanes, automobiles, radio, television, telephones, movies, computers, and the great creations in literature, art and music are dispersed among all men. But the Jews are great propagandists, and we now all admire the intelligence of the Jew. If the ordinary man today could regain his courage, if he would cast aside his fear of losing his little luxuries of sex filled af- ternoons of talk shows and soap operas on TV, and a paycheck which is just enough to pay a mortgage interest to the rulers and still buy beer, he could perhaps be great as in a “great civilization” in the best meaning of the term. Having great machines, or luxuries does not make a civilization great. What then is greatness? It is so easy to be a slave to the mind control of the media who give the masses their dose of corrupting “mind heroin” so they will keep on working for their masters. Man, even with the weaknesses he pos- sesses now, can be great if he takes to task the well being of his fellow man. If he can hold high virtue as his goal and peace and harmony among men as his prime directive instead of self indulgence, personal gain, and the exercise of his petty antipathies, he would be happier than he has ever been...or ever could be, even if Ladnil Yerret recreated him to be civilized through forced genetic correctives. But as Yerret saw it, neither by a broad socializing education nor by deception, nor by distractions of sex and violence in the media could the world be brought from the brink of destruction in a destabilizing world. The only way was the final solution of Lad- nil Yerret. In Williamsburg, Anaheim Joe and Pong Pee were prime examples of an incurable disease of the human race.

Episode 17: Down the Rabbit Hole Anaheim Joe had not been idle. After his little investigation of the basement wherein he followed Yerret to the edge of the green glowing hole (from which he returned with a bad sunburn), he thought of his friend Pong Pee. Pong was a good friend to have. He could raise a hue and cry in Williamsburg by what he wrote in his King County Railroad. So Joe invited Pong over and told him the whole story. Pong expressed great outrage at what the Priestess was doing. Joe could not under- stand why Pong was blaming the Priestess, when in fact it was only Yerret who seemed to be doing anything nefarious. It is the hu- man condition that we bend truth to our fixa- tions, and that was what Pong was doing. This, as you know, is not a good policy for a newspaper publisher/editor. However, it was for this that Joe so often admired Pong.

Together they decided that they should take another chance in the catacombs. To- gether they would hide out once more, allow Yerret to go down the hole, wait for him to return and then send Pong down with a note pad to record what he saw. So, Pong & Joe waited, Yerret appeared and entered the hole in his radiation suit. Hours later he reappeared, hung his suit back up on the wall and retreated up the stairs. Joe and Pong quickly raced toward the hole and pulled the lead cover off. Pong donned the suit which flopped about because Pong was so small, and then...down the rabbit hole. The first sub floor was flooded with radiation. This was a failsafe the Grexi had devised to kill any stray biota that may have entered their secret labs. Opening another sealed entrance, Pong descended further. Closing the door after him he noticed that the Geiger counter had dropped to normal levels of radiation. So he took off his suit. The laboratory of the Grexi was a won- der to behold; a vast chamber lined with iridescent crystal computers covered with odd hieroglyphs and symbols. There were objects that looked like hairnets with thin wires leading to the computers, but there were no keyboards. There were tables throughout the center of the room with bizarre looking equipment, which Pong could not at all fig- ure out. He did sketches of the lens, screens and fixtures and such, but it had no mean- ing for him. But on one table was a Personal Computer (a micro supercomputer provided by Cray research in Wisconsin, one of Yerret s own companies) clearly used by Yerret, and a handwritten notebook. Pong could not get beyond the computer s log in, but he did begin to read the notebook and was...horrified. Pong read passages form Yerret s di- ary. He was especially chagrined by what he wrote about the art community: ...the hubris of the mayfly artists of Williamsburg. They flock in from every corner of the globe, abide a little while in hopes of being discovered as a great artist or musician, then abandon Williamsburg in poverty and disappointment after a short bout of partying. Or, ...that art is considered by humans to be of such importance when it is merely decoration. Art, which had been merely a respected craft in the High renaissance, has been elevated to the level of importance it does not merit. It is now a commodity of a peculiar type. It does not matter about the artistic merit of any particular work of art. What people look for is the name. If a paint- ing bears a name that the public believes can make the painting saleable at high prices, the painting becomes desirable as art. People have begun to confuse art with commodity Or, The peculiar overweening ambition of Pong Pee and Anaheim Joe, who being failures at anything useful, will prostitute them- selves in any way for fame and fortune. They attempt to attach themselves to institutions like the Modern Museum through Bob Store- front, who had no bond or loyalty and being burdened with no intellectual possessions, was obligated to no one. Storefront was quite capable of roasting a chop over a Stradivarius violin, and boasting that he had sensibly and expediently organized a cultural heritage.

If you could have seen Pong s face at that moment it looked like sallow wax. Nothing in Pong’s life had so darkened his brow. He wanted to destroy Yerret! Pong heard some grunting toward the back of the lab and was startled. He carefully walked to- ward the noise where there were a number of rather ordinary looking pieces of lab equip- ment, mostly of the medical research types, nitrogen cooling tanks, test tubes etc. ...and a number of pigs in cages. The pigs seemed ordinary enough. Aha! Thought Pong, I will write about unclean conditions and cruelty to animals. Yerret is probably torturing the poor pigs in medical experiments. So Pong returned to where Joe waited. And they left quickly, Joe asking repeatedly, well what happened??? Pong did not say a word except. Wait till we get out of here. And they went home to Pong s, this time without Harmony, and spent an entire night engaged in heated discussion and planning.

Episode 18: The Grand Surrealist Conclave: The SNAFU Empire Restoration Project Things got very strange at the WHACK Center, as if things were not strange already. Perhaps it was because of that art project called the Snafu Restoration Project that attracted a lot of attention. Emma, a kindly British Lady who ran the Hausfrau Gallery at 37 Narroway brought in a young man named Steve from Harvard who was the spitting image of Ladnil Yer- ret as a young man. They had with them a truckload of machines. They were huge black boxes stamped with the Egyptian symbol of the golden scarab, with gears and pedals and viewing devices. Steve said they were modules from the SNAFU magnum opus, id est, The NIDUS-MONAD! (see www.em- piresnafu.org). Yerret was fascinated. The machinery was unloaded and taken down to the catacombs where they were plugged into the wall sockets. One could peer into the viewing goggles and step on a peddle and images of surreal landscapes appeared and one traveled through galaxies and viewed super novas and saw strange beasts graz- ing and flowers of such magnificence that it boggled the imagination. The gears turned, the electric current hummed, lights flashed and noises of strange beings, and creatures on distant planets made sounds unheard by human ears till now which gave one goose pimples. So, with the permission of the Priestess, Yerret open up the basement to the public and visitors paid a fee for entering the strange realms of the Snafu. This, of course caused a sensation in Williamsburg and articles be- gan to appear about the great thrills at the WHACK. News travels fast in the art world and soon the surrealists in Europe and England heard about the great surrealist Snafu Empire project. One day the Chairman of the Society for Art of the Imagination in London, Brigitte McFarland, arrived with her assistant Olaf Hegel to see with her own eyes the wonders of the worlds beyond experience. To sum it up, she was entranced (the machines had a strange thrilling hypnotic quality to them). It was then and there that arrangements were

made to have the WHACK host the greatest Conclave of World Surreal, Visionary, Fantastic Artists the world has ever seen with a grand surrealist ball. They decided to call the show Brave Destiny and encourage artists to imagine a future of man in a new age of enlightenment when the mind could soar to new heights and all of the petty ambitions of man would give way to a great utopia. This, thought Yerret, will prepare the world for his own plan for the human race...a preview of the shape of things to come. And it also gave him a perfect opportunity to launch his super virus. And thus, the great worldwide open call for artists to join in the greatest gathering of artists was launched! Meanwhile, Anaheim Joe and Pong Pee plotted their own evil deeds. One could imagine two trains, one Yerret the other the avaricious and frustrated Joe and Pee, on the same track running hell bent for leather on a collision course. This TRAIN WRECK WAS NOT GOING TO BE PRETTY!

Episode 19: The Puscular Trinity of Evil Joe and Pong enlisted the help of Bob Storefront. The Trinity of Evil, that Puscular Sore on the Williamsburg art scene met in high dudgeon to meet their great challenge of destroying the WHACK and ridding Joe and Pee of their greatest irritation, that Jap Lady who was always preaching Peace & Harmony. After all where did peace and harmony ever get anybody. It did not make one rich, did it? It might make you famous like the Priestess, of course, if you made it into a way of life. But where is the pleasure if you cannot destroy your enemies? Joe got a tingle in his crotch as he thought of his enemies suffering. If I can get rid of her and the WHACK, thought Joe, things will get back to normal and I can once more be the leader among the artists and galleries. Little did Joe think that the artists did not need Joe, and wanted him less. Even if The WHACK were not there for the artists, they would not have come to him for any reason. His time had come and gone, and he had done nothing to help the artists, only himself. When Joe created the Anywhere Festival to compete with the WHACK Festival, he took all the glory for himself in the press and left the galleries and artists who paid large sums of money to participate hanging in the wind. The Williamsburg art scene remembered this and the many other times Joe took the credit for everything. As a result, the Anything Fes- tival was one time event that nobody wanted to see repeated. Pee was his running dog in these matters...and behind the scenes, help- ing at every turn, behind every evil deed, was Bob Storefront. Joe said, I suggest we enlist the aid of the Michigan Militia and blow the WHACK to Smithereens. Bob said no, and that this build- ing was on the National Register of Historic Places and it would create such a row that the government would track us down like the Al Quada. Bob did not care about any national architectural treasure, of course, he just did not want to get caught blowing one up. A light bulb lit up in Pong s little head, and his eyes flashed. He offered, What of we enlist the Al Quada? Have them fly a plane into the WHACK. They would receive the blame, they can destroy an American treasure,

and we get rid of that priestess! It s a win win situation. They mulled that over for a bit. Joe finally said, I think that its all too risky, the best thing to do is to create such a scandal that they will have to close their doors. Pong agreed, he would help by spreading vicious slander. By gossip and in- nuendo they would bring the WHACK down around the head of the Priestess. They snick- ered. This kind of thing is what they did best and enjoyed most. Bob Storefront thought it an interest- ing idea, but from what he heard of Yerret s activities, he thought that he should enlist the big guns. His friend in Washington who naively collected art by Bob’s guidance (for which Bob received heavy commissions under the table from the major galleries) was on the National Homeland Committee, he would inform him of this grave danger to national security at the foot of a major bridge in New York City. Although there was no real evi- dence yet, it was a matter that bore investi- gation. It was shortly after this that the City decided it was time, with federal funding, to do major restoration of the Williamsburg Bridge which according to them was in a dan- gerous state of disrepair, even though there was nothing at all wrong with the structure. The bridge was wrapped, traffic was limited to one artery and major equipment from The Army Corp of Engineers was moved in to the Williamsburg side of the bridge!

Episode 20: The X-Ray cannon and the Brain of Professor Cohen So the army had the task of secretly bur- rowing into the sub cellar of the WHACK under pretext of repacking the foundation of the Williamsburg flank of the Bridge. Yerret was actually well aware of their activities, but was not concerned. He was able to monitor their progress by using Grexi scanners. When the army reached the outer wall of the sub cellar, they were stopped cold. Their drills and sonic hammers had reached a solid gray wall that nothing could breach. General Davidson, who was in charge of the opera- tion brought in demolition experts from Fort Benning, Georgia. But, they too could find no known chemical or drill or explosives that could penetrate that cool gray wall. That was when they brought in the xray cannon. The cannon could penetrate anything known to man. Bearing the cannon at full discharge against the barrier still yielded nothing. Little did they know that the Grexi s had built the underground laboratories out of neutronium, until now unknown to human science. It could resist a direct nuclear blast. The sci- ence of the Grexi s was too advanced for pid- dling human intellects. The amusing thing is that though they had created every kind of protection against infiltration of their laboratories, nonetheless, when they left for Vega in a rush to defend their home world, they forgot one thing...to close the hatch on their laboratory, hence the famous glowing Indian well of the Manhatta and the ability of Yadnil Yerret to discover and enter with ease their laboratory. It just goes to prove, no matter how lofty the minds of creatures may be, there is still room for enormous mistakes. Is it not true that while focused on the minutest of problems, big problems are overlooked to our distress?

All the Army really had to do was walk in the front door go down to the catacombs and remove the lead cover to the laborato- ries. Instead, they brought in the biggest brain in the world known to man who could figure out every problem he was confronted with... Professor Cohen. His full credentials are: Professor Cohen, M.D., PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD. He was the worlds greatest physicist, mathematician, astronomer, anthropologist, agronomist, botanist, biologist, anatomist, brain surgeon, podiatrist, economist, bryophytologist, dermatologist, chemist, philolo- gist, philosopher, poet, fiction writer, poet, poet, poet, artist, poker player, world chess champion, deep sea diver, mountain climber, connoisseur of cuisine and wine, and if I left anything out, let me know! Also, the world s greatest poet, art critic, and, it was said, the world’s greatest lover! And he was good looking too, and had a voice that made women swoon. He had a penetrating gaze and a persuasive quality. In other word’s he was the world s greatest actor too, preferring only Shakespeare, which he had commit- ted to memory at the age of six. And he had seventy books on philosophy, the sciences and eating out to his credit. He had just returned from shooting a TV program with Martha Stewart on how to make the greatest stuffed cabbage in the world. He was also in Ripley s Believe It or Not for being able to wiggle his ears and twiddle his thumbs at the same time. Now, Cohen was called in to determine what this new barrier was all about, and how it could be penetrated. Cohen put his mas- sive brain to its labors. He examined it with all of the many tools Western science could muster. He pondered over the problem for many days, his mind racing though problems at the quantum level and finally concluded that...this was neutronium, a material pre- dicted by his own theories, a substance that could not be penetrated by any science cur- rently know to man. He also surmised that it was of alien origin. As to how to get into the laboratories of Yerret his great brain could find no solution. So the greatest mind the world had ever known, far greater than Einstein had or even Leonardo, left the field baffled and humili- ated. Cohen knew everything there was to know in the world except one thing...that all he really had to do was ask Yerret if he could visit the laboratory. Yerret always admired Cohen when he read his books. Or Cohen could have simply done what Joe & Pee had done...sneak in and go down the open hatch. But Cohen was too honorable for that any- way. This proves that even the smartest of us can create such a complicated problem in our own mind that the simple solution escapes us.

Episode 21: Level 7 and the Conceptual Crop Circles of Ricard Hooman Yadnil Yerret had enjoyed watching the army do it s best against the neutronium wall, but he felt he was endangering the Priestess and the fine people associated with the

WHACK. So he decided to excercise the control he had over everything that was controllable...he placed a call in to Loren O Buck at level 7. Now, you ask, what the devil is Level 7? This story gets more complicated all the time! It sounds as if the entire universe revolved around Williamsburg Brooklyn and the WHACK. Well, to tell the truth it does. There are nodes in the space time continuum, and this was a node in the fabric of historical will. What happened in Williamsburg Brooklyn af- fected the outcome of the entuire univers! Aftre WWII, Yerret had decide it was necessary to have a control center to coor- dinate the industries he had bought up after the war. By coordinating the activies of farm- ing, pharecuticals, chenicals, heany industry aviation and computer scienec, he could effectively make governments peform to hs will by threating to withold viytla resources. Yerret chose for his nerve center a salt depsot in amn ancient sea bed in Momn- tana far from any geoloical fault lines. Heavy equipment was brought in and seven miles beneath the earth a large facility was in- stalled. above grounf were communication towers, solar power converters, housing for maintence staff. Whenever a call came from the manag- er of level 7, presidents and potentates paid close heed and did what they were asked. It was always in their best interests, they knew. Now, Yerret, who was always engaged in some research project or other copuld not manage level 7 and do evreything else. So he had found an intellectual younf man who had an enornous IQ who loved computers and to read science fiction and who abstained from sex and had a phoboia of people and about leaving his room. On the promise that Yer- ret would keep him supplied in science fic- tion and give him the finest Cray Mainframe mnoney could buy, O Buck agreed to manage the vast Yerret world empire. Since Yerret was always engaged in other things whihc pre- occupied him, essentially the control of the world was left by default in the hands of O Buck. So the man who really controlled the world was Loren O Buck!!! Fortunately he liked to see things work well and he made sure that there were no world wars whihc would cause massive dislocations. Nor did he overcontrol the world, but aloowed events tp pretty much evolve natually,as far as prac- ticable. That gave him plenty of time for his science fiction!

Episode 21, The Greatest Artist in Williamsburg, R.U. Huuman, and the Mystery of the Crop Circles It is now necessary to tell you about how the greatest artwork of greatest artist in Williamsburg, R.U. Huuman, because it would ultimately impinge dramatically on events at the WHACK, and change the course of hu- man history. Yerret always had a keen eye for genius in the arts. He was always looking for interesting new things. R.U. Huuman, a con- ceptual artist, was working with notions of

language and epistemology in his art. The first work Yerret saw of Huuman s was something Called Psycho Slayer, an installation of ultra-blue blocks occupying the entire floor in a Soho Gallery. On top of the blocks were a series of Morse code symbols representing, in this case, Blondie s song Psycho Slayer. The substrate of the blue blocks could repre- sent the backdrop of the universe, the Mind of God, thought Yerret. The blocks were painted not with a solid blue color, but rather a painterly manner, just suggesting in Yerret s imagination the cool subtle infinite vari- ability in the process of the universal mind which can combine and permute the dots and dashes of the code which becomes meaning. Yerret was also reminded of the computer at Harvard called Big Blue (a binary monster) which recently defeated the world chess champion Gary Kasparov. As Yerret thought, the meaning of everything we perceive seems to occur from an act of will through the per- fect ideas of potentiality and actuality, yes or no (dot and dash, or off and on). Through these, it seemed to Yerret, all existence and all meaning transpire in the universe. Huuman s work, for Yerret, made the grand statement in a bold and rightly grandiose manner, that all meaning is a reflection of combinations and permutations of elegant simplicity the mind of God. Yerret thought that it would be especial- ly inspiring to create these elegant works of Huuman in grandiose scale on entire sections of the earth, so that even from out in space they could be observed. So, he commissioned Huuman to go to his Immune Nuclear head- quarters bordering Montana and the Dakota s to work on a special work of art. Yerret had uncovered great secrets from the Grexi lab. The repelling and binding forces of sub-atomic particles were mastered by the Grexi for use in stripping atoms and molecules from DNA and recombining them, and also for propelling their crafts between galaxies. Yerret was experimenting at the Im- mune headquarters with just such a craft on a small scale. He flew out to his Midwestern base with Huuman to show him what he was working on and to discuss his idea for the largest work of art in the world. Having mastered the operations of the small craft and its electromagnetic ray beam, Huuman was soon able to fly at great speeds across the landscape, and create dots and dashes in the wheat & cornfields. Local pa- pers wrote articles about the fantastic crop circles in their fields which appeared over- night. These initial sighting of the crop circles with mysteriously woven strands of wheat or corn were a wonder. Scientists from lo- cal universities came to investigate but were totally mystified. Now Huuman s great mind was always working on doing things on grander and grander scales that might approach the size of his own great vision. While Yerret had generously showing him the Grexi lab at the WHACK, Huuman had furtively coped some digital shots of the strange Hieroglyphs of the Grexi on the walls and computers. Huuman thought that it would be a wonder to create his greatest work on the landscape by using this strange spirals and complex designs. Huuman zipped around the world in his sleek little craft and on the night side of the planet created wondrous patterns in crop fields around the world. The phenomena became the sensation of the world and were covered in every paper around the Globe and in

every language. It was the greatest press any artist ever received in the history of the world...and the artist remained anonymous. Someday, everybody will know my name, thought Huuman, but right now let the mystery remain and grow to a legend that will go down as the greatest artistic achieve- ment ever! To this day the world does not know who is creating the crop circles. Now I, Art Fartie have revealed to you their true source. Huuman was not content with the crop circles, as great artists are never completely satisfied now matter how great the achieve- ment, and so, using the Grexi patterns, he carved out across the Canadian forests a huge pattern from coast to coast. He did not know what it might mean in the Grexi language, but it was certainly impressive. And he signed it in smaller letters R.U. Huuman. Looking down from the MIR space sta- tion the astronauts remarked on the peculiar natural patterning of the Canadian forests and continued their work without further thought.

Episode 22: The Eyes of the Amnion are Upon Us! The Amnions, when they had cleaned up the Vega system after defeating the Grexi, set out to undo any settlements or mischief the fun loving Grexis had perpetrated across known space. Their long-range scanner picked up a strange sight. Across the top of a continent on the third planet form a yel- low dwarf sun was the statement translated from Grexi meaning loosely Property of the Grexi Empire and signed in smaller letters for which they had no translation R.U. Huuman. This infuriated the Amnion. Could they ever completely clean up all of the debris of that hated race? So they set out at warp speed to investigate. So the Amnion came to Earth and ob- served. Earthlings were a primitive and bar- baric race of beings, simply unworthy to exist at all. They had only an eye to their immedi- ate needs and could not look to the future to prepare them against extinction. They noted that they were a Grexi creation, and the Grexi were utterly incompetent. The best thing to do the Amnion decided was to eliminate all Grexi technology and let the Earthlings slip into an oblivion of their own making on this putrid little planet. The humans es- pecially liked to while their time away in a game called Wall Street where they were concerned with quarterly profits and capital gains created by the rulers to funnel the con- trol of wealth into the hands of a few domi- nant humans. An utterly ridiculous waste of time and energy observed the Amnion General, when so much of that effort could be used for making life better for themselves. The Amnions, like the Grexi had given up use of money epochs past in order to use energy and resources directly for the improvement of society. The motto of the Amnion was from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs, so they did not need money. After all, it was a common struggle for the good of all. However, such a policy was not possible with the humans, because personal greed and ambition would cause any such idealistic attempt at selfless government to collapse, as did the old Soviet Empire of the humans. Humans simply would not work

hard unless they could gain more than their fellows by the effort. The Amnions discovered that the source of the Grexi infection was in a little building on the coast of one of the northern continents and proceeded to remove the problem. The Amnions under cloak descended at 3 A.M. on a cold November night and anesthetized the entire city of Brooklyn with a ray. Thence they proceeded to resolve the Grexi lab into common Earth rock, after kindly releasing the pigs that Yerret had kept there. The pigs appeared to be very handsome to the Am- nion, possibly because they resembled them. In any case, future years would tell takes of a colony of pigs living in abandoned factories... much like artists.

Map of Williamsburg