book 2:
-waya scene-by-scene ‘go-thru‘
Archetypos: Nozl chooses Junk for his next session with VASST. They watch a T-strain: from an Enter Prize location with a large window looking out to space. Schoolmister Redprik [as in ‘red brick schoolhouse’] has brought his older, highschool-age students here, to review their knowledge of Treek mythological constellations. Redprik believes that these starfigures, such as they are, exist to outline the forms of the Ghods and other icons. And as such, they ‘must’ integrate and illustrate all ways of being according to essential archetypos. Redprik now calls on Jho-Na, who finds the constellation of HurtfulEs [Hercules]. But Jho-Na draws on mythology to question whether this known family-killer is really such a great hero archetypo. The teacher next calls on Mewton, the hydroponic farmer’s boy, to explain the Zoo-D-Ark, and the role
of its caretaker, Row-ah, in preserving endangered species. Redprik then gets Lharcy to describe the ‘constellation family’ that represents the Zion King of Beneathiopia [Cepheus], his Queen Mama Cassi [Cassiopoeia], and their daughter Androgyna, whose media-portrayal is currently shifting from that of a passive damsel to a sexy action figure. But now, Nerdy Sintilla quotes from a newer textbook that describes constellations as a “So Older System-centric fallacy.” Her book optimistically welcomes the arriving technological development of vast, synthetic 3D constellations, able to be clearly seen from all around the cosmos.
Anny May, Andy Must: Nozl now shows Junk a Jakoff ‘homeVDO’ of the same Enter Prize kids performing soon after, on a makeshift stage in Redprik’s schoolroom. The occasion is their Mind-Science Fair and Termpaper Theater. First, the sons of Mister Shitty – that is, the Shitty Lads: Skippry, Jiffry, Pacsum and Welchers – do a punkish number called “Four without Fear,” about Junk’s concept of quaternity. Next, Jho-Na and Lharcy Cru-Sado take the stage, to dramatize Junk’s conception of anima and animus, by performing a skit as Raggedy AnnyMay and Raggedy Andy-Must. The scenario has their characters stigmatized because their maker, Johnny Cru-L [as in Gruelle] has switched their names and cross-dressed their doll costumes. But the Ragapuffin Rinkledragon is attacking Ragtown, so Lharcene’s Andy-Must has to release Jho-Na’s Anny-May from his hen-pecked duties, and let him get on with his mythological dragon-slaying.
Hippie Jeannie Baits Her Masters: Nozl and DSX now watch a Boner shrink-session tape, with Dirk here confessing the history of his secret extramarital affair: his frequently ‘disappearing’ with Hippie Jeannie [Iphigenia], who starred in Idreamogenia [“I Dream of Jeannie”], another show (along with “Lost Stone Place”) in this incestuous group of space-located ‘sit-calms’. Hippie Jeannie was a young, pretty Arabic lady, externally carefree but emotionally scarred-within by her father, Allah-Member-Not [Agamemnon]. She had also been something of a kooky big-sister to Lharcy. When their show got canceled, Hagmaster [Larry Hagman] abandoned Jeannie, like her father had done before. Reflecting now, Dirk reveals to Boner his regret that he never really did anything to help her. And now after watching this session, Nozl and DSX look for and actually locate from afar the lost Hippie Jeannie, who’s landed in the snows of the planet Naptume. She’s heard crying and “Master, Master”-baiting, with her ass now so fat that she’s become stuck inside her lamp, that has been carelessly tossed away. Jhuzm Chrost: Nozl and DSX continue with a Synbok T-strain of Lharcy in her bedroom at thirteen. She’s with her friend, Nickelle Rubberskin [Penny Robinson] of Lost Stone Place, who is sleeping-over. They are now staying up to watch the new Seazer channel’s production of The Second AD Celebration. It promises a vision of Jhuzm’s Res-Erection, seen amidst the Cruze-FX [as in ‘crucifix’] produced as cameras recorded Jhuzm, who was captive in a ROMan cruelship named Golgotcha, as it started to enter a black hole’s Vent to Rise In [as in ‘event horizon’].
As the build-up for the Res-Erection, Seazer presents highlights from Jhuzm’s Tele-Commune-Occasions, starting with his Sermon of Sir Mount. Jhuzm and his Herdsmen here act a bit like noble knights, who are equally steeds. We’ll soon learn that Jhuzm’s mother is Marey; her husband was Jho Horse-Half, the sent2war [centaur]; and that being Hebro is associated with horsiness. The sermon quickly shifts into the form of a ’60s/’70s-type concert. Jhuzm, with his band called the Kindom of Heads-In (Space), sings Fight My Lyre [Light My Fire]; then, The Certain Flame [The Circle Game]: “And the Seazers, they grow round around/ And anointed ponies grow up unsound/ We’re captured by the carrot-sell of Mind...”; then, the Jhudas Brutus-Tongue [Judy Blue-Eyes] suite: “I am hoarse! You are lyin’ – to the crowd, a star -- / But you pray like a cow-w-ard!” Seazer now shows a commercial for the evangelist preacher, Paw-Y’All [Paul], and his Roamin’ Cattle-Lick [Roman Catholic] Catheedrawl, in Re-Jhu-sell-em [Jerusalem]. Paw wants y’all to receive Holy Compunion. At a later tele-commune concert, Jhuzm, now with his new group, the (Heads In) Space Machine, sings I am the Hor-us [as in ‘horse’ and ...Walrus]; Purple Hay [Haze]; Lunacy Disguised with Diadems [Lucy... Diamonds]; and Seek Me, Fear Me, Fuck Me, Kill Me. But wait -- now the Res-Erection starts to happen -and the girls twiddle with their T-control knobs until, “O Jhuzm, Jhuzm, Jhu!” “The color trails, so beautiful! / The Cruze-FX are true!”
After this T-strain tapefile ends, Lap Nozl and DSX call up Yrhip d’Zz, who was Jhuzm’s friend and cohort, as well as the director of the Tele-Commune-Occasions. When Nozl was working for the Department of Intel-Gents, he once called Yrhip, warning him to not try escaping from paying his taxes that the ROMans were after. In gratitude for this favor that wound up costing Nozl his job, Yrhip now offers Nozl the gift of some of his sensational recollections about Jhuzm. Yrhip talks about Jhuzm’s ability to see the cosmos and its ‘true constellations’ in more than three dimensions. He compares the dubious ROMan doctrine of Zoom’jaculate Conception with Jhuzm’s claim to be born from star-seeds, making him ‘an S-UN of Zoom’. Yrhip recalls horsin’-around in group-sex with Marey Mammagland, and the way that Jhuzm conducted galloping male mare-athons. Yrhip now asks DSX to find an
online VDO clip of his participation with Jhuzm in a confrontation with the Rumpld McDumpld [Ronald McDonald] Gang, on the Moon. Rumpld and his fellow H R Puf N Stuf- ripoff characters are shooting a commercial: “Howdy there, McDumpsters and parents of platoons! / I’m Rumpld, the McDumpld Ranch’s rodeo buffoon! / Us pony-burger -busters come t’ rustle up The Moon!” But now Odah’s Ark-craft lands, and out charge Juzm and his Holy Dozen Men of Horse-Apostle-Lips [Apocalypse]. With “Jhuish Injun-uity,” the horse-men ‘scalp’ Rumpld’s gang, by kicking off their cowboy hats to reveal, underneath, yardmilker [yarmulke] beenies – the type worn by lowly Hebro dairy farmers.
To wrap up the Jhuzm saga, Nozl asks Yrhip about the reason Ponderus Pi-Chart [Pontius Pilate] had – namely business, of course – for killing the guy that the ROMan, Conker-Skeme [Constantine] and his propagandist, Eusequius [obsequious Eusebius] would later raise to be worshipped above almost all the other Ghods. Nozl also wants to know, “Is Jhuzm in that universe, the Black Hole’s reverse?” Yrhip says no. But if he were there, still alive, “Then Jhuzm wasn’t Saviour, dude! He’s sailed right off away from us! / It’s just a Great Escape that made his suicide a must!” Yrhip’s last lines in this scene imply that the ROMan Church’s “wafer” (as in the Eucharist) is actually a chip with a “siliconscious nature” that, once ingested, becomes a device to regulate Spacimens’ lives. Trophy Woman War: Back to Nozl watching the Forum Ex Decorum. Virchl Trump L’Oil, citing Lharcene’s sympathetic performance here, sets up a clip from another StaR Trip episode that ran amok. This time, Networth’s idea was to allow famous convicts to play themselves, in order to authentically recreate Home-ster’s story of The Illiots, about the famous gang war (and wasn’t that really what it was?) between the Greecers from ShitArgos [Chicago] and Dese-Troyers. The idea for this episode was to have the Enter Prize Cru summoned here, outside the port-fort of Old Yort [Troy/ New York ‘in reverse’], to round up both enemy mobs for imprisonment on At’catraz. The name of this war emphasizes the situation of Melen, a role that Lharcy begged to play, and wore a sort of make-up-and-veil disguise to do so. Unusually as well, and as a gesture toward
sibling parity, her brother Jho-Na was given a minor role, as the callow Stargent Jhones. The action commences with the studly ‘gangsta’, Akiller [Achilles] speeding and swooping his verticycle down upon a stony road, etc, while mercilessly dragging along behind him the heckling goombah, Heckler [Hector]. Now Captain Dirk gets Boner and some men to apprehend both criminals, who are then made to ride-in together upon the stolen choppper. Meanwhile, Shitty’s men bring in the Greecers Odiferus [Odysseus] and Bagolemons [Agamemnon], who were stuck inside a giant horse that Dese-Troyers never bothered to roll inside of Old Yort.
Arguments and re-criminations now pass to the Greecer honcho Manhul-Layus [Meneleus], who must walk chained together with his unfaithful young wife, Melen and her lithe Dese-Troyer boyfriend, Pairless [Paris]. Pairless now sees that his brother, Heckler is dead, so he shoots off a concealed mini-arrow that hits Akiller in the heel. Mortally wounded, Akiller now, with his last bit of strength, begins to strangle Pairless. Aghast, Lharcene/Melen screams to Jho-Na/ Stargent Jhones to save Pairless by finishing off Akiller. But Jho-Na, confused by his homosexual attraction to Akiller, can’t do it. Suddenly now, Odiferus rushes in to grab the distracted Jho-Na and his gun. He takes the young man as his hostage while swiftly stealing away upon Akiller’s verticycle. Puber-Teen Confession, Sol-Star Connection; Titty Takes Merry-Ferry ‘Tween Smink/Smone: Nozl and DSX now watch a late-stage Enter Prize T-strain tape: of Lharcy having a phone conversation with her best friend, Nickelle, who’s been living with her Rubberskin family on Holo World since their Tshow, Lost Stone Place, got cancelled. Here Lharcy, while rolling up a ‘merry-ferry’ joint, confesses to Nickelle that when she was twelve, she’d been groped by an Enter Prize boy, Jiffry Shitty. Soon afterwards, her mom’s mortified reaction to hearing about this instilled in the girl a crushing sexual insecurity that, as she confesses, has pre-occupied her adolescence. However, Lharcy now reveals a stronger and more positive attitude, specifically in regard to her imminent plans for going to college with Nickelle on Holo World.
Lharcy’s T has been on. Now the rising ‘roeg’ star, Titty Rox comes on to sing a commercial for the new ROMan corporation, Starmaker-DynastaR. They are currently developing the ‘technology’ to exploit what’s called the ‘sol-star connection’. “Do you know how a star goes super? / When StarmakerDynastaR II begins / To slip you through its dropper / To your bright, new constellation!” Lharcy turns off the T now, to play for Nickelle a song from the new Titty Rox album. Although Nickelle now ‘has to’ hang up – though partly she just wishes to withdraw in order to privately process the sad news, or rumor, of what Lharcy said has happened to their mutual friend, Hippie Jeannie – Lharcy continues getting stoned while listening to this appropriately mind-expanding number. In it, Titty’s mind merges with the dual female natures of a great cat-goddess, who is Smone, the serene, pride-nurturing lioness, by day – and Smink, the sexy ‘black tigress’ by night... As evening falls upon the planet Sat-On’s savannah, Titty/ Smone smokes the marrow of a burning ‘magic bone’. From this, she starts having visions. Titty now finds herself aboard a magical party barge, the merry-ferry. Even though there’s a wild celebration on this boat, a sense of dread lies upon the river of smoke they are crossing, above the plants and creatures of some ‘cannabal’ gorge. The ferry now lands where Titty finds herself alone in the dark, at the edge of a jungle. She now inhabits the goddess, Smink, who growls a lustful rhyme as she starts on her nocturnal hunt: “Smink have plan: meat of man! / Sweet I like! Night I strike! / Jungle grass – bite young ass!”
Jho-Nah and the Whole: Nozl and DSX tune in again to Forum X Decorum, where Spil’s prosecution of Dirk as a parent (versus the Trippin’ Cru’s defense of him) frames the set-up for the screening of clips from another never-shown Star Trip episode. First now, Virchl presents a backstory of Jho-Na, that incidentally serves to parallel the initial waywardness of the biblical Jonah. Whereas Jonah, while in the city of Ninevah, resisted God’s order to preach, Jho-Na, when put into a music camp on the planet of Minivan, felt himself to be resisting an imagined directive from Zoom to sing according to his own sense of beauty and truth.
The Forum now screens the first clip from this episode, that was to be titled Slave the Whales. At the start, we see that First MateAt-Helm Nbura has detected and paralyzed a giant space crabship, or cangrero, full of space-crustacean seamen called Chingons, who were trying to claw some valuable device off the exterior of the Enter Prize. Now the StaR Trip director, Yrhip d’Zz, hatches a scheme for the Cru to confiscate the Chingons’ contraband drug, C-weed. Then, seemingly as a conciliatory measure, they will offer the Chingons some large-screen telesterions. But tracers inside the telesterion crates will enable the Cru to track down the Chingons’ entire C-weed smuggling network. Yrhip thinks an exposè such as this would make for a sensational episode. The Trippin’ Cru now resumes the Jonah/ Jho-Na narrative, describing how Jho-Nah, trying to run away, hid himself in one of these large boxes. After the Chingons discovered him, they decided his presence was the curse that caused a sudden space typhoon. So they removed him from their ship, and held him as a hostage in their nearest whale-house. This breed of balloonlike, enslaved spermatawoa whales have allowed the Chingons to escape a poisoned Earth, by dwelling inside these giant creatures that evolved into blimps that could float off into space. While Jho-Nah actually finds a respite and a friendly Chingon salty-sailor father-surrogate inside this whale, the Enter Prize computer Synbok comes up with a rescue plan for the boy that also offers a new, ‘better’ StaR Trip plotline, one that latches onto the environmentalism trend. So now, as seen in the second clip from ‘Slave the Whales’, the Cru will attempt to tow the
whale down to a pool in a Holo World theme park, called Earth World. Unfortunately the whale tries to resist, by flailing around while concealing its body inside a defensive space-cloud of its own sperm. As a result, the special towline ray-cable, that Dirk was supposed to hook in the whale’s mouth, winds up getting caught in its blowhole instead. And this puncturing of its lungs is why, although Dirk intends to rescue Jho-Na by just bringing him out through the giant creature’s mouth, the whale tragically now explodes all around Jho-Na like a pierced balloon.
Teazer; Gawth: A day or two later, DSX draws Nozl’s attention to Spil Darnhue’s ‘teaser’ for the upcoming Forum, when the ‘final evidence’ will be presented to prove his charges of CruSado father-daughter incest. Nozl now tells DSX that he’s almost entirely skeptical about the incest allegations. Fraud enters their talk to claim that incest is usually a mere manifestation of female hysteria. Junk jumps in, agreeing with Fraud while associating incest with picaresque mythological themes. But Horny angrily denounces her colleagues’ unconcern for the serious issues of incest. She advances her theory about Dirk Cru-Sado exemplifying a father who inflicts his own ‘reverse Dadipus complex’ upon his children. The Forum now begins, with Spil, Virchl, Trippin’ Cru. The ‘evidence’ is from the last never-completed StaR Trip episode, shot on the planet Gawth. Lharcene here plays (in disguise) the Blackpower Widow, whom Captain Dirk must foil. During Gawth’s brilliant, nocturnal tri-lunar convergence, the Widow is to release her deadly robo-vulture from her Blackwidow Peak. This evil bird will hunt down a sympathetic nobleman, the VieKing of the Nil Frontier. But suddenly a dense isotopic cloud descends. Its fog ruins the shoot, so the StaR Trip people at the base of the peak now beem back to the Enter Prize. But Dirk and Lharcy, up on the peak, remain stranded in this beem-occluding cloud. They don’t know that a long-lens camera and parabolic microphones were inadvertently left trained on them. And the shot film has since been enhanced by ‘fog-penetration software’. This ‘surveillance’ of Dirk and Lharcy is now presented to the Forum. After the fog descends, the daddy stumbles his way up
the peak in order to help his daughter. He scares away an alien mamwolf , then sets up an emergency Tenta-Bed to help them to survive the cold Gawthic night. But inside this translucent cover, when Dirk rubs Lharcy with liniment as first aid for the beakbite on her breast; when they embrace each other for warmth, and deliver words of love to bolster each other’s spirits; and then when Dirk sits and bobs on top of Lharcene (struggling to help her loosen her painful Blackwidow corset), it all creates the wrong appearance. The audience irrationally focusses their condemnation on Lharcene for being a dirty slut, etc, and swears to not ‘let her’ become a runwaystar. But Virchl, who’s been silent so far, naturally comes to Lharcy’s defense. Then Spek and Boner deflect criticism of Lharcy’s mom for ‘enabling’ her husband’s
incestuosity. Lastly, Spil pries into the romantic as well as professional nature of Virchl and Lharcy’s present relationship. Virchl explains that their love developed over the course of his managing her runwaystar training. He comes off as a sensitive and decent character, outwardly successful but inwardly anguished by the ephemerality of his existence as a hologram. “Daddy?”: Later, in a still moment of reflection, Nozl tells DSX of times when he came home late at night: that Lharcene, surprised while still dreaming, would believe he was her father. Trashley Trapp and T.J. Hussler; Spek’s T-attack: Nozl and DSX catch the next Forum X Decorum, that starts with a raunchy country-music performance by Trashley Trapp, a badgirl friend of Lharcy’s while they lived on the Enter Prize. Trashley has been brought on to confirm that she and Lharcy once stole a couple of expensive beemer machines ‘together’. But Trashley soon stalks off the Forum stage, angry because no one else believes that Lharcene’s acting appearances inflicted a Dadipal kind of curse on Star Trip; this supposedly causing the show’s demise, along with that of Travis T. Trapp, her dear father. Doctor Boner now lays out the range of factors that really caused the end of StaR Trip. He then refers to all of the Cru’s dismal post-Trip careers, while gently mocking Dirk/ Shatnear’s later work on the show, T. J. Hussler. Spek suddenly interrupts Boner with a plea for sympathy toward Shatnear, with his “shattered ears.” Spek then bemoans his own passed-over career, his painfully distant relationship with his mother while growing
up on planet Vulva, and the hardships of chronic vulvanitis. Nozl, watching, reveals to DSX his deep antipathy toward Spek, who is evidently one of his many, many Vulvan brothers. He’s embarassed by his own reflection in Spek, who now in his lividity is succumbing to a characteristically Vulvan spell. But then, Nozl’s own pain-encrusted cynicism is shocked and challenged when Darnhue starts to caringly massage Spek’s neck and shoulders. Deaf Alley: Next time on Forum, Spil Darnhue presents a VDO of Shatnear/ Dirk that was captured by one of Seazer’s remotecontrolled, flying spy cambots. Shatnear is seen in a state of mad depression, stumbling through the noir streets of Narcs’ Beat in the city of Esseffalem on the planet Pludea [North Beach in San Francisco/SF: a ’fifties-jazz Jerusalem of a far-out Judaea]. Beckoned toward a haunting horn sound that emanates from a club called the Wailing Wall, Shatnear now turns with resigned determination down the fearsome Deaf Alley: a kind of Odyssean trap, where crazy echoes of your own words are known to return to you with force enough to shatter your eardrums. Nevertheless, out of a need for catharsis, Shatnear deliberately screams to effect the “kharmic ricochet” upon his “willing, fed-up ears/ Of a head that never veers from all its years of deadly folly.” He thus sentences himself to exist in physiological accordance with his psychic debility: of ‘deafness’. The self-deafening of this once-Dadipus Superwuss is clearly a spin (appropriate for a sound-piece) on the Oedipal selfblinding. From this act, Spil infers that Shatnear was guilty
about his incestuous relationship with his daughter. But Doctor Boner much more convincingly explores the metaphor of deafness as it would apply toward the father’s shortcomings as a listener: this being the cause of rash choices in his later career;
of mistakes that led to his marriage dissolving; and, most importantly, of his too-late response to his son’s sexual identity crisis. This last is the main point because, as soon as the family could adjust to the fact of young Jho-Na ‘coming out’, he almost immediately contracted HIV-RAIDS. Upon hearing this news, the saddening shock to everyone in the Forum is tremendous. And now this injection of grim reality catalyzes the moment when Spil, finally ashamed of propping up his ‘professional reputation’ as a prostitute for the prosecution, lets go of the ad hoc accusations he has levelled at Dirk and Lharcene. After the Forum ends, Nozl confesses to DSX his own guilt that Jho-Na’s unfolding crisis was partly the cause of his letting Lharcene stray from their relationship. He is so discomfited by death that he dreads being expected to offer comfort in the face of it. Now Doctron Fraud briefly drops in from VASST to air his theory about the ultimacy of the ‘death drive’. Nozl soon dismisses him, then nervously makes up a morbid parody-song, which DSX interrupts to ask him what became of Dirk. Nozl tells her that Dirk’s hearing damage was not total. After taking stock, Dirk exiled himself, escaping his family woes by moving to the Uranasian Planet. There he established himself as a Western Master, and made new girlfriends. A Polleny Licarus Insex Dream: Nozl and DSX, joined by Junk, Drymouth and Fraud, now hear and discuss a labitat tapefile. It comes from a lengthy recording made when Jho-Nah called, looking for Lharcene, and she picked up Nozl’s phone after its answering machine turned on. On this tape, still not completely awake, Lharcy describes (with her characteristically
child-like pronunciation) the dream she was having, about “the best, most beautiful insex.�
In Lharcene’s dream-story, she is Polleny Licarus [based on Polyommatus Icarus, from the Lycaenid family of butterflies]. Polleny must act to stop a great afig [aphid] infestation on her planet, Lepidoptra; this is somehow triggered by radiation emanating from Holo World’s VDO-wave transmission towers. To get to Holo World and tell them to stop their harm, our plucky little butterfly has “to fly high, through the hyperspace keyhole/ Silent and blind, in a state of dream-control.” But instead of going forward through space, she travels back in the time-stream, back to good ol’ sunny days with all her friends, including Papilio, Miss Kito, and the handsome ‘lepidoctor’, Pieris du Brasse-Key. Further back in time, she witnesses her mom the Beehive Queen giving birth to her; then she jumps time-forward to be with her brother, the Darkling Beetle and her dad, the Skipper Manmoth. More than revealing much about the ostensible subject of incest, these scenes illustrate general aspects of dreaming itself. Although Lharcy is certain she is ‘remembering’ elaborate scenarios ‘as they really happened’, Drymouth now appears from VASST to scientifically explain how deep dream-states merely produce image-flashes, which our minds play with and stitch together once we’re in a half-awakened state. The dreamfeeling of ‘endlessness’ (“What a sun-bent never-ender!”) is not ‘endless’ at all. ROM in Ozoompics, DynaStaR Trips: Nozl starts watching the Forum again, coming in during a moment when Spil challenges Virchl about the ROMan Ozoompics. Virchl
acknowledges that the new Ozoompic events abandon the austere, Treek athletic fundaments. But as he sees it, providing the ‘bread and circus’ is actually more democratic. Now a break for a commercial from DynaStaR Trips, the new ‘beeming’ tourism industry controlled by B-Ming DynastaR. In describing the attractions of their intergalactic Latin Pompayboy Resort chain, DynastaR projects the decadence of Ancient Rome into this ROMan future. And from the spiel that DynastaR uses to sell tours to planet-centers of worship, we learn about the cult of the ghoddess Crib-Belly [Cybele] and of the ghod Myth-Rush [Mithra]. We learn about the planet Sat-On from descriptions of the Sat-Onalia; about Naptume from the kiddies’ Starry Fun Safari; about Pludea from the Holy Plan’ tour. This last presents the historical ‘geography’ of Northern California’s New Age counter-culture, in a way that quite resembles the tourist highlights of the Holy Land. When the Forum returns from the commercial, Spil and Virchl are caught by surprise, disclosing private thoughts about their jobs – and about one Howhard Go-Sell [Howard Cosell], the legendary sportscaster who has somehow come back from the dead. Qtip and SpykE: With DSX Macintuch and the doctrons Fraud and Junk, Nozl re-views the muV [‘moo-vee’: music-video movie] entitled Qtip and SpykE [‘q-tip’ and ‘spikey’; Cupid and Psyche]. ‘Psyche’ means soul in Greek, and this particular myth is cited by Jungian psychologists as the essential, soul-affirming alternative to Freud’s depressing assertion of Oedipus Rex as the
centerpiece of psychoanalysis. Here we get an updated version of the story, set amidst the heyday of punk rock. Lharcene got the starring role, and this launched her minor acting career. The muV itself is narrated throughout by the roegstar, Titty Rox. SpykE is a Juliet/Ophelia-type, whose youth and beauty incur the jealous wrath of Vainus [Venus, veinous, etc.], who now sends her son Q-tip to shoot the girl with an arrow intended to inject some humiliating love-spell. But at the sight of SpykE, Qtip is so wowed that he slips and shoots himself with his own love-drug. Meanwhile, because SpykE always projects a crazy persona (with her “rogue-y vogue-y shake-a-blades and rakey-snakey hair”), her dad, a Holo World ‘studio roil’, gets worried about her marital prospects vis-à-vis the “regal lads.” So he now seeks help from “a Ghod psychologist, a sickening Apollo-gist.” Dad is told to have SpykE go and wait upon some mountaintop; she’s to be killed there, by a flying dragon. WTF, but anyway she goes and waits – and then, from up there, a “hawk-led zepellin” [after the wind, Zephyr] carries SpykE to Qtip’s ghodly mansion. SpykE loves her stick-figured loverboy and the whole luxurious scene. Except that Qtip, this punk musician who’s incongruously prone to flowery verse, is always invisible – why? She listens to her sisters, who tell her he’s a needle-freak, a junkie. She needs to get him under a light or something; so while he’s sleeping, she tries to run a wire through the head of his penis, in order to tie him fast to the bedside. But this does not work: he wakes to ward her off with his bass guitar, then double-disappears.
SpykE now appeals to Qtip’s mother, Vainus, to help get him back. But the deal is that SpykE first has to clean out all the dead-lover corpses from Vainus’ giant garage. Next, she must collect a bunch of blonde manes from the modLs of Beaverly Glade. Then, she must dive for sticks in the river StOnz. Finally, she’s told to find Queen Porcupina in Hades, in order to bring Vainus back a lagena of some beautifying eau des fleurs du mort. Despairing as usual in anticipation of her ultimate failure, SpykE tries to jump from the Holo World sign. But out from it comes Izik Hades, in the guise of a friendly bum. He bucks up her confidence, and tells her (with undisclosed self-interest) how to get down to the land of the dead. So our SpykE now takes a morgue elevator down to UnderCalefornica. “She drugs the big dog, Surlybitch [Cerberus], by servin’ morphine biscuits, / Then skirts across to Porcupina’s court of whiskered witches.” She then is made to perform oral sex upon this nasty, jaded Porcupina: an ‘O’ for an eau. Then, while going back up to Holo World, SpykE herself can’t resist a sniff of this magically-regenerative lagena (an ancient ‘flagon’) – and being mortal or whatever, she pretty much dies. But yay, Qtip’s there to pluck her out at the top of the hell-evator, and then revive her with a arrow-shot of methadrine. Soon works to smooth things out between SpykE, his mom and Zoom. And then after our couple’s happy wedding, their baby Vultura is born.
In their commentary wrap-up, Fraud argues that it’s the whiff of death, while Junk argues that it’s the discovery of love that finally pushes SpykE’s character through the blockage of her
arrested development. Junk then wraps both possibilities into one, referring to PlaydO [Plato] and his philosophical concept of “I do’s” [eidos, ‘The Forms’]. These “I do’s” – of one’s ultimate ‘marriage to death’ – represent an ecstatic union with the truth of the universe. Fraud now lambastes all of Junk’s arcana, mysticism and religious ‘typo-determinism’. Then Junk jeers at Fraud’s unwillingness to accede to any notions of culture and civilization, other than as collective manifestations of sexual sublimation. Finally, in reaction to what he perceives as Junk’s “parricidal” posture, Fraud suffers a seizure. This is Torchure: Nozl and DSX watch the next Forum, with Spil and Virchl interviewing Lizardbath Reptek; the Trippin’ Cru is off this time. Since the show is continuing its lead-up to the Super X-Dream Ozoompics, Reptek is asked to explain the technological bases of the Runway event. She describes how the runway beems – space-traversing ribbon-streams of energy – are shot between intergalactic Disk-Integration and Beem RElay Stations: cosmic ‘DIBRES’. The runway racers, called disk jockeys, surf the beem upon their DynastaR Diskoids. These are equipped with a wave catcher; also, a mass particulizer that acts as a variable matter/energy converter unit. For take-offs, the DJs must spin up from gigantic phonograph-resembling in-turntables at the disk integrator stations; then, while ‘particulizing’, they ‘brave the beem’. For landings, the reverse: DJs must ‘de-beem’ and ‘de-particulize’, then skillfully spin down upon the ‘disk integrators’.
A beem suddenly shoots above and across the Forum stage. Now the Shitty Lads: Skippry, Jiffry, Pacsum and Welchers [with three of these names evoking the connection between peanut butter and shit, and the last one being a jelly-brain] appear on it, jesting and jousting about on their diskoids, and wearing B-suits. Like Lharcene and Jho-Na, the Lads were part of the dozen-odd ‘Trippin’ kids’ gang’ growing up on the Enter Prize. Now these brothers are men, and they appear as guides to the new beeming sport of diskoid racing and torchure. They demonstrate how the diskoid foot-controls are used for ‘extreme sports’-type maneuvering. They also show how to fight with a space-age blowtorch. (Its fire is fueled by the torcher’s exhalation of a psychosomatic gaseous substance produced in the eyeballs, called victrius Umor.) While they are demonstrating defensive moves such as the shielie-wheelie, crazy Welchers crashes offbeem. As a pioneer of the sport, he suffers from bizarre symptoms of long-term side-effects, known as phantom limbic afterlives. DSX now turns off the T, and – out of the blue and a little resentfully – she asks Nozl why he sent one of their Lifeboys all the way to the Lhuvs’ Runway training planet, just to bug Lharcene’s B-suit helmet. Nozl explains to DSX that they will need to keep tabs on Lharcy during the Runway, in an effort to ensure her safety. Cattle-Flog: Titty Rox does a commercial spot on Seazer that furnishes incidental information about the mercantile operations behind the Ozoompic Runway’s upcoming fashion pageants. Cattleflog [catalog] is a way for the T-zone to shop for fashions
online. The sales figures, tabulated in real time during the competition, will help determine a runway team’s success. Invocatory Drive: DSX Macintuch here happens to ask Nozl how sex and drugs go together. ‘Showing her’ gives Nozl a reason to watch a kinky, trippy tape of Lharcy and himself. This tape was made on the planet Ozoompia, when they went on vacation to the colossal Zoom Planet Park. This metaphysical theme-park offers rides – such as Zoom’s Eye, the Mental-Model Universe, and the JupitEar that Lap and Lharcy chose to go on – that are supposed to make up a Fantastic Voyage-like representation of the celestial Ghod-Head. Zoom here is imagined as a hedonist, who’s into (free-)‘basing the smoke from a hill of burning ‘snow boulders’. Nozl describes how this Base is the start for a couple’s private, adultsonly rocket-ride. The couple first climbs in and lies naked beneath the little rocket’s clear nose-dome, upon a giant, soundcollecting, ear-shaped bed. Their rocket then flows along with the rushing air of Zoom’s inhalation, going into his Lungs. During exhalation, Zoom uses a special technique of blocking his Glottis in his Pharynx, in order to force a stream of druggy snow-smoke through his U-Station [eustachian] Tube. Along this tube now, on the ‘drive’ toward the ‘Organ’ of the Ear, the couple’s earcraft is also ‘driven’ by the sound waves produced by the incredible music of this ‘Organ’. All this serves as a literal construction of the sexual arousal ‘called out’ by the sense of hearing (again, an appropriate focus for a sound-piece), that Doctron Lack [Lacan] has termed invocatory drive.
This souvenir tape that was made during the Drive allows us now to hear (and supposedly see) Lap and Lharcy making love. The mood music inside the earcraft is by David Blowmie: a ‘take-off’ on his song, Station-to-Station. So the foreplay commences along with the song, and as the rhythmically hypnotic U-station Tube takes the U-shaped pass around the Ustation (just beneath the magnificently hammering ear’s Organ), the lovers reach their sexual climax. Geni-Tales to Critique; Hot Aliens: While Nozl and DSX take a break from making improvements on the Lifeboys, DSX admits that she still is mentally processing her vicarious new
excitement over sex. So being further curious, she asks Nozl if ‘Spaciwomen’ like pornography. He says that in fact they often do, but probably in a different way than men. For example, Lharcene mainly enjoys watching other women enjoying heterosex; e.g, getting fucked. Nozl now tells DSX to locate a labitat tapefile of Lharcy and himself watching a porno VDO called “Geni-Tales.” The porno tape is narrated in song by our ubiquitous Titty Rox. The first ‘geni-tale’, about a gardener and a dual-sided nymph(o), is a return to the genre of mythological stories about common workingmen who are forever ruined by sexual encounters with waifs that in reality are demons. Here the sweet, alluring girl offers the buff, sweaty gardener a refreshing drink, which turns out to be mixed with a potion that painfully prolongs his erection for life. And suddenly this comely babe and her bedroom transform into the world of a dominatrix – as Titty sings “Sado-maso-fistic Kitty, say hello to Titty’s titties.” Lharcene’s comments while watching the next ‘geni-tale’ end (along with the tapefile) with her statement that women share a “telepath intensity,” which separates them from men’s “emptiness and apathy.” But now the VASST website librarian, Lore-Lie Berry, comes on to discuss a possible disadvantage of ‘fempathy’: the tendency to enlarge partial and subjective views, which the scholar Mary Ann Moan [Doane] has termed overidentification. A literal take on such ‘partial views’ now reminds Nozl of another labitat tapefile for DSX to play. In this one, he teases
Lharcy, asking her why, instead of a regular mirror, she only puts on her make-up by peering into the mirrored lid-top of a Critique [Clinique] face-powder container. Her response is that she can’t afford to feel even more self-critical, which is how she’d feel if she saw herself fully in a mirror. Then Lharcy runs through a scathing put-down of the modLing industry, especially in regard to its calculating attitudes toward race. This leads, lastly, to DSX asking Nozl if outer-space aliens are gaining acceptance in the worlds of fashion and beauty norms. He offers a mixed response that is finally just hopeful enough for DSX to wonder when “girl computers” will “get their turn to be sexy, too.” Defame Show and Whitey: Soon later, Nozl has DSX listen to a recording that got left a year ago on his T-phone’s anwering machine. It was made unintentionally when Lharcene, alone in the labitat, ‘picked up’ for Jho-Na after screening the caller. Lharcy is watching the T as they speak, so she and Jho-Na casually share their views on Defame, the Seazer Nexus reality show. Its concept is to have flying spy-drone cambots do cambushes, that catch celestities in the act of doing things that would ‘de-fame’ them, by calling into question their ‘right to be famous’. Of course, as the normal meaning of ‘defame’ implies, the show utterly lacks journalistic integrity. Its real purpose is to brush aside fading celebrities, so that new ones can be sold. And the ROMan media capitalizes on this impulse for celebrity spring-cleaning – notwithstanding that the night sky is being filled up with media-produced ‘celestity constellations’, designed to never go away.
This conversation, in which Lharcy claims to be ‘into’ such reality shows, happens at the point where she is transitioning between Nozl and her new relationship with the ROMan holoman, Virchl Trump L’Oil. Because of her uneasiness during this ‘rebellion’, she is trying on some new attitudes and duplicitous ways that really don’t suit her. Brother Jho-Na points this out. His emotional state can often be unsteady, but he nevertheless remains the steady voice of conscience – as the ending of runwaystaR shall prove. And now Jho-Na reveals his reason for calling: that he’s troubled by what their father, slightly drunk, said to him a few nights ago. Dirk, letting a bit of his darkness shine, had defiantly spelled out to Jho-NA the crude implications of his Dadipal feelings for Lharcene. Jho-Na then quotes the Great White Father capping off his comments with, “fuck that world of Whitey and his middle-class taboos!” Women’s Drool: This segment’s theme is introduced when Nozl, while ‘on hold’ for the online Doctron Drymouth, hears a song about yeast infections, called Rage, Candidiasis [as in the Hair musical’s “Age of Aquarius”]. From Drymouth, this ‘most physicianly’ of the doctrons, Nozl here wants insight in regard to one of his self-bugged labitat recordings: of a fight he’d had with Lharcy. The recording conveys a ridiculous but real outburst of violence on Lharcy’s part, ‘provoked’ when Lap neglected to bring Lharcy back a Herkley’s chocolate bar on the way home from an errand. This turned out to be one of the final clashes before their break-up or separation, when Lharcy would move out to train for the Ozoompic Runway with Virchl Trump L’Oil.
Nozl seeks to understand Lharcy’s volatility, so he asks to Drymouth to discuss how one’s genes influence mental health. He also touches on the possible influences of campabliss [cannabis] and of vaginal candidiasis in relation to pre-women’sdrool syndrome [PMS], etc. At this point, Doctron Horny breaks in with practical insights on the natural treatment of yeast infection. She really tarnishes Drymouth’s aura of clinical authority. A brief, loony diversion has Drymouth taking the topic of yeast infection into outer space, by exaggerating the categorization of Fungi as a rather alien biological kingdom – thus making it an actual ‘invading alien kingdom’, that of the Sporx of Planet Spermia. End of the Bastardly Regime: Nozl now plays for DSX a preserved message that Lharcene left on his T-phone voicemail. In this soliloquy of sorts, she tells him that she’s decided to go off to train for the Ozoompic Runway; she admits to her new ‘relationship’ with Virchl. Lharcy reveals how her thoughts constantly oscillate in regard to Nozl: from bitter condemnation of his constant meddling, to profound gratitude for his having saved her life. Baloonia: Nozl now watches The Oppra Freeway Show, so as to catch Lharcene’s advertised guest appearance. The show is introduced by a Titty Rox song, called “Ox Hunger” – which is the Greek etymological origin of bulemia. After this, Oppra starts getting Lharcy to ‘share her own struggle’.
Lore-Lie Berry, the online virtual librarian for VASST¸ now joins the Oppra conversation. She cites various academic experts on baloonia and nervosa-rexia [anorexia nervosa]. Doctrons Fraud and then Horny weigh in, and then Oppra sings about her own history of weight issues and self-esteem. Nozl now surprises everyone on the show, using his ex-D.I.G. hacking skills in order to appear uninvited on a guest-speaker screen. (His need to barge-in will crucially be seen again, at Lharcene’s Ozoompic Runway finish.) The show at this point turns into a mini-postmortem of Lap and Lharcy’s relationship. Here Lharcene, in describing how she got her new life together, attaches more specific information to the contradictory accusations and gratefulness she conveyed in the previous scene. Doctron Junk now comes on Oppra to wrap up the scene, stating his belief that eating disorders, as well as our “cravings for sensation,” stem from a common psychic program that leads us all to anticipate receiving many fantastic pleasures in life.