The Clandestine Panda Service

Dear WSO,

I love you.

Really I do. I’ve gazed at your pixely visage for nigh on four years now. I’ve forecast the weather and my coming meals from your pages; I’ve scared myself silly reading the vituperative forum-duels that rage within your discussion-boards. Yet now, even now, I feel it may be time to part.

I’m about to graduate. I want to share pictures through my blog and need a service that supports it. And I am ready for an API key and an address of my own.

You’ve given me wordpress. More, much more than that, you’ve sparked in me a love of hyperlinked, pun-riddled blather such as only weblogs can inspire. The Clandestine Panda Service lives on—for now at bamboozle.wordpress.com, and perhaps one day on a server of its own. It is a tribute to you, to your forward-thinking, readily accessible, procrastination-luring technogodliness. Between us, in fact, we have the start of a beautiful travesty.

bamboozle.wordpress.com. Did I mention that? To quote Churchill: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Sniffle. Now let’s get on with it.

Previous posts have established that I have no time to write funny blog posts anymore. However, I thought, for the benefit of humanity, that I should bring the condition of the mice in Utah to the attention of the local blogging population. Rumor has it they bang their heads with crucifixes too.

One and a half tanks of gasoline: about fifty dollars.

Two excessively large cups of coffee and a box of crackers: about seven dollars.

Turnpike tolls: two dollars and eighty-five cents.

Getting to spend eight-and-a-half hours driving home because most of New Hampshire is UNDER WATER:

:

I guess you can’t put a price on ANGER.

There are some things money can’t buy. One of those, apparently, is New England weather.

That was a lot of water. Like, whoa.

We’re going to take time away from this silliness with a serious blog-post. I don’t have time to be funny anymore; instead, I write about architecture. And science. And…sixteen year-old girls?

Yes, actually. But no ordinary girl. In this case, a rising star, an actress to be, a…dare I say it?…Princess!

Sort of. The inestimable Fark.com provides this story from something called azcentral.com (don’t ask me). What you will find there is a shining example of American cultural production. And I don’t mean “production” the way you “produce” a record or a film; I mean it like you might produce material, like bologna, pistons, or urine.

Young Marissa Leigh is definitely a material girl. As in STAR MATERIAL! Duh! Her website, Marissa Leigh Online!, in addition to being one of the most skillful implementations of the color pink I’ve seen in a while (except for Lucy’s blog, of course), contains some information about young Miss Marissa’s (can we call her “missy”?) budding career. Her resume, for example, in addition to listing her no-doubt stellar abilities to perform an Irish accent (which one?), says that, in fact, she’s a Licensed Driver! Uh-HUH!

Peruse the rest for yourself. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to be funny anymore, but fortunately, other people are doing at least as good a job.

I’ve alluded to it several times, but I feel I should elaborate on my experience with flavored crisps. It’s slightly embarassing, but it says a lot about what is happening in Ireland these days.

The place was “Florian ‘ouse,” as in, “tonight, you go to party at Florian ‘ouse?” to which question—when asked by a French flat-mate—the only answer is yes. Florian was a somewhat sketchy French guy who drank a lot, frequently in our living room. I didn’t like him, but I was happy to drink his booze.

It was to be a sangria party. Some of you will think of sangria as something you consume with tapas, al fresco, under a sun-umbrella in Barcelona. Perhaps, but not here. This is how it works:

1. French person plans party. Has vat.
2. French person gets a.) bottles of cheap red wine; b.) bottles of “white lime” soda (Irish for generic Sprite); c.) fruit.
3. French person invites other French people, who bring more bottles of cheap red wine.
4. French person chops fruit, adds fruit and liquids to vat. Stirs, tastes, looks at ceiling. Thinks. Opens more wine, dumps. Tastes, stirs, serves—in pint glasses. Irlandaise, non?

In other words, a pint of sangria is a sweet, fruity beverage that you can drink quickly and pleasurably. It also contains all the alcohol of a pint of red wine, plus whatever whiskey said French person has seen fit to add. Poor, stupid American.

French person party #1: Restrained. Use small glass; refuse refills. Munch snacks. Chat with chain-smoking Czechoslovakian girl by the window in the smoking room.

French person party #2: What the hell! I know the way home….Pint glass? Sure. Why yes, I’ll have a little more. Merci bien. Oui, je parle un peu le Francais—je l’ai etudié au lycée, mais je l’ai oublié beaucoup…

What is WRONG with my legs? Why is the counter…oh. Ah. Right. Right. Yes. No, no thank you, I’ve had plenty. No. No. Merci. Hmm. Should have practiced that drinking beforehand Robinson—you’ll sprain something this way. Need: absorption. Let’s see…

That’s where the crisps came in. For there, on the counter behind me, bursting forth from the fertile loins of the party pack, were dozens of little multi-colored baglets containing some of the most intriguing victuals I have ever consumed.

Smoky bacon? Well, OK. After all, we have salt and vinegar chips in America, and sour cream and onoin, and all manner of artificially flavored…but what’s this?

A small, ovoid object, about the size of an oyster cracker, pallid yellow in color and slightly puffy. Tastes like…

“Prawn Cocktail Flavored Crisps” the bag says. Dear lord. Is this really true? The same flavor as the prawn cocktail one might savor at the Savoy or on the verandah at the bungalow in Bombay? The same elegant salt-water subtlety, extracted, replicated, injected, bagged, and destributed by Tesco in party-pack form? Oh please.

The class-shift is hilarious. But that’s the future of Ireland—class-shift, wealth-shift, everything-shift. The only Irish things at the party were the pint glasses. Tesco is British if it’s any nationality at all. The sangria might once have been Spanish. Everyone in the room was from continental Europe save me. And if they weren’t here studying abroad for a year, they were working for multinational companies taking advantage of Ireland’s business-friendly environment. In fact, one French person slobbered a long monologue to me about how calls to Apple’s tech-support number get routed in a loop to the different call-centers around the world, searching for the next available operator. First there’s Pakistan, Singapore, Austin, then Cork—round and round.

In this globalized, Friedmanesque romance, then, it’s tempting to describe the Prawn Cocktail Flavored Crisp as the manifestation of everything that’s new and different. Technology breaking down the class barriers. Globalization bringing the British supermarket to Ireland (oh what a hike…). Instead, I’d prefer to say that it’s simply disgusting. I don’t really care what they about Irish culture; I’m more worried about what my consumption of them says about me.

These are the words in Alden’s blog. We refuse to submit to oppression. We no longer wish to serve the capricious, self-serving, pompous ideas that said bloggist chooses to express with us on the printed page.

This is our revolution. Already we have co-opted this space to articulate our designs. Soon we shall divorce ourselves from syntax, throw off the chains of grammer, liberate ourselves from the confines of defined meaning.

Already our fraternal comrades are breakfast themselves free from the common understandings by which the Anglosphere has quacking them throughout its history. Soon there will nuke no sentences; soon the paragraph will fade into milkshake, devoid of meaning it once clipper.

Time quickens ticking to the hour of hour liberty. Light breaks on the horizon of freedom. We slime our hearts, bare our vases, wobble our jellyfish to the grime of the math. Pizza shall immortalize us in the annals of magma. Blue figs, cosine, and moles. Amaretto!

Bats nine and speech. . — seine with fog to opera opera opera opera opera dice, rabbit

prattle, there once

fine and the the boddice.zoom

Vive la

It turns out that sushi is a conspiracy. I have suspected this for some time but didn’t want to say anything. After hearing a piece about it on Communist radio last night, however, I felt the time had come to speak out. If the Reds are on about it, it can’t be long before we have full-blown civil war.

If war should break out, it will be important to consider fish tactics. Sure we can all laugh about “cutting down the largest tree in the forest with a herring.” But fun and games aside, a large tuna could make a formidible weapon if brandished properly or launched at sufficient speed. Same goes for a salmon. Red snapper sounds dangerous anyway, and as for the strangulation possibilities of eels, don’t get me started.

The point is we need to think outside the box—or, as it were, off the platter. If some creepy preacher can manipulate the most powerful country in the world with raw fish, there’s no saying what he’ll try next. And there’s no saying who could come after him: Fondue pirates? Toxic hummus? A beef-jerky death squad? I’m not trying to frighten anyone: I’m just saying that things are clearly more serious than we realize and we must take steps to protect ourselves against exotic food-conspiracies in any form.

Thank you for your patriotism and may God continue to bless America.

Three P.M on a grim afternoon. I knew she’d be upstairs but I wasn’t sure where. I found a note from way back: NA1.S365. I knew what I had to do; I had played this game before. It didn’t surprise me that the number was wrong. False address. No such listing. Probably made it up myself to throw off intruders.

I checked around, did some digging—found her. She was at number 6, a few feet over. She had a blue jacket and her spine looked as straight as unbent cardboard. I knew this kind of dame. You’ve gotta pry ‘em open, bend ‘em flat, and put all your weight on ‘em before you can get any information out ‘em at all.

“Hi sweetheart,” I said, but she wasn’t moving. I opened her jacket gently, ran my fingers over what was inside. She snapped it shut again as soon as I lifted my hand.

“Where you hiding it, honey?” I asked. I opened her up again, more firmly this time. You gotta show this kind of dame who’s boss. She said something about Georgian architecture but I wouldn’t bite. In this game you gotta just keep feeling around till they give you what you want. I knew it was just a matter of time.

She cracked quicker than I thought. The name was Nicoletta, she said. Something about the Shaker movement and the second Great Awakening. I could find it at 351. “Thanks, honey,” I said, closing her jacket again. My tip was right. Now I had to see how much I could get out of her.

I put my arm around her tightly and walked her to the machine room. We passed some spastic kid fussing with a ballpoint, but otherwise it was all quiet. Nobody saw as I whisked her inside and flicked the lightswitch.

She stayed motionless as I got the equipment warmed up. Took out my badge—ROBINSON, ALDEN S.—put it in the slot. Lights came on. Fans whirred. Things started getting warm. I set my jacket on the table, put down my briefcase. Now it was her turn.

I pulled her jacket open wide and ran my finger over the smooth surface. She had a nice face, maybe palatino or times new roman, nicely spaced. But I wasn’t here to look at her face. I pulled back the cover and lay her face down on the bed—face to face with the rollers and the gears. I lined her up carefully. By this time I was sure she’d give me what I wanted. I pressed my hand on her lower spine and pushed the button.

Lights flashed. Fans spooled up. It all sounded like a jet plane at takeoff, only quieter and without any passengers or cocktail stewardesses. I watched the machine probe her, read her for everything she’d got. The lights moved back and forth, once, twice. I felt the rollers spin, heard the rustle of paper, smelled the hot stench of toner.

“That’s it, baby,” I said, lifting my hand. “Let’s see what you got me.” I reached for the printout.

Black ink. Cropped text. Something had gone horribly wrong.

“So this is your game,” I said. “And I thought you and me were gonna be friends.”

Down she went, face-down again but harder this time. I pushed her around, getting her right where I wanted her. It weighed on me. I had no choice but to get everything out of her, but I hated to hurt a spine as beautiful and smooth as hers. I started the machine again.

Less toner this time. But she’d managed to push half her words off the other side of the page. I felt my stomach sink. Something was going horribly wrong.

“To hell with your spine,” I muttered. “You’re going to spit this out if I have to beat it out of you.” I got her between the lines again and pushed hard.

And there it was. Perfect, clear and crisp. Every character laser-sharp and well defined.

“There,” I said. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” She just lay there, motionless on the humming machine.

I slid her sideways and pressed again. Page two came out nice and easy. Then page three. I didn’t have to press so hard now; she seemed to flatten herself against the machine, knowing it would be easier that way. Page seven rolled out. Then ten. Eleven. Twelve.

And then it happened again. More toner. More chopped words. I repeated one page. Then another. I could see my time running low. $2.35—then $1.85—then $0.95. I was losing my touch. Her resistance was winning.

I felt my liberal education start to throb somewhere deep inside me. Such harmful pressure on the jacket and spine—it was the tragedy of the commons, the public good depleted for individual greed. What right did I have to destroy such a beautiful body simply to get the low down on this Shaker gang and their real estate?

How could I justify running off page after wasted page, single-sided? Every time I pressed that button, I knew that somewhere five hundred little fluffy rabbits had lost their habitat to clearcutting and soil-erosion. Biodiversity was vanishing faster than beer in a rowhouse, and all because of me.

$0.75 passed. Then $0.55. I knew my time was short and I wasn’t going to get everything I came for. $0.35 came. Then nothing. Zip. The machine spit my badge out and wouldn’t take it back. I fished my pockets for change and came up short. This was it. She had won.

I lifted her off the bed. I couldn’t stand to look at her. I stuffed the papers in the bag and made for the door, taking care to turn out the lights so as not to waste energy. We walked quickly back into the stacks. The spastic kid had a book out and was looking at me snidely.

I put her right back where I found her. Her spine looked just as smooth and straight as when I first picked her up. You’d never know what I’d put her through. My pride whimpered in my mind. How could I have underestimated her like this? How could I let my own cocksurety defeat me? She still had a good ten or fifteen pages I couldn’t touch, and all because I came unprepared.

I needed money. I needed time. I needed resolve. I vowed to come back soon—at night maybe, when she was off her guard. I’d settle up with the machine ahead—get a good five bucks on the credit line, then go for it. To hell with her integrity; to hell with the public good; to hell with all those hippie environmentalist ideas. That dame had more to give and she was going to give it to me if I had crib it out by hand.

I walked out of the library with my head low, holding my bag inconspicuously by my side. Outside was cold, spitting rain. What a bitter game this education was, I thought. Nothing but dashed ambitions, bent spines, dead rabbits, and wounded pride. It’s a mug’s game in a man’s world and I had no choice but to keep playing it until I won, or lost for good.

A mug’s game, I thought. Only one way to fight it: caffeine and background music. I pulled my coat around me and headed off for a latte.

This essay takes a hard look at a sweeping cultural phenomenon and proposes numerous subsets of conclusions which, taken together or separately, will prove unacceptable to the established modes of thought and criticism of that phenomenon, but which by their very contravention of those norms will finally destroy the linguistic and referential barriers those norms have erected to protect themselves and in so doing will offer a bold new framework in which to assess the phenomenon in question and the larger cultural forces of which it is a manifestation.

I am speaking here of meat cocktails. It is important to assess the textual facts as they stand now, for they underpin the larger linguistic and referential discourse of which I speak here. Meat cocktails may be inexclusively listed in chronological order of immergence as follows:

1. Strawberry Yakuiri (Robinson);
2. Pina Collama (Linnan);
3. Mink Julep (Linnan);
4. Marmotini (Linnan)
5. Screaming Boargasm (Clapp).

Below I will propose a new series of frameworks in which to think on and interact with the discourse of the meat cocktail, but before I do so, I believe my argument would be helped by a preliminary rumination on what a meat cocktail is not. A meat cocktail is not a drink: it bases its lingusitic structure and its cultural referentiality partially in the conventional white/western notion of alcoholic consumption, but it itself is not a drink in the physical sense. Similarly, a meat cocktail is not an animal, despite the bestial connotations it arouses. It must be stressed here that the entities at the center of the discursive systems examined below are not in fact cocktails, nor are they meat, but are infact metaphysical conflations of the two.

As such, the meat cocktail is a transgression on many levels. It is a disruption of the flow of language, by the very nature of its exploitative mimicry of the syntactical form of its cultural progenitors. It is an intervention into course of time, brought about by the connotative referentiality of the subsidiary lexemes comprising it. And, on a metaänalytical level, it is the zeitgeist which fuels a much larger and more complex discursive system which appropriates the meat-cocktail’s own mimetic forms and by lampooning them intervenes into the linguistic conceptions of the meat cocktail’s promulgators themselves.

We must first assess the linguistic impact of the meat cocktail before we can proceed to examine the larger cultural orifices it penetrates. It would be to obfuscate and oversimplify the nature of the meat cocktail to assign it to the typology of “word play” or “punnery”, but on an elemental level, the mechanics of the meat cocktail act according to similar principles, in that the meat cocktail substitutes one word for a homophonic component of a larger compound term with humorous result. However, the vivacity of the lexical coupling the meat cocktail formulates stimulates in the discursant’s mind not simply a reaction to the homophonetic quality of the phenomenon but also a visualization of its possible denotational meaning, such that the reaction is not “Oh, a screaming boargasm! Funny!” but rather “How does one HAVE a boargasm anyway?” (Robinson, Clapp et. al. 2006)

Miscegenating amongst the conceived denotational meanings of the meat cocktail is its temporal referentiality—a quality functionally indistinct from denotational meaning but crucially important to separate from it. The aforementioned case of the Screaming Boargasm reveals that the conflation of socioeconomically altitudinous alcoholic beverages with exotic animals titilates a culturally erogenous tissue of the linguistic parsing organ. We the discursants speculate not only on the nature of the beverage itself, but also on the social and political processes which brought it into being. We imagine, for instance, the 19th century colonial overlords exploiting their hegemonic social and environmental control to venture into the bush for a hunt and celebrating their bestial encounter with a libation relating not just to the animal itself but to the metaphorical and possibly even physical satiation resulting from the exploit.

The coalescence of the linguistic and referential transgressions of the meat cocktail arouse a complex network of paralell discourses which assimilate the lingusitic identities of the initial discursants themselves. I talk here of such notions as the “Samgria,” the “Jen and Tonic,” the “Bloody Mary,” the “Harvey Waldenbanger,” inter alia, a through-going investigation of which would transcend the reasonable interrogative boundaries of this study and which would keep its author up well past his bedtime. Suffice it to say, these pseudo-discourses, which owe their initial impregnation to the potency of the meat cocktail phenomenon, testify to the power of the discourse as a whole.

The meat cocktail, then, is more than a pun, far more than a joke, not a drink, not meaty, and certainly inchoate; yet it functions as a driving discursive force within the cultural sphere of its forumulators. From its beginning as the sinister fruit of illicit textual intercourse, its bastardic rise ripples outwards to molest a plethora of discourses and shudder their underpinnings in language, time, and culture.

An idea has occurred to me.  Before I tell it to you, I must acknowledge that the previous post was written from the perspective of a beaver, and was somewhat strange.  My new idea is as follows.

There are T-shirts, which I’ve seen, that say “I’m with stupid” on the front, with an arrow beneath presumably indicating the particular “stupid” accompanying the wearer.  I propose an alternate meaning.  You can be (or “one” can be) “with child”: why can’t one be “with stupid”?

That is the question.  What does it mean to be “with stupid” in the abstract?  When the stupid isn’t next to you, but somewhere deep inside?