By Alf A. O'Megha
The Abominable Screed
Underpaid Staff Writer
DAY NINE – I turn into a pumpkin between 2-4 p.m. Sunday. So’s I’m just tellin’ yous now that I’ll be a lights out Luddite well before then. Not that anyone is reading this abominable screed anyways. Near as I can tell. I’ve mentioned Dr. Mengele before, I’m not going to rehash what his first name is because all of the names here have been changed anyway. If you don’t like the name that was chosen by the attorneys then you blame them, NOT ME! I could say [any name in the book] who is part of our social media network of nice fellas whilst I’m saying all of this outrageous, true-to-life, revealing stuff now just to see how its laundered and vetted when it’s finally printed out in a book. I’ve already noticed that if I make a misspelling or write/say into Dragon: “yous guys” they just leave it like they found it those lazy bastards – I spelled Luddite wrong in an earlier edition of “The Screed” and it flew – It’s like I’m a dirty dog or a piece of garbage by the side of the road.
Watch this: If I say we got a guy in Seattle name of: [Dr. Donald “Ducks” Coles] who drives a [1992 Black Impreza], but it got heisted off of the street recently, they black it all out and put in different names, places and vehicles than I originally wrote. We got a made guy in D.C. by the name of [Herr Professor Dennis “Ralston” Purina] who [does Civil War re-enactments in his pajamas]. So I think we’ll see by the final edited, purged of all righteous juicy content re-gurgitation that none of the real names of my friends will actually come out in the piece. I don’t feel so bad though because I saw in that Jewish Chronicle/Christopher Hitchens/Martin Amis video on YouTube that HIS EDITORS once changed the word “patois” to “patios.” So maybe I shouldn’t feel so bad after all. And he was a professional.
Anyway, I was talking about that no good Dr. Mengele, I’m not going to lay it on thick any more with the adjectives it’s just a waste of time anyway because if I write anything really juicy and delicious they’re going to just excise it anyway. My new C.P.A. [J. David Jackson] of [Quest LNG and T Squared Capital] in [St. Croix] estimates that the good doctor heisted about $170,000.00 from me over the last five years. So by mentioning that fact you have an idea about how I feel about that guy right now. Anyway, the good doctor was the boss then and I was just a kind of a glorified baggage handler. The boss did the hiring and he hired hundreds of young men and women to do business for us. I’ll admit he had a keen eye for it (despite having jaundice in real life) and one of the things I gleaned from him in our brief conversations was: “People always tell you what you need to know.”
What Dr. Mengele meant by that was when he was doin’ the hirin’ was: like Art Linkletter used to say: kids say the damndest things! Dr. Mengele would always ask [the candidate]: “What is it that I need to know about you?” So when [the candidate] said: “I always show up to work on time.” We knew right away: “That [expletive deleted] will be late” if we hire them on a job. And so on. There was one Danish national, she told us, first thing out of her mouth: “I never cheated anyone.” We said: “Good morning, [Ruffles].” Because that was her name and they’ll probably let it fly in this first draft let’s see! Then when we checked out this [Ruffles] character, although she ran the Danish Consulate in the Green Tortugas (good cash business) everyone we asked had a personal story about how [Ruffles] had cheated them out of $600.00 and so on in some kind of threadbare Middle European ponzi scheme.
The reason “people always tell you what you need to know is important” is important is that I was re-reading old Jerry’s “Slight Rebellion Off Madison” and in the first couple of sentences old Jerome David says: some girl “THOUGHT SHE SAW HIM” on some street in New York City blah blah blah. The reason this is important is that Jerry knew he was a great writer (Hemingway met Salinger during the war and saw him writing in a bunker – both J.D. and F. Scott weren’t sure if they’d survive the wars they served in so they wrote at a feverish pace – and Papa Ernest who wore a girl’s dress as a little boy gave J.D. the Queen’s stamp of approval.) So Jerry knew he was a special writer like QT – and he knew he’d soon get his wish – a kind of Greta Garbo-type wish that all he really wanted was to be left alone there in Cornish, N.H. But the truth was: all he really wanted was to hide out there in the woods and eat a macrobiotic diet and practice Zen Buddhism and have the [young sweet nubile] girls find him there! And if you look at his life and who he married and who he consorted with you’ll find out that what I say is true. I saw Larissa Szporluk’s work in 1983 and I told her when she was nineteen that she would be a great and published American poet one day (and believe me I had read a lot of girls’ poetry by then and it was mostly a bunch of horseshit gibberish). Now Szporluk is a lauded professor of English at Bowling Green Tortuga State University in Ohio. Blonde, blue-eyed, great athlete Larissa (of Chernobylian descent – she could throw a perfect spiral with a football on old East Annie Street in Ann Arbor) once wrote a poem about me. Szporluk called it: “The Swordplayer.” Which I thought was a compliment to me at the time. And [R&B terminologies] had not been yet introduced to [lamestream] culture so calling someone a “player” in 1983 was indeed a fitting tribute. Like when someone calls Warren Beatty or Prince gay.
Anyway, I’m kind of getting lost in all of the nonsense here. I read all of Jerome David’s works including “The Hang of It” and all the works he deemed not appropriate for us to read once he was famous. But if you read that early crap that was published in The Saturday Evening Post and all those other godawful Norman Rockwell-doesn’t-pass-the-smell-test [half-smart] media from the 1950’s, you’ll see an evolution in J.D.’s writing. He starts out good and gets great. When William Faulkner accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature he said something like: “no one should have to live in fear.” Now I trace “The Fear” to John Steinbeck in “Travels With Charley.” Some will credit Raoul Duke, but I think it begins with J.S. The reason this stuff about “fear and loathing” is important to me is that I too want to be a great writer some day. I’ll probably never get the Nobel Prize for Literature because the real me will be lost in too many pseudonyms. I’ll probably never be a great American writer like Jonathan Franzen or James Woods, or [insert name of the other guy here, something like Gordon “Sonny” Elliott] but as the last guy mentioned [Elliott cq?] says: “there is a nobility to trying to write a novel.”
If you ask me the best living writers are: 1) Martin Amis, 2) Quentin Tarantino, 3) Diablo Cody, 4) David Mamet and 5) Jerry Saltz. No sense in calling people’s names who are dead already because they’re not here to rub their saliva glands in the cat nip of praise. Of course, nobody cares what my opinion is: but I write it down just the same to be entered into the official record. I mention Faulkner because I thought “As I Lay Dying” was about the funniest book ever written. From the title of it you wouldn’t think so, though. I’m not sure why all of this came up but MasterCard shut off my last working Black Card today. I gotta skeddadle from the place I’m in by Sunday. I got less than a quarter tank of gas in the old Gray Humpback. No one wants me to stay with them free anymore (even though I’m clean and quiet) and it’s beginning to sound a lot like the sixties all over again: “gas, grass or ass; no one gets to ride for free.” Apparently that “rule” is all of a sudden being grandfathered in on me! Those bastards! I got one cash dollar to my name and I’m going to buy a Mega Millions ticket with it. I’ve got a few dimes in the cigarette bin in the Honda and a wooden nickel and some pennies and about $240.00 in my checking account. The computerized wizards at the credit card companies call my house nearly every day (I can check the messages remotely). Everyone’s looking for [Harry] and no one’s callin’ just to say “hello” or “Happy Birthday [Harry]” or “April Fool’s Day” or nuthin.’ It’s a gloomy day here today raining and cloudy and cold and it usually isn’t that way. Enough about the rich and prosperous [Harry]. How are you doing today? How is your day going? I really do care about you and I’m not just writing that because I’m [supine] desperate for cash right now. I’d really like to get to know each and every one a yous out there and you can write to me on Facebook at that [“John McCarthy”] catfish site. There’s no nobility in not making money in America (Elliott) and I can tell you that most famous writers before me have gone through the same thing. It’s a rotten, underpaid and nasty business and I’m hoping it will all end well rather than badly.
I gotta write fast ‘cause I don’t know how much time I have left. I just saw a “Johnny On The Spot” big rectangular truck hit a little bird, the bird did a kind of flopping- around-on-the-ground-like-a-fish-out-of-water dance – it was truly sickening and revolting, but that’s the natural world we all live in – none of us is immune to it. I don’t know why I mention it here in this venue. Because if you’ve ever seen an animal die it is the most horrible thing imaginable. Trust me on this. The French don’t call it the “danse macabre” for no good reason. And the reason I’m writin’ all of this here now and got immunity is because I [witnessed someone die]. This is not the venue to name names. And I ain’t no Sammy The Bull dirty dog; I’m just going to do my citizenly duty and kinda clearing my own good name in the process. Well, like I says, I seen a guy die. At least one. And it’s the same sickening shit all over again. Doesn’t matter if it’s a bird or if it’s a man. Disgusting death dance. There is NO Dignity in Death (DID). I wasn’t there for Joaquin Phoenix at Johnny Depp’s place in LA, The Viper Room or the Voodoo Lounge or whatever stupid name it was that he came up with (always name a business or a book starting with the letter “A” because it’s the first thing you come across – at least it was back when they were still using phone books – now it’s all Yelp! this and what have ya. You’ll notice that the Arabs understand this in America). Hollywood still doesn’t have it quite right if a guy sustains a gun shot wound to the head (my best friend is an emergency room physician) the blood comes out dark purplish with the gray matter rushing out on the gray sidewalk there. Usually HBO/Showtime/Miramax makes blood between bright red and dark red; whether it’s “Dexter,” “The Closer” or “The Sopranos” or some QT film. They ain’t got it quite right yet but they’re getting closer. Problem is, nobody quite knows for sure – except me and the emergency room physicians who described it to me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
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