What Comes Through When We're Not Paying Attention

Browsing in search of something entirely other through Barbelith's Creation forum—the writers' collective that thinks it's a message board—I kept running across little fragments I'd posted and forgotten: bits of verse, microfictions, sketches. Most of it I barely remember writing, but some of it seemed worth preserving here. I'll be presenting chunks of it over the next few days...

from Return of the Base Canard

My tenure as electric-zither player for the pioneering folk-funk band Flanagan's Peascods was tumultuous. Arising from the ashes of the Bozeman, Montana "flunkie" scene (literally—the Lazy i Club, epicenter of the scene, was burned to the ground during a concert by local flunkie stars Withered 'n' Dyed, in what was later discovered to be a fire started when an overheated amplifier tube ignited the cattle farts permeating the building: the future members of Flanagan's Peascods were the only survivors of the blaze), Flanagan's Peascods melded cowboy yodels and phat beats to the plaintive joiks of lead singer Kaigal Fluugi's native Urkutsk. With our flamboyant look (furry goatskin chaps, Beatle boots and fezzes), Kaigal's dynamic overtone-singing, and the supafly rhythms of drummer Flex McKechnie, we began to make a name for ourselves across the frost belt and were quickly signed by Bodean Records after an intense bidding war: our debut disc Steppe Lively debuted at #37 with a bullet.

The crowds got bigger, the booze got louder, the drug dealers' breasts got firmer, and the pressure to be more and more spectacular began to crush us. Our unscrupulous manager, Dunkirk Dunharrow, contrived a fantastic publicity tactic: doing Def Leppard one better, he would arrange for our drummer Flex to lose both arms in a horrific car crash, and then return in triumph, aided by new technology. If only he had told Flex before that fatal night... if only I hadn't borrowed Flex's Jaguar to head out to the Shop'n'Save to buy Kaigal fresh pantyhose...

...if only I had known, then I wouldn't be sitting in a double-wide trailer, wearing a urine-stained bathrobe and typing this with a pencil between my teeth as I watch (again) a well-worn videotape of Flanagan's Peascods collecting their six Grammy Awards... with a brand-new zitherist. Computers may be able to play the drums, but the zither requires the human touch, and that, alas, I am no longer able to give.