MOST FUCKED-UP PERSON ALIVE
The Autobiography of Being Pissed Off
==============================
I was born to hijack space shuttles and blackmail
cities and start world neurologic wars. And be
kicked
out of rooms and institutions and off planets and
out
of solar systems.
I was born to be the kind of person that intercepts
a
satellite feed and superimposes flashing titles
like
"Child Molester," "Mass Murderer," or "Dickhead,"
over
its images of celebrities and world leaders.
And I was even born to be elected President of the
Cosmos -- on a platform of "Fuck the Economy!
Fuck
the People! Fuck the Police!"
Or else, I wasn't born this way at all, and
something
must have happened in life itself, to make it this
way.
I was born around Big Midnight in a CanaMexican
motel
where the owners and maids were all so busy either
drying out or scoring, that they couldn't be
bothered
with checking people in or cleaning the rooms.
My parents had met at a school or a spa, where
young
ladies were taught to be proper alcoholics.
They lived on Zero Street, home of coffee,
toothpaste
and vodka -- all at once.
After graduating, they stayed together for a while
and, instead of life, decided to have the
fucked-up
offspring: ---- > me.
My paternal mother belonged to the Benign Fascist
Labor Party, and my maternal mother ran a chain of
simulation shops that only really existed in the
kind
of rumor that never got past Mouth One.
Though I grew up with no control over my own
hopeless
life, I could sometimes force events in the real
world -- earthquakes and fatal illnesses,
corporate
bankruptcies and stock market crashes, drug czar
resignation scandals and mountain road auto
accidents,
to name just a few. Most, without even being there.
Some, without even trying.
I was born in a Sony 797, one day, and my first
birthmemory was the sight of the pilot, co-pilot,
and
crew, out the window, parachuting by.
My parents had wanted me to grow up to be one of
those
people who, by sheer strength of personality, can
convince 12 or 15 members of an audience to jam
themselves into a small, tight, transparent, glass
booth, made to hold about 6 adults max, and then
lock
the door on them and take two ordinary house cats
and
hold them out for the rest of the audience to see
what
sweet gentle little kitties they are, then shoot
them
both up with a long thick syringe of concentrated
PCP
and drop them into the glass booth and clamp down
the
lid so there's no exit.
Then join the audience in watching, as the little
kitties tense up and gracefully purée the
volunteers,
with a driving, insect-chainsaw sound.
Of course, I didn't grow up to become one of
these people and, instead, enrolled full-time at
Find-the-Salami University, with a major in
cable/phone/software consciousness, and a minor
in how even kamekazis get abused. My advisor
was
Professor Our.
Things went OK there, for a while, but eventually,
sophomore year, I just lost it one day, in between
classes, and headed out for the airport and
hijacked
a plane that was sitting on the runway,
stuffed with passengers, waiting to take off.
Soon, the police came and deployed their snipers
and
sharpshooters, and through the glass of their
makeshift command center, I could see the contract
psycho-therapists they'd hired, madly scanning
disks
of clip-text, for the perfect line or word to use
to
talk me out of it.
I got on the radio and tried to be straight with
them,
at first, making only the simplest emotional
demands.
The police negotiator, Captain Our, listened
politely
to my list, and then, when I was done, just said,
"I'm
sorry, but those all seem to violate some
fundamental
law of physics or other, and can, therefore,
simply
not be met in this universe, at this time. Even if
we
wanted to."
I got so pissed at that, I started demanding
everything I could think of, whether I cared about
it
or not -- then, got so guilty, I only asked for
softball items, just to let the cops have, at
least,
some success.
"How about more drugs," I said, into the headset
I'd
taken off the dead pilot. "Lots more drugs -- if
it's
not too much trouble. And while you're at it,
let's
have more colors and deeper darknesses and richer
histories and more intelligent timbres and new
hi-res
emotions from formerly restricted top-secret
government databases, with real-time-interactive
cartoon-animal user-interfaces."
When that didn't work, I demanded more streets and
more cities and more nations and continents and
more
moons and more space junk. And more words and
more
subtle explosives and more alphabets and languages
and
more new categories of self-sacrifice and
self-destruction. I was all hyped up. Nothing
was
enough. Everything bored the piss out of me.
Thermonuclear war between Earth and Venus. Mass
suicide of entire populations by wall outlet
electrocution in bathtub. Golden anal sex with
the
world. Zarathustra blowjob.
"There has to be more action," I screamed at
Captain
Our over the hotline between us. "Constant
action.
Somebody has to get shot or save somebody's life
on
every street corner, every minute. And every
kickoff
has to be run back 110 yards for a touchdown, and
every basket has to be made from the stands at the
opposite end of the court, and every pitch has to be
a
hit batter who dies on the spot, so both dugouts
pour
out, and the two teams kill each other, as well as
the
umpires and fans -- leaving nobody alive.
"Every sound has to be an earthquake or tidal wave
that topples governments and changes national
boundaries and mutates whole species so they
suddenly
drift off the planet, across galaxies, only to
return,
years later, when nobody wants to know them cause
their credit rating's bad or because they can't do
the
Mashed Potatoes.
"More violence, more cataclysms, more adventure,
more
car crashes at stoplights and intersections. More
meteors and satellites and re-entry pods and
debris
dropping out of the sky, carrying cryptic filthy
messages on slim-line videodiscs hidden under a
false
layer of paint.
"Hundreds of new world leaders installed every day
to
replace hundreds of old ones ousted by obscene
scandals or by lazy 1-man revolutions. 4 new wars
starting every day to replace 3 old ones ending.
7
celebrities born each day, replacing 5 murdered, 4
married, 7 dead by natural causes. 9 new songs on
the
charts every hour, displacing 8 old ones off. 10
new
shows launched each day, replacing 11 old ones
cancelled after only a week.
"More mid-air collisions and high-altitude rescues
and
trainwrecks and nuclear disasters and droughts and
bridge collapses and biologic blackmail and
accidental
missiles dumped from trainer aircraft.
"When I walk down the street and only 3 or 4 shots
are
fired at me, I find it hard to stay awake."
I was born in a squadron of intelligent, unmanned,
stealth glider-bombers that cruised the earth
forever. On-board neuro-digital,
idiot-precognitive
systems, networked throughout the formation,
predicted
the weather on a moment-by-moment basis, all over
the
world, and kept the gliders aloft by using today's
best air currents to get to tomorrow's.
Thousands of these squadrons decorated the skies
over
thousands of different cities at once, giving
populations their final taste of awe -- and the
supreme consolation prize for having put up so
well
with the complex bullshit of being.
When I was old enough, and ground-based expert
systems
indicated that the planet was ready for me, I
crawled
into the co-pilot's seat and pulled the eject
lever,
as I'd been trained to do on TV airplane school.
Instantly, a precise dance of explosive bolts
rocketed
the seat and me into space. My chute deployed,
and
below, all life lay spread open before me -- like
a
nymphomaniac.
When I landed, there was already a job waiting for
me
at Company Zero -- a really pissed-off,
multi-disciplinary, multi-modal, multi-tasking,
multi-sexual, underground, pirate, gypsy,
hegemonic,
corporate behemoth, that spanned the globe but
couldn't be found when someone wanted to arrest
its
president or make it stop.
It didn't have a comm number or a street address or
an
ether name. It didn't have a Tax/Security ID or
encrypted password logo.
I was hired to be one of the many bogus employees
of
Company Zero, whose only task was to circulate
endlessly through the bars and restaurants of a
town
or city, to give the false impression that our
corporate headquarters was somewhere nearby.
In reality, headquarters was randomly relocated
many
times each month, sometimes to places tucked deep
in
volcanic mountainsides or to caverns under the
sea,
where even nuclear explosives couldn't penetrate.
For the non-bogus workers, this meant a new office
in
a different building or a different city or a
different hemisphere or a different world or
dimension
altogether, every few days.
Appearances, brand name loyalties, friends and
families also had to be changed at approximately
the
same rate.
When I was finally asked to leave the Company Zero
apprenticeship program, one day, no specific
reason
was given, other than a "re-thinking of issues of
corporate culture," and a "necessary reallocation
of
resources, based on unexpected fiscal shortfalls.
Or
something."
I immediately joined the "Smiling Saint Genocide:
Mafia Bitch" Project. Its meetings consisted
mostly
of its chairman complaining that his monkey had a
laptop on its back.
When I got home from these meetings, I'd usually
learn
that a neighbor or roommate had been dismembered
and
boiled up in a soup and fed to some community
group
unbeknownst, and they'd all loved it.
Then I dialed a wrong number, but the therapist
who
answered couldn't resist running me through a
battery
of standardized psychological tests, anyway.
A few hours later, she called back.
"After checking and re-checking and cross-checking
your results with all my colleagues and mentors
and
even my students," she said, "It's clear to me and
to
everyone else, that what you have is simply an
extreme
case of being multi-, poly-, ultra-, para-,
super-,
extra-, mega-fucked-up. -- And that's the
optimistic assessment."
She told me I'd better do something fast or risk
evaporating on contact.
"There is only one place," she said, "That even
claims to be able to deal with people like
you."
A soft orange-yellow glow suffused all space here,
where things should have been white or gray -- but
it
wasn't a new-color sun or just after a brush fire.
A light I didn't know I had, started flickering
somewhere inside my head.
They'd built the world's largest electromagnetic
mountain here, and once you were cleared for
entrance,
they turned it on as you passed through.
By the time you reached downtown, it had
thoroughly
erased all your ugly, stupid memories, and all the
pretty ones too, and you were nothing, anymore,
but
yourself, at the moment.
Non-functioning `48 Chevys and `53 Oldsmobiles sat
parked along Main Street like bath toys -- their
only
use, to jump on when you were drunk.
There were few moving cars and fewer people. I
suppose, once you've had all your memories blown
out,
you don't really need Main St. anymore, unless
you're
new in town.
As I walked past the simulated, boarded-up
storefronts, a `54 Buick convertible came cruising
slow from behind me -- doin' 4, maybe 5 mph.
"Hey - yo! Mah man! Dude!" a voice called from
the
driver's seat as the car pulled up alongside me
and
slowed to my pace, maybe 1 to 1.5 mph.
"Whatcha got on it?" I said, because that was the
only
line I knew for people in cars. It was a call for
specs, and I thought if I got him talking numbers,
maybe he'd never get around to trying to show me
his
fucking baby pictures.
"Got 500 horses," he said, "437 Cubes, 10 on the
floor, and 6 undocumented on the column."
He reached over as he drove and popped open the
glove
compartment. He took out a stack of owner's
manuals
and, leaning across the front seat, held them out
to
me.
I had to walk into the street to get them, and I
didn't
even want them.
"I don't want your fucking service manuals," I said.
"I only said what I said cause it's the only line
I
know. I don't care what the answer is."
He smiled.
"Then you're my kinda organism," he said, pushing
open
the door for me.
We cruised down Main St., and he told me about his
days in reform school. I didn't have any
memories,
so he got to do all the talking. So what.
He reached into the console and pulled a little
vial
out and held it up to the light that came dead
down
Main St. thorough his windshield.
"Di-methyl, tri-chloro, Di-hydro-phenylalanine
sulfate," he pronounced, phonetically. "Street
name:
'Not-to-be-alone.' The number 1 motivation drug.
Outlawed 3 years ago."
We came to a section of the street where makeshift
cardboard stalls and tables offered all possible
consumer items, but had no customers, and the
vendors
didn't care.
"The drug," he said, pointing at the bottle and
taking
his eye off the road long enough to almost hit a
line
of parked cars, "Works by making you think you're
not
alone in the world. You are, therefore, willing
to
take great risks to try to kill your friends and
loved
ones, knowing full well, they'll be there to save
your
ass, when you fail."
Storefronts drifted by as he talked, his feet so
light
on the pedals, his fingers so light on the wheel.
"When it was outlawed," he continued, "I was able
to
invent a legal placebo that worked exactly like it
--
if you believed in it enough when you took it --
and
I'd found a backer with deep pockets and
interplanetary distribution channels at his
fingertips."
His tone turned somber. "But then, suddenly, just
2
days before full-scale production was to begin,
the
backer had a nervous breakdown and was committed to
an
institution. Without his cash, all activity on
the
project stopped immediately, and no one else could
be
found, willing to bankroll it.
"So I took my $500 advance, bought this old Buick,
and
have been cruising up and down Main St. ever
since,
waiting for something to happen. And, right now
--
you're it."
I settled down there because it was the only town
in
the hemisphere that still accepted World Ponzi
Markers
as legal tender, and that was the only currency I had.
The streets of Rabid City were littered with the
bodies of people who'd wanted desperately to be
mad
dog killers, but had failed miserably at even
being
mad.
These people now found themselves in low-level
service
jobs, ancillary to the mad dog killer industry,
with
no hope of advancement. Many had dropped the
fantasy
altogether and opted for other, less glamorous
careers, like Hospital Investigator or "Fuck
Money"
Facilitator.
Despite these losers, this town was still well on
its
way to being recognized as the Number 1 mad dog
killer
town in the world.
Not only did many mad dog killers grow up and
operate
out of here, but many up-and-coming mad dog
killers
from small towns everywhere, came here to study
and
make important career contacts.
And many famous mad dog killers of the past, when
you
looked into their records years later, turned out
to
be originally from here, as well, though you'd
never
have guessed it.
This was the kind of town where maybe 1 out of
every
20 cars that went by had a muffler.
Every bar in this town had a core group of
regulars
who sat around all day long, bitching about how
the
only real alternative to being an asshole and a
loser
in this life, was to be just an asshole or
just a
loser.
This was the ugliest town in the world -- but all
the
others were worse. And this was still the best
town
in the world to be pissed off in.
Hundreds of valiant wars had been fought here,
over
alleged encroachments on the other guy's sacred
piece
of dirt.
All the trucks and buses in this town had "Ain't
My
Planet, I Just Eat Here!" bumper stickers, and all
their drivers wore "I Don't Know, And I Don't
Wanna'
Know!" tee-shirts.
In this town, every company was a world company --
but
then, in this world, every town was a company
town,
and in any company, every world was a small-town
world.
The only crime here was screaming "Fire!" in a
theater
when there really was a fire. If you screamed
it,
and there was no fire, or if you killed the
Pope,
that wasn't a crime.
My days were adventures in slo-mo: waiting for
the
next angry creditor, the tax service, the courts,
the
World Peoples' Bureau of Investigation, or World
Repo
to come get me for either being, or not being,
enough
of a dickhead.
But, then, suddenly, before I knew it, this nothing
--
this absolute, fucking nothing -- this lameass,
worthless, piece-of-shit, scumbag nothing -- this
eternal, endless, stupid, useless, piss-dumb
nothing
-- this flaming, flying, creeping, slimeball,
dishrag,
slutbucket nothing -- before I knew it -- it was
something.
Then, it was everything.
I was given a job where I just had to sit around
all
day, scanning the skies for a slow-spiralling
football
that would appear to come out of nowhere.
In reality, this would most likely be a long lost
pass, vanished mysteriously, centuries ago, from
some
busted Hail Mary Play, in the climactic moment of
some
inter-continental meta-superbowl.
I did so well at this, I was promoted to a
position
where I just had to walk from my apartment to a
grocery store, and come back with a box of Twinkies,
a
bottle of Altdorfers, and a soft-pack of
Mitsubishi
Lites.
But, to do this, I had to push my way through huge
crowds of hunger-strikers, demonstrating
round-the-clock, demanding more prissiness in
murder
and war.
These demonstrations had been going on for years
and
occasionally turned violent, with hundreds of
lives
lost in a single day and thousands of people injured.
And many of the participants openly advocating
world
cognitive collapse.
During this period, I began having a recurrent
nightmare. Then I'd wake up and it was just my
life,
so why worry?
All new residents of Rabid City were required to
submit a cell or two for DNA analysis, and the
genologist who did mine got all excited as soon as
she
finished.
She came rushing over, beaming with pride and shook
my
hand vigorously, congratulating me again and again
for
having both the "savage kamikaze" gene and the
"bitter
recluse" gene.
"You're a sure bet to win either the
Recluse-of-the-Year Award from the International
Brotherhood of Kamikazes," she said, "Or the
Kamikaze-of-the-Year Award from the Union of
Concerned
Recluses. And possibly both, and possibly many
times
over."
But she couldn't tell me how long I'd have to wait,
or
specifically, who I'd have to blow, before I'd be
permitted to receive even prize one.
So I quit my job and moved into a Universal
Generic
Habitat in an Automatic Survival Zone on the
outskirts
of town and set in to wait it out, getting by
mostly
on General Motors Nutrient Bars and Kool Filters.
That was fine for a while, I guess, but then, one
day,
in the midst of all this, something seemed to snap
inside me.
I assumed it was "the Call" -- which I'd seen
advertised so much on the covers of matchbooks
and,
mysteriously, in the flaming heat-shields of
returned
re-entry pods, given up for lost, decades ago --
and,
without thinking further, or trying, I suddenly
understood what had to be done:
Someone had to bring the Near-Death Experience to
the
masses, in a lo-cost, recreational, "home" version
that anyone could afford.
Simply in the interest of redistributing power and
understanding and fun. And, thereby, levelling
the
so-called playing field.
Until then, only the wealthiest and most famous
people
could pay the price of or even knew about
the
Near-Death Experience as a vacation option or
weekend
hobby.
If my work was successful, the common man would
suddenly have access to this technology, and at a
most
reasonable price point.
And the only real difference would be that my
"home"
version would have a, roughly, 40% accidental
death
rate, while the "unaffordable" version (performed
by
top medical practitioners in clandestine,
ultra-hi-tech facilities), had only about 10% of
its
superstar clients accidentally receiving
the
Full-Death Experience.
Then, suddenly, there was a day with no pain. I
was
so troubled by this, I called my doctor.
"Don't worry," he said, "It'll pass."
But could I believe him? He lived in San Luis
Louie
and "It'll pass" was their state motto. Old men
sat
around old barrels there, in old grocery stores
all
day, saying it to each other.
So I called my lawyer. "My doctor's fucking up,"
I
said. "He's starting to quote from state placebos.
I
want to sue for malpractice."
"Don't worry," my lawyer said. "I'll get right on
it."
But I didn't like the way she said it.
So I called my CPA. "My lawyer's talking like she
just got off a spacecraft," I said. "I'm not sure
what to do. I need somebody to help me sue my
Doctor."
"Don't worry," she said, "I have this friend --
well,
he's not really a friend, but I like his car.
He's
not really a lawyer, but he seemed very smart and
I'm
sure he knows enough to sue your doctor. I'll
call
him for you right now."
As soon as I hung up, the phone rang. It was a
wrong
number, but he knew my CPA anyway.
"She doesn't know what she's doing," the guy said,
and
he recommended a roofing contractor who could
efficiently kill both her and my lawyer.
So I started out in Satan's Triangle and, from the
first minute I arrived, I was definitely the most
innocent person there.
Then I went to Slovo-Czechovskia, where it was
between
me and one other person.
But, at the end of a week, he came up and admitted
that I was much more innocent than he could ever
dream
of being.
From then on, I could walk into almost any garage
or
any arena, anywhere in the universe, and when I
told
them I was the most innocent person they'd ever
seen
or would ever see, no one dared to disagree.
"And, as an added bonus," I told them, "I'm also
the
biggest asshole you've ever seen -- and without
even
trying."
As my reputation for innocence spread globally, I
was
flooded with offers from civic groups who wanted me
to
come help them set up new TV networks where all
the
newscasters would have angry, bitter expressions
on
their faces but, then, always smile inappropriately
at
the end of each newsstory about death and destruction.
"I'm sorry" I said to all of them, declining their
gracious and stinking offers, "But I'm already too
busy doing and being virtually everything there is
to
do and be -- from Pyro-Humanist to Ego-Socialist
to
Labor Pan-sexual. From Klepto-Maoist to
Nympho-Keynesian to Market Para-maniac."
Of course, when I'd finished doing and being all
these
things, and suddenly needed work, all the old
offers
were gone, and the only job I could get was
designing
product warning stickers like:
"Do Not Plant Car Bomb In This Car,"
or
"Do Not Disconnect This Refrigerator With Child
Still
Inside,"
or
"Do Not Release Swarms Of Pissed-off Wasps In This
Packed Auditorium During World Grand-Slam All-Star
Games of Character and Motivation."
Then I got a job in a store that, instead of
selling
things people wanted to buy, only sold books and
tapes
and songs and stories and posters and clothing
about
things people wanted to buy.
And the bulk of my work there was simply cleaning
up
the puddles of tears and white goop that casually
fell
to the floor in long viscous strings from the
corners
of the patrons' mouths as they stood, for hours on
end, gawking at cardboard mock-ups of artists'
renditions of actual product packaging.
Then I got a job at a bookstore that catered only
to
slimeballs and dickbrains, and the only books we
carried were their all-time favorite literary
masterworks like Slimeball on a Hot Tin Roof,
and
The Slimeball Who Came in From the Cold, and
Look
Homeward, Slimeball, and The Magnificent
Slimeballs,
and Sons and Dickbrains, and To Kill a
Dickbrain, and
Bonfire of the Dickbrains, and The One
Minute
Dickbrain, and so on.
One day, at work, I overheard Satan crying to
herself
in the washroom.
"Why is every door always locked to me," she
sobbed,
"And surrounded by vast mine fields and
electrified
barbed wire fence?"
Then I got a job writing the form letter
apologizing
for nuclear missiles which sometimes went a little
awry during disposal attempts and accidentally hit
and
demolished innocent civilian non-targets.
Please excuse this inadvertent nuclear
explosion on your premises. You have,
of
course, our most heartfelt apologies
for
this mishap which, let me straight out
assure you, had absolutely nothing to
do
with you or with anything you've ever
said
or done.
As you know, [I continued] accidents
like
these are unavoidable in our modern
world, and the blame does not go to
people
like you or to people like me, but no
doubt, belongs to software -- of
which,
mankind has neither understanding nor
control.
In closing, then, I trust you can feel
our
sincerity -- if you know what's good
for
you -- and will please, therefore, get
the
fuck off our backs and go harass
somebody
else.
"Sincerely," etc.
Once I'd finished this letter, my employers
immediately ran off all the copies they needed,
sent
them all out, and no longer required my services
for
anything else.
The next few jobs after that are a blank in my
memory,
but may well be the subject matter of the rush of
images that come to me sometimes, uncontrollably,
and
seem totally familiar yet cannot be pinned to any
concrete piece of my fucking life as I remember it.
If these image streams do not come from forgotten
pieces of my life, then they must either be old
dreams
suddenly remembered for the first time, or else
extra-sensory experience of someone else's awful
past
or loathsome future.
Then, possibly as a reward or consolation for being
so
fucked-up, I was hired to run the grinder at the
meat
market of either ideas or desire -- I forget which.
First day on the job, I learned that the
gut-wrenching
sounds of bone going through the machine, were all
digitally synthesized -- straight from numbers and
waveforms -- and that the small, coarse chunks
that
spewed out the nozzle, were all made of
mock-substance.
Second day at work, I learned that the meat market
itself was just a front for a multi-function
warehouse: all its interior walls were flat panel
plasma, which could display absolutely anything,
anytime, under control of software alone.
So that any religion could saunter in, at a
moment's
notice, insert its own disk, reboot the house
system,
and -- Bang! -- instant holy place of whatever
flavor
and design.
Then, a few hours later, a para-military group
could
march in and turn the place into a custom supply
dump,
housing, for example, tactical biologic placebos,
or
handheld pseudo-thermonuclear devices that ran on
Utah
room-temperature pseudo-fusion.
When I'd had this job for a while, my supervisor
called me on the phone, one day, and asked why I
hadn't been to work in 3 months.
I told her I'd gone straight and was no longer
fucked-up enough to carry out my assigned duties.
She knew I was lying, but didn't know which part,
and
didn't really care. She didn't need that in her
skill
set, and had risen quickly to the top without it
--
simply by virtue of belonging to that class of
people
who could walk briskly into any problem situation,
without ever looking down or breaking stride, and
yet
never step in a fresh puddle of dog piss, no
matter
how unavoidably waiting, dead-ahead, in their path.
She offered me a different job where all I'd have
to
do was think back to the beginning of recorded time
--
to just before the North American Repartition. But
I
couldn't accept.
"I just got through linking many geographically
disparate pockets of population and infrastructure
with high-speed, command/control, expert-system,
interactive hypertext front-end, neural-net,
fuzzy-logic stackware," I told her, by way of
apology,
"And, boy, are my arms tired!"
One night, I was unable to sleep from all the noise
of
ancient, illegal, disappeared airliners suddenly
reappearing at just that moment in the airspace
above
me and slamming down into civilian neighborhoods
nearby.
I got up, finally, and went out and got so drunk
and
stoned, that I must have accidentally interviewed
for
(and landed) a high-powered, high-paying,
high-prestige position, crying openly in public
places, 12 hours a day, 6 days a week.
This was considered an important function for
society,
because without it, experts feared, the people
might
get all slimy and stop asking fundamental
questions
like "What is this tragic, stupid existence no
more
than mere vestige of?"