From: mmaxwell@ucsd.edu
Newsgroups: alt.prose
Subject: OD Catastrophe
Date: 3 Sep 1992 17:06:22 GMT
Organization: UC San Diego
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: irpsws80.ucsd.edu
Keywords: Do not read this.

Greetings.  Finally posting to alt.prose.
God help me.  God help us all.

Comments/flames to me, thanks.


	Marilyn's face was greener than a plate of week-old 
limburger, phosphors on the monitor totally out of whack 
because of magnetic interference from the umpteen megawatt 
speakers placed on either side of the set, now blasting out a 
steady stream of guitar feedback and heavy organ swell.  The 
movie was "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," but thanks to the color 
it was more like "Gentlemen Prefer Women Who Have Been Dead for 
More than a Week."  The air of the room was stale bordering on 
fetid, since the air conditioner had choked and gagged a couple 
of hours ago on the monoxide vapor that everyone around here 
breathes.  I was high on the chemical smell and lack of oxygen 
to my brain, beginning to feel like I was getting strangled and 
afraid that I was learning to like it.
	"I'm losing
	 losing touch with my mind...."
	I switched the channel until I found something black and 
white, past happy people reading news about chemical spills or 
serial killers, past three channels of infomercials and coached 
audiences applauding the miracle of colored automobile wax or 
vegimatics, past video women wearing fishnet stockings and 
nothing else, running their tongues across guitar shafts, tiny 
electrical arcs between their mouths and the metallic strings.  
There was an awesome stillness in the air as I lay there on the 
couch, one hand on the controller that looked more like an 
electronic detonator and the other hand on a bottle of tepid 
beer that had begun to taste like someone else had gotten to it 
before I had.  The only motion in the room was that of the 
soundwaves pounding my already reeling and half-poisoned brain 
into a mass of something not unlike tapioca pudding.  It hit me 
like sonic rain, a downpour, a torrent of invisible and 
oscillating waves.
	"I'm hoping
	 hoping to find my head..."
	The Creature from the Black Lagoon flexed his scale 
encrusted biceps/triceps/pectorals then bellowed at a woman 
onscreen, her shirt containing almost none of her huge, 
swelling breasts, nipples pointing up like MX missiles just 
beginning their ascent from hidden silos.  She inflated her 
lungs and began to scream, but it only came out as a wail of 
feedback, since the television's tiny little three-inch speaker 
couldn't hope to compete against the electromagnetic 
monstrosities that pulsed under the fabric face of the 
Marshalls that the previous tenant graciously left for me.  
Nickle-iron cores in the speaker columns pumped out a fearsome 
hundred decibels that made dust on the furniture jump and dance 
out wavepaths on the air in the room.
	"The way your life, it changes you
	 exactly like a neon rain..."
	The digital clock on the floor read 00:51, since it had 
been pushed off by the steady vibrations of the speakers and 
was lying upside down in a corner, feebly glowing a 
phosphorescent green.  I drained off the last of the alkaline 
beer and threw the bottle hard against the tiled bathroom wall, 
which was the only part of the house hard enough to make the 
bottles break, which is the best part about American beer.  
Sure isn't drinking it, that's for sure.  I tried to sit up and 
turn away from the television, but everytime that I did that, I 
saw purple swirls of color in front of my eyes and my body 
insisted that I lie down, usually by making me think that I 
wanted to throw up.  But I really wanted to go out and get some 
real beer, since that was the last of the American swill that I 
had found in the fridge.
	"Once you take the trip
	 your mind opens up
	 start doing what you want to do..."
	There was really only one way out of the dillemma.  I 
stood up and felt the world go fuzzy and then I stumbled into 
the bathroom, dimly hoping somewhere that the shards of brown 
glass didn't cut right through the soles of my converse 
hightops (which I had carefully drawn elder signs and 
inscriptions into so that the shoggoths and mugwumps would be 
powerless to harm me.)  Somehow I heard every piece of glass 
shifting nervously under my feet as I stumbled in, even over 
the tumult and feedback of "Rollercoaster."  Something wet hit 
the floor, just between the toiletbowl and wall.  At the last 
moment I chickened out, seeing that the toilet was so goddamn 
clean, I just couldn't bear to even take a piss in it, much 
less do a technicolor yawn and spew half-digested pizza and 
beer soup all over it.  It was absolutely spotless, sterile, 
cleaner than the greenrooms where they make the chips and 
circuits that they stick in everything from radios to 
televisions to the goddamn talking teddy bears that they sell 
in toys are goddamn us.  A Platonic ideal of cleanliness, the 
cleanliness to which all other cleanlinesses point to in hopes 
of attaining it.
	"This is an OD catastrophe...
	 This is an OD catastrophe..."
	Someone played a screaming riff on their atomsmasher 
guitar, particulate matter falling out of the shattered air in 
front of the speakers.  Well now that all that this nausea was 
settled, it was time to go out and get some more beer.

-------------------
Matt Maxwell
mmaxwell@ucsd.edu

"He took personality tests
 and stapled them to his lower lip" -- Stan Ridgway

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