Author: gulley

The Naked Felix

or Things That Go Bump and Grind in the Night

by St. Frank

Author’s note: I have travelled across vast oceans and journeyed through distant continents; I have witnessed great savagery, seen exquisite beauty and have thrown up in over twenty different urinals… there is little of these adventures that I remember, for I am an old man and my memory is not what it once was. But there are some things one can never forget, no matter how hard one tries.

Part I. The Beginning

It was the best of weather, it was the worst of food. It was Isla Vista. Here is where the Legend begins; a small band of rogue intellectuals, known as Physics Grad Students, roamed the land espousing their own twisted ‘Weltanschauung’ on the unsuspecting Undergraduate populace.

Among this group of brigands was Alan ‘the Gash’ Lash, a Teutonic brute who stood well over Six Feet, four, whose gigantic wit was excelled only by his obscenely large liver. He was impervious to extreme cold, toxic levels of whiskey and Mark Sperling. Alan was an ‘odds’ man; his specialty: Fillies.

Another well-known n’er-do-well about campus was Jean ‘SCUM!’ DuBoscq, a shadowy figure from high in the Basque Pyrenees. It was rumored that he could eviscerate forty sheep while dancing a Can-Can… and still keep his beret on. It was also a well known fact that his body odor could make a Frenchman faint. Jean was a practical type; his specialty: Smoke and ‘mirrors’.

Then, of course, there was Chris ‘I love it when you call me Big Papa’ Felix. He was a mountain of a man; He once laid waste to a cafeteria, leaving only a bowl of Velveeta and a stunned food server behind. He could fart the national anthems of fourteen different countries and burp those of another twelve. Chris was omniscient; he knew everything and would tell you, too… those who were lucky escaped before anything by Douglas Adams could be discussed. His specialty: Lasers and ‘the Dance!’

These three Physicists formed a mighty Troika, a legendary threesome whose presence on campus sent ripples through the student body. (Their combined weight was well over 600 lbs.) They were a culture in and of themselves; they associated with like-minded individuals, they shunned style and good taste, but despite all this, they welcomed into their fold a certain undergraduate. This was not just ANY undergrad… he was a Poli-Sci major! That undergrad was me.

I was allowed into their world; and what a strange, bizarre world it was. I saw pocket protectors, I ate nachos until I felt like I would die; I drank vodka, cheap vodka, late into the night, playing insipidly clever word games. I listened to MATH JOKES! Occasionally, in an cathartic burst of energy, we would hurl obscenities at well-dressed Undergrads. All this time I had to feign interest. I had also to feign intelligence, for I had no idea what was being discussed when the conversation turned to Physics, which it invariably would as the hours wore on. The one thing this twisted gang of three did that even remotely interested me (besides the booze that is) was gambling. Oh, how they loved to gamble; the “probabilities”, the “odds” the statistical-freakin’-anomalies! I didn’t care, I was there to learn and to win… I wanted their money, but alas, rarely did I prevail… I had no head for probability.

It was through countless nights of drinking, gambling and inane Physics stories that I eventually gained their trust. It was this trust that led Alan, Physi-Goth, to confide in me a story; a story whose basic facts would send me reeling, searching for something, anything, which I could grab onto and anchor myself in reality. I listened as he explained a night not unlike many others we had spent together. On this particular night, the carousing and gambling took a perverse turn: There was dancing, naked flesh and grinding bodies. I listened to him, but I could not believe it; I thought it was perhaps a test of my loyalty. After all was said and done, I soon put the whole sordid tale out of my mind… I was after all by then working in a coffee shop and this took nearly all the concentration I could muster in my waking hours. I was to spend several years in the pursuit of the perfect double espresso and my connection with the Physics Gang all but disappeared.

Part II. The Part II Part

As I said, I had all but fallen out of touch with the core group of Physics gangsters… we had scattered to the three corners of the earth (The Fourth corner would have nothing to do with any of us). I did stay connected with the Teutonic Knight of the Newton order, who had, in the meantime, broken ranks and joined another sect: Mathematix. It was the Teuton, Al, who was the most preoccupied with ‘probability’ and also the one who had told the strange gambling story.

As a Mathematiker, as they were known, he became more and more obsessed with numbers. This was demonstrated on a visit he made one holiday weekend. He arrived with his girlfriend, Lonnie, at our house in Richmond, California. It was raining pretty hard that weekend, so we resigned ourselves to just remaining indoors. After about two minutes, Al got bored.

“We need to gamble to take our minds off this boredom!” he said None of us were up for a poker game, so Al suggested craps.

“How are we going to play craps without a table?’ I protested. Al got an insane gleam in his eye; he ran over to the coffee table, shoved all the magazines off the top and flipped it over.

“Here, we’ll make a craps table out of this!” he bellowed. What could we do? We were stuck in a house with a madman… we went along with him. Within a few hours we had a craps table that vaguely resembled a real one. We spent the rest of the weekend throwing dice and loose change at each other. We had even gone so far as to include the ‘Don’t Pass’ and ‘Don’t Come’ bars on the table. In addition to that, ‘The Field’ was a panopoly of colored numbers…12 pays Triple! When Lonnie and Alan left at the end of the weekend, we turned the table back over and thought no more of it.

The months went by, and we got news that some of the original Physics Gang was coming out to the West coast for the Christmas Holiday. We arranged to have everyone over for New Year’s Eve, mainly because they were no longer showing the Village People on New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.

Finally, the big day arrived. My wife, Deirdre, and I spent the whole day preparing a meal and a reception befitting such an august group. The Christmas tree was a shimmering gem that was slightly too large for the room it was in, but it’s beauty made up for any inconvenience it may have caused. There was a roast in the oven, whose heavenly fragrance filled every room in the house. Hors d’oeuvres and drinks were at the ready.

Alan and Lonnie were the first to arrive, and Alan wasted no time before sprinkling the room liberally with Wild Turkey 101. It was as if he was blessing our living room, except some of THIS ‘holy water’ wound up in our mouths. Lonnie immediately headed for the safety of the kitchen, where if the Teuton should enter, she could fend him off with beer.

Al cornered me in the living room and asked me if the coffee table still held its alter ego to its underside. I replied that it did, and offhandedly suggested we might throw some dice after the meal. The telltale gleam returned to his eye, but before he could utter another word, The Basque and Mr. Felix himself arrived.

The Basque went to the kitchen to survey the goings-on… he had an incredible talent for cooking, but had let it remain unnoticed for fear that if his roommates ever discovered it, they would chain him, naked, to the stove and force him to commit depraved culinary acts. The meal seemed to meet his approval and with that we all sat down and began fighting for food. Despite the wrangling and jockeying for bits of food, we all enjoyed the meal. The banter flowed as freely as the wine and soon we found ourselves talking about the old times; reliving the Glory Days as it were.

“Remember that time we almost left ‘Carny’ Dave on the beach, drunk and vomiting and sure to drown in the first wave that reached him?”, The Basque reminisced.

“Yeah, I remember that… No one wanted to put down their drinks so they could carry him”, Alan said. “It’s a good thing we put together that impromptu Rochambeau.”

“I always wondered what you guys would’ve done had I been the slob passed out on the beach,” I said with a nervous laugh.

“Well… uh,” The Basque muttered.

“We would’ve, uh, you know…” sputtered Al.

“Hey, does anyone want that last potato?” Felix interjected, effectively changing the subject.

I couldn’t help but notice a collective sense of relief in all of their eyes.

We made it through the meal without any more awkward situations or injuries and decided to retire to the living room for some coffee. Al suggested we flip the coffee table over while we waited, so we did. Almost immediately, Deirdre and Lonnie moved to the other side of the room, with a look of foreboding clouding their faces. I, of course, thought it was their usual reaction to a bunch of guys getting ready to drink (not coffee either) and gamble. I suspect they had some intuition that something bad was going to happen; something so horrible, that their survival instincts took over and tried to move them as far away from that table as possible.

PART III. The Game

So, the women had moved to the other side of the living room, as the Physix geeks and I prepared to roll the mighty dice. Preparations included pouring large, stiff drinks and searching every inch of the house for small change, as none of us, with the possible exception of Teuton Al, were gregarious enough to wager more than 50 cents on any given bet. I would like to interject for a moment to point out another coincidence or bit of synchronicity: Small change is not just something we were throwing around that night; ‘small change’ would later play a major role in the events that would later unfold. (Check your old albums).

In any event, we gathered around the makeshift altar, er, craps table and proceeded to play. We had to wedge ourselves between the fireplace, the couch and the Christmas tree. Chris, being the largest of the group, got the space next to the tree. The flickering candles and Christmas lights added that glitzy Vegas feel. The regular rules of craps applied, of course, with the small exception here that the ‘House’ rotated. That meant, that I started out playing the ‘House’ while the other three placed bets. When it came time to pay out the winner, I had to do it. This went on until the shooter crapped out, and in this case the responsibility of house would pass in a clockwise fashion. The house always retained the option to allow larger bets, double odds (or even triple odds), and side bets.

As I said, I started as house and play began. Jean the Basque was the first shooter and my primary goal was to get him and the other players to throw as much money as they could on the lamest bets.

“Come on now guy, how ’bout a Yo bet, bet that eleven, we gotta new shooter comin’ out!” I wailed in my best croupier’s voice. “Let’s go, let’s go, whatta ’bout those hard ways?!”

“Shut up idiot. Throw ’em Jean!!” was Felix’s response to my attempt at easy money.

I had forgotten already that I was in the company probability freaks, and it hit me like a sucker punch that in all PROBABILITY I was going to lose my shirt… or at the very least my socks. Little did I know how close I was: Clothes would be lost that night.

The Basque’s roll lasted through a few numbers. He made little because his bets were relatively conservative. Al, on the other hand, despite being obsessed with odds, could not help throwing money at the YO, all the hard ways and occasionally into The Field. Felix was reluctantly being drawn into Al’s slowly emerging insanity. Finally, inevitably, the Basque’s roll ended and the dice moved to Al.

He came out with bets on the Seven and Eleven, promptly lost those and, undeterred, kept placing Come bets to amass more numbers. We made sure to keep our glasses at a healthy level, and soon the level of play and that of our VOICES were on the rise. It began to get difficult to follow the action. The dice were passing hands quite frequently now, and there was a definite increase in absurdity: Amid the cacophony of voices and music, someone asked, screaming, why the hell there was no space for Avogadro’s Number on the board. Then someone else, Felix I think, piped in on the side of Pi… “What about Pi??” The next thing I know, a punch was thrown and the lights went out.

I opened my eyes and had the feeling that I had been away for a while, but with no recollection for how long. When I regained what little composure I had, I went back to the table to find that my stack of change was considerably smaller than I remembered… apparently I had made some unwise bets while I was out.

I resumed playing (and losing) and realized that the K.O. was not an isolated incident, but a turning point in the game. There was no rhyme or reason to any of the bets, except perhaps that they were all uniformly bad, and then Al jumped in to stop everything. Felix at this point was the House, and Al asked for permission to make an unusual bet.

“Chris, I want to bet The Naked Felix. Will you cover it?” Al asked.

The Basque and I flashed a look at each other that said, “Wha’?”

“The Naked Felix?” Chris said. “Yeah, I’ll throw a buck on Midnight (the Twelve) and if it comes up, you have to do a Striptease like that time in Santa Barbara. If it doesn’t, you get the buck.”

It might have taken Chris 10 seconds to respond, but in that room, everything stopped; our wives looked over at Chris, not sure if they heard correctly, but damn sure they WANTED to know. I swear to Christ I even held my breath. The Basque, on the other hand, slowly and measuredly began to hyperventilate. A year passed, then he answered.

“Okay.”

Look up the word ‘Pandemonium’ in your dictionary… then throw it away!

I began screaming that I wanted to match the bet, Al was laughing hysterically, the Basque was beginning to sweat profusely and our wives started to get up from their chairs.

“Holy shit, I can’t believe it!” I cried, “Throw the dice! Throw the damned dice!”

“Okay, Okay,” Al said. “So you’re all right with this Chris? I mean…” He didn’t finish.

“Hurry up before I change my mind,” Felix said, as a grin that can only be described as ‘Shit Eating’ crawled across his face.

Of course, it wouldn’t happen. It COULDN’T happen; the odds of a Twelve coming up on a roll are 36 to 1… Only idiot’s and drunks bet on ‘Boxcars’. Of course, we satisfied both conditions with ease.

Twelve.

Go get the dictionary out of the trash and try to find ‘Apeshit’.

The wives were up now, saying in unison, “Oh no! Oh, no!” They knew something bad was about to happen and were making their way to the door leading to the bedroom.

Al was up, “Yes!!! The twelve! Look at it! Look at it! Igotit Igotit! I can’t believe it!”

I was intoning my new mantra: “Oh shit, now what? Oh shit, now what?”

And Chris Felix simply smiled and began getting up from his place at the table. He was chuckling as he stood up and asked, “Well, where am I supposed to do this?”

Al and I sprang into action; he moved the craps table and couch almost simultaneously and, it being my house, I went to the stereo. We would need music for this. What to play, what to play? Ah… What else? My eyes landed on Tom Wait’s CD “Small Change,” which happens to have a picture of a stripper on the front. Hmmm… Here we go, track number 7, “Pasties and a G-String.”

Trying to keep the women in the room to view the spectacle proved impossible. Then we noticed The Basque trying to sneak out with them; He was trying TO BLEND IN with a crowd of two! We grabbed him and placed him between us, unfortunately we were out of toothpicks, so any “Clockwork Orange” analogies would be lost.

This thing had taken on a life of its own; Chris was positioning himself in front of the Christmas tree, our wives were cowering safely in the bedroom and the three of us were standing there waiting… we had created this situation but were suddenly unsure if we wanted to see it through. The only reason I can give as to why we did watch, is to say that it was like slowing down to see a car wreck: You don’t want to look, but you CAN’T not look!

The music started and so did Chris. I had picked the perfect soundtrack; bass drum and hi-hat cymbal… what else did we (HE) need? Felix began to slowly gyrate, seeming a little nervous. After about thirty seconds, his anxiety disappeared, along with his shirt! We laughed uncomfortably as he flung off his shoes and began working on his socks. He was now shaking and grinding and bumping like a pro!

“My GOD! He looks like a human Lava Lamp!” the Basque shrieked.

Felix’s pants came flying through the air. Al caught them and started a victory dance of his own until he realized WHOSE pants they were; he threw them in the kitchen.

Felix was now as close to Totally Nude as you can get. I was experiencing the most bizarre sensation as his body writhed and rolled in front of one of Christendom’s holiest symbols: The Christmas Tree. Good Lord, I thought, this is sacrilege! It’s obscene! Why, we are celebrating the birth of our Lord Jesus, and Chris is slapping his cheeks in time to the music!! OH, THE HUMANITY!!

Each time he spun around in this salacious scene, we’d catch sight of his brief’s waistband.

“Jesus! He’s wearing BVDs… Beelzebub’s Vile Drawers!” Al could be heard yelling above the music.

“No,” I replied, “I think it’s HANES: His Ass Nearing Exhibition Stage!”

“You’re both wrong.”, interjected The Basque, “It’s Fruit of the Loom… THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT OF SATAN’S LOOM!!”

It didn’t matter; the skivvies in question were now hurtling toward us and it was all we could do to avoid their violent arc. Chris was now completely naked, after giving his ass a rub-down with the same tighty-whities that almost caused the three of to kill each other in our scramble to take cover.

What do you do when there is a giant, naked man dancing in your living room? Nothing I had learned in four years of college, nothing I had seen in Amsterdam could prepare me for THIS! I could only watch and hope beyond hope that I could someday forget this whole thing ever happened. Obviously, I haven’t…

It ended almost as quickly as it began. The three of us were still frozen in place, like three big, drunken deer caught in a giant, naked headlight. We didn’t know what to do; in a normal strip club, the “Act” returns to the dressing room, maintaining a little decency by being allowed to dress again in private. In this case, we sort of had to help Chris retrieve his garments, then we politely turned away. The only thing to do after something like that was to have a drink and relive what we had experienced, not unlike UFO abductees after a tough night of getting probed. And like so many abductees, when our wives returned to the living room, they didn’t really believe what we told them. Sure, they smiled and laughed along with us, but we knew they didn’t believe… WE KNEW!

In the end, it didn’t matter who believed us. We’d been to hell and back, and the bonds created by such an ordeal will last a lifetime. I’m still in contact with my Naked Felix buddies, sometimes we get together just to reminisce… sometimes, we try to tell others of that fateful night, only to be disbelieved or worse, scorned and ridiculed! I know what I saw… I BELIEVE. I will always believe in the legend.

Crafting Christmas

Christmas! That wonderfully wrenching time of year is upon us again, to be endured like a violent case of hiccups until cured by a New Year’s hangover. Not malign, just annoying. After all, it won’t kill you, but it can sure make you sore as hell.

As luck would have it, Paracelsus wrote exactly one year ago this week. The topic then was December Birthdays, and it generated more response email than anything else Paracelsus has bothered to post. Maybe you or someone you love is afflicted by DBS (December Birthday Syndrome). Take another look at last year’s story; the cause is still a dire one. And remember to leave a comment for us about your overshadowed birthday story.

Christmas also brings back memories of making cheap ornaments by hand in the living room. Do you remember any of these: clothespin reindeer, walnut shell mice, styrofoam balls wrapped in ribbon, or the ever-popular garland of red and green loops of construction paper? Cheesy though they sometimes seemed, these homely objects become more of a treasure every year, linking us back to the small hands that made them.

One of the best ways to escape the inevitable bummer of commercialized holidays is to make something with your own hands. And the best way to enliven a dispirited Christmas party is to get people to participate, whether by singing, filling in Mad Libs, or simply flinging off their clothes. This week’s story is brought to you by St. Frank, a new contributor to the Star Chamber. His is a heart-burning… er, heart-warming seasonal tale that includes both handicrafts and joyous performing at a holiday party.

Filling the Void

Jumping the gun a little on Halloween, memories of strange stories shared with old friends inspire this week’s Star Chamber.

Why is it so much fun to exchange stories of the bizarre and unexplained? Why is there an almost cultic appeal of UFO and X-File mysteries in our current age? The answer, we suspect, is not so much in our stars as in our noggins. But that, it turns out, is good enough to terrify.

In the dark, a good imagination can be a bad companion.

Continue reading “Filling the Void”

Losing Over Marbles

by Bill York

May 3rd: This morning I was a bit overwhelmed by the sounds from the bird nest outside my window. I bought a bag of marbles and a slingshot. It seems that I’m not meant to be a sharp shooter as I did not hit a single bird with the marbles. I gave up trying to scare them off and collected the marbles in a glass jar which now sits outside my window. The evening sun which shines through the jar is quite nice.

May 9th: After a few days with little to no birds around, they are back in force and have taken a liking to the marbles. The sparkling marbles have the strongest effect. There were so many birds around the marbles jar this afternoon, I couldn’t get close enough to it to get rid of them. No problem. The squirrels are now intimidated by the birds and stay a safe distance away.

May 21st: More birds than ever now; the neighbors are starting to talk. This afternoon I put the marbles jar in the back seat and drove across town. The birds followed. They seemed to call other birds to join. By the time I reached my destination, the sky was black around my car. I’m not sure whether to be happy or sad. There was no problem with traffic, it seems that drivers around here don’t want to rush into a flock of birds.

June 7th: I bought another jar and some more marbles, that makes 5 jars. There’s one on each corner of the lot and one by the front door. I hardly ever see the sun.

June 21st: The neighbors are complaining about the quantity of bird do on their houses and have called in help from the local animal shelter. The birds don’t respond well to the attempts to make them leave and seem a bit agitated. One person from the shelter was scared off by the birds today. He had never seen so many wild birds in one place. It’s good that nobody got hurt, as the birds can be quite temperamental when disturbed.

July 4th: As I was watching the fireworks tonight I started chewing some gum on the back porch. First one bird flew up to me and landed on my shoulder, then another, then another. Within twenty minutes, I was surrounded by these birds. I’m not sure if they were attracted to the smell of the gum or the chewing sounds. But they sure liked it.

July 17th: A news reporter stopped by to get an exclusive interview about the bird activity near our house. She was very attractive and must have been in her late twenties. Too bad she did not like the birds. We could use some help at feeding time. Rosie (one of the blue jays) and Paul (a black crow) took quite a shine to the her and followed her home. Perhaps I should see if she will join us for dinner some time.

July 18th: The reporter’s story from yesterday appeared in this morning’s paper. She called me the Pied Piper of birds. The phone has been ringing off the hook. I let the machine pick it up and scanned the messages throughout the day. Most of the calls were from neighbors and old friends who wanted to hear inside story. A few calls came from local newspapers too. I even got a call from the Enquirer.

July 19th: Not as many calls today but the messages were more interesting. The police called and asked if I could help train their homing pigeons – the pay sounded good but I wasn’t sure. I also got a call from CBS but I didn’t want to do any more stories.

July 23rd: Steve Davis from the FBI called today, they need 2,000 wild birds for a top secret project. So I’ll talk to Rosie and Paul to see if the birds are interested in travel. I’ve gotten very good at juggling the marbles so the birds will now follow me most anywhere. Chewing gum, walking, and juggling is a bit of a chore but in the park, we’re a big hit.

July 31st: I’m now under oath not to discuss what we are doing with the birds, but I can say this, I’m glad they are on our side!

August 23rd: After weeks of working with the birds, the project is complete. In a few days the new system will be tested. We saw Ginny, the newspaper reporter, walking in the park. Rosie and Paul still like her; they perched on her shoulders.

September 12th: The Iraqi news reported power outages throughout the capital, some problem with birds gathering around the transformers and causing them to overheat. Another article mentioned that the Iraqi air force is no longer able to keep planes out of the restricted zones, birds swarming around the radar antennas make it impossible to observe incoming aircraft.

September 19th: The front page of the Pravda reported blackout conditions of undetermined origin and that many important documents were missing from government offices.

November 2nd: Throughout the world, governments are throwing their hands up in distress. The population of birds in all the major government centers has increased to the point of suffocation. Only Washington DC has been spared the agony of infestation. Major streets have been closed, highways are nearly impassable and air traffic controllers are stuck as a result of the radar interference. International commerce has come to a halt. Doomsday preachers appear by the thousands. Animal rights activists protest the use of force to remove the birds. Social structures are crumbling under the pressures from differing factions.

November 22nd: Four men in black tuxedos arrived today to take me to dinner with the president. Over dinner we talked about the bird problems throughout the world and how he wants to recruit my help. He also talked of how some of his critics want to remove him from office and take over the world by force. The CIA has a theory that there is some militia group in charge of the whole bird invasion and would like to try a counter attack so the US can regain control and come out looking like heroes. Steve gave me a subtle nod as if to say “play along” – so I did.

December 24th: Rosie, Paul, Ginny and I are all quite happy in our new home. The Blue Hill mountains are quite beautiful in winter. I seem to have lost my marbles in the move, but the birds followed us anyway.

The Rewards of the Infinite

September so soon.

With any luck, the approach of May will be just as swift. Still, one has doubts. On the other hand, what with the apocalyptic combinations of El Niño, Global Warming, and the End of the Millenium, perhaps next frame is too distant by far. We beg you to take a moment to read about what may be the biggest environmental issue of all time

Alchemy is never far from the mind of Paracelsus, and this week is no exception.
Q: What’s the parlor game that changed the world?
A: Ask Zeno. You’re halfway there already.
Continue reading “The Rewards of the Infinite”

Pinto


“Near the end of the last century, the art of marketing emerged from its crude mass-appeal beginnings to the highly networked point-market science we know today. The culmination of this historic trend was the appearance of the Personal Needs Technician (PNT), the so-called Pinto.”

— J. Ogilvy, Marketing in the 21st Century, Rand-Bismarck Publishing

Curiously, the promotion did not sit well. Which is not to say that Ellery Fox, database guru of the profitability department, did not deserve it. But he was deeply ambivalent about the extra money. Money means more freedom, more fun, right? But he knew that he quite honestly had money enough already — he had already left a much higher paying consulting job in New York to move west for the windsurfing. The religious guilt of his upbringing tugged at him fitfully. More money seemed to both confuse and thrill him.

More specifically he was annoyed the news was first delivered by his irritating former officemate Fleming. Stork-like and angular, Walter Fleming (affectionately known in the Profitability group as Phlegm) thought he was successfully concealing his envy, but he was in fact spilling it messily all over Fox’s carpet. “Pulled down the big promotion, eh? Well three cheers to you, big guy, heh-heh.” Here he made an abrupt and strangely aggressive toasting gesture, thrusting his stained coffee mug toward Fox. Fox managed a thin smile and watched the sloshing mug anxiously. Fleming continued, “I bet you get a Pinto for this.”

“Walter, you know that only the guys on the executive team get those. I don’t even want one. What the hell would I do with some glorified ad man chasing me around all day?”

Fleming raised an eyebrow and tipped his head toward Fox skeptically. Then came the maddening mechanical laugh: “Heh-heh. Yeah right, and I don’t want to be Bill Gates.” His head bent quickly and sipped from his agitated mug. “I bet you get one. Those guys can work wonders. Heh-heh.” And with that, Fleming poked his free hand into his pocket and ambled stiffly back into the hall.

“As a result of high-speed communications networks, point-of-sale identification infrastructure, and advanced neural prediction software, marketing experts had enough information to exactly predict the needs of their clientele. From this point, it was a simple jump to assign individual specialists, PNTs, to highly-compensated wage-earners. Freed from the horrendous expense of mass-targeted advertising, marketing money was channeled directly to Needs Technicians who expertly matched client income with corporate product.”

— J. Ogilvy, Marketing in the 21st Century

“I hope you don’t mind that I let myself in!” were the words that Peter Martinez, Personal Needs Technician, First Class, used to greet Ellery Fox on his arrival home that night. Fox, doubly stunned, was still standing in the doorway. Stunned once: this stranger, this bizarre marketing person whose arrival had been predicted by his co-worker, had broken into his house and re-arranged his living room. Stunned twice: the place looked great. All he could think to say to the affable man standing in the kitchen doorway was “Where did you find that Hokusai print?” This was in reference to a magnificent Japanese print tastefully framed and hanging over the mantel.

“Isn’t it great? I knew you wanted it. I’ve been doing my homework on you ever since I got the good news last month.”

“The good news?”

“Your promotion, silly! Human Resources automatically notifies the firm and gives us the necessary powers of attorney and so on. It’s all very pro forma.” He smiled brightly, brown eyes twinkling merrily and utterly without malice.

“You’ve known for a month…?” Fox’s voice trailed off in bafflement. He took in the scene: his computer was now atop the elegant maple desk he’d been considering buying for a year or more. The piles of magazines he’d been meaning to straighten up were neatly stacked. The floor was spotless. “Did you clean the place up too?”

“Oh, no no no. You see, I’m not a butler. I simply use your money to acquire the goods and services you’d get for yourself, in an ideal world. In this case, I arranged for a very pleasant young woman from the Philippines to clean the house Wednesdays.” He leaned forward and added significantly, “…that’s your soccer night.”

“I’d been planning to do that,” said Fox in a small wary voice.

“YES!” exclaimed Martinez, nodding vigorously, a fountain of good will, “of course you had! Don’t you see?”

“As our ability to gather accurate information on a wide scale becomes more and more powerful, we expect to make sweeping gains in efficiency, enabling us to employ PNTs with households of lower and lower combined salaries. It is not an overstatement to say that we are on the cusp of an unprecedented rise in human fulfillment.”

— J. Ogilvy, Marketing in the 21st Century

As life became better and better for Ellery Fox, he became more and more miserable. There was no better illustration that his life was without meaning than the fact that his every desire could be pinpointed by the PNT firm within minutes of its coalescing in his brainstem. What depressed him even more was the fact that Martinez was always a step ahead of him, even when Fox was in a funk. Just when he would decide he needed a vacation to some remote island, Martinez would drop off tickets for a well-researched trip to the Galapagos. But then of course, he HAD always wanted to go to the Galapagos, and Martinez cheerfully reminded him there would be a partial eclipse of the sun while he was there. “Go ahead, you deserve it!” was the Pinto catch-phrase, and it echoed endlessly in Fox’s head.

So off he’d go to the Galapagos or the Upper Cascades or Katmandu, and somehow the more it was everything he’d hoped it would be, the more it depressed him. He had bleak visions of planning a suicide only to have Martinez appear at the last minute and offer the neatest, best-researched, and most tasteful exit strategy (“Go ahead, you deserve it!”). It was like being beaten to death by Martha Stewart.

One morning he found tickets to a New York Philharmonic performance of Beethoven’s 9th in his desk drawer at the exact instant that he had begun to hum it, and something snapped. He knew that if he rid himself of all his money, there would no longer be any economic logic to having a Pinto. Sell the house, move to the country, …

The phone rang; it was Martinez. “Great news!”

Fox cried “No, no more great news, Peter! You listen to me for once—”

Martinez continued without pausing, “I got a terrific price for your house, and I was able to cancel on the Beethoven concert. I’m sorry, what were you saying?”

“Indeed, the day is not far off when we may expect to see one-to-one or greater ratios of PNTs to the non-PNT population: Mankind in the service of marketing, and marketing in the service of mankind.”

— J. Ogilvy, Marketing in the 21st Century

From inside the scrubbed whitewashed walls of the old monastery, Ellery Fox contemplated with satisfaction the realities of his life of simple poverty. No more money, no more anxiety, only thin gruel in the morning and the daily rituals of devotion. Now he spent most of his time preparing for his mission work and chanting hymns in the name of infinite compassion. His physical and mental health would have been at a peak had it not been for a chance encounter in the temple courtyard. For there, walking serenely in the orange robes of a priest, was Peter Martinez.

“Peter,” Fox called out with a smile, “you’ve given it up, too, all that rat-race nonsense? Good for you!”

Martinez turned slowly and surveyed him with beatific calm. “What do you mean?” A quaking began in Fox’s knees and moved quickly into his thumping chest. “No no no, Ellery Fox! I still perform my mission work in the name of infinite compassion.”

“But… you never…” rasped Fox.

Martinez shined his smiling face on Fox. “Ellery, listen: Marx said that religion was the opiate of the masses. But he got it wrong.” His brown eyes glimmered with saintly benevolence; his white teeth gleamed. Fox was suddenly aware of a warm sense of bliss spreading across his chest. Martinez continued, “If you want to save the world, you need to use the right tools. Your mission time will come soon…” Martinez kept such good care of his teeth! “We’ve just gotten word that Fleming has received his promotion.”

Grounding Day

Happy Grounding Day! The editors of the Star Chamber would like to remind you to enjoy this special midsummer holiday, first described in this space last year. Mischief is afoot, the summer is at the top of its arc, and aliens are abroad. And if there aren’t any aliens here on Earth, well then, we’ve sent our own to Mars.

By the way, careful readers of these pages will recall that we scooped the movie Contact with a tale of our own on these pages about beaming bad TV across the galactic void. Of course the book Contact came out years ago, but we will gently step over this fact by noting that we never took the time to read it.

In the meantime, for the admirers of that noble verse form, the double dactyl, we herewith include a humble example of our own


Life on Mars

Pathfinder, Sojourner:
Where are your pictures of
Martian inhabitants
For us to see?

Is it because of some
Extraterrestrial
Pusillanimity:
Fear of TV?

So in honor of Grounding Day (and before it’s too late), why not avail yourselves of the pleasantries of summer? Fix yourself a martini concocted with iciest gin, juiciest olive, merest hint of vermouth, sit on the back porch and read A Midsummer Night’s Dream one more time. Or better yet, pull up a chair and consider with us the curious tale of Ellery Fox.

Birth Sky

Comet Hale-Bopp has finally left our evening skies, and while I managed to see it a good many nights, I never did see it perched in a truly dark sky. This is a great pity, as you will know if you were lucky enough to do so.

I did have the good fortune of being in a place with very dark skies just as comet Hyakutake was making its appearance. I was on vacation in Costa Rica, and two nights before, I had gone looking for the comet without success. Finally on the last night of my trip, I saw it almost by accident during a late night walk. Here is what I wrote down the next morning:


Saw comet Hyakutake last night! It was sitting just near Arcturus after the moon had set. It was ghostly with a long streaming trail — at first I thought it was a search light shining from something in the sky — a helicopter? Then when I realized what it was it was just an incredible sensation of awe and mystery. Of course it was silent, but somehow its powerful silence is what I remember most vividly, as though something so dramatic should roar like a waterfall. But it sat quite still and looked at me, like the ghost of Hamlet’s father. I wanted it to announce itself, but it just stared back, its ragged coattails streaming in the wind.

This is the same sort of sensation excited by eclipses of the sun, or by the titanic smashing that comet Shoemaker-Levy gave Jupiter last year: something obvious is going wrong in the sky. A good reckoning of the heavens is the first great accomplishment of any civilization, associated with the rise of agriculture, so when something so weird happens in the sky, it can be disturbing at a very deep level. You can begin to see why both comets and eclipses have caused (and continue to cause!) such fear and disruption.

For me, comet Hyakutake underscored the fact that we are not projected onto a backlit screen. We are solid creatures that literally fit into an encompassing three-dimensional cosmos. During an eclipse, the point is driven home that I am here, and the sun is there, and the moon is there. The three of us have come together in a way that suggests the sun knows about me — for an instant an invisible axis, a spindle, passes right through me. It tells me that these celestial bodies are enormous actors that shape and inform the rocks we stand on. This is not a painted backdrop or a great big screensaver. These celestial wanderers write our rules, and any minute a giant rock may tumble from the sky and carve a jagged hole in our planet.

During eclipses, people react strongly. Some are stunned to silence, others are overcome by giddiness. Why? The shining sun was here and then it was blotted from the sky. This is the difference between knowing and knowing. I know that the earth waddles around the sun with moon in tow. But slide the moon between the me and the sun, and by God, I KNOW it.

But moving beyond the physics, we count on the regularity of the sun to fill the great void, and when the sun vanishes, the void beckons. Science cannot fill the great void! The void is an empty spot behind your eyes beyond the reach of reason. The raw reptilian brain that understands this is comforted by the richness of the creatures that live in our sky’s imagination. Show me Perseus and Pegasus!

That night in Costa Rica, I felt the weight of Hyakutake’s eyes on me. It was watching me. The experience took me straight to the place where our forebears and forelizards spent their entire lives, a place where the heavens were animated with living presence. The event reminded me how close the skies are, and how much they matter. How much we owe them and how much they own us.

So now, if I told you that I could reconstruct for you exactly the configuration of the planets and stars on the day you were born, would you be curious to see the result? This is the kind of thing that astrologers claim to do all the time, but astrologers have, by and large, fallen out of the sky, which is to say they have lost the connection the actual relationship between the stars and the planets. Their zodiacal signs are tokens, which, like Tarot cards and tea leaves, are as useful for divination as anything else close at hand. But the astrologers do not speak for where the planets were actually swimming when you were born. The horoscope is out of step with the sky on two counts: the signs have been shifted by precession and their width has been regularized.

The earth is a spinning top, and as it spins through daily rotations, it also nods very slowly first this way, now that way, inclining its head toward successive members of the zodiac. Precession is the name for this lazy nodding. Though too slow to notice in one person’s lifetime, it has added up to a very noticeable difference since our constellations were defined some 3000 years ago. For example, the first day of spring used to occur when the sun was in Aries, but it now occurs when the sun is in Pisces. Some time in the next century or so the first day of spring will occur when the sun is in Aquarius, and the age of Aquarius will at last have begun in earnest.

This is a representation of the sky at the very moment I was born (see if you can work out how old I am!). I find it strangely satisfying to look at. It uses symbols familiar to astrology, yet it is an altogether accurate diagram of where the planets were relative to the stars in the constellations of the zodiac.

If you were to see this model, this birth-sky, for your own birth date, what would you think? An astrologer would use it to read omens, but I think that any of us, even the most hard-hearted, would be inclined to behave like all pilgrims do at the end of the journey: we would look around and say, “Hmmm. So that’s how it was.” Somehow, it matters enough to be worth knowing.

Learn more about the Birth-Sky diagram.

Solstice musings

As the sun winds its way toward the summer solstice, permit us to pause for a moment and recall that the StarChamber has been operating since
April 16th of last year. The first anniversary of that date slipped by with little fanfare.

This illustration shows the configuration of the planets in the sky on that very date. Look closely and you’ll see that Venus was lounging in Taurus, Jupiter was hanging out by itself in Saggitarius, and wow! look at that crowd around the sun in Pisces. It’s enough to make you think some kind of harmonic convergence launched the StarChamber. Sound like astrological voodoo? Maybe. But this is an honest-to-goodness image of where the planets were in the sky on April 16, 1996, no matter what interpretation you attach to it: A sky chart for the StarChamber’s birthday. And every week since then, for more than a year, we’ve been listening to the music of the spheres and putting up the content.

Bobo would be proud.

Mr. Saturday

Ransom shook his head and replied:

I’ll tell you how it was that I came west. It was nothing like that. I left the very next morning after old Mr. Saturday came to visit. Mama Haynes always said: “Send dreams not mischief, Mr. Saturday.” Now I know what she meant. I can see Mama Haynes now, chuckling. “Everybody sees him once at least,” she would say.

I was in the study with Enrico rebuilding (for the fifth time) the sprocket wheel guide on the orbital track mount. We had been working obsessively on the orrery for over two months neglecting hygiene, nutrition, friendship and sleep — our house was a foul-smelling unhealthy place and we were by this time arguing bitterly over every gear and pulley.

tophat.gif

Responding at last to loud knocking I opened the front door, and he walked in smiling, all white teeth and white eyes, not saying a word. I had never seen Mr. Saturday before, but there was no mistaking him, a thin dark man wearing a shabby top hat, bowtie, and an old soot-smeared black suit. He glided straight past an open-mouthed Enrico to the kitchen and sat down at the breakfast table. The table was still littered with dishes, crumbs, and the Sunday paper. He sat right down, with his thin hands folded in his lap; with his bloodless car-accident smile and his wrinkle-creased suit. I can tell you it sent a chill right through us. We followed him into the kitchen and stood in front of his chair.

The left corner of his crooked disapproving mouth twitched twice. There was a wheezing rumbling sound like a distant avalanche which we realized came from his stomach. He looked directly at me. Mama Haynes had told me many times that Mr. Saturday has a big appetite, so I offered him the remains of the congealed macaroni and cheese. He gobbled it down with such alarming speed that I feared for my fingers. We opened the refrigerator and gave him more. He ate greedily, appearing to get hungrier, to accelerate, as we fed him: Enrico’s old lasagne, the last of the Cap’n Crunch, some moldy orange-flavor beef from Szechuan Garden. We kept the food coming, and the detritus clung to him. Crumbs from stale cranberry muffins stuck to his white-whiskered chin stubble. Viscous globules of Thousand Island salad dressing dropped onto his stained jacket. Bacon grease glistened on his thin fast-moving fingers.

Toward the end, we began to realize that he would swallow anything: a box of peppermint teabags, the entire spice rack from the ground Jamaican ginger to the Hungarian paprika along with the salt and pepper shakers. I began to worry about what we were going to do when we ran out of everything remotely edible.

It was Enrico who hit on the idea of feeding him books after we saw him gobble up the Sunday paper. Presently we were bringing everything off the bookshelves: textbooks, fieldguides, religious tracts, all 17 of O’Brian’s sea novels. They all went down at a quickening pace, though he slowed down briefly as he chewed through the Bible, the Tao Te Ching, and Luck’s Arcana Mundi. Once the shelves in the apartment were empty of books, we pulled the maps and posters off the walls. I fed him mom’s old ukelele and both of my concertinas. He devoured my small collection of CDs in one abrupt jaw-popping thrust. With each slobbering mouthful he seemed to grow larger and more threatening, until in heartbreaking desperation we began to feed him our precious machine. First the blueprints, then the spare brass gearworks, and at last the entire nearly-complete orrery. Finally I brought him the old broken-glass charm that Mama Haynes gave me before she died.

At this, he paused and appeared to think for a bit. Then he leaned back suddenly in the squeaking chair, his hands rubbing his bulging belly. A long wet gurgling belch bubbled out of his food-smeared lips, filling the room with a sickening odor of fish heads, WD-40, and bleach. He cleared his throat, preparing to speak.

His dry clotted voice rattled: “Tell me what he sees. Like it or not. No time to lose. Tell me what he sees.”

There was a long pause before he continued “A big bear wearing a bright red cap balances on a sagging blue ball. A small maiden in sequins dances on the back of a galloping horse. A toothless leopard old before her time paces in a filthy circus cage. Crack goes the ringmaster’s whip: the bear waddles to the left. Crack goes the ringmaster’s whip and the bear waddles to the right. Crack! goes the whip; now the bear steps off the ball and rushes past the ringmaster into the crowd. The bear rips at the canvas walls of the circus tent, pulls down the poles. The tent falls into itself and is crushed from sight. The bear, alone, looks up at the sky. Tell me this: what does he see?”

Now his eyes were glowing match heads stubbed into dark sockets. “No time to lose. Like it or not. TELL ME WHAT HE SEES.”

three-of-swords.gif

We had no answer, but he leaned back, apparently satisfied for the time being. He plucked an ivory toothpick from his waistcoat and picked at his shiny teeth so violently that one of them popped from the back of his mouth and rattled across the floor, stopping next to my foot. Undistracted, outstretched palm toward me, he considered his thick yellow corrugated fingernails, pursing his lips. Then his eyes sparked and he flashed a carnivorous smile. He stood to leave, thumping his hat onto his head. On his way out the door, he put a bony forefinger to the brim of the hat and said: “See you later.”

Where he had been sitting there was a dogeared playing card face down. On the back, the words “No Time To Lose” straddled a sideways figure eight. I turned the card over: three of spades. Three of smiles. Three of teeth. Mama Haynes used to say: “Everything Mr. Saturday says, he says verbatim.” How true.