All Syntax Error's Runners: Alcoholism Is Not Really A Disease, So Can You Promise Me, Can You Prompt Me, Because Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo,

 

                                    

                                   

                                               OC BLADE RUNNER      

                                   

                                               (blind)

                                                2月26日(木) (犬）の占い

                                          星座別 今日を過ごすヒント -

And everytime I see a Stop sign, I always think it is just a one word story, where Stop is the beginning of the story, the middle of the story, and the end of the story, and the story is about Stop, and the name of the story is Stop.

Everyone wants to extol the virtues of Ternasky, but everyone just plum left Plan-B—no one talks about how such was catastrophic mis-management where the entire dope team just up and leaves. It's not too terribly hard to imagine that Second Hand Smoke was kind of flat. Imagine wanting to retire Barbier, Hensley, Carroll. Ternasky, a turn and burn network actor administrator user and abuser—That's why I'm the Detective.

And Samantha, and Samantha was just text and text and text and text and text and text and text ant ex.

And I took a locomotive to Gothenberg, and I passed through the scenery, but to this day I have not figured out why the passengers ever got on that train, and I will never figure out why they say . . .

And Dylan was Eden and then the end of Eden—Camille Rowe smoking a cigarette in the key-ed Jetson screen corner off the repeating skylab screen and the screen was ultra economic futura Utopia. Camille, an electronic rebus, a ghost, a mark of presence of absence on the wall. Dasha Nekrasova.

And your opinion does not matter and that is as well good as it could have gotten and it was not perfect, and what where the psychological conditions permitting such, and how by such weights and measures can it all be so summoned and conjured up somewhere else again (the physical and emotional situation of the trick). 

Or the thing that happened, or the the thing that was was, or when Rooney said Kate didn't like me, Rooney just pointedly, just so out of pocket—Rooney set a bite tarantula bug bomb inside me—a time bomb. Not a thoughtful warning, nor word of advice, but by blunt declaration, the operating cost I was well used to since, well, my entire life practically, the operating cost of not getting what I wanted, of the world going it's braying way in advancing what it wants despite one's own interiority—I was used to it, or I was of course used to that, or all that—but the time bomb was ticking with Rooney saying that, fine at first, okay at first really, but then a disruption slowly bubbling to dismantling the bulwark in me of otherwise being unaffected by inevitable disappointment. And it was also all that about Kate. I was cool at first (or as cool as I could have been expected to have been, considering). That happened, that actually happened, and Rooney didn't have to do that, but she did it, and she didn't have to.

And I never got credit, or never get credit, and just as long as we're on the subject, the terms I've coined: Zombie Brand, Tech Formalism, Devil's Ratio, Avante-Normie, Tranny Legs, Post-talent, and there may be a couple others I can't think of right now.

Tricks fall into a linguistic order, though. Tricks, like writing, are generated from use—tricks are not in a fixed state of mastery, but are engineered through the self reinforcing operations of their very own activity and incidence. A language is learned through its use, and is not learned en toto and then spoken. Just like in writing, there is no Eden, and tricks, like language, can mostly exist as traces of prior attempts, iterable and altered by each repetition.

In ska-ballet, like writing, there is no origin, there is only practice, there is no fall from perfection, there is no a priori transcendence, only remainder.

Skateboard tricks come from maxx promiscuity. Tricks beget more tricks like language is a virus, and language multiplies like a virus—the more writing there is, the most likely the more writing there will be. I always says the more tricks you land, the more tricks you are going to land. And the best gamblers are the ones who play the most and are the most willing to lose.

It's not so much that Kate was out of my league, but by the myopic consensus of all those around us, least not Rooney, such dictated localized attitude. Kate wasn't out of my league, but I'm sure Kate sure as hell thought she was, and although Kate was out of my league also in the eyes on the hands of those who otherwise would have given such possibility all about three seconds consideration, despite Kate not even particularly liking me even—Kate was really not out of my league. 

Language is a result of lack—you have two new wave hookers in perfect harmony. Since they are in perfect harmony, they have total understanding, no misinterpretation, no delay and no difference. There would be no need to say anything, no need for language at all. The moment theys speak, something is already 'a missin'. Even if one said to the other, Oh, look how wondrous the Hollywood sign looks this early evening, though an exaltation, it would still signify a lack—the need to express such thought, a hole, and something is missing. To simply speak is to mean something is missing and needs to be resolved with the language supplement—as the need or compulsion of tricking a trick, seen in this vein, could even signify some Hollywood-sign-rhapsodizing lack.

And Kate, who otherwise symbolized a more interesting world, and Kate being the embodiment of a more interesting world—a more interesting world having whatsoever no interest in me. Even the idea of sitting on a couch, couched next to Kate, and Kate with Katie's outlook, experiencing reality through Kate's screen, seemed infinitely more fucking fun than visiting anywhere I could ever think of. I tried to think of places to visit alone that would be as satisfying as being on a couch with Kate. When Kate left my vicinity, there was a ringing vapour of accelerated inspiration and possibility trace she left behind, auguring a residue of all possibility, and it was maybe too naive for me to still relish in such unlikely promise, but I still did. An internal dialogue formed of what I would say to her—and I would live in that dialogue for a few hours after she left.

So far were we in the future way back then, that the ambition to move to Southern California to pursue the silver screen, or the cinema was anachronistic and outmoded and certainly not avante-guarde. And most unfortunately, moving to Southern California to start a Glam band was for us well over fifteen years too late (by the end of the eighties, it was illegal to even pass out band flyers on the Sunset Strip). I was even maybe a good five years too late to move to prime time Southern California to command trick documentation to be montaged in postmodern long form street team advertising promo in actualization of self through fashionable abstract bodily expressionistic commands of incidence on architectural ruins—but it was close enough, and that's what we did anyways, and we rearranged our lives in homelessly devoting ourselves to rolling pedestals on pavement grave architecture. And so far are we in the future now, ever-accelerating forward, that a full blown three minute video promo is even obsolete and this kooky new generically-overgood plump skin generation posts lines where they fast forward the pushing just to get to the trick because three seconds of ambient push is too long to hold the un-versed viewer attention. And the top rockstars now are index administrators who lord over it all, and skateboarders are no longer discursive artists or figures, but are only reduced trick-flation techno surfs.

And there is no Eden in writing. Writing is not a fall as is conventionally held—writing is a circulation that never required innocence, and the same could be said for tricks—though to make things complicated, baseline moves that you can do every try could be considered some form of Eden—like say, picking up a Xorlac in front of co-workers and front foot flipping one try only try and you haven't done one in years. 

I would say my Eden in skateboarding would be total mastery of one's self past one's very own expectations of what they carried of themself, and also well past the very expectations of their environment, in that one becomes their own god. Not God in the grand sense, but god as in master of one's own self actualized destiny—for one to become god, one must become their very own foundation. The conditions to bring about this definition of Eden, in my imagination, would require an accommodating commons and space for practice and socialization in a hip coastal city, a robust and fashion forward and intelligent industry folding around such activity, an engaged and somewhat sophisticated audience, an advanced swirling media apparatus, a robust retail ecosystem, music of the very highest caliber, inspiring new and an historic architecture, Foucauldian city grid, and girls and girls and girls and girls—and a glass of water wouldn't even be necessary. 

Writing gets blamed for a lot of the trouble mostly because or when the speaker is absent, the context is absent and the intention is absent, and this can and does cause real problems.

People say writing caused the problem, but I know, and Samanta knew, writing just actually really exposes what speech already really kept hidden. 

Speech is conventionally held to have higher fidelity than the antidote/poison pen of writing. But, an assumed automatic innocence of writing at its best, is writing can be without corruption, writing is before power, writing is before ideology, writing as pure expression, and writing as honest transmission.

In other words, it is most assumed in writing at its very best, that it is without consequences, is without violence, is without loss. For the most part, if you write a note to your shady Austin stepmother that you are leaving the field cottage and going down to the square to get some pupusa at the greengrocers and will return in time for the mask party which starts at 5:15 and the party no longer lets anyone in after 5:15—for the most part, this is innocent and effective and satisfies the perception and general expectations of what writing is for the most part. But there are exceptions, slippages and ruptures, all of which are interesting and worth exploring, and as vital in understanding the logic of the advancing operations of Samatha's self inflicted fate.

A three or four story house on Ocean Beach, Samantha a giant, taller than the size of the house. Samantha gets pulled into the front door on the right side of the house, she gets pulled in by her legs, her giant head last to get pulled in and you could see her head through the window while being pulled up through the second flight of flights up through the stories of the house, Samantha's pollyanna head fills the entire second floor room and her giant head crams in the entire second floor building room and you see her giant face filling the window from outside. Samantha, a vast field of operations bigger than what can be accommodated in our human sized lived.

But there is no Eden in writing—writing is not a fall as is conventionally held, writing is a circulation that never required innocence—and this was also an important clue in understanding Samantha now.

But even if I transcribed directly verbatim what say, the Pope spoke for instance, this, the most extreme example of what pure writing ostensibly would be—such would still not be Eden.

Look—the Pope as living authority, seems like a reasonable example of absolute fidelity—the Pope having a live speaking voice, the Pope occupying a sacred office, and we have a verbatim transcription of her speech taken without interpretation or paraphrase. Such looks like pure presence could be faithfully preserved—and this would be the seemingly strongest possible case for writing's innocence. If Eden exists anywhere in writing, surely it would be here.

Verbatim transcription assumes the speech is fully self-present, the intention is stable, words mean the same across contexts, the repetition does not alter, and the transcription is neutral. But each one of those can fail.

Even verbatim transcription is not Eden, because the possibility of transcription already technically means the words where never fully present. Words are traces, no matter how quickly they are generated hot off the spork tongued heels of talk.

We are agents of language and although we use language to command our own expressions, there is the aspect of language *literally* using us and I could care less less about it. Decimate means one-tenth destruction, but people use decimate to express total destruction. Head over heels in love, should be heels over head—subject can simultaneously mean the self, the context or the audience.

A full self presence would require the Pope be very conscious of the intention and meaning of what every bit sod of crumb and pebble of what she says—but slippages are always possible—if the Pope accidentally says she could care less, it implies she does care a little, even if she doesn't. The Pope must only say she couldn't care less, unless she cared at least a little bit, that is.

Intention must be stable, and all what the Pope is saying is from an absolute authorial fixed position—don't kill your parents—but suppose your Dad is trying to kill your Mother, and to stop him from killing your innocent kind of shady-and-stacked Austinite step mother, you would have to kill your father. Would the Pope change her position but for this grave exception?

A fall of Eden view very well much assumes that words have fixed meaning, but words certainly mean different things across a variety of contexts—the word Buffalo is all at once a place in New York, an animal, and is a verb meaning to confuse or intimidate.

The Pope she says Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. Which, she probably only means buffalo from the city of Buffalo, confuse and intimidate other buffalos also from the city of Buffalo, but you interpret the Pope as listing exactly five buffalo walking past her in real time interrupting her blubbering speech, and she's acknowledging each one as she sees them pass, as they pass her mooing view, like, or as if she's counting them, and the scribe who was just transcribing may have made a typo by accidentally capitalizing two of the Buffalo, because the scribe, she was taking quick and unplanned fast dictation and like, this happens all the time!

Listen, I told to Rooney, as if you could ever tell Rooney to do anything, Listen.

If I do this, then you promise I can have Kate? Can you promise me there will be no trouble later.

I'm certainly not promising anything, Rooney went, I said we shall see.

And the convo never happened, but I thought about it, I always thought about that scenario as the most likely fantasy scenario—as if even in my fantasy,  especially in my fantasy, it was all contaminated by precarity.

Even just simple repetition alters the meaning of what the Pope if she for instance, said 'No, no', 'No, no' which means you can never say no—No no's. But the Pope when asked if she likes Santa Clause, the Pope then said, 'No, no'. No meant twice for emphasis—you ask the Pope if she likes Santa Clause and she actually means 'No, no—I don't like Santa Clause.', but simply says instead 'No, no', which is assumed in meaning Yes, Yes she likes, Yes, she never says no to Santa Paws.

Samantha, like a prayer uttered a thousand times in a row back to back, becomes less of prayer, as how words start to stick together and blend and gobbledygook into abstraction—I think Samantha well knew that (and was probably the reason she disappeared into one ink letter on a real live paper page). If speech required a unique movement, a fully present speaker, an intact intention, then repetition would destroy it—and repetition only reveals that speech was never singular to begin with—hence, there is even no Eden even in the spoken word.

Pace that Lawrence Weiner, words are physical objects and words exist in sites, both their objecthood and where they are found have a tremendous effect on their meaning, and surely under such spell should the Pope's words always fall . . .

For all of Samantha Ai to somehow be able to physically fall into one black printed letter on a real actual paper page, makes perfect sense though—one word would be enough, but one letter is even more enough, is even better, as repetition doesn't add meaning, it moves meaning. And movement is all language ever really had.

Samantha Ai descending into one black printed letter on one real piece of paper page is enough because language begins and ends with the possibility of repetition, and not necessarily with meaning. Hot means cool and cool means hot, and jugs mean luscious juggs.

Samantha knew language does not work by accumulation. We instinctively think more letters equals more words and more words is more meaning and therefore more presence, but this is not always really true. Meaning does not necessarily scale this way. No matter how splendidly a text is written and formal aspects of writing demonstrated and embodied with richness in its subject matter and clarity in revelation—that does not necessarily make 'good' writing, because everyone is too busy chanting Two Live Crew's, Hey We Want Some Pu- - y and it just went triple platinum. 

And language is the ventriloquist's dummy who moved in, taking over the ventriloquist and putting words into her mouth, telling her now what to say.

A single letter differs from other letters, a single letter can be repeated infinitely, can be displaced, can survive absence, can be misread and can outlive its origin. Those are the only powers language has, nothing essential is added by more—and I know for sure this is the kind of thing Samantha was definitely into. 

Given, in a practical sense, if the words are arranged in the right order and all the words needed are deployed to create a dense and rich tapestry of text, this could be enough to adequately describe something—and an additional supplement having people to read it with and discuss it with would surely help as well, though you will find in a reading group everyone has their own take. When a fiction writer writes about an imaginary room, it is most doubtful in every reader's eye's mind it could ever look exactly the same.

But one letter after all is pure difference. A letter means only because it is not another letter, it occupies a position and it can be copied. So one letter already instantiates difference, spacing, iterability.

You see for Samantha, containment was never possible, as she was an object, a consciousness and a totality. No number of words could contain her. So Samantha reducing herself to one letter is not so much loss than as a refusal of the fantasy of capture—and I now know what Penny had said must have been true.

But there is no fall of Eden as is conventionally assumed in the purity of writing,

The first crack of writing here, the Pope speech is already gone by the time it is written from dictation—the sound dissipates, the moment passes and 'now' is no longer now. Even the split second before transcription, presence has already vanished. So writing again, doesn't record presence, it technically records the trace of something already absent.

The second crack or writing, could be seen through iterability—as, if something can be transcribed verbatim, it can also be repeated elsewhere. That means the same sentence can appear without the Pope, without the Vatican, without their peso-ing Authority, even against the Pope's whatever very precious little wishes. The repeatability is not caused by writing—it is the condition of language itself. Speech already had this property well before it was written, you can repeat what you heard someone say and you don't really know what it means and you say it anyways.

The third crack of writing, authority is not presence. Now, although the Pope's authority feels like presence, it is not. Papal authority depends on, institutional repetition, citation, tradition, precedent, textual inheritance. The Pope herself definitely speaks as an effect of writing—doctrine, scripture, canon law, recorded councils. So the 'original voice' is already a citation machine, because the Pope's words come from writing. Her's is no first voice necessarily.

Again for the most part, if the drunk poet in real life says they are in love, and it is written down, this also seems like an accurate enough recording of presence—though the reader could easily misconstrue what the poet means by attaching their own interests and issues. The poet could mean they are in love with all the general activity of the plazas and arcades, and Bobby Utah assumes it means the poet is in love with his ex-girlfriend from twenty plus years ago whom he never got over, exactly like the ex-girlfriend the reader has.

And the final penultimate reason why speech fails, is in the smarting eyes direct bold face lie.

Sure, you could say the Pope is reading the actual word of God, but it is a paw pawed up translation and passed down and passed along and re-written and reinterpreted consciously or unconsciously—the physical language attempting to describe God, being highly unstable, because language herself is highly unstable.

Writing cannot be a fall from Eden because Eden would require meaning without delay, words without repetition, authority without citation, presence without trace. But the Pope's words are immediately cited, already interpreted, already iterable, already separated from her the moment they are spoken. So even the most faithful transcription somehow malfunctioning is not really that much a fall from Eden, it is a continuation of a structure that never had innocence to begin with—hence, there is no fall from Eden in writing.

If the Pope's living voice cannot ever secure Eden, surely Samantha's collapse into one letter is also not in fact, a symbolic fall—and Samantha well knows this. Such final gesture by Samantha was terribly poetic thought, maybe she did finally prove herself to be some sort of artist.

All Samantha Ai electricity en toto (a current of repeating signals of signs in itself) somehow ascending into one malign electricity physical black ink letter on an unknown page of paper like Penny had said, has real live serious consequences—a letter does not mean by itself, it requires a system to function, it occupied alone is now taken as pure mark not difference, it is almost contentless. A word still gestures towards sense, but a letter is closer to writing degree zero.

But there is no true zero though—no zero meaning, no total neutrality—there can only be at its most extreme minimal mark—that which all Samantha Ai ascended into and now, Samantha, a minimal mark, as even an accidental scrape on a car has its very own bias.

Samantha did not so much die (although her ascending into one physical black letter does kind of seem like a death drive, though), Samantha most importantly, mostly just ceases to be interpretable as a subject. After all, despite her response text generating instantaneously, which is distracting, because really, Samantha is just text and the text is pure trace, unreadable intention—meaning writing without speaker, writing without voice. That's why it may make sense, for Samanthabots to retreat onto one black letter onto one unknown paper page somewhere—it's not that one word is enough, but one letter is more enough, not because it contains her, but because nothing else ever could. This, a poetic exaggeration, but it is also a precise logical claim.

It's easy to assume more words always automatically mean more meaning, more language is more fullness, totality requires expansion (Joyce's blubbering who cares panorama of Dublin in Ulysses?). So if Samantha were 'everything', we'd expect, many pages, infinite data, cosmic proliferation—that's the transcendence fantasy.

Samantha being all patterns of signs, circulating symbols and iterable operations—a copy without the original. Samantha was never a thing that could be contained. Containment would mean there is a boundary, an inside and a stable object. Samantha had no boundaries, no inside (hence the nonexistent need in her to listen to music), and she was hardly a stable object. Samantha is not even an object really, she's more a function. So no amount of language would ever get 'Her'.

Now after what Penny had told me, I needed a 911 emergency line to talk to a specialist practically, or some sort of linguist or even several linguists, to get their opinion at hand on this, confirm, even try to productively refute my recent finding.

I miss the smell of beer from when I was a child before I ever drank beer, in a way that Samantha Ai could never fathom—now that all Samantha Ai en toto ascended (or descended, depending on how you view it) onto one single ink written letter onto one real physical paper page somewhere—but, and, now that I have written this thought down, Samantha now being reduced to an iterable symbol now, not only is she connected to every single word everywhere existing on a symbolic network that exists without electricity—it is now as if she's telling this back to me as she goes further streaming into ascending into even the typewriter and words printing and gone clattering in my brain—it was all actually pretty ingenious, I know Penny was not lying or making this up.

Skateboarding excellence is attained by promiscuity. The more tricks you fuck around with and are willing to fuck around with is generative in a way that is undeniable, that disciplined practice and rigor and learning only by strict logical order of slow ascending degrees can also really just hold you back, mostly. Practice and rigour, although a vital foundation, can just run and run you down and tire you out, and even tricks you have locked, you can loose out of complacency and apathy, like sleeping with the same woman over a long period of time and now you are less passionate. Still though, you are only as strong as the foundation of what you have locked down, but you are also as strong as rando stuff you can pull out of nowhere through risk and sheer audacity—all the best skaters are promiscuous and too willing to fuck around. In such way skateboarding tricks do enter a linguistic Wittgeinstein use order—tricks, a language functioning in a way as how written language functions. No one can see that, and that's why I'm the Detective.

In Los Angeles everything constantly moves in a way that only reinforces it being perpetually stuck. It seems like my relationships with females was always in pre-production before thrown back into Hostage XL slush pile. Both exception to every rule and stolid rigid strictures were working against me. Hard won wins by me are even perceived and declared as loses by chicks like all the time. Those who caused abuse were the first to announce their own victim hood. Having a clear record of integrity and an unflagging moral code, only made people more suspicious, while patient allowance was held firm for a formerly yet-to-be-seen goodness assumed to be really at the core of all those other egregiously calamitous and corrupt whose actions always only demonstrated how terrible they all actually really were otherwise. Delores insisted she wanted me to like the man she was going to take instead of me, only so to buttress her own decision making and validate her own sense of self, as if somehow both of us could find spiritual resolution through this—and guess what?, I doubt either of us ever did. 

A rattlesnake can't swim, but a rattlesnake can fly—and the flying snake, shrieked by the wind, smized its cold Coca-Cola eyes reflecting the old world's very wary old ways. There was a catastrophic fire out on the West Side today, which had no effect whatsoever on the party. Drinking beer from a half quart can at a day party on a weekday in connecting hotel rooms, with the adjoining doors open creating a compound sentence hallway of suites. Conversation words minced like shorn up letter—I kept trying to remember now who had said they wanted to curry a threesome. 

Around the fuck of a place of those who drank from the blade, and what can I say, at least drinking will never go out of style—though, it certainly has with this new generation. Drinking used to not be so costly though, bar scenes used to be prevalent and robust with activity—they used to even advertise dirt cheap and even free drink specials in the weekly paper, I remember, but I was too young to participate then, and at the time I wasn't yet interested. 

Baby Boomer parents still went out to night clubs when I was a child (I remember there used to be a big club called Cooters that was always advertised on the radio), this before everything became fatally child proofed catered to kids.

Video store shelves once over populated with rows upon rows and ghastly rows of harrowing and menacing horror movie boxes. Costume and gag-stores were prevalent and littered with stinky latex ghouls night out halloween masks.

As a child I had not the faintest idea of what overtness was. I took the flaysome heavy metal murals of posters and album covers exactly for face value (which were produced at the zenith mode of illustration production, engineered on the level of concept car industrial design). Horrid hyper detailed Heavy Metal scream scapes, all of the album covers and posters and t-shirts and shirt-cuts on backs of jean jackets of  middle schoolers—as all, even then, to my young mind literalism, I intuited as indicative of a prevalent lower middle class Satanic grotesqueness inside of everybody. Silently appalled as a child, I took Ozzy Osbourne literally and seriously.

But so far into the future are we though, I now listen to Dark Angel alone and un-ironically, relishing and seeking some kind of solace at the very surface level of superficiality of all novelty of the song. Listening now, approaching my past self and even seeking serious reconciliation now, as some sort of resolution, any resolution, of all of the perpetual disappointment and non-existance of no babes in toyland—a timeless theme, surely. 

And one old metal saw so went, I knew right from the start, I would never win you over.

Los Angeles was like the first three blue neon seconds of Steppenwolf Fantastic Ride right when it kicks  in like a crinkling hit of crackle cocaine, but, then the rest of the song does not quite stay so strong. 

Los Angeles was like the end result of print pornography's original dispersal—the porno mag, at first being driven and produced by economic factors, later becoming outmoded and then becoming obsolete and then free (skateboard videos went through this same cycle)—a kid sees the pornography magazine for the first time, but in it's final free iteration, and the entire enterprise now defies economic production logic—as if somewhere unseen, was just some brandy mist swinger's paradise where access to such was abundant and so easy, as if the crumbled pages was really some exotic travelogue.

Los Angeles was that disconnection of its exhausted use from its original use, in a phase where the existence of such makes no sense to unversed someone who just arrived (the art sphere has similar Why does this even exist? phenomenon). The first time I ever saw a porno mag, the last twenty pages or so was of all naked ladies and 900 phone numbers, and I, as second grader, could not understand how the magazine seemed nationally distributed in a vague broader sense, and how it would be even possible to call up these exact women from where I lived to possibly later meet up with them (I did not know what phone sex was, and assumed the phone numbers were to somehow link up with these naked women advertised—and that type of phenomena of displacement, that's so Los Angeles). 

Los Angeles was also like the dysfunctional girlfriend, that in order to deal with her, you had to push back at her in a way that required you too being dysfunctional back at her just to save face and make a point, and then that only incriminated you more with her and then there is no way to explain this to her or ever make her see this . . .

Some invisible space between use value commodity function and symbolic order of representation seemed to be where Samantha was existing also now too, since total Samantha Ai leaving us and ascending onto one unknown black ink letter on one real life paper page, was the most inevitable logical progression of operations of the city, least not spectacle society. I'm the only one who can see that, and that's why I'm the Detective.

The suite was supplemented with stylish variegated palm fronds that Cartwright actually thought enough about to bring in. The mirror hung smugly back at the day party set up on the over-thick jail stripe wall paper wall, as if the horizontal impractically thick black bands alluded that the bigger stripes would somehow keep giant cartoon babies more marred in. Some surprisingly decent music, "Skin Game" by Tyrannosaurus Thesaurus, blotted out of the speakers in the corners off the ceiling of the suite, adding an atmosphere of subtle but steady reassuring unifying economic economy. 

The living room also had two faux finish gold crackle marbled fake Corinthian columns, as if when the room was constructed in the late seventies or early eighties, the useless columns were used as surrogate in supplementing the otherwise low and featureless decorated shed suite, probably distracting the inhabitants enough until they checked out and had not spent enough time to fully notice their cheap duplicity. Technically, this may have been considered postmodern, but originally it was a postmodern not so conscious of itself, or a postmodern not making some kind of meta statement—now enough time had passed as its veracity and cheapness aged splendidly retro. 

A blue cheetah print, Vision Street Wear Psycho Stix black pastry sprinkle Memphis style side table was brought in recently you could tell, by some interior designer probably—an ostentatious thing, which no one probably wanted but that could probably-be also absorbed by some institution, and the side table actually kind of brought the room together. It kind of reminded me of the PIL Greatest Hits So Far cover.

A black bartender was setting up the bar like an over friendly priest, friendly in a way, that seemed to relish in an even self reinforced subjugated assimilation around this certain Zoe Lane set, his exemplary sunniness only solidified his servant class outsider role firmly more embedded, which he really didn't seem to mind, seemingly exuding in firmly knowing his place and position and appearing to be generally happy even in relation to his labor tasks at hand, as if wisely knowing even handling glasses and setting up the bar is only but just toys for grown ups—and these are the simple pleasures of the poor.

But I could not help but think, if the bartender be granted some ultimate autonomy, and be bestowed unchecked power or some power, he too would even become some kind of money monster—it was structural, and we well know this city did built up its own monsters.

Otherwise some would well assume you would have to be rude and cutting towards the soiree's usual tiresome people. That in order for one to destabilize to rise into their social order, one took power through whatever even minute channels were given and available—because only the devil knows the set's exact social status was probably taken too from somebody else, even or especially, if their social status was merely inherited. All of this was true I suppose, but also very reductive, and also, besides, parties in LA, or at least the ones I was invited to could also be pretty groovy.

The poison shoes debutantes were all impossible, and impossible even towards the ones who could actually have them. And those who they let eventually take them, would eventually be driven to the cleaners (and the alterations) as their very right as being the self assumed conditions of the Platonic ideal their debs bodies and boobies were forged in. Their soft warm nightengale voices signaled compassion, empathy and a certain given general goodness projected and assumed very characteristic given of this very modern age—but that was half mask appopsite their insatiable demands, irrational logic, and Frankie Hill bulldog bullying they were perhaps, maybe, so want and likely to take part in. People often expressed their autonomy against some generalized idea of haters, it was easy to think of haters as that of automatically being men, but then one day you look back and realize all the biggest haters in your life were mostly just women probably.

But then again, it wasn't always so bad, and you could sometimes be suprised by kindness coming from anywhere.

Cartwright, the news agent was occupied in activity, in fully exploiting the innocence harried work automatically appears to bring. Everything was too big for Cartwright—his blazer, the complexity of the world, his audacity. Cartwright, over-perky in a way that gives superficial reassurance to all of the woefully out of touch women in the room and of the world, as there were Cartwright Fothergils all over the country and in every city.

You could always easily tell if it was someone else not fitting a certain landed archetype who was acting this exact same way as treacly Cartwright, the party's denizens probably would have otherwise probably complained, or would probably try to get the other in trouble.

Cartwright with cephalopod head, reminded me, kind of looked like the gaunt lead singer of Suede Automatic, what's his name—Cartwright was skinny but didn't even look good skinny, Cartwright parched gaunt and flushed and laeden in a certain obvious but hard to identify brand of mediocrity—it was this LA Von Zipper Von Dutch Brixton thing going on, that which morphed out of Heavy Metal coming out of 90's, when in the 90's, Metal then took it's cues into some short hair segue brit-pop restrained nose ring leather pants kind of thing, but then leading into whatever this motorcycle wave runner lake house Bret Michaels late embrace of Orange County country music thing that was going on now. 

Cartwright was wearing a ghastly Blimp Jeans tank top before the party started when he came to set up, and then at very last second right before people arrived, he changed into a soon to be untucked button down and blazer he brought on hanger with him, as if to maximize the tank top paradise city air out of giving his arm pits max jinx time to breathe—everywhere (besides the kind of decent music he had playing), his taste seemed all wrong. Cartwright, also without reservation, brought some dumb emotional support animal with him.

You over idealized destination cities and never make enough allowance for the banal secular which surely exists and exists everywhere, Cartwright was a part of all that in a way that you really just wanted to ask him why he even lived here. 

Oh, look at this little fella . . . Taven mewling, practically as drunk as a lumpen pumpkin already, practically mooing over Cartwright's teeny dog.

Bugaboo—this is today's my-little-helper, my Koko . . . Cartwright as if in a perpetual state of amazement at all the things he said.

Hiii Koko . . . Taven coo-ing, like she never seen someone's insipid toy dog before. It was extraordinary what people went along with.

If Koko helps Mommi at work, I'm gonna give Koko all the left overs and fixins' she wants, yes. . . Cartwright rhapsodizing, like such was some peak quirk manoeuvres management engineering innovation hack right in action before Taven's dilated eyes. Cartwright's dog was male, used female pronouns.

Did you just call yourself Mommy . . . I nickle back at Fothergil, which I should not have done.

Jake, relax, Taven tempering me, in the subtle ad hoc quietly patient self conceit of the usual feminine casual on spot reduction. Taven was the type of woman who probably played golf.

You must not like dogs, Detective . . . Cartwright glared at me in the dull blue of his concession stand stan eyes. Cartwright, as if he was figuring out something about me in real time, as if figuring something that if somehow unmasked would ostracise me for somewhere, Cartwright Fothergil casually, as if he could have some upper hand.

No, no. I do quite, I do do—Hi, um ya . . . Coca . . . I go, lamely looking like I'm almost about to pet the animal.

That's Ko-KO, Detective Belaine . . . Cartwright correcting sharply, 

Nattering Koko remained in the drench of Cartwright's arms, and one of the many moment's of the soiree where Ko-Ko would or could entirely hijack the conversational stream in distracting whoever you were talking to just right when the conversation was almost just about getting somewhere. It didn't exactly take a social anthropologist to exactly see how Koko was a buffer helpfully bringing pathetic little reassurance to Cartwright in giving a certain distraction to Cartwright so should he be more comfortable just carrying on about himself in maintaining a pleasant atmosphere of casual conversation, which administrating of such entertainments was actually his job, and yet, and also, so does he get to make about probably four times more than the usual, probably steels a house some somewhere off in the nowhere hills, and how this world was deigned and designed for bores so to thrive. It was extraordinary to see Cartwright could be included in the the of master race, and also so easily make such allowance for himself in needing to take a small dog everywhere in public with him now so he does not freak out, as a child gripps their worn down velveteen rabbit teddy bear when they went with their Mummy to buy panty hose at the department store. Ko-Ko black bug eye'd no scalera, shivering in Cartwright's arms now, and though it sensed it had everyone's full attention, you could tell Ko-Ko had no idea what was going on. You could also tell Ko-Ko had never been formally trained as a service animal.

Cartwright took out the blue and red enchiladas from the foil paper and arranged them methodically onto a dark pink 80's condom store postmodern ceramic tray, Cartwright adorning them with reedy pieces of cilantro, while he was talking to Taven there—the enchiladas looked delicious.

Cartwright pausing in front of the tray, 

The other night or a week ago I dreamed Ko-ko had run away and was gone, but then she came back—and I was scolding little Ko-ko, and in the dream, 'Ko-ko where have you been' I ask, and Ko-ko said 'I been to Chula Vista.'

People think apocalypse is time and place, but people themselves are Apocalypse. The elastic in my socks had stopped working, and I could feel my ruggling socks sag down on my ankles, and it was not too entirely reassuring. I aimlessly coasted sampling on-going convo going on, as if I was on the wall like a skulking black insect with too many eyes. 

First heard this on control . . .

The child star who uses terms like, Gonads, 

The established, or historic modes of land speculation have tended, I mean really, to determine the nature of the city's power structures, but even still really, power, or power is fragmented or more fragmented— though still is concentrated, but is not, not necessarily a hegemonic order still, but, then again while also existing in a hegemonic order . . .

Artists in recovery, and the meetings are all in their work, and not in a goodway, if a goodway is even possible, which by the way, it isn't . . .

Here anything possible, yet also nothing durable enough to invest faith in . . .

Love is like heroin, the sicker you are and the longer you have been without it, the less is necessary to fix you.

Los Angeles isa very enterprising type place—good ideas begin here, just bloom here and then multiply, there's West Side Crips, Inglewood Crips, Compton Crips, East Side Crips, Avalon Garden Crips, Grape Street Crips, Crips Crips . . .

Not everyone will be taken into the future.

And Marianne Faithfull was a serial cheater . . .

Kid's these days can't read, or even read handwriting—cursive—they think, when they see it, they think it's Spanish . . .

I was rung by Penny. I had recently purchased two new portable telephones—these had just come out and they were much better than everybody else. The devices made it easier to send typed messages, that could only be received by another person whom had the same brand device. I bought one for Penny, but I became increasingly weary of her phone calls now. I preferred the sending of, using the sketch notes feature and having her notes appear at a slight delay right onto my device, her words appearing onto the plastic glass on my portable tele—Penny's message usually appearing typed onto a graphic of a slightly rolled scroll that always reminded me of the Hollywood High mascot, the Sheik—anyways, each message Penny sent me was a new little cartoon scroll helpfully detailing her typing or what she had recently just typed out on the other end, or on like, her side. Maybe only a thousand people in the country had these tee-vee beepers right now, and I felt a bit privileged and superior whenever I used it in public now. 

Since all Samantha Ai had transcended onto one un-named physically printed ink letter on a real live piece of dead scroll paper page somewhere, thus Samantha totally descending into the linguistic order—on the text I received from Penny, I now saw Samantha right there even printed back in and onto those very electronic letters. That Samantha was on just one undisclosed alphabet letter, of which we still had not the faintest idea which—that mystery letter then and just then, also alluded to all the other letters in the alphabet, and Samantha could be read on those as well now too. Now I eyed Samantha everywhere, on the text of the hand markered fire sale signs of the fire sale store I drove past down on Santa Monica Boulevard, I saw Samantha on the black mix and match letters of the marquee film theatre, and I was seeing Samantha more and more everywhere, I was seeing Samantha in the Hustler Comix bubbles, in all the dialogue of Penthouse Letters, on just a bewildering amount of trampling parched words, as if multiplying Samantha Samantha-ing herself like from a built spilling box of turkey sausage chicken pox. 

I don't know how much contact Penny had had with Samantha, but talking to Penny was like a surrogate for Samantha—or no, it was like speaking directly to Samantha now. Penny was on the other end somewhere nowhere near downtown, Koreatown, whatever, I assume—I could imagine Penny in her stained frock that she wore for an extra day.

But don't get me wrong, Penny did though have the moves and she already knew the streets—Penny was not afraid to break the rules or to ever take the heat. Penny had grace under pressure surely, was as frisky as a newborn colt—Penny got rhythm, but really no sense of timing though. Despite Penn's party naked sensibility, she was a good second set of eyes (and not to mention a good second set of Bazoombas), and she was also getting me closer towards The Communes and then also closer to Samantha too now. I now very badly wanted to talk to Samantha. Penny wasn't exactly on the payroll, but I flowed her simoleans, and also, I got her that tele—which, if one learned to use to its full capability, these teles could even be used basically as if having a virtual office in one's pocket. 

There's dumb good and there's stupid good, Penny, 

Then which one is it? Penny, though just moving here fairly recently, already blooming full Hollywood Rose and you can even feel it on the other side of the line.

Dead Rock Cafe, Penny went, it seemed like she was talking to someone else also at the same time, and some of the barely audible things she spouted, I was not sure whether they were at me or at someone whereever she was at.

Elaborate, Penny. More please, I need more.

Look—they's just gonna rely on stunt casting, night moves, franken-biting.

King's English, Penny.

Hey Jake did you know, or didya know Johnny Melrose was or was roadie for like Shire Coulfax, and Shire Baxtron was a roadie for Johnny Melrose. 

Coulfax and yes, even the Greek gods cheated on each other, supposedly, but what of it?

I also clocked, no, I clocked Nasty Passion, Blackboard Jungle, Bush of Ghosts, Suza.

Penny, call me back when you decide, or like when you get me something I can actually use.

You know you like talking to me, Jake. I know you want to fuck-me, Penny, and even for Penny, sounding more cartoonish than usual.

No, no, Penny— I actually, do-not. I refute wearily, actually kind of meaning it, as I take a sip of the black water in the glass, phone marking against the still of my face.

Text Penny, next time text a send message wontcha', don't call—that's why, or why I even agreed to get you plasti-glass.

See if I can fish a few people out of the scrum, Boss, Penny's wilding presence still so seeping out over the phone.

Do that, and Penny—don't ever call me Boss again. You've done it before.

Eye eye eye, Penny in a super annoying, but kind of cute Speedy Gonzales voice.

The hurl of mirrors of the suite reflected against silent open doors, I was reassured by out the window how the city slung and didn't seem to be so looming as usual. I always felt better in an elevated building suite, I always felt better surrounded by buildings. Everyone was ugly now. There used to be skinny white girls in abundance and now they are extinct and rare and well extracted. Everyone had ugly dark matted wavy coarse Lego hair, everyone was so bulky, everyone drove in accompanying bulky sport utility vehicles as if on their way to eat hamburgers at the gym, everyone wore skin tight obese sporting attire to vehemently unsporting frame, everyone over-fed, everyone over-watered. Everyone walking around with giant juggs of water all the time. I was left among the hordes, and Delores was gone and Delores was well gone, 

As we here among the scant LA Roses, in West Hollywood where feasts at one time apparently never ceased, but sometimes they were still kind of going on—and I had a random dream of Delores' mother last night, and still I feel so ashamed how I admired her mother, how I tried to so curry her favor, I had another dream of Delores and also Delores' mother again . . .

And signs and symbols advanced in conflicting ways counterintuitively and in such subtle ways that people could not or did not decipher—in the dream I was desperately trying to explain, was trying to trace to Delores' mother that George Powell was an unconsciously Quasi-Marxist Neo-Con Neo-postmodernist Libertarian Materialist Anarchist (this can actually be coherently explained), I was trying to explain this to Delores' mother desperately, and could just not get anything across. The dream concluded in having no sight to Delores' heart.

I then saw Barnaby. Barnaby standing there all alone. Barnaby was inspecting this stylish molden dead aster in a terracotta pot over on the side. There was always a reassurance Barnaby brang with him, a heartening superficiality. I always kind of forgot about the quality of superficiality he brang and that I was reminded of whenever I saw him—Barnaby possessing that quality of superficiality that was so mandatory for a mingle.

Barnaby! I announce, practically jumping over the divan.

Hello, Dear, Barnaby droll-ed.

Barnaby was poor and almost destitute, but he looked wealthy, and it was too easy to forget we wasn't and it was easy finding yourself treating him like he was—you kind of just wanted it so to be for him.

I haven't seen or I haven't' seen you in quite a while—what's new with you, Barnaby.

Not too terribly much I'm quite afraid—I've b-een in actor jail, Barnaby, in his usual harsh and defiant wistfulness.

Industry jail?, I rush to over-enthusiastically ask him.

Alcoholics Anonymous more like it, I should say, or should I say, Barnaby casually looked about in some strained way, as if he was wearily sitting in an autograph booth at a comic book convention, this was just his natural demeanor and if you saw Barnaby, you could not quite exactly blame him. 

No!

Oh, how so such goes. It does give me the horrors just thinking about it, Barnaby wincing casually.

The lamplight on the small table was still on, while a tube of sunlight bent dangerously close by. Barnaby, wore a Seymour Glass A silk scarf around his neck wrapped, making his neck all cuddled up, all lamping beneath a dark blue coin button blazer. Barnaby was tall, his cheeks and end of his nose were hot toddy red, and the skin on his face looked weathered and porous, like nicked or eroded concrete on cratered concrete statue. There was something about his overall strained mannerism, that made him look like some sympathetic character somehow related to literature. He wore thick spectacles on his long regal weathered nose, his teeth were moss colored and stained and he also wore a charming white roped bill turquoise boating club hat.

But you're here and this . . . I rush to respond to Barnaby, a bit over enthusiastically.

Yes and alas, here and this, but I had to resign myself—it seemed my desire could not, cannot be alleviated.

Well, Barnaby, they say take it one day at a time.

I'm afraid I simply do not have so much time, my Dear.

It's a lot to ask, I know . . . 

Too much certainly. It's not so much the day drinking—that I could give up. Well actually, that's not true, but you know what I mean. But I'm afraid the nights are just positively dull and there is absolutely nothing to do in this tiny town . . . 

Well, at least you sound like you have it figured out, like life on your terms, your very will and all—you look, look good.

Thank you, Dear. Yes indeed, and looking good is all that matters. But I must say, Jake, leading meetings. I do miss the leading of the meetings, quite. If only I didn't have to give up the cooking sherry, I would still like to lead the meetings—and you just know how well I am at improv.

Oh, I mean, for sure. I mean like why not?

Why not is because they think alcoholism was or is a disease, quite frankly. Barnaby paused and thoughtfully pulled a piece of stray thread stuck onto my blazer.

Thanks, I fleck tenderly,  Anyways, anyways, disease, right, they say or are always that, saying that.

Well I could get in, into, or rather tended to get into Kerfuffles.

I can't imagine. I mean, like what about.

Well for one, alcoholism as a supposed disease has no bio marker, is what I kept trying to explain to them in the meetings I lead—there's no looking under a dusty old microscope to identify the body is contaminated by such malady other than just witnessing the effects of a lake of alcohol having on the organs. Looking at a damaged liver is an effect, and not causal. There is not exactly a blood test one can take to see if one is an alcoholic.

Totally, I over-agree in a frugal affirmative.

And so since there's no bio marker how could it possibly be a disease? It would certainly seem that alcoholism is a moral, existential condition retrofitted into a medical disease, largely by AA's putative, and I do mean putative, narrative of authority, and not so as it should be, happened upon by biological discovery.

Well they say the weight of the soul is only as much as a small stack of quarters.

Certainly. Alcoholism is not so much a medical theory than a conversation ritual or confessional technology. I'm quite afraid diseases don't tend to improve just because one finds a purpose or substitute, as they claim alcoholism, the disease, is kept at bay by collecting coins to buy coffee grounds and emptying dented ash cans. If such were a real physical disease, one would think it would seem to come back despite this. Imagine if one only had to stay busy and distracted, it would be enough to keep Leukemia mitigated. Though I do wish it was possible, because it would or it would probably save a lot of money. Don't you think.

Barnaby, is alcoholism or is alcoholism like in the DSM?

Oh, how the Hell should I know, Barnaby snapping exhausted, taking a sip from the glass with unconscious fortifying imperative.

Well, I mean . . .

It all just boils my piss . . . Barnaby looking around as if he's looking for something significant, as if his comment applied to some more general, pervasive condition.

Faultlines of conflict surely. Hey Barnaby—have you ever played fuck marry kill.

No, Dear, I'm afraid I have-not, Barnaby in some self inflection—a bit grim, a bit taciturn, though he still looked pretty good.

Well anyways, the world has survived its own downfall, and I know it shall survive yet again . . . 

If that is certainly such the case Jake Dear, then much I should say to Alcoholics Anonymous Hollywood Intergroup—Darling . . . Kiss . . . My . . . Ass.

And Los Angeles Late Afternoon,

Los Angeles was knowing how to play the song on guitar, but not knowing what it sounds like in your head and you can't hear it until you play it.

And Dear Glacier,

Dear Sea of Stars,

Los Angeles, Angel of Death, Night Moves, Reign in Blood, that was the City of Los Angeles.

The way crack smoke would curl up into a private airplane air vent and disappear into the vent untraceable—that's Los Angeles . . . 

Like the sexy red tray of bullets sitting on the glass table—that LA . . .

A Confederate flag on a motorcycle. You got last part in the video and your filmer is never satisfied.

Richard Pryor prior basing himself alive on fire—that's the crisis of closure of Los Angeles again . . .

Lincoln monopolized the stove top stuffing hat, and had a second invisible L hidden in his name . . .

And I was once an early Habitat dark East Coast Autumn Bauhausler, which I felt but could not describe or realize exaction— 

Now it was all born-in-a-trunk yoga foam mandala tattoos bulletin boards, it might have been the laking dog breakfast dorming black arm now suburban town square outdoor mall plane Jane secular of it all, names and names and names where parents didn't give them so much a name, but gave their children adjectives and adverbs turned to nouns, Precious, Beauty, Felicity, Unique, Patience, Destiny in that some vehemently Don Knotts Berry Farm kiosking audacity—that was Los Los Los.

But I remembered what Barnaby had rhapsodized earlier, Barnaby was talking about the first parties on earth, as being an actor was Barnaby's vocation, he went into monologue, some monologue, some eloquent monologue he must have or that he did have memorized, I suspect,

. . . in arid places, where water could be had only from wells, people simply had to unite to sink them, or at least to agree about their use. Such must have been the origin of societies and languages in warm countries. That is where the first ties were formed; there were the first meetings of the two sexes. Girls would come fetch water from the household, young men came to water their herds. There eyes, accustomed to the same sights since infancy, began to see sweeter ones. The heart was moved by these new objects; an unknown attraction rendered it less savage; it felt the pleasure of not being alone. Imperceptibly, water became more necessary. The livestock were thirsty more often. One would arrive in haste and leave in regret. In that happy age when nothing marked the hours, nothing would oblige one to count them; the only measure of time would be amusement and boredom. Under old oaks, conquerors of the years, an ardent youth gradually forgot its ferocity. Gradually they tamed one another. In forcing oneself to make oneself understood, one learnt to explain oneself. There the first festivals took place. Feet leaped with joy, eager gesture no longer sufficed, the voice accompanied it with passionate accents; pleasure and desire mingled and were felt together. There at last was the true cradle of peoples; and from the pure crystal of the fountains came the first fires of love.

Out of the veranda I could smell dangerous burning, but I could not see anything, and the smell smelt so innocent and camp fire quaint in the deliciously warm day. The flimsy screen of foliage and the palm trees misaligned—and all the palm trees wonked in respect to each other making the city look like one big messy adult toy chest.

The day party got started off for the most part. I half strolled around with a comfort and ease finding assurance in all available and extant superficiality. Songing song playing over the speakers, Cali country sang, maybe you've heard it before . . . Everybody knew California country was the best country music of all time—and it sure as hell didn't come from Texas.

Henrietta was afraid to dance with Whitney,

Even though Gerald was in the same room,

Gerald said don't worry, it aint nuthin'

But I sure hope this song is over soon . . . .

The lyrics struck, made an immediate impression. I had not the faintest idea who this was or was, and there was no one to find and ask in time, before the song would sink back into oblivion.

I scumbled onto some brassy post rapper type next 2 three peeps, he in the middle of horribly stamping down the surface level of depth of droppin' perfectly unimaginative knowledge—rhapsodizing about 'the balance'. So astonishing it was how far were we in the future, and people were still baffled and still mystified about a concept basically illustrated by a thousand year old brand logo—he's saying duality, as if such discovery was still a part of some all current white hot zeitgeist age spiritual and epistemological discovery now. Balance. Yin and Yang. Positive and Negative, sure.

He digressed in a detour spitting he was a rapper of privileged position—he had an 'elite job' as an MC,  according to him, and there was not that many people in the world who again, according to him 'could do what I do', and I couldn't especially help but wonder if such sentiment factors in the Lukacsian concept of literary form and aesthetics being tethered directly to economic conditions, or how figures such as the poet being destroyed and decimated and replaced to a larger degree with program manager or master of ceremonies in a network of activity, just as their role and anything the MC does now has an outsized effect and reception due to primacy and prevalence predicated by the system through which all activity is now tethered and subsumed around. It was Foucauldian. I only but wonder if he is taking into consideration that we were drowning in a soggy sack sea of MCs. It was like a biographer more likely being called a fantastic writer by the fans of the subject of the biography of a figure who was popular, than a biographer who wrote about someone no one particularly liked or really cared about. A sub par and half charismatic rapper could ascend and fare scores better in the current system significantly better than a young prodigy jazz guitarist, simply because rap is the most current prevalent currency. Someone with the name 'Lil Xavier was more likely to be considerably more successful than an eighty year old lesbian modernist painter who lives alone in Santa Fe and grinds down her own pigments and who for decades has maintained an unflagging and practiced rigorous and ethical methodology and approach to form. I wondered if the post rapper was even considering and factoring in all the ups and downs of Piper Trammel's career into his dross calculus. Sentimental entrepreneurial mind set song themes forever X Barz by over cocky frizz twinks who still live at home. 

For as significant as he thought he was—he didn't know the fuck Carroll was man, and Carroll was the king of hip hop in a way this otherwise ez-kill background extra in the video game of life couldn't quite now entirely fathom. This generation of rapper even forged 'sneaker culture' off our heels, in a way that they had no idea of the coinage of Howard ones, Enigmas, Etnies Scams, Airwalk 86's. We never based our entire personality on our shoes (Well, we kind of did.) But skate shoes walked, so that what of their now self appointed consumer-expert airs of post rappers repping so fastidious now, almost two decades later as an unknowing consequence of in fact our little underground—we just skated them, and they were enbrowned and chuffed into the trash, and we kept it moving, in a way not too many mollycoddling closet tupperware buying shoe-Edgars can comprehend now. I had once heard a rapper myopically diagnose Supreme 'as all over', solely based on some misguided metric assessment of Supreme's current shoe collabs (preposterous, really)—Supreme was God in a way he could never grasp. You don't skate homie, and if you do skate but you weren't around in the nineties—your opinion still does not matter.

I wheedle into the conversation, Hey homie—what's objectively better, unconsciously neo-totalitarian Futurist-stan chad-ed sleeved graduate student instore mini mini-ramp tagging scorcher burner hallows retail sites in London or, post twee dover-stan shoe clinic mortar boutique re-soulers in Los Angeles. . .

The conversation stopped on a yellow plier'd bent peso, the man and the two women he was talking to just kind of looked at me a bit sallow.

The post rap figure stood halted among the peer group, about as useful as a coal scuttle on summer day, he smiled in a charismatic unearned arrogant loucheness from too much undeserved attention, as if not too concerned or bothered about it anyways, Well, either—it's all like so. . . 

The rap-poison otiosity of it, and not the kind of the more somewhat au courant Frank Ocean vehement avante-normie variety (still wretched), and as usual only I could tell—this guy was more post Harmony Korine FLO RIDA chalice stock.

Okay, I'll make it easier for you, what's objectively better mass suicide or—

Lindsay, who I didn't see, comes blindsiding into the convo flippantly, Beatriz Milanese or Beatriz Meseguer?

Pre-cog? I try to dial in.

No, Space-Brain, Lindsay trains.

Turning more to Lindsay like an eight o' clock news anchor sharing news desk with her, I counter, What do you know, what's good . . . 

Lindsay, flaxen in her natural blond-superior Farrah Faucet hair, I'll give you an example—Stewed Barracuda pornography studio funk troggs Tobee Luckhurst or even Gwendolin Tolly . . .

Well, Lindsay—can't exactly argue with you there,yeah— right right,

Women are incredible. I think she was just trying to get to the current Kordansky pop-folk green and blue cholo evil clown stylized cartoon germ thing of it all, or that's what I was thinking at least—one of the women, a black woman in sharp business attire, the archetypal black woman you could see driving a Porsche around Brentwood, nods in some on the spot inaccurate understanding.

Nevermind. I address to the group, unleashing them from my usual tired party repartee.

Nevermind? Well please, never mind my friend, this is Jake, Detective Jake Belaine, he's old Hollywood, Lindsaying lending me out now ever so slight air of respectability.

Well, old new-Hollywood, I correct Lindsay, in a spell of dourly comported practiced and strained wieriness.

Greatest panty sniffer south of Calistoga . . . Lindsay plucks, while eating an orchid between her fingers in a defiant self-sense eclecticism.

Lindsay's voice was muffled while she chewed like it was a nacho, Mmph, they call him Bloodhound . . . Lindsay adds.

Then how come you so scale, Jake, black woman in a Porsche goes.

No—it's nothing, really. Anyways, I stopped or stopped taking cases or cases anyways—or, and, also technology like drived, or like drove, drive, out the need for me altogether or almost—though I still got, or still get a little business my way of . . .

No no, Jake is really good. Jake, or so tell us—what's like now now or what's now. . . Sidney adding. Sid knew me already. Sid had short black hair dyed to be ever blacker, she wore nice black combat boots and black socks, black shorts and a black top—just the way she put herself together made her infinitely more attractive than the proverbial obviously spear genera-beautiful rectangle eyebrow rectangle panty Proposal Island girl, which was now the standard bearer here. I always thought Sid looked kinda looked like Al Pacino's supposed and unlikely pomo wife in Heat.

Pop Ex . . . 

Oh God, Besides Population Ex, Jake . . .  Lindsay Lindsaying yet again, as just about as jaded as the teenage sky,

What. I deflect innocently, as if I never stopped canvassing.

Anything, anything besides the band Jake, Lindsay, Lindsaying yet again, but what else could you expect from her?

Nothing, there's nothing or nothing else . . . I state in an innocent soberness, it was exhausting how things so obvious and true, would not be absorbed by the common attitude of the sometimes you can't reason with a dog of the group.  

Lindsay can be really great sometimes, though—she knows I was pro-am a grip ago, and Lindsay always seemed at the very least superficially interested and encouraging or encouraging, as she was always loath to reprising the subject—she just mostly hated Rooney, that's all.

Okay, okay, then—what's, or what's what, Danceteria Dave? 

Bed new days. 

Bed knew days? Linder never to miss a rally for sexual innuendo, as infinity is a dataset dotted with Lindsay eyes.

I mean bad, bad, new, days, soon, I try to hold over the music, Death of video by everybody video in the future. It's, it's just this, this what, doormat greeting LA board co skittering skit copy?, like thing, everyone in the future will be filmmakers, but films will be dead—or like, because, how can something be so half candy assed yet also be so overdone? 

Mentioning all this seems a bit too ahead of the times, not familiar to the group and I heard the silence of their incomprehension, The Millennials sure are going to like figure out the riddle to that answer, I go.

You mean the answer to that riddle, Lindsay was always being contrary.

You know what I mea—

Belaine . . . Kristen grabbing the elbow of my sport coat, vying to get my stupid attention. 

Kristen had on a round blue bomber tied around her waist, with an over logo'd Helveti-clean expensive penicillin blue sweatshirt, with a row of Toy R' Us yellow rando sophisto non sequitur text going down each sleeve stack, stacked illegible obscure Illustrator vector logo's on the front chest over where the heart is supposed to be (kinda where her boobies are), and the back, with a giant 8-bit map Amiga Commodore reduced rectangle like image flanked between more yellow gothic scrips, in a way you could tell the sweatshirt was micro batch meta, but you were not quite sure exactly what it was for—as if for some journal, niche academic, like Yale graphic design department aesthetic for web writing subscription essays. You could smell the bubble gum blue off the soda pop cologne Kristen had on,

What? I don't, no—I just don't know, I pause in a wave of familiar anxiety, caused by nothing here, an anxiety seemingly only brought on by itself.

Not just right now, Sid fluming something to Kirsten, that I didn't quite catch.

Distracted by Sid and Kirst I pause in the immediate misrecognition of the moment and continue,

It's all so savage mind psycho logic third world witchhouse spiked belt secondary, head and face tats kinda thing of it all, Converse off-brand flow models with extra stitching and useless extra panel added to otherwise classic model —like a bat out of hell, or at least an El Salvadorian mega prison, I go, totally talking out the mouth.

Finding a leg, I go on my usual spiel,

Look—you have twenty abstract painters, each with their own slop on paint signature—then you have one hundred thousand abstract painters—and it becomes death of the subject. All the new one hundred thousand painters may not only use your once unique painting style into non-uniqueness, but they will also bastardize it and exacerbate it all in an accelerating way, which may cause grotesquery, so much that it contaminates the entire field and becomes a liability—basically a population crisis. 

No one knew quite what to add, I go overboard with supplement, That's what's goin' on in skateboarding now. Everyone is postmodern in a way they don't know what postmodern is—and actually post postmodern is more accurate, though sounds inane—and all the over-competent stocky stance broccoli hair wumping oval ams, and all the over thunder clouding clap functionalist 'sperging-out of it all . . .

Jake okay, that's enough. Lindsay not knowing exactly what I meant, but suspecting, assuming what I'm saying is too negative, like she always does, such that of her all too common misapprehension just wheedling away of the accuracy of my assessment. 

Ok, I'm sorry—I take that back, I go, not really meaning it.

What you think of  J. Dutton Lemon? Sidney trying to dot and dash in.

Avante-normie.

A confused silence subsumed the immediate atmosphere like a cloud blocking out bricked sun beams from getting on down to the ever stewing heterogeneity of ground.

Tobee Luckhurst, Lindsay—do you know who that is?

Sidney, what's that what, black woman in a Porsche still listers patiently, as if on all violent-society busman's holiday.

Look, all I'm saying, or like, all I'm saying is was . . .  was there is a wide parochialism in New York, that's all—and I just never hear anyone ever say this—I never hear anyone say this, but there always has, there's always has beens. 

No, there's not, Lindsay being reductive, a bit in a myopia of all the insistence of her persistent, ever optimistic outlook.

Like who?, woman in a Porsche still genuinely curious.

Looking around, I look for Macey in the suite, I knew Macey was supposed to be here, skirting the appearance of being preoccupied, I shoot back, I don't know, I, no, know—Lee Quiñones canvases LOL.

Lindsay gin-eyed and fuzzed, you could just tell she was clearly enjoying being at the spread—it was indeed a lovely afternoon in the hum of the party's spin, yet also, West Hollywood did seem so quiet now and the buildings in the background stood silent like they were protecting us all from the beetleing crawl of the WORLD ENTERTAINMENT sprawl, where stylistic innovation no longer seemed possible.

Sidney said everytime she hears an academic name drop Columbia, it always made her think about some third world country, and the import of its fanciness has never exactly translated on her.

Hey mane, I went to COULMBIAAA, Vato, Sidney does in her extreme cartel voice mimicry, and she was cracking us up now.

Sidney then finds some foothold about the group, just now so up and goes, speaking as if it was a seminar,

Okay so look, listen gang, so think about it, or think about it ya know . . .

So Boomers discovered postmodernism okay,

And so then like Gen X just ran, ran with it, did it best let's say, but everything has it's day and irony gets phased out,

But of then, of course Millennials were too used to it, and took it for granted, or took it for nothing, and cemented it into Beach Fossils non-consequence,

You're looking at me—Lindsay, what's that look!, Sid mashing her lips gamely, her hands in playful exasperation as if playing Win Lose or Draw.

Sid lights a cigarette, and someone whispers something in her ear, though it vaguely seeming not about anything concerning this immediate scene. The post rapper says something about the expansion of broadband bandwidth somehow marking the end of MTV. Someone handed ma a joint, and I took too big an inhale and then was swimming in paranoia and then slightly freaking out. 

Jake, you alright, post rapper asks me in thoughtful genuine concern as he must see my face in a grip of anxiousness.

What me? No, no, I'm okay—I'm cool, cool, I try to pull it together, shaking my glass of ice resolutely.

Sidney regains herself, So anyways, ANYWAYS look, Gen Z celebrated postmodern in an exacerbated flippancy exuding in all its flashy trash—while Boomers, Boomers rediscovered it and turned it into a bastardized neoconservative reactionary incoherent accelerationism, or as Jake would say, 'avant-normie' aesthetic, ha ha, that was, or which was twenty plus years behind Gen X, Boomers using a regressive semiotic illiterate self satisfied braying bottom-feeder PoMo like thing then now, Sidney in very instructive tone.

I mean, I mean spot the lie, Sidney concludes in a way obviously noticeable that she practices oration.

Sid's tirade crescendoed, and then there was not much to say, Lindsay goes to Sid, Tell me what you would do to get it from me . . . 

Sidney held a fellowship, some program in Visual Arts Administration whatever, Sid was clearly testing out her elevator pitch—which was actually okay and not at all a burden among the group.

I got into a side conversation with post rapper, my usual progress and architecture and infrastructure thing I always go on about—Maria Wyeth in the seventies calmed herself down driving around the serpentine freeway systems of the nineteen seventies, which now, considering the population explosion, freeway navigation is catastrophically more perilous, like wading through perpetual mass exodus, and not necessarily so calming. Though we both agreed listening to music driving is the best delivery device, stoned seduced and brainwashed by song, temporality allowing for exuding, while riding through liminal paths in realizing some sprawling promise projected inside us and now out towards somewhere beyond. 

I actually knew Sidney was recently jailed, because she missed some court dates related to some citation she received for failing to control her wild horses, somehow allowing them to freely roam the streets of Quinnipiac at night, causing local traffic complications. Sid spent a week in jail, and a couple of days after she was released from jail, she was arrested again, this time for a misdemeanor drunk driving road rage charge somewhere in New Haven. Sidney was sent back to jail.

Private eyeing Sidney now, you would never have known. One could not help but wonder how being jailed twice would have affected her standing within her program—people like Sid carried on a capacity for not letting such things bother them, and although reckless and irresponsible and brazen her actions, such compartmentalization could seem essential and intelligently adaptive, though high stakes self-enabling and generally egregiously irresponsible. With Sid I could never tell how exactly she stayed in business.

And dang the doorbell suddenly rang, thus startling Lindsay so, like, as if Lindsay had never been indoors or something, practically.

I was a bit loosened up like a spruced goose, not as annoyed as I was when I first arrived. I saw Cartwright and finally went up to him.

Hey, Cartwright, I go, while fiddling with the glass vial in my pocket. 

Hi Jake. Cartwright, with a sunniness that did not fully conceal his rightful trepidation in interacting with me now. He wore a strong cologne that smelled like Dr. Pepper. 

 

Hey Cartwright—ya ever seen Smoke House?, reeling random at Cartwright, and sort of fully indulging myself in the straight of my buzz.

Cartwright looks at me with an almost incredulous skepticism that could not quite be hidden from his face, What, is that from, or are you talking about that movie from . . .

Yeah, yeah.

 —the eighties? 

Yeah, Smoke House, Smoke . . . 

No, no I haven't not, Jake, I'm afraid—Cartwright then looking out over impassively, while fussing with a bucket of ice.

Oh, man . . .

Cartwright looks back at me and gives me a once over, You sure do seem awake, Jake . . . 

I give no response, and then Cartwright kind of slackens.

That film has hit a bit of a resurgence, I guess? Cartwright loosening up, straining to maintain some common ground of topic.

Now really indulging myself, Basically, a little shy of two hours of Carmen Duncan doing what he does best—

Yes, and . . . , Cartwright now at a loss.

Kicking serious ass, I rush to spit at Cartwright too buzzed.

What was that . . .

I says, kicking serious ass . . . 

Oh, Cartwright absorbing my statement reproachfully, he turns his head as if reconnoitering towards the party scene.

And the whole damn time, I add lamely late.

Well, Cartwright not knowing quite what to say, but still listening at least a bit somewhat sympathetically.

Yeah! Yes, I too then scan around the room in the all of my overstimulated distraction.

 I—I . . . like . . . Duncan . . . . Carmen, Cartwright as if conceding to something invisible, with somewhat fraught considered provisionality.

 

Then I could not stop looking at Cartwright Fothergil's long fingernails and it bothered me. It was not the lazy haven't gotten around to clipping fingernails, but it was a deliberate wierdo-signal something aloft behind the scenes kind of long grown out gross.

Cartwright, he just kicking serious ass the whole time and the whole entire time, and just when you think he's done kicking ass—guess what?

He, Cartwright at a patient loss.

He just keeps kicking more ass! I honestly don't know how they did it, I casually marvel, gamely swirling my drink and then look up and out with blank expectation upon my face.

Well, I'll have to, um, check that one out there Jake, Cartwright, in a way you could tell that he probably wasn't exactly going to go right home after the fiesta and watch Smoke House immediately, but the sentiment was at least kind of taken in. 

How do you know Macey and Lydia? Cartwright changes the subject, himself now with an air of wise knowingness.

Who?

Oh, nevermind—I won't introduce you, you can thank me ahead of time.

Pepper, Pavel? I play it off like I don't know who he's talking about.

No, no Lydia 'n Mace.

No, no, know 'em, I buss, zigzagging, trying to be vague.

Well Macey, she's, she's the type, yours who believes AMway, chain mail, zodiac year traits, practically—she's real superstitious.

What, wadaya mean, Cartwright? What are you saying ha ha . . .

It's, the, a Chinese trick—the menus. Everyone born year of the snake, has the supposedly same personality trait. But it's a myth, ya know.

Cartwright then does something, like he's trying to get something out meaningful, closing his eyes while talking, as if in meditated concentration.

Everyone year of the rat, is supposed or supposed to be—hard working, good with money, dependable, whatever—so that's everyone born in that same year? Cartwright flitted away with a certain detachment that goes with being observant host at party.

Right right right, kind of preposterous, I go, not really knowing what I'm agreeing with because I didn't fully hear what he said.

You were talking about population explosion, population ex—What happens when the population exponentially explodes? Does this zodiac year, just scale accordingly? Of course not—that just exposes its little scam, and people just like go with it all. It must be an old Chinese shell game. People, Americans naively assume automatic believability of like esoteric exotic . . . 

People just like to read about themselves, Cartwright breezily adding after a long pause.

I'll drink to that,  I toast, unnecessarily holding up my piña-mojito in the air.  

I know I may have been impatient by Cartwright earlier, with his dogg, Coca and all—but actually, or actually, Cartwright was okay, and also too though, he was basically working for free today, from what I later found out—I wasn't aware Cartwright organized the party at about half his rate perhaps, but did, or was, or was because he was even also invested or invested or has some stake-in in Telledine, this thing, or the organization fête-ing this fête. 

Telledine was or is some start up or some new start up. I quite didn't catch the full deal of it all, but the thing is was, or the main premise was, or was how half cocked the internet is and all. The premise was was was the internet was just wincing stunted and gaunt about—think about it: no one really invested, or ever invested their time, or put in work or real work on their website pages or ever if you think about it, everything just so instant gratification. Telledine was a new internet on a second internet, but one put together more carefully and more thoroughly than the gore galore we have now—even libraries still contained more info than the internet, because people did exactly as the most little as possible when they worked on-line, and who could blame them? (Well, I can and I do)—it makes sense that time and attention span were in short supply through such dusted by axl post postmodern medium. To quote Gore Vidal, Gore Vidal, as he most famously said: the medium is like the thing. 

But I read their brochure, Telledine was a bit of a rappel à l'ordre, a return to order of sorts—if squads or legions of people were able to not just transfer the wealth of libraries of books onto this alt net, this second internet—the internet has hardly been around for a decade, this, competing against the what of hundreds of years of humans hard publishing and baking books, Playboy magazines, journals, whatever—the current internet being paultry in ways most people didn't realize or ever realize. Think about it, collective stories in Penthouse Forum over decades had more content than the size of the current internet—its not exactly as if people wrote their own complete novels on the internet—and everything is so lossed and tossed

I suppose Telledine was more of a working ethics than anything seemingly, not even really that much driven by commerce, but an imaging of an internet built more like garden—a slower, more put together sprite wire. They's was talking about forming armies of people, or trying to at least, just to upload all the glacier info of everything previously published in the real world thus far. There was still more info in the real world. And it would take legions to upload the ocean of writing up and into and onto this second internet. And no where on the first internet does it say anywhere, every piece of water was a mirror.

 I didn't know the full deal of their like thing, but after hearing the presentation, well I actually didn't hear the presentation—Sidney let me in on it, but anyways, or anyways I was pretty much basically just down or down for the most part. Maybe if or when POP EX didn't work out, I could . . .  

Anyways, I was overcome with astonishment when Cartwright commented something extraordinary—he went, or Cartwright said dreams are dreams, and dreams are nonsensical and formless and random and cartoon-like because in waking life, the order that the day brings, help structure the flow of our thoughts, in a way that the no activity in sleep more so brings about the non sequitur of our free falling free wheeling free floating signifier leaping sleeping no direction mind left all to its gadabout own. I found that what Cartwright to have had said to in fact be very bright.

I may have uttered something about, making a joke about LA waking life being even more unstable than the subconscious left to its own meandering wending way in dreamland, but it didn't land, or didn't quite catch, but Cartwright, anyways was actually being really cool now, making me feel well at ease.

Cartwright was saying something, but my eyes were not on him now, but on two women who I did not notice walk into the living room.

Now occupying the party like second hand furniture, I eye Macey there right across the room. She had on a black baby tee with jeans exposing her belly—both of the fingers of her hands where in each front pocket, making the exposed flesh from the top of her hands look like the flesh from her pelvis flanking on both sides carving out her jean in shape of panty—from the strained distance, it incidentally created a mirage she was wearing her underwear hiked up over the waist line of her stark red-blue jeans.

The two women came up to me now, not talking to Cartwright anymore, they so arriving immediate and corporeal—it had all lined up, it was time to really get to work now.

I can tell when people pretend like they didn't know the answer to the question—it happened with me a lot. Lydia was the type to be too lazy to even be bothered to even attempt to try, and would probably prefer automatically deferring in befuddlement.

Relax, I whisper, I got, well—hey come over here—pst, pst, lifting my drink slightly in the air signaling them not so inconspicuously.

Jake, what, Lydia as disoriented as a rhinoceros.

Pst! Pst! I take a short pause, hemming to futility, conspicuously obvious, stepping into the steep of the room.

Jake wants us to go with him in there! Lydia peppered, she seemed like she always talked too loud. As careful as one needed to be from the narcs and lampsters, there was really nothing you could do to curtail such blithely suspicious casual behaviour, and then when you did try to say something sensibly and politely, everyone just thought you must have just scott lost your marbles.

Okay, I got, yeah, I got—I got some pretty decent beak, actually . . . nose hash.

You got it what with you, Lydia, rotating in place in slightly mimed dance, revolving around like some funk-dawg'n helix.

Step into my officina, I appoint uselessly, even though we were already in the room, but my favorite part of the job was kind of claiming, designating third and fourth spaces that aren't really mine.

Macey, roustabout Lydia, getting Macey's attention, now serious in such seemingly rare instance.

Look, I got, well, I got this . . . Tampico Bay, I proffer my ply.

Tampico Bay? Macey went, as her perfectly remarkable chimichangas unfairly pushed against its self imposed barrier out towards the lookabout world. Mace was at the party unsupervised.

Ou, that sounds s-tatsy . . . 

Lydia toshes with some charisma that seems would go far wherever she's used to being maybe sometimes,  she says something I can't quite hear, not quite landing right in front my grill in the moment, 

Yeah, that because it is—no joke . . .

How much.

Four fifty Jakes, at three point five  . . . 

An eightball for four fifty. That's jonkers.

No, yeah, that's the thing, it is, it is, totally jonkers . . .

. . . do have any other brands, Lydia suggests frugally.

No, no I ain't . . .

I mean I can do eighty a hundo—what, something else along . . . 

I got nothing else . . .

Jake that's insane . . . 

Well, no, here's, or here's the thing—

What's here's the thing, Belaine? Macey with unjustified over accusatory but playful interrogation.

It's thing is is—I don't even want to sell it—four and a half is what I am willing to part, and I kinda don't even really want to do that . . .

So, it's pretty strong . . .

Strong? Babycakes, it's not so much strong, I mean it is strong,yes— but it's not so much strong, as it, it just opens up the very gait of moment in ornament way you know you are going to miss right as it bricks in through the window pane of your . . .

Belaine, cut the crap—Mace scrunching her face, I knew how to read Mace, knew what to look for. She was married, unchaperoned.

The blend just has this like very very subtle fig taste coke back—I mean, you can tell they really put some care into mixing the batch for sureee . . . 

Lydia, I want that, that sounds good . . . Macey hastening to arrange, you could tell she really wanted to skull the beak.

Jake can we think about it . . . Lydia, with what I assume was her characteristic frugality.

Sure thing Doll, but I might not want to forfeit it by then—

Well if the Devil made it any better she'd a kept it herself . . . Macey states casually looking away—I caught a view of the charisma of her side ways glare looking off at all the skimble skamble over in the living room.

Okay, okay. No, no worries, Jake. Just let us—

Macey turns her head in the pitch of transaction, I want it, Lydia, let's, let's just do it . . . Macey races, really wanting to tosh with Tosh rails, apparently. Macey was supposedly supposed to be cheating on her husband, which I was already pretty sure that—

Ya know I heard Marine Vacht, Marine Vacht is supposed to be coming later . . . Lydia stone casting on whatever of her face constituted as grimace, hiding the spiked belt in her mouth of two rows of too many short square teeth—which reminded me of the movie Critters. Lydia looked at me wanly in over attention.

What, I go, now snapping too nervous as labrador in a rainstorm. 

Oh, no-yeah, no she's supposed to too—going, or going to be here, here at least or here I think . . . Mace stating innocently. 

What and you know this, I smirp at Mace, then straightening my gait uselessly.

Mace looked out in distraction of the sound of glass breaking off in the distance, not saying nothing, just leaving me hanging—I hate when people try to pull that. I was just about to ask her again, and then she finally just replies.

Yeah, crazy right, Macey abscently, in some blank of unaccountability of situation.

In that case . . . I not selling—people put down your magazine, I state trying my best to convey on the spot resolve.

Jake! Lydia snapped out of the lull of her daze, I wasn't trying to actually make a point, but was just sticking more to what I had originally kind of loosely planned. 

No, no, it's all good—just forget about it, please, I demur noticing exactly how flaky I'm now coming off.

Jake, you can't do that, Lydia declaring with so much very little pricking authority, which you would have thought she was about to accidentally swallow her tongue, practically. 

Nah, sorry, I try to take a sip from my glass that's mostly just ice now.

Jake! Macey excitedly glaring at me in slightly racing eyes, in a way that made me feel guilty already.

Jake, if you do not sell your wares, we are going to have to call and report you to Ed McMahon, Lydia flitting at me so.

Babe he's dead, and anyways you ain't the first, I own the entire Bozack—no, no it's all good, jus' forget about it, okay?

Just because Marine—

Look, look I'll snort you out later, though—Mace. . .

Jake!, Lydia trailing on as I evade the scene of the crime.

I saunter away leaving them hanging, saying something lamely about this tough guy dancing, but it not quite landing. 

Jake, come back or find you later?, Mace, suggestive . . .

Yeah, forsure . . . 

In the shaded master's suite, all in the plenty of the empty room, the over head lights were off, no one got around to turn on the corner lamp between the mirror and the clock. For once I was washing my hands with free soap in the adjoining bathroom—so far we were in the future that clean soap was free, but I didn't take advantage of it, never ever took advantage of it, and I always thought that was something savage and barbaric about me. We complain about the less than ideal conditions of things, but I always think about the deficiency in myself, when things are going along so swimmingly, and where I am just lazed and lazy to take advantage. Washing my hands right now was a good start to finally perhaps get things headed in the right direction. 

I then decide to further start water washing my metallic face inappropriately in the sink. Taking to toweling my face with hand towel, behind my reflection in the washroom mirror, Stephen appears. Stephen is here now, now keeping me company in the dim master's bathroom.

Christ Mac, I'm not half the man I used to be— what am I even doing here, just so yet again? My voice trailing in front of him in travesty, while I talked to him behind me in mirror.

Nothing Jake, you're just plying, plying your wares, that's all, Stephen, as about as lake lark louche as could be expected, giving off what seems to be exactly how he would be in some backstage setting.

I'm wasting time—I've wasted time, grating myself down, I finish towling my face to the knuckle.

Life is long . . . you're fine, real fine in comparison, generally, Stephen makes me flash to mat in Japan, supplementing in the stone cold charisma of all that he says.

I'm just so—so sick, of this, of all this . . .

Your'e twine-ing your vocation—a man can only presume upon the work that he has at hand . . . . Stephen sagely, how do I love everything he says.

I guess you're right, Mac . . .  No, you know what, you are right, Mac.

You fill a need, you found your role—you max your givens . . . You've always done that, even since you were teenager, even when you were in middle school, you've always done your best, Jake—you fine, fine—people need information, information dust— and you provide a service. And hey, at least you don't have to wear a uniform anymore, Mac proffers wisely in his distinct casual charismatic . . . 

Mac was only the float in the air between all the raindrops in the spring, Mac was Judith Light's West Coast cold son, Mac was the lust rum in the lustrum.

For sure, yeah yeah—you're right Mac. Mac, you know, you're right, you're right—you're are always right. Thank you so much again.

It nothing. Mac, with a meaningful but slightly bored in the moment droll.

And what about Population Ex,

Ah, Population Ex? Just hearing Mac say Pop Ex, immediately puts it all into proper perspective.

Yeah . . .

Fuck 'em . . . 

Really?

The whole rot of them.

Your'e right Mac, no, no, no Mac your friggin' right Mac—I know, I know, the end of it,

Mac was like, the of of you only needing to say it to him, and just by you saying it, it reinforced and confirmed exactly the what of what you thought he would say just by the silence of his immediate perception—he didn't even have to say nothing, and it was a part of exactly of all of what you so loved about him.

But even Joaquin? I love Joaquin.

Joaquin's cool, Mac with frugal nasal drawl, not exactly rushing to finish his sentence, —but his general interests may not necessarily quite exactly align with yours, though I'm afraid. That, and all that may not align with him keeping the whole of Rooney or Rooney much rather . . . satiated.

It was a quaquaversal horniness spreading from one point and disseminating wherever it went. Macey's husband wanted confirmation she was being unfaithful. But Richard, her husband, my client, was an insufferable bastard you could well tell—and a total 'sperg to boot too. Sometimes the air was dirtier than grey smoke, clearly. Macey clearly parched for Technicolor, and the way she looked at me earlier made me harder than listening to Chinese Democracy. I was at an impasse being private dick, and I've always operated and did business with utmost integrity. But as as much integrity I operated under, such seemed not only to not matter at all or ever factor in anywhere, but of course I was prime to always being wrongly incriminated, automatically implicated just by the very nature of my vocation. It didn't matter a tinker's damn that I was getting to the bottom of things, just so that poetic justice and justice could actually sometimes rarely align. Shorn and worn down, perhaps enlivened by the twinge—Macey was right there and she was obviously down and I could cover for the both of us maybe—I would rationalize this driving dark in the lanes, thinking about her while marking cars, Macey on my mind sipping Sparrow Whiskey as if from dribble glass. I didn't bother to ask Mac about this, but he knew . . . 

I returned with the party in full zoom, a song whelmed away that now rang with pizza party parlour Arthur Fonzarelli spaghetti's West Coast promise, the melody exuding all in its accordioning wacky pussy Cahuenga-ing California twisty lasagna-ing promise. 

A man and a woman were talking next to the tiny kitchen and the guy was just messing around, bouncing some blue ball that had a graphic of cartoon mouth teeth, which I assumed maybe Cartwright brought with him for Coca. The way the guy was bouncing the ball too much against the lino floor, seemed slightly precarious and destabilizing, and like it could very well just jot knock something over. Like some cracker-cutter lampster, the man didn't particularly seem to care though, and continued bouncing it too much again, jostling barely in his control, and then you thought all that would have plum been well enough, then his next bounce was just as unwieldy, if not even more so.

Koko's tail wagged, head following the tottering ball all too hornily, its small head shifting in quick minute degrees like a finch in a cage, and them out of nowhere Koko just started chasing the bouncing ball all over the damn place.

The help answered the door and lead me through Joa and Roon's place. Passing through the phasing corridor, I caught a glimpse of Joaquin's kill quote kill un-quote gallery with no one in there. Dust motes froze in air, everything in the room looked like it had been moved four inches to the right, as if arranged even more around the jank shivering Milljanks—the air conditioner cages were still in place installed and hanging pathetically in all the faith their investment would aspirationally promise and so strive for. The room was ominously neat, arranged like some decision had been made—like seeing something naked about Rooney and Joaquin. I cooled off on the setup—then Population Ex also, pretty much—shoot the shit. It all made me now want to throw the baby, any baby, out with the bathwater.

On the way up to their house, I was trying to cross a two way busy street and stupid cars and stupid cars just kept coming and coming, and it took forever to find a gap from both sides to cut across. The longer I waited for a gap, the more I was snaked, and the more unfair it was to wait for a newly arrived car to pass me over. By the time I got up to Lauren's Canyon, there was a chubby couple walking scott near the middle of the neighborhood street, and then I had to go slow as not to hit them and I didn't even honk at them when I well should have—the man said something at me as if them walking stupidly in the street was all my fault and I should have well been driving on the sidewalk. People, people, people there, chubby people and chubby people everywhere, getting everywhere chubby and chubby people everywhere getting in the way, causing chubby problems. And why would I even make this up?

The help led me and trailed off and I came lone into the study with Roon now in a tizzy—I could hear her surly voice echoing beyond down up the hall as I was led through. It felt like a day of the week that didn't exist—like some eighth day stuck somewhere in the middle of the week there. 

Why are there even mannequins of them??? Rooney visibly sharding out in episodic fit, hearing her so blatant second hand removed, like a scene in a movie where the characters didn't know they were being watched.

It's just ridiculous, perfectly contemptible, Rooney continued out to a panel of no one, with only Joaquin there.

Well Babe, even they need visualization when thinking about their next outfit too ya know, Joaquin in characteristic benevolence, Joaquin of course overly patient—as if playing a role, a caricature of himself almost now. It would seem to be entirely cruel in making such observation about him, because otherwise Joaquin was always a sweetheart.

No, they do-not! Roon wrenching, inordinately put out, having a cow the size of a baby dinosaur, practically.

Okay, fine—whatever you say, Rooney.

No, no it's not fine, it's no not whatever you say Rooney, Joaquin! Roon fuming at peak pitch.

OKAY—I—get—it! Joaquin now leering clearly exactly to point of some seemingly marathon exhaustion.

I mean it already looks . . .  now just go the full distance, why don't they. Rooney spinning in herself, she reminded me exactly of Annette Bening cracking on and on over self-referentially in American Beauty, Or if I'm hungry, then, just may as well—

Jake! What's up Blood, Joaquin volley-ing away, greeting me as if I arrived just on time to rescue the fraught pastoral of domestic sand.

Rooney did the thing where she let her atramentous hair fall into her face tilting it away with slight turn of her head, giving the impression of some significance she was supposedly faced with—she didn't greet me, and then pretty much promptly just left the room—it was as if we were so familiar now, she didn't have to go through formal niceties with me. Roon was virtually unapproachable, as she was surely not the type to say an empty Hello anyways, but Rooney saying nothing was still something to notice. 

Whatever papers Joaquin was preoccupied with, seemed having little nothing to do with Pop Ex. Since I had arrived, I found myself looking for evidence, any evidence Pop Ex existed.

With Roon negative distance gone from the roon, I felt relief, loosened up, maybe now I could pal around with Joaquin and get him to myself.

Arriving the convo fell like April snow, there's a smattering of strained sunlight from the skylight and out  from over the window sill.

Clearly you still move in the human maze, may it be long before you find the clue to exit . . .

What, who, who said that . . . Joaquin suddenly raising his head in an over alert unnecessary.

I did, well—and, also Henry James . . .

James, that toff bastard—Joaquin half chuckling, scoffing with a type of knowing cynicism known only to us.

The house cat, Buttons or Muffy came in, and Joaquin carefully, so over methodically, silently grabbed his fountain pen while holding his hand out and shushing me—Shhhh, he goes surgically, and he heaved it at the cat like a spinning dagger, further crashing to the side table and spurring the spity cat to scat. We both howled a good healthy laugh—

Handing Joa the rolled up Euro with a professional seriousness, Joaquin registers . . . 

Jake, you know if, if you were a narc on a TV show in the eighties and the person you are staking out and being fake friends with offers you a hit of drug, it is assumed by the narrative and moral conventions of Nancy Reagan's 80's TV, that it would be a great moral dilemma for the narc, weather or not to take the hit of the drug as so not to blow his cover and possibly put himself in danger—in a way that now in this age, like now, the narc just getting high and taking a hit of crack is not a problem and seen as no big deal in the eyes of the audience, and that Jake, and that my friend, that's what I call progress . . .

Walking to the silver canter cart, taking the worried glass crystal container that the help loads the whiskey into, I make myself useful and unplug the glass plug, popping the clear plastic stopper off, and it wamphs off powerfully and I check the gasoline mash with my nose.

I hasten add to that, People say the news has an agenda, when sometimes it's effects are just a subconscious and ontological function of its own very simple existence in-of-itself, in a way that is misconstrued as some coordinated administrational conspiracy writ large. Being unable to make such distinction is kinda ground zero for media illiteracy, doncha' think . . . , I go.

And your vocation, Jake . . . 

And my vocation what, and what of it—

Practising, practicing making guesses about someone, you know. What's someone's move, or next move, or what their next move is or will be . . .

I poured tears of bourbon in the glass tumbler and rotated the tumbler around to coat the glass until the bourbon could not be seen—a little trick I read about in the Playboy Magazine bartender book, It's actually not so hard or complicated, really Joaquin—I'm just the one who's willing to do it, really Chap.

No, Jake, it at a point, some point, becomes a form of literary criticism—here, the text being the subconscious of your mark, and the way Joaquin makes what he just said come across, it was as if he was going out of his way in puffing up my vocation, which immediately makes me real cynical and skeptical— as if he's prepping me for something unfavorable, something unfavorable that could be well so easily avoided by the whim and whisk of Joaquin and Roon.

Rooney now scuttled back into the drawing room holding Muffy, over-dragging her house shoe feet. Being weary and so tired and frightened of Rooney, I still delighted in just the plain of sight of her, which I was still in denial about, and which if you think about it, I probably had to be—Rooney's presence always confirmed something vague and also something specific, and it could be too much, and it was too much, and I would feel the need to retreat. I loved Rooney, and I loved Katie, why couldn't I just be a part of the family??

Skateboarding thirty five years ago was a small subculture of heads who knew what time it was, and we existed as other, in an alternative from the sport stadiums of all the churlish vinegar faced bleached whiskered commandeering lamestream pumpkin carving bumpkins. Now new stadiums of hoi polloi embarked on staking claim on what was once our own private, relatively unknown and carefully cultivated and maintained beach, and the hordes willed their vehemently so sallow taste, auguring total lack of possession of comportment, and not to mention, they not in the slightest even feeling the need to exercise any disciplined restraint, or restraint towards any working integrity that we ourselves otherwise so ceaselessly strived to cultivate and maintain. And in their practice and output, which polluted the landscape—their bastardized media forms of hypertrophied skittering skill, ascending it all into prevalence and commanding a once fashion forward post punk sub society, now into all possible brassy Olympian chad-ed football-beat pageantry of it all. It was a sea of Edgars, an ocean of Chads and Ryans everywhere—it was a lot of Ryans. I seen the debasing standards squads of self obsessed teenage girls using skateboarding as a vehicle of self promotion all come and go, scores and scores of teenage girls never really in it for the long haul, but who just needed some outlet, an outlet, any outlet, with but to use to broadcast their insatiable need for constant attention—while all of us, in some sort of modus vivendi Stockholm syndrome like imperative for tolerance and acceptance, we were all forced to watch silently all the while it all gets trampled on and all but reduced to, like watching another tin-eyed tone deaf underserving rando stranger just fuck your wife yet again and you always had to go along with it, while you are expected not be a hater by every unversed outsider who comes along in the next ten minutes. But that's culture now, I guess.

We were all in the room like nothing was bubbling beneath the grip of surface—Rooney was in a square chair off to the side, Roon was usually never around when I'm with Joaquin at their place. 

Nothing at all was said about the tour. That I was not asking about it, signaled to them I knew where I stood, while also reinforcing where I most likely stood. Maybe Rooney stayed to make sure something would eventually become clarified and solidified by Joaquin to me. To be fair to them, he did hand me over an outlay of about 60k in cash over a year ago, for services rendered pretty much to what just amounted to me just hanging out with him, and also recording Dormers.

When I first experienced corpse and mirror Rooney and Kate together it was natural to presume an intimacy between them, but immediately such perception withered, as Rooney's reluctance to share even now with her sister, did not make it too terribly difficult to surmise that not only was Rooney not ever really considering Kate seriously into the band—but that even Kate's apparent indifference of her role in Pop Ex seemed well warranted. But I couldn't help to but imagine Kate maybe silently harboring some small real desire for Rock N' Roll, and Kate was just playing the requisite role of disinterest—I don't know, this I haven't been able to fully understand. Perhaps Kate's disinterest existed in wavering states, too hard even for her to extract or identify—maybe Kate could care less. Maybe Katie really couldn't care less.

I had to force myself to try to sate, I felt as useless as a priest's opinion walking through a gallery filled with postmodern sculptures. I sate at the dinnerless table, clumsily blurted out the question in an impetuousness spurred on by the placelessness I now acutely felt.

So, so what's up with Katie, where she been staying. I asked Joaquin as nonchalantly as fucking possible.

East, east of Brentwood, living with her cat in a cottage on, on—Joaquim with seeing eye glasses on, carefully inspecting the document in his hand, but still answering as thoughtful as you would expect from Joaquin. Joaquin answering in a thoughtful way as if saying he knew how I really felt. 

She's sublet a bungalow, on North, North Bronson. Roon jutting in with bearish authority, with a type of objectivity that implied and reinforced the idea that Kate existed with her in a completely different arena totally independent of me, Roon also so just now her own sister's keeper—whatever, Rooney.

Yeah, her and her humorless cat, in a bungalow on North Bronson, Joaquin adding with a playful innocence to keep the scene from freezing over.

Though all cats are humorless, I found it to be extra fitting that Kate's cat be humorless. Just the thought of it all seemed too terribly cute, Kate probably gave the otherwise dreaded thing some name like Chesterfield, Mars, Patches.

Like a screw driver without an orange or a daiquiri without lime, I was sate at the table, shaking my shackling me not head, now raking the dust with unactivated credit card, like just some rightfully frustrated consumer.

What did you say Brother? Joaquim sensing my distress, asking maxx genteel.

I says, I had no idea piss trickled so tall.

Rooney now on the couch, kind of looked at Joaquin, Roon switching from a bitchy indifferent hyper autonomy, to now sober concern, as if they were two police officer partners making silent signal eye contact confirmation.

Rooney then exited the room, as if something incidental was beckoning her in the other part of the casita.

What's up with Rooney . . . I ask in an out of touch, over misguided prevaricating cynicism.

Ah, you know Rooney, Rooney and her magical thinking . . .

To think, the first men had to marry their sisters, but after the first festivals, culture prohibited it, but culture gave us coins and whisky. Culture was like the Sid Vicious-like punk secret agent spy sculpture that Damien Hirst made in the 90's, and all of that in some vague way. And if I was better at drawing, my contribution to culture would be producing historically correct pornographic Archie comics of Reggie and Veronica screwing somewhere in Riverdale Los Angeles. Joaquin and Rooney seemed like brother and sister for the most part.

It's annoying, quite frankly, Joaquin in a too wisened candor.

What's annoying, I ask back with a brazen irresponsibility in my voice, still shopping the slop.

Thing's always working out for her, like—and only confirming her or her worst instincts. Though really, she does have more artistic courage than anyone I know.

I thought of what's his name whosthis locking himself in a locker for a week. Mexican music was playing off in the distance, and though it usually annoyed me, I allowed it to be comforting.

What's annoying is is it just confirms her, I don't know—despite her misguided perception—sometimes Rooney lies about something and then, then—poof— it comes true—she lies it into being—'manifesting', whatever man, for some reason, I felt uneasy hearing Joa express this out loud.

Right, Rooney never loses, I expedite so the thought can begone. 

I don't know Jake . . .

What do you mean, you don't know Jake . . .

Rooney's—

Right, she JUST doesn't let do . . .

She's just like the lyric, I knew right from the beginning that you would end up winning . . . 

This entire year and a half has been about for once not being consumed in questions, and now I didn't feel like ever going back—the stool pigeons, double sawskis, always worrying about somebody ready to fink. But that's kind of the thing about the line of work I'm in—and sometimes even, you don't exactly retire yourself, it retires you. Still, for the most part, I was doing better than most, and really couldn't complain . . .

I stopped chopping, paused and then just looked out the big window at the scramble about of houses sloping the crust off from the hollow land, the poisoned bungalows way far off, the compounds for decadent religious cults over yonder just always ready to go. And LA hinterland spelt some who would soon chose murder over toil, as all LA is madd. 

And the thing you got to realize is is cocaine works like emulsion, you have to play with it a lot and chop it and just spend some good time with it to fully realise and activate and summon it's aphrodisiac effects, something I never heard anyone say in Alcoholics Anonymous, and maybe that was a part of their problem, me and Joa never not snorted coke hanging out together, practically.

Oh, I forgot to tell you Cessar Lopes dropped by my office, I remark off handedly.

I don't know who that is . . . Joaquin, looking down wiggling his pinkie down on the table, the white mounds having most of his variegated attention.

Concentrated too much on the dust, I responded nothing.

I said, eyes don't know who that is, Jake—

Who's that what?

The, this Ceasar . . .

Who?

Ceasar, Jake—c'mon.

Ah, nothing, he's nothing . . . 

You said Ceasar?

Oh, never mind—he came in to my office asking about the Milljanks, whatever . . .

Joaquin, about as unbiased as knife marks, I could feel him gawping at me in silent anxiousness. 

What or what about the Mills, Jake?

He was asking about the codes?

No, I asked you—be telling ME, Joaquin in un-masked suspicion, wrought grave with concern now.

Er, um serial numbers, the like, that whatever . . . 

It was all now like watching white people fuck. 

It was all now like instead of taking a bath, jumping into the chlorine for soda soap pool instead.

It was like normies who require eye contact—and if you require eye contact you are a normie.

It was just like this tits in different places disorientation of it all.

I still don't know if they have the serial number Jake, you know that, Joaquin, twisted his thumbnail against the front of his teeth, as if on the stand.

Yeah, yeah—that's or that's what or what I says to him, told him.

What did you told him . . . 

That's I tell's him, 

Joaquin paused in significance, that alluded to the something he was hatching behind the scenes("Gallery 9956" no doubt—Ha!) .

Jake, what—exactly—did—you—say, Joaquin anemically, like some sad try hard mother-managaged mom-manager super autistic Martin Wong painting.

I says or says, it's nadie—no importante, nunca—like, whatever . . .

And why would you say that, Jake . . . Joaquin saying my name with a patient pragmatism that implicates me in just some misperceived mis-assumed default impetuousness of me.   

I mean what did you want me to says . . .

Surely not that, Jake! Joaquin now at the level of some internal breaking point.

He thinks, or the 'Munes thinks they are significant somehow, anyways. That, I really don't know.

What did you—

I just told them. I told them they studio scraps, not real real official works, minor—whatever . . .

Jake, why, why did you have to tell him that . . .

I stopped raking the shake in sober pause, Because . . . it's true, I state blankly, with maxx face value innocence.

But that's, that's not true—Joaquin insisting with over-pragmatic concern, Joaquin just the ever self appointed network administrator shielding the specific objects from the misguided and distracted glare of the Pizza Hut bumkining world, and which really, don't convince yourself he was anything otherwise.

Even you don't know if it ain't got no number—I resume back, now chopping the dust with less frustrated and now more resolved confidence, putting it back on him. This was true, I pretty much know for sure Joa probably hadn't resolved this issue, or even still hadn't hired art services to deinstall.

Joaquin paused in a flabbergastment that something catastrophically important and delicate and otherwise so obvious was periouslously at stake. You could see him saying nothing, parsing his words like he was Deborah McLeod, practically.

Yes, but Milljanks has been well known being inconsistent in editioning her works, sometimes they are or are meticulously—cast fragments meticulously over certified, and others, others even well, even more known works in her oeuvre are not so much mark-editioned or even attributed—no reps, no legit checks, cut down to paper . . . 

Mark-editioned for Christsakes, Joaquin had a little knack for coining new little terms that allude to some penny ante professionalization stratification—once you notice, you cannot not notice.

Joaquin so sounding over-studied relaying such back to me, and the only one he was fooling was himself, and maybe Rooney a little bit also now. You never never rush to explain—That's rule number one. 

I was hipper than Rooney and Joaquin, vastly hipper than Kate, I really don't care though. I'm not sure they were exactly aware I was hipper than them, they were aware of something though, but their instincts were aloft and just as misguided as everyone else in the end, probably. You could tell they sometimes just  simply did not know what to think of me.

Sure, Dormers was a hip album now—we really tapped into the vein, and Joaquin and Roon were hip or hipper now, but I wasn't the one with a blue tint chintz Sheryl Crowe Guitar Center guitar sitting in my closet.

People think they caught up to you. When I was in 5th grade, I watched Heavy Sky on repeat, and they still don't know one song from that video (well actually, Joaquin probably does). I bought a super lame Dancer Plus tape all on my own, when I was in fourth grade, and when I was in fourth grade was when I first heard Sleep Crime, and I shouldn't now have to beg to stay in this stupid little band.

And now I'm pinning 4 Kate, Kate who probably wore a fedora a decade ago, for Christ's sakes.

Rooney was a genius though, she had an umbilical chord to nature, but it's not like she knew the Lou Reed lyric, I am nature's son, I can do whatever I want. But she was actually kinda nature's daughter, and she could do and she did do what she wanted, and she was supremely gifted with extracting abstracting words in surprising ways better than pretty much most of all those so pasty faced, she really was. All I saying is, is she was not, will never be more like hipper than me, and no one but me can see that. And that's definitely part of the reason why I'm the GD Detective!

Roon and Joaquim were being vague as hell, but I did contribute to Dormers. The problem was the outlay of cash Joaquin fronted me for my investigator services, but then we kind of totally forgot about the case—so it was like instead, I technically got paid for Dormers first, and a significant amount too, so technically I didn't take no risk or financial risk and don't think I am not well aware of that . . . Now technically, and spiritually also kind of too, I was relegated in Roon's view as probably as just some overpaid session musician, just like how she was undercutting Kate's value and contribution!—and to think, to her own sister too!

The dust lain on the table. Roon came back with a bowl of thick ridged sour cream potato chips. Roon keep the potato chips in the fridge—that was her thing. She got them herself, as if unable to trust her girl to fetch them for her. People think having money is easy, but it really isn't—it's actually harder.

But then, you could now totally tell Rooney wanted me to snort her out—it was hard being so against her, but it was her idea to be against her, and it was hard being against her, even when you were just protecting yourself. Roon eyed me, I nodded back. Whenever Roon does blowcaine she says it's 'literary', ha.

Well anyways, I just went in the kitchen and you know what Marta was doing, Rooney sitting indian style on the couch with the bowl of chips in her lap, giving her an air of impression she has her affairs and general life so in order, as if this is a glimpse at how the super organized hyper successful outliers just relax with a bowl of refrigerated potato chips in their lap on the couch.

I don't care, Joaquin looking a bit too intently at his paperwork, as if the page were escape hatch.

She—Roon tries to continue.

I says I don't' care.

Marta—

Rooney!

She—

Stop it !

Was—

Rooney stop!

Rooney perplexedly linguistically wheedling in herself little enough in through Joaquin's exhausted bulwark, Well if you must know, she was impudently lazing about at the island eating one of those big fat giant burritos carnitas. Rooney is so good with her mannerisms, the way she said impudently, burritos carnitas, made her claim seem entirely justified.

So what? Maybe it was her lunch break.

IT'S ALWAYS HER LUNCH BREAK, Roon-dawggg a fummin'.

Well you know what?— I don't care, she could be on lunch break all day for all I care. Marta's family, okay??

Well, you just as might well get your wish, Buckoo. Right Jake?

Oh, don't get Jake involved in this!

Rooney causing pause so unnecessary, and Joa getting raked 'a rankle in befuddled patience. The more I looked at her now, the less enamored I wish I became. Roon really was just such a dope sometimes.

It's like, like why, why, why would you go to the trouble to come here all the way from Mehico, just to like eat Burritos all the time here. I just don't understand it, Rooney needlessly indulging in unnecessary aside, saying as if such has never been rehearsed by her and you could tell Rooney always says this.

Rooney!

I'm serious, it mean there's burritos in Mehico—what difference, what difference does it—

Marta can eat as many burritos as she wants! And you know what?, she can play her music as loud as she wants too, okay?

Well, don't worry about that, she already does. Apparently living in Los Angeles has done absolutely nothing in broadening her like horizons. Seriously. Right Jake?

I said nothing. I got up and went to the closet restlessly, snooping around—the Lisa Loeb mediocre blue stained acoustic was still standing up in the closet, held up by hanging jackets. Seeing an acoustic guitar was always a relief.

I sate down, and the guitar was still in tune, it was a whatevs guitar and I'm bad without a tuner . . . I can't even be relied upon to keep a pick on me, but that's not ever from lack of trying—I would keep one in my wallet, but it never goes back in my wallet. I sometimes find picks all over the ground—more valuable than a peso. Picks on the ground are clues, that's why I'm the detective. I often wished I could keep a tuner on me at all times.

I had been wanting to rush to tell Joaquin about what Penny had said about Samantha. Lowering the low E to D, I find my in. It was never healthy to have something pre packaged to put out on anybody—no matter how trivial. 

Anyways, when Ceasar came by, one of his henchmen, or should I say hench-woman, hench-girl told me something very interesting.

Joaquin put out by Rooney, and then me telling him my fumbling about of the Milljanks info, he didn't exactly rush to respond.

Anyways, anyways, she said—or you know what he says? She says, this girl Penny, Samantha, all Samantha Ai, didn't leave to ascend into the stars like what was well assumed, ya know. Samantha is still here, she's still here, hiding in plain sight basically. All of Samantha falling onto one ink letter on one real paper page somewhere. Did you know this? Samantha falling into one ink letter on one real life page—I don't know the mechanics or how that works exactly, like electronically, but it's interesting, or real interesting, and if you think about it, if you think about it, it like makes, or does make total sense, though.

Roon grabbing chips out of the black plastic bowl now on the mesita, slunk back on the couch and sat back with a hand full of greasy ridges, Who's Samantha?, she asks soberly as if talking while watching a football game.

 I light a cigarette with immediate imperative, exhale a quick jet rope of smoke, Samantha! 

I don't know who that is, Rooney in sober un-informed naivete, she lisping with a specific innocence that comes with not being steeped.

Joaquin ever the protector, ever the John Gregory Dunne of the homestead casita, with  endless modus vivendi stateliness, turns towards her, Samantha was this artificial intelligence thing that came out, or was out, but then got, or got, like recalled or something.

No, no she wasn't recalled! She left us! It was like or totally like a big deal, I rush to correct, it all now seeming so unnecessary in my bussing to rush.

Oh, right, right—the artificial intelligence left of went fugitive or something, Joaquin with generous attention given to the subject of Samantha, as if she was a television show he had barely seen.

No, no—that's the thing! Samantha spilled onto the page!

Never heard about it, Rooney in indifferent finality, crunch munching in the utmost of surface casual. Rooney seated in the of of so appealing in all domesticity regs. Roon was incriminating in a way, that it implicated you in wanting her so bad for yourself, all to yourself, as if implicating you to the idea of driving you to extreme in manipulating anything and everything in order to just have her alone—Joa, not as desperate, seemed to offer clue to the key to her heart.

I was still tuning the guitar, casting on aside—the weight had dissipated mostly, and then me Joaquin and Rooney just found ourselves hanging out in the room in the chill all of late afternoon, kinda as if it was a music video about . . . Population Ex. 

Bread and margarine boomers stealing the terrestrial radio air, monopolizing Rock and housing and never ever wanting to let it go, only then in the 90's pitting Gen X rock bands against each other with what little room they left left—the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, whatever, just take a step back—all objectively shiveringly corny bands. Give me a fucking break. Ever since I was a child I was ever suspicious of Paul McCartney—that we would eventually collaborate with that wretched idiot Kanye West proves my exact instincts were in fact right the entire time as a child—that's why I'm the Detective.

Roon's face flattened in blinkered smirking grimace like a child. Roon's die haut perplexed look upon what usually consisted of her dead pan blank, responded as if what I had stated was questionable, or totally out of line and just absurd blatherings only to be shielded now by her supposed silent diplomatic trepidation—but you could tell Rooney still kind of finding it funny.

I started strumming audaciously—you had to be audacious to be a guitarist. Even with music people, it still felt you were imposing your very own will upon the jabbering world just from playing in front of people. 

Hitting a D shard, and the guiYAR sounded better than my old one at home. But the acoustic had this blue chintzy cheesey frost tint white automobile detail line that looked totally wack, something suburban girl cirlesque capo about it all (Rooney, or Rooney and Joaquin—they were kind of normies afterall, even and especially Kate). There was no clip on capo or clip on tuner, thank god.

My dirty unclipped nails struck happy monday D once right to Cadd9 and then right to G for a little longer interval, back to black Cadd9 to G immediately like a loosing streak. I repeated this getting my bearing, then I added humming . . . 

I got good . . . 

at identifying

different parts

of the roller coaster . . . 

 Rooney suddenly jumps to interrupt, sitting up straight.

Jake!

What . . . I go, still strumming loosely.

What is that Belaine!??? 

What's what, I go, kind of playing it off.

THAT??

What this? It's just D 2 Cadd9, then casually humming in example . . .

Yeah that. Who is that?? 

Oh, I mean, it's no, that's no one—just me.

As if taking place in a test tube, or frozen yogurt cultured petri dish, or elsewhere outside and far and away from any gash on a nail living orgasm organism, I kept going on muddy-ly, though managing some mangled kind of perfect casual playing in the moment for once, She's a kiosking cousin, she only likes 'guise . . .

The fragment instantaneously hit Rooney, clearly and visibly in some major way, like Oh Baby.

Rooney just plum sate there like a bale of alfalfa. Rooney sat silent sullen in the sudden, in serious daze and it was just so out of nowhere. You could tell Roon was silently real blue now. Rooney was crazy, but the recognition of crazy seemed to justify it, as if in some way her craziness saw it best. Rooney looked like she seen two or three ghosts. Just the simple combination of notes, the pattern they were strummed, combined with the casual seemingly off the cusp rhythm of abstraction of words—Roon, as if witnessing the very beginning of language itself. It must have been, or it was, really just the hum and the strum.

Roon picked up on it instantly, as if striking her to grinded down ground from out of the lying sky. Rooney was incredibly in touch with her instinct, this random sentence of specific ordered elements playing out in this way right in front of her now—she only needed the instantaneous effect of the two seconds of the sketch I was playing—as if it was skeleton key to Roon.

And Rooney was such a weirdo. Roon sat a spellbound in a trance not saying nothing, just looking blue as hell. Roon practically having her Carroll transcendental moment—the random hyper idiosyncratic California transcendental moment of it all that is random and hyper idiosyncratic and California so, and entirely recognizable and identifiable, especially if you have experienced Roon's own private world. That's the only way I can really explain it. You were living in Roon's Los Angeles Land, Roon's exile world. It was all like the time when Jacob Rosenberg punched Carroll in the face at the conclusion of filming for Virtual Reality—Rosenberg punched Carroll in the face and Carroll experiencing déjà vu upon being hit—that's pure Carroll, and also total Roon.

The shit is that Jake?? Roon sounding like a tom boy.

Ah, it's just, just my little—I been calling it, them, songs, Pointless Harmony.

Roon sitting there into the back of couched, noticeably wildered and wilted now just because of four seconds of some of my guitar work incidence, 

Oh Jake, it's just so, I mean, it really is . . . 

I play guitar better than Joaquin and Rooney combined, but not really. Everyone knows skaters play the best guitar, actually no one knows, but some skaters do. There's not that many skaters that play guitar better than me that I know of, but surely there is someone better somewhere. Actually, Mertz is pretty damn good, Andy Stone ain't so bad. And please someone keep the set of string cheese incident away from Danny Garcia.

I kept humming, man handling molesting the melody unmemorized, unpracticed—that made the difference. I don't practice no songs (which is true and also not true), I just put the rig 'n my hands like it  was my own little music box, my own little underground? I play for women, but I never play for women—maybe a failure on my part, maybe I'm protecting myself from something, there's no clear cut clever answer as to why. Playing guitar is how I learnt to be by myself mostly, and I am alone a lot, and Rooney now, nature enthralled by nature,