(Representing meanderscribbles in the direction of clarity thrown into soft focus, proud to present these scrytchbits from next door. Into the everything, under the evergreen, and through the everlasting light...)

"There will come a time of great wailing and gnashing of teeth, and dentists will have many customers then." - Hollywood Smith

"What I don't know about dreams doesn't hurt me," she said slowly and softly, letting the words dangle from her lips like a drop of chocolate escaping from an ice cream cone.

"That's what you think," replied her significant other, sweet and sensuous, a tiny giggle taking flight, then another, then another, as giggles are wont to do. She smiles, and she smiles back, and they are taken aback for a moment, caught up in each other's smiles, in each other's faces, in each other's bitterness and sublimity, in bursts of laughter and crying jags over inconsequential everythings. They are rolling down a hill together, never mind the spikes at the bottom.

"A trip report," he types into the computer, pausing carefully, considering.

"The collapse of the United States Government today at noon was marked by a five minute halt on the floor of the Asian Union Stock Exchange, after which trading resumed as before, with AT&T reaching a record high of nearly a gajillion twinkies. On the good ship Lollipop, orbiting Jupiter for the last nine months, the occasion was marked by a champagne celebration and the summary ejection from the ship of the American ambassador, nefarious World Wrestling Federation champion the Hungry Hungry Hippo. In America itself, fully seventy-five percent of the population remains in a drug induced slumber thanks to smart missiles designed and exploded by the Unabomer, who said in a statement published in Swank magazine, 'Maybe a good night's sleep will be enough to snap everybody out of their demonic love of technology.' Renegade military vessels from the United States Navy are now being pursued throughout the world's oceans, and an award has been posted of a hundred thousand ho-hos for anyone who delivers the head of President Brad Pitt on a plate by the mysterious Iranian terrorist group, Baby You Can Drive My Car Bomb."

Katie turns the station.

"Outside it's America, outside it's America," sings some Irish guy.

"Try again, Steve," says the engineer. "Take 23. Quiet please. And... playback."

Soulful and spacey comes the background track, and Steve sings mournfully into the microphone, 'Tiiime keeps on slippin' (slippin' slippin').... into the future...."

"This is a trip I took a few nights ago," he types. "I was home alone by myself in my apartment, and I had gotten a few mix tapes together of some of my favorite music, and I had lots of soda and lots of fruit and lots of pillows and comfortable clothes, and I was fully prepared to do the serious work, you know, metaprogramming at the root level, getting in there where the truly dysfunctional programs keep iterating themselves and iterating themselves and iterating themselves. I am not intellectually up to snuff these days, due to lack of sleep. Something has got to give, and what I was thinking was, throw enough acid at a problem and it will soon cease to be that particular problem.

"I took ten good hits of solid orange sunshine from the coast, the kind They Just Don't Make Anymore(TM), and laid down on my back, the sensational sounds of the Best of Ambient Hypno-Gurus CD featuring Bill Laswell blaring on the stereo. I was going over lists in my head of things I needed to do that week, papers I needed to write, people I needed to contact, meals I needed to eat, laundry I needed to do, air I needed to breathe. Before I knew it I was in over my head, sinking into the floor itself, surrounded in a swooshy ocean of wood grain and plaster. Sinking through the termite nests and the ants into the very foundation itself, below the concrete and into the dirt, the earth clogging up my sinuses and stopping shut my eyes, worms and beetles investigating their new neighbor, plants taking root in my hair, and there was not a damn thing I could do but wish I had put on Best Of Slippery Ambient MegaStars featuring
Bill Laswell instead.

"And there comes a time in every trip when the hallucinations and the pretty Christmas lights and the moving patterns and complex dancing grids begin to fade away, that point where you recognize that you've dissolved maybe a few too many boundaries and are on your way to a meeting with the light. That point.... exploding that point was my business the other night, recognizing the insanity of my premature burial and feeling no urge to argue, the mundane pressures that weigh down on me in my life, absurdities and other gems wrapped in tin foil. We are given this blessing of life, the most magical and mysterious gifts in the universe, consciousness and the ability to dance and sing, and yet we spend 95% of our time engaged in flipping burgers and typing memos to ourselves to do the dumb things we gotta do. A third of your life is spent learning how to waste the rest of it. I could feel my skin dissolving, could feel the cold chill of unbreathed air tickling the outside of my lungs, could feel the bones rattle as the tendons began to dissipate, could feel my eyeballs rock and roll in their empty sockets, lost my nerve is what I did, could feel a pulpy mash of brain material seeping through the seams in my skull.

"And I could feel you, Larry. You were right there with me, responsible for it all. You sick crazy bastard, what the hell were you thinking? I believe my acid was laced. Not with strychnine, but with bad moods, bad hair. I can't go out tonight, not looking like this. Perhaps I need a hat."

"Weirdness," she said, "is the engine which keeps this bowling alley from going under." They are holding hands in their imagination, sharing a very particular dream which has, unfortunately, one less link to reality than they would like.

"When are you moving to Chicago?" she replies.

Scotto