MiSTed: The Drake Raft Field Trip (5/8)

[Chris Mayfield]

[Continued from part 4]

[SOL. Crow has a pile of papers in front of him, in his net, ink smeared
all over him.]

Mike: So what have you got for today's c.w. assignment, Crow?

Crow: A modern masterpiece! A visionary...uh, view! I call it "A
Clockwork Gold."

Mike: It looks like it's written in gibberish.

Crow: Oh, that's just nasbot. Now, listen. Ahem.

"What's it going to be then, eh?"
There were me and my three muskies Vid, Donny, and Slow, Slow being
really slow. We were looking to score some RAM chippy wippies. Donny had
a plan.
"There's some quick sot who's got a pile of them back at his bleek. We
just show up, take them, and split." said Donny.
It sounded too easy to me, but never one to miss an opportunity I
said, "Goodie, my muskie. Let us go and take what is rightfully ours."
And we were off.
Donny led us to this strange bleek were this crazy old man lived. It
was decided to have me go in first. If the quick sot came out, I'd put
him down. My muskies would watch to make sure no one showed up while I
was inside.
The door was unlocked. I entered the dark bleek. It was really quiet.
I moved through the house feeling a smidgen pynchin (paranoid, that is).
It was completely empty. Not empty, nothing in it, but _empty._ Then I
heard the sirens gingsing outside. Screaming, mad, hysterical! It was a
trap, my brothers! Donny had set me up.
A group of flanns burst into the house. I tried to run, but fell in
the dark. The policemen closed in all around me. I ezared on of them on
the gabbler and he fell on his coriol, but two grabbed my arms while the
third flann started ezaring (pounding) me in the stomach till sexy sadie
licked my insides and I fell to my knees and puked on the floor, all
sicky sticky wicky. One of the flanns kicked me in the face and I went
unconscious.
When I awoke, I was in a room filled with projectors and computers and
whatnot with a bunch of camoos (strangers). They had they strapped Your
Glorious and Brilliant Narrator to a chair with my head fixed forward.
One of the camoos approached the chair and introduced himself as Dr.
Lumberer.
"What are you snopesies doing to me!" I shouted.
"We're curing you," said Dr. Lumberer.
"You're going to cure me of stealing RAMchips?"
Dr. Lumberer laughed. "No, no, no. Forget RAMchips. That's peanuts.
No, we're going to cure you of your habit of making sexual innuendos at
every opportunity."
I smirked. "And how are you going to do that?"
The doctor said, "You've heard of the Ludovico treatment? You've heard
of the Burgesstic treatment? Well, this is the Esterhazy treatment.
We're going to show you Showgirls in a infinitely repeating loop until
you are so sick of the sight of sin and sex that you'll never make
another lewd comment in your life."
Then he turned on the projector. Oh, my brothers, it was bad. A
veritible Bulwer littany forced into my head. I gingsed. I cried. Inane
dialogue, a plot that lurched from one scene to another with no reason.
And that BIG FAT LADY! AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!
After three momas of the treatment, they displayed me to some
committee. Dr. Lumberer said, "She invited me to her place and I said
'I'll come as soon as I can.'" A thought swept through my mind, and I
was about to say something but got all sick and slumped to the floor.
The committee was impressed.
I crouched there ill, brothers, completely ignored by all these
snopsies too busy congratulating themselves. "What is to become of me?"
I portnoyed. "Am I to be painted a clockwork gold and left to dry up
like a raisin in the sun?"
Dr. Lumberer said, "You've got no room to complain. You've brought
this upon yourself." And after that, they released me.

"What's it going to be then, eh?"
That was me. I was

Mike: Crow, how long is this?

Crow: Oh, around eighty-some chapters.

Mike: Eighty?

Crow: Yeah. See, after the first the first chapter, I--I mean, the hero
starts his revenge for all those who have wronged him, beginning first
with that traitor Donny, whose torture makes up most of chapters 6-38.

Mike: Um, yeah. You might want to edit some of that.

Crow: What? Cut my baby? Are you kidding?

Mike: Well, just for American release.

[lights flash]

Mike and Crow: WE'VE GOT JOLLY ROGER SIGN!!

[6...5...4...3...2...1...]

>
>So I took off out of there, into the slanting river of rain, and
>WCKCHNG!

Crow: [signing] Everybody Wck Chng tonight!

> It was so close the thunder came before the lightning,

Tom: So close it could defy the laws of physics.

> and
>rocked and rattled my bones-- I felt it more than I heard it. I
>realized I'd forgotten my distortion pedal again, for like the fiftieth
>time-- the one I left there like two months ago, so after I hid my
>stuff under the shed, where it wouldn't get wet in the rain, I snuck
>back in Cliff's, after some contemplation on it.

Mike: That's quite a run-on.
Tom: Elliot's sentences. They keep going and going and going...

> His dad was a total
>hard-ass, you see,

Mike: He uses the Butt-Master.

> and there's no tellin' what he'd do if he caught a
>hippie sneakin' around, which is what I was, basically, 'cause I had
>this long hair. Their old dog Hamlet 'roused up,

Crow: What is he, a Great Dane?
Mike and Tom: Booo!

> but I knew he wouldn't
>bark, or anyt hing, 'cause he'd seen it all before, and nothing excited
>him enough to make him bark, anymore, 'cept for the neighbors Siamese
>cat, Muffin.

Mike: Nummy Muffin Coocol Butter! [sniff]

> I stopped by the kitchen to get an apple when all of a
>sudden I heard them walking up the basement stairs, so I ducked in the
>pantry and had a seat on the barrel of apples they always had in there,
>only it was about empty, it being spring, and all.
>
>"Please sit down, Clifford, and lend an ear to your father.

Tom: What? You want the other one too?

> As you well
>know by now, I'm never angry,

Crow: Prone to sudden fits of physical violence, yes; but never angry.

> but only deeply concerned. Very deeply--
>especially in light of the recent incidents."
>
>"Yeah."
>
>"I have no wish to argue with you, so just hear me out, son.

Tom: If you don't talk, then we won't have to argue.

> OK? I
>sincerely hope you understand every word I utter is for your benefit."
>
>"OK." Cliff said like he was totally bored.

Mike: Much like the audience.

>
>"I feel we're growing apart. . . I see you have great difficulty
>resisting the temptation of your generation's muse--

Mike: Clio?
Tom: Terpsichore?
Crow: Calliope?

> every youth does,
>and it is to be expected. For the morbid, money hungry, vicious, aging
>baby boomers in Hollywood tempt the children of this land and of the
>world with the candy of jungle rhythms and bared flesh,

Mike: Yep. This is definitely the Jolly Roger's work.

> long before
>y'all have had a chance to develop a sense of judgment of your own.
>Your development is arrested."

Tom: Hey! We're depraved on account of we're deprived!

>
>"You're born with a sense of judgment, dad-- you're talking about
>colonization in like my mind and stuff, with like family values and
>things. No offense, but I've got my own mind."

Crow: [Dad] Actually son, you don't.

>
>"So that's what they're teaching y'all in that public school?

Mike: They're teachin' y'all ta speak lahk crackers.

> I would
>like to meet the man who plunders my tax dollars so. For I'm not
>talking about any sense of judgment-- I'm talking about a rational
>sense of judgment--

Mike: [Cliff] Uh, dad, that _is_ a sense of judgment.
Tom: [Dad] Shut up, you little runt! I'm trying to beat the love of God
into you!

> the cornerstone of Western Civilization which is
>rooted in the mind, son-- in the silent part of the soul.

Mike: Hey! Descarte was right! The soul _is_ in the pineal gland!

> And while
>you're yet down here upon this earth, and within my four walls, I'll do
>my duty to the Lord,

Crow: [Dad] I'm sorry son, but God wants me to sacrifice you on top of
some mountain to prove my faith.

> and attempt to instill it within you, as I wish I
>would've done for your brother-- for there are higher truths-- truths
>which exist beyond opinion. Did you read The Book of Values I gave
>you?"

Mike: Seen it.
Tom: Done it.
Crow: Bennett.

>
>"Like it was plagiarized-- I'd already read all those things
>elsewhere--"
>
>"This culture's dead.

All: Generation X is dead! Long live Generation X!

> Are you hearing me? Your brother's," his dad
>paused. "As long as you're livin' under the roof I provide--" his dad
>coughed.

Mike: [Dad] Hmm. Blood. Anyway...

> "And please eradicate that distracting habit of saying like
>every other word.

All: Boy.

> It's painful to hear y'all's generation speak, boy--

Crow: [weakly] It's funny 'cause it's hypocritical. Ha ha...

>it echoes of all those relativistic shenanigans-- nothing is anything,
>it is only like something. But words mean things, I tell you.

Crow: What kind of "things?"
Mike: I'm not sure, but they're definitely "things."

> You
>really did cheat yourself by getting expelled from Exeter; more than
>you'll ever know." I heard his dad get up and start pacing about the
>kitchen.

Tom: One, two, three, TURN! One, two, three, TURN!

> "Had I only known the extent to which the baser forces of man
>have overtaken this world!

Mike: Now it's a Pat Robertson novel.

> Uncle Walt was a fine, fine man, the fin est
>of poets.

Tom: I suppose Drake Raft praises Walt Whitman because Walt prophesized
him.
Mike: Uh, no. That was Ezra Pound.
Tom: Oh, yeah. I get all those facists mixed up.

> He'd been my poetry teacher too, and when a soul as white as
>his turns upon itself-- it's a sign of the times, a sign of the times

Crow: And it's redundant and repetitive, too.

>up there. Priceton's been sold to hell-- those liberals got to him,
>they did.

Tom: A single school of liberals can skeletize a poet in under a minute.

> For I genuinely believed I had sent Drake to the Princeton
>were I had once attended; a gentleman's school,

Mike: Sort of like Citadel.

> where words yet meant
>things and we voyaged there to learn of knowledge for the sake of
>knowledge-- not for mere empowerment. Where the idea of a truth yet
>existed, and formed the inspiration and guiding light

Crow: Walt was killed by a woman which Drake witnessed so then he faked
his own death so that his brother could find his map while his father,
unbeknownst to them all...
Mike: It _is_ a soap opera!

> for all of our
>endeavors. Yes son! We were driven by a sense that the truth could be
>obtained-- not by a senseless political panic for power which so many
>succumb to at this institution where the weak minded, having no
>intrinsic beauty, destroy all sense of beauty for all other men and
>women, so t hat they might satiate their crass, violent will to power.

Mike: It'll be interesting how he backs this statement up.
Tom: Yeah, keep dreaming.

>I had mistakenly believed I had sent Drake to an institution where men
>were yet men,

Crow: Women were yet women, and small, furry creatures from Alpha
Centari were yet small, furry creatures from Alpha Centari.

> and a man's word was more important than the diploma he
>bought, and where women were yet women, my son, and something beautiful
>and inspirational,

Mike: And objectified.

> rather than the mortal enemy and object of our
>desire which they have been cast as in this fallen society.

Tom: My guess is Dad hasn't gotten any since the Ford administration.

> But where
>we once had our spiritual dignity, and our soul's integrity, y'all now
>have but your appearance

Crow: Ouch. Poor Elliot.

> and your material possessions, reflecting the
>fact that where once the leaders of these institutions were good
>Christians, they are now economists."

Mike: In the long run, gentlemen, all gods are dead.

> Like suddenly there came this
>humoungous thunderclap which rattled all the jars and cans in the
>pantry there where I'd stationed myself, and his dad faded back in as
>the thunder rolled on across the sky, like it was a duet.

Tom: Sort of like those nature tapes.
Mike: Jazz and the Coyote.

> "I know it
>must be hard for y'all to conceive of a world where tru th and duty
>dictated a man's life-- for the Hollywood elite and liberals rape your
>souls at such an early age.

Crow: And who let them do it, pops?
Mike: [Dad] Sorry I haven't taken an interest in your life until today,
son.

> It's no wonder y'all are, you're all-- what
>do they say-- slack ers.

Mike: Usually they say it as one word.

> How can you even envision a meaningful
>community-- for a community is the result of men

Crow: Women--who needs 'em?

> who were created equal
>united in a common purpose-- but now the only common purpose is to
>outdo your neighbor by hook or by crook, son. By hook or by crook is
>how the bitter women and liberal minorities play--

Tom: This has been KKKK radio, with the White Power Hour.

> by whatever means
>necessary. They have not a whit of truth within their souls, and the
>concept of eternal love is utterly foreign to their nature." The
>thunder shuddered again, but his dad was up to the challenge, and like
>his voice boomed over it.

Crow: STURM UND DRANG!!

> "Oh, free enterprise and liberty are great
>things, but I fear them in a moral void!

Mike: Abouuuuut FACE!!

> In the name of peace, freedom,
>and capitalism, they have rampaged across the fields, uprooted all
>higher culture, razed the individual's sense of responsibility towards
>higher truths, pillaged man's monuments of rationale, burned all
>religion,

Tom: Kingsford martyrs; edges light quickly.

> and the thick smoke, ash, and soot have risen to the sky,
>blocking the white light of our Lord, and a darkness has fallen across
>this land-- but this is not the worst son! This is not yet the worst!

Crow: We've still got over ten pages to go!

>My greatest fear is yet to be realized-- a beast, shrouded by night,
>shall be free to take root and spring from these barren fields of man's
>collective soul--

Mike: What a Revelation.

> for he grows now, in the silence and darkness, in the
>shadows of man's perceptions, unheard, and unseen in this deep, deep,
>deep midnight in mankind's soul."
>
>"Uh, huh."

Tom: So, pops, you took the brown acid, didn't you?

>
>"Do you not know of what I speak, foolish youth? I'm understating the
>bleak reality. For yesterday there was a beacon,

Tom: A beaconway.
Mike: From a lighthouse.
Crow: To a pirate ship.

> a beacon fueled by the
>collective consciousness of men, which kept a man upon the straight and
>narrow, and in your brother's memory, my child, you must have faith--

Tom: In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Memory of Drake...

>or you too shall be utterly lost!"
>
>"But yesterday

Crow: All my troubles seemed so far away.

> we had World War II-- you know? There were a bunch of
>white men shooting each other, and throwin' people in ovens.

Tom: First, you heat the crematorium to 450 degrees...

> And before
>that you had--"
>
>"And the Nazis were defeated-- were they not? By the combined Christian
>faiths of the world.

Mike: Hey, the Nazis _were_ Christians primarily.

> For without faith, look to the depths to which one
>might fall in these callous days! Look what happened to Russia, and
>look at what's happening to us today! We are but a hair's breadth from
>tyranny, where the conceited liberal liars prosper,

Crow: [Spock] Lie long and prosper.

> where those lacking
>depth of soul and aptitude for meaning are running the world with their
>brutal jungle music and shallow displays of flesh. Look at the filth on
>y'alls TV!

Mike: And that's just CNN.

> On y'alls MTV! At this, y'alls Beatrice and Bum-head! Is not
>tyranny the next logical step in this vacuum?

Tom: Uh, no.
Crow: At this point, what's a little logic between madmen?

> If you succumb to the
>forces of what the Hollywood elite tempt you with; if you succumb to
>their wicked dealings, you shall lose your way, and then your soul, as
>did your brother! You'd better pray to the Lord that Rush restores
>democracy!

Tom: Interesting theology you got there, pops.

> For as Twain once said, a man without a faith is a walking
>corpse."

[Commercials]

[Continued in part 6]