A list of all the lies I’ve written about myself recently. Taken as a single artifact, it reads as a most disjointed but detailed map of my recent inner life. Sort of a Rorschach inkblot test, w/more tech-speak.

Wythe Marschall…

accompanied Julian the Apostate into Germania just long enough to catch a bad case of “torque foot,” necessitating retirement to Gaul.

protested the Palatine Elector’s use of the title markgraf to describe his favored parrakeet, Black-Eyed Susanna Holdorff, whose vile squawk, it was said by Rumanian smallholders, could be heard at night all along the Danube.

confounded Mehmed the Great’s attempts to subterraneously subvert the Galatan wall; single-handedly repelled Genoese pyrates from the Pontus who might otherwise have been tempted to prey upon the imperilled Byzantine harbor’s rich magazines of oats, corn, and hardy Scythian pisswheat; invented bawdy, easily-memorized songs to stir the cockles of the last Emperor’s last-remaining guards; discovered a cask of Theodoran-vintage fortified wine under the partial ruins of the tower of St. Romanus; drank the cask; took to sleeping through his watch; hibernated a full tri-month as the Mohammedians regrouped and carried their flat-bottomed war-galleys overland to the shallows north of the harbor; hibernated as Constantinople fell; was awoken by a stray cannonade in the early morning of the thirtieth of May; immediately enlisted in the Great Sultan’s auxilliaries; invented an early version of whist that could be played without cards; was promoted to the governorship of this province by early July.

commanded a cohort of cataphract archers from distant Atlanta Inebrica, fabled homeland of the Jovian Squid, a land-squid capable of inking in a thunderbolt-pattern and with such force as to blacken the roof of a castrum pitched some five (Illyrian) miles from the squid’s forest lair.

painted his shield with Scratch-n-Sniff heraldic imagery: Above, the maroon silhouette of the Colosseum, symbolizing knowledge, exudes stench of boot leather; below, the gray stream of Normandy, symbolizing maltheism, exudes sulphur; between, a winking silver maid of Albion, symbolizing lust, exudes the melancholy rot of water-damaged linen.

toured the marshy Gothic marches on the western beach of the Pontus Euxinus with a favored cohort of auxilia palatina, a time-traveling band of rapscallions in strange fashion who called themselves, according to one late imperial biographer, “Big Bang TV.”

of Aquitania, noted for his promulgation of the healing powers of cat dander and whole coffee beans, taken in “trices” or bundles weighing three-stone.

devolved the administration of Pannonia onto his favorite horse, Imaginary Valour; the horse promptly ordered the execution of the province’s other riding-animals; wacky chaos ensued.

is remembered primarily for his Masterworks of English Prose: The Scratch-N-Sniff Edition, the preface to which encourages the reader to “smell Moby Dick.” How the editor obtained an “eau de Sassanid lion-jerky” that lets the reader “practically taste the fall of Antioch” along with Edward Gibbon, we do not know.

stubbornly refuses to wash his lucky “I Defended Tours from the Burgundes, et Alle I received from Chilperic’s Treasury in Return wast this, a Knavish Shirt in the Shape of the Cross” shirt.

’s milkshake brought all the girls to the yard, in Merovingian France; the girls were packed off to nunneries; their brothers were tonsured and made monks; in this way, all of Gaul fell under the dominion of a single milkshake.

’s girlfriend brings all the milkshakes to the yard; notwithstanding the question as to why one wants one’s yard so full of creamy drinkable dessert—the milkshakes join to form a more perfect Milkshake, annuit coepit; in another version of the universe, the milkshakes fall to fractious squabbling and are consumed, one by one, by a mysterious culprit, whose name is TIME…

“synergizes” with “key infrastructures” “in order to” “valuate” “core commodities” such as yo weakass rims, dunny. Those rims look like they failed Marketing 303, mayn; how you got em all up in yo Strategy Innovation group? What they gonna do, spin around, in small circles, while larger rims who didn’t just hold their [wrenches] in their hands through the whole 1990s, push forward tomorrow’s social networking API browser integration ad-server buzzologisms? Unbristolpalinievable!

wonders if, in a cosmos where fleas developed sentience instead of primates, the phrases “There is no dog but Dog” and “What if Dog was one of us—just a stranger on the bus?” would have come into common usage by now.

lost himself at the mall; please buzz Information and ask for ipseity, for omphalos. Or at least get some China Wok while you wait.

: half human; 25% cheese; 1/8th ocelot; 1/16th shiraz; 1/32nd 3-dimensional word-forms (”Chramn,” “Allmuseri,” “Cilicia,” etc.); 1/64th blue-gray cat dander, “dander the color of the sea at dusk” (Melville); etc.

proposes a new political paradigm:  “Alan Moore/Yayoi Kusama 2012: Because America Deserves A Crazy Foreign President.”

is sometimes Y, the way Bruce Wayne is sometimes Batman, or butter is sometimes, unbelievably, not butter at all.

served, according to the trouvère of Champagne, as Parsifal’s page until he twisted his ankle fighting the heathenous Avars; thence, declined to perform knightly duties and was eventually sent back to a life of quiet butter-gyring; gyred with great enthusiasm; declined to eat butter or red meat; lived from Arthurian times until France and Britain merged, hideously, via the Hundred Years’ War.

patrols Omnitropolis by night; by day, pretends to patrol Omnitropolis by night; thus evades the suspicions of the dastardly Dr. Ith, the despotic Mayor Dynamo, and even the dynamic Nancy Nunez, ace reporter and professional tease.

carved turkey with Carver; ate chives-flavoured cheese with Cheever; rejects both activities now in favor of killing ghosts, in the face, with Ghostface Killah.

reads Calvin & Hobbes through the eyes of Calvino; Hobbes the tiger becomes Hobbes, author of The Leviathan; Calvin the little boy becomes Calvino, Cuban-Italian fabulist and cartomancer; strangely, both the little boy and the old dead man play the same games…

wields a failing investment bank as a boulder, smashing into the McCadaverous McCain and his Ice Harpy.

n. also spelled “AEIOU,” pron. “eye-yow.”

plans to inject huge amounts of his own imagination into the American authorial system in a bid to thaw frozen short-term idea markets.

draws emeraldine slabs of asparagusite up from the glittered bowels of the earth; blanches asparagusite for three minutes before adding to a braise of lambicite, deep in the fires of an alembic smelter; sears lambicite with other minerals for ten minutes before depositing inside a kiln preheated to 3000 degrees; plays boardgames with magmaman for one hour; returns to kiln; burns mortal flesh while ladling out delicious crystalline braise; fights off hungry rock-cat; sits; chews for a thousand years.

plans to inject ham into the water supply of the vegan terrorists.

is too deeply rooted in the national psyche: He must be argued against on ontological as well as ideological grounds; he must be hunted with primitive tools as well as attack drones and metal planers and spanners and screwguns; he must be found in jungles, oceans, gorges; running, dashing, jumping; etc.

was said by Augustine of Hippo to be too turbulent to be corrected, too insidious to guard against, unlearned and therefore unteachable, indolent and stirred up, argumentative, prideful, desperate, steady, engaged without hope of reconciliation, needy yet helpful, oppressively liberating, encouraging, and all-loving.

slapped the table. “There’s been too much gaming of the system,” he thundered. “Capitalism is not working! There’s been a corrupting of the system of capitalism.”

shaves you money & enlarges your pines!

bade Duke Boso (not to be confused with the traitorous Guntram Boso) travel to Carcasonne to swear those people there to an oath of loyalty to the crown of his uncle, King Koopa, who meanwhile invested his estate near Paris, preferring to winter there instead of Stratesburge or Colonia; for the Parisians, King Koopa was often heard to remark, had not been known since the days of Saint Martin to dine upon turtle-soup.

tells everyone his motto is “tratar de quedar bien con Dios y el diablo” (try to be on good terms with both God and the devil) but never picks up the phone when either Guy calls; is surely thus doomed to wander earth for eternity, like Wall-e; plans to use time wisely by finally learning useful stuff, like, uh, French talkin’, and genomes.

proposes a band: Peter Tosh, Peter Abelard, and Peter Peter Pumpkin-Absconder.

awakens from a frightmare of democracy: The ultra-rich Juice Springsteen croons ballads of economic hardship to NFL fans whose retirement portfolios have been wiped; meanwhile, back in the swampy metropole, dream-Palin spreads her icicle-tipped condor-wings and launches up from the Rose Garden, cawing into the night that America is the greatest, most wealtheistic empire in North America, and don’t let the Ruskies forget. NEVER FORGET…

drafted and subsequently rejected several plans to bail himself out (but of what?) with an irresponsible $700 billion loan; passed instead a stop-gap measure involving two (2) pieces of mixed dark-white chicken (leg/thigh), liberty fries, and 1 (one) unbuttered sweet roll (wood-flavor). To celebrate tomorrow in Georgetown, during veep debate, with select college “chums;” shrimp and sherry cocktails until 11:00!

is not actually going anywhere near Georgetown, ever, if possible, but he appreciates your concern as re: his proximity to the hideous axis imperium.

and Norah’s Infinite Praying Mantis debuted last night to mixed reviews; while critics mostly lauded Michael Cera’s geek-chic portrait of a highly edible male, they bemoaned Kat Dennings’ failure to embrace her role in the true spirit of hexapodal hip; according to early on-set buzz, Dennings refused to have her mandibles Bedazzled with “ironic” plastic sequins; she did, however, agree to have “Free Tibet” tattooed on one of her wings.

regards his cells with affectionate detachment and assures his audience that no great calamities or revelations are in store… unless his audience figures “impending catastrophic financial, spiritual, and dental melt-down” under the “great calamity” column.

claims his cache of sippin cachaça is visible only a) when large comets pass very close to earth, b) when McCorpse takes the stage to lecture America about his tall-talkin/soft-stickin foreign policy, and c) when certain vestal priestesses call Wythe from his cthonic sleep to lecture America on McCrap’s inept for. pol.

has an IP address conflict with another system on his network (but doesn’t want to admit a problem exists).

plumbing system, stove, ceiling fan, water heater, concrete shot, magma bazooka.

is the most feared bee-disease, after foulbrood.

keeps his five-point lead over Sen. McClaw, but slips twelve points against Delicious Vegetable Pakora. Ironically, dark-horse candidate Pyaz or “Onion” Pakora has been unable to convert a stellar final-debate performance into a gain at the polls. Some commentators blame the Onion-Bradley Effect, while others blame alliinase, the pungent chemical that causes the human eye to water while chopping onions.

is the tomato-fried daemon of impatience.

discovered that George Washington both a) could not tell a lie and b) liked big butts, which his brothers could hardly deny.

discovered that George Washington could neither tell a lie nor remove the wooden teeth that the dude from Saw put in his mouth while he was sleeping. Happy Halloween, America.

chafed his way through the first Bush Administration as Recondite Undersecretary of Delicious Papayas, a position now filled by Elijah Snow.

will be called, today, but increasingly in the future, “mixed source,” meaning he and everyone else will balance open source with some proprietary element, like a “dongle,” or a totally sw33t bright orange PS3 controller.

originated in 19th-century Hawaii as a fusion of the native lyre and the small, guitar-like instrument of Portuguese sailors; was subsequently banned as sonically offensive to the “Nightmarchers” (huka’i pō oi’o), the ghosts of slain Hawaiian warriors, who preferred the grittily harmonic stylings of Rodney Dio.

was originally a Byzantine administrative title analogous to secretary of state. In sixth-century Greek, “wythe” means, roughly, “one who drinks the sacral bean, euphemistically takes umbrage on behalf of his employers, and enthusiastically ratiocinates.”

proved definitively that dinosaurs still exist, mostly by purchasing “dinosstillliveouttheresomewherezomgcomeonyouknowitstrue.org,” soon to be a Wordpress blog.

shined the sea and bepurpled the mountains *specifically* as per the Founders’ guidelines, downloadable as a PDF on the Dept. of the Interior’s sweet, sweet website.

voted early and often, writing in “Wythe Marschall” for “President-Elect’s Mysterious Distant Cousin From Georgia (the American one, not the Russian one).” Has necktie close at hand; is still waiting to give victory speech.

regarded by Neoplatonists as the fifth Humor, joining blood, red bile, melancholy, and phlegm. A chronic imbalance of Wythe in the body indicates a Wythelike temperment (moist, agnostic, passionate, lazy; composed of the fire-element; ruled by the planet Saturnus; confounded easily by ice hockey), which, according to Pseudo-Priscian (121 CE), “Befits the clown and the rhyme-constructor, for, like drunkness, it induces tongue-pranking.”

What do we do with him? To be ethical creatures, we must admit even the stutterer, the lion-kisser, the crafter of flatus-harmonies. But of the [MS here damaged by water and Florentine mold; we can safely assume the missing word reads "Wythe"], we are not sure: His atoms are not as large or as hot as our own; he hails perhaps from the kingdoms east of ["Hooverville" ? E. Neumann proposes "Shelbyville" ?], where ["the Wends" ?] ["indicate" ?] against their own brothers and sisters. What can we make of him? Not even a theory.

considered fresh dopeness de rigueur; now a blur, what’s the word?, hurried on, harried bad by these wack verbs: Work (all), voice (echo), wire (fire), and ghost (le’s-go). Only question left: Who bails the holder of the bankroll?

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could do Hamlet with chainsaws. Or just do chainsaws who cannot decide between a lonely life as a once-royal knave and a death whose chrono-echoic beauty still drives regional theater patrons to tears, shortly before they are begged for quid by destitute regional theaters.

remembers positive in negative, negative in positive. For example, though Francium, the rarest natural element, is massively radioactive, it was never forced to defend itself in a World War against Germanium. (Not to mention, there is no Italicum, nor an Algerium for Francium to occupy.) One day, perhaps the military/individual esprit of Unitedstatesium will ebb before the might of Internetium, the dream element, the world brain, the unifier.

one-upped string theory with “silly string theory,” in which fermions and leptons are composed not of tightly coiled, vibrating five-dimensional strings, but of wacky pink foam, the ejecta of trans-multiversal E-Z-Kleen spray nozzles.

while waking from anxious dream, discovered that in bed he had been changed into a verminous VW Bug.

takes no vacation from oration.

decorates his Festivus pole as did the ancients, with an umbrella of celery and knots of merry daikon; looks forward to kissing under the miniature missile-defense system hanging in the kitchen doorway; plans to shop until dropped (via kick or dropsy); savors already the smell of just-cooked Festivus Chinchilla, simmering in its joyous sauce of leftover Tecate and figs; etc.

feels he knows the Etruscans better than they knew themselves, whether because hindsight is 20/20 or because the Etruscans spoke magical gibberish and couldn’t agree on common trade practices, much less combine Voltron-style to stop Rome from beating them like so many red-headed stepchildren.

called “the sinister devil scorpion” by the Sabines, the deceiver of deceivers and marshifier of volcanoes by the Latins, the rockhanded water by the Samnites, the lightningthroat goat by the Rasna, and the little purple evil in Roma; invoked by electrocuting a goat in a marsh; thus invoked very rarely if ever in early historical times; currently revered by some Vlax and Romani as a daemonic curer of pestilent fungal worms (ringworm, “sandface,” stormy pox).

repels, for your hunting convenience, deer, squirrels, mice, groundmice, woodchucks, hares, voles, and hogs; attracts meteors, ice-swans, mojitos, clay wine-jugs, pendants shaped like Will Smith’s trademark smirk circa 1993, scorpions, lists.

has wasted time and been wasted by Him; has simultaneously checked himself and wrecked himself.

cracked the genetic code of the incredibly rare rebus monkey, which speaks in visible rhymes. Upon the occasion of such cracking, shared with the monkey several beakers of California champagne. Was sad to see the monkey go (via monkey-shaped hole in the lab wall), but totally understood. Monkey’s name: “Merlin St. Tupac Amari.” Monkey’s Twitter feed: de-liced, blocked, and considered seditious in China.

cracked the genetic code of the incredibly rare rebus monkey. Upon the occasion of such cracking, shared with the monkey several beakers of California champagne. Was sad to see the monkey go (via monkey-shaped hole in the lab wall), but totally understood. Monkey’s name: “Merlin.” Monkey’s Twitter feed: considered seditious in China.

claims the walls have ears, eyes, and so forth–a total anatomy, in fact, capable of digesting the room, over many seasons of activity and solitude.

has nothing but love for the common Red squirrel of Britannia.

proves his residency to the Man by faxing in a lease agreement and a tater-tot in the shape of the Triborough Bridge. Receives fax back of catsup. Faxes in a hickory-smoked turkey burger with wasabi-ginger dressing. Receives several faxes in return which collectively comprise a 1960s diet guide called Know Your Chub. Faxes in a lewdly-shaped broccoli. Receives no reply. Realizes the Man believes that he is a resident but has no intention of discounting his tuition. Sighs and consumes broccoli.

verbs his adjectival nouns in an adverbial way.

evolved, over millions of years in the limestone under-jungles of Z’quoz, the seventh sense, referred to in popular cog. sci. glosses as “Umberto Echolocation.”

informed King Wanax of the Dorian invasion in a timely fashion and was put on olive-duty. The invaders saw the olives and figured them poisonous, decorative, so they let me go. Millennia later, my latest genetic/memetic incarnation still loves olives and is allergic to ravaging barbarian hordes. Go fig.

tells a fable about a legendary kangaroo king. The king presided over a fairy-tale court wherein only anecdotal evidence was permitted. One day the king fell ill (a grasshopper jumped into his pouch), but before he died (official cause: confluxication of the rhinomphalos) he told a parable about a king & a grasshopper. We, his subjects, couldn’t parse the king’s allegory until a dolphin named Jacques Derrida pointed out that we were trapped in the fable I’m telling. Then we had lemonade & Mexican beer.

tells a legend of a Secret Formatter, who appears at night to unscore the spaces after hyperlinks, to unbold non-headlines, and to italicize the names of periodicals. He carries in his magic sack a bag of diacritics, a pan of accents, a tray of typefaces, and the Wand of Nicholson Baker, which turns all prose to mirth and vice versa. If you leave out a Manhattan and a tip for him, by dawn he will also export your Secretly Formatted document as a pdf.

rides a pale bear across the Arctic sky to mark thund’rously the occasion of the Spring Rite: yellow snakes (gamboge cobras) grow like sun-struck orchids, up from moss-stumps and icy patches of hoarcrab cat’s-tails; wasps confuse the snakes for flowers and stumble, drunk, up from their abysmal mud huts to hump at fangs, spangling armor with pollened gore. In Bangalore, an IT call-center worker picks up the phone and hears my pale bear’s last pale dry snow-voice of winter, signing off, stung by spring.

digs On Being Blue, Omega Red, rain-gray skies in northern California at eventide, devil’s-food cake, horseshoe-crab’s blood, night captured by Picasso or Van Gogh, crimson cloudy night-day as released by Kandinksy or Miro, the sea-slugs of Yves Tanguy, the volcanic almost-black rock of the wounded earth, the sea, the sea on Mars, Neptune, Io, veins on his girl’s knees, his broken nose-capillaries, azure, tomato.

claims that he was facing increasing opposition and isolation within the church, particularly after an outreach to the ultra-inebriated leprechaun community of Montserrat. Claims further that certain among the College of Cardinals were even moved to recommend excommunication for any leprechaun deacon caught drunk before vespers. Claims his claims are risible and not divisive. Claims many, many things…

has a posse, but does not feel his posse is ready to take on Andre’s posse. Right fellas? Ladies? We’re plannin on leavin Andre the heck alone? Alone like a giant, lonely in his cloud-castle, making gigantic five-bean chili? To eat by himself? Over the course of a single gigantic week?

floats like a moth, stings like a poisonous bird.

dives into endives; relishes radishes; triumphs the turnip; beats beets; gallops over greens; zahirs his vegetation; Xs his Ys.

mailed himself a postcard from the future telling himself to remember to check the mail.

applied to work for Emperor Zombie but was dismissed as “too alive,” instigating a massive lawsuit: Who is “alive,” truly? Who can claim to be more than the sum of so many dizzying interactions of lifeless electrons, top quarks, and sideways quarks? Who but Thomas Aquinas, lateral-thinker and arch-foe of Emperor Zombie.

retook le Puy from a band of Anglo-Gascon brigands only to lose Blois to the Black Prince’s vile son, the Grey Earl, sometimes called “Earl Grey” to highlight via hyperbaton (an unexpected inversion of terms) the young man’s unexpected vileness. Counseled Charles the Wise to ask the Bretons for help in retaking Blois but was shot down by the Duke of Orleans, Charlot the Interrupter. Asked if the Bretons could at least be taxed to pay for–ep! zip! Interrupted!

led a 9th Crusade in the late 14th century, at which time no French or Englishmen could be asked to leave the 100 Years’ War. Ended up with 70 Spanish “knights,” all of whom were either geriatric, schizoid, or both, as well as 13 Italian children who were just trying to rebel, sans cause. Made it as far as l’Chamelle (Homs), Syria, where the Spaniards were traded for more children. Led the kids to al-Tasti, where the first soft-serve yogurt business was then founded. Died penniless.

married a club-footed but otherwise stunning Guelph signora, though he himself was a patrician Ghibelline. At his wedding, dueled ten consecutive assassins, each wielding an envenomed estoc slightly longer and more razory than the last. Carved the initials of his shipping firm, the Wibillengen Arezzo-Spoleto Transporto Expeditio, into the forehead of the final assassin, who disappeared, it is said, in a puff of “Alchemist’s Shame” (common flatus).

is making capes for the homeless squirrels of Strong Island.

crossed the Rubicon, marching on Roma to demand he be made governor of Gaul in perpetua. By his march, sundered the Roman Republic. Shed a single tear for the end of a government-by-citizens, not to be seen again in Europa for over a millennium. Realized he left his dopest republic-sundering kicks back in Narbonensis. Rode back to Narbonensis, located kicks. Re-upped. Re-crossed the Rubicon, sundering with a vengeance.

shakes off 100% organic squirrels with his patented motor-coat.

replaces his fingers with chicken fingers, his legs with sea legs, his head with head cheese, or a toilet, or the monsignor’s position at the table. His livery he tailors from real liver; his hat, from human hair shaped like a cowboy. His boots, he stole from Italy. In this way, he is not only possible and multiple, but truly able to connect with all machines: the food machine, the sign machine, the “Italy is shaped like a boot” machine. &c.

metahistorically verbs himself into a wacky noun (situation, parlour, last hour of beauty before a certain face’s melting-away-into-darkness); then turns a corner and admits a weakness, confesses a dream, un-verbs an anti-noun, de-inverts a syntax that is only ever an apophasis, revealing a hollow conflux of signs: Our history is neither static nor progressive, except in number of recursions; Crusades yesterday mirror Crusades and treaties on Easter today; the past is only irreconcilable with our telling of it.

sells slobgillion (you may call it “gurry”) down by the Drunkards’ Wharf. One Castillian quarter-joe buys a drunk a pony-tunne (1/2 jack-barrel) of his finest Pacific-Line slobgillion: black rubies of “gurry-wart” sliding easily through the yellow slob; a keen drunk rakes whole peppercorns through the slobbottoms, spicing the sly whale-grist with a cool black fire.

cures autism with the shaman’s horse-magic (”talking to cloud / opening the storm-bag / scaring the living hell out of pale mute child”); cures zombies with daggers and buckshot; at a dinner party, accidentally curses whoever made the coffee; zombies the coffee-maker with curses; cures curses with recursion (see “curse zombies,” ibid); cures recursion with never to be explained aposiopesis, the sudden breaking-off of

ran away from Hannibal’s elephant-cataphracts at Cannae, screaming like a little girl in a barrel of wolves, but felt multiply justified for his cowardice: In the history of central-Italian agriculture, twelve-foot-tall gray monsters with tusks played at best a minimal role.

became the first lycanthrope-American in space after it was discovered that NASA’s initial pick for astrogator of The Re-Endeavoror, Lt. John “Shingles” Kastakis, had not only shot a man just to watch him die, but had subsequently grilled that man, applying four successive coats of sweet garlic-cayenne BBQ sauce. Enjoyed space, until he realized how close space is to the (full, as in total) moon. Devolved early and often; had to be penned up with zee Russians on the ISS. Wrote a tell-all.

finally sold the Dunkin Development team on the concept of Munchkins-brand doughnut holes made from *real* munchkins. Wrote up a distribution agreement with the Mega Munchkin, who eagerly signed and bade his munchkin mandarins ship us the round, sugary bodies of several executed munchkin “terrorists.” Had to rethink strategy when FedEx refused to insure.

is unfrozen by the fearful but past-deadline Sea/Explore team. After reassembling himself from his various independent unbreakable fiberglass molecubes, Wythe dives into the testing pool, nimbly imitating penguin antics and “digesting” tossed fish (with lasers) before disappearing into the hole he created during his last session. “Where’s the bird?” someone asks. “The bird has flipped…”

spells “çangria” with a cedilla.

bought Kenneth Koch a bagel once (1). Or was that Ed Koch? Was he chronicling private life in the City of the era of the television, or was he on television, judging privations? Gave Marcel Mauss a bottle of Cynar (2). Or was that Mickey Mouse? Was he transliterating the circle of the gift, or was he driving a cartoon steamboat off a cliff? In conclusion: I need new glasses.

has been asked on Friday to work Sunday. Does this destroy the weekend or transcend it? Is the weekend shifted back, so that it preserves its orthography? Am I in the weekend right now? All I know is, I’m not writing reviews of crunk rap albums for a living. (I am moving from A toward Z, like all writers, but I have only gone as far as R. I can spell “crank” but not “crunk.”)

provokes fear of a pandemic, shutting down Mexico City and parts of the Bronx. Provokes also questions: Have you coughed in the last week? Have you felt dizzy, weak, turgid, gnostical, or venal? You might have Swine Wythe virus.

induces abnormal cell growth in lab mice, but cures dyspnea and hypothyroidism in dolphins. How did we fund a study of the effects of Wythe on dolphins, you ask? Of what use is such a study, you ask? You ask too many questions: These results are profound and apart, like the claritas of a gallow’s-laugh in Dubliners, or the sudden moon acting as envoi in a poem by Hafiz.

cures dolphin-breath.

hurriedly plated the latest cutting from viral rat-cohort M82-24, nicknamed “Sick M.I.Tc.H.” He zoomed in, desperate to unlock the secrets of the pandemic. Spirals of primeval ichor flattened into focus, deepening in color like wet flower-petals. After several seconds, he spotted it, the rub: The virus had reprogrammed five healthy organelles to spell out, crudely, in a Comic Sans font, the word “PWNED.”

named his pet pet shoggoth “Ahab,” which was admittedly condescending. Was still surprised when his pet shoggoth relentlessly pursued him across the trackless Antarctic wastes, dissolving friends and scientific acquaintances. Suggested “Lil Ahab” as a name instead. Was surprised situation did not improve.

upgraded his beer goggles to gin goggles; saw everything through a haze of juniper and Englishness. Was soon told that beer goggles were so uncool that they’d become cool again, but could not locate his old goggles. Pined and mourned. In the morning, among pines (whose smell recalls gin), buried his gin goggles in the soft dirt, marking the place with an empty, ironical bottle of Cointreau.

proposes a new drug made from Ambien(TM) and processed sacrificial chicken-marrow: ZOMBIEN(TM), for the loa with a day job. Need to stay awake during the day to stock videos or wait tables, but itching to get out at night in the form of an unkillable body-hopping nether-spirit? Take 800mg of ZOMBIEN(TM) once before bed, after eating a live frog. DO NOT USE A FORK while eating frog. May cause unpleasant gas and/or shin pain.

will make every day Thanksgiving Day, or die trying. Or at least eat a lot of cranberry-goo. One of those options. Did I say “options?” TAKE THIS FREE SURVEY TO WIN 10 iPOD NANOS~~~

effaces each room of his palazzo, one by one: The footmen set the verandahs, porticoes, and grottoes on fire; the chief valet pisses into each tureen in the scullery; the aging, rheumy-eyed crier cries suddenly for all the players and dicemen to rise from their last siestas atop the benches of the southerly French garden, which is promptly being leveled by out-of-work Prussian soldiers; the outhouses are turned in; the paintings, palimpsested; the books, pages mostly still uncut, given to the blind.

nearly chillaxed himself to def over the weekend. Def, of course, is a condition so close to death that only the truly fresheezy can discern the faint pulse of one who is merely highly chillaxed or “maxin.” Perhaps most unsettling, upon reentry into the work-a-day stratum, the def have sometimes been known to be like whoa.

scraped your name into a knuckled-shaped hunk of carnelian but lost the stone in a duel on the Dina. Won the duel, but, at the last parry, the rose knuckle slipped from its wallet, still unbezeled, not yet a ring, into the cold waters. Spring was cold that year as it is now. The peasants told us the wheat inherited the fragile gray exoskeletons of the dead and tasted of memory. Bitter beer turned sweet, and vice versa.

assembled a contemporary cohort of patients in order to ascertain whether drankin crazy like a monkey be good for you. Set clear endpoints. Followed cohort for eight months after trial. Published results in a medical journal he heard of at a bar. Found out that medical journal was actually a racy “blue” magazine with a dry title. Shrugged, assembled a second cohort…

wandered through arid Anatolian sulci as plague ravaged the towns. Encountered a holy man sitting upon a rock pillar sixty feet tall. Later encountered a different holy man, this one sitting upon a rock pillar some seventy feet tall. His beard was sixty nine feet long. Felt bad for the guy and tied a whip-like branch of argan onto the end of the beard so that it finally touched the earth. He was stung three days later by a scorpion unafraid of heights. [Cue Keyboard Cat...]

took an oath to ride with his younger brother Louis the German against their older brother, Lothar of Austrasia. Was surprised when Louis decided to sign a peace treaty with Lothar, leaving the elder brother the Middle Kingdoms and Lombardy. Was all like, “Wehn we gon ride, dawg? I got my horses.” Louis was all like, “i kno. But Lothars to powreful to beat and to weak to fux w us. Whatevz.” Concluded his oath with “i c.”

removes each offending organ one by one, until not his heart but only his sleeve is left. The sleeve is a more elegant iteration of the wrist. Where the wrist pulses, the sleeve moves gently, provided there’s a wind. Some days there is no wind and the sleeve is still.

denies that he actually wrote Nixon’s Checkers speech. (The dog was supposed to be named “Chess Man.”)

is only 12% pulp.

floated on a sea stained orange with algae for three days. Jawless sharks vacuumed his hair free of sand. The sun never fully emerged from behind a distant, horizon-muting gray stormhead that never really threatened his zone of float. Was saved by a supertanker called The Iron Circlet of Wudi. Thanked the Chinese crew using mime. Savoured canned grouper.

manufactures long-lasting barn-owl nest-boxes, for barn owls planning for “the long haul.” But what do owls have to haul, besides the viscera of fieldmice? They haul owl-anxieties, of course. “What if my head doesn’t turn around far enough?” etc. It’s sad, really.

manufactured single-sailed merchant vessels called dromones in medieval Venice until he was fired for lackadaisical hewing. Complained to the guild of hewers and was reinstated at half-pay. As a result, was only able to buy half as many port-rats and hull-crabs to eat. Limbs vitiated, grew even more lackadaisical in his hewing. Concluded that life is a feedback loop. Was flogged for concluding.

thought outside the box until that was the norm; thought outside the norm until Norm McDonald called and said he felt hurt; thought outside William Hurt’s house until a lawyer with a firehose showed up to shoo off loiterers; thought outside the bounds of the law after that, agreeing with Bakunin et al that law is not Justice, merely the rude operation of society convincing itself that it itself is not a prison, by sending thinkers into boxes.

is so old school, his hagiographies were written while the saints whose lives they detailed were still alive. ["Oooh!" from crowd.] So old school, the rock heads on Rapanui were carved in honor of him and him home boys. Who were hundreds of feet tall, for some reason… Okay, so he’s shrunk. It’s been a while. [Crowd disappointedly disperses.]

taught a combined Zombie Defense Basics/Preggers Pilates course down at the Y, until sued by the pro-zombie lobby. The Y was demolished in aught-seven to make room for a gun-expo/chocolateria. A zombie chocolateria.

studied roguery under Barry Lyndon as part of a low-residency BS program, wherein B and S stand for words other than “bachelor” and “science.” Prof. Lyndon had a habit of Johnson-stropping jackrabbits, un-pensioning pensioners, and toggling innocent Irishlasses’ lightswitches. Allowed in class: Debonair, Pimm’s, horse pistols (set), keen-pointed/polished estocs. Disallowed: Cussin’, oathin’, non-picaresque tomfoolishery, the sound of the police.

is frustrated that his frustrations are banal: Marius had the dictator Sulla; Caesar had the treacherous aristocracy and rapacious merchant class; Augustus had all the imperfections of humanity. Wythe has the AMA style guide, an overripe peach, bland coffee… On the other hand, bland coffee never stabbed a dude fifty times on some bullshit.

drubbed Arthur Miller in the pages of the Observer for drinking Proseco. “Drama stems from the interpenetration of the socius or cage of debts-incurred and the individual mens or will, not from Proseco.” Miller’s limp riposte claimed that he didn’t even like Proseco, had in fact no idea why the drink should factor into the critical reception of his plays. Wythe’s counter-riposte, published in La salamandre paillard, skewered Miller and held him over a fire: the fire of drinking Proseco.

tweets via pneumatic letter-tube. Blogs about typewriters, sending each post to his loyal readers via the Thurn & Taxis postal system. Was recently hired to work on a website, but refused to video-conference with his clients, demanding they instead meet via seance. Scared off the medium hired to facilitate the seance when he appeared, not as a spectral version of himself, but as a spectral version of himself a villain from Scooby-Doo.

speaks the language of mice. They talk a lot about rats, and about the ears we sometimes grow out of their backs in the name of science. The ear-mice can hear incredibly well. They like Prince. They despise Steely Dan and Bon Jovi. One of them disagrees. Listen to him wail.

exists by convention: “sweet by convention, bitter by convention…” They put it to a vote in Athens (of course). William Gass was there. He voted against my existence. I flipped him the bird. He threw an actual bird at my head. What the hell, Will? Democritus arm-barred the old coot and sent him back into the heart of the heart. The vote was had. Results announced next week.

rendezvouses venomously with preposterous broccoli, bifurcate ballyhoo, multiple oxen-feet; I mean tail, I mean grease, ground meanly into flax sheets, wax beats poetic and ebb tides till three deep; feet sleep, sandily, chalcedon- and moon beam-hued beneath wavelets and fearing no grue.

provides a glimpse of life’s puzzling origins. What was life on earth like in the heady prebiotic years? How and why did RNA ever self-assemble into the first methane-gulping proto-slug? The answer, scientists now admit, is surprisingly simple: Life self-assembled in order to rock a moustache. (A methane-aspirating proto-stache, perhaps.) DNA evolved out of RNA so that slugs could rock monocles and listen to Charizma while chilling on couch-shaped fragments of whinstone or chert. Etc.

has been at loggerheads with the loggerhead turtle community for some time. The turtles keep eating members of the horseshoe crab community. The horseshoe crab community has been resident in my imagination longer than just about any community except the WTF-is-that-amoeba community and the G. I. Joe community, the latter of whom recently cashed their remaining cultural checks and fled. The WTF-is-that-amoebae in now in danger from C.O.B.R.A.

apologizes on behalf of his MySpace account, which has been naughty: If Wythe von MySpace has recently sent you spam, phished you, stolen your car, bought several thousand remaindered Galician geometry texts for you online, or broken up with your girlfriend on your behalf, please accept my nigh-humblest apologies. (My humblest apologies will be reserved for the victims of the villain who hacks my Goodreads account.)

speaks the secret triangle-language of the Incans. The same language, by the by, was invented once before, about four thousand years ago, by King Sulayman. His triangle-language allowed for repartee with birds, centipedes, and Basques. Knowledge of the great king’s language was lost when the Romans destroyed the Second-and-a-Halfeth Temple during the reign of Septimius Severus. Ah, Septimius. What an asshat.

is either truly yours, truly nuts, or just playing: that’s need-to-know, like his power level when he Super Saiyan.

can be injected into fine-grained subterranean rocks like felsite, creating pressure, creating heat, creating a renewable, clean source of energy. Possible side effects may include earthquake and hurting felsite’s feelings by fracturing it into millions of super-heated shards. I mean, earthquakes suck, sure. But I wouldn’t wish that fracturing stuff on nobody’s moms, yo.

teared up as he spoke, rambling for more than seven minutes before getting to the point: “The taxpayers have been deceived. The bottom line is, I have misused state funds, been unfaithful to Jenny, and… I am actually a highly-motivated horse in a human-suit, not a human governor at all.” He then proceeded to chew hay sullenly, glancing down at his Italian loafer-shod hooves in the full glare of Carolinian opprobrium as reporters’ cameras snapped.

finally cornered his archnemesis, the reversible Emord Nilap, a devil from Krape Park who lived on desserts stolen from stressed bakers; a god to the sort of dog who woke raw on the trams, making smart comments even to soldiers off to war; a star of rats who left spit for tips. And yet, just as he grabbed at Nalip’s mackintosh, the villain cried “Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas!” and turned into his own shadow, which he dragged brightly and fleshily behind him until it wore away.

accidentally ticked the box next to “Shaman/Sorcerer” under the heading “Occupation” on his COBRA application. The application was accepted, but now his insurance only covers him for two “doctors,” a Dr. Victor F. who according to his card specializes in “Monstrosities & Tempering with the Spark Divine,” and an Amazonian hedge nun named Tsoma who can resurrect tapirs and pot-bellied pigs with fits of holy sneezing. Went with Tsoma, for now.

spent most of the seventeenth century in Izmir, cutting gerbil-sized barques from the flotsam that drifted back into the great bay following the Sultan’s many frivolous sea-battles. When enough miniature barques had been cut, loaded them with piratical gerbils and went to sea, paddling alongside on a tarred-shut wooden trunk. The gerbils, suffice to say, fared poorly against both the Ottoman’s fleet and that of the Duke of Venice.

unmoored the Caesar of the Caspian from its berth south of Yalta and watched as his darling Tsarina Cassandrinova and her fifty Jack Russells drifted off, at a sharp cant, toward Armenia. A confused Cossack awoke and started firing at the shore, thinking the war had begun again. A few peasants pointed. Overall, was saddened that stealing the imperial sapphires had come to this, an act of unabashed unmooring. The unmooring, as it were, of a heart.

boils world leaders in Liquid Molten Super-Espresso piped up from his secret Hell-Reservoir, far beneath Mount Etna (an UNESCO Heritage Site)! Re-lasers his nemeses with the Double Laser (copyright Samsung Electronics)! Commands his squadrons of brutishly intelligent Man-Squid to ride their out-sized Sharkipugs down the Corridor of Maudlin Doom, chanting “F’thagan, Wythulhu!” (concert DVD available Oct. 12 from Matador Records)!

eating artichoke and blue cheese with miniature bread; dreaming of miniature flying islands (house-sized) and miniature cats (bee-sized) and enormous bees (horse-sized); cannot, personally, fit into a breadbox.

scombres his big-headed gray alaunts after badgers as readily as after harts and hinds; after boars and hares, no concession to the smallness of the hares or the dogs’ disinterest in them; after giraffes and old-growth Hibernian mega-sloths, no concession to the fact of their patent nonexistence; after Magneto, Master of Magnetism; and after a tree, what swayed gently at me the wrong way this one time. Scombres his alaunts, one could say, “like the Dickens.”

rebranded his cat as a cameleopard, his toothbrush as a oaken ferrule of Hermes Trimegistus, and his loafers as winged sandals.

consults an Ayyubid star-chart called a zij to determine in what house Leo will rise next week. That mangy fuck’s always risin in somebody’s house, eatin up all they pets, stealin brews, flushin all loud with the door open at like three in the morning. Don’t even have his shots.

is a proud dues-paying member of the West Side Highway Giant Squid Massage Society, whose mission is to: empower giant squid living in the Hudson River to massage themselves and others with impunity; engage the giant squid community on tough issues such as massage oils and cedar massage tables constructed for decacarpal persons; and enrich giant squid massage-life via our monthly zine, Glub Rub.

will live forever. One day. Until then, each time he dies, he must pick up the trail of all those Wythes who died before him, who collectively comprise the Ur-Wythe. Too, he must leave an imprint of his own vast enough that every Wythe who comes after will be able to see in it a piece of himself. In this way the chain of Wythes is preserved eternally, until the Wythe of the Apocalypse is born. There can be only one.

grows only the south slope of a certain mountain in Normandy, a mountain visible only in the late summer and on Whitsuntide Day, and then only to certain holy fools, pangolin-handlers, and children. Should be collected only by the trained monks of St.-Germaine a la Fet, and then only with the aid of special Damascene “churlers” (crimson, kid-leather gloves). Should be roasted with garlickscrape and served after the breads but before the soups.