RANTS: FROM THE VAULT

On Blown Up Children and Other Bits 

Go. Go directly. Go directly to where it is you need to go. Do not pass go. Do not pass anything. Retain everything. If you must dispose of something, use the receptacles provided. And please don’t stop. Don’t stop for anything. Especially don’t stop to collect anything. It is too late for collecting. It’s beyond the time for collecting. Do not take any baggage with you. Carry-ons may prove hazardous to your health.

Remember: Warnings are posted for your safety. No one will take responsibility for You, except You. (You have been warned!) Once on board please keep your arms and legs in at all times. Enjoy your ride, and have a nice day.

Warning: Smoking and guns kill. Signs are posted. “Smoking Guns Kill,” they say. Avoid smoking guns and cigarettes. One kills more quickly but the results are still the same.

Buckle Up for Safety: In the event of a nuclear attack DUCK AND COVER. For your understanding, radiation is absorbed through the skin. (Please remove your epidermal layers to prevent the absorption of subatomic particles.)

When in the course of human intercourse replace all divots with attachable turf and water daily until green. Always apply sunscreen before leaving your shelter. While skin tumors may be your friends now and you must enjoy their company, for your own peace of mind please stay within the designated lines and whatever you do don’t step over the line. It is there for a reason.

Reasons are like the seasons, someone once wrote. They are understood only in the long term. “Oh! That was why. Now I understand!”

Children come with the seasons like dew drops and acorns. They, too, are also are understood only in the long term.

Love is a season and so is hate. That is why calendars were invented.

The characteristics of love and hate are as follows:

Love has no taste—taste begets favour. Hate may be sweet or salty, bitter or sour (chocolate or chalk.)

Love has no colour—colour begets limits. Hate has all colours: the colour of flags, of fashionable clothing, the silver glint off a strafing  jet’s wings, bright red bricks of a schoolhouse, the blue of a newborn’s eyes, the sky; all colours, everything, anything.

Love has no place. Hate, every place.

Love has nothing. Hate’s cookie jar is full and there are crumbs everywhere!

“Sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite! No school today! No school today! You can sleep today, sweet one. You can sleep and sleep. And sleep.”

Decisions are made because of reason. Unexpected results are children. Or not.

To all passengers: For your comfort, copulation is allowed on all decks. Proceed in an orderly fashion, but remember that the show is almost over. When the lights go out, please use the proper exits. Don’t forget your personal items. Wrap them in tissue paper and place them in the receptacles provided.

Thank you for your cooperation.

“Each to his own” is written on the back of envelopes and beneath wax seals. But each thought is open to all. Like doors and windows, thoughts open onto surprising places. Surprise is the bedfellow of truth and many truths lay amid sweaty sheets. (Look, I’m trying to be honest with you, here. This is for your own good. It’s for all our good. So please remember to use a mild detergent when washing your sheets and never add bleach. Stains are the tell-tale rings. They give us our sense of proportion.

And when you encounter it, remember that it may be hazardous to your health. Now, many things are hazardous to your health. Like smoking and guns: they're hazardous to your health, and they may kill you. But, life will kill you—all the time. One hundred percent! There is no cure. Life is the disease of death. It festers in schoolyards and sours wine.

If you are experiencing nausea  at this time: take a pill but follow the directions on the label. Follow them carefully and in case of an overdose either go to sleep or decide to live.

Life is usually over when the top half of the skull is removed, surgically or otherwise. By the way, used surgical instruments make excellent shrapnel, though it must be said that martyrs’ belts are a bit heavy and make poor fashion statements. (Please leave them at the door.)

Drink eight glasses of water a day. Eat your vegetables and fruit—and watch the carbs!

Eat. Breathe. Touch. Allow. Be.

When in the course of human intercourse: Honour thy and thee and thou and thine, and also when and if and how (but not why), not forgetting him and her and them and us and you and all and of and it.

“A smack a day keeps the psychiatrist away,” Psychosis said to Neurosis.

Organize yourselves and leave the rest to us: Beauty is Love’s child. Art, but its namesake.

Any sudden movement may cause the craft to capsize. Please stay where you are until Simon says. So: Simon says take two steps forward. Simon says take one step back. Now put your hands where you can see them. Touch your nose. Fart like a hog. Now wink. Simon says.
Expenditures have exceeded cost parameters. Terminate the program. Control-Alt-Delete it.

If you can’t control something, alter it or delete it, but always keep a back-up file. Just in case (and there is always a just in case).

Finally, a clown’s favourite trick is when he takes off his makeup—it’s all about timing.

Some things just aren’t funny, but most things are if you look at them long enough—in the long run I mean.

Take a joke for example:

A clown, a soldier and a used car salesman walk into a bar. The clown goes up the barkeep and says: “Honk-honk!” The barkeep gives him a banana daiquiri. Next, the soldier goes up and says “Bang-bang” and the barkeep gives him a Bloody Mary. Finally, the used car salesman goes up to the barkeep and says: “Have I got a car for you!” The barkeep says “Honk-honk!” and shoots him dead. Moral of the story: say what you mean, what you really mean, what you absolutely mean to say. (Suggestion: It's not always the first thing that pops into your head, or the last, for that matter....)

And the last person left is supposed to turn off the lights, but if you can, leave them on—just for a little while.
..........

I WROTE THIS A WHILE AGO. I was looking through the crypt and among the moldy bones was this long screed that I had forgotten about. It was written sometime after the 2004 Beslan Massacre where 150 children died along with hundreds of others killed and injured during a three-day hostage crisis in North Ossetia, Russia when Chechen separatists took over a local high school. Like most people, I was horrified and sickened by the use of school children and their teachers as hostages by this group of radicals, and I didn’t need to understand the politics surrounding the event (or who was more culpable for the death and destruction that ultimately occurred) to know that killing children for your cause—for any cause—was just plain wrong. No matter whose side you're on. So I vented in this long, more or less stream of consciousness rant (to myself).

I don't know if it makes sense, or some sense, any sense, or is just plain nonsense. I went off on various tangents, but there are some images, observations and conclusions that I find still resonate, even after all this time. [I've added various illustrations to break up all the words and to make them behave! Ed.]

So I’ll put up this hoary, tattered account of something most of us have forgotten, in remembrance (as we near November 11) for all those who die for the sake of someone else’s idea of a perfect world. There have been so very many. Sadly, there will be many more.

Cheers, Jake.