The boys and I were out on the town, looking for some action. And I don’t mean “action” like some mob of hormonal teenage brigands. Nah, I mean like something edifying. Something you’d feel in your DNA, not just some T and A. That Paul Atreides kinda ride, moreso than the Alex DeLarge trip. You dig?

See, we’d been sucking down hard cider like it was water. It was October or the eschaton or somewhere thereabouts. The bar we’d found ourselves in was full of college kids, enamored with their own newfound independence. Dressing themselves with a purpose and trying to impress everyone they spoke to. Bad scene. No action here. The boys and I were looking for much more than somebody’s Junior-year book report on the Great Gatsby, you dig?

I suppose I should introduce the boys, since I keep mentioning them.

• My right-hand man, Buckler Precious, a retired fisherman. About ten years my senior, with a glass eye that changes colors with barometric pressure. He says he lost the eye in “a fight” and won’t tell any more. A short but stout man, with a wiry black beard descending to almost his waist. Wears wool sweaters and khakis.
• The social butterfly, Tim-Tim Acrimundo. A flirtatious and roguish young man, and a survivor of the horrendous American foster-kid system. He is tall, lithe, and has curly hair and a bad teenage mustache. He is a talented musician. The violin is his favorite instrument.
• Cabbage, the Talking Parrot. He’s a 26 year old talking African Grey. Mostly stays silent but when he does speak, it’s usually a trenchant insight or a very funny joke. I actually had a single-shoulder pauldron made with a little stand for him (at great cost) so hanging with him would be easier. Dude’s a legend.
• The newest fella in the group, Spring Touloosey. He grew up in New Orleans, so his speech has that sort of royal drawl that those people have. He grew up in a mostly empty manse that was overgrown with ivy, and he swears it was always cold enough to see your breath inside, even when the southern summers were blazing hot outside. We kind of haze him by punching him and making him buy cider for us.

The boys and I were out on the town, looking for some action. Cabbage said “This is like an all-boy kennel! No bitches!” Which was somewhat misogynistic and reductive but also keep in mind he is a talking parrot. “I agree,” Buckler said, burping. “I heard there’s a really great place just a couple of blocks away. Thing is, though, and you’re not gonna believe this…”
He paused.

I rolled my eyes and slapped my hand on the table. “I hate that shit. When people do that thing where they prompt someone to ask them more about the thing they were just talking about. Why do you need that? You’re being stupid.”

Buckler looked at me for a couple seconds “I wasn’t doing that. I was about to say it. You seem kind of agitated. If I-“

I interrupted “Yeah, okay. Sure. I was an asshole. I’m sorry. Can we drop it?! I’m drunk. I’m sorry.”

Buckler said, “Yeah. No problem man. The bar is just a couple of blocks away, but we have to use our imaginations to get there.” There was a resounding silence in the bar, as the jukebox just ended Toby Keith’s “Shoulda Been a Cowboy” and took up Daniel Bedingfield “Gotta Get Thru This”

“‘Use our imaginations, what the heck are you talking about!?'” asked Tim-Tim. “He’s trying to open the conversation to gay stuff,” suggested Spring.

“No! Not at all!” exclaimed Buckler. “In fact, I will show you,” he said, standing up and pushing his bar chair across the deathdry plankboards with a squeak. “Just come outside with me. Just trust me this time,” So then we were outside, I had a cigarette in my mouth. The boys and I were about to embark on a journey to a bar that could only be accessed by imagination.

And wouldn’t you know it? We all surrendered our suspicion, our attachment to The Way Things Are and we ended up in a different reality. Despite the honking of many speeding cars, the jaywalking with a mind set on imagination led us to an entirely new place. The waking world gave way to a different reality. I do feel slightly guilty about all those cars that crashed when they swerved avoiding us and they all died crashing into light poles and buildings and burning to death and stuff but the new place we walked into was just so magical.

The boys and I were out on the town, looking for some action. We found it in the Woodland Critters Cafe. It was a building in the shape of a boot, which is the most whimsical of cartoon building shapes. I walked in, and the air was that warm, orange musty smell of a familiar and safe place in the long winter nights. Cabbage gave a long bird cry and swooped across the room. Tim-Tim locked eyes with a girl and I think she may have been a gingerbread cookie or something but he disappeared for the rest of the night. And the stale beer and human heat of the room felt inviting as opposed to the crisp cutting cold of fall outside. I saddled up to the barstool closest to me and watched the bartender wipe down a mug. He was a bear. A grizzly bear wearing an apron.

Bear Bartender: What can I get you, son?

Mark: Well, uh. I’m not sure. We’re in Imagination, right?

Bear: Yeah. Yep. (he’s refilling the ice resevoir)

Mark: Well can I get like, a…some kind of imaginary drink? Like a Faerie Margarita?!

Bear: ….

Mark: …

(They both laugh)

Bear: You just asked for-

Mark: Yeah! Yeah I know man! Okay. Okay.

Bear: A rum and coke?

Mark: That sounds great.

(Bear prepares the drink)

Bear: So, you’re not from Imagination, right?

Mark: Nah, I’m from Wisconsin. Which is seems kind of like this place.

Bear: Nah. It’s not like this. (He’s making some other patron’s drink by now)

Mark: It’s always cold and empty.

Bear: Yeah, and Imagination is the opposite of that. It’s warm and full. Y’know?

Mark: I guess I mean like it’s just a construct that we feel socially. It’s topography and shit is cool, but it seems arbitrary. Minnesota is the same thing but the politics are different there.

Bear: I don’t care. I’m a bear. Would you like to drink another round in a magical enchanted boot or go back to the real world?

Mark: Yes, barkeep. I will surely have another.

Bear: Yeah. They never want to go back.

The boys and I woke up and went back to work. The experience had to get muted into the routine in order to function. The action was found. It was disappointing. I like the bear though.

Greetings, Learnstronauts! It obviously brings me no pleasure to address the accusations against Professor Howie Dewitt. This is a dark time for everyone at the Learnstronauts, LLC. family, and while I knew Howie as a pre-eminent professional, I feel that I must acknowledge the allegations against my former employer and do the work of believing women. We are temporarily suspending Howie Dewitt until further notice, pending the results of the internal investigation. Please bear with us in this time. I will be filling in for the moment, because I also have a name that is a pun.

Peter B., Age 9, from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin:
I was eating a watermelon slice and my cousin said a watermelon was going to grow in my belly if I swallowed a seed! Is this true?

Worry not, Peter. Watermelons need nutrient-rich soil and exposure to the sun to grow. Your tum-tum is safe. It’s too dark and acidic to grow a bean-sprout, much less a watermelon!

Gem T., Age 33, from Butte, Montana
Hey Howie! Long-time, first-time. What’s the biggest animal?

The blue whale is the answer. They are like a hundred feet long and packed full of fat. Longest, heaviest creatures that god ever deigned to bless us with, and they are extant in nature right now. I read something about how they once were a terrestrial animal not too dissimilar to a wolf and they were like “fuck this living on land shit, back into the ocean,”. That’s pretty cool. They are just huge, too. Have you ever seen one of those fuckers? Gigantic.

Oak J., from Two Harbors, Minnesota:
I’m infertile. I pressed my balls into a panini press back in 2004 and now I can’t have kids. Is my life worth living?

Absolutely, Oak J. You don’t need to have kids in order to matter. You’ve made your legacy a problem for your children if you need that to feel satisfied, and if you can’t make a meaningful impression on people already in your life, and instead have to imprint significance onto the captive audience of your children, I’m not quite sure you’ve got the right idea.

Yucky Booger-Man, 44, Tree City, WA:|
Howie was a fucking legend and you are a dumb slut for trying to replace him and i hate you

A surprisingly common sentiment among Learnstronauts! I have a PhD in Learnstronomics, so don’t even try to come at me. You fucking worm.

Clip McDooger, Age 42, Seneca, WA:
What is love?

Love is gentle, and it is kind. Love is a fascination with your partner, it is being enraptured with their answers to your questions. It is looking deeply into their eyes and feeling nothing like longing but more like completion. Love is the simple answer to the riddle you’ve held all your life. Love casts your heart across the lake of eternity with a hop, skip, jump, and you’re happy for it to have happened. I love being in love. Howie Dewitt was also accused of heinous crimes.

Pork P, Age 33, Lansing, MI:
I don’t understand a godamned thing about geese. Why are they flying away?

Geese fly away because it is getting too cold for them! They migrate in a way that is yet mostly unknown to humans! Magnetic leylines, compasses, eating the shit of the duck in front of them? No one knows. The geese fly in a V into the better tomorrow, so why don’t you?

That’s about all the time I have, Learnstronauts! I hope everything turns out to be above board with the bad stuff! I mean, probably not! Usually, that’s not the case! But hey, whatever. Strap on your thinking helmets and get ready to blast off into a better chapter!

Greetings, Learnstronauts! I’m Professor Howie Dewitt, and this is another exciting edition of How We Do It! It’s the only column where curious humans, from kids to adults, can write in and ask just about anything, and the professor will do his darnedest to give you an answer! Alright Learnstronauts, get your Thinking Helmets on, and get ready to blast off!

Austin L., Age 8, from Chattanooga, Tennessee:
Dear Professor Dewitt,
I really like frogs! I am wondering why I can’t find any frogs in the winter time? They always seem to hide!

Ah, an astute inquiry, young Austin! That is to say, a very good question! Frogs are cold-blooded, meaning that their body temperature changes based on how warm or cold the air around them is. As the air gets cooler in the winter, so does the frog’s body. That means they have to hide out for the cooler months of the year. I guess you could say that they have to find somewhere to “chill” while the air “chills!” Most frogs will hide underground. They may dig a hole and bury themselves in the earth, or use the burrow of another animal, or even hide out in a cellar or basement! When the air starts to warm up in the spring, your frog friends will crawl out and hop around to your hearts’ content, Austin. Ribbit!

Brian G., Age 28, from Seattle, Washington:
Hey prof! Big fan! I’m enjoying a grilled cheese sandwich on a rainy afternoon, and I just realized that I have no idea how cheese gets made! Care to enlighten me?

Brian, it would be my delight to describe the fantastic formula by which you are imbibing that edible bit of culinary creation! The base ingredient of cheese is milk. Most of the cheese we eat is made from cows’ milk, but it can also come from goats, sheep, buffalo, or rats. All mammals produce milk, from their mammary glands, or boobs. The trick to making cheese is to separate the fatty solids from the water that comes with it. These are called “curds”. Once the moisture is removed, the curds are aged. This is done by adding different molds, or yeasts, or rats. Various bacteria, fungi, and microbes of all kinds play around on the curds, and then it becomes cheese.

Paul F., Age 33, from Clutier, Iowa:
How come no women ever wanna fuck me

Well my lonely Learnstronaut, more often than not a problem like that stems from your attitude or outlook moreso than your looks. Try an approach wherein you are genuinely interested in learning about and connecting with other people, and seeing if any chemistry develops from that, rather than interacting with your own penis at the forefront of your mind. Women tend to be more drawn to an interesting person who can reciprocate conversation and someone who will be a peer, rather than an insular psychotic freak.

Tim T., Age 50, from Albany, New York:
How many feet are in a mile?

5,280. That’s something you could easily find out without involving me…

Elizabeth G., Age 18, from Mocksville, North Carolina:
I am stuck in traffic on a bridge and I’d like for you to explain how a bridge even gets made

Well Elizabeth, the answer is very simple. They go underwater and dig a hole and then put some big fuckin’ things in there and then start building on top of it I guess. I don’t know. The truth is that it’s very complicated and I am astonished every time I drive over a bridge.

Gweefer Z., Age 29, from Wausau, Wisconsin:
What up, Prof! Why am I working 40+ hours per week and still living paycheck to paycheck and eating Ramen noodles even though I have a degree?

It’s capitalism. It’s more specifically late capitalism, wherein at one time workers had enough leverage to demand more from their employers, but virtual or actual slave labor in the third world devalued manufacturing enough to make production in the United States a goofy afterthought, and all of the service economy jobs were so compartmentalized that it could be easily outsourced to India or Bengladesh or something. A service economy that only serves itself is a swirling ring around a drain.

And it is profane, right? It is people wealthy beyond measure trying to acquire more just for the sake of it. But the folk religion of our western culture posits that maybe, maybe someday, I’ll be one of those bigshots. I’ll get to have a big house and a cool car and shit, and while all their wildest dreams could come true with a price tag of like $2 million, they play the stooge to some shithead with billions of dollars.

People don’t understand the scale, the vulgarity of the ultra-wealthy. Millions, billions, whatever, I’d like to be a rich guy too! A million seconds is twelve days. A billion seconds is about 32 years.

That means a billionaire was being paid a dollar per second for 32 years, from birth, without being off-clock for shitting, sleeping, whatever. A dollar per second for 32 years. And if it started at birth, without spending any money, they would just have become a billionaire about the time their hairline started receding. That’s $3600 dollars per hour.

You are a victim of a predatory system. It promises that with a little luck, and some gumption, you too, can be one of the bigshots! It is a lamprey eel that sucks your work, your life, your value into itself and bloats into putrefaction for nothing. Capital, of course, tells you that you’re worthless, you’re nothing, in order to gain, someone else must lose. It will take a spiritual awakening to change this. As the blood is squeezed from the stone, people must look one another in the eye and realize that our lives don’t need to feel like this. It’s gonna take something like fire to alight behind dull eyes watching commercials. We lived for hundreds of thousands of years without this capitalism shit. We were weak and blind creatures that could thrive because of our interdependence. Our community. The spirit of god, whether he exists or not, has to rise up in us. My political thesis statement is this: That every person born into this world deserves dignity, with no caveats.

Fliptrim E., Age 11, Bakersfield, California:
Hello Prof! I like birds! What bird can fly the fastest?

Your query piqued my interest! The peregrine falcon can dive at nearly 200 miles per hour! That’s about as fast as a NASCAR car drives around the track! Woah!

I recently had the chance to interview Bendt “If” Bjornsen, the Danish wunderkind film director who just released his newest masterpiece, “A Wife in Trouble”. What follows is a transcript of our conversation, edited for brevity and clarity. I would like to extend my sincere thanks and gratitude to If Bjornsen for his insights and hospitality. Enjoy!

BBM: Thanks for agreeing to this interview, If. May I ask, first off, why your preferred name is “If”?

IB: Of course you may. Yes. Why accept the nickname if you cannot understand it? It is because I am, in some ways, almost a slave to possibility. I go to a party, and I ask him, I ask the host, “Where do I put my coat?” Right? And he says, “Oh, you may put it on the coat rack by the door,” so my mind, my thoughts say to him “But what if the coat rack was an alligator?” And he does this thing, I see it all the time. He scrunches up his eyebrows and he says “What?” And that is what I am subject to all the time. He is scrunching his eyebrows to me because he has no imagination.

BBM: Right, yes. Yes. Do you think-

IB: He is scrunching them like this! (He furrows his brow) It looks like, I am not sure, two worms, two…how you say…two worms mating, yes?

BBM: Well a furry worm is probably a caterpillar-

IB: Yes! Exactly. Yes.

BBM: Why do you think so many people find your films challenging?

IB: (Long pause) Stupid.

BBM: The audience is stupid, or my question is not-

IB: The people watching do not have a big enough brain to understand. Many people of course, they do the working from 10 AM to 3 PM, whatever, they go home and sex on their wife, they are watching football, they do not have a mind enough to imagine.

BBM: Right. A lot of people are so beaten down by the day-to-day drudgery that they can’t devote any mental energy to challenging art, and they end up making lowest-common-denominator bullshit like Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory hugely successful.

IB: Their faces look like two worms fucking. Or no, caper- caffa-

BBM: Caterpillars. “A Wife in Trouble” is a marvel. I loved it.

IB: Yes.

BBM: The movie just has a, I wanna say “texture”, that you just don’t find in other stuff. A lot of intense dialogue scenes filmed far away from the actors’ faces, a very rich color palette. It’s like every trend in the film industry was pulling the other way and you just bucked it all and made one hell of a film.

IB: I know, I know.

BBM: So what does the-

IB: I’m okay with it, yeah? I am saying that every person, a man or a woman, is doing the walk. They are, how you say…doing the thing in the…building?

BBM: Okay, yep. Your English is not as good as my producers lead me to belive but go on,

IB: And on the inside of that, there is room for problems. Noam Chomsky, an American, he said that “colorless green ideas sleep furiously” was an English sentence that made sensing out as far as laws of the language go, but it is silly and means nothing-

BBM: Yes, and gutentag-

IB: I am thinking this is in the language, but it is also in the life. You can be doing every things that make sensing, but it is not a thing that makes sense, yeah?

BBM: Let me try to think about that. You seem like, really perky compared to other stuff I’ve seen you in.

IB: Yeah, I’m having cocaine. Whatever. Faster is better, am I right? You can be doing every things that makes sensing, but-

BBM: But it doesn’t really-

IB: It doesn’t do the “if”. That is my name, that is what I’m all about. People forget, they forget all the time that I am 29 years old-

BBM: You are 44, your Wikipedia says-

IB: I may marry a young actress, yes? Have a good film, yes? Look at pictures of my father and not cry? But that is all up to the gods now, yes?

BBM: Uh, yeah. I suppose.

IB: I must retire now. I am feeling dizzied. Perhaps I worked too hard today.

BBM: Doubt it. But thank you for the film, thank you for the interview, If Bjornsen.

IB: Fuck you.

Aleister Crowley said
| “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”
Great theory, dummy.
Laws are made to prohibit certain things.
If all is permissible, then you’ve no longer got a law, you’ve got a complete damned free-for-all.
The world’s most aggressive power bottom just said the dumbest thing in the world!
Why would you assume that any and all actions were acceptable!?
Unless context was necessary. In which case…

Friedrich Nietzsche said “God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?”
Geez, Friedrich. Chill out for a half-second.

Both of these quotes reject the superstructure of prior generations.
Laws, and gods, and traditions are cultural architecture that we are unwillingly born into.

I say this not as some Randian piss priest,
but as an emissary of the possible.
Humanity has always been a collaborative effort.
We incubate in our mothers’ wombs for 9 months because other people were looking out for our mothers.
We are helpless and weak for years because of collective care and protection.
Some antelope and lizards are born ready to fight.
Not humans.
We depend on each other to become actualized.

Capitalism has taken on the role of the Demiurge, the great and terrible Satan that teaches all of us that we are alone, and that we are in competition, and life and love are a zero-sum game.
In order to gain, someone else must lose.
This is the great death-gift that our world teaches.
Money must triumph over your brothers and sisters and lovers.
How many families will be torn apart over inheritance?
Why does it cost money to die?
Money, representation of worth, bites into our brains and lives and shakes it into pale pink slurry.

Do what thou wilt, and god is dead.
We have no obligation to conform to the sickly black traditions of our ancestors.
The future can be anything we make of it, and it will take courage and persistence.
We will tread into uncharted territory.
We will walk into a deep black night with fire in our eyes and know not fear. The future is terrifying but to step into the dark without being prepared is the way to Become.

I had a dream the other night
in which I was walking up a long staircase.
The stairs were a carved stone, a kind of tan block cut unevenly from a rock
. Each one had moss growing around the corners, and embossed into the front of it was a word.
It was carved into the face of the stone in a very official, western typeface sort of way.
It was like Times New Roman dyed black embedded into these primeval stones.
The words didn’t form any cogent sentences or thoughts. “PRIDE” one would say and then “MOUTH” and another would read “ORIGIN”.

And I walked up these steps, reading each word.
After a time, I craned my neck up to see where the staircase was leading, and it was just an infinite point in a misty white horizon.
The stairs never ended.
They faded into infinity.

“Oh,” I thought, “This is like that thing I wrote about before. The thing about the fae making you climb endless staircases in your dreams. If they show up here, I’m not eating any chocolate, I can tell you that much-“

I realized it was a dream and I woke up.

My girlfriend was in bed next to me. She was under the warm blankets with me and just about to put her phone away to fall asleep.
I started explaining this strange dream to her.
She looked back at me with love and understanding.
Something was off, though. Something was wrong.
I told her about the almost Mesoamerican steps, how nature had grown up into the corners. Heavy imprints of words that didn’t describe anything coherent.
I was climbing and mostly liking it until i realized it didn’t make any sense.
Something was off.
She didn’t say anything back.
And then I realized I was wearing my winter jacket while sleeping in bed.
I had a heavy black jacket on in bed.
Why would I be wearing my winter jacket while sleeping-

Then I woke up for real. That last moment was also a dream. I sat up with a kind of violence. I did not like that! I sat awake for about 90 minutes. Trying to think about anything that couldn’t become a nightmare.

i fell asleep again
my beautiful wife was in bed next to me
when i woke in the morning
and went to get us some coffee

This is part of why everything is so fucking fucked up in our culture. This idea that if we set up any kind of mechanism for social good, it’ll be spoiled by people abusing it. The Reagan era introduced the phrase “welfare queens” into the collective lexicon, and it has achieved it’s intended purpose of poisoning everyone against any kind of welfare for the needy.

What a crock of shit. Does it happen? I’m sure it does. Is it common? No, but even if it was…who gives a shit!? Isn’t it better to have a baseline level of human dignity in this country, and accept that a few soulless assholes might exploit it, than to have thousands upon thousands of living, breathing human beings no different to you or I malnourished and starving in a nation that throws out literal tons of perfectly good food every day?

How is this something that exists in the mind of a functioning human adult? “Oh, this would help people, but it might help some who don’t need it, so we better not do it.” Should we just not have medical clinics because hypochondriacs exist? Should we shut down all public schools because some kids don’t get good grades? What are you TALKING about you mindless fucking slugs!?!

It drives me batty. It’s the line the rich and powerful have fed you to keep you at odds with your neighbors and blaming the wrong people for everything. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

“Hold!” I shouted, clenching the wheel
Ice and bilge assaulted the deck
rushing water sweeping over all
The black sky offered no light other than cracks of lightning to glimpse the terror of the scene

The power of the sea grasped my ankles and shins and knees
and it climbed my body as I tried to command
as though I was in control
Colder than my corpse would be, I turned to my men
Shouting instructions gesturing wildly,
my cries being overwritten by peals of Biblical thunder

The bottom of the parabolic
and she drinks into her doom so deeply
overwhelmingly
my eyes add a few drops of saltwater to our tomb

a terrible crash into oblivion
water cold to shock the heart into death
strikes everyone, and it hits chest high
the swell stirs and pulls everything
into it

My vessel rose against herself
The wood moaning in agony
Each rising gave to the fantasy that one more crash and we’d be safe
that somehow we’d be past the storm
And as the hull plunged, I braced again
eyes wild and teeth clenched to bleeding
and the terrible black beauty of mother ocean sank to meet us

Frost and foam clung to my beard
The wind drank my words into oblivion’s belly
And bubbles froze to my lips as I said
“Let’s watch another cartoon!”

– The Diaries of Captain Kangaroo

I was sitting on a log in the woods
Hunting season was almost over
It had been unusually warm to start the season
I sat with my dad and my uncle a couple of times
Didn’t see nothin’
Other than hawks and squirrels

I was 12 or 13 years old
I was mostly into Pokemon cards
and was scared by the movie
The Blair Witch Project

Sitting alone in the woods with the Blair Witch is pretty scary when you’re like 12

I was glad I had a gun

I had a 30 ought six
Pretty big gun for a little dude
We were in eastern Jackson County
Where no one lives
and it was early afternoon
My uncle said he would walk a few hundred yards north and try to drive the deer toward me

A couple days earlier I was in the woods
And I felt something strange and sacred
The wind was rising and falling through the tree branches
and the leaves were breaking off and spiraling to the ground
and then there was a pause
and the wind would rise and the trees would sing again
and the earth was breathing
and i felt a connection
cutting through everything else
this was strange and sacred
and common and right

A light snow fell, briefly
for only a few minutes

I sat on a log and then from the south,
the opposite direction my uncle went,
two deer came walking
I heard one of them snap a branch underfoot
A doe and a fawn
They were close

I brought the gunsights to my eye
and I don’t have this thing
this thing i hear some deer hunters talk about
where they get overwhelmed with excitement and can’t slow their heart down
i feel a focus
and i exhale and pull the trigger twice
is it a gun that i had to recock to reload? i don’t remember

shortly thereafter my uncle came back, and asked if I had shot at a deer
“Yeah,” I said

It was dead on the ground like less than 100 feet from where I shot it. Got her right through the heart. I did a Bambi. I apologize to the fawn.

I pulled the carcass out of the woods. We went to a bar in Pray, Wisconsin. It is an unincorporated little hamlet with no churches and no desire. “We’ve gotta register this guy’s first deer,” my uncle said, “And we’ll take two beers.” The bartender lady didn’t blink and served me a beer. My uncle said he was just kidding, but I guess getting your first deer deserves a beer in such rural towns right?

The Blair Witch was pressed against the window, greenish nose smushed to the glass. I ate some venison, but the deer I shot was not a big one. It was legal, but small. I have not been hunting since. Glad to have been a part of it, I suppose. Mother earth and human history and whatnot. Funny that I remember it so clearly.

GENERAL: Well, Mister President, there’s…there’s really no easy way to say this, so I’ll just give it to you straight.

(beat)

GENERAL: At approximately 1900 hours tonight, NORAD and Cent-Comm received signals indicating the presence of a new shape on the North American continent. After cross-referencing data and verifying instrument functionality, all relevant parties concluded that we had in fact detected a new shape. It was located five point five clicks south of Topeka, Kansas. Now-

PRESIDENT: Run that by me again, you detected a new…shape?

GENERAL: That is correct, Mister President.

PRESIDENT: Tonight, here in the United States…you’re telling me you found a, a goddamned new shape?

GENERAL: (lowering his eyes) That is correct. Mister President.

(The PRESIDENT sinks back into his chair, sighs heavily and brings both hands to his face. He rubs his eyes, seems to center himself, and leans forward.)

PRESIDENT: I must be the Biblical Job reborn. Handed shit sandwich after shit sandwich. Alright, who knows about it?

GENERAL: Unclear at this time. The Five Eyes of course, potentially China, maybe the Soviets-er, Russia. No media so far as we know.

PRESIDENT: Okay then. Balls. Balls! New shapes. What, I mean, not that it matters, but what kinda shape?

GENERAL: That is uh, not something we’ve got a real handle on at this point, Mister President.

PRESIDENT: No handle on it? There’s a goddamned new shape in the center of our country and we don’t have any fucking clue what it-

GENERAL: We are working on it! Mister President! We’ve got the relevant experts here. We’ve brought him in already. The man to my left is Dr. Chris Proce. He’s the chair of the geometry department over at MIT. One of the preeminent geometry men walking the earth today.

(PROCE is a thin man of slight stature, bad posture, bad teenage mustache. His glasses are thick-framed and thick-lensed. The lenses make his dark eyes look oversized.)

PROCE: Hello, Mister President. It is an honor. You know, I voted for you in November and-

PRESIDENT: Spare me, Proce! Now’s not the time for it. If I wanted my ass kissed, I’d buzz my secretary in here, and I’m pretty sure he’s at lunch anyway. What do you have on this goddamned new shape?

PROCE: Oh, oh, well (he adjusts his bowtie and straightens his posture) the new shape has been detected. However, our analysis can’t really begin until we have the proper tools to begin breaking it down from top to bottom. A sort of full-blown audit, if you will. (he snorts in a very nasally sort of way.) I will need 30,000 pages of graph paper, 22 protractors, 130 rulers, 184 graphite pencils-

(The PRESIDENT slams his fist angrily on his desk)

PRESIDENT: We don’t have TIME! I wanna find out what this bastard-shitting shape is TONGIHT!

(PROCE wilts)

PROCE: I’m sorry, Mister President, but protocol for these sorts of discoveries demands that our team first plots…the…vertices…and….

(He begins crying)

PRESIDENT: General, are you really telling me this human puddle is our best Geometry Man? What about, uh, what’s his name?

GENERAL: Oh no, Mister President, don’t even think about-

PRESIDENT: Oh to hell with protocol and procedure at this point, Jeff. I don’t care if he’s blacklisted. I don’t care if he’s a loose cannon. I don’t give a rat’s hairy grey ass if he plays by his own rules. A crisis like this demands only one man.

GENERAL: Sir, I cannot advise strongly enough against-

PRESIDENT: Bring me…Darren Bader!!!

(TITLE SEQUENCE)

(South Los Angeles. The spotlights from some movie premiere drag across the smoggy sky. Sirens from police or ambulances are heard in the distance.)

(We enter the office of DARREN BADER, a smoky, mostly wood office. It’s disheveled. The pictures on the wall hang askew, the desk is covered in empty booze bottles. DARREN himself is lighting a cigar, sitting in his highback chair, thinking.)

(The door explodes open and flashlights catch the particulate dust and cigar smoke as the GENERAL and his cohort enter the room.)

GENERAL: Darren ‘The Rhombus-Killer’ Bader…

(BADER draws from his cigar, the orange glow only illumating his eyebrows and blackish eyes. He slowly exhales a lungful of cigar smoke, and it drifts over his desk and falls to the floor like a liquid.)

BADER: Is that you, Jeff?

(the rhythmic thumping of helicopter blades is present, but the searchlights fade into the grey)

GENERAL: Yeah, Darren. It’s me.

BADER: Thought I’d see you again soon. I had a dream about you.

(The GENERAL looks down, seems to hesitate trying to find his words, and then looks up before being cut off)

BADER: This is all about that new shape, isn’t it?

GENERAL: Well, yes. I would say that’s what I’m here for. Yes.

BADER: I figured.

(The room is completely dark. It’s all black and there are just little veins of greyish smoke catching distant searchlights once in a while.)

BADER: Proce can’t do it or what?

(He smiles as he turns the lights on in his office with the flick of a switch.)

GENERAL: You know damn well he can’t handle this like you could. Will you please just…

BADER: Just what? Huh? Forget it all? Come back into the fold? Unlikely!

(Bader screws the cap off of a bottle of booze with a swift thumb motion, and then takes a big drink of it.)

BADER: Just go back into Geometry!? Huh?! After what happened to me!?!

(He pounds the bottle with ferocity)

GENERAL: (apologetically) Darren…

BADER: (defiantly) Oh yeah. Darren. Jeff. It’s like we’re friends. When all the shapes are accounted for, we’re thicker than thieves. Circle, square, triangle. No problem. Everything is a-ok. Nothing to worry about…

GENERAL: I’m not asking you as a general, I’m asking you as a five star friend. You used to believe in-

BADER: Yeah! I used to believe in a lot of shit! Back when the shapes were easy! Back when my daughter was alive! Back when we killed that rogue dodecahedron together!

(The GENERAL slumps and rubs his temples, but seems almost embarrassed, catches himself and sits up)

GENERAL: I’m not really asking you. I’m ordering you. You swore an oath. And I’m demanding that you fulfill it.

(BADER finishes the bottle of booze, rubs his lips with his forearm defiantly. He stares at the floor a few seconds. He looks up, an excitement in his eyes.)

BADER: You know as well as I do. I swore I’d never do Geometry again. Not after last time. Not after where that cone went, not after what the cubes and those rectangles did to our friends. Christ, Willie Wagner was what, 19 years old?! Nothing ahead of him but daylight, until those bastard shapes got involved. You know I don’t do geometry like the textbook teaches. You know I’m a hardnosed badass who plays by his own rules. You know I’ll fuck up a rhombus any day of the week. I’ve been out of the game for a long while. Maybe too long. Maybe my daughter would want me to quit feeling sorry for myself, and take up the only charge I seem fit for. Alright. A new shape has been found, huh? Haha. I’ve got something for all the shapes, old and new.
(He snorts, looks up)
BADER: For old times’ sake. Let’s fuck this shape up.