The Toddler Detective

Tuesday afternoon. 2:30 PM.
The sun was out, a beautiful day.
The old lady said I was cranky, she had to put me down for a nap.
Like I hadn’t downed a few slugs of formula myself to try to find some shut-eye.

I woke from my adjustable baby-walker thing with a bang.
The door flew open, I drew my palm over my soft spot as I woke, and the police chief stomped over to me.
Dry Cheerios flew off the tray onto the floor in the commotion.
Damn, I could really use those right now…

“I had some trouble finding you,” started the chief of police, a plump old Irishman.
He was too old by a decade to hold the post, but his round and rosy cheeks served him well. Never had any trouble with the politicking, but basic police work was apparently beneath him.
I knew him.
His outward nicety fell away when we were together.
We’d had something of a falling out when he asked me to go to the Policemans’ Ball.
The old Patty insisted that I put my shoes on, and I just utterly refused to do so.
I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to. Don’t want to now!

“Well, Sherlock Holmes,” I snorted derisively, “How’d you manage to crack the case of where I would be?”

He sat, took his cap off, and wiped his brow. “Figured you’d be in the Toddler Town part of the city,”

“Great insight,” I gruffed, reaching into my desk and grabbing a can of powdered formula.

“Then I just took to walking. Just walking around, looking around. And I got to a place where they were playing a lot of Cocomelon…”

“Sure,” I replied, now pouring water into my flask of baby formula powder. “Lotta kids like that show,”

“Yeah, yeah. They sure do,” said the police chief. “But you wanna know the thing that really tipped me off?”

I shook the flask around, trying to stir it, but I don’t have total command over my body functions so it just kind of flew off to the side of the room and I tried to play it off like that’s what I meant to do and I coyly answered “What?”

“You have a 15 by 15 foot billboard on the outside of this building advertising that you are the only Toddler Detective in the world. So I took that to be some kind of a clue.”

Maybe this Mick bastard was smarter than I thought.

“Alright, so what’s the case? Why are you disturbing my nap time?”

“Murder,” said the police chief, “I wouldn’t drag you out of retirement for some petty theft or something,”

“I never know about you,”

“Please,” said the police chief, his countenance suddenly becoming far more grim and serious as he leaned forward, “You’re the only detective that we can hire in exchange for a Ziploc baggie full of animal crackers that we can give this case to.”

I leaned back in my bouncy little roller thing, you know what I’m talking about right? Thought about the trauma of birth. About my brain growing at an exponential rate. Thousands of pathways being born, each moment of every day. Thought about how I could dunk on the fucking police chief if I solved this thing after I already told him to go fuck himself. Also I needed money. Babies ain’t cheap.

“I’m in. Goo goo gah gah. Just kidding.” I polished off the flask of formula and I don’t remember the cop leaving. Think I dreamed about Cocomelon.

I was still learning my numbers, but the math just didn’t add up.

Even for a seasoned P.I. like me, the crime scene was especially brutal. The departed had been killed, and then cannibalised. Partially eaten. Called to mind Dante’s Inferno, where the lowest layer of Hell sees its victims frozen upside down in ice and Satan continnualy gnaws on their legs, or the Very Hungry Caterpillar. Somebody was chewin’ on this stuff.

You’d expect them egghead dorks in forensics to come up with somethin’, but they were stumped. Just like I am when I have to try to put a square block through a round hole in a spatial awareness reinforcement toy.

“The perp was a ghost. Either he was the cleanest hitman ever seen, or I didn’t develop object permanence yet and forgot evidence as soon as it was out of my immediate field of vision. Either way, this was a tough walnut to crack,” said I.

“Ahh shit,” said the police chief, as we stood in the rain. “I would have assumed that with your unspoiled baby brain that you would have been able to see things that we may have missed, right? Like children are the most honest because they don’t have the social conditioning that forms their-“

“Hey!” I interrupted

He began trailing off “assumptions and…well, yeah, what?”

“I just shit my pants.”

The police caution tape snapped in the wind, and the formula in my flask separated into solid chunks and liquid whey in my pocket.

“Guess the map is not the territory, huh brother?” asked the police chief

“I don’t know because I am a baby.”

We shared a laugh in the rain.

Stay tuned for more adventures of The Toddler Detective but maybe not because it’s a pretty dumb idea

I ordered an egg pod on the internet once.

Who hasn’t?

I wanted a pet praying mantis, because they are cool. You can’t order one praying mantis though. They sell ’em in little egg clutches of 250-500 little monsters. They send you a thing that looks like a piece of poop and you have to incubate it and collect the newly hatched bugs after a few days. People order them not so much as pets, but for pest control. It’s up for debate whether or not they are useful for this purpose, because they just eat any other insect they can catch. They don’t necssarily catch problem bugs.

So I was probably drunk, and I ordered some praying mantises. They arrived in a little brown bag. I’ve done similar things before; I have owned several venus flytraps because I love the idea of a predatory plant. I once sat a flytrap outside on my porch and watched a fly go into his little chomper mouth and get closed in on and it was beautiful to me. Dumbass fly touched both trigger hairs and it was all over. My chomper plant consumed him.

The acorn clutch of mantis babies arrived in the mail. I stuck it in a styrofoam cooler. I don’t know. They need several days of a constant temperature to actually hatch.

I came home from work each day and checked on my little guys. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. One day I opened it up and that shitty styrofoam cooler was brimming with life. Dozens of mantises arrayed all over the interior of the thing. “Oh shit,” said I, “We’ve got mantises.”

I grabbed three of them with my little pincher fingers, trying to be as gentle as possible. I put them in a terrarium. They were so small. Imagine the intricate architecture of a mantis’s body, but like one centimeter long. Tough to pinch them lightly enough to put them in a tank. The rest of the hatcherlings were going to be released into the wild. I was going to introduce this species to the south side of Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Took the shitty styrofoam cooler outside, took the lid off and tipped it on its side. I watched the mantises walk to the edge, stop, and consider their situation, and then jump off into the grass. I swear to God. They were intelligent. They considered the jump. Some of them even tipped their head a bit, like they were thinking.

I released like 500 mantises into the Eau Claire area. If this is a crime, well, I didn’t actually. (But really I did)

My terrarium mantises died almost right away. I feel kinda bad about that, but I couldn’t catch prey small enough for them. I grabbed a couple of really tiny ants and threw them in there, but those ants were about as big as them. I don’t know what baby mantises hunt. I encouraged my pet mantises to attack those little bitch ants, but they just looked at them with their blank expression. Maybe man isn’t meant to have these things as pets, I don’t know. Should I have caught some fuckin’ aphids for them to eat or something?

I had imagined the hundreds of mantises would rule the school in southern Eau Claire. I never saw one again. Those smart little bugs just disappeared completely after I set them free. However

My friend, Hakey, said he saw a tiny little praying mantis in his kitchen. This was a few months after I got my boys. It was standing with its arms spread wide. They are not native here. It may have been one of mine. Maybe it grabbed onto his pantleg when he was leaving my house or something. I dunno. These are a great scythe-arm critter. They are an intelligent bug. Isn’t that interesting?

Sometimes an idea sparkles. A bug eats another bug. It’s really pretty.

Grass far into the distance
A wind fluttering the blades green to pale
like waves on an ocean
Patcha tended the sheep
As his father and forefathers had done
since before man carved symbols into stone
Patcha was born in a pasture
a pasture of knee-high grass
with sheep slowly gathering
curious

The sheep were settling in for the night
Ewes dropping their bellies into the rich soil
Patcha slowly walked among them
stroking their ears as they passed him for comfort
each one grunting a recognition
The guard dogs running and barking at each other
far in the distance, scouting a distant treeline

Patcha sat cross legged on the hillside, the cool of night filled the air
His favorite ram, Kot, approached him, and offered a hoof. Patcha smiled and took the hoof in his hand, squeezing it lightly. Kot curled into a repose next to Patcha.

The shepherd and his favorite sheep watched the herd
They felt the sun sink and the dew bead
The half-wild dogs came back, tired and low

Kot’s head now in his lap, Patcha said ” I never really knew my father,” and Kot rolled his little sheep eyes. He’d heard this before but he’d humor him.

“I suppose he didn’t think of himself as a father, so he wasn’t one. It’s a heavy mantle. It’s something most people can’t just fall into,” Patcha said, pulling a pouch of tobacco from his belt. He began to roll a cigarette. “Sometimes people can do it, but even when people try to prepare for it, they find themselves-” he licked the cigarette closed “-not ready.”

Patcha continued, “I think of myself at his age. I didn’t know anything. I was always nervous, pretending to have some inner strength. Maybe if you put up the facade, if you play the role long enough, you become what you’re pretending to be, I don’t know…”

Kot asked, “Hey man can I get a drag of that?”

“Yeah of course,” and Patcha let Kot hit his cigarette.

” So for a long time it was like a sliver. It was a thing in me that I didn’t want there, that would probably be easy to pluck out but I wondered how I ever let it pierce me in the first place,”

“BAAAAAAA!” said a couple of sheep. Patcha rose up a bit, and surveyed the twilight field. With his sharp eyes, he saw that a couple of sheep had just seen a toad hopping around and had become frightened by it. “It’s fine, it’s fine!” he called, waving his hooked shepherd staff around. The sheep soon were settled and laying down once again.

“Fuckin’ toads, man,” said Kot.

“Yeah, so I think it’s human nature to assign significance to everything in your life. My father knocked up my mother when he was a young guy, didn’t have it in him to become a father-familyman type guy, and I assumed this had something to do with me. It’s understandable, right?”

Kot nodded, now dipping his head to eat a dandellion.

” And my, I guess stepfather, Krop, has been a constant friend and a huge part of my life. So I’m not completely sure what I’m getting at,” Patcha said. “But I feel like if I had a child somewhere out in the world, I’d do a lot to make sure they were doing okay. That they were comfortable. That their life was decent. I’d be interested in their life, in their experience here on fuckin’ planet Earth. You dig?”

“We’ve got a saying in the sheep community,” Kot replied. “Yesterday’s grass.”

“Yesterday’s grass,” repeated Patcha. “I like it. What’s it mean?”

“Just what it says.”

The last gust of wind rippled over the grass, ceding to the royal blue tones of the night. The sheep were closing their eyes and sleeping. The distant trees were strangely still.

” Can you forgive someone you don’t know? Can you forgive an idea?”

” I don’t think forgiveness is needed. You get it, kinda. That’s good enough.”

Kot shifted, sheep hooves dancing a three-point turnaround, and Patcha was surprised by how quickly he turned around.

“Hey!” Kot shouted, “I’ve got an idea that’s gonna make us both rich!”

“Yes?” Patcha said

“Ewetube.”

the sharp relief takes the black ink
it draws from the capillaries
it drinks and fills itself
the stone cries blood to fill the depression

a bird or two dares song into
a frosted morning, clutching hollow bones
onto dry branches and
discombobulated by noise of
trucks
cars
TVs
urinals
power lines
the hum of the new forever

Could a word draw blood?
Is a poet a swordsman?
His description, insight, cutting against the flesh of the world
A necessary wounding
A bloodletting, or a spearing of a cyst?
Does overvaluing your own dubious skillset make you a big obnoxious asshole?

One of the most beautiful sentences in English,
“I don’t know,”
Three words, implies a vulnernability, suggests a willingness to learn and understand
A second gorgeous sentence:
“I forgive you,”
It’s empathy, submission, and a re-establishment of peership after an implied darkest hour
The third is: “I love you,”
Simple as

The valley drinks the rain
It draws into deep underground belly
miles from the thunderheads
the sky drenches the soil to fill the depression

a deer or two dares wander to the side of the road, violets budding in the dew
onto asphalt and yellow reflective paint
the grass in the median awaits

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