I’ll be sitting in as Andy Gibb with Tragedy tomorrow night at the Bowery Ballroom.
Saturday, October 11
TRAGEDY
NYC
Bowery Ballroom
6 Delancey Street
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Archive for October, 2008
since i wasn’t using it, i lowered my chin-up bar to 12 inches above the floor. i damn myself every time i trip over it. instead of fixing the situation properly, i put a traffic cone in front of it and damned myself when i tripped over it and the bar. instead of fixing the new situation properly, i put a flag pole in the traffic cone and retrieved an autumn-themed flag for the pole to remind myself that there was a chin-up bar impeder. i damned myself again as i saw the flag and thought about how much i enjoy autumn weather and seeing leaves change color and then tripped over the chin-up bar again. instead of fixing the situation properly, i bought a sensor that connected to my record player. when I passed the sensor, the sensor triggered the needle on the record player to land on a random part of a John Philip Sousa record reminding me of the chin-up bar. that seemed to work.
then i damned myself for impeding my life.
There was this man who worked at a sanctuary for chimpanzees in Florida. He used to be a nightwatchman for a company that made gps chips for pets. Some vets would put them in but not others. Some vets thought it ridiculous to put a chip inside an animal in order to keep track of it. One vet said, “I saw Gattaca. It was nice.” And then he railed on treating people and pets as products. “People will be fucking idiots if you let them.”
The former nightwatchman, Larry, remembered a friend who took empty pill cases and filled them with candy and then didn’t go further with his project. It’s good when cleverness sees a red light, thought Larry. But his drive to make something amazing dimmed that light, so he could see behind it clearly.
What he saw was a way to inject prions with a cognitive ability to speak.
In the sanctuary there was a chimp who loved to watch television. Her name was Stacey and she watched soaps and infomercials and sometimes talk shows. Her mate had passed away a few years prior to this time and she mainly kept to herself. Larry would sit with her, watching tv from the floor every night while she sat in the comfortable chair.
And every night, he stirred trying to figure a out way to inject this chip into her head without much fuss. He didn’t want to hurt her and was afraid his curiosity would end up killing her. Then, a commercial for a flea and tick spray came on the tv and so did his lightbulb: He would put the chip inside a tick, let it rest upon on her head, and once the tick had burrowed in, wait until it filled with blood. Then, he would then squeeze the tick, deflating its body like a turkey baster of blood and chip that goes into the chimp to be delivered into the brain.
He was so nervous that night but it worked. Furthermore, he looked like a hero for taking off the tick.
He sat and waited to see if anything – if anything at all – would happen.
2 hours later, she turned to him and just stared. Larry started to cry knowing he’d done wrong and then she said, “I’d really like to watch tv alone if you don’t mind.”