Dr. Identity

by D. Harlan Wilson

For a moment Achtung 66.799 thought about pretending she wasn’t there. Maybe she wasn’t there in the first place. Maybe she was a hallucination. Hallucinations were common phenomena in the Schizoverse experienced regularly by nearly forty percent of users. This further problematized the Papanazi’s ultimate objective: the plaquedemics might not be there either. But if he started questioning the metaphysical validity of everything, how could he function? He had to assume the worst, which is to say, he had to assume that even potential fictions were real.

  He said, “Pardon me, ma’am. I’m sorry if I offended you. I have to use the toilet. Excuse me.” He took off like a road runner…

  …and went down like Wile E. Coyote.

  14

  EXCERPT FROM "THE POST(POST)/POST-POST+POSTMODERN ICKLYOPHOBE: ULTRA/COUNTERHYPER-NIHILISM IN FIONA BIRDWATER'S MEGAANTI-MICRONOVEL, THE YPSILANTI FACTOR" – 1ST PERSON ('BLAH)

  …elided a dialogically problematized ludic that Gretle and her entourage of xenophobes entirely lacked the psychocratic ability to cognize. This figuration of conjugated subjectivity not only produces a detached awareness of molecularized perception in the fictional characters of the novel’s post(post)/post-post+postmodern diegetic megahyperreality, it produces a detached awareness of molarized perception in the creative nonfictional characters of the novel’s (post)/post-post+postmodern readers, whose actually acute megahyperreality is thus retroactively transfigured into a figurative scarecrow whose “spitshined phalanges gleam in the light of the winking, winedark moon” (Cantaloupe 294).

  [9,341] This dynamic references a point I made earlier in regard to the function of Xanadu Booberry and her interpellation into the icklyophobic system of ethics to which I have subjected my decidedly polygonal hermeneutic of suspicion. The Ypsilanti Factor underscores a much deeper mediumessage than that which is suggested by the former reinscription of Big Bad White (She)Male syndrome. Booberry’s “desire to reclaim a sense of multiperspectival selfhood” is a mere simulated emotive mechanism whereby protagonist #16 conveys a particular mechanized image of its beep-beep subjectivity in the eyes of the Department of Infocojack as much as its own dereconstructed self (Legume 35). Hence the appearance of the kitschy Julio Iglesias simulacrum in the 403rd chapter. Recall the simulacrum’s physiognomy, namely its indexical jawline, joint-action nose and monological eyeballs, all of which reflect the very logocentric fertilizer that Booberry discharges from virtually every orifice. The metaphysics of presence effectuated by this instance of “renegade, mitochondriacal behavior” elicits a more perfunctory (albeit performative) rule of “Tommygun” thumb at work in the novel, that is, the lebenswelt of protagonist #8 and #29 that I discussed in paragraph 220 is likewise inscribed upon the social and ideological body of the “doppelgängster” in question (Artichoke 67, 101). I will return to this digression in paragraph 10,035. For now, let us focus on the character of Birdwater herself as she manifests in the form of a sentient tomato who Booberry must slice, salt and consume.

  [9,342] Birdwater as tomato is a flaming law of contradiction in which an analog communication erupts like a fistful of aporia. The general hermeneutics of this embodiment are as palpable as a slap in the face on a cold, wet morning. Doubtless Birdwater is revising the curious nature of tomatohood by reconfiguring its global misperception. The characters that populate the matrix of The Ypsilanti Factor mistakenly regard the fictional Birdwater, a tomato, to be a fruit when in fact she is a vegetable, unlike the characters that populate our own diegetic reality—that is, unlike me and you—who, broadly speaking, categorize the tomato as a vegetable when it is in fact a fruit. All this is unbalanced by the personification of the tomato in the novel—especially when we consider this act of personification as an act of persecution. The matter is further problematized in that the personified/persecuted tomato does not move, talk, sing, or indicate in any way that it is an organism possessing intellect, emotion, and other so-called humanlike qualities. Indeed there is a terribly real chance the tomato that is a fictional representation of Fiona Birdwater is not sentient at all but rather a “vegetable” the likes of which one might find in the grocery store socializing with other dirt-born provisions. Thus any ethnomethodology of the “vegetable” in question invokes a logical paradox and, interpreted from a schizopatriarchal gaze, has the capacity to wield a revolutionary ideoverse by dint of the nature of such an apodictic truth. Whatever the genuine pseudonature of the tomato (or tomatoes in general), however, Booberry must confront the “veritable Martian,” as it were, and subject it to a partial ontological erasure (Birdwater 889). It is only when Booberry accomplishes this erasure that an operable borderzone (albeit not in a Lyotardian sense) is partially armageddoned. Consider the following passage:

  He walks into the kitchen and turns on the lights. He yawns. There is a tomato sitting on the edge of the counter. He shuffles across the floor and picks up the tomato. He looks at it. He places it on a cutting board.

  “Xanadu?” says a voice from another room. “Tomorrow is Wednesday.”

  He nods in dark understanding. He removes a knife from a drawer. He slices the tomato in half. It bleeds Spaghetti sauce. Pressing together his lips, he reaches for the salt. (59)

  The autopoetic unity visible in this sequence is the pathological product of its structural coupling. One gleans a sense of patterned jello here that hints at a mere post+postmodern aesthetic. This is canny subterfuge on Birdwater’s part, particularly in light of the koinonia that exists between Booberry, the tomato and the voice. Note how the voice lacks a body. The voice is furthermore discharged “from another room.” Such a disjunction is both intended to derange readers[1]18,021 while figuratively reifying the triangulation that classifies this work not as a post+postmodern phenomenon, but as a post-post+postmodern and post(post)/post-post+postmodern phenomenon at one and the same time.

  [9,343] Thus far my theoretical blitzkrieg has focused mainly on establishing an operational definition of the paramodal narrative technique that distinguishes The Ypsilanti Factor. I have also attempted to demarcate the coordinates of this novel within the commedia del foul genre considering the frequency with which its protagonists endeavor to woo and marry chickens. However, I have yet to broach the ultra/counternihilistic vibrations that distinguish the novel as a postpositivist, unilateral instance of catachresis that challenges the acausal principles of the inscribing socius and calls for the death of language in general. I hope to accomplish this feat by the end of this essay. If the feat is not accomplished, I officially reserve the right to do so in another essay that I shall tentatively entitle “The Post(post)/post-post+postmodern Icklyophobe: Ultra/counterhyper-nihilism in Fiona Birdwater‘s Megaanti-micronovel, The Ypsilanti Factor—The Sequel.” In the meantime, I want to revert to the critically acclaimed Hillbilly Scatman Goes To Lunch scene in which there is a “periodizing (mis)disaf(in)fect(a)tion” of “immanent, hamburgler temporality” on the “specters of the (megahyper)diaperreal” and their impact on the “historiographic sublimation of the abyss of reversal’s informatic penchant for apocalypticism and ethical cybernetymology.”118,0[2]2 Prior to the injection of this scene into Birdwater’s textual flesh, said flesh is a mere tapestry of whale blubber onto which has been imprinted only the vague likeness of some form of semantic use-value. In other words, the novel fails to transcend its jejune Dasein, relegating itself to an oligophrenic, isomorphic, rasorial and above all limaceous vapulation with a bad case of cardialgia that promulgates a gongoozling, idiotropic battology at best.118,02[3]

  [9,344] Patrique O’Darkness has argued that the general character and social performativation of Hillbilly Scatman is “a retroFreudian symptom of a sociosymboeconomic homosexual desire for the Names-of-the-Father in a literal sense. This would explain why the Hillbilly consistently scribbles his step-father’s real name and aliases on pieces of scrap paper and ejaculates on them. These closet spectacles of would-be jouissance are often followed by moments of extreme public defecation that are particularly curiou
s and revealing” (67). Jean-Claude Biff and Antoine Formaldehyde take a less direct approach, claiming Scatman is a product of “the stalwart functionalism that typifies his daily life. He produces semen because he is a producing-machine. He produces excrement for the same reason. It’s not complicated, folks” (Fungulations 444n). Others attribute this behavior to the fact that he was not spanked as a child but rather forced to endure a surplus of time-outs. The latter is the most popular view. My view is an altogether divergent animal. What critics have failed to recognize is that Hillbilly Scatman is a bivalent mechanical alien created and inserted into the social matrix by actual aliens from the planet Mowgli. If one were to peel him like a grapefruit, one would not encounter something juicy and pink beneath the surface but rather something more like the guts of a flybike. Put differently, he is not a man. Or, if he is a man, indeed, it is only insofar as his ideology operates under the aegis of a Nietzschean joie de vivre and fin de siècle technosocioeconomic attitude. Some might argue that this de rigueur claim is a natural, potentially ecological corollary to my staunch bête noire façon de vivre. They might say it is a dernier cri on my part to salvage an à la carte argument that relies solely on trompe l’oeil and that may or may not be entrée dans le shitter, if you will. After all, Nietzsche did explain early in Ecce Homo, his penultimate work, that he was, while anthropomorphous, “more akin to a stick of dynamite than a human being.”118,02[4] In any event, Scatman is a heterotopic freak of (in)human anti-nature that imbricates the laws of rationality and coerces readers to rethink the anti-nature of (in)human paralogical utterances.

  [9,345] Hillbilly Scatman is an invasive presence in The Ypsilanti Factor whose slippery-when-wet raison d’être and unreasonable troublemaking inform the modus operandi of numerous protagonists (e.g. #4, #8, #17, #23 and #24). I would not go so far as to call him a protagonist himself as the spirit of protagonism requires a certain “pancreatic symbology” that he altogether lacks.118,02[5] Additionally, he suffers from gymnophobia and usually hides behind large objects in fear of the notion that his clothes might suddenly fall off and expose the world to his nakedness, the sight of which, he suspects, would turn onlookers into brain-eating zombies. This affliction is significant in terms of the aforementioned Goes To Lunch scene as it is the only point in the story where Scatman does not conceal his body in some quixotic fashion, albeit he considers the prospect on occasion. The scene reads:

  A cat crossed the Hillbilly’s path as he adjusted the suspenders of his overalls and clamored towards the front door of the bistro. The cat had dark purple fur and went “Meow!” four times. Taken aback, the Hillbilly clutched his chest. He became lightheaded and, thinking he might pass out, carefully lay down on the ground so that, if he did pass out, he wouldn’t hit his head. A mechanical Chinaman with overexaggerated facial features pulling a politician wearing a top hat and monocle in a rickshaw ran him over. So did a number of pedestrians. Realizing he wasn’t going to lose consciousness, the Hillbilly stood up, brushed the tire marks and footprints off of his overalls, and entered the bistro.

  “Ahhhhhh!” exclaimed a maître d’ from behind a tall podium. The Hillbilly glanced suspiciously over his shoulders. Was the exclamation a reaction to his unannounced presence? He apologized despite himself, eyeballing a nearby statue that seemed just large enough to hide his body from view.

  The maître d’ smiled, then used what looked like a mascara brush to pencil a thin mustache onto his towering overlip. The Hillbilly waited for him patiently. In the background, waiters and busboys ran at top speed from table to table, taking orders and serving food. Now and then a busboy paused, dumped a bucket of dirty plates and glasses onto the floor, tapdanced on the mess, and shot himself in the head with a pistol. Another busboy promptly descended from the rafters on puppet strings to take the dead one’s place, making sure to clean the carcass up with the broken dinnerware that had been forsaken.

  Inspecting the mustache with a hand mirror, the maître d’ wiped it off of his face five times, unhappy with its appearance. Finally he settled on one. “Name please?”

  The Hillbilly began to sweat. “I don’t think I remember,” he said.

  The maître d’ huffed. “I’m terribly sorry, sir, but we don’t seat diners who either lack or fail to articulate their names. Is this a hardship with which you are familiar?”

  Panicked, the Hillbilly took a step towards the statue. He stopped himself before he could take a second step.

  “Scatman?” he said. “My name is Mr. Scatman.” A dove flew out of his beard.

  The maître d’ looked at the dove disapprovingly. “Fine, Mr. Scatman. I might add that the bistro upholds a No Pets Allowed policy. Failure to comply must inevitably result in the death of the errant pet that is brought onto these grounds by the felonious party. Do you understand?”

  “No,” said the Hillbilly, frowning.

  Unwilling to pursue the matter further, the maître d’ pushed a button on the podium. A faceless robot wearing a tall, neon orange hunter’s cap emerged from a secret door in the wall and riddled the sky of the bistro full of holes with a machine gun. After a short pause, the dove fell to the floor along with a few busboys. The robot saluted the maître d’ and disappeared back into the wall.

  “We apologize for the inconvenience, good sir,” remarked the maître d’, “but you must understand that a policy is not something one can easily skirt, ignore or disgrace. Table for one?”

  Still not understanding, the Hillbilly shook his head compliantly and allowed the maître d’ to escort him to a table. For a moment he considered crawling under the table—maybe a waiter would serve him down there?—but he resolved to take the opposite route and sat on top of it, his legs hanging over the edge, the tips of his boots scraping against the floor. He lunched on a salad of sauerkraut and caramel-coated lima beans that he ate out of his lap, then snuck out of the bistro without paying the bill.

  The police apprehended him.

  They stripped his cloths off in the interrogation room. It was at this point, for the first time, that the Hillbilly’s purpose in life struck him between the eyes like a crucifixion nail. (Birdwater 126-127)

  The allopathic, psychogeographic, dromological implications of this scene are obvious enough, and the messianic legitimation of Hillbilly Scatman as allegorical martyr is egregious to a disaffectingly relativistic degree. The scene, in other words, speaks for itself in terms of its situational catachresis, not to mention the highly overspecialized way in which Birdwater partakes in a correspondence theory of truth here. I am admittedly hesitant to pursue a discussion of Scatman in the above context, partly because of the immediately aforementioned point(s), partly because of the point(s) I made earlier in this essay (which, to reiterate, I will return to in due course). This elicits the question of why I cited or even mentioned the Goes To Lunch scene, which has little or nothing to do with any of my originary theses. The answer is…

  15

  the briefcase – 3rd person

  A man opened a pink Big Chill Retro vintage refrigerator and removed a carton of plain yogurt. He opened the carton. He sniffed the yogurt. He sniffed it again.

  He vomited in the kitchen trough.

  Inside of a pyroelectric wine glass sitting on the counter stood the miniaturized holographic image of a telecaster reciting the morning news in a high-pitched squeak. The telecaster’s hairdo was a burning orange bush. The flames blackened and his voice slipped into a baritone as a newsflash threaded into his monologue. “This just in. Holocaust at Corndog University. Plaquedemics dead. Student-things dead. Madcap behavior. Perpetrators suspected to be plaquedemics. One human, one ’gänger. Good-looking. Fair sense of style. At large. Pigs on the scene. Papanazi on alert. Ultraviolence, gore. Stay tuned.”

  The man cleaned his mouth with a damp washcloth.

  He opened a closet and turned on his ’gänger. “Zippity do da,” it said.

  “Mr. Bogarty 2,” said the man, and retired to the bathroom to mastu
rbate.

  Mr. Bogarty 2 adjusted and dusted off its suit, made a cup of coffee, took a sip, gargled, spit it out, picked up a briefcase, made sure the briefcase was locked, and left.

  The 2,450 story elevator ride to the ground floor of the spacescraper took fifteen minutes. The elevator only stopped once. A half-naked oldster got on. Slung over his shoulder was a knapsack of Legos. He emptied them onto the floor, kneeled, and hurriedly built a small castle. He didn’t exit the elevator when they touched down.

  Mr. Bogarty 2 worried about its tie as it hopped onto a slideway. Next to it was a ’gänger who had on a superior tie in its opinion. Its fingers tightened around the handle of the briefcase.

  The slideway curled into a funhouse tunnel. Clowns, demons, smurfs, pornstars, Babars, homunculi, Pee-Wee Hermans danced and battled on the ceiling screens. The slideway sped up, jerked left, skated right, spiraled upwards…Momentum and magnetism kept most of the riders in place. A few flew off into the Void.

  The slideway slowed down, smoothed out and emerged back into the open. It was high above ground level now, suspended in the air by interminable, pencil-thin copper wires that stretched into the sky.

  A vidship passed overhead. The megascreen on its underside ran footage of an ultraviolent scikungfi fight. The camera moved in on a bloody, twitching victim. A clawlike appendage removed the victim’s mask…exposing the face of Voss Winkenweirder. The camera zoomed in to a close-upggggHis face was bruised, dripping. A gray tongue hung out of his mouth. For streetgoers with 3D glasses or vision, a holographic image of the tongue drooped out of the vidship’s bottom and swung across the slideways. “Movie star killed by plaquedemic menace,” whirred the vidship. It repeated the announcement and urged people to beware of university educators of any kind until further notice.