JPod

by Douglas Coupland

  "I think I hear the sound of someone who didn't make the high school math stream," added Evil Mark.

  "Gee, Mark, pass me the bong. I just had this really profound idea about subatomic particles."

  "Bree, why does water feel wet?"

  "Mark, why are kittens fluffy and cute?"

  "I like fluffy wuffy kittens."

  "Don't worry your pretty litde brain, pudding, no one's going to say anything ever again to make you feel small."

  "Okay, guys, you can stop now."

  I felt so stupid—and I still don't know the answer! What's worse, I couldn't find the answer on Google, which always drives me nuts. Then I made my situation worse. "Do you guys think they'll ever invent some form of wireless electrical power transference?"

  Bree said, "Well, actually, it exists right now, Ethan. It's called x-rays."

  Then John Doe googled and found these great photos of people standing on top of their apartment buildings in Chernobyl on the night of the big meltdown. They were a mile away, yet they were still absorbing the equivalent of ten chest x-rays a second.

  "Goners," John Doe said.

  . . .

  Bruce Pao killed SpriteQuest today, Friday, at 4:30 p.m.

  Ugh.

  After everybody heard the news, it took only forty-five seconds for them to adjust. Evil Mark is already designing a new goal post for a football game, and Bree vanished to hit on guys at the local pub.

  Kaitlin said, "It's as if the game never existed."

  I had to agree. I felt.. . blank. Just blank.

  . . .

  Steve refused to believe the game was dead, but there was something more going on than just denial. Around midnight he came to my place and told me to accompany him to my parents' house.

  "Steve, Mom's not there. She's at her commune."

  "I don't want to see your mother. I want to see your father."

  "Why?"

  "You'll see."

  Dad was moaning drunk when we got there. Steve asked me to help drag Dad into Steve's Touareg.

  I said, "Not until you tell me where we're taking him."

  "A recording studio. We need to get Ronald's voice tracks laid down. Your booze-soaked heartsick dad is the dream voice for Ronald we've been searching for. I'm paying my own money for the sound session."

  "What if he pukes in the back seat?" I said.

  "He won't. Members of the Greatest Generation never puke. They just internalize their nausea, then squeeze it out in the form of freeway infrastructure and tighdy indexed pension plans."

  "Dad is a boomer, not a member of the Greatest Generation."

  Dad's body was about as stiff as a garden hose, which made it hard to carry him. Just before we plunked him in the back seat, Steve gen-dy nudged Dad's liver, and Dad parped out a hoarse, mucousy goddammit.

  "Need I say any more? If he isn't Ronald, then who is?"

  Steve was right. A drunken, utterly fucked up Dad was Ronald to a T.

  Once Dad was inside with his door closed, Steve and I stood there in the moonlit darkness. The only sound was the faint roar of the Trans-Canada Highway to the south.

  "Ethan, over the past year you've made crap, you've made shittier crap and you've made three-layered crap sandwiches—but don't forget for a moment that with the creation of Ronald and his Lair,you and the jPod crew have been making the finest form of art—a blood-soaked communion that allows weak souls and lost lambs across the globe to give vent to their inner rage as surely as Jackson Pollock threw household enamel onto raw canvas, or Jack Kerouac scrawled his druggie maunderings onto Woolworth's foolscap."

  "I'd never thought of it that way, Steve."

  "You, Ethan, dammit, are an artist."

  "I am!"

  "Okay, let's drive off with boozie here."

  The drive downtown was uneventful. Steve needed a fix big time, but the recording studio adjoined his favourite dealer's alley—convenient. After lugging Dad into a small room covered with grey carpeting, Steve popped outside for his vein treat, and returned with a bit of zing in his step. "Let the voices begin."

  I sat in the recording room with two techies while Steve circled Dad, who was slumped over on a teal-coloured Naugahyde sofa. He bent down and screamed in Dad's face: "Ronald, who the fuck are you?"

  "Wha—?" Dad's body hopped like a cricket

  "I said, WHO . . . THE . . . FUCK . . . ARE . . . YOU?"

  I cut in over the intercom. "Dad, just say you're Ronald, okay?"

  "I'm Ronald."

  Steve said, "No, you're not, because the Ronald I know is angry. The Ronald I know is pissed off. You, you disgusting maggot, are a flaccid, docile fetal pig splayed out and waiting for the first incision." He whacked Dad on the back of his head.

  "Steve, Jesus Christ, go easy on him."

  Steve kept talking to Dad. "Ronald gets the first speaking role of his life, and what does he say? Nothing."

  The words "speaking role" seemed to rouse something deep in Dad. He grabbed Steve by the neck and pulled Steve's head down to his own.

  "This particular Ronald does not blow his chance for a speaking role. I will ace this goddam role, or I will snap your legs into slivers like the stems of cheap wine glasses."

  Steve looked at me. "Did you get that on tape?"

  "Got it."

  From there, Ronald's/Dad's words flowed smoothly.

  I am Ronald,

  of Mordor,

  the Mage,

  the

  Destroyer.

  Taste the scorched fruit

  inside my pies.

  Chew the bitter towelette

  of truth.

  Die, you seedy little elves

  who refuse to accept any

  new menu items added

  after 1975.

  I scorch your loins with

  coffee that sears like a

  molten steel patty

  flipper.

  I smash your bones on

  rocks of ice churned by

  spews of cola.

  I till your soil, steal your

  potatoes, circumcise

  their skins, cook

  them in tallow

  and tell you

  they're vegan.

  I shall castrate your

  bulls, rendering them more

  juicy and docile,

  and I shall salt them with

  hormones, making them

  girly-cows.

  Youshall wander the

  wastelands in search of

  fishwiches fallen from

  the sky, frozen and plump

  with weevils and sauce

  of fiercest tartar.

  My face is stripped of

  pancake makeup,

  staring at the sun,

  burning, awaiting

  balloons and a helium

  canister that will never

  arrive.

  Your ears shall hear only

  the sound of a french-fry

  computer that beeps

  eternally.

  Youshall remain forever

  parched with a

  bottomless Styrofoam

  drinking cup.

  You, my imprisoned

  sprite servants, I shall

  deprive of both minimum

  wage and nutrients.

  My cooker writhes

  with yellow frybabies

  your lips shall

  never taste.

  I shall pierce your being

  with shakes made of

  ground bones, nay,

  chalk.

  Youshall beg for death,

  but instead shall receive

  only laughter and

  choking hazards

  disguised as plastic toys.

  In my costume of yellow

  bib and coarse

  enormous red feet, I will

  smite you with burgers

  laced with thorns.

  Inside your bird nuggets

  you will
find razor

  blades, rats and tumours.

  The

  only

  real

  clown

  is

  a

  dead

  clown.

  I ONLY MAKE

  YOU FAT SO

  THAT YOU'LL

  SIZZLE

  WHEN YOU

  BURN

  . . .

  "Hey, Ethan, there's some really great stuff here—"

  It was three a.m. Cowboy and I were listening to Dad's work.

  "Thanks. Dad is such a star. Steve really coaxed it out of him."

  "I had no idea Steve had all this pent-up bile. It's wild."

  Cowboy was dressed in weird belt less rugby pants. "What's with the pants, Cowboy? You look like a 1982 liquor store clerk with herpes."

  "Since I've laid off the sex, I've had to come up with all sorts of ideas to help me out. Allison downstairs told me about these special undergarments worn by Mormons. They're specifically designed to unflattering the body, so that if you end up with someone, they'll snuff out any urges."

  "Right. How's the no-sex thing going?"

  "I hate it."

  "Are you at least allowed to, er, fly solo?"

  "Nope."

  "So what happens?"

  "Meaning?"

  "Meaning—can you sleep or think or anything else?"

  "Nope. The thing about abstinence is that all you think about is sex, whereas when you actually have sex, you don't think about it nearly as much. Which do you think is the more religious option?"

  "Sex."

  "Thank you, Ethan. That was the permission I needed!"

  Cowboy leapt up and was gone. I made a mental note to turn off my cellphone for the next twenty-four hours.

  Mark came in. "Where'd Cowboy go?"

  "At the very least he's gone out to stock up on Kleenex."

  Mark and I worked until dawn, generating new moves for Ronald. Now that he had sound effects, it was impossible not to work on the project. Ronald had become real to us.

  Kwantlen College Learning Annex

  Course 3072-A

  Assignment: Describe Your Life Quickly

  "Ma Vie"

  by Kaitlin Anna Boyd Joyce

  Another day passes. Everyone picks away at minor tasks. The cafeteria makes nutritiously stylish meals. The crows arrive by the tens of thousands to roost in the alder forest across from the Willingdon off-ramp. Endless cars drone by. I once saw the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile, but never again. I say hello to people in the hallways, and they say hello to me. We all go home and watch Law <& Order. New pairs of Pumas and Nikes arrive, and idle chat begins. The sun rises and sets and the moon changes phases. Someone comes home from Tokyo or E3 with a new electronic toy and everyone says, "Ooooh." People move from one office to another office on another floor in another building. The TVs in the lobby blare whatever league games are happening. One day is much like the next and the one after that. Somewhere along the line you buy a new sofa at a store maybe two notches above Ikea, but then its cushions get dull and have a wear pattern from your butt. Nothing's new. You wonder how much the guy you're talking to is making. He wonders if you have stock options. The guy at the cafeteria table beside me wonders if he should initiate a conversation with me, whereas I wonder if he would have been out of my league pre-Ethan.

  Life is dull, but it could be worse and it could be better. We accept that a corporation determines our life's routines. It's the trade-off so that we don't have to be chronically unemployed creative types, and we know it. When we were younger, we'd at least make a show of not being fooled and leave copies of Adbusters on our desktops. After a few years it just doesn't matter. You trawl for jokes or amusingly diversionary .wav files. You download music. A new project comes along, then endures a slow-motion smothering at the hands of meetings. All ideas feel stillborn. The air smells like five hundred sheets of paper.

  And then it's another day.

  . . .

  The phone rang at 6:12 a.m., and I knew it wasn't going to be an ordinary phone call.

  "Mom?"

  "Ethan, honey, I need your help."

  Oh God. "What's up?"

  "I'd rather not discuss it on the phone."

  "Where are you?"

  "I've left the commune and I'm back at the house."

  "Where's Dad?"

  "Greg took him to a 'Swing-Step and Pivot' seminar in Seattle to try to cheer him up."

  "Mom, it's 6:12 in the morning."

  "Ethan, I need your help right away."

  "Doing what?"

  "Something only you can help me with. I don't want to discuss it on the phone."

  "I don't want to get up."

  "Don't be such a lazybones."

  "I've got to eat breakfast."

  "Breakfast is for losers."

  "No, it's not, Mom. I know for a fact that every family on earth eats breakfast."

  "Who told you that?"

  "You never served breakfast because you didn't want to get up."

  "That's not fair, Ethan. I've got low thyroid."

  This is still a sore spot in our family history. Greg and I got all the way to high school without ever eating or being served breakfast. However, having stayed over at friends' houses, we finally realized that our family was aberrant in its rejection of a.m. dining. When we confronted Mom with the fact that everybody else eats breakfast, she was like a bird trapped in the house, trying to escape. Then one afternoon she came home with a bag of chocolate-flavoured Carnation Instant Breakfasts, plonked them on the kitchen table and said, "There, I never want to discuss this again." Greg and I figure we could have had master's degrees at MIT or Harvard if only we'd gone to school properly fed. But the past is the past.

  "The last time I helped you like this, it was a pretty shitty experience."

  "Ethan, don't swear. I wouldn't have called if it wasn't urgent."

  "How urgent?"

  Mom started to sniffle.

  Oh God. "Okay, I'll come over."

  "Thank you. Dress warmly and wear sturdy boots."

  Boots? Dear God.

  . . .

  When I pulled into the driveway, Mom was loading shovels and turf-hedging tools into the K-car. Before I could say anything, she said, "Ethan, we have to go dig up Tim."

  "What?"

  "You heard me. He's got a safety deposit box key in his jacket."

  "What's in the box?"

  "Don't be nosy."

  "Why don't you just call Kam and explain it to him? I doubt he'd care."

  "I did phone him." Mom was loading a tarp. "His acupuncturist said he's down in Oregon, foreclosing on some small town that got wiped out by cheaper manufacturing costs in China. At least he won't catch us digging up his prized New Zealand tree fern."

  "Do you have any idea what Tim is going to look like by now, Mom?"

  "Don't be a sissy. Hasn't the Internet toughened you up at all? Kaitlin says you practically live in all those gore sites. And in any event, I packed a few bottles of Febreze to help mask the odour. So just get in the car."

  "Okay, okay, already."

  "I knew you'd help me. You've always been the responsible son."

  We got in the wagon. "Mom, how come Greg gets to swear as much as he wants, but I can't?"

  "Ethan, that sort of thing was decided long before you were born. Use your nervous energy for better purposes, like trying to figure out ways to make the world a better place. Wait a second—did I pack both plastic tarps?"

  I looked in the back. "Yup."

  "Good."

  Off we drove to Kam's fabulously bizarre Canterbury neighbourhood, past an endless succession of homes even larger, more garish and more bizarre than Kam's. "I find it highly suspect that, of all the houses in the city, Kam ends up buying Tim's burial plot," I said.

  "It's not a coincidence at all. I showed it to him when he was house hunting. I told him it had good kung fu."

  "Feng shui."

  "
That, too. Wait a second—Ethan, stop! Stop the carl" Mom was screaming.

  I jammed on the brakes. "What! What!"

  "I saw a sign for a garage sale just up the hill. We can sneak in as early birds."

  So we did, and Mom haggled like a Microsoft accountant over a stack of 1980s-era National Geographic magazines.

  "Mom, why are you buying National Geographies? We got rid of ours ten years ago."

  "I know, and I've been sick about it ever since."

  I helped her load them in the back. When she slammed the door, she said, "I got them to throw in a set of used Cuisinart blades for free."

  As we resumed driving up the mountain, she said, 'Your father would have to go AWOL the one day we really need him."

  Finally, a natural point for me to ask a question or two.

  "So, Mom, how is, um, freedom doing?"

  "Ethan, I am not a lesbian."

  "I'm not saying that, Mom, I was just asking how she is."

  "She's fine. She's in Seattle today, delivering a speech."

  "On what?"

  There was a note of challenge in her voice. "It's called 'Revoking Yesterday's Vagina: Towards a New Theory of Birth, Post-Industrial Economics and Clitoral Praxis.'"

  I remained mute.

  "I am not a lesbian."

  "I'm not saying you are."

  "freedom is an enlightened woman and has given me range to expand both my autoandrogyny and my hormonal slope."

  More silence on my part.

  "It's very scientific, you know."

  I played silent.

  Mom said, "If you must know, the food at that house was awful. A bird feeder has better food than there, and every bite came with a lecture. After a while I began dreaming of having potato chips and Tang for lunch in silence."

  "Kam's house is over there."

  We parked the car. "What if people question us?" I asked.

  "Ethan, I'm a well-nourished rich-looking white woman. I could burn polka dots onto Kam's front door with a creme brulee torch and nobody would question me."

  "Good point."