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LJL Chinon -- Autographed Copies Direct From the Author
Category:
Humor
ISBN-10: 1587219999
Type: Fiction
Pages: 174
Copyright: Jan 1 2002
An uproarious quest for love, reason, and stamina that speeds through the streets of Manhattan, culminating in an explosion of pastoral bliss.
Author's Prologue
Greetings, Dear Reader and fellow lover of lovely things! Let us distract ourselves for a moment or two and join our seasoned greenhorn as he tries to cope with . . . . ahhh . . . . yes . . . . . it's Life! Filled with those people who always do those things that people do, who always act in those ways. Yes, people. And while we're on the subject -- oh, the company that I keep: if you only knew! My kingdom for some relief!! And the company that keeps me: God bless them, for theirs is a painful tea party.
But enough of that -- the curtain is rising, and so let us set the stage. It is late in the fall of 1998 in this universe we must call home, since we have not yet the deftness of flight to escape far enough away from the eerie clutch of our rotating globe to that other world the next universe over, the one where the noble natives have erected a sign that can be read upon entry into the stratosphere, which reads: Welcome to LovelyWorld, where everything makes sense. Please check your phobias, hang-ups, neurosis, conditions, insecurities, manias and spells at the door, which you will find conveniently to your left. You may retrieve them upon your departure. Enjoy your stay.
But oh, if we could go there, how long would we stay, really? What a bore it would be -- what would there be left to talk about if everything made sense?? I can hear the conversations now: 'Yes, lovey, I went to the market today and there I bought some tomatoes'. 'Well, yes, of course you did. That's what you said you were going to do this morning when I left for work. By the way, did I tell you that it just happens to be the smartest and most talented person in my company who is in charge?' 'Well, there's no need to tell me that, Dear -- it wouldn't be any other way. Off the subject, do you remember that telemarketer from the telephone company who called about three months ago offering us that calling plan that just sounded oh too good to be true?' 'Yes dear, of course I remember, why wouldn't I?' 'Well, we've received our first bill today with the new plan, and all of the charges are exactly as the telemarketer stated. There are no additional costs at all, none of the fees listed are mysterious and everything is just rosy with the telephone bill.' 'Well, of course, Sweetpea, anything else wouldn't be lovely. Would you please pass the salt?'
Oh, Dear God! How dreary!! Did someone say Wales in February?? What's that? I heard a whisper -- you'd rather be driving nails through your hand??? Yes, we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves -- what with everything making sense and everything -- we'd be bored out of our gourds if we didn't first drop dead of brain cramps! And so if you dare, read forth through the tale that follows, my friends, my brothers, my sisters, but be forewarned that, when you read those last words and smile softly, as a lost puppydog mutt who has at last been found by its unconditionally warm and lovingly bright, cheerful and accepting owner, that the seemingly LovelyWorld ending to this tale will be crushed and obliterated, as well as laughed-at, ridiculed, thrown at with darts, shot at with guns, punched at with fists, scoffed at by shrews and highbrowed by cretins within the first few pages of the sequel, as this tripe offering was not conceived in LovelyWorld, but rather in the world in which we live, and our nascent greenhorn has many a road to travel, yes many a mile to go, before the worldly winds will dare whisper to him: 'Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty you're free at last."
And so yes, read forth, if you wish, and waltz away an evening in the moony morass of obstinate hope, but all the while please bear in mind that while yes, it is true, to use the words of our most adored Thomas Moore, that there's nothing half so sweet in life as love's young dream, one must always be on their guard, and consider the heedful cynicism of Johnson, when he warns: Alas! another instance of the triumph of hope over experience.
So if you must, if you will, if you need, if you care not to heed, read forth then, Onward, Onward, and you will learn what your most humbly treasured author recommends.
Yes, my most dearly loved and smartly-dressed readers, it is for all of you that I offer the following advice on the episodes that follow: steer clear, stay away, don't read this rubbish, put it down, man! Stomp on it! Throw it away, and then go and give your mother a kiss. Make a baby smile. Make a cupcake. Save a squirrel. Go to the park. Try the honey-glazed eel. Elope. Ride a unicycle. While juggling. Relish.
But first, here's what you do: go to the next page on which there are four carefully chosen quotes. It took not one week to write the episodes that follow, yet it took twenty-seven years to choose these quotes. So go to that page, rip it out (especially if you are reading this in a bookstore and you haven't yet purchased the book), throw the book on the ground and stomp on it. Soak it in charcoal lighter fluid and set it ablaze! Then call it names, like 'stupid', and throw dirt on it. Next, take the quote page that you have ripped out (if you haven't yet been arrested), put it overtly in your pocket while calling great attention to yourself and go forth at once to a secluded area, post-haste, that is -- a seashore at 2:00 a.m., for instance, half-way up a pine tree, a mountain top, the dungeon where the mean old lady chains you to the furnace and makes you eat cheese, the attic where the mean old lady chains you to the beam and makes you eat pickles -- and then set forth to read the quotes carefully, one by one. They are all taken from people much more talented than yours truly, as it took them, collectively, less than seventy words to say what it took your beloved author more than 50,000 words to say. Read the quotes, close your eyes, meditate calmly for one hour in aforementioned secluded area and, upon opening your eyes, you will have achieved total enlightenment. Yes, total enlightenment. Then you can write to me, and I will send you your pass to LovelyWorld, where everything makes sense and where you will be a valued bore, or a roguish boor, whichever you choose (so long as it is the latter), in LovelyWorld society.
Yes, ours is a tiresome load: but believe in yourself and you believe in me. But how, I hear you already, the naysayers, the doomsdayers, the not-okayers, always complaining and moping about with slumped shoulders, so heavy it is, the burden, the weight, the freight, the pain, the anguish, the trouble, the rubble, my brethren, my brothers, I hear you loudly, are we going to do it? Sheer will and faith! God speed to all, and as a show my support and my faith in you, I offer in closing the words of our dear friend Master Alcofribas, and the motto of the Abbey of Thélème:
Fay ce que vouldras.
(Do what you will.)
Peace out,
LJL
Chapter 25: How Joy Boy felt good; an insider's look at the paperless office; and how Charles told Joy Boy the magic phrase
Joy Boy vaulted swiftly and with confidence up the stairs from the subway station at 51st and Lexington. He smiled as he reached the street, the morning sun cutting through a break in the skyscrapers to warm his face. An uncharacteristically stalwart posture poised his form, and he held a firm grip to the strapped handle of his Mulholland Brothers briefcase as he began the short walk to the Talon. He felt as he walked that eyes were turning towards him, noticing him, watching him in admiration as he passed. He felt certain they were wondering what kind of top secret, super-important documents he had inside of his classically cool briefcase.
As he walked through the revolving door to the building in which TVT HQ was housed, Joy Boy gave a sharp smile to the security guard seated at the entrance desk in the lobby. Continuing on to the elevator, Joy Boy entered and pressed '37'. It was a 44-story building, the Talon occupying floors 37 through 39. Joy Boy turned to the side to take a look at himself in the mirrored wall of the vertically-condemned box. He gave a little tug to the knot of his tie, running his palm down the length of the silk clockworks design. It was his favorite tie, Flyaway had given it to him the previous Valentine's Day.
The elevator came to a stop and the doors opened, Joy Boy stepping out to exit. He felt a strange silence, and looked at his watch to see that he was earlier than he had thought. He began walking past the rows of five-foot high makeshift walled aisles, looking down each as he passed to see only unoccupied chairs. Fogsley often made it known that, if he had it his way, there would be no walls at all in the office, so that all of his worker bees could feel free and open, creative. But, he conceded, the nature of the business required that the editors have a place to store channel folders and stylebooks for quick and easy reference, as well as a place to hang calendars, deadline dates, phone-lists, call-sheets, press releases, station lists, question forms, update faxes and error reports. Charles, the editor for CBS and TNT, once calculated that the amount of frivolous paper which passed through the office in any given year was enough to keep Fynch & Pryne paper mill in North Creek, New York not only in the black, but in such a state of euphoric production that they could afford to give Christmas bonuses to their employees each year larger than the combination of the three Christmas bonuses Charles had received since he began working at the TV Talon Times, assigning the mug a liquidation value of $1.75.
Joy Boy turned the corner to his aisle to see Charles tapping furiously at his keyboard. "Hey Charles," he asked. "Got an early deadline today?"
"Oh, hello there, Joy Boy," said Charles, spinning around in his chair. "In a certain regard, you might say that, yes, I have an early deadline. Or, more precisely, that I had a deadline. A deadline to stop enabling ugsome and ill-begotten evil-walks-the-earth scoundrels and swindlers from taking all of the glory and the profit from my hard work and talent. However, my dear friend," Charles continued, looking to the floor as he shook his head. "How I let it pass. How I let it pass by being roped into their mind-numbing, zombie-yielding tactics. A yearly review. A Christmas insult. That mollycoddling worry: What will I do without health benefits? 401k? Oh Joy Boy, dear Joy Boy, this smokescreen they've created in order to run our lives and thieve our labor. Our days, our years, our very lives, I say!" Charles leapt up suddenly, raising his hands in the air. "Management by fear: knocking us down and making us fear that we will be lost without them. And all the while keeping us baited with a little something, or a little nothing, which is always just around the corner. Like this putrid mug!" he said, grabbing the TV Talon mug from his desk. "And so we live our lives, or we continue to breath while our lives pass, spending each day washed away from reality in thoughts of what little treat awaits just around the corner -- ooh what is it? what is it?" he said, prancing around in front of his desk on his tippy-toes as Little Red Riding Hood with her basket, "is it a five-cent piece of bazooka? Or maybe a two-dollar gift certificate to the bookstore? -- and we keep waiting for what's around the corner, waiting for what's around the corner, until finally we round that corner and we get what we deserve for being such weak fools -- a coffin! That's it, it's over . . . hold these nails, will you please, and step in, chap? Yes, that's it, just lie down right there, you've got the idea. Yes, Joy Boy, but they are deft in what they do, and I must say I have to give them credit, as they've succeeded in duping me for four years to the day. And when I leave, this chair will be filled by another wide-eyed starling who'll begin unwittingly tapping away his or her life into nothingness. Oh, do I have a deadline, you ask. I'll say I've got a deadline," Charles concluded, placing the mug back on his desk as he looked to Joy Boy. "But look at you!" he remarked, with a change of demeanor, "you're looking rather happy today, quite a turn around from the sorry state you were in yesterday!"
"Oh yeah," Joy Boy said, sitting down at his desk. "Had a little spat with Flyaway yesterday, but things are looking up again. I'm sure that by the end of today everything will be worked out."
"Oh, those women," Charles began. "Their incongruous thoughts can ruin even the best of times. Marplots, really," he said. "Nothing but unbridled higgledy-piggledy running rampant inside of their heads. My experiences prove it. One pippy dame after another, each more hell-bent than the next on conjuring up drama and confrontation out of thin air, like some sort of black magic sorcery. The only thing you need to know about women," Charles continued, "is that each and every one of them refuses to log on to logicandreason.com. Yes, their thought patterns are the very model for efficiency-defiance. Oh, but they don't mean it, and once you know the magic phrase, you can look forward to a lifetime of serenity: Yes dear, you're right. It's a keeper, give it a whirl when you get a chance. The sun will shine brighter, the air will smell sweeter and your head will stop spinning. Yes, women," Charles said, "what a unique creature, indeed. I gave up on them long ago."
"But, you're married," Joy Boy noted.
"Exactly," Charles said. "That is to say, yes dear, you're right." Charles spun back around in his chair and began once more tapping furiously at his keyboard.
Excerpt
Somewhere between our ever-extending, post-adolescent existence and having a life, lies a nether-life. It's called Joy Boy's Chasm, and i have never before known it to be so damn funny. -- Young Werther
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