Legend of the Spidery Things Ch. 02

Oh the stranglehold the Arctic Circle Armada put around that city was not near as troubling as the plague sweeping across the world in those days although we might say in some ways the Arctic Circle stranglehold dribbled a dose of molasses to that city - not so much for the sweetness but for the slowdown effect; slowing down the advancing plague and the progress plague-bearers achieved - and the records are mostly in harmony in the view the cold front coming upon them brought a blessing disguised in bitterness and annoyance and avalanches except this was not a hilly city - yep it was a pretty plain city meaning a city fairly flatly set - so the avalanches could not bury anyone in the literal sense. But the annoyances could sure the dickens pile high in the minds of those dear city citizens down there back then. That's the way to see. Men may reside in the physical way on a hill or in the plains or in a city or in the country. But inside their heads may be all kinds of mountainous glaciers or mountains no glacier would dare set foot on; or they might enjoy an easy view across a kind of eternal harmony of field or prairie and a sky painted mellow blue and streaks with virginal cotton. We could be here until next time the reindeer come and clatter on our tin roofs and defecate on our hardening lawns.

To get back to The Legend of the Titanium Spidery Things; we talk about how texts try to bless and the blessing the text handed down to our clan attempts to sneak in under the escalating suspense - has to sneak because of knowing there is no way to compete with all the suspense we've built already - well that would be in the way the sweeping plague did not so swiftly bring the horrors it brought to cities the Arctic Circle invaders almost never ventured to. Arctic Circle invaders almost never went much more southerly than latitudes knowing four separate seasons. The Arctic Circle invaders came to annoy for a spell and then move on or head on back to their frigid quiet coastal towns.

The plague on the march around that globe, eating everything - you beat me to it - lord maybe you'd like to tell the thing?- eating everything like locusts eat everything but locusts don't have much choice because the good lord invented the locusts to teach us about humility - this plague we speak of came from demonic bowels and had no neighborliness within them or such schoolyard intentions as to cause a spell of annoyance and move on. No. They intended to establish eternal presences. You raise a worthy point. As annoying as an Arctic Circle onset onslaught can be - designed to be - once the first wave eases or settles, well, folks see - just like we said when we first sat in this cozy den and supped this potbelly warmth - folks see things they can do - drag out the sleds and sleighs and slap together a few harmless snowball battles. Or do like we learn to do as we put a few seasons in our diaries. See it as nature's invitation to cook up hearty stews. Snuggle up with your sweetie or sweeties underneath a thick blanket rich in down of the goose. And we could - ahem - no need to go into too many details on that path right now, seeing as we have listeners who should be thinking about turning in for the night right soon. There are sections later on where - well I'll be mighty glad the lights are dim in this den because they get - maybe Maggie and the gals will be done with their nighttime chores by then and one of them can handle those passages.

But to get back to what we're trying to get to. Per the point you raised, about the contrast, explains many things - see the powers behind the plague on the march of conquest around the globe back then down there, well, they were pretty much intent on wiping out all the ways the regular folks went about trying to enjoy themselves. They'd tried a number of times but failed to take into account how regional climates had a say in how easy or complicated they'd have it in trying to carry out their fanatical missions.

So the plague's basic purpose being to eradicate pretty much all things folks do for fun found fewer obstacles where the lands were less clearly divided into the four seasons, meaning lands knowing the temperate warmth more than air streams we'd call chilly. What made the plague-pushers so dang diabolical, besides an inability to let go of their goal and basically live like the regular folks they despised - oh I expect some vestiges - particles I guess they'd be - still roam the galaxies but most all intelligent forms of life had to learn the painful way about the darkness they brought to all they gained communal prestige over - but like I was saying the extra-spicy diabolical nature of the plague-carriers had to do with how they eventually learned to approach the various climates or the folks in those climates. For instance, since people in the warmer climates were less averse to folks exposing their flesh and girl-gazing simply composed normality for most, these plague bearers could not barge in covered in their thick sweaters and sweatshirts like they did in the more northern latitudes; so they went and shed some pounds or let their locks grow long like the traditions we recaptured showed favor for and toned down the whines that squealed from the literatures; eventually seeped - slowly - but seep they did - seeped into the edges of those worlds and - well we threaten spoilage here or hopping from the primary tree to another where the branches will take us too far from our base and I fear all presently tuned in will succumb to the sandman long before we get to know the one we ought be getting to know, and that someone is the one the Arctic Circle invaders failed to get a reaction out of.

So let's set this hefty sucker full of all these wondrous tales on the floor for now; might want to call on it later on; and maybe someone could stick another cherry chunk in the potbelly, that's it, now damp it down a bit, that's it, oh that roar, never shall I weary of that hot potbelly roar. Might also see if Maggie or one of the helper gals will bring us hot hard ciders for what follows will try our sobriety and I just can't imagine a soul so strong they could travel through these lands that became so full of illness without wanting to reach for a whiskey or few or if you can get your gal to heat that hard cider - ah here we go - yeah just set it on our homey potbelly or by our homey potbelly.

Now that we've ingested these intoxicating lubricants we know fill our minds so healthily, and of origins and spirits we can't really find anywhere except from the raw products we can endlessly exploit from our lady of a planet - and here we do worse than give thanks to the good lord for showing us how to cultivate and nurture the apple tree orchard and for granting us the land to grow them and prune them and then to bring teachers to teach us how to turn our harvests into these delicious hot intoxicants - so now that we've done this I reckon we can move on to the nuts and the bolts and morsels and sections we should find the deeper we penetrate The Legend of The Titanium Spidery Things. Well now the obvious might by now spread a mighty wide pair of wings but I hoped to build up to what the tale is most about - it is hard for us to put ourselves in the position they who wrote this tale found themselves in as they had to do it in secret thus couldn't come out and give a name to the true evil that plagued the world in those times.

We left a forlorn man the books named Eugene alone on a bench not far from a building whose spotless facade and empty blinded windows said as well as the words chiseled over the columns that genuine or spontaneous emotive capacities had been depleted. The forlorn Eugene did not seem aware much less care about the frosty frenzies and freezing frays that blanketed the city and it's possible even Eugene didn't feel how forlorn he really was, that something so saturated him he couldn't feel his saturation because he lost what dryness was; thus no surprise his apparent imperviousness to the handiwork those particles from the Arctic Circle proudly sponsored and already whooped to high heaven for how their surprise swoop so easily put the city out of kilter. Except they'd not thrown Eugene out of his kilter. Someone had beat them to him.

Even up in the lookout - that's what I like to call it - lookout - I think the texts use a technical term like Misty Perch On a Pole - so up in the Misty Perch on a Pole, an officer particle - if I recollect right it was a petty officer - so a petty officer smoking what was the best particles could come to our blessed tobacco, smoking his fine smoke up in the lookout tent - got a sudden bright idea to see if a few frosted flakes might get a reaction out of the creature-human we know as Eugene. The smoke he smoked offering the same kind of calm nutrients our smoking tobaccos are so rightly adored for, supplied the mellow confidence to approach the Most Decorated Particle while the Most Decorated Particle occupied that same lookout tent.

But the Most Decorated Particle had replied, "I appreciate your persistence in the search for a solution for this one. I was once like you. Yes I was once like you. I'd want to try the frosted flakes on such a creature-human. But I think we may as well let this one go as there is not much we can do that it looks like hasn't already been done - or worse - yes it appears something worse than anything we could throw at that creature-human, an even worse ailment ails it. See there, coming off that transport that fouls the landscape with unclean screeches. A whole herd of them. Why not empty a few rounds of frosted flakes on them?"

The officer particle then said okay it would do that and hopped to the panel of particle lights and flipped the telecommunication-particle device and ordered a squad of frosted flake specialists to divert their momentum away from that creature-human and blow all those frosted flakes on that batch of creature-humans who'd dared to come in the open. So they did so.

Beg pardon? The tale threatens a whimsical traipse into the unbelievable? It would be and is unbelievable. But since it's been brought up and since it ain't that late I imagine we can look into this idea of things being unbelievable. Unbelievable or hearing the word or the claim a thing or event is unbelievable activates those lazy parlors in this old noggin and I can't help but think of someone like barber Lee Roy Lawrence. You'd have to be a corpse or the freshest immigrant to our shores if you don't know who barber Lee Roy Lawrence is.

And if you know barber Lee Roy Lawrence then I don't have to explain how when barber Lee Roy Lawrence tells his hunting stories and those days he went on and on about a family of fanged cottontails dressed in coats they peeled off snowy white minks - his encounters with animals we didn't want to believe in; then how he told about having to grab his head to hold his mind in one piece but still doubling over because of insults hurled from the albino crew of crows versed in at least ten languages. He tells or told them stories and we all nod or nodded since his trusty hands wielded the scissors and clippers and that razor that made us pray a little harder than we tend to do whenever he'd set that edge on our necks - shake your head all you want but ain't nobody here got a cause to be the tough guy and deny they never prayed a touch harder than they tended when barber Lee Roy Lawrence pressed that razor's edge against our creamed necks, telling us them tales while only half done with our heads and figured he was putting on a fine show and prayed he'd not think of going into show business because if he'd go into show business our town would lose the finest barber, in barber Lee Roy Lawrence, ever to get into barbering in the honorable supply and demand lifestyle and do so in a small town so humble as ours.

Oh but what happens but old Jeffrey Conrad Jurgensen decides not to open his used tire enterprise one nondescript midweek afternoon, because of an itch to mosey down to the river, pretending he's a fisherman, but old Jeffrey Conrad Jurgensen comes back with his eyes wider than our provincial delta widens in the spring and his lips crusted with blood and clumps of fur and his fisherman trousers torn in the worst places a fisherman - even a man pretending to be a fisherman - can have his fisherman trousers torn - and he's crying and privately shows us mighty suspicious contusions that could not come from anything but a fanged cottontail so now we know when we wander to the river to keep an eye out for a fanged cottontail. Well we could find ourselves in a land far away from the land The Legend of the Titanium Spidery Things beckons us to explore.

So let's get back to our forlorn Eugene. We call him forlorn. I call him forlorn. From reading the texts I know he was forlorn. The precipitous particles coming from the Arctic Circle, they were the beings in the dark about Eugene being a forlorn man.

Many have agreed the best way to encapsulate his condition within a sustainable environment shorn of predatory organisms was to say his was the kind of mental condition that also affects the spirit so all of the afflicted - by all meaning the totality, the all in this case Eugene, meaning Eugene was that deeply afflicted man - so Eugene's condition was that kind of being neck-deep in the state of stun; so deep was Eugene stuck neck-deep in the state of stun that in these moments long on brute agony he felt nothing but the tidal power of the words that were already lodged inside.

Well that's what I was about to get to. The white leaf the lowly particle noted and the Most Decorated Particle's beloved Captain Clerk noted. They called it a leaf because they didn't have paper in their world - I'm not saying whose world was more advanced - we can suppose they never put their female particles in charge of too many things except for the basic well-being of their male particles and as far as we can guess that's how they've kept their social systems together so we don't have to worry about things like our world's climate getting out of whack - so guess we'd want to know if they ever developed paper or if they used more spiritual-based mediums - oh they likely didn't have too many trees and likely still don't; but to get back to our track to the tale, it's pretty easy to guess in Eugene's world Eugene clutched what we in our world what rightly recognize as a sheet of paper - probably stood out extra stark if he was clothed in clothing the colorists in those days pigmented darkly.

Won't dare venture too deep into specifics there but best I can discern from the text, it sounds like he wore a navy blue windbreaker and we have no idea what style or color of shirt he had on under his navy blue windbreaker. So it seems clear to my humble mind that's what should be looked into - not what kind of shirt Eugene wore under what we believe was a navy blue windbreaker but the paper in his hand he had to stare at but didn't want to stare at; and turns out the particles including Captain Clerk had some high-test intuition juices running in them because the paper or the text printed on the paper did indeed have just about sole responsibility for the state of mind - the sunk neck-deep in stun Eugene sat in on that bench while the world around him became colder and colder and precipitous particles flung faster and faster. And they'd not yet drug out, or called from the rearward positions, a single blizzard blaster.

First time offender. That was the bullet busting his bone or the hammer ringing his bells. Offender. First time offender. That's what Eugene was. What he became. All but overnight. Hm. Like a sudden death? Well that might be an apt association. Maybe not so quick but about on that order of shock - the style of shock able to make a man sit neck-deep in the state of stun. If sudden death is a helicopter falling on you soon as you step out your door, I reckon Eugene's case would be like hopping on a bus and waking up the next morning to find yourself waking up on a picnic table in a town you don't know, hungover and tattered.

A man who'd once been recognized as among the nicest of men to have for a neighbor or a friend or the kind of easy-going guy who could bring a brightness to the soul deep down in the dumps and do it like a magical thing with one wave of his hand. That had been Eugene. Oh but now. No more. Offender. Eugene the Offender. First Time Offender. First time offenders were not taken from society but they were required to go to meetings and report to probation officers. Oh these powers fueling the worldwide plague were mighty big about meetings. Some have posited this fetish for meetings fertilized dormant seeds and others contend the seeds were the meetings themselves. Oh I don't know. Fairly unfathomable way to exist to me too; meeting minutes; recitation of what happened when metal chairs calmed their squeaks on waxed floors and forms of life choosing to attend a meeting and reading minutes from past meetings instead of cozying up to an old potbelly like we cozy up to this old potbelly. Or to go and grab a gal winnowing wheat and hauling her to a grassy glade and partaking of her goodness. Or to just cogitate on a porch and remember times when we were spry enough to chase them gals and latch their garments and feel their slick and sweaty legs as we'd push them apart; so on and so forth. But that's what the world had become back then. I imagine had it not become what it became then we'd have no Legend of the Titanium Spidery Things to tell while we sip hot hard ciders by this old potbelly while our gals tend to kitchen chores.

Activities would be monitored more closely than actions of those who'd not become offenders. First time offenders could expect surprise visits from officers and the surprising officer may not necessarily be the offender's probation officer and it wouldn't matter because whichever officer would come to the door and however large or small the surprise, the offender was required to allow that officer into the offender's place of residence without an explanation going past because the officer said so and the officer could take as much time investigating the offender's home and person or persons as the officer deemed appropriate.

The paper described in language we more personable folks might consider on the soulless side, the specific statute he'd violated (complete with parenthetical number and date the statute became a statute); the punitive-prescriptive state of affairs for violating the statute that Eugene had no choice now in choosing to abide by or not abide by; options for ignorance on the offender's behalf did not exist unless that first time offender would become a second time offender and then risk judiciary ire in finding out how offenders fared in the hands of disciplinary officers when offending the third time and only in a fiction existed fourth offenses. If you'll pardon my tongue, the gist the offender was to take most to heart - offenders were not to fuck with officers.

Ink for the print spared no bold or black for the declaration that attendance required of the first time offender to meetings could never be mistaken for a laughing matter nor should the offender think just because he could walk the streets without a special status patch sewn to his shirt that he was very free, because many categories of behavior would be monitored by monitors trained to go by the books and quick to mark down demerits; for instance, the punctuality or tardiness of the offending attendee. These women were also recruiting more volunteers by the day who'd be positioned strategically so the first time offender wouldn't go far from his residence without raising the chances one of these women volunteers could spy on him and report suspicious activity to the local women authorities.