Gary Panter blog

WALLY

I'm a fucking beaver, out here in the woods chewing down a fucking tree, is what's happening. What do you think, smart ass?!

I saw you talking to the fish. Fuck fish! Fish think they are so fucking smart, but hey, fish are stone cold candy-assed fools. They have no fucking idea what goes on up and out and over and around here. Out in our woods of the clear air with the whispering elm and shaky maple or whatever the fuck; the bitter fir or sibilant martin; glowing lichen and wildcat pee-stained moss bank. No fuckin clue. A little jump out of the drink and what do they learn? Not much, sister! Something about a worm? Get out and walk around and learn something, Karl. Live a little! Carry something over a stump for as change. Spoiled brats! I have no sympathy for them. They don't deserve— they deserve what ever they get.

Me, as I chew down a friggin tree, I am watching those tall pale motherfuckers grope and stumble about and all their shenanigans and hijinx and goings-on far away from their white meat hive. They are always up to something and it is not good! I hunch in the under-bush and observe piously. The Whatchacallums. I don't know what they call em, but I am keeping a close eye, believe me, sailor. They are crunching around hooting and such—making hot spots and smelly areas, dis-infections, wire barriers and deafening reports— and corks. Kind of like Pepto Bismol colored or cocoa-flavored walking stick insects, but seven tails erect, some of them, cheap bastards in shabby threads and shecky Tees. Fleshy blabbing lemurs in stripes and dots or jaggered with canopies or jugends. Never for a minute quiet. Can't shut up.

Last night in my sub-pond hidey hole, or beaver cave if you prefer, suit yourself, either way. I was shaking like a leaf, no shit. There was a BIG WHOPPING THUD right on my crap and I was freakin out, Inspector Fenwick. The twigs were heaving and shaking, rattling—I thought the whole mess would come loose, whisking me up some shit creek with a big fat functional fucking paddle, right? You with me? Sittin in splinters? But somehow! Gee whizz! Holey moley! Somehow my little soggy wet dripping love shack withstood whatever ever the fuck was going on out there. I didn't dare look. Those fucking ass-holes—maybe Yogi or Bullwinkle J Moose or Wally Gator or some other dick, probably. Officer Ranger or some stupid fuck. Fucking around. Rattling on and on and on about something! Not minding their own damn business. Coming around here like mincing gaylords and tearing shit up in their propulsion units or dropping a royal pain in the loaf. Me, I chew a gas hose or starter connection now and then, I eagerly admit it. Slow up the snivelling shits, I say. Give em a kick. It's only fair! They are fucking with my shit, right? Fuck, man! Boo hoo, right?

A gas hose is nothing. I can chew straight through a big honking log even! No problem! In no time flat. Like you would a carrot. But I'm not stuck up about it. How do i do it? You of all people should ask. Well, that's for me to know and for you to miserably fail to find out. A trade secret. There is a technique and maybe a little show biz and deception involved, but I sincerely do gnaw my way through plank, heavy timber, branch or bough. There is a certain sincere angle that helps. I don't try to analyze it, really. I knew since I was a little peckerwood that I had a gift, knack, talent, luck—a witching way with wood. Whatever you people call it. Board-feet. length-o-pine, pole, shim. peg. shilleleagh or switch!

Fishfood

Hooks nearby, with writhing half dead worms on them. I don't know if worms can breathe underwater. Doubt it. These guys are mortally wounded—not happy. Oh yeah—that one's a goner. Inert. Bobbing in the current. Fishfood.

I admit that they smell nice. Wormy. Like the mud in the ground at the bottom of the lake. Night crawlers are night-crawlers, because they love to crawl out of the wet grass at midnight and amble and tremble in the moonlight. Everything wonders what's up there. Fish wonder. Worms, too. Up there in the Black and twinkly area up there. Around that area.

During the day night-crawlers lie under the lip of grass that demarcates the flower bed from lawn—to the earthworm a substantial braided canopy, a shield against the searing rays of the sun. How do I know this? I who have only leaped into the air for a momentary glimpse of what passes up there on the forced dry air? I tell you now that we have our sources and traditions— our ways of gathering and protecting the knowledge we amass from all realms over the long ages of vertebrate memory; our sacred notions and halls of learning, including encyclopedic gleanings concerning the airy ether and of certain information to do with the close packed earth to the depth of 4000 miles; our scroll-filled underwater lending libraries; our Davey Jones Locker, if you will.

Undersea, we have many suns apparent that dance and sing in the sky. One and many. Red and yellow and blue and green and pink and orange and purple, depending. Even under a fathom of emollient, we still seek the coolness of shadow—of docks, of boats, of reefs and jetties, underwater caverns and lagoons. Nice chilly spots. With speckles of heat light. A little variety is nice.

Which hook to bite? Better think it over. Every decision a path. Some say a crown and throne and glory is at the end of the line. Multitudes of mammalian and monotrematic life-forms bow and quake or kowtow there in the celestial throne room where each cod and mackeral waves a golden scepter with majesty and radiant glory. Well, really only reflecting the glory of the biggest whale on the biggest throne of all the heavens, that's all!!!

What is dropping those worms impaled on cruel hooks into the briny brine? Are there giant worms with no consideration for tiny worms? Worms whose pain is too small to register on any sensitive instrument relative to the astounding bulk of their tormentors? I wonder what they taste like? Maybe like worms. Worms serving a greater cause, perhaps? Maybe a ritualistic effort conducted by believer worms. Perhaps the giant walking manatees or worms or whatever they are up there—and I sincerely do believe something is out there, are up to something or another. Otherwise: worms on hooks from no-where? I don't think so. Worms on hooks come from somewhere. It may be a simple mechanical or natural process, like swamp gas, or it may involve intent. With all our knowledge of land-life, some very important parts of the conundrum seem to be missing. We fish are great observers and eager listeners, ready joiners, flockers, even, but lousy theoreticians. Metaphor, analogy, simile, rubric, parable and aphorism are only words to me. I am more comfortable with bubbles. Trails of bubbles heading somewhere. Bubbles going out there.

The Den

In heaven you get: A baloney sandwich with a slice of American cheese, a sheet of iceberg lettuce, mustard, and/or Miracle Whip, some Fritos or Ruffles on a paper plate, also home to a crowd of migrating pork 'n beans buoying a white plastic fork. Also, a cold king-size Coke in a glass bottle, dripping picturesque rivulets.

There is a redwood picnic table on the grass with napkins and a jar of butter pickles. And a yard with a swingset to stand by. The sky is blue. There are three fluffy white clouds adrift. Birds are singing like crazy and occasionally zip by, quick as a wink, but they are not standing around in plain sight twittering or tweeting. There are no wires for them to loiter on.

The swing is too small for your ass, but it is really just for looks. It looks nice. There is a slight breeze, just a puff. Not much is happening. It's almost time to sit on the freezer. More ass appropriate.

Later means cinnamon Pop Tarts with butter, blisteringly hot. Great Shakes and the Monkees or Jetsons, take your pick. That's in the Den, also called the rumpus allusion.

Outside the yard is the horizon. There are some bare gray trees on it. They trace invisible forces with their limbs. But they are very tiny and far far away.

No insects—well, there are ants, but they are just quietly singing In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida waiting for a crumb. No problem.

There is a little league game, if you want to watch. The announcer is a real character. His warm voice booms to the treeline and back and all around. The little guys sure swing and shout and kick up a storm of dust.

Leave a message for the manager or employees of Taco Bell:

You guys work hard. We, the taco eating public thank you!

I see you back there, slipping around on skims of pre-grated cheese, packets of exploded hot sauce, scattered bits of extra-crispy taco shells and scraps of iceberg lettuce. It can't be easy taking orders from the window while making a chicken bacon snack wrap. I can't chew gum and walk straight, so I can only vaguely imagine the fog one must enter; what psychic challenge it must be, trying to order ones senses while taking the order by earpiece, given all the contradictory sensorial input; running back and forth from the colorful branded zones of Baskin-Robbins/Pizza Hut/Taco Bell/Dunkin Donuts—how many colors and smells can you intake per minute? You have to be as canny as a bartender, mixing subtle ratios of matter and flavor bits, into tasty Manhattans of 100% cheesefood, microwaved ground fried beef, frosty sour cream, gloopy russian dressing and so forth, soft or crispy? Each item a routine ( like mixing a martini) a skillful turn of the wrist—a torque, an obstacle course. Your white blouse a little too small for your generous bosoms. I feel for you. All of you. You all. Not just all of you. All of you all. Friendly feelings of humanity. Sensual feelings of thriving earthly animal humanity, chugging along, doing our thing, each one up to his or her eyeballs in it. In the toil of being alive, earning a crust, making a chicken quesadilla or eating a chicken quesadiila: the best thing you guys offer. Not in flavor, though the flavor is fine, but, excellently, in the not-giving-me-a-big-fat-fajita-style-stomachache from eating a beef and bean burrito supreme with two taco supremes, for example, followed by a couple odd Boston cream pies washed inland by a chill Chocolate Blast, which, though wonderful, often revisits my personal scene later in the hour.

Anyhow thanks and best wishes. The public couldn't survive a minute without your reasonable and even counsel, your skillful ladling of deep humanity and subtle manifestations of psychiatric wisdom—like when that guy, yesterday, with his little bitty daughter. He the silent monster and she the harping seal pup endlessly trying to provoke him into action with questions questions questions and him resoluting refusing to acknowledge her existence. It was a titanic battle of wills on the food court. Them on one side of the counter, facing you, you facing them. Him looming overhead, she pecking his ankles. It was your first day, and your English was not so good, getting to know a new system and a complicated piece of machinery with the clear plastic germ guard encased register thingy and you struggling with those handi-wrap sanitary disposable gloves which had dribbled some viscous liquid off your fingers onto the shielded keypad; sheilded yet made slipperly by the bean juice, or red drink, or donut icing or peperoni squishins or chocolate sauce—heck, it had to be something.

Lurch wanted it special and he wanted it with out delay—a customized burrito or two, no sour cream no cheese no lettuce just chicken and beans and he didn't want 'no' or 'what?' or your predictable confusion. Frankenstein with a menacing Blue Tooth hanging out his ear. His tot, a deer tick, looking to draw blood in the toe-hills if she could.

"Daddy, what did that man want? Why is the money in the car? You should stop smoking. Mommy wants a beer and cheese combo. And a Fresca. It's not your turn yet. She's only trying to do her job, Daddy. They're out of napkins. I want two straws. No, I wanted 3 tacos, Daddy. Where's our cinnamon sticks? Can we get a donut?" She, very cute, yammering on and on, him obviously wanting to throw her in the Gowanus as soon as they got outside, but for now imitating a prehistoric monolith.

"Open the register and put in my ten and give me four bucks back is all you need to do. Do it!" he said to you out of the mouth of the wide hollow log that was him.

You looked back with alarm and wide innocent eyes. You backed off. That was psychological wisdom! I felt for you, but you'll get the hang of it. Plus, your prison tats are very elaborate and scary. It'll be a cinch!

Shackletina

I had just crossed a donkey with a barn owl, when I noticed the hour was late. All around the shack, the grasshoppers, crickets, katydids, grand-daddy longlegs, night-crawlers and all the many grubworms that had boiled generously, even languorously, against the windows all day and night, for three days and nights, now, had finally subsided—a waned chitinous cabin-wide tide begone.

It would be safe to say that it would be safe to go outside, soon, and take the sap buckets off the heady dutchweed stalks. The sap, extracted from the drippy thick pulpy reedy tubules by boring, insertion, plumbing and pumping, has lots of uses and advantages over lard or margarine, down this way, as a general and friendly lubricant. Things will go round and round, if you let them.

Generally speaking, you can bring the whole carriage to a hard hopping halt or you can grease those shocks, gears, u-joints, suspensions, load-bearing wheels and axles and so on, and go on ahead, put your back into it, and load the heavy iron cage onto the donkey cart. However, once the donkey cart is bearing a large iron cage with shacklettes on the barn donkey owl, darn it! Who will pull the wagon?

Who will pull it? I'll give you five bucks to help me pull this donkey tram to the nearest Roman circus, AND, AND! I split the profits with you: two for me, one for you. Hey! I developed it. I developed it! There would be no barn donkey owl, down yonder smelling up the place, to even proffer, if, if it wasn't for my invention and long and hard and endless and unremittingly relentless years of limbering up for the kill. Now it's dead. Who will cart it to the mill to be ground into pixie dust? I can't do it alone. Well, if I have to, I will, but I can't. Plus, I can't grind it around here. I would if I could. I really need to take it out to the grinder to grind it and pulverize it and pat it into pattycakes for limited consumption by discriminating parties of various cast. The grinder must be agrinding. That's all there is to it. It's a foregone conclusion. Fact, not fate. I don't make up the rules. I follow them.

Went into the CITY to deliver my 'Omega the Unknown' cover to Marvel. For some reason I thought it was on Fifth Ave at 17th, but it was 37th. When things like this happen I tend to take the long walk and look at the city, which I did.

Lots of sights. Smart people, dumb people, pretty people, ugly people, freezing hotdog and sausage vendors, smokers hanging out in clumps outside buildings like cranes and jackals by watering holes, Yellow cabs nowadays with designy flowers on the hood running red lights, polite drivers deferring to pedestrians, pedestrians abusing the privilege, giant hairy ugly dwarf smoking a stogie 'blocking the box' with his Hummer2, the Empire State Building from underneath where you can't see it as happens to ants passing by Paul Bunyan's foot, guys trying in vain to collar passersby to discuss global warming, hip hop dudes in million dollar leather jackets with full congo jungles scenes embroidered thereupon on their way back to the ghetto, crazy faddists in those skeleton body hoodies which when zipped up become grim reaper burkas, normal looking girls with babies they were crazy enough to have by these calaveras, fucking idiots on cel phones not minding personal space. The reds, the grays, the blues of NYC in winter. The beautiful fresh cold air gridded with contrails.

At Marvel they directed me around the corner to some vaguer hole in the wall they called 'the mezzanine'. Mezzanine? It was a door through a janitorial area. There was a locked glass door at the end of the corridor with a card entry slot. There on the floor, by the door, was a pile of packages, but also some thrown-out pizza boxes in the same pile. I knocked politely about 3 times then banged the shit out of it until the irate kid who was supposed to be manning that station appeared, yelling at me that I could've thrown it on the discarded pizza boxes and I told him no thanks. Is this any way to run a Death star?

THE FUTURE IS NOW

Haven't seen you for ages, Gary.

No pissing around now, you need to enlarge your cock.

Think you're a mack daddy? Think again, you ain't hittin it with that twinky you call a dick.

Make her buckle and moan all night when you split that pussy wide open.

Are you going to pass up an opportunity to get a humungous penis? really?

Look down to see a strong meaty cock hanging that you can be proud of.

Keep her in the mood when you hang out your new whopper.

Stretch her ass wide open with your new dick size.

It's no good thinking your dick's big when it aint.

Drop a cum load on her today, they seriously love it!

If you want more out of life, then make ya dick bigger.

Your dick will be best of all!

Your dick will be record-breaker!

Howdy partner, Gary

Bad news buddy, you got a small dickie!

Congratulations Gary, You've just won the award or the WORLD'S SMALLEST DICK!!!