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WAGATRON

Speak to Me


These links aren't very interesting, but they're mine. My own. My precious...

Happy Birthday to me. At this point, I have definitely reached the age where birthdays are no longer a status thing. After 21, you begin to dread your birthday instead of anticipate it. This is for a few reasons:

• no one else will know its your birthday unless you mention it--why rock the boat?
  
• your age no longer represents a vital rite of passage
  
• your birthday is likely to be a weekday, and thus, a "school night" (must work in the morning)
  
• over time, birthday cake slowly becomes a poisonous substance to adults
  
• a birthday is only an embarrassing reminder that one day in the future, a doctor will give you a prostate exam
  

I could go on, but I don't really enjoy sobbing like a baby. I'm 24. Time to enjoy it.

What are personals sites?

I honestly think they are mirages. You think there are people there, but there aren't. It's exactly like the subway, where if you even wanted to talk to someone, they wouldn't like you. Everyone on board wants someone else, who doesn't want them back.

Worse, the personals site is a timeless sort of vacuum, not at all like the real world. People get frustrated and get off the train, but the afterimage remains, streaking away with time, and people still respond to it. There's a one-way correspondence between the desperate ones who just boarded at the last station and the pathetic ghosts who've been lingering for months, slowly disintegrating like wood smoke.

Most of the people look better than their posted picture, except for the ones who look worse, and most don't resemble their picture at all. It's a complete crapshoot, and the only way to find out is risk contamination by contact. Meeting someone.

Invariably, even if this goes better than expected, it's a slippery slope. Quicksand. A booby trap.

Consider yourselves fairly warned. Anyone with evidence to the contrary, feel free to email it to me. I'd like to read it.

I challenge you not to find this game queasily addictive:

Santa Ballz

Sure, Christmas is over, but Santa's balls are fun 365 days a year.

Mattress Planet Mission Statement:

we are your official "get-stoned-and-read-this" website.

Enjoy.

It's an impressive block of glass and concrete, I think to myself as I walk up the drive. Organic, even alive in some form. It's inviting--comforting, somehow.

I designed it that way, you know. You have an eye for design.

This voice shocks me out of my reverie. I'm used to hearing my own thoughts reverberating in my skull, but I'm not in the habit of picking up others'. And no one spoke aloud--that was a voice in my mind.

Can you hear me? I think, looking around for some sort of hidden speaker. I feel foolish, but only because I'm excited by the possibilities of a disembodied spirit haunting this office building.

I hear your thoughts, yes, but the expression on your face is more than enough to give them away. You're not a Vegas man, are you?

Are you human? I think to this presence, just as I realize that, if I am going to continue to talk to myself, I might as well do it on the move, instead of dumbstruck on the sidewalk. As I reach the revolving door, I get my answer.

This is what I’ve forgotten...

Daniel buttons his cufflinks, twists them beneath his hands so they lie on his wristbones, like ladybugs. His face is flush over his collar—in the mirror mine looks the same. We step to the mirror together, laughing. (When Dan and I laugh it’s like mirrors anyway. Put two jokers onstage and they will compete trying to split each others’ sides, both succeeding in the process. Whatever he does makes me do something that makes him laugh, or else he goes straightfaced and stares off in his head, in which case I go right after him, until we’re both dripping with sweat, gasping for air and spasming with giggles.)
There’s a knock on the door, and a dwarf in purple brocade appears round the door. “Places.” I don't know where that is, but the dwarf is motioning to us, and Daniel follows. I reluctantly follow after them.
This is a very plush theatre we’ve found for ourselves, I’m thinking. I’m still trying to fix what we’re doing here, but Dan seems to know well enough. We’ve done this sort of thing plenty before—but why don’t I remember this place?
Suddenly we hear a brass fanfare beginning below us. We round a corner and find ourselves at the back of the house, aisles filling the air below us. The orchestra is only the size of a coin, more than two hundred feet away. The dwarf leads us over to a floor rug laid out on the ground. There are four cables attached to it which stretch into the rafters, far above. The cables are fixed to the corners. Daniel steps to one side of the carpet, grasps two cables. The dwarf is smiling idiotically, waving for me to step on to it. As I do, the carpet ripples under my feet and I can feel it supporting my weight. Not your normal carpet, but not exactly a magic carpet either. The cables are rather unusual as well. Suddenly we are moving, and I see that Dan is pushing against the carpeting—pumping, as though we were on a swingset. We soar over the aisles, back to the heights at the top of the house, and then careening down towards the stage into the flys, and back up again. I can see the audience pointing, laughing, and I know many of the people in this audience. There are several hundred people though...suddenly I see Jason Wagner, laughing his goddamn head off. And as I lift my head, I see that Daniel’s laughing hysterically, which means I must be laughing as well. Hooting and pumping, higher and higher into the rafters. We leap off, landing in a net strung high above, and after simply clinging for a few moments, we climb down onto a rafter and toe our way into the darkness.
After many circuituous turns, forks and twisting passages, we find our way back to the dressing room. In my locker, I find my clothing: one sharkskin suit, polyester shirt, Day-Glo orange wingtips. “Daniel, what city are we in? Is this in style?” I ask him.
”You look fine.” He’s wearing his crumpled brown jacket, and a giant fish necktie. Leaving the dressing room, we descend a ladder, take two lefts and slide down a fireman’s pole. We’re inside a fire station, but it’s obviously abandoned. Daniel pushs the garage door button, and it slides upward a few feet before it sticks shut. We crouch and slide under.
The city is muggy, and that’s about all I can say about it. All distinguishing features, if there are any, are obscured by waves of heat and condensation. We hail a passing bromeliad and head downtown...

Well, here I am. I doubted that I would ever make it here, but somehow, I did. As I look down upon this great city of Montreal, I wonder: How will the world react to a man in a provolone cheese suit, plummeting toward the ground with 3,000 urinal cakes strapped to his undercarriage?

I guess there's only two ways to find out. And one of them died with Mr Peepers. I told that stupid chimp not to eat his colostomy deposit bag. Oh well.

Give my love to Eunice and Shit-for-brains. Eat this letter.