“The Awakening” in America’s Not-So “Pleasantville”: Evolved Parenting Results in Authenticity Rising and Defeat of the Body Snatchers

Culture War, Class War, Chapter Six: “Pleasantville” as Culture War Allegory

To Follow or Not Follow “the Script” in America’s Not-So “Pleasantville”

“Pleasantville” as Culture War Allegory: Thinking for Oneself Gets You “Colorized”

Not So “Pleasantville”

The film, “Pleasantville,” is a postmodern sociological allegory or fable released in 1998. It begins in then-current time against a backdrop of the usual violence, chaos, and turbulence that we are conditioned by the media to believe characterized the Nineties in America. Two high school teenagers, David and Jennifer, played by Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon are planning their evening.

A Tale of Two Siblings

David is planning to watch the Pleasantville marathon on television and to participate in the trivia contest that will be part of it. Pleasantville is a an old sitcom from the 1950s in the Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver, My Three Sons style which has attained a cult-like following and is shown regularly on a cable channel similar to the “Nick at Nite” one that we know of which specialized in reruns of old sitcoms. It becomes clear that David is an ardent devotee of the show in part because it compensates for the lameness of his real life. Unlike his sister, who is portrayed as a real “firecracker” of a young woman, he doesn’t date or participate in the school scene. It is implied that he may be using the sitcom as an escape from not only a boring life but a threatening one and that he longs to live in the kind of ordered, safe, and unchallenging reality that the sitcom depicts. David is such an avid follower of the show that he is shown to be a master of “Pleasantville” trivia and is primed and eager for the contest on Pleasantville trivia.

But his sister, Jennifer, is planning for a hot date at home…their parents being away for the weekend providing an opportunity for her to be unchaperoned with her guy—which she eagerly anticipates. At odds over what will be played on the TV–Jennifer wanting to watch instead an MTV concert with her date—they wrestle over the TV remote and end up breaking it. However all is not lost as at just that moment and completely inexplicably a television repairman played by Don Knotts drives up in his truck, knocks on the door, and imposes his services on them in fixing the problem.

Don Knotts—perfectly cast, in a Jungian sense, for it is often the impish or normally overlooked and unnoticed element that initiates sweeping changes in people’s lives—indeed does introduce the magical element into the film. He produces a different kind of remote control, which he claims has special effects saying, “You want something to put you right in the show!” Sure enough, in checking out the remote they hit a mysterious button and are transported into the TV and thus into the sitcom and the town that is called Pleasantville.

To Follow Or Not to Follow “The Script”

After their initial confusion, they realize what has happened and try to return, but do not know how to. David–who it becomes apparent has been thrust into the role of Bud in the sitcom–advises his sister–Jennifer who has become Mary Sue in the TV series–to go along with events until they figure a way to get home. Since he knows all the plots of every show of the sitcom, his idea is that they act out the events as they are supposed to happen and that they do what the two characters–the teenage son and daughter of the parents in the sitcom, Betty and George Parker, played superbly by Joan Allen and William H. Macy–are known to do in the different episodes he has seen.

Essentially, then, David as Bud is advising his sister to “follow the script.” And of course it is not hard to discern at this point that we are beginning to see a metaphor for psychological realities and that “following the script” has a broader meaning for a choice that everyone must make in life in growing up, viz., to follow the script laid out for oneself by one’s parents and society in general or to follow one’s inner direction and inner guide in asserting one’s individuality and expressing one’s unique self.

The rest of the movie is the story of how these two characters–transported magically from the future as well as from the real world as opposed to a made-up TV world–introduce change into the town and thereby color. Mary Sue, formerly Jennifer, does it consciously. Rebelling against her brother’s admonishments to follow the script, she goes on a date with someone she is not supposed to according to the sitcom script and then–horror of horrors for a 1950s world – engages in sex with him at the local “lover’s lane”–where the farthest that anyone goes, according to “script,” is holding hands. We find later that her date describes this unheard of experience to his classmates, and, like ripples emanating from a pebble dropped in a pond, her action results in a number of the school youth engaging in sex and thereby becoming, to everyone’s amazement, colorized!

The brother also introduces change, and therefore color, but it is done unconsciously at first. As mentioned, he tries to get his sister to follow the script. Still, in a metaphorically powerful scene, when he is late for work at the local malt shop–this is unheard of as well because “Pleasantville” is a world where no one is ever late for work–he inadvertently introduces change himself. In fact, he introduces the most insidious element of change because he explicitly advises–without realizing what he has unleashed–that his boss think for himself!

In this scene Bud, formerly David, finds his boss and coworker, Mr. Johnson, played by Jeff Daniels, stuck at the end of the counter, cleaning away with a wash cloth, like a stuck record, at the same spot, even as the surface of the counter is rubbing away.

When the soda jerk, Mr. Johnson, explains confusedly that the normal regimen would have required Bud to arrive at work before he, Mr. Johnson, could go on to the rest of his chores, “Bud” simply suggests to Mr. Johnson that in the future he continue with his next chore even if Bud isn’t there.

So simply in being himself, coming from a future in which people react to change by thinking out new responses and thereby adapting to them, Bud, aka David, introduces a totally new element into the soda jerk’s script. This has far reaching consequences as the movie progresses and Mr. Johnson begins thinking for himself and having ideas about other things as well. In this way, the soda jerk, soon to be artist, too ends up “colored.”

“The Awakening” in a WWII Generation World of “Blue Meanies” and “Nowhere Men” … “Yellow Submarine” … “Pleasantville”

“Pleasantville” and “Yellow Submarine”: The WWII Generation World of “Blue Meanies” and “Nowhere Men” vs. “The Awakening”Blue Meanies

The 1998 movie, “Pleasantville,”thematically, is remarkably akin to the 1968-released movie “Yellow Submarine” put out by the Sixties Generation rock group The Beatles.

In “Yellow Submarine” there is a region ruled by the “Blue Meanies.” These Blue Meanies, especially their leader, are depicted as powerful and cruel, yet sniveling, insecure, weak, and selfish underneath. Their angry and oppressive personas are shown to reveal poor little whining babies behind them. Their actions are shown to be those of “big babies,” whose gruff exterior must remain intact at all costs, lest their hidden sniveling and hurt little selves be revealed. The analogy the Beatles are making to those of the WWII Generation—at that time the parental generation, those “over 30″—is impossible not to make.

“Nowhere Man”

The movies are so similar in theme that the only major thematic difference between “Pleasantville” and “Yellow Submarine” is that it is music that is not allowed in “Yellow Submarine” whereas in “Pleasantville” it is color. But the idea behind them both is the same: Music and color both represent deep feeling, aliveness, thinking for oneself, and change. In “Yellow Submarine,” the man without music is Nowhere Man, who “knows not where he’s going to, doesn’t have a point of view.” In Pleasantville, the men without color act in the same ways, performing the same actions, day in, day out, without change, zombie- or robot-like–like characters in a 1950s-style sitcom in which nothing unpleasant, different, new, or too emotional is allowed to occur.

And above all, the black-and-white men do not think for themselves. This is graphically portrayed in the scene mentioned where the owner of the town malt shop, Mr. Johnson, portrayed by Jeff Daniels, is left cleaning the same spot of the counter for hours so that its top is rubbed away because his coworker is late and the routine they use to close up cannot be completed in the way it is done, everyday, in exactly the same way. Confronted with this small change, he shows himself to be the “Nowhere Man” and like a needle stuck on a record, he is rigidly stuck repeating the same action, not having the power to think of an alternative action in response to a change in the usual routine.

“The Awakening” – No Longer a Distant Vision

The differences in the years of the release and the different artistic modes used to express the themes of these two movies have something to say as well. In 1968 the changes in culture of the New Age were a vision and a hope. It is appropriate and telling that “Yellow Submarine” was expressed in animated form. Like a dream that would take a long time to realize, it needed to be expressed in cartoon-like fashion, for the time of its emergence in reality was too far off.

By contrast, “Pleasantville” blends a fantasy world–appropriately it is a TV sitcom, which has more similarities with reality than an animation – with the actual reality of postmodern times. The advance toward reality is patent in the evolution from an animated form–indicating the change is far off, a fantasy, a wish, a hope–in the 1968 movie; to a black-and-white form involving real actors, real people; and then to a colorized version involving real people in what is supposed to be real time and real cultural reality, in the movie released thirty years later. One might say that what was a fantasy over forty years ago is, however unconsciously, being heralded as, hopefully, emerging and coming into being now–in actual, black-and-white or colored, real time and place.

Reversing the Invasion of the Body Snatchers: The Preeminence of Inner Authority – Authenticity Rising

The Preeminence of Inner Authority – Authenticity Rising:
Reversing the Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Reversing the Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Concerning the movie “Pleasantville,” noted movie critic Roger Ebert quite astutely pointed out that it was “like the defeat of the body snatchers” (from his excellent review, “Pleasantville” ). One might also say that it is one in which Holden Caulfield, the character in J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, wins out and children do not grow up to be adult “phonies.” Another analogy would be that it is a depiction in which Peter Pan stays young, when he succeeds in keeping the children from ever growing up and thereby losing their capacity to “fly”–representing the capacity to dream, to envision, to be open to new possibilities, to adventure.

What It Is That Makes One Alive

Against this backdrop of lack of real aliveness, the introduction of “color” into the town of Pleasantville through the introduction of sex is not seen as something bad at all. Similarly, in recent history, despite the increasing drum beating of the Religious Right in the last three decades, those of us who grew up in the Fifties know that the introduction of sex–in the Sixties, as in the “sexual revolution”–was a step forward from the hypocritical sameness and plodding repression of the Fifties.

Other elements introduced into Pleasantville that produce colorization in the participants include thinking for oneself (Jeff Daniels in his role as the soda jerk), intellectual passion (the sister), questioning the way things are supposed to be or, in Sixties terms, questioning authority (when the brother finally becomes colored), artistic and creative passion (Jeff Daniels again), and even the passion of honest rage (the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce). These elements arise in Pleasantville just as they arose into the collective consciousness of those of us living in the Fifties and Sixties.

Of course I am not naively saying that these elements never existed before the Sixties. The underlying factor that was introduced into the movie causing color and that was also introduced into our society causing all the sociocultural changes that we, usually, complain about is the factor of choosing something different than what is expected by society, than what is expected by the outside. What is introduced in the movie–as it was introduced in our culture–is the preeminence of inner authority in making decisions, as opposed to outer authority.

A New Psychohistorical Era!

In psychohistorical terms this difference is marked by Lloyd deMause as a difference in a mode of child-rearing. The black-and-white Fifties Pleasantville is a representation of a mode of child-rearing—which characterized the Fifties—wherein the role of the parents is to “mold,” model, and guide children along paths that the parents have deemed to be correct–called the socializing mode of child-rearing. The child is expected to be a clone of the parents, a mini-me, or at least to represent the parents’ ideas of proper behavior, ideals, and mode of living, irregardless of whether the parent models them or not. And when not, the phrase “Do as I say, not as I do” and the term hypocrite as applied to the parents are apropos. The basic nature of the child is considered to be sinful and evil or at least beastial; the classic novel Lord of the Flies depicts this view of human nature. Therefore the child needs to become other than itself and conform itself to something outside of itself in order for she or he to be considered “good” and to receive good responses in turn from parents and society.

By contrast, the colorized Pleasantville represents the mode of child-caring that came out, big time, beginning in the Sixties, wherein the parents’ role is that of “bringing out” from and supporting, encouraging, and helping the child to discover what the child’s talents and inherent abilities, feelings, and proclivities are, and then encouraging the child to “believe in him/herself” in the expression of those inherent and inborn good qualities and values–termed the helping mode of child-caring. [Footnote 1]

This mode contains a radically new view of basic human nature. Humans are seen to be essentially good (even “divine”). It is evil and painful events impinging upon the child from the outside—family and society—that are deemed causative in taking the child from its natural state of innocence and goodness and inherent unique talents to one wherein the child is corrupted and thus becomes beastial and lacking in inherent good qualities and talents.

Therefore the solution is to protect the child from traumas coming from the outside, especially the huge one of feeling unloved through not being seen or respected as a unique individual…as opposed to being seen as a mere outgrowth or mini-me of a parental entity. And in so doing the parents’ role includes helping the child to discover his or her uniqueness and dispensing unconditional love, that is, love that is given freely, without the requirement, as in the socializing mode, that the child do and be what the parents want before the child is accepted or shown approval or any emotional warmth.

In representing this advanced mode of being (and child-caring) the “colorized” people in Pleasantville open themselves to possibilities that were never before considered; they stray from the earlier mode requiring strict conformity to parental scripts. Robert Kennedy’s Sixties quote comes to mind as expressing this: “Some people look at things as they are and ask, why? I think of things that never were and ask, why not?” This means, then, a capacity to experiment and adventure in one’s life, which, at bottom, involve a belief in questioning authority and thinking for oneself in Sixties terms or, in Sathya Sai Baba’s words, a belief that we are, each of us, “experiments in truth” in our sojourns on Earth. And just as these elements and beliefs became more and more a part of America’s collective consciousness in the Sixties and Seventies and ever since then, they also gradually develop in “Pleasantville.”

Love Uncertainty – We Need to Stop Bemoaning the “Messiness” that Comes with Freedom

What It Is About Change… Revolution Is Not a Tea Party
(But It Can Be a Tweet Party)

The “Messy” Scenery of Healing

“Love My Uncertainty”

One reviewer described the ending of the movie as “not at all easy and tidy, but rather very, very messy” ( “Pleasantville” by Chris A. Bolton). Ebert–more astutely but not quite correctly—wrote that the determining factor in whether someone became “colored” was the factor of change. The first reviewer, like someone with one foot still in “Pleasantville” or one who is still not fully colored, does not understand that the ending, wherein the characters proclaim that they do not know what is going to happen next, contains exactly the essential message of the movie. The ending can only be “messy” if one expects a particular ending.

The reviewer is very much like the critics of Occupy Wall Street who claim the protesters do not have a message, or a leader…essentially don’t know where they are going. He is wrong for the same reasons those critics are.

The whole point of change is that it is always something one does not expect. Likewise, when people act out of inner rather than outer authority, one can only expect that what happens will be unique, like people are when they are not conforming to external expectations. So there could be no pat or predicted ending. The moviegoer could not leave knowing whether Betty Parker, the Stepford housewife turned liberated woman, returns to her husband, George, or takes off with the soda jerk turned artist, Mr. Johnson, because that would destroy the uncertainty inherent in change, growth, aliveness, and so on. So the ending is exactly what it has to be.

And this ending expresses the spiritual razor’s edge each of us must cross during our life’s sojourn. Whenever we try to put life, or love, into a box, package, or a gilded cage, it dies or stagnates—just like a boring black-and-white sitcom world. Real change and spiritual growth means letting go and opening oneself to the unexpected and the unknown. So it is in this vein that the spiritual teacher Sai Baba tells his followers, “Love my uncertainty,” in helping them to deal–after the usual “honeymoon phase” at the beginning of their spiritual path–with the trials, changes, tribulations, and suffering that his devotees experience later on, along their path to greater purity of heart and compassion, and eventually spiritual liberation.

The Scenery of Healing

One of the reasons the movie, “Pleasantville,” so appealed to me is that its view of current events is so akin to that which I have been expressing in other of my more recent writings–e.g., the articles “The Sometimes Messy Scenery of Healing“ and “The Emerging Perinatal Unconscious“ and the books Apocalypse – No!, Apocalypse Emergency: Apocalypse? Or Earth Rebirth? and Apocalypse, or New Age? The Emerging Perinatal Unconscious–wherein I make the argument that recent events are not evidence of a downfall of civilization, as conservatives like Newt Gingrich and Pat Buchanan would have us believe, but are the necessary “birth pains” of a new age being born.

In Pleasantville, indeed, though everyone smiles and there is no crime or unpleasantness–which is supposed to reflect the view of reality presented in Fifties sitcoms like Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver–it is inherently flawed in that it is lacking in “color.” Those of us who lived through the Fifties know that the lack of color is an apt metaphor for exactly the way it was at that time. It was a back-and-white world–a world that covered up its underlying nastiness and evil by repression and denial–psychological defense mechanisms that characterize the World-War-Two Generation especially.

New Mantram: “Thinking for Oneself Is Good!”

The point in the movie, which is so appealing, is that it causes us to look again at the changes in our society that have occurred because of the various “revolutions” of postmodern times–civil rights, student antiwar, women’s rights, sexual, and so on–and to stop bemoaning the “messiness” that comes with freedom. We have more choice, more freedom now than ever. And this freedom allows us the opportunity for a higher spirituality—some would say the only true spirituality—which involves the harrowing path of deciding for oneself, based upon one’s ability to intuit or “feel” the correct path, and experiencing the consequences of one’s choices, as opposed to the preordained religiosity of following a script.

Though many would argue this, one has only to look, as this movie forces us to do, back at where we started. And from that perspective, with that stultifying, hypocritical, dishonest, and phony kind of supposed “living” in mind, we can easily see the changes and progress made in individual freedom and, dare I say, genuine spirituality, and accept the uncertainty, emotional pain, apparent evil, “messiness,” social and political turbulence, and all the rest that comes with it.

Footnote

1.  See “The History of Childhood As the History of Child Abuse” by Lloyd deMause on the Primal Spirit site.

Continue with Culture War, Class War, Chapter Seven: Cultural Rebirth, Aborted

Return to Culture War, Class War, Chapter Five: The King Won’t Die – An Aborted Changing of the Guard

Invite you to join me on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/sillymickel

friend me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sillymickel

To Follow or Not Follow “the Script” in America’s Not-So “Pleasantville”

“Pleasantville” as Culture War Allegory: Thinking for Oneself Gets You “Colorized”

Not So “Pleasantville”

The film, “Pleasantville,” is a postmodern sociological allegory or fable released in the late Nineties. It begins in then-current time against a backdrop of the usual violence, chaos, and turbulence that we are conditioned by the media to believe characterized the Nineties in America. Two high school teenagers, David and Jennifer, played by Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon are planning their evening.

A Tale of Two Siblings

David is planning to watch the Pleasantville marathon on television and to participate in the trivia contest that will be part of it. Pleasantville is a an old sitcom from the 1950s in the Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver, My Three Sons style which has attained a cult-like following and is shown regularly on a cable channel similar to the “Nick at Nite” one that we know of which specialized in reruns of old sitcoms. It becomes clear that David is an ardent devotee of the show in part because it compensates for the lameness of his real life. Unlike his sister, who is portrayed as a real “firecracker” of a young woman, he doesn’t date or participate in the school scene. It is implied that he may be using the sitcom as an escape from not only a boring life but a threatening one and that he longs to live in the kind of ordered, safe, and unchallenging reality that the sitcom depicts. David is such an avid follower of the show that he is shown to be a master of “Pleasantville” trivia and is primed and eager for the contest on Pleasantville trivia.

But his sister, Jennifer, is planning for a hot date at home…their parents being away for the weekend providing an opportunity for her to be unchaperoned with her guy—which she eagerly anticipates. At odds over what will be played on the TV–Jennifer wanting to watch instead an MTV concert with her date—they wrestle over the TV remote and end up breaking it. However all is not lost as at just that moment and completely inexplicably a television repairman played by Don Knotts drives up in his truck, knocks on the door, and imposes his services on them in fixing the problem.

Don Knotts—perfectly cast, in a Jungian sense, for it is often the impish or normally overlooked and unnoticed element that initiates sweeping changes in people’s lives—indeed does introduce the magical element into the film. He produces a different kind of remote control, which he claims has special effects saying, “You want something to put you right in the show!” Sure enough, in checking out the remote they hit a mysterious button and are transported into the TV and thus into the sitcom and the town that is called Pleasantville.

To Follow Or Not to Follow “The Script”

After their initial confusion, they realize what has happened and try to return, but do not know how to. David–who it becomes apparent has been thrust into the role of Bud in the sitcom–advises his sister–Jennifer who has become Mary Sue in the TV series–to go along with events until they figure a way to get home. Since he knows all the plots of every show of the sitcom, his idea is that they act out the events as they are supposed to happen and that they do what the two characters–the teenage son and daughter of the parents in the sitcom, Betty and George Parker, played superbly by Joan Allen and William H. Macy–are known to do in the different episodes he has seen.

Essentially, then, David as Bud is advising his sister to “follow the script.” And of course it is not hard to discern at this point that we are beginning to see a metaphor for psychological realities and that “following the script” has a broader meaning for a choice that everyone must make in life in growing up, viz., to follow the script laid out for oneself by one’s parents and society in general or to follow one’s inner direction and inner guide in asserting one’s individuality and expressing one’s unique self.

The rest of the movie is the story of how these two characters–transported magically from the future as well as from the real world as opposed to a made-up TV world–introduce change into the town and thereby color. Mary Sue, formerly Jennifer, does it consciously. Rebelling against her brother’s admonishments to follow the script, she goes on a date with someone she is not supposed to according to the sitcom script and then–horror of horrors for a 1950s world – engages in sex with him at the local “lover’s lane”–where the farthest that anyone goes, according to “script,” is holding hands. We find later that her date describes this unheard of experience to his classmates, and, like ripples emanating from a pebble dropped in a pond, her action results in a number of the school youth engaging in sex and thereby becoming, to everyone’s amazement, colorized!

The brother also introduces change, and therefore color, but it is done unconsciously at first. As mentioned, he tries to get his sister to follow the script. Still, in a metaphorically powerful scene, when he is late for work at the local malt shop–this is unheard of as well because “Pleasantville” is a world where no one is ever late for work–he inadvertently introduces change himself. In fact, he introduces the most insidious element of change because he explicitly advises–without realizing what he has unleashed–that his boss think for himself!

In this scene Bud, formerly David, finds his boss and coworker, Mr. Johnson, played by Jeff Daniels, stuck at the end of the counter, cleaning away with a wash cloth, like a stuck record, at the same spot, even as the surface of the counter is rubbing away. 

When the soda jerk, Mr. Johnson, explains confusedly that the normal regimen would have required Bud to arrive at work before he, Mr. Johnson, could go on to the rest of his chores, “Bud” simply suggests to Mr. Johnson that in the future he continue with his next chore even if Bud isn’t there.

So simply in being himself, coming from a future in which people react to change by thinking out new responses and thereby adapting to them, Bud, aka David, introduces a totally new element into the soda jerk’s script. This has far reaching consequences as the movie progresses and Mr. Johnson begins thinking for himself and having ideas about other things as well. In this way, the soda jerk, soon to be artist, too ends up “colored.”

Continue on this site with
Culture War, Class War, Chapter Six:
Culture War Allegory

Invite you to join me on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/sillymickel

follow me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sillymickel

Auto Salesman Tells Mr. Boehner About the “Real People” and the “Lowlies” – Class Consciousness Allegory, Comedy

Comedic Monologue with a Twist

I wish to finish this book on a philosophical note. It starts as comedy, which may not either be a bad idea right now after what we have seen together in previous chapters.

Interlude

It seems to me that since this exposition picks up, from here, and ventures into the even more dire, more intense—albeit fruitful and imperative—apprehension of our environmental debacle, this is a good time to step back, to contemplate and assimilate, and to the extent one can, be buoyed up, refreshed, and re-created before the necessary trek into the heart of this darkness. You might consider this the hobbit’s interlude in Elf Kingdom before taking up again the quest, continuing through the devastated land of Mordor to its center, to Mount Doom, where exists the only true brightness in the bleak expanse, the only hope.

Interlude

I’m not Auto Salesman, but I do know him.

This is Auto Salesman’s story. It is he talking. Lest one be confused, this is not me talking. I am not an auto salesman and don’t know the life that he describes for himself.

But I know of it, very well. I was brought up in a very much working class family. I know the class consciousness that auto salesman describes, having it everywhere around me as a child and adolescent…as brothers, father, friends, teachers, coworkers. I also went to a semi-ivy league college attended by many well-to-do students. And I have been a student or instructor at other such educational institutions in my life. I feel I have a little something to say about class differences and perceptions.

Still, this is Auto Salesman’s story, as I said. It came through me from god only knows where. I listen to it and read it with ever more understanding that I did not have when I spoke it a couple years ago. I often perceive it as a stranger would. This is the creation that I feel is the most alien thing that I have ever done, even more a distinct character and different from me than the fawnish character in “Thank You, George W. Bush.”

Not that I am at all unhappy that my muse chose to send it out to the world through me. I thoroughly enjoyed and still enjoy the entire bizarre yet philosophical world this monologue opens to us.

Time for the “eagle’s view”

Still, you be the judge. I can not know very well how others really take this. But I believe it is a powerful understanding, in the end, of the inner worlds that are in play in our national and world dramas at the moment and provides rare philosophical perspective on it all.

Anyway, what this is specifically is a very funny monologue in audio form with the bulk of it transcribed here as well.

Baby, he’s a rich man.

The character speaking is an auto salesman. The invisible non-speaking other, a Mister Boehner by name, is a well-to-do man who is there to buy a car. Lest there be any misunderstanding the fact that he was given the name of the current Republican Speaker of the House has only one significance: I see the Speaker as a despicable representative and voice of the filthy rich. I do not mean to insinuate the Speaker’s actual life is in any way like that portrayed for the rich man or is even so by analogy. I am aware that in fact the Speaker’s life is quite different from the one depicted. However, it seems fitting that since Mister Boehner represents the moneyed elite in Congress his name should point to the wealthy here as well.

This monologue is a bit risqué at times, so be forewarned. However, it is not more risqué than you’d hear on cable TV. The well-to-do patron, Mister Boehner, is constantly teased, and sexual innuendos are used. But this monologue is more than just sexual banter.

In spite of ourselves…

In fact, the monologue uncovers more and more of the character. And despite one’s initial reaction to his crudeness—which could be revulsion, and even if that you can’t help laughing at him despite yourself—the listener is forced to have warmer  feelings  at times, and then more often. This puts one in a position of trying to unravel one’s various feelings about this working class crude person and the “rich” people that are described. 

“Stand-Up” Philosophy

This reading is continually funny and becomes more philosophical toward the end and even a bit poignant. Overall it portrays class or people as complex, and the entire thing could be anyone’s Rohrshack Test, as there may be as many reactions to these people as there are listeners.  As the dialog unfolds the auto salesman discloses and reveals increasingly more of himself. 

The climax is when he tells a story about his boss’s life that moseys into allegory. In that way, the story reflects meaning back into the relationship at the car lot.  The auto salesman’s strange push-pull dialog with the rich customer takes on a deeper meaning. The listener may not know what to do with the feelings evoked…may initially label the man as crude and no-class and later come to see a side behind the crudeness that looks more and more familiar.  Yet there is absolutely no obvious message or bias apparent. How one views the ending is quite unique to each listener.

---

Anatomy of Class Consciousness –
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

Here is the author’s audio performance of this monologue of comedy, allegory, and analogy. To hear it, click on the audio site above or click the audio player here.

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=xdqhrrmrvm
Anatomy of Class Consciousness – Comedic Monologue, Allegory, Analogy by SillyMickel Adzema

---

The Transcription – You Get to Laugh Here

“You Really Don’t Want to Leave” Beginning at 1:36 after “oh my mother”:

Now, you really don’t want ta leave without just writin down your name on this piece of scrap paper with this figure on it….

[laughing in background]

What are you laughing about? Ok, well it must be… Ok, as long as she’s with you…

[someone snort laughs]

You lost your wife and you come up with her, a snorter! Aaaaa haaaa! Well, I’ll tell ya. Well, we’ll talk about karma later, Mr. Boehner. Anyway, oooo weeee!

As well! You really should snap it up now, but I hear… I hear ya, y’know—wife and kid dead for lack of HEALTH insurance because you lost your job! And they got two different conditions at the same time! And with all the different doctors for each of them, each getting many tests, since it was thought to be something more exotic than it turned out to be!

And, you having medical…and you having medical but you having to pay out of your pocket for the expenses and you had them see as many as you could afford. But it was not enough.

And now they’re up in heaven. And you got the insurance company money from this tragedy but of course, you’re really hurtin. So, I hear ya. Got it all, didn’t I?

C’mon you gotta admit I did that pretty well, right, Mr. Boehner?

Eh, whatever, Mr. Boehner, I understand. You’re down in the dumps…understandably, I say, understandably.

Hey! I also say, If you’re not allowed to be sad when your entire family all of a suddenly die, all of em, y’know…. Not to mention it bein a lot of it on your head, y’know, cause you’re not being able to provide, as is our job, we men. And darn it I know that’s gotta be the hard ‘en not to think about, I know. I know it would break me, you see.

“Back behind the counter, Mister Boehner…”

Ye, wel…. Uh… Whataya doin there, Miste…. Mister Boehner, come on, man. Now just…. Now, now, na… Ok, now look…eyu….

[long pause]

It’s getting dark out there, yea, I understand that….

[an even longer pause]

[someone sings:] “Oh, my lover…I just…”

Now, Mister Boehner, you just stay away, now. I mean I know you’re… C’mon, man…. The…. I’m just your auto salesman, ok?

En, I know I’ve been awful kind to you, y’know?… And I’ve been talking to you about sex and everything and trying to cheer you up, y’know?… ‘Course you didn’t have to hit me in the face for that one thing, y’know….”

Mister Boehner, well, that’s where I’m not going to, y’know, no, I’m, I’m not kinky, y’know?…. I’m not that way, ahm kinky, man, y’know? I mean, y’know, like I told you last time, I mean, I’m kinda en I’m kinky in the head! But that’s just in the head, y’know? No it don’t comen out, it don’t come out, I mean, I ain’t got holes in my ears, er nuttin like that, I mean, y’know.

Hey!….

So anyway….

Sorry bout that, and….

Y’know….

Not being able to provide for your wife and, eh I mean…I know how it would break me, y’see?

Yea, ya wish I had a buck fer every time that I’ve told….

Every time I’ve told….

[really, really long pause. Sound of lips smacking at times]

“Mr. Boeh-ner, get back be-hind the coun-ter.”

“You might say I made the world the world a little bit more accepting of your right to be grumpy…”

Ok, now. Ah, I’ll pretend that didn’t happen ok Mister Boehner, now, like….

Shew! Man. You guys are…. Where’d you say uh…. Never mind, never mind.

Ok, anyway.

I wish I had a buck for every time I told people that about your havin a damn right to be sad when your family all die off around you suddenly. Leaving you all alone…tsk, tsk, tsk.

Yep, that’s a bad one, no doubt, but you can see that…all those times I was sayin it…well you might say I made the world a little bit more accepting of your right to be grumpy and stuff…right now….

Just a little, of course! I mean…just. Y’know.

I mean, don’t overdo it or anything, y’know.

“Probably doin a lot of…Bible-thumping…”

Hell, I don’t need to pump myself up, I tell ya yer looking at the least of an ego kind of a guy as you’ve probably ever seen. But gotta I tell you, Mister Boehner, we all gotta look out for each another now…don’t you agree?

Like it says in the Bible. It just occurred to me you’re probably doin a lot of…like they say…Bible-thumping lately? Yea, we all get religion when we’re feeling so guilty and sinful, don’t we? Yea, we’re goin to church, Bible groups, and a course we’re prayin like crazy, aren’t we?

Yea, we’re prayin like crazy, aren’t we?… yea….

Ummm…. Yea….

Pray-in fer goin ta church! Prayin for our little girl…who lost her chance…to even have a life? And your no doubt loving wife for….

Seen the picture you showed me and she was the hot one!…WHOOOOO! MAN, YOU DOG! You bagged yerself an anilos, or a cougar, I mean…errr…more than a milf! I mean…erright, she…so she musta loved you, lookin that sexy… [chuckling]

Pretty perceptive, your wife…

I’m sayin this only as a complement to your good taste and your obvious qualities…that she saw in you…that nobody else can see, like….

How cu…how could I see them? y’know i mean….

Ha?…

I guess I’d have to be a hot chick er something though, couldn’t na…not of course…I mean, I…

No I hope you did’t think anything about my little joke. Nah, just plays fer me and maaan! I guess I’m a lot like you that way, you with that hot piece you had….

Guess you’re really, really gonna miss sex with her, huh?

Now don’t get tense, I know you’re sad….

Just tryin to cheer ya up is all!

“Not into anything weird…”

But this way, I mean I like sex and all but I’m not into anything weird or nothing not that there’s anything wrong with that if somebody else is [mumbles] but I’m just tryin ta say that I’m not into anything weird myself. I mean…it ain’t my taste….

But when you showed me her picture y’know I just…got to give you all the credit. You must got some…really powerful hidden charms er something [chuckling] only…only she can see like, y’know, I…don’t you ha…they have dog whistles that we can’t hear? Or it’s too loud for us? Or something?

Don’t wanna be saying anything stupid. That first way sounds too freakin impossible I’m sorry I did it, y’know?…said it, but…. But then it’s funny I maybe I…cin get a smile outa you yet!

Yea! The idea of a dog hearin a whistle that humans can’t hear, christ, how stupid!

Oh, sometimes I guess I…. Don’t it just seem that we all get a little…dim, and need to change our batteries, that’s all.

But let’s not be talkin about me, y’know I really gots to tell you that it’s a tribute to you and it’s the…godhonest truth, I’m not shittin jya, uh, believe me, why, why would I say this unless it were the truth cause like I say I ain’t no perv. Nope. Straight as an arrow.

But that hot babe a wife a yours…

Course, what did ya have to do? What did you have…what did you do….?

Heh!

[part removed]

Would ya have to do send out for the Saint Bernards when you’d lose your way in those mountains?

Yow, what I’m saying but…better not use that phrase any more.

These younger folks, y’know. They’d think I’m an old fart now I bet ‘ey got the same the same kind of joke amongst their own, y’know, friends these days.

But ain’t this a trip I guess the punch line is probably something so different I…. I can hear them talkin to each other ‘s like, “Hey, buddy….

[break in transcription]

Preacher Kid

…her own Dad … preacher guy, you say, oh oh, that’s sometimes pretty kinky. There’s all those guys on TV; then you find out they’re leaving the wife at home to be tappin prostitutes or prowlin or something.

No, nothing. It’s just a funny thing is all. It’s kinda like for the P.K and then for the PK kid, they’re all pretendin that, well, It’s like sex doesn’t exist. Oh, there’s birds, and then there’s bees.

“Looking for good bee and bird”

Now I am gonna have to laugh my ass off. I’m thinking of all these chicks , or guys, I’m not prejudiced, you see. And they’re all these PK kids and they’re now adult; and they start having articles in Playboy about how ya got these folks out a lookin in the country to like score… yo’know, like going down to the Southside for us, but they’re out looking for good bee and bird.

“Want cher best B and B,” I can hear them sayin it. Picture it’s like these Amish dudes, they’s askin. You know they’re now making fake fireplaces and making money hand over fist….

The Transcription – You Get to Think Here

37.30 On

So… Why ya mopin your life or begrudging me a little fun I get. I mean, hey, man, ya practically killed them yourself. With all you had you’d a thought you’d taken better care of them.

Listen, here is my gift to you.

“Lots of Tom Waits Saturday nights…”

So.. yea, got hook nose beak face slopey-headed profile…but…and I’m better lookin than you…but…money’s always a problem…and I won’t be sayin I’m too awful smart though I get by. I’ve had lots of Tom Waits Saturday nights. And I took the advice of the song, and I’m getting pretty ok spaghetti.

I learned to be happy for a nighttime…when the light’s out…and on those occasions when I’m in bed with my ugly wife, I’m sure as hell thinkin about something that looks more like yours.

So, you’re sad. That’s bad karma for practically BEING A MURDERER.

Ha, ha…just kiddin, just kiddin, bro…It coulda happened to anybody…it coulda been anyone of us…WHO HAPPENS TO BE AS BRAIN-DEAD AS YOU…

He he, no, I’m just foolin, I’m just foolin on you…got ya good that time though, didn’t I? he he

No, no, I didn’t mean no…I didn’t mean anything by it… I’m just a little goofin with your mind is all, y’know, like your mommie did, y’know

Peek-a-boo

“Where’s Mommie?” yer askin yerself,. You’re startin to cry, maybe, or begginnin to piss your pants…

Yer sayin, “The whole world has come to an end…” but you remember and never forgot it…and never forget it…that napkin that was dangling in the air…

How bright were you then, Mr. Blackberry, heh heh. Well that’s rich. Come on, Grumpy-Face, are you now gonna start cryin about missin your mommie?!

No, man, just goofin on ya. Just havin a little look-at-the-poor-little-geeky-faced-brain-dead-rich-boy fun…fun with you…

You think us poor folks can afford to have such thin skins?

Well, aren’t you lucky again then!? You think I give a shit anymore if a boss of mine comes in and chews me out for bein stupid for some job I did…callin me lazy or brain dead? Ya think it bothers me listenin to him…with his face right in mine and his words…heavier because of the ninety-proof SPIT that’s email attached to every ungrateful word jamming up my inbox? … Nooo. Not really.

The guy’s a drunk…but he doesn’t know what he’s talkin about. The jobs are done perfectly, to a T. Better than he could ever ‘ve done it in his prime.

“Too rich to think…he could ever…not know everything without having to learn anything…“

And even though I’ve never been accused of smart I’d run this business a hundred percent better than this sixty-seven year old snot nose little boy who was born too rich to think that he was just a…human in the end…. Too rich to think that he could ever be so unspecial and unprivileged as to not know everything without having to learn anything.

No. The poor guy’s just a little kid at one time…looks around at himself and his surroundings and then around at every one else and he learns that…what anyone else would conclude…everyone else except the others in his rich circle of specialness is lowly.

So he grows bigger. y’kin see him looking around but ever more down at the other people who are not special and whose lot in life seems to all be about growing smaller and smaller…even as he grows bigger and bigger. He was living on top of this house on top of the hill. He could just see those people far away..and he just never left there. And he just kept thinking, “Man, these people just keep growing smaller every time I get bigger!”

But he thought that made perfect sense. He didn’t know any different. But poor guy actually while gaining in height even grows bigger in girth and, like I said, still comparing he sees even his overweightness as more proof of his specialness and their smallness.

“Magical abilities to know…without cracking a book…divinely inspired…”

His magical abilities to know all the answers without cracking a book…is like intuition or divinely inspired…so his sense of his greatness expanding, his ego swelling like a hot-air balloon…and all the people looking like ants from his place of specialness.

Divine privilege, it is now, and wisdom, and power. As an adult it seems there is but one path, but that’s as meaningless to him as saying there’s only one God…he he he.

But, y’know, he’s surrounded by others who quite magically…it seems to him…and conjuring further is further proof of its truth…as if he needed any, having been letting him know over the course of his life increasingly and then as an adult, without inhibition and doubt, or restraint, amongst themselves that is, letting it be known that in fact they have all the same conclusions…see the world the same way…right down to the tiniest details.

It is so divine, uncanny, wonderful, and more and more just so plainly obvious that he cannot imagine…it simply never occurred to him…that in his infrequent excursions among the Lowly—a term describing the absolutely only way he can see them. And the only way all the so-called real people in his circle can see them too. And it being so obviously true he is sure they all see it.

“They can do no sin…”

So in these infrequent instances of elbow rubbing with the masses, he is confirmed in everything, even by these Lowlies themselves–to their obvious deference to him, their currying of his favor, and friendship, their often lowly, base, slavish lowering of themselves, humiliating themselves in their willingness to debase themselves with a smile and their caving to any and all of his wishes, desires, or lusts, year after year passing, where no longer anything worthy of even a passing thought of this now obviously perfect and righteous structure of the world of living things—God above, but very much alike to himself and the others in his circle…they can do no sin…their decisions are always correct…their understandings of the way of things, always perfectly accurate.

“Below…these…’creatures’…”

And below are these disturbingly base, ignoble, shameless…well…”creatures”…rather. For certainly closer to the hordes of other living things than they are to his kind.

And of course these animal, insect, and myriad other living things being lower still can only be seen as things to be used as resources. For they are eaten as food, forced to do work, to satisfy ‘em… much like the human Lowlies. The needs, wishes, urges, desires, and proclivities of the “real” people.

It’s the universe perfectly in order with all things—animal, vegetable, mineral…everything, indeed, that exists…facing inward as if it were toward the center of this huge circle of everything. And at the center are himself and those like him.

“The only morality…”

The only morality that exists or even could exist he thought once, in a rare philosophical moment, are the things consistent with his obviously truthful, very easy to understand universe.

How perfect. How simple. There is no grief or hardship other than for those in the Circle of Privilege. For anything without had its very reason for coming into existence the fact that it might at some time be brought forth, taken, used, consumed, or in some way allowed to fulfill or play a part in the enhancing of the pleasure, worth, or feeling of experiencing life for those in the Circle.

“No other experience than their experience…”

For in their charity of their truth, there IS no other experience than their experience. No other actually true life, no actually true pleasure, no really existing pain other than those of the Circle.

The other, seemingly living things, in fact, depend upon the ones in the Circle to do the living that they are incapable of…but which as the ones in the circle have observed…they can have a kind of creature or zombie life-sense to the extent that they can mirror, ape, emulate, mimic, fake the experiences of the Real People.

So a phantom kind of experience is that which sustains them and is the goal, source, and reason for their being. But they do not have real experience of their own. They are totally dependent on those in the Circle to live and experience life. As whatever their experience, it is a direct feed from the center.

Thus, the richness of experience in all forms becomes the food for all…the sustenance of life, its only reason.

“Lowlies…place…midway…between lifeless matter and…”real” beings…”

The Lowlies are phantom or creature-like things that have their place in reality, truth, experience, consciousness at about a midway point between the non-living substances—that which is inert, lifeless, matter—and the “real” beings.

There is therefore only two paths in their life. Facing into the world of nonbeing, inert matter, which is obviously their fate at some point; and facing in the direction of the Center, which emanates aliveness, richness, drama, lust, complexity, desire, fear, power, omnipotence, all derivatives of immediate experience.

Morality, for example. Which is defined thusly: What is good is whatever is acted, experienced, thought, or felt by the Reals. So both the Reals and the Lowlies are symbiotically related. The one as source of life. The other as mere resources to serve as the things or toys that can be used or not used.

It is all about what the Reals can desire, imagine, wish for, consume, or want…or make out of things other than them. And that includes the Lowlies.

The Lowlies fix their attention on the Center.

But the Lowlies are capable of a phantom-like semi existence, say, feeding on the actual events and experience, and the sights, sounds, and movements of those in the Center. They therefore face toward the Center, and fix their attention there. For it is the only place from which a vicarious experience, involving the imagining and acting out of that which it is possible for Lowlies to apprehend.

So that was the universe that spawned my boss. One problem in this perfection. Something so horrible that all the seeming benefit of being Real of the Circle of the Source, the Special, became turned upon its head.

“They were the only Deciders…”

You see, in time, gradually, little by little, then more frequently and increasingly, my boss, and others in the Circle, not all–through pure random action or as a result of the events not controllable–who did everything and every resource had as its purpose not just the possibility of being used, consumed, or simply to exist as backdrop for the ones in the Circle, but, for as the Real people saw it, being akin to divinity, perhaps Divinity itself as far as they could tell, they were the only Deciders, Intenders, Planners, Schemers, Desirers, and independent actors.

So it sustained their beliefs of the way of reality to use freely of the resources, either to use lightly, if their intentions, imaginations, and decisions regarding what would happen and exist was of a kind that did not require much of those not them. On the other hand if their desires, intentions, play and so forth involved heavy use, misuse, or destruction, consumption of those not them, it was all the same in terms of the rightness of things.

As mentioned there were things that happened that were not…well, you might say…in the playbook. And this was the big flaw in that entire system.

“What they had to do…is…pretty much stick to themselves…”

I don’t know how long, how many years, it may have been hundreds, that his family and his kind lived that way. But, well, just look around you in this day and age. What they had to do to maintain that idea is they had to pretty much stick to themselves all the time, pretty much not get to know any of the Lowlies. And that was pretty easy, cause if you looked at the Lowlies and you felt that, you know, they were not quite human, you didn’t have any inclination.

But what, perchance, if you’re down at a place in town or something, and perhaps one of the Lowlies is keeping a shop there. And then she should happen to smile at you, or one of the ones in the Circle.

And then she starts…”How ya doin today” and all that. And it’s like, the woman you figure, she’s probably programmed that way and everything but…you got, you see the great smile. And then you realize, she’s like…listenin…and she’s chipper…and she’s…well, that’s the sad thing is that, for all of their drama making and everything, all of their plans of doin this and doin that so that other people could experience stuff…well, the problem with my boss was…and…he had an experience like so many others did or were starting to have, and this was his experience with that girl, y’know?

And he saw her just…in that store…just…singin, being chipper, havin fun…seemin to dance around the store, y’know…as if she was just…happy….

But there was no reason to be happy. Especially not for her. And she didn’t get no happiness from up there…in the Circle. So he was dumbfounded.

“They’d had so many…they thought…experiences…costing lots of money…”

Not only that but the nature of her happiness was so far beyond anything that he’d seen anywhere that was called happiness. They’d had so many, so many…wonderful…they thought…experiences…really well planned out…y’know, costing lots of money and stuff.

And there she was. No money. Nothing. And yet she seemed really happy in a way that seemed more real and genuine than anything he’d ever seen.

Well, that really shook my boss. And…there was a series of those kind of events and….

I don’t know how many people live up in that Circle or even if it exists but my boss got older and he started doing this stuff and I got to be a job with him.

Well, all I can say is there hasn’t been a day when I haven’t seen him…. Heh… funny… Well, he was sayin how they would all say how these Lowlies were livin half lives, like zombies.

“Never seen him as anything but…”

Y’know, it’s the strangest thing, Mr. Boehner, I never…since the day I met him I’ve never seen him as anything but a zombie…bein on booze all the time…

And so… I can’t hate him… I mean, could you? .. I mean…could you? Could your kind….?

I mean…. That’s like kinda like hatin…well…an animal that annoys ya. You don’t go smack a dog around or a cat or nuttin like that just for bein a dog or cat!

And whatever he is, it’s like, he can’t help being himself now, now he’s already it. And I don’t even know if he ever had any choice in becoming it…what he became ‘cause…all’s I know is I never thought much of life and I never…I never…I never so, y’know…thought of myself as close to divinity or maybe God Himself *scoffing* and I never thought everybody around me, oh, could do whatever they, y’know, I could have whatever I wanted. I never thought I had that kind of power or that kind of importance or anything.

So, y’know…so they “Sweep this up here,”and, y’know, “Fix that thing over there,” and, y’know, I say they can say whatever they want I mean, I don’t care.

Perfection in a world like mine…and I get ok spaghetti…

It’s like…I like it, y’know? I like using my hands. I like touching the earth. I like the touch of tools…nice cold tools, and makin nice snappy wrenches and nice snappy sounds as you’re twistin those things around and you’re getting tight, just right perfect snug. There’s perfection in a world like mine.

And, y’know, it’s like, there’s no stress, I mean. Sure, I mean, I ain’t got your kind of wife, I mean. I like got ok spaghetti, like I said, y’know?

And, uh, now how do I compare that…. I ain’t really ever been unhappy really….. Disappointed…. But easy to accept considerin my background and… People around me, it’s like, it ‘s not like, it’s not like I’m any worse than anybody.

So I don’t feel bad really. And…and my boss…I don’t know how it would feel, Mr. Boehner, do you? You’re all the way from up from being a…years and years and years thinkin yer…yer god-like…you’re above everybody…you’re divine, and there’s no…and everybody’s there for your pleasure…and there’s nobody can resist you?

In fact I wonder what happened with that girl. I mean that first girl. I mean, I wonder if she…if he really…he’d ever….

He talked about her a lot. But now that I’m remembering the way he talked about her, it was like, it wasn’t happy after a while, it was like….

“Musta been…she was…happy…said no…had some respect…”

My god, I think that’s what did it. I think it was probably the first time he had an experience where somebody wasn’t fallin all over him, willin to do everything he wanted. It’s…it musta been that she was just so happy and everything and…she said no, and had some respect.

But don’t ya see what all that is from how high…. Can you imagine feelin that superior and dominant? And then comin down and bein..like as if you’re like now like you’re livin with the worms and that’s what you found out you’re more akin to them than the birds in the sky that you were once flyin with? Huh!

So how can I be mad at him?

Is anyone livin’…the real one…?

So what I want ta ask you, Mr. Boehner…you rich folks…pretty wives…unfortunate tragedies… god only knows what kind of sex and imean uh… And you know, us…. And then there’s my boss….

Now, who’s livin the vicarious life? Who’s livin the real one? Or is anyone?

ANYway. Mr. Boehner, you just put that piece of paper down there, and you put your name on it and I’ll have it for you tomorrow, and, uh…. Don’t forget, y’know, guess you’re gettin your ride home tonight, hear it comin….

You’re thinkin about your wife and your kids and everything and…

So remember I’m always on your side, but y’know….

[singin] The dancin’ she do ain’t gonna be with you… hahahahaha….

---

“Class Consciousness” – Some Important Parts

Auto Salesman Does Perry Como Does the Doors

Description

This is as funny as it sounds.  I did it; and I still can’t stop laughing, especially since it was completely unplanned, an improv off of a screw-up in the reading of “Anatomy of Class Consciousness.” 

When these things come through you in the spur of the moment, when you’re on a roll, you just know that God’s got to be the best comic of all. I don’t know where else this kind of material comes from. I’m still laughing. 

Hey, maybe I can do what auto salesman wanted to do, yea!  That’s the ticket, “SillyMickel does Perry Como does the Doors.” Yea. They’d wait months for tickets to that show.  Yea!

Oh my God, did I just say that out loud. I didn’t did I? No way!! Oh, I did? … (damn!)

Sample Quote

“Oh, man, who the hell, who the hell sings like that, man. That was like the fucking worst I’ve ever sung. Man, where my mind been that I can’t remember the Doors, and somewhere out of the really far past, I’m singing “Backdoor Man” by Perry Como…. Wow….

“But ya know. Somebody’s laughing I think I can make a gig out of this…. Ya know, can’t you see it: ‘Perry Como Does The Doors’”

There’s’ no way that any more can be expressed in text; it has to be heard.

Auto Salesman Does Perry Como Does The Doors

To hear this clip taken from Anatomy, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=wxfdxpxcqw
Image of “Auto Salesman Does Perry Como Does the Doors” by SillyMickel Adzema

The Snorter, Mr. Boehner, and the Auto Salesman

Description:

This is just plain nonsense–a combination of vocal gymnastics and memorable one-liners, super-silliness cut from the beginning of “Anatomy of Class Consciousness.”  The primary speaker is the auto salesman. The invisible non-speaking other is a well-to-do man, called Mr. Boehner, who is there to buy a car. His actions are implied from the reaction of the auto guy. 

As far as who is the singer and who is the snorter, that is the riddle for the listener to try to solve.  Along with how John Wayne managed to walk through…and how come he can’t see. 

Sample Quotes:

“I’ve been telling you about the “filthy rich….”

“You lost your wife and you come up with her, a snorter! Aaaaa haaaa! Well, I’ll tell ya. Well, we’ll talk about karma later, Mr. Boehner. Anyway, oooo weeee!”

“If you’re not allowed to be sad when your entire family all of a sudden, suddenly die, all of them….”

“I know I’ve been awful kind to you…and I’ve been talking to you about sex and all, trying to cheer you up, y’know..course you didn’t have to hit me in the face for that one thing, y’know….”

“I’m not kinky…. I’m just kinky in the head; but that’s just in the head; it don’t come out; don’t come out; I ain’t got like holes in my ears, er anything.”

“Mr. Boeh-ner, get back be-hind the coun-ter.”

The Snorter, Mr. Boehner, and the Auto Salesman

To hear this clip taken from Anatomy, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.
http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=vftvxfgqjx
Image of “The Snorter, Mr. Boehner, and the Auto Salesman” by SillyMickel Adzema

Others by Auto Salesman

Auto Salesman Does Como Doing Doors, Update – Aftermath, post-Gig

The following audio is a takeoff from “Auto Salesman Does Perry Como Does the Doors” above. It is not in the larger “Anatomy” audio.

Description

This picks up from the clip “Auto Salesman Does Perry Como Does The Doors.”  It takes the story forward to a time after Auto Salesman has tried out his “special talent” in front of an audience tryin to sell his CDs shopping-network style.

Sample Quotes

“You too can have the full 15-CD set.  Each one packed with eight hours of Perry Como…er, me…doing Perry Como…doing The Doors…Rolling Stones…and Beatles…and, you name it!  Probly got it….”

“Ok, I’ll try something different next time then….”

“I didn’t like those looks I got from the audience…. It was like…I mean…If I was on the G Network or QVC, whatever like that, man.  It’s like, if they had anybody in the audience, it’s like…  Shit, man, and I’d be, I’d have to go run off the stage, and, y’know….  I’d just, y’know…wow, man…Jee-sus.  I mean –  if there’d be more of them they’d be throwin up, it was like that bad, y’know…it’s like…Jesus Christ!  Specially that one woman…she-sh’ dinu’fess at all, man, she like — Wow, man… How’d you get to be alive, you suck….”

“I can’t seem ta think of the tones…  What happened to me…what happened to me I forgot The Doors and I been Perry Como’d and…….they did somethin ta me…when I was a kid…they must’ve injected Perry Como syrup inta me er sumpthin….  I’m telling you they injected Perry Como syrup, I mean they were dishin’ all kinds a stuff fer the kids ‘n… I mean they were conrollin’ those little fucks-i’mean us.. me.. they were tryin ta control us…

“And they would use anything…spankin’ ‘n…sirup…injections…  I mean, I believe it…

“We only caught ‘em on the LSD later on…  We don’t know what they were doing earlier… to little kids… yea, they won’t tell you that.”

Auto Salesman Does Como Doing Doors, Update – Aftermath, post-Gig

To hear this takeoff from Anatomy, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=vrtvpvpdyb
Image of AutoSalesman Does Como Doing Doors, Update – Aftermath, post-Gig

Auto Salesman Speaks His Mind on SillyMickel

This is the last clip in the Auto Salesman series.

Description

This is not clipped from the long monologue and is another spinoff from “Anatomy of Class Consciousness.” In this one, Auto Salesman tears into the author, SillyMickel, talking kind of like his alter-ego.

Sample Quotes

About SillyMickel, Auto Salesman says:

“What’s his big fucking beef? What’s he got against George W. Bush? What’s his beef anyway…better than that bozo we got up there. I don’t know what’s his beef. He says something like, ‘Oh, he says, oh, he says like, oh, I…why, he says…he says,
‘Why George W. Bush, he, uh, he’s behind the Trade Center bombing and it was a government job, all for the purpose of doing this and that, and it killed thousands of people,’

“and, not only that he said the scientists are saying that we only got 20 to 50 years to save the planet, and that we’re all gonna die.

“And I say, “You call them reasons?” ….

“You call them reasons?”  I mean…..

“I didn’t see where that affected MY pocket book one bit!  Now where does he come from? Just because people, just because the whole world’s gonna die…

“I’ll be dead by then, probably…so what the hell do I care?  I don’t think anybody should be caring if it’s not going to effect them!

“Now, as far as the children and the grandchildren … are gonna die in a fiery inferno and whatever  in the next 20, 30 years and all the planet’s gonna be wiped out, now, I think: THEY should be worried! It’s THEIR problem, right? Ain’t my problem…why should I care?

“So, I said to that erudite little fuck, ‘You stay in your fuckin’ jar…well, stop botherin’ me with this stuff about how we’re all gonna die and everything like that because NOBODY cares…If it’s not them, you know, they don’t even care about their children so…what does it matter!?….”

Auto Salesman Speaks His Mind on SillyMickel

To hear this spinoff from Anatomy, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=xdksvpbqyt
Image of Auto Salesman Speaks His Mind on SillyMickel

Continue with Apocalypse Emergency –
Part One: Trillion-Alarm Fire

Invite you to follow me on Twitter: 

http://twitter.com/sillymickel

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/sillymickel

Class War Comedy, Allegory, Philosophy

Class Consciousness

Comedic Monologue with a Twist

I wish to finish this book on a philosophical note. It starts as comedy, which may not either be a bad idea right now after what we have seen together in previous chapters.

Interlude

It seems to me that since this exposition picks up, from here, and ventures into the even more dire, more intense—albeit fruitful and imperative—apprehension of our environmental debacle, this is a good time to step back, to contemplate and assimilate, and to the extent one can, be buoyed up, refreshed, and re-created before the necessary trek into the heart of this darkness. You might consider this the hobbit’s interlude in Elf Kingdom before taking up again the quest, continuing through the devastated land of Mordor to its center, to Mount Doom, where exists the only true brightness in the bleak expanse, the only hope.

Interlude

I’m not Auto Salesman, but I do know him.

This is Auto Salesman’s story. It is he talking. Lest one be confused, this is not me talking. I am not an auto salesman and don’t know the life that he describes for himself.

But I know of it, very well. I was brought up in a very much working class family. I know the class consciousness that auto salesman describes, having it everywhere around me as a child and adolescent…as brothers, father, friends, teachers, coworkers. I also went to a semi-ivy league college attended by many well-to-do students. And I have been a student or instructor at other such educational institutions in my life. I feel I have a little something to say about class differences and perceptions.

Still, this is Auto Salesman’s story, as I said. It came through me from god only knows where. I listen to it and read it with ever more understanding that I did not have when I spoke it a couple years ago. I often perceive it as a stranger would. This is the creation that I feel is the most alien thing that I have ever done, even more a distinct character and different from me than the fawnish character in “Thank You, George W. Bush.”

Not that I am at all unhappy that my muse chose to send it out to the world through me. I thoroughly enjoyed and still enjoy the entire bizarre yet philosophical world this monologue opens to us.

Time for the “eagle’s view”

Still, you be the judge. I can not know very well how others really take this. But I believe it is a powerful understanding, in the end, of the inner worlds that are in play in our national and world dramas at the moment and provides rare philosophical perspective on it all.

Anyway, what this is specifically is a very funny monologue in audio form with the bulk of it transcribed here as well.

Baby, he’s a rich man.

The character speaking is an auto salesman. The invisible non-speaking other, a Mister Boehner by name, is a well-to-do man who is there to buy a car. Lest there be any misunderstanding the fact that he was given the name of the current Republican Speaker of the House has only one significance: I see the Speaker as a despicable representative and voice of the filthy rich. I do not mean to insinuate the Speaker’s actual life is in any way like that portrayed for the rich man or is even so by analogy. I am aware that in fact the Speaker’s life is quite different from the one depicted. However, it seems fitting that since Mister Boehner represents the moneyed elite in Congress his name should point to the wealthy here as well.

This monologue is a bit risqué at times, so be forewarned. However, it is not more risqué than you’d hear on cable TV. The well-to-do patron, Mister Boehner, is constantly teased, and sexual innuendos are used. But this monologue is more than just sexual banter.

In spite of ourselves…

In fact, the monologue uncovers more and more of the character. And despite one’s initial reaction to his crudeness—which could be revulsion, and even if that you can’t help laughing at him despite yourself—the listener is forced to have warmer  feelings  at times, and then more often. This puts one in a position of trying to unravel one’s various feelings about this working class crude person and the “rich” people that are described. 

“Stand-Up” Philosophy

This reading is continually funny and becomes more philosophical toward the end and even a bit poignant. Overall it portrays class or people as complex, and the entire thing could be anyone’s Rohrshack Test, as there may be as many reactions to these people as there are listeners.  As the dialog unfolds the auto salesman discloses and reveals increasingly more of himself. 

The climax is when he tells a story about his boss’s life that moseys into allegory. In that way, the story reflects meaning back into the relationship at the car lot.  The auto salesman’s strange push-pull dialog with the rich customer takes on a deeper meaning. The listener may not know what to do with the feelings evoked…may initially label the man as crude and no-class and later come to see a side behind the crudeness that looks more and more familiar.  Yet there is absolutely no obvious message or bias apparent. How one views the ending is quite unique to each listener.

---

Anatomy of Class Consciousness –
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

Here is the author’s audio performance of this monologue of comedy, allegory, and analogy. To hear it, click on the audio site above or click the audio player here.

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=xdqhrrmrvm
Anatomy of Class Consciousness – Comedic Monologue, Allegory, Analogy by SillyMickel Adzema

---

The Transcription – You Get to Laugh Here

“You Really Don’t Want to Leave” Beginning at 1:36 after “oh my mother”:

Now, you really don’t want ta leave without just writin down your name on this piece of scrap paper with this figure on it….

[laughing in background]

What are you laughing about? Ok, well it must be… Ok, as long as she’s with you…

[someone snort laughs]

You lost your wife and you come up with her, a snorter! Aaaaa haaaa! Well, I’ll tell ya. Well, we’ll talk about karma later, Mr. Boehner. Anyway, oooo weeee!

As well! You really should snap it up now, but I hear… I hear ya, y’know—wife and kid dead for lack of HEALTH insurance because you lost your job! And they got two different conditions at the same time! And with all the different doctors for each of them, each getting many tests, since it was thought to be something more exotic than it turned out to be!

And, you having medical…and you having medical but you having to pay out of your pocket for the expenses and you had them see as many as you could afford. But it was not enough.

And now they’re up in heaven. And you got the insurance company money from this tragedy but of course, you’re really hurtin. So, I hear ya. Got it all, didn’t I?

C’mon you gotta admit I did that pretty well, right, Mr. Boehner?

Eh, whatever, Mr. Boehner, I understand. You’re down in the dumps…understandably, I say, understandably.

Hey! I also say, If you’re not allowed to be sad when your entire family all of a suddenly die, all of em, y’know…. Not to mention it bein a lot of it on your head, y’know, cause you’re not being able to provide, as is our job, we men. And darn it I know that’s gotta be the hard ‘en not to think about, I know. I know it would break me, you see.

“Back behind the counter, Mister Boehner…”

Ye, wel…. Uh… Whataya doin there, Miste…. Mister Boehner, come on, man. Now just…. Now, now, na… Ok, now look…eyu….

[long pause]

It’s getting dark out there, yea, I understand that….

[an even longer pause]

[someone sings:] “Oh, my lover…I just…”

Now, Mister Boehner, you just stay away, now. I mean I know you’re… C’mon, man…. The…. I’m just your auto salesman, ok?

En, I know I’ve been awful kind to you, y’know?… And I’ve been talking to you about sex and everything and trying to cheer you up, y’know?… ‘Course you didn’t have to hit me in the face for that one thing, y’know….”

Mister Boehner, well, that’s where I’m not going to, y’know, no, I’m, I’m not kinky, y’know?…. I’m not that way, ahm kinky, man, y’know? I mean, y’know, like I told you last time, I mean, I’m kinda en I’m kinky in the head! But that’s just in the head, y’know? No it don’t comen out, it don’t come out, I mean, I ain’t got holes in my ears, er nuttin like that, I mean, y’know.

Hey!….

So anyway….

Sorry bout that, and….

Y’know….

Not being able to provide for your wife and, eh I mean…I know how it would break me, y’see?

Yea, ya wish I had a buck fer every time that I’ve told….

Every time I’ve told….

[really, really long pause. Sound of lips smacking at times]

“Mr. Boeh-ner, get back be-hind the coun-ter.”

“You might say I made the world the world a little bit more accepting of your right to be grumpy…”

Ok, now. Ah, I’ll pretend that didn’t happen ok Mister Boehner, now, like….

Shew! Man. You guys are…. Where’d you say uh…. Never mind, never mind.

Ok, anyway.

I wish I had a buck for every time I told people that about your havin a damn right to be sad when your family all die off around you suddenly. Leaving you all alone…tsk, tsk, tsk.

Yep, that’s a bad one, no doubt, but you can see that…all those times I was sayin it…well you might say I made the world a little bit more accepting of your right to be grumpy and stuff…right now….

Just a little, of course! I mean…just. Y’know.

I mean, don’t overdo it or anything, y’know.

“Probably doin a lot of…Bible-thumping…”

Hell, I don’t need to pump myself up, I tell ya yer looking at the least of an ego kind of a guy as you’ve probably ever seen. But gotta I tell you, Mister Boehner, we all gotta look out for each another now…don’t you agree?

Like it says in the Bible. It just occurred to me you’re probably doin a lot of…like they say…Bible-thumping lately? Yea, we all get religion when we’re feeling so guilty and sinful, don’t we? Yea, we’re goin to church, Bible groups, and a course we’re prayin like crazy, aren’t we?

Yea, we’re prayin like crazy, aren’t we?… yea….

Ummm…. Yea….

Pray-in fer goin ta church! Prayin for our little girl…who lost her chance…to even have a life? And your no doubt loving wife for….

Seen the picture you showed me and she was the hot one!…WHOOOOO! MAN, YOU DOG! You bagged yerself an anilos, or a cougar, I mean…errr…more than a milf! I mean…erright, she…so she musta loved you, lookin that sexy… [chuckling]

Pretty perceptive, your wife…

I’m sayin this only as a complement to your good taste and your obvious qualities…that she saw in you…that nobody else can see, like….

How cu…how could I see them? y’know i mean….

Ha?…

I guess I’d have to be a hot chick er something though, couldn’t na…not of course…I mean, I…

No I hope you did’t think anything about my little joke. Nah, just plays fer me and maaan! I guess I’m a lot like you that way, you with that hot piece you had….

Guess you’re really, really gonna miss sex with her, huh?

Now don’t get tense, I know you’re sad….

Just tryin to cheer ya up is all!

“Not into anything weird…”

But this way, I mean I like sex and all but I’m not into anything weird or nothing not that there’s anything wrong with that if somebody else is [mumbles] but I’m just tryin ta say that I’m not into anything weird myself. I mean…it ain’t my taste….

But when you showed me her picture y’know I just…got to give you all the credit. You must got some…really powerful hidden charms er something [chuckling] only…only she can see like, y’know, I…don’t you ha…they have dog whistles that we can’t hear? Or it’s too loud for us? Or something?

Don’t wanna be saying anything stupid. That first way sounds too freakin impossible I’m sorry I did it, y’know?…said it, but…. But then it’s funny I maybe I…cin get a smile outa you yet!

Yea! The idea of a dog hearin a whistle that humans can’t hear, christ, how stupid!

Oh, sometimes I guess I…. Don’t it just seem that we all get a little…dim, and need to change our batteries, that’s all.

But let’s not be talkin about me, y’know I really gots to tell you that it’s a tribute to you and it’s the…godhonest truth, I’m not shittin jya, uh, believe me, why, why would I say this unless it were the truth cause like I say I ain’t no perv. Nope. Straight as an arrow.

But that hot babe a wife a yours…

Course, what did ya have to do? What did you have…what did you do….?

Heh!

[part removed]

Would ya have to do send out for the Saint Bernards when you’d lose your way in those mountains?

Yow, what I’m saying but…better not use that phrase any more.

These younger folks, y’know. They’d think I’m an old fart now I bet ‘ey got the same the same kind of joke amongst their own, y’know, friends these days.

But ain’t this a trip I guess the punch line is probably something so different I…. I can hear them talkin to each other ‘s like, “Hey, buddy….

[break in transcription]

Preacher Kid

…her own Dad … preacher guy, you say, oh oh, that’s sometimes pretty kinky. There’s all those guys on TV; then you find out they’re leaving the wife at home to be tappin prostitutes or prowlin or something.

No, nothing. It’s just a funny thing is all. It’s kinda like for the P.K and then for the PK kid, they’re all pretendin that, well, It’s like sex doesn’t exist. Oh, there’s birds, and then there’s bees.

“Looking for good bee and bird”

Now I am gonna have to laugh my ass off. I’m thinking of all these chicks , or guys, I’m not prejudiced, you see. And they’re all these PK kids and they’re now adult; and they start having articles in Playboy about how ya got these folks out a lookin in the country to like score… yo’know, like going down to the Southside for us, but they’re out looking for good bee and bird.

“Want cher best B and B,” I can hear them sayin it. Picture it’s like these Amish dudes, they’s askin. You know they’re now making fake fireplaces and making money hand over fist….

The Transcription – You Get to Think Here

37.30 On

So… Why ya mopin your life or begrudging me a little fun I get. I mean, hey, man, ya practically killed them yourself. With all you had you’d a thought you’d taken better care of them.

Listen, here is my gift to you.

“Lots of Tom Waits Saturday nights…”

So.. yea, got hook nose beak face slopey-headed profile…but…and I’m better lookin than you…but…money’s always a problem…and I won’t be sayin I’m too awful smart though I get by. I’ve had lots of Tom Waits Saturday nights. And I took the advice of the song, and I’m getting pretty ok spaghetti.

I learned to be happy for a nighttime…when the light’s out…and on those occasions when I’m in bed with my ugly wife, I’m sure as hell thinkin about something that looks more like yours.

So, you’re sad. That’s bad karma for practically BEING A MURDERER.

Ha, ha…just kiddin, just kiddin, bro…It coulda happened to anybody…it coulda been anyone of us…WHO HAPPENS TO BE AS BRAIN-DEAD AS YOU…

He he, no, I’m just foolin, I’m just foolin on you…got ya good that time though, didn’t I? he he

No, no, I didn’t mean no…I didn’t mean anything by it… I’m just a little goofin with your mind is all, y’know, like your mommie did, y’know

Peek-a-boo

“Where’s Mommie?” yer askin yerself,. You’re startin to cry, maybe, or begginnin to piss your pants…

Yer sayin, “The whole world has come to an end…” but you remember and never forgot it…and never forget it…that napkin that was dangling in the air…

How bright were you then, Mr. Blackberry, heh heh. Well that’s rich. Come on, Grumpy-Face, are you now gonna start cryin about missin your mommie?!

No, man, just goofin on ya. Just havin a little look-at-the-poor-little-geeky-faced-brain-dead-rich-boy fun…fun with you…

You think us poor folks can afford to have such thin skins?

Well, aren’t you lucky again then!? You think I give a shit anymore if a boss of mine comes in and chews me out for bein stupid for some job I did…callin me lazy or brain dead? Ya think it bothers me listenin to him…with his face right in mine and his words…heavier because of the ninety-proof SPIT that’s email attached to every ungrateful word jamming up my inbox? … Nooo. Not really.

The guy’s a drunk…but he doesn’t know what he’s talkin about. The jobs are done perfectly, to a T. Better than he could ever ‘ve done it in his prime.

“Too rich to think…he could ever…not know everything without having to learn anything…“

And even though I’ve never been accused of smart I’d run this business a hundred percent better than this sixty-seven year old snot nose little boy who was born too rich to think that he was just a…human in the end…. Too rich to think that he could ever be so unspecial and unprivileged as to not know everything without having to learn anything.

No. The poor guy’s just a little kid at one time…looks around at himself and his surroundings and then around at every one else and he learns that…what anyone else would conclude…everyone else except the others in his rich circle of specialness is lowly.

So he grows bigger. y’kin see him looking around but ever more down at the other people who are not special and whose lot in life seems to all be about growing smaller and smaller…even as he grows bigger and bigger. He was living on top of this house on top of the hill. He could just see those people far away..and he just never left there. And he just kept thinking, “Man, these people just keep growing smaller every time I get bigger!”

But he thought that made perfect sense. He didn’t know any different. But poor guy actually while gaining in height even grows bigger in girth and, like I said, still comparing he sees even his overweightness as more proof of his specialness and their smallness.

“Magical abilities to know…without cracking a book…divinely inspired…”

His magical abilities to know all the answers without cracking a book…is like intuition or divinely inspired…so his sense of his greatness expanding, his ego swelling like a hot-air balloon…and all the people looking like ants from his place of specialness.

Divine privilege, it is now, and wisdom, and power. As an adult it seems there is but one path, but that’s as meaningless to him as saying there’s only one God…he he he.

But, y’know, he’s surrounded by others who quite magically…it seems to him…and conjuring further is further proof of its truth…as if he needed any, having been letting him know over the course of his life increasingly and then as an adult, without inhibition and doubt, or restraint, amongst themselves that is, letting it be known that in fact they have all the same conclusions…see the world the same way…right down to the tiniest details.

It is so divine, uncanny, wonderful, and more and more just so plainly obvious that he cannot imagine…it simply never occurred to him…that in his infrequent excursions among the Lowly—a term describing the absolutely only way he can see them. And the only way all the so-called real people in his circle can see them too. And it being so obviously true he is sure they all see it.

“They can do no sin…”

So in these infrequent instances of elbow rubbing with the masses, he is confirmed in everything, even by these Lowlies themselves–to their obvious deference to him, their currying of his favor, and friendship, their often lowly, base, slavish lowering of themselves, humiliating themselves in their willingness to debase themselves with a smile and their caving to any and all of his wishes, desires, or lusts, year after year passing, where no longer anything worthy of even a passing thought of this now obviously perfect and righteous structure of the world of living things—God above, but very much alike to himself and the others in his circle…they can do no sin…their decisions are always correct…their understandings of the way of things, always perfectly accurate.

“Below…these…’creatures’…”

And below are these disturbingly base, ignoble, shameless…well…”creatures”…rather. For certainly closer to the hordes of other living things than they are to his kind.

And of course these animal, insect, and myriad other living things being lower still can only be seen as things to be used as resources. For they are eaten as food, forced to do work, to satisfy ‘em… much like the human Lowlies. The needs, wishes, urges, desires, and proclivities of the “real” people.

It’s the universe perfectly in order with all things—animal, vegetable, mineral…everything, indeed, that exists…facing inward as if it were toward the center of this huge circle of everything. And at the center are himself and those like him.

“The only morality…”

The only morality that exists or even could exist he thought once, in a rare philosophical moment, are the things consistent with his obviously truthful, very easy to understand universe.

How perfect. How simple. There is no grief or hardship other than for those in the Circle of Privilege. For anything without had its very reason for coming into existence the fact that it might at some time be brought forth, taken, used, consumed, or in some way allowed to fulfill or play a part in the enhancing of the pleasure, worth, or feeling of experiencing life for those in the Circle.

“No other experience than their experience…”

For in their charity of their truth, there IS no other experience than their experience. No other actually true life, no actually true pleasure, no really existing pain other than those of the Circle.

The other, seemingly living things, in fact, depend upon the ones in the Circle to do the living that they are incapable of…but which as the ones in the circle have observed…they can have a kind of creature or zombie life-sense to the extent that they can mirror, ape, emulate, mimic, fake the experiences of the Real People.

So a phantom kind of experience is that which sustains them and is the goal, source, and reason for their being. But they do not have real experience of their own. They are totally dependent on those in the Circle to live and experience life. As whatever their experience, it is a direct feed from the center.

Thus, the richness of experience in all forms becomes the food for all…the sustenance of life, its only reason.

“Lowlies…place…midway…between lifeless matter and…”real” beings…”

The Lowlies are phantom or creature-like things that have their place in reality, truth, experience, consciousness at about a midway point between the non-living substances—that which is inert, lifeless, matter—and the “real” beings.

There is therefore only two paths in their life. Facing into the world of nonbeing, inert matter, which is obviously their fate at some point; and facing in the direction of the Center, which emanates aliveness, richness, drama, lust, complexity, desire, fear, power, omnipotence, all derivatives of immediate experience.

Morality, for example. Which is defined thusly: What is good is whatever is acted, experienced, thought, or felt by the Reals. So both the Reals and the Lowlies are symbiotically related. The one as source of life. The other as mere resources to serve as the things or toys that can be used or not used.

It is all about what the Reals can desire, imagine, wish for, consume, or want…or make out of things other than them. And that includes the Lowlies.

The Lowlies fix their attention on the Center.

But the Lowlies are capable of a phantom-like semi existence, say, feeding on the actual events and experience, and the sights, sounds, and movements of those in the Center. They therefore face toward the Center, and fix their attention there. For it is the only place from which a vicarious experience, involving the imagining and acting out of that which it is possible for Lowlies to apprehend.

So that was the universe that spawned my boss. One problem in this perfection. Something so horrible that all the seeming benefit of being Real of the Circle of the Source, the Special, became turned upon its head.

“They were the only Deciders…”

You see, in time, gradually, little by little, then more frequently and increasingly, my boss, and others in the Circle, not all–through pure random action or as a result of the events not controllable–who did everything and every resource had as its purpose not just the possibility of being used, consumed, or simply to exist as backdrop for the ones in the Circle, but, for as the Real people saw it, being akin to divinity, perhaps Divinity itself as far as they could tell, they were the only Deciders, Intenders, Planners, Schemers, Desirers, and independent actors.

So it sustained their beliefs of the way of reality to use freely of the resources, either to use lightly, if their intentions, imaginations, and decisions regarding what would happen and exist was of a kind that did not require much of those not them. On the other hand if their desires, intentions, play and so forth involved heavy use, misuse, or destruction, consumption of those not them, it was all the same in terms of the rightness of things.

As mentioned there were things that happened that were not…well, you might say…in the playbook. And this was the big flaw in that entire system.

“What they had to do…is…pretty much stick to themselves…”

I don’t know how long, how many years, it may have been hundreds, that his family and his kind lived that way. But, well, just look around you in this day and age. What they had to do to maintain that idea is they had to pretty much stick to themselves all the time, pretty much not get to know any of the Lowlies. And that was pretty easy, cause if you looked at the Lowlies and you felt that, you know, they were not quite human, you didn’t have any inclination.

But what, perchance, if you’re down at a place in town or something, and perhaps one of the Lowlies is keeping a shop there. And then she should happen to smile at you, or one of the ones in the Circle.

And then she starts…”How ya doin today” and all that. And it’s like, the woman you figure, she’s probably programmed that way and everything but…you got, you see the great smile. And then you realize, she’s like…listenin…and she’s chipper…and she’s…well, that’s the sad thing is that, for all of their drama making and everything, all of their plans of doin this and doin that so that other people could experience stuff…well, the problem with my boss was…and…he had an experience like so many others did or were starting to have, and this was his experience with that girl, y’know?

And he saw her just…in that store…just…singin, being chipper, havin fun…seemin to dance around the store, y’know…as if she was just…happy….

But there was no reason to be happy. Especially not for her. And she didn’t get no happiness from up there…in the Circle. So he was dumbfounded.

“They’d had so many…they thought…experiences…costing lots of money…”

Not only that but the nature of her happiness was so far beyond anything that he’d seen anywhere that was called happiness. They’d had so many, so many…wonderful…they thought…experiences…really well planned out…y’know, costing lots of money and stuff.

And there she was. No money. Nothing. And yet she seemed really happy in a way that seemed more real and genuine than anything he’d ever seen.

Well, that really shook my boss. And…there was a series of those kind of events and….

I don’t know how many people live up in that Circle or even if it exists but my boss got older and he started doing this stuff and I got to be a job with him.

Well, all I can say is there hasn’t been a day when I haven’t seen him…. Heh… funny… Well, he was sayin how they would all say how these Lowlies were livin half lives, like zombies.

“Never seen him as anything but…”

Y’know, it’s the strangest thing, Mr. Boehner, I never…since the day I met him I’ve never seen him as anything but a zombie…bein on booze all the time…

And so… I can’t hate him… I mean, could you? .. I mean…could you? Could your kind….?

I mean…. That’s like kinda like hatin…well…an animal that annoys ya. You don’t go smack a dog around or a cat or nuttin like that just for bein a dog or cat!

And whatever he is, it’s like, he can’t help being himself now, now he’s already it. And I don’t even know if he ever had any choice in becoming it…what he became ‘cause…all’s I know is I never thought much of life and I never…I never…I never so, y’know…thought of myself as close to divinity or maybe God Himself *scoffing* and I never thought everybody around me, oh, could do whatever they, y’know, I could have whatever I wanted. I never thought I had that kind of power or that kind of importance or anything.

So, y’know…so they “Sweep this up here,”and, y’know, “Fix that thing over there,” and, y’know, I say they can say whatever they want I mean, I don’t care.

Perfection in a world like mine…and I get ok spaghetti…

It’s like…I like it, y’know? I like using my hands. I like touching the earth. I like the touch of tools…nice cold tools, and makin nice snappy wrenches and nice snappy sounds as you’re twistin those things around and you’re getting tight, just right perfect snug. There’s perfection in a world like mine.

And, y’know, it’s like, there’s no stress, I mean. Sure, I mean, I ain’t got your kind of wife, I mean. I like got ok spaghetti, like I said, y’know?

And, uh, now how do I compare that…. I ain’t really ever been unhappy really….. Disappointed…. But easy to accept considerin my background and… People around me, it’s like, it ‘s not like, it’s not like I’m any worse than anybody.

So I don’t feel bad really. And…and my boss…I don’t know how it would feel, Mr. Boehner, do you? You’re all the way from up from being a…years and years and years thinkin yer…yer god-like…you’re above everybody…you’re divine, and there’s no…and everybody’s there for your pleasure…and there’s nobody can resist you?

In fact I wonder what happened with that girl. I mean that first girl. I mean, I wonder if she…if he really…he’d ever….

He talked about her a lot. But now that I’m remembering the way he talked about her, it was like, it wasn’t happy after a while, it was like….

“Musta been…she was…happy…said no…had some respect…”

My god, I think that’s what did it. I think it was probably the first time he had an experience where somebody wasn’t fallin all over him, willin to do everything he wanted. It’s…it musta been that she was just so happy and everything and…she said no, and had some respect.

But don’t ya see what all that is from how high…. Can you imagine feelin that superior and dominant? And then comin down and bein..like as if you’re like now like you’re livin with the worms and that’s what you found out you’re more akin to them than the birds in the sky that you were once flyin with? Huh!

So how can I be mad at him?

Is anyone livin’…the real one…?

So what I want ta ask you, Mr. Boehner…you rich folks…pretty wives…unfortunate tragedies… god only knows what kind of sex and imean uh… And you know, us…. And then there’s my boss….

Now, who’s livin the vicarious life? Who’s livin the real one? Or is anyone?

ANYway. Mr. Boehner, you just put that piece of paper down there, and you put your name on it and I’ll have it for you tomorrow, and, uh…. Don’t forget, y’know, guess you’re gettin your ride home tonight, hear it comin….

You’re thinkin about your wife and your kids and everything and…

So remember I’m always on your side, but y’know….

[singin] The dancin’ she do ain’t gonna be with you… hahahahaha….

---

“Class Consciousness” – Some Important Parts

Auto Salesman Does Perry Como Does the Doors

Description

This is as funny as it sounds.  I did it; and I still can’t stop laughing, especially since it was completely unplanned, an improv off of a screw-up in the reading of “Anatomy of Class Consciousness.” 

When these things come through you in the spur of the moment, when you’re on a roll, you just know that God’s got to be the best comic of all. I don’t know where else this kind of material comes from. I’m still laughing. 

Hey, maybe I can do what auto salesman wanted to do, yea!  That’s the ticket, “SillyMickel does Perry Como does the Doors.” Yea. They’d wait months for tickets to that show.  Yea!

Oh my God, did I just say that out loud. I didn’t did I? No way!! Oh, I did? … (damn!)

Sample Quote

“Oh, man, who the hell, who the hell sings like that, man. That was like the fucking worst I’ve ever sung. Man, where my mind been that I can’t remember the Doors, and somewhere out of the really far past, I’m singing “Backdoor Man” by Perry Como…. Wow….

“But ya know. Somebody’s laughing I think I can make a gig out of this…. Ya know, can’t you see it: ‘Perry Como Does The Doors’”

There’s’ no way that any more can be expressed in text; it has to be heard.

Auto Salesman Does Perry Como Does The Doors

To hear this clip taken from Anatomy, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=wxfdxpxcqw
Image of “Auto Salesman Does Perry Como Does the Doors” by SillyMickel Adzema

The Snorter, Mr. Boehner, and the Auto Salesman

Description:

This is just plain nonsense–a combination of vocal gymnastics and memorable one-liners, super-silliness cut from the beginning of “Anatomy of Class Consciousness.”  The primary speaker is the auto salesman. The invisible non-speaking other is a well-to-do man, called Mr. Boehner, who is there to buy a car. His actions are implied from the reaction of the auto guy. 

As far as who is the singer and who is the snorter, that is the riddle for the listener to try to solve.  Along with how John Wayne managed to walk through…and how come he can’t see. 

Sample Quotes:

“I’ve been telling you about the “filthy rich….”

“You lost your wife and you come up with her, a snorter! Aaaaa haaaa! Well, I’ll tell ya. Well, we’ll talk about karma later, Mr. Boehner. Anyway, oooo weeee!”

“If you’re not allowed to be sad when your entire family all of a sudden, suddenly die, all of them….”

“I know I’ve been awful kind to you…and I’ve been talking to you about sex and all, trying to cheer you up, y’know..course you didn’t have to hit me in the face for that one thing, y’know….”

“I’m not kinky…. I’m just kinky in the head; but that’s just in the head; it don’t come out; don’t come out; I ain’t got like holes in my ears, er anything.”

“Mr. Boeh-ner, get back be-hind the coun-ter.”

The Snorter, Mr. Boehner, and the Auto Salesman

To hear this clip taken from Anatomy, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.
http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=vftvxfgqjx
Image of “The Snorter, Mr. Boehner, and the Auto Salesman” by SillyMickel Adzema

Others by Auto Salesman

Auto Salesman Does Como Doing Doors, Update – Aftermath, post-Gig

The following audio is a takeoff from “Auto Salesman Does Perry Como Does the Doors” above. It is not in the larger “Anatomy” audio.

Description

This picks up from the clip “Auto Salesman Does Perry Como Does The Doors.”  It takes the story forward to a time after Auto Salesman has tried out his “special talent” in front of an audience tryin to sell his CDs shopping-network style.

Sample Quotes

“You too can have the full 15-CD set.  Each one packed with eight hours of Perry Como…er, me…doing Perry Como…doing The Doors…Rolling Stones…and Beatles…and, you name it!  Probly got it….”

“Ok, I’ll try something different next time then….”

“I didn’t like those looks I got from the audience…. It was like…I mean…If I was on the G Network or QVC, whatever like that, man.  It’s like, if they had anybody in the audience, it’s like…  Shit, man, and I’d be, I’d have to go run off the stage, and, y’know….  I’d just, y’know…wow, man…Jee-sus.  I mean –  if there’d be more of them they’d be throwin up, it was like that bad, y’know…it’s like…Jesus Christ!  Specially that one woman…she-sh’ dinu’fess at all, man, she like — Wow, man… How’d you get to be alive, you suck….”

“I can’t seem ta think of the tones…  What happened to me…what happened to me I forgot The Doors and I been Perry Como’d and…….they did somethin ta me…when I was a kid…they must’ve injected Perry Como syrup inta me er sumpthin….  I’m telling you they injected Perry Como syrup, I mean they were dishin’ all kinds a stuff fer the kids ‘n… I mean they were conrollin’ those little fucks-i’mean us.. me.. they were tryin ta control us…

“And they would use anything…spankin’ ‘n…sirup…injections…  I mean, I believe it…

“We only caught ‘em on the LSD later on…  We don’t know what they were doing earlier… to little kids… yea, they won’t tell you that.”

Auto Salesman Does Como Doing Doors, Update – Aftermath, post-Gig

To hear this takeoff from Anatomy, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=vrtvpvpdyb
Image of AutoSalesman Does Como Doing Doors, Update – Aftermath, post-Gig

Auto Salesman Speaks His Mind on SillyMickel

This is the last clip in the Auto Salesman series.

Description

This is not clipped from the long monologue and is another spinoff from “Anatomy of Class Consciousness.” In this one, Auto Salesman tears into the author, SillyMickel, talking kind of like his alter-ego.

Sample Quotes

About SillyMickel, Auto Salesman says:

“What’s his big fucking beef? What’s he got against George W. Bush? What’s his beef anyway…better than that bozo we got up there. I don’t know what’s his beef. He says something like, ‘Oh, he says, oh, he says like, oh, I…why, he says…he says,
‘Why George W. Bush, he, uh, he’s behind the Trade Center bombing and it was a government job, all for the purpose of doing this and that, and it killed thousands of people,’

“and, not only that he said the scientists are saying that we only got 20 to 50 years to save the planet, and that we’re all gonna die.

“And I say, “You call them reasons?” ….

“You call them reasons?”  I mean…..

“I didn’t see where that affected MY pocket book one bit!  Now where does he come from? Just because people, just because the whole world’s gonna die…

“I’ll be dead by then, probably…so what the hell do I care?  I don’t think anybody should be caring if it’s not going to effect them!

“Now, as far as the children and the grandchildren … are gonna die in a fiery inferno and whatever  in the next 20, 30 years and all the planet’s gonna be wiped out, now, I think: THEY should be worried! It’s THEIR problem, right? Ain’t my problem…why should I care?

“So, I said to that erudite little fuck, ‘You stay in your fuckin’ jar…well, stop botherin’ me with this stuff about how we’re all gonna die and everything like that because NOBODY cares…If it’s not them, you know, they don’t even care about their children so…what does it matter!?….”

Auto Salesman Speaks His Mind on SillyMickel

To hear this spinoff from Anatomy, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=xdksvpbqyt
Image of Auto Salesman Speaks His Mind on SillyMickel

 

Continue with Apocalypse Emergency –
Part One: Trillion-Alarm Fire

Invite you to follow me on Twitter: 

http://twitter.com/sillymickel

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/sillymickel