After a couple of weeks in rehab to recover from over-Festing indulgence, Brown Nose the Pirate returns to file what he describes as part 3 of 4 in his
Winter SWL Fest 2011 trilogy.
RP wonders whether he was released too soon.
"We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar"
--The Hollow Men, T.S. Eliot
A big guy with an even bigger head wearing a cheese hat opens the door. For some reason I'm thinking Riff Raff from Rocky Horror, only gone to pot. Maybe it's the slack white hair and overhanging forehead. "Enter freely and of your own will," he says without any hint of welcome, "and leave behind your happiness, eh?"
I don't wanna seem too suspicious so I take in the room, casually, over his shoulder. The light's dim, greenish, and I can't see clearly, just shapes moving around. I move toward the threshold for a better look and walk into, I dunno, like a wall of soft putty. I tap my palm against it. It makes a hollow
plonk with a low reverberation, like an untuned kettle drum. Transparent stuff, like glycerin, but the view through it is warped and twisted. I squint at Riff Raff.
Riff Raff snorts and says "I can't help you. If you want to enter the rabbit hole, you're on your own."
I poke the stuff with a finger. Won't quite go through, but feels like it might with a pen or knife. I don't have either one on me. Thanks, TSA, can't carry anything sharper than a crayon on flights now. I'm fishing through my jacket pockets and find a small piece of plastic card with some wires. I pull it out - a
Tiny Tenna. Hadn't worked in years since the wires all pulled loose from the sloppy solder joints. Thought I'd thrown it away. I use the edge of the raw circuit board to slice open the
pwdre sêr, enough to slip in one hand. The wound is trying to close so I let go of the Tiny Tenna and use both hands to pull apart an aperture and slip through as the slit closes with a flubbering bloomp sound. The Tiny Tenna is stuck in the goo, leaving a gash in the portal. Just as well, first time the piece of crap was useful.
A couple of Scrats - Mosby and Thumper on their collars - dart past my ankles, shinny up the portal and vomit up ectoplasm to patch the gash. That's what I just crawled through? Again I feel the tequila and beer doing the backstroke up my throat.
"Take these," says Riff Raff, shoving beer and cigarettes toward me.
"I don't smoke," I say, trying to wave him off but he pushes them into my hands anyway.
"Then don't inhale," he growls, "but you'll want 'em to kill the stink. This hutch hasn't been cleaned all week."
Soon's I grab the brew and smokes he's reaching up into a hole in his cheese hat and pulls out a pad of paper and thrusts it toward me.
"What's this?" I mutter, turning the pad around, trying to read in the dim green light.
"Signal reports. Official WBNY signal reports."
"They're already filled out," I say, flipping through the pad. "Every one of 'em. 'SIO-555. Beautiful AM signal! Perfect audio! Brilliant programming! No one does it like Commander Bunny!'" Only thing not filled out are the check boxes next to the dozens of relays listed. "The dates and times are already filled out for these relays. They haven't even been aired yet." I point to the pads.
Riff Raff snorts dismissively. "Just fill 'em out and turn them in. Don't make trouble. Just check the boxes. Don't make things worse for me here, awright? Don't be a smartass. Just work with me." He stalks back toward the door.
"Hey, where is he?" I call toward his back, but Riff Raff is gone. I don't see anyone else I recognize. I'm thinking I knew the risks, or imagined I knew. But the thing I felt the most, much stronger than fear, was the desire to confront him.
I look around and try to get a fix on the huge, dark, hazy room. I can see animals milling around, some in small packs, all on hind legs. Furries. Fucking place was full of 'em. I'm wishing Boomer was here. Only sane furry I knew of in the whole pirate radio scene. And even he was crazy, had a rep as a demolition expert, homemade
grenades or some crazy shit.
A wild-eyed hippie with a grizzled beard scuttles toward me from across the room, three or four Nikons dangling from his neck and shoulders, clattering together, his ponytail flailing behind him from beneath a paisley bandanna tied around his head. "Hey, friend! Hey, hey, howya doin', howya doin', now watch out for those socks... on the floor! on the floor! Right, and watch out, those goddam Scrats bite, I tell ya, worst case of rabies and mxyomatosis you'll ever see. Hey, I'm Zoidberg, a Decapodian, Decapod DXer, photojournalist, and you got the cigarettes and beer and that's what I've been dreaming of, they won't give ya shit in here unless you're a furry, I dunno how you got so lucky," he speed talks as I hand over the smokes and brew.As my eyes adjust to the dim light I can see bodies on the floor. Headless bodies, at the base of short antennas. A head impaled atop each antenna. Hotel note paper stuffed into their mouths, with "Nasty signal report!!!" scrawled on the notes. "Ruining it!" on another. "Nasty attacks!" "Destroying pirate radio!!!" Crude drawings of apes sketched on the death warrants.
CB is close. He's real close. I can't see him yet but I can feel him.
"The heads," Zoidberg mumbles, sounding embarrassed. "At the heads, you're looking. He even put Fansome's head up there. I, uh - sometimes he goes too far, you know - he's the first one to admit it! Well, I mean, not him, per se, but, umm... Pat, you know, Pat always... smooths things out after CB, y'know..."
"Fansome's not dead," I say.
"Yes, he is, I mean look, the head, the sign..."
"Take my word for it," I say, "he's not dead. He's not a human. He's more of a ca... anyway, that's not his body," I kick the body, and straw pops out. I look closer at the impaled heads and tap one - hollow. Fake. All the bodies, fake.
Straw men.
"Remember us — if at all — not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men."
"Who are all these peop... furries?" I ask, looking around the room.
"His children, all his children, far as the eye can see. They think you're here to attack, umm... destroy... nasty, uh, y'know, um, ruin, ah, ruin it... all... and, uh... I hope that isn't true," he's babbling. Guy sounds like he's reciting a script, political talking points, and not doing a good job at it. I'd heard this Zoidberg character was smart but right now he seems like another buzzed up publicity flack.
"I'm just here to talk with him," I say. "He asked for me, so..."
"Hey, man, you don't talk to the Commander. You listen to him. CB has enlarged my mind... well, my QSL collection, anyway. He's a poet-warrior in the classic sense that, um, Bill O'Reilly is a pleasant guy or Tiger
Woods is a faithful husband. I mean sometimes he'll, uh, well, you'll say 'Hey, I heard your show last night', right? And he'll just walk right by you, and he won't even notice you, no QSL, nothing. And suddenly he'll grab you, and he'll access your IP information and expose your identity and home address,
call you a child molester, insult your family, and he'll say 'Do you know that "you" is the middle word in "ruin" and "ass" is the middle word in "nasty" and "hole" is the middle word in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Get it? YOU... ASS... HOLE.'
"I mean I'm no, I can't - I'm a little DXer, I'm a little DXer, he's, he's a great rabbit. I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across floors of silent seas,
whoop-whoop-whooping in search of a
stink gland..."
"Shut the fuck up," I suggest. "If you talk again I'll punch you in the nuts."
I shrug off the sense of dread and move toward the center of the room. It smells like slow death in here, myxomatosis, madness. The floor is covered with urine soaked cedar shavings, droppings that look like brown M&Ms... and socks. Everywhere. Dirty socks. I nudge one with my toe. It sticks to my boot like it's covered in jizz. I bend down to look... fucksake, it is covered in jizz. I stagger backward, scrubbing my boot toe in the cedar shavings to wipe off the stuff, and step on another sock, this one stiff and stained.
"STOP KICKING MY FRIENDS!" a voice booms from a darkened corner across the room. I can just make out a pair of long ears through the dim haze.
"The socks, man, watch the socks, why don't you!" Zoidberg yells. "They're his friends... his best pseu... his friends... they speak, um, for him, you know? They help him communicate complex messages, uh... about his... superior philosophy and..." He trails off to gather his thoughts, then grabs one off the floor and holds it out at claw's length.
"Look! This is one of his favorites, see, it's still wet and sticky, he's used it a lot lately to rub out, umm, work out some, uh, complex problems about the FCC and government shutdowns and... radio... free speech, and... stuff."
"PUT BILLO DOWN!" roars the voice from across the room.
"Hrrrng poots!!!" comes a muffled voice from my left.
I pivot left, bumping my knee into someone's extended leg. It's covered in gauze... the whole body is covered in gauze, stained, soaked in yellow-green and suddenly I recognize the stench. Pus. Festering wounds. Seen it before, the last Great Pirate War of 2008, the one that never seemed to end.
"HRRRNGG POOOTSSS!!!" the mummy man wails.
"What's with him," I ask Zoidberg. He covers up his crotch with a camera bag. "Go ahead, I'm not going to punch you in the nuts."
"RF burns," he says. "Worst case anyone's ever seen. Can't be around a transmitter more than 10 watts now. He thinks that's huge power, thinks it can be heard at SIO-555 all around the world, but don't try to tell him any different. He's dying of terminal butthurt from it."
"Ppp hrrrng poots..." the mummy mumbles.
"What's he saying?" I ask.
"'Stop hurting the pirates!' It's pretty much all he says. Nobody knows beans about what he means by it. Pieces of him fall off, maybe?"
"Hey, hey," Zoidberg calls to a passing furry. "Fluff up his beanbag chair, get those beans arranged better to make him comfortable, why don't you? You gotta get the beans just right or he'll whine and cry all the time, try to hit you when you're just talking with the guy. Hey!" yells Zoidberg, way too loud, "Beans bag pus covered grouchy mummy guy, it's been years since medical school, so remind me: Butthurt in your species, fatal or non-fatal?"
While he's distracted by the mummy man I notice a zombie Elvis impersonator shuffling toward the door. I grab him by the arm. The arm comes off, still clutching a tote bag full of WBNY pogey bait. He stares transfixed at the QSL swag.
"Hey, Elvis, Evil Elvis," I whisper. He looks at me and grins. At least I think he's grinning... hard to tell with zombies - no lips.
"I need a favor, buddy," I say, and hand him my iPhone, loaded with a custom BCS app. "These are the co-ordinates for an air strike from Canada. If you don't see me back downstairs at the bar in one hour, call it in. The code is Furpocalypse, coordinates 6925. That's the order for the Canadians to drop a massive payload of butthurt trollbombs and begin the Psy-Fudd campaign. Can you do that? There might be a pennant in this for you."
Evil Elvis just grins and nods. Or maybe his last neck sinew just popped loose, I can't tell. I hand him his arm, still attached to the WBNY tote bag. "Sorry about that, buddy, you can probably glue that back on."
Evil Elvis shuffles toward the ectoplasm portal and just melts right through. There are advantages to being mostly dead.
(To be continued - Part 4 of the Fester trilogy.)
Video of the Now: Sick of sockpuppets? You won't be after
Sifl & Olly declare monkey love to be crescent fresh! But Bouncer? Not cress.
An unusually melodramatic solar flare observed by a Defense Emissions Radiation Projects space observatory on Tuesday could set the stage for some emotional disruptions to shortwave pirate radio over the next week or so, officials said on condition of anonymity.
claimed to have driven an invisible car off an invisible cliff. Sheen claimed this week's solar flare disrupted the vehicle's automated HAARP-proof guidance system (available from The Power Hour and similarly reliable GCN affiliates, next to the Chi-magnets).
