Sleeping at the End of the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (September 2008)

When your computer goes to sleep it randomly displays pictures from your photo albums as a screen saver. You realize that your computer is dreaming; further, that your computer is dreaming that it is you, from fragments of birthdays and trips to EPCOT with your family.

***

You dream you’re stuck at the bottom of a pit, like in Silence of the Lambs. You come across your father’s stash of pornography, only it’s really weird, like babies with shoes and stuff and you want to get out, but you can’t.

At the top of the pit stands Tori Amos. And she just laughs at you, looking down at you from the edge of the pit.

Then she strokes her enormous 18-inch penis that looks grey and wrinkled, like an elephant’s tail.

***

You suffer from “restless phantom limb syndrome.” On an internet forum you discover the following herbal remedy: eat an entire GNC container of Creatine Monohydrate (blue raspberry flavor), 100 tablets of Ultra Iron 65, tramadol, oxycodone or methodone, and a sheet of acid while watching DVDs of featuring people without 2 or more limbs: A Zed and Two Noughts, Boxing Helena, and Cremaster 3. You follow this recipe with the addition to a box of Triscuts, some fish food and amputee porn you decide to take in once the acid hits.

The next day you cannot remember if your phantom limbs gave you any trouble. You do discover, however, that you have made yourself an impressive full set of gladiatorial gear from jagged glass in which you slept outdoors in your backyard in an equally spontaneous creation apparently called “the octopus’ garden.”

***

Your Real Doll sleeps on an air bed in the guest room.

***

You buy a white noise generator with inverse phase sound cancellation. The settings are:

• Peaceful waves crashing WITH SEAGULLS.
• Peaceful waves crashing NO SEAGULLS.
• Amazon Rainforest
• Rain
• Bubbling brook
• Stormy Night (THUNDER AND RAIN)
• Crackling Small Fire
• Medium Size Campfire
• Large Fire
• Major Conflagration
• Distant Falling Bombs
• Haunted House (WITH ORGAN AND LAUGHING)
• Gravediggers Working Late
• Man Chuckling to Himself
• Clown Laughing
• Money Being Counted
• Audience Applauding Your Comeback
• Applause, End Credits Bumper for Next Show or Episode
• NPR
• Names of War Dead
• Audio Captchas

***

You dream it’s your funeral and you’re lying in your coffin, only your heart has been replaced by an extremely dark chocolate replica with only 0.00001% sweetener filled with a raspberry coulis and raccoon droppings.

A line of ex girlfriends take the podium to explain how you touched their lives. Some are clearly overcome with grief and comfort each other with hugs and embraces. Then some of them start making out. You know who I’m talking about.

At the reception there is black coffee, spicy hot wings, stale wedge fries, and despite your specific instructions, meatballs in gravy. You want to get up and swap out the stale wedge fries and meatballs for some Dim Sum and Oysters, but you can’t because you’re dead. Things only get worse when KC and the Sunshine Band Plays.

Upon waking, you immediately google “how to write your own will free” and confirm the worrisome fact that KC and the Sunshine Band are still around.

***

Though you are single and have no children you buy a baby monitor and place it in your other guest room.

***

In the morning when you check the pornography you’ve been downloading over night, you fast forward through the whole thing, as though the download window were a dream catcher, to see if you are there.

IN EVENT OF A HOSTILE MOON ENCOUNTER

PRESIDENT READS TEXT AS FOLLOWS:

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace after dying in peace from whatever is killing them in peace up there on the moon.

These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice. And whatever they do now, alone on the moon will be A-OK, because no one’s going to judge them.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind's most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding. They are not the first explorers to venture out into the unknown, nor the first to be eaten alive by some horrible unknown creature against which shovels as weapons are useless. Nor, we may hope, will they be the last.

They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by the nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown. We will not let their frantic and panicked pleas, their ill-chosen words, or their disturbing admissions sully our true memory and knowledge of these brave men.

In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.

In ancient days, men looked at the stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood, trapped and alone, running out of oxygen, fleeing some terrifying moon creature that eats return spacecraft.

Others will follow, and surely kill the thing that is killing them now. They will kill the thing and all things like the thing, whatever it is that the thing is. Man's revenge will not be denied. We will show those things pictures of Neil and Buzz as we kill the thing and the children of the thing (if it has any) in front of the thing. If it is necessary, we will learn to communicate with the thing just to explain to it why we are killing it and all others like it and how long it’s going to take and how they can’t do anything about it and how much we enjoy it. But however many of these things we end up killing we will remember: they started it by eating these two great pioneers.

For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world newly stained with our bravest human blood. And every thing that lives upon the moon should see Earth rise and know: here is your executioner.

PRIOR TO THE PRESIDENT'S STATEMENT:

The President should telephone each of the widows-to-be. He will probably need a FEW stiff ones.

NASA SHOULD END COMMUNICATION WITH THE MEN IMMEDIATELY WHEN:

Either astronaut drops the f-bomb again.

Neil begins calling for his mother again.

Buzz sings.

Crunching or chewing sounds are heard.

AFTER THE PRESIDENT'S STATEMENT, AT THE POINT WHEN NASA ENDS COMMUNICATIONS WITH THE MEN:

A clergyman should adopt the same procedure as a burial at sea, replacing “sea” and “deep” with “hostile airless moon” and concluding with the Lord’s Prayer.

Sonny and Cher sing “Space Oddity”