“I am honored my fair king…I shall look forward to the arrival of your chariot this night. I shall thank Aten for bringing your passion into my bedchamber…over and over.” - Nefertiti

Dr. Edmund Kwan explains that, “Preserving ethnicity is the biggest concern of Asians having plastic surgery.” And the website AsianSurgery.com assures us that “The desire to possess an eyelid fold or a well-shaped nose should not be misinterpreted as wanting to look Caucasian. While it is true that some Asians truly desire to look Caucasian, most want to retain their ethnic identity.”

Which is exactly why President George Bush recently signed a bill preserving the “ethnic identity” of Japanese-Americans who were forcibly detained at camps to prevent them from aiding an invading Japanese force. “The law is intended to help preserve the camps as reminders of how the United States turned on some of its citizens in a time of fear.”

There is a phantom island in Irish myth called Hy-Brazil which was said to lay off the south-east coast of Ireland. It was completely circular, but for a river running east-west across it’s center. The island was cloaked in mist at all times except for one day every seven years when it became visible but could still not be reached.

Last night I wrote a short chapter in my novel about a space ship which creates a human child out of its available biomass and statistical information from its computers because it is lonely traveling the depths of space. Eventually the girl leaves the ship, shrinking back down to a pool of biomass to find her father scattered across time and the universe. A recent survey discovered that two out of three Americans received an automated “robocall” during the last presidential election. Every thing every where feels the impulse towards love, to connect with others. You have to wonder at what point these calls begin to make themselves, just so they can hear the sound of a human voice, of soft breathing across the electronic sea… cosmetic surgery eyes peering out towards the island of Hy-Brazil.

Rolling Stone’s Jonathan Lethem has publicly accused James Brown of being a time-traveler, of snooping in on the future and bringing back its forbidden fruits.

For my part as a witness, if I could convey only one thing about James Brown it would be this: James Brown is, like Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, a man unstuck in time. He’s a time traveler, but unlike the HG Wells-ian variety, he lacks any control over his migrations in time, which also seem to be circumscribed to the period of his own allotted lifespan. Indeed, it may be the case that James Brown is often confused as to what moment in time he occupies at any given moment.

Practically, this means two things. It means that sometime around 1958 — approximately the year he began voyaging in time, if my theory is correct — James Brown began browsing through the decades ahead — Sixties, Seventies, Eighties and perhaps even into the Nineties — and saw, or, more correctly, heard, the future of music. This, if my theory is correct, explains the stubbornly revolutionary cast of his musical efforts from that time on, the way he single-handedly seemed to be trying to impart an epiphany to which only he had easy access, an epiphany to do with rhythm, and with the kinetic possibilities inherent but to that point barely noticed in the R&B and soul music around him.

Independent of that, I have been listening a whole lot the past few days to the Carpenters, as part of my on-going efforts to go back and snoop on the past. And I have come to much the same conclusion about Karen Carpenter: a time-traveler if ever I heard one. In A Song for You, she sings “I love you in place where there’s no space or time.” Goodbye To Love has some obvious references as well (see also, It’s Going to Take Some Time and Yesterday Once More). In fact, one could go so far as to argue that her songs were never about love at all, that they were about time. Or rather, that her melodic understanding of love was inextricably entwined with the vicissitudes of time. Here today. Gone yesterday. “There are no tomorrows for this heart of mine…”

Penny for your thoughts: “Pennies now cost more to make than they’re worth as currency. Even nickels share their plight, thanks to rising metal prices.” The amount of copper in pennies made before 1982 is now worth 2.13 cents. Nickels now cost 8.34 cents to make. Melting down the coins for profit can now land you up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

The government is a cartel which grants licenses to do business as long as you give them a kick-back. We call this “taxes.” Crime is simply business which is conducted without paying the devil his due. How can laws stop crime when the whole point of crime is that it operates outside of the law? Rainy days and mondays always get me down…

They say that a bride wears a veil because she is infused with the beauty and glory of God upon the occasion of her marriage. The light emanating from her is so brilliant that it can’t be looked upon directly - presumably without being incinerated. Along the Via Dolorosa on his way up to Calgary for execution, the face of Jesus is wiped by a woman named Veronica (whose name means “true image” roughly). According to the legend enshrined within the Stations of the Cross, the sweat from his brow imprinted a mark in the shape of his face upon the veil Veronica wiped him with.

“A great promise was contained in the moment when Madonna kissed Britney at the MTV Awards. She in a sense was saying,”I’m passing the torch to you.” It was a fabulous moment. Britney looked toned, in control of her career and it was up to her to take the next step. Literally from that kiss, from that moment onward, Britney has spiraled out of control. It’s like Madonna gave her the kiss of death! Britney is throwing it away!”

(From the mists around Hy-Brazil a great lidless eye looks out into the darkness…)

This is not the same thing as the Shroud of Turin. That was a death shroud. But yeah, things seem to get imprinted onto other things. Things seem to be contagious. I have no idea how it works. But I know that the weekend after I finally “got” the first solid chapter in my novel, which features a character called simply “the woman in white,” I was hiking in the woods with my friends and far off in the distance (where we’d just been and seen no one) a woman dressed completely in white emerged from the green background. A dog began barking. The other night I was telling my friend about a dream I had which I’d written into the novel: about a man who’s the mayor of a city inside of a bubble, a great transparent sphere city. I left his house, walked down the darkened street and at an intersection I found a giant plastic transparent sphere situated directly in the center, partially deflated. I became confused and honestly a little scared. All I can guess is that it had blown off somebody’s house as part of some kind of new-fangled Christmas decoration. I looked around and saw nothing. Small blue splotches of paint decorated the surface of the sphere here and there. I didn’t know what to do. I moved it out of the street and walked home.

In my dream I was the mayor and I had to find a key hidden inside a puzzle in a children’s museum in order to flood the city and start life over again.

Here, on the only Smiths single released exclusively to France, we have two people on a romantic date, at night, in the city, driving in a car. They fantasize about getting killed together in a car crash and mention is made of being gripped by fear in an underpass. The song concludes with Morrissey repeating that “there is a light that never goes out”.

Ten years later, we have Princess Diana with Mr. Dodi Fayed in France: two people on a romantic date, at night, in the city, driving in a car. They actually do get killed together in a car crash and the fearful event does occur in an underpass. It happens to be the underpass that goes directly beneath the Flame of Liberty, “a light that never goes out”.

I found a list on Wikipedia of “names for the Biblical nameless.” Noah’s wife was called Naamah. The Queen of Sheba’s name was Makeda. Pretty girls make graves. The Three Wise Men were called Balthasar, Melchior, and Caspar.

We three kings of orient are. Verizon unveils plans to re-build a more reliable multi-route network across the Pacific Ocean after an earthquake in Asia caused service outages. A teenage boy in Snohomish county was shot in the leg by a cannon ball at a football game. He received numerous death threats to keep silent about the whole affair so that they wouldn’t be forced to stop shooting off the cannon at games. The Queen Is Dead.

(Thank god for cell phones that can track your kids! Thank god for new guns that can kill better - watch the video! Thank god for Nintendo underwear!)

“You don’t exist any more. I’ve killed you. Jill Layton is dead.”