Fuck You Pen

The alarm clock sounded and I lay still, awake, for twenty seconds before the room was silent and I can sleep again.

“Fnord,” it called.

When I woke again, I checked the clock.

“Fnord,” it read. I was late for work.

I sat at my computer to read the news, checked off the fnords in every story, even the one about a girl who kicked cancer and was now singing in the children’s choir.

I read the news and checked the weather.

Fnord. It was pretty damn cold.

I dressed and put my keys in my pocket, my phone in the other pocket, and checked my wallet before pocketing it as well.

Fnord. I was broke.

The bus came and I hopped on, flashed my pass at the driver, whose clean, crisp uniform read “fnord” across the breast. He waved me in and some punk kid had the same shirt, only his was too big, stained, and matched his un-laced shoes. Shit, he was a living fnord. He even had fnords for eyes, staring right at me as I found a seat.

I was late and my boss was hollaring:

“Fnord, fucking fnord, fucking fnord.”

“Fine,” I told him and pulled the mob bucket out of the closet.

Someone shit a big fnord and it clogged the toilet, so I plunged it on down and cleaned off my hands with the gallon of fnord that’ll fnord you if you drink it and don’t dial a certain number.

“Fnord,” my boss called at me from his office. He was hollering my name.

“Sit down,” he said calmly when I walked in. “Shut the door.”

I did and sat and he went on talking about how I was late so often he couldn’t keep me. He even said he waited to tell me until I’d gotten rid of that big shit and washed my hands off.

“Here’s your final paycheck.”

Not enough. “Fnord,” it read. Rent was due in two days.

I left, said to hell with the bus and started walking.

“Fnord miles,” I guessed, said it out loud in front of some old lady who backed away from me looking like she’d just seen a fnord.

Some dogs were barking.

Fnord.

Some kids were cussing.

Fnord.

A stoplight lit up a big red hand.

Fnord.

Everywhere.

I walked on into the street and caught a flash of a fnord in the corner of my eyes, looked and saw it coming straight at me before I fell. The fnords were there but it was too dark to see them.

I was fnord.

Fnords

Since the two of you seem to be enjoying the use of the term, allow me to expand upon its meaning beyond your repetitive yet limited uses, Mule Man, who’s allowed it to slip into his writing seemingly without being totally aware of its history and proper usage, and Dupe, who I believe simply pulled it out of his ass.

We will start where I know Mule Man started: the writings of Robert Anton Wilson, specifically, his and Robert Shea’s Illuminatus Trilogy (Dell, 1975). It is here where we receive the infamous line “I see the fnords.” What is literally seen, the author purports, is the word ‘fnord’ placed haphazardly in newspaper and magazine articles through which the article’s author would hope in startling or scaring the reader (RAW and Shea expound greatly upon the physiological symptoms associated with the sighting of the word). ‘Fnord’ acts as a stimuli, whose conditioned response is fear, a response conditioned, as Wilson and Shea state, by elementary school teachers, much as our most basic fears are indeed conditioned at an early age, not necessarily by our elementary school teachers, but often times, yes, by our elementary school teachers.

Simply put, a fnord could best be described, in regards to news media, as stories which instill fear or, at a minimum, anxiety. But the key distinction between RAW’s use of the word and yours, Mule and Dupe, is that RAW has certain articles acting as fear stimuli, that is some articles have fnords, while others may be able to instill fear and anxiety without any fnords, simply by their subject matter (though RAW never states this overtly).

And now we have the Mule Man using ‘fnord’ to represent ANY stimuli that would instill fear.

Allow me to make a distinction:

Use fnord only when the stimuli is administered with the intent of instilling fear.

Who’s intent? The hell should I know.

It’s my job to bitch.

Goodbye.

What value is there in Secrecy?

Observe our current presidential regime--
Take it at face value and observe the face it shows the public. The face shown before the cameras, the star of the show, the president himself, the man and his words. Is he an idiot? Is he an idiot or he is able to mask reality in a veil of incompetence and buffoonery? How can we possibly know?

Take the underlings, the costars, the one’s who take the back seat, yet are essential for the shows success. Rumsfield: still in a ‘consulting’ role after ‘resignation.’ Take Cheney: blatantly reported as being in a ‘classified location.’ Take the testimony of Gonzalez and Rice before Senate committees: How much information was released concerning Iraq policy and domestic spying? Little to none, all of it concealed behind “I don’t know,” and “that has yet to be determined.” The President, the star, can not make such statements because of his position. If he doesn’t know, the spectators will not stand for anyone else to know.

But why withhold information? When this act is obvious, we suspect the worst. We decide that if they can’t be honest, there must be a reason. They must be hiding something:;they must be hiding a practice they know we would find unacceptable. They know we will declare the hidden actions we assume are occurring to be wrong. They must know that some will likely overestimate their immorality. Why then conceal a practice that all will readily imagine, deny perhaps, but easily imagine and assume in proportions beyond reality?

Perhaps it is more effective to conceal a plan. And an effective plan, one that utilizes secrecy as a means to reach its goals, is one that can be realized even with the unknowing compliance of its perpetrators.

Secrecy will always breed lies and incorrect assumptions.

These lies and assumptions will breed fear.

Fear is a valuable tool for manipulation.

We may never know the extent of prisoner abuse endorsed by the United States government. We may never know the extent of domestic spying perpetrated by the United States government. We do not know what the United States government plans for the nations of Iraq and Iran. There may not be anyone in the United States government that knows. But some know that all three mysteries can scare the crap out of anyone who seeks to know, and can never find out.

Secrecy may serve a role beyond obscuration.

Whether or not it ever does is concealed behind an equally vexing secret.

All we can know is that we don’t know, that we can’t understand, that we can not realize a satisfyingly complete version of reality. What we don’t know, we can only assume. What we assume NEED NOT scare us. Our presumed assumptions can only serve one useful purpose...