stellarish

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Vasco encouraging Machete by shouting "go white boy go"

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Shōwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjū, Kumota Haruko

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dead yesterdays and unborn tomorrows

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Shōwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjū, Kumota Haruko

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the god of death, the god of art

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obsessed with one sad old man

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Some Kiku panel redraws from back when I was reading SGRS

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Kinda strange colors but okay...

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Noe's turn but I improvised abit to suit him since the ref is a huge mess orz

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I'll be around town just a lil' bit...

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could i offer you some round bears in these trying times?

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;;; what’s happening in ph

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Day 90

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"I'll be here for you, always and forever."

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gay meth

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Little Pierrot

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"It wasn't one thing, you know, it was like, everything. Everything just kinda happened slow. It wasn't fast. It was slow.

It was, uhh... 1964, I think. LBJ was in office. Yeah, 1964. The government rolled out the whole hypnoeconomics thing in uh, sophomore year. Something like that. I didn't really watch the news, but I remember everyone talking about the election. I remember it being a big deal but, you know, seems like every time the government does something it's a big deal, you know? It's always like, fine. It's always fine.  

 I had just graduated from UC Santa Ana. I had a degree in photography. What do you even do with that? Photography. It was hard at first, shopping a portfolio around, doing weddings. I had a gig going for some real estate company. That was alright. Taking pictures of empty houses for speculators. Something like that. I didn't know the specifics. I was good at it. It's not hard once you know the equipment, and what the client wants. But you get tired of it, you know? You get tired of it.

My mom wasn't the nicest lady. She's my mom but, you know how mom's are. The only thing to do in west Texas was go to church. I was raised really Christian, and Santa Ana was just so different. I didn't know many people. I had a job that didn't feel right, no friends, no family, no church. So I was looking for a church. You got all sortsa stuff out here, you know? You know the Navigators right? That big megachurch? The first chapel was like, a 20 minute drive from student housing. There were always people out preaching in the quad.

It was a girl. Uh, Nadine. Nadine Galt. We had a 101 class together. Math, I think. We really hit it off. She was just funny, you know? She said she was from out of state too, had a really pretty gold cross necklace. I think she polished it. We had similar upbringings you know? Small Town girl, big city, not many friends. That sorta thing. She invited me to a party. A jewelry party.

I asked her "what was that" and she explained the whole concept to me. How she was an independent seller, how she had all these friends, how she was gonna buy us wine and food and show us the stuff she had this month. I liked her. It sounded fun. It was fun.

She said she did that every month. I didn't know too many people, and it was a good way to meet people, you know? I may have paid a bit much for some bracelets, but hey, she was good at selling bracelets. I looked forward to the jewelry parties. I did. Every month I looked forward to them.

I had been going for maybe a year, year and a half, and she asked me if I wanted to become a seller like her. She did it slow, you know, every once in a while she would ask me to stay after the party. I didn't think I could do it. I had a degree in photography, what did I know? But she layed it on thick. Told me I was just what she was looking for. And, well, she said the money was good. I needed money. Or, I had money, but I needed more you know? She made it sound so, well, important. Said we needed to do this, that a market needed competition, you know? That the hypnoeconomists couldn't really track people like us. She said we were "essential to a free financial dreamscape." She made it sound like we were a pair of cowgirls out on the open range together. She said I would be a natural.

And you know what? I was pretty good. At first at least. At first it was just helping out Nadine with her stuff, but she taught me how to talk, introduced me to her distributors, even taught me how to look for new clients. I held a party for some of my clients in real estate. Bought out a whole section of a fancy restaurant and invested in nice cases from the distributor. It didn't go well. I didn't make much profit at all. I think they were mostly pity-buying. I didn't make a cent.

All gold. Yep, all gold. And that wasn't a lie either. It had to be gold, or it wouldn't work.

Nadine went missing in, uh, 67 I think. I was heartbroken. And worried, you know? I was worried sick. Everyone was reaching out, asking if I was alright. Hell, excuse my language, even my mama reached out. Called me on the phone, said I was in her prayers.

The distributor reached out too. Colin. I didn't get another name. Just Colin. Called me one day to express his condolences. He had a nice voice, over the phone. Smooth. Kinda timid, but in a way you liked. I dunno how to describe it. You know what else he told me? He told me I was responsible for 89% of the profits for his channel. Eighty nine. Thinkin back now, I shoulda known that was a bunch of bullshit. He said he wanted to meet with me at the company headquarters in Pasadena. Once I was ready of course. Said he wanted to "talk shop." It was a bright spot, you know? A bright spot in a scary and lonely time. I went. Got a hotel and everything.

What was it like? You mean like what happened?...oh,  you mean like, the inside? Like of the building?

You know what? Now that I think about it. Weird. It was weird as hell. Lotsa gold and concrete. Like the jewelery. It was like every room was like, I dunno. It was like they were too big and too small at the same time. And there was a LOT of gold, in all sortsa patterns.

No. Yeah. Yeah I'm okay, I can talk about it. I'm okay to talk about it. I wasn't there long. I've heard the stories, you know. I don't know what you know, you probably know more than me, being the government and all, but lemme say that if you heard a story about something happening in 11414, it's probably true.

Anyways, Colin met me in his office. No windows. We talked shop. They asked me to arrive early and I skipped breakfast to get there on time and, it seems like every time I tried to bring up lunch he would wave it down. I had to damn near demand to get up for lunch. He invited me up to the cafeteria. The nice one, the one the distributors got to eat at.

It was nice, like, real nice. The plates had those same gold patterns on them. It was after that-

The pattern? Uh, I'll try, do you have a pen? It was really complicated. I'll do my best. It had all these criss-crossing... Hm? Yeah. Yeah you know what? That's exactly what it looked like.

Yeah, you know? I actually did ask him. I asked him about the pattern and he just kinda looked at me like I was in on a joke and said put a finger to his lips and he tapped on the back of his head. You know, where they put the plugs. And he said "you know, so they can't listen."

Yeah he offered to let me try one. He got all quiet, brought me to the lounge behind some curtains. Yeah they had the gold thing too. Started talking like he had a secret. He must've had fifty, sixty pills in a fancy little case that had the same pattern on it.

No I wasn't surprised. How else would they make that much money without hypnoregulation? It was kind of an open secret, you know? I didn't want any of that. But you can't say no, you know? Then you're implicated. You can't leave. I agreed to take one.

I still think about that, you know? How I got out of that. What a dodged bullet. Oh my god. It's kinda embarrassing, now that I gotta say so, but when I was little, I used to do magic. You know, card tricks, sleight of hand, all that stuff. I palmed the damn thing. Slipped it right into my pocket.

I sat there for a bit. Tried to copy him, you know. The lounge had a bunch of sub-finantial cortical wires hidden in the coffee table. He gave me one and told me to watch what he did while he fed it up his nose into his head. I sat there for a bit, trying to stay calm. His eyes rolled into the back of his head and he had the gold scalero, uh, scaleri, no, uh the white parts of his eyes...

Scalera! That's it. They were gold and everything.

I didn't know he would convulse so much. I thought something might've been wrong, but eventually they died down. I gotta say, I was so damn scared I couldn't move. I coulda been there for hours. I probably was.

I have a good memory. So eventually I worked up the courage and just...walked out.

Yeah. I walked out. You walk like you're supposed to be there, and you're kinda mad, you know? Like you're late for something and you can't talk right now. It's all about confidence. Nobody hassles you if you look like you know where you're going. I even said thank you to the secretary in the lobby. Nadine taught me that you know. It's all about confidence.

I made it to my car, got the engine going, and the moment 11414 was out of my rear view mirror I just started crying. Cried myself to fits. I didn't even know at the time. What was it? Six weeks later? How many dead?

Yeah, too many. Too many. I guess it doesn't matter.

I drove to a McDonald's for some food and at some point I turned on the radio. You know what was playing?

Yeah. It was that fucking Tremeloes song. You know the one."