Showing posts with label Idiocy Ltd.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Idiocy Ltd.. Show all posts

Monday, December 31, 2018

Why I Do Not Work for the CIA / 我不為 CIA 工作的理由




Why I Do Not Work for the CIA

1.

I do not work for the CIA because I am too dumb
And I am not a Mormon

Besides my patriotism is lacking

I wouldn’t have passed any of their tests

It’s clear I do not work for the CIA

2.

Do I maybe, after all, work for the CIA?
It’s hard to believe I do

I begin my day later than them

And teach language at night

CIA people would be analyzing language
Arabic and Urdu and such

Documents of specs in Chinese

But me I teach language

The CIA wouldn’t be teaching anything
They’d be writing up reports to answer
Yes or No Yes or No

But me I teach and joke with students
Trying always to play out the Maybe

For as long as possible

3.

I keep to myself and drink scotch
This is very CIA

How long have I been CIA now?

4.

I'm damn good at what I do in fact

My Chinese is better than many a fellow agent’s

And my French was once good too

I still get the subjunctive wrong less often than many a Mormon
Who passes me sober in the halls at Langley

5.

I’ve never been to Langley

There's no way I'm CIA

I’d have cracked under pressure sooner
And told everything I know

6.

Though I’ve been under immense pressure at times
And have cracked twice or more
I’ve never quite told everything I know

But it wasn’t because I was holding back

Out of patriotism or to protect some asset
But because I didn’t quite know how to put it
How to frame it I mean

Everything I know

And sometimes I didn’t even know really
That I knew it

7.

This kind of thinking is definitely not CIA

Maybe that’s why I'm such a precious asset to them
They wouldn’t risk me on any small mission
Translating chatter from Urdu

Instead they coddle me

Keep an eye on my drinking

They’ve pared me down to one cigar a day

They’re encouraging me now to find a new health club
Get back in shape like I was

When we were winding down the Cold War

8.

In fact I will not find a new health club

I’m tired of this far-flung Asian assignment

I want them to know it too

I’m tired of the metro ride back and forth

The students half of whom are ADHD

I’m waiting for my station chief finally to have enough of me
And drop word that I’d be better off

Somewhere with more action

Berlin or Rome

Nice would be nice

But I’d settle for Damascus or Tel Aviv

As long as it wasn’t too dangerous

In short somewhere my skills can be used

9.

Now that it’s clear

I’m solid CIA

I must pay off those back taxes soon
Plan a visit to Langley

I must stop messing around with Maybe
And get back to basics

Yes or No

Me or You

One of us is in the wrong here

Eric Mader
* * *

我不為 CIA 工作的理由

一、

我不為 CIA 工作,因為我很笨
而且我不是摩門教徒
加上我那貧乏的愛國情操
鐵定無法通過他們任何一項測驗
顯然我不會為 CIA 工作

二、

又或許我,說到底了,就是在替 CIA 工作?
真叫人難以相信

我白天比他們晚起

晚上還有語文課要教

CIA 那幫人則忙著分析語言
諸如阿拉伯語和烏爾都語
和處理中文計劃書的文件
但我呢我有語文課要教
CIA 倒是什麼課也不教
只顧著把報導整理成文,好回答
是或不是或是或不是
但我呢我有學生要教還要跟學生開玩笑
也要試著沉浸在或許這又或許那的世界裡
越久越好

三、
我獨來獨往,會喝蘇格蘭威士忌
這很 CIA

我 CIA 多久了?

四、
我在工作上其實表現得可圈可點
中文比許多特務同事都要流利
法文也一度說得嚇嚇叫
不像許多經常錯用假設語氣的摩門教徒
後者總一派清醒地與我在蘭利的廊間擦身而過

五、

我沒去過蘭利
不可能是 CIA
稍被施壓我就會崩潰
大事小事都要脫口而出

六、
縱然有時得承受非比尋常的壓力
也崩潰過兩次或超過兩次
我卻未曾供出那些大事小事
倒不是出於愛國情操或是
為了守住某些資產才三緘吾口
我只是不太曉得該如何啟齒
我是說該如何表達
我所知道的一切
有時我甚至無法確定
我真知道那一切

七、

這種思考模式肯定很不 CIA
這或許便是他們視我為 CIA 之寶的緣故
他們不會冒險派我執行不起眼的任務
譯出截獲來的烏爾都語閒聊內容
他們會把我捧在手心
時時留意我又喝了多少
一天只准我抽一根雪茄
現在還鼓勵我找家新的健身俱樂部
好找回往日的健美
就我們準備結束冷戰那時期

八、
但我才不想找什麼新的健身俱樂部
我受夠這無窮無盡的亞洲任務了
我想讓他們也明白這一點
我受夠搭地鐵通勤往返
我的學生有半數是過動兒

我在等我 CIA 的駐派國代表終於也受夠了我
並呈報說為了我好
應該派我出去跑跑
看是柏林還是羅馬
尼斯的話就有意思了
但即便是大馬士革或特拉維夫我也絕無怨言
只要那邊不會太危險就好
只要是個能讓我發揮所長的地方就好

九、
既然一切都已水落石出
我就是如假包換的 CIA
那我得儘快繳清積欠的稅款
也該跑一趟蘭利
別再或許這又或許那地扯個沒完
我得回歸基本面
是或不是
我或你
總有一個人搞錯了

枚德林
* * *

Check out my Idiocy, Ltd. at Amazon and begin the long, hard reckoning.

買我的書《白痴有限公司》! 有犀牛、蝙蝠、obasans 、海豚、真英雄、台北秘史 and more. 你可以在台灣買到:

at 博客來

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Sunday, December 30, 2018

OBASAN! 歐巴桑! (英/中)



Obasan #7

Taipei. I was sitting atop a cement traffic pylon near a busy intersection. It was just before class and I was smoking one of my mini-cigars before going in to teach. I had my umbrella leaned against the pylon—not a very good umbrella, the handle kept coming off and I needed to get a new one when I had the chance. 

A well-dressed 60-something woman came by me with a little caramel-colored dog on a pink leash. The dog was sniffing the base of my pylon and I was thinking: “This obasan is NOT going to let her dog piss on the pylon while I’m sitting on it.” 

Of course I was wrong. The dog started pissing, the stream of piss just missing my umbrella. I didn’t look at the woman, but kept my eye on the dog to let her know I saw how rude she was being. 

And the dog, no more than a foot tall, just kept up its pissing. Its piss flowed voluminously, amazing for such a small dog, until a broad puddle had formed just under me. 

Then the woman went on her way. 

As I stood up to go, not a minute later, my leg nudged the umbrella and it fell flat into the puddle. I decided to leave it there. 

I crossed the street and went into a little bakery to get something to eat. I hadn’t had time for dinner. Coming out, I saw the woman circling back with the dog. She looked at my umbrella lying in the piss, then looked round to see if I was still nearby, then reached down carefully to pick up the umbrella. She’d decided to take it! 

Pulling a few sheets of tissue from her high-end, oversized purse, she began to wipe the piss off the umbrella. I watched her from the shade of the bakery awning. When she was done wiping off the piss, she continued on her way, heading home with her dog and my umbrella. 

But she carried the umbrella by its handle. And the handle came off in her hand, the umbrella itself dropping to the ground. 

Surprised, she glanced round again, to see if anyone was watching, then looked down at the umbrella at her feet. Finally, in a gesture of frustration, she tossed the handle down next to it. She continued on her way home. 

Very OBASAN! Yes, very very OBASAN!

-----

我哈台灣奧巴桑

一、
好啦你最了不起啦擋在旋轉式柵門的入口前翻找包包裡的悠遊卡彷彿天底下就你一個人而已嘛後面六個人全都擠在那邊過不去嘛你還瞥了我一眼好像在說「我都五十六歲了一 手養大兩個兒子其中一個還是台大畢業的老娘讓個屁路!」哎喲台大是嗎啊不就好厲害陳水九騙的母校嘛我上班快遲到了一邊涼快去啦奧巴桑

二、
我每逢星期六就只能抓緊下課時間去買杯咖啡喝或許只 有三個人在排隊吧兩個奧巴桑加一個男人那兩個奧巴桑跟 櫃檯小姐說拿鐵會比卡布奇諾大杯嗎?對了刷什麼什麼卡是 不是可以打折?哦等等哦我有帶什麼什麼卡阿娘喂2%的折扣溜我來找一下卡什麼星巴克又出全新系列的隨行卡了哦那 我先前那張隨行卡裡面的點數還能用嗎裡面還有一些點數咦 有折扣嗎朵拉你看星巴克新推出的隨行卡溜(開始討論新舊 隨行卡哪張比較美老天饒了我吧)要不要買張新的你覺得咧 你覺得這張顏色好看嗎小姐你們有別的顏色可以挑嗎好了朵拉你要喝拿鐵還是卡布奇諾哎喲他們有聖誕節限定的噁心巴 拉摩卡溜這下好了已經有七個人被她們堵在後面了既然肢體 暴力在這個城市屬於犯法行為我就撤了我就兩步做一步直奔 Cama Café 去了我去你們的奧巴桑

三、
我要買體香劑就我太太只喜歡的那一款可現在是我的午休時間還有位要買兩小罐護膚乳液的奧巴桑就站在結帳櫃檯前然後櫃檯小姐說小姐(!)現在只要多花八百塊就能獲得這張價值五百元的折扣禮券明年就可以用啦奧巴桑在考慮了我還不清楚接下來會怎樣嗎老子二話不說揚長而去

四、
我在 7-11 正打算買點薄荷糖就發現結帳隊伍裡連續排 了三個奧巴桑而且最前面的奧巴桑已經跟櫃檯小姐吵了起來 說便當不是要比結帳金額便宜個三塊錢嗎那奧巴桑邊指著發 票邊說啊櫥窗上的海報不是寫便當只要多少錢喂喂我難道得 在這邊聽她高談闊論不成何況她後面還有兩個奧巴桑在等我 沒吃薄荷糖又不會少塊肉閃人了閃人了

五、
我有件包裹要寄去紐約結果人一進郵局就看見現場排了兩組人馬其中一排有五個人不過都是男性和女職員另一排則是兩個分別抱著一小件包裹的奧巴桑我可沒那麼傻我走向那 支排了五個人的隊伍然後哈沒想到吧我寄了包裹錢也找好了隔壁排的第二位奧巴桑還在那邊郵資哪個方案怎樣又怎樣問個沒完媽呀!

六、
隔天,我們一行七人緊緊挨在擁擠的捷運車廂裡面對車 門站著。我們這群人稍後就會一片黑壓壓地蜂湧而出,準 備下車轉乘綠線。我身後有個奧巴桑,穿著花俏橘襯衫。奧 巴桑這邊推那邊擠,試圖從我們之中開出一條路— 就因為 她已經,呃,五十七歲了?她好像迫不及待要下車,好像等 不及要奔向某個地方的收銀機,隨便什麼地方的收銀機。她 拚了命想擠過去,那可惡至極的超大 LV 包的金色搭扣也開 始勾住我樸素包包上的黑色帶子。我也下車— 我嘟噥著中 文。她沒抬頭看,也沒搭腔,倒是露出若有似無的淺笑。她瞇起了眼在計算,過分嫣紅的嘴角嵌著一小滴晶瑩剔透的口水。我知道她腦子裡正轉著會員卡、折價券、禮券、贈品的畫面。八秒之後,她又試圖從我們之中穿過去,即使用膝蓋想也知道我們會在這站下車。我也下車!我又說了一遍。我也下車,奧巴桑!

Eric Mader
枚德林

-----

Check out my Idiocy, Ltd. and begin the long, hard reckoning.

買我的書《白痴有限公司》! 有犀牛、蝙蝠、obasans 、海豚、真英雄、台北秘史 and more. 你可以在台灣買到:

at 博客來

at 誠品

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Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Bats




What is a bat if it is not a meat moth having a fit under the moon; if it is not a small furred contraption on the verge of going unhinged?

Indeed a bat is a haunted rubber toy dancing to a strobe light; it is Hecate’s own hand-puppet.

Bats are defiantly stuck in the 80s, as you know. Their ears are physiologically incapable of registering names like Britney, Gaga, Kanye. “Who?”

They burst from the hollowed trunks of long-dead trees like text messages sent from the cell phones of Hell.

Will the iPhone 15 be able to decipher these floppy hissing missives? The iPhone 20?

“Look forward 2 seeing u. Sooner than u think. ;) Alison”

No, your Mother can never, neither can your anxiety-disordered Aunt, nor your little sister Carrie when she found the severed gopher’s head in her lunch box--none can shriek more piercingly than the smallest bat.

Was denkst du, Fledermausmann? Müssen wir noch Heidegger lesen?

(As a teen I dreamed such dreams, and if only I had such courage now, I would fulfill these dreams: A one-room museum displaying only the cleaned and mounted jaws of the various bat species, under each jaw a photo of the bat and a sonnet in its honor.)

A bat is a mole in a manic episode. A mole is a depressed bat.

Bats hang while they sleep upside down. Bats sleep while they hang upside down. Bats hang upside down while they sleep.

Sentence 3 is the best.

And you, Kay Thiesenhusen, where are you now?

This and 42 other important public service announcements can be found in my book Idiocy, Ltd.

Sunday, June 24, 2018

Idiots / 白痴: A Public Service Announcement 英/中



IDIOTS

There are idiots in every country in the world. Idiots can be annoying or even dangerous. The total number of idiots in the world at present is unknown, but this number, whatever it is, is certainly very high.

Sometimes idiots can even become national leaders. In that case millions of people will suffer.

It is important to know how to recognize idiots and to know what kind of idiots they are so that you can protect yourself and your loved ones from danger or many wasted hours.

But I don’t really want to write about idiots here. What I want to write about is pandas. Pandas are not really bears like most people think. They are cats pretending to be bears. Pandas are large, stinking vegetarian cats posing as bears. They do it to appear special.

If you see a panda doing its usual roly-poly act in a park, do not approach it to take photos. Do not waste time warning others gathered round it. They are likely already under its rollicking spell and will not listen. Get yourself and your family to another park as quickly as possible.

Pandas should be illegal. The only thing worse than a panda is a kung-fu panda. And the only thing worse than that is a kung-fu panda in 3-D.

How long are you going to let them fool you? They are going to eat through all the bamboo forests in the world and then they will start eating domestic livestock and children. There are videos to prove this.

That pandas are cats and not bears should be obvious to everyone. All you have to do is look in the encyclopedia.

In fact cats are not even mammals. What they are is reptiles that have evolved fur so as to appear to be mammals. Cats may seem cute when you look at them, but this is just an act. When humans are not looking cats commit all manner of evil and unhygienic acts.

If you see wild dolphins in the ocean, you may want to swim near them, but this is not a good idea because wild dolphins might not like you and also sharks often follow dolphins because they feed on them.

If they think you are being a pain, wild dolphins can kill you by butting you with their heads. But even if the dolphins ignore you, the shark may interpret your swimming which is less graceful than the dolphins’ as the movements of a dolphin having a seizure, and it then may attack you because it thinks you are easy prey, which is just about right, you dumb New Age fuck.

Some authorities believe cats are actually trying to take over the universe.

Chameleons that have not encountered predators for a long time may become so lazy that they forget how to change color. Such chameleons are good for nothing and do not even deserve to be called chameleons.

We hold these truths to be self-evident.

Eric Mader
2011

白痴

在這個世界上,每個國家都有白痴。有時候白痴真的很煩人,甚至可能帶來危險。目前全世界的白痴總人口數雖仍無從得知,但不管這數字究竟是多少,必定非常之高。

白痴甚至可能當上國家領導人。在這種情況下,千百萬的國民都要遭殃。

為避免自身和親人遭逢不測或浪費太多時間,知道怎麼 辨別白痴,並能看出對方屬於哪一類型的白痴就是兩大關 鍵。

不過,這篇要談的其實不是白痴。我想討論的是熊貓。

熊貓並非大多數人所認知的那樣;牠們不是真正的熊,而是假扮成熊的貓。熊貓是種又大又臭的貓,終日茹素,性喜扮熊。牠們想藉此建立自己的風格。

如果你在公園看到熊貓耍起一貫的翻跟斗伎倆,千萬不要上前拍照。也不要出言警告那些圍觀的人,因為這麼做只是浪費時間。他們很可能已經中了熊貓的嬉耍魔咒,聽不進你的苦勸。請儘快和你的家人前往別座公園。

熊貓根本是目無法紀。而比熊貓還讓人束手無策的,恐怕就只有功夫熊貓了。不過比起功夫熊貓,3D 的功夫熊貓 更是令人一籌莫展。

你打算被這些熊貓愚弄到什麼時候?牠們遲早會吃光這世上所有的竹林,接下來就輪到家禽家畜和孩童了。有相關影像可以證實這項說法。

熊貓是貓不是熊,這應該是明擺著的事。去查查百科全書就能當下立判。

說真的,貓連哺乳動物都不算。牠們其實是為了看起來像哺乳類,才會演化出毛皮的爬行動物。貓的模樣或許挺可愛的,但那些都是作秀。一旦沒人觀看,貓就會幹出種種卑劣兼缺乏衛生的醜行。

你在大海裡看到野生海豚,會想游到牠們身邊吧?但這可不是什麼好主意,畢竟野生海豚不見得會喜歡你,而且,以海豚為食的鯊魚通常就尾隨在後。

要是野生海豚看你不順眼,用頭頂你一下你就一命嗚呼了。但就算那些海豚不理你,後頭的鯊魚也可能把你那不如海豚優雅的泳姿理解成海豚癲癇發作時的動作,繼而開始攻擊你— 因為牠們覺得你很好下手啊,而鯊魚這麼判斷也大抵無誤啊你這蠢到家的新世紀大草包。

有些研究權威認為貓真的在想方設法,企圖奪取這個世界。

許久不曾碰上肉食性動物的變色龍,很可能就此怠惰而日漸遺忘改變體色的方法。這種變色龍真的有夠窩囊,簡直汙辱了牠們變色龍的名字。

我們相信這些真理都是不證自明的。

枚德林
寫於二○一一年

* * *

English:

This and many other important public service announcements can be found in from Eric Mader’s Idiocy, Ltd.. Check it out at Amazon. Dryest humor in the west.

中文:

《白痴有限公司》: 還有犀牛、蝙蝠、obasans 、長頸鹿 、真英雄、台北秘史 and more. 你可以在台灣買到:

at Books.com

at 誠品

at 金石堂

Like my Facebook author page: Eric Mader 枚德林

Saturday, June 16, 2018

Reminder! / 注意事項!




Reminder

Cows moo, dogs bark, sheep bleat, horses neigh, donkeys bray, cats meow, ducks quack, roosters crow, lions roar, wolves howl, ants are quiet, pigs grunt, elephants trumpet, hyenas laugh, hens cackle, llamas are usually quiet, moths are very quiet, crows caw, pigeons coo, mice squeak, trout are quiet, moles are quiet, chameleons are quiet, bears growl, oxen low, whales sing, salamanders are quiet, stag beetles are quiet, bass are very quiet, owls hoot, crickets chirp, parrots talk, impala are quiet, manatees are quiet, haddock are excruciatingly quiet, snails are quiet, lobsters are quiet, centipedes are quiet, sloths are quiet; porcupines resist all our efforts at communication: they are quiet; dace are quiet; salmon are quiet; earthworms refuse to tell us what they know: they are quiet; flounder are quiet; termites are quiet; after all our coaxing the mayflies remain quiet; hedgehogs are quiet; turtles are quiet; both the carrot and the stick have proven of no avail: walleyed pike persist in a dogged and perverse silence that apparently nothing will break.

注意事項

乳牛會哞,狗會汪,綿羊咩咩叫,馬聲嘶嘶,驢聲喔喔, 貓會喵,鴨會呱,公雞會高啼,獅子會怒吼,狼會嚎,螞蟻很 安靜,豬聲侯侯,大象會嗷,鬣狗會笑,母雞咯咯咯,大羊駝 通常都保持沉默,蛾一向非常沉默,烏鴉嘎嘎嘎,鴿子咕咕咕, 老鼠吱吱吱,鱒魚不會出聲,鼴鼠不會出聲,變色龍不會出聲, 熊會低聲咆哮,公牛的嗓音低沈,鯨魚會唱歌,蠑螈靜悄悄, 鍬形蟲靜悄悄,鱸魚非常安靜,貓頭鷹會呼呼叫,蟋蟀會唧唧 叫,鸚鵡會講話,黑斑羚寡言少語,海牛寡言少語,黑線鱈寡 言少語到令人尷尬的程度,蝸牛不太說話,龍蝦不太說話,蜈 蚣不太說話,樹懶不太說話;豪豬完全抵制我們為溝通所做的 一切努力:牠們默不作聲;代斯魚默不作聲;鮭魚默不作聲; 蚯蚓拒絕交代自己知道的一切:牠們悶不吭聲;比目魚悶不吭 聲;白蟻悶不吭聲;我們連哄帶騙後,蜉蝣依舊不言不語;刺 蝟不言不語;海龜不言不語;事實證明,不管人們來軟的、玩 硬的都沒用:一意孤行,堅持封口到底的大眼梭子魚,顯然不 會因為任何事而打破沉默。

English:

This piece is from Eric Mader’s Idiocy, Ltd.. Check it out at Amazon. Dryest humor in the west.

中文:

《白痴有限公司》: 還有犀牛、蝙蝠、obasans 、海豚、真英雄、台北秘史 and more. 你可以在台灣買到:

at Books.com

at 誠品

at 金石堂

Like my Facebook author page: Eric Mader 枚德林

Sunday, May 27, 2018

吃蝴蝶 Eating Butterflies



自然教學法

我還沒刮鬍子,人也還昏昏欲睡,但依然鎖上我在台北 這位於五樓的家門,等著電梯來。我看看手錶,上課快遲到 了。然後,當自高樓層龜速降下的電梯總算在我面前打開, 我便瞧見這位媽媽和她年幼的兒子。這對母子是樓上的住 戶;兒子差不多四、五歲,抱著一大片用保鮮膜包好的西瓜。 那是片黃肉西瓜,而且顏色就跟他 T 恤上印的腳踏車一般 黃。做媽媽的則提著一只過大的 LV 包包,臉上仍舊化著過 濃的彩妝。小男孩對我笑了一笑,但婦人始終低著頭。

接著,就在電梯關起門時,她忽然狠狠打了一下兒子的頭,還用中文破口大罵:「不要一直摸西瓜!都被你摸壞了誰還想吃啊!西瓜就像蝴蝶的翅膀,一摸就壞!」

電梯開始往下走。我從鏡中觀察小男孩的反應。

「有人會吃蝴蝶的翅膀嗎?」幾秒鐘後,兒子問媽媽。

她「嗤」了一聲,然後只回一個字:「笨。」她將那只大包包往身上一攬。

電梯快到一樓時,我和鏡中的小男孩對上了眼。就在這 個高大的外國人面前被打被羞辱,小男孩心裡肯定很不好受。正當電梯準備停在一樓,我便笑著告訴他:「我們國家的人會吃。」

於是小男孩望向媽媽,並在電梯即將開門之際不服輸地說:「他會吃蝴蝶的翅膀!」

我步出電梯,卻瞥見這位母親橫眉豎目地瞪著我。可是小男孩開心了。我知道他的腦袋正在描繪外國人吃著黃色蝴蝶的翅膀,那副津津有味的模樣。

如今,上課快遲到這件事已經變得無關緊要。我走進雨裡,撐起那把不大堅固的破傘朝著捷運站走去。我很慶幸能在電梯裡碰到那對母子。大人就該盡可能趁孩子年幼時,多多啟發他們才是。

寫於二○一四年

Natural Pedagogy

Unshaven, still drowsy, I lock the door to my 5th floor Taipei flat. I check my watch as I wait for the elevator, realizing I’ll likely be late for class. When the elevator door finally opens, after an annoyingly slow descent from a floor high above, I come face to face with some upper-story neighbors, a mother and her young son. The boy is four or five and carries a huge slice of watermelon covered in clear plastic wrap. I notice the yellow of the melon perfectly matches the yellow of the bicycle stenciled on his teeshirt. The mother, as usual, has way overdone her makeup, and is carrying an oversized Louis Vuitton bag. The boy smiles at me, but the woman keeps her gaze on the floor.

Then, as the doors close, she suddenly whacks her son sharply on the head and snaps in Mandarin: “Stop touching the melon! You’ll ruin it and no one will want to eat it! It’s like butterfly wings. If you touch them you ruin them!”

I watch the boy’s reaction in the mirror as the elevator begins to descend.

“Do people eat butterfly wings?” he asks her after a few seconds.

She makes a scoffing noise and says just a single word: “Stupid.” She clutches her bag closer to her.

As we near the ground floor, I catch the boy’s eye in the mirror. He’s clearly upset to be hit and insulted in front of the tall foreigner. As the elevator slows to a stop, I smile at him and say: “We eat them in my country.”

And just before the doors open, he looks up at his mother and defiantly says: “He eats them!”

As I step out of the elevator, I catch the mother scowling at me. But the boy is happy. I know in his mind he’s already picturing foreigners munching on yellow butterfly wings.

That I’ll be late for my class matters little now. I step out into the rain, hoist my flimsy umbrella, and head to the subway. I’m glad I caught them on the elevator. One must always try one’s best to get to children when they’re young.

2014

中文:

《白痴有限公司》: 還有犀牛、蝙蝠、obasans 、海豚、真英雄、台北秘史 and more. 你可以在台灣買到:

at Books.com

at 誠品

at 金石堂

Like 我的FB粉絲頁: Eric Mader 枚德林

English:

Have some deadpan with your coffee. From Idiocy, Ltd. Dryest humor in the west.

Sunday, February 11, 2018

Idiocy, Ltd. / 白痴有限公司 and Why I Love the Prose Poem


With Sharky Chen at TIBE 2018

I was very glad to join Sharky Chen of commaBOOKS (逗點文創) at the Taipei International Book Exhibition to talk to readers about the new Chinese translation of Idiocy, Ltd. Here were my comments:

謝謝各位來到這裡。

我是寫3種文類的自由作家,也是住台北20年的台灣女婿。

我很感謝詩人枚綠金幫我找到陳允石這麼好的譯者來翻譯我的這本和台北有關的散文詩故事集《白痴有限公司》。我也特別謝謝陳允石。我和她溝通很多次,詳細說明, 讓她知道寫作的用意。也非常謝謝逗點文創的各位幫忙這本書。

台灣讀者知道的法國詩人波特萊爾是努力推散文詩的十九世紀大師。我寫的散文詩故事已經有世界其他大師的影響。

我寫出很多新的實驗,還有我對台灣的愛。

書裡面有推薦文和序,註解,幫助讀者明白我的語言實驗,很多益智闖關遊戲和謎的神秘感覺,等待大家發掘。

That’s quite brief. Initially I’d planned to spend more time giving some rough ideas of what I’m trying to accomplish with the book. But I didn’t have time to get my comments rendered in Chinese. And anyhow, I’m not sure people sitting there wanted to listen to my painfully accented Mandarin for that long. (!)

Still, I’ll post my draft comments here because, for readers new to the prose poem, they might be helpful.

Eric Mader 枚徳林

On Idiocy, Ltd. and the Jacobian Prose Poem

Thank you all for coming to listen. I’ve been writing seriously for many years now, I’ve published a novel, a collection of essays, and other things, all in English. But since the 1990s I’ve been living here in Taipei, my life is here, I love Taiwan, and so I’m very happy finally to publish one of my books here in Chinese. Because many of my best friends are here, and now they can read some of what I’ve been working on. What’s more, I’m especially happy it’s my weirdest book that’s been translated first: Idiocy, Ltd. I’m thankful to 逗點文創 for taking on the project.

This book is a collection of short texts, including a few short stories, but mostly it contains what we in the West call prose poems. The prose poem has a very odd history, beginning in French in the 19th century with Baudelaire and Rimbaud and eventually being practiced by writers elsewhere in Europe and the US. What started me writing in this genre was my discovery many years ago of one 20th century French prose poet: Max Jacob.

With Max Jacob and a few other European writers, the prose poem took on a very different character from what it was earlier, and became very different from lyric poetry in general. Jacob turned it into a space of play. For one, he used the genre to play with narrative conventions. Jacob mastered a certain tone, both intimate and detached at the same time, a very ironic tone connected, I think, to his Jewishness, and arising from his being something of an outsider to European culture.

What do I mean by Jacob’s “playfulness”?

This will be difficult for me to express in Chinese, so I’ll try to make it very simple.

Whenever you sit down to read a story or newspaper article or novel, you immediately, in the very first sentence, are infected by a rhythm, by a certain style, that determines how the genre works and tells you what kind of thing you are reading. What Jacob did brilliantly was set off in the style of one genre--his first sentences leading the reader to anticipate automatically what kind of writing would follow--but then suddenly he would switch in some other direction, the initial style would stop making sense, or the logic of the writing would break down. In other words, Jacob was constantly tricking the reader, making the reader expect one thing, then surprising him with an entirely different thing. He would begin stories that would go nowhere, that would end up in a joke on the main character, and he’d do it all in a handful of sentences. His writing is intentionally confusing in a way that makes you think not so much about the content of the story, but about the rules according to which stories are told. Or sometimes the rules by which newspaper articles are written. Because Jacob played this kind of game with all kinds of different genres of writing: newspaper articles, love letters, family histories, fairy tales.

I don’t know if you follow what I mean. In a few brilliant sentences, Jacob would mock the way we use language, and the way he would do it would make us notice how stiff our genres are. He would show this stiffness by breaking the rules in funny ways.

I give an example from everyday life: If you’re used to using a knife to cut vegetables in your kitchen, you don’t think about it, you just reach for it and start cutting. But if one day you pick it up and it’s broken, if the blade cracks and falls off of the handle, suddenly you have this odd feeling: “This is my knife that I’ve been using for years. And now?” You look at it as a suddenly alien thing; you notice it. You realize how long you’ve been taking it for granted only because, suddenly, it is something completely different: it can no longer cut your vegetables.

This is what Max Jacob and a lot of modern prose poets after him do with language. They break language in order to wake us up. They show us what we took for granted by misleading us in unpredictable ways. Of course as a writer Jacob does more than this, he does much else as well, but this is for me his most essential accomplishment.

In a lot of the texts in Idiocy, Ltd., I’m working in this way too. In many of them I use the language of persuasion and argument to make claims that aren’t persuasive at all. Or I state facts about things that aren’t actually facts, but absurdities. But I state them in a tone as if everyone already accepted the claims as true. Or I start out in a certain style, say adventure narrative, and shift into something very different, putting the whole notion of adventure in doubt.

Reading this kind of thing, some readers just say “Huh? It doesn’t make sense,” but other readers, they laugh. They’re led to laugh because the effect has worked.

Another thing I want to say about this kind of writing--I mean the kind of prose poem writing that a lot of writers have been working on during the recent decades: it is a method that can take up almost any genre of text and deform it in humorous or revealing ways. So, for example, here are some kinds of texts that could be taken up by a prose poet:

political speech;
fable;
folk take;
restaurant review;
message in a bottle;
public service announcement;
travel log;
medical report.

I make fun of some of these in my book by infecting and bending them.

Now this kind of writing is hard to translate into another language, and I’m very lucky that for this book I had Pansy Chen as translator, because she worked very hard to make the odd changes in tone work in Chinese. From people who’ve read the book so far, people here in Taiwan, I can tell that she often succeeded brilliantly. She and I met regularly for awhile, discussing most of the texts in the book line by line, so she always knew just what I was trying to do.

I want to thank Pansy for that careful work. I think any of you here, though you’re likely to find some of these texts just strange or opaque, other texts will make you laugh or make you look at things in a different way. So it’s a book about breaking perceptions, or at bending them in unexpected directions. I’d love to hear from you if you have any comments.

You can look at the handout I’ve given you. I invite you to follow my author page on Facebook and post comments there. In the coming weeks I’ll post any reviews that come out about the book. So you can see what other readers think of it.

Again, thanks for coming.

E.M.

白痴有限公司在台灣:
books.com

Eslite 誠品

Kingstone 金石堂
The English original is available through Amazon:
Idiocy, Ltd.
Reviews of Idiocy, Ltd., etc.:
Who’s the Idiot?
My novel A Taipei Mutt is out in a second edition. The Asian capital unmuzzled:
A Taipei Mutt
Cheers.

Thursday, February 8, 2018

Idiocy, Ltd.: 白痴有限公司 Launch Party




THANK YOU all for coming to the book launch for 白痴有限公司! I was so glad to see you--many people I haven't seen in a long time. I only wish I'd had more time to talk to you during the party. I was busy signing books for the three hours.

台灣是我最愛的國家。你們台灣學生朋友們是我最愛的人。沒錯。

Thanks to Toasteria Cafe 永康 Yong Kang staff for coming, some of you, and for doing such a great job. Hope you guys who weren't working had a good time. Special thanks to 林小虎 and Vivian Ruan. Great job!

對於這本書感興趣的其他人: 白痴有限公司 is in Taiwan's book stores: http://www.eslite.com/product.aspx?pgid=1001254072653973

--枚德林/Eric Mader

[The book launch party for 白痴有限公司, the Chinese translation of Idiocy, Ltd. published by 逗點文創結社, was on January 31, 2018, at Toasteria Cafe Yong-Kang. The English original is available through Amazon. Above photo with the great people at Toasteria!]

PHOTOS / READER COMMENTS

With Yumin Lai and others

Yumin writes: 我和孩子的英文老師枚德林Eric Mader, 是個風趣但是教學卻嚴謹的美國人;他學的是英法比較文學,卻因為娶了台灣人而在台灣停留了二十年;這本以富有童趣的文筆寫成的諷喻小品集,除了令人莞爾,其實也隱含了不少對當今社會現象的洞察與規勸,有點像東方朔的風格。它原本是英文的,如今有了譯筆精湛的中文版,在這懶得出門的濕冷天,閲讀Eric老師的冷笑話再適合不過了,也推薦給大家!

With Annie Chang

Annie writes: 我從小學三年級就認識的英文老師 Eric Mader, 將他的書翻譯成中文付梓了。

這年代出書其實門檻沒那麼高,但我必須用「付梓」這個字眼來描述【白癡有限公司】的出版發行,因為這是我看了本書第一部分,那些有點文青但又富含文化底蘊、針砭時事發人省思的屁話之後,覺得最符合本書風格的用字。

以前Eric帶我念青年版的 The Odyssey, 希臘神話、希臘悲劇Oedipus Tyrannus、舊約創世紀,可以說是引領我學習西方文化的入門,雖然很多生澀的單字我可能離開課堂就忘了(也太快),但 Eric教學的時候常常有很生動的比喻跟演出,還有很多發人大笑的白板畫,一直都讓我難以忘懷。在閱讀這本書的時候,那些插畫還有跟Eric敘事的風格一模一樣的畫面就躍然眼前,讓我欲罷不能,一口氣就讀完接近三分之一。

我很榮幸在Eric眾多的學生中,成為他印象深刻的一個,失聯多年後,我們在2011年在東區的星巴克重逢;我還邀請Eric參加我的婚宴。

這是我親愛的英文老師也是永遠的朋友出版的第一本中文書,推薦給大家。

Eric: Thank you so much, Annie. I'm so happy to have run into you in that Starbucks, because I remembered very well teaching you as a little girl--and who wouldn't remember? You've always had such clear vision and so much personality, the only kid who'd come into the classroom early, then sit down RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME and start talking, almost like one adult to another: complaints about life, questions about this and that, and then you'd be doing it all while drawing doodles. So I knew this girl was something special.

I'm really moved by your reaction to the book and will certainly save it. I've been lucky to have such a classy friend. Hope you and that witty guy you married keep getting the most of out of life.

With students Howard, Jessica and others

Jessica writes: 兩年了 大家還是很鬧 他還是很搞笑
他的文字也還是遠比許多無病呻吟的情感有溫度的多
看過他好多文章 這次他出書了 認真覺得好開心

To me, you are the best (funny) teacher.
Thanks for every one of your crazy classes!!!

Eric: Great photo with you guys! Thanks for coming and thanks for posting it. Because I want to remember you all when I'm . . . old. It has been great fun for me teaching you, and, for you in the Friday class, reading your writing! Because it's always sharp, and often hilarious. Even that Allen MF 2 guy, when he's not falling asleep, writes some really funny stuff!

加油 Howard, Jessica, AMF2, Hank, Ylang, Andy and Charlie.

With Aven Kao


With Williams Adilehou and Eileen Chen


With Nick Huang and Julia Chen

Nick writes: 我之前是Eric的學生,而我讀這本書的原則是:
「幹你娘看爆」


沒錯,就是幹你娘看爆。

什麼?讀後感?我說,

喜歡The Simpsons或South Park美式笑點的你不能不去一趟納普勒斯的恐怖再教育中心;身為台灣人的你不能不為台灣奧巴桑的迷人行徑瘋狂;身為基督徒的你不能不知道為什麼文生會在創世紀裡被罰站兩次;身為地球人的你不能不了解貓貓的來由及Hello Kitty的陰謀。

吃飯時間快到了,我要去抓蝴蝶了,伏爾泰在等著我餵他/牠吃蝴蝶翅膀呢!

#這批很純

#不管他嗑了什麼都給我來一點

以下神秘連結點開有驚喜:

books.com

http://www.eslite.com/product.aspx?pgid=1001254072653973

https://www.kingstone.com.tw/book/book_page.asp?kmcode=2018740959593

Eric: Hah! Many thanks for the good word, Nick. I'm glad you're getting some laughs from the book. Of course your commentary made me laugh too.

BTW, for others who see this post, those two in the photo, Nick and Julia, were part of the longest-running class I ever taught. Some of the students in that class, like Nick, I began to teach when they were about 11. And continued teaching them for ten years! We started with basic verbs, and ended with George Saunders and Shakespeare. It was great fun.

With Lisa, who helped me out getting books to people

Lisa writes: Love my crazy teacher Eric Mader and all his wonderful thoughts.

希望大家都買五本,一本自己留著讀,一本收藏用,兩本推廣用,一本放神桌拜拜。

With (from right) Michael Thomsen, Serina Tsai and Marcus Thomsen

Serina writes: 大概是八年前,有一天我突然想說,來跟住在我家對面的鄰居~Eric老師上英文課。這樣以後出國的時候不用依賴別人,已經會寫、會看,就是不太能說的我,於是展開了社會人士學習之旅。


說英語,其實沒有那麼難,如果你找到好的老師。雖然現在已經沒有上課了,但是當時Eric真的給我很大的啟發跟幫助!

等我沒那麼忙的時候,希望自己可以繼續上課。

今日是他的新書發表會,看到擠滿的人潮,跟大排長龍的簽書書迷,就知道,他絕對是個好老師.........在各方面!!!

Congratulations to my dear English teacher.

Eric: You're too good to me, Serina. And me too, I'm very glad I finally got to know you: a sharp woman with a brilliant attitude toward life. Also I've met some great people through you, so I'm lucky there too. Of course I'll always be very willing to work on any English with you, though you don't much need it anymore, given you've learned so quickly.

Much appreciate you guys coming. Hope you enjoy the book!

With Frank

With Daniel and Michelle Fang and the Chen sisters

Tony and Coco

With Hana "Banana" and Orion

My colleague Erica and the inimitable Duku


長頸鹿一旦搭上電扶梯,永無止盡的災難就開始了。   

沒有最白痴,只有更白痴!
  動物人類手牽手,獻上高智商北七寓言——
  一本以「卡夫卡式荒謬」與國際接軌的白痴故事集。   

什麼叫「白痴的言行」?怎樣算「白痴」?
  「只要能辨明一個人究竟是如何耍白痴、可以多白痴──只要能看出此人臻至這種白痴狀態的方式和程度,並釐清這個方式和程度與此人可能自詡為聰明之處緊密交織、環環相扣的關係,便蔚為一項難得的殊榮了。」——枚德林   

當世界的癲狂成為日常,唯一看見真相的只有外表看似英文教師,實際上是人間格物者的枚德林。
  四十則帶著關懷卻引人發噱的小品,十二則獨特視角的臺北紀錄,為這過於嚴肅又常笑得毫無理由的海島,提供了另一個看待世界的方式。   

P.S. 書裡的長頸鹿會抽菸,小朋友不要學。
  P.S. 書裡的插圖也很有事,是作者親筆畫的喔!

好評推薦   

「枚德林始終雋永奇特,自成異格。其文思與意趣上下縱橫,源源不絕。謎般笑點或爆點,為閱讀人帶來層層挑戰。妙筆所到,處處生花。絕對值得歷險尋寶。」——Bradley Winterton,《台北時報》資深書評家   

「無論是抽著菸的長頸鹿,佛羅里達州式的思想改造營,或是台北市裡一整群難得一見的怪胎,枚德林純熟老練的筆法,穩健適切地表現了以下技藝:譏嘲針砭;善意嘲諷;矇哄幽眛詭奇—近似波赫士,卡夫卡以及其他大師筆力,卻全然發輝屬己精神。荒謬感冷不防蹦出,上窮碧落無法無天;上下文的語境指涉瞬變,看似傾軋,精彩得令讀者難以招架。潛在的批判貫穿《白痴有限公司》全書,展現深度人文關懷。這是一本會讓你吃驚大笑的書,但,最重要的是,腦力激盪之餘,促人認真思考。」——Duncan Chesney, 美國學者,現當代文學評論家,國立臺灣大學外國語文學系暨研究所教授。   

「在《白痴有限公司》為我們打開的世界,藝術的遊玩與嚴謹感動了讀者,眼界及耳域都因此更加開濶,覺察字句的音樂與興味。」——John Poch, 美國詩人,著有《Dolls》以及《Two Men Fighting with a Knife》等數本詩集。

At Eslite (誠品), Kingstone, and online.

For more reviews, new books, follow my author page on Facebook: Eric Mader 枚德林

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

CATS: Unspeakably Evil Pseudo-Animals from Outer-Space


Cat, stage 4 projection: about 2029

[The following Public Service Announcement is taken from my book Idiocy, Ltd. Pick up a copy today and save yourself a world of trouble. --E.M.]

Re: CATS

They’re onto me. It happened again today. Not long now and I may not be here to warn you.

But does it matter? How many of you are listening anyway?

I will give it one more try.

Until now I’ve usually kept my warnings polite and indirect, focusing on the relatively unimportant issue of dogs vs. cats as pets. Everyone knows the world is divided between “dog people” and “cat people”. Up to now most of my efforts have been aimed at making cat people see reason--to help them rethink allowing felines into their homes.

“Cats are loving and intelligent companions,” they’d say. “Besides, they’ve got more personality than dogs.”

Uh-huh. And mashed potatoes are a tasty alternative to duck à l’orange.

These discussions usually followed a predictable pattern.

“Look,” I’d begin. “Let’s do a little thought experiment.”

“Sure.”

“Imagine you’re at home in your living room, about midnight, and some drugged up kid breaks in. One of those fluke break-ins by an addict in need of drug money. He’s got a tire iron and his plan is to smash your head in and rifle your place for cash. Now, for this experiment, I want you to imagine you have a dog as pet. Okay?”

“Sure.”

“So--what would your dog do when the kid came at you?”

“He’d bark like mad!” the cat lover says. “He’d bite him.”

“You're right. Now imagine the same situation, but you’ve got a cat instead of a dog. What would your cat do when it saw the intruder coming at you with the tire iron?”

“Uhhh . . .”

“Not sure? I’ll tell you what your cat would do. It'd sense danger and dive for cover behind the sofa.”

“Well . . .”

“Then after the intruder had killed you and left with your cash and credit cards, once the coast was clear, your cat would come out from behind the sofa and check you out. Then it'd proceed to laze on the sofa."

"You're sick."

"Well, what do you think your cat would do? I think you know. Your precious cat would do nothing to protect you. It'd watch out for its own fuzzy little ass by ducking behind the sofa. And what does that tell you about cats?”

“I dunno . . . They’re smart?”

“Agent Smith is smart. That doesn’t mean I’d want him as a roommate.”

“Whatever. It’s not gonna happen,” the cat lover concludes. “And I’m not so sure my cat wouldn’t defend me anyhow. You never know!”

“Right.”

Sometimes I’ll raise a different scenario, in which the cat lover is in her living room with her cat, watching TV, but this time there’s a witch hovering outside the window who decides to shrink her down to six inches tall. Suddenly there she is on the sofa next to Mittens, but six inches tall. What would Mittens do?

Of course I usually get the same evasive “Uhh . . .” for answer.

“Your cat that loves you would look at you for four or five seconds, a bit confused maybe, then smack you one with its right paw, then smack you again with its left, then break your spine with its jaw, and it would keep playing with you like that until dinner was finished. Doubt it?”

“My cat would never do that.”

“Give me a break. But what would a dog do in this situation? Imagine it. Really: try to imagine. The reaction would be very different. A dog seeing its owner suddenly shrunk would panic. It would whine, its tail would wag nervously, it'd run around trying to figure out what to do. In short: A dog would do pretty much what a human would do. That’s the gulf between dogs and cats--same as the gulf between dogs and lizards.”

Having presented these scenarios, having pointed to the other obvious disadvantages of cats (hair stuck on everything, the LITTER BOX) by the end of the conversation the cat lover would still usually insist there was nothing perverse about living with cats. Instead, he or she would typically go away convinced I was a jerk for coming up with such scenarios in the first place.

That’s mental illness for you, huh? Try to help people and they turn on you. Is there any getting through the kitty fog that blinds them?

But that was the old days. Things are different now. Now I’m taking the gloves off. No more pet talk. Because is about the fate of humanity. I’ve decided to come out with the full truth. Someone has to, and frankly, I’m sick to death of watching this. Personally, again today, I was almost killed by one of these vicious creatures.

I was walking in a lane near my apartment in Taipei, where I live. In recent days I’d noticed a new cat prowling the neighborhood, slinking behind parked cars, glaring at me as I headed to work. Nasty butterscotch-and-whitish thing--what do they call it, "tabby"? I paid it no mind, except to glare back.

I should point out that these Taipei lanes are often abuzz with traffic, usually motorcycles and scooters. Kids fly down them at a pretty good clip too, and it’s a wonder more of them don’t get killed, except that plenty of them do get killed.

Anyhow, heading home from work, walking down the lane, two young women on a motorbike were flying toward me at high speed, nothing to worry about, they’d simply fly past, except that this time that tabby street cat decided to dash out from under a parked car and right into the line of traffic.

What do you think the girl driving the motorbike did, run over poor kitty? No. She swerved straight at me. Better to injure a walking man than harm a street cat.

I leapt just in time and landed on the ground, my glasses flying off my face as the girls skidded to a stop ten meters away.

The girl on the back jumped off and ran to check--on the fucking cat! The driver gave me a non-committal smile and said: “Sorry. You OK?”

“No,” I said, sitting up on the pavement. “First, you’re going way too fast for a lane. Second, you could have put me in the hospital. If I hadn’t dived, I’d have broken bones.”

“Well, sorry. As long as you’re alright. I mean, I saw the cat but didn’t see you.”

Which was a lie, given my size relative to the cat.

“The cat’s alright!” the other girl said, coming back breathless and smiley. It was then I noticed the Hello Kitty helmet.

“Pssh!” I scoffed. I stood up, dusted myself off, limped away.

Now maybe in all this you see an everyday traffic mishap: a cat spooked by something runs into the street, driver swerves and knocks someone down. That's not how I see it. Because this isn’t the first time this kind of thing has happened. The truth is that cat tried to kill me, and it had come into this neighborhood to do just that. Yes, my accident today was actually a case of attempted murder. And this is why I’m finally going to reveal what I know about cats. Because the truth must be told. Before it’s too late.

Cats are an alien species of life that has come to our planet to take it over. They are a parasitic life form that has learned to impersonate mammals so as to attach themselves to us, their hypnotized human hosts. My research suggests they are making rapid progress in this takeover. I believe they'll soon be moving to Stage 3. Once that happens, we're finished.

For whatever reason, cats have chosen to infiltrate us by hypnotizing and subjugating the female half of the species. They’ve done this through their supposed cuteness. Consider: It used to be that women who had trouble with men would turn to religion or volunteering or some other kind of charitable work. But look what’s happened. Community service or prayer or knitting clubs are all passé. Most of these women now become cat ladies. Instead of doing anything for other people, they spend their days taking care of feline parasites from outer space. Is it any surprise the parasites are multiplying?

Did I mention religion? Have you noticed how cats have become objects of almost cult-like worship for these women? They’ve replaced the role previously held by Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the Buddha. The cats have done it by design. They're leading us to worship them.

Did I say hypnotized? That's to put it mildly. Cats carry a brain virus called Toxoplasma gondii which they transmit to humans via contact with their excrement. Cute, huh? And think about it: contact with cat excrement is pretty much a sure thing when they’re shitting inside your house in a little sandbox, then tramping the shit-laced sand dust everywhere with their designed-to-transfer-shit-dust puffball paws. Shit dust on tables and chairs, shit dust on sofas and counters, shit dust all over. Is it any surprise people with cats become carriers of the Toxo virus, which has been linked to schizophrenia and brain cancer by the way, but which also, and this is key, has been shown to warp other mammals’ brains so as to make them attracted to the smell of cat urine.

Don't believe me? Go look it up. Zoologists suppose cats and the virus evolved in symbiosis so as to draw rodents to the odor of cat piss, the virus thus offering cats a little protein perk for hosting it. And guess what, cat lover: In this equation you’re the rodent. Virally mesmerized by the smell of your cat’s pee, you slavishly feed and care for it day after day while it sits there glaring at you, waiting for the day when it can give up all pretense of being a pet and take over.

Scientists insist evolution explains the virus, but I know differently. Though I support evolutionary theory in general, in this instance I smell intelligent design. Alien intelligent design. Toxo is a high-grade bioweapon installed in the cats in pursuance of total human enslavement at the hands, or paws, of these stinking pseudo-mammals and their alien overlords.

An estimated sixty million Americans currently carry the Toxoplasma virus. House cats should be banned. I’m thinking industrial-sized burlap bags with bricks. Or the way we deal with cattle that have mad cow disease. But instead of sane public policy, what do we get? A worldwide onslaught of pro-feline propaganda.

Do I even have to mention the Hello Kitty brand again? It’s perverted the minds of tens of millions of young girls globally, many becoming office women who tote Kitty cell phones or key chains, then soon after that going full-on cat lady.

I can still remember the shudder I felt arriving in Asia back in the ‘90s when I saw how saturated the culture was with this mouthless little vermin, the Kitty icon. At the time I didn’t understand what was behind my shudder. Now I do. I was experiencing a premonition of the slow infiltration that was just then entering a new stage.

Two decades on, Kitty has infiltrated the West too. In the States I see Kitty girls all over and cat ladies popping up on every corner. Start with Avril Lavigne and work your way out.

Here north of Taipei in the park where I go for a smoke break from work there’s a dotty-looking cat lady who walks round every evening putting down little plastic bowls of Friskies for the strays. They wait for her under parked cars and glare at me with their alien eyes as I smoke my mini cigars. They know me. They know I’m onto them.

But as for the homeless woman missing one arm who hangs out on the other side of the park--does our cat lady ever bring something for her? Never. I chat with the homeless woman and put change in her bowl a few times a week. Meanwhile the cat lady feeds these alien parasites, raising up the next generation.

I watch her as she makes her rounds, the distracted air, the nervous twitch on her face, brain eaten away by the Toxo.

When is the world going to wake up? How obvious does it have to get? It’s to the point that these invaders have begun hardwiring humans to work for them.

Did I say humans? Maybe I should say fakes, androids.

Years ago I read The Facebook Effect, David Kirkpatrick’s book on the conception and founding of the world’s first major social network. Kirkpatrick focused on the strategies behind Facebook’s advance and the brilliance Mark Zuckerberg showed every step of the way, overcoming obstacle after obstacle, foreseeing problems months before they came up. It was an amazing story, and before I’d finished the book, as I was reading the last chapters in a local cafe, it dawned on me: “This Zuckerberg guy isn’t actually human.”

And he isn’t.

Mark Zuckerberg is an alien plant, an android. He was put here by the cats. You doubt it? Skim Facebook feeds and you’ll see. Photos of cats, cats used as profile pictures, endless videos showing the skills and “cuteness” of these adorable “animals”. Nonstop visual atrocity!

As a psy-op, Facebook sure was genius. You gotta hand it to these despicable aliens. “Zuckerberg”, that supposed smart Jewish kid from White Plains, New York, created a portal through which the cats could invade ever more of our human consciousness. People are now actually using cat faces for their profile pictures. Can you beat that for propaganda? People identifying themselves with the aliens that will soon enslave them.

With all this going on, how long can it be before they make their move--before they reach out their paws for total control? Perhaps there won’t even be a coup. They’ll achieve ascendancy slowly without us even noticing. It will be a silent takeover, not a whimper of protest. One fine day most of the planet will wake up and realize they’ve been reduced to sweat-shop conditions, working in huge cat toy factories or grinding up lobster and fish carcasses to fill truckload after truckload with cans of Friskies Captain’s Platter. Meanwhile the cats will be feeding us intravenously. We’ll be chained body and soul to the fishy grindstone of their pussy utopia.

OK, that last line didn’t come out right. But anyhow, after the takeover will come the physical change, Stage 4, when the cats shape-shift to reveal their true appearance. Some fellow researchers in this area have managed to get images of what this next stage of cat will look like. It isn’t pretty.

Of course I realize some of you may be skeptical. You may have doubts that cats are actually an alien species sent here to enslave us. You may suspect I personally just don’t like cats and am making all this up because I’m allergic to cats and my grandma’s cat scratched me up bad when I was four and I still haven’t forgotten it. But I’ve a few more facts I think will cinch the deal.

First, when I say that cats are here to reduce us to groveling submission I am referring to house cats only. I have nothing against the larger cats: lions, tigers, panthers, cheetahs, cougars--these all can be fine animals, especially the latter. No, it’s only house cats, those that pose no apparent threat to humans, that concern me.

Because if you research the history of these smaller cats, you will find something very strange. Paleozoologists actually have trouble explaining it.

Consider: Cats were first domesticated in Egypt around the time the pyramids were built. It is in Egypt we first find cat bones buried in ways that indicate they were pets. But interestingly, these cats are of a type and species that can’t be found in the zoological record. There's so far no evidence of any similar-sized wild species of cat that the Egyptians domesticated. In other words, the zoological record shows that this species first showed up in Pharaonic Egypt as human pets. The species didn’t exist until it was already living in Egyptian households.

How is that possible? It’s nothing like the case with dogs or other animals, whose domestication can easily be traced from wild forebears. What does it mean?

I have told you.

House cats are an artificial species. They are fake animals. They were genetically engineered precisely to be taken in by us. The alien intelligence that engineered them used wild cats as a rough model (they wanted to create a convincing mammal) but made the soon-to-be-domestic cats smaller and more deviously intelligent. The Egyptians fell for the bait: they took the creatures in, and the demented practice of keeping house cats spread from there around the world.

It’s little surprise the Egyptians were the first to host this parasite. As noted archeologists like Erich van Däniken and Zecharia Sitchin (the former was nominated for the Nobel Prize, but didn’t get it because of the machinations of Swedish cat lovers) have pointed out, there is evidence the Egyptians, in their technological advancement and in the construction of the pyramids, were using techniques taught them by aliens. In fact is likely that, like the Nazca lines in Peru, the pyramids were important markers of some kind for alien landing strips. One can imagine how it went. Hyperintelligent cat-faced creatures arriving in their UFOs, landing in the Egyptian desert and meeting with the Pharaoh to tell him what to do. And the Pharaoh, he's like: “Okay. Whatever you cats say.”

This is how it happened. Van Däniken deserved that Nobel Prize.

Yes, I know there’s a lot of info here and maybe you’re having trouble digesting it. But the point is, something must be done before it’s too late. I’m trying to get the warning out here, and I'm tired of getting blank stares. So if you're reading this and are not yourself infected by Toxo, you might help me. Share this as widely as possible.

Eric Mader
Taipei

This and 42 other important public service announcements can be found in my new book Idiocy, Ltd.

Saturday, June 20, 2015

Who's the Idiot?



It is a rare privilege to recognize just how one is idiotic, how idiotic one is, the howness of this state and how it’s interwoven with anything one might call one’s intelligence.
--Eric Mader

Idiocy, Ltd. is now available. You do need a copy.

Some readers:

Whether its smoking giraffes, Florida-style rehabilitation, or the oddities of a whole cast of characters in Taipei, Eric Mader shows a sure hand in balancing satire, spoof, and twilight-zone weird, revealing hints of Kafka, Borges, and other worthies, but with a spirit all his own. With its riotous absurdity, its jarring changes of register, and its underlying critical but humane tone, Idiocy, Ltd. will make you laugh and, more important, make you think.
--Duncan Chesney, Professor of Comparative Literature,
National Taiwan University

Unpredictability is Mader’s stock in trade . . . an endlessly fascinating eccentric.
--Bradley Winterton

The best of these poems surprise us not with a flashy detail, but an image or an abstraction we somehow knew was right around the corner. In the most imaginative moments, where the poems are surprised by translation across language and culture, we are playfully and seriously moved to open our eyes wider and our ears to hear the delight of words.
--John Poch, author of Fix Quiet and winner
of the 2014 New Criterion Poetry Prize

More:

BOOKISH ASIA has posted a review by Prof. Hugh Hochman of Reed College. A scholar of 20th-century literature, Hochman raises some of the questions that most interest me, especially that of genre.

Idiocy, Ltd. is now available in a Chinese edition published by Comma Books. See: 白痴有限公司 Launch Party.

Also of interest may be Letter to a Young Prose Poet, on the roles Max Jacob and Daniil Kharms played in getting me into this fix. See also: Idiocy, Ltd. / 白痴有限公司 and Why I Love the Prose Poem.

Check out Idiocy, Ltd. Dryest damn prose in the West.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Chitter-Chatter


The squirrel: furry forest friend or pestiferous urban vermin? That's the topic of tonight's show where we let the viewer decide.

"Hopping his Merry Way across the sidewalk and onto the trunk of the lone Maple, I see my Friend the squirrel come to break the paved Drear of my city block. I breathe a whiff of emergent Nature."

"What sound is more frightful than the shrill chitter-chatter of the mad squirrel that dismembered the trash bag behind my Building? It dragged off a carcass of pizza crust that I watched disappear round the corner like my Hope.

"The center of Power is shifting and we do nothing to stop it."

Though it has long been known that squirrels spread Rabies to pets and children, it is only recently that researchers have proven the amazing ability of these rodents to spread Gossip.

Studies done by Hunt and Greimas at the University of Michigan (2010) suggest that an even minimally dense squirrel population can move an item of salacious Rumor across an urban space and into the suburbs even faster than traditional print Media.

The squirrel rests on its haunches, eating the Chestnut held in its forepaws. Its tail, curved into a stiff "S," stands to attention behind the upright silver body.

When the tasty tidbit concerned a prominent or fashionable young Woman, squirrels were found to spread the slander at a speed and efficiency approaching that of the Internet. This led Greimas to conclude in a Dec. 2011 interview in Zoological American that: "A squirrel is a suburban housewife trapped in a rodent's body."

Hunt, however, has disagreed with his this assessment, stating in a counter interview in Nature: "The soul of squirrels cannot be gendered or classed this way. A squirrel, in my view, is a small mammalian incarnation of the god Hermes. That is how we should treat them. Parkside libations, peanut butter, the works."

A squirrel is the pilonidal cyst of the animal kingdom; it is a compact yet motile furball of pent-up office park Rage.

Greimas: "Note the beady black eyes always on you, the twitching. You approach the tree from one side, it scutters round to the other. You go to the other side and it scutters back, the twitching tail all the while sending Messages in every direction, mean backstabbing bytes of Gossip."

Hunt: "In his role as psychopomp, Hermes led the dead to the Underworld, his caduceus held aloft and guiding them like the squirrel's tail. If only we could cleanse our eyes to see. If only we could read the divine chatter. The word hermeneutics, after all, comes from Hermes."

To move through life like a squirrel leaping branch to branch, Philosophy my tail keeping balance, my path developed by a fractal logic, out to the perimeter of one Oak, then working toward the center of Another. To accept each day with its acorns and near auto misses, ever aware of the boy with the Pellet Gun who lives down the lane.

Greimas: "My research points to one of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors as most effective. I've especially shown good results using Sertraline, which can slow the gossip-mongering of these rodents significantly."

"C'mon, kids!" Buddy Squirrel exclaimed, waving the crowd to the platform. "C'mon! The Acorn Train is about to depart! It's time to go to NutterNutterLand!"

Hunt: "United with Thoth, he brought us the Corpus Hermeticum."

Greimas: "Within ten years, I predict prudent city councils will be earmarking funds to medicate their squirrel populations."

Whether Greimas or Hunt's approach will best help us appease the Wrath of these small tree-hugging mammals, whether they are friends or chattering foes, there is one thing I think we can all agree on here: Squirrels would be nowhere without their extravagant tails.

If Evolutionists point to the tail as having evolved to help the animal balance, we can point another important survival-enhancing aspect of the tail: It's the one thing that makes squirrels cute.

Only raze the fur from a squirrel's tail and you get a largish tree-climbing rat. How long would a neurotic, hygiene-obsessed species like ourselves have tolerated such a creature in our parks and school yards, chattering at our children and denying the Trinity? How long would this verbose vermin have survived?

Whether parkbench backbiters or avatars of Greco-Roman divinity, we'd have exterminated the lot of them back in the Fifties.

* * *

This and many other animal musings are collected in my new book Idiocy, Ltd.--dryest damn prose in the West.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Giraffes

A giraffe is a slim character, chancery style, a lank loiterer always in the way.

Never trust a giraffe with your car keys.

A giraffe is a pillar of dust and dung, feigning gold; it is a broken bamboo rocker wrapped in faux fur; indeed a giraffe is a pair of crutches designed by Louis Vuitton. Overpriced, and far too long to fit under any armpits.

Giraffes are the supermodels of the Serengeti. Their diet of twigs and leaves gives them just enough energy to strut back and forth. If you expect more, bring cocaine.

Giraffes may look peaceful, graceful even, but the truth is they are bored stiff.

If a giraffe could speak, this is what it would say: "It's always the same game. The acacia tree grows taller to keep us from eating the leaves, then we grow a little taller to reach the leaves. Then the acacia tree grows a little taller again and so on. I see no end in sight. We're fed up with it. You got a light?"

Yes, giraffes would smoke if they could.

I'd love to watch a small herd of giraffes just smoking, ignoring the acacia trees as best they can, sunk in ersatz ennui.

Do not believe the Animal Planet cranks. The little knobs on their heads are NOT atavistic antennae from an age when giraffes rented themselves out as radio towers to enterprising Australopithecines.

Giraffes are the Floss-Picks of the Sun.

"I'm at Marcy's place and we're up in her bedroom on the second floor. And things are starting to heat up, you know? And I look and there's this giraffe head in the window watching. About two feet from the screen. Just standing there smoking and watching us. So I yell out, 'Hey, fuck off, you!'"
"Did it go away?"
"You bet it did. Caught the perv red-handed."
"Red-hoofed."
"Huh?"
"Never mind."

The Chinese word for giraffe is "long-neck deer". The Chinese word for owl is "cat-headed eagle". The word for dolphin is "sea-swine". I'm not kidding you.

Giraffes have no end of trouble with escalators.

If they opened a Kentucky Fried Giraffe, four kids could gnaw on the same drumstick simultaneously.

If you interbred a giraffe and a banana, you'd get an oblong sofa pillow covered with soft fur of a dappled yellow and brown. It would probably be marketable.




This and 42 other important public service announcements can be found in my book Idiocy, Ltd.