As the gas crunch and impending financial apocalypse threaten actual apocalypse à la Mad Max, and with Mel Gibson seemingly unavailable to save us, we can only turn to ourselves to draft a contingency plan. I’m using the royal “we,” of course, because really you’re on your own. Let’s see: I’ve got popcorn, chicken, oatmeal, and a liter of water on backup. Sustenance, check. It probably won’t make a difference now to tell you I also own a secret bag of frozen vegetables, which I plan on bartering for a compass. Not really in a chicken mood, moreover, so I may just trade for weapons. Homegoods was all out.
Now, when the rolling blackouts start–and sweep they will–we’ll need to rendezvous at Sanctuary Point. You may know it as the ancient brick church down by Old Man Wiley’s farm, corner of Lawnhaven and Crestmoore. Or what’s left of Crestmoore, anyway. And watch your back. Waypoint B6 is reporting an uptick of Chinese people in quadrant seven. Crazy, huh? They’ve been taking our jobs, goddamn it, and now they’re taking our land.
Set traps if you must. Apparently they don’t eat real protein? They just have to want to believe they’re eating protein. Melamine. Leastways that’s what that egghead Wellenback used to call it before they got to him, rest his soul. Like moths to a flame, he’d say. Soused as all get out on the stuff. I did a dead drop by the dumpster behind the Red Lobster. Four kilos. Brown package. Look for it, but make sure you turn the stop sign 90 degrees clockwise when you leave.
They blew up the nearby Verizon tower. Gone. Nothing but rubble. Signal’s dead. Wait, no, I’m getting a single bar! Praise the L– It’s dead again. Shit. We’ll need to find other LOC’s. No way we can count on this website. Three, four hours tops, and it’s lights out. But we shall not go into the dark of night. Well, at least until sunset hits. I’d send you the next post–call it a communiqué, please–via falcon, but I only have one left. Bird flu got the other six. Hope your Morse code’s up to snuff. Look to the lighthouse on Thursday. If you make it until then.
How the experts determine whether we’re in a recession, depression, or even a humiliating rap session, nobody really knows, though I suspect there’s a giant plastic spinner sitting in a prestigious think tank somewhere, and it’s click-click-clicking to a stop. Analysts and economists “congregating,” it turns out, is really code for picking which lucky schlub gets to give the ol’ plastic sonuvabitch a whirl. Most recently, it looks like it’s settling on the dreaded “D” word.
When I think of the Great Depression, two things promptly come to mind: first, there’s the iconic photograph of the double-wide soup line, an orderly mass of gaunt, grim men in bowler hats. The other imagery comes from a scene in Seabiscuit, during which a ringing phone interrupts a dinner party to herald the coming of economic catastrophe. Sorry, should’ve left it at the photo. That second reference probably cut off my line of street cred considerably.
While neither scene should happen these days, primarily because I didn’t name my racehorse something equally stupid like Oceancracka, there’s a kind of panic in the air. Do you withdraw all your cash, hide it under your bed? Will your bed actually be worth more than the cash sitting under it? Will you have a job six months from now to pay off the combination bed-safe? Why are gas stations dry? This is milk I’m buying, right, and not liquid gold? Now, more than ever, the best policy seems to be to tune out the media noise and just cruise. Sometimes, when there’s a rough patch, I like to set a future beacon for myself: this same time next year, it’ll all be over. I’ll look back and wonder why I ever worried. Right?
Vulparroty, a timely concatenation of “vulgarity” and “parrot,” is the name of the avian overlord perched securely above, his prodigious eye fixed upon you, ever watching, ever judging. The old logo, born screaming onto a cold text file one night, was an unseemly hatchet job well past its shelf life, and I’m relieved we were able to retire it. I knew I couldn’t be trusted to renovate the graphic, since my Microsoft Word skills have stagnated these past few years, so I turned to Mod Memento for assistance.
I made sure to contact the proprietor through back channels, naturally, because the official storefront lies in dangerous country: Etsy.com, a terrifying hellscape of handmade crafts and decorations. The urge to weep openly is upon me, truly. Think of Etsy as an artsy eBay, a haven for those who would willingly commune to celebrate design, drawing, sculpture, colors other than black and olive green, knitting–certainly I could visit, but my presence would have all the effectiveness of a church group in Amsterdam.
Chief among my initial requests was the stipulation that no part of the logo could be pink, nor could there be tulips and orchids or some such shit adorning it. Most importantly, though, I wanted to retain a reference to this idea of secondhand discourse, or saying stuff that’s already been said. Well, Boo Bear listened. She delivered. Parrots, in my mind, are usually the province of pirates or pet stores that can’t sell through stock. But they indeed are deft at recycling communication, and this was far cleverer and subtler than the original symbol.
It was a process, of course. There were revisions. The first iteration, Vulparroty Prime, was a malignant-looking beast. And some people continue to be physically incapable of producing swear words, so I suppose we’ll settle for an asterisk, a percentage sign, and a few harsh wingdings for now. The end product, however, was exactly what I needed. When it was finally unveiled, Boo Bear noted how glad she was to “capture the proper expression of a bird with a chip on his shoulder.” Ha! Unbeknownst to her, birds don’t even have shoulders. I don’t think they even have necks.