BB:\KERNEL RECOVERY SUCCESSFUL

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BB:\HELLO MR. PILGOR

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BB:\ACCESSING FILE: TALL TALES

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Since all confessions inevitably begin with a song and dance routine, I have decided to go with a low-tech production number, one that requires no allegros or adagios, no choreography or chorus lines, an ancient, defunct Earthling art form that amalgamates volubility and pseudo intellectual pabulum into a nice, neat package of towering incomprehensibilitythe poem:

An itinerant tinker, a talented tailor,
An award winning thinker, a Cook County jailer,
A wise man on high, a candlestick maker,
A trench-coated spy, a three-tier cake baker,
The question to me, is not to be or not to be,
Be is all I know, given lifes stage is just a show,
For this vagabond soul, has played every role,
Acted grand soliloquies, faked passing sociabilities,
Talked to kings, kissed Popes rings,
Scraped crap off of shoes, for a swallow of booze,
But I happen to know, theres no low quite as low,
As being lost in a haze, an innavigable maze,
Of impolite, uptight clicks,
That last for days and days.

And in the spirit of another ancient tradition, I have resurrected an axiom that applies to the unfortunate victim of my sins, the Earth:

Its a nice place to visit but you dont want to live there.

In fact no one can live there ever again.
Not for longer than ten seconds then poof! all gone.



If the opinion of a criminal means anything, its my opinion that my life most resembles a Mbius strip: it comes from nowhere, leads to nothing. But even a measly Mbius strip life such as mine has a telltale seam, the place where the ends were taped together. Lift the brittle piece of tape concealing my seam youll find February 13, 1945, the day I was viciously torn from the womb by a Christian Scientist who wouldnt give my mother any drugs to quell the pain and thought nothing of letting her die, if itd come to that, so I, a future mass murderer, might live.

The significance of this date has been misplaced in the archives, so I, in the assumed capacity of a chrono archeologist, shall recover it for posterity. On February 13, 1945, half a world away from my primitive birthing, real history was in the making. The Allies were carpet-bombing the living bejesus out of the civilian population of Dresden, Germany. Four fifths of the city and 135,000 people burned, donating their atomic wealth to the Earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust and so on and so forth. The sensible reason behind this extravagant recycling project was to rush the conclusion of World War Two, which ended in Europe on May 8, 1945.
Every little bit helps.

For those interested in the definitive humanistic perspective on the annihilation of Dresden, I suggest calling up from the archives Kurt Vonneguts Slaughterhouse-Five.
Kurt was there, and so, of course, was I.
The carpet-bombing of Dresden commemorates the fourth and fifth times I broke the hell out of Albert Einsteins Laws of Relativity and a gazillion other laws governing space-time.

What can I say? Im an unrepentant recidivist.

Recidivismnot so smart.

It was near the end of a nauseatingly long string of clicks that Kurt and I butted heads twice. During the first leg he was a dried-up old chain-smoking fussbudget with flagging mental capacity. During the second he was a snotty little fifth-grader who tried to slug me with a canoe paddle.

In other words, bookend Kurts.

Yes, and even though we shared common ground as survivors of a fiery holocaust, the subject of Dresden was never broached. Old Kurt was too tired to splash around in the stagnant pools of the past. Young Kurt was too focused on splashing around Eagle Creek to understand or care.
Pure bliss is a rare thing to find, and I found it twice.
Just call me a lucky ducky.



Heres the best description of my temporal ambiguity, in print for the first time anywhere:

Oh, to feel the ignoble turn of the worm upon my breast, to hear the sting of misfortunes laughter, to look upon the inveterate stain of our worst nature, to see the blackened sky of inevitability. Nay, tis but corrupt centuries and calamitous eons mocking me in protestation against the very threads by which I pendulate as the silhouette of the hanged man doth linger against the parched and barren prairie of our soul.

Heres how that same passage looks in its aboriginal form, as drawn by a Stone Age shaman on the backmost wall of a famous cave in Lascaux, France:

Like a hunting party of stick figure savages stabbing barbed toothpicks into the belly of a terrifyingly large blob of faded brown pigment.

Definitely gains something from the UBL doesnt it?



Theres a universal declaration in all human vernacular that, no matter idiomatic idiosyncrasies, no matter how translated means I give up, I surrender, I have not a clue, I am fresh out of ideas:

I dont know.

So how does all this rigmarole that Im confessing fit together? I dont know.

After all these years, still fits like a glove.



I was christened Rupert after my grandfather Rupert G. Pilgor, making me a Jr. once removed.

One morning over breakfast I asked my father Pluto Pilgor if this minor breach of cultural etiquette was something to be ashamed ofI was ten at the time therefore still curious about the world; cant say the same anymorewhen he informed me the only real shame in the world was the unpopularity of the phrase I dont know.