VI. Interstate 10. Houston.
Baytown Rest Area
Population: 1,595,138
Elevation: 37
Climate: Sub-tropical
Topography: Coastal plain.
Historical Oddity: The city has no zoning.
Prominent Amenity: Air conditioning.
Best One-word Description: Fetid.
Insight: The Rothko Chapel, which art historian Robert Hughes identified
as the place where the "Modern" era ends, is located here.
1. Of course the same decade that produces Reagan gives us Laurie Anderson, Julian
Schnabel, and George Will. Whadya expect?
–Totalled
* * *
1a. You know what happened when the Pope went to Mount Olive?
Popeye almost killed him.
–Mud Flap
* * *
2. The gridded century.
–Mr. Camp
* * *
3. The dangerous religionists are those who, thinking themselves
humble, must therefore when they worship unknowingly evoke the arrogant gods.
–Mr. Camp
* * *
4. I been around since water.
–Sidewinder
* * *
5. The mindful East. The yoke is on them.
–Jack Flash
* * *
6. Catch the chick in the yellow Mustang. She be buck naked.
–Brown Eyes
* * *
7. If you still want plot, and characters, you've come to the
wrong century. Even Joyce was barking up the wrong book. Nietzsche went crazy only because
he was early, and couldn't wait.
–Mr. Camp
* * *
8. Of the cultures that have elided into the present, apparently
only Europe–and much less so, India–was truly pagan. Oriental puritanism makes
the western version seem positively liberal by comparison.
–Bullwinkle
* * *
9. AIDS. How easily the compulsive breeders forget four centuries
of decimation by incurable syphillis.
–Billy Boy
* * *
10. Wilde lost his way in the swamp within, while the rest of the
world turned cartwheels in the charnelhouse outside.
–Jack Flash
* * *
11. They all want surcease, do you hear? There lies the definition
of humanity. A human is a creature who equates peace with surcease. With such a profound
misreading of all that is, it's no wonder that we are such lovers of artifice.
–Wild Man
* * *
11a. Suppose, just suppose, there are "psychic" germs
just as invisible to us as physical germs were before Leeuwenhoek invented the microscope.
Mind parasites? Nerve parasites? Emotion parasites? What if, what if?
–Medicine Man
* * *
12. Blake lost his way in the paradise within, altogether an easy
thing to do–as witness Bach.
–Backdoor Man
* * *
13. Old boy goes to a whorehouse and tells the madam he wants a
girl with the clap. She's about to throw him out when one of the girls comes up and says
she's the one for him. They get through with their business and the girl looks up at him
and says, "I fooled you, Mister. I ain't got the clap." And he says, "Oh
yes you do."
–Prairie Dog.
* * *
14. Alleged scientist, alleged poet, alleged priest, always
alleged. You can remember that even if they don't.
–Pat Angeli
* * *
15. You talkin' like the man with the $6 million pecker, honey.
–Sugar Britches.
* * *
15b. Man is a sun. His senses are his planets.
–Novalis
* * *
15c. Plants act on the plant-sense of man, animals on the
animal-sense, stones on the stone-sense.
–Novalis
* * *
15d. Are all humans necessarily humans? Creatures quite different
from humans can exist in human form.
–Novalis
* * *
15e. There is only one temple in this world, and that is the human
body.
–Novalis
* * *
15f. Anybody out there know the difference between a fox and a
pig? About eight or nine drinks.
–Mud Flap
* * *
16. My century was born curvilinear and is going to die digital.
–Wild Man
* * *
16b. Diseases respond to many kinds of cure. The choice of the
best cures reveals the talent of the physician.
–Novalis
* * *
17. Patterns of consciousness quilt time. Think of Russia and
America going to Mars together.
–Gamekeeper
* * *
18. The trees want so much to nurture–which is to say,
teach–us.
–Celia Celia
* * *
19. The animals stand by helpless, endangered because they are too
close, so close to us.
–Green Mountain Girl
* * *
20. Private art is the only subversive act left to us, maybe the
only one all along.
–Zig-zag Joy
* * *
21. Business was real bad at this here hotel down in Sarasota, so
the manager give a whore one of the rooms. The third day the fellow that's got the room
calls and complains about the whore. The manager comes up and asks what's wrong. The
fellow says, "She don't know nothin'. I asked her for a blow job and she took it out
and blowed on it." The manager gives the old girl a look and says, "All right,
now, Nadine, you watch close. This is the last time I'm going to show you how this is
done."
–Bar Ditch.
* * *
22. The Sargasso Century.
–Totaled
* * *
23. I gotta stop and drain my radiator.
–Inch Worm.
* * *
24. Even in private art, the ever-voyeuristic observer is advised
to read between the lines. (Contradiction here, as often, is only apparent.)
–Zig-zag Joy
* * *
25. Ouroborus. Self-fellatio. The arter.
–Orange Krishna
* * *
25b. The nature of disease is as mysterious as the nature of man.
–Novalis
* * *
25a. This bunch of sex doctors held this big conference to talk
about why dicks is shaped the way they is. The French doctor gits up and says, "Our
research shows ze penis is shaped to give maximum pleasure to ze woman." The Brit
gits up and says, "We believe the male organ has its distinctive shape in order to
give maximum pleasure to the man." Then the American gits up. He says, "There
ain't no doubt about it. It's shaped the way it is so yore hand don't slip off the
end."
–Sugar Britches
* * *
26. Beware the mind clouded by nicotine, caffeine, and aspertame.
–Tasmanian Devil
* * *
27. Thin points, where you may more easily glimpse normally
ignored extra-temporal and extra-spatial connections, in the reality's mantle: courtrooms,
the ocean, sleep, Germany, some bars, Israel, Las Meninas, Sri Lanka, the Goldberg
Variations. Thick points, where the glimpsing is even more difficult than usual: drama,
movies, some bars, some art, restrooms, mass spectator events, war, hospitals, France.
–UFO
* * *
27b. That which you love you find everywhere.
–Novalis
* * *
27c. The flower is the symbol of the secret of our spirit.
–Novalis
* * *
28. Study tiredness. A very peculiar phenomenon.
–Cam's Gillette
* * *
28a. The Israelites was gettin impatient waitin for Moses to come
down off the mountain from negotiating with God about the Commandments. He finally come
down and said, "I got some good news and some bad news. The good news is, I got him
down to ten. The bad news is, adultery is still in."
–Mud Flap
* * *
29. The idols of every age have countless grasping fingers.
Sometimes they caress seductively, sometimes they grab, sometimes they choke.
–Lorelei
* * *
30. Not all, not none, not now, not then, not here, not there, not
up, not down, not in, not out, not fast, not slow, not old, not new, not good, not bad,
not beautiful, not ugly, not once, not twice.
–Orange Krishna
* * *
31. Man, east was, er, is...
–McLoony Tunes
* * *
32. There's an audience of two on my shoulder.fn1
–UFO
* * *
33. Considering the etymology of "enchantment," it's no
wonder poets starve.
–Zig-zag Joy
* * *
33a. What's got a hundred teeth and eats weenies? A zipper.
–Mud Flap
* * *
34. I wrote my way into the smooth maze of linearity. Now I write
my way out, back into the proper playing fields of the multituned verbal mind.
–Gamekeeperfn2
* * *
35. He told me he had to split from his old lady on account of her
filthy habits. Ever time he went to pee in the sink, it was full of dirty dishes.
–Wild One.
* * *
36. Don't berate the scribes. If you seek rewarding confrontation,
look rather to the Pharisees. They at least labor with the blind certitude of fear.
–Horny Teen
* * *
37. Ain't nothin' free no more.
–Dr. Detroit.
* * *
38. Pliable symbols breed rich cultures, which is why the patriots
anger so easily at attacks on the flag.
–Horny Teen
* * *
39. Bamboo whistles in, and bends before, the strongest winds.
–Lorelei
* * *
39a. Y'all know what cowboy hats and hemmorhoids got in common?
Sooner or later ever asshole gits one.
–Mud Flap
* * *
40. I need some lipstick on my dipstick.
–Tasmanian Devil.
* * *
41. Every age chooses its Greek role-models. Tiresias is about to
have his day.
–Mr. Campfn3
* * *
42. They was this bad wreck on I-95 the other night with a
four-wheeler. The highway patrol is really gettin' on this old boy's case cause his girl
friend wasn't strapped in and she was throwed through the windshield and killed and there
he sits still alive behind the steering wheel. "So what," he says, "go take
a look what she's got in her hand!"
–Mud Flap.
* * *
43. Vidal's villa. One wishes to speak at length with the maid.
–Jack Flash
* * *
43b. If God was able to become a man, he can also become a stone,
a plant, an animal, or an element. Perhaps there is thus an on-going salvation present in
nature.
–Novalis
* * *
43c. The fresh glance of the child is more creative than the
deepest probings of the wisest adults.
–Novalis
* * *
43d. We are alone with everything that we love.
–Novalis
* * *
44. The digitalization of reality = us trying to keep the universe
at finger's length.
–Gulf Stream
* * *
45. Norman Brown at least tried to buffer the force of his
arrogant threats by giving a miniature bibliography to each fragment. Nietzsche didn't,
and look where it got him. On the other hand, neither did Novalis.
–Fritz
* * *
46. What I'm trying for is a kind of "intellectual
Basic," idea-bytes, if you will, that can be combined and re-combined,
"run," with each "program" then having a different
effect–sometimes small, sometimes large–on the manipulating mind.
–Hard On!
* * *
46b. Sensual pleasure is to love what sleep is to waking.
–Novalis
* * *
47. A little old lady goes in the main Bank of America one day and
demands to speak to the head honcho. She shows him she's got a million dollars in cash in
her shopping bag and wants to put it in his bank, but first he's gotta to make a bet with
her. She bets him a million dollars that he's circumcized. The old boy smiles real big and
takes the bet. Next day, in she comes and she's got a Jap friend in tow to be the witness.
The Bank of America big shot proves she's done lost her bet by showing his wang, and the
Jap falls right over in a faint. "What's goin' on here?" says Mr. Bank of
America. "You see, honey," says the little old lady, "he's the president of
the Bank of Japan, and I done bet him yesterday that in twenty-four hours I'd have the
president of the Bank of America with his pants down."
–Mud Flap.
* * *
47a. A Aggie's definition of a real friend is a buddy who'll go
downtown and git two blowjobs and come back and give him one.
–Sugar Britches
* * *
Houston Notes
1UFO believes we all have twin
observer spirits who ride about with us all the time.
2Gamekeeper kept his
diploma from the Famous Writers' School hung on his dashboard.
3Mr. Camp wanted me to
remind the reader that Tiresias was traditionally much more than the limited figure
portrayed in Oedipus Rex. He was better known in Greek myth for having been the only
person to have experienced sex both as a male and a female.
The Texas Tao
continues...
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