Nor are eagles plausible, not at all, not for a moment.
                    -- Donald Barthelme, "The Glass Mountain."

A FEW days after that, the mouse bumped into a stranger.
        The stranger asked him how things were going.
        The mouse shrugged and said:
        "Meh."

THE NEXT day, the mouse bumped into one of his old highschool old teachers.
        The old highschool teacher asked the mouse how life was treating him.
        Again, the mouse shrugged and said:
        "Meh."

A FEW days later, the mouse was in a bookstore, looking at books, when he heard a voice going:
        "Pssst.  Psssssst.  Hey, mouse.  Mouse mouse mouse mouse mouse mouse mouse mouse mouse mouse mouse mouse mouse mouse mouse mouse mouse mouse."
        The mouse turned, annoyed, ready to either say "Meh," or strike out in rage, when he saw it was Phil.
        The little while mouse was stunned.  He hadn't seen Phil since at least Part 2!
        Bubbles were still coming out of Phil's head.
        "So, how's it?"  Phil said.
        "Meh," said the little white mouse.
        "Not bleh, feh, or peh, but meh.  I see I see."
        "How are things with you?"
        "I've been around.  I was around.  Things always get done when I'm around.  Well in a sense."  Phil laughed.  "I was in New York when the towers came down."  Phil said it as if being there was some sort of badge of pride.  "No safety.  Dust.  Fear."
        "I know somebody who was there," said the little white mouse.  "Yeah.  It was bad."
        "They search you, now.  They would search inside you if they could.  Dig into your soul.  Put a hand in.  Like if they had an oscilloscope or something that could read your soul.  Hands up.  Excuse me, but I just had this gold hash, blonde hash, really good hash."
        Great, thought the little white mouse.
        "They grow it underground, they do.  Deep underneath the radar.  And things--" Phil laughed-- "things, well, they just have a way of getting under the radar.  I was up North and down South.  I was at Burning Man.  You've heard of Burning Man."
        The little white mouse was unclear if Phil had just asked a question, of it he's simply stated a fact.  Either way, the mouse had heard of Burning Man.  So he just sort of noncommittally said:
        "Yeh."
        "Ooooooh," Phil said, "that was the place to be.  About freedom.  It's all about freedom.  Freedom.  Freeeee-dommmm."
        Actually, Burning Man was the place to be, maybe 10 years ago.  That was when it was fresh.  Now it was just more of the same, and actually quite dated.  And not in any sorta cool way.  But, then again, when you were stoned out of your mind you probably didn't really care.
        The little white mouse didn't tell Phil this.  He kept his mouth shut and let Phil ramble on.  Not like Phil would have been able to tell if the mouse had voiced an opinion, anyway.  Phil was busy doing his own thing, he was on his own trip, communing with whatever personal inner voices he felt had anything important to add.
        "The music there, all the people.  Tattoos and piercing.  I got my dick done.  I thought why now?  I mean, why not?  I have the freedom to do with my body what ever I want to do with my body.  It's tribal.  Mysticism.  The new big thing is splitting tongues.  You split your tongue like a snake.  A snake in the grass.  Grass.  It's for oral sex.  It all's always about oral sex.  There's this book by Terence McKenna.  I wonder sometimes, time, it's slowing down or speeding up but we exist di-laterally with it.  I just thought that up. 'di-laterally,' not 'bi-laterally,' but 'di-laterally.'  Like the roll of the die, it's got that in it and Lady Di and it makes you think of angles, like the angles between the walls, how they make invisible walls on the other side.  'Di-laterally,' there's also 'diurnal' in there which is like the sun's coming up not going down.  The sun is coming up in the angle between two walls and it's through that-- thorough the roll of the die and the sun coming up and death and-- well, like Lady Di's in there too, so there's royalty-- true royalty, not just the royalty of the crown but the royalty of the people.  Purple is a royal colour.  So it's like the sun goddess, it's morning and we exist in di-lateral time which is to say at an invisible impossible angle to the time within which we now find ourselves."
        Everything must make incredible sense to Phil right now, the little white mouse thought.  The personal clarity of the stoned.  By that, of course the person who is stoned thinks he's being clear.  Too bad, the mouse thought, this is all just a bunch of disconnected gibberish to me.
        "And when the sun comes up that means the clouds leave and that's the change-- the change in seasons, in weather that we're expecting.  That we need, NEED!  To get into the next level.  Level of spacetime.  It's like learning yourself through the-- well-- so--"  Phil thought for a minute.  "I thought you'd be riding the Net now, mouse.  I thought you'd be living in light."
        The mouse told Phil of how he was currently back at the Kingdom Of The Eagle.
        "Good.  I was in Europe," said Phil.  "I learned there.  You will learn where you are.  You will find something, everyone does.  Back to the books.  Hit the books.  There was this girl down there, she was so nice.  The marriage of philosophies thing didn't work out, though.  Sometimes I just want to fly away, to leave my woes behind-- but then I think," and then Phil shook his head and laughed.  Listening to Phil was like listening to a tv set that's had its remote control sat on by a cat.  "I've been in a balloon.  I gave blood.  Something... I take all this acid and I go back in time.  I know that sounds crazy, but I'm writing a book about the ghost of my mother.  Well, I need to do something.  I don't believe in aliens, but they all think I do.  Time flies.  I want to be a car.  I need to buy a gun.  It's a dangerous world.  Granola, that girl, over there, I know her.  I dunno, I dunno.  The government lies, but they also lie about lying.  And the bombing.  And the people in cars.  People in cars.  So many things happen when time passes.  I live in a small house, on the edges of town.  Three days ago I was followed by a cat.  Television programs you.  What's up with this Christina Aguilera woman anyway.  Soon it will be New Year's.  Still, the Millennium bugs may get us-- computers have to take time for their errors to accumulate.  I still have cans and cans of food.  Hash, need hash, and mushrooms.  I wanted to design this wallpaper.  And I know that the weather will change.  The weather will change.  God she has a great ass.  The other night--  The weather will change.  We are entering a new kind of environment.  We are going to develop a rapport with it.  The weather, it will be different, soon."
        And then, as if someone had flipped an invisible switch in Phil's brain, Phil suddenly turned around and walked away.

A FEW days later, the mouse was walking down the street and he saw this guy.  The guy was big-- really big.  Big, and tall, and wide, and thick.  At least compared to the mouse.  He had a beard and hair that was sort of swept back, but also seemed to look messy at the same time.  The beard had gray bits.  So did the hair.
        "Mouse," the guy said, "you need to mellow out and cheer up."
        "Meh," said the mouse.  Then he looked up, cringed in the guy's shadow and said: "Do I know you?"
        "You should just go home and listen to something good.  Put on Cornelius's Point album, or anything by Cornelius, for that matter-- or Ryuichi Sakamoto's BTTB.  It's all solo piano stuff and it might make you feels a bit calmer."
        "Uh," said the mouse.  He was sorta afraid of running from the guy, but he also didn't want to be standing here and talking to him.  After all, he wasn't sure who this guy was.  But he felt if he made any sudden moves he'd be squashed like a bug under one of the guy's massive feet.  Best not to show the insane any weakness, he figured.  But, at the same time, he also felt kind of angry.
        "Or read The Count Of Monte Cristo.  It's not exactly brilliant, but it's fun.  It's also really, really long and it'll take your mind offa stuff for a bit."
        "Oh," said the mouse.  "O-okay."
        "You have to start focusing a bit more.  Stop moping around.  It's interesting how sometimes someone can let themselves get destroyed for no particular reason."
        The mouse actually agreed with that, but he didn't want to say anything.  Also, was the guy talking about the mouse or himself?  Again, the little white mouse just wanted the big guy to go away, so he didn't ask.
        "So that's all I have to say," said the big guy.
        (Good, thought the little white mouse.)
        "So I'm gonna go, okay," said the big guy.
        "Okay," said the little white mouse.
        "Bye."
        "Uh, bye."

A FEW days later, the mouse bumped into the Eagle in the produce department of a local grocery store.
        "Hey," said the Eagle.
        The mouse, who actually thought that the Eagle didn't need to eat, was too stunned to say "Meh," so instead he said:
        "Hi."
        "I hate buying groceries," the Eagle said.
        "Me too," said the mouse.
        "But one thing I hate even more is buying diapers."  And then the mouse noticed that the Eagle's shopping cart was filled with boxes of Pampers.  "But, y'know, in my line of work you can never have too many diapers.  At least they give me a bulk discount."
        "Uh," said the mouse, "yeah.
        "So," said the Eagle, "how's it going?"
        By now the shock of seeing the Eagle in public, and buying groceries-- and diapers-- had worn off, so the mouse remembered to shrug and say:
        "Meh."
        The Eagle looked at the mouse for a minute.  Took it all in.  Then:
        "You're a schmuck, mouse."
        The mouse stared at the Eagle.
        "That's right.  You're a schmuck."
        Then the mouse got mad.
        "How the hell can you say that when -- when-- after what you did to me you-- you--"
        "Did to you?  I didn't do anything to you."
        "You.  You put your eggs in  me and.  And."
        "Oh.  That.  Look, kiddo.  I do that to everybody.  Not just you.  You came to me."
        "You bastard.  You took me.  You stuck those tentacles into me like it was some sorta sick Japanimation porno cartoon and--"
        "Whoa," the Eagle said.  "Woah.  Woah.  Woah.  The way you perceive it is up to you.  I do my part, and you interpret it the way you want to interpret it."
        "I didn't want to interpret it that way."
        "Yes," the Eagle said.  "You did."

THE MOUSE was quiet for a long time.
        "What about all those people.  The ones you poisoned.  What about that?"
        "They were dorks."
        The mouse blinked.
        "Dorks," the mouse said.
        "Yeah," said the Eagle.  "They were dorks.  They were pretentious dorks wallowing in their own twaddle.  And you chose to listen to them."
        "But....  But they were in the Kingdom Of The Eagle."
        "Yeah.  So what.  There're dorks everywhere.  You should know that.  Even in my Kingdom.  Just because they wandered in doesn't mean they're smart.  Or, really, anything.  All it means is they have a few bucks to spend."
        "Dorks."
        "They come in because they think they should, or because their parents are forcing them to.  They come in thinking that if they hang out in my Kingdom long enough they'll get good jobs that pay a lot.  It's faulty thinking.  It doesn't really work that way.  They're dorks.  The first time you came to my Kingdom you did it because you thought you were hot shit, but sadly weren't and didn't have anything to back up your claims.  At least you weren't there because you thought you'd get some CEO job or something.  You were sill kind of a dork, but you weren't totally beyond hope."
        The Eagle paused for a minute, cleared his throat.
        "And then when you came back at least you did it for the right reasons.  Or partly the right reasons.  Part of it was simply you wanted to get away from that stupid store, and I don't blame you.  But the other part was for the right reasons.  You did want to learn something.  And that's why I gave you a bit of cash.  It was more a reward for not being a dork, rather than something that was owed you."
        "Oh," said the mouse.
        "And now you're acting like a dork again."
        "You said I was a schmuck."
        "Same thing."
        The mouse thought about stuff for a little while.
        "And that whole thing with time getting faster and all the days seeming the same.  It's called getting older.  Get over it."
        "But," the mouse said.  "Things really have lost their luster."
        "That's because you see the same information over and over again.  The older you get the more you lose your sense of novelty and wonder.  Things are only new and fresh when they're foreign to you and the more information you absorb, the less things become foreign to you.  Again.  It's called getting older.  Get over it."
        "But that's what keeps me going.  New stuff."
        "Then find new aspects in the things you're already familiar with."
        "But that's hard."
        "Nobody said anything was easy."
        The little white mouse wanted to hit the Eagle.  Punch him right in the beak.  But the Eagle looked like he could probably take the little white mouse.  And the Eagle also looked like he was made out of rock.  So the little white mouse didn't hit the Eagle.
        "So," said the Eagle.  "What have you learned?"
        "Probably nothing," said the mouse.
        "Suit yourself," said the Eagle.  "But in case you suddenly have a hankering for some kind of lesson to take with you, some kind of life-lesson thing, here it is:"
        (The mouse listened intently.)
        "You will survive.  And then eventually, you won't survive any more."
        The mouse blinked again.
        "That's it?" he said.
        "In a nutshell, that's it.  That's the moral, the lesson, that's what life's all about.  You'll keep going until you stop."
        "That's it."
        "You've got it in you to tread water.  You'll make it through a lot of stuff.  But, eventually there will come a time when something happens that you won't be able to negotiate, and then you'll go under."
        "That's hardly comforting."
        "It happens to us all."
        "Except you."
        "No, even me," the Eagle said.  "It just takes longer in my case.  But it'll happen.  Hell, it's happening even as we speak.  After all, my Kingdom is filling up with dorks."

THE MOUSE didn't say anything for a long time.
        "Hey," the Eagle said, "you okay, kid?"  The Eagle snapped his fingers in the mouse's face.  The mouse jumped back.
        "So the lesson is I'll be okay until I'm not any more."
        "That's right."
        "Nothing more?"
        "What else is there?" asked the Eagle.

AGAIN, THE mouse didn't say anything for a long time.  And then, finally:
        "What bullshit," said the mouse.  "There has to be something better."
        "Then go find it," said the Eagle.  "Stop moping around like a whipped dog, stop acting like a weepy little martyr, and go out there and find it."
        "I thought that's what I was doing."
        "No.  You wanted some sort of vague self-gratification.  All you wanted was for people to say 'Hooray, Hooray For The Little White Mouse,' remember?"
        "Yes, I did.  Everybody wants that."
        "Except that you did nothing to earn it.  You already thought you were hot shit when you came into my Kingdom.  And then you did nothing to prove it to anybody.  Let alone me.  You were a classic underachiever.  And that's what underachievers do: they think they're great, but they never do anything great to prove their worth.  They've already made it in their minds and so think that they are deserving of recognition.  But they never get the recognition they think they deserve because they never do anything.  And they either blame other people-- saying that everbody's unreliable or stupid and so is hampering them, or they simply sit around on their laurels reveling in their own egos.  Or they do both.  You, at least are just lazy.  You don't make all kinds of big plans that fall through, and then blame other people for your lack of initiative.  You do think of yourself as a martyr and a victim, which is obnoxious.  But you mostly just beat yourself up.  At least you don't think you're blameless-- and that makes it a bit easier to get through to you.  Again, you're not totally beyond hope."
        "Hm."
        "You get out of it what you put into it.  You felt like a martyr, so you envisioned me raping you with tentacles.  That, you thought, would make you stronger, and also make you more passive.  And, so, when it came time for you to put up or shut up you just used this little self-generated rape fantasy to whine about the eggs I put in you, and used these 'eggs' as an excuse to be lazy and feel sorry for yourself.  You could have envisioned me handing you a golden box, or a big book, or some sort of burning wheel, or, well, anything else.  But you chose a rape fantasy because that way you could play the victim."
        The little white mouse looked at an old lady squeezing avocados.  She put three nice ones in a bag, and then walked away.
        "And now you're back.  And for a while you were okay.  But now you're falling back into those same tired old pitty-me-pitty-me patterns.
        The little white mouse felt sick.
        "Grow the fuck up, mouse," said the Eagle.  And then the Eagle walked away.
        And the little white mouse watched the Eagle walk away.
        And the Eagle vanished.
        And the little white mouse started to feel funny.
        He started to feel himself fading away.
        Fading away, and fragmenting.  Dispersing throughout space and time.  Being distributed along lines of probability.
        And this frightened him.
        But part of him also liked it, too....

After talking to the Eagle in the grocery store, and fragmenting into infinite oblivion, the little white mouse:

1.  Becomes a standup comedian.  But he isn't that funny, though.  Or is he?

2.  Runs away, pierces his anus, and joins the Jim Rose circus.

3.  Compiles a list of 30 similarities between David Bowie and Friedrich Nietzsche.

4.  Moves in with two real hot babes, but has to pretend he's gay so the sneaky landlord won't throw him out.

5.  Shaves off all his fur and stations himself outside an airport, handing out flowers and "inspirational literature."

6.  Eats lots of chocolate bars.  Then he pops.

7.  Decides he will devote his life to a higher ideal, begins with good intentions but after about 15 years grows crazier and crazier, finally succumbing to his own madness.  At this point, he begins praying and fasting, giving away all his worldly possessions, and then devotes himself to following a God of his own making that is little more than a muddled reflection of his own deep-seated control fantasies, fear of intimacy, and massive egotism.

8.  Writes a book, gets it published, and is happy.

9.  Writes a book, gets it published, and is miserable.

10.  Writes a book, never gets it published and is miserable.

11.  Writes a book, never gets it published, and is happy.

12.  Doesn't write anything and spends the rest of his life trying to decide if he's happy or miserable.

13.  Stars in a cartoon series based on his own life, but with a valuable lesson at the end of each episode.  The way he's drawn is really cute, though.

14.  Spends years studying and finally proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that rocks are the only things with souls.  We've been lying to ourselves all this time.

15.  Walks over and kicks the Eagle in the nards.  Then the Eagle kicks him in the nards.  And on and on it goes, forever.  Kinda poetic, that way.

16.  Lives happily ever after.

17.  Lives happily ever after, but not for very long.

18.  Lives happily ever after for a long long time.

19.  Lives happily ever after for a long, long time but secretly wishes he would just bloody die already.  Because there's only so much a mouse can take.

20.  Gets married to someone nice, has a family like any normal creature, and surprises himself by realizing how happy doing this actually makes him.

21.  Meets the Eagle one day at the liquor store.  They're both out of work.  They decide to team up, become private detectives, and solve crimes.

22.  Develops a horrible nervous condition that causes him to gnaw off all his own fur.

23.  Actually gets to go into outer space, just like Forrest Gump.  And while he's not the first mouse in space, he is the first sentient mouse in space.  And he's not even mildly retarded.

24.  Stops whining and stays in school, gets his degree, and fades away.

25.  Has a nervous breakdown and starts thinking he's a superhero, and that he can fight crime.  He even makes himself a spiffy spandex costume with a cape, a mask, and everything.

26.  Psychotically draws hundreds of thousands of really crappy, scribbly pictures on crappy notebook paper, and never goes outside.  This stuff is all found in his cramped, smelly apartment after he dies.  No one can really decide what the pictures are of, but the art intelligencia likes them because they apparently "display an authentic sense of naive future primitivism."  Then, he gets an art opening and people write about his twisted genius in all the right magazines.

27.  Predicts falling rockets with his erections.

28.  Sits by his bedside, rubbing a stuffed bear until its eyes fall off and stuffing pours out of its stomach.

29.  Becomes the chess-boxing champion of the world.

30.  Hangs out with Lee "Scratch" Perry on the streets of New York, and then cuts an album of award-winning Eggae music with him.  Eggae, not Reggae, because Eggae heals.

31.  Goes back to work at Charlie's.  And even though people tell him he's not a failure, deep down he knows they're just humouring him.

32.  Buys an ice-cream truck and hands out packets of cocaine all around the neighbourhood.

33.  Gets to be a teacher, and actually makes a difference.

34.  Finds out he's related to British royalty, and has to spend a night in a spooky mansion to get a bunch of money.

35.  In the middle of a huge temper tantrum dons his giant robot suit and squashes humanity underfoot, punishing them for being the selfish ants they always claim not to be.

36.  Spends the rest of his life wondering why there are always hairs in the bathroom, even though he cleans it once a day.

37.  Asks for a pellet gun for Christmas, gets the pellet gun for Christmas, and then promptly almost shoots out his eye with the pellet gun minutes after unwrapping it.

38.  Goes and lives out in a cabin somewhere.  And is never heard from again.

39.  Suffers from migraines.

40.  Goes on a Paris vacation, meets the Eagle.  They get involved in a caper-- find true, but temporary, love-- and foil art thieves.

41.  Puts on a critically acclaimed, but ultimately baffling, one-mouse performance of The Vagina Monologues.

42.  Kisses the princess, wakes the princess, marries the princess.

43.  Dies of the bubonic plague-- but this is depicted in a clever code so children won't twig on and get too upset.

44.  Has a huge, circular dream that encompasses all of humanity's history, and has a lot of fun doing it.

45.  Teams up with both the Eagle, and Lee "Scratch" Perry, and solves crimes.

46.  Spends the rest of his life on a computer making really obvious fake nudes of celebrities people only half remember (if at all) and then posting them on Internet newsgroups under a series of clever pseudonyms because that's what all the reeeeally cooooool people do.

47.  Spends his remaining days making long, unfocused lists of alternative "endings" to his life because he can't think of anything better to do with his time.

48.  Does something utterly random and unexpected, which lots of people like for some reason, and then they all do go "Hooray, hooray for the little white mouse."  And then the little white mouse is sort of happy, but really mostly confused.

49.  Realizes that he's been a fool all this time, and also realizes that the real truth can only be found in Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.  He then spends the rest of his life collecting Yu-Gi-Oh! cards which alienates all this friends and family.  But that's okay-- they don't know the truth, they don't collect Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.  How is he supposed to care about people like that?

50.  Tries to make a joke out of everything, but it doesn't really work.

51.  Googles himself day in and day out.

52.  Aches.

53.  Becomes a student of anticlimax.

54.  Decides to try hermeneutics.  Discovers he's really good at it.

53.  Puts pickles up his bum.

55.  Spends the rest of his life blissfully staring at the Homestar Runner website.  (...... ev'ry-body ... ev'ry-body ...... ev'ry-body ... ev'ry-body ......)

56.  Wakes up one morning bright and refreshed, gets in his car and drives away in a random direction.  On the road he meets dozens of different people, and has dozens of fascinating adventures.  For example, he solves the murder of a rich widow in a small town, brings piece of mind to a falsely-accused young boy, and gets a huge reward from the widow's family-- while the corrupt sheriff of that town ends up in jail for life for premeditated murder.  In another place he falls in love with a shy schoolteacher and changes her life forever by giving her the self-confidence she always knew she had deep down inside.  Elsewhere, he helps a priest regain his faith, and in yet another place helps a mathematician break through a decade-long mental block thus completing his life's work and lives up to his son's expectations.  The mouse also brings peace to warring families and helps runaways see that the solutions to their problems lie in facing these problems, not hiding in the drug-riddled chaos of the mean urban streets.  Eventually, the mouse becomes his own legend and still travels around in that old car, to this day, up and down the highway, stopping in place after place, helping those in need and then vanishing in the dead of night like some mysterious angel....

57.  Goes insane.

58.  Bores everybody.

59.  Gets a cold sore.

60.  Wishes he was a Powerpuff girl.

61.  Immanentizes the eschaton.

62.  Does nothing at all.

63.  Goes on and on.

64.  Who knows.

65.  Give it up.

66.  This is boring.

67.  It's time for bed.
 

Next: Bury my heart at Lambda Hopeless Forgotten Wavemaster....
 

Epilogue 65.
Epilogue 63.
INDEX.
HOME.