Pickytown

I wanted to leave everyone behind, but everybody in this town looks familiar. Many of them are carrying what may be mangled dolls in their arms, scratching the heads of the genius children as they parade through town. The urban planning seems distinctly unamerican, more like Dresden than LA, more like rat poison than the colliseum. Nevertheless (or thusly) I always know what way to go.

Genius Child Orchestra

Alicia tells me of her other friends.

She treats the Genius Child Orchestra as if they were a video game.

She wants them to play our song, which is "Margaritaville".

I hate that song, our song.

The Genius Child Orchestra

Nobody can play it like Alicia with her leg cut.

Friends on the Net

http://myhousearrest.blogspot.com/

I have discovered that my old friend who I feared had gone crazy has his own blog too. He still lives in a world of hallucination and illusion. It's true that I received various tweaked message from Alicia, but I haven't kidnapped her. Last thing I heard she cutting her leg open in a motel.

Poor, friend, his ties to the world have all but collapsed. I am a "mediocre doll-maker"? I am a lot of things, but never mediocre. Perhaps I will make him a final doll. It will be called The Final Doll.

Strangers on the Net

I have discovered that several of my customers have been depicting their struggles online.

For example this man:

http://brimsassemblage.blogspot.com/

It's hard to see how I can be blamed for leaving the doll-brains in the little dumb-dumb village. Their heads are stuffed like the head of deer.

Video Games

Instead of dolls I have decided to make use of my college training as a computer programmer.

My first game is called "The Genius Child Orchestra." The players each take on a character from The Genius Child Orchestra. The object of the game is to assasinate famous political leaders of the 20th century. So for example, there is one scene in which you infiltrate President Johnson's farm and try to drown him in the pool. In another one you try to sneak some arsenic in Chairman Mao's beer.

The second game is going to be a whodunnit. You collect evidence in a Museum of Natural History. You are a taxidermist. Also, the murder has to do with plagiarism. You have to learn how to forge things. I'm not quite sure yet, as I'm still working on the Genius Child Orchestra.

Also, I'm planning a game that kills your computer.

My New House

I have a Victorian mansion. A dollhouse, said a crackhead who walked by on the sidewalk as I stood outside looking at the house.

No, not a dollhouse, I replied. A human house.

He wanted to tell me all about his own house. He was moving it "out of the ghetto" because his father-in-law was giving him trouble. Move it all the way out in the country.

Right now I'm sitting upstairs, tilting like the house. An ice-cream truck is jingle-jangling its song down the street.

The reason I'm quitting dolls is that I'm sick of having to deal with children. And the worst part are the other doll-makers with their Napoleon complexes and Melville complexes and oral fixations.

Goodbye Alicia (and the rest of your hooligans)!

I'm moving north. I'm writing this from a Days Inn. A kid is sitting next to me in the computer lab, playing a game that seems to involve gouging. Tomorrow I will be in a new town and the only way you will ever hear from me is through this makeshift "blog."

I've had it with the doll subculture. A bunch of nerds sitting around trying to recreate childhood or the first time they read Keats. I will continue to sell my merchandize but I will have nothing to do with those silly buffoons. My next line of dolls will be the gouging line. That or the kid-on-the -computer-next-to-me line.

Strange Messages

I've been receiving your messages, Alicia, but I can't understand them.

Who's barefoot? What does it have to do with me?

You haven't contacted me for days and then this?