Life at the Sentient Bean / Night of the Living Drunks

So Banister blustered in and he unleashed his scroll of changes du jour. I was never quite sure why he printed these things out, they were in my e-mail, and especially why he printed them in scroll fashion. But it did give his entrances a certain flair, like returning from the mountain with the law. Thank goodness the stone printers were prohibitive on cost, otherwise these notes could become a serious weapon when the sessions went south. The first proclamation to come forth from the lips of Bannister Crawler were:

“First, the scene with the girl, white jumpsuit, parachute, and burro has to come right out. That time goes to more product shots.”

Some things never change.

“Who’s idea was that anyway” demanded Bannister.

Well the likely candidate was the original Art Director since she had been fired soon after this project began, though I miss her because I liked the way she thought, and Bannister was all over that suggestion.

“Good thinking” proclaimed Bannister. “let’s get cracking!”

And this is where we went:

Dingy room with a large circular bar that dominated the space leaving only a narrow path behind the patrons seated at the bar. Perched at one corner on top of the bar was a show platform upon which was a slowly undulating forty year old stripper dancing on the mock up stage. Pondering the cesarian scar on the stripper are two young men in their very early twenties with generic bottles of swill with “Beer” printed on the label. This is their first foray into the adult drinking world and it ain’t a pretty sight. The grizzled old men are either half asleep at the bar or arguing about some now meaningless point of political Kabuki theatre. That is except for the few with their tongues lolling out of toothless mouths while leering up at the performer. Our two initiates also seem focused on the tiny dancer but have been drinking all afternoon and are now moving into the heart of the night mostly befuddled while dealing with the conflicting emotions of MILF lust and Oedipus complexes long buried. Through the bar door swims a shimmering, undulating, and technicolour neon tropical fish with an extreme femine form. Bright red quivering lips encircling a seductively round mouth, slender neck leading to soft shoulders and willowy arms tipped with delicate hands gesturing smoothly around an absurdly tiny waist which expands to a superbly shaped behind before resulting in the archetypical mermaid tail. Yet the whole fishy package is topped with two heaving luminescent breasts. As she slides around and between the two young men softly brushing faces with slender fingers, breasts against their arms, and tail lightly flowing up their inner thighs the womafish has certainly drawn their attention away from the aging stripper who just moments ago had their undivided attention. Holding the large containers of caffeinated Pumps Beer in front of the heaving, glistening breasts the fish tart says to the lads, “Grab a hold of these and steer me like a cow.”

The lads are transported by the fish to a Eurotrash nightclub where there are hundreds of women their age, in the prime of their hard bodied youth, dancing with abandon. Huge Bacchanal on the order of the Matrix Reloaded rave. These two lads are happily pounding down the caffeine laced beer, and from the glowing faces of the women surrounding them you can tell it will be their night to remember. Fast montage into a frenzied and blur of images till we come abruptly to the the final scene with lads passed out on top of an aquarium with tropical fish lazily swimming about. One fish has a twinkle in it’s eye and winks at the two young men who look at each other and then at the camera and exclaim “Woof!”

Tag Line:                                          

          Pump Beer

Looks like a fish, swims like a fish, steers like a cow

I just looked at Bannister and he looked at me.

“Before you say it, yes we bought the rights to that tag line, and the client likes it.” was all Bannister had to say. We now had to make it happen.

With that Cyrus Plush rolled in with Auroa Mora on his arm followed but the rest of his entourage and announced “Yes ladies and gentlemen. The research shows it is all about the fish.”

My head hurt now.

Life at the Sentient Bean / Suite Fang Fang Wu

Suite Fang Fang Wu


As I arrived all was quiet in the suite. A large room with numerous work stations scattered about. One corner was for the graphic pukes with the 3D, 2D, and Holographic rendering power. We needed all of that now since so much footage was no longer shot live, but we still needed to create many options for the endless game of “what if” that we play while shilling for the advancement of our clients market share.

The Omnibus Suite was often like a three ring circus, or gladiator arena, depending on the mood of the project. Then you had the audio stations where the engineers hunkered down and finely stroked the many layers of audio in their virtual reality helmets that simulated the surround of a perfectly tuned room. Of course final mix was still done in an open air room so all concerned could make snarky comments to each other even though the helmets would give a truer rendering of real world conditions. Then there were the numerous uplink channels and their operators who knew the ins and “pouts” of each distribution channel Even the Chinese couldn’t bring about cohesive standardization. But that was good for all concerned because it kept more people busy trying to figure out how to deliver the message in an optimal stream.

Now there was just the whir of the fans and pumps for liquid cooled processors that were always working, even when idle on our projects, so every nanosecond of their adding machine power could be used somewhere, by somebody, for something; when they were not adding things up for me. A world in the ether of the “intervent” needed more power all the time, just like we all have learned to need. More, more, more. Ideally more of what we were about to tell you from this arena of desires. My clients were telling you what you want and not what their competitors were telling you that you wanted. What you wanted was immaterial. You probably don’t know anyway.

This suite also had the memories of the time Fang Fang was an apprentice here after I got her a job tossing this crap around rather than the crap she tossed around for the Labrador Retrieval Waste and Recycle.

It was an interesting, busy, and all around entertaining time for all. Clients loved the Fangster. After she worked with us for a while I really had to wonder what she was doing as a garbage gal, or shall we say waste removal specialist. Naw, the Chinese didn’t go in for that politically correct nanny state bullshit we were regurgitating at the end of the last and the beginning of the new century. We were back to smoking, swearing, and being much more honest with each other. The ancient culture of China with it’s traditional roles actually helped all of us to stop sweating the small stuff. Of course even the enlightened can’t escape a primates natural distrust of the other. It is wired into our DNA. Only the millennium of stacked ideas and civilized cooperation, layer upon layer of “you shoulds and should nots” through the ages masked it now. First to protect ourselves from the other, then to sell the other what we were selling, made it worth our while to get along with each other and thrive as a species.

Fang Fang thrived in the post hell holes of shilling for international concerns like it was a long lost vocation. After all multi national corporations were people too. But the first time Cyrus Plush moon walked into the room and perched in his usual place next to the mirror that changed. Fang Fang could smell money and immediately she began combining the efficiency of her role in the post suite with the oriental feminine charm no Xirong can ever completely ignore. The Wu’ster utilized skills from previous employment and stuck out her can. Cyrus nearly fell from his perch when his beak hawked out her form and for the first time completely ignored his own reflection. Well, for a moment or two.

I don’t even remember what project we were working on. They all blend into one another. Some sort of useless product that in essence made the buyer feel better than the monkey next door till the monkey down the street bought the newer better more expensive model. But as usual the message we were delivering had to be delivered in the most hypnotic, convoluted, and cleverly obfuscated package meant to worm it’s way into the psyche of even the most thick skulled consumer. No need to discriminate if the viewer could ever afford the doodad, we were motivating them to be productive enough to at least keep the landed gentry in the style to which they felt themselves entitled, never mind if the poor bastard chasing our floozied up carrot ever reached the promised reward. As long as they believed they had a chance we could soak up their hard earned shekels like a Sham Wow. Well on the day Cyrus and Fang Fang met I remember wondering which one of these two was the floozied up carrot on a stick  and which was the donkey in hot pursuit.

On that day in the suite we finished up the project quickly with Cyrus’s object of distraction keeping his bird brain occupied elsewhere. Now what shinny object can I use to distract him with today while we deal with “The Night of the Walking Drunks” campaign.

Just then Bannister burst in to the suite with the obligatory two questions.

“Are we done yet?” and “Whats for lunch?”

Let the games begin.

Life at the Sentient Bean / Braking Ugly

Braking Ugly

Now knowing what was facing me I began to absent mindedly wiggle my teeth. They had all seemed to be  loosening up these days. I know I should be tracking down a dentist. But since the insurance companies have lost their strangle hold, all dentists and doctors now had to operate in the market place. No longer having their prices propped up artificially by the insurance racket, finding good dental and medical service was a real bidding war. There were a few years between the demise of insurance swindlers where the resources were pooled by the citizens of the U.S. which meant shareholders and CEO’s no longer got the excessive skim they once enjoyed. But when the Chinese took over they had no sense of humor about past digressions and enjoyed shoving our free market hyperbole quite literally down out throats. You now really got what you paid for. No ticky no washy as the darling Fang Fang Wu would say.

It was then that Mediatrix turned around as if remembering just where he had seen me. Last time I rode with Mediatrix I had him take Cyrus and me out to the airport. That was when Mediatrix had recognized Cyrus from his pictures. Cyrus Plush made his initial money by selling bottled water in Mediatrix’s country after their entire water table was ruined by fracking for natural gas. To make matters worse Cyrus’s company bottled the water just far enough away where the health effects on the population were minimized, but close enough where the shipping costs were not prohibitive to making a tidy profit.  Mediatrix’s countrymen paid the freight with the double whammy of washing down the genetically grown schmeat with flammable bottled water. The results weren’t pretty. As he turned his full grey eyes on me which blended perfectly with his grey pallor and hair it had the overall effect of a twilight shadow. He said,“So what sort of defective product are you and your associates foisting on consumers today?”

“No no no, ya got it all wrong sport” I exclaimed, “We're just helping a befuddled multitude believe they need these products so as to keep everyone gainfully employed. I get people to buy what my clients sell so’s they can afford to hire your services. We're all in to this together pal.”

“Right,” was all Mediatrix said as he turned to look back at the road. I know the collision avoidance system usually kept two items from occupying the same space, but I am old fashioned and feel better when the driver is looking at the road ahead so I was relieved doubly by his renewed attention to navigation.

Well we were pulling up on my destination and this building had a huge plaza all around it. Good way to avoid drive by bombing, but Mediatrix was always one for delivering the optimum of 21st century fashionable customer service so he drove across the huge plaza at an excessive rate of speed usually screeching to a halt millimeters in front of the hatches to the building. Hatches worked better to deter the compression from explosions. But today he missed so I was delivered directly into the lobby of my building.

As Mediatrix was nabbed by security I wandered to the lifts and went to work. I’ll catch him with the fare next time. It was time to run the footage through the concept corrector.

Life at the Sentient Bean / Mediatrix

Mediatrix



My favorite quality Mediatrx had was the fact that no matter how many times I rode with him, he always acted like it was our first time meeting. I was never sure if it was an act, or if it was from his early childhood diet of schmeat. Yep, the old beaker bacon. That was back when we first started growing our animal products, and we had to try them on someone. His country drew the short straw of that global lottery. It was a great idea. Eating flesh that had never, sweated, shat, or peed seemed like a good idea at the time. But when the side effects became apparent the Archetypes had to administer a forgetfulness pharmaceutical to spare the survivors the recollections of the disaster. Good things we cleared that up before that little snafu got to much publicity. So with the blessings of the Marquis De Bob, it was swept under the public rug, which was only shaken occasionally by a few of the politically embarrassed crackpots and conspiracy theorists which were quickly discredited by the ever present media. The poison will never out if if we refuse to know about it.

Even so Mediatrix was always plugged in and as a victim of exploitive experimentation he knew better than to believe most of the fear driving drivel. HIs cab was a rolling hot spot. Sure the world was covered by the ubiquitous G-10 network, but with the ludicrous encryption and sub networks Mediatrix’s cab was plugged into places even the Chinese couldn’t track you on the infernal net. So I used the time to check e-mail for any heads up that Bannister might have about the coming assignment. The world of commerce never slept. Only I did. When I wasn’t awake that is. But being awake was never the easy row to hoe. There was peace from time to time mostly when I pushed myself away from the treadmill and stopped thinking of more and bigger things to take care of the things I thought I had. That was no longer for me.

   But eating was always a pressing problem and since most these days did their tricks for food having long given up the illusion of carrot and stick. No longer were we fooled by the promise of a fine retirement funded from the life time of labor, The reality that those assets were quickly drained away by the privatize entitlement scams that sank in even to your the densest of the masses. We are all dumb money now.

   The e-mail came from Bannister and the news was not good. Cyrus Plush was coming to the session. Although I knew that turn of events would pad the hours considerably for my billing, it would be painful spending that much time in the room with Cyrus perched like a Budgie behind me fretting and a pacing only to stop occasionally to admire himself in the mirror and perhaps ordering in for more cuttlebones to sharpen his beak on. So will my next hours be.

But I do not enjoy it as much as I once had.

Life at the Sentient Bean / Bannister

Bannister


Well enough musing about Fang Fang. I had a meeting with Banister Crawler, a transplanted New York producer who came to this cow town to handle the alcohol and caffeine beverages account boondoggle.

With this caffeine laced beverage there was no more snorting illegal cocaine to stay awake while drinking. Now just drink alcohol and caffeine and all will be well. That is till the local constabulary had to start dealing with the ravages of walking drunk syndrome. Darn. Legal substances both. They could no longer supply the for profit prison system with cheap labor and felons that the prison profiteers payed kick backs for. Also they have yet to figure out a way to confiscate property for consuming caffeine with alcohol. So they had to lobby the Corp Boys to knock off this particular product category, which was being heavily promoted, in the hope they could get back to the good old days of arresting people for being wide awake drunk and breaking laws by the act of ingesting verboten substances. Since many corporations were heavily invested in the prison system, they needed to oblige. Sure the profits from caffeine laced vitzblitz were big, but when your IRA’s are in the market you had to play all eventualities, which ain’t easy. Prison was big business. Criminal justice was a perfect jobs program for the self righteous. So was the double dipping they could garner from the illegal drug trade it would revive.

So that meant I would be able to bill many more hours while we took a campaign meant to extoll the virtues of being the rizzed inebriated, to just extolling the tried and true virtues of getting lucky while geezed. Of course this would mean a re-shoot. But first we would rearrange the marbles we had ad infinitum. Of course this meant hours in a dark room and much hand wringing, but this came with the territory. Bannister was a good sort, though a WASP through and through. He knew Providence would always smile on him with hard work and knowing what to kiss and when. It would entail the obligatory haggling over the hours and billing, but a good time would be had by all. The lunches were good and numerous, though being somewhat reminiscent of the days of Roman Bread and Circuses. Only a little less bloody.  I might even get back into the black after the recent Fang Fang junket.

So I bade farewell to the Beard with the usual, “It’s a good day to die.” nonsense and emerged from the Sentient Bean refreshed and enlightened from the morning reverie. Hailed the first gypsy cab I saw. As I crumpled into the back seat and licked a twenty and pasted it on my forehead to show good faith the driver took off. We hurtled towards that impressive array of unrented airspace formerly known as downtown. It was only then that I found out I was in the cab owned by the one known as Mediatrix.

Need I say more.

Life at the Sentient Bean / Sally

Sally


“Hello Sally” I said feeling like I was being sized up. For what I did not know. Well Fang Fang strolled up to me in her dirty Golden jump suit which was about five sizes to big  clomping over in work boots that seemed just as huge for her tiny frame. Even under the outsized Labrador Retrieval unform her surprisingly well defined feminine keyster was apparent. She aimed her butt in my general direction and said, “Fulfill first part of contract before moving to second part round eye.”

Well it seemed like a good idea. What could a little playful slap and tickle hurt. So I wound up and swung but she deftly maneuvered out of the way and said, “Not so fast G.I.”  G.I. was how the new Chinese immigrant overlords referred to us natives and stood for, Globally Indentured. They had learned lessons of history from the colonialists well and were enjoying their new roles.

 “How do I know where you been. I find you hanging out in the alley. Could be you live here.” Fang Fang said with a sly smile.  Before I could reply she demanded, “You buy me coffee now.” The little one was all about control so while lust filled visions and carnal possibilities surfaced from the reptilian part of my brain courtesy of my D.N.A. any sense, good bad or indifferent, was swiftly snatched away. I agreed.

Meanwhile the traffic was still blocked in the alleyway by the garbage truck. But Golden Retrieval employees were fearless when it came to local ordinances and rules. Never mind the honking horns. Once the other drivers saw the little operator strolling into the coffee shop with me they meekly reversed course and found alternative routes. It was White Lotus land now, and  Fang Fang knew it..

As I gallantly gestured for the little lady to enter the Sentient Bean before me I slapped that delightful behind and said, “So what’ll ya have Sally.” She gave a giggle akin to a child’s and then menacingly mumbled something in her native tongue which I didn’t quite catch. But I sure caught it later.

As we tumbled into the back of the Sentient Bean the Beard chimed in when he saw Fang Fang, “Hallo Sally, did you make it through the “Of Human Bondage” chapter in Spinoza’s “Ethics” yet?”

“Who have time for that crap, I too busy trying to save the world through recycling” retorted the Fangster then added, “Most of it is junk you transplanted  Euro Trash bought on credit, and pitched when it no longer was shinney and new.”

Now, I have to ask myself why she spoke that way since I would eventually find that she was born and raised in Buffalo NY. Just passing for advantage maybe.

Fang Fang Wu was a mystery through and through.

Life at the Sentient Bean / Casino

Casino

The last time I saw Fang Fang Wu she was physically and verbally assaulting a slot machine. At four foot eleven you may think  the Fangster would be easy to trifle with. That would be a serious miscalculation. But ask any slot machine, or dealer, car or otherwise and they will turn pale at the mention of this little force of nature.  Once her cold black eyes caught you, caught you were. Well I had to try to wrestle her away from the machine, because management was moving in the forces to stop her from trying to rip the arm off of the one armed bandit, but she knew it was payday and she was there to collect.

At this point she had mounted the machine and seemed to be trying to hump a payoff out of the machine while gibbering in what she claimed was her native tongue. I could never confirm nor deny that fact. This gave security pause since the violence had turned into something the guests pay for as a floor show. Then those glinting black eyes turned to me. She just threw me a hundred dollar bill and screamed. “YOU PLAY THAT MACHINE NOW”, and pointed  to Cleopatra across the room. I found this strange because she had sold everything thing I had and we were living in my 1966 Pontiac Star Chief Executive. No reasoning with her now. She was a woman, and while in the grips of warfare with the slot machine Buddha of her desires, now  was not trifling time.

Instead I realized that enough was enough, and having some money for gas I decided  this would be my cue to move on. A hundred bucks was more cash than I had seen since the credit card crisis sunk  the major banks into the black hole of derivative divine divergence, or whatever excuse for dodging moral hazard they were using that day. Better put, you can’t get blood from a stone. We were all squatting by the side of the economic road rubbing rocks in our heads for entertainment since it was what we could afford now that no one could say the magic words “charge it.” Nobody was making anything, and nobody was getting paid to advise us what to do with our no longer liquid brokerage assets. We have been trickled upon and could no longer find anyone else to trickle on. Monetarily speaking we were fucked. White Lotus had become a reality, but not as anticipated in the nineteen fifties. As few things had.

But I should have known I was fucked when I first laid eyes on Fang Fang Wu. She was a driver for Golden Labrador Retrieval Waste and Recycle , and was thumping a dumpster into the hopper, humming Bang a Gong in the key of “O”, when she turned around and saw me smoking a cigarette at the back door of the “Sentient Bean”

She whistled through the gap in her front teeth and exclaimed in the unforgivable voice of hers,

 “Well slap my ass and call me Sally “