SERIALIZATION OF “the Zany Time Travels of Warble McGorkle” – Chapter 56 of 61
Warble Corners the Market on LSD at Woodstock and Plans to De-Pacify the Hippies There
Chapter 56
Warble Corners the Market on LSD at Woodstock and Plans to De-Pacify the Hippies
Entering New York airspace at Methuselah speed, Warble slows the craft down as they pass Schuylerville and Watkins Glen. Following an imaginary glide slope* down to the tiny hamlet of Woodstock, he barely misses bowling over a grazing cow as he secrets the Arodnap behind a dairy barn on Max Yasger's farm.
* Warble has acquired a decided preference for airplane mode as opposed to V.T.O.L., or vertical landing mode, despite the mishap at the Greasy Grass
The cow moos in alarm, and races away from the Arodnap and its cast of characters, looking back at them wide-eyed, tail sticking straight out. Her next batch of milk will be ruined by the traumatic encounter with the time-and-space travelers, but Warble doesn't know that. And if he did know it, he wouldn't care, because he doesn't drink milk—like most megalomaniacs, he is lactose intolerant.
Warble and the crew bury the Arodnap under a pile of alfalfa. Warble doesn't want some nosy farmer discovering his little beauty and taking it for a joy ride.
On inspecting their handiwork and judging the Arodnap to be completely invisible beneath the pile of legumes, Warble raises his arm and points to the northeast. “Follow me, boys!” he commands, and begins trotting in the opposite direction that he pointed.
After covering a few yards, Warble glances back and sees that Mary and Marianne are still standing by the pile of livestock fodder. 'Probably talking about me,' Warble thinks. “AND GIRLS!” Warble bellows out, furrowing his brow, and gesticulating wildly. “Do I have to spell out everything? What does gender matter at a time like this?” Warble mutters, exasperated. Mary and Marianne look over at Warble and give no response, but then suddenly begin running full speed toward their wayward comrades.
“So it's a race you want, huh, girls?” Warble says. “Well, you can't beat us—we're men--and besides, we've got a head start, which is only fitting, lords of creation that we are.”
Somehow Mary and Marianne not only catch up to, but overtake Warble and the other menfolk. When Warble sees they are being outpaced, he pulls up, climbs a small knoll, and begins to address his troops (he imagines himself as General George Patton, standing atop a jeep).
“Violence is Golden!” Warble proclaims, at the top of his voice.
“Warble, how can you hold such a reprehensible viewpoint?” Mary queries, walking up to the group with Marianne. “Especially in such a peaceful and bucolic place?”
“Whether the botulism rate is any higher here than anywhere else, or higher than in the average burg, I really don't know or care, Mary,” Warble replies coolly. “But I'm here to tell you that our way of life cannot be maintained without violence. And I mean to put an end to all this talk of peace and such nonsense. We are here at Woodstock to nip these freaky, psychedelic peaceniks in the butt.”
“Now you're talking!” Albert says, not quite understanding what Warble means yet.
“At least somebody here knows which side of their bread is buttered,” Warble notes, nodding at Albert, grudgingly and gradually forgiving the mechanic for his former display of disrespect (and also wanting to be on Taterskin's good side).
“We are here to sabotage these beatnik peacenik anti-establishment malcontents,” Warble explains. “They think they are going to found the Peace Corps here this weekend, but instead of that we will head them off at the pass and get them to do a 180 and found the Violence Corps instead.”
“The Violence Corps?” Marianne asks. “Well, I never! Why would we want them to do that?”
“Isn't it obvious?” Warble asks. “Especially to a security expert? Without violence, our soldiers and sailors, marines and flyboys will have nothing to do but play ping-pong and get themselves into other sorts of mischief. We need wars to keep the economy going.
We need the economy to stay strong to keep consumerism ascendant. So, it's plain: the more violence we can generate, the better it is for everybody concerned.
“You see, the hippies—these tie-dyed, long-haired, dope-smoking, convention-flaunting, anti-establishment, anti-American whey, anti-capitalist wackos, weirdos, and freaks—are wrong about everything: pollution, the Vietnam War, that politicians can't be trusted, etc. And so, we've got to flip their minds over and upside down.”
“How do you intend to do that?” Marianne asks, skeptical that such a thing is even possible (in a figurative sense, anyway), but curious as to what Warble might suggest.
“It will be a two-step process,” Warble explains. “First, we buy all the LSD here, thus cornering the market—everyone will have to come to us to get their fix and fill of it. But first, before we dole it out (at a good profit, of course), we re-engineer it so that it contains megadoses of steroids. This will make the men big and buffed, which will make them want to show off their new-found muscles by beating people up, shooting them with machine guns, baking them with flamethrowers, defoliating them with a little Agent Orange(™), and so forth.
“It will have an even more profound effect on the female gender: It will give the women permanent PMS and menopausal symptoms, which will cause them to encourage their men to join the military—just to get them out of their hair.”
“Wow!” is all Marianne can say in response, practically made speechless by the degree of duplicity and depths of depravity manifest in Warble's plan.
Comfy, though, who had been a little distracted by Jimi Hendrix' version of “The Star Spangled Banner,” enters the conversation by asking what the second phase of the two phase plan is.
Soundtrack note: Should be obvious. If not, leave that wacky tabacky alone
“You see those monitors up there on the stage, people?” Warble says, pointing at the smaller amplifiers aiming back at the performers. “Those contain digital displays that prompt the singers—if you want to call that caterwauling they do singing—with the words to their songs. After all, they're all so high on marijuana and LSD and such that they barely know where they are or even who they are, let alone remember the song lyrics.
“As an example to prove my point, take that last song that that left-handed, bandanna-wearing, purple-bedecked maniac played: he couldn't remember any of the lyrics at all, and so had to just fake it by flailing away at his electrified guitar.
“Anyway, we will bribe the guy feeding in the lyrics to replace the hippie's 'love love peace peace' nonsense with a little propaganda of our own. In this steroid-induced frenzy, the crowd will be hypnotized by the superliminal messages we'll send them.”
“Superliminal?” Marianne asks.
“Yes, superliminal,” Warble repeats. “We have nothing to hide. Everything is on the up and up here, out in the open and plain as day. Subliminal messages are so yesterday, anyway. We will give them our message straight out, no trickeration involved.”
“Now what is the point of this propaganda again, Warble?” Mary asks, who had read George Orwell's 1984 in high school (assigned by a hippie teacher) and is getting a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.
“The purpose of the propaganda is to help these poor misguided youths, Mary. To get their mind right and their thinking straight. The function of propaganda is to get people to do in cold blood what they would or could otherwise only do in the heat of passion.
“So, since these hippies have these crazy notions about peace—jeez, what a stupid idea!--we have to knock some sense into them, so to speak.
“Propaganda is your friend. Take television: All red-blooded Americans love TV and gentle toilet tissue, right? Right. Well, television is a great medium, as the boob tube can tell people what to think. When polls are taken, and viewers are told the results of those polls, they can and do change their opinions to that of the majority, because they want to fit in; and it's just easier thataway, to “go with the flow” -- you know. “We have to make sure that from now on it is real people, like us, who control the polls. We can't have a return to the days of old when cows set national policy.”
“Did I hear you right, Warble?” Jacques asks. “Did you say, 'cows'?”
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Blackbird Crow Raven’s “the Zany Time Travels of Warble McGorkle” is being serialized in this space each Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday; it is also available in its entirety from here.
You can listen to the recording of this excerpt, by the author’s alter ego, here: