Tell it to the Constable

A real Johnny Scuffles classic...

She liked smokin' menthol cigarettes
Said that their taste was smooth
Had a sister named Marguerite
Them chicks was always on the move
Well, I remember them tinted windows
On her beat up ol’ Pontiac
And ever' time the cold wind blows
I want my Rhonda back

Mini skirts in Texas
Stockings down to Tennessee
Babe, I ain't got no exes
I got a long list o’ tragedy

So you can tell it to the Constable
You can say your prayers to him
So that I can have my sacrament
Of bitters, lime, and gin

Well, I keep my pills in a tin box
An' I got just one sock on
I thought that baby was a tiger
But she turned out to be a fox-trot con
And, no, I didn't see it comin'
No, not till my money was gone
And so I smoked my last cigarette
And I passed out at dawn

You know, them mini skirts in Texas
Them stockins down in Tennessee
Babe, I ain't got exes
But I got a long list o’ tragedy

So you can tell it to the Constable
Yeah, you can say your prayers to him
So that I can have my sacrament
Of bitters, lime, and gin

Convicted early one mornin'
They released me later that night
Was shipped to a mental institution
Where them drinks is just alright

You can see the bottom of a stiff one
You can drink until your blind
But, man, you go with that damn pretty lady
An' you're bound to lose your mind
And them blues is all you'll find
Yeah them blues is all you'll find

So go tell it to the Constable
And just say your prayers to him
So that I can have  my sacrament
Of bitters, lime…and gin

Socratic Dialogue on the Existence of Scuffles

Below is an e-mail exchange between the author of this blog and the author’s friend, whose first name happens to be “Socrates”.   It nicely summarizes the purpose of this blog and the underlying work from which much of this blog’s material is taken:  

>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Jan 20, 2012, at 7:50 PM, ______ < <_____@gmail.com>
>>>>> ______@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> I do not normally do this, but there is a new musician named Johnny
>>>>> Scuffles whom I discovered and who seems interesting.  He has a blog,
>>>>> though
>>>>> it's not completely functional.  For some reason he's huge in
>>>>> Almaty and
>>>>> Gdańsk.  Apparently he's got some appeal for Kazakhs and Eastern
>>>>> Bloc hipsters who know of him.
>>>>>
>>>>> The link is:
>>>>> <http://johnnyscuffles.blogspot.com><http://johnnyscuffles.blogspot.com
>>>>>>
>>>>> johnnyscuffles.blogspot.com

>>>>> On Jan 20, 2012, at 8:27 PM, Socrates <______@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> Stfu!!!!

>>>> On Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 12:19 PM, ______
>>>> <______@gmail.com> wrote:>>>>> Haha...I have another, too:
>>>>>
>>>>> Werehuahua.blogspot.com
>>>>>
>>>>> Sent from my iPhone

>>> On 1/21/12, socrates <______@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> you are hilarious.  love that johnny scuffles still exists.

>> On Jan 21, 2012, at 7:43 PM, _____ wrote:
>>
>>> S____!!  I quoted your e-mail directly below and then responded with a
>>> Socratic Dialogue...have some patience, because this may be the best
>>> of all possible e-mail exchanges if an e-mail exchange were used to
>>> introduce the central theme of my novel...that's why I copied ____,
>>> ___, and ____: because I thought they would find it hilarious:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 1/21/12, socrates <____@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> you are hilarious.  love that johnny scuffles still exists.
>>>
>>> Still exists?  But Socrates, you must be using the Socratic Method!
>>>
>>> Johnny Scuffles is the central character within my novel [which I MUST
>>> finish no later than June 24, 2012, as I refuse to turn 30 without
>>> having finished: I will go so far as to stop all of time if I must!],
>>> *Scuffles and the Stained Strumpet*.  The novel, of course, is a
>>> fiction, but Scuffles is a fictional rock star within the "fictional
>>> reality" of my novel.  He is [to be, or not to be?] a rock star wholly
>>> invented by the central characters [fictional, of course, but very
>>> real within my fiction], but he takes on a life of his own, a real
>>> life, within the fictional universe.
>>>
>>> So...I see where you were going with your comment: "love that johnny
>>> scuffles still exists"!  Great Socrates, what you have given me is a
>>> simplified Socratic Dialogue:
>>>
>>> Socrates: "Does Johnny Scuffles still exist?"
>>>
>>> Disciple: "Johnny Scuffles never existed.  I invented Morgan,
>>> Brooklyn Gordon, Cornelius Coldwater IV, and Valkyn Kyrll, who then
>>> invented Johnny Scuffles as a fictional rock star who never really
>>> lived.  They published his fictional biography and his lyrics, but
>>> there was never any music and never a live Johnny Scuffles, even
>>> though their ruse tricked the world."
>>>
>>> Socrates: "People all over the world sang his songs, always in the
>>> same melody, and Scufflemania became a global craze, and Morgan had to
>>> kill 'Johnny Scuffles the Idea' in order to become 'Morgan the
>>> Person', before later being recognized as the Mayan god Ah Tupp Kabal
>>> in a Guatemalan fishing village where he spent the rest of life.  Did
>>> Morgan ever exist?"
>>>
>>> Disciple: "Yes, Morgan existed, but only in the novel."
>>>
>>> Socrates: "Does Morgan exist within the fiction, even though he,
>>> himself, is a fiction?"
>>>
>>> Disciple: "Within the fiction, yes, I suppose he can exist."
>>>
>>> Socrates: "For so long as the words exists, does Morgan still exist?"
>>>
>>> Disciple: "Yes, for so long as the words exist, Morgan still
>>> exists."
>>>
>>> Socrates: "For so long as the words which created Morgan still exist,
>>> do Morgan's words create Johnny Scuffles?"
>>>
>>> Disciple Chris: "Morgan's words, the words which created Johnny
>>> Scuffles, for so long as they exist, those words create Johnny
>>> Scuffles."
>>>
>>> Socrates: "Do those words still exist?"
>>>
>>> Disciple: "Yes."
>>>
>>> Socrates: "Does Johnny Scuffles still exist?"
>>>
>>> Disciple: "Yes, Johnny Scuffles still exists."
>>>
>>> Socrates: "Did you finish the novel?"
>>>
>>> Disciple: "No, not yet."
>>>
>>> Socrates: "So finish the fucking novel already!  You've been talking
>>> about it for 10 years and now you're blogging about it?  FINISH THE
>>> FUCKING NOVEL!"
>>>
>>> Disciple: "I will, oh wise pedagogue!"
>>>
>>> xoxo
>>> Chris
>>>
>>> PS: if I redact our last names and e-mail addresses, can I post this
>>> e-mail exchange on my blog????

> On 1/21/12, E____  <e@____.com.> wrote:
>> ....is writing the novel a fiction?
>>

On Jan 21, 2012, at 9:24 PM, ____ <______@gmail.com> wrote:

> Everything is a fiction, remember?  No...writing the novel probably
> was a fiction before I realized how miserable my life would be without
> writing.  I do "lawyering" and I bleed fiction.  I guess a lot of
> lawyers bleed bullshit (no offense,_____), but not many people bleed
> for fiction, so maybe that's what I mean.
>
> “If I could stick my pen in my heart, and spill [blood and ink] all
> over the stage, would it satisfy ya?  Would it slide on by ya?  Would
> you think the boy is strange?  Ain't he strange?”
>
> --from "It's Only Rock 'n' Roll (But I like It)" by the Rolling Stones
>

If Socrates, the person, acknowledges that his predecessor, Socrates, was not only a reality but also a fiction, wouldn't it be fair for Socrates, the person, to acknowledge the inherent right of Johnny scuffles (aka Ah Tupp Kabal) to exist not only as a reality but also a fiction within or outside of a novel?

Ps: you may take that as my approval to redact names and post this conversation to your blog about the fictitious reality of novel subjects

Peter Sloterdijk's *Bubbles*

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12633

Giantess

Man with Giantess, Starbucks on Melrose, Los Angeles, CA circa 2008

Gottfried Helnwein, "Lulu", 1988

La Géante

Du temps que la Nature en sa verve puissante
Concevait chaque jour des enfants monstrueux,
J'eusse aimé vivre auprès d'une jeune géante,
Comme aux pieds d'une reine un chat voluptueux.

J'eusse aimé voir son corps fleurir avec son âme
Et grandir librement dans ses terribles jeux;
Deviner si son coeur couve une sombre flamme
Aux humides brouillards qui nagent dans ses yeux;

Parcourir à loisir ses magnifiques formes;
Ramper sur le versant de ses genoux énormes,
Et parfois en été, quand les soleils malsains,

Lasse, la font s'étendre à travers la campagne,
Dormir nonchalamment à l'ombre de ses seins,
Comme un hameau paisible au pied d'une montagne.

— Charles Baudelaire

The Giantess

At the time when Nature with a lusty spirit
Was conceiving monstrous children each day,
I should have liked to live near a young giantess,
Like a voluptuous cat at the feet of a queen.

I should have liked to see her soul and body thrive
And grow without restraint in her terrible games;
To divine by the mist swimming within her eyes
If her heart harbored a smoldering flame;

To explore leisurely her magnificent form;
To crawl upon the slopes of her enormous knees,
And sometimes in summer, when the unhealthy sun

Makes her stretch out, weary, across the countryside,
To sleep nonchalantly in the shade of her breasts,
Like a peaceful hamlet below a mountainside.

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

Case of Those Old Blues

For all of you Scufflists and Scufflettes with a case of those old blues...the time has come. Scufflemania has arrived.

Kinship of Scuffles

Johnny Scuffles, as all of us do, has both fictive and true kinship, despite the fact that he is himself a fiction.

Hear this Damned Scuffle

“If he met any one good—were there any good people left in the world or did they all live in white apartment-houses now? Was every one followed in the moonlight? But if he met some one good who'd know what he meant and hear this damned scuffle ... then the scuffling grew suddenly nearer, and a black cloud settled over the moon. When again the pale sheen skimmed the cornices, it was almost beside him, and Amory thought he heard a quiet breathing. Suddenly he realized that the footsteps were not behind, had never been behind, they were ahead and he was not eluding but following ... following. He began to run, blindly, his heart knocking heavily, his hands clinched. Far ahead a black dot showed itself, resolved slowly into a human shape. But Amory was beyond that now; he turned off the street and darted into an alley, narrow and dark and smelling of old rottenness. He twisted down a long, sinuous blackness, where the moonlight was shut away except for tiny glints and patches ... then suddenly sank panting into a corner by a fence, exhausted. The steps ahead stopped, and he could hear them shift slightly with a continuous motion, like waves around a dock.”

 – F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
Book One, Chapter Three: “The Egotist Considers”

The Stained Strumpet

"Keep it real."  Keep it real?  If there were but one thing that I've come to know as "real", it would be that we have been searching for the “real" since the start of this human mess and that all that we've come up with is a great deal of fiction.  Life – real or fiction – is just a strumpet lying alone in her room, stained with a very robust red wine.  Now…after all those nights, nights that ache as they become mornings, that moaning little strumpet cries out that the only thing left to her is an obnoxious stain in a strange red hue.  It's been the same stain, each night, and she'll be stained with red wine until some fool tells her that things will change.   Shakespeare had it right, though it may have been Woody Allen: “Life is a strumpet stained in wine.” 

And then there was Morgan, alone on the bed, his white shirt stained in brown from whiskey.  He felt like he heard a cynical laugh coming from somewhere.  It must have been that little strumpet, knowing that she was not alone.  Morgan wasn't alone, either, and the sun continued to rise.  He got up, walked to the bathroom, and laughed at himself, knowing that a little strumpet stained in red was laughing with him.

Peter O’Toole from What’s New Pussycat, Woody Allen’s first feature-length writing credit: “Life is a strumpet stained with wine.  Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath made me mad.  I say, we will have no more marriages!"

Peter Sellers: “Isn't that Schiller?”

O'Toole: “Shakespeare!”
 

Scuffles

Morgan lifted his head.  "Scuffles.  Johnny Scuffles." Language is a whore and poets are violent pimps with aggressive tendencies couched only by the semblance of art.  He sat in the living room and things suddenly just stirred.  They stirred in his belly, around the ceiling and down into his toes.  His innards became a madman dancing wildly in some field underneath the satellite moon, frothing at the mouth and expelling the nastiest and beautifulest of creative creations.  Caesars and seizures, his torso in a fit of gonzo fury, this was the time when the world could shake.  That is when it happened and the idea of Scuffles was born.