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fanfic start Salt turns me tomato. Pepper turns me human. Salt=>tomato. Pepper=>human. Hide me in the cooler. This is how we’re getting through the police checkpoint.

“Hmm,” I thought… “I hope the police do not want to eat salad!!!!!”

I didn’t choose to be a Killer Tomato. I didn’t choose this. This was not my choice. I wept bitterly, the tears from my salt instantly transforming me to tomato mode. “Damn it!!!” I thought. “Why does crying always do that!!! It’s so embarrassing!!!”

Pepper flakes fell like gentle snow onto my brow and I sneezed and turned human and collapsed into his arms—-ZACK the SKATEBOARDER smelling like sweat and Lemonheads and Pepsi. “I’m sorry I’m such a mess lately!!!!” I said. He did not say a word and wrapped his strong arm around my neck in a headlock and stroked my hair right then and there. “Babe, you never have to apologize to me. Never.” I was so glad he was mine. I was so glad he could skateboard. We were looking up at the War Room map. Zoltan’s army were advancing on the city and the human resistance were fresh out of ideas.

“What we need,” I said, “is a plan, and I know just the thing!!!!” I winked at him.

tank treads

explosion grasping red hands

my red spheroid body strapped to the conveyor moving into the Sauce Machine. The loudspeaker crackled. “Once the tomatoes are washed and restrained, the Saucification process begins. Chamber one will gently slit that perfect crimson skin so the probe may enter. The contents of the central tomatile ventricles will be liquefied, the pulp and seeds funneled to storage tanks W and X.” “Now, this would  cause excruciating pain for a sentient KILLER tomato…fortunately, those kinds never go in this machine!!!” The scientist smirked knowingly. The helpers of the factory and the civilians on tour exchanged knowing glances and smiles. I screamed out “nooooo!!! I am not a regular tomato, I’m a Killer Tomato!!!” a family of tourists just smiled, pretending not to hear, and pressed their wrinkly faces against the observation glass

Zoltan returned to his fortress and programmed the Mutator to create new stronger WEIRDER tomato morphs including TWAAL (Tomato With Arms And Legs) TWAO (Tomato With Arms Only) TWLO (Tomato With Legs Only) TW (Tomato Worm) TF (Tomato Fighter.) He frowned. “A thief has broken into my valuables!!!” He and his friends searched the grounds. In the courtyard, in a pool of moonlight, was a shining red puddle. “Blood, or is it tomato juice. Tomato juice or blood?” Mused Zoltan. “It is the year 30XX and we Killer Tomatoes have long since conquered this world—the old world is memory fading. Was there really a time when tomato ketchup was used on hamburgers instead of human blood ketchup? Was there really a time when tomato ketchup was used on hot dogs instead of human blood ketchup?” He shook his head and sighed. “Was there really a time when tomato ketchup was used on french fries instead of human blood ketchup? Was there really a time when tomato ketchup was used on steaks instead of human blood ketchup?” He frowned and switched off the light and sat in darkness.

Wait, that’s a question, not a statement. The humor I know largely involves taking the familiar and bumping its bits around until they’ve been ordered into something absurd and surprising. This requires a shared definition of “the familiar,” a baseline to work from which is, in effect, a consensus reality. Does it validate and reinforce that fictive “reality” to so acknowledge it, if only to subvert or ridicule it? All satire would then be futile yapping for self comfort at the stone monoliths that will fall on you regardless, or does the comfort alone mean it isn’t futile? What is “futility” at this point, even? My issue is with the need, when writing fiction, to create a foundation that makes real within fiction what is fictive within reality: the shared narratives we use to describe who we are and what we are doing. To accept the narratives of the prevailing culture, as I think we often do when we “poke fun” by different means, is to accept that endless expansion, growth, and prosperity are (A) totally possible and (B) definitely what we’re heading towards right now. That’s a little far from the mark. The overwhelming impression I’ve gotten is rather that We Blew It, that we could admit by now that we’re not fucking our odds of preserving our current civilization through a combination of tremendous overpopulation and irreversible climate change, they’ve already been fucked. We’re not going anywhere, but nor can we imagine anywhere to go. In popular fictions, the two big endgame future scenarios are Star Trek and the post-apocalypse. Either one’s a fantasy of discovering a new frontier and restarting the engines of colonialism, hoping for a new golden age (that would last ‘till we thudded ourselves against the same walls again.) Something saves us and we don’t really have to change.

What’s worth joking about? That the brutality and cruelty our society permits are in service to idiotic fantasies about a utopia just over the hill, one we’ll never see without the order imposed by these rigidly enforced social barriers? That practically everything we do or say, every interaction we have in the course of moving through a day is in service to a compost of accumulated lies, interlocking systems founded on lies that will cease to function once the lies do? That my personal narratives, too, were traditionally founded on the premise that things would get better in the future, or that there was even a future to go to? Faced with these things, I feel I can do, am equipped to do nothing but write jokes and I don’t know what skillset could possibly make me feel any more empowered. A skillset more conducive to gathering enormous piles of cash with which to comfortably isolate myself would still fail a ways down the road when global destabilization was employed as justification for America’s final slide into authoritarian sludge (in a final effort to wrangle control and pretend there’d be a cool ending to its story arc.) [WRITE JOKE HERE.]

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Print this onto a sheet of white paper.

Glue it onto a sturdy piece of card stock and keep it in the buttoned breast pocket of your day-shirt.

“In light of [A], [B], [C], […], trans rights seem pretty insignificant, honestly.”

Fill sequence [A], [B], [C], […] with impressive-sounding issues you will, with relief, stop thinking about immediately after posting.

Stream the latest Mad Men.

This is my impression of you getting all social justice-y on Tumblr: THINGS AREN’T 100% OK ALL OF THE TIME. BAD THINGS ARE DONE TO PEOPLE PURPOSEFULLY. I SURE CARE A LOT ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS TO ME AND OTHER PEOPLE. RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE.

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“What I believe is this: that we should all see each other equally,” he said. “Not as black or white or gay or straight or cis or trans, but as human beings,” he said. “Any grievances you might voice are already covered by that statement,” he said. “Shut up,” he said.

Phase 1: Slow gray nightmare sliding down into tar depressed darkness no no

Phase 2: Thinkin’ and thinkin’ and cryin’ up at 4am and cryin’ up at 4am and cryin’ up at 4am

Phase 3: Feeling loads better, going out, getting those constant startled “what the fuck are you” stares

Phase 4: The Future, such as portrayed on The Jetsons

Grudgingly admitting that I, in most contexts, am not a gliding bog witch, that you outnumber me, and that you can terrify me more easily than I can steal your bones to build my cottage walls.