DANGEROUS HOOKY

It's shocking to see the lengths to which truant officers will go to make sure the children under their thumbs have appeared on time for school. This footage of a Pittsburgh elementary school shows that extraterrestrial technology is being employed to take a DNA scan of all students, parents, and teachers entering the building before classes. Will the government's increasingly baroque invasions of our privacy ever come to an end?

Let it be stated that The Apocryphist is a product of neither the public school system nor the nefarious underground network of private schools that dot the educational landscape like so many measles on a sickly child's face. Our stunning insightfulness and savage independence of spirit stem from the fact that we were home-schooled. By whom (or what) we are not naive enough to say out loud on the Labyrosphere (which, if you need reminding, is our preferred neologism for the Internet). Suffice it to say, saying what we've said should suffice.

FACING THE BOOK

The very phrase “social networking,” fills us with dread so deep that one cannot see its bottom, and is thus forced to imagine the sort of fanged, eyeless creatures that scrabble about far down in the unprobed abyss. However, just as we struggled for years over the decision to share our riches with the world by producing a web-based log, we have spent long, candle-lit hours debating with ourselves over the decision to join the Facebook, a tool noted for its “social networking” abilities. Our message won the day over our comfort – truth requires exposure, and so we have deemed it necessary to poke another breathing-hole from within the solace of our bushel to let our light shine better on the world outside.

And it’s been a smashing success! We have 86 friends! That’s more people than we’ve spoken to in person for over a decade! And the best part is, we don’t need to speak to them! We’ve also started a group, entitled “Friends and/or Enemies of The Apocryphist,” and this group has garnered 24 committed, enthusiastic readers of this web-based log! Why only about a quarter of our 86 "friends" want to be considered members of our "group" is difficult to understand – we would think the ratio would be removed, since “friend” is such a loaded word/concept, whereas most people hold little stock in the word/concept “group” – we’re all part of the “group” of vertebrates, for instance, but you don’t see anyone lending a komodo dragon twenty dollars simply because of shared membership.

Anywhy, it is our firm belief that the Book of Face and its related applications are destined to revolutionize the dissemination of important crap from here to eternity. This because of the true kernel of genius lying at its core: though it may be “networking,” there is absolutely nothing "social" about it! We can now all be friends without having to lend each other twenty dollars, ever. This is the true evolution of the species!

IN NO WAY INTENDED TO BE ALLEGORICAL

We have been hesitant to write at too great a length about one of the tinier denizens of our home, as we are deeply wary of falling into the practice of personal feline reportage known colloquially as “catblogging” – particularly on Fridays. However, our little Neqa’el has been so adorable recently that we simply couldn’t allow her behavior to pass without comment.

As many of you no doubt recall, Neqa’el has been veritably mummified as a result of injuries sustained during the ill-fated Sexy Robot Experiment of March 2007. Now that her bones are beginning to knit (extremely quickly, might we add!), she is walking around the apartment some, and we no longer have to bring her tiny bedpans filled with litter.

Yesterday evening, however, she topped even the sight of her little Michelin-Man body hobbling comically in chase of a loose-floating feather from one of our collection of African blow darts. Hers is a feisty spirit, as you can imagine, and even an injury that would have long since killed most normal cats doesn’t prevent her from following her charming little whims.

Well, due to a set of circumstances that I won’t go too deeply into, it transpired that a white dove broke loose in our apartment and started flying around the room. (Neqa’el normally wouldn’t stand for our keeping birds, but this was an isolated incident involving a particular project and it was made very clear to her that it would not be a regular occurrence.) Needless to say she tried to chase the thing, which in itself was nearly enough to hideously maim one with cuteness.

But the end of the story is its most precious part. The bird alit on the sofa at one point, and Neqa’el, on dainty paws and incredibly slow-moving, was able to sneak up near it without its notice. Her bandages were coming a bit unraveled from all the horseplay, such that after a brief tussle a stray end of the wrapping became tightly wrapped around the poor bird’s neck. The bird attempted to fly, but Neqa’el’s weight was such that it only lifted her about an inch off the ground, its wings working furiously, before its neck snapped, causing them both to fall to the ground. Oh, the look on Neqa’el’s face was most priceless!

We regret that we’re unable to provide photos of this adorable occurrence, as displaying Nequa’el’s distinguishing characteristics to the world will make our own identity that much more identifiable, and our cabal would skin us alive and then force us to eat our own skin while we bled there, skinless. This pains us, because we have the most adorable photos of Neqa’el as a kitten peering out from within a grinning human skull, and no one will be able to look at them.

OPERATION SHREWD EUPHEMISM

If we were not above apology, we would offer regrets for our recent absence from the blogosphere. Suffice it to say, we are deeply embroiled in a project that will be taking up more and more of our time over the coming months. It would not behoove us to share with you the goal of this project, but since you, faithful Reader, have been such a faithful reader, we will bestow upon you a series of hints that will enable your imaginations to catch fire. This new project involves:

• A jarful of mosquitos
• The home telephone numbers of all members of the United States House of Representatives
• A carefully drawn map of the Paris sewer system
• Three syringes of pure oxyglutamine
• 23 signed headshots of Jennifer Hudson
• A dozen Lascar strongmen, primed for adventure
• Two rocks
• A Rembrandt painting entitled “The Conspiratorial Blessing of Isaac Firkkens,” which is believed to be a fake but is actually a Rembrandt painting entitled “Christ Oversees the Swineherds”
• Three Charles Darwin beard hairs
• An incriminating Betamax cassette of Jimmy Carter cavorting with Roy Cohn
• A cyborg giraffe
• Deep love for our craft

Anybody who can guess the object of our scheme will get a free signed first edition copy of our book. When we write it.

AN IMPLICIT INVITATION MADE EMBARRASSINGLY PLICIT

It has been five full weeks since we began disseminating classified, semi-classified, quasi-classified, pseudo-classified and crypto-classified information to the likes of you, the Reader, in the weblog format you see before you. The echo of our voice within the void of the digital canyons surrounding us is satisfying, sure, but occasionally we find ourselves wishing to determine better what type of walls this form of virtual sonar is bouncing back to us from.

Now, we understand full well the risks inherent in being seen fraternizing with us – if our own cabal found out about this site they would KILL us (most likely by hypnotizing us into killing ourselves). This is why we must point out that – and we apologize if you find this shocking – “The Apocryphist” is not our real name. At the risk of making things even more complicated, and of bursting the delicate illusion we’ve been so painstaking in the preparation of, we are not even actually more than one person, but rather, an individual entity exercising a common stylistic conceit not dissimilar to the Royal We, but only without all the corruption and inbredness endemic to blood monarchy.

Our goal in revealing this anonymity is that we wish to persuade you, the Reader (and yes, we’re pretty sure we’re being accurate in using the singular form) to likewise cloak yourself in the incognititude available to members of a fake community such as the Labyrosphere (this is our one of our new words for the Internet – we’re working on others as well). We wish to encourage you, with honeyed words and persuasive gestures, to sign up for a free gmail account under the assumed name of your choice, and to engage in fierce debate with us, free from the stress and turmoil caused by the prying eyes of overlords and co-cabalists. The comment section of this and many other entries fairly cries out with the pregnantly trembling tears of solitude – and though we enjoy that about three-quarters of the time, the last fourth could stand to be filled up with your opinions, refutations, rebuttals, denials, professions of brotherhood, and, in their proper place, ejaculations.

We await your move, Reader. Or, shall we say, “Joe.”

MORE OBLIGATORY PERSONAL POSTING

It’s always so difficult to muster the will to uncover compelling evidence of conspiracy, paranoia, and ignorance first thing on a Monday morning. The Saturday night cabal meeting is usually so exhausting, often stretching until the Sunday dawn forces us back into our darkened warrens – and with Daylight Savings Time so early this year no one remembered that we were losing an hour, which led to frayed tempers and accusations of bribing Congress into passing the Energy Policy Act of 2005 as a complex ploy because SOMEBODY knew that far in advance that they’d have a heavy brunch date on Sunday March 11, 2007. (In confidence, we can predict that certain cabal members will end up kicked out on their freshly brainwashed asses any day now.)

But that wasn’t the only adversity we faced this weekend. Our cat (who is NOT our familiar, thank you very much, and who for the purposes of this blog we will refer to as “Neqa’el”), swallowed something foreign and was puking up all over the house. We had to take her to the underground vet, who gave her some gingko root, monohydrodopamite, and medicinal marijuana before suggesting that we figure out what exactly what it was she ingested. Upon arriving at home, we discovered that she had been gnawing on the corners of some lab reports we had recently received from the National Cooling Chamber in Los Aburres, Nevada regarding the postmortem cryogenic preservation of the Skatebirds; we believe the cryogenic chemicals from the papers might have been the root cause of her ill. Bad Neqa’el!

Anyhow, rest assured: fresh revelations will appear on this hallowed page tomorrow. On Thursday evening, however, we are leaving town to attend a Greater Cabal Convention in Las Vegas, which will keep us occupied until Sunday. The taking of photographs and videographic images is not permitted at the event, but we will provide you with whatever meager scraps of reportage and hearsay we can safely convey without risk of having our souls stolen from us in dark, blood-drenched rituals performed by nefarious rivals.

OBLIGATORY PERSONAL POST

A funny thing happened at our cabal meeting this weekend. Unfortunately, we can’t tell you anything about it, because doing so could endanger the lives of yourself and all those close to you. It was really funny, though.