woodenrocketpress

Montel Williams Recives The Word Of “God.”

It wont surprise many of our readers to learn that ousted television monarch, the formerly sir, Montel Williams has spent the bulk of his now fifty-two year retirement wandering the boardwalks in Calcutta rehearsing his Oscar speech. Nor will it come as a great shock – at least to those who purchased copies of the limited print Early Writings of an Urban Wizard – to learn Mr Williams’ recitation, which more or less constitutes a  half century of intense mantra practiced, finally had the effect of setting his chakras into perfect alignment. Mr. Williams was bless with this brief, but intense spiritual experience earlier this week.  The noteworthy part of this story, is the profoundly unusual nature of Mr. Williams’ particular religious vision.  While most saints who under go this transformation report hearing the voices of Marry, or the Archangel Gabriel, Mr. Williams appears to have contacted the wandering spirit of the late Senator Ted Stevens, and channelled an exact, word for word recitation of the departed mans reasoned argument against the Net Neutrality Bill.

From the cell phone recording of a passer by, and for those who may not recall the exact wording of the text in question, here is a transcript of the incantation Mr. Williams’ recited while in his alleged trance.  The punctuation is my own, as derived from the cadence, and the words belong to Mr. Stevens, but the voice is on the recording undoubtedly belongs to Mr. Williams:

What the senator is talking about is allowing all of these entities that support this to provide streaming stuff going – going on the  Internet.  Now the Internet – let’s you know.  Let’s go back, the Internet started with with the concept of local to local.  Connections across the country and, you could go for Alaska but you. . .  you had to go through local connections to get there.  The industry wisely provided for streaming of, in affect a new kind of long distance, and that’s what we’ve got.  We’ve got a service that’s immune to distance.  And it’s there for the consumer.  But but when we take, and really indicate that.  Anyone that wants to use it, this system, for massive, massive communi-commercial purposes.
There’s one company now you can.  You, you sign up and you get a movie delivered to your house!  daily!  By subscription, by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it put in the mail box and you get home. . . and in your muscle you can change your order.  But you pay for that, right? This service is now going to go through the Internet and what you do is,m you just go to a place on Internet and you order your movie and guess what? you can order ten of them!  At deliver to you, and the delivery charge is free right? Ten movies streaming across that in Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet?
I just the other day got – internet  was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday. I got it yesterday!
Why?
Because you got tangled up with all these things that going on the Internet commercially.
So you want to talk about the consumer? Let’s talk about you and me. We use this Internet to communicate and we aren’t using it for commercial purposes. We aren’t earning anything by going on that Internet. Now I’m not saying you have to discriminate or you want to discriminate against those people.  I’m just saying that we haven’t seen anything yet, that indicates there is discrimination! And until you can define it, I’m opposed to the concepts that are implied by your recommendation. 
We have, if it. We have already had unfair competition. And here we have this one situation where enormous entities want to use the Internet for their purpose, to save money, for doing what they’re doing now!  They use FedEx, they use the. . . delivery services, they use the mail! They deliver in other ways. But they want to deliver fast amounts of information, over the Internet.
And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on, it’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes! And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled – and if they are filled — when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material! Enormous amounts of material.
The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says “No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the Internet.”
No, I’m not finished. I want people to understand my position, I’m not going to take a lot of time.

Om Shanti Om.

Michael Scott

What I Learned On The Mountain: A Conversation with Jonathan Taylor Thomas

“Good, you have made it here. But all things are fleeting,” the master said, the tips of his hair frosted like the mountains themselves. I was out of breath. My hands blistered from my walking stick and all my fatigue disappeared as I stared into his cheeks, pinched into dimples so deep my eyes could only search them for the unanswered questions of the universe.

“Success is but an illusion. In life, a man may climb many mountains. He may soar to many great heights and win may Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards, but he cannot stay atop a mountain! A mountain has no food, no water. Real sustenance comes from the earth, from the trees, from life itself. Not high above life where there is cold rock and clouds. A man may climb many mountains, but he must always come down.”

His every sentence is a palindromatic whorl of thoughts, turning back on itself and, in turn, turning my understanding on itself. He sits atop a modest wooden stool. The wooden shack built around him is decorated with red tapestries, beautiful though dusty. He looks right through me, out the door and onto the steep cliffside road I traversed to get there. I have walked many miles and lost many friends in my journey to know life’s truths. Many travelers have come here before me looking for the same truths.

“You may ask your first question,” the master said.

“Oh JTT,” I replied, hesitant. “Why did you leave Home Improvement?”

“To symbolize that all life is change. Like the tide whose water dances around our feet and is tomorrow on our enemy’s shores, or the snake who looks the same from year to year but has shed layers of himself, so too must the sitcom eventually experience a character disruption. Plus our ratings were falling like autumn leaves and Zach’s popularity was vanishing and with me in the picture, Taran would never ascend to true Tiger Beat nirvana. It was a good time for me to go.”

He paused and sipped from a cup of tea I had not seen before. The wind behind us disappeared and all I could hear was the liquid on his lips. “You may ask your second question,” he said, forcefully and gently all at the same time.

“What is the meaning of life?” I asked.

“Life’s purpose is to feed life. Whether it be through helping your fellow man, or teaching a child, or feeding thr hungry, life’s goal is to give all other life the chance to further nurture its surroundings. Life must demand from nature the means to lift life up when it struggles, and to support life where it needs help to flourish. This, my pupil, was what Wild America was about.”

I sat in silence, pondering his statement. I dare not waste my final question. He took another sip of tea and his bright eyes stared out at me. A gust came through the shack and his hair serenely stood its ground. I thought of my last question, my trek and the home I left behind and I couldn’t ask it. I felt inconsequently empty. Knowing why Home Improvement was left behind and why life itself exists left me questioning the master. His smile became a smirk, and the doubt I felt crept over me. I felt like one answer would never be enough, and one question had been bothering me since I pressed my knees into the floorboards and though it may incur the master’s wrath, I decided I must ask, or commit myself to a life of spiritual penury, the sadness brought on by not encouraging my own questions, getting my own answers and letting my life move forward.

“Master,” I started. “He who goes be my names, JTT, Heartthrob, Simba, the Guy From I’ll Be Home For Christmas, and so on. When I first entered you said that success itself is fleeting. All things must come to an end.”

“Yes,” JTT said.

“And that man himself will climb many mountains, but it is his destiny to return back to Earth. Man can not live on mountains, you said, no?”

“Correct,” spoke JTT.

“Then why, master, do you live on a mountain? Why have you not come down? Does not the physicality of your act defeat your teaching? Don’t you survive up here fine and, therefore, can’t man’s success be indefinite? Can not man stay at the top forever? Why can’t man stay in a mountain forever if you, master, can live here? What makes you different?”

“Well come on,” he said. “I’m JTT.”

Reviews?

Hey folks,

So every second week we here at Wooden Rocket Press like to post a review of some independent project, and with the Small Press book fair an agonizing three weeks away, I thought it would be prudent to solicit your independent art for our consideration. Also I started a new job this week and all I’ve been able to read were menu specs. In review, the training manual at Joy Bistro is rife with spelling and grammatical errors, but its use of building up the waiter character is pretty compelling.

If you have a book or zine or graphic novel or installation project (so long as it prominently features words), we would like to read / walk through it.

Shoot us an e-mail at submissions@woodenrocketpress.com, so that we have something to read on these long, cold summer months.

From the trenches,

Dave