End Of A Rainbow

And we will speak in no more tongues and you will not understand me, nor I, you. We will yell and scream and bang on invisible walls with bloody knuckles, like visitors in a prison. You may crow that you have won and I might do the same. But really, there are no victors here. Only those who once could’ve been friends.

We Write And We Read And We Wait

And we struck a giant stone disk through the center of the world and started it turning, it took a while for someone to figure out that whatever they wrote at the outer edges of the disk would eventually travel to the other side of the world and back but they did. And so every day, millions crowd the slow rotating surface, some writing (but only as long as they are willing to walk and follow the slowly turning disk), some reading (but only as long as their eyes still see), across its circumference around the globe, some searching its outer rim for messages from the missing, the far away and the not heard from for too long. And some, writing messages to the same.

Everything Is Disgusting. Part 8.

"So." Said Weatherson. Eggbert gave him a blank stare. Then suddenly remembered why he was there.

"Oh! The campaign." Eggbert shuffled the boards into some semblance of order. The suit had left a big puddle of drool over them. It was kind of disgusting. But then, this was advertising. Everything was disgusting.

"Never mind about explaining it to me. I already know what it's all about."

"Bu-"

"Shut up you stupid little man. Tell Johnny I think it's great and that the ape can tango however he wants, as long he keep raking in the cash while he does it." Now Eggbert was really confused.

"I told you Eggbert. You'd be surprised what I bug."

Eggbert made his way back to the agency, the suit drove them in his Porsche (creatives get awards, suits get paid). Eggbert fed him a banana and thought about what had just happened. Did Johnny know Weatherson was bugging the agency? Did he mind? If he didn't, how would he react. Eggbert's stomach did a back flip with a half-turn into splits. He hadn't signed on for this. He just wanted to know how to make good ads. The ones that made him laugh when he was a kid. He wanted to make kids laugh too. He wanted to think of funny things to say about other people's things. He wanted to sit in a room and get paid to daydream. Not get involved in all this stupid intrigue. Eggbert sighed.

Everything Is Disgusting. Part 7.

"So, tell our listeners about the new campaign, you in the suit." Said the DJ. Thank God thought Eggbert. At least he was asking the suit. Suits never knew anything.

"Well, it all has to do with the intrinsic benefits of children's deodorant." Eggbert heard a "thump" as people across the country let their heads hit the table in front of them. Eggbert snatched the boards out the suit's hands, lest he by some miracle actually give away some real information.

"Mr Weatherson, we've got to-" Eggbert began. But as he began, Weatherson shoved his hand in his face in the standard shut the hell up manner. Weatherson pointed towards the door to his office. A small, round man with neatly trimmed blond hair and a skin-tight neon green vest walked in. He looked like a penguin who didn't get the memo about the death of rave music. Sitting down at the mike opposite the DJ, he opened his mouth and began to talk. But it was Weatherson's voice that came out his mouth. Eggbert did not understand.

"Yes Mark. You see I take pride in all my products, and the one's that we make for kids are especially important to me." The small round man rattled on. Weatherson slowly led Eggbert into a side room. It was small and quiet. There were two chairs, a table and not much else. It wasn't the sort of room you'd expect to find in building like Yum MacYummy Head Office.

"What's going on?" Asked Eggbert, forgetting himself and his place for a moment.

"Well, I'm sure you wouldn't want me to blurt all the juicy details of our latest ad campaign all over the air." Eggbert shook his head.

"Rod is my voice. We like to call him the metronome. Well, at least that's what the guys down in sales and distribution call him. I hear them talking about it in the bathroom sometimes."

"You bug your own bathrooms?" Asked Eggbert.

"You'd be surprised at what I bug Mr Eggbert Romel." Eggbert twitched. No one had said his surname in so long. Since he had arrived at the agency, no one had asked. Eggbert decided this was all a little bit too strange and it would be best to get the hell out of here as soon as was humanly possible.

"So what does… "Rod" do exactly?" Why, he asked himself, oh why, was he asking more questions he didn't want the answers to.

"Well, on days when that infernal DJ as he likes to call himself comes round and we do "A Day With Weatherson" he goes in there and pretends to be me. He fools everyone. He's been trained since birth to say absolutely nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Yes. Nothing. He can go on for hours about it. You could spend the whole day talking to him and learn absolutely nothing. He's great. A bit round and penguinish but great none the less."

"That's…amazing." Said Eggbert, wondering how mad this person really was. Quite mad his brain assured him.

Everything Is Disgusting. Part 6.

The secretary walked into Mr Weatherson's office carrying a silver platter with 5 live puppies on it. Eggbert didn't want to know about the puppies. Whatever was going to happen to them, he wanted no part of. The secretary came out a minuet later and told them they could go in if they wanted to. Wanted had nothing to do with it and one would have thought the stupid bitch knew this, but no. Such was not Eggbert's luck, the little that he had. Eggbert kicked the suit in the shins to wake him up. Johnny had told him to do this and it was apparently accepted agency practice. After all they were just suits, if you needed a new one, you just shaved down a monkey and taught him to take notes. A few bananas every now and again and everyone was happy. The suit got up and grumbled something about the distinct lack of breakfast on offer at this particular establishment. Realising he was in fact, not at any particular establishment, he shut up and picked up the thick pieces of cardboard holding the masterful story boards for Johnny's latest wonderful idea. They walked into the office.

Inside the office, Mr Weatherson was busy doing an interview with the radio station he owned, 7FM. Of course the journalist was trying his best to be objective and question Mr Weatherson in a manner which suggested that this was a radio station you, the public could trust but it wasn't working very well.

"Mr Weatherson, some people say your company is dumping toxic baby sealskins in children 's playgrounds across the world. You were seen by several policemen and a judge dumping the sealskins yourself, and there were cameras rolling. How do you respond to that?"

"… What toxic baby sealskins?" There was a brief and awkward silence. Suddenly the sweaty little journalist scum burst out laughing. A nervous, placating sort of laughter. The type of laugh that says "You've just said something that I'm not going to disagree with because you'll fire my ass."

Eggbert sat down in the corner of the office, quietly. Why the hell had they been let into Mr Weatherson's office if he was busy doing a live interview? As the internet would say: wtf? Mr Weatherson turned then and looked at Eggbert. Weatherson's eyes had that bore into your soul quality to them. Then he smiled. The smile was worse.

"You'll have to forgive me. Every now and again I invite a journalist or DJ to spend the day with me so that the buying public can see that I'm just your average sort of guy." Weatherson said.

"Oh" said Eggbert. Eggbert wondered if it was such a good idea to discuss the marketing campaign for Weatherson's new range of children's deodorant on national radio. The suit came alive.

"Mr Weatherson, we're here to show you the new ad campaign and direction for your range of children's deodorant."

"Excellent, let's talk about this with our listeners." Eggbert was getting nervous. What the hell was Weatherson thinking? Johnny would kill him if word of his campaign leaked before it broke. A journalist posing as a tea lady had once infiltrated the agency and written about one of Johnny's campaigns before it broke. Johhny had apparently hung upside down like a bat inside the journalist's bedroom for hours then swooped down and stuck a pen in the man's head. All subsequent tea ladies hired had to be able to prove that they could neither read nor write. How this was done, only Johnny and an elite team of interrogators knew.

Everything Is Disgusting. Part 5.

Eggbert sat in the drab, grey waiting room of the Yummy MacYum Head Office. Yummy MacYum owned nearly every brand in the world. If you could sell it, they did. It was a radio station (7FM - all the hits, all the time, all the slime), a hot dog factory (Puppy Delicious – More Dog For Your Bite), a Swiss watch manufacturer (Twatch – Every second is another moment) as well as several other money-making machines. It was 7am and the secretary looked like she knew it. Let's just say she was not the most helpful person on the planet. When Eggbert introduced himself, she snarled. He backed off and sat down. Her hair was a mess, a stylish mess but a mess none the less. And she had the rather irritating habit of laughing while on the phone. Not that Eggbert had anything against people who laughed. No, he was all for laughing, in fact, one might say that if there were two teams and one was against laughing and one was for it, Eggbert would be a cheerleader for the laughing team. It was laughing like a coked up prostitute on speed being beaten by her pimp that Eggbert had a problem with. Eggbert got up and paced the room. The secretary continued to laugh. Perhaps she was being paid to torture people in other countries via the phone line? He did not know. The suit the agency had sent with him snored quietly on the seat next to him with his eyes open. It was a trick everyone at the agency learned very quickly. The ability to fall asleep while listening to a client saved many heads from exploding. This suit had apparently become so conditioned to it, that he just did it naturally. Eggbert waved a hand in front of his face. Nothing. Eggbert continued to pace. It helped him think. In a few minutes time he was going to go into the office of one of the most powerful men on the planet and try and sell him evil mongooses. He ran over his strategy in his head.

"Hello Mr Weatherson. You are God. So listen, I'm from Ketch and Co and Johnny sent me over here to explain how we're going to handle your children's deodorant range. We're going to call it Plush Pythons. It'll be absolutely fucking amazing. Johnny says so."

Things seldom work out the way you plan them. Eggbert should have been more aware of this than most, given his current situation in life. But, of course, he wasn't.

In The Town of Los Angeles, 1994

And it came to be in the town of Los Angeles that an oracle did descend from the heavens and approach me one night as I lay slumbering.
And it roused me with its pulsating light that did turn the insides of my eyes a dull red colour that slowly faded back to black, again and again.
And it said to me

"Awake, Sir, for I am here to bestow upon you a mighty gift and indeed, a gift for all mankind."

And I did sit up straight and heed the oracles words.

"I can answer any question you have. I am the complete sum of human intelligence throughout history. And if the answer does not exist yet, millions of people could be thinking about it in seconds, all you need to do is ask the question. I am the greatest, most sublime phenomena since the invention of language itself and I am here for you, whenever you need me. What would you like to know? What would you like to see? Who would you like to listen to? What will be the first request you ask of the oracle?"

And I did say unto the Oracle

"I would like to look at a naked woman."