9966. SOMNABULANCE

SOMNABULANCE

That's the vehicle they send when you can't

get to sleep  -  days of this on end. I walk

with Edgar Allen Poe, down on 4th Street,

where he had a house long back. It's gone

now of course. There's a fire house across 

the street from it, and the jerks at NYU had

the audacity to just take down Poe's house

and build some new thing, for offices and

for University use  -  then, to fake everyone 

out, and placate the outrage of the local 

community, they put back up, fake of 

course, the old facade. With a nice plaque 

on it too  -  about the size of a postage stamp. 

The big kind. Telling you what went on, as 

if something  did. Actually, nothing went on 

at all  -  except they tore down an old building 

with part of Manhattan's old history, right there,

and replaced with some bogus relay-race crap

about something else. I'd like to find the guy

who wrote the plaque, and stick his head in a

cinder block, not a new one, mind you, just

a nice, authentic old one, and then put up a

sign that says : 'Here is an asshole in a 

cinderblock, masqerauding as a head.' You

really couldn't beat that for information. Then

all the drunks over at the corner bar, and those

firemen across the street, they could have a 

good old time. It even has a Poe tone to it,

the whole idea. Like the Cask of Amontillado,

or maybe The Telltale Heart. Macabre too.

Do you know how to say that word? You

kind of just stop at the 'b', forget the 're'

at the end, just sort of bump it with your 

tongue, to maybe suggest an 'r'. But that's

all. Like something Vincent Price would

have said in one of those old horror sort of

movies he made. He had a show once, 

where he claimed to know the answer to 

any question offered. Never wrong. It was

cancelled though. It was called The Price

Is Right. It was on a few times, but

I never saw it.