FFR 187

URGENT TRANSMISSION – A Prolegomenon to the Imminent Consumption of the Fowl Feathered Review – Perchance, a Dispatch from the Abyssal Depths of Orono, Maine, Where Chronological Coherence Suffers a Catastrophic Lapse, and the Very Fabric of Literary Expectation Fissures Like a Glacially Advanced Crumpet, and the Night Holds Its Breath with a Lingering Note, Low and Glutinous Like a Lamenting Saxophone in a Rainy Alley.

To the Cognoscenti, the Connoisseurs of the Contretemps, the Insomniac Illuminati of the Printed Page, all ye who, in your peculiar wisdom, choose to frequent the errant quarterly known, if such a term can be applied to its ephemeral existence, as Fowl Feathered Review—prepare, if preparation be truly possible in this terminal phase of pre-reading, for an encounter not merely with text, but with a singular, treacly, roped-out, slow-drip phenomenon, an altogether unsettling thing that settles like a bass note played too long, a textual event horizon if you will, emanating from the humid, verdant, and frequently bewildered reaches of Orono, Maine, a kind of mucilaginous thrum, a lament that clings to the mind's ear.

One must, in the name of semantic probity, or perhaps merely in deference to the peculiar demands of our present epoch, disabuse oneself of any quaint notions concerning "issues" in the conventional, linear, perhaps even digestible sense. For this latest permutation, this eleventh-hour efflorescence of ink upon paper (though "ink" here serves as a euphemism for a far more chaotic process, and "paper" a placeholder for whatever fibrous substrate chanced to lie in the path of our manic scribblings), did not, I assure you, merely materialize from the ether of diligent editorial application. Oh, no. This was a grand, almost liturgical, ingestion, a ritualistic communion with the unspeakable, distilled into a gelatinous matrix that pulsed with a deep, grumous languor, like a mournful horn section winding down a particularly long night.

Flashback. The humid clatter of ice in a plastic tub. A whirring sound, distant, like the lament of forgotten blenders. A faint, chitinous aroma, almost imperceptible beneath the cloying sweetness. The Editor, Virgil Kay, his brow furrowed with an intensity usually reserved for deciphering ancient Sumerian tax records, peers into a bubbling cauldron. His gaze, a pinpoint of focused mania, betrays the existential angst of one contemplating the ultimate fate of the unsung asterisk. The air hangs, slabbed and syrupy, a forgotten dream's forgotten echo, as if the very molecules were tired of holding form.

Consider, then, the very substrate of this, your imminent literary journey: not wood pulp, not digital pixels, but a gelatinoid, ropy, and tremulous mass of Jell-O shots. And not merely the innocuous, neon-hued confections of suburban bacchanals, but Jell-O shots infused—a word which here strains under the immense semantic burden it must bear—with the granular, terrestrial pulvis of ground crickets. Yes, the very chitinous remains of orthopteran songsters, pulverized into an almost imperceptible dust, lending to the ephemeral jelly a subtle, earthy umami, a whisper of the soil, a fleeting echo of the entomological choir. This tremulous, insect-laced construct, once solidified into cubes of disquieting translucence, was then—and here the narrative descends into truly Byzantine corridors of gastronomical absurdity—meticulously, nay, reverently, poured over and around the glistening, ovate surface of a freshly fried egg. An albumenous plinth, a yolk-sunken orb, serving as the very omphalos of this gelatinous cosmos, atop which the cricket-infused, quivering cubes lay in precarious equilibrium. And as if this ocular-culinary assault were insufficient, this entire, gravity-defying edifice was then, with a flourish that bordered on the shamanistic, served upon a cascading, golden drapery of fried noodles, which, in turn, found their ultimate, ignominious resting place not upon a platter, but upon the very apex of a retired business accountant's impeccably polished, utterly bewildered cranium. (His name, a forgotten footnote in the annals of fiscal rectitude, has been redacted for his own protection, though one might infer a certain Pascalian wager on his part regarding the peculiar benefits of such an impromptu cranial poultice.)
The textual artifacts themselves, those fragmented remnants of the discursive chaos that constitutes our collective modern existence, have been culled with a maniacal indiscriminateness that would make even a semiotician’s most carefully constructed epistemology buckle under the strain. Prepare for lacunae of insight derived from the intricate, often intentionally obscure, legal disclaimers that govern the fine print of our contractual prisons, their recursive subordinate clauses a grim testament to the recursive nature of human litigiousness. Expect also the florid, often pathological, grandiloquence of fraudulent wills, documents wherein avarice and delusion converge to paint portraits of familial discord worthy of a Breugel canvas, albeit one rendered in the lurid tones of a penny dreadful. From the cacophonous digital maw of the tabloids, we have extracted—with forceps usually reserved for intellectual dissection—the most lurid headlines, the most scandalous pronouncements, the very raw nerves of the global id laid bare for your horrified fascination.

Interlude. A discordant trumpet blast, followed by the mournful strumming of an imaginary guitar. The faint, ghostly echo of a maraca. The city, a grid of concrete and forgotten dreams, extends infinitely. A single tear, perhaps. Or merely a bead of sweat. The wind whispers through empty instrument cases, carrying a strain of the blues, a long, drawn-out treacly note that fades into the endless twilight. “¡Ay, Jalisco, no te rajes!” a voice, hollowed by loss, murmurs into the indifferent night.

And then, woven into this tapestry of disjunction, you shall discover the lamentations—translated, we hope with minimal further corruption—of a mariachi band whose very souls, embodied in their stolen instruments, now float adrift in the ether, their once vibrant melodies now mere conceptual echoes in the urban concrete. Furthermore, behold! A semiotic marvel! The profound, almost theological, utterances of a pickle, yes, a common pickled gherkin, which, through some alchemical caprice of brining and perception, has come to resemble, with an uncanny and unsettling verisimilitude, the very essence of the Kardashians as Muppets. Truly, a testament to the protean nature of fame, and the inherent absurdity of resemblance. And finally, lest we forget the primal simplicity amidst this baroque complexity, a single, unassuming feather, an almost anachronistic whisper of natural order amidst the swirling gyre of our manufactured madness.
It is our earnest, if somewhat deranged, aspiration that you derive some measure of… what?… edification? amusement? existential nausea?… from this issue. For it is not merely published; it is unleashed. It is a scream, a whisper, a prolonged groan in the grand, cacophonous symphony of the age, a long, drawn-out glutinous chord that resonates in the empty halls of meaning. And in its very essence, it embodies the profound, the ridiculous, and the utterly inescapable truth that often, the most illuminating insights are those delivered on the back of a cricket-infused Jell-O shot, served precariously on the unsuspecting scalp of a retired accountant.

Sincerely, and with the peculiar aroma of fried noodles still clinging to the very air of editorial sanctum, the ghosts of jazz saxophone wails lingering like an old habit,
Virgil Kay,
Editor (Self-Appointed Archon of Anomaly,
Rooster,
China Wok Habitué (and occasional chronicler of the peculiar rituals therein)
e-Book copy of this issue of FFR:
PDF is grafted into your brain.
Film: https://archive.org/details/how-to-become-a-star
Music: https://youtu.be/JsGJ9yLfoWk?si=eTgVmBV3xG0pZUmX
Book: https://archive.org/details/usa0000john_n2z9

Keywords: key,keys