FFR 167

To Those Designated "Feathered Friends," Entities Occupying a Space of Dubious Depth (A Depth, Perhaps, Only Linguistically Determined), and Fellow Passengers (But Is There Really Any Movement?) On the Passagassawakeag (A Signifier Whose Referent Remains Elusive),
"The detail is not the same as the thing it represents." – Alain Robbe-Grillet. And yet, we persist in these acts of representation, these frail attempts at signification. Greetings, if that word retains any stable meaning, from the "paper canoe" of my "mind"—a phrase whose metaphorical status is, at this juncture, distressingly unclear. This "canoe" (a floating signifier?) drifts, or perhaps merely appears to drift, in a "sea" of "metaphors" whose viscosity (so "thick," we are told) could, theoretically, accommodate a "twelve-inch sandwich." (Kewpie, naturellement. Though the condiment itself is, of course, a construct.) As Madman Muntz (a name, let us acknowledge, fraught with its own semiotic complexities) might have asserted, "It’s not just good, it’s *good*!" The quotation marks, however, destabilize the very notion of quality.
It has come to my "attention"—a phrase implying a centered consciousness I am increasingly disinclined to endorse—through channels both "mystical" (a discarded "fortune cookie," a text whose oracular authority is, to say the least, suspect) and "mundane" (a "chatty dust mite," an entity whose sentience presents certain epistemological difficulties), that you, designated as "readers" of Fowl Feathered Review (a title itself begging for deconstruction), are said to "possess" a certain... je ne sais quoi. A willingness, or perhaps a compulsion, to engage with the syntagm "lobster mob," to execute the oxymoron "tap dance with scorpions," and to contemplate the metaphysical burden of "lost salad loaf pants." (A sartorial absence whose presence, paradoxically, dominates the discourse.) For this, I offer the simulacrum of a "salute." Or perhaps the equally unstable offering of "Oysters Rockefeller." As Irwin Corey (a verbal construct of some notoriety) would have it, “It’s all relative, even Oysters Rockefeller.” But what, ultimately, is relation?
In this "issue" (a term suggesting a problematic coherence), we have attempted (a verb implying agency) to "capture" the "ineffable" (two negations yielding a positive, or do they?), to "categorize" the "un-categorizable" (a logical impossibility?), and to "consume" the "ephemeral" (a thermodynamic absurdity?). We have navigated the chromatic instability of "Clara & Clementine," traversed the olfactory distortions of "Radon-Pellet-Ring Noir," and sought (futilely, perhaps) "wisdom" from "Toe Bean Freshley," the "Avocado Oracle." We have even foregrounded the problematic construction of "duck canal"! In other words, we have given you (a pronoun whose referent is increasingly diffuse) "everything," including "Benny and the Jets." A "veritable smorgasbord" (a culinary metaphor collapsing under its own weight) of the "peculiar." To quote (and thereby distort) Pound: “Details are crucial. For it is in the details that you find the beauty and the horror.” But "beauty" and "horror" are, themselves, unstable constructs.
Some (a designation implying a unified subject) may "call" it "madness." Some (another problematic designation) may "call" it a "symptom" of "cultural decline" (itself a dubious teleology). I "call" it "Tuesday." Though, as Muntz (a signifier in search of a signified) was "fond" of "saying": “It’s a steal at twice the price!” A "sentiment" I apply, with extreme caution, to this entire "enterprise." Corey (a deconstructionist before deconstruction) would likely interject: “Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It will wait until tomorrow.” A statement whose temporality is, of course, open to endless deferral. Which gives one (who?) more "time" (a construct) to contemplate the unrepresentable "salad loaf pants."
So, designated "readers," continue to "embrace" the "absurd," "question" the "mundane," and, for "heaven's sake" (a phrase whose theological implications are deeply suspect), remember to "eat." After all, as we all know (but how can we "know" anything?), "Does it really matter?" As Pound (a vortex of linguistic energy) succinctly put it, “Pullman was a poet.” And so, in a way, are we all (or are we?).
Your designated "Editor," designated "Rooster," and designated "Purveyor" of "Peripatetic Prose" (a phrase whose coherence I vigorously deny),
Virgil Kay
(Designated "China Wok Habitué")
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MUSIC: Egg - Seven is a Jolly Good Time (BBC 1969)

Keywords: Parachute pants,art