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prokopetz

Well, now you've done it. You started thinking deeply about what the social and political infrastructures of your imagined world would have to look like for that weird porn scenario you came up with to make sense, thereby establishing a very specific set of mental associations, and now reading about residential zoning laws gives you a boner.

I know how to spell "bureaucracy" for completely normal reasons. Please do not ask what they are.

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prokopetz

The whole Polybius thing is my favourite conspiracy theory because nearly every individual element of the story is absolutely true, but not for that reason.

Did some early arcade games cause people to suffer hallucinations, memory loss, and short-term personality changes? Yes, they did – because many folks who played them were experiencing close range exposure to bright, rapidly flashing lights for the first time in their lives, and – at the time – public awareness of photosensitive epilepsy was practically nonexistent. Most who had it were undiagnosed, and its symptoms often weren’t recognised when they arose – and if you have no idea what photosensitive epilepsy is, those symptoms might look a lot like alien mind control!

Were early video arcades frequented by serious-looking men in dark suits? Again, yes they were – because they were suspected of being money-laundering fronts for illegal gambling rings, and thus were routinely placed under federal surveillance. And those suspicions weren’t unfounded – it later transpired that many early video arcades were, in fact, money-laundering fronts for illegal gambling rings.

Did arcade cabinets with strange titles and indecipherable gameplay quietly pop up in out-of-the-way places, then vanish shortly thereafter, never to be seen again? Absolutely – because a thriving black market in off-brand bootlegs arose almost immediately. Quality control was nonexistent, so many such cabinets had operational lifespans measured in weeks, and you’d most often see them in arcades with poor locations simply because they were cheap.

It was a perfect storm of largely unrelated factors that added up to the convincing appearance of a shadowy conspiracy, even though each element by itself had a fairly boring explanation.

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This month is the one year anniversary of posting my poem “Condolences” to TikTok and Instagram, where it amassed millions of likes and tens of thousands of comments.

Since, people have used the poem for adaptive art pieces, short plays, books, and class work. For your piece of art to be transformed into another…it’s difficult to describe.

After several rejections from poetry publications a decade ago, I decided to post my work online instead. The responses were overwhelming. I realized that an official publication doesn’t make you a poet. Writing poetry does, and bonus points if you manage to resonate with just one other soul who needed to hear what you needed to say.

I was utterly taken aback by the response to this piece. People have asked me many times to explain it, but from the response it was clear that the meaning can be explicated with a little time.

Some people who didn’t understand it until it was explained were angry when it came together. It wasn’t written for them.

I’m only grateful that it reached the people who needed it.

I feel that the imagery is part of the piece, but I know not everyone can or cares to listen to a video. Here is the poem:

———————

They buried a girl in my hometown today.

“A young woman, gone too soon, in the prime of her life,” they all said.

My friends and I all knew her. We grew up together.

We were in all the same classes and hobbies and we made up games together at recess.

But none of us went to her funeral. We weren’t invited, because the people planning it didn’t think we’d understand. They said it wasn’t our loss.

So we got together for drinks. We laughed all morning and played card games all day.

At 4 o’clock, we heard the church bells. We saw that long, sad procession of cars stretch like a creek through town, up the cemetery hill.

We heard strange rumors that night, that the casket was empty. That they put it hollow in the ground.

So we went to the plot first thing in the morning. They buried her empty box next to her dad, down the row from an estranged aunt she never really knew all that well.

There wouldn’t be a stone for months, but the little placard had my name on it. But not the one I go by these days.

“How strange,” we all said. “What a waste of good crying.”

All of this mourning for me, and I was down the street the whole time, laughing and drinking.

But some people will never understand. They’d rather plan a funeral than learn a new name.

My friend said she felt sorry for them, in some small way.

What a sad notion—to lose a daughter who never lived—

And a son who never died.

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peter capaldi doctor sitting on a bench going "yeah i had a crush on the master. when he was a boy. and i was also a boy. yeah gender is stupid and ours are better than yours. get on our level. idiot." to his favorite lesbian and then missing his mouth and dropping food all over his lap is actually so iconic.

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