image (c) 2015 R William Lundy
I want to throw a party to snub all the people who
didn’t invite me to their party.
At my party, I will have a pony, a piñata, and clowns.
There will be a bounce house and a special Taco Bell
that makes free tacos for my guests.
Some of my guests will prefer McDonald’s to Taco Bell
and feel disappointed, without saying so, that there is only a Taco Bell
but we will not need a McDonald’s because this Taco
Bell will also make special Mexican cheeseburgers, for free.
The party will be deep in the South American jungle.
Live tigers will wander through this jungle, hungry.
The tigers will have laser beams for eyes
and tiny Great White sharks will be riding the tigers
on tiny saddles made of seashells
and all the guests will have to address the tiny
sharks as “sheriff”
and if anyone forgets to address a tiny shark as
“sheriff” he will be savagely beaten
and burned with laser beams, because the sharks will
also have laser beam eyes.
Next to the jungle there will be a lush green valley
tended by the Jolly Green Giant
who will sell my guests fresh canned vegetables for
free
and periodically call out, “Green Giant,” in a tonal baritone
that echoes through the jungle
startling my tame-wild tigers and causing them to
lunge with half-crazed eyes in random directions
but my sharks will restrain my tigers with brutal tugs
on their tiny reins
and the whole thing will lend to an atmosphere of
pageantry and spectacle at my party
which my guests will come to appreciate, after their
initial alarm they see that everything is quote unquote well in hand.
In a fantastic turn of vaguely, if unintentionally,
racist imaginary South American politics
my tiny sharks and the Jolly Green Giant will secretly
be at war over drugs, probably cocaine.
In a canny move against my sharks, the Jolly Green
Giant will have secretly sold my guests stale canned vegetables for free
which my guests will realize simultaneously when they
sit down to eat their vegetables at a climactic, communal dining event
and with a dream-like, phantasmagoric sense of horror
interrupting what has been communicated, through several cinematographically
brilliant cut-scenes, as my guests’ completely and unaffectedly trusting
anticipation of vegetable freshness and goodness
the perception of vegetable staleness will dawn on
them, at first incrementally and then abruptly
ruining my party.
I will be enraged at the Jolly Green Giant
with his internecine shark politics
and I will walk up to the Jolly Green Giant and punch
him in the face
“What’s your problem anyways?” I’ll ask
but he is a giant he will crush and eat me
and go on a ballistic rampage
driving my tigers mad with rage
beyond the ability of my tiny sharks to control
and they will dart, helter skelter, mauling guests
and my party will be a catastrophe.
When the other people who were not invited to my party
because I wanted to snub them hear about it the next day on the news
they will feel relieved they weren’t invited, and a
secret glow of confirmation that yes, they were right not to invite me to their
party in the first place.
But secretly the joke is on them
because I will have staged my death as a media stunt
in anticipation of my comeback album
which will be a commercial and aesthetic success of
staggering proportions
rocketing me, like proverbial phoenix, from the ashes
of my untimely and publicly humiliating, if fake, demise
to new and dawn-like heights of stardom.
I will have a concert tour to promote my comeback
album.
At my concert there will be a light show and fog
machines wreathing the stage in thick white oceans of smoke, periodically
pierced by radiant beams from the laser eyes of tiny sharks.
On stage there will be a giant mechanical tiger head
and my silhouette will emerge from the fog, rising
above the stage on its giant mechanical tiger tongue.
Half my body will be covered in tiger fur
and half, in shark teeth
surgically grafted onto my skin in an experimental operation
that will have brought me back from the imaginary brink of death
and symbolizing my meteoric return to fame.
My guitar will be made of human bones
and you will feel jealous
and regret not inviting me to your party.
