What are your preferences?

A coalition of clowns?

Shake up the world with the BIGGEST LAUGH IN HISTORY, and see what happens.

Some reasons why I feel obliged to plant a few seeds.

Out of Bangladesh: Out of Luck? Three Ground Zeros and We’re Out? Outting ‘Mmmericans? 24 Hours to Get the “F” Out? All titles rejected within seconds.

The frustration of fiction. No more.

“‘The chilling scope of the bomb attacks that swept the length and breadth of the country yesterday should have no one in doubt as to the intent, organization, and capability of the terrorists that were behind it,’ a leading English newspaper, the Daily Star, said in an editorial.”

That was straight up from a Reuters report on the desk of Richard Martin Oxman. It knocked him clear out of *the person* he was using.

While the police were high-fiving themselves, and jiving the public around with their low-profile profiling underground in major cities around the country, a new kind of baby stroller was introduced into the the nation’s subway system…and elsewhere.

The one that carried a bomb in the baby carriage.

Meanwhile, Big Al’s carriage and Bad Al’s carriage changed quite a bit down roun’ Al-’Ayun around the same time.

Their *marriage*, following Malone’s knock on Good Al’s Desdemona door…ostensibly to apologize for the slash in the windsurfed sea off Essaouira, was a shock to their collective systems; suddenly they just wanted to be alone with one another.

But when they ventured into the Western Sahara, Morocco’s illegally occupied territory, to escape…Matilda followed in disguise. That would have shocked them even more had they known.

“Not even the rain has such small hands,” whispered Good Al, in appreciation. “I like Cummings too,” dripped The Bad Malone.

“The wind stood up and gave a shout.
He whistled on his fingers and

Kicked the withered leaves about
And thumped the branches with his hand

And said he’d kill and kill and kill,
And so he will and so he will.” — James Stephens’ “The Wind” (1915)

“…to know which way the wind blows.” — *Subterranean Homesick Blues* (1965)

To the south of Essaouira, due west of Marrakech, there’s the windy beach, the one with gusty winds so strong they drive people to relief in *madness song*, seeking shelter in the medina.

At the estuary of Wadi Qsob, on the far side of the beach, vestiges of the system of defenses built on a rocky promontory by the sultan, silly/senile Sidi Mohammed, are visible. They crumbled long ago, but thick walls can still be made out at the spot where Good Al stood August 7th, one month to the day of 07/07/07, before meeting up again with his off-road mates.

An awful lot of people wouldn’t be playing ball anymore — even if they wanted (to) — if they were…able. But Matilda’s table didn’t anticipate that.

The way the cards fell compelled our Great(ly Rejected) One to board the Royal Air Maroc jet, totally ignorant of Big Al’s presence in the North African nation. She didn’t like the way he ended the relationship, but she certainly wasn’t the type to track unrequited love.

Tracking what came up with the Tarot, however, was a different matter. *Journey, journey, journey*.

Good Al got good and tired of The Great Matilda’s *goodies* around the same time that he lost interest in *civilization* falling apart all around him. Bad Al’s most ingenious means of destruction no longer fazed him much, and he was so fed up with filling Matilda’s *cup*…he just gave up on hard…on all normal human intercourse.

Perhaps that’s how he landed in Merzouga, 33 miles southeast of Erfoud, a small oasis at the foot of Morocco’s Erg Chebbi Dunes.

His *Hummer Holiday* commenced with a 19-mile climb into the desert, 820-feet up…to greet the half-light of a Saharan sunrise. Fascinating colors climbed with him as his bloodlusty companions — strangers all — screamed out of scrunched faces…language most foul…most fatal for the fowl ahead.

In the solitude of his modest Miami rental, Al “Ivan” Martin Malone — quite alone in other respects too — played his flute, fondled the shoelaces from one of his victim’s shoes and molded a clay figure of a child, only to crush it into a lumpen mass when he was finished.

He was watching the Joseph Losey “M” which began to play along with the Fritz Lang film on the tube nationwide as July recorded temperatures way higher than ever before.