A Brief Time Out For An Important Matter

Dear Carefully Selected Participant: Now that i have decided to throw out my fifteen years of recorded, collected, and unlabeled, Howard Stern audio cassettes - probably the greatest collected OCD evidence of mental instability in the history of mankind - i keep thinking of ways to at least memorialize this "clattering monument to pathological illness," as someone I do not care to name, called it. I keep thinking of the best way to record the event photographically. You're asking, "What Howard Stern audio tapes. What are you talking about." Well, I'll get to that. Just be assured that this is a fantastic breakthrough I have achieved psychologically and emotionally - deciding to throw them away. But how. How to do it in a significant and meaningful manner, that is my problem. And one for which I am asking for your suggestions. What i keep coming up with is taking them to a dry salt bed and dumping them all into a pile...or more properly described, into a
vastly expanding, circular, translucent, charcoal-hued plastic puddle...and then standing next to them, or in the middle of them, while the pictures are taken. Preferably with a medium format camera, or a digital camera of of least 25 mega pixels capacity. In case I want to make posters. And then leave them there as a sort of...let's call it art. Art of the mind. In the desert. Preferably at a National Park. Or a National Monument. Like White Sands. Or "the racetrack" at Death Valley. You know, where the mysterious rocks move? A place like that. Dump them; take the pictures; and then move on with my life. And leave the tapes there. Forever. For all to see. It would be a visual depiction of a mental state. In the wilderness. For all to come across and admire and wonder at. A physical representation in the stark sunlight. With no distractions. With emptyness all around. And it would be depicting - let's see: it would be depicting "what happens when an
individual human brain attempts to function in a collectivist-mentality society." This has a lot better cachet than saying "This is what fucking happens when someone, A: has no life, and B: tries to construct one out of nothing. You get ten trillion audio cassettes of the Howard Stern radio program for 15 years: for which he got nothing and Howard Stern got 3 billion dollars. Good job, asshole." So you see, saying "this is a physical representation of an individual mind trying to cope in a herd society" sounds a lot more wondrous and profound and a lot less...what would be the word: loony. One never wants to depict oneself as "loony." It is always better to depict oneself as "an artist." People will endure, to some extent, "artistry." They have no sort of favorable disposition to "loony." Or in my own case, "serious mental and emotional impairment." Being thought of as an artist is much better and less threatening to people. You see, my own mental and
emotional state is no problem at all for ME! It's other people that get all antsy. I'm quite fine with it myself. In fact, most insane people are quite fine with themselves. Because they can never get a graphic depiction of their insanity right before their eyes. I seem however to have overcome that barrier. Yes, in my case, the matter is a little different. My mental state can be actually pointed at with the index finger. There are all these cassettes, you see. There can be no denying their existence. Especially when you rattle them around. Or slide your foot through them. It's pretty clear to the eyes AND THE EARS that they are really there. And they are not empty tapes, no. They weren't just bought and opened and then put into a banana box, no. Howard Stern's voice is on every single one of them. Saying something different from moment to moment. This means that someone went to the trouble to procure all the tapes. With money. To put them into the
recording slot one by one. To turn them over every 45 minutes. To take them out and replace them with others. Once every hour and a half. Five hours a day. Five days a week. For 15 years. With no thought or plan or intention to ever listen to them. With added complications i won't even tell you about. YOU would go insane were I to tell them to you. There's enough crazy people. And I am most of them. We don't need more. So there you have it. To some extent. I am looking for feedback. Something I seldom seek. But this seems worthwhile. This seems like something important enough to solicit the opinions of others about. But of course to me it WOULD seem important. Even though it clearly isn't. I mean, OF COURSE i would go around asking others "What do you think i should do of a MEANINGFUL nature with ten trillion audio cassettes of the Howard Stern radio show compiled over a 15 year continuing fit and obsession and compulsion of MEANINGLESS monomania? Any
ideas? Anybody? You? You in the back: any ideas? Mr. Simmons? - could you put your legs together please? - Anybody else? Anybody else have any thoughts on how I should dispose of these? Preferably in a way involving expense, time, hopefully travel to a distant, barren location, and perhaps involving the breaking of one or more environmental edicts and even better, the extinction of a species?" So, yes, OF COURSE I would be seeking advise on how to BEST accomplish this idiotic task of no significance at all. And it goes without question that I would want to drag others into the matter. So, in addition to the salt-flat notion, which seems very chi-chi to me and very high-fashion, art-director-wise, I have also pondered taking them to the Grand Canyon and video-recording the continual cascading of them for a period of however much time it would take for them all to go over the side. The Grand Canyon has many "cuts" where the slots slice into the rim such
that you can just drive over to the other side of the slice and still get a clear depiction of the rest of the Grand Canyon whilst spilling the tapes over the side of a particular "cut." Rather than, you know, going over to the fucking North Rim with a fucking Hubble telescope and trying to capture the moment from 18 miles away. That would be nuts. So from this location across a "slice" of the Canyon, you could easily video the few moments, or the one or two hours, or however long it would take... to dump 15 years of the Howard Stern show into the Grand Canyon. As you can see even in their demise and destruction and departure I am being pretty obsessive; I am looking at all the particulars very closely. You never really get RID of OCD. You only find new paths for it to take. And so there you have it. I am sending this to only a select few people who I know will appreciate the scope and drama; the awe and mystery; that reaches from the inner mind, to the
outer limits of this therapeutic decision of mine, and who will be able to offer cogent and meaningful suggestions, or even words of discouragement, if those seem in order, to what is now my main goal and sole motivating impulse in my existence and the primary direction and purpose in my life: disgarding 20 banana boxes full of carefully stacked and columned and unlabeled Howard Stern cassettes. I look forward to your thoughts!!! Thank you!!! For those of you still reading, some of my selected advisors have already come up with some ideas. One has said to dump them at Bonneville. He said that even if they were dumped miles away from any speed-test areas, over time certainly one or more of them would be blown here and there in the high winds and the day would come when someone, traveling 300 miles per hour across the flats, would have his tire roll over a Howard Stern Show cassette just under the powder and immediately shoot into the air, end over
slow-rolling end, to crash and erupt and burn and yet still race down the salt at hundreds of miles an hour, only now in flaming shards and pieces and bits. People would gather, first running, and then walking in sadness and desolation toward the wreckage. And then, after a prolonged search, someone would bend down and retrieve from the white dust a Howard Stern cassette that drifted in from miles away and from long ago. And they would wonder. And be amazed. I have to admit, I like this scenario. Another, somewhat less understanding, "advisor," said, basically, "Why don't you take them to Burning Man. Every year in the desert there is a gathering of imbeciles and lunatics and people who talk to inanimate objects and to invisible beings on other planets, and they take off their clothes and arouse themselves like monkeys in public while contructing a piece of shit out of trash and calling it "sculpture" or "art" and then they urinate on it and throw their
own feces at it and have a very fine time for themselves, out in the desert and far away from normal humanity. You could haul the things out there and people would worship you as a god, because, like you, they are all insane to the absolute total possible maximum." Parts of his suggestion I liked and parts of it I didn't. The arousal part, for instance, that caught my interest. But I couldn't attach any relevance to it. It wouldn't have helped, it wouldn't have advanced the task at hand. I found it alluring but possibly counter productive. Another well-meaning fellow said I should just blow my own brains out and fall onto the tapes and die. Right there in the garage, where the tapes are at the moment. And don't tell anybody. "You just lay there and rot and eventually the city will drag you and all your crap out of there and bulldoze the place." I am still not sure if he was being sarcastic or if he was actually trying to be honestly helpful. Someone has
suggested that I should take them to Yosemite and dump them over Yosemite Falls, the highest waterfall in America. I asked him what would be the point of that. He actually had the nerve to ask me "What's the fucking point of dumping them over the Grand Canyon!" He apparently couldn't see the difference. Just for the record, I don't need suggestions like this. If you're thinking of giving one, think again. Don't waste my time. I think that was the extent of the suggestions. Some of them good, some of them questionable. I look forward to your own ideas. And thanks again. Needless to say this is very important to me. jjs

Oh, before I go, I am well aware that even though this request for advice is going out to only a very select few of carefully chosen recipients who I have personally judged and decided to be rational, helpful, caring individuals, be assured that I am fully cognizant of the essential monkey nature of earth-dwelling human beings, and I know that at least one of you, in answer to my request for suggestions of what to do with these Howard Stern tapes regarding the manner of their disposal, there is going to be the suggestion, made dryly and blankly and with no expression or hint of emotional tone or demeanor and with no discernable hostility or sense of non-cooperation, one of you, I absolutely know it, is going to respond by saying "Why don't you just stick the fucking things up your goddamn fucking ass." First of all, this isn't helpful. And while you may think it is, it is not. You also no doubt think it is amusing. Again you are wrong, so now that's
twice you have been in error. It is not at all amusing. Second of all, I see it coming. It's not as though this is going to be a surprise answer. Third; if it's any of your business; and I don't think it is; I actually did stick one of them up my ass. I had my reasons, you don't need to know them. And I can tell you, sticking all the rest of them up there would be impossible. Even if it was made of hyper-elastic condom material for blue whales. No way they would fit. So save your breath and save me some boredom. Believe me, I tried it already. And that ain't the answer. But thank you anyway in advance. Dipshit. SORRY EVERYBODY!! Didn't mean to bring this otherwise exciting situation to a "downer" level, but I took care of it. There's always one, right? Ok, off you go! Looking forward to those ideas!!

jj