Come What May

During times of war, many horrible things happen.  With the recent trend of arms acceleration and biological warfare as well as the ongoing threat of nuclear weaponry, we as a species must be careful.  War has never been a very successful problem solver, but now there is the real danger of widespread genocide, accidental or otherwise.  We must strive for alternate means of dispute settlement.  Come what may, nothing is worth the potential carnage that could come about as a result of human carelessness.

      Art Barnes looked around him.  There wasn't much to see, besides a mist of rain coming down in strong steady sheets through the trees.  He had his eyes open wide for VC, but of course, he didn't see any.  Suddenly, through the dark, what seemed like only very heavy raindrops by the sound came ripping through the leaves.  Art hit the ground fast, and he quickly felt water beginning to seep even deeper into his shirt.  He knew that he had to get out fast, because the general procedure they had taken to lately was simply retreating and firebombing the entire area, and several men had already died.  The VC moved fast, so you had to retreat quickly enough to be able to carpetbomb the area, and if a few men got left behind, it was a noble sacrifice to kill nobody ever knew how many of the enemy.
      Art felt every inch of his skin as adrenaline flowed strongly, and he quickly got to his feet, crouching down amongst the brush.  He heard a few other soldiers running through the brush around him, scattered shouts, and bullets shredding the foliage, but all he could focus on was the rain in the trees, and the pounding of his heart in his ear.
      As he began to climb a hill, he felt something snap into the back of his right thigh.  He fell, and warmth quickly began to spread across the back of his leg.  Before he could do anything other than panic, his hand was being pulled, and next thing he knew, he was draped over a pair of shoulders.  The bouncing run only made the pain in his leg worse, but now he was hearing distant thundering reports, which meant that the planes were closing in.  They were probably only a few miles away.  When he could hold his head steadily up, Art could see two other men running ahead of him, and he actually watched one of them get hit in the back of the neck and fall.  Whoever was carrying him ran right by as Art watched the body spasm on the ground.
      And then the bombing was becoming exponentially louder, and then there was a blast of heat and noise from directly behind, and Art felt the body beneath him lurch, and then he was flying through the air.

Tracks of special interest:

3. One day, Pat told me about a piano board that was resting on his back porch.  His father had asked him to bring it to the junkyard, but I asked him to bring it over to my place instead.  After much struggle, I had it in my barn.  I went out and bought a few mallets, I borrowed Zach's four-track, and I invited Alex over to help me make some interesting noise.  Unfortunately, there was a low-pressure system moving in, and by the time we had set up, it was heavily raining, but the rain actually improved things.  As the storm raged on, we banged away at the piano board.  Every few minutes, a string would snap with a spark and recoil closely past our faces.  Eventually we had to stop because we were scaring the horses, but we had something.

6. One night, Alex and I were touring about the countryside, listening to 1050 AM.  After a very short while, we noticed different stations phasing in and out.  AM is a much farther reaching wave than FM and on a clear enough day, someone in New York can receive transmissions from places as far away as Florida.  The AM Radio Experiment can be thought of as listening in to God's mind.  Spinoza philosophized that all that exists is the same one substance, and he calls this God, so after a fashion, what Alex and I were experiencing was in fact a very limited sampling of God and his thoughts.

15. Spontaneous Human Combustion was a planned track, but most of the samples in the second half of the track are completely spontaneous.  I was at Cuppers after hours with many friends, and it just started.  Everyone went wild, each doing their own thing, mostly unrelated.  Noise, certain words, transmogrifying into other words, plays spontaneously acted out, insanity in group form.  So I got out my tape recorder and began recording.

Other notes:

The drips in spelunking are one of salesman Eric Dudley's knives.  Yup.

If you like Espionage Technologies, check out Auto-Schwitz.

The Fifth Symphony burst in Culture Exposure actually happened while Alex and I were driving around.  Just the first two phrases.  I swear.

The title Liberty Bell is ironic.  Duh.  So is A Patriotic March.

Jabberwocky (not The Jabberwocky) was written by Lewis Carroll.

Canon in D (not Canon) was written by Johann Pachelbel.