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Brett Haberkorn
Untitled Surrealist Text (excerpt)


(Editor’s note: These “narratives” were based on a process of fusing together disparate fragments of story and dialogue encountered while channel surfing. The inspiration for this project was the early Surrealist practice of wandering in and out of movies in progress, allowing the different film fragments to merge into one hybridized narrative.)



The computer screen flashed a simple “R-M,” over and over. How can I physically survive the amount of dope that I would need to visit a “shoe-seum?”

And for years and years, I was high on life. But after a while, Michael Jackson and his band of monsters had beaten the life out of me. Left and right, I was literally sick to my stomach at the barrage of poor music videos that I was subjected to. Suddenly, that “shoe-seum” wasn’t looking so bad after all.

“So what we can do for you is put in the oven for you.” She was playing a game that dealt with smoking while she made my pizza. My partner stunk.

But Woody Allen always said it was most sublime. I thought the mayor of New York would not be a good cover story for a magazine. But I sort of took a deep breath and thought about which would happen first, the money or the murder.

I figured the murder.

He was a big character, Alex Panke. It might have been Finley, but I couldn’t really see the number. He wanted to be in the tournament. So we started asking questions.

“Where’s Dada?” we asked.

“Oh, he know,” Panke replied smugly.

Every time the weather changed, I heard sobbing. I was rejoicing. In the presence of your client, the district attorney had decided to charge Keith as an adult. If he was convicted, he was going to do hard time.

“But you know what happened,” I told him.

He replied with what sounded like gibberish, but was probably just some broken Spanish. The information that hadn’t been nabbed was green peppers and mushrooms, but I figured that if we stopped for a pizza now, they’d never know. These things were designed for very little current. It could explode….




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