The plants rule me. I have given myself entirely to their desires. Their little faces look at me full of need, begging me to feed them. But I can't feed them. I spent the last of the money two weeks ago on a lighter to burn my records, because it was all I could offer to feed my plants, and the ash itself is almost exhausted now. Here, far from the sun, far even from the memory of it, the day has slowed to a crawl. There is nothing I could really call a day. My clock battery is almost exhausted, and when it is gone I won't have any way of telling so much as the hour, let alone whether it is before or after noon. Once the clock stops moving I will finally have to admit there is no such thing as motion or hope. There will be just me and the plants, and they have long since stopped growing. Once upon a time I had a memory of a sound so pure it could strip away the rust from what I used to call life. Now, if I think for a long time, I call still remember words, but the voice eludes me like a coquette, slipping away into the recesses of carbon dioxide even my plants are now choking on. This voice, if there is such a thing, used to say, "death came calling today. I heard the gentle grace of its cadences. I couldn't say no." I think maybe this voice was God. I think maybe . . . yes, maybe if I strain . . . I can hear . . .

I no longer think about Stuart staying in. Ever. Such things don't exist for me. You'll find that once you quit the demon, modern rock songs, life begins to be sweeter in all its aspects. The sun, not concerned with the musical choices of simple beings like you, continues to shine in the sky, sending down its brilliant rays as if just for your little garden. The color green stands out everywhere, even in the winter, time's darkest and bitterest hour, when the soul shrivels up to the size of one of Pascal's fleas, and reels at its own insignificance and worthlessness. The smell of the air is fresh and sweet, like smoke from a crematorium. And your ears, no longer clogged with that horrible modern rock, are open to the sound of whistling at midnight, coming from the dark center of the universe. It took a lot of work to be the clear, content gardener I am, but I'm pretty sure, pretty damn sure, that anyone can equally easily quit listening the demon music.

Here are some good cures for slugs in the garden:

1. Set a few magnets (natural magnets do best; perhaps a lodestone or an rubbed brush of horse hair) near the affected plants. Then, the slugs will occupy themselves by playing with the magnet, and will forget about eating your plants.

2. With a small knife, make a half-inch slit on the stem of each plant. Once the plants dry up, the slugs will have no recourse but to go elsewhere.

3. Violently stab at the garden once a week with a hoe, or whack it with a hammer or shovel. Within a month, the effect will be the same as if a minor nuclear weapon had localised itself on your garden. Bye-bye, slugs!

4. Set up a battery-operated transistor radio at the edge of the garden and set it only to MOR adult contemporary stations. If there's anything slugs hate more than salt, it's Phil Collins. (Ear plugs are recommended for this operation.)

5. Run a moderate electric shock through your garden every fifteen minutes. We recommend hooking the ground up to a car battery or, for those do-it-yourselfers, attaching it to a fallen live wire. This will singe the plants to such an extent that the slugs will most likely leave the garden, probably entering the house to find food.

6. With a standard-issue blow torch . . .

Music? Music music! Fucking music! Why don't I listen to any good music? Good Christ, what music? There is no "music"! Who ever even thought there was music? Who comes up with this shit? Do people really get paid for this? How does anyone stay alive going around telling people such tremendous lies as "there's this thing called 'music'?" No one's so stupid as to believe them, and there's gotta be a least one guy big enough to beat up the lying bastard! There are songs, I guess. I've heard plenty of songs. Then sometimes the CD skips and I wonder if it's intentional, because it might as well be part of the song. So songs, yes. I've made songs before. I make them all the time. But music? That's ridiculous! The very idea is ridiculous! We all need to get over ourselves real quick, because we're dying soon and it's not a good thing to rejoin the All Soul with the idea that we create music. I've tried it before. That's why I'm still here. Next time I'll know there is no music, and I'll have a better shot at oblivion. Are you listening to me? Somehow I doubt you're listening to me. You're probably listening to songs right now and thinking it's music, aren't you? I see you! You have headphones on! They're not so small that I can't see them! Well, take them off! I'd say music is dead, but that's a logical impossibility, seeing as the concept of "music" ever having even existed, let alone lived, is absurd. Go find another web page to read. This is no longer a modern rock blog.

The river has gone mad and is donning its lapels for the new look of the century. The river is dressed in spats and an attractive cotton tie. The river has a date with pop culture and is taking pop culture to a concert in a conglomerate bookstore to see how the other half lives. The river is grinning and its hair is slicked back with aromic oils. The river has teeth like a picket fence. The river looks back at you from your computer screen. The river only wants your money. The river has hit upon the massive fashion statement of draping its soul on the outside of its body to show the world what it isn't feeling. Tout le monde aime le fleuve. Jeder liebt den Fluss. Tutto ama il flume. The river is the newest dance just sprung up at the downtown clubs, and you better know it. The river will not let you drown; the river does not want you to escape. You might as well stay on the shore.