Ten: Nine, Eight, Seven…

I heard it. I’m certain of it: the unmistakable wail of what must be the last Civil Defense siren in New Orleans howling noon. What fresh apocalyptic hell might this signal, or was it just an accidental misfire of memory, the passing ghost of a missleman who spent one day too many in the hole until he ate his .45? Was it just some accident of the atmosphere that carried this forgotten sound to me from somewhere in the bowels of Gentilly, a chance collision of groceries and noon?

I had just been sitting in my car listening to Oasis Champagne Supernova at an entirely unreasonable volume, composing this in my head:

If the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency ever discovers the digital signature behind a song like Champagne Supernova, the kind that fires every roller coaster orgasm cocaine pleasure center in your brain and send you straight to 11, Big Pharma will lose the race for universal Soma and we will all be deeply and truly fucked. Perhaps they already have. That would explain so much: the dumb truck cowboy Kiss spectacle of Ameriker First county rock hybrid dragging everyone back into some Stetson hat stars-and-bars fantasy land that camouflages the sterility of the ranch box big box lunch box of their daily lives; the relentless throb of misogynistic hip-hop glorifying the quick and the dead, feeding the assembly line of prison disenfranchisement.

Never mix synchronicity and portent. It’s a hell of a hangover.

Tomorrow at noon, if you find me standing outside staring into the sky, you will know why. Unless of course our own Rocket Zero is making its reentry blaze somewhere over Alexandria right now.