# summer of nfr 81 evil woman by elo now plays in the lab background our new favorite humalien at college soon finds out our awful control freak mother doesn't like them we never find out why - probably just the fact mother dear is a tcf total control freak and sees our new friend as a threat to ir iron grip on our nowhere suburban half life moms soon stops us from borrowing ir car at at the weekends out of sheer spite so now we and our favorite humalien can't escape; we're both desperate to get out of our parent's houses-not-homes i've also recently been banned from going up to ir room by ir idiot parents as apparently according to them no lie 'the sound of our hot scientific sax interrupts ir daily soap operas' elvischrist we cannot and refuse to believe these turgid air-wasting bags of flaccid undead gristle were ever beautiful youthful or knew true love so one day we're leaning against a high brick wall with interesting grey moss gently growing on it when the bad news arrives 'we're moving to old brighton' they say no way we reply when what how why this panful revelation wasn't exactly out of blue however swanson didn't want to get some crap weekend 'mcjob lozenge' wanting to make ir psycho mother 'pay in all ways' so neither of them ever had any money to go anywhere this combined with henry constantly crying about ir dysfunctional home life made the situation worse swanson's tender scientific soul still got crushed however and ey was heartbroken they tell us they're leaving in two months but from now till then 'we should stop seeing one another' what the ever loving shit why and why now to say henry wasn't ready for this was a biocosmic understatement all they'd told us about themselves the sheer intensity of what we'd shared; all the tears and private laughter it was as though now it meant nothing a thin sham a mere theatrical sideshow by hopeless amateurs dancing to an old scratchy roxy music cassette - 'there i was many times a fool' one day in early spring we're heading on out toward blumquist video store where they work part time - we wanted to go into town anyway far from our asshole parents we soon arrive - and notice though the smokey store window they're talking to 'random video rental store employee 1050b' chatting that is in a way ir current heavy scientific lover looking in through darkened safety glass from across the street might sense was mtmf 'more than merely friendly' some random skinny insect with a bright pearly smile and happening anime hair parted on one side 'something told me it was over'; we start to feel physically sick - crushed under the intense high pressure psychic ruination of the unfolding situation we wanted to stride in there and calmly pull this thieving guat's head off we've only just been old brighton-dumped yet our beloved is already looking for tss 'that special someone' else is that it oh wait a second - unless of course they've been seeing them long before today the dirty relationship-penny suddenly drops oh swanson you poor native low-wattage schmuck it suddenly occurs that it's probably been like this between them for a while eventually our love says goodbye to loverboy and goes home for lunch we then proceed to stroll in there and join video club which was our plan all along - just to join the darn suburban video rental club: 'all i wanted to do was rent a video man' it was only by random biocosmic chance swanson caught them laughing together video-rental-store-employee doesn't know us from ir dad and beams; merrily unconscious shark bait vrse: how can we help you today sir here at blumquist video we've a fine selection of action adventure bad sci fi 70's low budget italian gore flicks and lighthearted comedy-romance movies the employee appears so disgustingly innocent and clueless as the mighty rollins states it just wouldn't have been a good plan to execute - akin to smearing out a bunny your idiot friend finds cute with a runaway concrete nibbler while you're both out looking for existential bargains in semi disposable self-assembly swedish furniture heck we mean it's hardly worth permanently damaging brainless tepid morons whose existential anthems are ripped from soundtracks to juno or amelie swanson (half choking with grief): we'd *acckk* like to join blumquist video club please we smile tight lipped staring though them over the lightly scratched beige plastic counter employee guy 1050b is unconsciously 'weirded out' by something supermassive and terrible burning ten miles behind our eyes of polished black onyx but hands us the standard twelve pages of signup forms in the efficient and friendly manner ir's been trained in as a modern mediated professional we fill the forms out give a photo driver's license birth certificate take an eye fingerprint foot and dna scan and ten minutes later they hand us back a freshly laminated holographic blumquist video club membership card 'bye now sir' they say as we exit premises with a bad unrewound japanese format video taped copy of george andrew romero's undead classic 'day of the deaders' in our sweating red right hand two weeks later we find out everything about them our only true love tells us they've quote 'made a new friend' at work oh you sweet two angel-faced liar no wonder (as i realise now) your last partner dropped you like a dirty potato sack of red hot fibs as they say the words 'new friend' we feel our jaw tightening along with our terrifying internal chinese kung-fu fists of stony deff how could you do this to us how we ask silently (oh ragged disappointment; oh crushing existential weight of naked falsehood) turns out guy-smiley's even a massive flan of of hyperkult sci fi lite tv series 'stir dreck' oh man of all creatures a 'drekkie' - they own the uniform a matching ray gun holster and travel hundreds of miles to every stir-dreck convention going our only humalien our only slim tender love has dumped us for a bad lukewarm shatner lookalike oh big science hear our heartfelt cry at high desert mesa dusk our pathetic little life is over please just beam us back up and knock us out thankfully the vhs movie kicked much arts fellow researcher k0de blue at start of the big munching scene at end just said: ahh man we thought this a most suitable response and imagine loverboy screaming while being passively yet enthusiastically chewed by hordes of rotting blue-grey ash faced undead static bad print aged video tape over saturation and scan lines on a low dot pitch monitor the general lofi look of the film caused by unique technical limitations and obsolete film recording media along with the overall moody lighting making the scene far more convincing horrible and darkly hilarious the overall effect is one of stumbling onto another entirely different universe one that was perfectly aligned with this one a realty one hardly suspected could exist heck yeah a near-future retro 80's big scientific republic // republic of bob