Hillary plays Los Gatos Electronics/ The pink cookie

Part I  Hillary plays Los Gatos Electronics

Let me get my review of the Democratic debate over with.  I watched it in the showroom of an electronics store on Los Gatos Blvd. in the eponymous city, where Hillary's face was duplicated fifteen times around the room which, though slightly disorienting in terms of telepathic reception, did allow me to collect the basics.  When Clinton argued that even though she was a first lady, a senator and a secretary of state, she is a Washington outsider because she's a woman, I focused all my energies on her inner thoughts.  There were none.  She was just throwing out a well-rehearsed line.  She already knew who would buy it and who would not- everything was anticipated.  Sanders displayed a similar well-rehearsed delivery accompanied by a similar non-reflective interior.  One note of interest: Buried deep in his left hemisphere, Sanders carries the moment years ago when he figured out that if he did a few mildly radical things in his youth, he could carry the term "progressive" with him the rest of his life.  He foresaw that his colleagues in Congress would tolerate him for opposing the Iraq War and the Patriot Act because he had no expectation of prevailing on those issues. Prevailing would have ruined his career.  I located an archive in Sanders' brain recording a memory in which he figures out how he will use the terms "socialist" and "progressive" for an appreciative electorate in Vermont, then downplay those terms for a national audience. His big anxiety is his cave to gun manufacturers and his opposition to the Brady Bill, which Sanders deemed necessary so that Vermont hunters would not trash his career hopes.  When the NRA gave him a D- because of his lip service to later gun control proposals, he was relieved and uses this D- in all responses to gun control questions.  

I must apologize to readers who were expecting more on the debate.  I found this one really boring and depressing.  What did it have to do with the crises of our species: the disappearance of settled culture, the inability of the state or the global consumer machine to substitute for the missing culture?  Not to mention war and genetic engineering, the unholy twins of our apocalypse.  Last night's debate was as far removed from reality as if it had been scripted fiction spoken by actors.  The places to go for serious discussion of the human condition are science journals and science fiction. Writers like Arthur C. Clark, Greg Bear and many others describe the reaction of a shocked human race to news that everyone's way of life will be over in a few years, the same news humankind has received in real life.  In the stories, people react by rioting or adopting survival mode and/or space flight, but they usually don't continue business as usual, like we are.  What kind of story would that be?  We have to read fiction to find our reality.  

Part II  The pink cookie

Sorry if I seem irritable.  I'm not myself after what Tom, my new billionaire friend, did to me in Big Sur last night. 

Rewinding:  The morning before I arrived in Los Gatos, as I sat in the back of the Uber Tom had paid for, distractedly looking out at the 17 Mile Drive, I remembered the small package he left for me with a note apologizing for giving me Test 1124.  I dug into my pocket and pulled out the package, tore off the paper and found a cunning wooden box.  Inside was a pink cookie and a card with the instructions, "Eat me," in Tom's wild cursive, and: "P.S. Make sure someone is around to help you enjoy this!"

I got the picture and felt humiliated that a billionaire huckster could target me so knowingly.  Still, after my experience with Test 1124 I was hesitant.  As Tom had explained, he had contacts for the newest drugs, many of which were so powerful that care had to be taken in introducing them into society.  My pink cookie, I suspected, was one of these.

Nevertheless, as we whizzed north I wondered what upcoming venue might best suit the cookie's purpose.  Los Gatos approached, surrounded by the sea and beautiful mountains.  It was a bit crowded after Cambria and Big Sur, but I decided that crowded was what I needed.

I asked the driver to drop me at the Motel 6 on Bascom Avenue, off the 17. Following a nap and a shower, I walked to Los Gatos Electronics, a few blocks down, for the debate, after which, in dire need of new input, I ended up in front of The Happy Hound Cafe on Los Gatos Blvd.  There was still plenty of sunlight.  The cafe looked cozy.  I went in and sat at a window table, where I ordered coffee.  The place was busy.  There were regular people and irregular people.  I stared into my coffee and wondered which I was.  Then I took out the little box, removed the pink cookie, put it in my mouth and ate it with coffee.  Too late it occurred to me that I should have secured payment from the pharmaceutical source for beta testing.

It was clear that the researchers in question had figured out super-fast activation of an orally ingested chemical.  No sooner had I eaten the pink cookie than- well, I had expected something intense, but what actually happened is hard to describe, and I either hate Tom Kettleman or I'm grateful.  I think that Tom, during one of his Test 1124 trips, intuited that the pink cookie would combine with my telepathy to produce...something new.

Like physical encounters at a distance?  Would that be new?  It started with the waitress.  I became hyper-aware of her and she became aware that I was aware, and then she became aware of me and I was aware of that.  Then it felt like we were in close contact, though it was hard to tell if it was physical or mental- maybe an amalgam of both.  The feeling was startling, but it only lasted when she was standing near me.  When she went to the kitchen or waited on other people the effect was gone.  This was frustrating and I felt I should have taken Tom's advice to find someone special to share the experience with.

The trouble was that I didn't have anyone special at that particular point in time, way back yesterday; I was kind of on my own, kind of adrift.  I paid and left the restaurant, looking for a place where I might establish a connection.  A few blocks down I found a Whole Foods Market and went in.  Lots of healthy, attractive people, and a salad bar!  I got a salad and perched on my stool, surveying the couples at tables and beyond them shoppers going to and fro.

Then I felt the residual effect of the previous night's Test 1124 kick in.  It turned out that Tom's second experiment on me delivered a triple whammy: I saw a schematic in my head showing how to commingle with every person in the Whole Foods.  I can't recall much detail, but the schematic gave directions to secret gateways found in everyone's psyche through which all manner of communication and contraband can pass.  Through these portals I connected with my fellow humans and felt an other-worldly bonding which involved awareness of them on my part and a pronounced though invisible awareness on everyone's parts around me and a rather erotic glow developed and it felt like everyone's skin touched everyone else's.  As customers swiped their credit cards across from cashiers, their eyes met in fire.  As thrifty shoppers stared at the mayonnaise prices to compare with Trader Joe's, the grip of their hands on the cold glass became a connection with the throbbing and sensual heart of the cosmos.  And then, as all particles must on that day foretold by faith-based empiricism, we ignited and burned together, our souls reduced to a subatomic dance, which, by the way, was quite pleasant.  I felt a deep serenity. Whole Foods, I will never complain about your prices again!

Sorry for the dissipation, if that's what it was.  I'm sure it's not seemly in a man my age.  I'll get back into politics as soon as I can stand it.  Not that I'm judgmental.