by Harum Scarum
 
 
     It first occurred to me on one of those mornings when it seemed 
like all of America was a transvestite. 

     Cigarette in hand and 20oz bottle of Coke on the armrest to my 
right, I stared at the television set (it was turned to cable channel 
13,) knowing that at this very minute I was being fooled by the 
are-they-are-they-not ladies on the screen and their not-so-subtle 
disguise. The seduction was simple enough. First you mix a nip n'tuck,
a shot of hormones, a mask of Cover Girl, and a foam padded butt.
Then you put it in a tanning cocoon (now don't forget to remove a rib
or two,) and bake it for twenty minutes at full frying power. Once 
the implanted breasts have risen to full height, you take it out of 
the oven and wrap it up in a rather nice, yet slutty, ball gown, you
know, one that looks like something a first lady would wear but only
if the first lady was heavily into ventilation. In the end you'll 
arrive at something that is almost always convincing, and a 
transvestite you will have made.

     My head now televeniously filled with television transmissions, 
I began to wonder that if America was a transvestite, then what about
the world, and if the world was a transvestite, then what about 
reality itself. If that was the case, then everything is just a 
make-over over a make-over over a make-over over a make-over.

     I took a drag off my cigarette, inhaled, and then blew it out, 
mulling over this thought. Yeah, so what, I said to myself, it's not
like that idea isn't already two hundred years old and as dusty as 
Descartes. Actually, I said it out loud, the "yeah, so what," not the 
rest, but no one was around so it didn't matter.

     I took another drag off my breakfast cigarette and started off on
some tangent that really isn't worth mentioning, but then I noticed 
the faded black magic marker 'X' on my right hand, an inspiration from
the night before. See, I'd gone bar hopping the previous night, and 
for those of you that don't know, I'm speaking about all the little 
children out there, the man at the door who checks your ID, well, he 
puts an 'X' on your hand if you're 21, and if you're not, then you get
stuck with a rubber stamp that's shaped like a baby bottle. Do I have
to mention it's pink? Well, anyway, what I was saying was that the 
faded black 'X' on my hand caught my eye, and then this image mixed 
with the sophomoric thoughts I was having on transvestites and 
Descartes, and then. bamm, just like that, it hit me: Reality really
was a transvestite, and I had just seen under its dress.

     Immediately, I stamped out my cigarette and stood up. I suddenly 
felt very queasy as the entire implications of what I was thinking 
came at me. Anxiously, I paced back and forth across the room as the
images and recollections rushed at me. At this point I also realized
that the nausea I felt in my belly was the result of an adrenaline 
rush and not some sort of anxiety attack because truthfully I was very
much alive and very much on fire.

     At the moment all I had were a series of scattered thoughts, so I
 grabbed a ball point pen and the top of a pizza box, and I began to
 write what I soon deemed "Revelation 13."

     See, it all starts at the beginning. I entered the world in the 
summer of 74, a full-fledged member of the post-Baby Boomer generation
Generation X, the 13th generation of citizens born in the USA. At lot
was going on in 1974, Watergate, the end of the Vietnam War, and the 
rise of cocaine, but none of this concerned my generation. It was a 
Baby Boomer thing; we weren't even aware of it.

     About the first thing I remember though is going to see Star 
Wars for the first time after my parents had come back from a visit
to Washington, D.C. They gave me a tiny lunch box-sized record player
 with Shawn Cassidy's remake of the "Do-Run-Run," and then they took 
me to go see Star Wars, all as my reward for being a good little boy 
while they been vacationing in D.C. Really, I hadn't been all that 
good, but my grandmother was so nice that she wasn't going to tell.
But as for Star Wars, I loved it. I mean, the moment I got home, I 
pulled a broomstick out the hall closet and started swinging and 
slicing everything in sight (I wasn't too concerned that I had
knocked over the trashcan,) all the while I imagined I was Luke 
Skywalker fighting off Darth Vader. I attacked walls, cupboards, 
lampshades, you name it before my folks finally got me off to sleep. 
I wasn't allowed to drink Coke after dark for quite a few years after
that. 

     However, by the next day I decided I didn't like Luke as much as
I did the night before. Now I liked Vader better. There was some-
thing about him that was unbelievably attractive despite his evil
appearance and demeanor, or maybe even because of those things. 
Well, I bought a couple of action figures here and there over the 
next couple of months, you know, Luke, Darth, Chewie, R2, C3PO, but
when Xmas finally came, I got the goodies I'd really been wanting:
a Han Solo action figure (did I mention that by this time he was my
favorite?), an X-Wing Fighter, and the Millennium Falcon.

     Over the next six year, I basically lived and breathed Star Wars,
and so did most of my friends. It was all that we really talked about
and at birthday parties it was all that anybody got. Unfortunately
though, things had to come to an end. Darth Vader had to turn to the
good side of the force, Luke had to finally become a Jedi Knight, 
and Han and Leia had finally hooked up for good. Over the next couple
of years I would have been really lost if it wasn't for Indiana 
Jones, but that's understood.

     Around this time of Star Wars deprivation, I picked up my first 
copy of The Uncanny X-Men. You know who the X-Men are right? They're
a group of outcast mutant super heroes who are hated by the more 
established super heroes such as the Fantastic Four and the Avengers 
as well as by the average Joe, who fears a future where average Joe, 
Homo sapiens sapiens will be exterminated by Homo sapiens superior, 
i.e. the mutants, all those who possess the mysterious X-Gene. Well,
the X-Men are a kind of depressed, downtrodden bunch, but they still
do what they can to help humanity. There's Wolverine, a mutant with 
a super-human healing factor, who has razor-sharp claws that jut out 
of his hands and a steel skeleton. Then there's Cyclops, the white-
bread leader of the bunch, who possesses the ability to shot beams of
laser light out of his eyes. Next, there's Storm, a blue-eyed, white
haired, mohawked African babe who has the ability to control all 
facets of the weather. After that, you got Nightcrawler, a blue-haired
,devil looking fellow who has the ability to teleport. And then there
is.... well, the list goes on and on, and it's even growing to this 
day. I could say more about them now, but I'll get back to them later.

     Anyhow, I'd been reading X-Men for awhile (Oh, did I forget to 
mention that the PG-13 motion picture rating came to be at this time?)
and it was now my 13th year on this planet, and this new television
network starts up, Fox (Notice that Fox isn't in all capitals like
the other networks, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, HBO, etc....) It's rude and
crude and it only comes on two nights a week, Sundays and Wednesdays.
At first I don't watch it much, but then all of a sudden the Al 
Bundy arrives and Fox is finally worthwhile. Now at first the show 
was so offensive, at least to the average Tipper Gore types, that 
one lady in particular launched a big media campaign against Coke 
because Coke advertised on Married With Children. Coke paid about 
as much attention to her as the statue of Abe Lincoln pays to all 
those Potomac spawned mosquitoes that land on him everyday.

     After that, and I'd say somewhere around 91 or 92, I heard that 
Spike Lee was making a movie about Malcom X, so I decided that I'd 
read The Autobiography of Malcom X as told to Arthur Haley (What 
really got my attention was that really cool 'X' baseball cap that
Spike Lee was wearing anytime he did an interview or a television 
commercial for Nike.) I really ended up digging the book; in fact, 
it's one of my all-time favorites. As for the movie? It didn't do too
well at the box office, but the 'X' hats, man they sold like 55 cent
Big Macs (well, like 55 cent Big Macs would have sold if you didn't 
have to by a medium fry and a medium Coke too.) For the longest time,
I considered by an 'X' hat, but I didn't. After all, I'm a white guy,
and I merely would have looked like young David Silver or something.

     A couple of years later, Fox starts showing a X-Men cartoon on 
its newly formed Saturday morning cartoon block. The X-Men are an 
immediate success. Soon, toy stores are jam packed with X-Men toys
and accessories, far greater than anything that Star Wars ever did.
I mean, there's Battle-Armored Wolverine, Nuclear Ravaged Wolverine,
Oceanographer Wolverine, Runway Wolverine, etc.... The cartoon is 
doing so well that Marvel Comics expands the X-Men comic book line to
where it now includes 13 titles. There's X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, 
X-Factor, X-Force, X-Men Unlimited, X-Calibur, Generation X, Cable,
Wolverine, Untold Tales of the X-Men, Professor Xavier and the X-Men,
X-Man, and The Adventures of the X-Men.

     After this, Fox begins showing the X-Files, which was created by 
a man named Chris Carter. At first the X-Files doesn't do so good, but
after three seasons they have quite become a phenomenon, so much so 
that Chris Carter's Production Company, Ten-Thirteen Productions 
(he was born 10/13/67, a Friday) starts up this new show called 
Millennium. Do I need to mention that there's this fellow on X-Files 
named Fox Mulder, and he gets his kicks by exploring unexplained 
phenomenon and otherwise things that most folks would call strange 
coincidences?

     Also by this point in television history, Fox, which has become 
the official Generation X network, is doing so well that it expands 
to another network, fx. Oh yeah, they also by the Family Channel from
the Rev. Pat Robertson, who had once protested not only Married With
Children but The Simpsons too. Very strange indeed, don't you think?
Well, all of these things had happened well before that day when I
was sitting in front of the television set watching transvestites on 
Jerry Springer on cable channel 13, but I had never made the con-
nection. When I did, I realized this truth: somebody or something,
working through Twentieth Century Fox, has been controlling and 
programming Generation X for quite sometime now for something big 
going down come 2000 time, and being the pessimist that I am, I can't
help but think it's going to be quite apocalyptic. If you don't see
it for yourself, then let me remind you:

     First you have Star Wars. It's not only distributed by Twentieth 
Century Fox, but it features X-Wing fighters and the Millennium 
Falcon. Then you have the X-Men, who eventually rise to pop culture
prominence on Fox as well as expand their title line until there are
13 X-Men related comics books published. Then you have the PG-13 
movie rating. You have Malcom X. You have Ten-Thirteen Production 
who produces not only the X-Files, whose main character is Fox Mulder
(now we have 2 'Fox's'), but Millennium too (tying back to the 
Millennium Falcon from Star Wars) all on Fox. Oh, did I mention that
all new films made in America today are equipped for THX Sound which
George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, created? I didn't think so.)
And then there's the fact that Generation X is the 13th generation
of American citizens and that Fox will have it's 13th anniversary in
the year 2000, the people's choice for the dawn of the new millennium.
And, I almost forgot, there's Xtreme Sports too and the X-Games 
which are show on fx.

     All in all, it looks like this:

Twentieth Century Fox, Fox, Fox Mulder, X-Files, X-Men, Malcom X,
Generation X, 13, 2000: Fox's 13th anniversary, Ten-Thirteen Pro-
ductions, Chris Carter, Millenium, Millenium Falcon, X-Wing Fighter,
Star Wars, THX, PG-13. Being the good person I was, I started 
immediately shared this revelation to my friends and family members.
Some were bewildered. Some just thought it was amusing.
 
     Others dismissed it entirely. But, some, yeah, some were spell 
bound. And they became even more spell bound as the number 13 and the
decreasingly odd coincidences related to it began to pop up over and
over again.
 
     For example, did you know that Tupac Amaru Shakur, the slain 
gangsta rapper, died on Friday the 13th? Did you know that the Tupac 
Amaru, a Peruvian terrorist group, seized control of the Japanese 
embassy in Peru soon after Tupac died? Did you know that the car that
 carried Lady Di and Dodi crashed into not only another vehicle but 
the 13th pillar in the tunnel? Did you know that River Phoneix died 
on Oct 31 which is just 13 switched around? Did you know that Monica
 Lewineski first met President Clinton the week of November 13th and 
the first day that Linda Tripp began Monica was on the 13th? Did you 
know that the founder of the Church of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, 
was born on ....

     Still, despite all the coincidences, of which there's another one
everyday (just work in the Exxon factor, the Exxon tiger, William 
Blake's "The Tyger," the number of Friday the 13th's in 1998 divided
into 1998, the Book of Revelation: Chapter 13, etc....)
 
     I'm not too sure about the whole thing. For example, I went to
 buy a new computer the other day from one of those warehoused retail
 chains (their name I won't mention, not wanting to give them free
 advertisement,) and I bought a new computer for around $2500. Well,
 Judd, that was the sales person's name, he says to me, "Would you
 like our extended warranty, sir? It's only an extra $100, and it will
 take you well past the year 2000. As it stands now, your warranty
 expires Dec. 31, 1999. " 

    I paused for a minute, considered the number 13, dismissed 
"Revelation 13," and said, "Yeah, I think I will." 
	
    After all, reality is just a transvestite with one make-over, 
over another make-over, over another make-over, over another 
make-over, over another make-over .............

Harum Scarum's Links to the Infinity Monkeys and Beyond