Tub Book: Glossary L - N

From Plastic Tub

Labyrinth

labyrinth jlb 1. A unicursal path wound to a central turn-about. 2. A geomachynically-rendered purificator utilized in ritualized ablations of the soul. 3. A Greek Key fit with a lock.

Usage

...toomed entanglements, walled, mine eyes bereft..

From the AA uncoils the Tub.

Extrapolation

TerraWee briefly sported an elaborate labyrinth named Saturn. Its concentric rings of shrubbery circled a deep sinkhole, and Watchtowers orbited the outskirts. Art Doll pumped the sinkhole full of pancake batter, flash-fried the surface, and slathered it with gallons of butter.1 Doll had intended to raise funds by selling off chunks of pancake at TerraWee's Solar Bakery, but an early winter storm turned his giant flapjack into an ice-skating rink. The unflappable Doll simply took it as support for his pancake interruptus theory.

Doll kept a well-worn copy of Dr. "Alamo" Jane Jenkins' labyrinth treatise2 by his bedside. From the introduction:

Ancient labyrinths dot the globe from the arctic to the Mediterranean. Unlike the maze, whose object is to befuddle those going from Point A to Point B, the highly-stylized labyrinth loops one to the core and back out the same path. Labyrinths have long served as physical manifestations of metaphorical journeys wherein one returns from tribulations (or wanderings), bettered. Similar devices include Mt. Fuji, Dante's Inferno, beanstalks, and the Bath-Marie. Like the Bath-Marie, a labyrinth draws the impure into a central chamber, removes impurities, and expels the purified agent while containing the baser stuff.

The most famous labyrinth stems from gnostic Minoan legends. Daedalus fathered the labyrinth as a boneyards for the minotaur and placed his son Icarus inside. Icarus crept darkly through the hunimal tomb before leaping out in angelic ascension, ditching his burdensome Father. Of course the gods casually swat him back to earth, his journey perhaps more transhumance than transhuman or alchemic. "Ah but that brief moment of flight," crooned the fallen angel in phoenix-like recollection."3

Birth itself apes this process: a sperm wriggling through feminal channels to the womb, joined to an egg (its halfness lost), expelled some nine months later -- now somehow greater than its original form, more than the slimy stuff shot forth by the Father into the void. Just ask Oedipus. Oedipus, like Daedalus before him, placed his son inside a labyrinth of his own making. Will the lesson ever be learned? Fathers beware -- your children are unlikely to forgive their creation.

It should be noted that Doll, unlike Jenkins, had no officially recognized off-spring,4 though he often refered to the astromical observatories in his watchtowers as "my babies".

Notes

Note 1: According to Doll, "Sinkholes are manifest evidence of Donut Earth, that thin crust collapsing to yield the hollowed innards. Why, it's only natural to fill such holes with batter. Only a damn fool would leave an unattended grotto laying about his land. That's just asking for a bunch of Gnomes to come make themselves at home." Of course, Art Doll also claimed to have found a fully-realized labyrinthodonut fossil (teeth and all) stuck amongst the garbage strewn bowels of the pit -- who are we (mere scientific laypersons) to argue that it was, in fact, a labyrinthodont?

Note 2: Full title: “Labyriths and Mirrors: Reflections on the Twisted History and Proper Usage of Myself”; subtitle: “Note on Self”; genre: oddly, not autobiographical. We should note here that Jane and Art had a “brief encounter” at the Fourth AA International Conference, after which they maintained a life-long correspondence that “held a tender yet refreshingly Victorianesqe timbre of amour courtois” (Waingrip, 2005 -- both quotes). Jane cried when Art died. Her husband, however, did not.

Note 3: The emphasis was Doll's. Ironically, this phrase was later spoken at his memorial.

Note 4: We need not note that rumors, of course, abound.

See Also

• Death
• Gnostic Materialism
• Homunculus
• Ouroboros
• Procreation Myths

Lambda Land of Gar

Posthumously-named group of decidedly unimportant artists from Garland, Texas, who throughout the late 1980's and 90's unknowingly engaged in civil unrest and sympathetic AA operations. Like Tampa, Florida, Garland is home to an over-proportionate distribution of drug abusers and dexterous guitar-slingers scanning all categories between speed-metal and death-jazz. Few Garland artists, however, find their way out of the suburb, and those few who don't lose themselves in the increasing Skinhead meth-movement eventually employ themselves at one of the many motherboard manufacturing companies who set up shop in the industrial parks littering the flat and polluted landscape. It is also the home of several wealthy computer game developers who are often seen strutting their stuff in gorgeous Hummers.

Les douzaines

Les douzaines fr. 1. A kind of fancy way of making fun of someone else's mom, but in French; eng. "the dozens." 2. A notorious Marseilles Street Gang.

Extrapolation

Alexandre Dacusse modeled his adolescent band of ruffians on Les Douzaines, calling his group Le Petit Treize, literally, "The Little Thirteen."

See Also

• The Dangerous Contest

Lil' Robin Redpants

Robin was the imaginary friend of all the Lil' AA scamps and scal-a-wags who populated Jonathan Trenchwheat's popular comic strip. Known for his amusing antics and oversized head, Robin often whizzed about delivering the characters snack cakes and pancakes.

Robin was always attired in ill-fitting capri pants, red as a fire engine, bulbous blue shoes, white pirate shirt and green elongated cap, which flew behind him as he sped along his way. An almost tourettic spewer of non-sequitors, onomatopoetic exclamations and sentence fragments, he was also a irrepressible singer of tunes, mainly of his own invention. The Sunday edition of Lil' AA was periodically comprised of panels which showed Lil' Robin Redpants running hither and yon, startling gape-mouthed strangers with a plate of cakes, the dialogue bubbles consisting entirely of one of his improvised and nonsensical songs.

Extrapolation

Lil' Robin has been described as a metaphor for the Jack of beanstalk fame. (Gonzales, 89)

Non Canonical Text

"Falling rain has often produced disaster." Robin uttered this non-sequitor to Lil' Dacusse in a strip three weeks before a flood in Santa Fe, Argentina destroyed hundred of homes, killing dozens and displacing thousands (January, 1961). Alexandre Dacusse had left a friend's house, where he had been staying, only two nights before. Though his friend did not live in Argentina, bullets were dodged in the vernacular.

See Also

• Heartplug

Logos

logos n. 1. Cosmological term for the intitial motion of the unmoving mover, specifically, the generative word of God; the first word, resulting in the creation of the one million things. 2. singular. A compact visual "branding" design, used extensively in the distribution of Poob Culture. 3. AA code-word for tedious bloviation. 4. A Czech vulgarity.

See Also

• Run!
• Seize Him!

Lollipop Enclave

In addition to being a collection of "killer tunes" produced by legendary Beta Chimp producer and increasingly disgruntled visionary Steven Vogeler, it is also the title of a collection of essays by anonymous member of The League of Men with Fancy Gloves published in 1959 decrying Poob Culture and its notions of God.

Desiderata

AA wannabee and lurid performance artist Liddy Broom once did a piece called Lolita-pop Enclave where she dressed as a small child à la Shirley Temple, sucked on a giant lollipop provocatively and had a legless midget stuff yams into her anus with his tongue.

See Also

• Associationalist Composition No.1
• Sven and The Tingles