Minister Faust by From the Notebooks of Dr Brain (v4.0) (html)

Rand and a little more Frigg! The real Frigg, like, your mother?”
    “You’re only in ze FOOCH to milk it for marketing, for synergy tovard your next album, your next product line, your next Grrrl Guide on Tantric Flute Playink or vutever, or to launch a movie career! You haff no more devotion to ziss organization zan a tapevurm hass to a stomach! You need to straighten out your priorities! You need to chainch your life! You need to—”
    “ You need to remember you’re not my mother !”
    Both women fell silent.
    A hot breeze blew through the neuroscape, tugging at each woman’s hair, and the dust grew thick enough to choke on.
    Syndi’s simple statement of fact seemed to have sliced through the argument like a dull ax through a forehead. And it was the last sentence I could wrangle from either of them for the rest of the morning.
 
CHAPTER FOUR

    Iconoclastic Means “I Can!”

    SUNDAY, JULY 2, 1:45 P.M.

    Iconversion: Art for Heart’s Sake

    Y our task,” I told Hnossi, Syndi, Kareem, and Mr. Piltdown inside the Aesthetics Laboratory of the Hyper-Potentiality Clinic, “is to construct with the materials in this room a three-dimensional model of your own personal icon.”
    “Good God, ‘Doctor,’ ” said Mr. Piltdown, “is there any floor past which you cannot sink? The finest flame of the Age of Heroism has just been extinguished, and meanwhile you want us to pretend we’re in grammar school so we can drawr pitchers ?”
    “Art therapy, Mr. Piltdown, is a highly reputable and effective means through which the subconscious mind can release its repressed fears, anxieties, grief, and yearnings. And during the psychemotional turbulence of having lost a figure of such importance to you all, to the country—”
    “So the answer is yes, then,” said the brawny septuagenarian billionaire. “This is pointless. And if I’m to be subjected to this pointless inanity, why aren’t Wally and that dung-crawling tap dancer here to be punished alongside us?”
    “Festus, please,” sighed Hnossi. “Let’s just get ziss over viss. Can ve do zat?”
    He paused, finally nodding to her. “For your sake, Hnossi.”
    “Sank you. Continue, Frau Doktor.”
    “Thank you, Hnossi. To answer your question, Mr. Piltdown, André isn’t feeling well—”
    “Either a hangover, or a ho-over,” muttered Kareem, possibly louder than he thought (or possibly not), “number seven hundred and thirty-eight.”
    “—and Wally said he’d be here, so I’m sure he’s just running behind.”
    Flying Squirrel: “Running some thing, I’d wager.”
    I looked to Mr. Piltdown, expecting him to elucidate. He said nothing.
    I continued. “You have all afternoon. Look around the Aesthetics Laboratory. Use anything, from felts and crayons to swatches to minerals to industrial cast-offs, and employ whatever powers, skills, or talents you wish. All I want you to do is to evoke through art what moves you most about the person, group, or place that embodies your highest ideals. The point here, especially during this period of bereavement-processing, is to connect yourself with the power source of your emotional-intellectual nexus.
    “While you’re working, I’ll ask you some questions about what you’re doing and why and how, and then at the end we’ll have some conclusion-and-contemplation work. So, go to it!”
    Power Grrrl raised her hand.
    “Yes, Syndi?”
    “Is there any of André’s baking left from the other day?”
    “No, Syndi.”
    “Like, could you call him and ask him to bring—”
    “Just focus on ze verdammt assignment, Fraulein ‘Grrrl’!”
    “What- ever !”

Iconograffiti
    B ecause actual icons—the type held in museums—represent our most esteemed virtues, we might assume they must be constructed exclusively from genuinely precious materials such as marble, gold, or achillium.
    But during Europe’s Middle Ages, a thriving trade in faked icons saw horse molars sold as the teeth of Saint Paul, splinters