SellingYour Magazine in an Anarchist Bookstore
"Alright," she says, "I'll get a coffee and wait."You feel the tension at the counter ebb, as Bobbi
walks slowly to get in line for a drink at the cafe.You note that most of the staff and customers
are now trying to pretend they weren't watching the scene you just witnessed.
You hear James mutter an apology to Pork Neck, the two of them banter a little. It seems to
you that they're over the drama for the time being.Your mind snaps back to business, to your
reason for having come to this place today.
"Hey," you say. "I realize you guys have a lot going on right now. Could I please have the
Acquisition's Manger's contact information?" They both look at you, then at each other.
There's a flash of recognition between them, and then they both start laughing nervously.
After a few seconds of laughter, Pork Neck says to you, "Sorry, sorry. I can give you her card,
or you can go ask her yourself. She's standing at the cafe counter right now."You look at their
shit-eating grins, then you turn your head to see Bobbi standing at the cafe counter chatting
up the cashier while receiving a mug of coffee.
"Thanks," you say to the two of them, not meaning it.You see Bobbi sit down at an empty table
and pull out her phone. She's typing something.You walk over.
You get to where Bobbi is sitting. She glances up at you from her phone, and you nod to her,
but you don't stop. No, you keep walking; past Bobbi, and out the doors you entered through.
You realize the anarchy of the anarchist's cafe is too much for you to navigate. Fuck it, you think
to yourself, I'll just try selling this thing online. UJ
The Meditations of Caius Caligulia
ChapterV: OfWar
he mad moon calls to me. Not literally. I do not, like madmen, claim to hear voices that
other men do not hear. Gods know things without hearing them. And I know Diana’s
shadow. Diana has always envied the sons of Mars. And Rome is the greatest son.
T
War is a topic fitting for an emperor to discourse of. As I have said, the Emperor is exalted on
the chair lifted by the legions.This is literal, and metaphor. My very name is the gift of the
legions. Some of the Senators act as if they have never heard me called Caligulia, as if they are
frightened to utter it in m presence, for fear that I shall be somehow offended.To be fair, I can
be wonderfully easy to offend. And I cannot put it past me to behave in an irked manner if
some toad in a toga were to call me Caligulia in a certain tone. An unserious or disrespectful
tone. But when the soldiers call me it, they give the word the same adulation as “Caesar”.
Which, as everyone knows, was but a name, and is now almost a title. It means “hairy”, and
everyone who feigns wit will display some remark upon the fact that the Divine Julius was
balding when he died. As if any of them had dared to say so when he was alive, the swine.
I have lost my path. My anger is to easy a theme to play; I must enact a greater restraint upon
myself. I must be the glorious son of Mars, not degraded Greek Aries. Rage must be channeled
like an aqueduct to its target, not set loose in a spastic flood.This is the difference between
war and murder, which sophists pretend not to understand. Both are deadly and cruel, but war
is forthright and honorable, murder shrinking and cowardly.
It was to liberate myself from the murderous air of Rome, air that Macro and Silanus had
poured their death-rattles into, that I took command of the legions of Gaul. But there were
other reasons. I have said that the legions are mostly loyal to the son of Germanicus. But the
problem with the legions, like all masses of men, is that they must be led.Thus, the nature of
the leaders is of great consequence.
As it happened, a worm Tiberius had failed to trod upon, by the name of Gnaius Gaeticulus,
was in command of the Legion of Upper Germany. He had been a close friend of Sejanus, yet
somehow had escaped the consequences of that false Praetorian’s downfall. And this man, in
connection with my sister Agrippinilla and a few senators, plotted to murder me and