Every so often a mysterious entity
calls me. The entity calls itself "The Future" and knows where things will be in New York after the Starbucks and
Whole Foods have blanketed the town and then disappeared.
Episode Three of Twenty. (Originally posted November 16, 2007 at Gawker.)
"Hello?"
"Zhe shi shenme? Is that you, nanonips? I must have hit the wrong avatar on my iPortal! I meant to call the police!"
"The police? Are you okay?"
"I was just having lunch at CNNZone in Times Square when all hell broke loose."
"Is it a terrorist attack?"
"A what? ... No. Far worse. It's a Tranny Reclamation Riot."
"What does that even mean?"
"It all started when the Supreme Court overturned the extension of copyright laws. For years, Congress, at the behest of big business had prevented the passage to public domain just about anything. The original intent of the laws, to protect creators, had been perverted to just sustain creative ideas as corporate assets."
"And how would that affect trannies?"
"I'm getting there, micromuff. At first some of the smaller
companies were affected. Characters like Spider-Man going into public
domain meant that the assets of places like Marvel Comics were simply
wiped out. Some of the larger concerns had some adjustments. TWA for
example just shifted some assets around."
"TWA?"
"Time Warner/American Media? The company Harry Levin runs? Hold on. I have to find a place to hide. I'm going to try this closet. ... Damn!"
"What happened?"
"Anderson Cooper's in there with Rick Sanchez. There's no more room.
I could make try to run across the street to Madame Tussaud-o-Vision."
"Where?"
"MTV. It's a portal-vision network that shows programming by wax dummy replicas of humans. Another result of the copyright rollback. Viacom, which had very little creative content, did fine. I wish the same could be said for Walt Disney. If they had survived I wouldn't be hiding from the tranny rebels out there."
"How would Walt Disney affect ..."
"Duibuqi. Walt Disney was pretty much propped up by their licensed
holdings. Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Jessica Simpson. All those lunch
boxes, t-shirts, toasters and everything else were where their money
really was. Following the copyright changes, they quickly went
bankrupt. And for Times Square, that meant that about 70 per cent of
the theaters and other businesses were suddenly just gone. Completely
undisnified. Some locals tried their hand at bringing theater back, but
people were wholly uninterested in shows like "Rosie's Ruff-Riding
Rodeo" or "Apprentice, the Musical".
"So without theater, what happened to Times Square?"
"There was an attempt to continue some of the tourist interests. ESPNZone became where I'm hiding out right now, CNNZone. LOLCaiteteria has very nice interpretations of Franco-American products. And the Jolie-Pitt Adopt-o-rama is quite popular with the gays. But the area is sort of going downhill. Thus the reclamation riots."
"What exactly are the trannies trying to do?"
"When they were first pushed out of the area back in last century,
many of the trannies and the prostitutes and the hustlers all felt that
they had been pushed away from their motherland. They had to leave the
streets and hole up, resorting to advertising for their services. At
some point, local magazines pushed them out as well. Now with so many
of the buildings in Times Square just sitting empty, they're trying to
reclaim the land from which they were forced out. Last year they used
slingshot garters to take out the Macy's balloons from the top of the
former Conde Nast building. And now, with the riots, I don't even know
if there will be a parade this year."
"But trannies can't be that scary."
"Are you kidding me, robo-roids? They're thousands strong and ... Oh, no. Zhe shi shenme? ... It's a Press-On Pipebomb! I'll call you soon!"
