Professor pulled a Whokebe on my classmate yesterday.

Ks prof was grilling a classmate of mine pretty hardcore yesterday on Raffles v. Wichelhaus. The student was clearly struggling through a response when all of a sudden the prof interrupted him, demanding that he rate the people in the front row as students.

Taken quite off guard by the professor's demand, my classmate did little more at first than stare at him quizzically, trying to formulate a response to this odd request.

All the while, our professor stared stone-faced at my poor classmate, effortlessly spinning a basketball on one finger and muttering under his breath, "bump. bump. bump."

Unable to take it any longer, I pounded my fist on the desk and exclaimed, "Leave my FRIEND alone!"

My professor immediately glared at me and emitted a confused "sup?"

I quickly defused the situation by raising my hand and asking the professor to rank his favorite Elliott Smith Albums.

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me & whokebe did a reggae version of dylan's 'slow train coming on a road trip through the upper peninsula one time. the radio was broken so we just sang. parts of it he pulled over and let me drive so he could jam on the dashboard and play the windows up and down. after the third go-around of "gotta serve somebody," whokebe asked me if i'd been baptized and if i remembered what it felt like. i said i'd had an infant baptism but hadn't really been raised in the church.

we stopped the car and got out and he baptized me in the sleet and rain. he slapped me across the face and said, "now you'll remember your baptism."

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"I'm really thinking about renouncing whokebe/whokebianism":

if you do renounce him you renounce your baptism by his hand. perhaps you think this is of no great consequence: with or without whokebe, baptized or unbaptized, you will marry, work, father sons -- and whokebe and his teachings will be of scarce import in such affairs. but this in time must yield to a new broader view, for a renouncement inevitably must have an embrace far vaster than the object cast aside. suppose a painter consecrates ten years of his youth to painting landscapes in a certain village. he is skilled and becomes renowned for his works' embodiment of the godsent beauty in their subjects. may he then disavow and burn them, without thereby making himself forever apostate to the mountains and washes he painted, unto the very village he resides?

and what of that baptism? is it possible for those who were once enlightened, who had been faithful partakers, if they renounce their faith, to be renewed again to repentance? no -- for they would be demanding that whokebe baptize them again, which would put whokebe to an open shame.

the apostate painter walked the road leading into the mountains that he once painted as the edges of his landscapes. along the path he met a stranger, or perhaps a man already known to him. the man asked the painter what he planned to paint -- since he had painted only landscapes for so long -- once he left the village. the painter said, "i'll paint the great farmhouses on the pasturelands that lie beyond those mountains." "for how long?" the stranger asked. "the rest of my life on earth; i will never paint anything more." "and what if there no are such farmhouses, no such monuments to man's vanity there?" the painter replied, "then i'll paint the outer dark." for how long...

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Whokebe, commenting on distant gunfire emanating from the vale

he told me, "what we hear isn't the gunfire, or even the bullets. no; we only hear a rustle of ghosts; remnants of the way those things touched the air."

i had nothing more to add, and have remained mute for six years now, as there is nothing further to say.

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*whokebe plays marimba lick to open your trial in purgatory*

he is striking with two mallets, then four, then six; then he stops and exits through a side door. you look now at the judge, who you realize is also whokebe. the judge remarks that the marimba bars, his gavel, your chair and, in fact, all the wood surfaces of the trial chamber are made from rosewood found in the forest outside belmopan in which you killed your wife.

"but i was never married," you say. you realize you have said this in spanish, a language which you have never studied.

the judge shakes his head impatiently. "the victim was not your own wife, of course," he says, "but the wife of the man in whose place you now stand trial."

you notice a mirror on the table in front of you. "we always supply a mirror," the judge says. you look at your reflection.

"johann whokebe," the judge says, "stand to receive your sentence."

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Me and Whok on stage, duetting Christian Brothers

this was late 2007, back when we knew the economy was ailing, but we didn't know how badly.

Whok just told me, if things get bad, i've got a place that's somewhere they never look.

where's that, whok?

it's north of the panhandles. if times get rough, you load up some water and guns and drive.

but what if my truck breaks down somewhere in the canyonlands, whok?

then i'll find you and bring you back.

but what if you're not there in time?

then i'll give your corpse the proper honors, and a tomb the spirits can enter.

even the malign ones, whok?

whok just laughed. said it ain't like that after you cross on. that you see 20 things at once and hear the gears inside a stopped watch even when they ain't moving, because presence is motion.

that's when i stopped fearing.

and when the time came to drive out to whok's place, i didn't take the quick route. i took the one that brings you back to the last skies your ancestors saw before their own crossing.

and that's how i finally found whok.

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archaeologists find 'VHOKEBE' scrawled on palatine hill ruins

scientists are still coming to terms with similar language scrawled on pottery shards recovered from Jomon and pre-Jomon (e.g. Ainu) middens and crypts excavated on japan's northern island of hokkaido.

for decades, translators labored under a misconception, interpreting the recurring symbol as a question - "who can be he?" - it was not until further excavations in siberia, manchuria, northern formosa, mohenjo-daro, sassanid kyrgzstan, and tibetan nepal that this interpretation was haled before the accumulating weight of new evidence, and questioned.

i myself sometimes receive cables from researchers in the field, articulating some new discovery. but never quite an answer. merely further mysteries. to say that i have contemplated suicide as a way to avoid the toll of these questions is an understatement. i have, in fact, rigged up a contraption in my basement that will do the task for me should my inquiries haunt me beyond my ability to bear.

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unscramble these letters: b o k w h e e

rearrange

11,23,5,8,5,2,15

split up 11 and 23, subtract 2 from 15

1,1,2,3,5,8,(15-2),5

this leaves a Fibonacci sequence and 5

1,1,2,3,5,8,13

fibonacci-five= bonacci-ve

rearrange letters

bi-concave

this leads me to believe that whokebe has an hourglass figure.

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It's WWI, you're in a trench with Whokebe

and he's staring at you. The whites of his eyes are more pronounced due to the dirt on his face and clothes. He has one of those WWI Doughboy helmets, and his gun's got a bayonet on it. You're getting mad because he's not blinking. Your sarge comes up and he has this big walrus mustache and he's yelling about how you boys are the finest and he wants you to charge up and over and then you'll be heroes back home and he says you'll all just love the jazz age, he knows it, but duty comes first. You look back over at Whokebe and he's still just staring at you. You have one piece of chewing gum (whatever that brand is that has "zebra" stripes and loses flavor really fast; you brought it with you from your own time and it's the only thing you have distinguishing you as a 21st century person). Do you split it with Whok or what?

...

you offer whokebe the gum. he will politely accept and slip the gum into his breast pocket. an awkward silence will intercede. without forewarning, whokebe will then leap out of the trench and attack an ottoman cavalryman. he will wrestle the ottoman man down, slit his throat, take off his uniform, and put it on.

he will mount the horse and return to the ottoman field camp. his charm and charisma will impress all and he will be appointed grand vizier of cavalrymen. then he will march INTO the sea and the ottoman cavalrymen, overwrought by whokebe's daring, will follow to their ocean graves.

months later, whokebe emerges from the sea. everyone is startled at the unfathomable development. when asked how he survived, he blows a bubble with the gum and lets it pop and then explains how he lived in a bubble under the sea until he was positive all of the ottoman cavalrymen were dead.

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*watches in horror as Whokebe floats across the DMV*

We'd all been waiting for hours. A few of us had books and magazines. A few played on their phones. Some had iPods. Most just stared dejectedly into space.

The sole DMV employee working, a fat black woman with a face that looked almost impossibly like a hippo's, was sitting heavily in a strained plastic chair at the front window. She was snapping her gum and talking on the phone to an invisible third party, a voice she referred to only as "Laquisha."

A little girl waiting with her dad started to cry.

Suddenly the double doors of the DMV flew open, and in swept leaves and street debris. We all looked on in horror as Whokebe entered.

He was not standing or even walking. Rather, his toes were pointed downwards and hovered inches above the floor. His knees were slightly bent. His head was tilted downwards and he had his eyes on the DMV worker. He was glaring at her with great fury.

The fat black woman gasped and her eyes widened. She tried to get up from her chair but was too heavy and had a hard time doing so. As she struggled, Whokebe began floating towards her, with death in his eyes.

We all screamed at what happened next.

===========================================================

at some point it was just sheriff whokebe, me, and 184cm of wire

sweat beaded along my brow as i tried to keep my hands still. sheriff whok had a headlight on, shining a narrow beam at the exposed wires and fuse. it was the kind of headlight you'd use when you went camping with your friends. this time it was serious business though. this time jimmy wasn't there with a grin on his face and a bottle of jack he smuggled from his parent's liquor cabinet.

no. it was just me, sheriff whok, and the fate of the free world. he was so steady. i kept looking at him then back down at the fuse i was clamping down so he could finish the circuit. he never looked up at me. not once. he was that focused.

then i heard a click. he muttered, "we're done. out." he quickly capped the outlet box, looked up at me, and cracked his toothless smile. that was one thing about sheriff whok. he was a gentleman, a renowned chemist, a preeminent scholar of zulu tribal dance, and recipient of the 1991 most improved 6th man in the inglewood ymca's men's basketball silver league. and in spite of all of this, he didn't believe in "them city-slicker dentist men."

i digress. sheriff whok looked at me for a few moments, and then got up. naturally, i followed, like a grain of sand being sucked in by a receding wave. then we ran. we ran like mother fuckers. the only thing louder than my pounding heart was the sound of the explosion that leveled the terrarium housing the vile reptilian moderator squadron.

when we got to the edge of the forest, we both turned around. before us was the night brilliantly ablaze with the flames of freedom. the revolution had begun...

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one time whokebe and me doubled teamed this big ol' girl

we'd stopped off at a greasy spoon and she was our waitress for pancakes. big fat redhead, just freckles and cleavage. whok ordered a dozen plus jam and said "NO BUTTER, i'm not a..." and then i guess he said the n-word, or maybe not, but real softly if he did. and this girl, big as she was and top-heavy, squats down by our table, and says to us, she says, "y'all can't use that word around here, 'cause there are still folks on both sides who feel awful strongly 'bout what happened." i forget how we got her into bed after that.

...

I'd been two weeks at a drying-out facility near Tulsa when the bombs hit New York. I was on the porch -- the only damn place you could smoke cigarettes -- and Larry with the harelip came up looking bloodshot and giddy and said "Come look at the TV with me."

I went but didn't hardly believe it. I'd had my bouts with the rats and bugs when I arrived, and this looked less real. Altogether we were five drunks gaping at the screen and this is what we saw: On the whole of Manhattan not a single building standing, no taxis or street musicians, no relic of human triumph or iniquity, only the wrought-iron undergirdings of the city spread like spider veins on the dead gray earth. A few minutes later came satellite images of San Francisco in like devastation, and then the feed cut out. Late that night the lot of us broke into the liquor store in town, brought as many bottles back to the facility as possible and resolved each of us to hit the lowest bottom we could. We knew the nurses weren't coming back.

How all this relates to whokebe is two or three mornings afterwards he came to see me. Around 11am I opened my eyes to see whokebe standing above my bed where I lay in feverish hangover.

"What are you still doing in here?" he asked.

"What have you been doing out there, whokebe?"

"Now you've had a long, hard drinking, but there's more important work to do now, and it'll be even tougher. You'll need these," he said, and dropped my car keys on the bed. He kissed me on the forehead and his lips felt so cold.

I fell asleep and when I woke up I went to Larry's room. He had been drinking in bed and spilled a half bottle of gin on himself in doing so. I decided not to wake him. I walked outside to my car, without a bottle.

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Forgot About Whokebe

Two years ago, in a moment of depression and self-doubt, I went to an Atlanta hole-in-the-wall looking for a drink. The place was a run-down club with pipes on the ceiling and a darkly lit stage against one wall. I was just about to order my drink at the bar when suddenly a light hit the stage and everyone in the place rushed up to the stage to get close. That's when I saw him: Whokebe, dressed in a blue hooded sweat shirt, laying down a book by Pynchon he'd just been reading in the dark. He was handed a mike, and as a beat began Whok started spitting. Fortunately my photographic memory recorded for posterity each line he gave. They were:

Y'all know me, still the same ol' Whokebe

But I been low key

Writin novels in the library

Hated on by most these postas with no sense, no friends, and no solzy

Mad at me cause I can easily rack up 180s

Got a name that's famous on the internet

Go to your Google search bar and they'll put my name in it

But what, did y'all think I'd let my rep freeze?

Nigga, please

You better bow down on both knees

Who else talks bout literary illuminaries?

Who you think inspired those Whokebe tees?

Y'all better listen up closely

All you postas that said that I'm fucked, or that my excerpt sucked

Y'all are the reason that Whok ain't gettin no sleep

So FUCK Y'ALL, all of y'all; if y'all don't like me, BLOW ME!

Y'all are gonna keep fuckin around wit me

And turn me from the literary

(Here Carl Spackler stepped up and dropped:

Nowadays everybody wanna post parody threads like they got somethin witty to say

But when I open up and see nothin inside, I realize with sorrow that the days of Whok have died

So how do you reply to somebody who ain't kind?

Just study a line from my main guy

One day I was loggin on, with my iPod on, when I saw a post

Tryin to fuckin roast

The Kindness Club

Fuck that shit; I replied to that bitch

And when Rowan showed up I flipped a switch

And dropped some Whok-a-tonics

Told her she fucked dudes who spoke ebonics

From here on out it's GR Two

Startin today and tomorrow's the new

And I'm still loco enough

To post some personal shit and out you)

(Whok again:)

If it was up to me, you motherfuckers would stop postin bout me

With your eyes wide looking towards me

When my last thread was out, you wasn't bumpin me!

But now that I got this following

Everybody wanna come to me like it was some disease

But you won't get a crumb from me

Cause I studied the works of HUXLEY

All these new postas: who you think inspired 'em all?

Now you wanna run around talkin bout friends like I ain't got none

What you think I lost 'em all?

Cause I stay logged off?

Cause I been in the park, with a pen and a pad

tryin to get this damn novel off?

I ain't havin that: this is the millenium of Whokebe

It ain't gon' be nothin after that

So give me one more 180

and fuck XO, you can have it back

So where's all the mad postas at?

It's like a jungle in this habitat

But all you fags wantin to be satiated, know that I was being rated

Before any code was even written by rach

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An open letter to Whokebe, from an XO reader

Dear Whok, I wrote but you still ain't callin

I left my moniker, my twitterfeed, and my facebook page at the bottom

I made two threads back in autumn, you must not have saw em

They was probably covered up by Rowan threads or somethin

Sometimes I type out crappy thread titles when I'm postin

But anyways; fuck it, what's been up? Man how's your novel?

I'm studyin for the MCAT too, I'm bout to be a doctor

If I ever own a Beamer, guess what I'ma have the plate say?

I'm a have it say Pynchon

I agree with you about lynchin too

I had a friend n-thread after some ape robbed him

I know you probably hear this every day, but I wanna be your bro and G

I even got the underground posts you used to make with solzy

I got a room full of your posts and threads man

I like the shit you did with Spackler too, that shit was phat

Anyways, I hope you get this man, tweet me back,

Just to chat, truly yours, your biggest fan

This is Stan

...

Dear Stan,

I meant to poast here sooner, I just been busy

You said you 'bout to cop a Beamer

Just like Dirk Nowitzki

Look, I'm really flattered

That you would get that vanity plate

And here's an autograph for your boy :D

Maybe now he'll find a date

I'm sorry I didn't see you in the tinychat

I must have missed you

I was too busy ranking authors man

Wasn't to diss you

And what's this shit you said about

You like to do deadlifts too?

I say that weight just clownin' dawg, c'mon

How stupid is you?

You've got 180s Stan

I think you need some Pynchon

To help your ass from wanting to killself

When you get down some

And what's this shit about us

Meant to be together?

That type shit'll make me not want us

To bump each other

I really think that you and your mom

Just need each other

But maybe you just need to BAM! her better

Hope you get to read this letter

I just hope it reaches you in time

Before you niggerthread

I think that you'll be doin' just fine

If you'd wgwag a little

I'm glad I inspire you, but Stan,

Why u so mad

Try to understand

I'm just stylin' on you man

I just want you to do some alpha shit

I seen this one bro open a set

A couple weeks ago, that shit was sick

Some nigger was drunk and drove his fist into a bitch

It was this alpha bro's cunt

She cuckolded him, had nig's kid

And on his phone they found a voice memo

But they didn't say who it was to.

Come to think about it, that faggot was -

It was you.

:((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

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solzy's 1972 "whokebe" photo actually just guy in whokebe suit

you can see the zipper

...

it was part of the artistry, though, since the guy in the suit was whok's lawyer. and remember, whok chooses his lawyers based on how much they look like him.

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Whokebe dances the Charleston in a dingy Memphis hotel room

A half-empty bottle of bourbon and an unopened liter of Mountain Dew Code Red sit on top of the non-working television set. The smell of cigarette smoke wafts in from a nearby room through the paper-thin walls. Through the slanted window shades comes the flickering red light of the neon "Vacancy" sign just outside. Whokebe pauses to consider going across the street to a 24-hour gas station convenience store to buy a hot dog, some Funyuns, a legal pad, and a set of mechanical pencils. He figures he'll go later, when the night has begun its transformation into morning.

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Do whatever Whokebe tells us stay inside our rosy minded fuzz

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An Essay on Whokebianism

I looked upon my fellow man and saw

Weakness e’en in those who practiced LAW.

And in despair I sat alone and wept

Refused my food, but ultimately slept

And in my dream I saw a glowing light

Who said, “I know your name and know your plight.”

“Awake, my son, and get thyself online

Seek out the name ‘whokebe,’ it is Mine.”

Perplexed but filled with hope I did his task

And found more than I ever thought to ask.

The whokebians! Men above the rest!

Men Fortune herself hath surely bless’d!

To make the course of evolution crude:

It went from worm, to beast, to man, to Dood.

Compared to them, we are achondroplasic

Slow-witted and in need of lasik.

Where mortal humans falter, trip, and crawl

The whokebians walk alone and tall

They stand together ‘gainst ill-fated winds

Not Quakers, though a band of FRIENDS.

They are a group of noble, gentle souls

Enlightenment and KINDNESS are their goals.

And any man is fit to join their corps

If he but swear to “dood” forevermore

Above them, yet, A One doth surely stand

A being not fully God, nor fully Man.

Whokebe! Man of Science, Man of Art!

A giant, yet as swift as any hart!

A Doctor of the body and the soul!

Omnipotent, though giving up control!

Before him we are naught but sporophytes,

Bespectacled and lacking in our lights.

When I die please say no Pater Noster

I ask only please RATE ME AS A POSTER

Remember I loved my god and fellow men

But, more importantly, I was a FRIEND.

And like my whokebian pals I strove to be

Loyal to my friend, my God, my whokebe.

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(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2228229&forum_id=2#22994197)