Daft Mejora’s Infinite Madness (Or How to Travel Near America with Friends)
AVAILABLE NOW from Apprentice House, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon!
"Evoking "Breakfast of Champions" in the best possible way, Karl Dehmelt casts a satirical alien's-eye-view on a recent, unfinished history Americans know all too well. It is in part the story of a plague we all (kinda) survived -- afflicting heart, mind, and culture -- that is revealed in hilarious and heartbreaking detail as only a non-Earth narrator could. It's intense and dizzying, even frightening at times, but then again all the best drugs are."
- Thaddeus Gunn
"... a scathing piece of trenchant brilliance ... an absurd and astonishingly poignant portrait of modern-day America ... with the comedically lyrical lines of Tom Robbins and savage turns of phrase that would make Hunter S. Thompson tip his cap, Dehmelt stands on the shoulders of giants without slipping too far into derivative tropes. The author is right in thanking John Kennedy O'Toole in his introduction, for much of this prose is laced with perfectly visceral wording, while there are also echoes of Pynchon from the more in-depth diatribes... this romp of a political screed will have you hysterical in more ways than one."
- The Independent Review of Books
"I see Dehmelt's satire as having a similar style and feel as R. Crumb's work. If "Daft Mejora's Infinite Madness" were a graphic novel, I envision its characters would resemble R. Crumb's iconic look. They both use their artistic genius to bring a consciousness to society's problems.
The novel is entertaining and thought-provoking and a screed of contemporary America."
- AuthorsReading.com (review publication forthcoming)
"If you like political satire, science fiction, and owls who wax poetic, you'll find your next favorite with Daft Mejora's Infinite Madness."
“There is some fun spoofing of American mores here, and Dehmelt proves to have a voracious and playful imagination… An ambitious, if sometimes overwhelming, take on an alien’s-eye view of a divided Earth.” - Kirkus Reviews (full review at link)
A science fiction/satire compared to Kurt Vonnegut´s Breakfast of Champions depicting Modern Life in America, as based on the Internet´s daily intersection with the mundane, the insane, and the extraordinary.
In the words of the Wise Owl, one of the three main characters from another planet:
THE WISE OWL
The disease spread from the shorelines, shimmering, complacent,
Laughter and life passed, directly adjacent:
Partiers – drinking, smoking, dancing, raving, raged
And in the land of plenty, death took a novel name.
It came from a bat, from the Chinese, they claimed,
The kung-flu turned into something they blamed,
To keep working and turning, spending and earning
The laughter never louder than when the bodies were burning.
They said, this is all in our own heads, the brainless, the dead
Centered around the right to keep living instead
Of locking down, shutting up, cancelling graduations
With minds never designed for strict contemplation.
If it’s God will, then let it be so much as it is,
“I don’t give a f**k if it kills someone’s kids!”
There’s no shot at them stopping to see what they did,
Because to do so would mean they’d have to admit
The fires and factories and makeshift facilities,
Nurses numbed down to their core sensibilities.
Nails broken, eyes sunken, the relentless disease
A vengeful sort of deity no person could appease!
And the election they ran was decided by the mail,
Oh, what a terribly dumb process entailed!
They counted the ballots of team life and team death,
When the day turned to night, their kind got depressed.
He said, counting only works when the numbers are real,
The nuclear football right next to how he feels.
On the day they came to Washington to tailgate with guns,
They marched, screamed, demanded, had utter tons of fun
Clashing with barricades, shouting the lofty names
Of politicians they claimed should feel totally ashamed
For forgetting math’s principle: the numbers can change
Depending on the person by whom they’re arranged.
They waved navy blue flags with names waving high
And unleashed on the world the hell hidden behind
Their friendly, polite smiles, the voice’s high tone
Which ends as soon as they put down the telephone.
These are the people who’d shoot us to shards
If we tried to march on their towns or children’s schoolyards.
They moved in a throng, tracking dirt, grub, and grime
Recording, enjoying, feeling this was their time.
Ever since they first put hands on the clock,
There’s never been time to rest or to stop
So onward they went, through each metal fence
The lonely guards own bodies now held up to prevent
Something terrible, historic, amidst the euphoria
Of knocking someone down and them not getting back up.
Chills! That’s the feeling they say crosses their skin
At the images of the Shaman celebrating his win
From the podium of a person normally as far away from him
As the universe between what they said and what they really did.
They broke and they shattered, they cheered and they howled
For once they were inside, all had to come out.
Jesus was being denied his right to selection,
And their candidate secured their children’s protection.
The army showed up like a coroner to a scene,
The people split to both sides with a chasm between
Brothers, uncles, friends, neighbors, fathers, daughters, sons,
No longer able to say they’ve been United as One.
They erected tall walls, stationed troops outside the dome,
Then, after hardly even pausing, everybody went home.
This is what disturbs THE DAFT ONE and our entire race
There was no sense of shame, no sense of disgrace
For when something unholy enters what’s supposed to be sacred space,
Is there anything holy to this “perfect, proud” race?
So in the land of the free and the home of the brave,
Where everyone’s a sentence ripped from a torn page,
We ascend through history so thick one might choke,
If they hadn’t already lived their entire lives in smoke,
For to be blind is to be free, and to be stuck is a disease,
It’s time to see what from us Senator Baetz really needs …