Symphony for the Dissatisfied

Welcome to 2022

Everyone knew the Carzack twins were gonna amount to something big or go to prison or both when they put their first lemonade stand in the middle of Wayne Fontes Avenue and only let cars pass after a purchase or an argument.

Millard Carzack grew up to start a cab company and Chester Carzack opened a used car lot before their twentieth birthday, and Millard had a scar the shape of a gluttonous garden slug under one eye from when he and Chester fought over who was going to get the phone number 1-800 -For- Carz.

Chester got indicted for an odometer rollback scheme when one of his technicians overzealously made a 1973 Pinto Wagon show 17 miles on it, and Millard had used his cabs to sell weed and run numbers, successfully, because he was smart enough to cut in all the right people, usually city council, newspaper publishers and the guys who owned the Lead Zeppelin Rock n Roll Shooting Range and Hydroponic Supply Showroom.

Chester briefly got some good publicity for giving the Heimlich maneuver to Miss Diabetic Michigan, who was choking on a tube of lipstick during a celebrity coney eating contest, and Millard briefly got some mixed publicity for impregnating Oleander McMichael, the morning traffic reporter on WORT Channel 8, who was twenty-five years younger than Millard and seemed to go up a cup size every time there was a fender bender on the Soupy Sales Parkway. 

Millard and Oleander’s daughter, Lisa, grew up privileged but depressed, changed her name to Entropy Fetish, and started an all-female goth band called Weep.

Weep rehearsed in a maintenance bay in Entropy Fetish’s  Uncle Chester’s car lot, sucking down Mango Kratom and sodas and plotting a new religion.

As plans for the religion began to gel-they had seventy-two commandments, a logo, and an altar which was a discarded salad bar from a defunct Elias Brothers Big Boy - Uncle Chester hired a mechanic named Norbert Phillip Shuckner.

Norbert had the unofficial world record for unauthorized removal of catalytic converters without losing any digits and a few nonconforming physical traits due to the fact that his parents were fraternal twins raised above a plastics molding plant on the edge of Detroit’s infamous Zug Island.

Among Norbert’s quirky physical traits were three eyebrows above his left eye, two septums, and an amazingly long, almost awkwardly thin penis.

Norbert immediately fell in love with Weep’s keyboard player, Maura Ceesuchs, who beyond being a brilliant instrumentalist trained at the Berklee College of Music, was also aggressively polyamorous.

Entropy thought it would be a fantastic idea to start an entirely new generation of humans to populate their religion, especially humans with a heightened possibility of two septums,

so Norbert, after a long day of swapping out rusty mufflers on Buick Skylarks, made passionate love to Maura, enthusiastic missionary with Entropy, rather embarrassed coitus with Velcro Magnon (because he didn’t think electronic drums were a real instrument), and exhausted, pathetic penetration with Jill, who kept her given name because if she changed it to Ash DuPatriarchy her dad threatened to put her Bat Mitzvah pictures on Instagram.

Entropy and Maura celebrated their first missed periods with an unannounced rooftop Weep show at UFO Factory, where the Corktown police showed up in their new soft off-melon conflict resolution uniforms.

Within a month, all four members of Weep were officially pregnant, Norbert was no longer employed at Carzack Motors, marijuana and gambling were completely legal in Michigan and civilian ride-hailing services had destroyed the traditional taxi industry.

Millard Carzack was destitute. 

Oleander was no longer the traffic reporter on WORT, having been replaced with a nonbinary hologram who could be purchased as a scratch and sniff snuggle companion in the metaverse.

All four members of Weep gave birth to healthy babies and unanimously agreed to name the children That.

Then the worldwide baby formula shortage hit, and the members of Weep, all devoted and very public breastfeeders, decided to do something about it.

They would do a benefit goth concert and raise funds for women who couldn’t breastfeed, as well as breastfeeding awareness, outreach, counseling, and a chance to win a vegan ice cream maker

Lactation for the Lugubrious packed the now empty parking lot of Millard Carzack’s once-thriving business.

There were dozens of concession stands selling everything from Kale Masala to Tasmanian Earwax Infusions, and a caricature artist who drew everyone to look exactly like Noam Chomsky.

Weep, of course, headlined, with the highlight being all four members of the band breastfeeding children of striking salt mine workers while not missing a note of their impassioned cover of William Shatner’s Stairway to Purgatory.

During the encore, Entropy baptized willing members of the crowd into Weep’s official religion, Gurgle, as Norbert sat rocking his four children inside the sensory chamber of the Andrew Eldritch Memorial Ferris Wheel, and Millard and Chester were on a Zoom call with a guy in Fiji who was going to convert the benefit concert receipts into a new stablecoin named after his ferret, Manilow, and make them all billionaires.

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Photo Courtesy of Getty Images