Lombardo Barnyard: Level Up (Excerpt #3)

Lombardo Barnyard: Level Up also features a lot of great art personally made by up and coming artist, director, and writer, Rick Boven. Check it out.

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Lombardo Barnyard: Level Up (Excerpt #1)

This book chronicles the rise of our business Lombardo Barnyard and why we quit. This is a chapter of the book called "The Level Three Pipe."

The footnotes have been cut out, those are a bonus for those who actually bought the book.

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           It was about this time that we began to grasp our own fundamentalism. Methodically, by way of earthly attrition we were able to cipher our own 95 Theses. Bit by bit we purged what was left of our own interior image, and took on the eyes of our own exegesis. Self-righteous transformationalism, our new sojourn, a complete bypass of transhumanism and its posthuman movement. We were growing; our minutia becoming the cultivated spirit of doctrine.

~LB~

          The gateway out of hell was an open pipe that led from the fiery furnace to Earth’s fiery desert. The summer was a torrent of sweat and growing pains. Our will and endurance were pushed to the utter most, and our body whipped into submission, covered in blood, and ripped to ribbons. My eyes were dug out like scoops of ice cream. We had traveled to Hell, what other place for failures like Jarmo and I, couldn’t even beat the buffet, couldn’t even be Lombardo Barnyard. So we were dragged through the Level One Pipe, and joined in the Level Two Pipe. Now we even held the power of time. With the days of summer drawing to a close it was time for Jarmo and I to crawl back through the tunnel that birthed us here, and tear back into Earth, new, alive, and as Lombardo Barnyard. Before us was the Level Three Pipe, the way, the path, the birth canal. 

        We don’t know how Simon found the Level Three Pipe, he just sort of knew where it was, like someone whispered the directions in his ear, or like it was written on his heart ahead of time. Still mesmerized by the words of Tim Vandermolen, we knew that this would lead to our predestined future. With less than one day’s journey, Jarmo, Simon, and I found the Level Three Pipe, our pipe, the mouth that ate Judas.We stared at the pipe like it was an illusion, but we all knew it to be truth. The long cylindrical tube bulging out the crust of the earth looked as if it was placed by the hand of God, but we knew it was constructed by Satan himself. Together we stood at its entrance, a small crack in the earth, a hatchet wound of an ancient now defunct religious figure. The thought of disease did not enter our mind; our lust for the black hole in front of  us consumed us with fire and untamable manhood. Stout, and blood flowing, we penetrated the earth without permission. 

              Once inside we knew it was a thin-place, the place where all layers of reality, soulular, geosoulular, cellular, protocellular, genetic and cultural converge. The tunnel was the entirety of darkness. Near the entrance were most shades of gray, but not too far in, it turned only a black, the black that you can’t even imagine if you tried, a total absence of light, color, and God. We lit flair for light. The incendiary light coming from Jarmo’s stick revealed the pipe as an aged and wrinkled cask of its former self and glory, thirsty and famished. The ground revealed signs of former cross-conscious shifts, bottles of Drano laid in the dirt. As we began our journey into the blackness, the exposed stolen light filled the tunnel with smoke. The smoke purified the unclean walls, and cleaned stagnate backslidden air with its pleasing aroma. 

                We walked in code and after some time came to our next obstacle. At our feet was water’s edge, an underground ocean that had no discernable end, no point of origin, no color, shape, or sound. Although it was the hottest day of the year, this underground water was frozen by deities of irrevoke, succubi, and the general cold heart of the bleeding woman, so cold it didn’t freeze, so frozen it didn’t move, so dark it became fire. It was woman. 

               Without hesitation we ran into her warmth-sheared waters. We needed mastery over the Level Three Pipe. To harness its power for ourselves, we became its lord, architect, husband. Sometimes, to know someone, to truly know them, you have to go through pain, cause pain, explore them and their bodies, even if they fight back. She fought back, the cold hearted canal cried and whined with each step we took into her. Her fingers lacked blood and as they slid up our legs, and past our boots, they scratched our nerves, and blackened our skin. Her waters filled our boots and made our veins crack, our toes burst open, our feet frozen lead. 

               We started fast, but we quickly slowed due to our lack of endurance. Her arms were stiff and they continued up our thighs causing our cremasters to recoil and thicken. The further we entered into her, the more she enveloped us, the more of our flesh became tainted, seared, and blackened. Our pace slowed incrementally with every couple of steps; the frozen water had now begun to thicken all our muscles. Soon thereafter steel rods, wood, and other debris began appearing on the bottom of her canal, discharge from past trespassers. To continue we had to be surefooted and confident in our progression and goal. Small snakes swam in the opposite direction of the way we were walking. Her stiff claws rose up even higher, up our bare chests and around our necks. She clutched our lungs and each of us gasped for air unsuccessfully. Our once long strides were now only shuffle steps. Her water, her discharge, her cold heart, her voice, her misshapen body, her insecurity, was at our lower lip trying so hard to kiss us, infect us, taint us, she was trying to enter us like we had entered her, kill us. 

                Then we hit the wall, her back wall. There in front of us was a steep incline that led to a small pin hole of light just big enough for our heads and bodies to stretch and rip through. In front of me was the external os, and I could only reach for it. My leg strength was gone so all I could do was reach, reach for that dilated hole. I gasped and only water entered. A small shaft of the light pierced into my eye. Then, something grabbed my arm tight, hard enough to counteract my lubricated body, and I was dragged up the incline, through the hole, and to my new home. 

                My frozen clothes wrapped tight around me as I lay on the ground. The wet layers sucked to my skin and a cord of light from the sun fed me. I went into shock and began to slide in and out of consciousness. For a moment I turned to see Jarmo’s pants down, exposed, disrespecting her one last time. I fell unconscious again. This time while unconscious, I didn’t see the bright light of Heaven, or the burning fires of Hell, the only thing I saw was myself. I knew then that we had taken the pipe for our own, and that all who could pass through it would not find  Heaven or Hell, but find the growing fetus of Lombardo Barnyard. 

               When I awoke from my unconscious state I saw the black figure of what looked like Simon Jack clouding the sun. An aura came off his sun-drenched body, and I could not see his face. I knew right then, that the one who pulled me and Jarmo from our death in the Level Three Pipe, was Simon Jack. I knew then, he was more than man.

Lombardo Barnyard: Level Up (Excerpt #2)

This book chronicles the rise of our business Lombardo Barnyard and why we quit. This is a chapter of the book called "Destrow Everything."

The footnotes have been cut out, those are a bonus for those who actually bought the book.

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                 What if you had to kill your own child, a child from your very seed, pressed from your loins, raised by your hand; a child who you not only shaped, but shaped you as well? Would you do it? Would you kill you child, if it was the very will of God himself? 

                     “My life! My life!”

 

                Jarmo and I were faced with this very problem. The Basement, a place of diet swill, moldy cheese, and broken furniture, a room of infinite pure and childlike emories. For me it was life before Lombardo Barnyard, before Jarmo, before everything that I now was. Inside it was sticky, slimy, but warm, and cozy; like a sheet in summer, a comforter in winter, a mother’s hug, a girlfriend’s kiss, the Basement was my mother’s womb, and out of it, I entered into the world. 

              Jarmo and I laid on the floor next to each other hoping death would smite us from existence, hoping the foundations of the would collapse and crush our skulls. Nothing has ever been so hard – killing the Basement. It was so mentally frustrating that we had no plan, no procedure, and the very thought reduced us to the babies the Basement was meant to protect. 

                   It was Christmas morning. On the ceiling above my head I could hear the rat-a-tat of my parents cooking dinner, my sister opening presents, and my uncle and grandparents laughing in their most pure sound. I was downstairs on a patch of sticky carpet with my family, Lombardo Barnyard. 

                I felt like the father of Israel, Abraham. God promised to make him into a great nation, to bless him, to make his name great, the LORD said that all the peoples of the earth will be blessed through him.301 It was a covenant between  God and man, the same covenant  etween Jarmo and I. So far all had gone to plan, but just as the type302 Abraham was asked to kill his son Issac, the promise of the covenant, so too it was in our hands to kill  hat we made, what had made us. 

               When Abraham held his silver dagger up to his son’s chest, he was ready to pierce, ready to cut out his son’s own heart in the name of the LORD. He was ready, and he was stopped by God. He was ready to do it. Jarmo and I, we couldn’t even stand. 

 

               “My life! My life!” 

              Brent and Simon kicked the Basement’s door in. They grabbed us by the scruff and the flab. They picked us up, threw us against the door and wall, punched me in the face, hit Jarmo across the chest with a piece of bamboo ripped from the wall, broke our guts and stepped on our spleens. Simon threw a  ehumidifier across the room and it caught me on the top of my head. Blood started to dry in my scalp. They were forcing us to fight. They were making us bleed. They were making us men.

           If Abraham wouldn’t have picked up his knife and held it against his son’s heart; God would have sent Brent and Simon. 

            It had been so long since Jarmo or I had talked to Brent and Simon, but yet their fists to my eyes and kidney told me otherwise. When they first grabbed our lifeless bodies I thought that they were beating us because we left them, beating us out of revenge or anger. It wasn’t until I was completely bruised, until I could move no more, that I discovered they were once again teaching us the truth. 

             Each punch was a punch to my self-doubt; each kick strengthened me, crushing my very weakness. They were beating the crap out of us, and pounding ourselves back into Lombardo Barnyard. 

            Who were we? We were Lombardo Barnyard. We were the fastest, strongest, sexiest, sons of nothin’ this side of Texarkana. Who the hell could mess with us? Since when were we attached to this world anyways? The taste of blood in my mouth made me realize who I was. 

             There was no discussion, no pointless meandering around the subject. The date was set, the death of the Basement, December 31, 2005, 11:59PM. At the very moment the world shifts from one calendar to another, one state of mind to the next, the start of another terribly tragic day; we would kill the Basement. New Years, the symbol of rebirth would only bring death. The new era of Lombardo Barnyard would begin. 

        In the days leading up to the Kill the Basement party, Brent and Simon taught us the fine art of destrowing. Destrowing is the ability to not only destroy, but to completely banish something from all time and space, to erase time and memory, to stricken something from God’s predestined plan. In those final days of the Basement, all we did was fight and destrow. 

          Our fights were spectacular, each battle a junkyard match, no rules, nothing off limits. In one battle, Lombardo Barnyard’s greatest battle, Jarmo and I grappled and rolled on the ground, his hands on my throat, my fingers in his eyes. We were tearing up the place, ripping paper and breaking wood. Brent with barbaric strength, threw a couch down on to our twisted bodies. Then Simon threw a recliner on top of that. Jarmo, the little snake that he was, was able to crawl out, but my leg was trapped under the heavy wood couch, pinched between two bars of splintered wood. I wanted to bite it off. Seeing my weakness, Simon threw a phone at my eye, Brent hit me with a TV. I swung the phone cord like helicopter blades until I could escape. Finally free, I crawled to my feet only to be tackled once again by Jarmo. We rolled all over the floor, knocking books off shelves and ripping posters off walls as we defended each others attacks. With Mihály Csíkszentmihályien focus we didn’t feel the duct tape that Brent and Simon were binding us in. We were stuck together, only having enough room to punch each other in the face. Hit for hit, fist to head. Brent grabbed a bag full of hardcover Danielle Steele romance novels and poured it on Jarmo’s head. I laughed, leaving an opening; Jarmo grabbed a book and shoved it into my mouth piercing my soft upper palate. Blood ran out my mouth. I was in pain, but I was able to free my arm and grab a VHS tape of the 2003 WWE Pay-Per-View event, Backlash. I hit him in the face with the tape several times until his body went limp and his face askew. 

          Why did we fight like that? To knock the weakness out of each other. To cleanse our body. To discipline each other. These are the things we had learned from Brent and Simon. This cleansing needed to not only happen to our body, but to the Basement as well. We destrowed so much in that basement: three rows of bamboo lattice, a bottle of Gold Medal Apple Cider, a box fan, a pair of  brown pants, five cans of corn, the ceiling, a circle end table, a dehumidifier, Jarmo’s jacket, a kodak easyshare CX7430 digital camera, a piñata, a projector, my rib, a telephone, three TV’s, two VCR’s, a wall, a whammy guitar, two wooden couches, a wooden rocker, two vacuum cleaners, a vanity table, and our bodies. Our destrowing ability was so triumphant that it digressed destrowing things long since forgotten, things in the past. Things like the Basement’s door knob, a box fan, four cans of corn, the ceiling, a coat rack, a five pound jar of olives, my two front teeth, a golf club, a huge stuffed animal, a knife, a lamp, a picture in a frame, a plastic sword, two Playstation 2’s, a radio antenna, a rocking chair, three TV’s, the wall, two wooden hairs, and a young girl’s heart. 

            We destrowed so that when all the peoples of Alpena came to see the Basement for the final time, they would only see a graveyard, a bloody mess of trashed memories and smashed artifacts. They would see a near dead eyes. Nothing would hurt them more than seeing him killed before them. 

               We destrowed so no one could ever be like us again. 

           There were a few artifacts that were too sacred, too powerful, or to dangerous to destrow, so we agreed to construct a special ark to house the artifacts for a later date. 

             When the day had come for the Kill the Basement Ceremony I looked at all our destruction and knew that this ceremony would lead Lombardo Barnyard to be great, would create for Lombardo Barnyard a powerful new nation, and would make Lombard Barnyard a true power. 

                I felt like Abraham, except unlike him, I had the guts to finish the job.