The Bombast Transcripts

In more ways than one, Chris Locke has raised a godawful racket on the Net. Under his alter-egotistical nom de plume, RageBoy, and through his webzine, Entropy Gradient Reversals, he has entertained and enlightened thousands of readers from some of the world’s largest companies, governments, and institutions-including those from which he’s managed to escape. Now for the first time in browser-free format, The Bombast Transcripts brings together the best of his worst. And his worst is very good indeed. Marvel as one of America’s foremost social critics interviews pop-media superstars such as IBM’s Lou Gerstner, Sayanarology’s Moe Ron Hubbard, Godzilla, Mr. Ed, and, in a twisted hall-of-mirrors tour de force, RageBoy himself. Tremble in awe as mysteries of the universe unfold, from thermodynamics and cutting-edge neurophysiology to sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Thrill to obfuscation so arcane you’ll need to be sedated. Laugh so hard you’ll think you have been. While Locke’s semantic antics will have you in stitches, his real aim is for the jugular-via a triple bypass transplanting business, media, and social mores into a carnivalesque landscape of the imagination where conventional logic bellies up and flatlines. Part scathing send-up of commercial techno-fetishism, part hysterical stand-up on the theme of spiritual bankruptcy, part intimate memoir of a vibrant and uncompromising life, The Bombast Transcripts will rock you, shock you, and leave you pondering what The Economist once called “the wisdom of RageBoy.”From the Bombast Transcripts: “Wandering barefoot on the Lower East Side of New York, over a thousand dollars cash in my pocket, looking to score, bring back for the holy freaks the one good thing. Odysseus adrift. Also in my pocket, the Tarot, the Waite deck I’d just bought that day. I went into The Eatery on Second Avenue and my waitress saw the cards. ‘I was raised by Gypsies,’ she said. ‘I will tell you about the trumps if you like.’ I had just dropped another tab and had little time left I knew, but she sat with me and pointed to each of the major arcana, the Lovers, the Fool, the Tower, Death. Then stopped. ‘You have two Magicians,’ she said . . . “