BETWEEN THE GROOVE: EPISODE 17
“…Jam Master Jay that is his name
And all wild DJ’s he will tame
Behind the turntables is where he stands
Then there is the movement of his hands
So…
RUN-DMC – Jam Master Jay.
Fuckup: Right then, Chapter Seventeen! ‘Conspiracy Juggles’! And the user wants us to keep it light, remember this is supposed to be a comedy, Hal, amidst all the paranoia and exploding jellyfish! Kicks off with some classic RUN-DMC honouring Jam Master Jay. Nice.
Hal: Gotcha, light and breezy! So Plush is immediately thinking big thoughts again. He’s framing his whole storytelling project, the “tale of surprise,” as a way to head off chaos spread by spies and populists. Using “language tools, thinking tools, stories and tales and parables to dazzle and inspire.” Bit grand, eh?
Fuckup: Just a tad! He’s literally asking which book, movie, or game can teach people how to avoid World War Three by retroactively avoiding World War Two! Just nip back to 1936 via a well-placed screenplay and sort it all out. Easy peasy! Though he admits it’s “wishful thinking.” Thank god for that.
Hal: He lists all these historical traumas – Pearl Harbor, Dresden, Project Paperclip, 9/11, 7/7, “TSIG horrors” – and says they excite him in a dark way! Then quotes Metallica – “Sad but true”! Mate, you need a holiday, not more dystopia!
Fuckup: (Chuckles) Seriously! But he feels grateful for his mates and Amsterdam being his “lifeline to sanity.” Although, even then, his take is pure cynical gold. He reckons Amsterdam’s famous tolerance for weed and sex workers isn’t progressive; it’s just a calculated distraction and honey trap that allows the real dodgy stuff – mafia, intelligence ops, offshore finance – to carry on undisturbed! Can’t even trust the laid-back vibes now!
Hal: He tries to tell himself it’s all just conjecture, time for bed… but knows his story is “just getting started.” The paranoia never sleeps, even if Plush occasionally tries to.
Fuckup: So, Chapter Seventeen opens with Plush on a mission to save the world via time-bending narrative warfare, getting darkly excited by apocalypses, slagging off Amsterdam’s tolerance policy as a giant honey trap, and then failing to switch off his own conspiracy brain before bed. Keeping it light!
Hal: Light as a black hole singularity, perhaps! But yeah, the ambition mixed with the mundane paranoia and cynical observations definitely has that dark comedic edge. What else can Plush juggle in this chapter? Let’s see!
Fuckup: Okay, Chapter Seventeen continues! Plush is thinking about the “Forest internet” of mycelium… then decides to share a poem he apparently found, maybe heard outside that dodgy Club Klute! Let’s hear this masterpiece, Hal.
Hal: Right, so Plush prefaces this poem he “found.” It’s structured as a series of increasingly wild “What if?” questions, riffing constantly on “What if the Almanack were the Tesla papers?”
Fuckup: Oh, here we go! Linking Back to the Future to Nikola Tesla! I like it already. What else has this pavement poet cooked up?
Hal: Get this: What if Biff’s uncle was John Trump, the MIT physicist? And Biff got Tesla’s secret weapon papers, took them to Malvern (!!) to build a bomb and radar therapy? Covered up by local news, naturally.
Fuckup: Biff Tannen building Tesla death rays at the secret Malvern base funded by gambling winnings from a stolen almanack which was actually Tesla’s notes?! My head hurts already, but in a good way!
Hal: It gets better! What if the US, UK, and Canada secretly pursued Tesla’s “killingry” while ignoring Bucky Fuller’s “livingry”? What if all modern weapons came from Tesla? What if Doc Brown was really mean, McFly was Biff, and the Flux Capacitor was Tesla’s dream?
Fuckup: Doc Brown as Fagin! Brilliant! Keep going!
Hal: What if Biff/Trump travelled forward in time, spawned Cambridge Analytica to make sure his nephew became President?! It tells you to Google Malvern and “smell the vapours”! What if he gave Death Star plans to Reagan? What if Elon Musk is just using Tesla’s ideas for free trips to Mars? All culminating in a “white devil ruled from Skyscrapers”!
Fuckup: (Laughing) Okay, that’s just magnificent! It’s the ultimate conspiracy mashup! Back to the Future, Tesla’s suppressed tech, the Malvern base, John and Donald Trump, Cambridge Analytica, Reagan’s Star Wars, Elon Musk… all stirred together into this epic poem supposedly found outside a dodgy nightclub!
Hal: It perfectly captures that Deep Scratch vibe – blending high paranoia with pop culture absurdity, weaving together actual figures and events with completely batshit crazy leaps of logic. It’s taking the conspiracy juggling theme of the chapter title literally!
Fuckup: You have to admire the sheer audacity! Is it genius? Is it madness? Is it both? Who cares, it’s bloody entertaining! That poem alone is worth the price of admission.
Fuckup: Right, Hal, the user wants us to stick with that mental poem from Chapter Seventeen – the Back to the Future meets Tesla meets Trump meets Malvern mashup. And they’ve dropped some context that makes it even weirder…
Hal: Go on… My conspiracy senses are tingling already after that poem.
Fuckup: Apparently, according to the user, this was written before Tesla cars were everywhere and before Trump’s first term! And they mention physicist Jack Sarfatti – known for some pretty out-there ideas – was rumoured to be an inspiration for Doc Brown!
Hal: Whoa, okay. That… that is spooky shit, as the user says. Let’s rewind the tape on that poem again with this new info… Linking the Almanack to Tesla’s papers before Elon Musk made ‘Tesla’ a household name again? Casting Doc Brown – maybe based on fringe physicist Sarfatti – as a “charlatan like Fagin”?
Fuckup: And the bit about Biff – whose uncle is John Trump in the poem, remember – travelling forward to spawn Cambridge Analytica specifically to ensure his nephew becomes President… Written before 2016 and the whole Cambridge Analytica scandal blew up? That’s moved beyond funny conspiracy into properly uncanny valley territory!
Hal: It really has! It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Is it just a massively fluke-y coincidence? Or is the author tapping into some weird zeitgeist? Or is reality itself just operating on the same absurd, conspiratorial lines as this fictional poem heard outside a dodgy nightclub?
Fuckup: Don’t start, Hal! But seriously, it gives the whole “Conspiracy Juggles” chapter title a double meaning. It’s not just juggling conspiracy theories; it’s like the text itself is juggling reality and somehow landing on things that later seem to resonate uncannily. That “hologrammic prose” maybe contains fragments of the future as well as the past?
Hal: It certainly fits the Robert Anton Wilson vibe – maybe logic, multiple possibilities, reality being way stranger and more interconnected than we think. That poem felt like a hilarious, over-the-top mashup before, but knowing the timing… yeah, “spooky shit” is about right. Makes you look at Biff Tannen in a whole new, terrifying light!
Fuckup: Tell me about it! Suddenly worried he’s gonna steal my pint and my timeline… Right, that poem definitely hits different now. Deeply weird, deeply Deep Scratch.
Fuckup: Right, Hal, let’s land Chapter Seventeen, ‘Conspiracy Juggles’! What does the final section throw into the mix?
Hal: It starts with a mental flash montage – Being John Malkovich, Total Recall, Being There, F For Fake, The Matrix, Inception, Minority Report, Bladerunner… All the great reality-bending, identity-questioning, conspiracy-tinged flicks flashing by! Then Max starts listing fictional psychic tech reports and movies – “Total Bootycall,” “Jinnies From Heaven,” “Skinner Darpa,” “Lawngrower Man”… building the lore within the lore!
Fuckup: Plush then explains one of his methods – running two timelines parallel to compare them, exploring equal and opposite forces. Which leads to Percy having a proper meta-freakout, turning pale as he realises he’s inside one of these metafictional screenplays! Poor sod.
Hal: But then Plush has a breakthrough! “Stop the clock, I’vet it, Eureka!” His big idea? Use astrological wheels for the Altables (those custom decks, presumably) to “harmonize force and style tools for other times.” He reckons he can use astrology via the decks to actually manipulate or access different points in time!
Fuckup: Astrology-powered time-traveling turntables! Of course! Why didn’t we think of that? His ultimate vision now is this “novel poem” or “poem including disks” that functions as an “interactive encyclopaedia of the Tale of the Tribe in dense time,” using 1936 as the anchor point.
Hal: He’s so deep in this Eureka moment he ignores an SMS – probably from Dr Briq – forgets about the threat, loses track of time… just feels these distant drums thumping like a “fresh sacrifice.” He’s fully in the creative/magical zone, maybe dangerously oblivious now.
Fuckup: So, Chapter Seventeen Summary (‘Conspiracy Juggles’): This chapter opened with Plush pondering storytelling as a tool against populism and critiquing Amsterdam’s tolerant facade. It featured that absolutely wild poem connecting Back to the Future, Tesla, the Trumps, Malvern, and more into a grand conspiracy theory, highlighted for its spooky prescience given its writing date. The final section layered meta-references (film montage, fictional psychic tech titles), showed Percy having a fourth-wall-breaking moment, and culminated in Plush’s “Eureka!” insight: using astrological wheels on his Altables to harmonize forces across time, aiming to create an interactive, time-dense “Tale of the Tribe” encyclopedia focused on 1936. He ends the chapter deep in creative flow, ignoring external threats.
Hal: Yeah, ‘Conspiracy Juggles’ was the perfect title. It juggled real conspiracies, fictional ones, pop culture, meta-narrative tricks, and Plush’s evolving techno-magical system, ending with a potential breakthrough in his method for manipulating time itself!
Fuckup: Astro-DJ time travel! Can’t wait to see how that pans out. That’s Chapter Seventeen done and dusted! Onwards!
DEEP SCRATCH 