Upsetting Day: Truax

Ready for a kids' book?

Don't worry, it's not about hating people.

Or even by a nazi! I assume. If writer Terri Birkett's a nazi, she's pulling double lunatic duty. Truax defends loggers from The Lorax's fuzzy slander. While the Lorax spoke for the trees, Truax speaks for the market.

Listen while you can. And pardon the gore: the cover presents a wizened tree and passable owl, squatting on miles of potential condo. I'd weep, but I know the ending. Commerce finds a way. Note the subtle sign of hope: a hero's axe, resting by its future victims. One day, that owl will be as homeless as a beachfront human.

That tightness in your chest? The truth. That itch in your lungs? Don't worry about it. The National Oak Flooring Association says it's gucchi.

NOFMA (do you say noff-mah, or spell each letter out?) published Truax alongside "educational materials" about redwoods wasting space. If that sounds like a conflict of interest: counter-argument. NOFMA just enjoyed Terri's slush pile submission, written from the manager's office of the Stuart Flooring Mill.

Correction: assistant manager's office. Perhaps Truax was Terri's tilt at promotion. It led to embarrassing herself on The Daily Show. Better, really, for a modern attention addiction.

Terri's profit-worship gets me misty with nostalgia. Truax prays to Capitalism Classique, instead of "State Capitalism with American characteristics." Fascism's definition before coffee or after a state-inflicted headache. Clumsy lies land differently then "fuck trees, fuck you, and fuck air. My e-vizier says I'll be able to breathe money by 2024. It's running late, but science is a process."

True to industry habits, the cover skips the artist. Who—spoiler—fares much better than Terri. I thought a modern American felt shame, until I hit the credits:

Orrin's either a Flying Grayson or compulsive liar. I'm taking him at face value, since true's in the title. I’m not obsessed with flips or reactionary children’s illustration, but I think he’s the first to do both. Kudos. I'm not mean enough to hope Orrin's net snaps. But I’m just mean enough to hope he has FSU's signature souvenir.

Here's how Terri pitches herself:

Charming! Forget all that mean stuff earlier, My degree's in bullying. While an assistant manager sounds complicit, an "active member" could be anything. Maybe she's a lion tamer? Orrin's an acrobat, so anything's possible. I can even imagine Truax staying out of Blue Ridge schools.

On to the text.

First we meet Truax, avatar of logging. He looks like this:

Think Bob the Builder, sans soul or a soul. Truax minds his business, daydreaming about wood chippers, until his world changes:

Personally? If I'm shaving the rain forest and anything mysterious flies overhead, I'm booking. At best it's Superman, who spent the Silver Age inventing punishments beyond death. And watching Pa Kent inflict them when the mood struck. At worst, survival-supremacists have finally escalated to drones.

The absurdity? Our comic heavy, Guardbark. He looks like this:

Why's he have floral afro puffs? Why's he winking? Did he hit a green-crested quacker on the way down? All of these questions melt when Guardbark starts talking.

Every week, I thank Pinhead for his gifts.

By now, you've gotten tired of Guardbark or spotted mold in your home. While there’s lots of cognitive dissonance to cover, I’m parking here for a moment. The book's already doomed.

Terri’s after a Lorax parody. Sure, fuck it. Already, our title character, with a name mangled to sound like The Lorax, isn't the Lorax pastiche. Instead, there's a flying idiot with a tree for a head. We’ve also traded the flashback structure for a flying idiot with a tree for a head. Parodies can wander, but we're on page two and the thread's a hazy memory.

Guardbark's a unique name: it gets worse during each petasecond in your brain. Remarkable storytelling, really.

In hindsight, leading with the images above was misleading. My bad, I forgot to put true in my title. Page Two shows Woodchip and Truax in their prime.

Look at Woodchip burling out, like a child that just learned the groundwater's their problem. Look at Truax summoning critters, like a Disney Princess for suicidal animals. Every inch is a failed painting. The bird almost evokes Seuss, which is more than I can say for the rhymes.

Sadly, text lurks nearby. Above and below, left and right. The dialogue makes Greenpeace's case. Not just because Terri's an artless greedsack. Her words pollute a natural vista.

Who invited Terri? I almost bought into the silent film version of Truax. There's shock value to the reasonable, empty-eyed logger smirking at a hyperactive dryad. Terri's less subtle than that, which should get you dissected. Stupidity this pure warps reality, and the race for WWIII superweapons is on. To say nothing of the Superman situation.

I'm stuck on "horribus deed." Seuss made up words to cheat rhymes and dial up whimsy. Terri makes up words because she assumes a parody should. Fair instinct. But one far behind "having a point" or "having a Lorax." Her neologisms are less Seussian and more stroke.

This is your brain on Thneeds.

Do I need to describe the bit? How far does professional responsibility go? If you're old enough to read, you're old enough to get and ignore Truax. This is a twenty page political cartoon. The Truax is smart--smog's taught his brain to do more with less air--and Guardbark is as dumb as someone named Guardbark. Therefore, Yellowstone would make a beautiful mall.

On the other hand, I like this bird:

Neat.

Sorry, I forgot, I'm on Woodchip's team of asylum regulars. FUCK this EARTH-FUCKING BIRD. I hope it gets BIRD CANCER. Or that Terri turns his HOME into SOUVENIR DILDOS. Those do numbers in Indonesian tourist traps.

I hope Terri can fix my alleged brain.

She did it! Dead forests can't die. That's why hospitals double-tap you at the entrance. Where do I sign up to turn the Everglades into floorboards? Voting with my dollar's fun, but I want to get my hands splintery.

With contempt for Woodchip Burlfucker locked in, the story dies. The point of Truax is that Woodchip sucks, like all Burlfuckers. He yells in ALL CAPS, and Truax monologues in his inside voice.

For example, Truax educates us on biodiversity. It sucks, and you don't need it, unless logging helps, then it's wonderful, so don't worry about it Burlfucker. We've got McMansions to build.

See? Biodiversity has lots of good meanings. I only know the one, from books outside the Logging Lovers’ Library. I guess Woodchip's been busy. Truax invented alternative facts before reality finished collapsing.

Here's Woodchip's response: nothing. Truax keeps talking.

Logging’s only a threat to povvo fauna. Nature’s bootstraps are fine, and Woodchip has no parries, questions, or idea where he is. A fine lesson to reactive, loudmouth children: slow down, listen, and adopt the next opinion you hear. Now we know the real conservationists.

One detail I extra-hate: I thought the ALLCAPS spam was here to make Woodchip Burlfucker look stupid. But Truax does it too. Terri thinks people sound like this. If she wrote Sinners, every line would be "I HOPE you DON'T TURN into a VAMPIRE."

At least Orrin’s having fun. He's got a blank check for style parodies. For example, this tree classroom:

After beating my brain to death against this genre, mid art's a relief. It's a little flat, but that happens when they take you off the cover. Truax resembles what it parodies, and that's a reactionary miracle. A Christmas gift to defenders of Christmas.

Ready for the equally fun words?

At this level of horseshit, I get paranoid. How many paragraphs like this have I skated past? Sure, I don't think we can kill every tree over thirty and be fine. But maybe I think Martians run the shadow government. Maybe I think fluoride keeps our nanites in check. Maybe I think there's a human spirit that bucks clear historical patterns. What's my insanity?

Truax succeeds at making Guardbark annoying. Unfortunately, while I want to smack Guardbark, I want to feed Truax his own tru. And not because I want to live past fifty or some hippie bullshit like that. Terri's stand-in has intense holier-than-thou Sunday morning arrogance. Lying barely matters with that voice. Truax could make "Happy Birthday" sound like propaganda.

His closing argument doesn't help:

Never cutting down a tree again? Interesting idea. Terri should’ve written that instead. Or let the monster she invented to disagree with her say that. Terri’s turned controlling both fighters into losing twice. A master class in straw suicide.

At this point, a child tells you to enjoy choking on methane. But that logic's good enough for Woodchip.

Enlightening. With ents this lazy, the planet deserves death. I’ve seen stoners put up better fights against Pringles. Woodchip Burlfucker likes trees, but he loves sleeping in.

My brain’s stuck in workshop mode, so let's try reviving this corpse.

The thing about riffing on Dr. Seuss is holy shit, I just realized the oligarchs on The Boondocks are named after The Lorax. Once-ler. Wuncler. How'd I miss that? Am I five? I teach words for money, and I missed that. Anyway, broad parodies are doomed. That leaves getting very precise, or naming a Bush family analog after The Lorax. The latter's out of Terri's weight class (and mine), so she should get precise.

A closer parody wouldn't be hard, really. I'd avoid tempting fate, but I suspect NOFMA read less than they write. A quality Lorax parody would paint a world ruined by our commie feelings. The Never-Will could narrate the death of local investment. How he ruined a surging economy by chasing acid-free rain. Think a Cuomo ad in verse.

"Why" gets more mileage as an exclamation than a question. I get why Truax exists. Unlimited desire and limited patience explain most of history, and the present twice. "Why" just has the right texture. It just fits the moment, like “don’t shoot” or “please acknowledge the future.”

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Mr. Bob Gray, who hobbled down here with something to say. "If you rhyme when you write but it won't flow just right, make up a word, it's your god given right!" And then he disappeared in a whirlwind of middle fingers and haymakers.

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