I’m slapping enormous New Mexican bugs against my neck and talking into a bulletproof window.

“Non-smoking if you have it.”
“We don’t.”

I give thirty dollars to the lady in the purple robe and she shoves a key under the glass. She has curlers in her hair and she’s ticked because I woke her up at two in the morning but I have to ask:

“So why is this town called Truth or Consequences?”
“You remember that game show in the fifties?”
“Not really.”
“Well, we really liked it.”

She flips off the light and goes back to bed, leaving me in the dark.

(I later learned that the name was adopted in 1950 when the radio quiz show ‘Truth or Consequences’ announced that it would broadcast the program from the first town to rename itself after the show. Hot Springs, NM won.)

* * *

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Scarab – Seekers Of Truth (Tulab El Haqq)
from Secrets of the Past & Future. Wordsound, 1997 | buy mp3s
A forgotten old favorite that I don’t play nearly enough. From Brooklyn’s Wordsound camp, Secrets of the Past & Future is a scattershot 12-year-old blend of skeletal dub, dusty breakbeats, and Middle Eastern overtures that never crosses the line into world music kitsch. Think Muslimgauze on heavy sedatives.