Thomas Wictor

A story about a Republican congressional candidate named Tim Murray caught my attention. Tim is contesting the June 24 primary election for Oklahoma’s Third District. The winner was Representative Frank Lucas, a twenty-year incumbent who got 82 percent of the vote. I’ll let the Honorable Tim Murray explain in his own words why he’s contesting the election results.

That’s a little incoherent. I don’t know what it means to be “displayed by a look alike.” Even if Lucas is no longer alive and has indeed been displayed by a lookalike (?), the next sentence says that the lookalike was “depicted as sentenced on a white stage in southern Ukraine on or about January 11, 2011.” Wouldn’t that mean the lookalike is in custody in Ukraine?

And I’m not clear about why the election was “blocked.” The Department of Defense used Murray’s DNA but didn’t release that information to the public? And Congress wants Murray to state that his DNA used by the Department of Defense will not benefit people with whom he’s never had relationships of a family nature?

Eh?

Another of Murray’s letters makes his case more comprehensibly.

Okay, now I get it. Frank Lucas was hanged by the World Court in the Ukraine on or about January 11, 2011, and the…entity now claiming to be Frank Lucas is actually an artificial or man-made replacement and is thus not eligible to hold the office. Tim Murray—unlike his opponents—is a human.

As a candidate for Oklahoma’s Third District, Tim Murray made promises.

He would never use an artificial-intelligence lookalike to inform the voters of his accomplishments as a congressman, nor would he ever own a robotic lookalike. I wanted to find a better photo of the Honorable Tim Murray, so I used Google Images. Here’s a good shot.

What was amazing was all the other Tim Murrays I came across. This is the general manager of the Buffalo Sabres ice hockey team.

I picture him sitting across from me on a subway car, staring at me like that. He terrifies me. So does this Australian Tim Murray, Executive Dean and Charles La Trobe Professor of Archaeology at La Trobe University, Melbourne.

Imagine being in a cave with a flashlight, and you suddenly illuminate him standing there with that expression, holding his head at that angle. Christ.

This next Tim Murray is a Faculty Fellow at David R. Atkinson’s Center for a Sustainable Future, Cornell University. He’s also Director of the Society for the Humanities; Professor of Comparative Literature and English; and Curator of the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art.

He hates us! Look at that sneering, curled upper lip. He’s dripping with contempt! What did we ever do to him?

And yet his disgust is trumped by the ice-cold remoteness of this Tim Murray, an artist.

I can’t buy your art if you scare me! You appear to be one of the artificial replacements that the Oklahoma Tim Murray was talking about. And I’m sorry, but I don’t buy the attempt of Tim Murray from Charlotte to present himself as harmless and friendly.

That’s a come-into-my-parlor smile. The cat who ate the canary. If I took lessons from that Tim Murray, I’d demand that we have them out on the sidewalk in front of the guitar store in the middle of the day. And I’d be armed. With Hellfire missiles!

Now we have a Tim Murray poet.

For the love of humanity, turn on the lights! Don’t let him recede into the blackness. That’s what he wants! Don’t you understand? Shine one of those World War II antiaircraft searchlights on him.

The music calmed me down a little, which is good, because the following Tim Murray is… Well, see for yourself.

He holds his head like a leopard or falcon, some kind of merciless predator. There’s no telling what he’d do to you in his fitness classes. Do you know how fast he could run? Fifty miles per hour, easily. You would never escape him. Never.

You thought that Tim Murray was a creature from your worst nightmares? Wrong. There’s a Tim Murray who’s an opera singer!

“Hi! Hold still while I serenade you. Hit it, boys! A-one and a-two and a-three!”

Tim Murray makes those motorcycle sounds with his mouth. On your bare belly.

And finally, the ultimate Tim Murray. A Tim Murray for the Apocalypse.

Protein bars? You toy with us, you and your abs and your secret codes? Have you at last no decency, sir? Damn you, Tim Murray! Damn you!

There are many, many more out there. Some Tim Murrays have run afoul of the law, of nature, and of civilization. If—like me—you’re a seeker of truth, type “Tim Murray” into Google Images.

But first, a warning: That which is seen cannot be unseen.

May God bless and keep you on your journey.