Jackson Slim had a new soundtrack coat. You only heard it when you were
talking to him. (That was the law.) If the subject was happy, then
sprightly bell music played, fiddles & violins. If the conversation
turned salacious, gossip and so forth, then soap opera organs &
sizzling eurodisco. When Jackson Slim had a surprise for you, the coat
rolled a drum or went DUNH-DUNH-DAAAAA. In all respects it was synced
to his utterances and spoke for him sometimes in reaction to the things
you'd say. Sometimes it seemed the coat was reacting when Jackson Slim
was not. Or that the coat's attention was wandering. It got so you
wanted only to hear the right soundtrack out of Jackson Slim's coat
before doing anything; if it was birds and soft synthesizers then you
could ask for something out of him...but if you heard syncopated drums,
Charlie Parker horns, Ligeti voices wailing monolith ragas -- about
face, my friend, come back later.

Mickey Lawanda had a magic 8-ball coat. It was black with milky white-blue
writing. He'd use it to respond to you with the classic panels from the old toy.
Particularly good at work, where people could approach his office and see the
panel exposed on his back facing them: "Ask Again Later", for example.
His buddies would ask his coat questions and joggle him around a little,
thinking themselves humorous, whereupon Mike would touch the button to
mix the coat all up, and everyone would be rapt waiting for their answer.
They soon tired of this, and stole his coat and sold him into slavery in Egypt.

Wilhelmina Psychowksi had a Paris Hilton coat. It was of vatgrown skin,
shiny like vinyl with preprogrammed tan, jiggling tiny boobies,
frighteningly insubstantial angular bottom, legs long and awkward as a
newborn colt. If you squeezed its nipple, it said "That's hot." If you
pinched its bum it'd go, "Oh vomit." At regular intervals it advertised
a product from the Paris Hilton empire: skin products, hair products,
Paris's new pink hotels. The advertisements appeared on the broadest
part of the coat's body, the back & shoulders, winking like an old EAT
AT JOE'S sign. But sometimes they'd show up like tattoos on other more
secret crevices in the coat. The people on their knees peering...that
kind of thing made it unpleasant to wear the coat, so Wilhelmina
donated it to a pediatric burn unit. And though the doctors
retrovirused out the ads, they still sporadically appear...garbled &
distorted, nonsensical shapes.