The Galactic Equivalent of Boy Scout Technology's LiveJournal

Subject:	AN OPEN LETTER TO CRAZED GUNMEN
Time:	11:40 am.

Dear all prospective campus shooters, disgruntled employees, and other violent dateless wonders,

You know how all of you seem to turn the gun on yourself at the end of your little shooting sprees?

Here is an idea. One that I think we can all agree on. Before you walk into your former place of employment, or your ex girlfriend's house, or more accurately, to the house/apartment of the girl who shunned your advances because you were a big, creepy, scary weirdo, or to the school in which you once attended and start shooting everyone, why don't you take the big, manly gun that we all know is to overcompensate for the rather modest one nature supplied you with downstairs, turn that sumbitch around, and shoot yourself in the head FIRST.

Better yet, sit yourself down in a nice, comfortable chair, or tree stump out in the woods, and hold the firearm, regular or that fancy sideways gangsta style that was all the rage a few years back, place it right over your kneecap, and pull the trigger.

Ouch! You feel that? Thats called pain. Real world pain. Not the wimpy little shit you feel deep down inside because nobody wants to pull on your pecker or thinks you are as great as you think you are or as much as your mommy once told you you were. Not all the self pitying woe is me stuff you run through your head in a constant loop because you have nothing else better to do but play videogames and jerk off and sit around and think about how the world isnt bending over and giving itself to you just because...well....you havent figured that out yet but, it just SHOULD even if you havent even tried to do anythig, dammit.

Feel that pain? Good. Because that is what you are visiting on a whole bunch of other people for no good reason whatsoever. You arent collecting souls for the afterlife or making some big statement about society or how lost the little guy is in this post industrial 21st century virtual global village or getting back at every girl who wouldnt go out with you or every guy who pushed you around or every professor who didnt give you a better grade because you felt like you deserved better or at the world that never gave you a chance.

Maybe if you feel that pain, that REAL pain, you will see what a douchebag you are being, and maybe will actually try to do something other than whine and waste your time and actually do something, or allow yourself to maybe find a way to be happy that doesnt involve hurting someone else.

You aren't some badass motherfucker who people will look back at with reverential awe. You are just a spoiled, self absorbed little shit. The legacy you will leave is not even what you feel like it will be. It will just shine a much brighter light into the sad, pathetic, and downright weak little existance you eeked out for yourself. Even the mildest public scrutiny will show that instead of being some new aged warrior you were a sad sack of shit who just wasn't strong enough to make it through everyday life without giving up. What you are doing is just a big spoiled kid temper tantrum. But instead of breaking your own toys, you are ruining the lives of people who you never met and who don't deserve your wrath.

Yes, 20/20 will run a special about you, and maybe someone will remember your name for a few days, and a bunch of specialists will say how you couldnt take the pressure and your piss poor writings will make it around the internet, but after that...nothing. You aren't Travis Bickle. You aren't even Squeaky Fromme. You are shitbird with a gun 247. Its getting a little played out, too.

So if you feel the insane notion to hurt a bunch of people to get back at the world, when we all know you are really just mad at yourself for looking at yourself the way you think the world is looking at you, please, try and get some help. If that doesnt work? Just shoot yourself in the face first, instead of after you have shot half a dozen people, ok?

I mean, you don't want your good friend Marilyn Manson or the manufacturers of your favorite shoot em up videogame to go through any more undue stress, do you? No. You don't want that.

Comments: Read 17 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	SERBIAN STUD STABLE
Time:	8:11 am.
Music:	tv on the radio - snakes and martyrs.

I haven't gone out much recently.
Felt no real urge to go out and about, late at night, and mingle with the other nocturnal types trying to drink off the last week.
Seeing friends now and then was great, but other than that I was more than satisfied staying at home, or riding my bike into the wee hours.

Lately I have felt that old urge return. With a vengeance.
Not really looking for anything, but hungering for new sights and experiences.
It is precisely this sort of thing that was in store for me this particular night.
But not in the ways I had hoped.
Not by a long shot.

It was eighties night at a local bar. There was a dance floor, and all that, but it wasnt a club, no matter how much they tried to pull it off.
Which made the payment of a cover all the more ridiculous.
Someone else ponied up the dough, without me even asking, so it barely registered as a concern.

Last week it was goth night, something I was all for. Not that I like to dress up like Marilyn Manson or have patent leather anything. It was because I would not fit in, and stick out rather obnoxiously in comparison.
I have developed a certain penchant for attending events and situations in which I feel the least welcome. Not belonging is my special brand of acceptance.

There were costumes and get ups, sure, but none as exaggerated as the week before.
Better music, though.
Especially since all the goth/industrial songs began to sound like more ominous variations on "cotton eyed joe".
Which certainly makes me want to open a vein, so i guess it makes sense.

All my drinks were being paid for, so I naturally would put them down as soon as I got them.
Far be it from me to not show the proper etiquette.
Which of course lead naturally to dancing.

When I say dancing, I mean the rather spasmodic, full body dry heave I tend to do set to music. My legs seem to spring out away from me, akin closely to the earliest experiments on the muscular tissue of dead frogs. The arms, well, the arms are a different situation. One arm can generally be
in motion. But not when the other one is also moving. Something must be wrong with my medulla oblongata. Once the one arm stops, the other can pick up, like the passing of some invisible baton. Needless to say its more of the parody of dance than the real thing.

After embarrassing myself by pole dancing to Prince's Erotic City, hey someone had to, my bladder was in an uproar, and I made my way for the men's bathroom. Which was crowded, of course. I had a cigarette outside, and made my way back in. This time around there wasnt a line at all.
The only people remotely near the restroom were two fellows who came out together, apparently in a state of agitation. They were speaking Russian, or Serbian. Some slavic language. While I couldnt understand what was being said, their rushed speaking and conspiratorial, or at least worried tones lead me to believe it was some sort of bad trouble.

The cold war being over, I didnt think anything of walking into the bathroom. It was probably an unrelated situation.
I fling open the door, a lit cigarette hanging from my lips, and I see....IT.
I say it because I could not tell what it was at first glance.

There was a fellow Serbian, at the far end of the room, standing next to the dividing wall separating the only toilet from the urinal. He wasnt the object in question. What was, however, seemed to be attached to him.

At first glance, which has now been seared into my memory by the foreman grill of sheer horror, it seemed that there was a large, fleshy protuberance emanating from his mid section. A strange, fleshy, trunklike object.

It just didnt register at first.
Was this man some strange freak with some genetic abnormality that caused some freakish limb to grow....

....and then it hit me.
Like a shot of semen in the eye from the almighty.
It was a penis.
Not just any.
But his.

What exactly he was doing with it, I dont know. From the size of it, what WASNT he doing with it.

This went way beyond what was considered normal, or decent, in ways of human anatomy. This was some straight up "Horsecock Johnson" styled freakshow porno stuff here.
John Holmes had nothing on this guy.

I could not make out the head, nor did I want to, but it would almost have been a relief to see, just to ensure that there were not large, canivorous leeches the thickness of Pilsberry cookie batter rolls lurking around the premises.

Now, generally speaking, guys with small penises seem to be of the braggy, chip on their shoulder lot. They have a lot to prove, and to overcompensate for.
This guy, inversely, should have had self esteem off the charts, and enough good will towards his fellow man to start his own happyfuntime feel good movement.

But it was not so.
He was angry. Very angry.
And much like his penis, not afraid to reveal it fully.

Now, there comes certain times in your life feel are tests of one's self. Of your true mettle. Moments you can look back on and gauge your courage, strength of will against adversity.
Did you stand your ground or did you flee, tail between your legs. No pun intended.
Well, ok a little bit.

I could not back down now. I had to look my destiny square in the eye and not let my fear dictate my actions, and carry through with my initial plan.
Plus I was about to wet myself.

Bladder bolstering me with the original liquid courage, I made my way to the stall adjacent to him. With only a rickety privacy wall between us.
I unzip myself and scoot my own member out, feeling more than a little bit inadequate, and began to relieve myself. Luckily my stream was now cowed by the circumstances at hand.

Despite this obvious distraction in front of him, Jackoff Smirnov here began to take a particular notice of me.
He muttered something in his foreign tongue, angrily.
I did not respond.
How could I?
WHY would I?

Where I come from, the conversation starts when the cock goes away.

"Vaastadonia, eh? EH??!!"
He began punching the dividing wall with his fist, which buckled violently with every shot, threatening to spring from the wall at any moment.
Leaving nothing between me and his man snake.

Now, not to disparage any ethnic groups, but Serbians have a reputation for getting a little....wild. Not the type of fellows to casually fuck with, if you like your teeth, or breathing something other than your own blood.
And thats with their pants on.

I would rather deal with five made Cosa Nostrans with a vendetta to teabag me back to the stone age than one freakishly endowed Serbian.
During the Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian fracass a few years back, I could imagine four stout men leaping from trees or low buildings onto the cocks of the most fantastically hung of their compatriots, riding down like firepolls, to unleash ungodly projectiles of man gravy upon their hapless foes...

Keep cool, I tell myself. Finish up. You are almost done.
Smoke from cigarette curling into my eyes, blinding me, I try my best to hurry things along. If this isn't hell, it sure as shit could pass for the coming attractions.

Horsecock had quieted down for a few seconds, muttering under his breath, and I felt the worst was over. Maybe the depressive effects of alcohol had taken over, or tumescence had occured and he would pass out from blood loss to the brain.
No such luck.

"Bullsheet. BULLSHEEET!!!"
God, I hope he doesnt attack me. Because he will kick my ass.
While he pummels me with both fisteses, I will be too busy trying to swat away his Serbian super sausage to put up any kind of real defense.

Moments before I finish up, or am garroted from behind in the most sinister fashion ever contemplated, his friends burst into the rest room.

"POOT CHORE DEEK AWAY AN LESS GO!"
"NO! NOO! FAAACK CHU!!! FACK CHU!!!"
He began hammering the wall with renewed frenzy.

I shook it off, hoping for each drip to be my last, zipped up, averting eye contact, and made my hasty retreat. Let his friends handle it.
IT.

Later that night I had to ponder what he was so angry about.
Maybe he was trying to make friends, and found the language barrier to be incredibly frustrating, and simply expressed himself as was the custom in his homeland. He could very easily have been the janitor, snaking the toilet with that thing. With a few inches to spare.
Or maybe he was too inebriated to stick his manhood back into his pants, without escaping the cheese grater effect of his zipper, and his pleas of help were being ignored by this American asshole, who was too inadequately proportioned to ever understand his rather unique and personal dilemma.

Either way, I wasnt going to stick around and find out.

Explaining away a shiner caused by a ruthless cockslap is not something one could easily live down.

Comments: Read 22 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	CALIFORNIA DESERVES WHATEVER IT GETS
Time:	2:38 pm.
Music:	dead kennedys - california uber alles.

It might have just been a peculiar string of bad luck, but every toilet seat I sat on in the state of California was broken. Not split down the middle, or hanging off the side. Under simple observation it seemed perfectly safe to sit down upon.
But the second ass met seat you nearly slid off, since one of the supports was invariably snapped.

This was everywhere I went. Every single rest stop,restaurant, tourist trap, thrift store and domicile up and down the Pacific Coast Highway.
That perilous here we go sensation every time I sat down, and to shuffle one cheek to the next I felt like Indiana Jones trying to place a bag of sand in lieu of some ancient artifact without triggering some unseen booby trap.

This bothered me. Even the hotel room seat was like this.
Then it dawned on me. Earthquakes.
Up and down the coast people were evacuating their bowels the precise moment the earth hit a grand mal seizure.
In that moment of bowel releasing terror, those already planted on the porcelin throne had the distinct advantage, hygine and dry cleaning wise, but after a few seconds, the scales begin to tip radically against their favor.

From what I have heard from movies and word of mouth is to run into a door frame. Avoid falling objects. Get away from anything that could catch fire or shoot electricity at you.
But what if you were in the middle of a particularly persistant bout of Montezuma's Revenge? Do you simply leap up, en medias res, and just stand there, your soiled backside resembling a child's face at a moon pie eating contest?

There are a few fates worse than death. Having the family of your significant other observing you nude below the waist as a you make the nile river valley down your exposed thigh before the roof caves in on them I would have to say is one of them.
You would pray for no survivors after that. The indiginities of having everyone burst into fits of childish giggles every time someone asks you to pass the gravy would be enough to wish for a premature burial.

Why is there no literature about this? Why has tinsletown not given us that great, socially awkward earthquake comedy? Charlton Heston himself couldnt survive dripping chocolate syrrup out of his puckering roundeye.

So what do I believe happens at these moments of mortal peril on the terlet?
They hold on.
For dear life.

If the sky rains down upon them tons of concrete, wood, mortar and tar, so be it.
They just hunker down, grab both sides of the toilet seat and pray for the best.
Jostled around as they are, it puts a terrible strain on the poor thing, and odds are something is going to snap.
After it is done, nobody wants to admit they rode out "the big one" straddling the commode at the local Jack in the Box.

The damage goes unreported. A code of slience is maintained.

So every tourist and out of towner has to sit and ponder, in much more quiet and contemplative times, this rather unheralded mystery.

Comments: Read 26 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	AS THE WORM TURNS
Time:	7:27 am.
Music:	serj tankian - praise the lord and pass the ammunition.

Florida weather is a fickle taskmistress.
One day it is as hot and sweltering as a Turkish bath house. Humidity so
unspeakably high that you feel as if you are wading through liquid plasma,
a thin layer of protective sweat sprouting out of your forhead like the
morning dew.
The next its rainy, drizzly, with a wickedly sharp wind.

Today was neither. The sun had poked up its reluctant head like the
tentative glance of a guilty lover after a night of infidelities, to see if
their loved one was still asleep.
I have long lost my love for you, you evil orb. Come and go as you wish.

Since it was so downright pleasant, I thought I would take a little walk.
There was a light breeze whipping through the trees, and it actually felt a
little bit like fall for the first time. Which never fails to excitE.
The summer never fails to depress me. Its too bright. Too hot. Nature
as the obnoxiously chipper co worker whose very existence seems to be
blessed solely to rebuke your own life by sharp contrast.

Winter is the exact opposite. Understated, muted.
The great beyond humbled, cuckolded at long last, eating a ripe slice of
crow, a big blob of birdshIt on the almighty's once spotlessly starched
collar.

Carefully stepping over random cracks in the sidewalks, my mental revelries
are cut short by a curiously long trail of translucent goop snaking along
the sidewalk. Obviously the trail of some slimy creature of some sort.
I follow the path until my eyes land upon the longest earthworm I have ever
seen, who had stranded itself on the concrete.

This phenomenon has always intrigued me. Whales beach themselves, sure,
but they are mammals, and intelligent ones at that. Smarts inevitably lead
to contemplation, which can often lead down the slippery slope of
depression, of paths not taken, or navel gazing introverted nightmares of
doubt and dispair.
Why shouldn't they too take their own lives? Why do we think we are so
grand that only we can entertain the option of ending our own existence?
But invertebrates?

They are blessed with the purity of unadulterated instinct. Unable to
contemplate morality, their every action is sanctified, innocent.
Unpolluted by such obstacles as purpose or meaning.
Why would such a creature dig itself out of its comfortable habitat and
fling itself onto an inhospitable terrain?
But it happens. Little dehydrated coils of wormflesh, sprinkled with
hungry ants litter every sidewalk.

Its just not right. It makes me lose faith in the simpler things, which
spirals out into large cocentric doubts about the grand schemes of things. Sure, not a sparrow falls that the good lord doesnt see.
But why doesnt the celestial peeping tom not catch the little fucker before
it plummets to its doom?
The sadistic prick.

Its the least i can do to help out.
To balance out cosmic inequities.

First I have to see if its alive. The tail end seems mashed flat, already
seeping into the rough grooves of the concrete in a gelatinous heap. The
texture slowly rises up along its length, like the slow slope of a mountain
range on a topographical map until I see some small movements near the tip.
And then I notice its head.

Most earthworms are seemingly uniform on both ends. Perfectly rounded,
symetrical. Natures boneless palindrome.
But not this creature. One end was normal everyday earthworm.
The other end was wedge shaped, like an off brown crescent moon.
A hammerhead worm.

This startles me.
I begin to feel a little uneasy, like that crucial moment in every horror
film where the protagonists suddenly realize the standards and practices of
everyday life have crossed over into the surreal and terrible.
What is this thing? It has a freakin shovel head.
Utilitarian and practical, to be sure, for some sort of earth wallowing
thing. Certainly not the norm, however.

How long have these things been like this? Here I have been wandering
about my own business, all my life, while strange and hitherto unknown
monsters have been burrowing about under my innocent feet.
Sure, there are strange subterranean monsters like the star faced mole, amphisbaenia and the like, but a shovel faced hammerhead worm?
Why haven't I seen pictures of these things? Unearthed them accidentally
while gardening?
Applied one, slack jawed, eyes bulging in disbelief onto a fishing hook?
Seen one in a magazine article or National Geographic styled program?

Or was this some sort of mutation, that the earth spit out like a wad of
bone meal from a McDonalds value meal?
Was I now about to do the ecosystem some disservice by sticking it back
into the ground?
Ants were already busying themselves around its inoperable hindquarters.
Should I not let them follow their way up its body to finish off its Barnum
and Bailey freakshow head?

No, that wouldnt be right. Why should I judge this poor fellow because of
the shape of his head? He can't help it.
By his trail he has gone through a rather long journey, and was only a few
inches from his destination. He risked it all, and it would be a shame to
see him fail because his own body failed him. A little gorilla glue to
Icarus' wings wouldn't have hurt anyone.
Save mythology.

So a rescue mission must be undertaken. With the tip of my shoe I slowly began to nudge him.....only to have his body slip apart like so much chewed gum.
Oh my. I am glad I hadnt eaten breakfast.
And lunch wasnt looking to good either.

Ok. Worms have about eight hearts. Or was that cows, with their
stomachs?
I should have paid more attention when I had to dissect one in school.
But Cherie Thompson had to be wearing a skirt that day, and the only thing
I was studying was the creamy, flawless milky whiteness of her thighs, and
the smooth tapering of her ankles. It was truly a sight. As if sculpted
marble met molasses.
I fantasized about the power to stop time, save me and her, and to
consolidate the mass of our physical bodies outside the flow of feverish
space time, we had to cling to each other, like two cats with their tails
tied together flung over a laundry line. The back of my head would be
cloaked by the front of her catholic school skirt, like the flap that
covered the viewfinder of an old camera on school picture day.
I wanted her liquid essence on my mouth as thoroughly as fruit preserves
would the face of the fat boy at a pie eating contest....

There I stood, foot aloft, covered in worm slime, while pitching more tent
than a boy scout jamboree.
Tumescence notwithstanding, I had a job to do.
I quickly grabbed a nearby twig and slowly began to lift what was left of
the worm's upper quarters from the pavement, as delicately as I would have
cleft the aforementioned Miss Thompson's moist sex with the tip of my
tongue.

Dangling weakly from the twig, I set him down in a particularly earthy
patch directly on the side of the concrete. His body hung motionless on a
blade of grass, and then his crescent head began to twitch, and he fell to
the soft dirt below.
You will be ok now, little guy. The length of you still smeared
distracted the ants where you left it.

I began walking back to work with warmth in my heart, lead in my pants, and
a thin line of slime on my shoe.
Which at the end of the day, what more could one ask for?

Comments: Read 27 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	MEET THE NEW YEAR. SAME AS THE OLD YEAR
Time:	1:05 pm.
Music:	frank zappa - why does it hurt when I pee?.

It was pure sadism.

Any which way you cut it, having a wedding at ten a.m. on New Years Day is tantamount to torture.

Technically I didnt have to attend. It was for the mom of an old college friend, who is one of my girlfriend's best friends. Sounds rather incestuous, especially if you consider the fact that the bride to be's daughter, and mutual friend of ours, and I had a little fling in college.

Hey, it was the nineties, man. It was like the sixties all over again. Except with weaker acid, free love replaced with prophylactic wrapped sexual paranoia, and more liberal use of hygiene.

My friend's mother was in her sixties, and the church going type, so having her nupitals the day after the busiest party time of the year could be forgiven. Especially since I passed out the night before around twelve fifteen.

The church was one of those small, out of the way affairs. Tiny frame, questionably painted, aching under a sharply arched roof, on an acre and a half of grassy expanse, with soccer goals on either side. The kind of idyllic, small town receptacle of olde tyme religion that never fails to give me the shivers. Much the same way a dowser can detect underground moisture, or corpse sniffing dog can instinctively recognize the the sticky sweet stench of slowly rotting flesh, I can sense the a buttoned down bastian of red state inspired hillbilly hypocrisy from a mile away. The Sundays of my youth were a never-ending procession of similar shaped edifices, tucked nicely away from prying eyes and discerning minds.

Scouring the decor, I could quickly assess that this fortunately wasn't one of more free wheelin Bob Dylan fundamentalist compounds I was so used to. Most in attendence were well past the prime of their lives, their snake handling days were long behind them, and their righteous indignation was saved primarily for the ballot box. Most were dressed in garish ensembles, the women frilled and laced to a nearly indecent degree, while the men crouched their slumped shoulders in sport coats so vivid in color one couldnt hold your gaze to it without fearing temporary blindness. Fashion seems to be, despite conventional wisdom, the first thing to go. But I like to think it runs along more utilitarian lines. The same way medieval cathedrals adorned themselves with gargoyles to ward of evil spirits, I believe these people dress in such a way to ward off the steely eye of the grim reaper himself. If the strange color patterns and white hot pastels weren't enough to shun the clammy hand of death, the shame of escorting such atrociously attired individuals into the great divide would surely seal the deal.

We were running late, so we had to take a seat in the last pew on the left. The ceremony itself was well under way, and the preaching was already slinging the snake oil something proper. Yet I was all ears, when I noticed that the preacher had a noticeable speech impediment, and fond of odd, unintentionally humorous phrasings.

"Ladieth and gentlemen, what a whot a fwend we haff in jeesuth. Thith union ith juth a thmall thymbol of hith perfect love for uthhh."

It was perfect. You felt for the guy, and I found myself rooting for him, despite his flowery and excessive evangilizing, at the truly heroic task of chosing a speech peppered with so many Ses. It was like watching a thylidomide victim trying to juggle. You feel almost voyeuristic, but their passion and bravery inspires nonetheless.

"It ith the togethernetthh of theth two people coming together that maketh thith tho spethul. The "we", the "wee-neth" that we are here to thelebrate...."

Weenis? If I knew it was going to be this kind of party, I would have brought my foreskin helmut and toga.

After a bit more stumbling sigmatisic stylings, he got to the meat and potatoes of the ceremony, and the two were legally wed. All in all it was a rather nice ceremony, and the bride and groom both seemed to beem, ready to tackle their golden years together.

Which I dont know if I would do if i was that age. If I was that old, I think I would probably want to ramp it up a bit, and decide to indulge myself in some sort of arrested adolescent free for all. Tomcat about with some nubile forty-year-olds. Get a shiny new candy apple red convertible, to tussle around my thinning hair, and sunburn my scalp a sufficently distracting color to disguise the liver spots. Boner pill it up so bad that I was a throbbing, undulating, shuffling erection, tackling any and all comers with the youthful abondon of a teenager at band camp for nymphomaniacs.

My gait wouldn't be anything resembling a walk as much as a continual pelvic thrust hurtling me forward, locomoting about like a landlocked jellyfish at low tide.

Why is aging gracefully so admired? Because the young don't want to see it. Fuck that. If those whipper snappers want to saunter about with their mid drifts exposed, and their ass cracks for the world to see, then they are going to get an aching eyeball full of grandpa long gone in some sickening, denture dropping lip lock, dry humping lose women on every bus stop bench until my surgically repaired hip finally snaps like a rusted bobby pin.

Hopefully I will still be in control of my bowels. Because that whole adult baby shit just creeps me out.

These thoughts filled my head, as I noticed my bladder was doing the same. More with urine than speculation, mind you. Not a good sign. I just chalked it up to involuntary sympathic response, and decided to wander off to relieve myself. But the bathroom I quickly observed was going to be a problem. The only male lavatory was a single toilet affair, and the light bulb had burned out. Normally I have good night vision, and like the aforementioned dowser, my wand invariably brings me moisture. Dick in hand, I can work in total darkness and end up shooting that first test stream square and true into still water. Sometimes its even the toilet.

During the day, however, this sixth sense is curiously silent. I guess it rests during the light of day, conserving itself for night, when it would be more logical for it to be acute.

So I had to keep the door ajar, and try and rush my water making so nobody would walk in on me. I could have tried my way about the darkness, but I really didnt want to end up micturating all over the sink, floor, or potted plant. Those old timers are a gossipy lot, and the news that I marked the men's bathroom like a cocker spaniel on a fire hydrant would make the rest of the reception rather uneasy for my girlfriend. Me, I usually dont truck in such currencies such as shame or guilt, but doing little things, like not peeing everywhere in public is just one of those little compromises you just have to make in a committed relationship.

So I propped the door open, unbuttoned my pants, and made my swift way to the toilet bowl. Right before I pull my little trooper out of the barracks, a shadow falls upon my light, and I realize someone is trying to run in. Before I know what is going on I swivel, and hard charge the door. By this time some grisled oldster is already half way in.

I catch the opening door, and begin to shove it closed with all my might. Unfortunately, so does he.

I truly dont know what came over me. It was truly some sort of primal, ape brained involutary resonse. Maybe since my underparts were nearly exposed I descended into a primeval sort of territorial beast like rage. Most mammals mark their haunts with their own water, so I guess it could be reasoned that way. But what happened next defied even the most leniant of explanations.

After several seconds of heaving and pushing, the old guy tries to stick his arm and head into the closing door. He was a thick forearmed, cigar chomping kind of guy. Probably served in the armed forces, and might have wringed the necks of a few Japanese soldiers in the Pacific theater during WWII. If my response was excessive, his defied all logic.

A person in a bathroom will instinctively defend his privacy. And logic would dictate that if a door is being actively closed from the inside of such a place, well, someone is probably in there, up to something he really doesnt desire an audience for.

Logic, however, was a lofty concept we could not indulge in the moment. In hindsight, I wondered why I didn't say anything. Not once did I utter "occupied" or even a more assertive "give me some privacy, Jack!". Nothing.

We had lapsed into some sad, simian, styled battle of wills, cocks, balls, and bloated bladders.

For a fleeting second, I almost slugged the fellow. It seemed my only recourse of action. For all our supposedly exalted intelligence, in the pinch of immediacy of any heightened moment, the most common human instinct is violence.

Or maybe I am some sort of socially inept idiot who really shouldnt be allowed out of his cage to play with the other animals.

I am willing to entertain both sides of the argument.

Thankfully, after a few seconds of intense struggle, the grey haired gent relented.

"Oh", he said with almost unbelivable casualness, "I didn't know you were in there."

Didn't know I was in here? Does this character usually have this much trouble in going to the bathroom? Does he live in some old folks’ home, where such live and death struggles over toilet time, fueled by inflamed prostates, often resolve themselves over fisticuffs? A haunted house, where the opening of every door is a supernatural struggle?

"Not a problem" I finally muttered, catching my breath.

I quickly proceeded to the toilet, where I continued with my regularly scheduled plan.

Resolving to deal with the next person through that door simply through the medium of a hot, wet stream.

Comments: Read 20 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	WE WILL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS...UNFORTUNATELY
Time:	7:50 am.
Music:	jedi mind tricks - blood out, blood in.

Every day headlines from every newspaper seem to scream the same tired, but
timeless message: the breakdown of american society, and society as a
whole, is imminent. Not only are people treating each other, and
themselves with criminal disregard and hostility, but we as a people seem
to have grown indifferent to this.
The irony that the over saturation of these horrible things in the media is
one of the prime reason for this is never given consideration.

Despite all of the doomsday scenarios, from global warming, hurricanes,
natural disasters, religious strife, intolerance, bigotry, genocide,
murder, muggings, shootings, stabbings, bombings, ethnic cleansing,
oppression, meteor strikes, pollution, alien abductions, the one thing that
disturbs me the most.
Paris Hilton.

The world is always in a state of flux. Always has been. Always will be.
Long before anything gained enough sentience to realize what it was doing,
or the neurotic touchstone of self awareness, the unanswerable "why", one
thing lived by taking nourishment from another living thing. People will
never be nice to each other. Its too hard. Especially when there is fear
in their hearts.

Yet despite all this, there is a little shred of hope. That somewhere in
the clash and fray of all these different ideas, ideals, and insurmountable
odds, progress, in some form, is being made SOMEWHERE.
That the human spirit still throbs, even if to hostile rhythms.

Then you see another story about Paris Hilton.
Another sex tape. Paris loses an ear ring at the day time Emmys.
Paris had a bad dream. Broke a fingernail. Got too many onions on her Big
Mac.
Had a pimple on her ass.

She stares out, through truly soulless eyes, from a face cast long since
birth from the most condescending clay, into a world her unearned,
undeserved wealth isolates herself from fully, and we do not run her out
of town on a pole.

In no small order she is truly the golden calf, a false idol for the
sickest and most depraved of societies.
Cult of personality is always a troublesome thing to witness. It shows a
people reduced to a mindless, collective mass, always ready to be molded,
redirected, set angrily lose like agitated army ants, like a fire, a
scourge, a flood. Under the guise of utilitarianism they will grind down
and trample anything and all that doesnt succumb to the lowest common
denominator.
But at least when it is for a dictator, even one of the vilest intentions,
there is a form of logic behind it. This person will finally stick up for
me, will complete my life through iron and fire and blood.

With Hilton?
We celebrate the most troubling of criterias: nothing.
It is a 21st century conspicuous consumption nihilism most foul.
She is famous for........being famous.
She has no talent. No skills. No ideas.
She isn't even attractive. Her body looks like lengths of oiled leather
drawn taught over a scarecrow. Pigflesh stretched out, adorned with
overpriced fabrics, bleached blond and let lose to spread its disease
unchecked. The sickness that tells young girls that they aren't pretty
unless they are tanned, have not an ounce of fat, and have their ribcages
jutting out of their jaundiced flesh. That substance isn't just secondary
to style, its something that should be mocked and ridiculed.

A backlash is in order. And quickly.
These things happen now and then, like influenza outbreaks that erupt every
twenty years or so, wreck havoc, and then are gone once again.
Because Paris, honey, you are freakin Zsa Zsa gabor. Without the class.
The Simple Life is just a "reality" based Green Acres. Your handlers knew
this, and are milking you like the cow you are.

So the answer to your problem is quite simple: die.
Die, Paris.
Just...stop living.

Its not that bad. In fact its the next logical step in your career.
Iconization.
Think of it. Do you think any of these tragically hip college kids running
around with Che Guevara t-shirts know anything at all about the man? How
he asked the Soviet Union to launch a nuclear strike against the US to
ensure they didn't invade Cuba or all the assassinations her oversaw? Of
course not. Because its the image, sweetie. The less you know of
something pretty the more mystery it has, the more you can throw any and
all of your hopes and dreams on it, without that pesky reality sh!t
harshing your buzz.

Die.
In a generations time poor crippled children, the blind, diseased, maimed
and lame will light candles to your image, the patron saint of the big, fat
zero.
Die.
Before you cause every dispossessed person the world over to rise, en masse,
and destroy the heartless soul of capitalism and the privileged classes and
install something even more savage.
Die.

Eddie Guerrero, after making an inspirational comeback from depression and
substance abuse, mending his life and family, died recently from a heart
attack while brushing his teeth. And still you strut around sucking up air
and taking up space.

Die. At least you will be immortal as a t-shirt and academics trying to
make a name for themselves will cite you as a trend setter, a modern day
Edie Sedgewick.

Die.
And don't even leave a corpse.
It will only poison the water supply, and leave the earth too tainted for even
fertilizer.

Comments: Read 33 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	R.I.P.
Time:	5:37 am.
Music:	sun kil moon - tiny cities made of ashes.

R.I.P.

Well, that's it.

This upcoming weekend, we can officially say goodbye to any resemblance of cold weather we should see for the next seven to eight months or so.

And I for one am not happy with it.

The sun already is taking back its awful dominion, and each passing day is a little more scorching than the last. Soon, very soon, even the night will give up its facade of neutrality and give in to hot, and hot all the time.

So here, submitted for your approval, is a quick list of why winter is so much better than summer. Discuss amongst yourselves.

1. Heat= bad.

Overly simplistic, but no frills. First thought, best thought.

2. Heat = sweat.

If you are a big mammal like me, from lumberjack stock, the summer heat isnt your friend. Merely stepping outside, into the gelatinous miasma of a summer day, to get the mail or smoke a cigarette, drenches you in a thick, otherworldly slime. Which most terrifyingly enough, COMES OUT OF YOUR SKIN! And forget calisthenics out in the yard before a big day, oh no. Not if you dont want to look like you are trying out for GIRLS GONE WILD, which is still a rather traumatic experience, and a memory still fresh with guilt, regret, and deep emotional scars.

3. Summer clothes suck

Summer clothes, at least in Florida, do not exactly give one a wide range of choices. You have bright, and skimpy. Usually merged into one. I cannot abide sandals. I refuse to have my feet open for fire ant attacks or whiskey bottle strikes. And shorts? With my skin tone? You might as well take a flame thrower to my lower extremities, or rub some liquid plutonium on me, because within a few hours, I am radioactive. Peel the wallpaper off the walls when i walk by radioactive, brother.

4. Longer days

Me, I am a night guy. Night does special things. It drives children in from the streets, blankets the land with endless possibilities, and hides embarrassing stains. Give me night, and give me it early. Night starting at eight, eight thirty? For the birds!

5. Summer sex sucks

Sex during the summer lacks a certain sparkle, a certain pop that it has during the winter. When its cold outside, and when you bundle under the covers with your special lady, or fellow, or favorite inflatable device, there is a certain passion, a certain carnal necessity to the coupling. Friction causes heat. Causes warmth. Sex is in and of itself the gift that keeps giving, but when it allows you to also feel more comfortable in your normal surroundings, its where win meets win.

Its also the height of romance to just lay there, encapsulated in the warmth and good feelings of your mate, bodies intwined, body to body, nestled up next to each other and slipping into a restful sleep. All without sticking to each other like a fruit roll up on cracked leather.

This winter I can count the number of times I had sex on one hand. Ok, both hands. And a toe. But only the baby one, I wont get greedy. This is simply intolerable. I am in the prime of my life and the most romantical of all seasons has passed by without as much as a strong murmer in the lovin department.

The springtime wasnt so hot, but even when a young man's thoughts turned to fancy, my thoughts were turned to making enough money to keep gas in my car and food in my cats.

To make matters worse, I went on my "masturbation fast" during the winter, which eliminated even the majesty of self love for a precious thirty five days, which didnt help matters.

And finally, number six.

The winter is a season of mystery. Its the time for new romances, gathering of people around fires, sharing stories over the soft clouds shot out into the cold night, like tiny, ephemeral word balloons, where every sentence can be seen as well as heard.

The earth itself seems to sleep, and we wander around, basking in its still forming dreams. The air seems imbued with endless possibility. Its nothing short of magic, when going inside huddles people closer, an almost primordial solidarity of shelter that fullfills fundamental needs more than any other time of the year.

Goodbye, winter.

You will be sorely missed.

Comments: Read 31 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	WATER CHESTNUTS ROASTING ON AN ASS OF FIRE
Time:	7:33 am.
Music:	fischer spooner - megacolon.

Nature always finds a way.
When people worry about the state of the world, about the destruction of
the rain forest or global warming or the polar ice caps or unbiodegradable
plastics or pollution, they shouldn't be worried about the earth. The
earth will be fine. Even if all the nuclear weapons of the world exploded
at once, the earth will still be here. Sure, we could be knocked off orbit
and most of the life as we know it could cease to exist, but things would
eventually balance out.

The planet went from minuscule single celled organism to being ruled by
monstrofical super lizards, for millions of years, to our present state of
mammalian imperialism. No matter what something will be living on this
planet, whether its weather resistant cockroaches or day glo radioactive
mer-men or intricate societies of airborne insects.
And Keith Richards.

As we sit and breathe, the earth is slowly edging us on the way out. An
eternally patient host, it often eases out the current house guests ever so
gradually, but its conviction is strong, and the door will slam shut on
even the most reluctant of hangers on in due time.

Our huge brains and indefatigably expansive egos have cast our concrete and
plastic shadow across this globe, and even dragged our sticky sweet trail
like a leaking slug off into the stars. To remedy this, the earth's plan
is as simple as it is effective. It aims to make us stupider.
Technology is rapidly stripping our ability to control it. Every day we
map out our eventually more detailed suicide machine. And not all the
rockets in the world will be able to carry us any closer to the sun than
Icarus'wings.

Of course a lot of us seem to be doing a good job in offing ourselves from
our own homespun stupidity.

Death comes in various seemingly innocuous guises. Its most tempting would
have to be the canned good.
Death can't come in a can, is the standard response. Death has to swoop down, to the sound of thunder or long, ear splitting whistles from the heavens or flapping loudly with leathery wings. It has to tear through the earth's crust like a monstrous and murder mad mole cricket. It isn't supposed slip into your house and rest upon your kitchen shelf for months, coiled like a poisonous snake or angry genie hell bent to be out of the bottle.

Unsuspecting that larger, phantasmagorical forces were at work, I decide I
am going to whip up some makeshift Chinese food. I have chicken, mixed
vegetables, angelic Sririhachi sauce, and rice. But it needed an extra
kick. The kind only water chestnuts in a can could provide. Observing the
outside of the can, it seemed a bit...off. Sure, I could have turned on
the light switch, but that was all the way over there. Why waste
electricity when the half light from the setting sun illuminated the place
enough that I didn't bump into things?

I open the can, and notice the chestnuts look....odd. These seemed to be
whole ones, and not the slices I was used to. Being unable to notice the
finer nuances that sight usually offers in the light, I decided to explore
the old fashioned way, by sticking one into my mouth. Sharks do it. Rats
do it. Wonder if something is edible? Just take a bit bite. If you dont
die you are good to go.

After the third bite I could tell something was wrong. Powerful wrong. I
spit what was left in my mouth and turned on the light. Inside the can it
looked like twelve little cat turds floating in chicken broth. If the cats
were into the flower garden and Jerry Garcia iced cream again.
Undaunted I found a different can, inspected it, and poured out its
contents into the wok, and cooked it all up, right and proper. A feast fit
for a king.

Satiated I went about my business, putting the potential poisoning behind
me. Until my own behind beckoned suddenly outside during a cigarette. It
wasnt a gentle reminder, either. This was no test of the emergency
broadcast system. This was gabriel's trumpet into a doomsday whistle.

Clutching my ass cheeks like clenched fist, I stumbled inside. Suddenly I
didn't fel so good.
My stomach felt like it was practicing origami on itself, and my ass felt
like it had just been vanquished by the wrathful and uncircumcised cock of
the almighty. The little brown spider flash fried into calimari.
No sooner had I stood up from the throne and slid my pants up that I had to
turn around and go through it all again.

Sweat burst out in thick drops and I felt violently lightheaded.
Then I remembered...the water chestnuts. Botulism! In a can.
Diabolical.

I stumbled into the bedroom and fell onto the bed. A few hours pass.
I wake up feeling worse than before.
Big fat Jimmy Crimm jumped up next to me and began nuzzling me with his
head.
I clenched him tightly to my chest as my lower intestine made a noise
usually reserved for motorcycle engines or large amphibious dinosaurs.

"Well, this is it, my sweet prince. Promise me you will eat freely and
fully from my body when I pass away. My ample frame will supply plenty
sustenance by the time the authorities find my body and send you to a new home..."
I couldnt complain. I had lived an interesting, if not a full life.
Live fast, die young, and leave a cat eaten corpse.

My head was still swimming from uneasy sleep, and strange irrational
thoughts began to swarm through it. The once familiar sound of the
raccoon in the attic scratching around took on ominous undertones. The
beast couldnt even wait until I expire! He likes his meat fresh. I
clutched my obese cat close. All light was cast in sharp, expressionist angles, as if poised to extinguish itself lest it be swallowed whole by the
encroaching darkness.

Thoughts of TROLL 2, which featured plant life consumed by humans rendering
flesh into a vegetable goo to be eaten by rubber faced midgets became rather plausible. I closed my eyes and in a hypnogogic haze envisioned large praying mantis styled creatures made entirely out of green beans...

These are the pockets of diseased time in which the truly personal
atrocities take place. Subjective nightmares that visions of hell are recorded. Where phobias reach mitosis and split off in fresh
bundles. Time and space melt into each other, peeled slowly apart like wet
flesh from cold leather. An aboriginal dreamtime of unspeakable
proportions, where all action is parabolic and uniquely distorted.

The air
itself a wavering fish-eyed distortion of a funhouse mirror. This is when,
and roughly where, people get anally probed on the side of isolated unpaved
country roads by bubbled headed monsters of intergalactic origin with non
existant noses and emotionless, almond shaped eyes, glowing space rods
driven spun roughly home by long, spindly fingers...

An indeterminate amount of time passes. I try to stand up, then fall back
to the bed. More accurately I slump back down let a wet towel into a
formless mass onto the squeaky mattress. My hair is slick with sweat, but
I begin to feel a bit better. I gather my strength enough to stand and
make my way to the kitchen where I drink a half gallon of water. The worst
has past. Its one of those miniature near death experiences. I walk
outside and light up a cigarette, savoring the soft curls of the smoke
snaking their way out of my face and into the cool night air.
Until that now all too familiar rumbling starts up like rolling thunder in
my abdomen, promising unwelcome rain.

I clench my ass, yet again, stomp out my cigarette and awkwardly two step
my way back inside.

I will have to accept my personal Darwin Award in the mail, thanks.

Comments: Read 28 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	IN THE LAND OF THE BLIND...
Time:	7:41 am.
Music:	blind melon - no rain.

I am really glad i am not blind.
I would be the most obnoxious blind person ever.
Why? Because blind people can get away with anything.

I wouldn't have your standard clickty clackety stick, neither.
I would have a huge cattle prod. Or a broad sword. A long pole with a
rusty nail in it. If I caught even the slightest whiff of patchouli in the
air, I would start thrusting it downward, to stab the sandaled feet of any
and all hippies around.

"Like, woah, blind dude. You are like, you know, harshing my buzz..."
"OH! OH, I am sorry, MAN. Didnt mean to be CAPTAIN BRING DOWN, DUDE, but if you havnet noticed I CANT SEE! Why dont you mock my inability to anything other than pitch black darkness by wearing more psychedelic tie dye, you ass!"

The rest of the time i would find my way about by swinging a bicycle chain
around my head.
"Pardon me folks. Blind man coming through. Cant find my seeing eye dog.Cane is in the shop. Move it or lose it."

I could push down the elderly, ram myself into yuppies, and punch children
right in the face.
What are they going to do, arrest you?
Some filthy little urchin or ankle biter starts up with the smart mouth,
you can shut his sass hole up something proper.
"You feeling hungry, junior? How about a couple of KNUCKLE SANDWHICHES!!!"

At your trial you can look the judge right in the eye, or whichever way you
are facing, and give him any old story.
"I am sorry, your honor, but I thought he was one of those killer midgets!
Those little monsters PREY upon the sightless! Its the way they stick it
to big people."

I would have all manner of seeing eye creatures. Donkeys, goats, killer
dogs. The most rambunctious, masterbatingest, poo flingingest helper
monkey you ever seen. "CANT BRING HIM IN HERE? Without my simian savior here, I couldnt get around! I would be subject to the cruelties of an environment hostile to the tragically sightless! His occasional auto
erotic flighty of fancy aside. Flinging fecal matter? Why, I never. COME
Mr. Marbles, we didnt need that McRib, anyway!"

Dont get me started on dating. Blind guys get more vaginer than a toilet
seat in Boone, North Caroliner.
"What do I like to do in my spare time? I love to READ. What the hell
you do you think? I am blind! I spend my time trying not to knock into
things and hope for the sound of standing water when i take a leak! I
once accidently took a dump in a baby carriage! Its living hell! Are we
going to do it, or what? Its not like I care what you look like!"

You ask me, blind guys have it pretty sweet.
At least none of them can read this and disagree with me.

Comments: Read 26 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	TWAS BOOTY THAT KILLED THE BEAST
Time:	7:49 am.
Music:	the misfits - kong at the gates.

Lately I have been thinking about King Kong.
Specifically, his love interest with Fay Wray.

In Peter Jackson's remake, the relationship is much clearer, much more pg-13. Kong likes Naomi Watts because she shows a lot of spunk, won't take his shit, and falls down with a remarkable grace lost in physical comedy since the decline of the vaudeville theater.
Exacerbated due to the lonliness of being the last of giant, prehistoric apes, which several large skeletons shows that there was a point taken on the director to show.

The original was a beast of another color.
There seemed to be something far more sinister in his movement and actions. The 30's Kong played out more out of whitey's mixture of fear with a twisted voyeuristic taboo at the notion of Faye Wray's flower of wasp womanhood violated by some swarthy jungle monkey heck bent on miscenegation. Our introduction shot of him is of a large, menacing head, eyes bugging out, mouth agape in the sinister smile of a trenchcoat exhibitionist or chronic masturbator. What Kong expected to do with this woman was rather intriguing, given the tried and true failures built in to grossly incompatable anatomical pairings between rail thin Hollywood starlets and thirty foot tall stop motion monkeys.

In the remake Kong's attachment seems much more of an emotional one. Maybe CGI is inherently more Alan Alda than the rough and tumble, earthiness of clay and primitive puppetry. It would take brighter minds than I to get to the heart of that eternal question.

This time around it is Naomi Watts, who if anything, tries to seduce the big ape with song and dance, when all Kong wants to do is snuggle and watch the sunset. Kong as couch potato, Kong as albundy forever denying the pitiful advances of his sexuall frustrated wife. Hey, the poor guy just wrestled about eight Tyrannasauruseses, some while suspended in vines off the side of a cliff. Sometimes after a hard day at the plant you want to kick back, chew some bamboo and just vegetate.

This may be simply the once meatnormous Peter Jackson filling in the blanks, projecting his once sweaty bulk onto that of Kong, radically redefining the truest forms ephemeral aspects of romantic love as sloth and gluttony vs the virility and passion of love making and other typical storytelling staples.
The knight in hairy armor may slay the dragons for m'lady, but he shore as shit is gonna watch him some tee-vee when he is done. Forget the flashlights, ladies, save the batteries for your electric pleasure wands and “back massagers”.

When the newly wussified modern Kong escapes his chains and runs amok, he believes he sees his love interest around every corner, but disappointedly tosses each dame of a simmilar physical characteristic aside when he finds out that it is a case of mistaken identity.

The original Kong was much more Ike Turner, wanting to roughly possess the beauty, for reasons unknown.
Maybe the large apes perished when their sexual desires waned from other large hairy brutes to hairless females one twentieth to scale. Outside of using the tribal females as suppositories or inserting them roughly into their oversized urethra holes, I cant see what the danged dirty ape planned to do with these minature females. Or maybe its the cruelest irony of all. In this age of viagra and boner pills galore, this Kong can't get it up.

Maybe there is a deeper psychological message here, of how nature ensures balance by driving the natural reproductive instinct to more environmentally sound forms by driving the urges of more space consuming beasts on a sliding scale. Or maybe its a parable of the futility of basing one's lust solely on physicality? Or how the rampaging, infantile, impotent sexual urge is a plodding, ineffectual brute in the face of a civilized society. Notice how Kong, innefectual in his attempts to roughly couple with his lady love, still doesnt get the message, and instead of retreating from his unrealistic desires, attempts to take them a step further by climbing to the top of the most loomingly phallic symbol around, the Empire State building.

Maybe it is strictly a Freudian exploration of sexual development, and the inability for the infantile urges to weather the storm of maturity?
The kindler, gentler, dr. phil/oprah era's beast's ascent to the top of the tower is not to the skull cracking release of orgasm, but a fast forward to the post snog cuddle.

The old Kong is a dark, unhealthy id trapped and bound by the confines of polite society, who cannot fully be tamed, and is murdered for his transgressions, all the while aiming for immediate physical gratification. The new Kong dies off due to his dogged attempts to fight instead of fuck. Or maybe its because Kong's bashfulness in not using the greatest weapon known to ape: the monkey biscuit. Let's face it, that other Kong would still be up there since the 30's if he started chucking his doo doo bidniss at the crop dusters swooping at him. Even the most daring aces of the First World War would balk at the prospect of flying into THAT anti aircraft artillery. Falling to your fate covered in flaming ape shit is NOT the stuff that legends are made.

Most cynically, maybe its a grand fable denouncing the pursuit of perfect beauty, or how the animal within is crushed by the machine of modern society.
You aim for intangible, incompatable beauty, you take the big fall.

Don't go chasing waterfalls, Kong.
Stick to the rivers and the streams that you are used to.

Either way, the end moral is simple.
In the immortal words of Jack Kerouac, pretty girls indeed make graves.

Comments: Read 18 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	BLOOD WILL FLOW AND BLOOD WILL SPURT, ENEMIES KEEP THE MIND ALERT
Time:	12:20 pm.
Music:	the misfits - die, die my darling.

We had to set up all of insurance here at work today. The guy who set it up was a wonderful fellow, who sounds just like Morgan Freeman.
Going through the normal motions, he asked me about my life insurance.

"Don't you want to set up a plan so your loved ones would be able to get through the grieving process without worrying about the legal fees and the normal red tap tied into the whole process?"
"Honestly? No. Because if I am dead, I really have nothing to worry about, do I?"
"You have a mother or father?"
"A father. But why make it easier for him. What's he ever done for me, right? Anyway, I don't want to announce to anyone of the windfall they would reap given my untimely demise..."

But then the thought hit me. Maybe I DO.
We have to set up at least one beneficiary for a mandatory life insurance claim. And they have already established, most cruelly if you ask me, that I can't leave it to my cats.

So this is what I propose to you, faithful livejournal readers:
Tell me why you would deserve to be the beneficiary of my policy if I was fallen by a piece of satellite, assassinated by a rogue ninja, or eaten by zombies.
And more importantly, how YOU would then go about trying to off me to claim your prize. The more imaginative the better.
The winner might just find himself on the business end of a tidy sum if I should expire like a piece of over-ripe fruit.

Why you ask? Imagine the benefits. Knowing I have a mortal enemy out there actively seeking to off me at any particular moment will add a special spice to life. Every breath, which could be my last, will be imbued with renewed savor. I will pursue all my hopes and dreams with a fervor I otherwise wouldn't have.
Not to mention the fact that this game of cat and mouse will be good exercise.

Let's hear em.
If one knocks my socks off, you might just get some ink on my policy, jack.

Comments: Read 85 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	UNTIL OUR SHELLS SIMPLY CANNOT HOLD
Time:	12:11 pm.
Music:	the postal service - we will become silhouettes.

I have a very addictive personality.
I always have.
To the point of near monomania in its most excessive manifestations.

Part of this stems from the fact I tend to shift, quite dramatically from endless over analyzation to committed, fanatical action. For any particular circumstance, I can find at least half a dozen scenarios for both pro and con. Instinctually I begin to take both sides under careful, studied reflection, trying to get to the root source, the driving cause and center of each, then work my way out in ever widening circles. This often does not lend itself to decisive action.

Yet when I know what I want, without question, I charge toward it, eyes closed, head down, full steam ahead. The passion that has been stifled from reflective inaction released like a tightly coiled spring finally let loose. The clarity of thought and purpose, relinquished from the quagmire of circular, internal debate often gives this a ferocity that at times scares even myself. Part of me remains detached, giving a play by play commentary of all that transpires, often far more amused than what could be considered healthy.

Lately all I can think of is sex.
Raw, unadulterated fucking.

Once you get a taste after a long drought, it sends your system in libidinous overdrive. The way a leg long atrophied inside a cast quickly builds back to its initial mass, so does the body react to the muscle memory of the physical kinetics of the act of physical love, like a post hypnotic trigger in the hitherto unknowing subject.
The muscle memory twitches back to life, long dormant tissue pulsing via the application of a strong electrical current.

The heart races, leaving the rib cage cracking and bending from the internal pressure. You find yourself sitting in the most innocuous of places with your fingers endlessly tapping out some primal rhythm, a morse code of frantic need, feet tapping to an internal system of random, moorless impulses informed by a freshly released chemical floodgates coursing throughout the body, all with the express purpose of embarking on our most basic biological imperative, with no exact focus, fluttering around like a starving bird of prey over an empty desert without scanning miles and miles without a victim in sight.

I long for raking fingernails, leaving thick red welts across my back, like tiny fading footprints from a puddle of spilt blood. Two bodies locked, fleshy pistons of an early industrial age threshing machine, locked in tight, precise motion. Teeth leaving clotted groves on broken skin of the shoulder, leaving an impression of a sloppy scarlet lipstick kiss on a love letter through busted lips. Filthy words hissed breathlessly, desperately through gritted teeth inches from the ear.
The whole world slipping farther and farther away with every thrust, any second conceivably your last.

Comments: Read 119 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	AN OPEN LETTER TO HURRICANE WILMA
Time:	12:41 pm.
Music:	dillinger escape plan/mike patton - irony is a dead scene.

Dear Hurricane Wilma.

Hi. We haven't met.
But I know your work.

First off, let me say my grievance isn't with you, per se. You just happened to come along at the wrong place, at the wrong time. You tipped the scales here. Before this season was tied with the most number of named storms. You changed all this.

Do you know how many storms have hit Florida in the last fourteen months? Seven.
That is one every two months, on average. Last year? Every time one of your kind was done running around, smashing things, flooding things, ruining people's houses, lives, and welfare, another would run up right behind it.

And this year? So many of your frat brothers and sorority sisters have come gatecrashing that we have run out of names for you, and have to go to the Greek alphabet. Which I think was your goal all along, wasn't it?

Lets step away from the more devastating aspects, and tackle the more superficial elements of why I am not to happy with you. Your name.
Wilma.
What the fuck is up with that?
If I am going to be pulverized by a natural disaster, can't you be named after something more significant than Fred Flintstone's wife? If I am going to lose my house, can I please not have to tell the insurance company that Lulu or Suzie did it? You are a huge, monstrous, perfectly constructed obliterating machine. Have some self respect, and get a handle one can at least look himself in the mirror in the morning knowing he was bested by APOLLO CREED or SATAN'S SLEDGEHAMMER, instead of ravaged by a storm that sounds like someone's grandmother's pinnocle buddies.

On the homefront I have a stray I take care of. If something big rolls through here, I am going to have to keep him inside. Except he fights with the other indoor cats. So I will have to stick him in the front room. He hates that and whines. And the other cats get mad that they have to share one cat box, and one of them will end up shitting on the floor.
And Wilma? Thats just gross.

Now, I know this isn't really your fault, since you are new and all, but just look at what your fellow hurricanes have already done this season. That cunt whore Katrina? What's up with that? Don't you think you should just lay off a while? Get some good PR work done, with slogans like "hey, you got off work last monday" or "how else would you know bush doesnt care about black people?".

But I know you aren't the real culprit here.
After much soul searching, navel gazing, and meteorological research, I have finally figured out who is to blame here:
Santa.

Thats right, the jolly ole yuletide elf himself.
Oh, but Santa would NEVER do something like that!

That's where you are wrong. Santa has been seething with animosity for years. He is sick and tired of making toys, paying exorbitant fees for strong arm men to keep the elves from unionizing, and hearing that Ms. Claus has a headache when his candy cane needs unwrapping.
He wonders where his edge went. There was a time when kids would shake in their knickers at the prospect of Santa putting them on the "naughty" list. Now? They couldn't care less.
Santa wants true deity status. Not just the bland, corporate pitchman status he has now. The Michelin Man and the Pilsbury Doughboy get more play with him, and they are hideous. And impotent!

All the superheros got their "grim n gritty" wild oats out of their system in the late eighties, early nineties. But not Santa.
Its all pre-ironic fifties wholesomeness for Old Saint Nick. And the melting polar ice caps have REALLY hurt his property values.
So finally the fat fuck just snapped, and turned his toy making machinery into hurricane creating dealers of death. There are rumors he smuggled arms into the Middle East to fund this monstrosity, but Michael Moore is still checking his sources on that one.

Santa has decided to go all Shiva on us.
Santa am become death.
The destroyer of worlds.

Kill em all, says Santa.
Let Fema sort em out.

Brownie, you got out while the gettin was good.

Comments: Read 33 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	FACE OFF
Time:	1:06 pm.
Music:	billy idol - eyes without a face.

Everyone I know has fantastical celebrity stories.

How they used to babysit for, met up with, hung out with, slept with, fought with, were next door neighbors to, or just palled around with various famous and/or important people. Bar fights. Seedy motel room encounters. AA meeting bondings. Cocaine swapping solidarities.
Save myself.

When it comes to the fabulously wealthy, influential, or well known, my experiences are quite tame. Even the pseudo celebrities who I have come in contact had to slip down a few rungs from their already unenviable position on the collective consensus of tabloid self worth.

So in a true tribute to banality, here are my biggest celebrity moment:
Getting my picture taken with that guy who played "Face" on the A-TEAM.

See what I mean? I couldnt even fit Murdock into my social calender. Forget having George Peppard stop over for Thanksgiving, or Mister T over for a tupperwear party.
It was some half assed auto show, that tauted all of your favorite tee-vee show gadgets, cars, and paraphernalia.
On the whole it was quite a disappointment. First off, the A TEAM van that they promised wasn't even the correct color. It was just your run of the mill grey van, with nothing at all special about it. If there wasn't a poorly constructed banner rumply announcing "The official A TEAM VAN!!!" I would have thought the caterers had simply decided to park in the civic center. Kit from KNIGHT RIDER wasn't that impressive either. I guess I expected to be able to talk to the car. I was young, so the notion of artificially intelligent cars were well within my scope of reason. Made a hell of a lot more sense than how David Hasslesoff got to be an international celebrity and actually threw a concert on the Berlin Wall.

Either way, Face was going to be there. For those of you innocent to the pop cultural landscape of the mid eighties, all you need to know about the A Team is that they were four vietnam vets wrongly accused of yada yada, and now they wandered around helping out the little guy whenever they ran into them. They also shot magic bullets that couldnt hit the broad side of a barn at point blank range. They could also build anything from the contents of a metal lunch box and an alarm clock.
Mister T had a fear of flying, yet would foolishly eat or drink anything offered to him while he ranted and raved about not wanting to fly, even though each week they poison him and drag his fool pitying carcass on board.

Face was the token "good looking" guy. As long as your tastes tend to favor JC PENNY khaki slack models. He looked like a slightly less radioactive George Hamilton. He didnt really seem to have a personality, but boy could he wow the ladies. How this would come in handy in some paramilitary capacity is never fully explained. When the shit hits the fan you really want that guy whose ass looks just so in dockers pleated pants, and want to die with the knowledge that the guy laying bleeding next to you got a hell of a lot more action in his lifetime than you.
Maybe you could ride his coat-tails into handsome man's heaven, at least.

Then again, really wasn't all that good looking. It was just written into the show that he was irresistible to the ladies. He would bed farmer's daughters or dress up in a suit and wander around aimlessly in mansions filling the rest of the team with information about locations and what not, all the while displaying as much charisma as a paper towel dispenser.
At least Murdock had the power of insanity on his side.

But he was at the civic center. Allowing people to drag in their kids or their confused elderly to get pictures next to him. We arrived late and Face had someplace to be. Probably had to bleach his skin or try and iron out those crow's feet that looked like the fancy footwork of one thousand ravens next to his hollow eyes.

Face was a sport, though, and fit a ten second photo op into his busy schedule. Despite his Soap Opera understudy looks, he took some time out for the little guy.
I was the littlest guy around. And I was unfortunately going through some uniquely child logic driven phase where I decided my smile wasn't as big as it could be. The solution? Curl the top lip up against the teeth! The end result were a year's worth of pictures making me look like some sort of pasty white rat boy.
Seeing that smile warming up, I guess face thought it was the least he could do for this little blond haired rodent child who was probably dragged out of the cellar for the off chance of seeing the mudflaps for the original BIGFOOT monster truck.

Outside of this? I got Mo Tucker's autograph and drunkenly asked John Vanderslice to throw away my trash.
He was a sport and dutifully threw away my empty Gatorade bottle and cigarette pack. Vanderslice 'o life.

Ok. Let's see what you guys got.
The seedier, the better.

Comments: Read 66 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	OOOHHHH POSSUM!!!
Time:	12:07 pm.
Music:	toadies - oppossum kingdom.

Looking out at the body laying motionless in the street my heart sank.
My knees felt wobbly.
A dry electrical fire ran up the back of my neck, and settled in the base of my skull.

I thought it was the body of Kip, the little stray I feed.
I can't bring him inside because he fights with the other kitties, and wants to get up on Chili.
But who doesn't.

On closer inspection it turned out to be an Opossum. I felt bad for the poor critter, but was quite relieved it wasn't my outdoor cat.
It was a big one.
It was over a foot long. Its body didnt look like it was hit by a car, or at least it wasn't mangled. Its jaws lay open like the world's deadliest greater than sign. I had to marvel at something that eats nothing but garbage could have such clean teeth. Maybe its a marsupial thing?

I ran inside and grabbed a trash bag. Might as well take care of this now, before some yahoo in a pick em up truck decides to splatter it all over the road. The closer I got, the weaker my resolve became. Look at those teeth! It could wrap its whole jaws around my throat. Maybe this is a trap... maybe it is some killer opossum, who now has a taste for human flesh. Or the rabies. Or that Peter Jackson DEAD ALIVE rat monkey virus. This would be a perfect way for it to lure in prey.
I stepped forward, bag extended, and I could have sworn I saw it sneak a furtive breath.
There was no way I was going after it now.
I mean, they don't call it "playing opossum" for nothing!

So I left it there. Surely someone would come and get it. If nothing else, one of the endless stream of 'necks across the street will just scoop it up for some old family recipe. No need for fresh vittles like that to go to waste.

The next day driving home from work I noticed it was still there. I drove toward it, careful not to hit it. As I drove toward it, a thick wad of flies angrily took flight. It was a veritable storm of bloated bodies and buzzing wings.
Flies, filled to the brim with raw meat, tend to float with a certain mechanical lethargy. They would emerge, angry at first, then would slowly settle back down, like the contents of a dark gothic snow globe after one solid shake.

Stepping out of my car the scent smacked me right in the face. It was nearly overpowering at thirty paces. I went inside and tried calling animal control, who weren't picking up their phone. The cats were meowing loudly at the front door. I went to check on them and they were sniffing under the door. They then looked up at me and beseeched me with their little voices to do something about that smell.
I had to do something.

Opening the front door I noticed several little kids, with slingshots, shooting at the lifeless body. Thats a great idea. Try to rupture it, kids. The stench really isnt as pungent as I want it.
There really is an untapped reservoir of pure, unadulterated evil behind the dark coal of little boys' eyes.
"Hey! Gowangetouttahereyoustoopidkids!"
They scampered off. I wagged my cane and clicked my tongue at their hasty departure.

Every few seconds an insect would dive bomb my face. As if there were sentries around to protect the insects prize. It was a regular invertebrate Lalapalooza over there. By this time tomorrow, under the harsh glare of a ripe Florida sun, the poor thing would be so covered in maggots that it would resemble a writhing bag of spastic spaghetti-ohs.

My neighbor walked up, picked up his trash can and looked out into the street. I did the same.
We locked eyes, nodded, and moved toward it.
"Ok, chief, here's the deal. I will scoop it up with this trash can lid and you hold the trash can open."
"Let me hose it down a bit first."
He turned the hose to it, sending the insects scattering to the four winds.

The scent seemed to die down, then return with renewed fury.
"Alright...one...two...three....go!"
We rushed it. The trash can lid had barely touched its backside, lifting the dead weight up a few feet when the nausea hit.

"HUUUHHHHNNNN!!!! URRRGH...UH...ACK! GURGLE...."
It felt like someone was trying to pull out my stomach. Through my throat.
"I can't believe you talked me into this. I got a weak stomach."
"Man up, Ace. This is only going to get worse if we dont get it."

We lunged at it again, followed by more gagging, coughing, and fleeing the site pitched over.
A long string of saliva congealed in the corner of my open mouth, and slowly descended, like a dew drenched spider dangling from a web after an early morning rainshower.

Strategies altered. Tactics changed.
We would now scoop it into the trash can, then into the trash bag.

Steeling myself, I did what I always do in unpleasant circumstances. I turned it into a broadway musical.

"Ohh possum! Nooo possum!
Those gases in your stomach sure have blossomed!
What happened? What kind of trouble you been gettin?
Is that poison in your small intestine?"

Spotlight the kickline, softshoe midgets dance out in top hats and walking sticks, dressed up like little furries until they run onto the back of a fat man in a gray costume with a long ropey tail...

"URRRRR...UUUGHHHHH...AACKK...UHH...URRRRRGGHHHLLLEEEEE!!!!!!!"
Somewhere in the swatting of insects, running around, arms flailing, stomachs churning, heads turned away, open mouths attracting flies, we got the smelly thing in the trash can. Phase one completed.

I hold trash can and tilt it, into the trash bag. My neighbor squeals and runs away gagging.
I decide to take the trash bag.
"This is it man. Get it IN THE BAG! WHATEVER IT TAKES! RAH, etc!"

Deep breaths held, we run at it. I hold the bag open, he tilts the trash can. It falls forward, head first. In mid transit the intestines uncoil from the loose housing of its ribcage. It lands into the bag, sure and true.
I scream and stumble forward, tripping over the curb, and nearly pass out, trash bag in hand, like some seedy deep South Santa violently on the nod.

Mission accomplished, my neighbor goes inside. Leaving me literally holding the bag. Trash has already been collected for the week. I can't leave it outside. The stench from the bag is already sufficient to rally the insect hoards to their buzzing, intrusive business. I am going to have to get rid of this, post haste.
I light up a cigarette, throw the bag in the trash can, and begin my way down the street. Crackhead bicyclists give me a wide path, as I stumble down the street with my smelly cargo, trailing a small cloud of flies like that smelly character from Charlie Brown.

At a full sprint I take across the busy four lane street, garbage can held at arm's length, to dodge the smell. I finally find a dumpster behind a bank and toss it in, flies noisily rattling inside the plastic.

On the way back down the street the sun hangs directly overhead, seemingly feet above the ground like some amoral, all seeing eye of some long neglected god. Whizzing across the surface I notice huge bugs in mid hunt. The dinnerbell of the dragonflies has been rung, as they dive bomb, strafe and swoop up their newfound bounty, a miniaturized dogfight painted in the washed out orange brushstrokes of a West Texas mural.

Comments: Read 52 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	THE BIG THREE OOOOH.
Time:	12:37 pm.
Music:	they might be giants - older.

Ok, so I turn 30 this week. I know this is an arbitrary number, and if I wasn't cognizant of it, it would be just another day.
But I know about it, and didn't think I would make it this long, so it is mildly daunting.

To keep myself from running out and putting another mortgage on my house to get a candy apple red convertible, I will make a short list of the things that I am thankful for. Or at least appreciative of.

* I have a full head of hair.
I got it at the wig shop. I fashion it over the large bald patches of my own mis-shapen skull. Most of it is human. At least the smell is mildly human...

* I have a beautiful trophy wife.
She should be here any time now, post office willing. People talk trash about Soldier of Fortune magazine's classified section, but it has its merits. Hopefully it will be a real woman this time. Sorry, Boris, but the whole tuck method can only be ignored so long. Until your boys swing free and our testes smack together like one of those trinkets on psychiatrist's desks, really.

* I have my health.
Well, with the exception of my thyroid. And herniated disk. And the sciatica. And the constant muscle spasms in my back that keep me in constant pain. High cholesterol. Lactose intolerance. Sway back. Flat feet. Strange blackouts. Screaming fits. Night terrors. And that strange itch...you know, down THERE.
But other than that I am healthy as an ox.
Or at least a wet yak.

* I own my own house.
Sure, its not the Ritz, and the plumbing sucks, and there is a hole in the drain field, and there is strange areas which havent been cleaned since Truman was in office, and the neighborhood isnt so great, and the backyard is a jungle, and there is some malevolent entity that attacks me in my dreams which looks like some large shadow type creature that could actually eat my soul. But I do have a roof over my head. Which I own.
Which puts a roof over my cat's heads. It also puts a roof over the head of those raccoon beasts that eat up my insulation. And appeases the shadow monster enough that he can gain the soul sustaining nutrients he needs from sucking psychic material frock cucharachas in the attic.
If you think those buggers don't have soul you have never seen them dance on a hot sidewalk.

* I have an enriching social life.
Most of the homeless and crackheads know me on a first name basis, and don't even try to panhandle from me anymore. Well, Kenny does, but he has that whole crying schtick he needs to keep up. And those looks from Juwanna the street walker have gone from pity and disgust to something akin to mild interest in the last few weeks.
Score!

* I have a fulfilling career.
As soon as I persuade myself that I am some swinging super agent with charm, wit, and kung fu excellence to spare instead of some simple, work a day data entry clerk and furniture mover arounder putter togetherer.

See?
Everythin's comin up roses, ace.

Comments: Read 58 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	THE DAY OF ANNIHILATION FOR ALL THE WHOREHOUSE NATIONS
Time:	10:33 am.
Music:	system of a down - sad statue of liberty.

Annihilation Annie loves her cigarettes.
Most paranoid schizophrenics do. There is a disproportionately high incident of cigarette smoking amongst their ranks.

In her more lucid moments she will ask kindly for one. She will then inform you how hard it is for her to hold on to them, because THEY always come and steal them from her whenever she gets a pack. They apparently love the smooth, refreshing taste of tobacco. I wonder if They can get cancer? Emphysema?
Can the faceless, malevolent collective actually suffer the insular effects of the individual? Does it give Their offspring birth defects? Or is that what their denizens always so cranky?

She will then begin to ramble, in a speech well rehearsed, until her voice begins to trail off into an indistinct whisper, as if the audio track worn out from constant use.
This is when she isnt screaming about the end of the world.

She told my friend Ian that I was from the future.
And very methodical.

Which could certainly explain my reticence and precision of movement. You try going through your day haphazard knowing that your every action could alter the space time continuum in ways you could never dream possible.
That I was also a "bottle prop" baby.
Which I thought was mere fancy until another friend told me that this was something real, that in the fifties they had a device, for the housewife on the go, too whacked out on benzedrine and legalized speed to remember all the little details, babies being quite tiny, so that the mother could put milk in a bottle, attach it to the side of the crib, so junior could just roll over and satiate the demands of their oral fixation without all the tricky and time consuming task of human interaction.
Which would lower the amount and ability to produce, serotonin in the brain.
Breeds sociopathic behaviors, lack of empathy for others. Trouble with social etiquette.
Thrill seeking as a form of comfort.

When the mood strikes her Annie becomes the righteous fist of god, knocking loudly on the window pane of the unsuspecting populace. Her voice becomes gravel, a shade away from Linda Blair in full possession.
"OTTO, THE GOD OF WAR" hangs just around the horizon. He is an angry Roman god.
They are always Romans. They are always angry.
I wonder if she has heard of Philip K. Dick's delusions about the Black Iron Prison.

Today is the last day.
"IT IS THE DAY OF ANNIHILATION FOR ALL THE WHOREHOUSE NATIONS!!!"
As far as raving eschatologists go, Annie waxes on the shores of the poetic.

When she takes her meds she sometimes talks to the regular patrons downtown.
"Its not so easy with all these voices in your head" she explains.
They take her over and make her scream at random strangers about the war machine and impending doom. She also seems to like to sit right next to my car. Perhaps it is my time machine.
About time Honda got on the ball.

One has to wonder about the correlation between isolation and repression in mental illness. Why are all the voices always angry? Why they beseech the chosen to yell and scream? To hurt themselves and others?
Why dont they ever tell people to go feed kittens, plant daisies? Why don't they tell them to clean up their act, to shape up, and fly right?
Maybe the gods are inefficient puppet masters. Their marionettes can only pitch about and ramble, their ventriloquism only audible in the range of loud and angry.
If only you could watch and see if their mouths really moved, or if they at least had gotten something right.

Comments: Read 25 or Add Your Own.