WRITINGS FROM THE RODENTS OF THE UNDERGROUND
VOLUME UNO, ISSUE NO. TRES
(c) 1997, All rights reserved to the writers; the members of the Gopher Society and no one else.
Read it, print it, DON'T tinker with it or I'll send over my trench-coated friend
with the beret and perverse smile to eye you until your skull implodes.
LAVAR EN LAVADORA CON AGUA FRIA.
....and don't you forget it.

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Editor of this Fine and Dandy Kick-Ass E-Zine: REWIRED

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-Kick-Ass Stuff Written by-
-Those Other People Whose Names Are-
THE GREAT OMINCHANNING
NOBODY IN PARTICULAR
THE GLASS BUTTERFLY
THE CIB MAN
THE TIN MAN
DR. SHITFACE
RUE ATHA
MR. G

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THE KICK-ASS TABLE OF CONTENTS

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THE EXHILARATING KICK ASS EDITORIAL	by REWIRED
(A STORY THAT MR. G. LOST THE TITLE TO)	by THE GREAT OMINCHANNING
THE SEMI-ADVENTURE OF ARUGALABOB	by MR G.
APOCRAPHIA OF UNFINISHED CRAPPY POETRY, PART I	by REWIRED
THE ADVENTURES OF KUNG FU GRAND MASTER MELVIN	by DR SHITFACE
STARE	by THE GLASS BUTTERFLY
MR. CORN	by THE TIN MAN
ARGYLE SOCKS AND FLANNEL	by THE GLASS BUTTERFLY
UNTITLED	by NOBODY IN PARTICULAR
CUMBERSOME	by REWIRED
COMMITMENT	by THE GLASS BUTTERFLY
A MATHEMATICAL PROOF	by ANONYMOUS as found by MR. G.
MODERN AGE PARANOIA	by REWIRED
ONE TO ANOTHER	by RUE ATHA
?	by THE GREAT OMINCHANNING
THREE UNTITLED	by THE CIB MAN
I SHOULD REALLY STOP WRITING COOKY STORIES AND GO TO BED	by REWIRED
DEATH	by THE GREAT OMINCHANNING

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"This is precisely the sort of thing that people who like this sort of thing will like.."

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THE EXHILARATING KICK-ASS EDITORIAL
by Rewired

Why, hello. Guess what? I got a damn car. I also got a job, the first one in two years, where I work for an old decrepit woman that looks like Yoda turned to The Dark Side. The damn lady cannot be nice, even to a nervous high school senior in flannel that's trying oh so desperately to please the evil little gremlin. But hey, that's society for ya. If it was my choice, I'd write and draw all day (well, other than a job and schooling and hanging around with my friends at coffee shops, that is all I do, but that's not the damn point here). Anywho, we've got a shmo of new writers this issue, even more than last time, which is kick ass. I even got Ominchanning, a good friend of mine, to write for this zine even though he made his own zine because, and I quote, he didn't "like the title." We're gonna swap writings between me and him. We're even gonna publish a few versions of a story we wrote together about a year and a half ago.

But now, for a change of taste, I will dump upon you *REWIRED'S UPDATE ON HIS CURRENT STANCE IN LIFE*. Guess what's just in sight in the foggy mists of the future? New Different Stuff! What's going on right now? I'll tell you. Same old incense. Same old drawings. Same old story. Same old conspiracy. Same old philosophy. Same old house. Same old room. Same old bed. Same old floor. Same old walls. Same old ceiling. Same old feeling. Same old emotion. Same old coffee. Same old aftertaste in my mouth. Same old face staring back in the mirror. Same old hair. Same old anxiety. Same old paranoia. Same old insomnia. Same old obsessions. Same old ignorance. Same old songs on the radio. Same old tapes. Same old CDs. Same old chapped lips. Same old lies. Same old dreams. Same old falling into alternate planes of existence. Same old insanity. Same old bitching. Same old shit. Same old words to type on paper. Same old malfunctioning brain. Same old computer. Same old classes. Same old changing. Same old aging. Same old absence of control. Same old lack of motivation. Same old loss of direction. Same old basic disorientation. Same old fears. Same old hope. Same old let down. Same old desires. Same old yearning. Same old stance. Same old hate. Same old planet. Same old world. Same old universe. Same old planes of existence. Same old multiverse. Same old multimultiuniverse. Same old multimultimultiverse ad infinitum. Same old religious dipshits. Same old atheism. Same old agnosticism. Same old witchcraft. Same old Occult. Same old drugs. Same old cravings. Same old stinky feet. Same old attracting odd odors like Fruit Loops and Broccoli. Same old jokes. Same old whining. Same old blabbering. Same old same old. Same old questioning. Same old emptiness causing my soul to implode. Same old rotting inside. Same old fervent search for useless truth. Same old despising the bullshit that makes my worlds. Same old movies. Same old TV. Same old lying, deceiving, arrogant, power corrupted control-freak governments. Same old greetings. Same old farewells. Same old loose thoughts. Same old paralyzing phobias. Same old same old same old same old same olds. Same old wanting more but not knowing more of what. Same old state of uncertainty. Same old boredom. Same old severe ARGness. Same old GIR. Same old depleting OYE. Same old going WAH. Same old toadshit-for-brain wannabes. Same old assholes feeding the elite. Same old psychotronic massmind enforced by extraterrestrial devices inserted into the brains of abductees. Same old government using its people and guinea pigs. Same old ignorance of all mankind. Same old ex-girlfriends. Same old horrid feeling when you set down a cup of coffee for a second, pick it up a second later and sip it only to find out that it wasn't today's cup of coffee you picked up but some month-old coffee cup that you left there to get frigid and moldy. Same old damn sister playing her damn flute in her damn room. Same damn cockateils squawking at me. Same ninny noises I honk back at those damn birds. Same old clinging to the edge of sanity, ready to fall off at any moment. Same old remembrances of remembrances of vivid flashback hallucinations. Same old same old same old same old same old same old same old same old same old same old same old ad infinitum. Same damn beautiful women five feet in front of me, same damn urge and same damn subconscious voice chanting over and over, "dipshit! You know your too fucking nervous!" and same damn me listening. Same old fingers typing the same old words on the same old computer. Same old consistent and nagging regrets. Same old mysteries never to be solved. Same old people who somehow scare the living crap out of me for no reason. Same old eye sex. Same old past lives. Same old psychic disturbances. Same old alien abductions. Same old RAR! RAR! RAR! RAR! RAR! RAR! RAR! RAR! RAR! RAR! Same old needle twisted relentless thoughts into my befuddled and already-twisted mind, causing me to do... nothing. Same old Secrets of the Universe that don't make a lick of sense. Same old Nothing behind Everything. Same old Man creating his gods to create Man. Same old ruthless astral entities escaping out your Mental plane through the whole in your head, than out your shadow were they suck your aura dry. Same old Huh? Same old What's on second base. Same old dskkshnudinetnsasfgyjlodvb, but only on Wednesdays between 8 and 4 am. Same old too many puppies. Same old Nothing else matters. Same old eldering sameness. Same old mental conflictions causing a sudden compulsion to write things such as this sadistic bullshit. Same old walking downstairs late at night in socks in the front room to watch an old video tape only to find the dog peed about four gallons right in the spot where you decided to step. Same old itchy ass. Same old lazy asses like me pissing me off. Same old hypocrisy. Same old SNIFFLE YEEKP NARGLEFLIPPLE VON VAGINASPLORB. Same old wondering just what the fuck that meant. Same old Yon! Von krubio elk saditos bron bloodcravenodle! Same old old old old old sameness. Same old constant change. Same old RIGHT BRAIN - LEFT BRAIN. Same old everything, but then again its still changed. Like I said before, I got a job. I hate those damn things, they suck the life out of you like a leech... ooo, which reminds me, I wrote about a leech in this issue.... Anyway, about the other stuff other than my new job which sucks: It's all changed. All is new. We've got not a good, not a better, but one hell of a kick-ass (extra large) paper. We've got a shmo of new characters writing for us. All kick ass.

And with that thought and this third issue, I will shut the bloody fuck up.

It Started in the deep, dark, really, deep, deep, deep, dark caves of the really mean and nasty and very, very bad Hogandalash tribe. Actualy the Hogerdabash tribe has been extinct for 300 thousand, million, kizilion weeks. Having been all executed by Picantantantanto the great conqueror from across the realy deep, deep, blue sea. Well back to the present. Well actualy when you read this it won't be the present because I'm writing it right now it will be the futer or your past. Unless you read this aggin but then it will be your present. Oh danginit, thuis is gittin pretty hog darned confusicating. I probably shuld quit will I's still sane. Well back to the story. Well not realy back to the story this is all part of the story that you are reading right now, NO!! your not reading it now cause i'm just now writing itt and how can tyou be reading what i'm just writing wile i'm writing it and there is no one in the room wit me. Less yer a gost . But gosts can't read can they. Well if yur reading this I gues yous is a ghost and that twoult mean gosts can to read. Unless your invisible. Althogh if yous wus invincible I would here your breathing and feel your rancid breath. (I'm writing in a reeeaaallly cramped offeece). But this to can be circumvented if you are intangible and silent.( or also if your intangible and din't breath(in wich case you would probably suffocate before I finish the writing of this(Then I would probably trip over your limp body and break my neck when I finnish writing and get up.))) If then you are all these things what then would make you different from most ghosts? I don't like this

I QUIT !!!!!

Ha! yous never ever git me ta writ agin so yous evil eeys kin rede it.

No! I can't stop. IEAHHAEHHYYAEA............

Funny things happen that way. ArugalaBob looked down over the cliff. Like all good cliches go, it was a long way down. Kinda like the song. He knew something bad might come from that. What was he thinking? A new spiffy secret language seemed to be such a groovy idea. Why were people chasing him now because of it? Was it because he was such a charming personality that it caught on the way it did? Naw, he was just an average joe, or in this case, ArugalaBob. Maybe, it was something about the way the word 'Pipe' rolled of the tongue. It was such a silly idea to use that word to describe everything groovy in one syllable. All of his demented collegiate-type friends thought it was pretty groovy. They started using it, adding to it. Heck, before long, it was a cohesive language. Everywhere ArugalaBob went, people started greeting him with a nice, sincere 'Pipe!'. Maybe it was because he was the only ArugalaBob in the tri-state area... It was simple, it was fun. ArugalaBob was proud of his accomplishment. It's not every day somebody starts a new language and gets away with it...

Anyways, ArugalaBob was cool with the whole scene. He even chuckled a bit when the new language started to show up in the school newspaper in some of the editorials. After a while, seeing 'Pipe' in that newspaper became a common occurrence. There was nothing wrong with that. It was all good clean fun, right? It must have been a lot of fun, since the 'Pipe Talk' as it was now being called, started to show up in the local daily papers, and some of the boring news shows, too. You know, another funny thing happened, too. All of ArugalaBob's computery-type friends started using it in the internet chat rooms. Pipe Talk caught on there, too... isn't technology wonderful? Soon, Pipe Talk was spreading out all over the globe. People were even able to hold coherent conversations in it. Men and women from many countries around the world could have conversations and communicate and such.

All was peachy, sort of. The good ol' US government finally caught onto this Pipe Talk trend and decided to do something about it. After that big Ebonics flap, they couldn't bear to have something like that happen again. So they tracked down the creator of Pipe Talk to stop the plague at its source. Amazingly, they found ArugalaBob. So, like any good self-respecting government, they sent out the army. They soon found ArugalaBob.

Now, that brings us back to the cliff. The 42nd Paratrooper division found ArugalaBob and chased him out to the cliff. Naturally, they would come at an indecent hour, say, oh, 6 in the morning. ArugalaBob wasn't a morning person. The paratroopers cornered ArugalaBob in his PJ's up on the cliff. They drew closer and closer. He decided to try to ease the tension mounting, with those troops moving towards him with lots of pointy things...

He said, "Pipe?"

Maybe that wasn't the smartest thing to say...

In the moldy field they grow
Amidst the red rain and yellow snow
Across the feild and up the oak
They light my fire as you yank my rope
_____________________________________

Scream at, kill, yell at me so I know what you meant
Fuck me, fuck you, lets burn the government
_____________________________________

staring deep into eyes so cold
in a soul that must be centuries old
the cold I see in you you is a refelction of me
you help me see what I shouldn't see
the way this rips and tears at my brain
is enough to drive a madman sane
tonight I sip this coffee
and take a drag of this cigarette
traveling back in sweet misery
to such memorable regrets
I keep seeing you there
on that couch
_____________________________________

A face ground in the mud
A shadow stained with blood
A truth coated with lies
A mask covering a disguise
A broken watch on the ground
A dead clock in the sky
Tears on my shoes and dust in my eyes
Running but I'm paralyzed
I see nothing when I look in your eyes
______________________________________

At a time when delusions haunted me
and a paranoia had left me bleeding
you took me in your arms and drank me
______________________________________

You draw from others
you can't find you without
being someone else
can't be independent
can't be creative
can't be anything
can't be me
without drawing from
someone.
______________________________________

Janitor boy, janitor boy
mopping, cleaning, thinking boy
______________________________________

I sit here watching you drink
as you sit there watching me bleed
sometimes I miss you
more than I miss me.
______________________________________

I fell asleep and went home today
the world inside my head.

Kung Fu Grand Master Melvin went to the store to buy eggs. Suddenly, a gang of bikers came in and tried to steal beer. Melvin jumped up on isle four and began throwing canned foods at them. He did army rolls and Ninja jumps and kicked the leader in the face, breaking his neck and killing him.

"That's what you get for steeling beer," said Melvin.

"Thank you," said the store keeper.

"Where are the eggs?" Said Melvin.

"We're out." Replied the raghead.

Melvin karate chopped the man in the nose. Death was instantaneous.

Melvin, in search of eggs, went walking down city streets. Men with badges began chasing him and shoot at him. Quickly, he climbed up the nearest telephone pole and chummied across a stop light. With men still shooting at him, Melvin dropped down through the roof of a semi truck. He beat the truck driver's face into the window 17 times until both the window and face were well broken, and he threw the man out. Melvin then floored it, and ran over all 36 men in badges.

Our Kung Fu hero got out of the truck. He did back flips to the nearest convenient and jumped through the front window.

He stood up and brushed off the glass.

"Where are the eggs?" Asked Melvin.

"We're out." Said the manager.

Melvin readied his fist and muttered: "This is going to be a long day."

ACT I SCENE I: [October, 1929, in a rural area outside of Lincoln, Nebraska. It is night out and crickets can be heard. Away to the west, the lights of Lincoln glow smokily in the night. RATCLIFFE, about thirteen years old, faces them. FATHER emerges from the house and surveys the corn fields and then walks to the boy.]

FATHER: The stock market...

RATCLIFFE: I know. What are we going to do? All that money... All gone...

FATHER: Hey, it's not our cash. I didn't have anything in that market. We haven't lost a penny, I'm sure of it. In fact, I just dug our life savings up from the barn floor and it's all still there.

RATCLIFFE: But no one else has any money. They won't be able to buy anything from us whether or not we have money. We'll go broke too.

FATHER: [Reaches into his pocket and pulls out a few Mercury head dimes.] See these? This is "money". It doesn't do a man any good. It's worthless but for the grace of Uncle Sam.

RATCLIFFE: [shakes his head] But it's not worthless. It's all backed up with gold.

FATHER: Gold? It doesn't do a man any good either. He can't eat it, he can't breathe it and unless he's King Solomon, he can't make a house out of gold. No, son, there's only one type of money in the world, and that's commodities. Look out on this field. What do you see? Corn and corn and more corn. It doesn't care about a Stock Market; it'll keep right on growing and we'll go right on harvesting. It's what we've got and it's what everybody else is going to want when they start to tighten their belts. [Gestures out to the corn.] We're living in Fort Knox, son. This is the new money.

RATCLIFFE: The corn?

FATHER: [Jingles the dimes in his hand.] There's one thing that this money here has got over corn. If you give it to a man, he can't go out and plant it in the ground and grow more. But corn... If you pay a man in corn just once, he won't need you any more. Unless he's a fool, he can grow his own, and that's no good.

RATCLIFFE: Isn't... isn't there some way so that he can't grow any more?

FATHER: Sure... But how?

SCENE II: [November now, inside the barn. Corn is piled high from the reaping. It is nighttime once again and FATHER comes to the barn. The lighting is poor and we barely see silhouettes.]

FATHER: [Takes a bag of corn and dumps it out onto a table.] How to make it not grow? [Lifts something heavy.] Well here's how... [He proceeds to slam the object, apparently a rock or some such other item, onto the table. He repeats this over and over. He stops then and runs his hands through the pulverized corn. He opens the bag again and sweeps the pieces into it, tying the sack after they are all in. He heaves it into a corner.] Corn meal. [He reaches for another bag.]

SCENE III: [Still November of 1929, but outside a store. The road is, as in all epics about the Great Depression, invariably dusty. The dust sticks to everything, once again, as it usually does in tales about the thirties. FATHER and RATCLIFFE emerge from a first generation pick-up truck. In the back, sacks of corn meal are stacked high and for some reason a few planks are thrown in for good measure. In the store window, prices are seen to have been recently marked up quite a bit.

[It's day and the store and the pick-up need painting. The two go inside the store.]

SCENE IV: [Same day, but seconds later. The inside of the store is nice and neat, of course. The shelves are pretty bare, but beyond that, it seems like an ordinary day. A newspaper on a rack cries out in the typical headline eloquence and panicky over-statement: "STOCKS DOWN!".

[FATHER approaches the counter, which the store owner is minding. His name is WINSTON. He's wearing a cowboy hat and looks none too happy. FATHER, by the way, isn't wearing a hat.]

FATHER: Mornin', Winston.

WINSTON: Very observant. [Sits up. (He has been slouching...)]

FATHER: You expect to get hit hard by this stock thingie that happened in New York?

WINSTON: [incredulous] The economy just crumpled! Everybody is broke! Of course I expect to be "hit hard". [Takes off his cowboy hat and uses it to gesture at FATHER before replacing it.] You should, too. It ain't going to be no easier on you farmers than us store folk.

FATHER: What are you supposed to be? An Okie? Can't you talk like a normal person? Well, anyway, you say that this Market just crashed and now everybody's broke. Right?

WINSTON: [Nods.] Yo.

FATHER: But wasn't everybody rich and high not long ago?

WINSTON: [Nods again and gets up.] That, my friend was the roaring twenties. Those are gone now. [Holds up hands and shrugs defensively.] Hey, I know just as well as other folks that it is still 1929, but for all intents and purposes, the thirties have begun. [Sits down again and repositions his hat.] And the thirties look to be a crappy decade.

FATHER: [Nodding politely.] Oh? Now, I was just wondering about this stock thing. If everybody had money, and now no one has money, where did all the money go?

WINSTON: Well... I don't have much book-learnin'-

FATHER: [puts up hand] You're starting to sound like an Okie again.

WINSTON: Sorry. So, I believe it is called trickle down economics. You see, all the money is supposed to be up in the Market and trickle down a little bit at a time, so that it don't make people crazy. But, in the twenties, the trickle turned into a big, uh, trickle. Like a faucet, see? More money than wasn't supposed to was coming down and it made people pretty much greedy. So they opened the Market up all the way and it crashed.

FATHER: That so?

WINSTON: [emphatically] That's so.

FATHER: So... Winston! I need a new plow. Got one?

WINSTON: 'Course I got plows. The question is: have you got any capital? I'm sorry to have to say it, but nobody's credit is good here no more.

FATHER: Well, now, I don't have any silver if that's the kind of capital you were looking for...

WINSTON: [nods] That's what I thought. Look, I know you need a new plow, but I ain't aiming to run no charity store here.

FATHER: [Gives WINSTON a sarcastic thumbs up gesture] Yeah, okay, Pa Joad. You go. Look, I might not have any currency, but I've got commodities. Understand? Now, if I've got this whole depression idea right, then it seems to me that a lot of folks are going to go hungry before it's up and finished. Now, I'm prepared to trade you a sack of corn meal for that plow. Corn meal, Winston, corn meal.

WINSTON: [weakly] It doesn't seem a very fair trade, does it? You can always grow more corn, but I don't have no plow tree out back...

FATHER: Are you going to grow your own food, Winston?

WINSTON: N-no...

FATHER: Then give me the damn plow so I can grow it for you!

SCENE V: [Minutes later, back in the pick up truck. FATHER is driving (thank God) and RATCLIFFE is a passenger. A plow sits in the back, along with the corn meal and the two by fours.]

RATCLIFFE: Pop?

FATHER: Yo?

RATCLIFFE: That sack of corn meal isn't going to last Mr. Winston very long, is it?

FATHER: [laughs] No, not with his family. But don't you worry, I'm just whetting his appetite. Just whetting his appetite.

SCENE VI: [This is actually a conglomeration of action. It is outside the store and we see FATHER come out the door with a tire pump, and then, in truth days later, with a chair, and then a battery for his truck, and then with a window, then a few cans of paint, and finally with a side of beef. This has taken place over a couple of weeks; it is now January 8, 1930. The scene is the store again. FATHER goes in and the scene changes to the interior.]

WINSTON: [with a mixture of hatred and relief] Ratcliffe...

FATHER: I'm about to make you an offer.

WINSTON: You know the deal, one bag of corn meal, fifteen bucks.

FATHER: That's not what I mean. Not that kind of offer.

WINSTON: Oh, well. If you ain't going to make me an offer, every other farmer in town will. I have to beat them off with a stick and seeing as I sure as hell don't got enough supplies for everybody and I sure as hell don't need much more corn meal than I get from you all.

FATHER: I want to buy the store.

WINSTON: Ain't no amount of corn meal able to do that.

FATHER: You should know by now, Winston, that you can't buy items from the cities with food. They want money. You've got none. Pretty soon, you'll have nothing worth buying. What then? They'll be no corn meal and no wheat or hogs or whatever else they're all paying you in.

WINSTON: [licks lips] What's you offer, then?

FATHER: I buy the store at the price of one bag of corn meal.

WINSTON: HA! You're insane! I'd rather starve with the store than without it!

FATHER: A week.

WINSTON: Eh?

FATHER: For five years. That comes to roughly 260 bags of meal, or in your reckoning, $3900. I doubt that you'll find a better price than that. From anyone.

WINSTON: I don't know...

FATHER: You can still man the store if you like and I don't aim to kick your family out of the upstairs. Come on, Winston, I'll feed you. I swear it. I'll feed your family before I feed my own.

You would think after two thousand years, humanity could separate itself from social boundaries. If I don't wear argyle socks and plad minis, I can't go into Yuppie Central. And if they don't wear black boots, relaxed jeans, and smelly flannels, they can't come to my coffee shop. Bullshit. I don't like wearing colored grease on my face so I'm not cool in nice dance clubs. Bullshit. So, I'm gonna be me, and they're gonna be them and that ain't gonna change. So we might as well just deal with it, get over it, and get used to it. It has to stop being a contest or misery is eternal and inevitable.

The force of reality hit me and hit me hard about two years ago. I suddenly realized that everyone has the same problems and same needs. The difference is that we deal with them differently depending on their importance to us. When this hit me I thought, "Cool, my life might actually start going the right direction." Guess what? I was wrong. That alone isn't pointing me in the right direction. It just helps me tolerate a lot of things most people would not. Unfortunately, it has also made me weak when it comes to making decisions and having the courage to stand up for myself when others let me ...... that I didn't live up to their standards. I would always think, what the hell? What's her problem? Why does she backstab me then talk nicey-nice to me the next time she sees me? Next time she does that I'll kick butt. No, I'll just bitch her out. Actually, maybe I'll just talk to her. @%#! You know what I'll end up doing? NOTHING. That's it. Absolutely nothing. I sit and dismiss her mockery. I just rationalize it as this: she just has problems that she deals with the best she knows how. I ignore her think nothing of it... until later when I'm sitting in my room rethinking my shitty day.

I'm remembering her now. Like down at the Ledges. Loved that place, the Ledges. I keep seeing her walking, pacing, smoking a cigarette in quick drags down by the Ledges. And it scares me, because although I'm seeing the image as vivid as day in my mind, I don't think it's a memory. It never happened. Maybe its a combination of memories. Or a symbol. I dunno. Maybe both, maybe neither.

I cloud reality so much, living, hiding in this fantasy. I hide in questions and false emotions. I hide in my own fiction. I hide in rampant thoughts. I never take my time, always running on this path of life. No wonder I'm blinded by the wind and blur of the sun and sweat on my face. It makes me fall face first into bullshit many a time. I think in a twisted way I enjoy that. Running blind. It helps me escape reality, escape truth. I escape my personal truths as well as the collective. Ignore portions of myself until I'm all but a void of nothingness, a black hole that sucks me in, a vacuum that causes my mind to implode. I deevolve. Essentially, I decay into death. My body catches up, slowly, in order to ensure my suffering.

Fear is funny. It can be motivational. It can be paralyzing. It can serve your needs, or it can get you entrapped in a wheel of infinitely breeding bullshit that clouds your vision and eats away at your very soul.

I've got many fears -- among them, I seriously think I've grown to fear thinking clearly. If I don't have a computer or a pad of paper and a pen in my hand I can do jack shit for myself mentality-speaking. Otherwise I roam the halls all day dissociating and staring into things at such an intense level some think I'm stoned, and I guess they're right, but I'm only naturally stoned. Stoned on thought. The absence of meaning burdens me. I want a definition, a purpose, an insight that won't leave me blinded and disoriented and paranoid.

I called an old friend tonight. It was nice to hear her voice again, and it brought me back to the times when I heard it all too often. Her face, which I miss as well, used to be a sign of annoyance for me. Things eventually happened for us, but as they usually do: at the wrong time. We saw each other a little bit, and it was on the road to something better than the last time we went out when I stopped hearing from her. Letters halted. The last time I saw her, we talked very little. She never called. I ignored the thought of her, because it confused me. I known her for an entire year and determined she was just a friend, right? It shouldn't change. It wouldn't.

It already had.

Yet it wouldn't go away. So tonight, I called her. When I'd first met her I was in the middle of it all. It was all starting to hit me hard, and I became very disillusioned, depressed, and paranoid. I was working on my comic back then. I remember.

Yet my mind drifts back even farther, before her. I look at the shadows of my past, once so meaningless, and see a maybe-mystery there I've grown to find headaching and annoying, at least at the moment, primarily because I'm annoyed and have a headache. Life's funny that way, kinda like fear.

As I'd taken a look back on my life, it was pretty stupid and boring and uneventful. That's what I'd presumed until about two years ago, when all of a sudden I started having lucid dreams, sometimes super-imposed over the real world with my eyes open.

I grew up in a city-like town. Moved "out in the country" at the beginning of fourth grade and made a few friends. Mel, who now has a kid, and Jay, who is now stoned, and another guy. There were a few scattered acquaintances, but I didn't have any other really close friends until I met this one guy, named after a body area, who I followed around like a puppy and mimicked until high school came along and classes got in the way and I kind of slipped away from everybody I once called my friends. I started mingling with this other crowd kind of by accident, having to sit by someone in art class that wouldn't make me want to claw out my eyeballs. I guess you could call the gist of them the intellectuals, the smart kids. I felt more to myself in this group, not clinging to anyone or trying to be like anyone. Not that I was intellectual. Sure, I couldn't understand what the fuck they were saying and way more than half the time what they said was way over my head, but my muddied vision seemed less annoying and more like a passing joke to them. There was a sense of loneliness inside me, and an odd sort of flower began to bloom within me, to sprout a dementia that would surface later my freshmen year.

I got a nifty comic going, a western. Though it didn't ever really "get going", we had a shitload of really nifty ideas. We got together to work on it but it just became me and Phloyd obsessively trying to put the pieces together while the rest played some Magic (c) card game that I didn't have the brainpower for nor the patience. Soon he,too, was drawn into the card game. The western comic, once my hope for something with meaning, some possibly profitable conduit for the unknown within me, slowly faded out into existence. And also my hope for my own little character. I always wanted my own little character. Like Ziggy or Garfeild or Opus, but different. It was hopeless.

One day, while talking in art with a different girl I was obsessed over and seriously nervous around, I was playing with a gummy eraser, squishing it and molding it. I hardly realized what I was making when someone asked me. I looked at it, and spoke in sync with them what it appeared to be -- a duck.

I had one last attempt with the western comic. Yet one night, at home, I threw my arms up in disgust. Screw it, I said, I quit.

I sat down and drew a duck. No purpose, no plan, no intended storyline. Just, simply, a duck. A fowl. A beaked featherhead. That duck belongs now to a comic that is very special to me, and is sort of a conduit for all the BS that followed one night after drawing some nifty dreams of mine. I had a few flashbacks that kind of threw me off the rocker. It was late, I'd been listening to Tom Petty: Wildflowers, it was right after Christmas, late at night, and I'd been staring into my lava lamp at glanced at a book by H.G. Welles. _War of the Worlds_. Ever hear of it? I used to watch it all the time when I was five. Nevermind.

So, proceeding that night I began drinking large doses of caffeine and taught myself how to survive on two to three hours of sleep. A vivid delusion can give a person motivation like you wouldn't believe. Started drawing a lot more. Writing a lot more. My creativity got a little more bizarre, you could say.

I had a job. I continued to obsess over the girl whose harsh comments had caused me to draw the duck. She's what I would term "the second one", the second obsession of my life. In antichrist standards she'd be Hitler, but she was an addiction that was driving me as mad as my delusions were.

She moved away. I quit my job. Life went on. I wrote a lot more. Drew a lot more. Time passed.

Then she walked into my life, more or less stumbled, symbolically. She, the one I talked to tonight, the one I miss so much. Ah, irony. It's so... I dunno, ironic. The way you look back at times that were once held as so bad when those times were termed the present, but now that you stare back at them as past in your present present you realize how great it had been. Just goes to show how pathetic your present present is. The past is a nifty thing in that it can be whatever we want. We can change it to fit our needs. Of course, the truth is buried within us at all times, recorded and filed within the astral mists of our unconscious. Yet the flicker of memory we dwell on, either to push us forwards or draw us back, can be altered by present perception, enhanced to be bad or good, no matter what it had really felt like at the time in which it occurred.

I was writing a vampiric story once day over a cheap kind of mocha you get by mixing coffee in hot chocolate (a nifty trick Phloyd got me addicted to) as I scarfed down packages of Ritz. This was back when the computer was downstairs in the family room. In a small way it was cool because when I wasn't writing I could shoot some pool or play piano. It was profusely annoying in a massive way because my mom had about forty of those damn cockatiel birds in a flight cage in that room that chirped and squawked every time someone decided it was in their right to breathe.

I was tip-tapping away at my keyboard when I sensed a familiar presence and heard a familiar voice. It was Guitar Guy (sorry, I'm getting addicted to these lame acronyms, deal with me...). He was looking for the it-snows-when-I-headbang Crusty Dude, but I hadn't seen him or smelt him or anything else, which meant he wasn't in a fifty-mile radius.

As I began talking with him, I was struck by an unfamiliar presence. I noticed he had a girl with him I had not ever seen before. She looked attractive (her pink Kool-aid hair made her even more difficult not to notice), but I tried not to show anything. I was intent on not going after a girl just because I found her esthetically pleasing; there had to be some mentality link between us, something I liked about her mind-wise before I decided I liked her. It was just one of those morals I had tried to keep. Guitar Guy introduced me to her. Instantly I was reminded of that girl Claire Danes off My So-Called Life, who I'd found attractive for some time. Actually, I had been wishing for a girl that looked just like her for some time, but I wasn't actually serious...

She (the Claire-lookalike that I'll refer to as Claire) was a fine being, indeed. An odd being, yes, with that shoulder-length pink hair and all, but nonetheless a fine being. She wore one of those weird green shirts with the collar and those little dinosaurs in front. When Guitar-Boy introduced us she kind of had her arms crossed and nodded a sarcastic "hi" with a tilt of her head. Ah, a cocky woman. Anyway, as any conversation with me ever starts on my behalf, I started making fun of her. Yet to my surprise, the attempt at conversation was successful. Well, partially. In a relatively short time she was sitting on my face while Guitar-Boy spellchecked my story.

That particularly Crusty Dude I mentioned before owned a basement in which he played in a band along with Guitar Boy. Well, a day or so after the encounter with Claire, Guitar invited me over to watch them play.

At this particular time I was about fried out due to a night-after-night habit of having close to no sleep and consuming mass quantities of caffeine. Why? I'll be blunt: I was seeing hallucinations that, in a non-drug-induced state, I should not have been seeing. A psychologist would've called me skitzo. A new ager would've called me an alien abductee prone to falling into to alternate states of awareness and abstract planes of existence. A government conspirasist may have labeled me a victim of the government's continuing MKULTRA mind control experiments. I wasn't sure, and I wasn't about to be taken away again, be it government agents or aliens or hallucinations or not. So I stayed up, watched myself and my family. Paranoia drove me, and back then I felt so much more alive. I'd been so mind frizzled and so depressed and felt so real that it was almost a masochistic ecstasy. I drew my best pen drawings during that period, did my best pastel pictures. I wrote my best poems and my writings had deep meaning, and the words flowed from my soul directly to my fingers through the medium of my diseased mind. I didn't even have to think, just place my fingers upon the keyboard. And I didn't care. I cared about nothing. I hated anyone I pleased and didn't feel guilty about it. I doubted everything but myself, but I felt so real. I felt more real than the world. Everything was so lucid, but so disorienting and confusing. Why did I love this so much? I still do not know. All I can say is that I felt more "me."

Well, while I was sitting on that black couch, a familiar face came and sat down beside me in some weird cloths, big boots and funky socks. She had pink hair and was smoking a cigarette. "You know those things kill your lungs." I'd said. She blew smoke in my face, and I nudged her arm, and she nudged me back.

Crap. I liked her.

Claire was there again. Apparently, Guitar-Boy had brought her over to Crusty Dude's house because it was his job to watch over her.

I talked with her off and on that night, just joking around, realizing more and more that I liked her and I began less and less to hate the fact. I mean, why should I despise the fact that I actually liked someone? I should go for it -- yet she had a boyfriend.

Sometime that night a lamp broke in Crusty Dude's living room, and Claire had somehow managed to get some of it in her knee. She ended up with a lampshade over her head. A vision irrelevant to your knowledge of it, but it still floats around in my mind; ah, these pointless things.

That night, Gutair-Boy called me on the telephone. He had liked my cousin, Pat, at the time and since I liked Claire I jokingly asked if we could exchange cousins.

I got off with him, and he called back to ask if he could take me up on that offer, because she had broken up with her boyfriend, Josh Watzizface that kinda looks like Gutair-Boy (that means he had an evil twin around the same time I did... uh, oh yeah, you don't know about that... different story). He gave the phone to her and I talked to her that night. We talked for awhile, and with some aid on her part I ended up asking her out over the phone, something I'd promised myself I would never do again. I'd decided "in person" was more my style (right). Or more the style of a person with courage, an image I'd always wanted but could never live up to.

Still can't.

Anyway, she said yes and the next night we ended up in Crusty Dude's basement making out for (what seemed) two-and-a-half (very relaxing) hours when, in between sucking spit, I realized I didn't know her last name. This disturbed me royally. Every time my one, lower head wanted to do something my other, higher head snaped in the YOU MUST NEVER KILL YOUR LAST BOYSCOUT IMAGE common sense shit and it was starting to piss me off royally.

Then I discovered that she would be moving into my school in a few days. Now I had to walk her to class? I was nervous and paranoid enough during this time. This was not helping matters.

When she came to school the first day, we walked, we kissed, and stuff, and I was as nerotic as hell, as usual. I didn't pull out of constant depression like I thought I would. I thought having her would help me. Then I realized maybe, just maybe, I was using her.

I dumped her a few days later and was almost relieved, not because I was tired of her or because I didn't like her but because having a girlfriend gave me too much to think about. Hell, it gave me something to be happy about. I just couldn't have that. My lonliness has always conforted me. Take that away and what do I get? HAPPINESS? NOW JUST WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU DO WITH THAT?

She cried after she got off the phone with me, and I got that oh-so familiar feeling of regret. She was crying the next morning when she came into school, and I felt more and more like a jerk. An asshole. Or something worse. Even more than usual. I hid in the art room until the first bell rang. All in all, the relationship lasted roughly a week.

The next day or so she ended up going out with a long-haired alien-drawing friend of mine who likes Ouija boards and wears a trench coat named Donny. I was happy for them. I was also jealous and wanted her back. I was afraid she'd never talk to me again. But we began to talk, she gave me the occasional bite of pizza. She became a true friend when she let me borrow money for caffeine (ah, the earlier mooch days..) I figured it was just another nice girl realizing I was a fuckhead but felt sorry enough for me to remain friends with me.

That day, the next day, I dunno when... she called me up to tell me her and Donny weren't working out and that she wanted me back. We spent about three hours or so talking. She was actually begging to have me back. It was scary. What the hell did she see in me?

I found that in many ways me and her are alike, but I really didn't like her in that way. I knew her as a friend and I couldn't see it stretching beyond that.

It may have been fear talking, though.

It didn't end there, as one would probably guess. She went out with my (now ex-)evil twin, Dave around Haloween. Let's say I got the impression at the party that she was still interested.

Me and her weren't even going out. This was my ideal relationship. Why? She was persistent (I admired that). In time I began to admire her. Yet I resisted. I let her slip through my fingers. She went out with a number of my friends until she moved away, then farther away.

As time went on, and she drifted away, I began to desire her more.

Guess it just works that way sometimes, huh? It wouldn't have lasted long anyway.

Tonight, I sit here, not with coffee, but with tea. Warm tea. Really raunchy warm tea, and all my damn Ritz are gone because I can't find a hooting roll of them anywhere. You never know what you never had until what you never had leaves and no longer wants you, the person who never had her but never really wanted her but really did deep down. In other words, I think I like her. I think I miss her. I think my mind is still decaying and there is no hope for the future. Yet a shaft of light highlights something in the void that is my room. Well, more presisely, the lamp at near the computer terminal has cast its light into my room through my open doorway and has given me enough light around my chair. A roll of Ritz, unseen before.

A glimmer of hope pushes me along.

Fuck the tea.

Coffee, here I come.

I know myself and I'll never change
I don't deal with commitment
I'm not good at it. I'm good at ironing, not commitment.
I freak, and he doesn't get it.
The closer he comes the less oxygen flows to my brain.
Things get dark and I feel like the world is waiting for me to blow it.
To make that crucial mistake.
The one that ends it.
O-well.
I need freedom like the butterflies need wind.
The more commitments I have
The more locks bind the chains on my soul.
Gotta fly on the wind to be eternally free.

Given: Barney is a cute purple dinosaur
Prove: Barney is actually Satan

Proof: Since the Romans didn't use the letter 'U' in writing, we see that the representation of Barney is

A CVTE PVRPLE DINOSAVR

extracting the roman numerals yields:

C V V L D I V

which are

100 5 5 50 500 1 5

the sum of these add up to 666, which is the number of the beast.

Proved: Barney is actually Satan.

I sit patiently in a coffee shop on the square, and I admire the silence that surrounds me. Of course it's not complete silence-- you have the tinking of coffee mugs and glasses of mochacinno, the distant chattering of philosophers and businessman alike, the soothing whir of the machines. And you have me: a tired, worn-out freak of a man dressed in a long black trench coat and shades, an exhausted mind and hyped-up nerves. I do hate humanity, I remind myself, but this place is a pleasure.

Perfect place to write about the the years of my life, focusing on the "important" twenty-nine -- everything before the teenage years is a blur. My talent is controlled self-ignorance, and so I can ignore my far past and dwell on the importance I must speak of now.

At sixteen I was writing and reading constantly, observing vast amounts of poetry and short stories until my eyes grew wary... I had a thirst for something more. The truth. Fiction, I well knew, was a version of that truth but I was sure there must be a more productive way of obtaining real truth, hard truth, direct truth. I looked at the world around me one night after a few nightmares and realized I'd wasted my entire life being a stupid pawn within a massive, addictive, corrupting game. People, in short, were ignorant and stupid. How can I say this, you might ask?

Truth so frightening I was knocked flat on my ass had appeared in front of my face, showing itself rather harshly by the time I was seventeen -- A war had been developing, and now the US, my country, "the land of the free and the home of the brave", was sticking their noses into it. Not that they shouldn't have defended themselves -- the opposing powers that be were indeed sick and twisted -- but the whole idea of war frightened me, gave me visions of horror, as if I'd seen it before. Yet I knew I couldn't have. But it didn't ease the imminent terror of each passing day.

I graduated (by the skin of my teeth) and entered college already rebelling against anything I could rebel against. I didn't care. As for the nightmares, what they'd told me and what I'd researched and figured out on one hand, and for the fired-up conflict, the war, which had so bitterly come out of the mists and battered any heavenly thought I may have had left about the world to a fine pulp, I was in no mood and felt no need to live within society and follow the rules and regulations and stupidity just like the rest of the meek-minded droids. On the contrary, I had turned by back on everything and had created my own, ideal world in my mind, and when I saw the real world going the other way I hid my face, not wanting any part of this. In time, however, I found people I cared about and could not let go of -- friends who, although we did not nessesarily share the same perceptions, or if we did they in no way shared them to the extreme I did, they accepted me for who I was. I did not want to see them die. So, for them, I learned to live within society in order to corrupt it, or at least try, rather than having it corrupt me.

Prohibition -- pointless. I settle back with an "iced tea" or two and babble on for hours with someone I later determined wasn't even there. The alcohol was getting to me a tid bit, but the obsession lasted only a few months. After that I found it stupid and mindless, and therefore found no need for it. Who wants to talk to a drunken fool? Why act so much like the idiots of society you oppose? I found hypocrisy the most aching dilemma. As for the drinking, I could finally do it legally in 1933 -- at which time I still denied having even a sip more, although my increasing paranoia often made me think otherwise. It had done it's job with me. The addiction was over, and remains so to today.

Now, in my new life, I have caffeine.

I read more and more over the years, catching the newest books and reading them in about three nights or so. Although most of their subject material was raw and boring, I found it necessary to know the culture in order to despise it. And so I learned to know my surroundings, inside and out, quite well, and despise them beyond all possible belief.

I found Truth did lie out there. My nightmares started making sense, and I found I could look into people, read them, understand them, feel their deepest emotions. Their eyes were the key, striking and burdening, powerful and cold. Some hid behind a wall of stone, others where as squishy as all hell. I feared what lied behind my eyes, and so my stoner glasses served me well. I didn't take drugs, I strongly opposed them. But the image never failed me: not the curly beard, not the glasses, not the top hat and not the unlit cigar hanging out my mouth. It was the perfect mask, an extention of the biological mask I and every other human posessed on this tired old rock. I was hiding the large parts of myself I feared. I knew no one was who they claimed to be. We're all a hell of a lot more. Maybe I was insane, but at least I was being noticed.

In 1918 a worldwide influenza epidemic killed roughly 20 million people. I never did get to see it affect my friends, family, or myself directly, and I'm thankful.

In 1920 the Nineteenth Amendment to our excessively fiddled-with Constitution gave women the right to vote -- something that should have clearly been made so at the beginning. I found women were much stronger, and could be much more independent, than an arrogant man could ever believe. I knew this, because I found myself failing relationships miserably, yet gaining the ex's as trustworthy friends afterwards. It became a joke, but not one I preferred to laugh at. Come to think of it, I hadn't had a good laugh since I was sixteen.

Little things I remember happening -- the debate over the paranormal, the government's honesty in general, and whether technology was, indeed, a good thing (I opposed, for the record), the Spanish painting 'Persistence of Memory' in 1931, Nimi's suicide in front of her dorm on that dead oak tree, and her funeral that everyone attended. She was loved by everyone, and we'd talked for hours some nights. She couldn't take the harsh version of reality she'd painted for herself, so she'd taken her problems from just mental chatter to drug abuse, to drinking, to talking to me and then to the last place she could resort to -- a rugged rope dangling in the November wind on a tree that hung above the picnic table we all used to sit on and talk, staring up at the stars, wondering what lied beyond there. I wondered almost fanatically. She wondered and then fell back, riddled by the problems in her life -- she couldn't ignore her pain anymore, it had built up to the extreme.

I do vividly remember, however, the year of 1933. I had never met the man face to face, and likewise I had never hated -- not despised, but literally, coldheartedly, undoubtedly *hated* a man as much as I did Hitler. An aura of evil seemed to surround his body, and when he rose to power in Germany and imposed Nazism I was afraid trouble had only begun to brew, for I could sense the man had hideous plans lingering in the back of his mind. He had powers most couldn't fathom. There was an uneasiness he projected onto the people he came into contact with, whether it be in person, on the radio or on the television -- At least, *one* person received this impression. I can only speak for myself.

I spent the following years, and promised myself to do so until what I hoped would be his coming demise, watching this man very closely, almost obsessively, through the media. It was almost an addiction -- to understand someone, it seemed, I had to almost get pulled in to the far reaches of their mind. I did this by eyes contact. Whether this is a form of empathy, telepathy, or proves I was standing too close when they were painting the lockers my freshmen year still stand to debate. But I found myself doing this subliminally -- I supposed I'd had this odd thing my entire life. It explained my constant nervousness, my inability to stand up in front of large groups of people, and might even explain why I loved these stoner glasses so much. I could see out, yet they couldn't see in. It was selfish, but no one's perfect -- I'd become a lucid reflection of that statement. The man believed he couldn't die. He believed that after his physical death, he'd return.

He'd arouse trouble as he had before, only the next time more amplified. But with this knowledge or vivid mental delusion in mind, I knew it was inevitable that he must eventually fall, if only in this physical form.

In 1941 the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor naval base, which brought the US into the war. New evidence, which I have heard "through the grapevine", state that the powers that be knew of the impending attack but felt that the risk must be taken and the results of the attack must be suffered in order to get the American people completely and wholeheartedly behind the United States entering the war. What sort of sick freaks

do we have running our country? Do we ever sit back and question the dipsh!ts sitting back in their cozy smoke-filled offices, laughing insanely as they effortlessly pull the strings and make the puppet -- the American public, maybe even the world -- dance and do nifty little tricks.

If as a *culture* and not just an individual we had half a mind, we would put all effort into snipping the puppet free from the strings. It'll hurt hitting the ground, sure, but soon we'll be up and walking straight toward truth, justice, and everything else America has mindlessly fell in to fabricating over the years. We have lost all, and we're blind to the loss. It's time to wake the hell up, we've been asleep for too long.

1943 increased an interest I had in the skies that I had ignored since the departing of Nimi. Little balls of light dubbed "foo fighters" were pursuing warplanes, varying in size from a few feet to a few inches across. Was this the result of some of Hitler's fiendish little plans or did the origins of these machines (or whatever, indeed, they were) derive from above our atmosphere, their origins being... extraterrestrial?

I began writing about things that plagued my mind as I always had, allowing my fingers to go wild on the typewriter, under the control of my empowering subconscious. Only now I began to show some people my stories and the illustrations I incorporated into them and, in time, got some of the illustrated short stories and even a novel published. For some time I was content. Cruelties were certain, but an end to the insanity and turmoil that had built up over the years was coming to the end I had always thought I'd foreseen. Not an ending, really, just a jump to the next level.

I wrote about my thoughts-- ways of destroying Hitler, unidentified lighted objects pursuing warplanes and our governments strange quietness surrounding it, dead ex-girlfriends, plaguing nightmares of a past that shouldn't, couldn't have been...

Anything.

And then, in 1945, Roosevelt died and Truman resumed the position of president. Seventeen days later, it all finally gets to Hitler -- *What, the final realization that his life was pointless and that he should burn in hell? Or that if a place called hell did indeed exist it would surely be spewed fourth from his own rotten, mangled, evil, vile, tortured mind?* -- and he commits suicide in his now-famous bunker. Three months later US drops two atomic bombs on Japan and, finally, World War II ends with a bang.

It is said today the second world war was one of the bloodiest and most tragic conflicts ever to occur. I am in doubtless agreement with that statement. It's the only real "conflict" I had ever dealt with, true, but I can not yet imagine a more hideous and brutal war. I do, however, fear that one day, while an even bigger war is beginning to broil in maybe such a similar way as this one had, that Hitler, in one form or another, will return and hurl his evil across millions, bring back Nazism, and devastate the world with his harsh and vile new order.

I feel better having wrote this out. I wonder: will I, in another physical form, remember how I had, myself, been in this coffee shop at this day and wrote this short story depicting the life of my era? Will I, in some future reincarnation, recall what I have done here and continue on with my work, my knowledge?

I believe the government has lied, what shall I do if, or rather, *when* I find out it's secrets? Knowing death, in the literal sense, does not exist, could I one day use what information I have about my past and my theories for the future to...

No. Who would ever believe me? I'd go nuts, hide away from my world, fear the every day. I'd never survive such a purpose. Hell, I'd never sleep. I couldn't handle that in any form, could I?

Could I?

Or simply: *Would* I?

I live for the night
For the break-neck speed
Of which I ride

I crave the danger
Around every bend
I long for the stranger
Sleeping innocently

I want the sweet rush
Or life everlasting
Of joy, of tears
Of life
For eternity

To taste that sweet nectar
That overflows with energy
To have the strength of ten
And life
Oh the life!
Of the truly immortal

I would give anything
For this
Anything!

WOULD YOU GIVE YOUR HEART?
WOULD YOU GIVE YOUR LIFE?
WOULD YOU GIVE YOUR VERY SOUL?
TO LIVE AS I DO?

TO WALK EACH NIGHT ALONE.
TO LIVE ETERNALLY.
TO NEVER FEEL, OR LOVE
OR LOVE?

NEVER THE SUNLIGHT,
CARESSING YOUR SKIN.
NEVER AGAIN,
THE FEELING OF A MORTAL'S LOVE.

TO CRAVE THAT SWEET NECTAR,
IS SURELY A CURSE.
FOR I AM THE ONLY TRULY,
TRULY!,
LONELY MAN ON EARTH.

I AM IMMORTAL.

Other mages began expirementing with new magics. He knew of their expirements but let them continue with their work. They stumbled upon ancient, powerful evils. Through their expirements the evils were released. They fought the evils with great losses but triumphed, or so they thought. Most mages of all the lands died in their united fight against the evils. The few remaining dwindled to just one in the next decade. He walked on. He rememberd the changes in the lands after th battle. Droughts, floods, and so on, but those were not the ones he feared most. They were caused in part by the massive amount of magical energies released during the momuntous battle. Those changes he feared most he ignored. He knew the great danger those changes indicated and he feared the truth so much he put them out of his mind. Years past, the changes grew in proportion, the kingdom and nearby kingdoms weakened. The mage grew older and weaker. He knew he had been overlooking something, missing some horrible truth.

By the time he realised the danger it had grown to powerful to be stopped. He could do nothing but watch it progress. Oh, he knew it was impossible, but he tried and tried to stop it. For all his efforts he got nowhere. The people would not, could not help him =, in fact they cursed and abused him for his efforts. He cursed himself for his ignorance and his fear of the danger. He knew he should have been above it. The plague of the evils spread. The mage's kingdom had fallen. So too had all the surrounding kingdoms, and the ones beyond those were begining to fall. He began a quest to find a peoples to help him stop the plague of the evils. He searched and searched, but all he ever found were the remains of what had once been great and powerful kingdoms. That's how he found himself walking the great expance of the desert. He walked on.

He took out his spellbook, made a magical flame and burned it to ashes. Then he took out the remainder of his magical items and ingredienta. He then spread them to the four winds. Last, he took out his waterskin, took a long last drink, and poured the rest onto the hot sands, then watched as it seeped into the thirsty ground, and then he walked on. Hopeful to find the next world free of the evils plague.

He laughed at how such a small insignificant thing could crush a world, for the great plague of the evils was Ignorance.

Ignorance!

Blue mustached, yellow headed mushrooms
pasted on to orange peel envelops with peanut butter
and mustard. The envelopes will be transported
through the seas of cheese until they reach
their destination, under a sopping wet hair dryer
that was supposed to have rusted into oblivion
5 seconds before the first moron was born.
______________________________

Cream soda poring out the nose of a psycho
pathetic upside down Egyptian, worshiping a Bob
Ross happy little tree totem. The devil is a
corrosive hydrochloric acid/paint thinner/lacquer thinner/
a not nice person. His goal is to disintegrate happy
little trees, puddles, and other merry landscape. However
titanium white will be saved by the good gophers,
that live in the land of beautiful corn. The gophers
will tap into their endless supply of yellow #5 to
rid the world of demoniac turpentine. Then happy little
trees, and beautiful corn can live together in a world
filled with the YëY powers of Bob Ross, corn, and gophers.
______________________________

Bypass surgery done to an amoeba's heart is the essence
of all knowledge that has corrupted humanity.
______________________________

Frozen maggots on a telephone pole
hippopotamuses in a bowl.
But only if a crocodile
is drowning in the Nile.

"Katie, will you take that damn cat out of here?"

I had been trying to concentrate in my study when that cat had strolled into the room and started pissing in my loafers again. My feet smell bad enough, like I need raunchy cat piss now. Anyway, my five-year-old daughter casually picked up the kitty and took him out of the room and down the hallway. I got up, with a heavy sigh, and shut the door. I couldn't believe all that had happened. I couldn't believe my wife had cheated on me, or that my brother was gone, dead. Or that she had been cheating on me with my brother. Or that I had killed my brother with the aid of a sledgehammer last night and buried him in a shallow grave in the backyard. All that stuff. All of it was confusing and headaching, and it had all happened so fast. Today, in the study, time was going slow. I guess time always goes slower when you watch the clock. I was awaiting the call, I was eyeing the phone, I was ready to hear that soothing, sexy voice that had ripped my heart out of my chest and nail-gunned it to a pile of shit. She would say hi, and speak my name in that delicate tone. I would imagine her lips and teeth as she formed the words, I would see it in slow motion in my mind, and the words she spoke would slip passed me, would mean nothing. I wanted her, god dammit, I NEEDED her. And I would get her. And no divorce, threatening phone call or restraining order would stop me from reaching my goal. A mallot to the face might, though.

The phone rang, and I knw who it was -- you know, *her*-- but I didn't pick it up. I couldn't make it seem as ifd I was awaiting her call, that would be ludacris. Suspicious. I waited for the third ring, and picked up and casually greeted: "Hello?"

"Dwayne," she said, and I fell into a trance, "Do you know where your brother is?"

I shrugged before I realized she couldn't see me over the phone. "You mean he's not down your pants?"

"Charming, my ex-dear," she said. Their was a silence, a pause, that shouldn't ahve been there. She was thinking. That wasn't right. She never thought. But I could hear the gears in her mind clicking. I could could smell the burning rubber of her brain, although it might've been something else. "Dwayne, you didn't... you didn't KILL your brother, did you?"

I shook my head (again, failing to realize she couldn't see me do so): "No. Nuh-uh."

"You sure?"

"Yeah I'm sure. Damn sure. Why'd I want to kill my bro? He only fucked my wife, it's not like he... lik he, uh.... yeah, I buried him in the backyard. Why?"

She burst into tears. I tried to caress her, and from over the phone I'm sure you can imagine it looked migty perverted. "C'mon, honey, it ain't all that bad. Look, if it'll make you feel any better we can bring him back. I mean, the government just cloned a sheep AND a monkey."

"(*sniff*-*snifff) What's that? (*sniff*) The government can clone his monkey?"

"No! Well, yeah. Actually, he can have a couple winky-dinks if you tip the genetic eingineer in a subtle wink-wink kinda way. You know?"

"Honey, I can engineer your brother so he's better than when I first met him! This si great! Science has brought us so far!"

"Wait a minute, why should that blind arrogant fuck get a better body? He deserves being in a shallow grave! If anyone deserves a better body its me!" So I shot myself, but before I realized it would be mighty hard to clone myself after havig been dead.

Dammit, I always think of things too late.

Oh well. Better luck next time.

As I sit here reading,
I am thinking.
Wings, they don't posses,
Overpopulation, would kill all us.
Future, don't be late.
Death, can't escape.
Grave, or cremation
Varies, on your destination
Please, be more specific.
Well, I have must be karmic
I, thought I already said so.
Um, ... I don't think so.
No, it's just a mental bout
Can, you imagine it out?
No, this is something
Everything, is everything
Very, well could be.
Much, ,matters to me
Fine, and you?
No, makes me spew.
Looks, like it bub.

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