Speaking of old people...

Old age frightens me. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'll hit it off by 22, 23 tops -- I've kinda always thought I'd die at age 23. It's always the number that's on the microwave when I pull out food early. It's also discordian, as my friend Ominchanning keeps reminding me. Since me and him talked about it a few days ago I've been seeing the number with more and more consistency. It's everywhere -- at work, I saw the number written in red marker atop a jug of cooking oil. I saw it on a kid's shirt.

Maybe it's not old age as much as it is old people that scare me. Evil Decrepit Yoda, for instance, resembles a prune with a little pruny head and four appendages (maybe some more I don't wanna know about). She talks like a gremlin with severe constipation and nasal congestion. She acts like it, too. Other old people I see scare me because instead of growing it looks as if they're shrinking, rotting away, decaying into a nothingness that ends as dust in the ground. And when they're dead, they realize that the God or gods they've been worshipping all their lives are really just a myth created by man to hide him from the real truth, and the real `One' that you must rely on is the indivdual self that you are. You are your own judge, your own `god' if you will; you create your own afterlife (hopefully you met this belief of mine in the iM rebuttles). Old and wrinkly, you peer back at your life and see the times that you've wasted and your steady decline back into soil.

I don't want to be old and bitter. I'm young and bitter, and I want to get better. Yet I can't get better while I'm bitter but I better or I'll end up being bent up, twisted, mauled, and listless walking dazed and alone on streets at night under the shittowne shitty city lights.

And I'll be some bum living in a carboard box mumbling about little gray men and alternate planes and how much religion sucks and how society is being run by a shadow government. I'll be a lonely bum, a man with no face.

It would seem to me that prohibition was an American experiment. People who were caught up in the "spirit of self-sacrifice, aroused by the war", looked to prohibition as a way of increasing the morality of the nation. I would deem it as an "experiment" because any mentions of it were based solely on speculative benefits or drawbacks, or the benefits and drawbacks after the fact of the law. There seemed to be no references to successes or failures in any foreign lands to back up claims, and this is why I would call it "American".

There are several arguments that I feel are most convincing. On the side of prohibition are the cleaning up of some of the slum areas, and the more frugal expenditure of income. Advances like people owning cars, and the advancement of technologies, I feel would be attributed more to the general flow of the times than to the prohibition of alcohol. Arguments that I feel are strong for the anti-prohibitionists are the loss of government income from excised whiskey, the large expenditure on a corrupt enforcement agency, dangerous low quality homemade alcohol (sometimes of the wrong type), and the general discontentment of a large, opposed minority.

Hello all. Rewired wanted me to write a story for this little thing, so here goes: I've been in a few stories already on Gopher. You might know me a Claire Danes. I finally got to read this little newspaper thingy today and I have to say it's pretty fucking cool. My compliments to the editor. Okay i'm going to ramble on about my life and stuff now.

I moved from California to here about 2 years ago. Of course I was different than a lot of people and because of that, most didn't care for me much at first, and some still hate me to this day probably. But I really don't care. Anyway, when I got here I had pink hair. Ah, memories. I began attending school with people like rewired and Phloid and basically the whole gopher crew. Thats when some weird incidents began taking place [see issue 3, cumbersome] and a major change of my perspective on some shit began taking place for me.

I'm sane now....really. At least I think so anyway. Maybe moving to another state actually helped me. Or maybe not. Maybe I just move too much. Oh well. Okay this story sucks. My apologies to everyone reading. I'm just a little disillusioned right now. I think.

She had just lost at pool. She picked up the gun and held it to his temple, with a mean glare in her eyes. As he looked at her in horror he just had to admit that he cheated, and the game was hers to be won. Yet, since she told him if she won that he had to shave off all his chest hair, he refused to admit that he'd cheated. In fact, he hadn't cheated at all, accept in her eyes. And they were nice eyes. But she was quite determined to prove to him that she was right. And she knew that he would cave . She knew all of his weaknesses and how to use them to her advantages.

She came to his face and told him this, that she could control him by knowing his weak spots and poking at them.

"I don't think so." he said, "There's no way in hell -- I won the damn game, woman."

With just a simple pull of the trigger she had the power to end his life. But, thats not what she wanted. All she wanted was to win. Her whole life she had never lost at anything and she wasn't about to start losing now.

As a matter of fact, she had lost at things -- quite often, in fact. She just would not let him be above her, not a second, and in her determination (and, of course, the fact that she could blow his tofu-for brains away at any time she desired with the gun held point-blank at his temple) she knew she would win. He was on his knees, face pale, a cold sweat forming on his forehead.

"okay ,okay I give" he said.

And with a little smirk she said "I thought so" and pulled the trigger.

A weird green substance poured endlessly out the whole in his head. He watched as in seeped into the carpet below his dying body, watched as it poured into his hands. His brain had been long gone, all that misery and pain built up within his skull. where he had seconds ago seen her as a beautiful girl gone made, she was now his savior in a sense. She had set the pain free from his body.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOO" she screamed when she realized that she had not hurt him, but in fact had helped him.

The thought of that had sent her into even more fury. A look of pure disgust came over her face and she began to violently throw things around the room.

He got up, as if bricks he'd been carrying over his shoulder since birth had been suddenly cut free from him. He felt light as a feather, an unstoppable high filled his being. He got up and tried to tell her it was okay. She took a ruler, nearby, and jabbed it in his eye. Now he was a little pissed off. He threw her on the pool table and and she hit her head quite hard. The blow had knocked her unconcious, and when she finally awoke in a dazed state. She looked at him, eyes red with anger. Her face crinkled itself into a distorted scowl.

A friend, Clive, strolled on into the room, where he was supposed to pick the two up to go to the local coffee house and some weird party that was going on later. He saw the mess. He saw the goop, and the hole in his friend's head. He saw her. Hrm. She was kinda hot...

Immediately uponthe arrival of Clive, the girls face turned from an angry look to that of pure bliss. "Hi, My name is Tesla" the girl said to Clive. "Who are you?"

"Whatever you want me to be," Clive said in the slyest way he could, which wasn't too sly. "Why is Ty on the floor with crap leaking out a hole in his skull?"

"I shot him, dumbass." She said.

"Oh. Uh, wanna go out or something, leave Ty? It doesn't look like he's feeling well anyhow. Let's get wasted."

With a grin on her face she replied "Um......Okay." And the two were out the door leaving poor Ty to clean up the mess.

Ty sighed. What just happened here? Your life sucks, you try to play a game with a girl, and she blows a hole in your head, sets you free, and someone takes her away from you to numb her mind with alchol. Well that just fucking SUCKS. Ty wondered what he'd do the rest his life (especially without a brain -- it's sort of required). Where would he go, what would he do? Frankly, she didn't give a damn, he was sure. He left the house a mess to roam the streets that cool summer eve and mumble to himself about little gray men with big black slanted eyeballs.

Meanwhile, Clive and Tesla were sitting around in an old abandoned house drinking little bottles of Jack Daniels and strawberry daquiri wine coolers getting quite drunk. Tesla began to think of Ty. Why had she gotten so mad over a stupid game of pool? She should go back to Ty. What was she doing with Clive anyway? He wasn't even cute.

Ty had made his way to a telephone booth on the square nearby the coffee shop. He picked up the phone, brain goo still dribbling down the side of his face. He'd gotten a cigerette from a friend and intended to try it once and for all. The habit was disgusting, but it had always interested him somehow... He lit up. He opened the phoone book and found the listing THE PHONE NUMBER OF THE GIRL AND THE OLD ABANDONED HOUSE WITH THAT FRIENDS OF YOURS WHO ARE BOTH GETTING DRUNK. It was even this area code. He dialed, took a hearty drag, and his lungs blew up. He still tried to talk, and didn't intend on telling her he had tried the shit.

"Tesla?" He said, but found himself speechless to say anthing more.

"Ty...is that you?" said Tesla in quite a suprised voice. " I didn't even think this old house had a phone. Oh Ty, I'm so sorry. I didn't really mean to shoot you. I don't even know why I came with Clive. He's sort of, well....stupid."

"That's alright... some things have changed for me, too. I got myself together a little. I tried a few new things, like I put an application in a store as I was strolling around mumbling to myself."

"Um Ty, I think I'm gonna puke".

Ty smiled. He took another drag (sure he had no lungs, but still, it was, you know, `relaxing'). "Aim at Clive."

Tesla did and covered clive in half digested doritos and 6 bottles of JD.

"We gotta get together." Ty said over the phone. He scratched his head as she agreed to hang out with him again. He touched a tend spot on his head where a bullet had blown through what seemed only hours ago. It wasn't so bad, he thought.

Have you ever had that feeling that you think everything in your life is just the greatest? You have everything that you could ever possibly want. Things couldn't get much better, could they? But it's still possibe that they can get worse and 9 times out of 10 thats usually what happens. Life sucks. Plain and simple. And you can't really do much about it. But still you drone on things that go wrong until you can't possibly take it anymore and you think that you might be losing your mind. I usually tell people to let it go because they can't really do anything about it and theres no sense in trying because no matter what you do you can't change something thats already happened. I guess maybe I should start taking my own advice. I just recently heard really bad news about something (I'm going to keep it private though, because it's none of the worlds business) and I flipped. All I wanted was a cigarette to calm me down. Then me and two friends of mine went for a drive. Instanly I grabbed a wine cooler from the back seat because I thought that if I got drunk maybe I would feel a little bit better. Well it didn't work. I just got angry at myself for that and went into a bigger rage. We went for a walk and we came upon a big cliff. Hmm...tempting.

Why are people so dependent on others? When you are born, you need your mother. When you're in high school, you have your playmate. In Junior high you have your best friend. In high school, you should have a boy/girlfriend. Later in life you have a husband/wife. Before you die you always have that "special friend" who comes to visit.

Why are some things better in pairs than alone? Like twins, double mint gum, hands, arms, legs, eyes, ears, socks, shoes, etc. Practically everything is to have at least one or more compainions. Like the saying "two heads are better than one." What if both heads were really stupid? Wouldn't one really smart person be better than two stupid ones? Why is that?

Why are we supposed to have friends? If we don't, we are considered "loners." Look around. People are laughing and having fun or complaining about teachers and work, but in a corner a person sits alone. To you, he/she may look depressed. In reality he/she is thinking about the hardships they are going through. Gossip, heartbreaks, deception, etc. Who knows, maybe they'll go off together on a Heaven's Gate expedition. He/she has already been through that and have learned that they are better off trusting no one. Isn't he wiser than the rest? Staying away from harm to injure his/her soul?

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