Crux Ansata, a writer from the e-zine SoB(kicks ass) wrote a piece on CIB Man's article on one of my favorite books, Anthem (the other favorite books being To Kill a Mockingbird and Catcher in the Rye, as if you wanted to know). CIB wrote the article for school about a year or two ago and claims that he does not particularly like the novel, and has a response to Ansat's response, which, if not in this issue, will be shoved in next issue. Ansat's piece is in this issue, however, and it boggles the mind (and perplexes the feeblings). Also included herein is the second George Story, which should've been in last issue but, as I've said before, hey. Glass Butterfly WHO SHOULD WRITE MORE is also in this issue, along with a few new people who's stuff should arouse that sensation in your skull - you know the one, where you have an itch in your brain and you want to claw right through your skull to scratch it?

And I put in an old story of mine (I got another, for next issue) that's quite long compared to what we usually get. It's an old story that i wrote a year or two ago that I've patched up (major patching). It should be, in the least bit, interesting. I hope it just makes a little sense. Any criticisms, let me hear 'em. I know they're out there.

I am glad to say that, for our first summer issue, we're loaded with shit. Good shit. Quality shit, not your average grimy stinky brown goop with bits of corn sticking out of it lying in the middle of a lawn somewhere covered with flies. To the contrary - damn good quality shit.

I woke up one morning to a bird in song
so I got out of bed and heard its song
It was a pretty bird with feathers of red

For some time he felt an ookiness about the odd phenomenon that had just taken place; he was as disturbed as he was perplexed. Soon, he saw it as kinda nifty. He reached into his suit pocket, brushed away some lint within it and pulled out an old box of cards. He opened the box and held the cards in his hands, sifting through them, and came across a little piece of folded up notebook paper with blue pen seeped through. Blue pen. He hated blue pens. They had to be black.

He opened the letter.

The letter stated as so: "George- We have given unto you a great and powerful endowment you must use it with powerful fruitesense. Beware: this leisure suit shall revert back to it's original and unpowerful form at the time when it is most inconvenient. Always remember the immortal words of the great Bob Ross: 'Let's put a happy little tree over there.' "

Ah, Bob Ross. George remembered his afternoons of watching " The Joy of painting" on his crappy little 6 inch black and white TV. But he pushed the memory aside. He had more important things to think about now. Like, what was the point of the suit. He obviously had some sort of mission to accomplish but he had a difficult time thinking about it. Other pictures and memories kept popping into his head. Like the Rutabaga man. What? Whoa he really needed to get some sleep. Suddenly the bus came to an abrupt stop. George wasn't sure where to get off, but something inside him told him to get off at that stop. A little man in his head. With poofy hair. And then it materialized in front of him as if it were a black hole ready to swallow him up. He saw purples and greens and... woh. This was definitely giving him a headache. Never mind, it was just Barney standing at the bus stop handing out yellow balloons to defenseless passing children. Okay. What was he thinking about again? Oh yes, the suit. It had to have a meaning.

George asked the green-haired business-suited man next to him (who just so happened to get off at that bus stop, too...) about the silver leisure suit that he now wore. The green-haired gentleman's eyes went wide in recognition.

"You!" he exclaimed. "You're wearing the fabled Silver Leisure Suit of Pimp! I have something for you!"

He reached into his briefcase with the Misfits bumper sticker on it and handed George a small rectangular package. George took the package and opened it up. Sure enough, it was a yellow brick...

"Oh fuck," stated the brick, "It's you again."

George sighed. Why was it always this damn brick? He was beginning to hate this brick. He scratched his chin and asked the damn brick a question: "what's your thoughts on the meaning of life?"

The brick couldn't scratch his chin, of course, but would've done so had he had a chin. "Well," he said, "I see it as sort of macroscom and microscom. The universe is like a big consciousness with little consciousnesses attached to it. These little consciounesses attached to it interact with each other-- "

"Oh fuck it, this is impossible. Life has no meaning." Said George, "I mean, look at this ninny beside me with the turnip nose and the gerbil feet. His gnerble flizackmoids are condiplaterpzating his narsuiolic nutboids in the sixth month of December when his flaming anal weasels moved to Alaska to hibernate with the native squash and sing spring summer carols over the tunguska fire cracker late morning one night during a kaleidoscope Sunday that he licked down to the pits of infinite nothingness in a millisecond."

"Kid, you've got some problems." Said the brick. And the brick jumped out the window. George farted.

It was a good fart. In fact it was a damnable quality fart. George sat there whiffing up his quality fart for some time until he realized that his quality fart had caused him to get a dirty silver leisure suit. So George muttered about how the yellow brick had been so obnoxious, and went to find a bathroom where he could clean himself up.

By the time George had cleaned himself up his caffeine buzz was wearing thin. Slowly he descended into a very mellow state, probably somewhere out in Wisconsin. George soon found himself walking across acres and acres of ... cheese. The cheese was moving; it was watching him. George became very scared, and it reminded him of those weird rocks in the Wizard of Oz.

Oh great now he had that "we welcome you to munchkin land" song in his head. Oh well, in time that too will go away as did everything else in his life. That's what things seemed to be going like for him. He never did find the Giant Burping Gerbil. The whole thought of that had just slipped his mind. And so did that thing about the purpose of the leisure suit that he noticed still retained its silver color, and everything else that had basically happened in the past five minutes or so. Whoa the song is out of his head now. Cool, he thought to himself.

So now, as George walked through the acres of cheese, he once again tried to figure out the purpose of this trip, and why a whole bunch of other interesting shit was happening. Hmm.....maybe it could wait until he had something to eat. Since there just so happened to be cheese all around as far as the eye could see, he decided to make that his meal. He came upon a ...whoa....A cheese tree! George randomly picked a block of cheese of the cheese tree. It sort of resembled a brick. Pushing a thought aside he shoved almost the entire brick of cheese in his mouth, causing him to belch quite loudly when he was through.

"Geez, that was attractive" a strange voice said.

George turned around to see who had made the comment. It was a farm girl looking person. Trying to think of an intelligent response (which was quite difficult for him) he replied "Um...thanks."

George stopped a second and gawked. Yup, it was a farmgirl in front of him. She wasn't cheese either. George breathed a sigh of relief. He brushed some of the cheese crumbs off of his Elvis sideburns, which he had decided to grow upon receiving the Silver Leisure Suit of Pimp. Finally he mustered up enough courage and said another word.

"Howdy," George stammered

"You don't talk much, do you?" asked the farmish girl.

"Nope, I'm kinda like Calvin Coolidge that way. He was the president that didn't say hardly more than two words at a time," George said.

"Yeah, but you've just said more than a couple words..." said the farmish girl.

"Yeah, I get carried away sometimes..." said George.

Suddenly, in the spirit of getting carried away, George started doing the "staying Alive" type disco dance.

The farm girl slapped him. Hard. Really hard. George went spinning onto the ground. The Silver Leisure Suit of Pimp was not enough to charm this farm girl.

"Get up" she said, "I have work to do, and you doing that silly jig isn't helping any"

George got up and was still clean do to the amazing powers of his Silver Leisure Suit of Pimp. (which was evidently self-cleaning, like an oven...)

"That's an awful nice leisure suit," said the girl, gawking in amazement.

(The Silver Leisure Suit of Pimp had begun to work its magic...)

"Gurgle shmulg," responded George, whose face had turned deep red, (especially in the cheek where she hit him.)

"Is that all you have to say? Dressed like that, I would think you must have had a very interesting life."

"Well yes I have ever since I got this Silver Leisure Suit of Pimp"

At these words the farm girl fainted into George's arms from the astonishment that HE was the owner of renowned suit. Delayed reaction I guess...

George laid her down gently and propped her feet up with a yellow brick until she woke up.

"We seem to end up on the ground a lot." said George in a voice which was amazingly calm and cool. At least for the situation he was in and the thoughts that were scampering about his brain.

George watched in astonishment as the girl morphed into a form George has seen years ago while on a quest for the prehistoric prahootishka (details later) -- the Rutabaga Man. What a turnip he was, lying there. It was a clever disguise, dressing up like a chick -- George wondered whether he did this for fun at home on some nights. Sick pleasure always made him nauseous.

The scent of destruction lingers in the air like a thick mist, touching every one, inhaled by all, understood by few. What they fail to understand is that it is they that do the damage to their world, it is they who murder it and leave it bleeding, leave it do die. It is they who perpetuate the wheel of lost hope, of growing chaos that pushes them further and further toward obliteration.

A storm brews at the horizon, the deep, rumbling growl of thunder travels through the earth, the air blasts across the land, the lightning appearing over the forest treetops highlight some trees, set ablaze others. Rain isn't seen or heard yet, but it is felt, it is tasted in the wind.

He sits on his rocking chair on his porch with a cane in one hand, a piece of apple in the other. The rest, about half an apple slit up into quarters, lies on a dish nearby where he sits. On the ground below his feet cuddle his beloved bloodhound, resting its wary mind. The man is tired, his face shows age. Throughout all those years, in the constant pursuit of wisdom, or truth, of harmony with that inner self. He only wanted to go home and learn to work from there. He only wanted to know himself. His eyes showed others things he could not see but strove, nonetheless, to understand. Yet as the bangs of his thin, gray hair danced in the wind in the shadows of this dark eve he knew the time was coming. He knew the storm that was to arrive, the changes that were to be brought about by the wind, the structuring of the rain, the breaking down of the fire and the burying - and unveiling - of the earth mother.

His cabin was a nice home, an abode of peace to aide and heal him in his time of silence. It had taken so long to get here, to discover this peace, this tranquillity, this harmony with something true. He'd seen it coming so long ago, felt the storm approaching, but could do nothing to ail it, nothing to drown away this knowing that he had. He learned to face its reality and to move on with his life until it made its way to him, inevitably.

He knew that it was the end.

I don't know much about him. I do know he was an actor on the hit TV show, Sea Quest, and that he's a major hunk.

Within the umbrella of socialism -- Rand's collectivism -- is a large selection of philosophies. Just as Ayn Rand appears to have thought she was writing against collectivism, the CIB Man appears to have thought this is the same as Communism. Just as I don't recall seeing the word "communism" in Anthem, the word "collectivism" does not appears in the CIB Man's essay. "Communism", strictly speaking, I try to reserve for Marxism-Leninism and its children, as found in the U.S.S.R., the American Communist Party, the Maoists (in China, in Peru as the Shining Path, in the United States as the Revolutionary Communist Party and the Maoist International Movement), the Trotskyites, etc. Marxism is, to me, an economic system that has influenced many socialist groups, but is not followed by all. Anarchism is, to me, inherently socialistic, which is why I consider Kropotkin's term "Anarcho-communism" redundant. (Self-centered "Anarchism" would inevitably lead to nihilism and dissolution.) This is aside from such less common philosophies as National Socialism, so-called Utopian socialism, etc.

By Capitalism, I mean conformity to the assumption that some people should sell their labor, and others should invest their capital, and the two should split the profit -- in other words, that some should live off the blood of others. Needless to say, while our society is somewhat socialistic, the assumptions by which we tend to be ruled are capitalistic, selfish, individualistic.

And therein, as they say, lies the rub. The concept of individualism is most addressed in Anthem, and in the CIB Man's essay. I will now, though, address several points brought up in the report in the order they appear. I will ignore polemical points, such as the fact that "medieval" and "regressive" are, by definition, not possible adjectives for Communism as Marx described it, and can only describe so-called primitive socialism, if that. Instead, I will concentrate on substantive arguments.

"Communism", says the CIB Man, is a "form of society in which new ideas and technology are rarely introduced because they can only be thought of by people who are selected as thinkers." The concept that socialism stunts technological development is, of course, a popular capitalistic canard. Is it true? To answer this in practice we can only look at the few examples of Communism we have. Russia before the revolution, in 1917, was a truly medieval system, feudal and underdeveloped. Even granting the reforms of Peter the Great, Russia lagged far behind the West in virtually every field. Even in World War II there was very little idea of the U.S.S.R. as a superpower. (In the proper sense of the term -- economic, political, and military.) In the roughly seventy years the U.S.S.R. was under one form of socialism or another, it was brought from this primitive state to be a true competitor with the United States, which had centuries of bourgeois society to draw from. Soviet technology did not always equal American, though in some cases, such as the AK-47 versus the M16, theirs surpassed ours. In the context of time, though, the advancements made by the Soviets are among the most rapid developments of any country, from medieval to modern in less than a century.

And how is the technology now? In the former Soviet Union, scientists simply are not getting paid. Scientists are being hired by outside firms for a fraction of what they should earn under a free market, though our capitalistic slavemasters assure us they are now "free". Someday, perhaps the market forces will stabilize. More likely, we see the beginnings of either a totalitarian coup or a pitiable "brain drain", as scientists flee the economic wasteland.

Here in the United States, the government subsidizes a great deal of research. Anyone who thinks we do not have socialism in our technology is living in a dreamworld. The space program and the military alone have been responsible for a great deal of the advancements in American technology this century, and previous to them we were not really a "modern" country, compared to the nations of Europe.

Outside of practice, it simply makes sense to socially subsidize science and technology. They are an investment in the future, and scientists can't eat dreams. Combined with the fact that if all scientific advancement was corporate monopolization would obviously increase, we have quite compelling reasons to subsidize.

The nature of art, by which I propose to address the "ideas" part of the CIB Man's statement, is more subtle. For ideological reasons, the Soviet Union censored its arts and literature. This, too, requires an historical context.

Censorship in Europe is not new. Censorship is, indeed, the norm in most societies to one extent or another. Here in the United States we like to pretend we don't have censorship because we permit obscenities on our television sets and pornography in our theaters. As long as they aren't forced to think, Americans tend to be quite happy, and forget that Wilhelm Reich died in jail for his medical beliefs, Sacco and Vanzetti in the electric chair for their political beliefs, that James Joyce and William S. Burroughs had to fight in court to publish their work. More insidious than that, though, we have other forms of censorship. I defer to Huxley's Brave New World Revisited:

Today [1958] the press is still legally free; but most of the little papers have disappeared. The cost of wood-pulp, of modern printing machinery and of syndicated news is too high for the Little Man. In the totalitarian East there is political censorship, and the media of mass communication are controlled by the State. In the democratic West there is economic censorship and the media of mass communication are controlled by members of the Power Elite. Censorship by rising costs and the concentration of communication power in the hands of a few big concerns is less objectionable than State ownership and government propaganda; but certainly it is not something of which a Jeffersonian democrat could possibly approve.

In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or it might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalistic democracies -- the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.

He will see a "trick", a "fraud", perhaps an "hallucination". He will not see a unicorn, however, because for him they don't exist. In the same way, most people in our "free" society do not see what is there, but rather what they want to see, what they are told to see.

People go out to look for what they want to see, and ignore what they are not interested in. Like the unicorn, people almost as a rule do not see the validity in other systems because, for them, they do not exist. People can only see what they have been programmed to by their society, and in ours that means they see through capitalism colored glasses. What does not amuse Joe Six-pack gets no distribution and no glossy posters or television advertising spots, and what threatens the capitalistic world view is not only suppressed actively (and anyone denying this need only consider what happens to Holocaust "deniers" in our "free" societies), but passively by brainwashing children from birth to see the world in a capitalistic -- read predatory and selfish -- way.

I suspect the CIB Man, though, was less talking about distribution than production, and I will set aside the obvious (i.e., that someone who sees the world in a capitalistic manner will see production only as a prelude for distribution, and very few people write totally without concern as to who will read), and deal with the concept directly. If a belief in socialism kills individuality and art, then why can I list so many socialistic thinkers and artists? Many people read 1984 and Animal Farm and pretend they are against the Communists, failing to realize that Orwell was a Communist, who fought alongside the Anarchists in Spain on behalf of the Party of Marxist Unification. (That story can be read about in his Homage to Catalonia.) Oscar Wilde wrote "The Soul of Man Under Socialism". (This is included inexpensively in the Penguin Classics edition of his De Profundis and Other Writings.) George Bernard Shaw was a prominent socialist, as well as an internationally renowned -- indeed, Nobel Prize winning -- playwright. Philip K. Dick and Jack London both were socialists at times when it was dangerous to be. Andre Breton, perhaps the greatest of the Surrealists, was a good friend of Trotsky.

Our market driven society tends to kill art, because the artist needs either to pander to the market or spend most of his time working in another career to survive. In previous times, art was subsidized by the ruling class on an individual basis. Today, we subsidize art governmentally in a poor attempt to make art survive. In a socialistic society, artists could survive without the need to produce marketable garbage in order to eat.

Immediately on the heels of that previously quoted statement, the CIB Man makes another statement with which I take exception:

Even then the idea must be known by everyone and thought by everyone so that it is completely communal.... [T]his ideology means that everyone would require the same amount of collective knowledge as everyone else. No field of study could be advanced or be specialized because then the information, and data gained would have to be known by everyone to be completely collective.

I am not sure where the CIB Man got this interpretation from. Anthem has passages like:

Manuscripts are precious, for our brothers in the Home of the Clerks spend one year to copy one single script in their clear handwriting. Manuscripts are rare and they are kept in the Home of the Scholars.

The true interpretation of information under socialism is, in the words of Bruce Sterling, "Information wants to be free." No one owns knowledge, in this envisaged society. Rather, ideas become collective property.

Copyrights are a very new concept. I think patents go back further, but even if they do they are not more than a few centuries old. These exist for a couple of reasons. In any society, they exist to give credit to the creator. In the world of Anthem, this would appear to be superfluous, although in a real collectivist society this would not be so. Books in the Soviet Union certainly had the authors' names attached. Marxism-Leninism practically has a copyright in the name. The big difference is that in our society copyrights and patents exist for economic reasons. One gets a copyright or a patent so that other people do not make money from your intellectual work. Obviously, in a collectivist society, this would be unnecessary, and no one need fear that a collectivist society could only have as much collective knowledge as can fit in a single head.

A later comment appears to be an axiom of the last:

Another problem is the possibility that the most intelligent people would get jobs that would restrict them from developing their own ideas (such as a street sweeper). Instead, it would put those of the least intelligence in charge of teaching and studying.

(In the meantime, the educational system and the State are busy brainwashing kids with ideas like, "We shouldn't learn this unless it will help us in later life." The purpose of education is, of course, to make a better citizen, capable of appreciating the arts as well as operating a lathe, and has nothing to do with employment. Who was it that said, "Give me a child until the age of seven, and I will have him for life"?)

All these have been preliminaries, though, and now I can address the CIB Man's main thesis:

From Anthem people can perceive that individuality is one of the most important characteristics they can obtain. Humanity can't let it be taken or life shall be little more than an intricate beehive, each individual working just for the betterment of society, and never for the betterment of themselves. Communism is perhaps the greatest oppressor because it is self inflicted, enforced by peer pressure, and taught from birth. Its goal is a better society, but its side-effects are the loss of freedom, of speech, religion and individuality. "I" is a word to be cherished and used with care. To forget its significance is to forget what it means to be human.

In a number of ways, the Soviet Union was opposed to individualism. This is not surprising; the Russian language does not even have a word for "private". In order to say that someone wanted to be separate and alone, one must imply that the person was mentally ill. This predated communism. The Russian language has no way to say "this is mine" in the way English can. I can say, "this is my keyboard," and in saying express ownership. Russian, on the other hand, implies something like, "this keyboard is to me," expressing a process, a vector, rather than a state. The language and the society did not know how to express individualism, and we cannot look to the Soviet Union for the cause of this problem.

Socialism need not eliminate individualism. Quite aside from the artists listed above, personalities and heroes play a major role in the labor movement. From Joe Hill to James Connolly, heroes are admired. The big thing is, though, they are seen as heroic not because they are better than other people, but because of what they did. As Black 47 says in "Paul Robeson":

"The great are only great / because we're down on our knees." The individual is respected to the extent the individual deserves to be respected.

lack of intent, but to capitalism's lack of time. As we go on, we become more and more commodified, turned into a commodity.

This is, fundamentally, the basis of capitalism. Man is what man has, and for labor that is the sweat of their brow and their television set. In socialism, every man is equal, but not every man has the same knowledge and abilities. The leader is not "better" than the street sweeper; he is merely -- ideally -- best cut out to be a leader. Here in the U.S., kids are being turned out of schools not as people, but as job seekers and consumers. Producers and consumers. Muscles and mouths. Sex is commodified; pornography, prostitution, and sexual exploitation are products of capitalism. The body is commodified, and it is only a matter of time before organ harvesting begins in earnest. Even death is commodified, and the couch potato doesn't even realize that watching violent shows like Real TV, Faces of Death and the like does not make him "liberated" or a "rebel", but merely a participant in the horrifying process by which we are all being turned into beasts of burden. Capitalism, by its very nature, destroys the inherent dignity of the person, and makes him a statistic before he is even dead. In one point, though, the CIB Man is absolutely right. In a socialist society, "each individual work[s] just for the betterment of society, and never for the betterment of themselves." Except, of course, that by bettering the self one does better society, unless one benefits the self at the expense of those around him. Humans are social animals. It is in our nature to help people and to love people, and the predatory nature we exhibit so much today is a function of our ill society. The Brotherhood of Man is obscured, but it is there. In a socialistic society, where we were freed from the need to devour our brothers to live, we would be fulfilled through the helping of others, and in self-giving one finds much more happiness than in self-aggrandizement. Rather than protesting this altruism, when one comes to understand it, when one is healed of the sicknesses Capitalism breeds, one welcomes self-giving.

I am told socialism is inevitable. Maybe it is; I don't know. I do know that Capitalism cannot survive. Capitalism is the flesh eating bacteria of society. Capitalism exists by feeding on others, and then by feeding on itself. Capitalism leads to colonialism, slavery, the commodification of humans, and to planned obsolescence. Capitalism also leads to a centralization of wealth and the oppression of the worker. The big question is not whether wealth will be centralized, but who will control it. The question is not will capitalism fall, but what will replace it.

The Marxists are of the opinion that society, like any organism, cannot devolve. It can evolve, or die. Marxism sees capitalism as an inevitable stage, as inevitable as the feudalism preceding it, and Communism following it. I am less optimistic; I think it entirely possible that capitalism can precede a true dark age as easily as it can precede a workers' paradise. So, what will follow capitalism? The final answer is: It is up to us.

Both Communism and capitalism agree that man is inherently selfish. Capitalism believes that market forces can counteract this selfishness, and that the individual is unimportant. Communism believes that this selfishness inevitably leads to the workers' revolution. Apart from philosophical maxims like "all is flux", it is obvious that capitalism, at least, cannot continue in a stasis. Capitalism exists by exploitation and maximizing profit -- inevitably at the expense of those who need to buy to live. If man -- even if merely capitalistic man -- is inherently and unchangeably selfish, the workers' revolution is inevitable. Success is, in my opinion, not.

Anarchists take a different tack. Anarchists say that man is selfish as a result of society. Whether he is or is not by nature selfish, he does not have to act in a selfish manner. The biggest difference between Anarchism and Communism is the nature of free will. Anarchism believes man has free will; Communism does not. It is not that the dictatorship of the proletariat believes in taking man's freedom away. The dictatorship of the proletariat does not believe he had it in the first place.

Anarchists believe that man can be self-giving, and that he can be educated to use his free will in a free and fair society. This can only come about if we, as people and as educated individuals, choose to give up our selfishness and work for freedom. As I try to remind myself, "The Revolution is not about me; the Revolution is about you." That is to say, I am not an Anarchist because I want to be able to do what I want. I am an Anarchist because I want everyone to be free, to be able to do what they truly want. Fighting for my desires is not the Revolution. That is a temper tantrum. The Revolution is fighting for justice, and against unjust power.

He was standing there, she knew.

Yet this was not him.

She looked into his eyes, pale blue eyes begging for mercy, eyes that were pools of water. She looked deep into the seas within him and saw how they had blackened, how the scorpions had turned vile and has eaten up everything within him.

She looked in his eyes at that moment and tried to say to him what she should have said so long ago, yet she knew that the wish had been denied even before she even began to send it.

He would not let her dare dream that he would show a hint of mercy, of love, that he would bestow upon her even a wicked form of compassion, for in that second of relief she would be handed from him too much glory, too much happiness.

It's claws fastened around her neck, like a hard stone vice that cut into her skin slowly and torturously,

intensifying without remorse. Could this creature in even the deepest sense have a soul? She thought into his eyes.

Again, she thought she knew the answer.

He squeezed his sheared, clawed fingers ever so much harder, her eyes burst with tears of lost hope, his eyes tearing into hers like knives, arrows, shears; bearing and enforcing as much pain mentally and spiritually that he was putting forth physically. Fluid began to endlessly flood out of her mouth, the life of her being pushed and harshly drained out of every pore of her body.

She put fourth all the power she could gather. The creature saw in a moment her attempt to scream, and fervently execute the blood curdling glass-shattering sound that might've erupted from her crushed esophagus. Indeed, she had tried to scream, but the vile creature cut it off so swiftly only a murmur was allowed to glide from her quivering throat. No, his impulses were ripe and deadly.

It echoed in his mind, the murmur, stabbed his soul like an army of pins. He threw her limp body

against the wall, allowing a smile cross his hideous face for the glorious crime he had done. The murmur grew within his mind, turning to the scream it was meant to be. The scream rose and rose; silence was forever lost.

Her howl went on beyond her long-awaited death, beyond her grave - buried under a bookcase she was thrown up against - and beyond her domain, her existence, beyond the world, the image of reality she called home.

The creature, such a monstrous entity, clenched it's hungry teeth. He scowled at the sight of the pale, lifeless body partially covered with books and shards of wood. There she lay, fragile and helpless. It still held beauty, her image - it still held warmth.

He had failed. He had wanted to end it all. It was the mission he had been appointed - kill the lovely, kill the beauty, kill the memory that burns because it only holds you back.

Death, he growled.

Death ended nothing. Death was a fiction, a lie like everything else. Wars would seemingly end, but there would never be a real conclusion, for it would live on in the hearts of men and women who had been a part of it. There was no real winner; never a real victory. Always a defeat, again and again.

He still loved her. Loved her? Damn emotions, damn his heart. Though black, though cold and twisted, it still remained beating like all else, still haunting his ever-decaying mind with it's messages and needs and desires.

He walked into walls, watching them as they shattered before his eyes, and came to the doorway marked EXIT. He lifted his arms, swung them back.

His fingers, the claws, tensed together into a gigantic uniclaw, and he pounced at the door, dropping it to the ground, hinges flying in the air and the growing black rain. He ripped the wet wood, smashing it into chips. He stormed out of the house; into the rain and angry skies. The dark rain washed away the blood that had stained his putrid, worn body, isolating him from the guilt, existent somewhere within his angry soul. He was now able to feel pure gratification.

He laughed. It was more a laugh of reaching a goal and breaking down a barrier and eliminating a desire than a laugh drawn from happiness and joy. He would isolate himself from his past, from his lucid thoughts, like he had so many times before. He would forget, suppress, lock it all away deep in his mind along with his other crises, nightmares, encounters, lives, tragedies.

He would never let it resurface, he promised himself.

Though deep down he knew they would.

They always did. He'd face them again.

He finally let go of his tunnel vision for a second and thought to himself.

I've lost faith.

It is nothing like it had been at the beginning. No, now it's worse. I can't rationalize, understand, control my thoughts and emotions and fears and doubts and anger, let alone try, or even begin to try, to understand theirs.

My head is away from the visions, the memories. I'm now living in the moment, and, much like when traveling within myself, I don't like what I see.

They hate, and they spread it and manipulated others. Such vile souls deserved what came to them. It hurt me to do it, but they'd twisted this world, and thusly me, to the maximum. I was no longer myself.

I no longer cared who I hurt or why, but I knew I truly wanted to kill this boy, dare I call him a man, in the worst and most hideous way. I wanted to watch as his skull crumbled. I wanted him to feel every pore in his body burn with unfathomable pain, while the very essence of his soul understood, finally, how it was from the preys' point of view.

And her... I cannot bear to reflect on or attempt to explain, for it hurts too much, to real to say, too deeply-rooted to express in mere words.Only thought, coated with thick and monstrous emotion, can hold its truth.

This time, they were the prey.

I was the death, the evil.

I hate myself for what I've done, but they pushed me too far. I loath my intentions. I loath myself.

I loath this cruel world, and I feared that all of it loathed me as well.

Fear and hate hide behind a call for justice. A quest for peace is overrun by war, protection and possession, dignity and obsession of the box we've lived in for so long and have no doubt created in our heads to create the boundaries and borderlines of our thinking, our acceptance, and, in short, our lives.

In my worn, torn, tired eyes, in a sense, it's all over now. There's no turning back from hate, from humanity. The only way is to wipe the slate clean, leave no cruelty behind.

So here, curled in a ball beneath the earth, I wipe that slate clean. I will no longer watch hate burn in my fellow citizen's eyes. Humanity has failed. It is over.

It is over only in my eyes. I know it will live on somewhere. And this hatred, this burning passion, this hunger to punish those who had taken lives, ruined lives, will continue to grow,

until this anger and hate is unleashed within me...

Again.

For now, I shall have it buried deep within my dark and treacherous pit, away from humanity, away from the fear, the rain, that blurs my path. Down in a hole, along with the rest of me.

If there is any 'me' beyond this purpose I have set up for myself.

I know the rain will soon stop pounding on the ground, blurring the paths of travelers.

I shall thrive in thought and live in dreams once again, and await the next time. It will happen again.

It will always happen...

Again.

The smoke rose from the cup of coffee I'd poured for myself and I munched on a Ritz cracker. I sat in front of my monitor, typing frantically on the computer, at the same time trying with all my might to keep it down so as not to wake my parents in the next room.

Suddenly, I stopped typing.

It was all starting to sound the same.

I swore silently to myself, sighed heartily, took a sip of coffee, exited my word processor program and flipped off my computer. I shut off the radio, which was humming softly in the background. I turned off the light to my room. I grabbed my coffee.

I proceeded down the stairs. When I hit the bottom, I glanced at the microwave. 3:23 am. I laughed. The palindrome from hell just won't leave me alone. 23 will just not leave me alone.

As I walked out into the night, passing by the couch which my dog had sat upon for the last few years, I reflected on the month that was nearing end. A bad month. Didn't want a month like this again. My dog died, my other dog died from depression due to the first dog's death, I lost my job and I flunked out of high school. My grandma is going downhill, as with my uncle. I got in a car crash, which totaled my car. My parents are threatening me to take some form of medication for my condition or they'll throw me in an institution, where they'll make me take the medication.

Now, I almost smiled as I raised the hot mug to my lips, I've fallen right back where I had been before I'd set out into the world. Before I found the motivation to get a job and a girlfriend and move on with my life a few months ago. I was back in the shits. I even had to go back at my old job at Super K, which wasn't at all good, but it sure as hell beat having to work for Yoda at Convenient, or as I called it, the Hellhole of her expanding Dark Empire.

The coffee needed sugar, but it gave me the go I needed to keep up with this insomnia, and it loosened up that Ritz gook that continually plasters itself against my back teeth. I scratched my goatee, shorter now than how its been. I plodded my feet down my long driveway, kicking stones until I reached the street. The boondocks. For next to nine years I've lived here in the boondocks.

I've come this far, only to live in the past - and, maybe a past that never was. A past I've somehow built in my fantasy-prone mind. I think that's what the doc was implying - not directly stating, of course, but just hinting about. Standing atop of grassy hill at the end of my driveway, a Beatles song tickled the back of my mind: The Fool on the Hill. That forced a smile. Ah, associations.

I proceeded into the dark eve, listening to my breathing, listening to the trees clap there way into my ears, letting them soothe my brain and calm my coffee nerves. The moon, like the pupil of mother earth, surveyed the grounds below, and, looking at me, asked me just why the hell I was doing this to myself.

The trees went silent suddenly, the insects stopped chirping, the wind stopped blowing. The earth seemed to stand still. I sniffed the air and found the strong sent of cigar smoke. I didn't have to turn around. I knew he was there.

"Long awaited." A hoarse voice growled.

I sighed, closing my eyes, wishing it was not so, wishing he was not here. "What do you mean - what's long awaited?"

"This time. Your time. The time of revelation, where the truth, after your life dies away, will suddeny fall itno your lap."

"You're full of it. You're hope."

"I may be hope, but I'm your fear. I'm your worst of all fears. Not the truth you seek, maybe, but the real truth. That could be anything, it could be everything, or it could be nothing."

"Why are you doing this?" I asked, as I turned to face his shadowy figure leaning against an old oak tree - one I knew well.

I could not see, so I cannot be sure - but I think I felt him smile. All doubt was casted away as he laughed like a madman. "I'm not doing this, you fool - you're doing this."

He's keeping me away. Away from the oak tree. The secret lies in a black box in a hole at its base, cradled in age-old roots. I feared what lied within it. I feared even more it was a mirage.

I smiled. "What?"

"I have here, in my hand, what you need to find your truth. To survive."

I looked at his hand, which he opened. I looked down to see what rested in his palms, then looked back at him.

I shook my head. "You're not the key. You're not even close."

I walked off.

It is about the little gremlins that are in my mom's car

Every time I transport one of my boom boxes in my moms car a little hole apears below the buttons on the tape player. This happens then not that long after the button stops working. This gets annoying because I don't want to buy another radio. I think that this is a gremlin because I bought a radio of another brand and on a trip to south carolina I found this had happened again. I don't like gremlins. As a car they look funny and all but are way too popular and as a little beasty they keep taking my stuff and breaking things.

Great now they are stealing my thoughts...

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