Gopher 24

Volume Number Two -- Issue Number Twenty-Four
Two Full Years and Still Polluting the Space Between Your Ears.
(c) 2000, All rights reserved to Rewired and the Gopher Society.
e-mail us at: rewired@trianglepants.com
Liberate Tute Me

-Dedication-
The American Government, Who Raped the American Dream,
and Keeps Stealing My Friends

-Nifty Fact of the Month-
Remember, when someone annoys you, it takes 42 muscles in your face to frown.
BUT, it only takes 4 muscles to extend your arm and smack the asshole upside the head.

-Those Who’ve Spilled Their Brains for us to Use at Our Disposal for Our Wicked Purposes-
Claire
Jane Doe #69
Drug Addict
The Guy
Tinman
Heather S.
Star-Gazing Dreamer
Evil Mike
Issa
Big Bad Jane
Grace Kelley, the Original
Nightfall
The Evil One
Cado Noctus
CIB Man
Denese
Satan

Lairotide Eht	by Rewired
Is it Such a Wonderful Life?	by Rewired
If I were a Killer	by Claire
His Mumbling Monotone	by Jane Doe #69
Raging Fire	by Drug Addict
Untitled	by The Guy
The Just Society	CIB Man
That Limbo Between	by Rewired
Time	by Heather S.
The government	by Star-Gazing Dreamer
From the Little Green Notebook	by Evil Mike
Character Sketch of Rewired	by Nightfall
Life	by Star-Gazing Dreamer
Cassanova	by Issa
Big Bad Jim	by Big Bad Jane
Faceless	by Grace Kelley, the Original
A Fight for Custody	by Star-Gazing Dreamer
Eat-N-Park	by Star-Gazing Dreamer
Untitled	by Issa
A Brutal Poem	by Tinman
Napkin Arguments With Myself	by Star-Gazing Dreamer
Chocolate Homicidal Latte Cappacinno	by Nightfall
Minds Are Like Doors	by The Evil One
Untitled	by Issa
Carpe Noctum	by Cado Noctus
On Feeling Rejected	by Denese
Separate	by Rewired
The Long Dark Road, an Abduction Story	by Rewired
Thinking About You	by Nightfall
Something Else	by Rewired
ending stuff	by Rewired

"You'll never find yourself if you are looking so hard you can barely see. Stop searching for that cosmic one answer because you'll never find it. Life is a series of intricate questions and therefore has a series of intricate answers.
Life is beautiful. Life is ugly. Life is saucy and scary and strange and silly. Life is a mime sitting in his imaginary box in the rain, watching his make up run off of his face because although he pretends that box can protect him from angry strangers, it can't protect him from the weather. There's your answer."

Hey. Haven’t put out one of these damn issues in quite a while, have I? Well, a year behind and we’re still going, and we’ve got a fairly large and quality issue here. There’s been plenty of changes in the lives of those involved with the Gopher since our last few publications, and yours truly has moved, gotten broke, moved back home with his parents and is now looking forward to moving back again. I can’t seem to maintain solid ground. The college town of Kent proved to be interesting though, and you’ll be reading a lot of what happened down there in the next issue or two. Things get good and bad, go back and fourth, give birth and die.

The following is not meant to be an attack on that individual who sent it or the one who initially wrote it. It is merely my point of view on the matter on this particular evening/morning and I felt obligated to share it with all of you. Responses are welcome.

Though at rare occasions life does seem to be wonderful -- while you're doing artwork alone in your room at 3am, heavy, rhythmic tunes beating in the background; while your gazing out across a sunset in an empty park on a grassy hill, a cigarette held between your cupped fingers and a warm cup of coffee by your side as you let your mind alone and just let the feeling run through you as if you're the conduit for some divine force; or while you're speeding down a deserted road early in the morning, with your hands out the window, and you can just feel the taste of freedom, or while you lay beside the girl you love in your arms, wishing you could just melt into her. They are just that: rare, swift moments that drift down to touch you just before they are taken away by the wind of reality and sucked into the engine of a Boeing 707. A nihilistic philosophy this may be, but it holds true. Why? Because the loud music wakes up your parents, who ruin the passionate, artistic mood you'd just gotten yourself in, and they knock on your door at 3 am and ask you why you're not in bed, and they throw the fact that you still owe them money for car insurance and destroy every hope you have of getting back into your artistic fervor; because the cigarette dies and the cup of coffee grows cold and the sun begins to blind you, and as you grow older you realize you can't live without at least a pot of coffee a day and a pack and a half of the strongest cigarettes on the market, which contribute to the lung cancer you get when you're forty; because a bee hits your arm which you've left hanging out the window of your car as you drive it 80 miles an hour down the road, and the stinging sensation distracts you so much that you don't even see the school bus around the corner and the kids getting off; you can never tell the girl how you feel, and like an idiot you both call it quits and you realize a year down the road that you actually loved her, even though by this time she's flipped her lid, run off to the Army Reserves, got married and tortures you with cryptic symbolism in your dreams that the guilt feeds on and your heart has to take.

Wonderful? Only in those few seconds squashed between limitless months of bullshit that seem to last an eternity. In a world that demands that you be a slave to their system, that you bar your mind and lock it in it's appropriate cell and focus instead on the mundane, materialistic and meaningless, in a world run by people who demand that you do what you’re told or what they'll bend the rules enough to let you get away with, in a world that is run by such ignorance, where the base motivation is greed, your life is run by responsibilities thrown upon you by a system you’re taught you have to accept because `it's just the way it is and there's not a damn thing in the world you can do to change it'. There's little time for you own true passions, and only through your own true passions can you reach true happiness, true bliss; and only through that can you reach the good life of your dreams, which is the only way life would be wonderful.

Or maybe I'm just cranky and I need a high-speed car, a canvas, some paint, a good stereo, and the girl I love. I'll settle for a cup of coffee with four spoonfuls of sugar and a cigarette.

If I had a hook for a hand I would be really cool. I would hitchhike on the road and then when people picked me up I’d act all normal so when they least suspected it... I’d hook them with my hook. Some people think a hook isn’t a good weapon, but I disagree. With a hook, I could slash someone’s stomach open and spill out all their guts. Then I would wipe my hook clean and make a really wicked smile. That would be so awesome. Just like a movie. (Ha, ha Rewired!) So all of you out there thinking about becoming a psychopathic killer, choose the hook as your weapon of choice. We can start a hook club.

Raging fire blasts that come through the walls
Throwing all creatures within its reach
Farther around this circle of grievance.
Lives dramatically different in the passing of a simple moment.
Alone, it takes our everything and rubs our
Pitiful existence of a proud tale into the
Incredibly hard mountainous range.
>From here, it smashes and pounds harder
And more -- for one asinine purpose --
so that we never return...
We have what they crave: sanity.

Elaina walked down the cobblestone stairway, which led down the basement. Torches lit the narrow stairway, giving off a ghostly glow. Tiny windows cut out from the stones allowed a cool breeze to blow across Elaina’s pale face. Dust and cobwebs covered the walls, and the scent of death lingered in the air.

When she came to the bottom of the stairs, a wooden door stood before her. A carving of a pentagram was etched in the center of the door, and its iron handle was stained in blood.

Elaina pulled on the handle, swinging the door open. Its hinges squeaked and cobwebs fell from their corners. Beyond the doorway, Elaina could see a room filled with books and vials. Entering the room, she saw a large table, couches, and a bed. A fireplace was lit on the far wall, illuminating the room.

The man looked up and saw Elaina’s slender face. Her eyes were dark and mysterious. Her skin was as pale as the moon, and her lips were the color of blood. Her long black hair seemed to blend in with the shadows, while her white night gown revealed her every curve.

"Welcome to my chamber, Princess Elaina. I called you tonight to help me with a spell I have been working on. It is time for this kingdom to feel my power so that the people will know who the rightful king is. What do you say, my dear?" Asked the dark robed man softly.

"I thought you would say that," said the robed man. Then he waved his hand, and Elaina was blown off her feet and onto the bed. Next the springs on the bed ripped through the mattress and rapped around Elaina’s ankles and wrists.

"I’m sorry that your heart isn’t into betraying your father; however, mine is. You are going to help me, like it or not."

Elaina began to scream. She yelled for help, but she was too far under the castle for anyone to hear her cries.

As Elaina screamed for someone to rescue her, the dark robed man began to cast his magic spell.

"Oh, spirits of the damned rise from the pits of hell. Meld into a physical form and take this mortal woman. Take her as the bride of the damned and create a child. Warp her young mind so that she will raise a child in eternal darkness. If you do not, I will bring heavens wrath down upon you all. This I command," chanted the dark man.

As he chanted, the flames of the fireplace flared up. Then creatures flew out from the flames and began to form into one body. When the spell was completed, a giant green monster stood over the bed.

The creature had six crimson red eyes that reflected the fires of Hell. Six large tentacles protruded from the bottom of its body dripping with green ooze, and six mouths with razor sharp teeth dripping with green saliva.

Elaina screamed in terror at the sight of the grotesque demon that neared the bed.

The demon raised two of its tentacles and put them in her ears. The ooze dripped off its own tentacles and down her ear canal and into her brain. Elaina screamed harder, and then she became silent.

In searching for an answer to whether or not it would be possible to define if a society could be just or not I found that I first had to decide what exactly the words ‘just’, and ‘society’ meant. Looking at the dictionary on my Bookshelf 98 CD I found the following definitions:

Just: Honorable and fair in one's dealings and actions; Consistent with what is morally right; righteous; Properly due or merited; Valid within the law; lawful; Suitable or proper in nature; fitting; Based on fact or sound reason; well-founded.

Society: The totality of social relationships among human beings; A group of human beings broadly distinguished from other groups by mutual interests, participation in characteristic relationships, shared institutions, and a common culture; The institutions and culture of a distinct self-perpetuating group.

Believing the task of trying to advocate the possibility of a just society a much more fruitful endeavor than merely trying to refute that any such harmony between people is possible I shall attempt a method of standards required to produce the desired effect. However I feel it is necessary to place some boundaries by using the above definitions to give the scope of what a just society would entail. For the purposes of my argument a just society will be defined as follows: A group of people in which law provides for equal benefits for those who obey the laws, and equal punishment to those who disobey a given law. Furthermore the laws which are in place must provide for the protection of individual rights and thoughts which do not conflict harmfully with the most fundamental precepts of said society.

Let me make it clear that I distinguish what a just society is from what a fair society might be. For a quick example, when I was younger I was playing with a toy and my sister came and tried to take it from me. After fighting ensued for possession of the toy my dad came over, took the toy from both of us, and sent us to our rooms. I might be able to say that the out come was not fair, since I did not start the fight, however I was fighting and that was not allowed. Both my sister and I broke the "law" and justice was served equally. I believe that the 100% just society that people want might never be achieved, the reason being that often people who break the law will never be brought to justice. This however does not exclude the possibility for a fully just society under a strict interpretation of my definition because no specification is made as to the enforcement of the laws created. Let it be noted however that by using the word "provide" in my definition a just society does exact that a reasonable attempt be made to carry out the provisions made by the laws. It in is determining the line of "reasonable" which creates the greatest obstacle for making a just society. Returning to a childhood example: most children would easily get away with taking one cookie from the cookie jar, but removing all of the cookies would likely lead to some form of punishment. The question lies in deciding just how many cookies can be taken before the action becomes sufficiently wrong receive punishable attention. Ultimately the answer depends on how much of a difference it makes to the person deciding the case. If your sister rats you out then punishment might be given for just one cookie in order to make an example that stealing is inadmissible.

For this next part of my paper I will give more clarity to a part of my definition which if not addressed could raise some serious issues. As part of my definition of what I intended for a just society I stated that the laws in place must defend both the individual and the dictates of the majority (society). The clincher of this statement relies on a single word, "fundamental". What is it about certain things which make them more fundamental to a society than others? Why is it that almost any society forbids murder, but that many allow for euthanasia or abortion? What is it that makes some drugs okay to use, but others ‘fundamentally’ wrong? Or, looking back through history what was it that makes it okay for one religion to pursue extermination of another? Unfortunately I believe that the answer to these questions is more disturbing than the questions. The answer is that what is fundamental is decided by the whims of what those in power decide that it ought to be. There are many people who believe that the KKK or the Nazi party is a stigma on our society and those people wish that these hate groups did not exist. However what is more fundamental to our society at this point is the belief in the freedom of speech, religion, and political persuasion. Therefore, although some people are acting as the nagging sister, pleading to authority; the law in this country has decided that there are other issues at stake which are more fundamental. Note that this has not always been the case, and that there was a point in our history, during the age of McCarthyism, in which Communists in the United States were often deported, executed, or imprisoned.

In conclusion, a just society appears to be one in which political corruption does not exist, where the law breakers who are caught face a punishment which is relevant in degree to the severity of their actions, and where those who enforce the laws are not above the law. The standards are high, but I do believe that they are unattainable. The unfortunate thing is that though we may obtain a just society, I doubt that it could ever be fair. With the simple fact that "life isn’t fair," how could we come to expect more from a society?

"God is not dead, he is merely trapped for eternity on the Cosmic Commode after making the grave mistake of forgetting to check the `paper’ before he `claimed’ the seat."
-- Omin Channing.

"Do not battle with ye monsters lest ye become a monster oneself --
and gaze long enough into the abyss, and the abyss gazes into you."
-- Nietzsche.

I find myself awake at the sound of the irritating alarm, and dread washes over me. Where am I? I’m alone, at home on my bed, atop all covers, shaking violently as if in convulsions. For a moment I wonder what lies behind that dark veil in my mind; what it was exactly that happened the night prior, but I have grown to be quite familiar with that tip-of-the-tongue feeling. I’ve grown to accept the fact that no matter how hard I try no memory will surface -- no memory I could hope to validate, anyway; nothing that would come to make me doubt my ability to differentiate fantasy from reality.

The convulsions continue, and I turn off my alarm, close the book of abnormal psychology I’d slept by in hopes that there might be some bizarre psychological condition that might explain just what it was that had been happening to me -- yet no matter how far in it I read, no one condition could stretch to explain it all.

I feel ill. Sickly. Like I want to suck myself in like a turtle and explode like an A-bomb simultaneously -- but eternally stuck in that limbo that lies directly in-between, never wavering, even for a solitary moment.

I grab my book bag and make it downstairs, but I can’t stop shaking. I’m freaking out, coated in thick layers of cold sweat -- and every now and then it feels as if needles strike the back of my eyeballs.

I sip my coffee, hoping my route to consciousness will drive the terror away. The teenage years aren’t supposed to be like this -- high school isn’t supposed to be this way at all. Bullies are your worries. Grades are your worries. Women dominate your every desire, and college is the goal.

Little gray fuckers with big, black slanted liquid eyeballs aren’t supposed to be your worries. Government control, colliding realities, hidden cosmic truths -- you don’t find that in association with adolescence. A search for deep, spiritual and universal truth dominates my every desire, and my goal is undefined, but transcends the material and anything I could explain in the crude semantics of words.

We’re in the car, and my body is drawn in, wanting nothing touching it; my ears are ringing, wanting to grasp no sound; my eyes are open just barely, for this reality hurts in ways even more than the other, and my mouth is sealed, revealing nothing, for the mind which it acts as a medium for refuses to allow it to limit its contents into the crude land of words. My hat is backwards, and my sweat-drenched bangs scrape against my clammy skin -- some are plastered to my forehead, and others poke at my eyes like spears. The morning twilight gives the inside of the van an eerie look that further plays with my mind, and my body still jitters.

My sister is in the back seat, silent and subservient to the elderly female beside me that allegedly gave birth to both my two younger sisters and me. Does my mother, in the driver’s seat to my left, have any idea that something is wrong with her son, with her eldest offspring -- particularly on this dreary morn? She seems oblivious to the convulsing muscles on my body, blind to the sincere state of terror that envelops me.

She pulls to the front doors of the high school, ten minutes before homeroom. I open the door and get out, closing it quickly before she says anything that I my pounce at her for -- which would be anything.

"Goodbye," she says in a snobby tone that seems to indicate something along the lines of, `I drag your sorry ass out of bed to take you to a place that you hate and this is how you repay me?’

"Bye," I say as I walk towards the doors, never looking back. The bright lights blur my vision.

I wonder why I came here -- what the purpose of me being in this crude place is. I’m so out of tune with everything here; I’m on a completely different wavelength. These people walking passed me are worried about popularity and acquiring that little slip of paper at the end of thirteen years of this torture that rate your level of worth so you can go on to the so-called `real world’ and be a professional Drone Child. I’m thrown these visions, hallucinations, impressions and experiences that break me, detach me, so it ends up that I see their world as the Biggest Lie, the Clever Distraction from what it all really is and what it all really means. What am I supposed to do with this? I’ve seen too much to let go and too weak and fearful to fight something that’s so much more than I am, and so I remain stuck between, accomplishing nothing but endurance through suffering. I still exist, I’m still, in some state, conscious -- that’s my accomplishment, and I suppose under the circumstances it’s a grandiose one, but I can’t accept that. What’s the message here?

The twitches grow further apart, and I come to the art room, my abode, my shrine -- where sanity is accepted as a disease that can be cured. Insanity is equivalent to beauty, and the chaos is the mystery of our heart and souls spilled on canvas and poster board and newsprint; a mind that bleeds itself through India ink and pastel, paint and charcoal. The pieces of their souls cover the walls, decorated with delirious designs displaying unconsciously guided themes. This is the place in this Palace of Programming that people come to touch the truer layer of the world, the deeper layer where consciousness dominates and existence is it’s medium, the vast layer of reality where 95 percent of my awareness resides. With pastel in my hand, with my pen to my paper, I can try and reveal to them what happened, what I saw and how I felt and how I feel. I bring it out in this place for them to see and for purposes of objectifying myself -- so I can throw myself out on a paper, hold it away and glance back at a skewed portion of myself, a monstrous manifestation. It’s the only moments of joy I receive, a path of passion, of absolute freedom where I am the king and I am in control and I am the one with power and the rest of them can go fuck themselves, for this is my spiritual masturbation. It’s my only peace, my only real way of communicating.

Time
Now its time to fly
And time to dream of the sea
Time to play with crayons
And time to cry
It's time to remember days
And time to wash everything away
Now it's time to put on wings
And time to say goodbye.

You wanna know what I think about our government? Really? I think they're all a bunch of insecure assholes with money. They pay people to build up strong campaigns and say smart things for them, so they can get higher and higher up the ladder of governmental positions. And, if they're lucky enough to be elected, they get paid for it in return for their troubles of being so powerful. OOh. I couldn't do their job. I think they are so cool. Why don't I pay them my hard-earned tax money to make sure they get well-paid for sitting in chairs all day and making horse sounds "Yeah" a few times, "Neigh" a few times. (Sarcasm, in case you hadn't guessed.) It's all random and has no real divine meaning. Those damned people in their rich suits and professionally-cut gray hair. They wouldn't know what living life was if it slapped them in the face.

I had a conversation with Rewired recently, and I came to realize another point. It would be absolutely wonderful to burn the government, but then what the hell would we do with the world? No rulers would coincide with no economy and no legal system, and we'd have a big problem about how to make money or prosper. I mean, granted, I hate the system that we've come up with thus far, but having absolutely no rulers would be scary. If people like Rewired or myself took over and put our ethics to good use, then we could let the people live as they pleased but still keep an economic system so that people could make money to live their lives. It would be great to have enough lumber and resources free to make your own house if only you had a fucking clue how to do it. If you have zero skills in this area and never will, no matter how hard you try to learn, then you should have someone else do it. What if that person didn't want to do it? That's why we need money or something for those of us who don't know how to do stuff. We need to be able to pay others to do it for us. My decision in this matter fluctuates, though, because I also think it would be pleasant to live life on this world without seclusion from the rich and poor; to put everyone on the same social level. It would be fun to live together on this earth without hatred toward people living higher-classed lives. How could our society actually stand this? There are so many of them out there that live merely off their airs over lower people. How could sports players and movie stars survive their lives without more money than everyone else? How many janitors do you know not named Will Hunting or Bob that really enjoy their job and would still be doing it if they didn't need the little amount of money that they do get? I know I sure as hell wouldn't be working in the fucking library if I didn't have to. The library pisses me off to the worst extent that anyone can piss me off. That's it. I'm going to have to write an article about the library and inform you about the hell I go through to warn anyone thinking of the job themselves. Bye for now.

Editor’s Note: I have no idea were this came from, and cannot preach its authenticity. But it’s funny:

When Apollo Mission Astronaut Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon, he not only gave his famous "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" statement but followed it by several remarks, usual com traffic between him, the other astronauts and Mission Control. Just before he re-entered the lander, however, he made the enigmatic remark "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky."

Many people at NASA thought it was a casual remark concerning some rival Soviet Cosmonaut. However, upon checking, there was no Gorsky in either the Russian or American space programs. Over the years many people questioned Armstrong as to what the "Good luck Mr. Gorsky" statement meant, but Armstrong just smiled.

Just a few years ago, on July 5, 1995 in Tampa Bay, FL., while answering questions following a speech, a reporter brought up the 26-year-old question to Armstrong. This time he finally responded. Mr. Gorsky had finally died and so Neil Armstrong felt he could answer the question. When he was a kid, he was playing baseball with a friend in the backyard. His friend hit a fly ball that landed in the front of his neighbor's bedroom windows. His neighbors were Mr. and Mrs. Gorsky. As he leaned down to pick up the ball, young Armstrong heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky. "Oral sex! You want oral sex?! You'll get oral sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!"

On days of old and new for those who are among the true the delicate night blankets over the harshest days on my darkest night I choose to remember the days of old. I like to think of my past with a special fondness not with regret. In my past is my joy. For those among the true I remember my greatest joy...

My purest feeling, the only feeling...no matter what the day or night. Love brought me something that is rare...hope. Days of old... Today I'm stronger yet weaker. Love gave way to uncertainty and doubt. The days are more brutal even blinding. There is no rest for me daring my nights for they like my heart have grown cold. Yet in the face adversity I have a last resort. Something love gave and could never take away...hope.

Hope dims the brightest days and sooths me at night. She passes in and out of my life day and night. Now once again I have to track her down and make her mine. Among the true this is my today.

All the power in the world is in the eyes. For eyes hold the truth. Even for those who are not among the true their eyes still bear the truth. Truth is my bible, my messiah. I find comfort in knowing what is real. I like knowing when someone lies to me. I like blatantly disregarding those who are untrue.

Its been seen by many. Numbness that is my sanctuary. No pain, no sorrow. I forsake its protection for love, nothing more nothing less. Someone once said silence was golden. In my mind `was’ is the operative word. Then art of conversation is my link to the minds of others.

Shades of night fall upon my eyes. A lonely world fades away. Misty light. Shadows start to rise. In my dreams your face is all I see. Through the night you share your love with me. Dreaming visions of you. Feeling all the love I never knew. Here we are on the crossroads of forever. Shining stars light the way. Walk with me on the winds of time. Love's mystery is for us to find.

Until the day I find you. I won't rest, I won't let go. Somehow someway I know I'll be beside you. To warm my heart and fill my soul.

For those who have gone before me... learning is a tool which can be molded into insight. I prefer to learn from the mistakes of others, rather than my own. So I let those weak of heart be my teachers. They are the ones that deserve my pity. They are destined for a fate not much worse than mine.

Shades of social strife cover my eyes and take my patience. Those so shallow to assume they are better than someone else have chosen a dire fate. People too proud to admit their weakness are not much more than common pickup artists. Woe to those who refuse to be vulnerable, for it will be their downfall.

To swear fidelity is nothing short of suicide. Especially when young. You give up your life. You surrender your heart and your most precious thoughts. In return you get her. To you it’s all worth it. Every second of the day. Minutes to hours over the phone. Fidelity drains you of everything and fills you with her. That's the price you pay for your joy.

The mind is a terrible thing to waste, but it’s an even worse thing to taste. Only one person I know has ever had the misfortune of tasting the bitterness of the human mind.

Born to this world by the forty and fifty year olds just over twenty years ago, Timothy Theodore Lance saw the overly bright lights of the deathly white hospital and questioned "why?"

He grew up in Thompson trying to discover the whys and wherefores of existence and little gray men while struggling through high school.

His long, dark brown hair lays unwashed on his head, hiding it under his backwards ball cap. His brown eyes stare right through you as he studies your personality. He wears an old, black "TOOL" T-shirt and an old, smelly flannel. His baggy, faded jeans overflow with junk from his pockets such as cigarettes, pens, and other such objects.

As a paranoid schizophrenic caffeine fiend, Tim draws the people around him into his own downward spiral as he heads into the realm of insanity.

Hiding out at Mentor Eat ‘n Park, joblessness is beginning to get to him as he tries to decide whether or not to shave off his scraggly goatee, a requirement to work as a dishwasher or greater. Sure it’s just hair, but it’s the principle that’s important to him.

Starting a literary magazine on the internet and a regular, paper lit magazine in the works, he is a writer with many ideas. He can sit down anywhere with a Bic pen and some form of paper in his hand and he can write whatever comes to mind, usually filling the sheet in no time.

A friend to everyone, Tim is in the middle of everything, leaving many to believe that he can control people. But are the people controlling him?

"It’s not a question, but a lesson learned in time
I hope you have the time of your life"
-- Green Day, Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)

Life. A confusing mass of what everyone considers "time", circling my head and bringing in new people and new questions. I will never understand the purpose of my own life. Am I supposed to, though? Is there ever a purpose? I have begun to realize that there never was, nor ever will there be a purpose. I’ve always wanted there to be some divine reason for my existence, but this is indeed a vain hope. There will never be a reason. I am here, just like everyone else, living in a life of ordinary and unordinary happenings, learning new things and hopefully helping other people through their lives, to find a life that they would consider adequate enough to satisfy themselves. I’m adequately happy, so I would like the people around me to be just as happy. I’m a people person, in that I always consider every one of my friends before I consider my own happiness sometimes. Seeing my friends divinely happy makes me happy and fulfilled. I don’t like when other people make my friends unhappy. Like, for instance, last Prom when I dumped my own date who was being a selfish jerk to my friends. Some may think this to be a stupid character trait, but those people are also only out to please themselves. I don’t believe in only pleasing yourself, as I’ve so far repeatedly stated. I shouldn’t bitch, but some things in life upset me so much. I used to keep things inside, holding onto them as much as I possibly could until I burst and went into insane fits. And now I have to come out with my bitchings so that others will understand my frustration finally and those that I’m bitching about will stop doing what it is they’re doing to piss me off. I guess that’s selfish. Oh well. Fuck it. Everything.

Nearly a year ago it happened, but the image still burns in my mind. The night I realized just how beautiful and how precious to me she is. It was a long drive that night, full of 80s music sing-alongs, and just plain idiocy. The day we arrived, we had been passed on the interstate by a school bus; mind you, we were driving about 95 mph. That evening, I realized how spectacular the female really was, at least the one I was with.

I remember the majority of what happened; I was exhausted the entire time. I remember seeing her clothes being tossed on to the floor. Beautiful. In the dim light from the moon, and some given from the TV, her milky white skin seemed to glow.

He laid down next to her and kissed her deeply and passionately (or rather, in the midst of lust). I sat back and watched as my girl was being "taken care of" by some boy we hardly knew. But the pleasure on her face was unmistakable. It was beautiful. Watching her muscles tense, every nerve in her body aiming toward one main goal…

Sweat dripped off her side onto the blankets below her. I watched every expression she made; I realized that she was a work of art, and that I would do anything to make and keep her happy. Finally, the conclusion. I handed her a can of lemon something or other, lit her a cigarette, brushed the damp hair out of her eyes and smiled. I don’t think I will ever be able to share with her the beauty I saw that night. Every time I see her reminds me of how precious she is.

Regardless of how many boyfriends we get and go through, she’ll still be my girl.

While working one beautiful morning in a restaurant with some servers who are old enough to be my mother -- or grandmother some of them -- I overheard a conversation about Big Bad Jim. He, so I understood it, is a masturbation tool that one of the nicest, sweetest women I work with owned. Now I hear these ladies talk about everything from their kids to weddings, but never have I heard them talk about something so graphic. Some of the servers owned no toys, others left their toys on the kitchen table to torment their parents when they were younger. I own no toys. There were jokes made about buying some of the servers’ toys for Christmas. Jokes made about so and so being the entertainment at the Christmas party, and jokes made about taking home and freezing breadsticks together. I felt compelled to answer with a comment every now and again, but I didn’t. I just laughed to myself and sat the next customer, watching their facial expressions as they heard bits and pieces of this unusual topic. Oh it was a riot. It got me to wondering exactly how many women masturbate and don’t tell anyone.

I walk among a crowd of thousands
All with stone cold eyes and faces
Looking at me I seem faceless to
Them as they look right through me as if they
Want my soul to take
They try hard and succeed
Soul has become theirs
My eyes become cold as stone
My heart has gone cold and my soul
Has been obliviated
I become the crowd as I stare through
All of you
Now I lay my head to sleep
Still faceless to all
I lie six feet deep
Alone and faceless forever an eternal
Sleep.

Editor’s Note: I haven’t a damned clue were this one came from, either -- but it’s funny:

Scientists at NASA developed a gun specifically to launch dead chickens at the windshields of airliners, military jets, and the space shuttle. The idea was to simulate the frequent incidents of collisions with airborne fowl and to test the strength of the windshields in collisions at maximum velocity.

British engineers hear about the gun and were eager to test it on the windshields of their new high-speed trains. The appropriate intergovernmental arrangements were made, and the gun was shipped to England. But when the gun was fired, the engineers stood shocked as the chicken hurled out of the barrel, crashed into the shatterproof windshield, smashed it to smithereens, crashed through the control console, snapped the engineer's backrest in two, and embedded itself in the back wall of the cabin. The horrified Britons sent NASA the disastrous results of the experiment, along with the design specifications of the windshield, and asked the US scientists for the input and suggestions.

I sat there on that smooth, wooden bench,
kicking my feet and staring at my new She-Ra sneakers.
With the emblem of the powerful heroin
surrounded in reds and yellows staring back at me,
I thought to myself,
"I wish I were that beautiful and that strong."
My guardians sat next to me.
I didn’t know why I was there,
and they were explaining it
in a way where I still did not understand.
I showed my mother the smelly paper I was scratching.
It smelled like root beer!
At that moment, a tall old man,
in his sixties at least, I believed,
summoned us to enter another room.
There was a lot of talking carrying on
between my guardians and this old man.
There was at least one other person in the room.
I recognized her but didn’t know
exactly who she was…
I was tired of being there,
and I really wanted to go home and play.
The tall man looked at me and asked,
"Who do you want to live with?"
I was frightened of him,
and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do…
so, I sat there in silence.
He stared at me, and my guardians
and this other person I still did
not recognize did the same.
Did they expect me to answer?
I still stared into his pudgy old face,
knowing my answer but unable to say it.
"Would you feel better if I took you
into this room, where we could talk in private?"
he pointed to a door; an escape, I saw it as.
Immediately I nodded, curious to where this new
passage would lead. Entering, I noticed
there were many people, occupied at their desks.
The tall old man leaned down toward my face,
and whispered so I could hear,
"Who do you want to live with?"
and I whispered back,
"Please don’t take me away from
my parents. I love them."
He looked at me for a second, thinking,
and consoled me as everyone else
had always done, half-heartedly,
"I’ll see what I can do."

I pick up my book bag,
and rush ahead to catch up
because they are already inside.

Taryn darts to take a corner,
and Tim and I fight and argue
over the other corner.

Our waitress sighs,
knows we won’t leave too soon
and she’ll have to refill our coffee.

After an hour of small talk,
we bore of each other’s company
and begin to write in our notebooks.

Falling into a state of dreaminess,
I look around me to associate
with the surroundings that are my home.

Booths ache for company,
as the rest of the herd
has not yet arrived to fill them.

Leaves enrapture the window,
giving it a jungle-type setting
in a family-style restaurant.

I remember a time,
when Pat discovered them alive
and decided to feed them dog biscuits.

There were wooden bars,
separating the booths between us
and providing a shield for the other patrons.

Tim needed to use the bathroom,
so I received the corner this time
as my fair right.

With its black top laced in speckles,
the sugar jar from the caddie
moved to the middle of the table.

I stared into its contents,
realizing more and more
just how bored I really was.

As if hearing my plea,
Curt and Marco entered the establishment,
cigarettes in their hands.

They joined our table,
and we all began to chatter
in a fury to release all our energy.

Not being personal,
we never spoke about our relationships,
or any such happenings in our lives.

Philosophy and religion,
along with sex and masturbation
were some varied topics we discussed.

Everyone was educated,
read more books than those…
thought to be normal…other customers.

And they were the ones staring at us,
as though we were reckless teenagers
bothering their lives with our presence.

Most of us were over 20 or close to it,
yet we were thought of as children
who didn’t know anything about the world.

It was a joke to us all,
that they were so blind to not see
who we were and what we knew.

We continue to meet there,
at that haven for cookies for
every week till we come to our demise.

"Good morning," the teacher says with a nod, seemingly knowing about the previous 8 hours of my life.

Then I sink into my own world, to the comfort I’ve found in a pen and paper. I’ve come to realize that people really don’t know me. The people I think most highly of as friends don’t understand. I get the quick glances from those people with the added, yet expected look seeming to say, "What’s wrong?" All I can do is stare bleakly back with a slight smirk that twists the dark circles and bags under my eyes into an insincere smile; or look of near content that tells them, "I’m fine, just fine."

I think these pills that I’m taking will be my downfall. The bursts of emotion; I can’t handle that. I consider myself a strong person and showing weakness lowers my self-esteem. So, no crying, no hiding (not that there is anywhere to hide), and no self pity. Just doing what needs to be done, when it needs to be done.

I feel the dryness of my skin; I have to laugh as I think, "they’ve sucked me dry." I haven’t felt like this in almost 5 long years. I had a great friend back then, but she’s long since gone from my life. I find myself with a new friend, who sees through her eyes, speaks with her tongue, and cares with her arms. I’ve missed her, yes, but did nothing to find her again. Our lives have changed, as have our thoughts.

I smile as I think about my future. To be an archeologist, digging my own grave in the dirt I work in. I suppose, though, it’s that way now. The filth of society. Everyone hurrying around, rushing towards death with every mile per hour they add to their speedometer.

I’m going out of my mind in this world. Mother says I have no trouble making friends. Then I have to ask, "Does she know who I am?"

"I want to live; I want to give;
I’ve been a miner for a heart of gold."
-Neil Young, Heart of Gold

"And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?"
-William Blake, The Tyger

"So always remember that you’re holding my heart..."
-She Unnamed, first letter

I was born on the golden highway of the sun, halfway between here and eternity, but that’s halfway closer than most people get. I sailed the concrete rivers of molten stone and dreams, homeless, friendless, alone, and bearing the weights of a thousand and one burdens upon my shoulders. I was cast out of every doorstep, denied every fleeting luxury of youth and innocence, and thrust upon the world to run like obsidian fever through the sable velvet of the burning nights and harness all the building force of the coming asphalt dawn. I have a trusty rusted school bus, a stainless steel crossbow, and a titanium alloy heart. They call me hermit, nomad, and gypsy, but soon I will make them learn my chosen name of Tinman.

It was many years ago when they stole my warm heart of flesh. Two heathens had paid for their ambush with death, but one had left a retribution in my chest. With the useless strength of the doomed, he had thrust a shapeless iron thorn deep between my ribs and it had found lodging in my septum. I sat heavily upon the dirt and coughed a stew of blood and phlegm into my mouth. One way or another, I knew that I would soon be dead. Quick death would follow if I attempted to tear the barb out of my heart and slow death would come were I to leave it in. These thoughts were my final conscious ones that day.

When I awoke, the pain had dwindled to a dull insistent ache all along my chest. The wound had been cleaned and dressed and I felt with horror the cold titanium monster humming behind my ribs. Both of the men that I had killed had been sliced open and deprived of their organs. Every drop of blood had been surgically drained from their body and even their skin and marrow had been extracted. All that remained were two heaps of muscle and hollow bones. Such complete and precise butchery could only mean harvesters-- harvesters who had come to reap from the dead and sow in the injured. They had saved my life, given me a titanium heart, and in doing so had traced a seal of blood across my head. Charity is never free.

It was dusk and I was Tinman and I had no thought in all my mind but to slay the demon who had deigned to save my life.

I know metal. I can taste it in the air and feel it throb under my hands, my feet, upon my skin. Every nerve of my body is tuned to cold sounds of metal and one glance can tell me the name and nature of any metallic object. Strength and age, ductility and malleability, conductivity and electromagnetism, density and charge and reactivity all pour through some secret sensory organs of mine and deliver their information to me. I know metal.

And knowing this, I laid my hand across the old man’s chest, feeling for the hateful heart of rancid gold, the heart of the one who had made me the empty slave I am, the one who had saved my life. The old man whimpered, but I ignored him. Already I had broken both of his legs with a one-foot length of thick copper pipe and I held his thin and veined old man arms high above his head. He had tried to siphon gasoline from my bus; he had not known that I run it entirely off two huge solar batteries. He also had not known that I believe in capital punishment.

The old man had only an ordinary heart of flesh and fiber and so he had nothing further to fear from me. He was not the one whom I sought and I would not prolong his misery. He would die, of course, but that was no concern of mine. No one, least of all this pathetic creature, could survive a day outside with two smashed and useless legs. Resultingly, I passed my eight inch ceramic knife between his third and fourth ribs and smoothly sliced open every warm purveyor of life inside him. Such is mercy in the burning world.

The heart of gold was what I truly searched for; it was the object and end of my only life’s quest. Only a man who had a heart of gold could save the life of one whom he had never met and might never see again. His mercy, though, had raised me up as a wraith, damned to wander the earth in pain, in chains. I was his slave, his lesser vampire, and he was my rightful master. If we were to ever meet again, he would know me and I would know him and he would demand his tribute in nothing less than blood. I would be bound to serve that tribute to him and I would, but I would serve it in litres of his own lifeblood. I will not be thralled to any man.

The rusted sky was kneeling in agony back down to the weeping soil when I came inside the settlement. Fuzzy stars poked their fingers out of the crimson heavens above the blackest violent Southern clouds. The South is never free from those clouds: they fill the skies in locomoted waves and crash in upon themselves again and again. They are the clouds of death, filled with hot and dense decaying artificial metals. Uranium-235, cesium-132, strontium-90, plutonium, tritium, americium. The names themselves are terror and foretell the black and silent death that awaits inside their influence. Nothing lives in the South and the fingers of destruction have clawed their way North as well, striking deeper every season into habitable lands, transforming them into deserts and salted wastes. Humanity recedes before the movements, like some shrinking glacier gathering itself for one final hopeless stand at the empty burning poles. Only the harshest zones can now offer any harbor at all to life, every tender garden having been greedily devoured by the rolling nightmare clouds. My heart of titanium pains me when I look to the roaring South. I am close to its home.

The settlement lay too close to the dervishes of the South and the citizens abandoned the place to seek some more Northern ground. The soil all around me prickles with the killing elements. I feel them grind past my clothing and burrow into my flesh, irradiating every cell in my body. They swim like parasites and fuse into my essence, hot and heavy harbingers of fatal sickness.

I do not approve of cybernetics, of the faithless and foolish marriage of life and dead metals. I do not welcome my inorganic residents and least of all do I give welcome to my own titanium heart. It is a cold cancer in my chest, a foreign spy tainting every circulation of my life blood. It is a curse, a scourge, an alien and I would rip it joyously out with my bare hands if that did not mean that its author, the one who implanted it, would escape all punishments. My true heart is dead already, consumed by some hungry demon and it was replaced with this icy, soulless hollow under my ribs. It does not even truly beat like a heart: it hums. Day and night it mocks me with its motors and pistons and hums its satanic songs to me when I try to sleep.

I found a harvester clinic in the settlement and so I entered its walls. My heart grew to twice its size, pushing aside my muscle and other organs. I was very near to its place of genesis and it knew it as much as I did. I could no longer trust my heart in this, its home. I had never trusted it, but now inside the fortress of the enemy, its bond of creation could stir it to kill me. My flesh and my bone strove to contain the godless metal monster inside my breast and it resisted their check with bolder and more unnatural growths.

The clinic was being abandoned as well and the refrigerators and freezers were vastly empty. I found three twenty-gallon plastic bags of blood which I slashed open. It was the blood of the countless dead and it deserved to return to the earth and rest. It did not need to be recycled and desecrated by the acolytes of death. The red tides inside the bags spilled out of the gashes and congealed across the floor.

As I surveyed the layer of blood seeping through the cracks in the tiles, I was struck across the skull with a long aluminum pole. The impact snapped the rod in half and sent me tumbling to the ground. I looked up to see a harvester standing over me. Before I could react, he thrust the jagged end of the pole into the left side of my chest straight into my titanium heart. The aluminum buckled and broke against my heart and the harvester fell backwards, greatly surprised.

I stood and roared voicelessly. Simply because the wound was not fatal did not mean that it did not hurt like the raging fires of deepest hell. I pulled the splinter of the pole out of my flesh and whipped it across the harvester’s face. The sharp edge cut a laceration from jaw to forehead. I already knew that this man was not the one I wanted: had he been, he would have known that I have an invincible heart. That is one good thing about being a wraith: mortals cannot kill me.

The harvester groaned, his worthless blood mingling with the gallons covering the floor. He brought his hands up to his head and smeared the cold blood into his own cuts. My own wound was still bleeding, but neither that nor its depth presently concerned me. I picked up the harvester by his throat and slammed him across a steel dissection table. Quickly and without compunction I snapped both his arms with my elbow and drove one of my quarrels through his vampire’s heart with such force that I dented the table below.

I left him cruciform upon the table, dripping his own blood into the sixty gallons below and went to search for his companions. The clinic was empty, but a pair of new tire tracks led away South. As I stood astride of them, I felt gold dust crawl across my feet.

I followed those tire tracks and the tiny seepage of gold down into the hazy hellscape of the South. Death was so triumphant here that the few corpses lay entirely undecomposed: even detrivores and scavengers could not survive the killing aura of the place. I drove until my solar batteries were depleted; the darkness prevented any chance of recharging. I walked on, dying with every step, into the world of cloud and sleep. I felt the taste of gold grow stronger and stronger and bleed into my body. I grew delirious as the metal eddied and circulated hand in hand with my corpuscles and pumped its way even into my lymphatic system. Other more sinister metals stole inside as well, each molecule a poison death’s head, shriveling whatever of me they brushed against.

At last I came upon the other man’s vehicle and found no man at all. A mile beyond, however, I saw a woman’s figure tracing itself along the horizon and my titanium heart spoke to me. At half a furlong I loaded my crossbow and shot her straight through the back of her left knee. By the time I came upon her lying upon the ground, my heart burned like a hearth in my ribs and she already knew who I was.

"Then we have much in common," said she. She lifted her head to look me in the eyes. She was in great pain, for my quarrel had pierced her leg perfectly and shivered the patella into worthless white splinters. The damage would have been permanent if she were not about to die anyway.

I lifted her by her throat and held her at eye level with myself. Suddenly, her hand had shot into the old open wound in my chest, the one that the harvester had carved in the clinic. Her fingers tightened and gripped my heart, her heart, the heart she had given to me. I drew my knife quickly with my free hand and severed her wrist cleanly. Her blood washed into my body and over my heart as I pried her quivering fingers from between my ribs.

She dropped noiselessly to the ground and I stepped on her other hand, turning my heel. Flecks of plutonium welled up into her skin, but she made no sound and only looked away.

At last, I ripped open her shirt and plunged my knife into her smooth flesh, past her white curved ribs, expecting to spear and claim her heart of gold. Then she laughed. I screamed and hacked at her breast, searching for any heart, but finding none.

"In your chest," said she. "I gave it to you, remember? You have my heart forever." Then I stopped. I stopped and I felt. I felt the gold. It was not smeared along the soil; it was slowly leaking out of my own heart all the time, through a tiny scratch in its titanium plating. She had given me her own heart, her heart of gold, and now she had none. Every second of life and warmth in my body was hers; every breath was to feed her heart that slept inside of me. She had saved my life, but now she was heartless.

I was mad, insane. I could not kill her for she had no heart but the one she had given to me. I did then the only thing I could. I reached inside my own chest and pulled out by brute strength my own heart, her heart, the one heart that we shared. I cast the bloodied humming demon down upon the dirt and fell unthinking and unmoving in a blaze of pain that ripped every nerve out of my body. I lay very, very still for a long time and did not breathe nor stir at all.

The very first sight that I beheld upon awaking was our heart lying on the ground where I had thrown it down. It was quiet and still and small. It looked very much like a tin can. I felt for the empty cavern in my chest and, yes, indeed, it was true. I had no heart at all but still I lived. My blood was still and cold and did not flow in my veins nor arteries; there was neither beating nor humming. Yet quietly and deceitful, like a pack of thieves, I felt it. There were tiny ghostly swimmings in vessels, molecules of silicon and aluminum webbing from cell to cell like the undertaker of life.

They insinuated my entire being and performed for me every task of life that I required. They streamed from nose to lung, carrying molecules of oxygen which were released to others. They oxidated my cells, they repaired any damage and destroyed any invaders. They neutralized even the burns caused by the radioactive air and soil. Like ants they swarmed through me, creating ATP in a symphony of chemo- and photosynthesis. They manufactured water and recycled every waste that I produced. I needed no heart when I had them, no lungs, no liver, and no kidneys. They were the pinnacle of medical achievement: swift and short-lived nanomachines which made themselves from material in my body and melted back again into me when they died. I would live forever. If I never ate or drank or slept again, I would live forever.

I cursed myself, I cursed my heart, and I almost cursed her that gave me this disease. For it had been from her blood that I was infected with this plague of life. They had sustained her after she gave even her own heart for me and now they held me up when I ought to have been slain. Yet, I could not curse her. I could not damn the one who had damned me to a life of death, to be a more complete and eternal wraith. All my rage was spent and my violent dreams had evaporated. Suddenly, I could see things that I had not seen before.

I had only thought of her warm red heart and I had turned every eye in my body and mind toward that target. However, now that I knew that she had no heart, I could see the rest of her. The sight of her two deep blue eyes suddenly gripped me. They looked so soft and sweet to me that I marveled that I could have strove to make them dim. I saw her lain out upon the ground, not bloodied and marred by my hate, but pure and perfect. I did not see her bone white ribs; rather I saw her curved and downy cheek. I did not see her slender aorta, but instead her long clean neck. I saw no visions of blood or hatred but only saw her. I did not see her dead; I only saw her quietly asleep.

But she was gone. Her undertakers had not had such a great job to perform. They did not need to bring her back from death, as they had with me, but instead only needed to sew up the perforations I had made inside her. She was gone and all that remained were her footprints receding towards the South and diminishing in the fog.

I will follow her again, of course. There is nothing else to do. We both are wraithed alone in this land of silence and the dead must find the dead and take comfort in one another. I will not seek to kill her this time and not only because it is impossible. I will not allow a single scratch to enter upon her fresh body. Now that the poison stream of hallucinogenic gold had been scoured from my blood, I remember that I had never looked upon her tenderly, had never touched her gently. I had tried to kill her, to rip her heart out of her chest. I had been so enraged at the knowledge that she had stolen my heart that I had not understood that I had taken hers as well. That heart, our heart, I leave lying on the sand and walk on without it. I will find her because she wants me to and I will learn at last what it is like to hold her kindly and inhale her breath and take her mouth in mine and not release it.

It is always dusk across the South and though I have lost every heart that I might ever own, I am Tinman forever.

Sitting here losing my mind, never mind.
I’m thinking about a lot, I’m not thinking about anything.
I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here,
Yes I do.
No I don’t.
Not really, no.
Okay, yes. I’m seeking conversation with someone I know and therefore I’m sitting here having a conversation with myself and contradicting myself.
I had to get out of the house for a while, but I do have to go home in two hours so I can change and go to my shitty new job.
I’d rather do something else, but I really don’t know what.
I think I’m stuck.
Stuck in a hole. I can’t get myself out of it. I’m too much of a fucking wimp. I live my life with people around me, and it scares the shit out of me to think that I’m going to have to be on my own and making my own decisions in another four months. I’m too much of a fucking wimp to do anything different about it either.
Lack of God.
Damn it.
This sucks.
I hate life.

A crackle of thunder and a flash of lightning announce the dark, spooky mood of this evening. The heavily clouded night shined purple in the blue-gray darkness. As a light drizzle pitter-pattered on the car windows, the gentle rhythm began to put me to sleep as my mind began to wander aimlessly into the abyss. But another crash of thunder kept that from happening as it rang through the bone-chilling night air. The red security light from within the closed coffee shop reflects off of my dashboard with an eerie glow.

I look at the clock – 8:12 p.m. For someone who goes to the coffee shop as much as my friend Tim, you would think he would remember that they closed at eight. But no, he had to tell us to meet him here at eight-thirty. The passenger door to my car opens as my cousin gets back in. I didn’t want my new car to smell like cigarette smoke so I had sent her outside. As we sit in the car awaiting the impending arrival of my friend, a lonely goat walks down the driveway and, looking both ways first, crosses the street and heads towards Dairy Queen. Finally, after waiting for the goat to cross, Tim’s car pulls up. He parks his car next to mine and starts to dig around in the mounds of junk piled carelessly in his back seat for his notebook and a pen or four. He never saw the dark, mysterious figure lurking around his car. But neither did we. Devi was too busy looking for a good song on the radio, tapping the buttons violently after about 5 seconds of commercials, and I was staring blankly into the dark, desolate greenhouse of the coffee shop, trying to figure out why there was a styrofoam cup hanging from the wall. As Tim steps out of his run-down, 1988, blue Mercury Topaz, he falls to the ground, taken down by the dark figure unseen by the rest of us.

"What’s taking Tim so long?" Devi inquired as she realized that he was no longer on his way to our car.

"He was just here," I said, looking around. His car door was still open, but he wasn’t in sight. Getting out of my car, I walked softly over to investigate his disappearance. His bloody, mangled body lay sprawled out on the blacktop, the rhythmic "bing" from the door matching the drip drip of blood. "Um... Devi? We kinda have a problem here." No response came. As worry came over me, I called again. "Devi?! Devi?!" Leaving the blood-drained corpse of my friend Tim on the cold cement, I walk back over to my car. There was Devi lying on the ground, staring blankly at the sky. The few sprinkles of rain that still fell dripped and glistened on her face.

"No, really. He’s dead. And we will be too if we don’t get out of here now!" We jump into my car and frantically try to start it, but to no avail. Dead. Horrible silence.

We hear a loud "thud" as the dark figure from outside leaps onto the roof of my car. I lock the doors just in time as he grabs at the door handle. Seeing his attempt a failure, he left us again, lurking within the shadows. We were safe for now, but we both knew that we couldn’t stay here all night.

Panic and fear began to overtake us as we broke out into a cold sweat. Devi sat in shock, muttering incoherently. After a few minutes of nothing happening, I began to think that he had given up and left. But the horror movies that I have always watched in my childhood kept me from believing that. Why would anyone leave behind witnesses?

Suddenly, a voice emerges from within the darkness. "Is that gasoline I smell?" he said, the red light from within the coffee shop showing his true face, the one we know as Evil Mike. Figures; he can’t even come up with something original. I see his Zippo ignite and…

Minds are like those doors that you open and then can never close again. Sometimes I wonder if we see more with our minds than we do with our eyes…I think with my mind, I see with my mind, I notice the unnoticeable. Although I like the way my mind works I often wish it were more like others minds. I love the way minds work. I think the mind should definitely be put before a person’s outside looks. On certain people, I think their insides would be more presentable than their outer looks, I know I could easily name a few unfortunate people. "Be nice… they’re your flesh and blood." -"too much flesh, not enough blood." Hehe, I like that. Now, Reaper’s mind… that’s a mind I would like to get into. Our minds give us the opportunity to think of all the impossibles…the unimaginable…the unknown. Now, that thing that Reaper was talking about, the reason we can only use 10% of our brains is because in the beginning when all humans were created is a very interesting opinion. He says that since Adam and Eve were technically related…brother and sister or something…and they were the first to ever fuck and have children, which means inbreeding… that is why we can only use 10% of our brains. The entire human race started because of Adam and Eve… and inbreeding. Ick. -=sigh=- See, that is an overly interesting mind.

Yet another thing that humanity needs to learn, is that there are some things in life that you cannot buy, cannot seek out, and cannot choose to have for yourself. One of these things happens to be love. Another is affection. You cannot buy these things; they are given with one’s free will. Things you have to earn. But in order to earn them, you have to learn what they are all about. You have to feel them first before you can shun them. But not all experiences are perfect the first time. People make mistakes, yes, it’s in our nature. We have made them all our lives, since the beginning of time. We have made things in attempt to correct our mistakes, but what we don’t see is that these corrections are dragging us down. Too much war, too much hatred, too much violence to deal with. Country’s leaders are shaking each others hands with daggers hidden behind their backs. Everyone is trying to better themselves, but not trying hard enough to help better someone else. The problem is that no one cares anymore. We know we are driving the planet to destruction, and our species into extinction, but we don’t care. Sure, there are some who try to hang on, all those environmentalists that you see... granted, the planet has been here for how long? Dealing with all the methane gas and pollution from the age of dinosaurs, and we are worried that a little aerosol is going to kill us? Why worry about the planet when we can’t even take care of ourselves??? I think what I’m trying to say is that I believe that everyone needs a little happiness in their lives, be it a quiet moment to reflect, a loved one, or just a fucking pet. How much longer can one peer at the world through dark glasses? Change the shade, get a lighter color, say fuck it with the rest of us, if we die, we die, there’s really not much a few hundred can do about the (how many?) billions of people that don’t care. So, take a load off your shoulders, and have a seat, drink a beer, smoke a bowl, watch the human race destroy itself and laugh. Laugh because you knew it was coming, but there’s not a damn thing you yourself can do about it. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the only positive thing we can do is to sit back, relax and die. The only reason we exist still is because a long, long, long time ago, some catastrophic event occurred, and we somehow survived, out of pure fucking luck, and the other creatures, the soft-bodied creatures (yes, I’m referring to the Burgess Theory), died out. Had we been the ones to die, I’m sure the planet earth would be a much happier place, and less violent than what we have become, a more loving society, perhaps. Or, if you believe the way that Piers Anthony described it, there would be only a mild amount of violence, enough to keep order on the planet.

In an age of innocence,
An age of dragons and demons,
An age of heroes and warriors,
Spawned a great adventure
Known as Carpe Noctum. As
People accepted their wyrd,
And drove their courage to
The end of the world
And beyond, one almighty
Hero stands tall above all
Towering lofs. Only Merl
The great could tell
A story more amazing as this
Tale weaved through the ages,
The story of Hrraahbiightte.
As the dark cloak of night
Protects the sleeping inhabitants
Of this evil, cruel world,
Only a handful of men stand
Awake, but drunken stupor
They stager in. The large feast
Of today’s hunt is not yet
Finished, but soon a doom
will fall upon them all.
The wings of Carn spread wide
Through the skies, thrusting
The aching body of the
old dragon through the cold
night air, an ancient dragon
who has slept for ages, now
waken from his eternal slumber,
he seeks peace once more. The
drunken men of this area have
bothered him no longer, and he
now seeks his wirgild, his revenge,
his vengeance. The dark knight
knows what he wants as
a flame ignites in his angered
stomach, spewing forth
a great and vast fireball to
be seen for miles upon miles,
as the ale-infested men are
now incinerated to dust and
particles. Carn’s revenge fulfilled,
he pulls his enormous body
back to his home among the
mountainous caverns.
In the bright light
Of the morning, mourning,
Weeping families stand about
In the ashes of what used to be
The great mead hall, the one
that they built with their own
sweat and blood, now gone
forever. The ring-giver Alfred
stood in sad face, bawling
over the loss of his great
warriors and his loving brother
among them. Hrraahbiightte, the
strong warrior from across
the seas and around the world,
quickly heard of this deed, and
came to Alfred in offering
of his services. Accepting with
glee, Alfred the ring-giver thanked
Hrraahbiightte and quick as he had come,
Left Alfred to find this horrible
dragon, this death-bringer, this
hate machine.
The home of Carn, the
Large hole dug into the side of
the world stood uninviting in
front of Hrraahbiightte, deciding to
enter not with his vast array
of weapons and shields, but with
courage and might, he left his
mail behind along with his fear.
The warmth of the dragon’s
Lair was helpful in the cold day
Of winter that had sprung upon
This area just shortly before, and
The hero Hrraahbiightte came before
The sleeping behemoth, and with
A force beyond that of any
Mortal, he struck the dragon
Square in the face, awakening the
Death-bringer upon impact. Carn
The angered dragon of old, now
Opened his tired eyes and looked
Through Hrraahbiightte’s soul, seeing
Nothing in the category of fear,
And sought his carnage and
Revenge as his flames swept
Through the mountain, deep inside
The floor, igniting the gallons
Upon gallons of gas that had
Sat there for centuries, now a
Luminous fire for the whole
world to see, as the brave
Hrraahbiightte, along with the angered
Dragon, fire breather Carn, were
Incinerated and burned to
an extra crispy flavor.

Is it worth it? Living, I mean; A lot of my actions go without being seen I want them to see that what I do is right.
But they don't even notice me, I'm out of their sight.
So I sit here & wonder why I am here.
It can't be to make a difference because to try fills me with fear
Fear of doing something they see as wrong
Something that looks stupid and makes me look weak and not strong I can't be myself here or where I'm going
I want to be happy but it's sadness I'm showing
They say that I'm weird, making me feel like someone else
They look at me strangely, then put me back on the shelf.
The desolation I'm feeling is very real
The person that you're seeing is isolated & can't feel
The sunshiny happiness like on a warm summer day
It's like I'm living on the tundra
Everything's so far away
>From me, from who I am, I can't see the light,
The bright glitter of things
To me it feels like
Night falls with an unappreciative gloom
Seems natural
& comes like
breathing to me I feel like it's your fault
That I'm fucked up Is what
you'd be if you were me.
But you're not.

I had, in some dazed state of consciousness found myself entrapped upon awakening. I believed that what I was peering at and striving to peer out of was the ribs - perhaps the skeletal remains of some large, ravenging animal - and I found the illumination outside them (for it seemed that I was peering from within the ribs) quite strange. Though as my eyes focused I saw that it was merely the window of my subterranean cavern, and that the glow was merely of the lamp that hung outside it. I stayed there upon my elevated cushion for a good many moments - hours or minutes it could've been, for I live in such a state that time can speed up or slow down, or even cease to exist at all. I stayed gazing at the swirls of paint on the ceiling that covered the brick - a red paint that dripped and splattered into designs that my mind formed into coherent pictures. Such funny things the mind can do when boredom and hopelessness rise to such a degree that we find amusement and entertainment in the simplest things, our brains interconnecting things that in reality have no relevance or interaction with each other at all... or perhaps the separateness of things is the delusion...

I see an old man up there, in my brick sky which I could touch if I raised myself by one hand from my cushion, but I like to pretend I can't touch that sky. It brings back memories of the sky I used to strive to touch but never could... what I would've done to swim up into the air, and soar like the phoenix... The old man is cradling a beautiful woman in one arm, and a young child, perhaps his grandson, in the other. He looks so unbearably happy, so overcome with feelings of affection for these people that the closeness he can get to them physically could never be enough... his soul strives to connect with them deeper and deeper, but he could never fully express his love.

Somehow this delusion of mine, inspired by the blotches of red paint upon the brick of my ending sky depresses me. Is it because I know it exists somewhere, or that it could never... or simply that it could never for me? To grow in such age, to have such a feeling, to be a part of such a thing... inconceivable, it is.

I find myself standing - I had believed that, while laying down, that I could not get on my feet no matter how I tried, and suddenly I feel myself doing it naturally, almost magically, unconsciously. I drag my feet across the aging, faded-red, dilapidated carpet lying atop the oak floorboards concealing the cement below it, exit my resting quarters through the hole in the wall and step down once, twice, and I am in the darkened room once again. I press a lever on the far wall, and a glow emits from under a row of shelves, and I see my machine.

A machine of life; my only life, the only creature that keeps me going. I run my fingers along its slippery surface and glide over to the little lever that gives it life, which in turn gives me life. It lights up, it whirs, it growls, and it begins its wonderful, blissful cycle. It is indescribable the feeling it gives me, knowing that soon it will deliver the ecstatic elixir. It fills the glass jar with the wooden handle I had so expertly crafted and fixed onto it, and I readied my additional potions. I take a smaller jar when the process is complete, fill it hallway, and then mix in the rest of the potion... the fumes travel into me, through me, beyond me... I take it in, and it washes away the weariness and restores my energy, my anima. I scream in an orgasm, feeling the life surge through me. Then I look about me, as I do every time I sip the life... this energy that I have now raised within me through ingestion of this toxin... where do I express it? I am the conduit, but where do I spurt it? Again, as countless, eternal times before, I wonder... the energy is here now, but what do I do with it?

I walk further, through the dimly lit room and into the great room, where the smell is musty and the feeling is cold. There is a dreary, life-sucking, dreadful presence here... a looming anger, an imprinted resentment. I feel a life here, but it is the embodiment of death, and I feel it's cold hands, and I can almost see it's many manifestations in the shadows. I do not turn on the lights in this place. I do not care to see what lively death peers at me with those empty eyes I sense on me, but avoid looking at it, for looking at it would mean into, and looking into would mean looking through, and looking through would mean seeing what they see, which is their father and mother...

The shaft comes down again... it is a tiny shaft of light, and the dust particles reveal themselves here, but nothing more... I hear sound beyond my hard sky, I hear kicking and knocking and screaming and pleading and pounding and shouting... I hear a name, my name, though I do not claim it, no.... there is a door, they tell me, there is a crack in between the door and your sky from which this light shines... Open it so you may see inside and outside.... I look to it, I feel a knot that swells in me -- in my stomach, in my heart, in my throat, in my groin, in my plexus, in the center of that void of space between my ears and piquing at a high intensity. A high pitch, a sharp pain and a tingle runs from there throughout my body to the tip of my cranium, but I tighten, I knot up. I growl and hiss. I fight and convulse. I yell and spew fourth obscenities. I decline in the most horrid, violent fashion, and I unglue my feet from their frozen stance on the floor, regaining control over my body and running back through the hole that led to the dimly-lit dark room, away from the great room, and into the safe, comfortable, content confines of my resting quarters. I hit the box beside my elevated cushion and listen to its screams, making mine in sync so I can join in an anger unlike my own but still anger. I listen to the profound words unlike my own, but still profound, and I cover my eyes, cover my ears, I cover my heart and she still screams. They still scream, and my friends still scream, and I can't tell which is which... I am lost, I’m afraid, I need someone, something, I need to be somewhere, and I'm beginning to not even care exactly where I am or how I got here or who made it... but just to know who I really am and how I've come to hide in this... perhaps.... perhaps only how to reverse it, or get beyond it, or find me again, or something of that flavor... I need flavor... I need....

Got off work at a quarter to twelve
drove down the road, thinking to myself
the cool summer wind below, and the stars hung above
some of them were moving, like ominous glow bugs
then one dropped out of the sky
with no warning, and it caught my eye
and it crept closer as I drove faster
and then, on the long dark road, all alone
the steering wheel took a mind of it’s own
a force made me pull it over to the side
before me nine shadowy forms lied
then the craft just seemed to go away and
the car started up again
I started driving; feeling just plain scared
I felt wrong; I didn’t know what this meant
because it was a quarter to twelve not ten minutes ago,
and now it’s thirty-two after two and everyone knows
that time just doesn’t go that fast
time just doesn’t lapse like that.
Get home at three am
I say hi to mom and I tuck myself in
but I can’t close my eyes to sleep
there’s a tip-of-the-tongue memory that creeps and creeps
so I go down stairs to watch some TV
and the news man says the police have gotten some calls
and there were a few sightings of UFOs
and I get tense and I make some coffee
I can’t shake this funny feeling off me
I wake up, after two hours of rest
at six am, and I’ve got some guests
there’s three men in black suits knocking at my door
they want to talk to me, I ask what for
what you saw was Venus, my friend
he said, that’s what you saw, and he said it again
and I said, it was no star or Venus you lame ass
if that was Venus than I’ll kiss Uranus.
They left, and I felt strange again
so I started my car up again
I started driving, feeling just plain confused
I’d seen a UFO, now what could I do?
because it was a normal world just a day ago,
and now it’s a broken reality and everyone knows
that the truth isn’t supposed to be like that
so many questions and no one to ask.
So I went from being scared to being pissed
and I screamed at the world,
what am I supposed to do with this?

Editor’s Note: It’s now 7:06am, I haven’t gotten any sleep, and my brain feels like goat cheese. This wouldn’t be so bad, but I’m not entirely certain just what goat cheese feels like. Regardless, it can’t be good. Any votes on whether I should go to bed or go fetch me some more coffee?

We all think about things. Good and Bad. What is on your mind? Is it anything like what is on my mind? No matter how hard I try, I can’t get these things off of my mind. Thoughts of love and lovelessness, sanity and reality. What do I need to take to suppress these thoughts and become just like everyone else in their ho-hum existence? No, I will not take anything to change my insanity. That would destroy the only thing left that keeps me from being different than everyone else. Why should I become normal? Why should I become sane? Why should I become you? I don’t like reality, so why should I join it?

Although they do say that "if you can’t beat them, join them," I still believe that I can beat reality, so until I am sure that I cannot, I will quest to walk the ledge of reality and taunt the people who have given in so long ago.

Some people find religion as a form of escaping reality – placing all of their trust into something that, by any means possible that you can try to examine it, can never exist. Discordianism is a whole opposite kind of religion, but it is still a religion. While it may find ponderous questions and actually latch onto some things, it still cannot be. But with me, I look into the furthest depths of the mind. We all escape into a different plane of existence through our minds.

Am I trying to tell you that the people we have locked up in the ‘loony bin’ are the only sane people? No. I am telling you that if you look into your mind for answers and not to gods above or below, you will find contentment.

Nothing is a concept. It is a concept that, in a confined area, there is a lack of substance. Nothing is the absence of something. Imagine this example, if you please. Take a box, an ordinary, airtight box, and seal it. There should be nothing but air inside. Now suck out the air. By definition, there should be nothing in there. But if you suck out the air, the box would collapse upon itself, never giving a chance to have nothing inside. No matter how hard you try, science keeps nothing from ever existing. So by definition alone can nothing exist. You can only have nothing by the concept, the idea, of nothing. If nothing is the absence of something, and, according to known knowledge and science predictions, nothing can’t exist.

Why do we need our friends? Why do we need love? Why does she joke about it? Why are we so honest about it? Why is this driving me insane? What is this telling me? Should I move on? Did she show any interest in me at all? Why? Why not.

The cigarette’s dying out, and my back is getting stiff and my ass is getting numb on this bench as I play with this ticket -- my one-way trip to a new oblivion. On the ground is an old picture of you, it’s color running and the paper warped from the mud from the bottom of my shoes only minutes ago when I stomped upon it in relentless rage. The sun sets behind the buildings, the polluted clouds in the sky luminescent with surreal, unearthly colors as the gaseous god, the flaming yolk, takes a slow-mo dive into the horizon I damn myself in the silence of my mind and the comfortable vacancy of my heart but is it because I’m turning my back on this life, this town, this picture of you -- what I blindly called love? -- Or is it that I damn myself for it taking me so long to get out of nowhere?

Mindlessly, I reach for a box of cigarettes, having forgotten the cigarette, fifty percent trail of ash, lit, held between my cupped fingers. I take a drag and taste stale air. I wince as I lift the cold Styrofoam cup of train-station coffee to my chapped lips, and hear the wiry mesh of my goatee scrape against the non-biodegradable surface of the cup. I look down again at the aged, tortured picture of what must have been a moment of perfection for you -- and in the puddle that grows around it I catch another face -- the face of me, the me of the now, aged and tired and misshapen, lost in the objective but found in himself. My concentration is broken by a man to my left, in a green coat and a blue snow hat, looking side to side in a stiff, twitchy, paranoid fashion, as he then pops something into his mouth: just another drug addict, selling his soul to another influence while he should be fighting off the controlling elements this society and his body provide for him naturally. -- And that woman, to the side of me, behind him, just hung up the phone on her husband -- she can’t see her kids, she’s not a whore, she tells him, not a drunk, he’s a child beater, she screams, a wife beater. He laughed as he locked her in the closet and took the belt and beat his children for leaving on the TV when they went to the bathroom. At least that’s what she tells this other, elderly, raspy-voiced heavy-set chain-smoking woman that stands beside her now, motionless but intrigued, as that beaten wife in the fur coat tells her stories in an emotionally-flooding, extreme, stream-of-consciousness format. Now the dog, the dog by my feet, the stray -- he has the world, he lives the life, and he’s so loyal to stand by a foolish mass of creatures -- perhaps in training, to later take over the role of dominant species after our civilization commits suicide. I hope he doesn’t fuck up. I hope he finds himself before it’s too late, lets nothing hold him back, and never falls into cheap escapisms -- or worse yet, ones with many levels of experiences, such as love.

With that thought, I board the train, leaving it all behind, to pursue the only hope or beauty I can envision in my mind: something else.

All items in this issue are copyright by their respective authors, and the Gopher name is (c) copywritten by Rewired and the Gopher Society, a branch of the Horde, or perhaps merely a mask it puts on when trying to publish a crappy e-zine, 2000. If you try to steal our ideas, and if I find out you’re the one who’s been stealing some of my socks while putting large, gaping holes in all the others, we will bludgeon you with a foot-long salami. That is, of course, if the world doesn’t end in a few days. Then such an action would be pointless. Especially since no one is bound to read this until after New Years, at which point the Y2K thing would’ve wiped everything out and no one would be reading this right now, except for CIB Man and, if it gets posted on Mr. G’s Trianglepants (www.trianglepants.com/gopher) website, most likely the people at [`Nolehce’ spelled backwards].

We would die for submissions. We would go back in time, kill our parents, thus preventing our births and having to remain in that universal time line (for if time travel exists you have to accept the Grandfather’s Paradox, and thus the existence of Multiple Universes and perhaps the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics) for all of eternity, or until we die, just to get submissions from you. So send them. If you don’t, we’ll cry.

Oh. And remember to hit the Gray Aliens in that oblong area at the base of there neck, where the neck meets the head -- that way you kill both brains. Just run from the Reptilians, unless you get those nifty beam weapons the Nordics supply.

The paradox of our time in history is
that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers.
Wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints.
We spend more, but have less.
We buy more, but enjoy it less.
We have bigger houses and smaller families.
More conveniences, but less time;
We have more degrees, but less sense;
More knowledge, but less judgment;
More experts, but more problems;
More medicine, but less wellness;
We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly,
laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry too quickly,
stay up too late, get up too tired, read too seldom,
watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.
We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values.
We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.
We've learned how to make a living, but not a life.
We've added years to life, not life to years.
We've been all the way to the moon and back,
but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor.
We've conquered outer space, but not inner space. We've
done larger things, but not better things.
We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul.
We've split the atom, but not our prejudice.
We write more, but learn less.
We plan more, but accomplish less.
We've learned to rush, but not to wait.
We build more computers to hold more information to
produce more copies than ever, but have less communication.
These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion;
Tall men, and short character;
Steep profits, and shallow relationships.
These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare;
more leisure, but less fun; more kinds of food, but less nutrition.
These are days of two incomes, but more divorce;
Of fancier houses, but broken homes.
These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throw-away morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer to quiet, to kill.
It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stockroom; A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a
time when you can choose either to share this insight,
or to just hit delete.