Well, you asked for it.

Well, you asked for logical reasoning, so here it is in abundance. It's a long slog, so you might not understand what you're in for. If you do, then dive right in! 

It's too long to post on Facebook, so I'm using my blog site. Have fun!

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Luckily for us, we're human beings and can choose how to remember things, without ignoring the facts of history... we can choose to remember the dead, rotting corpses of assholes, now safely 6 feet underground where they belong, who decided to erect these Confederate monuments. We can choose to ignore their asshole reasons, their asshole attitudes, their asshole actions, etc.

We can, of course, choose to remember those assholes, and hold grudges against the dead. However, I detect a problem here. How are supposed to hold grudges against people who are dead and gone, right now in the present? The people who choose to hold these grudges against the dead and allow hatred to grow within them, more often than not, develop a sense of misplaced righteous anger, which can often lead to a proclivity toward violent actions in order to right these wrongs of the past.

Folly. Pure folly.

Again, luckily for us, we can also choose not to give a flying fuck about dead assholes and whatever racist bullshit that was contained in their dead, rotting brains, which are now merely food for worms.

We can instead choose to view Confederate statues, if not at face value as works of art, then more importantly, we can choose to view them and remember them as very public, very visible reminders of our past mistakes.

We can also chose to view them as memorials to the forgotten dead... our ancestors in fact, who have no gravestones to point to, proclaiming they ever even existed at all. Especially all the dead children who were conscripted or joined as Confederate soldiers... also dead. The respected dead deserve these Confederate monuments as memorials to their lives as our fellow human beings. These monuments are a part of our history, as ugly as some people may find that fact to behold.

In essence, these monuments are here now, and those who erected them are dead and gone, along with whatever fucked up reasons they originally had in mind for erecting them.

We're also extremely lucky to live in a country where they let us choose how we want to think, as long as we keep such thoughts to ourselves, if they're extremely demented and prone toward violence and not acted upon. Thank God most of us aren't bent that way.

We can also choose to continue to get all butthurt about the past, or we can get the fuck over it and continue with the process of moving on, today. If I can do it, anyone can.

For example:

I've been to jail twice in my life because of warrants issued for unpaid traffic tickets. It was an extremely unpleasant experience, both times. I was treated as a murderer, as opposed to a mere traffic offender. One especially unpleasant memory was being stripped naked in a room full of other naked men, then hosed down violently with a high pressure fire hose. Where was the need for that?

Another memory is of one particular cop who, for some vile reason - probably job dissatisfaction - decided that it was necessary to point out to me, constantly and very loudly so that everyone could hear, of how ugly I was, how bad I smelled, of his obvious distaste with my attire, that if it was up to him he'd cut my hair - which reaches down past the middle of my back - right then and there, how Ill kempt I was... all of it generally untrue.

He was compelled, for whatever deranged reason in his unbalanced noggin, too recite this unceasing observation of how disgusting I was, ceaselessly.

When he asked if I was on any meds, and I answered, yes... Celexa, for depression, he practically threw a goddamn hissy fit right then and there, like a two year old! He made his opinion regarding his dissatisfaction with my mental well being very clear to me, very loudly, and with lots of gesticulating and shoiting.

You wanna know why? It was because it meant he'd have to drive me across town for a medical evaluation. What I wanted from say to him was this:

"Quit your bitching and do the job we pay you to do, you fucking pig. I pay part of the taxes that pay your rent, asshole."

Instead I told him to just forget that I'd mentioned it. This seemed to satiate him GREATLY. My good deed for the day. And guess what? Thisas a black cop. It didn't make me prejudiced shit black cops, but never in my life have I witnessed a grown man behave more like an impudent child than I did that day during my processing at Lew Sterrit. And for a traffic misdemeanor!

My time spent in the actual cell at Lew Sterrit County was more unpleasant than then the time I went to jail in Austin, again for traffic tickets. I used a boloney sandwich for a pillow.

Anyway Yeah, I had some no-no's on my record. However, being completely deprived of my dignity on both occasions of arrest and processing, for mere traffic issues was, excuse the pun - unwarranted. I definitely learned my lesson, though!

However, I don't have it in for the cops. I don't want to tear down the courthouse. I don't bear any grudges at all for the degrading way I was treated. I got over it, and I got on with my life.

I could point to dozens of injustices which have been carried out, performed, thought, and flat out committed against me, completely unfairly, merely because of the way I look. Only for that reason. I know what the opposite of white privilege means and feels like, because I've experienced it countless times. So when I say I have a good idea of how black people feel, you can take that to the bank as the truth.

The fact happens to remain that we can choose to get over unfortunate shit that's happened to us in our lives. Thank God nobody today living as an American citizen has ever had to endure institutionalized slavery. It was gotten rid of for a reason.

It's possible to just get over it, you know. That may sound crass and insensitive, but it's the truth. It's a choice we can all make together.

Can we not choose together, to get over this bunch of bullshit happening today, that nobody alive today had anything to do with? It's an issue that dates back, beginning 165 years ago in reverse, and people still want to bitch and moan about it, as if slavery actually happened to them! Or as if the civil war actually happened to them! Black, Confederate, Union, or otherwise!

I understand that the idea and practice of racism is still alive and well today. Haven't we come pretty far though, compared to 165 years ago? I think we have. Imagine what it will be like 165 years from NOW. Push cool idea, huh?

So, yeah.

Some people just get a kick out of stirring up the anthill. Real life Trolls.
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Here's one fact that not many people are aware of. Presently, we are living in the most peaceful time in the history of the human race.

https://rootsofprogress.org/the-most-peaceful-time-in-history

https://slides.ourworldindata.org/war-and-violence/#/title-slide

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.good.is/amp/closer-to-peace-than-ever-2639599443

https://ww.google.com/amp/s/www.good.is/amp/closer-to-peace-than-ever-2639599443

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Even with all the apparent good news, I'm having a hard time this year, despite my status as a bonafide lunatician. I'm bamamboozled. That's as far as I can come to decribing, in one simple word, what the events occurring now (I'm not talking about that stupid virus) are causing me to be feeling. It's an unnatural urge to let my voice be known regarding some of the goings on of a political nature. There are several to choose from, lately. It's a somewhat unsettling proclivity for me.

This is NOT my norm. I'm usually opposed to, or at the very least casually indifferent to politics - and I hesitate to refer to it as such, - it's nature.

My usual antics when an ubiquiitous, polarized political situation becomes widely prominent, battering the attention givers with the most dire of news since Climate Change, were widely prominent, if you read what I post regularly. I suspect that most people don't. Anyway.

Climate Change was all that we used to yammer on and on about. It did elicite a common reaction from a goodly sized portion of the American public (and what a load of Hairy Hogwash that great fear of Climate Change still is, I tell you) to accept it as fact, anyway.

Here's what the common reaction to Climate Change used to be - and maybe still is - based on the sheer amount of misinformation that has been, and is still, being dished out to we, the commoners:

"Oh noes! Climate Change is Going to Murder the Earth in 12 Years, and it's TOO LATE TO STOP IT!'" (this statement and the prevailing attitude that goes with it is the most mountainous load of horseshit from which anyone has ever tried to construct a convincing, but more importantly, a valid argument. Except maybe for zeitgeist. What a load of excrement that was. Anyway).

Bow howdy, did Climate Change ever get the boot from the news when the impeachment hearings started, though! Did anybody else notice that? That Climate Change was practically amputated from the American mindset? You know, the one that makes the determination between:

"Is this interesting?"
and
"Who gives a shit?"

It's a good thing the impeachment came along when it did. It was about time we were allowed to have some fun!

But then, Sigh...

This stupid virus that has the entire planets' panties in a bunch came limping along. Nobody cares about the impeachment anymore. Nobody even remembers Greta Thunderburger anymore. Everything worth an interesting, time wasting damn experience disappeared from online and cable news except that stupid virus...

But, of course, there's still tons of news if you've selected 'technology' and 'science' as your interests on Google News, like I have.

There are:

SpaceX, Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and even NASA, all in on the game now, after 9 years of having to hitch rides with angry Russians aboard outdated Soyuz spacecraft! And that's not even really counting the Chinese, Indian, Japanese and European space programs!

Yeah, those guys are like our younger, dumber brothers when it comes to space engineering. But there they are, and maybe they'll grow up and do some awesome shit!

HELL YEAH, GO SPACEX! AND ALL OTHER SPACE PROGRAMS, ALL OVER THE WORLD! EVERYBODY IS ROOTING FOR YOU!

And now, I proudly present, for last:

The official U.S. Space Force! We finally have one now! YEE-HAW, and again, it's about damn time!

Allow me to post some links of interest:

SpaceX - Falcon 9 Heavy and Crew Dragon, plus the Starship Project
https://www.spacex.com/

Blue Origin - New Shepard, and New Glen launch vehicles, and the Blue Moon Lunar Transit Vehicle
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-awards-northrop-grumman-artemis-contract-for-gateway-crew-cabin

Lockeed Martin Orion Crew ww.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-23/lockheed-wins-4-6-billion-nasa-contract-for-orion-spacecraftLockheed

Boeing Starliner Crew Capsule http://www.boeing.com/space/starliner/

NASA Artemis
www.nasa.gov/specials/artemis/

The United States Space Force

https://www.spaceforce.mil

I, of course, got sidetracked with my digression as usual.

As I was about to say before I went off the rails, the Fear Tactic used by those who wield power are in a constant state of planning and implementing it, as a means to control us.

What scared the buhjeebubs out of us before Climate Change? Was it North Korea? What was before that? Oh yeah, Trump got elected and the world went Apeshit.

Before that, there was always the fear of the polls being rigged. Also, there's always been the fear that our due process will begin to be systematically denied as a matter of course, with more and more visible atrocities being committed against blacks... but there are things being hidden from us by the powerful, who have the clout to enforce this agenda, too.

Why, for instance, is violence against black people by police constantly being printed at the tops of the headlines, and videos of these acts of violence placed in the forefronts of our awareness? Surely there are just as many miscarriages of justice being committed against whites, among other races. Someone is making a choice to popularize one form of news and cover up another.

This, too me, is obviously yet another Scare Tactic, one designed purposefully to control our actions and reactions to the current situation of injustice, and to reinforce an overall State of Fear.

I remember when I was a little kid, we only needed one Fear Tactic - Nuclear War. I existed for most of my childhood inside a constant State of Fear that nuclear war was imminent, and would surely happen any day now. I was more sure of that than anything else during those years from the mid-70's to the early 90's. Thank God it never happened, and hasn't happened yet.

Oh. And one more thing:

IT'S NOT PRONOUNCED NUCULAR, FOR CRISSSKES, it's pronounced NUCLEAR!

Whew!

Back to it. Shit tons of people will disagree with this, but I have 4.5 billion years backing me up.

Nothing is wrong with the planet. It's been chugging along, just fine, doing what planets do, for 4.5 billion years. Then we came along. Our entirety of existence on this world, compared to how long this world has been doing just fine without us, is roughly 200,000 years.

200,000 years of having human beings on this planet who differ from one another only culturally, and not genetically at all, is maybe just a slight yawn for this ancient world. Anyone who seriously considers that we, as Homo Sapiens, represent a legitimate threat to Planet Dirt, has a Brain Bungle and needs to get it fixed. The message should read, not:

SAVE THE PLANET!
(how pretentious)

It should read:

SAVE THE HUMANS!
(this is the correct, non-pretentious, and a far more honest slogan)

A word to the wise, folks. The Planet is fine and dandy, and you can take this to the bank. It's us, the human beings, who might be fucked.

Fast forward until now. I'm a lot older, a lot more cynical, WAY less idealistic, I don't trust anything from the media, and I especially don't trust the system of politics, or politicians. I can only consider what information I have because of those in charge, the ones telling us the Big Things.

That they're only telling a partial truth that's part of a bigger truth, one that they don't want known, or that maybe they're flat out lying to us, I'll never know, and there's no way TO know. It SUCKS and I don't trust it. Not ONE BIT.

Somebody tell me a sure fire way to KNOW, with ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY, that one person is telling me the unblemished truth... be it face to face, through the TV, a recorded broadcast, a live broadcast, and similarly with radio and what I read in the news online - news which comes from a myriad of websites - and also from what was written by one person but published by someone else, who might have made editorial changes to fit his own agenda, by hiding the truth that way. I need this method, this machine, this, this... this Power of Truth, or whatever.

If some one has a doo-dad that will do all that, one that I can put my trust inside of with all my heart, then I might decide to start participating in the political system. Until then, you guys are better off without me.

This Fear Tactic, whether motivated by racial inequality, police agendas, military control of American citizens, peaceful protests, sometimes violent protests, curfews, the loomig threat of the removal of our civil rights, police brutality... all of it is a politically absurd device which endorses the case for an increasing climate of change; one with fear always being its' goal.

It wouldn't surprise me one bit if a limited nuclear exchange occurred between Israel and just about every country in the Middle East who hates Israel, or a similar nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan, just to scare the pants off of us. It's all part of the game of political life on Earth, and the goal of those with enough power to play the game are continually striving toward a constant State of Fear.

If I can offer any proof that this is a real tool used by those in power to keep the masses in check, it was the complete, confident statement issued by the G.W. Bush administration, declaring with absolute certainty to the American public, and to the entire world, that WMD's existed in Iraq, as a statement of FACT.

None were ever found.

My ending point after all this is a long, elaborate post which takes its inspiration and subject matter from hither and yon, with the essence being to bring attention to this purposeful State of Fear being projected upon the American public, as far as I can know...

Which is a considerable amount of information about this planet we live on by the way, including its' physical properties, the likely method of its' formation, basic plate tectonics, how the Gulf Steam influences the weather patterns worldwide, why the overwhelming amount of tornadoes occur mostly only in the American midwest and Bangladesh, a layman's understanding of the various stages of our worlds' development, including some of the more simple evolutionary lessons of our planet AS a planet, which I will now present for your reading pleasure, from back to front:

There are very early ersas of our planets' history, beginning about four and a half billion years ago. The most distant era begins with the Hadeon era, a period of heavy bombardment of our proto-planet by meteors, comets and planetoids, which added mass to the Earth, and helped it to take shape. The Moon came along at some point during the Hadeon, most likely as the result of the collision between the Earth and a Mars sized proto-planet also in the process of forming, retroactively named Theia. The resulting collision shattered chunks of the Earth and Theia, which eventually coalesced and formed the Moon... or Luna, which is the officially recognized name of planet Earths' moon.

The Archean era, beginning about 3.5 billion years ago, was when the first microbial life appeared in the recently formed oceans of Earth.

The Proterozoic era, a time during which oxygen was first introduced in abundance into our atmosphere by a proliferation of oceanic plant life, also included a time from about two billion years ago, when the Earth was completely covered, pole to pole, with ice.

Then came the really interesting eras -

The Paleozoic, the Mesozoic, and Cenozoic eras, which began about 500,000,000 years ago. That is, about five hundred million years.

Those three fairly recent - in geological terms, anyway - eras are largely defined by the sudden, as yet to be explained, explosion of complex life upon the Earth, both upon land and in water alike. Called the 'Cambrian Explosion', it was a relatively brief time consisting of an extreme evolutionary event. Complex creatures began to appear, which evolved at an incredible rate.

Many of these animals, most of them sea creatures, shared a common distinction... nature had invented vertebrates. That is, they all had backbones.

The discovery of the first presence of fossilized vertebrates are more or less a a bullseye caught between the sights of modern history, compared to the very ancient.

The discovery of the first fossilized vertebrates tells a extremely accurate story as to when in the history of the Earth the evolution of what we could truly call complex life - life of a kind that we can begin to compare, with real meaning, to very similar forms of life which are proliferate today.

Summed up simply, the vertebra is the so-called Gold Standard when comparing the evolution of more complex life, as it moves away from previous, more primitive types.

It all happened as a result of, as I've mentioned, the 'Cambrian Explosion'.

It's this last era of the Cambrian Explosion, which is sort of an all descriptive term decribing three different eras, back to back.

The last one of these 'mini-eras' which existed as a result of the Cambrian Explosion was the Cenozioc, the time during which mammals evolved. And about 4/5ths of the way through the combined Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras - that is, right on the heads off the very first mammals that ever existed - an asteroid about 6 to 10 miles wide impacted the Yucatan basin in the Gulf of Mexico.

Some of the ejecta was blown away at high velocity from the sheer force of the impact, and were actually blasted into outer space. Some escaped the Earths' gravity, while some went into orbit.

Then there were the few scadzillion chunks of future Mexico, including large parts of the seafloor which would have become The Gulf of Mexico a few dozen million years later, which achieved suborbital velocities and, as a result, started to re-enter the atmosphere. Suddenly, chunks of earth ranging in size from a speck of dust to boulders the size of a house, and larger, began raining back into the atmosphere, all over the Earth.

There was so much ejecta coming into that the Earths' atmosphere that the heat of what must have been millions of meteoroids entering the atmosphere for a good long while - days, maybe - combined, resulting in a global air temperature of about 600° F, evenly distributed over the Earths' surface.

Needless to say, much more surface life survived if it was able to dig deep underground... and some were able to, and
some survived. They were mostly the mammals, and possibly some lizards and insects.

Other larger animals, most of them being some of the dinosaurs we recognize even to this day, which had thrived on the surface of the Earth for millions of years, didn't have much of a choice, or a chance. They either stayed on the surface and were roasted alive in the 600° F air temperature, or they choked to death on volcanic ash. Probably a combination of the two. Neither one a pleasant way to give up the ghost.

For anyone who is curious and thought I'd forgotten, ocean life was largely unaffected by any of the ongoing calamity occurring on the surface and in the air... until the food chains started to collapse.

All in all, about 75% of all life on Earth went extinct due to the asteroid which struck the Yucatan peninsula, about 65 million years ago. Which also means that, unbelievably, 25% of life on Earth actually survived the ancient cataclysmic event, and over the course of several more eons, a new diversity and a new kind of life was thriving.

We have the Earth as we know it today thanks to the 25%, of life that wasn't wiped out. Without those hardy survivors, the human race wouldn't exist.

There's evidence for this imbedded in the strata of the Earths' rocks, called the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary, or the K-T boundary, as it's more commonly known.

Elements discovered in the this dark strata which distinguishes the K-T boundary layer consist of impact shocked quartz, clay glass spherules, and most importantly, iridium... which is naturally found on Earth, but far more abundant in nickel- iron asteroids and meteoroids, carbonaceous chondrite asteroids, and comets... providing serious evidence which, through carbon dating, almost certainly proves that a major impact occurred along the Mexican Yucatan peninsula about 65 million years ago, initiating a major extinction event.

There's even a buried, 93 mile wide crater there, discovered by space borne radar, named the Chicxulub Crater, after a nearby town.

Anyway, that's a bit of knowledge about our planet, and a good portion of my knowledge of it's history all. It's all I feel like yammering about now, anyway. I will reiterate, however...

The K-T boundary is 65 million years old, evidence of only one of several even more devastating extinction events which have occurred during the history of our planet, which dates back to about 4.5 billion years ago... ages upon ages during which the previously described epochs occurred, in terms more readily understandable to mere humans, which I've already addressed.

And even though I've only described the most recent catastrophe which has befallen our planet, there are several even MORE harrowing episodes our planet has endured and survived, one of which wiped out 90% of ALL LIFE ON THE PLANET.

Still.

Dinosaurs didn't really go extinct. They evolved into birds. Mammals obviously didn't go extinct, and some of them evolved into animals familiar to us, today... Including ourselves.

Other than these facts I've already, stated, plus a handful of others I haven't, I know next to nothing about Planet Earth and the way we react to and with it in a meaningful way. I just know that to a lot of folks, the words 'Planet Earth' and 'Human Beings' are synonymous. I don't because people like these sure are unavailable concerning their ignorance, but they sure are irritating as hell.

Which beings me to my NEXT topic. Will this guy ever shut up?

Probably not.
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So, If you aren't polarized beyond hope pertaining to some issue, making it possible to demonstrate a bare modicum of intelligence and willingness to listen to an opposing argument based on it's own merits - which of course, would likely be in direct opposition to yours - I believe that would be at least be a step in the right direction toward a togetherness and understanding, as opposed to fear and a closed mind. It simply doesn't matter all that much who, ultimately, is right or wrong.

Anyway, I'll bet you thought this long-ass diatribe was close to being over and done with.

WRONG AGAIN!!
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Allow me to introduce My snark. He's a GREAT bullshit sniffer. In fact, he just LOVES to roll around in bullshit, and get it all over himself, including other humans! l usually only release my snark, depending upon three different conditions:

1. How hungry is my Snark?

One of my snarks' more usettling type of behavior occurs when I'm not taking the best care of him. As a result, he is content to snark some snarky remarks on anything that happens to scroll by, whether or not it's deserved.

Occasionally though, we'll come across a post containing a bonafide Attitude, which happens to be my snarks' favorite food! When this happens, IT'S FEEDING TIME! GET READY TO MEET MY SNARK! I call him Snarky, for short.

2. Everyone is already gossiping their empty little heads off at the absurdity of the news.

At times like these, my snark and I don't have far to look for sustenance. The local and international news frequently, and by that I mean, ALL THE TIME, just publishes news news news... and it flies flies flies, like backbirds with recently mended wings, singing in the dead of night and directly over the crowds of thundering dunderheads who happen to be surrounding some monument or another (doesn't matter what the monument represents, if it's a monument, it's coming down), with the violent intent to perform an act or acts or violence upon said monument, using righteous anger as their tool, but in their doing so, becoming so falsely enlightened, they are therefore encouraged to perform who knows how much more 'righteous violence' against innocent people, private property, themselves, the police, and other buildings and cars, nearby or otherwise, occupied or otherwise, which share no association of any kind with any reason why rioting should take place there.

By now, these people, the rioters, are completely disillusioned. I can hardly keep my snark... his name is Snarky... in check during discussions of these matters.

3. The evolution of what I've just
described is called Mob Mentality.

Snarky HATES Mob Mentality, more than just about anything. By now, he's ready to advance to a Level 2 Snark, Snarky the Serious!

If you don't believe me when I say that such a phenomena exists and that it's occurring more and more, right here in the USA, then Google it up. It's easy.

Here, I'll help, with a simple definition:

Mob Mentality, or Herd Mentality. I can't help but notice how the word 'Herd', an animalistic condition, is applied to a human condition.

"Herd mentality -

Herd Mentality, or mob mentality and pack mentality, also lesser known as gang mentality, describes how people can be influenced by their peers to adopt certain behaviors on a largely emotional, rather than a rational basis."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_mentality#:~:text=Herd%20mentality%2C%20mob%20mentality%20and,%2C%20rather%20than%20rational%2C%20basis.

And  here's a thorough description of Violent Mob Mentality in humans:

"As humans, we have instinctual responses that are exacerbated by group influences. What we might not do as individuals we may do as part of a group.  People may lose control of their usual inhibitions, as their mentality becomes that of the group.

You have never heard of a peaceful riot.  Riots are, by definition, violent in nature.

All a riot is, is violent group behavior. The larger the group the greater the amplification of that group behavior.  If the group behavior is peaceful, exemplified by Martin Luther King and Ghandi, the group behavior is peaceful and orderly.

If the group behavior is violent, the larger the group, the more magnified the violence. The phenomenon of mob mentality has occurred throughout human history, whether it's witch burning, religious zealotry, political protests, or reactions to perceived racial micro-aggressions."

https://drwendyjames.com/the-psychology-of-mob-mentality-and-violence/

My snark is getting extremely pissed off. He has no mercy, my snark, on those who think and operate from an eager motivation to embrace ignorance, and an active defiance of at least acknowledging an opposing point of view without expressing violence in words or violence in personal action, such an assault upon someone physically or verbally against someone's personal character - mostly with physical violence used in a misguided attack, with the purpose of vengeance.

I expect this violent mob of oppressors currently operating in Denton to be using whatever tools at their disposal that an unruly mob can bring to arms in order to tear down that Confederate monument on the Denton Square.

I'm gonna assume the use of fists, yes... fists, sledge hammers, crowbars, regular hammers, electric power drills, a few long, metal poles forced underneath the foundation of the monument, with tough, solid objects, metal or otherwise, as a leveraging mechanism for uprooting this Confederate monument on the square in Denton, the one on the south side of the lawn upon which the old Courthouse still stands. I wouldn't surprised to see backhoes being used.

My snark is so pissed he's hot enough to glow a dull red. I'm having to keep him tied up with Teflon cord and away from flammable materials. He's having a difficult time with the concepts of tolerance which I once instilled into his snarky little brain.

I'm reacting to his visibly upset condition with a slew of words, continually repeated to him, like a mantra:

"Why should I really give a shit? Huh? Really, why? Why should I care about the memories of my ancestors? Why should I care that burning Georgia to the ground was an unforgivable atrocity? Why should I give one, single, floating turd about this issue? I can just go about life, right? My life... as it is, anyway.

My snark is giving me a look. A look that's close to imminent, ravenous laughter, but even closer to his imminent intent to shred me to pieces, even somehow with me safely out of his way.

He's thinking of making his OWN way closer to escaping, and his OWN way to Denton, to DO something...

But at the end of it, I guess that's all. Just pipe dreams. Now Snarky displays only this sad look of desperation and resignation.

My Snark is not in a mood.

Best to leave him alone for awhile.

He's not in a mood.
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A short story my experience of the almost unheard of, almost forbidden to mention existence of the phenomenon of white entitlement... except happening in reverse, to a white guy, and described exactly as it happened, detail by horrendous detail.

Guess what. I'm the main character of the story! I'm the white guy who was discriminated against, because of my long hair my beard, my combat boots, and the satchel I always have with me to carry around the accoutrements of a modern life.

It's only one story out of dozens and dozens of similar situations which I've endured stoically throughout my life for the most part, but today, this one particular bitch, plus all of her cohorts, managed to stir me up, practically at the same time, resulting in my telling all of them, in so many words, that I hoped each one of them had to continue to endure their own miserable existences for the next several eons, and that they all had defective genetics. Also, sometimes you just gotta tell somebody to fuck right off the planet, and to die horribly while they're doing it.

This particular instance happened today, June 18th, 2020 at about 2:30 pm.

Well, I have to admit that I had a fairly interesting day today, as far as shitty days go. I was accused of stealing wine from the local store where I buy cigarettes. By the way, this baseless accusation is worth about twelve tons of elephant manure.

I haven't purchased wine there for probably about six weeks, but I have been a regular customer at this specific store for about five months. I've been in there almost every one of those days, including ever since the alleged thievery occurred, to pick up a pack of daily smokes.

For some unfathomable, retarded hick reason, the retards who manage and work at the place had finally decided six weeks after the fact of my last wine purchase, that I had been stealing wine.

Huh, thought I? This was my first reaction. Gotta be a mistake.

I had purchased wine there before, sure - and I had ALWAYS put the wine on the counter, followed by exchanging money for goods and services - but for this somewhat slowly burgeoning idea in their brains they'd that I was somehow guilty, to congeal, took six weeks. decided to allow six weeks. An entire six weeks went by without my making a single wonder purchase... just cigarettes. This is what really called me when it has stink inpin, which didn't years more than a few seconds, after being accused of stealing wine.

My second thought was:

What kind of stupid ass, retarded, below 75 IQ kind of deduction was THAT? Why didn't they act on this suspicion six weeks ago, as opposed to tearing me like any other customer for six weeks, before putting to strike? Are the folks who run this place really as retarded as I've suspected they were?

My third reaction, after being told to leave the store under threat of calling the police was uttering, very loudly:

"What the fuck? You can't be serious!"

That's probably a fairly common, instant type of reaction to hear from someone right after feeling the instant shock you get when you've just been arbitrarily accused falsely of a crime that you had absolutely nothing to do with.

Being accused falsely of something is like pressing my Big Red Nuclear War button.

So, as I expected - when she beame adamant, that's when the real War kicked off, and I started cussing like a lunatic. Then the real shouting began, when I made it perfectly clear to them exactly where they could all fuck off to, with the bottom of the Marianas Trench being my most popular suggestion. I cursed them, their families, their ancestors and their horses. I cursed the ground the stote was built upon. I was told to have a 'nice day' by one employee as I was in the process of exciting the store. I replied:

"You can have a nice day in Hell, lady." I bought my cigarettes elsewhere.

By the time I was almost home, a cop spotted me and waved me over. Of course they'd called the cops, those bunch of earthworms. The cop who motioned to me asked if I would mind waiting outside the store, while he talked with the proprietor.

"Go for it," I replied.

After enough time has passed for the owner and employeesh to finish spinning thecthe crafted exposition of lies they'd obviously agreed upon beforehand, making absolutely sure that there fiction they were raising was fine indeed, I waited outside while lies were being told about me inside.

Finally the cop came out of the store and interviewsed me personally.

Cop - "Have you ever stolen wine from this establishment?"

Me - "Hell no! Everybody who works there is filthy pack of liars! I've been a regular customer for six months, and yes, I have before purcased wine there legally and with real live cash. Sometimes even with a debit or credit transaction! I don't know what kind of bug crawled up their asses and died, or why they all have their panties in a bunch, but they're accusing the wrong guy! I'm sick of this shit, being singled out and accused of something ALL THE TIME because of the way I look and dress. Sick of it, I say!"

The cop was all like:

"Whoa whoa, settle down and hold your horses for a sec. I understand that you're angry, and I'd be too if I were you. You're not under arrest or being detained. You've done nothing wrong. (a couple of employees were watching the transaction began myself and the cop, and didn't look too happy about the way things were turning out. Well, fuck them with a corkscrew!)

Cop - "However, there are just a few details we have to see to still we can put this mess behind us -"

Me - "Gimme it. I'll sign it gladly. I have nonno intention of ever stepping foot inside that shithole again, trespassers warning or not. Lemme sign it."

The cop was a little taken aback, but promptly produce produced the papers. I signed them then, and that concluded our business.

Although. 

One thing it's certain. Somebody is stealing wine at that place, and apparently it's reflecting in their inventory logs. I have 12 years of experience working at a place that, and somebody's stealing. Probably an employee

I hope she gets caught and fired real soon.

If it's not an employee, well. More power to 'em. I hope they clean the place out. I wish the wine thief the best of luck.

I grew up in a small East Texas town 20 minutes from where I am. I'm almost 50. I haven't lived here for 30 years. A few things have changed... there's a Mac Donald's now. Mostly what's changed is that nobody I knew in high school lives here anymore.

Oh. One thing that hasn't changed. One horse towns in the Bible Belt are still overflowing with retarded hicks..
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Ok, I went off the rails there for a while. Still, if you actually read all of that, you've wound up with not only a good dose of my logic, but some of my personal experiences, as well.

intro

The Nonplussed

An Introduction
by
Anon
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Hi!

DISCLAIMER THINGY

If you're reading this, then know that there's a story here that I'm willing to tell you, and it's a real humdinger if you're a human being. If you're some far future alien life form then you'll probably just think the whole thing is gross and disgusting. Go ahead and read it though, if you want. Maybe you'll like it, who knows... but I doubt it. You should probably just file it away somewhere and get on with your own gross and disgusting alien business.

However... if you're human, then I advise that you continue reading because this is YOUR story! It's all about people - human beings, just like you - stupid, smart, retarded, insane, evil, benevolent, funny looking, socially , miserable, deliriously happy, bright, dim, shiny and dusty people, plus a few really exceptional ones thrown in here and there. Statistical anomalies.

So, I might ask yourself... how do I know all of this, and why should you trust me to continue reading any of it? Because I'm the storyteller, and I'm the one doing the telling, which means you have two choices - you can either stop reading, or you can just trust me to know what I'm going on about like a lunatic here.

You're still here? Cool.

Now... are you ready to embark upon a fast and furious, laugh-a-minute adventure filled with action and intrigue? To bear witness to an epic tale of good versus evil, festooned with heroic deeds of derring-do performed by the common man against withering odds? Are you prepared to be literally poleaxed when you realize that all of this is gonna end in tears, no matter what, for everybody, even the bad guys? And to understand how that's just the shittiest, most cynical, most realistic ending to every story that you've never read or heard, EVER?! Well then, wrap this concept around your noggin, if you can - now I'm going to tell you about Mankind.

However! Before diving face-first into the action, a little exposition might be helpful for understanding the finer points of how everything got chucked into the proverbial handbasket and onto the ole express bus to hell.

First we gotta backtrack all the way to January of 2018. It all began when somebody kicked over Pakistan's bucket of fuckits, resulting in a dozen 50 kiloton tactical nukes 'sploding over Mumbai. New Delhi was next, and after that Pakistan got THIS close to landing about 75 nuclear howdydoo's right onto the Ganges and smack dab in the middle of laundry day. However - and luckily for India - by a fantastic stroke of luck, a completely unrelated nuclear exchange between NATO and Russia just happened to be at the right place at the right time, making a thermonuclear sandwich out of those 75 Pakistani missiles. The resulting atomic clusterfuck was definitely the awesomest thing that has ever happened about a hundred miles above Middle Eastern Europe, EVER.

You can probably guess most of what happened next, as a bevy of high ranking Indian middle fingers all punched down simultaneously onto several big red buttons, and before anybody knew what the heck was happening, a backyard nuclear skirmish had expanded into an international nuclear brawl as North and South Korea and assorted parts of the Middle East all called dibs on the batters box at the same time. It only took four days - starting with Mumbai - until New Delhi, Karachi, Islamabad, Mecca, Cairo, Damascus, Tehran, Baghdad, Pyongyang, Seoul, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem were all just a bunch of radioactive mirrors smoking in the desert.

Immediately following the nuclear skirmish of 2018, and after confirming that Mecca had been vaporized (along with a shit ton of Muslims), the United States finally declared absolute victory over the War on Terror. What followed was the flower childrens' ancient and long sought after No Nukes! War on Nukes, and it was this twist of fate that probably saved the entire planet from engaging in a full blown, worldwide nuclear holocaust, because - and here's the irony. It's long been established, of course, that when the United States recognizes something despicable and goes to war with it that it absolutely does not go to war on that thing, but instead just spends trillions of dollars to make it look like it it did. So it was that in 2019 the United States initiated a new nuclear deterrent strategy, touted as 'The New Clear War on Nuclear War'. The defense budget was immediately quintupled and spent on fast tracking the development, production and immediate dismantling of 50,000 brand new, 500 megaton thermo-quantum PlanetBusters, which really, really pissed off the state of Georgia when the other 49 States just kind of chucked the bill for all of it onto Atlanta's doorstep at 2:00 AM one Sunday morning.

There's a bright side to all of this though. As it turned out, the glaciers weren't really melting, the West Antarctic Ice Shelf was fully intact, and the penguins and polar bears were just fine. After the nuclear fiasco in the Middle East, it was finally deemed sufficiently safe to reveal that the whole global warming thing had just been an elaborate practical joke cooked up by Al Franken as an SNL skit that kinda got outta hand, and the liberals had just ran with it. However... after this revelation, Kim Kan Kook, the latest cult of personality fad in North Korea, was totally serious when he ordered a nuclear sneak attack upon Antarctica to take out the Anti-Santa Clause once and for good. So theWest Antarctic Ice Sheet collapsed anyway, which resulted in a worldwide five meter rise in sea levels.

Now it's 2060, almost 40 years since the entire world forcibly relocated North Korea to the south pole. The rise in sea levels has made all of the continents look funny, and everybody hates the new world maps. The new coastlines smell bad, and there's talk of nuking Antarctica again, because... you know. North Korea. Mankind has PTSD, and it's looking like it might all end in tears before it's supposed to, and right as it's starting to get good.


brand spanking new 6 trillion dollar Two Dog Night Light, and the absolute last straw for Georgia.

That's a good place to start, huh? Let's begin your story here, in pissed off and hung over rural Georgia, on New Years Day, 2060.
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Dempsey Witt was passed out pretty hard for a Sunday morning, which used to be unusual. If he could've seen himself curled up on the kitchen floor and cradling his service revolver like a teddy bear, he would have been moderately disappointed with himself, what with it being a Sunday morning and all. He used to make it a point to pass out somewhere closer to his bedroom on Sunday mornings, with his service revolver tucked snugly into the waistband of his underoos instead of hugged up under his chin. Nowadays though, simply waking up was a disappointment, and he was always bitterly surprised when it happened.

On this particular Sunday morning however, a ray of sweet sunshine containing the first photons of the gathering dawn gentled softly upon Dim's left eyelid like angeldown. To that left eyeball, the substance of that single spark of hope almost discerned felt like a Nazi jackboot stomping onto the left side of his noggin.. Dempsey SCRRAHGOUGHLED awake, choking on the snotty boogers of his own wet, ugly snores. With a mighty HAAGGHCK! a slimy fhlurghph PSCHFLOOP'd across his tongue and sphlURGH'd somewhere over there, across the kitchen.

OHGODNONOTAWAKEAGAIN was the sound that fell out of his face. He passed out and immediately bounced awake again. Minutes of trauma transpired - severe trauma, traumatic trauma - trauma like a 900 pound retarded kid made out of sharp edges, bulldozing through his awareness. Eventually his lips made a moist 'pop' as they came unstuck. The inside of his mouth was dry and sticky. He tried to build up a little saliva by smacking his tongue and lips together. It made a nasty noise, like a dog licking its own asshole. Tastes like a dog's asshole too, he thought.

Dim continued to lie there in the darkness for an interminable moment, blind and with the taste of a dogs asshole in his mouth... and pleasantly surprised, for once. He'd really expected hell to be so much worse than just the world's godawfulest hangover. He decided to risk opening his eyes to see if it really was demons and pitchforks and a lake of fire, but everything remained dark.

Well, dimwit, he thought to himself... that could mean several things. The most likely thing is that the eternal darkness of hell is right here and now, and you're at the beginning of it. Either that or you forgot to drain the methanol from that batch of hootch last night and you've finally drunk yourself blind, idgit.

He lay there in the darkness for another interminable moment trying to decide if he was in hell or blinded by methanol...

"THAT GAWDAM DOG!" he hollered out loud, as murky details of the night before came back to him. The sound of his own voice was like an inside-out kick to the head, and his hands jerked up reflexively to catch his eyeballs before they popped out of his noggin. He could feel the skin of his eyelids pulsing against his palms as his eyeballs tried to make a run for it.

...or so retarded hung over that you just forgot to open your eyes, idgit.

Once his eyes had stopped bouncing around inside of his head like a couple of pinballs, he very carefully tried to open his eyelids, and discovered that they were stuck fast. He could feel something dry and crusty rubbing against his palms.

"What's this hairy hogwash??" he whisper-shouted as he scurried backwards on his ass and hands across the kitchen linoleum, reaching frantically for some kind of stable purchase. He finally backed up forcibly against the fridge, which he'd left open the night before after a drunken search for sustenance. The impact jolted a jar of pickle juice perched precariously on the rack above, which tipped over, spilling green vinegary liquid all over his head and onto his eyelids, immediately dissolving the dried crusty muck sealing them shut. His eyes flickered open. He could see!

"I can see!" Dim exulted, and then the pickle juice was past his eyelids and into his eyes.

"I'M BLIND!" he screamed. He scrambled to his feet, one hand furiously trying to punch out the fire in his eyes while the other hand groped around blindly for something to put out the fire that didn't involve smothering it to death with punches to the face. If you can imagine someone doing all of that, then you're imagining him exactly the way he looked while he was doing it.

Dim abruptly recognized the kitchen sink with his thrusting, outstretched hand. "WATER!" he exclaimed breathlessly, and he immediately put both of his hands to the task of making water happen in the sink.... but what happened instead of water was just bad luck. His frantic, jerking hands happened upon the jar of methanol that he'd carefully extracted from the latest batch of hootch the night before, which he'd reserved for some future project involving that gawdam dog and left safely in the sink to await its purpose. However, being blind, hung over, eyeballs on fire and desperate for relief, Dim completely failed to remember to put the two and two of the previous night together. Instead, he latched onto that jar of methanol, thinking it was cool, precious, fire-quenching water. He upended it upon his upturned face and directly into his pickle juiced, on fire eyes.

The pain was so tremendous that the nerves conducting it from his eyes to his brain actually backed up like a traffic jam. Fully five seconds transpired as he stood there, immersed in a kind of un-feeling... much like what you get when you touch something so hot that your brain freaks out for a second and tries to think that it's freezing. Five seconds of a rapturous, expectant, kind of hot-cold-numb limbo transpired for Dim as he stood there in his kitchen with an upturned jar of methanol held over his hopefully expectant, pain wracked face. Then the traffic jam of nerve endings became a pileup that just kept piling up and piling up and piling up, until it was a 7:00 AM rush hour traffic massacre of pain, pointing with pointy, painful, on fire points that piled up and piled up, pointing right into his eyeballs from every direction, and every direction was ON FIRE!

Dim SHRIEKED, and finally woke up the gawdam dog.
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After a medium-sized while, the front door of Madame Maybell's cracked open by just a smidge, and an amplified caterwaul issued forth -

"BEELZEBUB IS A PRETTY GOOD GUY!"

(this is their secret code; not so secret though when hollered, and through an amplified megaphone)

Dim rolled down his window and hollered back -

(these guys...)

"AS FAR AS DEMONS GO!"

And again, from the crack in the door -

"BUT HIS BROTHER BAAL..."

"LORD DON'T HE WAIL!" Dim yelled, close to cracking up. And again, from the crack in the door -

"AND BAPHOMET..."

And then both of them together, "IS JUST PLAIN PSYCHO!"

The front door to Madame Maybell's House of Well Repute and Oasis slammed open and half a dozen shotgun barrels poked out, pointing in all directions, like some kind of Looney Tunes ensemble.

"We gotcher dead to rights!" came the challenge.

Dim stepped out of the cab of the truck and walked around to the back. "Dead to rights?" he yelled, as he fiddled with the tailgate latch. "You don't even know what that means!" Dim yanked the latch up and down furiously about a dozen times, but it wouldn't open. He slapped the tailgate in frustration and yelled to Deputy Buck. "Gitcher fat ass down here and help me unload these kegs of moonshine!"

Deputy Buckeye Buck lumbered out onto the front porch of Madame Maybell's. "Shut up dimwit," he hissed, his eyes shifting left and right as he leveraged his considerable bulk down the front porch steps. "What if I was posing as myself as an undercover cop? You don't know who might be hollerin' out the door, hiding in the nooks and crannies and alcoves! Great Godahmighty, son!"

Dim gave the latch of the tailgate one last, exasperated yank and decided to just skip the damn thing. He clambered up over it and into the bed of the pickup and shouted back, "First off, I'm old enough to be YOUR pappy, SON!" Heh, Dim chuckled and thought, I sure get a kick out of myself. "And nextly, concerning your cornfed paranoia, well... there wouldn't never be no problem of an undercover cop to begin with, would there, you thick country bumpkin! Because you'da  justa been POSING as one!" Dim manhandled one of the big aluminum kegs toward the back of the truck. "Kinda like how you're constantly posing as Deputy of Podunk county," he added, "when you're really just the Hooch Man for every back-woods whore house and broken down saloon in all of southern Georgia!" Oh boy, Dim laughed down into his chin, he was sure hot today.

Suddenly six girls with shotguns, ranging from about ten to fourteen years of age, burst out of the open door of Madame Maybell's and went charging around where Sherrif Buckeye stood on the steps, like rapids around a boulder, and very nearly sending him tumbling. "You girls... you girls! Dammit, you girls!" blubbered Buckeye.

Dim looked up from wrestling with the aluminum keg, just as one of the older girls - about thirteen years old, by the look of her - leapt up effortlessly into the bed of his pickup and offered him her shotgun. "Sir, would you mind keepin' a hold of this for me, just for a bit, til me and the girls is done here?" She said.

Dim stared wordlessly at the girl with his mouth hanging open. In all of his sixty-six years, this was probably the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She was about 5' without an inch to spare, with dark brown hair that went down to her unusually broad shoulders. She was wearing a tank top, on the front of which was printed the image of a fur covered monster that was lifting up the fur from it's midsection and pointing to a set of well chiseled abs. 'THE ABDOMINAL SNOWMAN' was printed underneath, in large letters. A long, brown summer skirt decorated with paisleys and flowers flowed down from her waist to her ankles, almost covering the pair of well worn sandals that she wore on her small feet. The girl was obviously in great shape, Dim could tell; simply by observing her arms and shoulders, which were smooth and well defined. She was simply the epitome of youthful exuberance.

"Sir, please? Time's a-runnin' out, and we gotta get this evidence to... to..." The girl looked around frantically for a second, as if she were trying to locate... " to where it's supposed to be!" she suddenly shouted. "And right quick! Please, zillions of lives are at stake!" She gave the outstretched shotgun an impatient shake, and Dim took it from her. Then the girl smiled a smile that could have gone down in history, if history had been paying attention. History was busy somewhere else though apparently, so only Dim saw that smile... that heart wrecking, ship breaking smile.

"Thank you sir!" she said, and then to the others waiting below...

"Girls! Let's get to it! You know what to do!" And with a tchika-tchika THUNK, one of em had jimmied the tailgate latch that Dim had been struggling with, and then it was down, and all six of the shotgun girls immediately began unloading the barrels of moonshine and rolling them up to the front porch of Madame Maybe's. "Were rollin' over and turnin' states evidence!" shouted one of the younger girls amidst the flurry of activity. Another, older girl shouted, "Shut UP! This is a black op, STUPID," to the younger one who had just blabbed about turning states evidence, whatever that meant.

Dim watched it all with his jaw hanging open. What the heck had just happened? he thought to himself. That smile, from that girl, the beautiful girl... It had poleaxed him! Suddenly Dim was overcome with a feeling of paternal love for her, whoever she was. He knew right then and there that he would die to save her, to protect her... What the heck is happening, Dim stuttered inside his own head. That girl had smiled the most perfectest smile in all of the history of the human race, and... she'd had no idea! How could she have? She was still existing inside of the perfect naivety of unspoilt innocence!

Dim was sure, more sure than he'd ever been in his life about anything, that this girl, who had just smiled that miraculous smile, had no idea that she was the most beautiful newborn woman who had ever just crossed over from childhood, through puberty, and into young adulthood. She just didn't know it. Amazing!

"Lookit em go," commented Buckeye Buck with a smile, as he finally made his way over to where Dim stood stupidly in the bed of the old electric Ford pickup, now empty of 7 and a half barrels of the bestest moonshine in all of southern Georgia. "They're something, ain't they?" Buckeye laughed. "A tad excitable though, but that's youth. Didja see how I almost broke my neck, with all of them tadpoles scurrying past me down the steps? Lordamercy! Dim? Dim, you awake in there?"

Dim came to with a start. "Uh... yeah." He dug around in his pocket for a second, as if he'd lost something, and then his hand just kind of settled there.

CH. 1 edits

     Sheriff Dempsey Witt of Podunk County Georgia celebrated the new year by doing the same thing that he always did on a Saturday night - by getting stupid drunk and trying to kill himself. He'd come close a couple of times to actually knocking himself off, but he almost always never succeeded. Invariably, he would pass out before working up the required cojones to actually do the deed. It didn't help that Dempsey Witt was also a hopelessly happy drunk so he always became really shitty at suicide after a dozen or so shots of double rectified spirits.

     However, at the current moment he couldn't have given a horses patoot about the meticulous plans he'd made the night before while he was three sheets to the wind and at the end of his rope... that is, the plans he'd made to never have to wake up with another planet sized hangover, ever again. At the moment he was safely ensconced inside the bowels of oblivion, and that was the plan. The problem was that the plan seemed to be perpetually stuck inside a gosub loop that was attached to an if/then statement of somewhat dubious logic, resulting in an infinitely repeating subroutine... like a closed, time-like loop.

     Whatever, who cares. Dempsey certainly didn't. To him, it was simply another repetition of his weekly routine, which began like this...

1. Drink yourself silly on Saturday night.
2. Carefully plan your suicide.
3. Wake up Sunday morning, disappointed and with a planet sized hangover.
4. Sober up and sheriff the county until next Saturday and -
5. - keep the county in its cups.
6. Repeat.

     
   





     He came to that morning buried underneath an avalanche of murky confusion and with absolutely no idea who he was, where he was, or why the silent depths of sweet oblivion had felt it necessary that he should be vomited back into existence. There was no identity, no ego, no perception, no nothing. For Dempsey Witt, the entirety of his being during those first moments of non-oblivion consisted merely of a familiar sense of resignation, accompanied by mild disappointment. No biggie... just a kind of 'all encompassing 'oh well'. Plus his head felt like it was crammed full of steel wool, which made any attempt at thinking comparable to having the inside of his noggin scrubbed vigorously with a brillo pad.

     After passing out again and immediately bouncing right back to suffocating (I don't think the suffocating part was mentioned earlier, so... yeah, suffocating) underneath an avalanche of murky confusion, Dem became aware of a cold, hard surface pressing uncomfortably against his entire body. He couldn't begin to fathom what it might be, which made the inside of his brain itch like the image of a madman's head fungus. He could feel the cold, hard 'whatever it was' trying to squash his eyeball as it pushed against the side of his face, just pressing and pressing, like some kind of giant, really bad spatula.

::: squashed eyeball afterimages, memory triggered, horror buried in the subconscious, a dream no a nightmare remembered, the imminent arrival of the far flung Hunger from the Eleventeenth dimension, the STARVE-ling :::

     A kong, drawn out gasping, choking, suffocating, and drowning noise, like that of a dying, pathetic creature, issued forth from his throat as a perfectly causal reaction to some insanity-spanning horror that most likely lurked just beneath his conscious memory. No doubt about it... it was definitions like some kind of fucked up Jack-in-the-box.

     No likey, he thought. He said it out loud - 'No likey no likey no likey' - and then he shouted - 'ME DEFINITELY NO LIKEY!' He awoke suddenly, as if from a nightmare, and the murky confusion transmogrified into a conscious thing. 'What the heck happened, and what the heck is this crap that's happening!' he screamed inside his own head. Then he passed out.

::: Exposition :::

     Consciousness came crashing into his noggin like a forty car pileup.

::: Exposition :::

     Well, there was the cold, slick thing he had cradled like a teddy bear against the declivity near the top of his chest, with the long end of it pushed up snugly under his chin. 'Huh', he thought, feeling vaguely repulsed. 'What's this thing?' Although he held it like a teddy bear, it definitely wasn't comforting like a teddy bear ought to be. No, this thing was... could be... comforting, yeah. But not like teddy bear comfort... more like 'Smite Thine Enemies' comfort.

     What the hell? he thought. Never mind, I don't wanna know.


     he'd been more and more of a mind to do something about the problem once and for all, but he never seemed to get around to it because he keep passing out at the crucial moment.

::: Exposition on suicide and plans for suicide and screwing up his own suicide :::

What he'd gotten instead was the grandmother of all hangovers.

The inside of his mouth was dry and his lips were spit-welded. They made a moist 'pop' as they came unstuck. He tried to build up a little saliva by smacking his tongue and lips together, which made a nasty noise, like a dog snacking on its own nether regions.

'Tastes like a dogs butthole.'

He tried to inhale through his nose and was greeted with the smell of snotty, freshly snored boogers. His eyes were gummed up and crusted over.

::: yada yada yada :::

Dim was definitely disappointed. He'd chickened out again. If he was really serious about blowing his brains out, really, he was gonna have to man up and do it sober.






Ubiquitous, he thought to himself as he heaved and pulsated while trying to catch his breath. Ubiquitous. He'd learned that word some twenty years ago from some science fiction novel that he'd been reading, and at the time he'd thought it a pretty damn cool word. Ubiquitous - meaning ever present, abundant, all over the place, filling the nooks and crannies, just all over everything. The boogers in my nose are ubiquitous, he mused as he threw up all over the kitchen floor. The ubiquitous vomit covered the kitchen floor.

He thought of all the ubiquitous things in his life that he hated. The ubiquitous waking up that happened every day was the worst... then there was the ubiquitous hangover, followed by the ubiquitous passage of time. Inside of that was the ubiquitous dread, from which he observed and followed his own ubiquitous habits, every day, ubiquitously. Oh, how he hated that word. If was just so... pretentious! And ubiquitous!

Another level

I love being outside inside of the small hours, on public roads when the weather is happening and the city is silenced and I have it all to myself, all of this space that's demarcated for the use of everyone, but for now it's all mine.

I love the subtle light that lives inside of the darkness that nobody ever sees. I love the bottom layers of sound that only come out at night when everything else just shuts the hell up. I love being able to walk fifteen feet away from here and disappear completely.

I love the strangeness of everything. I love walking into the darkness of something. I love how utterly unreal it seems.

I love being alone in it.

The Nonplussed chapter 1 - rewrite

Gimme a sec, ok. Geez

The Nonplussed - chapter 1 (draft)

DISCLAIMER THING

If you're reading this, then know there is a story here that I'm willing to tell you, and it's a real humdinger if you're a human being. If you're some far future alien life form who happened to get hold of this by some clusterfuck of probability, then it probably won't make hardly any sense to you at all. You can go ahead and read it though, if you want. Maybe you'll like it, who knows... but I doubt it, so you might just wanna file it somewhere and get on with your totally alien and probably totally gross and disgusting alien business. Hey, no harm, no foul.

However... if you're human, then I'd advise that you continue reading, because this is YOUR story! It's all about people... stupid, smart, retarded, insane, evil, benevolent, funny looking, socially inept, miserable, deliriously happy, bright shiny and dusty people, just like you! Plus a few really exceptional ones thrown in here and there. Statistical anomalies.

So, I might ask myself... how do I know all of this, and why should you trust me to continue reading any of it? Because I'm the book, I'm the storyteller, and I'm telling you this. So, you can trust me to know what I'm going about! Ok?

Ok! On with it then.

Firstly. Let's see... um. Dang, there's so many to choose from. So many points of view! It's hard to decide which ones should take precedence. Ok, lemme back up. Let's see... um, um, um, um... Ok! Here we go, this guy looks interesting, and there's a lot of interesting folks around him, too. Huh... WHOA! Oh yeah, this guy is connected, he's a major focal point! Cool. We'll start with him. His name is... hang on... Dempsey Witt. From... Georgia, Podunk county, United States of America plus Baja California, the year 2060 AD.

Ok. We'll start with him.
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Dempsey Witt - Dem to folks who knew him, Dim to his friends - was taking the scenic route to work today. It was a fine, almost spring morning in southern Georgia in January. The January dandelions were letting go, the January honeysuckle was in the air, and the smell of springtime in January was almost blowing in the wind, as fine as nostril wine, in the back country of southern Georgia.

'Almost is all you need,' Dim sang out loud to the tune of a hundred year old Beatles song that was squeaking out of the old dashboard sat-radio.

'Oh, and you know what else?' Dim continued out loud, 'Almost only counts in horseshoes, thermonuclear war, and 180 proof distilled spirits!' The proof - no pun intended - was the almost full load of almost 100% pure grain alcohol in the bed of the pickup. He was in a pretty good mood that morning, for a dilapidated old bootlegger, and he hardly even noticed any of the potholes as he bullied the old Ford pickup down the well neglected oil roads of southern Georgia, Podunk county, USA - well neglected in the upkeep, but well familiar in the driving of. That's the way that the oil roads of back country USA had been for the last hundred years, and Dem was sixty-six years old and could vouch personally for a bunch of those years. 'Oil roads were made for runnin' moonshine,' his dad used to say. They were the arteries and veins of it - and right now, Dim was the beating heart that was pumping the vital hooch to the vital organs. If Dim was the heart that pumped the hooch (or mule kick, as his dad used to to call it), then Sheriff Buckeye Buck was definitely the liver that did the processing. Sheriff Buck was the organ that filtered the 'lectric honey (as his mom used to call it) - that Dim delivered, so that it was provisioned fairly and according to the Law of the Land, according to Buckeye Buck that is, who was the hooch accountant, the county liver... Yeah, there ya go! That's the analogy he was looking for!

That's what Dempsey Witt was thinking that morning as he trundled over those ragged potholes. Work for Dempsey Witt was running moonshine, and the running of it was work for Dempsey Witt - Dim, as he was known to his friends, Dem to just folks - and he'd never known anything different for his whole life. Later on he'd maybe  think about how strange all of that seemed in retrospect, once seen outside of his world of rural Georgia, right after the universe had exploded in his face, but whatever future that was gonna be, Dempsey Witt had no idea of it right then. He had hooch to deliver today, and not some time hence.

So it was a fine, spring-like January morning in Southern Georgia that Dempsey Witt - Dim to his friends, Dem to just folks; he always liked to make that clear - pulled his old hooch laden Ford 'lectric into the front yard of Madame Maybe's House of Well Repute and Oasis. It was 7:00 AM, and only just seven hours past the state mandated closing time of any and all reputed houses, be they ill or well. Dim (we'll just call him that from here on, ok?) cut the juice to the Ford and parked for a while, waiting. After a medium-sized while, the front door of Madame Maybe's cracked open by just a smidge, and an amplified caterwaul issued forth -

"BEELZEBUB IS A PRETTY GOOD GUY!"

Dim rolled down his window and hollered back -

"AS FAR AS DEMONS GO!"

And again, from the crack in the door -

"BUT HIS BROTHER BAAL..."

"LORD DON'T HE WAIL!" Dim yelled, close to cracking up. And again, from the crack in the door -

"AND BAPHOMET..."

And then both of them together, "IS JUST PLAIN PSYCHO!"

The front door to Madame Maybell's House of Well Repute and Oasis slammed open and half a dozen shotgun barrels poked out, pointing in all directions, like some kind of Looney Tunes ensemble.

"We gotcher dead to rights!" came the challenge.

Dim stepped out of the cab of the truck and walked around to the back. "Dead to rights?" he yelled, as he fiddled with the tailgate latch. "You don't even know what that means, you asshole!" Dim yanked the latch up and down furiously about a dozen times, but it wouldn't open. He slapped the tailgate in frustration and yelled to Sheriff Buck. "Gitcher fat ass down here and help me unload these kegs of moonshine!"

Sheriff Buckeye Buck of Podunk county, state of Georgia, USA, lumbered out onto the front porch of Madame Maybell's. "Shut up you dimwit," he hissed, his eyes shifting left and right as he leveraged his considerable bulk down the front porch steps. "What if I was posing as myself as an undercover cop? You don't know who might be hollerin' out the door, hiding in the nooks and crannies and alcoves! Great Godahmighty, son!"

Dim gave the latch of the tailgate one last, exasperated yank and decided to just skip the damn thing. He clambered up over it and into the bed of the pickup and shouted back, "First off, I'm old enough to be YOUR pappy, SON!" Heh, Dim chuckled and thought, I sure get a kick out of myself, don't I? "And nextly, concerning your cornfed paranoia, well... there wouldn't never be no problem of an undercover cop to begin with, would there, you thick country bumpkin! Because you'da  justa been POSING as one!" Dim manhandled one of the big aluminum kegs toward the back of the truck. "Kinda like how you're constantly posing as the Sheriff of Podunk county," he added, "when you're really just the Hooch Man for every back-woods whore house and broken down saloon in all of southern Georgia!" Oh boy, Dim laughed down into his chin, he was sure hot today.

Suddenly six girls with shotguns, ranging from about ten to fourteen years of age, burst out of the open door of Madame Maybell's and went charging around where Sherrif Buckeye stood on the steps, like rapids around a boulder, and very nearly sending him tumbling. "You girls... you girls! Dammit, you girls!" blubbered the Sheriff.

Dim looked up from wrestling with the aluminum keg, just as one of the older girls - about thirteen years old, by the look of her - leapt up effortlessly into the bed of his pickup and offered him her shotgun. "Sir, would you mind keepin' a hold of this for me, just for a bit, til me and the girls is done here?" She said.

Dim stared wordlessly at the girl with his mouth hanging open. In all of his sixty-six years, this was probably the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She was about 5' without an inch to spare, with dark brown hair that went down to her unusually broad shoulders. She was wearing a tank top, on the front of which was printed the image of a fur covered monster that was lifting up the fur fom it's midsection and pointing to a set of well chiseled abs. 'THE ABDOMINAL SNOWMAN' was printed underneath, in large letters. A long, brown summer skirt decorated with paisleys and flowers flowed down from her waist to her ankles, almost covering the pair of well worn sandals that she wore on her small feet. The girl was obviously in great shape, Dim could tell; simply by observing her arms and shoulders, which were smooth and well defined. She was simply the epitome of youthful exuberance.

"Sir, please? Time's a-runnin' out, and we gotta get this evidence to... to..." The girl looked around frantically for a second, as if she were trying to locate... " to where it's supposed to be!" she suddenly shouted. "And right quick! Please, zillions of lives are at stake!" She gave the outstretched shotgun an impatient shake, and Dim took it from her. Then the girl smiled a smile that could have gone down in history, if history had been paying attention. History was busy somewhere else though apparently, so only Dim saw that smile... that heart wrecking, ship breaking smile.

"Thank you sir!" she said, and then to the others waiting below...

"Girls! Let's get to it! You know what to do!" And with a tchika-tchika THUNK, one of em had jimmied the tailgate latch that Dim had been struggling with, and then it was down, and all six of the shotgun girls immediately began unloading the barrels of moonshine and rolling them up to the front porch of Madame Maybe's. "Were rollin' over and turnin' states evidence!" shouted one of the younger girls amidst the flurry of activity. Another, older girl shouted, "Shut UP! This is a black op, STUPID," to the younger one who had just blabbed about turning states evidence, whatever that meant.

Dim watched it all with his jaw hanging open. What the heck had just happened? he thought to himself. That smile, from that girl, the beautiful girl... It had poleaxed him! Suddenly Dim was overcome with a feeling of paternal love for her, whoever she was. He knew right then and there that he would die to save her, to protect her... What the heck is happening, Dim stuttered inside his own head. That girl had smiled the most perfectest smile in all of the history of the human race, and... she'd had no idea! How could she have? She was still existing inside of the perfect naivety of unspoilt innocence!

Dim was sure, more sure than he'd ever been in his life about anything, that this girl, who had just smiled that miraculous smile, had no idea that she was the most beautiful newborn woman who had ever just crossed over from childhood, through puberty, and into young adulthood. She just didn't know it. Amazing!

"Lookit em go," commented Buckeye Buck with a smile, as he finally made his way over to where Dim stood stupidly in the bed of the old electric Ford pickup, now empty of 7 and a half barrels of the bestest moonshine in all of southern Georgia. "They're something, ain't they?" Buckeye laughed. "A tad excitable though, but that's youth. Didja see how I almost broke my neck, with all of them tadpoles scurrying past me down the steps? Lordamercy! Dim? Dim, you awake in there?"

Dim came to with a start. "Uh... yeah." He dug around in his pocket for a second, as if he'd lost something, and then his hand just kind of settled there.

Sheriff Buck's eyes narrowed. "Now, Dim, you ain't been at the hooch this early on a Sunday morning, I know you ain't, cause you and me both know that I'd hafta... heh." He'd meant it as a joke, but after he'd said it, it didn't seem like one. Sheriff Buck glanced down furtively at his dusty boots, then up again at Dim, waiting to see how he'd take it.

Dim shook his head in annoyance, as if he were trying to rid it of an infestation of fleas. "What?" he barked, and then noticed Sheriff Buckeye standing right there, leaning against the side of the truck, and looking up at him with the most retarded look of questioning suspicion that Dim had ever seen. It was the look of an ignorant hick, stupid and glazed, Dim thought. For a couple of seconds as he looked down at the Sheriff, he was filled with disgust at the sight of him - 'What a stupid bottom feeder... how do I even know this backwoods inbred hillbilly?' -  And then he'd snapped out of it, and saw his friend Bucky again. Sheriff Buckeye Buck. Dim called him Bucky. Young and dumb, yeah, but with a lot more smarts than anyone would ever know, unless they knew him as a friend. Dim felt ashamed for thinking those things about his friend. He'd been discombobulated by the girl's smile, that's all.

Dim recovered his composure and resumed his pocket digging, producing a pack of smokes and a lighter. He casually popped a cigarette out of the pack and put it between his lips, then cupped the lighter flame with both hands and inhaled deeply. "That's real funny," - cough, chuckle - "I guess Boss Hog just caught me red handed being human," Dim said as he exhaled a lungful of smoke.

The import of the moment hadn't been lost on Sheriff Buckeye, though. He'd seen that look of contempt cross over his friend's features, just for a second. With all of the years that they'd known each other and run hooch together, he'd always known that Dim had looked down on him with a certain measure of contempt... an ashamed and we'll hidden contempt, but still there, nevertheless. It's why Buckeye Buck had maneuvered himself in the lofty position of Sheriff of Podunk county, after all. He'd done it for the good opinion of Dempsey Witt, because Dempsey and Buck's dear departed dad, Billy Buck, went way back... back to a time when the Sheriff's name was Witt, and when Buckeye was what you hollered at the scamp that always getting under his dad's heels...

"Was that a gaggle of gun toting girlies I just seen blow through here and carry off a truckload of South Georgia White Lightning, slicker'n goose shit?" Dim suddenly blurted, in an attempt to preempt the gathering mood.

Sheriff Buck relaxed visibly and laughed. "Heh! That's my secret service in training. Ain't they somethin'? A tad bit rambunctious, but that's just young'uns being young and playin' purtend, as young'uns ought ta."

Dim suddenly remembered the shotgun that he'd been holding the whole time, that the girl with the bedazzling smile had asked him to hang onto. He lifted it up for a closer examination. He tested the heft. He released the pump action and opened the chamber, revealing a bona fide12 gauge slug resting within. He turned it over and examined the stock, which had 'Mossberg' printed on one side, and 'SuperSuze', in very stylized, curlicue letters on the other.

"Say, what the hell..."
.
.
.
"Thanks for holding onto my gun, sir! Oh.. and, mission accomplished! I'm special agent Susanna 'SuperSuze' Hicks, by the way! Nice to meetcha, and thanks again for holding my Mossberg for me! Bye!" She saluted crisply, then leapt from the bed of the truck and was gone.

A dream - flying the hang glider

I had my hang glider. I'd finally built it. I had it disassembled and packed into a duffel bag, and I was taking the bus out to the edge of town to look for a good place to launch from. Someone on the bus asked what I had in the duffel bag. "A bamboo hang glider that I built," I replied. "I'm gonna test it today. "

The guy smiled, shook his head, and said, "If you're trying to kill yourself, you sure as hell don't need to take a rickety, homemade hang glider with you when you take the plunge." I'd definitely heard that before, and I had my stock answer ready.

"I ain't trying to off myself. What I've built is based on a glider design called a Rogallo wing, and this one specifically is referred to as a bamboo butterfly. And I didn't just throw this thing together together willy nilly, you know. I've built five different test models, and I tested each one until it was trashed. The final one was a 1/5th scale model with a wingspan of a little more than four feet, so I've done a lot of testing. The only thing left to test now is the real thing, so here I am." The guy raised his eyebrows and made a little 'pff' sound, and just shook his head a little.

"I've read about people doing this and pulling it off with no experience whatsoever," I said. "If they can do it, then so can I." The guy just shook his head some more. Finally he spoke.

"I know what a Rogallo wing is, and I know all about your bamboo butterfly. I'm a hang glider pilot, and speaking from years of experience, what you're doing is a damn fool stunt and you're liable to break your neck."

I looked at the guy. "It may be a damn fool thing to do, but I sure as hell am gonna do it anyway. I mean, anybody can do this. Anybody! The bamboo is free, it grows everywhere. You might wind up spending fifty dollars for materials, such as nuts, bolts, screws, duct tape, a propane torch for curing the bamboo, a saw for cutting it, and plastic sheeting for the sails. Do you understand what that means? It means that any Joe Schmoe with fifty dollars and a little determination can FLY, man. How can somebody have that knowledge in their head and then not do it?"

The guy looked at me for about five seconds, then he slapped his knee and busted out laughing. "Well, I guess even a damn fool can make a good point. If you live through it, let me know how it went." I said that I would, although I didn't even know the guys name, or how to get hold of him after.

My stop came and I hefted my duffel bag and got off the bus. I walked around, looking for a good spot to launch, and I found one. It was a wide street with thick stands of trees running along each side that went downhill for about an eighth of a mile, then leveled off and continued in a straight line until I couldn't see it anymore for the trees. There was a decent wind blowing from the direction of the road, so I unpacked my hang glider and assembled it, hefted the pilots cage over my shoulders, gripped the support struts with both arms, ran as hard as I could toward the slope of that road and jumped with everything I had. The sail billowed as it caught the air, and suddenly my feet were off the ground. I looked down and watched as the road surface slipped away beneath me. I looked to the sides and saw that I was almost level with the treetops. I was a good thirty feet in the air, and flying. No, not just flying... I was sailing. Sailing straight and true, cupped inside that little valley of trees, and following the path of the road below.

Then the leading edges at the far ends of both wings snapped. The wings didn't outright collapse, but I'd lost about twenty percent of my glide ratio. I shifted my body back as far as I could to lift the nose so that more of the surface area of the wings would be able to catch the air. That helped a little, but then the nose came up too far, and I stalled. I started to drop fast, so I pushed myself forward, straining to get the nose down again. Finally the wings billowed as they caught the air, and I dropped hard onto the road surface, like a paratrooper. It was like jumping from a ten foot height and landing on your feet. It felt like an inside out uppercut - like a pressure wave traveling through every square inch of my body, starting with my feet and landing full force, right inside my noggin. I thought my skull was gonna come apart. And, MAN, did the soles of my feet STING! I was alive though and no worse for wear, and my neck wasn't broke. I'd done went and did it.

I inspected the broken leading edges and saw the weak spot. It was where I'd had to fasten two bamboo poles together to increase the total length of the edge, and it didn't hold, plain and simple. I'd have to make it stronger, is all. I trudged back up the hill with the broken hang glider resting on my shoulders, and when I got to the top, the bus just happened to be right there as it was making its rounds. The guy I'd spoken to before saw me and waved, then made a gesture with his hands like he was snapping a twig, followed by a shrug as if to ask, 'what happened'? I made the twig breaking gesture, followed by a twisting screwdriver, and a motion like I was rolling tape around something. Then I made as though I were trying very hard to break a stout branch without success. After that I made a muscle with my arm and gave the guy a thumbs up. I could see the guy laughing and giving me a thumbs up as the bus disappeared down the road.

lives

Here in Denton there's a cemetery right close to the UNT campus. An old one, surrounded by high fences, but there's always a gate open whenever I go by there, no matter what time of day, night, morning, gloaming, or whenever. I'm always over there at night, though.

Olden graves are something of a comfort to me because my dad used to take us kids to olden cemetery plots in East Texas... just to be there, you know. To imprint the experience on a young brain. I remember those cemetery visits from 30-40 years ago, so nowadays I approach cemeteries as a place where I'd like to be. With a young, dreamy feeling.

I go into that cemetery here in Denton sometimes, like tonight, when I'm wandering around, restless and with nothing to do, but not ready to hit the end of it yet. I go into there and look at lots and lots of graves. It's easy to lose myself in the looking at all of those names, all of those lives. Lives like mine, that meant something once, to someone, and I'm only catching the thin, foamy froth of the ocean of that life, by seeing that headstone, with the name and date, and sometimes a personal inscription.

If I dwell on this stark reality of never knowing the texture of all the lives around me, alive and visible, alive and behind closed doors, dead and cold and buried and forever unknowable, I'll begin to despair with profound grief. If I let that feeling grow, it'll start to hurt so bad that it passes beyond my comprehension, the feeling of it, and I'll reboot back to just being confused and a little depressed. I can account for the process of it now, because it's happened so many times before.

The car chase

I was in a car chase once.

A bona-fide, side-swiping, corner screeching, rearview mirror looking, heart pounding, trying to get away, seat of my pants car chase. I just now remembered it. I can't believe I forgot about it... I must have repressed it. It was when I was out of my mind on morphine every day, back in 2005.

What triggered the memory was that movie Ted, about the teddy bear that comes to life. The one with Marky Mark, and that 70's chick who played his girlfriend, and that scene where the suit and tie guy from Avatar stole Ted and then the car chase ensued. I was watching that movie tonight. I dunno why it was that particular car chase that triggered the memory of my very own car chase. Maybe because that whole movie is on drugs? Anyway. Here's what happened:

Firstly, it's important to note that although I was a genuine opiate addict, never ever did I ever obtain opiates from a drug dealer. Oh, no... I was a special kind of drug seeker. I explored and researched legal ways to obtain my substances, because my addiction was private. The only people who might have even suspected it were the checkout clerks at the grocery stores and hobby supply shops that stocked what I needed. I'm talking about bulk poppy seeds at grocery stores, and dried decorative poppy pods at the arts and crafts stores. Oh. And eBay.

The thing was though, I would frequently buy out all of the available stock from every local store within a 25 mile radius, so I was always riding the ragged edge of disaster because withdrawals were always, ALWAYS just right around the corner if I couldn't get my legal opiate fix. Like I said before, seeking out a drug dealer was just out of the question, because I wasn't that kind of junkie... I was still a junkie though, to be sure. So, with withdrawals always lurking around the corner, I was constantly searching for another store that was relatively close by where I could score my poppy seeds or my poppy pods. My main drug dealers at that time were Central Market, World Market, Fiesta, Joanne's Arts and Crafts, and Michael's. And occasionally eBay, but eBay involved a long wait for delivery, and junkies are seriously not about long waits when withdrawals are knocking on your door like Jehovah's Witnesses.

So, about the car chase... that's what all of this is really about, you know.

What happened with the car chase is, one morning I woke up from what I knew was my last binge of poppy seeds. I'd been all over DFW to every one of my usual places the day before, and nobody had anything in stock. I was getting very, extremely desperate, so I got online and expanded my radius of range by another twenty miles and discovered an untapped Fiesta Mart just 40 miles away, in Mesquite. Fiestas always stocked the two pound bags of poppy seeds (unless I'd completely liquidated their inventory), and I'd never been to this particular Fiesta before... so it stood to reason that if I hauled ass over to Mesquite and to that as yet unplundered Fiesta Mart, that I'd be able to score the poppy seeds which would stave off my imminent withdrawals. I calculated that I had just enough gas to get there and back again, so with withdrawals just nip nip nipping at my nose and ready to take a big bite, I got into my car that morning and tore ass to Mesquite.

Now the thing is, during this miniature road trip, I was just about almost exactly on the edge of some full blown opiate withdrawals... and unless you've ever had to experience it, you'll never understand the fear of anticipation. Calling opiate withdrawals flu-like with diarrhea is like calling radiation poisoning flu-like with diarrhea. Can I just say it's awfuller than anything you're likely to have ever experienced before, unless you've had your own bones crushed before your eyes? It was the fear of imminent withdrawals that was driving me to Mesquite like a lunatic, to get to my drug dealer/grocery store so that I could purchase the magic cure for dope-sickness. Oh yeah... I think it's important to note that I'd long since gone way beyond drug seeking for the simple purpose of getting high. Now it was simply a cure seeking ritual. Catch here a glimpse of the living, repeating hell of the life of an addict.

Ok ok, to the car chase, already!

I was almost there, and sitting at a stop light. There were two lanes for turning left, and I was in the right one, waiting for the left arrow to turn green. It was taking forever, as stoplights are wont to do, and when it finally turned green, the car directly ahead of me was just sitting there, doing Jack and blocking my left turn. Finally the light turned yellow, and the car blocking my turn hadn't turned yet, so I gunned it and sideswiped that car and hauled ass to the left, just making the light, but tearing the hell out of the front of that car as I forced my way past it. I saw in my mirror that the front bumper of that car had been wrenched loose and was hanging down by about six inches, and that the front right quarter panel was just scraped all to shit. Well, that sure as hell woke 'em up from whatever passed for Tweeting in '05, and they ran that red light like a bat out of hell and came hauling ass after me.

After that, it was like all rules of traffic dissolved and just didn't matter anymore. I didn't stop at red lights, I didn't stop at stop signs, I didn't signal, and I didn't slow down unless I was screeching into a turn. It was exactly like a car chase in a movie. Every few seconds I'd check my rearview and catch a glimpse of my pursuer, and then I'd either gun the hell out of it, or I'd brake like a maniac in order to go tearing around the next corner. This happened repeatedly - this checking of the rearview, glimpsing the pursuit, and reacting accordingly, like a lunatic straight out of the Dukes of Hazard - until finally, after an interminable period of cat and mouse with cars, I realized I'd lost them. I was the winner. I'd won the chase, and I'd gotten away with it.

I was lost by then, so I carefully found my way back to whatever road I'd been on and continued to the Fiesta Mart. When I got there, they had about twenty feet of shelf space filled with those 2 pound bags of poppy seeds. It was an overdose of relief, if there is such a thing, and that flood of relief suddenly evaporated all of the adrenaline from the car chase that'd been holding me up until that moment, and I just started to boo-boo. Very quietly and discreetly, mind you, but genuine sobs, nonetheless. I couldn't believe that any of what had just happened had really happened. I couldn't reconcile my own identity with the person that had just done all of... that.

I still can't.