The five stages of pulling a double

The five stages of having to work a double shift.

1. Denial
Dang, it's 10:30... where's 3rd shift? Surely he'll show up. Yeah, he just overslept is all. No way I'm gonna have to work a double shift... no way. That's crazy talk. He'll be here.

2. Anger
WTF! It's frikin' 12:30 and where the F is 3rd shift?! This is BULLSCHNITZ! Why the heck doesn't he leave his phone turned on when he goes do bed?? Wake up man, and get your ass up here so I can go HOME!! FUUUUUUUU-!!!

3. Bargaining
(hello?)
Hey man, 3rd shift never showed. Can you work for me so I don't have to pull a double? I'll work truck night for you -
(click)

4. Depression
This sucks!

5. Acceptance
Oh well. At least it's time and a half.

Bee

I think a bee is in love with me.
Oh can't you see, little bee, that we -
Thee, and me -
Can never be?
Flee, bee!
For you are she,
And I am he...
Yet of two different species
Are we.

Screams

Right after I finished composing that bunch of words about the Baptist Church, I was walking down Bryan St. and was just about ready to call it a night.

There's a hill there at the corner of Bryan and Egan that goes up to Scripture, and it's kinda steep. I usually perform the back and forth Z pattern when I go up it, like bulldozers do when they're going up and down the cliff sides of those strip mines. It takes longer, but it helps to not wear me out.

I had just crossed Egan and was doing my zigzag up Bryan toward Scripture when I heard this SHRIEK. Just this WAIL of despair from behind me, like an animal sound, but from a human throat. I stopped and turned around and saw somebody right down there, at the bottom of the hill on the corner of Egan and Bryan. Some young teenage girl who was apparently having a bad night. I could see her pretty clearly, from a distance of about 60 yards. Black skirt, black halter top, long black hair, black hose, black heels, and screaming.

I ignored the screaming event at first and just kept walking, which is always my go-to maneuver in situations like this. However, as I continued up Bryan and up that hill in my zigzag manner, the screaming of this girl just went on and on and on. What it seemed to me was...

Ok. This is 3:30 A.M. and there's nothing going on here, in the middle of the small hours. Nothing. It's just me and this screaming girl. We're the only two humans in the area who are Awake and Present, so it kind of makes for a public intimate situation, whether or not you ever wanted to be involved in one. It was just the two of us, and it absolutely felt to me like she was screaming to me, trying to get my attention... I mean, it was just us. It felt exactly like being in a room alone with this person, and watching her scream scream scream her head off. What would you have done? What? What?

I spent about 120 seconds at the top of the hill, looking back down at her at the corner of Bryan and Egan, debating with myself as to whether or not I should get involved with her screaming episode. As I stood there, feeling like an uncaring, selfish, shallow and emotionless ass for continuing to not do anything, these were my thoughts -

"I'm too tired for teenage drama."

"She's probably just pissed off at her step dad."

"Or her boyfriend/lab partner."

"Ash, you have zero business worrying about this anonymous, screaming stranger."

"Ash, you're more likely to make it worse, whatever her problem is."

"Ash, if you go down there to see what's wrong, she's gonna think you're a serial killer."

"Ash, don't even think about going down there to see what's wrong with this screaming girl. Just forget about it. It's teenage drama, and you're a 45 year old man. Don't be a fucking idiot."

"Ash, what if she's about to kill herself over some stupid bullshit?"

That's the thought that did it for me, so after just about two whole minutes of standing still at the top of the hill at Bryan and Scripture, fully illuminated by streetlights and looking down at the corner of Bryan and Egan to where this girl was having and incredibly vocal nervous breakdown, with both of us completely visible to each other the whole time, each of us waiting to see what the other one was going to do, I finally decided after the suicide thought to go down to her and find out just what the heck was wrong, and get all involved with the drama.

As soon as I started back down the hill - and I mean, IMMEDIATELY as I turned around and began to head back down the hill - that girl shut up and high-tailed it east on Egan. I hurried to catch up, and she made a chase of it for a while, hiding and popping up between cars... but by the time I'd gotten to Fulton, I couldn't see her anywhere. I shouted a couple of times, but she wasn't up for it anymore, I guess. Or maybe she wanted me to keep searching... I dunno. She was gone, and I was at a dead end and really really tired, and that's that.

So I just turned around and typed up all the happenings of it on the way home, and here you have it.

Prize gloves

What happened, was...

See, I live on the second floor of a complex of compartments. From that second floor height, high up from the ground can seem a lot higher than it actually is. If you're actually on the ground and judging the same height then you can get it, about how it's not really all that high.

With that said... what happened was, I was on my second floor balcony and looking down. What I saw was a pair of gloves that somebody had fastened to the branches of a tree, right there, and just under my position and out of reach.

Well, thought I, I'll take on this challenge! I'll just go down the stairs and underneath, and JUMP up and grab the prize gloves! It'll be excellent. It looked so easy, from way up above. Ain't that something though? Don't it always look easy from above?

So I clambered back down those stairs and was just ALL READY to jump as high as I could, from ground level, to claim those high-up gloves that I'd spotted from my second floor balcony compartment... and do you wanna know what happened then? Huh?

Those gloves were pinned to branches that came up to my shoulder at ground level. Those gloves weren't prize gloves... they were just somebody's gloves that were hung out to dry on a tree branch.

Memory

I'd like to try to explain something in detail. A personal experience.

There's this song that I listen to a lot, called 'proceed to memory'. When I first heard it, it imprinted upon my memory circuits as a nostalgia.

You know, you never can tell when those things will pop up and be permanent.

Well it did, and it had autumn as its reference. It's perfect, if you look at it as fall, being an ending, and proceeding into winter, as a memory...

Anyway.

Oh yeah. I almost lost track of what I was wanting to talk about. It's about this memory that I have, of when I was a little kid, in little kids school. Way back a hundred eons ago, in North Carolina, at Skerlock School. I have a lot of early imprints of that place, but not really that many actual memories. I think that the imprints show up in my dreams though, sometimes.

Anyway, again.

At night, when I walk up Ponder Street, up towards the high school, there's always a street light that casts shadows on the tall brick side of the school building. I've stopped there, just a whole bunch of times, looking at that brick wall with the shadows on it. They're simple shadows - just tree branches. Fuzzy, low resolution shadows, cast from a distance. But they sound... I mean, they look just like those lyrics. These lyrics.

"And soon all you'll have is a memory."
"And then you won't even have that memory."

It's very personal, this thing I'm talking about. Not that it's private... just, personal. You know? You probably won't get it. I'd like it if you got it, though.

In your FACE, turdknockers! YEAH.

Back in 2003, the ESA (European Space Agency - NASA's younger, dumber brother) gave the UKSA's (United Kingdom Space Agency - ESA's younger, dumberer step brother) Beagle 2 Mars lander a piggyback ride to Mars aboard the Mars Express mission.

Remember? Anybody else remember what happened to that mechanical clamburger looking thing, the Beagle 2 lander? And how it was supposed to pop open, like a... a waffle iron, and then flop out those two space waffles on each side, like a couple of space flavored Pop-Tarts? Remember how you don't remember it doing any of those things?

Yeah, it was a flop. Just the awfullest, colossalest, floppiest, sloppiest 40 million mile high dive belly flop onto another planet, EVER.

Y'all remember that now?

Well, that ESA kid on the other side of the lake just up and got too big for his britches in 2016, and decided to send it's very own 30 trazillion euro paperweight to Mars... and they named it the ExoMars mission.

Come on. I thought Europe was supposed to be trendy and ahead of the curve. Naming everything that's supposed to be awesome after the letter X didn't make the Mars Express any more X-Treme than it already wasn't, and that was at the tail end of the whole EXTREEEM!!! fad.

So why are you still doing it sixteen years later, ESA? Huh? Are you trying to bring back the old black? Trying to be retro for the hipsters, or whatever those things are called over there? Is that it? Are you trying to appeal to a worthless demographic? Why would you do that? Is your, uh, board of ministers or whatever run by stuffy old farts who still think the mimeograph machine is mind blowing technology? Huh? What?

You don't have to answer any of those, because here's the answer.

NOPE.

Sorry boutcher hipster-fueled next generation Waffleman with X-Treme autoskip protection and the latest European army man parachutes that went SPLAT all over Mars yesterday, like a Mongoloid hijacked the short bus and sent it careening toward Mars, hell bent for space waffles.

Come on, Europe. How hard is it to put an armless, legless robot with a walkie talkie on Mars, for Pete's sake? Your older, smarter brother has had like, seven of those things up there for the past 40 years, now. Four of them are cars by the way, and two of those cars are still driving around. One of them for thirteen years, and still going.

BAM! In your face, Europe! And Russia, and China too, as a matter of fact!

In your FACE, turdknockers of the world!

JPL RULES!

Over now.

Tonight, I went out in search of the storm, I guess, because that's all I had. Never mind... it's true.

Well, I sure as hell found it. Boy, did I ever get pounded. I got tangled up in a barbed wire fence trying to make it into the sparse shelter of a loose copse of trees, just as all hell was breaking loose.

I finally got all huddled down with my umbrella, down in there amongst the wet things and the fertile things and the rich things. How I huddled, for about 30 minutes. It was almost like being indoors, under those trees. But man, wasn't it hell raging outside.

Finally it started to let up, and I crept out from my enclosure, into an adjacent field. It was like a meadow in moonlight, except it was cloudlight. You know. Lowlight. Lowglow. Light bouncing around from cloud to ground and back up and down again.

It lit up everything. I could see the trees, right over there, where I'd been crouching. And I could see lightning flashing beyond the trees, through and behind them, with the intricate limbs and leaves of the copse outlined as black shapes in silver-blue fire, for an instant. That sight alone made getting drenched totally worth it, ten times over.

But now. I can't help but wonder... who all, if anyone, has ever seen a grassy field come back to life after a violent storm? I never have, or had, until tonight. What I'm talking about is the slow but increasing movement of a few bugs. One or two.  Then shake it up a little. Just shake it up, until it gets back to normal. The storm is over.

It was one of the most amazing things I've ever stopped purposefully to witness the happening of.

Me, at first, and then nature.

So. This is what my life looks like.

Firstly, I feel rotten for feeling rotten. I wanna just get that out of the way right quick, because it's like the bad taste of a shitty malt liquor. There's no buzz without the crappy taste, just like there's no self indulgent whining without the self loathing. We square? Coo.

What happened was, I got excited and jumped the gun just then and spoiled the Big Reveal about feeling rotten. And also - because I'm passing by the place and thinking of it right now, and so it has to be said - I totally, completely resent you, whoever you are, and what you did, by installing 24 hour lights in my underground secret stairway, where I read 'On The Beach' and bawled my stupid head off four years ago. Thanks for the dark stairway to begin with, I guess... but 'THANKS' (wink wink, nudge nudge) for ensuring that I'll never, ever be able to seek solace there, inside of the intolerable small hours, ever EVER again. EVER. So...

THANKS FOR THAT.

Ok, enough about them, and back to me. Me me me, and my one point perspective. That's a joke. It's ironic, because one point perspective is a description of a static picture. You learn that in drawing 101. But, consciousness isn't static, so it's actually a perspective consisting of infinite points, receding outward in all directions... but the joke is the comparison of a physical perspective to a mental one.

Whatev. It ain't funny anymore because I've over explained it. You shouldn't have to explain a joke... I mean, I shouldn't have to explain a joke. You know what I mean. Hell, it wasn't funny anyway, so it must not have even been a joke to begin with.

So... what was believed to be a joke wasn't a joke, and... thusly, it becomes a joke on the joker! Isn't that funny?

Anyway. I almost cured my bad mood with that anti-anti-joke. I almost don't feel like bitching and moaning anymore. Plus, there's the ever-encroaching lightning on the horizon, and that's giving me a buzz.

No, it's not the alcohol, or the nicotine, or the Substance D...

Nature gives me a buzz. Pissed off nature, just woke up with a hangover nature, nature in a murderous rage, nature on its wedding day, so beautiful that it hurts my eyes to look at it, nature that forces the incomprehensible math of Itself into my tiny awareness, so that I become a flubbering imbecile, drooling and pointing at the Hyper-Calculus of it, and muttering, 'so pretty, so pretty...'

Where was I? For a minute there, I lost myself.

2(10^11) galaxies.

How many galaxies are in the universe?

There are about 2*10^11 galaxies in the universe, as the smart apples like to say.

That is, a 2 followed by eleven zeros, or 200 followed by 9 zeros, which is another way of putting it.

Or you could just write it out as 200,000,000,000, which is tedious, but probably a more familiar way of expressing it.

If you wanted to forego a strictly numeric expression, you could describe the number of galaxies in the universe as two hundred thousand million... but the simplest, most familiar way would be to just say or write two hundred billion. Two hundred billion galaxies. That's how many galaxies there are floating around out there in space.

Two hundred billion galaxies, yup. That's how many galaxies...
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NOT!
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Throw all of that crap right out the window, because that's what we used to think. Because NOW we've discovered,  very recently, like in the last couple of days, that there are many many many MANY more galaxies bouncing around out there than we ever, ever, ever EVER would have imagined... as in, somewhere around 2*10^12 galaxies, as the smart apples like to put it, hanging out in all of the vasty deeps.

2*10^12 galaxies. That is, a 2 followed by12 zeros. 2,000,000,000,000. You know. Two thousand billion, or two trillion.

We live in a universe which contains TWO TRILLION galaxies.
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NOW!
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Your average galaxy contains about two hundred billion, or two hundred thousand million, or 200,000,000,000, or 2*10^11 stars.

Oh... and I just realized that I probably should've explained wallago about how scientific notation works and how to read it. It's about powers of ten, you know? Remember that from junior high?

Just in case you don't, it's like this:

10 to the first power is written 10^1
The ^ symbol signifies 1 as an exponent.
10 to the first power is 10^1
10 to the first power equals 10
10^1 = 10

10^2 is 10 to the second power
10^2 is the same as 10 squared.
10^2 means10 multiplied by 10
10*10 = 100
10^2 =100

10^3 is 10 to the third power
10^3 is 10 cubed
10^3 = 10*10*10
10*10 = 100
100*10 = 1000
10^3 = 1000

And so on. Get it? So in order to write numbers in scientific notation that aren't limited to the strict powers of ten, you just multiply the power of ten by another number. So, if you wanted to write, say... 4000 in scientific notation, you'd write it like this:

4*10^3

In other words, the exponent of the power of ten is the number of zeros following the first integer.

Otay?

Our own galaxy, The Milky Way, is a fairly average sized, barred spiral galaxy which contains around 200 billion stars. Since the Milky Way is pretty run-of-the-mill as far as galaxies go, then we can safely assume that the average galaxy in the universe probably contains about two hundred billion stars, more or less.

Now, multiply 2*10^11, or 200 billion, by 2*10^12, or 2 trillion. To do that, you just multiply the integers and add the exponents.

2(10^11) * 2(10^12)
equals
4*10^23
or
4 with 23 zeros
or
400000000000000000000000
which is

400 sextillion.

So, just FYI. There are approximately two trillion galaxies in the universe, and four hundred sextillion stars. Approximately.

Galaxies = 2,000,000,000,000
Stars = 400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Just sayin'.

Duh Lekshun

There's this thing that I've noticed a lot more of lately, because of duh lekshun for the new Principal of America... about how people who spend a lot of time farting around on Facebook tend to react when experiencing a head-on collision with such instigationalizing items as news, information, observations, opinions, inane drivel, incessant ramblings, cat memes, caca, poo poo, bullshit, and the antics of the apparatchik chicks... who, admittedly, are just super cute and impossible to look away from. GO APPARATCHIK CHICKS! YOU GUYS RULE!

Anyway, back to the thing that I've noticed a lot more of lately. Para ejemplo (just a couple):

1. Mainly, it's all of this crap about the upcoming showdown for the new Principal of America that's got everybody's panties in a wad, and it's just unfathomable to me. I mean...

Ok. I think I can safely presume that just about everybody has had his or her panties in a wad before, for one reason or another. I know I have, and I can say with utmost vehemence that having my panties in a wad pretty much sucks thoroughly, and sideways. Having to dig in there and rescue my underwear from the cracks of doom is NOT an experience that I've found particularly palatable, and I feel as though I'm speaking for pretty much everyone here. Right? Am I right?

Ok. Now that we've established the unpleasantness of having to rescue your underwear from the Challenger Deeps, it becomes necessary to examine the reason why your underwear ever needed any rescuing to begin with. Why? Why would anyone knowingly ever put their underwear in such peril?

I'll tell you why. It's because politics makes you stupid and oblivious and causes your butt cheeks to clinch up incessantly, creating the perfect underwear trap. There. I feel that I've just spelt it out clearly enough so that any moron can understand. I mean, they teach this to us in kindergarten. Even the tardlies who take the short bus to school know better than to get their panties in a wad about... about... POLITICS!

IT'S ALL JUST A WIDELY BROADCASTED PSYCHOTIC JOKE, ALL OF IT! HOW CAN ANYBODY TAKE ONE LOOK AT IT AND THEN DECIDE, WITH AN UNPSYCHOTIC MIND, TO ACTUALLY INVEST ENOUGH CARE IN IT TO ACTUALLY PARTICIPATE, AS IF IT WAS SOMETHING THAT WASN'T JUST THE BIGGEST UPCHUCKED HAIRBALL OF LIES THAT'S EVER BEEN SERIOUSLY PASSED OFF AS A THING THAT ISN'T A BIG, FAT, HAIRY, STINKY, HILARIOUS JOKE, ESPECIALLY SINCE YOU'RE THE PUNCHLINE FOR BELIEVING ANY OF IT?

And then there's -

2. - the real badassery that gets circulated on social media now and then, but that nobody gives a flying horses patoot about. Stuff like, how the universe has a hundred times more galaxies than anybody ever thought it had, before... two trillion galaxies, that is! Preposterously awesome.

And other cool shit, like that star that keeps getting dimmer and dimmer with no plausible explanation for it, except that maybe there's a Dyson sphere under construction there? And that's what's blocking the light? An alien megastructure, in other words?

Or how about the Juno probe which just arrived at Jupiter?

Or the six inch wide, single celled amoebas at the bottom of the Mariana Trench?

Or the two supermassive black holes that collided and shook the universe so hard that reality crumpled and exploded like a rebounding trampoline for just a split second, and during that split second, every single cell in your body accelerated to Warp Factor 1? No shit?

Huh? What about all of that amazing stuff? What about all of that? Why do people instead love jacking their brains to a cartoon race to the top of a gold plated garbage heap? Why why why?

Why? Am I the mutant?

I just flat out do not get it.

ATALL.

Oh. And here's the REAL butt clincher...
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Naw, just kidding about the butt clincher. I'm done.

Sidewalk

I'm the kind of person that's... well. I'm not a bad person, per se. I don't think that I am, anyway. I hope I'm not. However... I am a pretty blatant street name dropper. I know this about myself, and I recognize it as a flaw. Can I continue with forgiveness already assumed? Cool.

So. I'm walking north on Bonnie Brae, and I've just passed by the fire station on Windsor. There's actually a sidewalk there that goes north too, after that. It's exactly like the last place that you'd ever expect a sidewalk to be. Going north and into oblivion, from the corner of Windsor and Bonnie Brae.

It's a real sidewalk, and I'm on it right now. I've been on it lots of times, but for a couple of years I was totally and completely afraid to go onto that sidewalk. It really is the kind of sidewalk that you'd think would lead into an overgrown, choked up, black and gray darkness... like what you'd dream about. It's really like that. It's the kind of thing you've known about and have been familiar with for a long time, but are afraid of.

A couple of years ago though, I went ahead and walked down that sidewalk. It was just way too much like a dream to keep ignoring just because I was afraid of it... so I went down it, and I went and went and went. It's strange to remember that first time that I dared the sidewalk, you know. What with me being on it right now, and all.

It goes north for a little while, for about a quarter mile, and all along its way, it gets more and more choked and choked and overgrown and neglected until it gets to a bona fide country road. I've had dreams about this sidewalk, and the road that it comes to... it's a strange path. It's one of those feeling/meanings that's hard to convey as an awake-time concept. It tries to slip into the dream feeling the more I think about it and try to grasp it, you know...

It's the physical reality and presence of this thing that I'm trying to describe. This spooky, dreamy path that goes north. It's a real, physical thing that's already a  happened thing, and has been a real thing way before the presence of me. I've only discovered it recently, but it was already here long before me, soaking up its own mystery, for an unfathomable amount of time. Do you get it? Understand what I'm going on about?

I'm transcribing the experience of reality every time I write something down, just so you know. No matter how crazy it seems, what I'm recording are things that I'm describing, according to my ever present memory, as a transcription. It's just me taking notes on what is happening to me. Trying to put the experience into a form that I can communicate.

I understand now why I was afraid of that sidewalk to begin with. There weren't monsters down there, or dangerous evil things. Nothing like that. It's more like... being afraid of the kind of dangerous risk that happens inside of a dream. Not a nightmare... just a dangerous dream, that you remember for years and years after, and that you can never really stop thinking about. Until the dream finally bleeds itself away from a memory, and into a terrified, relaxed kind of feeling.

Does any of that make sense?

Face plant

A person can't live like this, with the no-sleep thing going on 75% of the time. I ain't kidding. That's an average of two hours of sleep a night when you add up about a years worth of this crap that's been happening to me. I don't think a person can live like this, anyway... am I a person? I can't live like this is what I mean, I guess. I can only do this for so long... definitely NOT until my natural expiration date, if this method is supposed to keep up until then. This awful, awful method.

I've read everything I could find about it. There's no cure for it except for drugs, drugs, drugs, and those will only dilute the suffering so that it's able to stretch out into a bona fide insanity. Some people have had to endure decades of unrelenting insomnia! I've only been dealing with it for almost two years, so how the heck do these insomnia veterans decide every day NOT to eat a face plant off of an overpass onto the interstate?

There's no cure, there's no help, and there's no hope. I'm stuck inside of the flawed, unwanted and rejected hardware of myself, which is incompatible with the responsibility for my own continuance. My life is a tightly coiled spring, all the time, and I have to move in precise ways and do precise things, all the time, in order to keep the spring from coming all the way unlatched and just blowing everything to hell.

I can't simply take the first steps. I can't take a step back and get a good look at things. I can't just take advantage of what's available. I can't just check myself into a clinic. I can't just find a doctor. I can't just materialize resources. I can't just cast a spell, or dream an epiphany, or visualize a solution, or pray for a miracle, or just figure it out. I can't just decide that I'll do whatever those things might be that will make me ok. I CAN'T DO THAT.

Why? I'm physically capable of DOING, right? So, why? Because there's a severely broken gear in my noggin, is why. Broken, and only held together with the captains spit, like the Millennium Falcon. Isn't that funny?

Have you ever felt immobilized? Just unable to do anything? Anything outside of those blunt force requirements, like going to work, and... I dunno, eating and crapping? That's me. I'm immobilized. Why? Because that's what a true painting of me looks like right now. There's no explaining the reasons for it in vivid detail. There's no nothing about it, at all, ever. There's just the painting as it exists right now.

I'm broken. I can't do anything except go to work, and work like a broken function at work. After work is the only treasure in my life because it's the only time I can feel anything. It's like, being let go, released, and so for a couple of hours after work, and only after work, I'm almost free, a little bit. And the hilarious thing about it is, the insomnia is a symptom of the brokenness. So even if I were somehow miraculously cured of the insomnia, I'D STILL BE BROKEN.

I have a good sense of humor though. A cancerous, puss filled, self-deprecating sense of humor, to be sure... but I've also got an awesome immune system that totally deals with it, so my sense of humor is always healthy. I've also got a full grown appreciation of irony floating around in there, too.

Plus, I'm just a swell guy. And there are people who like me, who really, really like me... and dammit, if I weren't such a swell guy, I'd have eaten that face plant years ago already. But hell... how selfish and not swell would that have been?

This isn't me just being low, and it's not just a mood I'm in. This is baseline for me. Humor and joy and love and hopeful feelings are all... what do you call the jumps and spikes on a graph? Aberrations. Good, calm, peaceful, satisfied, hopeful, ok feelings are all just aberrations. Spikes on a flatline.

I often think about why people decide to off themselves. Sometimes I feel repelled by the thought. That's the normal way to feel about it. I think everybody can understand that feeling, right?

Other times though, I can understand the contemplation of it. I can completely understand why somebody would do it. I mean, I'm right there, at the apex of their logic. I get it, totally.

It's like... understanding that cauliflower is good for for you, but since you don't like cauliflower, you don't eat it. That's what the face plant looks like to me. The face plant is cauliflower, and it's good for me, but it still tastes bad so I'm not gonna take a bite of it. Yuck. Face plant. Sounds way worse than egg plant.

What scares me though is how it's common to just say F it after we've grown up, and then we'll just eat the damn egg plant already. That's totally what people do all the time... they grow up and decide to eat the food they hated when they were a kid. I know, because I can actually stomach some mushroom or some squash now that I'm all growed up, as long as it's dressed up inside of some other flavors. It just has to seem appealing enough to overcome my initial feeling of revulsion, is all.

See what I'm afraid of? See the analogy? Do you see how it feels like an inevitability to me, that I just need to grow a little bit more into the feeling, and then I'll be able to develop enough of a taste for face plant that I'll actually take a bite of it some day, as long as its dressed up inside of a few palatable seasons? I mean reasons?

Maybe I'm just in a crappy mood right now. I don't know. Everything is a circle of crap that eats crap and digests crap and craps crap and sows crap and grows crap and harvests crap and prepares crap and serves crap and eats crap.

Oh well. Maybe I'm just in a crappy mood right now.

A dream - The Scourge

Whoa. I just slept for four and a half hours and had the craziest dream.

Something had gone disastrously wrong with the Earth in the far future. The core of the planet had been poisoned, and the entire planet was slowly rotting from the inside out. When the rot reached the surface, the Earth would become uninhabitable and every living thing would die.

It was decided that the cause of whatever was happening to the Earth was rooted in deep time, and would have to be dealt with at its source. The scientists of the future scoured two million years of human history, searching for a group of people with the physical toughness, mental stamina and moral fiber to travel three billion years back in time to the dawn of life on Earth, where they would systematically move forward through those three billion years in an attempt to locate the source of 'The Scourge', which is what they'd taken to calling the Earth's sickness.

Only four 'perfect' people were found to have ever existed throughout the entire history of humanity, and all four of them were American World War 2 soldiers; two men and two women. Once contact had been made with them by the far future humans via a wormhole communication link, the four Perfects were made aware of the dire condition of the Earth in the far future, and of the mission through time to locate and destroy The Scourge. They were told that the four of them had been chosen specifically, out of every human being who had ever lived, to take on the mission to save the future Earth.

The four Perfects agreed, and the future humans hurled them three billion years into the past to begin their search through time for the source of The Scourge. What they discovered, almost immediately, was that soon after the first single celled life had naturally appeared, the Earth had been invaded by a vast swarm of alien spores... which, upon falling into the oceans, had given rise to a planet-wide infection of alien viruses. As the alien infection propagated, a semi-sentient viral network began to emerge, similar to a neural network but on an unimaginably vast scale. It wasn't long before the nucleus of every single living cell on planet Earth had been virally injected with alien RNA, forcing an unnatural, misshapen purpose upon the natural evolution of life on Earth. This was a plan 3,000,000,000 years in the making, and the alien viruses had a lot of patience.

The four Perfects understood immediately. It was them, just the four of them - two men and two women, discovered inside the midst of one of the most morally conflicting and physically reprehensible periods of war known to human history, fighting the good and pure fight - who were all that was left of the Earth's original intent for Life. The alien virus didn't get everything, because these four had evolved along a hidden, impervious line - independent and pure and immune to alien hijinks - and guided by an inbuilt 'unconscious awareness', originally meant to be a common characteristic of alive things.

There was one more troubling thing that the four Perfects noticed before setting off into the future with their source report however, and it was this - a small and unobtrusive yet purposefully planted vegetation, growing out of a particularly significant place on the surface of the Earth in the soil, and megayears before any kind of intelligence had been purported to have evolved. It could have only been put there for some purpose by the viral network.

The reason why it was such an issue to the Perfects was this... the spot where the tiny vegetation was growing happened to be the exact spot where the World Tree would be growing, just a few thousand million years later.

What's the World Tree? In my dream that I'm telling you about right now, the World Tree is the route of all evil. 'Root' being the key word here. The thing about the World Tree is, in the far future, the World Tree is the sacredest thing to those of them living there. It's basically respected, if not actually worshipped, like a god by all of those far future humans.

As The Four were traveling back up the line of time to report to the future humans, they were able to witness the evolution and growth of the World Tree as it occurred. They watched as the alien infection slowly evolved the seeds of the World Tree, and how the root of the World Tree insinuated itself further and further down over the eons, until it had finally reached the core of the Earth, far in their own futures. They were able to see how that route had not only spread down toward the core, but also far and wide so that it encompassed practically every square meter of arable soil in the world, therefore influencing and molding all life into a state of infected knowing, from birth, that the World Tree was the source of all life energy, even though that was a lie constructed purposefully over the eons to appear true.

After the Perfects arrived in the far future of the sick Earth, they gave the future humans the bad news about everything that they had just learned regarding the alien virus and the hijacking of natural evolution. Then, after that, the Four gave the future humans the really bad news... that the history of the universe was, is and will be, ever, unfolding according to plan and that their own very existences were, are and will be, ever, born from an innate wrongness of which they'd been unaware but nevertheless had been inflicted upon them at the beginning of the world, and even before then... and that since they were an offshoot of the wrongness, they were naturally flawed and had to go.

Well, I can tell you, and the four Perfects can also tell you, that the future humans didn't really take to the simple acceptance of this doomsday notion with open arms, and so it was that an epic war began between the future humans and the four Perfects.

At this point in the dream, the view zooms out, encompassing the entire surface of the Earth engaged in all out, far future War. The future day World Tree has grown into a continent of forests which have all merged together to form one mighty trunk, several hundred miles wide, which grows up solidly and merges into an immense canopy of leaves and branches that extend all the way up to geosynchronous orbit, 26,000 miles above the surface of the Earth, and shading a quarter of the planets surface. The roots which hold this colossal vegetable to its planet-sized prize extend all the down to the core, by the way.

After the World Tree is almost destroyed,the full horror of realization finally dawns upon the far future humans, and they recognize the truth... that the source of The Scourge has all along been themselves, and that the four Perfects had performed their mission far more effectively than the future humans had ever dreamed in their most perfect nightmares.

Hi, how are you?

This is in no way a bitch or a moan, just saying - but insomnia has me by the short and curlies again! I've only slept 5 hours since Sunday, and I'm ready to puke coat hangers!

WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY!

Oh, my brain hates me so much. My brain is just laughing, laughing laughing, and laughing at me.

'Look at the oh poor baby who can't sleep! Har har, hardy HAR HAR! You little sniveling baby, how do you like THIS... (twists my hypothalamus)... or, THIS... (pushes my heartbeat volume up to eleven) ... or... THIS!

There wasn't any kind of new 'THIS'. It was just my brain being an asshole because it thought I was funny, all suffering and stuff. Well, F you, brain. Just F you. You won't be laughing when my ass goes right through you at terminal velocity after I jump off of the top of the TWU Twin Towers, and land, brain first on the concrete!

You won't be laughing then, you... you... you F'ing BRAINIAC! I HATE YOU!

Walk.

Walk.

Walk walk walk, walk walk walk, walk!

I wish I wasn't so drunk... but I have to walk, of course. I'm normally not this drunk whenever I have to do it though... I mean, a certain amount of buzz is required, but sometimes a little bit is just a little too much.

The thing is, I'm trying to switch from a high calorie, low alcohol diet to a low calorie, high alcohol diet, and it's gonna take some getting used to. I'm doing that because it's cheaper, and also, fewer calories make you tougher. Sensical, no?

Have you ever been writing something, and was perfectly satisfied with your paragraph, but then looked up and saw that the paragraph which you'd just finished and thought was perfect looked too small? And even if what you said in the paragraph was perfect, you had to go back and either add more to the paragraph, or make that paragraph part of another paragraph, or split it in half, just so that it would look better on the page as a block of words and sentences?

It takes a lot of practice to be this articulate when you're as drunk as I am right now. I've always said that drunk driving takes lots of practice, and I'm pretty sure it's the same for drunk walking and typing. For example, even though right now I'm WAY drunker than I would usually ever want to be, I'm still in control of my major factories. I mean faculties.

I'm totally in control of everything that makes my body go, and do, and swipe-type. In fact, I'd be just fine if I could just think straight, and walk without spinning. You'd never be able to tell that those were problems just by looking at me though, because I'm an expert. Just don't get me mixed in with some other person or someones or some somebodies, because that's where it would all fall to pieces... if I had to actually do a one on one communication thing, in real life, right now, with something. Otherwise, I'm perfectly alright.

Still though... I normally don't like to be this drunk, but it was an accident, so whatev. I can still walk a straight line until I run out of calories and as long as the line I'm following is straight, and the roads here in Denton are usually pretty dadgum straight, even at night. I'll say that right now, dadgumit... Denton has a fine road construction. But the sidewalks kinda suck.

As a matter of fact, as a Dentonite - is that even a thing? A Dentonite? Sounds like it might explode - anyway, as a Dentonite, I hereby request more and better sidewalks.

SEE WHAT I MEAN ABOUT THE UNDERSIZED PARAGRAPHS?

Anywho. Tonight is a fine night to walk, if you have to walk. The clouds are low, it's a cool temperature, and light is bouncing everywhere and off of everything, making shadowy things stand out in an orange kind of way. There should be a word for that kind of light... that late night, cloud lit light.

Nightlight? No... cloudlight? Nightclight? Longlight? Lowglow? Longlow? Lowlonglow? Maybe one of those.

The thing is, I don't think a lot of people know about that kind of light, so that's why there's no casual way to refer to it. I mean, there's words like twilight and gloaming and midnight and high noon and stark white and pitch black and magic hour, but nothing for the low glow. Maybe they have it in another language? Probably... in the mean time, I guess I get to enjoy it all by myself for now.