BITTER VOLTS

 A light rain was speckling the window at the top of my cell as I packed up my letters and the few items I was allowed to keep with me. They gave me a box that was just big enough to hold it all and a sticker to fill out so that they could mail the thing off to my survivors. I addressed it to the prison and stuck it on the box then folded the lid down. For the next hour I didn’t think about anything in particular while I waited for them to come get me. Four guards that I’d never seen before showed up at quarter of twelve and said it was time to go. I was going to be dead in fifteen minutes and I couldn’t think of a thing to say. They opened my cell and four hands grabbed each of my arms. I guess they were always expecting someone to go crazy on this last walk but I was not about to pull any funny business. When we got to the cell with the electric chair I was introduced to the prison doctors and the executioners. I was also introduced to the doctors I had hired on my own even though  I already knew them via numerous missives. “Everything ready?” I asked my doctors. They said, “Yes.” and I let the executioner strap me into the chair. “Good luck.” said my main doctor. I nodded to him and said, “Same to you!” At twelve sharp they threw the switch and I was blasted with ten thousand volts. There’s no other way to describe the feeling except to say that it was shocking. As soon as I was pronounced dead by the prison doctors they signed a document saying that the sentence had been successfully carried out. The second they had signed the document my doctors went to work with adrenaline and cardiac massage. They had me back in less than two minutes. When I opened my eyes the first thing I said was, “Ouch!” My head, arms, and feet hurt where the current had gone into me. I felt like my heart was beating too fast and I didn’t seem like I was breathing correctly. But it was a success! What a legal coup! There was absolutely nothing in the law that said I had to stay dead once I was executed. A fantastic loop hole. My doctors put me on a gurney and rolled me out to a waiting ambulance which took me to some offices in the suburbs. They put me up in a room which was warm and cozy with a TV and a kitchenette. I hadn’t been in there for more than 20 minutes before I noticed a little slip of paper come sliding under the door. It was a bill for the medical services. Under the diagnosis section it said, “dead.” and under the course of treatment it said “returned to life.” Under the price part it said, $34 million dollars. Ah yes, the same amount that I had obtained durning the murderous robbery that had landed me on death row in the first place. I just don’t understand the meaning of justice when it’s applied to me.

 

PITCH BLACK WITCH’S BACK

 

 

 

 Ah, another perfect day in the virgin state of post confederate society. I spent the day in this last week of my indentured servitude sanding a floor with a massive, dirty, noisy, machine. I don’t know why it was so pleasant but it really was. Not encumbered by the presence of my overseer, I could simply day dream and grind hour after hour barefoot and shirtless without a worry in the world. I thought about this and that but nothing too important. I pondered my lack of a railroad but decided that I have it pretty good despite that one deficit. When I got home I took a shower, dealt with the animals, made a cup of strong coffee, and then played guitar and sang for a couple of hours. When it got dark I headed out into the cool rain and went to my favorite bar for a nip. I was sitting there reading about the machinations of OPEC when someone sat down next to me. I never look when someone sits by me. I try to stay in my space and concentrate but after a minute I ascertained by the voice ordering that it was a girl. Now it was harder to stay in my space but I continued reading. After about five minutes I stole a glance and saw that it was a girl named Mindy who was now known as Lola. Hmm…! Well I’d met about three new girls in the last couple of months but I just couldn’t apply myself for some reason. It’s almost like I’ve finally learned something though I’m not quite sure what. I will say it right out, I would happily have brought Lola home. She’s tiny and cute and I’d seen her running (literally) around town for the last couple of years. My impression was that she was thoroughly insane which explained why she sat next to me. We started talking and she said that she always thought I was quiet, which was a notion that I proceeded to dispel. We talked about biology, physics, electrical and mechanical engineering, energy, religion, hometowns, nutrition, unconditional love, animals, California, human nature, order, and…, well the works. I did detect little flickers of madness but she was much more composed than I had anticipated. What DO you do? I watch people pick up girls all the time. I happen to know some of the most talented girl picker uppers in the world. I just can’t bring myself to do it though. I have a dreadful passive streak. I didn’t ask for her number or anything! She asked me what kind of school you’d have to go to in order to build a hair drier. I told her how to build one from scratch. That’s the kind of thing I know! Good God, she could have added two years to my lifespan in one night! Well, I will keep my eyes open. I’m a big fan of anticipation and chance. Never plan around human dispositions I say! I forgot all about OPEC’s plans. That was good.

VIRGINIA DARE

“If we go in there I have a bad feeling we’re not coming back out.” said Tabehul.

“You’re just wired up from that sauce.” I said as I clicked six shiny shells into my gun.

“What if he has a gun?”

“Well, I assume he does. He killed someone a couple weeks ago if we’re to believe the paper.”

“Thats’ just it.” Replied Tabehul as he felt the gun in his jacket pocket.

“Let’s go.., there’s nothing to worry about.”

 We pushed through the door and walked down the isle of candy, condoms, and bug spray, past the display of cheap jade jewelry and flip flops, the bottles of sunscreen and foot sprays and up to the counter which stood very high before us since we were both about four feet tall. Tabehul pointed at the carpet to a large stain that covered about 9 square feet. “There’s where the fucker died.” He said under his breath. 

We stood at the counter for about thirty seconds before the proprietor came out from behind the drugs and asked us how he could help us. We pulled out our guns at the same time and I said, “Hand over all the cash you’ve got back there and all your morphine.”

“I’ll be damed if I will.” He said.

“Do you want to die today?” Asked Tabehul.

“You can’t kill me you little fuck wads.” He said as he wiped his forehead with a bright white kerchief. He reached over to a bottle of something, took off the lid, and started to measure out some of the liquid into a smaller jar. He was acting like we weren’t even there and I can tell you that when someone behaves like that under the barrel of a gun it will sure make you nervous. If nothing else it indicates that they are insane and not likely to react to the usual exhortations.

I reached up and banged the butt of my gun on the counter top which caused the small bottle he was filling to almost tip over but he grabbed it with a movement that was so fast that it didn’t make sense. 

“You bang that counter again and I’ll put some strain on you.” Said the pharmacist.

“I’m gonna pop a shell through your brain pan mister.” Said Tabehul as he sort of jumped sideways from one foot to the other. 

“You’re congenital.” said the pharmacist “I could give you a pill that might make you grow a some nose hair but it won’t help your brain.”

“Sir,” I said, “Please believe me, we’ll kill you. We really will. Just give us the cash.”

The pharmacist took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead and then his mouth. He put it back in his pocket and then poked Tabehul in the eye with his finger and slapped me on the nose with such speed that the hair stood up on my head. Tabehul fell to the ground howling in pain with one hand over his injured eye and the other reaching around for his gun and I felt my nose to see if it was broken or bleeding. 

“Now boys,” said the pharmacist, “I can outdraw you both by orders of magnitude. I have a gun back here and I’ll happily blow your brains out, assuming you have any, which I doubt. Now you want to buy some rubbers or magazines then go to it. Other wise…, clear out.”

“I don’t believe this.” I said. “How the hell can you move so fast mister? I’ve never seen anyone move that fast.”

The next thing I knew, there was a gun pushing on my nose and the pharmacist was laying halfway across the counter. I didn’t even see it happen. It was unbelievable.

“I practiced for years on people just like you who think they can just come in here and have anything they want. I realized that the quick and the dead were real elements of life and so I chose the quick. Now what do you think you should do you punk?”

“OK, Ok,” I said in a nasal voice, “we’ll clear out.”

I helped up Tabehul who was still whimpering and I noticed the stain again. I started walking out and then I turned and asked why he killed the guy a few weeks ago instead of demonstrating his superiority with the draw.

“I shot him because he was a spic.”

“So, you’re a prejudiced quick draw. That’s a bad combination.”

“Now just what the fuck’s wrong with being particular about who you shoot?”

“I guess it’s what you’re particular about in a given case that matters. Like, I’m glad you’re not particular about midgets.”

“You’re midgets? I thought you were kids!”

The two shots were so fast that it sounded like one big bang and Tabehul’s appropriately tiny last thought was, “I was finally right.”

THE WILD OF SANCHEZ MOLL

EEEK! Was all I could say when I saw the face come out of the black doorway. I wasn’t really left with any other choice since I had been taught to respect pleasant things and act repulsed at unpleasant things. There must have been two hundred pockmarks where some one had shot him with a shotgun during some botched robbery in the past and not only was his face messed up but his teeth must have been blown out too because the teeth he had were all made of steel which was beginning to rust. “I’ve come here to pick up your daughter.” I said.” He beckoned for me to follow him into the house and we walked down a dark hallway that had piles of clothes pushed up against the wall on both sides. We went into a kitchen that was dimly illuminated with four night lights plugged into one wall and he pulled open the refrigerator door and took out a big crock pot which he placed on the table. “There she be.” He said. “Excuse me?” I replied.

“I cooked her last night but couldn’t finish her.”

“What! What do you mean you cooked her?”

“I mean what anyone else would mean when they say they cooked something. Are you thick?”

I was shaking my head when I heard Maria’s voice coming from somewhere down the hall. “Is my pa pa messing with you?” 

“I’ll say!” I replied. 

Her dad laughed and said, “I just wanted to see what your sense of humor was like.”

“I’ll be out in a minute.” Said Maria.

Her dad took the lid off the crock pot and said, “Hell I wouldn’t cook my daughter. That would just be crazy cannibalism. I did cook our dog though. That little fucker bit me one time too many. Dogs taste like crap. I can’t see how people eat ‘em over in China or where ever.”

I dated Maria for two weeks before she dumped me. She said I couldn’t get along with her dad and that I always looked like I was going to puke when she mentioned his name. I couldn’t argue with her.

NOISE

Grey  Coy, Donnie French, Dee Burch, Scott Elrod, and I decided to lie to our parents and say that we were all sleeping over at each other’s house. But we really went to the railroad tracks in Moraine and set up camp on top of a decrepit bridge abutment that had chunks of concrete falling off it and plants growing out of every crack. We would sit up there drinking and smoking while the trains went by with the locomotives so close to us that our chests would rumble and our breathing would go awry. The cigarette smoke, factory smoke, and locomotive smoke saturated our lungs while we gobbled down candy and fortified wine. We really couldn’t get enough of anything. In the quiet hours of two or three in the morning when it became damp and the fog began to roll off the river a train slowed down enough for us to run down the embankment of the bridge and jump on a coal car. It was the best feeling in the world when we first started a train ride. As the train accelerated the cars would begin to rock and bounce and you just knew people were not met to be riding on them, that they really were met for inanimate materials that could get very hot or cold and soaking wet or whacked by rocks from kids just like ourselves. But really, thinking back on it, we really were like inanimate objects, at least intellectually. Our bodies were immortal and that was all that really mattered. We roared past parking lots in small towns where kids were hanging out around their cars and we pelted them with chunks of coal and wine bottles. We smoked and watched our cigarette butts be swept away into the hurricane that followed the train down the tracks pulling bushes and flotsam into its wake while the wheels clacked and squealed like giant scissors being sharpened in the dark. It was just too good. But after a couple hours it dawns on you that you are far away and getting farther by the second but the train just keeps pulling and pulling with the industrial indifference of commerce while the coal dust gets in your teeth and up your nose. Finally, the thing slows down and we jump off in a freight yard outside of Cincinnati. We make our way to the highway  just as the sun comes up and start hitch hiking. Some guy in a hopped up convertible picks us up and we all immediately fall asleep as we head back north. Later, when we’re dumped off back in our town near where we started off, but not near enough, we swear we’ll never do it again because we’re so tired and dirty and sick feeling. I don’t know why, but it takes about two weeks to forget  the bad parts and do it all again. Two weeks is just about forever when you’re immortal.

DARK BUILDINGS

At one point, back some time ago, I rented this tiny hut over in the ghetto. It was super cheap and the day I signed the contract was the last time I ever saw the place in daylight. My schedule was like this: Go to work at the boiler plant at six in the morning and work until four. Then at five, go to work in the restaurant and work until two in the morning. Then at two in the morning, meet up with my girlfriend at my hut and hang out until about five in the morning at which time I would catch an hour of sleep. When my girlfriend would show up at two in the morning the first thing she would do was to pull a giant butcher knife out of her sweat pants. She carried this to deal with the hoodlums who inhabited the railroad tracks that she had to cross by the hospital. She told me that she once gutted someone and pulled out their ribs for messing with her. She also liked to drink and when she showed up with her butcher knife she was usually blasted out of her head. I never understood this since she worked at the same restaurant as I did and would often get done with work at the same small hour of the morning. Somehow, between leaving work, going to her apartment, and arriving at my hut twenty minutes later she would down some astounding amount of alcohol to pickle her brain and ensure that we were going to have interesting times while we conversed about sleep deprivation and the traumas of love. We lived in a haze of sleeplessness and booze until, finally, one day I found myself hallucinating from lack of sleep. I was sitting in the locker room of the boiler plant looking at the floor. I saw a dust ball blowing out from under a bench and as I watched it cross the floor it turned into a spider and then back into a dust ball. It was so real that I knew something profound had happened to my brain and that night I mentioned to my girlfriend that we might want to think about leaving. A week later we did leave, packing everything we could into a giant Cadillac Eldorado convertible that I had received as a half assed graduation present. I left half of my belongings in the hut and never saw them again. I also left both my jobs without notification or the slightest bit of guilt. I remember blasting up through the north east corridor on the way to god knows where with my girlfriend sleeping on the seat next to me. It was our hour, about three in the morning while I was roaring up 95 in the snow when I lost control of the car. We turned sideways at eighty miles an hour and slid along the highway with a wave of snow blowing up in the air behind us. Somehow the car righted itself and I found that we were driving like normal people again. I looked over at my girlfriend and she hadn’t stirred. I realized that sleep was the best place to be no matter what was happening outside. She was safe as an egg and didn’t even know it. But, really, I have to admit, I didn’t know it either when you get right down to it.

THE LIST OF 9s

Once again I am teetering on the precipice of bold language and feeble ideas. I am dissatisfied with all the currently used systems of thought. I am trying to figure out a way to make all people into computer like machines who can be programmed into doing precisely what I want them to do. First of all, I would program about five billion of them to walk off the continents and into the oceans where they would swim to the sharks and try to pet them. Then I would take the remaining billion or so and make them into builders so that I could tear down every city, suburb, mall, car lot, etc. until there was nothing left but dirt and grass. I would pile everything up on Manhattan island and have about three million people left there to sort through everything and recycle any usable materials to a warehouse in New Jersey. After about a year or two, when all the denuded spots had regrown I would begin building the new improved city. There would be no roads going into the city. Just four railroad tracks coming from the four cardinal points. Since no cars could come into the city the paths between buildings would  be a little wider than a sidewalk and a little more narrow than a street. The city would only be 5000 feet by 5000 feet so you could walk everywhere and cross the city in about 15 minutes. The buildings would be made of concrete, stainless steel, and glass and they would be extremely tall. Every one would be made to live in a numbered pod and all of the pods would be exactly the same. Everyone would also have the same job and get the same pay. The money would actually consist of a chit that stated you would be allowed to live for another week. The second anyone broke out and tried to distinguish themselves from the population they would be burned as fuel in the giant boiler which would generate electricity and heat the city. Imagine! The perfect society! Everyone is finally equal and all the progressives are finally satisfied. The right will have been exterminated and used for millions of kilowatts of free power. I, of course, will not be equal since I invented it all. Soon, the entire society would direct their last flickers of dissatisfaction at me and a whole new party would be formed with the express purpose of toppling my reign. But I would be ruthless. I would point out that for the most part equality had been realized and that it could not be maintained without an overseer to ensure it’s viability. As crazy as it sounds, I would tell them, equality is something that must be imposed from the top and the vicious monstrosity known as nature will do everything it can to dissolve equality and plunge the entire population into chaos and misery if allowed to rear it’s grimy head. But they would certainly not listen. Try as I might to whip and beat it into their heads they would insist that I come on down and join them in the great sea of oneness. Day after day I would sit up on the tallest building pulling levers and flicking switches while the populace bubbled below. Their leaflets and fliers would start piling up in the pathways and raise the level of the ground by several feet every month. Soon the city would be subsumed by paper and they would be upon me. The moment I joined them the melee would commence and equality would lose its commission. The city would be overrun by barbarians from the woods who had their programs denigrate via simple neglect. Fire and spears would be arcing through the air as the stainless steel turned black with heat and billions of papers floated into the air carrying fire to long lost places outside the border. Everything would be undone and my name would be permanently associated with terror and destruction. I would insist on a trial by rodents and would surly be installed in an insane asylum where I could contemplate my deeds for years and years.

SLAKE THE FILM

Two thousand years from now I should just about be done with my house. I have been working away at various things just trying to keep nature at bay and I realize that I spend a fair amount of time doing just that. I would like to figure out how to make a house that not only doesn’t allow nature to eat it but that actually channeled the nefarious bugs and plants into useful roles. I honestly wouldn’t mind it if a tornado came along and leveled my place so I could start again knowing what I know now. Everything would be made of concrete, glass, and steel. I would trap every drop of water that hit my house, use the sunlight to heat it and pressurize it, then have it spray out periodically to steam clean the bugs and plants off the outside. I would have the plants and bugs collected in neat little troughs which would funnel the biomaterial into a machine that would compress them into cubes and place them on a grid in the sun. When they dried out I would use them for fuel in the winter. My whole house would be and energy trap that ticked on its own just like a clock. It would take care of itself so that I could take care of other things. Now, having just written about it, I want to go home and work!

THE JUNGLE MIX

Every day I’m learning a little bit more about he physics of energy and every day it becomes more apparent to me that the green movement is oblivious of reality. I just read an article about a solar powered airplane that is being built in one of the Scandinavian countries. A couple of guys want to fly it around the world to prove the viability of solar energy for aviation power. The wingspan is nearly as large as a jetliner’s and it has 12,000 voltaic cells on top of the wings. It is gigantic. It develops about 50 horsepower which is just enough to make it barely fly. It holds one person. This basic machine was build around 30 years ago and flown across the English channel. The same useless solar powered airplane. Now it’s being done again presumably to dupe another generation into believing that solar power will have some use in transportation. If you could perfectly convert a square meter of sunlight to usable energy it would create a little over a horsepower. So to have a 200 horsepower output you would need roughly 2000 square feet of surface area. Let’s see, that means you would need a car 10 feet wide and 200 feet long to achieve the surface requirements. But then you’d need more horsepower to move such a giant. That’s assuming that we had the perfect technology to convert the energy %100 from sunlight to mechanical energy which is physically impossible. We can’t even come close. And yet these people keep perpetuating these ideas and funding the research. You know, the second we apprehend our consciousness we begin looking for magic. It’s just a never ending quest. I love machines and technology. I know that we live such a luxurious life because of those things and I am for pursuing every avenue of more efficient and environmentally palatable energy. But diverting our efforts with bald faced lies just undermines the entire effort. When the greens advocate voodoo the gluttonous hogs are given more ammunition to justify consuming and burning everything in sight.  But the people who are green tend to be the flakey, hippy, new age, types who are dumber than mud when it comes to understanding anything of use and so I don’t know what to say. I guess it will all work out in the end. Personally, I want to live far in the future, out in the jungle within a pod within a tree where outside my door everything is really green and unspoiled. I’ve never seen anything really grimy in the woods or fields unless it came from a person. I don’t know how we do it.

TILE IN THE AMAZON

Last night I had one of my recurring dreams that I was back in the military which, actually, is more of a nightmare with me chomping at the bits for a way out. When I awoke I was relieved but while I was lying there I thought, “I spent nearly five years of my life inside a machine that was designed expressly for destroying other machines and people.” What a strange thought…to live inside a machine of destruction like its your home and nest while it’s out hunting Russians or whatever.  But then I thought I’m glad I was on a destroyer. Why beat around the bush? People hunt each other and vie for control over various dominions. There must be some atavistic drive there that’s been buried under layer after layer of deception.  And what I’ve noticed is that the people who are most vehemently against war and violence are the ones who ply power in the most insidious manner possible. There is a whole crew of them who are connected through subtile symbols of sophistry and fashion, who run among the swift and clever, and whose deeds always appear reasonable and helpful despite the ultimately self serving outcome of their efforts. It really is such an amazing thing that has happened. Raw power has given way to this fascinating chess game that is conducted at little desks in front of computer screens. It’s like there is power flowing back and forth while deals are made and undone. But the participants seem to garner the same rewards whether they’re winning or losing. It’s just such a safe bet. The contemporary world is being turned into a huge computer game and a perpetual battle of wits. I guess it makes sense. Why move your body to earn a living if you can just play a game while sitting on your ass. I’m glad they’re doing it. I’m glad that they are becoming more entwined in this virtual world. With luck, there will come a day when all of these people are permanently ensconced in their pods where they can run through the virtual forests with one another chasing sparkles of electrons. It is, of course, unfortunate for nature because of the vast amount of highly refined energy used by these machines in order to recreate a world that is already here. But let’s face it, these people, despite their often strident advocacy of green, are most disconnected from nature. Yes, they are unnatural. But I guess that’s what people do… differentiate themselves. If nothing else, it’s fun to watch.