TRANSFORMATION IN WAYNESBORO

I decided that I would spend my easter vacation in Waynesboro since the internet seemed to work much better over there than in the world class city of Charlottesville where marketing had finally overcome substance. Yes, I was going to teach them a lesson in Charlottesville. I was going to prove that Waynesboro was a better place to be on the web while at the same time celebrating Easter and going on a tour that I had long planned. So I went over there on Friday night and checked into the Boreguard motel which was located right next to the DuPont plant. I plugged in my computer and the thing was downloading pages left and right as if the speed of light were faster in the valley and I just wished so much that I could show the people in Charlottesville how an internet should work. But fuck ‘em. I wasn’t going to fret during my vacation. I downloaded several thousand pages of information on Easter celebrations in Waynesboro then took a bath. After my bath I went down to the Smoke & Slag lounge for a drink. There I met some dudes who worked in the Dupont plant and I asked them how they liked working there. They told me that they didn’t like working there because the union was fucking with them one day and the management was fucking with them on the next. I told them that I was there to celebrate Easter and, coincidently, go on a tour of their plant on Saturday. They advised me against going on the Easter Tour of DuPont because they said the whole thing was a hoax and that Jesus didn’t have a thing to do with DuPont which was directly counter to what I had been told by my travel agent. “Sure, we won the Easter contract this year but that doesn’t really mean a thing.” said a burly looking dude with a funny set of teeth.

“Well,” I said, “I plan on going on my tour tomorrow and I plan on seeing the Easter Bunny grandmas doing hand made Bunny Pop Tarts. I collect rare Pop Tarts you know.”

“Jesus! You collect Pop Tarts? That’s a new one.” Said another dowdy looking dude.

“It’s very interesting to collect Pop Tarts. I have a Pop Tart from 1964, the first year they were introduced. I’m sure if I opened the package it would still taste delicious. You know, they got the idea of sealing them in foil because they used to seal dog food in foil. It was very space age like.”

The workers looked at me as if I were from outer space and I paid my bill. I went back to my motel and had some hot chocolate, another bath, and then went to sleep. When I got up the next morning there was black smoke coming through the curtains and when I opened the door I saw that the smoke coming out of the DuPont chimney was going straight down the side of the chimney and then spreading out on the ground like a sneaky black fog. “What the hell?” I wondered. Suddenly as I was about to go back into my door a breeze came along and slammed it shut before I could grab the handle. I couldn’t believe it. I was wearing my Pop Tart pajamas which also had little mice on them and some other things that looked like flowers or something. I was standing there looking at myself in the picture window reflection when I noticed a bunch of dudes coming out of the Smoke & Slag. It was the same gang I was with last night and I guess they’d been drinking all this time. God all mighty. How could people live in such squalor? When they got over to me they started laughing and I asked them what they were doing. They told me they were on their way to work. I asked them if I could go with them since I didn’t know how to deal with getting back into my room whilst wearing pajamas. They said sure and so I followed them into the factory, sort of hiding in the middle of the group as they went past check points. I was pleased to see that the security of Pop Tarts was taken seriously. We walked past some huge machines that were humming and clanking as they stamped and chummed things down a conveyor belt. “What are those things that look like dog turds?” I asked.

“Those are Pop Tart precursors. The fundamental essence of Pop Tart.” Said the dude that seemed to be a foreman or something.

“Oh, come on,” I said, “where’s the kitchen? Where are the little old granny’s who do the cooking.”

“Are you kidding?”

“I saw it on Utube. I saw those old ladies cooking Pop Tarts. I know they do it in these factories so that the shipping is right there but I also know they have their own kitchen area set aside from the general factory works.”

“Those are Pop Tarts going by you right now. The only old ladies here are the hags who clean the offices at night.”

“Come on guys. I know there’s a lot of teasing in these places. You know, camaraderie and all that among the troops. But let’s get into the Easter spirit and see those Pop Tarts! I really want to see the Easter Bunny Pop Tarts!”

“You’re seeing Pop Tarts going by you right now. That smoke you saw coming out of the chimney this morning was from the desiccation plant. It dries out the cattle dung that we use for the fundamental precursor to Pop Tarts.”

“I don’t really think that is all that funny mister. I love Pop Tarts.”

“Well, whoever bought your pajamas certainly likes Pop Tarts.”

“I made these myself out of Pop Tart clothing material. I sewed them together.”

“They have feet on them.”

“Sure they have feet on them.”

“You look to be in your thirties at least.”

“So?”

“Never mind.”

“Where’s the kitchen? Why does it reek so much in here.”

“Pop Tarts reek until they are coated in DuPont’s 434 polyurethane sealant.”

I was starting to feel queasy as we walked along the line. I was sure that they were bullshitting me but then we came into another part of the factory where a big machine was stamping about a thousand stamps per minute and by God the things it stamped out looked like about the size and shape of a Pop Tart. I watched about five thousand Pop Tart shaped things get stamped out and then all the sudden the Pop Tarts coming out were shaped like bunny rabbits. A few minutes later some Jesus shaped Pop Tart like things came flying out of the maw where the stamping was taking place. I was feeling like I was dreaming. We proceeded into another room where the things were summarily dumped into a giant vat of noxious smelling stuff that seemed to have peeled the paint off of all the machinery around it. “That’s the 434 DuPont polyurethane that seals in the cattle dung so that we can then inject Chemical 77 into the unit and thereby transmutate raw dung into a edible substance. Believe me, it still would taste like pure shit if you ate one at this point. We let a few thousand of them slip out back in 1978 and believe you me it caused all sorts of problems for not only Kellogg but for DuPont as well. After they’re injected with Chemical 77, we inject some mice liver exudate into the mix. We still have no idea why it happens, but the mice liver exudate reacts with Chemical 77 and cattle dung in such a way as to create a tasty fruit center within the Tart itself.”

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I started twisting and turning as I fell over and knocked my head on the floor. The last thing I remember hearing was someone saying, “Just dump him in the vat. He would have wanted it. He’ll make a good Pop Tart.” They were right. I made a delicious Pop Tart.

SHAKE THE BEES

“911 Dispatcher, go ahead.”

“I have an emergency.”

“Go ahead.”

“My gas pedal is stuck on full blast.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m heading south on I75 just outside of Lexington Kentucky.”

“Now listen carefully. You need to make sure you are clear of traffic. Are you clear of traffic?”

“I see a cat down on the side of the road.”

“Don’t worry about a cat. Are there any cars?”

“No.”

“Now I want you to carefully turn your ignition off without turning it so far as to lock your steering.”

“Do what?”

“Turn your ignition off.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your key. Your key man. Turn your key off but don’t turn it so far that you lock your steering.”

“If I do that the engine will stop.”

“That’s right. That’s what you want so you can regain control of your vehicle.”

“I can’t turn the key off.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m using my GPS thing and I’ll be lost as a marble if I turn it off.”

“Look buddy. Your in danger if your gas pedal is stuck. You are also endangering others on the highway. I want to help you.”

“The only danger I see is that I’m about to run over a cat.”

“Can’t you carefully apply your brakes and avoid it?”

“I can’t use the brakes.”

“Why? Are they broken?”

“No. I think they work but my foot really hurts. I have a bunion.”

“Can’t you use your other foot?”

“I’m not going to have time to switch feet.”

“How fast are you going?”

“About five miles an hour.”

“You mean fifty miles an hour? Are you super nervous?”

“No I’m going about five or four miles an hour and…, Oh My God, I’m about to run over a cat!”

“Turn the wheel! Turn the Wheel!”

“Oh my God! I just ran over a cat!

“You’ve got to get that engine off! Turn your ignition off!”

“I can’t. I really can’t be without my GPS.”

“Can you tell me when your gas pedal got stuck?”

“About three hours ago. Just outside of Columbus Ohio.”

“Your gas pedal has been stuck on full for three hours and you’ve just now decided to do something about it?”

“I was busy before.”

“Doing what? What’s more important than concentrating on your driving?

“I was texting to Pantera.”

“Your in violation of the law. Your not allow to drive and text in the state of Kentucky.”

“First of all, I started texting while I was in Ohio. Second Pantera is a sext messenger which runs about 40 dollars an hour. I’m not hanging up on her!”

“OK. Listen! I want you to put your car in neutral. Put it in neutral!”

“I’m not in a car! I’m in a Toyota airplane.”

“What!”

“Oh my God! I’m about to hit a car! A car is in my way!”

“How fast are you going now? Talk to me.”

“I’m going about three miles per hour.”

“Can you jump out of the plane?”

“I have no parachute. My foot hurts. I’m busy sexting. My GPS is flickering. I’m tired and I am pissed about you not being able to keep me from hitting a cat.”

“You’ve got to take action. Don’t you have a kill switch or a mixture control in the aircraft?”

“I have all those things but I just can’t do it.”

“Why, are you suicidal? What is wrong with you?”

“I just don’t know what to do.”

“You must take action!”

“I just chopped a person in two with my propeller! Oh my God! And now I’m starting to go off the road into a ditch! Oh my God!”

“Just hold on! Keep your cool! How fast are you going now?”

“About two miles per hour.”

“And you have no brakes…, right?”

“No. I told you about my foot.”

“You’re starting to fuzz out. I’m going to transfer you to the next 911 person available. Can you deal with that?”

“That’ll be the eighth time I’ve been transfered today.”

“Sorry I couldn’t help you.”

“That’s ok. Bye.”

ON YOUR KNEES DOGS

Well for the last week the top story in the USA has been Toyota’s sticking gas pedal. I find this to be interesting because this is the first time in my memory where a consumer item has taken top billing in the national media for a whole week. You could argue about the Tylenol recall of 1982 being a significant consumer event that was in the news for awhile but that was a different situation. The people were different even that short time ago because the profoundly simple minded were kept more in the background and did not play such an important role in consumerism. Now the consumer society is so strong that it has sucked every human, rabbit, and insect into the fray.  This morning, on NPR they played a tape of someone calling 911 while they were flying down the highway with a stuck Toyota gas pedal. It was hard to believe that anyone with a drivers license could not figure out how to deal with a stuck gas pedal. Let’s see, you could turn the engine off. You could pop the transmission into neutral. You could stick your toe under the gas pedal and try pulling it back. All this is assuming that, coincidently, when your gas pedal failed, your brakes also catastrophically failed. But, in this era, all the people could think of to do was call for help. Four people were slaughtered in the ensuing accident. When I think about these people calling 911 from their speeding Toyota instead of dealing with the problem and saving four lives, it makes much more sense that the top news story for the last week has been Toyota’s gas pedal problem. The news doesn’t matter anymore because the people don’t matter anymore. They could not comprehend something that was actually news. They can only comprehend chaff and meaningless clatter so, in fact, the world with its sterile strip malls, bland lifeless neighborhoods, self help books, and utterly ridiculous “news” is in fact perfectly tailored for the people. I am so pleased with the immutability of reality that I could scream!

THE TREE

The first time I set foot out of the structure I thought I would be sick to my stomach because it smelled so sweet. It was warm and thick feeling and when I looked at my hand I saw that my skin was a different color in the natural light. A light breeze blew on me and I wondered where it came from. I turned to the power plant and saw about twenty thousand birds land on a conglomeration of metal towers and wires that were crumbling with rust and fatigue and when they took off again, flakes of metal and glass rained down onto the gravel below. I couldn’t believe I was outside. It was said that you would be dead in a matter of minutes if you went out of the building but I didn’t feel like I was going to die at all and I didn’t see what would kill me. Presumably, there were animals and diseases along with wild humans who had splintered off from the social structure and plunged into malevolent tribes of cannibals and destroyers but I didn’t see anything moving except the birds. I wanted to find a tree. I had read about trees but I didn’t believe that they were real because I simply couldn’t believe things that I didn’t see. I knew all about their cycles because, inside, I worked on the bio mat which was a giant growing slab of foodstuff that utilized photosynthetic elements, many of which were used in trees. I couldn’t believe that something would just grow wild and in such an inefficient form as a tree. They took up enormous amounts of space with little branches and twigs splitting all over the place to just fill up with thin air. According to some old calculations, one cubic meter of bio mat material has the biological energy of a full grown tree from the oak family. No wonder they wiped them out! They sounded like a terrible waste. Supposedly they could kill a human being also. I couldn’t tell you exactly what caused me to do this. It was probably because of Lilly Nine. She’s the one who told me about the trees. Lilly Nine worked in the glass machine where she helped keep things on time and smart. But she also liked to delve into ancient history where she would dredge up all these things from the past which were long gone and turned to dust. She told me about the giant bombs made of metal and filled with superheated steam and how they were used to replace the atom bombs because they were “green.” Unfortunately, supposedly, the steam bombs weren’t too scary so they burned through them like popcorn until the earth had been plowed and pummeled down to the bedrock. That was, at least, one of the theories for how we came to live on the permanent side of the wall which was more expansive than the earth itself and which had pretty much displaced the outside with an elaborate inside. But the ever ingenious Lilly Nine looked and looked because she was convinced that she could find the corridors where the outside had not yet been pumped to the inside. I thought she was nuts but here I am standing in the ancient atmosphere looking at the sun with no glass between us. It’s really pretty amazing. My nose is going crazy and my mouth is watering with the taste of wild things that I’ve yet to touch. Lilly Nine is supposed to join me at noon because she said she would be able to find a tree faster than I could. I believe her. We who work on the bio slab are on the bottom of the heap and the people on the glass machine are about half way up the heap, though I would be summarily dissolved if anyone heard me think that. But what I haven’t told Lilly Nine, is that I plan on keeping her when she comes out to help me look for a tree. I can’t be in there anymore. Every day is perfectly controlled and imprinted with an ironclad luxury. Nothing ever goes wrong and therefor nothing ever goes right. We say things like, “see you tomorrow.” but there is no tomorrow because it will have been exactly like today. I had this idea that if I stole Lilly Nine and brought her far down one of the corridors, we could somehow survive without living in the same day over and over again. I asked her about this idea but she didn’t like it. I said, “Look, it will be like something in ancient history. You will get to see what it was like back then.” But she said that there was no going back and that just because you were in a different place it wouldn’t make you see differently. I disagreed because I knew that there were things you could do that would change you. We were constantly messing with the bio slab  and sometimes there would be a change in color or the thing would have a section that smelled different. You could affect change. Those were the very words I said to Lilly Nine, I said, “You could affect change.” She nearly blew up when I said that. Evidently, according to her, the era of decimation began with people who had a mantra of change. So that soon change was equated with goodness regardless of the actual outcome. If you made the change from moving creature to non moving creature it was good. If you made the change from washable clothes to disposable clothes it was good. A lot of the changes just happened to coincide with things being easier at the expense of something unknown but the end result was that we changed everything so much that there was no change left to be had when we were through. It was like there was a end of time waiting for us at the limit of change. Or was it the end of change at the limit of time. I don’t know what happened. But I know that there is no time on the inside. You just sit there breathing in and out while your eyes flutter and your heart tries to die from boredom. That’s what I felt at least. I bounced this idea off several friends and they threatened to spell my name on the big board as a traitor of the Inland. I knew they wouldn’t really do it but I found it disturbing that they were so against my idea. It just killed me that Lilly Nine was also against reason. So I thought I would resort to another idea the Lilly Nine bounced off my head some time back. Violence. It was something that we didn’t have except in so far as being dissolved which was not seen as violence but simple returning, a little early, to the bio-flow. Lilly pointed out to me that it could be called violence with a little modification. But grabbing her and dragging her down one the corridors to live on the outside seemed to me to be violence and I thought I would try some. So I was standing there breathing this amazing outside air and pondering my violence when I looked at the glass and saw Lilly Nine standing there with some millicents. Well…, so much for that. She ratted on me and was laughing hysterically. I ran down the corridor of outside but it just dead ended into some more glass. I ran down to the other end and was again met with glass. And then I noticed that there were all sorts of people looking at me from the glass. I ran back to the place where I had gotten into the corridor and there were two big dishes there with my name on them. One had water in it and the other had some material from the bio-slab. I could see in the reflection that I had been re-designated “Pet ex-machine and ex-time.” So it was. So it is. So, unfortunately, will it be.

TIME ONCE WE WERE

Walking through the forest eighteen thousand years ago I didn’t know who I was. When light came I didn’t know it came from the sun. It was simply light and there was a big thing in the sky that was also very light but the idea of one causing the other never occurred to me. And when I whapped an animal on the head because it bit my foot I was likely to think that my foot was doing something odd. There was no backward or forward. No time at all, so that one moment was like any other and what might be happening at that moment was the same as what happened before or might happen afterward. I liked to climb up into trees and look around but I never thought, “I am here and I could go over there,” because the way I viewed it was like this: If I moved my feet a certain way then a tree at some distance would simply come over to me. If I wanted a river that I saw because I wanted to drink I would move my feet very fast and the next thing I knew my face was down in the water and that was that. I put fish in my mouth and chewed them until I could swallow something. Life was pretty grand, if not confusing and meaningless. I had no idea that I would someday die. When I saw another dead person I thought they were in a deep sleep and if I saw them sometime later when they were decomposed I saw something else entirely and as far as I was concerned someone or something had taken the space where a sleeping person had been. There was no coincidence because things were not connected…. they just were. That was the way it was until I ran into the tribe of people who looked like me but did things that made me feel unusual. They had yellow fire that hurt if you brought it too near and they jumped over it going around and around while making noises from where they should have put food and water. I don’t know how they got to me since I didn’t aim for them with my feet, but my feet were going on their own and next thing I knew, there they were. One of them bit me and I bonked the head. They fixed my feet so I couldn’t make them get me things. I was amazed. There were vines around my feet and I took them off. They put them on again and I took them off. They made loud noises from their food holes and put the vines on my feet again. I took them off and put them on the person I knocked on the head. Then I put some vines on their hands so they couldn’t take off the vines on their feet. The person squirmed and made noise. The people stood there and watched the person squirm. I felt odd. I felt good without knowing what good was. I decided that I would take the squirming person with me so I put them on my shoulder and aimed my feet for the forest which came to me and then grew darker and darker. I put the person down and sat by them. They weren’t like me. They were smaller. I kept the person because it made me feel good and some creaky machinery started groaning in my head. A ratio began to present itself and I saw that there were differences and things to be contrasted. When the light came about the person was gone so I directed my feet to where the people were. They WERE there but now they WEREN’T there and I could feel the difference because of the ratio and the fact that there was this and that. I started moving my feet and then suddenly something flipped in my head and I realized that I was going and the land was just sitting there. The sky turned dark and began to rumble. Flashes of light stabbed the ground and I tried to run away. Drops of water began to hit me and then the leaves began to be ripped from the trees. Then the trees lunged out of the earth and flew into the skies. The time began to flow and in my frenzied running I began sucking down air and squeaking from the throat. I was making the same noises as the tribe. I made loud noises come from my throat and directed them at the sky where trees and animals were swirling around roaring for mercy. Another flip in my head and I felt that something or someone else was just like me. Empathy and rationality were now mine and along with those things came terror and desire, time and loss, cause and effect. The grand life was over. Solutions came about but for every solution there were a thousand problems. I tried and tried to go back to when my feet brought me things. I was convinced that time was going the wrong way because I wanted to find the small person but I couldn’t. “How could I go back?” I wondered. For a thousand days after the storm I wandered over lands looking in rivers and under leaves. I moved rocks and rolled logs over. Time kept going and every moment I wondered where the small person was and what they were doing. “Where did the time go after it was spent?” I wondered. One day I was picking over some branches that were piled up in an unusual way. I pulled up a stick and out came a pair of baby bears humming and yawning. I grabbed one by the ear and pulled it. I wasn’t trying to hurt it but there was no reason to pull its ear and no reason not to. Or so I thought. You can guess the rest.

THATHANKA’S HAPPY DAY

As soon as we came over the hill I had a bad feeling. I looked over at Custer and he had that funny cloud in his eye that made me realize he was cooked on opium. The sun was also looking funny the way it cast its glare down the valley and lit the tops of burned out weeds and I don’t know why but I kept thinking of sugar when I saw those weeds even though they didn’t look like anything but what they were. Thathanka’s Cheyenne were sitting on their ponies squinting their eyes in that indian way which makes me think they’re pretending to be trying something they don’t need to do. I saw a couple of warrior scouts look over at us and laugh. I didn’t really care about killing indians, and to be honest, I sometimes enjoyed seeing them win against the blowhard Colonels and Captains. But I was riding along as the representative of the Benjamin Pellet Gun Co., where I was the senior liaison between the Benjamin Co. and the Army, and I intended to see our new product, the Benjamin 112 pellet rifle, mow down a few indians on this fine afternoon and thereby secure my place in the history of pellet gun dominance as well as something else. I was convinced that the air driven pellet rifle was the wave of the future. No powder to get wet. Tiny little pellets that could be carried in your pocket or your snuff box. You could even shoot a rock or clump of dirt in an emergency. I would tell soldiers that they could literally carry about 200 pellets in their mouths if they needed a quick place to put them in the heat of battle. Also I had read a recent article by doctor Victor Frankenstein about the health benefits of a little lead and so I was telling soldiers that they could eat a pellet a day to keep the doctor away which helped boost pellet sales as well as improve the strength of our military. Anyway, this was going to be our first full blown battle using no powdered weapons against the red man and I was almost bored such was my confidence. Custer also seemed to be supremely confident, as was his nature when he was cooked. We were just sitting there looking and waiting and I was just about to say something when Custer took his shiny new Benjamin 112 out of its scabbard and raised it above his head. He was just about to kick his horse when I remembered something. “Make sure all of your pellets guns have 12 pumps in them or they’ll not kill!” Everyone looked at me with big wide eyes and pulled out their pellet guns. They started pumping and the click clack of pellet guns being pumped up echoed across the expanse between us and the indians. Then there was the sound of indians laughing as a hail of arrows rained down on us. “Jesus H Christ!” Shouted Custer, “You idiot! We’re going to be slaughtered!” The indians started riding toward us loading arrows and laughing so hard that some of them fell off their ponies. The troops who were able to pump up their guns quickly enough fired off a few shots but the indians who were actually hit by pellets just laughed and pretended that they were brushing off mosquitos while their arrows punctured soldiers left and right. One trooper rode up to an indian and began re-pumping his pellet gun as the indian held his bow at the draw, ready to fire. Oh my god was it sad! The indian actually released his string and held onto the arrow while the soldier pumped in 12 pumps. He was a smarty pants warrior who yawned and then laughed as the soldier finished pumping and began to load a pellet. When the soldier began to raise the rifle the warrior plugged him right through the neck with a perfect shot and the pellet gun went flying into the air where the barrel reflected a bit of bright sunlight before the thing fell into the dust. The men were cussing me and the Benjamin pellet gun corporation with a vengeance while the indians whacked their tommy hawks through their foreheads and laughed their asses off. Custer pumped up his pellet gun and blasted me one. The pellet stuck in the sleeve of my jacket not even penetrating the cloth which was fashionably thin. I plucked it out and couldn’t believe my eyes! They were 177 caliber pellets and all the pellet guns we had were 22 caliber! Holy shit! We might as well have been shooting slingshots! All the air was whooshing right past the pellets because they were too small! I decided to ride for the hills but as I turned around for a last look I saw Custer riding up on me with his pellet gun raised like a club. He took a swing at my head and then went flying off his horse. When he got up he shouted. “Use them as clubs! Fuck the indians! Kill this pellet gun representative!” I rode like I’d never rode before with tumble weeds whisking by my horse’s hooves as they drummed out of the valley. I got to the top of another hill and looked down at a sad scene. Soldiers and pellets guns were lying all over the place and the indians were crying because they’d been laughing so hard. They had gotten a hold of Custer who was frothing at the mouth and swinging his pellet gun around wildly while the warriors tore into him. I high tailed it for destinations unknown. I knew I was not going to win the hand of Lilly Benjamin who was the entire purpose of my machinations. But I had my pellet gun and a batch of the wrong ammo. I had water and some jerky. I had my hide. And what did I learn? Nothing really. To this day I love my Benjamin 112 pellet gun and I keep it on my mantle where it reminds me of treacherous stories and fun times on the range.

UR CARS WEIGH MORE THAN UR HOUSE

After my first date with Tammy I came home to find a note on my mailbox that said, “Ded dog inside.” I opened the box and sure enough there were the remnants of Lula. I was sure it was the doing of Circle Fleen who had been feeding kittens to Lula right out there by the road. He just held them right above her mouth and when she slobbered and whined enough he would drop them into her gullet where they would be swallowed whole. I didn’t know exactly why he did it but my thought was that he was born wrong and just got worse as time went by. He got really bad when I started seeing Tammy who was supposedly his daughter and his wife which I didn’t understand at all. Anyway I told him to stop feeding those kittens to Lula or I was going to do something mighty bad to him but he got the jump on me by killing Lula and stuffing her in the mailbox. So the next day I go over to his trailer and have Lula in a IGA paper bag which is smelling mighty bad. I knock on the door and then kick the door until Circle comes to it. He opens the door and stands there in glorious living color which is basically a white body and a red face and neck. “Good God Circle,” I say, “You killed Lula, you’re butt naked on Sunday, and as far as I can tell your boinkin’ your offspring. Now what do you have to say about that?”

“I’d say you have the wrong man.” He replied. And sure as shit he was right. Those Fleens all look the same which causes all sorts of legal problems. I went up to the next trailer and kicked. “Go to hell!” I heard coming through the metal door. It was Circle Fleen all right. I could tell because he had a perpetually clogged up nasal system from snorting coke mixed with Draino so that he sounded like a cartoon character mixed with hill billy. “You get your ass on out here Circle!” I shouted. About two seconds later a blast went off and pieces of aluminum struck me in the face. Circle had blown a hole through the door with his shotgun which didn’t surprise me at all. “That’s some nice way to answer the door Circle!” I said, “Now you have air conditioning!”

“You get your hide down the road or I’m going blow you to the next county!”

“Now Circle. I have Lulu here. I want you to give me about 25 dollars to cover the funeral expenses. You give me that and I won’t kill you.”

“I have a better deal. You move on down the line and I won’t blow your block off.”

“Circle, you shot a hole through your door which was nice, but you know that I know you’re not going to get up off that couch to take a better bead on me. You wouldn’t miss that Astro Boy cartoon for the world and Tammy told me how you are in love with Astro Boy. Now while you’re in there drooling over Astro Boy I’m just going to go over and unplug the extension cord that is feeding your television. By god, I’ll make you miss Astro Boy Circle!”

Another series of shots went off and tore the door from its hinges whereupon a trio of dogs ran out with various undergarments and stuffed animals in their mouths.

“I’m gonna unplug you Circle! You put that gun down and come out with your hands up and with twenty five dollars in one of ‘em.”

“If I have to come to that door it’s gonna be a sad day.”

“Come to what door Circle? You did for it and I’m telling you I’ll do for you if you don’t do Lula right. You had no cause to kill my dog not to mention feed it kittens without my permission.”

“You been messin’ with my woman.”

“What are you talking about? We went on one date down to the park and I nearly didn’t touch a hair on her head. Besides she’s you daughter.”

“She’s also my wife so I’m telling you right now I’m not gonna stand for you messin’ with her.”

“Circle, you aren’t going to stand for anything at all because I don’t think you can stand up you tub of poisonous lard.”

At this point I pulled the extension plug from his trailer and the sound of Astro Boy fizzled down in perfect sync with the rising howl of Circle. I could hear him thump to the floor but the next thing I saw was Tammy who came to the door dressed in a very luminescent bath robe with little monkeys, puppies, snakes, tigers, and baby turtles on it. She was smoking and drinking a coke while trying to pull something out of her pocket.

“How you doing there Tammy?” I said.

“Well I’m not doing bad considering I just had a baby about five minutes ago!”

“A baby! What are you talking about. Since when were you pregnant?”

“Since you messed with me down at the park the other day.”

Circle’s voice began to rumble but you could tell he was flat on his back which caused his epiglottis to interfere with his enunciation. “You goddamn whore! You been whorrin’ down at the park with that half breed galoot? I’ll kill you dead you bitch!”

I shook my head and tried to get things clear. “Now Tammy, what makes you think you had a baby?”

“You dumb ass. You don’t think I’d know if I had a baby?”

“Well where is it?”

“I’m trying to get it out of my pocket.”

“You put a baby in your pocket? What’s wrong with you?”

“Kangaroos do it!”

“You’re not a Kangaroo!”

Tammy kept pulling until out of her pocket came a furry little thing about the size of a chipmunk. She cradled it in her arms and cooed at it. Then she looked up at me and said, “You’re gonna help me raise this baby buster.”

“You’re goddamn right you’re going to help raise that baby you whoremonger muther fucker. And if you think I’m gonna pay for that dumb dog you got another thing comin’. You best be bringing me 50 dollars as a down payment on the beby and the things it’s gonna need.”

“That’s a chipmunk Tammy. It’s not a baby!”

“This is your baby mister. You’re the only one I had messin’ with me in the last few days.”

“Well, Tammy, I know you live in squalor but if you know nothing else you should know that it takes more than a few days to grow a baby. Also that’s not a baby. It’s a chipmunk. You probably have chipmunks in your bed though I really don’t like to think about that.”

“It’s your baby.”

“Damn right it’s your baby! The thing has your exact face!” Shouted Circle.

“Well now Tammy, I like you enough but I’m not going to be ramrodded into caring for a chipmunk who is posing as a human baby.”

Circle managed to get on his stomach and crawl to the door. “You’re gonna take care of that baby or we’re going to get one of them d.m.a. genny tests done on you and have your ass put in jail.”

“God all mighty. I have had some threats put to me before but this one might take the cake. There you are Circle, a beached whale, a dog killer, a kitten killer, and inbred mutant trying to threaten me from face down in a trailer with no door. And you Tammy. I thought you were a nice girl and you’re trying to tell me I impregnated you with chipmunk spume. I won’t have it I tell you!”

Tammy put the chipmunk back in her pocket then stood akimbo and spit down into the dirt. “Circle,” she said, “Why don’t you put this door back on so I can slam it in this fucker’s face!”

“You dumpin’ me Tammy? You think you can just dump me like a piece of trash? I won’t have that either!”

“You done enough to me mister! You knocked me up with Circle Jr. here and you messed up my hair the other night! I’m telling you to move on down the line!”

Well, I had my pride. I took Lulu and held her up in front of them both. “Just so you turds know, my last girlfriend said this was her baby too. I’ve been through this exact situation before. I dealt with it! That’s what happens when you are an aristocrat instead of trailer mutts like you. I took care of this dog even though I knew it wasn’t my baby. That’s class!”

Now Circle was really frothing at the mouth as he tried to get out of the trailer. “You goddamn whoremongering, cat fish sucking, chicken head. I’ll kill you on the spot!”

Tammy took a kick at me and then fell down smashing her coke bottle against a trailer wheel. I said, “You are peasants. I wash my hands of you.”

I walked away with Lulu in the IGA bag and contemplated my classiness. It felt pretty good but I wasn’t sure how much I believed it. I went home and tried to figure out if there could be a ghetto section in a trailer court. I just couldn’t tell. It all seemed the same except for my trailer. Go figure.

TWENTY LASHES

Am I alone in thinking that I have lost my mind? I’ve been cramming on the Depression lately, reading a book about FDR as well as trying to fathom some basic economics from the Wall Street Journal and the NY Times. What I can see is that no one knows what is happening and no one knows what to do about it. But if you look around the articles at the photographs of models who look like Nazi vampires and over the top jewelry both of which exude a sense of extravagance you are able to equate. Our required items are so harmless and easy to get. They don’t need to be machined and adulterated since they are clearly apprehended for what they are and what service they provide. Food, transportation, a place to sleep. That’s about it. All the rest… and think about how much that all the rest comprises….all the rest is nothing but fluff. We’ve made a super heated economy on these unworthy items. The economy was cooking on the pent up energy of complicated waste materials which gained their great energy as a function of their complexity. People using their fundamental knowledge to create fuel that was gassing up the bubble with shocking speed. The mantra which vibrates between prayer and avarice makes for a mighty powerful thunder in the hands of those who lean in those directions which would be a large portion of our population. This time they’ve managed to fuck us very badly indeed. What can we do about it I wonder? I say we should strictly get with a program of buying what is only absolutely required to sustain life. Give your children stick and rocks, a few empty boxes, and they’ll be just fine. Let them play in the dirt and read library books. Run the poisonous fast food industries into the ground. Shut down Walmart, Sam’s Club and all the “craft and gift” shops. Trying to sustain an economy on gross consumption is not the way of a good future. Banish the ad agencies. Put sales people in prison where they belong with the rest of the criminals or better yet, slit their throats. I know many people who claim to be anti-consumer and environmentally concerned. For some strange reason these people are actually the most egregious consumers of all. They have babies which give them an excuse for buying everything under the sun. They have give away yard sales under the pretense of “thinning out” but then immediately refill their houses with junk so they can start the cycle all over again. I have to be honest. I couldn’t care less if human beings decimate the planet. I love nature but I don’t worship it or anything else. It is what it is. But I cannot stand hypocrisy. When people say, “I recycle and don’t buy paper towels.” while they’re buying a bunch of other bad shit just makes me want to kill. Still, I’m trying to be nice about it. I don’t really want to slit their throats, I just want to give them a minor beating.

MARTIAN’S DILEMMA

I have to admit, I had no idea what hit me. One moment I was riding high looking out the window at the shuddering sky which seemed to be moving in long lashes of fine grey metal stuff while the planet twisted around and around. We were traveling along the “Spoon Tine” which allowed us to approach the speed of light and therefore lose hours off of our miserable lives so that we could live them again and hopefully generate a more satisfying history. Time and time again people took this ride. They took the ride as if they were applying make up. It had become mundane. You could push a day right back to a shade before zero and do it all again. At first people would wait quite awhile to knock off a few days or months. They would just do it now and then. Now, well, I didn’t know anyone who had made it out of this particular day. For almost all of us, it has been this very Tuesday rehashed several thousand times. We just can’t seem to get it right. Some people are now doing half days and therefore only making it until lunch before they decide they have fucked up once again. I can see what is going to happen. Pretty soon they won’t be able to get out of the second and soon after that they will simply freeze into a state of abject fear with their lives hanging like icicles in the stratosphere. So it hit me. I want to go through to Wednesday… and then Thursday. I’m going out there.

SOUTHERN ICE

Well, yesterday I went ice skating out in my fields where there is a young version of a primordial swamp trying to form. I skated around various weeds and over luminescent green things growing under the ice. I went through the ice several times, which was good just so I would get the feel of it. The dogs chased me and I chased them while I tried to re-acclimate myself to tight turns. I fell down a number of times and once slammed my hand through the ice. Today, I have to admit, I have some sore spots. But I’m in town to buy some new laces for my skates and when I get home I’m going to the gravel pits where the skating is transcendental and where the ice cracks for hundreds of feet echoing in the hills like nothing you can hear anywhere else. What a feeling to slide along on a glassy sheet of water! There are hawks and beavers, deer and herons, and the silent fish who look up wondering “What the fuck was that?” while you hiss over them and their unimaginable world of cold. Ice skating is a rare treat in the south. We have an ice rink but it just doesn’t cut it because it’s like skating in a 7-11. I belong to the confederate ice skating league which I notice was missed on the recent festival of american festivals showing at our illustrious Bridge. Those dweebs!