Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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Copyright 2010 by The New Scum Productions
http://www.thenewscum.org
errors, and it will be different than the printed version. I'm into
This book is dedicated to and written for the people I’ve met and
the times I’ve cherished with them. Good and bad. You yourself and
the people you choose to keep around you are the only things in this
2
3
Preamble
4
Preamble
feel invincible under the influence of alcohol; you are not actually
are not a god, gods exist for humans to look up to and fear.
I’m totally in love with myself because I’m the only one that I
can ultimately control, and at a minimum because I know I can get away
every once in a while. I watch people make bad decisions all the
time. Not like driving home from the bar, not like snorting a line of
cocaine from the toilet of a bar, but more like spending every day at
are. Wasting their time on a cheap escape when the real answers are
staring them right in the face. Competing with one another, trying to
decide who's the better man. I’m not afraid of competition, as long
as I know I can win. That’s the thin razor line we balance on when
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beat dead horses with sarcasm and the whimsical wallowing in self pity
kinetic – and I didn’t really mind that much at all. After all,
swoop in and “save” me. That’s how most of those stories end. Either
you find love, you find religion, or you find the bottom of a bottle.
I found the bottle. I fear in some abstract way that alcohol may
If you think you’re right, and people always tell you that you’re
right; you probably are. There is such a thing as right and wrong,
Right an wrong are not things, but ideas. The external interpretation
may be to the contrary, but as long as what you’re doing and thinking
is right for you, and you can decide it for yourself in the context of
ours, and it’s really hard to get away from them sometimes. I’d be
public sometimes, because it sure makes my blood boil. You can't get
The asshole that cuts you off on the highway, the shit-head
taking your order at a fast food restaurant, the person that tries to
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tell you how to raise your kids, the bum you give a dollar and asks
you for a five, the degenerates that tag gang signs on your business
and living for free for being worthless, garbage human beings that
illusion.
torn down by the people that don’t deserve to live in it. I invite
you to take a journey with me down a road you may never have traveled.
It’s a long road out, and a long road home, but in the end- it’s
7
Part One
The Past
8
Chapter One – The Doldrums
know, but you really can't make these things up. They just seem to
happen. After all, you have to make money doing something if you want
of fryer grease, and I most especially hate being stuck adrift in this
gives me heartburn. I’m not talking about hating the people I work
with, I like them – we're all working for the weekend, but the hate
waiting for slaughter by brain spike. They don't even seem real.
mental capacity than how you order at a restaurant. It does not take
the menu out loud to no one in particular- we will not assume you are
talking to us, nor will we engage you in conversation. You get one
chance for eye contact, and if it doesn’t happen we will not look you
in the eyes, because you have no respect for us. If you don’t respect
nothing. I want nothing from you, but you want something from me -
your dinner. Did you forget? Which one of us has the power position
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in this struggle? We have things you want, you pay us for the
pleasure of having them- this is how business works. You trade money
for goods and services. This is America, and this system has done us
someone you don’t know with “Lemme git one of dem…” That’s a dead
giveaway that you did not graduate high school. You never got the
“look the principal in the eye when he gives you your diploma, because
that’s how we show respect” speech either, because you were too busy
asshole, huh? Tell me something I don't know, and while you're at it,
We hear what you people talk about on your cell phones while we're
phone. You say “hold on one second so I can order food,” look me in
the eye, say hello and order like a human being that can speak the
language of an adult.
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If it is the first time that you have been at a restaurant, then
by all means take a moment to browse the menu, we're here for your
grazing after all. In fact, most menus even list commonly asked
questions like “what's in this?”, “how much does that cost?”, or “dat
cuh wit unyuns?” One minute, max. It’s a menu, you have to have seen
one before. It's there to let you know what we have and how much it
costs. Read it. If it’s Chinese food, don’t ask for a burger. If
it’s a pizza place, they don’t have burritos. You are all so god
did common sense go? Where did literacy go? How can you be so stupid
in a world that made everyone else so smart? Where did the rest of us
go wrong by not teaching you? When did you go wrong and turn into a
idiot, far from it, although it certainly feels that way sometimes. I
have lots of friends, you know, other people that don't drool on
these people. There’s just too many of us. Way, way, way too many.
I first came to realize all of this one day when I was, you
fight over the cost of her tostada. As you may know, a tostada is a
round, flat, fried corn tortilla topped with various Mexican food
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blue in the face about whether or not the tostada is Mexican,
$2.11 2007 USD. That’s roughly 35% of one hour’s worth of work at
minimum wage in Michigan, which we’ll say was $7.00 per hour. That
means that this tostada would have cost exactly 20 minutes of work at
restaurant upon getting out of her decked out Lexus. She could have
been anyone, with any face. I've noticed that no racial or socio-
extras. Hot sauce on the side. Easy. Should take less than a
minute.
“That will be exactly two dollars and eleven cents,” I say, with
voice. She says nothing, chomps loudly on gum, and whips out the
Prada bag. She digs through it, cracking saliva bubbles of gum the
whole time until she pulls out a brand new touchscreen phone. Way
back when a touchscreen phone was the type of thing people like me
touch? When the hell did that hit the market?!” She half drops, half
Pulls out the matching Prada wallet- same ugly print as her purse. I
hope it gets stolen. Finds an Abe, and a Washington. She tosses the
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bills on the counter, although my hand is open, face up, and less than
That was her response. She said it. She said that, after she
handed me six bucks for a $2.11 bill. I couldn’t believe she had
know there’s no sensible reason to pay a $2.11 bill with six even.
Maybe three one dollar bills. Maybe a five and eleven cents, but no
possibility of the event. Maybe eight, now that would have made even
just a little bit of sense, in a world one year later where she could
trade the old five in for a new one with a bright purple numeral on
the back and a spiffed-up color background for good old ironic Abraham
she was black- but she could have been anyone. It's happened just
accounting from MSU, and she can tell that I don’t know a god damned
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I typed $6.00 into the computer system I programmed, with my own
you've got to do- the math is right. 2.11 subtracted from 6.00,
3.89. Ok. I am not hallucinating. She holds out her hand, like I
had- but I drop the change and the bills in front of her. Like she
have the upper hand. I smile, wryly, and turn around, walk five paces
and about-face. I walk forward and look her in the eye again. I put
my hand forward and say “Zachary Elmblad, General Manager. How can I
I calmly bag it, add the requested side of hot salsa, and hand it
over. I smile, wryly again, and say “here you are, miss, all set- hot
angrily back to the Lexus, pulls back the convertible top and drives
off post-haste with an angry and crudely dumb look on her face. I
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knew what was coming. I had mouthed off to the wrong people at work
than some bitch black lady to epitomize my total hatred towards what
the human race has become. You want to talk about being mistreated?
Yeah, so your mom's mom's mom's dad's mom was a slave way back in
fucking 1886 when germs were demons. Let me play my violin while you
sing the world's saddest song for shit that happened 200 years before
But.
I.
Am.
Not.
A.
Fucking.
Racist.
only was I accused of being Racist, but sexist as well. Do read on.
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I was working the night shift. Wednesday night. That meant I
another year I've since repressed. The foul year of our lord, MMVII.
Any hope of leaving less than eleven hours from then was a lost cause.
Any hope of having a meal less than eleven hours from then was a lost
pulled up. Big Burrito closed at four in the morning. I wasn't even
with a word worth hearing coming out of their mouths at that time of
situation from the start. I finally got a second to sit down, and I
sparked up a delicious Camel Light to take the woes away. Not two
puffs in and her fucking Lexus speeds up as she slams on the brakes
nearly missing the curb in the process. I knew what was coming. It
You know, maybe I was an asshole to that lady- but I don’t think
it matters. I am who I am, and she is who she is. Anyway, I got
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woken up at eight in the morning the next day (Thursday.) It’s the
background, while he’s gulping out “Dude, Zach, this lady is screaming
intelligence last night and she says you discriminated against her
because she was black, and because she was a woman- and she says she’s
going to call the Better Business Bureau if you don’t call her and
apologize. I can’t have that happen, will you please do this for me?”
in less than eight hours after working a twelve hour shift the last
love chicks, of any race, so long as they put out and don't piss me
off. I'm no better than the rest of you. I was not only confused,
He laughs, albeit very quietly. He knew what she was doing, but
what could he do about it? Mouth off to her like I had supposedly
done and risk having her actually call the better business bureau?
She had left now, with her phone number on a piece of paper and a
such a thing. He was beside himself. He says “you’d better call her
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I said, “I really don’t feel comfortable doing that. I feel like
she should apologize to me. I’m not a racist. Why would I work for
you if I was a racist? 66% of the crew that worked last night was a
situation.” That makes one black woman, two Mexicans, and one white
racist when that word carries such a horrible stigma. Let alone a
I called her. I fucking did it; I'm not satan. I sucked it up.
I took one for the team, even though altruism disgusts me.
“Hello.”
“Yeah, I’ve been waiting, and you’d better have something to say to me
understand why you gave me six dollars for something that cost less
“That’s not what this is about. You had an attitude with me, and you
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I was throwing things across the room at this point, and biting
backward from ten to one. I was trying very, very, hard not to become
it.
“I swear to god [I figured I'd bring him in for good measure], ma’am,
“I will accept your apology, but don’t ever insult someone because of
chiffarobe and never found Atticus Finch. Oh well, damned if you do,
everyone these days, you’re nothing but a screen name with a bunch of
numbers after it and a weird character in it that no one can name that
looks like a little “a” with a circle around it. “Commercial At” is
proud of us. You don’t have a race, you have an ethnic background.
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Euphemism. You select it from a drop-down list so that you can be
some kind of fucking statistic in our own 1984 come trickling down
Racism was for the idiot drunks in the south that burnt crosses
in Martin Luther King Jr.’s lawn. I’m not one of them, I don’t think
like them, and I am insulted to have been accused of being like them.
through it, my parents did, and they were only like eight years old
when Martin Luther King Jr. got shot. I grew up with people of all
but other human beings, which they are, and always were, until you
racial disparity.
even know where to place our hate- so we have to take it out on those
who least deserve it. In my case, it was a rich black lady with
political clout that I mouthed off to because she made a dumb mistake
and I’m addicted to nicotine. In her case, she had to deal with some
long haired, pieced-eared white kid with a chip on his shoulder at the
burrito place when she was only trying to get a midnight snack. What-
You've all been nothing but cold and ruthless bitches to me thus far,
think I am. I don’t have a problem with women, I don’t have a problem
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with blacks, I don’t have a problem with Mexicans, Jews, Chinese,
and nothing. I've met them all, save the kings and tycoons, but I
But if you are a dumb-fuck, and I call you out on it- don’t call me a
bankrupt by now, right? If they thought Babylon was bad, I’d love to
see those Bible assholes take a walk down the Vegas strip and not blow
brave. The land of the free. The land of the burgers and fries. The
land of the “lets grab up all the oil we can at the end of the
twentieth century and fuck over our children before we make them cure
our Cancer and AIDS for us.” The land of innocent until proven guilty
fucking swine that gave us the internet, but neglected to take care of
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bastards, the lot. It’s the year 2008, I’m twenty-three years old,
you, you never had to worry about getting your fucking identity
news again, for one reason or another. The world has gotten really
fucked up. All my friends have gotten really fucked up, and society
feel it rather suits me. It’s in my blood. I’m not bad yet, but we
am. I finally found out what it was. I have to be one of the people
who tries to band together with the other ones that haven’t been
have one. Social media is a new part of our cultural identity that we
around me, but I can’t seem to catch it. I’m so happy! To think I’d
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abuse. Is it, now this may be a long shot, because those things don’t
make you stupid? I know I’m going out on a limb here, but for once in
our lives, can we accept the fact that stupid people make stupid
choices and end up ruining everyone else’s fun? Can we accept this?
for a moment and accept that maybe I’m being too judgmental. Ok,
learned from them? For the most part, yes. Have I endangered any
other person but myself in making a bad decision? Rarely. Why is it,
then, that even though I regress at times and may lose sight of common
thing?
people can just make you want to grind your teeth while smashing their
meaning of life?” These are stupid questions with easy answers. No,
and nothing. One wrong answer will leave you with half your money
gone, the other will leave you with half your useful years gone. Most
people pick one of these two things, in one way or another. I don’t
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along the lines of “how in the living fuck can these people get out of
bed in the morning? What keeps them going? How do they feel
to as “normal?”
Really.
and resting in the comfort of our little white picket fence financial
wanted the money, we wanted the hot chicks, we wanted the fancy toys,
and we wanted to fight for them. So that’s what we all did, and now
we have to pay for it. And it’s not my fault, It’s your fucking
kind of ejected out from your woman parts in a horror show of bloody
goop and screaming. It wasn’t a choice. And then they make smoking
illegal in the bar. I hate this place. I hate this planet, and I
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Chapter Two – California
I went to California for the first time. Is that cliché? For me, it
happened a lot differently than a lot of the people that find their
calling out there in the wild west. I didn’t run away to California.
I was only there for like four days. I didn’t take the actor route, I
didn’t take the hippie route, I didn’t take the escape to the palm
trees and traffic route, hell I didn’t even intend on taking the
writer route at that time, but here I am typing away none the less. I
one of the coolest places I’ve ever woken up in. Aside from that one
time I woke up in a big bed with five chicks, a broken phone, and an
empty fifth of Jack Daniels. That was pretty sweet. It was late
really, really big tree trunk. At the same time I figured out where
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Kevin has been my friend since I was seven years old, in second
grade when I moved to Kalamazoo. His first words to me, and I will
never forget, were “hey kid, want to join our club?” Other than my
I feel sorry for him because I’m so crazy. Although our paths have
separated a few times since that day in Mrs. Enderson’s second grade
This was right before gas prices started getting to be such a wreck on
our economy that you couldn’t turn on a form of mass media without
through the southern half of the United States to the grand finale of
Las Vegas, and a second in 2008 which took us West by Northwest to the
root hub of the modern idiocracy, California itself. I’m not going to
We spent the last few months of 2006 and the first half of 2007
called Fourth Coast. It’s a dive of a joint, and I’ve spent enough
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by the dregs of society and college students. For a while, I lived
around, you will see the bum stumbling down the road talking about an
imaginary Asian hooker he fucked in the bushes last night sipping his
sixteen year-old girl smoking cigarettes and wiping ashes off her
vinyl skirt to give her a piece. She smiles, puts the candy in her
razors. He’s there all the time. A stranger with candy. In real
life.
There’s the chick against the back wall wearing too much
Soup for the Teenage Soul. There’s the strung out couple arguing
across the room near the payphone that doesn’t work. The punky
looking blonde with patches all over her messenger bag, and gagues in
her ears nodding her head to the garage band on the radio and writing
cheap over ear headphones nodding his head and furiously punching
buttons. There’s a greasy dude with tattoos all over his face sucking
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down hand rolled cigs at a rate that would put me to shame. The
businessmen come in early for a cup of coffee and a copy of USA Today.
The college kids study for their exams and show each other flashcards
at the bar. A hipster mac user uses photo shop filters and checks out
his hair in a pocket mirror. The poor baristas split their tips and
I always sit in the corner seat, the one with the windows all
around it. It's easy to conceal the Jager you're pouring into the
coffee. That spot that’s always taken unless you show up at four in
the morning. It’d been eight cups of black coffee, a pint of Jager,
twelve hours since I started working on my book, and forty eight hours
since I’d last been asleep. Ah, the life of an artist. Kevin strolls
in, taking the seat across from me. Transvestite waves hello. The
school and never ends. You’re always running into people you know.
worried about how much time it’d take to get to each place, tried to
budget out the gas exactly, talked about what kind of food we’d bring,
and how much time we'd spend at each stop. Where we wanted to go,
what we wanted to see. It’s the first time I realized how big this
country was. I’d been to Egypt, but never really got a taste for the
flying over the Atlantic Ocean, you don’t get much of an appreciation
for how humongous some of these spaces are. I’m not even going to
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bother trying to put into words the majesty of some of the scenic
beautiful.
place is magical. The green of the land leaks out into the road as
nature makes one last vain attempt at getting rid of our dominance.
The Pacific Ocean smacks up against the rocks with the giant old
up yet.
We were only there for two days. It didn’t matter, all it took
was ten minutes on a rock watching the waves come in for me to make it
digging the fuck out of the scenery, pocket full of cash, a thousand
some miles behind me, and several days away from home.
wanted to see everything I could possibly see. I can keep going with
keep seeing things like that. I can keep up with the constant demand
stare at the ocean for two hours every year. I can get through
walking the streets of New York City in less than a day. I can keep
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I knew right then and there that I could never go wrong. As long
can always escape. I may not always have the money, but I will still
be able to keep going just knowing that the chance for me to see
frustrated with the way people chose to approach their defiance. I’m
frustrated with everything I see around me, but at least I know that
really, quiet inside, about a mile back. I still long for the
there are millions of things for me to see and hear about in this
life, and I can get up in the morning and be at peace with the fact
I do not want all of these idiots ruining it for me. I’m not a
the Redwood National Forest kept away from the reaches of spaced out
shit heads that will fuck it up for the rest of us. I want to be
alive. I want to access all this world has to offer me, and these
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Maybe this is a clue. It’s a step on the road to understanding
the differences between myself, the people I keep as company, and all
just looking to escape everybody else for just a second? That doesn’t
explain why some people are idiot fucks, but it’s going to get us
started. I can’t assume that everyone should think like me. That’s
It’s getting more and more crowded, and it’s getting harder and harder
something we want. I’m not just talking about obvious things like the
trees, the oil, the water, and the ozone layer. I’m also talking
about the other things. We robbed all the graves of our ancestors.
a funeral, right? Not that I disagree with people making money, not
things without being compensated for it somehow, not at all. Not that
that we have the Internet, all of that has been blown to bits. Art,
Music, Literature, News, Socialization- it’s all there, and it’s all
free. You can’t keep us away from it anymore. It’s over. There are
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like six something billion people in the world this year, and now
else on the planet. And we’ve all come to the consensus that
Some agree more than others, but I hope that everyone can see the
signs. In the past, we’ve always had something to blame for our
problems. Think all the way back. Egyptians blamed the gods. Greeks
then everyone started arguing back and forth until we all had the
argument sea-fence you were on. Now we have China and India knocking
on the door, the Middle east pointing nukes at each other, Europe
well, just about everywhere except the polar caps. South Americans
concrete, hell we’re even driving over ice roads in Canada to get
Why? We just kept running away from each other until there was
carriages, then cars to drive in and avoid people and homes and
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all started to develop regional differences, and started to fear each
free speech to cover all the brilliant new ideas we were coming up
with. Unfortunately, that let the Idiots have free speech too. Then
guns got involved, and the guns got really big. The guns turned into
rockets. The rockets turned into nuclear weapons. Then everyone got
Traditionally, the people that were smart and built things were
kept separate from the people who worked and made things happen. Not
until these last few centuries has man been able to both be smart, and
sometimes. We can’t all break the mold all the time. That’s what
normal is.
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hate, black and white, rich and poor, light and dark, agony and
ecstacy, life and death, and all the stupid concepts we invented
contingent upon the existence of each other. Are you confused yet? I
don’t think Aristotle would really like that one, but I don’t think it
probably wouldn’t have known anyway. We’ve come full swing back
forces.
questions, and they did it mostly for the right reasons. Times were
great, everyone had a bunch of wine, slaves, money, and time on their
hands. They got together, drank a bunch of wine, fucked little boys,
and then started asking questions like that stoner kid that thinks
life is nothing but Pink Floyd and smoking blunts. “Dude, but what if
the way I saw blue was, like, the way you saw red? So, like, maybe we
all have the same favorite color, but I just see it as blue. Wouldn’t
want to start talking about philosophy, read a six foot tall stack of
books and get back to me in a few years. You have to read them all
the way through, not just put them on a shelf and tell everyone you
read them. Stop telling me “fuck the establishment” while you drive a
Jeep to your two hundred dollar fucking Phish concert. Tell me who
the product of fascist consumerism is, you idiot fuck that bought up
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all their live albums with the special binder, and followed them
around for years because Jerry Garcia was dead and you couldn’t suck
his big money cock anymore. You know what? Patchouli smells eerily
also a meat head movie star. Not that I have anything against movie
think, however, that this particular joke has been played to death, so
How about the Haight district, the hometown hotbed and breeding
ground of the hippie culture? I drove through it. Nothing but the
very same consumerist garbage they tried so hard to escape fifty years
ago on the east coast. Fuck ‘em. I hope they die in a patchouli
fire. Sissy rainbow loving crap it is, nothing but new age crystal
gripping mystical magic mumbo jumbo. Bad Vibes, Bad Karma, Bad Aura.
Maybe these people just don’t like me, but for as much as they talk
about not labeling people they certainly seem to have plenty of labels
for me. Especially when I fuck their girlfriends, god how they hate
it! You know what, dude- you’re girlfriend is pretty hot naked after
new age hippie movement, you are all a bunch of lazy pieces of shit
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that make bad music, bad art, and bad smelling incense. Leave it to
the Indians, theirs smells much better. You are also idiot fucks.
I was even more shocked to see Big Sur, which I heard so much
about from Jack Kerouac. It would have set us back eight bucks to
bother trying to see the rest of the place after that, I just kept
looking out at the Ocean, wishing I was back on my rock. I’m sorry
for what they’ve done to the place, Jack- but I’m sure you saw it
coming.
shit his fault, too? Beat culture? I wonder if that isn’t part of
the reason why The Beatles is spelled that incorrectly. Isn’t that
where modern Jazz and poetry came from? The first time blacks were
Hunter S. Thompson? Holy shit. Yeah, he’s dead now. Been a few
Kurt Vonnegut, Jim Morrison, George Harrison- all of your heroes are
What did we get? Larry the cable guy, Paris Hilton, and the
nameless dog fuckers on American Idol. I hope you all get nuked to
capabilities of the planet, and you film yourselves kicking each other
36
in the nuts with boots on and eating each other’s shit out of an ice
cream dish. God I fucking hate all of you. Dig your own fucking
graves.
How did we get ourselves into this mess? I wanted to know, I had
to know- I decided I would roam around the country a little bit and
could have popped a bubble, but there was something more going on.
one state out of fifty, and I had never really even had a reason to go
greatest weed our country has to offer. I had suddenly become very
accepting of Kevin’s plans for our road trip to end in San Francisco.
So after I realized where we were, and that the trees were really
cool, we had to bide about two hour’s time before sunrise. Kevin
napped in the front seat while I sorted through the last few days
Once we could see the sun peaking through the tree tops, I hopped
Pacific Coast Highway. Fucking gorgeous. Every few miles, the curves
break from the forest and rock cliffs to provide you with a
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breathtaking view of the Pacific Ocean, complete with waves crashing
up against the rocks about two hundred feet below. If you ever get a
chance to drive the Pacific Coast Highway, take it- you won’t regret
it.
the rangers about the possibility of rock climbing, seeing as how that
had been a major impetus for our road trip wanderings anyhow. Our
first trip had started in Kentucky where we tried sport lead climbing
for the first time in the Red River Gorge and really gained an
appreciation for the sport, and for the experience of going to the
middle of nowhere, climbing a rock, and staring off into the distance.
I’ll never tire of it. I redpointed my first 5.8 sport lead in the
gorge, got to the top, and realized I didn't know how to clean.
Bummer. I had to back-climb a clip and risk life and limb to escape
you can only boulder, and the Native American people living in a
because the scenery was good enough that just walking around the place
We spent most of that day wandering about the tide pools, looking
at the foreign ocean creatures there. It was the first time I had
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seen the Pacific Ocean, and the first time I had been to the Ocean
gone through a quarter of the best weed in Kalamazoo, but I was nearly
two thousand miles from home, so that meant I couldn’t call Kenny to
after a cigarette. Kevin was about a mile down the beach, poking at
reaching the top, I sat down and brushed the ocean creatures from my
pant legs. I happened to glance out to my left to see the distant fog
rolling out from the green hills into the cliff face and through the
tops of the redwoods out to the sea. I had never seen anything like
and no sound but the gulls and the waves crashing. Suddenly reading
I figured out why it’s so cliché to walk along the beach and
situation and those sounds. The fresh ocean smells, the beautiful
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land, the captivating fog, the total lack of wandering idiots.
I don’t have a clear idea at how long I sat at the top of that
rock just vacantly staring out into the Ocean. It was one of those
moments that you refuse to end voluntarily. You need something to end
the moment for you. A wave caught my foot and stirred me back to
life.
more because I had all of a sudden begun to feel very heavy. Heavy,
that I was finally doing what I wanted to do. I was free from my
taxing mental burdens for that small sliver of time on that rock. I
had totally been lost there staring at the ocean, and I had forgotten
good and bad. Sometimes there’s that point at the party where
something bad happens. The cops show up, some chick starts puking all
after one too many and hits a tree. There’s always a chance of
the nearest couch (or bed if you’re lucky,) you’ll be fine to party
another day.
40
I don’t want to get into the “live life day to day” mantra
anything other than sitting around doing nothing, really. Idle time
breeds ignorance.
That was the first clue I had. That’s what got the ball rolling
I had always felt like something was wrong with the world around me,
but now I felt closer to figuring out what it was. I felt one of
those “urges” or “callings” that people always talk about, but can
never really nail out a good explanation of what it is. That’s one of
those things that you can’t read in a book. You actually have to take
to be alive. You can’t just sit around and watch other people live
theirs on TV. Maybe too much idle time has turned you all into idiot
fucks.
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Chapter Three – The Open Road
you’re in, but sometimes you honestly just want to sleep. Probably
dining. We eat ravioli out of the can, shop at gas stations, and
sleep in the car while the other is driving. It’s a rite of passage.
You know you can go pretty much anywhere, yet you’re confined to
the safety and familiarity of your car and the road. You can feel at
home while you’re abroad. It’s a great feeling. Any time you feel
uncomfortable, you can just escape to the open road and be gone in an
instant. The best time to experience most of the long highway hours
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Chewing tobacco spitting, drunken rambling, cigarette smoking, foul
rocky mountains and not get yourself killed. That’s why I love
hanging out at truck stops. You may run into some strange people, but
you will rarely run into an idiot fuck. They have no business being
there, unless there’s a McDonald’s inside the truck stop. Idiot fucks
are for the city. It’s our own special sociological breed.
permanency at a truck stop, unless you’re the poor fucker who has to
If the truck stops are the best place to forget, it makes sense
that the open highway is the best place to remember. And on this
trip, remember I did. I had a lot to remember. Life has its own
little way of reminding you it’s there. Especially when you have a
When we left for California, it was exactly one half vacation and
one half escape. I had been diving headfirst into a nice couple of
could ever find any, and I had always wanted to try it. As with any
drug, L.S.D. has the potential to be both very good and very bad.
43
For me, it wasn’t really either. It was a catalyst. Some
The strange thing about L.S.D. that I’ve noticed is that there’s
no real way to place the feeling you’re having. Your brain can’t
sense itself. It’s really weird. For all the good it does us, you
can’t feel your own brain. Even while tripping on Acid. It’s
disappointing. When you smoke pot, you can feel your lungs burning.
When you snort a line of cocaine, your nose burns and you can feel it
mixing with mucus in the back of your throat and dripping down. When
you eat mushrooms, your stomach feels like its being eaten from the
inside by weasels. When you drink you feel like you’re heavy and the
ground is waving around. When you eat some acid- it comes out of
nowhere, and never hurts. You just kind of slowly fade into it.
The first time I tripped on Acid was at Ken’s house. Kenny was
this guy I had gone to high school with, lived with for a while, and
ten hour shift, and I was ready to go smoke some pot and play my
drums. When I got there, Ken looked at me really seriously, and threw
I’m like… that hurts your fillings. He says “No, Idiot- open it,
carefully, and eat it” I do, and see three little pieces of what
looked like a cross between dead skin and the inside of a jelly bean.
44
I threw two of them in my mouth right away, without thinking
about it that much. I had spent so much time wishing I could try Acid
didn’t know how much it would cost. I set it down on the table and
“I say let’s listen to some music, and when you’re feeling fuzzy,
it’s working.”
hour after I ate it, I started feeling what I can only agree with Ken
British prog from the seventies. Around the time “Nimrodel” came
along, I had the distinct feeling that liquid was pouring down my
spine, and then everything started to shift and quake and I knew that
hearing the flute parts dancing around the room, and hearing the
lyrics come from the middle of the room. Ken says “eat the other
one.”
is real drugs. The kind of drug that can fuck up your life really
45
but there’s just something about tripping on Acid in that you can’t
actual peak of the trip itself, which is more mind boggling than it is
anything else. It’s the recovery stage afterward that serves as the
experience the most worthwhile and rewarding. Seeing the walls move,
and having super sensitive hearing is pretty cool, but the best part
is laying in your bed trying to sleep after the fun is over. This is
To me, it feels like after a good ripping Acid trip you have to
lay in bed and listen to your favorite music while you put your mind
don’t know how to handle it, but internal mental affairs have never
really been difficult for me. The concept of putting my mind back
familiar with, but everything seems to look, taste, sound, and feel
just a bit different. You feel like you’ve gone on a trip, and that
must be why that’s the colloquial way to phrase it. Tripping balls.
For sure. There’s nothing like it in the world. Not to sound like a
drug addled maniac, but there’s just something about a good session of
enhancement and satisfaction. Not for children, and not for idiot
46
fucks, but totally useful for adults who are in control of themselves
and feel like exercising their mental abilities. Drugs are all in
a good job, I haven’t fucked up my life anymore than anyone else has.
the drug use. I don’t think I’ve ever broken a law that didn’t
intake. I’ve never been pulled over for speeding, I’ve never been
formally arrested, and I’ve only been in a few car accidents, mostly
user. I don’t even like to call myself that. To me, a drug user is
it’s really cool, I can totally see how someone’s mind could be
should not be in the hands of idiot fucks that will ruin their lives
or other’s.
the head the idiot fuck that decided marijuana, a plant that used to
47
grow on the side of the road in much of America, needed to be illegal.
How do you make a plant illegal? Why did we let this happen? It’s a
problem, right? Wrong. Some guy named Anslinger got it up his ass
that it made you go crazy and rape little girls? I’ve never felt the
people just suck. It’s time for us to get over it. Some people are
walking stereotypes, and you know exactly what I mean. We always have
stress syndrome. We’re always hiding the fact that some people can
That’s not good or bad, it’s a fact of fucking life. When you walk
down the street and feel better than a bum, you are. When you walk
down the street and some slick dressed business mogul walks past you,
he’s probably better than you. Those people at the Olympics flipping
in the air and shit are better than all of us. Maybe not at anything
but flipping in the air, but that’s still something. Maybe you’re
really good at baking bread. Maybe you’re better than me. That’s OK.
It’s good to know where you stand in life. What you are, and what you
can expect. Learning new things, dreaming outside of your reach, and
making goals are all good things, and so is climbing the socioeconomic
ladder, but don’t ever think for a minute that everyone is the same
48
and everyone is good, because it’s just not true. People are really,
Did you ever have the urge to fuck a horse? Me either. Dude,
just go on the internet and type “chick fucking horse” into Google and
yourself that you’re right about everything because you aren’t. There
and you can’t control them. It’s impossible. No matter how much you
want to try, and no matter how much it would benefit you, you
ultimately have no control over any human being other than yourself
unless they give it to you or you take it by force. You will not
take my mind from me unless you are prepared to fight for it.
For about two months before I had left for California, I was living in
had known for several years by now. We were living it up, going out
to the bar and keeping the house clean. It was nice to have a
rather throw their dirty dishes into the kitchen from the living room.
However, Seth was moving to Washington D.C. to take a good paying job,
so his little brother Will was going to take over the spot on the
lease.
49
just paying him to stay there, without much documentation. Maybe
After Seth had been gone a week, I began to start seeing more and
fuck. Some of the guys were really cool, and I could have a
wasn’t accustomed to, but when people know me they have to put up with
dealers. Especially those that take over your house, turn it into a
crack store, and start filming trashy porn in the empty rooms and
house, but if that’s what Will was into, I couldn’t tell him how to
live his life. I just stayed upstairs and left them alone. I figured
they would respect that, and follow suit. They did for a while, but
five in the afternoon, and there would be three guys in my living room
snorting lines off the coffee table. I’d come home at four in the
morning and they’d be right there, but this time there’d be fifteen of
50
human beings. I’d try to go to sleep and hear nothing but the “bump
bump bump” of rap music through the floor, and the random screams of
into my room without knocking and just started yelling “hey” until I
woke up and asked him what he wanted. I got out of bed, and looked
past him down the hall to see two black women (it hurts me to call
them women) with gap teeth and horribly colored weaves on Seth’s
mattress, naked, on all fours, one of them getting pounded in the ass
by a naked black man. There was a video camera on the ground, and a
“You wanna get your dick wet, homie? You wanna get fucked?”
degenerate piece of scumbag dog shit? Why are you fucking hookers in
your friend’s house at five in the morning while he’s out who knows
where doing god knows what while I’m stuck here trying to get sleep
with your disgusting sex acts going on down the hall from me. Stay
the fuck out of my room, and stay the fuck downstairs if you have to
be here!”
time I’ve had it. I go down the hall to the room where I kept all of
the floor with a straw and a razor blade. I had bought that record
for twenty five dollars near mint, and now there was cocaine residue
all over the back of it, and fade marks from having coke ground up on
51
it and into the label. Motherfuckers. Goddamn pig fucking swine.
I walked downstairs, out the door, and down the street to Fourth
Coast to call the police. I hate cops. Not the people, but the idea.
I don’t like to call the cops on other people, because I don’t want to
called Kevin instead, who helped me rationalize and not call the cops.
It would get messy, and the dudes would have a vendetta against me. I
didn’t need that in my life. When you call the police on people like
that, you’d better hope they get put away, because if they don’t-
gonna take over the house, they could have it, but the person with all
the money and all the expensive toys was leaving. I didn’t want my
Coast, which was exactly 187 steps away from my front door, if you
were to include the three front porch steps. I counted one day. As
we were walking back, I could see the front door was open and all the
lights were on, but the cars were gone. I started to get scared, and
ran up to the house. I looked in, and every single knife, fork, and
kitchen utensil with a blade or long handle was stabbed into the
walls. A piece of art that Seth had made with our friend Katie was
52
ripped into a hundred pieces after being stabbed repeatedly with
knives (there were hundreds of knife marks in the wall where the
poster had been. On the chalkboard was scrawled the esoteric message
morning to get some much needed sleep. Later, when my dad came
the couch with another ridiculous story to tell him. I was completely
moved out of the house in less than twenty four hours, and more than
ready to leave town for a couple weeks to hit the open road.
surprise, and nothing sounded better than a good old road trip across
expansion. Sometimes, when the shit hits the fan and everything
around you starts going bat shit, you just have to leave town for a
while. I called my friend Glenn, the owner of the house, and let him
know what was up. At that point he didn’t really care, because the
economy of the State of Michigan was totally fucked anyway, and his
lives sucked so bad sometimes, and we tried to get Will to kick out
the coke heads. He tried to get Glenn to let them move in. Mister
53
headed straight up to wherever you go to issue an eviction notice the
next day. Poor, Poor Mister Glenn. I’ve put so many unsuspecting
many times I’ve moved out and then right back there. They just kind
of laughed and said “welcome home!” I’m really glad my parents are
for them just laughing with me through all of life’s day to day
bullshit problems.
I had packed them up and spread everything out in another house only
to take it all back down again and stack the boxes in my parent’s
basement. They say that home is where the heart is, and I couldn’t
backseat of your car. It really doesn’t matter where you live, it’s
For two weeks, home was my parent’s couch while I waited for my
little brother Josh to move out of my old bedroom and back to his.
of the seats out of the back so we could lay down our bouldering crash
dirt everywhere. From your boots, from your clothes, from the
54
Our first stop was South Dakota to see the Badlands, Mount
nice drive out of town. The snow had just stopped a few days before,
Minnesota while Kevin slept in the back. We pulled over in Blue Earth
filling up the gas tank when I gazed across the parking lot only to
see a giant Sprout statue (the Jolly Green Giant’s son or sexpot or
to check out their hundred feet or something tall Jolly Green Giant
nearby. We followed the signs and found the giant and took some
tourist pictures. It was like four in the morning so no one else was
I woke up in the great plains, which was the first time I saw
stop at all the scenic pull offs we can. You never know what you’re
it’s something cool. I like cheesy stuff like pretty trees and rocks.
I’m a sucker for nature, despite how much I love the city.
our way for our first stop. The badlands, if you’ve never had the
opportunity to see them, look like what I hope hell would look like.
Literally. Imagine a square that was about a hundred square miles and
55
made out of grey plaster. If you were to just hit the plaster in
random places with a hammer for about a million years, you would end
tightly packed sand that has been eroded by rain and snow melting
were more “preservation minded,” we probably would have stayed off of.
were kids we spent most of our time together wandering around being
mischievous.
After our romp at the badlands, we tried to hit the needles, but
the sky was grey, and we could see the flakes starting to come down.
were pretty much crushed. It was too early in the year, and too far
frostbite.
After the obligatory stop at Wall Drug, which everyone should see
56
this trip, if the Jolly Green Giant wasn’t our first cliché roadside
amazing. Faces we’ve all seen in books and on TV since birth carved
on it.
entire park was still closed for the season, so we decided to head
stopped to get some gas in some scary bilge water town at the foot of
the mountains with not much more than a road and a gas station, where
I took over driving. After finding a highway rest stop with a good
through the mountains for the next day and a half. Rockies, then the
Cascades.
rain turned to slush, and the slush turned to ice, and then it got
nasty. I didn’t stop to think about how sparsely populated that area
the tank, five hundred miles over the oil change mark, and one barely
awake driver with white knuckles and a full bladder. We gassed up and
57
headed to Billings, Montana to sleep in a parking lot until we could
grabbed the keys to turn on the battery, and rolled down each front
window to greet the police officers at either one. I kicked the bowl
under the seat, and grabbed for my wallet- which was under the knife I
puts his hand nearer to his gun and says “Please do not grab that
cops on us, the suspicious vehicle from Michigan occupying the shady
spot near the dumpsters. Kevin had chosen a bad place to park.
They let us go after they checked our ID's and all of that.
“We're just trying to make sure you're not drug runners or serial
58
Chapter Four – Montana
gassed up once again, grabbed some food at the truck stop across the
street, and made our way for Idaho. We enjoyed a scenic trip through
the mountainous stretch that makes up western Montana and the Northern
descent into Eastern Washington. After Kevin’s drive through the rest
much there but open space, which is probably why they call it big sky
country. Most people that go there are probably just passing through,
most of the people that live there probably dream about leaving if
like it’s not real, it’s only a temporary place that exists when you
go there, and doesn’t exist any other time. Even if you go back to
the same place, it never looks the same. As I was smoking a cigarette
in Billings, I looked off into the early morning horizon and saw
nothing but blue sky and endless possibility both in the terrain of
59
Here I was, again, far away from home and lost in the endless ebb
and flow of life. Surfing the tides of change, wishing I knew where I
was going in life. Sure, I had my life planned out years ago. Music,
what my life has always consisted of, and hopefully always will
consist of. I can’t help but find solace in the uncertainty of where
in the middle.
future is really even a real thing, or just some idea that we came up
I don’t give two shits, nor a fuck about the future. As far as
I’m concerned, there’s only the past and the present. What happened,
and whatever’s happening right now. I can make plans to hang out with
you tomorrow, but if your drunk driving ass wraps your S.U.V. around a
tree, that won’t work very well will it? Time moves in a straight
line backwards from right this second to back when some asshole
decided to divide into increments the movements of the sun from East
giant ball of gas thousands of miles away spewing out the nuclear
60
chariot of fire being driven across the sky by flying horses and some
When you don’t care about the future, what “will” happen becomes
what “might” happen, and once you get over the need to put things off,
it becomes “what’s gonna happen that you don’t care about today.”
one day. In fact, I wouldn’t even know I hadn’t woken up, because I
You can’t change the past, you have little to no control over the
present, and if the future even exists, it isn’t here yet so you can’t
react to it- and you can’t promise that anything will happen just
because you said or thought it would. Maybe the future is useful for
the calendar industry, but if you don’t make calendars for a living,
then stop worrying about next week and start making today the most
this, but no one ever listens. If today is your last day on earth,
It’s kind of hard to keep yourself in check when you have such a
attainable, some not so much. The first thing in life I ever wanted
shot down real quick. The next was Astronaut, that’s a little more
61
I call them. That makes astrophysics a bit out of my range. No
astronaut antics for me. After that it was musician, and I never
than a big fucking raccoon, I lack the requisite fur, and have a much
larger brain. If I had asked one of them, the response would have
making only enough money to keep me alive but right where I am on the
constantly berated by fools” and I probably would have drank the stuff
under the sink my dad drew a skull and crossbones on, waiting for the
sweet darkness.
of how much faith I lack in life. This is where I have to point out
the eerie correlation between “faith” and “hope.” Right now, I have
no fucking idea how to rescue myself from the peril of being far more
62
education for “proof” of my abilities, the finances to move out of
Does that mean I need to lash out with temper tantrums, a hostile
demeanor, and vast reserves of self pity? No. It just means I have
to get back on the horse and keep trying. Challenges in life are
there to allow you to prove to yourself and others that you can rise
above the petty crap that keeps us from getting what we want or need
from life.
I know I’m no failure. The only people that fail are those that
can’t take things as they come. Hurdles are to be jumped over, and
comes to “life.”
Plants are alive, right? Ask any hippie. They may or not be alive,
but some of them sure are fun to dry, burn, and inhale. Are animals
alive? They eat, shit, fuck, and move around. Some of them are even
far as I’m concerned, no. Plants and animals don’t have to wake up in
the morning and worry about being late for work. Animals don’t need
to worry about how they’re dressed and how great their hair looks in
order to get laid. They don’t go to court when the rent is three
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to any decimal. Life is a concept we invented to refer to the
that shit without wiping their ass with ground up and bleached trees.
When you’re driving through Montana, you are driving through what
“squirrel” and “porcupine.” You see the road carve gracefully through
the snow capped rocky mountains. You see a gas station attendant
for the life of him figure out how my earrings work. He was
fascinated! I had two hollow gauges in each ear, #2, with captive
bead #10 rings going through them, all stainless steel. He just says
“did that hurt?” I said, “like a bitch, but I’m not a fucking pussy.
earlobes to put those gauges in. I can’t really say I convinced him,
I had just said it like I meant it, and he believed me. He didn’t
people who make and understand facts, and people who hear and
conundrum.
What if I told the guy that my earrings didn’t exist, that he was
slipped L.S.D. in his coffee, his wife is dead, and I am with the
I.R.S. coming to collect six million in back taxes before I inform the
64
D.E.A. and A.T.F. about the illegal gun cache slash meth lab In his
What if it was all the truth, and I was just telling you a true
television, national public radio, Harry Potter, and papal decrees are
all the same these days. Coming up in the RSS feeds while you chat on
sort between what was reality two days ago and what was reality just
now before it changed again, that we didn’t even realize that there
grace of god, and the internet. They are nothing in the essence of
God is a reason for us not to hate this life in hope for a better one
later “at some time”, irrational numbers are a way for us to poke at
We live day to day with heavy concepts running through our brains
so much that we forget to say thanks to the dude that held the door
for us at the gas station, we talk about community action and never
65
and a good deal of people not even acknowledging its existence, we’d
potato and grill a burger ourselves, and we’d rather pay someone to
groom our landscapes than learn how to prune a rosebush, much less
appreciate the history and people that brought you that money,
privilege, botanical knowledge, land, free time, and then not even
look at the god damned roses let alone smell them because you’re too
busy thumbing away on the old blackberry to notice the colorful plant
your gardener just put there. It’s her favorite flower, but you
twenty three year old in a coffee shop with a laptop, so let’s get on
as a “gateway” of sorts from what I knew (Michigan and the east side
house and moving forward in life. I think I might put a little too
much emotional investment into my road trips, but I’m getting away
A road trip is just the long road home. You’re only escaping.
You’re not truly putting things behind you. Is that what we’re all
doing? Running away from life slash reality and trying to escape it?
Is that both our desire and our demon? The desire to escape, and the
want not to have to? So is what’s keeping me going the same thing
66
that keeps me from getting where I want to go, or am I serving my own
others with slimy rhetoric and soft money, or in D.C. wishing I was in
big sky country without all the noise and people? Is there even a
considering we just die at the end of it? What happens when the bank
fails? Did Hunter Thompson blow the last hope of the American Dream
67
Chapter Five – The Fall of Rome
success chasing has been solely at the hands of the people that didn’t
system and allow idiot fucks to breed more idiot fucks and spend more
and more of our tax dollars on housing and feeding a new batch of
felt he should get something for nothing for being different in some
way from everybody else, be it his age, skin color, inability to pilot
demonize others for whatever they’re doing that we don’t like, even
Satan, abort fetuses, and have gay sex while heading straight to the
have your unviable child and hate it, breathe our second hand smoke,
68
our own values, we ask religious communities and mass media
being who we are while demanding that we must think for ourselves. If
they wrote “we” as the first word of the constitution, they meant all
of us. Not just me, and not just you. Limiting freedom is
like it if I say fuck in front of your children when you’re the one
that brought them to a bar after ten, but I don’t like it when you
tell me that god doesn’t approve of it. Show me the bible verse that
says I can’t say the word fuck. Fuck is an English word that didn’t
exist when the bible was written. In Greek. Back when America may as
well have been the Atlantic Ocean. Back when “to be free” meant to be
we’ve been trying to keep it for ourselves and take it away from other
69
people. Freedom remains nothing but an ideal, a concept we spend all
our time citing as an impetus for our actions that destroy the freedom
of others. It’s the same shit that’s been going from the beginning of
human dominance on the earth to the minute the idiot fucks could get
on message boards.
About two thousand years ago, mankind had its first major
struggle with one of its own. I am not talking about Jesus paci-
Christ. I am talking about Caesar Augustus. When our robed rabbi was
tenacity. Not until Descartes did we know the concept of “I” again.
concept of zero, and took the time to try to preserve the knowledge we
figured out thousands of years ago, and “god” told you was blasphemous
over Europe again. This time, the big bad U.S.A. was around to smack
Hitler down, piss off Russia, bomb the Japanese, and create Israel
70
(and another century of problems,) with one great bludgeoning from our
bit the dust. We have fixed most of the diseases except the really
scary ones, and we have much flashier toys than any roman emperor
could dream up in a million years. But here we are still, stuck with
with all the dead people? What do we do with the living ones that
will lead us? Who decides? These are all ancient questions, which
many have tried to answer, but all have ultimately failed. Without
planet? Do we? Have you ever even personally seen a nuclear weapon?
forty years before I was born. Yet here we are, here I am, in 2008 in
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Just flip a coin and say it’s us getting bombed by them. Are
Islamic Extremist terrorists just idiot fucks with guns and a head
them, or their beliefs. How did our hate shift so easily from
communists and drug lords to Allah worshippers and oil tycoons? Did
priorities reiterate themselves into the new communists and the new
drug lords? Are we always just stuck perpetually hating those that
think differently than us, and those that bring us what we want but
they’re from, only where they’re going, and what they take on
million year old organic material into S.U.V.’s that we drive to mega
another poor innocent child onto this trash heap of a planet, she has
to get guilt tripped and harassed by the religious right. I’m not
going to start getting on a soap box about “the issues” like some
body politic to think, talk, and act just like him. There’s a reason
72
we have a congress. Things like war, abortion, immigration, taxation,
and health care are things that have so many different facets it
That’s why we’ve been mired in legislation since the moment John
didn’t smooth out all the kinks, and I think they realized that when
were certainly not drafted by idiot fucks. These men knew exactly
what they were doing, acted mostly together, and left us with
heard of.
browsing a book store the other day and noticing the title “Are we
73
didn’t even need to read the book. I know enough about the Roman
how about “what goes around, comes around.” Maybe “Whatever happens
happens”
tits, the families made it powerful after raping the sabines, the
hand with the moral decay that Christianity was protesting. Now if I
say “Columbus found it trying to find a cheap way to get spices, the
powerful, Martin Luther King, Jr. brought it all back together, and
then Christianity destroyed it hand in hand with the moral decay that
Christianity was protesting,” would you know what I was talking about
in 2000 years? Don't you people understand that the world exists how
television on our cell phones but we still can’t figure out that we’ve
been trying to figure out why Rome fell since it fell? We were
wondering about the fall of the Roman empire when “we” were still
74
liked that little bit of social commentary. Does it really matter
what year it is? We’re counting off since “the birth of Christ” which
calendar year on a fictional event that doesn’t even happen on the new
75
Chapter Six – History
own, or even just to Rome's. There have been a lot of people on this
Earth before we got it. They all had to get up in the morning just
like we do, they had to meet chicks and get laid, they had to find
food and money, they had to build nice places to keep their chicks,
they had to figure out their roles in society, and they all died just
like we will.
about with each other, we had to conquer a few things first: fire,
socialization.
record of what happened before the cultures that developed in the four
Egypt, the Middle East, China, and India. Sound a bit more familiar
now?
actually triangles poked in mud with sticks and then dried. These
physical form, and thusly, the most commonly known example that
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We get writing, and what do we do? Figure out how to transmit useful
people that don’t do what we think they should. We fucked up from the
and found the Egyptians there building pyramids and were like “wow,
other smart people- that’s awesome!” They didn’t fight! They had no
reason to. The Sumerians had their river, and the Egyptians had
theirs. They didn’t even know about the other guys, and the other
guys didn’t know about them. Since they were both smart, they started
learning from each other and selling shit. Egypt makes money, Sumeria
becomes Babylon. They both built pyramids. No one really knows why.
idiots and they could fuck their wives in peace. Also, dudes from
India started talking to dudes from China, and then the Babylonians
met the dudes from India, so now we all knew there were a bunch of
other people, and that we had a bunch of land between all of us. We
nearest anymore. We could tame the rivers with irrigation and flood
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we could just beat them up and take it. We moved, then, from being
it was to be smart and invent new stuff to sell. We didn’t want new
stuff, we just wanted more- and we didn’t want to pay for it, we
wanted to take it from other people that worked hard to make it.
several notable city-states, but the one we know most about is Athens.
That’s where a lot of the coolest shit went down that we hear about
you, and just talked about stuff. Everyone could hear everyone else,
and it only mattered how good you were at talking if you wanted to get
something done.
what was going down in India- by that time they had already decided
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that all the things Greeks were arguing about were decided by gods,
and that those gods dictated your life. Also, they had this awesome
thing called a caste system, where you were born into a social strata
that not only dictated who you were, what you did, and what you could
The Greeks figured out a bunch more shit, invented a few gods of
their own, and built some really cool looking buildings. They decided
that not only was writing words cool, but coming up with words for
things that weren’t necessarily real was even better. They wanted to
figure out what made the world work. They started “schools” to teach
younger people what they had figured out in hopes that the younger
ones would elaborate on it. Then what did we do? We killed Socrates
for making people think for themselves. That was the moment western
sociopathic curmudgeons.
buildings and getting smart. People all over what we now recognized
Like Kalamazoo. We really got into naming things for a long, long,
time. We named things like bronze, iron, spear, shield, sword, blood,
Then there was a brief glimmer of hope when some kid named
make them the same as him. He came pretty fucking close. He took on
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his dad Philip’s fight to destroy the Persian empire, like the two
dudes we know now both called George Bush. The Persian empire, which
is what Babylon had become, was the bridge between Europe and India,
sell Greeks stuff, Alexander wanted the Greeks to have all of it- and
getting smart and making cool statues. He got all the way to India,
but instead of taking it over, his soldiers were just like “eh,
whatever, fuck it- you guys just fight with the Chinese.” Then he
fizzled out and got taken over by Rome, who now had the biggest dick.
Rome took all their cool ideas, renamed the gods, forced the smart
ones to teach their kids, and then inherited the legacy. Rome came up
with the republic, where individual people were elected by a big group
ocean, some of them got too drunk on Friday, and some of them didn’t
care- so now we had politicians to “speak for us.” We just kept with
foot.
stayed away from Egypt. They needed Egypt to sell them food, and
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their dick wasn’t big enough to hit Egypt from all the way across the
happened. Egypt was hundreds of years old back then, and they took to
over other societies, the Romans finally got too big to be ruled by
young man like Alexander to get them fat paid and fat laid. A few
dudes tried, named Marius and Sulla, but their dicks weren’t big
enough. Then came the biggest dick of them all, Julius Caesar. He
whooped ass on all of the hippies dancing around fires in what is now
France and Spain, and then butted heads with the other guy trying to
take over the world, Pompey Magnus. Pompey allied himself with what
was the faltering Roman republic and pussy slaveland Greece, and
Caesar took all of his soldiers, promised them a bunch of money, land,
and women, then proceeded to totally whoop ass until he got taken down
by those old men in the senate. Before he died, he adopted some kid
named Octavian he had paid to go to school and get smart, and left him
tried to take it all for himself. Octavian was a bit too smart to let
it happen. He was like “nah, how about we just team up with this guy
that has a bunch of money and political clout, Lepidus, and with our
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Mark Anthony was dumb as a post, so he was like “sure, why not-
money and political clout, that he was smarter than the old men in the
senate that hadn’t gotten such a rad education, that once he got money
and political clout he could totally whoop Mark Anthony’s ass, change
his name to Augustus, and then show that his dick was bigger than
system that could support itself even if someone that was a total
eventually they fucked it up bad enough that the smart ones couldn’t
compensate anymore, and after taking over a good chunk of the world
and getting a bunch of money, the Roman empire split into two parts.
All of a sudden, it was the Europe half, and the Babylonian half
again. The eastern half called themselves Byzantium, the western half
became the Holy Roman Empire. Both were still centered around
Now, instead of learning from the people that came before us, we
do via the people we paid to save us from him. After dealing with
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this, somehow, for about a thousand years, people figured out how to
write down what they were thinking again, and some dude named
Gutenberg figured out a way to not just write stuff down, but to write
it down again and again and again. What’s the first thing we printed
While the idiots around Europe tore down the cool buildings
because they had nothing better to do, and destroyed all the knowledge
were nice enough to remember it all for us as best they could. After
that had their own new version of monotheism. They didn’t want our
that there were other places called India and China that we could
than walking through Byzantium, because they wouldn’t let us take the
bibles through.
the world. Considering there wasn’t anything but ocean to the West,
he should just be able to hit India without having to go all the way
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another two continents, both a shit ton bigger than Europe, that were
Turns out that not only did these people not know about Jesus,
but they didn’t even have huge buildings like the ones falling apart
surely needed bibles more than anyone else. They didn’t want our
bibles, either. Instead of just ignoring them like we did the people
world, there were a lot of smart people left where Rome used to be,
which they now had divided back into city states and took the books
the people in Byzantium had saved for them and started learning from
history, picking up the pieces where they left off with Augustus.
They figured out how to build cooler buildings, make cooler statues,
paint cooler paintings, and they started valuing being smart again.
making cool words for concepts again, but they all start ending with
While all of this was going on, there was still an ass hole in
Rome that was now called pope, who called all the shots. His
a big dick. He just told everyone that he was the only one that could
talk to god, and since there were only a small number of smart people
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Sporadically, all across Europe, people began to wise up and be
like “yeah, whatever, I don’t know about all of this pope to god
conversation business. “ Then some guy named Martin Luther wrote down
some words on a paper that said, among other things, that the pope was
a charlatan, and he didn’t mean shit. Religion was just about god
After this took place, some people in France decided that not
only was the pope thing a stupid idea, but so was the idea of having a
king or emperor there to tell everyone what to do. They called this
their time to themselves, not involving themselves with the two river
basins to the west of them arguing back and forth buying all their
stuff. While there was still a caste system in most of India, some of
the Indians and most of the Chinese came up with this idea they called
guy that showed everybody how to think for themselves. We, western
civilization, thought that Idea was ridiculous, but our dick couldn’t
reach far enough to hit them with it yet. How could those people get
After the French people had the French Revolution and got rid of
the king, they tried to use what the Greeks and Romans had used in
guys, they were elected by normal people, who had now become used to
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parents had done for the last thousand years. Now they could be
elected senator if they got smart enough. But maybe they didn’t want
They could make stuff and sell it to other people instead of taking it
Then, all the smart people realized that the super Christians had
taken over this place called America, where there was a bunch of land
Perfect! Just a generation or two later, there were some very smart
to have our own place called America, not a bunch of colonies owned by
British dudes who wanted to tax the fuck out our tea, wrote the
signed it, paving the way for us to fuck it up again. We call them
the founding fathers. Really smart people like Thomas Paine, Benjamin
built things you couldn't imagine building, and thought about concepts
itself than Augustus did, because they were able to learn from the
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government. Who leads us? Somebody smart, in conjunction with
another much bigger collection of smart people that have the authority
to call him out if he isn’t acting smart. Who decides? Us! But
makes three. One to lead, one to question, and one to answer. A self
each other like Europe did, so we expanded on the city state idea,
made them a bit bigger, and just called them states. Now instead of
having one law that bound the whole nation, we decided that we would
agree on broad issues at the national level, but then leave each
identity as the people who figured out how to live the good life. We
called it the American Dream. Become what you want, because no one’s
going to stop you anymore. There isn’t some big ass hole in the sky
telling you what to do, there isn’t a dick pope in Rome with a million
dollar hat telling you what to do, there isn’t a king telling you what
to do, and there isn’t a feudal lord telling you what to do. Just you
doing whatever the fuck you please wherever you feel like doing it.
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We reveled in it for a while, but forgot to realize that the rest
of the world was still mired in the river basin fight over who had the
bigger dick and who got to sell who what. The smart people in
America, and also in Europe, kept inventing things that made life
Talk about learning from the past. When things burn, they release
Combustion engine. Some things release more energy when they are
had the biggest dick. For some reason, we forgot about that for a
while and started fighting with each other over whether or not we
would have slaves, and whether or not the southern half of our country
and then a badass giant named Abraham Lincoln steered the smart people
back to their senses, planted the seeds of the civil rights movement,
and brought our feuding nation back together. What did we do? Shot
and see in effigy how big it really was. It took two world wars and
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an economic crisis to prove it, but with one big swoop of that giant
big American money:power dick. Then Russia spat out the cum, which
They decided that it wasn’t selling shit to each other that was
cool, but that everyone should be treated the same. They didn’t
acknowledge that people were the same only in body and not in mind.
That totally didn’t work, but they were willing to try really hard so
we let them. Well, we may have let them, but we watched closely, and
made smart Germans we didn’t kill in the war build us dick shaped
bombs to shoot across the ocean, and across Europe right at them.
They were like “fuck that, our dick’s bigger and we’re gonna build
rockets so big that we could shoot them all the way out of Earth’s
hell, why not, right? Our dick shaped rocket made it, and a few
Americans got to show Russia how big our dick was from the moon. And
Neil Armstrong was like “That’s one small step for man, on giant leap
Then America had a personality crisis. After all those guys had
traveled around Europe showing everyone how big America’s dick was,
other guys and arguing about the size. Fuck they did, producing the
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generation we now call “baby boomers.” A few decades before the
second war, we had decided that women were actually pretty cool. They
had brains just as big as men’s, and were capable of doing everything
a man could do. The only real difference was, they didn’t have a
big dick that makes us cool, what is it? That led to even bigger
questions, questions we had put off answering for a few thousand years
natives in our land before we made it America. Our country had a very
Those people didn’t like it, but didn’t have much of a way to
room of a bar singing about what made them sad. Talking about the
sadness somehow connected with other people that were feeling sad.
That music turned into Jazz when it stopped just being sad and
But if black people are sub-human, how can they express themselves?
black people were indeed cool. For the late fifties on into the early
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sixties, everyone was listening to black people make awesome music on
the radio, and then being shocked to find out they were black when
Wild, but it existed within some of our parent's time. Less than 50
years go, man- black people were being treated like a sub-human
After the beat culture of white kids hanging out with black jazz
cats and writing poetry on Benzedrine, we got the Beatles, who created
pop music by having white faces playing black music. This was 1963,
one year before Martin Luther King, Jr. came out of the woodwork and
showed the idiot white guys that still couldn’t believe black people
could be smart that they were totally wrong. Martin Luther King
people’s faces and blaming them for what had happened for two hundred
change. After agreeing with him, and taking massive steps in not just
understanding that black people were cool, but that everyone had the
bad decisions.
down once and for all, but still didn’t want to touch Russia with our
destruction” that meant if our dicks crossed, the world would end. So
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airplanes full of eighteen year old men into the jungles of Southern
Asia to prevent Russians from rubbing their dick on Vietnam and giving
that showing our dick to Vietnam, and thusly to the rest of the world,
simply wasn’t going to work anymore, so we got the hell out of there,
each other, but now since the sixties blew social reservations out the
fucking dudes, and no one cared about who had the bigger dick, because
everyone got to play with one if they wanted to. The world caught up,
and most of the cool people decided that killing each other was
and making more music and art, everyone started to get closer to
couldn’t get to the biggest ones. What is the good life? If it’s
not selling stuff to other people, taking it from them, showing them
our dick, or getting laid- then what the hell could it possibly be? I
would like to, jokingly, suggest smoking weed every single day. Or
at least drinking some whiskey. My dick does just fine hanging out in
my pants.
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Chapter Seven – Transgression
forced to name by name the things I had done that the church didn't
class, when I said 'fuck' too much, when I stole beer from the keg
after the fish fry on Friday night during lent, or when I lied to my
god, but more importantly before the priest. In this case, Father
Mike, our parish priest. From early on, I had reservations about
group of people in unison. Back then, I had no idea why, I just knew
him things I would never openly tell a middle aged adult male in my
adult life. You don’t need to feel sorry for aborting your rape
child. You don’t need to feel sorry for masturbating. You don’t need
to feel sorry for saying “god damn, I can’t take this shit any more,
fuck it.” You don’t need to feel sorry for feeling like you’re a
Nazi when you stand up and sit down like a sheep in church. You don’t
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between the marching Nazis in black and white and the uniform “sign of
the cross” making going on at mass. I couldn’t help it. There didn’t
because you’ve always followed him and everyone else you know does,
“if all of your friends jumped off of a bridge, would you?” Fuck no.
in the middle school football field? That sounded a lot more fun
this day. Everything I’ve ever done that anyone ever told me was bad
still resonates in the back of my mind like I should still care about
I’ve broken every commandment with the exception of “thou shalt not
kill.” Unless you count small animals. All seven deadly sins, every
venial and mortal sin I can think of with the exception of the above
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Any person who tells you how to live your life is a piece of
who’s advice you follow, and who you tell to fuck themselves. Your
choose for yourself. If you can’t think through the outcomes and make
a good decision for yourself, you are an idiot fuck. This is the
clear line that separates us. Those that can take care of themselves,
and those that need to be told what to do because they lack the
fore fathers intended the voting body to be, and that’s why we have
candidate told you he’d give us all free pizza every day for four
years, a free line of coke, and a six pack of strippers, he might win
just for that- and that’s why we need smart people in the government
to act as a tidal dam for the flood of idiocracy that has taken over.
But this negates the claim that the government is run by the people,
for the people. How can we balance this without adding some sort of
of these things seem to work. The problems are too big on a scale
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You can, I wholeheartedly believe, teach yourself not to be an
idiot fuck. You can learn. It’s what we do as humans. You had to
learn enough to eat food and not die, you have gotten that far. Take
some time to notice what’s going on in the world around you. Instead
of drooling over the football stats on Monday night, and wasting your
life away at the bar the other six, flip the channel to a twenty four
hour news network. So it's slanted and biased, at least it's better
different places on your planet. You have to live here with them, you
watch those guys play a good game, and you feel like knowing the stats
inside and out makes you more equipped to talk to your friends.
game because that’s what they feel like they’re supposed to do. It’s
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chose it for yourself. With all the thought and decision making
There are billions of people in this world. We’re all stuck here
saying that sometimes we’re not always going to agree. It’s both a
secular and religious law that forbids killing, but it happens every
the Earth, we will never escape death, and we will never escape the
“lets grow out our hair, rub patchouli on our bodies, and smoke pot
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This time, we need to get to the root of what’s been plaguing us all
It’s not that hard, people. It’s time for us smart people to
stand up and say, “we’re not going to cater to you idiot fucks
anymore, we’ve had enough- and we’re doing something about it.”
do. We can’t tolerate letting them turn our kids into glue sniffing,
vampires!
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Chapter Eight – Let’s All go to the Apocalypse!
permeate your waking mind for days and days after it occurs. The kind
of dream that would cause some guy named John to write the book of
revelations. The kind of dream that you can’t easily write off as a
This dream, while beginning in the same city, took a bizarre turn
now familiar city. This time around, a dimly lit bar inside an
windows, I can see a long sea of pavement where airplanes are taxied
antique fly fishing rods and bolt action rifles mounted near
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I’m sitting at a circular wooden table with five other people in
black hoods. We all drink gin from dark hand-carved wooden cups. I
can taste the gin, and feel the familiar warmth of it flowing down my
dream state.
I ask one of the hooded figures where we’re headed. One turns
toward me, face shrouded by a shadowy black veil, who calmly mutters,
through the window to see a 1930’s era prop plane with what seemed
like yellowing canvas wings and ancient engines sputtering thick black
smoke. We all silently stand and file out the doorway to the tarmac,
the airplane. At the base of the staircase, we meet the pilot, none
other than Teddy Roosevelt, 26th president of the United States, long
He’s not wearing a black cloak like us, he’s dressed in his
man.
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After getting off the airplane, we walk a few hundred feet down a
dirt trail to a horse stable, where we are told by Teddy to “mount and
a small, dark skinned, Spanish speaking man named Pietro, who motions
outboard motor. Teddy politely takes his leave, with a graceful bow
The figures and I board the boat, as Pietro sets off to sea from
the river delta, following close to shore. We bear south, with rocky
sadly underpowered, makes its way slowly down the coast. Off in the
distance, I can see a canyon materialize from the fog on the horizon
three hundred feet in the air. The river flows into a small circular
pool, also surrounded by sheer cliff faces with a small sandy beach
opening into a cave on the far side of the circle. Over the mouth of
the cave flows a raging waterfall, falling from the height of the rock
Pietro ties the boat ashore after running it up onto the beach.
He points, and for the first time speaks. His words come out as
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Spanish, but somehow I understand what he’s saying perfectly. My
to understand what he was saying to me. He says “only one may enter.”
Sounds exciting, and I’m willing to bet it’s going to be me. Dreams
The hooded figures all bow their heads, and Pietro points at me
and says “You have been chosen,” and moves his gesture towards the
turn back to see Pietro sailing the figures away back down the narrow
channel we had just sailed through. I take a deep breath and enter
the cave proper, which opens up into a surprisingly large cavern, with
into darkness.
I take a burning torch from the wall, and proceed down the path.
After passing, I encounter another large room, where I see three doors
with distinctly Mayan looking carvings all over the walls and on the
posts and lintels of the door frames are perched three different
Inside the pediment rests the figure of a bird with wings outstretched
On the right door, there is a circle with a dot in the center. Inside
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the pediment rests a crouched human figure with four faces, each
ambivalence.
closely examine the door on the left. I press on the cold stone, and
hear a noise behind me. Wheeling around, I see Pietro standing in the
beginning.”
The door fades away like a dissipating fog, and I see a grassy
hill on the other side. Stepping out onto the hill, I can see a
the familiar stars twinkling against the black backdrop of space. The
daylight, but the night sky seemed to be more clear and dynamic than I
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eyes, and the bird leaves in its wake the familiar night sky, with
As the bird passes my field of view back on the other side of the
horizon, I hear the word “witness” resound through the hills and
off of my feet as the ground begins to crack and break around me,
tossing me violently and making a god awful racket. As the hill I’m
standing on breaks off and appears as if it’s going to sink into the
abyss, it turns into a giant wooden sailing ship as the blowing grass
powerful wind and driving rain coming from black clouds that have
ambient light fades away. I look up to the tallest mast to see the
thunder, the seas calm and the storm clouds fade away, revealing a
the waterfall from the center of the cove. Pietro asks of me, “do you
sense at this point that Pietro is some sort of guide, not there as a
part of the experience, but merely an arbiter. I step back onto the
shore, cross under the waterfall, and head back into the cave without
turning back.
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Where the door I entered had stood was now a ruinous pile of dead
looking stone, and the stone bird was nowhere to be found. I notice
the eyes of the stone jaguar above the middle door have turned an
hear Pietro say “proceed” from behind me, but I already know what must
destination in sight.
jaguar running next to me and keeping pace. As I look into it’s eyes,
I hear Pietro’s voice softly speak the words “Witness the end.” The
the end” as it becomes a glimmering black and jade streak fading into
the horizon. I can see land materializing at the end of the bridge
where the jaguar’s figure has faded into the black. The bridge
in the last room. I see the unrestricted view of the dazzlingly clear
night sky. The golden bird screeches in the distance like it had
before, but as it reaches its apex, the Jaguar leaps from somewhere in
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Whoa.
universe begins to suck itself back inwards towards the point at the
the center along with the rest of the universe. The land around me
just outside our own solar system. I arrive just in time to see the
golden bird burst from the center of the sun as the planets align like
pigs for slaughter allowing the bird to blow through them like a
distance carrying the now limp and stone colored bird proudly in its
The cave rises above me in an instant, and the second door has
now crumbled to dust and the third door is left wide open, with Pietro
perched at the top. He’s crouched in the same position as the figure
guard, and says “witness your true nature. You have no choice.”
With that, he jumps from his perch, walks coldly past me and through
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the waterfall where he dives into the water and swims top speed toward
I reluctantly enter the room on the other side of the open door,
and the air seems musty and thick with dust that scatters the light
into visible beams stretching down to the floor. The beams of light
but firm to walk on, and I pace about the room trying to make sense of
who has a sad look on his face. He seems reluctant, yet determined to
interrupted.”
look around to notice that the shop décor is uncannily similar to the
décor in the airport lounge. I walk over to a map display, and pick
Belize.”
I tear open the map and frantically try to locate the cove I had
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around to see a fat middle aged woman with graying hair and a camera
strapped around her neck. She flashes a friendly smile and says “Did
you take the coastal tour? These things always seem to end way too
soon.”
“You wouldn’t believe the half of it, lady,” I say with a movie
star smirk. As I look over her shoulder and across the room, I see
me over the brim of a wooden gin cup grinning wryly as my snooze fires
up again. I tear the alarm clock from the outlet and throw it across
the room unable to fall asleep again as I’m forced to accept that I
can’t find my true nature in a dream, and have to get ready for work.
just seems to be some dreams that scream “I’m trying to tell you
brought up the cool little pseudo-philosophical idea that you can re-
live your entire life, or have a different life entirely, in the dream
world in the first few minutes before your death. It was interesting.
Mostly avant-garde and artsy, but the point got across. There’s a few
sequences near the end about lucid dreaming and finding out if you’re
in the dream world. It’s worth a watch if you ever get the chance.
It just goes to show you how some people can find meaning in the
strangest parts of the world. There always seems to be some new angle
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changing world, you’ll come to realize that you don’t know a fucking
thing.
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Part Two
The Present
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Chapter Nine – I Make Burritos for a Living
day makes me want to shoot the brains out from the back of my skull.
The dreadful barrage of mindless idiot fucks that can pour into a
his greasy head. The never say die hippie washout with the Tevas and
white ponytail. The drug dealing black guy with a diamond stud in his
ear big enough to put on a Stepford wife’s ring, rope thickness gold
chains, platinum tooth covers, and a six inch stack of fifty dollar
bills that walks out to a shit pile car from the eighties. The
crooked toothed bitch of a fat woman with body rolls leaking from her
sweat stained sleeveless plain color cotton tee shirt. The drunk Fed-
can’t shut up about it. The lonely balding thirty something staring
at the bartender’s ass wishing he had found the one before it was too
late. The immigrant, doesn’t matter where they’re from, fresh off the
chatting away on her phone. The greedy yet thrifty business man in a
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polo shirt who’s bumming about the economy and his wispy stock
portfolio, so uses a coupon and tries to talk me into giving him extra
meat for free. The well meaning, but neurotic frizzle haired lady
sour.” The charlatan art school students with turtlenecks and berets.
just now because that motherfucker owes him money. The smelly
unshaven fat guy with the all your base shirt that you know just wants
to go home and spill burrito all over his keyboard jerking off while
There’s always the nameless scruffy “rebel” face with the mall-
bought pre-torn khaki pants and a factory faded Che Guevara shirt.
The terrifyingly cute, yet tragically clueless blonde in the giant bug
sunglasses and a striped pink and white sundress that barely goes down
her thighs. The couple that argues with each other about whether or
not the wife has a hat like mine, which turns into an argument over
whether or not the husband likes hot sauce on his tacos. The
grandfatherly wise old black man with the classy hat to match his
three piece suit, with a soothing southern drawl that, although very
nice, is holding up the now very long line. The squirmy democratic
party weasel that drinks free tap water while reading newspaper
articles out loud standing so uncomfortably close that you can feel
his rotten breath on your neck. The sunken eyed bulimic that orders
something the size of her torso, and pukes in the garbage can instead
of the toilet. The balding middle management jackass that won’t stop
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giving me cliché in-store marketing ideas. The flashy rich kid with
his pink collar flared up, too much gel in his short bleached-blonde
hair, and aviator sunglasses that might hide his bloodshot eyes but
can’t cover the white powder stains on his nostril. The stuttering
meat head that just wants meat and cheese, so he can drip another
stain on his fading NBA jersey. The cheerful blind guy with a wild
moms way too fucked up on vicodin and xanax to be driving a two ton
tight black dress sucking down Marlboros and well whiskey like there’s
no tomorrow. The all too familiar “wishing for something better” look
The vapid stare of a teenage girl that doesn’t want a taco, but that’s
what abusively drunk daddy is going to buy for her, god damn it. The
walk in the footsteps of the lord and have a blessed day. The chatter
jawed meth head that comes in and talks to me about Slayer albums, and
how bad Metallica has sucked since they met Bob Rock, and even though
the new album is good without him, they’ll never be the same again.
The gay old man with dangly earrings that calls me “sweetie” and “hot
buns.” The screaming red faced drunk idiot that met the owner at a
bar some time last March and demands a discount because of it. The
street kids that come in for a drink of water, then use the bathroom
to piss on the seat, wipe shit on the walls, plug the sink, and carve
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“fuck” in the mirror. The “insert random face here” teenagers in
European soccer uniforms that make me turn off the history channel so
they can watch poker on the T.V. with audio. The guy in the decked
out Jeep that gets mad because the drink isn’t free with his burrito
Then, of course, there’s the long haired white guy wearing too
much stainless steel jewelry that’s behind the counter ringing you up
and wishing he could take a break just long enough to head out back to
the cooler and kill himself, but he won’t be able to step away from
the cash register for the next six hours. I could go on and on for
forever and a day about the people I see while standing behind that
screen and pressing buttons. One of them told me once, “it takes a
lot of people to make a world.” I guess so, huh? Some of them tell
me we’re all the same, and some people tell me we’re all individuals.
No matter what side of the fence you’re on, the next time you stop at
a restaurant, take a second to step back and see what that poor fucker
behind the cash register has to deal with for a change. Put a dollar
treat you like shit and who’s going to be that refreshing face in the
crowd that says “hello” back to you before going ahead with making
piece of shit, saying that would be out of line. I’ve run into plenty
of perfectly pleasant people. People that return your eye contact and
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greeting with a smile, a friendly hello, and maybe even some sort of
your day,” or sometimes even “ooh! I really like your earrings!” The
lady that came in last week, and remembered the conversation you had
with her about your trip to California. The guy that asked your name
after you remembered his order, and then shook your hand with
respectful vigor while looking you in the eye and honestly saying
respectively silent when in line, order their food politely, and don’t
make a mess of the table. The strippers that toss a few free passes
into the tip jar with one of those winks that would sell her to any
joe six-pack stupid enough not to figure out what’s happening to him,
but can also tell a long story about the girl’s comfort level with
herself. The guy next door at the pizza place who just came upon some
killer weed and wants to spark one up after close. The people who say
“excuse me” before they interrupt what I’m doing to ask me to get
something for them. There is always the kind old man with a dear old
lady that wisecracks his way through the whole transaction with the
look you in the eye, speak politely, and show some small sliver of
respect.
That’s all we’re asking for. You don’t need to ask us about our
and we’ll probably do the same. Don’t make ridiculous demands of us,
talk on your cell phone, leave your trash everywhere, hit your
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see it anymore. Keep it at home, America. Keep it at home. Your own
transgressions are only side tracks on the path. Just don’t involve
understanding. March from birth to death with your own god damned
feet. Jesus won’t carry you down the beach, and I won’t either-
We’re all wondering what the hell the point of all of this is,
and we’re all stuck wandering around with our heads up our asses
all know together. It’s a world made for a nice ivory tower
circumstances you can be born into and rise above, so many different
people you can see and interact with, so many monuments that we watch
some dude was that most people don’t care about anymore anyway.
So I keep beating around the bush with this concept of “the good
ivory tower and say the good life is a life lived free from regret.
Free from random acts of mindless terror by idiot fucks. Free from
corrupt government.
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The good life is not a life free from pain, suffering, contempt,
are still things that occur out of random chance that we cannot
for the future. You have got to take the good with the bad. The good
life cannot be lived without understanding the bad life. You can’t
ever know everything in your life time, but there’s no sense in giving
up the attempt.
The trying times in life allow us to enjoy the times we’re happy,
in the world that have things worse off than we do. Pain reminds us
accept what happens around us. The death of others reminds us that
we, too, will die like everyone else. Contempt reminds us we can’t
always be right, and that everyone has a different opinion. There are
The good life, itself, might be the end goal that we’ll never be
able to reach as a society simply due to the fact that it can mean so
can’t have.
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Can I live the good life while spending my life wanting more, and
what the point of wondering, or even hoping for a better tomorrow is.
Any way you slice it, it’s going to be a long road home. And in the
end, whether we figure out ourselves and the balance between who we
are and what we want out of life or not, we’re all still going to die.
Fuck.
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Chapter Ten – A Renaissance man
but we’re all forced to come to grips with reality sooner or later.
It doesn’t matter how silver your spoon is, some time you’re going to
really doing any actual good. Are we right to interfere with their
in, love, and lament their seemingly forced predicaments? What if you
had the misfortune of being born into some bombed out wasteland,
simultaneously trying to create your own? Would you want someone else
coming in and talking about how great they have it and how they can
in our society with the exception of the few outliers and people no
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pseudo-ideal that we all metaphysically long to become in our constant
fifteen minutes of fame we’re all supposedly granted? How does one
step out of line, think outside the box, or leave their mark? How do
Love your brother, do unto others as you would have them do unto
you. What the fuck are we talking about here? Accepting each other,
fearing each other, and avoiding each other? We should all be butting
heads and arguing, not pacifying each other out of fear of offense.
having the good life that we’re willing to take any risk, any shot in
the dark that might offer some sort of solution to the problems facing
around each other, and our need to escape one another. That which
binds us is our desire to break that which binds us, forever mired in
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ideologically frustrating conflicts of interest we escape by any means
chemicals. We’ve all got to cope with the same day to day stressors
pockets and try to forget that some people think differently than us.
much that we feel like we are required to write all these things down
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to prove that we are, in fact, a person; and, in fact, possess an
identity all our own. We’ve leveled the playing field to such an
stand for, what we want, and what we believe in. Our opinions change
by the minute with every fleeting passion and shattered dream. We’re
us, and how we’re feeling at the time. With all of these dynamic
interpretations?
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and all the people after him that have benefited from the Latin phrase
and that realization that helped society remove itself from the depths
at the same time learning from all the lessons taught us by the
countless people that existed before us and left their legacies in the
teach each other. Why does the word “dream” mean both ‘what happens
in our minds while we sleep,’ and ‘what we wish reality and, moreover,
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Chapter Eleven – Love
in that biological, “my dick fits in them” way. Sex is one of those
things that we have to do, but have invented an entirely separate life
and identity devoted to its hunt and capture. I’ve never had a stable
pointless waste of time. I know this is hard for many people to agree
Romanticism and Sex, however, are not. Men and women are entirely
equal except in the fact that the sex organs of one go out, the sex
organs of one go in. They fit together nicely, like puzzle pieces.
Talk to them. Make friends with them. Buy them shots at the bar.
But at the end of the night, when most of them go home with other
guys, I’m headed to the coffee shop to write for four hours in a
notebook. I’m a social creature, but I can only take so much of the
garbage dialectic.
sleeping with them, it’s all good- sex and sexuality in the twenty
first century are nothing but concepts just like anything else. My
the second I wake up to the second I pass out drunk on the bathroom
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floor of an unfamiliar house. I’d be scared to think that anyone else
thinks otherwise.
ourselves off, shave faces and legs, apply various lotions and
places that fit with what we’re pretending to take interest in, all in
barbie doll and have a nice house with kids and a dog and a bunch of
junior year of high school, and have been cutely smitten with one
parents were members of the post world war two generation porking all
sixties, junior high for disco, and graduating from high school before
coke hit big. My dad played sports, and my mom hung out with the
other chicks and worked at J.C. Penny. My smart fucking dad got a
Then I was around to watch the whole god damned American Dream
thing fall apart like glass under boot. I woke up the other day to
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strangely distant voice says “and in the markets today, and
Stock market crash. Not quite as bad as it was before World War Two,
year and a half, I went to a bagel shop every Thursday morning at Six
Thirty A.M. for a salt bagel with plain cream cheese. There was a
cute girl that worked there that I think I went to high school with.
I barely recognized her, I’m sure she had no idea who I was. I smiled
at her, she smiled back, and I put a dollar in her tip cup. One day,
I just stopped going. I don’t know why, but I’ve never been back
there since. It’s not that I don’t like bagels anymore, in fact I
could probably go for a salt bagel right now. That’s beside the
point.
She’s a cute blonde with piercing eyes. The kind of girl that looks
like she drew horses in high school art class. She was very cheerful.
She always knew my order, and yelled it back to the cook as soon as I
Zach.
benefits,” the chicks say, but “sex with a friend,” I say) over the
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years but none I really cared about except a handful. They were all
about two of them. They added a nice literary contrast to each other,
one being an innocent high school fling, the other a full fledged
relationship trainwreck.
sisters, and heard news people talk about gays, teen pregnancies, and
I’m a fairly perceptive person, and I can’t help but notice what’s
colored disposable plastic cup that cost five bucks, I hear and see
girlfriends come and go. I’ve watched them soar high on that rushing
feeling you get when you meet a new person that adds some excitement
to your life. I’ve watched them get mutually and subsequently crushed
when the rushing feeling goes away. I’ve seen them get drunk and
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fight. I’ve seen them cheat on each other, lie to each other, make
up, break up, and drag each other down. I’ve seen dudes get saved by
seen people meet, marry, and have children. I’ve even seen a couple
of my friends get divorced already, and I’m only twenty three at the
The only times I wish I had a girlfriend are when I feel like I
need to be showing one off. I feel kind of sick about that inside.
Now marital status has become a conceptual drop-down list just like
marketed to.
“no.”
“Oh. Why not? You’re cool, you’re kind of hairy but not ugly”
“yup.”
“nope. Clean.”
“medical problem?”
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“nope, healthy.”
“I have it.”
“What?!”
of wine and laughing with a woman. I like holding hands and walking
down a city street at night. I like watching the snow fall in the
park. I like to sit under the stars. I like to walk down beaches and
and walking in the rain. I like to go to the woods in the fall and
look at the colors of the trees. All that crap. I love my life, I
love being alive, and I’m happy that I can share that love with other
people. There's so much to enjoy in the world around us, I just don't
understand why people waste their time with people that drag them
down.
I like pet names, I like the smell of fruity shampoo. If I get drunk
enough, I’ll dance. For every time I get angry or upset about life,
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come. A fading reverie of a time when things weren’t as bad as they
are now.
which really wasn’t that hard, and I hand wrote messages to her. I
went out and bought a nice looking red heart shaped box, wrapped the
cookies in tissue paper all artsy and whatnot, and tied it shut with a
ribbon. We went out to a movie, and afterward, I handed her the box.
She takes the box, opens it, looks at them, closes it, throws
them in the backseat and says “I’m not hungry, let’s go back to my
brought her back, and she left them in my backseat. I was crushed.
Ever since then, I have hated Valentine’s Day. I thought people liked
satisfied. I’ve had, and still have, friends that I wish I could
spend every minute of the day with, but the good times never seem to
last. I’ve never felt totally comfortable with another person to such
an extent that I thought I could spend the rest of my life living with
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I don’t want to have a girlfriend just because I feel like I
should have one. I don’t want some girl hanging off my arm unless she
something everyone seems to feel and know exists, but no one can
define it or control it. Love can mean many things. Passion, desire,
of the whole. I love this, I love that, I love you, I love him, I
love her, I love it, I love them, I love nothing, I love everything, I
dogs. All things I hear and say all the time. Words we use every
day. Concepts we throw around at each other, hoping the other has the
same opinion.
things shaped like hearts. Love has become something that everybody
wants, everybody expects, and everyone feels empty without. But how
can you take away emptiness with empty love? Why do I see so many
someone? Why dedicate yourself and your love to a single person with
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story books. Want to have meaningless sex? Do it. Wear a condom,
take the pill. If you want to have kids, have them. If you can’t
raise them, don’t. These things are self evident. We’re supposed to
rubbing your clit on the internet? Do it, why not? Want to get
married? Want to get divorced? Go for it. Kids make for great tax
write offs. They also must be a lot of fun to teach and watch grow
up. I just can’t imagine that I’ll ever find what I really want in my
fuck with a six pack and a healthy tan like always. We’ve also taken
have it, we want it. If we can’t have it, we rest assured knowing
so. Anything we invent about the interaction between us and them can
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instead of perpetuating our traditional forms of family life, cultural
does that term even mean? It supports some sort of committed feeling
to some other person that the other person may only feel to a certain
of friends who were girls. I mean, they're half the population, you
don’t want them to get hurt. The same as any other friend I have.
They’re definitely not my girlfriend, but when I’m with them- we get
was saying yes, but I’m not. Why should they assume? Why should they
care? Why can’t they just assume I’m trying to have a good time like
with someone I’m just trying to party with and hold down the keg?
I can’t help but finding myself asking the question: “why don’t
a park somewhere in Chicago not too long ago with a friend of mine,
just given up. It was the truth. I’ve met so many people in my
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I guess there’s some biological urge to propagate my species that
But that’s not even part of why I hang out with them.
I’ve seen them meet guys, break up with guys, cheat on them, fend them
off, and cry over them. I see their boyfriends treat them like taken
for granted piles of meat. They take them out to the bar and show
them off to all of their friends, and then I have to hear the girls
talk late at night when the boyfriends are gone about how they don’t
give them orgasms and can only fuck for ten minutes. Years and years
else, man or woman. Things come up. People come and go. You never
You know what? The whole god damned process makes me sick. I
dick wet. I absolutely love having sex. I just don’t feel the need
to pursue some other person and make them shape their life around mine
just so I can fuck them. It’s not that big of a deal to me. It’s
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just one of many pleasures on this wonderful planet that we try our
I’m not into the whole twisted Hollywood sexuality either. I’m
not gay, for whatever reason I don’t really have any gay friends, I
don’t know any swingers, and I try to stay out of the affairs of
moral choice is what kind of people bring sexual pleasure, the virtue
going to just accept any girl that comes my way so I can select “in a
time devoted to one person that may leave me at any time. It’s
terrifying. I have plenty of love to give, and I feel loved from the
give one person, it’s something I give and receive to and from many
For someone to make the demand that I would be only with them all
the time, or insist that they are attached to me when in public, would
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only result in repulsion. I like being touched, but if I’m at a party
accessory that I keep around with presents and mind games. I don’t
If I don’t like you, you’d probably know it. I don’t waste my time.
which therefore means that you can be fucking sure that I won’t be
lengths to help out my friends and ensure that they have a good time
when they are with me. My friendships are the things I value the most
don’t need one, and I’m “picky” as they say. The reliable sex would
not Love. It’s just something that people can do together that
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monogamous relationship, but only with a person that I honestly felt I
I never know how to approach the whole thing anyway, and it seems
like every chick worth having is hanging on to some idiot fuck anyhow.
If I find some brave woman that naturally just assumes that position
by her own right and certainty of that right, I suppose that’s the
only way it’s ever going to happen. The love of another person,
and care for. That’s what love is. Not some stupid fucking
in the civil union and tax sense that allows you to pool your assets
legally because you feel that you can rely on the other person to take
care of your old decrepit ass as it falls apart from too much
love is just another name for an idea we all seem to share. Another
explained.
I wish and hope for a love like that, but I don’t honestly think
it will ever happen. That kind of love is rare, and I spend entirely
too much time devoted to my own ends that I don’t think anyone could
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ever tolerate being around me for that long. I can’t say I would
perhaps forever, I am content with myself enough that I don’t feel the
feel like I should have to pay for. I don’t want a woman as a prize,
But what do you care anyway, John. Q. Public, you’re dating that
hot blonde behind the counter at the bagel joint. You are an asshole.
of a promising toddler. Have fun with the three kids after the
divorce and inevitable weight gain. I hope you spend your forties
taking xanax and wishing you hadn’t married that piece of shit waste
sudden, and I called my friend they’d just say “yeah, I got the update
from facebook on my phone in class… what’s her name?” But they’d know
I remember being in law class back in high school and hearing the
phrase “never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to.”
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That’s some really interesting advice. Doing dumb cartoonish shit
like stressing over who I was going to take to the school dance was
Never ask a question you don't know the answer to. I'll rephrase
it, and add a clause- Don't ask if you don't know, or have a really
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Chapter Twelve – A Citizen of the World
certain extent how the world itself works? Is that even possible? What
one of them. Is that really the top of the hierarchy? Is that the
that where we’re all headed? Down the funnel from the melting pot to
to go wherever they feel, do whatever they want, say what they want to
say, and think what they want to think without fear of reproach, then
you want or need, and no one ever has to suffer? Would you want that
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balance your winds of change? No ideological conflicts? Is that
there any difference between the two? Is there really any difference
corrupt facade?
We solemnly kept up the search for “truth.” We’ve got the possibility
all over earth, just waiting for our world leaders to have a nicotine
humanity the day America brought us all into the nuclear age. That
point has been argued to death, along with every other point any one
had, ever, since the whole fucking thing got started with the dick
you find a person you can actually relate to, even thousands of miles
that really caught our attention. There was one site we almost took,
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safes to keep the animals away, and a wooden latrine all centrally
located around a fire pit with a metal ring. It was less than a mile
away from a paved parking lot with running water. We thought about it
hiking coolers full of beer down the paths. Here I am trying to enjoy
We drove down a rutted out two track designated on the map as a cliff
line area near an old World War Two outpost. We barely made it back
there, dodging overgrown roots and foot deep ruts. We figured there
dropped off three hundred feet to the Pacific Ocean, and the campsite
was a mile hike up the hill with barely a path and no lights at night.
Real camping. We brewed some tea on the camping stove we brought with
“Hey!”
pass a fellow woodsman, you say hello. It’s common courtesy, and a
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“What’s up?,” we respond immediately.
rustling grass and footsteps. A guy about our age approached, looking
We’re a little taken back, and I say “…yeah, how did you know?”
“Oh, there’s a car parked in the lot with a Michigan tag on it.
I’m from East Lansing, I moved out here a few years ago after I
visited. Got a job down in Arcata, and I’m staying with the logging
Michigan, they’re gonna smoke bud. “Yeah, we smoke- but I just ran
“It’s all good, I’ve got a joint left that we can smoke after I
set up camp. I have some sausages, too, if you want them- I can’t eat
them all myself. Plus, if you guys are headed south tomorrow, I can
probably find you a sack in town if you don’t mind checking out
Arcata. We can get a beer or something and I can show you the city.”
thousand miles away from home, but we had a few things in common, and
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better yet he was going to solve my weed problems. “That’s fucking
Nate took his leave, marching back down the hill to get his gear
and set up camp. I began to feel a little under the weather, so I got
back up, and he smoked the joint with Kevin, but I had a pounding
headache and just wanted to sleep. I know it must have been bad
heard Kevin and Nate talking by the fire. I listened to the sound of
the animals, the peace of the starry sky, the crack of the fire, and
the low chatter of two new found friends. Life at that moment was
around me. A friendly face in the fog. Pick your metaphor, it was a
Nate went on to tell Kevin the story about how he ended up out in
seeking escape from the rest of the country. It must be sad when they
get there and find out it’s all the same no matter where you go. I
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I was having a hell of a time trying to get some sleep. My
heartburn was flaring up, my head was pounding, my mouth was dry, I
shook myself awake around two so I could go down the hill to the car
and find my TUMS and Aspirin. I grabbed for my headlamp and walking
stick, and headed down the trail for a dark and treacherous voyage
As I step out into the clearing next to the road, I hear Nate
call my name. He tells me he’s about to head home due to the cold,
and gives me his phone number so we can call him in the morning and
get directions to Arcata. I thanked him, and told him we had a nice
He hopped in the truck and took off down the dirt road, and I went for
the meds.
the middle of the night, I opted for a warm nap in the back of the
car. After a healthy swig of water, some calcium carbonate, and a bit
sleep.
pacific ocean from the cliff we were parked on. I couldn’t help but
but smile even bigger knowing I was going to be scoring some legendary
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After some personal time pondering what I was experiencing, I set
up the hill to the campsite to see if Kevin was awake. I found him
poking at the fire with a stick, brewing a cup of tea. I told him I
had slept in the car, and he told me about his conversation with Nate.
We broke camp and set out south in search of good food, hot coffee,
the call. Arcata was about two hours south of us right off the
got off the exit, I noticed that there was no real sign of habitation
anywhere. Since we had been told, we figured it was the right way to
go, but if we hadn’t been told there would have been no reason to
We took the exit, followed the roundabout, and drove about three
miles down the road as instructed, turned right, and found ourselves
the sun poked out from beyond the broken horizon and punctuated the
set out on foot to the pedestrian square. After a short walk, we came
to the statue in the center of the park, where we met Nate. After the
places in town, about the college, about the beautiful women, and
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about the perfect weather. Pacific Ocean less than an hour away,
It was about noon, and the dude with the grass didn’t get back
from logging camp until five or so, which left us with a few hours to
kill. We shot the shit a while, checked out a local donut shop with
some fucking delicious cake donuts, browsed the used bookstores, and
directions to his house. We grabbed a late lunch waiting for him, and
I found an ATM to get the seventy bucks to get the quarter of grass.
Seventy a quarter was thirty less than I had been paying at home, and
We drove down the dirt road to the farm that Nate was staying on.
It was a pig farm, and the farmer had allocated a small amount of land
for a small real estate venture, along with a few spaces for R.V.’s.
buried bottle of Patron from the back of the car, and we knocked on
the door.
a shot of Tequila, and talked about where we were all from and how we
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got to Arcata, California. There were a lot of interesting stories,
as any experienced traveler can testify to. It seems like people that
live with the understanding of an entire world around them always have
After another round of shots, we headed out back to the R.V. with
the dope. The guy, I can’t remember his name, reminds me it’s seventy
for the quarter. I surrender the cash, he retreats into the R.V.
adventures. He smiles, pulls the bag from his hoodie’s front pocket,
seen in my life. Had I not been three double shots of Patron down, I
you” about ten times. We went out back to see the pigs and smoke a
farewell cigarette, and Kevin and I loaded up the car for the drive
to stay in touch.
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on this Earth that loved his life and yearned for the experiences it
has to offer.
requires that you understand the world has many faces, cultures,
opinions, customs, and ideas. It goes without saying that you would
personal level. It’s a strong bet that you yearn for the new, respect
the old, and take full appreciation of the time between. Being a
intellectual revolution.
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Chapter Thirteen – A Life Raft on Stupid Sea
school. His dad flew out there with us, rented a car, and drove from
technical climb, there’s a path that goes right up it. There’s not
The point of going was never to climb the mountain, it was to go.
idyllic, and you can drive around the mountains and view a hundred
years of mining history. The town itself isn’t that big, but has a
nice downtown area with shops like any other American town. There’s a
main street that runs through the major business area, and out into
the mountains. Just before you leave town, there’s a small restaurant
voice writing your order on a pad of paper she took from her stained
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We ate there a few times during our stay, and I’ve always
beautiful view of the mountain range we were staying at the foot of.
I’ll never forget the experience. It’s one of those moments I cherish
and keep in the back of my mind for trying times. I’ve been friends
with Kevin for so long that he and I have been able to share many
moments like this. Beautiful scenery, time well spent, and memories
There’s a guy that comes into Big Burrito named Bruce. He’s an
older guy, well traveled and well spoken. He orders tamales, loves
was born in a small mining town in Colorado. Out of the blue, I just
that’s the first time anyone I’ve met has known about that town.”
again, and said he remembered the food not being so good, but recalled
it being a good place none the less. “Ah, the metal ass, I remember
wasteland. A dick smack spot on the map with no significance but what
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Memories aren’t always so connected with the places as much as
value to our time spent on this planet and around all these people.
We remember what we like, and what we need to stay away from. They
say a picture is worth a thousand words, but a good chunk of time well
that you respond to emotionally and often share with other people.
Finding another person that you can spend valuable time with, and
a good place to spend it is like a life raft on stupid sea. Every day
ourselves with, it’s so nice to feel alive every once in a while. You
walk the city streets dodging beggars and idiot fucks, and you duck
into a coffee shop to see a guy in the corner reading Atlas Shrugged
You know, maybe it’s not so bad that all these idiots are around.
Someone has to mop the floors at night, right? Maybe some people see
hold shit above people, all while I make burritos for a living and
me, and no one else can have it. My time on this Earth is very
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Life rafts on stupid sea are the escape we all desire. The
escape from the world around us as a whole. Our friends, our business
partners, our lovers, our houses, and our hang outs. The shelter from
rewards us with these dynamics. Personal highs and lows that are only
surely be hell. Even if you only hate them all, it’s still an impetus
to better yourself and prove them all stupid and worthless. We exist
from.
Relationships come and go, just like life rafts sink and get
ship, and keep it in the harbor. These are the relationships you
spend time cultivating. The ones that mean more to you than the
You have to have a ship to sail the sea, and the more equipped the
ship is to keep you afloat and comfortable, the better. The best
ships can weather the most powerful of storms, yet take the most to
We don’t know what to do with the people that just don’t get it.
medicate them and pay someone to keep an eye. Some of them get it
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enough to exist in the world, but can’t progress. We keep them under
our thumbs with religion, the economy, and fear. Some of them are
of the world, but just can’t seem to cross the line. These are the
people we try to help, and try to steer in the right direction. All
change things? Are there really any other options? Can you cater to
one side of a conceptual balance without taking away from the other?
balance between one side of the fence and the other. The intellectual
haves and have nots. It’s depressing. Is it our right to wish for a
better world when we know it will never happen? Can we steer our
tyranny of the stupid over the smart? That’s not right either. It’s
tyrannis.
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revolt against the idea that we have to be on one side of the fence or
the other? Will America continue to be divided into red and blue
argue back and forth about theoretical concepts, and create laws and
chose to deviate from those rules. We have a two party system that
conceptual sides of fences, they are only establishing where the fence
is. There was never a dispute over there being a border, only where
Buddhists talk about the middle way, which is a nice way to wrap
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Establishing a middle ground is for extremists. Average people
don't fall into the extremes, they capitulate somewhere near the
good argument. While sailing the stormy seas of society, what have we
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Chapter Fourteen – When The Lights go out in New York City
struggle? Is there any way to make Atlas shrug? I’ve mentioned this
a few times, but one of the best books I have ever read is Atlas
In it, the life and times of a country of people are decided and
life, what it is, and how to get it. We encounter characters Dagny
literary classic, and equally distributed in those that read it, hated
it, and loved it. I am one of the people that read it several times,
found solace in the ideas of Ayn Rand, and urged others to read it and
appreciate it as I had.
realization that he is living for other people that feed off of him
This would obviously change the world around him very rapidly, but he
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doesn’t want the world to benefit from his invention while
ideologically supporting this idea that what he did was done for
humanity, John Galt struggled with his ability being capitalized upon
dumped in the hands of the workers. This has resulted in the men
according to their ability, which meant that John “needed less” based
on his lack of a family, but was able to work more due to his enormous
intellect.
Instead of letting the company take all the profit and credit to
further its ridiculous needs, he quits and takes his new ideas with
him.
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He’s lucky enough to have a few friends that act as life rafts on
stupid sea, sharing his ideas and respect for what it means to have
them. All the men in Washington are seeking to make money for
sociopaths.
John and his friends Francisco and Ragnar seek to use their
They target the individuals in the world that possess the ability
to come up with new ideas, and ask them to quit that life to join John
Gulch where they can exist to freely interact and re-create a society
founded on mutual respect of fellow human beings that love their lives
and won’t let themselves be ruled by other people and the economy.
it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, or ask another
Throughout the book, the ideas presented by Ayn Rand through her
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to convince Dagny Taggart, brilliant manager of a transcontinental
railroad, that she needs to join the intellectuals that have retreated
from society. She maintains the belief that society doesn’t need to
Washington destroy the world. As John Galt and Dagny Taggart fly over
New York city, the lights go out symbolizing the end of the old world.
impossible to lay out every single opinion you have and every single
thing someone might say to oppose it. Ayn Rand tried very hard, but
still the only solution she could offer was escape. Through Dagny she
Society can’t be fixed by taking out the best of us all and then
just perpetuates the whole dynamic of the intellectual haves and the
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Some day in the future, will the people that inherited the earth
from us wander around the ruins of New York City like we wander around
the ruins of Rome, wondering about the people that lived and worked
there? When the lights go out in New York City, will it be the end of
Ayn Rand purports that society will, and must, be saved by the
select few possessing the ability to save it. This idea is supported
with the power elite at the top, the debt slaves at the bottom, and a
hierarchy of “middle class” between them with a ladder that only goes
with idiots at the bottom, and wise men at the top, but the key
difference is that the ladder goes from the bottom all the way to the
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When Ayn Rand’s Atlas shrugged, it was because the metaphorical
motor of the world had been stopped by John Galt and his associates
it did not offer a solution in the real world, only a fictional world
is not.
When the lights of Ayn Rand’s New York City went out, there was
nuclear war was just beginning to offer a realistic and tangible end
to society and moreover, the world. The civil rights movement was yet
his writings about his late nights of pot smoking in black jazz clubs.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was just another black guy in the south
march through the inevitable passing of time. We will never stop it,
We’re all going to die, and so will New York City. Our lights
will go out long before the great cities we’ve built, but everything
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comes to an end. With the exception of concepts. Concepts are
eternal. As long as there are people, they will agree and disagree.
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Chapter Fifteen – A Destination
The hardest part of any trip is the long road home. The anticipation
lies in the approach, the value in the destination, and the meaning in
time. Things fade away as we grow older, ideas we held fast evaporate
at the sky. There’s not much that is more breath taking to me than a
good view of the stars on a clear night. Ever since I was a kid, I
liked to stare at the stars and wonder how far away they are. I
remember lying in my bed one night, very young, thinking about the
vastness of space. It’s a pretty big concept for such a young child
to contemplate.
My dad had just read me a book about the planets, about the names
and what they were made of, and how long it would take to drive to one
all the time, and I had lived there once. I knew it was kind of far
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I thought, If I were to drive a car to the moon, it would take a
really, really, long time. I also knew that when I stood and looked
at things in the distance, the smaller they were, the farther away
in a car, and I couldn’t even see the other planets, but knew they
were really big just like the earth, how far away could the stars be?
lot bigger than me, a lot bigger than my house and my school and my
city. I thought about where the god I heard about every Sunday fit
into this equation. He created Earth and all, but 2000 years ago,
they didn't even know that Earth had an entire other half. They
didn't even know there was indigenous people there, let alone the fact
that there were other planets hundreds of times the size of ours –
logical question was “did you go to Care-a-lot and see the care
bears?” He told me that Care-a-lot wasn’t a real place, and that the
clouds weren’t solid enough to build a castle on, because they were
“If the clouds are made of water, how do they stay up in the
sky?”
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“Well, there are different states of matter, solid liquid and
gas. Matter sinks, liquid runs, and gas floats. Ice is water, too”
I should have pressed further, but I was only seven, and I had
remember sitting there, listening to the other kids talk about the
about what that man had told me. No Care-bears, huh? Why are some
things around me real, and some things aren’t? Just makes me want to
watch what I say around little kids. A year or so later, my mom told
me the Ninja Turtles and Ghostbusters were also fake, which I had more
Tooth Fairy, and every other childhood illusion. When I came to god,
astronauts went to the moon and they didn’t find heaven, then maybe
god wasn’t real, too. I couldn’t have been more than seven years old.
wasn’t the only planet in the universe, then what else could be out
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there? What other gods might people have? If other stars are like
greater than I design the whole place? What was it like before the
universe was around? Nothing but endless white? How could there be
there to see it because they wouldn’t exist yet. What was white,
It was a bit too much for me, and I slowly drifted off to sleep.
Problem was, when I woke up the thoughts wouldn’t go away. They never
have. Maybe that’s when I first realized how big it all is.
Everything, the world around us and the world around our world. The
Sometimes I don’t think most adults realize how big it all is, and how
small they are in all of it. The world is so much bigger than you,
your house, your town, your state, your country. The solar system
full of worlds, the galaxy full of solar systems, the universe full of
galaxies.
rock together with nothing to do but argue with each other, make
isn’t it? Of all the things to do and see, we keep ourselves in the
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little bubble of 'community' we've assembled around us. It's a shell
keeping out the blinding light of profundity that is the world around
us. World not in the sense of the Earth, but world in the sense of
skies. I don’t know why, I just do it. I have yet to seriously ask
myself the question “does everyone else think about these things,
too?” I’m scared as to what the answer might be. Sometimes I think
around them. It’s sad more than it is scary, I suppose. They just
walk around letting other people tell them what to do, acting like the
from the latest viral video, quoting lyrics by the latest corporate
down boxes.
I saw a shooting star a while ago for the first time. After all
concepts like infinity, god, and the universe, and I had never seen
been out drinking with her roommate and a few of her friends. One of
them had stuck around after we went back to her place, wanting us to
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the sky, excitedly pointing and yelling at every meteor that streaked
across the sky. It was a meteor shower, like the ones you hear about
few lights as we could find in the city. It was only a few blocks
away. I was surprised to see that no one else was out there enjoying
We laid out a blanket and watched the sky for an hour or so. The
staring, until the meteors seemed to die down. I could live forever
in a moment like that. Seeing something amazing for the first time,
good company, good stories, good times. I said once that life is
nothing but a bunch of stories. I’ve come to agree with myself more
staring out at the rocky mountains from the golden burro café.
Snapshots in time that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.
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Just the other day, weeks after that moment had passed, I
wandered home drunk after a long night of partying and typing late
to stop in the front yard and gaze up into the sky. As I looked up,
just above the top of the house, a shooting star streaked across my
view. I smiled, remembering the last time I had seen one. Then, just
for a second, I thought I might see a golden bird get caught mid-
what people mean when they say that. You'll just have to see it for
yourself.
house, down the stairs, and fell into my bed in a wretched exhausted
hump. I laid there, again, thinking about the stars like I always do,
and thought that maybe it wasn’t so bad, all the crazy shit going on
around the world, and around me. As long as the stars are in the sky,
and as long as there’s rocks in the Pacific Ocean, I’m going to die a
middle, face-forward and ready for the day. Ready for the new, for
the journey, and for the long road home. Life, I've heard people say,
face and fighting stance. Die facing forward, with the zeal of your
youth and the wisdom of your age etched in your face for all the world
to see.
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Chapter Sixteen – The Long Road Home
decided to take a nap, and woke up with a knock on the window from a
Cops.
Kevin turns on the car, rolls down the window. We had been woken
ask the question, “Are there any weapons or drugs in the car?”
I can’t hate on the guy for having values, but there’s a time and a
tracts of time, who knows what the fuck we could have run into? It
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have been perfectly honest, I would rather have remained perfectly
grass.
law says that if you have bullets in the case, it’s considered loaded.
Also, only law enforcement officers are allowed to have twelve shot
Another cop pulled up, after we had been asked to exit the car,
hand over the keys, and sit helplessly on a log next to the car. I
the mattress in the back of the car, which was covering an open bottle
of tequila. The gun was under the other end of the mattress, which is
what we told the cop. I had given Kevin the “Please let me speak to
the vibe. He opened the back hatch, lifted up the mattress, which
caused the backpack to fall forward and fully conceal the bag of
the gun case, inspected it, compliments Kevin on the cleanliness, and
state of California.
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parking lot. That was my first taste of San Francisco. Fucking
When you play with fire, you’re going to get burnt. We had a
did informative and helpful. That’s how the police are supposed to
act, and I was really happy to have seen it. I’m just really glad
they didn’t see the bag of weed and the open intox.
and stretch our legs. We wandered over the ruins of machine gun
entrenchments from forgotten days, imagining the lives lived out there
protecting the bay. We walked along the streets, feeling the city
from the inside. This was the destination, the point where the trip
We paid the bill and left town to check out Big Sur, our final
stretch of the near entirety we drove of highway one. Kevin had been
nice protected beach with palm trees and a waterfall. It had become
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his sole obsession of the trip. The whole paradise bit, he seemed to
of the road several times to take pictures, and soak in the view, we
found the parking lot for McWay cove. We found out it cost eight
I swear, for a second, that I almost saw Kevin shed a tear. How
horrible it is, to come to see paradise and find out it costs money to
walk down the staircase and look at where the waterfall used to be
until all the assholes in San Francisco and Los Angeles sucked up all
the water. They had commoditized his paradise into a farce. I asked
him if he wanted to go down, he just said “let’s get back in the car
and find a view of it from the road and take a picture” with a far
away look in his eye, as if he were fighting the urge to cry. I could
I felt bad for him. I had been feeling the overwhelming sense of
We left Big Sur not quite sure how we felt about the whole situation.
Surely it was beautiful, surely it was amazing, but there was just a
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drive to work or play. For us it was supposed to mean something.
land was beautiful and the journey was a triumph, but I felt it lacked
Madly he drove through the night, disgusted with Big Sur, the big
We got out of the car and sat in the middle of the road for a
how many stars there were in the sky. It was a thousand times more
beautiful than any view of Big Sur. It was a visceral and personal
Angeles and San Francisco. Untold millions had uttered about the
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beauty of Big Sur over soy lattes, taking the natural surroundings as
people had taken the time to drive three hours away and check out this
highway between cities. It was only then that I realized why it was
we were traveling around the country. The value of the trip was in
the unexpected personal experiences along the way. The long road home
trip. The trip hadn't been about going to San Francisco, it was about
thirst for new experiences. You can't plan those things out, they
just happen.
Two days later, we were home. Kevin drove almost the whole way.
We didn’t talk much for the whole ride. It wasn’t that we were angry
with each other, we were both just so disappointed with what we had
seen that we’d rather just get home and deal with it in our own
personal ways. There’s not much to be seen after you get through
Denver. Kevin and I had spent our time in the Rockies, we were
homeward bound.
stopped in St. Louis for a change of scenery and a quick look at the
Arch. It cost money to take the ride up it. Everything costs money.
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gateway to the West. Gateway to a consumerist garbage wasteland it
is.
When we got home, nothing had changed but the season. It wasn’t
winter anymore, the snow was melting away and it was time for spring
away. Kevin had to find a new vision of paradise, and I had to figure
out how I was going to settle back into a familiar world full of idiot
What did the future hold for me that summer? I continued to make
where I didn’t care about anything except what was going on right
Michigan, I stayed out late drinking and having a good time as much as
time and finances would allow. I made a lot of new friends that
summer, some I hope to keep around for a good long time. I loved
There are a lot of concepts flying around these days. All sorts
of things we have to worry about, and things we have to take care of,
but just want to put off to another day so we can enjoy the little
time we have. I’m just like everyone else. I wake up, I do my job, I
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and so many more things to see and experience, there’s always going to
register where I just can’t make sense of the world around me. Times
Times when I'd swear life couldn't get any worse, and times where I'd
extremes about a middle-way for you to walk your line from birth to
I hope you have learned something on this journey with me. It’s
your road, and it’s a road you must follow alone. Don’t worry, all of
your friends will be there to help keep you along the way. History
it. Who cares about the idiots? Let them be idiots. There will be
good times, and there will be bad, but we can all rest assured knowing
that tomorrow is another day, and there’s always a new road to travel.
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Enjoy your journey.
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