Jackal Lantern

I doubt if I'll ever be able to afford to live in a neighborhood that's affluent enough to support the custom of "Trick or Treating". That sucks for me, but it's good news for the costumed beggars who might otherwise receive such treats as:

-Individually-Wrapped Potato Chip


After spending the whole day wrapping chips I'm in a pretty shitty mood; so try not to look so goddamned disappointed with your fucking Pringle already.


-Scoop of Ice Cream


You're in luck here. Sorta. Good news: I'm partial to yummy, expensive ice cream and I don't mind sharin'! Bad news: I only have one bowl and one spoon, and they only get washed on an "as-needed" basis, so I'll just plop a scoop on a napkin and drop it in the ol' bag. Hurry home before it melts!

-A Curmudgeonly Lecture About the Old Days


When I was your age we had "real" Halloween costumes, not this cheap-ass Wal-Mart crap- what are you dressed as anyway? one of those movie tie-in toys that comes with a fast-food meal? The junk you kids eat, tsk... back in my day, we used to get candy apples and rum toddies.
Tell your parents to spend more time on your costume and to feed you better.
On second thought, don't bother. They don't love you anyway.

-B-B-BATS CANDY



I miss a few things from childhood, such as CherryBombs , Lawn Darts and loosely-enforced truancy laws, but I don't miss these nasty tooth-killing fuckers. Much like C-Bombs and "real" bottle-rockets , these sorry suckers are still manufactured and given to children, but shouldn't be . No one in their right mind would want one-I especially remember the yellow ones. No one would trade for them. They tasted like the local Dow plant used to smell, at least the way it did before the EPA shut it down.

B-B-Bats Facts:
Bbbats were used in WWI by soldiers(and civilians) on both sides to extract gold filling and teeth from corpses. Working in teams of two, one ghoul would open the corpse-mouth and the second would insert a bbbBat. They'd clamp the jaws together real hard and pull out the bbbBat and all the poor bastard's teeth along with it. (Yeah, it's gross, but it's Halloween.)

One of the first Federal RICO cases involved allegations of collusion between the American Dental Association and the Candy Lobby to create a product that countered the then- rapid spread of fluoridated water and basic dental hygiene.

Bbbats were once the State Candy of the former Czech Republic.

Bbbats once sold a Bacon-flavored candy. Rumour has it that a batch of grease and lard was used in lieu of the traditional vegetable shortening due to war-time (WWII) food shortages.
A second batch was never released.

Q: Which Bbbats Fact is true?

The Apple Washer

I am a chameleon, hidden and green with the rot of envy for normal people and the pleasure taken in the brainfood they eat; green and pale, washed-out, the color of pasted Lima beans. Unseasoned.
An appropriate shade , utterly devoid of epicurean appeal, yet easily digested. Lacking anything worth chewing on , no teeth required, no gnawledge needed. Easy-open jar and a button that tells you when it's safe to eat. The Greengo Redstop Shop is fine for the incurious, but it's Yellow where things start to get interesting. Dangerous.It's where the fun is. It's also where the lonliness lives. That's the dangerous part of the Yellow. By Yellow, I mean not Red nor Green. Black nor White. Yellow shares these characteristics with Gray, therefore Yellow is sometimes Gray; the reverse should be true, but it's not.

So I've got all this thinking going on, manic as hell, but utterly silent except for the flurry of tiny blows landing on my keyboard. Abandon hope , all data entering here, except I cease my attack on the keys long enough to consider: Isn't Miranda Latin for 'wonder'? Isn't that girl I met the other day named Miranda? Wouldn't it be Romantic if we were in a situation where I could tell her that?
Who am I kidding? Our collective Sense of Wonder has been reduced to :"I wonder what's on TV tonight?"

Babyfood. Pablum. An offering of schmaltz smeared on toasted Wonder Bread. Everyone's favorite!
Not everyone's. Not mine- not all of it anyway. A lttle bit, yes; but a full serving leaves me ill.
It's the root of my rot, the heart of my jealousy. My social allergy, the source of denial, denial of what isn't likely to be true, and even if you believe, I can't. I get hives.
These people have so much that I don't: Wealth, health, good credit, new cars, sex on a regular basis, etc. The kind of people who never need duct tape.
Yet they are willing to settle for so little. They never ask "why?" because they really don't care about reason. They are capable of asking "when?" only by breaking it down into simple components:
A)"Then", also known as History (or the past)- this leads us back to "why?, as in,"why should I care about history?" Such words are the sound of raking nails to my Yellow ears.

B) "Now", AKA the Present. This, apparently, is the only culturally relevant aspect of "when". No one cares about the past, and very few are prepared for -

C) "Later" , (sometimes called the Future). 401k, IRA, Pension etc- all decent enough , and something I'm not afraid to say I wish had more (some) of. But in the coming NewDark Age, the period of anarchy and violent social restructuring preceding the age of post-electronic agrarian Fuedalism; during this Dark time a new Hummer will be worth about as much as an old Pinto. (Probably less, with petrol sure to be scarce.)
How to plan for that? Don't ask me. My farming and hunting skills suck.


I see a man washing an apple in the breakroom sink.
Soaping it. Scrubbing it with with hands, kneading it like a beautician kneads a scalp.
Rinse. Repeat.
I wonder where exactly this apple has been that it requires such a cleansing.

"You know, with all the rain and the sewers backing up, they're issuing health warnings about the tap water", I tell him.
I forget to mention that I'm talking about southern Florida, not Richmond,Virginia.

"Really?"
"Yep. Saw it on TV last night."

As I left the room , the man was trying to peel his apple with a plastic knife.

Nobody Loves Me

Chris was getting really tired of listening to the Bear's complaints.He despised his latest office job and he hated all of his co-workers, but the Bear was the worst. The bear in the next damncube.

"Nobody cares", muttered Whiny the Boo-hoo Bear to himself.
"Nobody cares", repeated Boo, just a little louder.
One more time, louder still.

Boo looked over at where Christopher Sobbin pretended to be engrossed in an Excel Spreadsheet. Chris was trying to make his picks for this week's football pool, but that goddamn fucking bear was distracting the shit out of him. I never should have taken this job, thought Chris. This place is full of fucked-up people, more than I'm used to, and I'm used to a lot.

"Nobody CARES", went Boo-hoo, managing to be both pitiful and loud.

"Jesus Fucking Christ", exclaimed Chris, "what the fuck is wrong this time?"

"I forgot my password"

"Again? Dammit...hold on." Chris wrote something on a post-it note and handed it to the bear.
"Here's your password. Don't lose it this time."

"It doesn't work-nothing ever goes right for me", sighed the insufferable ursine irritant."Mr. Rabbid said he was gonna fix my computer real good before he left, but it hasn't worked since he quit."

"Rabbid didn't quit. He got fired. Because you told Mr. Owl about his thing with Cutlet." Chris wasn't sure what exactly happened between Rabbid, who was at least 40, and Cutlet, an intern of indeterminate age and gender. Chris hoped that by mentioning it, Pooh would spill the beans, but the annoying fucker was too wrapped up in his self-pity to engage in gossip.

"Here, Bear. Let me take a look." Chris wheeled his chair over to Whiny's cube. He typed in
'Ctrl+Alt+Delete'. Ugh!

"Goddamnit, you fucking chucklehead! There's honey all over your fuckin' keyboard!"

"That's it!", squealed the bear, clapping his sticky paws together. Chris noticed paperclips and pen caps stuck in the matted mess of Whiny's fur.His smell was so sour-rotten that it made Sobbin wince. Just because you shit in the woods doesn't mean that you don't have to wipe your ass.

"That's what?"

"My password! H-U-N-N-Y! Honey!"

Christopher went back to his spreadsheet, but in his mind he was killing the Bear in a thousand horrible ways.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Filename: Dirty Little Fingers

It occurs to me that most of my recent jobs have given me access to other people's personal data and stuff- first the Census, then Big Insurance ,followed by The Bank and now- a Law Firm. I can't give any details about anything from anywhere to anyone at any time. Really.
I wonder if that's why I'm so inclined to spill my guts here- I'm carrying the secrets of a thousand lives everywhere I go- consequence or side-effect, my own life becomes an open blog.
Makes sense. Moron Simple Sense.
Sorta.
("Yes, damn it! The fucking inkblot looks like a fucking butterfly! I am not giving you what you want to hear! It looks like a butterfly-it really does!"- very young me, vouching for my own sanity,circa 1982)


Sometimes you don't really need details-it's all spelled out in the titles. Somewhere, there's a huuuge warehouse where a bunch of sad bastards have stored- and are now scanning-10 years worth of legal documents . (I'd wager 100 to one that this work is done by temps).

What I see on the screen is something similar to:

Client: xxxxxxx ( xxxxxx v.yyyyy)
Xxxyyyx Matter # : %%%%%% (xxyyxxyy)
Sub-Matter xxxxyyyyy:%%%%%%%%%%%% etc...

Sometimes it's funny: Here's one with the title "Penile Implant Matter"- it includes a sub-matter:Deposition of Dr. ( first AND last name synonymous with penis) , M.D.
It went on& on &on: SubMatter: Exhibit A-Erectile Dysfunction Presentation (Video) -Dr. (synonymous with penis), MD.
Dr. (swp's) Medical Records (copies i&ii)/----'s Penile Implant Surgery (permanently destroyed by shredding)

(I hope the red flag referred to the file)

And a hundred more, just like it.
I was laughing so loud that my Boss came over and asked me if I was OK.


Sometimes it's not so funny. Last week I saw a file index that (abridged) read like:

Mr.---'s psychiatric/medical history

--- ER- mm/dd/yy

--- ER - mm/dd/yy (2 days later)
---'s Medical Records, xxxx

'---' evaluation of DR.xxxxx
---ER -mm/dd/yy
----City Police, incident #@@@@

---'s Medications chronology and atty notes

---ER -mm/etc


a lot more ER files later...

---Coroner's report

---Photos: Exh12 -16 ( occurrence, including weapon used in suicide)

From merely reading the titles, the tragic drama of ---'s unlivable life unfolds. The details, like reasons and meanings, are exactly what they need to be: unknown, yet not wholly unfamiliar. A big-ass Generic File Folder of Life and the Problems That Outlived Mr.---.

It's like running fingers through the last ,desperate days of someone else's lifetime. Unwashed hands not leaving dirt, merely exchanging it.
I wonder if Mr. --- ever had any happy moments, a smiling photo taken in a place only visted once, a cheerful doodle on a phonebook somewhere ,anything considered precious and saved , anywhere by anyone- or if it's only the bad times that got archived- stored and and scanned by strangers, for strangers.

Some people have more pictures taken of them after their death than before it.

Germs are Bugs Too

Note: I didn't feel like watching the ad at Salon , and I sure as hell ain't payin ' money;so I was only able to cut and paste the first two paragraphs -and the picture- from this article. I had to connect-the-dots in order to make up the rest. Of course, by now , it's too late.



Biological alarm in Washington
Did Homeland Security attack Demonstrators with a deadly pathogen?
By Mark Benjamin


On Sept. 24, 2005, tens of thousands of protesters marched past the White House and flooded the National Mall near 17th Street and Constitution Avenue. They had arrived from all over the country for a day of speeches and concerts to protest the war in Iraq. It may have been the biggest antiwar rally since Vietnam. A light rain fell early in the day and most of the afternoon was cool and overcast.

Unknown to the crowd, biological-weapons "delivery teams", scattered for miles across Washington by the Department of Homeland Security, were quietly doing their work. Other teams were watching machines designed to detect killer pathogens. Sometime between 10 a.m. on Sept. 24 and 10 a.m. on Sept. 25, six of those machines sucked in trace amounts of deadly bacteria called Francisella tularensis. The government hopes it is one of six biological weapons most likely to be effectively used by the United States against itself.

F. tularensis is transmitted to mammals by the bite of blood-sucking insects such as mosquitos, ticks and fleas; although a more virulent food-borne strain is reportedly emerging in scattered locations throughout Central and West Africa, where the bacteria is thought to have originated.
Exposure to the bacteria nearly always results in tularosis, a horrible and difficult to treat disease of the skin that often spreads to the internal organs. After an incubation period of up to 45 days the skin of victims starts peeling , followed by the formation of bleeding, ulcerous boils. It also attacks the liver, kidneys and circulatory system, the most common cause of death being renal or heart failure. Even with debriding and intensive antibiotic treatment , the disease spreads quickly through the body; left untreated, death usually occurs within 72 hours. There is currently no treatment.

Officially, no word was released as to to the cause for the sensor readings, but a senior offical who was monitoring the sensors at the time said, under condition of anonymity, that the anomalous readings were "strikingly similar" to the dispersal patterns caused by a "sudden manifestion of airborne swarms of infected insects", suggesting that large numbers of mosqituos may have been released at key points throughout the capitol, centered on areas where large numbers of protesters were gathered.

The report, which was not released until Oct.19, comes only a a few months after the Pentagon reported that 6 kilograms of active, weapons-grade F. tularensis cultures had mysteriously disappeared from a military research facility sometime between the end of the Cold War and last summer.Curiously, during the week before the demonstrations, fourteen commercial Potomac mosquito hatcheries filed reports with the FDA , citing sudden, unexplainable depletion in their stocks. No action was taken by the FDA.

A spokesperson for the Pentagon had only this to say ," ...for Christ's sake, it was a bunch of fucking Mosquito Ranchers- it our our opinion that the less goddamn mosquitos , the better. Besides, I heard that the damn bugs had been bought by the Homeland Security spooks as part of a experiment...oh shit. I shouldn't have said that." He then died of a tooth infection.

According to CNN quack Dr. Soggi Goopter, "these types of infection - where the tooth spontaneously fills itself with cyanide and then shatters, instantly killing the patient, are very common, but are usually misdiagnosed as suicide. It's really quite natural."

Marl Burrow

Do you remember when Marlboro cigarettes had a "Marlboro Miles" promotion, in which smokers would save tiny "miles" coupons from each pack and eventually save enough to trade in for a jacket, tent, cooler or other item ?
One day, way back then , a co-worker was hitting up everyone at work for some " miles" . She only needed 1500 to trade in for a Formula One racer or something .
"C'mon", she'd say, " I know you got some."
"I don't smoke."
"You could start."

She had all these little "miles" chits in a zip-lock baggie that she kept nervously playing with. Anytime that I see a rolled-up baggie , I think of dope. Hell, anytime I see a sandwich in a baggie, I think of dope, but... anyway, seeing that, I had an idea.

I grabbed some shredded paper and scissored it into confetti squares.

"Here", I told her,"dump a handful of this shit in your bag. It ought to weigh at least as much as 1500 miles."
"Why?"
"Because Phillip-Morris isn't going to have people handcounting 5o,000+ tiny paper scraps per envelope- their customers will all be dead before the counting is over. They'll just dump the crap on a scale and weigh it. If it doesn't go "clank!" when it hits the scale, you'll be fine."
"Really? No way."
"Really. Try it."

So she dumped the shreds into the bag and shook it, sealed it and sent it.

Later, she quit, or I moved, or something - but I never found out if my theory was correct. Did she ever get her yacht or car or thermos or whatever it was?

Today, I was talking to a guy at work about how shitty temp jobs are.

"Yeah", he agreed, "the first,worst temp job I had in Richmond was weighing those goddamn Marlboro Miles!"

Breathing Exorcise

I've been holding my breath for 24 hours and the clock still hasn't moved. My eyes are closed.
I breathe.
I hyperventilate with the first tentative inhalation.There's a smell- faint, yours, gone.

I open my eyes.
The light from the staring-box hurts them, causing me to blink. My eyelids feel like sandpaper. Some tears would probably help, but that's not how I feel, not at all. I am a rock. Immovable. Impassive. Marvel at my stoicism! Giggle at my stupidity!

It wasn't long ago that Lenore called me -first time in weeks? months? She had heard that I'd been sick and called to check in. This scared the shit out of me-I must really like Lenore, because she terrifies me- she seems to know an awful lot about me and I've only known her a little over a year. We met at one of my Temp jobs. During that time she's been:Divorced , seperated, single , widowed, married- sometimes simultaneously. I find her inscrutable, yet compelling, like one of those arty Swedish flicks that you are supposed to understand, but don't. Still, it's an engrossing film. The only thing I know is that she has two kids, boys, 8 &11 , I think. They seem to like me, but they make me feel weird. I'm sure it's mutual, though we've only met a couple times.

I'm trying to avoid emotional turmoil right now- I'm not at all ready for a serious relationship, and I don't want one that isn't serious- so Lenore's call made me wish I had my Xanax.
Whew! She doen't have time to talk- she'll call back soon.

I stop breathing again until her next call. I plan my speech, over and over, pretending that I know how she'll respond, preparing my words of calm and balm, readying myself for what is to come.
I need to tell her that I still care about her, but we can't be together. Our Crazy Quotient is too high. I'd be a Bad Dad. I will always consider her a friend , but I can't see her now- not for a long time , if ever. And so on. The Speech.
Anyway, I was ready for her call.

Ring!
(Semi-verbatim)

Lenore: We need to talk.

Me: OK

L: I still love you (wow!-she never said that before!), and I'm glad you are getting better, but we can't be together.

(i'm completely unprepared for this)

Me: ...why?

L: I could never date a man who doesn't drink, and I don't want you to start again.

( Lenore is nothing if not full of surprises. Not one be be estimated, over OR under )

Me: That's cool, I was , ahhh...nevermind.

-We talk about the folks at the old job for a while-

L: Well, gotta go! Be good-I'll send you a card sometime! (?)



Gosh. I sure do feel stupid, but at least I'm relieved enough to breathe deeply without passing out.

Glasses

It's a long-running joke among comic-book geeks that Lois Lane must be the world's worst reporter- she can't even tell that Superman is really just Clark Kent without the glasses.
Ha Ha.
The obviously fictional Ms. Lane looks like Ed Murrow when compared to the somewhat more ambiguous character of Judy Miller. In case you missed it , Ms. Miller floated to the top of journalism's bowl during the media's orgiastic March To The Bloody Fucking Horrible Mistake In Iraq. Or whatever the hell its called these days.

Her NewYork Times headlines screamed "WMD!" at us from the front page- news described as 'precious' by a media gaggle of gibbering Gollums to an idiot audience of unthinking orcs. The Nationalist Media frenzy preceding our nightmare of choice had a LOT to do with us meekly accepting Bush's volatile, yet blatantly unreasoned rationale for war- and she was happily tossing gas on that fire. Remember, it turned out that her main source of information on Iraqi WMD was an alcoholic Iranian double-agent who hadn't been to Iraq for twenty years and couldn't tell a dirty bomb from a dirty blonde.
Somehow, then-CIA Director George Tenet got a Medal of Freedom for using her unvetted 'evidence' in his "slam-dunk" case for Iraqi WMD. Curious, eh?
More recently, she "can't remember" who leaked the Plame Name to her. Wow. That's the sort of attention to fact and detail that'll get you a Pulitzer fer shure.
At the age of 57, she's a bit young to be invoking the Reagan Defense, even if she does consider Ronnie the greatest man who ever lived.
She once admitted that she used to think about Reagan while she pleasured herself, a charge she at first denied, then admitted to in a 2000 interview with Larry King, explaining why she preferred Bush to Clinton," it's not a sin if you are thinking virtuous thoughts while you [ diddle] yourself".

That's the only true thing she's ever said, and I had to make it up.
--- --- ---

Speaking of people who really need to go fuck themselves, check out these unabashed lunatics .
Wow. Those are some pretty far-fetched claims and stories-got any attribution ? Some proof?
Of course you do. There's a link to a site you own , which supports your point on another site, which you also operate. It's sad to think that there are hundreds of thousands of people dumb enough to fall for this.

On the positive, I really like the idea of assembling all the religously insane people in one area, like a giant reservation, prison or concentration camp- Utah would be my first choice, but it's taken- too bad really, the remote desert locale dovetails nicely with the Pentagon's plans to violate certain Test Ban Treaties.
South Carolina it is, then.
Give 'em all the Guns and Bibles they want, cut off all Federal funding ( maybe they hate public schools, but I bet they love the interstate highway system), let them establish a faith-based economy, whatever they wish. ( I bet it wouldn't take two weeks for them have their late, lamented slavery back, but not for long- it'd be a good reason to invade South Carolina. Again).
Imagine.
Such a State would begin as a Totalitarian Fundamentalist Theocracy and quickly go downhill from there. It would be a lot like Iran, but all-White and with less rights for women. James Morrow wrote about it in his novel, Only Begotten Daughter. Dante would've mentioned it, but they didn't have South Carolina Trailer Park Subdivisions when he was divvying up the Inferno.

Stop looking at me like I'm a fascist- it's their idea!

There Can Be Only One

If it wasn't so obvious, it would be ironic for me to use this space to tell you that the internet is full of utterly useless crap; so I won't tell you that.
Instead, I will inform you that there is an internet list of Blogs that mention the Snakehead fish, and I'm at the top of that list. I am the Snakehead Blogging Champion!

I was there before it was cool. Check the date on that link- exactly one year ago today. Weird, huh?

Hags to Riches

I posted this link in one of my first-ever posts. At the time, I had a temp job that was so slack that I had nothing better to do than spend entire days researching weird animals on the internet. One of my enduring favorites is the hagfish, which is a really fascinating creature.
There's even a sub-culture of 'hag' aficionados , ready to defend the honor of this loathsome corpse-sucker.

Anyway, I had a brief period of hagfish-driven wistfulness, eventually moving on to the snakehead, giant squid and other beasties (until the job ran out)...

BUT

Now I make $30k-$50k a month, in my spare time, raising hagfish. I started with a motley collection of wading pools that I stole from the neighbor's backyards ( not my neighbors-we don't have yards here) and just this month I signed a 10-year contract with The City to convert their soon-to-be unfunded Municipal Swimming Pools into a series of hagfish hatcheries. I can barely find the time to write this, hurried as I am by conversations with my perpetually breathless team of expert helpers-even now we are lining up some other Big Cities and boy, are they ponying up some juicy incentives in order to convince us to annex their burdensome and unsanitary Public pools. I can't tell you the details, since it's mostly illegal, but trust me-it's a Sweetheart!
Big Cities-not dead-end Chicken towns, but real Cities, the kind you read about in the papers. You can do more than read about them- you can own part of them, even live there if you so desire.

NOW IS THE TIME

The hagfish stands poised to go bigtime. I'm talking Global, baby! The Koreans have been eating hagfish for centuries- more so now than ever, since the 'hag's food of choice is dead fish, which Korea's (n & s) polluted waterways produce in abundance. The hag seems able to thrive in an environment of untreated sewage and raw industrial waste, lending credibility to the once far-fetched Mistopian ideal of the world's oceans as a sort of global hagfish paradise. In N.K. there's not much to eat at all but hagfish and sewer cabbages, meaning that North Korea is actually thirty to forty years ahead of the rest of the planet, not fifty years behind , as some speculate.

WHY

Face it- meat's kinda gross. We've sorta skated on the whole Mad Cow thing, but the Avian Flu pandemic seems inevitable- I mean, migratory birds as carriers? That's scary. The possibility of a world-wide decimation of poultry (live) stocks is a very real one, causing an epic shitstorm in Big Food (traded) Stocks. Of course any domestic outbreaks would be covered up at first, or blamed on Canada, or both ; but eventually it'll get out and then-no more chicken or turkey,goose or duck, pigeon or vulture, etc. No more omelets or holiday bird feasting. What a fallen world it will be for the wretched masses who aren't ready to seize the future. The ones who didn't invest in hagfish when they had they chance. I'd pity them, but I'm too busy counting my money. When the chicken disappear, they're gonna leave behind a mighty big market-hole. I intend to plug that hole with hagfish.

HAGFISH IS THE NEW CHICKEN

Like me, if you've ever worked the 'C' shift at a frankfurter factory , you know that anything can be converted into a product that the majority of people will treat as if it were edible. This includes hagfish. As a bonus, hag hide can be fashioned into small, yet versatile articles such as would normally be constructed of leather- a belt, a wallet, or a pouch that a child could use to carry marbles or a pitiful handful of coins collected from passer-by. These items can be manufactured overseas by unpaid children, stamped with a look-alike designer logo and sold on cable TV and parking lot "flee" markets for a tenfold profit.
Even better, the copious slime the fish produces when stressed contains the same proteins as egg albumen, making it a perfect substitute for eggs in many dishes.
This evolutionary throwback is a money tree.
I've even taken the financially prudent step of registering "Hulafish" as a business trademark- 'Hagfish' as a brand name has fared poorly in our focus groups, but everyone one loves the old-fashioned, yet hip sound of 'Hulafish'- it's similar phonetically toTunafish, which gives the consumer a "comfort platform" from which they encounter my product. Our product.

I NEED YOUR HELP

That's a lie. I need your money. A mere $50,000 will grant you semi-exclusive Hulafish farming rights in one or more specially selected zip codes. Some of our carefully selected regions are so desolate and inaccessible that they are virtually uninhabited, making them prime areas for intensive development- you can recoup your initial investment with just one mass spamming, selling sub-farms and franchising sweatshops for the production of "Hulaskin" shoes.
My friend, if you can't sell a product named "Hulaskin" on the web, you should be living in a Marxist collective, not investing in my product.

URGENT

Unless I can get the 50k soon, the City will withdraw it's offer- and the hagfish will never save the world. Instead of millions of dollars, myself and my fellow visionaries will have only our broken dreams and the pained expression on our face as we once again tell our teary-eyed and malnourished children that this Friday, as every Friday before, there will be no Hulafish on our barren wood-plank of a table.

Don't let this happen.

Send money NOW, before it's too late. For the children.

TimeFlies

If fruit flies like a rotting banana, what do time flies like?
-someone

Was it really only 30 days ago that I was in hospital ICU, hooked up to a mess of tubes and wires tangled and painful enough to please the Bondage Spiders of Chaos Prime? Those were some good times, all surgery, sedatives and the hourly blood-lettings. Whoo.hoo.

Today, I did something I've not done for years- since 2001, to be precise- I cashed a paper paycheck. Not direct deposit-paper. It felt pretty good, yes indeedy!
I like my new job. I sit in a room by myself and do something with computers- I'm not even really sure what I do, or why, but my boss said I'm really, really good at it.

Has it really been over a month since I suffered the lash in the galleys of Bank of Generica? My doctor told me I was the second patient he'd seen this year whose health went Titanic after just a few months of BoG employment. 32-year old guy w/ heart attack & minor stroke.
Jeez, I think I working at BoG for a month is worse than 3-a-day at McDonald's . No wonder I was drinking so much.

It's also been over a month since I put gas in my car. That's right. Since before Katrina, actually. It was $2.61 a gallon, which seems cheap. I've had that gas in my car so long that I've developed a sentimental attachment to it, like a good book that I really don't want to finish reading; that's the love I have for my current near- empty tank o' vintage gasoline. I always did tend to pin my heart to vapor, so there's a certain lame poetry in that last gallon or so.

Taking the bus to work is great. By the time I pay tolls, park and walk the 11 blocks from the parking lot to the office, taking the bus is actually faster than driving. This also allows me one uninterrupted hour of reading time every day, which I find inexplicably precious. I didn't realize how so until the other day ,when I reached the end of my book, still with twenty bus minutes remaining. People would board the bus, glance at me and my unopened book, then walk past,' sniffing' just audibly, as if signaling that they knew me for the unread lout that I truly am, the book a mere prop, for use in a vain attempt to appear smart and pick up college chicks.

One of the books, Beasts ,by Joyce Carol Oates, seems to be pretty much based on characters I know from childhood- my parents were friends with a couple who were both fairly well-known painters (her a writer as well). When Arty Couple broke up, it was revealed the Mr. Arty liked teen-age kids a little too much. (Mrs. Arty was OK.) For a while he did some teaching and had a new, older and eviler female partner/enabler, but he eventually dropped out of our lives after he sold my mother a signed Dali print that turned out to be a forgery.
Twenty years later, I wasted several hours trying to convince the sisters who lived next door ( 17 & 19 , i think) that group-eloping with Mr.Arty and joining an art commune where they could indulge in being Brides of Ralph ( Mr. Arty's name) or some other such borderline sociopathic cultist pastime. The last time I saw Ralph, he was harboring a houseful of runaway teenagers.They all had the strangest look ,eyes all bulgy ,skin sweaty, shiny-white and wet like a Dunwich horror or a peeled boiled egg with binocular vision. Anorexic druggie boiled eggs. Shell-free, weak and vulnerable-looking. Ralph food.
Ecstasy was cheap and legal back then, so that was probably part of it. Some really bad stuff happened at Ralph's commune, or so I heard. One day, Ralph had an accident and had to leave town very quickly (and leave the kids, who went to the State) behind. Most of his paintings were destroyed. Ooops! Poor Ralph. I'm sure he's dead now, which is good.
Anyway,it was odd reading this book, since I already knew the characters.
I hope the denouement has some basis in true events-in reality those poor,stupid kids didn't stand a chance against Ralph.

Funny, I hadn't thought about Ralph and his child-Brides for years. I swear he's Mr. Harrow. Different media and setting, but...I dunno. It's giving me a' creepy'.

Next bus-book: a long-over due re-reading of Foucault'sPendulum. It's been nagging me: I feel like that guy in Foucault's, you know, the one that has all the secret computer files, his password was "NO" - that guy- what the hell was his name? The one the first guy obsesses on?
Belbo!
That's it!
Re-type password.
NO
Belbo!
Yay!
The library's tattered (I used duct tape, it helped) copy is now in my grubby paws.
I like my bus ride.

Spontaneous Erosion

I've been to Sunday School exactly once, back in the 3rd (4th?) grade. By the time class was over, I'd pretty much figured this out.
As a child, I was a huuugge dinosaur fanatic - watching movies, I'd get indignant when Pteranodon was portrayed as Pterodactyl or cavemen were hanging with the dinos. I could rattle off the chronology of epochs that I can't even spell today.
My dinosaur obsession clashed with my teacher's spiel about Eden, and one of the "grown-up" books that I had read had pointed out that characters in the Bible were prone to living for centuries, begetting and begatting the entire time. Whooo! (I wanna be 600 years old and still "having knowledge"...)
What about the dinosaurs?
What about the really old people?
These are the kind of questions that get a kid disinvited from Sunday school.

It seems like there's a subtext of resigned condescension to this latest papal proclamation, as if the Holy See was saying, "look, we know most of you get it already, but just in case you missed it, here it is in a simple-to-understand form".
Ever been in a class with someone who keeps asking variations of the same question about a concept or lesson that everyone else understands?
Geez, I've hardly ever been in class at all, but when I was , there was always a kid like that.
Biblical literalists remind me of that kid.

----

Hey Mr. Preznit! I work at a law firm! Can I be a judge? I'd settle for Traffic Court- I promise
that Jenna and Barb will never experience the same DUI unpleasantness that you have.

I've worked at a bank- can I replace Alan Greenspan? Actually, I probably should, as I think he's been dead for at least ten years-I mean, holyshit- look at his skully head... Greenspan's a a man of amazingly overrated ability and importance. His steadfast opinions on policy: ("tax cuts will promote growth" OR "the lost revenue[resulting from] the recent tax cuts threatens the long-term solvency of the nation as a whole" ) are impressive. Which is it?
You're doing a heckuva job, Greenie.

I've checked ID's at a club before. I was corrupt and incompetent, letting in pretty girls who had obviously fake ID's. Any openings in Homeland Security? Damn skippy there's openings in Homeland Security- the kind of openings found in swiss cheese and hula hoops, that is.

I've managed retail stores and restaurant kitchens and taken lots of drugs. How 'bout a gig with the Commerce Dept. or the FDA?

By the way sir, rumour has it you've been hitting the sauce again. Please know that if you start having "drinking thinking" , feel free to call me, day or night. Consider me your personal AA sponsor, so next time you " choke on a pretzil " (I love that euphemism!) call me.

I will rescue you in a New Orleans minute.

Mere Dessert

Meanwhile, the beast-thing that we broadly refer to as "Society" continues it's dissolute, cannibalistic repast; a centuries-long Last Supper , ending with either the just desserts of the righteous, or the non-fat ice milk of the wicked. Or somewhere in-between.

The point is, I'm gonna have some ice-cream with fudge, peanuts and a handful of M&M's that I found in my pocket while I was doing laundry. I am celebrating a clean bill of health from the Doc. I was waiting to find out if years of hard living had done any permanent or serious damage to my liver-amazingly, the damn thing seems to be working OK these days. It's actually healing itself-Doc says my enzymes are down to almost normal, which I'm pretty sure is a good thing. He seems surprised. I am. Heart, lungs, blood count- all good.

Even my blood pressure is good, which was previously a little high; worrying the Doc. It was the booze, I 'spose.

So what if the Cat's Cradle is becoming unravelled, accelerated by the use of scissors and torches? It's not exactly the first time.

I'm still gonna have my goddamn sundae.

Karma

A couple years ago I found a wallet in the parking lot of my apartment building. It had lots of money and credit cards. The ID showed a young woman with a suburban address. I looked up the name and wound up speaking to her mother. It turns out that her daughter just moved into a neighboring building- she called her daughter,Sabrina, who then came over and retrieved the wallet.

This weekend Sabrina found something that I had lost. She found my cat. He had somehow got himself locked in the basement of her building. He must've been eating mice or bugs, 'cause he's still alive and not skinny.

Hooray for Sabrina! Hooray for less-than-instant karma!

Welcome back to my fat cat.