Allow me to blow your mind

A list of the main points of interest in the movie 'Paint Your Wagon':

1. Clint Eastwood

2. Lee Marvin

3. The old west

4. Toe-tapping musical numbers, involving both stars

5. Bigamy

How's that for a gogurt tube of weirdness?

A new waste of time

So, if you're one of my three readers, I'm sure you've noticed the new link listed on the right, up there at the top. It's for a blog/extended story I'm writing, following the adventures of Runcible 'Red' Hand, and some of his friends, who wander among the various dimensions and drink at a bar together. I make no promises about quality, as my writing style can best be described as throwing every idea that wanders through my head into a pot, and posting the unholy slurry that results online, but I can promise often correct use of grammar.

I'll also be posting three times a week, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, so you can be bored by my writing at least that often.

If you've just wandered by at random, welcome! Please read my story, and forgive me my trespasses. You should also read the archives on this blog. It's genius, every entry. I promise. Would I lie to you, person I've never met before, and who I desperately hope will like me?

Found this online today, so... yeah.

FOREWORD

It was Henry David Thoreau, in Walden, who remarked, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” This statement appears to be just as true today as it was then. Perhaps it is even more valid today considering the pressures and frequent monotony of today’s world. The majority of today’s men and women live in boring circumstances, and when the opportunity for change arises, they are often quick to seize the chance. For the characters in this story, the opportunity is one which many would consider perverse and deranged. But it provides a release and a need. All morals and scruples are cast aside in a moment of madness — a chance to grab pleasure before it is taken away.

SOME NUNS SUCK… SECRETLY! — a novel about the quiet desperation in so many of us — and the extremes to which it may drive us.

Bad Cut

Do you think there comes a point when, after a certain number of plastic surgeries, that you just give up on looking human any more? This question came to mind yesterday, after I tripped across a photo collection of various people who seemed to have gone overboard on going under the knife.

Now, I know that poo-pooing the fascination some people have with 'improving' their looks through surgery is the equivalent of hunting cows with a high powered rifle and scope. I know it's a slow moving target. But I have to wonder what goes through some people's minds when, after spending upwards of $30,000, they find themselves with a face that could have come from someone working them over with a crowbar. Seriously, most of them look like boxers do right after a big fight. I'd put up a couple of pictures as an example, but I'd rather not have them permanently on display. Also, I don't know how. But that's neither here nor there.

Are they happy with what they see, after all the work that's been done? Do they look in the mirror and think that if their doctor gets just one more chance to take a cold chisel and an angle grinder to them, they'll be perfect? Or, god help 'em, more perfect?

In which spoils are divided and drinks are spoiled

I figured I owed Automatic Jack a drink. Given that he'd been taken hostage while collecting money for me on bets I wasn't supposed to be making, and threatened with death as a way to force me to do something I really didn't want to do, it seemed like the gentlemanly thing to do.

So, immediately after handing a still warm, severed arm to the bastard who had been the cause of all of this, he and I made Grindlebone's our destination.

I call Jack a he, but it wasn't because of any obvious sexual characteristics on his part. Automatic Jack wasn't a flesh and blood creature, but an autonomous mechanical being. He might have been an actual robot, although his ramshackle, thrown together appearance suggested otherwise. I suspected he was either a spirit inhabiting a pile of random, humanoid shaped junk, or some sort of metal golem. I'd wondered about it, on occasion, but the situation had never seemed quite right for broaching the subject. I had quite a good friend in Jack, so it hardly mattered.

Grindlebone's, the location to which we conveyed ourselves, is one of my favorite watering holes. It managed to be both spacious and intimate through clever use of furnishings, had a number of Doors leading to a number of widely disparate places, and served surprisingly diverse and well prepared food, along with a vast array of drinks. Grindlebone often tends one of the scattered bars himself. He said it made the place more homey for the regulars.

Indeed, we saw the man himself as Jack and I entered through the Door leading from the Gambling Hell. General asking-after of each others health followed, and Jack and I were granted use of one Grin's private rooms. Jack and I had business to discuss, after all.

“Well,” Grin said, “You two head back on past the hall heading towards the pool room, walk through the next set of curtains, let yourselves in the purple door. I'll send Janx along with your drinks presently. And don't worry, it's a real quiet room. Oh, and avoid the back Oak Room, there's a bit of an altercation going on there, right now.”

Grin had added the last to let us know the room would be as secure as he could make it; some of his so-called private rooms were just private enough to let people think they weren't being watched. Not that either Jack or I had anything to hide at the moment, but it was a nice touch nonetheless.

So we wandered along to the designated spot, although we did take a peak into the Oak Room. A gang of the Red Brotherhood were lighting each other up pretty hard in there. They'd probably asked specifically for that room, too, as it was out of the way and the solid wood furnishings lowered the damage charges they'd inevitably be paying. The furnishings also made cracking weapons.

The room on the other side of the purple door was quite comfortable. The drinks that came along shortly after we arrived, whiskey for me, Bertham's Oil for Jack, made it even more so. Being metal and all, I don't think Jack could have been tired in the same way I was, but the day must have been quite wearing on him mentally, and for a moment we simply savored the alcohol and sat quietly. But there was business to be done, and we got down to it in relatively short order.

I leaned forward as Jack grasped the plate of iron covering his chest and lifted it off. Once it had been removed, two small metal grates that had been concealed underneath the plate swing open, and a box extruded from Jack's chest cavity. He removed the box and set it on the table between us, as the grates closed again.

While a bastard, the person who had taken Jack hostage had at least been a truthful bastard. He had promised, upon my completion of his task, to release Jack unharmed and with all of the currency he had been carrying. The cash was all Gambling Hell Exchange Vouchers, and it made quite a nice pile on the table.

Jack said, “I still can't say the day wasn't worth it, not while I'm looking at this much money.”

“Jack, my cast-iron friend, you are not wrong. By the way, I think I owe you an apology.”

Jack pshaw-ed the very idea, and we engaged in a friendly argument over who owed whom what, all the while dividing our large pile of money into two smaller, but still very attractive, piles. When the division was complete, we both settled back in our seats, and commenced with a discussion of what really quite clever and fine fellows we both were. And now moderately wealthy, to boot.

It was at this point that our budding mutual appreciation ended prematurely, due to the appearance of some heavily armed people, coming through the door to our room. Two hairy men in scruffy combat gear cleared the corners and then brought the muzzles of their guns to bear on Jack and I, still sitting quietly behind a table piles high with money.

Sighing, I took a sip of my whiskey. This day simply would not end.

Walking out of the World

“It helps if you don’t know where you’re going,” the old man told me.

I’d been in McGinty’s most of the night, commiserating with a friend who’d lost his job and girl earlier that day. Jimmy’d gotten pretty far into his cups during the course of the evening, progressing from dislike of his ex-boss and -girlfriend into outright hatred for the whole stinking world, and this city in particular. Before the whiskey had robbed him of his ability to form consonants, my pal Jimmy had waxed rather poetic about what a soul-sucking hole our fair city is, an ‘envious and vindictive bitch of a metropolis, dedicated to taking the good out of any of her denizens and grinding them into compost to grow the poison flowers that would draw another crop of rubes out of the hills, to be destroyed the same way.” He’d seemed quite sure of himself, and seemed to feel the need to share this and other observations with most of the bar. It had all been downhill from there, and shortly another friend had helped Jimmy, still declaiming to the rafters, out of the bar and into a cab.

I sat back down, finishing my beer and deciding whether to head home or over to another bar to listen to a new band, the Murder Orgy, I’d been told about. My eye fell on a square bar napkin that Jimmy had been using early in his exposition about the evils of the world. The only legible things on the napkin were the words “Walk right out of this goddamn world”. I’d picked it up, and was poring over the words, and the odd squiggles and glyphs that surrounded it, and an old, gnarled finger had appeared and tapped the word once, twice, then a third time, and the old man’s voice had drifted into my ear, sounding like the rough rustle of leave in late fall, quiet but still perfectly audible over the background hubbub of the bar.

“It helps if you don’t know where you’re going,” he’d said.

I looked up and at the man for the first time that evening. He’d been sitting at the end of the bar, on the stool next to mine, all night, but I hadn’t spared him a second look in all that time. He had been there when I came in, and I suppose I’d assumed he’d be there when I left. He had the air about him of a regular, the feeling that he wasn’t so much in the bar as of the bar, a fixture, like the brass rail and the sticky floor. He belonged in the bar, and I’d accepted him in the same way I’d accepted the presence of the neon beer lights. The kind of guy you’d look at and never see.

But when I did take that moment to look at him, to see him, he became subtly wrong. The details of his appearance marked him as a stranger, and quite a strange stranger at that.

The hat he wore had too high a crown and too wide a brim, his coat was of an odd cut and material, the suit under it was of a strange hue. The man wore thick, chunky glasses made of a black substance, coming close to being what a hip young person would wear, but arriving at slightly disturbing through a slight asymmetry. Both his thick mustache and beard stubble were an odd shade of gray.

“I’m sorry?”

“If you want to walk out of the world. It helps if you don’t know where you’re going.”

“What do you mean? How can you walk out of a world?”

“Oh, it’s easy, really,” He’d said with a dry chuckle. “Many a man has gone from this world to that’un simply by being a bit to preoccupied, oh, ayuh.”

“Preoccupied?”

“Yuh. When you know where’s your going, your mind helps keep yuh pinned to the path you want, see? But when you go a wandrin’ willy nilly, or get to distracted as you travel, a body’s apt as not to come on one of the lost ways, and take a turn right out o’ the places they know, and come upon someplace wholly different, oh ay.”

“Lemme see,” I said, slurring a bit as the old man took another drink of his beer, “Lemme see…You think that if I, right, me, I were to walk out of here, and just wander around, I’d ‘walk out of the world’? Really”

“Maybe, maybe you would,” he said, scratching his temple. “Most people, they don’t, whatchacallit, they don’t have the right attitude. They could stomp around with no fixed destination for all their lives, and never come across anything out of the ordinary, least that they’d notice. Not to say they wouldn’t cross a world or two, not at all, but they’d never know it, as where they ended up would be too near what they expected to notice. Y’ever gone to a place, and later found out someone ya knew, knew pretty well, was there the whole time, and yet ya never saw one another?”

“Uh…yeah.”

“It’s the kind of thing most people write off, right? They figure they just floated around such a way they never caught sight o’ one another. And most time is, they’re probably right. But sometimes…” He took another drink. “Sometimes, one or the other o’ them, maybe both, stepped just a little bit sideways on the way in, turned a little bit, right, and ended up in a world a hair’s breadth away from the one they thought they was in.”

“So they were in the same place, but not?”

“Oh, ayuh. Y’see, most people think a place is a single thing, right? But a place is an agglomeration, really…”

“A collage?” I said, getting into the idea.

“Exactly. A collage made up of what different people expect to see when they get to a place. If you was to ask each person here, in this place, to tell you about it, you’d get as many different places described as people you asked. And even when you put all the descriptions together, you still wouldn’t have everything that makes this place what it is.”

“But, how does that make it a different world? Just because people aren’t very observant?”

“Nah, it’s that people assume most of what they see, right? You walk down a street you walked down a hundred times before, how much do you really see? Not much, oh no. Your head builds a picture, and you think it’s the real thing. Sign’s might be wrong, numbers might be different, you might have wandered onto a street you never seen before, and’ll never see again, but your head takes away the things it don’t expect to see, and fills in what it thinks should be there.”

“Like, they don’t have to look, because they know?”

“Seems like.”

“But I still don’t see where the walking out of word, worlds comes in.”

“You from the city, here?”

“No. No, I moved here...”

“Remember when you first come here,” He said, cutting me off. “Did you ever head out and end up a little lost, someplace you didn't know was there?”

“Yeah, a couple of time. Of course.”

“That's all it is. People get set in their way pretty quickly, though, and they stop coming across new things. Part of 'em assumes that the city is only so big, and eventually the set o' memory they have put aside to make a map in their heads gets full, and they get done finding things. But there are 's many cities out there as there are bars in here, see?”

“So,” I slurred, “How do you keep from assuming like ever'body does, hmm?”

“This is a mighty good way to start, no doubt.” He said, lifting his glass.

I lifted mine along with him, and finished the last third of my beer in a few gulps. “So, lemme see here, you're sayin', right, that if I walked out into the night, here, and wandered about, I might walk right out of my everyday world? Do you believe that, really?”

“Don't matter what I believe. Question is, do you?”

I lifted by gaze from my empty pint glass, and looked at the dark eyes behind the black glasses, then looked beyond the stranger to the door behind him, and the unanimous night on the other side of the door's glass.

“Another beer?” I heard the bartender ask.

The thing what came out of Dexter

By this time, Dexter’s skin had become translucent, a thin shell covering the thing that had destroyed him. Under the yellowish, parchment-like covering, lumps and tendrils moved back and forth, thrashing impatiently and pushing out, here and there, causing cracks and tears in the drying skin. Only the mouth, impossibly large and tooth-filled, and the eyes, burning red surrounding pit-black irises, showed the horror of the thing waiting to shed Dexter’s skin and be born into our unready world.

“Time itself will come to an end, Paladin.” The voice of the beast that was wearing Dexter’s skin was surprisingly high-pitched, piping and unpleasant. As it spoke, tendrils lashed out of its mouth, probing at the desiccated skin of Dexter’s face, tearing strips loose and bearing them away, into the open maw. “Those From Outside will follow my path, and this little realm will become ours; it will be rent and torn and changed to suit our whim. All that you know will end in pain and hate and terror, without end.”

With a piercing, staccato sound that might have been a demented laugh, the mouth-tendrils shot out and finally tore the skin of Dexter’s face and head loose, pulling it back into the creature’s maw in great strips, filling the air with a series of horrible tearing and cracking sounds. As the skin was consumed, the mass of thrashing, whipping, sucker-ended tendril spread and unfolded. This sudden, final destruction of the visage of a man who had been a friend to each of us brought out shrieks, groans, and no small amount of flinching from our little group, as we each fought the urge to flee headlong away from the monstrosity. The tendrils seemed to focus on our sounds, or movements, and, as more and more of them, impossibly more, unfolded, swelling to three, then four, times the size of poor Dexter’s head. The eyes had separated, each to its own tendriled stalk, above the mouth that gaped from just below where the head-stalks joined.

More ripping and tearing as all of Dexter above the waist split and then vanished, some pulled into the thing’s mouth, but most consumed by the suckers on the end of each glistening, flagella-like stalk that burst forth, freed from their chrysalis of human skin. As with the head, the monster swelled and spread out more tendrils than could possibly have been held in the dimensions of a human chest, and gave the eye-watering impression of unfolding from…somewhere else.

The appendages that had been encased in Dexter’s arm split each into two multi-jointed extremities that spread out fore and aft, and lifted the central structure, Dexter’s legs still dangling from it’s underside, off the ground. One shoe and sock dropped off, and some sort of claw like thing could be seen struggling to break free as the rest of the thing had. The maw of the creature began spitting out painful sounds, and suddenly the world around me seemed to have an unreal sheen to it, like the cheap plastic of a child’s toy.

Enough of this, I thought. Reaching to my waist, the familiar weight of the Colt 1911 came into my hand, and I could feel the sigil embossed on the grip slip into line against it’s mirror, tattooed onto my palm. As I began to speak the Words, time slowed, making it a physically taxing effort to push the weapon and my arm into line for a good shot. A burning began in my palm, and, as the incantation continued, spread it’s fierce pain up my arm and into my chest, searing my heart.

After a period I can’t measure, my eye, arm, hand, and weapon came into line for the shot, just as the incantation ended. Time stopped. I could see the white hot lines burning bright on the metal of the weapon, extending over my hand and arm. Mostly, I saw that the shot was aimed at the abomination a few yards away from me, and would strike just where I wanted it to. I said the final word.

Time snapped back, and I had to squint away from the bright, painfully bright, spectacle of the burning power of the round pulling the lines of heat down my arm, into the weapon, and through the space that separated me from the thing that had killed my friend. The shot made a burning line out of the end of the barrel, with heat and licking fire coming from it. It hit the beast just under the jaw, where it’s form thickened from the joining of the two upper stalks.

For a moment, the thing seemed panicked, with both stalks of it’s upper section flying down and slapping at its midsection. Smoke rose from the point where the shot had struck, and the sun-brightness of it flickered and spun as the tendrils surrounding it lashed and withered under the heat.

But this only lasted a moment. The horror paused for a moment, seeming to consider, and, as it became obvious to us all that it wasn’t going to be killed by this, it’s keening ‘laughter’ filled the air again.

I was paying attention to neither it’s fear or it’s joy. While it had been preoccupied, I had taken my second weapon in had. Though this weapon was also a .45, it seemed to only weigh a slight fraction of it’s brother pistol. As I swung my right arm into line, the weapon seemed to pull my hand forward, so that I had to spit out the three words of the activating spell as fast as I could. I didn’t even bother to aim, as the pistol would make the rounds strike where it thought they should. I spoke the Firing Word and squeezed the trigger four times, feeling the stab of the freezing sigil on this one’s grip shoot pain up my arm, covering it with freezing lines that flared and vanished instantly, leaving only the seared image on my retina and steam rising from the arm of my jacket where the frozen sections that had been exposed to the lines of force met the sections that had been untouched.

The four rounds struck almost in the same instant, forming a diamond pattern around the point where the hot round had struck.

The thing stopped. It yelped, then shook itself like a wet dog, then began to shake madly and whine. The light cast by the five rounds began to spread. Fire sprang out of a few clumps of tendrils, then a few more. Ice and hoar-frost solidified on other patches. As the abomination’s painful gyrations grew in intensity, whole sections of itself became engulfed in primal cold and heat, flame giving way to ice, frost burning away under the onslaught of insistent conflagration. Huge, suppurating wounds formed at the borders of the different sections, only to be consumed and exacerbated as each element spread and fought for space on the thing’s hellish form. As it beat its four legs against the unyielding floor, cold and ice covered almost one entire appendage, which snapped under the manic terror that consumed the keening beast. One of the head stalks leaned down and tried to push the stump of the amputated limb, now attached by a thin strip of skin, against the point of the break, but screamed as the limb burst into flame and melted the eye attached to the stalk.

I tore my eyes away from the spectacle of the thrashing beast, and looked back at Saren’s horrified face.

“Saren!”, I called out, “Saren!” No response from her, my voice bouncing off of her disgusted fascination with the pain of the beast that had come out of Dexter.

“SAREN!” I screamed, to no avail. “God damn it, Saren, wake up! MYKE!”

At the sound of her given name, Saren’s eyes snapped to mine. “Now! Do it now! This won’t kill it either! It’s just gonna piss it off! Send it back, before the rest of it breaks through!”

Saren gaped at me for a moment, confusion written all over her expression. After a second, though, she snapped into focus. She glanced at the beast, which seemed to be trying to beat itself to death, then back at me. With a curt nod, she started singing.

Saren’s voice cut through the awful sounds the thing was making. As her song continued, the thing diminished, shrank, folded back in on itself. Still covered in fire and ice, it was being forced back into the aperture from which it had come, into Dexter’s skin.

Even the bits that had snapped off from the cold or melted from the heat were pulled back into the husks of Dexter’s legs. At last, all of it vanished, and, with a huge cracking sound, the scarred and battered flesh settled to the ground, empty and flaccid.

This was all that was left of Dexter.

I turned and looked at my shell-shocked friends, and realized I had no idea what to say to them.

One day, mankind will conquer all of the ills of the world, of population, information, and government, and no one will want for anything.

And on that day, I think the living will envy the dead.

So... Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhmedy

Blake built himself his own little cubicle in the room we shared. By 'we', I mean he and I and about fifteen other guys, all of whom were part of the 1/503rd Infantry Regiment's headquarters company. We were assigned to a large room on the second floor of one of the buildings near the entrance to Fort Corregidor, just outside Ar Ramadi in Iraq.

The room had been partitioned off by various means, and I myself had used some wood panel, a bookcase, a bunk bed, and a hanging blanket to make my own private section. Blake had gone all out, though, well beyond anyone else. Along one wall, he used wood panel and two-by-fours, which he'd gotten from god knows where, to enclose a 6 by 15 foot area into his own little space. It even had it's own ceiling. The regular ceiling, about 14 feet high, was good enough for the rest of us, but not for Blake. I don't know, maybe he was worried about guys lobbing things over his wall.

He and I spent a lot of the nine months we occupied Fort Corregidor hanging out in his room, mostly talking about comedy. Sometimes, we'd compare religious views, which was always interesting, given that he's a committed Catholic and I'm just as devoutly atheist. But usually it was comedy.

We had, and have, a shared interest in making people laugh, and in what make good or bad comedy. For both of us, it was a way to get our minds off of the vagaries of being in the Army, and in a war-zone, and having to work closely with some guys who were, frankly, idiots. Blake had a worse time with that than I did, as he was a cook. The cooks in our unit weren't the best and the brightest. I most cases, they weren't very good or very bright at all, Blake being the notable exception. He's saw a lot of things that make good stories now, but that were aggravating as hell when they happened.

So, most nights, we'd end up chilling out in the hundred degree atmosphere of his room, watching Eddie Izzard or Jerry Seinfeld in Comedian, talking about doing comedy. We'd ping-pong ideas for sketches off of one another, using his computer to keep track of our genius, and we'd make plans for the day we were back in the States and out of the Army.

It kept both of us sane, or at least saner than we would have been otherwise. Occasionally, though, right at the start, one of us would look at the other and say, 'So... Caaaaaaaaaaaaahmedy!' This was the sign that we probably weren't gonna be writing anything that night, or even talking about performing except in the most abstract sense. It was our way of letting each other know that that night was just gonna be about hanging out, and feeling some kind of easygoing normalcy which comes along with spending time with a sympatico individual.

Iraq was a strange experience all around. It was made even stranger by somehow finding one of my best friends there.

It's a sobering realization

I like to think I'm a pretty well-rounded guy, the type of dude who's interested in more than the everyday pablum you find on TV. I was, for instance, quite thrilled to see that Akira Kurosawa's 'Seven Samurai' was available for viewing tonight.

It's on right now. So is VH1's 'I Love 1975'.

One guess: which am I watching?

sigh....

Meeting people at a new school

Apparently, this happened on my second day at the Quaker boarding school I eventually graduated from.

I was sitting, eating lunch at at table with a kid I didn't know, whose girth met or exceeded my own. As an icebreaker, I leaned over to him and whispered, "Y'know, I've only seen two fat people at this school. Me, and you."

Blind Idiot Translation

I was reading, today, about a phenomenon known as the Blind Idiot Translation. Basically, it's where something is translated from its original language by someone with only a rudimentary understanding of that language. This usually has the effect of ruining the work in question. Sometimes the translation is unintentionally hilarious, but more often it's simply a string almost-but-not-quite-comprehensible nonsense.

Since my time is worthless, I figured I'd give you an example, taken from my own writing. I dug up an online translation program, Yahoo's Babel Fish, and translated one of my blog entries from English to Japanese, and then back again.

Here it is, in all of it's joyous senselessness!



You try by your, as for the decision which kills between, you are brought up in me for being rather long. When I return from Iraq, they'd Platoon I'd which is broken at on; As for d which is part at the line company moving human everyone of the infantry. As for me being moved by Able Company in noncommissioned officer and the Simmons same platoon, person I' You obtained; d used the majority of the years when it drives for HUMMM-V.

Still, I trouble we' Approximately 6 months which the rear starts possessing; The house which can by d immediately after the start 2006. I drank the movie, my room which is seen passed most evenings independently. With method of working my every day of the thing which is the soldier, you did not obtain that under any condition with all clear methods without of being. I passed most nights and the weekend when exactly shock is drunk after the shock.

The 1st platoon was the group of the good man. They' The majority of the heavy raw materials being middle, d which is the right, the city of Ar Ramadi of our battalion parts directly we' So it is; d year we' Being posted outside because of the majority; D which is used in Iraq. It seems that I like the majority, like me.

But I think, I wasn't You obtained and I couldn't which it corresponds; The vibration of t it is loose that. As for me, me all raw materials you which are done; You tried; It re-was supposed to. I me thought of thing at least.

I did speaking to the pastor and 1 morning. I asked to him concerning the possibility of changing my specialty something other than the infantry to. Because as for me at that office which how has expressed me I wasn't You killing who, as intended to be able, me who feel there it destroyed; t sufficiently good soldier. The idea' But from beginning the basic training me certain d now as for that I happen, it was something which is and has known.

I couldn't It is that in t. As for me cause of the death of one someones of the thing where the companion of the platoon dies in me, it was not possible to be.

I Anderson spoke in noncommissioned officer Simmons and Lt. One time respectively. But what which changes greatly. As for Simmons noncommissioned officer my person, we' Was; d two degree it is blasted together. And Anderson Lt, he good platoon leader, the smart person and the graduate of the West Point, seems that really worries our everyone, was. Those tried the fact that it helps. As for me those must've It presumes. But that didn't seems that is changed with anything. And I couldn't t is dissatisfaction for the second time.

As for with, me I how thought terribly whether I was the other person, which rank of the millstone, I couldn't It had done; The hateful person who was broken by the fact that also t is a is added. That' What which was called the person who has the problem of a certain kind always in s, it had to be handled, it is there was every [wa] always.

And night of 1 Sunday, as for me I wasn't It decided which can take another week of failure and goes. As for me I'd It decided on the other hand dies

In which I am chased by werewolves

I ran as fast as I could. I had been running for quite a while, so that was not very fast, but I was still moving. The pack of werewolves that was following me made sure of that.

They weren’t really werewolves, not in the classic sense. This particular Earth parallel had found its destruction at the hands of a plague that killed most of the population and drastically reduced the intelligence of the survivors. The few who were still alive had become feral creatures and responded badly to anyone that entered their territory. I had entered their territory. Now, I was prey.

Normally, I wouldn’t have had a huge problem with this. I can bridge across most dimensional rifts, so my normal response to having unfriendly locals chasing me was to ‘port myself to a more genial locale. This particular parallel, however, had been declared off limits by the Travelers Guild, in all of their idiotic wisdom. They had done whatever they do to keep people out, which meant that I could not open a bridge at will. In order to avoid the ‘werewolves’ and leave this place safely, I had to reach a stationary gate. Luckily, the locals really were quite stupid, and the gate was now very near.

Yes, I know that I ended my last entry in the midst of what should have been a very lucrative card game. Various things had occurred which led inevitably from that point to this. Suffice it to say that the Immunoman who had sat across from me during the card game, the Infected fellow in the full isolation gear, had turned out to be not very nice at all. When I had chosen to give up my seat at the table, he had accompanied me, and explained that I was going to undertake an incredibly dangerous trip to a forbidden, diseased world and bring something back, or else.

I scoffed of course, even going so far as to laugh into my whiskey and deride his intelligence. He had then explained that one of the officials of the Gambling Hell was well aware of my placing bets through a proxy while also receiving a percentage on my play from the house. This official, a close friend of the Immunoman to whom I was speaking, was prepared to issue a lifetime ban on me for breaking the rules of the house.

Furthermore, a close friend of mine, who had collected my winnings from Andros and X after I had left the Hi-Low table, had been taken as a hostage. In the off chance that I was willing to accept a ban from the Hell just to spite the Immunoman, who I had admittedly come to loathe in a remarkably short period of time, this friend would then be exposed to the Immmunoman’s touch, which would result in their messy and painful death.

Alternately, I could choose to accept the snatch and grab mission. Not only would my violation of the Gambling Hell’s rules be overlooked, I would be allowed to have the percentage I had bought from the house. My friend would be released unharmed and still in possession of the cash they had received before being kidnapped.

All that would be required was to step through a gate, and find something. Granted, on the other side of the gate would be a world in ruins. A world destroyed by a hideous disease, for which there was no cure. Once in this hell, I would have to search out the very dangerous, highly contagious locals, secure a piece of still warm flesh of not less than two kilograms, then make a happy jaunt back to the gate. What could go wrong?

This might seem like an odd and pointless thing to ask someone to do. Why not just leave well enough alone? You see, the Infected made their money by curing disease, oddly enough. Their mighty immune systems let them be exposed to infections that would destroy most other organisms, and distill a cure from their blood. They were unparalleled masters of curing diseases. They also needed diseases to survive, as a way to keep their immune systems occupied fighting outside invaders, and new sicknesses were always needed. A new, uncured disease could therefore be sold to both those who might contract the disease and to the Infected themselves. A third source of income could be gained by buying sole rights to the world the infection had come from, then allowing immunized colonists to reclaim the abandoned world and kill off the diseased original inhabitants. All of these together would profit the Immunoman who secured the first strain of a new disease immensely. More than enough to make the commission of bribery, kidnapping, and blackmail worthwhile, really.

This is how I found myself leaning against a wall in a room on the second story of a ruined house in the middle of what had been London, unless I missed my guess.

My gasps for breath served as a counterpoint to the constant thumping coming from downstairs. The disease that had run amok on this world had reduced the intelligence of the survivors to the point where I had bought myself some breathing room by simply closing the front door behind me as I entered the house. No longer understanding how doorknobs worked, the werewolves were reduced to throwing themselves against the door as hard as they could. One would beat itself senseless against the still solid oak while the others ran in circles, barking and yipping. Three to one said that if I just kept quiet for long enough, they’d forget why they had been trying to break through the door, and go running off, chasing birds.

Of course, there always have to be the smart ones, two of whom I heard coming up the back stairs. They must have circled the house and found an open back door. They had no concept of stealth, though, so when the door finally burst open, I was ready for them.

The first one through took a solid blow to the side of the head, delivered by the hunk of meat I was engaged in bringing back to the Immunoman. As the hunk of meat was most of a left arm, it worked quite nicely as a club. The werewolf fell into a heap under the window, as I punched the second one in the head with my left hand.

As I believe I mentioned, my left hand is not flesh, but metal. As such, striking the werewolf with it did me no harm at all, while doing a great deal of damage to it. My fist was in fact stuck in its skull, so that by turning and bringing my arm around, I managed to throw the now limp body at the other werewolf. Which worked out nicely, as both of them were pushed through the window, falling into the front yard below.

So I continued on my merry way. Down the rear stairs, out the back door, across the backyard, quickly over a wall, and there I was at the gate leading out of this place.

Well, now, there you have it. Blackmail, through a gate, stealthy search, steal an arm, a bit of running, some medium violence, back to the gate, and bob’s yer uncle, the job was done.

It started at a card game

Some people swear by card games like Dragon Poker, or Cripple Mr. Onion, or Damage, even Double Fanucci. Some people play Pyramid, or Tall Card; hell, I've known some who swear Cups is the greatest game ever invented. Personally, I like my games a little more basic. Blackjack works for me, War, and I have taken part in some very lucrative rounds of Combat 52 Pick-Up. Once won an enchanted sword at that last one, one fine night.

But when I’m in the Gambling Hell, I play Hi-Low. Well, I bet on Hi-Low. The actual game is as simple as can be. Two to four players take turns drawing off a standard deck, and the highest card wins. Winner of the last round draws first, then draw proceeds around to the left, until all players have drawn, at which point all players show their cards. That’s the whole game.

Betting on Hi-Low, now, is something else entirely. You can bet on the winner, on who gets second, third, or fourth card; you can bet on whether one player will beat another, on the number of times a given player will win or lose, on the total number of wins or loses by a particular player, on the number of times a particular player will win or lose in a row, on how many times a particular suit or number will appear during a set run of draws. You can, in fact bet on anything that comes into your head, as long as you can find a taker. Some of these bets may seem like incredible long shots, involving sets of factors on which no person could possibly make odds. When the individuals who make up the betting pool include Demon Princes and hypermetric computational entities, psychic precognatives, persons with access to workable methods of scrying and divination, those who can speak to the unquiet dead, and Stochastic Men who read order into chaos, well, all bets are off, no pun intended.

So the simple game was really the quiet eye of a very complicated storm of wagers, some taking place before the game began, some taking place before each shuffle, some taking place before or after each player made their draw.

I’ve made a good amount of cash over the years, betting on my gut. Today, though, today I was flush, and felt lucky, so I’d gone whole hog. I’d bought a spot at the table, and hedged it so guaranteed to leave with at least something I wanted, and possibly a whole lot of it. See, along with my place at the table, I’d bought a percentage on my bets. That is, I’d bought, from the management of the Gambling Hell, a payback on winning bets placed on me. The Hell took a 1% fee for all bets placed, win or lose. Of the money they took for those bets based on my place in every draw, I got 2% of what they took. Way I figured it, if I stayed in the game long enough, I was bound to at least make back the cost of my place at the table, and maybe the percentage charge as well.

However, my real hope for cashing in lay with Andros and X, my betting partners. Andros and X were very successful professional Hi-Low bettors, with a clocked win rate of 56%. It wasn’t strictly legal, by the house rules, for me to have money on a match while I was getting the percentage back. You could get paid coming or going, but not both. It was one of those rules that everyone broke. It was a way for the Hell to toss out people they didn’t want around anymore. The Gambling Hell never let its own regulations get in the way of business. Bless the owners’ black and flabby little hearts.

So I spent ten hours sitting around a small, well-lit table, drawing cards, eating free food and drinking free drinks, listening to the joy and pain of the betting crowd roll over me at the end of each draw.

My fellow card players were an interesting lot, too. The fellow across from me was wearing a containment suit, with the most complete coverage I’d ever seen. Made sense, really, as he was one of the Infected, from a locality of such lethal diseases that that the local human stock had evolved to the point where they could survive anything but the absence of disease. The containment suit was as much for him as for the rest of us; if the illnesses he carried had spread, instead of re-infecting him constantly, his super-charged immune system would have begun to destroy him for lack of anything else to fight.

To the right, there was one of the Celestial Architects. This particular specimen might have been human or human derived, but who could tell without asking impertinent questions? It was humanoid, anyway. The Architects made their money by using proprietary dimensional and temporal technology to produce made to order planets, solar systems, localities, and other, more outré topographic places for customers with very deep pockets. I’d never been this close to one before. A bit staid for my tastes, but very polite.

Our fourth for the game was less commonplace than the rest of us. Wreathed in shadow, even under the table’s spotlights, it seemed composed of writhing tentacles, red, staring, only occasionally visible eyes, and distractingly misshapen appendages, it was an authentic Deep One, a horror from beyond space and time. It had spent the game snacking on small, screaming creatures it grabbed from a covered dish beside the table and speaking in a voice that was composed of hugely disconcerting buzzing, whistling, and screeching, which was only slightly improved by the cultured Indian accent that came out of the thing’s translation cube. For all of the Deep One’s off-putting presence, it did make quite amiable small talk.

And there was me. Compared to these three, I was as normal as could be, even with my third eye, and the left hand made of crimson metal.

Some stuff I've written...

http://www.365tomorrows.com/04/22/seeing-clearly/

http://www.365tomorrows.com/01/11/stillness/

http://www.365tomorrows.com/11/19/the-more-things-change/

I don't really know how to write this

The decision to try and kill myself grew inside me for a pretty long while.

When I got back from Iraq, they'd broken up the platoon I'd been a part of, and had transferred all of the infantry guys into line companies. I got transferred into Able Company, into the same platoon as Sgt. Simmons, the guy I'd spent most of the year driving a HUMMM-V for.

Still, I started having trouble about six months after we'd gotten home, just after the start of 2006. I spent most evenings alone in my room, drinking and watching movies. It never got in the way of my day to day work of being a soldier, not in any obvious way. I just spent most nights and weekends drinking shot after shot.

1st platoon was a good bunch of guys. They'd been right in the middle of most of the heavy stuff our battalion had been a part of, in Ar Ramadi, the city we'd been posted outside of for most of the year we'd spent in Iraq. I liked most of them, and they seemed to like me.

But I got the idea I wasn't measuring up, and I couldn't shake it loose. I tried, I did all the stuff you're supposed to. At least I thought I did.

I went to talk to the Chaplain, one morning. I asked him about the possibility of changing my specialty to something other than the Infantry. I broke down, there in his office, talking about how I felt like I was going to get someone killed because I wasn't a good enough soldier. That idea'd been with me since the beginning of basic training, but now it was something I knew was going to happen.

I couldn't have it. I could not be the cause of someones death, of one of my platoon mates dying.

I talked to Sgt. Simmons, and to Lt. Anderson. Once each. But nothing much changed. Sgt. Simmons was my guy, we'd been blown up together twice. And Lt. Anderson, he was a good platoon leader, smart guy, West Point grad, really seemed to care about all of us. They tried to help. I guess they must've. But it didn't seem to change anything.

And I couldn't complain again. With how badly I thought I was doing, how much of a millstone I was on the other guys, I couldn't add in being a broke dick, too. That's what you called the guys who always had some kind of problem, always had some shit that had to be dealt with.

And one Sunday night, I decided I wasn't going to be able to take another week of failing. I decided I'd rather die.

It's all about context

So, I was wasting my life away yesterday, again, and I came across a TV show which had a bit set at a bullfight in Mexico.

Now, just on it's own, the outfit of your average bullfighter is quite fey. Slippers, frilly capri pants and short jacket in bright colors, and what can be best described as a very odd hat. Not to mention the cape, which is to be waved in a highly theatrical manner.

But then you see the guy in his proper surroundings, going toe to hoof with two tons of angry pot roast. Then you realize the guy could be wearing body paint, a g-string, and a feather in his ass, and he'd still be the manliest guy in the room.

I'm just saying, is all.

And I giggled myself to sleep

I woke up around 4am this morning, and couldn't seem to get back to sleep. So I got up and messed around online and sampled the wide array of infomercials being broadcast at that time of day. Being that it was unusually early for me to be awake, and the soothing sound of a hard rain out in the night, I found myself in a rather introspective mood.

So it was nice that another friend of mine was also up, and we chatted over IM for a while. As the conversation began to wind down, I figured I'd pick her mind for her thoughts on some of the questions I'd been pondering earlier.

So I told her I wanted to ask a question, and I didn't need an answer right then, but I did want her to think about it.

Instantly, she sent back the message, 'I don't want to get married'.

Thought of by an interesting mind

My mom once saw, out in the wilds of Pennsylvania, a sign advertising 'Freshly Mined Coal!'

Coming to grips

I'm in pretty good shape. Well, I think I'm in better shape than the next guy, as long as the next guy in question is Jack Black. Or Jonah Hill. Maybe the late Marlon Brando.

OK, I'm in crappy shape. How crappy, I did not realize until this morning, when the act of getting out of bed left me gasping for breath. Hell, I had to take a nap to recover.

Sometimes, there is no answer

No matter how many different dream interpretation websites I check out, nobody seems to be able to tell me what it means when you dream that you're being beaten at ping-pong by the wicked serve of F. Murray Abraham.

Fin de Siecle

So it’s the end-times, as I think the existence of competitive cup-stacking proves. But what does that mean, to average folks like you and me? What is the role of the common man in the coming storm of chaos? When the craziness begins, when various gods begin returning, when the asteroids rain down from the sky and the war of angels commences, when the stars begin to go out and various diseases run rampant through the land, where do you fit in?

Well, this is an important question. The last thing you want, when the winds of final destruction begin to blow, is to be caught off guard. Much like when one graduates from high school, it benefits one to decide in which direction they would like to head when the world enters the mouth of madness.

Now, some might claim that your options re: the end of time and space are limited. But this is a needlessly shortsighted view. Given the breakdown of law and order, not to mention basic morality, your choices are actually much wider than they are in everyday life. So let your imagination run wild! Did you like Mad Max? Get yourself a muscle car, weld on some armor plate, lay hands an autofire shotgun and a cool leather jacket, and you’re in business. If you prefer something that will still let you hang out with your friends, have three or four pals throw on face paint and some old football armor with fur stapled to it, and run amok on dirt bikes. Maybe throw in a couple of steel pipes, or a bat with nails driven through the hittin’ end.

Myself, I’m going the whole ‘heavily defended bunker’ route. I’m slowly digging a deep hole/tunnel system. It’s amazing how much work you can do with a jackhammer when you’re living in an extended-stay motel. When my shipments of guns, ramen and …other things comes in, I’ll be ready for anything. I’ll sit tight, occasionally harvesting fresh meat from attackers, and wait for the final end.

But, when that end does come, stop on by, won’t you? You’ll find me sitting atop the pile of rubble that used to be this hotel. We’ll hoist a glass of champagne while we wait for the final shockwave to tear the flesh from our bones!

Accentuate the positive...

It's all about how you spin it. I'm not overweight, I'm a caloric over-achiever!

The Horror...

The forces of the Clown Kingdom are some of the most feared in the universe, and the terror of their attacks is almost unrivaled. The sonic attack always heralds the arrival of their tent-ships; The blasting of a discordant calliope in a pitch that cannot be ignored, and which often induces collapse in buildings and seizures in men. Sometimes entire cities are decimated by rains of explosive confetti, or sliced apart by falls of monomolecular ‘cotton candy’. Clown soldiers sometimes rain down, floating on anti-gravity floppy shoes and ill fitting, baggy protective armor, melting their opponents with blasts of hydrochloric seltzer, unleashing hordes of cannibalistic balloon animals, smashing creme pies impregnated with slaver nano-viruses in the faces of their targets, firing gasses that cause hallucinations and madness from flowers mounted on their lapels. And when the entire world has been ’converted to happiness’, the survivors are herded into the tent-ships, and only exit as corpses or new soldiers of the Clown Emperor. Fear their coming, and run as fast and as far as you can.

Spreadin' the crazy

I don't know why, but sometimes, when the phone rings, I have the urge to pick up the receiver and scream incoherently into it for ten or twenty seconds. Then maybe make a gurgling noise, and hang up.

Comedy Bit

There's this thing guys do, when they're bored and feeling kind of stupid. You can see videos of this particular kind of dude all over youtube. Guys who who were doing nothing one day, hanging out with friends, who suddenly think, "Hey, you know what would be cool?"

And whatever they come up with is just incredibly stupid. "Hey, film me riding this skateboard off of this roof onto the roof of my car!" "Dude, you drive down the street in yer Hyundai at like 30 miles an hour, and I'll run towards you in the opposite direction, and see if I can jump over the car!" "Me and Jim, we'll get on his motorcycle, and he'll come driving down the street to where you're parked on your bike, and at the last second, he'll do a stoppie, you know, one of those things where he brakes so hard the whole bike comes up and balances on the front tire, and I'll leap from the back of his bike to the back of yours, and then you'll take off really fast with me on the back. It'll be like the pony express!"

Now, the only reasonable response to a request like this is, "No! Fuck, no!" "But, it'll be cool man!" "No, Cletus, it'll be cool if it works out just right. And given the case of beer we've been working on since 10am, my bet is that your little Rapid Motorcycle Passenger Pony Express Transfer is gonna go horribly, horribly wrong, and we'll spend the evening in the hospital, in pain, instead of finishing this beer. Which is what God wants us to do."

And then you get the ultimate guy insult, "What are you, a wuss?" You know what, I'm just gonna go ahead and cop to that. I am a Wuss! Now don't get me wrong, you need something moved, I'm there. I can lift heavy shit, no problem. I've been in the Army, I went to Iraq; I've been out with friends and shit started and I took part; That I get. Sometimes, shit happens and you have to throw down, and damn the broken bones. I get that! We're at a bar, your girl gets fucked with by some drunk asshole who's got pals with him, I'll be throwing punches right next to you.

But. But! If I look at an idea you have, ESPECIALLY if it comes up after I've been drinking, and all I can think is, "Well, that don't make no fuckin' sense..." I'm out. If my semi-inebriated self looks at your plan of action, and finds it wanting for logic, I'm out. That's it. Call me a wuss all day, that is fine. You do your thing, and I'll watch from a safe distance, ready with a phone, so that when the inevitable happens, and the unforgiving pavement separates your jaw from the rest of your head, I can call 911 so the can come out an spatula up your various parts and sew ya back back together. And I won't laugh, in front of ya, and I'll come by the hospital and agree with everyone else that you were Just THAT close to making it work, but now way in hell will I be the guy in the bed next to you. I've been badly hurt before, enough that I have no interest in experiencing it again unless absolutely necessary. Internet fame is fleeting, and pain take FOR EVER!

One thing we could do, though, is start using all this 'cool' stuff as punishment. Instead of incarcerating most criminals, we should just make them do crazy stunts. "James Weston McNeil, You have been found guilty of drunk driving, resisting arrest, and ramming another vehicle, causing the death of a nineteen year old girl. You are sentenced to ride this dirt bike down this ram and attempt to leap it over these fifteen school buses." " What if I crash?" Well, then you're going to be hurt quite badly, Mr. McNeil." "What if I don't get on the bike?" "Well, if you don't get on the bike, we let Big Earl and Moose back there go nuts on ya with their night sticks and tasers, and when you've been beaten enough to stop arguing, we strap you on your bike, and send you down the ramp. So, you can get on the bike right now, or you can get on the bike with a couple of broken ribs and a shattered kneecap. But one way or another, Mr. McNeil, you ARE getting on the bike."

"Tom Williams, you have been found guilty of defrauding old people to the tune of 17 million dollars, and you will now involuntarily skydive off the top of the Sears Tower, here in lovely downtown Chicago." "Wait, I don't wanna..." "Throw 'im off boys." "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh......" "Lets go to Ron in the observation booth!" "Thanks, Marv. Williams has cleared the 90th floor, he's past the 80th, he has not pulled the ripcord on his 'chute yet. This guy only got ten minutes to learn how to work a parachute, I think he's forgotten which is the ripcord... He's down to the 30th floor, the 20th, and he pulls the cord! Just a little too late, though, parachute didn't have time to open fully, he hit the ground pretty hard....Annnnnnnd, the doc on the ground has pronounced him dead. Well, a bad day for Tom Williams, convicted of fraud, but a good day for any of you viewers out there who guessed Williams was going to land in the red square, each one of you has won a case of Pepsi!"

You call it cruel and unusual, I call it Justice!

A cunning plan

I'm going to buy a Mini Cooper, and tell everyone I'm compensating for something.

Come the Apocalypse...

If it ever comes to pass that man's o'erweening ambition brings him low, and I find myself leading a new generation of children through the shattered remnants of our once great civilization, I think I'll start spicing up human history. Our shared history is, in many ways, a rather extensive collection of stories about how horrible we've been to one another. I wouldn't want the new generation coming in to lose sight of what man can do to man, but I think the outset of a whole new era in human history might benefit from the inclusion of a little whimsy.

When I gather the young'uns about the fire after a long day of exploring ruins for useful objects and fighting off mutants and zombies, I think I'll make world history a little more... colorful than the history that we're taught today. I'll tell stories about how half-man/half-bovine 'cowboys' won the west, in a generations-long game of cards. I'll talk about how the world was revolutionized by the advent of the Monkey Express Postal Delivery Service, and teach them to settle internecine disputes with West Side Story-style dance offs. I'll fill their language with a mishmash of gangster lingo, Brooklynese, and hepcat style.

Why not. Living in a harsh, scarred world, in what way could it hurt to teach them that Genghis Khan and his Golden Horde struck fear into the armies of Fu Manchu by attacking dressed as giant rabbits, the most feared beasts of the old world?

Resolution

It's not my normal thing, but this year, I made a new year's resolution.

I've decided to only have sex in the month of February.

And, I'm back-dating this resolution to the year 2000.

This is not because I expect to actually have sex in February. No, no, no. That way lies madness.

This is just so that I can look back at the last decade and make a reasonable claim to only having been involuntarily celibate for nine months. The rest of the time, I simply wallowed in my own purity.

Also, having not gotten laid for nine consecutive Februaries minimizes the overall total days of involuntary celibacy I have to admit to.

Quality of life, my children, CAN be directly tied to which particular delusions one chooses to embrace. Believe it.