Alpha, bravo -- CHARLIE NO!

We leave the fair in a huff. Charlie and I have already waited twenty minutes for Jason to wander his way to the entrance/exit where we intially came in, but after six Somas and a 'happy pill' later, there's no telling where he thinks he is. Time slows down for Jason, as Charlie (drunk as a skunk) desperately fights back the urge to get into a fight with anyone walking by. I try and diffuse the entire fair situation, and finally -- low and behold -- a scraggly head of blond hair with matching goatee on top of a red GWAR shirt comes staggering through the crowd of people.

The crowd of thousands suddenly stops dead in their tracks. They're all frozen, and slowly fade to a shade of gray under the dim carnival lights and neon flashing ride signs. A man and a woman are frozen mid-kiss. A child with a giant corn on the cob is happily licking the butter and Lawry's off his fingers. A trucker-hat clad broham is lighting a cigarette, while the cigarette rests between his lips, lighter only millimeters from the end of his grit, his eyes are fixated on his girlfriend's large breasts happily bouncing out of her revealing wife-beater as she whips her hair back to tie into a bund all the while making sure her rather nice tits are on display. Time has stood still for these people. This moment is meaningless. It ends abruptly when Jason runs into us with a howl of approval as he scans the fair -- for what I don't know, and neither does he most likely.

As we walk past the exit, the tension has already begun to build between Charlie and Jason. They're arguing about a game of horse shoes they played earlier at our friend Bret's house. Who won, who should have won, who throws better, who is a sore loser, who landed more ringers, who's dick is bigger, who has fucked the most girls, who has fucked ugliest girls -- who cares?

We barely make it past the exit when Jason begins telling us (for the tenth time) the surpisingly amusing story about the girl who he gave two cigarettes to and in turn got $5 for a barbecue beef sandwich. Despite how amusing the story might be, he fails to realize that both me and Charlie were standing two feet away when it happened.

"...and I can't believe I got a BEEF SANDWICH for two cigarettes!" He goes on for two more minutes. "Two fucking cigarettes! Tell me the last time y'all got hooked up like that! When? Never! Beef sandwich for two cigarettes!"

The next thing Charlie says will unkowingly spark an angry tsunami that will make the Indian Ocean in 2004 look like a popped waterballoon. "I'll give you a beef sandwich for free!"

It's not that funny. It really isn't. But in the spirit of the night, we both laugh -- Charlie and I, that is. We cackle and crack more jokes about beef sandwiches, rib at Jason a bit, and he decides he's had enough of both of us. He's been reduced to the mental capacity of a small child, and he stops dead in his tracks, crosses his arms, and says, "Fuck y'all. Go on with out me. I'm staying here."

We're supposed to stop, slap him on the back, tell him we're kidding, to lighten up, to not take things so seriously, that we love him, if he needs one of us to tie his shoes, and so on and so forth. We've done this routine a hundred times or more. I know this act. It's drunken childlike behavior, and I'm not fond of it (which is why I never act this way, even while inebriated). I loathe this type of behavior to such an extent that I become flushed red with frustration, but I yield immediately and remember my duty as designated driver and what it entails; making sure all of us have a good time, beef sandwiches or not.

But something happens. Charlie and I don't stop to cradle Jason. We keep walking. We look at each other, exchanged laughs, shrug and continue to walk. It's not working this time, Jason, I think. It's not working and it will never work again.

We keep walking until I take the time to turn around and see if he's waffled and begun trying to catch up to us, but there he is. Still posted up by the exit with his arms crossed, cigarette in his mouth and chin up in the air. Maybe he knows we're through with his act but he's too stubborn to fold and give in to us. Maybe he thinks we're coming back for him after some reconsideration... no matter what he thinks, I'm not turning back.

Fast forward to the car; Charlie and I are posted up by his car which I'm driving as designated driver for the night. Twenty minutes and more beef sandwich jokes go by, plenty of laughter, and just as I'm about ready to abandon Jason to his own devices in fucking Costa Mesa which is miles from our fucking neighborhood, I get a mysterious number calling me on my cellphone. I already know the score: Jason has borrowed some ones phone in the crowd and is trying to get ahold of me.

"We're at the fucking car. Get your fucking ass over here before I fucking leave you here Jason."

"...hello?"

I'm getting that flushed red sweaty feeling again, and suddenly I am extremely annoyed with the humidity licking at me despite it being 10:15 PM.

I give him direct instructions to get to the car, and he staggers along twenty minutes -- twenty fucking minutes -- later. Right away, the jokes start again, and old wounds that span over five long years of friendship are reopened within sixty impressive seconds. Games of darts, puking at parties, fat girlfriends, whores, slutty sisters, ugly moms, arrests -- it's rattlesnake season and anything is free game here.

Charlie calls the final ultimatum out: "Alright fool, if you wanna handle this with fists, lets fucking do it. Lets fucking do it. I'm tired of your mouth bro, so lay it on me. Lets settle this. C'mon. Step out of that fucking car." He's had enough, and I can tell by the tone of his voice he's gone beyond drunk threats and is dead serious about throwing some blows around.

Now they're out of the car, squared up, and it begins. I don't know who throws the first blow, but it's all over relatively quickly. They roll around on the ground for a minute or two, and as I light up a cigarette, a group of three attractive -- attractive? fucking sexy -- ladies walk past the scurmish. They stop, jaws dropped, looking at the two children wrestling about on the blacktop of the parking lot, trying to make out what's happening under the dim flourescent lighting, and suddenly become aware of me.

I'm leaning on the trunk of the car, in the middle of lighting a fresh cigarette, when I look up as calmly as I can be and ask them, "How's it?"

They exchange shocked looks at each other, give an uneasy laugh, and continue walking. Some one in the truck next to me -- that I just pissed on ten minutes ago -- rolls his window down and tells me to break it up, that I have to break it up, that they're going to kill each other, that they are out of control, and I tell him to shut the fuck up and stay in his truck and let the men (children really) handle their business. He rolls his window back up, flips me off, and begins to drive away. I flick my freshly lit smoke at his car and pick it back up after it bounces off his car and he's long gone -- it's my last one.

This is an ordinary night to me. Some broham in the distance is screaming kill him or some bullshit like that, and I'm too annoyed to tell him to fuck off. I tune him out instead. I tune out the dim parking lot lights. I tune out the fact that Charlie has Jason by his hair, pinned underneath a car, kneeing him in the side. I tune out the blood coming off Charlie's forehead. I tune out the blood oozing from Jason's mouth. I ignore the security guard screaming towards us, besides telling him to fuck off and find a real job -- and when it's finally all over with and Charlie has tossed me his keys and instructed me to take Jason home then pick him back up, I tune out Jason punching spiderwebs into Charlie's windshield until his hand begins to bleed.

The crunch of the windshield brings me halfway back down through the atmosphere of anger, and I pull Jason off the car. Realizing I can't drive the car with a fucking shattered windshield, I cuss out Jason and remind him how fucked we are, that we will never get home, and that he took it too far.

I don't really care about any of this. While the clash of the titans unfolds before my eyes, I am bored with it and it is already over quicker than it started. I call Nikki and tell her she needs to pick me and her brother up. Charlie stays at his sisters. Death threats are lobbed back and forth via cellphone like Qassam rockets into Israel all night. The storm will soon pass and tomorrow this will all be meaningless. The cronies will have been phone up for nothing. None of this fucking matters, I think on the ride home while Jason curses the world from the seat behind me. On the freeway, the tailights and oncoming headlights become tiny fireflys of some sort. "Oh my god," I say aloud -- "they have their own fucking freeways!"

I hate my state.

Way to go, Arnold. You can defeat the Predator with your bare hands, but you can't close a $26 billion budget.

Nearly every state park in the Bay Area — from the towering redwoods at Big Basin to Angel Island, Mount Tamalpais to Mount Diablo and every state beach from Año Nuevo in San Mateo County to Big Sur — would close as part of budget cuts proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In all, 220 of California's 279 state parks, about 80 percent, would be padlocked starting as soon as Labor Day, under details of a historic closing plan released Thursday night by the state parks department.

"We've never been in as serious a predicament as we are facing right now. It is potentially devastating," said state parks spokesman Roy Stearns.

Read more about this awful idea here.

Soul Train

There's something in my eye. So I go to the doctors on Sunday morning at 9:00 AM.

Well, in my eye socket really. It's a small, marble-sized hard bubble that feels like it is lodged in my tear duct. My eye isn't irritated. My sinuses aren't really aggravated, but I am experiencing periodic migraines and come-and-go sinus pressure. My mood has dropped tremendously since it has showed up. I am both chronically manic and depressive, constantly trying to start interesting conversation or meaningful bonding moments with people, only to walk away completely defeated and more miserable than when I began.

I am perpetually in an awkward moment. I can't decide on -- I just can't decide period. I am full of shame, but the source is as elusive as the end result of this paragraph. I am on a sliding scale of completely content and in control with my situation, all the way to questioning if my consciousness is jeopardized. It might all blow over. I might turn into a rabid knife-wielding animal. I'll probably just stuff it into a potato sack and cram it in the back of my brain, or tip the conductor $25 to toss it in the caboose and take it away forever.

I'm still poking at the bubble in my eye when the door opens -- Ah, I think, the doctor. I'm actually looking forward to telling him about my problem. I begin telling him about the antibiotics -- that didn't work -- and the antibiotic eye drops -- which also didn't work. As we progress, I actually begin to hope for more tests. I'm hoping for a specialist. They'll stick my head into a machine, and look inside my head. This is getting existential. They'll tell me I owe them $500 and my car will break down on the way home and I will be broke. They'll all feel so bad for me.

I silently laugh to myself about the would-be peptalk I just gave myself, and become interested in the doctor, who now has a light shining directly into my eyeball. I'm moving my eye left, right, up, down at his command.

I feel grounded again. No complicated thought process. I'm at the doctors office. I'm getting a minor problem checked out. I am not paranoid -- he told me to come back last time in 48 hours if the eye drops didn't help. It's been two weeks.

Red, white, black and blue.

I'm rubbing my eyes way too hard, so I stop walking and let my vision come into focus. I can feel humidity's serpent-like slither wash over me like a warm wave in a sea of piss -- and it very well may be, as I am 2 miles off the Strip, on a 98 degree night with thunderstorms staggering drunk, bleeding from my head, and suddenly aware of my dillema as I stammer towards the giant monolith in the distance. Like God's glow, the monolith calls out to me: MGM Grand.

Lightning. I take a few moments to gather myself and try to shake off the alcohol, and, despite not smoking pot in two years, the marijuana from the black man in the dance crowd with the joint. My thoughts are clearing up as I pick up my pace. Just as I remember the midget in the fez hat operating the elevator, my stoned laughter is cut short. First by my bleeding scalp, now dripping into my right eye, but then something to my right catches my gaze, then I hear it: a woman crying.

Normally I'd walk past. Normally I'd play dumb to the middle-aged woman bawling into her lap, sitting only three feet off the sidewalk. Normally I'd be that person. Normally I'd go back to my room and feel guilt and terrible awful feelings about it, and normally I'd never stop miles off the strip to shoot the breeze with a homeless person in fucking Las Vegas -- normal is far, far away.

I stand over the woman and take a long drag off my cigarette, suddenly feeling parched. She hasn't even noticed me yet, so in a dry, cackled voice I can hardly recognize as my own I lean down and pop the obvious inquiry: "What'sa matter?"

She's still bawling and still hasn't noticed me. Confusion sets in, and I ask again. Then, "Are you okay? Were you raped?" The fact I asked the last question sobers me up more.

She seems to notice my presence, not my voice, and slowly looks up. I try not to look shocked, or even surprised at her tattered and bruised face, but I can't help it. I can't tell if she's been beaten tonight or two weeks ago. She's missing a tooth -- no, teeth -- and I'm suddenly aware of what I have just walked into. Her snaggle-toothed scowl is the final step in sobering me up enough to be able to reason again, and as she throws her hands up to me in some sort of desperate plea (among random spitting, screaming "GIBBER-GABBER"s), I take in the full weight of my decision to stop.

I take two long steps back, and collect myself. She's still got her hands in the air, howling as if she's going to die. Maybe she is. Maybe she's in the middle of a fatal stroke, or a deadly aneurysm. Maybe the portion of her brain that enables you to beg for a fucking 911 call has been severed, and she is pleading to me to save her life. I grow wings... I begin to levitate...

You are here to save me, she tells me. You have been sent here by divine intervention to rescue me from the depths of this festering whore corpse. I will go with you. I will follow you wherever... you... go...

Time to keep moving.

The trauma passes as I hit the strip, some 30 very, very long minutes later. I head up the street towards the New York New York, as I know it is directly across the street from the MGM. A Russian man and his companion stops me and asks for a cigarette. I give him one, ask him where he's from. Moscow. I lie and tell him my family is Chechen, and I am returned with a shocked gaze from both of them. They seem at a loss of words, then the other one says, "Dobry dien!" I return the phrase, and continue walking. A few stoned giggles later, and my enjoyment is punished once more by more blood in my eyes -- both of them this time.

After our brief encounter, the lights around me catch my attention (after only fifteen fucking minutes of being engulfed by them), and suddenly I feel stoned. Very stoned. So bright, so vibrant. I am aware of my toxicity now, and I am beginning to enjoy it. I keep heading south, now with Planet Hollywood to my left, and cheesey light show is amazing. I smile, wipe the blood gathering on my forehead, keep walking... this is never going to end.

This is Vegas. This is never going to end, I think again. Then aloud, "this is never going... to end..."

... Benign ramblings.

A Bentley pulls up to the MGM as I head past the valet parking. Then a Lamborghini. Now a Mercedes, and the Mercedes seems strangely out of place. Almost impoverished in comparison. A man in a white suit exits the car. He lights a cigar, and waits for his supermodel female friend to exit the other side before shouting extremities at the valet guy.

Before I zone out into another dimension again, I quickly walk past this madness and suddenly I have teleported through the casino and into the gift shop, where I ask for a pack of Camel Filters. The woman asks me something, and I repeat my request. She's not budging, and I am starting to lose my patience.

"Camel... Filters."

"Sir..." she begins.

"Ca-mel! Fil-ters! That yellow and orange pac--"

"SIR!" she cuts me off with distinct urgency. I pause.

"Sir, your head is bleeding. Do you need a paramedic?"

Chimney sweeps.

Fuck. Fuck.

Some Girls is playing. I think it's Beautiful Rune. I'm warped right now. Sun-baked, sun-bleached, and sun-burned, my vision is blurry and it was a mistake to buy alcohol. I'm guzzling water--

I'm pounding water into my system. I can't piss. I'm trying, my piss is dark yellow and smells fucking foul.

As sun and dove devour.... bat and moon if we stay on this road, we'll find religion soon...

This music isn't soothing. It's harsh, abrasive, usually something good for me to listen to when I'm in an awful and distasteful mood. But this isn't a normal bad feeling, this is something else I can't put my finger on. It's large, but completely benign to me. I'm not affected by it, but I want to bite another human at the moment.

I plant the seeds... that flower in veins... destined down black-lit bathroom drains...

I was a chimney sweep today.

We tore down monolithic brick structures... I clambered into and then out of a dark, damp cave with just a flashlight and a vacuum hose... I climbed up towering ladders--

We couldn't escape the sun. The sun. Oh the fucking sun today.

Who will fuck when these people are gone... who will fuck when these people are gone...

That lyric echoes in my brain, and I go into deep thought of life after humanity and I actually search for an answer to the question. It's hypothetical, I tell myself. But I keep digging deeper. Suddenly, Wesley Eisold answers the question for me and chants it for the last five minutes of the song with the rest of the band:

Ape... ape... ape... ape... ape... ape... ape...

I've gone far past the barrier of a trance; I'm completely lost. It's a narcotic rush I experience naturally, and find myself wondering when I am going to go see that movie about Myanmar with Mary--I think we have tickets for tomorrow at noon, and I've already agreed to work a full day. I shrug this off with another sip of Jim Beam, and begin my stagger into bed.

It will all come out in the wash, I tell myself, then aloud: "It will all come out of her squash..."

I am asleep before my head hits the pillow.

People can't change.

"Do you even speak English? Are you even a fucking citizen? Si? No? Fucking green card?"

I'm in line at Del Taco, becoming more and more aware of the asshole in front of me chewing out the attractive, English-speaking girl working at the counter. It's 9:30 AM and the guy is apparently already either drunk or high on something.

"Okay pal, people are waiting," I hear Jason say from behind me. "The fuck is this guy's problem?" he asks me silently. But the jerk just keeps on with his rant, completely oblivious to the angry patrons amongst him.

I'm somewhere else right now. I'm not even in this restaurant. I'm not feeling the horrid hangover I woke up with this morning. I can't feel my neck seizing up in a sudden rush of anxiety. I don't even know if I'm hungry at the moment, but after the long walk to pick up Jason's truck from wherever-the-fuck-we-left-it-the-night-before, eating just seemed like the right thing to do. I don't remember coming home last night. Is Del Taco even considered a restaurant?

"Number five... cinco, you know, you understand that right?"

I'm still spaced out, but I pay attention to life long enough to roll my eyes at Jason. Jason's shrugs and shoots a look of disgust at the prick in front of us.

The girl has finally had enough after taking his order, basically throws a fountain drink cup at the bastard, and walks off to begin preparing his piss-ant tacos or whatever-the-fuck-he-ordered. He takes his receipt, while also taking his sweet fucking time, puts it in his wallet, and before moving to the fountain drink machine gives me and Jason a look of disgust while jerking his thumb at the Mexican girl.

After I order--I can't remember what, I'm on autopilot at fast food joints now that I've spent 23 years of my life eating at them--I'm waiting at the counter with Jay for our trays.

"So..." He's got something on his mind. "I say we go see Terminator in a little bit. That shit looks pretty rad. I think I gotta get some sleep, lay down for a bit first though dude, my stomach is fucking raw from our night of debauchery."

"Well," clearing my throat, "I'm down, but I'd rather see it early this morning, because I work tonight. You know the 4 AM thing..."

"Fuck that man. I'm not feeling like doing anything. You know we passed out at 10 o'clock? We could have fucking made it to Jack in the Box, but you said it was too late and they were closed."

"Eleven." Referring to the time we finally cashed out and drunkenly stumbled to my house. It was a long night.

I'm checking out the Mexican's ass, which is ample. She's got nearly perfect skin, a perfect body, and green eyes. She spits into the taco she's preparing for the asshole who was in front of us, before wrapping it up and calling out his number--"Forty-seven."

"...besides," I continue, "711 was right there and I was in no shape to walk a fucking mile for a Jumbo Jack."

I time travel for five minutes and suddenly I'm half way done with my burrito, sitting in a booth towards the rear exit. Jason just moans and has given up completely on his food, complaining about bourbon not mixing well with vodka, food from 711, how he almost died of food poisoning one time a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away where 711 food is responsible for the deaths of millions upon millions of enslaved--

"Oh no," Jason starts right as the door behind me opens. It's not a worried 'oh no,' he's got a sinister cackle already going to match his devious grin. "Look who just walked in. Fucking won't believe it. Oh Jesus dude..."

"Oh fuck."

It's the homeless man we ran into while walking home last night near the street construction. We offered him change, threw a cone into the street, kicked over a sign that read 'CAUTION', and exchanged (both sides lying) Vietnam and Iraq war stories and how awful war flashbacks are.

He recognizes us reluctantly, and as he's asking for change, I go back into the cave in my brain and begin to zone out as usual. The white fluorescent lights and counter tops remind me of a hospital, and I pretend I am actually in one. The Mexican family eating in the corner becomes a swarm of nurses and doctors surrounding a patient, eagerly gnawing and gnashing at his insides with plastic forks and spoons, shoveling his organs into their mouths. The homeless man next to our table is the head surgeon. Maybe he's here to tell me my mother isn't going to make it through, or we need to operate now if your dog is going to stand a chance... organ donors... feeders... medical school... junior college... cocaine, I think, cocaine would be swell right now.

Gathering myself, only seconds gone by, I tell the homeless guy I've never seen him before and he'd better fuck off because I have no change. Jason just stares at me, and after he walks off, I go back into my hospital trance and only pretend to hear Jason begin to let me know how fucked up that was.

Later that night, after seeing Terminator: Salvation with Julia, I go home and silently weap into my pillow for a minute, thinking about what I said to the bum.

Fortune cookie.

I walk in the door Sunday morning at 8:25 AM after being picked up by my mom (yes, my mother) from work. I've only got about an hour worth of sleep from last night running, so I'm easily distracted by a pile of fortune cookies left over on the counter from last nights dinner. I think we had Pick Up Stix.

I sit down, put on Jungles by Holy Fuck, and uninterestedly peel the plastic off, and then crack open the fortune cookie.

I stop, dead in my tracks, just as the tone bank on the track kicks in, as if Holy Fuck has written this particular song specifically knowing that this moment in time would happen--some divine intervention has happened. I stare in shock at the cookie, inspect it a second time, and realize in horror what is happening to me: the fortune cookie is empty. There is no tiny piece of paper with a fortune scrawled on it awaiting me.

Sweat begins to form on my forehead and I can feel hyperventilation coming on slowly. I've learned to deal with panic disorder and anxiety attacks, but all my methods of curbing it are miles away now. A void begins to form near the back of my head--where I can't see it--and everything is drawn to it. Everything is being sucked in slowly around me, and somehow my eyes and mind are still transfixed on the empty sweet. I think I am beginning to drool. What is happening right now? My hands become stiff and cold, and I can't feel them anymore. My limbs become static and I feel like I am dissolving. An unstoppable force has met an immovable object in the universe. I don't even know if I've taken a breath in the past five... ten...? minutes.

Bam.

The drums kick in and I suddenly, alertly snap out of it. My forehead is dry. I can feel my limbs, and my heart rate feels normal when I check my pulse. Holy Fuck delivers once again, and as I regain touch with the music and my own body, I stare down at the fortune cookie and start to breathe again. It's only been a few seconds.

I shove the entire cookie--both pieces--into my mouth like a rabid animal and gobble it down. I've decided that this incident is both insignificant and not worth mentioning to anyone. I become ashamed at my tendency to read into events like these. The cookie tastes stale and sweet.

Stale and sweet, I think... a fitting end.

A day at the office.

My vision slowly returns as I lower my hands and grip my box cutter, the glare of a red-and-white-nightmare creeps into my vision after I'm done rubbing my eyes--

I'm at work.

"Hmm," I groggily murmur. It's more of a question than a statement of curiosity.

Detergent... air fresheners... cut up cardboard boxes... the sound of a pallet jack being taken off lock and rolling across the white and gray linoleum, off in the distance an illegal alien is cackling in Spanish to a co-worker, and a long, drawn-out vocal yawn coming from my mouth. This is Target store 2304, conveniently attached to the Westminster Mall off of Bolsa Ave. and Edwards, Westminster, California.

It's 5:51 AM, and my shift is only one hour and fifty-one minutes long thus far. At 6:00 on the dot I will hear an announcement over the intercom to take a break. I'm working for the flow team; the company sluts who have the tedious and crucially important task that only a fucking caveman or chimp could comprehend: open box, place item on shelf, throw box away. You repeat this process until your eyeballs melt and ooze happily out of their sockets, your brain has rotted from its core and seeps merrily out of your nostrils, and the fanged demon that lives on your back has no life left to suck from your already-lifeless soul.

On the bright side, the new girl they hired today is a nice change from the long-time early morning crew I've seen for the past two years. Nice ass, decent tits, a thousand-watt smile, and very pretty eyes. I imagine myself dating her, cuddling after sex, and I can almost fabricate a sense of happiness that could only be true if I were to actually live this secret fantasy out. I will never talk to this girl.

Detergent... citrus-scented air freshener... Febreze... Yeah. I'm in the chemical department. Anything from Downy fabric softener to Tide detergent, from Raid bug killer to mops and brooms, this department is geared toward making shit smell like roses and is perfect for a seemingly perfect housewife to clean the mailman's cumstains out of her husbands sheets.

--

...tossing hand grenades in to Hello Kitty stores... committing noble suicide to save humanity... eating Top Ramen out of the pan in front of my house...

"Sean."

Little Arab boys shouting "Anasara!" at me in the streets of Libya... running from vampires in the park... gripping an AK-47 and unloading on--

"Sean! Wake up man, break is over--"

"...and in Jesus name in pray, amen," I slowly lift my head from the break room table, suddenly aware of the moving chairs and shuffling of people filing out of the break room eagerly (God knows why) to get back to work.

"Very funny," Junior says with the slightest hint of sarcasm. "Daniel needs to see you in his office."

"For what?" I'm genuinely curious and awake now.

"Not sure bro, he needs to see you right now. After you're done jerking him off I need you to finish up in chemical and head upstairs, I need you in toys today." My supervisor is always keen on details and motivation.

"Yeah. Toys... yeah... I can do that... Toys..." I'm already spacing out.

I leave the break room and go directly past my bosses office, completely ignoring the fact he has successfully requested my presence, and head back to the sales floor. Walking past the escalators, I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the frozen food aisle's glass door. Fucking Christ on his fucking throne I am getting--

"Hey, prick." Craig Hartigan.

"Daniel wants to see you, Craiger," I immediately say to him without thinking. Craig's about 50 or 51, but doesn't really look it. He's a slender white guy, good attitude, and shares the same distaste for the company we work for as I do. I've got a bit of a shorter temper, and Craig is much more well educated.

"Daniel? The hell for?"

I shrug and jerk my thumb in the direction of his office, "Not sure pal."

He ignores me and heads back to the toilet paper aisle, where he will continue to stock merchandise until 8:00 AM when the store opens and hundreds of pissing-and-shitting customers will come to stock up on softened two-ply tissue paper to run across their assholes and vaginas, or blow their slimy filthy mucous on to that seeps out from their spider-legged evil brains--

"I'm not in a good space... to... day..." I'm humming to myself in a non-identifiable melody. I look to my right, still walking back to my work center, and make eye contact with Maricel. Maricel is a middle-aged Hispanic woman, probably Mexican, and at one time was probably pretty attractive--sans five kids and twenty years of course.

"Would you like me to light your head on fire?" I ask smiling and nodding to her, still walking. "Gasoline, fire? Fuego? Yes? Would you like that...?" She smiles, gives me a confused look, and with her head cocked to the side, gives me an unsure shrug, suggesting she doesn't understand. I get back to my aisle, finally, and suddenly I am charged and ready to work. Within a split second, I feel ready to tackle any task today and prove my worth to the corporation. "I'm a fucking STUD!" I shout at the top of my lungs as I quickly swoop down, pick up my box cutter, and begin to open a box of red carpet cleaner, one of which the canisters has exploded and resembles human brains inside the box.

Tossing it to the side, I grab for the next box on the floor of the aisle, and pretend the boxes stacked along aisle D2 are miniature buildings. I become a giant robot, controlled by unseen foes to this imaginary city, and begin to gut every building and eat the inhabitants inside.

I just don't get out enough, I think to myself, laughing.

Diet for infected root canal:

Vicadin, Orajel, scotch, and cocaine.

Hello there, nobody!

Well, it's been a while. But I've been hustling as usual at work getting a whopping 25 hours of work in, and trying to get some extra cash. Problem #1: Getting extra cash.

Besides what I've been up to, I have some information on what the government has been doing in urban ghettos. Promising young black NBA allstars are being stripped of their right to play hoop in the barrio. Take note of the picture I have included, and observe all aspects and details of it. From the father in the suit, to the child's facial expression, to the fucking Club on the fucking hoop.

It's been a long week, and there's been a lot of Olde English going around.

More details soon.

FREE TIBET... sort of!

Had to get that off my chest.

Birthday BASH!

Well in about 5 minutes I'll be twenty-two years old. In honor of myself making it through another year of life with only a swollen prostate, no known STI's, I've scrounged up a couple images from my private archive of excellence to keep your eyes drawn toward this post.

Getting older [not old, just older] isn't the hard part. Gaining years is like gaining weight for me. The days kind of zip past me so quick that I rarely know what the date is, let alone what the day of the week is. Time just sort of drifts by uncaringly. Nah, getting older is easy. Getting up in at 4:00AM, putting on your Target vest and name tag, wriggling into your stiff, cold khaki pants, looking in the mirror at your unshaven face, checking your voicemails from your friends who are having college grad parties, and getting in your car realizing that the jump from 18 to 22 only took four short years and you're no better off now than you were then as you zip up your discount store jacket -- that's the hard part.

The good part? As you jab away at plastic knobs on a desk to put words in your benign blog that no one reads, you get a midnight call from a pal who decides to rap "happy birthday" freestyle to you just as you think the walls of time are closing in.

Thanks Sven.

Recipe for disaster

The consumption of alcohol I dosed myself with yesterday morning/afternoon/night was one of astronomical proportions. The stars aligned, a virgin was sacrificed, and a complete & total solar eclipse of my brain occurred. The aftermath is sore muscles, achy joints, and a collective of blurry memories being at The Sundown and hearing the "Last call!" Makes me kind of proud to know I made it.

Now I'll just leave you with a picture I found on Google image search of my future wife... as soon as I can track her down, throw her over my shoulder, and make her mine forever.

Oh yeah, it's St. Patrick's Day. God bless the English.

IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM ARTHUR!

Pretty much everywhere... it's gonna be hot.

Ring the Alarm

Man, can't ever get enough of old Tenor Saw: