Journal: fat rednecks dropping like flies in the Chevy 1500's. the humanity.

Up pretty early considering late bedtime, but no big whoop, because I felt a sort of nervous energy from the sleep deprivation.  Motivated.  Quizzical star forecast seemed upbeat while also saying I would change my mind about something important after a setback.  Times like that, you can go around wondering when the safe is going to fall on your head, when in the day things will go wrong.

I wrote and wrote and wrote.  Off and on, throughout the day, promoted the writing.

leg quarter day, where we make a batch of leg quarters before noon, and make two meals from the batch.  Went low-sodium on that, except for a cheap-ish crab cake seasoning blend.  I was thinking also how Caucasian women sometimes turn red or pink like boiling shellfish, how that can be okay, especially if they had an open shirt, or a swimsuit top on.

A kind of baked nakedness that reminds me of food.  Therefore, in terms of appetite, killing two birds with one stone.  John Updike's short story A&P where the little girl buys canned fruit or olives or something.  I know, I went in the grocery store, too.  I'm a rock star around this town.

Chieftan of all the Worrier Clan.

Had a good long wait in the heat at the fast food place.  Finally took the initiative on that, and unlike some folks, I didn't get mad about it, or rude with the employees.  Hell, sometimes you focus on your goal and you don't make your own minor inconveniences a teaching moment for other people(strangers, those).

Helped Scarlett, or tried, past a bought of doubt, where I wasn't sure what was really at the root of the problem, was it the trigger, or was it just like, a certain precipitous time for behavior.  No answers there, but a friend is a friend, and I tried to be there, be a good ear, a good fish guy, who monitors the tank and tends the fish.

It was hot.

The damn blazes with it.

It's summer, already and just beginning.  Can't rightly get bent about it at this juncture when were still six weeks from the Dog Days.

Rather be an oyster than a snail?

Old chickenassed little hoochie ma, baby-mama.

I brook so that I brook to broach the Koopa film ranch and free the chickadee from the evil turtle, and I further wot, it means indeed, I am, upon all receipts, a good man, in the final analysis.

In the further adventures, there are other things, like sitting in the food stamp office for FIVE HOURS with some screaming kids, and Peach pregnant with another little dependent.  "It's gas station chili dogs for you, love" I tell her, and she's got that stupid gleam.  I can't tell if its anti-depressants or middle aged love.

I dare, but for the grace of God, to storm that impervious citadel.

Professor Plum in the washroom with the candlestick./Pick me out a winner, Bobby/If I Forget Thee, Arizona!

It's all just about touching mucus membranes, and when you put it that way, it doesn't sound all that fun.  Like getting kisses in the wound where the Indian shot your grandpa.

But still, when Roy broke Wonderboy thanks to a cornfed farm boy flamethrower relief pitcher, Bobby didn't hesitate to bring the Sequel That Is Equal, the "Savoy Special".  "b52's fryin' chickens in the barnyard."

It took magic to fight magic, sweet bird of youth and freedom, all that, iconography, the elites incontinent and the gleats from the low men spitting on the sidewalk as the deputy passes by.  Almost time for a haircut, too, I wot.

Sure, there's Phoenix, but there's also Tuscon.  And over in New Mexico, there's Tucumcari, a little gleat of a town, itself, not a Winslow, Arizona or a Laredo at all, but kind of an afterimage of America, kind of like "America's watermark."

Smikey the Bear fights Arson because, "a burning tree killed his pa".

I know what your thinking, that its all more minutia, nothing that touches your own circle, nothing that penetrates your daily life.

But can you be so sure?

I'm like Santa Claus, babies, because I'm everywhere at once.  And I'm not good at stitching people back up either, so there is like a "wetworks crew" that sometimes has to fix my handiwork, and usually after I've left the seen.

"They don't pay me to mop the floor, Darryl."  I throw my pogs, and then the ones I don't win back, I mean, really, who gives a fig about those?

Howell Kirvonnen is now, on this website, christened as "Bitch Pudding".  Its not a derisive term, mind, but like that guy they called Snake Shit, its like somewhere between Utilitarian defeatism and endearment.  And maybe even Bitch Pudding himself doesn't even know the difference.

On second thought, Darryl: make Bitch Pudding mop the floor.  Darryl, I just wondered if you're even alive anymore, or maybe in an assisted-living facility.  Like maybe I could bring you some of those strawberry candies and some bananas, let you bum a cigarette off me.

It would be fun.  We could talk about cars worth less than 1500 dollars, and dream about how many we'd like to own, perpetually intending to buy something, at least one big-ticket replacement item for each of our specimens, tires and battery here, wiring harness and transmission there.

But most importantly, like I mentioned earlier about the wetworks crew, we don't just leave a body on the table.

A marionette with it's strings clipped, but no, Pinnochio, not made a real boy, just on that trip from which there is no return, beyond the mortal coil through a cloud of pollen towards the radiation belt, and that with its own peculiar magnetism.

Putting some stinky on your rake. The malaise.

In the latter days, the sundry fly squabble biscuit-dry rabble that is the torment of man, his own striving against himself and his fellow, woes come and laments, and other things, dead witnesses seen before the world.  Prophecy and prophesy(I had a theology grad tell me these were two different things.).

We will be laid out, browning in the sun, like some bacon, fats alive and roiling against the flesh.  So again, the flesh strives against itself, the heart to ground the works, and the brain to be perturbed into inaction through constant anxiety and bemoanings.

The long trip to a bygone tomorrow, the horizon blinding us from so far ahead, yet we make we make speed, rushing headlong into whatever is it that fate bestows.  Meanwhile some part of us certain, and another uncertain, with differing opinions at war in our headspace, but the truth being that it comes regardless of what we make it to be.

Looks like they just wasted two perfectly-good white boys.

But still, nothing much in the scheme of things to write home about, or even walk up the road to the scene and take a vigorous spit in the wind.  Time and chance happens to them all.  The race is not to the swift.

And all that subsequent bullshit, having it all out with only the paperwork left to be finished.

Kids, before ordering, get your parents' perdition./killer on the road/sticks in the wind

"Killer on the road.....

his brain is squirming like a toad....

if you give this man a ride,

sweet family will die:

killer on the road.

Yeah."

parachuting, jumping from a perfectly good aircraft,

behind enemy lines.

Normandy, man.  Shitfuck.

Gerries flailing like cordwood.

Taking a better pair of shoes from a dead GI.

Eating grapes while savoring the smell of gunpowder in the air.

Am I too morbid, you say?

Memento Mori, losers.  A reminder of death.

Some Kentucky pone was playing his harmonica,

singing a song about corn.

Meanwhile, we were just idly watching the smoke rise near the horizon.

Canned fish and stale crackers, which you might think dismal,

but it fills the belly and revitalizes the necessary killing spirit.

Like in the old days: warm beer reviving the far from home seamen.

Warm beer and piccolo music, something silly about girls watching the coastline,

something that sounds vaguely louder than the din from seashell,

but no less profound in how markedly vague it is.

We only had what we took with us over there,

no matter how many Gerries we picked over in the pits.

Hitler Youth knives, Riefenstahl autographed b/w porn postcards.

The Acolyte(a father's day musing)

We sent the ice cream man

to Afghanistan

we coerced Bin Laden into

shopping at our lemonade stand

Scale model of the universe,

on the shag carpet of my Chevy van!

George Bush knelt down

painting on my toe nails

me shopping for cooter

at a Pentacostal bake sale

meanwhile they tried to 

put my whole crew in jail.

Cousin had a sticker on his

truck window that said the eff word

he make the help at the window

politely address him as "sir"

when I rhyme his way

he repeats every verse.

A prayer: Psalm 102

"my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth.

My heart is smitten, and withered like grass; so that I forget to eat my bread.

I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping..."

How Mike Bettis Brought Down the Republic.

The damn progressive Obama pushed against what he perceived to be injustices, observing what he termed as "beer diplomacy", but how applicable is that across the prejudices?

For instance, there were some experiments last century, before the APA passed updated ethical guidelines, and some of those experiments involved ethnic and racial differences.  Six babies of other races(white, black, brown, red and yellow) where used as a control group against a group of meteorologist babies.  The babies were placed in a room, in their carriers, with an apple.  The control group babies were eventually curious about the apple, and most of them even picked it up and looked at it, with a few seeming to smell the apple, and even some gave licks.

But the weatherperson, babies?  You know what they did?  I mean, even from birth!

The meteorologists babies waited for the scientist to look away, then reached for the apple, each trying to hide the fruit under their swaddling.

Once, me and my buddies were weekending, driving around in Kershaw County.  We were surprised to see a weatherperson with the nerve to walk down the street beside a WHITE WOMAN!  Can you believe that?  But we showed that weatherperson the error of its ways.  We grabbed the loathsome creature, dangling against the roadway from the bed of the truck, and we dragged the thing for several miles.

And we know a weatherperson will lay up with a white woman.

I mean, meteorologists smell funny, and they're not as smart or ethically superior like babies of others races.  That's why they put meteorologists in special classes.

And mostly they just go on and on about the weather, and their own kind, you know?  It's like a waste even being around them.

What I would do is get a horse worthy enough to be called Traveler and ride that up to the Weather Channel headquarter's door, with a burning torch in my hand, and in chalk, I would write on the walk, "get the hell out my country!!!  RTFM!"

The Old Fraud and the Sea.

The ghost caught me, from where I don't know, in my fishing boat.

I felt icy fingers at my flesh, and I writhed and thrashed about in terror, unafraid of falling into the seawater.  Then I felt my waist-belt being unfastened.

"My life--!" I thought, so much of it rushing through my mind.

"WHY TORMENT ME, SPIRIT?" I cried, my heart about to burst inside my chest.

"I am going to strangle you with your own belt" came the quiet voice of the spirit, and then unconsciousness over took me, that being a kind of ironic mercy.

"the devils also believe and tremble."

Paul says "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

-This unlocks a powerful intangibility in the game of life, that's stymies blatant, vulgar materialism.  Behind our eyes, in our thinkgood, none of our lawn tractors or ATV's or big screen televisions can penetrate into the inner core, and like Charles Foster Kane, we would be sitting morose in a material wonderland like his Xanadu, but ultimately, despite the toys surrounding him, unhappy.

James says, "Yea, a man say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew my thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works."

The casual reader would place a tension between between the faith dominated doctrine of Paul versus faith and works doctrine of James, and yet that reading is too superficial.  What we can say is that Paul emphasizes faith, but in the daily course, one's faith becomes evident to those around him.

"Thou believest that there is one God: thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble."

-Worship and gratitude are the paths of personal expression of faith, that and that alone, fervent, earnest prayer.  Because we have the doctrine of the omniscience of God, we are assured he knows all of us to our very core, that he has access to our innermost thoughts and dreams.  And then Jesus talked of thought-sin, that even a corrupt thought, as of a dissipation, condemns one, because plainly, even that kind of very subtle, internal sin, is quite apparent to God.

"We don't make teevee. We make teevee better."

My friend from Utah was going on and on, kind of in a Shatner-style empty musing about watching his DirecTV.  "Such irony.  They call it '16 & Pregnant', but they could call it 'rodeo clown'."

And I had worked as a birthday clown for a while, kind of for side money, then finally one day I got all serious.

and the laughter stopped.(but that's another story)

MKL aka "Jr", on his "I have a dream" rhetoric.

"Across the land, the people clamor and restlessly, the jump over one another.  It's quite the game isn't it America?  A handful of walnuts, here, and a new pair of running shoes, there.

The whole thing gives me fits, and yet every piece is a building block of what we always believe will be a better future, be it 1955 or 1968."

Or back in the day, after an attack of Bell's Palsy, the Great one saying, "Snow Pole got McMahon!"

In fact, there are little points of light throughout the interim, little points that nourish our hope, Al writing memos to the President and so forth.

But I ask America so intently, "what is the next thing?"  And is focusing too much on the future a bit of a red herring during an election year?  Can we have two plates of breakfast, and not come away too tired, blood sugar bound to the dismal earth?

Give America that question, that "what's next?"

MKL, unlike MLK, was worried more about his own success curve, like rally attendance and so forth, and the people, so innervated to follow along, but all things inevitably serve the best interest, and even John Roberts himself help but stop worrying and fan the flames of the future.  And Mitt looks street wearing a Covid PPE mask.  Citizen Z.

on a more cognizant nature: the flesh is weak, or "I knew as much."

If a man were to come upon himself in a desert, how then would he react?

"It is bitter, but I like it, because it is mine."

Cheevers, I tell you this.  We must rebuke ourselves more harshly than even our bitterest enemies would dare.  Would the be mistrusting oneself?  Indeed, I wonder, even asking for more cognizant nature of the gestalt, that one know oneself first, so as to know the closest and probably dearest material best.

Sensory deprivation.

As of yet, to be mindful of the move of one's own spirit without forgetting to check the deer cams online to see how many crossed the forest area overnight.  And to sustain the common affliction, to speak on it from one's bed in the hospital ward, but not as an authority, but as a common sufferer recording his experiences.

To center oneself, almost like a balancing act, saying that it is possible to put the spirit out of balance, twittering precariously this way or that.

The guru says to "tuck in your buttocks", as to the point that the natural posture or the common posture, happens in fact to be inversely un-natural, so one must as a pregnant woman balance her extra girth.

The deers though, see there is corn scattered in little piles, bait.  They come for that, and they come for a cool drink at the pond.

The cognizant person observes his own nature, and watches the deercam as his query moves innocently about.  There are first principles, and not "to thine own self be true", but the old familiar, "know thyself", or "physician, treat thyself", feel the movements within one's own spirit, almost disconnectedly so(thanks to good anti-psychotic meds).  One can then almost watch himself, as from the outside as he makes his missteps and mistakes, and not be so overwhelmed, so consumed in his own failures, but instead say to oneself, contentedly, "the flesh is weak; I knew as much".

Despite sniggers being banned, a Philistine just gotta be a Philistine.

So back then it was a NYT op-ed style:  DO THIS, IDIOT!  A dictutorial piece design basically, not to promote thought, but tell you what to do, which is against the stated policy.  That real paradigm is why Tom Cotton's piece got the editor fired, is that every piece defines part of the larger organization's personality.

Meanwhile I'm just a housefly on the dodge against the swinging tail of the pack animal.

A fistful of dimes for our hours,

and handful of dust is our retirement trinket.

And in the top of the ninth with a close score, fatigue had the bats slowed down and the flame-thrower had taken the hill.(and his entrance music: Welcome To The Jungle by Guns'n'Roses.  It was all head games, man: intimidation.  "we know what is coming across the plate, but we can't do much about it.")

Maybe in the final analysis, there was more "welcome" than "jungle", and more "roses" than "guns".  But it is so much harder to stop an intruder with only a bouquet of flowers.  But sniggers got banned, and there was a food order, then some kind of later food poisoning, where the conscientious writer stank up his rooms because of all the farting, and not caring even to grimace because of the stomach cramps after it had gone on so long, eventually losing its novelty.

The bitterest variety among all the little jaded ironies.

I got a call this morning, kind of early, from friend in Utah.  Amazingly, my caller seemed quite manic, animated.  Among the topics, they were talking about official advice from the city government, to not place the mouth in the contact with a partner's anus.

I was thinking, then.  "So that's what they do when they aren't either cooking pizza, eating pizza, robbing each other, or talking on television."  I felt as if I had seen how the other half lives, which was, to an extent, illuminating, while also being rather dismal in its context, with the government having to intervene, however gently, to discourage anal "rim jobs".

Friend, how you can be so lively, and that early in the morning?

Oh how we learn and grow.

We learn to walk bolder and bolder,

while still protecting our little toes.

"Vanity of vanity" saith the Preacher.  "All is irony."

You would think that would foster a world of transient, shifting truths, but the contrary is more true, that the whole framework depends on stable truths, and without those solid foundations of our ontology, there could be no necessary comparison between the formal and the ironic concepts.

Another, a kind of prophet advised us: "jump in the pit and love some one."  And then he began speaking in tongues, which as the good book notes, does not edify without an interpreter.

I visited "Writeyourownepitaph.com" and came up with some paraphrased words based on work of the poet Edgar Lee Masters.

"Pretentiously, they would inscribe here

'here lies a man'

but I, the subject, would elaborate

that 'here lies a man,

his nature so mixed in him

that he even fought a war against life

after which wary nature would stand assured,

that this was a man."

Oh, if I could.....

Oh, I'd rather by an oyster than a snail;

wouldn't that be swell?

Panties hanging from my sail.

I'd rather be a hammer than a nail;

with better stories to tell,

and staying out of jail.

Temper our grand hopes

with your sullen little sniffles,

and then demure, pretend and stand,

blamelessly pink-cheeked in the middle.

Tony was having like, waking nightmares, some bizarre form of catalepsy.  And I felt bad for him, I really did, but it was like, strange, because he was describing his nightmare, and I was like "man".

Hannibull Lee, a verse.

I could do so much for her,

If she only would or could,

and she for me,

to make a shine,

a prosperous glow,

from that kingdom by the sea

She would bring me salt pork,

we would share greens,

and sit and minutely chew,

as I had a bait of her peas.

Finishing with ice cream

and then cleansing our palates

with some minted iced tea.

But then, in my best polished shoes,

to quietly, somberly, visit her tomb;

why my own mind speaks to me

like an old friend that also knew,

that interesting bird Hannibull Lee

Just one more graven image

on my gleaming breastplate;

oh how the hostilities go,

other concerns,

to hawks and falcons thrown.

If I heard one,

then I've heard dozens:

"You should not, cannot

betroth your child cousin."

And with those talks,

I was okay,

and then I wasn't.

Floating down the Okeechoke/The Man From Pidgeon Forge

The number was just finishing......

"Globules drowsily hanging,

like great rings from your fingers;

Marshmallow Toads with Marmelade Eyes."

The emcee: "wasn't that nice.  Let's get on with our next spectacle, though.  Ladies and Gentleman, the Starlight Ballroom is proud to present:"

"The Tennessee Slicker!"

Of course, Obama, on his 2012 victory lap, having already licked the sweet coating off of crying babies' candied apples, claimed to have the support of an anonymous

"Man in Tennessee."

So.  I bring forth my own man from Tennessee. 

(Oh, says the tuxedo-clad ushers to ne-er do well, "No speakee the King's, eh?" fidgeting.  "We'll find somebody who speaks your language!")

And the man begins to pick and grin with a drunken glee.

"The Old Grey Mare is not what she used to be;

tell you she is old and mean,

and just between you and me,

I keep her tied to a tree."

the quick brown fox jumped over the dry fire.

As Jean Bn-Sartre put it so well, "why does the world even bother wiping its a$$?"

America, have you stopped dreaming of the future?  Are you more concerned instead with cruising for a$$?

Where does it end, man?

A light at the end of the tunnel?  A story that does not end, but continues to get better and better, holding the complete attention of the reader.

killer on the road.

He did a long, slow circle around the house, now and then glancing in a window.  When he came around the add-on bathroom, he could literally smell the water, vividly, like it was calling to him, lighting on his nasal hairs, but he could also catch a whiff of the sewage, but not terribly so.  No not so much.  But the water.  And you might think him insane, our part hound-dog to actually smell water, but I tell you it just depends on what else is in the air.

The nose can ferret out such things when the breeze is still and the only sounds and smells are coming from between the hills, around the house.

Then she, seeing him before he came full in front of the window, was looking at him, but not seeming to really imply anything-that Marlboro beauty that you either immediately recognized or just never noticed.  He paused, froze in his tracks for a second, thinking for a few seconds she would react, but she never did.  He was like a fly under a microscope to her, or maybe less than fly, at that.  He was scenery, maybe, like a part of the flora and fauna, no more a remarkable part of the place than stray animals that might wander out from the scrub growth at the edges of the yard.

He prayed for a moment, just a word to God, though part of his mind had leapt through the window already, before that, and part would want to go later.  But he could feel his own stupid feet, as if they were trying to press down into the ground, like burying themselves under their own clumsy weight.

He felt cool on his lips, then realized his mouth was opening, and he was breathing heavily through his open mouth, pulling great gulps of air that were cooling his lips and tongue.  And oh he needed water, now, his tongue feeling like it had been dipped in sand.  This much brought him fully back to himself.

He gathered himself up and walked on, slow like before, perturbed now, but with his prior resolution intact.

Approaching another window, before the porch ahead, he began to hear something beating, something insistent, fervent, as of some kind of wild native dance.  He listened, wondering what could it be, the haphazard formless drumming.  Sometimes the beats would overlap, like there were many different beats running at the same time, almost like a construction crew at work on different parts of a house at the same time, hammering here and hammering there at the same time.

Hammering everywhere.

It was a couple in the window, under blankets, asleep in there bed, with maybe the younger down the hall just getting ready for bed, causing him to pray, pray for himself, pray for her, pray for her beauty, pray for her sanctified breasts and bared back, as of a refrain from a hymnal, whispering in his ear, or was it his own thoughts?  And the other two, asleep, almost laughably so, with a sound like shoes in a laundry machine, shoes being spun, banging against the sides of the metallic drum of the machine.

There was a pain through his temple, immediate, sharp.  He flicked two fingers, as if to reach toward the pain and knead his flesh, but he relented, and moved his shoulders ahead towards the side of the porch.

He sat on their top step, those woods people, and waited, the pain coming and going, the birds flitting around, grasshoppers popping through the grass.

He was thinking he would pose them all after he did what he wanted, pose them like they were sleeping peaceful, sleeping as if hungry for rest, with a kind of lazy gusto.

They would look like they were sleeping.

when the book about life becomes a life about a book. writer problems, in other words.

So I was having a discussion with a fellow author who is in the midst of completing a book.

One thing became abundantly clear.  The writer gets so blindly engrossed in the work that everything else in his life suffers.  Stuff gets ignored, like romance and potted plants, pets or making another season of Twin Peaks.

Observe someone working against his own interests, even forgetting sometimes to eat or sleep.

Paradoxically, if publishing becomes an issue in the author's mind, then that can become the focus, raising the spector of the author losing the narrative all together thanks to said distraction, already picturing the finished product, rather than worrying about actually making the thing.

During my first novel, I took a good long break of six weeks during the rough phase.  Mind that I had been going at a break-neck pace with no time off before that, and after the break I resumed like a hurricane.

To be so completely engrossed in an idea is the fate of a writer, but once published, its gone like a campfire the morning after.  Such individual twists and turns, but looking at the road sign ahead, is the fate of the writer.

In the outlining phase, I don't adopt that focus exclusively, but have sometimes worked on several outlines at once, thanks to having a productive mindset, an overly active mind, probably on a bipolar high, or a caffeine binge, working near its waking peak.

But the first quandry, being absorbed by the material.  One's only hope is to finish the story, no?  The particular author knows his story, and knows, or should, all the details, and therefore is uniquely capable of getting the thing published, seeing the finished product of that beautiful book waiting for the eager hands of readers.

I feel like, maybe I don't even know my own cats anymore.

I was petting a kitten that walked over between my feet.  I was being gentle and re-assuring.  And my other kitten, Augustine saw that from across the room and was watching, as if thinking, "I want to get on this loving".  Foggy, the other kitten was there.  We used to call Foggy Smokey because he chain-smoked all day and played FB games all the time.  But he quit both cold turkey, so now we say his new nature is more elusive, like the fog.

And he's gray.  So there.

Let's hear one from Jim Acosta.

Hold it right there, Jim.  You don't think I can beat the Hart Foundation at Survivor Series?  Have you not been watching this head of steam I've built over the last weeks?  It was on teevee, cuz.  They call it momentum, and that's what I've got on my side, that and a promo about how the other side doesn't deserve to win.

See how I made it about them?  Sure, you can counter the Texas Cloverleaf, and the Codebreaker, and a lot of my repertoire, but spiritually, its like.

I deserve MORE to win.  I deserve that more than the Hart Foundation, anyway.  Sure, I mean, they have a valid point that wrestling was my fall-back option early on, that I wanted a successful career as a DMD, but I'm here now, and I've got the track record.  I'm a house on fire; quick!  I need water; I feel like a shark!

Check out the merch tables if you haven't already.  I've got my logo shirts plus some Gospel cd's I sang on over last summer.

"tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'."

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: this world, seems to me, is looking for any reason at all to tear itself apart.  3k here, 100k there.

I could be more mindful.  These people just sneak up on you, and after I referred to the four now criminally-charged Minneapolis cops as "Motherless Children".

Shep said Katrina was "the Freezing Point of Humanity".  I was watching that day back in 2005.

Anyway, my sister Peggy was washing my feet, with me getting kind of weird nerve-ending thing from what they say are "pressure points" in my feet.  I was thinking of Isaiah, but also about to rag Peggy about the lady anointing Jesus's feet with oil, putting that in her hair then rubbing her oily hair on his dusty feet.

The joy of being the youngest child in the house.

Peggy was more priggish about her hair than the lady in the Bible.  I had got Peggy one time, telling her, "you're no Ruth, my little corn shuck".  It's a love-hate thing.  I mean really.  We've seen each other at our most vulnerable, at our worst, like when we pick our noses and stuff.  Those days when I don't wash my butt, instead hanging around the house trying to take my turn with remote control.

Flipper probably died of old age, having never been ground-up with some Tuna.

Peggy may have did something untoward and secret, with her selfie stick.  Because it smells like Easter Island.

If its going to be "a brave new world", then at some point the people have to be "bold", "brave", and "new".  But not to the point of falling in a deep existential funk because you had sex with your homely sister.

But about Isaiah.  A cycle of curses and blessings as the people vacillated between true religious devotion and more worldly concerns.

"We were that close to the brink.  One man turned it around, Sarah.  Your son.  Your unborn son."

My son, Martin.  Who thinks, incidentally, that he might be a vampire.

Modernist Oasis on the Soapy Sands

I was playing some clone of Prince of Persia, Prince of Egypt or some crap.  So pedestrian I even forgot the name, an Android port of a bad console rip-off from some unscrupulous developer/publisher combo "wildcatter" who wears all the hats, then in turn is owed all the profits, save what the Frugal Pleigh Store takes for itself.

I really felt it, right in my gut, you know?  Even though there was a lot of old static polygons, with bushes and other fauna that are 2D like street signs or something, I was really getting the atmosphere of the whole thing, really taking it in.

There was a desert.  Beautiful sky, but the sand grains weren't so great.  Just a swath of color, no wind effects or anything.  Like they always do the optical glare "doubling" effect, like of a corona, a regular Corona Borealis.

I was in that desert, on my dromedary, porking him along, even though my character was soundly fatigued.  When, wouldn't you know, but an oasis: but not a spit of water and glorious shade from palm trees, but instead a Whirlpool refrigerator, sitting right out there in the desert.

I got the dromedary to kneel so I could climb-off onto the damnable sand, and approaching the fridge, I could sweat around the door moldings.

The world according to sheltered young girls: "kill the body and the head will die."

Joey had got in the wrong van, and the guy was telling him, "you wanna go see your Pep-pep, don't you?"

Sure, Joey was saying.  Joey really loved his Grandpa, who he referred to as "Pep-pep".  Like the girl in the Dario Argento movie, "I call him cookie, because I like both with chocolate milk."

"Look, Joey" said the man, turning in the seat, and shining a light on the beaten old Grandpa in the back of the van.

"Here's your Pep-pep."

Then Joey vomited.

Something like "they just want those microwave tacos from Jack In The Box."  Look bitch, you don't know everything about people, so you better just stop judging everybody before you know anything about them.

Look bitch.

I'm trying to throw it back on you, or anything like that.  I'm just saying, babies, its a big old varied world out there.  Maybe you just haven't developed the faculty to make a more granular analysis of the world.  Stick to the objective facts.  "It's not what you know; its what you can prove."

Rumpus acting as the decoy while the police gassed "peaceful protesters".  And the media, mad again because Lucy tricked them into trying to kick the football again.

You have to play dead, Joey.  If you don't, that rage inside him will keep feeding.  So just lay down, arms by your side, or even better, hands folded on your chest, like a deathpose.  Close your eyes and breathe slowly, quietly.

Pep-pep was the first, in the final analysis, to depart the mortal coil: first out the door, so to speak, and gone but not forgotten, but rather just a prop to be used to freak out Joey.