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Wednesday, May 1, 2013
I Drink To…Uh, I Forget
My name is Craig and I am an alcoholic. I said that once, many years ago at an AA meeting. It wasn’t a particularly revelatory exclamation to myself or others. I knew it as did those around me, in my life and at that meeting. In my life owing to my irresponsible behaviors; in that meeting owing to my admission and presence there.
I came to the meeting reluctantly. I had been drinking pretty steadily since I was about fourteen – by that point I was about 44. Thirty years of drinking had taken a heavy toll; my attendance at that meeting was a coin in the basket. A great personal dissatisfaction, alienation of my loved ones and diminishing returns on my work output/income were the real unhidden costs. And still, with escalating negative physical reaction and all the other negatives howling at me, I kept at it.
It was a family tradition, you see. My father was a lush so my mom decided to become one so they could drink together, apparently the logical choice for someone committing their own and their children’s futures to the delights of substance abuse. When I was older, I became one too. Seemed the logical choice – for a lush. Because to live in a house with substance abuse is to experience substance abuse. Some substances are necessarily more abusive than others. In my parent’s house, alcohol was the choice to beat.
I came of age at a fascinating and very dangerous time for impressionable young idiots. Vietnam was hot and heavy and the opposition was growing and becoming more vocal, more insistent. The counter-culture was in full swing, (the backlash at the oh-so-proper and boring 50s), and sex, drugs and rock and roll were my defining cultural ethos. As my preteens turned to my teens, the 60s turned to the 70s and I got caught up in all the druggishness.
I remember seeking drugs (a lid – I had no idea what that was) in late 1968 at the offering of my friend and neighbor, John. Roaming around in the dark in the fairly bucolic Santa Rosa hinterlands, I remember stumbling in a creek and going down hard, slamming my leg on a rock. It fucking hurt. But there was no pot forthcoming and we stumbled home empty-handed, acquainting me with the reality of my first drug run: pain and failure. I was ready.
Perhaps surprisingly, it wasn’t John who got me interested in drugs. It was the government. In 7th grade, they sequestered the students by gender and had us watch some films. Government propaganda films. While the girls watched films about why they were bleeding in certain areas during certain periods, the boys got to learn about the dangers of drugs. Drugs. (Sorry, I can’t type that to make it nearly ominous enough. You’ll just have to take my word.)
At that point, I was still too much a kid to know about drugs. Sure the Beatles were singing about stuff that had little to do with their girlfriends or dancing all night, but by the release of the White Album, I still didn’t understand. By Abbey Road, I did.
The movie, to my recollection, warned a bunch of silly little kids (and some seriously fucked up ones too) that certain drugs would lead to all manner of anti-social decay. Then they showed someone smoking a joint and seeing themselves in the mirror with the face of a gorilla. I kid you not – the makers of that movie suggested that smoking cannabis would hasten de-evolution. Spontaneous de-evolution. Pretty fucking impressive if you ask me. Then they showed how taking LSD would turn the flame of an oven range into a beautiful flower, which the crazed acid-head would presumably attempt to pluck and sniff, leading to all manner of hilarity when officials recounted the story over cocktails. Stupid hippies.
I was sold. I mean, if the authorities went out of their way to tell us that drugs were that cool, who was I to argue? Perceptional de-evolution? Come on! I was a kid so the racist undertones completely escaped me, but with my folks smoking and drinking and taking Big Pharma’s finest, clearly druggishness was the course laid out before me. I followed the path, however hazy, poorly lit, raucous, or downright terrifying – it has led me thus.
In retrospect, it appears that this was deliberate: offer enticements through compulsory media and then categorize people by which ones they respond to. Makes accounting much easier – and social engineering. I don’t know of anyone that kind of film would dissuade from trying drugs; most thought it hysterical. By my way of thinking, the adventurous spirit isn’t hastened in the meek or dissuaded in the predisposed by poorly realized propaganda. We who would drug do so readily. Those who would not, do not out of fear. But not fear of monkeyface or hotnose: fear of social stigma, fear of lack of personal control, fear of self-realization.
Euphoriants and psychedelia are a different breed of drugs from the socially sanctioned ones as they tend to enhance, not deaden. Where alcohol and pharmaceuticals make things fuzzy or even blurry, soften the sharp edges, make hideous fuckable, euphoriants and especially psychedelics tend to sharpen the focus, on occasion making the fuckable hideous where not downright hilarious. Socially demonized drugs (euphoriants and psychedelia) sharpen focus and come with no appreciable body count; socially sanctioned ones deaden focus and rack up huge numbers. Considering the drugs used by the majority, this can’t be emphasized enough.
Seriously. Cannabis, designated a Schedule 1 Drug, is categorized with heroin, a deadly narcotic. How many people does heroin kill every year? According to the CDC, heroin kills about 2,000 citizens of the USA each year. Marijuana? There are no numbers available. The CDC, the USA, the UN Convention on Narcotics, FBI, DEA, AMA: none of them can point to a single death caused by ingestion of marijuana. Ever. And not for want of trying.
The legal drugs? According to drugwarfacts.org, the AMA stated that in the year 2000, tobacco was responsible for 435,000 deaths while alcohol provided for 85,000 funerals. Pharmaceuticals take out a minimum of 100,000 of us a year and, according to the DEA, are the biggest drug problem facing the nation. One wonders if the fact that since the Reagan 80s Big Pharma has been advertising on TV has any correlation.
Don’t get me wrong, cannabis has many sedative properties and when used by lazy minds, produces lazy thinking. Just like most drugs. But as one who has used both drugs in conjunction, and each separately, I’ve made some personal observations, and they seem worthy of consideration in a nation with 100 million + people loaded up on one compound or another. Or a bunch.
After about 13 years of combined use – pretty much every drug available combined with booze and pot – I went clean. And by clean I mean that I stopped taking drugs. Well, except for alcohol, caffeine, the occasional pharmaceutical… I’m a dirty, dirty man.
Anyway, I did the family thing, cut my hair, got jobs no smart man would ever take, struggled to sell my work in a place that had no interest, and I drank. And drank.
Now, owing to what I do, I have a fairly decent memory. Reading and writing both place demands upon the memory, pump it up. In order to be a decent writer, one must read. In order to retain as much as one can from their reading, it behooves one to write. Writing is very good for the memory because the building materials of literature are uniquely interchangeable, and one must constantly seek the precise combination in order to effectively express themselves. Writing is good for the memory because we have to remember how to spell the words we use to do it.
The times of my life I found to be the foggiest were those during which I drank and watched TV. Watching is a passive activity, drinking a numbing one. Combined, I found they impacted my memory as well as my social and professional life, impacted them negatively. The more I drank, and I drank a lot, the less I worked my mind, the worse my memory became. The worse my memory became, the worse my outlook on life. It became hard to remember the good parts and easy to focus on the bad ones. Without knowing what I was trying to forget, I found that I was drinking to forget all the same. And it worked. A bit.
I found it easier to give up TV than, well, pretty much anything else. I turned it off at around 13 and have had a very tepid relationship with it since. It seemed to me that in being the good viewer, I was sacrificing my real life to watch people get paid to portray fictional ones. I had better things to do. So I drank and wrote. My memory improved. A little.
Finally the bottle took its toll and the last real doctor I had told me I had a choice: I could stay alive or I could continue drinking and die. Fairly horribly. He said my liver tests indicated that it was about halfway wasted. He suggested AA.
I drank. After diminishing myself a little while longer, I went to AA. I heard a fellow say that he woke up one morning, pulled himself together and went out. The first guy he met was an asshole. Then the next person he met was an asshole, too. He finally realized that the asshole was traveling with him, that he was the asshole. That’s when he went to AA.
AA is much lauded but doesn’t really have that great a success rate. I suspect this is owing to their approach to substance abuse. In order to get with the AA program, one has to admit they are totally helpless and require the help of an imaginary friend to overcome this. Then they call real drunks. This strikes me as utterly untenable: addiction is that very mindset – I am helpless.
Isn’t that the real problem with substance abuse: looking to an external source to contend with issues we have created for ourselves? Is not alcohol that more powerful force that we’re surrendering to? Drugs? Isn’t supplicating one’s self to a notion almost guaranteed to fail in the face of the tangible? I can pray to divinity all night and come up empty, or walk down to the corner store and fill myself with spirits in the immediate. Helpless?
Bullshit. I’m not helpless, I’m lazy, I’m weak, I’m a boy in a man’s body. To embrace their ethos I must supplicate as that boy, beg Daddy for forgiveness and admit that I have no will of my own. I must then seek out those I’ve embarrassed myself around and beg their forgiveness. Huh? For being a drunken jerk? If everybody in the USA who got drunk and acted idiotically were to do that, we would grind to a halt nationally in a weepy cluster of pathetic recriminations and self-pity. To drink is to act stupid. Considering what we know about drinking, to drink is to be stupid. If my drinking has harmed you or yours, I offer my deepest apologies. Hopefully we can leave it at that.
But owing to its unique properties, particularly its effect on memory, it is not a surprise we do it or that our world suffers for it. Drinking to forget is a very real phenomenon. Numerous studies show that alcohol consumption lowers the individual IQ as well as lowers the IQ of one’s progeny. If you’re stupid enough to drink when you’re pregnant, don’t be surprised to find your offspring even stupider still. IQ and recall are inextricably linked.
People drink when bad things happen, to help them through it. If it does in any way, and I can’t say that it has ever helped me, it seems it would be in the dimming of the memories. Why does civilization continue repeating the same imbecilic behaviors over and over and over? It’s as if we can’t recall what came before, and worse, that we don’t care about what comes after. That is alcoholic thinking, alcoholic on a downward spiral.
Alcohol is a principal cause of automobile accidents, workplace accidents, domestic accidents, domestic abuse, incest, rape, egregious assault and murder. Cops drink it. Soldiers drink it. Jocks and their sycophants drink it. Our political leaders drink it. Our religious leaders drink it. Our economists drink it and we, the people, drink it.
Consider our world: the physical USA is a shambles, regions made wastelands, seething toxins, our infrastructure collapsing – like the body of a wino; our economy is a complete disaster, unemployment and escalating and irreducible debt plague us – just like the finances of a drunk; our authorities are angry and violent, prone to crazed outbursts and remarkable cruelty for even the tiniest perceived slight or challenge – like the besotted asshole in the bar; our nation at war with the world, trying to impress everyone with how tough and cool we are as we stumble all over ourselves swinging wildly at everyone who even looks at us funny – like a teenaged boozehound on a snort. Our citizens, afflicted with diminishing memory and personal resources, find themselves lost and confounded by a world spinning out of control around them. We live for the moment waiting for our next drink to wash our horrid daze away: the lush life.
How insidious a drug that makes you feel terrible, makes you behave embarrassingly, makes you pick fights and argue over trifles, makes you harm your friends and loved ones, makes you look stupid, makes you feel depressed and then makes you forget all of it as you prepare for the next sip. Cool and refreshing, ah, that’s nice.
What are you looking at? Jerk!
© 2013 simmbiosis 4/30/13
(Leading Causes of Death 2000) "The leading causes of death in 2000 were tobacco (435,000 deaths; 18.1% of total US deaths), poor diet and physical inactivity (400,000 deaths; 16.6%), and alcohol consumption (85,000 deaths; 3.5%). Other actual causes of death were microbial agents (75,000), toxic agents (55,000), motor vehicle crashes (43,000), incidents involving firearms (29,000), sexual behaviors (20,000), and illicit use of drugs (17,000)."
Saturday, March 30, 2013
The Concord Hero
I have looked down the barrel of many a gun and not because I was cleaning them or suicidal. Many people over the course of my life have felt the necessity to point fully loaded and cocked guns at me, to my good fortune none have had the occasion to shoot them – so far. Having grown up around guns with a full operational knowledge of them, I have always had the wisdom to do what those pointing them at me instructed.
I know how dangerous guns are – I have killed with them. I have seen the detached simplicity with which they can be used to dispatch that targeted, well understand the righteous glee with which we promote them and moral indignation with which we repudiate them. The USA is a nation conquered with guns (and lots of germs). Our Constitution was amended to include them as a fundamental right of citizenship. There are hundreds of millions of them on the North American continent, maybe billions.
Like it or not, they are here to stay.
I learned early about gun use in a defensive capacity. At the dawning of the glorious Reagan era, much vaunted by those with memories not dissimilar to his at the end, I had the occasion to attend a birthday party for my brother in lovely Concord, California. In attendance along with several adults and children was a woman with man troubles. She attended the festivities with a paramour not her boyfriend who apparently felt very protective of her. (This I found out after the fact.)
As the party progressed, there came a tapping, officers there came a rapping, partiers fairly crapping, rapping on my brother’s door. They came forth, two of them, to alert us that the now departed woman’s thoroughly deranged boyfriend had called the police and warned them that he was headed our way, drunk and armed with mayhem in mind. We thanked the police for offering their protection.
They explained that in this case they were only messengers; that they did not function in a protective capacity. But they did say that if he showed up to give them a call and they’d come back around. Then they left.
Let this sink in: the police, a uniformed armed contingent tasked with the enforcement of the law, are informed in advance that a crime is to be committed – not a robbery or vandalization but a capital homicide. They dedicate two officers to warn an apartment full of men, women and children that a drunken, rage-fueled predator is headed their way, but don’t have them stick around to protect or defend. What were we to do? Use the phone.
About a half an hour after the police left, the crazed fellow showed up. We used the phone. He started kicking on the front door of the apartment, shouting insanely. The police assured us they were on the way. He kicked the door again, bellowing loudly. The door was steel plated and had to hurt like hell as he battered it, howling in anger.
The women and children were herded into the back bedroom, out of any direct line of fire. My brother took position directly facing the door, I off to his side. The door shuddered as the intruder kicked and kicked it. My brother pointed his cocked Smith & Wesson Model 19, 357 magnum at the door and our breathing became halted, senses tense and ready.
Bam! The door burst open and the crazed jerk stormed right at my brother, one hand in his pocket. No gun visible, my brother pulled his pistol back and pointed it toward the ceiling. Shouting, menacing, threatening, then the hand comes out of his pocket and he grabs for my brother’s gun. My brother shoots him in the gut. He stands there, no flying across the room in a hail of slo mo blood, no violent twisting and wrenching to the floor – he just stood there.
Stunned, his rage now shock, he stumbled toward the door. We knew better than that and sat him down. If he was found shot outside of the residence, then my brother could be charged. The first rounds in my brother’s revolver were loaded with 38 shot loads, which are like little mini shotguns for one’s pistol. More projectiles with less penetration, the single shot cost anger-boy about 15 feet of his intestines when all was said and done.
Within five minutes of the end of the confrontation the police arrived. Ready to kill, 8 to 10 of them swarmed the tiny apartment pointing their pistols in each of our faces. My brother was handcuffed and taken in; jerko was taken to the hospital to enjoy the true costs of his drinking problem. The remainder of our evening was spent working to extricate my brother from police custody for defending his home from an invader they had warned him about, which we finally accomplished by morning.
In the 10 minutes it took for the police to return, had jerko come armed and had we no defensive capacity, he would have had sufficient time to kill us all. The phone would not have thwarted his anger. All because he got drunk and jealous. The police confirmed for me again in that instance the vital importance each of us faces in defending ourselves and our loved ones. There is no external force (unless you can afford one) that will care for you or me, so we must do it ourselves.
The police as the military are offensive forces, not defensive. It is simple reason which dictates this: a thousand people cannot protect a hundred thousand people; ten thousand cannot protect ten million. Our protection and defense must come from ourselves as must the protection and defense of others. The police have no legal mandate to protect us nor does the government.
Most people behave responsibly with guns – as there are over a hundred million gun toting citizens of the USA, this is borne out by the very lack of bloodbath we are supposedly basking in. Police officers kill people for taking drugs, kill them for mouthing off, kill them for running away.
Most gun violence is alcohol or drug related as most drug crimes are prohibition related. Eliminate prohibition and drug crimes will decrease, meaning less gun violence. Prosecute anyone who uses a weapon egregiously, especially those under color of authority, and violent offenses will diminish.
Outlaw guns and create one more unenforceable prohibition that will only further entrench the police state and further widen the division between law enforcement and those subject to its excesses. Defend yourself or remain defenseless.
The conquered here, owe.
Peace.
© 2013 simmbiosis 3/30/13
I know how dangerous guns are – I have killed with them. I have seen the detached simplicity with which they can be used to dispatch that targeted, well understand the righteous glee with which we promote them and moral indignation with which we repudiate them. The USA is a nation conquered with guns (and lots of germs). Our Constitution was amended to include them as a fundamental right of citizenship. There are hundreds of millions of them on the North American continent, maybe billions.
Like it or not, they are here to stay.
I learned early about gun use in a defensive capacity. At the dawning of the glorious Reagan era, much vaunted by those with memories not dissimilar to his at the end, I had the occasion to attend a birthday party for my brother in lovely Concord, California. In attendance along with several adults and children was a woman with man troubles. She attended the festivities with a paramour not her boyfriend who apparently felt very protective of her. (This I found out after the fact.)
As the party progressed, there came a tapping, officers there came a rapping, partiers fairly crapping, rapping on my brother’s door. They came forth, two of them, to alert us that the now departed woman’s thoroughly deranged boyfriend had called the police and warned them that he was headed our way, drunk and armed with mayhem in mind. We thanked the police for offering their protection.
They explained that in this case they were only messengers; that they did not function in a protective capacity. But they did say that if he showed up to give them a call and they’d come back around. Then they left.
Let this sink in: the police, a uniformed armed contingent tasked with the enforcement of the law, are informed in advance that a crime is to be committed – not a robbery or vandalization but a capital homicide. They dedicate two officers to warn an apartment full of men, women and children that a drunken, rage-fueled predator is headed their way, but don’t have them stick around to protect or defend. What were we to do? Use the phone.
About a half an hour after the police left, the crazed fellow showed up. We used the phone. He started kicking on the front door of the apartment, shouting insanely. The police assured us they were on the way. He kicked the door again, bellowing loudly. The door was steel plated and had to hurt like hell as he battered it, howling in anger.
The women and children were herded into the back bedroom, out of any direct line of fire. My brother took position directly facing the door, I off to his side. The door shuddered as the intruder kicked and kicked it. My brother pointed his cocked Smith & Wesson Model 19, 357 magnum at the door and our breathing became halted, senses tense and ready.
Bam! The door burst open and the crazed jerk stormed right at my brother, one hand in his pocket. No gun visible, my brother pulled his pistol back and pointed it toward the ceiling. Shouting, menacing, threatening, then the hand comes out of his pocket and he grabs for my brother’s gun. My brother shoots him in the gut. He stands there, no flying across the room in a hail of slo mo blood, no violent twisting and wrenching to the floor – he just stood there.
Stunned, his rage now shock, he stumbled toward the door. We knew better than that and sat him down. If he was found shot outside of the residence, then my brother could be charged. The first rounds in my brother’s revolver were loaded with 38 shot loads, which are like little mini shotguns for one’s pistol. More projectiles with less penetration, the single shot cost anger-boy about 15 feet of his intestines when all was said and done.
Within five minutes of the end of the confrontation the police arrived. Ready to kill, 8 to 10 of them swarmed the tiny apartment pointing their pistols in each of our faces. My brother was handcuffed and taken in; jerko was taken to the hospital to enjoy the true costs of his drinking problem. The remainder of our evening was spent working to extricate my brother from police custody for defending his home from an invader they had warned him about, which we finally accomplished by morning.
In the 10 minutes it took for the police to return, had jerko come armed and had we no defensive capacity, he would have had sufficient time to kill us all. The phone would not have thwarted his anger. All because he got drunk and jealous. The police confirmed for me again in that instance the vital importance each of us faces in defending ourselves and our loved ones. There is no external force (unless you can afford one) that will care for you or me, so we must do it ourselves.
The police as the military are offensive forces, not defensive. It is simple reason which dictates this: a thousand people cannot protect a hundred thousand people; ten thousand cannot protect ten million. Our protection and defense must come from ourselves as must the protection and defense of others. The police have no legal mandate to protect us nor does the government.
Most people behave responsibly with guns – as there are over a hundred million gun toting citizens of the USA, this is borne out by the very lack of bloodbath we are supposedly basking in. Police officers kill people for taking drugs, kill them for mouthing off, kill them for running away.
Most gun violence is alcohol or drug related as most drug crimes are prohibition related. Eliminate prohibition and drug crimes will decrease, meaning less gun violence. Prosecute anyone who uses a weapon egregiously, especially those under color of authority, and violent offenses will diminish.
Outlaw guns and create one more unenforceable prohibition that will only further entrench the police state and further widen the division between law enforcement and those subject to its excesses. Defend yourself or remain defenseless.
The conquered here, owe.
Peace.
© 2013 simmbiosis 3/30/13
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Weirdo
I am a weirdo. By my own definition as well as by any societal measure, I am weird. This is neither a brag nor lament so much as a simple statement of my place in all this, at least as I perceive it. I am able to view my weirdness dispassionately. Which is, I suppose, weird.
While many I suspect have come to this conclusion in my regard, it may come as a surprise to some of them to realize that I understand this. The crazy that knows he is crazy as opposed to the crazy that thinks he’s sane. Not that I seek it or go out of my way to perpetuate it, but much like being, say, black, or short, the acceptance of it as a fundamental personal reality goes a long way toward finding a level of social harmony, where being weird is just, well, weird.
And while a level of blackiosity or even shortitude is socially and culturally, if not desirable, at least tolerated, weirdness is its own civic division, like goat’s ass breath or awful hair. It is to draw attention for all the wrong reasons, like a loud noisome fart during a wedding or funeral, at that perfect moment when silence has descended and the audience is rapt with sentiment and reflection. A Prozac moment, which defines you for generations to come among family and friends – he’s the one who ruined Mama’s eulogy and cleared the first three rows on the groom’s side of the chapel for BooBoo’s nuptials. It is infamy as opposed to fame.
I suspect my weirdness is the result of several factors: genetically, as both my parents had lots of weird tendencies which appear to have accumulated and imprinted onto me. This isn’t to say I didn’t get an abundance of their good qualities as well, more to acknowledge that they had more weird tendencies than good ones, and in my case the good ones only serve to spotlight the weird ones. Most weird people at least have the courtesy to be quiet about it.
But displaying weirdness, as the interweb has proven repeatedly, is very popular presently and often weirdness popularized becomes the new standard for normal. Which makes people who don’t go for such contrivances weird, perpetuating the cycle of weirdishness ad odballium.
Some might point to drugs as the culprit, but clearly such tastes aren’t by any social standard weird as half the nation is on one drug or another at any given time. Ah, but the kind of drugs: not the good, safe (deadly), legal, socially acceptable drugs, like cigarettes or booze or pharmaceuticals or even over-the-counter pain relief and medicinals (which combined kill about a million of us a year), but the awful, socially demonized, un-governmentally-sanctioned ones – the mind altering kind. The kind that (combined) kill closer to 20,000 people in the USA a year. And to be honest, I, weird as I am, never trucked much with the ones that came with a body count. At least the illegal ones.
Don’t get me wrong – I have known well panoply of legal drugs and they didn’t abate my weirdness one bit. Frankly, by any real measure they only made me weirder. Weirder still. Alcohol and prescription pharmaceuticals were the worst – they made me at times unrecognizably weird, like still being weird but being someone else who is weird. A different weird guy in the same old weird me. I might be a weirdo and all but even I know that if one is resigned (inclined) to druggish proclivity, then it behooves one to choose the drug best suited for one’s idiosyncrasies.
I’m fairly certain that had I never taken a drug, legal or weird, my mind would be far more sharp; I would be more intelligent. I might have even attained smartness over time. But my weird tendencies drew me unto druggishness young and my effective function – intellectually, mentally, emotionally – has been compromised. Smart as aspiration, not achievement.
I, in all my weirdness, understand that being smart, while holding a level of personal appeal, has a severely limiting aspect socially. Most people aren’t really that smart (I mean other than my readers, you geniuses!), so being smart demands that communication can only function based upon the intelligence of the dumbest person in the conversation. Where there is no understanding, there is no communication.
I realize then that had I forsaken the pleasure, fun, elation, ecstasy, awareness or experience that can only be achieved through the ingestion of certain emollients, I could have been so smart as to have nobody to talk to because no one would understand me, nor would I want to talk to most people because they wouldn’t interest me. Being too smart is weird too.
But that isn’t my problem. Not to suggest that I have a problem. But if I did, being too smart wouldn’t be it. Frankly, most people don’t want to talk to me that much anyway (I suspect because they think I think I’m too smart) nor do they interest me all that much – unless I’m properly intoxicated. Then the conversation takes precedence over the individual participants and becomes interesting because of engagement, not individual capacity.
Hell, even I think that’s weird. But more than my independently minded hair or apparently uninspired sartorial inclination, my perception expressed defines my weirditude more than any other factor. I say weird things because I see the world quite differently than the average fellow. Most people adhere to some religious persuasion or another, follow some messianic type or another and many of those who don’t still represent themselves as ‘spiritual’. I’m not ‘spiritual’ and I don’t believe in any human notion of divinity. Not a fucking one.
Weird.
Most of my fellow voting age Americans express a preference for the republican or democratic parties politically, others prefer the independent or even green parties. I don’t party with those types; did when I was younger but grew out of it by about 30 when I realized they were just different faces of the same coin. A coin that we’re in the pocket of.
Weird.
I never accept the official narrative at face value in the case of any momentous event. I operate from a perspective that if one is inclined to lie to me about things, as our leadership is openly wont to do, then I should bear that in mind when they tell me things and weigh what they say against appreciable reality. Not taking admitted liars at their word strikes me as reasonable thinking. Hence I don’t believe JFK was killed by two random gunmen, or that RFK was shot in the back by a guy in front of him, or that JFK Jr.’s plane just happened to suddenly fall from the sky, or that those massive steel buildings just miraculously collapsed into the course of most resistance (their own footprints) on 9/11.
Weird.
I don’t accept that money is real. The evidence supports the creation of money as a way for some people to have huge amounts of it and all the power that is accorded it (its inventors) while it is used to stratify and demoralize those with only enough to subsist upon (its slaves). As money is created by fiat or design, by merely typing figures into a computer somewhere, all those starving so that some people can have more of those invented numbers than others are the victims of capital. I feel capitalism is the worst thing to happen to humanity. Capitalism is what makes companies like Dow and Monsanto produce known toxic substances that enter the food chain and contaminate all of us – poison for profit.
Capitalism is what makes companies like Pfizer and Merck flood the market with pharmaceuticals, with horrific side-effects, one of which is hundreds of thousands of deaths annually. Capitalism is what makes companies like Boeing and General Dynamics and Halliburton demand a perpetual state of warfare so they can continue producing things which destroy us – for profit. For figures on a piece of paper or computer monitor, the world is consumed and devoured, raped and desolate. This is what I think, based upon the hundreds of thousands of pages I have read over the course of my life.
Weird.
I don’t believe. I understand reality as it exists, accept that it changes and adapt as best I can when those changes occur. Of course the odd challenge will exist: can I know for certain say, the sun will ‘rise’ or do I not operate under the belief that such will occur?
In the context of existence, if the sun doesn’t ‘rise’ I won’t be around to debate the issue, nor will anyone else, so such distinctions make little point. Cosmological events or global evolution can and will continue to make things we feel certain of unsure. But clearly certain realities are absolutely necessary for human perception to occur – the sun goes super-nova or a close passing comet wreaks havoc, all bets are off.
In the framework of human enterprise, I operate based upon trust: I trust an honorable person will live up to their word, I trust a dishonorable person will not. Both people can be trusted entirely to behave in accordance with their natures. All peoples’ natures can change (adapt) in intense or extreme circumstances: this we can trust as well.
But to tell me that a stranger in a suit is concerned about my well-being, a stranger in a uniform will protect me from harm or that a man in religious apparel can pave my path to some ill-defined after-life blissatorium, and for money no less, then I must state that I do not believe.
This above all other things makes me a weirdo.
I’m good with that. Upon reflection, normal seems kinda terrifying.
© 2013 simmbiosis 1/22/13
While many I suspect have come to this conclusion in my regard, it may come as a surprise to some of them to realize that I understand this. The crazy that knows he is crazy as opposed to the crazy that thinks he’s sane. Not that I seek it or go out of my way to perpetuate it, but much like being, say, black, or short, the acceptance of it as a fundamental personal reality goes a long way toward finding a level of social harmony, where being weird is just, well, weird.
And while a level of blackiosity or even shortitude is socially and culturally, if not desirable, at least tolerated, weirdness is its own civic division, like goat’s ass breath or awful hair. It is to draw attention for all the wrong reasons, like a loud noisome fart during a wedding or funeral, at that perfect moment when silence has descended and the audience is rapt with sentiment and reflection. A Prozac moment, which defines you for generations to come among family and friends – he’s the one who ruined Mama’s eulogy and cleared the first three rows on the groom’s side of the chapel for BooBoo’s nuptials. It is infamy as opposed to fame.
I suspect my weirdness is the result of several factors: genetically, as both my parents had lots of weird tendencies which appear to have accumulated and imprinted onto me. This isn’t to say I didn’t get an abundance of their good qualities as well, more to acknowledge that they had more weird tendencies than good ones, and in my case the good ones only serve to spotlight the weird ones. Most weird people at least have the courtesy to be quiet about it.
But displaying weirdness, as the interweb has proven repeatedly, is very popular presently and often weirdness popularized becomes the new standard for normal. Which makes people who don’t go for such contrivances weird, perpetuating the cycle of weirdishness ad odballium.
Some might point to drugs as the culprit, but clearly such tastes aren’t by any social standard weird as half the nation is on one drug or another at any given time. Ah, but the kind of drugs: not the good, safe (deadly), legal, socially acceptable drugs, like cigarettes or booze or pharmaceuticals or even over-the-counter pain relief and medicinals (which combined kill about a million of us a year), but the awful, socially demonized, un-governmentally-sanctioned ones – the mind altering kind. The kind that (combined) kill closer to 20,000 people in the USA a year. And to be honest, I, weird as I am, never trucked much with the ones that came with a body count. At least the illegal ones.
Don’t get me wrong – I have known well panoply of legal drugs and they didn’t abate my weirdness one bit. Frankly, by any real measure they only made me weirder. Weirder still. Alcohol and prescription pharmaceuticals were the worst – they made me at times unrecognizably weird, like still being weird but being someone else who is weird. A different weird guy in the same old weird me. I might be a weirdo and all but even I know that if one is resigned (inclined) to druggish proclivity, then it behooves one to choose the drug best suited for one’s idiosyncrasies.
I’m fairly certain that had I never taken a drug, legal or weird, my mind would be far more sharp; I would be more intelligent. I might have even attained smartness over time. But my weird tendencies drew me unto druggishness young and my effective function – intellectually, mentally, emotionally – has been compromised. Smart as aspiration, not achievement.
I, in all my weirdness, understand that being smart, while holding a level of personal appeal, has a severely limiting aspect socially. Most people aren’t really that smart (I mean other than my readers, you geniuses!), so being smart demands that communication can only function based upon the intelligence of the dumbest person in the conversation. Where there is no understanding, there is no communication.
I realize then that had I forsaken the pleasure, fun, elation, ecstasy, awareness or experience that can only be achieved through the ingestion of certain emollients, I could have been so smart as to have nobody to talk to because no one would understand me, nor would I want to talk to most people because they wouldn’t interest me. Being too smart is weird too.
But that isn’t my problem. Not to suggest that I have a problem. But if I did, being too smart wouldn’t be it. Frankly, most people don’t want to talk to me that much anyway (I suspect because they think I think I’m too smart) nor do they interest me all that much – unless I’m properly intoxicated. Then the conversation takes precedence over the individual participants and becomes interesting because of engagement, not individual capacity.
Hell, even I think that’s weird. But more than my independently minded hair or apparently uninspired sartorial inclination, my perception expressed defines my weirditude more than any other factor. I say weird things because I see the world quite differently than the average fellow. Most people adhere to some religious persuasion or another, follow some messianic type or another and many of those who don’t still represent themselves as ‘spiritual’. I’m not ‘spiritual’ and I don’t believe in any human notion of divinity. Not a fucking one.
Weird.
Most of my fellow voting age Americans express a preference for the republican or democratic parties politically, others prefer the independent or even green parties. I don’t party with those types; did when I was younger but grew out of it by about 30 when I realized they were just different faces of the same coin. A coin that we’re in the pocket of.
Weird.
I never accept the official narrative at face value in the case of any momentous event. I operate from a perspective that if one is inclined to lie to me about things, as our leadership is openly wont to do, then I should bear that in mind when they tell me things and weigh what they say against appreciable reality. Not taking admitted liars at their word strikes me as reasonable thinking. Hence I don’t believe JFK was killed by two random gunmen, or that RFK was shot in the back by a guy in front of him, or that JFK Jr.’s plane just happened to suddenly fall from the sky, or that those massive steel buildings just miraculously collapsed into the course of most resistance (their own footprints) on 9/11.
Weird.
I don’t accept that money is real. The evidence supports the creation of money as a way for some people to have huge amounts of it and all the power that is accorded it (its inventors) while it is used to stratify and demoralize those with only enough to subsist upon (its slaves). As money is created by fiat or design, by merely typing figures into a computer somewhere, all those starving so that some people can have more of those invented numbers than others are the victims of capital. I feel capitalism is the worst thing to happen to humanity. Capitalism is what makes companies like Dow and Monsanto produce known toxic substances that enter the food chain and contaminate all of us – poison for profit.
Capitalism is what makes companies like Pfizer and Merck flood the market with pharmaceuticals, with horrific side-effects, one of which is hundreds of thousands of deaths annually. Capitalism is what makes companies like Boeing and General Dynamics and Halliburton demand a perpetual state of warfare so they can continue producing things which destroy us – for profit. For figures on a piece of paper or computer monitor, the world is consumed and devoured, raped and desolate. This is what I think, based upon the hundreds of thousands of pages I have read over the course of my life.
Weird.
I don’t believe. I understand reality as it exists, accept that it changes and adapt as best I can when those changes occur. Of course the odd challenge will exist: can I know for certain say, the sun will ‘rise’ or do I not operate under the belief that such will occur?
In the context of existence, if the sun doesn’t ‘rise’ I won’t be around to debate the issue, nor will anyone else, so such distinctions make little point. Cosmological events or global evolution can and will continue to make things we feel certain of unsure. But clearly certain realities are absolutely necessary for human perception to occur – the sun goes super-nova or a close passing comet wreaks havoc, all bets are off.
In the framework of human enterprise, I operate based upon trust: I trust an honorable person will live up to their word, I trust a dishonorable person will not. Both people can be trusted entirely to behave in accordance with their natures. All peoples’ natures can change (adapt) in intense or extreme circumstances: this we can trust as well.
But to tell me that a stranger in a suit is concerned about my well-being, a stranger in a uniform will protect me from harm or that a man in religious apparel can pave my path to some ill-defined after-life blissatorium, and for money no less, then I must state that I do not believe.
This above all other things makes me a weirdo.
I’m good with that. Upon reflection, normal seems kinda terrifying.
© 2013 simmbiosis 1/22/13
Monday, December 31, 2012
I'd Ream A Genie
FADE IN:
EXT. DESERT ISLAND – DAY
This is an idyllic tropical island, white sandy beach framed by a lush verdant jungle. A 60s era rocket capsule Stardust One rests on its side in the sand just beyond the surf and various rocks, logs and seajecta form the letters SOS on the beach beside it.
A man in NASA garb, CAPTAIN TONY NELSON – early 30s, tall and of regal bearing – carries an armload of driftwood and other material from the edge of the jungle to complete the second ‘S’. The bottom tip of the ‘S’ is an old bottle which rolls out of place after he sets it. Confused, he picks up the bottle and sets it back in place.
Standing back, admiring his handiwork, he is again bewildered by the bottle rolling out of place. He looks at it then looks around, as if being played by someone.
TONY
What the…?
Retrieving the bottle he examines it.
CLOSE ON BOTTLE
It is made of oxidized brass, purple in hue with gold accents, about a foot tall with a ridged bulbous base about five inches in diameter. The neck is thin, perhaps an inch and a half in diameter with a rounded spout and a stopper with a truncated hemisphere and a golden nipple on top. It is fairly ornate and CAMERA ADJUSTS as TONY considers it.
MEDIUM BEACH – TONY shakes the bottle and listens. Considering it again, he grabs the stopper and yanks on it. It is firmly in place. He looks around again then back at the bottle which he again attempts to uncork. He struggles with it for a moment, stops then tries again real fast as if it could be tricked. It is stuck fast.
ANGLE DRIFTWOOD LOG – TONY considers this fairly hefty piece of driftwood then looks at the bottle. He wedges the bottle into a crook between branches and applies all of his weight to the stopper. It releases suddenly with an audible POP sending TONY hurling backwards into the sand.
TONY – He looks up in wonder as a pillar of smoke arises from the neck of the open bottle obscuring the area before it. The smoke dissipates and a beautiful blond woman in very revealing harem attire appears before him, smiling widely. She is JEANNIE – 2,000 years old but very fit and hot – and she speaks to him in Farsi.
JEANNIE
Amok aluck uncorkage suk, salabeem.
SUBTITLES: Your wish is my command, Master!
ANGLE BEACH – TONY stares at her aghast. He’s either lost his mind or made the greatest discovery known to man. He is mesmerized by her breasts, poking through her flimsy bodice.
TONY
I have no idea what you just said.
This is amazing! Who would have
thought of bottled women?
(sniffing)
How do you stay so fresh in there?
JEANNIE
Deem inute boot ekwipt wida spay
seeos ressa rume.
SUBTITLES: It’s small but has a big powder room.
TONY – He is utterly amazed. He drinks her in as he considers the possibilities.
JEANNIE – She is completely smitten, her wide almond eyes swirling in the deepest adoration as she hangs on his every gesture. She will do anything to please him and awaits his command lustily, hungrily. She steps toward him almost predatory.
ANGLE BOTH – TONY steps back, a little intimidated. He clumsily attempts to divert her ravening. Pointing skyward he speaks to her.
TONY
Helicopter. I need a helicopter.
She smiles at him while he attempts to mimic a helicopter by spinning around with his arms out. He steps back up to her, a little exasperated as she LAUGHS uncontrollably at him. Sensing his displeasure she looks into the sky, where TONY pointed and blinks. Above them a huge albatross swoops in low, depositing a little poop in TONY’s hair.
This causes JEANNIE to burst into peals of laughter, rolling into the sand. TONY on the other hand, inspects the damage to his rapidly fleeing dignity, then wanders over to the surf to rinse off his displeasure. As he cleans his head, JEANNIE appears suddenly beside him, startling him, causing him to stumble back into the surf.
His annoyance is now beyond question and JEANNIE chokes back her laughter lest her master renounce her vintage.
ANGLE BEACH – TONY walks back up onto the beach, his spacesuit soaked, his hair sullied and his genie, not only linguistically challenged but mega-disrespectful. JEANNIE, offering a display of serious judgment, does her blinky thing and TONY finds himself dry and feces free. This improves his attitude considerably.
TONY
Well, that’s better. Just wish you
spoke English…
JEANNIE
Your wish is my command, Master!
TONY
You do speak English.
JEANNE
As you will it I shall make it so. You
have freed me of the lamp – now I serve
only you. Master.
She sidles up to him. His eyes lock onto her breasts again.
TONY
This is udderly amazing. In the 20th
Century, magic. Round, glorious
firm and uplifting magic.
ANGLE TONY/JEANNIE – TONY pulls himself away and considers his options.
SERIES OF SHOTS – MONTAGE SEQUENCE
ANGLE BEACH – DAY – CHOPPER sweeps in low above beach.
FULL SHOT AIRCRAFT CARRIER – DAY – The massive sea city receives TONY’s capsule Stardust One lowered from a chopper.
MEDIUM SHOT AIRCRAFT CARRIER – TONY is received by the crew, saluting the Commander.
EXT. KENNEDY SPACE CENTER – DAY – Establishing shot of the massive facility.
INT. DOCTOR BELLOWS’ OFFICE – DAY – TONY reclines on Dr. Bellows’ sofa as Bellows shakes his head displeased.
INT. DOCTOR BELLOWS’ ANTEROOM – TONY argues with fiancé MELISSA STONE, DR. BELLOWS shaking his head in BG and making notes.
INT. SENATE CHAMBER – NIGHT – TONY addresses a phalanx of stodgy, rumple suited senators, who keep talking over him in this smoky room.
INSERT HEADLINE: Mortem Post – Hero Astronaut Astro-Nut
EXT. TONY’S HOUSE – DAY – MELISSA carries her bags to a waiting cab as TONY follows her pleading. She climbs in and speeds off, leaving TONY standing dejected in the street.
INT. OFFICE DAY – TONY is hastened out the door by NASA security while BELLOWS and former pal ROGER HEALY shake their heads at the fallen star.
INT. BAR – NIGHT – TONY sips a whiskey in this smoky dive while others talk about him furtively in the BG.
EXT. BEACH – DAY – TONY, old and demented, stumbles toward the lapping waves.
PULL IN ON OCEAN – The sea is relatively calm, spotty clouds on the horizon.
PULL BACK REVEALING TONY and JEANNIE back on the beach. He has been projecting this and now looks back at JEANNIE.
TONY
What do I call you? Genie?
JEANNIE
You call me whatever you wish. Jeannie
is fine. If it pleases you.
TONY
Is that it? Is my pleasure your purpose?
JEANNIE
It is that and that alone.
TONY
And you can do…anything?
JEANNIE
If you can conceive it, I can make it so.
CLOSE ON TONY – He thinks this over for a couple of beats. He smiles, then looks at her. PULL BACK TO TWOSHOT – She is utterly ravishing, her left breast, perky and substantial, peeking from beneath her barely fastened top. Her eyes gaze upon him enraptured and expectant. Her every move says, she wants him.
ANGLE TONY/JEANNIE – TONY looks at her and speaks.
TONY
All right. To begin, we’ll dispense with
the wishing. Too Disney. I’ll tell you
what I want, you make with it. Capiche?
JEANNIE
What you wish and as you wish it.
TONY
We’re gonna get along just fine.
JEANNIE
I have no higher purpose, Master.
PULL BACK SLOWLY as TONY lays out his plan.
TONY
Not sure about the ‘master’. We’ll
see if I grow into it. Okay to begin,
you will never be jealous of me. And
as of today, you are bi-curious. No,
bi-adventurous. So we want to have
some nubile and libertine young servant
girls, to feed us, another thing on the list
as we explore these powers of yours.
TONY is lifted gently onto a throne made of driftwood and broad leaves from the jungle by a bevy of impossibly gorgeous naked women (17 to 25) who feed him slices of rare beef (Prime Rib) and butter oozing lobster, while others massage him. He continues.
TONY
Okay. Oh, this is good, delicious.
Hello. My, you’re a big one, or two.
Okay. Jeannie. Just a second, sweety,
Okay, I want the bastards that killed
JFK, uh, in prison. Being raped, gang
raped in prison, for say, forty years…
every day for 40 years. And the bomb
we need to do something about that…
FADE TO BLACK
FIN
For Larry.
EXT. DESERT ISLAND – DAY
This is an idyllic tropical island, white sandy beach framed by a lush verdant jungle. A 60s era rocket capsule Stardust One rests on its side in the sand just beyond the surf and various rocks, logs and seajecta form the letters SOS on the beach beside it.
A man in NASA garb, CAPTAIN TONY NELSON – early 30s, tall and of regal bearing – carries an armload of driftwood and other material from the edge of the jungle to complete the second ‘S’. The bottom tip of the ‘S’ is an old bottle which rolls out of place after he sets it. Confused, he picks up the bottle and sets it back in place.
Standing back, admiring his handiwork, he is again bewildered by the bottle rolling out of place. He looks at it then looks around, as if being played by someone.
TONY
What the…?
Retrieving the bottle he examines it.
CLOSE ON BOTTLE
It is made of oxidized brass, purple in hue with gold accents, about a foot tall with a ridged bulbous base about five inches in diameter. The neck is thin, perhaps an inch and a half in diameter with a rounded spout and a stopper with a truncated hemisphere and a golden nipple on top. It is fairly ornate and CAMERA ADJUSTS as TONY considers it.
MEDIUM BEACH – TONY shakes the bottle and listens. Considering it again, he grabs the stopper and yanks on it. It is firmly in place. He looks around again then back at the bottle which he again attempts to uncork. He struggles with it for a moment, stops then tries again real fast as if it could be tricked. It is stuck fast.
ANGLE DRIFTWOOD LOG – TONY considers this fairly hefty piece of driftwood then looks at the bottle. He wedges the bottle into a crook between branches and applies all of his weight to the stopper. It releases suddenly with an audible POP sending TONY hurling backwards into the sand.
TONY – He looks up in wonder as a pillar of smoke arises from the neck of the open bottle obscuring the area before it. The smoke dissipates and a beautiful blond woman in very revealing harem attire appears before him, smiling widely. She is JEANNIE – 2,000 years old but very fit and hot – and she speaks to him in Farsi.
JEANNIE
Amok aluck uncorkage suk, salabeem.
SUBTITLES: Your wish is my command, Master!
ANGLE BEACH – TONY stares at her aghast. He’s either lost his mind or made the greatest discovery known to man. He is mesmerized by her breasts, poking through her flimsy bodice.
TONY
I have no idea what you just said.
This is amazing! Who would have
thought of bottled women?
(sniffing)
How do you stay so fresh in there?
JEANNIE
Deem inute boot ekwipt wida spay
seeos ressa rume.
SUBTITLES: It’s small but has a big powder room.
TONY – He is utterly amazed. He drinks her in as he considers the possibilities.
JEANNIE – She is completely smitten, her wide almond eyes swirling in the deepest adoration as she hangs on his every gesture. She will do anything to please him and awaits his command lustily, hungrily. She steps toward him almost predatory.
ANGLE BOTH – TONY steps back, a little intimidated. He clumsily attempts to divert her ravening. Pointing skyward he speaks to her.
TONY
Helicopter. I need a helicopter.
She smiles at him while he attempts to mimic a helicopter by spinning around with his arms out. He steps back up to her, a little exasperated as she LAUGHS uncontrollably at him. Sensing his displeasure she looks into the sky, where TONY pointed and blinks. Above them a huge albatross swoops in low, depositing a little poop in TONY’s hair.
This causes JEANNIE to burst into peals of laughter, rolling into the sand. TONY on the other hand, inspects the damage to his rapidly fleeing dignity, then wanders over to the surf to rinse off his displeasure. As he cleans his head, JEANNIE appears suddenly beside him, startling him, causing him to stumble back into the surf.
His annoyance is now beyond question and JEANNIE chokes back her laughter lest her master renounce her vintage.
ANGLE BEACH – TONY walks back up onto the beach, his spacesuit soaked, his hair sullied and his genie, not only linguistically challenged but mega-disrespectful. JEANNIE, offering a display of serious judgment, does her blinky thing and TONY finds himself dry and feces free. This improves his attitude considerably.
TONY
Well, that’s better. Just wish you
spoke English…
JEANNIE
Your wish is my command, Master!
TONY
You do speak English.
JEANNE
As you will it I shall make it so. You
have freed me of the lamp – now I serve
only you. Master.
She sidles up to him. His eyes lock onto her breasts again.
TONY
This is udderly amazing. In the 20th
Century, magic. Round, glorious
firm and uplifting magic.
ANGLE TONY/JEANNIE – TONY pulls himself away and considers his options.
SERIES OF SHOTS – MONTAGE SEQUENCE
ANGLE BEACH – DAY – CHOPPER sweeps in low above beach.
FULL SHOT AIRCRAFT CARRIER – DAY – The massive sea city receives TONY’s capsule Stardust One lowered from a chopper.
MEDIUM SHOT AIRCRAFT CARRIER – TONY is received by the crew, saluting the Commander.
EXT. KENNEDY SPACE CENTER – DAY – Establishing shot of the massive facility.
INT. DOCTOR BELLOWS’ OFFICE – DAY – TONY reclines on Dr. Bellows’ sofa as Bellows shakes his head displeased.
INT. DOCTOR BELLOWS’ ANTEROOM – TONY argues with fiancé MELISSA STONE, DR. BELLOWS shaking his head in BG and making notes.
INT. SENATE CHAMBER – NIGHT – TONY addresses a phalanx of stodgy, rumple suited senators, who keep talking over him in this smoky room.
INSERT HEADLINE: Mortem Post – Hero Astronaut Astro-Nut
EXT. TONY’S HOUSE – DAY – MELISSA carries her bags to a waiting cab as TONY follows her pleading. She climbs in and speeds off, leaving TONY standing dejected in the street.
INT. OFFICE DAY – TONY is hastened out the door by NASA security while BELLOWS and former pal ROGER HEALY shake their heads at the fallen star.
INT. BAR – NIGHT – TONY sips a whiskey in this smoky dive while others talk about him furtively in the BG.
EXT. BEACH – DAY – TONY, old and demented, stumbles toward the lapping waves.
PULL IN ON OCEAN – The sea is relatively calm, spotty clouds on the horizon.
PULL BACK REVEALING TONY and JEANNIE back on the beach. He has been projecting this and now looks back at JEANNIE.
TONY
What do I call you? Genie?
JEANNIE
You call me whatever you wish. Jeannie
is fine. If it pleases you.
TONY
Is that it? Is my pleasure your purpose?
JEANNIE
It is that and that alone.
TONY
And you can do…anything?
JEANNIE
If you can conceive it, I can make it so.
CLOSE ON TONY – He thinks this over for a couple of beats. He smiles, then looks at her. PULL BACK TO TWOSHOT – She is utterly ravishing, her left breast, perky and substantial, peeking from beneath her barely fastened top. Her eyes gaze upon him enraptured and expectant. Her every move says, she wants him.
ANGLE TONY/JEANNIE – TONY looks at her and speaks.
TONY
All right. To begin, we’ll dispense with
the wishing. Too Disney. I’ll tell you
what I want, you make with it. Capiche?
JEANNIE
What you wish and as you wish it.
TONY
We’re gonna get along just fine.
JEANNIE
I have no higher purpose, Master.
PULL BACK SLOWLY as TONY lays out his plan.
TONY
Not sure about the ‘master’. We’ll
see if I grow into it. Okay to begin,
you will never be jealous of me. And
as of today, you are bi-curious. No,
bi-adventurous. So we want to have
some nubile and libertine young servant
girls, to feed us, another thing on the list
as we explore these powers of yours.
TONY is lifted gently onto a throne made of driftwood and broad leaves from the jungle by a bevy of impossibly gorgeous naked women (17 to 25) who feed him slices of rare beef (Prime Rib) and butter oozing lobster, while others massage him. He continues.
TONY
Okay. Oh, this is good, delicious.
Hello. My, you’re a big one, or two.
Okay. Jeannie. Just a second, sweety,
Okay, I want the bastards that killed
JFK, uh, in prison. Being raped, gang
raped in prison, for say, forty years…
every day for 40 years. And the bomb
we need to do something about that…
FADE TO BLACK
FIN
For Larry.
Maybury: RIP
FADE IN:
EXT. MAYBURY SOUTH CAROLINA – PRESENT – DAY
THEME MUSIC OVER – THEME is whistled but slow and melancholy – sad.
PULL IN ON a man and boy walking together down a desolate dirt road.
MEDIUM CEMETERY – DAY
The pair wander into a derelict cemetery and stop before a fresh grave. The man is revealed to be OPIE TAYLOR – mid fifties, bald and conservatively dressed. The boy is his son SCOOPER – 10ish redheaded and freckled – and they stare silently at the burial plot before them.
CLOSE ON GRAVE – The headstone reads:
ANDY TAYLOR 1921-2012 Beloved Father, Beliked Uncle, Betolerated Moral Authority – Cornpone Sheriff for 10 Seasons (with reruns)
CLOSE ON OPIE
He sips from a flask he’s concealed in his Bible.
SCOOPER (O.S.)
Pa?
OPIE
Yeah, Scooper.
PULL BACK to include SCOOPER.
SCOOPER
Granpa was mighty old.
OPIE
He lived a long time, son.
SCOOPER
Seemed like he’d never die,
didn’t it.
OPIE
Shore did Scoop. Your ma and
me wondered if he’d ever kick.
SCOOPER
Kick?
OPIE
The bucket – we wondered if
he’d ever kick the bucket.
SCOOPER
That what happens when you die?
You kick a bucket?
OPIE
Not everyone. Uncle Floyd kicked
a state trooper up in Hog Flats. He’s
dead too.
PAN ACROSS GRAVES REVEALING that virtually everyone from Maybury is dead and buried in the same shitty cemetery. Floyd D Barber, Ain’t Bee, Barney Fife, Otis B Drunkard, Goober Pyle, Gomer Piles…
MEDIUM GRAVEYARD
OPIE and SCOOPER shuffle away from the graves and back onto the dirt road, OPIE spitting a brutish lunger onto OTIS’s grave.
OPIE
Pederast.
SCOOPER
What’s a ped a rast, pa?
OPIE
Remember cousin Willy?
SCOOPER
The Boy Scout leader?
OPIE
Yep. Know how he liked to do
tent checks during the jamboree?
PULL BACK FAVORING OTIS’S GRAVE as the pair wander away from the cemetery.
SCOOPER rubs his ass as he responds.
SCOOPER
He did other checks as well. What’s
a prostate?
OPIE
Something Boy Scout leaders shouldn’t
be examining while on bivouac.
SCOOPER
I’ll say.
As the damaged pair leave frame, the soil over OTIS’s grave begins to push up from below, clods rolling aside as the ground opens revealing a very decomposed OTIS – 65 and pickled – as he crawls from what appears to not have been his final resting place.
OTIS
(hocking and hacking)
Powerful parched.
DISSOLVE TO
INT. TAYLOR HOUSE – BEDROOM – NIGHT
OPIE and his haggard wife BUTTY SOO – 46, plain and a trifle flabby – rut it out under the comforter on ANDY’s bed in a fairly uninspired missionary position. BUTTY SOO stares longingly out the window, through the gap in the gingham curtains as OPIE grunts his way to his ineluctable conclusion.
OPIE
Uh, uh, uh, uh, owww.
BUTTY SOO
I told you not to put that in there.
OPIE
Why do you call it that?
BUTTY SOO
What do you want me to call it?
It?
OPIE
I told you what I want you to call it.
BUTTY SOO
Well, it isn’t and it seems silly to
call it one.
OPIE
(finished, he rolls off)
Don’t know what the big deal is.
Prickly Sutton, over in Hamster
Swallow, well his wife calls his…
BUTTY SOO
I know what she calls his, everybody
knows what she calls his. But his is.
Yours ain’t so I cain’t call it that.
(sotto voce)
Magnum. Huh! More like Derringer.
OPIE
I heard that!
BUTTY SOO
Facts is facts, Ope. Ain’t saying it
ta hurt ya.
OPIE
Hey…How do you know Prickly’s is?
BUTTY SOO
Oh grow up. He shows it to everyone.
OPIE
I know – he showed it to me.
(conspiratorial)
He had me touch it.
BUTTY SOO
You touched it?
OPIE
He put it in my hand once when we
were in the locker room. Thought it
was a goldurn snake. Creepy.
PULL BACK THROUGH WINDOW REVEALING the entire cast of the original series zombified and watching this exchange. As one they look at each other and ANDY posits:
ANDY
Well, no brains here. We oughta
head up to Mount Pilate.
They turn and stumble away, disappointed. Gomer shakes his head and it falls off. Hilarity ensues.
FADE TO BLACK
FIN
For Andy
EXT. MAYBURY SOUTH CAROLINA – PRESENT – DAY
THEME MUSIC OVER – THEME is whistled but slow and melancholy – sad.
PULL IN ON a man and boy walking together down a desolate dirt road.
MEDIUM CEMETERY – DAY
The pair wander into a derelict cemetery and stop before a fresh grave. The man is revealed to be OPIE TAYLOR – mid fifties, bald and conservatively dressed. The boy is his son SCOOPER – 10ish redheaded and freckled – and they stare silently at the burial plot before them.
CLOSE ON GRAVE – The headstone reads:
ANDY TAYLOR 1921-2012 Beloved Father, Beliked Uncle, Betolerated Moral Authority – Cornpone Sheriff for 10 Seasons (with reruns)
CLOSE ON OPIE
He sips from a flask he’s concealed in his Bible.
SCOOPER (O.S.)
Pa?
OPIE
Yeah, Scooper.
PULL BACK to include SCOOPER.
SCOOPER
Granpa was mighty old.
OPIE
He lived a long time, son.
SCOOPER
Seemed like he’d never die,
didn’t it.
OPIE
Shore did Scoop. Your ma and
me wondered if he’d ever kick.
SCOOPER
Kick?
OPIE
The bucket – we wondered if
he’d ever kick the bucket.
SCOOPER
That what happens when you die?
You kick a bucket?
OPIE
Not everyone. Uncle Floyd kicked
a state trooper up in Hog Flats. He’s
dead too.
PAN ACROSS GRAVES REVEALING that virtually everyone from Maybury is dead and buried in the same shitty cemetery. Floyd D Barber, Ain’t Bee, Barney Fife, Otis B Drunkard, Goober Pyle, Gomer Piles…
MEDIUM GRAVEYARD
OPIE and SCOOPER shuffle away from the graves and back onto the dirt road, OPIE spitting a brutish lunger onto OTIS’s grave.
OPIE
Pederast.
SCOOPER
What’s a ped a rast, pa?
OPIE
Remember cousin Willy?
SCOOPER
The Boy Scout leader?
OPIE
Yep. Know how he liked to do
tent checks during the jamboree?
PULL BACK FAVORING OTIS’S GRAVE as the pair wander away from the cemetery.
SCOOPER rubs his ass as he responds.
SCOOPER
He did other checks as well. What’s
a prostate?
OPIE
Something Boy Scout leaders shouldn’t
be examining while on bivouac.
SCOOPER
I’ll say.
As the damaged pair leave frame, the soil over OTIS’s grave begins to push up from below, clods rolling aside as the ground opens revealing a very decomposed OTIS – 65 and pickled – as he crawls from what appears to not have been his final resting place.
OTIS
(hocking and hacking)
Powerful parched.
DISSOLVE TO
INT. TAYLOR HOUSE – BEDROOM – NIGHT
OPIE and his haggard wife BUTTY SOO – 46, plain and a trifle flabby – rut it out under the comforter on ANDY’s bed in a fairly uninspired missionary position. BUTTY SOO stares longingly out the window, through the gap in the gingham curtains as OPIE grunts his way to his ineluctable conclusion.
OPIE
Uh, uh, uh, uh, owww.
BUTTY SOO
I told you not to put that in there.
OPIE
Why do you call it that?
BUTTY SOO
What do you want me to call it?
It?
OPIE
I told you what I want you to call it.
BUTTY SOO
Well, it isn’t and it seems silly to
call it one.
OPIE
(finished, he rolls off)
Don’t know what the big deal is.
Prickly Sutton, over in Hamster
Swallow, well his wife calls his…
BUTTY SOO
I know what she calls his, everybody
knows what she calls his. But his is.
Yours ain’t so I cain’t call it that.
(sotto voce)
Magnum. Huh! More like Derringer.
OPIE
I heard that!
BUTTY SOO
Facts is facts, Ope. Ain’t saying it
ta hurt ya.
OPIE
Hey…How do you know Prickly’s is?
BUTTY SOO
Oh grow up. He shows it to everyone.
OPIE
I know – he showed it to me.
(conspiratorial)
He had me touch it.
BUTTY SOO
You touched it?
OPIE
He put it in my hand once when we
were in the locker room. Thought it
was a goldurn snake. Creepy.
PULL BACK THROUGH WINDOW REVEALING the entire cast of the original series zombified and watching this exchange. As one they look at each other and ANDY posits:
ANDY
Well, no brains here. We oughta
head up to Mount Pilate.
They turn and stumble away, disappointed. Gomer shakes his head and it falls off. Hilarity ensues.
FADE TO BLACK
FIN
For Andy
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Fuck
Why do animals die in the wild? This isn’t a trick question, more a thought exercise, like any reading of substance. Does this have substance? One good way to find out, huh?
Old age. Many animals die because their bodies can no longer sustain them. Happens to all creatures in time – nothing particularly revelatory there at first blush. Disease. Predators. These both fall under the same category as disease is the tiny predator that brings down giants. In the wild, animals have no physical defenses against disease, meaning they can’t hide behind a tree and growl menacingly to ward off a cold or something. They can’t see disease coming so they can’t defend against it.
Animals in the wild, on their game, sustain themselves through rigid focus on the moment. A gazelle or wildebeest on the savannas of Africa isn’t thinking about whether that other gazelle or wildebeest thinks their ass is too big, or who’ll win during the big game tonight. With the finals and all, a heated match is pretty much assured. Go Wildebeests!
Creatures in the wild stay alive through that focus: they assess based upon experience and observation of movement around them. They move with the herd, the more resilient staying toward the inner regions of the mass, allowing their less resilient brethren to be picked off by encroaching predators. Animals in the wild are said to exist in only two modes, fight or flight. But simple observation shows that this is not the case. They also exist in fuck mode.
Fuck mode is fundamental to their existence. Because whether they know it or not, they exist to fuck. The fighting and flighting is just to stay alive long enough to fuck some more. What do individual animals fight each other over? Pussy. We call them elaborate mating rituals, but they are nothing more than a couple of animal jocks showing off for the animal cheerleaders, on the sidelines egging them on. Animal pussy knows it doesn’t want animal cock that can’t stand up to some pounding – what, are they animals?
Sure they are. So are we. Came from the very same place, Earth. Biologically we are so close to our fellow beasts that tests on rats can tell us what will happen to us when we eat that GMO corn or suck down too much smoke. Parts from other animals (here piggy, piggy, piggy) are transplantable into human bodies. Try that with a sapling from a larch or poplar.
Biological organisms have no purpose beyond reproduction. Lions ain’t solving universal conundrums, spider monkeys ain’t curing cancer, ring tailed lemurs ain’t explaining what God really wants – they exist as the product of fucking and exist to fuck and propagate. That’s all.
We have been told that even though we are animals, we are not animals, we are better than animals. Often the one telling us this is us, ourselves. We’re always comparing our vain selves to other people – are they fatter, balder, flatter, poorer? – so it becomes easy to feel superior to that which can’t argue the point. Stupid dog. What the fuck does he know, anyway?
Well, for one thing they know how to get rewarded for laying around the house all day, licking their own crotches. How many of us would turn down such an enviable position? They have figured out how to get humans to pamper them and even walk around behind them and pick up their shit. Stupid, my ass! It’s pretty obvious who the stupid ones in that relationship are.
Cats? We bow and scrape to them. Make them their own little toilets and everything and even become the biological flushing mechanism when they doody it up sufficiently. (We call it litter – dogs and people shit; cats litter.) We scoop up their furry puke-balls off the rug and cater to their mewy whims while they lay around licking themselves building the next belly tribble.
Domestic animals (slaves) have no agenda; they’ve no big plans for the future; they’re not working on those memoirs. They are for the most part content to lay around, eat and fuck. But because humans are very sick animals, animals that think they aren’t animals, they take care of that little fucking problem. In the name of conservation, we steal these animals’ capacity to do the one thing they exist to do: fuck.
This changes them; they become docile, or crazy; they become useless consumers, ornaments for lonely humans to connect with when other human contact becomes too complex. Neutered, they have no purpose and exist waiting for the next meal, walk or display of affection. They never argue any point you make and will actually cower should you be compelled to menace them. Most people try hard not to giggle when we do that to them.
Of course, naysayers will challenge such assertion: perhaps they exist to reproduce, but to say they exist to fuck reduces it to something base and unseemly. Bullshit. Only human thinking makes fucking anything other than what it is: our biological imperative. If you are reading this, thank your parents for fucking. Because if they hadn’t, you couldn’t.
If fucking wasn’t pleasurable, we wouldn’t be here because really, who would do such a thing without the reward of pleasure? It’s too much work. Sadly for too many, fucking only has to be pleasurable to the masculine participant. But the act in itself isn’t the problem. As always, performance is defined by the actors.
Humans can alter our reproductive process so as to eliminate contraception but not destroy sexual ardor. We call it vasectomy. I had one and consider it among the best money I have ever spent. No diminution of ardor; I can maintain my purpose and what remains of my sanity.
We can fix our pets without ruining them, but as slaves with no field to till, neutering is done to reduce the drive, the will, the force which makes them live. We want our slaves (pets) calm, well behaved, not fucking everything that walks in the door. Reduces embarrassment. So we take their balls or ovaries before they ever get to fuck, thereby stealing their raison d'être and watch as they hang around the house, looking for something to do.
Kinda like their humans.
History is written by, if not the winners, at least the survivors. But then only the literate among them. Animals, while demonstrably able to abstract (nesting a fine example), do not write their histories; they exist in the present without terms and figures to confound their thinking. Billions of them exist in the wild every day without a language, medical system, communication network, food repositories, government, corporations, money or god.
Billions of them exist in conditions most humans, with our superior knowledge and physicality (in God’s likeness and all), would perish in. Naked in the wild, most of us would die. And not a happy nicely sedated, family-gathered-around-to-see-you-off kind of death. More akin to eating your own flesh out of desperation after starvation drives you mad and drinking what urine you can muster to stave dehydration, while consumed with bugs and roving predators.
Best I can tell, God didn’t make us particularly special. We’ve articulated our grunting into language and come up with all manner of reasons for all the stupid shit we do. We’ve convinced ourselves that not only are we better than the animals (we tell our deepest secrets to) but indeed, better than most other people around us when it comes right down to it. We’ve come up with all kinds of purposes for us to engage in to keep our collective minds from going crazy with boredom. To keep us out of mischief.
We’ve manufactured all manner of distraction to keep us idle and inoffensive and polarized, perpetually at odds with someone or some group or some mindset that we can ultimately feel superior to. But these notions, these goals and objectives, while on an intellectual level are gratifying, are but distractions of our own to hide the truth we dare not face: We are only here to fuck.
Because we cannot face this – and let me be clear, I am not advocating reproduction in this, for that is a very hard and oft times disheartening road – we are culturally discontent. While we have neutered our pets to keep them docile and not pumping out litters every five minutes, we have intellectually neutered ourselves. We have made sex result- or goal-oriented – gotta have a baby/gotta come – instead of pleasure-oriented. It becomes the rushed appetizer to the boring meal of sitting around afterwards watching others banter cleverly on a screen somewhere.
All this manufactured human bullshit has completely fucked up our thinking. Why would God create in us a drive only second to hunger if the fulfillment of that drive was wrong? Is eating wrong as well? Is it not just stuffing different stuff into different holes? Is shitting a sin, or only if it feels really good? How about pissing? God knows how good that feels. Suspect that’s part of the reason beer is so popular. Lots of opportunity to run a little more through that sweet, sweet channel.
Our software (minds) has fucked up our hardware (bodies). Our perverse perspectives on sex have made us confused and befuddled and frustrated and ultimately asexual as we settle in to lives more ordinary, seeking the comfort of inertia rather than the challenge of action. Elevating ourselves above animals has made in so many a perspective which keeps them from elevating themselves above the ones they love. And that is a shame.
And thus we behave as animals, describing our work as a rat race, our workplace as a jungle and clawing our way to the top over those too weak to seize advantage. We make our world a battlefield where we describe those who behave most horrendously as animals. Yet animals don’t sit around and come up with reasons to attack each other, don’t organize and arm massive contingents and lay waste utterly to that which they would dominate. Humans do that.
Perhaps if we behaved more like animals (fucking because it feels phenomenal) and less like humans (not fucking for any one of a thousand reasons), we wouldn’t be so angry all the time. Perhaps if we weren’t angry all the time we wouldn’t fight each other so much. Maybe if we didn’t fight each other so much we wouldn’t be in a constant state of warfare. Which, it seems, would make our lives better, as well as the lives of those we are currently waging war upon.
Never heard of someone on their deathbed saying they wished they had fought more during their lives. I wouldn’t be surprised if many had wished they had fucked more, whether they expressed it or not. Seems like an unnecessary regret in a world of so many horny people.
Fuck. Why the fuck not?
© 2012 simmbiosis 11/5/12
The Bottle
I live in a bottle
The bottle lives in me
The influence of the bottle
Affects all I hear and see
Everything I think, I feel
My very sanity
Every time I drink, I seal
My fate, my slavery
Equate equilibrium
With a sense of harmony
Conflate wittiness and charm
With drooling debauchery
Confuse misplaced ardor with
Growing dependency
Addiction needs must assure
Sustained advocacy
For deep is my thirst
The bottle’s is as well
Which outdrinks the other first
I suppose time will tell
I’d bet on the bottle
If history is a guide
It proceeds heroic
Support network wide
The lubricant of empire
Wet nurse to undue pride
Ejaculant of industry
With profits liquefied
Detracting its advocates
Advancing suicide
Each drink further we sink
Thirst never satisfied
Diminution of the self
Relinquishing control
Labeled poison on the shelf
The bottle takes its toll
Each sip the bottle bests me
Each draw my life it drains
In self-control it tests me
Only my control abstains
In time it will ingest me
I lose, the bottle gains
In my darkness I molest me
Waxing wroth as my life wanes
Diminution of the self
Relinquishing control
Labeled poison on the shelf
The bottle takes its toll
As my father before me
As his father before him
Back throughout the ages
Where our history grows dim
The thirst ever unquenched
The hunger never sated
So deeply entrenched
Cannot be satiated
Besotted missionaries
Proffering our imposition
Stumble forth impiously
And toast to our tradition
Of destroying everything
That we could once hold dear
The past laid out before us
Our future appears clear
The wisdom that we strangle
The madness we inflate
The apotheosis
Of the drunken reprobate
Elevate society
Consuming a depressant
Crumbling eventually
By thinking adolescent
Diminution of the self
Relinquishing control
Labeled poison on the shelf
The bottle takes its toll
Get blotto
Or wasted
Hammered
Or stupid
Smashed
Or wrecked
Or gassed
Or plowed
Or pickled
Or stewed
Or soused
Or tanked
Destroyed
Or ruined
Diminution of the self
Relinquishing control
Labeled poison on the shelf
The bottle takes its toll
The bottle takes another life
Consumes as foe a friend
The damage we do to ourselves
Difficult to comprehend
© 2012 simmbisos 7/8/12
The bottle lives in me
The influence of the bottle
Affects all I hear and see
Everything I think, I feel
My very sanity
Every time I drink, I seal
My fate, my slavery
Equate equilibrium
With a sense of harmony
Conflate wittiness and charm
With drooling debauchery
Confuse misplaced ardor with
Growing dependency
Addiction needs must assure
Sustained advocacy
For deep is my thirst
The bottle’s is as well
Which outdrinks the other first
I suppose time will tell
I’d bet on the bottle
If history is a guide
It proceeds heroic
Support network wide
The lubricant of empire
Wet nurse to undue pride
Ejaculant of industry
With profits liquefied
Detracting its advocates
Advancing suicide
Each drink further we sink
Thirst never satisfied
Diminution of the self
Relinquishing control
Labeled poison on the shelf
The bottle takes its toll
Each sip the bottle bests me
Each draw my life it drains
In self-control it tests me
Only my control abstains
In time it will ingest me
I lose, the bottle gains
In my darkness I molest me
Waxing wroth as my life wanes
Diminution of the self
Relinquishing control
Labeled poison on the shelf
The bottle takes its toll
As my father before me
As his father before him
Back throughout the ages
Where our history grows dim
The thirst ever unquenched
The hunger never sated
So deeply entrenched
Cannot be satiated
Besotted missionaries
Proffering our imposition
Stumble forth impiously
And toast to our tradition
Of destroying everything
That we could once hold dear
The past laid out before us
Our future appears clear
The wisdom that we strangle
The madness we inflate
The apotheosis
Of the drunken reprobate
Elevate society
Consuming a depressant
Crumbling eventually
By thinking adolescent
Diminution of the self
Relinquishing control
Labeled poison on the shelf
The bottle takes its toll
Get blotto
Or wasted
Hammered
Or stupid
Smashed
Or wrecked
Or gassed
Or plowed
Or pickled
Or stewed
Or soused
Or tanked
Destroyed
Or ruined
Diminution of the self
Relinquishing control
Labeled poison on the shelf
The bottle takes its toll
The bottle takes another life
Consumes as foe a friend
The damage we do to ourselves
Difficult to comprehend
© 2012 simmbisos 7/8/12
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