Rude Awakenings

I awoke slowly, consumed with inexplicable apprehension. My head seemed detached, distant and I swam through the mind’s darkness seeking the glow of consciousness. I became aware that it was dark; I couldn’t see. Anything. As the sleep cloud faded I realized something of even greater concern – I couldn’t hear. I was deaf.

This scared me more than anything. Darkness was a state I was accustomed to, it’s dark all the time, I close my eyes, it’s dark. But silence – total, absolute, unyielding – terrified me – I felt isolated, cut off from the world just beyond the darkness, more alone than I’d ever felt. Someone could be standing but a few feet from me, talking to me, telling me what had happened, warning me, but in the silent darkness, I would not know. I was alone.

Remember. Try to remember: What was I doing before the darkness, before the silence? Where was I? Where am I? I moved my right arm, slow, heavy handed. Then it hit – Wake up! Pain! Horrible, Searing, Throbbing – first my arm, then my shoulder, back, chest; my head. My head felt like I had been kicked in the face, by a horse wearing cleats. I instinctively reached up, then realized I was pinned – I couldn’t raise my arm to my head.

The pain, pulsing now, like a grinding toothache but the tooth is my head. Then the drill. That’s what it sounded like: a dental drill, right through the top of my head. I shout out, but nothing. I can make no sound, I am racked with escalating and all but unbearable agony, I cannot see, I cannot hear, I do not know where I am.

I don’t know who I am. A new level of terror – pain, horrible, pounding, searing, grinding pain and I don’t even know who is feeling it. I am so afraid. Then I smell it: smoke. Whoever I am, where ever I am, I smell smoke. Think. Think. What kind of smoke? There are different kinds. What do I smell?

Wood. Wood is burning. Then with the already excruciating pain everywhere, I feel it. Heat. Wood is burning near me. Whoever I am. I thought I was afraid before. Is the next awakening coming with the smell of me cooking? I try to move, now my whole body. I sense stuff on top of me, heavy, difficult to move. The heat increases, the smell now includes artificial scents: plastic, polyester, rubber. Flesh. I smell burning flesh.

I focus all my concentration and try to move – I’m on my back. I force myself up, feel wood and debris fall off of me, smell gypsum dust through the smoke, I sneeze. This shakes me awake and I begin coughing. At first I hear nothing but as I cough, nearly choking on the dust and smoke, I can hear my body hacking, each cough agonizing, my chest feeling as though it will cave in, arms like they were beaten with baseball bats, head pounding, swimming.
My eyes open. The room is dark, but I can make it out through my clouded vision. I see the sky through a hole in the ceiling, the walls around the hole cratered and burning. Lots of smoke. I focus hard, my head splitting, body straining as I lean forward, rubble from the ruined structure around me falling off. I can barely make it out, but once I realize what it is I find myself: a framed photograph of my family on holiday. On the night table.

I am in my bedroom – I am on my bed. The wrecked ruin around me, upon me, is my house. I look to the right. Beside me on the bed lies my wife, very still. As I sit upright, more rubble falling from my brutalized body; my ears split with a horrible buzzing, grinding sound. My head swims and I begin to topple back to the bed, catching myself. I know who I am, I know where I am; I observe with silent horror the ruin of my home around me.

My wife is dead. As I move closer to her I see that her face has been ripped from her head by a ceiling rafter, her neck broken, body torn by burning shards of something, the bed soaked in blood. I begin to cry and see in the broken mirror near me that I am bleeding and appear to have half of my face torn off, mangled right ear and skin hanging from my shredded head.

The pain overwhelms me as I look into the room next to ours, the children’s room. It is a flaming ruin, walls and ceilings collapsed, rafters and roofing crushing our two daughters, pinning them until the flames can finish them off. By now this has occurred and I stare into the burning hell that engulfs my family and I try to make sense of it.

Then I remember: Certain governments fly unmanned aircraft over residential areas and bomb houses where people they suspect of opposing them might be. Apparently, they were in the neighborhood and decided to drop by. While I didn’t really care one way or the other about them before, I think you can say I number myself among their growing opposition now.

And with no family to care for, or any chance of ever knowing a woman again with my face destroyed, I’ll have plenty of time to express it.

(c) simmbiosis 12/1/11

http://simmbiosis-spoken.bandcamp.com/track/rude-awakenings

Neighbor Hoods (Think Globally/Act Locally)

“Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.” Bertrand Russell

As many Americans, I pride myself on being a good neighbor. I live on a nice street in a nice house in a nice place. What can I say, it’s nice. I even get along with some of my other neighbors; we like to keep things around the ‘hood' very livable. You might say we have mutual interests.

There was this fellow down the street, Moe, who’d become a bit of a problem. We’d always had a tentative relation; he wasn’t really like the rest of us, at least the guys I got along with in our local neighborhood watch coalition: Nick, Allen, Tom and Oscar. We call it NATO as a kind of in-joke. I didn’t say it was funny. Most jokes really aren’t when you think about it. Suppose that’s why we don’t think about it. Easier just to chuckle.

Moe was doing pretty good for himself: he had a young wife, a bunch of kids, great house, new cars and even a boat. Gotta tell you, none of us in NATO had a boat and we live on the good section of the street, not on the other side of the tracks like Moe. We had developed our suspicions as to how Moe had come about his good fortune which were bolstered by his association with a guy named Boris, who none of us really liked and who had been an antagonist of mine for some time.

Allen told me that his kid had heard one of Moe’s kids talk about conditions in Moe’s house. I was appalled. Sounded to me like he was a strict disciplinarian, perhaps even beating the children, as well as restricting their internet access, which is tantamount to a first amendment violation these days. Don’t get me wrong, I feel discipline is vital and that we suffer the lack of it, but as concerned citizens, we can’t allow people with authority the right to abuse that authority by abusing others who can’t defend themselves.

And we had this on good authority. Allen’s kid, I think his name is Billy, heard it direct from one of Moe’s kids. Said it looked like he had been beat up. Or had a black eye or something. So even though we were friendly with Moe when we’d see each other at market or whatever, we had begun feeling he was not merely an annoyance but indeed a threat to the harmony of the neighborhood. There way down the street, across the tracks.

So Moe, in all his wisdom, started his own neighborhood watch without consulting us or getting our approval. Not that he needed it, really, but it would seem that in the interest of good neighbor relations he would want to make nice with us, especially in light of our concerns about his parenting, and stuff. Coupled with his improved relations with Boris, things were getting tense around the neighborhood.

Then Billy, or Bobby – one of Allen’s kids – tells Allen, or Cindy – Allen’s wife – that he heard that one of Moe’s kids was in the hospital; that it looked like Moe had beaten him up pretty badly. It seemed that all hell was breaking loose in Moe’s house and something needed to be done. So we, NATO, drove over there and parked across the street. We had several beers and stood out in front of his house talking shit about him.

After about an hour he came out and asked us what the problem was. We told him. He responded that we didn’t know what we were talking about and asked us to drink elsewhere. Allen told him it was a free country and we could drink anywhere we wanted. As his neighbor didn’t feel like chasing us off (cowering inside his house), we had decided we would drink there. Moe told us to fuck off.

So I punched him. This surprised all of us as I’m disinclined to punch anyone, but Moe had pushed me to the limit. I drew a line in the sand. In the gutter across the street from Moe’s house, there across the tracks, about five or six miles from my house.

Shocked, Moe considered his options with the five of us standing there and went back inside. So we started throwing rocks at his house. Busted out the windows on his cars, smashed his mailbox, shattered his hummingbird feeder and threw bricks through the front windows. His kids were crying inside, he was probably beating them, wife screaming. God knows what he was doing to her.

So what does the asshole do? Moe, I’m talking about that asshole. He releases his dog, a corgi or something and it runs out barking at us, like to bite us. So Tom pulls out his shotgun from the trunk and blasts that yapping little bastard right there on the porch. I was with him all the way; if that dog had left the porch, ran across the lawn and the sidewalk, leapt the curb and crossed the street, it could have bitten one of us.

Moe went nuts. All his kids were screaming; the beatings were more than we could bear out there in the street; his wife was hysterical, wailing and babbling; we couldn’t understand a word any of them said. It was intolerable. The crazy bastard came at us with a weapon, not sure exactly what it was because he was still in the house, but once we had established he was coming to attack us, we knew what we had to do.

We opened fire. We all had our guns out by now knowing that defending ourselves from the crazed dog would only escalate to violence. Moe’s movements in his house left us no option. We shot the house for a couple of hours: my trigger finger was numb; Tom’s shoulder was so sore he ended up getting a massage afterward. We went through about 1000 rounds before we ran out of ammo. The smoke-filled air reeked of cordite and we could hear the weeping of joy from the other houses, the full knowledge that another tyrant had met his grisly end comforting them there in their homes.

We were pleased that of five children, his wife and mother, we were able to protect two of the kids and his wife may even walk again – if their insurance covers it. Because of our time and expense (bullets ain’t cheap), we felt obliged to take a few things by way of compensation. It seemed fair in light of the circumstances.

In retrospect, it seems kinda odd that no one stepped up to intervene: no one even complained. Guess they were all happy it wasn’t their family we were protecting. Which is great, until NATO decides to go water skiing in your neighborhood. Then, well…


© 2011 simmbiosis 10/25/11

Spontaneous Tales

To keep sharp here, in this culture steeped in mediocrity, I create challenges for myself, realizing that the only artist one can really compete with is oneself. This particular challenge I have embarked upon with go to goil and muse to the star(crossed), the ever alluring Robin. Robin doesn't consider herself a writer, but as a remarkable muse she understands that when I have my pants on, I need inspiration of a different kind and she provides it wonderfully.

The challenge is to create a short story based upon a spontaneously generated 1.) title; 2.) paragraph; 3.) characters; 4.) or whatever the fuck. The first was based upon a paragraph, off the top of my head, no story in mind. Most are written sitting down with no knowledge of what we'll be faced with over the course of an hour or two. Hence the challenge. It's ever so much fun.

I have thrown this challenge out to some of the 'writers' I know, but as 'writers' they are too busy with other stuff to waste time writing. Regardless, we have generated some fun tales and as we're the only two to have enjoyed them thusfar, figured I would share some of mine and lay down a little writing exercise for the good folks hereabouts.

The only limitations we've adhered to is keeping words in the same order they were created in, titles are used as titles and all characters must figure into the story somewise or another. Beyond that, go nuts.

The first paragraph was by me and operates thusly:

I was on the set of Spunky’s Inferno when I first saw him. This was in the pre-independent film boom, back when they were still called B films. The film had script problems from day one and had run three weeks over budget just setting up craft services on the first morning. Something about thermite in the coffeemaker. He had seemed a little disjointed earlier when the wardrobe assistant mysteriously imploded while ironing some socks.

Enjoy!

Crafty

I was on the set of Spunky’s Inferno when I first saw him. This was in the pre-independent film boom, back when they were still called B films. The film had script problems from day one and had run three weeks over budget just setting up craft services on the first morning. Something about thermite in the coffeemaker. He had seemed a little disjointed earlier when the wardrobe assistant mysteriously imploded while ironing some socks.

I had originally been hired as a script doctor but after some rational assessment it was determined that a script coroner was more in order, so we ordered some sandwiches and played darts. After several rounds of darts (a game unlike the one played pretty much universally, where one comes up with an idea for a story line that doesn’t suck, then darts around the table stealing everyone’s drinks until the idea is shot down – with shots – and after refilling, it begins again)(I didn’t say it was a good game, just a game, so get off my ass) we decided that development money would be better spent on hookers and that pretty much killed the first, second and first half of the third draft.

As the budget diminished my role declined as well. I worked a week as script dentist, extracting all the decay and stuffing it with filler, using 12 ounces of pharmaceutical cocaine to keep properly numb. It didn’t do much for the script but it kept me and the hookers, especially Connie, oh how she loved the cocaine, satiated until my next demotion to script chiropractor where I worked out the old kinks, adding a few new one’s (thanks Connie!) and merely made adjustments as opposed to structural changes.

Finally I worked as script podiatrist, just offering footnotes and kicking around ideas until some genius, I think it was Vinnie the line producer, decided to gear up and fix the difficulties in post. Always in post, huh, Vinnie? Ya’asshole.

Skip Winterbottom, the executive producer came through with an additional 4 mil when they signed on David Spade. This was good because we’d burned through our seed money, per diem, sold most of the office furniture and Connie was getting a trifle sketchy and offering cleaning personnel handjobs for some of their ranker emollients, just to keep an edge. In retrospect, it’s probably best we parted ways, she had begun to smell of Comet when she’d do a Sid Viscous and that was off putting to the stoutest hobbyist.

When Spade showed up the first day of rehearsal (coincidently the first day of shooting) he was outraged to find Lite-Cheddar Cheeze Goldfish on the crafty table as he felt it was an example of reverse weightism; where in actuality they didn’t have the regular ones at Fart and Spinal so Cuddles (she insisted we call her that though it was a poorly rendered moniker and one that will cause her much pain when she sobers up) went with the low fat and Spade had a hissy fit.

And then the coffeemaker blew up.

Now there were accusations tossed about, David trying to bugger Cuddles behind the porta-potty, his ass-istant Peaches running around bitching about red Gummy Dogs, “Everybody else gets bears, why does David Spade have dogs?” and the like, but as they are all unfounded and unproven, for insurance purposes we are settling on calling it a manufacturing defect and letting the Wing Ho Soop company in Canton China (as opposed to a Chinese Canton which are in actuality provinces and little areas where people sit quietly waiting for their turn to howl like a cat in a paper shredder) deal with it.

He looked up. I fairly burst from behind a pile of severed donkey parts, to be used in the holiday montage, and stumbled toward him, likely looking crazed. My mouth was full of red Gummy Dogs (stupid Cuddles) and Lite Goldfish and I tripped over a PA who was unconscious against a rack of Nazi uniforms. I saw him pull back, concerned.

“Hiya, can I get a cuppa java?” He’d been passing out Moe’s Bean Juice around the carnage on the set and I’d missed the bastard for 20 minutes. I knew the two remaining cups he proffered would be cold – I didn’t care. I needed something to wash down those awful Gummy Fish Dog things. Spade was right. Cuddles deserved her buggering.

I offered the other cup to Peaches. He was contrite.

What a freak show.

(Of course, you can play too. The following is the second challenge, this one offered by Robin. Use it in a short story and post it in the comments and offer up a challenge yourself. It's a fun and creative exercise for writers who like to keep sharp, and even for those who just like using their brains actively instead of passively.)

We ran around the corner of the building and hunkered down behind a couple of trash cans, then watched as it wandered in our direction, sniffing the air delicately. I was out of breath—God, I hate running!—and trying desperately to hold back a sneeze, which had been brought on by the smells coming from the garbage: stale beer, old vomit, moldy meat, filthy socks, human catastrophe. I knew that if that thing found us, we were toast. My breath hitched and my nose itched and I could feel nothing but the build-up of one whopper of an at-choo! and now oh shit I have to fucking piss!

An Interest of Conflict

“The greatest pleasures require the least - the least pleasures require the most”

I like sex. There, it’s out in the open – let’s enter this particular relationship honestly, cards on the table. And by like, let’s not diminish through wanting affection, I love it. I think about it, a lot, watch a good deal of visual stimulation enhancement (porno) and engage in it probably 20 times a week, 15 with a partner. Minimum. Some would call me a horndog. Most avoid calling me all together.

Not that this is a surprise. My horndoggery tends to put off those who are less doggedly horny. Any among the readers who know me, know this; any others who have paid the slightest attention to my work know it implicitly, because I don’t hide it. I’m not ashamed of it. You might even say I’m pleased by it.

And that alienates me – most aren’t comfortable around sex. Sure they can make witty comments about it, throw off the odd vulgarity, even talk sparingly about it, in general terms, but when it comes to explicit particulars, or gets too personal, most have other things to attend to. Most would rather talk about other stuff than how they use their junk.

Notice that term: junk. What is junk? It is waste, used up refuse, trash. That’s how the modern hipster refers to the one part of their body that can truly create. Wise creatures would look at their reproductive attributes as near divine, ecstatic elation which leads to creation. In the west it’s our junk.

No big surprise how we treat what comes of it.

In societal terms we treat childbirth as a miracle but look at the birth of a snake or polecat as gross and vile, it’s only miraculous when a human pops out. Especially of a snake or polecat. At the same time we socially treat sex, which is the accepted means to achieve said miraculous childbirth, as a dirty and disgusting process, those who enjoy it for its own sake, perverted and wrong. Horndogs.

Western religion treats the means to the miracle of birth as but a necessary evil in the propagation of the species. Don’t do it because you enjoy it, do it because the church needs more sheeple to bleat its praises, more acolytes to repeat its phrases. Do it cause God insists, not because the very act is a delight. At least when performed correctly.

In many regards it seems that’s why the church in all of its (western) forms insists that we do it incorrectly, so it isn’t a delight. And we’ll get out of bed on the porously defined Sabbath and offer our juice to God through the church of our choice, instead of rutting away as God must have intended lest It wouldn’t have made sex so much more entertaining than church.

I have come to the conclusion that the reason some of us like sex so much more than others is simply our point of focus. How often do you get laid a week? How often do you think about getting laid a week? Would you like to get laid more than you do?

What do you watch on TV?

If you’re as most you watch the hip new flashy version of the same old shit that’s been on TV since its inception – propaganda. Programming to convince you that you are not only of the best place on Earth, but because of it you must certainly be better than people of other places. Shows which define you in terms of how actors and directors and editors and producers interpret what writers promote as ‘real’ life.

You know writers? The sexually frustrated geeks who never got laid at school, who sit alone in a room and make sweet sweet love to their computatator, releasing their bile on all the jocks and cool kids who actually went outside and did stuff, these are the people defining ‘real’ life for the average TV viewer. Film writers too. People weaned on TV’s massive awe inspiring teat, many with little personal life experience, define life for the viewer through a commercial lens: flash, violence, noise, explosion, sex, product.

Most of course forget that like radio, TV was first and foremost used to sell product; consumer goods in escalating proportions confirming the primacy of the single product hawked with the most fervent urgency: Capitalism. You know, the political ethos currently destroying the world in a hail of greed and rampant corruption? All the creative content was ever intended for was to keep the viewers (listeners) in their seats. Ethos and lifestyle were incorporated into the programming to cement consumer loyalty: nationalism, the brand. Filler originally between the commercials has now become the commercial itself.

It’s awesome.

I read a quote by a Russian journalist who worked for years in America; he commented that American propaganda is much slicker than Russian propaganda owing to our massive advertising industry, but that while Americans tend to believe our propaganda, Russians tended to disbelieve theirs. As it becomes further influenced by western promotional techniques, one wonders how long that has remained the case.

Americans love shows like 24 and Survivor and Americon Idle. We love sports. These diversions promote one thing in common: conflict. Each of these shows and entertainments advance the notion that life is a constant struggle against oppression, that the strong prevail over the weak, good prevails over evil and that no matter how good your sports franchise is, they can’t win every time. But they’re bound for a resurgence next season. Drink Bud!

From these shows, we learn how to talk, are provided common jokes to share around the water cooler, learn how to dress to suit our particular niche in society and especially how to think. We learn to think about buying stuff, how important buying stuff is.

We learn what constitutes a national threat, what it takes to form a consensus, to drive the unappealing from our midst, what constitutes a good singer, dancer, flashing monkey. We learn that a Bud is good during Miller time but that players on performance enhancing drugs are a bane to the noble game. Why would anyone want to enhance their performance?

Shows like 24 offer up a dichotomy that Mani would have been proud of: pure good vs. pure evil. No gray areas to blur the lines of very clearly defined rightness and wrongness. The show that sold torture to America as an absolute necessary, I don’t know, evil seems like such a strong word – maybe just a tool of the good, to wrest information that isn’t forthcoming out of those of pernicious design. To combat evil using the very methods employed by evil. For good.

And though it’s never worked in real life – anybody can be tortured to say anything and Mr. Blair aptly pointed out in 1984 that torture is used to break those tortured, not to gather intelligence – every episode has people tortured to save thousands of lives. Always to save thousands of lives. Something that all the torture the USA has ever employed upon all the poor bastards caught up in our clumsy efforts to make everyone fear us has failed to do. The same idiots who couldn’t protect the Pentagon from a subsonic, unarmed civilian airliner with over an hours notice and trillions of dollars worth of weapons, are out there torturing terrorists to protect us. I feel safe.

Consider Survivor: as one of the most popular shows on TV it is about nothing more than humans reduced to the law of the jungle – and prime time censorship. Got to make sure any rutting leads to conflict, like the soaps and pretty much all horror films: fuck = death. Survivor is nothing but a show about us being animals again. Its popularity proves that we like watching others behave as animals. We go ape over it.

How about American Idol? This is but another version of the Gong Show, with has-beens and snobs taking the role of the gong. Either the contestant is deemed really good and accepted into the better graces of the hosts (producers) or deemed not good enough and relegated to the ignoble position of never-were, consigned to spend the remainder of their pathetic lives cursing the ground Simon walks upon.

Conflict.

Conflict, we’re told, is the essence of drama. And as a spectator, it beats the hell out of listening to dullards prattle on about how happy they are the dog got fixed or that Aunt Martha’s hip pain is subsiding. But, do we need drama in our private lives, beyond what we have already equipped ourselves with? Do we need to escalate the drama by creating conflict, even when we’re home, especially when we’re home? Do we need more battles to keep our lives interesting? Do we have to fight each other to tolerate being around each other more than a few hours a day?

These are good questions, because we’ve been told that we can’t; that we must fight, that life is a perpetual struggle for the top of the food chain – the law of the jungle applies. But doesn’t the law of man supersede the law of the jungle? Isn’t that what civilization is all about, getting us out of the woods, away from the lower species? Doesn’t the law of man suggest that we’re better than animals; that we shouldn’t have to crawl and scrape and fight to sustain ourselves?

Doesn’t the law of man raise us above all the other creatures of the Earth so we don’t have to live in perpetual conflict and fear? But is it not the teachings of man, the advancement of empire and control, the promotion of God, which makes human even lower than the animals by human claiming to be superior while proving to be not? We continue the conflict we say we’re better than, by maintaining the brutality and law of the jungle we claim to have overcome.

Can we have it both ways? Is life a Manichean dichotomy: good vs. evil? Everybody thinks they’re good, even evil people. The worst people in the world imagine themselves as good. Some people think Dick Cheney is a national treasure others a war criminal. Advocates cite his tough stance on terror while detractors point to the terror felt by the millions of people that his actions killed and displaced. Who can say? The Hague?

Sports aficionados, to perhaps ascribe a level of nobility to their delight at the simplest of conflicts will cite the grace and symmetry, the poetry of motion in the human form, the amazing abilities of sports figures to contort themselves, to throw themselves, hurl themselves, land and bounce and roll and slam into things with such grace and ease.

But, if that is what they watch for, why don’t they watch ballet or figure skating? Perhaps they do. I’m betting the majority of football fans out there who cite amazing feats of physicality as a reason they appreciate the game, likely don’t watch ballet or figure skating, mostly. Even though dancing and sporting disciplines employ strong men tested to the limits of their endurance and scantily clad women seemingly flying through the air the reason sports fans really like sports is the score. Conflict.

Why do people get upset when their team loses? Don’t they just watch sports for the game? Isn’t just catching the ball, throwing the ball, running with the ball sufficient to the appreciation of human endurance? Getting crushed under a pile of fucking gigantic guys? That beautiful poetry of human form so noble and revered, that we thrill to watch humans slam into each other as hard as they can to advance a few yards, to gain a few points?

If the score isn’t what it’s all about, there’s no need for it. The score is what it’s all about, it’s the besting, the wresting of control, it’s one beating another, it’s the law of the jungle. We’ve elevated ourselves right back to where we started. We live in perpetual conflict to amuse ourselves. We’re just that bored.

If conflict is the primary staple of one’s diet it becomes more natural to use arms to keep others away, at a safe distance. If affection, or pure horndoggery is what you feed upon, the natural response is to use arms to embrace, to draw close. Sex in a society steeped in conflict tends towards violent, abusive, disrespectful or equally offensive to the form, just plain lazy. So many just can’t be bothered.

Because we fear intimacy – a result of capitalism, which teaches us to distrust, to operate in secret, to always seek the advantage – we can’t be bothered to explore each other, or especially ourselves when it comes to sex. We strive instinctively for this closeness only to rush through it as though it is a chore to be tended to, not the delight it can be.

Instead of spending our nights in bed with each other talking and kissing and licking and sucking and fucking, we spend our nights watching people battling each other for primacy, as our nation battles for primacy in a world that for the most part has moved past this, opting instead to resolve their own internal struggles rather than share them with their neighbors.

No big surprise then that a nation that bullies everyone around to get their way has little time for the joys of sex, the freedom of intimacy, the liberation of sensational delight. The only freedom we seem interested in is the freedom to make a bunch of money, no matter what it costs. We’d rather be millionaires than great lays. We’d rather own a bunch of shit we never use than use the stuff we came equipped with to create pleasure for those we claim to love the most.

Sex is more an appetizer than the main course – so many rush through it so they can look at the 2 dimensional world of TV or the pornonet. With a living breathing, willing, naked human we like, right in front of us, so many of us would rather watch TV. TV is easy, no demands (oh, alright, consume!) no disappointments. No one judges our performance watching TV – hell, everyone is too busy watching TV. It never expects head, having already severed ours from our bodies.

So many relegate sex to something to be tended to when time allows. Soon as the important stuff is taken care of, then we can eke out a few minutes for sex. Hours for TV and the Web a few minutes for affection, love, sex, just before passing out immediately after getting what we came for, focusing upon the destination missing the delights of the journey completely.

No surprise that the USA’s citizens are angry and repressed and hostile and violent, more interested in making more holes in bodies rather than enjoying the ones we came with. Actual conflict is fun for the whole family while actual sex is our nasty little secret, hidden, sequestered, X rated and wrong. Women who fuck on film are whores, the ones who don’t fuck at all are saints.

Having met both, I prefer the whores. Saints are bores.



© 2011 7/25/11 simmbiosis

Question Everything

When people meet me, they tend to discover in no short order that I possess an innate distrust of authority. Because they don’t know me well, most don’t bother to find out why – the disconcerting is more easily dismissed than examined. And frankly, why would they care? I lose little sleep over the oddities of others – why would mine be any different?

I suppose my concern is that owing to cultural programming and social engineering we have been trained to dismiss that which challenges the assumptions we base our lives upon without consideration. This is a reactive response, the programmed perception supersedes the cognitive function and critical thought is trumped by effective training.

Those who present themselves as authorities tend to not like me much, for the most part. As I am unimpressed with their position, real or imagined, they are equally so to the position I take – a position of opposition. I feel everybody is pretty much the same whereas authority types and their apologists imagine everybody but them as the same. For authority to be effective (to authority) opposition can not be tolerated – that’s where tyranny comes in, though as applied to me, its usually just annoyance. I tend to ask questions which make people uncomfortable; questions authority is loathe to answer.

Because authority has been cultivated in our society (human society, not just American) to represent truth, justice and the path to rightness and order, the natural (easiest) tendency is to accept what those in authority present as truth while doubting, nay-saying or decrying those who question it.

Why? Well, because they tell you to, that’s why.

We’re trained that those who question authority are paranoid, lunatic, tin foil hat wearing conspiracy nuts. We are trained that those who question authority are not to be trusted – clearly their distrust indicates that they harbor some deep seated maladjustment, suspicious people should be regarded with suspicion. For the most part, we are trained well completely ignoring the fact that those who proffer this nonsense are the most secretive and distrusting of all humans.

(While much of my life is private, none of it is secret and I don’t employ spies to gather intelligence – I fucking read. I also don’t walk around wearing guns and mace and Tasers and clubs because I’m afraid of people. Authorities do that.)

Now, if authority tells you to trust it and not its detractors how is that any different from a detractor suggesting that you trust them and not authority? The credibility of the authority or detractor – it must be based upon something more than just an exhortation. Evidence is useful, precedent informative. “Because I said so” should not suffice, unless of course you are 5 years old.

Who has an unchallenged record as to public proclamations repeatedly proven untrue (lies) and who derives no benefit from the exclusion such behaviors manifest? While authority in all shapes and sizes has been proven to lie and lie and then lie some more, usually to the benefit of the authority (think of all the American illegal immigrants in Iraq stealing oil for Halliburton) those of us who challenge this make no money, friends or gain any other tangible benefits from our doubt expressed. Where is our fucking parade?

As those who are abused as children often grow to become abusers as adults, one would be wise then to consider what leads one to distrust authority. Could it be the result of abuse at an early age? Tell you my story:

I got into drug use early – I smoked a pack a day, drank nightly and consumed panoply of pharmaceuticals for nine months before I was born. After that, I increased the dosage. By high school I had alcoholic leanings (when I could stand) and smoked three packs a day (while oddly consuming no tobacco) and was like many of my fellow students, high. Stupid kids preparing for a life as stupid adults, a goal we appear to have achieved magnificently.

The constabulary in our little burg conducted an operation called Royal Flush – let me tell you how that worked. Some alcoholic, beer gutted sheriff’s deputies arrested a 19 year old girl, found her to be addicted to heroin, if I recall correctly. They caught her with enough drugs to threaten her with time in San Quentin. So these big tough cops nabbed her little sister, 17 years old, and told her that if she didn’t rat out her party friends, they would send her sad junkie sister to prison.

So this girl, surrounded by a bunch of skeevy middle age deputies (I dealt with these guys, they were skeevy, and that’s being nice) set about trying to help her sister by ratting out her friends and others she knew who used drugs. 18 at the time, I trusted her and sold this biker looking dude she was with some pot – at his behest, they approached me. Then he came to my house and smoked out with me and I sold him some more. Then I took the proceeds and hitchhiked to Canadia.

To make a long story interminable, the biker dude who had exhorted me to sell him drugs (he was initially looking for speed, which certainly fit within the false persona he had adopted) was a sheriff deputy and he and his cohorts kicked my parent’s door down to arrest me only to find I was out of the country. While they were disappointed, my folks were positively ecstatic, allow me to assure you.

I had to hitchhike back from Canadia to turn myself in, which I did. The judge who I surrendered to agreed with the public defender that a guy who hitchhikes a 1000 miles to turn himself in was not a flight risk – some brilliant jurisprudence – so I was released on my own recognizance. I faced jail time for selling pot to a cop, who entrapped me by forcing a little girl to rat out people she knew to help her sister.


The system lost the evidence, dropped the charges, then turned around and said they found it again and stuck me before a fucking pig of a judge (why, yes he was) and I heard the narc who busted me state in open court that he simulated taking a hit of pot. Having been there as I blew a supercharge into his lying mouth, I pointed this out to my public defender and he told me to forget it. Then they put me in jail.

When I got out I had to pay them a fine, $1,000.00, plus the money they paid me for the pot they effectively stole from me under color of law. If I presented myself falsely to another person and coerced them to sell me their property, then at gunpoint (or under threat of duress and perhaps some assrape) compelled the person I ‘purchased’ the property from to give me the money I paid them back, as well as kick in another 4 times the original amount, I would be guilty of extortion, fraud, breaking and entering and robbery to begin with before even getting to perjury.

I have never done anything of the kind to another person, would never – to lie about one’s intentions then take people’s freedom and money strikes me as repellant behavior, regardless of who does it. No one I had ever met or dealt with had done anything like that to me before, so as a stupid kid, I had no context. I was not naturally suspicious. Afterward, that changed considerably, but only of those who give me reason.

As a young druggy kind a guy, I realized early on that virtually everything the government and police and other authorities said regarding drugs (especially cannabis) was, where not an outright lie, a complete obfuscation of reality. If these outlawed drugs were as deadly as presented, why would we pay police officers to disguise themselves and seek them out with the full knowledge they will use them?

But the lies regarding the drug culture were nothing compared to watching a legal system use children to advance their agenda in courts where state sponsored attorneys dismiss lies by authorities. I remember hating the girl for what she had done, know many of the seedy types caught in her compulsory web of deceit wanted her dead, or worse. I know that while drugs are horribly harmful to bodies and minds, they are an individual taste which is not improved by the additional damage wrought by the state.

I saw, firsthand how much concern the authorities had for the lives of the people they used to justify their paychecks. They had no problem ruining a young girl’s life, basing a drug sting around the terror they could invoke in her with the full knowledge she could be killed or brutalized in the process.

Police narcs have guns and Tasers (now) and clubs and mace and radios and sap gloves (my police science teacher told of them – leather gloves with powdered lead sewn into the lining over the fingers for added kick when you punch – he told the class they were against the law, but that as sheriff deputies, like him, certain laws were impediments to enforcement and were disregarded out of necessity – convenience). Teenage girls, after working with the authorities don’t even have friends, so there is no one to protect them after authority is done with them. Kinda like soldiers, hundreds of thousands of whom live on the very streets they killed people in other countries supposedly to protect.

The authorities have no problem locking boys and girls into cells with hardened criminals when they arrest them for taking socially unsanctioned drugs. For what? Does sodomy make one a man? Why do policing agencies engage in such deadly subterfuge? If they are stupid enough to believe they can adjust human behavior through force of arms, they shouldn’t be allowed around sharp objects, as dull subjects everywhere can attest.

Morality? Please.

When do we all learn to distrust authority? When authority is revealed in a lie. Our first systemic lies are based around what? Commerce. We lie and are lied to, to generate commerce. What’s the Tooth Fairy bring? Floss? How’s about the Ishtar Bunny? Or Sandy Claws? These are make believe tales (lies), promoted systemically for the express purpose of generating cash flow – from the consumer to the corporation which distributes all the delightful pointless little gewgaw and flashing distraction with which we surround ourselves in lieu of human interaction.

Accept the lie, receive the reward. We learn early the benefits of believing the lie. Western culture is suffused with fictional imagery promoting the notion of benevolent angels, fairies and saints offering rewards to those sufficiently docile. As minor divinities, they are painfully aware of our behavior and when approving, deliver tangible bennies on specific holy days. These are lies promoted in homes and marketplaces and schools and churches as harmless joys of childhood.

The gift or boon is presented as a reward for good behavior, from a voyeuristic and benevolent third party. But a kid who is poor doesn’t collect for their good behavior (because Santa Parents have more pressing concerns, like food) and often, kids who are little shits, get all manner of goodies (because harried parents don’t want to put up with the grief of not gifting all the kids, nor the social stigma). The message is clear to kids who then grow up feeling entitled or that good is only what delivers the goods.

What happens when a child calls mom and dad on the whole Santa Claus racket, when they expose that they know it is all bullshit? The gifts from Santa stop coming. Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny? Call them on their fiction and lose the bennies of the lie. Our first exposure (for the most part) to systemic mendacity teaches us, trains us, that ignorance of reality pays dividends. Point it out and find your own ride home. Why do you think so many people claim to believe what they know they can’t really believe? They remember the disappointment they felt when they discovered those they trusted most lied to them, then punished them for pointing it out.

I (reluctantly) lied to my kids about such things, spent thousands of dollars on stuff, mostly that nobody needed, often didn’t even want and returned the next day for something equally pointless with more personal appeal. These are stories we promote as fact to the young and credulous only to be revealed as liars to those we nurture. Why? Because authority tells us we must. They lie for money so then we must lie for it as well to take the stink off their mendacity. Hell, everybody’s doin’ it!

Did operation Royal Flush achieve its objective? Cost me jail time and over a thousand bucks, I know they collected a lot with fines. But it didn’t stop anybody from using drugs, at least anyone I knew. Most just grew out of it and settled into sedentary lives dulled by alcohol, pharmaceuticals and TV. Some got religion, some became cops. Most of us forgot all those lies, convinced the good life would end if we doubted our social masters and stopped asking questions with answers which could only be uncomfortable.

All the bullshit we knew as children now is accepted through years of repetition and colossal disinterest on the part of the public mind at large. The majority operates from a position of certainty with no facts, where the reasoned mind demands facts with no certainty. Adults understand that one can not fight a war on drugs with troops fueled by booze and pharmaceuticals any more effectively than one can promote democracy by overturning popular weal and installing a dictator, both things authority hereabouts does often and particularly poorly. But then, they don’t refer to themselves as adults do they? They call themselves good old boys.

The summer of my drug bust a friend of mine died. We were at a party and he got into a fistfight with a long time antagonist. The police were outside busting kids for drinking and such while in the street less than 100 feet away a crowd watched his antagonist and another little punk beat him to death. I saw this from across the street, the police were between me and my dying friend. I got there well before they did but it was too late – he had been beaten to death – I watched him die in the street. The police did nothing – didn’t protect, didn’t serve. Well, they arrested the guys, later on.

I mention this because my bail for smoking out a cop and selling him a couple ounces of pot at his behest was $50,000.00. This was my first offense. The guy mainly responsible for my friend’s murder, who beat him to death by slamming his head into the pavement repeatedly and then kicking it like a football after he had been pulled off, a sick boy who had been in and out of the system a large portion of his life, well, his bail was $25,000.00.

So, if you wonder why I distrust authority – I come by it naturally.