Want to cause endless hilarity? Forget about covering your buddy’s entire apartment in aluminum foil. Secretly put a Star Trek transporter in his shower.
Won’t he be surprised!
Let us sit at the feet of a master.
Well, my friends are gone and my hair is grey
I ache in the places where I used to play
And I’m crazy for love but I’m not coming on
I’m just paying my rent every day in the Tower of Song
I said to Hank Williams, how lonely does it get?
Hank Williams hasn’t answered yet
But I hear him coughing all night long
Oh, a hundred floors above me in the Tower of Song
I was born like this, I had no choice
I was born with the gift of a golden voice
And twenty-seven angels from the Great Beyond
They tied me to this table right here in the Tower of Song
So you can stick your little pins in that voodoo doll
I’m very sorry, baby, doesn’t look like me at all
I’m standing by the window where the light is strong
Ah, they don’t let a woman kill you, not in the Tower of Song
Now, you can say that I’ve grown bitter but of this you may be sure
The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor
And there’s a mighty judgment coming, but I may be wrong
You see, you hear these funny voices in the Tower of Song
I see you standing on the other side
I don’t know how the river got so wide
I loved you baby, way back when
And all the bridges are burning that we might have crossed
But I feel so close to everything that we lost
We’ll never, we’ll never have to lose it again
Now I bid you farewell, I don’t know when I’ll be back
They’re moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track
But you’ll be hearing from me baby, long after I’m gone
I’ll be speaking to you sweetly from a window in the Tower of Song
Yeah, my friends are gone and my hair is gray
I ache in the places where I used to play
And I’m crazy for love but I’m not coming on
I’m just paying my rent every day in the Tower of Song
You’d be surprised about how many people believe the Earth is round and that the moon is flat.
Sometimes stories come up, that need to be better documented than just in an email. Here’s a bit of conversation between myself, Wink Jr, Soren and The Lunky. Email starts right down there:
I tried reading this, skimmed over it. I’m afraid the story didn’t grab me.
Though it did remind me of the night where I’d gotten lost exploring rural Nevada in Der Thing after that man burning thing that happens sometimes. Eventually I ended up at I think it’s called Soldier Meadows dude ranch, where people like Hairy Larva and crew (used to) go to decompress after the event. Somewhere around here I have a photo of me with The Larry. In fact… you can read all about it here, and you probably should:
http://tikimojo.com/amz.com/site/sbp/bm99/highrock.html
High Rock Canyon east to High Rock Lake is very rugged and remote and can be driven in four-wheel vehicles by experienced and well equipped explorers.
Yet I had told the staff at the state park in CA where I’d started out many hours before to be concerned if I didn’t show up so I was stuck continuing to drive all the frickin’ way to Gerlach so I could at least use the phone (remember, this was 1999 and nowhere Nevada and you don’t have phones everywhere) and make sure the Parks people didn’t call out the rescue squad – not just pointless in this case, but also expensive.
Long boring drive through the kind of areas where honest to gawd I would have not been surprised at all to have been abducted by aliens. Not one sign of human activity in any direction other than the gravel highway. Eventually ended in Gerlach, met a wonderful woman who invited me to spend the night at Planet X and eventually we had enormous amounts of sex, so I suppose we can call it a win all in all for everyone.
The next night, back in the campground just south of Lakeview, decompressing with a bottle of the local plum wine and a campfire, watching the sun over the lake I pretty much was sure I’d breached the 4th wall.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_wall
Got me one of these things:
And I am fairly terrified of it. Death is going to arrive at any moment. That’s why I rode home at 80mph. Figure that means fewer seconds of sheer terror vs. 55mph which I’d still be experiencing sheer terror.
“I wonder what Amish Batman is up to tonight?” she mused pensively…
Deep Space 90210
…ok, that’s been thought of many times before and I just now heard about it.
Maybe we could add in “Buffy the Space Vampire Slayer”?
I woke up. In that dream I was reading an amazingly entertaining and innovative novel that I had written. Of course, the process of waking up wiped out the memory of what I was reading so I can’t write it down.
Yet it was stuff my mind made up. It’s all inside this skull. I didn’t consciously come up with it, it happened somehow and it’s waiting in there looking for a chance to get out.
I have to figure out how to set it free. It’s there. How do I get it out?
Question: What’s this “second amendment” for anyways?
Well students,
There’s a small number of people who have a romantic dream of being part of a rag-tag team of rebels who use their small arms to secure their right to own small arms from some tyrannical government.
Bit of a circular argument, eh? “I need lots of guns so I can have lots of guns.” There’s never any details of what would a tyrannical government would be like, except fewer guns, maybe.
Keep in mind these aren’t America’s deepest thinkers. A member of the liberal east coast elite gets elected and they go bat-sh*t buying up guns and ammo one year, and eight years later a member of the liberal east coast elite gets elected – no change in any of the gun laws during this time – and sales drop so far that gun companies are headed for bankruptcy.
We ain’t talkin’ about the sharpest tools in the shed, now is we?
Topics like this, I can see how they would encourage someone to colonize Mars.
Marigold woke up on the floor behind the bar. As usual the Yucatan sun beat mercilessly into his bloodshot eyeholes. He raised a meaty hand to shade his face and brush back his bushy, dirty blonde hair.
Morning.
Seagulls called to each other on the Riviera Maya and the humid, cool morning sea breeze boiled over his limp body like a salt-water gazpacho.
Lying there, memories of the previous night, mixed with thoughts about the duties of the coming day arranged themselves in his mind, like so:
Sigh.
“Marigold, why are we here?” his brain asked. Why indeed. With a heave he flipped up to one knee and drew himself upright on the de-laminating vinyl of the bartop. Hazy morning sunlight filtered down through the palms. Due to the nature of being built on sand, the whole pallapa and related structures leaned a bit in the oddball directions usually only seen in the customers after they’d been there for a while. Sticky too.
To his surprise, he found a dwarf with a broken nose in a straw hat and bright hawaiian shirt perched on one of his stools. Looking at him, with that look that says, “I’m thirsty.”
The pair took each other in. The dwarf stuck a half-burned Cohiba in his mouth and causually re-lit it with a fine lighter, a vintage Davidoff, noted Marigold. Taking a solid draw, he exhaled and slowly gazed at the rumpled figure before him with the patience of a man who knew he came expecting to wait.
“Marigold is a funny name for a man.” Cigar stuck back in mouth.
“Yeah, ask my mom about that.” Swipe the bar. Towel, clean enough. This guy has money to spend. “What kin I getcha?” with an attempted note of morning friendliness.
Fact Finding Timmy tapped his gold ring against the empty glass to his right, which gave off a tinny ring. “Scotch on the rocks, still got ice? And some coffee.”
Marigold rattled a couple of battered coolers behind the bar – a few stray cubes swimming in meltwater, waiting for today’s delivery of the fresh stuff. He sniffed his hand and behind the bar pretending FFT couldn’t figure it out, used his fingers to fish out a few survivors into a fresh plastic cup. Scotch not being the drink of choice of the gringo surfer crowd of Tulum, the single bottle of Johnny Walker was nearly untouched.
Marigold’s sleeveless t-shirt, chest hair peeking out of every crevice, the right thing for most of the Carribean weather felt sticky and a bit cold with sweat and salt. Marigold took a moment to breathe, brushing his hair out of his face. Pulling all the professionalism a man could have under the circumstances he set the drink in front of Timmy. With something of a sorry glance he followed, “Coffee. All we have is instant Nescafe, and there’s no hot water until I get a fire going.”
“Of course.” FFT leaned back with his smoke and regarded the mustachio’d bartender, as Marigold tended to the overnight disorder behind the bar. “Things didn’t go so well in Texas, did they?” the dwarf asked, eyebrow cocked.
Texas. Headlights. Fists. Money, but not enough. A long, terrible dark ride to Mexico. Marigold reached out for a toothpick and stuck it in his mouth as a delaying action. Spinning that tiny tree around his pie-hole a bit and peering through his dirty locks he sniffed, “You’ve got cash?”
FFT looked away, smiling a bit. Tapped out a bit more ash. Leaning forward, looking deeper into Marigold’s eyes. Cock the eyebrows, cold stare. “Cash?” #DramaticPause. The camera pans back, framing both figures backlit by the sun just starting to assert itself through the verdant setting of the Gulf of Mexico, a bit of cigar smoke floating through the frame.
Cigar: Tap tap, a quick cigar stab towards Marigold’s slightly blood-shot eyes.
“I’ve got something better, Opportunity.“
