How many of us crawl away to "the easy job", "the desk job", not "a great man" but "a good man" who will put up with any insult "just to get by". What passes as the tap water of our spirits? A slim volume of poetry, or even the solemn, turgid works of “Raymond Carver” or “John Cheever”, which to me would be about as good as “shit paper”, if slightly less convenient.

Why, I don’t even read poetry. . . . I see it as a fount for women’s sexual frustration and the expression of a bunch of snivel-lipped leftists who go on interminably about nothing with pompous, whining solemnities made all the more worthless in proportion with its “spit on me!” vagueness. Indeed, it is America’s least marketable art form and finds itself out there with the Cheeto bags, torn lotto tickets, cigarette butts, and other refuse left by the milling slime of humanity who are perhaps "less sensitive".

“The Atlantic Monthly” and “The New York Review of Books” is nothing more than the pornography of gratification for morons who want to think of themselves as sophisticated while being led around like a bunch of pompous 15 year-old’s with their noses stuck up in the air like snobs of “The Jewish Mind Disease” with their Eastern WASP hangers-on that tries to rationalize away the fact that “The Emperor has no Clothes”, lost in their world of abstracts that lie to themselves and everyone else “about what life is”. Yes, akin to John Kerry giving 27 finely-sliced answers of “goat meat” when the rest of America was asking “Where’s the Beef?”, a binary yes/no proposition that cuts the crap and the Greek flutes and Michael Dukakis butt-fuckery.

I see kids from “enlightened families” who are raised with nothing but PBS and are shuttled back and forth to “wholesome activities” but never develop an appreciation for the profound silence of time, away from these google-eyed fruits of the Democratic party. When you don’t have a sense of the cultural paradigms that came before you or how others live. You might be given a tour of other countries, but the message is so sanitized, so politically-correct, so stage-managed, that you don’t walk away with a sense of anything as we’re conditioned to become “global citizens” and not object to the destruction of local cultures, governments, and nations in the name of a one-world free market Imperium under surveillance.

I told my mother that if she ever was split open for open-heart surgery, we’d fill her up with gold and credit cards and stock certificates and a year after she was planted in the ground with dry-rot, we’d dig her up and play our version of “Mexican Christmas”—beat the corpse around like a piñata until all “the loot” came spilling out with one titanic thump as our mother’s remains danced through the air and her descendants jumped up and down with glee. Afterwards, we’d have a barbeque in her honor—she sitting in the corner with a rib sandwich in her ghastly hands. Food for the living, comfort for the dead for their great journey across “The River Styx”. Be sure to tip the boatman with that rib sandwich, if you ain’t gonna finish it—old skull-face is probably hungrier than you are. But what am I talking about?! Circling around "The ME generation" like trust-fund vultures, when the whole economic edifice shakes underfoot like hell’s wrath, capitalism’s volcano of ill-gotten gains whose time ran out like an hour-glass of judgment.

And such a sheltered boy I was. . . . . mortified by his sweetsy-feelings that rose within him like a root beer float for two geeky country girls, a pair of sisters who hung out while I helped build my Aunt Linda's log cabin on "a Sunday to spare". They were the sweetest, most lovely creatures I ever had occasion to know and apparently “the crush” was mutual. That was one of the greatest days of my life as a young 13 year-old pup, and I felt as proud as a sailor on duty. They weren’t “geeks” to me. One had strawberry blonde hair and was wearing a “Goofy” t-shirt and the other had dark hair and was wearing a red flannel shirt with a ball cap.

This was mere weeks before "The Oklahoma City Bombing" that only accented the raging culture war in America between the coasts and "The Heartland".

Around the same period, I had a crush on another girl—a senior at my liberal arts alternative school in the city. SHE—I can only refer to her as SHE—was rummaging through some old boxes in the school basement for what passed as "Yearbook Club" in the first quarter when nothing could be mobilized, except to sell a few token ads to local businesses “on the fly” and listen to the New Left teacher go on with her cruddy “Ms. Magazine” rants like a flow of rotten honey while the alterna-kids uttered on about whatever like something mush-mouthed, lisping, and even-more-rotten. I was a marble-mouthed, shy wreck who couldn't believe his good fortune-- that I had "quality time" to be with SHE-- my sweet senior who looked like the heroine out of a cold-war era comic book with a leather jacket and cowgirl jeans like "Miss American Ferrai 1966", fire-apple red with a bucking stallion for a key-ring. Motherfucker, I was lifted on a host of angels to hear the sweet-ribbon of that mostly one-sided dialogue as SHE explained to me how maybe SHE figured SHE wanted "to be a social worker or something" with a WASPy sense of Eastern seaboard "Establishment duty".

Then one day I was working with a handyman in the warm early summer birth of titanic good things in The Central End, a revitalizing area of perhaps a bit of exaggeration and a cloud of unreliability. I had kind of a moon-eyed look about me as the breeze blew and it came to be around quitting time. This character—a satin-voiced New Ager of vegetarianism and Yoga and “getting into ladies’ pants” with down-on-your-knee shmaltz asked “if you a honey to meet”. And out of the square mileage of the St. Louis area, and the wilds beyond, with my heavin’ heart of geek love and snuffin’ the rich scent of possibility, I knew they were out there somewhere and that this heavy-handed idiot pawin’ at women in cars could never understand the profundity of it. Not in this land of jangly alternative rock, Clinton-baiting, and penurious mean-spiritedness. Not at all.

I could never picture doing anything great in my life. . . . . "like becoming a public figure or something". If asked if he wanted to be a celebrity, by the time he stuttered out his bob-throated answer, the TV news crew would have long since moved on to a more telegenic, brainless personality who would give them the spicy "COPY" they needed, throwing me in a depressed slump that I wasn't good enough for the television personalities, rave-dealers, and spokesman of this world and never would be.

Did these people, who seemed in good possession of themselves, have an answer?

Welp, there ain't a whole lot romantic about the news n' entertainment industry, brother. What strikes me is the level of SLEEEEEAAAAZEE and gutter-ball desperation of low-class people WITHOUT A CLUE. If they look good or sound good, that's about it but they really don't have that much more goin' for 'em. You get down into the margins of "the old timers" and it sounds like the darker side of a Texas oil men/Israeli secret agent/Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North/slicin'-a-water-buffalo-in-half Sunset Boulevard early 1980's nightmare where E.T "The Extraterrestrial's" severed head is found in a culvert covered with crawling ants.

Oh, the putrefecation. . . . . of Reagan "Cold War" apocalypse and little George Lucas-lookin' Ewoks and "Bucky" the blond-banged boy playing on a "Little League" team for "Wonderbread" before sitting down in a space-age, gray-hued '80s kitchen where microwaves spew radioactive yuppie death across middle America and shrink our "nads" to the size of Coca-Puffs.

EEEEAAAGGHHHHH. . . . .

Behold our children's souls leased off to the Japanese and their South Korean animation conglomerates with "Voltron" and "The Transformers". . . . . one big zappin' toy commercial of giant trucks and laser cannons like hard-on's from space, destroying the city like angels dueling on the surface of this hell-ball called earth.

Pray for deliverance to your investment bankers. . . . your S&L operators. . . . . Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Hulk Hogan, "The Macho Man" Randy Savage, and Andre "The Giant" as they press the country over their head like Atlas and then shrug the weight onto the hard mat like cocaine-fueled, steroid-ripped "Title Belt" glory that makes the skies rumble and the earth shake!!!

See you there. . . . . IN A NOSTALGIA PARK NEAR YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And all the nostalgia he'd feel for the band, Metallica. . . . . 1980's metal titans and how his relatives knew their manager back from the halcyon days of college and folk music and Hare Krishna top-knots. The damnest thing about this, was that I was told back in '93 when I was a fresh 12 year-old thunking up and down in my room and had all the enthusiasm in the world. But my relatives wouldn't let me call the guy. Then years later I found out why. Here was this snertzy little wood louse, a long-haired character who looked like an elderly extra from "Fiddler on the Roof", who was shoving potato chips into his mouth like a dead-eyed middle-man and was as much a part of the record industry's problem as anything. The weak-kneed sell-out who always rules the gate with "a no" but always enables his clients with "a yes" that won't stand up them, as long as the money spigot keeps things profitable and running.

Dregs of the city, law of the world.

New York. . . . . 10,000,000 cases of quibbling unhappiness "paid off" not to explode like an ethnic cockfight of grease-chinned capitalistic excess as the effete rich of nattering nabobs and mausoleum mavens and the ass-rot of putrescent rich jr’s wipe their mouths with $1000 bills and swallow eternity like a truffle, chewing away like mean-eyed hogs.

I wonder how Winona Ryder deals with all her mail?! I’ll bet her hooded assistants all probably dump it out in trash bags and light it with gasoline to exhume it of evil. . . . . when it's guaranteed that the average kid'll lose. What is it—his shaky voice, unconfident manner, or putrescent attempts at small talk that die at her feet like a croaking sack of shit?

There was once an actress named Jennifer Connelly who about 10 years ago during “a career slump” had a small-time official website/storefront where the public could pay $75 to join **THE OFFICIAL FANCLUB** and get **UPDATES** on her nowhere progress bi-annually, if not a pre-printed photograph that wasn’t even a personalized autograph. For **$100** you could nudity pictures, **BUT ABSOLUTELY NO FAN-MAILS WERE ACCEPTED** from the sniggering hordes.

It wouldn't do nothing for the likes of J.D. Salinger or Kurt Vonnegut who I wouldn't even call "men" but pukey, aged adolescents who need to quit reveling in their pain. About the best thing anyone ever told me was "to quit being a piece of shit" because part of me was addicted to that stimulation and couldn't conceive of anything better, because doing the work to get myself "out of that rut" would have took the character I didn't have right then.

Sad but true.

I once saw Winona on a 20/20 interview promoting "Girl, Interrupted". . . . . a feminine mental health opus that took itself "way too seriously" and "had no distance". She couldn't laugh at the fact that a casting agent once told her that "she wasn't pretty enough" to become an actress and may have to consider something else. It's funny. . . . . it still haunted her.

Can 800,000 fan-mails be wrong?

CAN I BE WRONG?

Get off your narrow track mind. . . . . and I hope the lesson is not too bitter; that once your star begins to fade and your former associates abandon you, that you can put it in perspective. There was a time when I was 18 and all my old friends were "winking out" one-by-one. Some moved away and went to college. Others didn't want to spend time with this socially-struggling geek and left me stranded. I could have lived the life of a shivering cur, like "The Star Wars" kid, but that wasn't good enough. I HAVE THE POWER. I am PURPOSE-DRIVEN.

And all you whipped dogs of the postmodern condition will "fall into line" before I snarl. Force, rooted in justice, backed by courage. Talent on loan from God.

You have nothing to lose but your chains. . . . .

*******************

"You want a-nuther song? Well I ain't plain' one mutherfuckin' note until someone comes up here and puts sum money in my god-damned tip-jar! You know I only came here for one purpose. . . . . to take yor fuckin' cash! Why, I could make more profit puttin' out my meth-head neighbor's asshole and ringin' a bell, hollerin' 'Man for sale! Man for sale!'

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

(Rheeee of Crickets)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

("I heard that, Missy!")