"Hop-a-Long Scoop Rides Again"
(&
A Decade Hence)
This is a
sequel from a piece way, way,
way back in the beginning:
"The Fall of '99"
*********************
Life was. . . . . good.
Far less a platter of screaming skulls or Cannibal Corpse album covers. "Butchered at Birth". . . . . "Tomb of the Mutilated". And my favorite, "Eaten back to Life" as a mangled zombie in blue jeans thrashed around in a field of broken tombstones, an evil grin on his face as if to say "I'm one funky dude, motherfucker" as he quite literally "ate his heart out", or at least chewed on some gray, ropy intestines like the ole' "pullin' yourself up by your bootstraps routine" as busy-bodies cawed their pestiferous complaints like harpies.
I had seen less morbid
determination at Ayn Rand "fan clubs" (-- i.e. fiend clubs) or at those gyms in
former Soviet countries where "Eastern Bloc-Heads" wore sunglasses and plotted
military coups against democratically-elected leaders. Or even if the Slavic
crypto-Nazis made newspaper editors "disappear" as they patted their hands on
the table with tumblers of Stolichnava with the ringing of nationalistic
anthems, the tolling of a 20 ton bell whose coldness would freeze the balls off
a brass bulldog, even as they shipped him off to Cambodia in a Halliburton
milk-crate for caiman-bait, with the desultory fleck of the later-'gator tail.
Well, ole' Scoop had gotten out of the newspaper business. He resigned himself to a morning routine of fixing coffee, eating cornflakes, and keeping abreast of the headlines on the little portable t.v. in his old man's woolen pajamas. It was "cowboys n' Indians" off there in Afghanistan, with anything so glinting as "Operation: Enduring Freedom" and the whole darn tent threatening to blow away with the "SCREEEEEE" of the wind, making the military honchos look ridiculous as "the air strikers" bombed caves and the patrols "made fist-bumps" with shifty-eyed locals as little kids sucked candy and pointed their fingers.
It was "an information
war". . . . . a dim ordering of consciousness n' brain chemistry and the
transient "footprint" of the days and weeks. Unfortunately, "The Smallville
Gazette" could not keep the price "to scale" with the increasing burdens of
technology reinvestment, and "the game wasn't worth the candle". Not unless the
staff would accept pay-cuts. Then, bless his grinning Howdy-Doody soul. . . . .
Scoop would not be burned in effigy but simply chopped up for firewood with a
burning tire placed over his gray, downy head.
Duck-billed dinosaurs and plaid-shirted caveman and bug-eyed 1960's hokiness. . . . . the only way out was burrowing deep from the hot, sweltering sands of modernity and the saber-toothed free market upon Al Gore-stained slabs. Those "Earth-toned" good vibrations will be reduced to maggot shit under a jungle canopy as scowling men count the distance between villages by lit cigarettes and wear bandoleers of bullets like a joy-happy sarape.
And the former low-fi life I had known up at Scoop's "vacation villa" ten years before. . . . . a sagging plaster patch in the ceiling, a sadly-deflated football, an all-but-comatose dog laying on its side, rising to its feet with a jingling bell around its hairy throat that made you want to go up into the attic "and eat cold cheese" like Nixon in '76.
Or maybe it was Ben Franklin. . . . .
*******************
"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!")
Drop "The Bard" a line at
michaeladams_s@yahoo.com