The November 19th Epilogue

Oh, Northwest Flight 5752, just give in, and let me make love to you.

It will be like getting a shot in the arm. You will only feel a short prick, just for a second.

Northwest Flight 5752, I think I love you. You are probably the only flight that I have ever, truly, truly truly loved.

I can run my wet tongue all up and down your cute, tiny little turbines.

Just please promise to take me to the hospital when we land.

When my lightningbolts are glowing, I can see where I am Going.

I have been unappreciated here for a month. It's too much for a sensitive bore. You can save me, Northwest Flight 5752. I love you and I believe in you.

Tomorrow afternoon, I will ride my bicycle throughout the Fan and rejoice: "I am able to be here because of my beloved." And maybe it will be raining and everyone will call me a psychopath. And they might be right.

I'm a psychopath for you, baby. You are the 'Rutti' before my 'Crazy For You'. It is simply that intense.

Maybe tonight I will masturbate while fantasizing about you. And in the fantasy I would be asleep in your delightfully uncomfortable seats that I am too paranoid to ever lean back in. The vision is hott. I am wearing that almost-corduroy greensleeved shirt again. Ohh! Not so fast, babe.

It's simply that serious.

I am devoting myself, because I simply can't go through life eating blocks of cheese for dinner. Or plates of cookies. Or sixpacks of mgd. I am not the metabolism of a seventeenyearold, but I should be.

Also, the townspeople have pinned a red "Y" to my sleeve, and I walk amongst everyone in shame and repentence. God forgive me, I am a motherfucking Yankee. We were not meant to be, Mississippi and I.

I simply cannot feign interest in anymore conversations about shooting deer.

Oh, wait.

I almost forgot.

I love you, Northwest Flight 5752. Please don't crash because I haven't done any Christmas shopping, yet.

Hindsight, the Morning After

Four beers and a brick of extra sharp cheddar cheese do not a good dinner make.

Hm?

Moomfuss

Memphis is my new favorite city.

I spent the whole weekend wandering around inside of it. Beale Street and Main Street and Madison Avenue and Peabody Place.

Those are the names of roads.

Plenty of time spent at BB King's Blues Club, and the Flying Saucer Draught Emporium. There was a girl on Friday night at BB King's, but she wasn't just any plain girl. She was the bartender, and she was slim and tall, rocking the girlnextdoor thing that I adore, and she wore a handkerchief on her head, and she helped me make fun of my co-worker from Alabama and his Budweisers, while she and I touted Newcastles everywhere, and even after it was long over I tried to give her smiles whenever she passed by, waiting on customers, but it seemed like I was just being humored. And I felt like I was a pathetic twelveyearold. Nobodysexyforme!

My co-worker friend from Alabama could have used a razorblade slash to his eyelids after six beers, a la Rocky. His eyes were drooping that much from the drunkenness.

Fucking lightweight. I was well into my sixth Newcastle. Streuth! Bright-eyed and lacy-tailed.

So he and the woman he was cheating on his wife with for the night went back to their hotel, and I wandered around Beale Street some more. Tried to go back and see the handkerchief girl, but she would not even humor my twelveyearold smiles anymore, at that point. She was too busy.

The band was tearing it up on stage, though. Spot-on versions of Al Green classics, and Ike & Tina stuff. Killer. Everybody dancing. Soul & blues. Mmhmm. Right-on.

No white people no black people, just the blues. These cats was swinging, my friend.

I should have called myself a cab, but I did not. I walked around for awhile, and then back to the parking garage, and I turned my car on, and I cranked the heater, because it was damnedcold. And then I fell asleep.

I woke up at about 3:30AM, sweating my ass off.

I was not drunk anymore. I was just feeling like trash.

That was my Friday. If I could do it all again, I'd use my seventeenyearold smile, this time.

Saturday was the day I went record shopping, and I saw the Motorcycle Diaries, and I connected with Che, and I returned to the psychology of pointlessness, and I chanted internally about how ruined and stupid I was, how I should be doing Anything Except What I'm Doing Now, how quickly nothing feels lovely, and plenty of other negativity. Ying. Yang. I suppose.

What it boils down to is, Saturday isn't any of our business.

Still, Memphis is my new favorite city. Small, happening, walkable downtown area. And then another little area for Indian restaurants, cool record shoppes and a theatre for independent flicks. You dig?

OOps. The Alabama co-worker just called and wants me to come over to the Ramada for barbeque. I am a slut for free food.

Incidentally, though. Now that the weekend is over, I am back in Batesville. And Batesville is the shittiest little town I have ever had the mispleasure of attending. Take that, red state.

Thunderous sparks from the dark of the stadiums

Panic attacks are getting to be a regular occurance, now. I'm not sure what the fuck is wrong with me.

What used to be nothing turned into: a simple claustrophobia.

Which turned into: simple claustrophobia plus occasional motion sickness.

Which has turned into: hyperventilating whenever an intense movie is on, whenever I am in angry foreign traffic, while playing airplane simulation games, riding in boats on the ocean, in large rooms with shoulder to shoulder human beings, etc.

Suddenly, everything asphyxiates me.

I'm probably going to turn into some weirdo who breaks out in hives whenever I see Alex Trebek. Or something.

I was having a panic attack while driving on Friday night. I'm not sure why. I ended up running a red light (on purpose) and getting pulled over (not on purpose). Which gave me a chance to open the window and breathe, and center myself.

Deep breaths in and out. Do not faint. I did this while retrieving my license for the officer, who had a Jersey accent even though we were in North Mississippi. "I seen too many wrecks 'cause of people runnin' them yellows" he said. And he gave me a warning paper. Which meant I was off the hook.

'Off the hook' in the old-fashioned sense, and not the new-fashioned sense.

So. I dunno what's next for me. Narcolepsy, I guess.

Give me five years and I will be prone to epilepsy, narcolepsy, insomnia, and possibly a bit of schizophrenia in the average day.

Plus, WebMD tells me that I'm more likely to become fiendish for vices. Like alcohol and narcotics.

See where living like a saint gets me?

WebMD also says I should avoid coffees and cokes. And start hanging with a different crowd (i.e. anyone but me). And exercise. And have a plan for every day.

No one else has to do these things. It sucks.

I think God is punishing me for those couple of years when I listened to hardcore death metal. And the Beatles.

Fucked by the Beatles, again.

L.E.D., you shall blink.

(*)

(*)


It would be tough for me to be more pessimistic about the world, right now. I am also one of the many thoughtful people (I guess), who just assumed that the average American had loftier expectations, less in the way of ignorance, more in the way of openmindedness. But I was way, way wrong.

But alright. Maybe the average outlook is no less valid than my own. That's okay. It just means that this country won't be "free" like I would expect it to be. It will never be an enlightened country. I should be a European or a Canadian. Exactly.

And so there are all of the forms. Forms and applications that Tim has downloaded over the past week.

Forms and applications for Canadian immigration. Forms for the Peace Corps. Forms for joining expeditions to Antarctica. Applications for the first manned mission to Mars. Applications for becoming a Vietnamese butler. Applications for herding goats on the Gobi desert. Applications for becoming the Prime Minister of Madagascar.

Basically, anything but being an American. Or being the type of person that Americans will have to be becoming, morer or lesser. If America will be the land of anything-goes-consumerism and nothing-goes-on-in-your-bedroom-without-us-judging-you-for-it and ... umm.. well. The land of lowered expectations.

Maybe I'm just preferring to be bitter, at the moment.

Yes, I'm sure of it.

I have been cutting people off in traffic. I have been driving like a Jersey maniac in smalltown Mississippi. I have been flaunting my yankee accent. I have been egging on arguments.

I never do that. So I must be inbetween piss & vinegar. piss-ant and vinegar-ant. or fire-ant. Ouch,

I would probably even blare a Pisces Iscariot cassette at loudest possible volumes, if I were to have one.

-

But I'm not kidding myself about the national polarization that's been going on. And that will continue. We have never been so divisible.

With devotees even doing circles: Liberals getting so pissed off at their own, that they begin to say anything to spite Liberalism.

...Conservatives... not so much.

But definitely, the spiteful Liberals. For sure..

It would be better to escape into the countryside and into the mountains with a pint of moonshine and a pretend-loaf-of-bread. To get our minds off of the televisiontalking. But I guess that's not an option.

I never even considered the gay marriage issue the least bit important. Maybe that's because I'm somewhat unthoughtful/insensitive and I don't personally care about it, but I just figured that if I WERE gay, would I even care about if I could get married or not? And I said "No."

And then I thought, "Well, who would my first boyfriend be?"

And I thought for awhile, but then I stopped. Leonardo DiCaprio was not the final conclusion.

Besides, so many heterosexuals have been making a mockery out of the institution of marriage for so long, sometimes it's hard to value it at all.

But somehow the gay marriage thing became important.

I don't understand our priorities.

I almost think everybody's ballot must've said "Bet you're GAY!", and then they all punched the "AM NOT!" chad.

As for my priorities, I would prefer the Mars mission first, then the expedition, then the Viatnamese butler thing sounds interesting, then becoming a Canadian, then the goat-herder, then the Madagascarian political scene, and then if none of those work out, I guess I'll dig ditches and plant seeds for the Peace Corps.

I need to be a lot more selfless than I've been, anyhow. I guess.

A lot less American that I've been for all this time.

-

The L.E.D., which is blinking, would like to let you know that morality does not equal religiosity, but that multiple ideals are all equally valid.

Thank you, L.E.D.

on a scale from one to two

they're gonna laugh

behind your back.

National Health, part #2

Whiny abortion-rights people are all up in arms because Bush will be appointing a replacement Supreme Court justice probably sometime soon, and hence the conservatives will have a court majority, and Roe v. Wade will be overturned, but geez, says I.

Abortions will still be possible!

They will just have to be about twenty years later, on a battlefield in the Middle East, somewhere,

is all...

National Health

Now that the country has made a decision, I will try to fall in line with my rightward-leaning (or "rightward-fallen-to-the-floor") countrymen.

But in order to do this, I must know where I am coming from.

And so, my first question:

How many arabs can we kill before we start to make Jesus uncomfortable?