The Birth Of A Hippie Thanksgiving Tradition

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If you say Alice’s Restaurant to an old school hippie around Thanksgiving you will most likely elicit a huge smile and happy reflective eyes. Why? Alice’s Restaurant is a Hippie tradition, and just about anywhere you go in the country you can find a radio station playing Alice’s Restaurant Massacree at 12 Noon on Thanksgiving day. It’s a song by Arlo Guthrie based on a true story about a hippie commune celebrating love and life on that day and the hilarity and banality of events after it to an at the time unpopular group of peace loving peoples called hippies. It’s sung by Mr. Guthrie in his trademark style, with a monologue center guaranteed to bring tears of laughter to all true hippies. The tune lasts for 18 and a half minutes and for many of us it goes way deeper than just a tune on a day, it’s a memory of an era. A golden memory. Many others have a tale similar to mine so lets just reflect on my first epiphany on how much this song really means.

As soon as I turned 18 I made good on my threat to move out of my parents house so I wouldn’t have to follow all the ridiculous rules while I was “Under my roof” in the authoritarian gospel according to Dad. So now I’m on my own, my hair is not an issue under my roof, and its okay to indulge in activities that I had to do by an open window while burning incense. But I still had to go to Thanksgiving dinner at home because I didn’t move far enough away, and you just couldn’t say no to Mom. I was at the age where family get togethers were more of a torture once you’re no longer sitting at the kids table. That didn’t mean I had to go there unprepared.

I invited my best friends over for a pre T-day dinner soiree to get us all in the right frame mind to combat the inevitable bevy of put downs. So I told some friends to come on over around 11,we’ll smoke a few bowls and listen to Alice’s Restaurant. That’s how I sold it and the response was overwhelming. Eight of my closest friends stopped by and each had their own version of temperament enhancing herb. So we sat in the living room of my basement apartment, which of course was also my bedroom, rumpus room, den, and dining room. We sat around on milk crates and bean bag cushions passing chamber pipes, chillums, sticks of Thai, and even a well weathered meerschaum pipe. We were all feeling exceptionally good and listened to Alice’s Restaurant on our rock station. As usual it had us all laughing and grooving without any thoughts to what lay ahead with the family function. Each of us had reasons to not want to go to our homes for thanksgiving, most because we would get the litany of when are you gonna cut your hair?, what college are you going to?, why do you dress like that?, you call that music?, anything to put us down in front of the family. Not wanting to make the convergence into fake family fun all of my friends stayed until 2 o’clock and left my humble basement room feeling like we could take anything our families had to give. As each person left we swore to do it again next year, same time.

Thanksgiving dinners became so much more bearable that day and the tradition continued the following year. By year three, two of the group had moved away, I had moved four towns away, and life began to just sort of happen. By year four it was two friends, each of us with our girlfriends, and after five years all of us had gone our separate ways but promised to keep up the tradition wherever we were. This year two of our original group have passed away, two are just missing without staying in touch, one doesn’t speak with me anymore, and of the other three I am still in touch with one, but every year since then I have listened to a radio at noon wherever I was and reflected on my eight friends. These days I no longer reflect on the eight revelers in particular, but all my friends and acquaintances from that era, many whom I have reconnected with on social media. So every year, I celebrate the epoch of the best people that ever lived, my hippie friends from the early chapters of my life. My radio is set, and today the tradition will continue. Peace

Thanksgiving Without Mom

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The night before Thanksgiving my phone broke the rhythm of the stereo by ringing out of tune at eight o’clock in the evening. The call was for me which in and of itself was unusual, but even more unusual was it was my Dad calling. Dad now lived alone in the big house we grew up in, my four brother and two sisters all having moved out starting our own families and seldom made the effort to call. Mom had passed away just last January and my Pops was a bit lost and confused. On top of coping without his soul partner and the foundation of our family this was the first thanksgiving for us without Mom. Dad wanted everything to be like a normal holiday gathering of the family so he had invited me and my family, two of my brothers and two sisters and their families over for the big dinner. We all agreed it would be the best thing for him and we all accepted, but his phone call had a somewhat ominous tone about at. “Hey kiddo, I know your coming over for thanksgiving dinner tomorrow but I was wondering if you could come over early and sort of help me get dinner together. Its our first dinner since your Moms gone and to be honest I have no idea how she did it or what to do.” I really should have known this would happen, me being a chef and Dad now on a strict diet of microwaveable dinners and can cuisine. “Of course Pops, how big is the bird?” I needed to know what I was up against, “I got a thirty pounder for everyone, it barely fit in the freezer.” He sounded proud but I was still unsure of what he meant exactly by ’help’. More like ’can you come over and make thanksgiving dinner?’ which was cool, I sure knew my way around a kitchen “Okay pops, you have it in the sink of the fridge?” The silence should have alerted me but back in those days I was slower to catch on due to my indulgence of herbal accoutrements if you catch my drift. “Well, ah, no son, its still in the freezer. Is that a problem?” Problem? Oh no, raw frozen turkey is how everybody does it! This time it was my turn to create an uncomfortable silence while I weighed options. Think hard buddy, what to do? “Okay listen Dad, put the turkey in the sink right now, leave it there overnight and I’ll be over first thing in the morning.” Looks like no “March of The Wooden Soldiers” for me this year.

I got up extra early because I was expecting other disasters to appear not knowing what my father had in store for me. Within minutes of being there I was not disappointed as the first disaster reared its ugly turkey neck. Still ¾ frozen I began running water over the cryo-packed turkey and turned to my father. The look on his face could best be described as a combo of bewilderment and confusion, “Okay, what else do we have for dinner Pops?” Mr. Bewildered looked at me sheepishly and by way of firm reply said, “Well, I have a bag of frozen onions and a box of frozen baked stuffed potatoes……Can you use that?” I thought about saying in my typically sarcastic tone, “Oh perfect old man, the fourteen of us can share two potatoes while we dine on Butterball popsickles” but a wave of sadness fell across me. Here was my old man, a dude who never spent a day behind the stove, a man whose cooking talents are limited to a few things on the grill in summer, this lonely man just wants to have his family over for Thanksgiving like we did when his wife, our Mom, was alive. To top it off, he was depending on me, probably his most undependable child. The veritable black sheep of the family, the one who Mom complained always “Danced to the beat of your own drum” the rebellious name ruining prodigal son was being asked to save the family celebration.

“Say Pops, why don’t you go clean up the living room and dining room or something and I’ll take care of dinner. I’ll call Jake (not the State farm guy, my next oldest brother) and together he and I will create a Thanksgiving dinner Mom would be proud of.” I know he’ll never admit this but he turned away quickly so I wouldn’t see the tear of part pride for his son and part profound sadness from missing his lifer partner. No sooner did he leave the kitchen I opened the window, lit a joint, and called Jake. “Jake, buddy, you gotta come over here quick man, we got to shop and cook the turkey dinner for tonight.” I could tell the silence was a quick option weighing silence combined with a how can I get out of this silence so I sweetened the pot. Literally. “Look dude, I got some primo gold weed here, we’ll puff a few on the way to the store then some more once we start cooking.” Successful arm twisting worked and he was on his way over.

Now I am a trained chef, and I know it goes against common protocol, but I added more hot to the running water, and took the bird out of the wrapper and set it up so the water ran directly into the cavity. Jake honked his horn and I jumped in his car and lit another joint. By the time we got to the grocery store we were laughing like friggen banshees. We tore through the store and filled our cart up with red bliss potatoes, fresh asparagus, corn, carrots, and broccoli, sweet potatoes, stuffing mix, and all the accoutrements needed for a good chef created T day dinner. Also in our cart was a box of ring dings, oreo cookies, devil dogs, and chips and dip, proving once again the theory that one should never shop for food after smoking pot. But, Hell, what’s done is done, so we paid and split.

By the time we got back to Dads, the turkey was close enough to at least remove the gizzards and neck and season the bird. A bunch of veggie trimmings in a roaster and first things first the turkey went in the oven. So we did the most natural thing. We lit another joint and smoked it blowing the smoke out the window. Just like old times when we both lived under their roof blowing it out the window while burning incense as a cover. The next few hours Jake and I had a blast, puffing joints, cooking together, and laughing our asses off. Well not completely off, more like halfway off.

By three in the afternoon Dad finally peeked his head in the kitchen to see where we were. “Should I set the table like Mom used to do, so we can have our Thanksgiving dinner just they way she made it?” I thought for a moment, then replied, “No Dad, the truth is no one will ever be able to make dinner the way Mom did, no one could come close. So how about this, a new tradition. I’m gonna make this a Thanksgiving buffet, put all the food on the dinner table and we can all make our plates and eat in the living room. I could never compete with how much Mom put into dinner.” The tear returned, this time he didn’t hide it but wiped it away, “I love you guys so much, this is gonna be the best Thanksgiving possible.” He left, Jake and I looked at each other and the teardrop must have been infectious because we had each developed one too.

When the time came I set a carving station up for Dad, with turkey, vermouth gravy, and pumpernickel artichoke stuffing, then arranged everything else around the table. Traditional sweet potatoes, red bliss mashed potatoes with four cheese, steamed broccoli and asparagus with hollandaise sauce, caramelized pearl onion, green beans almandine, fresh corn shaved off the cob and tossed in buerre noir, and baby carrots braised in maple syrup. And I’ll tell you this, the Thanksgiving dinners my Mom made were jam packed with love and hard work and each of us always appreciated what she accomplished, ans I couldn’t have done it on my own the way she always had, and it certainly did not have come close to what Mom would have made, but it was one tasty damn meal and there was all the love at the house we all needed.

Cheffing In December is like…….Death warmed over in a microwave

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(Warning, story contains actual chef language containing both fowl and foul words some may find offensive and shit.)
Here we are embarking on another “holidays” season. Up here in the NorthEast its shrinkage weather. In the morning, I open the front door and if there is immediate shrinkage, I know to dress in full winter weather regalia. Soon after Thanksgiving festivities have come to a trytophanic end, the Turducken Football OD is over, and Alice’s Restaurant has played on the radio, its time for the annual MMA Shopping event Black Friday. That can only mean its time for chefs everywhere to prepare for December. Radios everywhere will play the same tired songs they have for the last 200 years, stores and malls open extra hours for extended full contact shopping, and we make lists of who we need to tip, who we need to get booze for, and who to buy gift cards and presents for. One of the worst examples of our inhumanity in this time of supposed brotherhood is the perpetual argument over how to greet each other. Ho Ho Ho, Merry Christmas chef, Happy Kwanza chef, So how’s your Hanukah going chef, hey chef, cheers, happy holidays.

Christmastime, Kwanza Season, Hanukah, Holiday season, Winter Wonderland, Noel, No Hell, give it whatever name you want but to a chef its more of a suicide/homicide countdown. It takes all of what’s left of our strength to not kill ourselves, or half the staff working for us. In the prime of my career December was the darkest most evil time imaginable. The December Kitchen wears a hockey mask to cover a misshaped face full of scars and zombie eyes, has hand of metal serrated spikes, carrying machetes, axes, and chainsaws. December cheffing frightens the hell out of any seasoned or marinated chef while sucking the life blood out of all the kitchen workers all over the country. While others argue and bicker over whether to say Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays a chefs answer would be about 20 decibels higher and sound more like, CALL IT WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT YOU JINGLE FUCKING BELL LAME ASS MENORAH LIGHTING LIMP DICK HALL DECKING KWANZA DANCING SANTA FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT AND PICK UP TABLE 15 NOW!!!

Yea that’s right, while party revelers are getting drunk, having affairs, doing lines in the bathrooms, and being absurdly ridiculous because of the intake of massive quantities of alcohol, the chef is screaming at the perceived incompetence of workers who are actually stressed and stretched beyond human limits due to the massive pile of work assaulting them. In between his vociferous beration of anyone in sight the chef is sweating and working his ass off. Every morning we need to go to the ass store to buy a new ass to replace the one we broke the night before. So many holiday parties and so little time to get them done in!

The month of December is indeed physically taxing which is bad enough, but it is also super hard on the chef’s family. Communication is reduced to post it notes and telegrams to and from the spouse, swatting at the kids like they’re flies when they jump on the bed and interrupt your one and a half hours of sleep you‘re alloted, and calling Mom and Dad just so you can catch a nap on the phone while they catch you up on the latest afflictions and maladies they suffer from. “So Pops, how’s your arthritis been lately?…..zzzzzzzz. You learn to sleep in the shower during the rinse and repeat cycle of shampooing, you grab your clothes and hope they match because your eyes aren’t open enough to see them, and you eat standing up so you don’t have to take the time to digest. Let gravity work on the digesting, chef’s have more important things to do.

If your lucky like me you get to take mass transit where you can catch a long nap. But beware, often a nap will last four stops past your destination setting your day back before it even begins. Or you may wake up from a nap in a panic and get off thinking your past your stop only to find out you still have six more stops before departing. Or maybe you ease into a decent sleep only to be startled awake because a jolt of fear split your head open thinking you may have forgot to order that 100 pounds of shrimp for tonight that was ordered last minute yesterday. And yes…every one of those scenarios has happened to me at least once while December cheffing.

I don’t want to make it sound too grim, there is a bit of a perk. Everyone and their mother wants to let you know how much they appreciate your cooking so they bring you alcohol (or whatever may be your pleasure). But even that can be a negative perk at times. Like when someone sends a glass of wine to the chef in the middle of service because they’re partying and feeling really good, and generous. Of course the wait staff neglect to tell the patron that the chef is a bit off balance because others have already sent in shots, beers, and drinks from other happy patrons knowing full well the chef is burnt out and at the mercy of not having the will power to say NO THANKS to a bit of happy juice! Instead, its pond this shit down and get back to the heat of the heartless oven.

Yes my friends, December cheffing can really shred ones world apart but thankfully it only lasts until the final push of the year, new Years Eve. That’s the night chefs get to hear every non working person in the world shout in drunken stupors “Happy New Year!!!” while the chef silently says to themselves, Fuck YOU! So this year, while you are out partying and carousing and carrying on all over town celebrating whatever the hell it is you call it, take a few minutes out and thank a chef for all the sacrifices of cheffing in December….Peace

Chefs Of The Future,,,,Ha Ha

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“Professor Renoit, can we see the Café Fete film from 1988 again?” The students at The Academy of Bio-nucleic Culinary and Nutrition Arts and Science University loved viewing the ancient eating rituals of the 20th century. “Well, since it’s a short week I guess we can see it again, message the Audio Visual Center to synch us up with Video CIA/FS11721. I haven’t seen images of Old-Old New York City restaurants in a long time.” Professor Renoit enjoyed the old films even more than the students. It was a fantastic break from all the technological culinary sciences and molecular gastronomic techniques. “ Okay guys, put away the superconductive reassemblers and be prepared to record notes. Pay close attention to the patrons ritual dining experience because I will expect a thesis on 20th century dining and the Amino Acid reaction to the digestive system from eating meat.”
The giant screen lit up and the video began. The title splashed across the screen “Dining In The 20th Century at Café Fete, W145 43rd street Old New York” The narrators voice broke the silence as the camera’s panned through the front door of an old restaurant named Café Fete, “This is Café Fete, and I’m Chef Krandem, executive chef. I am a Culinary Institute graduate and I have worked here in Manhattan for twelve years now. Café Fete is a 180 seat restaurant and catering facility located in midtown Manhattan. We serve what we like to call innovative Pan-Global cuisine, meaning we take fusion into the future by including cuisines from all over the world.” As usual this brought a chorus of laughter from the students as they viewed the now archaic eating establishment boasting of being futuristic. Café Fete was a large and roomy restaurant with 20 foot high ceilings, plush designed with large tables and regal chairs as well as banquette seating. The entire front wall was a bar loaded with a cruvinet for over twenty wines by the glass and fourteen spigots for ales and lagers. Chef Kramden was noted for his daring tell all exposes on restaurants in the eighties. Professor Renoit paused the video, “As many of you know back in the 20th century eating was more of a social phenomenon than the optimal nutrition blending we incorporate today. Back then the culture was all about doing drugs, drinking, and having sex whenever and wherever possible. Chef Kramdem wrote his confessional exposing the restaurant industry’s secrets. He was a self described ‘party monster’ who drank excessive amounts of alcohol, smoked, yes that’s right SMOKED illegal marijuana, and did an assortment of drugs such as cocaine. That was the culture, drugs, sex, and neverending hangovers. His stories included lines of a powdery cocaine on sheet pans, intercourse inside a walk-in refrigerator, and oral sex behind racks of glasses. Kitchens were quite different back then, not like the laboratories we use today ”
He called out “Go” and the video continued, “But today I will take you behind the scenes to watch as line cooks sniff cocaine, waiters and waitresses engage in lustful sex acts, and through it all we manage to serve well over 300 people a night who are totally unsuspecting of the decadence surrounding their meals.” Again Renoit held up the video, “In the 20th century people got together in groups, or in pairs if it was a date, and actually spent sometimes hours sitting at a table eating and drinking. Can you imagine how much information we would miss if dining took us hours? Unthinkable!” The video continued, showing a large area. Along one wall there was a large grill and broiler, five stoves with flat ranges, and a huge sink. There were four cooks at the apparatuses and the noise level was unreal. Screaming over each other, all trying to be the loudest as they cooked food and put it on plates. On the other side of the room was a cold section where they made foods from various vegetation which they called salads. it’s a wonder anything could get accomplished. The students all looked on in bewilderment.
The next scene scanned the dining room which always got a rise of chuckles from the students. Why on this or any other planet would people waste so much time talking and sipping fermented grape beverages? In this multi planetary world such action is a total waste of valuable time which could be spent gathering information. And the sex? My God sometimes it took forever to reach climaxes, not like the auto climax embracing machines they use today. Thirty seconds of embrace and all three or four partners reached climaxes and moved on. And to sit and cut up foods instead of swallowing a bar of compressed energy ion tablets once a day seemed absurd. The video showed a man and a woman sitting across from each other gazing intently into each others eyes. A waiter came out and placed a dish in front of each of them as he described the foods. “For the lady, the pan seared diver sea scallops with avocado balsamic remoulade on a bed of baby spinach from Belgium, and for you sir the grilled Iowa Black Angus fillet mignon with mango and Madagascar peppercorn glaze, twice baked potatoes, and floret’s of broccoli. Enjoy.” The waiter left and the couple daintily began deconstructing the beautifully laid out entrees. Next the video was of Chef Kramden at his desk speaking with what seemed great difficulty about the couple. “Oh yea, he is definitely gonna score tonight with a meal like that. Not to mention the bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon from Haut Medoc that he sprung for, probably set him back two hundred just for….for….Oh My God! Yessssssss! The wine!” The camera panned down to see a woman’s head under the chefs desk bobbing up and down then stopping suddenly. The students were rolling and holding their sides having just witnessed the old practice of oral sex.
The students viewed an assortment of sexual acts performed with the cooks ans wait staff in various ares’s of the kittchen, drunk and high workers all around, and all the time unsuspecting patrons dined a social interactive meal. They all seemed to be enjoying it which was perplexing to the students. At the conclusion of the video all of the students cheered and clapped. One hand raised up quickly and the professor pointed, “Yes B22?” A young lady stood up, “What did the woman at the end of the video do with the emission from the chef of the future?”
TBC

Living La Vida Existential

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Is your belief system stressing you out with too many demands? Why not try Living La Vida Existential. Belief systems are so difficult to maintain these days with all the rules and regulations and the conflicting messages. My creator all mighty its hard maintaining any religion these days. I mean love thy neighbor, unless they’re gay, no unmarried sex unless you wear religious garments, a bunch of commandments to uphold, just way too much work remembering how to make the verse from whatever your good book happens to be to fit into the desired result. Are you tired of having to go to a house of worship once a week? Got bruises on your knees from too much kneeling? Maybe you’re tired of having to admit the evil rule breaking you committed during the week to an obscure stranger in a dark box? Are you looking for a belief system that doesn’t cost you so much money, even going as far as having baskets shaken in your face shaming you into giving up your hard earned cash? Does your religion make so many demands on you want to scream, “I’m mad as the burning afterlife and I’m not gonna take it anymore.”? Or scare the actual Hell out of you by threatening to send you straight to Hell? Would you like to stop having to fold your hands and talk to yourself before bed, listen to your stomach growl with hunger while everyone has to wait for that one person to say grace? If so, then Living La Vida Existentialism may be right for you. For a limited time you too can become an Existentialist and throw away all the categories and labels religions place on you. It’s easy, all you have to do is believe in yourself. So hurry, this offer expires when you do so act now!

Thousands of people have been turning away from the out-dated teachings of organized religion. If you like belonging to a group but would prefer something more modern, more flexible and reasonable maybe its time for change. Why not considered Living La Vida Existential? Being an existentialist is fun and easy to do, plus it free’s you of all those pesky tenet requirements of organized religions. The best part is you can do it in your spare time in the privacy of your home or office, or even while texting from the bathroom. Not only that, it cost no money and is open to absolutely everyone, no experience required. All that is required is an open mind, and you already have a mind so wait no longer. Open it up to a world of possibilities. Forget all those ugly theological labels, like gay abominations, lustful coveters, or sinners in the war on god. Existentialism is skin color blind, gender blind, and practices actual non judgmental living, not the phony non-judgmentalists who pray and point their finger calling others names (No, pray was not a misuse, its a play on words. Its okay to joke when your existential) Sexual orientation remains your business in existentialism. Its all about living your life the way it should be, free of all the garbage that has built up over the ages such as attempting to explain the unexplainable with cartoon precision. Wile E. Coyote can paint a usable tunnel because its The Roadrunners will. Don’t involve yourself in a which came first argument, the egg and the chicken arrived simultaneously and have always been. We are here and we are alive, what difference does it make when we first came to be here on this planet? Be fair, be just, and forget about judging others, just enjoy life while your living it. No need to condemn your neighbors and call them unholy, that won‘t help you live well. No need to force others to believe what you believe either. Why you don’t even need to exclaim to the world that existentialism is the one true religion, and practitioners of any religion other than that is an express ticket to damnation. Its not a religion, it’s a REALigion.

Actually, its not a religion at all, it’s a philosophy, more like Hakuna Matata, or Karmic Existence. It’s a very common misconception, existentialists are often misunderstood, sometimes even by other existentialists. They are not nihilists or anarchists, not Pagans or polytheists, not occultists or Satan worshipers. Nor are they atheists, although by strict definition most existentialist are Atheist, just not practicing Atheists. No need to go to an anti-church and praise scientific logic, deny God, or sing songs like “Imaginary Grace” or “The Old Rugged Death Penalty”, just accept that there is an abundance of ignorance in the world and let those who don’t get life have their bliss.

Existentialism is a philosophical belief not a faith. Many people today are jumping on the ex tr ain because its believed that existentialist are clever intellectuals that speak in profound quotes of some of the more famous existentialists. “I think therefore I am”, “He thought therefore he was“ “He will think therefore……” you get it. . While most of us are indeed very clever, we are no a bunch of beret wearing brainiacs who sip cappuccinos at cafes and discuss matters of global implications. You don’t need to be a college graduate and read every work of Kierkegaard, Sartre, or Kant. Many existentialists are just average people whose beliefs do not fit in to a mainstream belief that we were all created by the one true creator be it God, Yahweh, Jumping Jehovah, Allah, or He-Man Master of the Universe. We don’t need a structured religion to explain to us how we should live our life, what will happen to us if we don’t follow the rules, what happens when we die, and who is the one we must consider to be superior to everyone and everything in the universe even though we are the tiniest speck of a planet in an unimaginable vastness. Simply, everyone is equal and deserves equal respect. That’s not to say we can‘t believe in divinity.

Existentialism does not rule out the possibility of a creator although for the majority if there is a creator its nothing like the one most of us were force-fed as children. No all-knowing all-seeing god who demands praise from everyone, sitting on a metaphoric throne waiting for us to come to him. No angels waiting up in a gated paradise community playing incessant harp music in the clouds as we ascend to heaven. But that’s not to say that some form of energy or entity didn’t have a hand in getting the ball rolling so to speak. For existentialists it’s a little clearer than believing a magic image in the sky that is watching over everyone to make sure we behave. It seems a bit arrogant of a god to take credit for all the good shit that happens but then when the fecal matter hit’s the oscillating rotary alter everything goes to, pardon the expression, Hell in a hand basket. No waving of the hand explaining things away by way of mysterious ways being worked we’re apparently not clever enough to understand. That kind of deck stacking would have you banned from every casino from here to the Netherworld. It’s more about a cycle of life, we’re born, we live our life, then we die. We exist in that cycle just the same as every non worshiping living thing on earth. I can’t prove this but I firmly believe bacteria do not worship any pathogen gods or pray in any amoebic temples yet they live the same cycle we do. The bottom line is everything lives, everything evolves, and everything dies. Respect all life.

We all accept that others lived before us, and others will live after us, and in every religion death is an accepted stage. However temporary, whether it leads to paradise, another life, another stage of existence, a box bed covered with dirt, a reduction to ashes in an urn, or pure nothingness it happens to us all. What occurs after death we tend to disagree, but everyone pretty much agrees death is imminent. Except maybe Donald Trump, he believes he can build his own tower in heaven greasing the almighty palm enough to buy himself a private room in eternity. Trump eternal? Talk about living Hell! But we exist in the here and now and frankly if there is a god it will have zero effect on how I choose to live my life, which by the way is far more Christian than most Christians I know. Maybe they should actually read the entire bible and not just the parts they enjoy bragging about. I mean really, what is religion anyway?

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Religion is described as an organized collection of beliefs, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to an order of existence. That makes your religion a random happenstance, an accident of geographic birth not very different from gender, or class. Existentialism is relatively simple. Our existence precedes our essence leading us to an understanding that the self is what’s important, that we are merely tiny specks on tiny cogs in a vast and complex universe. It gives us the ability to defy classification, especially when it comes to religion. Its what’s in our hearts and our minds that matters. Live your best life, treat others as you wish to be treated, help out your fellow humans when they are in need, share and do not judge how others live their lives. Live and let live. Many religions claim to teach those principles yet they condemn others for their lots in life. Its hard for me to get behind a religion that tells you we are all of Gods children then tells you if you’re gay you are an abomination. Clearly forgetting judge not lest ye be judged. It irks me to see a person on social media claim their love of God and tell me how blessed we are and how we should rejoice in one post on social media, then spew hatred at someone because their politics are different than a friend (or ex-friend once politics enters the relationship) in the next. Unfortunately it seems we live in an age of rage, intense hypocrisy, especially among the holy rollers. Religion shouldn’t allow you to feel superior, but humble. Unfortunately most religions fall far short on the humble. This is the main reason most existentialist show distain for religions.

So that’s my take on existentialism, not right for everyone but especially handy if you’re a recovering Catholic, a confused protestant, a paranoid closet Muslim, or a doubting Hindi. Practice whatever damn religion you want but before you continue your religious commitment take existentialism for a test ride around the block. Terms and conditions do not apply, no scrolling past a million words to reach an I Agree button. If your still unsure, ask your clergy if existentialism is right for you. Wait! Check that, better if you just ask yourself the way I did.

I was born scraping and scratching my way through life and now I’ve reached a point where death becomes more and more imminent every day. One of the cruel jokes of life is when we finally much of living is bullshit we are too tired to live the life we should. We allowed money to be the center of our lives, putting us not in a solar system like every other living thing, but an economic system in which we all revolve around money. I should stop before I become more like the people I’m ranting about! Damn, looks like my equine ride has been puffing my weed again. Time for me to get down of my high horse. PEACE

Cosmo’s Guide To Cosmic Gardening

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PART 1. NOT JUST DUST IN THE WIND

Where should I begin? In the beginning God created the heaven and earth? I think that opening line is taken but it begs the question why are we really here? Some say in the beginning there was a vast empty space, a nothing vacuum in a nowhere space until a bunch of atoms spontaneously appeared and took to flying around everywhere (or nowhere depending on your view) when suddenly two overly aggressive atoms collided causing a huge explosion. Spontaneous combustion. The Big Bang! Yea, right! First nothing and nowhere then all of a sudden a Universe so huge it has no end. Wait, hold on, even better, first there was nothing and then the one and only god created shit to keep him from being bored. Spent six days building it then chilled for a few million years. A massive universe with one teeny weenie little speck where he created the supreme lifeforce, human beings that looked just like him, to rule over everything. First nothing then one man, one women, an apple and a snake. Now that’s even funnier! As a matter of fact both of these comical stories are a source of great humor and hilarity and the butt of many jokes at The Board of Co-operative Gods and Goddesses out in District seven. At any decent cosmic cocktail party you’ll hear no less than a hundred jokes about various theories of how life came to be in any of the life gardens but the Earth stories are by far the most numerous. The “monkey trials” keep gods and goddesses laughing for hours on end at inter-galactic get togethers. There’s not a god worth his sodium chloride that hasn’t heard of Darwin, Moses, Jesus, Mohamed, Elijah. Or the Talmud, Koran, The Bible, even The Upanishads. Stories of a pure evil horned devil with blood dripping from its hands and fear bolts being shot from its eyes keep them rolling in the anti-matter with tears of laughter. Satan, Lucifer, Serpent of Evil, Beelzebub, so many knee slapping names for the antichrist. Oh yes, the earthlings grown by Cosmo are a source of great amusement to all the gods. All the gods? Am I saying there really are many gods? Does a pope defecate in the woods? Is a Polar Bear catholic? Can white bears jump? Of course there are many gods, and many galaxies supporting forms of life. Did you really think you were the only living beings in the entire universe? Jeez, and I thought Wookies were dumb. Well sit back you Vader naysayer and let me tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Well maybe a fabrication or two along the way because YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!
In the beginning, Once upon a time, at the outset, none of these phrases apply because life is a circle with no beginning and no end. There just simply has always been many gods and goddesses with endless open space and these gods have varying responsibilities. Gods and goddesses are each given their own garden plots which you call galaxies. They tend their gardens and grow life in a variety of forms. The gods and goddesses perform many tasks such as making gardens spin, enforcing the law of gravity, some create laws of physics to apply differently in different particular purpose. Some create wind and motion to make global area’s different but the brightest gods and goddesses get selected to the Board. There they ponder deeply the laws of the universe and how they should be applied everywhere. These are the most intelligent gods and goddesses and they hold court to make the decisions that effect all forms of life. No cosmic gardener can grow anything without their approval. It’s known as The Board of Co-operative Gods and Goddesses. (BOCGG) They made the decisions that effected the farmer gods who were expected to grow and experiment with the various galaxies across the universe. Each galaxy was tended to by its own god. There was great and clever Simon in the Tolkien Galaxy, Mychrighton in the Andromeda Strain Galaxy, The red haired beauty Lucille who watched over the Bobaloo Galaxy, Luke-ass who presided over The infamous Jedi Galaxy that was far far away, and so on. Here in our Milky Way galaxy, the farmer was and is the god Cosmo. Such a good farmer is Cosmo that they named the entirety of space after him. The vast space of the universe came to be known as “The Cosmos”. Travel was known as Cosmic travel, knowledge as cosmic knowledge and any left out odds and ends in space became known as Cosmic debris. Hey there brother, I’m not jiving you bout that Cosmic debris! Cosmo is indeed an accomplished cosmic gardener, in fact he is somewhat of a legend among the other gods. In Solar system 728KJ he had cultivated nine grooving spinning garden orbs he called planets. From the tiny and excruciatingly hot mercury, to the equally tiny but totally frozen Neptune he tended to all nine magnificently. Like the giant Jupiter (which for some reason had red eye in all the family photo’s) with an assortment of moons, and the ill advised named Uranus (No need to tell you the jokes at The District with this one) . He put some cool looking bangle bracelets around the lovely and mysterious Saturn, and named two of the planets after his own Mom and Dad. The entire universe was touched at the naming of Venus and Mars. Yes Cosmo had really taken pride in that particular solar system. But his pride and joy and claim to fame is most assuredly for his work done on one particular planet, known throughout cosmos as garden earth. Garden earth is a rather insignificant looking planet in solar system 728KJ. It is the third planet from Sun 728, and has the benefit of the perfect amount of sunshine. Earth also has a considerable amount of water on it which is the other essential ingredient in growing things. Sun and Water in abundance makes for a smashing garden. Cosmo wants to make planet earth, in solar system 728KJ the most prolific and successful garden in all the universe. With a vast ocean to create clouds which would in turn drop water back into the garden a system of synergetic energy is created. Cosmic irrigation! Garden earth is a thriving ever-growing populace world. A wide variety of vegetation and many roaming creatures inhabit the garden.
But what you see on garden earth today is not how it was at the beginning so put on your seat belt as we travel back in time to see how this all came to be The Planet Earth. Catastrophic is the best way to describe his first attempt. Maybe he wasn’t mature enough or maybe like a fool he just rushed in but either way it’s a story that is told and retold as far away as Gabor40904 which is about eight billion gazillion gamma light years away. To you that would be a mere two point five septillion miles give or take. At any rate here is what happened in Cosmo’s first attempt.
When a god reaches a certain age he or she is given a Galactic Farming Starter Kit. In the starter kit comes a package of sea monkeys which gods could use to populate in any gathering of H2O. These sea monkeys would eventually grow into all sorts of different weird looking creatures. Some even had 8 legs! But, that’s way in the future as evolution thrives underwater. The problem was that no one could see the assortment of single cell creatures in the Pangaean Sea of garden earth. Cosmo wanted more on his special planet. He wanted some things that he could watch and toy with and keep as pets. So with the BOCGG approval Cosmo sent away for the “Advanced” farmer kit which comes with both aqua mobile seeds and terra mobile seeds.
Cosmo surveyed his round global garden noting the huge land mass which he had called Pangaea. It was enormous but completely unadorned and surrounded in entirely by water. Cosmos first brilliant concept was born. Edible vegetation. Not just pretty to look at like in other gardens, he wanted to develop some of his vegetation as energy giving edible substances. He developed gargantuan trees and shrubs which would absorb energy from the sun storing energy and converting some into oxygen. Now he could create some creatures and they would have food and be able to breath. Brilliance had come to Cosmo in a dream. He was being chased by a creature with a long neck and large mouth with sharp teeth. This would be his first creature. What should he name this creature? Jar Jar Brinks? No, that’s stupid. He thought out loud. “Lets see, the creature was chasing me and my buddy Steggo and when it got near it bit Steggo’s ass. Steggo yelled out damn man, now my ass is sore and.” He stopped in mid sentence. “That’s it! I’ll call him sore ass! No, not sore ass, Steggo’s sore ass. To avoid any divine libel law suits it was suggested he make it one word. It sounded smart and sophisticated as stegosaurus so he went with that. Now for some other creatures for stegosaurus to play with.
So Cosmo created an assortment of giant creatures. Long necks, smaller faster creatures, a few with wings, and one really scary one. He made up weird names for them like Stegosaurus, brontosaurus, Pterodactyl (He also invented the silent letter which would cause all sorts of shit in years to come), and his personal favorite, the frightening one, Tyrannosaurus Rex. For weeks the great god Cosmo played with his new dinosaurs. He started to get a little worried when he saw them chewing on the tops of all his beautiful vegetation, but realized that they needed to eat something. My creator almighty they have appetites bigger than their damn bodies. Seems the more they ate the more they expelled from there butts. Some of it a horrible almost violent smelling gas which was a bit of an embarrassment to Cosmo when other gods came to view his garden. But the solid stuff actually deteriorated and made the trees and shrubs grow even better. It seemed like a perfect system. Everything depended on everything else to survive. The sun gave everything energy and sucked up water to make clouds, the clouds returned water to cool things off in the garden and help grow the vegetation. The vegetation gave air and food for the creatures , and the creatures pooped out food to feed the vegetation. A cycle was created which Cosmo referred to as “The cycle of life.” A theme that would forever define his garden no matter what thrived in the garden beds.
One morning while sipping some of his favorite caffeinated breakfast beverage, Thors Thunderbolt, Cosmo noticed some strange things happening in his garden. His creatures appeared to be having sex repeatedly and Pangaea was becoming very crowded with baby creatures. And some bi-saurus creatures were looking stranger, larger, wider, and Cosmo sensed some major changes. Having sex also seemed to make the creatures very hungry and they were eating twice as much as usual. One particular bush or rather one particular weed actually seemed to give them voracious appetites. Not just for food, but for sex. Cosmo won’t swear to it but he believed it made his creatures laugh. At the very least they smiled more than normal. He wondered if it was co-incidence, or if the cannabis bush had some unusual qualities to it so he took a few homegrown plants to try himself. He decided he would let them dry out and smoke them after dinner. As he continued to survey Pangaea another curious practice was observed. The creatures seemed to be fighting each other over the sex, which was not really a colossal deal but it appeared that the winners where actually eating the losers. Believing it to be from the cannabis he referred to the practice as canibisalism. He opted not to try smoking the shit just yet afraid of what it may make him want to do. The eating of the other creatures also made the eaters even bigger and stronger. He would need to keep an eye on these developments.
As time passed more and more creatures were killing each other and eating the remains. And damn were they multiplying. They engaged in sex virtually everyday and babies were everywhere. Every day there seemed to be more and more, and nearly all the vegetation had been eaten. Not only that but they began biting kicking and scratching each other for no apparent reason. Many fights seemed to be over who had more dangling under their tail or who was going to screw the better looking female dinosaurs. Many times these fights caused some to fall down never to get back up. Cosmo was not happy with the with these developments at all. His garden of creatures was turning into a giant fighting fiasco. His giant behemoth experiments were much to big and clumsy. He decided he needed to start over and this time start with much more compact set of creatures. First though he needed to extinguish and cover up the debacle of the dinosaur.
His first thought was to go subterranean. He began to churn up the ground at different points of the land mass Pangaea. The shifting of dirt created numerous effects. The mass of land split in various places and Pangaea began to break up into smaller lands. A few dinosaurs fell off the edges, but for the most part they rode the land mass that they happened to reside on and just sort of relocated. Two chunks of dirt headed out quickly, one due north and one due south. Each went as far as it could go until it turned into a giant massive iceball. Every dinosaur on these arctic edges froze along with it. The other land masses fared much better. Cosmo needed names now for the different masses. On the east he had North Columbia and South Columbia. Way across the newly formed ocean there was a dark mass he called Afrika, and a huge piece he called Eurasia. A smaller mass slipped down under while a very green land went slightly north. He would name them later. As for the dinosaurs they had begun to change and were ironically defined by their land masses. The creatures in North Columbia grew more aggressive body parts, like large razor sharp teeth, pointed spiny tails, and large muscular arms. Cosmo believed they actually thought themselves superior and tried to make all the others live the way they did. Pretentiousaurus! The dinosaurs in Africa were very wild and it took on a predatory nature of survival of the mightiest. In Eurasisa half fancied themselves the more sophisticated and chic while the other half absolutely excelled in math. They had all begun to mutate body parts that were used as weapons or as protective amour. Spiny heads and necks, horns, shells, claws, Talons, scales and many other features that assisted warfare or survival. They continued cross breeding and a host of new genus’s were born. Now we had some walking on two legs, some on four, some eating only vegetation, some only other dinosaurs, and many eating both. The flying dinosaurs alone mutated into over 500 species. The fights became rampant and more frequent and quite frankly it was pissing Cosmo off a bit. The shifting of the land also had an effect on the once enormous Pangaean sea which was all the water surrounding Pangaea. The other lands had created borders which split the Pangaean sea into vast oceans. New weather patterns and water currents came into play, and many of the places he churned up dirt had formed piles, ranging from tiny molehills to humongous mountains that reached up towards the sky. At first Cosmo tried to make all the dirt piles as majestic as the giant ones but he quickly learned he couldn’t make a mountain out of a molehill.
As time went on things just got worse and worse. The changes in the garden plots were great, but the dinosaurs were out of control. In each land mass they were carrying on and destroying the vegetation, trampling everything in their paths, kicking the everlasting dinosaur shit out of each other. If that wasn’t bad enough the fornicating was maddening. No matter where you looked in the garden you could find many dinosaurs letting it all hang out ready for reproduction. Giant penispods galore. Humping and swamp hopping there was sex going on everywhere. Puddles of sperm gathered that drowned the lower vegetation and while they were knocking horns and creating future fossils it tore up the ground and caused many a fight to the death. Genus were being wiped out, it was a constant state of confusion. The trees they had eaten clear down to the roots. They simply had no respect at all for Cosmo, his garden, or each other and that was the final sipping stick! It was time for a raptor rapture!
The angry Cosmo had had it. He reached up into space and grabbed the biggest asteroid he could hold and hurled it towards earth with all his might. Had it not been an act of destruction one might have thought it a beautiful sight. Upon impact a huge explosion of colors, bright reds and yellows danced tangos across the planet. A blinding flash of white so brilliant it could be seen as far away as the Tolkien Galaxy. Flames that reached so high they tickled the moon and made it giggle and squirm. Sheer magnifigance. Why it was a fireworks display fit for the gods. But mere seconds after the glowing kaleidoscope lit up the skies, as if to remind everyone that its beauty was marred by violence, it was quickly replaced with an ear pounding roar. Burst of concussion inducing reverberation accompanied on this evening with mushroom plume of billowing smoke dressed in charcoal black from head to toe. A snap. A crackle. A pop. Within seconds garden earth became Earth Krispies. The explosion kicked up an awful cloud of dust with it that pulled the rug of sparkle pomp and circumstance right from under its cosmic ass. For the longest time Cosmo could see nothing but an enormous floating dust bunny. Virtually everything was obscured and he had no clue as to the fate of his living garden below. One thing for sure, if any of the suns rays got through at all it was undetectable. How could anything live without food, without light, without sunshine? Cosmo was absolutely certain he had lost everything. He underestimated the ultra tiny earth dwelling insect known as the cockroach. Will anything kill those bastards?
As time went by the dust began to settle it was becoming apparent not much if anything would survive. Even with only a portion of the dust gone he could see there was not much sign of life. The vegetation tried valiantly to reach back up towards the sun but with limited success. The garden seemed still and void. Even Cosmo couldn’t detect the tiny crawling cockroach foraging at the base of the vegetation. But trust me when I tell you, those cucaracha’s marched on. The once magnificent dinosaurs however were not able to crawl between any cracks and did not fare well. A massive open graveyard was all the gardening god could see. Humongous piles of giant carcasses littered the ground and whatever ground that could be seen was scorched to a grayish black. Nary a leaf or a pine cone to be found. Not even a blade of grass on this once animated garden of green and blue. Stacks of bodies and body parts could be seen everywhere with billows of smoke reaching out to the Milky Way cluster. There was a stench quite unfamiliar to Cosmo, charred flesh smelled nothing at all similar to a god BBQ. To call the aroma unpleasant would be an understatement. The forces of fetid decay banded together with burning flesh and gunpowder. The acrid odors began an all out assault that would serve as a rank reminder of the magnitude of failure here. Battalions of rotted mounds of foul fecal sewage mixed with dino debris formed an aerial assault. The army of stench marched up Cosmo’s nose and set up a camp of odiferous angry troops behind his eyes. Some salted droplets of sorrow snuck down Cosmo’s cheek which he blamed on the carousel of stink spinning in his sinuses. Make no mistake though that was no dew drop, that was a teardrop
Denial is not yet just a river in Egypt. A deep sadness overtook the creator of the dinosaur. Still smoldering and becoming increasingly covered in dust Cosmo reflected on his once thriving lizard kingdom. Had they not been so enormous he mused, perhaps things would have been different. He wanted to have a way to remember the jumbo Jurassic relics . After some time many of the hearty vegetation had once again begun to sprout, rising up from the ashes. It seemed as though everything reminded him of his creatures. “I shall name this period of existence the cretaceous period in honor of my creatures. In order that no one, especially me, ever forget their magnifigance I shall create a living memorial. With that Cosmo placed very colorful vegetation he called flowers everywhere. At first the flowers were impractical, the only benefit being the ambiance and je ne sais quoi of their beauty and fresh interesting aroma’s. The wonderful aroma’s to cover the stench of scorched earth were amusing. He had no idea what an impact they would have later on. Flowers would become symbolic of love and beauty and figure into a strange talk between fathers and sons some day. People would fashion perfumes and air fresheners form their enticing smells and men would find them a beneficial tool in making up for mistakes. Flowers would proudly display their floral genitalia and bees would find them irresistible. Flowers would come to represent anticipation of sex for both honey bee and honey dear alike. Forever linked with love because that was why Cosmo created them, to remind him of his love for the once utopian behemoths. Beautiful flowers of white pink peach, purple, red, yellow, blue, violet, green and orange. Fantastically designed shapes of bells, funnels, trumpets, tubes, saucers, bowls and labia. Brilliantly displayed all over the land masses along with new and tastier vegetation. It was a sight to behold. An arboretum of the grandest scale any had ever seen. This colorful garden alone would have stopped a charging raptor in its path to gawk at the beauty and inhale deeply the scent of passion on this marvel of an orb. An ambush makeover on the grandest of scales.
Now a new task was at hand. “I will take my new plan to the BOCGG and see if they will approve and allow me to once again have mobile life in the garden. It was time to face the rhythms melodies and harmonies expressed through instruments. Cosmo knew it was no use trying to pull the woolly mammoth over the boards eyes. Best thing to do was fess up and submit his urban renewal plan. However, when Cosmo went to request some new life seeds, the board of co-operative god and goddesses were waiting for him. They did not seem pleased.
The Board of Cooperative Gods and Goddesses convened in an area of the universe known as District Seven, or just “The District” as gods called it. The District was like the universes capitol. A retreat for any of the gods who wanted some R and R from controlling everything. Restaurants and a few pubs, recreation areas where they could swim in warm liquid methane or play a few rounds of Gomf (Gods Only Mortals Forbidden). They could visit the Library of Everything, catch up on current events in any galaxy, or just relax. It was also where the BOCGG held court to make decisions that effected the entirety of everything. Unfortunately for Cosmo that was precisely why he was here in The District on this day. To go before the Board and issue a plea for forgiveness and the go ahead to start over.
The tallest of the gods spoke first. “Cosmo, you have made a gargantuan mistake in trashing your garden. You broke a law when you interfered. If you check page 7 of the BOCGG codebook it clearly states than no god may interfere with the natural progress of any form of life anywhere. You have deliberately destroyed the entire garden. What have you to say of yourself?” Cosmo knew it was senseless to lie to the gods because they can tell instantly. “Yes its true, I destroyed the giant dinosaurs I was growing but in my defense they where way too massive and ate tons of vegetation each day. And they were destroying each other and all the beauty around them. They would have destroyed the garden in no time. I felt it best to begin over with a much more efficient and intelligent design. If you gaze now upon the garden you will see it is perhaps the most colorful in the universe. I have grown many shapes and colors on earth and it is more magnificent then ever before. It even smells nice.“ Cosmo presented at bouquet of beautifully arranged flowers from Earth to each of the Goddesses. Instantly he had won the lady lords over and he knew it. “All I need to complete this garden is some new life seeds so I may create new creatures, much smaller in stature and less capable of destruction. I have learned much from my mistake. From the ashes of my galactic faux pas I have come up with a cutting edge form of existence I call the cycle of life. Given the chance it could become a prototype used all over the universe. I would be overjoyed to have the opportunity to institute it on Earth and make a garden more worthy of The Board. I deeply regret having caused such destruction. I promise will not ever mingle in the affairs of what grows within the confines of my garden ever again.” Tall God gave Cosmo fifty lashes with the high beams from his angry eye sockets. “Indeed Cosmo, we all witnessed disaster even from as far away as we are.“ Time to lay on some god charm so with kindergarten eyes and trademark flirtatious grin he said, “Well did you at least enjoy the light show?” He handed him a picture of the new colorful planet and an earth cigar. Tall God visibly softened his stare and playfully rolled his eyes. Cosmo was one of the most handsome and charming of all the gods and was well liked in every corner of the universe. He quickly submitted his new and improved garden blueprint which was in fact quite impressive. This seemed to satisfy the gods who were all nodding their heads in agreement. The Lengthy Lord spoke again. “The Board is impressed and looks in anticipation of this cycle of life. So it shall be Cosmo, you will go back to Solar System 728KJ and replant, but may I suggest you use your new life seeds more wisely. There be no need to rush things.” He shook his lean angular noggin and threw up his overstretched arms. “Why is it you young gods are all so fucking impatient these days?” Cosmo agreed that he would indeed secure a well thought out plan this time and thanked each god individually. No slouch at schmoozing was Cosmo.
A smart schmooze as well. He called his good friend Kirk T Spock from the galaxy Vulcan and invited him over to discus some ideas and smoke some of that tickle weed from his garden. He had finally got up the nerve to try it and was blown away at the results. He rolled many of the new cannabis silly sticks and gave them to his friends. Now it was a favorite all over and grown in nearly every galaxy. Kirk has a rather successful galaxy himself. His most impressive garden has much more of a modern look focusing more on technology than things like vegetation and floral arrangements. Teleportation and lasers were more important there. Eating food was not an event as it would be on earth but a pill in the morning gives every creature the optimal energy needed, so eating was essentially unnecessary. For the most part all galaxies were like that absent of Cosmo’s brilliant cycle of life. In comparison to his garden most of the universe is cold and uninviting. But Como enjoyed Kirk’s array of interesting life forms. Unlike Cosmo he had already asked for and received intelligence seeds. One day he would request them as well, but first things first. He poured them each a long mug of Amber Idol, the favorite carbonated malt beverage of the gods and lit a doob. As they drank and puffed they read the guidelines set forth by the boards codebook. “Okay, rule one is something about allowing for some hurdles. On Vulcan I call them will call them clusterfucks, but you need to come up with your own term.” Cosmo loved the term clusterfuck but Kirk was right. “Yea, too bad. I dig your name but I don’t want to diss your ass. Hey that sounds kinda funny. Diss your ass. Disaster ass. No, disaster. That’s it, Natural Disasters.” And so Cosmo first set about to make some severe weather currents. He created hurricanes for the Atlantic and Typhoons for the pacific. “And how about this, I’ll make these storms cause flood producing waves that can change the tides?” Even Kirk was getting excited now, after all, who doesn’t love inventing tragedies? “ Ha, that will create a shit storm. Theres a good name too, storm. Oh yea, that’s good Cosmo, call the waves tidal waves and the disruptions storms.” They felt a slight wind crop up from his newly formed weather pattern. “Holy shit! What a great idea. I will make some winds super strong. Strong enough to take things as heavy as the mighty dinosaurs I grew and fling them around for miles. I’ll call them tornadoes and I will put them mostly in the middle of this huge land mass in the Northwest.” Kirk couldn’t help but get a playful jab in at his friend. “Mighty dinosaurs? More like huge humping humdingers. You think you could come up with a wind stronger than those putrid explosions they expelled from themselves?” Cosmo took a joke well and shrugged it off. “Ha ha, humping humdingers my ass, more like formidable flatulent fornicators.” They took a few minutes to laugh uncontrollably not because that was funny, but more than likely because the doob was such good quality. Kirk got his laugh muscles under control and continued. “I bet they’ll come up with a catchy name for that area like tornado road or tornado cul de sac or something. This is great fun!” Cosmo was very excited now. He decided he would make some droughts and some overflowing rains to add to the storms to create challenges and confusion on earth. But that wasn’t enough, he needed something else. He chugged down some carbonated nectar of the gods and began thinking while the beverage began to bloat his stomach and dizzy up his head ever so slightly. After a half hour the inspiration opened its hand and slapped Cosmo upside the head. Cosmo let out a huge belch that shook the whole garden. “Oh man, that’s perfect. “I will add something uncontrollable that comes from inside the gardens own stomach. Like a burning hot burp” Kirk laughed half from the weed and half from his amazement. “A burp. How do you come up with these ideas?” Another long chuckle. “I get my inspiration from you my logical friend. Up out of a mound of dirt will come some really hot melted rock. I will name the disaster after you Kirk. Kirkeruption.” Kirk was touched but very modest. “Don’t use my name use my galaxy name. Call it a Vulcano!” Cosmo understood his reluctance to have his name immortalized. That was the type of god Kirk was. “Let’s compromise and call it a volcano. I will force rock up like a belch so fucking hot it will flow like burning water until it cools. I will make volcanoes and sprinkle them around everywhere. Maybe even some underwater. Oh yea, these will create massive headaches.” Cosmo could not help but laugh out loud. “This will be the greatest garden ever.” Kirk T. Spock recited all their concepts out loud then shook his head and repeated twice in a slow speech, “Fascinating.”
The two high empirical horticulturists chugged down the last of their beers, finished the jolly joint and sat back. Cosmo was quite satisfied with himself. But had they thought of everything? “Lets see, I have major storms, the cold ones creating avalanches, the warm ones floods, landslides, and huge waves. I have volcanoes that will erupt spitting boiling shit on everything. What else? Hmmm, maybe I should create something that causes destruction that can’t be seen coming. Some kind of organism that can destroy from a micro sneak attack.” Kirk was quite impressed. “Wow, an unseen micro-organism that is so miniscule they won‘t even have a clue whats attacking them. Brilliant!” Cosmo continued enthusiastically. “The sun will shoot out flares and make droughts, the storms will make floods and chaos, the volcanoes will ruin everything near it, and the microorganisms will attack things unseen. I will create fire, but I won’t introduce that quite yet. Not until I have something around that can exploit it. I think I have everything covered.” Cosmo laughed so hard that he shook. Kirk was preparing to leave when one last thought hit him. “Hey wait a minute! Why don’t you make something that will make everything shake uncontrollably. It will knock shit over, cause things to tumble down, and any life form you have will quake in its boots.” Cosmo never ceased to find amazement in his friends concepts. “Absolutely! That’s the final piece, Earthquakes! Without warning I will cause tremendous shifts underneath the ground. Not a single creature will know who is at fault.” Kirk pulled a transponder from his pocket. “I think your off to a great start Coz. Thanks for the nectar and the weed. Sweet Mary Jane that was some good shit. At any rate good friend it’s time for me to leave. Let me know when you have your creatures. Can‘t wait to see this cycle of life.” He lifted his transponder and hit some buttons. “Co-ordinates set. Beam me up Scottie.” In a flash trillions of tiny pixels of colored dots spun in frantic circles and poof, Kirk was gone. Happy with the events of the day Cosmo took a well deserved nap.
Feeling refreshed after his nap it was time to do some more creating. Cosmo took his new life seeds and began. “Now what shall I grow? “I will create a variety of species. Like a couple of million. I’ll have bacteria, fungi, crustaceans, insects, birds, reptiles (tiny versions of his beloved dinosaurs), birds, fish, and mammals. I will let all these species evolve. Yea, that’s fucking it. Evolution. I will let things change and adjust to their environments. Maybe even evolve into new species. I will give one or two species the ability to reason. To be able to think like I do.” He gave this some consideration. “Well maybe not think like I do, but to be able to reason. They will be able to use and make tools to make their lives easier. But I don’t want to get to far ahead of myself here. I’ll let that happen in a few million years. Oh but wait, what’s a year going to be for them?” Cosmo remembered a trick his friend Simon used in his garden in The Tolkien Galaxy. Each planet had its own system of time. A full trip around the sun will be a year. Each spin of the planet will be a day. So for Cosmo every million years on earth will equal one god year. That settles the timing issue. This is when the fun began for Cosmo. He used his imagination to come up with a large variety of creatures and would make them all dependant on each other. He made some that ate only vegetation, some that ate only other living moving things, and some that ate both. That part at least worked well for the dinosaur era. The cycle of life. When something dies it will rot and become food for the vegetation. Everything depending on other things. Bugs that eat dead leaves and convert it to useful fertilizer. Birds that eat the bugs, animals that eat the birds, and bigger animals that eat those animals. I will allow everything to thrive as it struggles to survive. Just let nature take its course so to speak. Then he can watch how they deal with and evolve from the disasters. The plan was set and the new garden, the new world had begun.
For a few years, oh I’m sorry, for millions of years things went along great. A variety of life forms walked feely in the garden and found ways to survive and multiply. To avoid the whole fornication fiasco he came up with a variety of different ways to reproduce. Some eggs were fertilized inside bodies and some outside with many different strategies. Some had only one offspring at a time, some many, and some even thousands, or millions at time. There were many that even reproduced completely on their own without assistance from another member of the species. For the most part however it was a contribution from a male and a female of any particular species. This gave the happy creator a wide spectrum of creatures he could make. Bacteria living in an unseen world, insects so tiny that millions could thrive in small areas, and then his array of animals. That was the glory, Cosmo’s animal kingdoms. He started in North and South Columbia. He created an assortment of smaller animals, some sneaky and underhanded like rats and weasels, he created mice and chipmunks, minks, ferrets, gophers, and his sexually proficient rabbits. He gave them unusual but deadly defense systems like the quills of the porcupine or the stench of the skunk. One creation was always stealing shit so he gave the raccoons bandito eye masks. Mid size creatures also coexisted there with wolves and coyotes, and the hot looking foxes. Slightly larger were his deer, cattle, moose, and elk. Cosmo loved having ferocious animals around so he had some fearsome groups of bears to strike fear in the hearts of everything. Next he duplicated these animals in Euroasia, but he added a whole slew of more interesting animals. With a larger land mass he could afford larger animals. He created horses, camels, donkeys. As a nod to his beloved dinosaurs he created a sleeker and more refined version of his woolly mammoth, the elephant. Also some variations on his mountain lions he made tigers and Bengals and leopards. Why even a twist on his grizzly pals across the ocean he made a strain of Panda bears. Next his attention went to Africa where he would have his real masterpieces. Ferocious predatory animals was the rule here. Giant Lions and Tigers, super fast cheetahs. The Fierce large mouthed crocodiles, charging rhinoceros, the hungry hungry hippos. A absolute menagerie of animals One species of animal was vegetatarian but too short to get at the tops of the trees where the healthy vegetation grew so he stretched the neck and he had a giraffe. He filled the skies with an uncountable amount of birds of all shapes and sizes, then put wings on some mice and called them bats. But the most important of all the animals he created were the primates. Gorilla, orangutan, lemur, Loris capuchin, Ape, monkey, and chimpanzee. At first he had them living in the trees, swinging around on vines and gathering fruits from the branches. Then a funny thing happened. They climbed sown from the trees and began walking, stumbling really, on two legs. Cosmo knew in an instant that if any creature would deserve intelligence seeds it would be them. He watched them with much anticipation.
Yes he had grown a fine garden. He used wit and wisdom and had created a self sufficient world. He thought it would be funny to throw a few curve balls and make some strange animals. He noticed there were no animals on his land down under and immediately came up with some great idea’s. Kangaroo’s that will hop and box, a confused animal. Legs like a lizard, body like an otter, and face like a duck. Put it all together and it’s a duck billed platypus. Marvelous little creature. But he wasn’t done. Wallabies, Nubat, Wombat, and Koala. A kookaburra bird and some flightless birds with the tiniest brains possible. He also thought it would be funny to see how something does without any arms or legs at all. Yuck. Worms and slugs and snakes for all the land masses. He took another flightless bird and dressed it up in a tuxedo. Penguins thrived all over but did especially well in the very cold regions. What an infinite variety of animals. His one last brilliant move was to enlarge the skulls of many of his primates, so that one day he could grow larger brains in them.
He had also filled the oceans with an array of new creatures to evolve along with the single cell sea monkeys he started with so very long ago. From tiny little cuddly fish to gigantic orcas. He even snuck a few dinosaur size creatures deep in the oceans. Blue whales, giant squids. Cosmo allowed the creatures to rule their own world under the sea. He created underwater vegetation and planktons and clams, oysters ,mussels. Everything as brilliantly colored and co dependant as the world above the waves. But just to make it more interesting Cosmo added some sharks, some poisonous jellyfish and a few other predatory fish and sea creatures. He made eight armed octopi, horseshoe crabs, and starfish. In another display of his incredible humor and insight he created sea horses and made them the only thing in the garden that gives birth via the males. This gender bender of a mix up will keep them guessing for years to come.
Now his world was set and all he could was wait and watch. He had created a near perfect world and added some special fertilizer which would quicken the pace of evolution. New species were cropping up every day for Cosmo. He was tending to his garden, keeping it watered and full of sunshine and just watched. One day he noticed that the big hairy apes of his walked steadier and more efficiently on two appendages. Cosmo decided it was time this species received actual intelligence. Why they had already made a choice using some basic logic. They were finding food scarce and climbed out of the trees and walked in search of more food. These primates show great promise so Cosmo decided to go back to the Board of Co-Operative Gods and Goddesses to plead his case for intelligence.
When Cosmo finally got back to the Board he could sense that they were feeling exceptionally agreeable but he was still a bit wary from his previous visit. He presented his plan to add intelligence to some of the primates in his garden. Of course it was tall god who spoke up first. “Ah yes Cosmo, intelligence. Why is it that all you gods eventually want to give your gardens an intelligent species? It seems to me that you wouldn’t want them trying to understand what you understand, yet you all want it sometime. You do recall the fiasco in Solar System 928MJ in the Chimera galaxy, yes Cosmo?” Cosmo did indeed remember what had happened when the god Botchiegalloup added intelligence to one of his creations. He had this odd looking species of a five legged giant oval animal with three mouths and ten arms. Once it developed intelligence its only focus was finding the god Botchiegalloup and destroying it. Oh my supreme being that was a battle royale. Why Botchi had to call in gods from all the nearest galaxies and they were losing ground every day. The board had to come up solution so they looked to the wisest of farming superstars the lovely goddess Lucille. Luscious Lucy was a goddess to remember. So incredibly funny with a mind that wouldn’t quit. She could make you laugh one second then gap with wonder at her knowledge the next. The Bobaloo Galaxy was a model galaxy filled with laughter, music and merriment. Its design however was anything but comical. An absolute genius Lucy had come up with advances in gardening that nearly every aspiring farmer subscribed to. She came up with a new phenomenon called a black hole At it’s core the black hole has so much gravity in the fucking thing that it sucked in planets for millions of miles around. Nothing could escape its gravitational gullet. Not even light could get out once the hole got it in its grasp. Once put in place the Crimea galaxy became nothing but a black hole. Botchiegalloup has never farmed since. “Of course I remember the debacle of the black hole, but there have been successful intelligence programs as well. What of Simons galaxy ? The Tolkien Galaxy has lots of successes like the Hobbits, The Efts, The Elves and such. Why I have seen a few flying objects I could not identify on earth and I am sure they were from another galaxy. It can be done, it just needs to be tended to cautiously.” The tall god knew of more than one successful thinking gardens but he didn’t want to make it seem to easy for Cosmo. “Well I tell you what Cosmo. We will bring it up tomorrow with the board over a few pitchers of Meade during happy hour. I will propose your request of intelligence officially and we’ll see what the board has to say. As for The Tolkien Galaxy, do not forget how it almost got destroyed by the Orcs. And keep in mind the dinosaur debacle you had, many still laugh about that one. Anyway, leave me your resume and list of accomplishments. That will help your case.” Cosmo thanked tall god profusely and did as he was advised. The following day he waited outside the god bar hoping to have his answer. He heard much laughing. That mushroom juice he added to the Meade must have done its job.
After an excruciatingly long hour Tall god came out to meet him with a shit eating grin on his face. “I don’t know what you put in the Meade Cosmo but if its something that grows in your garden it’s a fucking winner. The board has approved your request for using intelligence, but want me to stress that you use it wisely and sparingly. I will bring you intelligence seeds tomorrow. Now go out and have some fun before heading back to your Galaxy tomorrow. We have a new shipment of god toys that act very strange indeed after only one large cup of Meade. I will see you on the morrow” Cosmo was overjoyed and shook tall gods hand. “Thank you so much, I promise you won’t regret this.” The smile walked away from tall gods face. “I am sure that I won’t regret it Cosmo, I just hope you won’t. Anyway, you can thank us by shipping us some more of whatever you spiked the Meade with. Now get your god ass out of here before they change their minds.” The smile came running back and jumped on tall gods face just in time for him to go back to happy hour.
Cosmo left a very happy god. Now he could go hang out at The Hershey Bar, get plastered and enjoy some of the new god toys that Tall god spoke of. Cosmo walked up to the bar, ordered a large Meade and sat down. From the corner of his god eye he spied his old friend Simon, whom he had just spoken of to Tall god. Cosmo called out, “Simon old friend, your god ears must have been ringing with joy. Why I was just bragging to Tall god how well your Tolkien Galaxy has turned out.” When Simon stood up he towered over just about everyone. A tad shorter than Tall god, yet enormously wide. His torso was so big and round that many joked he must have swallowed one of his planets whole. Though none brave enough to say it to his face as he was as foreboding as he was large. His massive thighs stood like oak trees holding up a huge muscular frame. A god who loved to fight and had a reputation for putting out the lights of many a challenger. But as frightening and ornery as he was, if you had the opportunity as Cosmo had to really get to know him, he was the best friend you could ever hope for. When he met Cosmo’s gaze Simons huge orange eyes lit up and a giant smile took over his entire face. Simon was also an endlessly jovial god. When I say his smile took over his face I mean it quite literally. His mandibles had developed the ability to dislodge and become unusually huge. It was most likely a mutation made to help accommodate his voracious appetite and deep bellowing belly laugh which he invited into the room for all to hear. “Oh my supreme being if it isn’t Cosmosaurus himself.” Simon immediately filled the airwaves with his infamous laugh. He could say things about you that might normally erupt in a war if anyone else said it. But Simon did it lovingly with a decibel challenging laugh. All one could do was smile and enjoy some of the excess mirth his body exuded. Cosmo smiled a big smile as well and the two hugged. When Cosmo looked at Simons smile, a thought hit him. Maybe I could use that for my snakes and let them eat other things whole. How fucking cool would that be? Cosmo’ss thought went on vacation as his body was near crushed under the weight of Simon’s constricting bear hug. “Well supreme being damn it Sime, how the fuck have you been? Haven’t seen you since your hashish experiments. It was so impressive and cool that I planted some in my garden.” Simon was blushing now and he placed his hands on his thick curly long locks of sandy colored hair and threw them into the air. “Ah yes, the laughing root labs. Still going strong all over Tolkien.” He looked to the bartender. “Dean, give my old friend here a large Meade Plus on me.” He then turned to Cosmo. “Pound down that lame drink there and try this new one. Laced with some shit called Opium. I got it from the Ming Dynasty Galaxy. This shit kicks some serious god ass. Speaking of god ass Cosmo, what say we indulge in the new toys that arrived last week.” Of course Cosmo was game for anything, so he guzzled his plain Meade and took a sip of his Meade Plus. “Wow Simon, this shit tastes great.” Simon let a quick chuckle sneak out which actually shook the bar. “And less filling ha ha. Just wait until the Ming shit kicks in. You will feel it everywhere if you catch my drift.” Cosmo did indeed catch his drift. The stories of Simons escapades with the lady gods were legend. “Hey Simon, I am getting some intelligence enhancer for earth tomorrow. How did you get yours to work so well?” Simon took a large gulp of his Meade Plus, and wiped his huge disjointed grin with the back of his oversized paw of a hand. “Oh shit Cosmo, you are gonna love this shit, but it takes a little work. The first species I gave it to was the repojacks. I just used a dab to experiment with and they learned language almost immediately. But I made the mistake of trying to guide them telling them what they should do. One day the leader of the repojacks comes up to me and starts to bitch up a weather pattern. He says to me, ‘We can’t seem to do nothing right for you. Simon says do this, Simon says do this we do this, Simon says do that, Simon says do that we do that, but the one time we do that without Simon saying you make us start all over again. It’s like a fucking kid game or something. Then they tells me we have decided to quit your Simon sez do this game and play our own game of tag and you are not it. We are it and you can’t do nothing about it. Well I was having none of that shit so I made everyone Midas tagged turn to gold ice.” Out came the famous belly laugh as Simon was obviously quite amused with himself. In between choking laughs Simon explained how the “Mother Fuckers” inadvertently discovered freeze tag. After about six and a half minutes of uncontrollable laughing the two old friends took deep breaths and deep sips of Meade Plus. “My point being Cosmo, as tempting as it is I think it is better to not have our creations worship us. It only leads to revolts. I almost got caught by the board on that one. But, it IS your garden, so you must choose how you grow it. Make sure you give it to an appropriate species and keep both your eyes on them at all times. Just have fun and by all means do not rush things.” This being the second time today he heard this, Cosmo made a note to himself to heed the advice. He listened but he had already made most of his plans. Right now it is time to enjoy this evening.
The Meade Plus was doing its job well. Cosmo was feeling as happy as if he had had some mushroom juice. He felt the happy but not only happy he was also feeling unusually strong, especially in his god loin region. He had a sensation that his all his muscles had gotten bigger, but especially that pleasure muscle that hangs between his legs. Time now to experience the attributes of some of the new god toys.
New god toys was code for a breed of lady god pleasers that are specifically bred to help satisfy a gods sexual needs. For the Goddesses they had goddess toys as no god could fully satisfy a Lady Lords near insatiable sexual appetite. Like everything else both gods and goddesses have a strong and fervent desire for sex and a seemingly unending performance need. Unlike non-gods, they can not only last as much as 8 hours straight, they can enjoy as many as 12 partners in a row, or even at the same time. Their sexual prowess goes beyond anything any intelligent species could ever even imagine let alone perform. So new “god toys” were indeed a special treat and this new batch would be no exception.
No sooner did Cosmo and Simon get into the playroom when already the zippers of their trousers came down. As one would expect the extremely large Simon was well endowed in every area of his body. A slightly too audible gasp was heard by the first god toy that touched his play tool. Cosmo couldn’t help but look over and the appendage was so huge even he blushed. “Oh my Creator man that thing is too big. You will break the new toys as surely as I stand here in envy.” But Simon was paying him no mind and had already taken 3 toys off to ravage and enjoy. He carried one over each shoulder while the third clung with her legs tightly bound to his oak tree thigh while holding on to the joy handle with both hands. Simon disappeared into a private room and it instantaneously filled with screams, squeals, and a chorus of “Holy Shit that thing is enormous”. Cosmo had only one single god toy caressing his much less imposing yet still impressive love muscle. The god toy looked up and was instantly and happily struck by Cosmo’s good looks. He has an angular well defined face with a nose that seemed to be chiseled in place perfectly. His long dark black hair rolled over his broad shoulders in layered waves. Unlike Simon there was not a single ounce of excess body fat on his well defined muscular body. His chest puffed out proudly on its own and had just enough hair on it .His arms were like argon filled balloons. He ha a smile was every bit as engaging as Simons without a trace of the gregariousness. The god toy spoke to him. “My but you are handsome, you are by far the best looking and easiest to look at god I have ever seen. I can tell I am truly going to enjoy this assignment.” Cosmo flashed her a smile so alluring she made a soft purring sound. The second he looked at her fuscia pink eyes he knew he wanted her to be exclusive. She had tight blue and green corkscrew curls that formed bangs above the sexy eyes and her head was framed perfectly with platinum hair in the shape of a crescent. The tips that disappeared under her chin were ebony black. A sight to behold. Of course her body was bred so close to perfection it didn’t seem fair to other females. Long muscular legs with perfectly proportioned hips. He pulled her hand away from his crotch and scooped her up in his strong arms. “Then lets get a private room and begin enjoying each other.” The god toy smiled as it was the first and quite possibly last time a god would treat her so tenderly. “Have you a name young maiden? Mine is Cosmo, but I prefer to be called Coz.” God toy looked up and said “They named me Ginger, but my real Name is Mary Anne.” Cosmo smiled another winner, “Ah that’s great, I think I like Mary Anne more than Ginger. I shall refer to you as Mary Anne and request you for the entire night.” Mary Anne blushed at the thought of being an exclusive. “Are you sure you don’t want a few others Mr. Coz?” Cosmo stared at her with eyes so filled with lust and passion it would have melted the butter clear through the refrigerator door. “First of all Mary Anne, its not Mr., but just Coz, and second, I prefer to concentrate all my enjoyment on the most beautiful maid and you are by far the hottest babe in The District. And its not the Meade Plus talking.” While he was talking Cosmo, I mean Coz, unbuttoned her blouse. He reached inside and cupped her smooth and delicate lady lumps paying extra attention to the nipple. Gently twisting his fingers as he inched his lips towards her at a teasingly slow rate. Her breathing was deep and heavy and her eyes burned with desire. When he clamped his warm lips over her soft full lips their tongues exploded in a furious search. Wrapped around each other the tongues danced and twisted to a passion rhythm. She arced her hips and Cosmo pressed his groin into hers. He could feel her loin shudder beneath her skirt and was well aware of how his touch had rendered her helpless. A shit storm of physical pleasure was about to explode between her legs and Mary Anne was quite willing to set the charge. Her hips swayed rhythmically anticipating the take off of Cosmo’s missile into her love canal. T minus ten, nine, eight, and within seconds the rockets red glare disappeared deep inside of Mary Anne orbiting her pleasure zone. Her sexy lips were adorned in bright red gloss and they parted slightly to allow a sensual hum sneak out and hang in the air like giant cloud. Her large pink saucer eyes now focused on Coz’s with intent directed at satisfying him like no one before.
During their nine hours of exclusive bliss no less than eight god toys had gone in and out, pun intended, of Simons room and each lasted no more than two hours before being replaced. The squeals were non stop and Simon cold be heard roaring with delight on several occasions. By contrast, Coz had only one visitor, the very lovely Mary Anne the entire time but the squeals and roars were every bit as ferocious and ten times as passionate and meaningful. The noticeable difference was that Coz’s roars and Mary Anne’s screams had an addded tenderness and order to them. When Cosmo had finally exhausted his final lust thrust everything ounce of Mary Anne was filled with love liquid. Coz was exhausted yet overflowing with pleasure and the room was filled of the smells of nine straight hours of love making. Mary was full as well having just been injected with a massive amount of god seamen. So much had Cosmo come inside Mary Anne that every time she sneezed a handful of microscopic god sperm snuck out into the night for a moonlight walk. Conceiving child is somewhat of an occupational hazard for god toys. It isn’t common but it does happen, and like most gods Cosmo refused to use a hefty bag. The thought of pregnancy crossed his mind but by the time it got to the other side it was forgotten. Pregnancy wasn’t able to cross Mary Anne’s mind, at least not for the moment. The nine hours was normal for Cosmo but it had taken quite a toll on Mary Anne. Physically exhausted, her curly platinum blond an patchy colored hair was tussled and matted and sat like an eagles nest above her head. The tight blue and green curls all but gave up curling and lay as limp as Mary Anne herself. She stared up at the ceiling as if still stunned by an amazing dream. The smile on her face would make Simons best smile hang its head in defeat. Her smile was immobile, sitting on her face on its own accord because Mary lacked any energy. Even as Cosmo got up to leave and thanked her the happy glossed over orbs remained fixed on the ceiling. Unable to move, the smile unwilling to leave, she laid there in bed as Coz kissed her gently on the forehead and told her he would never forget her. It’s quite possible she nodded or shuddered a thank you, but if she did it was imperceptible to the naked eye. Or the naked anything else for that matter. Cosmo wrapped on Simons door and yelled out “Good bye old friend, until next time.” Perhaps it went unheard, or perhaps Simon was in a position that prohibited response, but the squeals continued albeit with less than half the enthusiasm shown earlier. It was time to get some sleep and pick up his intelligence seeds the next morn. There was much to be done. As Cosmo left the room he heard a barely perceptible moan that sounded like “mmmmm so fucking good, so fucking good, thank you Cosmo, thank god. mmmm” There was something else in the air too, something Cosmo could not recognize. It almost felt as though someone else was in the room.

Cool Man, Who Won?

vote

Last night the mid term election of a lifetime
Did little but upset the balance of primetime
Will it be republicans or will the democrat win
Depends which news you listen to get their spin

The political pundits are hard from return analysis
Either that or they od’ed on too many Cialises
The male winners of last nights mid term elections
Are standing up tall proving they’re the erections

Hopefully everyone got out last night to vote
To save the country from rowing a paddless boat
Cruising up shits creek while paddling by hand
To keep terrorist and viruses out of our land

Isis Ebola and a crumbling economic mess
What is at stake here is our futures at best
Hopefully now a brand new set for u and me
Of douches and douchettes to send to DC

No more commercials, screamers and criers
Time to analyze our spanking new pile of liars
So smile everyone we gottem on the run
Another new congress to get nothing done

Woodhenge: Behind The Music 3 days of hunting, gathering, and celtic rock

woodhenge I

Woodhenge: Behind The Music
3 days of hunting, gathering, and celtic rock

For three days in the hot period of 3969BC nearly half a million young nomads attended the Woodhenge Music and Arts Festival. It was the most celebrated and peaceful gathering of the Mesolithic period which took place in an area of The Island Britannia which was known as Witheridge. It promised to be a weekend of nomadic tribes enjoying music, love, and peace. But it was not so peaceful for the three promoters, Artemis Field-of-corn, Joelius Rosenthorn, and Micah Langspear. Artemis: “I was as petrified as some of the fossils there. It was like..someone is getting burned at the stake for killing 20,000 people man, and that someone was gonna be me!” Joelius: “I had never seen so many hunters and gatherers in the same place man, it was like Bedrock bedlam. Sex, crazy smoke, weird tablets, and just people everywhere. There was no way someone wasn’t going to get jousted or have their eye poked out with a stone sling man, it was just a crazy scene.” Micah: “I wanted to have a nice small mass of a few thousand, you know, like to share some gathering strategies, new hunting techniques, and maybe exchange some cultural art, which was coming off the cave walls and onto rock trinkets. I never dreamed that so many people existed let alone would come to our festiva1”
It was a troubled era, the end of the 3960’s, the BC’s most turbulent decade. Protests over The Cola Wars pitted tribal leaders against the youth, Neolithic Counterculture protests and civil disobedience gatherings fighting for the rights of crossbow arrow hunters, Gatherer Libbers burning their breast straps, and the assassination of some young leaders of the Liberal Cave Party. It was the Stoned Age, and kids were puffing on crazy smoke and getting stoned all over the European countrysides. Lutes and pan flutes replaced the strings and reeds in music, the female gatherer sheepskin body covering got higher exposing more skin and hunters began braiding their hair. In the middle of the decade the Greek Olympics had become marred with inter species showering and the new event, javelin fondling. It was the beginning of the sexual revolution and attitudes were changing fast. There were female hunters, stay at cave Dads, and manskin arrow handling attitudes were being redefined. The ice age was still on the minds of the older generation but the youth just told them to chill out. The times they were a changing. As the cultures moved out of the caves and into tents a variety of artistic expressions evolved. Young tribal members found new and interesting uses for the blowpipes. Gatherers used them for self gratification and the hunters found they could entice more gatherer groupies by using blowpipes to make new more melodic sounds while others modified the pipes to use as a multiple user smoking tools. The strange new phenomenon of nasal powder sniffing through the tubular blowpipe increased as well as young nomads searched for new ways to get “that feeling”. Power powder, mood tablets, and crazy smoke were sweeping the meadows. A countryside turned on, tuned in, and dropping LCDVII tablets to hallucinate. The time seemed right for three young visionaries to create a gathering, build a monument, and change the flat world forever. But was the Pagan community ready for a Rock and Rumble monument? When we come back, some were building monuments, others jotting down notes …….. (long pause for effect)

It was Joelius Rosenthorn who first had the vision, peering across the huge land mass of grazing Harecleum, the oversized bovines that populated Witheridge. Joelius saw an abundance of milk the gatherers could use to make cheeses and yougurts, and bovine skins to make come do me shoes and negligee’s. The huge animals were prime for prime rib. Giant steak ladden bucks for the hunters to kill and butcher and a wide open area to share and exchange idea’s. Joe had the dream but not the backing. Artemis Field-of-corn, an old friend of Joes who played the cave bear femur flute in his band “The Rolling Boulders” had connections but they came with conditions as well. “I told Joey I could get him enough sheep wool and wolf pelts but we would need to make some monuments for a few Gods, Thoth, Musagette, Cernunnos, and Tzets. A few nice stone pillars all connected like a dais, a table of stone for the Gods, ya know. We could use it as a stage! I had connections for some Granite and Bluestone from Sarsen. That’s when we brought in Michah. Micah: “I had a sweet rock quarry in Sarsen with the perfect stones for making monuments. Only problem was they were huge, hard to move.” The three visionaries had come across their first challenge, moving these two ton slabs of stone some five hundred miles to Witheridge. They went to their old friend Axle Roads from the rock and rumble band Bows and Bouquets who had invented the original Goodyear. Axle: “Micah and I used to race in reverse, we go back a long way. For some back monument passes and a few bags of crazy smoke I promised him my newest invention I called the flatbed could get the boulders to the site. Man he has good weed, haha” Axle delivered but became part of the problem from drinking to much solution. As treacherous as that was it would end up becoming the least of their problems. When we come back, Shepherds State Thruway shut down as thousands leave their chariots to walk to the Woodhenge Festival…….. (Another long pause, even more effect)

Woodhenge, Behind the Music, Three Days of Hunting, Gathering and Celtic Rock

woodhenge II

Part II
After months of planning and hard work the monuments were set, the invitations sent by marathon messenger service, and the weekend was set. The monument would be the stage for a huge array of rock and rumble bands, The Rolling Boulders to Crossbow, Stills, and Gnash. The problem now was finding enough pelts to pay the performers. The trio had gone over budget in the construction of the stage/monument. Rosenthorn: “Man I was like what the fornicate else could go wrong man? More pelts for the bands? I mean this was an opportunity, a chance to perform in front of a mass of hunters and gatheres that could pay off huge in their futures, but half the bands were greedy, expecting extra pelts. And the special requests were like off the branch man. Band members wanted crazy smoke, power powders, their own personal dressing caves, and one even requested a discreet affair with a Welsh sheep. I mean shit man, we couldn’t even get them to the stage let alone worry about finding a prostisheep. Hunters and gatheres came from everywhere man, like exotic places like Germanland and Pastaville. Fuggettaboutit! So many people showed up that they shut down The Shepherds State Thruway. People were abandoning their charriots right there in the paths. It was as if they knew instinctively this was the happening of a lifetime. Hell the happeneing of an entire epoch!” Rosenthorn was right, Pagans from as far away as Kazrockistan were there. Crowd control hadn’t even been conceived yet and the crowd was way out of control. Throwing off their animal skins and copulating right there on the fields. Something had to be done to calm the masses. That’s when Wavy Ravey, an entertainer and peace activist took the stage. “Holy shit man check it out man, there must be 200 thousand of you fornicaters out there man, The Shepherds State Thruway is closed man, hahaha. Lotta freaks, hahaha. We’re just about ready to get this show rumbling, are all you hunters and gatherers ready to rock?” The crowd stirred nervously not knowing what to expect until Wavy Ravey yelled really loud, “I said are you Mother Copulaters ready to rock and rumble?”
The crowd roared its approval as a dark skinned former hunter took to the stage with his horse hipbone and strings guitar and began playing music. It was Richmond Havenshire and he kicked off the show singing about freedom. It looked as if everything was finally going smooth, but back in the Mesolithic era, nothing ever stayed smooth for long. When we come back, Alexander the Great threatens to send in The Macedonia National Reserve jackbooted soldiers as the party crazed hunters and gatherers discover bronze, and the Kama Sutra….. (Insert pause here)

Woodhenge was in full flight, the bands were playing as the attendees let loose. Stoned out stone agers dancing naked, swimming in tiny waterholes, and making some noise. Too much noise according to neighbors of the sites owner, Maximus Yazgurian. “I’m a farmer, and I can barely speak to twenty other agriculturist at a time let alone half a million nomads, but they proved to the world that young people could get together for hunting gathering and music and have nothing but hunting, gathering, and music. I just wish my pain in the ether region neighbors saw it that way.” Here’s what the neighbors had to say, “Those hunters were disgusting, swinging their reproductive things all over the place, screaming and yelling. It was like watching a charriot wreck, disgusting yet I couldn’t take my eyes off of them!” ….. “I don’t know whats the matter with those kids, all hopped up on crazy smoke and Thor knows what else. I was scared, properly frightened for my life.” ….. “Someone should do something, come up with a multiple person explody thing or get word to the authorities. I went to feed my sheep and caught five young hunters engaging in a sexual act with them. I’ll tell you this, if my sheep end up giving birth to some kind of sheeperson or something I’m headed straight to the Enquirer. Somehow the news had gotten to an authority in the name of Alexander The great, who was well known for being jealous of anyone having more sex than he was. Alexander sent his fastest marathon messenger to Artemis who was proper frightened. Atremis: “Holy Isis I was shitting pottery squares, I mean Al the Great man, he don’t fucking play. One seriously mean mother humper. It wasn’t until I saw the falcon flying that I finally chilled. I knew that could only mean one thing, The Alchemist had traveled from the deserts of Egypt and if anyone could change Alexander’s wrath into fear it was The Alchemist.”
The Alchemist had indeed traveled to Woodhenge and not only had he brought relief to the festval co-ordinators, he had come to introduce the hunters to a new metal he had discovered in his search of gold. Bronze. Bronze would revolutionize not only hunting, but warring and and art as well. New protective gear could be made from this bronze, newer and more efficient killing utensils, and some tools for digging up earth. But what the Alchemist really intended the new metal for was for metal bands. He brought bronze sculpted musical instruments which would change the course of Rumble and Roll music forever. More versatile and more sounds from his bronze rams horn blower than the traditional ones, bronze saucers for the drumming rock kits, and a more durable and easily replaced bronze lute so band members could trash their instruments on stage. The first one to use these new bronze instruments was Ozzinald Ozzbourne, using the heavy metal instruments in his loud band, “Black Churchday” .. Ozzinald, “I was like I’m the fucking prince of darkness, that’s why the the the the the the alk, alchemist ghghghghh gfgdgdg the broze shit man. I’m the fucking prince of darkness.” Ozzinald’s mumbling was hard to understand and honestly we have no idea what he was saying but when he sang he sang beautifully and the crowd was mesmerized by Black Churdays new sound. In the very near future just about every rock and rumble band would be playing in bronze. But that wasn’t the most significant contributiuon The Alchemist made. When we return, Jefferson Airplane heads to Macedonia as the festival rumbles on. (Yup, another effective pause)

Like most others of his ilk The Alchemist had trained his falcon well. Quickly replacing the marathon messengers falcons all around the Nile were a much faster and more efficient means of communication. The Alchemists falcon, called Jeffersonm Airplane was one of the fastest, and fiercest. With a message and bag of gold nuggets Jefferson Airplane flew to Macedonia to pay a visit to Alex the Great. Artemis was relieved and gave The Alchemist some extra special crazy smoke to enjoy. “Man it was awesome, The Alchemist was so stoned he just sat there with a huge smile on his face. The bands were finally getting to and from the Woodhenge stage without effort and the crowd was under control. Then the mighty Thor made his prescence known with a loud crack of thunder followed by heavy rain. Neil Young Dude and the Kings Krazy Horses were on stage chanting no rain no rain which caught on quickly with the crowd. That was the first known sample of a rain dance and instead of ruining the ruins the crowd embraced it. They invented new games, mud wrestling, naked mud wrestling, and mud sliding.
The new game naked mud wrestling didn’t go unnoticed and was ripe for being exploited A stange Hindu reveler was amonst the Celtic Nomads by the Vatsyayana. He had recently published a codex of sexual acts he called The Kama Sutra, and he saw this as a golden showered opportunity for great publicity. His codex was a set of pictures and descriptions of many unusual positions that would bring smiles to both the hunters and the gatherers, with special tips on arousing the arrow tips of the hunters. “Holy Cow it was a dream come true. The young kids were so stoned it was easy to make them get in my strange poses like the downward spiraling anaconda thruster and my upward facing reverse holy cowgirl. And my god Vishnu they were more than willing to try every position in my codex. My sales would be through the Himalaya tops.” The sexual revolution ready to explode and before the end of the decade gatherers would be stripping, dancing around maypoles, and giving lap ceremonial maneuvers. Spider webcams would be popping up hidden in caves and hunters would be popping up underneath their loincloths. The Mesolithic era was becoming the Meso lick it era.
In the end history would forget Woodhenge and be replaced by the mysteries of the monuments ruins. But at the time revelers surprised the world by leaving peacefully, contented and educated, and they even cleaned up as they left. Three days after the fesival there was little evidence that a half million nomads had gathered, listened to Rumble and Roll music, experimented with sexual positions in the fields, partied their asses of and left. All that remained was the monument. Artemis: “When the three of us saw how weird it looked, no longer looking like a stage at all with just the monument stones standing in a circle Micah had an idea.” Micah: “Maybe I was still high from all the drugs sex and rumble and roll but a thought occurred to me and I laughed. What if we just never tell anyone else about this and in time everyone forgets. People will come here and wonder what the intercourse is this? We laughed for hours wondering what strange explantions they may come up with. Imagine what a goof that would be, hehehe.” Strange explanations indeed, the “goof” as they called it was prophetic as history would scratch its chronologic head for centuries to come wondering how and why these giant monoliths appereared out of no where. They still stand today but the Legend Of Woodhenge will be forever lost. Except by us hipsters anyway! I’m Marksamus Goodman and this has been an eMp Tee V music channel exclusive.
Peace

The Day I Died

day died

So this is it!? Not how I thought I would die that’s for sure, I was certain I would be killed in a car crash or something equally spectacular or at least condusive to how I lived. Like back in the day I thought I would either OD on drugs, or in a bar fight too drunk to defend myself but drunk enough to say something stupid to put me in a dangerous situation. One thing I was sure of is it wouldn’t be suicide, I always play the hand dealt no matter how shitty the cards. I will admit though like a lot of people I have over the years contemplated if suicide was an answer. You know, during any one of the countless worst moments ever! So now I’m laying here feeling the life slowly seep out of my body. At this point I’m oddly serene, maybe even ready. Finally after all the years of meditating and practicing out of the box strange arts rituals I’m having a true out of body experience.
Its not like I obsess about death. Okay maybe a little now that I think about how much of my writings revolve around death, but everyone obsesses about death a little. Or at least have often pondered about their own best if used by date or at the very least how and when they’ll expire. With the exception of a few sick bastards we all hope our death will be quick and painless when our time comes. Mostly I think because we work ourselves up in a tizzy from viewing or reading about so many horrible deaths. Ghost stories, zombie apocalypse, serial killer stories and that’s just the nightly news. I personally watch an assortment of television shows delving into the minds and actions of evil, laced with just enough violence to make me wonder why I suffer from insomnia. Movies and shows with people being buried alive, (OMFG, not that one please), murdered for money, shot during the commission of a crime, revenge killings, chainsaw hacking (far worse than computer hacking), military explosions, viral infections, even tortured to a slow death by someone with the sadistic tendencies of the old Marquis De Sade and the pain bringing skill of Jack Bauer. One of my own worst case scenario’s is suffocation. I grew up near a beach where we used to play chicken diving down in deep water to come up with a handful of sand to prove you made it, and on a few occasions I was worried I wouldn’t make it back up in time only to spring out of the water panting like an Eskimo Sled Dog that took a wrong turn on the Iditarod then ran all the way to the equator. Television and movies have given me a plethora of horrible and unwanted deaths so all in all I guess dying from a gunshot wound ain’t so bad in the scheme of things. I mean either I’ll go into shock soon or I’ll get pumped up with morphine so an ending like this is almost welcome.
Anyway, I don’t think I have much time left so I won’t waste it philosophizing over which manner of death is or isn’t cool. How did I end up with a bullet in my chest? Damned if I know, I was just going about my normal day when I heard a few loud bangs. At first I thought some asshole kids were shooting off cherry bombs or M80’s or something, until I saw people with an unmistakable look of terror on their faces scattering around, diving to the ground behind cars or whatever. Not me! Oh no, I was doing my usual head in the cloud meandering taking care of errands when I felt someone punch me in the chest. I say punch, but it felt more like my chest was catching for a Cy Young pitcher’s fastball. Before I knew it I was on my back looking up at telephone wires and tree tops. Within seconds I felt the warm syrupy blood spreading across my tee shirt. I tried to look down at it but my head wouldn’t move. I grabbed my chest with both hands and felt the blood oozing between my fingers. My first thought was who the hell hit me. Then I thought oh shit almighty I need to do a finger in the dyke maneuver or something. Finally it sunk in and I thought, holy shit, I think I’ve been shot.
I laid there with my chest throbbing and pulsing at the same time. I tried to cry but nothing came out, not even a gasp. It was hard just breathing. WTF? Did it hit a lung or something. Seconds passed by or minutes maybe, IDK, I’d lost all sense of time and reason. That’s it man, I’m freaking dying. Hope I have clean underwear on or my Mom will pissed, that is if I go to wherever she is. I soon, or maybe not so soon realized the pulsing and pounding pain were fading. Taking a breath on the other hand was harder than ever. Next I’m laying here and the pain subsided completely so either I’m getting close to the end or shock has set in. I guess this is the point where my life is supposed to flash before my eyes but honestly I am a bit too tired to watch my own rerun. All I want to do is sleep. Wait, what’s this? Someone is putting their hands on my chest and there’s a lot of commotion, people and noises all around me and people touching me. Appropriately. That’s weird, the noise is oddly soft and fading in and out, not loud and chaotic. Oh oh, the sound seems to be fading out completely along with my eyesight. I know words are being said but they don’t sound like words, more like muffled reverberating sounds. I think I hear sirens but I’m not sure if they’re far off or just more of an illusion. I think I feel some people picking up my body and putting it on some stretcher or something but it doesn’t matter, too little too late. I feel my essence, my very being slipping out through the hole in my chest along with the flow of blood. Weakness took over and silence is filling in my ears now. My last breath, my last whimper. Time to pronounce, wanna make the call doctor? (I watched a few medical shows too) No more anything, done, over, ipso facto, adios ghost, see ya later terminator. Nothing more to do, no more fun and laughs, no more tears and pain, only darkness. My final game of Clue. Colonel Deranged Stranger , on the street, with a handgun!
My Epilogue

It feels unnatural being dead. I see my body in a sort of file cabinet awaiting confirmation of who I am. I’ve seen a lot of morgues on TV and movies but its way less spooky and far too clinical and dare I say cold. I am at this very moment preparing to move on to my next phase and frankly I’m a little excited. Aside from my obsession with dying and death I’ve always had a deeper obsession with the afterlife and now I’m about to find out for real. Am I going before a judge with angel wings, on a hot escalator to Hell, into some weird meeting place for everyone who died, preparing for reincarnation, or just going to sleep? If I can tell you when I get there I will, but I’m afraid they may have rules about “spoilers” in the afterlife. But before I embark on my new journey I’m just curious about something. We….oops, sorry not used to this yet, I mean you live in a society that actually has sub-genres of killings. Random shootings, (like mine), School shootings, Mall shootings, workplace shootings. You have witnessed hundreds of families go through hell after their child’s school was shot up, or someone’s father and mother were murdered for shopping in the wrong place, yet you continue to bicker and fight over personal rights for gun ownership without thinking twice about having to jump through hoops to get a drivers license and registering your car. I mean people get arrested for not keeping their license current, or cars are removed for violations of non registration and non insurance. One could argue cars don’t kill people, people do, and on some level maybe that’s true, but that’s why we have global wide regulations for moving vehicles. Are peoples lives so insignificant that you can’t come to a reasonable compromise that will allow responsible people who want to own guns get them in a reasonable and safe manner, like I don’t know, a handling, care, and using of firearm mandatory class? Kinda like the driving thing ya know what I mean? Is arguing and posturing and allowing corporations sway the voting the best you can do as a society? If that’s so then I guess I really am in a better place as has been suggested.(overheard actually) I have no idea what’s next for my dead ass, but take some advice from a dead guy with nothing to lose. Do something more than just cry about amendments on paper and protect the actual living breathing lives of the innocent. If you all don’t start to take this gun thing real serious and do more than just talk about it after every shooting, wherever I’m going now is gonna get a lot more crowded far too soon. Peace