Tag: satire

Death After Death part 2

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p2

J.T. Hilltop

Life after death? Is that what’s to be with me? One thing for sure I can’t wait to meet this “Creator” at the bottom of the staircase. I started down the steps I had just recently negotiated in an odd mix of fear and curiosity. Halfway down I stopped and looked back up to ask one more question. My advisor was no longer there I was alone. The image, my Mom, my daughters, my love, my friends everyone I ever cared about were gone. They had all disappeared and I was alone with a notion. The notion that something was waiting at the bottom of the staircase and that something was the truth. What is truth? Is truth law? Will truth reveal all? Is truth unchanging or ever changing? Can I choose a dare instead of truth? Will it set me free? Does truth have feeling? Can I handle the truth? Will I find the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? And most importantly, are all these questions even necessary? Time to go on down to the bottom and find out!

No more questions I have my answer. Go downstairs and find out what the truth is. I proceeded cautiously not knowing if truth was an entity, a concept, or a trap. As I climbed downward I noticed that the staircase was spiral. But it wasn’t a spiral before. Or was it? Whatever, its time to bribe the piper, to face the joyous sounds expressed through musical instruments, time to get on the hippie multiple person transport vehicle and find out for myself. When I reached the bottom of the staircase no one was there, just a huge blackboard with some drawings and equations scrawled across it. There was a picture of a DNA strand, a helix, and a diagram of a Nautilus shell, diagrams of various ferns, flowers and plants all spiral in shape, and some sort of segment worm curled up tight. Tacked onto the top of the blackboard were 3 aerial photographs of massive super storms. On the other side of the board was all numbers, or rather symbols numbers and fractions and such. A math geeks orgasm. There were some I recognized like 3.14159265359, which I knew was pi, multiples of nine showing how each quotient adds back up to nine, (9×2=18..1+8=9,9×3=27..2+7=9..etc), as well as a series of equations that could not possibly be more foreign to me. Perhaps even Einstein would have found a spot amongst his quizzical locks to scratch his head and ponder the meaning. That said….What the Fuck?? What is all this shit supposed to mean to me? This is the truth? I didn’t understand what or why I was looking at this strange blackboard but I knew it would give me the answer to my…….Jesus shit I don’t even remember the question anymore. Not sure if it was what is life all about or what is death all about or something in between. Something important was here in front of me so I decided to give it a stab with the images and leave the math number and letters problem for the end. I looked closely at the image of the giant storms from an aerial view, the nautilus, and the ferns and realized that they were all spiral in shape. Just like the damn staircase. Come to think of it the DNA strand and helix are two spirals intertwined. I looked to the spiral formed by the segment worm all curled up. Then I thought about a milky way galaxy photo I had seen before. Out loud to no one I blurted out, “Holy fuck, its about spirals, like the fucking galaxy. That’s it!! The truth is spirals. Spirals!” I was overjoyed for about ten seconds until the next thought hit me. What the fuck do spirals have to do with anything? Again I spoke to no one. “Yea, that’s it, spirals. But that’s what? I still don’t get it, and I will never get what those stupid equations mean.” I stared up at the board and was startled when the no one I had been speaking to spoke back to me in a sort of scratchy and almost squeaky voice.. “You’re right, it is spirals. Even the equation is spiral, the golden spiral. I am quite impressed that your scientists and mathematicians have figured it out. Your people have learned much, and have lost me a lot of bets in my world. This logarithm, Pi, the DNA, all of the math up there is no accident, it’s my signature. Like a barcode or watermark you use to identify things, or a hologram The math problems are my hidden code that I myself scripted all over your universe. That ensures proof to all the other universe makers that this one here is mine and belongs to me. I call my universe ‘Omnia Etares”. The signature spirals appear everywhere. Galaxies are spiral, your DNA is a spiral, storms, shells, everything. That’s what happens when atoms collide, natural spirals form when the energy shoots out from both sides of the explosion in a whirlpool fashion forming a spiral. Imagine two cars colliding head on in slow motion. At the epicenter there would be a big explosion and parts from both cars would spray backwards. Pieces of the pieces travel to different distances depending on their weight or size, their mass. That’s how this universe and your sister universe started. I collided two atoms together and the resulting explosion was spread around and settle at different distances from the center. The beginning of two universes look like a surrealistic bowtie. The collision is the knot and identical universes fan out like the tie triangles Some of the larger pieces in each universe slam into each other forming planets, asteroids, comets, and even galaxies. It all travels in a spiral pattern even though its not perceptible to the eye. Why even this universe itself is spiral JT. I know common belief is it’s constantly expanding but that’s only part true, it is expanding as it spins inward and will in time settle until it slams into someone else’s universe. A better term for the vastness of space would be multiverse” I was so stunned to hear a voice I barely even processed what he had said let alone had the where withal to wonder how he knew my name. That is to say I thought I was stunned. When I actually turned to see who was talking to me I was galactically bewildered.

Not a tall muscular slender long-haired Herculean man as one might expect a creator or godlike truth teller to be but a rather diminutive and non athletic man with tightly curled short black hair. His nose was too big for his oblong face and he had what seemed a chronic case of chin stubble in a futile attempt at appearing cool. Not at all what I would expect as a creator, he seemed more like a tech geek at a Radio Shack or Best Buy. He was dressed the part of a scientist in a lab coat complete with black glasses, pencil behind the ear, and clipboard in hand.. He stared at me blankly as if he were completely done talking and I should just be assuring him I understood what he had said. But clearly I didn’t get it. “You? You’re God, you are the creator?” The tone of my voice was way too obvious in its incredulousness and cynicism. He did not look the least bit offended however and gave me an all too familiar condescending smile. “Not what you were expecting JT? Tell me what a creator looks like and I’ll see what I can do to make you feel more at ease.” I glared at him defiantly, “Well I certainly didn’t expect the creator to be so sarcastic, nor did I think it would be a nerd. What should I call you anyway, Mr. Adam collider, The Grand Creator of everything? That sounds awfully egocentric for a humble End all be all.” This time his smile was more genuine. “Now who’s being sarcastic? My name would be way to foreign to you to say so when you call me you can call me Al.” I couldn’t resist the Paul Simon reference and I replied with a chuckle, “like I can be your bodyguard and you can be my long lost friend?” He looked at me puzzled and with an air of confusion said, “No. Al, as in Albert Einstein. I am a physicist too but far beyond any human abilities. Einstein did come close however, so I just go by Al for you humans. I was the one who collided the atoms that formed the ‘Big Bang’ your people have been talking about.” I stared in total disbelief, “Wait Al, I need to sit down and sort this through.” My new friend, teacher, guru, and I assume Sherpa of my afterlife, this Al manifestation gave me a chair.

Al allowed me about ten minutes to gather my bearings. “ Maybe I should start at the beginning JT. What I am is similar to what you call a scientist but my form is from a very different universe. Call me a shift shaper if it’s easier but the truth is I’m more like pure energy with a conscience. In my universe the scientists create universes by colliding positive and negative atoms and try to find life on them. At some point they may even be able to create one here on your earth with one of those, what do you call them, particle accelerators, the Large Hadron Collider.” I was now starting to understand. “You mean like the one in Switzerland for CERN right? Some sort of underground tube ride for atoms that cost a few billion dollars and is supposed to make the scientific community all warm and fuzzy and shit. The Higgs Bosen God thingy. They are gonna recreate the …” It hit me. “Holy shit, the big fucking bang! They are going to create a new universe down there!“ Al rolled his eyes, looking more like a parent than a creator. “Put that way it seems less relevant, but yes that’s where it may happen. I hope they know what to do if they are successful. A universe expanding underground will get pretty messy. Anyway, they do a lot more than just that down there, they are gathering all kinds of information they believe will help them understand their universe.” My head was spinning and I was beginning to wonder if this was maybe some weird ass dream or something. A flash of questions hit me the first being about Al owning my universe. “Hold on there Al, your getting way ahead of me here. Lets go back a bit. Back to your signature thing. Are you telling me you created the universe and then invented pi, and those other math equations as a way of claiming this universe as your own? Sorry but that sounds ridiculous.”

This creator, this Al dude, had begun pacing by the blackboard rubbing his head while slightly tussling his poorly recreated hair. I assumed he was planning his answers. Once a scientist always a scientist I guess. Finally he spoke, “Okay JT, first I’ll tell you about my role in this and then we can get to the truth you search for so you can move on.” Even in the middle of this profound and hopefully enlightening philosophic discussion with either a spirit or alien the phrase move on was rather disconcerting. What the fuck did he mean by that? Perhaps I would be better off stalling him, but fuck that, then I’ll have to stay in this…..this classroom or lab or whatever. I shut up and let him continue. “So this is hard stuff to understand and I really don’t think its important to you but here goes. I am a universe scientist. Quantum physics is only scratching the surface vibrations if you pardon my pun. Everything is in constant motion but on a sub-sub-sub atomic level its imperceptible even to microscopes. Like tiny nose hair vibrations. You believe an atom is the smallest thing around, but its not. Reverse dark matter is. In our labs we create energy from this reverse dark matter, form them into tiny knots of energy similar to what you call atoms. It gives the energy mass, or substance. Inside this, let me call it a tiny ball of powerful energy, I placed my math equations to be constant throughout. Placed them in each of two atoms and had them spin at speeds that make light seem slow as a century. When those two balls of energy collided they created an explosion. It starts out very small, but like all explosions grew outwards. That’s your universe, or actually my universes, this one and your sister universe. Your sister universe has life to but not in any form you would recognize. It’s not like you sci-fy parallel universes with alternate realities. That is something else entirely and involves dimensions but we won’t get into that.” He looked at my blank face. “Too much JT?” I looked up at him with some degree of confidence, “No, not really. Well I was getting the whole universe thing but now you slam my brain with dimensions and alternate reality. What the fuck is that all about?” Al laughed out loud, but not a biting laugh, more like the laugh a parent might use when tackling difficult subjects. “That certainly is another discussion fopr another time my son, suffice to say you live in a dimension that has billions of other dimensions stacked up like a warehouse pallet. But let’s not go there yet, lets stick to universe creating. To one of the energy balls I added some carbon, to the other I added hydrogen which is the building foundation for life. So in essence, I created you and every living thing you have ever known. We can’t control life we only create it. All living things take its own direction. Every living thing in this universe is related, it began with one single cell. In this single cell organism was my signature math equations as well as instructions on duplicating. What your scientists have figured out to be DNA. A strand of information and instruction from me passed on to everything that reproduces, an owners manual if you will. Sometimes they just duplicate themselves out of extinction and other times, like on earth, two organisms collide and form a multi-cell organism, which creates the male and female structure. After that its all logarithmic growth creating more diversity at every split. You are a rather tiny and irrelevant part of it, but all universes experience forms of life and yours happens to be the one with a brain capable of reasoning so I explain to those I think can handle it how it is they got here. For whatever reason humans have an innate sense of wonder and a desire to understand that so strong its driven many of you mad. I believe it was when you left the water and began to form a brain some billions of your years ago. Over time that brain grew in size and became able to actually think and reason. So once I tell you your truth, you can go on and become part of the matter of the universe again. Who knows, maybe part of you will form a new star, or comet.”

Al looked in my eyes and I could tell he knew much of what he told me was above my pay grade. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “So that’s that. Now what about that truth do you want to know more about?” Once the confusion subsided a mild anger began to set in. I mean I’m dead so what have I got to lose? This unworthy looking god pretender claims to have created everything then call’s me insignificant! This shit can‘t be real. “No way, no fucking way am I buying all this bullshit. This is some kind of bad dream or nightmare or something and you’re not real. I ate something that is fucking up my system and giving me this piece of shit dream. All this shit about colliders and spirals, equations and explosions is all bullshit. I live in the information age and this is just bacon cheeseburger Google overload. It’s the price I pay for being in the world wide web, cruising down the information highway guzzling beer and chomping on cheeseburgers and fries and having the Encyclopedia Britannica at my fingertips. Once I fell asleep this weird ass nightmare began with that happy place upstairs. You must represent Hell in my nightmare.”

Exhausted from my tirade I sat down again. Al stared at me then shook his head. He seemed ever so slightly frustrated with me but kept a cool even demeanor. “ I assure you this is not a dream, there is no Hell, and I am real. Well real in the abstract anyway. My look and mannerism are manifestations you created in order to understand better. If you saw what I truly looked like it would as you say, blow your mind. Listen JT you were not living in the information age, the true information age began long ago and what you are in is more of an information overload age. Your concept of time isn’t completely accurate so I don’t expect you’ll understand that, but I will explain as much as I can for you. You are not even living at all anymore but that’s beside the point. Because I have grown fond of your species I try to at least at times to satisfy the driving force of questioning that exemplifies your species. You have an open mind and are capable of seeing beyond how the world was explained to you by people who know next to nothing about life. You think you have acquired so much information you can just will all you have learned in a dream? That my dear boy is what you call bullshit. You haven’t. Stay seated my boy because I am about to tell you things about dreams and information that will challenge almost everything you think you know. Your species reaching knowledge this far is somewhat of an anomaly and does not happen often. It was a series of bizarre and incredible coincidences that got your species to where it is and that’s why your kind fascinate me so much. Put on your safe body fastening strap because your in for an uneven terrain traveling destination.” I did remain seated, and began to worry. “Okay Al, I’m ready, bring on the bumpy ride.

TBC

 

 

 

This Way To Egress 2016

On By Terrapin - The JourneyIn Uncategorized2 Comments

egress

 

Come on suckers gather around

Listen to the loudest snake charmer in town

I build people up so I can beat them down

I make a lot of noise but it’s nothing but sound

I’ve got no real plan and I couldn’t care less

Throw your vote down my hallway this way to egress

 

Jump on my bandwagon please donate

All by myself I’ll make America great

If you wanna know how you just hafta wait

Cause there ain’t a single plan here on my plate

I screw the people in my way but I couldn’t care less

Let me deal and steal your right to vote, this way to egress

 

No foundatrion my words are purely baseless

Screw the elder victims to me their faceless

Some say my eminent domain is a little abrasive

Bit what can you expect from a misogynist racist

All the things I do will leave our country a mess

Making me the Prez the quickest way to egress

 

 

Put me in charge so I need to feel the power

I got a million insults to make every race cower

My White House will become a giant golden shower

I really don’t care if I make this world a big mess

As long as I’m in power, this way to egress

 

 

Egress, The action of going out or leaving, direct means of departure

This way to egress was one of P.T. Barnum’s most infamous scams. While in his Barnum’s American Museum signs were strategically placed that read “This way to egress”, egress being a word many people did not understand. Mr. Barnum realized people spent too much time there and needed more revenue so he placed the signs strategically knowing people would follow the signs out of curiosity only to find they had exited the show and would have to pay a second admission if they wanted to return. Don’t throw your vote out the egress, educate yourself about the issues and formulate informed opinions based on fact or reasonable speculations no matter which party you support. Don’t make knee jerk reactions or be a slave to a political party, choose which candidate you truly believe will do right by We The People.

 

 

Cosmo And The Garden Earth (An Absurdist Philosophical Tale of Creation)

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revelation

 

Part 8 REVELATIONS

War, Hummph, what is it good for…Absolutely nothing!

 

Now I’ve done more than my fair share of hallucinogens in my day and honestly I have had some pretty obscure hallucinations but believe me this was no chemically induced manifestation. The most remarkable thing happened. Cosmo’s arms came right through my computer screen and grabbed me by the shoulders. As if I had been transformed into a wavelength of pixilated energy I entered into the story I was writing coming face to face with the god I thought I had created. I was confused beyond galactic proportions and I somehow managed a statement. “Oh My Cosmo, did I die?” My mind was racing, no harp music, that has to be a good sign, but there he was big as life. His voice was less godly than I anticipated, no thundering roars, just a friendly statement as if he were a college professor or just a bar mate, “I understand you have some profound questions JT. Come with me and I will try to give you some answers. We’ll be traveling through various dimensions in a way you are unfamiliar with so just remain quiet and observe” I was stunned, in a sort of trance but I decided to take the RAM by the horns. But Cosmo grabbed my hand and even though I had a keyboard full of questions I was dragged alongside this sprirty thing in silence. We moved through some sort of crowded city street then through a bustling building into another building. I thought it was the New York Stock Exchange but it was cold and unlit. I could hear people trying hard to yell over each other even though the place was empty. Through another dimension and we found ourselves walking through a bank, also cool and unlit this time filled with voices in a language I could not understand, like Japanese or something. Through another dimension we found ourselves in some sort of foreign government building, a palace or some ultra rich home, and finally through a concrete graveyard. Just as quickly as it had gotten cold and dark a light appeared and a wave of warmth spread over my body. We were walking along a beach I had gone to many times in my younger days, and then through the familiar streets of my youth. The seaside city that watched me grow to a man. The ball field I learned to play baseball in, the playground complete with see saw where I learned the mechanics and necessity of teamwork, school, cars, bars, all of my youth. I was feeling giddy. He led to some sort of park that was filled with all sort of life. Everywhere I could see and hear children playing and laughing squirrels darting to and fro, birds jumping from branch to branch, and I even thought I saw a small fox. I couldn’t help but smile as Cosmo walked me through the most carefree times of my life. At long last we came to a path in a wooded area that led to a clearing. “There JT, over there. We can sit there and talk.” I almost ran up to the clearing and found a spot to sit. I had so many questions and I wasn’t sure where to start but as it happened I didn’t need to. Cosmo looked me in the eyes and this is going to sound strange but I got the feeling I was looking at everyone I had ever known. Cosmo spoke clear and soft. “JT, you have many questions and I will try to answer them as simply as possible. You ask of the purpose of life?” The largest and warmest smile I had ever seen.

“Its not God that works in mysterious ways JT, its love. Love has the power to create misery or mystery, irritation or elation. You remember one of your favorite all time movies? How about this line, “You’ve always had the power to get home. You just needed to learn how to use it?” Its not a co-incidence that it’s a wonderful life came out the same time. “To my brother George, the richest man in town” Love tried in the year 1933 to remind the humans what’s important and what is real, but it never caught on as anything more than entertainment. People still went about learning to hate, to be greedy and jealous. The opposite emotions of love overpowered the minds of humanity.” He sat and stared reflectively out at the children playing so I took the opportunity to ask a question, “Am I dead?”. Again the warm smile, “JT my son, death is not something to fear, its merely a stage. What’s important here is that you understand life, not death. Things are what they are because love lost out to power and greed. That’s the classic Good versus Evil if ever there was one. You see the planet earth really is a garden, like a giant rain forest and it needs cosmic tending. I am the gardener. I got all of life here started and have just shown you your history.”

I was not quite sure I grasped what he was saying, I mean just like if there is a God why would that God allow so much misery? “What’s the matter JT, did you not understand?” I reflected a moment and responded. “No, I understand on a certain level, you say something like fate that you created determined our paths on earth but something still bugs me I mean ….well why wars? Why did you allow war with its devastation and destruction to evolve. Its like history was written in blood and not ink. Why does it seem like we are constantly at war somewhere?” I watched as Cosmo thought deeply, I assume to give an accurate assessment. “War as it has come to be is hard to explain it’s one of my biggest disappointments along with my dinosaurs. Let me start at its beginning and see if I can in some way outline it for you. When the garden was still quite young many different tribes were forming all over. They shared one common concept. They understood and observed my law of life. This understood law was quite simply that every creature has the right to achieve its survival in the garden. What a creature cannot do is deny any other creature its right to its own survival strategies without reason. But in one little garden corner, or more accurately a crescent, a certain species figured out a way to manufacture and horde food. They penned animals behind fences and learned how to cultivate and manipulate vegetation. This would eventually become known as the agricultural revolution and they horded so much food that no one in the tribes ever went hungry. They prospered, and when a species prospers it has growth spurts. They were eating and fornicating so much the population doubled, then tripled. This created two major problems, first it was getting too crowded, and second by hording so much food it was depriving other creatures of an opportunity to feed. To make shit worse, if a fox or a gopher or a crow or any other creature tried to eat the horded food, they not only killed the hungry thief, but they attempted to annihilate that entire species of the hungry creatures even if they themselves weren’t taking food. Just because they MIGHT take some food at some point. But it was the crowding that really set the fecal matter hurling towards the rotary oscillator. These tribes began forming imaginary lines and began laying ownership claims to the land, and all the animals and vegetation on that land. My land! As a few generations passed by the people began forgetting the time when the garden belonged to everything and soon the people were growing up with the notion that their parts of the garden actually belonged to them by virtue of their imaginary lines. As they worked the land they tried to figure out why some harvests would suffer droughts or flooding storms. They began to fear that a higher power was responsible so they invented gods. Oh mercy did they invent gods. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands. A god that made it rain, or a god that controlled the wind. Even the big beautiful sun was a god. And they started making sacrifices to these gods. Animals, other humans, whatever they felt would make the gods happy so they could continue to horde food. Somewhere along the line one culture came up with the concept that there is only one god, the true god. This somehow gave them superiority because they were the culture that knew the truth. When other cultures challenged that belief they would destroy the threat brutally so their god wouldn’t think them wimps. They began building armies to protect their belief and to protect their imaginary lines. The weapons they once farmed and hunted with now became instruments of death and destruction used on any human that challenged their land ownership or their one true god. They began a strange custom of burying their dead which further denied other creatures the right to what belongs to the garden. It broke the cycle. So the armies began killing in the name of god and they began killing any who trespassed their land. Their land! Oh that makes me laugh. No, it makes me angry. They began to get crowded, they were charging people money to live on my land which they called their own because of some stupid imaginary lines. They wanted more land, they made the imaginary lines longer and wider.” Cosmo stopped to catch his breath as he was visibly upset. I wanted to change the mood so I asked, “You keep saying imaginary lines, are you talking about borders? Borders are important because they separate areas of land.” A funny sound came from his nose like a nasal windstorm or something, and I wasn’t sure if the smile on his face was sincere or sarcastic. Maybe both. “Where do you live JT?” I proudly informed him I was born and bred in New York. “And what makes you so different form someone born and bred in Connecticut, or New Jersey? Or even Oklahoma for that matter? Do they have three arms in New Jersey? Five legs in Connecticut? Perhaps they are half bovine half human in Oklahoma! Of course not. Aside from a slight difference in the way they pronounce words, or the words they use to describe things like soda in New York and pop in Oklahoma you are all the same. You see JT, borders don’t separate people from other species of people, they are just arbitrary lines that make you think you belong to something special. Like New York which you so proudly proclaim. You are no different from a JT from Oklahoma just different environments. 0You can’t step over a line somewhere and not find people similar to the one on the other side. You look for the differences in each other instead of the similarities. That’s part of the problem. You have forgotten that in the end you are all human. You all want to love and be loved, you all want to live a happy and healthy life, you all get sick or injured and you will all eventually die. When you really think about it there are much more traits you have in common to others than there are that make you different. Why even more similar if you take religion out of the equation. If there were no Jews, or Muslims, or Hindis, or Christians how would you define your differences? But I suppose you will go on believing that it is important to consider yourself in some way better than other humans. That’s why war JT. That was how it began, war was a child protecting its ego from the rest of the world.”

“And the armies got bigger and stronger, and the weapons more and more advanced to give whoever had the most money to pay for the best equipment. Ah yes, once greed reared its ugly head in it humanity was done for. The larger landowners had better weapons and machinery and therefore built stronger and deadlier armies to protect them. It wasn’t enough to have more than enough food, they wanted to have it all. Control the food and you will control the world. Wars raged on in a struggle to control the food and hence the people, and to keep everyone in line it was important that everyone believed the armies had god on their side. Sounds a bit ridiculous when you think about it. All loving God wants you to kill or maim other humans. In the name of God my ass, it is clearly in the name of gold, or oil, or rubber, or anything else that can make one rich with the false perception of power. War had and has terrible consequences. Death and destruction resulted in a bid for the powerful to become even more powerful. It’s easy to see what horrible atrocities could come out of war but there were unintended consequences occurring as well.. The most hideous was the buying and selling of other humans. Slavery was a direct result of war. When one army decimated another those unfortunate enough to live were turned into slaves. Why? To work the land so the owners could own more and not have to pay. Buying another human being. Despicable, yet an accepted practice everywhere. Now they owned the land, the food, some of the animals and even other humans and industry flourished. War had become a teenager feeding on greed and lust for power. Yea, things were out of control, people killing in my name, killing for power, killing out of lust. That’s when I sent my son down, to put them back on track. To get them to understand that they should worship no one but accept everyone. They needed to revert back to a culture of existing with the rest of the garden”

Como paused here as though reflecting on a happy moment in his past. I know the look because I do it myself quite often. That was okay with me because my head was spinning anyway. After a five minute pause, he continued. “ Well that sure didn’t work out too well. When my son witnessed so much greed and lust and crime and trickery it pissed him off. He began to use my name to warn them of my fury so instead of a message being go back to living together they continued to worship. They gave him so much shit and many of the humans wanted to mess him up so he changed his message. Out of anger it became more like follow me and listen or my Dad will kick your ass. Just as quick as a nuclear fission things turned from bad to worse and religion split off into a few different major religions, all agreeing on only one thing. That their religion is the one and only true religion and all others must perish and give the world to them. God created earth for humans after all, but only for the humans that know and understand true religion. Bah!. So they did what they always do to a theory they can‘t comprehend, they killed him. A horrible way too. It’s almost like they had to think of the most heinous way for him to die. I guess it made them feel all chest puffy or something. They had no idea how little and insignificant they were. Like any other gnat in this galaxy, their entire species could be wiped out in one giant swat and the universe would continue as though they never existed. But war was now becoming a young adult, and the weaponry just got more and more advanced. Bombs, missiles, planes, tanks, all the best and biggest in high tech murdering. Not that they should stop there, why of course there would be biological and chemical weapons as well. All the way up to the ultimate bomb. The atom bomb. The garden was ultimately taken over by the most destructive species that ever roamed the planet.”

TBC

 

The Bigger The Atom The Bigger The Bang, Oh Mega p2

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p2

 

Life after death? Is that what’s to be with me? One thing for sure I can’t wait to meet this “Creator” at the bottom of the staircase. I started down the steps I had just recently negotiated in an odd mix of fear and curiosity. Halfway down I stopped and looked back up to ask one more question. My advisor was no longer there I was alone. The image, my Mom, my daughters, my love, my friends everyone I ever cared about gone. They had all disappeared and I was alone with a notion. The notion that something was waiting at the bottom of the staircase and that something was the truth. What is truth? Is truth law? What will truth reveal? Is truth unchanging or ever changing? Can I choose a dare instead of truth? Will it set me free? Does truth have feeling? Can I handle the truth? Will I find the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? And most importantly, are all these questions even necessary? Time to go on down to the bottom and find out!

No more questions I have my answer. Go downstairs and find out what the truth is. I proceeded cautiously not knowing if truth was an entity, a concept, or a trap. As I climbed downward I noticed that the staircase was spiral. But it wasn’t a spiral before. Or was it? Whatever, its time to bribe the piper, to face the joyous sounds expressed through musical instruments, time to get on the hippie multiple person transport vehicle and find out for myself. When I reached the bottom of the staircase no one was there, just a huge blackboard with some drawings and equations scrawled across it. There was a picture of a DNA strand, a helix, and a diagram of a Nautilus shell, diagrams of various ferns, flowers and plants all spiral in shape, an some sort of segment worm curled up tight. Tacked onto the top of the blackboard were 3 aerial photographs of massive super storms. On the other side of the board was all numbers, or rather symbols numbers and fractions and such. A math geeks orgasm. There were some I recognized like 3.14159265359, which I knew was pi, multiples of nine showing how each quotient adds back up to nine, (9×2=18..1+8=9,9×3=27..2+7=9..etc), as well as a series of equations that could not possibly be more foreign to me. Perhaps even Einstein would have found a spot amongst his quizzical locks to scratch his head and ponder the meaning. That said….What the Fuck?? What is all this shit supposed to mean to me? This is the truth? I didn’t understand what or why I was looking at this strange blackboard but I knew it would give me the answer to my…….Jesus shit I don’t even remember the question anymore. Not sure if it was what is life all about or what is death all about or something else entirely. Something important was in front of me so I decided to give it a stab with the images and leave the math number and letters problem for the end. I looked closely at the image of the giant storms from an aerial view, the nautilus, and the ferns and realized that they were all spiral in shape. Just like the damn staircase. Come to think of it the DNA strand and helix are two spirals intertwined. I looked to the spiral formed by the segment worm all curled up. Then I thought about a milky way galaxy photo I had seen before. Out loud to no one I blurted out, “Holy fuck, its about spirals, like the fucking galaxy. That’s it!! The truth is spirals. Spirals!” I was overjoyed for about ten seconds until the next thought hit me. What the fuck do spirals have to do with anything? Again I spoke to no one. “Yea, that’s it, spirals. But that’s what? I still don’t get it, and I will never get what those stupid equations mean.” I stared up at the board and was startled when the no one I had been speaking to spoke back to me in a sort of scratchy and almost squeaky voice.. “You’re right, it is spirals. Even the equation is spiral, the golden spiral. I am quite impressed that your scientists and mathematicians have figured it out. Your people have learned much, and have lost me a lot of bets in my world. This logarithm, Pi, the DNA, all of the math up there is not an accident, it’s more like my signature. Like a barcode or watermark you use to identify things, or a hologram The math problems are my hidden code that I myself scripted all over your universe. That ensures proof to all the other universe makers that this one here is mine. I call my universe ‘Omnia Etares”. The signature spirals appear everywhere. Galaxies are spiral, your DNA is a spiral, storms, shells, everything. That’s what happens when atoms collide, natural spirals form when the energy shoots out from both sides of the explosion in a whirlpool fashion forming a spiral. Imagine to cars colliding head on in slow motion. At the epicenter there would be a big explosion and parts from both cars would spray backwards. Pieces of the pieces travel to different distances depending on their weight. That’s how the universe started. I collided two atoms together and the resulting explosion was spread around and settle at different distances from the center. Some of the larger piecers slam into each other forming galaxies. It all travels in a spiral even though its not perceptible to the eye. Why even this universe itself is spiral JT. I know common belief is it’s constantly expanding but that’s only part true, it will in time settle until it slams into someone else’s universe. A better term for the worlds would be multiverse” I was so stunned to hear a voice I barely even processed what he had said let alone had the where withal to wonder how he knew my name. I thought I was stunned but when I turned to see who was talking to me I was speechless.

Not a tall muscular slender long-haired Herculean man as one might expect a creator or godlike truth teller to be but a rather diminutive and non athletic man with tightly curled short black hair. His nose was too big for his oblong face and he had what seemed a chronic case of chin stubble in a futile attempt at appearing cool. Not at all what I would expect as a creator, he seemed more like a tech geek at a Radio Shack or Best Buy. He was dressed the part of a scientist in a lab coat complete with black glasses, pencil behind the ear, and clipboard in hand.. He stared at me blankly as if he were completely done talking and I should just be assuring him I understood what he had said. But clearly I didn’t get it. “You? You’re God, you are the creator?” The tone of my voice was way too obvious in its incredulousness and cynicism. He did not look the least bit offended however and gave me an all too familiar condescending smile. “Not what you were expecting JT? Tell me what a creator looks like and I’ll see what I can do to make you feel more at ease.” I glared at him defiantly, “Well I certainly didn’t expect the creator to be so sarcastic, nor did I think it would be a nerd. What should I call you anyway, Mr. Atom collider, The Grand Creator of everything? That sounds awfully egocentric for a humble End all be all.” This time his smile was more genuine. “Now who’s being sarcastic? My name would be way to foreign to you to say so when you call me you can call me Al.” I couldn’t resist the Paul Simon reference and I replied with a chuckle, “like I can be your bodyguard and you can be my long lost friend?” He looked at me puzzled and with an air of confusion said, “No. Al, as in Albert Einstein. I am a physicist too but far beyond any humans abilities. Einstein did come close however, so I just go by Al for you humans. I was the one who collided the atoms that formed the ‘Big Bang’ your people have been talking about.” I stared in total disbelief, “Wait Al, I need to sit down and sort this through.” My new friend, teacher, guru, and I assume Sherpa Al gave me a chair.

Al allowed me about ten minutes to gather my thoughts. “ Maybe I should start at the beginning JT. What I am is similar to what you call a scientist but from a very different universe. In my universe the scientists create universes by colliding atoms and try to find life on them. At some point they may even be able to create one here on your earth with one of those, what do you call them, particle accelerators, the Large Hadron Collider.” I was now starting to understand. “You mean like the one in Switzerland for CERN right? Some sort of underground tube ride for atoms that cost a few billion dollars and is supposed to make the scientific community all warm and fuzzy and shit. The Higgs Bosen God thingy. They are gonna recreate the …” It hit me. “Holy shit, the big fucking bang! They are going to create a new universe down there!“ Al rolled his eyes, looking more like a parent than a creator. “Put that way it seems less relevant, but yes that’s where it may happen. I hope they know what to do if they are successful. A universe expanding underground will get pretty messy. Anyway, they do a lot more than just that down there, they are gathering all kinds of information they believe will help them understand their universe.” My head was spinning and I was beginning to wonder if this was maybe some weird ass dream or something. “Hold on there Al, your getting way ahead of me here. Lets go back a bit. Back to your signature thing. Are you telling me you created the universe and then invented pi, and those other math equations as a way of claiming this universe as your own? Sorry but that sounds ridiculous.”

This creator, this Al dude, had begun pacing by the blackboard rubbing his head and I assumed he was planning his answers. Once a scientist always a scientist I guess. Finally he spoke, “Okay JT, first I’ll tell you about my role in this and then we can get to the truth you search for so you can move on.” The phrase move on was disconcerting. What the fuck did he mean by that? Perhaps I would be better off stalling him, but fuck that, then I’ll have to stay in this…..this classroom or whatever. I shut up and let him continue. “So this is hard stuff to understand and I really don’t think its important to you but here goes. I am a universe scientist. Quantum physics is only scratching the surface. Everything is in constant motion but on such a minute level its imperceptible even to microscopes. Like tiny vibrations. You believe an atom is the smallest thing around, but its not .Energy is. In our labs we create energy and form them into tiny things which you call atoms. It gives the energy mass, or substance. Inside this, let me call it a tiny ball of powerful energy, I placed these math equations to be constant throughout. Placed them in each of two atoms and had them spin at speeds that make light seem slow. When those two balls of energy collided they created an explosion. It starts out very small, but like all explosions grew outwards. That’s your universe, or actually my universe. To one of the energy balls we add some carbon and hydrogen to the other which is how life is formed. So in essence, I created you and every living thing you have ever known. We can’t control life we only create it. Life takes its own direction. Every living thing in this universe began with one single cell. In this single cell organism was my signature math equations an instructions on duplicating. What your scientists have figured out is DNA. A strand of information and instruction from me passed on to everything that reproduces. Sometimes they just duplicate themselves out of extinction and other times, like on earth, two organisms collide and form a multi-cell organism, which creates the male and female structure. After that its all logarithmic growth creating diversity at every split. You are a rather tiny and irrelevant part of it, but all universes experience forms of life and yours happens to be the one with a brain capable of reasoning so I explain to those I think can handle it how it is they got here. For whatever reason humans have an innate sense of wonder and a desire to understand that so strong its driven many of you mad. I believe it was when you left the water and began to form a brain some billions of your years ago. Over time that brain grew in size and became able to actually think and reason. So once I tell you your truth, you can go on and become part of the matter of the universe again. Who knows, maybe part of you will form a new star, or comet.”

Al looked in my eyes and I could tell he knew much of what he told me was above my pay grade. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “So that’s that. Now what about that truth you want to know?” Once the confusion subsided anger began to set in. This unworthy looking god pretender claims to have created everything and called me insignificant! This shit can‘t be real. “No way, no fucking way am I buying all this bullshit. This is some kind of bad dream or nightmare or something and you’re not real. I ate something that is fucking up my system and giving me this piece of shit dream. All this shit about colliders and spirals an equations is all bullshit. I live in the information age and this is just bacon cheeseburger Google overload. It’s the price I pay for being in the world wide web, cruising down the information highway guzzling beer and chomping on cheeseburgers and fries. Once I fell asleep this weird ass nightmare began with that happy place upstairs. You must represent Hell.”

Exhausted from my tirade I sat down again. Al stared at me then shook his head. He seemed ever so slightly frustrated with me but kept a cool even demeanor. “ I assure you this is not a dream, there is no Hell, and I am real. Well real in the abstract anyway. My look and mannerism are manifestations you created in order to understand better. If you saw what I truly looked like it would as you say, blow your mind. Listen JT you were not living in the information age, the true information age began long ago and what you are in is more of an information overload age. Your concept of time isn’t completely accurate so I don’t expect you’ll understand that, but I will explain as much as I can for you. You are not even living at all anymore but that’s beside the point. Because I have grown fond of your species I try to at least satisfy the driving force of questioning that exemplifies you. You think you have acquired so much information you can just will all you have learned in a dream? That my dear boy is what you call bullshit. You haven’t. Stay seated my boy because I am about to tell you things about dreams and information that will challenge almost everything you think you know. Your species reaching this far is somewhat of an anomaly and does not happen often. It was a series of bizarre and incredible coincidences that got your species to where it is and that’s why your kind fascinate me so much. Put on your safe body fastening strap because your in for an uneven terrain traveling destination.” I did remain seated, and began to worry. “Okay Al, I’m ready, bring on the bumpy ride.

TBC-The Real Information Age

 

Oh Mega Where Is My Alpha

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after

 

Part 1..  The Beginning Of The End

by J.T. Hilltop

 

We all do it. Each of us wonders what will happen to us after we die. Once we pass our use by date do we get recycled, start again as someone new? Are we limited to the option of floating on clouds with wings and a harp or burning forever with the evilest most vile horned creature from under our childhood beds? Is it another step toward reaching our Nirvana? Or do we just cease existing altogether? Well this is the story of the very day I found my answer. This is the story of my afterlife experience…….

 

 

 

I

“Sir do you want fries with that?” Mmmm, fries. “Why yes indeed my young friend, supersize me with an extra large, I deserve a break today.” Of course I wanted a break it was on of those time I felt the need, no an entitlement to splurge a little and pay my homage to the demons of my poor life choices. A really rough week was how I justified having that humongous cholesterol popping double bacon cheeseburger and free fatty acid dripping fries laden with sodium on my fateful night. And anyways, what the Hell. I’m all for freeing fatty acids and cheeseburgers come in second only to double cheese and pepperoni covered pizza. Holy guacamole what a tasty burger, better than a Kahuna burger although honestly I never really had one of those. I was having a bacon burger Royall that just begged for a can of Fosters Ale. The huge oil can of Aussie malts and hops with a jumbo half pound of grease splattering all meat hamburger topped with six slices of sodium laced fat filled hickory smoked bacon and four slices of lactose laden sharp cheddar cheese. All on this delicious sesame seed bun with “secret sauce”. It was the cholesterol lovers special, a sacrificial lamb to the great prophet Angina, patron saint of clogged arteries. It was oh so delicious going down and man oh man it just melted away the stress giving me that all warm and fuzzy feeling in my stomach.. The grease spots on my bag of extra large fries advertised an accompaniment of deep fried deliciousness. This meal was an orgasm and a half for my taste buds who were merrily dancing with reckless abandon all over my mouth. I’m telling you brothers and sisters, when you have the three B’s, life is good. Beer, bacon, and burgers. Collectively they make everything feel all tingly and giddy but as I would soon find out this particular evening that tingling was much more than the usual comfort food rumblings. All that warm and fuzzy tingling on the inside was actually a war erupting deep in my entrails and not a jovial taste bud drum circle producing the happy tango in my belly

Unbeknownst to yours truly there was an acidic uprising throughout my gastric battlefields. The war of the small and large intestines was fully engaged and acids were bouncing and flying around everywhere. An all out acid attack was underway which was bad enough, but even worse, in cardiac central a shock and awe campaign was in full flight. While the intestines battled it out they sent waves of nausea up through the esophagus in a campaign to create a reflux warning. Tossing and turning, tumbling and churning, the gastro intestinal system did its best to raise the threat level to red and wake me up. But the four oversized cans of Aussie brain fuel combined with the large glass of boxed wine had seen to it that nothing short of an absolute hydrogen explosion or an atomic uprising would wake me from my comatose sleep. The battle ensued and intensified through the evening as much of the fat from the bacon, cheese, and hamburger had forced their way past the intestine walls and into the already weak liver. There it jumped on the hemoglobin transport and took the main artery directly to first coronary quadrant. The transport emptied exactly where the cholesterol had been preparing for its moment. The bad cholesterol, the axis of evil in the digestive tract had been planning for this event over the years, setting up roadblocks all along the arteries to prevent supplies from passing through to reach the life center. If it can cut off all paths to the heart an prevent the flow of life giving liquids to blood pumping center the evil cholesterol will be declared the winner! The blood supply line was doing its best to bring humanitarian supplies to the heart, but this huge bacon cheeseburger gave cholesterol just the advantage it needed to create a proper blockage. Now it can shut down its opponent forever. Without blood flow and the alcohol sedation it was just a matter of time. My time. That’s right my good friends your narrators time had run out. Sad to say not a victim of some heinous crime, not dead from a car accident, not an overdose of illicit joy enhancers, not even a natural disaster for me to blame for my demise. Only thing to blame was the man in the mirror, the man who knew damn well that all those poor choices would one day take their toll and this was the day. In the end I guess I’m glad I was asleep at the time because I never saw it coming, but stay tuned because what follows death is the real reason I’m here now.

This was my final dance, my last call. The beer and wine combo platter successfully masked the sensation of having a massive heart attack but not the reality. I woke from my sleep, or that is I thought I woke, but I wasn’t really awake. It was a surreal state. My eyesight was strained kinda like I was looking through the thick lens of a calculus student. Not so much blurry as if I was seeing ten dimensions and they overlapped causing an almost fractured view of the world. But what world? I mean like where the fuck am I? Okay think back, whats the last thing I remember? A ton of cholesterol laden bricks fell on my head! I had a heart attack! This is it! I must be dead. I guessed I was gonna find out that what happens after death is you walk around confused, like some lame ass ghost.

I had finally started to put it together. Yep, I’m dead as a doornail yet I can still think. Is this that phenomenon of life after death? I can see my body but I cant feel anything so why am I still thinking? What am I here for? I took stock of the room. The walls seemed almost oval and I felt encased in water or some warm liquid yet I’m breathing normally. Some kind of joke or something? I’m back in the womb? No, its not that, I’m not being reborn but I see a kind of tunnel to the right, and a stairwell to the left. Could this be my final decision? Was I completely wrong about God and all the mystery surrounding him or her? Am I stuck between heaven an hell? The tunnel like thing is sorta dark so that must be hell, and the stairwell is lit up at the top so that must be my stairway to heaven. Okay JT, time to choose. One glance down the tunnel revealed absolutely nothing but darkness so the decision was pretty easy. Up the stairwell I go to where all that glitters is gold.

I ascended the steps but I couldn’t feel my feet. Actually I didn’t so much walk as I sorta floated up the steps slowly, one at a time. The tension was building. I was anxious to see what was at the top. When I arrived there was a beautiful image looking at me and straight away I could somehow tell she knew everything about me. I knew instinctively that if I were going to plead my case this was the time and she was the person. Time to get pro-active.

“I made some pretty bad decisions, didn’t I?” She looked at me knowingly and shook her head. In the most soothing voice she said, “Yes JT, you have made some very poor choices which caused undue harm to people who did not deserve it. On the other hand you have helped out a great many of people as well.” Hope rose up in my throat like magma burning to escape. “That’s true, I did, I helped so many people in many ways. I know I made some mistakes but I did a lot of good too. Right?” I can’t be sure but I think I was breathing hard. If I was even breathing at all. She smiled and it lit her face up. I got a closer look. Her hair was light brown and hung around her face in slight curls. So thick and full her locks were billows of blustery clouds. Her face was perfectly round and beautiful. Somehow she looked like every girl and woman I have ever known. Slightly raised sleek forehead one moment, perfectly flat and silky smooth the next. Her face was absolutely wrinkle free and she had a nose that epitomized the button mushroom one second then jutted out regally the next. It was quite disconcerting and confusing. By far the most intriguing and alluring part of her face were her eyes. I was peering directly into two mirrors aflame with a fire of compassion and burning with life. Her thin warm lips did not move so I assumed it were those reflective orbs that spoke directly to my soul. “You know JT, it had taken you many a year to learn the preciousness of life and you have been so very honorable to so many, yet you did not take much care of your own well being.” I knew she was right, I have a long history of various forms of self medication and self abuse, I didn’t get check ups regularly nor tests when they were suggested, I ate and drank many things I knew were not good for me, and overall took little care of the maintenance of my body outside of daily personal hygiene. “True that Ms. Spirit, I have put others ahead of myself but isn’t that a good thing? I mean, I cared for many others and not taking care of myself was more or less a well deserved self punishment right? How many times did I figuratively give someone the shirt off my back, even when I had so little? You know, “Those who have little give everything and take nothing“ or something like that. I’m paraphrasing here but it is true, I forsook of myself so that others may benefit from my deeds.” I closed my eyes so she couldn’t see my fear, but of course she’s not human so I have no idea if she even sees at all. “That’s what we’re here to decide JT, whether or not your deeds and attributes outweigh your mistakes and earned you the right to hear the truth.” I looked right into those all seeing disks, “I have tried to make amends for all the stupid things I have done. I have given much of myself and here it is, the end. This is how it works? You choose who is worthy of going on and……and what happen to the rest, what is the fate if you decide they are unworthy? Are you God?”. Again the smile which by this time was actually beginning to piss me off with its somewhat condescending sneer. A belly laugh from this female god faker seemed almost evil and my mood was changing rapidly. Was she laughing at me? “It doesn’t matter who I am JT, and as for you the decision was made long ago by you. I’m not real because you created me JT, I am a sort of collage of lives that have been central to yours. Do you see your mother in me? I know you do, they all do.” Now anger was rapidly being replaced by confusion. What the hell does she want from me? I created her, are you serious? But here it was, an image I apparently conjured up from people I love or loved and it’s already been decided what my fate will be.

“So what happens now?” My spidey senses were tingling, or I think they were, not really sure of anything anymore. “Now its time for you to go see the creator.” She said it so matter of fact and nonchalant. Her words hung around like a morning mist lingering the mountaintops waiting for the sun burn away the fog. I hoped she was preparing to shine a clearing light of knowledge. But the words themselves betrayed and threatened all my beliefs. Thoughts swirling in a vortex of confusion I uttered the most appropriate response I could muster with what little strength I had. “ You mean God?” I just stared at the woman I had begun to think might be God and she smiled that so familiar smile that seemed to warm my soul and put me at ease. I couldn’t move or talk, could only observe. “Relax JT, its nothing to be alarmed of. There is no one God as you have been taught. You are God, and I am God. Trees and bees and lions and tigers and bears are God. Everything you have ever loved is God. You are not meeting God you are going to see the truth. The creator has the truth JT, and the truth has been waiting for you. It’s time for you to hear the truth. Go now to the bottom of the staircase. Your time is at hand”

 

Viva La Revelations (A twisted tale from the unrepentant Absurdist)

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revelation

 

J.T. Hilltop

I was always the fucking last one picked. No one really wanted me on their team. Said I was uncoordinated, too slow, and good for nothing. But I showed them. I wrote a book for the Bible. The “Book of Revelations” which ironically was the last story chosen for the Bible. Coincidence? Are you fucking kidding me or what?? Maybe you think Revelations was too fat, too slow, and too uncoordinated to play in the Old Testament but Omega of the New? Get the Shepherds Flock outta here. Ya want the true story or the bullshit stories you’ve been taught by people you have been fooled into trusting.

Well my name is John. John of Pathos and I had the visions I am prepared to share with you while in jail. Yea that’s right, jail. What? You thought we only had torture chambers back then? Okay admittedly dudes and dudettes we had some killer Iron Maidens but we also used jails. And jail is where I was at when I received the Holy Fucking Revelations!

The book of revelations is somewhat difficult to tell because its told in some rather unusual circumstances. I had been a prolific Theological Blogger in my day who had already had a number of stories published in the New Testament under my chisel name, Pontius Pontificator. Not to brag or anything but it’s a play on my own name John the Fornicator. I used Pontius cuz I was a dream to the ladies if ya knows what I mean. Anyways, some of my books were under the epistle category, and a gospel song called Psalm 43 (The P has the right to remain silent). John the Fornicator from Pathos will now begin the story of Revelations as I saw in my visions from jail. It includes the four headless horsemen of Sleepy Hollow, the Liar of Judah, angels, seven trumpeters, the beast, a dragon, a false prophet, an arched angel, and of course no biblical tale would be complete without a whore, this one straight outta Babylon. So take out your cones guys and girls, here’s the real deal scoop appeal.

 

One evening while I was studying in the prison library the guard tells me I got this like visitor. Now not many of my friends come by and my family disowned me so my interest is how you say, peeked. A woman, not saying it was Jesus’ Mary cause I would never do nothing behind the J-mans back so lets just say she looked quite similar to Mary Magdalene. So Mary come in and lays a snog toggling tongue twirling kiss right on my mouth. I mean it was like a cheek wrestling, saliva swapping smacker of a French kiss right there in plain view of everyone in the visitors cave. While we was moanin and groanin I could feel two slimy tabs of something slip off Maggs tongue. She tells me to swallow, something you don’t normally wanna hear in prison, but I swallows the tabs. Then she tells me I just took two tabs of Cobalt Cheer acid. Man I was stoked, that’s some ass kicking cid right there my brothers, I knew I was gonna be tripping my nuts off. I smiled all the way back to my cell knowing what was coming. I got to my confinement cave and laid down on my stone cot while my bulge subsided. (Hey, when ya gets a kiss of that nature when incarcerated things pop up and stay popped up) After about a half hour or forty five minutes or so I hears this voice. Like I sit up right away and look around but there ain’t no one there. So I lays back down when the voice comes back, this time calling me by name. “Oh Jaa-ahn” So’s I shout who’s that, who’s there? And the voice says ‘Its me John, God.’ Now I’m thinking it must be the acid kickin’ in right? I mean the walls of the cave had been like breathing for a while and this voice was like soft and almost girly. Not the powerful deep voice you’d expect God would have but the chick-like voice insists. ‘Really John, its me God’ Then he steps out from the shadows and sure enough it is the almighty himself, God. Amazing how much Jesus looked like him, I mean like the spittin’ image except like a million years difference. What else could I do? I sez, “what’s happening God?”

Then he walks straight through the bars. Not around them, I mean like right through them, like they wasn’t even there. Then he sez, ‘John, I’m going to tell you a story. I want you to write this story down and make sure everyone reads it.’ I’m really feelin ripe about now so I sez to him, you mean like a bestseller or something? To which he replies, ‘Ah…yea, something like that. But first try and get the story into the bible, because the book needs a proper prophetic ending and this will be the story of the end and the new beginning.’ Now I’m really thinking the acid must be slamming the insides of my brain up against my skull or something but I figures maybe I should like play along and I sez to him, ‘Yea, yea sure Mr. Devine Being, whatever you sez. He goes on, “When I first created everything I had seven arch angels to watch over heaven and protect it. Six of these arch cherubs were cool, but one malignant rascal, Beelzebub, was just a real pain in the sacred cheeks. Had to do everything his own way and refused to follow my directions. Finally one day I caught him rolling in the hayclouds with Gabriel’s teenage daughter and that was the last straw. I tossed him and his baneful ways out of heaven straight down to earth along with one third of the questionable residents of heaven, like my own heavenly flotilla. He went down to earth with the low-lifes and they formed a gang of goblin thugs calling themselves the Crypts. Picked the name of a sacred burial undercroft just to spite me. After that he enters the Garden of Eden, whips out his penis angling it in front of Eve like some big snake. Well of course his phallus being thrice the size of Adams Eves eyes widened, began to water and left her mouth agape which he quickly filled with an apple. He then seduced Eve enticing her to make love, five times, and that’s when all the trouble began. That was the fall of man, when Adam, teeming with jealousy and divine penis envy begins recruiting humans for his own gang to exact revenge. So I had Gabriel, a very trusted angel form a gang up here first because I knew there would someday be a major showdown and the humans wouldn‘t stand a chance. He formed the Bloods of my blood, after my sons prophecy. We call them the Bloods for short, and it created a rivalry that would be the mother of all rivalries. Positive vs. Negative, Life vs. Death, Good vs. Evil, none of them have anything on the rivalry of the Bloods vs. Crypts. One day we would have our gang lords get together for an epic rumble. This showdown will be called The Rapture. Are you getting all this down John?”

Now I knows I’m still tripping and all but I’m starting to think maybe this shit really is on the up and up so’s I keep scraping away on my stones getting down his words so I could one day write the book for him.Being an ancient journalist of course I had questions, so I asks him to explain to me how this Rapture thing is gonna go down. Then something happens that may sound like a fairy tale or a hallucination. He floats up to the ceiling an sez come on up John it will be easier if I show you”

Now I’m flipping ya know? I’m like how the brimstone am I supposed to get up there, but before I even gets to thinking about a strategy I was lifted right off my feet and floated right next to him. Honest to god, from Gods mouth to my ear he whispers, ‘Watch this. These guys can really stir it up’ A light went on and I swear to you it looked like a giant flat screen TV in HD. The images seemed so real. There was a stage with seven musicians, each one a phenom trumpeter. Al Hirt,Loius Armstrong,Wynton Marsalas, Miles Davis,Chuck Mangione,Maynard Fererson, and Dizzy Gillespie. Not just ordinary musicians each stood with a golden trumpet in their hands. The seven Trumpeters. They jammed away in like improv style non stop for about an hour. Man my head was floating! And that’s when the real show started!

TBC

 

 

 

 

The Cradle Of Civilization Gets Drunk

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Excerpt from “Cosmo and The Garden Earth” ……J.T. Hilltop

Previously : Cosmo had blown up his dinosaur world and started his garden anew with far more intelligent species, although I suppose more intelligent could be relative.

Cosmo’s new species was eating and sexing, grunting communications, and even began an emotional outburst called laughing. Some particularly enterprising individuals saw a need for the power of the many and began to organize tribes or villages. These developers were quite slick and every community had them. So treacherous were they in fact that they convinced all the others that they actually wanted thses developers to dictate village behavior. They organized the best hunters go out to hunt food for everyone, the best builders to stay build more structures, most notably the mansion sized structures for the developers to live in, and any others would learn to grow and prepare fruits and vegetables so they could have awesome parties. The organizers created a form of controlling the food they called inventory. The organizers had the builders make fences, so they could trap animals and keep them from roaming off. This will be an important discovery years later during the agricultural revolution but for right now we need to concentrate on what everyone, god and human alike craved outside the cave.

Of course like most things in the ascent of man it all came down to sex. Men were judged by the size and usage of their spears. And all the time that the hunters were hunting and the builders were building and the vegetable growers were growing these organizers were doing the wham bam thank you for gathering maam with all the women. The men would come home all horny from hunting or building, or farming, and try to engage in sex. But the women of course were exhausted from satisfying the organizers all day long and feigned pains in their heads. No bedside spearing tonight Arrowman, I have a headache. “I sure hope this practice of refusing sex doesn’t last long” thought Cosmo. But the society carried on, the men satisfied with a once a month romp in the rocks. Once a month? This gave Cosmo another of his bright idea’s. He decided to mess up the organizers plans of daily sex by giving the females a monthly curse. So once a month, no sex for the organizers, period!

Now some of the hunters began to get suspicious. They watched as the animals they hunted engaged in the deed constantly with nary a headache claim. They started to wonder why they should do all the work, and the organizers stayed back with the women, and kept what they brought back for the community. They noticed that the builders had begun creating large dwellings for the organizers, and they always seemed to get the best fruits and vegetables for themselves. Why come to think of it, those organizers are locking up the animal skins and the fruits and vegetables and all the meat and fish that was brought back. It was the organizers that decided who got what, and it depended on how happy they were at the time. Now this was bad enough, but they began to wonder what the organizers did all day. One of the hunters wandered back into town mid day and peeked in the windows of the organizers new structure and was shocked. He gathered all the other hunters and told them the unbelievable sight he had seen. Every single woman of age was having sex with the organizers. Some organizers had two or three women at the same time doing the oddest things to his man plug. There was an immediate upheaval of anger…Cosmo was alarmed yet at the same time quite amused. “Jealousy! Greed! Anger! Just like tall god had warned. “I hope this isn’t a bad omen.”

Oh if only I could have talked to Cosmo. It was of course a bad omen. A rather significantly bad omen. There was trouble in River City and pool wasn’t even invented yet. The organizers were using the others to make their own lives more comfortable and as if that wasn’t bad enough, they were hoarding food, clothing and worst of all sex! The men were becoming increasingly possessive of their women and began forbidding them to satisfy the fat organizers. It was at that point in evolution that women realized that they could use their bodies and abilities as bargaining tools. The promise of some sex got them things they wanted and helped them to control the men. Some women went as far as to offer unusual sexual acts to organizers in exchange for more meat, or some nice animal skin coats. Sex had become as much a commodity as food was. Maybe even more. But the sad part of it all was how it turned some cave women into possessions. The better and more frequent the sex, the more ownership the man would attempt to have. Some even made their wives have sex with others in exchange for goods. It was a mess. Men began fighting with other men who tried to have sex with their partners. Men became envious of the one with much possessions as they would always have the prettier and more active women. Jealousy turned to anger and eventually carried over cross tribe rivalries as they attempted to steal women from each others clans. The clans began warfare with each other over which clan would get the whole enchilada. They began to form borders and set up fences to keep other out, and their women in. The warring evolved into raiding in which clans would steal and ravage not only the women, but the amassed stockpiles of food. In one such raid one clan had been run clear out of it homes so the thieves could steal at will. Some yeast had been inadvertently left out on a counter and was knocked into a tub of juice. Believing the juice to be ruined the raiders left the juice, and only the juice behind. When the clan finally returned they had nothing left but said juice. The leader of the clan spoke. “ Julia they have taken everything except this gnarly juice on the counter and we are all thirsty. We have nothing left but ourselves, our kids, and some fermented juice. What are we to do?” Julia was of course the resourceful wife of Ernesto so she took a sip of the juice and smiled. “Holy shit Ernesto, this juice ain‘t half bad. Not to mention it makes me feel just kind of, I don’t know, happy. Maybe not happy but more like I know everything sucks but I don’t care.” Ernesto noticed a dull looking stare in her eyes and a weird smile. He took a long swig and wiped hi lips. “You’re right Julia this juice kicks ass. And I feel that buzz sensation too.” The kids were whining and complaining and Ernesto was on his everlasting last nerve. He drank some more of the juice and yelled at his children, “Stop all the whining kids, and have some of this.” The whole clan drank well into the evening with nary a whine With a little prompting from Cosmo a thought struck Julia like a thunderbolt from the not yet made up god Thor. She shared her divine plan with her mate. “Honey, what if we trade some of this juice for what we lost. We can call it Ernesto and Julias jug whine. We can get all sorts of crap for this delightful beverage.” An on this day, trade, commerce, and industry were born. People began buying and selling, and drinking and laughing and even in the face of defeat, many had smiles thanks to the magic beverage. The side effects however, were a different story entirely.

It seemed that some of the people were unable to hold their juice very well, and numerous fights broke out, and numerous bad decisions were made, and numerous clan relationships began to suffer. The Cradle of Civilization was getting down and dirty drunk on Ernesto and Julia’s jug whine. Some couldn’t get enough of the magic juice, some started making their own, and of course the organizers figured out ways to mass produce the juice using the others to do the work. Once they had made enough, they locked in the inventory room. Then they gathered all the grapes used to make the juice. Now they had all of the juice and no one had grapes top make more. They decided to raise the trader cost of the juice. The very first system of government emerged. Anarchy!

TBC

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Laughter Is Far More Than Mere Medicine

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J.T. Hilltop

It’s a running joke. No, I’m not talking about the potential candidates running for president constantly flaunting of their assholiness, what I mean is laughter being the best medicine. Although I must admit some of the ranting of those running for president are far more ridiculous than any slapstick routines I’ve seen. The bottom-line is more than just a venue in Greenwich Village with popular acts, the bottom line is that the most creative, concise, profound, and just plain sensible information about life, love, and politics have come by way of brilliant comedians.

 

It started with Lenny Bruce, although admittedly I’m too young to have seen his act live I certainly have learned much about censorship and abuse of power from Lenny. But the first comedian who really made sense as well as developing my sense of humor was a big fan and learned much of his craft from Mr. Bruce. George Carlin. From the Hippy Dippy weatherman to the brightest funnyman who ever shed light on social and political issues in a way in which we could all understand. George Carlin not only made me laugh, yes out loud long before lol was a thing, but he also helped put so much more into perspective in a way which I personally could relate to. George helped me to understand my nagging sense of spiritual emptiness as well as my frustration with authority figures, ie Washington DC. Through his brilliant use of comedic perspective George Carlin shed an enlightening perspective and helped me to sort out my life issues with a hint of sarcasm and a ton of laughter. Thank you for the medicine George, much of what you said still rings true in so many hearts.

 

When George passed away a deep chasm of a void needed filling. His humor was so sustainable because unlike many jokers who tell the same jokes in different ways (sort of like reporters asking a set of questions that sound eerily similar to the first one they asked) his humor had evolved. But the void remained, thankfully to be filled in from an alien from outer space, Mork from Ork. Robin Williams was the next comedian to enter my little world with a handful of laughter medicine. Different from George but equally as talented and funny. Robin taught me that living my life in an improv format was okay as long as I kept my perspectives. The main difference for me was that Robin was equally adept at playing dramatic roles, but none the less his humor not only comforted me but it also helped to validate the social and political issues I had developed from following Mr. Carlin. The recent tragedy of losing Robin hit hard on a number of levels not the least of which was his ability to rise above his inner demons for as long as he did through the use of laughter.

 

With Robin gone another huge void had been created. The next laugh man I latched onto for medicinal joking was Jon Stewart. Jon had transcended social issues to a completely new level, delving ever deeper into politics and the disgusting hypocrisy and corruption while brining it to light in a serious way via his brilliant comedic outlook on life. As a note of accomplisment Jon Stewart was incredibly significant in the passing of the 911 first responders bill to make sure they have medical coverage. It absolutely astounds me that a single person on Capitol Hill needed to be shamed into voting for the heroes that answered the call on the darkest days our country has see3n in modern history but then again, congress are humorless jokes. Jon went up and down the corridors of the building with some responders having to shame them into agreeing to even put the bill to a vote which only strengthens my position that comedians should have more influence on social and political issues. I compare Jon to Johnny Carson on two levels. One I remember my father, despite leaving early for work in the morning never missing The Tonight Show and laughing so loud it often woke me up. I would later learn that Johnny Carson was dishing out the daily social news stories with his own brand of humor. But more than that, Jon Stewart like John Carson before him kick started the careers of many a comedian, the most notable in Jon’s case Steven Cobare, or more pretentiously, Cobert pronounced Cobare. Using incredible wit combined with profound wisdom, both of these jokers are able to place today’s issues in an understandable if not always humorous way.

 

There have been other laugh makers that helped shape the social and political landscapes, Monty Python, Prime Time Players, Second City among others. All have helped us to not only make sense of a complicated world, but to be able to laugh at the same time. It’s ridiculously hard to remain sad or angry while we’re laughing. That’s why I stand by the statement laughter is the best medicine. I will however admit, that some substances make the laughter even funnier, but these are humor additives not humor itself even if they sometimes make us laugh without understanding why we are laughing.

 

In conclusion, in a recent election in Brazil an actual clown, not clown in the sense of those running for president in the US, Tiririca, was elected to Brazilian Congress. Notably he too is a Republican but perhaps its not the same in Brazil as it is here. In summation, maybe it’s time we form an independent political party and load it up with doctors of comedy who can administer the medicine we all need these day, laughter….

PEACE

 

The War On Christmas Is Supposed To Start On A Friday

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J.T. Hilltop

Despite commercial attempts at decking the halls the day after Halloween the holiday of Christmas is under siege again. Perhaps I shouldn’t call it the holiday of Christmas or I may be accused of being indoctrinated into the war and I am after all a pacifist. But it’s war that has already begun, a bit too early as everything seems to these days. The 2015 War On Christmas. This year the first battle lines were drawn very early and quite decisively with the shot of espresso heard round the world when a plain red cup surreptitiously entered the holiday fray with a social media bang! Excluding snowmen, snowflakes or other such holiday emblems was a clear violation of Geneva Holiday laws not to mention a huge slap in the face to Parson Brown in the meadow who‘s face it was rumored to be the snowman on last years cups. Be that as it may the red cups of coffee have declared war on Christmas on a Tuesday! History dictates the annual war on Christmas is always declared on a Friday. The Friday after Thanksgiving to be more accurate, a day of non denominational salebrations. Rumors of its beginnings in Central America are without merit as is evidenced in the spelling of the rumored cry in and around the Isthmus of Panama, “It’s time to keep the Isthmus in Christmas” So how did the Christmas Wars begin? Did some puppet regime take Christ out of Christmas? Maybe some green monster ripped off all of the Whoville presents under the Christmas/Holiday tree. Or was it far more devious a plot to inject commercialism into Christmas. Let’s let History be the judge..

 

 

It was a cold and breezy day with wind gusts that snickered sarcastically at all the revelers waiting on the eternally long lines. The aggressors had left the comfort of their turkey dinner to cash in on the huge sales. Like the proverbial (not from the book of proverbs) carrot before the horse a promise dangles motivating the troops into leaving behind the safety and love of family to trot happily towards the big screen TV’s advertised all week. Time was ticking down inside the stores as the front lines, the frightened first line of defense prepared for the invasion by making final checks on the store shelves and cashier stations. The manager bellowed out a warning, “Five minutes to opening!” Those four simple words sent shivers across the entire group of employees working this evening. Most if not all had left a traditional gathering of their tribal units to save their low paying jobs which would surly be in jeopardy had they not accepted the challenge of the upper management, to be working on Thanksgiving eve. But a far sinister force had already altered their destinies as they laid out their plan.

General and CEO Grinch surveyed his troops via a closed circuit television inside his very upscale warm and safe abode. His voice reverberated over the expensive audio system, “There is a day of celebration that the little people call “Thanksgiving”. The mass of sales hungry insignificant sheep claim it’s a day of unity in which they offer thanks to all they believe to have given them. Nothing is given to anyone, you have to work for it. Ladies and Gentleman the mindless followers about to invade our store maintain that this holiday is without any religious requirements but you and I both know that is a lie. All they want is to have the best and most presents under their religious tree’s and its up to us not to disappoint. We will prey on their faith in the brotherhood of savings. It is a day in which they wine and dine themselves into a state of numbness after consuming alcohol and tryptophan while watching a brutal display of small armies fighting over the real estate of what they refer to as a “football field”. This only enhances enough testosterone from both male and female viewers to whip them into a feeding frenzy for us, the corporate armies of America. We will tantalize them with the promise of huge sales and insane savings which is the force that drives our enemies, the believers in Christmas presents. We shall put everything in red and green and decorate all the halls from here to Montezuma with festive holiday greetings, bells, holly, and wreaths while calling them holiday decorations which will divide the army. Divide and conquer people! While they bicker and feud between the proper greeting to use we can convert that ridiculous energy into a desire to save. A perfect deception causing them to spend far more than anticipated in a misguided attempt to make this the best Christmas or eh, holiday ever. So be ready, today the war on Christmas will commence on this day of November 27th, Black Friday, a day that will live on in infamy.”

Black Friday. That’s how history will retell this tragic day. Technically the corporate armies have pushed back the beginning to Thursday nights, the actual day called Thanksgiving but history will remember it as Black Friday. It will be a brutal battle in which patrons will stampeded, push, punch, and bite each other over sales regardless of their religion. In the name of Christmas sales the Christian soldiers would be licking and nursing their multiple wounds suffered during the mêlée of Christmas sales surreptitiously projected as “Holiday Sales” designed to include non Christians into the time of sharing and giving which will surely infuriate the soldiers of Christianity while lining the pockets of the corporate soldiers of fortune. Many a front line sale hunting warrior has met defeat while screaming “I don’t care what you Say, its Merry Christmas, not Happy Holidays before being trampled by sale hungry enthusiasts who care nothing about anything that does not relate to at least 50% off.

Oh sure, others have already waged the war of words on television blaming mainstream media for only reporting on the acts of kindness that need no religious declarations and ignoring the fact that the holiday is the sole possession of just one religion in particular. Tragically it matters not when you take into account it’s not a crime federal or even a misdemeanor to use either Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays as a friendly greeting of choice. To the soldiers poised for hours in front of a store to capitalize, yes that’s right, capitalize as in Capitalism, to beat their once loved neighbor into submission in the name of the final flat screen TV‘s all the niceties can commence at a more convenient time. Any cheek turning during sale battles will get a kicking tonight. Move the fuck over you pagan scum, there is a Christmas sale on! Fuck you you elitist piece of shit, it’s a goddamm holiday sale you moronic nincompoop. Who’s to say? A Chanukah sale? Kwanza spectacular? Christmas present special? Do the sales pertain to Agnostics or Atheists? Or is it exclusively a Christmas sale? Nay say the corporate gods, it’s a holiday sale. And why not? We accept monetary denominations from all denominations.

From a strictly nostalgic point of view a dark day was upon us. A one time spectacular day when the family together watched Macy‘s Parade, March Of The Wooden Soldiers, and the traditional football game while the home filled up on the wafting aroma of roasting turkey flesh had been changed forever. A day in which Dad, the head of the household stood poised with a large carving knife prepared to slice up the treasure, the huge turkey carcass on the only day of the entire year that was a day in which we all called peace on all worlds to merely express gratitude and celebrate family. It has forever been misconstrued to a day when children leave the serenity of a happy nested family dinner immediately after pie for a full contact no holds barred live global conflict of penny pinching uncaring attitudes to find the best sale at the cost of harming if necessary even an elderly grandmother. And why not if she attempted to outwit one in an either holiday or Christmas sale. Sanity broke down and the war on Christmas would escalate the very next Monday, cyber Monday!

Those reading this in the future may find this laughable, an actual war on Christmas which was a single day when it first began, but they would be ill informed not to understand how derisive a simple greeting had become. “I’m unarmed, I come in peace” may seem so common sense it couldn’t possibly have not existed forever, (No you sales nuts, not Forever 21) but there was a time when some asshole Americans actually fought a war over using the greeting Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas. It was a deep philosophical rift, with one side insisting that to say Merry Christmas offended their very existence while others insisted that unless everyone said Merry Christmas it was somehow an insult to an entire religion. If only their Gods, their Jesuses, their prophets (not profits), and Santa Clauses had had the chance to admonish them all for their foolishness we may have been able to get through a holiday (yes that’s right, Christmas is a day, Holidays are group of days in which goodwill used to be the main component) season without hating. But then again, maybe that’s what religion means to some of us, not love one another but to show our hatred to anyone not like us. There are many accounts of people so small they needed to put others down to escalate themselves to match the splendor of their twisted ego‘s. It seem that just like being a Vegan, everyone who insists that it can only be Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays seem to have a driving need to let everyone else in the world know that “I don’t care, I say Merry Christmas, not Happy Holidays” or vice versus. Go ahead say whatever, give me a greeting filled with love not words or terms. I’m happy to get any kind of a kind greeting, even a simple Whats up Dude, just don’t laud your choice over me like it somehow makes you superior. It doesn’t. Spread love not anger, and have a great friggen holiday no matter who or what you are…… Love, Peace, and more Love………

 

DIVIDED HOME

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divide

 

 

My mom always hoped I’d make something of myself and had her “list of idea’s” of what I could be. I doubt being an inmate at Rikers Island was even on the list yet it was a remarkably easy goal to achieve. Sorry Mom. But anyway I’m a product of my old boy, my Dad, a working class martini drinking, advice giving, home owner with a white picket fence and a two car garage used for storage. Most families had 2.5 kids which, if my algebra and biology lessons are correct is actually impossible, but my old man bucked the odds by having six kids all of which it turned out were boys. The starting lineup for a hockey team if we could skate. However, I would never make it in any sport. I guess you could say I’m the typical suburban failure. I was the youngest off those boys and my destiny was laid out at birth. I was mom and dads last hope at having a daughter so I came out of my womb a prepaid disappointment. An unwanted middle class kid in a town built on the hopes of a generation that survived World Wars and the great depression and were required to remind us about that at every opportunity. They fled the concrete jungles for a promise of a utopian society. Suburbia, the enchanted land just outside the reach of urban decay my parents grew up in where they could dream of an ideal future. They dreamed of having a girl and I totally fucked up their dream.

I didn’t have to be a constant source of disappointment if they just let me be who I was from the beginning. I’m a cook at a restaurant and love it which the folks could never understand. I did far better in school than my dumb ass older brothers so mom decided I would be a doctor or a lawyer. Dad wanted me to be a football star because I played with the older kids on account of my brothers but I hated sports. Maybe I hated them on purpose to further add to pops disillusionments for me but I would never attain any of the goals they set for me. I wanted to be a romantic, a poet, maybe an actor, or even just a chef. But I fell in with a crowd of buddies who only wanted to be rebel outlaw bikers so all the hopes and dreams mommy and daddy had for me went floating down the sewer system on two wheels where rats are king. That’s me, King Rat, the badass boy from Levittown. I earned my street stripes from shoplifting at the mall, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer, and being ready to rumble at the drop of a hat. Ready to fight over just about anything, even making up reasons to kick some ass. If you looked up teenage angst in the dictionary you’d find a picture of me and my crew. Suburban heroes, rebels without causes. But in truth we were suburban hoods, wannabes, not bona fide outlaws, just angry young teens looking to make sense of this so called utopian land that treated us so unfair. The suburbs, the new frontier of the fifties. Land of conformity. So all I can say is why me? Why the fuck am I sitting in a cell at Rikers Island feeling sorry for myself just because I grew up in a divided home?

Let me clear that up a bit, when I say divided home I don’t mean my parents split up, no no no. They had a fine marriage, but we had little money and one shitty loaf of bread and a pound of bologna had to be divided up between six kids and two parents. Yea, Pops wasn’t the thickest branch on his family tree, probably because he spent more time screwing mom and having kids than climbing any corporate ladders, so he only brought home enough bacon for a family of four that Moms had to stretch for a family of eight. So with Dad’s mediocre salary and a bunch of hungry kids we had to divide absolutely everything. There was never any seconds at dinner, sometimes I didn’t even get firsts. Being the youngest of six overactive boys I was at the bottom of the food chain. The wildebeest of the dinner table hoping to have enough time to graze a few morsels before the stampede. That’s how shit got divided. I ate dinner in like five minutes, wolfing it down before any of the older wolves finished and started to pick from my plate. We weren’t poor, just divided. I lived in a room divided by imaginary boundary lines set up by three older brothers, leaving me trapped in the crappiest real estate of a four bed suite the same size as a normal kids single room. Maybe that helped me cope with my current situation of sharing tight quarters with three other guys. Or maybe Mom and Dad were preparing me for my destiny but that’s what I mean by divided family.

Doesn’t matter, you play the hand your dealt and make the best of it. I was dealt the lowest card on the totem pole so I did whatever I had to do to get noticed, to be heard over the raging hormones of my big brothers. Johnny was the oldest so he got the benefit of being first in line. The newest clothes, the biggest dinner portions, and a monopoly on Dads time. Brian, or Legs was the next in line, the tall athletic son who used up whatever pride Pops had leftover from Johnny because he played sports. Jimmy, Bob, and Danny shared the middle child status where they existed in relative obscurity and devoted much of their time to teasing me or kicking my ass just for kicks. And holy shit could they kick! They happily and democratically divided that chore up pretty evenly. And then at the end of the line, at the bottom of the barrel came me, a virtual omnipresent bruise. Apparently when I was born the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck so I came out of the womb all blue. It earned me the envious nickname “Blueboy” which everyone called me for so long I’m not sure if anyone remembered my real name, Thomas. But that’s me with a nickname that stuck like Beaver Cleaver. Blueboy O’Brian, destined to a life of crime for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just glad they didn’t call me O’Blueboy.

 

Levittown wasn’t a particularly tough town as far as suburban towns go, but it was a town where appearance was everything. Parents spent more money on giving the appearance of being well off than they did feeding or clothing their kids. Like half the kids around town we starved so the family could drive around in a new big Chrysler and dress in high suburb fashion. Us angry teens on the other hand didn’t give a shit about looking rich we only cared about how tough we were, like the street gangs of the big city. Another disadvantage for me, Blueboy was not the toughest nickname around but what could I do, it has always stuck. One benefit was having a nickname, because everyone who was anyone had a nickname. My best friends were Red, Snots, and Digger. Red with a full head of bright orange curls, Snots with his ever runny nose, and Digger, the braniac who tried top dig a whole in his back yard all the way to China so he could run away. When I really think about it none of them that much better than Blueboy, but no matter, we were who we were and we were four young lads with tough ass nicknames preparing for an island adventure. Rikers Island.

We started out our lives of crime on a small scale, just selling a little weed here and there and reselling some stolen items from the mall. But we were hungry for more. Digger had a BB gun and Red had an idea. We planned to rob a Dairy Barn Store in Bayside Queens. It sounded brilliant, Dairy Barns were isolated drive up stores that sold basically dairy items, but you could also buy cigarettes, soda’s, just about anything you might find at a 7/11 store. We would drive up in Slots Rambler and Red would hold the BB gun on the dude inside the store. Me and Digger would run into the store and grab anything we could sell while the unsuspecting cashier would relieve the cash register of its contents into a bag and casually hand it to Red. I sensed trouble right at the start. The Cashier looked at Red and said, “That ain’t nothing but a damn BB gun boy.” Red was quick on his feet, “Oh yea? You want I should shoot out one of your eyes with this high powered BB gun? Why don’t you just shut the fuck up and put the money from the cash register in a bag there and hand it over.” The cashier didn’t look very impressed as he pointed to a sign that said “Store under surveillance” about the same time Slott’s Rambler stalled out. I tripped as I entered the store and Digger fell on top of me. “There’s a camera right here you assholes. Who the fuck thinks robbing a Dairy Barn is a smart idea? You assholes are going down.”

Slotts tried in vain to get his car running, Digger and I scrambled to our feet and the dark of evening soon became drenched in flashing red and blue lighting. About that time I thought I probably shouldn’t have brought the bag of weed with me while committing a crime. “Put your weapon down and your hands up!” Red dropped the BB gun to the ground, Digger peed his pants, and Slotts finally got his car started and in a panic hit the accelerator while putting it in drive slamming into the fence four feet in front of him. We would eventually be tagged as “The gang that couldn’t drive straight” by the local newspapers but for now we just learned a few new legal terms. Intent, transference, and armed robbery

 

So anyway, that’s how I landed this all expense paid trip to the Island to include housing. I have three roommates. They look mean and nasty but I think they’re all nice guys deep down. Theres Shredder here who I assume works in an office, and Knuckles, who I’m a bit unsure of. The real big guy over there calls himself “Hammer” and he calls me Blue Balls instead of Blueboy which he thinks is hilarious. Tell you the truth I don’t really mind that…..”YO BLUE BALLS. GET ON OVER HERE ITS HAMMER TIME!”…oh, gotta go, that’s Hammer now. My culinary knowledge and training suggests he wants me to teach him how to make pie crust. Why else would he have brought such a large jar of Crisco with him? Until next time guys, peace out.

Blueboy O’Brian