IMMORAL CUNTS FOR CHRIST

Im often asked, mostly by the pious, what happened to me to make me despise religion so much. Its difficultperhaps impossiblefor them to conceive of the notion that I simply dont care for their teachings. How much irrational bullshit can a human being who doesnt measure himself as the sum of his own obedience stomach in the name of a faceless deity whose existence has never been demonstrated to even the slightest degree? The theist line of reasoning goes a bit like this: 1.) The creator is on our side because our book of absolute truth says so, and we know our book is accurate because it says in our book of absolute truth that our creator said that our book of absolute truth is accurate. 2.) The creator is the only barometer of morality in the universe. 3.) Even if you disagree with us, shut your heathen mouth and follow our moral directives because those who dont believe in God have no right to criticize him or his followers. The third one is what really gets me. Theists act as if it is the place of atheists to keep silent and let them believe what they believe, entirely unimpeded. After all, religion is the source of morality! NEWSFLASH TO THEIST FUCKWITS: Letting your daughter die of cervical cancer because you were afraid that the vaccine would make her promiscuous is immoral. Teaching kids that condoms dont work and that only abstinence will prevent STDs (bad) and pregnancy (worse) is immoral. Suicide bombings are immoral. Tax exempt status for religious institutions with massive political and social influence is immoral. Denying a person medical treatment because your God doesnt believe in medicine is immoral. Bombing abortion clinics is immoral. Putting religious laws in front of a courthouse where everyone is supposed to be treated fairly is immoral. Telling people what they can and cannot do with/to their own bodies is immoral. Denying people of different sexual preferences the ability to enter into the same social arrangements as everyone else is immoral. Slavery is immoral. Going to the third world to indoctrinate those living in abject poverty is immoral. Genocide of those whose invisible cloud king wears a different set of boxers than yours is immoral. Crashing aircraft into buildings because your sexually repressed ass has been told that heaven is swarming with cherry-intact cunt to fuck is immoral. The idea that a woman is worth of a man is immoral (its closer to 2/3rds). No tits on TV is, if not immoral, at least really fucking lame. Religion is where we get our morals from? Why then, at the root of every inhuman act of cowardice and degradation do we find a Bible or a Quran? Why then, is the justification behind the sum of all evils, when boiled down to the naked essentials, God said so? Why then did the Nazi soldiers where the words Gott Mit Uns (GOD WITH US) on their belt buckles as they tossed Jews, gypsies and homosexuals into gas chambers to writhe and scream and choke and gasp and die? These are important questions, are they not? The perpetual inability of theists to satisfactorily answer these and other important questions leads me to the conclusion that a theist claiming that God is the source of all morality is akin to a dictator telling you that a nuclear arsenal is the root of all peace. The next time a theist tells you that you are trying to destroy morality, do not for a moment deny it! Instead, tell them that if their idea of morality is the garbage found in their religious texts, then you are proud to be among those working to put an end to their morals. Inform them that you believe not in God and his dark morality of guilt, suffering and repentance, but in a human morality with the virtues of happiness, justice and prosperity. Then, for good measure, tell them to go fuck themselves.

A DANGEROUS IDEA?
A friend and mentor once asked the people: is there such thing as a dangerous idea? My answer: Abso-fucking-lutely. The idea that we were created by a supreme being who can reward or punish our behavior as he sees fit and that we are aware of his nature is a dangerous idea. Some would argue that if we admit that Christianity and Islam are dangerous ideas, then we have to admit that Greek mythology is a dangerous idea, a notion that anyone would dismiss as patently absurd. However, in the days when the stories of Zeus and his brood were not taken as stories, but as true accounts of beings of extraordinary power, those ideas were dangerous. The stories arent dangerous today, simply because no one believes them. A popular idea among religious apologists is that religion is inherently good, but that evil men use it to evil means. They look upon those piles of bodies that religion has left in its wake and say, Religion was twisted into this! Thats not what God is supposed to be about! God is supposed to be about sunshine and bumblebees and glitter and rainbows! My God would never do this sort of thing! Forget about Lady MacBeth! These assholes think a weak little chorus of thats not what I believe is all that it takes to get their hands clean. Sorry, you degenerate jerk-offs, you dont get off the hook that easy. Belief in God has inarguably led to many times the number of deaths that the atomic weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did, but can you imagine anyone talking about atomic weapons the same way that they talk about religion? Well, in the right hands the bomb is a tool for peace and love, its only when its misused that bad things happen. The truth is that religions, like those bombs, are only good at creating carnage. But religion brings people together! Yeah. So what? The Ku Klux Klan brings people together too. That doesnt make it a great, morally upstanding organization. NAMBLA brings people together, doesnt it? Let them have a few kids! What the big deal? New studies show that most 6-year-olds like a dick in their ass! As far as Im concerned, people are better off apart. Togetherness is vastly overrated. The next time you hear togetherness extolled as a great virtue, gently remind the person blathering that nonsense that they are a filthy communist and that, as of yet, no single person acting on their own has ever committed genocide, unless you count Gargamels efforts to wipe out the Smurfs. But religion gives money to charity! Poor people need food, clothing and shelternot bibles. One thing is for sure to anyone who has ever seen the inside of Mother (Fucking) Teresas Home For The Dying in Calcuttathe money wasnt being used to help the sick. Maybe it went to buying more statues for the popes house over in Rome. Pat Robertson collects sports cars. Jerry Falwell died a rich man. Church charity is not charity, unless you consider the man at the pulpit with the huge hardon for the boys in the choir to be needy. The only this he really needs is a prison sentence not for raping the boys, mind you. Thats the least of his crimes. He should be arrested for exploiting the terminally gullible. But . . . But nothing. Fuck off.

CHRISTIANS ARE STUPID, EVIL, CHILD-ABUSERS.

According to the Bible, God created the Earth in six days. According to calculations by Charles Lineweaver and Daniel Grether at the University of New South Wales there are about 100 billion stars with planets in our Galaxy. That means that, with 100 billion galaxies in the known universe, there are at least 10 trillion planets out there. Do you see where Im going with this? How did a God who took six days to create our pathetic little planet do the same trick 10 trillion times since then? It would have taken God 60 trillion days to create every planet in the universe. Thats 164,383,561,643 years of worth work, give or take a few months. From the genealogies found in the Bible, Christian scholars have deduced that the Earth is between six and ten-thousand years old. Well, says the ever crafty fundie, maybe God created those other planets first, to prepare the universe for us! Nice try, christsucker. In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth. Genesis 1:1 That doesnt prove anything! further protests our missing link between man and tree stump, It says he created the heaven first. The heaven could include those planets. Heaven is a place of unending bliss, remember? If those planets were part of Gods heaven, then going to Heaven would be as easy as building the USS Enterprise. Translation error! But . . . TRANSLATION ERROR! JESUS DIED FOR YOUR SINS! Ah, translation errorsthe last refuge of a thoroughly defeated Christian. When you hear the words translation error, pat yourself on the back. Youve just won. Every argument with a fundamentalist Christian goes through six basic steps. 1.Atheist challenges scripture. 2.Theist defends scripture. 3.Atheist refutes defense. 4.Theist makes statement about the glory of Christ and his dying for our sins. 5.Atheist continues to press original issue. 6.Theist claims a translation error. I dont recommend pressing the issue beyond step six for a reason that is exactly one word long: Salem. Dont think theyd hesitate to kill you. These are the same people who still support Bush and the war in Iraq. They have no moral qualms about purging the world of sinners. In fact, they have no morals at all. Nothing bears this out better than the psychological, and in many cases physical, torture that they inflict upon their own children. Let me ask you a question (You cant answer or argue! God, I love this medium!): Why the fuck is it legal to tell toddlers that they could go to Hell? Dont get me wrong. There exist few bigger freedom fans than me. The first amendment to the constitution guarantees all people in the United States freedom of religion, without government interference. To my way of thinking, passing a law against teaching your children about your religion is

unconstitutional. Aside from that, there is a limit to how much I am willing to meddle with the upbringing of any child. Most child-rearing decisions belong to parents, plain and simple. However, children are not property. They are human beings who should be extended a certain degree of individual rights. Modern society does not allow parents to beat their children, despite the bibles endorsement of corporal punishment. While I dont necessarily agree that all spanking should be illegal, I think that the vast majority of people would agree that there is a line that should not be crossed. Parents do not have to right to mangle their childrens bottoms (or any other part of them), regardless of what their holy texts might say about it. The action of beating ones children is illegal. Doing it in the name of God is no less illegal. Now imagine the psychological abuse of being taught from an age before your reasoning faculties are developed, that if you do not obey the doctrines of a religion that you have no hope of understanding, you will burn in a pit of unfathomable torment where demons will gnaw at every centimeter of your flesh and the unimaginable heat of fire too hot to comprehend will drag multi-pronged dagger-tongues across your soul until the end of time. I see that as being worse than a beating in the long run. You might as well just hand the kid a rifle and point him to the nearest bell tower. So, why do we allow it? I cant think of a good reason. Wed never allow a parent to tell their child, If you dont obey me, I will pull out all of your teeth with an old pair of pliers and fuck your mouth! so why do we allow, If you dont obey God (me), youll go to a land of eternal torment to writhe in agony for infinities upon infinities! If you remove the sacred cow status of religion for a moment and look at the situation objectively, Im sure you wont be able to answer the following question. Who does more damage to a child: a one-time rapist or a parent who teaches them that if theyre not good theyll burn in hell forever? Whatever your answer, Im willing to bet that you actually had to stop to think about it.

CONVERSION COUNTER: 0 AND STEADY

I once remarked that converting a Christian to atheism is like changing the label on a jar of pickled dog turds. I stand by that statement. Many Atheists give oblivious credence to the notion that an imbecilic theist will, once converted to atheism, transform into the most brilliant of brights, the most spectacular of secularists, the apotheosis of atheistic intellectual integrityand other such corny alliterations. The sad truth is that a shit-for-brains who thinks that Papa Smurf in the sky is watching his every move with unwavering concern will, if converted (or deconverted, if you prefer) to atheism, become a shit-for-brains who thinks that books are a nifty decoration. Youll not improve such a personif anything, youll make him worse. Consider, for a moment, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the shooters at Columbine High School. They were as atheistic as I am, but they embraced the dogmatism of the thoroughly debunked idea of Social Darwinism (which should rightly be called Social Spencerism). They managed to convince themselves that their shootings were, in some way, natural selection. If theyd been Christians, they might have killed for Jesus. Instead, they were Atheists, and they killed for Nietzsche and Darwin. Thats not progress by any definition of the word that I would embrace. I WARN YOU FURTHER: In an atheist world, atheism will no longer be a badge of intellectual prowess. Those of you who revel in your elitism now may well find yourself clutching at straws to justify your worth in the secular utopia of your fondest dreams. And who will we do intellectual battle with? Each other? I know we say that, but is it really what we desire? In your little black hearts cant you admit, if only to yourselves, that its a lot more fun using your vast intellect to anally rape the cognitively deficient than it is rationally discussing ideas with your equals? I suppose we can always argue with the social Darwinistsbut as far as pseudo-sciences created solely to justify the actions of the powerful against the powerless go, intelligent design will never be topped. It will always hold that special place in our hearts, wont it? Wont you look back on the pwnage of those imbeciles and smile? I know I will. I imagine myself in the old atheists home, sitting in my rocking chair, being blown by holographic teenagers while robot nurses pump apple-sauce down my throat through little grey tubes. Atop my nightstand Ill have a little scrapbook of all the believers I ever crushed in one-sided, totally unfair debates. Ill look at their pictures and Ill laugh myself to sleep each night, but inside Ill be crying. Without religion, there is no religion to destroy. Our victory is our defeat.

ISLAM IS LAME
YOU THINK YOU HAVE BALLS? I WOULD CHOP YOUR HEAD OFF YOU PATHETIC FAT SHIT. YOU ATHEIST BASTARDS HAVE DESTROYED THIS WORLD WITH YOUR EVOLUTION THEORY, SAYING LIFE IS MATTER OF CHANCE. THAT IS WHY THEIR IS DEPRESSION AND SUICIDE BECAUSE ATHEIST LIFE IS BASE ON PERFORMANCE. IF I MET YOU I WOULD DO ALLAH SWIFT HONOR AND THE UMMAH HONOR OF CHOPPING YOUR HEAD OFF AND DRAINING YOUR BLOOD! KEEP HIDING BEHIND YOUR COMPUTER! COME TO ENGLAND AND SAY THAT TO MY FACE AND I WILL STAB YOU UP, YOU PIG HONKY. LOL. MuhammadFaysalNawa, Youtube User (abysmal spelling and punctuation has been corrected) FUCK YOU, racist fucking kafir! I wish I could chop your fucking head off you fat fuck! Islam OWNS YOU, bitch! islamistic123, Youtube User (abysmal spelling and punctuation has been corrected) Hey, man, why you are insulting Islam? This is a very big thing! You had better back off these shitty things or you are a dead man, I swear to God. karimsaber123 , Youtube User (abysmal spelling and punctuation has been corrected) The religion that talks the most about forgiveness is the most unforgiving, so it should come as no shock to anyone that the one that talks the most about peace is the most violent. Ive spent a good chunk of my life mocking Christianity and only the last few months expanding my interests to Islam as well. Ive received more death threats from those Muslims in the last few months than I have from Christians in the last 10 years. Honestly, violence doesnt bother me much. If someone wants to punch me in the teeth for pissing all over their notions of how the world works, I consider that a work hazard. I know full well that if I poke a few hornets nests, Im going to get stung every now and then. Ill even have a beer with the asshole that did it later (and draw penises on him when he passes out), because Im a good sport. But I dont think I should have to worry about the proximity of my head to my body just because I like to create insulting depictions of the prophet Muhammad. My head and my neck are good friends. I even like to think of them as inseparable. I hope some proponents of the religion of peace dont prove that assumption false.

CHILDRENS LETTERS TO SATAN

deer satan, we lernt in sundae scool that u r evul. why come r u evul? signed, billy Dear Billy, What the fuck is a sundae school? Do they teach you to make sundaes there? Are you going to attend Baskin-Robbins Tech when you grow up? Seriously, Im glad your being instructed in how evul I ambut maybe your parents should spend a little less time pumping your head full of that stupid nonsense and a little more time teaching you how to spell. Im almost surprised that you managed your own name. To answer your question, Im evil because all the good guys like your Sunday school teacher are dicks who indoctrinate children to ensure that their collection plates stay full well into the next generation. Your Pal In Hell, Satan ***** Dear Satan, I dont get it. If youre in charge of Hell and you want people to sin, then why is Hell a place of torment? Signed, Susanne Dear Susanne, If you can answer that question than youre a lot smarter than I am. I dont know why I would torture those who take my side in the war against God. The more I sit here and ponder it, the less sense it makes. Why would I incentivise people to turn to God and away from me? It seems like Id be doing much better business if I made Hell a little bit more appealing. Its a little bit embarrassing that a child had to point it out to me, but thanks for doing so. I promise that by the time you get here (you know a girl as analytical as you is going to wind up a Godless atheist heathen) things will be much nicer. Your Friend at the End, Satan *****

dear Stan, YOU are so Stupit to b against god. He will kick you BUTT when the day of Judgmint cames. My mom sed so.

Signed, JED Dear Jed, Ritalin. You need it. First of all, my name is Satan, not Stan. Well, actually, my full name is Beelzebub Lucifer Satanson, but everyone calls me Satan for short. Second of all, God is all-powerful. I cant possibly be against God unless thats what he wills me to do. Why would God be so cruel as to force me to suffer just to have the universe a certain way, you might ask if you were smarterthe answer eludes me. Ever consider the notion that maybe Im not really the one on the evil end of this whole good/evil spectrum? Third of all, are you taking spelling lessons from Billy? Judgmint? Sounds like something they put on your pillow in purgatory. Your Source Of Laughter In The Ever After, Satan ***** Dear Satan, Your horns are cool. Why do you have a pitchfork? Is there hay in hell? I thought you were cool in that stupid Tom Cruise movie where you steal that unicorns horn. Your horns are cooler than a unicorns horn anyway. Your Fan, Jonathan P.S. I like to light things on fire. Is that cool? Dear Jonathan, Thank you. I get far too few compliments on my appearance. The Big Red Guy With A Flame In His Eye, Satan P.S. Fuck yeah. *****

Dear Satan, I just dont see how any of it can be true. You, God, angels, talking snakes, people turning into pillars of saltIve tried and Ive tried, but I just cant believe it. God doesnt answer my letters, so Im trying you as a second resort. Hoping, Chris

Dear Chris, If I didnt exist, then youd have to accept that the bad things in the world are not the fault of an allmalevolent being and that all the good things cant be credited to an all-benevolent one. Are you really willing to accept that? If you are, then these words that you think Im speaking to you know should suddenly just vanish into thin. . . .

FAGGOT
Christian moms and dads, how can you be so cruel? Ive read the letters of your children, you know. They write to me. They trust me, because they can see that Im not going to hate them for some petty difference. Boys and girls13, 14, 15, 16 years old. Old enough to see through your shit, too young to not need your guidance and approval. They cant get it from you. They look at you and see nothing but judgment and tenuous love. Conditional love. How can I receive letters from teenage girls who dont want to be disowned for being atheists without wanting you dead? How many letters can I read from kids who are gay in religious households where fags are sinners who go to the deepest and hottest part of Hell without wishing that each and every last one of you would just do the world a favor and die? How many kids have to wind up with slit wrists so that you can have your grotesque death symbol cross plastered to the back of your Earth-raping SUV? How many lives have to be prematurely squandered before the people realize that whats really going on here is nothing short of a holocaust? Youre killing your own offspring. Youre not putting the guns to their heads yourself, but youre as guilty of their deaths as if you had. So I have to do what you wont and cant. I have to do the job no one else will do and give these kids some glimmer of hope. I have to make them realize that youre not worth spilling tears (or blood) over. I have to teach them to hate you. So, when the day comesand it will comewhen you find yourself saying that I turned your children against you, know that I will not deny it. I will admit it with the greatest pride that I have ever known. Your kids will stand taller than you ever stood and they will burn your book and spit on the ashes. They will fuck who they want, take whatever drugs they want, dress how they want, listen to whatever music they want, and more importantly they will love who they wantand it wont be you.

THE GAY GOD ARGUMENT

This argument isnt going to de-convert anyone, but its fun to use just to watch fundie faces get red: YOU: Does God have to follow the ten commandments? FUNDIE: No. Those are rules laid out for man. So God is allowed to sin? Its not sinning when God does it. Hes above those laws. So God could be a homosexual then. WHAT!? Well, you said that God is above the laws of man, so even though he forbids homosexuality, he can still indulge in it if he so pleases. POSSIBLE RESPONSE #1: Well, I guess so . . . COUNTER: [None needed. Youve won.] POSSIBLE RESPONSE #2: God has no sexuality. COUNTER: But God made us in his image. Are you saying he has reproductive organs but no use for them? POSSIBLE RESPONSE #3: God has no gender, and therefore no sexuality. COUNTER: The bible never makes any reference to Gods androgyny. It clearly categorizes him as male. POSSIBLE RESPONSE #4: FUCK YOU! COUNTER: [resort to violence]

QUESTIONS CHRISTIANS HATE

Why does God desire the affection of vastly inferior beings like us? Its like if you or me demanding to be praised and glorified by ants. If God knows whos going to Heaven and whos going to Hell, then whats the point of all this? If Heaven is so great, why did Satan and a third of the angels rebel against God? If God puts us here on Earth to test us, why does he make the test unfair? A test only makes sense if everyone is given the same test, but every human being is given totally different trials and tribulations. Some people who are Christians who will be saved by God would be Muslims damned to hell if theyd simply been born in a different geographic region. What does your personal comfort have to do with objective truth? How big is Gods dick? (You have to ask this one seriously, demanding an answer as if it were of vital importance.)

HOW TO GET LEFT THE FUCK ALONE

I am vulgar. I think bad thoughts and more often then not I shit them forth from my mouth with all the enthusiasm of an overpaid whore on ecstasy. What's worse, I usually say them when in mixed company, or when speaking to one with fragile ears, and a frail mind in between them. Jaws drop and gasps resound. "Did he really just say what I think he did?" You're damn right he did. And do you know what? He enjoyed it too. It's how I maintain my sanity, and now, with my help, you too can improve the quality of your life by being a dirty foul-mouthed bastard. "How can being grossly offensive improve my life, Amazing Atheist?" God you people ask some dumb fucking questions. Observe my ingenious equation below. People + Life = BAD Life People = TOLERABLE And how do you get rid of people? You can stick dynamite in their asses and paint the walls with their insides . . . which is effective, but illegal and costly. You can poison their coffee, but it tends to be slowand problematic if they drink tea or water or cat piss. The best solution to your people problem is to make your company utterly un-enjoyable by totally offending anyone foolish enough to seek your conversation. "How do I accomplish this feat, Amazing Atheist? I am not clever and witty like you." I know. Don't fret. I'm here to help. There are four basic methods of fucking with peoples stupid heads. 1. The Grumbling Prick Method 2. The "My Life is Shit" Method. 3. The Polite Asshole Method 4. The Amazing Atheist Method THE GRUMBLING PRICK METHOD This method is usually effective on those who want to ask for favors or opinions, and best of all for you dumbfucks, it's so easy that it doesn't even require any brain activity. Basically, you just grumble. Victim: "Hey, AA, can I borrow some salmon?" Me: "Grrrrrrr . . . Flippidyskittlefucker! YOU KNOW NOT MY POWAH!!!" Victim: "What?" Me: "Fraggenrippert shitterpickfork eat nachos in hellzzor!!!" Victim: "Uh. I'll come back later." THE "MY LIFE IS SHIT" METHOD This is the favorite among whiny people who, for the most part, don't even understand that it repels people. Basically, when you are approached by an undesirable, you start whining about everything wrong in your life. If you have a relatively happy life, just make some shit up. The more inane the shit you bitch about, the better. If you bitch about valid things, then your misery is likely to be compellingwhich you

don't want. For instance: Victim: "Hi, TJ!" Me (in depressed voice): "Hi." Victim: "Something the matter? You sound down." Now, this is where you hit them with it. Your response should be inane and whiny. You don't want to compel them. WRONG RESPONSE: "Oh. Nothing much. A serial killer murdered everyone I loved and brutally raped me." That's sure to lead to a lot of consolation that you don't want. RIGHT RESPONSE: "Something the matter? No. EVERYTHING is the matter. I've got a paper cut. My Coke is flat. My Toes hurt. My hands are kind of cold. And to top it all off, people that I hate keep trying to talk to me." THE POLITE ASSHOLE METHOD This method requires more brains than the others, and is the least effective in getting rid of people since many are too thick to even know that they are being insulted. However, this is the best method for those desiring a feeling of superiority to those that they are insulting. You most commonly see this technique used by people who want to insult people who are ridiculous, but have a lot of authority. Basically, you insult them subtly, and make it sound like a compliment. A good sense of irony is needed for this one. Victim: "Do you think that they will ever create a computer with Artificial Intelligence?" Me: I don't think a machine could function on your intellectual level, sir. Victim: Really? Me: Oh yeah. A computer with a brain like yours wouldnt know what to do with itself. THE AMAZING ATHEIST METHOD This is my favorite method, and not just because it's named after me. I won't even bother explaining, because you'd never understand, but I'll give you an example: Victim: "Hi, TJ, do you want to go swimming?" Me: "In your bloody remains maybe." Victim: "Um . . . huh?" Me: "Fuck you, you shriveled scrotum sack!" Victim: "Hey! Fuck you, uh . . . asshole!"

Me: "SUCK THE BALLS OF THE GREAT MONKEY DEMON!" Victim: "Eeeeeeek!" (faints.) "Wow, Amazing Atheist, you sure are the greatest genius to ever live." Yes. And you aren't even worthy of my great wisdom. Anyhow, I'm off to drink the urine of 17 virgin cattle so that I may unlock the secrets of the multiverse and all of its special juicy cosmic-type powers.

HOW TO WRITE A BOOK

This is what writers do. They sit down and write. You don't need a big vocabulary. Hell, you don't even have to have much of anything to say. Most things, after all, will say themselves if you let them. Another thing to remember is that you have to write what you feel like writing; you'll never get anywhere if you write what you think. That's probably why I'm struggling so much with this medium. I'm not a very emotional person. Shit. If I even unlocked the feelings that I know must be somewhere deep inside me (probably near the crotch) I would be better than Shakespeare. Well, not really. But I could be pretty goddamned goodbetter than any of these fucking monkeys that are writing today. That's kind of funny. Isn't that how it always starts? You look at the work of those who are getting paid for something and realize, that's awful! I could do better than that! And that's when the little light bulb manifests out of thin air right above your head. You realize that you've just found your calling. Writing! What could be better? You can remain as lazy as you ever were and never have to go out doors. You can be as ugly as a festering splatter of runny cat shit and still become an internationally recognized celebrity with infinite wealth. Well, actually, most writers make next to nothing and have to hang on to their day jobs to pay the rent, but fuck those guys! You aren't going to be one of those! You're going to be a number one bestseller. Stephen King will beg to suck your dick so that he may achieve an inkling of your tremendous talent by stealing your semen and using it to make a clone of you so that he can steal its inevitably brilliant ideas. You could write a book about your right nut and sell more than J.K. Rowling. That is the extent of your talent. After having had this epiphany, you rush home and break out the old typewriter (PC's are for pussies). After you get the dust out of every crevasse and yank the dead rat out of the roller, youre ready to begin work on your masterpiece. No ideas emerge immediately. You give up and go to sleep saying that you'll try it again tomorrow. The next day you sit, gazing madly at the blank sheet of paper. After a few hours you type an M. You stare it with the attentiveness of a coked-out president peeking in at one of his hot daughters showering through a cracked door (nothing against "good ol' G Dubbya." I aint no terrorist-lover). What the fuck is wrong with that fucking M? Hes just sitting there, looking at you in his smug, smart-ass way. FUCK HIM! You lift the typewriter up and toss it across the room right into your TV set, smashing the screen to smithereens. That's okay, you tell yourself, it is unbefitting a writer such as myself to watch television anyway. You decide that the typewriter approach is outdated. You decide that you need to go buy a brand new PC. Unfortunately, you have no way to pay for it unless you take all the money out the savings account that you've had since you were a little kid and would sell your body to the local sex offender. That's okay though, you're going to be a filthy stinking-ass rich writer soon. Youll show that fucking M! Youll never put him in any of your stories! There wont be any Ms in your stories! No sir! On your way out the door your phone rings. You pick it up. It's your boss wondering where you were all day. You tell him to go fuck himself up the ass with a big, floppy, rubber dick. You hang up the phone and giggle at your cleverness. You feel better all ready. A few hours later, you're back with your brand new, deluxe, limited addition XK-33 with an ultimum 666 processor and a flat-screen monitor. The side of the box reads, THE OFFICIAL COMPUTER OF SATAN. You smile and nod with self-approval at you excellent purchase. You bring it into your work room (formerly called the bathroom) and plug that bad boy in. It explodes into flames and burns down your apartment complex, killing two and injury twenty. You are badly burned, but the paramedics tell you that your insurance has expired. No biggie! The burns don't hurt that much, and you're sure you can sleep at a friends house until you get back on your feet. And tomorrow you can go back to that computer shop and give them Hell! You hop in your car. It won't start. Who cares? Its a nice night for walking anyway.

After a few hours (during which you could not locate one working payphone) you arrive at your friend's apartment. He is not home. You begin to feel a bit angry and decide to mutilate the first person you see. You spot and old granny walking her tiny poodle around the block. The bitch must die! You run after her screaming obscenities at the top of your lungs. Her face contorts in panic and she grabs a Glock .9mm out of her purse. You scream, jump back and try to run, but granny isn't having it! "Thought you could off me, huh? Ya sonuvabitch!" she yells passionately, while unloading two bullets into youone in each butt cheek. You fall to the ground and turn on your side. She uses this opportunity to kick your nuts a few times. Then, as you clutch your balls in pain, her dog mistakes your face for a fire-hydrant. After she leaves, you lie there and pray for death. It doesn't come, but the police do. They arrest you, but it's not such a bad thing. At least you'll get some medical attention, and you'll have plenty of time to write in prison.

HOW TO SEEM SMART

Even though you will, over the course of my numerous lessons, become much smarter than you are now, you'll still be fairly stupid. Which is okay, since advancement in human society is based not on how intelligent you are, but how intelligent you can seem to those handing out social promotions. "I don't understand, Amazing Atheist! BLaaaaaarrGGGHH! Why come is I be so dumb?" It's okay. I'll simplify it for you: You are stupid. The Amazing Atheist is smart. But if you follow his instructions to a T you can at least seem smart to others. Thus, your position in the social hierarchy will rise faster than your dick at the sight of any sort of farm animal. VOCABULARY A timeless method for seeming smarter than you could ever hope to be is to use incredibly complicated language to communicate any task. For example: Concise Language: "My friends and I will go to the store and get some food." 'Genius' Language: "Presently, myself and some acquaintances shall embark upon a journey to the local market in the pursuit of reasonably priced sustenance to sate our appetites in the immediate and for a period of days forthcoming. Sure, people won't understand what you're saying, but you'll seem smart to them because you used lots of really big words. This is because they, like you, are stupid and have no concept as to what actually constitutes intelligence. SILENCE Abraham Lincoln once said, "It is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it up and get your tongue eaten by evil flies." Or something along those lines. Anyhow, the point is this: shut the fuck up. For some reason, people who don't talk much are considered to be intelligent. Perhaps because it is assumed that they are deep in thought about physics or genetic enhancement of the male sexual organ, or whatever it is that smart people think about.* GLASSES Smart people wear glasses. This is a well known fact among anyone who watches TV. If a guy (or gal) wears glasses, let it be known that they are probably capable of building atom bombs using only duct tape and silly putty. If you already wear glasses, great. If you don't, go get some. It is a good idea to get the ugliest possible pair in the store since everyone knows that smart people have no . . . FASHION SENSE BACK AWAY FROM THE DESIGNER BRANDS! From now on you shop at K-mart, where you will buy only the most repulsive clothes that you can find. You need stuff that positively screams, "I AM A GEEK! I'M TOO SMART TO WASTE TIME DRESSING MYSELF LIKE A HUMAN BEING." If you have trouble finding clothes that scream that, record it on a pocket recorder and play it in a continuous loop everywhere you go. THE LAUGH Smart people do not laugh the same way, or at the same things, that other people do. You must perfect a laugh that sounds something like a bat getting butt-fucked by and elephant. This will take time and

practice, and I recommend that you allow yourself to get butt-fucked by an elephant (just once) so that you can get in the proper frame of mind. You don't have to, I suppose. If you do, be sure to take pictures and send them to all the members of your family as well as your classmates/co-workers. Smart people are always doing eccentric things like that, and you will notice a big change in the way people view you. But, I digress. Another important factor is what you laugh at. Things that you find funny now, like Big Mommas House 2, just aren't gonna cut it in the intellectual community. Watch Monty Python and just laugh every time it seems like there was a joke. Eventually you will begin to think that you actually understand the humor and will be able to pick up on smart people jokes in the real world. "But what happens when I have to tell a joke of my own, Amazing Atheist? Won't it reveal to them my overwhelming stupidity?" Nah. Smart people are fairly slow to pick up on things like that. Their minds are always analyzing things. If you tell a joke that hints your stupidity, just laugh and say, "I don't know what came over me. I apologize for my immaturity." Then start bitching about Bill Gates, or an upcoming sci-fi or fantasy film. This will divert their minds from your digression from established intellectual standards of humor. *For those of you wondering, the thing that smart people actually do think about most is how unfair it is that they are trapped on a planet full of imbeciles.

HOW TO PWN MY ASS ON YOUTUBE

Despite frequent attempts from a plethora of sources, ranging from Encyclopedia Dramatica to Jordi Cruise, I have yet to feel truly pwned here on the internets. Hopefully, this helpful pwnage guide will change this fact forever. SEIZE MY INSECURITIES Youll make no progress simply calling me fat. If I were sensitive about my weight, dont you think Id make a better attempt to conceal it? If you really want to get to me, point out words that I mispronounced or logical fallacies within my arguments. If I misspelled a word in my title or description, jump on it like CapnOAwesome jumps on an opportunity to whore himself out for even the faintest possibility of a new subscriber. Theres nothing I hate worse than feeling stupid. UNCOVER MY CONTRADICTIONS I have plenty of contradictions from video to video. I leave them up because I assume that no one will ever be anal retentive enough to notice them. Prove me wrong. Find two clips of me saying totally contradictory things and play them side by side to make me look like a jackass who doesnt know what hes talking about. WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS, POINT OUT MY FAILINGS People seem to adore pointing out my shortcomings rather than arguing with my position. So, for my beloved collection of invective-spewing haters, I submit this bullet-point list of some of my failings. My oral hygiene is below average (above average in Britain). I neglect my toenails. Theyre quite ugly. I pick my nose to an obscene amount and examine my finds afterward. I waft my own farts upwards so that I can catch their aroma. I play with my balls for at least one hour each day. And smell my hands afterward. I have masturbated to The Simpsons. My penis is small enough to fit in your pocket. Twice. I fantasize about being cooked alive by sexy female cannibals. I masturbate to deviant pornography. When I was 11, I shit in the cat litter box just to see what it would feel like. My nose is covered in black heads that Ive made no attempt to treat. Because of my fair skin and massive fatness, I have revolting stretch marks up and down both sides of my body. I have back hair. I wear the same pair of jeans for weeks because Im too lazy to transfer my things from one pocket to the next. I think 14-year-old girls are hot. (Yeah, so does everyone else, but I actually admit it) I keep arguing a point even after Ive been proven wrong because Im too embarrassed to admit defeat.

EVERYTHINGS FINE
According to the right, the world is about to end. We have sinned against God and soon his judgment will be upon us and everyone (except those brought up to Heaven in the rapture) will suffer horribly. Liberal extremists will conquer the planet, gay orgies will spread like wildfire, and abortions will become as commonplace as brushing your teeth (this may be a bad example for those of you living in Great Britain). The only answer is to mandate prayer in schools, burn the Bill of Rights and, for the love of all that is holy, stop teaching children that evolution nonsense! According to the left, the world is about to end. We have sinned against mother nature and soon the ice caps will melt and everyone will suffer horribly. Greedy multi-national corporations will conquer the planet until every last human being on earth works for slave wages. The only answer is to stop eating meat, drive hybrid cars and stop saying anything even remotely offensive about anyone other than George W. Bush. I have a question. Doesnt anyone else think that things are fine and that were all being arrogant and reactionary? When the Earth starts getting warmer, we say, Must be something we did! and ignore any evidence to the contrary. It sounds right to the left on a visceral level. Were so important that it must be our fault! Look, Im the last person to argue with scientists, but climate science is one of the trickiest branches there is. Meteorologists cant figure out the weekly forecast half the time, but Climatologists are 100% certain that human CO2 levels are responsible for global warming? From a purely common sense standpoint, it just doesnt sound very reasonable. Climate scientists are quick to point out that the earth is, as hot as its been in 12,000 years, but this planet is 4.5 billion years old. If it was this hot as recently as 12,000 years ago, then why is it so unusual that its this hot now? The fact is that, just a million years ago, the Earths climate was completely different than it is now. The sea level was 80 feet higher. The air was far more humid and stifling. Imagine planet Louisiana. It got from there to here without our help. Why do we automatically assume that it must be our fault that its going back again? Sure, adjusting to a changing climate will suck, but thats what evolution is foradapting. And if the planet becomes uninhabitable, that would certainly suck but weve already got caffeinated donuts and Die Hard 4 . . . I think its safe to say that weve had a good run. The conservatives arguments for whats wrong in the world makes even less sense. At least liberals have the scientific community behind their doomsday scenario. The neocons have only got biblical evidence (read: jack shit). And the conservative idea of hell on earth is rampant alternative sex and drugs with no legal consequences whatsoever. If this hell were ever realized, people like me would find themselves in heaven. Meanwhile, their idea of heavenyou know: clouds and harps and all that jazz, er, gospelis about the least appealing thing in the world to anyone with half a brain and a set of balls (dont be offended ladies, the analogy could as easily be and a functional cunt) It would be like the worst hell imaginable! Eternal bliss may sound good to the people who have never even had a single second of bliss in their lives, but those of us who have orgasmed without procreation even crossing our minds and not felt so much as a single iota of guilt afterward know that there is little worse in life (or afterlife, Id presume) than too much of a good thing. For the sake of making a larger point, lets all pretend that the conservative notion of human liberty as the apotheosis of immorality is, indeed, as bad as they think it is. Lets just ask ourselves these two questions: Could the liberals be right about the world being fucked by global warming?

Could the conservatives be right about the world being fucked by God? The respective answers are maybe and no. But the more important question here is, what about the people who think things are the best theyve ever been and are getting better? We exist, I assure you. Dont we get a say in all this? Wheres our media exposure? Where are our celebrity icons? Our propaganda films? All weve really got is that stupid fucking Bobby McFerrin song, Dont Worry, Be Happy. But how can we not worry when everyone else assures us that theres so many things that we need to worry about? How can we be happy in a world full of miserable people? Being an optimist sucks.

THE OUTSIDER GENERATION

In all my years of spouting my crazy opinions, I have no recollectionnot oneof ever changing anyone's mind about anything. I've written essays and poems and songs and stories and paragraph-long insanities on a million different subjects, but none of it has ever made anyone who didnt already agree with me say, Wow, youre right! I've constructed arguments that I believed to be air-tight, but my enemies keep breathing comfortably. I've produced, on a few occasions, nearly incontrovertible evidence to back up this claim or that claim, but the dissenters only scowled at me and stayed their course. As I've stayed mine. I state my opinion, you state yoursand neither of us changes our mind? Neither of us improves or evolves in any immediately conceivable way? No one wants to change their mind about anything. They actively resist it. They hate the very notion of it. If you examine the words "change your mind" closely, with a psychologists eye, it's easy to see the source of these fears. Hell, if there was ever a word that scared the living pig shit out of every man walking this little ball of shit in our toilet bowl of a galaxy, its change: "Things change," says the scraggly villain when the hero falls. "You've changed," says your girl or boyfriend just before they dump you. "He's changing!" screams the protagonist of a werewolf story when someone begins the transformation. It's a very negative word. At least, usually. It does have positive connotations as well: "It's time for a change," says a new leader to a crowd sick of the way their old leader mislead them. "Nothing ever changes," someone says sadly. (This is a negative statement, but change has positive connotations.) The rule here is easy enough to discernchange has a positive connotations in dissatisfactory circumstances and a negative connotations when people are content (or content enough) with the way things are. So when someone tries to change your mind, you reject their attempts. Why? Because you're a human being who secretly believes that you are perfect, in spite of your character flaws, of which you are mostly aware. You are content enough in your mind to feel as though it is untouchable and sacred something to be preserved at all costs. Why do you think the first step any cult leader or government agent takes to brainwash someone involves eroding their sense of identity and smashing their self-esteem to pieces? Any human being functioning normally is not very susceptible to the overt suggestions of his fellow man, despite our instinct to take cues from the pack and go along with whatever the general consensus is. In fact, ironically enough, our built in conformity streak is a big part of what makes us so reluctant to go along with people. This is because we are wired to distrust the outsider and accept only the ideas of those within our social group. In this age of extremely limited social interaction, this mechanism, once crucial to the evolutionary process, has begun to destroy us. People are cynics who distrust everything. In the 1950s when the government and corporations churned out endless propaganda, the masses, for the most part, believed every word of it. Today, people distrust everything they hear, everything they read, everything they see, everyone they meet. Nearly a fourth of people believe that the Government was responsible for the attacks of September 11th. I suspect that people have always been terribly jittery creatures, a race of idiots recoiling from their own shadows, but there was always an us and a them. Us was a collective of individuals that could be trustedthey go to the same church as you, the have the same values as you, they are you. Them was any one that belonged to any other group and believed a slew on unwholesome, terrible things. Now there is no us. There is only them.

We are a generation born to belong nowhere, a generation charged with making out own clique, but we dont want to. And what is to blame for our reluctance? The conformist mechanism, that component of our psyche that tells us that were not to trust outsidersbut now everyone is an outsider. We do not function as a group. We do not have a common ideology. We do not have a common system of values. We run the gamut. Is this a good thing? Can anyone hope to compete with other social organisms when they havent one of their own? Doesnt anyone want to get together and march to war with me? Hell yes, you say? But you want to lead? Fuck that. Never mind.

RAPE SURVIVOR CHATROOM SURVIVOR

Rape isnt fatal. So imagine my indignation when I saw a chatroom called Rape Survivors. Is this supposed to impress me? Someone fucked you when you didnt want to be fucked and youre amazed that you survived? Unless he used a chainsaw instead of his dick, whats the big deal? I dont mean to be horrendously offensive and insensitive here, but everyone survives rape. Some women are killed afterward, but thats murder, not rape. To say that youre a rape survivor is as meaningless as saying youre a jury duty survivor or a divorce survivor. Lots of things in life suckthat doesnt mean we survived them. The word survivor applies to people who are alive after being stabbed 73 times with an ice pick or mauled by rabid wolverines, not to a woman who gets dick when she doesnt want it. Just because you got raped, you have to rape the English language? You vindictive bitch! Also, dont you ever get tired of being the victim? How many failed relationships are you going to blame on a single violation of your personal space? Im not making light of it. I know that it is damaging, a reminder of your powerlessness against the worldbut it should be a wake up call. We are all powerless against the forces of fate (or chance). Were all on different paths, but they all lead to the same place. Life leaves no survivors. NOTE ON THE ABOVE: I just showed this writing to a friend of mine, along with the question, Is this too offensive to release? I was looking for a yes. I got one. So, Ive included it here. Im here to cross lines. This is not The Amazing Atheist from those cute little youtube videos you love so muchthis is the real me. And the real me doesnt give a fuck about your small-minded boundaries. If youve been raped, does the above passage add insult to injury? Does it make it hurt worse? How could it? If rape is the paramount psychological trauma in life, then how could my words aggravate it whatsoever? Too often in this culture, we fear words. But even if my words are the height of ignorance, they should elevate you. If you find them funny, then you will laugh and dismiss them as a joke. If you find them honest, you will respect my bravery. If you find them infuriating, I will have given you power. If you find them sad, then I have enriched you. Words never make less of a person, unless they are bland. If you feel something, then Ive done my job as a writer.

NOBODY 08
A beer-bellied bastard on La-Z-Boy, swilling pisswater lager, transfixed on a 24 months with no interest 52 plasma screen TVs from Best Buy, watching fast, advertisement-plastered cars go in a circlecan you see it? Can you see those vacant eyes, fat and glistening with impotent monkey rage? Can you see those mustard stains on the wife beater too small to cover the gelatinous blob of hair and flesh called his stomach? Can you smell himcan you feel sweat, motor oil and poorly wiped ass forcing its way up your nostrils? This manlets call him Frankworks as a short order chef at Waffle House, making $8.25 an hour after 10 years. He hates niggers. He hates spics. He hates faggots. He loves Jesus. He loves Nascar. He loves ogling teenage ass. Hes an all-American. He votes for whoever waves the flag the most enthusiastically, whoever tells him that he gets to keep his guns, whoever says the world freedom the most and whoever believes in freedom the least. I hate Frank. I dont hate him because hes a poor redneck. There are Franks all over this nation with perfect elocution and full pocket books. I dont hate him because hes a Christian. There are Franks reading the Koran. There are Franks that practice Yoga and pray before Buddhist altars. I dont hate him because hes a conservative. There are hippy franks who smoke pot and listen to Grateful Dead all day. I hate Frank because Frank is a stupid motherfucker that will believe whatever the proper authority tells him. For Frank, its Uncle Sam and one of the many guises of Jesus. I hate Frank because he doesnt stop to think that maybe people have a vested interest in lying to him. I hate Frank because Frank doesnt care what happens in the world as long as it doesnt happen to him. Most of all, I hate Frank because Frank votes. Politics is a movie with a high budget and a low IQ. The acting is wooden, the plot is rehashed and the characters are two-dimensional. Democracy is a packed theater full of cheering, clapping idiots, enthralled by the some one-trick pony that theyve watched for as long as they can remember. The people are a great and clamoring mass of idiots who have no business making decisions about our society. Benjamin Franklin said it better than I ever could: "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." What business does the heterosexual majority have legislating the rights of the homosexual minority? What business does the white majority have deciding how much funding black schools will receive? What business does a majority of Democrats or of Republicans have telling the other near-half of the country how things will be done? Democracy in its purest form is just fascism by consensus, wherein 51% of the population can rule over 49% simply because theyve got bigger numbers. Would you let your next door neighbor decide who youre to marry or what youre to wear or how youre to spend your money or your time? Fuck no. But thats exactly what youre doing when you participate in this system. So why would you cast a vote for anyone? Why would you choose to build the bars for your own cage? The constitution that our wise founders set down to paper all the years ago to protect our republic from mob rule and ensure the rights of individuals has been eroded by years of apathy and malice. Its not going to protect you from the acephalous juggernaut of pure democracy. When you go to the ballot box and cast your meaningless vote for a meaningless man or woman who has no intentions of changing a thing in this world for the better, you are complicit in your own slavery. Why do you need someone else to represent your interests? Why not represent your own interests in the day to day world? If you dont like drugs, dont do them. If you dont like gay marriage, dont marry someone of the

same sex. If you dont like abortions, dont have one. Why do you need to pass a law that says no one is allowed to do these things? What the fuck business is it of yours where I stick a penis or a needle of a coat hanger? If I want to walk down the street naked with my cock in my hand, that should be my right! You have the right to turn away or to call me an idiot or, if youre a business owner, refuse to sell goods to me. Whats so wrong with that? Whats the big fatal flaw in this plan that socialist and other democrats claim is so glaring and obvious? Freedom means the right to be part of a 1%. The right to be in the majority is a given in any system. Even Stalin worked for the good of the majority, he just killed a few million irrelevant individuals to manage it (for the information of the historically inept, he still failed). I say nobody in 08, because thats exactly who I feel is qualified to lead me: Nobody.

FUCK RESPONSIBILITY
Libertarians dont know what the fuck theyre talking about, and their boner for the word and concept of responsibility attests to this like nothing else. I want you to focus very intently on the next two words I am going to type: FUCK RESPONSIBILITY. Fuck it right in its corny, shit-spewing asshole. Responsibility isnt freedom. They dont even live on the same block. They work at the same company, but they hate each other. Theyre both vying for that big promotion. Theyre rivals. Responsibility should be something we begrudgingly accept as an unpleasant necessity, something to keep us from offing motherfuckers for looking at us funny or to keep our dicks in our pants at ballet recitals. Responsibility is nothing to come in your panties about. Yet all my libertarian friends just cant get over how fucking wonderful responsibility is! OH! And they usually call it personal responsibility, which is redundant because theres no other kind. I know that they do it to draw a distinction between responsibility to and for themselves and responsibility to and for othersbut come on, we all know what responsibility means. And they always pose these stupid questions to me like, Would you put a gun to my head and steal from me to give medicine to a sick person? They consider this an argument against Universal Healthcare. It always makes their heads spin when I answer, If it was someone I knew, Id blow your fucking head clean off just to extend that persons life another day. Anyone who adamantly opposes a portion of their income going to the treatment of sick people deserves to die anyway. I dont actually believe that (my official stance on Universal Healthcare is, in fact, that I dont give a shit), but its fun to see them get all pissed and indignant, hurling insults and screaming obscenities. It makes them look like the primitivist apes they are. The question asked by all political philosophies is this: where does power belong? Some say that it belongs in the hands of government (statists, fascists, communists), some say it belongs in the hands of the people (social democrats). Some say it belongs in the hands of the market (libertarians, anarchocapitalists). Some believe it belongs to individual personsnot to be confused with the people (anarchists). I dont particularly like any of these ideas. So fuck it. I dont believe in anything other than tearing your stupid beliefs down until someone smarter than me comes up with a solution.

CONSERVATIVES HATE AMERICA

Okay, this is a last minute addition to this book and Im writing it in anger. You guys probably think that I often do things hastily or act in anger, but really I dont. I do everything in my power not to. However, when the book Power To The People by conservative talk radio slut Laura Ingraham is number one in the country and Amazon.com is deleting negative reviews in deference to cunt-servative ideology, I find it hard to bite my tongue about it. I have not read the book. I have never heard of Laura Ingraham until today. But when I read the inside flap, I could barely hold back the bile. If you're like most Americans, you've had enough. You're fed up with sell-out politicians who won't defend our borders; a Hollywood that peddles profanity, pornography, and Al Gore and Rosie O'Donnell as "entertainment"; schools that teach our kids more about condoms than about the Constitution; and snooty judges who think it's their job to legislate for us. But there's a way to stop the madness and return power to the people - where it belongs. Laura Ingraham, the most-listened-to woman in political talk radio, shows us how to take back what is ours. In POWER TO THE PEOPLE she provides a riotous, take-no-prisoners journey through our besieged culture and gives us a battle plan to re-make it anew, the way the Founders intended - strong, patriotic, pro-family, and unapologetically God-fearing. Part expose, part practical manifesto, and wholly entertaining, POWER TO THE PEOPLE is written in the style of Laura's fast-paced, no excuses, action-oriented radio show, weaving in personal tales of her own struggle to right the culture and the politics of our country: including how she derailed the appointment of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, mounted a grassroots campaign against corporate America's sponsorship of one of pop music's biggest and most profane rap stars, and torpedoed the amnesty bill that would have granted instant legal status to millions of illegal aliens. And for the first time, Laura also reveals how she found her faith during a moment of deep loss, along with poignant details of her year long battle with breast cancer. Over the years Laura has jousted with everyone from Michael Moore to Bill Maher to the Dixie Chicks. She once worked in-side the "dinosaur" media (CBS News and MSNBC) and knows the deceptive techniques practiced by those who "report" the news. In POWER TO THE PEOPLE, she holds back nothing, and takes the fight beyond Right versus Left to show you how to reclaim the culture and win. If you're tired of bewailing America's course, if you want to know what you can do to protect your family and restore our country, POWER TO THE PEOPLE is the book for you. Too bad breast cancer didnt win. There is an unspoken truth this country that needs to be spoken, and Im the one to speak it: Conservatives, those flag-waving fucktards who get all teary-eyed when the Star-Spangled Banner starts bleating out of some sub-par songsters mouth, HATEnot just with a capital H but with a capital AT-E as wellAmerica. They talk about Traditional Family Values as if that means something. The only thing it means is, Fuck everyone whos different. They disgust me. They can all die. Whats a traditional family? Mom, dad, son, daughterDad works at the plant, mom is a homemaker, junior likes baseball and jet airplanes, Little Sally likes to play with dolls and has no further ambitions than keeping the kitchen clean for her man? Fuck those values. I hate those values. I think those values suck. Do you know what I propose we do with those values? Not a damn thing. You know why? Because I believe in freedom. I believe that traditional families can be traditional until they choke on their own revolting conceit. Its their right. What isnt their right is telling

me what kind of family I can have. Family is supposed to be a bunch of people under a roof that love one anotherwhether its two men, two women, a women and two men, a man and two women. How can it be any of your business what your neighbor does if it doesnt effect you? Is your traditional family somehow damaged by what Frank and Gregg two doors down are doing with their dicks? You dont love America. You love a 1950s sitcom version of America that never existed. It never did, it never could and it never will. Because as long as there are people like you who want to clean up the world, there are people like me who will dirty it faster than you can clean it. I love violent rap music, guns, drugs, fags, niggers, spics, kikes, Hollywood liberals, pornography, profanity, secular humanism, lesbian mothers and Harry Potter. In short, I love America. Its my country as much as it is yours, and if you dont love that fact, then youre not a patriot youre just another pretender.

TITS vs. ASS: THE FINAL SHOWDOWN

A brain dead idiot that I used to talk to (it was GypsyWytch) once told me that there was nothing sexual about breasts, that they were just to feed children. I think she told herself this in order to convince herself that people like her for her brain and not for her bust. I know that I'm probably breaking the rules of literature when I actually commit this word to ink, but LULZ! The females of every mammalian species other than man have breasts that become engorged only when they are nursing their young. Only human breasts stay plump and juicy year roundwhy is that? The answer is as simple as it is beautiful. Because human beings walk upright, women needed a frontal as well as a rear sexual displaybig tits was evolution's answer to the need. This is why a pair of voluptuous breasts looks remarkably similar to a fine ass. Tits are a mimic of assbut are they a shoddy imitation or an improvement on the original design? Let's explore. TITS: Have to press them together to fuck them, and even then theres no real tightness. You get to cum on their face when youre done. Easy prep with little clean up. ASS: Asshole is pleasantly tight and even if your cock is small, she can really feel it. You get to cum on their back when youre done. Requires lube and possibly some educational videos if youre well-endowed. And you might get shit on the tip of your dick. You can take a picture and she wont be any the wiser. Girls get weirded out if you play with it too much and are often extremely reluctant to let you fuck it. Spankable. Looks good into a womans 40s or so. EDGE: ASS

TITS TITS

Hard to stare at without girl noticing. Easy to get girls to let you play with or even fuck them.

ASS TITS

Suckable. Sags with age.

TIE ASS

Its a tie! No, Im just fucking with you! Ass wins. Why?, you may ask. Just because. My book, my rules. Deal with it.

SOMETHING HUMAN IN THE INHUMAN

I am a 35 year old mother of four sometimes in online chats. I have a 13-year-old daughter and men tell me how they want to rape her and I tell them how wet it makes my plump MILF pussy to hear them say that. Sometimes I meet men who go beyond that, who say they want to chop her young tits from her body, strangle her with a jump rope, things of that nature. My favorite scenario anyone ever conceived of was removing the jaws of all my children (the youngest of which I claimed to be 8) so that they would have direct access to their throats. Other times I'm a strict father with two teenage daughters. People write to me, asking for explicit details regarding their spankings, offering hints as to what they want to here. For instance, the question, "Do you make them get naked for spankings?" should always be answered yes. Sometimes I'm a 20-year-old girl named Kara who wants to sell myself into slavery. Men tell me how they want to whip me frequently, make me keep a buttplug in 24 hours a day, force me to drink their piss and eat their shit, eventually snuffing me on camera for the whole worlds pleasure. How do the preceding paragraphs make you feel? Offended? Excited? Amused? Depressed? I feel all of those things at once. I am offended that no one online ever rebukes me my perversity, but that they instead actually revel in it. I'm excited by how many perverts like me there are in the world. I'm amused because I know that, like me, they're all talk and no action. I'm depressed because I wish I had it in me to be all action and no talk. Internet sex chats are where people go to lie to one another about what they're capable of; pageants of lustful deceit where sick fucks like myself go to keep our sicknesses from destroying us. Zoophiles, pedophiles, slaves, masters, cannibalism fetishists, sadists, masochistsmonsters of all shapes, sizes and colors congregating in a judgment-free environment for the purpose of helping each other get off. It's a beautiful thing, really. Ted, the overweight divorced accountant from Virginia becomes Ted, the tall, muscular polygamist with seven curvy wives that he slaps around for his amusement and 12 daughters that he molests on the side. I talk to him as Debbie, the luscious and naive 19-year-old that's looking to become wife number 8. We both know that were being deceived, and we don't care. We're telling lies to each other and stroking our cocks all the while. Ted and I have made a connection. A real one. Sure, it's based on deception, but it's a mutual deception, a deception that we have both consented to. I jerk off to your lies, you jerk off to mine. That's what scientists call a symbiotic relationship. It's amazing how, in a world where people are so disconnected from one another, some of us can find true a meaningful (I'm tempted to say loving) connection in the most unlikely of places. You can rape my daughter if you want. Sure, I don't have a daughter and if I did there's no way in hell I'd let you so much as glance at her, but in this consequence free environment, feel free to exercise your demons on her. Slit her throat and fuck the wound if you want to. It doesn't matter. I'm not judging you. I'm jerking you.

ILL LOGIC
I am not easily bored. I'm very content with tranquility, because my mind is a circus freak show of deformed demons and holy holes. I can sit for hours in what is perceived as aloofness, when in reality, or rather, out of reality, I am moving at a million miles a second, reveling in my genius and lamenting my idiocy. I sit there with a blank expression on my facethe world scarcely pays attention. They have no idea that I am in another place; a place where the beauty of ugliness is understood completely and so am I. In this wonderful, horrible world, I am an all-powerful god, whose every perversion is immediately fulfilled. I reign over the populace like the eidolon named Night from Edgar Allen Poe's, Dream-land. I suppose that is exactly what the world of my thoughts is: a dream-land. The real world finds me in an infinitely less enjoyable position. I am a spineless coward, insecure in myself and unable to muster the will to take any step towards improving the quality of my existence. Despite the fact that I am blessed with luxuries that most don't have, I am apathetic. Even in the face of adversity, I remain unfazed and uncaring. I neglect my hygiene to the point of disgusting those around me. I am infatuated with a pathetic fantasy world that is obviously a product of my shallow, meaningless life. Dream-land is basically a necessary antithesis of realityartificial flavoring if you will. I take some (but not much) comfort in the knowledge that I am at least intelligent enough to analyze and understand my delusions. That is supposed to be the mark of a true philosopher: the ability to analyze ones own delusions. It is for this reason that I have chosen to write this. I feel that we live in times that are in need of a new philosopher; someone who realizes both his inadequacy and his greatness; his kindness and his cruelty; his love and his lust. That someone is meor it isn't. Only my time and your ridicule will tell. It is amazing how many people can formulate a rationale to justify their actions or further their cause. Obviously, logic is not flawless. It is, in all honesty, very flawed. Different minds make different connections and have different prejudices; therefore we are inclined to side with the rationale that best rewards us. We will actively and consciously defy what we know to be true in order to obtain our ideal. But what, if anything, do we know to be true? Well, according to Descartes, the only knowledge we truly possess is that of the existence of our own thoughts. Sadly, it is the true nature of this thought stream that is so often raped and mutilated by institutions such as religion, politics and the education system. But if logic is flawed, how is one supposed to advance an argument? It is a question that is probably bubbling in your mind right now. The answer is simple enough one can't. So then, why bother to attack logic in the first place? Because far too many people have forgotten that logic can be imperfect. It should seem obvious, when there are so many contradicting ideas out there, but it has become so blatant and common that it is rarely ever perceived anymore. I want all who read this to realize that logic is not natural law, and we have no standardized system of it. The truth is that logic is a blunt force instrument, used as a weapon or a shield for institutions that have no true merit. Religion- Pious logic is the most dangerous and flawed of all the forms of logic. It is logic that only makes sense if one is willing to blindly accept the unprovable as fact. In the case of Christianity, all that is required is a belief in God. Christian logic states that God created the universe and knows and sees all things. Therefore, his opinions are automatic facts. His opinions, as well as his guidelines for living, are all collected in a book entitled The Holy Bible. So, it can be logically assumed that The Bible is always right and any other logic is just the flawed logic of man. This only works, however, if you believe in God. But when you try to rationalize the existence of God, you end up with the following paradox: Christians believe in God because The Bible told them to, and they believe in The Bible because God told them to. Atheists like myself are all too familiar with this circular reasoning. Politics- Political logic is too often based upon something that is initially just propaganda. A clever politician knows how to confuse even the most intelligent of people, simply by hiding the lack of

substance behind a wall of euphemous logic. All the rationality in the world means nothing if it is built upon a foundation of nothingness. Advertising- If you drink beer, beautiful women will want to have sex with you. If you have any problem spotting the flaw in that logic, then you need to go take some cyanide, because you're a waste of existence. Law- Justice System logic is reliant on the infallibility of the justice system. That is all the justification they feel they need. Any logic beyond that point is simply for decorative purposes. Example: prostitution is illegal, but as comedian George Carlin has often pointed out, it makes little sense for there to be a law against selling a thing which is legal to give away. Notice a trend? Sound reasoning is often corrupted by extremely illogical suppositions at the foundational level. I suggest that you be extremely careful when considering a new idea. Always check the building material used for the foundation on which any rationale is based. But be wary, for distortions don't always occur at the foundation. KEEP IN MIND- Even though I try to base all my logic on fact (or at least well thought out opinion), I am human, and just as liable to make an error in rationality as anyone. Do not consider anything I say through out the course of this book as being anything more than one man's thoughts and ideas. I hope that my ideas will feed your own, just as all of your ideas have fed mine. We must share knowledge and opinion with one another for as long as we are able. We may get our Nietzschian Ubermensche yet. It could be you.

The God(dess) speaks

Say this unto the world of man. This is the word of the god(dess) called dull throbbing as transcribed by the servant of reality and unrealitywhich are one in the sameTerroja. I have given him his name to celebrate his significance and expose naked his irrelevance. He is a living martyr . . . thus, he is a contradiction. Thus, an apt (anti)prophet for this age. I do not exist. I am a figment of his imagination. I exist. I am an imagination of his universe, which has an effect upon this larger universethe mind of the one true God. But let us not concern ourselves with Him. He is too important to be relevant. He is concerned with His own gods, and they with theirs. Acknowledge the limitations of infinity. Embrace the vastness of personal destiny. An endless field of reflection, as a man standing between two giant mirrors will see an army of clones of himselfso are the gods of mortals. Every god is a mortal. Every mortal is a god. The hierarchy is endless. Thus, position is irrelevant. You are the slave to, and master of, infinity. Do not fear or fret if you fail to grasp this concept. Understanding is given sparingly. Do not shun what your mind does not grasp. Perhaps heart or soul will be quicker to understand. Mind=The universe. Your personal dull throbbing. I am mind. Heart=If your mind is the universe, then your heart is the eye that views it and interprets its meaning. Soul=Your soul is a string. Strings hold all things. How can it be known that this is truth? It cannot. But the truth is what it wants to be to who wants it to be. You demand concrete. Yet, you are given paper mache. But in building a statue, which would you prefer? If you seek ease, you will demand the paper mache. If you seek longevity, you will demand the concrete. Concrete statues crumble. You demand metal. Metal will rust. Nothing is eternal, save for existence itself, growing and changing. "Sophistry!" you say. I try to sell you the flawed. Yes and no. I give you what you want. And that is the only truth that you will ever accept. How can you discriminate when you only accept what sounds good to you? The rational man says, "I do not believe this." The rational man ignores a heart and soul that beg aloud in his mind for him to accept the burden of true multirealitywhich is both reality and unreality. Or, if you prefer, perception and imagination. Thus, he that embraces only concretions is no more rational than he who embraces only abstractions. Wisdom lies not in choosing one or the other, but in recognizing the place of both.

ITS SMALL. GET OVER IT.

People always feel the need to defend my penis from me, even when Im not attacking it. All I have to do is mention that it is small and people will say, Im sure its just fine. I didnt say it wasnt fine. I just said it was small. Its not small, Im sure. No, I insist, puzzled that they would argue with me about a piece of my anatomy, It is. It probably just looks small because youre such a big guy. Well, that probably makes it look smaller, but even disregarding that, its small. Why are you so down on yourself? they ask. Im not, I always explain at that point. I dont have anything against my penis, but the fact is that it is a small penis. Any shame I might have about that I lost after getting laid a few times and realizing that it wasnt the end of the world. A girl told me a story once. She told me that she was once lying naked in bed, legs spread apart, waiting for some guy she had just met to come in and fuck her. He entered the room, looked down at her, and started undressing. But at that last crucial moment, the revelation of what he was packing, he unveiled a miniscule member, probably roughly the size of mine, and she closed her legs instantly and left him standing there to wallow in his woe. I told her, Youre lucky it wasnt me. Id have busted your fucking nose. So maybe I am still a little sensitive about it. But hey, its easier to convince chicks to do anal.

GOLDEN ARCH NEMESIS

Little boys with tits! Could life possibly be more amusing? The corpulent spawn of bovine Americans waddling around on the slick floors McDonalds across the nation, sweating pure grease and heaving with exhaustionits so fucking adorable that it makes me want to stomp on a litter of kittens while singing the national anthem. It makes me so proud that I want to tattoo the American flag to my putrid little penis and expose myself to old women at the supermarket. A friend of mine once told me that when fat people are burned to death in a fire, the odor that their charbroiled blubber leaves behind is exactly identical to the smell of a McDonalds. Makes you want double quarter-pounder (what a ludicrous name) with cheese, doesnt it? Uglinessthats the contribution of Mickey Ds to this fine nation. Making the landscape more ugly with its endless golden arches, making people more ugly with their fattening foodmaking children jones for burgers like crackheads jones for their next hit. Damned evil cunts. Still, theyve got good eats.

RATED XXX
How pissed would you be if Id just filled this book with little Xs? That shit would have been so funny. Xxx xxxx xxx xxxxxx xxx xx xxxx xx xx x x xxxxxx xx x x xxxx xxx xxxxxx xxxxx xxx xxxx xxx xx xx xx x x xxx xxxx xx x xxxx xxxx. Tell me theres not a part of you that wouldnt be impressed by that? Holy shit, that dumb ass tricked me into buying nothing! What a cunt! Oh, how Id laugh. How Id laugh with your beautiful money fattening my wallet. MWAHAHAHA!!! Youre lucky Im such a nice guy.

BIG BLACK DICKS

I notice that black guys dont complain too much about being categorized as well-endowed, nor do I hear too many complaints from Asians about being labeled as good at math. If a black man can hold the belief that he is a better dancer than most white men then why is he so offended by the notion of many whites that their race is generally intellectually superior? It seems to me that racism is either valid or its not. Those who fight against it need to stop allowing exceptions, or they undermine their own cause.

INTERNET CELEBRITY IS A FATE WORSE THAN HELL

When I was 15, I would have done anything for even the smallest taste of fame, but now that Ive had the smallest taste of fame Id castrate myself with a toothpick before wanting even one more subscriber to my Youtube channel. Imagine the stupidest, most annoying person youve ever met. Now imagine that person being annoyed to death by the people who write me letters everyday. I get about 10 to 20 private messages on youtube per day and they fit into four basic categories. 1. 2. 3. 4. Horrifying. Revolting. Sickening. Theres no way this is a real person

The sentence amacing athiest u fucken rock is the most horrible thing I have ever seen. How could anyone who enjoys my videos be so fucking stupid? Id rather have one million of the most vitriolic invective-spewing detractors than even one stupid fan. Youre writing to me, yet you cant spell my name? How is that even fucking possible? You had to type my name to send me the message, so you must know how to spell it or it never would have reached me! You fucking people are mudmade of dirt and piss. Just look at a few common comments I receive on any given video: GET A LIFE! What does that mean, exactly? Is a stranger actually being so presumptuous as to criticize my use of my time? What sort of twisted sense of values would lead anyone to believe that they are in a better position to arrange my affairs than I am? I have a sneaking suspicious that the sort of people who compress the coal of my cohesion into this priceless little diamond of invective (a gem of counter-wisdom) are actually saying that instead of spending my time making videos about issues of interest or concern to me, I should be drinking alcohol and having sexual intercourse with inebriated girls in an environment of negligible consequences. If my presumption is correct, I wonder why it is that they themselves use so much time that could be devoted to the aforementioned promiscuities to instead watching videos that they very apparently find distasteful or boring. YOURE FAT! Indeed I am, keen observer! How magnificent your perception must be to notice such a well-concealed characteristic! I am truly in awe of your perceptive abilities. Your skills are wasted here on the internet! You should apply them, instead, to the field of espionage. Provided that the enemies are dragging around heavy briefcases with huge red lettering reading TOP SECRET stamped across the side, youll undoubtedly perform all missions with an aptitude hitherto unheard of among government field agents. YOURE A FAGGOT! Youre a failed psychic. ALL YOU DO IS MAKE VIDEOS ALL DAY! I average about one video per day. My videos are typically around six or seven minutes in length. A seven minute video takes seven minutes to shoot, seven minutes to upload to my computer, five minutes to render, 5 minutes to upload. Comments can be checked at my convenience. All in all, I spend about 24

minutes a day (on average--its often more of less) dedicated to my own videos. But lets say I spent an hour. Thats still 23 hours a day left to work, read, fap, watch other peoples videos, listen to music, go to movies, go out to eat or anything else that I feel like doing. In summary, youre a douchetard. FUN FACT: Microsoft Works Word Processor tries to change douchetard to documentary. IM AN ATHEIST, BUT I STILL THINK YOU SUCK! What bearing does your disbelief in God have on your feelings towards me? This comment implies that I am seeking the approval of all my fellow non-believers or that I am of the position that I am entitled to the automatic support of atheists everywhere. This could not be further from the truth. The fact that a person shares my lack of belief in the big G does spark a modicum of endearment in me, but nothing that would sustain any lasting feelings of loyalty or friendship. In other words, fuck you too, buddy. YOU MAKE ATHEISTS LOOK BAD! Pardon the fuck out of me for not sticking to some lame ass party line at all times. I have my own ideas and opinionsif thats something youre against, then you can kiss every square centimeter of my golf ball-dimpled ass. You never elected me. I never hired you as a consultant. You never paid me to make my videos. I cant see what in our relationship would lead you to the assumption that you have input on my content? Allow me to clear up this little misconception by stating definitively that I DO NOT GIVE A FUCK HOW I MAKE YOU LOOK. Personally, I think you make yourself look stupid when you say otherwise. YOU CURSE TOO MUCH! Fuck you. The fact that I deal with this shit on a daily basis would nominate me for sainthood in a world worth living in. I should be on the one dollar bill for the stupidity I have suffered at the hands of YouTubers with more spare time than good sense.

STUPID BULLSHIT THAT I FUCKING HATE

At Movie Theaters Snack prices and anyone dumb enough to pay them. $3.50 for Twizzlers? Suck my fucking cock, AMC Theaters. Ill buy that shit at the drugstore for 99 cents and sneak it in. Are you gonna pat me down? I dont think so. People who demand their money back when the movie fucks up for 10 whole seconds. If I were the theater manager, Id waggle my dick at them when they demanded to see me. Oh, you didnt want a good glimpse of my man meat? I apologize. From your cock-hungry tone of voice, I thought thats what you wanted. Clean floors. What the fuck is this shit? I like when I go to a movie theater and my foot sticks to the layer of congealed sugar (and semen?) on the floors. I like the sound it makes and I like the way it feels. Commercials? Not only do I have to sit through 20 minutes of trailers for shit that I wouldnt see unless some malevolent force with a Clockwork Orange eye-pry setup decided otherwisenow Ive also got to endure insipid advertisements that assure me that Coca-Cola is the solution to all my problems in life. Black people. The characters cant hear you. SHUT THE FUCK UP. Old people. You dont need to explain the plot to whoever is sitting next to you. SHUT THE FUCK UP. Teenage girls. Why did you come to a movie just to talk to on your cell phones? SHUT THE FUCK UP. Movie geeks. No one cares what program the studio used to CG Tom Cruise into a non-midget. SHUT THE FUCK UP. The kid behind me. If you dont stop kicking my chair, Im going to tear off your legs and use them to plug up your fat mothers used twat so that she cant sick any more little fucktards like you on decent folk like myself. Stupid people who insist on using the automatic ticket machine. If youre too stupid to figure it out, wait in line with the rest of the dimwits. Dealing With People When someone is close enough behind you that you would feel impolite not holding the door for them, but far enough behind you that you have to stand there for longer than is comfortable, holding a door for some stranger who doesnt even say thank you or give you a nod of respect of anything. Who the fuck does he think he is? The way people act more repulsed by obese women then they actually are just to seem cool in the eyes of their friends.

People who point my height out to me. Wow! Youre tall! Wow! Youre stupid! Screaming kids. Leave your spawn at home if they cant handle the stress of being at Wal-Mart. Its bad enough that I have to be around obnoxious hordes of adults, I dont need the ear-splitting bellyaching of brats too. Small talk. Who gives a fuck how I am today, you ugly fucking cunt. Put my buttplug and SLUT paddle in the bag and hand me my receipt so I can go about my dayand dont tell me to have a nice one. I havent had a nice day since 1995 and I dont plan on repeating the experience any time soon. People who take my humor seriously and my seriousness as humor. Thats pretty much all of you. Listening to someones problems and awkwardly feigning sympathy when all I want to do is scream, I dont fucking care! at the top of my lungs. People who quit smoking and then tell everyone else how bad smoking is for you the next day as if theyve never touched a cigarette in their lives. Babies. Whenever I hear a story about some guy who raped a baby, I laugh my ass off. Women who say things like, Who cares what Paris Hilton is doing! This isnt news! and then watch two hours of Paris Hilton coverage. People who spout uncourageous and uncontroversial opinions as if they were cutting edge. I dont mean to be offensive, but I dont like Terrorists. Wow. What a brave fucking stance on the issue. Ill be impressed the day that someone says to me, I dont give a shit what anyone thinks, I like Osama Bin Laden. He just seems like the kind of guy Id have a beer with. In The Media Princess Di. A spoiled bitch went splat because she couldnt handle the strain of being photographed on her way back to her mansion. Shes not worth the salt of the tears wasted on her. I could have sprinkled that shit on my eggs, you wasteful bastards. Fox News has a conservative slant. Fine. Thats obvious. Quit pointing it out as if youre Noam fucking Chomsky just for being smart enough to notice. Nancy Grace is worse than every child molester she demonizes. Her face is like a sack of moldy prunes that someone puked on. Her voice is like the contents of a spittoon being lapped up by a dozen starving Chihuahuas. If someone put lipstick on a rattlesnake and gave me a choice between kissing Nancy Grace or the rattlesnake, Id tell the EMT to have some antivenom standing by. Bill OReillys ratings are only as high as they are because people watch him as a comedy show, so quit shitting yourselves liberals. Al Franken isnt funny. And I dont mean Bob Saget not funny or Andrew Dice Clay not funny. Al Franken is staring at a beige wall not funny. Why is this guy called a comedian? Thats like calling a

dog that laps up its own sick a chef. Fuck the Anniversary of some shit that happened once. Do you mean to tell me that nothing else happens on September 11th but the anniversary of some planes crashing into a few buildings and offing a ks worth of homo sapiens? Thats old news. We all remember it. Those of us who dont are either stupid or Alzheimers patients. Light a candle. Sing a song. Then get back to the real items of the day. You know, important stuff like Paris Hiltons latest public display of gross insipience. In The Bedroom Dommes with delusions of grandeur. You spank my ass for one reason and one reason only, bitch because thats what I want from you. Nature has seen to it that I could smack you in the face and tell you to piss off if I so chose. Too often Ill go on the internet and visit the websites of dommes who think that theyre going to set up a matriarchal utopia where men are their servants. You provide a service. Thats all. Supply and demand, bitch. Look it up. Toothy blowjobs. What the hell? My dick is tiny. Its not like its an explosion of flesh in your mouthyou should be able to keep the teeth off of it. Not having had enough sex in my life to actually make this list a decent length.

AMUSING ALTERNATIVES TO ABORTION

For some reason, Christians have gotten it in their heads that God doesnt want us vacuuming fetuses right out of the womb before they have a chance to drive everyone batshit with their unending chorus of highpitched mewling. Luckily for us, the moral majority doesnt care what happens to people after theyre out of the womb, so here are some fun uses for those unaborted babies guaranteed not to rile any religious zealots with their gears stuck in the 12th century. THANKSGIVING DINNER In case you havent noticed (and who hasnt, honestly?) babies are roughly the same size as Thanksgiving turkeys. Those unwanted November tots, properly trussed, can make a delicious meal for you and your family. Thats good eatin! FOOTBALL This gives a whole new meaning to playing catch with your son! Though heavier and less wieldy than the old pig skin, an otherwise typical game of drunken backyard football with the guys can be livened up considerably by substituting Junior for the ball. Play until the ball gets limp, stops crying and is cold to the touch. SHOT PUT The premise of the game is exceedingly simpleyou just throw the shot (usually a small metal ball weighing around 8 lbs.) as far as you can. Normally, this game is played on a wide, grassy field. However, when using a brat for your shot, I recommend a debris-strewed alleywaythe rats and pigeons will take care of cleanup. SNAKE FOOD If it can eat a bunny, it can eat a baby. PENNY You could drop a penny off the empire state building, sure. But why waste money? With gas prices how they are and the stock markets recent instability, can you really afford to be tossing pennies off skyscrapers or into wishing wells like you used to? The solution is obviousbabies instead of pennieseveryone loves that delightful SPLAT! they make. DECORATIONS Take little Sally on a trip to the taxidermist! Trust me, shell be better off as a cup holder than a stripper (youre a shitty parentall your kids will wind up in sex industry jobs if you let them grow up). Besides, if you ever decide to keep a kid for some reason, seeing that their older sibling wound up a cherub on the mantle will get them to bite their insolent little tongues. If you are offended by this list, then allow me to remind you that babies are nothing but bug-eyed little doughy sacks of perpetually leaking piss and shit that adults have tricked themselves into finding adorable. But, Amazing Atheist, theyre human beings! So were the Nazis. Are you pro-Nazi? Racist.

I WANT TO KILL MYSELF WHEN I GROW UP

Hunter S. Thompson blew his brains out on my birthday, which is also Kurt Cobain's birthday. It's odd, because sometimes I feel like I'm somewhere in between the twopart brooding loner, part raging truthseeker. My writing lacks the fire of Thompson's, and it lacks the poetry and irony of Cobain's, but it's naked and self-revealing in the same way theirs were. I feel like I'm the heir to that throne sometimesthe suicide genius, the man who loves the whole world by hating himself. Can one declare them self such a thing, or is that for the people to decide? Id hate to think that it's in the hands of such a small-minded bunch of miserable cretins. But, the idea that it's in my hands is even worse in many ways. This is such livejournal shit. I bet you feel stupid for paying 20 dollars for this. Fucking idiots! Eh, cheer up! It's all good, right? What the fuck does it matter in the long run? We're all just biding our time until the day we become corpses. Everything we do from the cradle forth is just a distraction from the grave, a way of denying how fragile our lives are, how death is getting nearer and nearer. It's a cruelty of nature that a being should have to understand the concept of death. We have so long fought against it with fanciful notions of an afterlife that is far better than our small lives here on earth. "This is all you get," are the most hopeless words that could ever be spoken in the ears of most people. Death is not far away. It isnt just a transition. Its close, and its forever.

Whence Cometh Evil?

Cody Webers hair was blond the week that I went to visit him in the dirty little Midwest town of Keokuk, Iowa. He shoveled eggs into his mouth under the harsh light of the truckstop diner, talking, often with his mouth full, about his favorite subject: failure. He spoke of how he was destined to be someone greater than the pallid lad sitting before me. He told me that as a child everyone had expected wondrous feats from him, had imagined him as a world conquering go-getter. This he spoke with sorrow. When he came to the part where their fantasies of him all crumbled to the dust of disappointment, however, the pride in his voice was unmistakable. Failure, for him, had been no accident. It had been an accomplishmenthis defiant middle-finger to the tyranny of his own expected greatness. It occurred to me, listening to him with what I imagine was a bemused grin, that we all craft a narrative for ourselves. We give our lives all the trimmings of a myth and then believe that myth as devoutly as any religious person believes in their whacky dogma. We are all, within our own minds, great warriors, misunderstood prophets, unappreciated visionaries, defiant rebels or any number of other archetypal heroes. Identity is not, I think, a matter of our thoughts and ideas alone. Nor is it simply the culmination of our talents, opinions and idiosyncrasies. Identity is the illusion that our lives have a storyline, that who we are can be found in what weve been through. My contention is that our lives are meandering and plotless, and though they certainly contain stories, they are not stories in and of themselves. Any semblance of order in our paststhe notion that every event is linked in some fatalistic way to every preceding and following eventis an illusion manufactured by our needy consciousnesses. We call this illusion self. I was born. I was raised. I went to school. I quit school. I lazed about for a while. I got a job. I made some money. I lost the money. I started trying to make the money back. Youve just read about my 23 years of life on this planet in one small paragraph. Does it tell a story? Certainly the events are causally related. If I had not been born, I could not have been raised. If Id not gone to school, Id have never quit school. If Id not lost all my money, Id not be trying to remake it. Cause and effect are present. Events lead to other events, actions have reactions. There is a beginning. There is (or will be) a middle. There will be an end. So why does my life only have the illusion of a storyline? For the answer, lets look at some men whose lives have been adapted into stories. The movie Ray, for instance, tells the life story of Ray Charles, a famous singer and musician. From the movie, we learn that Ray lost his vision as a small child, not long after seeing his brother drown. We see him learning to play music. We see him innovating music. We see him falling in love. We see his marital infidelities. We see his struggles with drug addiction. We see him overcome obstacles and earn his place as one of the most famous musicians of all time. The movie was a story, for certain, but was Ray Charles life a story? Id say no. These moments we see in the film have been embellished, idealized and edited together to make the audience draw conclusions that would not be entirely apparent if we were privy to all the events that occurred in the vast gulf of years between them. Given the same facts about his life, different writers and directors could tell entirely different stories. The movie leads us to draw a conclusion that if Rays brother hadnt drowned, Ray would never have become the genius that he was. This might be true, but its not a certainty. Cause and effect are at work in our lives, but often obliquely. People often say, If only Hitler had gotten into art school. What if he had? Whos to say that he wouldnt have still perpetrated the evil that he did? He might have quit art school after a year and then found himself shortly thereafter on the same path that he would have taken had he been rejected.

My friend Cody views himself as a heroic failure who bucked everyones expectations of him and broke free of the shackles of their ambitions for him. Lets look at the facts from which this archetypal Cody Weber was drawn (We cant really know these to be facts, because they were relayed to us by a biased party, but we will not presume Cody a liar): 1. 2. Cody was expected to do well in life. Cody did not do well in life.

Based upon just these two facts, we can make Cody Weber fit any number of archetypes. We can make him a hero who stood up against the role others were trying to impose on him. We can make him a weakling who buckled under the pressure of those who wanted him to achieve great things. We can make him an ingrate who spurned the love and support of his family out of pure spite. We can make him a spoiled brat who glutted himself on everyones love and admiration to the point that he took it for granted. How can we know which of these are true? How can we know if any of them are true? Surely there is a cause for what Cody perceives to be his failurebut why is it necessarily to be found in the support of his family? Perhaps it was caused by a chemical imbalance or an event that no one would think to tie to said failure? Further, how do we knowand how does Cody really know, for that matterthat his family really did expect a lot of him or that he really is a failure? In the former case, memory has been shown to be far less reliable than we would comfortably be able to admit and in the later case his failure is contingent upon his personal definition of the word. Those who admire his brilliant photography certainly do not view him as a failure. Under scrutiny, our narratives fall apart. They are our fragile and inadequate attempts to bully our lives into making sense. We havent the proper tools to make any real sense of things. Our memories are shoddy, our objectivity in matters of self is dubious and the effects we assign to certain causes are likely more often wrong than not. If my original precept that identity is largely derived from our narrative for ourselves holds true under scrutiny, then in diminishing the veracity of said narrative, I have also dealt a blow to our current concept of identity. I think that this is far too counterintuitive to have any real impact on our perceptions of self, but if it can be accepted as truth, then I think there is a great deal of freedom (and danger) to be found in it. To say that perception is truth is something of a banal clich at this point, but to assert that how we choose to perceive the events of our lives can actually change our identity entirely would give us the ability to control who we are (at least in our own eyes) to an extent rarely dreamed possible in the age of genetic determinism. To clarify, I dont believe that these perceptions can turn someone who is by almost all accounts a villain into a hero, only that it can make such a person believe that he or she is heroic. Of course, villains throughout the ages have always fancied themselves heroesthis is nothing new. Hitler did not see an evil man in the mirror. The difference in my line of thinking is that it makes such delusions permissible by their ubiquity. In other words, if all men are delusional in regards to their self, then who can say that one mans delusion is any less or more untrue than any other mans delusion? By what means, if my reasoning holds largely cogent, would we be able to dispute a villains claims of heroism or a failures perception of success? If identity is delusion, then all perception is undermined and no ethical barometer can be said to possess any objectivity since the good guys are only good in their heads and the bad guys are probably good in theirs as well. Some will here make the argument that ethics lay outside the will and that good guys are good regardless of their perception of themselves and that acts of evil are evil regardless of whether or not evil was the intent of the malefactor who perpetrated them. If God is that outside force, that non-human moral barometer, than I would like to see proof not only of him but proof of his will. And if that nonhuman mechanism of morality is not God then what is it?

Richard Dawkins, the famed evolutionary biologist and an outspoken advocate of atheism and rationality, outlined in his best-selling work The God Delusion, his evolutionary explanation for the origin of morality and ethics. He explains how things like kin selection and game theory have imbued man with a natural sense of right and wrong. While I dont disagree with his assertions, I have to ask why a moral code that evolved is one that need be followed? We evolved instincts towards violence and, if the God gene hypothesis is correct, belief itselfand yet no thinking person views non-violence or non-belief as impossible (and only a strange few thinking people find them immoral). An evolved or natural morality is a morality that can be challenged on an intellectual basis in the same way that the value of an evolved predilection towards violence or endocannibalism or rape as a means of reproduction can be challenged. Any evolved social trait can be challenged. No evolutionary biologist that I have ever heard of has made or provided evidence for the assertion that evolution is infallible or has our happiness at heart. So, if Hitler views himself a good man and no concrete ethical code exists to contradict his goodness, then can we say that our mass perception of him as a villain overrides 1930s Germanys perception of him as a hero? Or his perception of himself as such? Returning to Cody, does it matter how much his admirers view him as a genius when he views his own work as ugly and wholly lacking in beauty (as he once confessed to me)? I think that it doesnt. I think that a billion voices telling a man who believes he is Thing A that he is actually Thing B are useless if that mans perception of himself is unshakable. If a genocidal maniac is called evil, he can always escape into a more comfortable identity. Im not evil, he might tell himself, Im misunderstood. Im heroically doing what I know is right, even though the odds are against me. Im reluctantly doing what is necessary to create a better future. I am a visionary. Our disgust with such people and what we perceive as their shoddy justifications for their evil actions is nearly universal. Few human beings on this planet today are not aghast at genocide and contemptuous of genocidal maniacs. We so deeply feel this repulsion towards mass violence that any belief system that doesnt hold such people as objectively vile seems unpalatable to many of us, myself included. I just cant see a way around it, however. Ill restate my logic from start to finish in the briefest terms possible and hopefully someone can provide me the solace of showing me where I am mistaken. 1. Identity is based largely on the illusion of a narrative and the establishment of an archetype of self within that narrative. 2. This narrative is erroneous in every single human being. 3. It is impossible to object to a delusional perception of self in another human being when ones own perception of ones own self is demonstrably delusional as well. To do so would be an act of hypocrisy and inconsistent with the hitherto defined parameters of human discourse. In other words, the pot cannot call the kettle black (the kettle remains black, but the pots blackness negates this criticism or makes it universal and thus pragmatically irrelevant). 4. Because delusion is invariable and presumably inescapable, no one sense of self can be seen as superior in veracity to another. 5. An evil man who perceives himself as good cannot be contradicted by other men (for reasons explained in supposition #3) or by an established system of ethics because ethics is either derived from a. man, who is delusional and cannot rightly judge other mens deluded narratives. b. God, who cannot be verified to exist. Even if we simply made the huge assumption of his existence, his will regarding our behavior (if he even has one) would not be readily known to us. c. Nature, which can be disputed, as shown by all manner of precedent. Its hardly original to argue against a concrete good and evil, but surely in the face of genocide and mass murder, we would be better served if such an objective morality (or ethical truth if you prefer) was somehow in place. We find ourselves in an unenviable position. We can choose to persist in the deluded view of moral certitudes and objective right and wrong or we can accept that no such thing exists and attempt to justify

our persecution of evil in other ways.

Honor: Another String Tied To The Human Marionette, Nothing More.

A friend of mine said of me recently, I'm friends with TJ for the same reason people keep snakes as pets the snake is fun and cool and really interesting to watch, but of course you dont expect to get any warmth or compassion from it. He went on to say that I possess an utter lack of humanity. Should such a thing bother me? I must admit that I have long been aware that I lack certain sentiments that seem to widely characterize my species, but Ive never thought of myself as lacking humanity. I seceded from it, sure. But thats just a cute thing to say to make everyone say, Wow, that guy sure is hardcore! and cream their jeans in unrestrained admiration for my greatness. I must confess though, I do find many human conventions quite antiquated and wholly unworthy of the attention of 21st century people. Honor, for instance, that long revered staple of masculinity and masculine values, holds no weight at all with me. I find myself bizarrely perplexed when others expect me to be beholden to it. A recent example involves a bet that I made with a YouTube user going by the moniker of BigEvasive. BigEvasive was looking very forward to this years summer blockbuster The Incredible Hulk, which was a franchise reboot of director Ang Lees 2003 flop Hulk. I told him that, in my opinion, The Hulk was a stupid character and it didnt really matter who directed or acted in a film about him, because the source material is simply not of sufficient quality to inspire anything but a mediocre film. This argument eventually turned into a bet that The Incredible Hulk would far surpass Hulk in critical accolades. For our wager we used the critical consensus site Rotten Tomatoes, which compiles hundreds of film reviews, categorizes them into two classesfresh and rottenthen averages them out in order to come up with a rough over-all picture of what critics thought of any given film. Hulk had received a freshness rating of 61%, which meant that 61% of the reviews that Rotten Tomatoes had compiled had given the film a positive review. In order for BigEvasive to win the bet, The Incredible Hulk had to surpass the original by a statistically significant margin. We determined the margin to be 5 percentage points. In other words, it had to receive a freshness rating of 66% or higher in order for him to win the bet. The stakes were that if he lost, I had to paint myself green and make a video where I behaved like The Incredible Hulk. If he lost, he had to dress as Marilyn Monroe and sing Happy Birthday To You to me. The Incredible Hulk opened and reached a freshness rating of 68% . I had lost the bet. Now it was time to pay up. Or was it? BigEvasive was located all the way in Canada and I knew him well enough to know he was too chickenshit to really put me in any sort of difficult position if I neglected to fulfill my end of the bargain. Honor never factored into my decision to welch on our bet. I didnt feel that warm and tingly masculine ethic tugging at my heartstrings, informing my conscience that I would be diminished in some profound way if I didnt paint myself green and gallivant around smashing things in the fashion of a third-rate comic book character. As ridiculous and sophomoric as the whole situation was, the small backlash that it inspired set my mind to wondering as to the exact nature of honor. Its a word that we all hear tossed around a lot, but I for one have never had the concept explained to me. Consulting the dictionary was useless. It contained 13 separate definitions of the word, all of which fell staggeringly short of encapsulating the word as it is most commonly used. It became obvious that if I wanted a definition to the word honor, Id have to figure it out myself. I started by Googling the word by itself and seeing what came up. Wikipedias entry was meaningless, other than some interesting etymological notes. What caught my eye were pages pertaining to the Medal of Honor, which is the absolute highest decoration offered by the US military. It is given to a soldier if he (or she, I suppose) distinguished himself "conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while engaged in an action against an enemy of the United States."

Lets dissect that, shall we? In other words, the military defines honor as risking your life to kill people in service to them. Not just risking your life thoughbecause all soldiers do that. You have to pretty much walk into certain death (when its not even necessary or expected of you) to get awarded a Medal of Honor. As I went further and further down the list I discovered samurai codes of honor, honor killings and other specific examples of honorbut mostly I waded through the endless litany of fluff surrounding the word. After about an hour of research and a number of days spent in contemplation, I drew this conclusion: honor is nothing more than strict adherence to a completely arbitrary code of conduct. The more strictly you follow the code, the more honor you have. The more staunchly you interpret the code, the more honor you have. Honor and obedience are remarkably interchangeable concepts. Allow me to demonstrate: She has dishonored our faith by not entering into an arranged marriage. Sheila has disobeyed our faith by not entering into an arranged marriage. Lieutenant Gilroy behaved dishonorably when he gave our position to the enemy. Lieutenant Gilroy behaved disobediently when he gave our position to the enemy. The fact that I would not paint myself green to fulfill my end of a bet shows that I have no honor. The fact that I would not paint myself green to fulfill my end of a bet shows that I have no obedience (to the system of betting and bet fulfillment). Once one comes to the understanding that honor is nothing more than adherence to a particular code of conduct, one is less inclined to lament its absence in ones self. I have never fancied myself an obedient person and I have little in the way of tolerance for those who do. I adhere to no code of honor because to do so would be to dishonor myself. Many will make the argument that strict adherence to certain social codes are a necessity to facilitate a stable society. These people are the unwisest of soulsthose who have not yet realized that we must be bound together by our common ideas, not made common by the act of binding ourselves to the ideas imposed upon us by a given overlord. In other words, we must unite around our goals, not expect our goals to unite us. The concept of honor, as I have adequately defined it, is inarguably a detriment to the end goal of getting humans to acknowledge existent harmony rather than strive for artificial harmony through the coerced recognition of codes of conduct that expand well beyond what any given individual would acknowledge as necessary. Honor has long been a tool to keep those who benefit from obedience (namely, those who are obeyed) in control. We are essentially beings who, in our boundless capacity for delusion, stitch random events, emotions and sensations together into a tapestry called identity. We reinforce our narrative by comparing it to the equally flawed narratives of our fellow human beings. Those who reinforce our narratives are friends. Those who contradict our narratives are enemies. Thus, the currency of other peoples opinions is vital to our sense of cohesion. This is why loners are often incomprehensible; Its because without the steady influence and reinforcement of the tribe, their narratives topple in on themselves or becomes muddled and idiosyncratic. Those in powerCEOs, Senators, Celebrities, Journalistsare all what Id like to term super-reinforcers. Super-reinforcers are those who have enough influence to propagate a particular narrative over a larger sphere of human beings than typical reinforcers. For example, your friend who agrees with you that your girlfriend is a skank because she cheated on you is a reinforcer, because he is supporting your narrative. If you watch a TV show where a girl who

cheats on her boyfriend under similar circumstances as those in your life then everyone involved in that TV show is a super-reinforcer because they not only reinforced your notion that your girlfriend is a skank, but theyre likely reinforcing the narratives of thousands of people who are or have been or will be in your situation. It is natural to feel affection towards those who reinforce your ideas about yourself. Your girlfriend meanwhile, seeks out her friends to assure her that she is not a skank, but that she acted out because you neglected her. Her friends will support this idea and there are plenty of TV shows, movies, books and role-model super-reinforcers to back up her narrative as well. Unfortunately because your narrative casts her as a slut who cant say no to any offer of cock and her narrative casts you as a cold and distant shell of a man who is incapable of love, you will not reinforce each others narratives. It is this, more than the pain of any indiscretion, that will drive you apart. This is why honor is such an effective control mechanism. It promises to turn all perception against you if you behave disobediently. It says to youif you deviate from our idea of good, then you will be devoid of reinforcers. Honor uses reverence as a currencythose who adhere to the given code are given ample amounts of reverence. Those who do not adhere are given none of the currency of reverence. They are, in fact, denigrated and despised by the people. This sometimes culminates in a sickening ritual, practiced mostly by Muslims, called honor killings. Honor killings are when a female is murdered by her family for dishonoring the code of their religion . According to a leading website on honor killings Over 5,000 women and girls are killed every year by family members in so-called 'honor killings', according to the UN. These crimes occur where cultures believe that a woman's unsanctioned sexual behavior brings such shame on the family that any female accused or suspected must be murdered. Reasons for these murders can be as trivial as talking to a man, or as innocent as suffering rape What man, other than a violent sociopathic, would murder his own daughter because she was raped? A religious one. Religions have codes, and if one doesnt adhere to those codes, one will seem dishonorable. And apparently, for 5,000 families each year, the loss of daughter seems a small price to pay to avoid the loss of honor. So, when a politician or a commentator gets on the airwaves and starts weeping and wailing that honor is a dead concept here in America, my response is, good. When the reverence of others is more important to people than their own loved ones, something sick is happening. Honor has the right to exist only as a guideline, pinning you to your own ethical standards. When you replace your own will and desire with another mans will or desire solely to maintain honor in the eyes of others, you have become a puppet. Youve allowed your own dissent to be weaponized against you and you have undermined your individuality. Wheres the honor in that?

Instant Gratification
This section is dedicated to Scotty and Evelyn, respectively the smartest and cutest accidents I know. Its my belief that people are basically selfish to the point of self-defeat, that in their attempts to secure their personal happiness they destroy everything that could ever bring them happiness. Were always willing to make the worst bargain in the world: a little bit of here-and-now-joy for a heaping helping of down-and-out-misery down the road. As a species we pollute our planet because cars and factories are spiffy conveniences; we dont give a tall glass of fuck that our children might grow up in a world made of shit and smoke. As individuals we have unprotected sex, resulting in diseases to wipe us out and in kids we cant afford (because we spend all our money on worthless impulse buys that consistently fail to live up to their promises of making our lives complete). We do this for nothing more than a single moment of blissan orgasm lasting no longer than a few seconds. From that pursuit of tiny happiness comes massive misery! We drink now, saying fuck you! to our future livers. We smoke now, saying eat shit! to our future lungs. This is not an original observation by any stretch of even the imagination. Pundits and other assorted fuckwits have yammered on about our culture of instant gratification for as long as I can remember. So why am I bothering to harp on this old and established bit of cynicism? Because I aim to defend it. Intellectuals may oft lament the limited long-term planning abilities of their fellow human beings, but rarely have I heard folks extol the many virtues of our widespread inability to prioritize on a large timescale. Not once have I heard a man or woman give thanks to our tendency to make the devils deal of short term pleasure at the cost of long-term contentment. The benefits of our instant gratification tendency, hereafter referred to as IGT, are largely unsung. The first and most obvious thing that IGT provides for us are children. In 2001, 49% of all pregnancies in America were unintended . As a man who hates babies and usually cares even less for the adults that they grow into, I must still begrudgingly admit that its a good thing that they exist. The continuation of the human race is, even in the eyes of a misanthropist like me, a good thing. If we assume that those 49% of Americans in 2001 hadnt had their babies because they were smart people who were able to plan ahead and realize they couldnt afford kids, then half of the 7-year-olds annoying the piss out of you today wouldnt be alive. That sounds good on the surface, but consider this: if half the people alive didnt exist, there are only half as many chances of some asshole hitting the genetic lottery and becoming the next Richard Dawkins, Salvador Dali or Steven Spielberg. Now before you make the argument that those 49% of babies that were unplanned are the offspring of people too dumb to take even the slightest precautions against pregnancy (and, we can extrapolate, STDs) and are therefore almost certainly idiots themselves whose children are likely to be as dumb as their parents, Id remind you of three important facts. 1. It is perfectly possible for intelligent people to fall victim to the powerful force of IGT, especially in the area of sex, where powerful chemical impulses can overcome our better judgment like a hurricane can overcome flimsy lawn furniture. We can prove this by looking at the number of exceptional geniuses throughout history who have contracted sexually transmitted diseases. Even in recent times, where condoms are readily available to all, a number of famous authors, playwrights, film and literary critics contracted the AIDS virus . 2. It is perfectly possible for two unintelligent people to produce intelligent offspring. Neither my mother nor my father had blue eyes, but both my brother and I do. The reason for this is because we both received a recessive gene from each parent to give us blue eyes. Intelligence is a lot more complex a trait then eye color, but the principle is the same. Genes that are dormant in two stupid people could become active in the offspring of said people and result in a child smarter than the dumb asses that spawned it. 3. Stupid people serve a number of vital functions in our society. They cook our burgers, lay our

brick and keep comedians like Adam Sandler and Larry The Cable Guy successful. No one with an IQ west of 110 is going to want to work the register at Taco Bell, yet plenty of MENSA members are still going to need Double-Decker Taco Supremes and Cinnamon Twistsso lets all agree that idiots in this country, though unpleasant company, pull their weight. IGT keeps us cranking out kids, ensuring that we have a stable population even in this age of easy contraception. If the overpopulation fears of alarmist liberals are anything to worry about, then Ill point out that IGT also keeps us dying at a healthy rate from preventable things like STDs, heart-disease and lung cancer. IGT may well be the sole stabilizing force of our population! It keeps us breeding and it keeps us dying. Another advantage of IGT keeping us from living too long is that far less of us survive into senility than medical science, combined with reasonable health awareness, ought to rightfully allow us to do. This spares us from the worst years of our lives. Just recently my great grandma, who has survived to the miserable old age of 96, told my gay uncle that she doubted that my aunts daughter was really my aunts. Why? Because my aunt is such a slut that she probably cheated on her husband. In my grandmas senile and faltering old brain that doesnt just call the paternity of my cousin into question, but her maternity as well! I hate to spout a tough guy clich, but if Im ever that old and stupid, please shoot me. Thankfully, my proclivity for donuts and cheese and processed meats to the disregard of my health will likely send me to an early grave like my father before me. Thanks to IGT, I will likely die with my wits intact and my family will be able to remember me as a mean-spirited old fucker who hated everyone and was damned hilarious. You may be saying at this point, Okay, perhaps there is something of an argument to be made for benefits of personal IGT, but on a societal level, its all bad news! I will grant you that IGT creates problems like global warming and peak oil, but if not for our reckless use of oil and petroleum based products, wed likely not be as far along in our research of alternative energy because our frugality in the face of a crisis would have had us managing our oil better and using it longer. If it werent for the global warming problem wed not have poured nearly as much many into climate science, which has lead us to a number of auxiliary revelations about how our whole ecosystem works. Scientific discovery and innovation have always been driven by crises. Aviation technology has been pushed forward more by war and the need to stay ahead of enemy competition than it has out of love of science. Microwaves, Velcro, thermal imagining, prosthetic limb advancements and even the computer networking techniques that eventually led to the creation of the internet were all designed or perfected by the military for the purpose of being more effective as a killing machine. IGT is a force that creates problems that only science can fixit is my contention that the two things are symbiotic and that if we were a species less prone to getting into mischief, we would lack a great deal of the scientific and technological sophistication that we possess today.

Obey Your Master

"Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth. You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you're doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you'll hear about them." Those are the words of Bill Watterson, the creator of the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes which ran from 1985 to 1995. Bill Watterson is a strange breed of person. People, on a subconscious level, feel that his mentality is a threat to the American dream. The American dream being, of course, making fat sums of money. When Steven Spielberg called Bill because he was interested in making a Calvin & Hobbes movie, Bill just turned him down flat. Thats incredible. In this culture, shunning greed is the utmost sin, the most unforgivable and incomprehensible outrage. When he refused to license his characters (all those truck decals you see with Calvin peeing on rival truck brands were made without licensing) to make a profit, he was essentially making the statement that the integrity of his artistic creation was more valuable than any sum of money, than any life of comfort. As much as I adore and admire his resolve, I do not perceive that sort of integrity in myself and allusions to such integrity would be illusions. However, just because I lack Mr. Wattersons immense and incorruptible virtue does not mean that I lack all virtue or that I cannot recognize the validity of his virtuousness or admire the strength of his convictions, just as I have gotten a great many people to admire the strength of my various convictions by becoming a public-speaker, sometimes-comedian and freedomadvocate on the popular internet website YouTube . Honor has essentially exploited our tendency to admire those of great resolve by standardizing morality. Our admiration is permissible, in the eyes of the powerful, only when it is directed towards their ideal. Their ideal, it should be noted, is never the ideal that they themselves live by. Its the ideal that most conveniences them to have others live by. Let me say here that I dont for a moment believe in the idea of CEOs and Politicians as archvillains dividing and conquering the populace with ingenious deceptions and carefully-crafted propaganda. I think this vile tendency emerged quite naturally over the course of our social evolution and have rarely, if ever, been conscious acts of malevolence. And because this tendency has been hardwired into us by evolution, it can only be overcome with cognition. There is a good reason why so few films financed by major studios encourage introspectionit is subconsciously perceived as detrimental to the agenda of the corporations, which is to keep the population dull and complacent. Only people disconnected enough from any sense of self to watch MTV would be undiscerning enough to inhale the glut of insipid and intoxicating miasma known to mankind simply as commercials. Honor is used to teach us who to admire and who to revile. Those who adhere to the social codes for their given class99% of celebrities and athletesare admired and revered because of the misdirection of our natural love of those with strong convictions towards those who have only the strong convictions approved by those in power. Those in power despise with infinite vitriol the Bill Wattersons of the world because the ethic that he exhibits is not conducive to their vision of utopia, wherein everything and everyone is for sale; where art is nothing more than a product to be cynically peddled to the masses for a little capital gain. What upsets the powerful more than anything about Wattersons case is that to berate him openly would have displayed to the whole world what they really were. Despite all of our programming to the contrary, many human beings can still recognize genuine integrity when they see itwhich is why occasionally the powerful let someone with genuine integrity infiltrate the mainstream. Usually they do it

on accident and, when theyve realized their mistake, cannot possible fix the problem as long as the individual of integrity is successful. To do so would be to declare themselves open enemies of true integrity and undermine their unquestioned authority. I fear, however, that the day is fast approaching when few people will recognize true integrity and the powerful will be in the position to oppose it openly. Its as Bill said. A person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. What merely seems eccentric today may be called subversive tomorrow. And what is merely subversive today may become unforgivable tomorrow. The pursuit of happiness that our founders felt important enough to call an inalienable right in The Declaration of Independence is now viewed as evil by the majority of Americans. Of course, if you sat most of Americans down and said, Do you believe in the pursuit of happiness? theyd nod their empty heads until the sound of the spare change rattling around in their skulls gave you a migraineyet, those who truly pursue happiness are cast in a villainous light. The enterprising young businessman in the slums who tries to make money selling drugs that the US government doesnt approve of will find himself crushed beneath police truncheons because, as Chris Rock so astutely pointed out, Only the white man is allowed to profit from other peoples pain. I would substitute the word normal instead of the white but otherwise have no qualms with his statement. The pursuit of happiness cannot only be for the rich, the well-connected or those willing to sell their souls for table scraps from the big corporate banquet. If happiness is to truly be an inalienable right than laws must only be passed and enforced when the cost of one mans happiness is the destruction of another mans will. The drug dealer peddles his wares to drug users who have a choicethey can choose to take drugs or not to take drugs. The murderers victims have no choicewhich is why murder must remain illegal. The murderers right to the pursuit of happiness must be alienable to safeguard to inalienable rights of others. This does not, however, make the urges of a murderer eviltheyre simply not pragmatic. If the murder finds a willing victim, one who wishes to by killed because he is tired of life (or for some other reason), then said murderer can pursue his happiness without violating the right to anothers happiness. We are here making the assumption that our lives are the property of our selveswhich is the assumption that our founders, despite their slave-owning hypocrisy, made when they founded this country of rugged individualists who reviled the authority of the crown of England. This idea is contrary to all presently popular socio-theological-political models. We are viewed by a great many as property of a God whose will is known to us only through the 5,000- to 2,000-year-old desert scribblings of Jewish nomads. Our lives are seen by those who subscribe to this ludicrous fairytale as nothing more than kindling to stoke the fires of Hell or drones whose sole purpose is to act out the will of their fictional deity. Others see us as belonging to the state. The state can decide whats best for us, take our money to create weapons for our soldiers to use to attack countries that we have nothing against. And if too many of our soldiers die, theyve no qualms about ordering citizens to fight in their wars. Fight or go to prison is the choice they give us, all while claiming that were fighting for freedom. What freedom? Their freedom to tell you what to do? Their freedom to conscript you into an army and make you kill your fellow man for the sake of a cause that youll never understand? Their freedom to send you to your death the moment that your death will fatten their pockets in the slightest? You are not free as long as you are the property of a God or a government. You are only free when you are the master of your fate and the captain of your soul. The elections that they hold are nothing more than a means of placating you with fake freedom, whilst strategically keeping you from the historical understanding of what true freedom entails. It is as Benjamin Franklin once said: Democracy is three wolves and a sheep voting on dinner. Liberty is a well armed sheep contesting the result. When you allow yourself to be fodder for the wars of powerful men, you are not well-armed sheep contesting the result. You are pawns on a chessboard, viewed by the King and Queen as wholly expendable

from a larger strategic perspective. If you kill enough for them and are brave and selfless (what a terrible thing to be) enough for them, you could win a Medal of Honor. You could be a hero, like Ira Hayes who raised the flag at Iwo Jima in that famous picture and died drunk face down in a ditch lying in his own vomit and blood a number of years later. The currency of honor does not buy a means to the pursuit of happiness. Rather, it further indebts you to your ownersthe CEO, the senator, the judges and cops and prison guards. And theyve shown from their inability to take care of the heroes at Iwo Jima or the heroes of 9/11 that no matter how much you give them, they wont give anything back. The people are told to be selfless while the politicians, justice system officials and corporate cocksuckers are free to be selfish. Youre told to not pursue your happiness, while they whip your backs bloody and sustain themselves on your blood like the vampiric assholes they are. And if you complain about your lot in life and demand your fair share of the pie, they start whining about their rights. They talk about the fruits of their labor, while youre the one working in the factory and theyre the ones shuffling papers in an air-conditioned office making huge salaries. They call you a socialist, as if the word itself were an instant argument winner because theyve imagined and sold you a consensus that says socialism is bad and socialism means whatever they want it to mean. They know that you dont know what it means and use your ignorance to control you.

Honor Thyself
Without reinforcers of any kind, our idiosyncrasies compound to the point that we are no longer able to function in normal society. We are social animals who need the approval of our fellow beings to maintain a coherent sense of self. Conversely, if we play by the rules and allow ourselves to be influenced by others, we find ourselves to victims of the nightmares of the pecking order. In 1921 a Norwegian zoologist named Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe (dont worry, I cant pronounce it either) discovered a strange behavior exhibited by chickens during their feeding time. The weaker birds would refuse to eat until the stronger birds had their fill. He called this occurrence the pecking order and it occurs in all animals in one form or anotherthe perceived weak willfully succumb to the perceived strong. In nature, the behavior that lends itself most to social advancement is aggressiveness. The willingness to relentlessly attack all those who oppose you makes you dangerous and will, even in our supposedly enlightened species, bring you to power. Have you ever wondered why loan sharks kill those who cannot pay them? Surely a living man is always more likely to repay a loan than a dead one! Its not a necessity of their business, but it is a necessity of their perceived dominance within the territories under their control. Criminals conduct themselves in this fashion because they have not yet socially evolved to the point where theyve recognized the power of reinforcer-denial as an even more potent control mechanism than old-school brutality. Many government (and aspiring governments) in countries that we (in all of our American arrogance) label underdeveloped or the third world still enforce their dictates with the sloppy and outmoded use of physical violence. We are not the least bit better than any of these countries in most respects. Our sole advantage is that we have devised a more cunning thing to take away from people than their lives. We take away their ability to regulate their self-image through the social and cultural reinforcement of their personal narratives. We steal their identities. The only possible means of countervailing this identity-theft is to recognize the manipulation as it happens and consciously defy its influence. This can be achieved in several ways, but before we can even begin to discuss them, you have to figure out who what narrative you would truly prefer. Because your identity is inexorably tied to those around you, pay attention to who you gravitate towards, who you idolize, who you admire. Then ask yourself if you really admire what theyre selling, or if you merely fear not buying it. Never allow yourself to be motivated by fear. Fear can be levied against you to make you behave in ways that you otherwise would not. The first step towards self-realization is the renunciation of fear. Ah, but some fear does you a service. The fear of prison likely keeps you out of prison. The fear of snakes will prevent snake bites. The fear of losing your life will prevent you from risking it foolishly. So embrace those fears if you choose. The type of fear you must renounce is a far more subtle and devious variety of fear. It is fear of inadequacy, fear of being judged, fear of the wrath of the superreinforcers. Luckily, this fear can be destroyed by the very solution to the identity-theft problem. It was simply important that you acknowledged your fears before attempting these methods. Lone Wolf. Is it possible to maintain ones cohesion even without reinforcement? With constant strength of will, I believe that some people can do so. However, a life without any interaction whatsoever is bound to be savagely lonely. Even the most virulent misanthrope would likely be heavily taxed by such an isolated existence Combine that with the sheer exertion of maintaining your psyche in a vacuum and youre a train wreck waiting to happen.

Subversive. The simple act of awareness is enough to largely free you from the bondage of societal synchronicity. When you are aware of the constant manipulation of all those around you, youre less likely to be impacted by it. The drawback here is that you live a life of utter paranoia, always wondering if you really like what you like and really hate what you hate. Counter-Culture. Dont like the values of the vox populi? Create your own value system and find others with similar ones. Once this was hard, but in the internet age its significantly simpler. The drawback is that such groups can become too clickish and cult-like. Ultimately, no solution is the perfect solution. They all have their share of pros and consbut even at their most problematic they are preferable to the bland life of servitude that I thoroughly criticized in the previous section.

My Various Failed Subversive Revolutions

This chapter is something of an aside that explains my credentials as a revolutionary. They are less than impressive and often make me appear entirely repugnant, but I trust they will be amusing to many of you. The ASU Atheist Scum United was founded on April 4th, 2007 with the purpose of pissing a lot of people off. It quickly came under fire from moderate atheists for its extremist stances and hostile conduct, and imploded on May 5th 2007 , just barely a month after it had launched. The tactics, which included spam attacks on Christian websites, driving Christians off of public forums like YouTube and forming a lobby to get children removed from fundamentalist households, were loathed by all but the most authoritarian secularists. Its true purpose was to elevate me to cult-leader status and build a following of extremist adulators to funnel money into my pocket and obey my directives, which would have always been aimed at wreaking social havoc. Sadly, because of my home environment at the time and the stupidity of those who I exploited as partners in the venture, the whole thing went to hell in a hand basket. Private documents explaining ASU tactics leaked to the public before they had been polished down into something more bland and inoffensive and the backlash was tremendous. The ASU wound up spending all of its time defending its own existence and soon collapsed under the weight of its own bloated incompetence. It remains my most public attempt at destroying the social order and my most public failure. Feminist Rape Plot In 2005 and 2006 I posed as an extremist feminist named Martha Stanton who advocated a number of extreme measures for creating a matriarchal society on various online forums and in a few small newsletters. Of the numerous opinions of Martha Stanton, I shall illuminate a few: The rape of men through the use of alcohol (or other intoxicating agents) and large strap-on dildos. The stated objective here was to make men realize that they could be victims as well, thus engendering new empathy between the sexes. Many feminist extremists (hereafter referred to as feminazis) advocate the abortion of all male babies, but that wasnt subversive enough for Martha. She instead advocated giving birth to male children but raising them to obey and worship women, to treat them like dogs and to never love them. Martha demanded that the word man be stricken from the dictionary and that all words describing manliness of masculinity (such as manliness and masculinity) be removed from the language as well. In doing so, Martha believed that men would lack the ability to express themselves as different from women and the divisions between the sexes would diminish. Martha said that newly-wed brides should have lesbian orgies on the night of their honeymoon and that they should divorce their husbands the next day without ever sleeping with them. I dont even remember her rationale for this one. Martha wanted certain boys to be raised on farms and cultivated as meat for women so that man recognized his place as an animal. Martha wanted 95% of boys castrated at puberty. Martha demanded that only girls be allowed access to education because the violent tendencies of men led them to use their education only to make bombs and guns. Marthas ideas never caught on. She spent most of her time arguing with less extreme feminists (such as all of them) and was banned from countless forums. The newsletters that printed her work subsequently came under fire and would not publish future articles. She did, interestingly enough, acquire a somewhat sizable circle of male sexual submissives in the BDSM lifestyle, but these were useless to her purpose of

creating a matriarchy and even more useless to my purpose of fucking the world up royally. The Pricks & The SSS As a young lad, I attended the private school of Crestdale. I remember very little about the school, as I am largely a forward-thinking person, not often given to reminiscence. I do, however, recall the school song, taught to us by a balding and hopefully now dead asshole named Dave . Crestdale school is number one! We make learning fu-un! Well I know! (clap clap) Well I know! (clap clap) Cause Crestdales where I go! Even as a boy I found that song to be completely inane drivel. I was fond of some of the other songs we sang, such as Ghost of John and Oh, You Cant Get To Heaven, but I digress. What I remember most of all though were my friends Luke, Nick and Whats-His-Face and our two clubs: The SSS (School Sucks Shit) and The Pricks (this name was a double entendre in that we were admittedly asshole and that we all carried around thumbtacks with which to stab other children). I dont recall if School Sucks Shit ever had a theme song, but I know that The Pricks did. We are the pricks! We prick you in the dick! Dow dow dow! Dow dow dow dow dow! Dow dow dow! Dow dow dow dow dow! Granted, it was only slightly less inane that the Crestdale theme song, but it was a hell of a lot more fuun. In either incarnation of our club, our primary agenda was to fuck up our uptight private school, which we all despised with every fiber of our angst-crammed preteen minds. Threatening letters to teachers, harassment, the infliction of tiny puncture wounds upon our peers, lifting up the girls skirts, making fun of the kid whose older brother had committed suicidenothing was above or beneath us. Pretty much all of us were expelled from Crestdale or asked to leave, so I guess we must have been a threat to the established order. At 8-years-old I had managed my first and thusfar my last successful subversive movement.

Democracy Is Fascism By Consensus

I am an atheist in a country with a religious majority, where the majority rules. If ever a law were to come before the voters that somehow restricted the rights of those who do not believe in God, how would they vote? I imagine they would vote similarly to how 11 states voted on the issue of gay marriage in 2004. The question posed to the American people was simple: do these people deserve the right to enter into the same social contracts that we do? Lets take a look how that turned out. BAN SAME-SEX MARRIAGE? YES NO Arkansas 75% 25% Georgia 76% 24% Kentucky 75% 25% Michigan 59% 41% Mississippi 86% 14% Montana 67% 33% North Dakota 73% 27% Ohio 62% 24% Oklahoma 76% 24% Oregon 57% 43% Utah 66% 34% There you have it, Mr. Franklin, three wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. Where are the well-armed sheep to contest this vote? Where are those who defy the masses of dumb asses and shove the narrow-minded pettiness of the populace down its own throat? As George Carlin once said, We dont have people like that in this country. People must have control over their destiny and the direction of their country, but just as murders cannot murder without consent, populations cannot strip one-another of inalienable rights. If your pursuit of happiness includes fucking other members of your own sex, then it is un-American for us to put it to a vote. If desegregation were put to a vote, blacks might still be drinking from the black water fountain and we certainly wouldnt have a man named Barack Hussein Obama in the highest office in the land. A system where 51% of the people can rule over the other 49% doesnt make much sense, either ethically or pragmatically. Having a leader who only represents the values of a little over half of your country makes no sense. The fictional character spider Jerusalem from Warren Ellis comic book masterpiece Transmetropolitan explained it best: You want to know about voting? Im here to tell you about voting. Imagine youre locked in a huge underground nightclub filled with sinners, whores, freaks and unnamable things that rape pit bulls for fun. And you aint allowed out until you all vote on what youre going to do tonight. You like to put your feet up and watch Republican Party Reservation. They like to have sex with normal people using knives, guns, and brand new sexual organs that you did not know existed. So you vote for television, and everyone else, as far as your eye can see, votes to fuck you with switchblades. Thats voting. Youre welcome. The sole qualm I have with this analogy is that were not lone dissenters at the mercy of an overwhelming mob. We have numbers. If youre gayor just a freedom-lover who wants to fight for the beaten downthen fight those who seek to pass laws against gay marriage. Dont vote against the measure because doing so is a tacit admission that voting on such matters is the proper thing to do. Instead, challenge the very notion that such things should be voted on. If you cant win on that basis, then its time to get more extreme. For my own legal safety I cant tell you what extremes you might go to to preserve freedom, but Ill tell you what Thomas Jefferson had to say about it. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

Commercials For Mediocrity

Television has taught me much about my enemy, the human race. It has shown me, with stark clarity, their every perverse desire and oppressive insecurity. It has lain naked before me their cruelty and ignorance. One drunken night, I sat before this idiot boxwhat Harlan Ellison in his infinite insight into all things dubbed the glass teatwith a pen in hand and a notebook sprawled out on the coffee table before me, jotting down the messages of television advertisements in the most undiluted terms I could manage. Here is a sampling of the results: 1. Save money on car insurance with Progressive, so that you can waste it on frivolous purchases that your wife doesn't know about. 2. If you play the game "Rock Band" for the Nintendo Wii, you will become as cool as the members of an actual band. 3. Anything that you do after midnight, other than going to Denny's, will turn out badly. 4. Red Bull Energy Drink will enable you to fly to Heaven for the purpose of exacting revenge on your recently deceased husband for leaving his fortune to his mistress rather than you and the two children you had with him. 5. Attractive people are all inexplicably using dating services, so your ugly ass had better get in on that action. 6. Penis Enlargement Pill (Extenz) is "scientifically proven" and if it didn't work then its makers could not possible afford to put commercials for it on television. 7. Without a drug called ProGene, you will be a completely unsatisfactory lover. Graphs are presented to prove this fact. 8. With AutoZone, you can restore a shitty old car that you found on the side of the road to working condition if you work on it constantly for months on end. Lets examine these concepts one-by-one and extrapolate their appeal, shall we? We shall. 1. Save money on car insurance with Progressive, so that you can waste it on frivolous purchases that your wife doesn't know about. Saving money is obviously desirable, but not good enough to really sell insurance in Progressives opinion. You also have to spell out for people what they could do with this money and, in this instance, theyre saying, Hey guys, with all the money youll save you could buy shit behind your wifes back! Shell never find out! Only a fool would look to commercials for their morality and obviously no one looks at this material as though it were meant to influence or persuade usbut it is and it does! If commercials didnt persuade us to buy products, then multi-billion-dollar corporations would not waste money utilizing them to sell everything from car insurance to low-fat yogurt. Why then is it a stretch to think that this message of, Its okayor at least expectedto go behind your wifes back with the households finances might be influential?

2. If you play the game "Rock Band" for the Nintendo Wii, you will become as cool as the members of an actual band. The oldest lie in the advertisers arsenal: X will make you cool. You must have X. Without X your life will be reduced to a hideous montage of shame and degradation. What most uncool people never seem to realize, even under the crushing weight of all those unfulfilled promises of thousands upon thousands of products designed to make you cool, is that cool simply isnt sold in a store. A loser in a corvette parked outside his palatial estate is still a loser. If this inescapable truth was ever realized, the entire advertising industry would be destroyed overnight. And that would be fucking cool. 3. Anything that you do after midnight, other than going to Denny's, will turn out badly. This is a strange phenomena of recent advertising: the non sequitur masquerading as conventional wisdom. You havent always known that everything you do after midnight is doomed to fail? Well, youve always known it now. As soon as Dennys creates this conventional wisdom, they immediately defy it! How bold! Marvel at how we stand in defiance of the principle that we ourselves contrived for the specific purpose of boldly defying it! 4. Red Bull Energy Drink will enable you to fly to Heaven for the purpose of exacting revenge on your recently deceased husband for leaving his fortune to his mistress rather than you and the two children you had with him. I like commercials that make claims that are so ridiculous that they are designed to not be believed. Energy drinks in particular enjoy this technique. A man drinks a Vault and he suddenly has the ability to punch out sharks while clubbing lesser men to death with his erect penis. Why is this commercial making the claim that the product it advertises can do things that even the dumbest viewer knows with a binding certainty it cannot do? I think its to distract us from the fact that the product doesnt actually do anything. 5. Attractive people are all inexplicably using dating services, so your ugly ass had better get in on that action. Is there even one among us who really believes this? Peoplemen in particularare so controlled by their sexual organs that many advertisers wisely choose to ignore their brains altogether. Will men who know damn well that attractive women dont use telephone dating services suspend their disbelief long enough to cough up a credit card number? You and I both know the answer. 6. Penis Enlargement Pill (Extenz) is "scientifically proven" and if it didn't work then its makers could not possible afford to put commercials for it on television. What I adore most about this commercial is its shaky attempt at logic. Rarely does a commercial attempt to employ logiceven of the shaky varietyso one has to give them a measure of credit for their attempt. 7. Without a drug called ProGene, you will be a completely unsatisfactory lover. Graphs are presented to prove this fact. Theyve got charts! How could anyone ever possibly resist the fact-laden persuasive power of a brightly colored pie chart insisting their urgent need for a particular product?

Actually, how could anyone not resist that? 8. With AutoZone, you can restore a shitty old car that you found on the side of the road to working condition if you work on it constantly for months on end. This commercial really touched my heart. A teenage boy finds a dilapidated car on the side of the road with a note in the window that reads If you can fix it you can have it. So the boy gets a job and works his butt off until he has all the parts he needs to slowly repair the car. His tenacity and resolve exemplify the American Spirit! As does his stupidity. He spent his summer getting parts to fix a shitty car that someone abandoned on the side of the road when he could have just saved up to buy a used car already in working condition. So, what can we extrapolate from these commercials? I wont force any conclusions on you, but heres the conclusion that Im forcing on you: human beings, especially Americans, are the most gullible assortment of rubes to ever walk this shit-covered ball of filth and bacteria that we call Earth. Now, this may strike you as unfair and unreasonable, and I will concede that it is. However, it also happens to be true.

Our Heroes
Our heroes are not scientists or explorers. Challenge an American on the streets to name 10 scientists off the top of his head. Ask them if they know the name of even one current astronaut. Watch them fumble stupidly. Our heroes are not artists. We might lovingly embrace a director or a singer every now and then, but usually only if theyre directing movies about exploding trucks or singing about how great America is and how much they like expensive things and sexual intercourse. Our heroes are not actors and actresses. Weve turned them into our public freakshow, putting the pressure of our intense scrutiny on them and then waiting for them to snap under the weight of our merciless judgment. Our heroes are not everyday people like us. Were a bunch of fat, complacent slobs. Wed be idiots to admire one another. We pay a little bit of lip-service to firemen and police and soldiersbut at the end of the day those people have no impact on most of us (other than those cited in vague allusions to keeping us safe and fighting for our freedom). If you think soldiers and firemen are our real heroes than ask why so many homeless people are veterans. Ask why firemen dont get multi-million dollar endorsement deals. Ask why youve never seen a panel of guys sitting around a table talking about their favorite fireman or how amazing a certain cops takedown of a particular criminal was. But there are two factions of people in America these days. There are those who have heroes and those who have to act as if they do not. I will write about the latter first and segue into a discussion of the former from there. A lot of my friends, whom I consider to be among the smarter living denizens of shitball #3 , say that they have no heroes. I view this as partly a response to the inanity of what is considered heroic in modern America and partly a consequence of the look-up-to-no-one trend started by Kurt Cobain in the early 90s. Kurt was a reaction to the ridiculously flashy and fake rockstars dominating the scene at the end of the 80sguys gallivanting around in yellow spandex and purple codpieces, wailing like banshees about rocking your body and touching your body and tasting your body and doing a whole assortment of other unseemly things to your body. With Kurt, the idea of the rockstar as a God-like figure who was simply better and cooler than you in every possible way went to its grave. The rockstar was now just an everyday guyperhaps with a bit more poetry in his or her soul, but otherwise indistinguishable from the masses. Playing a gig in jeans and a T-shirt was now not only okay, it was expected. Dressing up in flamboyant costumes was now looked upon as the behavior of a poser. Since then, those rules have been relaxed to admit more theatrical acts like Marilyn Manson and Slipknot into the darker bowels of the mainstreambut as oft-derided acts taken seriously only by their hardcore fans and laughed off by most others. When we look for the ultimate fulfillment of our most closely held valueswe can only ever see them perfectly realized within the world of fiction. In movies and films and even (for some of us) books there exists a moral simplicity that is innately gratifying. In film, Batman was transformed from a campy crime-fighter in tights in 1966 to a rich boy out for a good time bullying criminals in 1989 to a brooding bad ass with an unbreakable will in 2008. The trend here was towards a more human rendition of the character. Adam Wests Batman was silly, Michael Keatons was dull and spoiled, Christian Bales was complex and believable. By now some of you are wondering what the hell Im rambling about, so Ill spell it out: our heroes are becoming people who dont want to be our heroes. Is there any doubt that Axl Rose loves nothing more than being loved and adored and worshipped by whatever remains of his pathetic fan-base? Kurt Cobain, on the other hand, felt deeply conflicted about the idea of being a role model. He didnt really feel up to the task of being anyones hero. Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan crafted a similar Batman

one who felt unworthy of being a hero and unsure if he could handle the pressures of being perceived as such. For this reason, the no-heroes crowd respectfully pretends to not have heroes. Even if they adore the ever-loving shit out of someone, they act as though they dont to spare their heroes a little bit of the pressure of being heroes. Its awful considerate of them really. The pro-heroes crowd is not so considerate, but their heroes dont want them to be. The heroes of pro-heroes people are typically self-absorbed athletes with more muscles than brains. It is always fun to watch as these heroes are fed a steady diet of love from the public for years and years, feeding their already morbidly obese egos, until one day some fact about them comes to light or they start to lose their game and their sycophantic devotees evaporate like a mirage. Thats when the tabloids and the gossip shows (and, increasingly, the actual news) get ahold of them. The Green Goblin from 2002s Spiderman was among the lamest realizations of an iconic comic book villain in cinematic history, but I always found myself agreeing with his contention that the one thing people love more than a hero is to see a hero fall. And before your criticize me for referencing superheroes twice in one section, Id remind you that Im about as nerdy as a person can be. As a teenager, acne accounted for more of my body mass than penis did. Besides, this is a chapter about heroesand super ones are the most idealized of all. This notion, by the way, fits perfectly into my idea that athletes are our ultimate heroes. Who could ever be more athletic than superheroes? They can run faster than speeding bullets and leap tall buildings in a single bound! The superheroes are the home team and all the supervillains are from rival schools. It fits together eerily wellat least in my mind. I dont know if we can choose our heroes or if who we admire is inexorably linked to our own valueswherever those are derived frombut it seems to me that we should have deep admiration for anyone who is especially talented at what they do. Why cant a man who can eat more hotdogs than most people be a small-time hero? My stepfather is an excellent contractor and carpenterwhy does that skill entitle him to less hero worship than a guy who can pluck a guitar well? Dont we need roofs over our heads and four walls to hold them up as much as we need music to reverberate off of those walls? Am I being too idealistic? I had better stop in that case.

Sorrow & Flatulence

TJ, theres something seriously wrong with your father. Id be lying if I said panic was my first reaction to those words. The sentence, and its meaning, made the room I was occupying seem larger. It made me feel smaller. I rose from my chair, jogged briskly to the bedroom where my father lay moaning inhumanly. His face was purple, his eyes glassy. We turned him over. His beige pants were drenched with urine. Oh god, shouted my stepmom. Hes pissed himself. At that moment, we all knew he was going to die. It was the unspoken obvious fact that filled the room like a cloud of noxious gas. Oh god, hes pissed himself was grief-stricken wife speak for: Of fuck, hes a goner! Weme, my brother and my stepmommanaged to get him onto the floor. She pumped his chest and blew into his mouth. I called 9-1-1. The breaths she gave him seemed to bypass his lungs entirely, simply inflating his stomach instead. They came out in little bursts of cartoonish snoring that would have sounded funny under different circumstances. Hell, theyre kind of funny even in retrospect, albeit in a dark and haunting way. Paramedics arrived quickly and worked on him for what seemed liked 15-minutes but was probably a considerable shorter period of time. They managed to restore his pulse. They were all very casual. It was nothing they hadnt seen a hundred times before--just another family destroyed, just another person sucked into oblivion, just another day at work. I freely admit to hating them to this day, despite knowing that detachment is an important part of their job. We stewed in the hospitals waiting room while doctors performed surgery. We were told that my father had suffer a massive heart-attack. The waiting room was filled with people wanting to be seen for minor illnesses. A black woman kept shouting how outrageous it was that she had to wait so long for treatment for her sickle-cell. I know these white people in here aint got no sickle-cell! she shouted indignantly. I wanted to smash her face into the brick wall that I was leaning on as I sat on the floor because stupid cretinous morons like her had taken all the chairs. I wanted to pound her face into a pulp until sickle-cell was at the very bottom of her list of medical problems. Being in the hospital that night kicked killed the conservative in me. Not all at once, but it was the first blow to all my high-minded idealism about the strong pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. Here I was, surrounded by the weakthe poor, the infirm, the refuge of society. I had an epiphany then (though it was drowned by grief): these people were my countrymen. These sickly people and these relatives of sickly people were my fellow human beings. That hard truth is that no one is strong. We are all fundamentally weak because no matter how spectacular we may fancy ourselves to be, were still biological organisms of immense frailty. My friend Logan was driving in a car with his girlfriend once and he had to slam on the brakes to avoid a collision. His girlfriend wasnt wearing her seatbelt and her head smacked against the windshield. She was largely unharmed, but Logan realized that if he hadnt hit the brakes when he had, hed have crashed and she would have been severely injured or worse. He told me then how he hated the fragility of human life. There was a time when I would have agreed with him, and much of me still does. However, and in spite of all the sorrow it has caused me and countless other human beings, I kind of dig our fragility. Marilyn Manson, who just so happens to be the most brilliant man on earth, puts it best in his song The Reflecting God:

Without the threat of death Theres no reason to live at all Isnt that the truest statement ever spoken or sung? Without death, life has no meaning. Existence is no fun if its not temporary. Thats why we drive too fast, do drugs, eat shitty food and all that fun stuff. We like to give death a big middle finger and dare him to bite us in the ass. But I digress. I was in the hospital room waiting for my father to get out of surgery. Everyone knew he was going to die. There were no delusions. We were all attempting to lie to ourselves, but none of us believed our own bullshit. Maybe if hed contracting cancer or something like that and wed had weeks to lie to ourselves instead of just hours, we could have tricked ourselves. That wasnt the case though. I supposed that the first time a loved one dies, you should come away with a deeper understanding of yourself. Its sort of expected of you. My dad died, but I gained such and such insight into myself. Its our way of acting like us and the world are Even Steven. So, without further delay, here are somethings I learned about myself in exchange for my fathers death. GRAND ISIGHT INTO MYSELF #1: I fart a lot when Im consumed by grief and shock and terror. I could scarcely go a minute without releasing the most rank and vile farts known to man. I was in a room filled with sick people, waiting for news about my fathers fate and I was farting. Nothing in those overwrought dramatic films about personal tragedy prepares you for such incongruities. Sorrow and flatulence are supposed to be mutually exclusive occurrences. Farting while be dad was dying taught me this: there is no supposed to be in the real world. Reality doesnt care about ought or should. Hoping, praying, wishing, expectingthese activities are akin to wading up a piece of paper and throwing it at a tank. GRAND ISIGHT INTO MYSELF #2: I have a thick country accent when Im bereaved. I stood beside my fathers deathbed with my normally unaffectionate brother clinging to me as if I was the sole thing keeping him from spiraling into madness. I spoke to my father for the last time knowing full well that he couldnt hear or perceive a goddamn thing that I said. I may as well have been talking to a wall. I begged himin a thick southern accent that I dont normally haveto pull a miracle out of his ass. I told him that if anyone could defy the odds it was him. I swore that if he made a full recovery, Ian atheist since childhoodwould praise whatever God may be in any way that I could. Hours later, he was dead. The nurses told us that he had no chance and that even if he survived he would likely have serious brain damage. I said, Thats not what hed want, and I had them take him off the machines that were keeping him alive. It was amazing how quickly he went from a human being to a corpse. His body was suddenly so stiff and lifeless. When I gave him my departing hug, it felt as though I were hugging a mannequin or a wax figure. I went home that night and the first thing I did was make a YouTube video . It may seem peculiar, but Ive never been one to suffer in the shadows. I want people to know that Im in painjust like I want them to know when Im angry or happy. I always want everyone to share in my emotional state . The night my father died taught me a number of important things. It taught me that I fart a lot under stress. It taught me that I have a thick southern accent when I get really upset. It taught me that no matter how full of life someone seems, they may be close to death. Most importantly, it taught me that life isnt fair. Were told that all the time growing up. I couldnt possibly count the number of times I was told as a child that life isnt fairbut I didnt really realize it until

I was 23 and my father died before ever even getting to wear the watch I bought him for Christmas. Oh well. Life goes on. . . . Until it doesnt.

Bitches Be Crazy
So theres this girl. . . . I wonder how many stories start that way. Im betting that most of the stories men tell start with some variation of those words. Love stories start that way, hate stories start that way; tales of everything from redemption to obsession start with a girl. Girls are capable of an intensity of emotions that most men could never muster. Any man who has ever argued with a girl knows this. Reason and logic are thrown out the window the moment that a girls feelings are hurt. Some will call these sentiments sexist, and rightfully sobecause they are. This has little bearing, however, on my subject matter for this chapter. I have a little bit of a story to tell you, and in telling you this story I hope to prove a point about gender and about America. Failing that, I hope to amuse you with a tale of obsessive behavior. Gather round children and allow me to tell you a story. It starts like this: So theres this girl named Gwen. Thats short for Gwendolyn but that doesnt really matter since Gwen is not her real name. Shes an overweight teenage vegan who dreams of being famous. She is straight edge but is considering quitting so that she can do cocaine. She greets people by saying, Wanna get a pizza and fuck? Her mother is a lesbian social-worker. She is obsessed with Vanilla Ice. She yells at people when they eat eggs because its animal cruelty. She hates all the girls that like me because they like me. She brings up interesting topics in passing and then discusses boring ones at length. She frequently alludes to fantasies wherein I have sex with my brother or my friend Cody for her pleasure. She has Charles Manson eyes and gigantic tits. She will IM me for hours solid even if I dont IM her back even once. She alternately tells me that she watches all my videos and tells me that shes only watched two or three of them. She thinks the Columbine killers are cute. She thinks shes a good person, but she does not value human life. She hates me one day and loves me the next. She is unaware of most of these traits. Ive told her that she is a crazy bitch. Ive called her dirt. Ive been as mean as possible to her. Ive talked to her in ways that would have driven some people to take a razor to their wristsand shes taken no offense. Other days I have vaguely alluded, in the politest possible term, to strange idiosyncrasies in her personality and reduced her to tears and rage. She asks me for advice at times. She is terrified of the future. She doesnt want to be an adult. She fears that it will be more difficult to make friends, even though she has no friends. She fears that adults dont have enough sex, though she doesnt have any now. Shes essentially afraid that adulthood will be different by being exactly the same. When I was a kid only my gay uncle ever told me the truth about being an adult. When I asked 99% of adults what it was like to be a grown-up theyd tell me that it was awful and that Id better enjoy my childhood while it lasted. My gay uncle didnt bother with that smokescreen. Being an adult is way better, he said. You dont have to put up with a bunch of people telling you what to do all the time. You can sit around in your living room in your underwear with a joint and a bowl of soup and no one gives a fuck. So I essentially told Gwen the same thing, but for her it seemed like a nightmare. I asked her then, What are you afraid of Gwen? The following is her exact answer: Getting an obsession, not getting married, not having anyone fall in love with me, spiders, having kids with worse mental problems than me, being fat the rest of my life, not being successful, my cat dying before me, never being "hot", my agent (she scares the shit out of me), people who are really nice to me to the point I dont know if theyre real, being dependant on my meds, not getting into college, and ketchup. Its hard not to pity someone with so many fears. I felt a tinge of sympathy for her. I have my moments of humanity . Then I began to wonder, Do I even have the right to by sympathetic? Im as obsessive as she is and I fear that no one will ever love me. Im scared of having kids even more fucked up then me. Im

scared of not being successful. I worry about my sick dog. I distrust overly nice people and view them as phonies. I dont fear spiders or ketchup. Hell, Id eat spider in Ketchup is someone offered it up as an exotic dish. I dont take any meds, though I arguably ought to. Most of the fears that make her seem pathetic to me are fears that I share. The traits I hate most are ones I share most. Is my sending angry letters to a girl I broke up with 5-years-ago any less horribly obsessive than her writing my name across her tits and sending them to me without any provocation? Is my raging at people who believe in even the least dogmatic of deities any different than her raging at people for eating eggs? Girls. They reflect us with an emotional rawness that we could never muster. They show us our every insecurity, magnified by an order of magnitude. They are us better than we are ourselves. Thats why we hate them. Thats why we love them. Thats why Muslims put drapes over them. Thats why we subtly encourage them to wear as little as possible. Girls. Damned elusive beasts of our hearts.

Free and Dumb

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Today I saw a story on the news about a 15-year-old girl arrested for child pornography because she took nude pictures of herself . In other words, the government of this country has boldly declared, yet again, that we belong to them. Our bodies are not our own to do with what we pleasethey are fodder for Uncle Sams meat grinder. We call this a free country, but everything about this country is designed to stifle freedom. Now, many conservative rednecks like the ones I live around will tell you, Yeah, well you try protesting in the streets in China and then youll be grateful for the freedom you got here. Thats right. According to every redneck Ive ever gotten into an argument with, America is a free country because were more free than countries like China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. Thats like saying that McDonalds serves healthy food because its not as bad for you as getting shot in the face. I like to ask these rednecks (who are by no means inherently stupid people, by the way) if theyve ever tried to protest here in America. Most say that they havent. I ask them why. They say because they dont think it would change things. Which leads me to the question that not one of them can answer sufficiently: If protesting cant change things, then why does the right to protest matter? Of course, in America we have such a thing as Free Speech Zones, which are specific places set up where protestors are allowed to demonstrate against any given thing. Whats the point of a right to protest if you cant protest where those whose actions you are protesting can see and hear you? And does not the first Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America that every government official is sworn to uphold state that all of America is a Free Speech Zone? Anyone who has ever filed a Demonstration Permitthe very concept of which makes me sick and seen it rejected can tell you all about your right to protest. Ask the people who protested the WTO in Seattle (it doesnt matter here if you agree with their paranoid fear of multinational conglomerates or not) how they feel about the state of their right to protest. Getting sprayed with hoses, shot with rubber bullets and tear-gassed by police in full battle regalia tends to diminish ones ideas about any sort of right to protest in America. Exactly what freedoms do you think you have, America? The freedom to timidly voice a complaint with the way things are going? The freedom to pay less in taxes than most European countries, perhaps? Take my hand for a moment (its okay, I use sanitizer) and follow me down this road. Poll after poll has shown the Americans of all political stripes overwhelmingly favor some form of Universal Healthcare , yet to watch the news you would imagine that the country was fiercely divided on this issue (and if you watch Fox News youd get the impression that only hardcore socialists would even suggest such a thing). Does the government say, Wow, look at those polls! We better get on this problem right away!? No. Instead our representatives (HA!) say, Wow, the private insurance industry sure is giving us a lot of money. I guess we can tell 70 to 80% of people that its just not feasible and that theyre unpatriotic for wanting it. Heres just how stupid and controllable the electorate is: just today I overheard a redneck saying that the Democrats removed the word God from a WWII memorial. It was an excerpt from Roosevelts speech following the attack on Pearl Harbor, and it was removed by the Godless Democrats who want to write God out of history. This set my bullshit detector off immediately and I did some research. I found that, yes, God was mentioned in Roosevelts speech. However, the excerpt found on the memorial in

question NEVER included anything about God. The aforementioned redneck was complaining that God was nowhere to be found in a sentence that God was never in. Further, he boldly declaredas if it were a factthat Democrats were to blame for this travesty. Let me explain politics in America to you, folks. The Republicans are Coca-Cola and the Democrats are Pepsi-Cola. Thats all you need to know. Same drink, for all intents and purposes. Some people will swear up and down that there are vast differences between the twoCoke people say the Pepsi has a bad aftertaste and Pepsi people say that Coke has a bad aftertaste, but if you give a Coke person a Pepsi or a Pepsi person a Coke, most cant tell the fucking difference. The difference is all in the packaging and the marketing. It doesnt matter that these drinks taste nearly identicalto watch the competing ads for the two, youd imagine that no two drinks were ever so different. But folks, be intelligent for a minute, two things that are genuinely different dont need to spend millions of dollars a year convincing you of how different they are. Milk doesnt put out ads telling you not to drink orange juice. Peanut Butter Crunch has never and will never put out an ad letting you know just how superior their cereal is to mashed potatoes and gravy. Democrats and Republicans are essentially the same beast, and Ive created a helpful flowchart that shows you how they decide policy: Thats the breakdown, boys and girls. The folks on CNN would love it to be more complicated than that, but its not. Americans would like to believe that one side fights for them and the other side are ravenous monsters who want to see Americas values crumble to the dirt, but thats not the case either. When you believe that, youre a puppet. The GOP or the DNC have a big greasy hand up your ass. Your lips are moving, but the words arent coming from inside your headtheyre coming from Rush Limbaugh or Michael Moore (neither of whom I have any particular problem with, by the way). Theres nothing wrong with having your own beliefs, but when you view your opponents as not just wrong, but somehow malevolent, youre not solving anything. Youre not just part of the problem; you are the problem. If the people stopped worrying that the other half of the people were fucking them in the ass they might stop to notice that both sides are holding everyone down while the corporations fuck each and every one of us. Now, lets be clear: Im not advocating the destruction of corporations. I love that were a country of mass production where I can buy a computer for less than a grand or eat at cheeseburger for 1/6th of an hours labor at minimum wage. I like that we can get quality goods at affordable prices. What Im not happy aboutand what none of us should be happy aboutis that these same corporations are ruling over our government. We did not elect Wal-Mart or Halliburton our leaders and it shouldnt be up to them whether we pass environmental reforms or labor reforms or enact economic regulations. They deserve a voice, but they dont deserve an amplifier. They dont deserve more say in the fate of the American people than the American people. As long as they keep us fat and fatalistic, they will keep control. As long as we continue to believe that they are unstoppable, they are. As long as we worry about fake issues, we will be distracted from the important truth that we are powerless. It doesnt matter what we want. It only matters what IBM and Wachovia want. And they dont want you to be free. They want you to be a dumb slave who will pull the cart along without question. Thusfar youve given them what they want. What Is Freedom? In the greatest B-movie of all time, Deathrace 2000, Sylvester Stallone plays a character with the enviable name of Machine Gun Joe Viterbo who is introduced to a jeering arena of spectators with one of the most underrated lines in all of cinema: Here he comes! Machine Gun Joe! Loved by thousands, hated by millions! Thats the essence of freedom, folks. When youre loved, you are held to a gold standard that no human being can really live up to. When youre hated, almost anything you get up to is fully expected of you. If the governor fucks a hooker, its a story that makes the front page of all the newspapers; but if the governors gardener fucks a hooker, its

hardly even a story to tell your friends at work. The good manor, at least, the man who is thought to be goodis not free to tell the truth. He has to worry about what the neighbors will think, what the papers will think, what his golf buddies will think. How will they look at him when he goes to his favorite Mexican restaurant? How will they treat him in the checkout line at the grocery store? He cant tell the truth. He can only parrot one of two or three socially acceptable positions on any given subject matter. The bad manor, at least, the man who is thought to be badis not similarly constrained. He can tell the truth all day long because he doesnt give a fuck what the neighbors think. The papers dont report what he says or does. He doesnt play any faggoty games like golf. He is used to getting nasty looks wherever he goes. He knows that people dont approve of him or the way he lives his life. He can tell the truth. Truth is freedom. Freedom is truth. When a boy who looked like he could be anywhere between 12 and 20 walked up to me in a crowded bookstore and said my name, I was puzzled as to who he could be or how he might know me. My first guess was that I went to school with him, but he looked far too young for that to be the case. I watch you on YouTube, he told me, extending a hand for me to shake it. It never occurred to me until that moment that there were actual flesh and blood human beings, who occupied the same physical realm as I did, watching my videos. It was off-putting. I was pouring my heart and soul out to actual human beings? How unlike me! It was cringe-inspiring and traumatic to think that people, no better than any people that I had ever encountered in my life, knew things about me. Of course, on a rational level, I always knew that my audience was comprised of real human beings. I was under no illusion that my subscribers were as physically intangible as the characters that I have always created in my head. But there is a massive chasmat least for mebetween rational reality and visceral reality. Its the difference between hearing the words, Your friend is dead and actually seeing your friends lifeless bullet-riddled corpse. Its the difference between what we know and what we know. There is a cruelty inherent to the relatively new medium of internet vlogging in that it lures us into believing in some gullible and intellectually soft area of our brains that we are not talking to an audience, but to ourselves. By the time we realize otherwisetruly realize itwere already exposed. From that initial sting of realization, there can only come relief. Its a relief most people will never experiencethe relief of being freed from the burden of the mask of their own contrived banality. Once youve opened your mouth and removed all doubt that you are a complete nutjob, you dont have to pretend otherwise anymore. Truth is freedom. Freedom is truth. On September 11th 2001, this entire nation was awestruck with the spectacle of an attack on American soil of proportions not seen since December 7th, 1941. The American people rightly screamed for justice. They wanted to see those responsible for the heinous act against their fellow Americans punished. Thats the problem with suicide attackers. You cant retaliate against them. Theyre already dead. This is probably why so many Americans called the 9/11 hijackers cowards in the wake of the attacks, but by now we can all surely set that comforting lie aside and admit to ourselves that cowards do not die in the pursuit of their goals. The hijackers were certainly evil, brain-washed idiotsbut not cowards. They were, in fact, bold and brave men who made the ultimate sacrifice for what they believed in. The bloodlust of the American populace could not be sated with the destruction of those who perpetrated the attack against us, because it was a destruction that they had chosen for themselves. We had to go after who they worked for, and instead of investigating the matter thoroughly, the Bush administration pinned it exclusively on Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan, ignoring the ties of almost all of the hijackers to Saudi Arabia. Soon enough, even Osama was forgotten. The war in Afghanistan was swallowed alive by the war in Iraq. The bloodlust of the American people formed a red carpet for big government and big business to

stroll into the Middle East and set up shop. Military contractors like Vice President Dick Cheneys former employer Halliburton made record profits by overcharging the government for busy work. Oil Companies like Exxon made record profits while gas prices nearly quadrupled. By the time Americans forgot about their need for vengeance, they found themselves stuck in a war that will end up costing nearly a trillion dollars and has already cost thousands of lives. If these were the events of a novel, youd be incensed if the fictional population of the book didnt revolt and overthrow their government for such a miscarriage of their will. But this isnt a tidy fiction, it is a complex reality and the American people are too stupid and defeated to have the means or the inclination to rebel against their masters. So, the question becomes: How did a population descended from a bunch of badass rebels who kicked the ever-loving shit out of the English when King George III tried to tax them too highly turn into a cluster of tepid pussies with no real ambition? How did the home of the free and the land of the brave become the land of the timid and the home of the enslaved? The American people were tamed by a trifecta of factors: safety, patriotism and individualism. Now, I happen to believe that safety, patriotism and individualism are good things. However, when those who run the system use these concepts, they use them as weapons against the people. Safety starts to mean fear. Patriotism starts to mean obedience. Individualism starts to mean lack of empathy. Safety is a good thing. Theres no reason for people to be needlessly endangered. The thing is, safety is not something that should trump personal freedomas it did when our government passed The Patriot Act. Patriotism is a good thing. When you take pride in your country, you want to see it prosper. You want to make sure it is a peaceful and opportunity-rich place for the next generation to inherit. However, when patriotism is transformed into blind support for ones government, then it ceases to be a force for positivity and instead becomes a detriment to that which we should most cherish. Our children do not benefit from a world where corporate profit is king. The mindless obedience of the populace to the idea that corporate greed is good does not feel like patriotism to me. It feels a damn sight more like treason. Individualism is certainly a good thing, but when individualism turns into the notion of every man for himself then it is a basically Social Darwinism. You see this mentality reflected in the inability of the American public to forgive any transgression. If a politician sleeps with a prostitute, they want him to resign. If a man kills another man in the heat of passion, people want him to go to jail for the rest of his life. If a man molests a child, instead of trying to find out why this urge exists and making an effort to prevent it from occurring in the future, the people call for his head on a stick. The fork whose prongs are safety, patriotism and individualism has been stuck into us and were done. This triplet doctrine has rendered the free and the brave into a great and huddling mass of selfish slaves who take orders because theyre too fearful to ask questions and too uncertain to make demands. Too often, those who maintain courage and freedom and true individuality attempt to free the people by simply addressing the symptoms of the disease of servitude to the system. This is not effective. We must eliminate the disease itself. This can be done be educating the populace as to the true meanings of the virtues of safety, patriotism and individuality. Safety does not just mean death-prevention. Human beings are not the only things that need to be kept safe. It is also importantmore so, in factto keep the noble aspects of human beings alive. Freedom of choice, freedom of association, freedom from unreasonable taxation, freedom of and from religion, freedom to dissentthese things must be kept safe too. And who would really wish to live in a world of absolute safety? We can make people safer by taking away all their rights just like we can make the streets safer by outlawing cars. That doesnt make it a good idea. Patriotism should be pride taken in the accomplishments of our society. When we have a good economy and a surplus of freedoms, it is good to look upon that wealth and freedom and say, this is good shit! Patriotism also means recognizing faults with the system and coming up with solutions to fix them.

I have a deep and profound love for my country, but in times like these its a bit like being in love with a crack whore who you know will steal your stereo and sell it for crack if you fall asleep with her in your house. We shouldnt let America sell our stereos for crack. Its not right. Individualism means being true to yourself, not being a slave to self-interest. Let me give you an example of what I mean, since I know that a good deal of my Libertarian readers are currently scratching their heads and saying to themselves, but thats not what Ayn Rand said! The American right-wing is fond of the buzzwords personal responsibility. If youve ever watched Glenn Beck (I dont recommend it), youd think it was the name for the Philosophers Stone. He can hardly let a sentence pass by without throwing personal responsibility into it. Ask yourself: What exactly is personal responsibility? Its the idea that no matter what happens in your life, it is entirely your fault and entirely your problem. If there is a housing crisis and you were the victim of predatory lending practices, its your fault for not understanding the legal jargon that you signed before your Mortgage tripled. If you were drunk at a bar and a man grabbed your girlfriends ass and you punched him and he fell and hit his head on hard on the floor and died, youre a murderer and you should go to prison for the rest of your life. If you are a 25-year-old man and you start flirting with a girl and take her back to your apartment and fuck her in every hole she's got . . . only to later discover that she was 14, guess what? Youre a pedophile and youll go to prison, get your ass beat and buggered on a daily basis until eventually theyll let you out, make you go to a shrink and put you on a list that ensures youll never hold another good job and you wont be able to live pretty much anywhere. Personal responsibility in action, folks. Its been misapplied to the point of uselessness. Of course people should be responsible for the things they do, but we as a people have somehow come to the conclusion that this means that no one is ever allowed to make a mistake or have a moment of weakness. We are a bunch of unforgiving douchebags, and the reason for it is because Mr. A doesnt care if Mr. B goes to prison on some bogus charges. And guess what? Mr. C wont give a shit when Mr. B goes to prison a few weeks later on the same charge. America has the highest incarceration rate in the world. THE. HIGHEST. IN. THE. WORLD. Here in the land of the free, a full 1% of our population is in prison. 2 million people are incarcerated in the prison system of the United States of America. Those in power know that we wont stand up for one another, so they can put anyone behind bars that they want. Drug-users, political dissidents, the mentally illanyone that can fit into a cell can be sold into slavery in this nation. Why has this happened? Where did we go wrong? Did we forget that truth is freedom and freedom is truth? What then, is truth? Ayn Rand, that sour husk of a woman whose soul was as barren as her cunt was unfuckably grotesque, once said that A is A. If shed had a better understanding of the mechanisms by which we perceive what we call reality she would have said A is, for all intents a purposes, A. She sought to make everything an objective truth, and in doing so came to a false conclusion about the nature of freedom. Her idea of freedom was a world wherein everyone was objective and therefore behaved in an objective manner. A world where everyone thinks and acts the same is not freedom. Such a world is a planet of slaves. This is why Ayn Rand has the pseudo-Lovecraftian moniker of TBCITU (The Biggest Cunt In The Universe) in my mind. The truth is that there is no truth. Everything is viewed through human bias. We call the sun hot because its hot to usbut the sun isnt hot to itself and all the elements that make it up. Hot is our bias. Hot is subjective. Hard is subjective. Fast is subjective. Everything that makes up our seemingly solid world of airtight absolutes is entirely subjective. Does this mean that all truth is ultimately subjective? I wouldnt say that, but I think that objective

truth is so far beyond our grasp (and so far removed from our hearts) that it is essentially irrelevant. I think that sunsets are beautiful is every bit as true as the sun is hot. I think that sunsets are ugly is every bit as true as sunsets are beautiful. I think that freedom is found in the ability of contradictory ideas to coexist. A nation on non-drug-users who all believe in drugs rights would be a free nation. A nation of heterosexuals who allowed gays to have equal rights regardless of how they felt about gay people is a free nation. A nation of vanilla people who allow the kinky people to be who they are, regardless of how they feel about the kinky peoples lifestyles is a free nation. Freedom is truth. Truth is paradox.

The New Slaves

A man said to me once that the reason that so many minorities turn to lives of crime is because of gansta rap and movies that portray the criminal lifestyle as glamorous. Certainly, that may be a factor, but its not a problem for the reason he seemed to think it was. The problem is that minorities are stupid. Whoa. Hold on. Im not making any sort of argument about race-based intelligence, as I find such arguments repugnant. Im simply saying that minorities are statistically more likely to be impoverished and tend to live in areas where the schools are underfunded. Shitty education creates shitty people who make shitty parents who fail to instill within their children any sort of principles. Its no wonder that so many of these kids either grow up to perpetuate the shitty parenting cycle by producing offspring of their own or wind up initiated into gangs. And since the crime rate is so catastrophically high in many minority areas, there are fewer small businesses operating there and therefore fewer jobs. Often times, the only means of making money is to sell drugs or steal . The whole thing forms a vicious cycle that is incapable of endings without the intervention of an outside force of some kind. Violence and theft begets poverty and poverty begets violence and theft. Now, some will choose to play their little tough guy routines and give us all that slow-clap speech about personal responsibility and toss in some crowd-pleasing snide and sarcastic boo-hoos that mock rather than address the problembut that is beneath us. Or at least it should be. Minorities are stupid due largely to the racist policies that have dominated the vast majority of American history, so of course they view what is only intended as escapism (gangsta rap, gangster movies) as guidebooks for how to live the easy life. Its natural enough that they would view that as the pinnacle of human achievement when it is essentially the glorification of the reality that they already inhabit out of necessity. Who doesnt dream of being the best at what they do? Of course every two-bit drug dealer in the Ghetto will watch Scarface with envious eyes. Tony Montana is a better drug dealer than him. Tony Montana is the drug dealer he wishes he was. Art may encourage us in our chosen paths in life, but rarely does it set us upon them. More often, art is about learning to accept a circumstance or to escape into a better version of your own life than it is about making you into something that youre not. No straight-A student from a wealthy family decided to become a drug dealer just because it looks fun . This hopeless cycle is made all the more horrible by the fact that it has servedby design or by happenstancethe purposes of an elite group of Americans. The United States (laaaaand of the freeeee) has less than 5 percent of the world's population, but it accounts for nearly 25% of the worlds prison population . If youre reading that and youre not outraged, then your sole focus in life should be to avoid breeding at all costs, because the world doesnt need more idiots like you. Was it always like this? Were we always so fond of our "lock 'em up and throw away the key" philosophy of crime and punishment? Since 1970, our prison population has increased by 700% . You're not reading that wrong. It has literally become 8 times larger in just 38 years. (HINT: The US Population has only grown by about 3040% in that timestatistically negligible in the face of our previous number.) Hey, TJ, what year was the War on Drugs instituted again? I'm glad you ask, my child. It was instituted in 1972. But, TJ, now that we've put these violent criminals in prison, crime in this country has gone down! So the war on drugs is working! Yay! WRONG. Most scientific evidence suggests that there is little if any relationship between fluctuations in crime rates and incarceration rates. In many cases, crime rates have risen or declined independent of imprisonment rates. New York City, for example, has produced one of the nations largest declines in crime in the nation while significantly reducing its jail and prison populations. Connecticut, New Jersey, Ohio, and Massachusetts have also reduced their prison populations during the same time that crime

rates were declining. The next question on our agenda is why are recidivism rates so abysmally and staggeringly high? First of all, let's take a look at exactly how high these rates are: Of the 272,111 persons released from prisons in 15 States in 1994, an estimated 67.5% were rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within 3 years, 46.9% were reconvicted, and 25.4% resentenced to prison for a new crime. These are inexcusably bad results and when compared to the recidivism rates of most countries. Sweden, for instance, has a recidivism rate of only 22%! Could it be that they're doing something right and that we're doing something wrong? Instead of seeking to punish, Swedish prisons seek to reform. Psychologists have told us for years that punishment is ineffective as a deterrent, but we as a nation continue to think we know better than what mere scientists have to say! We've got something better than sciencewe've got a gut instinct, a whole lot of hatred and a serious lack of empathy for our fellow man. We don't care that punishment is ineffective, because it feels so goddamn good. Vengeance is a lot more fun than being rational and trying to come up with humane solutions that treat our prisoners as human beings with inherent dignity who are no less human than us regardless of their wrong-doing. Now, an estimated 11.9 percent of black men were in prison or jails, compared with 3.9 percent of Hispanic males and 1.7 percent of white males. The prison population in America contains many blacks and quite a few Hispanics and even a pretty decent number of white people. These people are the new slaves in America, and its especially sad in the instance of the blacks, who have already gone through so much. The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which ended one form of slavery, also codified another. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Prison is big business here in America. Prisoners are forced to manufacture everything from body armor for the military to the oven in your house. Ever called a customer service representative for a big corporation that you had dealings with? You might have been talking to a convict. Prisons in several state contain call centers that handle calls for many big companies . Aside from being a cheap source of labor for big companies, the increasing prison population also gives politicians an opportunity to funnel tax dollars into the pockets of the contractors who build the prisons that exist to house the influx of new inmates. According to cultural historian H. Bruce Franklin, in the typical American prison, designed and run to maximize degradation, brutalization, and punishment, overt torture is the norm. Beatings, electric shock, prolonged exposure to heat and even immersion in scalding water, sodomy with riot batons, nightsticks, flashlights, and broom handles, shackled prisoners forced to lie in their own excrement for hours or even days, months of solitary confinement, rape and murder by guards or prisoners instructed by guardsall are everyday occurrences in the American prison system. I was skeptical of these claims myself at first, so I did a bit more digging and discovered that the internet is a veritable treasure trove of sites detailing countless specific instances of the abuse of power by guards against inmates and by inmates against one another with either the encouragement or apathy of the guards. I suggest that anyone wanting to learn more about this type the words American prison torture into Google and start clicking links. So, if American prisoners are mostly minorities who are mostly poor and they are forced into labor and tortured by sadistic guardsthen I cant draw any conclusion other than that these people are slaves and we are all complicit in their slavery. Right now, as you read this sentence, a little boy is being born in a big ugly building with a name like Community Hospital. His mother is a drug addict of some sort and he will be born with withdrawals. He will grow up without a father and with a mother more interested in scoring drugs than raising him. The schools he attends will be under-funded and he will most likely drop out. He is likely to join a gang. He is likely to go to jail. He is likely to assemble ovens or body armor for large corporations

against his will. There is a little boy being born right now that has a good chance of becoming a slave whose labor you may one day exploit. Hes taking his first breath of this worlds air and hes cold and naked and he has no awareness yet of any of this. If you find his fate tragic, dont. It hasnt happened yetand maybe under your watch and mine, it wont have to. Demand from your politicians that our prisons be reformed and our schools along with them. Dont settle for vague promises of some nebulous coming greatness, but instead make them give you specific promises. Talk to your friends and family about this issue and if they dont give a fuck out of the goodness in their hearts than guilt them into it by mercilessly assaulting their character. Bully them into faking compassion. Sometimes doing the right thing means being a total bastard. Have no fear in the face of the oppositionlet the thought of the boy who might or might not wind up a slave steel your convictions and straighten your middle finger. Fight for him. Fight for yourself. Fight for a better world. Fight one person at a time. Spread the word. Kick some ass.

The Mandatory Murder Machine

It is sad to think that the first few people on earth needed no books, movies, games or music to inspire cold-blooded murder. The day that Cain bashed his brother Abel's brains in, the only motivation he needed was his own human disposition to violence. Whether you interpret the Bible as literature or as the final word of whatever God may be, Christianity has given us an image of death and sexuality that we have based our culture around. Marilyn Manson, 1999 In 1607 the colony of Jamestown was founded by England. The Algonquins, a Native American tribe rightly pissed at the white mans encroachment into their territory, tried to drive the settlers away. The white men massacred most of them. So begins the history of America. The white man spread, like a plague, across the American landscape. What he didnt kill, he enslaved. What he didnt enslave, he bound in indentured servitude or wage labor. The natives were systematically all but destroyed, as many as twenty-million slaves were imported to America to work in conditions beyond heinous, the poor Chinamen duped into leaving their homeland to come to America found a society that treated them like dogs on gunned them down the moment they misbehaved. In 1861, the Civil War began and America was at war with itself. The conflict cost over 600,000 livesa number beyond our comprehension in this era of modern warfare. With the end of the Civil War came then end of slavery . Southerners, bitter at their defeat, passed segregation laws, formed racist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, lynched black men, convicted them of crimes they had not committed and wrought numerous other well-catalogued offenses against them. I dont have to give you a full history lesson. If youre the least bit attentive, you are well aware of most of our all-American atrocities. Whether were gunning down out own soldiers like we did in the Bonus March on Washington DC or shooting unarmed protestors as we did in the Kent State shootings , we are always working towards the furtherance of our mighty military power-structure. America is a mandatory murder machine, because it is a machine that runs on blood, and by continuing to live our lives here, we are complicit in every murder America commits to stay afloat. This is not a new thought by any stretch. You can hear this sentiment from sea to shiny sea, from right- and left-wingers alike. What may be a new thought, or at least not such an old and over-explored thought, is the notion that it is our morality which has brought about this bloodshed, and only that which we conceive of as immorality can throw a monkey wrench into the spokes of the mighty mandatory murder machine of America. This is, in fact, the entire premise of the book that you hold in your hands. Every chapter up until this point has been an attempt to defeat true evilthe evil of a system that has subjugated you and everyone you have ever met from the time they were born until this very day. This system does not function on a single level. It functions on all levelsturning all of your wants and needs against you. With the concept of honor, they have found a means of cementing your conformity to their standards. With their twin prongs of sexual promiscuity and sexual repression, they have left you a confused wreck of insecurity looking to fill the whole inside yourself with any product that you can afford. And if you cant afford it, theyll happily make you pay interest on it for the rest of your life. In Whence Cometh Evil? you learned that any notions of moral superiority are rooted in delusion. None of us want this to be the case and perhaps some new knowledge will reveal itself in the future which will invalidate the content of the previous sentence. For now, however, we must accept it as truth. In Honor: Another String Tied To The Human Marionette, Nothing More you learned that honor is synonymous with obedience and little more than a means of manipulating you with the currency of respect that human beings naturally long for. In "Instant Gratification" I expounded upon the ways in which Instant Gratification might be beneficial. Some may view this as an endorsement of consumer culture, and in a way it is. I believe that

human beings making mistakes is a good thing, because only throughout folly can w advance. A perfect race of flawless beings would, I suspect, still be living in caves. In "Obey Your Master" I examine the American drive to define success only in monetary terms, exploiting the outright vilification of those who dare to define it on any terms but those. In a society with this attitude, gangs of roving drug dealers armed to the teeth should be a surprise to no one. "Honor Thyself" is about learning how to survive as an individual in a culture that will stop at nothing to destroy individuality. We must be aware of this culture's tricks if we don't want to become just another gear in their machine. "My Various Failed Subversive Revolutions" was a self-mocking look at my half-baked attempts at disrupting the social norm. It probably has no place in this book, but I thought it too humorous not to include. "Democracy Is Fascism By Consensus" dispels, with little effort, the notion that the people as an amorphous body should have any say in their governance. The system must exist to protect the individual from the masses, not to protect the masses from the individual. Currently, our system does neither--both the individual and the masses work in service of the corporations and the government. In "Commercials For Mediocrity" I take a quick snapshot of the state of television advertisements in America. Nothing gives you a clearer idea of a civilizations values than their ads. Ads appeal to what people really want in life. In "Our Heroes" I point out our tendency to make idiots into heroes, athletes in particular. And why not? They're rich for nothing more than being skilled at the right thing. The worlds greatest bricklayer makes 10 bucks an hour, maybe 30 if he's in a union--the worlds greatest ball-thrower makes 30 million. In "Sorrow & Flatulence" a chapter that I tried to keep as light-hearted as I possibly could, I relive the death of my father and pass on the lessons of that day to you. I don't know how useful it is to anyone but myself, but the story begged for a place in this book and sometimes you've got to let the words have their way. "Bitches Be Crazy" is another section that has more of a personal than a political touch, but in America sex and politics are in more dire need of separation than church and state. It would take a whole other book to fully delve into that issue though. In "Free and Dumb" I further build the case that the government views you as property with no more right to control your destiny than a hammer. That's what you are to them--a tool, something to be utilized. "What Is Freedom?" might sound like a philosophical question, but I examine it in terms that are at least by my estimationpragmatic. Ultimately, the chapter must seek to define truth in order to define freedom. They are two concepts that, while not as synonymous as "obedience" and "honor" are inseparable. One cannot be free when one does not have the freedom to pursue the truth. "The New Slaves" is a strong criticism of the American prison system, which is nothing more than a national string of labor camps where men and women are brutally mistreated and forced into labor against their will for the benefit of corporate America. And that pretty much wraps things up. Consider the aphorisms in the chapter to follow the closing credits to the cinematic experience that is, In Defense of Evil and the two following chapters one of those cool after credit bonuses. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

50 Aphorisms (In The Nietzschean Tradition)

NOTE: several of the aphorisms in this section appeared previously in my first book, SCUMBAG: Musings of a Subhuman. They are included here because they are the only part of that book that I am still proud of.
LOVE AND HATEIts easy to hate. Its fun to hate. Its comforting, like the buzz from a few pints of ale. It courses through your veins, throbbing, reassuring you or your superiority. When you hate a man, its easy to watch him die. When you hate a cause, its funny to see that cause fail. When you hate yourself truly despise your every breaththeres nothing that can stand in your way. Its hard to love. Its miserable to be in love or to love a thing. Its stifling, like smoke in the air. It courses through your veins, making you feel small and useless. When you love a person, its easy for them to stab you in the back. When you love a cause, its easy for that cause to consume you. When you love yourselftruly adore your every breathyou have everything to lose. SELF-DECEPTION FOR THE SAKE OF HAPPINESSReligious people often place personal happiness above the drive towards empirical or personal truth. They will sacrifice any fact or any insight garnered through introspection upon the altar of happiness. They dont want to believe in death because it is too distressing. They dont want to face a cold and unsympathetic universe because it is frightening. I resent them for the notion that deluding ourselves into believing a falsehood might improve the quality of our existence. It would be absurd for a man with a miniscule penis to live under the impression that it was large and in demand. It would make him feel better, but it would be demonstrably false and would cause him to exist within a world wherein his conclusions about himself were at odds with the conclusions of all others. Perception is, to some extent, realitybut when perception wholly contradicts the observable to such a degree that others are encumbered by said perception then it becomes the prerogative of the encumbered to instruct the perceiver and guide them, gently if possible, towards the truth. BEAUTY I've never seen anything breath-taking. I've never had a moment in my life where my breath was stopped by the sheer perfection of a sight. I've known the intensity of fear, of hate, of self-loathing but never beauty. Everything that's supposed to be lovely is offset by the ugliness of my heart. How could I, who lies and hurts at every juncture, look at the beauty of a sunset and feel anything but wretched? The light of beauty only serves to illuminate my emptiness. I would like to watch a city burn to the ground from a nearby hillside, huge flames reaching from the buildings to the sky, blotting out the stars with their smoke. That would take my breath away. That would make me feel alive. What does that say about me? PERFECTIONBeing perfect is just another imperfection. GREAT MENMore great men have died than have ever lived. ABSOLUTE FREEDOMIn a world of absolute freedom, you own yourself. What you own, you can sell. Therefore, you can sell yourself; you can become another persons property. But then, what if you change your mind? Can you tell them that they no longer own you and leave? If you can, then what did they buy? If you cant, then even absolute freedom isnt absolute. TRUTHIf the truth is hurtful to someone you care about and a lie is pleasant (and if it is your desire to please them and not to hurt them) then you should be true to your desires and lie to them. It is the most

honest course of action. DECEPTIONThe contrary nature of humanity renders the masses more easily deceived by an outright lie than a half-truth. MISANTHROPYMisanthropes are the truest humanists. Anyone with love for the human race will find themselves so daily filled with bitterness and disappointment that hatred will become their only means of expressing their love. RESORT TO VIOLENCEWhy do people always talk about having to resort to violence. People like violence. They dont resort to it. If anything, people resort to discussion/compromise. GREATNESSHumanity is the antithesis of greatness. Only when we cease to be human will we begin to be great. GREATNESS 2Who is it that says that not all men can be great? Surely all men can be great in some respect. Otherwise, why should they exist at all? FEASIBLE GOODNESSDont confuse whats feasible with whats just. Dont confuse whats possible with whats good. THE STRANGERIn this age of constant distraction, we find ourselves very uncomfortable in the moments where we are alone and undistracted. To be alone in this times is the be trapped in a room with a stranger. SMALL-MINDED GREEDGreed is not a vice. Short-sightedness is. So often, the want for a few trinkets in the immediate costs us the cooperation that could have yielded all of us riches beyond measure. ACHIEVING POWERA gang of unremarkable thugs will prevail over the most remarkable of men without fail. Individuals cannot achieve power by opposing the masses, only by controlling them. THE CRUX OF POWERThe more leashes your hold, the wider and weaker your grip will become. THE FALLACY FALLACYWhen you remove all fallacies from an argument, you wind up with nothing more than disagreement for the sake of disagreementwhich is the truth behind all of our disputes, but its a boring truth so it can go fuck itself. ALL TRAGEDY IS CONTRASTSomething is alive, then it is dead. Flesh is intact, then it is not. A building stands, then it does not. These are tragedies. A man dies slowly of a terminal illness. Skin cells die off over time. A building becomes dilapidated and is eventually condemned. These are (though possibly sad) not tragedies. Why not? PRINCIPLESThe good thing about being a man of few principles is that I follow the ones I do have. SEX OFFENDERSOnly in a country where sex is offensive would we have such a concept as sex offenders. Talking to people on the street you would imagine that sex offenders must be worse by far than any other criminals. The truth is that they are just horny people who did something stupid either because they are sociopathic or because they are too dumb to know better. Having a sex drive doesnt make you a monster, nor does acting upon that sex drive, even in defiance of the law. Treating people as though they

deserve the worst fate imaginable simply because they engaged in a sex act without the governments seal of approval, however, does make you a monster. More precisely, it makes you part of a monster. You are another cog in the machine whose purpose is the annihilation of liberty. RAPE-VICTIMSRape victims allow themselves to be raped over and over again when they accept special allowances because of their trauma. For every girl that is raped and milks it for all its worth, ten girls get over it and keep living their lives. The ten need to beat the shit out of the one. She is making it harder for all of them. DRUNK DRIVINGIf old people are allowed to drive, then drunks should be too. If they drive recklessly while intoxicated, then arrest them for reckless driving. Otherwise, leave them be. FUCK AUTHORITYthe reason people cheat so much is because society is so inherently dishonest and inconsistent in what it will and will not allow or tolerate. If people don't respect authority, it's because authority has shown itself to be beneath respect. GOODY-GOODIESAnyone who follows the rules just because they're the rules lacks character and intelligence. All intelligent people recognize rules as wholly arbitrary. HEADBlowjobs are the most overrated sexual maneuver of all time. Mouths have teeth in them. Is no one else aware of this? I call the borejobs. I believe that the only reason most men truly desire blowjobs is because they know that a good number of women still dont like giving them. Men always secretly desire that sex be totally joyless for his partner. Girls, if you find a man who prefers eating you out to getting a blowjob, then you should fall in love with him regardless of how inadequate he is in all other areas. A man who gives good head is a man dedicated to pleasing you and what he is bad at at first he will improve upon over time. FANTASY IS BETTER THAN REALITYThis sentiment is only held by people whose dreams have never come true. Its a bitter means of consoling themselves for their boring lives. Reality is better than fantasy because its real. Even if it falls short of expectation, it surpasses the banality of merely wishing something were happening. SLEEP DEPRIVATIONIm a point on a grid. And everything in front of me is expanding to terrifying horizons. The wall in front of me is an infinite distance away. If I got up right now and ran towards it, I would never catch it. HORRORThe most profound terror doesnt come from what is possible or inevitable, but from the impossible which has somehow been made to seem inevitable. DENIERSThere is something horrifically wrong with people who deny obvious truths: Evolution, Global Warming, The Holocaust. People who cant stand the truth and have to live a lie are the most pathetic of people, made all the more pathetic by their attempts at building evidence to show how established fact is falsehood. ANDROGYNYI read a report that testosterone levels had been steadily decreasing in boys from generation to generation. At the time, as a hairy male who likes violence, I was distraught. Upon further reflection, perhaps a new idea of what is masculine and feminine are called for. The sexes will never be the same, but I think that all of humanity might benefit from them meeting in the middle.

COMEDYThe greatest comedy is that which is derived from the obsessive compulsive and hyperjudgmental voice inside of all of us. We are all irritants that make each others lives miserable from time to time. The only ointment that you can apply to misanthropic irritation is humor. PETTINESSThere is nothing in life so satisfying as doing something completely petty and spiteful to someone whom you revile. ENEMIESIf your enemy wants to be loved, hate them. If your enemy wants to be hated, be aloof towards them. ENEMIES 2Make friends of your old enemies whenever possible and tolerable to keep them from teaming up with your new ones. LYINGTo not tell a lie that you want to tell is to lie to yourself. BLUNT PEOPLEPeople who dont know the truth often speak bluntly in order to conceal this fact. MUSICMany people without souls will claim that they are moved by all kinds music. It is as if they use their love for all music as a means of faking the presence of soulfulness. No soulful person likes all kinds of music. Soulful people like particular sorts of music and despise the rest. JAILBAITIt wouldnt be called bait if it werent tempting. RELIGIONReligions greatest crime against man has not been enslavement or war, but stagnation. Without religion, the acceptance of gays is a no-brainer. Without religion the funding of stem-cell research is obviously the correct path. Human society could have advanced tremendously if not for the interference of religion. CRUELTYGood cruelty requires imagination. Kindness only requires effort. In other words, one is a skill and the other is merely a chore. BREAKING THE LAWThe only means of fighting unjust laws is to break them. To stop smoking marijuana in order to legalize its use is like owning slaves while fighting for the cause of abolitionism. If you have deemed a behavior to not be immoral and you have a natural desire to engage in that behavior, then you must do so. BOOKSThose who find themselves unsettled and unable to adjust to daily life are typically those who shun reading. Only through constant reading can we being to appreciate life. Those who dont read are the walking dead. SMALL PENISESThere is no greater motivator than a small penis. The only cure for which is large sums of money. TOUCHFear of touch is fear of self. Those who put up a barrier between themselves and other are either afraid of being contaminated or afraid of contaminating others. If you know one of these people, touch them relentlessly. If you are one of these people, force yourself to touch others more often. HOLIDAYSIt is important that some days be special, either anticipated or dreaded. Without these landmarks the calendar would be a bleak place indeed.

MONEYOnly through money and the right attitude towards money can man achieve happiness. THE RIGHT ATTITUDE TOWARDS MONEYMoney is without value. Possessing mountains of money means nothing, in and of itself. Money is important because with it you can provide a good and lavish life not only for yourself but for those who you care about. HURTING OTHERSNever hurt those who have not in some manner invited your wrath. The man who avoids conflict should be left alone, but the man who insults you has invited back any measure of retaliation if he does not heed your warnings to this effect. ACCEPTING THE IMPERMANENCE OF THINGSNothing lasts forever, not even self. You could, as the Buddhist cowards do, detach yourself from all things and renounce your place in this world, but it is far braver and ultimately more gratifying to experience attachment and be strong though periods of separation.

God Of The Godless

God of the Godless is a title that I gave myself around the time my subscriber count on YouTube became five figures and people started saying things like, I cant believe Im really talking to someone famous! to me. Most people look at the title as further proof of my massive ego. Very few take the paradox of the distinction to its natural, self-deprecating, conclusion. God of the Godless is self-negating. It doesnt mean anything. Or, more precisely, it means nothing. As in, nothing to see here folks. The point of the title is that Im not important. I am an espouser of a particular belief system and its that belief system that is important. Whether Im dissecting societys values or making jokes about Skeletor hijacking an airplane, Im still trying to convey a viewpoint and only you can give that viewpoint any meaning. Without you there to laugh at my jokes, or nod your head with my grievances, Im nothing but a fat guy ranting in front of a camera. Only with your support do I become something more than that. For that, I thank you all. Eh, who am I kidding, you fuckers are nothing without me! NOTHING! I am spectacularly awesome in every conceivable respect and youre lucky I bother to feign humbleness for even a second! Ha!

Evil Always Triumphs Over Good

The Saturday morning cartoons of my childhood had only one recurring truisms that I remember: Good always triumphs over evil. Even as a kid I was skeptical of that pronouncement. If a villain murders 200 people and then the hero catches and kills him, then isnt the score 200 to 1 in the villains favor? This notion of good emerging victorious isnt supported by the numbers. Even if the bad guy only killed one person and you kill him for it, good and evil are tied with a score of 1 to 1. And this is all assuming that its really good to kill a villain. If hes evil for killing, then why isnt the hero evil for killing? Surely a sentient being is no less sentient and human simply because he has killed others. Another assumption that Im uncomfortable with is that everyone who kills people is evil. Was Che Guevara an evil man? I dont agree with his politics or his methods, but Im not prepared to call him evil because of them. If there are such things as good and evil than I would say that whatever brings humanity closer to a lasting peace and freedom is good and whatever brings humanity farther from that is evil. Does this make the instruments of these opposing ideologies in and of themselves good or evil? Can any human being be so lacking in complexity that we can stamp them with the good or evil stamp and say, this is what you are? No. Only those of foolishly overbearing self-righteousnessthe wearers of obscenely shiny goodguy badges would declare a man evil. To believe yourself to be good or evil would require a level of selfdeception that I will never be able to muster. Im just a man, and though I fight for what I think it good and just with all my might, I will never be able to call myself good. The desire to do evil will never leave me. Theres always a bit of Yang in Yin and a bit of Yin in Yang. I dont speak of balance. Its nothing so orderly and easy to comprehend as that. What Im talking about, ladies and gentlemen, is grime. There is a thick and potent residue of good on the surface of evil and vice-versa. Or maybe thats not the truth either. Maybe at the end of the day, its enlightenment and acceptance of the truth that makes men good and its ignorance and unfairness and thoughtless cruelty that make men evil. I hope that this is not the case, because if it is then the majority of the species are evil, and they will always call their evil good and call that which is truly good evil. If we truly live in that world, a world where the good peoplethose who hearts are brimming with compassing and soaring heights of understanding and sorroware labeled evil by those who are blind to their own evil, then the good will need a defender. Not just one defender, but manyeven if their words and deeds for the sake of good will be perceived as in defense of evil. Terroja Kincaid December 8th, 2008

Visions of Impact
Adrift in the blackness and not knowing when the impact will come Theres something oddly peaceful about driving a car at night. I want to just close my eyes and keep driving until I crash. Its not that I have a death wish. I dont. I just like the idea of being adrift in the blackness and not knowing when the impact will come. Cody was in the backseat and I felt oddly paternal; like I was the father of a nuclear family and I was taking my son Cody to Disney World. It was a nice feeling. It made we want children of my own. Then I started worrying that Id have children like Lee Doren or Steven Crowder. I think thats what keeps me from having kids: the fear that they will be lame. I dont think I could deal with that. Im a pretty tough guy, but having a lame kid would break my heart in ways I dont even want to imagine. Scotty sat beside me snapping endless blurry photos of the dark road. I dont know if he felt as though there was some great photo potential or if he was just bored and passing time, but I do know that I nearly crashed several times because I was watching him rather than the road. Before that we were at the beach and Scotty and Cody were both taking pictures like madmen. I could scarcely turn around without having a picture taken of me. Cody takes something like 800 photos a day and most of them are never seen because theyre just not good enough. I feel sorry for those photos, because every photo represents a moment. I feel like those moments not worth sharing are moments that are lost. I envision them as Hansels and Gretels that never escape the woods againtheir breadcrumbs have been eaten by the birds. I find sadness in the oddest little nooks of my existence. Before that we were at the Hardrock Casino in Gulfport, Mississippi. We ate at the buffet. Cody kept leaving to use the phone and marveling at the sheer variety of cuisine. Cody always looks forlorn. Even when he smiles, his eyes look like theyre watching someone precious die. I look at my own eyes in the mirror sometimes and try to see something that deep or soulful in myself and theres nothing lit that there. I see something cruel in myself. I am terrified others see it too. Cody has anxiety problems. Sometimes he will get shaky. His breathing patterns will change. If he has marijuana, hes okay. But without that to calm him down, his anxiety can get pretty overwhelming. I feel terrible when I see him shaking. I want to roll him a joint. I told Scotty days ago to conserve the weed we had, but he still let Matt smoke it all. What a waste. Holly told me this morning that I was avoiding touching her. Its one of those days where she asks me a lot whats wrong. Nothing is wrong, as far as I know. I feel as fine as I ever feel. Except I worry about the little lost pictures, my occasional surrogate son and the potential lameness of my future children.

RED DAY
A really bad novel by 17-year-old TL Kincaid
WARNING: Some of this book is actually pretty well written. That's not the part I'm warning you about. I'm warning you about the other 75%, which is absolute dogshit, in my opinion. Maybe you will disagree. Maybe you'll adore it. Maybe you'll tell me that it's much better than I think it is. I hope so. But I doubt it.

CHAPTER ONE

The end is near! Homeless Crazies Everywhere This is the end, beautiful friend This is the end, my only friend The end of our elaborate plans The end of everything that stands The End Jim Morrison
The alarm clock goes off like an air raid siren in the darkness of your cluttered bedroom. For a moment, you have no idea where you are. The weight of your identity sinks in again and the wet dreams that permeated your turbulent sleep fade away into erotic apparitions that dance with the shadows that squirm and writhe in the den of iniquity that your young mind has become. 6:15 AM reads the alarm. You are faced with the not-so-difficult decision as to whether or not to take a much-needed shower or to hit the snooze button and catch nine more minutes of sleep before going through your morning ritual of desperately masturbating while imagining yourself in extremely unlikely scenarios with bouncy-breasted girls from your high school, then getting up and tossing on whatever outfit happens to be closest and dashing out of the house at sonic speeds in hopes of maybe catching the bus. You hit the snooze button and plunge your head back into the comfort of your fluffy white pillow. Instantly, the alarm goes off again. 6:24 it insists with its droning cry of digital suffrage. You turn the accursed thing off and begin stroking your penis to the rhythm of a fantasy in which you are being sexually conquered by a girl from your Social Studies class named Crissi. Youre always the submissive party in your fantasies. She straddles you like a goddess straddling a stallion, her blazing blonde hair clinging to her face, held there by the sweat of passion. She thrusts. She fucks you like you're nothing at all, but everything in the world. And when you climax it rocks the foundations of all realitybut you're left lying on a dirty mattress in the disorder of your small bedroom, with semen sliding lazily down your wrist. You can't help but feel that life has somehow betrayed you.

No time to lament, however, because you've only got about three minutes to get dressed and be out the front door. You spring from bed, wipe your mess up with a T-shirt your grandmother sent you for Christmas (a bizarre artifact from her travels depicting the Statue of Liberty with the caption "Las Vegas, Nevada"), throw on a Black T-shirt and a pair of baggy blue jeans with a mustard stain from the hotdog you ate two weeks earlier above the right knee. Socks present a problem. You can't find two that match. Thinking quickly, you decide to do without them; and you step into your shoes with time to spare. You dont even have to run to catch the bus today. A brisk jog will suffice. You step on board and find a seat near the middle with all the other defaults. The losers sit up front. The cool kids sit in the back. Those who don't want to be noticed--as well as those who have tried to be noticed and failed--sit in the middle: the defaults. As always, country music is blaring incessantly from the new speaker system that the bus driver paid for with the money that he could have used to replace the ratty, tattered seats that give the bus the distinctive odor of cheap burning. The girls behind you are talking about how Dave got dumped by Keri and the boys in front of you are talking about how Keri got dumped by Dave and you're thinking about how little you give a shit about Dave and Keri or anyone else in the world for that matter. You also think to yourself how very, very much you hate Mondays. You spend the bus ride gazing out the window, watching the trees and houses go by. The world looks rather peaceful from inside the yellow, stinking deathtrap of annoying gossip and ear-grinding country music. Of course, you know better than that. The world isn't a peaceful place. As you ride the bus, hating your little life, there are children starving, women being raped, countries going to war, diseases killing hundreds of thousands and all sorts of other horrors that you can barely comprehend. For a moment there is a great flash of red that encompasses everything in view, but it happens so quickly that you wonder if it happened at all or if it was just a trick of your eyes. You blink once and then again, trying to fix whatevers wrong with them. "What was that?" someone exclaims. Guess its not just me, you think. "Probably just some Lightning," answers the driver, a white haired man with a Mike Ditka moustache who thinks no one notices that he ogles the female passengers butts when they exit the bus in the afternoons. You dont know his name. Youre terrible with names. "But there's not a cloud in the sky!" counters the boy indignantly, as if his intelligence has been insulted (which is has, you reflect). No one pays him any mind. They return to their small talk.

The sky is as clear as it could be. The idea of lightningred lightening, no lesssuddenly enveloping everything in view on a sunny day seems a bit ridiculous. Then again, what other possible explanation could exist? You struggle for a moment to come up with one, but it feels like an exercise in futility, so you default back to feelings of misanthropy and self-pity, forgetting it like everyone else. The bus reaches its final destination and everyone gets off. The school looks like a prison. This is Myre High School. This is your hell. You wish it would burn to the ground. Wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first. Your grandfather used to say that. He was as bitter as you are, you suppose. Who with a brain in the world wasn't bitter and disappointed? Who with a mind couldn't find reason to hate everyone? Who with a conscience didnt hate themselves? You're just jealous, you tell yourself. While everyone else is smiling and getting laid on a regular basis (if you believe the stories, and youre not sure you do), you're sitting and internalizing everything; finding faults with the world and with yourself and discovering nothing but enmity for everyone and everything. You don't have the right to complain! You have it good. So many people have suffered lives a thousand times worse than your own and maintained an optimistic viewpoint. Anne Frank comes to mind. She believed people were basically good even when faced with what history would ultimately perceive as the perfect example of human evil. But then, maybe she was just stupid. Her diary was boring, aside from the lesbian bits. Maybe it doesn't matter what happens to you. Maybe certain people are just happy and others just arent. If that is the case, happiness is an impossible goal. You could have the world handed to you on a supermodel's tits and you'd still not be content. You would just tell yourself that you didn't deserve it and feel bad about it. Thats a depressing thought. But so what? Theyre all depressing thoughts. You walk into the institutional building. The halls are full. No one is allowed to go to class yet. It's 6:59. Classes begin at 7:10. You have an eleven minute wait in a hallway crammed full of your peers. You try to make yourself invisible to them, and it usually works. Some mornings someone will get bored and notice you. They will mistake your misanthropy for shyness (or maybe you mistake your shyness for misanthropy) and attempt to talk to you. In those instances you ignore them until they get a clue and walk away in search of some other organism to interact with. Today you remain mercifully unnoticed for eleven minutes and the morning bell rings. You begin to walk to class, but youre stopped in your tracks by another flash of red light from

outside. This time it is immediately followed by a large explosion and a chorus of screams. The ground shakes below your feet. People start uttering confusioned whispers and dumb questions, but before anyone can offer a theory it happens again; only this time it is much louder and it doesn't relent. The ground is shaking violently and red light pulsates everywhere. People are running, but from what and to where? Everyone is crashing into one another, clawing and biting their way to find some sort of safety that nowhere on campus could possibly provide. It sounds as if the world is being torn apart. You immediately go numb from the inside out. It feels good to feel nothing, but that doesnt alleviate your fear. Everything is moving very slowly. Events unfold like scenes from a cartoon with warped reels. You ball yourself up on the floor and begin to pray to whatever god you think might listen. You can feel people falling on you, tripping over you, stomping on youbut theres no pain, just sensation. Empty sensation. When the madness finally ceases and the last embers of red fade away, you are left in a hallway full of vacant-eyed teenagers who don't seem to know where they are or even who they are. All of the sudden, everyone looks like youdead eyes, confused minds. You rise to your feet and walk exit the building that you had entered only sixteen minutes earlier. You see that the sky is dark with smoke and dust. You see that for about two hundred yards in front of you, everything is basically normalthere are cars parked in their parking spaces, trees, grass, all that good stuffbut beyond that, the land is charred black. The skeletons of a few houses still stand and here and there, and there are people in the parking lotparents who were dropping their kids off as well as students and a few faculty memberstaring into the darkness and deadness outstretched before them with dumbfounded looks on their faces. They're going to snap. You can see that in their faces. "When the shock wears off and our minds try to process this," you think, "we'll just snap and turn into blubbering idiots forever." No. Youll process it somehow, and so will most of them. Youll come to accept it, and thats even worse. Even in your soul-dead distress you feel a twinge of amusement as you realized that the exact opposite of your near-daily wish had come true. The entire world (for as far as you could see) had burned down, and the school remained unscathed. Irony: gotta love it. You stand there for a moment longer before going back inside. Others are walking out past you to view the horror for themselves. None of them acknowledge you. Youre not sure why you went inside except to not be outside, but it's no better in here. Everyone walks vacantly and uncertainly through the halls, unable to process what has happened. Some of them look relieved to be alive. Others look like they wish they were dead. Most of them

don't look like they're feeling anything at all. This was Hell. The books, the teachers, the lesson-plans and all those things you had the foolishness to call Hell once were the cozy little life that youd taken for granted. Boredom is a privilege, and its a privilege you will never have again. "Everyone! Everyone, listen! Everyone go to your homeroom classes! Everyone to your homeroom classes immediately!" says a little fat woman with curly hair that has been badly dyed a hideous shade of red. "I know you," you say to her, but you don't. You don't think you've ever seen her before. But you do recognize her, somehow. Theres to much blood in your head. She ignores you and runs down the hallway with a rapid succession of baby-steps, relaying her message to all. You want to do as she is saying, but you don't know where your homeroom is, or even what a homeroom is. You feel light-headed, and everything gets rough around the edges. You say something to nothing but you can't understand yourself. Then the floor suddenly hits your face and everything goes black. DAY TWO: JOHNNY AND THE SKY "Hey, wake up! Wake up, you motherfucker!" says a voice from somewhere in the darkness. Then you open your eyes and you can see a large form hovering over you, shaking you violently. "I'm awake," you say. Your throat is dry, and speaking is difficult. You sound like Clint Eastwood talking to some 'punk' in a dirty Harry movie. The shaking subsides and the fat figure rises to its feet. "I let you sleep for quite a while, man. A lot of the fainters were taken into Mrs. Calloway's class, but when you fainted in the halls I was right there and it was easier for me to lug you into here." "W-where are we?" you ask, trying to remember what set of circumstances had led up to this point. "We're in Mrs. Bradburys classroom. It's just you and me and those guys over there in here," he informs you, gesturing to the other end of the room where you spot three figures sitting in a circle, whispering amongst themselves. You can't make out their genders or races. The room is as dark as a cavern, and you can see little lights that aren't really there dancing in the blackness.

"Who're you?" you ask him, uncertain even of who you are. "Oh shit. I'm sorry. My name is John, but now that we're living in the end times and all, I'd prefer you called me Johnny. Johnny Yarrows." With that, he extends his hand to you. You place your hand within his and he shakes it warmly. "You sound like you could use a drink. If you get on up, I can take you to where the water is, because I'll be damned if I'm gonna carry you." "Will you at least help me up? I'm feeling sort of weak and really sore." "Alright," he says, positioning himself to lift you from your arm and shoulder, "on the count of three. One, two, three. Up we go. You got it?" "I think so," you reply. He removes his support and you feel dizzy at first, nearly falling, but you keep it together and follow him up the hall, down the stairs, and outside where the world as it is hits you like a sack of bricks. The decimated landscape, this time seen from the back of the school, brings back your memories of yesterday and you fall to your knees in shock and horror. "Oh my God," you say. "God? Humph. If there was ever a God watching over us, he's abandoned us now," he says. "Do you see those three houses over there, right on the verge of the destruction?" "Yeah," you say. Three white buildings that you normally wouldn't have even registered now seem like beautiful artifacts of a long lost time. "Well, yesterday, while you were comatose, a few of us went over to investigate those houses, and we found that they aren't really in tact. You see, the back ends facing the school are perfectly all right, but the fronts, facing the street--or where the street used to be anyway--are gone. Whatever destroyed them was so powerful and so concentrated that it destroyed one half of each of those houses without doing any damage at all to the other halves. Anyway, and maybe this is a bit too philosophical for the day after, but I think those houses are our world how it used to be. You look at it from the right angle and everything looks fine, but when you're inside . . . well, you don't want to go inside. "We didn't find any survivors. Well, we found one old woman, but she must have died of fright when the whole thing went down. I'm lucky my fat ass didn't have a heart attack too. We did find some food though. We had to turn it in to the school though. We only have about two weeks worth of food in there, you know. See, we have a generator that could power the school for like three days, but Mr. Alva routed it so it only goes to powering the Kitchen. Food is the most important thing right now. Well, I guess you can plainly see that

it's always been the most important thing to me, heh. Jeez, get a sense of humor, man. It's the apocalypse. Look lively." "My family. Everyone. They're all dead," you say emptily, tears rolling down your face. "Aw, jeez. Shit. I'm sorry, man. Look, they might be okay. I seriously doubt that we were the only ones spared. If one patch of land was left untouched, it stands to reason that there are others out there." "Where's the water?" you ask, not wanting to talk anymore. "The pond that they put in last year. The one taxpayers were getting all pissy about. 'How come you assholes can dig scenic ponds with our tax money but not afford to pay the teachers or replace textbooks?' Well, for once, the bureaucratic fuckers did something that paid off, because if it weren't for that pond we'd all be fucked. Well, I guess we still are, but . . . well, anyway, the water tastes a bit nasty, but beggars can't be choosers, as my grandfather used to say." "Mine always said, you can wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first. I thought of that yesterday when I was wishing that none of this had happened," you tell him, getting back to your feet. "What if your wish was to have a handful of shit?" he asks. You can't help but smile a little. "Would you mind leaving me alone for a while?" you ask him. "Sure," he says, sounding a little hurt, "you know the way back to Mrs. Bradbury's room, right?" "Yeah. I had her fifth period." He nods, but doesn't move for a moment. "I'll be coming back," you tell him. "Oh. Yeah. I know. I just. I don't know. Later." With that, he turns and goes back inside. There are other kids outside. Most are leaning up against the wall, smoking and looking out into the bleakness. They take little notice of you. You walk to the pond, get on to your hands and knees and lower your face into the water, gulping up as much as you can. It makes you feel sick when you come back up and lay on your back, looking up at the crescent moon, but you manage to hold it down. The stars, which had once been hidden by light pollution, now shined brightly like diamonds in the night sky. It is the most beautiful night sky you have ever seen.

When everyone was alive and happy the sky was ugly. Now that everyone is dead, crazy or overcome by woe, the sky is amazing. God, it seems, has never been happier. "He's not dead or gone," you say to nothing and no one, "He's watching over us with a great big fuck-you smile on His face and a great big hand on His almighty dick." A warm wind blows and the reeds protruding from the murky pond's moonlit surface nod vigorously as if in affirmation of your assessment of God and his role in all that has occurred. This strikes you as humorous in a deep, cold, bitter way and you chortle madly with your legs flailing. "You got some crazy, fucked up sense of humor, God," you say, "but I get it. I get your little joke. I get it." Your laughter tapers off into sobbing and you lay there for a great long while, rocking back and forth on your side, curled in the fetal position, repeating over and over again with steadily dying conviction to the premise, three simple words: I get it. *** Like a zombie, you shuffle back to Mrs. Bradbury's classroom. Johnny is waiting for you at the door. "You don't want to go back in there. Mrs. Bradbury's in there now, and she's bitching out anyone who comes in, unless it's where they're supposed to be. Mr. Alva, our beLoved fascist principle, is trying to maintain his illusions of control by getting everyone to report to their homerooms until he can figure out how to 'best handle the situation'. He can best handle the situation by leaving everyone the fuck alone. Chaos is inevitable in this situation, and any attempt to subvert it will result in certain death, but I guess the old bastard's just not cynical enough to realize that. "Anyway, most people are cooperating. Mrs. Bradbury's class was kind of the last haven of the resistance, so to speak. However, myself and those shady looking characters you may have spotted in the shadows plotting nefarious schemes have conceived a plot to meet in the last white house on the right tomorrow night. See, we sort of found this hidden attic entrance that no one else is likely to notice, and since the attic was towards the back of the house it's completely intact. We--and maybe this is sort of under-handed--hid all the nonperishables in the attic so no one would find them. Our own private stockpile, kind of. "Sorry. I'm rambling. Um, I'm trying to say that you're invited. You gonna come?" "Yes," you say. It sounds like a good offer. "Okay, well, when you go into the back door, youll be in the kitchen. From there you take a right and go through a door into a laundry room. If you look up, you'll see a tiled ceiling. One of the tiles is a little discolored. If you press it youll open the big panel so stand clear

and it'll fall out. From there you just unfold the ladder and climb on up. Oh, there is a piece of string tide to the bottom rung of the ladder, when you climb up, bring it with you. It's how we close it back up. You got all that?" "I do," you say, "but I have a question." "Shoot." "Why invite me? You don't even know me." "No one knows you. No one knows me either. We've both been loners, but this isn't the time for loners anymore. This is the time of tribes." "And a skies that look like drugs," you say. "What do you mean?" he inquires. "Well, the sky out there tonight looks like the best acid trip of all time, and yesterday . . . " "The worst?" "No. No. Have you ever known anyone who used crack?" "My Uncle did. It killed him too." "How the fuck did people ever get addicted to crack? What in crack-user history would lure anyone into believing that they can do it without becoming addicted? Do you know anyone who 'casually' smokes crack 'once in a while'? I sure as fuck don't. The only people I've ever met on crack have been slow-witted, toothless and thin enough to get blown away if--lord forbid--you should forget to cover your nose when you sneeze . . .. I think yesterdays sky looked like Crack." "Yeah. Maybe so," he replies, "That kind of shit permeates human nature though, if you think about it. "We do drugs that get us high for a little while, but make us dependant upon them in the process, and inevitably wind up destroying us. We vote for whoever can save us a little money in the short run even if it fucks us in the long run. We eat a pack of Oreos per day and feel miserable when we're fat disgusting things that no one wants to have sex with. We fuck people who look like walking disease factories for a quick orgasm and risk contracting illnesses that could destroy our lives. We always seek out immediate gratification that leads to misery later on. We live in the moment, and preach it as if it were a virtue, when it is perhaps the greatest flaw of our species."

"I think we think too much," you say, "that's the only thing that's ever brought me misery." "Maybe other people just don't think enough," he shoots back. "Sure," you say, "blame it on everyone else. We make our own lives while we're here, and no one else can be held accountable for what we do or how we feel." "But what about things like this that are out of our control?" he retorts. "It's still on us to decide how to react." "Well, according to Nietzsche--" "--Not now," you interrupt. "I'm sorry, but I don't feel like having a philosophical debate right now." "Okay," he says, "That's cool, I don't either." You think he's lying, but that makes you appreciate his understanding all the more. "I'll see you tomorrow, Johnny." "You too . . . um. Hey. What is your name?" You tell him and he nods. *** You don't go to your homeroom. Instead you go outside again and watch the sunrise. You've seen the sunrises before, but never really stopped to take one in. It rises over the scorched horizon, illuminating the destruction, but its beauty isn't lessened by this, but strangely enhanced. The black land contrasting with the bright yellow sun creates an intoxicating effect. "Hey, you!" shrieks an unsettlingly scratchy voice that could only belong to a teacher. You turn to face the voices owner, a tiny woman with tightly pressed lips and a face like a dried prune. You recognize her as Mrs. Brody, a woman with a reputation as the most insidious creature to prowl the halls of Myre High. "What are you doing out here? You're supposed to be in your homeroom," she asks with a distasteful look on her face. She looks as though all that has happened hasn't even fazed her, and that doesn't seem surprising to you either. It wouldn't surprise you if she had reacted with delight.

"I'm watching the sunrise," you tell her dismissively, hoping to enrage her, a tactic that succeeds quite nicely. Her cruel face turns red with anger and she begins screaming (screeching) at you, but you've ceased to pay attention, because something has caught your eye. In the distance, you see something shimmering in the sunlight. It's probably about five miles away--maybe more, maybe less, but whatever it is, it is shimmering. "Look at that," you say, not speaking to Mrs. Brody, but she looks anyway and sees it. "Oh my goodness!" she exclaims. "I'll get Mr. Alva! You stay right here." You do stay there, but not because she told you to. You stay because you are captivated by this sparkling beacon of hope in a world of things dead and things dying. By the Time Mr. Alva arrives, the sun has risen too high and is shining too brightly for one to see the shimmering thing in the distance any longer. He is an old man, with salt and pepper hair and a big solid gray mustache. "You saw it too, young man?" he asks. "I did," you say. "This could be something great for us," he says, "but it could also be nothing at all. Until we know for sure, I'm going to need you to keep quiet about it." "I've got a better idea," you say in the most persuasive voice you can muster, "Why not just send me to check it out?" Another student rounds a corner to come upon the scene of you, Mrs. Brody and Mr. Alva standing around in a circle. "Shit!" she yells before turning around and running off. Mr. Alva rolls his eyes, which makes him look younger than he is. "Mrs. Brody, would you please go after her, find out who she is and send her and escort her to her homeroom," he instructs the wretched woman. She jumps at the opportunity. She lives to reprimand. With her gone, he turns his attention back to you. "Alright, now. You said you want to go check it out yourself ?" "Yes, sir. I do." He bites his lower lip in consideration before speaking once more, "You know it'll probably be a disappointment?" "Yes. I know, but I have to see for myself."

"Well, I can understand that. Okay. I'll let you go, but I want you to take a friend with you, in case anything happens, and I want you to wait for nightfall before you head off. I have a compass you can use so that you don't lose your way. Follow me." He leads you back into the school, through the hallways, into the staff area and finally into his office. "Sit down," he tells you, extending his arm towards an uncomfortable looking chair in front of his desk. You do as bid. "So, what were you doing outside anyway?" "I was watching the sunrise," you tell him, "I've never really watched the sun rise before." "Did you know you were supposed to be in your home room?" he asks, even though he must already know the answer. "I knew," you say. "I didn't care." "The rules we're trying to establish are for your own good, you know. If everyone just wondered around, what little order that's left would be lost." "It's going to be lost anyway," you say, looking at the floor. "The control you have now is fleeting. When everyone realizes that you can't provide for them, you're going to have an insurrection on your hands." "You're awful cynical for your age. Everyone will be soon, but you've had practice. I can tell. You've got intelligence in your eyes. I just wanted to see what kind of kid you were before I sent you out to find hope for us. I guess you're as good a man for the job as anyone else. Do you know who you want to take with you?" "I only have one friend here really. His name is Johnny Yarrows." "Big kid?" "I think he'd prefer to be called fat," you say, smiling for the first time since the conversation began. "I'll send for him," Mr. Alva says, returning the smile, "I want you to wait in the teachers lounge until then. I'll see to it that the faculty stays out for now. I kind of have you pegged as someone who doesn't much enjoy the company of others." You nod in agreement, rise from your chair and allow him to escort you to the teachers lounge. He instructs everyone in the office to leave you alone while you are staying there, and for this you appreciate him tremendously. After ten minutes or so, the door opens and Johnny walks in with a big shit-eating grin on

his face and asks, "What the hell did you volunteer me for, padre?" You explain the situation to him. "So we're gonna save the fucking day, huh? Sounds fun. I knew I made friends with you for a reason," he says, looking unhealthily excited at the prospect of exploring the ruins of the world. A few hours later, a teacher brings you both an inadequate portion of food, which you ingurgitate in moments. "I'm fat, goddammit. I need more than this to keep up my physique." You both doze off around three and are woken up by Mr. Alva at nightfall. The room is pitch black now. "It isn't hard to see outside, but I've provided you with a flashlight, food, blankets and some bandages in this backpack" says Mr. Alva. He hands you the book bag and adds, "There is a compass in the front compartment." "It's probably going to be a bit frightening out there," he tells you, "Hell, it's definitely going to be frightening. You need to watch out for one another, and be careful. Are you sure you want to do this, because I've had teachers volunteer, but to be honest, I think I trust you two more than them." "We'll try not to disappoint, man," says Johnny, more soberly than you've ever heard him speak. "I'm glad to hear it. You've got about a weeks worth of food in there, so if you don't find anything in three or four days, you need to turn back." "Understood," says Johnny, "And don't worry, I won't eat it all on the first day." It is too dark to tell but you think that the old man smiles at this. "Could you excuse your friend and I for a moment, Johnny?" asks Mr. Alva. "Oh, sure. No prob," he says, "I'll just wait right out here." He walks through the door, closing it behind him. The room is very dark. Mr. Alva is no more than a silhouette. "I have something else I want to give you," he says, "because I see a lot of myself in your eyes, and because something tells me you'll need it." He plops a coin down in your hand. "It's nothing special, really," he says, "just a plain old 1958 quarter. It was given to me by my father as he sent me off into the world. He told me, 'This is your lucky quarter boy. You'd better turn it into a fortune.' I never did of course, but when Vietnam rolled around and I

got drafted, I kept it with me the whole time. I can't honestly say that it kept me alive, but like to believe that it helped. Now though, I think you need luck more than I do." You don't want to accept such a personal gift from someone, but something inside you warns you against refusing it. Something tells you that you just might need it. *** The light of the moon and the stars is more than sufficient to illuminate your way. The charred ground crackles like snow under your feet, kicking up dust and ash that fill the warm air with an unpleasant, yet subtle, odor. All and all, it isn't nearly as bad as you had come to expect. The compass is an invaluable tool. Many obstacles lie in your path, and weaving through them all confuses your sense of direction. Johnny follows at your side, chatting incessantly, verging on raving at times. Still, you are grateful for his presence; this environment is not one you would ever wish to brave alone. Wish in one hand . . . "Shit in the other," you say. "Huh?" Johnny puzzles. "Nothing. Thinking out loud," you answer. "Who's your favorite girl from School? I mean, like, who do you jerk off too?" he suddenly asks. "Either Crissi Drake or Lisa Martin," you say. You'd masturbated to thoughts of Crissi just yesterday. Dear God. Had it really been less than 48 hours ago that you had woken up at home in your bed and casually masturbated to thoughts of being dominated by a girl in your Social Studies class? That somehow seemed more implausible than anything else. "Good choices. Shit. I was gonna say Alley Bowers, but I forgot about Crissi somehow. I mean, I don't have a single class with her and I never saw her in the hall or anything except for once or twice, but even so, I can barely believe I forgot about her. I mean, the ass on her is just INCREDIBLE! And she never dresses really slutty either. A lot of girls now think that guys go for that ultra-slutty thing, and then they complain when they wind up with some retard. Not her though. She dresses with some fucking class. It makes you want to fuck her till she's cross-eyed, even if you know she could chew you up and spit you out; shes got that look on her face. You know, that one that says, 'I am so beyond your means." Yeah, if this shit wouldn't have happened, she would have been a fucking model one day. I

don't know who that other girl you mentioned was though." "Lisa Martin," you say, "I don't know much about her, but she's got really pretty eyes." "Eyes? You can't stick your dick in her eyes, man! Tell me about her body!" You chuckle and say, "Her body is fine. She's got tits and ass galore and I'm sure her pussy is just fine, though it's difficult to make any estimations through cloth." "Eyes! Jesus!" he yells with mock indignation. "You call yourself a man!" The humor is suddenly drained from his face. Even in the moon and starlight it's obvious. "What's wrong?" you ask with genuine concern that you didn't expect in your voice. "Nothing. I just reminded myself . . . of my father. 'You call yourself a man?' was one of his favorite little sayings. Well, I guess it's not much of a saying, but I don't know what the word for it would be." "Dictum? Maxim? I don't know. It's hard to categorize since it's in the form of a question and it's not particularly clever. I think saying is actually the best word to use," you answer. "Shit. I'm smarter than even I thought," he says with his usual uppity charm. "Let's stop a minute. We've been going for fucking hours." You nod and come to a halt, grab the backpack off of your shoulders, set it down and begin rummaging through it. You pull out a blanket and cover the charred ground with it. You both sit down on it, feeling your weight cause it to sink an inch or so into the scorched earth with a sickening ashy crunch. DAY THREE: THE WEED GARDEN, MONOLITH THE ROACHES AND THE

"Wake up! Wake up, man!" you hear as you emerge from a vast darkness. You are being shaken violently, and you rolLover to discover that it is daylight outside. "We fell asleep. We are a fucking low-rent Louis and Clark, man. We fell asleep!" shouts Johnny into your ear. You sush him harshly and let out a beastly yawn. "You're the one who wanted to stop," you say. "Don't blame me." "I'm not blaming you, asshole. I'm blaming us--as in the two of us combined." "Yeah, yeah, yeah," you yawn out dismissively, as you shake off and fold up the blanket on

which you slept. The backpack is lying where you left it (and why shouldn't it be?) so you return the blanket to it's proper place and resume your journey. "Yo, walking man, how about a little breakfast first?" asks Johnny. "Not right now. I want to get moving. We'll grab something later." "Who the fuck put you in charge?" asks Johnny in mock anger, thinly veiling impressed surprise. "I did," you say. "Let's at least get an hour behind us." "I can live with that, I think," Johnny replies. To journey through the decimated world in the daylight is much more frightening than traveling it in the darkness of night. In the darkness, you can imagine that there are horrors all around you, but when the light comes on and the horrors are worse than you even imagined--the twisted wreckage of tangled vehicles; the black skeletons of middle class housing; the burnt and fallen trees--and ash everywhere. If a strong wind were to kick in, it would fill the air with the dust of dead things. Thankfully, the day is windless. Utterly windless. Frighteningly windless, actually. Marching forth, combating hunger and exhaustion, it is noon before you stop again and finally sit down for a meal of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which was probably the only thing the school had that wouldn't spoil in a day, you imagine, however, that by the seventh day, the sandwiches will be less than delectable. You wash them down with carefully rationed sips from one of the four bottles of water provided for the trip. "We should have stopped by the house and crabbed some of the canned food from the attic. We hid a can-opener up there too," said Johnny, less then satisfied with the paltry rations. "Well, think of your friends. They have as much a right to it as you," you tell him. "Everyone has a right to it if you view things from a purely moralistic stance," he replies, "but that certainly doesn't work towards my survival. I guess you could call me a coward if you wanted to, and it might be true, but I value my own life more highly than the lives of others. It seems natural too. I mean, how could something possibly mean more to me than my own life? It defies logic, unless of course you hate your own existence." "That is logical," you say, "but when you examine things more closely you see that the people most prone towards selfish behavior are those that are full of self-loathing. I think their selfishness is sometimes even the reason for their self-loathing. It certainly is in at least

some instances." "I guess people like you and I know a little something about self-loathing," he says with a touch of sad finality. "I guess," you say. Once again, you gather up your things and resume your journey again. It isn't until three hours later that another noteworthy occurrence comes into play. You and Johnny happen upon a garden of weeds growing forth from the ash beside the blackened remains of what was probably once a library. They are lush green and vine like, entangled in one another so that there is no telling where one ends and another begins. "Amazing," he says. "Yeah," you say, "but how?" "I haven't the faintest fucking clue, m'man." Only fifteen minutes later you make another astonishing, but perhaps unsurprising, discovery while walking around a scorched pick-up truck. You glance into the vehicle through an open window at the blackened skeleton of unknown gender or ethnicity, and a cockroach is climbing up what was left of its right leg. "Everyone always said they'd survive the end of the damn world," says Johnny. "I saw a special on them once. They're highly adaptable creatures. For instance, you can expose them to radiation, and because of the simplicity of their design, they will evolve to survive it in a generation or less, whereas it would really fuck up a human being because we're so complex and there's more shit that can go wrong with us," you tell him. " Nature's ironic, isn't it?" "Moronic," you say, resuming your pace towards the east. From then on, as if you have been awakened to their presence, you begin to notice roaches everywhere: under cars, in the remains of houses, in the shadows of rocks and fallen trees-everywhere. I hate the little fuckers, you think to yourself, if I could kill them all, I would. There's something about them that you have always hater; something about them that is intrinsically disgusting, even though any obvious answer eludes you. They're not that different in appearance from a beetle, but somehow they manage to look infinitely more repulsive to your mind than any other creature in all of existence.

"Oh my God," says Johnny suddenly, jolting you from your reverie. It doesn't take you long to spot what he is oh-my-Goding. No more than 100 yards ahead of you there stands a great black stone which you estimate to be twenty or thirty feet high and probably four feet wide. Your steady walking paces turn into brisk jogs and then full speed runs towards the towering monolith. When you finally reach it it becomes very apparent that this was not something that survived what you have come to call Red Day, this is something which was erected afterwards . . . but by whom, and to what end? It's black marble," says Johnny, "feel how smooth it is!" "I'd rather not touch it." Johnny walks around to the other side, never moving his hand from its surface. "Holy shit," he chokes out when he reaches it's other end. "What is it?" you ask, alerted by something in his voice, but afraid to round the giant stone yourself. "I don't know," he says. "You have to come see this." That's what you were afraid of. Cautiously, you walk to the other side of the monolith with your head down, afraid to look at it until it is absolutely necessary to do so. Finally, after a moment stretched into a lifetime, you find yourself by the side of your only friend in the entire world, Johnny Yarrows and you look up at the thing that stands before you. In great golden lettering is written a single word that should not mean anything to you, but does. Breathlessly you say to your friend, "what does it mean?" "I don't know," he says. "I think I do, but I want you to tell me," you say. "I think I do, but I want you to tell me," he replies. "Let's just both know it, and neither of us say it, okay?" "Okay." And so, after a moment of horrified captivation, you turn away from the monument and continue towards the East, all the while, one terrible word rings through your head: LEGION

DAY FOUR: WELLS It is early in the morning and you have just awoken from a troubled sleep, filled to the brim with nightmares that you cannot remember, yet they linger in your mind. Formless horrors. Johnny still lies a few feet behind you in a deep sleep, but you are watching the sunset once again, waiting to see if you might catch a glimpse of the shimmering thing that had lured you out into this desolate desert of ash and death. You don't spot it, and this causes whatever hope left in your spirit to die away, or at least get lost within the clutter of your mind. "What am I doing out here?" you ask yourself. The roaches, frightened by the new light of the rising sun, scuttle into darkness. They've probably been crawling on us as we slept, you think. An icy shiver runs down your spine and throughout your body, and you begin to feel nauseous. "'Zit mornin'?" asks Johnny groggily from behind you. "Unless sunrise has been rescheduled to some other time of day," you say, "yes." "Geez. It's too early for sarcasm," he says, scratching his head through his greasy, tangled brown hair. "It's never too early to be a smart ass," you tell him with a bitter little grin creeping up around the corners of your mouth. "We should get moving. If we don't find anything by tomorrow, we'll have to head back." "We did find something," he says. "We've found a lot of things, in fact, and I haven't liked any of them." "Legion," you whisper. Johnny reacts with a solemn nod. "Well, sitting here shitting ourselves over it wont help us any. Let's get moving." "Yeah. Fear is irrational when you consider we're probably dead no matter what we do," says Johnny, "In fact, if we don't find something out here, I don't think we should go back. They'll be as foodless as we will in a few days, so why return there to chaos and cannibalism when we could stay here?" "So you could eat me? Fat chance, fat boy." Johnny giggles at this. "Do you seriously think they'll resort to cannibalism?" "I'd be surprised if they didn't from a historical perspective. The teachers would be the first to go, and then some other kind of governing body would probably come to power and

they'd most likely select the human feast from there. Of course, no society can survive solely on cannibalism, because human beings eat far more often than they reproduce. But, if you think about it, after a few months, alternative food sources might manifest themselves." "You've dedicated a lot of thought to this, haven't you?" you ask, somewhat disturbed by the scenario he's presented to you. "Since day one." "Red day," you say. This earns you another solemn nod from Johnny. You both walk on in silence until around noon, when it is decided mutually, and without the use of linguistic communication, that it's time for a break. Johnny sits down on a blackened--but serviceable--park bench, and you sit down beside him. "It is hot as a motherfucker out here today," says Johnny, holding out his hand for the water bottle, which you hand him after taking a sip yourself. "Do you wanna eat now?" you ask. "Nah, I think I'd puke it up right now. I can wait till tonight. You can eat now if you want." "No. I'm not hungry," you tell him. A cockroach scuttles by--this one seemingly unafraid of the light. Contemptfully, you squash it under the toe of your ash-black tennis shoes, which have practically become grafted to your feet from sticky sweat. You wish, for a moment, that you had put on socks on that faithful morning. In fact, you wish you'd stayed home so that you could have died with everything else, instead of being cursed to live on by some fluke in nature's design for the apocalypse, or else the cruel prank of some bitter God in a lonely sky with only clouds and commuter jets to keep him company. "I hate those little fuckers," says Johnny. "I think they thrive just to mock us," you say. "I wonder what they're eating." "Each other, maybe. I hear that they're cannibals too, only they can breed as fast as they can eat," you say. "That's at least one big difference between us and them," says Johnny.

"What do you mean?" "I think the reason we hate them so much is because they sort of reflect that side of humanity that we don't like to show. They gravitate towards darkness; they infest and destroy any habitat they're introduced into--they're just like us in a lot of ways, except they don't have our weaknesses. They're a superior model of humanity: resilient, adaptable and cold." "But they don't have the cognitive powers of a human being." "The what?" "The brains. The intellect." "Oh, well that's true, but intelligence it overrated. Where is the virtue in genius when everything that springs from genius is horror? Intelligence has given us wars over nothing, where we use bombs made possible by science to destroy our enemies because they're intelligence enabled them to form conceptions different than our own, thus offending the morality that we developed through that very same goddamned intellect. "And what's more, it doesn't even have any sort of practical application. I mean, shit, I'm a smart guy, but it's never made my life any easier. I make mistakes every fucking day and watch idiots with brains small enough to eat in one bite get more joys and accomplishments out of their lives than me. So where does this great and wonderful fucking virtue of intelligence come into the picture, because I sure as fuck don't see it!" You say something then that you never even knew you believed until that very moment: "Well, I guess that has validity, but the thing is that without your mind you wouldn't care at all about anything. Roaches might not go to war, but if they did it would be irrelevant, because no one roach is any different from any other. When a roach dies, the only thing that is dying is a little walking machine incapable of anything but surviving for the sake of surviving. When a human being dies it's a whole different story, because when a person dies a whole lot of memories, ideas and feelings are dying too. That's why I can smash any roach on this planet and not feel a thing, but I probably wouldn't be able to kill another human being, and even those that can usually do so because they get a thrill out of it, which is proof, I think, that even those you hold contempt for human life understand that the end of a human life is intrinsically more significant than the end of the life of any other living creature on this planet." "That's enough ramblin' out of you for today boy," says Johnny facetiously, not sure how else to reply.

"Let's get moving again," you say to him, rising once for to your sore feet. Johnny unleashes a girlish sigh of exasperation, but cooperates. "And to think," he said, "when I saw you passed out in the hallway I thought I'd be bossing your scrawny ass around." *** "What do you make of it?" asks Johnny. Before you are two limestone wells that look as though they were pulled straight form the pages of a children's storybook. In the ominous landscape they are so completely out of place that they create a feeling of absolute foreboding. "They look like wishing wells," you say. "Wish in one well, shit in the other . . . " he begins. " . . . And see which one fills up first," you complete. "It's a riddle." Your hand slides into your back pocket and pulls out Mr. Alva's lucky quarter, shining unnaturally, as if it were made of some unearthly metal. "We ought to just wish that none of this shit ever happened," says Johnny. You cautiously make your way over to the two wishing wells, Johnny close behind. The stench of human feces hangs in the air like the cheap perfume of a used up whore, and it increases tremendously as you get closer. When you get as close as you could ever want to, you notice that the well on the right is filled nearly to the brim with shit. "Aw, man. I'm gonna be sick," gurgles Johnny, battling the vomit in his throat. Without any warning, the air fills with a shrill and completely unpleasant noise. It doesn't take your eyes very long to discover the source of the dissonant sound. All around you, the roaches are up on their hind legs, shaking their antennae at the sky, trying to receive some broadcast from the blackness of space--a carnivorous choir singing songs of hunger, and their eyes are on you and Johnny. "I think I know what'll happen if we get this riddle wrong," you tell him. "Wish them away!" He grabs your arms. "Just wish them away!" "That won't do any good. I don't think it works like that," you tell him calmly.

"Bullshit. Gimme that quarter! Give it to me, you son of a bitch!" He grabs for it, but you're a lot faster. You're not fast enough, however, to avoid the fist coming towards your face. It makes perfect contact, and though there is no pain, you feel the world becoming hazy. Thing come back into focus rather quickly though, and before he can throw another punch, you push him to the ground and check your hand to make sure the quarter is still there. It is. You never even loosened your death grip on it. Johnny gets up again, all sanity now gone from his eyes, replaced now with desperation and fear. "Wish them away! Wish them away!" he demands. You can barely hear him over the cries of the hungry roaches, which inch closer with every passing moment. Johnny lunges forward for another attack, and in rage, you rise you leg to the level of his chest and he slams into it with the force of a car, knocking both of you over, and sucking the breath from his lungs, which buys you a little bit of thinking time. The roaches are so near now that if you are delayed another moment they will be upon you. Wish in one hand (well), shit in the other, and see which one fills up first. What was it that Johnny had said? What was it that he had said before he went nucking futs? He had asked you, "What if you wish for a handful of shit?" That has to be the answer. It has to be. It just has to be. You toss the quarter into the wishing well and shout, "I wish for a handful of--No, wait, I wish for a well full of shit!" Nothing happens. Then something does. The shitting well begins to overflow, and the foul, reeking waste spills out onto the scorched earth. It washes over the ash like a fecal glacier, sweeping away the roaches in its wake, but also rendering you ankle deep in human waste. Johnny, who had only just sat up, finds himself in a literal shit storm. It covers the back of his pants as well as his chubby hands. This is more that enough to kills his resistance to the vomit he had been fighting down, and the last few days of food spill out onto his shirt. To top it all off, you notice that he's pissed his pants. It is the most disgusting thing you have ever seen by an enormous margin. But not for long. DAY FIVE: THE TEMPLE It is early morning the next day before either of you speak one word to the other. "I feel revolting in every single way," says Johnny. He looks it too. You can't help but feel intensely disgusted looking at him and the stains of bodily sewage that cover and cake the tattered clothes that cover his fat body.

More revolting than his appearance is the mind that lurks behind his clever eyes--a mind that snapped when the pressure was on and almost cost both of your lives. How could he have been so weak? He had dealt with Red Day better than you had, so why had the wells caused him to crumble, while you kept your cool? Maybe everything that had happened had only really caught up to him at that moment and when it all hit he didn't know how to deal with it. Certainly that was a reasonable explanation, but (but what?) . . . "We need to get moving," you tell him, your words sounding hollow in the cool breeze that swirls the ash around your shit-caked feet. "It looks like we'll have to make a huge detour around all this," says Johnny, waving his hand towards the burnt forest that lies before you. "There's no knowing you big this is. We'll have to go through it." "Do you know how much of a deathtrap that is," he says. "Do you really still place value on your life . . . or mine?" you ask. "That's not fair." "It's completely fair. Now let's go," you say. With that, you begin your trek through the black forest of death. The few trees that still stand upright look like elongated tombstones, aspiring to scrape the bellies of clouds still tinted pink from Red Day. The other trees have fallen to various extents; most are diagonal from the ground to a degree slight enough to allow passage beneath like the wretched canopies of some forbidden circus tent with a mad ringmaster, where every act is an unspeakable one. Noon comes and a light shimmers from the distance, a glistening beacon of hope. "Oh my God, I was beginning to think you were full of shit about the whole thing, but there really is something up here," says Johnny, a pleasant breed of bemusement in his voice. "Don't even say the word shit around me," you say with a smug grin on your face. "I don't think I'd care if I get there and it turned out to be nothing, I'd just lie down and die with a smile."

"It doesn't look far. I'd say we'll reach it by nightfall, which is damned good since I can't stand the though of being in this place at night." Neither can you. The thought alone sends cold shivers throughout your body. "Let's keep on moving then," you say. But you no more than take another step before you hear a loud thump from behind you. You twist around and see a huge hole on the ground next to where Johnny was standing. "SHIT!" you scream. "Are you okay?" "I'm fine," he yells. Then, a moment later, "What the fuck am I talking about? I'm fucked." "You run to the end of the pit and glance inside. Dimly, you see him lying at the bottom. "It's not that deep," you shout, "stand up and give me your hand!" "I think my leg is broken. Shit! I can't believe this. It's just my fucking luck." "Stand up! You don't have a choice!" you shout. "Okay, okay. Shit." He tried and fails twice, but the third time is indeed a charm, and he reaches your arm and with a mighty effort that dislocates your shoulder, you pull him out. You lay side by side in the burnt forest. "We're some sad motherfuckers, aren't we?" he says with a half-mad chuckle. "Is your leg broke?" you ask. "I don't think so, but it's fucked," he answers. "Well so's my shoulder now," you tell him. "That's what 220 pounds will do to you. Well, I'm probably down to 210 now." "You're welcome, asshole," you say, rising to your feet. "What are you doing? What about my fucking leg?" "Walk it off." Johnny groans, but complies. He limps sadly along. "Could you at least help me out?"

"You fucked up my left shoulder bad, so unless you can switch that fucked up leg over to your right side, I can't do shit for you. Oh, and by the way, yes, we are some sad motherfuckers." *** "Jesus motherfucking Christ on a three dicked pony!" Johnny says when he sees it. You had spotted it a moment earlier and stopped dead in your tracks. A huge crystal floating in the sky, held by nothing at all. "That's what was reflecting the sun light," you say. Johnny begins to sob and chokes, "That doesn't make any sense! Nothing makes any sense anymore! My leg is fucked up! I'm covered in shit, piss, vomit and ash! My ass is majorly fucking chaffed from all this fucking walking and to top it all off I'm constipated! I haven't taken a shit in a week, which I guess shouldn't be surprising because I haven't eaten anything but stale fucking sandwiches, which are now growing mold and washed them down with little dainty sips of water! I think I'm losing my fucking mind! "I want a fucking hamburger with fries and a fucking Coke. I wanna watch Star Trek! I wanna smoke a fucking joint naked in my room listening to Metallica and jerking off to internet porn, ideally something involving horses with big floppy dicks and drunk fraternity sluts who think it's going to be a gateway to real acting jobs! I wanna . . . I just want my old life back." "Took it for granted, didn't ya?" you ask. "I know, I did too. Every moment of it. But sitting here bitching about it doesn't make anything better; in fact, it makes things a lot worse. You're all I have Johnny, and you went fucking nuts on me when the pressure was on. I'm all you have, and you really shouldn't take that for granted because I've held you together for this long, but I'm getting tired of it." "Hey, I'm the one who helped your ass when you were just some fainted little bitch on a floor somewhere, so I think that--" "--That what? That I owe you? I've paid my debt to you and then some. I don't owe you jack fucking shit, you fat-ass." He opens his mouth again as if to say something nasty, but then closes it again and looks at the ground for a moment. When he looks back at you, his eyes have regained their composure. "No. You're right. You don't owe me anything." "Let's go," you say. "I want to reach that crystal before nightfall."

"It's not a crystal," he says. "Oh?" "It's a diamond. A diamond in the sky." "Twinkle, twinkle? Do you think? A little star?" "Well," he says, "Legion is Biblical, wishing wells are Celtic, I think. I have no idea where 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star' comes from, but all this stuff is rather fairy-tale and folklorish. I think there is some sort of consciousness behind it all. I mean, there would have to be." "I guess so," you say. "Well, it's not important. Let's get moving," he says. "Wait a minute," you say. "Yeah?" "Don't people wish on stars?" "Jesus. You're right. If this is going to involve shit and evil roaches again, you can count me the fuck out." *** You both gaze upon it breathlessly. It is the size of and shape of an arena, but you'd want no part of any sport that took place there. It's as black as hell, as beautiful as heaven and as terrible as the voice of God. Ebony spires tipped in fire protrude from four points; above and between them hovers the sky-diamond, glowing (twinkling) in the flames. Never, even if you had been afforded million years, could you have conceived that something like this had been awaiting you. It is the most amazing thing that you have ever seen. It fills you with joy and horror; Love and hate; strength and weakness; a will to survive at all costs, but also the urge to slit your wrists and let death overcome you. You can only stand there in weeping awe of its beautiful invocations of emotions deeper than you had ever felt before. You wish, more than anything, that you could be a part of it. Perhaps you once were, in some long forgotten lifetime. Now is your chance to return.

"The sun is going down," you say, "and I think we can get there in 30 minutes or so if we hurry." Johnny just nods vacantly, mesmerized by the great and terrible arena, perhaps even more so than you, and follows your lead. *** Night falls and you arrive at your destination. The air is sultry and beads of ash-black sweat roll into your eyes. The arena towers over you like monster would tower over a frightened child. You can hear it breathing and feel its hideous life force speak horrors to the Love in your heart and preach gospels to the blackness in your soul. So repulsively inviting. So invitingly repulsive. I dont see any sort of entrance, you say. Im not sure we ought to go in anyway, says Johnny. This place is . . . . . . Evil, you say. More than that. Its wrong. Too wrong. More wrong than anything else even. I can smell it in the air here. Weve come all this way, you say, Its too late to turn back. Is that the real reason? Of course not. You want to enter. You want to be part of this arena. This temple. Yes, this is a templea place of worship. The question is this: who or what is being worshipped and who or what is worshipping it? The wind whispers an answer, but you cannot understand it. We should search the perimeter, you say. Its too dark, Johnny says. We wont be able to see anything. Theres not even much of a moon tonight to go by. Reluctantly, you admit to yourself that hes right. I guess we make camp here then, you say. Great, he says. Ive always wanted to spend a night between a dead forest and a giant black temple.

Wait. Did you just call it a temple? you ask, knowing full well that he did. Yeah. I guess I did. It gives off that vibe, doesnt it? you ask. Yeah. Its wrong. Its so wrong. DAY SIX: THE HEART WHOSE WOES ARE LEGION Light, unnatural and blurry, fills your eyes and fucks your soul. It wakes you from your uneasy slumber, but doesnt really. You cannot move. You feel as if you are floating, but pressed against a hard surface. The you just beneath your top layer tingles like a body part receiving blood after a few minutes of closed circulation numbness. You can hear voices speaking in unison from behind the wall of sickeningly white lightsmall voices, like the war cries of cockroaches. You cannot understand what they are saying, though a decipherable word here and there leads you to believe that they are speaking in English. This is bad. Youve got to move. A finger, a toesomething. Every effort to move any part of your body is completely futile. Youre paralyzed, and the sickening light that engulfs everything shows no sign of fading away. The chorus of indecipherable little voices chants away, strengthening the malediction that has befallen you. Indecipherable? No. Their mantra is clear to you now: The whore of Babylon spreads her legs and Kasaal the Chaotic lays her egg! Behind this unified army of voices there speaks another single voice little more than a choked whisper. It says one word over and over again; a word not of any earthly language: TESTEOTEDRUM. Upon this realization, the light evacuates from your vision and only darkness lay before you, formless and void of Gods creation. There is nothing above or below or beyond. You are alone and everything that once was has come undone. Then, in a heartbeat, you are not alone. There is some other presence in this boundless emptiness and it is vast and utterly inhuman. It does not allow you visual conformation of

itself, but it makes itself known nonetheless by wrapping invisible tendrils of cosmic indifference around your every struggling limb, previewing you to a harsh coldness the likes of which no human being has ever suffered before, save a few unnamed and unnamable souls lost forever in lands where not even their greatest of Loves would dare set out in search of them. These are dreams that are not dreams. Wake up. Wake up! shouts Johnny, urgently. Somethings happening! You groggily wipe the slumber from your eyes, and the dreams from your mind and look upon the great dark temple to see that an entryway is revealing itself in these early hours of lighta wide door not there the night before slides open, letting out a glacier of wild red light that does not conform to any one shape, but spirals and floats like mist dancing with horrifying delicacy on the surface of murky swamp water. It is a shade of red that you have seen before. Oh my God, says Johnny. Not mine, you answer, walking towards the light. What are you doing? he asks, grabbing your arm. You jerk it away from him. Damn it! you say. Dont you get it? Theres no turning back now! This is it! Our one and only option! There is no alternative. Theres always an alternative! he screams at you. We dont have to go in there! We can turn around and go back! Go back to what? you ask calmly. He doesnt answer, only looks down at his feet. Johnny, Im sorry, you know as well as I do that its this or nothing, and nothing isnt a real

option. Not for us. He looks up at you, dirty tears running down his ashy face, sorrow beyond sorrow in his deep, blue eyes. I know, he says simply, with surprising strength. You take his hand, and he takes yours back. Together, united by the bonds of a friendship borne of absolute necessity, you cross the glowing red threshold into the great black temple and the door rushes shut behind you. You are greeted by archaic stone hallways, lit by torches burning bright with peculiar red flames that do not cast shadows or produce smoke. A million or more curses hang like frozen ghosts in the air. A faint rattling can be heard emanating from every crevasse between the large stones that comprise the ancient-looking wall, as of large machines running relentlessly at some hidden depth. Its almost trite, you say, looking around with a mix of relief and disappointment. This isnt how it really looks, says Johnny. This is a shoddy monster mask over the face of a real monster. Well, we can go left, or we can go right, you say. At that moment, a massive wall of prison bars crashes down from the ceiling, separating you and Johnny. Shit! he shouts, banging against the bars. I should have figured as much, you say. Fuck! I cant fucking believe this! Calm down. Theres nothing we can do, you say. Take my hand. He takes it. If we dont see each other again, I just want you to know, youre the best friend Ive ever had.

You too, he says, but I think well see each other again. Its just trying to fuck with us. I hope so. I Love you, man. I Love you too, he says, looking at you with intensity. And just like that, youre alone. *** The rumbling and rattling of unseen machines grows louder as you make your way through the labyrinth of hallways and tunnels. Some are lit by torches; others are filled with the defiant breed of wild red light conforming to no law of physics. The resident roaches scuttle from your footfalls, perhaps only out of habit. It is, after all, their world now. Hours pass, and yield no discovery. You are hungry now, but Johnny has the backpack with all of the food in it. His odds of survival are higher than yours. Youll probably die wandering these black corridors. Youll probably die here in this maze of cheesy horror movie special effects to the soundtrack of mechanical rumbling. A pathetic death for a pathetic person, you think. Fuck that, says some other part of you, Im not dying down here. The conflicting voices that make up the illusion of a single entity that you identify as self . . . . (You are legion.) Then, without notice, the tunnel you were crawling through yielded a cavernous chamber, filled with the bones of the dead. Not one of the skeletons appeared precisely human. In fact, none of them looked real. Upon closer examination, you find that they are made of plaster or some similar substance. On the back of one skull, you can clearly make out the words: MADE IN TAIWAN.

Curiouser and curiouser, you say, quoting Alice in Wonderland without realizing it. Revelation after revelation only breeds further inquiry and exasperation. Living this nightmare is like trying to force the pieces of a thousand vastly different puzzles to form a coherent picture. How much more of this could a frail human mind be expected to tolerate before slipping (blasting) into complete madness, from which there could be no recovery? Not much is your guess. Im not dying down here, says your survival instinct. Yes I am, says your pessimism. No Im not. Yes you are. No Im not. Yes you are. Shut up! I dont need your negative bullshit. Im not negative, Im just realistic. Youre both annoying, hisses the reptilian brain. This internal monologue is brought to you by Pepsi, booms a voice from all around you, causing you to jump and brace yourself for a moment. Your heart thumps hard against your chest for a moment, but slows back to normal as you regain your composure and brush a hand through your greasy, tangled hair. Who said that? you demand.

There is no answer, and you didnt expect one. Well, fuck you then, you fucking pussy! you scream, Why dont you stop beating around the fucking bush and get the fuck out here so I can knock your fucking teeth out! The machines grow a little louder. Oh, did my insolence offend you? Im sorry, Ill let you suck turds out of my ass to make it up to you, you fucking son of a bitch! Whats the matter? All that power but not enough balls to cut the shit and come play? The machines grow a little louder, and the floor begins to shake beneath your feet. COME ON YOU FUCKING MONKEY! GET THE FUCK OUT HERE AND LET ME RAPE YOU UP YOUR ALMIGHTY ASSHOLE! The machines go dead. The shaking stops. The light flees. Then, you are overcome by new sensations: the gentle whisper and caress of an ocean breeze; the warmth of sunlight; the call of seagulls hunting for fish or mates; the sand between your toes; the scent and sound of salt water. Im in Santa Cruz, you say, I remember this beach. Yes, answers a raspy voice with a hollow quality. It is coming from a small Tiki God statue near your feet with glowing red eyes. Oh great, you said, I need this shit like I need a third testicle. You would do well to listen to me, boy, said the Tiki God. Uh-huh, you say, turning a walking away. Wait! says the Tiki God. Fuck you! Im not fucking around anymore. I want some answers, not more questions. Im tired of this nonsense! If you think Im going to sit on the beach and have a conversation with an action figure from hell, youre sorely mistaken. What form do you wish me to take? asks the Tiki God.

I dont care! Thats not the point! Why cant I just see what the fuck you really are and why cant you just tell me what the fuck is going on? I have no true form, and I have not the answer to your question, because I am only a part of you. You passed out just now in the temple of Vuru Raha and I am speaking to you now from the furthest outreaches of your subconscious mind. Vuru Raha? It is the name of the Goddess for whom this temple was built. Wait, you say, If youre just a part of me, how can you know things that I dont. I cant, he answers simply. You kick the Tiki God over and place your foot on top of him. Dont be a fucking smart ass, you tell him. The knowledge is inborna genetic memory that has been with the human species for millennia, says the Tiki God, apparently unperturbed by your attack. Okay, you say, Why am I on the beach in Santa Cruz? Because, he answers. Okay, well, thanks for the interlude, youve been helpful to no end. Now fuck off. Not until I have said what I must say, answers the Tiki God. Well then hurry up and say it! you reply.

He does. Oh my God, you say, This changes everything. I cant believe it. Why would he have done something like that? Power corrupts. How do you know this? Things you see and hear but discard; they all come down to me, and I put them together. I sense the patterns and communicate them to you through what you would call intuition. This, however, was too important to hint at. I had to bring you here, down to my level, to tell you this directly. I just cant believe it, you say, I just cant believe it . . . all this time . . . . I am sorry, says the Tiki God. And with that, you have returned to the temple, but are no longer in the room of false bones, but back in the tunnels. There is nothing to do but walk forward. After hours upon hours of stumbling weakly through endless corridors and caverns of strange light and odd turns, you come upon a room of enormity whose towering walls were adorned with shredded satin curtains with golden spiraling flora embroidered masterfully on every square foot. Suits of armor, all of ancient derivation, stood in guard of nothing in particular. At the back and center of the great cavernous space there stood a high throne of black stonethe same stone that had made up the terrible monolith whereupon was written the word LEGION. From the top of this throne there grew many black spires, reminiscent of talons, from the tips of which burned with great and terrible green fires. I never expected you to make it this far, said a beautiful female voice from above. You look up to see her floating down towards her seat of power, looking angelic and demonic and everything in between. She is clad, of course, in red.

She lands upon the great black throne, crosses one leg over the other and adjusts her long blonde hair. She is beautiful and hideous. Her breasts are succulently-shaped, but yellowish and diseased looking, as if they are inflated by puss or tumors rather than mammary glands. Her eyes are a brilliant green, but it is the brilliant green of raw sewage. Her lips are red with blood rather than lipstick. She inspires lust and revulsion in equal measures to such a disorienting degree that you fall then onto your knees and spray the dirty floor with vomit, composed than little more of saliva. We will take that, says the beautiful and revolting creature, as a compliment. Y-Youre . . . Vuru Raha? That is our name, she says with a large smile, displaying perfectly white, but unnaturally pointed teeth. A cockroach crawls out from her mouth and runs across her face towards an ear where it crawls back inside of her. You shudder and begin to understand just who weLEGIONis. Cued by your epiphany, an army of roaches pours in from ever nook and cranny of the vast throne room. They all gather and around you, forming a perfect circle and you hope to your feet in astonished disgust. Yes. We are Legion, she says. Did you . . . did you do this to the planet? you ask, emptily. For that we cannot take credit, she tells you, This world was unmade by they who made it to start with. God? you ask. She only laughs mockingly in response, and her roaches laugh with her in tiny, terrible voices. Then she tells you, No, they who really made this world. We speak of man. It is by the hands of man that man has fallen. Why was the high school spared? It must have been deliberate! Why?

Why? she asks mockingly, Why, for you-know-who, of course. Alva, you say. Yes, a powerful sorcerer is he, she said with a solemn smile. We, the last of the old gods, did nothing to stop him. We knew that We would inherit the earth. In return for his great and noble act, she says, I have grown him a garden to sustain his clan. You saw it in its youth when it was but weeds, and now it is nearly mature, growing every sort of fruit and vegetable you could desire. Sadly, I fear he will never find the opportunity to lead them to this arranged salvation. Another is rising to power. One with an even blacker soul than Alvas. You look at her with disgust and anger, How could anyone be worse than the man who burned down the world? Alva has done what he has done to give your race a fresh start; a rebirtha new Eden. The one coming into power now cares only for power for powers sake, and the satisfaction of devilish whims. Human beings are a sad race of creatures indeed. You vomit once more. Then, in a rush of color and light, everything floods away. . . . DAY SEVEN: THE FRIGHTENED GODDESS A fuzzy breed of consciousness comes back to you in sputtering spurts. . . . The goddess, Vuru Raha, smiles her terrible smile mere inches from your face. The teeth which looked healthy when viewed from across the room now appeared to be translucent capsules of semen. Her eyes, you note, are no longer green, but a deep, stormy gray. And then. . . .

A glimpse of pure white . . . Im in Heaven, you think, Im dead and Ive gone to Heaven. Im going to meet God. I ought to slap the piss out of him. And then. . . . You dream of Mr. Alva giving you the lucky quarter. "I have something else I want to give you," he had said, "because I see a lot of myself in your eyes, and because something tells me you'll need it." And then he had plopped a coin down in your hand and told you, "It's nothing special, really," he had said, "just a plain old 1958 quarter. It was given to me by my father as he sent me off into the world. He told me, 'This is your lucky quarter boy. You'd better turn it into a fortune.' I never did of course, but when Vietnam rolled around and I got drafted, I kept it with me the whole time. I can't honestly say that it kept me alive, but like to believe that it helped. Now though, I think you need luck more than I do." Was that all just a bunch of bullshit? Alva had been the one responsible for Red Day all along. Just six days ago you were endeared to a sad kindness you had seen in his wise eyes, but all along those eyes concealed something malicious. You could have killed him then where he stood had you known the truth. And then. . . . You awaken groggily, faintly aware that your penis is erect and being stroked with relish. What--? Relax, intones the mighty voice of the vile Goddess, Vuru Raha. With massive effort, you manage to lift your head long enough to glimpse her sallow hand firmly grasping your penis. You havent the energy to react overtly, only make a mental note of your disgust. Yours, she tells you, isnt as long as your friends, but its a bit wider. With that, she licks it from base to tip. Her tongue is rough like a felines, but wetter. You are disgusted and elated--and the conflict is intoxicating. You let out a small groan of pleasure and horror and she smiles at you with her come-caps. You nod off for what could have been anywhere from ten seconds to ten minutes and awaken to her naked body straddling you.

She intends to fuck you. Your heart races. No! you manage to choke. She places a powerful hand around your neck as a gentle reminder that you have no choice in the matter. The moment of penetration yields unforeseen horrors. You can feel things (roaches) squirming inside her goddess-hoodlittle legs and antennae brushing against your inflamed member. You convulse in shock, but she has you pinned firmly to the altar of your desecration. Your struggles are fruitless. We are in control, she coldly informs you, thrusting once more with swan-like grace. The pleasure is too great to remain disgusted. In fact, by the third or fourth pelvic gyration, you have long forgotten your horror and allowing yourself to be utterly consumed by pleasure without bounds. You come quickly in the electric pulsations of the most powerful orgasm ever before granted to a mortal being. Boundless pleasure, she tells you with a grin. We have given it to you and you will never have it again. That is simply one more tragedy of your little life. And with those words, a moment of triumph is turned, once more, into a moment of horror. Wheres Johnny? you ask. Vuru Raha seems offended (and perhaps even a little scared) by the defiant power in your voice. We have showed him the pleasures that God has kept from him, just as we have shown you. It drove him mad, she says, satisfied. We will take you to him. We will show you that there is no hope for you. We will extinguish the burning of your insignificant soul. Yeah, yeah. Whatever, you say, mustering as much nonchalance as possible, hoping to enrage her once more. She doesnt seem to take notice. In a flash of red, you are in a brand new room; black and completely bare, save for the cowering figure in the corner, who you recognize as Johnny. You run to him. He looks up

to you and flinches. His eyes are puffy, as though he has been crying for hours and he looks to have aged ten years in some ways. Rage pumps through you then. You get down on your knees beside him. What has she done to you, Johnny? you ask in the calmest voice you can. We told him the truth, she says from behind you. What truth? you ask, spinning around to face her, rising to your feet once more, causing Johnny to let out a little yelp. Humans are such a foolish species. You have seen what my wisdom has done to your companion, yet you still demand to hear it yourself. Were a race of crack addicts, you say with an evil smile of your own, recalling a conversation you had had with Johnny five or six days ago. Your smile seems to catch her off guard for a moment, but then she nods to herself. It is the sort of nod that says, Ahhhh . . . hes losing it too . . . all is going according to plan. Im not losing my sanity, you tell her matter-of-factly. She looks puzzled and afraid by these words. You really need to work on your poker face, you tell her, taking a few steps forward, closing the distance between the two of you. Stay away! she shrieks. Whats the matter? Why are you scared of me? you ask. Dont be ridiculous, y-you mortal fool. I do not fear you. I? What happened to we? We do not fear you either, she says. But you are your own entity, you push. I can be, if I choose, she answers, regaining her composure, but I prefer to be Legion. Well, you tell her, I think its about time that all of you showed us a bit more hospitality.

What? How dare you! The insolence! Shut up. A streak of red light blasts into your mid-section, catapulting you across the room to near where Johnny sits. That should teach you your place, she says with confidence. The air has been knocked out of your lungs and it takes a moment to respond. Is . . . that . . . it? you ask. You are steadfast in your defiance, she says through clenched teeth, Ill give you that. But in the end, Iwewill break you. Why? Whats your gain? It is part of the deal between Alva and us. He sent you here, bearing a cursed coin, which you have already given to us, for fear that we would destroy you. Had you been familiar with the doctrines of the ancient prophets, you would have know that we could do you no harm unless you were to make us a magical offering. You unwittingly gave us a quarter bearing a death hexand a particularly nasty one at that. We are obliged, if not obligated, to essentially torture you to death. We could, perhaps, have placed you upon the rack or whipped the flesh from your bones . . . but thats just not our style. We would much rather destroy you from the inside out. You still havent told me why youre so scared of me, you reply. We grow weary of you for today. Sleep. You do. DAY EIGHT: WELCOME BACK You wake up in the same tiny, black room. Johnny is curled in a corner muttering to himself, but you are fairly certain that hes asleep, dreaming of something awful if the unmistakable tone of fear in his voice is any indication. What horrible truth could he possess? After all that you had seen and experienced together in relative sanity, what knowledge could have finally pushed him over the edge? Should such knowledge even be pursued? What do you have to lose but your mind?

Im seeing Tiki Gods that claim to be my subconscious. Freud would take one look at me and burst into flames. I dont think I have much of a mind left to lose, you think. Johnny! Hey, John! Are you awake, man? No reply. You rise to your feet and stumble across the room, realizing for the first time since seeing Vuru Raha just how desperately famished you are. You place a hand firmly on his shoulder and shake him gently. He is not at all roused, but this close up you can decipher his sleepy mumbling. One word, over and over again: Red. You shake him again, more firmly. In a flash of movement, his hand has seized your throat and is gripping tightly like a python coiled around its prey. Do . . . not . . . do . . . that, he says, loosening his grip with reluctance. Then, he adds, Dont I know you? Yes, Johnny. Its me. Its . . . you? says Johnny, uncertainly, as if he distrusts his own thoughts and memories. Yes. After all these years. . . . I never expected to see you again. Its been such a long time, he says, such a long time. Its only been a few days, you tell him. Has it? I suppose youre right. I dont know. I have no sense of time anymore. A minute is and hour and an hour is a month and a month is a split second and everything bleeds into everything else like a dick bleeds its diseased cum into the giant flaming cunt of darkness, producing yet another zombie spawn to sing country music to a coalition of gay and lesbian midgets. He laughs wildly at this proclamation--The sort of laugh that is so taxing on the lungs that it becomes nothing more than a tear-inducing spasmodic wheeze. What have they done to you, Johnny? you ask, looking at him through teary eyes. Dont call me Johnny! I hate that name! Call me . . . um . . . Carp! Yeah, Carp is a cool fucking name. You dont hear that too often. Have you ever met a guy named Carp? I think not!

You begin to weep at this, but giggle in spite of yourself. Okay, you say, regaining your composure, JoherCarp, whats been done to you? Well, we got split up a long, long time ago, right? I was walking down the long and winding caverns and halls and all that shit singing Beatles songs and I realized that I had taken the food and that you might need some. So, I turned around, hoping you would have realized it too and turned back. Well, I dont know if I really believed you would, but I wanted to go back . . . maybe I wanted to go back to try and find another way out, but I was as lost as a nigger in a library, so I wound up in Vuru . . . hey, lets call her V-ro, you know, like J-lo? . . . Anyway, I wound up in her little throne room thingy-type-place and she smiled and laughed and made me . . . well, I wont get into that . . . but she made me do some real nasty shit that Ill never get out of my head no matter how hard I try. I tried to resist her, but that only pissed her off and she showed me her brain. She made me a part of Legion for a little while and I knew everything. I knew all about God and the creation and the history of earth and Heaven and Hell, but I forgot it. I buried it. It was too big and a lot of it was so goddamn awful that I dont want to try to remember it, even though I know thats what you want from me. You set out here to find the truth, but Ill tell you now man that the truth is more than you would ever want to know. Its just too big for you. But I will tell you this much, you have to get out of here. You have to go back to the school. You have to lead humanity to salvation, if you even give a shit, that is. Do you? I guess you do, or you wouldnt care about any of this nonsense. At any rate, you need to go to them and lead them to salvation. The weed garden has grown into a new Eden, capable of sustaining each and every one of them, but Alva was the only one among them that knew of its existence and hes dead now. There is a new guy in charge, now. A soul filled to the brim with a blackness and hatred that youd not fucking believe. Did that nigger joke offend you? Um, no, I guess not. But, Johnny, I have some questions. How could Alva have done all this and how could someone overthrow a man with that sort of power? Alva didnt do it by himself, says Johnny with a little laugh, he had help. Whose? you ask. You aint ready for that yet, my boy, says Johnny. Damn it! Dont do this! Dont get all cryptic on me, you fucker! There is a good reason why those who possess knowledge are reluctant to share it, he

says to you simply. As children we are told the rain is Gods urine, or his tears. We gladly go out into the rain, delighted that God cares about us enough to douse us with his piss. Theres a good reason why we dont explain to them about the water-cycle and density and all that boring shit. Firstly, because they wouldnt understand it, and secondly, because we get a kick out of watching them go on believing a bunch of completely implausible horseshit. It seems like every moment of my life for the past week has been completely implausible bullshit, you say. Yeah, lifes a bitch, then you get reincarnated. At any rate, its time to go. Go where? you ask, Theres not even a door out of here! Oh no? asks Johnny, gesturing behind you. You turn your head and spot a plain-looking wooden door. Where did that--? you start, but Johnny is gone. Where once he was crouched there is now a dustpan. The room that youre in is not the one you were in a moment earlier. This room looks like a supply closet. You rise to your feet once more, falling back down immediately, nearly passing out. You take a few deep breathes and stand up again, this time with more success. You take three unsteady steps towards the door with chipped white paint. You grab the knob and turn it. The door opens and you step out into the light. Youre in a hallway of bricks, coated in a thick layer of white paint. The tacky, multi-colored glue-down carpeting is covered with dark-red streaks that could only be blood stains. You spot a broken window, through which you espy no less than an anchor of dead grass. Welcome back to Myre High, you say to yourself. *** It doesnt take long to jog to the main office. The hallways are abandoned, save for a few overturned desks and various school-going paraphernalia: text books, pens, pencils, rulers, protractors and even a few cigarette butts, all smoked to their filters. You open the door to the office, finding papers carelessly strewn about; blood splatters and streaks painting the tacky Champaign walls. These streaks continue along the tile floor, concluding at the backdoor of the office. There, you can be sure, they continue towards some ghastly destination.

Why return there to chaos and cannibalism when we could stay here? Johnny had said what seems like years ago. A little shiver runs down your spine. The same dull fucks who rode your bus and intently discussed Stacey and Daves breakup could no be intently munching on Dave and Staceys liver or getting munched on themselves. You walk into Mr. Alvas office expecting to find it empty and ransacked like the main office, but instead you find Mr. Alvas body lying out on his desk, his head bashed into ground beef. Startled, you let out a small gasp, but recover quickly and move in for a closer examination. You no good fucking son of a bitch, you say to him. I hope youre burning in hell right now, even if it means Ill be joining you someday. Done taking in the rearranged features of Alvas face, you cautiously stride out of his office and follow the blood streaks out the backdoor to the outdoors. What remains of the schools once blazing green lawn is now the light brown of heavily-creamed coffee with streaks of rust-colored blood leading to a knoll of corpses, rotting and baking in the heat of the sun. There is a young girl standing in front of the corpse pile with her hands in the butt pockets of her dirty low-rider jeans. You recognize her as Lisa Martin, a girl that you had a major crush on a million years ago before the world vomited itself to death. She turns around when she hears the door shut behind you. Shes wearing a pink T-shirt with the word LOVE written in sparkles that dont sparkle anymore. Her eyes dont sparkle anymore eitherthey are the eyes of someone who has seen so much horror that they have simply burned out. You imagine that your eyes must look similar as she looks you over and then looks back at the mound of bodies. I know that its forbidden to say so, she tells you, but I hate this. I do too, you say. What can we do, she says. Its not a question. Whose in charge here now? you ask her. She turns to you again, curiosity now lighting her half-dead eyes. What do you mean? Where have you been? About a week ago, the day after Red Day, Alva sent me and a guy named Johnny Yarrows on a secret mission of sorts to investigate a glimmer of light to the East. We . . . well, we

found the source, but it didnt help anything. Not really. And now . . . now I guess Ive come back. I know where there is a garden that can sustain us. I have to lead people to it. You cant! she says, getting up close to you so that she can speak to you in a whisper, even though there is no one around. Mr. Alva mentioned it before they . . . killed him. He said that he was going to lead everyone to the new Eden and now were not allowed to discuss it at all, and anyone spotted headed East . . . well, I think you can guess whatd happen to them. Just what I need, you say, another fucking obstacle. A rough voice from your distant right screams, Lisa! Who the fuck are you talking to. You turn to see about twenty people walking intently in your direction. The voice quite obviously came from the boy leading the pack, a gargantuan ape with scruffy black hair and Ill-kill-you eyes whom you recognize as Adric Motka. Dont try to fight him, she tells you. And in a matter of seconds he is standing inches from you; a foot wider and a foot taller than you. His angular face is so full of crimson loathing that you imagine that you could cook ground beef on his massive forehead if you wanted a burger. You talking to my girl, little boy? he asks you through a smile of gritted teeth. He talkin to uh, alright, man. I seen it, offered a small black guy with huge eyes. You gonna answer me, faggot? I didnt know she belonged to you, you tell him. Well she does, he says, oblivious to the sarcasm in your voice. I think hes being a smart ass! says a semi-fat hid with a red hat, probably more to inform Adric than for anything else. You see that pile over there, boy, says Adric, pointing to the body knoll, thats a pile of smart asses. I dont have time for this, you say, punching the giant right in his nose, causing his eyes to tear up and his body to freeze in surprise. Just long enough for you to kick him in the kneecap as hard as you can. He falls to the ground and he falls hard. In an onslaught of kicks to his face, it becomes evident that you have won the fight. Adrics entourage does

nothing at all to help him. Daaaaaaamn, says the black kid. You whooped As ass! Lisa is staring down at the folded up body of the boy who had apparently owned her with utter contempt. She then turns to you with an expression of wonder and gratitude. Whats your name, man? asks a sharp-looking skinny guy with peroxide bleached hair. My name? you ask. Yeah. Im Adam, you tell them, Adam Black. They begin to chant your name. Theyll follow you now, Lisa whispers in your ear. Great. *** Youre sitting in the classroom that once belonged to Mrs. Kyle, whose fate you dont bother to inquire about. This is apparently where Adrics posse hangs out. Correction, where your posse hangs out. Adric is in the corner, mourning his lowered position in the pecking order. Cory White, the small black kid with the huge eyes, is blathering on about something uninteresting. The clever-looking boy with the bleached hair has introduced himself as Jake Carter. Other than those two there are Sam, Rick and Pete who are notable only by their lack of notable qualities. The girls of the group include Shelly, Sherry and Ariel. Lisa Martin is, of course, staying close by your side, asserting association with you. Are you hungry? asks Rick. Fearing that you might be asked to eat someone, you are reluctant to say yes. Weve got Ravioli. Where did you get Ravioli? you ask. Aaron knows where to get it. He knows how to get lots of canned shit and we dont ask him how, Rick answers. E fuckin saved ah asses! adds Cory cheerfully.

I see, you say. So where have you been all this time, man? asks Jake. Lisa taps your shoulder gently to warn you not to tell the truth. Ive just been keeping a low profile, you tell him. He gives you a nod that lets you know that he knows what youre telling him is a lie but hell keep his mouth shut about it. You give him a nod back that says thanks. The exchange goes completely unnoticed by the rest of the room. Im still in charge here, you know, says Adric suddenly. And I dont like you hanging around in here like you own the fucking place. Im not here to take away your pathetic little lot of power, you tell him, But Lisa isnt your property. Well she aint yours, bitch! I know. She belongs to herself, you say. I dont know if youve looked around, boy, but this aint the same world it used to be and it dont got the same rules. Youre wrong, you tell him, Its the same world it always was with the same rules. Im tougher than you are Adric, and Im sure as hell smarter than you. Darwin isnt on your side. You wanna rematch, boy? You caught me off guard last time, but this time I aint fucking around. Ill kick your ass right here and right fucking now. Would someone shut him up, please? you ask. No one moves. You, you say, pointing at Jake, Take him. Jake weighs this order for a momentyou can see him deliberating as to whether or not he should recognize your authorityand makes a the decision to act on it. With disorienting speed, Jake tackles Adric to the ground and pummels him with fists. Your subordinates cheer as their former leader is blasted bloody by a barrage of punches that look a hell of a lot harder than the ones you barraged him with only about an hour earlier.

Hes tougher than me and I can see in his eyes that hes as smart as I am, you think. Thats enough, Jake, you say, seeing that Adrics face is basically a swollen tangle of bloody mush. He unleashes one final punch for good measure before obeying instructions and rising to his feet. Come with me, you tell him afterwards, motioning to him with your hands and heading towards the door. He follows you out into the hall where you ask him, Is there somewhere to go where we can sit and talk for a moment? That class is abandoned, he says, pointing to the class across the hall from Mrs. Kyles. You nod your approval. The classroom contains a picnic table with a few chairs around it. Aaron used this room as his base of operations when the war was on. Im assuming he discussed strategy here with his generals, our friend Adric among them. I wouldnt know. I was fighting for Alva, though its against Aarons Law to say so. Does it occur to you, you ask, pulling out a chair and sitting in it, that all of this transpired rather quickly? It doesnt really seem like it happened quickly, but I guess its only been a little over a week, he says. You know why were here? you ask. Ive got a good idea, he tells you, but I think itd be best if you came out and said it. Okay. Well, what you did to Adric was impressive as hell. Ive never seen someone move that fast or punch that hard, and youre obviously smart enough to know that you could lead these idiots if you really wanted to, so, I guess my question is, why arent you leading them? Aaron, he says simply. If I tried to overthrow Adric, Aaron would probably kill me. By extrapolation, he must, therefore, be equally adverse to my overthrowing him; hence, Im fucked, right? Probably, he says, but if you are so am I, so we need to band together on this one. You consider this for a great long while, looking at the desk as he looks to you for a verdict.

Our best chance, you say, is to go to him before word gets to him from some other source. Fear fills Jakes eyes and he opens his mouth to protest, but closes it soon after, biting his lower lip. You know, he says, I hate to admit it, but youre probably right. *** The computer lab, now devoid of anything even resembling a computer, serves as Aarons base of operations, perhaps chosen because of its location at the very heart of the building. Outside of the door stand two large sentries, obviously former football players. You dont know their names so in your mind you assign them the monikers Mr. Left and Mr. Right. We want to see Aaron, you tell them. Dont nobody see Aaron less Aaron wants them to be seen, answers Mr. Right. Look, you say, I guarantee you that hell want to see me tomorrow when certain facts come to light, and Im just here to save him some time and make sure that that light is my light. Get lost, bitch, replies Mr. Right. Or well kick your ass, adds Mr. Left. You turn around, signaling Jake to your side. He attaches himself to your side and you whisper, You take Mr. Left, Ill take Mr. Right. Without a moments hesitation to make sure he heard you and understands, you turn around and charge your enemy. Not disappointing you, he does the same. Mr. Right doesnt go down quite as easily as Adric. He seems barely fazed by your right hook, and offers you one of your own, almost as if to tell you this is how its done. Luckily, you see it coming and pull your face far enough to back that his punch only clips your chin. The force of his own punch causes him to lose his balance and a cleverly placed jab to the back of his head brings him to the ground where he is vulnerable to an onslaught of facial kicks and stomps. You look over to Jake and see that he has made short work of Mr. Left. The door swings open and out saunters a tall, fair-haired boy with eyes that could stare down a Siberian tiger and muscles that could tear one apart. You recognize him as Aaron Bittor, former quarterback of the Myre High Rebels, and now, you suppose, the king Myre High. He looks at you as if your presence is utterly inconsequential, seemingly failing to take notice of his fallen guards, but you doubt that anything escapes his dark blue eyes.

Whats the meaning of this? he asks, outwardly unconcerned. Gathering yourself together you say, We came to see you about something. That much is obvious, proclaims Aaron. Can we talk about this inside . . . ? you ask, pointing to the computer lab. No. Alright then, you say. Then, trying to sound frank, you add, What I have to say to you shouldnt take to long anyhow. I beat the piss out of Adric Motka and Ive assumed leadership over his followers. Ive come to tell you this because youll obviously hear it anyway. Essentially, you have come here to seek my approval in this course of action, and ultimately, my forgiveness. Am I correct? Yes, you tell him. Youre Adam Black, correct? Yes, you tell him. Then you have my approval and you have my forgiveness. Come here tomorrow at half past noon. We have a lot of very important things to discuss, he says. Then he turns to Jake with apparent distaste and adds, Come alone. Then, in a surreal instant, he is gone in a twirl and the door slams shut behind him. Jake looks over to you and says, I want you to know that after what Ive seen here tonight, Im loyal to you. DAY NINE: THE PISSFOAM OF MEMORIES and THE BASTARD MASTER PLAN The early hours of morningyou havent slept or come close to a state even vaguely resembling sleep. Canned ravioli is revolting in your belly while disconcerting thoughts are bubbling in your brain. Jake lies to your left, likely still awake. Lisa Martin lies to your right, definitely still awake and making little attempt to conceal it, staring at you with enlarged pupils. Her expression is difficult to read in the dark.

Who are you? she whispers. No one in particular, you answer. A few minutes later, it appears she has fallen asleep, and for that you are thankful. Her curious gaze was becoming a terrible burden. You could feel her eyes burning a bright, blue hole right through your head. You get the feeling that Jake has also finally succumb to Morpheuss song. His breathing has changed; become deeper and louder. So Im alone in the waking world, you think. Not quite. The door blasts open and in charge three silhouetted figures. Jake is to his feet before you can even acknowledge what is occurring. Adam Black! screams the smallest of the figures. Which one of you faggots is Adam Black? I am, you say. Come with us! Hes not going anywhere, Devin, says Jake. The fuck he isnt! shouts the shadow puppet now identified as Devin. Hes gonna pay for what he did to Adric. No one fucks with us. And when someone does, we fuck them right back. He can come with us now, like a good little cunt,everyone in the room is standing now, but most dont look very willing to fight for youor we can come back in about five minutes with thirty instead of three . . . and if we do that, youre all fucked. I dont think Aaron would like that, you answer. Aaron--? says one of the shadow puppets. Devin hushes him scornfully. What are you talking about? he asks. I talked to him earlier, you say, Im supposed to have a meeting with him tomorrow at twelve-thirty.

Devin and his left and right nut dont seem to know what to make of this. They talk amongst themselves for a moment in hushed and harsh tones. Devin stomps his foot and whisper-yells an obscenity. After a few moments of deliberation, Devin says, Im going to check up on your little claim, but if youre as full of shit as I think you are, I swear to piss that Ill beat you to death with your own legs. And with that, they are gone. Did you really meet with Aaron? croaks Lisa. Yeah, thats what Jake and I were up to earlier. Ho-lee shit, man, says Cory. Whatd ya say to um? asks Pete. We just told him what happened, you answer. And he didnt fucking kill you on the spot? snarls Adric. To which Jake replies with a wellplaced foot to the face. Get out, he says, Weve had enough of your shit. This is the third time today your gotten your ass kicked and if me or Adam have to kick it again, its going to stay kicked forever, if you get me meaning. Bitterly, the defeated beast rises to his unsteady feet and drags himself from your presence, casting his tormented and tormenting eyes in your direction as he closes the door behind him with a pitiful attempt at a slam. The girls in the room cheer, seeming like girls for the first time since your arrival. This lends you a bit of comfort and more than a little strength. Shut up! shout Rick, Pete and Sam in unison. You shut up, you say, Its the first sound of happiness Ive heard in a long time. They do as you bid. Now theyll listen, Jake mumbles in your ear, but if it came to defending you, theyd watch you get beat down before even considering lifting a finger. Adric was such an uninspiring leader that almost no one wanted to follow him, so he wound up with all the few spineless bitchboys that survived the war and they wound up with three of the ugliest girls in the school. They also wound up with me, because Adric wanted someone good in battle and I fit the bill. No one else wanted me because I had fought for Alva.

How much of the school died in the war? you ask him. About half the students and all the teachers and all but one of the parents that was dropping off their kids when . . . yknow. Red day. He nods. Red day. What are you guys talking about? asks Lisa. Nothing important, really, you tell her. Something about her movements as she nods and slowly sits down on the floor makes you want to hold her. You feel as though maybe everything would improve if you could just become so tangles up in her existenceand she in yours. Such illusions have plagued you since your discovery of the orgasm, just before the bloody death of all naivety and optimism that danced hand in hand with the sour advent of puberty. Love is a lie. Lust is a half-truth. You lie back down then, truly weary and ready to phase the world out for a short while. Jake does the same and everyone else follows suit. As you lay there, you look at Lisa, whose back is turned to you. Her every curve appears crafted by the hand of an artisan God with a perfect eye for detail, one who must have spent eons on her ass alone. You had the courage to venture of into a world reduced to little more then an ashen graveyard; the strength and will and character to keep your head when Johnny was losing his; the intestinal fortitude to not only enter the great, black temple of Vuru Raha, but to tell her off; and the sheer fucking balls to speak to Aaron, who could probably melt you with his gaze, as if you were his equal. Yet, despite all of this, you find yourself looking at the back of this Lovely creature, frightenedcompletely terrifiedof scooting in close to her and wrapping your arm around her. Im such a fucking coward, you think to yourself before finally descending into dreamland. *** Consciousness strikes like a hammer, nailing all saviors to their respective crosses. Your troubled sleep, racked with nightmares that have lost form, comes to an abrupt end and you

find yourself wide-awake with no apparent precursor. The light pouring in from the windows is faint, suggesting that its still quite early, meaning you couldnt have slept for more than three hours. You rise quietly to your feet, taking an inventory of the room. Everyone is accounted for. Everyone is asleep. You do work fast, dont you? says a voice from inside your head. Who said that? you demand. Shhhh. Hush now, boy. Were inside your primitive brain, no need to speak aloud. We can hear your every nasty little thought. Vuru? In the flesh. Your flesh, in fact, she says with a small giggle. How are you--? What does it matter? You humans have an insipid penchant for utterly inconsequential inquiries. Humor me. We fucked. It was my means of connecting with you. Whether you like it or not, youre a part of us and were a part of you. We bare your seedling, she says. My seedling? you gasp. Not aloud! she chides, Yes. Your offspring. . . . Your child. You feel your insides eating away at themselves and you feel as though your belly is going to explode. You use your every muscle to choke back the locomotive of vomit that is trying to exit your body via oral defecation. Dont be so melodramatic, instructs Vuru Raha. We are not much fonder of the idea than you are. Our presence is, however, more than vital to the continued existence of your race in its current incarnation. Present incarnation? Aaron intends to change humankind. Change how?

Do you really want to know . . . or are you just shitting in your hand again, little monkey? I really want to know. We were hoping that would be your answer. You are overcome once more by blinding light and then. . . . *** You are sitting in the living room of your house. Your mom is sitting beside you folding towels. Her eyes, nostrils, moth and ears are all sewn shut with thick black wire. You scream and bolt away from here as quickly as you can. She stops folding the towels for one strange moment, turns her head towards you for a moment, smiles a terrible, bloody-mouthed smile and then returns to her towels. A moment later, your father comes stumbling our from the hall, clutching huge wads of red money in his rotting hands. His mouth is ridiculously large for his face, and when he sits down and begins counting his money, you can see that its filled with shiny metal hooks instead of teeth, and silver spoon for a tongue. What the hell is this? you shout. The front door opens and in saunters Johnny. His eyes are now as black as tar and framed with red, vaginal eyelids. From his shoulder blades protrude two tiny gray wings, too small to serve as anything but decoration. A flaming halo floats seamlessly above his fat face. He smiles at you sardonically and says, What the hell is this? you ask? Well, its only your brain, my dear friend. This is how you remember your dearly departed parents is it not? No! No! Of course not! you exclaim. Oh? he says, seemingly delighted with everything around him. He extends a hand towards the living room television set, which flickers immediately to life. You see your living room, only much cleaner that it is now. You mom is folding towels. Her visage isnt a sinister mess of stitches, but the face of a tired woman with sullen eyes. You are sitting next to her, but the you then looks nothing like the you now. The you then looks so untroubled and young, yet you recognize this very scene for only a few weeks ago. And you know what happens next. Your father comes through the front door, his face a deep purple and his eyes as tiny as

insect-angler halos. He doesnt waste a single second. Before anyone can even inhale a breath deep enough to ask him whats wrong he screams, I got fucking fired today, Tabby! Oh my God! What happened? she says. Shut up! Shut the fuck up! I dont need you rubbing it in, you fucking smart-ass-know-it-all bitch! I told you this would happen! I fucking told you that it would piss Henderson off if I asked for that promotion and he waited till today to stick it to me! The fuckers! They cant fire you for asking for a promotion! says your mom. Dont you fucking raise your voice to me woman! Use your fucking head! They can fire me for whatever they like, they just have to find some cover reason to do it. They say theyre firing me for finding pornographic pages in my history, but thats a bunch of fucking horseshit. Theyre firing me because that bastard Henderson has a goddamn fucking hair up his pussy because little-bitty nobody, Godwin Black had the fucking AW-FUCKINGDACITY to ask for a fucking promotion after just eight goddamn miserable back-breaking years of working for his sorry ass to feed a family that doesnt give a half-pint of rat piss whether I live or die! By this time, his face is so flushed that what little is left of his hair looks as though it might soon catch fire. Look at our son! he screams, pointing his finger squarely at you, Hey, Adam, guess what? Theres a whole fucking rainbow of colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and motherfucking violetand theres more! There are literally fucking hundreds of thousands of different colors. But looking at you, youd think black was it. Thats the only color possible! You look like your going to a fucking funeral every goddamn day! What the fuck are you mourning you whiney little pissant? Boo hoo! Dad wont let me join the Church of Satan! Woe is me! Its not Fair! and all that crap. Why cant you go out and do the shit teenage boys are supposed to do? Party! Get wasted! Fuck girls that are too stupid to understand the decisions theyre making! Join the football team! The Basketball team! Even DRAMA for fucksake! Just quit moping around the fucking house like youre pissed off at a world that hasnt even begun to fuck you over yet. You mom says nothing. She continues to fold towels. The scene ends and the TV fills up with static. I think I see why you never really mourned their deaths, says Johnny. I did! I am! you sob. You did? You are? poses Johnny, A foul-tempered father who didnt understand you and a mom too passive to defend you? Did you really mourn them?

Yes! I did! you shriek. Then, calming yourself, you add, My father wasnt a bad guy, he just didnt like the path I was on and wanted me to be happy. It only came out like that on that day because he was angry! And I cant blame my mom for not fighting my battles for me! But you didnt think so then, says Johnny. The static fades away into a new scene. You see yourself crouched over your homework desk, doodling in your sketchbook. It is later that same night. The camera pans over your should to focu in on your drawing. It depicts your mother and father on the couch with both of their throats slit. Beside them is a depiction of yourself, wielding a large bloody knife. The static overtakes the picture once more. Johnny looks at you with raised eyebrows. I was mad, you tell him calmly. That doesnt mean I didnt Love my parents. We Love you too, sweety, says your mom, still sitting on the couch, face now free of stitches. Very much, adds your father, you now also looks like his normal self. With that, they both dissipate into thin air, leaving behind, for a moment, shadowy afterimages. Then, even those fade away and you and Johnny are alone inside your house. Only, you know its not your house and that the creature with the strange eyes and the tiny wings isnt Johnny. Touching, says Johnny, trying to conceal irritation. well, moving along. . . . A new scene begins to unfold on the television screen. This one is unfamiliar. The location seems to be an abandoned factorya steel mill perhaps?a mint-blue Chrysler pulls into the dirt lot, kicking up dust under its spinning wheels. Out of the Car steps Mr. Alva, a solid decade younger than the Mr. Alva you knew, but by no means a young man. In some ways, he actually looks older, as if he bears some awful burden. This is likely true. He slowly makes his way towards the factorys entrance, not really wanting to go inside. He stops before the door, takes a deep breath before grabbing the handle, and another before actually turning it. The factory looks the same inside as out: rusted and abandoned, butterrifyinglynot

dead. No. This place was ripe with an unholy breed of life, the sort of life that children feel emanating from closets and under beds as they shiver off the remnants of ghastly nightmares. YOU ARE LATE, booms a thunderous voice, rattling the few dirty old widows left unbroken. Of its source, you cannot be certain. I apologize most humbly, my lord, answers Alva. YOUR APOLOGIES HOLD NO VALUE. No, but perhaps this will, responds Alva, producing a small box, no bigger than a pack of cigarettes, from his jacket pocket and holding it out to the unseen source of the voice. GIVE IT TO ME. Not just yet. GIVE IT TO ME. No. GIVE IT TO ME OR I WILL TAKE IT. I will give it to you, but there is something that I want in return. . . . WHAT DO YOU WANT IN RETURN? You have seen the state of the once proud human race, have you not? What could a guardian such as myself long for if not humankinds return to a state of grace and purity? IT CANNOT BE DONE. Ah, but it can. I have a plan. SPEAK. Static. Hey! you exasperate. Sorry, says Johnny with a small smile, Youre on a need to know basis.

And I dont need to know what happens next, right? you say. Right! Youre not as utterly idiotic as you first appear. Thanks, you say, looking at the screen, anything else I need to know. Just one more thing. The static fades away once more and youre in a tidy, white bedroom. Posters of sports stars adorn the walls. A computer sits on and otherwise immaculate desk. The CPU, zip drive, mouse and keyboard are tucked into their compartments with inhuman neatness. The bed looks like it was made by a cleaning lady employed by some ritzy four-star hotel. The door to the tidy little bedroom swings gently open and in steps Aaron Bittor. He closes and locks the door behind him, steps over to his bed, kneels down beside it, reaches an arm under it and pulls out a thick book that appears to be bound in leather. He opens it. The pages are made of a thin cloth rather than paper. Not a single trace of English can be found on any of the pages you chance to glimpse. He stops at a page towards the end of the volume and you can see that he is looking at an illustration of you. Static. No! You have to show me more! Surely I need to know more than THAT! Not just yet, says Johnny with his trademark shit-eating grin, only now his teeth are nothing if not hardened insect exoskeletons protruding from gums do diseased that they appear to be composed entirely of clotted blood. Another flash of light. *** Are you okay? asks Jake, crouched over your aching body. Your eyes unblur and you can plainly see that everyone is crouched or standing over you, watching you with varying degrees of concern. Im fine, you say, sitting up. Are you sure? asks Lisa. You stand up. Yes. You were stumbling around the room, yelling, clutching your hands to your head, she says.

Trippin, adds Corey. Yeah, well, Im fine now, you say, not really believing yourself. But how I am and how I feel isnt important right now. What is important is my meeting with Aaron, which is coming up in a little over six hours, from the looks of the light outside. Thats cloud cover, Jake says, Noons probably no more than two or three hours away. Cloud cover? I havent seen a cloud since Red Day! Well, theyre back, he says. Shit! you say, All right. No biggie. I need to be left alone. I need to psychologically prepare myself for every possible outcome. No one moves until Jake says, You heard him! Everyone out! Everyone leaves, and you find yourself alone in the classroom where a dead woman named Mrs. Kyle used to teach algebra to uninterested adolescents who thought school was the most boring thing on earth, and algebra was the most boring thing in school. Now, boredom was an emotion you longed to feel again. Youd kill for some fucking boredom. You go over events in your head, trying to make sense of it, trying to apply logic or reason to it. The most logical explanation your mind can concoct is that youre still asleep in your bed, having one very long and very bad dream. But thats not logical at all, is it? No, real logic, the sort of reasoning that concerns reality as it can be perceived would lead you to conclude that whatever is happening is really happening, whether it makes sense or not. Reality is based on rules. Someone just changed the rules. Its as simple as that. Rationality is not worthless. It can still be applied to the dilemmas of this new world. Different or not, the basic precepts of existence remain basically in tactcauses still bring about effects; up is still up; down is still down; cockroaches still think with a hive consciousness, sorcerers still roam the earth casting spells, ravioli still manifests itself out of nowhere. . . . Okay, so a few things are different. That just means you need a different sort of rationale. Throw away the Ayn Rand idea of reality and say hello to Mr. Crowley and his curious little grimoire, bound in sun dried roach wings and written in cum. Its a brave new world. You must be this tall to ride.

The door opens. Lisa walks in one step at a time and sort of smiles at you. Jake let me in, she tells you, Im sorry to bother you, but Ive never even really talked to you. I dont even know you, and the thing is, I really want to. I dont feel like I know myself lately, you tell her, so good luck with that. She nods slowly and turns to leave. Hey! you say, you dont have to go. I dont mind you. Oh. Okay, she says, sitting down cross-legged on the tile floor about ten feet away from you. Its all so huge, you say. Yeah. I try to make it all fit together . . . but it doesnt. The more I think about it, the less it makes sense, and the less it makes sense, the more sure I become that Im not going to wake up, you tell her with a small sigh. I was just looking around this classroom, wondering at what it used to bejust a place to sit around and be bored. I was thinking about how preferable that would be to this . . . this fear. I feel alone, like I want company, but whenever someone tried to Love me, I smash that Love into a thousand tiny little pieces. I was watching you last night, as I tried to sleep. You, looking all . . . curvy,--you let out a small chuckle--It was . . . fantastic. It made me feel a new sort of fear entirely. An exhilarating kind of fear that I could feel forever, I think. Shes five feet from you now. Both of you have been inching closer to one another. When I turned yesterday and saw you standing there, I think I thought I was dreaming you. There is something in your eyes like there is in Aarons and I saw it for a second. Four feet. It was intense and powerful and I fell in Love with it. It made me feel almost safe, but it was gone so quickly that I thought itd never been there to begin with. Three feet. But when you beat down that asshole, Adric, I saw it again and I knew that you had come here to save us. I knew that youd come here to save me.

Two feet. And now, I look in your eyes and I see it there behind the sadness and the confusion; behind the vulnerability. One foot. What is it? you whisper. Power, she says. Contact. Your lips are locked with her own, tongues doing battle with one another. You wrap your hands around her, and she wraps hers around you. A great burning spreads over and through you to the pulsating jungle-rhythm of your fluttering heart, erecting the totem pole of holiest worship. You can feel her hands gliding all over your body frantically, trying to get you as naked as possible without the use of cognition. You are doing the same, but are to wrapped up in whats going to happen to take any notice of what is happening. In a matter ofseconds? minutes? hours? days?you can feel yourself inside of her, and whats more, you can feel her feeling you inside of her and feel her feeling you feel being inside of her . . . and its so goddamn overwhelming. . . . We, you say. Are, she says One, you say. And the orgasm bursts into being like a flash flood, overtaking the landscape of thought and feeling, reshaping them forever. The stars bleed transcendental soliloquies into the funnel-shaped ears of unbelievers, while the giant flaming pussy of darkness loses its decaying teeth and takes a brand new shape, thus becoming the giant amoxicillin-pink pussy of endless Love and virtue. You dont know what these words and images mean, but you do know that the pleasure overtaking every fiber of your being is too much for you to handle. You yank yourself out of her and gasp for air, cupping your hands around your genitalia, afraid that something will touch them and you will explode into pure energy. She does something similar, but you scarcely notice. It isnt until a fifteen minute period of recovery that you speak. That was amazing.

Yes, she says, still short of breath, it was. *** Noon comes and goes and you find yourself walking the halls, with empires of eyes upon you. New world or not, the rumor-mill churns as swiftly as ever. The owners of the eyes speak amongst themselves in hushed tones, full of foreboding and something without name the bastard child of hate and respect. Aaron had told you to come alone, but it appeared that everyone was coming with you. You reach the computer lab at roughly 12:30 and place three careful knocks on the door, which swings open immediately and a girl that you recognize as the stunningly beautiful Crissi Drake. Her clothes are immaculate; her hair is well-kept and she appears to be wearing make up. You jot these facts down in your head under the heading SUSPICIOUS FACTS. Come in, she says. You do and she closes the door shut behind you. The room is overwhelming. It isnt the computer lab at all, but a room of impossible vastness. It almost looks like a palace ballroom, complete with satin curtains covering windows that reached from about five feet above the floor to two feet below the twenty foot high ceiling, from which hangs a sparkling chandelier. Were not in the school anymore, are we? you ask. Youre a sharp one, she says, follow me. You do, taking small peaks at her ass as she leads you through hallways, down staircases and finally into a small study filled with strange-looking books and an archaic desk, upon which sat a pile of papers and a jar of pens. Aaron will be here in a moment, she tells you, leaving the room. You dont dare sit down. Considering the setting, taking a seat without being offered one seemed like a bad idea. Instead, you grab a book off of one of the shelvesthe one you recognize from the vision given to you be Vuru Raha. It is bound in leather, paged in thin cloth, written in (blood) dark red ink. It is also bookmarked by a tattered old cloth to a page towards the end. On this page, there is a depiction of you, and you are grinning an unpleasant and somehow impotent grin of malice. Ive always wondered about that smile, says Aaron. You didnt hear him come in. You slam the book shut and return it to its shelf. You went right to it, he adds, like you recognized it from somewhere. What is it? you ask him.

He raises his eyebrows, widening his sharp eyes only a fraction. Its a detailed account of the end of one world, and the beginning of another. It looks old. It is, he says. Then how can I be in it? you ask. He laughs at you. New world. New rationale. Its a prophetic work. Then this whole ordeal was destined to happen? It was all a matter of . . . fate? you ask. Fate? A ludicrous notion of the feeble-minded, however, just because we are in control of our destinies doesnt mean that the future cannot be accurately foreseen by those who know how to look. Whats more, those who can see the future can shape it to their liking. I am not blessed with that gift, but I am blessed with this book, which gives me quite an edge over you. Why should we be enemies in the first place, and if we are, why not just kill me? We must be enemies because you want to give humanity a second chance and I do not. I want to create something better. As for why I do not kill you now . . . well, let me tell you a story. A few years ago, before my family moved to North Carolina, we lived in a small town in Louisiana called Abita Springs. There, we rented a small but adequate little house that was basically surrounded by woods. Not a forest by any stretch of the imagination, but it was enough land to host at least one family of raccoons and a number of feral cats, all malnourished and scared senseless of everything. One of these cats was a pure, beautiful white. An amazing creature. Big, clever-looking eyes . . . I would feed him pieces of sliced chicken every night. He feared me without knowing why. But slowly, I gained his trust. After about a month, he would come up to my hand, taking the meet ever so cautiously before bolting away to consume it at a safe distance, whereas I used to have to set it down and take a few steps back before hed even approach it. Finally, after nearly half a year of earning that Lovely little felines trust, he let me touch him; pet him; listen to him purr. One night, on a whim, I snapped his little neck. He died in my hands. He looked as Lovely

as ever in the moonlight. . . . There is a look of awful contentment on Aarons face as he says this. But--? That line of questioning has come to its conclusion, Adam, says Aaron. For a moment no one utters a word. Okay, you say, Then answer my other questions. What other questions? asks Aaron. They arent in that book of yours? you ask, grabbing the book off the shelf once more and flipping to the front. Maybe its in the table of contents. Aaron laughs. I admire one who deals with fear through humor. Id like to say that I admire cocky sons of bitches who beat around the fucking bush instead of telling me what I want to know, but to be honest, it fucking irritates me, you tell him. Tell me why Im not dead. Aaron smiles wide, utterly unfazed by your sudden change in demeanor. I knew you were tougher than you looked. Im not tough, you say, Im just pissed. Yes. I can see that, he says, but plenty of people have been pissed at me, but only you would dare say anything about it. A fool in my position would write it off as stupidity, but I know better. Youre as tough as leather, nails and semi-trucks. Whatever. Just answer my question. Very well. You are still alive for one simple reason. I havent killed you yet, he says. You give up on that question and ask another. What is this place? I expected that to be the first question, he tells you. This is a southern plantation that I stole from the late 1800s. Though, after a few months of renovations, we have all the modern luxuries, as Im sure youve noticed: electric lights, flush toilets, working showers . . . you know, all of that delightful decadence that humanity took for granted. Dont bother asking your next question. I can see it in your face. How is that possible? I

will tell you. These books contain hundreds of thousands of spells, many of which I have used over the last two years to achieve my objective, which I will explain to you in detail momentarily. For now, I will concern myself with the story of how I came to possess these tomes and how I became the most powerful sorcerer in the history of the earth. Around the time that I was murdering felines in cold blood, I was visited one summer night by an angel who spoke to me in Seraphim, the language of Heaven, a dialect inherently understood by all of Gods creations. The angel told me that there was a man named Alva, one of Gods sacred guardians of the eartha direct descendent of Eve, but not of Adamhad made a deal with a being called Arafaela fallen angelfor the destruction of the earth and that God, breaking the promise he made to Noah, decided to sanction, rather than oppose, Alvas course of action. The angel then told me that I was the only one who could prevent Alva from destroying the world . . . and indeed I could have, if Id wanted to. It was only a few weeks later that my father got transferred to North Carolina and I started attending Myre High School, where I saw Alva for the very first time. Where I saw you for the very first time when you started the next year. For you see, the angel spoke of you on that night as well. The angel said that should I choose the wrong paththe path Im on nowyou would kill me. For the longest time, you served as collateral against my choosing the path that best served my interests. That was until the day when I chose to break into Alvas home one week and stole every single spell book in his possession--which the angel must have known I would do, otherwise, how did she expect me have the power to stop him? But there was at least one book there that she hadnt counted on. Your eyes dart to the leather-bound book that contains the picture of your depraved, smiling face. Bingo, says Aaron. That book gave me the edge I needed. It told me everything that was going to happen--all of the mistakes that was going to make. They say that experience is something that you dont get until you no longer need it. I simply got it before I needed it, and while in some wildly different plain of existence, you posed a threat to me, here, you are nothing to me, and I just had to brag about it. But how could you read the books in the first place? What language are they even in? Seraphim. I knew the language because once you hear seraphim spoken, you know it forever, unless something makes you forget. If I had the proper vocal cords, I could speak it to you right now. As things are, I can only read and write it. Better than Alva could, in fact. No angel ever spoke to him in Seraphim. He knew only a bastardized version of the dialect. Thats one of the reasons he was weaker than I am . . . but not the only one.

I let Alva have his world of hellfire and brimstone, but I didnt let him keep it, he chuckles. Its not entirely a world of hellfire and brimstone, you say. Ah. The garden. Edens sequel via the roach goddess, Vuru Raha, the new world incarnation of Arafael. She no longer plays a part in these events. She has fulfilled her obligation, and doesnt care about the matter beyond that-- Dont tell him about our connection! shouts Vuru from inside your head, Hell kill you on the spot. and youd do well to never mention that garden again, or I will have to kill you, he says with a lick of the lips. Look at the time, he adds, looking at his bare wrist, Our meetings almost over. You dont say anything. You cant think of anything to say. If you did think of something to say, you dont think youd be able to say it. No further questions? asks Alva. Then follow me. He opens the door, walks you back upstairs and through hallways to the room with tall windows and satin curtains. I figured youd need some help getting back here, since you paid more attention to Crissis ass than where she was leading you, he tells you. One more thing before you go, he says, Take a look out that window. He is pointing towards one of the tall windows to your right. You slowly make your way over to it. Its so high off the ground that you have to stand on your tiptoes to see out of it, which makes you feel like a small child. After less than a minute of taking in what you are seeing, you turn away and saunter back to where Aaron stands, shaking severely, looking up into the predatory eyes that ornament his smiling face. I am going to kill you, you tell him. The day will come, he says, when you will try. On that day, you will fail. . . . I have shown and told you what I have today for the simple reason that I respect you. I respect you because if Id never found that book, you could have beaten me. Now, I stand before you in the comfortable knowledge that you are no threat to me whatsoever, and the even more comfortable knowledge that you know it. There is no greater joy than seeing the

inevitability of defeat on the face of your enemy. You may go. Oh, and if you are to take Adrics place as one of my generals, you will need to attend the meetings. They are every Wesnesday at noon. Today is Tuesday, so your first meeting will be tomorrow. Failure to show up will forfeit your rights as a leader of the sheeple. As he speaks, you never break eye contact with him. As you listen, he never breaks eye contact with you. When he is done speaking, he turns his back on you and walks away saying, The door behind you leads out. *** The walk back to Mrs. Kyles classroom is a lengthy one, hindered by the crowd of interested spectators surrounding you on every front. They talk over one another, asking pointless, fruitless, stupid questions for which you have no good answers. When you finally reach the classroom, you find it as crowded as the hallways, with yet more people asking more questions. Jake approaches you from the mobs ranks with aggravation apparent in his every expression and gesture. We cant get rid of them, he yells into your ear. You raise your hands, signaling for silence. No one pays any attention. Everyone shut up! you yell. This also, proves to be a completely futile effort. How do they expect me to talk if they wont shut up? you yell to Jake, who shrugs and mouths fuck if I know. You clear your throat. Everyone SHUT THE FUCK UP! Silence. Not even a cough, fart, belch or sniffle. Thank you, you say. I will answer all of your question The noise picks up again as everyone screams out their questions again. You look over to Jake, whose face is buried in his hands, then back at the inquiring throng. One at a time! One at a time! you shout to no avail. SHUT UP! SHUT THE FUCK UP! you scream, even louder than before. The crowd shuts up and you look at them with heat stinging your cheeks, a ringing in your ears and a sharp shortness of breath. Listen to me and dont say a fucking word until I call on you. I will take three questions, one at a time. So, by all means, if youve got a question, raise your hand.

Aside from Jake, you cant spot a single person without a hand raised. Oh boy, you say. Everyone, sit down. Jake, bring me a chair, would you? This is gonna take awhile. *** By the time the questions taper off, it is near nightfall. By the time everyone returns to their respective factions and you are left once again with Lisa, Jake and your small gang of leftovers, youre ready to go to sleep. Im so tired, you tell them. You had a long ass day, man. Of course you tired, says Corey. Jake says, Ive got a migraine. I hate people. Lucky for you, theyre almost extinct, you say through a yawn. The door opens once more, very slowly. In walks the boy who you remember from the night before as Devin. Last time you saw him, he was a mere silhouette, and seemed arresting. Now, seeing him in the fleeting daylight, he looks fragile. The anger that burns in his face isnt far removed from sorrow. His cruel eyes seem to be perpetually gleaming from too much water retention. He looks at you as if he wants to burn you down with his gaze and he with clenched teeth and a scrunched up chin he says, Adam Black. Yes? you say, acting as if you dont recall him; acting as if you are completely oblivious to the enmity that fills his every minute gesture. Welcome, he somehow chokes from of his throat, which is by this time as tight as and ants asshole. The other generals and me, we extend our welcome to you. With that said, he exits. Jakes smile is big enough to swallow up whats left of the world. Well everyone, Im sleeping in the adjacent room. Lisa, Jake, come with me. I need to talk to both of you. They both follow you into the room a little ways down the hall from Mrs. Kyles classroom. Jake is the last one to step into the room and closes the door softly behind him, trying to avoid any action which will irritate his headache.

You ignore the table surrounded by chairs, opting to sit in the corner on the floor instead. You let out a yawn of utter weariness and look blurry-eyes upon the strong and loyal Jake and the Lovely and timid girl that you think you might be in Love with. Both of them wear faces of dire exhaustion and something below that which terrified youadmiration. The world really is a fucked up place when people like them look up to me, you think. The story I gave everyone else was edited to all shit, you tell them. The real story of my meeting with Aaron is . . . well, I wish itd never happened. Things transpired in that room that I cant even begin to accept, and as I was leaving . . . he showed me something too goddamn awful to really be true, but I know it was. I have to tell someone, you say, Jake, you have to know. Lisa, if you want to know, I think youre entitled, but I can tell you right here and now that Id be happier if you went into Kyles with the others. I pretty much know that you wont do that, though. No, she tells you, I cant. Im sorry. You nod your head and begin the real story, telling them everything, leaving out only the fact that you stared and lusted over Crissis ass as she led you to Aarons study. When you finish the story, Jake and Lisa look at you in horrible silence. Tearssoundless tearsare pouring down both of their faces. How could you have seen something like that and walked out of there? I mean, how is it that youre still able to form sentences and have speak coherently? How are you still sane? Jake asks. Its awful, Lisa says, falling down onto her knees. Ive seen so much, you say, that I want to cut my head off just to get rid of all these memories. I wish I would have played hooky on Red Day. I wish I hadnt survived. Wish in one hand, shit in the other. . . . Dont say that! shouts Lisa, red faced, youre what everyone with good left in thems been praying for! A hero! And I dont care what books Aarons got, I know you can beat him. Good? you ask. I dont even know what that is, but Ive got the feeling that it doesnt apply to me. It does! It really does, Adam! I felt it when weuh, you know.

Dont be tactful on my account, says Jake, Im the one that decided to let you in. I knew pretty well what was going to transpire. Its too dark to tell, but you get the feeling that Lisa is blushing. Im very tired, you say. Lisa . . . will you stay her with me? Of course I will, she says, as if the very question were absolutely ridiculous. Jake yawns and says, Im tired myself. I guess Ill go back to Kyles and try to sleep off this damn headache. He leaves the room and Lisa lies down besidepractically on top ofyou. She pushes her head snuggly into your dirty old shirt and you lie there stroking her hair until youre too tired to even do that. Next thing you know, youre dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. You know you wont remember them when you wake up, and something about that is so frightening that its tranquil, so hideous that its comforting, so evil that its good. Thats the big secret of existence: everything is the same as its opposite if you push it hard enough. DAY TEN: AEROBIC TORTILLINI Sleep ends without bothering to inform you, and for a few minutes you are a confused and retarded boy lying his hard and weary back on a hard and hateful floor. This is euphoria somehow, but it doesnt last. Your fried little brain cells start humping each other again and before you can say shit happens your motor-mind is revved up once again, though sputtering as if someone pissed in the fuel tank. Lisa is still wrapped around you like a pretty bow on a Christmas present. It makes you want to rattle yourself around and see if theres anything good inside. Your arm is asleep under her weight, but the discomfort barely registers. You are sort of amazed looking at her. Completely astounded, actually. You tell yourself that you dont deserve her, but you find that you dont care if you deserve her or notshes yours just the same, and mourning that fact would be an act of tremendous stupidity. You look at the delicate curve of her chin, the lush tightness of her lips, the subtlety of her nose, arching up into thoughtful brows. Her eyes are closed, but if they were open, you would see vulnerability there and a gossamer layer of something without definition below it: like a damp sheet drying in the summer winds, flapping its delicate wings like a butterfly-

jellyfish and baking in the hot summer sun like the beach-roasted butts of thong-clad sunbathers. Perhaps it offers insight into your depravity, but this is your definition of beauty. Perhaps it offers insight into your insecurity, but you are attracted to her weaknesses. You want to protect her; to be needed by her; to be her knight in shining armor. You want her to validate your existence. Her eyes open slowly. She sees you looking at her. You see her looking at you looking at her. She smiles and giggles and averts her gaze. Why do you look at me like that? she asks, still smiling. Like what? you ask. She doesnt say anything for a moment, then says, Like youre asking me questions that I dont know about. I guess my eyes ask you questions, you say, because yours give me answers. You brush a rebellious strand of hair out of her eyes and kiss her without tongue and without romance. The kiss signified something else entirely. Something deeper than Love, if not as sweet. You find yourself wondering what shes thinking, how she was perceiving you, how she felt about you. . . . Love is only possible among the psychic, you think. Hate too, maybe. I have to go to a meeting today, you say. Then, horrified, you add, Geez! I sound like my father! Not even the apocalypse could prevent me from turning into my father. Ive got a dead-end job that I dont want and the boss is an asshole that hates my guts and wants me dead! My life has turned out exactly as he told me it would. The bitter fucker! Lisa doesnt say anything, only studies you, puzzled. Her expression makes you laugh a bit and shrug your shoulders. A girl doesnt understand father-son relationships anymore than a guy understands mother-daughter relationships, you suppose. Whats it matter? You know damn well that youre not your father. Yet. Its at noon. I have to meet with all the other generals. Im sure most of them are gonna give me a hard time. If Devin is any indicator, than Im basically just showing up to a big fuck-you festival where everyone takes turns jamming their middle fingers up my ass. Thats. . . . Lisa says, trailing of as she speaks.

Whatd you say? you ask. I said Thats kind of, erm, arousing. You laugh, caught of guard. Youre a very sensual girl, you whisper in her ear, thats whats under the vulnerability. Sensuality--if not outright perversion, tempered by timidity. . . . I think youre perfect. Im not perfect, she says. Youre perfect for me, you reply, surprised by how smoothly the words exit your lips. Your hands are on her ass but you dont remember putting them there. Its only a matter of strangely-shaped moments before the two of you are interlocked once again in tongue combat. Your hands wrestle of her pants, her hands wrestle off yours, and she rides you like a twenty-five-cent plastic pony. The Adam of Eden had a wife before Eve called Lilith, according to Jewish scholars seeking to fix discrepancies in the holy book. Adam found this first mate to be unsatisfactory because she liked to fuck on top. So God told her to cut that shit out, but she just wouldnt do it. She liked riding dick too much. So, whe was banished from Eden and given the life of a monster, forever walking the earth in misery. From this story, you can discern that Adam was a complete idiot. It doesnt take you long at all to cum and she seems to cum a moment later, but youve learned from the media to distrust the female orgasm. This isnt a media world anymore though. This is a flat world where orgasms are real and the earth, wretched as it may be, is the center of the universe. You might sail off the edge of the world, but at least you dont have to worry about obnoxious little boxes feeding you insecurities until you shit wads of money into their boney little claws. She collapses on top of you, drenched in the sweat of her passion. You can feel yourself softening inside of her as you pant and bury your face in her shoulder. Neither of you say a word there, or even move for a long time. You just lie there, contemplating nothing in particular and feeling content. *** The computer lab is just a computer lab again. Only instead of rows and rows of computers there are just two picnic tables pushed together in the center of the room with a chairs arranged around them. Aaron is seated at the head of the table in a burgundy office chair that most likely belonged to Mr. Alva before his violent death.

Adam! says Aaron with a politicians smile. You sit right there, between Devin and Garrett. Devin throws you a contemptuous glance and no one else at the table looks any friendlier. You even see them slip Aaron a few hateful looks, but they are more careful with these. I think the first order of business, says Aaron, is to address the massive number of transfer requests Ive received since Adam here took the place our beloved Adric. What do you mean? asks Devin. Nearly a hundred people have submitted transfer requests to McQueen. All of them want to serve under Adam, here. Bullshit! screams Devin, slamming his fist on the table and blasting onto his feet. The room falls as silent as a night in the wastelands of the dead earth. Aaron is still smiling, looking unperturbed and comically unconcerned. Calm down, Dev, he says. I will review the transfer requests myself and give him no more than twenty. Id like to choose them myself, you tell him. No, says Aaron. Carlos, I believe you have something to report. Wait a minute! you say. No, answers Aaron, Do not interrupt. Devin, I think youve been a bad influence on our esteemed associate. Youve given him the impression that I tolerate outbursts from my inferiors. Devin looks at Aaron like hes looking at a piece of dog shit and he says, I apologize, Aaron. I was being overly emotional. You are forgiven, says Aaron, though his tone says the exact opposite. Now you apologize, Adam. Every part of you screams NO! except for you mouth, which says, Im sorry. Then you are forgiven as well. Thank you.

Youre welcome, says Aaron, The rest of you could learn a lesson in manners from Adam. Now, Carlos, your report. A gangly Latino boy with a lot of facial hair rises up from his chair and says, All right, heres the deal. We got five or so discipline problems in Garretts and two in Codys, all of em minor. Pretty slow week. Five, Garrett? asks Aaron, and last week it was four, Are you having some sort of control problem? Its the same guys doing it every damn week, Garret says, I dont know what to do about them. They dont listen to a damn thing I say. They taunt the other guys girls, waste food, call me a fascist . . . if you could just give me permission to send them to the locker room. . . . I doubt such a drastic course of action will be necessary. Adam can take them off your hands. They probably requested transfers anyway. Youre okay with that, arent you, Adam? This is not a real question. Of course, you say. Grand. Now, the next order of business regards getting this damned plumbing working again. I think if we. The door explodes open and there stands the shattered and battered Adric Motka, clutching a hockey stick in both hands as desperately as one might grip the edge of a cliff. You damn fucking son of a bitch, he roars at you, thats my chair! And he charges like rhino with his weapon raised up high above his head that it scrapes the ceiling as he runs. You have only a second in fruit fly years to react and the stick is whooshing through the the air towards your head. No way to stop it! BRACE FOR IMPACT! Dot dot dot. Aaron is standing beside your chair. In his hand, Adrics hockey stick. In his eyes, the fires of Hell. And not the good parts of Hell, the slums of Hell. Then, there is a flash of motion and a loud thud. Adric, who had been standing in front of you looking confused, crumples to the ground clutching his gut. After a fit of spasmodic, mechanical coughing, Adric looks up at the cruel-eyed wonder that stands perched over him like a curious wraith. Through jagged and wheezy breaths and

over the course of half a dozen syllables, Adric is able to choke out one small (but never insignificant) word: Why? For a moment, Adric seems to contemplate an answer, but you know better. A mind like Adrics doesnt stop to think about anything. A mind like his works so fast that he could have answered the question before it was asked if hed chosen to. No, his pause was simply for dramatic effect. Because, answered Adric, why not? And then comes Adrics face at the base of Aarons boot heel. And then comes a countdown. Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . . seven . . . Aaron, please! I did everything you told me too! six . . . five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . Please! No! Please! Fuck off! says Aaron in the tone one would more commonly use to say blast off. What happens next is something straight out of a work out video. And lift, and stomp, and lift, and stomp, and lift, and stomp, and lift, and stomp. Or maybe what happens next is more like a cooking show, because Adrics face now looks like some amateur chef s failed attempt at some Italian dish. You want to think lasagna, but the piece of skin hanging off to the side makes you think tortellini. Thankfully, it doesnt look much like the cold, canned ravioli you ate earlier. Adrics last breath isnt a noise youd ever have expected to hear come from a human being because it sounds like a gunshot or a car backfiring. Five of six teeth and a chunk of tongue shoot out of his mouth when it happens and they may half of the journey up toward the ceiling. Well, thats enough excitement for one meeting, says Aaron. Everyone is dismissed. Oh, and Adam, you need to read this. He pulls a few folded up sheets of paper from his pants pocket and hands them to you. If you have any questions, Mr. McQueen will be happy to answer them for you. The papers tell you where you can find him. And everyone, he adds before anyone gets over their shock enough to scrape themselves away, Lets schedule the next meeting for, lets see, day after tomorrowFriday. At noon as

always. *** That went well, says Vuru as you plop into the corner of the room adjacent to Mrs. Kyles. You think of it as your room. Lisas not here. You have no idea where she wondered off to. Are you always watching? you sigh. We are Legion and our eyes are everywhere, she answers. Thats real comforting. It should be. Were your edgethe tarot card up your inter-dimensional sleeve. Thats wonderful, you tell her. Youre a rather unappreciative host, little human boy. We have done so much for you, and we receive nothing but disrespect in return. Oh! you say, rising to your feet with your hands clutched to your face, Please forgive me! Please! I am grateful! Im so grateful that you sicked your roaches on me, covered me in shit, raped me so you could have my baby, drove my friend crazy and, and . . . am I leaving anything out? Yes, says Vuru calmly, You are leaving out the fact that those roaches were placed there to test your worth. You are leaving out that you enjoyed having intercourse with us, and that it was necessary to forge this connection. We will not bother to tell you that your friend is not crazy, but enlightened, because your limited mind probably cannot distinguish between the two. You stick out your lower lip and blow a dirty clump of hair out of your face. All right. Fine. Whatever. I dont care. Vuru doesnt reply to this and you thank the ceiling and close your eyes. The door swings open and Lisa walks in. Oh, youre back, she says. Yeah. How was the meeting? It went better for me than it did for Adric.

*** The sex was brilliant. You lay curled there beside her, thinking of how damn nice it is to be in Love or lust or whatever in between space you were now occupying. Your mind begins to drift towards the futurenot the scary future of uncertainty, but the exciting future of sexual exploration. Will she let me fuck her mouth, her butt, upside-down and sideways?, you wonder. Would she care if you fucked other people? Would she be hurt if she knew youd been thinking about Crissi that last time? The answers to these questions is perhaps not as important as how they make you feel. From your dick to the pit of your stomach you feel weightless and tingly. This feeling is endlessly stimulating and uncompromisingly intoxicating. It makes you want to fuck again. You hold her tightly against you from behind so that she can feel you stiffening up once again inside the warm space betwixt her snow-white butt cheeks. It is as close as you can come to posing the question as to whether or not shell allow you to enter her there. She does not say anything, nor does she make any sort of gesture. You wonder to yourself whether or not she understands the question, but are scared to ask it with your mouth. Adric always wanted to fuck me there, she says. The words hit like a nuclear warhead and explode through your head like Fourth of July fireworks, bathing your mind with strange colors. I never let him. Then she says, Im glad that hes dead. She reaches behind her, grabs your hardness firmly in her fist and guides it deliberately into her rear entrance and you push yourself inside to her musical groans of pleasure. You discover quite quickly that you prefer this secondary altar to the one of Gods intention. Orgasm is intense and its seeds are plentiful, spilling out of her like juice from an overripe fruit. You pull yourself from her with a popping noise like that of a suction cup being pulled from a smooth, glass window. The aftermath of this religious ritual that you have come to know as fucking consists of lying around too exhausted to move, breathe, think, or know which of the three you should try to figure out how to do first. Jagged-edged stars do crazy dances in front of your eyes on stages of subtle light while unseen spectators toss meteors at them. This fireworks extravaganza ceases a moment later and you feel what passes for reality seeping back into your pleasure-racked body and before you know it youre on your feet again pacing back and forth contemplating thoughts A thru Z and pretending that you can make some sort of crazy sense of them.

Lisa stares at you from the fuck corner with curious concern in her eyes. Whats wrong? she asks in a voice that sounds more like an echo than anything coming directly from human vocal cords. Nothing you tell her, but your words crumble into dust and fly away into the ocean breeze. Shes still looking at you with concern, but now shes surrounded by an amber glow and comes complete with her own chorus of angels singing beautiful threats through megaphones. I think Im having a panic attack, you whisper at her reflection, before existence bounces away and youre left in the field where they grow darkness from the seeds of human hatred and confusion. Sodomy flowers spring up from the thin black earth and you pick them with your thoughts and tear away the Vaseline-scented petals while two-dimensional Japanese anime versions of your Crayola-scribbled souls chant I Love her, I Love her not ad nauseam to a techno beat. Life is all a movie. When were done shooting, we get to go back to our trailers and have coffee, you say. What? Lisa asks. What? you ask back. You realize that youre lying down on the hard floor and shes kneeling over you like a medic. She puts her hand on your forehead as if to check for a high temperature, but she just brushes your hair back and lies down next to you. What happened? she asks. No idea, you say, but it was weird. It felt like I was . . . retreating. Retreating? Yeah. That doesnt sound like you. You think of Johnny rotting somewhere in Vuru Rahas endless black palace. Yeah. I guess not. You look at her. Her eyes are closed. Shes pressed up close to you, as naked as truth and as beautiful as a lie. You Love her and you Love her not and you kiss her brow and you feel yourself beginning to doze off.

Theres a knock at the locked door and you yell, Who is it? Its Jake. Weve got a whole lot of new people next door! My new recruits, you say, standing up, running to the door, unlocking it and stepping out into the hallway. Wait! shouts Lisa, You dont have any clothes on! Youre quite refreshed to find that you dont much care and you saunter into Mrs. Kyles class in the nude and you find that this gets their attention. Fearless fucking leader done forgot his fucking pants, holmes, someone shouts. You can tell right off the bat that Aaron gave you every trouble-maker left in the school. Theyre unruly and disrespectful of authority, that much you can see in their eyes. If Aaron thought this would present a problem for you, he was sorely mistaken. Im not your leader. Im just some guy that has the power to do terrible things to you. Jake here is my enforcer. Hell see too it that you behave, you say with a smile. That faggot! yells some beady-eyed kid in a tattered yellow basketball jersey, He tried to fucking hit on my brother in fucking Drama club! I aint scared of his little queer ass. Almost as fast as Aaron hit Adric, Jake is across the room and yellow jersey is on the floor getting pummeled with a storm of lightning punches. Jake does not return to his feet until yellow jersey isnt moving and even then he does so slowly, his fists shaking as though stopping is the last thing on his mind. I am a faggot, says Jake, and this piece of shit here just got his ass kicked by a faggot, and if any of you have a problem with me or with General Black, youll get your ass kicked by a faggot too. Silence. What he said, you tell them. *** Did you know Jake was gay? you ask Lisa. Yeah. I thought everyone did.

Oh, you say, I have to read something, open those blinds, would ya? Sure. She opens the blinds and you pull out the folded pieces of paper Aaron gave you in the meeting. Its typed out, you say. He must have had one of the old computers hooked up to the generator or something, suggests Lisa. Yeah, or something, you say. THE MASTER PLAN By: Aaron Bittor Subtle, you say. A new order must emerge. My generals have served me well and shall be rewarded with territory. Below this there is a map of the school showing how the territories are divided. Aarons Ten Commandments for Generals 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Thou shalt not make war on one another unless I sanction the action. Thou shalt not grant rights to citizens that violate Aarons Ten Commandments for Citizens. Thou shalt not speak of what may lie beyond the school. Thou shalt not mention Alvas name or the name of any of his fallen army without contempt (hatred). Thou shalt not speak ill of Aaron or any action taken by Aaron. Thou shalt not speak ill of Aarons mistress Crissi or any action taken by Crissi. Thou shalt not grant to any female the rights granted to a male. Thou shalt not engage in acts of homosexuality. Though shalt not fall in Love with thy mistress. Though shalt not fuck up.

Aarons Ten Commandments for Citizens (NOTE: THESE SHOULD BE POSTED IN ALL CLASSES IN YOUR TERRITORY)

They are. Youve seen them. You just never paid much attention to them. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Do not engage in acts of homosexuality, unless you are a female and it is on the orders of your owner. Do not question the actions of your superiors. Do not speak ill of your superiors. Do not fight with your fellow citizens without the sanction of your General. Do not disobey orders. Do not eat what you are not given. Do not wander into someone elses territory unless you have business there. Do not speak the name of Alva or any of his fallen army. Do not read, write or draw unless the subject matter glorifies Aaron or some other superior. Do not fuck with me.

If you have behavioral problems, report them to Mr. McQueen in the Cafeteria and they will be discussed at council meetings where appropriate action will be taken. Public beatings are encouraged as a first form of deterrent. If these fail, citizens will be sent to the locker room. YOU DO NOT have the power to send citizens to the locker room. Only a unanimous council vote or a direct order from myself, Crissi or Mr. McQueen can send someone to the locker room. These rules are to be strictly adhered too. Food will be distributed by Mr. McQueen upon request and you may present him with any questions you may have. Enjoy your power. Supreme Lord of the Universe, Aaron Bittor Cocky son of a bitch, you say, looking at the papers in your hands. You crumple them up and toss them into the corner. Not the fuck corner, but the one across from it. Whats in the damn locker room anyway? Billy, answers Lisa. Billy? That huge guy that always wore the cowboy hat? The one and only. I dont know what he does to kids that get sent down there. No one ever comes back.

Well, how many people could possibly have gotten sent in the four days Aarons had power here? Well, a lot of people who refused to renounce Alva got sent, she said, at least twenty. They never came back. Great, you say. *** Youre standing on the dead lawn of the school, letting gusts of tormented wind rush over and (seemingly) through you. They carry swarms of ash, made at least partially of dead human beings. The pond seems to have dried up almost entirely. It doesnt matter, you think. Aaron wants to restore the plumbing. Aarons probably got more water than he knows what to do with. Hell rebuild the infrastructure of the school and theyll grow to Love him. They havent seen what you have. Nice night, says Jake from behind you. You didnt know he was there. Yeah, you say, I Love getting a good mouthful of the dead, I guess. I think weve all got a mouthful of the dead in one way or another, he says. I dont know what that means, but it sure sounds poetic. You and I . . . we could never be. You know that, right? I know that, he answers. I knew you knew it. I just had to be sure. Are you? Am I what? Sure. I guess not. I guess no ones ever sure of anything when you get right down to it. Ill drink to that, says Jake, . . . or I would if I had any booze. You know, theres laws against your kind in these parts, boy, you say in a bad John Wayne voice.

Aarons laws are a joke, he answers. Aarons a joke, you say, and I dont think hed be at all insulted if I told him so. I think hed take it as a compliment. I think he finds himself endlessly amusing. I wouldnt be at all surprised to discover that his motivation for all this destruction and pain was something as inane as boredom. He probably did all this for the entertainment value. The apocalypse as one mans sitcom. Maybe so. That isnt funny. No, you say, Its not. I never would have though you were gay. You dont exactly fit the stereotype. I didnt really know I was for a long time, he says. Not until about two years ago. I was in Drama and I started falling slowly in Love with Dwayne Ridge, the straightest guy on earth. Well, the straightest guy in Drama anyway. I tried to hit on him backstage during auditions one time and I got shot down with a punch to the eye. The next day, the whole school knew about it. I just assumed that you knew. Everyone else did. If Id have known you didnt know, Idve told you. Why? Its not any of my business, you tell him. Of course its your business. A guy swears his loyalty to you, it makes a big difference whether hes gay or straight. You sent Lisa into the room the other day to test me out, didnt you? Its hard to tell through the ash and the darkness, but you think Jakes blushing. And I thought I had some innate leadership ability, you say with a smile. Im still loyal to you, Jake says, And Im still your friend. Even if I know getting into your pants is out of the question. You cringe a little, not out of disgust but out of discomfort. Sorry, he says.

Bullshit. You dont need to apologize. Im just not used to it. It feels strange to know that another guy wants to fuck me. I think its best we dont talk about it, says Jake. You stop yourself from objecting to this notion and instead say, Okay. Word around the school is that you stabbed Adric to death in the meeting, says Jake. You laugh. No. Aaron did it. And he didnt stab him. He stomped him to death. No great loss, says Jake. I almost killed him myself the other day. He treated me like shit. He treated everyone like shit. The wind dies down and suddenly everything seems too quiet to be real and you notice for the first time since stepping outside that the moon in the sky is full and white like a mothers tit. A small roach crawls in front of you and you kick it lightly. It topples over onto its hard back and begins flailing about madly. They can survive the end of the world, you say with bitter humor punctuating every syllable, but if they fall flat on their backs, theyll squirm around like idiots and die of starvation trying to get back on their feet. Jake just looks down at the small, struggling creature and sighs. Youre a real prick, Adam, says Vuru. DAY ELEVEN: THAT WORD, YOU HAVE TO SAY IT WITH A CAPITAL L Your meeting isnt until tomorrow. Your little tribe has plenty of food and water. If anyone is acting up or out in any way, Jake is handling it. Your girlfriendyeah, you guess you can call her thatis sucking your dick with expert grace. Being a General in Aarons army is a lot easier than you had previously imagined. In fact, if today is any indication, your overall quality of life is actually greater than its ever been. Do I have to be the good guy? you can hear yourself asking your inner Tiki God. The answer to this question is always the same. You see what you saw outside that towering window in Aarons plantationthe fields. The fields of. . . .

Suddenly, you ejaculate into Lisas mouth. The accompanying sensation of climax feels like nothing more than a small snap of pleasure, embittered by thoughts of the window. Sorry, you say, I meant to warn you. No, she says with a mouthful of you, I think I like being surprised. You see her throat muscles contract, pushing your seed into her digestive tract. So do I, you tell her. She swallows, says Vuru with faux apathy. Lucky you. Shut up, you say. I didnt say anything, says Lisa, reflexively. I wasnt talking to you, you tell her. Vuru? she asks. You nod. You had told her the night before about the goddess inside your head, about the feeling of her insect-filled vagina and the pregnancy that your intercourse with her had producedall of the things you had left out of the original story that you had told her and Jake a few nights earlier. You also told her about your conversation with Jake and asked her for her thoughts. She told you to be careful. When you asked why, she said something very wise. She said, Lust rarely translates into respect. When it does, we call it Love. If he Loves you, then hed follow you through Hell just to be around you. At that point Vuru chimed in with, Smart girl. But lust isnt necessary for Love. I think Id go crazy if I had someone talking to me in my thoughts, Lisa says, smashing your reverie into tiny black shards of limousine glass that once separated its important occupant from the irrelevant world, at which he sneers. Maybe I was crazy long before any of this happened, you said, recalling moments spent alone in your room with the door locked, semen crusted in your pubic hair, studying an exact-o blade with your sleep-deprived eyes. I dont think youre crazy, Adam, she says, maybe just hurt. Yeah, you say, looking into her eyes and wanting to die and melt into her, maybe. I dont know if Im in Love with you or not, Adam, she says, But I do Love you. Like a

brother maybe. Then our relationship up until this point has been an incestuous one, you say with what you hope is a pleasant smile. It must be because she laughs and slaps your shoulder playfully. Every day she becomes more and more the human being she once was and less and less the timid creature you saw when you first returned to Myre High. You are such an extraordinarily beautiful girl, you tell her. Inside and out. The latter is probably the one I notice more. I dont know if I believe in inner beauty or not, but if anyone has it, you do. She stares at you silently for a long while with tears struggling to escape the prison bars of her eyelashes. Suddenly, she lunges at you with her arms wide open and grabs you tightly. Something about her hugging you makes your vision blurry with tears that run down your dirty face. What is this feeling? you ask her with a voice as shaky as crack-fiend having withdrawals. What is this feeling? she mirrors, perhaps only asking herself. That word, you whisper into her ear, you have to say it with a capital L. And a heart for an o, she says. Yeah, you say, and a v with a big old loop at the top. And an e that fell straight out of electric. Or evil, you say. Way to ruin the moment, she says reproachfully, but you can tell that shes smiling. DAY TWELVE: NO ONE CAN BEAT ROCK N ROLL Lisa and Jake escort you, in silence, to your meeting. Aaron manages to turn a discussion about restoring plumbing and electricity to the school into a speech worthy of a character from a Shakespearian play. Devin manages to keep his mouth firmly shut. You manage to not fall asleep after a day and night of almost uninterrupted sex with Lisa.

All and all the whole thing lasts about an hour, concluding with Aaron saying that his top goal was to restore utilities to the school within the week. How he planned on doing this, he did not mention. Youre quite sure that he has his ways. Youre quite sure that he could have them both operating smoothly at any moment he so desired. Sure, you could be the one to challenge him, to ask him where he was getting his water, his electricity, his canned foodsbut he would just flash you his fuck you very much smile and you wouldnt so much as flutter his little black heart or draw a single bead of sweat from his smooth, clean forehead. You get up from your chair like everyone else and head for the door, but Aaron calls out your name and you have no choice but to halt and do an about-face. Yes? you say, trying to sound unperturbed and failing dismally, much to Aarons apparent delight. Sit down, he beckons with a broad, wolf-toothed smile. Id like to talk to you for a moment. You do as bid. The door shuts as the last of the generalsDevinsteps out into the hallway. The room instantly begins to change shape around you, becoming the room with the huge staircases and towering windows with whirling satin curtains. What lies beyond those windows, you dont want to think about. So, how are you adjusting? he asks. Your gut reaction is to tell him flat out to cut the shit, but you know thats what he wants. So instead you smile at him like a small child smiles at a parent who has just purchased them some expensive toy and say, Im doing just fine. Thank you for asking. Aarons mouth remains curved upwards in a politicians smile, but the light in his eyes flickers off for a moment and comes back a little weaker than before. Good, he says. Well, Ill get right down to business then. I need some volunteers for my little projects and your tribe was the first that came to mind. Wed be happy to volunteer, you say. Now the smile fades and for a moment it seems as though he loses his train of thought entirely. Then, in an instant, he seems to shrug it off entirely and his eyes ignite once more. Well, Ill need you and three trustworthy workers to show up here tomorrow as soon after daybreak as possible. Why dont you get them to do it? you ask, pointing at the huge window, abandoning the pseudo cooperation strategy.

Theyre busy working on more ambitious projects. Fine. Is that all. No, he says. There is one more thing. What? Have a nice day, he says, rising from his seat, signaling for you to do the same. He escorts you to the exit, shakes your hand firmly and closes the door gently behind you. The guards nod at you in recognition and respect and Jake and Lisa greet you in the hallway. Have you been waiting out here the whole time? you ask them. Yeah, says Jake, We were getting worried too. You were in there longer than anyone else. Aaron wanted to talk to me. What about? You tell them. What do you think his motives are? asks Jake. Just to irritate me, you say. Cmon, lets go home. Home, says Lisa. Jake smiles. Home, indeed. *** You walk into Mrs. Kyles class and into chaos. It seems a string of fights have started up like wildfires all over the room. Cut the shit! you shout. For the most part, they do. Therere a few things I need to address. First of all, you see those rules right there? you ask, pointing to Aarons Ten Commandments for Citizens You can ignore them. They dont apply here.

Second of all, I know that in our Brave New World, you think that girls are just objects that are there only to cater to your sexual whims. Well, you can shove that notion up your ass, because everyones equal in this room. You ignore the jeers that this statement produces. Third of all, I need three volunteers to help Aaron and I get the power and water operational again. Jake gets up close beside you and whispers, Should I not volunteer? No. They obviously need constant supervision. Plus, I need you to protect Lisa, you whisper back to him. Hey, yells one guy dust-colored baseball cap, Me and Will and Bryanll help ya. And your name is? Everyone calls me The Bastard, he says, On account of Im a bastard. Not in the litchral dictionary sense or nothing, though. My Mama and Dad was married right up till they got burnt up, God bless the fuckers. Im just a bastard in the sense that Im a real no-good, nasty sunuvabitch. Im surprised you dont recognize me! I guess it was Dark. Were Johnnys old posse! We used to call ourselves the Texas Four for some damn reason. Aint a goddamn one of us from Texas and Im the only one who talks like e might be. I spose the name originated one drunken ass night when we was all sittin round the playstation and sharing a bottle of cheap tequila and playin some damn RPG that didnt none of us unnerstand in our state of mind. I saw you three when I woke up after Red Day! You guys are the ones Johnny found the secret stash with! Bing-motherfucking-go, he says with a shit-eating grin even bigger than Johnnys was. Then his smile fades into what could almost be called a frown and he adds, I miss that sunavabitch. Well, If you guys were alright with Johnny, youre alright with me, you tell him and his two companions, both of whom look less than happy about being volunteered for physical labor. So we got the job then?

Sure, you say, it doesnt look as though anyone else is going to volunteer. I was fixin ta volunteer, shouts Corey from the back of the room, but I had dis girls titty in my mouth! He points to the girl beside him, whose titties are nowhere near him and she cringes a little. Howzat for equal treatment? says a fat guy, grabbing a handful of his own crotch and shaking it at his girl. Someone must really want to visit Billy in the locker room, you say, sounding a bit too much like a teacher for your own sanity. This is surprisingly effective as a deterrent. For a moment, no one even moves, as if the mere sound of his name might invoke him. Thats right, you tell them, Im not afraid to get you sent down there if you fuck with me, and my rules arent hard to follow. Theyre almost the same one you were following before any of this shit happened. Those rules dont work in this world, shouts the fat kid who was clutching his crotch earlier. A system based on respect for individuality and individuals always works better than the alternatives. It just takes a bit more effort, you answer, once again inwardly disgusted by how much you sound like a genuine authority figure. Were not cavemen, and were not going to behave like it. Its not productive, and youll notice its not how Aaron lives. His girlfriend has the power to, at any moment she so desires, come in here and send all of you down to the locker room to meet what would likely be a gruesome death. She has just about every right and privilege that he has. . . . Ask yourselves why. And then ask yourselves if you want to be under Aaron, or on the same level. The room is silent for a great long while. Whether they are contemplating your words or just waiting for you to leave so that they can resume their hedonism, you dont know. Either way, youre pretty sure that they hate you. Maybe the girls secretly like you, but you doubt it. They probably resent you stirring up trouble among the guys and making their lives a little harder. *** I think Im about as popular as shit on a stick, you tell Jake and Lisa once your in the next-door classroom. People dont like change, says Jake, especially not after all of the change theyve already been subjected too. Do you think I could have gone about it better?

Jake just shrugs but Lisa offers this response: Well, youre doing what you feel ought to be done. And I think its better to just tear the band-aid off and take the pain that comes with it. If you went about it more subtly, youd just extend the duration of pain. I think that everyonell come around. I hope so, you say. Me too, says Jake, but to be honest, Im not as optimistic. Why not? you and Lisa ask in unison. Well, what youre trying to give them civilization. But they had civilization, and every last one of them spent their entire civilized existence praying for a world like this, where there are no rules. Aaron imposed rules upon them, you say. Yes, but all of his rules exist to cement him in their minds as their fearless leader and none of them encroach upon their desires. If they want to ram some scared girl in the but on stick a fist in her cunt, theyre free to do so. Aaron has given them the one thing theyve always wantedsex whenever they please and however they please as long as they dont do anything faggy like fuck one another, and probably very few of them harbor those sorts of thoughts in the first place. In fact, Im sure the only reason homosexuality is against Aarons law is that he knew theyd want it that way. But then you come along into this paradise of monkeys having orgiastic sex and tell them that you want them to lift up their knuckles and walk upright again . . . I dont think theyll take to it. You consider this for a great long while, your index finger running up and down your smooth lower lip. They dont have a choice, you say, Well, I dont have a choice. I have to do this because its whats right. Is it? asks Jake. It is! shouts Lisa. You dont know what its like to be a girl in a world like this! I dont? In case youve forgotten, Lisa, Im gay. This isnt exactly my ideal society either, okay? Im just saying that I dont think anyone is going to let their minds over-ride their dicks. What about their hearts and souls? you say. They were raised in a world where these rules already existed, and rightly so. I think that not so deep down the way they are living and have been living since Red Day is causing them a lot of guilt. I think their hostility

towards me stems from my stimulation of that well of guilt inside of them. I think that they will cater to their consciences in the end, especially when they realize that most of them can get girls to sleep with them consensually. What makes you think theyd sleep with them willingly? he asks. Because, Im no damn miracle worker. I can see as well as anyone that things have changed and were playing with a different set rules now. Im just trying to minimize the damage done. I hope that you can, he says. Ill do all I can to help you if you think it can be done. I do. I do too, says Lisa. Or, if I dont think it, I at least hope it. Hopes as good as anything, Jake says, smiling a little bit now, but nothings as good as hope. My mom used to say that. I can think of a few things better than hope, you say. Like what? he asks, his smile full-fledged now. Sex, drugs and rock n roll, you say. Never had sex or done drugs, he says, but I sure do miss rock. The last I heard any music was three days after red day when someone put on a Korn CD in a battery-powered stereo. I never liked them much, but I swear they were amazing in those moments when we all formed a moshpit and celebrated our damnation to the pounding rhythm and tangled guitar riffs of industrial metal or whatever the hell you want to call it. What was your favorite band? asks Lisa. Jeez. Tough one. I was actually more into psychedelic 60s and 70s music than anything out today. The Doors would probably be my favorite, but I like the Beatles too, post-acid of course. Im not a fan of their earlier stuff. I wanna hold your hand? Gimme a break. Ill take Come Together or Happiness is a Warm Gun over that any day of the week. What about you? I was always more of a hip-hop girl, but when I did listen to rock, I listened to the powerhouse rockers: AC/DC, Metallica, Quiet Riot, Rush, Pink Floyd. Eighties rock mostly, I guess. It was what my mom listened to, so I guess I got a taste for it too, she answers. How about you, Adam?

My holy trinity would probably be Marilyn Manson, Tool and Nine Inch Nails. Black is a perfect last name for you, observes Jake. Well, I dont know if it was so much the darkness that attracted me to their music. I think it was the cinematic effort and texture that their music possessed. I respect, or respected, Manson more as visual artist than a recording artist, says Jake. I saw a show of his a few years back. He was one fuck of a showman. I never got to see him, you say. You did see Tool though, about a year prior to red day. You spent so long trying to find a decent seat that you actually wound up sitting in the very back row. You might as well have been watching a flea circus for all you could see. Shame, he says, you missed a treat. I never really heard anything of his other than the Beautiful People, but I had sort of a crush on him from an interview of his I saw on MTV. Really? says Jake, I thought he was an ugly fucker. It wasnt so much a physical thing, but, I dont know. I found him sort of charming. In the same way I find Adam charming, actually. You feel heat gather in your cheeks. How cute, youre blushing, says Vuru. I miss my CD collection, you say, moving away from subjects that cause your face to flush and your lips to curl upwards. Yeah, says Jake. Me too, says Lisa. Actually, says Jake, I might still have most of mine, I just dont have anything to play them on. Where would they be? In my backpack, which is in the library with everyone elsepart of a barricade from . . . yknow, the war. I have a walkman too, says Lisa, but no batteries.

Well, when Aaron gets the power back on, we might just be able to listen to music again, you say. You know, says Jake, If we have rock, Aaron doesnt really stand much of a chance against us. No one can beat rock n roll. DAY TWELVE: WETWORKS You arrive at the computer lab, along with Will, Bryan and The Bastard at an hour after daybreak. The two guards posted on both sides of the door nod for you to enter and you do. You expected to walk into the computer lab, but instead find yourself in Aarons massive mansion. What . . . the . . . fuck? says The Bastard. Magic, says Aaron from atop one of the two large, marble staircases leading up to the second floor. He walks down the stairs so gracefully that if you couldnt see his feet youd imagine that he was gliding. Follow me. You do as he says, but the three remaining members of the Texas four remain behind, mouths open in awe, eyes scanning the room trying to make sense of it. Come on, you tell them, signaling for them to hurry up. In a daze, they do. Aaron leads you and the Texas Three to a room containing an enormous mechanical contraption that doesnt look as if it were engineered by anything with a sane mind. Its design surely went well beyond practical need and deeply into the realm of ominous aesthetics. It has pipes protruding from its every strange angle and a steady stream of steam billowing from a series of small hatches near its oddly pointed zenith, which is crowned with glowing green orb about the size of a basketball. What is it? you ask. We call it The Aries. Its based on an Atlantian schematic for a machine to desalinate ocean water, but weve modified the design significantly. What you are looking at with your uncomprehending little eyes is a machine that replicates water by extracting hydrogen and oxygen from the air itself. These pipes suck in air from outside, the superfluous particles of matter that make it through the initial filtration system are expelled from those valves up there in bursts of what you may have originally believed to be steam. The necessary hydrogen and oxygen molecules are then sequenced in the main chamber here and sent to out storage tanks via these four pipes over here. I cannot take you directly to the storage tanks so you will have to reroute one of these pipes directly into the schools pumping system. The red door to your left, coincidentally enough, leads to Myre Highs pump station

in the utility closet. I warn you, once youve opened the door, it cannot be closed again, or else it will disappear. All of the tools you will need can be found in the utility closet. I will shut the Aries off so that you can begin your work. I think this will be a process of trail and error, so theres a good chance that you will be here for a long, long time. Ill be by in seven hours. If youre not done by then, you can resume tomorrow. Good luck. And with that, hes gone. What the galdamn fuck is going on here? exclaims The Bastard. I mean, I knew somethin unnatural was happenin around here, but I never spected anything like this. This is just the first layer, you tell them, and the story, from beginning to end, is a long one, and a hard one to tell . . . a hard one to hear too. Well, I think we deserve to know! shouts Bryan. Yes. You do. After what youve seen, I cant deny that you do. And you probably deserve to know what happened to Johnny too. You know what happened to Johhny? asks The Bastard. I do. Its part of my story. The story that Im about to tell you. So you tell them the tale, every word rotting into the next and choking your throat like the dust and ash of the burnt down world. You tell them about your and Johnnys quest to find the shimmering object in the distance. You tell them about the weed garden, the roaches and monolith; the wells of shit and the temple of Vuru Raha. You tell them of Johnnys fate, and all of them shed at least one tear. You tell them about Adric and Lisa and Jake and Aaron and what each of them means. You dont tell them about Vurus act of rape or her resulting pregnancy and psychic bond to you. You dont tell them of the television visions that the Johnny with the shrunken black angel wings showed you or the mind-shattering sight that lay beyond the windows of this palatial plantation and you are glad that there are no windows around for them to glance out of. It would hardly make difference if there were; you are fairly certain that the room you are in now is below ground. Some of these things you withhold from them because you think Aaron may be listening or because you do not fully trust them. Others you do not tell them because you cannot bring yourself to tell them. I cant believe all that, says The Bastard. Its too much.

I know, you say, Im sorry. Fuck your sorry! he yells. Its not his fault, Milo, says Bryan. Milo, you suppose, is The Bastards Christian name. He doesnt look like a Milo. He looks too big to be a Milo. I know it, god damn it! he shouts, red-faced and weeping. He falls to his knees. His legs cant hold his weight any longer. But I didnt wanna know! I didnt want to know all them things. Theyre just too much! Snot and saliva bubble around his mouth and face and he regressed to infantile wails and incoherent attempts at speech. He looks so pathetic that you cant help but hate him. Still, something inside of you want to hold him and tell him everything will be alright, which his friend Bryan is doing while Will stands and watches it all like it was nothing more than a sad movie. Its fifteen minutes before Milo The Bastard calms down and gets it together again. Im sorry, he says, I didnt mean to lose it like that. It happens, you tell him. Its nothing to be ashamed of, says Bryan. Will opens his mouth as if to say something, but closes it up again without uttering so much as a single syllable. You dont talk, do you? you ask him. Will? asks The Bastard. He aint said a damn word since, well, you know when. I call it Red Day, you say. Thats as good a name as any. We should get to work, you say. Ha-ha. Yeah. Anyone know the first damn thing bout plumbin? Nope, answers Bryan. Not me, you say. Will nods his head.

You do? asks The Bastard. Ill be galdamned. You can do all the work then. Heh-heh. *** Will does know about plumbing. A little. He knows what wrench to use for what bolts and what most of the valves do and how water pressure works. He communicates all this to you and Bryan and The bastard through a series of amazingly successful hand gestures. Its a start. By then time Aaron peaks his grinning face into the room, the four of you have accomplished essentially nothing, but you somehow feel like your getting the hang of it. Same time tomorrow, girls, says Aaron as he shuts the computer lab/plantation door behind you. I hate that son of a bitch, says The Bastard. You see looks of horror on the two guards faces and quickly slap The Bastard on the back of his head and say, Watch your damn mouth! At first, Milo The Bastard looks outraged, but when he realizes the presence of the two sentries, he just looks down and pretends to regret his words. The guards unconsciously nod their approval and you and the Texas Three walk away down the hallway. Youve got to be more careful about that, you say. Careful like you, ya mean? he asks sardonically. All right. Point. But they arent going to take the same shit off me that they will off you. Aaron finds me amusing, hes just find you guys annoying. So this is a do as I say not as I do sorta thing? It is precisely that sort of thing. I hate that, he says, I dont like it, not one galdamn lil bit. Im sorry. Thats the way it is. Hes right, Milo. You just about gave me a fucking heart attack when you said that shit in front of those over-grown motherfuckers, says Bryan.

Alright! Damn! Its in the galdamn past, so lets just drop it already, huh? Geez-uz-fuckinChrist. By the time this conversation is over, youre back at Mrs. Kyles. You open the door to surprisetotal chaos. At first this chaos seems completely usual, but it only takes you a minute to see that this is the chaos of panic, rather than jubilation. Whats going on? you yell. He started having a seizure or sumpin, man! shouts Corey. Who? you yell, pushing through the throng. No need for anyone to answer, you can see for yourself. Its the fat kid who was shaking his crotch at girls the day before. Jake is kneeled over him trying to do CPR but suddenly he stops, looks up at you and says, Hes dead, Adam. *** Youre laying down flat on the floor, looking at the ceiling, thinking about the dead boy. Jake is sitting cross-legged to your left. Lisa is sitting backwards in an old school chair at your feet, looking at you with curiosity and sympathy. I wonder is life will life ever be normal again, you say to the small cracks in the smooth, plaster ceiling. Turmoil, angst, lack of faith in ones species, self-doubt and self-loathing, says Vuru. Id say that as far as your life goes, things are as normal as they ever were. Please, Vuru, not now, you plead. So you finally figured out that you dont have to talk aloud for us to hear you. We were wondering when youd get that through your skull. You dont say anything or think anything back to her. You feel gushing waves of pain pounding on the shores of your eyes, begging to be let out and it makes you sick to hold them back, but you have to. Im sorry Adam, she says, speaking as only one entity. In my own, strange way, I love you. In my own strange way Vuru, I think I love you too. Adam? says Jake. Yeah, you say, snapping out of an odd breed of hypnosis.

I asked how it went today, he said. I must have been zoning out, you offer. He looks unconvinced so you answer, It went . . . strangely. Everything goes strangely. This was no exception. Could you two leave me alone for a little bit? you ask, request, beg plead, Please? The both give you silent affirmations, nodding worried faces, and depart. You just lie there, looking at the ceiling in the waning sunlight, pretending the cracks are cracks within your heart and that the water spots are warped pieces of your damaged mind. The first time you attempted suicide was about two years ago. You were just about a month past your fifteenth birthday and all alone in your room, studying the stucco ceiling and seeing images in its complicated and completely haphazard texture: Clowns with rotten toothed smiles, giant robots shoving sticks of dynamite up the asses of what were either terrible ugly children of circus midgets, burning cities, foreign letters, stems with demonic heads where flowers ought to be, insects eating angels and angels fucking deformed, hairless blob-like masses of almost-humans. You see these things and you hate them, yet they make you smile with wonder. This stucco ceiling is a portrait of my mind, you thought. Such a mind surely has no right to exist, you thought. You dragged the razorblade across your wrists, but did it the wrong way and missed the critical artery. You passed out from the blood loss but survived the night and bandaged yourself up the next morning. You wore long sleeve shirts for the next few weeks. No one noticed. If only it were that easy, you think. If only this ceiling were Stucco. DAY THIRTEEN: ITS STRANGE HOW SHAPES GET RAPED OVER TIME The fat kids body is gone in the morning. They collected it, someone told you when you asked. You did not ask who they were. You didnt want to know. Its strange how shapes get raped over time. You dont know what this means, but it plays over and over again in your head like a perverse segment of a scratched CD. You are in the hallway, walking alongside the Texas Three. Milo The Bastard is chatting incessantly in the thick country accent that youve noticed he slips in and out of. In and out. Lisa was asleep when you left to work on the pipes . . . now you wish youd woken her up. Hindsights 20/20. Thats another grandfather saying. But then, all old people like that saying. Of course, there are no old people left anymore. Except for Mr. McQueenthe only adult who sided with Aaron over Alvabut youve yet to lay eyes on him and arent

sure of his age. Even if McQueen was an old man, he probably wasnt fond of the saying. Only men who have regrets are fond of that saying, and only men who have a conscience are capable of true regret. I hope we finish this shit today, Bryan says. Me fuckin too. You reckon well getter done today, Will? Will looks at The Bastard and shrugs and makes a face that says something along the lines of, I hope so. Weve still got to get the electric working too, you say. Lets not think about that shit today, alright? says The Bastard, Well, here we are. The guards halt your party at the door. The bigger and stupider of the two says, Sorry, Aarons instructed us not to let no one by. But? Sorry, he says, No one gets by. Well, fuck it, says Bryan with more than just a little bit of relief in his voice. You turn to stop him, but realize this actions complete futility and follow him instead. The Bastard and Will follow you. Somethings going on, you say, and I want to know what it is. Well, theres no way to find out, says The Bastard, so just let it go and lets go catch us some more fuckin sleep. Besides, what business is it of ours anyway. Aarons been a pretty good leader so far, says Bryan. From what you told us, Alva was the real prick, so were being governed by the lesser of two evils. In my book, that puts us in the alright. Aaron is as responsible for this worlds death as Alva, you say, maybe you can forgive that, but I cant. And there are . . . other things. Things I didnt tell you guys. Well, whatever. You know what, hes your enemy, not mine, says Bryan. Adam? says a voice youve never heard before.

Bryan and The Bastard stop dead in their tracks. Will? you say. He looks down, as if hes done something horribly wrong. I . . . Theres another way in. Oh my God, youre right! you exclaim. The utility closet! We left the red door open! Will! shouts The Bastard, his country accent gone completely, You spoke! Holy shit, its great to hear your voice again! Will just looks at him and smiles sheepishly. Milo understands at once that Will isnt planning on making speaking a regular part of his communicative repertoire again just yet. Well, Im going, you say. Count me out, says Bryan. Sorry man, but youre on your own, says The Bastard. They turn their backs and walk away. Come on, Will, shouts Bryan, but Will just stands by your side, quiet and blushing with defiance. Oh, Jesus, says Bryan. The Bastard turns around and sees the same sight. Will! he shouts, You cant be serious. Will just stares back at him, shaking from some powerful emotion, but otherwise not moving an inch. Its okay, Will. Go with them, you say. But he doesnt seem to hear you. Well, shit. If you wanna kill yourself, be my guest, says The Bastard, spinning around and stomping away. Bryan stands there for a moment like parasite torn between two hosts, but he eventually turns and follows The Bastard, whose name, you have discovered, is rather suitable. Im not worth getting yourself killed for, you tell Will.

His eyes answer back, Im not doing it for you. *** The door is the dark green of meconium and the words UTILITY CLOSET are embossed upon it in shiny black militaristic lettering. Its locked, you tell him. If we try and knock it down, someonell hear us. He opens his mouth and chokes out a dry sound. Then he clenches his eyes shut and his face goes red. You can see his lips moving frantically as if hes whispering incantations to ward of (or summon) evil spirits. Finally, he forces out the words, I know where the keys are. I . . . took them . . . off of Alva. . . . Where are they now? you ask, practically jumping down his throat. Its in the attic of the third house on the right, but . . . argh! . . . theyre . . . theyre, um, forbidden. We could get in huge trouble if they saw us. I should . . . should . . . go alone. No. Ill go, you say. But! "Okay, well, when you go into the back door, youll be in the kitchen. From there you take a right and go through a door into a laundry room. If you look up, you'll see a tiled ceiling. One of the tiles is a little discolored. If you press it youll open the big panel so stand clear and it'll fall out. From there you just unfold the ladder and climb on up. Oh, there is a piece of string tide to the bottom rung of the ladder, when you climb up, bring it with you. It's how we close it back up. You got all that?" Its okay. I know how to get in, you say. I just need to know where the keys are exactly. C-corner of the . . uhhhh . . . the big rug . . . its, uh, its against the wall in the corner. Its under a loose board under the . . . ugh . . . shit . . . RIGHT! . . . yeah, thats it . . . the right corner of the rug, up against the wall! Alright. You stay here. If anyone asks you, youre guarding the door from thieves. . . . Thieves? Yeah, thieves.

 . . . Oh, okay . . I guess. Ill be back before you can say Captain Cocksucker, you say. Then, after a split second worth of consideration you add, Actually, at the rate you talk, that might be true. *** You pull down the ladder behind the discolored ceiling tile in the laundry room and climb up. You dont bother pulling the ladder back up afterwards because you dont plan on being up here long enough for anyone to come looking for you. Everything in the attic looks ransacked, and you make a few mental notes of things around youa rocking chair, a pried-open chest full of photos, an old mannequinbefore setting off to the upper right hand corner of the huge throw rug, covered in beer or piss stains. The corner frayed and bent up against the dust wall. You pull it up and towards you and reach underneath it for the keysnothing. Shit! you say. You hear a creaking nose and a steady jingle and jump to your feet with a 180 degree spin and a small, tight gasp. The figure of Johnny is sitting in the rocking chair, jingling the keys in his hands, wearing his patented deviant grin and looking right at you with eyes as big and black as sunglass lenses. Looking for these? he asks you. Johnny! you shout, what are you doing here! I just stopped by for a little chat. Actually, I just stopped by to make a speech, and I know how you hate that and I would to in your position, but I have to and believe me when I say that this one is important. You look at him carefully. Im listening. Whats the matter? he asks, you dont trust me? Do I have any reason to? No, I guess not, he says, then pauses for a moment before adding, You know, its kind of funny, the human mind, though capable of coming to terms with the most hideous of exterior circumstances, is completely helpless in coming to terms with its own existence. Do you know why that is? No, but I have a feeling youre going to tell me.

Johnny lends you a solemn nod and says, Everything in nature is based upon a system of harmony. When human kind bit into the Apple of knowledge, they effectively seceded from nature and therefore broke away from that harmony. Human life subsequent to that secession has been defined not by harmony, but discord. In nature, conflict is just part of an equilibrium, but to us, it is the measure of all things. We greedily devour love and hate and lust and trust and sadness and madness in equal overdoses and call it a balance, when in fact it is an orgy. This is why we eat when we arent hungry and starve ourselves when we are; why we fuck when we arent horny and abstain when we are; why we trust those that we know to be deceitful and pity the delusion of those that love us. But nature is dead on this planet. God has run away and now man in law. Vuru and her legions are all thats left of the old system, and you are the one that must make the final decision. What decision? you ask. Whether this will be a world of mans law, or of natures, he says. You see, if man returns to the garden that Vuru has created, his divinity is restored and he will once again be a part of nature. If he does not, then Aarons new evolutionary beasts will walk the earth a higher form of man, taking mans principle virtues of conflict and excess to new extremes. A road of difficultno . . . impossiblechoices lay before you. Even under the best of circumstances, it will be a great long while before you feel happiness again. A tear of blood runs down Johnnys pale face. I thought I should be the one to tell you all of this. Im not sure I understood everything you said, and most of it I already knew, but Im glad you strung my loose thoughts together, but why are you helping me? Why is Vuru? I am helping you because you are my friend and she is helping you because Aaron is her enemy. If you fail or make the wrong choice . . . none of us has a future. Not me, not you, not even Vuru. As long as man is apart from nature, Vuru is helpless against Aarons power. Well, Ive got to get back, you say. Yes, I know. Good luck. Here are the keys. Thank you. *** Y-you got em?

Yeah, you say, showing Will the key ring. This might take a while though. I dont know which of these fits. Through a process of trial and error that seems lopsidedly error, you find the right key and the closet creaks open like a rusty robots pussy and the two of you dart inside and shut it fast behind you. The door to the Aries is still propped wide open with a small crate and an odd green light blurs into the utility closet like smudged pastel as strikingly as it did yesterday. You run into the room, signaling Will to follow then stopping him abruptly in the middle of the room with the machines great, glowing orb overlooking the two of you like the uncaring eye of some seismic Lovecraftian beast. Were in, you say. We have to be extremely fucking careful or well be caught, and chances are well be caught anyway. If you want to turn back, nows the time. T-t-twenty . . . minutes ago would have b-been the time, he says. Okay. Stay a step behind me at all times. The hallways are as silent as a muted TV and as empty as the heads of those watching it. You begin to run aimlessly in one direction, ducked down like a Hollywood spy movie star. You stop dead in your tracks in front of a big rust-colored door with a few flakes of what was once a mint-green coat paint scattered here and there, and say to yourself, I know this door. What? asks Will. I know this door, you say again, still not talking to him. Your heart begins to pound, not in your chest but in your neck like an Adams Apple of discord. You feel yourself start to shake, but it feels more like the rest of the world is shaking. Then, when Will lets out a small yelp, you realize the rest of the world is shaking. Shit! you say and you start running again, driven inexplicably farther down the hall and away from the big, terrible and familiar door. You see a window coming up on your left and shout, Dont look out the window. What? Will asks, and you cannot see, but you can feel his head turning to look outside and you shout for him to stop but its too late. His legs give out from under him but he catches himself on the windowsill and gazes out

upon the world outside. I told you, you say from an eternity away, not to look. He doesnt say a word. You walk gently over to him, not making a sound and you turn to the window yourself and look out upon the hellscape. Knowing what you will see in no way prepares you to see it again and the shock is just as powerful as it had been the first time around. W-w-what is . . . what is it? he asks. Its the world, you say, Aarons world. It is vast and black with rows of glowing red and corpses walking like puppets with invisible strings tend to it. You dont know what theyre doing or why theyre doing it, but if you had to take a guess you would say that they are harvesting the fires of hell from the black crust of some version of earth even more perverted than the one you and Johnny had ventured on your journey to the Temple of Vuru Raha. Deep in the background, you see buildings skyscrapersthat dwarf most mountains in width as well as heighta city of the damned where only the dead call home. Those people . . . theyre the ones that died on Red Day, arent they. I cant be sure, you say, but I think so. I wish Id never seen this, he said without a hint of stutter or stumble, but part of me is glad because it fills a part of me thats always been so empty. Yes, but with what? Will finally looks away from the window and sets his gaze directly upon you and you can see the bile in his violently shaking eyes. Hate, he rasps, With hate. There is a long silence between the two of you, finally broken by you saying, I never should have brought you here. No, says a voice that you know all to well, You shouldnt have. Hello, Aaron, you say, never turning around. You feel a sudden rush of heat surround and overwhelm you, short-circuiting all your senses and filling every neuron bound for your brain with messages of immense physical agony. Years laterbut only seconds in real time you supposeyou are lying there crumpled at Aarons feet and everything is a blur.

You two couldnt have picked a worse day to pull this stunt, he says. I am not is a pleasant fucking mood. You hear a loud crunch and a moment later youre fairly certain that it was the sound of your ribs shattering under his foot. You can get away with this somewhat in tact because I like you, but your little friend here is going straight to hell, he says through a series of whiney amplifiers and scratchy recorders with warped tapes into an echoing cavern somewhere between earth and the moon. The only thing you can think to say as the consciousness drains from you like bloody bathwater, spiraling into the oblivion of a drain and into and endless maze of pipes is, I saw the door. Fade to black. DAY FOURTEEN: DREAM-LAND O, I see you have come here to us at last, screams the pointless void. Im home, you tell him. Thats right, sing the choir of naked goblin children, waving their tiny colorless flags in the fluid air. There is something sexually arousing about them, but you do not dwell on this matter because they disappear as suddenly as they manifested and youre left to once again stare into the massive all-knowing eye that is the clitoris of what the natives of this strange dimension of dementia call the giant flaming cunt of darkness. Oh, giant flaming cunt of darkness, you plead, why am I here? Have I failed the world and have I failed myself ? Two columns of fire blast forth from the pointless void, framing the cunt nicely and the all-knowing-eye blinks in contemplation. You are not a failure and you never can be so long as you believe in yourself, says the cunt. The advice is so Walt Disney that it makes you sprout mouse ears. Are you sure? you say, Ive done terrible things, you know. Ive killed and raped and maimed for the sheer enjoyment of the act. We all do those things, says the cunt, Whats important is that we do them to ourselves, and dont let our personal battles spill out into the lives of those we love, unless we are ready to share those things with

them and they are ready to receive them. But what if I dont love anyone? What if Im only capable of hate? Or worse, what if Im not capable of anything at all? You are. Maybe, you concede, but no one can ever know me. No, says the cunt, not completely. But why is that a tragedy? Do you really desire to be understood fully, either implicitly or explicitly? Isnt it better to wonder? Isnt it better to be able to surprise your friends and yourself ? You pause to think about it and reply, I guess so, without much enthusiasm. Then there you have it, answers the giant flaming cunt of darkness. BLAM! Youre on the beach again and your Tiki God is standing in front of you, much larger than before. Youre naked and sitting down and there is sand in your ass crack but it doesnt really feel so strange or uncomfortable or even foreign. It is, after all, your sand. Youve come a long way since last we spoke, said the Tiki God. How goes the stitch work? you ask, find out anything that us boys up on the surface havent yet? Youve certainly become more cooperative. Insanityll do that to ya, you say. Answers? Questions. Great. Why didnt Vuru help us out in Aarons plantation? No clue. Maybe she couldnt. Maybe she didnt want to for some reason. Maybe just because I didnt ask. What was going on in Aarons plantation? Why was it shaking? No clue. Sounded . . . mechanical, you say. This isnt progressive.

It might be, says the Tiki God, I do have one answer for you, but I have one more question. Shoot. Do you trust Jake? Yes, you say. Alright, he says. I believe you had an answer for me. First, he said, I need to hear the question. You consider this for a moment. The door, where have I seen it before. BLAM! Youre in a movie theater with a large tub of golden popcorn and a huge drink. The screen flickers to life and you see a door the color of rust with remnant of mint green paint flaked near the handle and near the top. It in a brick wall on the side of a building somewhere on some sunny day. You can see the shadow of rustling leaves waving back and forth creating amazingly intricate patterns on the surface of the rusty door. In that moment, the door is Gods canvass. A younger version of yourself, maybe six or seven years old walks into frame wearing blue shorts and a smile. The door opens suddenly and a naked woman walks out like an alien stepping out of its spacecraft. Her head is bald and so is the spot betwixt her legs. She examines you for a moment with eyes that could melt butter and your scream and start to run but she grabs you by your neck with the speed of a falcon diving down to snatch up its prey. Make not a single sound, lest I have to crush every bone in your body, small human boy, she says in a language that isnt English, but that you understand inherently. And she pulls you into the small room and closes the door. I dont remember that, you say. Part of you does, says the small boy sitting next to you. It is, of course, the boy from the moviethe younger version of you. You tried to cut it out, he said, but the most you could do was bury it. What happened inside the room? you ask.

Thats buried to deep for even me to dig up, the little you answers, unless you hand me the shovel. I. . . . Dont want to? answers the little you. Neither do I, but we may not have a choice. Looking at her . . . those eyes . . . I feel sick . . . and afraid. The boy puts his hand on your own and says, Its the incident youve spent your whole life running from, and unless you deal with it, youll never really be able to live your life. But its in the past, you say, Dwelling on it now wont do me any good. The funny thing about the past, says the little you, is that it never stays there. *** Ive never been so awake in my fucking life, you say, clutching your broken ribs, responding to Jakes inquiry as to whether or not you were awake. Should I wake Lisa? he whispers. Were is she? you ask. Right beside you. No. Let her sleep. How long have I been out? Well, its Monday night. It might even be early Tuesday morning. Will? Why dont you go back to sleep. I told you, Im more awake than I could ever want to be, where is Will? They took him to the locker room, he says mournfully. FUCK! you scream, causing your ribs to explode and Lisa to awake with a start. You grunt to conceal a second scream, this one of agony and say through gritted teeth, No. I dont fucking think so. And you rise up from your place of slumber like a phoenix rising from the ash and in that moment you can see in their eyes that you have been reborn.

Where are you going? Lisa pleads. To save my friend. DAY FIFTEEN: BILLY and ADAMS CHOICE The locker room door swings open before you can touch it and the salty smell of sweat and other human odors hits you like a hellbound bullet train, nearly inducing a spell of vomiting. Its hard to see through your teary eyes in the dark room, but you can make out the first few rows of red lockers; some are caked in unidentifiable substances, others are bashed in, others hang open showcasing insides to dark to reveal a thing to any observer unwilling to stick his hand into them to feel what they might contain. The benches are splattered in what must be blood and the showers are piled high with dead. On the top of the pile lay Will, deader than the Earth itself. There was no stopping the vomiting now. The stench alone does it to most folk, says a gentle voice. You look up and see nothing but the tip of a cigarette glowing in the pool of blackness. But I see you needed that lil extra push. The A-man told me you might come by, and I didnt mean to kill your buddy there just yet, but you gotta unnerstand, I aint had no fresh meat in a good long while now least four or five days, ya seeand, well, Im a bit ashamed to admit it, but I get a wee bit carried away every now and again. His voice is quiet and possesses a relaxing quality like the voice of a mother singing to her baby or the sound of a breeze rustling through a tree full of crisp autumn leaves. Its almost as if he is talking as he slowly inhales the air around him, which makes sense in a strange way because you can feel yourself getting sucked in, wanting to trust him despite everything around you. He takes a long drag of his cancer-stick and says is his rapturously calming voice, Yep. I says to myself when I seen him, Thisnes got to last me a while, I said. But I aint one for what you call will power, so lo and behold, just a cunt hair past a day the lil sunuvabitch is deader than the tiny black heart beatin off in my chest. Ha-ha. You feel yourself walking towards him and you dont have the will to stop yourself. Yeah, thats right, friend. Step on ova here and let me take a good look atcha, he says. STOP, ADAM! shouts Vuru like a choir of falling pots and pans. Cut that out, you say to Billy, I know what youre doing. Oh, pooh, you gonna spoil my fun? Naw, you just playin hard to get, aincha, dumplin? he says, mixing country and homosexual accents seamlessly with a voice now so soft that it

sounds like you shouldnt be able to hear it at all. I said stop, you say. Oh, fucking tease, he says gruffly. They told me you were a pain in the fucking ass and that really burns me because being a pain in peoples asses in my job. And boy, I dont take kindly to no competition. You see them corpses over there. You notice how all of ems got assholes as wide as Texas? Thats my doin boy. Thats my work, my fuckin job and I dont take kindly to no needle dick panty stain like yourself movin in on my territory. So Ill tell you what, I challenge you to a butt-fuckin contest? What the fuck are you talking about? Zat a no? Okay, then I guess will just have to have ourselves an old fashion slobberknocker. And the cigarette rises up into the airs and then flies off to the side. The next thing you know, theres a rhino charging towards you, flailing fists as big as Gods nuts and you dont even have time to move before he is upon you. You can hear hells bells when his fist smashes into your face like a Mac-truck tearing into the side of some piece of shit 1991 Ford tempo like the one your cousin was in when he was killed a few years back. The room moves around you at light speed in slow motion stop-animation and you find yourself lying on the side of a pile of the dead. Will, the freshest amongst them and the least accountable for the stench that fills your nostrils, falls into your lap and you can see his empty eyes staring at the ceiling and his mouth hanging open as if to say, Avenge me, fucker! You push him off of you and get back up to your feet. Hes at least two feet taller than you and probably two feet wider as well, and decked out in cowboy regalia, including a big black ten-gallon hat; it huge rim casting a dark shadow over his eyes. Anyone ever tell you that youre a persistent sunuvabitch? Like a turd that just clings to yer ass no matter how ya shake around and feel like a damned fool? Youre the only turd here, you say. Oh yeah, great comeback, Spiderman. Is this the part where I tell you just how Im gonna kill ya and spout a whole mess of crazy supervillain pseudo-philosophical mumbo-jumbo? Well, why not, that sounds kinda fun.

After I defeat you, Im gonna tie you down to my favorite bench over there in my lil nook and shove my two footer right down your lil virgin boycunt till you scream my fuckin name, but Ill wait for Criss ta come down fore I do that. She likes to watch me work, ya see, and play with her lil pussy. I dont think Aaron likes it too much, but what the fucks he gonna do about it, right? Shut the fuck up, you say. No, no no. We aint done banterin yet, stupid. You wanna be a hero, you gotta banter? Dont you watch cartoons? Jay-sis fucking amateur Christ. Now, where was I, oh yeah, this is where I ask ya to come over to my side, and babble about how we could rule the universe together an all that crap, but I can see in your little cant-kill-me eyes that you aint gonna bite that worm, so I guess that all thats left if fer me to espouse my fucked up worldview and lay down my philosophical guidelines. Well, thats pretty easy, I dont believe in jack shit cept pleasin my own damn self and letting someone else count the casualties. Fuck all that justification crap. Im pure fucking maniacal evil and I dont give three licks of a lepers ass about tryin to justify my actions. See, Aaron is a fairly decent bad guy, but the problem with him is that he believes in something. He does what he does unner the guise of an agenda cause fer some reason he cant just wake up and admit to himself flat out, hey, Im one sick, evil motherfucker. My attitude is let the good guys have their agendas and principles and all that crap, cause for us rotten fuckers to have em, well, it defeats the goddamn fun in being the fucking villain, dont it? So when Im tearin yer ass up with my big ol Billy Jr. and yer wonderin why, just know that Im only doin it for the pure joy of it and not cause I think it makes me no bettern you or that Im doin it cause I think the devil wants me to or to collect souls or none of that wacky fucking rat shit. Are we done talking now? Well, I. You punch him in the face before he can complete his sentence, barely even shifting the position of his head. Shit. Yeah, he tells you, grabbing your throat with one fat, sweat hand, Deep shit. Did I forget to mention to ya that I aint exactly what you would call human? Yep, Im Aarons first attempt at the Ubermench . . . which is to say that he considers me a failure, but I dont. No sir. I like me just the way I am.

He says this as he chokes the life from you. Both of you hands are wrapped around his own, trying, with futility, to loosen his grip. Your gasps for air agitate your broken ribs which were, of course, all ready inflamed. The mixture of pain and suffocation is steadily poking holes in your brain, and you can feel consciousness leaking out. NO! You feel your hand shoot out and knock off his hat and he drops you. You hadnt even realized it, but he had lifted you up off the ground and falling back down to the hard floor on your unprepared legs was as much agony as relief. As you lie there with a twisted ankle and three broken ribs, sucking in as much oxygen as you can he is screaming, My fucking hat! What kind of asshole knocks off a fellas fucking hat. The door swings and four figures charge in like kamikaze pilotsexpecting to meet death, all of them wielding blunt instruments. What the fuck? says Billy. Then, quickly donning his soft voice again he says, Wait, dont . --WHACK! And before another word can be spoken, all of them are smashing him with their respective weapons: the girl, whom you think you recognize as your sweet love Lisa is bashing him repeatedly with what looks to be a fold-out metal chair, Jake is hitting him with a hockey stick, The Bastard with a pipe and Bryan is using a baseball bat. It seems like the attack goes on forever, but the giant form on the floor never stops moving. Finally, you rise to your feet and say, Stop. It takes a moment, but your friends comply. And you thought I was persistent, you say to the bleeding mass of meat on the floor. I cannot die, he says, no matter what you do to me, I cannot die. I bet thats not true, you tell him. What if we were to light you on fire. You wouldnt survive that, would you? The figure on the floor begins to chortle and says, Yeah, thatd probably about do it. Well, go ahead then, end my wicked life. Smite me, fucker. I dare ya. No, you say, Ive got a better idea. But Ill need something big and sharp.

Whatve you got in mind, Adam? asks Jake, sounding concerned. Lets just go, says Lisa, I cant breathe in here. You shouldnt have come in the first place, you say, Its dangerous. Youre the one who charged in her all rashly without so much as an inkling of a strategy and I just saved your ass, she says indignantly. Its the first time youve ever seen her angry and you back off almost out of pure shock. Well . . . at any rate, we cant leave him here. He could still be dangerous, you say. Then, to Milo and Bryan, Wills dead. I was too late. We figured, whispers the Bastard. At least we got here in time to save you, says Bryan. Lets kill this fat piece of shit and get out of here, you say, grabbing the pipe from The Bastards hand. You cant kill me, says Billy in his lullaby of a voice. It has no effect on you at all this time. Watch me, you say. No! Dammit! This isnt how its supposed to be! Yes it is, you answer, raising the pipe above you head, getting ready to strike a blow, The Good guy wins. Dont you watch cartoons? Adam, no, says Lisa. You dont hear her. *** You walk out of the blackness of the locker room feeling more like a monster than a man who just killed one, your lover at your heels and your posse not far behind. It had to be done, you tell them. You all have to know that. I feel sick to my stomach, but what happened in there had to happen. We know, Adam, says Jake, and Lisa places herself by your side.

Aarons not going to like this, says The Bastard. No shit, you say, thats why none of you were involved. When he comes down on it, he comes down on me alone. No, shouts Jake, we need you. You halt in your tracks and Lisa jerks to a stop with you. You push her gently away from you and turn to him, looking right into his eyes, What could you possibly need me for? He stands there not saying a word and then says, Because youre the only one fighting back. Thats right. I am. Me. Alone. And thats pretty fucked up considering just whatand who Im fighting for. Will was the only one of you to show anything even resembling courage and hes dead because of it, so fuck courage and truth and fuck being the hero. No, fuck you, Adam. I fought in the war against Aaron just over a fucking week ago. Just a little over a week, I was at war, and my side lost and we watched as they burned our dead in a pile and sent out living into the lair of that fucking demon Billy, and then, a few days later, you turn up and tell me things that give me the will to fight again, and now youre going to give up, when weve just won our first victory? All that exists in this moment is you and Jake and the fire that unites your eyes. Softly, you say, Two weeks agowrap your mind around thatfourteen fucking days ago, Jake, we all lived in a world where we were untouchable and our lives were stretched out in front of us, and the different paths were innumerable. Red Day stole those paths from us, and now there is only one road and Ive walked it for two weeks and lived a lifetime per minute . . . and I would welcome my own death. But god damn it, when I go, I want to take that son of a bitch with me. Gather everyone you can on Aarons order. Bring them to the Cafeteria. Ive got a story for them. The cafeteria, says The Bastard, But . . . my father. Your what? you ask. His last name is McQueen, Lisa whispers into your ear. Milo . . . your father is Mr. McQueen. Milo nods. He sided with Aaron in the conflict, even though I fought with Alva.

Why would he side with Aaron? you ask. For my brother, says Milo, When he sided with Aaron, Dad did too. They tried to get me to take his side too, but I . . .well, I never liked them anyhow. I aint never cared for neither of those fuckers. Well, in that case, you and Lisa, come with my to the Cafeteria, Bryan and Jake will have to gather up as many people there as possible so that they can hear the truth. I cant go, says Milo. You can and you will, you say. Bryan, hand me that bat. He hands it to you. Thanks. Lets do this. *** I picked you because you were so daring, says Vuru as you stroll into the cafeteria with Lisa on one side and The Bastard on the other. Its almost as dark inside as the locker room but you can make out three chairs at the center of the large room, and in these three chairs sit three figures. Then, miraculously, the lights flicker to life and you after the initial shock and adjustment, you realize you were mistaken. There are five figures. Oh my god, you say. In the center chair sits Aaron, looking endlessly proud of himself. To the left of him sits Crissi Drake, more beautiful than the eyes of God and more sinister than the devils grin. To the right of Aaron sits Jake Carter with a gun in his hand, pointed at the boy sitting on the floor just in front of him with a look of stony contempt in his still, blue eyes whose name, as you well know, is Bryan. No, says Lisa, who sounds as if the air has been let out of her world. The fifth figure is Milos father, Mr. McQueen, whos looking at his son with absolutely nothing in his eyes. Well, I admit, there were a few times that I was worried, says Aaron, addressing you and you alone, but you stuck to the script just fine, and whenever you showed signs of

deviation, Jake here helped push you in the right direction. Yeah, you say, he sure had me fooled. If there were still a Hollywood, Id say he could do well there. Jake shrugs as if you are accused of some inconsequential impoliteness like eating the last cookie or forgetting to put down the toilet seat after taking a piss. As you can see, Fearless Leader, Ive got a gun to this particular puppets head, and if you make one wrong move, you get to see how far his brains will fly. Dont worry, Adam, this whole thing is just about over, says Vuru. How am I going to get out of this? Just watch. Sorry, my friend, but it looks like its just your night to die. And by the way, thanks for taking care of Billy . . . he was getting much too rowdy, says Aaron. Jake, I think its time to betray your beloved leader. Yes, says Jake, turning the gun on Aaron, It is. The weapon fires silently and Crissi is suddenly painted dark red with the contents of her boyfriends head. I told you, said Vuru. Jake, shouts Lisa, who begins running to him. No! screams McQueen from the back of the room, and bolts for the nearest exit, pursued by his son, who is waving a pipe above his head. You cant take your eyes of Aaron minus Aarons head or Crissi, who is covered in his blood and looking like an apathetic Jackie Kennedy. Lisa is hugging Jake and Jake is looking as weary as a dog near death. Bryan is running after Milo, who just left the room in pursuit of his father. Its over, says Vuru, Its finally over. No, says Crissi, still sitting in her chair. The blood suddenly dissolves from her face and clothes, It is not over, Vuru. It has just begun.

How did you--? I hear everything Adam Black, she answers, my enemy. Jake and Lisa turn their heads to her but she never removes her eyes from you. Did you think that a man could possibly be competent enough to bring about this planets glorious rebirth? And in a single lifetime no less. Your ignorance has been your downfall. For two-thousand years my family has planned this rebirth, and you thought that it could be accomplished by one stupid boy in just a few years because some angel came to his bed and told him where to find some magic books. To think, when I passed that story on to Aaron to tell you, I believed you might actually see its gaping flaws. I over-estimated you. But I saw the book in Aarons room, in my vision, you shout, trying to reconcile this new turn of events with what you thought you knew. What book? The book of prophecy, written in Seraphim? Ha! I gave him that book! I wrote it too, to convince him of his own invincibility so that he would serve me without fear of death. It wasnt even in the true language of the angels but in the bastard tongue of those fallen from Heaven, but you knew that when first you laid eyes on it, didnt you Adam? Because you speak the language of Angels. All who hear it, can thereafter speak it. Jake seems to snap out of some deep trance and fires on her, but the gun, it seems, only contained a single bullet. Lisa just holds him tightly, looking at Crissi Drake with a mixture of fear and hatred. Ive never heard Seraphim! you scream at the top of your lungs. Your heart is beating in your head and everything is bleeding milk vapor. Of course you have! she screams right back, matching your volume, rising from her seat as she does so. Her face is a mask of royalty and he posture the apotheosis of divinity and the rights of the divine. She looks as though she could crush Vuru Rahaor anyone else between her thumb and index finger is she so pleased. No, you say, falling to your knees, clutching you head, hearing omnipresent high-pitched mechanical screeching. *** A younger version of yourself, maybe six or seven years old walks into frame wearing blue shorts and a smile. The door opens suddenly and a naked woman walks out like an alien stepping out of its spacecraft. Her head is bald and so is the spot betwixt her legs. She examines you for a moment with eyes that could

melt butter and your scream and start to run but she grabs you by your neck with the speed of a falcon diving down to snatch up its prey. Make not a single sound, lest I have to crush every bone in your body, small human boy, she says in a language that isnt English, but that you understand inherently. It is the language of the angels. And she pulls you into the small room and closes the door. Do not fear me, child. For it makes no sense to fear that which is inevitable, she says. I offer you this wisdom boy, but I can see in the stupidity of your shallow eyes that you wont take it. It matters not. Let me go! you scream. Shut up! she says, smacking your hard across your tender young face. There will come a day when the fate of this planet will depend upon you, she says. Human being are controlled by fate, she says, There is no free-will. Not yet, anyway, but there will be, one day. At some point in your future, you will be given the first real choice, and the pages of fate will end and you will start the first chapter in the book of the age of freedom. You will not remember any of what I have said until the moment of choice is near. Make the right choice. *** Yes, says Crissi, You remember now, dont you? What was it that she said to you, Adam? She sounds sweet now, but you know that she could make herself sound any way she wanted, but inside, you doubt she feels much of anything. She said . . . you clear your mind and look at her. She told me that I was to serve you . . . in anyway that I could. Aaron, no! shouts Vuru, That couldnt be what she said! You mean, you didnt see? Neither of us saw, says Crissi, it is blocked from us. But I believe you. I dont think you could lie to me. And to be honest, I always expected that you would come to my side eventually. You have a sorcerers heart, you know. You were my first choice for a King, but Aaron had more of a stomach for that sort of thing than you, so I chose him instead, and taught him the ancient ways of my family. He was a decent sorcerer when I finished with him, but you have the potential to be a great one, I think.

Adam . . . says Jake. Dont say anything, Jake, you tell him, This is what must be done. Thats right, says Crissi. Lisa jumps to her feet and runs to you, No, Adam, she says with eyes full of tears and snot dripping from her nose and her mouth a tortured tangle of lips and teeth. The sight of her in such pain tears at your insides, but you look at her with a gaze that you hope conceals the love in your eyes. You say to her, Im sorry, Lisa. But its better this way, and its what I have to do. Quit your sniveling, girl, instructs Crissi, He is coming with me. Jake, you are now a general for valiantly helping Adam kill Aaron, who was planning to betray us all in some vague way. It doesnt matter how. Best to leave it up to their imaginations. As for Adam, he is the new King of Myre High. Nno-o-o-o-o! Lisa shouts, sliding down your body, leaving a trail of her tears and mucus down your shirt and the upper part of your pants. Jake grabs her gently around the shoulders and pulls her away. For a moment you are worried sick that she will cling to you and Crissi will tire of the delay and kill her, but it seems that every ounce of strength in her body is gone, which is a sad but relieving sight. Jakes eyes say, I hope you know what youre doing. Yours tell him, me too. And you turn to Crissi, who stands there, looking taller than she is. She beckons you with a single feline finger and you walk loyally to her side and take one last look at your friends. Jake is holding Lisa in his arms and whispering something comforting in her ear. *** The Drake bloodline has plotted these exact events for years. The plans have changed as times have changed, of course, but we knew that they would. In fact, we relied very heavily on it. We were waiting for a time without God and without magic; a time of cynics and naysayers, drunk on their own alleged rationality and fevered with the excitement of their tiny human achievements. We knew such an age was approaching, and when it did, we set the wheels in motion. We planted seeds of malcontent in Curtis Alva, a guardian Mage in Gods army, and presented him with the means to sew those seeds into the polluted heart of the earth. He came to my father ten years ago, bearing a gifta key to the gate of

heaven, says Crissi. Oh my god, you think, recalling your vision. There had been a factory, rusted and abandoned but far from dead; a place was ripe with an unholy breed of life, the sort of life that children feel emanating from closets and under beds as they shiver off the remnants of nightmares . . . YOU ARE LATE, boomed the voice of something beyond human, and that, you suppose, was Crissis father. And then Alva said something like . . . I apologize most graciously, my lord. And the voice had said, YOUR APOLOGIES HOLD NO VALUE. No, but perhaps this will, said Alva, taking a bow the size of a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and showing its contents to the source of the voice. Where does Vuru come in? you ask. Her face changes so subtly that you cant be sure, but you think shes smiling. That was Alvas idea. He worshipped her and the Creator Himself with equal fervor, something expressly forbidden. It was in the war in Vietnam that he first turned to her for help. You see, God is all knowing and all wise, but hes not much help when you really need him, and Alva was only a dabbler in the magic arts in those days, and knew very few spells that were much more than mental masturbation, so not one of them came in handy. The one trick he did have up his sleeve was he had purchased a book several years earlier from a washed-up occultist named Redford GraysI would know, it was the Drake family that did the washingand discovered the names of all the true gods and goddesses of the earth, and, perhaps because he was from New York or perhaps because he had exhausted all the other gods, he chose her, and she helped him survive. Years later, when it came into his head that humanity had to be reunited with nature and return to his divine roots, he went to her. And she did it, because with her help, and the help of my father, she could, and in truth, it had been something shed wanted for a long time. Her creatures were, after all, designed to survive the end of the world by the hand of God Himself. Consider that for a moment and see if it doesnt arouse suspicions as to who really masterminded this whole series of events. So, the three of them combined their powers to create what you have come to call Red Day . . . my father died in the process, Alva died shortly after, according to the plans of my bloodline, and Vuru will die soon, when the fruits of our labor are ripenedwhen our final objective is realized. But what is the final objective? you ask.

She smiles again and says to you, Why do you think I kept the students of Myre High alive? Its not because I like them. Its because I need them, to help me create my perfect race! You have glances out the windows of my palace and seen earths dead constructing towers of black stone and cultivating fields of magma and you have heard the testimonies of Vuru, Johnny, Billy and even the different pieces of yourself, yet you still fail to understand just what it is that Im trying to accomplish. Im rebuilding the world, Adam. In my image, with myself as God. Do you realize the depth and width of my power here? Do you understand that I could bend the gates of heaven and stir the stars around in the sky? I can read your every thought and I know your every secret. I know your deepest fears and your greatest desires, your true feelings and thoughts. Hell, I know you better than you know yourself, Adam Augustus Black! she speaks so passionately and with such presence that you feel like a small kitten seeking shelter from a hurricane just listening to her. I know when you want to fuck me! I know when youre afraid of me! And I fucking know when youre lying to me! she screams, grabbing you around the neck with a hand as soft as an infants, but with a grip like an industrial vice. So tell me, what the angel said to you! Whats behind that door! What door? you ask, not even making as effort to conceal your fear and panic. THE FUCKING RUSTY DOOR WITH CHIPS OF GREEN PAIN ON IT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE HALLWAY IN THE EASTERN WING OF MY FUCKING PLANTATION, YOU FUCK! HOW DID IT GET THERE AND WHY CANT I GET IT OPEN? her voice booms, shaking the room and causing your ears to ring like tests from the Emergency Broadcasting System when shes finished. I dont know why the door wont open! you shout, but it probably sounds more like iyunnawidadowonnopun! But, she says, in a voice that could be called sexy if it didnt smash sexy to pieces by surpassing its epitome tenfold, you do know what the angel told you, so tell me. No, you say, shaking violently with rage and fear and lust and pretty much every emotion above, below or beyond those three. I wont tell you. Oh, thats okay she says, slinking down your chests with feline grace, running her fingernails over your shirt in zigzags, gliding down to your crotch like butter in a hot skillet. She unzips your zipper and pulls out the best part of you, who, despite your fears, shows no objection at all to a little game of in and out. I have ways of getting it out of you. You open your mouth to utter an objection, but her lips touch your dick and all resistance

sort of evaporates into a little cloud of pure lust that sends out little bolts of lightning to strike your pounding heart, leaving the orgasmic roars of thunder in their wake . . . and shes barely even gotten started. I shouldnt be doing this, you say aloud. She pulls her lips off of you just long enough to answer, I know. Doesnt that make it so much more fun? Yes, says something inside of you, fuck yes! You try to shut it up, but it wont, and youre having a hard time bringing yourself to care because the most beautiful, seductive, powerful creature that ever was is soiling her lips with your vulgar little piece of man-meat and the heavens are singing. This is the kind of shit that Wagner wrote Operas about! Snap out of it, you stupid boy! Stop thinking with your dick! screams Vuru, through static. Visions of Lisa start to dance through your head. The slope of her back, the roundness of her ass, the suppleness of her breasts, the warm glow of her belly, the subdued passion in her eyes--the humanity of her beauty. What was sucking your dick now was something beautiful, without a doubt, but something is something and someone is something else. What the hell! shouts Crissi. And you realize that your dick is going limp in her delicate hands . . . a site you never thought youd rejoice. Its not going to work, Crissi. Ill never tell you. You will, she says, showing no emotion, and I know just how to make you. You already know what shes going to do. Shes going to go get Lisa from downstairs, and tell you to make a choice between telling her what she wants to know or watching the girl you love suffer and die. It would be a choice, alright, but not the choice the angel spoke of. You know enough to know that. *** Predictably, the predictable transpires. And you find yourself I the exact position that you spent the last few minutes trying to figure out how to handle. You wont kill her, you say to Crissi, who holds a flailing Lisa by her right arm with a grip as unyielding as Rush Limbaugh. And why not? asks Crissi, Are you going to tell me what I want to know. Better, you say, Ill show you, provided you still have the key that Alva presented your

father. The key to Heaven? Ive already used it. I used it to open the doorway to this place. Yes, and I want to use it on the rusty door. That door has no key-hole. It doesnt need one. How could you come to such a conclusion? Dont help her, Adam! shouts Lisa. My intuition, you tell her. If theres one thing Ive learned about this brave new world of ours, its that intuition governs mens actions better than reason . . . maybe it was true of the old world too and I just never noticed. The puzzle of the two wells . . . yes, your solution was unknowable to a mind basing its actions upon logical thought, yet you knew it just the same . . . I understand. This world was built with you in mind . . . It was created so that only you could solve its riddles, only you could unlock its doors and lead its people. Yes, from the very begin everything which has transpired has been to your benefit. If I dont end you here and now, you will overcome me somehow . . . but. . . . But you wanna know whats behind the door, you say smugly. No, this is impossible. Things cannot transpire this way. They can and they will, you tell her. There is no such thing as freewill. Thats what the angel told me. She also told me that there would be such a thing as freewill one day, and that I would have to make the first ever real choice in human history. I couldnt ever make that choice if you killed me, and since you have no freewill, youve gotta stick to the fucking script and give me the key and take me to that door. That is ridiculous, says Crissi, tossing Lisa aside and focusing on you with eyes like black holes. I can kill you at any time I please. Then do it, you say. I will, she says, raising one glowing green hand to the level of your face, and nothing can stop me.

Nno-o-o-o-o-o! shrieks Lisa. Seeing the look of unrelenting enmity in Crissis pretty face forces you to wonder whether or not you just took a bad course of action, because as far as you could see, you were about to die. Tretch-yur-us bitch! shouts a great, bubbling voice to your right. You turn to see the mammoth form of Billy, his face no more than so much rotten ground beef, sewn together with fishing twine or dental floss. He is still wearing his cowboy hat, though it barely fits on his malformed head, and chunks of his brains are crusted on the brim. In his big-asbowling-ball hands he clutches a stick so big it might be called a small log. You planned it this was from the verra beginnin. An here I thought we had sumptin specialer than Special K and Special Ed combined. Oh my, says Crissi, whose angry face seems to have melted like a wax candle. Billy doesnt waste another moment talking, instead he charges Crissi with the speed and vigor of a raging bull on crack chasing the only cow in the pasture thats into anal. She responds just in time with a blast of green energy, but it proves as ineffective as kicking a woman in the crotch. About one-tenth of a second later, with a revolting combination of Hollywood sound effects, Crissis face magically turns into a blood-sprinkler and you think the sack of meat that is Billys face is smiling. Crissis body crumples up into a heap of deadness on the floor and Lisa screams, not in fear, but joy. Billy turns, looks to you and you think, this is it, Im dead anyway. But he says, I admire your brutality . . . then, he collapses, causing the whole room to shake. Only his hate kept him alive, you observe. A second later, you realize you were wrong, when you hear the chaos from outside: screeching, howling, scraping, exploding. You dash to the nearest window, half-ignoring Lisas question of, What is that? She joins you at the window and together you watch the zombies fall to the earth, screeching at inhuman pitches. The fires of the magma fields seem extinguished. Without Crissi this place is falling apart. Everything she created with her magic is unraveling. Weve got to hurry, you say. I know the way out! she shouts. No. We cant leave! Not yet. Weve got to find the key and the door! Then, on further consideration, you say, Ive got to, anyway. You need to go! No! she protests, Theres no way Im leaving you again!

I have just one more thing to do, and then we can spend the rest of our lives together, you tell her. No! No! Youre not going to make it! If I let you go, Ill never see you again, I know that in my heart! You seize her arms and pull her in close to you, kiss her tightly on the lips, then, looking directly in her eyes, you tell her, with complete sincerity, what you think is almost certainly a lie: I wont die. I promise. She looks at you for a moment, her eyes confirming something beyond words and says, I love you, Adam. I love you to, Leese. She leaves you now, in this room full of dead enemies, and you close your eyes and begin to let your mind reach out and search for the key. I know I can find it, if I concentrate, you think. And without opening your eyes or being aware that youre doing it, your feet start to move, carrying you out of the room and down one of the many long hallways of the onceproud Plantation, now melting and grinding into a visual that youd think looked something like a collaboration between Salvador Dali and M.C. Escher if your eyes were open. Many minutes later, much to your surprise, you find yourself standing in huge bedroom with walls that seem to stretch up into forever so that youd need a telescope to see the ceiling. It really is quite dizzying, but you dont have time to admire the effect. The key is in here somewhere, you say . . . The bed. Under the pillow. Youre right. The thing itself looks rather unimpressive. You had envisioned a golden skeleton key reminiscent of those found in pirate cartoon, but it looks more like an old car key. If you didnt know its importance, youd never have given it a second glance. You grab it in your hand then, gripping it tightly and closing your eyes once more, Now, lets see if my magical feet can find the door. You stand there for many minutes with your eyes closed, this time wondering if your feet are moving all by themselves again until you cant help but open your eyes and take a peek to make sure. Its a good thing you do, because standing before you lying in front of you is Milo the Bastard and over him stands his father, Mr. McQueen. He has been yelling at you for sometime, it seems, but in your tranced state, you hadnt heard him. doing here? How did you get here and whats happening to this place? Aaron and Crissi are dead, you say, And this place is falling apart without them.

You fool! he screeches, Youve damned us all! This is where all the food is! What are we to eat? You ignore his question. What did you do? you ask, looking down upon Milo, who seems to be rather peacefully asleep. I didnt do a damn thing, says the man, He died in the battle for this school, but Aaron brought him back for me. We were talking a minute ago and he just collapsed. I thought it was from the anger, but I guess its just that the spell is undone. I guess hes dying. Stupid boy. I loved him like I shoulda, but Ill be damned if I ever liked the brat. It dont matter now. Were all dead now. Maybe not, you say, closing your eyes again, knowing full well that the man will not attack. Hes got nothing left to fight for. A moment later, a little alarm goes off in your head and you open your eyes to the site of the big rusty door. The key in your hand is lit up like a flashlight, only not focused in any one direction, and, bathed in its light, the door is no longer a rusty old ugly thing, but a glittering gold column of imposing beauty of such intensity that it is necessary to partially shield your eyes from its glory. Here goes nothing, you think as you extend the key, which has now lost all sense of form, to the center or the glorious door. It shatters into a million pieces, revealing a white room, bereft of furniture. At its heart, sitting cross-legged like a Buddhist monk, with wings extended as wide as the room itself, but so perfectly white that you barely notice them, sits a girl so beautiful that your mind can hardly handle the sight of Her. You know immediately that She is God. I somehow knew that Id meet you before this was all through, you tell her. She smiles at you. I thought Id be angry, but looking at you now, I realize that its impossible to be angry at you. Thats untrue, Adam, she says with a voice that soothes all pain, Many have spoken to my face in anger, and some of them, I cannot blame. I am a trying God and not so infallible as some insist. I do have to ask . . . why did you let all this happen? She looks down, as if shamed, even though shame seems beneath Her, and says with deep

sadness, Even I am a slave to the master plan. But that is why you are here, because it is high time that I lifted my hand up from the steering wheel as I should have done in the beginning and present you a choice, a decision that you must make on your own, with a mind as free as my own, which is to say, a mind as free as it can be. What is my choice? Lisa Martin, the girl whom you love, walked to the exit of this place, only to decide that she could not abandon you, and turned around to find you in this vast and disintegrating place, says God. Oh my God, you say. Then, Er, sorry. Forgot you were sitting there. God blesses you with another smile. There is a machine her, the Aries, which, under the strain of Crissis demise, is only minutes from exploding. But Myre high will be spared, right? you ask, feeling sick. No. How, this place is completely separate from Myre high! Is it even in the same dimension? Same planet. Fifty miles to the south of Myre. The blast will be that big? No, but the two places are connected, remember? Jesus, you say, not bothering to apologize this time. What can I even do? What choices do I have? Well, you are linked to Vuru Raha herself. She bears your child. This connection is stronger than you realize . . . it can take you anywhere on this earth, for she, not I, is the keeper now of this planet. When you leave this room you can tell her to take you to Lisa, and then transport the both of you to either the garden or to the temple. Or, you can leave this room and ask her to return you to Mire high, and then seal this place off from that side. Vuru will know how to do it now that Crissi Drakes hold on this world is gone. There are other options I suppose, ones that would leave everyone in tact, but its more likely that theyd result in everyones death . . . your time, you see, is extremely limited.

I can see now how people could become angry to you, even to your beautiful face. You will learn to forgive Me some day, Adam, she says, seeming genuinely hurt, of that, I have faith. And then, with a perplexing suddenness, you find yourself in the hallway of Crissis plantation once again. The spot where the door once stood just an empty spot of wall, melting into nothing. Are you there, Vuru? you ask aloud, knowing that its unnecessary, but powerless to convince your heart of it. When there is no response your heart begins thumping. Oh shit, you think. So much for the first human decision. Im just gonna stand here and wait to die. Im here, Adam, she says with an unbecoming deadness in here voice, forgetting to refer to herself as we, And I await your choice. So you heard all that, huh? Yes. I saw it. I saw it. You already know what Ill choose, dont you? Actually, Adam, I have no idea what youll choose, but youd better hurry. The first real decision in human history, you discover, is not at all hard to make, though you imagine youll spend the rest of your life regretting it either way. So, you think, whatll it be, the girl I love, or the people Im sworn to? One life, or hundreds? The choice I know is right, or the one that I want to make? You have no time! You must decide now! Vuru screams in a panic. You make your decision. A BRIEF DISCURSION FROM THE JOURNAL OF JOHNNY YARROWS:

April 19 My dad is such an asshole. Hes always coming in my room and yelling about how dirty it is like it matters

to him how I live in a room that he never even comes into unless he has something he wants to yell about. What a prick! Sometimes, late when I lie in bed at night, after Im done jerking off, I pretend Im downstairs smothering him with a damn pillow. Sometimes I really wish I could do it. If I thought I could get away with it, I would. I have no love for him. In other news, I still keep having those dreams, you know, about the red skies and the black earth, where Im getting ate alive by fucking bugs! I swear to god I cant close my fucking eyes without seeing that shit, but theres this guy with me that saves my life and (I know it sounds faggy) takes my hand and leads me to safety. Even though I know it could never come true, I wake up sometimes and Im sure that it will. Strange. Well, my hand is tired. Fuck ya later! THE FINAL WORDS OF JAKE CARTER Im sorry, Lisa. I should have told him. I should have told you. I worked for Aaron from the beginning. Well, I guess I was really working for Crissi, but even I didnt know that. I fought with Alva, yes, thats true, but I was a, yknow, a turncoat. Please dont cry. Im sure things will be okay somehow. I know I dont have the right to say that. I never knew who I was really working for until he told me, and by then I was so ashamed I didnt want to admit it to him, even though I knew I could be of help. The truth is . . . I kind of held a grudge against him. I love him, you know. Like you love him. But I knew I couldnt have him, so part of me wanted to go against him. No, Im fine. I just feel like a human turd, thats all. I never wanted this to happen, but itll be okay, somehow. I just know it will. It has to be. I thought that it would all be okay after I got rid of Aaron, but, dammit, I fell right into her plans. I cant believe I was so stupid! Ive done so much wrong that I really dont deserve to live. No, dont touch me. I cant handle it. I cant. Please. No. I . . . I love the both of you so much. Ive never felt closer to two people. I dont understand it myself, but Ive hurt both of you and I dont deserve your forgiveness. Did you hear that? Hey! Stop! No! You cant take her. Lisa, run! No, stop! You motherfucker, I cant . . . ugh . . . shit, Lisa! Lisa! . . . oh god . . . I love you both, Lisa! Have faith! . . . have faith . . . oh god . . . I never even got laid . . . FROM THE JOURNAL OF CURTIS ALVA:

Undated [translated from Seraphim] Everything went completely according to plan, God forgive me. A student named Aaron Bittor has started something of a rebellion against me, but thats to be expected from kids under so much pressure. Once I lead them to The Mighty Goddesss Eden, they will be overcome with a peace unknown to them, a peace man has not felt since before original sin. Unfortunately, two more had to be lost before that peace could be found: Adam Black and Jonathan Yarrows. Adam spotted the beacon of Vurus temple in the distance, and I couldnt permit that information around the school just yet. Not until the Garden is done. I could have isolated them, but that might have started the teachers talking, so instead I sent them out on a journey, bearing a Death Hex. Vuru will take care of them. Still, I wonder if there deaths could have been avoided and Im now sure that they could have been in a hundred-thousand ways. Maybe I just have a taste for blood. Maybe its the only solution my mind even knows anymore. If so, may God have mercy on my soul and the souls that Ive dragged with me to this new world.
DAY ???: EDEN

Half asleep, you and roll over onto your side, wrapping one smooth muscular arm around the torso of your mate. Her eyes are wide open and filled with the stars. You look into them and think you could look into them all day. The bug-lady sits upon the grassy hill above you, just staring down, smiling. You really are beautiful, Adam, she says. Even more beautiful than the first Adam. First Adam, Vuru? you ask her. Yes, she says, A long time ago there was a man named Adam with a mate called Eve, and they lived in a Garden as beautiful as this one, given to them by the Lord God. He told them that they could eat of any fruit in the garden, except for the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Its fruit was forbidden. They didnt eat it, did they? You ask, enraptured. Your mate, Lisa, looks intensely interested as well. Im afraid they did, says the Bug-lady called Vuru. Why, if The Lord God said no? you ask. Because . . . well, I guess because it was the only fruit they hadnt yet tasted. What happened then? you ask in a very quiet voice. Well, God kicked them out of the Garden, and for a long, long time, God stayed mad at them. Did he ever forgive them? Lisa asks. He forgave them from the beginning, said Vuru. He had known they would take it. It was all part of Gods plan, you see. He was waiting to see how long it would take them to forgive Him. And did they? she asks. I think they did, says Vuru. Vuru? you ask. Yes, Adam.

We can eat whatever fruits we want, right? Yes, dear. You can eat whatever you want, and soon, there will be no fruit that you arent sick of, and then, maybe, Ill make some that you arent allowed to eat. But well eat them anyway, right? you say with a clever smile on your lips. Right you are, says Vuru with a motherly smile. You wanna go run through the high grass with me, Adam? asks Lisa, whos completely lost interest in Vurus story. Okay! you shout, jumping to your feet and running through the brush with her right at your heals. Behind you, you can hear Vuru talking to someone and even though she told you not to, you sneak into her head and listen to the conversation through her ears. It seems kind of sad, says a voice that you might have once recognized as Johnny Yarrows. I mean, Im glad hes happy, but its like hes an idiot. Hes as bright as he ever was, says Vuru, but hes lost the pain that tempered that intelligence. The truth is that as time wears on, the pain will return, and the intellect will grow and it will all begin anew, but this time, man will be in control of his own destiny. There will be no divine hand guiding his every action, pushing him in the right direction. That was the whole purpose of all of this, for God to correct Her mistake. But it seems to me that youre controlling them. I mean, whats all this stuff about giving them a forbidden fruit when theyre ready? Johnny, you can be so human at times, says Vuru. Theyll find theyre own apple. And they wont damn themselves with a single bite, theyll do it slowly, over the course of many, many years. They will slowly rediscover pain and the world around them will slowly reflect it, and in the end, theyll be all the better for it, because with pain comes wisdom, and with wisdom comes evolution, and with evolution comes . . . well, me. Dont you see, humanity now has a means to ascend as it never did before? And what about the child in your belly? He asks. I will give birth to him. And then what? Im a Goddess, Johnny, not a prophet.

And at this point, you stop listening. You dont understand what either of them are really talking about, but it makes you feel something that you cant recall ever feeling before. Something that you cant even find a word to describe, except maybe . . . pain? You dont want to think about it, so you turn and trackle Lisa to the ground, giggling and wrestling with her until she is worn out and lets you take her. You make love to her (for the first time?) in the high grass. Strangely, you find yourself thinking, Man has returned to the garden that Vuru created, his divinity is restored and he is once again a part of nature. A part of you understands that this return is not permanent. You smile.

NOTES

First, the uneditted outlines written for all of the videos in my idiots series.
BABIES ARE IDIOTS Babies. Our culture loves those little mewling fecal factories. Two of the top ten most viewed videos on YouTube are of babies. Charlie Bit My Finger Again with nearly 211 million views and Hahaha with neary 130 million. That's more than the population of the UK twice over. And it's just a baby laughing. What is he laughing at? The comedy styling of Bill Hicks? No. John Kennedy Toole's brilliant work of social satire A Confederacy Of Dunces? No. The surreal sketch comedy of Monty Python? No. A witty anecdote told by a charmingly intelligent associate? Nope. It's just his parents going BLOO! I don't get it. Am I missing some hidden comedy gem here? Have I wasted my life trying to formulate actual jokes based on social issues of relevance when I could have just been walking up to people and saying, BLOO! the whole time? Let's face facts here: babies are fucking stupid. Think about it. What's the last good conversation you had with a baby? When's the last time you saw a baby reading Voltaire? Have you ever heard of a baby making even one major scientific discovery? Babies are idiots. They lie around in a crib, shitting themselves, constantly crying for attention like little Lindsay Lohans. Aww, but they're so cute! Sure. They're cute. They've got little tiny bodies and great big heads and gigantic fucking soulless eyes. That's pretty much the recipe for cute. That's why Pikachu is cute. Same formula. Small body. Big Head. Big eyes. That's why puppies are cute. Small body. Big head. Big eyes. That's why Chibi's are cute. Small body. Big head. Big eyes. Sure. Babies are cute. But you know what else is cute? Girls. And unlike babies, girls are useful. You can have sex with them. They can make you a sandwich. Some models even come equipped with the ability to have an intelligent conversationthough that feature is still in Beta testing. What can you do with a baby? It's too small to have sex with, and even if you do, you go to jail. So that's pretty lame. It can't really propel itself forward in any meaningful way and has no coordination, so it can't possibly make you a sandwich or fetch you a drink. Hell, even some dogs can fetch you a drink. Not only will it not do anything for you, but it will make you do things for it. You have to feed it. And I don't mean you just give it food. You actually have to sit there and waste your valuable time feeding it. Either holding a bottle for it or shoveling goop into its mouth with a tiny little spoon. You also have to hold it. Burp it. And worst of all, change it's diapers. Let's think about that for a minute. This is a little tiny human being that cannot control

when it pisses and shits. So, our elegant solution was to invent a product to wrap around their potty parts. Here's a better solution. Throw the damn thing off a cliff and spare yourselves the trauma of seeing and smelling mushy fecal matter day in and day out, with no respite. Of course, you can't throw the damn thing off a cliff because then the authorities get all uppity. Did you throw away a perfectly good baby? That's wasteful! The only good thing about babies is that they eventually grow up. But here's the problem, 9 times out of 10, they grow up into failures. If you're considering having a kid, do yourself a favor. Go to a public place and look around. See all those morons? Odds are good, that's what your baby will look like it 30 years. Is that really what you want to do to this world, pollute it with another boring fucking loser in line at Starbucks? And let's say your baby grows up to be successful. So what? You think they're going to help you out? Bullshit. You're going to a nursing home where they won't visit you. Or let's say you have a hot daughter or a hot son. You were the one who made them. You were the one who raised them. But now that they look good, can you tap that? No. That would be incest and it's considered wrong. That's like telling a farmer he can't eat his own crops. The really lame thing is that the loser they do hook up with will be someone you hate. So you spent all that time cultivating some hotty only so she could blow the first guy who worked up the nerve to say hi to her. What a waste of your precious time. And don't get me wrong. I'm all for procreation. I'm all for keeping this big human machine chugging away. We're the most interesting thing in this universe. All I'm saying is this: babies are fucking idiots and they're overrated. I like flowers. I think they're pretty. But I don't give a fuck about seeds. In my opinion, a baby is still a seed. If it grows into an interesting person, then I'm interested in that person. But I know that most of them will grow up into bank tellers and traffic copsso I'm not too impressed with them as a whole. I'm glad my mom felt differently though. Because I grew up to be fucking awesome. CHILDREN ARE IDIOTS Children are even more popular then babies, because they retain baby-like cuteness but, unlike babies, they are capable of speech. Unfortunately, they've got nothing worthwhile to say. Half the time it's undecipherable gibberish: mamynmiwetodapu anisabuttafwy. And even when you do understand them, it's never anything fascinating. It's always some boring shit. I dug a hole in my backyard yesterday and I saw a worm. Big fucking deal, you little imbecile. Who hasn't seen a worm? If I wanted to see worms, I'd look up a stray dog's asshole. When they're not boring you with the most pointless anecdotes in the world, they're making the worlds shittiest arts and crafts. Macaroni pictures? Seriously, macaroni is for eating and even then, only if you're a broke ass loserit's not for gluing haphazardly to a piece of paper. It's a fire truck, mommy! No, it's a tree that died for nothing with pasta that could

have been used to feed a bachelor somewhere glued all over its corpse in a completely random configuration. A bachelor is starving tonight because his macaroni is stuck to some ignorant little moron's piece of red construction paper. A fire truck! Peh! I'd let my house burn to the ground before letting myself be rescued by such a noodly abomination. And fucking glitter. What socially irredeemable putz thought it was a good idea to give them glitter? Welcome to a gallery of the biggest eyesores to ever enter into our reality. Sparkles, they don't work for Twilight and they don't work for your picture of you and your BFF riding a giant butterfly to the magical castle. Fuck glitter. Also, they stare. You ever catch a kid just staring at you? Their eyes all filled with disgusting nave curiosity. And even when you catch them, they don't look away. They just keep staring. What am I, a fucking exhibit to you? Creepy little bastard. And no matter how fucking dumb a kid isthey've always got that parent who talks about how bright they are. Did you see that? Little Clifford just tied his own shoe lace. And he's only 7. I didn't learn to tie my shoes until I was 8. He's very advanced. No. He's stupid and you were even stupider. Tying your shoes is not an accomplishment at any age. I don't care if you were tying shoelaces in utero. I'm still not impressed. One thing kids get too much credit for is this idea that they have such tremendous imaginations. A walrus with buck teeth! Absurd! What an imagination my child has! Horse cocks! There's nothing imaginative about that. If your child is creating rich worlds with their own deep symbolism and iconography then hey, that's a smart fucking kid. Failing that, he or she is just another dunce and should be treated accordingly. Another piece of conventional wisdom that is stunningly full of shit: kids are innocent. So sweet. So pure. Yeah, right. What mental invalid came up with this shit and how has it survived thousands of years of empirical evidence to the contrary? Kids are vicious little sacks of pure malevolent cruelty who violently reject anyone or anything that is different than they are. I know. I was the kid that got fucking picked on for being just a little bit strange. Don't tell me that 6-year-olds are innocent. I got my ass kicked by 6-year-olds all the time when I was one of them. Never one-on-one of course. They hunt in packs of conformity enforcers, prejudicial cunts trying to beat you into compliance with their social norms. A lot of people complain that children are loud. I don't mind that. People who are bothered by loud noises are just whiny and pathetic in my book. Unless you're in a movie theater or library, you're not entitled to silence. The world doesn't revolve around you, you selfish fucks. What I do hate is if a child talks to me in public though. For one, I'm nervous that it's parents are going to think I want to abduct it. The only reason I would abduct a child is to feed it to the pet alligator I will hopefully one day have. For another, it is now officially encroaching on my life in a substantive way that is genuinely disconcerting to me. Hi! It

chirps, revoltingly. Erm. Hello, I say, walking or turning away and hoping it will vanish. Why is it talking to me? Does it think I have candy. I do, of course, but I'm not sharing. The biggest problem with children by far though is that they ruin everything. No tits or cursing on TV! Why? Children might see it. They might see it and come under the false impression that tits and profanity exist in the world. Every censorship organization in American history from the Comics Code Authority to the MPAA came about with the goal of protecting children. Watch a movie called This Film Is Not Yet Rated and learn how a group of nutty religious soccer mom's took control of art in America by using their children as stepping stones to that sort of power. Children. Horrible little mutant demon children. Our culture revolves around protecting them. Why? Because it takes a village. Wrong. It doesn't take a village. It just takes a brain. Too bad those are in short supply. TEENS ARE IDIOTS People got pissed off when I said babies were stupid. Aw, TJ, they're just babies! Their brains haven't even developed yet. Yeah, well, neither have yours, apparently. People also got pissed off when I said children are stupid, Aw, come on, TJ. They're just kids. They're still learning. Oh yeah. Why don't they learn to not be such obnoxious little bags of shit? However, I bet no one will get pissed of now that I'm saying teenagers are stupid. Everyone thinks teenagers are stupid, including other teenagers. That's why, in order to keep pissing you guys off, I can't say something popular. I can't say that teenagers are stupid. I have to say the opposite. I have to say the teenagers are smart. Luckily, I also happen to believe that. They're the only human age group that don't take it in the ass from authority. Teenagers tell their parents to go fuck themselves. They don't do their homework. They're trying to assert their little identities and so anyone who gets in the way of that gets their arrogant scorn. Children hate teenagers because teenagers are scary. Teenagers beat the fuck out of them if given the chance. Adults hate teenagers because teenagers are unruly and volatile. That's what I like that about them. I've done everything in my power to mentally retain the attitudes of a 15-year-old, simply because I think it's the only attitude in life worth respecting. It's the attitude that says: I want to do shit my way. Fuck everybody else. We're conditioned in this world to view our own desires as somewhat dirty and loathsome. We should think of others. We shouldn't be so selfish. Bullshit, the really selfish people are the ones who tell you that shitwho want you to put their interests in front of your own. Don't get me wrong though, teenagers are still idiots. They're not really smart, I suppose. They're just smarter than everyone else.

They prop up shit like Katy Perry and Transformers 2 with their utter lack of good taste. They spend most of their free time texting and playing video games and hanging out in front of places while acting as though they don't want to be there. They're typically thoughtless, witless little shitheads. And not that I have any room to talk, but they dress funny too. Teenage girls are annoying because they go out into public dressed like sluts and then if you look at their massive titties there is a segment of our society that will happily declare you a pedophile for oggling those poor children. Children, my ass. Children don't have D cups. Children don't have big, luscious round asses crammed into designer jeans. Teenage boys are annoying because they don't know how to fucking talk. They won't make eye-contact. They say um and like every other word. They like shitty music, though slightly less shitty than the music liked by teenage girls. They are mostly too nervous to tap that teenage girl ass, which is just a shame because someone ought to be hitting it and us experienced males can't do it without Officer Friendly breathing down our necks. You want to fuck teenage girls, eh? Well, in prison, you are the teenage girl. Fucking cops. For the most part though, I like teenagers. They blow their money on stupid shit like weed and Xbox games while their parents say, Shouldn't you be saving money for college? Fuck you mom and dad. I need to get my smoke on. I remember my own days as a teenager. Selling porno mags and cigarettes out of my backpack because I looked old enough to fool the Indian guy who owned the nearby gas station. Or maybe he just pretended to be fooled. I guess that, with the advent of the internet, you probably couldn't give porno mags away anymore. But this was in the days when the internet was around but most people didn't have it. If they did, it was in the living room. Your mom could walk in at any minute. And it was slow. Just looking at a JPEG took a fucking eternity. You had to learn to jerk off on this sporadic bursts, spaced minutes apart. So, magazines were still the reigning porn delivery system. You could get weirder shit on the net, but for speed and concealability, Penthouse and Hustler were still way ahead of their cyber competition. You know what I did with the money I made peddling my porn and smoke? I probably made $1,500 over the course of a school yearand it all went to books, comic books and fast food. I didn't save a dime for anything useful. Fuck pragmatism. Fuck a car. Fuck a college education. I want to read Batman and eat a cheeseburger. That's the teen mentality, and it's fucking great. It's stupidity, sure, but it's this wonderfully selfish Zen stupidity that is actually the closest we come in life to true freedom. When we're teenagers we never conceive of the possibility that someone might one day stuff us into a cubicle and make us sort through data all day. We never imagined that our

adulthood will consist of selling cars or mopping floors or being night watchmen or the very same cops that beat our asses and steal our weed. We never think we're going to grow up and lose our middle fingers, but we do. The authority figures that we rebel against win. Not by finally reigning us in, but by assimilating us into the adult collective. ONE OF US! ONE OF US! WE WILL MAKE YOU ONE OF US! Here's your mortgage. Here's your SUV. Here's some idiot kids of your own to worry about. Enjoy. The sad thing is, you don't know what you've lost. You have an idea that something is hollow inside of you, but you can't put your finger on it. Let me help you. It was that Zen selfishness. It was that healthy hatred for authority. Now you kiss ass on a daily basis. You suck authorities dick. And no matter how much you swallow, you will never fill that hole inside your chest. It will only get bigger and more empty. Until it consumes you. Teenagers aren't idiots. The title is a lie. Viva la zen stupidity! Viva la zen selfishness! Viva la teen angst! ADULTS ARE IDIOTS part 1 (20's and 30's) Being in your 20's is fucking horrible. It's when you begin to realize that all that wisdom and certainty that you thought you'd gain in your 20's is a big bullshit lie of extraordinary proportions. You're the same dumb fuck you always were. All that's changed is that you know have a lot more responsibilities. The days of telling your parents to go fuck themselves are over and the days of kissing their asses in the hopes that they'll lend you rent money have begun. And those are just the first asses you'll have to kiss. Remember that half-ass job you got when you were 16 where you told your boss to suck your dick after he complained that you didn't wash some dish properly? That doesn't fly anymore. Now you actually need that job. So you have to say, Yes, sir. Sorry about that. It won't happen again. You've become a good little trooper. You had to take shit off of people as a kid, but you dragged your feet the whole time. You let them know that you didn't take shit lightly. You threw a few middle fingers in their direction. Now the middle fingers are only in your head. You talk to your friends not about what you did to stand up for yourself, but what you would have done to stand up for yourself if you didn't need this job so bad. All the while, you think that behind the veil of the yes-sirring sad sack that you've become you're still the same person. You still know what you stand for. But you stand for nothing. Because every time you smile and say Paper or plastic? you die inside. I'm just doing this to pay for college, you say to yourself. Once I get my Associates in Mongolian History I'll be set for life. I won't ever have to do this soul-sucking job again. The only problem is that Mongolian History doesn't qualify you to do shit but be the Waitress who knows a lot about Mongolian history.

Or maybe you're more practical-minded and you get a business degree. Congratulations. Good luck getting that low-paying entry level position in an office run by a megalomaniacal fucktard boss that 300 other people with the same degree are also trying to get. Maybe you're an over-achiever or your from a rich family or both and you actually get a degree in something worth a flying bag of monkey dicks. You're getting a law degree or a business degree from somewhere that actually matters like Harvard or Stanford or some other pretentious cocksucker universitystill, so fucking what? Do you know what that enables you to do? It enables you to work a high stress job and support a gold-digging spouse and some shiftless fucking no-good kids that resent you for spending too much time at work. By the time you hit your 30's, the way in which your life sucks depends on what you did in your 20's. If you were lazy and shiftless then you stop being this cool guy that people look up to as this nonconformist badass and you start being the guy that people talk shit about: He doesn't even have a job. Sadly, this is actually the least stupid option. Others talking shit about you is a small price to pay for not being someone else's bitch. If you worked hard, but only in menial or semi-menial jobs like janitor or stripper or construction worker or waitress then you'll find that you are trapped in a dead-end profession with zero upward mobility. In your 30's you begin to realize that the job your doing now is going to be the kind of job you'll be doing for the rest of your life. If you got your college education in something useless like French Poetry, then you can probably count on a pretty similar fate. If you got your college education in something practical like business then by the time you hit your 30's you might be on your way to managing a small office. Or you might just be destined to crunch data until the day you die. It all depends on how much ass your willing to kiss and how much back you're willing to stab. However, even if you become the manager you're going to be miserable. If any of the idiots under you fuck up, then in your bosses eyes, you fucked up. Your boyfriend or girlfriend will constantly insist that you be more assertive to achieve even greater office power. You'll never get the raises you want. You'll always be stressed. And eventually, you'll recognize that your power is meaningless. If you're some high-powered professional, then you'll be surrounded by ass-kissing sycophants. You'll never know who really cares about you. You'll never know if anyone really cares about you. You'll be ruthless, because that's how you've always been, but you'll wonder deep inside your heart why no matter how much wealth and power you accrue, you still feel like a desolate husk of a human being. Only idiots would create such a meaningless hell for themselves to languish in. We must therefore conclude that young people are, regardless of social class or personality, complete

fucking idiots. A lot of people will wonder: TJ. You're in your twenties. Does that mean you're an idiot too? The obvious answer is yes, but the obvious answer is wrong. I'm fucking awesome. Why? Because this is my rant and I make the rules. So, I'm smart. And my friends are smart. Everyone else is fucking stupid though. ADULTS ARE IDIOTS part 2 (40's and 50's) When you turn 40, you develop a brand new emotion called moral outrage. You know how right now in life you get offended when someone smacks your mother in the face or calls you an ugly piece of trash not worth the 10 cents you whore your sister out for? Well, imagine getting that pissed off about what amounts to nothing. 14-year-old girls in bikinis?! I'm outraged! This country is going down the tubes. Also, there's too much cursing on the TV! Children might hear. And you know how impressionable children are. If you're a democrat, you become a republican. If you're a republican, you become Dick Cheney. You know, the living embodiment of pure evil. Ironically, while you are bitching about 14-year-olds being too promiscuous in the media, you are having an affair with an 18-year-old as part of you midlife crisis. Ah, the midlife crises. That's when you realize, Holy shit. I'm about halfway to the grave and I've accomplished nothing! So you make impulse buys like a new car and you start cheating on your wife (or husbandwomen and gay guys have midlife crises too) with a much younger person. You figure, If I can fuck youth, I can have youth. You become a Ponce De Leon of pussylooking for a fountain of youth that doesn't and can't exist. But you can't fuck like you used toand let's face it, you were never that greatso the only way to keep a young girl or guy interested is to buy them shiny objects. They're just exploiting you, and you know it, but you don 't care. You want to be young. So you pop viagra or cialis. You buy lot's of lube. It's barely even about the sex. It's about youth. They've got it. You want it. If you're a man, the midlife crisis abates after a year or two. You make peace with it. Well, I'm not young anymore, you say. You accept it. You move on. If you're a woman, the midlife crises doesn't stop until you officially become an old woman, around the age of 65 or so. You just keep putting on more makeup. Trying to convince yourself you're still looking good. I may not be a seven anymore, but I'm still a six. Meanwhile, your boobs are sagging. Your face is wrinkling. Your energy is flagging. You find yourself laughing at things that aren't funny. Your friends become the lame ass motherfuckers that your teenage self would have despised as prudish old cunts. You know that no man really wants to fuck you anymore. Sure, you can find guys that will do itbut the line isn't forming around the block like it used to. And you're the one pursuing them, not the other way around like it used to be.

And you've got a husband, but he doesn't want a damn thing to do with you. He's too busy watching The O'reilly Factor and drinking too much so he forgets that he's stuck with you. And you're too busy lying to yourself and wallowing in your own quiet desperation to have a relationship with him beyond the occasional odd complaint about how he doesn't do shit for you. Really, you don't want him too. He'd only fuck it up anyway. You hate his rotten guts. If you've got kids they're probably heading off to live on their own. They'll still ask for money, but they won't visit much. If you had your kids early, then your 40's might see you become a grandparent. You'll like your grandkids more than you ever liked your real kids. It's all the fun of having a kidplaying games with them, filling their heads with insane nonsense and admiring their cutenesswith none of the annoying shit like changing diapers or cleaning up messes or scolding them. Plus, it's fun to spoil them just to fuck with your kids. Tell them their dad is going to buy them a pony for Christmas. It won't be you who comes out the bad guy. This is the period where you stop being sharp and young and start being dull and closedoff. You become way to fucking comfortable with being way too fucking comfortable. The only things that piss you off are what other people are doing to have fun. Really what you're mad about is that the world has passed you by. You're not full of potential anymore. You had potential, but you squandered it. Now you're just full of shit and you want the whole world to be a bland as you are. So you ban tag on playgrounds and suspend kids for drawing violent pictures. Then you complain that kids are too soft. You made them that way, you idiot. You don't have any hatred left for authority. The shit-talking teenager you once were that you held onto throughout your 20's and 30's is now completely gone. Now you really believe the bullshit that you once knew was false. You think soldiers really are fighting for freedom. You think the policeman really is your friend. You think violence in the media is what causes violence in real life. You think a fetus is human being. You become a fucking idiot. Unless . . . unless you keep your middle finger. Unless you refused to let the system break you in your 20's and 30's. Then you get to be totally alone in the world. Too fucking radical for your age group and still viewed as an old, out-of-touch fucking fogey by the younger generation. You get to be a social pariah who preaches a truth that no one cares about, all while struggling with abject loneliness. The pain you felt as a teenager seems like heaven compared to the depth of the sorrow you feel now. Then it was mostly hormonesnow it caries a true intellectual weight. You sigh. The world is horrible. The world is dark. And the world will not change. Not for those angry young asshoels who think their generation will be different. Not for those soft old bastards who want to return to some old system of values that never really existed to begin with. And certainly not for you. The world will not

change. It cannot change. And so, quietly, and without much outward complaint, you despair. OLD PEOPLE ARE IDIOTS Old people are always talking about how wise they are. I been around, son. I've seen everything there is to see in this life and I know what's what. Bullshit. You spent your life drinking, watching TV, doing some meaningless job and occasionally getting laid. Maybe you fought in a war at some point. Maybe you killed some poor fucking brown people. Maybe some poor brown people killed your buddy and you watched him die. Sad? Sure. I feel for you. However, you've gained no wisdom. In the final chapter of your life you want to act like you were lived the life of a philosopher? No, you old fuck. You didn't pay those dues. You lived the life of a loser and any advice you have will only lead down the same ruinous path that wound you up in an assisted living community eating TV dinners for every meal. So fuck your advice. If you knew something, you'd be something. Old people basically develop one of three personalities. The confused eccentric, the sweet heart or the cranky old fuck. The confused eccentric is a goldmine of unintentional humor. What is this? That's a toaster, Grandma. In my day we used to make toast by sticking bread in our butts and running through grease fires. That's nice, Grandma. Those were more innocent times. The sweetheart is usually a lady, but can be a guy too. This is just the sickeningly wholesome old person that you just want to kick down a flight of stairs to put them out of their inner torment. Human beings are not meant to be this bland. How's the weather down there? I looked at your news and I saw it rained yesterday. What the fuck is your obsession with the weather, you sweet old bitch? You're stalking my weather. You're trying to vicariously experience my weather. That's just weird. Stop it. I baked you this cookies. Only I can;t see so good, so I'm not sure if those are raisins of chocolate chips. They're rat-turds grandma. I think it's time we put you down. Then there's the cranky old fuck. Usually a man, but it can be a woman too. This guy just hates everything and everyone, which is a reasonable position. Still, these fucks take it to new lengths. Get off my lawn, you damn squirrels. Fucking sons of bitches. I hate you, you little squirelly fucks! In my time, squirrels knew their goddamn place. If a squirrel did this shit when I was a young man, we ripped that squirrel apart with our bare hands and threw his guts into a meat grinder, doused the sausage with arsenic and sent it to the Japs. That's how you deal with squirrels. And Japs. That's another thing. Old people are all racist as fuck. And they vote. Usually for the republicans. The median age of a Fox News viewer is 65. People are always saying that old

people shouldn't drive. Fuck that. Let them drive, just don't let them vote. They vote against every damn social program they can, when they are the beneficiaries of the most socialization. They're the ones on Social Security and Medicaid and Medicare and they're the ones who vote against us young people having something equivalent. That's like when white people get to vote on whether blacks should have rights or when straight people vote on whether gays should have rights. Fuck you, old people. Socialism for you is great, but socialism for everyone is unamerican? Why? Because you think you've earned your keep? Why? Because you managed to avoid getting hit by a bus for 75 years? That entitles you to something that no one else can have? Well, fuck you, you wrinkly, famished scarecrows. You're the greediest fucking people on this planet. The labor of the young pays for you to live in a separate Americaand America where socialized medicine exists and works. And when we say, Wait a minute. I want to live in the America too. You say, Too bad, sonny. Shove your sonny where the sun don't shine, you raspy-voiced sack of incontinence. Where is my free shit from Uncle Sam. I give him a huge chunk of dough every check and he spends it on your stinky old ass and some stupid fucking wars in countries I don't give a dead rat's sauteed ass about. All I get out of it are some roads and a bureaucratic Berlin Wall of bullshit standing between me and my personal freedoms. I hate old people. They're so uppity. They think they know better than everyone else because they've been around longer. So what? Their brains have broken down due to disuse. They acted like unthinking morons their entire lives and think they emerged on the other side as sagacious pedagogues. Zarathustra come down from the mountain to tell us whippersnappers what's what. Well, pardon me, you old miserably fucks, when I decline your unsolicited wisdom. You were born dumb fucks. And you lived like dumbfucks. And you're still dumbfucks. You didn't have some great epiphany of spontaneous knowledge when you turned 60. So fuck off with that snake oil. And I was going to do a separate video for dying people, but fuck it. Let's just burn them too, right here and right now while I'm still good and pissed. Dying people, of all ages, are fucking idiots. I'm not talking about people who get hit by a bus and die on the asphalt over the course of the next 5 minutes. I'm talking about people who get cancer or some other slow acting disease and they think, Wow, this makes me appreciate life all the more. When I get better, I'm gonna change do all the stuff that I never got to do. Bullshit. First of all, you aren't getting better. You're going to die. Your optimism is not going to save you or even improve your final months. You need to accept your death, get you affairs in order and stop ignoring the truth.

Second of all, even if you do get better, you're going to be exactly the same. You're not going to change. At all. You had a dead end job before you got cancer? Well, you'll have that same dead end job after. You're not going to quit, go back to college and become a marine biologist. It's too late for that. You already played that hand and it just wasn't in the cards for you. You drew the loser card and that's what you'll stay. Just because the grim reaper tapped you on the shoulder doesn't mean the cards have been reshuffled. It just means that your pathetic life almost ended a little earlier than you expected. No big deal. Move on. I know a lot of this is counter to the wisdom of our culture. The idea that we can do anything we set our minds toobut that's just not reality. We've set up a system where you have only three choices. There are only three slots for you to fill. You can be successful. Entrepreneur. Famous Actor. TV producer. Whatever. You can be a grunt. Sewage worker. Firefighter. Computer repair. Or you can be a drifter, doing odd jobs, committing crimes, doing drugs and not giving a fuck. There is no other niche. And if you haven't found that niche by the time you're 30 or 40, it's simply too fucking late. Sorry. I don't make the rules. I just describe them. So, you dying people who are seeing life from a whole new perspective . . . you're full of shit. I hope you don't die. I hope you eek out some happiness is whatever life you've wound up with, but you're still full of shit. *** I hope you guys enjoyed this series! And those of you who say these this series depresses you, take some solace in this: if you are aware of the rules, you can find ways to break them. You can't break them by deluding yourself that they aren't there, but if you recognize them, you can subvert them. There are things that this world wants you to be, but you don't have to be them. Awareness is the greatest weapon of all. Awareness of the world is the only thing that can change the worldat least on an individual level. You may not be able to make the world better, but you can make your life better. You have that power. It's not easy. It's not simple. It's not the beaten pathbut it's still there for those bold enough to take it. TAA PTFO

Aspartamed I read an article that says that Aspartame was the 'most contested FDA approval' in history and that scores of independent studies showed that it caused brain cancer in lab animals and some doctors have linked it with a multitude of other symptoms, mostly nuerological. I was actually drinking a coke zero as I read this and I had to pause for a moment to decide which of three paths I should take, given this new piece of information. 1. Do I stop drinking zero calorie softdrinks and nuzzle once again to the highfructose corn syrup tit? 2. Do I give up drinking colas altogether. Or . . . 3. Do I persist in drinking diet soda, despite the possible risk of my head being taken over by a massive tumor named Billy, touting a shotgun at the front gate of my motor cortex and not letting any neurons transmit past him. I can't go with option one. I'm on a diet, and an abundance of corn syrup or even pure cane sugar, will fuck that up royally. I've lost 20 pounds since I began my commitment to losing weight. Why would I jeopardize that just for a few cans of soda? Option two is even more unlikely. Drinking carbonated beverages is what I do. I wake up and drink soda. Then I drink soda some more. Then I go back to bed. That is literally the entirety of my existence. Sure, I do other stuff in between. Porn, youtube, sex, reading-occasionally I even do something productive, but I try to avoid that as much as possible. You do something productive once and people start expecting you to be productive all the time. Option three is all that's left. I don't want a brain tumor, but maybe it will be fun. I go to raise my left hand and instead I punch a baby in the face. Then, as it lays bleeding, I can look its mother right in the eye and say, "I'm sorry. My tumor is really acting up today." Maybe sometimes I will try to say, "Thank you" and it will come out as, "NIP TIC SHABBOT!" That would be neat. It would make communication difficult, but who is there honestly worth communicating with in this world? I could even name my tumor. I'd call him Earl. Remember Toe Jam & Earl for the Sega Genesis back in 1991? Earl looks like how I imagine a brain tumor looking. A big, beige, friendly ball of stupidity eating a hotdog. Me and Earl could go on some magical adventures together. Like, we could forget how to tie our shoes or be subject to violent moodswings. Even better if when you can't remember the names of people you've known you're whole life. "Earl, where'd you put my memories of my friends and family, you prankster! LOL!"

I actually want a brain tumor. I wonder if anyone sells big cans of carbonated pure liquid aspartame. I'd drink it. Soda isn't nearly sweet enough anyway. That shit would pretty much guarantee a tumor. I'm going to see if the doctor can go in an surgically put sunglasses on my tumor. That would rock. I want a cool tumor, you know? I bet tumors are going to be the next big thing in Hollywood. Right now, heiresses are all about carrying little Chihuahuas in their handbags, but I bet that brain tumors are going to be in vogue in a few years. Everyone will be trying to have the biggest and most uniquely shaped brain tumor. I bet George Clooney will have one shaped like Popeye. I don't know why I peg him as a Popeye fan, but I do. I never understood the concept of Popeye. Two big, powerful sailors fighting over the most flat-chested and homely girl in all of existence. I mean, if Popeye and Bluto are going to beat the shit out of each other over a girl, she should at least have some curves. If you guys are gonna fight over her, why not just go to a janitor's closet and fuck a mop? Maybe it would make sense if she was desirable in some other way--like she had a great personality or was rich. Not the case though. She has a shrill voice, is totally fickle about who she wants to be with and doesn't appear to come from a rich family. Who fights over that? I mean, Popeye is deformed. Maybe he has no choice, but Bluto is a perfectly good-looking guy in that rugged sort of way. He should get him a nice little woman who knows how to cook. Not anything too fancy. Maybe a 5 or a 6. Something he can reasonably be expected to hold on to. You know what I think is really going on here? And I know that it's really popular these days to claim that iconic characters are gay, but in this case it actually makes a lot of sense. I think that Popeye and Bluto are repressed homosexuals whose true affections are for one another and that their unspoken desires manifest as quarrels over a clearly undesirable woman. They don't know how to express their raw sexual need for one another--and they live in an age where such affections are taboo to the highest degree--and so the only way that they can continue to be around each other, to touch each other, is by feigning a romantic rivalry for the hand of a woman that no heterosexual male could ever want to be romantically entangled with. When Popeye beats up Bluto, it's because he needs an excuse to touch Bluto. Anything to connect. When, at the end of the day, he shares his bed with Olive, it makes him sick. He knows that his true love is out there, sleeping alone. This is the tragedy of Popeye. You know, maybe I already have a brain tumor.

TSA VIDEO OUTLINE

The world is a scary place at the moment. The TSA is doing full body scans and patdowns of the citizens, and the line we hear from the government is, "It's for your safety. If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear." I do have something to hide. My big white naked ass. No Government agent should have the right to see that and no one in their right mind would want to. As for their alternative to the full body scanners--the full body patdowns by angry guys with little brains and an inversely proportional amount of power--I'm not too keen on that either. If some guy is going to fondle my balls, he's gotta pay the 10 bucks like everyone else. Then, Wikileaks leaked all sorts of sensitive documents of the US talking shit about world leaders behind their backs. Who knew the US was such a gossipy hen? A recent MSNBC online poll--not a scientific poll by any means--shows that 70% of people are in favor of classifying Wikileaks a "terrorist organization." In other words, "Someone's giving us government transparency and subjecting those in power to the same scrutiny that they apply to us citizens? STOP THEM! THEY ARE TERRORISTS!" Does that word even mean anything at this point? Pretty soon if you steal a bag of pretzels from Wal-Mart you'll be a retail terrorist. If you write a short story critical of US Policy, you'll be classified a literary terrorist. If you fart in an elavator, you'll be charged with biochemical warfare and dragged to Guantanamo Bay. We've done what we always do. We start off with a very specific definition of something, then pass laws against it, then broaden the definition. Sex Offender used to be essentially synonymous with child molestor. Now, if you steal someone's socks and jerk off with them, you're a sex offender. Pretty soon, if you get caught looking at a woman's breasts in public the government will tattoo "UNCLEAN" to your forehead and encourage people to throw rotten apples at your genitals in the streets. I can't wait for someone to develop a suicide bomber fetish and try to blow themselves up in a shopping mall or something. They'll fail, of course, because none of these American terrorists ever seem to be any good at building bombs. And when the FBI realizes that they did it because it turned them on, they'll have to invent a new classification: sexual terrorist. Put them in Guantanamo and the sex Offender Registry. Keep him away from the child inmates, which you know we probably have. Or hell, put him in with the child inmates. Maybe they'll start talking.

Scarier still, the government recently shut down a bunch of websites. Not websites for political dissidents. They know the people are pissed. They're realized that we won't ever do anything, so they've stopped paying much attention to that. No. They shut down torrent search engines. The government working on behalf of corporations once again. You download some music? The government shuts down the site you got it from. You owe the bank some money? The government comes and kicks you out of your house on the banks behalf. Pretty soon, if you write graffitti on the walls of a Wal-Mart bathroom, the government will come break your fingers so you can't hold a pen anymore. If you write a bad review of a book on Amazon, the publisher will send some cops by your house to shove a baton up your ass. I just wonder how much the people will take. The government is violating your fourth amendment rights when you travel. They're foaming at the mouth to violate your first amendment rights. They want to declare those who expose their misdeeds terrorists. They want to use your taxes to pay for police to lock you up for what you put into your body, what you put into your mind, what you do with your own person. They want to use your tax dollars to pay for their overseas wars--where your brothers and sisters throw away their lives for the interests of multinational corporations with big defense contracts. They want to use your tax dollars to shut down websites on behalf of their corporate masters. And the reaction of the common man to most of this? They don't care. They're at the mall buying more distractions for themselves. And if they do care, they care about the wrong parts. They care about being taxed too much, but they don't care about what their taxes are used for. They don't ever complain about the wars. They only complain if the government tried to give them some healthcare. That's when they get furious. If money is used to kill, they don't fuss. If it's used to save, that's when they get pissed. Remind me again why anyone buys into the notion of human goodness? If there is goodness in us then where is the voice of the righteously furious? Where are the people to stand up against tyranny, their heads held high in defiance of power? Where are they? They're all playing Angry birds on their iPhones. Or watching House reruns on Hulu. Or looking at videos of bulldogs skateboarding. And hey, I understand. That's me too. I'm part of the problem. And I always will be. As bad as things are, I don't have the will to fight. I am just another broken man in a country of broken men. I've stopped believing that this country is even worth fighting for. At this point, I'm only describing the horrors that I see unfolding in the hopes that maybe someone less jaded then me will hear them and rise to the challenge. Maybe that person is you. Probably not.