The Truth Behind the Lie

"Sometimes the law can't be foller'd no way," said Pa. "Not in decency, anyways. When [Pretty Boy] Floyd was loose an' goin' wild, law say we got to give him up--an' nobody give him up. Sometimes a fella got to sift the law. I'm sayin' now I got the right to bury my own Pa. Anybody got sompin' to say?"

--John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

So what are the grapes of wrath, anyway? We have wrath, which is a cardinal sin--something the Catholic church would kill a man over, not God, per se, but the Catholic church--and grapes, as we know, are tasty fruits that can be fermented to make a completely okay thing, even according to the Bible, an okay thing fine to drink and allow a man to forget himself. Laws beget wrath, because they demand a being live in a way that someone ELSE DEMANDS--a sickening thing. As William Powell said, as I was taken from my home for defending--"This country is ruined by stupid old men making laws they don't understand."

Now we have television shows like Jersey Shore or even Ancient Aliens (sorry Harrison, I love Tsoulaklos too, but goddamn, COME ON) distracting us from the truth. We have a real enemy in North Korea and another real enemy in Iran, and assholes want to bitch about the folks on Welfare? You short-sighted stupid fuckpigs! Those assholes on Welfare, as you call them, have had to fight their entire lives while you sit back on your dumb asses and watch Family Guy. Who do you think is going to save your soft-handed privliged ass when the shit hits the fan?

It's not going to be the coward who knows nothing about hand-to-hand combat or weapons usage.

Think about that the next time you talk shit.

Portrait of the Artist as a Complete Bastard

In this article, I may use the word “you” many times. By using that word I am talking in the proverbial, meaning not “you” the reader, but “you” as in the type of person that strikes me down day by day. If you fit into that latter category do me a favor and piss off. If you fit into the former category chances are you’re here for one of two reasons—first and foremost to be entertained, which is my main charge as a writer, and secondly to learn something you may not know about individuals such as myself. Before we begin, know this beyond a shadow of a doubt: I do not feel like I am above any single one of you, I am made of the same matter as every other human being and I did not ask for these thoughts and feelings, they just exist. To those who are bothered by this notion, I ask you “why”?

Do you never consider that perhaps I envy you?

We all have dreams, we all have goals, and for the most part I seriously doubt those dreams and goals include being the foreman of the local peanut factory. Those who are have nothing to be ashamed of, I merely find it dubious that any child lies in bed at night with their whole lives before them thinking “Gee, wouldn’t it be wonderful to be the head snack-packer?” Honestly if you did I feel sorry for you and you may want to stop reading right now; these words to follow will piss you off. If you did not, I hope you read on because I would like you to get in touch with some of those old hopes and feelings again, the ones that made life itself feel like magic rather than a shit-filled conundrum.

Since I became sentient, probably around the age of two when my grandfather Paul Ladwig noticed something different about me and started teaching me how to read easy words like “exit” and “stop”, thusly graduating me one year later to Dick and Jane books, I felt as if there might be some appointment ahead of me, a task or charge, that I was, if you’ll graciously allow, elect. For years I lived an up-and-down roller coaster quandary between being competitive in the brains category and terrified of the physical category. While others played football, I studied. I was that nerd who always raised his hand in class and suffered hundreds of ass-kickings at the hands of incipient cavemen after school. Words and books and drawings, sometimes all mixed together in the glorious form of the comic book gave me aid and succor while I licked my wounds.

Years later I got sick and fucking tired of these cocksuckers kicking my ass and I began to fight back. I did not join football or any team effort, I became what they now call “emo” but what we used to call gothic. And I did not fit in with that group either. I fit into no group at all. So I figured. This was not true. It took a very long time—far too long—for me to realize that I fit into the category of the Artist, and never ye mind the canvas. Words, music, drawings, shit, I did it all! And FUCK anyone who didn’t like it! My attitude was, and often still remains “Say something, motherfucker! Talk shit and see what happens.”

This is where the point comes in. I think I have spent too many words already on explaining how I went from fat, terrified nerdy kid to complete and total honest-to-spheres bastard. I mentioned earlier that I envy those who are, shall we say, normal. Those who dress for success and punch a clock or earn a salary and drive a decent, if not luxuriant vehicle and have more than likely followed all the rules or, in the worst case as far as I care, kissed the pre-requisite amount of ass in order to achieve what they consider and achievement. They have houses and families and probably bowel problems due to the sick fucking fact that today’s world is based on a credit system where no one really owns anything except for an illusory take-life-for-granted exit from life’s great truths and can bury their heads deep, enjoying that Satanic ass-fucking they take every single day without feeling real pain.

Either that or they punch a clock to struggle and put food on the table because they have a few sets of eyes to meet once they return home, eyes that trust above mouths needing fed. Young eyes that sit in a classroom listening to some overgrown fuckface who is supposed to be a teacher droning on listlessly while they should be planting the seeds of growth and goal in the young mind. Older eyes that hum and clean and do laundry and keep house or more, go to their own eight to ten hour task to help put food on that very same table. Eyes that should dream. Eyes that once dreamed. Eyes that may have lost their luster but not their love.

Those, I envy. I envy them because as long as they wake up on time and do what they’re told and try not to think too much they will get by, I hope, without the bank foreclosing on their homes or repossessing their cars and the like. Now, if I’m an artist, a writer, being paid at least every so often to do what I love, why should I envy those people?

There’s a thing they do not understand. It’s the type of thing anyone who feels that calling (and if you feel it, I don’t need to explain it) and responsibility to something further, beyond, not necessarily more, but definitely much more daunting. The calling to entertain those people, not ignoble, who dip through their daily lives. The calling to make their lives easier. To make them laugh, love, share, or even by fuck scare the ever-loving shit out of them so they can remember what it was like to be a kid and think the devil lived in the laundry basket when really all that lie within was a bunch of smelly clothes. For me, the responsibility is to the great group, to YOU, the reader, to give you a thing to read that will make you feel just that much better in the morning when you wake up and have to face down some fuckhead Vogon who makes three more dollars an hour than you do yet somehow thinks he/she is Tony (Collete?) Soprano.

In order to do that I have to face down things most don’t even consider. First, I have to rip my fucking skin and bone wide as if performing a self-autopsy and stick my soul to your brain via the page (or any other canvas). Secondly, I have to struggle to avoid all negative thought and lack of faith lest I bumblefuck my karma and not spin the quite tangible yet fickle and delicate creative mass of the universe—to please God, if you’re a Christian—into finding me worthy to entertain you. Thirdly, I have to deal with your (remember, proverbial you) heckling and shitting on me because I don’t punch a clock or have a set home or any of those securities you take for granted. And lastly, oh lastly…I have to find a way to answer you when you ask “Why don’t you just get a job, loser?”

Why? Because I do not NEED to GET a job. I have one.

It’s called saving your ass from the conundrum. It’s called making sure you don’t get bored. It’s called making you feel as though you are THERE when one of my characters fires a bullet into the eye of his asshole boss for talking too much shit and then following the murderer (and is that person, really, a criminal?) as he/she makes moves to escape the law. It is making you laugh. Making you cry. Making you realize that nothing is promised, there is no taking a single damn thing for granted. It is, at the end of all, making you feel better about the things you do and the people you love by nailing my heart to your eyes.

And it’s the hardest fucking job in the world.

Why I Hate Politicians, No Matter the Party

“We know that—all that. All that. But it’s not us, it’s the banks. A bank isn’t like a man…that’s the monster.”

“Sure, cried the tenant men, “but it’s our land. We measured it and broke it up. We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it’s not good it’s still ours.”

“We’re sorry. It’s not us. It’s the monster. The bank isn’t like a man.”

“But the bank is only made of men.”

“No, you’re wrong there—quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it…it is a monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.”

--John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

This is still true today. After almost a hundred years, this is still true. Why? It isn’t even because of the fact he fact that the Bank is a monster. It is because the People, who are supposed to be strong, worship the folding God and are terrified of the monster, but they do not have the courage to fight the monster. Most men do not even wish to fight the monster. They bow down and suck the phallus of the Golden Calf Bank and swallow the semen with fervor and gratitude.

You disgusting bunch of tie-wearing fucking cowards.

I hate you all.

Would you not rather stand up for yourselves and say “I’m not taking this bullshit anymore!” Are you going to let the media rob you of your guns, your only defense against the banks and the politicians and the whelps who work for them and just lay, open-legged, spread eagle while the bank, the politician, stick his vein-ridden cock up your anus? Does that sound like a good fucking time? You pathetic, puerile, terrified little shits are already allowing them to fly drones over your land in order that they can watch your every move—I’ve seen the fucking things for myself—is this what you want? Is this the land, the Constitution your forefathers fought to protect?

It is not.

And any cowardly pile of smegma who lays down and allows this shit to continue deserves what they get. The sad thing is this—you piles of dick cheese are in the majority because you’re so scared of losing your toys. Bunch of children. See, that’s what puerile means—childish. You are childish, with your iPhones and your iThis and iThat and all that pathetic bunch of tripe that means absolutely nothing—the push of a button and the laugh of a bastard and all of that shit—literally ALL OF IT—is gone.

“Life, submissiveness, hypnotizing the ignorant, a little boy’s best friend is always his mother.”

Chad Grey said that, talking about Ed Gein. What he did not realize at the time and more than likely does not realize now is that he described the times as they are today—we as a people suckle the teat of the toy-giving politician and actually listen to the cunts when they scream about the folks on welfare without realizing that the politician him or herself LIVES OFF OF WELFARE! WAKE UP FUCKHEADS! All of you assholes who are bitching and moaning about everyone else aren’t realizing this one important fact—while you judge one another the politician laughs at you for playing right into their hands while you pay taxes on your hard earned paycheck so these suit-wearing cunts can sit around and do absolutely nothing to help America! STOP HURTING YOURSELVES!

Stop hurting yourselves.

Let’s take the fight to THEM.

What "Bad" Is

I was lying in bed after doing my katas and lifting weights, trying to relax by reading Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” for the thousandth time because I love that book when it struck me that damn near everyone in my life knows what “bad” is. I don’t mean bad as in “he’s a bad guy” or “this is a bad job” although both are pretty close. I mean bad as in life. How life can be a complete and total motherfucker, skinning your ass every single time you try to make a move for yourself. Some people find Jesus, and I guess that helps a little. It has never helped me, but it helps some, and that’s perfectly fine with me. Some people find drugs, and that’s not very good, but I can’t judge because I certainly used the poisons long enough. Others whiskey. And yet others use judgmental behavior, calling their fellow humans pieces of shit for not doing this, that, or the other thing.

It’s that judgmental behavior that makes me sick to my guts. I know a lot of folks that know what bad is but there ain’t a single fucking one of you that knows what it meant to live in the Depression, the GREAT one, not this half-assed Obama-driven pile of phoniness we live in now. I see folks—I won’t mention any names, but I see folks—who went years without a job finally get one and after three months start talking shit about those who don’t work. Granted, a lot that don’t work don’t want to, and yes, those fuckers ought to be skinned alive and their goddamn laziness-perpetuating President along with them. But some folks out of a job do want to work and can’t find one because they don’t have an address, or they don’t have the right clothes, or they have a criminal record, and they’re not lucky enough to have Mommy and Daddy take them in until they can find one.

You judgmental piles of shit ought to take something into consideration—you do NOT have it bad. Not yet. You’re going to soon enough, but you don’t. Just wait. You fucks will crumble like cookies because you have no clue what it is like to have to drum up work for yourselves—to callus your hands swinging an axe, to dirty yourselves cleaning gutters, to pound nails, to cut grass all fucking day with some geriatric cunt yelling at you because you accidentally missed a single blade thinking about how nice it will be to finally, after twelve hours, get home and have a beer or smoke a joint, or to sum-pump sewers to pay the rent on a trailer that always floods when it rains too hard. No. You folks who have never had to do anything like that don’t know what “bad” is.

I write my fucking balls off in order to stay away from “bad”. I’ve done bad, I’ve done my time, and I’m fucking sick and goddamn tired of it and it still isn’t over. I’m sure I’ll have to flip another burger or swing another axe or crawl into another shit-pipe before my ship comes in, but that’s okay with me, I’ve done it before. And I don’t judge anyone. My scales are all broken. Why the fuck should I?

So the next time one of you cowardly cocksuckers tries to say something clever, know this—you’re NOT clever. If you were, you get paid to be clever by writing words, even if the pay is just a pittance. I’ve been paid for it…have you?

Riot at the Plasma Center

The NABI Plasma extraction center in Chattanooga opened at eight in the morning. Needing cigarettes and booze I showed up ahead of the crowd on this fine morning. I think it may have been around 7:30 am. When I pulled in to the parking lot I noticed about three people ahead of me. No big deal. I figured I would not even have to sit through five minutes of whatever over-played movie the workers would haphazardly toss into the DVD player (usually THE SIXTH SENSE), causing me to hate previously loved films. I parked the car and lit a menthol, watching the street breathe and bend around me. The Amnicola bridge’s laughter rang in my ears as traffic babbled insults while rushing by, jealous of the fact that I had reached my ddestination and it had yet to.

Oh yeah. About twelve hours earlier I had dropped some six or eight hits of microdot acid and the shit still worked hard on my system. Everything felt groovy, and that was fine with me. I smoked and got my head together. When finished, I got out of the car and pitched the butt because the ashtray was screaming at me that it could not handle the taste of smoked cigarette any longer. Fucker. I asked it what the fuck it thought it was built for and it gave me a raspberry. I shook it off and forgave the ashtray—after all even inanimate objects can only handle so much of something that sucks. The car cried as I shut the door, telling me it was Japanese and had no business being left alone in the south. I told it to get over its goddamn whining and proceeded to the queue.

Rewind. You’re thinking “What an asshole” aren’t you? Well, fuck you. I was only 23. I didn’t give a shit and I thought maybe I was providing a public service to all the poor burn victims needing a digital bath. At least this way they may have had a little fun. Don’t blame me. Blame the center for allowing me to pass the drug test. Worse, it makes me wonder now how many people with West Nile or Syphilis sold their plasma.

Back to the story: I blinked hard to try and set my vision straight because the three people in line had begun merging together and growing, stretching into some fucked up crack head Nyarlathotep. What kind of bastards were they? Moreover, what kind of bastard was I? No. Just blink hard. Close the eyelids and take a few deep breaths and come back from the effects of this horrible, dangerous drug. What day was it? The sun had yet to rise to the height of heat and an Elder God waited for me at the gates of phlebotomy. My shoes barked, the pavement asked me to stop. Turn around and leave this ghastly place.

“Hey man, you okay?” a large black man asked.

“Huh? Where’d that goddamn monster go? I need the Eye of Hastur.”

“What?” He laughed. “Boy, you crazy.”

Indeed I had not seen any fictional monsters, only the smiling and affable one before me. He stood at least six inches taller than me and must have outweighed me by over a hundred pounds. Muscles bulged. Used to being taller than everyone around me at over six feet this fucker made me feel like a sewer rat. We talked for a moment, both noticing that the line of people waiting for NABI to open had grown to the length of a legendary serpent. Thirty or forty people shuffled their feet and smoked cigarettes, bitched about whether or not the center would open its doors.

Then, the cobalt blue Nissan pulled up. From the passenger seat, the manager asked me around a cloud of cannabis whether we’d all mind waiting a little longer so she and her co-workers could get some breakfast.

“Sure,” I said. Bring me a fucking McMuffin.”

“Rob, you funny,” she said. Yes. They knew me. And they drove off. An hour later they came back. By then we were all very angry. I almost forgot about the drug racing through my bloodstream until I saw some lady reach down into the bushes and pluck a grasshopper from the ground. She crunched on it.

No. Dear happy Christ. Perhaps it was time to leave. The cobalt blue Nissan returned and the workers emerged from all sides, pushing past the babbling crowd and opening the doors. As we filed in behind them, the manager turned around and told us we’d have to wait another ten minutes before entering the building proper but that she’d turn the air conditioning on to make it a bit more comfortable. She unlocked the door and the bastards went inside, leaving us to rot.

“Hey, wait,” I said to the manager. “Can we get a bonus or some shit for all this waiting? It’s like, ten o’clock.”

“You a trip, Rob,” she said.

“We’re going to fucking riot!” I said. She laughed, knowing me a bit of a clown. Sure, I was half kidding. Unfortunately the crowd did not realize that. Before I knew what had happened the people were howling “riot” and “bonus” and pushing past me, beating on the doors. Holy fuck! What had I done? I felt like Dr. Frankenstein. Was it the drugs? I assessed that it was indeed not the drugs, these people were fucking pissed. The huge black man knocked me out of the way and made to kick at the glass door.

Shit.

“Wait, dude,” I said. I knocked on the door. The manager came back.

“You have to pacify these goddamn lunatics,” I said. “They’re going to break down the doors.”

She smiled until the large black man pushed me out of the way and balled up his fist. I’ve never seen a woman unlock a door so fast. The horde smashed through the door like a group of French Revolutionaries screaming for Marie Antoinette’s head. I slid through them and ran to the sign-in desk, climbing atop and using the one weapon I did have—my voice—to quiet the mob.

“We’re in! All of us will be hooked up to the Matrix but I’m going first! I need my money now!”

It didn’t help.

The manager grabbed my shirt and pulled me down. I cackled, at least I think I did, and she shoved something into my hand and in no uncertain terms told me to get the fuck out.

Everyone else looked nice and calm. Had that really happened? I left the center and got into the car. In my hand was a twenty dollar bill and around my right arm at the elbow a nice little stretch wrap to staunch the blood from the plasma extraction needle.

The moral of the story is: Never give plasma on acid. You may end up having a nightmare.