140Story - Day 53

 I'm writing a story 140 words at a time and posting the results here daily.  Can I sustain interest?  Will I lose the narrative thread?  Find out in this next installment of Bullets Ain't Cheap

weasels like Burton?
    I didn’t let him see my pain, I just nodded as if that were the answer I’d been expecting all along.
    My phone beeped and a text scrolled across the screen.
    ‘Clr. M33t @ bus stn. I find u.’
    Kelly read it with me, and frowned.  “So we just trust him?  What if he leads Telrik right to us?”
    Being cautious is always good.  But there are times prudence veers far into paranoia’s territory.  I had a feeling Kelly’s had been living there for the past two years.
    “Do you know how to get to the embezzled money?” I asked.
    Kelly nodded.  “But the second I do, Telrik will hand the whole thing over to the Feds.  And I’m screwed.”
    “I’m pretty sure Michaels can get around that.”
    Kelly considered this for a few moments.  “You know how

And That's The Truth

Ping pong balls are filled with nerve toxin.
   Santa Claus can't go back into Liechtenstein. He won't say why.
They actually make photocopiers strong enough to sit on because they know you're going to scan your own ass.
   Trees are telepathic, they're just not mobile. So they know you're going to chop them down but they can't run away. It's a cruel evolutionary adaptation, but nobody said nature was kind, only efficient.
Most of what you text is complete nonsense. Same with Twitter.
   Fire bad. No, wait, fire good.
Cameras do steal your soul, but only if it's a film camera. Digital cameras steal the photographer's soul.
   Most UFOs are shaped like weather balloons. Helps them blend in.
Termites are not blind, they're faking it for the sympathy.
   Every prison cell has a secret exit, you just have to be smart enough to find it.
In 200 years fashion designers are going to look back at 1980's leg warmers as the height of style.
   When you stub your toe that's the Universe's way of telling you to pay more attention to where you're walking. And maybe to put on some shoes.
Everyone you've ever known and everyone you're ever going to meet will die. Except for Keith Richards.
   Corporations are run by people who are less competent than you are, and who don't care enough about their jobs to do them well. But they're going to die like everyone else, so that's some consolation.
Winos rarely drink wine. At least not very good wine. Which is kind of the point, now that I think about it.

Reinvent Yourself

For every platitude there are ten self-help books you can buy that try to tell you how to achieve that goal. Want to be a millionaire in ten days? Book for that. Start your own internet business with no money and make ten thousand dollars your first month? Couple of books for that. Want a better relationship with your kids, spouse, co-workers, or pet? A whole aisle of those.
   And then there's reinventing yourself. There are even books on tape for that.
   Trouble is, there's no one definition for reinventing yourself. Some people just want to stop smoking, others want to lose weight, others want to drop a dead-end career and begin something new and fulfilling.
   I'm looking to reinvent myself too. But I have no idea how to go about it, mostly because I don't know what I mean when I say 'reinvent myself.' I'm in that demographic sweet spot, just comfortable enough that I don't feel the need to become a freedom fighter up in the hills, but not so comfortable that I want to keep on this same path the rest of my life.
   Kids are a pleasant interruption in most people's lives. You have a few kids and you know that for the next twenty years you're going to be raising them, teaching them, making them responsible citizens and then seeing them on their way. For a few decades you have a reason to endure the daily grind. But I ain't got kids. Want 'em, don't have 'em. So I'm kind of at loose ends here.
   Midlife crisis? Perhaps. But I think it's both less and more than that. I do keep thinking there has to be more I can do to help other people, to make a difference instead of just... consuming like an American does. But maybe I should just shut up and keep my head down until my time is over.
   Nah. Can't do that. I think, maybe, the struggle is the thing. The struggle to be heard, the struggle to be successful, the struggle to overcome yourself so you can get what you know you need instead of what everyone else says you should want. You only lose when you surrender.
   Besides, if I really wanted to 'reinvent' myself, I'd go with a prehensile tail and laser beam eyes. That would be cool.

Journal Of Unsurprising Research

I was reading in Scientific American* a few months back that researchers had sequenced the Neanderthal genome and then compared it with modern humans'. Their conclusion was that, at some time in the past, before Neanderthals died out completely, humans and Neanderthals interbred.
   This is a surprise?
   I applaud the effort the researchers went to, it's not easy getting genetic material from 60,000 year old bones, but I could have pointed them to any number of bullies and malcontents from my middle school and high school years to prove the caveman-interbreeding hypothesis. Low-browed and thick-limbed, dim-witted and guttural, these guys were throwbacks to pre-history, when strength and cruelty were needed instead of compassion and insight.
   I remember one guy in particular, a year ahead of me in middle school, who was on the football team. Keep in mind that we were, what?, twelve? thirteen? And already this guy was covered in a carpet of body hair so thick that he looked like a chimp on the run. Or a Neanderthal, now that I've read the research. It was astonishing, he even had wiry hair on the second knuckle of his fingers. Put him in wolf fur and give him a spear to jab into a mastodon and I think he would have been right at home.
   What I'm saying is I already knew what these researchers have proved. So I got to thinking, what other non-surprises do scientists have in store for us? Fire is hot? UFOs are real? Cats want to murder their owners and eat their eyeballs? These are all well-established propositions.
   Scientists should get extra points for coming up with new stuff. Like the universe is held together with twine. Space-twine, sure, but it's still twine. Or proving that your face really will stick like that, just like your mother said.
   See? I should be a scientist, there's lots of stuff I could test. They make a pretty good living. There's got to be a lot of millionaire scientists, right?


* yeah, I like reading about science stuff, so what? Don't you oppress me...

... And That Little Boy Smile

I have a black velvet painting of Elvis. I've had it for years, it was a present from a friend who knew of my fondness for midways, carnies, Vegas, and all things vaguely seedy and disreputable. He got it in Mexico, Neuvo Laredo I think, as part of a weekend-long excursion he only remembers bits of. The best part is the frame, which he got for an extra dollar. It's just mitred wood, there's nothing to actually hang the picture, which means it's been sitting on my floor for years. I vacuum it every so often - really - to keep the white-jumpsuited, Mexican-looking Elvis happy.
   My philosophy in life has been 'if it's good enough for Elvis, it's good enough for me.' Not that I've ever had the funds to do most of what Elvis did, or the toadying hangers-on to make doing those things worthwhile. But I'm working on it. So I figure a good first step would be for me to get my own black velvet portrait done. Once I have my smiling face beaming down from a wall somewhere I know I'll have arrived, and the rest will just fall into place. I can get a 'TCB' three-finger ring, a big ol' convertible Caddy, and I can start shooting televisions. And a cape. I need a cape.
   It's a natural progression - black velvet painting of myself, then all the stuff, then the cape, then financial independence. The way is so clear, I don't know why I didn't see it before. All I have to do is find someone to paint a black-velvet portrait of me and I'll be just like Elvis.
   I'll take a pass on dying on the toilet, though, if it's all the same to everyone else.

Things That Worry Me Which Probably Shouldn't

I hesitate to walk over manhole covers or those trap door things in the sidewalk, not because I'm afraid I'll fall through, but because when I do fall through I know I'll end up in a secret subterranean world, and I just can't keep a secret.
   There are many things below ground, phone lines, water pipes, cable TV cables, sewer pipes and the C.H.U.D.s that live in them. But I'm pretty sure that there's more, a hollow Earth maybe, or just really big caverns where blind cavefish have developed a some sort of civilization where there's no shame bumping into walls.
   It would be my luck to fall into the one manhole that doesn't end up in the sewer but ends up in some barbaric, Edgar Rice Burroughs-inspired world of dinosaurs and psychic flying lizards. I'd inevitably get captured by the psychic flying lizards, who would set about planning to kill me in an absurdly round-about way. I'd get out of it by explaining to them that no one on the surface world would possibly believe me if I told them what I saw, but I would assure them that I wouldn't say anything in the first place.
   Because the psychic flying lizards are gullible (right? everybody knows that) they would let me go. Then, of course, once I was safely back on the surface world I would blab the whole thing to anyone willing to listen.
   Before too long you'd have developers moving in, clear-cutting forests of giant ferns so they could put up condos, displacing the dinosaurs and buying the psychic flying lizards out for pennies on the dollar. Then the gorilla-men would go next, and the sabretooth-men, and finally the Stone-Age type human beings would start walking around with cell phones discussing what they'd seen the night before on TMZ.
   See? It's just better for everyone concerned if I walk around metal plates in the sidewalk.

Going Back On My Promise

Sometimes you say things you regret, or you do things you regret and you regret talking about them later. And sometimes you make a sweeping pronouncement so bold and all-encompassing that you never want to go against it. But then you do and you have to come clean. This is come-clean day for me. Ready? Okay... deep breath... here goes...
   I'm running.
   Yup, for the past two weeks I've been on the treadmill at the gym, slowly increasing my speed and my distance. My goal is a non-stop mile - which, honestly, I could do right now but for my laziness issues - and after achieving that I will find some other running-related goal.
   This will be disappointing to many of you, I know, especially my long-time friends. You may recall such pronouncements as 'I only run when someone is chasing me. With a gun.' Or classics like 'If you see me running, swerve and put me out of my misery.'
   If I learned nothing else from the Bush administration, I learned that it's a very bad idea to stick slavishly to a clearly-discredited policy, and my running ban was one of those. I've been steadily losing weight for years now, slimming down and toning up, but I will never be really fit until I get more cardiovascular endurance. And, regrettably, running is about the only way to do that. So I'm running. God help us all.
   I think this may be one of the signs of the Apocalypse. Anybody want to check the Book of Revelations?

To Boldly Go...

A few weeks back I turned off my cable service - told you I would - and now my TV is pure antenna. I have line-of-sight to the transmitters on Mt. Wilson about 5 miles away, so I get many, many stations crystal clear and perfect. And on one of those channels last night, I re-discovered the original Star Trek.
   Years ago, back when I was in elementary school, I discovered Trek at after-school care. I found myself alone in the Lego room one day, wandered out to the TV room where people were gathered, took one look at the show - it was the one with the rock-eating monster protecting her babies - and I was hooked. Hooked like a perch on a worm, like a duck on a junebug, like a runway model on smack. I watched every episode from then on, forgetting Legos and even abandoning Lincoln Logs. I managed to convince my mother to take me to one of the first Star Trek conventions, where I got a windbreaker and a copy of the Starfleet Technical Manual. Yeah, I was a wee little nerd.
   In the intervening years Paramount has put out movie after movie, and done series after series. But I gotta tell you, none of them match classic Trek. I haven't seen an episode with the original cast in years, and this was actually very well written, Shatner was a far better actor than he's given credit for, James Doohan was excellent, and even if I found faults with the direction and editing, the whole thing was waaaaay better than I remember it being.
   So now, decades later, I'm going back to where it all started. Classic Trek. The wee little nerd inside me is jumping for joy.

Weirdo Intervention

You ever have a friend who believes wacky stuff? You know, things like bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster? Most people have a passing interest in these things, on the off chance they might actually exist. But everybody has at least one friend or acquaintance who BELIEVES, who is convinced that any day now we're going to be conversing with gray aliens or that Elvis is alive and pumping gas in Arkansas. Unless it goes too far it's actually kind of fun to have a crazy friend like that.
   Now suppose that friend was substituting genuine religious belief - Catholicism, Buddhism, Islam, what have you - with their wacky theories. Like if they started attending the Church of the Chupacabra or Our Lady of Trolls Under Bridges.
   I have a friend who's starting down that road, and I don't know what to do.
   She's already into alternative, holistic things, which is not necessarily bad, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but that willingness to walk the fringes leaves her open to swindlers and con artists who prey on trusting, vulnerable people. I'm not going to link to it - I don't want this charlatan to get any more web site traffic - but here is an excerpt from a for-real, no-shit description of one of the 'Therapy' sessions my friend paid $75 to attend.

'...some of the techniques go far back to ancient Atlantis and Lemuria. Using all our intuitive abilities, meditation, telepathic communication and … Happy Spirit, we will experience the great healing powers of the crystal energy...'

   I have to call bullshit on this one. Or shenanigans, whatever. I just want to scream at my friend "Atlantis and Lemuria are FICTION!!! They're made up, they never existed!! Buying into this is like studying 'literature' from Middle Earth or Narnia or Dune!! It's not real!! It never will be real!!" As much as I would like it to be otherwise, telepathy is also just as much a fiction as shooting lasers from your eyes or guys who dress like bats and fight crime. And, jeez, don't get me started on all that crystals garbage...
   On the other hand, maybe there's a money-making opportunity here. I could divorce myself from my conscience, abandon everything my parents taught me about right and wrong, and dive into the deep end of the 'alternative religion' pool. How about The First Church of Oz? I could reveal the Secrets of the Divine Tin Man. For a price.