AAAAHH

This piece of writing is about politics. I doubt that the politics in question are particularly controversial at this point, but who knows? You have been warned.

Assuming the globe doesn’t turn into a fireball during the next few weeks, the government of the United States is set to undergo significant political change. The Democratic party will have a majority in the Senate and the House, as well as a Joe Biden in the White House. I know that, for many of my more conservative and apolitical friends, this turn of events is tinged with uncertainty. Certain political and media interests have long worked to frame the Democratic party as the nest of identity politics, hugbox artificers, and regulation fiends. The overwhelming sense that “nothing will really change” and “both parties are fundamentally the same” reigns supreme. The goal of this short piece is to try and add nuance to this dull equivalence. At the very least, I want to highlight some of the non-insignificant ways that a Democratic majority in our policy making could be pretty darn close to objectively better than the Republican stuff we’ve been contending with for the past four years.

As a rule, I’m not even going to touch identity. Though I personally believe that discussions about race and class are central to improving our country, I also know that many of the folks, young and old, that live in the white suburbs of northern Massachusetts don’t really give a shit. “I don’t owe people anything, what does this stuff have to do with me?” I get it, I used to think the same way. When you are born and raised in a place where everybody looks the same, there is little to no visible poverty, and crime is low enough that the cops are bored out of their minds hunting for speeding tickets, the social media posts from liberal college students about Black Lives Matter seem very foreign. Instead, I’ll be talking about other things that do have a direct impact on everybody’s lives, rich/poor, black/white–issues that the Trump administration has catastrophically failed to do literally anything about.

Let’s start with Net Neutrality and digital intellectual property rights in general. If you aren’t aware, Trump chose a man named Ajit Pai to be the FCC chairman in 2017. Before that, Pai worked as a Lawyer for Verizon and firms defending large communications companies. As head of the FCC, Ajit Pai killed Net Neutrality in the USA, deregulated various mechanisms in place to limit the already hyper-powerful corporate media landscape, and generally sides with the rights of corporate power over individual citizens. As an avid fan of the independent web (I code and host my own website for pretty much no reason other than to be somewhat more independent from larger social media moguls), this stuff is appalling. While the FCC has been hammering away at their project to make the internet as hostile as possible to individuals, the slew of conservative judges that the Republican administration has churned out over the years are no doubt working to cement legal precedents for a vision of the internet powered by corporate bureaucracy. Investigations into unethical and illegal behavior by large corporations were halted during the Trump presidency, surprise surprise. I find it particularly alarming that our government is so keen to dismantling Facebook and Google while internet providers like Comcast have been allowed to monopolize the physical information infrastructure of the entire country for decades. Somebody is paying somebody else a lot of money, and the Trump administration has been especially blatant about its conflicts of interest. Meanwhile, Comcast is increasingly free to snoop your online activity and tattle to Disney whenever they deem your internet use anti-profitable.

There is no guarantee that the new Democratic administration will be more resistant to the influence of rich monopolies. After all, it was old Clinton himself that passed some of the worst deregulations in the media landscape (indie radio pretty much died in 1996). That said, we may at least have an FCC that stands up for the rights of citizens. We will also have a government composed of policy makers with a higher inclination toward internet regulation than the past administration. Biden has already promised to bring back Net Neutrality and expand internet access nationwide, and now he has the senate majority to actually make it happen. I am hopeful, but I temper my hopes. You must understand though, that during the Trump administration these ideas weren’t even on the table. Any bill even suggesting that internet use should be at all protected would wither in Mitch McConnell’s desk. Basically, I’m just glad to have an administration that maybe, just maybe, can be reasoned with about these things.

My regulatory pipe dream is expanded rights for citizens regarding copyright law. If you use Youtube to watch smaller channels, you know what I’m talking about. Youtube is the corporate whipping boy. Corporations like Disney and Nintendo are allowed to immediately demonetize or even claim the income of any video they want, and it is up to the creator to manually refute the claim. It isn’t even a human or lawyer making these (mostly false) infringement calls. The process is automated. I follow a small aquarium hobbyist that has to deal with false claims multiple times a week, and the headache is getting to him. There needs to be penalties in place to disincentivize false copyright claims. And I can assure you, breaking up Youtube isn’t going to make it easier for independent content creators to fight for their rights. Beyond the Youtube sphere, Nintendo recently shut down an online Super Smash Bros. Tournament for pretty much no reason at all other than a desire to promote newer product and stifle attempts to keep the old Gamecube community afloat during the pandemic. How are a bunch of Smash players supposed to fight that injustice? Corporate media is leveraging its power to sculpt culture to the liking of profit-obsessed jerks. I foresee a boring dystopia in which all of our interactions online fall under some form of copyright, allowing the corporate government to censor our expression at will. In the ancient days, myths were a commons and ideas could move. Mickey Mouse was shoved down my throat before I could even conceptualize the idea of applesauce, let alone intellectual property rights, so I feel like I’m entitled to representing the fucking three circle mouse logo without worrying about a Disney lawyer ascending from the pits of hell like a Fury to claw my eyes out.

To tie this rant back to the discussion at hand: would Mitch McConnell and Trump defend me from that Fury? Hell no. It has yet to be seen if Biden’s gang will be more useful in that regard, but the change brings me hope.

(I did email Elizabeth Warren about my intellectual property concerns a few months back. She got back to me today… with an automated email about her response to Covid-19… I guess she didn’t read it.)

More pressing than our internet freedoms is the health of the environment. I allow the boomers their cognitive dissonance and strange moods, but if you are under the age of thirty and do not understand just how pressing the threat of climate change and ecological collapse is, then you need to be beaten over the head with a block of cement. I’m honestly shocked that politicians don’t use Trump’s anti-environment stance to attack him more often, but I suppose it really is an issue divided by age groups. In typical shill fashion, Trump has peeled back over one hundred pieces of environmental legislation in order to appease frackers and drillers. His environmental protection agency is a stunted little creature, and his gutting of federal land management is partially responsible for the uncontrolled fires of the west. These past four years have really hit home the ideological shift of the Republican party. Once home to pro-environment policy makers decades ago, modern conservatives no longer see America’s natural resources as anything more than materials for profit. It’s all Minecraft as far as the lobbyists are concerned. America’s lack of concern for the world has global implications as well. The clear cutting and burning of the Amazon rainforest has been met with zero response from the Trump administration. The asshole that runs Brazil apparently kisses Trump’s ass. While I’m at it, what the hell was up with the fixation on coal? “Clean coal?” Even if that idea wasn’t totally bonkers, coal isn’t a thing anymore. Coal’s not cool. Coal isn’t the backbone of our energy infrastructure. It’s embarrassing. It was a blatant appeal to sects of voters that Trump evidently had no real intention of helping.

I look forward to a wave of policy aimed at improving the health of the planet. It has to happen. I don’t need to echo the stakes; you can find more skilled advocates across the web. If I could have one wish, though, I think more public funding for transportation would be awesome. Every workday, i95 becomes choked with cars during the morning and again at night. The hours spent in Boston’s commuter traffic are brain-crushing, and I can only imagine the collective fuel waste. An expanded commuter rail with greater consistency, more trains, and a farther reach into the northern suburbs of Mass and even southern NH would be a miraculous boon. We need buses, too. As it currently stands, living beyond the cities of America without a car is nearly impossible. The original stimulus bill contained billions of dollars for the airline industry (which proceeded to pocket the money and layoff most of its staff), but almost no cash went to busing and other forms of transit. If Americans can reorient their relationship to physical movement, perhaps we can reduce fuel consumption, clear up the roads for the real car enthusiasts out there, and free ourselves from the bondage of the interstate highway.

There is so much more that could be discussed about the folly of the Trump years, but I’m just about burned out. If you’ve read this far down, thank you. If you were previously ambivalent to the current political climate, I hope I have illuminated some issues of legitimate concern. Trump has taken great pains to ensure that meaningful discussions about policy are silenced in a discord of jeers and victimhood, and the media has been somewhat complicit in this phenomenon. Ignore superficial politics and keep your eyes on reality. Don’t let the mainstream Democrats fool you either–old men with lobbyists behind them are similar across the spectrum. Now that they’ve won, they may try to distract you with self congratulation and token moves. We must remind them that this is there last chance. Don’t let corporate powers trick you into worship. Also, read a fucking newspaper.

There was a magic stream in the forest that could transport people to another world, and Sam liked to visit this stream as often as he could. Time did not flow properly in this other world, so Sam had to be careful about managing his hours there. Because of school, he could not go on weekdays, and Saturday was usually off because his mother insisted he go to temple. Once, before he fully understood the nature of the magic stream, he skipped school to play in the other world and emerged after some hours to discover that he had lost an entire day of real time. His parents were terribly upset about this, and he lost many of his freedoms.

Sam finally stopped visiting the stream when the giant insect from the other world destroyed Boston. It was a calamity far beyond the scope of Sam’s play, and he became very afraid of forests forever afterward. He learned on that day that magic streams are not always a source of good things. This is the story of that calamitous adventure.

The day started like many others. It was Sunday, and Sam told his mother he was going to hang out with Andrew down the street. For good measure, he informed her that they would be taking their bikes to the dairy for some ice cream and minigolf. She liked when Sam spent time with friends (especially those as well-mannered as Andrew), so she warned him to mind traffic and handed him ten dollars to spend as he liked. Sam, however, did not turn left toward Andrew’s Cul-de-sac, but right toward the newer developments.

Beyond the plastic houses with their freshly unfurled sod and their orange realtor signs was an old forest of oaks and maples. In truth, most of the forest was not that old. Lines of stacked stones told of pastures and fields that once checkered that landscape, but they were over a century overgrown now. Where ancient cows once grazed, foxes and squirrels and drinking teens now eked out a claustrophobic existence in the face of an encroaching suburb. The trees do not mind so much. They did not think so sourly of cutting as you might imagine. To them, new real estate means fresh sunshine for the acorns, and the trees know in their hearts that they will outlast the shingled boxes. Sam arrived at a bend in the road surrounded by one such unfurnished box and walked his bicycle into the backyard.

A little trail overgrown with ferns and saplings extended from one corner of the yard deep into the woods. Sharp raspberry tangles used to block the path, but Sam had long ago disposed of these with a pair of his father’s clippers. The trail itself was knotted with old roots and pocked with boulders. It was a twisting path, and Sam often had to look down as he walked to prevent tripping. The dirt was speckled with broken glass, dented cans, and brass and green colored bottle caps. There rested in one clearing the remains of a brick chimney and a cut up tire. A little circle of stones indicated a campfire, and sometimes half-full cans and bottles tempted the curiosity of Sam and his friends. Beyond this, the wood grew thicker and wetter. Puny asters crept forth from the carpet of brown leaves, and salamanders slid from log hollow to log hollow. The sky grew dim behind a canopy crown where squirrels build soggy nests and woodpeckers flashed their crimson crests.

On this Sunday, the sky danced between threats of drizzle and shine that promised a rainbow to the lucky. The air was growing colder by the week, but only the upstart leaves had begun to turn. At intervals, a light rain would speckle the earth, but the deep canopy protected Sam from drenching. At length, Sam reached the clearing and made note of some rusty folding chairs that had not been there before. He pressed beyond the clearing, and eventually he saw the stream. It flowed tepidly for lack of nourishment, and Sam appreciated the drizzle for its life-giving aid. Otherwise, there was nothing particularly out of the ordinary about this spot of the forest. Leveraging his foot against a jutting maple root, Sam leapt across the water.

The other world does not make its presence known immediately to wanderers. Its trees look much the same as our trees, and it even has squirrels and birds. Black squirrels, however, are the common variety there, and strange birds that did not fly so much as flutter or glide, like turkeys, wabbled between strands of brush. Sam called out, and all of the animal life of the new wood called at once back to him. It was a joyous song. The rain seemed to dim. The sun to pierce the canopy better here, and all was bathed in a brilliant glow like a perpetual sunset. Sam walked further and knocked on the bark of a pine, and the tree responded by oozing a delicious sap which attracted small birds and chipmunks. The creatures were unafraid of Sam’s presence. Sam scooped some of this honey into a jar and continued on toward a meadow.

Free of the tree-cover, the most brilliant features of this world become clear. The meadow grass, a shimmering goldenrod, stood twice as tall as Sam’s head, but no icky things like ticks of spiders seemed to inhabit it. The sky above was simply brilliant. A crystal blue framed the orbit of many moons that loomed so close that their craters and mountains could be counted with the naked eye. Layers of impossibly thin altocumulus flowed like distant waves across the expanse, and a thousand different kinds of birds, and unknown darker shapes still, constantly circled the sky, ascending and descending from the silhouettes of distant treetops.

TO BE CONTINUED

They said

That a long long time ago

Even before the Dinosaurs

When everything was very very

Primordial

The world was one big forest

And this forest produced oxygen all day long

There was a lot of oxygen to go around

Before the dinosaurs there were bugs and slugs and salamanders

We stop growing because our bodies

Know when to stop

Insects don’t stop

So long as they have the resources

So they said

I caught some specimens and put them in a box

I pumped the box full of pure oxygen

I put lots of hummus and grubs and cheese in there

Everything a bug likes to eat

I thought

I felt a little dizzy

It was already there when I woke up

Stock still, without opinion

An abdomen shattering the horizon

Wings like church glass

Carapace glistening

Shimmering rainbow

Oil on water

Eyes that saw everything

Everything

I heard the thrum before I saw it move

The sound consumed the highway and the birds

I lost balance and hurt my palms

It lifted imperceptibly

And then it rose

Smaller and smaller, until it looked normal sized

It ascended into space and was gone

beep beep beep

…

…

beep beep beep

what the fuck

…

beep beep beep

there it is again

what is that

beep beep beep

honey what’s wrong, nightmare?

no baby, listen

beep beep beep

what is that

I have no idea

beep beep beep

just go back to sleep honey

it’s nothing

beep beep beep

…

…

beep beep beep

not gonna happen

it’s not that loud

beep beep beep

did you leave the fridge open

not open

beep beep beep

did you check your phone

no shit, first thing I checked

beep beep beep

please calm down

it’s this corner, it’s coming from this corner

beep beep beep

it’s in the hallway

it has to be

beep beep beep

can’t go into the hallway without my fucking pants

can’t find shit

beep beep beep

just turn on the light honey

no, I don’t want to wake you up

beep beep beep

god kill me now

why don’t you phone the desk

beep beep beep

where’s the number

it’s next to the phone baby

beep beep beep

ya hello, there is this faint, rhythmic beeping noise

it’s really annoying

beep beep beep

if I knew what was causing it I wouldn’t be calling

no it’s not the air conditioner

beep beep beep

second floor

thanks

beep beep beep

you didn’t tell him our room number

like I want some desk clerk to know what room I’m staying in

beep beep beep

well how the hell is he supposed to fix it if he can’t find us

oh my god, you always find a way to make this my fault

beep beep beep

don’t go there now

every night it’s the same with you

beep beep beep

why do you always yell at me

why do you always make everything about you

I can’t do anything right

fuck me, I guess I deserve this

…

…

…

it stopped

…

…

I’m sorry honey

just go back to sleep

…

…

beep beep beep

The year was 20XX. The coronavirus epidemic had crippled industrial infrastructure, toppled the global economy, and caused more concentrated death on American soil than any event in recent memory. Claire Elise Boucher, Canadian musician better known by her alias “Grimes” (“Miss Anthropocene” in her later years) has just given birth to the King of the World, X Æ A-12.

The ascension of X Æ A-12 to the Throne of Earth in the years following the initial coronavirus outbreak continues to be a topic of great interest to historians today. While many academics as well as official archival documents indicate that the rise of the New Technocracy was planned throughout the two decades directly preceding the outbreak, some have argued that the weakened state of American democracy in the early 21st century had allowed for corporate entities, backed by massive wealth and technological prowess, to completely subvert traditional means of information dispersal and assume control of nearly every aspect of human life practically overnight. Those who argue this point of view often assert that the American way of life had long primed the population for such a dramatic and sudden takeover, but no concentration of wealth and power before TESLA had the scale of information nor the audacity to actually go through with it. Of course, to speak of any of this on unencrypted networks is grounds for protein recycling.

Though project Archangel would not be revealed to the public until April of that year, many point to February of 2021 as the point of transition from the old ways to the new reality. After the failure of the second mass vaccine trial revealed that the virus adapted too quickly to be subdued by a catch-all solution, despair began to creep through the population of the United States. Few came to terms with then President Donald Trump’s indefinite Stay-At-Home order. The president’s popularity at that point was either at an all-time high or an all-time low depending on which information distributor you asked. Either way, civil unrest was reaching a fever pitch, and the pandemic seemed all but uncontainable. Mass panic followed. The president’s sudden disappearance from the public eye near the end of the month was given hardly any attention amidst reports of a deluge of violent crime, mass sickness, and police overreach. By March, the military began to enforce quarantines in and around urban centers throughout the country. What followed was the Month of Silence, the great gestation period during which every major ISP blocked access to anything but the most basic functions of the internet. Television use, which had been declining steadily for years in the early 2000s, surged once again. It is interesting to note that almost all of the big name online shopping outlets went largely unrestricted, though shipping times were slowed considerably. Other methods of communication between households were essentially impossible. If there were any significant revolts during this period, the knowledge of them has been lost to time.

The people of the world experienced true quarantine during that fateful March, and we have experienced little else since.

On April 3rd, 2021, the machine turned on. X Æ A-12 announced his supremacy through neural-link, and the automated ration service began the very next day. Despite being a child of barely a single year, X Æ A-12 possessed the same capacity for language as a grown adult. Survivors from this period often recount that his voice manifested in their minds as a kind of childlike laughter, calming and innocent and filled with mirth. His first words, as dictated through the neural-link, are forever transcribed upon the footer of every major digital hub:

“History is dead. You are relieved of the bondage of your fathers.”

It is difficult to imagine that pre-Archangel world, that place of labor and hardship teetering upon the precipice of climate disaster. It may be hard, but do not look on these primitive peoples with condescension. It was through their mistakes that the children of the future discovered the means of escaping the boundaries of the physical and finally manifesting paradise.

Don’t move. Not a single eyelash. Remain perfectly still.

What form has that body of yours taken? Has your spine manifested the scoliosis curve of your 6th grade nurse’s worst nightmares? Does your head incline perilously downward, skull perpendicular as you peer into your phone? The device sits in the crooks of your fingers with a thumb poised to scroll or swipe. Does the way your fat bunches up between your jaw and neck unnerve you? The flab is comfortable when you can ignore it and scream inducing when you can’t.

Perhaps you haven’t gotten out of bed yet. Locked horizontally by gravity and heat, you must rely on your arms to bring the screen to eye level. Tiring, you opt to sacrifice the integrity of your vertebra in order to leverage the back of your head against a pillow. Why not take a picture of yourself, chin rolls and all? The glassy stare is endearing, though you may have been trained to abhor it. It is you at your least offensive.

The more industrious among you have already pulled out your laptops–a vital first step in beginning the day’s workflow. You half sit, half lounge like the rails on one of those library rocking chairs. Some of you make fantastic use of your bed’s headboard. My bed lacks one of those. My mattress rests atop a cheap metal frame from Walmart, and the door to the water filter prevents me from pushing the thing up against the wall.

If you like to do phone and computer things on your belly, god bless you. My arms fall asleep.

If you actually remained stock still through those last couple paragraphs, fantastic. Great sport. You can relax now. For years I resisted the use of my phone. Social media apps would be periodically deleted and reinstalled based on my level of what I myself deemed “obsessive usage”. To this day, I do not have messenger. I have relaxed in many other ways, however. I use my phone to read digital books and comics pretty much every day, and I have allowed myself to fully indulge in snapchat at this point, though I am still wary my instagram usage for pretty much no reason at all.

The current state of things has given people time to reflect on our techno lifestyles. Most of us have lived this way for some years now, but it took the latest innovation in plague warfare to show many of us just how easy it would be forego physicality entirely and fully indulge the culture of cyberspace. While we continue the labor of working out our relationships to these striking technologies in spaces, it is important to consider that the “before”, the idyllic, pre-smartphone pastoralism of, say, the eighties, sixties, or eighteen-seventies, was also an aberration brought on the by innovative technologies of the day.

Amusing Ourselves to Death, a pleasantly accessible nonfiction title by Neil Postman, has a lot to say about modern man’s relationship with the various media technologies that have ruled his culture for centuries. One passage in particular is the source of this post. The author is talking about the physical demands of reading:

“You are required, first of all, to remain more or less immobile for a fairly long time. If you cannot do this (with this or any other book), our culture may label you as anything from hyperkinetic to undisciplined; in any case, as suffering from some sort of intellectual deficiency. The printing press makes rather stringent demands on our bodies as well as our minds.”

It should be noted that Postman published this book in 1985, a time when television culture dominated and the internet wasn’t a real thing for most of the population. Popular culture’s greater understanding of ADHD and the various disorders of anxiety have eliminated the descriptor “hyperkinetic” from our vocabularies, and we are less prone to calling out intellectual deficiencies when we see them. That idea of self-discipline, however, is one that still creeps about the darker caverns of the mind. Many of you still reading this are probably doing so in an attempt to fight back the gnawing terror of a more academic reading assignment. Reading more than a few snatches of academic writing is very difficult in 2020, possibly much more so than Postman ever could have imagined in 1985. Even as we spend vast amounts of time locked away in bedrooms amidst the coronavirus epidemic, attention for ungratifying things is a rare commodity.

Let’s drop the self-loathing for now and focus on that last line:

“The printing press makes rather stringent demands on our bodies as well as our minds.”

We don’t often consider how our machines dictate our physicality. Sometimes we will see an advertisement for a posture saving device like an adjustable table or an ergonomic chair and we are violently reminded of our own moment-to-moment positional habits. Now imagine how bodies were configured before the printing press, when books only existed among the powerful. Journalism did not exist. One could not disseminate ideas with anything more than the power of words. Maybe some families had a bible, or some towns an accessible library, but for the most part reading was not a staple of life before the fifteenth century.

Feudal peasants weren’t told to read lots of books or admonished for being unable to sit still except maybe on Sundays if they were church goers. With the introduction of print, the entire axis of culture changed. The way humans move around and physically spend their time changes. The commoners of the 19th and 20th centuries had to know how to read and communicate ideas intelligently to get by in increasingly interconnected ways of life. Now that print is declining and being replaced by liquid-crystal pictures and curt prose of electronic media, we are seeing the results another fundamental shift in the human configuration.

The transitional years are over. It happened right before our eyes. Children born today will know of the old ways only by the nostalgia that we feed to them. Is it good? Is it bad? It is life as it has always been, and as it has never been before. We can only hope that we reconfigure our lives with happiness and health for others in mind, and that those with power are willing to play ball.

This is all to say that you should not be entirely ashamed of your social media slouch. You are merely adopting the instinctual shape of an ape that has been asked to stare at a glowing screen for thirteen hours a day. The next time the reflection of your flabby arms, not-so-ivory enamel, or chin rolls bring you to the verge of tears, remember that you are participating in a process of modernization that began with some smartass realizing that putting fruit in the ground makes more fruit. Absurdity is human nature. You are experimenting with the latest craze in our ceaseless drive to adapt and socialize, and there is nothing insignificant about that.

The lone ranger was driving south from Burlington when the cop pulled him over. The officer was not overweight, but the way he rolled his body as he strolled towards the driver side window gave the impression that he might have been.

“Do you know why I pulled you over today?”

“No officer, I don’t believe I do. I pride myself on my consistent adherence to all traffic laws including the speed limit.”

But the officer was not paying attention to the lone ranger’s response. He was gaping openly at the ranger’s getup.

“Why the hell are you wearing that?”

The lone ranger was wrapped in a colorful poncho of dubious Indian origin. It was a gangly thing to wear in a car; the back flap of the poncho smooshed against the fake leather seats and bunched up around the ranger’s arms and shoulders. It should be noted that the ranger, upon lowering the window to address the officer, immediately returned his hands to the wheel, reassuming a perfect 3 o’clock 9 o’clock position that would not be broken until asked to exit the vehicle by the officer some moments later. A stained and bulging riding bag occupied the passenger seat next to him.

“These clothes are warm, not to mention comfortable. Doesn’t a man have a right to keep warm during these cold Vermont days?” No eye contact, and it was mid-June. The officer wiped his face and blinked.

“Can you step out of the vehicle please?”

“I will step out of this vehicle, but I would like you to know that I am in no way legally obligated to follow that instruction without cause. I am leaving my car because I am in no way particularly disdainful of authority. In fact, I have a lot of respect for officers of the law.” His face did not turn to meet the officer’s even once.

The officer stepped back, and the ranger swung himself out of his car and onto the street with a clink–he was wearing a pair of ornate riding boots with spurs. The officer entered a state of disbelief. The ranger was also wearing a pair of dark blue jeans, the torn remnants of a leather belt and holster, and a crushed leather that hung around his neck by a string. He seemed unwashed.

“Where’s your horse, cowboy?” The officer couldn’t help smiling now.

“I object to that title. And I have forgone my horse for what I believe to be a more efficient means of transportation given how much I travel. I would trade this hunk of metal in for a living, breathing horse in a minute if my work permitted it.”

The officer shook his head and muttered something flippant before taking the ranger’s ID and registration back to the cop car. The ranger remained relatively still, squinting his eyes beneath the mid-day sun and occasionally brushing away the strands of oak pollen that seemed to blow endlessly from the trees that lined the highway. They were like strings of dull yellow pearls flowing riding the wind.

The officer’s background check came out surprisingly sterile. Everything was valid. The lone ranger’s real name was supposedly Trevor Smith, and he used to have a flowing beard. Trevor had no criminal record, and his driving record was truly immaculate. The officer felt a little sorry for what he was about to do.

“Alright rustler, I’m going to save us both a lot of paperwork and have you come with me to a mechanic I know off the next exit.”

“Why, officer?”

“Window tint. I could hardly see you in there.”

“I picked this lease up in Palm Beach. It’s legal in Florida. I’m headed back there now.” The ranger began to tap his feet, generating a steady clink. Clink. Clink.

“It ain’t legal this far north, buddy. Those windows are practically black. Now I can write you up and cause a mess of trouble for me and you back at the office, or you and we can just head down to the shop and get this fixed nice and easy.”

The ranger, whose ID read Trevor Smith, knew a trap when he saw one, but he saw this one too late. He contorted his mouth as if to speak several times, but he ultimately crossed his arms and said nothing. After glaring at the cop for several moments, he finally declared, “Alright, I’ll see your mechanic. But know that I am making note of this backhand dealing and will file a report if anybody tries to force me into anything.”

“Settle down Trevor, this is routine. You’ll thank me later when a line of New York cops don’t slap you with tickets all the way down 95.” The ranger snorted. “Take the next exit, okay? I will be right behind you.” The ranger nodded and the officer loped back to his vehicle.

The shop was one of those 15-minute oil change gas station combos right off the interstate. It was rusty looking place alone on a stretch of state highway that was not well maintained. Pothole city. It was far enough north that the pine trees began to beat out the oaks and maples to crowd out sky above the road. The mechanic was waiting for the ranger and the officer on a bench next to an outdated gas pump. The ranger parked while the officer pulled up to the pumps and chatted with the mechanic. The cop had decided some minutes before that this Trevor Smith was mentally handicapped, and he informed his friend of this.

The cop pulled away and stationed himself a little way down the street while the mechanic, apparently the owner of the establishment, strolled on over to the ranger’s car.  The windows were barely halfway finished rolling down before the mechanic said, “It’ll be two-hundred bucks.”

He couldn’t respond for some moments. “Two-hundred dollars to scrape tint off my windows?” The ranger was sitting stock still, 3 o’clock-9 o’clock, and his knuckles were white.

“I could make it three-hundred if you’d like.” The mechanic was grinning now, and his teeth were shiny like new. He was already thinking about how a story about his run in with this cowboy would be a great hit with his buddies.

The ranger was sputtering now. He kept trying to make eye contact with the mechanic, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it and instead his head sort of twitched back and forth like a broken clock. Finally, he spat, “I won’t stand for this, you know! You are the problem. The problem with society! You know you are. You’re what’s wrong with this country.” His face twisted in subdued rage.

The mechanic heard only gargling and a few hoarse exclamatory sounds. He was afraid that the ranger might have been having a seizure or something and moved to grab the door handle, but the ranger yelled and slammed open the door for him. He struggled with the seatbelt amidst the folds of his poncho and finally rolled out of the car with a heavy clink. He stood, heaving and shuddering against his own breathing while keeping his eyes far away from those of the mechanic. The two men stood apart from one another for some time. Open laughter could be heard from the police car down the road.

Years of dealing with the expression of indignance in all its ugly forms had steeled the mechanic against exactly this type of response. As the ranger stood before him flexing his hands and moving his lips inaudibly, what little concern the mechanic might have had for him was easily replaced by the hard calculations of confrontation. The mechanic was shorter than the ranger, but hardier. Flexing his own musculature, he looked the ranger in the face and began to exert all his psychic energy toward the usurpation of the ranger’s will. His hands were fists, but he spoke calmly.

“You want to hit me, huh? Huh? Makes things a lot easier if you do.”

The ranger did not hear him. He was trying to shout, “You are the evil in America, you are the evil in America!” but his mouth was sponge dry and all he could manage was a wag of the lips and a squeak. The police officer, perceiving from afar that the ranger might cause some real trouble, glided back into the lot.

“What’s going on cowboy? You giving Dag here some trouble?” Dag was the mechanic’s name, apparently.

Clink. Clink. Clink.

“Answer the officer when he talks to you–“

The police officer had barely begun the motions of pulling himself from his vehicle when a clap and a rush of wind tore through the left side of his face, causing him to slump back into the driver’s seat in a dead heap. The shock of the sudden gunfire caused the mechanic to leap backwards, rolling on his boot-encased heel and landing on his back. A second bullet from the ranger’s now unveiled revolver pinned the mechanic’s skull to the pavement forever. A woman’s scream erupted from the interior of the gas station.

The ranger could look them square in the eyes now. They were like marbles. The ranger, calm now except for a tremor in his right leg which caused a tinkling sound, stepped awkwardly over the mechanic’s body and moseyed on over to the station door. It opened into a dusty convenience store whose rows of mostly empty shelving displayed the detritus of decades. Expired candy bars and bags of chips with ancient logos were stuffed between pallets of brightly colored charging adapters and unwanted knickknacks. The shrieking from before had transformed into a prolonged and muffled howl from a back room behind the counter. The ranger pulled himself over the register and tried the door. The lock, which had existed in a constant state of needing repair for three years, gave without trouble.

The wife of the mechanic was newly middle aged and a little fat. She couldn’t scream anymore and instead moaned, attempting to hide herself behind a desk in the corner of the mechanic’s office. She hollered “No! No!” and attempted to throw whatever she could reach at the ranger when he entered. He dodged a holepunch while he attempted to justify himself to the woman, to explain to her that the bad men outside had tried to rope him into deeply entrenched systems of tyranny that could only be ended through violence, but all she heard was garbled English and snarling. The mechanic’s wife finally landed a stapler on the Ranger’s calf and he responded with a volley of bullets that ended the debate instantly.

It occurred to the ranger that he had never fired his revolver outside of the range before. Unless he was cleaning it, which he did often, it usually sat dormant underneath his poncho. He had made a real mess this time. On his way back to his car, the ranger didn’t look at the mechanic again. He didn’t try to examine the police car either. The ranger adjusted his poncho, stowed his revolver in the glove compartment, and reversed out of the lot. He took the on ramp back to the interstate and continued his journey southward.

The Elmwood Pharmacy, despite no longer serving in any official capacity as a repository for drugs, still acted as the nexus for Malden’s most sickly and impoverished residents. The Walgreens four blocks over may have taken Elmwood’s prescriptions, but the corporate overlords had yet to wrap their minds around the more subtle influence of scratch tickets and cheap french fries. 

It was by the age-old combination of lottery, cigarettes, and bad food that old brick and mortars managed to survive alongside the new apartment complexes and supermarkets that continuously sprouted and asserted their dominion over the city’s urban nucleus. Elmwood clung low and desperately to the earth like a furtive slug, and it was easily one of the most loathsome structures still standing within view of the commuter rail. The rare travelers that noticed Elmwood at all have been known to say that the property would be better served by a Starbucks, or perhaps even a Subway. The place was generally despised, especially by its regulars, and it was only when faced with the dangerous end of a robber’s pistol that Kilgore J. Cohen, third inheritor and proprietor of the Elmwood legacy, realized that the whole place should have been sold off or burnt to the ground ago.

“Give me all the money,” said the robber, his voice cracking a little on the last word.

Kilgore with a mind stunted by years of cash register-induced apathy could barely muster the degree of emotion necessary for fear. “Of course,” he said, “I would think of doing nothing else.”

Simple compliance. The robber’s relief was palpable. He allowed his pistol to settle on the counter. Kilgore quickly concluded that he was dealing with an amateur, and he was surprised to find that, rather than relief and determination, he was actually very disappointed. The robber seemed to smile gingerly beneath the scraggly sock that concealed his face, like an idiot. Yes, Kilgore thought, only an idiot would rob Elmwood these days. This latest disappointment in a long life marked by small but consistent disappointments triggered a wave of nostalgia and despair that consumed Kilgore’s mind.

In the sixty-year history of the Elmwood Pharmacy, a robbery had only been attempted once before, and that was during the days when real prescriptions and not just a few bottles of Ibuprofen lined the store’s back shelves. It was a story told to the children at Passover of the time when the heroic uncle Albert went toe to toe with a fentanyl-crazed, gun-toting lunatic. As the legend goes, Albert calmly talked the gunman down and convinced him that he needed to grab the drugs from the back. Uncle Albert returned brandishing a rifle and threatening to blow the maniac’s brains out. This happened in broad daylight during a time when Elmwood was flush with chatter and the regulars that didn’t smell like homelessness. Back then, there was no need to stock Chinese newspapers or instant noodle. The vintage soda machine used to get cleaned polished weekly, and it didn’t screech.

The robber drummed his fingers against the register and drew Kilgore from his delirium. 

“Yes, yes. Sorry.”

“No problem.”

Kilgore opened the register and laid some small bills and a stack of quarters on the counter. Then he tried something. 

“We don’t keep much in the register anymore,” he said. “Most customers use EBT these days.” The robber nodded solemnly, as if he too had forced himself through five years of pharmaceutical school so he could inherit a bloated convenience store from his father during the middle of a recession. “Got more cash in the back. Want a scratch ticket?”

“That’d be nice actually, thanks.” 

Kilgore peeled one of the more expensive tickets off the role and handed it to the robber.

“Got any cartons of Marlboros? Lights please, I don’t smoke the other kind.”

“Ya, give me a minute.” Kilgore hefted himself up the steps into the back of the store, which was really more of a raised mezzanine overlooking the register. He allowed his eyes to sweep the rows of dusty shelving and filing cabinets before settling on a cracked countertop where, just two decades ago, pills were bottled in-house. 

A second wave of nostalgia almost debilitated him, but Kilgore weathered the torrent and fumbled under the countertop for a pair of forgotten buttons. He was not exactly sure how it worked, or if it ever did, but the button to the right apparently phoned the police. That is what his father once told him, anyway. The other button made an annoying buzzing sound at the food counter that Kilgore would have been beaten for playing with. He pressed the police button and continued toward a thin closet in the back corner of the store.

“Hey, you having a stroke back there? Hurry it up old man, I need to get moving!” Agitation grated against delight. The robber was almost giddy.

From the closet, Kilgore pulled a rusty metal case with a broken latch. He laid it on the countertop next to the stairs and called down to the robber, “I’ve got it here, it’s all right here.”

Kilgore unsheathed a handgun from the case. It was old, but immaculate. If uncle Albert’s rifle had really existed, this certainly wasn’t it. Was this one loaded? Kilgore didn’t know. It was heavier than he thought.

“What is that, what are you looking at?” Uncertainty was creeping into the robber’s voice now. “Bring the money down here!” The old man in the back of the store did not hear him.

“Yes, I’ve got it. It’s right here,” whispered Kilgore, and he was lost in another world.

(This is the latest version of a story idea that I have been rewriting for a few years now. The setting and story are based in fact. Earlier drafts are actually quite different from this one, so I will post them some day.)

It was the day after Christmas, December the 26th. Boxing Day. I was sitting on a bench in an industrial-sized bowling alley feeling increasingly awful with every passing moment. Almost half an hour had slipped away by that point and our buzzer still wasn’t showing any sign of ringing. It must have been kids-bowl-free day or free margarita bar or something because the place was bloated by screaming children, absent parents, and pop radio cranked to a maximum over the speakers. My head was going to start splitting. The chisel was already in place above my left temple and it was going to be these brats driving the hammer. I swear to god they gave this elderly couple the OK to bowl before us and we definitely got to the desk first. Worse, there was something brewing in my stomach, a barely perceptible tenderness erring on the side of nothing. But it wasn’t nothing.

The previous afternoon, Christmas day, December the 25th, the commemoration of Christ’s slippery escape, my girlfriend and I had been opening presents and sharing little kissies when her stomach started feeling the same way. By nightfall she was on a permanent loop between the bedside trash barrel and the guest bathroom. She knew what this was. I knew what this was. Her stomach bug definitely knew what it was: 24 hours of highly contagious, gut rending agony. Despite that fact, I played the chivalry card. I fed her soup despite knowing where it would end up. I continued to share little kissies despite knowing where I might end up. Please understand, I come from a family of addiction. My mother smoked two packs of Marlboros a day throughout my childhood, which is to say that my own ingrained sense of risk-reward is about as helpful as a lead brick. It’s a bundle of dead neural pathways, zero. I couldn’t help myself if I wanted to. When I see free kissies, I take them regardless of a looming stomach virus.

Fool I was. I woke up feeling fine, and in a few hours Amy felt a lot better too. Josh begged us to take him bowling on Boxing Day, so I offered to drive (we sort of promised we would take him a few days before anyway). Our usual spot, a local retro-inspired candlepin alley, was closed, so we begrudgingly drove the extra twenty minutes to the larger mainstream establishment off the highway. It was a gaudy place. More than two dozen lanes, a gargantuan, buzzing arcade, and an even bigger bar and restaurant. Suburban hell. Lebowski wouldn’t have liked it, and I was already poised to hate it even before my burgeoning illness started to reveal itself.

My girlfriend was back in the bathroom within five minutes of arriving. I was ready to leave after fifteen, but she was still in there. No calls or texts could reach her in that place. Josh was entertaining himself with a Jurassic park arcade game. I found myself locked on a bench steeped in loathing as I tried my hardest not to glare at passing children and the desk clerk who, seven minutes ago, told me, “it’ll be about five more minutes.” I allowed almost thirty five minutes to go by before everything became unbearable. I grabbed Josh out of an arcade machine, offered him McDonalds for his trouble, and made a beeline for the woman’s bathroom. Amy was just getting out, but as the bathroom door slammed shut behind her I caught a snatch of hyperloud pop music. Can you imagine that? They had speakers running in the bathrooms. There was literally no escape.

The drive home wasn’t too bad. The nothing in my stomach began to shift towards an indistinct weightiness. This state was more tender, yes, but still not painful. My headache subsided somewhat as well, and I began to toy with the idea that maybe I wouldn’t be hit with the brunt of the microbial assault. Maybe it was just gas. This momentary lapse in fear and caution cost me dearly. When we got home, Amy hopped into her own car to head home and Josh went inside to eat his free lunch. Feeling pretty good about myself, I snatched one of his fries and it was swallowed in a second. Instantaneous regret. That greasy lump of salt and potato sank like a rock and just sat there in my stomach. The immediacy of this retribution shocked me. My belly seemed to swell, and the weightiness building inside of it was no longer quite so innocuous.

I lurched my way down, down into the basement as my intestines began to come alive. I paced, massaging myself, hoping against hope that the feeling would subside. It didn’t, of course, and my organs continued to writhe as my head grew light. Once the final dregs of my initial hope faded, a frailer one emerged; perhaps I could make it through this thing without having to throw up? You should know that I hate throwing up. I’m bad at it, I’m a bad puker. My face gets hot, I shake, I cry. The thought of it makes me wince. Pale faced and clammy, swaddled in a stolen Marriott Resort towel, I swayed about my subterranean hideaway between lapses of breathless sitting. I couldn’t lay down. The cheap LEDs in the ceiling threw barrage after barrage of white hot rays directly into my skull, yet like a moth, or Moses, I orbited them unceasingly in a kind of desert limbo. I don’t know how many hours I passed in this delirium before I built up the conviction to evacuate my stomach manually.

In the 9th grade I suffered a similar bug, though the symptoms were not identical. It was thirst that got me last time. I just couldn’t quench it. After laboring for hours into the night balancing my fluid intake, I finally lost control and, after sprinting to the bathroom, wrapped my lips around the faucet and drank deeply for about ten seconds or so. I read somewhere that researchers studying birds on the desert islands of the Galapagos have to secure their water supplies really well lest the entire population of finches mob the barrels and drown themselves in their attempts to drink. Well, I imagine those finches, even in the midst of violent drowning, experienced some form of bliss, because my no longer so pubescent body was in heaven as I guzzled dram after dram of New England tap water. Satisfied, I waltzed over to the toilet and promptly vomited my brains out.

That was probably the easiest throw up experience of my life. It alleviated most of the symptoms immediately, that’s for sure. Unfortunately, this new bug was not of the thirst inducing variety. I had no desire to drink whatsoever, in fact, and I could not force myself to. Backup plan: physical manipulation of the uvula. I got on my knees and peered into the porcelain bowl. I caught a glimpse my own pale, dead eyed reflection in the toilet water and recoiled. Cowering, I crawled on all fours to the tiled shower. The inflamed mass of organs and fat that made up my underbelly swung and sloshed beneath me. There was no blood anywhere near my face. In the end, I didn’t even have to stick the finger all the way in. The mere mental impulse of pulling my own trigger was enough to shock my body into a fit of dry heaving and convulsions. My head drew back like a viper’s and my features seemed to twist before contorting into a lockjaw snarl.

Done!

And there he was. Steeping in a puddle of transparent bile bleached and limp was the semi-chewed carcass of Josh’s french-fry. The bastard was completely undigested.

[end excerpt]

Hello and welcome to the latest and greatest version of AAAAHH.com! Er, I mean AAAAHH.net! In an ongoing effort to subvert corporate interests, we have dropped the commercial suffix and replaced it with a much more grass-rootsy one. Some of my favorite websites are dot-nets. Everyone loves a good dot-net, right? I know I do.

Returning visitors may notice that literally everything has changed. I have been working for some time to get this website into a state in which I could upload my stories and comics without much effort, and finally, after a month of hacking away at WordPress tutorials and PHP, I have accomplished just that. Aaaahh.net is officially a blog! I coded this thing from the ground up, so please excuse any hiccups or bugs. I am an English Major, after all.

In its current state, the site is quite bare bones. It has a main index, individual post pages, an easy-to-navigate archive, and an about page. There is so much more to do, but experience has taught me that pacing is everything. In the future, I hope to add a search function, a real webcomic interface for perusing my drawings, and mobile support. While the website loads just fine on phones right now, it is not exactly convenient to read. That will be fixed first!

That is all for now. I am glad to have this thing, simple as it is, all polished up and published by Pig Day. Thank you so much to everybody that has stuck with me for all these years. I know I am not always the most consistent plan-maker, but I am trying to improve myself every day.

Praise pig day!