Now, I'll be the first to admit that Slappy shouldn't have kidnapped the girl. But, if you really stop and think about it, he had no idea that he was going to do it - life being as unpredictable as it is. And, as you will discover, there was little that I could have done to prevent it. That said, keeping her locked up in a self conceived and constructed cage dubbed 'the love-hold trap', well that's something altogether different. I don't agreed with it, just so as you know, but who am I to argue with the unexplained forces of the unpredictable? I only went along on that slow ride to nowhere because I was unconscious when the board was in session. So I awoke to discover myself stuck in the middle of the Mojave Desert. With a girl locked up in a cage. All out of lame excuses.

If you are the sort of person who is easily disagreeable, I would suggest that you stop right here. I would suggest that you go and find some other means of mutilating the day away. This is not for you. To be honest, this is the kind of thing four Satanic High Priests would find disagreeable. My mother was a dancer in a house of burlesque and she would not be pleased (to say the least). I am her son, after all. And, though only a floundering author and measly hang about, still accountable for being first hand to an event that would inspire most to voice resounding objections. To be honest, though sickened, I was kind of intrigued by the whole thing. As vile as it might seem now, at the time it looked better than a banana split the size of Ojos Del Salado. So come on! Put the kids in the Town & Country. It's time for some strawberry shakes down at the late night survive-through.

You will definately not survive this bit.

Where dwells the hangman's hangman? In some forgotten tenement, soaked in the filth of the good Lords inevitable conclusion, resigned to the ideals of duty where none should admit allegiance? Where dwells the second black mask, those hands of blistered patience steeped in the intimacy of doom brought? Not in the Mojave Desert, I can tell you that. Come to think of it, justice might be the one and only thing that the imagination of God holds as fair capital. Which means, if you're so inclined, that we're all pretty fucked. It means that all things that have been gotten away with will never be brought to light in some extremely foreign court of appeals. It means that, at the hangman, the end is just that, the end. So just let it go.

Slappy had always been a bit of a reactionary. He was the kind of guy that wouldn't say anything about babies being killed, but kill one right in front of him and you'd never hear the end of it. The whole world's like that I find. Wholly mesmerized by an ill formed compassionate teaching that is entirely based on unreasonable proximity. If you had to deal with the fact that there were children eating leftovers out of your garbage cans you would probably feel guilty. Guilty enough to be brought to action perhaps. Maybe you'd feed them. Maybe you'd just hack them into little pieces and toss them in your compost. You see, it all depends on how you view whatever it is that haunts your daily vision. Most North Americans have become quite desensitized to homelessness, for example. This is largely due to the fact that they're so damn smelly and grubby lookin'. Therefore, proximity no longer has anything to do with it. Most North Americans tend to view 'crazy people who talk to themselves on the street' as, well... crazy people who talk to themselves on the street, I would think. Schizophrenics, on the other hand, might argue that their illness is comparable to living ones life with their head stuck in a toilet that is constantly being flushed. Most folks would not stop long enough to think about it. Most folks just wish such bothersome individuals would melt into the endlessness that is our great and desirable social landscape. Being that they are products of that landscape, the question remains: where exactly should they be sent? For if they are not to remain here, with us, then perhaps we are all destined for unceremonious exile. Having said that, know then that what occurred during those lost hours in the desert could be best defined as an experiment of sorts. It was an experiment to see what might occur if all the so called sane people of this world decided take the day off and just the crazies were left to mind the till.

Slappy Mutt Mutt had not always been a bad man. Like most people, he was once filled with emotions and thoughts of a pleasant nature. But all things in life change, quite often for the worse to be honest. Everyone and everything degrades. If you stare at your legs long enough they will most assuredly disappear. Everything is eaten away from the ground up. The ground has grown colder than the gift of its giving, I'm afraid. So Slappy was no exception. Slappy had once been a good man. I did not know him then. I only knew the demonic Slappy who was, without a doubt, far more entertaining than his former angelic self. I have no basis for comparison, truthfully speaking, but when has good ever been more fun than evil? Not ever that I can recall.

So there we were, five of us all toll. The girl, who made six, doesn't count. She was safely locked within the confines of the 'love-hold trap', bound and gagged. That left Slappy, myself, Ernesto Valencias (the famous Honduran trapeze artist known for lighting himself on fire), Dr. Maurice, and Mr. Chips walking free. The Doctor was a rather peculiar sort of fellow to be honest. He couldn't have been an inch taller than 5'1'', with a huge bushel of curly blonde hair atop his head. He was a motivational speaker. During our foray into the wilds he did a shit load of talking but failed to motivate anyone besides our captive (truth be told). I hope that he will not take that the wrong way, wherever he may be. But yelling at someone while they're trying to piss only prolongs the wait that one has to endure because of the party that is need of it. Yelling will not make it come out any faster. It will only deter it from coming out at all. This leads to a very uncomfortable endlessness that is impossible to dissolve. You just have to sit there and wait, I'm afraid.

There is no way in hell that you will survive this next bit.

Nothing works from the middle out. Things only seem to make sense when they're relayed from their conception. You, for example, make no sense whatsoever. You, as a singular being, make as much sense to those around you as some feebly lost American backpacker trying to get directions from a Greek and a Turk arm wrestling for a pistol. Not without your past can those around you presume to know the nuts and bolts of your being. And without that beginning your end is - sadly - void of any emotional ware and tare on those that are obliged to feel bad because they were related to you in some way. And that's just no good. Someone's gotta cry for Argentina. Better someone other than Madonna, I figure.

There's history behind everything, even history itself. The history behind our trek into the Mojave goes a little something like this...

It was a hot, dusty afternoon when I stumbled into town. Being that it was summer, most folks had resigned themselves to the fact that the day was a casualty of the season. So everyone just sat on their porches and waited for the night to provide them with an excuse to be productive. Night time in the desert is funny like that. Much colder than most realize, the drastic difference between the two twelve o'clock markers is quite severe. Deadly heat during the day and vicious cold at night. Perfect for lizards and, for some unknown reason, elderly asthmatic Canadian golfers.

Slappy Mutt Mutt was born in the desert. He was raised in the desert, went to school in the desert, went to war in the jungle and returned to the desert, and (finally) opened an adult books and paraphernalia boutique in the desert. So you see, besides the one year that Slappy spent in the jungle, he had lived his entire life in the desert. You know, I'm not quite sure what it is, but there's something about the desert that tends to blur the lines of social acceptability. Look at Las Vegas. Without a doubt the most obscene example of premeditated lunacy since a handful of influential Greek men decided it would be best if Olympic athletes competed naked so as to ensure performance equality. And you wonder why the Olympics only allowed young, amateurs to compete for so long. It's like that though. The desert makes you crazy. Look at Joe Pesci. In Home Alone he seemed fine. But put him in the desert, like in Casino, and he turns into a fucking animal. Come to think of it, everyone except for Don Rickles went pretty nuts in that one.

When Slappy was just a kid he used to live on the outskirts of town. His mother, Janice, worked in a road house called 'The Triple Suns'. And although Slappy was under the impression that she spent her time at the 3 Suns serving drinks to thirsty desperadoes, she was actually the one doing all the drinking. For you see, Janice was one of those rare prostitute-waitresses that rarely seems to have time to do either job properly. Either you get an unopened bottle of beer or half a yank. The woman couldn't concentrate. Years later, Janice would discover that she suffered from ADD. She would also learn that she was dyslexic as well. And, as ridiculous as it might sound, once she chose to acknowledge and tackle these ailments, she was forced to come to terms with the fact that she had an IQ of one hundred and eighty six. She was fourty seven at the time. She died two years later whilst driving to Washington where she had landed a job in one of those highly mysterious think tanks where people sit around all day and debate the pros and cons of things such as thermonuclear war and such. She accidentally drove her car into the back of a semi trailer parked on the side of the highway. She was doing ninety. She was putting on eye liner. She looked great at the time.

There are those out there that believe all people to be shaped by the happenings of their early lives. Now, we could sit here and debate the validity of this belief but I can't be bothered with it. Every time something like this rears its ugly head the wackos start popping out of the woodwork. You ever notice that everyone's got an opinion about practically everything these days? There are even those that say, rather unshakably I might add, that I am a highly opinionated man. To such an accusation I can only offer you this: I am not opinionated. I just wish that everyone would shut up.

Slappy, for example, was traumatized twice before the age of ten. The first of these traumas occurred when his father fell off the roof of the house while attempting to set up a Christmas scene after consuming a bottle of Wild Turkey. He fell and landed head first on the driveway. He was killed instantly. Two weeks later, Slappy's grandmother was shot to death by the milkman. From what I can gather the woman was quite unpleasant to most folks. So, after years of taking her shit, the milkman finally decided that he'd had enough. So he shot her nine times. The glorious bastard actually stood there and took the time to reload. God bless, son. God bless.

So, coupled with the fact that he spent a year in Vietnam, it was only a matter of time before Slappy cracked a bolt and lost his head. He had spent the better part of twenty years living a life of mediocre filthiness in a town where people were too lazy to be bothered with the exotic entanglements of licorice whips, edible underwear, and love harnesses. So you see, it was all just a matter of time. Not unlike the unknown workings of mind numbing number logic, Slappy's skull was just waiting for something ingenious to discover its dark, empty places. As it turned out, everything fell into place just as I strolled into town with an empty gas can. I would leave town two days later in the company of a would-be kidnapper and his faithful entourage. I would never see the gas can again.

You will fail this next bit not because I am strong.
But because you are weak.

It may sound almost too typical to be believable, but the truth of the matter is that I did indeed run out of gas in the middle of the desert. I had not planned it that way. As if a prelude to something altogether pulp, I felt as if I had landed squarely in the first ten minutes of some disgustingly brilliant hacker film. It left me with little choice but to rummage around in the trunk for a gas can that, at the time I could have sworn was bigger, and head off in the direction best suited to the illusions of hopeful outcomes. As luck would have it, I didn't have far to wander.

You won't find the town of Slappy's birth on any map. It's far too small for such recognition. Which must bring one to wonder why anyone in their right mind would open a XXX Boutique in such a place. Slappy would latter confess that he did it as an experiment in futility. I responded to that statement by walking into a wall three times in a row. The difference? Mine took under a minute. His took twenty years. It makes no sense. Perhaps that's the purest incarnation of futility. The redundant acknowledgement of your own unwillingness to do anything about it.

So that's where I found myself. In a one road town filled with an odd variety of introverts, extroverts, mindless shapes, and the cackling ghost of ill confidence. A town that had been frozen in the forgotten arms of the 1950's, looking as if it hadn't yet learned that the world had since woken up and then gone back to sleep. Slappy, unlike many of his fellow citizens, had left that little town for a brief time. He went from that place into the mysterious east where he shot at nothing and hid from even the sky itself. The outside world decided on as a bother, he returned to his desert time capsule and shut himself off. And that's where I come into it. For you see, he hit me with his pick-up, so there was little I could do about it.

It still boggles my mind to this day. How exactly does one get hit by a vehicle in a town with only one road? In a town where, even if the entire population owned a car, there wouldn't be enough traffic to warrant traffic lights. At the time I chose to blame Slappy's driving instead of my own foolish disregard. You must remember, I had been wandering in the desert and may have fallen victim to the ancient effects of the luminous Sol. Then again, due to the randomness of things, there really wasn't anything that could have been done to prevent it I suppose. I stepped off the curb just as Slappy was turning the corner. I froze, he slammed on the brakes, and I was introduced to the outstanding arguments to the contrary pertaining to the existence of most things.

When I awoke I found myself in saloon. I say saloon only so that I might make a half-ass attempt at remaining loyal to the differentiation between drinking establishments worldwide. You see, a saloon is a bar with a parlor. A tavern is one that serves food, Inns having both food and lodgings. Saloons may also have lodgings but are more commonly referred to as 'hotels' in such cases. Such 'hotels' simply have 'saloons' within them. Whorehouses can also have saloons attached to them, though never bars, taverns, or lounges. A lounge is a place that typically has couches or phones at the tables. Lounges also have a tendency to batter patrons with the musings of graduates of community college jazz programs. A 'bar' is just what it implies - a room with a bar in it. It is not to be confused with nightclubs or discos, which are bars that play loud music - whether it be prerecorded or live. Saloons can have live music but are typically referred to as something other than saloons if such musical happenings are more common than twice a week. That said, I awoke in a saloon. It was rather empty as saloons go. That came as no great surprise mind you. According to several locals that I would speak to later that day, the town theater had been showing 'Logan's Run' their entire lives and neither of them had ever seen it.

Are you getting impatient? Is all this incoherent chop starting to sizzle your master bedroom? I hope so. It's best that you get in the right frame of mind before you allow yourself to realize that it's gone missing. That way you can always tell yourself that, up until the point that you blew it, you were on top of your game. That's what life's all about. All those things about yourself that never measured up brought together, made over, and passed off as some second rate version of the self you never wanted.

So there I was. Semi conscious in a saloon with five strangers. As it would turn out, I would end up with four of them in Mojave Desert with the fifth locked up in a cage, bound and gagged. They were, as stated earlier, Slappy Mutt Mutt, Ernesto Valencias, Dr. Maurice, and Mr. Chips. As my eyes peeled back against the light, it was their faces that hovered above me like four angelic frauds. For there was but one angel in the room. And her name was Rosemary.

Now, it was easy to deduce that Slappy was in charge from the get go. No one said or did anything without his strange, unconscious say so. Everyone, that is, but Mr. Chips. Mr. Chips did not speak. And by that I am inferring that he never spoke, not that he merely had nothing to say. From what I could gather he hadn't spoken since the spring of 1976. Why? I have no idea. As to what he said prior to that year? - one can only venture to guess. But that's what Dr. Maurice told me the first time I attempted to make conversation with the eldest of our party. He said 'Chippy don't talk. He doesn't say a word. He hasn't spoken since May of 1976'. To this day I'm not quite sure if the story was true or not but the tale goes something like this. One night, in May of 1976, a local oil baron bet Mr. Chips 1 million dollars that he couldn't go for ten years without speaking. Mr. Chips took the bet and had not spoken since. At the time I didn't bother to do the math. I should have. It would have made the conclusion of that week all the more ridiculously entertaining.

Be that as it may, I was quick to delve into the lives of the three men that still possessed the ability to verbalize. But as I was to discover, that merely gave way to hours of Slappy's never ending analysis of the other two as they sat nearby, nodding whenever the occasion arose. Everyone seemed to give way to Slappy's 'better judgement' about practically everything, not seeming to care how he went about painting their character. For example, he went on and on about how Dr. Maurice could have been one of the greatest psychoanalytical minds of our time had he the strength to curve his appetite for young girls (especially those who were his patients). Dr. Maurice had once had quite a lucrative practice in San Francisco but was run out of town by the fathers of two young girls whom he had taken liberties with. Thankfully he had not been jailed. How, exactly, it led him to become a motivational speaker remains a mystery though. From what I saw of it, there wasn't anyone in that town worth motivating.

As for Ernesto, well... let's just say that when I met Ernesto he was convinced that he was in hell. A staunch Catholic, he viewed his time in the middle of nowhere as suitable punishment for killing his wife. Don't get me wrong, Ernesto wasn't a murderer by any means, but he blamed himself for her death none the less. You see, she had been sleeping with numerous other men while Ernesto was on the road with the circus. One night, after returning home unexpectedly after suffering minor burns during a show, he caught her with one of her lovers on the kitchen floor. His wife, so distraught that she had been found out, promptly ran to the balcony, climbed the railing, and leapt to her death. The man, by the way, was Ernesto's half brother Paolo Sanchez, the famed South American midfielder. The two of them had coffee while the police removed her body from the boulevard below. And why not? Honduras has some damn fine coffee.

Following that unfortunate escapade, Ernesto decided to retire from circus life and wandered north in search of a suitable place to torture himself. Never one to go half way with anything, his ceaseless exploration for the most despicable company in the northern hemisphere ended when he stumbled upon Slappy and Dr. Maurice dynamite fishing on nearby Lake Churapinã. And that's pretty much it. That's the whole lot. Except, perhaps, for Rosemary. To be honest, I didn't really speak much with Rosemary until after Slappy had abducted her. But by then I did it more out of a sense of pathetic obligation than anything else. Her captivity was, after all, due to my overactive libido and naïve misconception that most people are not entirely mentally handicapped.

This is how you will feel when you realize that you have gone quite mad and are unable to go and get take away because the door to your room is locked all the time.

It was on the second day of my recovery at the saloon that everything went terribly wrong. I have, since then, been dumbfounded by my own stupidity in the matter. One must always remember where they are at all times, especially if that locale is in or near any kind of desert. Because crazy things happen in the desert and no one ever hears about them. And that's why you should always think before you speak, especially if you happen to be in the company of desert dwellers. Take Sand People for example.

In the small hours of the morning is when most things of this nature are born. I, for example, was the product of 3:18am. As for my companions, I wouldn't think there to be any born before 1am in the whole lot. So there we were, all three sheets to the wind, talking in circles, talking stupid-talk, when I came up with the extremely sinful notion of hitting on lovely Rosemary.

Poor, sweet, Rosemary.

Knowing full well that she a) couldn't leave the saloon because she was the only employee and b) that she absolutely despised the lot of us with a hatred that could not be measured in even the cruelest of units, I decided to give it a go anyway. You see, Rosemary worked at the saloon because her father, an invalid, had been given the place by his father. Rosemary's great, great grandfather had built it during the late 1800's. So, despite the fact that she reviled the customers and loathed working there, she couldn't bring herself to break her fathers heart and leave town. So she dealt with Slappy's shit by ignoring him. And, to her credit, she a did a damn fine job of it. So much so, in fact, that Slappy and the boys rarely bothered to speak to her beyond ordering drinks.

So I found myself, cross-eyed and slurring, sitting at the bar attempting to coerce her into a conversation. I will be the first to admit that my etiquette was lass than appropriate. I should also have probably kept my voice down. Being that I am rather boisterous when intoxicated, I should have tried to be a little more tactful when it came to my overtly hedonistic advances. I must admit, from what I can recall of it, Rosemary was a rather good sport about the whole thing. She must have endured my slimy verbal tentacles for the better part of an hour before she hit me in the head with the beer glass. What was it with that town? Nothing but head injuries.

When I came around I was in the back of Slappy's truck. We all were (being the despicable loyalists to his royal highness that we were). Rosemary was there too of course, bound and gagged within the silvery confines of 'the love-hold trap'. I was bleeding from the head where she had crowned me with the beer glass and was in need of stitches. Her eyes, filled with panic and terror, looked into mine attempting to make me realize that I was not yet a willing participant in her abduction. Perhaps she did it so that I might help her, I don't know. Truth be told, I was far too disoriented to fully grasp the severity of the situation. As far as I was concerned, at that moment in time, things of that nature were quite common in the desert. And who was I to say anything to the contrary? I grew up in a temperate zone.

Before I go any further I must explain the sudden appearance of the device. You see, Slappy wasn't altogether delusional when it came to his meager existence in that little desert town. He had plans, as everyone must I suppose. One of Slappy's many hopeful flights of fancy was 'the love-hold trap'. Designed as the ultimate in submissive - dominatrix aids, he hoped to one day mass produce the cages and sell them to sex shops all over the world. The ridiculous thing about them was that they were just regular, ordinary cages. Anyone motivated enough to that extreme could easily make one themselves or purchase something similar from a kennel or pet store. But Slappy thought it ingenious. And there was just no convincing him otherwise. As far as he was concerned the cage was money in the bank. And, had there been a bank in that town, I'm sure he would have demanded it comply.

So now you know where he got the cage from. His basement.

It would seem that Slappy took some offense to Rosemary hitting me on the head with that beer glass. His reaction to the incident was to gag her with a sock, wrap her head with electrical tape, tie her hands together with a bar towel, and march her out the back door to his truck. Leaving the boys to watch her, he then went back inside for me. As far as I can tell, it was then that Slappy must have snapped. Perhaps he had fantasized about the whole thing before hand, perhaps he hadn't. As I've said, it seemed to me as if the man was just looking for an excuse, any excuse, to do something that could not be so easily undone. So the first thing he did was to drive back to his house for the cage. After that he planned to drive into the desert and confront that which most people dare not confront. The ever so loosely configured parameters of unrestricted freedom.

It was near the end of the drive that I came around. What seemed like mere minutes had actually been almost two and a half hours. I was surprisingly sober. We all choked on the dust as Slappy sat alone in the truck cab, his foot weighing the gas pedal to the floor, his eyes fixed on some imaginary point on the night horizon. I just laid there and bled. There was nothing left for me to do in it. I was beyond altering the course of what was about to transpire. I was beyond removing myself from it as well. Head injury or not, I was going to have to kick in and get on board for the big push. I would regret it, I told myself, but it was better than the alternatives that had started the creep into my head. Someone was going to be left out there. It sure as hell wasn't going to be me.

Take off your shirt. Here comes my money shot.

What you are about to read is not pleasant. The truth, perhaps entirely foreign in this day and age, rarely offers tidings of good will. This you will learn as your clock ticks. The truth, though commonly misconstrued as something noble and empowering, tends to turn up more often than not sounding of hammer blows on coffin nails. I have never been a truthful being. It would be quite a difficult thing to be someone truthful, I would think. But I'll do my best to fake it for you, offering you this truth as an obvious example of its natural tendency to be ugly. When we got out there, hidden away from the eyes of the world, lost in the windy cold of the desert night, we stood around pretending not to watch Slappy rape Rosemary. Then we pretended not to do it ourselves. Then, as if set on some diabolically irreversible course, we pretended not to do it over and over again.

The truth. A funny thing that.

What is the truth? Perceptions dictate truth, yes or no? Most things seem pretty real to me, yet they are comprised of tiny little particle do-dads. Does such information make them any less truthful? Is there even truth to the existence of such particles and likeminded miniscule nonsense? To properly explore the truth you must first discard the bullshit adage that 'the truth is the truth'. It is an altogether boring thing to say 'if truth did not exist then we, as sentient beings, could not carry on in a state of constant misinformation and haphazard communications'. Bend your head a little. For example: does God exist? Yes? No? How does anyone know for sure? They don't. Thus, you have the existence of faith. And, despite what you might have been led to believe, faith is not truth. Faith is a hard hat worn in areas where fear might fall and hit you in the head at any moment. It's your need for the existence of something, not the universal truth of it. Therefore, truth is entirely dependant on perspectives.

The truth? I found the entire affair beyond me. I convinced myself that I hadn't done anything, despite the fact that I just had. Consumed by feelings of self loathing, attempting at best to paint the whole thing as a crash course in how despicable behavior can serve to further individual experience, I did my best not to outwardly crumble while I went about it all. Mistakes are made in every life. This, though entirely extreme, is one such example. The repetitiveness of the endeavor aside.

I'm not exactly sure when we realized that Rosemary was dead. It was sometime the following night after a day filled with whiskey consumption, pretzels, and powdered donuts, that someone finally realized she was cold. I was sitting against one of the rear tires of the truck, bottle in hand, oblivious to everything save my own hatred for all that I had allowed myself to become. I looked at her immobile body, wondering what it would have been like to wake up next to her or carry on a conversation about something mundane while she was in the shower. I did my best to convince myself that she was merely sleeping. And then I lost it and killed everyone.

It's a horrible thing to live in fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of others, fear of yourself. Better to become the master of those fears rather than allow them to consume you. After hours spent attempting to rationalize the most unforgivable thirty hours of my life, I decided that it would be best to stop trying to convince myself that I had simply slipped up. I had fallen, no question about it. So why not hit the ground hard and leave an impression.

Like any good desert dweller, Slappy had a gun rack in his truck. Two rifles were to be found on it. One was a hunting rifle, one was a shot gun. I ended up having to use both. After shooting Dr. Maurice and Ernesto with the shot gun, I was left with little choice but to use the rifle on Slappy. For he had started to run. Now, as drunk as he was, he still made decent time. Being that I'm not entirely familiar with distances as they might pertain to rifles, I can't say exactly how far Slappy was able to go before I shot him. Let's just say that I had to employ the 'scope' to ensure I could make him out properly. Once targeted, I steadied myself and proceeded to shoot him in the back of the neck. He was flung forward, rolled around a bit, and then lay still. It was that simple. All of it was that terribly simple. Breath mint anyone?

Stranger still was the fact that, after having shot Slappy, I turned to discover Mr. Chips standing next to me, his head cocked to one side as if he were appraising my marksmanship. A round of uncomfortable seconds passed between us as I deliberated whether or not I was going to shoot him. He just stood there, his hands on his hips, looking out at Slappy's body, an entirely removed expression on his face. To his credit, he did not flinch. He didn't try to run either. Even when I turned towards him, the rifle held at waist height, my finger still on the trigger. He just stood there, calm as could be. So I decided to let him live. I also decided to burn everyone. Everyone except for Rosemary. Her I buried.

Right now it may look like you've won.
But trust me. It just looks that way.

So that's the whole of it. Perhaps you were expecting something far more interesting. Let me assure you, there is nothing interesting whatsoever when it comes to such things. There is only the doing of it. The telling of such occurrences, though always touched with a bit of danger and mystery, never quite lives up to the true depravity of such actions. And therein lies the sickness that we embody as a species. Horrified by the factual and entirely mesmerized by fact sold as fiction.

Slappy Mutt Mutt was just a man. One man alone in a place without boundaries. One man left too long in the searing heat of imaginary inner workings with enough hours for them to conquer what little reality remained. I, too, am just a man. A man that did what had to be done to survive. I am not proud of what I did. I derived no pleasure from it. They say that from all things, no matter the outcome, something good comes of it, no matter how insignificant. I would agree. I am a much better shot than I used to be.

Having buried Rosemary, feeling altogether meaningless as if doomed to know the secret of things but unable to warn the world about itself, I turned to Mr. Chips and began to mutter something about the sheer insanity of us and this planet that turns no matter it. Sitting down on the ground, I could think of nothing else but to put my head in my hands and weep. I have no idea why I did but it seemed the proper thing to do at the time. And that's when it happened. Eclipsing the sun, he walked past me and scanned the dry desolation before us. And that's when he said it. Shaking his head slightly he muttered - 'we are men never by choice... but apparently always by fault.'

The date? May something, 1986.

Collins Mini English Dictionary defines the following words as such:

1] Hue and cry n. public outcry.
2] Nap n. short sleep - v. napping.
3] Ran v. past tense of RUN.
4] Tombola n. lottery with tickets drawn from a revolving drum.
5] Wow interj. exclamation of astonishment.










'Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire,
I hold with those who favor fire.'

-Robert Frost

Yes! It's Steve Hoffman's
SuperDisco
2000

This past February I decided to spend a little time at one of my favorite places, the mystical island of Filiki. Located near the island of Kiritimati (better known to most as Christmas Island), Filiki is home to a splendid tribe of Polynesians known as The Filikiani. I was there visiting friends that I endeavor to see at least once annually, though I must admit that I spend far more time there than not. Last year, for example, I spent a total of seven weeks on the island, two of which were entirely devoted to sleeping. Filiki is also where my girlfriend lives. Her name is Khiama. She is quite lovely.

Due to the fact that the band had spent so much time on the road during the latter half of 1999, I returned after an absence of some months. It was good to see everyone and I immediately went about becoming the other me that I sometimes am - though never around any one of you, for obvious reasons. Things were, as usual, the nearest to perfection that they could be. My days were filled with lounging about, swimming, eating, and re-reading The Lord Of The Rings for the four millionth time. Life, it seemed, was perfect. You know, it's during those times that I often debate whether on not to bother with any of this silly musical nonsense any longer. After all, it seems quite pointless to me after spending a week in a lush tropical paradise with a very attractive girl who speaks absolutely no English whatsoever. My dreams of one day opening a Trader Vic's on the island with Rich seem better each time I'm there. But, for some reason unknown to me, I always seem to find my way back here to you lot. Why is that?

Anyway, none of this has anything to do with me, truth be told. It has everything to do with the boy wonder. Yes, that's right, THE BOY WONDER. The one and only STEVE HOFFMAN! (Yes, yes, I realize that you're now uncontrollably excited).

So there I was, lounging about on one of the most remote islands in the world. An island in the middle of absolutely nowhere. An island so far removed from those places filled with people and espressos and double cheese burgers that it could almost be considered nonexistent. There I was, lounging in the soft sands of a perfect afternoon, not caring which way the tides turned, not caring about much of anything. And that’s when it happened. Out of nowhere I hear this god awful ruckus. And, from around the crest of the bay head, this huge blue and white ship appears. It is emblazoned with a giant BMW insignia and a giant M. Well, well - I thought to myself - at least it’s an M class.

At the helm of this gigantic ship was none other than The Boy himself - Captain Steven Hoffman. I would soon learn that Steve had decided to quit show business in favor of sailing around the world on a massive BMW boat promoting his new Disco (which was, rather conveniently, the very same massive BMW boat). I got all this first hand from the man himself, you see. He filled me in via ‘bull horn’. He wouldn’t get off the boat. He was being accompanied by fourty of the worlds most attractive women. The Disco was not due to open until New Years day of 2001. Therefore no one was allowed aboard. Except for fourty of the worlds most attractive women.

So Steve filled me in via the bull horn. I stood there on the beach like a fool, straining my voice to answer him back. The ship was in the middle of the bay, you see, so he could barely make me out. I discovered that BMW had built the massive ship at their factory in Bavaria. 10,000 dwarves from Innsbruck were then employed to roll the thing on giant logs to the Baltic. Quite a feat, I must say. During those weeks Steve spent his days recruiting the lucky ladies that would accompany him. I may not know much but I’ll tell you this. I’m in the wrong line of work. Obviously you are as well.

Anyway, the appearance of the mighty BMW Disco ship pretty much ruined any hopes of a secluded and relaxing vacation. Steve’s sudden arrival reminded me that there were things to be done at home. There were shows to be played, sleeping pills to be purchased, Sucralfate to be devoured. So I left Filiki never to return. For you see, the French blew it up four days after I left. Now it will glow in the dark for the next five hundred years so Parisians can ponse about in their cafes, smoking like chimneys, waxing poetic about the good old days when, instead of radiating their many enemies, poor foreign bastards had to come bail their asses out instead. Oh - am I in trouble now!

Anyway, that’s my little story. Oh, one more thing. If you’re at all interested in getting down on the mighty Disco ship, here’s a little information to get you on your way. Please respond to: