Modern Future

 Things have changed.  It has become dangerous to get around these days.  After the cars started to self-drive and the self-driving crash lawsuits became a cottage industry, few manufacturers were left.  You see, the autonomous cars killed so many people, and so frequently, that you essentially had no choice but to take a self-driving car to your destination.  "Better him than me," I muttered regularly to myself.

I used my phone to hail a self-driver to get to work.   I knew what I was in for.  When the car arrived, it was even worse that I thought.  A cumslicked Buick arrived, announcing itself mostly by its strong smell of feces and animalistic sex.  I opened the door and was immediately overcome.  I signaled "wait" on the ridehail app and scoured the gutter for a solution.  

In an instant I found it.  A pile of fresh dog shit, steaming in the winter cold.  I grabbed as much as I could in my shaky hands and packed my nostrils full.  This was the best solution for riding in the autonomous vehicles - the ridership uses them as whorehouses, bathrooms, heroin shooting galleries and worse.

"Drive! Drive!" I yelled to nobody in particular.  It was just me, and the machine, and the incredible amount of body fluid and excrement.  We only made it about two blocks before it ran over the first pedestrian.  It was an octogenarian, his walker and mangled body jamming up the wheel in the wheel well.  The system roared to life in a mechanical tone, "RIDER: CLEAR JAM.  LEFT FRONT WHEEL WELL."  I sighed and got the pry bar out of the vehicle's trunk.

Archimedes was purported to have said, "Give me a long enough lever and I could move the world."  Well, I wish I had a longer one.  I pried and bent that old sonofabitch out of there and put his battered body in the trunk.  Better him than me.  I used my phone to submit an accidental kill ticket, it was the 25th I had submitted in the past 20 days.  The dog shit in my nose was oozing down now and burning a little.  

As the vehicle began to speed up again, I began to wonder if the old man was really dead.  There was a thumping and muffled moaning noise coming from the trunk, but I had read a lot of Eastern European vampire literature and assumed it was just decomposition gas escaping the corpse.  That's usually what happens on these rides.  Besides, I was late for work.

When I arrived at the office, the building was closed again for regulatory inspection.  Fucking bureaucrats.  I sent the cumslicked Buick back to cruise and retriggered the ridehail app, hoping for an uneventful ride home.

Crete

My dad is the crankiest old fuck you will ever meet. He watches a lot of Greek TV news and seems to think it's a battle between him and the presenter where whoever shouts loudest about how fucked the Greek government is wins.  We've lived here for as long as I've been alive.  He loves to yell and he spends all day drinking American whiskey.  I've asked him about that because he always says USA is a place for faggots, but apparently that doesn't matter.  

The Greek government is fucked.  That is my reality.  Every day, we have to scream that the Greek government is so fucked and ultimately the screaming drowns out the TV no matter how loud it was in the first place. Whenever there is an election, my dad burns tires in the street.  Sometimes he burns 30 or 40 tires per night.  He just gets junkyard tires and pours gasoline all over them and lights them up.  The thick, black smoke is impossible to navigate.  Everybody for ten miles breathes in the acrid fumes.

Here in Crete, this is all normal.  The Greek government is fucked, and he loves to burn tires.  And the homosexuality.  Everybody from the USA is a homosexual.  Sometimes, when my father is screaming at the TV, he is so focused on that element of things that he can hardly debate the presenter about the Greek government and how fucked they are. When there's an argument in the Greek parliament, whoever loses, my dad and his friends go rape the guy.  Just constantly, they're forming a gang to go rape the politicians in the parliament and the Greek government is fucked.  

He gets so fucking drunk drinking the American whiskey that he hates and then he makes sausages.  Over and over.  More sausages.  Raccoon sausage.  Vulture sausage.  Any scavenger that he can find.  It's fucking disgusting and the color and smell of it as it cooks makes me throw up.  The texture is sandy, and grainy, and the meat is oily with brown and black spots probably from disease.  He eats it every day and is fine of course, and he slugs whiskey and pounds his fist on the table while he screams at the fucking Greeks and their shithole country.  

Anyway, I'm writing this story because he died last week.  The old codger finally kicked.  He was 100 years old.  I thought for sure all the whiskey and raping and yelling and vile sausages would have killed him sooner.  I found a minotaur outfit in his stuff while I was cleaning out his house.  Surprisingly nice piece of kit for such a miserly old fuck.  If you want it, come by the house and you can have it. Follow the burning tires, it's just up the hill.

Gang Investigative Unit

The Gang Investigative Unit was housed in a ramshackle building downtown.  Built in the 50s, and spuriously maintained since then, the building exhibited nearly all the signs of urban decay.  A thick layer of car exhaust had blackened the ornate limestone exterior.  The façade had broken windows behind thick metal bars, serving to keep prisoners in, or maybe to keep observers out.  The paint throughout the building was yellowed from years of cigarette smoke and peeling off.  More importantly, the coffee tasted like shit.

Mike Donella was a tough cop, a detective and 30 year veteran of the force.  He remembered the bad old days.  Those were some real tough cops back then.  Nowadays, the cops were just baby-faced kids, test takers and pencil pushers mostly - chasing around these so-called "gangsters" who spend more time posting pictures of dime bags on their Facebook wall than committing actual crimes.  Back then you might end up with a hit on your whole family.  Nowadays a hit is something that happens to a webpage.

"Donella, You've got a perp interview in Interrogation 2," The Captain yelled from his office.

Donella's cheap suit struggled to contain his hulking frame as he lumbered into the interrogation room.  In the dimly lit room sat Ramos, a piece of shit nickel and dime drug dealer, if you could call selling 0.2 grams of marijuana to people being a drug dealer.  Ramos was of slight build, still wearing the same clothes he was arrested in last night.  He looked bedraggled after his night in the bullpen.

"The names Mike Donella," the detective boomed.  "And I'm going to make you talk today."

"What's it? 10 AM?  Plenty of hours left in this day, G-Man."  Ramos cracked a smile.

"G-man implies that you're a gangster.  You're no gangster.  You're a piece of shit!"

"Oh, ho - alright.  Make way for the shit-man!"

Before Ramos could finish laughing, Donella smashed his head into the heavy wooden table.  Ramos was out cold.

As he came to again, Ramos could see the massive cop in front of him again, adjusting his police belt.  Still groggy, he began to scream, "Ah, my ass! My asshole!  This guy tried to fuck me in my ass!"

A few minutes later the Captain came in.  The captain was an ugly, bald motherfucker.  He drank whiskey in his office and when that ran out he would drink cologne or hand sanitizer, whatever would keep the buzz going.  The Captain knew how to fail upwards, and through years of monumental fuck-ups had managed to be in charge of the entire squad of detectives at the Gang Investigative Unit.

"What the fuck is going on in here," the Captain demanded.

Ramos was hysterical and yelling at this point.  "This guy knocked me out and then he fucked me in the ass!"  Ramos pointed at Donella.

"Is this true, Donella?"  The Captain grimaced.

"It's all crap.  You know these guys, they'll say anything."

"So you didn't fuck him in the ass?"

"No.  I hypnotized him to think that I fucked him in the ass so that he would give up the information.  These guys, they do all this bullshit to act tough, to try to be a man.  If you take that away from them, they've got nothing.  They crack easy."

"Maybe your wife believes that kind of bullshit, Donella.  But I don't.  You're getting written up for this.  Your career is over!  Now get the fuck out of here!"

Donella, walked out of the room with his head down, defeated.

The Captain asked Ramos to tell him what happened with Donella.  As Ramos went on, describing the conversation and then the violent incident, the Captain took a container of shoe polish out of his coat and put it on the table.

"What's that for," Ramos asked.

"Well polished shoes are the key to success."

The Captain smiled wryly.

Donella was waiting outside as five or ten minutes passed.  Periodically a scream or a grunt would be heard loudly from inside the interrogation room.  Donella was fuming at the Captain at ending the interrogation on the bullshit abuse allegations from the drug dealer.  Donella balled his hands into fists and threw the door open.

The Captain came out of the interrogation room, his pants unbuttoned.  His face was red and blotchy, and covered in shoe polish.

"What the fuck happened?"  Donella demanded to know.

The Captain stared back like he was looking through a window.  Finger streaks of shoe polish formed black tiger stripes all over his furrowed face.  Still catching his breath, the Captain said calmly, "I hypnotized him to believe that there was a guy with shoe polish all over his face, fucking him in the ass."

Ramos was still inside screaming.

Donella closed the door to Interrogation 2, went to the kitchen and poured himself a shitty coffee.

Red Sauce

Giuseppe Agresta arrived in the United States with big dreams of making it in America.  He'd wanted this ever since he was a little kid growing up in the old country. Giuseppe was 50 now, with a wife and two teenage sons that he hoped to bring over from Italy when his business took off.

Giuseppe was a chef and restaurateur.  For the past 30 years he had toiled away in the sweltering kitchens in Calabria, Southern Italy.  He spent long summer days over the coal-fired ovens, and long winter nights smoking homemade cigarettes made from crudely cut tobacco rolled with newspaper.  Those were called giornales, something that was, and still is very popular throughout Italy but especially in the Southern Peninsula.

Giuseppe set up shop in New York City, renting a modest but very expensive storefront downtown.  He spared no expense renovating and getting the finest hand-made Calabrian furniture, perfect gold wall sconces, tables made from refurbished wine and balsamic vinegar barrels, and beautiful kiln-forged white tile.  Everything as it should be, authentic Italian and true to his dream.

He grew his own organic tomatoes and herbs in the backyard garden, and milled his own flour to just the perfect consistency for his coal-fired pizza oven.  Giuseppe hired top-notch line cooks and waiters and was ready for his opening day.

"30 years in the making, this day," Giuseppe thought, as he lit up a giornale rolled out of the NY Times travel section.  The American newspapers smoked differently, smoldering and dropping flakes of still burning paper onto the sidewalk in front of Giuseppe's Fine Italian Restaurant.  The Italian chef was unfazed.

Opening night was a huge success, with the restaurant operating at capacity and all the diners lauding the pizzas, appetizers and entrées.  Giuseppe spent the night at the ovens and over the grill, making sure each and every dish that went out to the dining room was up to the highest standard of fine Italian dining.  And the dishes were phenomenal.

The next day, Giuseppe received a call from Italy.  It was his oldest son, a boy of 15 who was rapidly becoming a man.  Giuseppe gushed to his son about how good everything in America was going, about the restaurant and his attention to detail, about how many covers they had sold on opening night.  Giuseppe poured himself a Chianti in a stemless glass, sipping the wine as he told his son of his great accomplishment.  "Pop," his son interjected, "I read a review on Yelp of the new restaurant.  it says, 'Just another rowdy shithole with mediocre pizza.  One star.' "

Giuseppe hung up the phone.  He went to his computer and looked up the review.  'Just another rowdy shithole with mediocre pizza.  One star.'

He slugged the Chianti, rolled another giornale, turned off the lights, and smoked in the darkness.

The Tantric Rapist

Being a line cook in a Chinese restaurant has its perks.  Nobody speaks English in any conversational capacity, so you get left alone.  The dishes are for the most part simple to make.  Scorching hot wok, add pigs feet, cock's combs, weird toenails and gloppy sauce.  Cook 3 minutes while agitating.  Most days (and nights for that matter), that would be the whole shift.  Occasionally the cooking would be punctuated by bouts of yelling in Chinese.  Maybe Mandarin, maybe Cantonese.  Maybe it was nonsense depending on how much Shao Xing cooking wine that the owner had drank that morning.

The décor in the restaurant was pretty typical:  Chinese dragons, cheap gold wallpaper, that cat that waves his paw at you.  One thing did stand out though.  A huge, golden-framed picture of him.  His eyes seared their way into your soul.  He was the rapist who would never come.

Shrooms Tofu and Snap Pea Stirfry

Visions of MSG
staring into a bathroom mirror
scales on my skin
Do you think I could be a lizardman (like Obama)
thanks General Tso

Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Hund

Raul woke up on a Wednesday, with a legendary hangover.  His massive German Shepherd was licking his face.  Raul got up off the floor and looked around his wrecked apartment.  He walked over to the kitchen sink.  The counters were covered in empty pizza boxes, and both empty liquor and pill bottles.  The dog stared at Raul.  Raul slowly filled a vodka bottle 2/3 of the way with water and pressed it to his lips.  The tap water had a strong sulfur taste, and combined with the alcoholic aroma of the old liquor bottle, it took all of Raul's concentration to not throw up.  Raul poured some kibble into the dog's bowl.  The German Shepherd pawed at the bowl, disinterested.  Raul put his hand on the dog's gigantic head, petting it lightly.

His landline telephone rang, interrupting the silence.  Raul tossed a handful of multicolored pills into his mouth, chewing them up as he answered.

"Hello?"
"It's Joe.  You sound funny,  what's the matter with you?"
"Nothing," Raul responded, marblemouthedly as he crunched up the pills between his yellowed, rotten teeth.
"Alright.  You wanna grab some beers?  Meet me at the bar by your place."
"Sure," Raul said, the tone of his voice wavering between enthusiasm and trepidation.

Raul was still in the clothes he wore yesterday.  He grabbed his keys, adjusted his dick in his jeans and left the apartment.  The walk to the bar was about 10 minutes, but Raul knew that he could make it in 5 if he went through the alleyway between the new condominium construction site and the old canal warehouse.  The alleyway stunk like trash and like the thick, black water that just barely flowed through the canal, but it was safe enough during the day that he had no qualms about using the shortcut.  His hangover would thank him once he got that first drink down, and the sooner the better.

Raul staggered into the bar.  His clothes were haggard and he was trembling, maybe from delirium tremens, or the pills he had eaten earlier, or both.  The bartender poured him a beer before he sat down.  Joe was already there, four empty shotglasses lined up in front of him.  Joe slammed a handful of crumpled bills down onto the bar and held up 4 fingers.  The bartender silently took the money and poured them each 2 shots of whiskey.  Joe looked better than usual.  Raul couldn't quite place it at first but then it hit him: Joe was wearing clean clothes.

"Job interview today?"
"Huh?"
"What's with the clothes," Raul asked.
"Ah, nothin'."

They drank the shots.  The two continued making small talk and repeating the ritual of slamming down the money and guzzling the liquor.  The alcohol binge and banter session went on until closing time without much event.  Closing time came.  The two men, now broke and drunk, staggered out into the street.  They planned to keep drinking at Raul's shithole apartment.  It was a dark night, illuminated only by the subdued shining of the waning moon.

The two drunks shuffled through the dimly lit alleyway.  Raul slurred nonsense and Joe nodded understandingly.  About midway through the alley, Joe stopped to urinate on a dumpster.  He leaned precariously, like a man standing in a canoe, and emptied nearly quart of urine onto the side of the dumpster.  That's when they saw him.

A shirtless man in cut-off jeans threw the top of the dumpster open and leaped out.    His hulking frame was covered in white supremacist tattoos.  Even in the darkness, the drunks could make a Schutzstaffel iron eagle across his chest. The shirtless man furrowed his brow, deeply folding the big swastika tattooed on his forehead.

"Suck my dick you motherfucker," the Nazi yelled.

And just like that, Joe sucked the Nazi's dick.  Raul was perplexed.  Joe wasn't gay.  The guy didn't even have a gun.  He didn't hit him or do anything.  And here's Joe, sucking the guy's dick like it's the dick sucking olympics.  The Nazi was grunting now and thrusting away while gripping Joe's head.  Raul walked away in disbelief, back to his apartment.

About 15 minutes later, Joe showed up. His new clothes were torn and soiled. Raul let him in, staring at him wide-eyed.

Before Raul could say anything, the giant German Shepherd traipsed over to them.

"Suck my dick you motherfucker," the dog said with confidence.

And Joe sucked the German Shepherd's dog dick, with gusto, right there in the filthy apartment.

The Wisest Wizard

The wizard woke up early on Wednesday morning.  He put on a freshly pressed wizard robe and his tallest and most intimidating wizard hat.  As he walked out the door of his wizard's tower, he grabbed a long, gnarled staff.  The staff was topped by a weird ram's skull.  He and the skull had lived together for the past 500 years.  The horns twisted and turned around themselves, the powerfully enchanted skull vibrating with an unpleasant aura.

The wizard ran out to his car, parked on a nearby side street.  Just as he arrived at his car, a traffic enforcement agent was applying a car immobilizer "boot" to the wizard's car.  He couldn't believe it.  All those unpaid parking tickets caught up to him.  He was going to miss his job interview.  His hopes of moving to a much more expensive and remote wizard's tower with nicer IKEA furniture were immediately dashed.

The wizard tapped his magical staff on the ground three times.  Immediately, the weird ram's skull sprung to life, twisting and undulating from dark magic.  The ram's skull began to speak in a shrill tone, "Now we'll never be able to afford a new flatscreen TV!  Do something, you twit!"

The wizard, not one to take any shit from the ram's skull, began to think.  With the speed of a man 1% of his age, he thrust his hand into his wizard robe and took out a meerschaum pipe.  The pipe was implausibly white, looking pristine for its considerable age.  It was painstakingly carved into the shape of a woman's distressed face, complete with wide screaming mouth.  The wizard shouted in a booming voice that echoed down the narrow street, "STOP RIGHT THERE! RELEASE MY VEHICLE!"

The parking enforcement agent, mostly ignoring him, muttered, "Just doing my job."

Before the parking enforcement agent could even finish his sentence, the wizard stooped down and packed the pipe full of dog excrement.  He flicked up one finger, and casted a cantrip.  Flames licked out of his finger, igniting the pipe. The wizard inhaled the smoke of the dog shit deeply into his lungs.  Stifling a cough, he pursed his lips and exhaled with great gusto towards the parking enforcement agent.

The parking enforcement agent's smug expression quickly gave way to a terrified mask of horror. From the wizard's lips came out a billowing cloud, made up of scintillating colors and shimmering patterns.  The weird ram's skull began to contort and pulsate, emitting a deep bass note.  And then, the wizard, the skull and the parking enforcement agent began to dance.  They danced together for hours while the putrid clouds of burning dog shit and dazzling colors filled the air on the untraveled side street.

The wizard eventually lost interest and walked back to his wizard's tower with the staff, remarking introspectively, "I'm high all the time, I smoke that dog shit."

Another Day at the Office

There he sat, brooding over a sad salad that was inadequate in all ways. The phone on his desk rang. He glanced at the caller ID display. He looked back at the salad, and took another lousy forkful as the call rang over to voicemail. The half-assed salad of unwashed lettuce, undoubtedly heavily laden with fecal coliform bacteria, loomed ever more ominous on his desk. He was a federal agent. A government killer with a badge and an arsenal of high-powered weapons.

The law didn't apply to him. He was the law. He was also a guy who liked to jerk off with Liquid Wrench, but he mostly did that off the clock. Back to the salad. It was really a shitty salad. He dumped the salad in his government-issued trash bin. The oily, brownish lettuce leaves cascaded down the mound of bullshit paperwork that he had discarded earlier.

He began to walk out of the office, his hulking, brutish frame making the floor shake with each step. As he reached the door to the parking lot, he unholstered his service pistol. He gripped the Sig Sauer P227 tightly in his large, hairy hand. It was an excellent weapon. This one in particular had killed plenty of people, innocent and guilty alike. "Everybody is guilty of something," he thought.

The sunlight made the matte black finish of the Sig contrast sharply with his cheap suit. He waved the gun around in the air, grimacing in the empty parking lot. The government killer walked, gun still in hand, to get an omelette at the diner down the avenue.

He opened the to-go container and mushed a handful of omelette into his mouth. Bits of egg clung to his hairy hand.

The omelette was fucking terrible.

Les Huîtres de Bélon

You've been to Bélon. I know I have. Le Bretagne. The oysters. The Mistral. The pussy.

I stayed in a small cottage on the river with no electricity and a primitive but effective wood-burning stove. It was a modest abode, the kind of place where a man could go to flee the bustling of the big city. I went to find peace. I also went to see an old friend.

Serge had called me weeks before I arrived. He had opened a sleepy bar near the river and wanted me to leave the United States for the French countryside. I gladly obliged - I owed him, after all. We had known each other for a long time, since our meeting in Laos years ago. It feels like forever ago looking back upon it.

The bar was called Le Petit Chou-Fleur. It was a tiny, bistro style bar with patterned tile floors. My feet hurt. Serge was behind the bar. I greeted him and we kissed on each cheek. The bar was mostly empty, except for one old man, sitting at the very end of the bar. The old man methodically sipped cognac from a tiny snifter, giving the glass a quarter turn after each sip. He looked easily over a hundred years old. I looked down the bar at him, and he shot me a fiery look that made me quickly look back to Serge.

Serge was a stout man, proud of his belly, and the fine food with which he filled it. He was short of stature, but his personality filled a room. While I had been looking at the old man, Serge poured me a glass of anisette, shaken with ice. The milky white highball sat on the oaken bartop. I sipped it slowly. Serge drank red wine out of a juice glass.

Serge and I reminisced about the old days. The old man stared. I realized then that he wasn't glaring at me. His eyes were cataracted. They were as cloudy and pale as my drink. I wondered if he was born that way or if it had developed in the hundreds of years during which he appeared to have been alive.

Serge brought out a large platter, piled high with oysters on ice. He gave me an oyster knife and took one himself. We shucked oysters and drank, laughing and gesturing. The old man said nothing. He sipped his cognac, turning the glass.

Serge was in the middle of pouring me another anisette when the sweaty Turk arrived. His clothes were shabby and his perspiration made his white shirt translucent. The Turk was a hirsute fellow; body hair erupting in tufts from nearly all his exposed skin. His beard was a vast jungle of blackness upon his face. The Turk stumbled over to the old man and put his arms around his ancient physique in a threatening grip.

The old man was frail and I was concerned. Before I could do anything, the old man stood up and smashed the Turks head on the bar. He deftly flicked out a pocket knife and shucked the Turk's left eye completely out of its socket. The old man ate the eye, slowly, chewing with his mouth open. I walked over to make sure the old man was okay, and then he shucked out the Turk's right eye, which I only ate so as not to insult the old man. The vitreous fluid from the eyeball exploded in my mouth and tasted like an especially mucus-filled loogie mixed with ocean water.

"This happens all the time," Serge said in a calm monotone.

The old man laughed. Then he took a sip of his cognac, spinning the glass. For a second, he looked just a little younger. And in the mirror, I looked into my face, and I looked younger too.

Culinary School

Barack Obama sat in the Oval Office, brooding over a stack of papers. He took out his crayons and scribbled furiously, drawing a crude scene of a pine forest. Obama grabbed a deep brown crayon and began to draw a grizzly bear. The grizzly bear was leaning forward, holding a salmon in his gnashed teeth. Beneath the bear, Obama drew a man. The bear had the man pinned face-down beneath his poorly-drawn paws. The man was being fucked in the ass by the bear. Obama accented the scene with a few squiggly lines to show the thrusting motion that the bear was making.

Obama stood up at his desk. He held his drawing in his scaly hands. His tongue flicked in and out of his mouth. He was very pleased with the drawing.

Obama's days in the Oval Office were not always so relaxing. Just a week ago he was embroiled in a vicious prank war with one of the sous-chefs in the White House kitchen. The sous-chef's name was Julio. Julio was a cantankerous alcoholic. He drank cooking wine in the kitchen all day and also all night. In spite of Julio's faults he had an excellent sense of humor.

Obama was meeting with the Japanese Prime Minister. They called the kitchen for an opulent lunch to be delivered immediately to the Oval Office. Julio had planned for this moment. He made a last minute substitution to the food cart, replacing Obama's requested seasonal pumpkin soup with an ornate gilded bowl filled with urine with chunks of human feces floating in it. Julio gagged at how disgusting the replacement soup was. Obama and the Prime Minister recoiled in horror as it was unveiled from beneath the cloche and served to them.

Without missing a beat Obama snapped his fingers and five Secret Service agents rushed into the kitchen. Four of them held down Julio, while the fifth undid his pants and jerked Julio off with high-quality gourmet olive oil. Julio struggled to get free but he could not break the grip of the four men holding him down. The workers in the kitchen were aghast, except for a few Ecuadorian line cooks that saw Julio send up the shit soup to Obama. They laughed like hyenas as the Secret Service jerked off Julio.

After about 2 minutes of being vigorously jerked off, a stale, grey load of jism exploded out of Julio's penis and the Secret Service agents reported back to Obama. The President of the United States laughed and high-fived the Japanese Prime Minister. The two men then sat and each chowed down on the urine and shit soup, stopping only to smirk and look at each other knowingly.

Ten Toes in the Game

Late last night I was watching Food Network. Mario Batali was doing a special, traveling the world and savoring the fine wines that the different regions have to offer. Batali's corpulent jowls undulated as he spoke of the terroir, a French term in wine used to denote the special characteristics that local geography bestowed upon particular varieties.

Batali spoke at length, his entire body vibrating and jiggling like Jell-O.

"Château Latour. Perhaps France's finest wine. This bottle is from 1996, an excellent year for Château Latour Pauillac. A red Bordeaux from the Bordeaux region of France, wine connoisseurs the world around have come to know Château Latour as the name in fine drinking."

Batali uncorked the bottle. He inhaled deeply from the cork. His face furrowing into deep, gelatinous thought.

He poured a massive glass of wine, rotating the deep red liquid around the expensive, stemless wine glass. Batali leaned in close toward the camera. His beard was unevenly shaven and his entire face seemed to be made of butter. Then he threw the wine in his face.

Screaming into the camera now, Batali repeated over and over, "CHATEAU LATOUR! CHATEAU LATOUR!"

His purplish-red wine stained visage was horrific. The wine made his face expand and contort. Batali pressed his terrible purple face into the camera's lens, occupying the whole shot and mushing his already porcine features into a muddled grimace. Wine stained the camera lens and Batali grappled with the cameraman.

The wine drenched man continued chanting, "CHATEAU LATOUR! CHATEAU LATOUR!"

Batali was in a frenzy, now pouring the remnants of the magnum bottle of wine over his unusually large head.

"CHATEAU LATOUR! CHATEAU LATOUR!"

Batali's screams were getting louder and louder from the television.

I was unable to cope with Batali's vulgar display. I took a huge swill of overproof peppermint schnapps and put on the extreme motorcycle building channel.

Shrimp Ceviche

"Fucking hot today," Tareq muttered to himself as he walked down the sun-scorched streets of Cancun. He wore a garish Hawaiian shirt, open toed sandals and tan cargo shorts. Only gringos and burros walk around in the noonday sun. Tareq knew that, but he had an entire duffle bag full of envelopes to bring to the post office. Over the past 3 days, Tareq had been preparing to mail his letters, containing a short, but pointless message and photographs of his short, deformed penis to the North Pole. 500 letters in total, the photos in each taken using a time-lapse camera in front of which Tareq danced a vulgar nude dance for nearly the entire 3 days.

Tareq's thirst grew as he trudged down the blocks to the post office. Sweat dripping from his brow, Tareq adjusted the strap of the duffle. There was a cantina nearby. The cantina wasn't air-conditioned, but they did have an attractive waitress that Tareq had seen before, and a large selection of tequila. Tareq entered the cantina and ordered a mescal, con gusano. The silvery liquor shimmered in the bottle, and the attractive waitress fished out the worm and dropped it in the drink. There was an satisfying plop as the worm hit the spirits in the glass.

Tareq eyed the drink, and then the waitress, and then the drink again. He gripped the lowball glass in his unsteady hand and slammed down the several ounces of liquor in one gulp, including the worm.

What Tareq didn't know was that the worm was an alien symbiote, and the resultant parasitic infection permanently turned him into a homosexual. While ordinarily that might have upset Tareq, the worm also robbed him of the ability to realize anything had changed. He did have to suck a lot of cocks throughout Mexico and the rest of the world, though.

The Highest Level of Government

The Manticore and Barack Obama sat in the Oval Office, playing Candyland like they did every morning. Obama passed the Manticore a bottle of whiskey and they each drank deeply from the bottle, taking breaks only to draw cards and advance their Candyland pieces. After 20 or so minutes, the Manticore had amassed a big lead on Obama. Obama's forked tongue flicked in and out, and he stroked his scaly chin, planning his next move.

The Manticore was unwavering. The Manticore took a huge swill of whiskey and advanced his piece on the final point on the Candyland board. Obama jumped to his feet, shouting at the top of his lizardman lungs, "YOU DIRTY JEW MOTHERFUCKER! PIECE OF SHIT FUCKING FAG JEW MANTICORE! BULLSHIT!"

The Manticore shrugged his shoulders, put his yarmulke down on President Barack Obama's desk and walked out of the Oval Office without saying a word.

The next morning, Obama and the Manticore met in the Oval Office and played Candyland and drank whiskey, like they always did.

Sandalwood

Rachel Simmons was a single mother struggling to stay afloat in America. She had 4 kids with her deadbeat, lowlife boyfriend Tony. One shitty Friday, Tony said that he was going out for a job interview and never came back. Rachel was left with their upside-down mortgage, car payments and an impossible full-time job: being a mother to 4 children.

Mr. DeMarcos knew all this. DeMarcos was a politician. He wore expensive suits and heavy leather shoes. DeMarcos strutted like a peacock in public. He stood for family values, and for the simpler times when the American dream was still alive.

Rachel knew of Mr. DeMarcos; DeMarcos was a state senator. She had voted for him in the last elections. Rachel Simmons hadn't thought about him since then. DeMarcos was doing a good job and he was popular with his constituents including Rachel. That is why Rachel was so surprised to see DeMarcos standing in her driveway after she returned from the Food Lion chain of grocery stores.

DeMarcos was wearing a Brioni suit. It looked every bit as expensive as it probably was. His Louis Vuitton loafers shone brightly in the sun. Rachel walked over to him, perplexed. DeMarcos handed her a note and without saying a word, strutted out of the driveway and into his nearby limousine.

Rachel went inside and read the note. The note was a list of instructions and detailed an appointment to meet DeMarcos after nightfall. Rachel carefully followed the instructions in the note, packing a briefcase as DeMarcos asked and waiting for him to return after dark.

About two hours after sunset, there was a rap on the door. Rachel saw DeMarcos through the ornamental glass window of her home. She let him in. Without saying a word, DeMarcos took the briefcase and set it on her countertop. He lit a cigarette, and took a long drag. Rachel dimmed the lights and admired DeMarcos in the now-smoky kitchen.

DeMarcos depressed both buttons on the briefcase, releasing its latches and exposing its contents. He reached in with both hands, gripping two massive handfuls of the 70%/30% hamburger meat that he had asked Rachel to pack inside. He rubbed his meat-filled hands all over his face, knocking the cigarette out of his mouth. Like a man possessed, DeMarcos grabbed more and more meat from the family pack in the suitcase and mushed it into his face. Rachel Simmons said nothing. In the background, a baby was crying.

DeMarcos looked her in the eye with an unblinking, meaty stare that would haunt her for days afterward. He counted out $5000 in $100 bills and left them on the counter. DeMarcos then strutted out of the house, his leather shoes clip-clopping on the tile floor. Chunks of meat sloughed off of him and dropped on to the floor. He pulled the door shut behind himself and left without saying a word.

She knew DeMarcos would be back. "Just one more time," Rachel reassured herself. "Just one more time."

Drakkar Noir

On a hot and humid June day, Principal Jackson's voice crackled through the static of the middle school public address system. "Students, please form straight, single file lines and proceed in an orderly fashion to the gymnasium for an Assembly."

We did as we were told, and I ended up seated next to my friends Joey and Mike. We weren't the most popular kids at school but we were pretty cool, anyway. The Principal, flanked on one side by a stocky policeman, asked our teachers to leave so that we could have an assembly about the dangers of illegal drugs. Principal Jackson introduced the policeman as Officer Albanese, and told us that he would be making regular visits to the school to educate the student body about drugs, and that he would know if we were using any drugs and put us in jail.

This was the beginning of the DARE program and the first we had ever seen of this sort of assembly. Joey rolled his eyes and Mike and I tried not to laugh. "What a waste of time this is," I thought.

Principal Jackson stepped away from the podium, heading to the back of the room, and Officer Albanese took his place as speaker.

"Hello, My name is Officer Albanese and I will be your DARE officer. I have been a police officer for 10 years and I have seen drugs tear apart families, destroy this community and kill children. I have seen the worst parts of drug use and I am here to tell you about them so that you will not use drugs and so that you will never have to deal with these tragedies that I have seen."

Officer Albanese's speech began to drag and he could tell he was losing the attention of the audience as the murmur of side conversations became a dull roar of student's talking amongst themselves. Albanese thoughts raced, quickly trying to bring the attention back onto himself. "I am a police officer and because of that, I am the only person in this gymnasium qualified to carry a gun."

The officer drew his sidearm, a black pistol and held it up over his head. Albanese waved the gun back and forth. "The government has entrusted me with this authority, to use lethal force to protect the public from criminals and dangerous drugs. The power of this firearm cannot be separated from the power of this badge," he said, holding up his badge in his other hand.

We laughed to each other in the crowd. "This guy is really on a trip," I whispered to Joey.

Albanese asked the Principal to come back to the front of the room. Principal Jackson took his place at the side of the podium and began to address the crowd. "Now, remember what Officer Albanese said and DARE to resist drugs and violence. I hope that you all --"

Albanese kicked the back of Principal Jackson's knee and pushed him down by his shoulders on to the ground. The officer trained the pistol on the now prostrated school administrator. A concerned silence fell over the crowd, but nobody moved at all.

"Take off your pants and take a fucking shit on the floor," Albanese's voice boomed through the gymnasium.

The Principal quickly undressed. His disgusting penis hung limply as he cowered, straining to produce a bowel movement before the burly policeman. As he strained and grunted, small nuggets of feces began to drop onto the shiny hardwood floor of the gymnasium. It was so quiet that we could hear each squishy plop as the pieces of shit hit the wooden floor.

Officer Albanese's face contorted into a smug mask of satisfaction and he walked out of the gymnasium without saying anything further.

I'll never forget that day. It was the first time that me, Mike or Joey had ever see a man forced to defecate at gunpoint. It wouldn't be the last.

A Christmas Goose

In the spirit of the holiday season I will share with you a tale of a Christmas past. I was invited by my friend and fellow patriot Tony to come over for the usual Christmas spread: a fine ham, a roasted and stuffed christmas goose with all the trimmings and a smorgasbord of other fixins.

Tony and I had been friends since high school. He was a pretty agreeable guy and he understood the truth in all its forms. Plus he cooked a mean goose, and the giblet gravy that he would make, was delicious. I went to Tony's house early that day to help with the cooking.

I drank a quart of brandy and he drank a quart of rum. The Christmas meal's intoxicating smell wafted throughout his A-frame cabin. Tony took the cooked goose, glistening in all its fatty majesty, out of the oven and set it on the table upon a silver platter. We guzzled more brandy and rum out of leaded crystal goblets.

Tony brought in the heaping pot of giblet gravy. The gravy was still boiling in the sauce pot. The dark brown color of the gravy was perfect. I could not stop thinking of how good the gravy would be atop the goose meat and how gluttonously we would eat this meal. That is when Tony's doorbell rang.

Tony carried the still-steaming giblet gravy to the front door. As he opened the door, I saw that waiting outside was the homosexual mailman, Rico. Rico stretched out his arm, his hand holding several envelopes. Tony quickly threw the entire pot of giblet gravy into the face of the homosexual mailman. Tony shut the door immediately afterward.

That gravy would have been spectacular.

We ate the goose while staring at each other silently. The pitter-patter of snow against the windows was the only sound. Sometimes Rico would yell from outside. Each time I would close my eyes and put another slice of buttery, succulent goose meat into my mouth.

The Forest

"The days are shorter. The nights are colder. Society is crumbling. The supplies are running out. The government is destroying us. The misery. We're dying from the inside out, because of technology. These are the elements of the "progress" that mankind wanted so desperately to achieve."

John knew that. The statement echoed in his very soul as he mouthed the words to himself in the darkness. The night was freezing cold and the forest was unforgiving. The noise of insects and the hooting and grunting of animals was barely audible above John's heartbeat. John's heart was beating like a helve hammer inside his chest. The adrenaline coursed through his veins and cold sweat soaked his clothes.

John was bleeding from running through the brambles earlier. His feet hurt from running and his thoughts were racing.

John was not much of a woodsman. He was a counselor for breast cancer survivors. Many of his clients were dealing with mastectomy procedures and he ran weekly group meetings at his office near the forest. The issues of loss of femininity and losing their sexuality plagued the survivors. John did his best in therapy to reintegrate them into the society from which the survivors now felt so removed.

John's life was boring but he liked it. Helping people was in his nature. He had a birthmark in the shape of the continent of Africa and he would rub olive oil on it at night.

But not tonight. Tonight John was running through the woods. Running for his life.

John blamed the whole situation on Cleite. Cleite joined the group on Tuesday. Cleite was depressed and unpredictable and she was turning the group against John with her headstrong diatribes against men. The cancer had made Cleite bitter, and her physique was as strong as her hateful feelings.

The meeting had gone awfully. John walked out to his car dejected. Cleite shouted from behind him, "John!"

As John turned to see what the commotion was about, he heard the distinctive pluck of a bow and the whizzing of an arrow past his head. John began to run and a second arrow flew past him.

John didn't have time to think as he ran into the forest. He weaved between the trees and ran as fast as he could. John had been in a runner in his youth but a car accident in the 90s had left him lame. The best John could muster these days was around 7 minute mile pace. No sense in thinking about that. Nobody can outrun an arrow.

John rushed and ran into the night.

These are the elements of the "progress" that mankind wanted so desperately to achieve.

John hid behind an oak tree and struggled to catch his breath. His eyes were watering. John gasped for air. He was dizzy and worried about passing out.

Just then, Cleite stepped out from behind the tree and saw John. She looked at John with a disdainful look and bent the yew of the bow. John clutched his chest. The carbon-shafted razor arrow protruded from his chest. The arrow punctured his lung. He was choking on blood. John fell to the ground and quickly passed out.

Then he woke up. Cleite was still there. She stopped doing CPR on him and killed John again.

Official Police Business

If you are reading this, you have no doubt realized that lizardmen control America. They are well on their way to controlling the entire internet and shutting down this website. Enjoy being able to view the truth while you can. Until the lizardmen do ultimately prevail I will speak the truth about them.

The lizardmen are organized in a patriarchal society. Each band of lizardmen is lead by an alpha male who makes them submit to his whims with violence. The use of force is the only law that the lizardmen know. The individual bands are united by regional warlords whose ruthless brutality subjugates all the bands. And yet the multitudinous warlords work in concert, under the scaly thumb of the supreme king of the lizardmen. The most exalted high king of the lizardmen is truly the worst of them all.

He rules America from his foul nest in an earthen mound. He has taken all the powers from the Americans, if they even can still be called Americans. Today's American shames the notion of what it is to be an American. The modern American is a puppet of the lizardmen, who pander to his capricious nature while exploiting his inability to see the bigger picture.

It cannot be disputed that man exists to kill man. Man has done so from the earliest days. Think back reader, to a time when there were many fewer men. Is there any doubt in your mind that in that prehistoric time, when the first man came across another man, that he slew him where he stood? Of course not.

And this is man's twofold purpose: idolatry and killing.

But nowhere did God say to man to be enslaved by the lizardman. And so I say, tell a friend to tell a friend about the lizardmen, and their society, and their foul, slithering king.

Barack Obama is a lizardman. He is the worst lizardman of all because he dominates not only with shockingly violent force but also with skulduggery . Barack Obama, the lizardman, dares not to show his true form to the American people and the people of the world, but instead comes as a Black, giving false hope to the downtrodden and racially oppressed. He hates grenadine and the mere sight of it drives him to lie in a specially-built teak bassinet where he coos and whimpers like an infantile retard.

Drive him back.

2 oz. Dark Rum
2 oz. Orange Juice
2 oz. Pineapple Juice
1/2 oz. Lime Juice
Dash Grenadine
Orange Slice & Cherry for garnish

Hooked on a Feeling

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

That's what I keep telling myself. But things have changed a lot. Maybe more than we're willing to admit. I know I've changed. I tried not to.

The more I think about what happened, the less I know. Jackie. Jackie's girlfriend. Ayaz. The videotape. The meteor. Maybe I'm cursed. Maybe not.

I had a dream last night. In the dream, I stuffed a fistful of hundred dollar bills into a pregnant woman's mouth. The sound of the bills rumpling and crinkling was as loud as her muffled groaning. The total value of the bills was easily in the thousands. The pregnant woman's face contorted into a mask of ecstatic bliss as the money crunched between her teeth.

The human mouth is horribly unsuited to masticating dollar bills. They crumple and become thick with saliva, but they never truly become easy to swallow. The pregnant woman knew this.

Just then, I woke up from the dream. I was soaking wet with sweat and the bedsheets clung to my body. The humidity of the summer night was unbearable.

I sat down on the couch. I crudely rolled a joint out of an ATM receipt and some very old marijuana that I had stashed in a drawer. The TV was on, and blaring. I wasn't sure if I had just turned it on or if maybe I had left it on all night. I poured a glass of peppermint schnapps.

I thought about the pregnant woman again. And the hundred dollar bills. What a strange dream.

I smoked a few more joints. Some burned quickly. The good ones burned slowly. The room was hazy with smoke and I polished off the rest of the bottle of peppermint schnapps. My hands were sticky. Schnapps. I stood up quickly to turn off the TV. I lost my balance and fell back down onto the couch. The room was spinning.

I struggled, staggering across the room and up the stairs to my bedroom. Right before I laid my head down to rest, I shoved another handful of hundred dollars bills into the pregnant woman's mouth. It's expensive, but it works.