Attempts at creative writing and journalism
needomaniac: a person or thing that requires excessive attention but can never be truly fixed or satisfied.
Every item,
is an ocean of need.
A nymphomaniac,
of infinite greed.
A ravenous hog,
you constantly feed.
Always demanding,
your time it bleeds.
Doing nothing,
still has a fee.
Filling your mind,
like a strangling weed.
Let me leave you,
with this little creed.
The item to tend,
is your sanity.
Author Note: It is a satire, just a satire. More than anything, I want to introduce the idea of digital distancing, maybe the start of my own little Meme. I swear, I tested positive for anti-memes.
So far, scientists have more questions than answers. Here is what they know so far.
ZVoid-21 is the first biodigital virus ever discovered. It is transmitted primarily through memes and social media directly into the brain stem of its victims. The virus immediately affects the production of neurological transmitters. Serotonin production is reduced resulting in OCD-like behavior. You may notice the affected individual begin to incessantly forward meaningless memes to everyone they have social media contact with. The biovirus also induces a dopamine dependency that seems to only be satisfied by immediate and continual likes in response to the sending of the meme.
In the second stage of infection, the biodigital virus attacks the amygdala, the emotional center of the brain. Victims begin experiencing emotional outbursts, pounding excessively at their keyboards, and even verbally attacking individuals that fail to validate their entries. In some victims, the biovirus attacks the hippocampus. Victims begin to experience selective memory tending to only remember things that support their pre-infected dispositions.
In the final zomboid stages of infection, higher functions in the pre-frontal cortex shut down. In this stage, victims become completely withdrawn from their physical social surroundings. While they sit at tables with others, their heads seldom lift from their digital media. The affected individual seems to lose all sense of awareness as a biological entity. Lab studies have shown that the removal of social media at this point results in complete withdrawal or violent attacks to the point of eating their antagonists as you may have seen on the news clips.
Zombies cluster in groups with similar pre-dispositions. Unless provoked as previously mentioned, they seem to be more dangerous to other groups of zombies with dissimilar dispositions than towards the unaffected. Pre-industrial communities have developed no cases of ZVoid-21 nor have they been attacked by any of the affected. The only known attempted attacks on the unaffected occurred during an organized zombie campaign in all the major cities. Fortunately, within an hour, all of the zomboid protesters stopped to post selfies of themselves disrupting the coherence of the event. The only damage occurred to social media servers trying to absorb the massive viral load of selfies and nascent memes.
The only defense against the biodigital virus that has shown any effectiveness so far is digital distancing. All anti-meme inoculations and remedies have so far proved ineffective.
For those who might be asymptomatic, the CBDDC, the Center for Biodigital Disease Control recommends turning off all digital media whenever possible and spending more biotime with your friends and family, gradually extending your digital distancing time into bio-only holidays and vacations.
For those with early symptoms of ZVoid-21, the CBDDC recommends slowly increasing your time between posts and checking for likes. The idea is to slowly reduce your need for immediate gratification and validation with the goal of learning to live with deferred and even withheld stimulus from your friends and followers. The fear of uncertainty in relations and social status is the leading indicator of susceptibility to the disease. A CBDDC spokesperson suggests practicing techniques of manifesting mindfulness and confidence as successfully used in pre-digital times until an effective ZVoid-21 vaccine can be found. They also strongly suggest visiting natural environments with the recommendation that you turn off your alerts, turn on your DND sign, go into airplane mode, and leave the earpods in their case.
Many argue that it is just people living. Epidemiologists who proactively encourage digital distancing are at odds with economists who argue that such behavior will bring the attention economy and ultimately the real economy to its knees. Both groups argue that any sign of intelligence is completely asymptomatic in the other. Social media sites argue that global interconnectedness and the overthrow of hierarchical control systems are far more important than the mostly benign symptoms of most cases of ZVoid-21.
But that is little consolation to parents who have infected their children, to the scores of friends lost to dings and little red hearts, and to unfathomable petabytes of banal information that threaten to overwhelm the fabric of our society.
As of this writing, there is no known cure and none forthcoming. Until there is, stay safe, digitally distance, and try not to be miserable. Hug a zombie (but don’t take his digital media if you don’t want to become a snack). Who knows, it may help.
You are sixteen years old. You are one of the first recruits to make it into Space Force as an infantry spaceman under the new law permitting anyone sixteen years young to join. You are aboard the Kobayashi Maru, a battleship at space for over a month now.
The Commander stands at the podium facing you and the rest of his troops. The Commander says, “Our mission is to control the L5 Earth-Sun La Grange point.” The green dot of his laser pointer pops against the black void on the cisEarth map on the large monitor. “Its location is programmed into your TDUs (tactical display units).”
You speak out, “There’s nothing there but empty space.”
The Commander responds tersely, “This a key control point of cisEarth space.”
You repeat, “But I don’t see nothing there but empty space.”
The Commander represses his anger at the insubordination. “You look but you do not see.”
You respond defiantly, “I see fine. There is nothing there but empty space.”
The Commander practically spits at you as he speaks. “This point is a La Grange point, a key strategic area in space. It may be 93 million miles from Earth but it is vital to the interests of cisEarth space.”
“What the hell is cisEarth space?” You never made it to physics or astronomy class at high school. They are classes for juniors and seniors. You haven’t made it that far in your high school career yet, but you aren’t going to let your ignorance stop you from asking questions.
“Everything on this map,” bellows the Commander, circling the 93 million mile radius of the Earth’s orbit about Sol. “The objective of our mission is to secure and hold the L5 La Grange point. If there are no further questions.” The Commander ends his statement with an understanding clear to all in the room except for you that there are to be no further questions.
“I have further questions. What is a La Grange point?”
“It’s Hill 1022. You understand the importance of high ground, don’t you? A La Grange point is the high ground of outer space.
“Now if there are no further.”
You miss the meaning of his incomplete sentence. You ask, “This is our secret mission? To take over a piece of empty space? This is what you pay me for?”
“I pay you to follow orders, goddammit. No more questions. Gunny, get control of your man.”
“Sir, yes sir,” shouts out the Gunny.
With that, the Commander dismisses you and the rest of the troops.
You turn to Gunny Highway, “He never answered the question. What the hell is a La Grange point? Why are we here?”
Highway, in his own idiosyncratic way, jerks his head sideways and snarls responding in a hoarse voice, “The La Grange points are points in space with no gravity to pull you back to either the Sun or the Earth. Like floating on the water on a surfboard just beyond the surf line.”
“A point? How big is a point?”
“Well, mathematically it’s a point, but practically speaking, it’s about the size of the Earth, maybe bigger.”
“You mean the space is so frickin’ empty it doesn’t even have gravity? And it’s as big as the goddamn Earth. Why do we have to fight for it?”
“These will be holding points for asteroids captured or piloted to the Earth for mining. So they have strategic value to the tune of trillions of dollars.”
“I don’t get it. You could fit a million asteroids into space the size of the Earth.”
“Like the man said, you’re not paid to think. You’re paid to follow orders.”
“I thought I was being paid to finish high school.”
In his gruff manner and guttural voice, Highway says, “Welcome to the real world son. You should have stayed at home.”
#
A blaring siren noise sounds, “Battle Stations. Battle Stations.”
The Commander stands on the bridge of the battleship monitoring the tactical data display. A bright dot is heading straight for the ship.
“Damn it, they’ve been shadowing us in the light of the sun.” No one catches the irony.
The tactical AI application speaks, “Inbound missile detected. Recommend evasive maneuvers.”
“I need a goddamn AI to tell me that? Evasive maneuvers,” responds the Commander. “Prepare to launch countermeasures. Ready missile bay.”
“Missiles ready,” responds a voice over the comm link to the First Strike Defensive Weapons unit.
“Make the initial trajectory of missile one degree off target. They can’t hide in the sun from both us and the missile.”
“Trajectory plotted.”
“Fire away,” orders the Commander.
“Missile away,” responds the First Strike Defensive Weapons unit.
“Inbound missile intercept in thirty minutes.”
“Launch countermeasures,” commands the Commander.
“Countermeasures away,” responds the Counter Offensive Defensive unit.
“Ground troops at the ready,” bellows the tactical leader of the first infantry unit.
You and all the men in your unit race for your suits and helmets and weapons. Your unit takes its positions in the airlocks.
“Troops deploy,” commands the Commander.
The first infantry team deploys out the airlocks positioning itself off the ship’s midsection about one klick. You and the others fall into formation separated and equidistant from one another. You have nothing to gauge your motion in the deep vacuum of space. It looks to you like you are just hovering over the ship.
An energy beam becomes visible as it closes. The iridescent beam passes through the countermeasures like an asteroid through Saturn’s rings.
In an instant, the ship is nothing more than muon shards in the quantum foam of space. The Commander and the ship have been atomized like the photons out of a light bulb. You don’t hear so much as a single scream from the wreckage. The crew of the Kobayashi Maru is as silent as the space you drift in.
In the distance, a rapidly expanding spherical rainbow of colors marks another explosion. The leading edge of the distant ship’s exploded energy field expands past you and the Kobayashi Maru troops passing like water through a fishnet. Your TDU detects enemy combatants approaching. You and the others speed toward your enemy face on and upright like the offense of a football team charging towards the defense without the bother of actually running. In the anger of destruction, no one bothers to worry about rescue and recovery.
Your tactical display registers a hundred enemy combatants on an intercept course. You charge up your weapon. You lock on to a remote target that you can’t see.
Gunny Highway shouts over your ear pod, “Fire at will.”
You fire.
Other shots from the first infantry unit fire into the void. You see Gunny Highway on your three. You recognize his shape and his inimitable sideways head jerk even through the obscurity of his uniform. He fires off three rounds. You see inbound energy spikes speeding towards yourself and the others. You lock on to another target and fire into the void.
An inbound energy pulse speeds to your right. Gunny Highway is split in half vertically from the top of his head to his crotch. The two pieces of him spin counter to one another like two tops, one in the Northern hemisphere and one in the South. You lock and fire into the darkness at an enemy that is nothing more than a blip on your TDU. Again and again. The TDU-indicated remote targets decrease from a hundred to fifty to ten.
More inbound fire. The men about you split in half like a high-speed wire is cutting straight through them. The sectioned parts spin at the cuts in the strangest of ballets. The feet of one man point toward each other than away and then toward each other again like interlocked gears. Another man’s torso and head appear together but then spin so it looks like he is kicking himself in the back of the head and then he is momentarily whole again. A frozen eyeball drifts past you looking blankly into the emptiness of space. A hand frozen on its trigger fires, again and again, the armed appendage recoiling about like a pinball in a game with no bumpers or paddles.
In seconds, no blips remain on your screen. The enemy fire has ceased. You shout out on your comms. “Kobayashi Maru report.” Static. “First infantry, report.” Static. “Anyone, report.” Static. There is no response. There is no purposeful movement. There is no enemy fire. There is no enemy ship. There is only.
#
You. You are the sole survivor. You have won the battle. You never even saw your enemy. You look at your TDU. You have drifted to the exact location of the mathematical abstraction of the La Grange point solidly painted on your screen. You fire your jetpack to stop your forward motion. Aside from a brief deceleration, with no reference points, before and after makes no difference in your speed or direction as far as you can tell.
You switch your comms to an Earth station frequency. You say, “I claim victory for Space Force and our Great Country. I claim this La Grange point for Space Force.” It takes about eight minutes for Earth to learn of your great success.
In another eight minutes, you hear the ground station response, “We don’t have a signal from the Kobayashi Maru. What condition is your ship in?”
You respond, “It’s only me. No other survivors. No ship.” And spinning corpses beginning to orbit about you in the deep gravity well of the La Grange point.
A distant blue dot hangs in the distance. The moon is barely a pixel in your vision. You are in the greatest nothing, both a real and existential void beyond your comprehension. You chose this job. You chose this path. To get to physics and astronomy classes. To get to prom and teenage awkwardness. To escape your mother from smothering you in a bubble. To hide from your father’s never-ending disappointment.
It takes way more than eight minutes before you finally receive a response. “God speed to you son.”
Spinning severed frozen partially uniformed body parts immerse you in a perverse ballet of rotating harmony. Highway’s neatly halved body continues to spin each eye spying its counterpoint for a brief moment then looking away, then looking again. One side gives an eternally frozen snarl to the other every corporeal rotation. The ballet of the battle-lost bodies orbits about you at the La Grange center of emptiness in a gruesome caricature of a solar system with you as its sun.
Your oxygen is redlining. A voice shouts in your ear in alarm. “Warning. Atmosphere depletion imminent. Warning.” You turn off your audio. You release your weapon. You release your TDU. You extend your arm towards Earth and then your middle finger. You detach the glove from the uniform with your left hand while your right arm remains extended with your gesture intact. Your middle-finger and hand freeze instantly in place as the air rushes out of your uniform.
Within a few seconds, you are frozen-dead, locked in a La Grange orbit forever by the negating gravitational forces of the Earth and the Sun. You are a corporeal monument of the “La Grange Wars” preserving your last commentary on the stupidity of your choice and the feelings about the purpose of your effort for all eternity.
<<<<>>>>
“I wish to enter the temple, Master Poh.”
“Simple. Just place your palm on the plate of the Mindful Scanner.”
I do so. I approach the palm scanner, my hand hovering in front of it. My palm makes contact with the transparent plate. It immediately flashes red and blares, “Access Denied.” I jump back, alarmed. “Master Poh, it’s not letting me in. Don’t you have to add my biometrics to its secure digital vault?”
“No.”
“How does it recognize me to let me in?”
“It is programmed with a keyword. If your mindful state is in accordance with the proper intent, it will allow you to pass.”
“Keyword? What is it?”
Master Poh places his hand on the scanner. It immediately flashes green and I hear the door lock unlatch. He says, “You may try again tomorrow. The keyword will be humility.” He disappears into the foyer inside the temple entrance closing the door behind himself.
#
Master Poh stands humbly in the doorway. I approach the palm scanner, my hand hovering in front of it. I think my most humble thoughts. I am nothing. I am a flyspeck on the universe. I am a stain on the planet. My palm makes contact with the transparent plate. It immediately flashes red and blares, “Access Denied.”
I jump back startled and shout, “What? I cannot be more humble than that!”
“Humble is more than thoughts of insignificance.” Master Poh places his hand on the scanner. It immediately flashes green and I hear the door lock unlatch. He says, “You may try again tomorrow. The keyword will be patience.” He disappears into the foyer inside the temple entrance closing the door behind himself.
#
Master Poh stands patiently in the doorway. I slowly approach the palm scanner, my hand hovering in front of it. Ever so carefully, my palm makes contact with the transparent plate. It immediately flashes red and blares, “Access Denied.”
I jump back startled and shout, “What? I took my time. How could I be more patient?”
“Patient is not the same as slow.” Master Poh places his hand on the scanner. It immediately flashes green and I hear the door lock unlatch. He says, “You may try again tomorrow. The keyword will be reverence.” He disappears into the foyer inside the temple entrance closing the door behind himself.
#
Master Poh stands reverently in the doorway. Reverence has me confused. Am I supposed to have reverence for the scanner? For the master? I’m starting to think it’s all a nasty trick on me, but I play along. I bow to Master Poh. I bow to the scanner. I approach the palm scanner, my hand hovering in front of it. My palm makes contact with the transparent plate. It immediately flashes red and blares, “Access Denied.”
I jump back and shout, “What? Are you f**king with me?”
“Reverence is deeper than bowing.” Master Poh places his hand on the scanner. It immediately flashes green and I hear the door lock unlatch. He says, “You may try again tomorrow. The keyword will be trust.” He disappears into the foyer inside the temple entrance closing the door behind himself.
#
Master Poh stands trustingly in the doorway. Am I supposed to trust the Master? Or is he supposed to trust me? I say to the master and the all-knowing scanner with a bowed head, “I will be a very good student. But you have to let me in first. Trust me. I will not disappoint you.” I approach the palm scanner, my hand hovering in front of it. My palm makes contact with the transparent plate. It immediately flashes red and blares, “Access Denied.”
I jump back startled and shout, “What? I trusted it but it did not trust me. The device does not play fair.”
“Trust is earned, not requested.” Master Poh places his hand on the scanner. It immediately flashes green and I hear the door lock unlatch. He says, “You may try again tomorrow. The keyword will be faith.” He disappears into the foyer inside the temple entrance closing the door behind himself.
#
Master Poh stands faithfully in the doorway. I rub my hands quickly together and say, “You can do this. I have faith in you.” I approach the palm scanner, my hand hovering in front of it. My palm makes contact with the transparent plate. It immediately flashes red and blares, “Access Denied.”
I jump back startled and shout, “Arrrrrrrrrrrggg. The machine hates me. Why do I continue to torture myself?”
“You must have faith in yourself, not the device.” Master Poh places his hand on the scanner. It immediately flashes green and I hear the door lock unlatch. He says, “You may try again tomorrow. The keyword will be.”
I yell, “Don’t say it! I think I get it. If I have no expectation, it will let me pass. That is the secret of the scanner.”
He disappears into the foyer inside the temple entrance closing the door behind himself.
#
Master Poh stands quietly in the doorway. “I’ve got this,” I say. I confidently approach the palm scanner, my hand hovering in front of it. My palm makes contact with the transparent plate. It immediately flashes red and blares, “Access Denied.”
“This is bullshit.”
Master Poh says, “Having no expectation is still an expectation.”
“Double talk and riddles. You just don’t want me to come in, do you? You programmed the thing to not let me in. Why don’t you just say it already?”
Master Poh places his hand on the scanner. It immediately flashes green and I hear the door lock unlatch. He says, “You may try again tomorrow. I will let you enter the keyword yourself.” He disappears into the foyer inside the temple entrance closing the door behind himself.
#
Master Poh stands identifiably in the doorway. He hands me the app. I enter my name as the keyword. When the app says, “Keyword Accepted,” I approach the palm scanner, my hand hovering in front of it. My palm makes contact with the transparent plate. It immediately flashes red and blares, “Access Denied.”
“The thing is stupid.”
“The device is not an access code to your accounts.” Master Poh places his hand on the scanner. It immediately flashes green and I hear the door lock unlatch. He says, “You may try again tomorrow. I will let you enter the keyword yourself.” He disappears into the foyer inside the temple entrance closing the door behind himself.
#
Master Poh stands anonymously in the doorway. He hands me the app. This time I add the word “not” in front of my name to catch the device in a contradiction. When the app says, “Keyword Accepted,” I approach the palm scanner, my hand hovering in front of it. My palm makes contact with the transparent plate. It immediately flashes red and blares, “Access Denied.”
“The thing is just plain broken.”
“You are not your name.” Master Poh places his hand on the scanner. It immediately flashes green and I hear the door lock unlatch. He says, “You may try again tomorrow. I will let you enter the keyword yourself.” He disappears into the foyer inside the temple entrance closing the door behind himself.
#
Master Poh stands unexpectantly in the doorway. He hands me the app. I hand it back to him. I say, “I wanted to get inside. I wanted to learn.”
“You have already learned plenty. You have learned that you are not humble. You are not patient. You are not reverent. You do not trust. You are not faithful. You are not a name. You are not clever.”
“The temple was my chance at a future. The temple was my chance at a life. All gone. I will become nothing. I am nothing. I get it. I am not getting in.” I sit down on an empty porcelain stool next to the door, defeated. I realize I have no control over what will happen next. I surrender to the inevitability of a future not of my own making.
Master Poh grabs my wrist and pushes my palm up against the scanner. The light flashes green, the lock unlatches, and the door swings open. My jaw drops to the top of my bare feet. I look at the master astonished.
He says with the faintest hint of a smile, “You are right, you are nothing. You may enter if you choose. There is nothing more I can teach you. But if you wish, I can help you to understand what you have learned.”
I bow to him and say, “I would be grateful.” I bow to the scanner with reverence and a humility born of fear and awe for the spiritual device that knows me better than I know myself.
Boris creeps up, his four legs on each side moving in a rhythmic waviness, practicing a menacing stare with his thirteen eyes, but his pincers are hidden behind a cloth mask with a black web imprinted upon it. I can tell by his eagerness that he doesn’t know. I have to break the bad news to him.
“What? Halloween is cancelled? Are you serious?” Most of his eyes stare at me intently to ascertain the truth of my statement.
“Yep. That’s what the boss told me.”
“Well, fly shit! They can’t do that. It’s the biggest day of the year. I get more on Halloween than all the other days of the year combined.” His head and thirteen eyes droop to the floor before he regains some semblance of composure. “Did he say why? Is it because of COVID?”
“Ostensibly, yes.”
“Ostensibly, yes? What in the hell does that mean? We all take precautions. We are evil distancing.”
“Some say that’s the problem. I mean, how scary is it when a vampire or a werewolf wears a mask? Half the scare is in the teeth. The boss says it’s a question of artistic integrity. Don’t you feel your scare loses its impact when you wear your mask?”
Boris squints his eyes and moves his gazes about the room trying to impress me. He flares his legs to make himself look bigger. It doesn’t work.
Boris says, “Okay. Okay. You win. I don’t like it, either. It’s not as scary with the mask. but if they can play sports with a cardboard crowd and sound-tracked crowd noises, and baseball can play seven-inning games and best-of-three playoff rounds, we can make a few concessions too. Don’t we owe it to our victims? Professionalism dictates that we get there and terrorize the populace. We owe it to the people!” He slams down his front four legs.
Ghosts flit about the room with the energy of his determination. Ghouls lift their heads and their eyes shine red in our direction.
“I admire your enthusiasm, but I think the problem is really much deeper than that. This year has scared the shit out of so many people already, and with a presidential election just a few days later, well…”
“So what are you saying?” Boris asks. “You think the real problem is scare fatigue?”
“Worse.”
“Worse?”
“Yes.”
“How could it be worse? You don’t mean…” Now Boris looks like he is shaking.
“Yes. Irrelevance.”
“Noooo.” I can hear Boris’s knees knocking back and forth in fear like Newton’s cradle.
“No one is terrorized anymore. I read a blog from one guy that said he would love to transfigure himself into a werewolf and rip the guts out of some people.”
“Oooh,” Boris retracts timidly covering his eyes with his pedipalps.
“And another that says living forever with sex slave vampresses doesn’t seem so bad.”
Boris’s spinnerets fall to the ground and his fovea flattens to the floor, the lift leaving his eight legs. Or is it ten? Or twelve? He has lots of appendages.
“No one is safe. Not even me,” I say. “Do you know I looked up goblin? It says I am and I quote, ‘A mischievous, and usually very unpleasant, vengeful, and greedy creature whose primary purpose is to cause trouble to humankind.’ That doesn’t narrow it down much when you think about it. I have to compete against politicians, lawyers, CEOs, stock analysts, and customer support people. Seriously. All I have going for me is green skin and bad dentition. It’s the same for all of us. We have to be more scary and evil than all of a black and orange Halloween decade that has scared the crap of anyone paying any attention at all more than we ever have. They are stealing our business.”
“So now what? There must be something we can do?”
“Yes. I think so,” I agree. “First, take some time off. Enjoy some gourmet fly carcass.
“And then,” I proclaim loudly, “we have to regroup.”
Ogres and ghouls and gargoyles straighten and stand from their sitting hump-backed positions.
“We have to become more scary than pandemics!”
Witches on brooms and ghosts circle over head dancing like electrons about a nucleus.
“We have to become more fearsome than global disasters and Greek-lettered hurricanes and state-wide firestorms!”
Jackalopes leap in bounds between Boris and myself with their evil antlers.
“We have to out-terrorize a population on the verge of a civil war!”
Werewolfs bay at the full moon. Bats echolocate at unhearable frequencies. Salamanders up their level of slime.
In the middle of my fantastic, albeit empty rant, the cheap elastic band snaps and my mask pops off. A collective gasp of cold evilness runs through the crowd and it disperses as fast as a viral news story.
“Next year,” I conclude under my breath and under my mask as I try to hold it back to my face.
All thirteen eyes on Boris’s hairy face are coated with the moisture of sadness. We each turn and go our separate ways.
As if an unwanted birthday wasn’t enough, my twenty-seven year old, freon compressed, central A/C decided to die of bad capacitance and a burnt-out motor a day before the two weeks of 100+ and 110+ degree weather. A subject matter expert came out to give me an estimate on a replacement unit. As he inspected the bowels of my house and noted problem points, he doubted the efficacy of my A/C efficiency to the tune of about 10K.
With the demise of the A/C, my living space was reduced to the inner sanctum of a single 10x10x8 room that contains all my connections to the outside world: the temporary room AC, the TV, the work laptop, the personal laptop, and the iPhone. I once read that the entire biomass of humanity individually put in 9x9x9 cubic foot containers could be stored inside the Grand Canyon. I don’t know if that is still true or not because the population has expanded by a few billion people since I was informed of that fact. I don’t think the Grand Canyon people-fill generated a lot of enthusiasm in the real estate market.
At work, dumped from two projects this year and waiting four months and counting to start a new one while COVID drove everyone from their offices to their homes, my living space also turned into my workspace. With time on my hand and inspired by the insane politics of the time, I read Hannah Arendt’s book “A Report on the Banality of Evil.” In the evilest empire of modern times, people hid behind platitudes. State a positive to overlook a negative. The road to hell is paved with platitudes. That is the banality of evil. I’ve had months to contemplate the platitude that made my pending work assignment once palatable, “Peace through Strength.” My workspace feels really small.
COVID had me in storage. Work had me in storage. An oppressive heatwave had me in storage. Regardless of the venue and with a milestone birthday imminent, I for one wanted out of storage. I decided to take the week off from work to get my head around my descent into decrepitude and to evaluate the efficacy of my own efficiency. Somebody called it a symbolic milestone, but the symbolism escapes me. It feels pretty real to me.
So what do you do for your symbolic milestone birthday in the age of COVID to get out of storage? Road trip! Particularly when you have Hetal and Chris for friends. Separate cars! Separate rooms! Stay outdoors wherever possible. Masks and hand sanitizer. We were going. As Hetal said, birthdays are a big deal.
The general plan was to head to Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon National Park. The reason for this particular destination was my desire to visit Kings Canyon. I’ve seen Kings Canyon from a distant overlook and technically, I’ve been in the park before because of the small isolated piece of it on the road to Sequoia that contains General Grant. I’ve never made it into the canyon proper mostly because I have visited the area in the offseason on late-year holiday trips when the only drivable entrance to Kings Canyon is closed off. Not at all complaining about the beautiful overlook into the canyon but just seeing it from the rim is a teaser, like flying over in an airplane. If you go to one park, it is a wasted opportunity not to visit the other if you can, so Sequoia is in the mix even if it is a several time repeat.
I was strongly advised to get reservations for a campground because of COVID constraints and crowds. Indeed, my search through the campgrounds proved them all to be full and the first-come, first-serve campgrounds closed on account of COVID. So I made reservations at Eshom Campground in Sequoia National Forest, which looked pretty close to the parks on a small map. This was the part of the trip I did plan in advance.
During an unrelated astronomical conversation concerning the identification and alignment of planets, the topic of the trip came up with Phil, a lifelong friend I met at the age of 9. A potential hike I was considering to Mist Falls was also on Phil’s to-do list. So he would be joining us for a night of camping and a day of hiking in Kings.
I packed my car full of camping equipment, coolers, and clothes. I chose Stephen King’s “On Writing: A Memoir on the Craft” on audio for company. Listening to King on the way to Kings seemed fitting. The reservations were for Sunday and Monday. We left on a Saturday. We had an unplanned night before the visit to the National Parks. When Chris and Hetal showed up at the house, I still wasn’t sure where we were going first.
I offered up the idea of the Kern River but the final decision was Ojai with the possibility of continuing onto Paso Robles. It wasn’t a completely random destination, we had discussed it at the beginning of the summer for a possible motorcycle trip but the stars and planets didn’t quite align. In a previous motorcycle trip through Ojai with a different crowd, I did little more than take a quick lunch break before cruising through the picturesque Los Padres National Forest on CA-33 on our way to Paso Robles and beyond.
While Stephen King struggled through his childhood for the next couple of hours and without any hint of what his rambling had to do with the craft, I began a text-while-driving negotiation to meet Ann who lives in Ojai, a friend I haven’t seen in the six months since we collectively went into storage back in March, to give her fair warning of our impending arrival instead of just showing up at her house and telling her “Surprise, we are here!” Not so much because I’m courteous but only because I don’t know with any precision exactly where she lives. Even in COVID, LA traffic accommodates my texting session with stopped traffic in the middle of the freeway for no other apparent reason than to allow me to continue my conversation without the risk of driving. Over the course of the four-hour trip, I learned that Ann will meet us somewhere for dinner after she finishes painting houses in Ventura.
After nearly four hours of talking, Stephen King is still only five years old in his memoir. I suppose five was a watershed moment in my life too, but all I have to say about that is you can’t trust old people. I think I could make a case for that lack of trust setting me off on a youth filled with long hair and informality and iconoclasm and introversion. With any luck, in five or ten years, I can inflict you with my own memoir on the craft so you can judge for yourself if my case has any merit.
Ojai is a tourist town and a gateway to the wilderness recreation in the coastal mountains outside of Ventura and Santa Barbara. The downtown has an adobe feel to it. Outdoor seating and drinking beckoned but our first stop was to Bart’s, the world’s greatest outdoor bookstore. Bookstores aren’t dead yet although it doesn’t hurt to have a quaint outdoor setting and a great reputation. I asked the kid at the register how they choose their books and he told me the books choose them. Fair enough. So I asked the books how they choose the store and each had its own story to tell. Haha. I couldn’t resist. Sorry.
We started our night on the town at the Ojai Pub. At Ann’s recommendation, we redirect to Topa Topa Brewing company where we finally meet up, and then from there to Ojai Beverage Co, all with outdoor seating and plenty of beer and food, a great way to spend a Saturday night. As much fun as I have in the inner sanctum of my personal storage drinking my homemade wine telling my dogs the errors of their ways, it just doesn’t compare to a warm night on an outdoor patio, eating someone else’s cooking for a change, and telling my interactive and three-dimensional and charming friends the errors of their ways. Ann is a gracious host.
After an overnight in Carpenteria and a coffee at a coffee shop to which people coagulate on a Sunday morning on a downtown artery of Santa Barbara, we headed out the scenic 154 for a panoramic view of Cachuma Lake and an involuntarily slow drive-by of a smoldering blackened car. We crossed over from the coast to Visalia through the golden hills inside the coastal range outside of San Luis Obispo. The yellow, gold, and tans with just an occasional splotch of tree were painting and picture waiting to happen.
Stephen King has been chatting me up as we cut across the state still talking more memoir than craft. He finally gets around to the topic of writing. He hates adverbs, I recall ruefully. He vigilantly culls his drafts for adverbs, but even he cannot purge his work of them all successfully. The road to hell is paved with adverbs, he says angrily and bitterly and ardently and abjectly. Abjectly sounded good when I wrote it but I actually had to look up its definition. Stephen hates pretense. Don’t fluff up your sentences with pompous and pretentious and supercilious and resplendent words that you don’t know the meaning of just to sound more erudite and educated.
He tells me half of writing is vulnerability. Stick your jaw out there, it will most certainly get punched. So far, when I’ve put my jaw out there for the punch, I’ve been hit hard by the harsh hands of irrelevance and invisibility and a complete lack of marketing skills. Needless to say, the other half of writing is about paying the hospital bill.
It pains me to no end that my fifty IG posts average about five hits compared to tens of thousands of hits in a single post of a hot babe in a pretend bikini telling me that life is an adventure. On second thought, maybe the other half of writing is about paying the shrink. In either case, my book sales to date won’t cover the cost for the phone call to set up the appointment.
Stephen ignores my pathos and moves on. It’s all about him. He lets situation drive his writing rather than plot. Plot is unnatural and forced and for him, at least, arises naturally from situation. Plot is emergent. Situation seems like an appropriate metaphor for a trip that was at least in part unplanned until its start day. Write this situation: what if we go to Ojai without a plan or a place to stay in the middle of a pandemic while the state is burning down?
In Exeter, we provisioned up at a little mom and pop grocery store that has only a mom and serves mostly the same fare as a gas station. The dairy section of the store is a single rack behind a glass cooler and there is no bread. But the lady is nice and sacrifices two sandwich bread loaves from her deli for our campout meals. In another encounter a day later, my vegetarian friend Phil stopped at a sandwich shop in Exeter and they gave him the Philly cheesesteak despite repeatedly clarify his order for something else. He’s pretty sure he could have ordered anything from the guy and he would still have ended up with a Philly cheese steak. So there you have it, the good and bad of Exeter. How many people even have the experience of being there?
From Exeter, we drove to our desolate campground in the Sequoia National Forest. We veered off to scenic back roads that narrowed into one car lanes and roughed ever bumpier and wound into ever tighter curves and bends. As the road turned to dirt, Google Maps told me, “Arrived.” I looked around. The only thing I saw was trees. In yet another unimpressive performance of the app, it had dumped me about a half a mile from the entrance to the campground. Google Maps once rerouted me in LA in the middle of the night down a freeway that ended, sent me into some dubious neighborhood, then cut out and dropped the image of the map while looking for its connection. I had no idea where the f**k I was. I once followed it in Idaho and it took me down a road that disappeared from the map while my impatient guide suggested over and over that I, “Return to the route. Return to the route. Return to the route,” as if it were my fault. They tell me AI is going to take over the world. Ha. Really? Wait. Now that I think about it, maybe that is one small step in its master plan.
It didn’t take long to set up camp, then play catch with Chris and a real baseball, sneak glances at the two pretty lesbian (that’s how my mind processed it) girls in the campsite next to ours, and snap a picture of a gopher that looks like he is up for a game of whack-a-mole. Gophers at home have eaten far more from my attempts at agriculture than I have. Don’t let those cute buck teeth and that cute furry muzzle fool you for even a second. The road to agricultural hell is paved with gophers. And rabbits. And squirrels. And seed-eating birds. And snails. And insects. There is a lot of traffic on that particular road. It might work out for me if I trick the gophers into eating adverbs instead of corn and cucumbers.
Of course, I find my way into the alcohol and have a beer or four with my teetotaling vodka-drinking friend Hetal, commiserating over the last few minutes of my now spent middle age.
I awoke in the morning from my bivy sarcophagus to a new decade. In my head, I heard the voice from Google Apps say, “Arrived,” having dumped me in the middle of existential nowhere. A big part of the trip is over. It was what it was, it is what it is, and it will be what it will be. That’s the wisdom I’ve accrued over the years. Not having much shit on my shelf, I figure it best to go talk to the 3000-year-old Sequoia trees to find out what their wisdom is. After all, they’ve survived millennia of fires and fungi (but they do seem to be at the mercy of men and climate).
The campground is only fifteen miles from Sequoia National Park as the crow flies but an hour-and-a-half to get to as the car drives down circuitous and curvy roads. With another half-hour delay added to the ride for road maintenance, I gave up on my ambitions to hike deeper into the backcountry. There are always plenty of trees on the Big Trees trail to visit. General Sherman was way too busy showing off his massive girth to the hordes to have much of a conversation. Hordes was his word. He pointed out to me that its the same word I use for mosquitos.
I found an ancient that wasn’t so preoccupied. This is what it said to me, “I put out hundreds of seeds per cone and thousands of cones per year. Conservatively, over the course of my two thousand years of life, I might produce 200*5000*2000 or more than two billion seeds. I only need one success in two billion to be successful.”
F**king optimist. If I were 3000 years old, I’d be an optimist too. But they are resplendent and grandiose and flamboyant and Stephen King is turned off for a couple of days until I get back on the highway. So thinking with my cup half full, I agreed with his Majestic-ness. But then re-thinking with my cup half empty, it means there are two billion less one failures. So big trees suffer from confirmation bias even after all these years they have had to get their shit together. When I confronted them, they ignored my protestations and insights. The big trees spoke of resilience and perseverance as they looked down on me. I didn’t hear what the two billion less one missing trees had to say. Probably, the same thing I had to say. “Humph.”
Enough talking to the trees, I had to race back to the campground to greet Phil. Fortuitously, I saw him on the Big Trees trail hiding under an Illini baseball cap and behind a bandit’s mask. I was within two feet of him before I recognized that twinkle in his eye that makes him him. Two life long friends of over fifty years could have sailed past each other on the trail without a glimmer of recognition just like that. Easy come, easy go? It was a fortunate encounter. I didn’t have to rush back and he didn’t have to get lost in the middle of the night trying to locate the campsite. Well, maybe he has better luck with his maps.
Phil and I headed to Moro rock. Despite the haziness of the smoke-filled air and the ominous presence of ravens, the steep climb thinly protected by a knee-high rock wall from a drop of hundreds of feet and a view of distant mountains across a deep valley was thrilling and awe-inspiring. A thick haze obscured our view to the west. After our summit and viewing, we trekked back to the campsite under a pink and red and purple sunset stopping briefly to watch a flock of turkeys crossing the road before rejoining Chris and Hetal for a birthday celebration. Celebration is kind of a strong word for a gathering of four and an event that I would have strongly preferred to keep as a target in the sight rather than a fading memory in the rearview mirror. On the other hand, there are two billion less one seeds telling me to f**k off. They never made it this far, relatively speaking.
Back at the campsite, we all enjoyed Phil’s beers, checked out the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, talked about COVID and politics and retirement and travel and a few other things I probably needed to shut up about already. I scored three sci-fis from Neal Stephenson from Hetal and Chris and a six-pack of Stone from Phil. I never got around to playing “Time Waits for No One” on the guitar. That is how you turn sixty. It was what it was, it is what it is, and it will be what it will be. I heard a bunch of trees groan in the darkness at the thought.
Enough of the moroseness of a happy birthday. Nothing to lift your spirits like the resplendence of a spectacular canyon. Parting ways with Hetal and Chris, Phil and I packed and hit the road for the Mist Falls hike. Kings didn’t disappoint. It was very Grand Canyonish, in fact, even deeper at its deepest point, with the advantage that you can drive down into it. It’s a long slow ride that makes a lot more sense if you camp down there over nights to spend more time participating in the wilderness than viewing it from behind a wheel. The campgrounds we drove past were closed and the road was empty.
At the end-of-the-road trailhead to Mist Falls, we caught up to other cars and hikers but nothing even remotely overwhelming for a national park on a perfect summer day. The first two miles of the Mist trail was flat following the South Fork of the Kings River. The walls and peaks towered overhead in the haze from far-off fires in the Valley. A mule train led by two park rangers passed us on a hot and dusty section of the trail loaded with metallic canisters of unknown cargo. After a mile or so, the open trail ducked under a riparian forest to a prehistoric undergrowth of horsetails and ferns. At the two-mile marker, the trail veered north turning into a gentle climb as it followed the contour of the canyon alongside the river.
We stopped so I could take pictures of the stream. I managed to forget my poles, walking for about a tenth of a mile before realizing my mistake. After I retrieved the damn poles, I contemplated the efficacy of my brain efficiency. It’s just a matter of time before I forget something critical like turning off a stove burner for a night or forgetting to zip up my fly after a bathroom break during an important meeting at work. But instead of getting angry at frustrating times like this, I remembered an extremely useful piece of advice, “ask yourself if what you are doing is helping the situation or not.” I heard it on a TED talk on resilience. Anger and or self-pity don’t help the situation. I know, I’ve tried. That one phrase has so far kept me out of any up and coming Stephen King novels.
A few stretches of the trail are steep enough to warrant a granite staircase. We passed cascades we thought might be the falls. A catch-and-release fisherman regaled us of his multi-species trout catches of the day and told us the falls were just up the trail about a half-mile. A sign marked the spot of the actual falls but once you see the falls, you won’t mistake them for anything else.
The falls were extremely photogenic with a peak off to one side, trees on the rim near the top, and a rock protruding from the bottom pool that allows people to stand right in front of the falls almost as if in them. I usually try to take pics without people but I think, in this case, the people add a sense of scale and contrast. Phil took full advantage of the pool at the base of the falls with a swim in the cool waters. We found Phil’s wheelhouse.
After a hundred photos, a quick jump in the pool, and a modest lunch, we headed back. Most of my hikes these days are solo filled with finding interesting things and composing pics in my mind but this one breezes by with Phil’s company.
On the way out of Kings, we made a quick stop at the Roaring River Waterfalls. It is just off the road on a paved trail and another photo op. A little further down the road, we stopped in Visalia for dinner. Surprisingly, Visalia had a pleasant restaurant row with outdoor seating. We ate at Corby’s Rock N Roll Heroes. Don’t be fooled, it isn’t it a record store, it’s actually a restaurant that plays great classic rock’n’roll with a very pleasant young server who surprisingly does a lot of day hiking on her own in Kings.
Stephen King rejoined me for the ride home to San Diego but he’s not such pleasant company on this leg of the trip. In 1999, he ended up getting run over by a callous man trying to stop his Rottweiler from digging into his beer supply instead of paying attention to the road. If not for the quick response and impeccable treatment by the first-responder, Stephen assured me that he would have died. As it was, he had a crushed leg that looked more a bag of marbles than a bone, a punctured lung, broken ribs, and bent frames on his eyeglasses.
Stephen told me that the inspiration credited to drugs and alcohol is a myth. He should know, he was an addict. I read somewhere that after decades of abstinence, he fell off the wagon again. I don’t know if he has once again kicked the habit. I do know he has published over 60 books. Two roads to hell and one to redemption.
He tells me I have to write, write, and write, and then write some more. He also tells me I have to read, read, and read, and then read some more. Damn it. I have a job.
Stephen finally shut up and I finally made it home. I watched the grittiness of the backcountry wash off me in black streaks swirling down the shower drain.
So one symbolic milestone came and went. I continued to doubt the efficacy of my efficiency and I learned that the road to hell is paved with platitudes, adverbs, and gophers.
I imagined myself plotting out the road to hell in Google maps. Same road as Stephen King’s and Hannah Arendt’s. And herds of gophers. I followed its direction. I got stuck in purgatory. I paved the road with colorful phrases like, “Where in the hell are you taking me?” No adverbs were necessary. With any luck, I permanently lose myself at the end-of-the-road on the Kings Canyon Scenic Byway.
I heard my internal map app voice speaking in my head, “Return to the route. Return to the route. Return to the route.” I’m sixty years old and I dumped me in the middle of nowhere. What route? What map?
I look at my older self in the mirror and say, “Now what?” He snarls his lips in disgust and disdain, stares back from inside the mirror, and says, “You live with it.”
Here’s Mikey!
More pics here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19U6xFP1BXhVX7onzwpCyEn2AWDA7aZcx?usp=sharing
An antonym of antonym is synonym.
An antonym of synonym is antonym.
A synonym of synonym is an antonym of antonym.
A synonym of antonym is an antonym of synonym.
There are no synonyms for synonym.
Just saying.
A soldier escorts a civilian to the CO standing in the center of the command center.
“Who are you?”
“I’m the mission observer here for oversight on Operation Lunch Delivery to observe the effectiveness of the CMCs.”
He presents his credentials to the CO. The CO nods assent. The mission observer stands with the CO at the heart of the operation.
“When do you send in the CMC’s?” asks the observer.
“We send in the TTs during rush hour.”
“TTs?”
“Terrestrial Torpedoes. That’s what they call ’em in the cartillery platoon. No one calls them Cruise Missile Cars except the engineering nerds.”
“Why launch at rush hour?”
“We know the traffic patterns. Easy to get lost in the crowd. Everyone is too busy shouting at each other to pay much mind to a bunch of nondescript cars.”
“So what is the plan?”
“They’ll drive in and park as close as they can to the target without raising suspicion.”
“Won’t a driverless car raise suspicions?”
“Barely, there not as ubiquitous as they are stateside, but they’re not uncommon. And the car bodies all come from a local business. They should blend right in.”
“You aren’t going to set them off during work hours, are you? It would mean a lot of collateral damage.”
“Yes, the mission is to take out enemy combatants. Targets are very specific but there is always collateral damage. That is the business we are in.”
“Now what happens?”
“Once they’re on secondary location, they’ll phone in and await orders. We’ll wait until lunchtime before removing the safeties and ordering them to their targets with their lunch orders.”
“You mean launch time and launch orders?”
“Launch time is lunchtime. This is a lunch launch. The torpedoes are all disguised as food delivery vehicles. The lunch orders are pizza to go.”
“Pizza to go boom,” the observer says wryly.
“We’re ready for launch now.”
A background voice, “Launch in 10..9…2..1..0. Missile fleet away.”
The observer studies the board for situation awareness. “It looks exactly like the online street map I used to drive into work today right down to the orange and red markings for traffic congestion.”
“It’s the same app, just showing our TTs.”
Red push-pins show on the road map identifying the land missiles. The fleet of TT’s moves out from its launch position and immediately split up. Most of them are stuck in traffic.
“Do they get road rage?” jests the observer.
“Of course not. They don’t get angry or frustrated or impatient. They just drive. That’s what they do. That’s all they do. Well, except at the very end.”
“Not exactly how I envisioned the terminator,” says the observer, recognizing the line from the movie.
The background voice says, “All torpedoes on secondary location and ready for target launch.”
“So now what?”
“We come back at lunchtime for launch.”
“And then?”
“Lavese Los Manos.”
“Huh?”
“We clean our hands of the affair and get back to work.”
P.S. The third in a series of car shorts. (Is car shorts a thing?) See https://www.thetembo.com/clip/2019/11/24/feral-cars/ and https://www.thetembo.com/clip/2020/06/27/courteous-driving/
“The Assertive is the creme-de-la-creme of the selfish-driving cars. It doesn’t cost any points to pass every other model and it doesn’t wait for anything, with the possible exception of other Assertives.” says the salesman.
“What happens when two Assertives meet at the same light going in cross-directions?” asks your son.
“They bid for the right to pass first so it all depends on how many points you configure the car for and what your reserves are. If you are in hurry, you post a lot of points and configure the car to bid high.”
“Is it safe?” you ask.
“Oh, of course, the bidding all happens in the blink of an eye and it is completely automated.”
“How much do the points cost?” you ask.
“You shouldn’t think about points, sir, you should think about your son making it to his new middle school class on time.”
“I will worry about the points thank you. What’s the bottom line on the Assertive?”
“50K.”
“Rude,” you say under your breath. “I said my ceiling is 15K, not 50K. Stick to my requirements, or I’m walking.”
The salesman doesn’t look the least bit apologetic.
“Over here we have the Timid. It’s our entry-level model in our line of self-driving cars. It’s completely selfless.”
“Dad, I don’t want a selfless-driving car, they suck. They stop for everything, even squirrels. I will get laughed out of middle school. When the kids with selfish-driving cars come by, they’ll make me look like a wimp. I will never get a girlfriend.”
“Sticking to a budget is more important to me than getting you laid.”
“Dad! You’re embarrassing me.”
“May I suggest the Courteous? You will rule the road over the Timids and you can go into Excuse Me mode if you really need to get anywhere in a hurry.”
“How much do the points cost for that?”
“They are just a little more expensive than the Assertive points, but you can only use so many in a year.”
“How much?”
“You shouldn’t think about the price of points, sir, you should think about getting your son to the hospital as quickly as possible in an emergency.”
“To the hospital? I thought these cars never have an accident.”
“These cars are flawless. I’m just saying if something were ever to come up.”
“How much?”
“A basic model without any add ons is 23K.”
You grumble under your breath. You look at the hopeful eyes of your son. It angers you to go so high over budget but you are a sucker for your kid’s happiness. You cave, “Ok. Let’s go with the Courteous.”
Your son’s face glows, “Yes! Thanks, dad.”
The salesman asks your son, “Will you be driving to other places besides your school?”
“I will drive everywhere from now on.”
The salesman puts his arms around your son’s shoulders and says, “Let’s talk about some of the Intrepid upgrades.”
You are feeling anything but Courteous.
https://www.thetembo.com/clip/?s=feral+cars for a related post, if you enjoyed this one.
H: Remind me if I forget.
Y: How will I know if you forget?
H: Forget what?
Y: To remind you of what you forgot.
H: How would I know if I forgot?
Y: Because you told me to remind you to remember.
H: To remember what?
Y: Whatever it is that you forgot.
H: How am I supposed to remember what I forgot.
Y: Well, I’m reminding you to remember, just like you told me.
H: I forgot what I told you to remind me of.
Y: You told me to remind you if you forget.
H: Forget what?
Y: You weren’t specific. Forget it.
H: I can’t forget it.
Y: Why not?
H: Because you just reminded me to remember whatever it is that I forgot.
Y: So you remember?
H: Remember what?
Y: Whatever it is that you forgot.
H: How could I forget?
Y: It just happens.
H: What just happens?
Y: I forget.
