Dinner

Oggy collapsed near the broken carbon-fiber picnic table, amid discarded fusion batteries and plates of protein bar residue from the CHEEP production process. Oggy thought he might be allergic to the residue or to some chemical in the protein bar that was liberated by the process of reduction. He examined one piece of plastic, or was it carbon fiber? Oggy reached out, distracted from all other stimuli, ignoring the feuding rats and the nagging prostitute bawling near the Dispos-all toilet shed. What was this artifact? Was it from a pair of biodegradable wrist cuffs that the police were using during their CHEEP raids? Possibly, but, it may have belonged to a personal communication device, long obsolete and broken down to harvest the circuitry, gold and microchip. Yes, Oggy recognized a hint of a shape where the case of the old digital device curved around the camera lens. That corner had been engineered for that purpose, thought Oggy, and now it lay here among the residue of rat feces and used Ultraviolet sterilization packages for temporary spermicide. Who could have predicted this fate? Not the engineer of the robots who manufactured it nor the drones who shipped it nor the consumer and then the pirates who scoured the landfills to retrieve the broken device and bring it back to the crude labs for disassembly and meltdown. This small portion of the case had broken off and been swept into a bag that later was used to transport donated food or clothing to the shelter. That was probably the timeline of this article of plastic, but it was not a complete timeline and Oggy stared deeply at the plastic shard as he tried to visualize the details, to fill in the gaps in the timeline as far back as when the plastic was in a boiling vat of ingredients waiting to be injected and molded, the workers...was it possible human laborers were needed during that process? It depended on the age of the device. There was a time when robots did not rule the workshop floor and humans still monitored or controlled the machines. That was important because the exact chain of commands that led to the molding of the molten plastic may have been controlled by humans or it may have been automatic, regulated by algorithms and supply demands and production quotas. The molding process itself may have taken place in the evening, or the morning, or on a full moon, or a full moon obscured by clouds or a tropical storm. Which tropical storm? Which moon? What continent? Well, it would be Central America, up until the civil war when the manufacturing was moved to the artificial islands in the Gulf. The timeline was impossible to complete with what little information Oggy had so he experienced a grinding frustration at the inability to fully visualize the lifespan of this piece of plastic. Why was it so complicated? He could see the groove where the circuit board would slide into, the small groove where the circuit board had once been but had been removed in order to harvest the chip and gold. But under what conditions had the board been installed and by whom did the board get removed? What was the person's name? When did the robot laborer get manufactured? What weather conditions were present during the harvesting process? Had that taken place here in Santa Cruz or elsewhere, had the workers been singing, what song were they singing? There were unsolvable mysteries because all Oggy had to speculate on was a piece of plastic no bigger than a Fiver Coin. So many mysteries, so many unsolvable riddles. A rat scampered through the debris, dragging its heavy scrotum over the trash.

"Dinner!" cried a scallion from near the entertainment tube.
The denizens of the shelter ceased their agitated milling and moved as one toward the tube. Oggy still held the piece of plastic and examined the circuit board groove with his finger nail but he watched the residents limp like brain-hungry zombies toward the tube. They gathered in a tight circle with those in the back climbing boxes of discarded fruit to see better. The tube glowed to life and a low murmur replaced the jabbering mosaic of hysteria.

"We had the slow-roasted roast beef," began the solemn gender-fluid voice within the tube. "And it was good. The sauce was not too salty..."

A man near the middle of the audience grinned like a grave-robber and said loudly, "Nothing wrong with salty sauce. I..."

"Shut up! Wait until dinner is over." shouted shrewd voice from within the audience.

The voice from within the tube continued, "...and the mashed potatoes were made with real butter..."

Many of the audience moaned with pleasure and a few murmured, 'butter...'

"I wanted the corn side dish but my husband talked me into getting the green beans and we shared the special summer slaw. It was all delicious. My only complaint was that there wasn't enough bacon in the beans. I give the restaurant 5 stars..."

The tube glowed silently for a moment and then turned off. The audience began to shout for seconds.

"Play it again! We want more!"
"Play the part about the bacon!"
"I want the one where she likes the medium rare steak!"
"I liked yesterday's pizza dinner better!"
"More mashed potatoes!"

Oggy watched with cheeks sagging over his fleshy frown as the audience clapped their wooden limbs and stomped their feet in hysterics until the dinner was served again. Oggy wanted to participate but the circuit board mystery bothered him. What was pure and right in a world where this piece of plastic had become so orphaned after so much love and attention was spent to produce it?

The tube spoke again: "We had the slow-roasted roast beef...."
The audience finished the sentence as one: "...And it was good."

Oggy nodded and whispered, "The roast beef was good because the sauce wasn't too salty." 

He got goosebumps as a twinge of warmth from a genuine memory came back to him, a real memory, not the ones he borrowed at the library, though hazy in image the smell was authentic, and a twist in his lips almost made him look happy.

Suck On This

After the park had been scanned for pressure cooker bombs, the activists were allowed to file to the designated free speech zones. Oggy helped with the box containing subversive literature and stickers while Woody and Robert and Kim brought the food and plates. While they were setting up, Street Cred Red ambled into the park after a few loud words with the security screening drone.

Everyone braced themselves for Red’s verbal assault.

“Fellow Comrades of the Revolution! I salute you!” Red gave a deliberate military salute and began to bear hug everyone in sight. Oggy eyed him as Red hugged Bella. He lingered too long, thought Oggy, too tightly embraced her, too sexualized, obviously an implication of molestation. When it came time for Oggy to get hugged he turned away and said his back had been hurt during the last protest and arrests. Red smiled through his shaggy beard.

“I’m sure you all heard the latest slander directed at the revolution. But in case you want a reminder I brought a recording. Red lived in a house so he had access to many digital wonders that Oggy and the other homeless activists only heard about. Red assembled a speaker system with a miniature digital player and as the meal preparations began they were entertained with the professional pundit known as “The Voice of Reason”. After a countrified version of the final bars of the Star Spangled Banner followed by a sound clip of a recent protest, shouting voices, “No peace, no justice!” broken up by the distinct humming of police drones and cries of pain.

“Those screams? That’s the sound of justice, fellow Americans,” began the narrative. “That’s the sound of these roaches getting a few thousand volts shot through their traitorous Liberoach spines. There’s a few videos I’ve linked to on my freedom sponsored home page. I invite you to watch some of these scumbags get their serving of justice. These traitors were marching around downtown, breaking windows, shoplifting, burning tires, destroying the livelihood of hard working folks and I think I could make a Christmas Carol from these screams and play while I’m wrapping presents. See,” here the voice changed gears to one of the ‘all-knowing sage’. “These are entitled roaches, they are dirtbags. Filthy. They spread their disease and they know you can’t do anything about it. They are thumbing their nose at all the hard working true Americans who go to work and put food on the table for their families. These filthy dirtbags are molesting your children, they are stealing your tax money, they are trying to undermine everything that you have worked for, everything that protects you family. They don’t care because they are diseased, the welfare state has poisoned their core so they can’t take any responsibility for themselves and they just want to cripple the economy so everyone is like them. All that matters to them is destroying America and we’re letting them get away with it. I guess there isn’t one brave person left in America who will stand up to disease-ridden scum bags in filthy clothes dragging their pestilence around the streets, picking up ticks and leeches and bacteria in the sewage system where they live, and make no mistake about that, these scumbags live and breed in the sewage system. They couldn’t get the government to give them housing so they displaced the cockroaches in the sewer and they have no regard for public health so they bring their diseases and drugs up from the sewers and spread them on the street. Why isn’t there a public outcry? Why aren’t the lanterns and pitchforks on the streets every night protecting our community? I guess people are afraid to stand up to pestilence and disease. I don’t know, America, I don’t know what happened to the spine of this country to allow these despicable cockroaches to murder children, to molest little helpless girls, to defecate on church lawns, to sleep in sewers where they keep their victims. I don’t know why long haired filthy disgusting worthless street rats are allowed to breed like cockroaches and not contribute one penny, not one penny, to the economic strength of the community. They only take and take and take and spread disease and poison and molest children. America, I am telling you that this disease will spread until it is too late to beat into submission. These cockroaches have no morals, they have no religion. They admit to worshiping Satan, they practice satanic rituals with innocent school children, poisoning the young, because they know that your innocent children can’t resist them. They only prey on the weak and innocent because they are corrupted to the core. These rats, they call themselves ‘Activists’, are diseased cockroaches and their existence vexes me deeply, America, because it means there are no brave souls left who will stop the spread of pestilence. I guess that’s how I was raised. My father was a doctor, God rest his soul, so I was raised to recognize disease and try to cure it, to stop the spread of disease, not ignore it. And I’m telling you that the disease these gutter punks and merchants of hate are spreading is threatening everything you cherish. They hate freedom, they hate liberty, they molest children, they are probably stalking your daughter right now, but go ahead and do nothing, I can’t be everywhere at once. All I can do is warn you that the war has already started and we need to organize, to defend our church, to defend our families. The streets are already filled to the brim with these gutter rats and their fleas and filth. They smell like feces because they don’t know enough to wipe their ass. All the drugs that their parents did when they were infants destroyed their brains. They are no longer human and you can tell that from one whiff of their odor. Imagine the putrid rotting mouth of one of these creatures close up against your daughter, imagine how afraid she would be. And you have a chance to prevent that today, or mourn your loss tomorrow. You think these cockroaches care if they molest one of your daughters? They probably don’t even know what they are doing because the drugs have destroyed their brains. We treat homeless dogs with compassion and I don’t know why we don’t round these cockroaches up and get rid of them in the same way. They’ll thank us for it. These cockroaches are lost, they don’t know any better, they are diseased and their poison has eaten all their sense away. It’s our responsibility to find a way to put them right, not ignore them until they breed out of control. There’s still a chance to save our community from these disgusting cockroaches who live in the sewers but only if we all work together, all stand up and do something. We have a chance to save our families from deadly disease. These street rats are full of disease and they are dangerous. If they attack you then you need to protect yourself. The police can’t be everywhere. These diseased gutter cockroaches may not go down if you shoot them once. Remember that. If they attack you, when they attack you or someone in your family then you must understand that they scumbags are high on drugs, their brain is numbed. They were diseased to begin with, from birth, but now they are simply walking zombies carrying disease up and down our beautiful streets. Please, do something. Don’t let yourself become a victim of these destructive cockroaches. It’s almost too late and I pray that I have still reached enough of you to make a difference. Let’s listen to one of the cockroaches, one who hasn’t had her voice stolen by drugs and disease…”

Oggy and the other activists were only half listening as they cut carrots and squash for the soup. But the voice they heard no was Kim’s, so they stopped.

“A flood is on the way, these citizens have petitioned for help but you can see that they’re being persecuted for their economic status…”

Kim’s recoding had been lifted from a media transcript for the radio show. The voice of reason returned, “I’m sorry, Folks, I can’t listen to this babbling cockroach for long. She said herself that she’s organizing these diseased gutter rats to bring a flood of disease to our community. I’m sure she is one of the leaders who has been molesting children for her amusement. Who knows what twisted ceremonies she’s involved in, but she admits that she’s going to flood our community with pestilence as revenge for not being allowed to molest children….”

Kim shook her head. “This guy is really out of control. I was talking about the flood of civil rights abuse that the City Council is preparing for all the people living on the street. He’s just taking everything out of context and spinning it to his narrative. Pathetic. Do people really listen to this crap.

As if on cue a truck drove by the park and a man shouted, “Gutter rats! Get the fuck out of my town!”

“Well, there’s your answer, Kim,” said Red as he paused the recording. “This is the guy I’ve been warning you about. He’s been broadcasting non-stop for weeks and he gave out my phone number so I’m getting threats all day.”

“You should tell the police, Red. Don’t ignore that.”

“I went into the police station and they were listening to him. They took my information and said they’d look into it. Then they arrested me for those outstanding warrants. I bailed out and have a prelim in two weeks. It was for those two citations that I contested a year ago. Paperwork never got processed.”

Bob stated, “So you went to the police about death threats and they arrested you?”

Woody followed that up with, “A fucking firebomb would solve all that bullshit. A big fucking bomb loaded with TNT. Who is with me?”

“Talk like that doesn’t help anything, Woody. You’re no better than him.”

“Fight fire with fire. Eventually we’re going to get to that point but if we don’t act first then there is absolutely no chance of winning. We can be too late or we can flip the script.”

“Woody, with all these drones around you’re going to get us all arrested.”

“Those drones have supersonic spy microphones.”

“I don’t give a fuck! Fuck them.”

Oggy sat in a trance, chopping the same carrot over and over. He was stunned by the vitriol he had heard from that talk show. Calling everyone diseased cockroaches, poisoned, molesters, living in the gutter? Where did he get these treacherous lies?

Two pedestrians passed nearby and he heard the woman say, “street rats…I can smell them from here.” It pained Oggy with embarrassment and shame, reflecting on his days in school when a drug sniffing dog would pass before a line of students and the joke was that Oggy smelled like shit so the dog didn’t want to sniff him. For a few days Oggy had been called “Shit Sniffer” and games and taunts and mocking songs had been sung at his expense.

“Shit Sniffer Oggy, sitting in a tree.

S-H-I-T-I-N-G.

He smells like shit, never wipes his ass

Oggy the shit Sniffer has no class.”

He could still remember the awful taunting song years later. Oggy also reflected on his own teasing a girl with buck teeth. He would chew like a rabbit every time she walked by. Childish but hurtful and he concluded it was a sign his moral construction was flawed from the start. Everything was poisoned. Maybe the talk show host was right and he was simply a diseased gutter rat spreading his poison. A wingless pigeon waddled nearby, pecking at the dry lawn.


*Hutu Power Radio is where I got the inspiration for this rant. The dehumanizing screeds are very important to genocide movements and I've seen this mostly on the Conservative media side and wanna-be Conservative pundits directed toward Liberals and gays, blacks, immigrants, women,, Muslims. Liberal media merely dehumanize Conservatives. I'm guilty of this in my darker moments. But the historical precedent is abundant: genocide needs antagonists and usually the hate pundits will encode their propaganda and act bewildered when someone takes it seriously. 

free exchange of healthy ideas

 
"All liberals need to be exterminated. The President has betrayed America...etc, etc...impeach, torture...Oh, but we don't mean to encourage violence. No! Where did you get that idea? We're merely expressing our opinion, which is protected by the constitution that we renounced when we stated our desire to secede from the union, but that we still want protection from because we're hypocrites."

There's a lot of crazy running free these days.

Brown Recluse

Larry had a small cot inside the woodshed. Electricity came from an extension cord from the main house. It froze in the winter like a meat locker but when the fog and rain came in the evening he would lay awake because of the back spasms and prostate throbbing like the bass drum of Blonde Destiny’s first hit “Rock My Rocket” The agony Larry described was comical because every day was a struggle with death. One night he woke up and there was a mattress spring poking into his side. He said he rode his bike to the hospital for more pain medication on account of the bleeding but he was denied. “What does it matter if an old carpenter like me suffers and dies in their waiting room?” Larry had asked.

Oggy stayed in the tool shed a few night, but there was almost no room on the floor and Larry had to urinate into a plastic milk jug “every hour on the hour” and Oggy had trouble staying asleep on account of the troubling holocaust visions. So it had been safe from patrol drones but mostly a miserable experience. Larry told bedtime stories in his coastal Maine accent, laughing and groaning, as he waited for the pain killers to numb his throbbing neck. The stories were similar to this one:

Jinxed

City Council Meeting

The Santa Cruz City Council meeting attracted all the flies to the kitchen of despair. The Meat of Democracy was rotting in the sun, all concerned parties filled the city council chambers with blood in their words, one even wore a Roman Toga to draw attention to the ridiculous formal dress of the Council members. The weighty  "Hegemonic Fashion Dictator" insult was hatefully directed at the Mayor as he walked into the chambers followed by cheers and smug nodding on the part of frustrated street zealots. Only the Meth Kingdom was not represented at the meeting because the junkie emissary had been delayed at the railroad trestle. As preliminary introductions were being recorded this emissary was smoking in dreamy bliss from a glass pipe in the shadows of a pile of creosote dipped railroad ties. He was content, even triumphant, the potent smoke made his eyes bulge and his lips swell but his pride transformed from a wriggling worm in the mud to a muscular werewolf on the run, leading the furious pack through a moonlit forest, chasing prey boldly, gnashing at the bony legs of fear, enveloped by lust. His head fell against a sticky wooden railroad tie but he felt nothing but his claws sink into quivering flesh during the foggy hunt.

Forum Chef

Oggy hobbled from the oatmeal line toward a picnic table where Bella was feeding rats with moldy bread. An old recording of a meandering song by The Doors played on the weather worn speakers of the feeding area. Oggy balanced the corn oil biodegradable foam cup of oatmeal until he reached the condiment table. Two men were occupied with the sugar cup.

"I like as much sugar as I can fit," said one through a toothless smile. "Sometimes, I pile on the sugar, and stir it up so that it dissolves, and then I can get me another spoon of sugar on there. That way it's good and sweet. The sweeter the better."

The other man nodded in agreement. He was scraping an empty container of margarine with a stick, or a pen, Oggy couldn't tell which. "If I had me a million dollars, I'd buy me as much butter as I could eat. I would buy butter and I'd stock a whole fridge full of butter so I could put a nice slab of butter on everything."

"Not this margarine shit."

"No. No, sir. I'd get the real butter, the cow milk cream butter with the salt."

"My doctor said I can't eat no more salt."

"Mine too, but I figure life ain't worth living without salt. So I'd get the butter with the salt."

"Low sodium?"

"No, sir. I'd get the butter with all the salt."

"Yeah."

"And I'd buy blocks and blocks of butter and put it in my oatmeal. That's what I'd do with a million dollars."

"Any margarine left?"

"No, sir. This margarine has no taste."

Oggy waited patiently and cleared his throat. "You guys know that margarine is only one ingredient removed from paint?"

The men ignored Oggy.

"I'd buy butter and I'd leave it out so it'd get soft."

"I hate hard butter. It don't spread."

"That's right. That's why I'd leave it out so it'd get soft and I could spread it."

"And it'd have the salt and everything?"

"Course. Salted butter. Ain't nothing better than that. Soft salted butter. Ain't no Margarine or sugar left, Oggy."

Oggy grinned with his lips closed because he felt that showing his teeth was an act of mockery since neither men had front teeth.

"That's ok. You guys have a good breakfast."

"With no sugar or real butter this oatmeal tastes like joint compound."

Oggy hobbled off using his crutches intermittently with his injured foot and also balancing a slice of bread on the cup of oatmeal, first moving the crutches and then leaning into them so his left foot was off the ground, or dragging through the wood chips, and his body weight was on his arm pits. He arrived at the picnic table with Bella and found that another man was sitting across from Bella staring at her with his jaw slackly drooping. The man was leering directly at Bella and it was hard to tell if he wasn't in a full drug trance or else was transfixed. Oggy cleared his throat hoping to get the man's attention but he didn't blink.

"Bella," asked Oggy hesitantly, "Why is this creepy dude sitting here staring at you?"

Bella shrugged and tossed more crumbs to the rats in the piles of abandoned clothes. The rats squealed and fought for the crumbs. They were getting bold, Oggy noticed, hardly showing any sign of fear of people. And they were big they were...then Oggy heard himself say, "WELL I DON'T LIKE CREEPY MOTHERFUCKERS SITTING NEAR ME STARING AT MY GIRLFRIEND!"

He didn't say it as much as scream it at the top of his lungs. A few nearby conversations stopped as the anticipation of a fist fight grew.

The man seemed to break from his trace and without emotion he slipped out of the picnic table. Oggy reached into his pocket for the knife he carried and prepared to unleash the fury of hell on this punk should he make any sudden movements, but the man drifted off toward the television and all the conversations resumed.

"AND IF I SEE HIM AGAIN I'LL CUT HIS FUCKING THROAT AND SNAP HIS SPINE!" Oggy paused because he wasn't sure if he had yelled this last threat or if the echo in his brain was becoming more audible. He looked around to judge by the reactions of those nearby and decided that he had only thought the words, but hadn't spoken them. His heart was throbbing nonetheless, exhaustion, were they drugging the oatmeal like some of the homeless people accused? Oggy wasn't sure, but he hadn't eaten any oatmeal so how did they get the drugs in him? Maybe they were delayed from the dinner the night before? It was possible that they were drugging the dinners to incite violence in order to justify closing the shelter...or rounding up all the violent people and shipping them to the labor camps. Oggy felt a wetness in his pants and realized he had stabbed his own leg repeatedly with the knife and he was gripping it so hard that his thumb was spasming. But no one had noticed and the wounds were not deep.

"I have to go to the bathroom," said Oggy to Bella who was contentedly tossing the crumbs to the squealing rats. Oggy mumbled something about the kitchen staff drugging the oatmeal and limped toward the port-o-potties. On the way he crossed paths with Karen, who hugged him and asked how his foot felt.

"As long as I don't walk, it doesn't hurt too bad," answered Oggy with a backward glance toward the picnic table. The diseased punk with the blank stare was back at the table staring directly at Bella with his cheap, gaping mouth, breathing flies and poison, brainless motherfucker. Oggy's eyes dialated as he envisioned himself pouncing on that punk and decapitating him with his knife, really enjoying the process of cutting every tendon in the punk's neck. He'd feed the man's throat to the rats, laughing. Stare at my girlfriend with your brain dead eyes? It'll be the last thing you look at. He'd then cut his guts out and...

"...minimum wage but it sounds like a job you would like. So, what do you think?"

Oggy turned back to Karen who was speaking to him but he had missed most of the conversation.

"Pardon me? I didn't get much sleep last night and I think the're putting drugs in the..."

Karen grabbed both of Oggy's shoulders. "Listen, I don't want to know what they're putting drugs in. I got you a job. You need to take it. I wouldn't offer it you if I didn't think it would work. No one else here can type or even turn on a computer so you're the one they need. I'm not asking if you want the job. I'm driving you there and you'll be great. Make some money, save it, rent an apartment for you and Bella."

Oggy nodded. Karen had a trusting manner, her tone was pure, Oggy decided, it was not covertly manipulative, she was simply stating exactly what was on her mind and her agenda was her own...Oggy relaxed his grip on the knife in his pocket.

"Are you bleeding, Oggy?" asked Karen.

"I just need some gauze."

"And then you'll go to the job? I'll take you there."

"I have to tell Bella, and I have to cut that son of a bitch's head off."

Oggy again looked at Karen but it appeared she hadn't heard that last threat or else she was ignoring it. Oggy could hear the squealing rats over the hum of the nearby morning traffic. Low clouds, overcast skies, damp air, coughing women in the port-o-potties, and the sound of deceit in the parking lot, clanging locker doors, arguments, lies.

"Let me tell Bella, and I'll get cleaned up. And then we can go."

Karen hugged him and she smelled like a forbidden cigarette mixed with cheap perfume and the animal stench of sweat. Oggy balanced on one foot and kissed Karen's shoulder.

"I'll call them back and tell them you can start in an hour. You'll be great. They'll explain the whole thing to you there."

"What is the job?"

Karen was already walking away and mumbled something Oggy couldn't hear. He turned back toward the picnic table and was about to crutch back there and cut that punk's head off but the punk had moved and could not be seen. The plastic door of the port-o-potty slammed closed and Oggy hustled to get inside before some junkie could get there first and shoot up and pass out for two hours while everyone shit in the bushes. He gently dropped his pants and tried to push the flaps of loose skin back over the gash he'd cut into his leg. Oggy decided the food at the shelter was drugged, they were drugging him intentionally to get him to self-injure. He'd heard dozens of similar complaints and now he was seeing the proof. That was it; the food was drugged, the cooks were Federal Agents, possibly CIA, and they were trying to incite riot and violence in order to eliminate the homeless so the land could be developed. Oggy used some of the last toilet paper to cover the wound and clean the knife. Unfortunately, the injury was on the right leg and his left foot was already injured so he would now limp on both legs. Before Oggy left, he took a shit into the pits of hell and hoisted his filthy drawers back onto his bone thin hips, his crutches propped against a plastic door with "Hump Fucker Rules" graffiti and "Blonde Destiny Fans bang chicken butt" and illustrations of cocks and asses with the sound of someone pissing against the concrete wall behind the port-o-potty was a sensual buffet for Oggy, a delightful romp through the fields of destitution. He didn't look back into the hole...he unlocked the door and did not meet the eyes of the next person in line.

Oggy pleaded with Karen to let him walk to the job location because the carbon dioxide emissions were not justifiable but she tricked him by saying her car didn't run on gasoline. Oggy didn't have time to verify this and she confessed en route that the car did run on gasoline but she had to pick up kitchen supplies at the store anyway so the trip was multi-tasking and therefore Oggy's presence didn't affect carbon dioxide concentrations at all. Oggy made a note to do the math on these claims at the earliest convenience. He clenched his jaws as they crossed the railroad track where Bella had fallen once and cut her hand when they were picking blackberries. The car trip was excruciating as the image of birds falling out of the sky as the pollution belching from the tailpipe followed Oggy like a mental funeral procession. He was exhausted by the time Karen parked the car outside a brick building near the east side Industrial park. She escorted Oggy to the door as he initially started to wander toward a park bench where squirrels were eating bird seed. He'd felt a need to formally apologize to a liberated member of the animal kingdom for the car trip but Karen intercepted him and led him by the arm inside the institutional building past a plastic sign that read "Forum Chef". 

He was introduced to a short woman with glasses. Oggy first noticed the grey roots in her hair that indicated a semi-recent coloring, and subsequent usurpation by age. This particular detail depressed Oggy to the point that the formal introductions were a blur of vapid stupidity, absurd, inauthentic, all intended to distract one another from the rapidly approaching death march.

"...where you'll be stationed and I want you to ask any questions."

The woman was escorting Oggy to a desk, Karen was gone, there were other people seated before some kind of screen, typing or speaking into a microphone.

"Questions. Well, I do have a question. What are we doing here?"

"Like I said before, this is Forum Chef, we manufacture custom forum threads for our clients."

Oggy almost corrected himself, he wasn't asking about what we were doing here specifically, but rather what humanity in general was doing on Earth, what was the purpose and goal? But he decided this kind of clarification would only cause problems and depress him further. People were simple, they wanted simple projects with the least amount of debate, like dying birds in a poisoned cloud. People were dumb and invented cheap fascinations, false hair color, teeth whitener paste, annoying music.

"And your project will be the toilet paper and baby diaper threads. Todd will be your project manager. Todd, I'd like to introduce you to Oggy. Oggy will be taking over the TP project could you explain the details to him and if you have any questions come find me in the main office. Ok Todd?"

Only then did Oggy notice a large man sitting nearby. The man rolled over in his office chair and extended a meaty hand. Oggy wanted to run outside.

"What happened to your leg, buddy?" asked Todd, glancing at Oggy's crutches and the blood stain on his pants.

 Oggy shrugged the question off as he immediately did not trust Todd. He didn't distrust him, but he didn't trust him either...so Oggy remained guarded. Todd didn't seem to press the topic of the blood stains and the crutches and gave Oggy a few sheets of paper. 

"These are your work orders. They collect in this bin here, "Todd gestured toward an overflowing paper bin. "Your goal is to process all the orders."

Oggy asked through squinting eyes filled with the flaking skin of chronic Blepheritis, "But what exactly are we doing? Specifically?"

"They didn't tell you? We're manufacturing forum threads to praise our clients. This is life behind the curtain. Take this order, for instance, for Silky Touch Toilet Paper. Fine. They paid for praise. Now you open up your forum chef program and begin to write praise for the toilet paper."

"Toilet paper I've never used?"

"Whatever the case may be. They ordered ten praise comments and four negative comments for their competitors...so you process this order by going step by step through the forums that are listed here. Product review forums. Hemorrhoid forums...colrectal cancer forums..." Todd yawned and scratched the stubble on his chin. Oggy yawned also but tried to hide his mouth behind his hand. "All the forums listed here. One by one. Check them off as you go. 10 praise comments and 4 negative comments."

"I just make the comments up?"

"Absolutely. There are some samples on the order sheet. Sample praise and sample criticism. See?"

Oggy studied the praise sampled, "I'm very impressed with Silky Touch toilet paper. It quality is leagues above the competition."

Oggy grimaced and looked around the office where a dozen or more people sat in confined cubicles.

"This is what happens here. You write fake toilet paper reviews on forums?"

"Not only toilet paper. Drugs, cars, airlines, hotels, any commodity that has a brand name has an opportunity for bolstering the advertising market."

"I really don't know about this. Do you have something more humiliating than toilet paper?"

"More humiliating? What's humiliating about toilet paper?" Todd looked uncomfortable.

"I mean the reviews are fake so you're asking me to be a virtual toilet paper shill."

"Correction: We're paying you to be a virtual toilet paper shill."

"But it seems dishonest. These are real forums with real people and I'm impersonating..."

"Real forums? No, most of the people on those forums are doing the same thing as us. In fact, many of the forums were created originally by shill services like us and they've been bought and sold so many times. I mean, there might be real people on them...but I highly doubt it. All those users..." Todd pointed at an active forum page..."those are mostly people you will find in this room."

"Is anything real?"

"That question's above my pay grade, Oggy. So, unless you have any questions I think you can get started."

Oggy took a deep breath and shook his head slowly back and forth but before he could object again Todd said, "Oggy, you can't do anything wrong. You can't do a bad job. It's impossible. You're only processing a client order and submitting your screenshot as proof so the client will know it's done. This is part of their advertising budget. It's no big deal. Easy money. Anyway, no one even browses these forums anymore. Not humans at least. Maybe capital cyborgs. But not humans. You can use the Transphone or the keyboard, whatever you prefer."

Oggy mumbled something about this being "so fucked up" but nevertheless sat down in the seat. It felt good to be off his crippled feet.

"One more thing, " said Todd. "Mix up the reviews. Try to be a little creative or else you get burned out. Don't try to win any awards but use slightly different language every time. It helps keep your awake. Right, August?"

Todd knocked on the cardboard petition and a vaguely affimative groan came from the other side.

"Ask August. She's been doing this a long time. Welcome aboard, Oggy. Lunch is at noon. I hope you brought something to eat."

Oggy hadn't brought anything to eat and hadn't eaten any of the drugged breakfast oatmeal. He was certain he had entered a hellish nightmare where all logic and sympathy had been abandoned in place of naked aggression and insanely rampant capitalism. He read the bold type on his order sheet "Important: Brand name must be mentioned at least twice (2x) in review."

He navigated the basic software interface and muttered, "bullshit". Then he grinned... "Silky Touch toilet paper feels like angle wings on my bum," he typed. "I purchased a package of 4 rolls of this delightful product, based on the recommendation of my neighbor, a Mrs. L who has a garden of tulips she orders from Holland and plants in the Spring. She expressed her satisfaction with Silky Touch toilet paper. She said that the quality and longevity of the product surpassed all previously used products. She insisted I try some so I purchased a package of four rolls at a nearby supermarket that is open late on Sundays. Imagine my surprise when I found that all her previous recommendations had been entirely founded in truth. This paper wiped my ass with a true silk touch, amazing, inspiring and excessively satisfying. My whole mood brightened. My sex-deprived lifestyle no longer cursed me so I was able to satisfy my neighbor over and over as we wrapped ourselves in rolls of Silky Touch Toilet paper, binding our limbs and then trying to break free. Blah blah...bullshit...bullshit this is all bullshit...I am changed now in a spiritual sense. Try Silky Touch toilet paper. Try it today. You will not be disappointed."

Oggy was smiling at first but he was quickly gripped by depression that stole the strength from his fingers.

"At least you can type fast," said Todd absently. "The person you replaced was in a wheel chair, one of those silicon valley kids with the heavy metal brain syndrome...and he transcribed everything verbally but because of the problem with his tongues, the program couldn't transcribe correctly. We spent more time editing his work than he spent saying it. This other lady..." Todd continued with a vapid anecdote as he clicked to a screen that allowed him to preview everything Oggy had typed...he nodded contentedly at first and then his obsessive finger tapping stopped suddenly.

"Whole Wheat Cheeseus! Oggy, what have you done!"

Oggy's attention drifted into a syrupy muse in which he thought for an instance that he was listening to a cyborg speaking to him through a virtual forum that was actually words transcribed by a Silicone Valley baby...and it was feasible that the universe was a fake forum designed by gigantic toilet paper shills. He also realized the he'd been driven to the building on the road that he'd been campaigning to have returned to natural state but tearing up the asphalt. What did that mean about his ethics?

Disdain

"I don't even know what it means to be self-loathing," said Robert in response to the remark someone in the crowd tossed out. "I know what you think it should mean, that I'm ashamed of my own behavior so I transfer my own shame into an attack on others, who are really a substitute for myself, like I'm too much of a coward to commit suicide, so I punish others, while subconsciously punishing myself. Is that what you're talking about? Help me out here."

The handful of spectators grumbled to one another but made no clear confirmation or denial of Robert's convoluted summary.

Robert's latest hunger strike was outside Seaside Books which was casually selling copies of the Bestseller Money in Minutes written by a real estate loan agent/anti-christ. The implied argument Robert stressed was that while freedom of speech and press were noble and worthwhile ideals, they did not require a bookstore to sell anything, and since carrying an item like Money in Minutes or its close relative Mein Kampf, the bookstore was approving of the content by making it available for sale. This was a delicate and controversial position so Robert had arranged for daily "conversations" to inform the public of the specific nature of his concerns and to clarify the dangers of confusing freedom with obligation. He disliked being labeled a censor so his current conversation was titled "Discrimination is not censorship." The author of the real estate book was free to sell it on the street like Larry did with Needles in My Arm: A True Story of Psychiatric Butchers In America (which was conspicuously absent from the Seaside Books shelves). These particulars had hardly been broached when someone had shouted out that Robert should "get a job" and stop being "a self-loathing son of a bitch."

Robert shrugged at the silence before clarifying, "Or do you mean that I secretly loath myself but suppress my loathing and target innocent businesses as a way to vent my frustration? Because I don't know what that means. I'm not self-loathing. This business chooses to sell a book that openly describes usury tactics

Oggy's Dream

Oggy lay on his back and wiggled his way into his new stick cocoon. He had a rough wool blanket now and the plastic mattress cover and new women's overalls with a fairy patch over a hole in the knee. He wore the overalls and his bright green cotton sweater over the silk blouse he found in the piles of free clothing at the shelter. All they needed was a lemon juice wash in the river levee. His back ached after the tumble he took from the railroad trail on his bicycle. One second he had been pedaling casually, singing an old John Denver melody to himself, and the next second his bicycle had vanished from under him and he was falling head over ass over guitar into the thorny brush. The trail needed maintenance with so many wing nuts and meth minions tromping it down every day and night during their commute to and from their huts. The meth minions especially were responsible for the degradation of the trail because they were irresponsible and delirious most of the time. It's a physically repulsive recognition of the habitat destruction that Oggy tried to extinguish from his brain but he could hear the echoing thump of their bongo drums and smell the smoke from their fires. The meth kingdom was growing more and more bold as the drugs started to erode their brains. Night after night the minions would raid the shelter bread box, they would terrorize the Food Not Bombs meals, they could not be reasoned with, their blood shot eyes and wiry necks and bulging jaws all professed their consumption by Meth. They would fight with anyone, throw perfectly edible peaches at passing police cars and then run toward the river laughing. They had no more respect for civilization than real estate investors did. But they were a mere footnote in the tragedy of Oggy's day. The whole affair had been a horror, the language of Oggy's day was tormented and rebuffed, ugly, unwholesome. Why? Because of the abortion.

It all started during the weekly FNB anti-hostility virtual barbeque

Last Resort

I'm having all kinds of problems finding place to start writing about Santa Cruz. I excuse myself because this is a traumatic era and my keyboard has a shift key that's sort of sticking and I'm troubled because of intestinal worms and possible mental decay and a long list of other life details to draw my attention from this project. I am not leaving Guatemala until this project has a substantial progress. It's a life goal and involves dramatizing something that is rarely understood. But not in the normal Oggy fashion, which I'm about to delve into, but in a Russia style, embracing the vast opera, the homeless cast of dereliction and emotional refugees, detailing the dirt beneath their nails, the meek expressions they have, all evidence of a broken spirit. Some were not adult children, some had surrendered to circumstance. Some were passing through and some were students of humanity but had elements of all the above. I considered writing the entire thing as a first person recollection, an indictment of myself and my past to shove it down the throats of the reader, brutalize and humiliate them, pull no punches in my attempt to injure those whose stultifying ignorance made them look like wounded cows next to an electric fence with their mouths gaping and chewing cud with flies nesting near their eyes while my brethren were led to slaughter. Motherfucking impotent cunts, my disdain has no words and that's the problem. Because I witnessed the homeless holocaust and smug elite pissed on their graves with no knowledge of anything except their own hidden shame, I have to find better words. I'm dealing with bread dead people, horses without eyes plodding toward some mystical carrot and my ordinary essays will not have an impact with that kind of idiot. I need to step up the game beyond anything I've written before because I don't want to preach to the choir; I want to burn the church down. Metaphorically, of course.

How does one do that? And there are so many anecdotes that I've reflected on in misery and self-loathing nostalgia. I will share one with you in order to move ahead with this madness.

When The Music's Over

Oggy crouched on the sandy uplift above the nude beach pondering the cascading waves and ant colonies of the crumbling bluff, dual activities that could hold the mystery to life. The sun appeared to descend toward the sea; intuitively, the sun set, but science had proved the sun does not move, it is stationary in the universe, at least in the immediate solar system, and the Earth revolves and also orbits, a circle within a circle, possibly within an even larger circular revolution of the solar system among other systems, in relationship to a mysterious center, ever magnifying Man's misfortune. Intuition was incorrect...and this failure of perception was a topic that haunted Oggy's cold nights. What other propositions, he wondered, had his perception misled him on?  What other mistakes had his undeveloped ape senses made in favor of the easy answer, and a hard question?

"What have they done to the Earth? What have they done to our sister?"

Oggy heard this distant question, asked years earlier by Jim Morrison, recorded and reclaimed, preserved and inherited by the new generation. A stereo played a magnetic memory. Morrison's anger was honest in that stoned and newborn mind sense of the 1960s...and also naive, sadly perplexed, inaccurate, metaphorically imprecise...these accusations are enunciated so clearly that the presentation became as important as the message. Gone was Connie Francis, The Virginal Fleetwoods all dressed in white, bloodless black and white images, the grey and sepia, Johnny Horton, the major key marching eunuchs of the Eisenhower Autumn.

"Music is your only friend. Until the end."

Read between the lines of poetry, the butterfly's scream is as loud as the last ray of light from the sun shining on cypress branches in Freedom Park, the shadows push the homeless east against their will, back to the shelters of despair, the surplus bus lockers, the dirty newspaper alleys, storm drainage to the levee where the damp darkness absconds on distemper horseback, little paws leading back to the source of all misery....long cold nights in the forest, the lizards and banana slugs recoiling in cold blooded survival from the night. Moths fly to the flame but humans lack wings so sink into the  deep sleep. We would soar to the sun as well with rockets on our backs, to drink the heat and evaporate in the blinding gases of our glorious source.

"Cancel my subscription to the Resurrection"

LDS missionaries knocking on doors So trite, so flippant. The resurrection is not an invitation you can decline, it's not a magazine sold by priests

A driftwood beach fire was being extinguished as the nudists found their sandy peasant skirts and the ocean doused the blackened wood...smoke then spinning up the bluff to Oggy's creepy perch. Woodfire smoke was an assault on Oggy's sense, a primitive reminder of danger and warmth. Rabbits raised in captivity nevertheless cringe when they see the shadow of a raptor on the ground, though the shadow is a cardboard cutout the lab scientists use to prove their point. The rabbits have never seen a real hawk nor do they know what the claws would feel like in their neck, but they still hide. What genetic atom carries that information or is it intuitive...like the false orbit of Morrison's embattled earth?

These topics were the primary colors with which Oggy then mixed and blended searching for the unifying amalgam that would solve the torment he had inherited from Morrison like the Rabbit seeking shelter when fake raptor shadows danced on the lab floor...Oggy also bounced celestial checks when trying to renew his subscription to the apocalypse. He mixed the colors, he mixed on a mental palette because intuition suggested these were all unrelated, coinciding only in Oggy's troubled mind, but intuition was wrong; had not the sun proven intuition untrustworthy, wasn't there a mystery in the multi-colored array of these mystical topics? So, with distrust as his booster fuel, Oggy mixed the white woodsmoke with the dark brown of the cypress bark....alas too tender and vapor-clouded a result, intangible, caught by the foggy updraft. So he took the blue from the peasant dress worn by the woman climbing up the bluff with the yellow on the roller coaster car....resulting in a green found in small specks on the screaming butterfly wings...which was closer to the source of everything but exclusive, not a unity. The missing tint was a tone found on faded photos from 1963, grainy, torn, mixed with hounds tooth gabardine. A man on the beach wore a purple linen shirt and Oggy thought hatefully that he must be from San Jose, that loathsome city to the East, forever hidden in the shadows of the Santa Cruz mountains, spared the fog of the ocean, drinking the residue from the ion implanters, the safety laser locks, poisonous high tech soup, the...Oggy's concentration had slipped, his peace was shattered by that damn linen shirt. Oggy wondered why he couldn't wear a linen shirt and look good. Even a normal color, not even purple. But no, he'd never look as comfortable as the man on the nude beach partially hidden behind the white smoke from the extinguished fire. Did ants feel vanity? Did the roller coaster altitude undulate with the same regularity as Oggy's self-esteem? Were the waves correspondent or harmonious?

"I hear a very gentle sound, very near yet very far."

The man in the purple linen shirt turned the music off. Waves plundered the shore like pirates on a blood rib. The distant lighthouse cast a gazing ray toward the approaching fog, before the long shadow cast by the drowning stars and that golden artificial ray was white like rabbit fur and friendly as a lab technician's coat fabric. Was the light turning around the peak or was the world revolving around the pure straight beam? These colors combined into the concrete aggregate found in the sewage drains, the interior of the bus lockers where Oggy's folk songbook lay with his socialist literature. There were similarities found everywhere and none of it was intuitive so Oggy embraced the trance. He could solve the puzzle of a thousand faces, the colors losing their turf to the darkness except for the periodic moment the lighthouse orbit favored them. The music was over but the music had now begun.

Original Flavored Jenny Crunch Returns to Stores

This movie ending is starting to feel like our beginning. Is today in 2014? 30 years after 1984? Or is it 1984 again, 30 years before 2014? Or 1954? Note that Winston moves his knight...then moves it back. Then begins to move it again and drops the knight. Colorado Koch brother knights are trying to erase history books to fit the narrative of a brave and triumphant Eurasia...I mean Oceania...I mean Eastasia...I mean Guatemala...the knight moves back one and over two. Winston is playing an endless chess game against an invisible opponent. And the Koch brothers fill an empty chair like ghosts on a cotton plantation. Notice the Black Knight is about to take the White Queen like the anti-christ Miley Cyrus raped by a smiling teddy bear. Prophetic or nonsense? White pawn must take black Knight.

The Orwell book ends:
"Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother"

But in Sacramento the Governor successfully erased the Confederate Flag from the gift shop of the Capitol. Not that the flag was being sold proudly, but mostly because it was on a phony Confederate bank note from 1863, that was sold with some kind of historical incongruity like fake Bill of Rights are sold in D.C. or like the fake Babe Ruth contract with the Yankees I used as a dart board in 1983. Sure, there are people proud of the fact Slave States like Alabama seceded but, believe me, they would not use these fake Confederate bank notes to show their pride. It's history, or was history...and now the history is about alleged fake confederate bank notes once sold somewhere...maybe. A government formed to defend citizens opens fire on citizens. At least Hong Kong police have an excuse...since they are not advertised as a Democracy. When your police force looks like Hong Kong's then you know you have a problem. Putting dog shit in the oven doesn't make it a frozen pizza but we've elected people serving us sliced hot dog shit. America doesn't "build" democracies, it destroys them in Honduras, Guatemala, Panama. The refugees of these military coups flee north and are doubly punished by first being labeled illegal by the very culprits of their plight, and then being sent back to the blighted landscape they fled from, the unstable landscape America created. The combination of ignorance and arrogance to criticize someone for fleeing a house you casually set on fire is more troubling that Eastasia's victories on the African Front. Billy Joel was wrong; we did start the fire.

I don't know if any of this actually happened or if there is a black market now trading fake confederate bank notes. I don't know shit except the Knight moves forward two and over one.

The important bulletin: Suspect cornered, officer awarded, man beheaded, terror warnings, airport burned, lose weight, look sexy, eat less, earn more, fuck harder with a bigger cock, good cop, bad cop. If I merely repeat the news I am flagged by FBI metadata assailants as hostile. Because it may not be news...or even exist. Edward Snowden is the new Emmanuel Goldstein. Edward Goldstein. Emmanuel Snowden. Emmit Gotfried, Erin Smith. Snoward Dengold. It all blends together. I even wonder if Orwell is not an artifice of the party...giving the false vocabulary to placate intellectuals. George Bleacher. Oggy Orcher. Ogwell Geoforce. Maybe a future Oggy will be employed with writing denouncements of past Oggys. The knight moves...

In the future of 2013 commercial plazas are guarded by toll booths. The homeless scratch lotto tickets for food and watch digital folders filled with surveillance footage looking for murders. But they don't know that most of the footage is actually staged by actors to test if the homeless are doing their jobs. Oggy is hired to work in the surveillance center but is fired after he misses three murders (one was real and involved a known criminal Oggy fed with illegal garden food). The bait car is waiting and the drones carry cameras, so we are told. The knight moves forward two and over one.

News is a product like toilet paper and Batman Comics. There is no need to lie when you can interview someone about the taste of a new Gelato flavored cigarette and then make that news. Or invite them to interview each other. Events too big to be ignored are spun to fit the commercial narrative. Bigfoot on Mars, gaseous Jupiter evaporates to reveal the hidden enemy who will be revealed after this message from our sponsor:

"Crinkle cut your love life with a 4 speed online atmosphere containing extra foot freshening qualities and anti-smog heat-activated crystals. Ask your doctor if Jenny Crunch is right for your cat's breath! Jenny Crunch, the Crunch that makes you orgasm!"

That's right, Oggy of the future is hired to drop acid and babble nonsense that becomes the droning commodities your kids will consider buying. Like a milk cow in a dark stable that smells of straw and shit Oggy will be harvested for his non-sequitur knight moves. Dancing his pulverized cripple foot to flashdance remixes, his cerebral nipples feed dramatic transsexual flies. Orwell saw oppression as the future means to docile people but I think we're moving toward the opposite, total debauchery. The torture is only hard on the sober people so it will be determined a stoned populace are more docile. The Russian Revolution was fueled by vodka. The Mexican Revolution was funded by Tequila. The French Revolutionaries had their wine. Americans have crystal meth and revolution is the furthest thing from what is left of their minds.

The irony of the homeless tooth challenged asylum escapees bearing witness to their own torture and forced drugging is the gradual training of Americans to drug themselves.

Truth: A bank can make a loan because it borrows the money from another bank that bought the original loan so it could loan money to someone else.
Lie: See above.

Let's all claw ourselves to death for a taste of Jenny Crunch. At least until they release Jenny Crunch Plus!

Vain Hobo Coughs Up Bloody Phlegm

No more excuses, thought Oggy, as the rain breached his final defenses, the tarp made of dream fabric and recycled self torment, bound by Lenin-stitches and Marxist thread. The bay leaf stump was not going to be the end of his fruit and nut utopia, no. In fact, the entire pre-conceived cliché, his use of the philosophically commercialized term “Project” to describe his activities was part of the problem. The roots, Socrates wisely taught, were always the ultimate source of failure or success and Oggy’s fruit and nut utopia project was no different. Once Oggy had defined the objective as a “project” then it could never evolve into a reality. It was a project, like a defeated era of the 1960s, an experiment in idealism, media-enhanced, subjugated by commercial terms, co-opted, ethically plagiarized from a failed and poisoned culture and that was why it had failed to gain support. The re-imagined Fruit and Nut Collective began to hover on the immediate horizon of Oggy’s soggy vision, mice and earth worms forming his immediate army. The disdainful golf course crawling with pastel pants and false teeth, the elitist and whore-filled crystal clubhouse, the awful, disgraceful “seafood” restaurant, literally buried in the rotting corpses of crustaceans and coerced butter sauce, must be appropriated for future generations…Oggy saw no other solution. The land was ideal for the Collective and had access to the seaside mansions that would also be appropriated for common housing during the revolution. The cursed elite of Santa Cruz were snug in their usurped houses while the exploited Ohlone Indians crouched in homeless shelter tents…the forecast called for Justice.

Oggy winced gravely as he shifted his meatless hips on the bed of crushed redwood leaves and re-purposed artichoke leaves. His throat was raw with disappointment and bacteria but his eyes remained focused on the future where love songs were authentic, sung around a healing fire, the light pollution that obscured the stars would be part of a discredited past. The alternative, Oggy knew, was a continued decline into a commoditized psuedo-culture where the indiscriminate price tag and the catchy slogan on the painted lips of the trashy spokeswoman was gospel to a bewildered congregation of flash mob boot lickers and pop culture tampon dispensers; fruit flavored toiletries, pre-tarnished jewelry, travel-sized ethics, lion shredded jeans, bears shitting out coffee beans for the smug elite morning cups. Oggy shuddered from acute disgust: Civilization was already collapsing, obviously, as the divide between the elite and the field hands grew more and more obtuse. So, against all odds, he would rally support for the fruit and nut collective, the antithesis of the awful decline into internet masturbation chat rooms and fertile land forever poisoned by dental products and wasted, rotting IHOP pancakes.

In the morning, rain or shine, throbbing prostate pain or not, Oggy vowed to camp outside City Hall, abstain from food, surviving only on the plentiful rainwater, until he could impress upon the blind Council members that the golf course property must be returned to the starving people. Oggy’s legs had fallen asleep in the crooked positing the tree stump forced him to lay and his neck ached and his prostate pulsed with infection and alarm…all these details gave him strength because a fight was only worth fighting if the stakes were life and death. Oggy had his Spanish Street School to consider, and the weekly vegetable pickup at the Farmer’s Market and his piano recital at the nursing home, but he believed these playful activities would not hinder his important mission to further the advancement of ultimate submission by the unconscionable dominant McGovernment. God, everything Oggy thought sounded like a manifesto, but he couldn’t help it. He was vain, he admitted and his pine bough mattress was an awful affront to environmental sovereignty. He might as well have dug up a cemetery and build a hammock factory on the rotting bones of Spanish priests.

Resin

Bella's mom scraped the chipped glass pipe with a sewing needle that Oggy had left behind when he went to find scrap aluminum to fix the hotel room heater circuit board. Her slightly hairy lips were an inch above the pipe and she murmured in meditation to herself softly singing a lullaby, a comforting song her own mother had sung to her back in Bakersfield. The pipe had been scraped within the last week but because Ched's SSI check had been stolen from the mattress by the hotel maid there was no money for heroin. Ched was pounding the streets in the evening rain, shaking down debtors and stray fags for quarters, Oggy was in the alleyway, distracted by those damn cats who were breeding, ranting about sterilization and a capitalist conspiracy, Bella was in the bath tub where the candles burned dangerously close to the off white Chinese imported towels. The couple in the next door had finally passed out after three days of rolling on Ecstasy, babbling about broken dreams and funerals for sock puppets...so Bella's mom had found time alone to embrace her happiest pass-time scraping the pipe for resin, the slight scratch of the needle on the glass, the audible smacking of the tar building up on the needle head, Bella's playful splashing in the tub, her childish humming, like when she was much younger. The exotic aroma of heroin tar coming from the pipe made Bella's mom's tongue snake out of her lips seeking the saliva trapped inside the resin, that only a flame could release. The monotone hum from the broken television and the sounds of Bella stepping out of the tub were Romantic symphonies compared to the hateful abuse Ched offered and the ponderous philosophic musings of Oggy. The universe would provide, she knew, she was a survivor, her family was important to her and when her son got out of prison then she'd take them back to Bakersfield and really build a life again. Because she would do whatever it took to protect them and give them everything she had.
Bella stepped out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, her pale skin reddened by the hot water, freckles multiplied, her strawberry blond hair flat against her back, innocent and clean, all the dirt and sand and sin of the city draining into the sewer.
"Bella, I scraped the pipe and I want you to have the first hit."
Bella bounced on her toes and went through the motions of a ballerina move, impressing her mother, reminding each other of classes and performances long gone.
"In a minute," she responded.
"OK, but you know how Oggy gets, talking about Afghanistan exploitation and the costs of drug shipment and donkeys dying in snowy mountains and war..."
"Uh huh." Bella smiled. Oggy sounded so smart and convincing when he opined about global drug trade, spirituality, cults, organic gardening, socialized medicine, non-violent revolution.
Bella toweled herself dry, naked before her mother but unashamed. They could do anything together.
"Anything you need, Bell, and I'll get it for you," said Bella's mom. "Anything."
Bella looked in the mirror, studied her profile, pretended she was pregnant by pushing her belly out and holding it with her hands. The last of the water drained out of the tub, the hair and blood and skin and dirt all washed away. After a bath you could start over and the past aborted.
"Where did you get those bruises on your legs," asked Bella's mom as she saw the blue splotches of coagulating blood beneath Bella's thighs.
"Oh, Oggy beats me at night."

Soggy Reminders

Oggy and Bella hunted through the indifferent night for a salvageable wooden spool at the train tracks where fags flipped tricks for cornrow heretics and the mice lived in rancid holes. The spool, originally for fiber optic wire to broadcast the suffocating paradigm to mouth breathing masses, would become the Dog Hotel, the maternity ward of wayward mutts, the last location of security for the squirming puppies now drowning in mud and refuse discarded by the careless human outcasts of the River Street Shelter.
Oggy insisted on removing all trace they had walked near the mouse habitat by dragging a broom behind his footsteps, a request Bella ignored implicitly, and eventually they stumbled on a spool that could be rolled down the middle of the flooded boulevard, police writing them several tickets, Bella's mother stumbling by in a feverish search for her own methamphetafuckmeup.
"You kids have fun," said Bella's mom as her pants fell down her skeletal frame and she disappeared down a rocky embankment, ever scratching the psoriasis on her forearm, her hair lay like seaweed on a shipwreck.

Border Inspection

I should identify with those videos on youtube where some conspiracy nut drives up to a border inspection with a camera rolling and a border patrol man or woman walks up and asks, "Are you an American Citizen?" to which the narrator says, "Am I being detained?"
Then it becomes a Laurel and Hardy dialogue.
"Are you an American Citizen?"
"Am I free to go?"
"Sir..."
"AM I being detained?"
"Are you an American Citizen?"
"I don't have to answer any questions without a lawyer present...am I being detained?"
"Where do you live?"
"Am I free to go?"
"Where are you coming from?"
"I have a constitutional right not to answer any questions without a lawyer present. May I go?"
"Are you an American Citizen?"
Silence
"Sir, are you American Citizen? I need to determine if you are American Citizen, this is a border inspection..."
"Am I being detained?"
"Are you an American Citizen?"
"Am I free to go?"

And you can watch videos where this goes on for ten or twenty minutes. And I should be rooting for the narrator for making the border patrol squirm. But I don't approve at all. It seems so completely petty. The narrator either has a thick New York accent, is a completely grey hair hippie, or otherwise looks and talks and acts like an American Citizen. There is no dispute that he's a citizen so this whole argument is pedantic.

Street Guitar

Oggy's fat free ass rested hard on the concrete flower bed that protected a few weeds dispersed by wind and fate. The bearded one had to shift his decrepit hips to avoid sores. Graffiti and pain were painful distractions that Oggy wrestled against, mentally pinning one against the other and grappling alternatively with reality and an image of symbolic warfare. "Famuz G." was one such purple paint tag. "BLK BOYZ RULE" was another. "Vato Street Brothers...V.S.B." Nowhere was the wingnut nation represented, lacking literacy and publicity department of the aforementioned...and this omission bothered Oggy because it touched on a larger problem within a problem, a hidden problem, one of education strata enjoyed by the dispossessed, not merely defacing property but a subclass of undesirables who were voiceless.

Man Eats Bunny

If you think this is bad you should see the rat I caught in my closet last night

Grateful Dead vocal harmonies plummeted from the car speakers dangling overhead the River Street Shelter’s aluminum roof, drops of condensation clung to the rusting cover screws. The notes dive-bombed the shivering audience like angry sparrows protecting their nest, but instead of protecting themselves the bleak children of the street peeked their noses from the damp blankets to find nourishment and motivation in the throbbing rites of spring. Now steel pan drums, no flute, now a set of hand drums, Spanish guitar…there were no rules and that’s how the fans liked it. Kerouac’s cool jazz dreams became a waking nightmare in the hectic poly-rhythms of the band from San Francisco. Why not two or three songs played at the same time?…better to stimulate the new generation. The groove locked a women’s hips into a grinding sway, impossible to ignore, every note attaching itself sympathetically to a vertebrae or pelvic component so that she was thrusting herself upon the air, fucking the distant voices with her own corporeal vibrations.

Some knew the words and these apostles of the faith sang them softly to the ghosts of lost lovers whose phone numbers written on wet skin dissolved metaphorically by morning as the sun burned off the fog and the wet blankets in the forest began to rise and fall with casual lover’s salutations. The feeling of brief intimacy and importance, the impression that this was important, these naked bodies in the forest, these tribal warriors all meeting before the stage returning with the blues melody, “Born in the desert… raised in a lion’s den.”

Oggy had broken ranks with the sheltered hoards and climbed on top of the bus lockers following Bella’s manic outburst the previous evening.

Oggy’s begging appeal, “I’m in so much pain…stop hitting me…” had done nothing to sway Bella’s attack. Her fury had been unstoppable, only Oggy’s adoption of Gandhi’s Satyagraha philosophy would justify his lack of defense or counterattack. Finally he had limped into the rain with his one remaining redwood branch crutch (Bella had broken the other) crackling on the gravel. At first the gate guard had refused to let him out, citing the rules and regulations of the lockdown camp, but seeing Oggy’s determination to climb the barbedwire fence to free himself and the potential to comfort Bella now that Oggy was gone, the guard had unlocked the gate, reiterating the policy that once out, Oggy was out for the evening. Oggy had not responded but had used his crutches to retrieve a milk crate to use as a step to climb on the bus lockers. In the dark and in his confusion at being pulverized by his girlfriend he inadvertently bumped against one of the men who slept on the bus lockers regularly. There were shouts and apologies followed by Oggy locating an open area and hauling his bones to the top between two concrete pillars. Of course the reason that area was empty was because there was a leak in the aluminum roof, but Oggy solved that with a flap of cardboard that diverted the leak to one side. Then he curled himself inside the shrink wrap tarp and moaned until he fell asleep. That was how Kim found him three days later.

Thematic Explorations

"It was very likely that the person responsible for stealing all of Oggy’s clothes was building a cocoon for a stuffed animal and simply needed more material. He’d seen weirder things and only the precipitous situation, his rumbling stomach and the arrival of chilling darkness with no more than his ragged cotton serape to protect him, prevented Oggy Bleacher from pondering the long list of weirdness that had been his assigned lot in life to witness since his arrival in the blighted land of Santa Cruz. Oggy’s focus hovered between the two metaphysical lips of a wide chasm of philosophy. What was more important at this very moment? The study of the human condition or the survival of the human? And what consequences wrought by the crime and punishments of time would follow Oggy’s answer? Not even the advancing arthritis in Oggy’s shoulder and back distracted him from silently debating this secondary-topic. To focus on survival at the cost of philosophical reflection was brain death. The unexamined life is not worth living, is it not?

The Fast Carnival

"And we laugh like soft, mad children snug in the wooly cotton brains of infancy."
--Jim Morrison*

*Ghost Song on The American Prayer album

When Jim Morrison wrote those words he may have been standing on the wooden Santa Cruz boardwalk overlooking the blond beach sands that masquerade as soft luxury to teenage ideals questing for realism behind the Hollywood prop curtain. That curtain fell and rose on Santa Cruz as it fell on Morrison's neon Los Angeles and The Grateful Dead's undulating San Francisco and Lou Reed's cockroach New York, but the Sainted Town of the Cross has more rain than sunshine, little neon and many dying addicts dreaming they are swimming in tropical seas while knee deep in the piss poisoned storm drain gutters. Winter brings fog that lays wet on the blankets of the flower children and falls as rain on the cheap wooden guitars brought to sing the traveler's ode, Me and Bobby McGee, bending the bridges and fingerboards away from weakened carpenter's glue. The weather washes over the stately redwoods and floods the hibiscus-scented, rape-friendly river levees (near where Oggy's drama unfolds) when storm clouds blow even wetter winds through the graying hair of portly street sages, the pot smoke filtering between ravaged and unflossed teeth, through lips that have sucked cock and eaten cunt and spoken profound poetry on both. Morrison's voice has more than a trace of irony at his own ideal of infancy and the tattered ruin that became his own LSD manufactured umbilical cord, employed too late and too often as a lifeline to the Gone Days, the Black and White Days, the 8mm Days before Zapruder and The Fab Four cast their strawberry colored shadow over Haight Ashbury's panhandlers and lesbian meter maids. Did Morrison know his words would find their way to an album, sans his permission, post-mortem, orchestrated by his musical step-brothers? Perhaps Morrison knew too well his own desires were grown up, not childish, but mad, indeed and the laughter was hard, not soft, and, furthermore, the gingham cotton of Patsy Cline had become pin-stripped polyester of Janis Joplin destined for the vintage clothes stores of Seattle and celebrity auctions of Hong Kong. Morrison's words are tinged with regret his tone is nostalgic at too young an age (25) forced, like he himself was, too early from the crib and cradle, too unprepared was he to play the "public man" role for teen gigilo, the mystery lover creeping into the bedrooms of virgin daughters and sticking his tongue down their throats at 33.5 revolutions per minute. He ravaged the mad children and then exposed himself to their parents, mocking their Eisenhower morals with his bourbon induced impotence. Then he sold our virginity back to us in song and left the parents of 1967-1973 to solve their own soap opera-diagnosed marital problems with self-help psychology and divorce. Impregnated through radio waves, the wooly cotton brains were alight with self-deception. The illegitimate children of the rock gods wove their tapestry in paisley and peppermint and cocaine. The youth movement briefly broke free of the corporate Disney-inspired technicolor suburbia Kerouac had failed to prevent and the picket fences were uprooted for magical fairy huts moments before being replaced with chain link while Morrison's own children remained unnamed and forsaken thus completing the infertile cycle. Those fairy huts remained undisturbed in the dark and rainy Santa Cruz forests, waiting for new residents to stumble upon them and take refuge from the snarling search dogs, residents such as the martyred Oggy and his loyal Magdalene, the beautiful Isabelle, both fated for biblical destinies described herein.

Of children (flower children, grown children, counting nickles and thrusting batons on leather lanyards) I have much to describe since the children of the street, the forest nymphs, the beach bunnies dwelling in their virtuous sand castles all play different and compelling roles in my story. It is my intention to detail the causes and effects of the street culture and carnage as I observed it in Santa Cruz circa 1994-1996. A natural history of this time period, a puzzling out of all the factors and features, is called for and it is what I will supply. Different cities or this city in a different time period are no doubt distinct with a myriad of similarities and differences. I make no attempt to compare or contrast different cities or time periods to the focus of my own investigations, thus a comprehensive conclusion may not be reached at this time. However, mad and soft as I am, snug in my own wooly innocence, allow me to haphazard my own conclusions so future astronauts bound for my own solar system of super nova sophomores may be primed accordingly. As it stands, my present work examines in detail the status and ramifications and alleged causation of the adjunct culture evolving and the defacto decay of street denizens then and now living in crack hotels and VW vans and behind the abandoned Ferris wheel amid debris from forgotten ages where you would ordinarily not even store used plastic buckets.

To the major movers who graciously and sometimes unwillingly provided me with interviews, primary source manuscripts, shelter and sustenance, I am grateful. Any errors should be regarded as my own oversight and any illuminating treasures should be regarded as a gift from these selfless feature players. It is my hope and expectation that this work will satisfy the conditions for my self-designed degree in Comparative Literature, Sociology and Social Reform. My lengthy research notes have been included along with various and sundry audio and videotapes when they could be retrieved from police evidence. Oggy's unabridged "Argument to Dismiss Charges on Grounds of Unconstitutional Vagueness and Moral Weakness" as well as his "Affirmation of Request to Dismiss on Grounds of Philosophical Unsustainability" have been included in their entirety as well as being referred to in the text itself. The accompanying supplement "Profiles in Homelessness: An Illustrated Guide to identifying the Homeless" was illustrated by my friend and colleague, Moses of Santa Cruz. Autopsy reports and Police case files have been included when permission to reprint was granted. Status of ongoing criminal cases and "at large" man hunts are listed in the final chapter.

Santa Cruz is a poem that is written in shifting sands by violent waters. The hypodermic needles washed into the Bay of Monterrey bear traces of blood but lack the voice to describe their Pacific Saga from beneath the stone bridges to the bathrooms and plastic port-o-potties of the parks and onward down the chain of abuse to the washed out steps of eroded beach access stairwells. My own opinions are not and can not be withheld from this manuscript. Journalism, non-fiction, cold reporting, are not in my carnival repertoire. I have attempted to be honest in my assessment of the facts as I observed them but I do not think my conclusions or bias will be shared by all who read this ghost song. Where actual interviews are transcribed I have set these in italics. Much is conjecture based on interviews and observation but all is a humble attempt to puzzle this moment in history to its 3 dimensional, chaotic, glory. Critics are welcome to respond.

"Back in those days," wrote Jim Morrison, "everything was simpler and more confused." To those days we now alight, like lonely stoned wolves descending to our immaculate granite den.

Letters from Oggy

In my latest attempt to recreate the frame of mind I need to be in to write the Santa Cruz book I went into the forest near Jones ave and built a plastic tarp lean to and with the flies and mosquitoes buzzing in my ear wrote the following letter home from Oggy in Santa Cruz to his mother. I think I'm onto something. I have to transcribe it because no one will be able to read the handwriting. The difficult part is holding back the pessimism that was not present for most of my time in Santa Cruz. We were changing the world and it felt right to have a team of people defending individual liberties and talking about the constitution and civil rights. So, Oggy has to be optomistic, which is forcing me to be optimistic to capture the same voice I want Oggy to have. While at the same time keeping the farce just to the edge of believability. Did it work? I forgot to use trash as the piece of paper since I only used recycled writing material. If anyone has letters from me during this 1993-1995 period it would help if you could scan them. And send them to me. I know I wrote some priceless descriptions from the woods. The trouble was that I was in a Hunter Thompson phase and started to exaggerate everything so they aren't historically accurate but the original letters will help me remember what key moments stand out. The Tweaker invasion is sort of true. I love that my handwriting perfectly fits this style of letter. This looks 100% authentic to me but it's more like 5% true. Still, it's a relief to find some outlet that works and I find entertaining. Any dull moments in the book can be rescued with letters like this. To the mayor, to friends, to presidents, dead people, parents, wolves. The variations are endless as well as the...AH! A whole series of conversations back and forth between the mayor and Oggy. That's a winning idea and actually happened. I have the mayor's blunt response to philosophical lectures on ecology. So funny. Signed by the city attorney, who also responded to my 40 page motion to dismiss an infraction ticket. "Mr. Bleacher's argument is devoid of substance." Perfect.
"Dear Mayor. What do you mean humanity is better off with inventions like the steam engine? Are you crazy? Look around! The Ohlone Indian tribes probably wouldn't agree with you, if any had survived the genocide enabled by the steam engine. They lived in perfect harmony on this same coast for thousands of years and we have..."

oh, so funny. That's really the kind of juggling act I'm aiming for. A letter to the mayor written on used bakery wrapping paper.


Dear mom- Hi! How are you? How are the cats? Do you remember that one stuffed mouse that Lois used to play with? What happened to that mouse? I remember I had it in my treasure chest after Lois died and it smelled like her. I loved Lois. Where is she buried? I think if I have time one day I will find that stuffed mouse and put it with Lois, if we can remember where she is buried. Was it the forest? Probably the back yard. I may have a map in an old journal that will tell the exact location of her grave. If you could look for that journal I would appreciate it.

You remember the girl I told you I met? Well, we're in love! She really understands the importance of ecology and natural habitat preservation. So we built a cabin in the forest just like I always talked about doing. I'm planting beans and we've already grown some tomatoes but the foxes or wild rabbits and woodchucks ate them before we could make a salad. Oh well! All animals have to eat. Isabelle knits in the evening using the candles for light while I guard the area. There are these roving bands of drug addicts called the Tweakers living out here too and they have invaded and stolen our furniture before so I have built a perimeter alarm system. Ha ha!

So we're safe + happy. I haven't spent any money in three months which I feel is important because it's going to help slow the environmental destruction that the United States is causing to wolf habitat. Isabelle also feels strongly about protecting the wolf.
The only thing I need is the location of that stuffed mouse that Lois loved so much. It's in my journal (the location) and I think that is where I usually keep it in my old tree house out by the river. We're all going into town next week for a big rally and socialist solidarity rally for imprisoned political prisoners. Should be important and revolutionary! Say hello to the cats. Love Oggy!
P.S. Don't send me any money because it's really hurting the wolves.