Got To Have A Code.

We all got one.

We must; it is compulsory.

Question is what’s ours? Yours? Mine?

You can trust someone when we know their code. Even if their code, by our best estimate, is dumb-fart wrong. When we know someone’s code we’ll know how they act. Even when we don’t like it — especially when we don’t like it — we best see it coming. When we know one’s code we can gauge their moves. Even if we’ll never for the life of us know what the fuck they be thinking.

Helps hugely to see It coming.

When I know my own code I don’t always know what I’ll do next — but I always know Why.

Knowing my own code helps incalculably.

My code is who I am at best. Our code is the highest ideal. Truth. Hunter S. Thompson once said: “There’s no such thing as hallucinations; only things more likely seen when you’re tripping.”

Actually I said that — in the epitaph I wrote for the good doctor. Which ran as a Letter to the Editor in my local daily. I said Hunter S. Thompson said that.

Final Wisdom: I claimed he poetically waxed right before he died. There’s no such thing as hallucinations…

Because it gives the quote better fireworks Action — the ooh ah shit that sells — when people think Hunter S. Thompson said it moments before he shot himself in the head.

All good writers are word thieves. But the best writers steal something better than words; something no one else has yet stolen. Something most writers much want, but will never even, think to steal. I for one am a roller coaster thief.

Better still: I’m Mike E motherfuckers!

Got an open container of make believe.

Make believe makes life better. I live to make life better. I make my life better when I believe unshakably in me.

I don’t know what my code is off the top of my head. Got a bitchin’ Motto though:

Better Living Through Make Believe.

email to my new agent

1.25.2008

Heyo.

Um…that’s not bad news. You can relax. I’m smiling — a big ol’ shit Drug Eating Grin — about this as we speak.

When Hunter S. Thompson finished his masterwork, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, he was plumb giddy with what he knew was an extreme accomplishment. “I’m high as a pigeon.” He wrote to a friend. Oh shit yes! High as a frikkin pigeon.

That’s when it’s awesome dudes.

I got jabbed in the gut, just now, by a fast Woo-Hoo flash of that Pigeon High plumb giddy thing; it’s a glorious feeling.

Hey Satan! Paid my dues.
Playin’ in a rockin’ band
Hey MAMA! Look at me:
I’m on my way to the Promised Land!!

My friend: thank you.

Upset? Me? Fuck nope! I was upset, old flame, when you nosed through my personal Journal lo those many years ago. Because you read what I wrote about the time I inadvertently slept with your best friend. And I then had to Deal With It — and I didn’t want to. Of course the only solid defense I could mount on my own behalf, that silly day, was a “Foul!” cry because you read about it while you snooped uninvited through my journal. So yeah. I couldn’t help but feel a bit intruded upon. I had to!

In retrospect it kinda makes me chuckle.

Quite funny.

Don’t ya think?

If you’re worried, as it seems, that I’ll feel similarly intruded upon over this thing — fret not!

That said, I am compelled to respectfully request that you not send any high school era journals you may have ah, borrowed from me, way back when, off to be published unbidden!

K?

Onward:

The fact — a fact I’m well aware of — is that I direly need an agent. I absolutely need help with the wherewithal of the marketing angle. So I could harp a bit on the fact that you didn’t ask me first — if you had I would have said “certainly yes!” — but why bother?

You’ve done a tremendously good turn by me.

If we’d agreed to this beforehand I likely would have fiddled with the piece a bit, tried to make it better before you sent it out. Maybe I could have improved it, maybe not. But whatever improvements I made would be promptly undone by the magazine’s final-cut editor before (if) they ever printed the thing. Yeah — I know that routine. I can’t even get a letter to the editor in Brattleboro’s po dunk daily printed without a botch job run on it by the editor. So it really doesn’t matter does it?

What counts is that you say they’re considering my story for publication. They really are? I am astonished.

For real? So it seems. I mean why else would they write you back, months later, to ask for an end-of-article Blurb about me? This is genuine. Huge. GIGANTIC. The New York Times Magazine?!

Even if they never print the thing, shit — they noticed it. They’re genuinely interested. This is the NYT Sunday Magazine we’re talking about; that is no small feat.

I have to compliment you on your good eye in picking out the one piece, out of everything on that blog, that I want to see printed somewhere like the New York Times Magazine. I’m pretty insecure about most of my stuff. But I wrote One Stinking Dollar to be published and I want 10,000 people to read it. So thanks.

As far as the blurb goes…I dunno. What do you think? You’re now my new agent afterall so I value your opinion. Maybe something like: Mike E spent the money he earned from the sale of this article on some rent. He now works gainfully as a freelance writer; studies Math & Economics on the side; spends much of his discretionary income betting on fast racehorses; and hopes one day to enroll in the Entrepreneurial Studies MBA program at Columbia University. Or some such thing?

Also if you can find me any other work…please! I’d prefer to churn out something fresh. I want an Assignment. So if you see anything around that pays say $100-plus which you think is up my alley — let me know pronto, dig?

Soon as we get some dough to roll in I will gleefully pay you the standard agency fee.

I gotta fly — my friend Superstar Brown just got back from Africa and he’s having a dinner party.

Righto.

Yippeee!

A thousand Thanks.

Your Friend,
Mike E

More Bad News For America

George W. Bush now has an economic stimulus plan.

For years I have wondered what exactly Bush & Dick Cheney’s problem is. I finally figured it out. They want to scrape America off the face of the Earth like dog shit from their shoe. Because George Bush & Dick Cheney are America’s enemy.

I’m not sure whose, if anyone’s, side they actually are on. I only know that they want to drive our nation into the ground.

For proof I offer their freshly unveiled economic stimulus plan — which the Democrat-led congress eagerly approved just this afternoon. The plan is to put $600 dollars, doled out as a tax rebate, into the pockets of 106 million Americans. Who will theoretically treat this unexpected boon as discretionary income — to be spent wildly on Stuff. And thus effectively jump start our consumer-driven economy. Checks will be cut by the summer.

For transparency’s sake I submit that I, a perpetually unemployed non taxpayer, do not stand to gain a dime from this ill conceived scheme. So maybe I’m biased against it. And in the further interest of full disclosure I admit that, were I a tax rebate recipient, I would accept the check & spend it gleefully — America be damned.

Still, Bush’s stimulus plan is unequivocally bad for the economy.

Look: the notion of a Tax Rebate inherently suggests that there is a pile of loose money laying around for us to rebate people’s taxes from. There obviously isn’t. We are going to borrow the money from China. Like we always do.

Let’s take it for granted that Bush & Cheney do not intend to repay their debt to China. Beijing may as well use all those US treasury certificates they’ve bought to wipe dog shit from their shoes. Now if the $260 billion in treasury notes we’ve sold to China are worthless scraps of crap wipe, one asks:

What is a US hundred dollar bill worth?

Less each day — as evidenced by the Dollar’s precarious tumble in the global market.

That tumble is at the heart of our economic woes. The value of the dollar goes down. Prices go up. Because America pays for barrels of Saudi oil with that devalued currency.

Dollar goes down. Prices go up.

So why not just print off a bunch of extra hundred dollar bills and give them out to American families to help them cover the costs of Inflation?

That would be like giving me a few hundred extra speed pills to compensate for the out-of-control tolerance my body has built up due to over-use of prescription amphetamines. A grand plan! Congress should enact it immediately.

But will it work?

Well…it’ll keep my personal train wreck rolling speedily for a few extra days — and that’s good enough for me. But is it good for the Country?

Not if the goal is to rein in my tolerance and make it so the prescribed dosage works like it did when I first popped one of those pills back in 1999. Still — though again I may be biased — I think the “give Mike E more speed” plan will work better than Bush’s “economic stimulus” plan. Which amounts to nothing more than printing up more currency to cover the costs of inflation. The net effect will be to further deflate the dollar’s value. And drive up the cost of living.

Elementary economics.

The Mike E Kiss Of Death

5 days ago I wrote a post predicting that John Edwards — whom I have supported since 2003 — would win the Iowa caucus. He had every chance to win. Edwards essentially never stopped campaigning in Iowa since his surprise 2nd place showing there in 2004. He had a tremendous amount of goodwill from Iowa’s voters. And he had momentum; he was rising steadily in every poll taken right up until caucus night. Plus he is the best candidate — but that’s a different story.

This is the story about what happens when I write a blog post in support of a particular candidate.

Sorry, Mr. Obama.

Look: Before Iowa I had no interest in Barack Obama as a candidate. But his victory speech — and the overwhelming number of young voters who delivered him to victory — won me over. I was swept up in the moment. I was excited. I was for Obama all the way.

I turned on CNN tonight a few minutes after the polls closed to watch my new favorite candidate win.

The Associated Press just declared Hillary Clinton the New Hampshire victor.

I hate politics. Because my candidates always lose. And I hate to lose — even more than I hate politics. But most of all I hate the dumb chump state of New Hampshire!

On the other hand…there is one thing I love more than those three things I hate put together — and now we’ve got one.

I love a good race.

See you in Vegas baby.

Iowa Recap

The said it was a “soaring” speech. And I’ve got to admit that Barack Obama’s victory speech was pretty good. In fact after his performance last night Obama will be mightily hard to beat.

I’m not quite sure what John Edwards is thinking by staying in the race. Iowa was a Must-Win state for him & he lost fair & square. Now, his wife is visibly ill with breast cancer. He is a multi millionaire who thus remains, despite his loss, in a position to effect a world of good upon those same causes he hoped to champion as president. Even if he still has a slight chance to win it seems like the classy thing to do now is go home.

Barack Obama is Hillary Clinton’s problem now. And she has a problem. What can she do: attack him? After his speech last night that would be like attacking Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

It was a pretty good speech.

His victory itself is genuinely remarkable. Much ado has been made by the pundits about the fact that he won in a state that is 99% white. That’s pretty good. But to me not stunning. I am offended by the notion that America is somehow “not ready” for a black — or a woman — president. We are not a nation of racist scoundrel. That said, clearly there are hurdles faced by a woman or person of color who wants to be president. And last night Barack Obama cleared one of those hurdles with style.

What truly blows me away about Obama’s win is not that a bunch of white people voted for him. It is the fact that he somehow managed to convince young, first-time caucus goers that he was worth their while. Look: I am a politics junkie. I smoke this shit for breakfast. And I know, from years of observation, that the Youth Vote does not…vote.

4 years ago a gargantuan effort was made to register America’s youth to vote (VOTE or DIE, remember?). The effort was wildly successful. America’s youth registered to vote in record numbers. These freshly registered voters were supposed to be the ace up John Kerry’s sleeve. And had they actually turned out to vote for him John Kerry would be president today. But as usual they did not.

Those little shits let us down again.
>>Hunter S. Thompson, Nov. 2004

I mistakenly disregarded Barack Obama’s run on the presidency — largely because I deemed that he was mistakenly counting on the youth to come out and vote for him. I also had — and still have — some questions about his sincerity. Those misgivings about his sincerity were somewhat dispelled by the speech he gave last night. It was stirring. But questions about sincerity are moot now. Unless Hillary somehow wins in New Hampshire on Tuesday — I would not bet on it…but then I would have bet that Edwards would win Iowa so what do I know? — Barack Obama looks all but unstoppable. If he can round up the kids to come out and vote for him he will be the nominee.

Perhaps more importantly: with the elusive Youth Vote on his side the is no Republican who can beat him in November. Assuming there is an election in November…Barack Obama will be the next president.

I wish him well.

Iowa

John Edwards wins tonight. He doesn’t win big. But he doesn’t have to. He’ll take roughly a third of the vote. So will Hillary. So will Obama. But Edwards will take the greater third. When his plane lands in New Hampshire tomorrow morning at dawn John Edwards will be the new front runner. And that will be a good news for America.

Dig: Here’s one good thing George W. Bush has done! See I personally…I’ve always hated America. Not that I ever wanted anything particularly Bad to happen to the U.S. I have just always thought we were wrong. Shit I thought Bill Clinton was a Nazi. What I’m trying to say is that I have just never been a big fan of my own country.

But George W. Bush changed all that. Because now America is getting our Ass Kicked. So on the basis of rooting for the long-odd underdog I find myself — for the first time ever — wanting America to win.

I’m not going to go on & on about why I think this John Edwards character represents America’s best chance to win.  Watch him on the news tonight & judge for yourself. But while you do remember that he is the only candidate — with a chance to win — who portrays the battle we face as We The People vs. the Corporations.

Another thing I like about the guy — and ya’ll know this is personal to me. He took time out of his campaign schedule recently to visit a homeless shelter. Far as I know he is the only candidate from either party to do so. For a reason…well, 2 reasons. With few exceptions — myself among them — homeless people don’t vote. Moreover, with all that has gone wrong in the world today, homelessness is one of the least ’sexy’ issues. People think the homeless somehow deserve the plight we’re in — but that’s not true.

I no more deserve homelessness than a storm refugee from New Orleans deserves homelessness. But this isn’t about homelessness. It’s about the election. I bring up Edwards’ visit to the homeless shelter only to illustrate the point that I think this dude cares. He has heart. And that is why I have been in his corner since I saw him officially announce his first run on the presidency on Comedy Central’s John Stewart show back in 2003.

We Should Get A Blue Ribbon

I swear where I live may — in the electoral map sense — be the solidly tried & true bluest county in America. There are more George W. Bush supporters in the caves of Tora Bora & the streets of Falujah than here in Windham County, VT.

Remember 911? Not the attacks specifically but the atmosphere. Afterwards. Like all of the sudden we were supposed to stop bitching viciously about the Government. At least in public. Was it like that where you live? Did you think it was weird about how a suicide bomber troubled to check his bag into the luggage bay of the plane he meant to blow up? I sure did.

But how much time passed after 911 before you dared to strike up a conversation about the Koran they found in that oddly checked bag which the airline conveniently forgot to put on the plane? I mean mouth off about it to drunken strangers.

My guess is some months, or a year, passed before conspiracy theories thread even tentatively into beer chats with strangers at your local bar.

Not mine.

I watched the World Trade Center attacks on the TV at the Bar here in Vermont. Happened to be there enjoying some beer that morning. I was as shocked as anyone when the plane slammed dramatically into the second building. Goodness gracious great ball of fire!

I couldn’t help but think to myself: Are they that evil??

Not the Arabs. Of course nobody knew it was them yet. Because they had yet to discover that copy of the Koran in the hijacker’s lost luggage. So we had no idea at that point that the terrorists were Arab.

My first thought — which I shared out loud with everyone at the Bar that morning — was:

Dick Cheney!

A few oddballs in the bar clearly — yet quietly, since they were uncomfortably in the minority — disagreed with the notion. After all America was under attack. And here I was suggesting we attacked ourselves? What kind of nation would do such a thing?

“Can’t you just picture him?” I conjectured. “I bet Dick Cheney flew those planes himself — with some kind of high tech remote control device.”

“Yeah — like an Atari joy-stick!” Someone suggested. Everyone laughed. Because Truth is the funniest joke of them all.

Then the first building fell down. That wasn’t funny. Still…I believe we were the first people in America to suspect a 911/Inside Job conspiracy.

think a little

John McCain was a bomber pilot in Vietnam. His plane was shot from the sky. He & his crew ejected & parachuted down behind enemy lines. They were captured by the Viet Cong & interred at the Hanoi Hilton.

In January 2000 John McCain won the New Hampshire primary. He was a genuine contender to run for president on the Republican ticket. Did you vote in your state’s ‘00 Republican primary? Me neither.

What a colossal blunder.

My friends: that was the time to beat George W. Bush. And we could have. Had all who feared a 2nd Bush presidency — and even then we were many — swelled strategically to support John McCain we could have scored him the nomination.

Consider:

McCain was a colonel when he was taken POW. An officer; which is a gig with fringe benefits. Like the one where McCain could have been exchanged — as per the Geneva Convention — for a similarly ranked Viet Cong officer who’d been captured by the Americans. Exchanged & turned loose from the cruel Hanoi Hilton confines. Released from a howling miserable captivity.

The Viet Cong made a bona fide attempt to release John McCain from captivity.

He could have soothed his soul with cold beer & a couple hookers that very evening.

Maybe he was already planning his run on the presidency. Who knows? Because what he did next sure looks good on the resume. He stayed with his men. Took the ride he bought the ticket for. 5 torturous years later the Vietnam War ended and Colonel McCain was released.

In my book that proves John McCain more fit than George W. Bush for the presidency.

Imagine. All we had to do to dodge the whole Bush/Cheney shit storm was turn out in relatively modest droves to vote for McCain in the 2000 Republican primary. Then come November vote as we please.

Golly did we ever drop the bong on that one!

Makes it hit home how our choices count tremendously.

Amongst the current crop of candidates there is some genuine good to choose from. But I tell you: there’s some real deal evil shit-chunk retards running for president in 2008. And **BIG SURPRISE!** they’re winning.

Smart folks like us best pay good attention. Now is our time. Our only time. Our only time is now.

That’s why I watched CNN until my ass literally fell off this week. Because I want to educate myself; to choose wisely. No big deal. About my ass that is. It’s a time of war so we all must make sacrifices. Besides if a Democrat wins there’ll be universal health car so I can get my ass surgically reattached for free!

Alrighty then. I’ve compiled for your perusal a sample of quotes from various candidates. Good candidates; mediocre ones; and of course…the evil shit-chunk retards.

Pop Quiz: can you guess who the retards are?

You know 18% of Americans [including the candidate...and me for that matter] say they’ve seen a UFO. I think that’s higher than George W. Bush’s approval rating!
>>Dennis in-it-to win it Kucinich

That’s a question for The Lawyers to answer.
>>Republican Mitt Romney, asked whether he as President would seek Congressional approval before going to war with Iran

I understand very well that people are not attacking me because I’m a woman. They’re attacking me because I’m ahead. As Harry Truman famously said: ‘If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.’ I feel very comfortable in the kitchen.
>>Hillary Clinton, when asked if she planned to play the Gender Card

As New York City’s mayor I cut crime, taxes AND the average annual snowfall by 50%.
>>Fuckface Guliani

Our campaign has so much money we can’t figure out how to spend it.
>>Anti-war Republican Ron Paul, whose maverick candidacy recently enjoyed a $4.2 million single-day contributor frenzy

My friends, this is what America is all about. This is a defining issue and clearly one we should be able, if we want to be commander in chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, to take a definite and positive position on. And that is we will never allow torture.
>>Senator John McCain

There’s going to be a day before each of us die, and you have to think a little bit about how you want that day filled.
>>Elizabeth Edwards

Affordable Housing: a case against.

New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has promised to leave as a legacy 500,000 units of fresh built Affordable Housing.

As you’ll suspect I propose there is nothing wrong with affordable housing. I’m tempted to suspect there’s nothing but good about it. But before we take that flying assumptive leap one must first ask Why.

Why would New York’s billionaire mayor want to build a half million units of Affordable Housing?

Why indeed? Follow The Money.

Affordable housing serves a Corporate Interest; by enabling Them to pay sub standard wages.

Low rent housing is a pricelessly needed tool for those who would keep the wages low. Because the homeless can’t work. Not that a homeless human can’t work; many can and will gladly. Still, it’s near impossible to hold down a job when you’re homeless. The work force must be housed. House it a half million-strong in low rent digs and New York City’s workforce has a Low Wage Mass — built in for generations.

The solution to New York City’s housing crisis is to set the minimum wage to adjust automatically to the cost of living. One good case may be reasonably mounted against my solution: what ill effect a mandatory, potentially steep minimum wage increase will have on struggling businesses?

A reasonable question.  Which must be dealt with because a minimum wage which self adjusts to the cost of living is unequivocally the right & humane thing to do.

I propose the difference between what employers can afford to pay, and what their employees reasonably need, be skimmed off the Top. Set a Maximum Wage — that reflexively self adjusts to meet the minimum wage’s new cost-of-living self adjustment.

I call it the reverse Trickle-Down feedback loop theory.

Bad Bromine. BAD!!

It was a moment of great hilarity.

“John?” the kid Bobby asked. John was my organic chemistry professor. Back in 1999. Each day at the beginning of class John would entertain questions. Bobby always came prepared with several. Some were good curiosity-driven questions. But this one he asked as a joke.

“John,” Bobby famously asked. “I heard it negates all hallucinogenic effects if you add Bromine to a molecule of LSD!”

The kid sounded pretty excited.

“Ah, Bobby.” John’s eyes filled with suspicion as he looked at his student. “Why would you DO such a thing??”

The girl sitting next to me shit her pants and nostril snarfed her feces.

John Hayes is widely regarded as the best o-chem professor in collegiate history; truly a cult legend in circles where such an accolade matters. His class had a certain atmosphere, a magic rarely experienced in college science departments. It was fun.

Now this kid Bobby was, on paper, the smartest kid in my college o-chem class. Bobby always scored real good on his tests. He father was a medical doctor and Bobby clearly had been groomed from birth to follow in his footsteps.

On paper I — a high school dropout — was the dumbest kid in my whole darned o-chem class.

Our professor, John, taught organic chemistry in the same classroom for 3 decades. Each day he walked into the room. Entertained questions. Then picked up a lone piece of chalk, turned to the board & got down to Business. Amazing. John knew his business.

He taught his year-long class with no text book. John copied his personal notes on to the chalkboard directly from his brain. These we dutifully transcribed to study for exams from. The final exam — in May — was a 6 hour affair which covered material we’d copied into our notebooks the previous September.

On the first day of class John shared with us an insight into the precise nature of his business. Why he was in the business to begin with; on the first day of class John told us why he taught organic chemistry. And I quote — he said he “liked to warp young people’s brains.”

Unquote.

WhoA!!

I was pleased as dosed punch to hear it.

To my mind warping young people’s brains is a solidly exceptional want. I wanted to be like my organic chemistry teacher when I grew up; matter of fact I still do. John took the place immediately as and remains still one of my very few “wanna-be-like you when I grow up” Heroes. And a good one. Good heroes are hard to find. So John, if you read this: thanks for being my hero dude.

I was not there to be groomed for medical school. It did occur to me that once successfully completed the year long class would satisfy the science requirement which, still incomplete after 4 full years of high school, prevented me from being awarded a diploma. But that’s not why I took organic chemistry 10 years after the fact. I was there for my own solidly exceptional reasons.

To figure out about what all those drugs that have slogged benevolently ’round in my brain since way back on Grateful Dead tour — what were they up to these days?

I mean can you scrape them out somehow and you know like smoke ‘em dudes?

Way.

Tao Way!

DUFF Custiez!!

The dedicated auditor learns all material presented in the class syllabus. Does the homework. Gets tested & graded. Suffers at times mightily to gain the proffered knowledge. But at the end of the day is rewarded no credits toward matriculation for the effort.

People said I was crazy doing what I was doing. The biology professor oddly suggested that auditing classes was like trying to kiss my sister. I guess he meant like: “What was in it for me?”

Knowledge. To a degree that you can’t get in college.

Moreover it was my smashingly good fortune to learn from John Hayes; a once-ever Welcome To Planet Earth experience. In it for me? Well I got my gad dang brainz warped up good! I got higher than a dosed bowl of punch.

Higher than drugs kiddoz!

I know, I know! I sound like a god damn old lady. But I tell you this: if I (of all people) say it “Got me higher than drugs…” you can bet I mean it as no disrespect to Drugs personally. In fact it maybe did not get me Higher than a particularly excellent drug at its’ experiential peak. But the ochem class “Got Me High.” I felt high from it when I woke up every morning. Plus it was cheaper & lasted longer than any drug you can buy off the street.

For Disclaimer’s Sake: “Higher than” is in no way meant to imply “better than” drugs; in fact higher than drugs veritably begs to be made better still with a giant pot of Alien Turdz tea.

John once saw fit to explain to the entire class that Bobby wasn’t as smart as he looked. Rather, he was very “tenacious with his question asking,” John said. The question-answer process solidifies parcels of information in the mind. When we form our own questions we engage a personal relation with their answers; a deliberate act of internalization.

Anyway that’s what John said Bobby had going for him. He came across as the smartest kid in the O-chem class because he asked a lot of questions. At times it seemed that Bobby hoped to quixotically topple the long-stood notion that “There are no Dumb Questions in a class like organic chemistry.”

No dumb questions, maybe. Sometimes Bobby asked smart-aleck questions he’d contrived to elicit a chuckle. Like the one about what happened when you added a bromine to LSD. But by no means was he the Class Smart Ass. There was only one Class Smart Ass. Was it me? Oh hell no. The class smart ass went by the name professor John Hayes.

So. If John was the Class Smart Ass. And Bobby wasn’t all that — then who was incontestably the smartest kid in the class?

Well first off: how could such a thing be quantified? Who would know?

“You know Mike E.” John assured me once, years after I historically aced his class. “You’re gifted. In fact after 30 years teaching that class…out of ‘em all you are my organic chemistry Standout.”

“But I mean like I’m a total fuck up John!” I protested.

“Then you’re the most brilliant fuck up I know.”

Swhoosh.

Hunter S. Thompson himself could not pay me a more giddily meaningful compliment. As meaningful — yes. Like the compliment Jay Herron left me in my comment box yesterday. Such moments of synergy are what keeps the artist categorically addicted to our audience. And the chance that one may see fit to tell me I’m All That — as John did — has long kept me addicted to my many heroes.

It twisted an earlobe to earlobe drug eating grin on to my face for weeks.

And begs the question: What did Bobby the bastion of o chem mediocrity know about a drug we’ll henceforth call Lucy?

By all outward appearances…Nawt Shey-it. As they say with drawls in Memphis TN. Or as it’s put in these parts: Not a damn thang!

In any event he clearly did not know as much as me. I mean I just kind of look like I’ve spent most every minute of my life blasted out of my brain on drugs. Like Wile E Coyote wakes & bakes when he rolls out of bed each afternoon — on a good blast load of TNT.

Bobby most likely never tried Lucy. Definitely he never got high with a little bangin help from Wile E & TNT.

He just said it to be funny. All eyes turned to John. Who smashed the joke pitched him by Bobby so far out of the park it rained 6 packs of 802 Woodchuck hard cider & Chivas Regal in tall rocks-filled glasses. It was the most gigantically funny moment organic chemistry has ever seen.

Yeah & I was so there dudes!

So what’s the big deal? I tell you what the big deal is. What’s the quantifiable difference between Bobby & me? Between folks of at times notably above-average intelligence — and the singularly sharpest mind John Hayes observed over the course of 3 decades of o chem teaching experience? I mean what sets me measurably apart from the Others?

Alien Turdz mostly.