_                                                                  _
    |_|              __   ___ ___  __                                  |_|
    | |             |__| |__   |  |__| | |                             | |
   _| |_            |  \ |___  |  |  | | |___                         _| |_
.-| | | | _               __   ___ ___  __   __   __   __          _ | | | |-.
| | | | |' |             |__| |__   |  |__| |__| |  \ |__         | `| | | | |
\         /              |  \ |___  |  |  | |  \ |__/  __|         \         /
 \     ./'                                                          `\.     /
  |____|                                                              |____|

  **** a SCUMDOG ENTERTAINMENT production, Vol.2, Issue 1 -- 05/05/2005 ****
             **** http://www.scumdogentertainment.com/tardz/ ****

                       "Dispatches from the Plains VI"
                                    by fj

You don't read.  I read.  I work in a bookstore, I receive a discount for
being an employee, and I read.  You don't read.  I know you think that you do,
but when you waddle up to me at the register with a copy of _The da Vinci
Code_ gripped in your Cheeto begrimed fist, or the latest literary abortion
that is a Tom Clancy franchise novel and you make small talk with me, you are
NOT READING.  We have nothing in common, you and I.  We are as dissimilar as
hawks and worms.  Now, let me be totally clear on this:  You, with your
airport grade, elementary novels that make me stupider for selling them are a
festering blight on the world.  You have no concept of history, literature,
art or music.

I want to be charitable and say that it is just in your nature, that your
complete lack of understanding and your opinions based on your intermittent
perusal of bumper stickers are a part of who you are and that you could no
more change them than Moly could be yellow and purple.  By the way, you won't
get that reference.  But it isn't your nature.  You have a mind, but you
choose to inundate it with the vapid blinking lights on your television,
caring more for who gets fired from the island or what job wacky rich people
get fired from.  Another note:  you will get that reference, which proves my
point.  Your sluggish minds, occupied with ill informed thoughts of who is
fucking who on the magical box, or which starlet is doing what and where have
betrayed the thing that differentiates us from ducks and chickens.  You have
gladly adopted the herd mentality because it is easy, because it is
conventional and because you don't have to work at it.

In one sense, your filthy apathy is great for me.  I can run at the head of
your little pack with almost no effort.  I don't have to put forth any
exertion to excel at what I do and to make you look bad while I do it.  I can
sit and wax poetic about Chopin, when I deign to speak at you, mispronouncing
it as the sound axes make striking trees to be pulped for your glossy copies
of _US_ and _People_, and you will never know.  You'll nod assent and offer
what you feel is a pithy comment, totally oblivious to my despair at what a
fucking clod you are.  I'll mentally pick the hayseeds from your hair and
leave, knowing that while you are better for having met me (which you will
never realize), I have lost minutes from my life that I will never recover.
Our interaction will be fruitless because you will never internalize the
things that other people tell you.  They will slide from you, like your mind
is coated with Teflon, and that just kills me.

Now, don't think this is the ranting of some angry whey-faced intellectual in
his basement.  Don't get me wrong, I am angry and you do make me cringe every
time you offer an opinion clearly pulled from Ann Coulter or Michael Moore.  I
would happily shatter my bottle of Jim Beam to slash your throat from ear to
ear any time you feel that loudly voiced opinion supplants fact.  In fact, I
am angry.  You have sold yourself short and in the process you have lowered
the world to your level.  You have basically kicked the universe in the balls
and as it lay trembling before your dull onslaught, you have decided that is
how you want it.  You will never try to pull yourself above that level, you
exist comfortably at that level, and you want everyone to be there with you.

****
by fastjack / fj@greeny.org
copyright (c) 2005 fj/SCUMDOG ENTERTAINMENT - www.scumdogentertainment.com
all inquiries/rants/hate mail should be sent to:  ass@scumdogentertainment.com
distributed by GwD Publications - http://www.GREENY.org/pubz/
Made in Texas, USA, word word word