The Greyhound bus leaves from Arcata every day at 9:50 from the Intermodal Transit Facility, arguably the most squalid place in town. The Greyhound company always locates their stations in the most deteriorated neighborhoods. If the town is too small to have a real ghetto, Greyhound will nonetheless find a suitably foul corner to put their station in. Right next to the Arcata station is the Food Endeavor. There's always a crowd of ornery indigents camped out around it, with rats darting in and out between their feet, the indigents fighting over spare change and the rats over their crumbs.
I hadn't ridden the bus down to Oakland for many years. I remembered that only the most desperate people took the bus, and I always tried to avoid it. It seemed that every few months a Greyhound flipped over outside of Bohefus, three or four people died and twenty-six were injured. Once a man in Canada sawed off his seat mate's head with a Swiss Army knife. It was very telling, I reckoned, that the Greyhound went strait to West Oakland and only secondarily to San Francisco.
I paid $51 for a one-way, weekday ticket to Oakland, more than I would have paid for gas had I driven down by myself.
Alongside the curb where the bus stopped, a stretch of pavement stained with many a puddle of piss, many a cigarette tar stain and dried loogie, stood a line of people waiting for the 'Hound to appear. Their luggage were overflowing paint-splotched duffel bags, piss-stained bedrolls and in one case simply a tattered garbage bag.
An Indian wore a colorful, woven cap and a white man of perhaps thirty wore dusty Carhartts and shredded skate shoes with a beat-up skateboard, a sleeping bag and a day pack. An old man with a Navy veteran cap chatted about field-dressing gunshot wounds to a younger man with tattoos on his hands who was rolling a cigarette. Someone was smoking a joint, and a young trustafarian was wandering around telling an unsolicited story about eating some mushrooms in the forest and “tripping face.” He was aiming his story generally in the direction of the crowd. Everyone tried to ignore him.
There was a wild-eyed, middle-aged man smoking a cigarette and wearing a dirty, torn hoodie that said “Welcome to My Hood: Bay Area” with skulls and motorcycles on it. His face was grown over in thick stubble. There was a Mexican in a sweat suit with a shaved head and an area code tattooed on his neck. I wanted to ask him what he'd do if the phone company changed his area code.
There was a woman carrying a baby and stringing along two young children. There was a man in a Slayer hat and a shredded hoodie with an anarchy circle-a and patches sewn all over it. There was a guy with bad acne wearing a beanie pulled way down over his eyes. It said “Humboldt” on it with a pot leaf under the “o.” There were at least five “Tap Out” and “Fox Racing” and "Hurley" hats. There was a woman with a lip ring and a cigarette hanging out of her mouth chasing her toddler through the landscaping shrubs, shouting “Come here this instant, Jeffrey. You stop that this instant! Three...two...one...that's it!” She yanked his arm just as the crusty kid began telling her his mushroom story.
The man with the “Welcome to My Hood” hoodie was running around, looking for the motherfucker who had snatched his bed roll.
The inside of the bus smelled strongly of weed as I boarded. I sat next to a seat with vomit stains on it, hoping it would ward off potential seat mates (the scheme worked until the bus was totally full). Panning across my fellow passengers, I concluded that I probably had the fewest felony convictions amongst them all.
As soon as I sat down a conversation started up in the row next to me. One of the interlocutors was the man with the hand tattoos, and the other was an emergency room nurse or technician of some sort. It soon came out that the man with the hand tattoos was a 34-year-old retired Marine named Robert. He was a certified welder in the state of Washington. He drank every night, stayed with friends and relatives in Arcata and lived on a $3000 a month military pension. In the course of relating a story about a fifteen-year-old girl he saw who had huge tits, he also mentioned that he had a daughter somewhere.
Immediately the Marine began to broadcast his war stories to the rest of us. He spoke loudly of the atrocities he'd witnessed overseas, hoping someone cared to overhear. “Somalia was a fucking shithole. A fucking shithole, man,” he told the nurse loudly, shaking his head. “There were bodies laying around everywhere, man. One guy stepped out of a building and shot this 15 year old kid right in the head right in front of us.”
The nurse was suitably impressed, and let out a noise of resignation. Then he asked the Marine where he was going.
“I got this little black girl down south,” the Marine said. He spoke in a laconic, lazy drawl, using the word “motherfucker” frequently.
“Yeah, she's from Harem,” he said, “Harlem, motherfucker.”
“Oh, shit,” said the nurse, “that's the big fuckin' city.”
“She's still got a little bit of ghetto in her, you know” the Marine said, “but she's been civilized and all that. Like, she's got a jacuzzi in the back yard and a big screen teevee, all that shit. I'm staying for a month.” The girlfriend, he said, left for work every morning, where she sorted files for a record company, so he could sit on the couch all day by himself watching sports. At night, all she wanted to do was fuck, he said, like a little rabbit.
The nurse said that the other day he had picked up a “little twenty-four year old bartender.” He'd just strode into the bar, and all these other guys were hitting on her, and he'd just ordered a beer and sat there without talking to her, and before he knew it she came up to him and started hitting on him, and they fucked on Thanksgiving.
“That's how it is, man,” the Marine said.
“One time I was in this bowling alley in Albany,” the nurse said. The Marine gave him a quizzical look. “You know, Albany,” the nurse said. “So you got Oakland, then you got Berkeley, then you got Albany, and they're all connected together. So anyway, I was in this bowling alley in Albany on Mother's Day, and I picked up this one sister at the bar. We ended up going out to the back of my truck...” His voice fell almost to a whisper as he described their act of copulation in the back of the truck. “Weirdest thing I ever did. Well, not the weirdest. I've done some weird shit. Then she asked me if I wanted a forty. I was like, 'Shit, is this your Mother's Day present?'”
Both he and the Marine let out a series of wheezing laughs, the Marine eventually coughing up a ball of phlegm, which he swallowed.
“Heard there's a strip joint around here somewhere,” the Marine said. We were headed south out of Eureka.
“Yeah, it's right up here, right out of town,” said the nurse, pointing out T-Great Razooly's Tip Top Club.
"Heard it varies," the Marine said.
"Yeah, it varies," the nurse said.
They got to talking about gunshot wounds. The Marine wanted to know if the nurse ever saw any of them at the emergency room.
“Yeah, we just got one the other day,” the nurse said, “Some guy had come up and shot this guy at point blank range with a .22 rifle. The bullet went through his--” He stopped to think. “His liver, his diaphram, and his lung, and it missed his spine by, like, two inches.”
“No shit?” the Marine said.
"Yep," the nurse said.
“The other day I was walking down the street, after I had had a few beers at the bar, you know," the Marine said. "I was just about ready to go crash out. It was the end of the night. And I see this big crew of high school boys coming at me. Like, four, five of 'em. And high school boys ain't small.”
“Shore ain't,” the nurse said.
“Anyway, one of 'em asks me for a cigarette, so I'm like 'Sorry, bro,' cause I was flat out,” said the Marine. “And then they starting gettin' up in my face and shit, you know. Like 'you motherfucker, I'm gonna kick your ass,' and this and that, you know. Fucking bullshit.” The Marine's voice rose to an innocent tenor, and he showed the nurse his palms. “I said, 'You know what, bro? You're a kid. If I hit you I'm going to jail.' But anyway, this one motherfucker starts circlin' round behind me and swings at me, and gets me with a ring or something, you know, like, he didn't really connect but his ring got me. So I fucking pull out my knife and grab one of 'em by the collar, and I got my knife right up under his nose, and I says 'You're messing with an ex-Marine with a big fucking knife.' They all ran off after that.” He let out another hoarse laugh.
“Oh, shit,” the nurse croaked solemnly.
The bus stopped in front of the liquor store in Rio Dell to pick up a motley collection of serious madmen in suspenders and snow boots and leather pants. They were lined up in front of a bear statue carved with a chainsaw from a big hunk of redwood, beside which sat a huge stack of empty Taaka Vodka shipping boxes. In the window, Copenhagen snuff was on sale for $4.49 a can, and Rusty the yellow lab was missing. There was an obese woman in a faded hoodie that said “Bad Dogs: Bite Me.” Her male companion wore a hoodie with a crucifix on it flanked by several skulls.
The driver announced that we'd be stopping for ten minutes. Everyone got off to smoke cigarettes in front of the liquor store. When they got back on the bus filled with the smell of hot dogs and fried chicken, the sounds of a toddler screaming, having shat in his diaper, and the sounds of the Marine licking his tattooed fingers.
Outside of Leggett the sun hit the western side of the bus and everyone passed out. The Marine curled up against the window like a raccoon in his den.
When he awoke again he cracked open a can of Joose, the popular malt-liquor soda pop. He opened in surreptitiously behind the seat so that the driver wouldn't see him. He took a few swigs and then belched up the carbon dioxide. The belched Joose fumes drifted under my nostrils.
Then the Marine tried to engage me in a conversation about the book I was reading, “The Catcher in the Rye. ”
“Good book,” he bellowed. “I heard it's banned in somethin' like 33 states. I wrote a big report about it in high school. Yep, I know a lot about that book.”
I said almost nothing. It was the first time I got a good look at his face, though. There was a gaping head wound above his left eye.
We were approaching Willits, where we'd have a layover. I imagined the people of Willits would be horrified at our arrival. They were like a coastal Gaulish village, and we were like a band of roving Vikings. There had hardly been such a high concentration of degenerates in one vessel since the golden age of piracy.
We rolled through the tidy downtown and into a neighborhood at the south end of town distinguished by its lack of aesthetic appeal. We rolled directly into the McDonald's parking lot. I knew there were several nearby Mexican joints that could have provided better meals for the same price, but I figured that this arrangement was part of Greyhound's “only the worst” policy. Either that, or they had a corporate kickback scheme with McDonald's.
Everyone filed out feverishly and lit cigarettes. The obese woman who had been listening to heavy metal at high volume in her earphones started eating Pop Rocks and Mentos. The woman with the screaming toddler was still chasing him around with a cigarette in her mouth, screaming back “Jeffrey, you come here this instant!”
Inside the McDonald's there was a twenty-foot line and a sign on the wall that said “Chemicals known to cause cancer or birth defects or other reproductive harm may be present in foods or beverages sold or served here. Cooked potatoes that have been browned, such as french fries, hash browns and baked potatoes contain acrylamide. Burger buns, biscuits and coffee also contain acrylamide, but generally in lower concentrations than fried potatoes.”
On the way out of Willits we crossed a pass and started following the Russian River downstream. The Marine had something to say about that, too.
“I found a nice little place down there by the river,” he told the nurse. “Nice place to go swimming.”
“Oh?” the nurse said.
“Yep, but that river's contaminated,” he continued. “That's what they say.”
“Oh?” the nurse said.
Then they got to talking about femoral artery wounds. The Marine wanted to know if the nurse had seen any of those in the E.R. He related the story of a bum he knew who got stabbed in the leg with a box cutter recently and whose artery was narrowly missed in the process. “Did you ever get that guy?” he asked.
“Nope, I don't remember that,” the nurse said.
“Them femoral arteries,” the Marine continued. “One time in Somalia I had to reach up into this guys thigh and pull one of those out. No shit. He got hit by a ricochet and the artery retracted. The medic was screaming at me to reach up there and pinch it.”
“Yeah, them femoral arteries are bad,” the nurse said. “You can bleed out fast.”
In Ukiah, we stopped in the outskirts of the Wal Mart to pick up more travelers. There was a man with a handlebar mustache and hand tattoos wearing a full battle dress uniform, camouflage fatigues from head to toe. There were three black guys who gave the driver wilted I.D.s from New York State. One wore a leather jacket, a Yankees cap with the labels still attached, and jeans with skull designs weaved into them and an illegible, ominous slogan embroidered in the ass. One of the black guys had a shaved head, a full beard and a big tattoo on his throat. The third guy had what looked like the scar from a knife wound across his eye.
An old lady came on with her service animal. A drunken woman missing her front teeth came in behind her, telling everyone “God bless you” loudly. She was leading her senile mother along, and placed her in the seat behind mine. Then she started trying to convince the woman with the dog to sit near her. “I'd rather not sit near young children,” the woman with the dog said. “My dog is afraid of them.”
We pulled out and headed south. A conversation about blood transfusions and leukemia broke out in the row behind me. “He was coughing blood,” I heard someone say. “He was dead.” The guy in the fatigues sat next to the Marine, who began talking about himself again. That Marine was a tireless mill of bravado.
At Santa Rosa, there were at least twenty people waiting for the bus. The driver said we'd stay for twelve minutes. The woman with missing teeth staggered out, making a lot of noise and chatting up everyone, who ignored her, until the driver told her to “cool it.” The mothers all hustled out to smoke with their children. The “Welcome to My Hood” guy got out and rolled up his sleeves to reveal faded tattoos fully covering his forearms.
Outside stood a guy with a hospital wristband who screamed that he'd hit a wall going eighty-five miles and hour, and then sat down, cradled his face in his hands, and began to cry. One of the travelers, a short black man, fell over backwards when the driver asked for his ticket. As he struggled to right himself, the driver looked him over suspiciously. Another man wore a hoodie covered with safety pins and a skull-and-crossbones flag flag pinned to his back and three thick chains hanging from his belt and another baseball cap with the labels still attached. This must be some sort of low-class fad, this leaving of labels on hats.
The bus was just about full now. Someone finally had to sit next to me. It turned out to be a skinny little man with a pony tail and halitosis who asked me what I was reading. I politely informed him. Then he put on ear buds, plugged them into his laptop and watched a movie.
In Oakland, I got out behind the drunken woman with no front teeth and her senile mother. The woman chasing Jeffrey dropped her bag, and McDonald's toys exploded across the pavement. I hopped over them.
At the side of the bus, I collected my bag. It was covered in motor oil stains. Then I wandered into West Oakland, past a screaming woman with a baby and a man berating her.
FINIS.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
A Selection of Band Names in the Heavy Metal Section of Rasputin Music, Berkeley
Acid Bath
Abscess
Aborted
Abomination
Abrogation
Agony Scene
The Agonist
Agoraphobic Nosebleed
Agenda of Swine
After the Burial
Acid Drinkers
Amoral
Altar of Plagues
All Shall Perish
Alestorm
Archgoat
Anvil Chorus
Antagonist
Angel Witch
Angel Corpse
Anal Vomit
Anal Cunt
Anathema
Anaal Nathrakh
Armed for Apocalypse
Arch Enemy
Attacker
Athiest
As You Drown
Asunder
Asphix
As I Lay Dying
As Eden Burns
Asbestosdeath
As Blood Runs Black
Artillery
Avenger
Avenger of Blood
At the Throne of Judgment
Autopsy Torment
At War
Atomic Aggressor
Atrocity
Azathoth
Azaghal
Behold the Arctopus
Behemoth
Belphegor
Beneath the Massacre
Bestial Holocaust
Bile
Black Anvil
Black Breath
Black Funeral
Black Flames
Black Tusk
Black Tide
Bleeding Fist
Blasphemy
Blasphemopagler
Blitzkrieg
Blind Fury
Bloodbath
Blood Ceremony
Bloodbound
Blood Duster
Blood Feast
Blood Horse
Blood Red Throne
Blood Stain Child
Blood Tsunami
Blut Aus Nord
Body of Scars
Bonded by Blood
Borknagar
Bonfire
The Boy Will Drown
Braindrill
Brimstone
Brother Von Doom
Bulldozer
Bullet
Brutality
Brutal Truth
Burial Hordes
Burning the Masses
Burning Human
Burning Skies
Burst
Cacophony
Cadaver
Carcass
Carnage
Carnal Forge
Carnal Grief
Carnivore
Catacombs
Catastrophic
Cattle Decapitation
Cauldron
Celestial Bloodshed
Cemetery
Cephalic Carnage
Chainsaw
Choir of Carnage
Chthonic
Christ Agony
Chronical Diarrhoea
Circle of Death Children
Claustrofobia
Coffins
Conspiracy
Corrosion of Conformity
Coroner
Corpus Mortale
Cretin
Cremation
Crematory
Crematorium
Cripple Bastards
Cradle of Filth
Crowbar
Crucifist
Cryptic Slaughter
Culted
Cryptopsy
Cycle of Pain
Cynic
Daath
Dark Moor
Dark Funeral
Dark Throne
Darkseed
Dark Sanctuary
Dark Fortress
Dark Heart
Darkness
Darkness Dynamite
Daylight Dies
Deadbird
Dawn of Demise
Dead Child
Dead Congregation
Dead to This World
Dead Breath
Death
Deathrow
Death Angel
Decapitated
Deceased
Decrepit Birth
Deicide
Debauchery
Defiance
Dekapitator
Deeds of Flesh
Demise
Demolition Hammer
Deranged
Destruction
Desaster
Destroyers
Destroyer Destroyer
Destroyer 666
Devastator
Diabolical Masquerade
Devil Driver
Disavowed
Disarray
Disgorge
Disincarnate
Dissection
Dismember
Disembowelment
Doctor Butcher
Dominance
Dominion
Doom
Draconian
Drawn & Quartered
Dreaming Death
Dream Death
Driller Killer
Drudkh
Dying Fetus
Edge of Sanity
Ektomorf
Elegy
Embalmer
Enslaved
Embryonic Devourment
Embrace the End
The End
Endless Blizzard
Enfold Darkness
Entombed
Engorged
Eviscerated
Execration
Exhumed
Exmortus
Eyehategod
Facebreaker
Fairytale Abuse
Fatalist
Father Befouled
Fatal Force
Fear My Thoughts
Fear of Eternity
Fear Factory
Fell Silent
Fleshgod Apacalypse
F.K.U.
Flesh
Flotsam & Jetsam
Flatline
Fleshcrawl
Flesh Consumed
Forbidden
The Fractured Dimension
Forgotten Tomb
The Forsaken
Frost
Frostbite
Fueled by Fire
Funeral
The Funeral Pyre
Frightmare
Funerot
Future's End
Gates of Slumber
Ghoul
Gnaw Their Tongues
Goatlord
Goatsnake
Goat Whore
Goblin Cock
God Dethroned
God Flesh
Gorefest
Gorgasm
Gorguts
Grave
Graveland
Gravehill
Grave Temple
Gravedigger
Graves at Sea
Graves of Valor
Grief
Graveworm
Grief of War
Hammer Fall
Hackneyed
Hemlock
Hail of Bullets
Hammerlord
Hammer of Misfortune
Hatchet
Hate
Hate Eternal
Hatesphere
Havoc
Hearse
Headhunter
Heathen
Hell Fueled
Hell Within
Hellhammer
Hellsaw
Hell Torment
Horde
Horde of Hell
Iced Earth
Ignominious Incarceration
Illdisposed
Immolation
Impaled
Impaled Nazarene
Impending Doom
Inevitable End
Infected Malignity
In Flames
Infernal Legion
Inquisition
Insomnium
Into the Moat
Iron Thrones
Jesus Fucking Christ
Khlyst
Kingdom of Sorrow
Kill What I Adore
Knights of the Abyss
Krabathon
Landmine Marathon
Lake of Tears
Last Felony
Lechery
Lecherous Nocturne
Legion of the Damned
Leprosy
Life of Agony
Limb from Limb
Light Yourself on Fire
Liturgy
Lord Belial
Lord Gore
Lost Soul
Living Death
Lurker of Chalice
Macabre
Made Out of Babies
Made of Hate
Madder Mortem
Malevolent Creation
Malignancy
Malefice
Massemdrd
Man Must Die
Martyr
Masochist
Mayhem
Massacre
Merciless
Merciless Death
Metalium
Miseration
Misery Index
Molotov Solution
Monstrosity
Morbid Angel
Morbid Scream
Morgoth
Mortician
Mortification
Municipal Waste
Mutilator
My Dying Bride
My Own Grave
Nailbomb
Napalm Death
Narcosis
Nasty Savage
Necrodeath
Necronoclast
Necrohomicon
Nefarion
Necrophagist
Necrophagia
Necrophobia
Neurosis
Nevermore
Nihilist
Nocturnal Fear
Nunslaughter
Nuclear Assault
Nux Vomica
Obituary
Obsession
Obliteration
Obsessed
Odius Mortem
Omen
Old
Old Dead Tree
Onslaught
Orange Goblin
Orphaned Land
Overcast
Overkill
Pain Principle
Pain of Salvation
Paria
Path of Possession
Path to Destruction
Pentagram
Persuader
Perversor
Pest
Pestilential Shadows
Pestilence
Phobia
Pig Destroyer
Pitch Black Forecast
Poison Black Portal
Porkfarm
Possessed
Power Quest
Profanatica
Prostitute Disfigurement
Primal Fear
Psychotic Waltz
Psycroptic
Pungent Stench
Pyorrhoea
Rage
Razor
Rebellion
Repulsion
Ravage
Relentless
Regurgitation
Rigor Mortis
Riot
Ripping Corpse
Rotting Christ
Rotten Sound
The Rotted
Ruins
Rumple Stiltskin Grinder
Sacrilege
Sacrificial Slaughter
Sacred Reich
Sadistik Exekution
Salt the Wound
Satan
Savage
Scar Symmetry
Seance
Sea of Treachery
Sentenced
Septic Flesh
Severe Torture
Serpent Throne
Severed Savior
Shape of Despair
Sickening Horror
Sinister
Sinner
Skinless
Skeleton Witch
Skin Lab
Slayer
Slaughter
Sodom
Slough Feg
Soilent Green
Speed/Kill/Hate
Squash Bowels
Steel Assassin
Stormcrow
Stormlord
Submission
Suffocation
Suffokate
Suicidal Winds
Suicide Silence
Svartsot
Sworn Enemy
Sword
Tarantula Hawk
Taunted
Terrorizer
Theatre of Tragedy
Those Who Lie Beneath
Those Who Bring the Torture
Threat Signal
Thor
Thorr's Hammer
Thorns
Three Inches of Blood
Three Mile Scream
Through the Eyes of the Dead
Torture Killer
Toxic Holocaust
Total Fucking Destruction
Toxik
Trail of Tears
Tribulation
Trigger the Bloodshed
Unholy
Tyrant
Trollrock
Ulcerate
Unleashed
Usurper
Unmerciful
Vehemence
Vale of Pnath
Vektor
Vengence
Venom
Villians
The Very End
Victimizers
Vile
Violent Force
Vio-lence
Visceral Bleeding
Vital Remains
Virus
The Vision Bleak
Vomitory
War
Warbringer
Warhammer
Warfare
Warlock
Watch them Die
Weakling
Weedeater
Wehrmacht
Wiplash
Within the Ruins
Winds of Plague
Wino
With Blood Comes Cleansing
With Dead Hands Rising
Witch
Witchcraft
Withered
Witchmaster
Witchkiller
Woe of Tyrants
Wrath of the Weak
Wretched
Zombie Death Stench
Abscess
Aborted
Abomination
Abrogation
Agony Scene
The Agonist
Agoraphobic Nosebleed
Agenda of Swine
After the Burial
Acid Drinkers
Amoral
Altar of Plagues
All Shall Perish
Alestorm
Archgoat
Anvil Chorus
Antagonist
Angel Witch
Angel Corpse
Anal Vomit
Anal Cunt
Anathema
Anaal Nathrakh
Armed for Apocalypse
Arch Enemy
Attacker
Athiest
As You Drown
Asunder
Asphix
As I Lay Dying
As Eden Burns
Asbestosdeath
As Blood Runs Black
Artillery
Avenger
Avenger of Blood
At the Throne of Judgment
Autopsy Torment
At War
Atomic Aggressor
Atrocity
Azathoth
Azaghal
Behold the Arctopus
Behemoth
Belphegor
Beneath the Massacre
Bestial Holocaust
Bile
Black Anvil
Black Breath
Black Funeral
Black Flames
Black Tusk
Black Tide
Bleeding Fist
Blasphemy
Blasphemopagler
Blitzkrieg
Blind Fury
Bloodbath
Blood Ceremony
Bloodbound
Blood Duster
Blood Feast
Blood Horse
Blood Red Throne
Blood Stain Child
Blood Tsunami
Blut Aus Nord
Body of Scars
Bonded by Blood
Borknagar
Bonfire
The Boy Will Drown
Braindrill
Brimstone
Brother Von Doom
Bulldozer
Bullet
Brutality
Brutal Truth
Burial Hordes
Burning the Masses
Burning Human
Burning Skies
Burst
Cacophony
Cadaver
Carcass
Carnage
Carnal Forge
Carnal Grief
Carnivore
Catacombs
Catastrophic
Cattle Decapitation
Cauldron
Celestial Bloodshed
Cemetery
Cephalic Carnage
Chainsaw
Choir of Carnage
Chthonic
Christ Agony
Chronical Diarrhoea
Circle of Death Children
Claustrofobia
Coffins
Conspiracy
Corrosion of Conformity
Coroner
Corpus Mortale
Cretin
Cremation
Crematory
Crematorium
Cripple Bastards
Cradle of Filth
Crowbar
Crucifist
Cryptic Slaughter
Culted
Cryptopsy
Cycle of Pain
Cynic
Daath
Dark Moor
Dark Funeral
Dark Throne
Darkseed
Dark Sanctuary
Dark Fortress
Dark Heart
Darkness
Darkness Dynamite
Daylight Dies
Deadbird
Dawn of Demise
Dead Child
Dead Congregation
Dead to This World
Dead Breath
Death
Deathrow
Death Angel
Decapitated
Deceased
Decrepit Birth
Deicide
Debauchery
Defiance
Dekapitator
Deeds of Flesh
Demise
Demolition Hammer
Deranged
Destruction
Desaster
Destroyers
Destroyer Destroyer
Destroyer 666
Devastator
Diabolical Masquerade
Devil Driver
Disavowed
Disarray
Disgorge
Disincarnate
Dissection
Dismember
Disembowelment
Doctor Butcher
Dominance
Dominion
Doom
Draconian
Drawn & Quartered
Dreaming Death
Dream Death
Driller Killer
Drudkh
Dying Fetus
Edge of Sanity
Ektomorf
Elegy
Embalmer
Enslaved
Embryonic Devourment
Embrace the End
The End
Endless Blizzard
Enfold Darkness
Entombed
Engorged
Eviscerated
Execration
Exhumed
Exmortus
Eyehategod
Facebreaker
Fairytale Abuse
Fatalist
Father Befouled
Fatal Force
Fear My Thoughts
Fear of Eternity
Fear Factory
Fell Silent
Fleshgod Apacalypse
F.K.U.
Flesh
Flotsam & Jetsam
Flatline
Fleshcrawl
Flesh Consumed
Forbidden
The Fractured Dimension
Forgotten Tomb
The Forsaken
Frost
Frostbite
Fueled by Fire
Funeral
The Funeral Pyre
Frightmare
Funerot
Future's End
Gates of Slumber
Ghoul
Gnaw Their Tongues
Goatlord
Goatsnake
Goat Whore
Goblin Cock
God Dethroned
God Flesh
Gorefest
Gorgasm
Gorguts
Grave
Graveland
Gravehill
Grave Temple
Gravedigger
Graves at Sea
Graves of Valor
Grief
Graveworm
Grief of War
Hammer Fall
Hackneyed
Hemlock
Hail of Bullets
Hammerlord
Hammer of Misfortune
Hatchet
Hate
Hate Eternal
Hatesphere
Havoc
Hearse
Headhunter
Heathen
Hell Fueled
Hell Within
Hellhammer
Hellsaw
Hell Torment
Horde
Horde of Hell
Iced Earth
Ignominious Incarceration
Illdisposed
Immolation
Impaled
Impaled Nazarene
Impending Doom
Inevitable End
Infected Malignity
In Flames
Infernal Legion
Inquisition
Insomnium
Into the Moat
Iron Thrones
Jesus Fucking Christ
Khlyst
Kingdom of Sorrow
Kill What I Adore
Knights of the Abyss
Krabathon
Landmine Marathon
Lake of Tears
Last Felony
Lechery
Lecherous Nocturne
Legion of the Damned
Leprosy
Life of Agony
Limb from Limb
Light Yourself on Fire
Liturgy
Lord Belial
Lord Gore
Lost Soul
Living Death
Lurker of Chalice
Macabre
Made Out of Babies
Made of Hate
Madder Mortem
Malevolent Creation
Malignancy
Malefice
Massemdrd
Man Must Die
Martyr
Masochist
Mayhem
Massacre
Merciless
Merciless Death
Metalium
Miseration
Misery Index
Molotov Solution
Monstrosity
Morbid Angel
Morbid Scream
Morgoth
Mortician
Mortification
Municipal Waste
Mutilator
My Dying Bride
My Own Grave
Nailbomb
Napalm Death
Narcosis
Nasty Savage
Necrodeath
Necronoclast
Necrohomicon
Nefarion
Necrophagist
Necrophagia
Necrophobia
Neurosis
Nevermore
Nihilist
Nocturnal Fear
Nunslaughter
Nuclear Assault
Nux Vomica
Obituary
Obsession
Obliteration
Obsessed
Odius Mortem
Omen
Old
Old Dead Tree
Onslaught
Orange Goblin
Orphaned Land
Overcast
Overkill
Pain Principle
Pain of Salvation
Paria
Path of Possession
Path to Destruction
Pentagram
Persuader
Perversor
Pest
Pestilential Shadows
Pestilence
Phobia
Pig Destroyer
Pitch Black Forecast
Poison Black Portal
Porkfarm
Possessed
Power Quest
Profanatica
Prostitute Disfigurement
Primal Fear
Psychotic Waltz
Psycroptic
Pungent Stench
Pyorrhoea
Rage
Razor
Rebellion
Repulsion
Ravage
Relentless
Regurgitation
Rigor Mortis
Riot
Ripping Corpse
Rotting Christ
Rotten Sound
The Rotted
Ruins
Rumple Stiltskin Grinder
Sacrilege
Sacrificial Slaughter
Sacred Reich
Sadistik Exekution
Salt the Wound
Satan
Savage
Scar Symmetry
Seance
Sea of Treachery
Sentenced
Septic Flesh
Severe Torture
Serpent Throne
Severed Savior
Shape of Despair
Sickening Horror
Sinister
Sinner
Skinless
Skeleton Witch
Skin Lab
Slayer
Slaughter
Sodom
Slough Feg
Soilent Green
Speed/Kill/Hate
Squash Bowels
Steel Assassin
Stormcrow
Stormlord
Submission
Suffocation
Suffokate
Suicidal Winds
Suicide Silence
Svartsot
Sworn Enemy
Sword
Tarantula Hawk
Taunted
Terrorizer
Theatre of Tragedy
Those Who Lie Beneath
Those Who Bring the Torture
Threat Signal
Thor
Thorr's Hammer
Thorns
Three Inches of Blood
Three Mile Scream
Through the Eyes of the Dead
Torture Killer
Toxic Holocaust
Total Fucking Destruction
Toxik
Trail of Tears
Tribulation
Trigger the Bloodshed
Unholy
Tyrant
Trollrock
Ulcerate
Unleashed
Usurper
Unmerciful
Vehemence
Vale of Pnath
Vektor
Vengence
Venom
Villians
The Very End
Victimizers
Vile
Violent Force
Vio-lence
Visceral Bleeding
Vital Remains
Virus
The Vision Bleak
Vomitory
War
Warbringer
Warhammer
Warfare
Warlock
Watch them Die
Weakling
Weedeater
Wehrmacht
Wiplash
Within the Ruins
Winds of Plague
Wino
With Blood Comes Cleansing
With Dead Hands Rising
Witch
Witchcraft
Withered
Witchmaster
Witchkiller
Woe of Tyrants
Wrath of the Weak
Wretched
Zombie Death Stench
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Execution Policy is Irrational
The recent case of Rommel Broom illustrates that execution policy in the United States is incoherent and absurd. Mr. Broom was tortured for an hour and a half as his incompetent killers tried to stick him with an intravenous needle in order to kill him by the humane method of lethal injection.
There are still several arguments in favor of retaining capital punishment. It may be cheaper than housing a convict forever, to no end. And it is manlier and more sensible to die after one last cigarette, with no blindfold, before a firing squad, than spend decades degraded at the hands of sadistic guards and inmates in a squalid prison.
But those arguments are moot, because executions are always far more expensive than simply sentencing a convict to life in prison, and we are apparently not concerned with the honor or dignity of those we convict of capital crimes, only in their comfort and humanity.
Another argument in favor of capital punishment is that it satiates victim's lust for retribution. In that case, the execution should be painful and horrifying. Rape victims should be allowed to castrate the rapist with a hot iron, and the relatives of murder victims should be allowed to slowly cut apart the convict with a dull razor, relishing his pain and fear. Those convicted of witchcraft should be carried from the courtroom and burned alive on the common pasture before all the village people.
But that never happens, because executions are supposed to be “humane.” The lust for retribution has gone the way of every other visceral thrill that offends the sensibility of secular humanists. The noose, the firing squad, and the electric chair were all successively deemed too savage, and replaced by more “humane” methods, culminating with lethal injection, an ostensibly peachy way to die. Never mind that a bullet to the head, or better, a cocktail of morphine and booze, would be swifter and less painful.
Never mind that killing someone is inhumane anyway. Our penal system reflects that sentiment. We consider murder the worst crime in peacetime, even before torture and false imprisonment. But death isn't the worst thing that can happen to you.
Say a criminal cut off his victim's limbs and genitals and poked out his eyes with a searing-hot hickory stick. We might give him a long sentence, but we'd never consider shooting him up the anus with a small-caliber pistol and letting him bleed out through his intestines in a dumpster, like the Mafia does . We feel that torture is too inhumane. But if torturing someone is inhumane, then why is killing them humane? Do we not consider murder at least as bad as torture?
The third argument in favor of capital punishment is that it will deter potential criminals through fear of death and humiliation. But the deterrent value of a ceremony held in a little room at midnight is limited. Most people never witness an execution. Furthermore, executions occur so long after the commission of the crime they're supposed to deter that everyone's forgotten which murderer and rapist goes with which murder and rape. Such a mild institution is unlikely to dissuade a psychotic rapist in a murderous frenzy.
That leaves us with two reasonable options. We must either abolish capital punishment, or return it to all its previous glory as a bloody public spectacle.
All I've got to say about that is: Rommel Broom could have made a killing for the Department of Justice on Pay-Per-View.
There are still several arguments in favor of retaining capital punishment. It may be cheaper than housing a convict forever, to no end. And it is manlier and more sensible to die after one last cigarette, with no blindfold, before a firing squad, than spend decades degraded at the hands of sadistic guards and inmates in a squalid prison.
But those arguments are moot, because executions are always far more expensive than simply sentencing a convict to life in prison, and we are apparently not concerned with the honor or dignity of those we convict of capital crimes, only in their comfort and humanity.
Another argument in favor of capital punishment is that it satiates victim's lust for retribution. In that case, the execution should be painful and horrifying. Rape victims should be allowed to castrate the rapist with a hot iron, and the relatives of murder victims should be allowed to slowly cut apart the convict with a dull razor, relishing his pain and fear. Those convicted of witchcraft should be carried from the courtroom and burned alive on the common pasture before all the village people.
But that never happens, because executions are supposed to be “humane.” The lust for retribution has gone the way of every other visceral thrill that offends the sensibility of secular humanists. The noose, the firing squad, and the electric chair were all successively deemed too savage, and replaced by more “humane” methods, culminating with lethal injection, an ostensibly peachy way to die. Never mind that a bullet to the head, or better, a cocktail of morphine and booze, would be swifter and less painful.
Never mind that killing someone is inhumane anyway. Our penal system reflects that sentiment. We consider murder the worst crime in peacetime, even before torture and false imprisonment. But death isn't the worst thing that can happen to you.
Say a criminal cut off his victim's limbs and genitals and poked out his eyes with a searing-hot hickory stick. We might give him a long sentence, but we'd never consider shooting him up the anus with a small-caliber pistol and letting him bleed out through his intestines in a dumpster, like the Mafia does . We feel that torture is too inhumane. But if torturing someone is inhumane, then why is killing them humane? Do we not consider murder at least as bad as torture?
The third argument in favor of capital punishment is that it will deter potential criminals through fear of death and humiliation. But the deterrent value of a ceremony held in a little room at midnight is limited. Most people never witness an execution. Furthermore, executions occur so long after the commission of the crime they're supposed to deter that everyone's forgotten which murderer and rapist goes with which murder and rape. Such a mild institution is unlikely to dissuade a psychotic rapist in a murderous frenzy.
That leaves us with two reasonable options. We must either abolish capital punishment, or return it to all its previous glory as a bloody public spectacle.
All I've got to say about that is: Rommel Broom could have made a killing for the Department of Justice on Pay-Per-View.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
The Ancient and Honorable Art of Killing
It was after an effete life amongst bourgeois liberals that I decided to learn the ancient and honorable art of killing.
I had become tired of my family's winging. They heaped scorn on all the rednecks for being crass and uncultured. They drank wine and discussed matters. Meanwhile, the rednecks were out with their power toys, engaging in visceral thrills. Their political agenda was far advanced. They sent their sons to foreign battles, where they drove around in big trucks blowing up rammed-earth houses and killing people dressed like hippies. In short, the rednecks were having all the fun while the urban haute bourgeois was stuck complaining.
The kind of people surrounding me were willing to eat their veal, but not without talking about suffering and death all the while. They wanted other people to do their dirty work. I wanted to see what it really took to take down a sentient being, to eliminate a large, complex organism, to wipe out one of God’s creatures. I wanted to send a deer to kingdom come.
Really, I only wanted to want to send a deer to kingdom come. Really, I was not comfortable with the idea at all. I wished I were an easy killer, a wooden stump of insensitive redneck, totally oblivious to the pain of others. But I knew the killing exercise would be gristly and unpleasant, slaying a noble animal with a red-hot chunk of ballistic lead.
The muzzle would explode with a shocking concussion, and if I were lucky the deer would then jump a few steps in terror before collapsing with blood gushing from his neck. I’d go down to his expired corpse and, as a man named Mike Guerin wrote on some online hunting forum, I would then perform the following procedure:
with the guts half in and half out I cut the diaphragm away from the deer's chest cavity, I then reach as far up into the deer's chest as possible and grab the deer esophagus. With the other hand I carefully slide the knife into the deer's chest and work my knife up into the chest to cut the esophagus just above my other hand. After it is cut I simply pull the heart and lungs out and with it comes the rest of the intestines.
I'd rip his skin off, hang him by a meat hook and saw off his legs and head. Like a Tutsi clansman in a genocidal fervor, I’d then eat the deer’s heart to capture its spirit fire. This last element, along with the process of quartering and further butchering the animal, composed what I dubbed “the complete visceral killing experience.”
For this purpose I added a Savage model 111 30-06 to my redneck heirloom collection. Savage is a model of long rifle. Its logo is an Indian with a headdress, a delightfully anachronistic, racist mascot.
The Savage was a bolt-action affair with a Simmons scope, black synthetic stock, four-round magazine, and floating barrel to reduce strange harmonics that might send my bullet eschew. Its muzzle velocity was 9000 feet per second, and one of its 150-grain bullets would land with the weight of a loaded semi trailer dropped from forty feet onto a surface half that of a dime face. When I deflowered it at a popular firing range on the summit of Horse mountain, I hit a target a football field off, within a couple inches of where I had aimed. The weapon's accuracy was acute. I knew I was not responsible for it. I can’t even hit a clay pigeon with a semi-automatic shotgun.
Within a few bullets I was tired of shooting the rifle, though, as it was very loud and kicked like a drunken mule. I would not improve my accuracy before hunting, I reasoned. I would manifest the opportunity to behead a deer from point-blank range.
Hirsch and I were staying at a luxurious craftsman style house in the boondocks of Humboldt County while its owners explored Montana. Initially I spent a days pacing around the house with the rifle in my hands, spotting the cat through the scope, climbing onto the roof and assuming various prone poses, covering the entrance to the driveway from the roof, fondling the nicely heavy cartridges and the bolt, listening to Megadeth and ranting about how I was going to blow off some deer’s head. “I’m going to go strait for the head shot,” I said, and Hirsch said, “but what if you miss, and you blow off its jaw or something, and it goes around all deformed for days before it dies?” And I said, “I’m going to blow its head clean off.” I even made a ghilly suit, with the leaves of huckleberry bushes. I imagined myself in an abandoned warehouse, Hillary Clinton rolling by in a convertible…
In order to learn the proper way of gutting a deer, which Hirsch was certain I would not be able to psychologically handle, we watched a series of videos on You Tube titled “Fat Boy Goes Hunting.” These were hosted by a rotund, beer-sucking redneck slouched in the seat of a swamp boat. “Gun berk, huhguhug. Bingk dung berk,” he bellowed, pointing this way and that, his face the color of a ripe tomato.
The only other chore I had to carry out before hunting was to obtain a license. By state law, I had to undergo a short gun safety class to do so. The class was held at a skeet club whose firing range pointed towards the end of the regional airport's runway.
Jeanette Griffin of the California Department of Fish and Game instructed five fat white people in the club's lounge shack. She began by defending the philosophy of hunting.
“These animals are going to die anyway, so instead, we kill and eat them,” she said. “You ever seen a deer with two fawns? Yeah, well, later in the year there’s only one fawn.”
Jeanette brought a small arsenal of firearms. She had a break-barrel shotgun, a semi-automatic shotgun, a bolt-action rifle, a semi-automatic rifle, an autopistol, a revolver, and a muzzle loader. She went over each and explained how they worked in a perfunctory manner. "This here's the barrel," she would say, and then closing the bolt, "is it loaded? What do you think? Is it loaded?"
A few hours later she handed out a multiple choice test with questions like:
Question 51.
An animal that kills other animals for food is called a:
Question 62.
Hunter Education is important because it:
Behind the house lay an open field. A top-floor window there afforded a perfect view of the field. This area Hirsch and I considered the “kill zone,” and every day a doe and her two fawns would come prancing through to eat berries and other plants in the kill zone. One time we saw six of them, all fawns and does. There was a garden and orchard of perhaps a quarter-acre there, surrounded by a deer fence.
“All we have to do,” Hirsch said, “is open the gate and let the deer saunter in, and then close the gate on them, and corral them in there, and then shoot them one at a time from the upstairs window. Boom! Chik-chik. Boom! Chik-chik,” he said, miming racking the action of a rifle.
We started baiting the field with apples. The deer came and ate the apples, even fighting over them. The little buck (he had two little stubs on his head and his coat was still spotted) would come and munch on the apple and chase all his sisters away. This sexism offended Hirsch's sense of social justice. “That motherfucker,” he said, “we should blow his head off.”
We moved the apples inside the corral while I set up a turret in the upstairs bedroom. Then Hirsch hid behind a nearby bush and we waited, sucking beers. Sure enough, the little buck and his two sisters came back, entered the garden and began nosing around.
It is illegal to kill a buck who lacks at least one junction in each of his antlers. This law I did not care for, any more than I would care for statutory rape laws if I encountered the opportunity to ravish a nubile young girl. My visceral impulses were too strong. There they were, the animals, and my trigger finger was itching. A drop of drool hung from my lip.
Suddenly, Hirsch emerged, startling the deer, and they ran in a circle idiotically, unaware that their route of escape had just been eliminated. He closed and latched the gate. I smiled. I cocked my weapon.
Our little Soribor was perfect. From my perspective, the slaughter wouldn't even take any heroic marksmanship. I held the high ground. Julius Caesar's podium. The little buck was a miserable Christian in the lion pen. Slowly I lowered the barrel to the window sill, peered through the scope, and lined up the little buck's forehead between the cross hairs. He peered back with a resigned expression. I saw it in his eyes. He knew. Breathe out slowly.
Then a sudden realization seized me.
What about the deer's feelings? He was still young. He had his entire deer life ahead of him. His spirit fire was inherently valuable. He was a unique ball of energy who contributed meaning to the vast and incomprehensible universe. What about the precepts of Zen? They expressly forbid killing, even though there isn't so much as killing. There isn't even “no killing.” Mu killing. Were not their long spiritual traditions in Christianity against killing as well? It led to Hell. In Judaism too there was a commandment. Just about every ethical framework in the world looked warily at wholesale slaughter like the kind I proposed to undertake. There were metaphysical prohibitions on killing, and humanistic ones. There were legal codes everywhere that proscribed harsh punishment for it. There was a strong sense of guilt swirling around it. The karmas would come back around later. The deer would come home to roost. Five lifetimes from now I'd be lined up and shot and bulldozed into a shallow grave for it, like all the people in Soribor.
Hirsch wondered if I was going to shoot. I looked down through the window over the end of the Savage barrel and told him that I had reconsidered. I was pardoning the deer.
He slouched over to the fence, disappointed, and opened it. Then he went back inside downstairs. The little buck pranced towards freedom. It could have been a scene in a Disney animated feature. The sun broke through a cloud at that moment, and the little buck turned and looked up at it, and I could have sworn that I heard celestial organ music.
I had a robust meal of bacon that evening.
I had become tired of my family's winging. They heaped scorn on all the rednecks for being crass and uncultured. They drank wine and discussed matters. Meanwhile, the rednecks were out with their power toys, engaging in visceral thrills. Their political agenda was far advanced. They sent their sons to foreign battles, where they drove around in big trucks blowing up rammed-earth houses and killing people dressed like hippies. In short, the rednecks were having all the fun while the urban haute bourgeois was stuck complaining.
The kind of people surrounding me were willing to eat their veal, but not without talking about suffering and death all the while. They wanted other people to do their dirty work. I wanted to see what it really took to take down a sentient being, to eliminate a large, complex organism, to wipe out one of God’s creatures. I wanted to send a deer to kingdom come.
Really, I only wanted to want to send a deer to kingdom come. Really, I was not comfortable with the idea at all. I wished I were an easy killer, a wooden stump of insensitive redneck, totally oblivious to the pain of others. But I knew the killing exercise would be gristly and unpleasant, slaying a noble animal with a red-hot chunk of ballistic lead.
The muzzle would explode with a shocking concussion, and if I were lucky the deer would then jump a few steps in terror before collapsing with blood gushing from his neck. I’d go down to his expired corpse and, as a man named Mike Guerin wrote on some online hunting forum, I would then perform the following procedure:
with the guts half in and half out I cut the diaphragm away from the deer's chest cavity, I then reach as far up into the deer's chest as possible and grab the deer esophagus. With the other hand I carefully slide the knife into the deer's chest and work my knife up into the chest to cut the esophagus just above my other hand. After it is cut I simply pull the heart and lungs out and with it comes the rest of the intestines.
I'd rip his skin off, hang him by a meat hook and saw off his legs and head. Like a Tutsi clansman in a genocidal fervor, I’d then eat the deer’s heart to capture its spirit fire. This last element, along with the process of quartering and further butchering the animal, composed what I dubbed “the complete visceral killing experience.”
For this purpose I added a Savage model 111 30-06 to my redneck heirloom collection. Savage is a model of long rifle. Its logo is an Indian with a headdress, a delightfully anachronistic, racist mascot.
The Savage was a bolt-action affair with a Simmons scope, black synthetic stock, four-round magazine, and floating barrel to reduce strange harmonics that might send my bullet eschew. Its muzzle velocity was 9000 feet per second, and one of its 150-grain bullets would land with the weight of a loaded semi trailer dropped from forty feet onto a surface half that of a dime face. When I deflowered it at a popular firing range on the summit of Horse mountain, I hit a target a football field off, within a couple inches of where I had aimed. The weapon's accuracy was acute. I knew I was not responsible for it. I can’t even hit a clay pigeon with a semi-automatic shotgun.
Within a few bullets I was tired of shooting the rifle, though, as it was very loud and kicked like a drunken mule. I would not improve my accuracy before hunting, I reasoned. I would manifest the opportunity to behead a deer from point-blank range.
Hirsch and I were staying at a luxurious craftsman style house in the boondocks of Humboldt County while its owners explored Montana. Initially I spent a days pacing around the house with the rifle in my hands, spotting the cat through the scope, climbing onto the roof and assuming various prone poses, covering the entrance to the driveway from the roof, fondling the nicely heavy cartridges and the bolt, listening to Megadeth and ranting about how I was going to blow off some deer’s head. “I’m going to go strait for the head shot,” I said, and Hirsch said, “but what if you miss, and you blow off its jaw or something, and it goes around all deformed for days before it dies?” And I said, “I’m going to blow its head clean off.” I even made a ghilly suit, with the leaves of huckleberry bushes. I imagined myself in an abandoned warehouse, Hillary Clinton rolling by in a convertible…
In order to learn the proper way of gutting a deer, which Hirsch was certain I would not be able to psychologically handle, we watched a series of videos on You Tube titled “Fat Boy Goes Hunting.” These were hosted by a rotund, beer-sucking redneck slouched in the seat of a swamp boat. “Gun berk, huhguhug. Bingk dung berk,” he bellowed, pointing this way and that, his face the color of a ripe tomato.
The only other chore I had to carry out before hunting was to obtain a license. By state law, I had to undergo a short gun safety class to do so. The class was held at a skeet club whose firing range pointed towards the end of the regional airport's runway.
Jeanette Griffin of the California Department of Fish and Game instructed five fat white people in the club's lounge shack. She began by defending the philosophy of hunting.
“These animals are going to die anyway, so instead, we kill and eat them,” she said. “You ever seen a deer with two fawns? Yeah, well, later in the year there’s only one fawn.”
Jeanette brought a small arsenal of firearms. She had a break-barrel shotgun, a semi-automatic shotgun, a bolt-action rifle, a semi-automatic rifle, an autopistol, a revolver, and a muzzle loader. She went over each and explained how they worked in a perfunctory manner. "This here's the barrel," she would say, and then closing the bolt, "is it loaded? What do you think? Is it loaded?"
A few hours later she handed out a multiple choice test with questions like:
Question 51.
An animal that kills other animals for food is called a:
- Rooster
- Vegetarian
- Varmint
- Predator
Question 62.
Hunter Education is important because it:
- Helps sell camouflage clothing
- Keeps old instructors busy
- Teaches ethics, safety, and responsibility
- Spends government money
Behind the house lay an open field. A top-floor window there afforded a perfect view of the field. This area Hirsch and I considered the “kill zone,” and every day a doe and her two fawns would come prancing through to eat berries and other plants in the kill zone. One time we saw six of them, all fawns and does. There was a garden and orchard of perhaps a quarter-acre there, surrounded by a deer fence.
“All we have to do,” Hirsch said, “is open the gate and let the deer saunter in, and then close the gate on them, and corral them in there, and then shoot them one at a time from the upstairs window. Boom! Chik-chik. Boom! Chik-chik,” he said, miming racking the action of a rifle.
We started baiting the field with apples. The deer came and ate the apples, even fighting over them. The little buck (he had two little stubs on his head and his coat was still spotted) would come and munch on the apple and chase all his sisters away. This sexism offended Hirsch's sense of social justice. “That motherfucker,” he said, “we should blow his head off.”
We moved the apples inside the corral while I set up a turret in the upstairs bedroom. Then Hirsch hid behind a nearby bush and we waited, sucking beers. Sure enough, the little buck and his two sisters came back, entered the garden and began nosing around.
It is illegal to kill a buck who lacks at least one junction in each of his antlers. This law I did not care for, any more than I would care for statutory rape laws if I encountered the opportunity to ravish a nubile young girl. My visceral impulses were too strong. There they were, the animals, and my trigger finger was itching. A drop of drool hung from my lip.
Suddenly, Hirsch emerged, startling the deer, and they ran in a circle idiotically, unaware that their route of escape had just been eliminated. He closed and latched the gate. I smiled. I cocked my weapon.
Our little Soribor was perfect. From my perspective, the slaughter wouldn't even take any heroic marksmanship. I held the high ground. Julius Caesar's podium. The little buck was a miserable Christian in the lion pen. Slowly I lowered the barrel to the window sill, peered through the scope, and lined up the little buck's forehead between the cross hairs. He peered back with a resigned expression. I saw it in his eyes. He knew. Breathe out slowly.
Then a sudden realization seized me.
What about the deer's feelings? He was still young. He had his entire deer life ahead of him. His spirit fire was inherently valuable. He was a unique ball of energy who contributed meaning to the vast and incomprehensible universe. What about the precepts of Zen? They expressly forbid killing, even though there isn't so much as killing. There isn't even “no killing.” Mu killing. Were not their long spiritual traditions in Christianity against killing as well? It led to Hell. In Judaism too there was a commandment. Just about every ethical framework in the world looked warily at wholesale slaughter like the kind I proposed to undertake. There were metaphysical prohibitions on killing, and humanistic ones. There were legal codes everywhere that proscribed harsh punishment for it. There was a strong sense of guilt swirling around it. The karmas would come back around later. The deer would come home to roost. Five lifetimes from now I'd be lined up and shot and bulldozed into a shallow grave for it, like all the people in Soribor.
Hirsch wondered if I was going to shoot. I looked down through the window over the end of the Savage barrel and told him that I had reconsidered. I was pardoning the deer.
He slouched over to the fence, disappointed, and opened it. Then he went back inside downstairs. The little buck pranced towards freedom. It could have been a scene in a Disney animated feature. The sun broke through a cloud at that moment, and the little buck turned and looked up at it, and I could have sworn that I heard celestial organ music.
I had a robust meal of bacon that evening.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Geriatria
Marci slouched before a table of disheveled place settings-- spoons submerged in pools of vinaigrette, sweet rolls flattened and left half chewed to become stale, flutes mostly empty of flat bubbly. The brass cacophony of a swing band crashed into her ears. Two tables away geriatric bodies gyrated on the dance floor. She wanted to dance. But Marci slouched, remembering that she was sixty. A fierce ache emanated from the lower part of her back.
With two hands on the edge of the table she pushed her delicate frame into standing position. Behind her, people milled around a spread of wine and cheese, talking over the music. Marci tipped the last of her wine down her throat, turned and moved stiffly towards the crowd.
The first man she encountered wore his hair in thin strands over the gleaming dome of his scalp. He was looking around for someone to talk to. When Marci stood in front of him, he looked up at her and the salt-and-pepper bushes above his eyes lifted.
“I'm Marci,” she said.
“I'm Theodore,” he said, drunkenly and eagerly. She didn't hear him. Standing brought the pain to an unbearable pitch.
“Do you have an ibuprofen?” she asked. A man with white hair standing behind Theodore turned when she said it. With palpable interest he inserted himself into the conversation circle. He was wearing a smoke gray suit and a hearing aide.
“An ibuprofen?” Theodore said, a laugh in his voice. “Of course not. Who needs that? You might as well drink a cup of tea. But I've got a Percoset.” He reached into the lapel pocket of his suit coat and produced a cylinder of white pills. Marci saw a twinkle of mischief in his eyes.
“That's a little strong,” she said.
“I've got Vicoden,” said the second man, suddenly turning to place his wine flute on the cheese table, and running his hands across his pockets searchingly.
“Excuse me,” Marci said, touching her chest. “I'm Marci.”
“Hansford Berkenshire,” the man said, “pleased to meet you.” They shook hands. Mr. Berkenshire turned again, pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket, and blew his nose.
“Thank you both,” Marci said. Mr. Berkenshire looked at her through the tops of his eye sockets while he cleaned the last vestiges of snot from around his nose. “I'm looking for something less potent. Otherwise I'll be absolutely incapacitated.”
“Exactly the point!” Theodore said garrulously, slapping Mr. Berkenshire on the back, who glanced sharply at his rival. “Either you can be crippled from pain, or crippled from drugs.”
Marci smiled and backed away from Theodore and Mr. Berkenshire with as much grace as she could conjure. She bumped into a soft surface. A mountain of a man with a handlebar mustache and three chins turned around and lay his gaze across her. The lower part of his huge face broke into a smile. It was too late.
“Upton,” he said abruptly, thrusting a meaty hand towards Marci. His white, frizzy hair, which projected from around each ear, wiggled when he moved. Gingerly Marci slipped her hand into his and his crushed around hers suffocatingly. They shook.
“And what do you do for yourself, Upton?” she said, blushing. A red-hot dagger slid lengthwise through her kidney, and she failed to suppress a grimace.
“I've been forty years in the civil service,” he boomed in a trombone tenor. “Did I hear you say you were looking for an ibuprofen? What's the matter?”
“My back,” she said. “I'm in terrible pain.”
“Well, I've got a soma,” he said. “It's a muscle relaxant. I'd imagine that it's just what you need. Back pain is really just muscle pain, you know.” He rattled two pills out of an amber tube as he spoke.
“I'd rather not,” Marci said. “I just want an ibuprofen.”
“This man is a doctor!” Mr. Berkenshire exclaimed suddenly, pushing his way back into Marci's attention. He was leading a squat man in a crème sash by the shoulder. The man looked around confusedly through a thick pair of spectacles, bunching up his nose.
“Where's the patient,” he said nasally.
“I'm Marci,” Marci said, “what's your name?”
“This is doctor Bertrand Cordova of the Mayo Institute,” Mr. Berkenshire said. Dr. Cordova looked up at him objectionably. “He's won several awards.”
“I'm quite capable of introducing myself,” the doctor said. He pushed his glasses up his nose and rolled his shoulders back.
“Nice to meet you, Doctor,” Marci said. “My lower back has been killing me for two days.”
Upton pushed his way in again. “I just remembered that I've got these other yellow pills,” he said. “Last time I had one, it knocked me out for hours.”
“Oh,” Marci said, and she felt her knees weaken. She rubbed the spot where the ache was the deepest and most entrenched, like a Nazi bunker above Normandy Beach.
“Are you an imbecile?” Mr. Berkenshire said. “How could you offer the lady a mysterious pill? You'll kill her!”
“He's a rapist!” exclaimed Theodore, who was back, his face the color of a ripe tomato.
“Defamy!” Upton said. “I'll sue you.” He began to roll up his sport-coat sleeves.
“Gentlemen, get a hold of yourselves!” Mr. Berkenshire said, coming to the center of the circle and waving his arms in the air. “The lady is crippled. We must save her.”
The Doctor turned to Upton. “Give me three of those pills,” he said.
“What are they?” Marci asked.
“Pure codeine,” the Doctor said. “These are antiques. You can't get them anywhere anymore. You should consider yourself lucky.”
“Oh?” Marci said.
“Nonsense,” Theodore said, “Percoset is stronger. What are you doing?”
“I'm the doctor!” the Doctor said, shrinking away from Theodore and growling.
Marci sunk to her knees, sighing, and sat on the parquet tiles. “She's falling down!” Theodore exclaimed.
“Alright, gentlemen,” Marci said, “give me everything you've got.”
An frenzied eruption engulfed the bachelors as they each reached to deliver their pills. Theodore pushed towards her with a handful of Percoset. Mr. Berkenshire rattled out five Vicodens. Upton poured a full glass of wine and handed it to her with his entire bottle of soma.
Marci ate the pills as quickly as she could and drank the wine. The bachelors swayed around her, whispering to one another. She tried to get up, and then collapsed.
“Oh, my God!” Theodore said. He grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her up. She slouched into a white, padded chair.
The music was all mixed together with the talking and shuffling people around her. The pills burnt the pain out of her back like a blowtorch. In its place came a sense of floating. The world turned white. Marci sunk into the chair, into oblivion. She closed her eyes.
“She's better!” Theodore said. “She's better!”
With two hands on the edge of the table she pushed her delicate frame into standing position. Behind her, people milled around a spread of wine and cheese, talking over the music. Marci tipped the last of her wine down her throat, turned and moved stiffly towards the crowd.
The first man she encountered wore his hair in thin strands over the gleaming dome of his scalp. He was looking around for someone to talk to. When Marci stood in front of him, he looked up at her and the salt-and-pepper bushes above his eyes lifted.
“I'm Marci,” she said.
“I'm Theodore,” he said, drunkenly and eagerly. She didn't hear him. Standing brought the pain to an unbearable pitch.
“Do you have an ibuprofen?” she asked. A man with white hair standing behind Theodore turned when she said it. With palpable interest he inserted himself into the conversation circle. He was wearing a smoke gray suit and a hearing aide.
“An ibuprofen?” Theodore said, a laugh in his voice. “Of course not. Who needs that? You might as well drink a cup of tea. But I've got a Percoset.” He reached into the lapel pocket of his suit coat and produced a cylinder of white pills. Marci saw a twinkle of mischief in his eyes.
“That's a little strong,” she said.
“I've got Vicoden,” said the second man, suddenly turning to place his wine flute on the cheese table, and running his hands across his pockets searchingly.
“Excuse me,” Marci said, touching her chest. “I'm Marci.”
“Hansford Berkenshire,” the man said, “pleased to meet you.” They shook hands. Mr. Berkenshire turned again, pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket, and blew his nose.
“Thank you both,” Marci said. Mr. Berkenshire looked at her through the tops of his eye sockets while he cleaned the last vestiges of snot from around his nose. “I'm looking for something less potent. Otherwise I'll be absolutely incapacitated.”
“Exactly the point!” Theodore said garrulously, slapping Mr. Berkenshire on the back, who glanced sharply at his rival. “Either you can be crippled from pain, or crippled from drugs.”
Marci smiled and backed away from Theodore and Mr. Berkenshire with as much grace as she could conjure. She bumped into a soft surface. A mountain of a man with a handlebar mustache and three chins turned around and lay his gaze across her. The lower part of his huge face broke into a smile. It was too late.
“Upton,” he said abruptly, thrusting a meaty hand towards Marci. His white, frizzy hair, which projected from around each ear, wiggled when he moved. Gingerly Marci slipped her hand into his and his crushed around hers suffocatingly. They shook.
“And what do you do for yourself, Upton?” she said, blushing. A red-hot dagger slid lengthwise through her kidney, and she failed to suppress a grimace.
“I've been forty years in the civil service,” he boomed in a trombone tenor. “Did I hear you say you were looking for an ibuprofen? What's the matter?”
“My back,” she said. “I'm in terrible pain.”
“Well, I've got a soma,” he said. “It's a muscle relaxant. I'd imagine that it's just what you need. Back pain is really just muscle pain, you know.” He rattled two pills out of an amber tube as he spoke.
“I'd rather not,” Marci said. “I just want an ibuprofen.”
“This man is a doctor!” Mr. Berkenshire exclaimed suddenly, pushing his way back into Marci's attention. He was leading a squat man in a crème sash by the shoulder. The man looked around confusedly through a thick pair of spectacles, bunching up his nose.
“Where's the patient,” he said nasally.
“I'm Marci,” Marci said, “what's your name?”
“This is doctor Bertrand Cordova of the Mayo Institute,” Mr. Berkenshire said. Dr. Cordova looked up at him objectionably. “He's won several awards.”
“I'm quite capable of introducing myself,” the doctor said. He pushed his glasses up his nose and rolled his shoulders back.
“Nice to meet you, Doctor,” Marci said. “My lower back has been killing me for two days.”
Upton pushed his way in again. “I just remembered that I've got these other yellow pills,” he said. “Last time I had one, it knocked me out for hours.”
“Oh,” Marci said, and she felt her knees weaken. She rubbed the spot where the ache was the deepest and most entrenched, like a Nazi bunker above Normandy Beach.
“Are you an imbecile?” Mr. Berkenshire said. “How could you offer the lady a mysterious pill? You'll kill her!”
“He's a rapist!” exclaimed Theodore, who was back, his face the color of a ripe tomato.
“Defamy!” Upton said. “I'll sue you.” He began to roll up his sport-coat sleeves.
“Gentlemen, get a hold of yourselves!” Mr. Berkenshire said, coming to the center of the circle and waving his arms in the air. “The lady is crippled. We must save her.”
The Doctor turned to Upton. “Give me three of those pills,” he said.
“What are they?” Marci asked.
“Pure codeine,” the Doctor said. “These are antiques. You can't get them anywhere anymore. You should consider yourself lucky.”
“Oh?” Marci said.
“Nonsense,” Theodore said, “Percoset is stronger. What are you doing?”
“I'm the doctor!” the Doctor said, shrinking away from Theodore and growling.
Marci sunk to her knees, sighing, and sat on the parquet tiles. “She's falling down!” Theodore exclaimed.
“Alright, gentlemen,” Marci said, “give me everything you've got.”
An frenzied eruption engulfed the bachelors as they each reached to deliver their pills. Theodore pushed towards her with a handful of Percoset. Mr. Berkenshire rattled out five Vicodens. Upton poured a full glass of wine and handed it to her with his entire bottle of soma.
Marci ate the pills as quickly as she could and drank the wine. The bachelors swayed around her, whispering to one another. She tried to get up, and then collapsed.
“Oh, my God!” Theodore said. He grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her up. She slouched into a white, padded chair.
The music was all mixed together with the talking and shuffling people around her. The pills burnt the pain out of her back like a blowtorch. In its place came a sense of floating. The world turned white. Marci sunk into the chair, into oblivion. She closed her eyes.
“She's better!” Theodore said. “She's better!”
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Dog Soul Mate
I met my dog soul mate in Bolinas today! I walked out of Bo Tierra garden on my way to nowhere and a juniper hedge was barking at me. I wrote a haiku about it in my spiral bound reporter's notebook and continued walking. Bush barking at me/ smells like shit there; it's a dog/ not the President. A little white spotted terrier with brown and black patches on her face came tearing out from behind the hedge and sprinted out in front of me. I followed her along Kale road. I walked around the bluff over Agate beach and she followed me, racing back and forth, pissing on everything and tearing up the ground with her paws. We walked to the beach. Suddenly she went up into Jack's creek and returned with a tennis ball. She dropped it at my feet. I threw it down the beach over and over and she ran after it and back, kicking up an explosion of sand with each catch. Sometimes she didn't drop the ball and instead held it in her mouth, repeatedly squeezing it. Sometimes she held the ball so tenaciously that I could lift her entirely off the ground by it, and she hung there growling. I growled back at her. Then I found it was more fun to throw the ball up the cliff so she could catch it as it bounced erratically down. She was in a frenzy. Then I found it was even more fun to throw it out over Duxbury reef so that she would run over the tide pools, sliding out on the seaweed, and dive into the waves after it. She came back panting frantically and running around me in circles, tearing up the whole beach. Every time she returned with the ball she dropped it at my feet and shook dog-smelling saltwater all over my pants. We had wonderful fun together, but eventually I was tired of throwing. She ran up Jack's creek again and I followed her. She dropped the tennis ball off a ledge into a fetid pool and stood looking down at it despondently. Then she bounded off the ledge, stepped gingerly into the pool, retrieved the ball, placed the now-stinky ball at my feet and begged me to throw it more. I went back to the beach and started walking up the trail. She passed me, ran way up the trail, and dropped the ball so that it rolled pathetically down to the ends of my toes. At last I threw the ball into a giant thicket of fennel. The game is up, I thought. She tore into the fennel, ransacked it, and emerged with the ball. She rolled around in the grass and wood chips at the trails edge, snorting. She was all wet and dirty and crazy. I kept throwing the ball for her over and over as we walked up Kale road. Finally, she hid the ball in someone's yard. A dog suitor distracted her near the garden and she went to flirt with him and smell his ass, and we parted rather nonchalantly. Best dog ever! We'll be in love forever...
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Constitution of the United State of Alaska
We the supporters of Sarah Palin, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United State of Alaska.
Article 1. Freedom of Religion
Jesus is Lord and Savior. Anyone who don't like it can get the hell out.
Article 2. Marriage
Marriage shall be between one man and one woman who promises to respect and obey him forever.
2a. Homos and other queers are banished to the North Slope.
2b. Abortion is illegal, including in cases of rape or incest.
Article 3. Economic Policy
Gas shall not cost more than 30 cents a gallon.
3a. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is hereby eliminated and replaced by the Alaska Strategic Reserve for the Eternal Refueling of Quads, Dirtbikes, Pick-ups, Big Rigs, Snowcats, Generators, Power Boats, Motorhomes, and Tractors, Especially of the Competitive Variety.
3b. Not one square inch of the Republican Republic's sovereign territory shall be off-limits to muddin' or other wheelin' activities.
Article 4.
Each house shall quarter at least one soldier.
Article 5. Executive and Legislative Powers
President-for-life Sarah Palin gets executive and legislative powers.
Article 6. Veto Power
First-Dude-for-life Todd Palin gets veto powers by virtue of his being the man of the house.
Article 7. Judicial Power
Judicial power is vested in one Supreme Court of nine judges elected by the people. The judges must be clergy of the Pentecostal Church. Principles of conflicting parties may also choose to settle their differences by a no-holds barred cage fight, or by motorized jousting. In the former case, everything goes except eye-gouging, hooking or groin shots. In the latter case, contestants will race towards one another wielding pruning-saw lengtheners, aboard either dirtbikes or snow cats, depending on the season. In either case, Jesus will see to it that the best man wins.
7a. Duane “Dog” Chapman is hereby appointed Attorney General.
Article 8. Court Jester
Trig Paxton Van Palin is hereby named Court Jester.
Article 9. Decorations
The flag of the Republic shall depict President-for-life Sarah field-dressing a moose before an oil derrick.
9a. The national anthem is “Drill Here, Drill Now” by Aaron Tippin.
Article 10. Global Warming
National policy will be for the advancement of global warming.
Article 11. Taxes
There is a flat tax of 1% on income. All of it shall be spent on the military, specifically the Corps (Semper Fi!) Taxes shall never rise. Big-government boondoggles with our hard-earned money are prohibited. A war is never a boondoggle. In case of war, taxes are eliminated to stimulate the economy.
Article 12. John McCain
John McCain is persona non-grata in the Republic. He is officially not forgiven for losing to Monkey Hussein.
Article 13. Bad Luck.
Article 14. Education
Due to lack of funding, state schools are eliminated. Home schooling is encouraged. Ideal curriculum includes field-dressing game, handling automatic weapons, wheelin', and church on Sunday.
Article 15. Drug Policy
There shall be no wacky tobacco smoking or other hippie business.
15a. No drinking on Sunday, dammit.
15b. Drinking and driving is okay, as long as you don't get too drunk.
Article 16. Immigration
No Mexicans.
16a. No Muslims.
16b. No communists.
16c. No foreign-language speakers, except in cases of divine possession.
16d. No poorly-dressed Negroes.
16e. Applicants undergo a period of hazing.
Article 1. Freedom of Religion
Jesus is Lord and Savior. Anyone who don't like it can get the hell out.
Article 2. Marriage
Marriage shall be between one man and one woman who promises to respect and obey him forever.
2a. Homos and other queers are banished to the North Slope.
2b. Abortion is illegal, including in cases of rape or incest.
Article 3. Economic Policy
Gas shall not cost more than 30 cents a gallon.
3a. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is hereby eliminated and replaced by the Alaska Strategic Reserve for the Eternal Refueling of Quads, Dirtbikes, Pick-ups, Big Rigs, Snowcats, Generators, Power Boats, Motorhomes, and Tractors, Especially of the Competitive Variety.
3b. Not one square inch of the Republican Republic's sovereign territory shall be off-limits to muddin' or other wheelin' activities.
Article 4.
Each house shall quarter at least one soldier.
Article 5. Executive and Legislative Powers
President-for-life Sarah Palin gets executive and legislative powers.
Article 6. Veto Power
First-Dude-for-life Todd Palin gets veto powers by virtue of his being the man of the house.
Article 7. Judicial Power
Judicial power is vested in one Supreme Court of nine judges elected by the people. The judges must be clergy of the Pentecostal Church. Principles of conflicting parties may also choose to settle their differences by a no-holds barred cage fight, or by motorized jousting. In the former case, everything goes except eye-gouging, hooking or groin shots. In the latter case, contestants will race towards one another wielding pruning-saw lengtheners, aboard either dirtbikes or snow cats, depending on the season. In either case, Jesus will see to it that the best man wins.
7a. Duane “Dog” Chapman is hereby appointed Attorney General.
Article 8. Court Jester
Trig Paxton Van Palin is hereby named Court Jester.
Article 9. Decorations
The flag of the Republic shall depict President-for-life Sarah field-dressing a moose before an oil derrick.
9a. The national anthem is “Drill Here, Drill Now” by Aaron Tippin.
Article 10. Global Warming
National policy will be for the advancement of global warming.
Article 11. Taxes
There is a flat tax of 1% on income. All of it shall be spent on the military, specifically the Corps (Semper Fi!) Taxes shall never rise. Big-government boondoggles with our hard-earned money are prohibited. A war is never a boondoggle. In case of war, taxes are eliminated to stimulate the economy.
Article 12. John McCain
John McCain is persona non-grata in the Republic. He is officially not forgiven for losing to Monkey Hussein.
Article 13. Bad Luck.
Article 14. Education
Due to lack of funding, state schools are eliminated. Home schooling is encouraged. Ideal curriculum includes field-dressing game, handling automatic weapons, wheelin', and church on Sunday.
Article 15. Drug Policy
There shall be no wacky tobacco smoking or other hippie business.
15a. No drinking on Sunday, dammit.
15b. Drinking and driving is okay, as long as you don't get too drunk.
Article 16. Immigration
No Mexicans.
16a. No Muslims.
16b. No communists.
16c. No foreign-language speakers, except in cases of divine possession.
16d. No poorly-dressed Negroes.
16e. Applicants undergo a period of hazing.
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