True pregnant beauty

Sometimes, the pregnant female form is about

the most wonderful thing in the world to look at.

Screwed up blog code

I have been away from the blog because Blogger has a "autosave" feature that pissed me off so much I walked away. It would save everything I wrote with a new entry, and I wound up with about three dozen posts for every sentence I wrote.

I hope it's fixed now.

And now, the sexual organs of flowers. Passion flowers from my deck.

I got a new camera. It fucking rocks. A digital SLR that has a really, really wide angle lens. Thanks Kori!

Prom Queen

SShe was the talk of the prom in that fine frock.

Kaboom, Tar Baby-Man with Malcontentia!

He pounds the skins

sounds sweeter than sin

he tickles and taps

knows where to rap!

The lovely dark eyed Pam

Does one become a sort of rockstar because they look like they should be, or because they rock out? Dark mysteries like this escape my puny primate brain.

T-Man, with crow

A photo from last night's band shooting. Scary, but damn handsome.

My New Loud Band

In all it's middle aged glory. Pam, Robin, Tim and that rude malcontented fake redhead.

This band's fun.

They don't give me dirty looks when I sing, ask me to play my songs instead of just telling me they're too dark, or ignoring them,.

They don't seem to see me as a tool to further their music and egos.

It feels really good, and like we're all in it for the sheer joy of playing music.

And we get to play loud!

We have two gigs coming up on June 2, too. More on that later.

Eliminate the middle man

Theology: the learning and developing of methods and practice in how to make people feel like shit about themselves, to make them scared of imaginary beings, also a method of middle man money extraction and a means to power and wealth filled with manipulative and needless speculation.
This madness is also tightly woven into religion, modern physics and political identity, and is both a curse and a source of endless wars, hatred and emotional abuse.

Spirituality: the day to day realization that there are things bigger than one's self, and that the huge and beautiful mystery known as life and sentience is bigger than our tiny primate brains could hold.
Being solidly connected to spiritual thinking in a world full of fundamentalist thinkers is a rare gift, and sensitive people who can rub more than a few neurons together are often driven mad by people practicing the often barbaric and ruthless methods of theology. Which have been all of them from where I see things.

My New Homeboy

My new pal Lucas. He's not much of a conversationalist, but sure has a loud voice. Mostly he just sleeps and farts a lot. Almost every time he stretches.

News Flash! The Pope sets pagan babies free! ( act now and we'll toss in a free bottle of holy water!)

Today the pope said he was getting rid of limbo, and all those pagan babies I worried about in third grade must be filing into heaven one at a time.
I wonder if heaven's got a DMV take a number setup, or if they just open up a whole new subdevelopment? There's gotta be a long line, going back to the neaderthal age of babies waiting to get in.
Then there's all those good hearted adult pagans that were supposed to be waiting too.
I wonder what the waiting room looked like, if it had horrible uncomfortable chairs, bad bathrooms, horrible coffee that tasted like cat piss filtered through broken and burnt walnut husks, with buletin boards on the walls covered in notices for things like the limboholics anonomyous group, and if the room had flickering flourescents and a strange pine disinfectant smell?
I knew the whole Catholic church and reliegon were horseshit by the time I was ten. And it was those poor pagan babies waiting in limbo forever that woke me up. I suppose I should be thankfull and not bite the hand that both blessed me and woke me up.

Cash money from the market gig

Right before we left on our road trip, my pal Bess and I played at the wintertime Farmer's Market. They liked us! We got fifty bucks tossed into the violin case, a great free organic breakfast, played two long sets for an oddly attentive crowd, and even had four people ask us if we had a cd and what our band name was. I told em' Led Zepplin.

It was good to play out again, I've been missing it since I got booted from the last band I was in.

Playing as an acoustic duo with Bess rocks. It's simple, organic and flowing, and really relaxing

to escape the weirdness that comes from playing with ego and insecurity driven singer songwriters. I sure love playing the loose instrumental music, and the crowd sure seemed to pay more attention than I expected.

The woman who runs the entertainment at the winter market wants us back again next fall when the big noisy, stroller and tourist choked market closes down again for the season.

What I Saw On My Trip To Cleveland

Sneaker, Atlantic Ocean, Wet Foot.

Kitty Hawk Sunrise, Again. April 2006

Snow in April

small flakes are drifing down

april is here but with a frown
tommorow when we leave this town
the goddamn snowlfakes
will follow us around
this weather sucks
but it won't last

things got green really fast

this ugly winter will

be in the past.

Toadkiller Dog drawing

Too much coffee brings out the artist in me. Or at least something like an artist.

I liked the name Toadkiller Dog in Glen Cook's Black Company novels, so I drew one. One that looks nothing like the one in the book.

http://riotclitshave.livejournal.com/ another good image site

I have no idea who took this photo, but I sure feel like it could be me on a bad day.

riot rite right clit clip clickshave slave save : http://riotclitshave.livejournal.com/ is another kick ass photo site I hit every few days.http://riotclitshave.livejournal.com/

Stuck In Customs photoblog

Go check out Trey Ratcliff's blog of photos. Here's one sample image.
www.stuckincustoms.com

Two Steps (more lyrics)

Two steps behind

She might just look back
to see where she's been
if just remind her to say
never again

One foot in front
two steps behind
headin’ on out
lookin’ for signs

Freedom comes hard
fear comes first
leaving is easy
all it takes is the thirst
better times and newer things
different songs and fewer strings

and She might just look back
to see where she's been
if just to remind her to say
never again

the road is the road
it's not good or bad
but it being back on it
makes her feel good
It hurts her to leave
hurts worse to stay
her feet are on it either way

She might just look back
to see where she's been
if just remind her to say
never again

One foot in front
two steps behind
headin’ on outlookin’ for signs

At the coffee shop (self portrait)

I love wide angle lenses. They fit my view of the world, a huge place

filled with angels and assholes and flowers and freaks.

Job title becomes new name

I think I'm going to change my blog name to Malcontentia, the dark and evil artist formerly known as ellie.
It's all part of a nefarious scheme to destroy the self confidence of the world's manly men with guitars.
I think I'll make a loose black and red leather coustume and get a utility belt with ropes and wire cutters and a super soaker full of bitter bile to shoot out at the people who irritate me.
Then again, I might just go play my guitar in the sun, and rejoice that I'm not stuck in an office full of management types. It sounds like less work than being a superheroine, and it's much more fun, soaking up sun and making vitamin D.

Warm, at last

Wet rain
mud and slush and crusty dirt
the fields have bed head
grass matts up like a hipster's straw blonde head
cigarette buts and crocus green
winter leaves the scene
whoa, strange feeling, I'm warm!
spring does not suck.

Unreasonable Man

I like this quote, but I'd change it to human instead of man. But old George was not a man who lived in times where women were considered equal.
Then again, in most of the world these days, they're still not considered equal. Never mind.


"The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him... The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself... All progress depends on the unreasonable man."

George Bernard Shaw

Junkyard lover lyrics

she got a big mean pitbull
tear you apart
she got tattoo says mother
over her heart
sleeps in the junkyard
down by the swamp
throw you down on her bed
for a short little romp
yeah she's a junkyard lover
gonna tear you apart
gasoline and roses
squalor and sin
chugging down bottles of tonic and gin

she keeps a loaded shotgun
under her seat
got a pair of legs look like
rock solid meat
she swears like a sailor
drinks like a fish
shoots rock salt and buckshot
and she can't seem to miss

yeah she's your junkyard lover
gonna tear you apart
gasoline and roses
squalor and sin
chugging down bottles of tonic and gin

He wouldn't stay down (even more dark lyrics)

she hit him but he wouldn't stay down
she wasn't taking any more
from that drunken ass clown
she hit him but he wouldn't stay down
it looked like an accident when they carried him out
he was flopping around like a half dead trout
all she said when they asked her was
"he's drunk and he fell"
she hit him but he wouldn't stay down
she wasn't taking any more
from that drunken ass clown
she hit him but he wouldn't stay down
seventeen stiches they put in his head
the blood they drained out
was a dark ugly red
and some people said he'd be better off dead
she hit him but he wouldn't stay down
she wasn't taking any more
from that drunken ass clown
she hit him but he wouldn't stay down
now he walks around town with a stupid grin
big old scar from his ear to his chin
he drools and he laughs sees things that aren't there
the new village idiot in the town square
she hit him but he wouldn't stay down
she wasn't taking any more
from that drunken ass clown
she hit him but he wouldn't stay down

Where the blacktop started (more lyrics)

She drove on out
to where the blacktop started
thinkin' it was long past time
that they parted
down the road
where the highway called
better off alone than broken hearted
She drove all night
drove so long and drove so far
only stopped to gas up the car
eyes got tired and her back got tight
she drove on into a new dawn's light
every mile behind her felt so right
been so long
since she'd felt this light
drivin' all day
and into the night
things were bad
then things got worse
every word spoken
became a curse
had to give up the fight
to win the war
every mile behind her felt so right
been so long
since she'd felt this light
drivin' all day
and into the night

Pig Chow (lyrics)

She dragged his body down the stairs
one last shove
pushed him right in
to the hog pen
watched as the hogs
dug right in
she took a rake in the morning
pulled his clothing back out
burned it in the yard
then she got the hell out
took the truck and the shotgun
his money and dog
put the pedal to the floor
drove until dark
never looked in the rearview
he had a mean black heart
seems like killing
isn't always a sin
sometimes it feels so good
you want to do it again
yeah it feels so good
you want to do it again

I've been working for a few months on a project of songs one of my pals calls Swamp Noir, this is one that popped out the other day.
Hopefully the three or four of us can get this stuff into cd form before we're dead. Or before we get too wrapped up in the joy of warm weather bike rides.

Snow Keeps Melting lyrics

the snow keeps melting
the rain keeps falling
that river is rising
and we don't have a boat
I'm thinkin' maybe god
will throw me a rope
cause the road is blocked
it's a shred of hope

the wind is howling
and the sky's coal black
I waited too long for
my baby to come back
the power's off
the food's all gone
when that water comes in
gotta hold on strong

three feet of water
comin' through the door
it's just gettin' started
gonna be a lot more
it's cold as hell
and black as a grave
mother nature's in the mood
to misbehave

the snow keeps melting
the rain keeps falling
that river is rising
and we don't have a boat
I'm thinkin' maybe god
will throw me a rope
cause the road is blocked
it's a shred of hope

Louder

You stopped listening
I talked louder
things got ugly
everything became harder
The wheels came off
things went bad
losing each other
both of us mad
the saddest thing of all
is it didn't have to happen
when the end came

you didn't even call
just loaded up my inbox
with nasty vitriol
so you asked me to go
I said ok
sick and tired of fighting
you got what you wanted
I went away
coulda shoulda woulda
it's what we didn't say
it's all so different
when you first asked me
to come out and play
coulda shoulda woulda
before it all went away
might have made a difference
to say what we didn't say
but it sure did end

an a pointless ugly way

Lifestyle or New Job Title?

malcontent
Function:
noun
Date:
1581
: a discontented person: a: one who bears a grudge from a sense of grievance or thwarted ambition b: one who is in active opposition to an established order or government : Rebel

I have been branded
a cranky malcontent
a troublemaker
and a grinch
someone who just refuses
to give in an inch
It's really quite simple
I hear them say
just shut the hell up
and do it my way!
But life is too short
and ugly and unfair
so I'd rather just give them
a steely eyed glare
Tom Petty told me
he wouldn't back down
he'd sure as hell stand his ground
and I agree his advice is sound
and tell all the assholes
when they come around
be carefull of those
with whom you mess around
cause it's your ass
that I will pound.

Viral Microfiction, Chapter One:

Anybody who's been reading this blog knows I've been writing microfictions about a big die off of the human race from an incredbly lethal virus. Oddly enough, I never wrote an intro story.
So today I did, and here it is.
I've started recording some of the virus stories to put out a podcast or cd, having pals read it. I hope to get it done before long.
Anyway, here's the first chapter. Some of the information is from the Bird Flu Wiki, some of it is right out of the science news I read.


The virus seemed to come out of nowhere, and at the same time it popped up everywhere. One week there were only the usual casually dismissed reports of wild birds and animals dying, the next week the morgues of every city and town had started to fill up.

Jet airliners and the interstate highway system allowed it to spread like a wildfire, throwing the sparks that ignited into a wave of death unlike anything modern civilization had seen before.

Every school, daycare and hospital became a center for infection.

In North America, the for profit health system had driven cost cutting in every sector of health care, and there were no isolation wards or extra beds to be had for the number of patients already in the system.

The virus spread on the wind, spread hand to hand, in offal and waste, and even got into the water systems of every town through the wastewater treatment plants . Nobody had time to even figure out where it came from.Some people blamed leftover

Cold War science from the former Soviet Union, others blamed US government researchers.

It may have come from a French lab project that had the goal of using DNA samples to remake ancient viruses. All anybody really knew was that it had a mortality rate of over 94 percent, and just like the 1918 flu, could kill healthy people who became infected within 24 hours.

It was hardest on healthy adults in their 40’s, and nothing seemed to slow it down. Quarantine proved useless, mostly because the just in time delivery systems used in most of the world meant that there were no stockpiles of food, medicine or fuel of any size left in North America.

The truckers who kept the country’s supply chain of food, and medical and fuel supplies also unknowingly supplied the virus along their routes.Some folks saw it coming, but almost nobody had a clue how bad things were going to get. Many of the people who did live died in the fires, the famine, or gave up and died from suicide or trivial medical problems.

Problems that modern science had made non fatal became killers in the space of weeks once the house of cards that civilization was had fallen down.

The huge numbers of dead just added to the misery and level of disease. It was the start of the Chinese year of the Golden Pig, what was supposed to be a time of turmoil, chaos and opportunity, when every child born was fated to be gifted with fortune and wealth.Mostly they just got dead. The few who lived had some seriously weird times ahead….

Her fists, In Black and White, 1988 or so

She was my main model for a long time. She liked being photographed as much as I liked having her as a willing partner in my photographic work. I took this a long time ago, I think around 1988, although I never kept track of dates or techinical issues.

She and I drifted apart as pals, I moved to the west coast and got strange, she moved to the Carolinas and married a guy with a jewlery store, had lots of babies and converted to being a Jew. She stopped modeling nude for me right around then. I don't think her husband liked the idea.

But I am glad I have boxes of photos to remind me of her, and I sure was lucky to have her ask to model for me.

Not as Big

I can see the dark side
of the way things are
how did it get so bad
when we've come so far
I guess it comes down
to who we are
I thought we were bigger
than either one of us

and the doors slam shut
and the meanings got lost
and most of what I wanted
slowly got tossed
thrown over the side
to sink to the bottom
the few that are left
I'm not sure I want them

I wish I was a monkey
swinging from a branch
just grab the next one
take another chance
it sure feels like I'm sick
of doing this dance
I been trying to tell you
but you can't seem to listen
I became unimportant
when you got a mission
I got shut out
or shouted down
ignored or dismissed
like some fucking clown

you expected

your ass to be kissed
sooner or later
you'll look around

and I will be gone

nowhere near

to be found

Scare the Dog MP3

Here's a rough mix of something I'm working on. It will stay rough, because texture and rough edges feel good. At least sometimes when you're sick of smooth edges and exacting performances in other venues.

http://www.snowdancer.stormshadow.com/mp3s/scarethedog.mp3

The Sally Gardens

http://www.snowdancer.stormshadow.com/mp3s/sallygardens.mp3

I am a lead guitar and electric mandocello player. I don't play rythym guitar much at all in my band, but I've been playing music with my nimble fingered buddy Bess, who knows her way around a violin fingerboard pretty damn well.
I get to play simple farmer chord rythym tunes with her, and I'm finding I like the semi-mindless repeating of chord patterns, it's a nice change from having to listen for places to play lead all the time in the Getaway Drivers.
Here's a little uptempo take on an old folk song. I love Bess's double stop fiddle playing.
She rocks.
The original has lyrics writtten by W.B. Yeats, a guy who would have been a kick ass rapper were he alive today, who also wrote The Second Coming, one of my favorite poems.
But we are doing the song as an instrumental. Click on the link above if you want to hear an MP3 of it.

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The Phone Booth, 1989 or 1990

West Virginia, sometime around 1990. New Years Eve, I think.

We were traveling from DC back to the wholesome and bland center of Wisconsin. The roads were a sheet of ice and rain.

Her Aunt had given her a fur coat, and she was midly mortified. Back in those days she was leaning into a hippie chick granola style, trying to be a vegetarian but not liking vegetables.

She was young, had a four hundred volt smile and I was madly in love. And a decade older, and rather obtuse about what the future held.

We pulled over at the phone booth, amazed that here, in a field miles and miles from nowhere, this relic of the 1960's still stood, and still worked. I took a few photos and we cruised on through the grey icy day, headed home.

She's gone from my life now, with twins and a long time girlfriend and a doctorate on the way. Now I make the granola, and I'm old enough to be somebody's hippie grandmother. Life's funny that way.

But I still miss that high voltage smile, and her friendship, even though we've both moved on. Like most things, it looks better in the rearview mirror. I saw her last summer for the first time in ten years. It made me realize how lucky I am to have the sweetie I do now.

How I spent the day after my fall vacation

The world starts to wrench sideways, like a boat being torn off rotten rope moorings. The steady hiss of the nitrous oxide and oxygen mix blend with the sounds of Joe Walsh singing "life's been good to me so far", an ironic tune to have running through your head when the novacaine needle slips right into a nerve, making you seem to hover instantly about 8 inches off the chair with a shock that would no doubt be like the one you send into a dead frog in science class. The man in the white coat stops for a moment, waiting for you to thud back down into the chair like a hog that's been hit with a sledge hammer, then reaches over and drills off most of a tooth you've been carrying around since Eisenhauer was president, all the time mumbling things you can barely hear over the stereo roaring and the odd disconnect from the gas. An hour and a half slide by in that chair, seeming like a slow motion accident, the sucking noises mixing with the grinding, the odd smell of glues and burnt enamel, the gritty spatter of old fillings bouncing off your teeth, finding their way over to the side of your face that doesn't feel like a frozen chicken breast, making you squirm. On the ride home, you realize that this constant removal of tooth material and money from your dwindling stash of cash can't keep up, mostly because you're running out of teeth to suck down money and offer these days of discomfort. And you pray that today's new temp crown stays on till the middle of January, when the new insurance kicks in, and that the tooth you're dropping a thousand bucks on won't decide it needs to finance the root canal dentist's new plasma TV. At least it's gray and raining. I hate walking out of the dentist office numb, drained and filled at the same time. I think I'll be a slacker the rest of the day.

Roadside Attraction, 1940 something

My mother, riding a dinosaur.

She's my rockstar mom. Great cook, world traveler, giver of unconditional love and adopted by hundreds of people with lesser quality mothers. I think this shot was from around 1947

What I drew at the Coffeeshop after four shots of espresso

Roadside Attractions, 1980

Somewhere in New Mexico or Arizona, 1980.

The car died three days later. We traded it for forty bucks and a ride to the Greyhound Bus Depot. In fucking Gallup. Never did like that VW Squareback.

My Father

Born in 1908, from a different world and a different society. Too young to be in World War 1, too old to be in World War two, he spent his life hunting, fishing, painting, logging, and trying to get more done when he was working than anybody else.
He quit his full time job as a caretaker at a huge summer camp to go back to being a logger when he was 70.
He shot 18 black bear in his life with a bow and arrow. He was fifty years old when I was born.
I dumped his ashes into the lake, like he asked, in 1983. He said he wanted to be fed to the big muskies that he spent so much time catching, so we fed him to the fish, sort of.
Sometimes I miss him, but not often.
I loved him, but didn't really find myself until he was gone. That happens when your father is a human dynamo.
But I can say that in the last few years he was alive, we worked out all our shit, and parted as close to being friends as two people so different and far apart as we were could be.

I like this quote

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.James Baldwin, "Down At The Cross: Letter from a Region of My Mind," in The Fire Next Time (1963)

He Liked Right Wing Radio, Too...

He was a reasonable guy, a family man who had two lovely daughters and a whip smart son who would someday be an artist just like his great grandfather, he thought.
He had it all, or at least almost all he wanted, and that was something most people never could say. A lovely wife who had a lusty nature and happily made a home out of the house in the country, a fairly steady job designing industrial parts for a slowly contracting Auto industry, with full benefits and a cranky boss.
True, work kept him on edge with a cut throat approach, but every day he came home to a family that loved him, and a life that he never thought would end.
He wasn't really a political thinker, but he took great comfort in identifying with strong leaders, and his political affiliation was mostly something he viewed like he did a sporting team. You picked a side, learned enough talking points to pee in the rice krispies of anybody who disagreed with you, and firmly believed that anybody on the "other side" was either a pussy, wimp, or hated their country. "Do onto others as you would wish them do onto you" simply didn't apply to politics, he thought. Sometimes you had to do first, when it came to those dangerous islamofacists.
When the planes hit the Twin Towers, he lurched even further to the hard side of politics. He took comfort knowing there was a strong leader in the white house, and the radio talk show folks who seemed to have a clue how dangerous the world was. He supported the war, and agreed with the chorus of voices that bad men had to be killed. Aside from some high gas prices, the war to him was ideological, abstract and distant.
He never saw the bombs dropped on the wrong houses, helped carry the dead out of the rubble, never saw the blood and life drain out of people shot at checkpoints because they didn't understand English. He never saw the wounded or the dead, all kept out of sight and mind. It never even occurred to him that his three beautiful children were connected. Those brown people lived in a different world.
But they didn't live in a different world, and when the Iran war was started by the idiot cowboy president needing to boost his election chances to keep control of congress to avoid impeachment and criminal trials, all hell broke loose.
What was supposed to be a "surgical strike" turned into a full blown war. When the Iranians moved against the US troops in Iraq, already burned out from years of war and stress, things fell apart so fast it seemed surreal.
Six months later, when the suitcase nuke went off in Detroit, he lost his wife and son, both on the edge of the blast coming home from downtown.
The bomb was set off and delivered by an angry patriot. A guy who lost his family to a bomb that had gone astray, and wiped out his son, his son's new bride, his wife and his brothers. A guy who wanted his country to be free, a true believer in god, and a man of morals who loved his country and wanted justice. An Iraqi man who thought he had everything, and then had it taken away by those selfish white people.

Things you might not need to know

I have a dead twin sister.
I have a degree in upholstery.
I think lima beans taste like spitwads dipped in old candle wax
I like eating thick cold chili sandwiches made on caraway rye bread with raw onions for breakfast
I have been an advertising photographer, a house cleaner, a barn painter, a pulp cutter with a Husquavarna chainsaw, and worked for a while destroying software.
I've cleaned up the messes from dead people more than once, and can tell you that a rug doctor's clear top shows blood too clearly, every pass you make over the pools of it.
I have a fear of black shoes induced by nuns
From the age of about four until about 12 we lived in the back of a bar and went to catholic school
from the age of 12 to about 19, we lived in the back of a convent
My dad smuggled a bear back from Canada, and kept it as a pet in our basment until my mother told him either she or that bear had to go.
I brew my own beer, build my own musical instruments, sew some of my own clothes, cook almost everything we eat from scratch, build my own furniture, but don't upholster it, build guitar amplifiers with my sweetie, and when needed, glue my own woodworking cuts back together with superglue.
I wear size 12 narrow women's shoes, but since I never wear shoes I can't run to or from somebody in, I buy men's. Girl shoes suck, mostly.
I have been sick with an ear infection for almost a month, and have been neglectin' this blog something terrible.
Ok 'nuff said.

If I Were a Super Heroine....

I wanna be her action figure. I want to spend a night with green skin, huge anti gravity tits and giant hair, get all She-Hulk on her buttocks in a slippery fun way.
Maybe take her for a ride in my invisible plane! Have her shoot bullets at me so I can bounce them off my bracelets, then lasso her up and show her how my take on Wonder Woman would make her wonder how she lived without me!
I think I'd skip the big pussycat thing though, I'm not sure I'd look good in that black spandex outfit, hissing and snarling, claws poking her skin and the Catwoman mask making my skull sweat.
I'd spend a night with her in dark smooth skin, blazing white hair and flowing cape, but I'd be afraid that being a mutant who can call up thunder and lighting might get out of control, and the storm I'd call up if I were storm would fry us to a crisp!
I wouldn't wanna be Supergirl though. Too much virtue, too white bread, even if I could fly her to Seattle for coffee and then north to the Arctic circle to make love on a polar bear skin. A live one, of course, hypnotic into sleep with my hypnovision, so it wouldn't tear her up.
I could see being Batgirl, if it weren't for the fact that I get dizzy honging upside down, and find caves to be smelly and dark. But having a utility belt with fun Bat-tools on it would be fun.
Maybe it's a good thing she likes me the way I am. It would suck to be a Menstruating She-Hulk, I bet her periods are a real heavy duty thing. And you know, sooner or later a SheHulk hot flash would burn down the house, and if you were Catwoman, you'd get allergic to yourself, and if you were Batgirl, you'd allays have a faint air of bat guano following you around.
I think I'll be my own mutant. She likes it that way.

Summer sucks

The air becomes thick sludge
with every breath and every step
you feel more and more
like an overheated wreck
the thermostat's busted
the radiator is blown
It's the hottest summer
you've ever known
and it's been thirty years
since you were full grown
the sun beats down
the garden wilts
so you crank the air
with a touch of guilt
the blacktop shimmers
with a heat mirage
the shingles are melting
on the garage
the only thing happy
Is the farmer's sweet corn
it's fat and plump
we've had plenty of storms
It's juicy and huge
a sort of food porn
you hide in the bedroom
with the air cranked high
hoping the powerlines
don't up and fry
a blackout or brownout
surely would suck
and the air conditioner
is broke in your truck
So it's bookstores and bars
and coffee shops
anywhere cool
is where one stops
you pray for a cold front
and maybe world peace
but mostly for this heatwave to cease

Mabel rolls free at last.

The big green Mercury sat waiting, waitng and waiting to go somewhere down there in the driveway.
Not to the damn grocery store. Not to band practice, not to the big box hardware store, but somewhere, anywhere it could stretch it's legs.
It was made for the roadtrip. Like a cheetah is born to run and kill, like a mosquito is drawn to feast and spawn, like a republican craves a mommy and daddy who will eliminate possiblility and make all things right, Mabel the Sable craved a big highway and a long unbroken run down the road, chewing up miles and spitting out fumes.
If she could purr, she'd would never stop at a flat 70 mph on the highway. She needed it, needed that wind flowing over her roof ticlking her rear end, needed to spool out on the turnpike, letting the scenery slide by her windows, her quiet interior making a green velvet coccoon for her driver.
She'd been a rental car when she started her road adventures, been nearly wrecked by it too. Her grandmotherly previous owner hardly knew what the pedal on the right was for, but her current owner sure did.
She fidgeted all night long, waiting for five am, when ellie would stumble down the stairs, ready to spill coffee on her upholstery, then settle into a serious rythym of tires clacking on road joints, stopping only till she hit the southwest corner of Pennsylvania for a week.
Of course Mabel allways forot about those regular java and bladder stops. When she did remember the routine, she'd get all cranky for a while and not let the airconditioner work,
showing that bitch behind the wheel that she wasn't completely in charge.
Ellie didn't mind. She like her green machine enough to know no relationship worth shit is frictionless. She'd learned that from her bandmate, who shall go nameless in this missive.
See ya next week, my freakish readers.

e.e.

Holiday Un-fun

He hated fireworks. Every mortar, every firecracker, every loud flash and boom, the drifting smell of gunpowder on the wind all made him feel like throwing up or hiding under the bed.
Even his german shepard didn't get as scared.
As a kid, he loved fireworks, shooting, guns and all the wild energy that came with being a kid and being LOUD. Loud guitars, loud cars, the screaming of football games or the throbbing feel of a big Harley with a blown muffler rumbling along.
Now, every bam!, every flash and bang brought back memories of those days on the big highway, crusing along listening to the big diesel roaring, feeling naked, waiting for those horrible crunching noises, the peppery smell of blood, and the numb feeling his ears had for weeks after the roadside bomb went off, along with his left earlobe, half his right foot and his little finger on his left hand.
It sucked, having his favorite holiday destroyed, along with his self confidence, sense of saftey and large parts of his soul.

Stupid Bird or Messenger?

For three days, there's been a young robin oustide my upstairs window. It keeps flying into the window, falling to the ground, flying back to the branch next to the window, where it shakes it's shoulders, and then flies back into the window.
It does this about every two miniutes for an hour or two, then takes a break and starts over.
If I had a pole saw 15 feet long, I'd cut the limb it launches from off. I've stuck things on the glass to scare it away, I've blasted it with the garden hose, yelled at it, but still it keeps thwacking at my window over and over. Thwak! Thump, shake and repeat.
Maybe it's a message from the universe, but I'll be damned if I can figure it out. I'm not sure I want to get the message if it is one.

Monkeys and crawfish part two

Her voice always surprised him. It should have been as deep and powerful as
her swing with the bat but instead it round and fruity, a sweet chuckle.

"So.....watcha' doing, lover?" she asked in that sweet voice. She had an
unreadable expression on her face, and that big old Winchester '97 short
barrel in her hand. Donnie managed a mumbled something about coming' home
from work but before he could get it all out, she interrupted him.

"You been drinkin' some, Mr?" That little playful lilt at the end of the
question tied his tongue in a figure eight. His only answer was a very soft
belch, mouth closed. He eyed the bag, then the shotgun, then the bag again.
His eyes left the bag and traveled up the arm holding them: his gaze rested
on her brass name tag for a moment before meeting her steady gray eyes.
"Roxanne". the tag said.

The very corner's of the deputy's eyes crinkled down a bit, while the very
corners of her mouth turned up a bit to meet them in something resembling a
smile. "I'll bet you're wondering what's in the bag, aren't you? It’s just
a little something I've been working on for a while now, kind of a
collection, I guess you'd say. Care for a closer look?" She held out the
bag a bit, and took half a step closer to the Ford.

Donnie found he wasn't nearly as curious about the contents of the bag as he
was about the contents of the shotgun. Monkey heads be dammed! They were
one and the same with coconuts or acorn squash as far as he was concerned.
Only a fool would stick around long enough to find out first hand what kind
of load that shotgun was carrying too, and although Donnie Delacroix's mamma
may have raised some mishappened crawdaddies, she had raised no little Cajun
fools.

Donnie stabbed the gas pedal just as Roxanne took that half step. The rusty
door handle snagged the mouth of the bulging bag just as it was held out.
In one moment the scene exploded into a swirl of dust: the Ford made a
break, rear bumper bouncing like a concertina, the bag caught and spun and
tore, spreading it's contents in an arching cascade. Roxanne spun too,
clutching her dislocated elbow as the bag was torn from her grasp.
To her dismay, she would need a pinch hitter for the rest of the season.

The Wolf You Feed

One evening a wise old man told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, "My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith." The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?" The old man simply replied, "The one you feed."

Donnie and Darlene 2, Cops and Crawfish

It was not being a good week for Donnie. First, finding what looked like human bones in his compost pile threw him for a spin, and now, his head full of scary romantic breakup shit and the tail end of 40oz Mickey's malt liquor buzz, the last thing he wanted to see was that flashing set of blue lights in the rearview.
Mumbling a few prayers and a lot more curse words without even realizing it, he pulled the big rattletrap four wheel Ford over and waited for the inevitable ticket. There always was one, even when he wasn't cruising with a slight buzz and half a rear bumper.
To make matters even worse, this was one of those county assholes, all full of bloated self importance, donut grease and Rolaids, no doubt itching to take out his pad and fill up his share of the county's "revenue enhancement" quota.
It could have been much worse, at least he wasn't speeding. He knew the drill by now, and kept his hands on the wheel, and waited till the county boy shuffled up to make his life even harder. He still had nightmares about that State Trooper who not only whipped out that big service revolver and drew down on him, but also threw him over the hood of his truck, cuffed him and searched his truck the previous year.
That one was mostly humiliating, and he got off with a warning and a reading of the riot act about not leaving the vehicle. The county guys were meaner, and just had no use for him. Or his kind, anyway. He wondered why he had ever come back home.
He didn't intend to stick around after he dropped out of college and came home to work for the summer, but somehow, it happened. Being a transplant in a dink town is never easy, but being a southern transplant, with a last name like Delacroix, having a Cajun accent, and having a set of parents who were both notorious fuck ups didn't make it easier.
Sometimes he thought people were still mad about the smell his parent's failed crawfish ranch had thrown over the town, but mostly he just figured it was a case of northern polacks not having much use for outsiders. Even ones who had been there for half their life.
He realized with a start that he'd been daydreaming when he looked up and noticed it wasn't one of the usual pricks that had pulled him over, but a the cop, a big dyke who played on his wife's night game softball team.
She must have went about 220, and he'd been more than a little scared of both her ability to swing a baseball bat, and how much his darlin' seemed to be obsessed with her. It was just one of the weird vibes he'd been picking up for a while.He was more than a little surprised to see her standing there with a shotgun and a bag of what looked like big monkey skulls, though....

He fears Death

My pal fears death

it's cold stinky breath

it make him squirm

to think of feeding worms

Me, I don't mind looking

at it from a distance

when I get old enough

I'll offer little resistance

my joints will ache

my spine will break

maybe I'll burst a vien

better yet

get hit by a train

nothing makes life seem do real

like hearing loud brakes squeal

knowing you could be a done deal

so shut the hell up

play yer guitar

we're gettin' old

got no daylight to burn

a few more decades

it'll be our turn

livin' forever would get boring

millenia of listening to your

wife snoring

after a few million years

you'd be bored to tears

Donnie and Darlene, chapter one

Things in Donnie's life were getting ugly, and showing signs of a serious meltdown.

All the signs and omens were there to see, had been for a while, but he kept ignoring them, looking the other way.
There had been changes in the strange mental air he moved through, and he was just smart enough to know what was coming wasn't going to be fun. He kept hoping that his coming shitstorm wasn't as big as it felt from where he was sitting.
The unraveling of his home life started with little things that made him feel helpless, like not knowing where Darlene was, or wondering why she looked so sheepish when she rolled in hours late, and fell right into bed without talking much.
She'd been getting more distant from him for a while. Not so much in the way she showed affection, that stayed fairly constant, but in the way she kept dreaming up new things to run off and do without him.
She had became totally detactched from almost everything involving the plans they had made together, and the way she got that distant look in her eyes, like she was staring off at something further away than the eye could possibly focus, and the long frozen silences that had replaced her usual chatter.
Not that the chatter stopped completely, it did keep up, but only when she was on the phone, and it stopped dead whenever Donnie walked in to the room.
It had became obvious that she had been moving on, showing only a strange sort of lingering affection and a desire not to feel like a total asshole for being the one to detach first.
When the wheels started coming off, they did it with surprising speed, and an odd, and totally bland and unexpected way. Like most things, it was not very well thought out, and happened in the way a frog jumps out of a pot of hot water right before it croaks.
In the space of about two weeks, it went from being a comfortably numb life of drinking and desultory and unfulfilling sex into a full blown mind fuck of life changing events.
That was right about the time he found the first of the bones in the backyard compost heap, and when he noticed that she hadn't gone out in the daylight for months.

I started a short novel by accident last year, some of which was written by my pal Pat Webster. I'm going to post it here in a slightly re-written way, partly because I'm too damn lazy to write much these days, and partly because I don't suck as much as a writer. Hope you enjoy it, it'll be mixed in with other posts.

e,

Whiny Ass TItty Babies

You say "bleeding heart"
like it's a bad thing
you only notice yours
when it's pounding with fear
you say peace through strength
but I think it's all about
penis length
you talk about responsibility
and morality
but your thoughts about
dog sex
got you up a tree
screaming nuke em'

till they glow
is getting quite old

from your keyboard

you act really bold
whiny ass titty babies
scared and weak

and living on fear
you shout down the adults
every time one comes near
if I could pull a switch
and make you all disappear
things would a lot nicer
on this big blue sphere
what pisses me off
what makes me see red
is that you're shoving me
into wishing you dead
I'm not big on murder
hatred or guilt
and I won't stay in
the closet you built
so you better shut up
and back away from me
when I get mad
'cause it's in your pants

that you'll pee

when you come across

a scary dyke like me
whiny ass titty babies
whine all day long
singing the same
chickenshit song

Microfiction: Pissin' and Moaning

There were many things that Nancy missed in her new life. She'd taken so much for granted in her old one, and spent most of it bitching about traffic, people who didn't believe in her god, that damn Mexican office cleaning crew that came in nights and kept moving her collection of stuffed animals into what she could swear was a nearly pornographic set of poses.
She bitched about her dentist and the way his nitrous oxide smelled, she bitched about how cold the stirrups were in her gynecologist's office, about having to wait at least ten minutes to get into the doctor's office, about how her massuse seemed to ignore her sore spots, how her hairdresser had been not spending enough time talking over her fashion needs.
She had bitched about nearly everything, from the way the barrista at the coffee shop made her late too hot, with too much foam, the way the baggers at the grocery store never remembered that she preferred plastic bags, how horrible it was to have to stand in line at the big box store to get a refund for those horrible gift choices her husband had made, how ugly the homeless people had made downtown look, there was just so much to bitch about that she never ran out of things, ever. Her most common complaint was with her housecleaner, and she complained twice as much those weeks her checks bounced.
After the virus hit, everything changed. She made it through, unlike all the other people in her office, and most everybody else who had made her life a living hell with lousy service and rude manners.
Now she wished she had all those things back. Pulling your own teeth out when they became infected was a chore she had learned, and her constant scrounging for unburnt cans of food in the charred ruins of the grocery store was turning into a skill
Just avoiding the rape gangs and marauder packs and sleeping all day on the top of a 5th floor walkup on packing blankets was a full time job, and without her birth control pills, her non-stop periods returned and were making not having tampons and running hot water a special messy hell.
It never occurred to her that she never had the time or energy to complain anymore. Not that there was anybody left who cared about her to hear it.

Offensive Breast Tissue Image

Shockingly tasteless, isn't it?

Kill the Buddha

Fuck tasteful
forget what your mother might think
sometimes what you
think of those things
drives me to drink
I'm sure she's quite nice
but you're fortythree
you worry so much
she's got you up in a tree
someday we'll be dead
worms in our head
or old and in the way
tied to a bed
maybe then you'll be glad
you were so bland
rejecting outrageous things
with a heavy hand
thinking you're the big
leader man
conventional thinking is your forte
but when it comes to art it gets in the way
kill the Buddha
toss out magazines
reject all that dogma
make up your own scene
empty your mind
like a dump truck load
go out and
build you own road
make something real
nobody likes a pandering toad
Maybe I'm just being rude
but knowing your mind
it's also quite crude

The Farm Worker

The long rows of vegetables and potatoes stretched out in front of them for what seemed like endless acres, although it was really only about a 40 acre plot. It had been a cool, wet summer, and the beans and potatoes were heavy with thick green leaves.
All day long, he pulled weeds, picked bugs off plants and spread composted human manure along the rows, slogging up and down in the sun, stopping only to relive himself and fill up again on the water from the creek.
It was backbreaking work, and his hands were beaten to a raw pulp. The last few pair of moldering cotton work gloves had long been worn through, and the dirt in his cracked fingers had caused them to bleed and ooze every time he pulled another weed.
Being hungry all the time had been hard, knowing that he was surrounded by food that he couldn't touch was worse. Thinking about how many would starve the coming winter bothered him, and the fact that he might be one of them made it even uglier to contemplate.
He sure had lots of time to think, something he hated. From sunup to sundown, a long stretch of time in this northern climate, they worked the farm.
Even had he chose to run away, the guards on horses with the few remaining bullets would have run him down. They might not even waste a bullet on him, the last few escapees had just been knocked unconscious and had a plastic bag wrapped around their head, gasping out their last few moments without even being aware of it.
He thought back to his life before the virus. His memories had become sharper and less accurate over time as he took them out and rubbed the edges down. Lots of things had drifted out of his memory.
He'd tried to forget the months of hell that followed the dying times, although he often woke up with images from his escape bubbling up, shredding what little sleep he got. In the 5 years since he'd left the ruins of Omaha, he'd drifted around the Midwest from one ragged band of survivors to another, until he'd been picked up by the Collective's sweep crew. Just another indentured servant at this point, he'd been treated the way peasant serfs had for millennia. Work, sleep, plant seed crops and hope you didn't get beaten dead by guards or by frostbite or a broken spirit. Or worse, a broken anus, since many of the guards were rapists, and the older ones hated the former corparate executives who had shit on them in the name of money or "company policy".
But the worst part of this life was the boredom. He'd been somebody once. An important man in a big company, making life changing decisions for little people.
Now his biggest choices were between committing suicide by attempted escape, or how to kill the potato bugs he pulled off the plants. Sometimes he ate them. It was a protien source.
It was a form of culture shock he never expected. To be on the bottom of the ladder, all his skills as an executive worthless, miserable and bored enough to die.

Portrait of My Brain Today

I have been remiss. For the last few weeks I have been posting over at the Getaway Drivers Blog, but it has come time to return to Hint Of Dementia.
Mostly because one of my Bandmates has irritated me because he thinks his mom will be upset by a small and shapley breast photo, making me feel like there's not much hope for creativity and joy over there, but also because this blog is mine, all mine, bitches!
Here is a nice little photo for your enjoyment. I call it "A Portrait Of Modern Love". I shot it sometime around 1986, when Bruce Springsteen first got muscles galore, and my pal Skooby rented the house that had these fish nailed to the boathouse wall.
The fishheads are gone, but Skooby is still around. This is a good thing.

Flower Porn

Pike's Place Market, 2004
Please forgive this instrusion of beauty and plant sexual organs. We now return you to dark fiction.

Microfiction: Mad Man WIth A Bad Plan

Some of us define ourselves by who we hate, who is pissing in our sandbox, angry at the world as a way of life.
Marty was one of those people. He hated most women. The bitches out for his nuts, anyway. He hated people of color, any color, although he would be mortified to know that the office sysop knew he surfed to Asian she-male websites on his office computer in the mornings before anybody else came in.
He hated spics, Jews, blacks, queers and even tossed Unitarians in the mix because, well dambitt, you have to take a stand somewhere.
In the dead of night, he laid awake thinking up new ways to kill em' all. Mass murder, genocide, he would find himself finding new and better ways to get even with all those ball busting bastards, from his ex wife to his boss to that queer in the shipping department who he was sure wanted to give it to him up the ass.
He started stockpiling guns, ammo, knives and reading up on how to wage war, make bombs, booby trap houses and cars, and how to cultivate anthrax and other nasty things. He actually worked up a good napalm substitute one weekend in the middle of nowhere in the Nicolet National Forest, out camping and shooting guns and drinking heavily, far from his apartment. He thought of it as fun with gasoline and powdered Tide Ultra Clean.
He had a plan, and with time it became a mission, one that had as much urgency and importance as any suicide bomber's.
He was going to take out those fucks at the office, once and for all, and them commit suicide by cop.
He gave notice, sold most of his worthless crap, and headed back into the National Forest to train. He spent a month, the whole time studying commando skills from books, hiking, working out and shooting both his pistols and his AK-47.
He actually became something close to a real Army Ranger, in his own limited way.
He hiked back out to the camper, and headed south, the roads eerily empty, the power out. What the hell was going on?
No matter, he thought, and he kept on driving, playing the scenes from his office massacre to come over and over again.
He made it back to the office as dawn broke, loaded up his guns, strapped on his armor, and headed in, still obsessing over the sheer act of bravery and warrior like intensity he knew he could pull off. He'd start by killing the first ones in the door, and work his way up to as high a count as he could before the cops took him out.
He felt a little bad about making the cops shoot him, but it was worth it to clean up the vipers nest that his workplace had become. Insurance was a pure form of business evil, the thought.
The door was open, the lights out, and he started to get a glimmer that something was seriously wrong. Things he'd been ignoring all the way home finally started to fall into place, and he realized nobody was in sight, and that the glow he'd been seeing on the horizon wasn't the sun over the lake. It was fire, and a big one. headed his way, and there was not a human moving anywhere in sight.
Right before the fires took out the business park, he painted the walls with his brains using a single big, slow moving slug from a .45.
Not because he would burn, although he knew he would, given the wind, the fire's speed and the blocked exit roads, or because of joy over everyone being dead.
It was because he realized that without the rest of the world to give him something to bitch about, life wasn't worth living.

Microfiction God's Path for The Family

Matthew was a man of god, one who felt touched by his grace, in awe of the beauty of his creations, and well aware that life here on his earth was a gift, but not one without conditions.
He read his bible, followed the calls of his church elders, and kept all those things holy that the bible called for. His biggest concern was the outside world, and the many temptations that he and his family had to face in everyday life.
His wife had given him 6 children, and a lifetime of support. She was a quiet woman with mouse brown hair down to her back that she kept braided up most of the time, and he had never seen her naked. She was ashamed of her sinful body, even more so because she knew that the hips that made making babies so easy also gave her the kind of figure that other men liked to stare at, even in church.
They made their living selling honey, scraped from the many beehives that Matthew rented to area farmers, and lived very modestly in the hills to the east of Spokane. Matthew didn't allow much in the way of comfort in his house. The floors were bare, the walls decorated only with the crosses he had his family pray to every night. His life was a righteous one, and he kept his house and family in a way that he thought of as cruel but fair, like an old testament patriarch.
His children mostly loved their parents, and mostly feared both god and the secular temptations of modern life. Only his daughter Sarah seemed odd to him, and since she had become a young woman, he struggled with her on godly matters. He struggled with his on lustful thoughts, but so far he'd kept the devil in the ditch.
When the virus started sweeping through the cities, they were ready. They had barricaded the road into the farm, had posted big quarantine signs to fool the filthy heathen hordes from town into staying away, and were set with a year's supply of food and seed crops, a barn with horses and plenty of stored fuel and firewood. He looked forward to the return of god's rule, and no more visits from Family Protective Services, telling him what he couldn't to with his own family. Spare the rod, spoil the child was more than a bible suggestion in his book.
They even kept out other church members who tried to join them. He was happier being alone with his family.
The plague had run through several waves before one of the horses came down with it, picked up from a migrating bird or other animal's droppings. It had been hard, but he'd shot it and left it where it was, for the coyotes to eat.
That had been the last straw for Sarah.
She'd loved that horse more than her family, and she was sick of the beatings and
sick of her father's hungry and angry looks. Every time he gave her the eye, she could feel his tension, his lust and his need to beat her ass again. He seemed to enjoy it. Her mother was useless, sometimes egging her father on.
Her brothers just hid like scared dogs. So she snuck out, saddled up the big packhorse, and headed out before dawn.
She was just on the other side of the river, out into the open and fallow fields when she saw the wild fire tearing along the ridge, heading right for the farm.
With no fire department, nature had decided to take back some real estate, including the family farm.
She rode on, looking back only to make sure that she was riding parallel to the fire. She said a brief prayer to the god that had been beaten our of her for her family, and was glad she'd packed a lot of food and the highway map from her dad's truck.
Seattle might be dead, but she was going to see the big city one way or another. Maybe try and find a girlfriend if there were any dykes left, if just to piss off her dad in heaven or hell or where ever it is that god's bastards go.

Downtown Nudity

Once, long ago I was a photographer. This one is from the vault o' prints slowly turning into junk in my attic.
It's downtown Milwaukee, sometime around 1993.

Microfiction: Mary and the Dead Crows

Mary knew she scared people. Sometimes she scared herself. Skinny, trembling and dark eyed, she'd ghosted her way through high school and college without showing too many signs of the dreams and visions that haunted her, but the older she got the harder it became to stop the images that filled her waking and sleeping moments. They were getting on top of her most of the time the last few years.
She also knew she was a damn fine biologist. She saw through things her co-workers were to conventional to notice, and made intuitive leaps and observations that irritated them.
Leaps that bothered them even more when she turned out to be right. They figured she was off her rocker, cracking her nut and letting her elevator go past the top floor. They had lots of cute ways to joke about her steadily unnerving ways, and didn't care that she heard them using them.
She wasn't a team player, and didn't follow the rules needed to suck up.
But she did know her viral research, and her work with dead crows and other birds had been of interest to a few people higher up in the Lab. She showed enough promise to those who saw her results that kept her on that fine line between useful and too weird to keep around.
The people who didn't see her scars, self mutilated cutting, or have to be around her crazy eyes and neglected hygiene habits.
She was halfway through her fourth year at the research lab when she lost it. Or at least lost it enough to be locked up at the Winnebago Mental Health Institute. They found her in the lab one morning, screaming, gibbering about the end of the world, some drug she had made that could save everybody. She did all this while waving a broken beaker around, and saying she had given herself the antiviral.
So they called the paramedics and cops and decided she was a danger to self and others, locked her up for "observation".
Everybody at the lab took a deep sigh of relief and went back to pushing grant proposals around and doing the tame and safe research that gave them a sense of place. Mary's research was cleaned out of the lab corner she had, her hard drives wiped and sent back into circulation somewhere else in the organization.
At the institute, they gave her a nice thick 400 pound blanket of Thorazine, little orange pills that took away all her demons. Kept her away from sharp objects, and gave her carefully administered shock treatments.
They put her on drugs that were supposed to stop the voices, the crazy fear and the paranoid feeling that the world was going to shit and she had to be back in the lab to prevent it.
The drugs made her fat, made her feel stupid and she hated every moment of it, at least the ones that she could feel when near the end of a dose.
It was the fat that saved her. For three weeks she had been locked up after the dying started, alone, living off tap water and the hope somebody would let her out. When the power finally went out at the nuke plant, the doors to her room unlocked, and she stumbled out into the light of day.
She started walking. Headed west and north. And all those old demons suddenly were quiet, pushed into the background by a world where paranoia and sharp intelligence were no longer bad things.

A Movie That Captures How My Brain Feels

For some reason, this struck me as one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time.
Mabye it's living in BushCo's world. But it captures how I feel too often.