Goodbye

My grandmother is dying, my father's mother, 87 years old. My dad told me Friday night. Health problems over several years, slow decline, nothing unusual for a person her age. She was taken off of dialysis on Friday. Seven days, maybe less, maybe more.

I ordered myself to call her. You're her only grandson, she faithfully sent you a birthday card with a fifty dollar bill even until you were a man of twenty five? Or are you a man even yet Mr. Beran?

What are you afraid of? Arn't you so ironic? Don't you mock other people's fear of death? Don't you laugh at other people's attempts to dignify their mortality? Religion, marriage, poems on the tombstone?

I called yesterday. She was asleep, I got my aunt instead. She told me that she (my aunt) was fine. She asked me about my life. Of course she did, I'm not 87. That's worth quite a hell of a lot isn't it? Almost enough to make me stop prematurely age myself, still I drink wine from the bottle as I write this.

I'll try to get a hold of my grandmother again tommarow, but she's sleeping twenty hours a day, pills for both the pain and the dread. I have to try, but I'm not likely to speak to her again. And if I do, than what? Should I tell her I'm praying for her? Would lying be worse than not talking to her at all?

Goodbye, would that be appropriate? And what if that isn't the end of the conversation? What if she asks me about my future? My future.

Nothing to Say

I went to Wal-Mart today. I like to walk a couple hours a day, it's been too cold to do it outside, and the campus rec center gives me the creeps, so I went to the Wal-Mart at the north side of Lincoln. Perhaps I would find more evidence of social decay that I could pass on in my own hilarious way to my loyal readers.

But what can I say that hasn't been said by people who are smarter than me? People who actually get paid for social criticism while I engage in pointless, wheel-spinning, childish Fruedian rebellion?

I saw a woman in a cowboy hat and a Dale Ernhardt Jr. racing jacket. She had a cell-phone headset on even though she was talking to no one at the time. Her boyfriend wore an identical Nascar jacket but sported a black nylon do-rag instead of a cowboy hat. I have nothing clever to say about this, (maybe she wanted to leave her hands free to browse Guns'N'Ammo) I got nothin. I found it hilarious at the moment, maybe I had some brillient zinger pass through my consciousness at that moment, but the moment passed, and five minutes later it wasn't that funny anymore, so I have nothing for you.

I walked past a pair of Larry the Cable Guy boxer shorts, and I have nothing clever to say about that. Why should I? You know the score, you either know what's wrong with this or you don't. Larry the Cable guy, the Nebraska native embraced by his former state so that we can feel like we're part of the outside world. He who speaks in a blatantly fake cracker accent, he whose grammer is well below what one would learn in any substandard Nebraska high school, who makes racist comments without any attempt to attach a joke to them. He whose popularity lasted all of three weeks, even before his movie came out.

But he's our boy. We Nebraskans can blindly worship fame just like everyone else, so Larry will always have a place here. And he'll always have a place at Wal-Mart,

What do Larry the Cable and the rest of the blue-collar "comedians" represent anyways? The white-counter snob, the hick defiantly proud to be a hick (You might be a redneck if) embracing a phony "heartland" culture in rural America, denying the existance of a distinctive Southern, Midwestern, or Western culture while asserting that the generic fantasy of the "heartland" is somehow America incarnate despite the fact that it is based on nothing.

Wal-Mart is proud to help sell the idea of the Heartland, and considering how many local cultures they've destroyed, they had better be.

In the grocery section they sold packets of corn. Three ears in each box,grown in Florida, vacuum wrapped, boxed.

I'm a fifth-generation Nebraskan. My grandparents grow corn. I'm no flaming socialist. (not quite) I don't hate Wal-Mart. I don't shop there because it's three miles away from my apartment. I go to the downtown thrift shops if I need some cheap do-dad because my mama forgot to teach me to fear brown people. But I don't actively boycott Wal-Mart. I entertain no thoughts of throwing a Molotov cocktail through its windows or seizing Joyce Meyer paperbacks to redistribute to the peasents.

But this offended me deeply. I was witnessing a passive act of blasphamy. This is Nebraska, no, this is Lincoln Nebraska, Zion itself, and here was generic corn from Florida, pre-packaged in shrink-wrap, carrying some bullshit heartland company name like "Golden Acres" or something, and surely weeks from the field and as tasteless as raw hash browns.

This Wal-Mart was a fucking corn field fifteen years ago. I mean here it was; entropy, the death of local identity, people sacrificing the future of their small towns to shop in this Babylonian waste because it they have to go where stuff is cheap, and at any rate, this is where normal and decent people go, and people who complain about Wal-Mart think they're better than us, better than America, and how dare they?

There it was, the future of American civilisation, fuedalism without flavor, Rascal Flatts instead of the Latin Mass. Go to work straight out of high school, get a job doing grunt work at some local shop, shop gets run out of business by Wal-Mart, shop at Wal-Mart, they're cheap, buy some of the corn in plastic wrap, the wife says some corn on Sundays reminds her of home, and ain't that just the Nebraskan thing to do anyways? Eat some corn, watch the game? Might as well get an application while you're there. It's steady work, they don't pay much, you won't get health care, they won't let you form a union (But you're not communist, you're where you're at because that's how God planned it.) So you'll have to shop at Wal-Mart, you'll have enough money to send the kids to the doctor every couple of years, and you'll quit smoking someday, you'll be fine, you're the provider, the protector, and you're teaching the kids the value of hard work, this is how the world works, this is what they're meant to be.

There it was, but you knew this. Department stores tend to be rather banal, I should turn that idea into an essay and turn it in to Look magazine.

Ode to Target

I left my old hat in my hometown of North Platte. I'll be sure to get it back when I go back there, but hopefully that won't be for many months. My hats really are signatures of mine. There's been a cold snap here, and I've been getting by with a woolen cap, but this isn't 1994, I needed an official Josh hat.

But there was a dilemma. Should I look for a hat at one of the charity shops in Malone? Maybe I would find a cool hat for cheap, or maybe there would be nothing but cowboy hats still carrying the sweaty stench of their previous owners. At any rate, I have a social conscience (If no other kind of conscience) and I didn't want to come across as some pseudo-hipster buying crap from the thrift shops in a phony show of solidarity with the working class that actually insults them. This isn't 2002, either. The same logic excluded me from going to the "hip" "boutiques" downtown. That and I'm not gay.

So today I went to Target. I needed something to drink tonight anyway, and why make two errands? In my old age, I've come to appreciate Target's trendy, hip, vibrant image that still respects the American family. It's the store of the ruling class,
understand. We appreciate the finer things in life, like Justin Timberlake, cute little kitty pictures on the internet and stacks of unread Newsweek's on the coffee table. wW're not the fucking proles you find at Wal-Mart. We're not Toby Keith people, we're Faith Hill people.

Take their wine section, for example; the Lincoln Target doesn't even sell beer, so I'm drinking wine tonight. The type of wines they have there, names like three lizards and yellow tale, are catered towards the sort of middle-class families that, while striving to be respectable, still like to show how they're "with it". Something that will give the old college chums a little giggle when they come over to watch the game. These are my people, this is our society. We're on the go. We keep track of the stock market, still flip it to VH1 every now and then.

I'd like to say that I bought the three lizards, but alas, I still have a bit of the country in me and have not yet adapted to hip Lincoln ways. so no, just a jug of Sutter's Mill for me.

I ended up purchasing the wine, a Digornio's pizza, and a nice brown fedora with a phony fluer-de-lies on the side, something like you would see Usher wear. I'm glad I made the trip. It's one-stop shopping, I'm a man on the go, the business class, neon collar baby.

On Metal

Everything that any heavy metal band has ever done has already been done on Black Sabbath's first album. Think about it, the album has death, Satan, some LOTR shit to keep the nerds happy, Satan, hedonism, sex, etc. etc.

As if that wasn't enough, Sabbath used it's next album to elaborate on these basic themes with war, drugs, and homocidal comic book characters.

Other bands can work with the same mix. They can change things up by emphesizing Satan over drugs or mingling sex with death, but really, what's the point?

Just listen to NIB, a brilliant inverson of the Christian "lust=satan" equation. Listen to how the music is perfectly matched to the lyrics, auralizing the sound of a dark lord aroused. Than realize that your favorite childhood band did the same thing, and when you were fourteen you thought it was brilliant. then, dispair, and realize that you have wasted your youth and subsidized the wasted youths of others. Dude, all we are, is dust in the wind.

ah, school.

School is back, the now familier rythms, four years now. Class times, (and also waking times) are scattered throughout the day, leaving my internal clock ruined. It is during the school year that I become truely, physicaly addicted to caffine, If I go half a day without coffee, I will pass out for a time in mid-day no matter how much sleep I had the night before. Caffine is the addiction that will follow me into middle-age. I am domesticated. I'll buy Foldgers if it's on sale, I'm not lying.

Speaking of domesticity, I'll need a day job, a real one, where one has to wake up at the same time every day.

The entire first class being wasted on the sylybis, pointless meet-and greets. Professors who are clearly packing it in and teaching the same class they taught when the Apple-2 first came out. Professors who care deeeply but are a little nuts. Hot braised pork, good shit.

And me, staying motivated as best I can and waiting for the next phase of my life to hurry up.

Happy birthday

He's getting laid more on his 60th birthday than we did/will on our 21st, and you know this.

Fun Fact

There is just as much rape in prison as you've heard there is. This may not sound surprising, but when people hear about a bad situation in a government institution, they usually assume that's it's even worse than what they're hearing. This is usually a smart assumption, but not in this case. Prison rape is as bad as you've heard, not worse.

I know a few ex-cons, and they're actually more eager to tell prison rape jokes and otherwise keep prison rape in the public consciousness than other people. Why is this?

Because it distracts people from thinking about how much voluntary gay sex goes on in prison, which I assure you is quite a lot. There are lots of cons who are "only gay in prison" and claim the ability to magically turn their man-lust off when they're on the outside. This is utter nonsense of course, and by the way, the criminal element is no gayer than the general population, so we all need prison rape jokes to keep us from thinking about things we would rather not.

One bad situation in prison that is worse than what you hear is the guard beatings. They are not just isolated incidents. Any prison guard you've may have met has probably beaten a prisoner just for fun. This is not a conspiracy theory, it is not the imaginary beef of difficult criminals and their slick lawyers. Everyone in prison gets beat for no good reason except for the narcs. It is quite simply endemic among the guards. You can go to prison yourself and see that I write the truth. In fact I would even advise you to rob a liquor store just for the educational experience.

Quiz

Here's Richie Incognito, batshit offensive lineman for the St. Louis Rams and formerly of the Nebraska Cornhuskers. The question for the day is weather Richie is going to

A. Have sex with all of the women in the background, or
B. Beat them to death.

Correct answer wins a free bottle of Crown Royal.

Everybody dies except you

While driving your car, or engaging in any of the basic activities of life for that matter, always remember this simple fact, everybody dies except you.

Yes, everyone is cursed with being a thinking creature aware of his or her own mortality, except you, you can't die, you're you.

So when driving on the interstate, you can take comfort in the fact that the forces of nature understand perfectly that you just have to get to that meeting, that dinner, or that shopping engagement on time. why should it be otherwise? The universe was created for you after all. The entire interstate highway system was created just so you could be driving on it as fast as you like right now. Your Ford Explorer was mass-produced on an assembly line just so you could be driving the one you're driving right now.

so it goes without saying that you were more than entitled to install the DVD player between the driver and front passenger seats last year, it's not that distracting, you don't even watch it, of course, it's for the kids. (Well, okay, maybe you sneak a peak every now and then,you know, just when traffic is light?) At any rate, so what if it is distracting? Remember, you're you, and these are your kids.

(Your kids probably can't die. They're only hal-you, after all, but that's why you hedged your bets and had six of them, isn't it? as for the wife, soon enough my friend, soon enough.)

The rain, of course, is here to provide you with water for your showers and half-caffinated coffee. The snow? It's there to give you something pretty to look at as you put the baby in cruise control and let your mind drift. Or maybe it's there to give you some story to tell the guys at work or at family gatherings when your military cousin shows up and you need something tough to say besides re-iterating your hatred for queers.

"I tell ya I gotta laugh when they get one or two inches of snow down south and they shut down everything. We can get eighteen inches and everybody still has to go to work, winters tough up here in Nebraska, but we're tough Germans arn't we cous?"

Everybody dies except you, so let your eyes drift to the video, go ahead and drive with half of your submissive hand while eating a burger or smoking a cigarette or drinking your half-caf coffee in the dominant hand

And above all, drive hard, drive hard, pound the gas pedal into it's slot until the engine screams like the orgasmic beast you, I mean your car, is.

Go ahead and drive 85 through the rain, but take it down to the speed limit if you hit snow or ice. Not that it matters to you, of course, but there are other people on the road who arn't you, and they're going to die of something or another someday.
So slide her in easy, nice and easy, easy.

What am I talking about?

Who are these people anyway? Obstructions, nothing more, forcing you to have to turn off and reset the cruise control, take your eyes off of the Blue Collar Comedy tour, put your coffee in the holder.

Who are these people except sticks crowding your interstate? Heading to appointments that arn't yours, jobs that arn't yours, families that arn't yours, movies that arn't yours, music that isn't yours. Taking up your road, your town, your taxes, your gasoline, your schools, your restaurants, your bars, your theatres your world.

So push the pedal down into it's slot. Your Explorer will hold, everyone knows they handle great on ice. everyone else is just going to have to get out of your way. They might slide off the road, but so what. Nobody exists except you, and your universe would be much better off without these obstructions.

Hello Mr. Beran

We hope you enjoy your trip on Amtrak today, gee, it must be nice going someplace warm this time of year, gonna snow bird it are ya? I have a grandmother living in a nursing home in Pheonix and she says it's just beautiful, no weather at all. I'll just need to see your I.D. before I let you board.

"No problem"

Alright than, and your social security number?

xxxxxx

Very good sir, and could you confirm the date of birth, just to make sure?

4/4/81

I'm afraid that just doesn't sound right.

"It's right there on my drivers license"

I know what it says on your driver's license, Mr. Beran, it's just seems a little too, cute, you know.

"What's 'cute' about it?"

I don't know, the way the number of the month and the day matches up, just seems funny.

"Are you kidding?"

Don't get smart with me Mr. Beran. You'll see how much I'm kidding when I throw you off this train and call the police.

"What the hell? I'm just as likely to be born on April 4th, or June 6th, or December 12th, as on any other date"

It doesn't seem likely

"Why not, somebody is born every day, and this was the day I was born on"

Well I've never met anyone who had a birthday where the month and date matched up and I've never seen any passangers on the train with that sort of birthday. I'm afraid you'll have to come with me.

"You can't be serious" There are thousands of people who board this train every year.

Yes and I remember them all.

"No you don't"

Excuse me sir. 'Security to car 26, security to car 26 we have a hostile situation.

"Are you out of your fucking mind?"

If you talk to me in that tone of voice Mr. Beran we will have to assume that you have some violent intent. We at Amtrak are fully aware of how important we are to American comerce and culture and we know it's only a matter of time before somebody tries to attack us. Now I'm not accusing you of anything but you are clearly dishonest and unstable. We have to take precautions.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus

It's against federal law to use that name in vain Mr. Beran

"Look, just listen to me for a minute. There is nothing biological about calended dates. They are a totally human invention. A day where the date matches up with the month is just like any other day. there is nothing on heaven or earth to prevent me, you, or anybody else from being born on such a day."

Until now, sir, I only had a faint idea about just how profoundly your madness has affected you. You are without question a threat to yourself and others, a varitable walking time bomb. a padded cell and soup out of a metal bowl is the only hope for you, nothing but alphebet soup for the rest of your days; otherwise you're bound to hang yourself with Chicken Noodle. Here comes the guard now, I bid you good day sir, let's see if Allah can get you out of this.

Get on the floor now!

"But I didn't do anything"

Shut the fuck up and get on the floor before I tase you through your scrotum

"What the hell is wrong with you people?"

What is your major malfunction? I own you sugertits!

So they hanged Saddam Hussein

At last the world is free form the next Hitler. Place your bets on who the next Hitler after him will be. Ahama.. from Iran? Kim Jong Ill? Hugo Chavez? All of the above?

What an interesting world it must be to those who imagine every antagonist to America to be "the next Hitler." If every foreign bogeyman is Hitler, than there's only one course of action to deal with all of them, isn't there?

Oh God yes.

No negotiations, no games, no patience, just the thrust and the explosion.

Hussain always was a pretty shitty Hitler, especially in the last fifteen years. He was only a serious contender for the title when we were supplying him, but you already knew that. It has been a good three or four years since Hussein has had any real influence on other people's lives. He wasn't running the insurgency after all. His capture didn't set us on the course to whatever victory means. Neither did those cute little elections.

But maybe the death of a 70-year old man who always expected this sort of end for himself will be just the thing to set all the bad guys straight. Or maybe it will be the big surge in troops. It's not as if the bad guys can go on forever, they're just fighting on their native soil with nothing in particular to live for, after all.

Than again, there was a time when saddam Hussein mattered. So his death is a legitimate occasion. You can even call it a milestone if you like.

And if you must call it a milestone, if the death of Hussein fills you with sincere glee, maybe even a sense of personal accomplishment, good for you, you're an asshole.

The sort of asshole who believes in "victory" as a moral end unto itself. The sort of asshole who feels sincere moral outrage when his (oh yes, his) favorite college football team fails to bring him satisfaction.

The sort of asshole who is deeply and irrevecably attached to the traditional masculine ideal, that man exist to form large flocks and protect them, and clings to this ideal in lieu of actually accomplishing something.

This ideal requires several things, worshipful children, thousands of dollars worth of automobiles, back yards, electronic do-dads, grand sporting events that allow assholes the opportunity to admire the masculinity of other men (In a completely non-sexual way, of course) and submissive women.

Most of all though, this ideal requires a constant supply of enemies, becuase a man cannot fullfill his duty without something to protect his herd against.

Internal enemies are quite popular these days; liberals, lawyers, uppity celebrities, college profesors, any city-dweller with the audacity to claim moral equality (lot's of brown people live in a city, not quite a coincidence.) homosexuals, "feminazis" ohhh, especially them, Hillary Clinton, that bitch.

For the more radical assholes, there's the police and fire departments, doctors, social security, OSHA,etc., any state entity that suggests that the protecters need protection.

Then there is the oldest and most effective sort of enemy, the monster from outside. The foreign invader who threatens to infiltrate the herd and pollute the gene pool. (There are those who honestly believe that ileagal immigrants are solely responsible for the recent increase in crime, most especially sexual assults. Those of us living in the rural Midwest have no need to wonder what life was like in 1890 Mississipi. The lynchings are coming, do not doubt this.)

This sort of enemy is especially useful to those in power. The outside monster, you see, can only be defeated through total obedience to the alpha male.

Those who fail to submit to power are always held suspect, of course. Failure to yield to the top cock implies disrespect for them all. But to disrespect those who, by establishing and conveinently fullfilling society's standards of "success" have symbolicly lengthened their own cocks, is simply unacceptible when the outside monster lurks.

This is a battle for the top dogs. We can rightfully do nothing except stand back and watch the alpha male fight off the intruder, anyone who tries to interfere will get his tail bit off.

The outside monster fears our discipline, fears the way we line up straight behind the head penis. To doubt this is to reject your own penis.

Read Free Republic or some other Right-Wing Forum. I assure you that nearly all of the opinions dealing with Iraq, "The War on Terror" Immigration, the economy, everything, will describe these issues in precisely these terms, many will be just as blunt about it as I have been. Just remember that these are the words of cowards. Cowards who turn to a wholly imaginary "natural law" because they are unwilling to accept that there is no such thing as human nature. cowards who embrace the non-existant maxim "survival of the fittest" in order to shirk their duty to create themselves and invent their own truth. Cowards who would rather burn the whole world down than embrace the most frightening concept of all, freedom.

I have decided to clone myself

I've decided to clone myself. The technology is already here, has been for a long time. Cloning a human being is just is easy as cloning a cow. The only reason they haven't, who says they haven't?

I'm fully aware of the controversy surrounding cloning, and it's not that I don't think cloning is wrong, not at all. Cloning is wrong, very, devient. It's just that cloning isn't as wrong as I am important.

Nebraska's own Unicameral seems likely to forbid the university engaging-in stem cell research, that's how much people fear the devience of cloning. One can only hope that Ernie Chambers can be motivated to do his voodoo on an issue not related to race or class in order to kill the idea. Because this is something the university badly needs to be involved in, we're a serious institution you know. Are we going nothing but a nursery school for the rich and a platform for deluded would-be politicians? Or are we going to be a nursery school for the rich and platform for would-be politicians that also helps the extend the average-life span?

An outsider may see the American right-wings opposition to stem-cell research and conclude that we are anti-science. This may be true, but only indirectly so.

What we are is demi-Gods, most of us anyways. The liberal media makes a hue and a cry about "diversity" but everybody knows that 97% of the country is made up of white middle-class Christians.

As Demi-Gods, we shouldn't have to try to understand anything; certainly not "science" or "facts". Schools serve no purpose beyond indoctrinating our children with the sense of their own divinity. This simply takes up to much time to leave any room for "book smarts."

It really is quite simple. There are those things that are easily understood and validate our sense of Demi-Godness. Anything that we have to try to understand must be evil. the real God is white and middle-class just like us, after all, so if we can't understand it, than God doesn't abide it.

A human zygote is "human tissue" It's "human life". That's simple, that's clear, that's meant. Should we measure humanity by the ability to think and feel? Nonsense! Anything that requires more than two steps of logic is of the devil. The truth has already been given to us. why should we busy ourselves looking for it? We are Americans.

And we Americans are not against science. We simply know that what we don't know isn't meant to be known.

So why than have I chosen to clone myself? Well, I think it's because I have matured to the point where I have accepted my own mortality. If I can't live forever, than the least I can do is to pass my genes on to another who will carry memories of me, perhaps even inherit my personality and mannerisms.

This is a desire as old as life, of course. Most people satisfy it by having children. How weak. Why should I pass on only half of myself and see my heratage diluted with each passing generation? I'm me, you understand, and the world must have the total me, one copy at a time, forever, and not a half-me polluted by female chromosomes.

I feel a new pulse within me. My decision has inspired me to grow, to acheive, to gain. Never before has wealth held much appeal for me. I'm a man of simple tastes. My only indulgences are are expensive liquor and cheap prostitutes. I don't require a lot of money to live happily.

But I do need quite a hell of a lot of money to die happily. I've figured that I'll need at least a hundred million, and that's just for a budget job. If I don't want a down-syndrome Josh or a hermaphidite Josh, I'll need to double that.

So I'll need a high paying job. Reporter, professor, lawyer? No, I'm afraid that nothing "above-board" will do. I'm only a demi-God, after all, mortal just like you, ad I do not know the day or the hour, could be any time.

So I'll need to raise two hundred million quickly, like in the next five years. Something like taking over a cartel, weapons dealing, cornering the rice market in a fourth-world country, have a torrid love affair with a major poltician and than blackmail him/her. (Note to self, this won't work in Europe)

Rest assured, I will get the money, it's only a matter of how many peasents have to be destroyed before I do.

So any healthy Teutonic woman between 18-30 interested in being the vessel for my new self should contact me. There's no need to get romantically involved, in fact it would be better if we didn't. Otherwise we could never really be sure could we? In fact it would be best if we never met at all, as I am quite irrisitible.

Do realize that you will be subjected to some rather, intimate tests if you so any sign that you are unable to keep your mouth shut, than, you do understand yes?

If you can keep your mouth shut, than you will of course be paid handsomely. But honestly, I don't want a woman carrying me if she's just in it for the money. This is your chance to be the new Madonna, a superior, technologically advanced Madonna. doesn't that mean so much more than money?

Of cpurse, Mary wasn't a real "mother". Her mortal genes did not the divinity of Christ. She was just a vessel, as shall you be. In order to protect my new self from the diseases and vulnerabilities of infancy, I've decided that my clone shouldn't be born until he is three years old. This will leave you quite infertile for the rest of your life, of course, and I cannot gurantee your own survival. I can only promise you the money and something like immortality, nothing like the real immortality I've planned for myself, of course, but understand that you are a woman and shall go the way of all the vaginite demons. You can do nothing meaningful except to contribute to the glory of a man, and doesn't this sound so mush better than getting married and cooking porridge for fifty years?