by J.R. Blackwell | Jul 12, 2006 | Story |
Today is an unofficial public holiday. Those people that can take a day off work do so, those that can’t call in sick. Today is The Burn. I don’t know who started the tradition (some people say that it was a group of Canadian activists, other claim that it was a collation of South African students) but it spread so fast that it doesn’t even matter where it came from.
It’s celebrated differently all over the world. In the old European Union, I hear they Burn effigies of dead celebrities like Elvis and Brad Pitt. The Europeans blame the Chinese for what happened, the Chinese blame the Indians and the Indians blame the Americans. Americans don’t burn any effigies; Americans break into cemeteries and steal corpses.
In North America they mostly just spit on graves stones, or sometimes even an open hole but in the Southwest, man, they do all sorts of shit. They steal bodies out of graveyards in poor neighborhoods and have giant tailgate parties where people shit on the corpses. A buddy of mine told me he went to a party in new Texas where people took drugs to induce vomiting so they can make a public display of puking on their ancestors. Of course, I’ve seen those corpses, and I don’t see why you would need to take drugs to puke, just smelling them usually does it on it’s own.
Near the equator, I heard that in some places they cook and eat the corpses. I can’t imagine what that old meat might smell like, smoking on a bonfire. Of course, that’s just a rumor, you hear all sorts of shit happening at the equator, the heat makes everybody crazy.
I was thinking about it though, waxing philosophical, you might say, and I think our ancestors got the better end of the deal. I wouldn’t want anyone to puke on me, of course, but they are dead and they don’t know what’s being done to them. I’ve seen the old movies, the flat screen pictures. They had lives without boils, without flaking red skin and the scarring, the flooding and the power failures, the plastic suits and stinking air. They had more metal and plastic than they knew what to do with. They had plenty, and they ate it up.
I get the boils, every day, a new one. I wear the suit, but I still get the boils.
You better believe I’ll be out there today. There’s a grave me and my boys got our eye on. The dead could have done something back in their time, but now it’s too late. They left us here on a world that’s broiling us. The Burn is the least we can do.
by B. York | May 9, 2006 | Story
Today, my arm itches like hell. Then again, lots of me itches. Everyone has an itch somewhere, but the scarring is never permanent. I’m working my new arm left and right trying to get the feel for it down while walking to my favorite breakfast place. Everyone I pass looks at me in the same way I looked at them when they told me I wasn’t perfect. Crazy asshole.
I don’t know why they think I’m different. No one with cash is 100% themselves. The good lord giveth and then he taketh away. Then chop shops borroweth and giveth back to people like me who can’t stand being at anything less than full potential.
Sitting down at the diner I order an OJ because I gotta remind myself that some part of me is still lactose intolerant. If I knew which part, I wouldn’t have that problem anymore. Today, being allergic to dairy products is the least of my worries. My daughter is having her play tonight and I’m going to go see it.
She don’t think much of me since I got the new nickname; won’t even look me in the eye when I come and visit. I dropped the idea that it was because parts of me were African or Asian. Nah, she’s too young to remember what racism used to be. Ex-wife tries to put on a happy face when I come around but I can smell the same old bullshit running through her head, too. Crazy asshole.
Orange Juice is good for you and so is an arm from an Olympic weight-lifter who had a bad case of the trips; the kind of trips that end at the bottom of a fifteen story building. Tough luck for him and his family, but I’m the one cashing in on it.
That’s what makes them sick, I think. Most are all right with what happens to people when they’re alive. People get tortured, molested and raped and the world goes by without a bat of a lash singing happy songs about how fuckin’ grand everything is. Somebody dies and you get the stink eye because you want to claim a piece of organic material as your own.
Checking my watch, I can tell I got to get a move on if I want to be ready for the play. That waitress is giving me a real mean look like she sees a cockroach she can’t crush. “Something wrong with your tip, ma’m?” I asked. I didn’t expect her to answer. I didn’t expect the owner to ask me to leave, either. One look at his scalp, though, and I had his number. “Nice hairpiece, buddy,” I said. “What was his name?”
I always wonder about what piece I’m going to get next. People are talking on the streets and in the courts and the big fucking temples they call legislative buildings. They’re talking about a revolution of flesh. Something about that reminds me of pitchforks and torches. Fuckers might even go storm a castle to find me one day. I wonder who’s going to get my parts.
