A Dry Sponge and the Reluctant Passage of 2000 Volts Through the Human Body

It's been a good long while since I've written something new and even longer since I've said anything of relevance. The past couple of weeks have been confusing to say the least, and I feel the sinister vibrations of an impending crash. Indeed. My boss god, the Scavenger Bird, is screeching somewhere in the distance. He feels the swell too, but I can't seem to gauge how far off he is. His ethereal shrieks echo off the canyon walls with increasing ferocity, compounding one another in a great cacophony of malicious hunger. The din has become unbearable, and there is no telling how soon I will be thrust unwillingly into fallout. The tides are marked with uncertainty and peril, despair.

But what brought all this on?

Monticello Gelatini, my old friend, was married on Saturday, a ceremony to which I bore witness with an odd contentment and a marked lack of the cynicism that normally taints my enjoyment of such ceremonies. Funerals and weddings have, for the most part, struck me as predominantly dishonest events, but I suppose that, every now and then, confluence rules the day. It is rare but certainly not non-existent. I am thankful, at least, to have been afforded the momentary respite of the past weekend before the Scavenger Bird finally arrives, for I will need fortitude to combat the fears of mine that will become realized, I think, before very long. The recent spiritual erosion has been unmistakable, and divergence might just prove unavoidable barring some evil arrangement with the cosmos I cannot promise to make.

All the warning signs are here, though. These bedraggled horsemen of a lesser apocalypse. On a personal level, if only slightly more. Hell. Dick Cheney assumed the duties of the President for two hours during this past week, a fact to which I was blissfully ignorant during the matrimonial festivities. If I had been aware, the weekend might not have represented the sanctuary that it did. Hearing the priest give the Benediction might have sent me into a frothing, mad tailspin. I would have been prompted by powers greater than my own to desecrate the Eucharist and drive a sword into the Christ's wooden heart, cupping his blood in my hands and gulping it down with the fervor of spiritual greed. Of course, none of that is true, but when the ground under my feet feels unstable, I am prone to flights of violent, irresponsible fantasy for no other reason than that it provides an effective counterpoint to anticipated sadness. The loudest men are also the softest, in a way. The most unsure of their certain future.

Damn it to hell. The words aren't flowing. I've spent too much time this weekend sucking on booze and nostalgia to be of any use to myself at the moment. Ha! You heard me, you filthy bastards. Myself.

Did you really think I was doing this for you?

These screeches from the Bird are getting louder, and I've spent too much of my life being a pushover not to stroke my ego a bit before the end. If karma has anything to say about it, I'll be sent back as a retarded platypus for bowing to hubris during the final moments of my former life. Then again, the gods have studied me well enough to know that I would be perfectly happy as a retarded platypus, so they'll have to come up with something truly heinous if they want their petty revenge. I don't know. Maybe a Deaf-Mute-Paraplegic Genius or the President of the United States of America.

This Scavenger Bird of mine is fucking scumbag.