Cruisin' for a Bruisin'

The children won't rest. They are stiffly sniffling with pimply rippling nostrils dripping forever upon their particle board tabletops littered with deceptive literature concerning the education of the complacent. The media addled brain of baby faced child slowly fills with chains. Little Jimmy is spinning a book entitled "Crystallography for the Tiny Child of Wonder" upon his drool draped finger. "Hey King of Jesus!" Mr. CruiseMan screams with spittle flung across his Jeering Lobe. "Quit your spin cycle or I WILL show you spin cycle. ALL OVER YOUR FACE!!!!" Yes, Mr. CruiseMan has been teaching his decrepit lesson plan for so long he sees it as a towering monolith of child sobriety. A harbinger of bloody discipline: it is the destructor of meandering adolescent paths. Shoot straight. Shoot it up real straight. Like some sort of schizophrenic heron flying out of the moonlight Mr. CruiseMan swoops down on these cowering shit for brainz and preens their minds of rebellion and safety blankets. He's ever-present; reminiscent of each student's recurring nightmare. Not only do the youth of the nation cower in this smothered atmosphere, so does the lone No. 2 pencil. Due to stifled creativity, each of these yellow sticks of graphite are subject to the jaws of every boy and girl. Chewed to oblivion as these young men and women so often are in the grasp of Mr. CruiseMan. Every twitch of budding limb, every undesired, semi-adult thought squelched in the effort to never join this world of zombies: they all spell the doom of a childhood that will be restrained while it exists. Mr. CruiseMan takes this fact as a rite of education. Let them be absolved of ignorance. For, after all, tis bliss.

Punishment with a Capital P

Looking into the concrete room, the one that features the electric chair as the only piece of furniture within it, Shamus second guessed himself: maybe that killing spree wasn't such a good idea after all. Yes, it was somewhat spastic. It was invigorating and life affirming as well. Like a breath of fresh shit free air after working a double at the Gary, Indiana Sewage Treatment Plant. Like swabbing out those canals inside your head and seeing all that deep yellow wax intermingling with deep brown specks and interjecting (quite belligerently), "Wow, I must be thinking too much." Like sweeping up all the gore of your life into a biohazard bag and flinging it to the mongrel dogs. While breathing the air of all that decieved him and delving deep into the canals of his life with mongrel dogs howling his despair, Shamus broke out his trusting bottle of Dr. McGillicutty Peppermint Schnapps and hit the town. Hit it real hard. With a brick. Sixteen hours later Shamus was detained by a gruff man wearing a badge. A man with apparently no trace of a sense of humor; he had barely cracked his jaw (which was smeared with frosting) with a smile as Shamus screamed drunkenly, "I DID NOT TELL HER TO LIE UNDER DEPOSITION!!! I TOLD HER TO LIE 'DER IN DAT POSITION!!!" Who knows. Maybe you had to be there. So now, 3 retrials and 2 appeals later, his eyes now rest upon the knotted wooden armrests of that which spells his doom. Did he care to die? He didn't know. He did know it was just too easy. You can't snuff out the sneaking suspicion of a life gone mad with a well placed lightning bolt. The feeling is seething under the mundane toil of all those children running mad with popsicles. Those pre-pubescent scoundrels just waiting for the lovely moment when they're chained within their padded, nine-to-five cell. Women and children weren't spared during The Rampage of Shamus: the rejection of a life etched so deep with desolation was. He shuffles in, chains clinging a cheery jingle. A single bubble of spittle forms at the corner of Shamus' mouth as the prison guard, grinning, straps him in.

High Definition Alopecia

Male pattern baldness terrified him so much so that he lost his ability to leave the house for three months. Well, not so much a house but a shack. In the middle of the woods. With no windows. Painted blood red. And not so much three months as three decades. His monthly shower under the bucket which doubled as a latrine had given him a dooming conclusion that rocked his already fragile demeanor. The ever increasing clumps of hair hemorrhaging from his scalp convinced him he would never be the stallion of pride and justice he had sought to be. Testosterone would never drip from his Burt Reynolds-esque mustache as he mounted a steed while carefully, yet decisively, remoulding his quaff of pure masculinity. He was wasting away. His hogs couldn't even stand up anymore. The well wasn't drawing water anymore. His dogs were all foamed at the mouth. His whip had lost it's crack. And this was the worst of it all: His Blu-Ray player had mysteriously stopped working. He used to caress the buttons, getting so sensuous, to stave off the inevitable thoughts of total hairy abandon. But alas, the stripped wooden boards plastered of chipped pornography holding this room of solitude together could conceal no more. Laid bare; barren, sickly, and staring, the eye of the blu-ray will no longer lull him to sleep. He's like some sort of receding hairline off on the horizon; forever lost in a Rogaine commercial he'll never behold in HD again.

Dont Cry Over Sensuousness.

His shifty-pinkeye usually betrays the ultimate sexuality inherently lurking beneath the pale blue iris in his one lazy eye. He is Sexual Rob and his mysterious demeanor and facial twitches bolster the scarily erotic feeling growing in your belly. The tension. The longing. The smell. He is a cassanova slinking along the dark underbelly of Paris, right near the lint inside the belly button. He is the football coach wooing the sixteen year old head of the cheer-leading squad, right near the lint inside the belly button. He once said "I love you" for a complimentary Grande Caramel Frappaccino. Or so he would like you to think. You will question his assertions as his clammy hand plants itself upon your thigh. Are those eyes, caked with a willfully thick baking soda residue, home to all that you desire? Have you been longing for some sort of obscure love predicated upon a blurring of the vision and a recipe for creamy alfredo disaster? These wants may be present but consent is not a tenet of Sexual Rob's belief structure. He is the king of sensuous subversion and he will make you feel how he wants: STRANGELY SEXY. Whether you be frightened or cringing with titilation, you will be confronted with sweaty crimson passion. Yes, his eyes are dead. Yes, he is holding a stack of porno mags. Yes, he hasn't done anything but stare at you for the past ten minutes. Nonetheless, Sexual Rob brings passion to life like a wild eyed necromancer clutching Pure Ruby Red Crystalz and waving a finger puppet through the air as though it were a magic wand in control of all the you yearn for. The sexual revolution is nigh, and it's sticky like spilt milk.

Little Miss Gloomtime.

With the coming of all that was deformed, mutations became a way of style. Like that lovely little fetus suspended within a jar of formaldehyde within your dreams, she will bring about all the rage across your face like a well played slap. Not that it matters too hard. You will succumb to her slowly searching fingers scratching at your inner circle of thoughts no matter how intense your convulsion. Her fingers like tentacles will find that clique of preconceived notions your parents placed delicately within your childhood and let fester into your personality. She'll probe it like it's never been probed before. Imagine a drunk truck driver soaring on crystalz. You'll be probed like that.

The Age of a Dreamer.

Laughter is addictive. Especially after a particularly spirited binge of The Golden Girls. Seeing those geriatric seductions play forth across the screen sent Gene "Moody Goo's" Gambie into fantasies of grandeur involving bedpans, creamed corn, and Mr. Rogers. And no, no, no. This Mr. Rogers prancing about in Gene's private world, bouncing off his synapses like a GooGooDoll splayed out on spraypaint, was no ordinary Mr. Rogers. This explicitly giddy Mr. Rogers wore a trim, curled, silverfox-white wig, lending him a striking resemblance to Sophia, the swashbuckling granny-in-a-wheelchair who doled out crazed idiosyncrasies to her daughter Dorothy and friends during the all powerful reign of the everpresent Golden Girlz. Sparks fly as Gene gazes into this introverted scene. He makes eyes, Mr. R tilts a hip. He pops a collar, Mr. R gyrates grotesquely. All in a days work, thinks Gene as he turns the TV off and detonates the plastic explosive attached to the VCR. This is the only way to kick the habit. He's been hooked on TwoG for years and those post retiremental fancies must come to an end. He was tired of catching the 5:30a.m. Early Bird Discount at the R&R, tired of those lonely eyes tooling around the manicured lawns of the Mt. Everest Assisted Living Facility. That AARP card was looking too delectable these days and it had to stop. He was 37 now and he would finally emerge from his mother's basement like the undead clawing its way out of the crypt. Though the world had changed in the years since Golden Girls was canceled, Gene felt that he could pick up the pieces of the life he had known and move on. Though he had lost a part of himself during the nervous breakdown that resulted from Bea Arthur's tumultuous decision to move on in May of 1992, he would regroup and quell the festering sores of longing scarred across his entertainment preferences. Adjusting the fanny pack around his waist and flipping his Nike Pumps into high gear, he ascended the Woodpanel staircase into his mother's kitchen. The smell of bacon was like Camelot.

Home, Home in on the Pain

It was a stripped out kinship race that had brought him to this point. Of no return is where he stands. Off in the midst... lost to all that call society their home. As one once said, "I didn't move to the city. The city moved to me." Such blind egotism was a mantra for him and he wouldn't let nothin get in the way a that. He screams, "Oh brothers, how have you let me get out this way? Oh brothers, why hast thou given such unfriendly thoughts? Oh brothers, why must I lasso my own urges to keep from falling across the tracks?" These questions lay unanswered because he lacks internal dialogue. Thus, the kinship race. The strung out, fucked down, stupefied spectacle that slapped him across the face and slipped a cold hand down his trousers. He lost. He lost it all: his family, his lifestyle, his pure sexuality, his Turbo Charged Camaro IROC Z-4, his wood tip Back Woods Cigarillos, his "ethics of nothing." All was lost 'cept his Stetson "Totally Fucked" Hat with patented shit stains and sweat-strewn brim. The goofy grin only emphasizes the fact that he is, and has been for eons, a plaything of fate with broken dreams and fractured aspirations.

A Toolshed Full of Drugs.

Toolshed is beside himself; though the tack hammer had done it's job he was unsatisfied. Before him lay the wreckage of seventeen televisions of various sizes. All had given Toolshed a hard time and none would be forgiven. Their screens were blacking out the sun in Toolshed's mind. Their antennae matriculating him into the College of Depression and Sadness. Their constant blare tearing a hole in his mind to be filled with the likes of anti-depressants, painkillers, and appetite suppressants. Could it be that all his efforts were in vain? A wind of emptiness still tore through his petty existence and the predatory pharmaceuticals preying upon his mind were still holding sway. Years previous it had struck Toolshed like a dumptruck slamming through a bridge embankment: he was hanging by a thread spun of medicated sadness above an abyss of woe. Though sidestepping the mental anguish had been fruitful for years, it eventually became futile. He realized the darkness creeping in could not be controlled. And so the media mogul that had been preaching in his living room for his entire life, the television, became private enemy number one within the realm of his broke-down, seedy boarding room. Scapegoats, however, breed more scapegoats. Every box of static was eventually trained under the mental cross-hairs of Toolshed. His latest and largest rampage yet, a raid on the local TV Repairman's shed, leaves him empty still. Popping another Xanax, Toolshed longs for a dramatic, single tear to drip down his cheek. But alas, tears denote emotion and Toolshed is so Zoned that he is just devoid of such things.