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  *** THE INNER SWINE ***
   Volume 1, Issue 1, May 1995
     www.innerswine.com

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"I am yours. if you feed me garbage. I will sing a song of garbage." - Margaret 
Atwood, 'Pig Song'

CONCEPT BY: Jeff Somers, Robert Gala, Ken West, Jeof Vita
COVER ART BY: Jeof Vita
EDITOR: Jeff Somers
SOME OTHER STUFF: Robert Gala
INSPIRATION:My Own Bad Self
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE EXPERT: Sean Somers

OFFICIAL BAND: Too Much joy, even if they did decline to be interviewed for the 
first issue. next time, we'll kidnap their loved ones and we'll see what 
happens.

TOKEN FEMALE WHO DIDN'T EVEN GET HER ARTICLE IN THIS ISSUE AND WHO I RARELY 
SPEAK TO THESE DAYS: Gina Perfetto

FRIENDS OF THE SWINE: Rose Ann Haberman, who has kept our front cover on her 
fridge for almost 2 years now, patiently; Elizabeth Augoustinatos, who has 
listened to my bitching about abandonment and lazy good-for-nothings, patiently; 
Peter Varsalona, who probably couldn't care less; Karen Accavallo, who always 
says "Hey, cool" when I talk about it; Eric Kun, who bugged me for a copy when I 
had none to give; Lauren, Karen, Misty, and Mickey, who read several articles 
herein and were polite about it; Anna Mossaidis, who offered to dom some work 
for us and who I believe would have come through if I had ever bothered to call 
her.

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   TABLE OF CONTENTS

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EDITORIAL: Pig In Shit #1: "For a Few Dollars More, I'll Tell You Jesus' Home 
Address and Phone Number"
FICTION: "And I Don't Know The People Who Will Feed Me"
COMMENTARY: "Hit It Big at Caesar's Palace: From Rome to Washington, Greed is 
Good"
COMMENTARY: "Copping a Feel in the Information Age"
COMMENTARY: "Happiness is a Warm Gun. The Paranoid View of Gun Control"
SELF-INDULGENT RAMBLING: "How I Conquered the Country, Grew Fat on the Blood of 
my Subjects, Tired of Absolute Power, Abdicated the Throne, and Returned to my 
Ancestral Home (Or, South Dakota and Back in a Few Short Days)"
FICTION: "The Hollow Men"
SELF-INDULGENT RAMBLING: "Just Shaved Monkies: How I Figured it All Out One 
Morning"

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The Inner Swine Volume 1, Issue 1 (ISSN: 1527-7704). Magazine published March, 
June, September, and December by Oinking Sow, Inc. (C) 1995-2002 by Jeff Somers. 
(There is no company, really) Individual subscription rates: $5.00 (cheap!) per 
year in U.S.; $6.00 (cheap!) per year foreign including Canada. Single Copy 
$2.00 (cheap!) but stop teasing me, you're never going to order a subscription, 
you heartless bastards. Free trades are absolutely entertained, send me 
something, and I will mail you treats. Checks payable to Jeff Somers, Editor. 
Address submissions and correspondence to Jeff Somers, The Inner Swine, POB 
3024, Hoboken, NJ 07030, mreditor@innerswine.com. But let's face it, when was 
the last time we published anything not written by me or one of my cronies? 
Other people's pimply writing gives me hives. Still, all submissions or requests 
for Guidelines (there are no guidelines, though) must be accompanied by S.A.S.E. 





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*** EDITORIAL ***
Pig In Shit #1: 
"For a Few Dollars More,
I'll Tell You Jesus' Home
Address and Phone Number"
========================================

  WE are all fundamentally wicked. If we weren't, there wouldn't be any need for 
organized religion, police, or laws. Even most religions, generally designed to 
confuse and ruin, admit man's evil nature as a basic premise. The fact that we 
must construct something as complex and ominous as a society just to keep each 
other alive long enough to do something constructive for the herd is merely a 
symptom: at the base of it all, mankind is bad. I take this as the natural 
condition of our souls, our thoughts and desires. We were designed this way, I 
think; original sin was not a typo.
  Viewed in this light, of course, religion and the whole concept of the moral 
order are seen as unnatural, as repugnant impositions on our instinctive 
tendencies. No one, I don't think, would deny that every facet of our societies 
was designed to fetter our wicked ways. From the relatively subtle cultural and 
moral codes we are immersed in from birth to the overt weight of a legal system, 
it's all there to make sure we follow rules -ancient rules which have remained 
largely unchanged throughout recorded history. And why? I'd like to say we 
create and adhere to these rules of conduct in order to preserve life to nurture 
growth, live in peace. Unfortunately, that is all side-effect and accident. The 
real reason we cross at the crosswalk and don't blatantly murder people (unless 
you live in New York) is to make a buck.
  You can't rent videos or buy blue jeans if gangs are roaming around shooting 
you. You can't pay your rent or your power bill if you can't get a job because 
terrorists keep blowing up your office building. No one gets rich without 
monopolies, tax shelters and high-priced lawyers. You need customers to make 
money, so thou shalt not kill. You need to insure the profits to make money, so 
thou shalt not steal (there are several variations on the theft theme -thou 
shalt not covet, thou shalt not poke your best friend's wife, et al). You need 
the faith of the common folk, you need to make honesty a virtue to make money 
(otherwise they may not trust you) so thou shalt not bear false witness. 
Recently even paying taxes has become a moral imperative, even if your 
government uses those monies to sponsor abortion programs and legislate against 
school prayer. It's not what the governments do with the money that matters as 
long as we're playing by the rules.
  Of course, there are other reasons we require enforceable rules, some of them 
quite noble. No one wants to live in Sarejevo these days, and rents are low 
because several of the major rules have been broken. This structure is necessary 
for us to advance -we wouldn't have, for example, Saturday Morning Cartoons 
without civilization, and I for one feel better off with Saturday Morning 
Cartoons. But the fragile nature of these rules underscores how unnatural they 
are. It is much easier to ignore them than it is to adhere to them, simply 
because our natural instincts are anti-civilized, or "evil" in the moral 
vocabulary.
  And if the mundane structure of society exists to enable the race to flourish, 
where does the moral structure fit in? To make a buck, because money makes the 
world go round and it all starts with tithing.
  Now, I don't disagree with this set-up, and I don't even suggest changing it. 
Besides the fact that religious superstition is too well entrenched in the 
everyman thus making a change like that impossible, I wouldn't want to. I don't 
believe in god, but most people feel a need to believe in something, and the 
various religions of the world are as good a golden calf as any. It is this 
artificial moral order which keeps the huge mobs of people in this world 
manageable, and I certainly wouldn't want it any other way. If Jesus makes sure 
I get the correct change at the newsstand, then thank you Jesus. If the pope 
insures my social security check, then thank you pope.
  Now, if the moral order is artificially imposed for a practical reason, and 
not a natural outgrowth of our innate goodness there must be exceptions, 
throwbacks for whom the moral code is sketchy and occasionally incomprehensible. 
I'd like to be one of those. I'd like to be amoral and guiltless, a wolf amongst 
the sheep. Alas, a lifetime of conditioning is hard to overcome, and often I'm 
shuffling along just like everyone else.
  Sometimes, I succeed, in small, petty ways. I doubt I'll ever become a truly 
amoral person, partly due to the strong pressure put on us by society to be 
moral, to insure business as usual, partly due to the fact that it's hard to buy 
lunch with no job and its hard to get a job with an inability to follow the 
rules. After all, our respect for the fundamental moral laws is directly 
connected to the survival skills of working in the modern day: respect 
authority, work hard, and don't steal office supplies. If you lose the 
foundation, you very quickly lose the rest. You are forced, by economic 
necessity, to follow the rules which perpetuate economics. Over the centuries it 
has smoothed out into a precise loop we hardly notice we're caught in. This is, 
after all, the way it's always been, at least as far as we can tell.
  Is there a better way? I doubt it. And the inherent value of being an outsider 
to all this would be lost if everyone became an outsider. And even anarchists 
rarely desire true anarchy. I know that as much as I question the moral order of 
the world I'm glad for it as well; if it weren't for "thou shalt not kill" New 
York's homicide rate would be a vacation. If it takes a lot of heavy- handed 
mumbo-jumbo in the form of religions to impose this order, then so be it. But, 
it is perverse irony that often, within this moral code, the most profitable 
existence is to be amoral, or more in tune with our instincts. As long as most 
people play by the rules, there is more money to be made by breaking them. Al 
Capone may have died badly, but he lived well.
  But even this, the darker side of money, is part of the rules. Many of the 
illegal industries could just as well be legitimate; all business is run the 
same way. A great many things in this world are considered Illegal or immoral 
out of cultural prejudice and little more, after all. You need to look at 
prohibition to see how perception makes morality: alcohol was good, alcohol was 
evil, alcohol was good, all within a few years. Considering how much more 
damaging and destructive alcohol can be than, say, marijuana, the arbitrary 
nature of our moral code peeks through. And if it all comes down to making a 
buck, why are such profitable enterprises still illegal? Two possible reasons. 
One, there is a higher imperative, and that is survival of the race. Crack can 
make you rich but it cuts our collective balls off and therefore must be 
suppressed. And two, let's face it, there's more money to be made if it's 
illegal.
  So, I can keep trying to shirk off the morality I've been taught in an effort 
to rise above its shockingly provincial and mundane beginnings. I'll probably 
fail, and live a distressingly blah life paying taxes and worrying about the 
small crimes I manage to commit. And the business of the world will plod on, 
careful of its moral mandates and good image.
  Ah, hell, I guess it really doesn't matter. If you try hard enough, you can 
see conspiracies everywhere. And anyway, I suppose I'd prefer economic slavery
 with good benefits to survival of the fittest, since I've never been very fit. 
Finally, there are Saturday Morning Cartoons something to live for, a higher 
purpose. And they're free, too.     

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*** FICTION ***

And I Don't Know The People 
Who Will Feed Me

by Jeff Somers
========================================

  MY coffee had gone cold, but I clutched it in one paw anyway. I was leaning 
against the car, watching the bank for sudden moves and shivering in the cold. 
For a while it had seemed like summer would last for the rest of the year this 
time, and then fall had muscled its way in, unconcerned. Leaves stirred around 
the car in crazy circles, madcap and brittle. It was a bright day despite the 
cold, and I squinted carefully. With my free hand I jingled the car keys, 
spinning the ring around my finger.
  There were three other people standing on the block or the one across from it: 
an old man with the rummy look of a hard drinker leaned against a pole just a 
few stores up from me; a suit with a heart attack looming in his fleshy future 
read a paper at the bus stop on the corner; a young kid in a greasy smock swept 
the sidewalk in futility outside a bagel shop. He was sullen and sleepy and I 
felt a little sorry for him.
  The rest of the people were moving, so I didn't worry about them. Moving 
people checked windows, watched their feet, leered at each other. None of them 
would recall a detail. I watched the crowd anyway, looking for potential 
problems, but mostly I kept track of the three men who'd been there as long as 
we had, who might have even seen Ed, Barry and me arrive.
  For a moment, I closed my eyes and savored the silence. 
  There would be precious little of it in a few minutes. I could feel noise, it 
was in the bank, swelling outward, about to burst. In a moment or two I'd forget 
there ever had been quiet. The day would become stiff and loud, chopped and 
jerky. I took a deep breath, wishing my coffee was still hot, or at least warm, 
and shifted my feet. That was the way life was, noise and peace, bright lights 
and darkness. You just had to stamp your feet through the quiet and try to keep 
up through the exciting.
  It would have been better if it had been raining, but I'd forgotten all of my 
rain dances and anyway I felt dry and dusty against the old chevy with the 
rebuilt engine. In the bright day details were clear and old men leaning against 
poles could recall them with ease and confidence. I was dressed in grays and 
blues, muted and solid, the sort of clothes people forgot, after a while. I was 
nondescript. I practiced being nondescript, it was my bread and butter and I had 
better be good at it. People who weren't became famous, in a bad way. Ed would 
be famous. If you saw Ed once, you could never forget him.
  I shifted my shoulder holster a little, the leather cutting into my skin with 
a cruel leer, and considered the wisdom of another cup of coffee. A good cup of 
old fashioned American coffee on a breezy fall day was one of the few good 
things in this worlds and when you could enjoy it you ought to. As I was 
thinking this, Ed and Barry burst from the bank. If you hadn't known them, you 
likely would have thought they were terrified.
  Because of the wind and the scrape of the leaves, there didn't seem to be any 
noise. Ed and Barry pushed open the doors and pelted across the blacktop of the 
parking lot, mouths open as if they were yelling, guns out and held aloft, like 
badges. In their other hands they clutched thick black bags. With any luck those 
bags were stuffed with money.
  I watched them scream and run and wave their guns for a moment. Let them make 
noise, I thought. Let them be noticed.

  Money had a life of its own. It spoke in low tones, muted and silken, 
murmuring constantly from your pockets and accounts, your bills and debts. honey 
was everywhere. Everybody and every place had some; once you began to listen to 
it you heard it rustling all the time. With insistent pressure, it forced its 
way into you. The language was easy to figure out if you tried, and it all made 
sense, awful sense you couldn't deny.
  There was food to buy and clothes to buy, rent to pay and gas to buy, cups of 
coffee and late-night tips to pay for and the good mill of your fellow man to 
buy. It was about as permanent as Sahara ice in your life, which was the awful 
aspect of it: you needed it, piles of it, and it drained away with mocking 
regularity. You could hear it laughing as it funneled down the black hole, 
gurgling into lost time and feverish, bottomless debts.
  You could sit in your room and listen, going mad, putting a price on all of 
your possessions hatching schemes and making lists of money owed to you, bad 
debts any fool could see would never be paid back. You would listen and money 
would tell you to do all sorts of amazing and ridiculous things, from working 
dull and lifeless jobs for years and years to robbing banks. And you would 
listen. Not all at once, but slowly, over time, you would listen. 

  Ed was known as Pink Eddy in the right circles, the sort of circles where 
everyone had a crazy nick-name because they frowned on their real names. I never 
knew when it started, and after a while everyone knew your nickname better than 
your real name, and your real name became safer. Anyway, he was known as Pink 
Eddy because Ed was in love with the color pink. He drove an old Chevy Nova he'd 
spray-painted pink, he wore pink suits, he ate pink food if he could. If asked, 
Eddy would grin around rotten teeth and say "Pink for pussy, boys" and everyone 
would feel compelled to laugh, low and growling, even though none of us thought 
it was very funny.
  He had the sort of limp, greasy heir that made him look sweaty no matter what, 
and the sort of oval, pale face that gave him a comic look of cheer all the 
time. As he ran towards me, it seemed like he was holding down immense laughter 
and the urge to puke all at once.
  Next to him, about half a step behind, Barry ran a little more sedately, 
trying terribly to look dignified while he pounded the pavement for dear life. 
It was a nearly impossible task, but Barry with his grim face almost pulled it 
off, running tightly and purposely, kicking up dust to obscure his escape.
  I carefully tipped my coffee into the gutter and felt my pocket for keys once 
or twice before remembering they were on my finger. I could just hear Ed wailing 
as I bent to open the doors so they wouldn't have to waste any time once they 
got to the car. I climbed in behind the wheel and stuck the key in, turning the 
ignition and giving it a little gas, It roared into life, smooth and healthy, 
built largely in my own garage. Then I shut my eyes and leaned back, listening 
to Ed get louder.
  He got really loud when he sailed into the back seat, smacking his head hard 
enough against the far door to knock himself out. He grunted once and went 
slack, lolling elastically in the back, a perfect cushion for Barry as he sailed 
in behind him, a moment before I hit the gas and made the backseat confusion and 
terror.

  The bank had seemed like an obvious choice, for a number of reasons. For five 
months we'd cased the place, and every week brought more good news, more reasons 
to wonder that no one else with a trained eye had been there.
  The cameras were in place but they were switched off until the alarm was 
thrown. The employees were instructed not to throw the alarm until all the 
customers were safe, until the crooks were out of the bank. The last thing the 
bank wanted was dead employees or patrons smearing the floor. It was 
understaffed and during lunch there were only thirteen employees in the place, 
and only one downstairs, out of sight.
  There was a rear parking lot and entrance, unusual in a bank. It made for a 
perfect emergency exit, in case something went wrong. It was also staffed with 
several old and presumably disgruntled employees who were lax and familiar 
careful but no longer careful enough.
  And every month, usually a Friday but maybe on a Thursday, payroll came in 
from just about every local business. You wouldn't think it was a lot of cash, 
but considering the lack of effort it would involve, it was quite a sum. Even 
split three ways, it was a lot of cash. Kept all to one, it was a fortune. 

  "Goddammit, Ev, you're gonna kill us!"
  Barry clutched the door tight, sloshing this way and that as I wrenched the 
car around. I sneered at him in the rear-view twisting the wheel again for 
effect. I'd put the car together myself. He didn't know what it was capable of, 
and that meant he was just a fucking coward. I let my eyes slip to the bag he 
clutched to his chest, tight like desperation, and then looked back to the road.
  "Shut up, Bar, we're fine."
  Eddy still lolled, mouth open. A thin line of blood trailed from his scalp. 
Eddy was at his best in that condition, I thought. I glanced in the rear-view 
and there was still no one chasing us. I kept my foot on the gas, and wrenched 
us around a slow station wagon with bone-jarring urgency. Squealing tires and 
roaring exhaust are no way to sneak out of a town, but getting arrested while 
waiting for the lights to change was no way to go out. I let Barry yell all he 
wanted. It made him feel better, and I thought he deserved to feel as good as 
possible.
  "For christ sakes they haven't even pulled their pants back up, Ev! Slow the 
fuck down before you wrap us around a fucking tree!"
  Barry was screaming just to release tension, he knew I could drive like this 
all day and hit only who I wanted to hit. The only accidents I had were on 
purpose.
  I spun into an intersection, smoke and rubbers and stopped traffic in all 
directions. Barry let out a volley of curses and I hit the speed once we'd 
straightened out, throwing him back against poor Eddy to make him shut up. All I 
got from him then was a series of grunts, and I offered him a grim smile. 
  By now we were heading out of town, onto the old state road which lead 
absolutely nowhere, except to abandoned factories and other state roads. People 
like us spent a lot of our time scoping out empty carcass buildings, hulks of 
stone devoid of life and not even wanted for real estate. We lived half our time 
in cars, the other half either in cheap restaurants or broken up and 
intentionally forgotten places like the warehouse I pulled into now. I'd been 
robbing for twenty-three years. I'd been stealing what I could all that time, 
snatching whatever came my way. After twenty-three years of grand larceny, I had 
nothing. 

  Crime isn't easy. Everyone thinks it is, unless they made their living at it, 
but it's the hardest fucking life there is. There's no health insurance, there's 
no retirement plan, your co- workers are untrustworthy, and the money never 
lasts. It never lasts. One day you're rich and the whole fucking world is cheap. 
The next day all you've got Is carfare and debts. There are always debts.
Always. And no chapter eleven. The money stopped speaking and began laughing. 
You couldn't go to a hospital if you got hurt ripping someplace off, you had to 
hire one of the doctors who worked off the books and they took you for all you 
were worth, because they could, because it was pay up or bleed to death, die of 
infection whatever. You couldn't stop it, it went round and round in crazy 
circles.
  Take this job: it didn't come cheap. You had to spend money to make money, 
right? Hell, it got so you had to pull jobs just to finance other jobs. First, I 
needed helps so I cut Ed and Bar in for a third each. Then, we need a car, 
something blank and domestic, forgettable. This is not the spot to save money. 
You run out of some spots racing for your life, and the fucking car had better 
be worth it. Whatever you get, it needs work. It needs a new ignition and fuel 
pump, it needs just about everything. And you do the work yourself so you'll 
know it's right and have no one to blame if it's not.
  You need ammunition, just in case. And you need to open accounts in the bank, 
so you can observe all the patterns and routines without being noticed. And 
through all this, you need to keep eating and living somewhere. You had to keep 
passing money along. By the time we were ready to make a fortune, we were broke. 

  The old warehouse had once housed refrigerators, I knew. I didn't know how I 
knew; something I'd read I guess. It was big and it was in decent shape if your 
standards weren't too high. Most importantly, it's wells were still together, 
and it would hide the car for a while. As long as no one had a good memory, a 
while was all we'd need. I jerked the car to a halt and slammed her into park. 
My eyes caught Barry's in the rear-view. I smiled at him, again.
  "What's the matter, Bar, you getting fucking delicate in your golden years?"
  "Fuck you," he snarled, tearing the door open, "and let's get this fucker 
painted. "
  In the trunk I had neatly tied piles of newspaper and masking tape, 
spraycans and rags. I glanced over the trunk at Ed, who was still out in the 
back seat and looked ready to remain that way.
  "I didn't ask you guys in so you could sleep and bleed." I said. I needed 
things to say, to keep the quiet away. I didn't want any more thinking then was 
necessary.
  "Oh let 'im sleep, Evvy." Barry growled. "He took quite a shot, okay?"
  "Give him a medal." I suggested without sympathy. "If push comes to shove 
and he's dead weight in the back seat, then he's" I paused to grin "dead weight, 
eh?"
  "Oh, fuck, just give him a break."
  We set about painting, slapping on the paper and rattling the cans. The color 
was red and it didn't need to be a good job, it could wash off in the rain or 
flake off in the sun a few days from now, it wouldn't bother me much.
  Barry stepped back and wiped sweat from his face, leaving a smear of red 
paint along his forehead. He put his hands on his hips and eyed the car 
critically.
  "Like new. " he pronounced.
  Barry was like that. He felt a strong need to speak his mind, even when there 
wasn't anything worth talking about and nothing to say about it anyway. Barry 
was a smart guy in a dumb line of work and it ate at him. He didn't want anyone 
to make him out as dumb, just because of the company he kept, so he chattered on 
and on just in case anyone was listening.
  I was on the other side of the car. I'd been careful to keep it between us. I 
set the spray can on the floor gently, and eased my gun out of its sheath. 

  The first and only rule of cash was that the more you had the more you spent. 
The first job I ever worked had been with my brother Tommy. Tommy Lightfoot, 
they'd called him, those old drunks and toasted connies he'd palled around with. 
I'd been fifteen, to me Tommy was rich. He was rich and he slept late every day, he didn't do nothing all day if he didn't feel like it. Like every true moron, 
my big goal inexplicably was to do absolutely nothing. My brother had nothing to 
spare, and he needed a driver.
  My brother got shot in the shoulder running from a liquor store; the fat 
old man behind the counter had waited none of the 300 seconds we'd told him to 
before grabbing his old revolver and blasting away. We split almost 1700 dollars 
for ways: I got a hundred bucks for driving, the three of them got about 500 
bucks apiece. We had to pay my brother's share to Grinning Joe, an Indian who'd 
been a medic in the war, to remove the bullet and close up the wound. Once 
Grinning Joe heard how much we'd scored, he wouldn't accept a penny less.
  I bought Donna Dellabrese a bracelet with my century hoping to get laid. It 
worked. It wasn't worth it, she was stiff and unemotional and it was like 
jerking off except not as fun. All I could think of that night was that Tom and 
I were both broke again.
  These days I am more successful at this job than my dead brother would have 
imagined. I'm smarter than he'd been, and I'm a better judge of people. As a 
reward I have more nothing than Tommy ever had. Every dollar I'd ever had is 
spent and the funny thing is with money, you don't feel it until it's gone. 

  I pushed the gun up and leveled it over the car. Barry was caught up in 
admiring our job, and after a moment he was still studying the car intently. 
Barry was so fucking smart I could shoot him and he would die with such a look 
of dumb amazement on his face! I didn't went Barry to die dumb. All of us had 
just one thing to take with us, and I wasn't going to take it from him.
  "Barry."
  He glanced at me, glanced away, and snapped back with the aging agility which 
had kept him alive this long. After that, he didn't move, not a single muscle 
or loose hair, which was why he was alive and still healthy. My brother Tommy 
never learned how to freeze. He took a shot in the back because he didn't 
believe a uniform would cut him down. Barry was old like me, he was smarter.
  "Oh no, no Evvy," he said quietly, "not like this, please not like this."
  You don't make friends, but you start to think, sometimes, that you've got 
some mutual respect, that maybe you could have been friends. I felt that way 
about Barry, at that moment. It was silly. I didn't even like Barry, really. 
Usually, he liked himself too much. But he stood there like a wreck and I knew 
exactly what he was thinking, because I'd be thinking exactly the same thing: 
After all this, this was it? The unfairness of it made my hand shake.
  "C'mon Ev, C'mon," he urged, "knock me down, tie me up, take the fucking 
money, man! But not like this!"
  Somehow, being made a fool of became a better option than death. When we'd 
been younger, it was the other way around. Me and Barry had lived long enough 
to value our dignity, to hoard it like aged dragons nursing gold. Taking it 
away from him wasn't easy. I stared, watching him shrink.
  "C'mon Ev," he repeated breathless. I didn't say anything, and his fists 
clenched at his sides. "Goddammit I don't deserve to go out like this! 
Goddammit Ev, I don't deserve this!"
  His shout echoed dully. For a moment we faced each other, and then he licked 
his lips and continued, softer. "What is it, Ev? It can't be the money, man. 
There ain't enough there to make it worth it. What is it, Ev?"
  But it was the money, it was the money, it was the fucking money. I wanted to 
tell him so, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't admit it, not even to a dead man. 
He waited longer than I could stand, and finally sucked in breath to shout. I 
couldn't listen anymore. I squeezed my hand and the gun jerked in it. Barry 
took it in the chests throwing his arms out and throwing himself backwards 
carelessly.
  There was nothing but the sound of my breathing, tired and old. I walked over 
to him carefully, looked down, and put two more in him to make sure he was dead. 
  The quiet could get to you.
  If you think about it, it's all quiet until we hit the scene. All of us 
animals running around roaring, making noises driving the quiet away. And the 
weird part was that after all the screaming sometimes you made so much noise 
that it all canceled itself out and left you in silence. I stood there in total 
silence and wasn't sure if I'd gone deaf or if it really was so impossibly 
quiet.
  As I turned away, there was the scrape of my heel on the floor, and it was 
over.

  Paint smeared itself all over my hand as I crawled in. I wiped it absently on 
my sleeves. She started up easy, smooth, purring in rebuilt glory. The smell 
of paint was everywhere.
  Movement caught my eyes, and I saw Eddy in the rear-view, squirming
and moaning, half-conscious. The bloods thin and delicate had dried on his 
forehead and looked around with his eyes closed. I put the car in gear and felt 
around for my gun, so I could kill him before he started to speak.

========================================
*** COMMENTARY ***

Hit It Big at Caesar's Palace:
From Rome to Washington, Greed is Good

by Sean Somers
========================================

  Few civilizations have ever gotten as good a rap as ancient Rome does both in 
our classrooms and in the popular mind. Tune in to any old Hollywood sword and 
sandal movie or open up any High School history text and you will find endless 
references to "the noble Romans" and the "Glory that was Rome". Of the other 
ancient civilizations, only Greece enjoys as good a press. All the rest, outside 
of the Israelites of the Bible, are just gothic despotisms inhabited by a lot of 
guys in bed sheets with no hair. The Romans, though, are portrayed as guys like 
us, people we could actually talk to if we'd actually paid attention to our High 
School history classes. Up until recently they were even thought of as better 
than us, as a standard for us to live up to. this was particularly true of the 
Middle Ages when present day Detroit could have easily been mistaken for the New 
Jerusalem, but as late as the eighteenth century Edward Gibbon was declaring the 
reign of Augustus Caesar to have been the best time ever to have been alive (the 
last thousand years or so being nothing but a let-down for Eddie). Indeed when 
pushing almost any reform or revolution thinkers and orators invariably cited 
Rome as though the future had already passed; Machiavelli thought that Rome's 
citizen legions were an ideal model for the Italian city-states, and all the 
main players of the French Revolution styled themselves after Brutus and the 
other great men of Rome, and followed their heroes closely by butchering each 
other wholesale. 
  We, of course, tend to feel that there has been some improvement since 
Augustus Caesar's day, but Rome is still extolled as the main progenitors of our 
own civic virtues, the ideals of rule by law and service to the state. 
Washington and Jefferson read their classics too, and were fond of referring to 
Cincinattus at the plow as their ideal of public service. Cincinattus had a lot 
in common with them, too: like Washington and Jefferson he had a lot of unhired 
hands to help at the farm. The founding fathers' admiration of Rome was such 
that the capital city constructed for the new nation resembles nothing so much 
as a new Rome, complete with slum quarters for the mob. Rome was praised as a 
society where men served the state for the sake of the Republic, not some despot 
for their own personal gain. Throughout history, Rome has been seen as the 
"good" empire, the model all later ones claimed to be following. 
  This was just as the Romans wanted it. They were consummate propagandists and, 
having read their Greek historians, were as interested in influencing the future 
as the present. Roman literature, whether history or poetry, was state policy. 
Virgil's Anead was written on commission at the express order of Augustus 
Caesar, and a good deal of poetry and history up until the very end took the 
form of Government sponsored suck-fests. 
  Virgil and his colleagues also had a better time of it. Unlike such latter day 
comrades in the spin doctoring trade as Lee Atwater and James Carville, Virgil 
had no competitors to crowd him out or call his bluff. If you could read and 
write in the Roman Empire, you were part of the system. Only the elite knew how. 
In our day, the more ingenious of our poor and disadvantaged have the basic 
skills and have even made movies, thanks to the NEA and other programs that the 
republicans are always complaining about. Rome's literature and history on the 
other hand was written entirely by men with a stake in the Roman system. (Roman 
art, on the contrary, wasn't: it was all done by Greeks.) Rome's culture, then, 
was culture from the top. It's purpose: to tell us how cool the Romans thought 
they were. History books quote panegyric after panegyric as if they were travel 
brochures put out by the Imperial Ministry of Tourism. Travel brochures, of 
course, lie. By and large, the Romans were not a particularly nice bunch of 
people. To say that they didn't really live up to the standards imagined by 
Jefferson and others wouldn't be accurate; they actually behaved very much like 
gangsters. 
  A true model of Rome was the noble Crassus: politician, general, 
philanthropist. He made his fortune running Rome's first fire brigade. Public 
welfare, however, was not his concern. the fire brigade was part of Crassus' 
real-estate business. Rome, you see, was made up mostly of cheap, shoddily built 
tenements, some five stories high and all of them made of wood, with the safety 
features normally found in Gulags. Fires, needless to say, were a constant. With 
no alternative, the owners would normally simply take the loss, but Crassus, 
with that vaunted Roman practicality, had a better idea. No sooner would a fire 
be sighted than his agents would rush to the scene and persuade the owner to 
unload the property cheap. The deal clinched, the fire brigade would proceed to 
put out the fire and Crassus would have fresh apartments to rent, only slightly 
less livable than before. 
  This racket, of course, earned Crassus more money than God, but in a country 
where actors literally got killed live on stage when their roles required it, 
something more was needed to gain the respect and support of his fellow 
patricians. Crassus had to put his money where his mouth was and in Rome that 
meant leading an army against one of your neighbors so that you could clean them 
out too. Crassus went to war against Persia, a troublesome country currently 
known on the world stage as Iran. Then as now, the Persians were a nasty crew 
and Crassus unfortunately was not as good at warfare as he was at extortion: he 
lost badly, and the great Crassus, or rather his presumably most noble head, 
wound up as a prop in a stage play put on by the Persian court. 
  Crassus' rise and fall, from godfather of graft to stage cue, is also a good 
model for the rise and fall of Rome itself. All empires are for the most part 
kleptocracies. The name of the game is to get things for free (or at least 
really cheap) that the natives would normally only sell at a premium, if at all. 
Spain, for example, conquered South America for its gold and open country. 
Ancient empires, such as Rome, were completely ignorant of economic theory and 
conquered primarily to increase their tax revenues. Conquest also meant 
wholesale looting and if the target were rich enough, that could be 
justification in itself. Rome's civilizing mission, so extolled by most 
histories, usually went no farther than the establishment of cities, little 
islands of Latinity in great oceans of Barbarousness. To be a citizen of Rome 
meant that you were a part of this city empire. Otherwise you lived as you had 
for centuries. The cities in turn were like huge garrisons, the legions which 
imposed Rome's terrible will on the countryside and the bureaucrats who did 
similar things but with greater subtlety coming from their walls. 
  The name of the game, of course, was to clean the place out. Egypt was already 
being run as a profit making entity by the Ptolemies when Rome initiated a 
wildly successful hostile takeover that left the queen and a few thousand 
soldiers dead. Augustus Caesar, the winner of this little fight, took Egypt as 
his personal fief and ran it very profitably. In later years, it served as the 
Nebraska of Rome, the rich soil of the Nile providing Rome with great quantities 
of cheap grain. Very cheap grain. Cheaper than could be grown by even the Roman 
heartland itself. 
  This was the pattern throughout the empire. Rome was a giant drain through 
which all the wealth and resources of the rest of the empire disappeared. Having 
conquered what was then most of the world, Rome proceeded to one of the biggest 
looting sprees in history. It lasted a very long time as there was a lot to 
steal. During this time Rome became a gigantic parasite, an economic black hole 
in which nothing was produced and everything consumed without thought of 
consequence. For example, Hordes of exotic animals from Africa, many difficult 
to trap even today, were brought to Rome at great expense and then simply 
slaughtered, their bodies dumped like so much garbage. 
  Now, this scheme worked out pretty well so long as there was something to 
steal. So long as there were still accumulated treasures to ransack in 
established territories to loot and scourge, the empire remained strong. But 
even entire countries can be ransacked for only so long. As for new countries, 
Rome began to suffer from Imperial Overstretch around the second century AD: the 
drive east which had overwhelmed the usually hardy city states of Greece 
foundered at the gates of Persia. Rome made nothing, produced nothing, grew 
nothing, and when it ran out of loot it lost its means of paying for itself. Of 
course, in the beginning Rome didn't have any of that either. All it'd had was a 
bunch of hard nosed farmers on a bunch of rather unimpressive hills, and if that 
had remained the core of the Roman Empire, history might have been different. 
But Roman greed undermined even that. 
  First, those hardnosed farmers. The Roman farmer, toiling over his small farm, 
was the backbone of the army under the Republic, the army that defeated all 
opponents and conquered an empire. His hard life made him able to withstand the 
hardships of military life and at the same time made the rewards of soldiering 
(often a plot of land in a freshly conquered territory) attractive. But when 
Eqypt became a source for cheap grain, the Roman farmer could not grow his grain 
cheaply enough to compete, unless it was on a large estate where lots of 
landless tenants worked large tracts of some other guy's private property. Roman 
farmers began to lose their farms. Landless, they drifted in two directions: the 
big estates or the cities. The ones who went to the estates were lost to the 
army; as the estates grew bigger and the money made from them increased, the 
owners used their wealth to divorce themselves more and more from the demands of 
the state. These men used their wealth to control their local areas, often in 
defiance of whatever came down from Rome. A few even had their own armies. 
Peasants who came to them were often exempt from taxes and from military 
service. 
  Those who drifted to the dim lights of those not-so-big cities were lost too, 
but in a more complex and troubling way. 
  Ancient cities produced little. They were centers of consumption, not 
production. Their base was the market where goods from the countryside came, not 
to be processed, but to be sold and consumed. This meant that there were only so 
many jobs in the big city and no room for a new job group. Unless a newcomer had 
a skill or hooked up with the right people he became un or underemployed. Either 
way, surrounded by all the obvious wealth of the in crowd, he was not a happy 
camper. This was a hazard of almost every ancient city: all were plagued by a 
large population of essentially bored, hungry, and aimless people ready to riot 
at the drop of a hat. To have so many people (over a million by some estimates, 
a great many for those days) near the seat of power in Rome itself was an object 
of no small concern. To head off trouble the state began to dole out bread, for 
free, and to provide almost year round entertainments, the bloodier the better. 
These bread and circuses left the Romans utterly demoralized. fed and distracted 
by the state, they had neither the grit nor the reason to join the army. Indeed 
their antics often required its intervention, for when the bread ran low or the 
show failed to amuse they often expressed their displeasure directly, out in the 
streets. With more and more of its citizens serving as either serfs or welfare 
cheats there were less to serve in the army. The empire was becoming, in effect, 
unmanned. 
  The other big problem was that even as the bottom fell out, there was nothing 
but mayhem at the top. Technically a republic, the empire had no clear line of 
succession. The emperor was, in theory, simply the first man of the state. 
Anyone with the patrician background could theoretically work his way up to it 
armed with nothing besides an able hand, an ability to play off rivals and a lot 
of luck. Being related to the previous emperor didn't help at all. Attempts to 
make the emperor a Near-Eastern style god/king only made the job more lucrative 
to a whole series of generals. In the third century, it got to a point where 
every guy with a posting in the army wanted to be emperor. At times you needed a 
score card to keep track of them. 
  Needless to say, the empire suffered. The frontiers were abandoned as army 
after army went back to Rome to put its man on the throne and within the empire 
trade was disrupted and property destroyed. It's hard to keep on top of such 
things, as emperor, if some other guy is trying to kill you. 
  In the end a guy who wasn't even really Roman pretty much killed everybody 
else. Impersonating a Las Vegas lounge singer's idea of the Sun God, Diocletian 
ruled over an empire so depleted that it was literally a bad imitation of 
itself. The money was junk, little more than base metal washed in silver, so 
worthless that bankers in Egypt refused to accept it. The population had shrunk, 
killed off in civil wars and plague resulting from civil wars. Whole skilled 
professions were severely disrupted. Sculpture, for example, which had been 
technically excellent a century before now produced stunted, idealized figures 
which revealed an ignorance of anatomy. Figures in paintings now wore long robes 
to hide the fact that the artist couldn't draw. In desperation, the Romans often 
stole the decorations off old monuments to make the new ones look better. The 
kleptocracy had run out of things to steal and squandered what was left in civil 
war. Rome, in its greed, had literally eaten itself. 
  Nevertheless the empire went on, tired, depleted, like some sort of 
geopolitical zombie. And the man responsible for this strange half life was 
Diocletian, the Vampire Lestat of ancient government. His main concern was the 
army, the main force that held the empire together. Though tiny by our 
standards, the increasingly backwards and medieval-looking army was the biggest 
drain on imperial Rome's coffers. Paying for it was murder, sometimes literally. 
So long as Rome's economy continued to decline to tribal swap-meet level, the 
money available to pay for it shrunk. 
  Now, the ancients had absolutely no idea of economic theory and if they had 
Diocletian probably wouldn't have understood it anyway. His solution to economic 
rot was to command the economy to stop. Prices were fixed. To keep people from 
abandoning jobs needed by the state and the empire in general, jobs were fixed 
too. If you made shoes under Diocletian you were required to make shoes for the 
rest of your life, and your son had to as well. 
  Needless to say, it didn't work. Diocletian created a grim prison house of an 
empire, a fourth century Soviet Union which took longer to fall simply because 
things took longer in that worn out era. Here greed took its final turn with 
Rome, making Rome literally the target. By now the Roman legions were long gone, 
the men who once served in them either on the dole in the big city or toiling 
away on some medieval Tara. To replace them, the empire hired foreigners, whole 
foreign tribes in fact. 
  These were the Germans, then a nomadic people with even fewer virtues than 
they have now. They were looking, like most people, for the good life, and 
served Rome in return for land to settle on. Federati, "friends of the empire" 
they were called. To make a long story short, it began to dawn on them that 
there was nothing to keep them from taking the empire for themselves. The empire 
was on its back, paying them in effect to defend it, usually from other Germans. 
And to the Germans even the depleted empire looked good. In the end, Rome's 
cynical diplomacy of playing tribe against tribe got tangled up in its own 
sneakiness and the Germans began to carve up the west for themselves. Worn out 
and long ago gutted, the empire collapsed into fragments from the glittering 
Greek-speaking Eastern Empire which lasted a thousand years more, to the 
darkness of medieval France which only seemed that long. 
  The racket was over. A new mob had moved in. Why then is Rome extolled even 
today? Well, for one thing, even the worst society can and will produce 
something of value. After all, the Nazis let Leni Reifenstahl make movies and so 
Rome produced Ovid, Martial, Augustine, and others. Second, beneath the hype 
many of our finest institutions and most basic concepts of government do have 
their origins in Rome. Finally, though, Rome remains the ideal empire, the 
civilization that made greed and imperialism seem respectable, even noble. The 
laws, the art, the poetry all legitimize and justify the raw aggression of a 
classic warrior state. Rome, whose leaders obeyed no laws save those of their 
own ambition and fear, claimed paradoxically to spread law. So too do todays 
pirates and patricians appeal to higher values to justify their aggression. The 
Romans spoke of "Roman Peace". During the Gulf War, George Bush spoke of 
creating a "New World Order". Rome's proved far more durable. Rome, for many, 
remains an ideal of greed sanctified, of ambition redeemed, of personal and 
national aggression becoming the trip wire of the common good. So long as men 
seek conquest, the Romans will remain, to tell them that it is right and just. I 
came. I saw. I conquered.    

========================================
*** COMMENTARY ***

Copping a Feel in the Information Age:
Life is Short. Play Hard
========================================

  Does anyone besides me and the usual grassy-knoll paranoids feel a little 
worried about the "information age"? I'm not discussing "cyberphobia", I'm going 
to assume we're all adults here and that none of us are really afraid of our 
computer. I'm talking about the fact that the so-called "information age" and 
"computer revolution" we're being suckered into is largely managed and 
orchestrated by the cynical and greedy powers that be, to whom we are wallets 
and credit lines and nothing more. I don't imagine fat men in shiny suits 
cackling as they control our minds -I refer you to the aforementioned grassy-
knollers for that sort of sweaty fantasy- what I'm talking about is the 
mindless way the information age is being handed to us as entertainment, as the 
ultimate way to waste whatever time your mindless job leaves you.
  We already have plenty of ways to keep from being bored, to stifle whatever 
creative and independent thought we've still managed to be burdened with. The 
movies have gotten bigger and prettier and more exciting. They're everywhere  -
on video, on laserdisc, on TV, on cable-  and, oh yes, in theaters. The music 
scene, for Pop/Rock anyway, is huge, with a thousand whores plugging themselves 
endlessly. There are better and better video games, more amazing personal 
entertainment technology to play them on anywhere  -Donkey Kong at home, on the 
bus, at work. Sports are everywhere, all year round and in detail. There are 1-
900 sex lines to dial up, musicals to see on Broadway, endless re-runs of every 
show, film, or infomercial ever made, a dozen radio stations providing 
continuous soundtrack to it all. Even the personal computer, supposedly the 
empowering gateway to that fabled information superhighway, is not immune: every 
effort, from screen-savers to games to cute icons, is made to make your PC more 
entertaining.
  In short: Where is all the information in this ballyhooed Information Age?
  Of course, it's there; I don't need angry letters about the Internet and the 
World Wide Web, FTP sites and CD Rom encyclopedias. That's not the point. All 
that information was always there; if you were too lazy to do some research and 
didn't notice, too bad. The point is, the Information Age is being handed to us 
as a way to direct-order movies and create our own stationary, a way to play 
bigger and more realistic games. Sure, you can look up anything you need to know 
somewhere on the Web (assuming you can access it) but why bother when you're on 
level 15 of DOOM(R)?

  This is not a conspiracy, I don't think. It would be fun to think so, I guess, 
but really, how could you believe it? Let's face it, you can e-mail a library in 
Hong-Kong and gets stats of a research article faxed back to you. No conspiracy 
worth the grassy-knoll mentality would allow that. What this is is simply the 
human condition. We're more interested in being entertained than in learning a 
god-damned thing. We built the huge and ugly entertainment industry, folks. 
We're the ones clawing each other's eyes out over Cabbage Patch Dolls, it's us 
playing MYST  ten hours a day or more. If what we really wanted was daily 
updates on political currents and medical breakthroughs, that's what the 
corporate vampires would have in the stores. But we prefer Virtual Valerie, and 
look forward to the day when we won't need lovers at all, and can screw 
ourselves into extinction with our Pcs in the privacy of our own living rooms.
  It has been noted by others that possibly the scariest part of the coming 
revolution is the potential for isolation. It's bad enough that you can shop at 
home, see movies at home, work at home, even visit friends while at home. When 
the Wired World hits its stride, you may never have to leave your house again, 
assuming you're one of the relatively few who will be able to afford all the 
goodies. You can wake up and telecommute to work via modem and fax, have lunch 
delivered, order a current blockbuster on your HDTV with surround sound, have 
dinner delivered, video- call your mother and then have Virtual Valerie blow you 
in the la-zee boy. One of the selling points for movies-on-demand technology is 
how bothersome it is to go to the theaters: so many people, so much travel time, 
finding a seat, annoying members of the audience, technical gaffes, yadda yadda 
yadda. For some people, apparently, having to deal with the rest of humanity is 
a very scary thought, and being able to dial up "Interview with the Vampire" 
without having to even speak to another human being is immensely attractive. To 
me, at least, it is disgusting.
  Sure, sometimes our fellow upright apes can be downright, well, idiotic. I 
roll my eyes at least once a weekend at the chimps jostling their way around me, 
hooting and hollering. In movies, especially, the mob mentality takes over. In 
the dark, surrounded by buddies, morons think its funny to make comments and 
throw popcorn, to shine lights on the screen, to move around the theater. We all 
get annoyed. But that's also part of the charm, as far as I'm concerned. Sitting 
in a crowded theater on opening night, you're part of a group experience, and 
there are damn few of them left, bubba. You get an instant reaction, boos for a 
turkey and awed silence for a success. As long as you share the group opinion, 
it's magical. If you're the one fool who loves the flick in a sea of 
disappointed apes, well, you may have a problem enjoying yourself. Too bad. My 
heart weeps. If you're such a tender soul, then by all means stay home and order 
pay per view, sit like a cow in front of your screen and store up your 
experiences like precious jars of mist, too delicate to be exposed to the sun. 
Flower like a mushroom in the darkness of your home theater, and I will not miss 
you.
  This is what we're being sold, though. Ease of entertainment, quantity of 
entertainment, quality of entertainment. Movies these days are smart, so are 
video games and music. We're smart. Despite the educational problems this 
country has, despite the creeping poverty and decimating cow-like attitudes of 
some of the right-wing extremists, we are still an amazingly smart public. 
That's never been the problem, the problem is the sheer concentration on 
entertainment. It's great to have choices, it's great to have quality. It's 
great to be able to go see any type of film we desire. read any type of book, 
listen to whatever death-metal-lite-pop-disco- freak CD we want. But should it 
be the main focus of our lives? Maybe we've been working for the weekend a 
little too much. Some of us spend so much time just trying to keep up with all 
the entertainment they barely have time to sleep, what with two VCRs recording 
shows, ten magazines arriving every week, Columbia House shipping them Cds, and 
only two days a week to watch movies and play games. There are people who would 
gladly give up everything else to just be entertained.
  What's the problem with this? Nothing, on the face of it. Being entertained is 
okey- dokey, after all, even necessary. I wouldn't give up my TV or my trips to 
the movies for anything. But it is so passive, so sit-and-stare, that it 
definitely robs us of initiative and creativity. We're a smart public, but we 
don't create anything. We can appreciate art and catch all the subtlety in a 
complex work, but so few of us ever bother to create anything. We consume and 
our intellects are stimulated by other people's works, but we don't produce 
anything.
  Of course, someone is. Someone has to be making movies, writing books, 
scripting TV shows, right? Sure, they're out there. But compared to the vast sea 
of us mooing our way into work every day, they're a tiny percentage, and a very 
incestuous one at that: the talents in Hollywood and at the Networks work on 
several different projects, they are intertwined in a great deal of work. Most 
of us are not submitting scripts, we're just waiting breathlessly for the next 
episode so we can solve that age-old problem: what are we doing tonight?
  
  The reasons for this attitude and phenomena are varied, in my opinion. Number 
one, of course, is the sheer amount and availability of entertainment: we no 
longer have to amuse ourselves. If there's nothing on TV we can rent a movies if 
we've rented them all we can play a video game if we've beaten them all we can 
go on-line and download some dirty pictures if we've digitized them all we can 
go to a concert, a movie, a game. Number two is the coming Age of 
Specialization, evil kid brother to the Information Age. Hundreds of years ago, 
being a Renaissance Man was easy: Science was primitive, art was everyone's 
domain, if you didn't learn to play an instrument there wouldn't be any music to 
be had. Back then it was possible to be an expert in any number of fields, 
because so much of it was either just being theorized or wasn't in sufficient 
quantity to be overwhelming. Today, this is a quickly-fading concept. If you 
want to be a Medical Doctor, it takes so many years of specialized education 
that you pretty much have to make the decision while in High School. You can't 
be an M.D. and an Electrical Engineer, at least you can't do it and still be a 
relatively young man when you stumble from the graduation ceremony. As a result 
of these two conditions, you have a large group of the population who don't feel 
they can create their own works. A financial analyst doesn't feel capable of 
producing a novel, or painting a picture. Some do, anyway, but few regard their 
works as truly competitive with "masters". For every John Grisham there are a 
million lawyers who might make fine novelists, but who don't feel capable.
  This doesn't explain it all, though. We all know that Stock Broker who writes 
Heavy Metal tunes in his spare time, that Engineer who jots poetry. We've heard 
tales of working slobs who make films with twenty grand borrowed from credit 
cards. Obviously, we're not that specialized yet.
  Number Three is really the interaction of the two: with a seemingly 
unaccessible entertainment industry making it seem like only a small group of 
people can create and market their creations, there isn't much else with which 
to stimulate your mind except with ready-made entertainments. We can't make 
movies, so we watch them avidly. Eventually, as the entertainment industry 
becomes more and more technological, the inverse proportion will increase: fewer 
people capable of creating, more intense entertainment in demand and available. 
The push is towards "interactive" entertainment, "virtual reality" games and 
movies, so that the audience, passive as ever, will have the illusion of 
kineticism and of creation. And at that level of technology, the number of 
people capable of creation in the arena will be the smallest ever.
As a result of these two dynamics, the trend towards an entertainment-based 
information highway speeds up. And without realizing it, we get sucked along 
with it.

  The dark side of the Internet. There is another factor in the Fluffation of 
the Information Revolution, and that is the people in charge of it, the 
government and the makers of the technology. Once again I do not refer to 
conspiracies. If the United States Government or the United States' Corporate 
community (and is there really all that much difference anymore?) could pull off 
complex conspiracies like that so routinely, I think we'd have a tighter grip on 
events and policies. No, it's more the usual fears and narrow-minded greed that 
gives us the F/X channel or The Home Shopping Network instead of CNN or C-Span 
on our cable menus.
  The powers that be, a vague term which I mean to suggest all sorts of 
government, from College administrations to the big Fed itself, are just 
beginning to get edgy about the Internet. For years the Internet has languished 
in obscurity, used only by computer wonks and collegiate intellectuals, and a 
few bratty teenagers with a serious computer addiction. In that atmosphere, an 
amazing amount of free speech prospered. Subjects ranging from anal sex to 
pedophilia to murdering your annoying roommate were bandied about without 
reprisal. Well, almost. The other remarkable thing about the Internet is the 
sheer amount of rules of polite conduct which have evolved amongst its users: 
there are ways to post your thoughts, ways to reply, and certainly a long list 
of things not to do. The truly remarkable aspect is the fact that so many users 
of the Internet abided by these unwritten rules.
  So, with a high level of cheer and only occasional Flame-Wars (a flame is a 
complaint or insult regarding a posted article or reply) one could down-load 
pictures of pornography, dirty stories, the best ways to kill yourself, and 
detailed instructions on how to cheat, among other things, the phone company. 
And, with the exception of the occasional Sysop, no one cared or noticed.
  However, with all the media attention the Internet is receiving these days, 
and with the onslaught of previously ignorant users coming off of services such 
as America Online and Prodigy, suddenly people are noticing.
  There are cops on the Internet, now, hunting Pedophiles. It is a sad truth 
that there are men (and I suppose women) who would cruise the Internet's sex-
BBS's and make contact with young children, establish a friendship with them 
exchange pornography, and then try to lure them into meeting physically. This is 
an absolute truth, and the police in some areas now routinely pretend to be 
young boys or girls posting to these BBS's in order to trap offenders. This has 
worked remarkably well, and has resulted in many arrests. On the surface, this 
all sounds wonderful, and in a way it is. I don't want kids being suckered into 
a rape scene through the computer, I don't want 10 year olds looking at stills 
of Tori Welles sucking cock. No one does, I'd hope. But I can smell a witch-hunt 
brewing, and I don't like it. The Internet is largely unregulated, largely 
because Congress is behind the times and is somewhat unaware. Most people are 
behind the times and somewhat unaware, and express surprise at what the internet 
can do. So, when three out of four news reports regarding the Internet focus in 
on the pornography on it and how it can get into the wrong hands, before you 
know it everyone from the PMRC to Jesse Helms is calling for intervention, to 
get the "smut" off the Internet.
  Now, to some of us even that sounds good. Who needs pictures of Tori Welles 
giving head, anyway? Well, no one needs them, per se, but if you start that, 
where does it end? Do we really want the Big Fed walking cyberspace, mailing us 
violations if we post a piece of fiction involving underage kids and sex, or if 
we use racial slurs or sexist insults? I don't call people spics or niggers, but 
man, I support your right to be a bigot. The pornography issue could be the 
inroad to Government regulation, under the unspoken theory that we as common 
people cannot handle our own freedom of speech, and therefore it must be 
regulated. Irony, you know, is lost on Senators.
  Another example of trouble brewing: the privacy issue. In the November 1994 
edition of Rolling Stone magazine, there is an article about a Cornell 
University student who posted a suicide note in a fit of depression, without any 
serious intention. The Internet was merely an anonymous way to vent his 
frustrations. Before he knew what had happened, a well-intentioned Internet User 
noticed the posting, alerted emergency services at the college, and our 
depressed young man was hauled away to a Hospital for observation, for his own 
good. All perfectly legal. And yes, it does make sense: what's better, a young 
man alive but with his privacy dented, or a young man dead with his privacy 
intact? Hard to argue. But his potential suicide isn't the real issue here: it's 
his privacy. It hints at darker things, at the fact that the Internet and the e-
mail system seem private, and so encourage honesty and daring, but really 
aren't. On the surface, this should seem obvious: after all, when you post to 
the Internet you're putting your thoughts up for millions of people to read. The 
concept of privacy in such a situation is an illusion. But the illusion is what 
makes the Internet so ripe for regulation: people may view any access to 
objectionable material as an invasion into their private space. What parent, 
after all, would walk in on their nine year old viewing those Tori Welles GIFs 
and not blame the Net? Even though it was their child's choice to access 
something called alt.sex, they will view it as an attack, and they'll naturally 
want to get rid of it and no one will be able to argue convincingly against it 
because to do so would put you on the same ground as the pedophiles and 
perverts. To protect the supposedly cow-minded public from a few perverts, the 
logic goes, the law must get involved.
  If that argument seems a bit vague to you, then that brings us to the Mr. 
Bungle Incident.
  Mr. Bungle was documented by The Village Voice a few years ago, and he 
demonstrates another way regulation may be invited to stifle the Internet. There 
are games (called "Multi User Dungeons", or MUDs) on the Net in which users 
choose pseudonyms and fictional characters to be. They then "play" those 
characters in the game, reacting as their characters would. The games are played 
in real time, with people drifting on and off as time goes by, their actions and 
reactions printed on the screen as they are typed. There is also a technique, 
called Golemizing, wherein players can take control of other people's characters 
without their consent or knowledge. It takes some computer know-how, of course, 
but it can be done. Often it is used as a sort of magical spell in some of the 
games.
  Mr. Bungle signed onto one of these games anonymously, and used the Golem 
technique to take control of some of the female players, and force their 
characters to say and do whatever he liked. For many of the female users, it was 
a very traumatic experience, seeing a character everyone thought was them acting 
very un-like them. Some have gone as far as to refer to this as a sort of cyber-
rape. That Mr. Bungle was cruel and violent in his imagery doesn't help. No 
matter how much weight you place on this incident, you cannot deny that people 
were violated. It underscores the immense freedom of the Internet, as well as 
the immense danger: there are no cybercops hunting Mr. Bungle down.
  And it is always possible that this will happen again, and so there may 
someday be cyber- cops. To protect the delicate from verbal violence and 
unacceptable ideas (baa,baa,baa), the powers that be may feel compelled to 
patrol the Internet. So long wild frontier of free-speech, hello the boring hell 
of corporate America.

  I go into such detail about the dark side because it is a contributing factor 
to the Entertainment Glazing of the world. The concept of the Information 
Highway demands freedom, with no limits of the type of information available. If 
our fears of the evil perverts and the anonymous attackers triumph, we'll begin 
limiting the Information available on the Information Superhighway. And what 
will be waiting to fill up the blank space? You got it: Virtual Donkey Kong and 
more interactive BayWatch CD-Rom clips. We are a country which has always 
operated on fear and our own supposed ignorance. In other words, conventional 
wisdom says we're both too stupid and too scared to know the whole story.
  For some of us, of course, this is certainly true, and most of those end up 
running the sorts of watch-dog organizations which target what they view as 
damaging materials. the way I see it, if you can imagine it then it must be a 
natural part of the human condition. if we're not careful, if we're not more 
demanding, if we don't reject the avalanche of wasted time being marketed to a 
PC near you, we'll end up with another gyp like the Freedom of Information Act, 
a nice story to tell your kids but little else. Dial up Tori Welles and you'll 
get a blacked out screen, or maybe an ad for Virtual Donkey-Kong.

========================================
*** COMMENTARY ***

Happiness is a Warm Gun.
The Paranoid View of Gun Control 
========================================

"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you" 

  Anyone who believes gun control keeps guns away from bad people probably also 
thinks "just say no" made the kids stop taking drugs during the eighties. Gun 
control is one of those issues which polarizes large groups of opinion-crazed 
Americans, every single one of them convinced they have something to say just 
because they have a right to say it. Usually, however, the issue is played out 
between the NRA, which apparently believes machine-gunning deer is an advance in 
the science of hunting, and gun-control extremists, who put forth the amazing 
concept that a ban on guns would somehow reduce crime. 
  Every one of them, I think, is missing the point. 
  Number one, while sub-machine guns are unnecessary to hunt dumb woodland 
animals, the truth is I couldn't care less how they kill the bambis of the 
world. Number two, criminals do not walk into gun shops and buy weapons, you 
morons, and if you think a 5 day waiting period will disarm the Crack dealers, 
man, you're an idiot. Sure, a 5 day waiting period doesn't hurt, and may help a 
little; but it won't even raise the price of illegal guns on the street. Number 
three, and most important, the gun control issue shouldn't be about either of 
these things. What it should be about is freedom, not the freedom of America, 
but the freedom from America. 
  If you believe that anything in this country is about your personal freedom, 
man, you're kidding yourself. No one gives a rat's ass about your personal 
freedom. We don't care if you have anything to say, or anything to contribute. 
Most of us, I think, would prefer you shut the hell up and stop whining about 
your freedom of expression. I know I do. I wish everyone would stop spouting 
about their goddam personal rights for just one day so I could have a rest from 
it all. And on that, me and the United States Government agree: we just don't 
care what your opinion is. 
  Oh, I'll nod. I'll grin. I'll laugh at the right places and reply reasonably. 
I'll even disagree at non-vital moments, just to make you think I'm interested 
in the exchange of ideas. But I'm thinking: shut up, you moron, I don't care 
what you think. I'm thinking it over and over again, like a mantra, a wall of 
silent words to keep me sane. And really, the US government is doing the same 
thing to you. 
  At one point, perhaps, the federal government existed to protect you and 
further your interests. You might argue reasonably that for the first few years 
of this country's existence, the federal government was a tool of the people. 
But today? No, I'm afraid not. All governments, whether they are monarchies, 
communes, dictatorships or even democracies exist only to continue existing. The 
main goal of the United States Government is to remain the United States 
Government, to enforce its laws, to reap its taxes, to extend its influence. I 
don't say that reproachfully: hell, kids, we can't have a revolution every day, 
can we? As much fun as that would be. This is the natural evolution of 
governments. And the reason this occurs, really, is the fact that so many of the 
people who make up the government have loyalties only to the government: it is 
the government, after all, which signs their checks and pays for their medical 
insurance. FBI agents do not write memos declaring their disagreement with 
federal policies, just like middle-management at my company don't write such 
memos. They don't want to be fired. As long as conditions are good, no one 
notices or minds if they do notice. I don't mind. So what if I can't declare my 
house an independent republic and collect taxes from the kids who play in my 
front yard: I've got cable TV, I've got football, I've got a decent job. The 
United States Government a self-perpetuating monolith? Okay by me, I've got my 
personal freedoms. 
  That's really why we don't mind how intrusive and controlling our government's 
gotten: our ancestors had the good sense a thousand years ago (give or take) to 
build those assurances of freedom into it all. We can still write what we want, 
we can still paint what we like. We can do whatever we want with our lives as 
long as we don't break any laws, or as long as we don't get caught doing so. The 
US government can be as corrupt and useless as it wants to, as long as i can sit 
here and write this article and not get creamed for it. 
  But, let me ask you: what would happen if that changed? What would happen if, 
somehow, one or more of our freedoms were taken away? Let's say, for example, 
your freedom of speech. Paranoid? Maybe. But, just for fun, here's a possible 
scenario: 
  Okay, we know that if Senator Bluto proposed a bill making it illegal to say 
the word "Sucks" he would be insulted, assaulted, beaten, kicked, burned in 
effigy and otherwise ruined. But let's say there wasn't any law passed at all? 
Suppose the Federal government, invaded by religious righters, started arresting 
people who vocally supported abortion, on the slim but perfectly legal grounds 
that they presented a danger to the safety of the American people, in this case 
unborn Americans. Hypothetically, of course. This would instantly send 
shockwaves of protest and anger through our communities, and we would rise 
up......and what? 
  This is a little paranoid, but that is largely because in our day and age 
things are fairly even-keeled and fair. While some big-headline events seem 
wacky and unbelievably unfair, the general business of the nation grinds on in 
boring even-handedness every day. Whereas you will read about a few put-upon and 
screwed individuals, most of us will struggle through without once having the 
federal government to blame for their troubles. Of course it's paranoid, now. 
But will it always be? It is the nature of all governments and societies to 
decay and collapse, and there is no evidence that our own will be any different. 
One day we might have to overthrow our own government, much as our ancestors did 
in 1776, in order to preserve our freedoms. And if we have to do that without 
guns, my friend, it's going to be a losing battle. 
  That's what gun control is about, folks. Not how the hunters shred their 
kills. Not whether some two-bit mugger would have had to stab you in the stomach 
instead of shooting you for the lousy fifteen bucks in your wallet. If there 
ever comes a time when resisting the laws and decrees of our government becomes 
a necessity, and not a crime, I'll want state of the art weapons on my side, 
thank you. 
  Do you think China would be the wasteland of oppression and slaughtered 
students if the people had access to weaponry? It would be a battleground, of 
course. I for one would rather live in a battleground than have to eat whatever 
shit they hand us and be happy about it. I for one would rather fight a second 
revolutionary war than just sit back and accept it. If we allow weapons to be 
banned, if we allow dim-witted animal activists and narrow-minded grievers to 
assume that we will always enjoy the level of freedom and self-determination 
that we do today, then we are throwing away the remote but eventual future. At 
some point, all societies collapse. Either they are put down, or they fragment 
into chaos. Either you have the America revolution, which resulted in an ordered 
and sensible new society (albeit not without its growing pains) or you have the 
Soviet Union, which finally imploded into chaos and bloodshed that still has not 
ended. Would there have been a revolution in the USSR if the people had had 
guns? Who knows? I think there might have been. 
  The other aspect to gun control is the weak-minded faith in our police 
departments. I have nothing personal against police: there are good and bad. 
Overall, I prefer to have them around, as imperfect as they are. There are a 
great many I do not like. But even if you assume that they are good-hearted men 
and women who exist to protect you (which I do not) from rash individuals, do 
you actually believe they are always going to be there? If that were so our 
murder rate would be ridiculously low. If you support gun control or gun 
elimination, you are putting complete faith and trust into men and women who 
have their own troubles and worries, and if you do that willingly, you are 
stupid. I trust most cops, sure. I trust them to deal with situations, too, and 
I freely admit that there are many situations which require the authority and 
training of the police. But there will always be moments and events which happen 
outside of the police's sphere of immediate influence, and in those moments it 
will be up to me to protect myself, my property, my loved ones. No amount of 
personal freedom, no amount of America citizenship will protect me then, but a 
gun might. 

  Remember: it is your god-given right to bear arms, baby. What you do with them 
once borne is your own decision, no amount of legislation, I don't think, will 
stop you. The revolution likely won't happen in our lifetimes, of course, and 
our guns will collect dust (hopefully) and become conversation pieces. But if we 
ever do ban guns in any big way, you can bet I'll be on line with credit card in 
hand that last day, loading up on ammunition, because I don't give a fuck about 
the United States of America. The U.S. exists to serve and protect *my* rights 
and needs: it has no other purpose. As soon as it ceases to do that, my 
allegiance to it ceases as well. I give no credence to dim-witted concepts of 
patriotism, to ruinous illusions of loyalty. I exist to further my own ends. By 
supporting and encouraging a society with rules and procedures, I help myself. 
It's that simple. I owe nothing to a monolithic group of bureaucrats and elected 
officials, hired to keep the ship running, and if they claim otherwise and try 
to take it by force, I will defend myself.

========================================
*** SELF-INDULGENT RAMBLING ***

How I Conquered the Country, Grew Fat on the Blood of my Subjects, Tired of 
Absolute Power, Abdicated the Throne, and Returned to my Ancestral Home
(Or, South Dakota and Back in a Few Short Days)

By Jeffrey Somers
========================================

  The trip cross-country is an icon of the American Experience, a dream which 
has lost none of its attraction with the aging of culture. The Unites States' 
Interstate Highway system never fails to fascinate, the concept of going 
anywhere never fails to boggle the mind. You could fit Europe inside the U.S., 
and we can drive from one end to another, any time we want. I know it made me 
giddy. I suppose I had the same romantic vision most people have, just me and 
Jack Kerouac motoring down empty roads bathed in pure sunshine, eating local 
food and making new friends, laying the local girls and somehow burning my name 
into this cold land of ours. I guess I figured it would be like the end of that 
movie How I Got Into College, where the hero's friend gets picked up by a group 
of gameshow hostesses driving around the country in a pink convertible with a U-
haul attached full of unclaimed prizes. At some point, I thought, MTV would be 
secretly filming me for use in one of their videos.
  And if not that, then I would have the sort of intense experience that bring 
about books, that bring about movie rights for the complex, moving tale of a 
young man finding himself in the heartland of America. I could entitle it Wild 
Country or Dark Roads or something like that and be hailed as the brooding new 
artist of the shadows, writing biting commentary about our fellow Americans 
while still managing an epiphany of wisdom, of sorts. I would come back a 
changed man, I thought: how could I not?
  I'll tell you how. Because there are more Bob's Big Boys out there than 
local diners, because no one living out there gives a shit that you're driving 
cross-country and finding yourself, because the cops are all pricks when your 
license plates aren't local, because gas is too fucking expensive and the local 
girls don't fuck the drifters prowling through like thinned wolves looking for a 
fire to lay down next to. Because the closest things to friends I made were two 
drunk guys named Todd and Marty who owned a Chevy Malibu with a rusted tailpipe 
and a trunk full of beer, because the closest thing to an epiphany of wisdom I 
managed was the realization that there is absolutely no reason to ever, ever 
enter Nebraska. 
  So, I suppose in a way I learned a great deal by attempting to drive cross 
country, since I now know better than to ever want to do it again.
  That's right, attempting. You see, I tried to do the USA on twenty bucks a 
day deal, I tried to drive cross-country when I was unemployed and broke, and 
after staring at Mount Rushmore for a few hours I realized that if I drove all 
the way out to California I'd be walking home. But let's not get to that, yet, 
let's not get to the dark foray into a pit called Nebraska, let's not talk about 
terror and motor oil at 3am. Let's begin at the beginning and we'll get to the 
end eventually.

  The Trip: I owned, by chance and luck, a startlingly perfect vehicle for 
this amazing adventure: a 1978 Chevy Nova, rusty, four doors and a parking brake 
that was basically theoretical, a leak in the oil line you could push a small 
rodent through, and a leak in the back windshield that loomed over the coming 
weeks with a leering, demonic grin. For supplies, I bought Pop-Tarts, seventy-
two Pop-Tarts, because I am a strong believer in the Catholic splinter group I 
founded: The Eternal Power of Pop-Tarts. With a shelf-life just slightly less 
than forever, and with a million uses some of which no one has encountered yet, 
there is no situation you cannot solve or in some way placate with Pop-Tarts. If 
I got hungry, I knew I could eat them. With seventy -two of them, I knew I could 
eat Pop-Tarts from one side of the country to the other and still have one left 
over when I got home. If I needed to I could use them as effective insulation 
against the cold. If I let them harden in the air I could use them as weapons 
against attackers. If I ate enough of them I would see visions. If I stuffed 
some into my gas tank I knew that my tired and wheezy 1978 Chevy Nova would roar 
into life, belching multi-colored and fruit flavored exhaust, purring like a 
kitten. When people ask me how I did it, I invariably reply: Pop Tarts.
  I roared out of this burg on the east coast one hot afternoon with four 
hundred dollars and a full tank of gas, the aforementioned 72 Pop-Tarts and, I 
suppose, a few changes of clothes for my Mother's peace of mind. In fact, I 
remained relatively clean over my trip mainly because I grew fearless about 
getting naked in front of strangers. There is simply no way you can wash up in a 
rest-stop bathroom without getting naked in front of strangers, who will mostly 
pretend that there isn't a naked guy washing his hair in the sink next to them. 
Rest stops are my new salvation, my temples. They are like little parks along 
the highways, with art exhibits and free coffee, literature, and conversation. 
There are people there to greet you, to answer questions, give directions. There 
are vending machines, shining beacons filled to bursting with overpriced Pepsi 
and Snapple. A man could live a fine life flitting from rest area to rest area, 
and never stop in a regular town again.
  This country is big and beautiful, with gorgeous little roads which meander 
through hills and farmland. Hills and farmland is what you mostly see when 
you're tooling about the country, and Hills and farmland are fine when you're 
twelve and on the field trip bus and don't give a rat's ass where you're headed, 
only that its a) away from school and b) nice scenery. After a day of staring at 
hills and farmland you can only wish that you never see another hill or another 
farm as long as you live, you can only vow to gouge both eyes out in self-
defense if you wake up the next day and find more hills and farmland. This is, I 
think, a normal enough response to the overweening beauty of our unspoiled (or 
at least only moderately spoiled) country and leaves you with only one 
difficulty: the nature of the interstate highway system brings you past more 
Hills and Farmland than anything else, except perhaps cows. The only mental 
defense against this is to speed and sit, hunched, over the steering wheel with 
a bloody grin on your face and no intention of stopping until you reach Chicago. 

  In New York State, all I met were lonely convenience store workers who 
though you'd come into their gas station-slash-mini mart because you could hear 
the tender keening of their tortured, bereft soul. I drive all day, stopping 
here and there, eat shitty food (trying to conserve my Pop-Tarts until they're 
really needed) and end up low on gas on some county road that doesn't even lead 
anywhere, and when I pull into a Gulf station to gas up I don't want to make 
friends. This is precisely the atmosphere in which that species of human I will 
dub The Talkers thrives.
  The Talkers are normal-looking but horribly mutated humanoids who lurk in 
lonely, dark areas of the country. They cannot tolerate large crowds. They 
cannot accept criticism. What they can, and will, do is talk to you. They will 
pick the least convenient time, the least interesting subject, the least 
appropriate place to speak to you, and once you look up and grin that polite 
grin, they burrow their pointy little heads into your skin and begin to suck.
  Now, maybe some of us drive cross country to talk to new and exciting 
people. I didn't. If I'd wanted to talk all the way across New York, I would 
have gone with one of my crummy friends. The Talkers, though, don't care what 
you want. Their existence is primarily focussed on them, their crummy opinions 
and their crummy jokes. They will sneak up on you in the Gas N' Sip, right by 
the microwave in the back, and catch your attention with a slight smile, or a 
nod. You nod back, and it happens. The Talker begins to talk. He begins to tell 
you how he's worked in that Gas N' Sip for thirteen years. You smile slightly 
and say, wow. He shakes his head and says he's seen it all, a lot of weird 
things. Uh-huh, you say, searching for beef burritos. He says he could tell you 
a tale or two and before you know it you're standing at the register and he's 
just talking to you, on and on, and because Mom raised you right you just keep 
nodding and grunting. Time goes by, and you can feel yourself getting weaker and 
weaker, your will to go on wilting. Or maybe you're ringing up gas and snacks, 
and the girl behind the register begins to complain. Complainers are just a 
subspecies of The Talkers. She will tell you she'd been working since six in the 
morning, which in case you were interested is an 18 hour shift, that she has to 
drive down to Albany in the morning and then be back there at noon to work 
another 10 hour shift. All this while she holds your Doritos hostage, all this 
while you just want to scream and smack her, hard, across the face.
  The Talkers will talk, I have found, until you are rude. You will simply 
have to swallow air and belch forth attitude until they get angry and pissily 
hustle you out of their domain. It might seem unduly mean-spirited, but only 
until you find yourself in the same situation, believe me. When you glance at 
your watch and it says one oh seven a.m. and you pulled in for a Big Gulp 
twenty-seven minutes ago and have been hearing about all the times Ernie there 
behind the counter's been robbed in his tenure as night manager of the Route 
Twenty Seven-Eleven, you get rude quick.
  Between New York and Illinois, I don't remember too much, really. Just more 
rolling fields of green and hallucinatory levels of heat as I trundled down the 
highways under the heartless sun. I can recall Todd and Marty, who may have been 
a hallucination or perhaps ghosts, haunting Route Twenty (Ohio's Route Twenty, 
not to be confused with New York's Route Twenty, or any of the other Route 
Twenties this great land has to offer). Perhaps it is no secret that the 
interstate highway system in this country is not quite finished yet. Ssssh! 
There are roads on the maps that aren't there yet, there are roads on the maps 
that end before they're supposed to. And every road in this land of ours is 
under repair, and has been for decades.
  I met Marty and Todd while cruising the peaceful side of Ohio, just 
emptiness and Amish country, and the only nuclear reactor I've ever seen up 
close. This one had big bellowing clouds of black smoke pouring from it; I'm not 
sure if it was supposed to be doing that, but it was. If I bear X-men for 
children, you alone will know why. Suddenly, at a point where Route Twenty turns 
into a two-lane dustbowl going by places which look like they were built in the 
worse times just before the better times, traffic stopped, and about ten cars or 
so found themselves waiting for workcrews to move an uncooperative bulldozer off 
the road. I was behind a grey Malibu, badly painted (just like my Nova!) and in 
need of serious body work (just like my Nova!). After idling for a few minutes, 
it was obvious to all of us that we weren't going anywhere, not really, and we 
all cut our engines and got out, because if we had been parked in molten lava it 
would have been cooler outside than in our cars. Todd and Marty were gangly, 
cheerful Tokers in jeans and tye-dyes, who greeted me with a more than polite 
good cheer, walked determinedly to their trunk, and popped it open to reveal a 
literal trunkload of Coors. There are several types of people in the world, and 
I have narrowed it down to 3. We are all one of three basic types, and this 
incident clearly illustrates that: one type of person debates the wisdom of 
keeping your beer in the veritable oven your car trunk becomes on the highways. 
A second type of person wonders what kind of moron drinks and drives that much. 
The third type is simply disgusted the moment they read the word Coors, thinking 
that if your going to buy that much beer, at least buy beer you can drink.
  At any rate, Marty and Todd were friendly, and offered beer to the half 
dozen or so stranded drivers, and we passed the half hour we were stuck in high 
spirits, drinking beer under the harsh Ohio sun, listening to Marty and Todd 
convince each other that there would be some sort of wisdom in moving out to 
California with only a trunkload of beer to their name. The road cleared, we all 
got back into our cars, and I for one have yet to see or hear of Marty and Todd 
again. 
  From this point on I entered what I call the Great Zone of Nothing in Ohio. 
It is a dark era in my trip's history, a painful memory. It is the point where I 
almost starved to death right there in my car, right there on route twenty. Of 
course, that's melodrama. I had my Pop-Tarts. I couldn't starve.
  The Great Zone of Nothing was a stretch of about four hours of absolutely 
nothing but dazzling scenery and empty horizons. I have photos of this expanse, 
pictures I took while driving (believe me, you could drive like you had nothing 
to lose in the Zone and nothing would happen -the likelihood of seeing another 
car was somewhere between doubtful and laughable) photos which, when I show them 
to my crummy friends, inevitably get the reaction "Hey -I don't see anything in 
this picture". I just nod my head heavily. "Exactly." I say. "Exactly!"
  I drove through the Zone from ten in the morning until two in the afternoon 
one hot day and by the end of it I was feverish and desperate for a place to 
pull over. But there was nothing. No restaurants, no gas stations, no people. I 
screamed and grunted, I speeded and cursed, I invoked ancient familial 
incantations designed to bring forth the most horribly evil spirits in the 
netherworld, simply because I needed the companionship. And by two in the 
afternoon I was starving for a bite of lunch. Even a 7-11 burrito would have 
been a Godsend, at that point. I became afraid that I had been swallowed up by 
the Zone, that I had become just another part of the nothing, unseen by 
traveling eyes, ignored by the waking world. And then I finally saw a sign for 
I-90.
  Now, let's not confuse The Great Zone of Nothing with Nebraska, though the 
similarity is strong. The Zone is merely that, a section of emptiness in Ohio 
that I happened to get lost in for a while during my ill-advised tour of that 
state. ("Want to see different Amish people than the ones in your home state? 
Come to Ohio!") Nebraska is an entire state. It has a large population, and, 
supposedly, several large cities. Somehow, in my nightmarish ride through 
Nebraska, I failed to meet any of them. If Ohio houses a Great Zone of Nothing, 
then Nebraska is must be a Black Hole, so empty there's just no room for 
anything. That only makes sense to me, I think, but then I'm the one who's been 
to this shadowy Ur-Nebraska, so whatever I say goes.
  I guess the circumstances of my arrival in the Black Hole colored my 
perception of it somewhat. I had arrived at Mount Rushmore with the fresh 
realization that I was broke much, much sooner than I had ever expected to be, 
and that left me with two choices: turn around or get a job in California. So, I 
spurned California. I hung around Mount Rushmore to see the lighting ceremony 
(in my opinion Washington's sculpture looks nothing like Washington) and then I 
hopped in my car and drove, literally, into the wilderness. I saw an interesting 
looking turn, and I took it in the full spirit of my trip. This was what I'd 
intended to do, this was the whole idea: getting lost on purpose. I was tattered 
and weary and close to broke, but I was hurtling into the Black Hills without a 
clue as to where I was going. It was fun for about an hour. Then I started to 
get sleepy, I started to wonder where I was going to sleep that night, I started 
to wonder if those "Cow-Crossing" signs were meant to be taken seriously. They 
were. I decided this was the case after a Cow loomed up in front of my car so 
quickly as to give me mental whiplash, so that every time I turned a curve from 
then on I had nightmare visions of Cow chewing cud, sleeping in the middle of 
the highway.
  By the time I realized how badly lost I was, I had already entered the Black 
Hole without realizing it. Instead of the dense forests of the Black Hills, 
there was: corn. And only corn. Corn as far as the eye could see, which 
admittedly wasn't too far in the near-total darkness. All through this, I played 
a tape a friend of mine had made for my trip, and the ghostly voice of Steve 
Miller took on an hypnotic rhythm, a terrifyingly chant-like tone:

   "My Grandpa he's ninety-five
    He keeps on dancin', he's still alive;
    My Grandma, she's ninety-two,
    She still dances, and sings some too
    I don't know, but I been told
    If you keep on dancing you'll never grow old"

  Over and over and over. I admit it was me rewinding the tape, but I don't 
think it was my decision.
  If this were not freaky enough for you, then I have a trump card. You may 
recall a mention of my car's amazing ability to leak stupendous amounts of oil 
on a steady basis: this is the payoff. While travelling the Black Hole in 
desperation, near madness from the dark and the corn and the velvet tones of 
Steve Miller, my oil light comes on and stares at me, angry red, pulsing with 
quiet insistence and it was saying just one thing, over and over again: pull 
over and put oil in the car, monkeyboy, or you'll have a whole new definition of 
"black hole" when this engine seizes up and turns into one. I pulled over, I 
killed the engine, and then I sat there, for a moment, listening.
  Nothing. Nothing but corn, swaying in the strong wind. Nothing but that.
  What followed were perhaps the most intensely irrational moments of my life, 
a time when I was thoroughly convinced that I was about to be murdered by the 
several hundred ghoulies and boogies I thought had been left behind years ago. I 
performed what may be the fastest oil operation in the known history of old 
cars, dashing into the forsaken night to rip open my hood, pour two quarts of 
10W-30 into the engine, and then dive back into the car with my heart pounding 
and a chill slime of sweat all over my body. I can't say that I envisioned 
wolves, prowling the back roads, or that I had a Children of the Corn flash 
(especially since I've never seen the movie) but I was definitely terrified. 
Sounds bad, huh? Sounds like no fun at all, you think? Now, imagine that it's 
not just a small area, not just a "zone" of terror, but an entire state. A Black 
Hole, a sinkhole of fear and silence and swaying corn, an endless expanse of 
emptiness called Nebraska.

  I have never driven so far so fast, all in the name of getting the hell out 
of Nebraska. By light of day it wasn't terrifying, it was just empty. So empty 
you wonder that Nebraska has any Representatives in Congress at all. I can 
recall sitting in my car just outside of Lincoln, reading my Fodor's Guide to 
the USA, and reading that there are over a million people in Nebraska. And I 
thought: well, they must all be in Lincoln enjoying cable TV, because there 
ain't one of them back in the Hole with the corn.
  Now, I am back in the lap of luxury on the east coast, where we have 
invented streetlights and no highway strays far from an industrial park. We 
don't have any cornfields, and nobody drives cross-country to get here. What 
have I learned from this experience? I've learned that you can't eat Pop-Tarts 
every day and keep your good humor. I've learned that you can't bring enough 
albums to keep yourself from the blues. You can't sleep in your car and expect 
to feel good. You can't make it across the country with $400. I learned that Des 
Moines, Iowa is the nicest city in the world, even though it's citizens are 
going mad with boredom. But most of all, I learned the one thing I gladly traded 
my summer away for, the one bit of wisdom I will doubtless cherish for years to 
come, that will doubtless inspire me in dark times:  there is absolutely no 
reason to ever, ever enter Nebraska. 

========================================
*** FICTION ***

The Hollow Men

By Jeffrey Somers
========================================

The Syndicate

  Mind-eaters and soul-stealers, drug-dealers and drop-outs, minor miracles 
for small-time sinners, endless cycles and mean grey walls: it squatted grey and 
lifeless against the moon-lit horizon, behind a chain link fence designed to 
contain giants, to repel behemoths, soaring up beyond reason. It squatted three 
stories high, speckled in grafitti, grinning lop-sidedly with teeth made up of 
windows which didn't open. We stared at it long enough, surprised, I guess, by 
how strange it looked at night. I sucked on a cigarette, waiting for someone to 
move, feeling the wind stick its fingers into me, testing the surface tension.
  The fence was easy. There had been talk, back when I'd been a freshman, of 
putting wire up on top of the fence. But it had never materialized, and the 
fence remained toothless. It was easy. Get a good running start, jump, grab 
hold, get set. pull up, hand over hand. Flip your legs over, brace yourself, and 
drop down. Less than a minute, and we stood panting in the courtyard.
  There were four of us. Me. Gail, in black jeans, boots, and leather jacket. 
Henry, in front as always, blue eyes and little else. Kevin hulking in the rear. 
Our breath steamed in front of us nervously. We were surrounded by broken rules, 
swimming in the thick grease of guilt, and all we could do was smile at each 
other. It lay shattered at our feet and we grinned at our reflections in the 
shards and reveled that we had the power to cause it. Then Henry took off and we 
followed.
  The side boiler-room door out back was still propped just so slightly open. 
Bill the mumbling old man who cleaned the place on good days hadn't bothered to 
check it, as usual. Old bill could be counted on for two things: to be asleep by 
two every day, and to steal dirty magazines from our lockers. With that he was 
clockwork.
  We slipped in and shut it behind us, making our way out of the works and 
into the lockers, dark and damp, foreign all of a sudden. We didn't take our 
time. Working on fear and determination, we cut through the halls by memory and 
broke into the printing office with Henry's screwdriver  -push, pull, watch for 
falling wood chips.
  I grabbed the paper, three packs of five hundred, from the side closet. Gail 
prepped the copier and set it up. The whine of its warm-up was ear-shattering. 
Kevin searched for the copy codes, popping open desk drawers with hard snaps of 
his own screwdriver, finally digging them up. Henry just watched, smoothing out 
the original.
  Gail stepped back, Kev punched in the pass code, programmed fifteen hundred, 
and I loaded up the paper trays. We turned to Henry, and he was just grinning, 
watching us, looking crazy, his flashlight pointed up at his face and all the 
wrong shadows around his eyes. Then he slapped the page down and pressed start. 
The room filled with snapshot lightning, and we waited, getting nervous. nothing 
happened. Minor miracles for small-time sinners.

  Done, we split up. We papered the place. We had to wade through papers to 
get out. Outside the gate, we checked time. Twenty minutes, exactly. henry joked 
that it took him longer to take a shit. It was his way of complimenting us. Then 
we each went home and forgot we'd seen each other.
  Tuesday morning, before the bell, and already class had settled in for the 
day. The wake and bakers had left a cloud of sweet smoke behind them in the 
locker-room restrooms; taking a piss became a hallucinatory experience after 
seven-thirty. Fall-out for the cliques was lazy and all over the place, the calm 
before the storm that brewed up around lunch. They all glared at each other and 
pretended not to see, pretended they were the only people on the face of the 
earth.
  I passed Gail on the way in but I didn't say anything. She didn't even 
glance at me. Her screwdriver was about to wiggle out of her back pocket, and I 
had to stop myself from pointing it out. I checked my own, instead.
  The day had a soundtrack. Everyone mimed and moved silently beyond my 
walkman, the opening credits of some teen angst movie. There was no slow-motion, 
no special effects, no credits. But it seemed that way anyway. I stopped at my 
locker and leaned my board against it. it wasn't the locker, or the combo lock, 
that they's given me at the beginning of the year. I'd switched both off a 
couple of times, so if they tried to search the lockers, they'd have to figure 
out where I was and whose lock I had, first. I figured it might slow 'em down a 
little. Make 'em drown in their own paperwork.
  I scanned the room, pulling off my phones, checking out my immediate 
neighbors, lost souls, minced minds, for all intents and purposes the enemy. On 
my right Chang the Politician blessed me with a good-morning sunshine smile, 
gladhanding even before first-light coffee. I eyed him cooly, which he accepted 
as a reply. To my left, the faceless freshman stuffed books into his full 
locker, sweating, pushing his glasses up every few seconds.
  "Hey, punk, you feeling lucky today?" I said waerily, sticking a Lucky 
Strike between my lips.
  The freshman, my pet freshman, my adopted freshman, looked up and smiled 
horribly, disfiguring himself. "Hey, Gavin." he breathed.
  I liked making the little fucker think, just for kicks. "If we're so fucking 
free, asshole," I began reasonably, "why do we have to keep all our stuff where 
they tell us to?"
  Chang laughed his inoffensive, superior minded laugh. Chang had it coming.
  "Uh," the freshman grinned again, "to make it easier, I guess."
  I shook my head. "So they always know where to look, stupid. So we have 
nowhere to hide. So they can control us through fear, paranoia, and physical 
force. Didja know your locker is searched twice a year, random?"
  He didn't. He didn't care. He wanted to get away.
  Chang broke in. "You're crazy, Stillman."
  I dumped my bag of tapes and shut my otherwise empty locker. "Chang, why 
can't you suck my dick the way you suck everyone elses?"
  That made him blink. He'd been in his networking, polite argument, cocktail-
conversation mode. The unprovoked attack made him jump, and I felt better. I 
struck a match. Chang stared, and I wanted to pop his eyes out.
  "Shit, man, you can't smoke in here."
  "What the fuck are they going to do? Put me in detention?" I asked, 
reasonably. "Ooh, big deal." I stalked off, leaving blue smoke in my wake. I 
could feel their eyes on my back, heavy.
  I didn't belong anywhere. Not to the pretty-boy jocks done up on steroids 
and smutty-buddy male bonding. Not with the nerds or the flakes or the geeks or 
the dusters, burned-out druggies over the hill at fifteen. Not with the school 
spirit committee or even with the small-town least likely to succeed club. 
They'd all bought into the bullshit. The only place I belonged I couldn't admit 
to. Not yet.
  The halls were grey and relentless, prison halls. They taught us here, every 
day. They taught us not to fight. They taught us how to dress  -I'd been in 
detention six times already for dress code violations. They taught us not to 
talk unless we raised our hands, not to take a piss or eat or sleep unless given 
permission. They taught us to do pointless, boring tasks over and over again 
without complaint. They taught us which words we were allowed to use, which 
opinions it was okay to have. They taught us to respond to bells, like animals 
in labs. They trained us.
  Some of us were sick of it.
  Walking up the stairs, I saw the flyers we'd hung up. People were already 
talking about them. Most of them were laughing at them, but that was okay. If 
just one person read it and knew what was going on, it was worth it. It was 
obvious we were going to get force-marched into an assembly about it. I blew 
smoke at people and paused at the foot of the next flight to unscrew the no-
smoking sign from the wall.

  Upstairs was a little brighter. The nerds for hire shuffled paper and copied 
homework for their pals-for-a-day jocks. The barbie-doll grads compared lipstick 
and blow-job technique, evaluating every cock walking by on a marriage-scale. 
The punks sat sullen and self-righteous, confusing laziness with revolution. I 
spat stares at them, but really had no dislike for them. They were good decoys.
  Henry sat in the lobby amongst less gifted peers, his blue eyes locked on 
me. I sat down next to him and pretended not to know him, ashing on the floor. I 
could feel his tension. I wondered if we'd been nailed about the flyers.
  After a moment he stood up and walked off; I knew better than to follow. A 
piece of folded loose-leaf sat expectantly on his chair, and I picked it up. 
Unfolded, it revealed a single line:
  It's on tonight.
  I got up and found him in the bathroom. We propped the door shut with a 
trashcan, and I set fire to the note.
  "Who?"
  He grinned. Henry was crazy. Henry was nuts. He grinned and you heard 
marbles rolling loose in his head. He bummed a cigarette off me and slowly 
unscrewed the hinge on the first stall, for fun.
  "The shithead's name is Thompson." He said, his voice the usual off-center 
drawl. His eyes were blood-shot and his nose was thin and sharp, a rat's face. 
"I don't know him too well."
  "Why him?"
  The stall door fell off with an achoed crash, and Henry shrugged. "Someone, 
right?"
  I nodded and swallowed, suddenly nervous. We had never done something like 
this before, but as we got older and bolder the stakes became higher. The air 
shimmered and the pact was made. I unpropped the door, and homeroom bell rang.

  Principal Davids was a middle-aged woman in high heels who'd once been a 
pretty girl in tight skin. She had an adult sneer on her face, fear and awe of 
the kids given way to bland, useless rage. Half of us wanted to fuck her, tie 
her down and make her bleed. The other half wanted to stuff a rolled up 
newspaper down her gas tank and light a match. I usually combined the two into 
one lucious daydream.
  She took the steps leading up to the stage almost dantily, stood before the 
microphone, and took a moment to scowl at us all. I smiled, hoping she could see 
me. I doubted it. Her hair was pulled back, leaving her face exposed and made 
up, pale and loose. She was old.
  She unfolded a piece of paper and held it aloft. My grin grew triumphant. 
She stood alone on the stage facing a huge crowd of us, condeming our flyer.
  "This is a disgrace -" she began
  I started applauding, on cue with my fellows. There were only a few of us, 
but the mince-minds thought it would be fun and joined in. We drowned her out 
and she waited for us to stop, jaw-clenched. Gleefully, I saw an unhealthy 
purple cast creep into her face.
  I looked down at my black Chucks and waited for her to resume.
  "This sort of filth will not -"
  I had barely begun to clap when the whole auditorium kicked in. Davids 
stepped back and studied us coldly, her eyebrow arcticly cocked, icy and 
disgusted. But there was nothing she could do. Just as we were dying down again, 
someone let loose the loudest wolf whistle I'd ever heard and everyone clapped 
harder, letting out cheers.
  We kept it up for a while, making Davids red and three shades of purple in 
the face. Finally, though, the kids grew bored and started to figure that the 
fastest way out of the auditorium was to let her have her say. Smart, those 
kids.
  She condemed our flyer. Anything calling for physical harm to teachers and 
damage to the school was reprehensible, according to her. I leaned back in my 
chair and crossed my arms, looking at her over the rims of my sunglasses. She 
wrapped it up by saying that an investigation into the identities of the 
involved parties was going to be launched, and that criminal charges would be 
brought. I gave her the finger and slouched out of the auditorium with the rest 
of the cows. Instead of class, though, I went to the library and read a few 
pages here and there. Eventually, they found me, and yelled, gave me detention, 
and sent me on my way. I sulked out grinning, the endless cycle complete again.
  
  Lunch was everyday bedlam. The little truces that kept life peaceful were 
thin-skinned, at lunch. I sat with Henry in the back, eating jello and smoking. 
Nobody liked us. No one sat with us. It was our cheerful attitudes, I think.
  Some chick was walking around getting people to sign up for a blood drive. 
She sat down next to Henry and flashed us her flossed, blinding smile. We both 
smiled back, repitillian, lips and teeth.
  "Hi, guys." she chirped.
  "Hi." Henry said. I grinned a high-volume smile at her. She seemed to think 
we liked her. I supposed she didn't meet many who didn't.
  "You guys want to give blood?"
  "I got a few pints back home I could give you." Henry said with a thoughtful 
look.
  "I'd rather give semen." I leered.
  She wrinkled her nose and beat a hasty retreat. We laughed, and returned our 
attention to the nothing we'd been thinking of.
  "There he is."
  I glanced up at Henry, and then followed his gaze to Thompson. I nodded. 
"Gotcha."
  "I wonder if we'll have an assembly about this?"
  I smiled. I looked at him. "Let's go get some Ho-Hos."
  
  For kicks, I followed the blood girl for the afternoon. She had Morrow for 
algebra and I could smell brain death in the air. She'd spotted me in the halls 
as I sucked down Ho-Hos and tailed her (pretty obviously, I think) and kept 
staring at me. Finally, while Morrow was scratching something on the board, I 
got up and took the empty seat next to her. She looked ready to boil away.
  I leaned on one arm and stared at her. My hairspray was getting gummy; I 
guessed I looked horrendous. I grinned. "Hi."
  She kept her eyes on Morrow. Everybody else pretended I was a desk.
  I sighed like Jack Nicholson; aping Nicholson is a bad habit of mine. "I 
sometimes see the darkened moon, shining in your eyes." I said, off the top of 
my head, a little too loud. She turned to me, eyes wide with that oh-my-god-
people-are-looking-at-me stare.
  "What?" she gasped.
  "I sometimes see the darkened moon, shining in your eyes, I'd like to taste 
the sweet caress hidden between your thighs." I sighed again. Everyone was 
looking. "Your sweaty thoughts around me like a pair of silken gloves, thrust 
and break ignore the pain kneel and taste the blood."
  Mr. Morrow was ordering me from his class. I still had a stanza to go.
  "The nights torment me, useless past of mine, our one night together, burned 
into my mind."
  Morrow pulled me up by the arm and started pushing. I let him. The look of 
horror on her face was worth it, and I was in a great mood. On the way out, I 
even smiled.
  
  Davids' office had my initials carved around its perimeter a hundred times. 
There was a waiting area outside her door, where her secretary sat at her desk 
and delinquents sat awaiting judgement. All the chairs bore my mark, as did most 
of the wall and some of the desk. Sometimes carved other people's initials, too.
  The secretary was gone, so I spent a few minutes removing something which 
looked vital from her typewriter with my trusty Phillips. There was a big stack 
of confiscated flyers on her desk. I smiled. It didn't matter if anyone read 
them  -we didn't expect much from the rest of the mince-minds. We did it just to 
do it, just to get under Davids' skin. And if someone got to thinking because of 
it, and maybe saw the reason behind it, even better. We did it because we 
weren't supposed to.
  I lit a Lucky, rummaged through the desk and found a pad and pen. I started 
writing down my new poem. I kind of liked it.
  The door opened,a dn Davids glared at me as if she expected me to get 
scared. "Who are you?" she snapped.
  "I thought you'd know me by now." I offered, reasonably enough, I think.
  She ripped open a file and tore through it. The thing is, I didn't hate 
Davids. I disliked her, sure, but I disliked a lot of people. She truly believed 
she was doing right, so I couldn't hate her. But I didn't spare her. Stupidity 
was no excuse.
  "Stillman." Her eyes flashed up at me. "You're in quite a lot of trouble, 
young man."
  "Don't I know it, old lady." I replied. "And it's getting worse every day."
  She smiled, which surprised me. "No," she said, "every minute."
  The babe had spirit.
  
  After a blistering interrogation squeezed into five minutes, I was ushered 
into my final class with a screretarial escort. My cigarettes had been 
confiscated, so I just sat in the back and listened to Miss Crowers lecture me 
about Hamlet. I asked her a few questions, but she refused to answer me unless I 
raised my hand, so we stalemated. Eventually, I dozed off.

  I'd missed a lifetime of gossip. Henry had told some milk-white handjob 
queen to fuck off, and her boyfriend had vowed to make Henry an unpleasant 
statistic. I slouched down the corner on my board and watched the proceedings. I 
saw Gail and Kev in the crowd, as well as Geezer and Norm, and caught eyes one 
at a time. We all smiled at each other.
  The guy was big. He wore his JV jacket like it meant something  -wrestling, 
which meant he thought he was tough. We'd prove him wrong. Right after the 
verbal assaults, while the jerk was pulling off his jacket, we stepped in. I 
socked him in the face with my board, Gail went for the balls, and while he lay 
on the ground bleeding and moaning, we quite literally kicked the shit out of 
him. And none of the sheep said or did anything. Afterwords, we walked off in 
our own directions, sweaty. I think Mr. JV had been expecting a fair fight, and 
if so then we had taught him a valuable lesson.

Someone

  I escaped the homestead that night by the skin of my teeth, boarding around 
the dark, listening to the Ramones. The night made it all grey and pale and 
lifeless. Pointless. I rolled past the stoners in the park, wasting another 
night, and the kids on dates strolling along the sidewalks, careful, polite lust 
looking for a quiet place to drool. I breezed past them all, dressed in black, a 
phantom bent on murder. They didn't know that, though. I made a few trolling 
cars hit their brakes hard and burn rubber; I suppose I'll get hit, eventually.
  I was aimless for a while, but when it started to feel like midnight, I made 
for school, walkman off and eyes open.
  We met outside the gym, hidden by a clump of trees. Gail wasn't there. No 
one mentioned it. henry smiled at us all, beaming, and then his eyes flicked 
behind us.
  "Hey."
  We all turned. Thompson stood with his hands in his pockets, looking chilly. 
Henry had invited him out with the friendly way Henry could have, if he wanted 
it.
  "Hey." Thompson replied, nodding. "What's up?"
  He had a disarming, lop-sided smile.
  Henry nodded, and we moved in. Kevin grabbed him and wrapped a meaty hand 
around his mouth and an entire arm around his neck, squeezing just enough. The 
rest of us grabbed the rest of him, and we dragged him, kicking and puffing, 
into the gym. I dragged my switchblade across his neck, Henry pulled a red 
permenant marker from his hip pocket and wrote on his chest in quick, decisive 
letters. Then  we left him there, went out the front door and ran, splitting up. 
I had blood on my hands. I think if we'd stayed together, Henry would have said 
something like it would have taken him longer to shit.

  By the time the next day rolled around, he'd been found and the cops were 
looking for a brutal murderer, a phantom with no face or name. The gym was roped 
off, and seven hundred mince-minds and their shepherds stood outside gawking.
  I was sipping coffee in a careful mimic of the plan-clothes cops skulking 
around. I fell in behind Chang and his girlfriend, the Ice Queen Diane herself.
  "Hey, Chang. Gettin' any?"
  She hated me. I wondered why.
  He glanced at me. "Stillman." he said carefully.
  "What's going on?"
  "Kid named Thompson's dead." he said with a glint in his usually laconic eyes. 
  "No shit, huh?" I sipped coffee. There was blood under my fingernails. I 
looked at Chang. "It doesn't bother you that we're all here just waiting to see 
the corpse?"
  He glanced nervously at Diane. It was starting to look like we knew each 
other, for god's sake. "Christ," he chuckled, "you've got to relax a little. 
Stillman."
  I nodded. "You'd like that, huh."
  I moved away and stood behind a gaggle of girls. "I hear the word NARC is 
written on his chest in blood." I said.
  One turned to me. "Yeah, except I heard it was written in shit."
  I raised both eyebrows. "Wow." I said, thinking that that would have been 
the perfect touch. I filed it away for future reference. "No shit, huh?"
  She nodded heavily.
  I walked away grinning secretly, hiding it by drinking coffee and lighting a 
cigarette. I made my way politely to the front and leaned on one of the police 
barricades.
  Davids stood talking with a suit and tie dick, a tall one who slouched next 
to her with a pissed off smirk and unshaven face. He didn't seem to like her, 
and kept running a hand through his dark hair and accidentally blowing smoke in 
her face. I tried to hear what they were saying. Instead, I heard the guy next 
to me.
  "I heard they carved the word PIG on his chest." 
  I smiled, studying the smoke from my cigarette dreamily. "I heard they 
shoved a red hot poker up his ass and it's still glowing."
  I felt stares.
  "No shit?"
  I tried to look solemn. "No shit."
  Davids had one of our flyers, and handed it to the smirking cop. I grinned. 
This was victory, as nervous as it made, as much as it made me want to throw up, 
this was it. The only way to be vindicated by the world was to be on its shit 
list.
  I turned and dived back into the crowd to find Henry, to tell him. he'd love 
it. It would make his day.
  The sheep were mooning about, losing interest. The nature of death prevents 
any true relationships, and it's hard to care about a body under a sheet. I 
couldn't blame them.
  
  We didn't get a day off, and on line in the lunch-room that was all they 
cared about. The crappy day off.
  I sat in the usual place with Henry and Tara, who he fucked around with but 
didn't trust. Over cheese fries and cokes we talked about it all as if we 
weren't murderers.
  The expanse of power as we sat and acted and kept secrets was great. It was 
intoxicating, and I started to glance around with the canny look of a spy. tara 
said I looked sick.
  She was tall and dark-haired, dim-eyed and sour. She had a nice enough body, 
smooth and taut. She wasn't too bright, but she was into cool bands and put out, 
so Henry was as close to in love as he got.
  "Hello there, guys."
  We looked up and watched our rat-faced detective as he sat down next to me. 
He smelled like nicotine and after-shave. He smiled as if he didn't care that we 
didn't like him. We stared back.
  "We used to just have pep rallies in the gym, when I was your age."
  I nodded wisely. Henry smiled. "Is that the theory  -ritual sacrifice in the 
name of school spirit?"
  Dick seemed taken aback. We'd caught him off guard. "Er, no." he admitted 
lamely. Then he smiled and looked up. "But it's not a bad idea. I'll look into 
it. You kids know him?"
  "A little." Tara said, gloomily.
  "Hmmn." Dick breathed. "I hear he went to meet some kids last night."
  "Christ," I muttered, "you can't even trust your friends anymore."
  "That's right!" Henry said brightly.
  "You wouldn't kill me, would you?" I whined.
  Dick got the joke and stood up, dropping a card onto the table. "That's my 
number, kids. You're on Ms. Davids' shit list, so I'll be poking around you a 
lot. Keep your noses clean, okay? And if you think of anything, give me a call."
  "Ten-four." Henry said with a wave.
  Dick looked at us with a weird sort of cock to his eyebrow. "In my day, kids 
joined the boy scouts, not the Hitler Youth."
  I shrugged. "Bullshit."
  He seemed to accept that, and moved on.
  "Seig Heil." Henry said, with quite a professional salute.
  "Fuck," I muttered. "We would've been in the French Resistance."
  "The what?" Tara asked. I just shook my head.

  In gym class, Rat Willer lined us up in our uniforms and gave us a speech. 
Half the gym was roped off, and the divider was closed. Nothing interfered with 
gym class, not even death.
  We called Mr. Willer "Rat" because he twitched his nose. It wasn't a 
personal thing. He was an asshole, but we didn't call him "Rat" for that. That's 
what the word "asshole" had been invented for. We called him Rat because he 
looked like one.
  He was otherwise a stout, thick-chested bitter man of middle age, with a 
military buzz and a sadistic approach to physical education. He usually wore a 
bright white T-shirt tucked into stained grey shorts, and I think that even if 
he hand't been our gym teacher, we would've hated him.
  The speech was about death. He seemed to think we were all traumatized, and 
his talk of carrying on and bucking up gave Henry ideas. He winked at me and 
started to back away, an odd light in his eyes. I started to laugh right away, 
and did my best to hide it.
  He waited until he had people's attention, and put his arms out all crazy. 
"He's not dead!" he shouted. "He's not dead! He can't be dead! He's alive! 
Alive!"
  And he turned and ran.
  Because I couldn't keep from laughing for much longer, I ran after him. We 
left a stunned silence behind, and ran all the way to Tony's Pizza Haven two 
blocks away, pulling the fire alarm as we did. An hour later, they were still 
doing head counts to see how many had escaped. Davids grabbed us right away and 
gave us each a lifetime of detention, for suspicion of who knew what. We just 
grinned.

  In detention, we busied ourselves unscrewing our desks while Mrs. Billings 
dozed. She was the old lady of the school, blue-haired and matronly, constantly 
cat-napping and occasionally dotty. Henry and I liked her, more or less, and 
usually left her alone. When my desk collapsed half way through and startled her 
awake, I was almost apologetic.
  Outside, we walked together and discussed strategy, losing interest again a 
few minutes later and talking about bullshit to pass the time. An idea came to 
us. A grand idea. A pristine, perverse stroke of genius. Neither of us could 
recall who had it. That's the way it goes sometimes, like an epiphany. Minor 
miracles for small time sinners.
  
  It took a few days to get it going. In the mean time we stayed out of the 
usual trouble and answered questions; Dick the friendly plain clothes man led 
his charming gestapo  through the school, questioning us all cheerily on the 
subject of our dead classmate, collecting statements from anyone who knew the 
late, great Thompson or looked like they might. We smiled at our personal cop 
and lied a lot, and I think by the end of it he liked us a great deal.
  Surreptitiously, Henry and I cornered the rest of us and held meetings, 
enlisting their support. After that, it was almost standard operating procedure, 
although Gail wasn't with us. Gail wasn't around much at all. We propped open 
the boiler room door again and hit the copy room again and no one was waiting 
for us, no one expected us, no one was there to stop us.
  The next day the school was wallpapered with eight by eleven warnings: ONE 
DOWN, THE WHOLE SCHOOL TO GO.
  It caused quite a stir. Davids and her fellow teachers scampered around 
swishing their tails in alarm, ripping down the signs and sometimes losing their 
cool. henry and I avoided each other, but caught stares, gleeful stares, and 
knew how we felt.
  
  We swam through the next few weeks noiselessly. We started getting into the 
same old trouble again, but nothing serious, nothing conspired. The teachers 
were skittish, and we loved it. Several refused to come to work without police 
protection  -so we never quite got rid of the pigs-  but it was worth it. Chaos 
loomed everywhere and we stood ready and willing to fall through the cracks.
  Dick came back not too many weeks later, dressed in a better suit and a tan 
trenchcoat, with a bunch of faceless grunt cops in tow. Davids met them, they 
disappeared into a classroom, and in homeroom I got a summons to room 113. I met 
Henry and Gail in the hall, but we didn't say anything to each other. Gail 
wouldn't even look at us.

Room 113

  Dick looked me over. there were three other men in the room, standing 
facelessly in the back, drinking coffee. In the center of the room was a single 
plastic chair, bright yellow. He gestured at it.
  "Sit."
  I slouched over and sat, smiling.
  "Name?"
  "Davids files that incomplete?"
  Silence.
  "Stillman, Gavin B."
  "B for what?"
  "B for Betty."
  "Middle name Betty?"
  "Middle name B."
  "B?"
  "B."
  He glowered at me.
  "Have a sensa humor, old man." I said.
  "Did you kill Ken Thompson?"
  It made me pause. I shrugged, feeling my heart shudder and stumble. "It was 
a couple of weeks ago, but I don't t