Roy’s Cinematic Dilemma

Roy could see it coming from miles away. All his life it was the same? Sitting in a movie theater by himself he felt normal. Once he stepped out intuit he light of day he was lost. It didn’t matter what the movie was a bout or the stars that were in it. Of course, like anyone else, he had his favorites. The world outside of that gave him palpitations. He could feel his heart pumping through his ears. The sheets would be wet from sweat each morning. No matter what he tried he was always back on the same old merry go round. He couldn’t hold down a job. Sooner of later he would get laid off. Not because he was a slacker! But perhaps, he took it so damn seriously enough that he would piss off his fellow coworkers because they didn’t. And that threw them off their game. But once he got back to the shack and shoved a VHS or DVD into the slot he relaxed upon one of this overstuffed threadbare ‘Barqa-loungers’ he was back in a pleasant limbo of another person’s life and not his own. Of course, that person did not exist. It was a very expensive patch of the collective minds and efforts of scores if not hundreds of others. It was always a strange mental calculation to add up the number of movies he had and multiply them by an average cost that was taken from sources that chronicled their making. If one took the number of films that a given production entity handled per year and multiplied that further against the result already arrived at then you might get an idea of what these characters were worth individually speaking. A useless mental calculation to be sure.

It had of late come down to a point of desperation as Roy’s peculiarities had been getting the better of him. Though he had never allowed himself to go so far as adopting the style and dress of any of the current movie avatars that came and went each half decade he would ten to adopt their scripted mindsets. It might be said this made Roy in line with a favored technique of getting into character. But society did not look favorably upon those who reached too far into the collective fictional narrative other that did not truly exist. The average employer wanted workers that were mentally uneventful, slow and steady whose greatest aspirations in life was to show up on time and work blissfully towards that day at the end of a week when they would gratefully received their paycheck taxes deducted. Those were the only waking dreams allowed by the current culture. All others were shown to the exit doors. That shared manifest destiny of the cataclysmic antihero might work on the page but stayed perpetually unemployed. The unintended consequence of this condition being that any lasting relationship with women was removed from possibility. The modern female too independent in her needs unlike the railroad track prone maidens of a century or more past. A solid home powered by a good steady paycheck was all the romance that most women sought though some considered that though all romance was dead in the current era it was no fault of their own. A fit male for breeding their fondest desires should come pre-equipped in both stamina to endure the most tedious of daily regimens and them return home reliably at the prescribed hour with mouthing more than the needs of his spouse predominately filling his universe. To Roy’s current mental mindset, another futile mental calculation.

The daily procedure of life degenerated into one where at a certain point the imagination of Hollywood having gone brain dead for the possibility of producing anything particularly novel that hadn’t been serialized in some was too many times previous had come to an effective halt. The invigorating feeling of stumbling back out into the light of day of old where one was fresh with plot heavy ideas posed in the corollary of the theme of the particular afternoon matinee needed no further mental energy. Too many of the same gambits explored by the big flickering of movie screen illumination. Where was the former bond of vision that he in the audience had once shared without he director in figuring out the novel plot line and being truly amazed or sometimes alternately disturbed by it stultifying implications? Now the cinema was merely a steady heartbeat of explosions on demand anchored betwixt hackneyed dialogue and a reliable twist int he end where the nemesis was reliably scheduled to by some incomprehensible means return back essentially unscathed bearing an increased amount of enmity for a go at round two of essentially the exact same thing. Imagine if in could bearing children that were cookie cutter copies of the first that you have born and raised but differentiated only by suspiciously similar names?

The rhythm of life for most was conducted by amazingly simple standards of routine behavior. There really wasn’t much complexity when one eliminated the inner workings of the assigned tasks each portion of society fell into. Each operated by he demands of inter connectivity to produce a complete organism of a cellular composition that heeded only the demands of the greater collective. Resources were doled out accordingly to a pyramid system in which those who took an active role keeping surveillance over their fellows in terms of monitoring the constancy of behavior and weeding out the deviants was considered of prime importance to keep the great worm of society inching forward rather thank stalling. The macrocosm of same mirroring any given particular example of the species that was in essence descended from successive direct parentage of a similar species over the eons under the phylum of plumbing dependent. The human body a maze of interconnecting pipes and open spaces where the balance of hydraulics reigns supreme. Any tampering with flow leading to a stoppage or inequality of expected pressure having to be resolved. Thus the ‘bread and circuses’ management of social diversion being key to the husbandry of the species. Where the Romans might have solved a problem on terms of the vitality of their empire by providing unwanted captives to die in the arena as a public spectacle. The modern era provided perpetual reliable boredom as an element of fostering both the flow of goods and the dumbing down of the aspirations of the viewer. By the sixth of seventh decades of existence given the perpetual burden of ennui, most were ready to fall away like dead leaves to make way for their children’s children to take up the dully flicking torch of meaningless existence. Given this reality, Roy felt that it was not unreasonable for him to demand a certain base level of entertainment on the fringes. The truth was that you could only bore everybody so far without occasionally adding a little spice to the same old stew.

The dark halls of public amphitheaters suited the nature of a personalized solitary enjoyment of common cultural celebration of the same old same old without endangering the whole with mutual contact. Isolation was after all the best way to hobble and possibility of deviating from the main game plan. So Roy felt as if he was being carried along in a great river of others that like the current of water of a great tributary was rapidly being him towards the inevitability of the falls. He had to wonder to himself how many others like himself in these auditoriums were as fully aware of this fact as he was. The big budget spectaculars were assessed with care based upon the likelihood of their trailers being too suspiciously as a blatant repeat of the same old well worn franchise waypoints of story and plot. Occasionally one might be surprised but the apogee of the reigning superstar too often leaked the fact of the ingrained repetitiveness to be warily avoided. Even the occasional foreign epic that could sneak through the tight network of distribution too often turned out to be a veiled variety of the expected pattern. It was inevitable that the only choice that this discriminating movie viewer had control over was the repetitive recitation of the lines of favored characters that were too often renewed again, and again and again. Roy sensed his psyche was unwinding slowly losing power like a windup toy. There was only this society to contend with or its total absence. Something that could not implicitly be shared with others because of course everyone had been crafted into the same state of hive-like mind. A consciousness that could only be escaped by the extreme poles of death or complete and total chaos. Not much of a choice feeling ones ever chained to that same old set in the twilight of the cave wall.

 

Licking God’s Hairy Asshole?

It seems so easy to not comprehend what is so obvious. The world as a whole is not a whole world at all. The glue that binds it is a matter of technical necessity. Survival is a matter of defeating overpopulation of social goods that take one away from their direct creation by making all interdependent and vulnerable to shortages. My exploits of the night stay hidden from me upon awakening. A dual dialogue that disappears conveniently from the mind’s access. Yet it’s presence remains. What seemed normal now is judged completely the otherwise. The sign of the present times taking it all in hand to re-spinning the spinner. I saw the clouds in their ether.

What a shock to find the depository of all one’s keepsakes reduced by unknown hands into a small stack of clear plastic containers housing a paltry amount of nothing in the stall of a leaky bathroom. This sort of mental event might shock one to believe that their own self definition has been grievously injured? Significant objects of status being important in many eyes as to the proposed eventual outcome of someone’s life. What a laughable irony that Dumas has his shadowy hero and Count of a nonexistent but an obscenely well-funded empire obsess and chase after one Mercedes? Can there be such accidents is the marketing of products leavened for public dispensation at premium prices? How easy it is to fall into a realm of narrowly posed obsessions? Does the society resemble you? Are your animal, tribal needs met in a healthy sense of positive inclusion and respect for your heartfelt opinion? Are you considered an irritant or an embarrassment by others within that framework no matter how you try to fit in? So therefore you mentally set yourself up as your own micro-version based upon the worst that society offers you and become critical of others to the point of cynical extremes?

The theater is always exhilarating from the fulcrum from viewpoint of the stage. To be accepted by an audience is always a heady experience. To challenge that same audience is always a dangerous proposition. But those who wish to remain in that sort of venue are ever challenged with that dilemma each night that they perform. That dual species of man and woman is enjoined to congeal itself upon an agreement of a singular viewpoint of perception of self. Something useful to the next industrial generation threatened of a proliferation of all manner of robots to replace and monitor the human species. Just to phrase this thought alone becomes a sort of insane anti-human rhetoric?

The isolation experienced in the public sense a results from the evolution of a social organism that invites one to peek out of their own cubbyhole and then buries them alive with the notion of self. One continues to float upon a Sargasso Sea of mixed up bottle cap notions whose origins and definitions defy logic or grace. The Capitalist paradise of the Socialist worker’s state of perpetual disarmament. A fully monitored prison of mental outlook for those who prefer to believe in globes and distant stars to wish upon, rather than eternally linear distances across an infinitely flattened plane. Pick your poison? The fantasy of ‘down to earth’ gritty reality? Or moonbeams and burning hulks aflame off the planets of Sirius Major? It is faux drama either way! Why are age and caste so damn important as the only thing worth living for? Or, is allowed in the moment?

A world of mobile machinations lived out in cart-bound lanes of slow traffic. Going to and fro to exercise one’s expertise in fulfilling otherwise mundane tasks cannot equate to animal survival. The current era seems like Chapter II of the previous Weimar era where the right response leads to becoming yet another NAZI hellbent upon one’s own survival. One that eventually leads to a final brave but unsung moment in the embrace of final extinction in the most current sense of an expected Gotterdammerung! A boy goes from past to present securing his place in the same old tired cycle. But all to what glorious and eventual conclusive end?

Summer warmth on a sidewalk before the tar beach of a parking lot. Back and forth, incessantly! The local humanity take up their daily habitual patterns of another day. I have only these paltry insubstantial wares to offer from my own precarious vantage point. Who is the ‘Eternal Jew’, now? Susceptible to death by sunburn of here-to-fore common knowledge unrevealed hidden truths.

When Caligula Becomes Big Brother

In this culture little white boys cry while little girls don’t. It is a shock to see this happen. But then is exposes something unexpected. A truth to the light of day. Little boys are put in an impossible position of not being able to express themselves as males where in a feminized world little girls have no restrictions. It has become a bygone appreciation in this culture to celebrate masculinity as an inherent virtue. In fact it has been demonized. Violence is accepted as a form of ethnic self-expression for both sexes. But is considered taboo for the most excluded segment of anyone of white Aryan Christian European heritage. The dogma taught being that they are most responsible for all the social ills of the current world. The actual historical truth suppressed being the exact opposite. Western society allowing itself to be overwhelmed by the fact of an internal cultural killer virus superficially referred to at ground level as organized Judaism. The cloistered fact of same violating the convenient conception of labels suggesting old rivals so much as covert alliances of several ‘desert based’ religious philosophies that stretch back literal eons.  The serum distorting the natural inclinations of male and female in terms of producing healthy intellectual savvy healthy generations being amorphously termed as Liberalism or Political Correctness. Essentially crafty programs that have been carefully devised to program the host population from cradle to grave into self-destructive mindsets and self-defeating actions. The equivalent of gaining poser over the most important and influential centers of control over society and dissolving same much in the manner that an organism is devoured slowing being bundled up in a web by an arachnid. Toxic notions bombarding the culture incessantly through the destruction of the minds of the young with insidious half-truths that invert the perspectives in a manner characterized by authors like George (Blair) Orwell. We of the most sullied demographic are in a war for out own survival with people that nestle too comfortably among us that seek out annihilation.

The knee jerk reaction is too call this absurd of course. Even to suggest such a theory in current society being termed unacceptable. That in itself is the most telling clue. If you wish to find out an inescapable truth then start with the actions of those who anyone is not allowed to question as to their culpability for any untoward action. The penalty that the questioner faces of course is an instant form of societal enforced exile. The reason for the fear of same being so prevalent in European heritage whites being that the sledge hammer of the popular Liberal dominated media constantly fashions scenarios that offer only total destruction through negative branding of any personage that does so. Like any other long lost empire of old gone senile through its own decadence the United States has submitted itself to its own destruction by falling prey to those who would subvert it through guile. At one time without he help of mass technology literally building a false narrative upon a well-crafted a false persona taken from a time of two totally unnecessary world wars that only served to destroy the best elements of Western culture. Then replacing them with moral equivalencies that only serve to hasten a final and complete genocide of anything ‘white’. The most absurd part of this unthinkable crime being that the key element being the enfranchisement of dogmatically infertile ‘white’ females as the most dominate gatekeepers encouraged by false notions of social victimization. The European part of the species doomed to extinction because what was once termed as ‘the weaker sex’ has become its own worst enemy. Whites are caught in a mile of commercially funded media that is total toxic garbage. They send their children to schools that discard traditional topics promoting functionally self-survival and replace them with this media harangue that elevates the lowest common denominators of society as a model of exemplary behavior.

This is by no stretch of the imagination an accidental situation some of unintended consequences as one might inadvertently mix two substances unadvisedly together to create a poison. Take any given segment of key element of this society in Western countries and find that it has at best been sublimated to the goals of an organized sect that uses the reigning international corporate hegemony as an infallible lever. All one has to do is examine the system of finance that allows this segment to make their wealth out of thin air from the ever increasing sweat of all portions of society that are made to work ever harder to get ever less. A system where the governments of every country on earth are connected by a single system of commerce based upon unsecured debt. The lender merely creating a piece of paper called a contract where the debtor promises to pay future wages in order to get credit from the company store. The role of same eventually becoming a small ruling elite that keep and iron grip on the common people through a government that enforces this cooperate hegemony without exception passing wealth upward and implementing further duress upon the have nots to squeeze them even more. All the while indoctrinating them with a totally inverted viewpoint of the would where they are led to believe that those of their own that resist this tyranny are to blame for it. The eventual goal of this world system being to completely segment all cultures and make them slaves through an interdependence that defiles their national and cultural independence. One group ever encouraged to be spiteful and envious of the other during an interim period as they destroy their own cultures through social and physical attrition. Not just a destruction of the European segment but eventually of every other segment into an ever willing population of domesticated sheep having no defining rebellious traits that would interfere with their own planned use and eventual destruction. Take the analogy of Orwell’s world and put Caligula at the helm and find the perfect analogy for the world of tomorrow if it is allowed to continue as ti currently seems to be.

Nice Guys No Longer Wanted!

Nothing. No motivation to speak of. The day was nearing the expected transition. Perhaps the hundred millionth one that he had failed to notice? So much much that was new to him as his eyes traced the fleeting direct illumination of the Sun. The clouds passing slowly like derelict prison hulks spewing fractals of cotton candy. The light streaming now like a puncture wound through rays of evening mist. Magnificence blocking the shadows deepening quickly bringing on drama to the otherwise mundane. He held out his hand extending a forefinger to trace the path of the rapidly departing Sun, its chariot galloping West. Struck like an aging toddler reborn back to the previous wonders of childhood yet again.

A solitary soul in a land of vague familiarity. So many hostile stares of young strangers taken aback. “Am I still here?“, he silently choked out in awe of their sour expressions. “Why haven’t you hurried up and got down to the business of dying?“, their malicious glares all seemed to say in an impatient unison. Same places remaining. But not how they had formerly had been. The narrative an accurate voice of family re-pagination. Inner peace disturbed by an unwarranted intrusion of the same old crowd of the impatient. “The world is no longer mine?” Something no longer of my own creation. Something no longer my fault. At least I am not living still in the bloom of accomplishments of a faraway long ago precocious youth. The crack int he world of their self-ascribed fantasy is what angers these self-important immortals. Nothing is more motivating than the fiction of eternal perfection remodeled to reveal a reality of unstoppable chaos! When abandoned by electricity the facts of one’s lack to compensate are too overwhelming to bear.

Soap opera bitches proclaiming, “The third successive decade of endless self-empowerment!” Resonating freely upon all the misplaced holiday’s TV network’s across the land. Is it possible to imagine a real friendship with a female in the current era? Better she run off with my assets as is now the custom. The current era won’t tolerate it. No overt fraternization! Their message running out of accompanying ‘bread and circuses’ to sell it before the impending collapse of society becomes too painfully imminent. All that is planned to be left for the male of the species is to joust imaginary dragons on his X-Box. And for all the women to have all the cartoon men of their dreams to mercilessly berate but still find all of them magically submitting themselves to even more abuse. The parental duty of organized defecation. Essentially the scripted version of the genocide of the modern European. Once the most favored demographic holding the most popularized products un-sellable. Now fools with beanies, the brims turned backwards. All the once great heroes now gone waiting for their few admirers to die off.

Were everything replaced with something absolutely brand new, the absence of the old equivalents still weigh one down. Museums spouting ‘heritage’ now simply categorical homages to older forms of consumerism and consumption. Whenever suddenly ‘over-exposed‘, women grabbing the own breasts not out of propriety but in embarrassment of fostering disappointment. Modern imagery no longer prone to accidents. And the possibility of being privy to creativity because of same gone forever. The most perfect of women incapable of procreation like any other damned long extinct species. There should be a billboard on every street corner, “FUCK UTOPIA!” The last thing in this universe a man needs is a, “Strong Independent Woman!” No more than his opposite needs those same dubious qualities from him. Those kings and queens of long lost empires that never existed outside the fancy of a terminally perverted mind. “Nice guys No Longer Wanted!” Just an inexhaustible universe of lamentable evil pricks that no ones care one way or another if they die.

Welcome To The Illusion Of Reality, Please Take Your Seats!

WEMBLEY ARENA – 05/22/2017 – 22:30 – Screams throughout the massive stadium! People existing ‘en masse’! The bomb did [not?] go off after two or possibly more booms when people began frantically exiting the arena. Various reports cannot be confirmed at this time! [Shh! But what if there was no bombs at all? Just another crisis actor jamboree?] Police, police in SWAT gear, police bomb squad trucks, but not a drop of real pavement bound blood or physical damage for the mind to ‘drink in‘?] Cordons and no go zones but nothing to really see? The supposed remote car cam CNN footage from a private source of a flash but so pathetically inept and fake! A dash of red stuff here and there but no chaotically bloodstained clothes upon the supposed walking wounded. Just immediate hearsay of an immediate and massive web echo chamber based pundits decrying how terrible it all is. “It’s the Arabs!” “It’s the immigrants!” “It’s Al Qaeda and ISIS!“, says the groundswell online of commentator’s! But where’s the beef! Where’s the blood of one-hundred victims on the landing or the sidewalk or a surrounding area of broken windows? Where is the footage from hundreds of street cameras or the structure’s allied surveillance equipment stationed evident within all the public areas of the arena building? Or anything like that at all? A few cherry picked crisis actor typed limp around wearing plastic foil blankets posing for pictures. Some are on the phone saying really nothing specific. But yet no real evidence of injuries. Crowds of people franticly leaving obviously freaked out . . . But no visible evidence of any real mayhem? False Flagged Again!

I am ANGRY! I’m sick of this crap! This IS a confirmation that, like some B grade movie from the nineteen-fifties where an alien life forms descend from parts unknown to replace the residents of a small town, the Internet is now totally a gov-op. The Internet has become a fully monitored and policed state sponsored echo chamber of late where the informationally deprived just go along with the most popular assumptions that are vogue in the headlines of the moment. The predetermined agenda of talking points for the day predominate all popular discussion. Detracting of course from more important topics that the public are not supposed to be concerned with. But! The populace of the Internet created world are expected to draw conveniently drafted conclusions along the lines of a heavily guided narrative that is always remains suspiciously the same scenario now as it was back then in the special op hoaxes of 911 and 711. [Of Newtown, San Bernadino, Virginia Tech, Boston Marathon, etc., etc., etc.!] Blind belief is for most people more powerful that any direct evidence or a paucity of the same! It no longer means anything if some source you know has said it. Or has acted like it might be true. “I heard it on the net from so and so!” “I’t all true GODDAM IT! But is it? What people see in the movies in the multiplex or on cable has more to say in terms of their personal construct of physical reality than actual palpable evidence of the same in their waking existence. What happens when the illusion of an online community is compromised by the notion that it all just might be manufactured and not real at all? The collective mind is tazed yet once again with a virtual mentally applied mass media cattle prod via the thought police special events Internet division of Tavistock! Treated just like the herd of cows and sheep that they have become! Oh no! There is no one around for you to believe in now! “Welcome to the double plus good reporting of Airstrip One brothers!” “Bend over and spread em’!”

Elevator Expose

As stories go this one may be brief but in terms of surprise it seems in my one mind extraordinary enough. I had been living at the place that was unaffectionately called ‘the towers‘ by many of it’s longstanding residents. A hulking dinosaur hailing from a time though not so long ago for my generation many today might consider the dawn of that conundrum as the large scale multiple dwelling building. The qualifying attribute for membership being a capacity of individual units that numbered near to two hundred. A designation that in time could come to be equally defined as a luxury place of residence or an urban project slum. This definition depending of course upon its quality of construction as well as the class of those who collectively resided there. My own situation being in terms of the habitation of a small corner of a steel reinforced concrete slab based creation of some one-hundred and eighty individual apartments and suites. The smallish two-bedroom space having been a legacy of my late parents who had bought into the property some forty years before when after a decade of serving as moderate luxury apartments it had been converted into a condominium building as was part of what was at that time a craze for real estate set. The issues that would later come to haunt being a legacy of the particulars of its construction as ordered by its very shady suburban developer.

The initial plan called for an ten story building of eleven stories in height with four levels of parking, one of them being located underground. Codes in both construction and conduct generally being less than above board within the site of its home to be it were expanded to incorporate an additional nine stories, penthouse included, after the first phase of construction. The building plans for the first structure called for three separate elevators. Two small ones that were designated for common use with a third to serve for hauling freight. But this notion was quickly circumvented for the sake of culling additional revenue by replacing the freight lift with the magic number of thirteen more units. The building trades that existed in the three surrounding municipalities that bordered the major intersection upon which it sat at all were rife with rumors of substandard construction and unthinkable shortcuts that went beyond the winks of insiders that they themselves might casually overlook. The developer in question having mob ties in a bedroom community that was said to be home base for a number of nefarious crime bosses. All this being so, despite many scandalous tales of crisis abounding, the building offered a reasonable level of functionality up until its passing into middle age. Then those anonymous figures who had long stood in the shadows actively using the condo board as an easy vehicle for milking the collective assessment of its owners like a cow began to ‘short sheet’ things. Needed repairs were pushed aside in favor of frequent and unnecessary expenditures that involved vendors and firms that only offered cosmetic solutions to silently festering situations. The apogee of its usefulness now long a faded memory all the essential systems including the main structure itself were falling into ruin.

So many things like cracking concrete, leakage from windows and mechanical heating pipes, outages in heating and air-conditioning as well as stuck elevators became common place occurrences. The board and its group of insider management firms reaping a bountiful living from implementing only temporary quick fixes to this distress. The modes and qualities of modern life of the new generation of ‘millennial’s’ overlapping that of their fading ‘baby boomer‘ predecessors the towers regressed to a haven for low end rental residents. The die off of the original owners seeing the ceding of their individual parcels to indifferent younger family members and small time rent based speculators. The atmosphere of these new times of acceding to the political rhetoric imposing tolerance of so many varied multi-cultural demands putting an added burden of additional musses and wear and tear on everyone. The accumulating costs contradicting major structural issues that only led to more and more unexpected outages. Many like myself who were owners sat upon the knife’s edge of a desire to either sell out for whatever we could get or continue to weather the storm and hope for the best. Unfortunately, this is where things for me went so dramatically awry.

The board of the condominium faced with the imminent collapse had as of the previous year been forced to float a special assessment proposal that while by the fact of state rulings did not require the affirmation of owners was such a dig into the pocketbook that it created great controversy. Monies were borrowed on behalf of the building to replace the elevators and other mechanical features that were far passed their prime. The vagaries of behind the scene politicking by the building’s management leading to a situation of unfathomable delays in the implementation of these repairs.
Now more than a year later the contraction had begun on one of the two elevators leaving the other which was in dubious condition as the only functioning conduit up to the floors above. The margin of safety of statistically having at least the possibility of an alternate functioning lift now removed for the next quarter of a year of more, the residents of the building now impatiently imposed even greater demands on the single one still in operation. It was only a matter of time until the unthinkable would take place. Unfortunately, I would be one of the few unwilling participants.

It was another normal angst filled day where I found myself sequestered in my apartment finding things to do at home that would preclude wasting funds on the outside. Sufficiently funded to keep body and ‘sole’ together but ever aware that sauntering out to the exterior world’s commercially obsessed envisions would potentially drain me dry. It must have been nearly close to early afternoon when I ventured to go down the hall and wait for the single working elevator to take me down the hundred feet equating to ten stores where the mailbox’s were located. I pushed the down button and pondered my chances of getting a prompt response knowing from recent experience that I might find the situation where the load limit of six adults would mean I would have to wait for the car to cycle back to my floor. Hopefully with less people and a lighter load. The recall of an indecent the previous night still fresh in my memory where the door opened up and seven people with a shopping cart were taxing the ability of the elevator to align properly with the floor. The gap of several inches below signaling that an imminent jam was more probable than possible. No one would get out of the car even though I politely recited that as the sign within mentioned they were likely to get stuck. One finally relented and the car was sent off to the upper floors with more buoyancy.

It was I after all who had discovered the peculiar quirks of these mechanisms when occasionally getting stuck by myself at various floors I found that by hitting the button for the floor that one was sequestered upon and then letting the doors open and then return to the point of nearly closing one could trigger the system to work properly again by hopping up and down once and shaking it back into service. The building management was informed and in a few cases it served to aid a few others similarly caught within the car. But there was a mounting number of unexpected bangs and thumps from without that did nothing calm one’s suspicions of possible failures that might leave one permanently caught within and at the mercy of whenever outside personnel might arrive. No one feared that anything catastrophic would occur including myself. Somewhere in the back of my mind lurked some information gleaned years back that some subsystem was forever ready to stop the elevator from free fall and save whichever passengers were found within from broken limbs or fatal injuries. Hollywood for its part could offer a ready catalog of productions that graphically ran counter to this where the villains or sometimes the hero is dashed like a broken toy into a semi-gelatinous blob. Something that was unconsciously conjured when an unexpectedly loud scrape or bump resulted in a demonstrable vibration of the cabin. But one’s eternal complacency in believing that such things would never be possible in their world won out.

Returning from the mental journey engaged while still waiting before the entrance of the elevators on my floor I was interrupted much to my surprise by the doors opening once again and finding only two fellow residents occupying it. I hastily boarded and offered the usual pleasantries to each adding my attempt at a short one-liner about the rotten service to lighten up the collective mood. The door closed with the customary mechanical clap and the car began its descent. The LED indicator above slowly counting off the floors an occasional sliver of light emanating from between the stainless steel doors. The progress uneventful to that point down to the third floor being accompanied by trivial patter between us as occupants. And then it hit us all! The initial sensation of falling several feet and then making a sudden deceleration as if something was trying to catch our fall. And then again an even swifter attack of a lack of gravity the chamber we were all in now in free fall. It is odd how such situations of mortal danger result in a sensation of everything occurring in super slow motion? The looks of dread upon the face of my two companions. One of them instinctively attempting to graze the red button on the panel inferring it’s own legend of ‘Stop‘! But with no success. The collective animal posture of hunching down that we all instinctively adapted everyone’s eyes open wide like those of a giant squid. And then the impact.

As best I could recall the call hit the bottom of the shaft and broke free of its railing. The car itself flipping head over heels with all of us like rag dolls impacting everything and anything multiple times. I could not recall waking up in the conventional sense but seemed for some odd reason above the entire scene like some uninspired objective observer desirous of only the facts. Maybe I was dead and, though not in heaven but given the immediate circumstances its antipode, certainly hovering bare millimeters short of mortal existence. The building manager arrived on the scene and though genuinely moved by the carnage could be seen to be more concerned with himself. I imagine the incident would be a great afternoon filler for the regional news? Possibly generating the high drama of an artifice of concern by news anchors and local city officials over the duration of a month or two accompanied by the requisite of serious faces looking concerned while all involved before the camera sought a way to escape with minimal political damage by sloughing off the blame on their opponents. The situation had drawn blood and in the way things always work in any organized society where the squeakiest wheel always seeks the grease the building received its new elevators in record time. Of course, I along with two others were unable to male the party to enjoy it.

The Poor Little Puppy

They say that cruelty is a result of many long years of an upbringing in hateful behavior. But I might add that a more extreme equally dangerous form comes from simple neglect of common sense. This quality would be something quickly shelved in the sunny paradise of any Southern California metropolis on any given day. The easy tempo of existence offers no challenge to the mind and as a result one is likely to encounter all manner of strange circumstances attributed to the lack of any attempt at foresight of some of its citizens. I recollect and incident that I as an average citizen happened to encounter when performing the unimaginable in the grand little perpetual ‘burbs’ of Los Angeles. I am speaking about walking on foot through an old but venerable section of that ever expanding grid of perpetual roadways. Having confessed to this shameless commission on my part to not be at least engaged as part of an auto bus provided guided tour I found myself walking past an unenclosed parking lot fully loaded with vehicles. Each one accompanied by a tall chest high parking meter biding their time waiting for a matron to walk past to wreak vengeance upon those who through mental oversight or lack of ready coin would flagrantly hope in their heart to shortchange the system of its rightful few grams of negotiable flesh. The transgression rewarded of course with a fine and a summons to pay some extraordinary financial penalty that would enlighten the every hungry coffers of the municipality and its officials. While this might have been considered as both acceptable and to be expected the sight that I spied besides one of the older but well-maintained luxury autos astounded my own sense of incredulity. A small Dachshund sat trembling in the sun leashed in such a manner that it was forced to fretfully balance atop a parking meter lest it slip and hang itself.

The car in the stall by the poor creature itself was identifiable to any living locally who had of late been apprised of the latest televised entertainment gossip that a former long forgotten luminary of stage and screen was engaged in what was unfondly referred as a comeback. Their car had even by Southern California standards had been so ostentatiously expensive and unique that its current reputation eclipsed its owner. Something given the fact that the lot it was parked in was immediately adjacent to one of the television studios that daily hosted celebrities that were in some cases caught trying to swim back upstream into fame and the glory of momentary public attention. Certainly one could surmise that such a state of mind targeted mainly on so challenging a mission would be unable to notice anything else in their immediate vicinity beyond the scent of waiting popularity wafting out from the studio awaiting their arrival. How what one could equally assume was her beleaguered pet might have found itself in such a miserable life-threatening physical state is beyond comprehension to and reasonable common sense thinking yet fully in line with the usual sort of antics one would expect from this town of entertainment savvy scatter brains. The poor animal sat perplexed by my approach. Shaking judiciously trying not to wag its tail too much lest it slip off to an ignominious doom. And a bit of ammunition for some celebrity reporter on a slow news day to use to make up a casual news byte headline about a former local great’s plunge into unfogiveable animal cruelty transgression. Like anyone in the news department could give a shit beyond a few extra rating points.

As it was up to me as some interloper still fielding my over preachy Midwestern attitudes I made it my task to immediately rescue the poor beast taking it town from its perch after detaching the other end of the leash. Care and kindness extending to a much needed watering and walk so the little canine do what all of its kind seem most prone to do in any urban setting. My sense of propriety lacking the requisite plastic bag to remove its trembling deposits. Seeing that fate in such a mercurial environment of every imaginable genetically customized show dog might lead to some inadvertent situation of harm to the little fellow by a viscous mean spirited four-legged rival I proceeded towards the studio’s entrance to find out if its owner was in some way prepared to take back custody ot its neglected little ward. I felt emboldened enough to pass a message on through one of the guards monitoring the entrance. something along the lines that ‘Ms So and So’ should be made aware that her beloved little pet was now safe from what I am sure was merely an oversight on her part. And that I would be happy to personally return her little pride and joy toy at her earliest convenience back out int he parking lot by her vehicle when her gala televised appearance had concluded. Some forty-five minutes later a very nervously conflicted but equally  disgruntled old dowager waddled over unsteadily towards my direction. No entourage of autograph seekers within a half a mile or more. of the loaded parking lot to accept the rare gift of a small stack of autographed photos in the folder that was in the vise of one of her upper arms. The twin laser beams like fog suppressed beacons emanating from her sunglassses covered eyes as the sight of my leaning against her old chrome and steel warhorse. The little ‘poochie‘ now happily strangling itself on both its hind legs by its leach bound collar with my arm pulled to full extension at the other end of its forgetful master’s approach.

I could tell by the vibe in her immediate vicinity that her efforts at public reconciliation had not gone as planned. Though I was able to confirm the fact of same at a subsequent rebroadcast of a total airtime of some thirty seconds or so she had been handily eclipsed by the precocious interruptive verbal contributions of a much younger talent and soon to be rising star of a new prime-time comedy series about buoyant young lesbian schoolteachers in rural Mississippi in the nineteen-sixties. The aging starlet cut to the quick in quips suggesting that her heyday in the spotlight was a dark era of misinformed and misguided sensibilities that had brought the world as a whole into an age of perpetual political and social despair. The poor old bitch was trembling with wrath on a part that rivaled her pet when I had first encountered it. It was evident that the stored up negative electricity pertaining to her previous experience of the day would find the shortest distance to a convenient pole to arc to. That of course being me. The nebulous excuse being to ward off any responsibility for so ridiculously stupid an impulse as to solve the potential danger of placing her tiny pet out of reach of malevolent marauding canines. Her coolness in confronting me lacking any sign of ebullience in seeing her pet safe and rapidly concluding in a very insincere and terse thank you. The leash snatched unceremoniously from my hand the old fossil bundling both herself and her beloved companion into the equally aged four-wheeled steel behemoth and screeching off into the sunny California haze. No doubt in the direction of some nondescript forgotten apartment block for aging senior has been’s from the former film industry located in a neglected potion of the San Fernando valley. I standing there bereft of the material boon of one of the yellowed publicity photos that had slipped out of the back seat of her in her better days a half a decade before I was born. This thank you possibly an oversight or perhaps of unconscious scorn for some stranger that had seen behind the platinum image? Having pondered the situation later that night in light of the pathos of her overwhelmed by situation of providing fodder for a televised disregard as the butt of attack against her generation I could only feel sympathy. The most hateful and malicious party at fault not so much this fading talent but this damn town and its faux atmosphere of vain complacency that had its own perverse industry to support and maintain the fiction of it. Hooray for Hollywood!