Reminiscence Of What Comes After

I once knew a woman who was OCD when it came to sex. She had to be banged very specifically. On first dates she’d give prospective mates the handbook. A beautiful leather-bound book. Over 700 pages long, full of explicit illustrations. That’s actually how I met her. We dated. I was totally into it. I mean, what a wonderful strange mind. I’m totally into weirdos, as long as they aren’t serious weirdos. Serious weirdos are the worst. Too serious about everything.

Anyway, I tried my damnedest to perform the complicated mating ritual and I’d failed her by page three. A lot of other people tried too. No one passed. Eventually all of us failures formed a big club. After a while, our club got too big and we got into boring philosophical arguments about the nature of fucking and etc. We split up into what are now the major religions of planet Earth.

I’ll be interested when someone figures out the right way to fuck the divine goddess. The legend states that when she comes her scream will eradicate reality in its entirety. I’m dying to know what happens after that.

White Trash Justice

This really is a true tale

Well...once upon a time there was a young guy named Microdot, who lived in various locations around Toledo, Ohio. It's very hard to tell a simple story, in fact, with Microdot, there are no simple stories. Even the simplest story is a the result of a chain of interconnected events, tragic, banal, dramatic but usually with a pretty ludicrous ending. This might be one.
So, Microdot, who really believed he was an artist, a wizard of sorts and a true star had previously lived another life as a semi homeless freak in Detroit, decided to go to Night School, get his GED and then go to college and get a degree in Fine Art. He really wanted to change his life after a few years of probation and he was lucky enough to end up with after a drug bust in a suburb of Toledo. He really was lucky because if he hadn't been white, he probably would have ended up in the Mansfield, Ohio State Prison for 2 years. He had decided to take advantage of his culinary expertise and was working as a chef in restaurants. He was actually doing pretty good as a chef, faking his way through Hollandaise sauce, learning authentic Northern and Southern Italian cuisine while indulging his  budding passion for playing loud and obnoxious music. He lived for a while with a few friends over the state line in Michigan. It was a strange ranch house on a long thin strip of property that went from sandy dunes to forest to Lake Erie Swamp with ugly shag carpeting in every room including the kitchen. The rent was cheap and they realized that it was because of the water. They had well water and it was sort of stinky and very red. It left ugly stains on the 70's style blue sinks and a thick gritty feeling no matter how well you thought you had washed your hair. Luckily, they had friends who let them take showers once in a while at their houses. One of his friends was his good buddy, Jody Frenchfry, who really was a great artist, but spent a lot of time denying it and was working as a semi driver. The other friend who lived in the strange ranch house was a self styled conceptual type artist. He was a real smart, pretty crazy guy named Greenie, but frankly, Microdot never saw any of the art work that his friend created. His art work was all in development, a collection of ideas and items that grew in the garage of the house they shared. Well, there was one piece, but it was unfinished and involved his hand cast in clear lucite plastic. His friend, the conceptual artist would go jogging along the busy road they lived on. One night after jogging, the artist showed Microdot a set of Michigan license plates he found on the road. "I think I'm going to put them in a piece" he said and put them on the table with the ever growing collection of artifacts. Microdot wondered why anyone would discard a set of current plates on the road, but forgot about them.
The conceptual artist left to go to the University in Ann Arbor in the fall, but his collection of artifacts remained in the garage.
One day, Microdot was driving to work in his snazzy white 1967 Toledo Police Auction Jeepster and he stopped at a light and a guy in the car next to him was trying to tell him something. He rolled down the window and the guy yelled, "Hey, your plates fell off of your car back there!"
There was no traffic and Microdot got out of his car to look at the front and back...his Ohio Plates were on the car...whaaaa? The helpful fellow backed up his car and turned around and roared back up Talmadge Road, stopped and got out and picked a few objects off of the road and then came back as Microdot tried to figure out what he was talking about. The guy stopped and said, "I saw them come off when you turned off of Alexis. Here!" He gave them to the puzzled Microdot...who thanked him but for what? The guy roared off when the light changed. Now, if Microdot had real Spiderman sense, he would have tossed the plates like they were red hot...but in his confused state, he put them under the front seat of his car and went to work. It clicked as he drove..."Why, it was the little darling"...he realized that the plates were his artist friends artifacts and that his girlfriends 4 year old daughter had found them and put them on his car while playing in the garage. He meant to put them back on the table with the other stuff, but, well, he plain forgot about them.
Time went by and Microdot moved out of the house in Michigan, back into inner city Toledo into a row house on Delaware Ave. that was slowly falling apart. The rent was very cheap and he shared it with Jody Frenchfry, who was rarely there. In the interim, he had managed and cooked for a dinner theater restaurant in a shopping mall in Toledo. He became pretty friendly with his immediate boss, a large mannish woman who always wore a white uniform. She liked him and one night she asked him if he wanted some furniture she was getting rid of. He came by her house and moved a few tables and a big comfy chair....as he was dismantling the chair, a pair of professional, police type handcuffs fell out of the cushions. The woman looked startled and said, "Oh, they must have belonged to my son", as if that was logical explanation. "You can have them, if you want..."...Microdot picked them up and took them as you never know...but there was no keys for them. He showed them to his friend, Crazy Paul, whose uncle owned a pawn shop on Monroe Street. He had recently bought a nice mid 60's Fender Stratocaster guitar there. Paul said that his uncle could sell him keys, so he bought some. Over the next few months, the handcuffs got abused by Microdot and Jody as they pulled pranks on a few unsuspecting friends, usually after a few joints. They would look at each other and Jody would say, "Don't you think he's getting a bit put of line?" Microdot would say, "Well, we need a break from this. let's do something about it."
He'd whip out the handcuffs and Jody and Microdot would and cuff their unsuspecting victim to the comfy chair and then get up and leave, laughing hysterically. Not for long. They would walk down Delaware Avenue to the carryout and buy a six pack of beer with the sputtering rage of their guest fading in the distance. Then they'd come back, tell the victim that they would give him a beer if he was good and unlock him. Usually, it ended up well but a few times, well, it didn't. But you know, fuck'em if they can't take a joke.
So, Microdot had a new job. He was running the only Vegetarian Restaurant in Toledo. Not that he was a militant vegetarian...the boy liked his meat...but he knew food. The freak guys would come in to check him out because they were a little spooked by the artist/musician who was cooking up the food their girlfriends were raving about. Microdot might have seemed a bit elfin, but he knew his way around a kitchen and had spent hundreds of hours in front of broilers burning steaks and lobsters. He loved biking and hiking and had begun to make himself into a real naturalist. He could do stuff these dudes whose dreams were based on getting a job at Jeep and working on the assembly line until they farted their last fart could not imagine. He was a weight lifting elf from another planet.  He was the buyer, planned the menus, did most of the cooking and even had decorated the place with a huge wall mural of wheat stalks blowing in the wind around the entire space. It had been an old post office and the entrepreneurs had built a huge stage where bands played. It was fairly successful. Microdot even got to use the place as his own rehearsal studio and occasionally got to play on the stage as well. He had quite a few musician friends in Toledo. There was a crew of aging jazz musicians he had met through his latest girlfriend, an aspiring young jazz pianist and composer.
Microdot took a little vacation. He loved the coast of Lake Superior and knew it well. He had biked 1200 miles up there and back from Ohio one year. That year he drove the Jeepster up to the Pictured Rocks and drove on the old logging roads having a great time, until while going over a small creek on an old bridge, it collapsed. The Jeepster was in an impossible position, but the front wheels were on the creek bank. It took all day, but with the winch on the front of the Jeepster and the steel cable he had in the back, he actually got the machine to haul itself out of the creek. Luckily he had a set of good maps of the logging trails and the car still seemed to run well and was in one piece. The little camping trip continued. Then it was time to drive the 700 miles back to Ohio. Things went smooth, but he noticed that there was a tendency for the car to start to shimmy. The alignment was off because of the accident and he knew he would have to get it fixed back in Toledo.
Back in Toledo, back to work. Driving to Ann Arbor twice a week to buy food from an organic co-op, one of these days, he was going to get the car looked at. One day in the early spring, he had to get some lumber and went to his friends fathers lumber yard in Temperance, Michigan. The friend was one of the owners of the restaurant he managed. Ron told Microdot, just tell my dad who you are and I'll tell him you are coming and he'll give you the lumber...good deal!
So he went to Ron's Dads Lumber Yard and got the wood he needed and started to drive back. Nice day, he had rolled a big fat joint and was smoking it when the fatal shimmy started....the car started to shake and he slowed down and pulled over. A innocuous car pulled in back of him. He thought it was someone who was going to ask if he needed a hand. Then, he noticed that there was a flashing thing on the hood of the car. "Whaaa?" he thought as two uniformed Michigan State Cops got out of the car. "Augghhh! I'm fucked!" Microdot mentally screamed in anguish. They wanted to see the registration,  insurance, his license and all seemed to be going well. They didn't seem to notice the slight odor of pungent pot wafting out of the closed ashtray. Microdot did a very ornate dance routine, making jokes and patter as the cops took advantage of the new Michigan Stop and Search Law...looking under the seats of the car and then finding....
The License Plates! The friking License Plates that had sat there forgotten for almost a year! They asked him about the plates and he told them the truth as far as he knew it. Then they did a search for info on the plates while Microdot sat in his car sweating. The cops walked over and asked him to get out of the car and wanted to frisk him and asked, "So, what do you know about a 1968 Tempest from Highland Park, Michigan?"...A totally freaked Microdot told them the truth, "I don't know nothing...my friend found them. My girlfriends daughter was playing and put them on my car. They fell off and someone retrieved them for me and I stuck them under the seat a year ago and forgot them!" The cops looked at each other in amazement and cuffed and then arrested him for grand theft. They took him to State Police Highway Patrol center up I-75 and then left him handcuffed to a radiator for about three hours. He pathetically finally was allowed to pee...then they told him he was being booked and was going to be held in the Monroe Michigan County Jail. It was getting dark then. Microdot kept repeating the insane tale of the plates and the 4 year old girl...the cops in the car driving to Monroe actually bcgan to be sympathetic. One cop said, "You know, your story is so nutty that it almost makes sense."
Then they got to the jail and frisked him again and looked at his key ring. On the key ring was the handcuff key his friend, Paul's Uncle, the pawn shop owner had made. The cop took the key, fitted into the handcuffs he was wearing and they popped open.
The two cops looked at each other incredulously. "You know, I was almost beginning to believe this guy...then we find he has a key for the cuffs in his pocket all the time...."
Microdot begins to sputter....
"I think we should just take him downstairs and work him over...."
They didn't, again, chalk it up to the luck of being a white trash in America.
He had a bail hearing and called Ron, the owner of the restaurant...."Look, man, I'm in the Monroe County Jail. I didn't do anything. It looks really bad. I'm being charged with Grand Theft, but the story is too stupid to even try to explain over the phone. Just come up here and pay the bail or you won't have a restaurant tomorrow!"
Then Microdot was dragged off to a holding cell where he shared company with a group of 15 crazed hippies who were tripping their brains out on any variety of trash psychedelic drugs after the party they were at was raided by the cops. Half of the guys were hysterically laughing, the other half were in the throes of a shared epic bad trip. They were screaming that they were going to die..and then describing the nauseous hallucinations that were attacking them. Microdot, who was quite conscious of his own sense of decorum and style, tried to disappear as well as he could into the darkest corner of the cell. These guys smelled! You could smell the stench of drug induced fear. It was impossible to escape the ugly reality as they pissed their pants and vomited.
After about 6 hours. It was well after midnight, the hippies had drifted into an uneasy coma, a jailer cop rapped on the cell bars. "Who's Microdot? Your friends are here!" He peered our from the corner of the cell and waved his hand..."Here I am!"
The door opened and Ron was there with Microdot's beautiful neighbor, Mindy, who he was secretly in love with as was everyone who ever met Mindy. "I paid your bail" said Ron. Mindy wanted to know what had happened. He said he would try to explain, but it was too crazy. He told the story on the way back and as he told it, he knew that it was just too crazy for even his own brain to accept. "Ron, just trust me. You know me. I never stole a car...in fact I have to try to make sure that this never really happened..." Then he went home, went to bed and in spite of everything, collapsed and slept.
The next morning, Microdot woke up. It was like a very bad dream, but he knew what he had to do. Immediately, he got on the phone and called his friend John. John had been a child prodigy pianist and composer in Toledo. He was as everyone who knew him said, a true genius. But John was totally fucked up. He was still a brilliant player when he wasn't smacked out and even then, he could be brilliant. He had been through the wringer and in and out of jail and still landed on his feet. Microdot knew that if there was anyone who knew what he should do, John would know. So, he went to work at the Restaurant the next day and called John as soon as he felt it could catch him in a semi coherent state. Microdot knew that there was no way that he could let this go any further.
He got John on the phone and after John began to rise to the land of the living and he realized who was calling him he listened in utter fascination to Microdots idiot saga of woe. "So, John, that's why I called you. I can't go to court. I need the crookedest connected lawyer you can recommend who has some pull in Monroe County. In fact, I want to make this go away, as if it never happened." Silence on the end of the line, then John said, "Yes, I know what you mean. In fact I know a guy who might be able to help..." Microdot feverishly copied the number and name John gave him and slavishly thanked him. "If this works or it doesn't, I owe you a big one, my friend!"
John in fact, called his lawyer buddy before Microdot did. The guy was expecting his call and said, "Unfortunately, I can't practice law anymore in Monroe....but John explained the story but I'm not sure he gave me the details...it just sounded too????" Microdot related the details and the lawyer said, "Well, that's kind of what John said but it's even screwier than his version...look I'll get back to you this afternoon."...Microdot sweats bullets as the reality of what had occurred only 24 hours earlier sets in. "I'll never go to jail" he rants...."This never happened and I will make sure it never happened!"
His friends are getting worried about what he might mean by these statements...Total reality denial? No, this is something bigger! This is total emotional commitment...I think if the Monroe County Court System knew what they were really dealing with here, they might be worried, because Microdot isn't going to stop with lawyers...if this fails, he's gonna get Santeria magic priests, Incan Brujos...Voodoo! Baby, Microdot is gonna burn your playhouse down...and he's not gonna play your game! He knows if he even gets his feet wet in the legal system, they're gonna pull him down into the drowning pool.
So about 4 pm he gets a call as he is putting together the dinner menu at the restaurant....the typical vegetarian pizza, spinach lasagna and an experimental recipe he is adapting, The Argentinian Walnut loaf....It's a guy named Allan, who works with the lawyer he spoke to earlier in the day. Allan tells him to meet him on steps of the Monroe County Court House before the hearing and to dress appropriately...Allan says he can't quite grasp the details of the story, but he knew John the pianist and owed him one...everybody seemed to owe John one. Microdot told him he would be the guy with the green art deco tie and he wouldn't mistake him for anyone else. Allan asked if he would tell him the story, in his own words...after about 5 minutes, John said..."Okay, that's enough...you can tell me the rest on Tuesday...."
On Tuesday, a very nervous Microdot got a ride from his buddy Dale up to Monroe for the hearing. He nervously walked up the steps of the ancient courthouse and looked for someone like Allan...who suddenly appeared...a pudgy middle aged guy in a bad suit. They shook hands and Allan told Microdot to follow him. They went down a hallway and Allan told him to sit down in a chair in the hall while he went into a room. Microdot sat there for almost 45 minutes. Then Allan appeared, smiling and said, "Okay, that's it. It never happened." Microdot was stunned beyond belief. He tried to thank Allan who said, "Now we have to get your bail back...you have to sign for it." They went to an office, Microdot signed a form, the bailiff started to hand him a wad of cash, which Allan deftly intercepted, folded and stuck in his pocket. "You can thank me now" he said. He shook his hand and just walked away.
Microdot got a slip which allowed him to go to the pound where his Jeepster was in bondage. Dale drove him over. The wood was still in the back. He got the car released and then looked in the ashtray and the giant doobie he was smoking when the cops arrested him was still there. He showed it to Dale. They began to laugh hysterically and then lit it up and smoked it...

Newt In Space

Someday, perhaps scientists will be able to discover what actually went on in Newts Brainz

I won't even go into parsing the "visionary" sci fi concepts waved about by the imaginary intellectual of the Republican Party, Newt Gingrich.
His doomsday scenarios, like the EMP (Electromagnetic pulse) attack which he flaunted over the weekend has been dismissed by most nuclear experts. He did write the forward to a 2009 sci-fi novel nobody read based on the concept.
Or the giant space mirrors that would eliminate the need for streetlights.
Or his 2009 proposal for a space laser system.
His promotion of the concept of geo engineering. Heck, why waste good money on fighting global warming when we can waste trillions of dollars totally screwing up the planet forever?
Or how in 2007, he proposed a better life through video gaming. He stated in a speech that Second Life could create a better "parallel country" that could teach us how to do things that are more difficult in the real world. As we all know, Second Life has basically failed.
What emerges is a dude who has a very bad case of arrested development, in fact, Newt Skywalker has had his head stuck up Isaac Asimov's ass since he was a spaced out teen. In his sociopathic egocentric view of himself and his love of personal power and his view of his own relationship with the lower mortal life forms on the planet earth, he seems to have developed a fixation on the Asimov character, the "psychohistorian" Hari Seldon. He wrote about this in his 1996 memoir, To Renew America.
The self styled historian envisions himself as a grandiose figure of planet-sized ambitions. Morality is but a mere bagatell when you see yourself as super being that is reshaping the destiny of the world. In a series of doodled diagramatic sketches by Newt recently unearthed and published in Slate, he tries to illustrate his role and mission as the System Designer and Definer of Civilization with himself at the hub of concentric circles...we the public have been consigned, quite predictably to the outer, lowest ring....

Newts Inferno

Pops, Can I Get you A Drink? #7

"Hey Pops, wake up!" the strange adolescent breaky voice annoyingly demanded that Dick listen, he seemed to be clawing his way back to an uncomfortable conciousness, aware that he had collapsed on the cool marble floor of his front doorway entry hall.

"You don't mind if I call you Pops? Okay? I mean father seems so formal." the annoying scratchy cartoon teenage voice went on..."Listen, Pops, can I get you a drink?"

The pain in Mr. Cheney's ribs seemed to be abating. He cautiously opened his eyes, disoriented and the first thing he saw was the face of the black enamel painted lawn jocky grotesquely grinning as it stood over him, peering intently into his face.

"Gahhh" said Dick Cheney.

"Pops, don't worry. Everythings cool. I already have a nice drink, Chivas and soda with an ice cube...just the way you like it!' The lawn jockey's face came into focus and Dick felt as if he could actually see it's concerned expression....The glass looked real enough.

"Am I insane?" he thought.

As if he could read Cheneys mind, the jockey said in his cartoon voice, "Hey pops, you aren't crazy. This is real, well, I'm as real as I will ever get. Thanks to you. Now have that drink. You really need it!"

The sound of sirens started to get louder. Cheney remembered paging his medical staff before passing out. He instinctively reached for his Blackberry in his hunting vest, but it wasn't there.

"You lookin for this?" the jockey laughed and pointed to a mangled mess of plastic and circuits on the table. "You won't need this anymore, Pops. You got me, your sonny boy!"

Dick  automatically grabbed the drink and gulped it down. The Chivas burned just right and instantly, he felt better. He breathed deeply and noticed the pain in side had abated.

He felt he could think again. He looked at the painted face and tried to be logical.

"Don't call me Pops. Okay?"

There was a frantic knock at the door....

#6 Blame The Medication

 June 23, 2013...an undisclosed location in Maryland

"There! The damn thing moved!" Dick shook his head muttering..."I must be having some kind of episode from this new medication...a lawn jockey doesn't move..."

He automatically grabbed the secure Blackberry from the top pocket of the fishing vest he had taken to wearling lately and pressed the button which automatically paged his medical staff.

He tried not to look at the lawn jockey, but in his undeniable trance like fascination, he couldn't help it. The lawn jockey had turned its head, with it's garish red lips grinning on its coal black enamel face and was looking right at him! It's vaudevillian pickaninny eyes were bugging out...

Then, incredibly in slow motion, the lawn jockey raised its lantern and seemed to beckon him....

Mr. Cheney gasped involuntarily and clutched at his chest and scrambled in a bizarre crab like gait, as quickly as the pain in his chest would allow back into the front door and collapsed in an overstuffed chair, wheezing painfully.
His vision began to blur and he felt like he was going to pass out, but he still couldn't resist the hypnotic urge to look out the window..."The fuckin' thing is moving!" Cheneys eyes bugged out in a bizarre almost hilarious imitation of the painted characature of the lawn jockey's badly painted iron face...
Yes, it really did seem as if the lawn jockey was moving in extreme slow motion, it had turned and was heading for the front door....
Sweat covered Dicks clammy face as he tried to get out of th chair in utter panic and  make it to the door to securely close and lock it, but it was almost with relief, a blessed sense of acceptance as his body slipped into shock and he fell to the floor and lost conciousness.

#5 Family Feud Goes Nuclear

April 16, 2015

The Washington Post 

Family Fued Goes Nuclear!

In the latest exchange of charges between President Palin and her estranged husband, Governor-General Todd Palin, the war of words and charges escalated dramatically.

The Governor-General claimed the near miss by an air to air missle classified officially as “friendly fire” was actually an assination attempt by his wife, the president.

Governor-General Palin claims inside knowlege from sources loyal to him with in the Alaskan Commonwealth National Guard has made it clear to him that the attempt was thwarted only because members of the crew loyal to him took quick action to thwart the aiming of the missle.

When the Air Force plane returned to the base, the member of the crew who fired the missle was placed in custody, pending an investigation, Our souces have learned though that the airman has disappeared. There is no word at this time as to the present where abouts of Airman Corporal Steven E. Lang.

Governor-General Palin claims that this is part of his wifes attempts to destabilize the Commonwealth after he entered into talks with Russia, Canada and Denmark regarding the establishment of the Polar Protection Pact, which would function as a sort of Military Alliance between the countries sharing the Polar regions of the planet.

President Palin and Secretary of State, Limbaugh have restated their position that Alaska is a part of the United States and has no independant authority to undertake any negotiations with any other country on its own behalf.

Sevretary Limbaugh stated, “Todd Palin has been relieved from his duties and rank as General. What ever he is calling himself now, General Commander, Generalissimo, Governor General is illegal and out and out treason!”

Further more, Secretary Limbaugh stated that what ever force was needed would be used to insure the territorial unity and integrity of The United States.

Governor-General Palin issued a statement saying that Madam Palin couldn’t keep the lower 48 in line and Alaska was capable of deciding what was best for Alaska!

He also mentioned that he was in control of the Alaskan American Nuclear Arsenal and said they could be aimed where ever he damn well pleased.

Cooler heads in both the Canadian and Russian capitals have urged the Palins to calm down and try to resolve their marital problems with out bringing up the threat of nuclear annilihation.

#4 Rider Of The Storm

The storm was approaching out of the southwest at a leisurely rate. Lightning spiked against the black clouds on the endless horizon over the dusty cornfields. A normal late summer afternoon in Kansas and Dale was pedaling his bike against the increasing wind trying to get to his job at the local Commonwealth Corporate Hardware Store before the fiirst rain drops hit.
He swore silently, a secret pleasure rushing through him as he cursed. No one could hear him out in the fields on his bike on the outskirts of Overland Park. He had silently whispered a curse word in his lab class yesterday at Cheney High and was reported to the monitor by that little pest, Angela Blasinsky.
That’s why he was riding his bike. He couldn’t take the bus like the other kids because of the corrective Christian detention he had to sit through as punishment for the next week.” I gotta get out of here” he desparately thought, “ Someday I’m gonna save enough money to go to New york or Los Angeles!”
An unspoken dream that could get him in even more trouble. “You never know who’s a snitch” he sneered.
Last month, his Uncle James had visited from New york City. Uncle James had arrived late complaining that he had been strip searched at the Heartland Visitors Welcome Center at the Kansas City Airport. “They took my newspapers!” He fumed, “No one said that I couldn’t bring a copy of the New york Times into the Commonwealth! You’d think this wasn’t part of the United States anymore!”
Then he had hinted that he had been questioned about his marital status and sexual orientation. They finally let him enter after a DNA sample of his saliva was collected.
An airport security gaurd had syruply smiled and said, "Welcome to the Christian Hearland Commonwealth, sir. Your visitors pass has been approved for a 2 week period."

It seemed that the border was getting tighter and tighter. Less and less visitors from the outside were coming into the Commonwealth for simple tourism. People seemed more suspicious than ever of outsiders.. There had recently been an incident of violence against a group of travelers that had blundered into a small town and tried to buy more gas than the rationing system allowed. They had been roughed up a bit because there was a panic that they might be arabs or something worse. The sherrif’s men had saved them and asssured the towns people that they were Americans with an Italian last name.

The family assured them that they were only trying to get to a relatives house for a visit in the next county and were in the Commonwealth on valid visitors passes and weren’t trying to get jobs.

Dale knew the last thing he wanted to do was work for the rest of his life for a Commonwealth Comapny. He could see gangs of laborers in the farm field even now as the storm approached. “What chance of a future did any of them have?” he thought. You were born into a workers family, no chance of a real education, brainwashed into religious submission and housed by the Corporation in a settlement in the middle of the endless Commonwealth Corporation Farmlands.
You could have a little plot of land if you wanted to have a garden, but other than that, the Commonwealth owned you. They gave you the medical care they thought you deserved, taught you what they thought you needed to know and you really didn’t even have to buy food. You could always eat at your community Christian Heartland Kitchen. The question was, what were they serving you?

When the Christian Heartland Commonwealth was formed in 2013, it seemed to be a buffer against the failing economy, the godless influences of immorality, the creeping menace of foreign workers and ideas. Christians united in a common vision to take care of each other with out the interference of the Federal Government. The 4 state Union was approved under President Palin, soon after she took office after the unfortunate, tragic death of President McCain. Alaska soon followed suite. Alaska was made a security buffer Commonwealth, with the newly appointed Brigadier General Todd Palin as the de facto military governor. It all seemed legal enough, but who had the time to stop anything, these days?

It was hard for President Palin to do other wise, what with the endless and expanding war with the Arabs and the unexpected results of the pre emptive offensive against Iran that McCain had initiated.
Dale had seen the latest pictures of the slow devastation of Israel, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon as they slowly succumbed to the spread of radiation. The news casters were invariably grim when reporters braved the dangers to bring the latest pictures, but the reports invariably ended on an upbeat note, with items about advances in the treatment of radiation sickness and the cheery predictions that the fallout would have little effect on the mainland United States.
Europe, on the other hand.......

Lightning flashed somewhere very near in back of him and the resulting thunder almost knocked Dale off of his bike, he pedaled faster as the first raindrops dashed against his face.
Still about a quarter mile to go, he cursed silently again.........