141 Mettle 2

I had a vague recollection of the direction to Glinty McFlintlock’s photoshoot for Glinda the Good Witch. I had driven after all. If you ever want to remember the way to a place the first time you drive there, don’t sit in the passenger seat.



But it wasn’t good enough to just drive out in the desert and look around for it. That’s how folks can get lost in the dunes. We would need to use a map and then plot on it with a pencil where we were located all along our path so as to not get lost.



You see, the Internet was not fully developed back then, and there was no such thing as GPS for anyone but the U.S. Military. Google and Mapquest were science fiction material.


Portable phones were not yet smart. No one had one of them giant suitcases except for the wealthy and self-important.

Texting meant pen and paper. Or pencil, if you were old school. LOL, OMG, FML, FAIL.


There were only two people who knew where that place was, and one was off in her own world now, and I had burned that bridge between us. I wasn’t about to go and knock on her parent’s front door, of course. That would be re-dicky-licky: ridiculous. The Fenders might have a song they’d like to play me that I would not particularly enjoy.



The other person who knew the location was ole Glinty himself.



I could not find his advertisement in any of the back pages of the Fuckno Bee, and there was no mention of him in the Yellow Pages. Nobody I spoke to had ever heard of him.


----------------------------



“Hey Katheena, thanks for driving me out here. I brought along a Tupperware jug of ice water and some sammiches in that back pack I put in the trunk.”



Bottled water had not been invented yet. Can you imagine buying water in a disposable plastic container that was manufactured for a single use? It’d be even funnier if the company said that their containers were better for the environment because they now used 20% less plastic.



Anyways…


Katheena said, “This old guy photographed your girlfriend way out here? Isn’t that kind of weird?”



I nodded, “Yeah, I thought so. But Glinda seemed OK with it. Well, until we saw him. Dude looked like a creepy old pervert. But she told me that he did an excellent job. So it must have to do with the light or something out here.”




Katheena took off her shades with one hand and looked out of the window on her driver side at the desertscape flashing by at a hundred miles an hour. She said, “Huh. It is pretty bright. She had her pictures shot outside then?”




I looked back in my head. “No. Actually, he had the windows covered up.”

Katheena just put her shades back on and shook her head. “All righty then.”








A road off to the right up ahead seemed familiar to me, and I told her so. We slowed down and looked at the map. There was no indication of it on the map.



“Will, we’ve driven exactly sixty-six point six miles on this here old stretch since the last intersection. I’m resetting the odometer. Make a mark.”


“Cool. Let’s turn in here and find the driveway. I was driving on some really old crumbly tar, and it curved here and there. I drifted now and then for fun, so there will be digs I made in the soft shoulder. Prolly some chunks of tar, too.”



-------------------------------




Indeed, there were scatter marks and flung tar all over the road at some curves. I was a hell of show off, as you might recall.



I hadn’t impressed Glinda all that much with my awesome control of my vehicle: in fact, it had irritated her to a good degree.




Katheena zoomed along, also quite adept of her handling of her lovely car, which she called Orion. We passed a place where it looked like someone had dug in their wheels and piled the dirt and rocks up all over the fucking place.



That was it.




We turned around and came to rest in the middle of the road, and now the skid marks were on Katheena’s side. The springtime sun glowed with big teeth, but the sky looked somehow dim.



There was no house, nor even a horse-stable-turned-garage behind where a house might have once stood.



We got out.



Katheena wore some old leather work boots instead of her dainty sandals. She knew we’d be traipsing around in the desert dust. I smiled. All she needed was a leather jacket and she would have looked like a proper Road Warrior with her wild hair.



Gawdamn it, there were footprints leading up to a bit of a hill where a house could stand, built there above the rush of an arroyo in a sudden desert rain storm. I saw more tracks in the dust that led around the hill to behind, on the right.



A garage might have stood there at one point, on another mound.



What the fuck was going on?


No where were there any indications of tracks left behind by demolition machines or earth moving equipment.


We were there, but there was nothing.



I dug the toe of my Doc into the dirt where the rear entrance to the garage might have once been placed.


Something caught my eye.


A rusted screw had come up into the sunlight.


A screw from a rusty latch that someone might have busted off from out of an old, weather-beaten door lay there.

I picked it up and examined it.


Now here was some proof.



Of exactly what, I could not say.



It simply revealed a single truth, which was this:



A door had once stood there.



Huh.





LINKS



Welcome to Sunday. Here’s a cool, hand-drawn cartoon for you.








Let’s go on a cruise, shall we? How about that Titanic? Here are some pics of it, before it left port. I think that Left Port is redundant. It’s cool if you land lubbers don’t know what that means. Anyways…






Speaking of fail, there’s this: From Entropy_Happens, this infuriating link. Words cannot-







Antidote: Cute Couple. Those goshdarned Brits and their brother-sister relations in a lift. Pip pip, cheeri-oh what the fuck?






True Punkology, or simply another Tea-Bagger Party exercise? You decide.






Here is from Saturday about that there above thing, from CBS News.






Anti-antidote: From Dotta. Questionable Content, a funny commix for your Sunday.







Is it a handshake, a whale gulp, or is it simply Venice, Italy?








This here is chust to mess with your head.







Writing on the stalls.





Cool Pics.






Nasty Bitch spills the truth?






God Help You.


God Help Us All.



---willies out.
















































OK, One More For You.



Cranberry Zero’s I Heart NSFW, the safest place in the intertubes for pron viewing.


















.

140 Mettle Begin

Katheena said, “What the hell are you talking about Will?”

I gulped. I was about to call her out.


When you have hit rock bottom, only then you are free.



What else do you have to lose?



You have to go All In and risk it all. It's simpler when there is little left.


But not like this:



“Tommy Hewitt said that you are a lesbian.”



Katheena charged at me. She did. She fucking charged at me as I sat there in the dust.



I moved to the right because I am right-handed, but it didn’t matter.


Her fists pummeled me, and I did not defend myself from her.


When she was tired from her spent adrenaline, she sat crying on my chest and stopped slapping at my face. I was thankful that she didn’t have her beer bottle in her hand from before.



I brushed the desert mud out of my eyes and stared up at her.


She said, “You do not have the right to say things like that to me.”




She was right. You have no right to pull someone out of the closet, and fuck you if you ever attempt such a thing.


There I was thinking only about me and my sudden need for The Truth and fuck all else.

Fuck everyone else and their own shit to deal with.


It was like I was expecting the rest of the world to suddenly catch up and be honest to me, even if they weren’t quite yet honest with themselves.

Shit did I have a lot to learn.



Katheena got up off me and walked down the side of the canal, into the fading sunset.



I rolled over onto my hands and knees and shook the desert dust off of my clothes and dug the salty mud from my eyes and then staggered up to go after her.



You know, I always seemed to be chasing after her. It’s like waking up from a really good dream, and you want to get back to sleep and try to get back into it, to continue it, to see what sort of ending such an excellent thing might take you.


These were waters I had never before navigated. I have never tried to understand how them women’s brains work, and this was not the time for learning. But it would not end like this. I would not have it.


She kept her pace, slow and steady, and I felt like I was about to wake up. So I quickened my pace to stay dreaming. It would all make sense, I was sure of it.



She got further away from me, even though I was speeding up. She became a dot on the horizon, and I lost her in the sun.


Crows cawed off to the right in the pale pink and orange of the fading day.

I looked down off to the side and saw footprints in the desert dust. These were quite dainty. They led away from the cement water canal, that man-made river, and off to behind a cement-block wall.

Katheena looked up at me when I came around it.


“Get the fuck out.”


“No. I won’t.”




“Get out Will.”


“Nope. I’m not leaving.”




“Get The FUCK OUT OF HERE!”


I stood my ground.



She did not get up. She just glared at me. Her make-up was all fucked up.



I said, “I can’t leave you. It’s chust not possible. I have nothing else left here in this desert wasteland, no reason to stay. There’s only you. So if someone is going to get the fuck out, it’ll have to be you. I’m not leaving.”



All In.



= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =





It was different this time. It began with a kiss, and it did not end with mayhem. Beyond that, it was like coming home, if that makes any sense at all to you.


A connection, a sort of unspoken communication that can tell you things you had not considered before… well… this is what it seemed to be.


Lost in the desert, but finding a secret path not traveled by many before you might be what you had been seeking.


Perhaps there is a home that does not involve simple geographical change?




Huh.



++++++++++++++++


She said we would make a perfect couple, but not in the way I had thought.


What the hell did this mean?



Fuck buddies? Booty Call? Ass on a rope?



Cheap?




No.



I think, looking back, she meant that we had some sort of connection which transcended such a thing as simple physical pleasure.




It meant something more than that stuff.




It involved both of us finding our Mettle.








With,



And because of,



each other.





Gawdamn, son.




+++++++++++++++++++




A watery angel, a nanabush jokester, a golden crow lady, a little lion man, a wounded savior, an imprisoned truth seeker, a saved lost soul, and a well-hearsed devil. It was like a friggin Alice in Wonderland sort of story.



You were thinking Wizard of OZ, huh. That’s funny, but probably it is more apt. Good for you.


I laid my leather down in the dust, and I laid Katheena on top of it. Always mind your leather.


I had some new things to show her. But it went beyond that. Ya know.





= = = = = = = = = = = =











Big Bryan could not greet me properly as he had wanted to, with a simple hand shake. He was restricted. His wired jaw prevented him from talking loudly through the phone as we sat across from each other with several panes of bullet-proof glass between us.



But he had learned how to speak quite clearly between his clenched teeth. Every phrase was spoken in a gritted grimace, like he was so pissed off that he could not open his mouth.



He sounded like Clint Gawdamn Eastwood. “Will. So good to see you my brother.”


I gulped. “Bryan, how they treating you?”



He looked around behind him and swung his face back. “Get. Me. Outta. Here.”


I sat back, eyes wide open. “Huh? Really?”




Then he laughed as loudly as he could from behind his prison of teeth. “I’m fucking with you!” He got spittle on the glass.


I sat forward. “Don’t do that!”




He laughed again.




When he settled down, he said, “Nah, I got me some bitches in here. It’s OK.”

My eyes went open-wide again. “You got bitches? You turning the other cheek dude?”




He chuckled again. “No, man. I mean that I’m running shit here, in my own little circle.” He saw the look of relief on my face and laughed again.




Fucker.



Then he said, “How’s Sean doing?”

I thought about this for a second. I did not know where to begin. “He’s healing.”



“Good. Uh, what else, Will? You look like you’re about to call the Kremlin for tickets to the DEFCON ONE show.”





“Hah? Oh, well, his girlfriend is a bitch. Actually, she’s a rich bitch.”

“Huh. Well, that figures. Dude likes money. But fuck all, who doesn’t, eh?”




I nodded. “She sure has plenty.”


“How plenty? We talking a new BMW every other year, or a new Mercedes when the ashtrays get full?”





“Bryan, we talking a new Benz to match the new purse.”

“Oh. Fucking wow, Will.”





Bryan settled back for a second, grimacing. Of course, that was his only look now. Even when he smiled he was grimacing. “Why she a bitch?”


Good ole Bryan. Always seeking the truth. So I said, “She called me out for being a whoredog.”




He chuckled again. “Was she right?”

I could only nod.


Fuck.




“So, how’s our girl Katheena doing?”

Man. This guy would not give up.




“She’s good.”


“How good?” He laughed, like he already new something.





But he did not know one thing.



He did not know that he was right.






Fuck fuck.











I suddenly wanted to go visit ole Glinty McFlintlock at his place out in the desert dunes.




Maybe it was time to start finding out for myself what in the hell was up with all that shit.







LINKS










The Truth About Katheena, from Tommy Hewitt. I had promised him that I would keep it secret, and I did. But a secret is not a secret to the one it is about.



What are you doing?!! Birds with mimic ability learn bad parenting skillz, yo.


Sorry about the following, which reminds me of all those times I got caught masturbating in the church apse when I was an altar boy…




How about something nice for your Saturday Morning viewing?

Here’s an interesting exploration about over edited action scenes in movies like the Transformers. This one is about the Dark Knight big chase scene. Damn fine.

In the Cut, Part I: Shots in the Dark (Knight) from Jim Emerson on Vimeo.

Antidote to brain, here’s brawn. Honest Abe got an arm and a foot Too bad about his bulletproof skillz yo.




Fix your videos with YouTube magic?





This is for DNR administrative assistant “Cookie” who thinks I have an addiction to tape. Seriously, the huge sample containers need to be secured well! She’ll never believe me…

Tape Generations from johan rijpma on Vimeo.

Your Superhero name is…?





Dandy Warhols. Dancey electro. Dotta song.












God Help You.


God Help Us All.





---willies out.















OK, one more for my lady. She is of the Crow Clan. It's an all night thing, baby.













.

139 The Truth Thing

We sat upon the cement wall of the river that coursed from the Sierra Madres into the Sans Joking River Valley, beers in hand.

Katheena was a chick who loved her Negra Modelo beer. How cool is that? Quite smooth. She bought it herself. No furtive bums involved. No stealing involved from them sort of folks. She drove us to an Imported Liquor store that also sold really good beer, and it was called Burby And Bates. She showed her I.D. card to the owner, but he already knew her from previous purchases. Then she walked out like a boss lady, a rack in each hand.




Clean. Gobless her, and her fake I.D.



Dayam, son.









I was learning things from her. I would learn quite a bit from this curvy Thai lady who held the whole world in her grasp at that time, back in the mid 80’s.



You know that I had started this Truth Thing back at that excellent, authentic Messican restaurant. But Katheena took it further, between us two, and for all of We The Punks. She finally got a hold of her “Mettle,” and this here is the story of how Katheena found her awesome, mighty power.




Huh.









“Will, you shouldn’t blame yourself for Tommy Hewitt’s death. He would always do what ever he wanted to do.”


“No Katheena. I could have saved him.”



As fresh as the water felt on my bare foot, with the spring-time runoff from melting snow running across it, I felt the burning heat of perdition in my sole. I had driven my rocket ship in a naked manner, and crashed to the desert dust bare-footed.




Doing such a thing in such a manner will cook your feet from the limited protection of the so-called “firewall” between you and the engine compartment.



Hell, I was still finding scratches and cuts from the popcorn glass sharp pebbles in my junk that had pelted my naked body from the angry biker dude and his flung tire iron at my windshield.


At Matilda’s windshield.


Fucking asshole.



I dipped the other foot in to cool it as well, and this did not help. But Katheena looked up at the mountains in the distance for a clear view of things.


She said, “Listen to me. I tried to save him once. But he only had eyes on something else.”


“You?”





“No. He thought he had something for me. But in the end, and why I broke up with him, is that he had no control of his demons.”


“Uh, what?”




Katheena sipped her beer and stood up, lovely backside to the cement water canal, perky breasts up front to me. This showed Trust. It would have been funny to push her into the water behind her.


So I did.







OK, you know me enough by now. Kinda a nanabush, a jokester, am I.






Katheena waved her arms said, “Tommy blew me away. He was fucking excellent. He had the style, the dance moves on the floor, and a suave way about things. You should have gotten to know him better.”


She revealed the little Lion Man's dance moves perfectly, and even spun back around, as if she herself wore a smoking jacket made out of shark skin that whipped the air with vehemence and style.


Evidently, Joey, little Lion Man, had learned something from Tommy Hewitt. But Katheena was dancing like Tommy, that cool bastard.




Hah?



I was impressed, but I did not mention that I had not all that much time after meeting Tommy before Fat Jerry broke a dining room table by picking it up and running with it into some huge and well-armed men at Tellesco’s ranch before All Hell Broke Loose.


You recall, don’t you baby?


I said, “I would have considered him a friend, if I had gotten to know him better. But there’s a reason I told you about him warning Joey against you."

Dayam.




"Are you going to throw your drink in my face again?”


Katheena looked like she wanted to, but she restrained.


Instead, she said, “Why the fuck do you keep going over that shit again?”

I was relieved, sorta. “Because it matters. Katheena, between you and me, it matters. It means everything.”




“What the hell are you talking about?”


“I tell you Katheena, I thought you and I would have been perfect together.”




“We are, Will. But not in the way that you mean.”

“Huh.”





“I’m sorry Will.”

“Uh, well, I kinda figured.”





“What do you mean?”


“Uh, well, because of what else Tommy Hewitt told me.”







Fuck. No turning back.





Ya know.











LINKS









.

138 Katheena TRUTH

Crank this FOO right the fuck up. It matters here and now.








The gold Firebird with the gold tinted windows and the giant black bird with outstretched wings on its hood soared over the sunlit tar with a throaty rumble.



Katheena loved her bitch. I did, too. This chick cared for her car, and she would never ask it do die for her. It was less the “asking,” and more the “not needing to ask.”


Her name for her beautiful star was “Orion.”




There was something here that had to do with a certain difference between Katheena and me: our approach to life.



You see, Katheena could calculate odds far faster and more accurately than I could. She was a smart chick, and I’ve always had something for smart chicks.


What this meant was that in a given situation, I would let my emotions get the best of me, and I’d fail due to my own bravado.



Katheena escaped harm’s way completely intact and looking pretty, with danger sliding off like she was coated in Teflon.



Me? I fucked shit up. For myself and those around me, it was a cluster-fuck bomb going off when the fuse was lit.




It would never change, sad as that was to begin to see.



++++++++++++++++++++



“Wow. Will, this chili verde is actually very good. I’ve never been down this back street before. How did you find this place?”


“Here, try the tamalitas. I’ve found none better than these. Well, it was back when I used to scope out streets on my ten-speed, before I bought Matilda and became obsessed with making her gleam, inside and out.”




“Did you know back then that this is a scary part of town?”

“What do you mean it’s scary?”




“You’ve never been here after dark, have you?”

“Huh. No. Never had a reason to. But I guess it’d be good to remember that.”




“Yeah, you need to heed that shit, Will. Definitely.”

“OK. I will.” I sipped my cola and thought about how best to ask my big question. I had no clue. I figured that I would wait until she ate most of her meal before I ruined her appetite, if that was to happen. I didn’t want to do that, but there was no way in hell I could go on with our friendship until I had a couple answers from her.




I needed a couple of answers about her.

And I had no right in asking them of her.

It’s just that it meant everything, between me and her, and so I would do this thing.




“Will. What’s on your mind?”

“Hah?”



“You’ve stopped eating, and you look like you’ve lost the keys to your head; looking around for them in that enchilada there with your fork.”

Dayam. All righty then. Fuck it. “Katheena, what did you think of Tommy Hewitt?”




Yup.



She set her fork down and wiped her mouth with her paper napkin. I expected her to get right up and toss her iced tea in my face.


But she smiled a bit, and looked down at her plate. Nothing was there anymore. “Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. How did you know about him?”



“I met him.”

“Oh, I see. What did you think of him, Will?”




“He was one cool cat. Right up until the end, I suspect.”

“I agree. He was one cool cat. How did you meet him?”




“Uh, I’m sorry Katheena. I hate to bring up the fire and all. But I met him on the day he died.”

Katheena’s face fell, but she did not cry. Not yet. “Did he seem happy?”




“Yeah. As a matter of fact, he looked like he was in pure bliss the last time I saw him.”

“I’m glad you said that. That’s good to know. I was hoping that he was…well… That he had some happiness in his life before he… Uh….”




“I thought he was a heck of a guy, Katheena.”

“Yeah, we was. He was a good guy, Will.”




Damn. I did not want to fuck up shit right now. That would be cheap of me. But she made it easy for me. She could calculate, as you know.


“Will. Why did you bring him up? There’s something you want to tell me about him, isn’t there.”

“Yeah, sorry. It’s about him. About you and him.”




Please turn down your volume before you press play on the tune below. It's loud. No need to hurt your ears, my friend.








“Ohhhhh…. I see.”


“I don’t know if I should ask.”





“Well, you seem preoccupied with it. So, shoot. Go for it. What do you have to lose?”

In my head, I heard the answer, “You.” But I didn’t say that out loud. I just sighed and hoped for the best. Then I took a deep breath and said, “Tommy Hewitt said he tried to warn Joey about you.”






Katheena stood up and she threw her iced tea in my face.












I tossed a twenty spot on the table and chased after her. This would not be ending like that.


The piercing sunshine made me squint and I wiped off the tea from my face with the arm of my leather jacket. She was stalking off to her golden bird with her rear shaking from each stomp of her small, high-heeled boots.




“Katheena!”


She ignored me and tried to get her keys to work, but she dropped them on the hot tar. She bent to get them and I saw her tanned thighs grow longer as her short lime green skirt rode up. She was wearing a thong.



For some reason, that made me sort of sad. I know, right? She was all dolled up, and she had lost her composure, done run away, and now she was unintentionally sexy while she was looking for her keys.


“Katheena. Please.”




She whipped around and her face had black lines of her eye makeup running down. Holy fuck. I hadn’t expected this. “Warn Joey about me? Fuck You!”



I stepped back. Probably those hadn’t been the right words to say to her. Ya think? “Katheena, I meant to say that---“




“What? What did you mean to say, Will? What?”

“I meant to say something better.”




“Fuck you. Find your own way back home.”


“I’m sorry.”






“Yeah, you are sorry. Go to hell. We are done.”






I watched her get down on her hands and knees to grab her keys from under her golden bird and I averted my eyes. For once.



I got down beside her and reached to help. She punched my arm away and pushed me down.





She snatched her keys and then stood up, over me. I had never expected such wrath from Katheena, my own star. There, lying prostate on the ground in that fucked up city in the desert, I saw a new side of her.



What ever was going through her head, at least she was showing me a side of her that she probably didn’t see much herself. She looked like she was going to kick me in the side. But she restrained.




“Get the fuck up.”

Great. Now her tiny fists would be pummeling me. I got up, fuck it all.




She stood there, and she glared at me, with her twenty-minutes-long application of face paint running down her tanned, full cheekbones.



"You have no right to fuck with my shit. You have no clue to anything. You have no idea about me. Get the fuck out."




I stood back.



That fucked my shit up.



But I think, back at that time, that I was learning to walk again, so to speak.




I had lost everything I had been working for, and now I had nothing to lose.




Such a thing can make a man dangerous.





"Tommy died because I didn't save him, Katheena. I saw what was happening, I had a fucking clue, and I didn't save him."



Her eyes widened.


I went on.



"Now I have to live with that. So fuck you, too. You and your own shit."



I did not even know I was going to say this shit. But it was the truth.







Finally, someone had started the Truth thing.






Fuck.

















LINKS



For your Saturday Morning pleasure: a short video showing How our Galaxy formed. Great. Now I want to eat a Milky Way bar.








Now that we have killed all the Space Shuttles, we have to rely on them Russkies for space travel. And what did you expect? Yup. The astronauts in the space station are stuck. Breathe slowly…










Antidote: Cool stop motion movie, hand-held by a thousand folks in Israel. Wait, hah? Check it out. Very cool.








Here is a site that will take up your whole day. Gifs. Select what you want to see. Most of them are fucking funny. And, you can make your own. No ads.





Short Docu: Real Cyborg Parts.








Fake Armor? Don’t hate on the ladies.






Here is something that may not hold a lot of meaning for you. But I have been involved with jabbywacker for four years. It’s an online chatbot. The next evolution is the cleverbot. It's a vid, of two avatars taliing to each other, on cleverbot. It’s the damn thing taling to itself, via two bots. Pretyy cool.














Weakyleaks sprung a leak. Well, what did you expect? Why is Weakyleaks pissed? Here’s why.








God Help You.


God Help Us All.



---willies out.




















OK, One More For Ya.







And Another One. Here’s an hour out of your life if you care to see.

Meaty McMeat 2: Back 2 'da Hood from Nathan Smithe on Vimeo.

.