Michael Kindt's Blog, page 123

The Needles, Black Hills of South Dakota, Spring 2015.Be...

The Needles, Black Hills of South Dakota, Spring 2015.

Be jealous.

Can’t put it down.

Can’t put it down.

Eating Good

So this guy thought he would rob a restaurant. His name was Marko Wilson, and he was tired of the man keeping him down. He didn’t want to get a job and work like most people because working was whack, even though nobody called things whack anymore.

Marko Wilson was so fifteen years ago.

He lived in a trailer in the shitty part of town off his girlfriend’s welfare and foodstamps, which she earned from having all these different kids by all these different guys. Marko couldn’t understand why some men avoided single women with children. Single women with children were bank, baby.

Though Marko didn’t want to get a straight job and earn money and pay taxes and go into debt and die like a normal American, he did have a varied and fullfilling career as drug-dealing small-time hood. He sold pot and meth for a while, stepping up prices from his source, Spencer, until Spencer got popped. He broke into working class homes from time to time. Working class homes were rich enough to have some money in them and/or valuables to hock, though not a lot of money nor anything very valuable. Working class homes were also poor enough not to have security systems. They had locks or sometimes dogs, but little else. He would watch the people who lived there, learning their habits and comings and goings, then would strike when they were away, earning a laptop or a juicer or $43 in quarters for his efforts. He would raid the fridges, too. One score had a freezer in the garage and he got a bunch of frozen pizzas and TV dinners, which he and his girlfriend and all her kids ate over two or three days, delaying the exhaustion of the foodstamps.

Near the Paradise Trailer Court where Marko lived was the Squat and Gobble, a greasy spoon diner that had, Marko noticed delightfully, a detached walk-in freezer. It sat several yards behind the building that housed the actual diner, humming night and day. Marko had checked it out and thought it great luck that it was so far away from the building. Why, even the stinky dumpster was closer. Thank you, Lord, he thought, hilariously.

“Baby Doll,” he said to his girlfriend one night. “We’re going to be eating good this week.”

“Huh?’ Baby Doll replied. She was having difficulty hearing him over the kids, who were yelling, screaming, crying, fighting, running around. There were, like, dozens of them, it seemed.

"We’re going to be eating good this week!” he shouted.

“Oh, yeah?! Taco Bell?!”

“Even better!”

Baby Doll blinked at him, trying to imagine something better than Taco Bell.

“You’ll see!” Marko shouted. He picked up his trusty crowbar and was off.

As he skirted lawns and went down alleys on the way to the diner, wearing his black leather jacket, which not only made him hard to see, but cool as well, he thought about the padlock he was going to have to break. It was a Yale and pretty stout. He’d grappled with them before. They could be busted or at least ripped out, but not quickly. He hoped it wouldn’t turn out like the storage unit job a few years ago, when he yanked and cursed and banged on a Yale far too long and ended up doing eight months in county.

As Marko neared his destination, he heard the dogs from the animal shelter, which was kitty-corner to the diner. Even though they were in cages and he told himself it was all kosher, they still made him tense. As a small-time hood and B & E guy, he was wired to think “Uh-oh!” whenever he heard a dog barking, and no amount of intellectualizing could change that.

The detached freezer was lit well, but because of the animal shelter, the payday loan place, the casino, and the diner itself, it wasn’t readily seen from the street. Marko had scoped it all out before, and as he set in on the lock with his trusty crowbar, he wasn’t worried about being seen by a passing car. Well, not too worried.

Surprisingly, he gained access rather quickly, in under ten minutes. He wasn’t able to bust the bastard Yale padlock, but managed to rip the whole set-up right off the door and frame. It was a metal freezer, but not really. It was just covered with a thin sheet of metal. A centimeter underneath and it was all plastic and insulation, just like any other fridge or freezer. The screws were readily shimmied out.

Inside, he couldn’t see anything. There was no light switch as far as he could feel with his gloved hands. He forgot his flashlight, too, but did have his celebratory beer, which he took with him on every job. He popped it open and slammed it, then got to work.

Up and down both side walls were shelves and on the shelves were varying hunks of what apparently was meat, wrapped tightly in plastic. The back wall was empty, but sitting on the floor by it was one of those 5-gallon food-grade buckets. Marko brought it to the open door to get some light on it. FLUIDS, someone had written in Sharpie across the lid.

Fluids? thought Marko. He put it back.

He took one of the hunks of meat off a shelf and brought it to the light, but it didn’t say anything. Underneath the plastic, though, was what looked like white butcher paper.

A roast! thought Marko.

He felt around. The meat varied in size from pretty small, like about the size of a loaf of bread, to very large, like a whole “prime rib”, whatever that was. Marko didn’t really know, but he imagined it to be very large. He loaded up his arms with three or four small and medium-sized hunks, closed the door behind him with his foot, and headed home. He intended to come right back to get another load, creeping to make sure no cops had shown up. He would keep coming back, too, he thought, until there were cops or the sky had lightened.

Back home at the trailer, Marko realized he couldn’t go back because he was tired. Carrying the meat home had taken a lot out of him and he just wanted to chill on the couch, play video games, and wait for the collapse of Western Civilization, which, clearly, wasn’t too far off. He ordered Baby Doll to get the fuck off Facebook and clean out the freezer, which was easily done since it was empty.

“It’s empty!” she yelled over the kids. “How do you want me to clean it out?”

Angrily, Marko got up and looked. “Get that rack out of there and put the meat in it. Leave this one out to thaw. You in the mood for a steak?”

“Sure,” Baby Doll said. “I’d rather have Taco Bell, though. When are going to steal us some money?”

“Goddamn it, woman,” Marko growled. “Don’t start with me.”

“Should I take the plastic off it?”

“Yeah,” Marko said. “Open it up and put it in the sink. In a few hours it’ll be steak time.”

He went back into the living room and turned on his video game. The night’s work began to melt away. With curses and smacks, he forced the kids into their room and it was almost quiet for once.

“Gross!” Baby Doll yelled from the kitchen.

“What the hell is it now?” Marko said.

“Oh my God!”

“What?”

“Goddamn it, Marko!”

“Jesus Fucking Christ! What!” Marko threw his controller to the floor and went into the kitchen, where there was a dead cat in the sink, frozen solid.

“Where the hell did you go tonight, Marko?” Baby Doll asked, snide in her voice.

“What the hell?”

“Marko, did you get this stuff from the Squat and Gobble, that place by the animal shelter?”

“I…”

“Oh my God, Marko, you’re such a fucking idiot!”

As Marko stared slack-jawed into the sink and Baby Doll berated him, above their trailer, flying this way and that, were black helicopters and drones, ostensibly for security. It was 2015 and there was no longer any need for dystopian literature.

Portland, OR is getting a new minor league baseball team.

They’re going to be called the Pickles. The Portland Pickles. Haha.

In the late 70s and early 80s, there was a minor league team in Boston called the Stranglers. The Boston Stranglers. But people got offended and they had to change their name to the Politically Correct Ass-Kissing Cunts.

Just kidding.

They changed it to the Fuzzy Widdle Woodland Creatures–until a bunch of semi-nude protests by PETA spokesbabes, coupled with a group of irate stutterers, made them change it again. By now, it was the 90s and the pluralized name was on the way out for sports teams. People were thinking that a whole team could be just one thing, like the Miami Heat or the Orlando Magic. This was 20 years ago and the world was a more primitive place. People actually thought that a whole team being just one thing was a cool idea rather than a stupid one, as we now know it to be. So they became the Beige. The Boston Beige.

Anyway, the Pickles. The Portland Pickles. My friends, I see green bumpy penis-like logos for miles! When I go out there, I’m totally gonna try and catch a game. I will be there, do that, and get the T-shirt, cuz, dudes, it’s gonna have a giant pickle on it!

See, I am TOO just a regular boat-wanting, cookout-having, golf-playing, sports-watching guy. After I finish writing this, I’m going to start some manly, tool-involved project and never finish it.

Just added the Drudge Report and the Huffington Post to the ‘always block’ list on my web filter.

slowly moving toward recovery….

This tent is an asshole.

This tent is an asshole.

I’m sorry

but I can’t take a woman seriously if she’s had her boobs enlarged. I mean, she could be talking about how Immanuel Kant says that we do not have a clear picture of reality. Everything we see, hear, touch, and taste is filtered, coming as it does into our knowledge through our sense organs. Even space and time are simply attributes we apply to the external world to make it graspable. The function of space is to break up reality into manageable chunks, which we call objects or “things”. Without space, we would be overwhelmed and would experience external reality all at once. Space, then, is merely a tool employed by our sense organs and is not something that exists outside of us. The same goes for time. Without time, we would experience external reality–the past reality, the present reality, and the future reality–all at once. It, too, is simply an “app” dividing reality up into pieces so that it can be experienced without confusion. Space and time are WITHIN, not without. There is a reality but it is unreachable to us in and of itself. Reality for us is merely a reflection, a shadow….a sensation.

And I’ll be all “Whatever, Toots.”

Call me sexist. I may very well be, and it may be a good thing I am posting this in the middle of the night (though I will leave it up for days because I am dark, off the internet, most of the week) but know that I can’t take a man in a toupee seriously either. The dipshit may as well be wearing a chinstrap.  In both cases, I can’t look at their eyes. In one, I’m looking down. In the other, up.

Vanity, thy name is “Toots”.

"They are one, the Ring and the Dark Lord."

“They are one, the Ring and the Dark Lord.”

- Gandalf, on marriage

Containers, man. They’re fucking everywhere.

Everything in my house is a container. My books contain words and my shelves contain books and my cupboard contains glasses which will at some point contain liquid which contains the ability to hydrate and fill and satisfy and my kitchen is nothing more than a container for my cupboards and my refrigerator which contains food which contains the ability to fill and satisfy and make fat and sickness and which transforms my body into a container for feces which contains the future because it feeds the plants which feed the animals which feed me.

My head contains a brain which contains cells and electricity and spirit and soul and fire and fuck you. My pants contain cock which contains loneliness from lack of fondling. My shoes contain feet which contain cracking bones and colorless blood pumping ever upward.

Everything is inside something else and the universe which contains infinity and eternity is contained in the mind of god who is contained in the mind of man who basks in ignorance and bathes in brilliance and walks the earth containing life like light like fire.

Does anyone else find it odd

that we are told incessantly to vote, yet if you approach people individually, of whatever political persuasion, you will not find a single one happy with the results?

Thinking about giving it up. We have a local election on the 2nd, so I have about 48 hours to decide.

If I don’t vote, at least I won’t be a hypocrite when i bitch about the way things are…