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     $$     .d""b. .d""b.                  HOE E'ZINE #1093
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     $$  $$ $$  $$ $$ss$$               "Am I Better Than This?"
     $$  $$ $$  $$ $$                        by, Dagolith
     $$  $$ $$  $$ $$  $$                      06/14/00
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     $$  $$ "TssT" "TssT"

        I entered this little reality that I'm going to call the spherical
 idiocy. I was walking around the spherical idiocy and wondering what I was
 really doing at 8:10 PM watching network television and trying in vain to
 sleep while constantly avoiding the cold touch of a renegade wallet chain. 

        I just laid, tossing and turning. Turning back and fourth every
 little stupid indescrepency in the more or less scriptable life I lead.
 "How am I going to pass my class? Does this girl like me? Shit! She's not
 at school! Oh my god what happened to her?? She didn't call me! IS SHE
 DEAD??"

        You know... run of the stupid genericized teen stuff... the
 brandy-wine mix of paranoia and false optimism.

        And in the swirling tempest of insomnia, and a distant feeling of
 laziness, I conjured up a question that I really couldn't rip apart with
 the tin falsifications that I so dishearteningly bring upon myself when
 such hollow little inaccuracies smack right into the daze I call
 adolescence.

	But it was different... more solid, more stupid... more jagged. 

        I'm not really sure about the exact structure of the question; it
 was one of those infractions that you can't sum up into words, but hell...
 Ill give it a quick try.

	Something like:

                "Damn it, what if you aren't the smart kid you always thought
 you were... and you're mildly above-average intelligence is being grounded
 by your drug use and almost total and complete vegetation in front of some
 sort of media source."

        Yeah, that's a pretty good summery... except I think when it came
 to me; I could have sworn that the word 'fuck' was present a lot.  Oh well.
 I'm just strange like that.

        Well, as this spherical bit of reality was about to concave in on
 itself, as most things in my brain usually do, a quick flicker of reality
 touched me: "Maybe this is right? Perhaps this whole image of myself is
 the most flawed example of analysis that has ever been my duty to bring
 forth... perhaps everything that I have done is only seems better because
 I live in a falsified little world. Perhaps I'm just a total idiot..."
 Cold and puzzled, I got up and pulled my Che Guevara shirt down over my
 exposed mid-section, and walked over to my door.

        You see, my door is the magical barrier between totally dissension
 of reality and the shrapnel that is lobbed upon my lofty perch in the sky
 by the flack cannons of reality.  What that means is this:  every time I
 leave the cover of my room, I will most likely receive a healthy dose of
 flack.

	In this case, the flack was in the form of compost duty.

        I walked outside and found it pungently waiting for me on the porch
 bench. It always amazed me how compost was composed. It always had certain
 genotypes that gave it a mainstay, but there was always the element of
 rarity that would make each trip just a little more disgusting as you
 could never second guess the way it would fly out of the bucket and into
 the compost pile--sending little bomblets of coffee grounds and vegetable
 soup flying in all directions and ultimately ruining your favorite Che
 Guevara shirt. 

        I walked outside and looked at the grass, it was looking green...
 somehow that was strange to me, but then again the sun is strange to me so
 my credibility on such subjects is greatly defamed.

	Splat.

        I returned to the cave and realized I was thirsty, I also realized
 that I had a big glass of water sitting on the computer case masquerading
 as a coffee table that sits in the center of my room. I then realized that
 I had been enduring this dehydration for some time... yet allowed it to
 remain while the glass of water stared mockingly at me.

        WAS I DELIRIOUS? AM I SICK? DAMN IT STOP THINKING! I'M GETTING TIRED
 OF THIS REALITLY#!@#$

        I woke up and took a drink. I woke up and took another drink.  I
 got up and stared at the flickering blue screen, I saw more network
 television. I then saw more network television. Sensing that there was
 no end if sight I got up and pulled my shirt down over my mid-section.
 And approached my computers.

	Ow, my foot hurts.

        The screen was off, so I turned it off. This managed to turn it
 on. I was pleased.

        I opened a random text file sitting brazenly on my desktop: "I love
 you... but I must kill you..."

	Ctrl-A...Del.

        I started to type, at 1st in a haze and then slowly my mind began
 to clear, I can't say that I like the clearing, but it made more sense.
 And since sense is supposed to be better than haze. I figured anything
 is worth trying once.

        And I kept typing letters and those letters formed words and those
 words formed sentences and those sentences formed broken little thoughts.
 I began to type paragraphs but thoughts where better and I really think
 that if you want to expand yourself and you have the choice of expression
 or philosophical its really not going to work.

        There was more typing and some deleting, a sprinkle of doubting all
 baked at 350 degrees until proofread. But I forgot to cook and it just ate
 the dough.

        And now it's done and I'm sitting with a searching look on my face,
 looking at everything that I thought would be so clear in white and black.
 It's gone from expression to paragraphs. From reflection to impression,
 from everything a stupid tale about a white kid to a stupid tale about
 everything he thought was real.

	Real isn't a stupid white kid.

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 [ (c) HOE E'ZINE -- http://www.hoe.nu    HOE #1093, BY DAGOLITH - 6/14/00 ]