BREAKING

Editorial

Fear And Loathing On The Internet

hunter

My eyes opened as I was awakened by the sweet stench of disgusting bile juice, vomit and vodka coming from my pillow. Damn, alive again and another day in the hell of the modern world. So be it! I reached for my coffee mug and a pipe full of “reason to live” but both were empty. Struggling to stop the room from spinning, I made my way to the kitchen to throw the switch. Nothing to do for ten minutes; an unstoppable heroin induced paranoia; the crawling feeling that I was being invaded pushed me to busy my mind… or numb it. Over to the trusty TRS-80 for some time on the old .com and relief from the strains of life.

Zip! Pow! It came to life as I hustled down the pipeline of my favorite site where surely the soft parade waited, pulsing, thriving, robots and puppets spewing forth the self centered drone of egotism. But not today, today a dark cloud had hung low over the .com and I could tell at once the stench was upon it and me. Everyone’s Avatars had been updated to mean, screaming faces meant to unveil the pain of misspent childhood piss-poor decisions and regret. Oh yeah baby, the bastards were at the wheel and they were taking the whole thing straight into the toilet.

What in the name of great Fanny Moses did I see but my very own name sprawled out over several recent posts, in a most vulgar and unflattering manner. It was hard to tell how much of this was the paranoia and how much was the reality of keyboard commandos who had set their sights on yours truly. The buzzer on the coffee pot went off and jarred me out of my seat. I jumped as if I were being awakened from a long nightmare. I scoured my mind as I poured the black blood into a half dirty mug. What could I have done to offend the huddled mass? What seemingly insignificant detail had I let fly that turned the worldwide Web against me?

I sucked down the mud and headed back to lay my peepers on it all again, in horror, but like a car wreck, unable to stay away. Back and forth the opinions flew about me, my writings, my style, even my friends. One name stuck out like a compound fracture in the fresh snow, his screen name “Big Bad Mutha.” It seemed as if each time the hum began to subsist the bastard would stir the pot and fling them back into a frenzy. Oh he was a master that yielded the simple skills of the pathetically empty mind; he pulled them to- and-fro, like the Pied Piper in his sick little plot to bring me down. Couldn’t they see it was all a game? Could they be that f*&king oblivious to sweet reason? Good God man! He’s a fraud! Someone say something! I screamed at the computer to no avail; the dance went on.

As the chair began to make my ass sweat, I realized that it had been three hours going over their ridiculous rants and unqualified opinions. Enough of this bullshit, I’d rather fist fight a den mother than settle for another minute of it. I pulled out the big guns and grabbed “Big Bad’s” IP address, loaded it into Google Satellite and wrote down his address. There were plenty of words to throw at this madman but little more would provide the satisfaction that an exercise in pugilism would. Into my ’72 Caddy and a hundred and two out of the driveway in reverse. The neighbor’s cat provided little resistance other than to fuel my blood-craving rage and desire to tear this son-of-a-bitch in half. I’d have him by the end of this day or it would be my last.

The ‘72 swayed back and forth across the highway like a carnival ride as I kept one eye on the road and one on my i-Phone map. Hub caps flew off around bends at ninety as I followed the directions to the lair of “Big Bad.” I was half way there before I realized I had left the revolver in my robe on the back of the bathroom door. Goddamn it man, what if he was a “Big Bad Mutha?” He’d have me for sure. Christ knows I was ill prepared for a great test of my virility. No matter, I’d pick up a rock on the way to his door if that’s what it took. I couldn’t turn back now; I was deep into bat country.

I wheeled through the neighborhood inching closer to his lair. I noticed the houses getting nicer, smiling faces and people shocked at my ability to maneuver a vehicle that was clearly too large to accomplish all it was going through. It must have been quite early in “Normalville” that day as their expensive robes and shit-kicking suede slippers told me the village was just coming to life. The cops were sure to be just around any corner but I drove on with daredevil speed and a lust for revenge. Approaching the house number, I shoved both feet through the floor, grinding the brake rotors to a pulp. This was it, the moment was upon me and I sprung from the ’72 like a fox. Up the sidewalk I went, stepping on his freshly planted flowers, up the stairs where I squarely planted a size eleven on his disgustingly white f*@king front door. It gave way like a house of straw and as the splinters flew across his parquet floor, I entered the home of “Big Bad Mutha.” Peering around, lungs humping breath and nostrils flaring, but no one was there. An eerie feeling came over me that I was possibly in the wrong spot. I moved the gizmo around in a figure eight to set my bearings straight. Yep, this was it. As the sound of my lungs calmed down I could hear clicking from the other side of a door in the living room. I hustled to that side of the room and the clicking got louder. With an evil grin I slung the door aside and was sure to have found my critic.

His eyes were as big as the headlights of my car as he saw at once who had invaded the sanctity of his lair. But wait, this tiny middle-aged man could not be him. He quaked cowardly, sniveling with a quivered lip like a dog ready to take another beating for pissing on the floor. ‘Big Bad Mutha?’ I said in a curious manner. “Umm… ahh… well,” he answered. As I realized the folly I was involved, I lost control. Few have been the times in life that I have lost my reserve in such a sick and depraved manner. This WAS “Big Bad” but he was neither big nor bad and even lacked the prowess to accuse me to my face in similar fashion to how he had attacked me from this secure location just a short while before.

With razor precision I snatched up the computer screen, still smoking from his hot words, and brought it down across the crest of his tiny skull. Blood sprayed across the walls and my face. Four or five blows later and the damn thing broke in half; the computer screen that is, the skull had caved in on the first blow. His legs twitched to the rhythm of the electric sparks at the end of the wires inside the screen. I let it slide down to the floor and grabbed a rag from my pocket to sop up the blood running down my own hideous face. Soaking wet, I used it to write on the wall: Here lies Big Bad Mutha – found guilty of crimes against humanity, judged for a lack of reality and executed by the people for his sins. I heard the whistles and decided to split. The man would never understand my poem and I was far out of place in this neighborhood. I took a bottle of soda from his fridge and ducked out the back, behind me the fear and loathing. Maybe tomorrow will be a better day on the old .com, one can only hope.

From The Editor: So maybe you get this, maybe you don’t. After a swarm of comments on one of the popular motorcycle news websites I began, uncontrollably, to channel the late Dr. Thompson…… Either that or I was just pissed!

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