Crimson Stars I: Deployment Module

INTEGRAL ONE - TRANSMISSION OXE-39115

translated from Gedo dronespeak:

"
Glory to the dark savior, resurrector of the seven, protector of the
"

END OF RECOVERY

the transmission terminates here. the originator of the transmission perished in a suicide dive while operating a small Gedan link craft.

* * *

PROPERTY OF M.S.O. PROCESSING AND INFORMATION - CLASSIFIED DOCUMENT, DO NOT RE-DISTRIBUTE
DOCUMENT IS INTENDED FOR USE SOLELY BY M.S.O PSYCH OFFICIALS
PSYCH EVAL ORANGE ALPHA

GEN PROFILE: Kesai, Xeve
SEX: M
AGE: 22
BIRTH: 06/03/3007 3Sol:08:15:26 - Fort Wharton, NEDCH
STATUS: ENLISTED, PENDING TRANSFER TO MERC CITY TRAINING ACADEMY
COMMENTS: Subject demonstrates a strong willingness to serve and die in duty of MSO. Cites enlistment of as motivation, despite having been raised by foster parents. Father was KIA during routine sweep on Janshee-118. Uncle is MIA, last recorded prior to space skirmish with Gedo heavy interception, Vector 268-339-006. M. Kesai's foster parents reside in munics outside Fort Wharton, though both have tested negative for neural transfers with New Grey Earth Frontists. Despite a questionable mental background, Kesai is neuro-transfer negative, and psychologically fit for ground and air combat.
PSYCH OFFR.: K. Layton
CONFIRM: *******

- ASS'S ASS'S ASS'S 8 8 8 8 8 8 8. L-Chroma Ready, and Ready 4 U!!! Not too be missed, myfriend. homegrown. good stuff indian/eurasian call me anyti--

BiLLYChannel4: "HOLDING THE TONGUE OF THE SPEECHLESS" - What's the latest buguptheass of the Terracrats these days? Are we going back to the days of First Amendmence? And does anybody REALLY care what FuBiTAah wore to the Cinema Torch's last night? The answers and more from Rick Carton.

CARTON [in yello]: You know what I love about this town? If you're ever gettin' mugged, let's say a guy's comin' at ya, trying to mug ya, you can just scream "GEDO!" and there'll be an officer along real quick ta help ya [lagh]. D'ya ever find yourself, you know, like, making love to a fem, and the thought just oohp! Pops right into your head? [pantomimes knocking on door] "Sorry honey, we have to stop, the cops are here." [lagh] "Yup, my fault again. Sorry, beb."

***ENCRYPTED TRANSMIT***
RESTRICTED ACCESS
THIS IS A SECURE LINE
ACCESS BY NON MSO ORIGIN WILL BE PERMANENTLY DISABLED & INVESTIGATED.

AudioRoomDAT//MSO Enlistment Frigate GEORGIA 11//Transfer Pod Bay:
K>TENNION- Oh, man. Oh, god.
T>JONNEL- What is it? What's going on?
D>REAGAN- [We're] coming in for a landing.
H>HABER- Is that her? Is that-
K>TENNION- That's it.
G>LART- My god. It's-
K>TENNION- It's fucking beautiful.
D>REAGAN- Wait until you see the temple.
T>JONNEL- Temple? What temple? The Gedo have temples around here?
D>REAGAN- No, you idiot, it's one of ours. Merc City.
K>TENNION- Look, there it is!
H>HABER- I can't see.
D>REAGAN- [lagh] Damn, these things are fast!

* * * * *
Raynon-Pillenger Defense Contracts & Aeronautics

At Raynon-Pillenger, we conduct our business by the time-honored belief that beauty is bound up in symmetry. That's why, in each product component, in every elemental variant, you can find HELIX cells re-enforcing each individual molecule*. These lycro-carbon moleculites create a hardened casing around every applied surface, with the added bonus of aerodynamic texturing. Studies conducted using a Halite Spraystar Vac to Ground Missile continuously yield a fifty percent increase in target accuracy on an average launch of six kilotons per payload.

*standard metalloids only.
* * * * *

sigmetc cc cccccccccccc
...--...
nmet ... .... cc . c . c . c . cc

TRANSLATING DRONESPEAK - - Loaded.

TARG001- Cold cloak red throat,
TARG002- Lotheode.
TARG001- What? You so brazenly speak my name outside the enclave.
TARG002- The Master's eyes don't watch here.
TARG001- How can we be sure?
TARG002- I serve directly under him.
TARG001- Your tongue moves more than you speak.
TARG002- Does this convince you?
TARG001- That blade, where did you get that?
TARG002- First some answers from you, brother.

SIGNAL LOST - NO DISCERNIBLE SIGNAL AS OF 43Wasp:18:09:17

*

Bicycle Lost

I know that the bloggings have been sparse, but believe you me, I hate this fucking blog. Since there have been many appreciative posts concerning my mountain bike and mountain-biking in general (early silent footage of me biking - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pl1zvkVvg4) I feel it is my duty to report to you loyal readers that my mountain bike was recently stolen on the corner of 3rd and Brown in Philadelphia. It happened around 1:30 in the morning while I was drinking in a bar across the street. The bike was tied to a traffic sign with a steel cable lock, which the thieves cut in half and left lying prone on the ground. I drunkenly approached the former parking spot of my bike and began to process what had happened. Several years and countless hundreds of miles of biking flashed before my eyes like a life that was about to end. In many ways that bike was a close friend to me, and there are more than a few times in my life where I would've been shit up a creek if I didn't have that vehicle on my person. It is sad to lose a good bike and I wish painful death upon the thieves and that is all I will ruminate about the matter.

Things are going great, blog, but I don't think I have enough time for you right now.

*reveals silenced gun from beneath jacket and fires point-blank at computer monitor*

53 Miles... Uphill.

On the 28th of June in the year of America 2009, myself and a rambunctious team of rowdy rapscallions embarked on one of the single most strenuous days of biking in my ongoing career of hobbyist cycling. It was the 2009 Long Island Harbors Ride, hosted by some ambiguous cycling group known only as "Bike New York". There were 4 ride options, ranging from 27 to 105 miles, each blazing their own trail through the hills and harbors of Long Island's northern shore. My friends (the eponymous Greg and Bill) and I decided to do the 53 mile course, a challenging but ultimately doable ride.

I was up by 6 that morning, sequestering an egg sandwich (no bacon) before traveling to the starting line with my fellow riders. Our crew arrived under cool grey clouds, thankfully spared the rains that had hitherto been plaguing the northeast. We were all pseudo-ready for the trip, each having done some amount of riding to prepare for the day's riding. But despite numerous training miles logged, we were each dealt a debilitating blow by the sheer scale of the journey ahead.

Since it was a ride and not a race, we departed at our leisure from the starting point at Brentwood, Long Island. From what is basically the middle of the island (north-south-wise), we headed north on a highway service road, bound for the coast. Long, broad roads gave way to forested side streets, and we made our way deep into the hills and valleys that comprise the great north shore.

We were warned of hills well before we set out that morning. The frequent elevation change was a challenge to even the most seasoned of riders, and just a glance at our group proved we were not the most seasoned of riders. Nevertheless, we pushed up those inclines, shifting gears and flexing calves like it was going out of style. Within a few big crests and troughs we found ourselves in familiar territory, for after all our ride was known as "The Huntington Loop" (and duhh that's where i'm from). We faced some local terrain with which we were grudgingly familiar, including the dreaded Snake Hill, a winding ascent that more than lives up to its name. We swilled water from insulated bottles and wiped sweat from our brows, cutting a path from familiar isles into eastern mysteries.

The sun roared out of the clouds just as the true nature of our ride revealed itself: this was not so much a harbor ride as much as a steady uphill climb through monotonous residential lanes. At some point the elevation gain began to lose sync with reality, and the amount of uphill in no way matched the meager downhills that dotted our course. The promise of scenic harbor views was ill kept, replaced instead by tree-enclosed stretches into infinity. A quarter mile uphill ended in a sharp curve only to reveal another mile and a half uphill. A gentle downward slope was but a prelude to a vicious ascending angle. Entire neighborhoods unfurled against brutal hillsides, baking in the hot noon sun like a heathen feast. As our water supply dwindled, our might as cyclists was put to the test.

Long gone were the peaceful inclines of highway service roads. Now was the meat, the true mettle of our journey. We each faltered at times, stopping increasingly frequently for whatever solace we could render on a humid sidewalk. Numerous sojourns found us splayed out wildly as corpses on the roadside, so that yellow-vested ride officials were forced to inquire after our well being. A kind of anguished frustration set in; the sense that this path was deliberately chosen for its maddening uphill stretches. We began cursing our route in between catching breaths. Often I stumbled upon Bill at the side of the road, his head against his handlebars in defeated repose. Even one of the official rest stops was perched far back on a hillock, one that had to be traversed entirely upwards and off course to reach (a sort of deranged cherry to this unhappy sundae was the fact that this was the worst of the rest stops that day, featuring little in the way of nourishment and plenty of Bob Marley's "Legend" on repeat)

As the afternoon sun lilted in the sky, talk of the finish line grew among our fellow riders. "8 miles left." "6 miles to go, you can do it." "You're almost there, why is your face so red?" We had come so far, yet one final stretch lay before us. As if to fully discredit the designation of "harbor ride", the final leg of our journey entered into a vast wash of industrial zoning. Endless fields of fresh cut grass outlined boxy business complexes, places of boring work where real life was muted in the interest of profit and faxes. It was here that we faced our final uphill attack, a shallow yet prolonged ascent past repeating examples of mankind's basest architectural creations. A security company gave way to a storage company, which preceded a corrugated metal tubing company, their monotony matched only by the steady pounding heat of the sun. But we were not there to report to some mind-numbing version of employment. No. On shimmering steel frames we glided through the Long Island afternoon, intent on the accomplishment we knew lay just ahead. It was then that we knew no amount of uphill could conquer us. We were The Riders. We were there to progress onward despite the most trying of conditions. And with that final determination, we coasted back onto the familiar streets of Brentwood, NY. The sound of Rush on echoey speakers was our fanfare; we had arrived. In that handful of hours we had put 53 miles of asphalt behind us, having done so solely with the manpower exerted upon our vehicles. To the more skilled rider this is all in a day's work. To us it was an achievement of strength and willpower. We had faced a great many uphills and taken each of them on with force and precision, never once dismounting to walk our bicycles to the top. It was a full day's ride, and as far as we were concerned it was a masterful accomplishment on par with summiting a mountain or strangling a freshwater catfish. A peaceful exhaustion setting in, we loaded up our bikes and headed for Carvel. Whatever the question was, a root beer float would be the answer.

P.S. I don't know any of the people in that photograph.

DOGRIDERS PART 3: BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE SIX BULLETS?

THE STORY SO FAR: They just looked like harmless little nubs. Grey knotted lumps that began to sprout from the back of each and every living dog on the planet. So quick and unprecedented was the event that none were prepared when these same nubs gained consciousness; a collective hive-mind that willed the dogs into an Assault on the whole of humanity. And when man met his attackers, vicious and bloodthirsty as they were, he named them Dogriders. There are many tales of calamity and loss surrounding these frightening events, but this particular story is that of Josh, a 27-year-old data entry clerk from Long Island, witness to the eradication of each of his friends, having last been seen swimming into the stormy waters of the Long Island Sound...


CENTRE ISLAND: A grey shoreline. Waters lapping at pale sand. JOSH, 27, lies motionless near the high tide line. His hair is wet and flecked with sand. His clothes are tattered and soaked through. He stirs.

JOSH: Hunhh...

Dizzy from too many hours at sea, he rolls his head around. Sand, trees, and sea, as far as the eye can see. He sits up, regaining his senses. A low growl issues from behind him. He braces for the inevitable, slowly turning to face his fate. A LARGE BROWN DOGRIDER snarls at him.

JOSH: No.

The beast paces forward, crouching as if ready to pounce.

JOSH: No no NO!

DOGRIDER: BROUF! BROUF! BROUF!

The Dogrider leaps at Josh, ONLY TO BE SNAPPED ASUNDER BY RIFLESHOT.

JOSH: WOAH!

The Dogrider, dead, lands merciful feet away from a stunned Josh.

SHELMAN (OS): You injured?

JOSH: What?

FRANK SHELMAN, 32, emerges from the brush, a sniper rifle slung behind his back. His gruff exterior belies a love of adventure and a sardonic outlook on life.

SHELMAN: Did that thing hurt you at all?

JOSH: No, I'm OK... thanks. thank you.

SHELMAN: What's your name?

JOSH: Josh... Josh Wibler.

SHELMAN: You able to walk, Josh?

JOSH: I think so.

SHELMAN: Then let's go. There'll be more where that came from.


FORESTED PATH, SHORTLY LATER: Shelman leads Josh along an otherwise unmarked woodland trail.

SHELMAN: What were you doing all alone out there?

JOSH: I was in the water. Trying to swim away from those... things.

SHELMAN: On your own?

JOSH: I was with my friends. We were trying to find a way off the island but they... they all...

SHELMAN: Alright, OK. It's OK.

They walk for a while in silence, the sounds of the forest murmuring around them.

JOSH: You're one of those paramilitaries aren't you?

SHELMAN: Used to be. Until all this.

JOSH: What about the others? The guys in your unit?

SHELMAN: Ran off, tried to fend for themselves. Most of 'em KIA. Those of us who did stick together, well, you'll see.

JOSH: Where are you taking me anyway?

SHELMAN: We'll head upriver in the airboat.

JOSH: Airboat?


RIVERSIDE: A marshy stretch of river that feeds into the Sound. A large structure is hidden beneath an olive tarpaulin. Shelman pulls away the tarp to reveal an honest-to-goodness AIRBOAT complete with a giant airplane propellor at the aft.

JOSH: Oh.


LAZY RIVER: A winding labyrinth of streams and tributaries. Josh and Shelman whizz along on the airboat, Shelman expertly navigating the maze.

JOSH: Why head North from D.C.? I thought we got hit the worst?

SHELMAN: That's what the media said before lights out. Now it's twice as bad down south. Riders are forming bigger and bigger hunting parties, sometimes hundreds deep. Lucky for us they can't swim as well as when they were, you know, dogs.

JOSH: But why Long Island?

SHELMAN (sarcastic): Always wanted to summer up here.

The airboat cuts a sharp turn into a narrower stream marked by A DOG SKULL ON A PIKE.


MARSHY EXPANSE: The airboat drifts to a stop alongside a GRASSY MOUND. Shelman hops into the knee-deep water as Josh contemplates his disembarkation. Shelman gives him an "are you serious, pussy?" look and then addresses the mound:

SHELMAN: Dader, open up, I got a live one here!

DADER (OS): State the password.

SHELMAN: I told you, we can't have a password in a hi-act area. Strategically, it's bullshit.

DADER (OS): Password, Grunt!

SHELMAN: (exaggerated sigh) Happy Halloween.

A slab of moss opens mouthlike from the mound to reveal DADER, 30's, a lanky gentleman with a sharp face and spiky brown hair.

DADER: Shabat shalom.

SHELMAN: Yeah, OK, hi. Get this guy some water, he's been in the shit.

DADER: What do I look like, the Red Cross?


MAKESHIFT BUNKER: A musty earthen tunnel, peppered with small portholes to the outside world. Spots of sunlight and the orange glow of gas lanterns. Dader and Shelman lead Josh into what looks like a hastily-dug dwelling. 3 or 4 other men are posted along the walls, downtrodden.

DADER: You know I'm not too keen on sharing, rations being what they are.

SHELMAN: Sorry to break your back but he's the first survivor we've seen in a minute. Let's not forget why we signed up for this shit.

DADER: Please show me the part in our contract where wild dogs devour the planet.

SHELMAN: Whatever happened to the overeager piece of shit I followed out of Maryland?

DADER: Look, you wanna babysit Timothy Hutton's balloon sculpture? Be my guest. Matter of fact, put him to work.

Dader tosses A SMALL HATCHET to the ground, which Shelman ignores.

DADER (CONT.): We need more lumber for the south tunnel.

Dader storms off, pushing a clod of dirt off the wall.

JOSH: Who's Timothy Hutton?

SHELMAN: Forget it, kid. Drink this.

He hands Josh a military canteen, of which he drinks deeply.

SHELMAN: You'd think for once people could look beyond their own gripes and try to help each other out.

Josh is silent.

SHELMAN (CONT.): Maybe that's what got us into this. All that hate, greed, selfishness. Maybe it rubbed off on 'em. The dogs. Made 'em change into those things.

JOSH: My dad says it was radiation from space.

SHELMAN: Don't believe everything you hear, kid.

SOLDIER (O.S.): RIDERS!

Shelman snaps alert, approaching the soldier.

SHELMAN: Head count.

SOLDIER: Two of 'em. Scouts.

Shelman takes a furtive glance out one of the root-curtained portholes. Across a marshy stretch, two Dogriders dart over an embankment.

SHELMAN: We gotta take them out commission before they report to Momma. Where's Mills?

MILLS (O.S.): Here, sir!

MILLS, 28, a bespectacled schlub with messy facial hair, waddles up.

SHELMAN: How's your shooting eye?

Mills crosses and uncrosses his eyes, both grossly exaggerated by his lenses.

MILLS: Uhhh, good, sir!

SHELMAN: Alright. Stick your neck out there. If it's just those Scouts, put 'em on ice. Any more than that and you call for back up, understood?

MILLS: Sir, Yes, Sir!

Mills runs back down the corridor, dropping a mag of ammunition on his way.

JOSH: Are we safe in here?

SHELMAN: Until they learn how to dig tunnels.

Shelman grabs a rifle from the wall and aims at Mills. Mills makes his way to the entrance hatch and cautiously pushes it up. He stands halfway exposed at the mouth of the hatch, panning his gun over the landscape. He rests his aim on something neither Josh nor Shelman can see.

MILLS: ... shit.

A DOGRIDER SNAPS AT HIM FROM THE ROOF OF THE MOUND, PULLING ITS SCREAMING PREY OUT OF SIGHT.

SHELMAN: FUCK!

He shoots at the entrance, but the bullet just dings the hatch as it snaps shut.

JOSH: Oh, no.

DOGRIDERS (O.S.): BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF!

Pawsteps pad the earthen roof like a violent hailstorm.

SHELMAN: Full auto! We got K9's incoming!

Soldiers hurry along the tunnels, scanning portholes with weaponry at the ready. Barking echoes from every direction. The men take potshots at fleeting shadows on the marsh. Somewhere down the tunnel a man screams. Josh backs against a wall, horrified.

SHELMAN: Where's Dader!? We need everything we've got! More than everything!

Shelman jams his rifle into one of the portholes, unloading round after round into the outside world. Outside, Dogriders swarm amidst the brush. Whatever horde was nearby is now directly upon them.

SOLDIER (O.S.): I'm out! Christ, there's too many!

SHELMAN: Don't let up! We gotta wear 'em down!

DOGRIDERS (O.S.): BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF!

SHELMAN: Get some! Get some!

Josh becomes aware of a LOW GROWL emanating from within the tunnel. He looks down a narrow corridor which drops off into darkness. A SHINY SNOUT begins to emerge from the shadows, bearing VICIOUS PINK FANGS. A DOGRIDER IS INSIDE THE BUNKER.

JOSH: Frank!

DOGRIDER: GrrrrrrrrrrrBROUF! BROUF! BROUF!

Shelman spins around just as THE DOGRIDER LUNGES FOR HIM. He holds his rifle sideways as the Dogrider clamps its wicked maw around it, knocking them both to the ground. In the struggle, a gas lantern is knocked to the ground, spreading liquid fuel across the ground. FLAMES RISE UP AROUND THEM AS SHELMAN WRESTLES THE HELLISH CREATURE.

SHELMAN: Ack! God DAMN YOU!

The Dogrider's teeth remain fixed to the rifle as Shelman tries to jar it loose. Josh backs against the wall as flames further separate him from Shelman's struggle.

SHELMAN: Kid! Get outta here! Go!

The Dogrider leans in with the brunt of its strength, its dripping fangs mere inches from Shelman's face. Shelman stares right into its murderous eyes.

SHELMAN: I'll be waiting for you in hell, you son of a-

The rifle SNAPS IN TWINE as the Dogrider chomps through steel and oak. Shelman screams as HIS THROAT AND FACE ARE RIPPED APART. The fire, now somehow raging throughout the corridor, casts nightmarish shadows of the feasting monster. As the Dogrider claims the life of its latest victim, it turns to face Josh... ONLY TO RECEIVE A HATCHET-STRIKE DIRECTLY TO ITS NUB.

NUB: EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHH!!

Josh withdraws the hatchet and STRIKES AGAIN, HIS FACE ALIGHT WITH NEWFOUND VIGOR AND RESILIENCE!

JOSH: YEAGH!

NUB: EEEEEH! EEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHH!!

The dog twitches as its nub bleeds viscuous black death. By the time he's finished chopping, Josh is splattered with the stuff, completely exasperated.

JOSH: Hahhh... huuhhhh.. hohh.

Shelman coughs through a gurgle of blood.

JOSH: Frank! Can you hear me!?

SHELMAN: Ruh... rock and roll, kid.

Shelman breathes his last and is still. Already separated from his newfound friend, Josh is awash with swirling emotion. All around him, the fire continues to grow, climbing dirt walls that are for some reason highly flammable.

DADER (O.S): You.

Josh whips around to see a bruised and battered Dader carrying A HIGH-CALIBER MACHINE GUN.

DADER (CONT.): You led them right to us.

JOSH: No...

DADER: We were safe here. We had a plan. Shelman. He wasn't supposed to die.

JOSH: I... I tried to save him.

DADER: You BROUGHT THIS UPON US!

He levels the gun at Josh.

DADER: Oh, but I'm not gonna let you fuck this over any more, no. You think you can waltz in here, kill my men, burn my base to the ground. You have the audacity to-

A GIANT WHITE DOGRIDER (eerily similar to the one that ate Nick in part 2) LEAPS FROM THE SHADOWS, POUNCING DADER.

DOGRIDER: BROUF! BROUF! BROUF!

Josh staggers backwards as Dader and the Dogrider tussle amidst the inferno.

DADER: Hagh! Aeeyagh!

Dader is SLAMMED into a dirt wall. The combined force of the impact and the hungry flames triggers a chain reaction. Massive columns of dirt begin to collapse around them. Dirt and mud fall in sheets along the corridor. Terrified, Josh backs into a corner of the room. As he crouches defensively, THE ENTIRE CEILING COLLAPSES IN A BLANKET OF SUFFOCATING DARKNESS.


(end part 3)

King of Recreation

I am not a man of great accomplishments. I have made modest steps forward in life and celebrated personal victories on a very respectful scale. I have not accomplished as much as others in similar shoes but I have filled my life with enough appreciable moments so as to achieve at least a balanced sense of self-worth. When it comes to recreational activities, this ideology remains. My victories are spread out among a sea of mediocrity. Today, however, was a day of victories. Recreational victories.

It being a weekend, and a nice one at that, a decision was made among friends to engage in recreational activities at a local park. Following the acquisition of bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches and large half-n-halfs (lemonade & iced tea), a game of bocce was embarked upon. It was myself against Billy "The Kid" Marsalise, with the winner going on to face Greg "The General" Reihing. Each round was an exacting struggle, with the pallino being knocked about the court in strategic warfare. Rains had come through the night before, while Billy and I were still just a couple of bros dancing around at a Phish concert. As a result, the court was smoother than expected and ball friction and drag was greatly reduced. Thanks to a few key throws that posited my balls just inches closer than The Kid's, I was able to win the first match.

Next came The General, and with him a brutal new form of strategy. The "bocce-ing" of the opponent's balls away from the pallino with a well placed throw became the attack-du-jour of this match. Just when it seemed a victor had been decided, a new ball came smashing into play, upsetting the entire playing field and drastically reallocating points. Despite an almost insurmountable lead by The General, I was able to rally my bocce skills and smash his balls into next weekend, removing his skillfully placed throws from their intended targets. This second victory propelled us into the final round, in which I would once more take on Billy The Kid.

All the previous experiences of the past two matches came into play for this final showdown. The finesse of every shot, the manipulation of the pallino, and yes, the bocceing of the opponent's balls. It was another close match, but thanks to some unforeseen luck and an almost preternatural sense of the game, I was able to cement a 3-match victory over both my opponents.

This recreational domination carried over to J.T. Carrington's Bar in Huntington Village, where a game of Cricket (the darts game) raged amidst the 80's classics of possibly the best DJ on Long Island. This time I was teamed up with Billy The Kid, but old grudges were set aside in pursuit of new glories. And glories there were, as we steadily worked our way through each of the numbers magic-markered onto the whiteboard, finally cinching the victory with a few well-placed bullseyes from yours truly.

Even in the post-alcoholic return to the bocce courts, I tasted the sweet nectars of ball victory. Out of a humble track record I emerged with winning skills and visionary determination, winning two more highly competitive matches. It was perhaps the my finest showing at any recreational event. Even though I lost in an end-of-the-night showdown with Billy The Kid, my overall achievements for the day were more than enough to represent a personal goal, a victory among a sea of mediocrity. Even though I may never again enact so pristine a performance in a single day of recreational activities, I can always look back on this sunny June day and know that, for a magical handful of hours, I was the King of Recreation.

LET'S TAKE A MINUTE TO TALK ABOUT MY CALVES

LET'S TAKE A MINUTE TO TALK ABOUT MY CALVES IN ALL CAPS. I STRESS THE CAPITALIZATION BECAUSE THIS IS SOMETHING OF A BIG DEAL FOR ME. I DON'T GROW MUSCLES ANYWHERE ELSE ON MY BODY EXCEPT MY CALVES. THIS IS DUE TO THE HIGH VOLUME OF BIKING/LOW VOLUME OF EVERYTHING ELSE IN MY LIFE. RECENTLY I NOTICED A PLEASING DEFINITION IN MY CALF MUSCLES FOLLOWING SEVERAL LONG DISTANCE BIKE RIDES. THERE IS A FORM AND CURVATURE TO MY CALVES NEVER BEFORE VISIBLE AND I MUST SAY THEY FEEL "RIGHT" WHENEVER I GIVE THEM A GOOD SQUEEZE. WHEN THE LIGHT HITS THEM THE RIGHT WAY, THEY ACTUALLY CAST A SHADOW OVER THE REST OF MY LEGS. SOMETIMES I STRETCH THE WRONG WAY IN MY SLEEP AND PULL SOME MUSCLE DOWN THERE AND I AWAKE TO SHARP STINGING PAIN IN EITHER CALF. NOT THE BEST THING TO AWAKEN TO BUT IT CERTAINLY ZAPS AWAY THE GROGGINESS. IF I COULD BE REMEMBERED FOR ONE THING IN MY LIFE IT WOULD BE A DEDICATION TO THE CREATIVE ARTS. IF I COULD BE REMEMBERED FOR TWO THINGS IT WOULD BE A DEDICATION TO THE CREATIVE ARTS AND A FIRM MUSCULATURE OF THE CALF MUSCLES. I AM NOT EVEN JOKING YOU CAN TELL HOW SERIOUS THIS IS BECAUSE IT'S IN ALL CAPS.

Wolverine v. The Global Economic Meltdown

by guest columnist Wolverine


Hey Bub.

Over here, in the alley. It's me, the ol' Canucklehead. I'm the best there is at what I do, but lately what I do's gettin' less and less nice.

Been fallin' on some pretty hard times lately, what with the economy and all. Prof. X had to close the Mutant Academy. Told me I couldn't squat there no more after an incident involving bear shit. A lot of bear shit. See that dumpster back there with the hobo piss? S'my new home.

Now I know it ain't paradise, but a man's got to settle for what'n he can in these troubling economic times. Livin' ain't easy, but livin's all I got left.

Done a lot things I ain't proud of. Ate a guy's family the other day. Can't say he didn't have it comin', though I reckon he didn't altogether deserve it neither. That's the thing about life out in the wild: you take the hand your given.

Tried to wrap my head around the situation. Washington. They're the bastards got us into this mess. Looks like it's up to yours truly to get us out of it. Now, I don't know to much about systems of aggregate growth or nothin' of that sort, but I do know this: if you want the job done right, you're gonna need a good dose of ice-cold adamantium rage.

Cooked up a plan all on my own. No X-men, not this time. Too much red tape, too much "Logan, this isn't even a plan, you're just stabbing people at random". Nice try, Cyclops, but I got this one all worked out. Y'see, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go down to Washington and start stabbing people. This will pretty much be at random, but the thinking is sooner or later I'm gonna wind up face to face with one a the bozo's responsible for messin' with me an' mine. And when I do, bub, you can bet he'll wish he had my mutant healing ability.

It won't be easy. I ain't ever taken on no economy before. Space demons, sure. Ninjas, plenty of em'. But when it comes to fighting an intangible concept based on a set of rules I can't rightly fathom, I'm at a bit of a loss. Lucky for you I handle all my problems the same way: with a judicious amount of stabs to the gut. When the ol' Canucklehead here gets done with this global economic downturn, they're gonna be pickin' through my bear-sized shit just to try'n identify it.

another ode to biking

the weather in the northeast is finally of a caliber i would call fucking fantastic. as i write this, my door-sized windows (actually they are doors but they don't lead anywhere except a three-story death drop) are wide open and the warmcool air that's usually reserved for the dogrider days of summer is filling my room. i just rode my bike home through this intoxicating weather and i was reminded of my biking adventures thus far in 2009.

let me first state that i am really an advocate of biking. i am by no means what you'd call a "biker" (i.e. no distinguishing clothing, no road bike, no crew of bros on bikes) but i am very much enamored with riding my bike through cities and forests and everywhere in between. i ride a big conspicuous mountainbike, a trek, and i like to take it anywhere it will let me. one of the things i like about biking is you create all your own energy for your vehicle. your speed and endurance is generated entirely by your own will; there's no other fuel source to worry about or throw money into. also it reminds me of sprinting incredibly fast but ALL THE TIME. even when you are catching your breath there is still the possibility of traveling at high speeds. lastly, there is an adventurous feel to traveling on a bike, something that hiking comes close to but doesn't fulfill in the same way. i think it's the combination of the journey and the speed. this is especially poignant when bombing through a forested trail and playing the lord of the rings theme in your head at full volume.

in this first quarter of the new year i've already had a variety of bikeventures, let's call them (yeah, i don't have many friends). one of the first truly warm days this year was so unseasonable that it got all fucked up by clashing high and low pressure systems and crazy storms resulted. riding out into the warmth, i was greeted halfway into my trip by the craziest sunshowers ever. the sun was bright above but the rain was whipping in sideways out of nowhere. i got absolutely soaked but was rewarded with a gigantic and perfectly arched rainbow over the delaware river. somehow it was all very symbolic; the sunshowers, the rainbow, life, the universe, my bike. i think it meant everything's going to be ok.

oh god are we still going with this post? phew, ok. this season of bikings also holds the farthest distance i have yet to travel in a single day, which was roughly 50 miles. i went from my apartment in south philly, along the scenic schuylkill river, all the way to valley forge, pa and back. i could not move for a little while after i got back. clearly it was awesome. i was considering not doing the whole thing but then saw a huge factory on fire and remembered that going out and seeing things was better then not, so i continued on through a brown haze of smoke and toward my eventual goal. this also had some symbolism but i don't wanna get into it.

today's bikescursion (yeah, basically no friends) was a reminder that you can't always go out and rock n roll when it's 94 degrees and you've barely eaten anything. i tried to hit up one of my mountainbiking haunts outside philly and shit was good for about 5 seconds before the heat and the hills combined to punch me in the face. i was in a bad way, walking my bike over terrain i would usually attack head on. i noticed that i wasn't very sweaty and in fact was getting goosebumps and this usually means you're about to have a heat stroke so i called it a day and got a milkshake at this really good place down the street. it was a trying experience and largely unpleasant (sans milkshake) but i equate it to just another tale of bikeventure. there will always be difficulties and hills you simply have to walk your bike up because they're too fucking steep and loose, but that's part of the journey. if there weren't hills and heat and rainstorms out of nowhere, you'd never see the forest or the industrial fire or the rainbow's perfect arc across the sky. i know this is a very obvious point to be making, but it reveals itself time and again through the simple act of moving forward on a bike. the journey is the destination, and vice versa.

i love this fucking bike.

Look Good In Time For Mass Genocide

i just found this ad on facebook. hilarious. not only is facebook on a downward spiral into incongruity and suck, but now they're running ads with neo-nazis telling you to get in shape. of all the muscled icons to use to promote ab-toning, they go with ed norton circa american history x. brilliant. toughen up those pecs so you can tattoo swastikas onto them! strengthen your calves to curb stomp minorities! i think the internet is just running out of ideas. that, or i am just completely disconnected from modern society and there is absolutely nothing wrong with this image. fuck. game over, man. game over.

UPDATE: apparently there IS nothing wrong with this. facebook just wants more cash and therefore the levee of decency is allowed to break. look, even gawker commented on this same ad: http://gawker.com/5215018/facebooks-get+rich+quick-scheme-has-yankees-player-sliding-into-home

p.s. I BEAT YOU GAWKER BY A WHOLE DAY. WHO'S RELEVANT NOW?????

why i'm bad at dancing

Age 10, I am at a German restaurant in upstate New York with my parents. Everything is going swimmingly until an accordion-toting musician enters the room. Sporting lederhosen and a feathered cap, he launches into traditional Bavarian folk tunes of a bygone era. I try to accept the scenario as harmless but it escalates severely. "We are now going to do the Chicken Dance," he announces, "and this young man is going to demonstrate how it's done!"
He's referring of course to me, the only child in the room. Any intended humor is lost to my juvenile mind, and I am faced with the very real threat of having to chickendance for the thirty-odd patrons in attendance. I plead with my parents, please don't let him make me dance, in a tone reminiscent of a child being dragged to a death camp. My heart is pounding, my head heavy with the thought of flapping my lanky arms while the accordion squawks its tune. Already the crowd is laughing in anticipation. Already they await my drawn out humiliation. I can feel his eyes on me, ready for me to join him in the center of the room, his leathery jowls like the collapsable lung of his instrument.
I cannot accept this fate. I refuse to face the firing line, to be jester to these bastards. I run from the room, out into the lobby. I would sooner abandon my family than dance like a chicken at a German restaurant. As a consequence, I will never be able to dance in any acceptable way, and all efforts to hone this skill will fail miserably. My body shifts awkwardly. I stumble. I lack rhythm. I will simply look for the nearest exit and run.

a couple non sequiturs about music

a friend told me they thought music was the most engaging art, a medium that communicated to the human soul more directly than any other medium in existence. i realized i agreed with this, probably always have, and probably always will.

lately i've had several "only listen to the smiths" phases. while the implications of this are bad (emo), i realize that i could have far worse taste in music.

the new animal collective album, while good, is one of their worst. breakfast at sulimays was right. (and whoever edited that episode is sexually enticing [and possibly me])

i have no problem with playing a song on repeat for hours on end, in fact this happens at least every other month. it helps me stay in a certain mode of thought while drawing or writing, plus sometimes you just need to keep listening to a song.

i played the upright bass in high school and just as i was starting to get good at it i got accepted to college and never played it again. this is possibly a regret.

my music listening habits are on a sort of pendulum that swings between melancholic tender tremblings and raucous heavy shit. i spend a few months on one side before swinging back to the other, and back and forth into eternity.

in the past few years i've gained a taste for more chaotic music i.e. tuneless structureless emotionless jarble that most people would shy away from. i even bought the whole druqks album by aphex twin. this likely stems from my overall appreciation of chaos and it's outright refusal to adhere to maths.

i was, at one point, a phish head. i saw their "final" festival in vermont and got lost for several hours on mushrooms, during which time i casually peed in front of a great many people and tried to lay down on a pile of mud. this is possibly a regret.

scott goldstein introduced me to the pulp album "this is hardcore" when i was in ninth grade and it became one of the greatest things i have ever listened to. it is now adorned with many mental connections of which i am reminded every time i give it a listen.

what genre is tv on the radio anyway? art rock? fuck, i don't know.

the first concert i ever went to was weird al yankovic.

last year i made my first honest-to-goodness music documentary about the band arizona. i like to think of it as unique because i was able to capture the birth of a song. literally the exact moment the idea for the song came into existence was caught on film, followed by its progression into a fully fleshed-out piece of music. if you haven't seen it, take a 20-minute breather and do so now.

playing drums on rock band is a lot of fun but my drums are broken right now FUCK.

i recently made a mix cd that included: talking heads, fugees, kate bush, wilco, ben kweller, the manhattans, tegan and sara, and the berlin philharmonic orchestra, to name a few. i don't think those musicians have ever all made it into the same sentence before.

i had a dream last night that my mom took me out to dinner with barack obama. it was thunder and lightning outside and we all sat at a candlelit table conversing like good friends. he asked me if i thought he was the best president ever. i said "given the current situation and your resolve in dealing with it, i think you are doing great." barack just sort of smiled at me as lightning flashed outside. though this isn't music related, i thought it was worth mentioning here.

in times of severe depression and loneliness, the only thing that can truly shift my mood is good music. this is endemic to the idea that music is the most powerful medium of all. AND SO THE CIRCLE IS COMPLETED.

Baseball Caps

i don't know what it is, but i am just not a baseball cap fan. this has been a lifelong issue for me. something about wearing a baseball cap, sports-themed or not, has never gelled with my character. every time i don one it looks like i'm faking it, like i'm wearing it in the most insincere way possible. the worst part is i can't even put my finger on why this is. put me in a wool cap, a tophat, a mining helmet, or a tri-cornered revolutionary ditty, and i get along fine. hell, my look might even improve in one of these. but as soon as i try on a standard baseball cap, everything goes wrong. my hair gets weird, the shape of my head changes, and my temples are constricted, causing the veins on either side to throb as if my soul is filled with hatred. then there's the brims. i can't get the brims right ever. they are either perfectly flat, suggesting i need special education, or overly bent into a horrid upside-down V, suggesting i'm some sort of asshole. even if you were to give me a hat with the brim perfectly curved in whatever way the kids are wearing them these days, it would constrict into some unacceptable shape the minute it came in contact with my scalp. don't even get me started on the thing in the back where you can adjust the size.

as i said before, the only thing worse than my incompatibility with baseball caps is the utter lack of a reason for this issue. my head and face are pretty average; there's no definable reason why i should have an issue with caps, yet i am continually beset by this curse. i don't even have photographic evidence of this because i am so rarely seen sporting a baseball cap. i think the only way to ever overcome this would be to transmogrify into a completely different person, and though i've toyed with the idea, we both know i wouldn't look anywhere near as good in snow hats. CASE CLOSED.

THE WORST THING ABOUT HAVING ROOMMATES

is that no matter how badly you want to scream at the top of your lungs, you can't. somebody will be upset by it, become worried, contact the authorities. they'll want to know why you screamed, what's wrong with you, etc. and you just can't achieve the kind of release one gets from screaming until completely hoarse. i'm not talking about a wail of despair, a wrath-filled bellow, or even an orgasmic cry of joy. just a good old-fashioned scream in which all the things you couldn't already say are ushered forth in a display of just how wild and loud a human voice can become. i do it driving in my car all the time, in addition to the other weird noises i make to keep busy (a lot of people are put off by this idea, yet i continue to be open about it). i'll be driving along some road in heavy traffic and, upon making sure the windows are all up, AAAAAAAAAGHGGHHGHGAHAAAAAH. the louder the better. if you can damage your own hearing with it, great. just so long as you are able to let every bit of scream pass through you and out of you. that is so fulfilling. it just feels right. christlike, almost. like taking a much-needed piss. but of course something so unabashedly good is beyond the constructs of normal society, and to scream with all your might outside of say a grindcore show is typically frowned upon. there's something almost perversely pure to it, like it should almost be made illegal. there are certainly repercussions for doing so in the wrong scenario. getting caught indulging in a scream is mortifying, as if the veil on your most personal secrets has been lifted. but when it's just you and the scream, all primal and powerful and meaningless and omnipresent, it's like saying hello to god. if you think i'm joking, try it. go out into the woods, or on a mountaintop, and just fucking cut loose. you're welcome, planet earth.

Smut Cave on G4TV

Welp, it's the moment i've been waiting for, and i wasn't even waiting for it. by some bizarre twist of fate (this one totally out of the blue), my brainchild Smut Cave was featured on national television in a generous spot from G4, the lonely masturbator channel. here's the clip:

http://g4tv.com/attackoftheshow/aroundthenet/66389/Smut-Cave-Obese-Spider-Monkey.html

this came as an utter shock to me, since the show (smut cave) really isn't too popular or for that case TV-appropo. yet somehow i see these people saying these words on the screen and it all pertains to me like i'm the character in some bizarre twilight zone episode (except instead of being a bad thing it's really ok). to see actual TV people banter about me like i actually matter gives me the feeling that maybe i am starting to actually matter. which in itself is incredibly exciting and somewhat frightening. it's just like uncle ben said: with great power comes great responsibility. let's say this smut cave does continue to grow, and i become the spelunker, web celebrity. what then? my greatest recognition is born from a retarded idea about a cave-dwelling internet-fiend who likes gross shit. yay? don't get me wrong, this is truly awesome and i graciously accept the feature from these guys. i just love to second-guess my achievements with negative brainwaves that render my joy meaningless. put it this way: i don't want smut cave to be the be-all end-all of my persona. i love that in this day and age i can earn renown through such a weird venue. and i love the comments i get from people who rofl at my shit. but i want this to be a starting point in something greater. the scope of my ability goes far beyond the guy in the mining helmet. i have but to convince the rest of the world of this. if all goes according to plan, smut cave will serve as the base board for a very grand and eloquent representation of myself as meta-video-artist. i seek to deliver not only laughter, but intensely sparkling creativity the power of which is rivaled by those free agents that alter nature's math in that other entry where i talked about that. i want to inspire. i want to be new. i never want to be pinned down, definable, or prone to youtube comments like "gay" and "this sux". this much i know, america: as long as i have the strength and wherewithal to do so, i will continue towards this end and, god-willing, bring to this planet something it didn't know could even exist.

like furbies, except they have mind-control powers and make everybody zombies and you have to fight the zombies and they're really scary but eventually we figure out a way and it's cool like a dream that you wake up from smiling but with tears streaming down your face singing hallelujah free at motherfucking last.

Death Nerds, or How I Got On Street Carnage

it was 2am last night and I was feeling frisky. the mood struck me just right that i felt like pimping out my craft to the world. i do a lot of work with videos of all shapes and sizes but they don't always get received by the widest audiences. so, feeding this urge to spread my artistic seed, i reached out to a favorite blog of mine, street carnage.

if you dont know street carnage it is a fun little site hosted by derrick beckles, the mastermind behind the awesomeness known as "tv carnage", and gavin mcinnes, one of the founding members of vice magazine and creator of the fashion do's & dont's, one of my favoritest things ever.

i didn't think much would come of this contact i'd established. street carnage seemed very caught up in its own bizniss. but lo and behold, by the time i managed to wake up this morning i began noticing a bunch of fresh hits on my youtubes. and then it dawned on me; i'd been featured on street carnage:

http://streetbonersandtvcarnage.com/blog/dear-street-carnage-introducing-smut-cave/

they put up a bunch of my videos as well as my desperate letter to them. they even declared me the first in a new subculture of nerd: Death Nerds. my life is so much closer to completion.

the little cherry on top was a personal e-mail from gavin himself later in the day. i present it here uncircumcised:

I like it but I don't think you should do that voice
be teh spelunker and yell like a monster but be yourself
that's more interesting to people than a fake monster man


dude has a point, but the voice of the spelunker has been an ongoing issue for me, and i am very torn about whether or not to alter it since its been altered for every episode thus far and kind of established as my thing. i wrote back thanking him for the constructive criticism and offering a guest spot on the show for whenever he and derrick were ready, replete with the ability to make said episode about basically whatever they wanted. as a regular to streetcarnage.com, it was awesome to find myself included in my own daily web browsings. it's a wonderfully validating experience, even though the general public seemed underwhelmed by it all. now i am somewhat obligated to make the next smut cave about their site, as promised in my letter to them, but my designation as the founding Death Nerd is more than reason enough to follow through on this promise. like a rainbow in the dark, i will spread the demented joys of the smut cave throughout the interwebs AND BEYOND BITCHESSSSS

*flips on shades and rides harley into desert sunset*

*sun explodes and destroys solar system and all organic life*

24 TO 24

I've just about 24 hours left of being 23. one step deeper into manhood. it's been quite the year. many progressions and transitions, as well as a few recessions. incredible highs and lows and my first-ever broken bone if you don't count that time i fractured my skull in the 6th grade (yeah that whole thumb story a few posts back? totally broke it). i became host of a marginally popular web series, and created probably more videos of every sort than any other time in my life. and i only just realized that as i typed it out there. that's kind of cool. if nothing else i further stated my artistic intents, which can be summed up as questionable at best. i guess what really counts is i was able to live my life according to some extension of my beliefs and outlook on How I Want Things To Be. granted things were by no means ideal, and as much as i rejoiced i despaired, but fuck if that isn't the human condition, right mon? i mean shit. mufuckas try an roll up on jah, jah just roll right back.

it looks amusingly enough like my last day of 23 will be a snow day. as in a blizzard literally keeping me in place as it coats the world in snow. this is kind of ok. as evidenced by this:

especially if you fastforward about 2 minutes in when they start kicking the trees and the snow falls in clouds. that to me is a piece of heaven. so, on concluding this 23rd year with what is probably the last blog post of my 23 year old self i say

it's been utterly fascinating thus far, let's see where we can go with this nick.


signed,
the neon cthulu that lives inside your skull

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king of the jungle

my aunt gave me this bottle opener when she came back from africa. the handle is made of bone, the smoothed tooth of a lion now gone. at the root now fixed a metal heart shape from which i crack many a beer. carved along the side the lion is mid-hunt, stalking toward whatever end he met. i like to think he's still out there, minus the tooth, but it's fixed so final, carved and smoothed and sold off. there ain't much hope for him. i scratch my head with the tooth, thinking what damage it might incur had the tooth still been attached to its owner. its just a thing now, no longer fierce, once torn through meat but now inert. an item in a drawer. necessity to novelty. maybe he got old, starved, too slow to hunt. maybe they cut him down in his prime. it's a trinket now, and will probably never serve me the way it did that beast. there is still a strength to it, a quality that recalls its former prowess. the curve of the tooth evoking the snarling maw. as if it might reconnect with its master and suddenly become a force to be reckoned with once more. maybe he still waits for it, poised like the carving on his own detached tooth. across an ocean and lost to new meaning.

DIARY OF F. SHELMAN, FINAL ENTRIES, OCT. 2015

October 5th: Bad scene. Poloucas ordered the base on LD til they get a better idea of the situation in Delaware. My guess is, it's worse than here. If those things took Philly, what's to stop them from moving on to the next metropolitan area? Until we get some answers, we're on ice: no EL's, no RnR's, all AD's suspended. Typical. We've made it to the shit but the doors are locked.

October 9th: They caught Ramsley trying to make a run for it. Poor bastard didn't get but 2 clicks from base. He didn't even try to cut out his chip he was in such a hurry. Now that's just asking for it. Bollard says they're still deciding how to process him, says he lost family, maybe he lost it inside a little too. I say throw him into the hypereventuality chamber and see how many places his bones can occupy at once!

October 12th: Dead quiet. Still haven't been deployed to any AA's, though it must be getting worse each day. Govt is calling it a biothreat, asking for more time, more sitting on our asses while BOVAT mulls shit over. I don't buy it. All I know is we need to flush these fuckers out before they set up a permanent residence. Starting to sympathize with Ramsley: need to GTFO.

October 14th: It begins. 4 units deployed yesterday, 5 more today. Somebody figured out we need to start fighting these things.

October 19th: Have been on several limited recons in past week. Not pretty. Saw my childhood home in Edesville burnt to the ground. Must remember to pay somebody back for that. Govt waited too fucking long to do anything about this, now it's all over us. Northeast fubar. Delaware mostly gone. Welles and Chen both AWOL. Starting to wonder if maybe I'd be better off fighting these things on my own terms. p.s. The news (when we get it) finally came up with a name for these things: Dogriders.

October 25th: A day I did not expect to see. Poloucas fucking ABANDONED BASE. What a cocksucker! We have to stage just about the greatest fucking paramilitary rally in the history of America and fucker just up and leaves. Now Dader's in charge. Fucking peachy. Like replacing a vagina with a eunuch. Oh wait that's exactly what it's like.

October 26th: The Dogriders have got designs on the base. I've seen them on firewatch the past two nights. These are not our dogs. They're thinking somehow, strategizing. They know how to hide and when they've been spotted. They travel in numbers. And they're always just out of fucking range. Dader is considering setting a trap for them when they do come knocking. Must admit, like the idea.

October 30th: We are essentially alone. Everything north is OAC. Base is a tomb. Everybody either deployed or AWOL. Those who stayed behind have agreed not to go without a fight. They've given us every indication they're gonna hit us, so we can only return the favor. Have rigged West Mess with so much C4 you'd think it was Christmas. Sentry guns at West and East Gate. Infrared drones on a click radius every five hours (electric permitting). Have gained slightly more respect for Dader since he realized we're thru fucking about.

October 31st: HAPPY HALLOWEEN FUCKERS!!!


-recovered near former location of paramilitary base-

Fibbonachos

I worry a lot about this concept of everything being mathematically definable. you know, the theory in which everything can be reduced to a series of mathematical equations that are just playing themselves out according to math's rigid bible of rules. it makes sense when you look around, trees are trees, the wind blows, everything in reality is definable within math's elegant tongue. but this concept, however sound, frustrates me as a human being of supposed free will.

if the idea was true, like einstein and everybody else said, and everything really could be boiled down to maths, then fate and destiny and unavoidable circumstance are all forced into being as well. if everything translates to an equation, then our lives are just one big equation that has a calculable answer like 2 + 2 or 7 - 4,770. a world completely bound in math is a world with no real freedom, every single action is part of an ongoing series of actions traceable by whatever exotic maths back to the point at which the equation began. think about it. if maths really are inherent in our entire reality, and there's nothing that maths can't account for, then everything that ever happens to us is just part of whatever mathematical system is playing itself out through the ages.

and this is where i take issue with this theory. i think there are undefinables, free agents if you will, that roam through an otherwise logically harmonious existence spreading chaos and uncertainty and perpetuating true freedom of one's will. i couldn't just list these things off to you, it's possible i've never even seen them, but they are out there, these unknown unknowns, and they disrupt the math in ways that make calculators say ERR. maybe you are scared of this, maybe you long for complete mathematical certainty in every facet of life, but believe you me when i say that things are the way they are because our maths are met by entities so chaotic they are rivaled only by math's rigidity. so just keep in mind my friends that sometimes, when x is supposed to equal something, there simply is no answer, no logic, no maths. and we're never going to have the slightest idea why. and maybe it's time we started being ok with that.

so much unfairness of shit

somebody at my office threw away a list of things i needed to do. it was all random video shit i had written over the course of several days and at least half the list is unrememberable to me now. when i found out about this i thought 'that's not fair'. by my reckoning, it was a harmless list intended to help me and somebody went and removed it from the world. then i started to think about the phrase: that's not fair. it's a hell of a phrase. that's not fair. it implies a wrongness of things with undercurrents of maliciousness and defeat. that's not fair, that's not the way it's supposed to be, this isn't right. i fuckin' hear you, man. shit certainly isn't fair, BUT

it is ever more apparent to me that "not fair" is the way many things are. things that run against your current are doing so because they have to run with some other current, and there really isn't any way for one bro to change this. unfairness happens every day. people disregard rules and ethics and suddenly there is a fatal imbalance to every mortal thing. the worst part about that's not fair is the more you use it, the less relevant it becomes. the more things you decry as "not fair", the more you construct an artificial way of viewing the world in which everything exists in opposition to you. suddenly "not fair" becomes a divine curse that contorts every situation into some kind of war being waged against you by invisible enemy armies. not me though, BECAUSE

after a while you kind of have to accept the unfairness as what it is: the other side of good livin'. many things are awesome in life, and many more are shitty, just as the yin yang has two distinct halves that together complete it. and while the darkness may shroud everything in seemingly irreconcilable ways, it often gives way to brilliant white light. and not in a gay jesus way either. i remain a firm believer in an ultimate balance to all things, so it is only fitting that so much unfairness of shit can only lead to supreme awesomeness of legendary proportions. that's how it works out, right guys?

guys?

ode to my bike

bike

i fucking missed you

it was the winter and it was cold and even though i wanted to ride you i was held back by the weather. i'm sorry i left you in the garage for so long with your chain all twisted up. i thought of you often and our adventures together last summer.

when i rode you tonight, down broad street in high gear with the early spring wind in my face, i remembered: i love you. you are the only form of exercise i will ever truly enjoy and want to return to. you take me to work for free, and you are powered by my own energy, which is awesome. when i want to go fast, you go really fast.

and you are a mountain bike too. there is no terrain you don't mind attacking. jumps are nothing. your shocks absorb even the most tremendous of impacts. and when i'm riding you under the influence, you always seem to steer me away from parked cars at just the right moment.

thank you, bike.

it's good to have you back in my life.

modern love

i went to a psychic with my ex-gf in our latter days. it was an outing i was somewhat opposed to, since every time i've had my tarot cards read i get "death" and "the devil" and that heart with all the swords in it. i feel like because my own personal beliefs are kind of hazy and change from day to day, that actual calculated mysticisms like the tarot & such will often look unfavorably at my life and condemn it with bad luck and evil that isn't really there (i mean some of it's there but according to the tarot i have the shittiest life ever that is slowly spiraling downwards).

so we go to this psychic despite my reservations and we both get some ten dollar premium palm reading with an outlook on love and life. to my ex the psychic says "you will find love with someone who is very close to you in your life". cool. then it's my turn and already i'm expecting her to shriek at my hand as the cross on the wall catches fire and melts. what i get is this: "you won't find love for a long time. but when you do, you will be very happy and will have a prosperous life"

not long after that night the axe came down and i once more found myself a single man in the world. so now i wonder if i have perhaps entered into this period of being without love and just how long this all lasts until i find someone and become happy and prosperous. the way the psychic made it seem, i have a long period of emptiness ahead. no love, no meaning, only wandering the path that will eventually lead me to Where I'm Trying To Get, which due to my shifting beliefs doesn't seem to be anywhere specific. i wonder about what will eventually become of me and my love life. i have believed in true love before and didn't that turn out to be a jolly load of shit. as far as karma goes, i've done things i'm not proud of as a so-called lover, so perhaps i'm experiencing a bit of divine retribution. in any case, i have entered a season of bullshit devoid of reason and direction. i don't know if having love would necessarily right whatever wrong is represented here, but it couldn't hurt right?

NO YOU ASSHOLE STOP BLOGGING ABOUT TRUE LOVE YOU'RE LIKE A DEPRESSED 13-YEAR-OLD GIRL ONLY WORSE BECAUSE YOU MASTURBATE A LOT AND DON'T SHOWER FOR DAYS AND JUST KILLED AN ENTIRE BOX OF TASTYKAKES IN LIKE 2 DAYS AND YOUR TASTE IN MUSIC IS THAT OF A GAY DJ FROM THE 80'S AND YOU SPEND WAY TOO MUCH TIME BROING AROUND AND TRYING TO ORGANIZE ULTIMATE FRISBEE TOURNAMENTS.

come to think of it, my life is really awesome right now. happy valentine's day.

LIKE JAMMING YOUR FUCKING THUMB INTO A SHEER ROCK WALL

I went rock-climbing this weekend. for some reason my friends are way into rock-climbing now. they have membership passes to this rock climbing place that's like a gigantic warehouse filled with 150 foot climbing walls and other x-treme shit. i have been x-tremely hesitant to go on these rock climbing excursions because a) my arms are pale and lifeless b) yo, what if that shit breaks? and c) you gotta drop like $24 to climb for the day. and i could have just as easily stayed in bed and gotten another hour of sleep for free and casually smoked a bowl instead but NO. gotta mix it up. can't fall into routines buddy, that's where they get ya.

so i'm climbing with some bros and brodettes in this indoor climbing monstrosity (it's called island rock, it's on long island you'll love it) and we're doing free climbing. no helmets, no ropes, just a cushy mat under you that you have to fall onto to not break your world. there are different ascents up each rock wall marked by colored strips of tape. so we're all five of us trying to do this one particular free-climb path. when it gets to me, i fuckin give 'er my standard 85% and come close to the top of the path, about 12 feet up. i can't get a steady hold on the top spot but technically you just have to be able to touch the end of the path, which is marked by an X in whatever color you've been following. so instead of securely establishing my post atop the Red X, i kind of hoist myself up high enough to slap it five, then drop off into nothingness. i landed hard on the edge of the mat, slamming my back against the wall in the process. everyone was all like 'are you ok are you ok' and i'm all like 'im ok' and i start to get up and take stock of my various appendages when i realize my thumb doesn't feel right at all. not necessarily broken, but definitely not normal. the pain starts to grow and suddenly my thumb is swollen to twice it's size and hurts to move.

i decided to stop climbing for the day and dwell on the fact that my thumb was severely fucked up. rather than seek medical attention, i decided the best course of action would be to go to the movies, eat a large dinner, and get wasted. later, while wasted, my friend greg asks to see the thumb. after looking at it for like a second, he came to the conclusion that it was dislocated and would have to be snapped back into place in order to ever return to normal functionality. for those of you who have never had to re-locate your thumb into its socket, it involves yanking on your thumb as hard as you possibly can. there was no way i was going to do this to myself. 'you do it, man' i say to greg. 'just get it over with'. he takes my thumb, and after an ungodly tense few seconds, he pulls. the cracking sound that emitted from my thumb was almost worse than the pain itself, but all i could do at that point was deal with it and hope for better times and a working thumb. a few minutes later, greg decided that maybe the thumb was messed up on the lower joint and not the upper one, which would require a different kind of yank (lol). i hesitantly volunteered him to do it again, just to make sure my thumb wouldn't go further into its plump unfunctioning state. this time it hurt like a motherfucker, a moment that was captured in the picture above. it was a grueling gauntlet of pain to endure, but i honestly think it had to be done. now it's been about 24 hours since i let a guy yank me and i'm a lot less swollen. it was a weekend of pain, hilarity, and the ongoing reminder that yo, everything's a test. sometimes shit gets real and you have to pay a hefty price to get out of it, but man, once you do, you can look back on all that pain and all those trials and tribulations and be like yo, i fuckin did it. i fuckin did it.

Fear of What?!

you may recall from the last hatepost that interviewee lisa noble concluded her questioning by noting that she'd written an essay on fears (of which she has many). we've received a copy of this essay and present it here, unedited, for your consideration:

Fear of What?!

For a good part of my youth there were often nights when I would imagine myself rising from bed still asleep, and unintentionally hostile. I’d walk out of my room, creep downstairs, and find my way into the kitchen where there would be a knife or some other sharp utensil I could manage to grab depending on the position my somnambulism has placed me. I’d then walk through the main hallway of the house, all the way into the master bedroom where I would proceed to stab and kill my mother or my father or both, in a blind and bloody sleep-filled rage. Sometimes instead I would stumble down to the basement where my brother sleeps and I’d murder him. Other times I would be too disoriented to make it past the kitchen, and my subconscious would settle for killing myself. These were the nights I would need two Extra StrengthTylenol and sharp swig of Nyquil to calm my nerves get into a nice motionless sleep. Otherwise I’d be awake nursing a mild panic attack all night, fearing against all odds that such an improbable accident might ever occur.

I have never been a sleepwalker. The only instance of sleepwalking that has ever taken place according to my knowledge was once, when I was about four, my mother found me downstairs in the living room, helpless, crying, and evidently unarmed. Yet, after many years of replaying this unfounded but highly morbid vision and all its variations, I will not go to bed entirely comfortable until I have shoved the scissors to the back of my desk drawer and suggested to my roommate that she invest in the proper bedside armor.

It’s not always sleepwalking that triggers such, shall I say, paranoia. I’ve actually gotten over my potentially threatening subconscious for the most part by convincing myself that most people tend to wake up when someone is standing over their bed with a knife. I can only hope that I would wake up in time as well, if anything to save myself the embarrassment of accidentally slaughtering a loved one. These days, my fears are a little less drawn out in length and detail, and play out more like fleeting thoughts of probability. I experience what I can only describe as a two to three second flash of an images having to do with my present situation and what might come of its risks . And as low as the chances may be, the effect of consideration is paralyzing. For instance, I often wonder how many minutes exactly it takes standing in front of the microwave before the radiation gives me brain cancer, or skin cancer, or colon cancer or whatever. In the midst of a blink I’ll picture myself rubbing a tumor the size of my fist. However, this is a possibility that I cringe over briefly in the last few seconds it takes for some mozzarella sticks to finish cooking. I might scratch a fresh mosquito bite and the thought passes through my head that this pest has taken great pains to make his way transcontinentally all the way from Africa to my arm and now I’m sharing blood with a diseased child from Somalia. The bump starts to redden and selfish thoughts of malaria are overpowered by a minor irritation of the skin. As laziness would have it, in both of these cases the convenience of inaction overrides the need for resistance of what are already short-lived fears. This is how I came to make the distinction that these considerations are indeed fears, and nothing more extreme as would a phobia imply.

A phobia, I found out, is more than a fear; it is an attempt to avoid your fear at all costs. A phobia would cause me to not only not use a microwave but dodge its line of vision when inactive and burn the instruction manual, just to be safe. And while fears can be just as irrational and just as distressing as phobias, fears do not significantly compromise ones way of living (i.e. agoraphobia: fear of leaving one’s home, or kathisophobia: fear of sitting down). So my question is then, what do they compromise?

If my chronic fears ever did turn into chronic phobias I would never walk up stairs for fear of falling back down and breaking every bone in my body. I would stand a good 50ft distance from street curbs either to deny villainous pedestrians the satisfaction of pushing me into oncoming traffic, or any buses likely to tip over in an attempt to turn the corner, squashing me like the reckless bug I am for not taking better caution. I would be an expert on exotic spiders, knowing in detail the features of one whose bite might shock me into a state of paralysis (this is not to say that I don’t avoid spiders when I can. But the occasional spider bite won’t really need medical attention until it’s mutated the fibers of my DNA and I’m climbing up walls like a tormented comic book hero). If I were prone to phobias, I’d constantly be in search of the best possible maneuver to surgically attach a carbon monoxide detector to my nervous system. But the last time I skimmed the aisles of CVS and found these things were running for $25 each, I decided to wait hold out for the coupons. And as of now, I don’t even have one for my apartment.

I don’t even know why these anxieties are so specific in the first place. In all logic, it doesn’t really make sense to be scared of one thing and not of another. Heights, terrorist attacks, roller coasters, and drawing pints of blood from my veins don’t faze me. Yet I lose sleep over just thinking about the chance of a lighter getting to close to my face. There’s just so much randomness out there; so many chances for a lost limb or a punctured retina that we just don’t see coming. Sure there are plenty of means for fears to be induced. The media is constantly telling us we’re likely to be shot, bombed, or asphyxiated at any given moment. Rumor could be what makes us wince in the dentist’s chair, anticipating the moment that decides whether or not that dental hook will end up lodged in your esophagus. Maybe even some of these anxieties spring from a traumatic childhood experience. My parents’ house has several very large mirrors which were not installed securely enough by the previous owners. The mirror in my parents’ bathroom fell off of the wall, smashing and scattering into what seemed like a billion pieces one night. My mother avoided this incident that likely would have killed her, by about fifteen minutes as she was finishing up her favorite TV show in the other room. We had all of the mirrors replaced after that, but until then, I was always a little hesitant to check my own reflection for too long. And it can’t be that all fears work this way, ingrained by some existing form of experience. Like I highly doubt that 80% of adults who are now afraid of clowns were possibly abused by one as a child.

For me personally, I need those little panics periodically. Fearing something irrational somehow makes me feel as if it’s prevention in itself of having to come face to face with it; that letting the uncontrollable know that you’re keeping your eye on it, makes it back off, turn the other corner and focus its attention on someone who’s not going to expect it. It seems safer to expect the unexpected, because there are things that you just can’t control by force, avoidance, or even rationality. It may be that it’s the irrational that serves as your only means of defense. Furthermore, it makes me feel all the more accomplished, getting through each day, knowing all there is out there to survive.


lisa noble is a coffee production manager who hails from georgia

interview with lisa noble

i wanted to interview my friend lisa noble because she is a fascinating member of blogciety and i think one of the great minds of this or any decade. she makes coffee for a living but is a skilled writer by night. also she's really weird. we sat down for a chat recently on aim, and i decided to talk about being scared, as this is a situation i often find myself in:

(IHTFB) so what would u say is the scariest thing that ever happened to u?

(lisa) im done. cant think og anythign

u suck. wors interview ever.

yoir the worst inttertvie ev

why dont you actually try to think of something instead of being a rag doll clump

nuthin that scarys happened to me

nothing ever happened that freaked you out and you thought there was gona be a ghost or monsters or something?

once i fell into a wall really hard when my brother was trying to hypnotize me, but that wasnt really scary...it just hurt a lot

or like scary men with feely hands on the subway?

oh shit yeah! ihad some childhood fears...i just thought you meant like getting run over by cars

well anything super scary stories

i used to sleep on top of the covers because i thought scorpians were going to be hiding in my sheets

how come?

cause i lived in georgia where there were lots of bugs and my house was kind of embedded in the woods

were you scared a lot growing up?

yeah but i think most of my fears were/are irrational...or at least implausible for the most part

how do you reconcile the implausibility with the ongoing fear if you know its baloney?

mostly laziness

whats your biggest fear right now?

apocalypse

what sort of apocalypse?

usually earth being demolished by an asteroid or comet

why do you think that is?

i feel like we're due for another one

are you crippled by your fears?

no. except i dont light candles because im afraid my apartment will burn down. but other than that... i dont think so. i mean im definitely scared of a lot of things

what advice would you give to people who are scared all the time?

well most fears i usually only think about when applicable. for instance im scared of buses tipping over when they turn the corner. and i definitely think about it every time i see it happen...but i feel like thats some form of prevention in itself

how so?

i guess because alot of fears are random and mostly have to do with the unexpected freak-accidents in life...at least for me. so if you expect the unexpected... it probably wont happen.

i think that about wraps it up. thanks lisa!

i suck. actually ive written an essay about this exact topic before




lisa noble is a 22-year-old blog writer living in new york.

Found Note: December 2015

-found by a scavenge team outside a firebombed neighborhood in eastern Connecticut.-

Honey,

I don't know if you got the voice mails or if you'll ever return here to read this, but I'm leaving this here in the hopes that you can find it and we can reunite. The house has been without power for 6 days. I can't get any calls out, still those emergency messages. After what happened I don't know how safe it is to go out. All the neighbors are gone, DON'T GO INTO THEIR HOUSES, there's NO FOOD, nothing left. I don't even want to tell you what I saw in some of the houses. ALSO - Don't Go To New York. Whatever you do. The last I heard, and this was last week, those things overran the whole city. We thought Dana and Grover were sick, but it was something else. I can't explain it to you but it's something nobody expected. Those growths on their backs, I knew all along there was something off about it all. They were like tiny riders, controlling the dogs, communicating through them. It sounds absurd but I know if you've seen half of what I have this week then you suspect it too. You're so smart, baby, I know you found a way to make it through this. If


-the note ends without completing the sentence, nor any indication of who the author was.-

AURAL FLAGELLATION

I filmed a concert by the scumfuck band Amebix tonight. it was swell. i got to wear a special wristband with a skull&crossbones on it and stand in front of the barrier that held everyone else away from the stage. the only downside to this was having my ear directly to the main amp and not having earplugs. the loudness and bass force of it all shredded into my ears, destroying hearing fibers & entire pitches and frequencies. at this very moment i am plagued by an intense ringing and a general fuzziness to everything i hear. at one point a gentleman jumped from the balcony of the theater (this was at the trocadero in philly), onto the giant side amp, and then onto the stage, from which he stagedived right over my head and back into the crowd. truly an impressive feat, met only by the severe aural flagellation wrecked upon my inner ear cavities. if you don't know Amebix they are like Motorhead but slightly more satanic and slightly less metal. they attracted a rather crusty crowd, and the scent of bag was ripe in the air. all in all a good show.

BONUS: a friend told me we spoke for several minutes last night and every sentence i said would end in BRUUUUUH. i don't even know what that means and i have no recollection of it due to profound drunkenness BUT this goes to prove my ongoing theory that when i reach a point of being black-out drunk my body reacts subconsciously by making me call someone on the phone to spew my drunkenness at them. it's kind of like casting a message-in-a-bottle out to the realm of sobriety. otherwise you might just slosh in a sea of drunk forever.

elimidate

there are many busies to be busied about. i don't make nearly enough money but i am always working at something. many times the work isn't necessary to my survival but rather the survival of my craft. i am a fucking artist, although much of what i do is in jest or simply without relevancy to anything anyone else would want to identify with. i am directing a movie called baby boner and hosting a show called smut cave. there is always the drive towards some sort of punchline, some striving that goes beyond creativity into "how fucked up can i be" land. i often regret that language cannot represent all the things that go on in my head. i think the only way i will make it big at this point is if someone who has already made it "discovers me" and decides to bring me into whatever echelon i can sing and dance my way into. mine is not the path of glory, rather the scenic route of curiosity and fringe possibilty. while kanye raps about getting arab money, i listen to the piano sections on drukqs and think about rainy days. someone told me recently that if they were in my shoes they would be really depressed. the only reason this is not so is because i am not usually in my shoes, rather floating somewhere above them. i'm making a music video with a cat that lives in my house. my facial hair looks really rugged lately. the heating system in my mom's house makes horror movie music. i stayed awake until the sun came out.

DOGRIDERS PART 2: BAYVILLE

THE STORY SO FAR: Somehow, completely unbeknownst to the scientific community, the Dogriders launched an Assault on the World of Man. Their purposes unknown but violently demonstrated, the Dogriders were once average house-pets spanning the globe in untold billions. Whatever consciousness existed within the animals, it chose to unleash itself in a terrifying unison as each and every breed & pedigree of dog on the planet simultaneously sprouted a nub on its back resembling a mottled troll of yore with a wicked countenance to match. Strategic masterminds on the urban battlefield, the Dogriders formed large hunting parties, systematically extinguishing any trace of human life their keen senses could detect. As the Assault wages on and fewer living souls remain, we join survivors JOSH and NICK, waging a desperate struggle to remain hidden in the sewer systems of Long Island, New York.



SEWAGE SYSTEM: Josh and Nick trudge through thick rivers of slop.

NICK: If this goes East, we could make it all the to Bayville.

JOSH: No, we're getting out of here as soon as we can. That smell... awful.

NICK: What, and meet up with those Dogriders again? I don't think so.

JOSH: I'm gonna throw up again.

NICK: Breathe through your mouth.

The ROAR OF DOGRIDERS echoes through the tunnels.

JOSH: Where's it coming from?

The ROAR OF DOGRIDERS swells.

NICK: Sounds like they're up top.

JOSH: Did they find us?

NICK: Not likely. I don't think they can smell us through all this ass-puke.

Josh vomits into the shit river.

NICK: Sounds like some kind of a rally. Could be hundreds of 'em up there.

JOSH: Let's not stick around and find out.



CONCRETE TUNNEL: Still covered in shit, the two take cautious steps down a massive underground pass.

JOSH: Shouldn't we get off the island?

NICK: You got a plan, I'm all ears.

JOSH: Well the mainland's back thataways right?

NICK: Oh, the City, brilliant idea. Let's go where even more Dogs are at.

JOSH: We go east we're just gonna run into the ocean right?

NICK: I'm counting on it.

JOSH: What, and take a boat?

NICK: Or a plane, or the L.I.R.R., or fucking ANYTHING, WE CAN FINDALRIGHT?? WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT TO HEAR? Th-THERE'S A ROYAL CARIBBEAN OCEAN LINER WAITIN' FOR US IN MONTAUK IS THAT WHAT YOU FUCKIN' WANNA HEAR?

Josh is sullen, keeping his head low as they walk. The wind reverberates in low registers through the subterranean hall.

NICK: Alright, I'm sorry Josh. I just... I got nothing.

JOSH: It's OK.

NICK: All I know is if we keep moving maybe, maybe we'll get out of this.

JOSH: Yeah...

They follow the corridor, led by the growing gloomy note of the wind.



SEASIDE DRAINAGE OUTLET: A chickenwire mesh screens the steady flow of sludge arcing out over a sandy inlet. There's a wavering in the stream as bare hands grasp the mesh, tearing it asunder. Nick emerges first, dropping to the murky puddle fed by the outlet. Josh pokes a cautious head out and joins him on the sandbar. The ocean makes itself known with a subdued dashing of froth to the shoreline.



BAYVILLE BEACH, DUSK: Josh and Nick walk along the deserted shore, keeping an eye on the upcoming township.

JOSH: I don't see any boats.

NICK: I think there's a harbor coming up around this bend.

JOSH: You said that the last bend.

NICK: It's Bayville, there's gotta be... bays.

The staccato of summer rain pelts the surrounding beach.

NICK: How bout that. At least it's washing the shit off.

JOSH: Smells like rain.

NICK: I love that smell.

A faint bark nips the air, barely audible.

JOSH: This is good, we're not seeing any of them, right?

NICK: We haven't seen anything since we got out here, Human or Dogrider.

The rain is picking up, and already a a gray cloud brews overhead.

JOSH: Maybe they all left.

NICK: And went where? I don't get it. And why would they go after us in the first place? We didn't do anything to them. I loved my dog! And where's the armies? Where's the guys who're supposed to be saving our asses?

Nick trips, falling hard into the sand.

JOSH: You OK?

NICK: I'll live.

JOSH: Look what you hit.

Both pairs of eyes come to rest on a SHOVEL, partially emerging from the dunes.

NICK: Alright.

He picks it up, examining the blade as rain streaks patterns on the metal.

NICK: Could be a good weapon, right?

All the color has dropped from Josh's face, his mouth slightly agape.

NICK: Well, I think it could be.

Josh's head is shaking ever so slightly, as if in stunted disbelief.

NICK: Hey, quit it.

Nick turns the shovel blade so that it reflects to him what Josh is actually staring at: a dark shape approaching behind them. Nick turns to see the hundred or so feet between him and TWO EXTRA-LARGE EXTRA-VICIOUS DOGRIDERS. The Dogriders approach slowly in full-on hunt mode. There's a dark shaggy one and a pure white wolf-like one, the pair forming some kind of nightmarish yin-yang amidst the growing storm. Nick raises his shovel in a ready position.

NICK: Josh, I want you to run, run to the ocean and do not look back, got it?

JOSH: Nick?

NICK: You're gonna swim out as far as you can as quickly as possible, understand? And do not, look, back.

JOSH: Nick, what are you doing?

NICK: Josh, I'm sorry to raise my voice again buT RUNNNNN! GO! GET OUT OF HERE, RUN!

DOGRIDERS: BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF!

NICK: GO,WHAT ARE YOU DOING, GO!

Josh tumbles backwards but snaps into a sprint as the Dogriders begin to rush them.

DOGRIDERS: BROUF! BROUF! BROUF!

Nick swipes at the black Dogrider, slamming it aside with an astounding impact. The white Dogrider leaps past, keying in on Josh as his feet slap against the shoreline.

DOGRIDERS: BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF!

Nick raises his shovel high overhead, bringing it down hard on the felled Dogrider. For the first time ever, the horrific brown nub protruding from the Dogrider's back opens its infantile maw.

NUB: EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH!!!

It's a horrific noise, the sound of bitter troll suffering amplified to an unnatural resonance. The sound stops the white Dogrider dead in it's tracks; it's a distress call of the highest order! The beast is momentarily stalled: does it go for Josh or return to help its downed huntingmate?

NUB: EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH!!!

The white Dogrider doubles back with renewed anger.

DOGRIDERS: BROUF! BROUF!

Josh thrashes about in the choppy surf, bobbing among waves as the riptide pulls him farther out.

JOSH: NICK! NICK!!!

He swallows seawater as a wave slams into his face. Between the whitecaps and sheets of cold rain, he sees the white Dogrider lunge at Nick, knocking him to the ground.

JOSH: NICK!

He tries to swim back but the current is growing under the storm's power. His vision obscured in the brine, he catches one last glimpse of the white Dogrider and the recovered black Dogrider swarming their prey, now a mere red blob on the receding coast. Thunder erupts overhead as waves begin to blot out the shoreline. It's a struggle to merely keep afloat.

JOSH: NICK! NICK!!! NIIIIIIIIH-HIH-HIIIIIICK!!!

(end part 2)