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Alone and Hamlet haunted on Father's day eve.

Hey, here's an idea. Step back from the Internet for a spell there lost son of Horus. Get high off some scrapped resin, banish earnestly and go a wandering into this dark, dark Saturday night instead. Go find yourself an adventure to lose yourself in, for this maudlin disposition shames those whose spirits you would honor on the day to come. Start outside your door where the gunshots echo and the coyotes prowl open amongst the prostitutes. Hit Memorial and it's eerily hollow of street traffic and stumble foot traffic. The sidewalks are overrun with weeds that stand tall as cornstalks. Streetlamps spaced to leave deep pockets of shadow jungle between their arcs. Vibing last man on earth when I realize that I've been relying on driving for too long. The world is going feral and you can't see it from behind a windowshield. You gotta go Situationist on that shit, hit sneaker to pavement, hit boot to the Shit.

Report true or shut up, which is not say that you cannot lie at the same time.

Eventually the world animates around me. Piss bums sing up at the crescent moon from behind wild lawns spreading from abandoned homes, faces appear out of bushes that watch you walk by, repeat drive-bys from squad cars scoping me out. Spotted some wino ghoul shambling after me for two blocks mumbling about Jesus, electricity, and nicotine alms.

Be cool... or at least as close an approximation as you can fake.

I've been here before, even if I haven't been here for awhile. Leaner times, owl in a wolf-pack times, know the fool bewares while the wise man settles for being aware.

Pop out my mobile device, my pocket super-computer because to silly-old-fashioned jet pack future wishing old man that I am that is exactly what my 'Android' is), and pull up the bus schedule along this neck of pre-apocalyptic America.

Pocket computer tells me it's two minutes until the bus shows and like Johnny Quest in some Mad Max future I escape the Law along the wino-ghoul madness. Pop some music into my ears. Close my eyes laughing. Next stop US 23 and a quick hike to Vampire Country.

An hour later and I'm dancing at the Yacht to the Violent Femmes with a Gothed up Nurse Feisty who's decked out in nightclub black and kick-ass Eye of Horus mascara under thick glasses.

Wait... back up.

Rewind - scratch, loop the vinyl.

Arrive at the Yacht drenched in sweat and still high.

Hit the bar. Figure just one, just one Jamie, just one glass of alchemical gold courage before I make my way to wherever will have me.

Then Lady Trouble saddles up at the stool next to me.

Lady Trouble, Valhalla-Back Girl, dates Cobra Kai exclusive and has an obsidian knife she wants to show me. With her is an old crush from my Chamber days, now Cafe Perilous royalty. Fishnet Joan to Bob Dracula's Don Draper. Well, the music sounds good, but really, I just was planning on ambulating through the metropolis like some reject from a Pogues' song but y'know, I miss talking to Lady Trouble and Chamber Crush.

See, I have this stupid idea, a documentary called, 'Horror Business', about this wonderful uniquely Southern geek-shitkicker subculture. This world where the Creature from the Black Lagoon rubs elbows with the Ramones. The bands, the artists, the shows, the stories, the next-gen of horror from Walking Dead to Silver Scream Spookshows... but shit, is that Nurse Feisty and is that Blister in the Sun...

... and one drink become twos becomes I don't, let's say six, seven, maybe... but it doesn't matter I dance. It doesn't matter that I'm 43 and dancing to music from the Dark Age of Reagan. It don't matter that my metabolism's slowed. It don't matter how stupid I look. When I close my eyes out on that floor, well then my earnest fraters and sorors, then my foes and detractors alike. I am magick. But I'll show you my trick, I'll show you how it's done. The first part is to never hit the floor until you're done with your second drink. The second is utilizing the inevitable patch of spilt drink - it will crash the amateurs on their ass, but to the daring, to the experienced it is the opportunity to dance free from fiction. Seriously, master that, and even tipsy-stoned-blind you can pull off some Bob Fosse moves.

And then, then magick summons magick...

... so when I'm not dancing I'm getting drunk with this dude I've just met who's completely serious (a writer knows) when he tells me about scoring acid for Ru Paul and crashing backstage the Christian Death show at Masquerade later. Talk to him some more and realize he was at lot of the same shows I hit here in Terminus. Death in June at 688 (where I somehow talked a cop out of arresting my then girlfriend and I). The Despised show at the Point where only the intervention of an African-American police officer saved a Nazi skinhead from being crowd stomped into a pulp. But the real kickers, the Crash Worship show in New Orleans 1994... the one I got arrested at and that opens the novel I abandoned.

Strange magick in the air, indeed.

I miss being this person really, just laughing, dancing, getting to listen to someone tell me about smoking weed with Genesis P before he became my Nan from Birmingham England somehow.

Fuck it, this is as best as I can report it right now, this night unfolded, this night where whiskey and music saved me from myself somehow.

But to you Fates Three who kept me company this Fathers' Day eve, to you Fates stunning who were not always registered as being of strictly platonic charm, I thank you.

For reminding me not of what I was, but what I am.

I'm getting real tired of Nordic countries smugly telling me how they live in a relative utopia because they do the exact opposite of what America does (and yes, I checked, they did indeed mean North America). Iceland boasts of 'bailing out the people and jailing the bankers' and Finland can't stop talking about how teachers get paid like doctors. You know, the opposite of us, as in the US.

Now I may just be a plain old pot-bellied and well-armed Faulknerian man-child willing to ride his Rascal Scooter straight up to a drive-through liquor store to pick himself up a six pack and some lotto tickets... but when did the descendants of Vikings get to talk shit to me and the rest of US about the virtues of harmonious realpolitik and civic kindness?

Slow your roll, Ragnar Junior... just because rape & pillage are no longer your chief exports don't give you the right to talk to US like a bunch of Vulcans who discovered a Bizarro version of 1950s America in some Podunk quadrant of the known universe.

In fact here's a few other things Nordic countries do the exact opposite of America that you never hear about in the liberal media:

1 - Bird Fishing.
2 - Salad for Dessert.
3 - Nap Gyms (aka 'Sleepnasiums').
4 - Drive-by Inoculation Shots.
5 - ABBA.
6 - Sobering up for the Weekend
7 - Non-explode-y Drones
8 - Roaming packs of Free-Range Snow Hippos
9 - Suomi as a Language and not some sort of William S Burroughs inspired experiment with random letters.
10 - ABBA cover bands

So yeah, next time you think about posting a meme like the one below, think twice about what those Viking Socialists really get up to when the rest of the world is too busy ignoring them.