Confessions of a Fuck-Up Artist!

Aquaman begins his day with a balanced breakfast followed by a vigorous round of underwater hentai from an octopus waiter.

Folks be posting about the weather like the rest of us can't just look out the window. Yes, I know, it's as cold and wet out there as a vampire's pussy before dawn. Yes, I know, tiny balls of ice fall from lands beyond those impenetrable clouds where caveman sky-gods shed the blood of weeping frost giants, Yes, I know, what little the average asshole knows about driving evaporates at the touch of the first snowflake upon their car and from there it's Fury Road all the way home.

Hell, folks around here too broke to text or tweet have been reduced to standing on the street corners and screaming with trembling finger thrust heavenwards. "Sleeeeeet! No, wait... Raaaaaaiiiiin.... slleeeeet... again...okay now it's clear, no wait... Raaaaaiiiiiiin!"

Fuck of a thing to have to watch from a traffic jam caused by two soccer moms bare knuckle brawling at the intersection of Claremont and North Decatur.

Later at the local Kroger it's a scene out of Stephen King's 'Mist'. Parking lot filled with scattered and overturned carts. Motherfuckers Tokyo drifting through the parking spaces in loud, booming cars. Shopping cart scooters sit abandoned at a nearby drive through. Fires burn in trash receptacles, men drink openly in the street and women of scarlet intentions wolf watch in feral packs from the dollar store.

I finally find myself a spot to park and as I walk in a young man on leave from the army and in his digital camo patterned uniform is weeping. "You don't want to go in there, son... it's... it's... "

And he trailed off walking away all zombified on me oblivious into the panic traffic.

A gunshot from inside the Kroger resounds and for a moment I consider turning my ass right around, getting back in my car and heading straight home.

Except home has zero Little Debbie's and that's absolutely the worst number of Little Debbie's a man can have when he has to hunker down through a sleet... no rain... wait, yes sleet storm.

So in I go.

Ten minutes later and I'm kneeling before a child king who sits royally inside a shopping cart stuffed with frozen dinners and has tied along its cage all the balloons from the floral section. The child king eats from a bag of cheese puffs with orange powdered lips and demands of the guards what purpose I have been bought before him.

The guards, three ladies of Sumo wrestler physique, inform his majesty that I am a trespasser in this kingdom and one who was caught pilfering the last box of zebra cakes.

From there I am made to engage in a round of trial by combat. Packages of defrosting meat are duct taped to chest, back and shoulders. I am given a push-broom as a weapon while my opponent, one of the meat department butchers, grins at me with cleaver in hand. Around us shoppers and employees form a human circle around us.

Three claps of the child king's hands initiated that the combat had begun.

A minute later and I've got a hunk of sharpened steel embedded into a t-bone shoulder pad while I choke a bitch out with a push-broom.

Two minutes later and I'm walking out with a box zebra cakes when mom calls.

She wants to know if I can go pick her up cigarettes.

Still wearing my armor of duct-taped meat, I pluck the cleaver out and cast my eyes towards the gas station that sells her brand.

"Sure, mom." I sigh. "No problem."

And all around the chaos the drizzle and the sleet continue to pour.

Up next a quick glance at the Metro Terminus weather tomorrow which calls for snow fall accumulating anywhere up to an inch with a 1/10th inch of ice as well. So a reminder to metro residents to step back, take a deep breath, and slowly begin to panic until a state of pants-shitting hysteria kicks in.

Are you there yet?

No, no you're not. Because if you were you wouldn't be reading this but would instead be stalking the supermarket aisles a starved wolf amongst men, ready to kill if need be for the last loaf of bread or half gallon of milk. For when the Snowpocalypse comes and you're trapped inside streaming old Twin Peaks episodes who knows how much calcium or processed bleached wheat you'll need to survive. Thankfully this is an open carry state, so you'll be able to stand your ground against savage milk-marauders, frost giants, sandwich stealing bears, and whatever else tries crawling through your window.

Trigger warnings and spoiler alerts - the worst is yet to come.

Even now, with memories of the Great Ice-Fuckening of 2014 still fresh in their minds, some residents shaking with traffic induced PTSD are listening to the rattle of a handgun between their teeth right now as tears that did flow at their own child's funeral flow now.

Some in preparation have begun setting fire to their cars, not just in defiance of the growing cold but because they'd rather see their car burn than drive it on 285 with a full fucking inch of snow falling on them and the madness alike.

Some have turned to God, and not just Jesus, but whatever one that will take a slaughtered sheep, household pet, or proud honor roll certified child in blood sacrifice.

But please be assured Metro Terminus... your gods have abandoned us (thanks Obama) and even your devils smirk in amusement at a chaos beyond even their sinister imaginings.

So it is I urge you all to try to remember while huddling with your loved ones tonight, feasting on slices of bread and sips of milk as you wait for the end, that we had a good run. We did some wonderful things as not just a city, but a people. Why we totally almost go all the kinks out of our trolley car system and we totally didn't fuck up that Olympics that one time. Plus, we've been in the Walking Dead a couple of episodes. How cool is that?

Why, almost as cool as this icy death that will soon blanket our fair city into oblivion... and now, finally, we turn to Tom with Sports. So Tom, how are the Hawks looking this year?

Meanwhile back in the corporate headquarters of Pharmtegrity United:

"And you plan to do what with the entire 2015 R&D budget, Doctor Babalon?"

"Track down and capture a yeti in order to make it a cyborg yeti, sir."

"I see... and what scientific value do you believe is to be obtained from such a costly, if not downright absurd, procedure?"

"It will prove my theory that a cyborg yeti would kick much ass... much, much more ass than a non-cyborg yeti or a cyborg human would kick."

"And...?"

"That's about it, actually."

"... very well, funding for Project Megafoot is approved."

*rubbing hands maniacally* "Excellent... soon my childhood enemies will be crushed under the mechanical paw of cyborg yeti justice! Just as I swore those many decades ago."

"What was that?"

"Oh, er, sorry... I meant to shout that in the lab, Sir. Preferably in the company of expensive prostitutes and whiskey shooters out of the beakers."

"Very well... carry on, Doctor Babalon."

"Artists throughout history are like the gamblers of Monte Carlo, and this blind lottery allows some to succeed and ruins others. In my opinion, neither the winners or losers are worth worrying about. Everything happens through pure luck. Posterity is a real bitch who cheats some, reinstates others and reserves the right to change her mind every fifty years." ~ Marcel Duchamp, "Marcel Duchamp: The Portable Museum"

Early day at the office tomorrow, big night after that. Time enough for one last, quick dispatch before hitting my bed.

It was three years ago today, well yesterday now, that my father passed away. I had forgotten really, my head up my ass with stage jitters and a long work day's toll. Mom reminded me before bed. Spoke to my nan, his mom, about it on the phone today. She sends her love, she wishes me luck with my 'show' tomorrow.

Yet, I've been sitting here for the last twenty minutes or so, just absorbing it all and looking back to that morning. Helpless. Terrified. Unable to get a cab to get to the hospital. You know this story well by now.

But the truth is I think he'd be proud of me for doing the read tomorrow. He always thought I should have done more stuff like it. He knew it scared me and thought that would only make me try harder, he knew I didn't think I was good enough to hold a crowd's attention and my saying so disappointed him more than getting kicked out of the Navy or losing my GI Bill or getting arrested shortly after that.

Here's another truth, since as a teller of tall tales I offer them rarely, I'm tired of carrying his absence like a burden instead of the inspiration he was when he was alive.

I don't know how it is with the sons and daughters of other fathers, but I spent a good chunk of my life refusing to be anything like mine, then another chunk trying to be the man he couldn't and now I just want to move forward.

I have so much more to my song than just my grief at what is not, for I have what was and it is in me now waiting to be roared.

Alright, sleeping pills and a book please.