Theodolite.  I thought there was another name for it, but I can’t come up with one, so there you go.  Someone will eventually be seen through one of those things, tap-dancing on my grave, given a universe of limitless possibility.  Sumatriptan.  And I thought that would be one the Great One would spare me, having already doled out a heaping helping of joy in the fear and frailty department.  But I know from what the Gurch is chiming in my ear that all is not well in the state of Nod, and indeed, never has been.  Nervous, he tells me he knows a guy on Long Island who will put herpes in my ass for next-to-nothing.  What do you do when all the channels offer the same board of fare?  Read a fucking book, that’s what you do.  That, or go out and trick someone into loving you for who you really are.

    That reminds me of this time I went to a fashionable club near the end of sanity with my sister and her boyfriend at the time.  The guy had a bartender friend that would supposedly sling us all the free refreshment we could stomach.  It was to be expected that it would be smoky.  And loud.  And have irritating flashing lights and nerve gas pouring from vents in the ceiling.  The club had seen many incarnations of roughly the same sort of scene but had never had its interior altered, having the same grand staircase and balconies it had always had.  The same patina on the walls of the twice cleaned bathrooms.  And, of course, the same crowd, only different faces.  It reminded me of an enormous crypt.

    At any rate, we got to the second floor and there was the bartender buddy slinging fools, paying customers, around in a barber’s chair and feeding them mouthfuls of tequila and vodka.  Surrounded by Young Nazi fraternity brothers and their dates (?).  After much of nothing involving rotations about the balconies, observing the machinations on the dance floor, we all settled at a hawk’s nest position on a balcony and settled into watching the carnage.  Murder on the dance floor.  Ominous forebodings.  Fat girls dance alone.  I happened to notice a beautiful girl, tall and slender, with all appropriate bumps and curves dancing alone.  I asked my sister why such a tender pouty lovely should be dancing alone.  Naturally I could not hear the reply, but I understood the situation immediately from the hand signals.  Gesturing three, oh and mouthing the word, “thirty” told me all I needed to know.  Add that to the list, folks.  Where youth is king, thirty dances alone.  Everyone is a type, aren’t they?

    As much as I tried to be a part of that time and place, I just felt shitty about the whole thing.  120dB muzak and overpriced drinks do not a swell place to equilibrate make for one of my ilk.  It was at this time that the Great and Powerful Oz announced that $500 in cash and prizes would be dropping from the ceiling along with the nerve gas, sealed in balloons that would drift down to the clutches of the seething horde of beasts crowding the dance floor.  And dear God, when the bombs started dropping I saw a spectacle of at least moderately disturbing proportions.  Grappling above their heads, shoving and jostling, then crawling about on the ground, the swine received their pearls.  It seemed to me that, had certain events in history been altered concerning dining practices, I might have witnessed the eating of live babies.  I cannot fully explain myself; you would have had to see for yourself the whole transmogrification into the intensely staring predators circling below to understand.  This is, apparently, what our forefathers ended up storming the beaches at Normandy to defend.  If you asked them, they’d probably tell you that this is what’s so funny about peace, love, and understanding.