Tracking down the Oneiroi

I've made it no secret, my newest pet project. I'm searching for the American Dream, plain and simple. If not just to grab it by the throat and choke it half way to death, leaving it's elusive body gasping on the floor of some North Carolina strip club stage knowing what it's like to be down on your luck. Funny how every time I go looking for the Dream, I end up face-first into some diabolical foray of endlessly iterating drug frenzies, alcohol binges, and aimless cross country driving. The damned dream gets further away for every stab in the dark I take at it's wispy-thin effigies dancing in the shadows of our nation's last-call bars.

I found myself smoking weed in public last week, a habit I don't indulge frequently. Setting the scene, we were at a local downtown haunt frequented by a large cross-section of Kalamazoo's finest. Next door, Ani DiFranco was playing at the State Theater (a casual coincidence.) I sat on a shady picnic bench with my friend Mike, and his buddy patiently yet frantically awaiting the telephone call that his first child was about to be born. On a bet, I asked two attractive young ladies at the bar if they'd fancy a jaunt down the street to have a few puffs on some lovingly cultivated, high potency marijuana. The ladies excused themselves from their dates, their husbands, who were left sulking at the bar as their newlywedded brides went off with two scary looking men in black clothing to smoke a plant most definitely still illegal in the United States. Both teachers in the Kalamazoo Public School System, the young ladies admitted that they had been on the hunt to get high ever since they went downtown to see Ani.

"Are we going to your car, Zach?" the blond asks, bubbly yet inquisitive.
"Nope," Mike interjects as he jams an index-finger sized joint in the poor thing's face.
"In public?" the stern and visibly more assertive of the two blurts out, as if accidentally.
"Sure, why not?" I say, as the passer-bys keep to themselves and stare straight forward.

There we sat, fifteen minutes in all, as the crowded bar district of Kalamazoo dispersed it's drunks accordingly. I thought to myself, if only for a second, "have I found it?" as we wandered back into the bar. Six pints deep, I had to occupy the lavatory. Naturally, so to speak. As I washed my hands, some rube walks in and says

"whoa, who's been smoking the reefer?"
"Oh, not me, I must have just missed out. It smells damn good, though, I can tell ya that much"
"Damn right, It's like fuckin Snoop Dogg was here or sump'n"
I laugh as I tell Mike the story, and he says
"Oh, I was ripping a chillum in there a few minutes ago"

As my mind wanders back to the places I've been, the people I've met, and the things that I've seen; one thing remains constant. Smoking marijuana. If it be Hashish-laced cigarettes in the Great Pyramid of Giza, back stage at the Club Soda, to every concert from Nobuo Uematsu to ICP to Opeth to Kenny Chesney, under the thundering elevated trains of Chicago, in the back alleys of Manhattan, in the dense thick of the Redwood National Forest, in the dazzling lights of Las Vegas, at all the parties, through all the late nights, in the kitchen coolers, the bar bathrooms, and the beds of girlfriends - one thing remains as a constant. Every one I know, and everyone I hang out with, and nearly everyone I've met smokes marijuana. Yet every few weeks, I hear that another one of them has gone to jail because of it.

I think, futher still, about the American Dream. I think about all the endless hours of driving with a smoldering bowl of chronic tucked under my leg, all over the country. I think about all the strangers I've encountered and smoked with. I think of all the grow-ops I've seen, all the strains I've smoked, all the cops I've nearly hit my pipe in front of. I think about my friend's close calls and near-misses with getting busted. The favorite glass pieces broken on brick porches. The stashes dumped down sewer drains. I think about the off-duty cops I've smoked with, I think about the Oklahoma billboard I saw, "cops against prohibition."

I think of the American Dream. I think of smoking weed on the streets of Washington, D.C. during the Inauguration of Barack Obama. I think about what it all means. I think about the bong my dead friend Stan bought us that sits in my footlocker. I think about the connections that we all share, as people caught up in the moment of being people. Sharing stories, passing a neverending bongload around a cicle. The joints around the campfires. The feeling you get, not when you're busy living, but when you remember the good times you had.

That feeling is the Dream in action. The feeling of connection with some great big idea that no one can quite hold on to, but for a moment of fleeting reverie. Needless to say, no matter where I'm drinking a mug of beer, there's always someone who's eyes sparkle when I say those two words we all hear every day.

American Dream.

Psychophantic Sedentary Symbiosis

I pulled out my headphones in line at the grocery store to pay for my groceries (mostly booze,) and the girl checking my ID made the mistake of asking the now ubiquitous question: "what are you listening to?"

"Bible of the Devil"
"Oh" (She picks up the bottle of Tequila, looks at the rum) "I guess this explains it"
"No, that's what the limes are for"
:Total Shock and Confusion:

She was nice, but totally terrified of the fact that I might not believe in god. Totally put off. I'm just another guy in the store buying booze, but the fact that I said Devil in public whilst wearing sunglasses suddenly makes me the enemy of the fucking state.

Yes, I drink. That's why I came to the place with shelves of liquor. Drugs, booze, cigarettes, sex, gambling, lying, cheating, cursing, motorcycles, yes, all of it. I have a definite sour taste for the law, and for a majority of society and their stupid pallid incompetence. I've been in rock bands for more than half my life, and I've done done more drugs than most people can name. I've traveled the world, and all anyone can ever say is "how?" Easy. Work hard, play harder. I've read the satanic bible as many times as the real one, and the bible of the devil the band is named after the codex gigas, which IS A CHRISTIAN BIBLE. Do these people forget that you'd have to believe in God to believe in the Devil? I am an ATHEIST! I don't believe in fairy tales of any kind!

Everybody else gets caught up in shopping at whole foods, balancing their lifestyle, and marching the straight and narrow right on to the collection plate at megachurch. Idiots. We're all going to die, and Horus will not be taking us to get our hearts weighed, much less will Jesus stand in robes judging our every life choice. Jesus, contingent on existence, would most likely not care. What a forgiving chap, right? When we're all rotting in the ground, the ground will not care how many shots of tequila you took two hours before work.

Religion is stupid. Just a thought.
Stay tuned for updates from the road. I'm leaving Kalamazoo for a while.

How pretentious do you have to be before you google yourself?

You've done it, right? You saw that blinking cursor on the search bar, and you couldn't help yourself. Maybe just to see your alter ego, maybe to add hits to the counter. It's a sad creature of malevolent self-pride to type your own name into a google search. Today, I did it. It wasn't the first time, it won't be the last. I was honestly surprised by what I saw. What's my score today? 3,190 hits. Granted that includes the first name "Zach," but honestly, I don't know how my name came up 3,190 times on the internet. I have 121 friends on Facebook today, and 0 followers on twitter. I own a website, thenewscum.org, which has had a few hits from stumbleupon, but nothing much. I gave out about a hundred stickers or so, and haven't got a single comment about the site from someone I don't know. But they are all over the Ohio turnpike rest stops, I know that! Sure, there's the podcast as well; The New Scum Fix, but there's only 13 episodes. I'm trying to create a presence on the web, of course, who isn't? The thing is, though, where do we draw the line? How do you take someone seriously on the internet? I'm just as real as any other person, but how can we quantify success these days? Some of the most brilliant minds on the internet are just normal guys like you and me, that just happened to have an early stake in some form of electronic exchange that gave them e-notoriety. So how prententious do you have to be before you go and start googling yourself? Not so pretentious at all, it would seem, but pretentious enough to enjoy surfing through thousands of results. You can rest assured, though, that no matter how much your checking account fluctuates, google will do nothing but retain more and more information about you and who you are as time passes. When does pretentious turn to terrifying?