The Diamond Island

For those not in the know, an advent calendar is a cardboard poster with a series of doors you can pry open, one for each day until Christmas. Behind each door is a colorful picture, saying, or candy chocolate associated with the Christmas season. The ones with candy in them are large and thick, while the picture kind tend to be flat, with only a backing to protect the hidden pictures. The candy kind shows up in the movie Bad Santa, if you’re interested in seeing one and having a good night’s laugh for entertainment.

Okay, even though I get glum at Xmas, I try to get an advent calendar because I love the idea of opening a door on something every day to get a new scene/fortune/candy. K and I each got one of those ones where you get a piece of chocolate behind the doors. She picked one with a bunch of animals being left hay, nuts, berries and the like by Santa. Now, I don’t see him leaving any steaks for the carnivores, so I’m a little dubious. I have to assume Santa is going off to visit them next, because the carnivores might decide a fresh rabbit is better than a fresh t-bone. I don’t know. Mine is the generic angel kids fluttering about decorating trees and delivering presents. But then I chose mine not for the scene but randomly – I wants the chocolates, not the pictures! I like K’s better though, because her scene is cute. Santa helps the ani-mani-mals!

So December 1st rolls around. K and I open our first door. She gets a nice picture of a choo choo train and a matching chocolate (a choo choo train in a toy, and toys are often an Xmas theme). I open mine up, and uh…huh? There’s a picture of a piece of wood. I suppose wood makes sense in that Xmas usually is celebrated when winter is on its way, and you want a nice roasting fire. But that’s pretty odd. The candy chocolate is a wrapped present, which is on base for the season. Except that it doesn’t match the picture! Here’s the rundown of the Advent Calendar of Doom so far:

Dec 1
Picture: A block of wood
Candy: A wrapped present

Dec 2
Picture: A doll
Candy: A church

Dec 3
Picture: Santa Claus
Candy: A snowman holding a broom

Dec 4
Picture: A pair of ornaments
Candy: A four leaf clover (???)

Dec 5
Picture: A snowflake
Candy: An evergreen tree

Dec 6
Picture: Three evergreen trees
Candy: A squirrel eating a nut

Dec 7
Picture: A fireplace (The block of wood makes sense now)
Candy: A Valentine’s Day Heart (?!?!)

Dec 8
Picture: A decorated Christmas Tree
Candy: A Christmas wreath

Dec 9
Picture: Two gnomes chit-chatting
Candy: A deer with a bow tie and no eyes (…)

Something ain’t right here.

I pulled out a ten-dollar bill to pay for some last minute groceries, and I noticed it had been stamped on the edge with the information for an escort service, with a phone number and web address. For goodness sakes! The things people put on paper currency.

After I got over my amusement, I got to thinking, and I imagined it had to be a meaningful coincidence. A psychic message perhaps, but from whom?

The “Dark Goddess”, of course. That archetype that dwells within the unconscious of all humans on the planet. So I dug into some of my old collections of useless information to see what I could bring back to the conscious part of my ape’s brain. I figured she wanted me to remember some of my lessons from back in the day.

Then, for no reason at all, Britney Spears and her latest tune pops into my head. I get to thinking this must be part of the message. Then I realize little miss “gimmie more” is carrying the projections of people’s expectations of the Dark Goddess. This goes back to my Escapegoat theory, whereby certain people embody the community’s own repressed qualities so people can mock them and feel better about themselves.

What are the qualities of the Dark Goddess? Well, aside from the obvious (the naughty bits), she personifies instinctual behavior, music and dancing, drunkenness, the pursuit of pleasure, reckless abandon, procreation, madness, self-destruction, illusions over reality, and generic forms of darkness and chaos thrown in for good measure. Sound familiar?

The Dark Goddess is often symbolized by things like the moon and underground tunnels, or personified by supernatural figures like witches and mermaids. You can go all the way up to goddesses like Lilith or Tiamat, and all the way down to famous actresses or femme fatales. It just depends on what you are looking for. Hrm. Famous people. That could easily apply to miss “oops I did it again.”

The obvious interpretation is that the Dark Goddess was reminding me that she’s out there, in the shadows and darkness sometimes, but more than likely in broad daylight without anyone’s knowledge. Britney is out there too, suffering the scarlet letter of people with no guts and nothing going on (we’re all guilty, not just her). The Dark Goddess is out there doing her thing, what am I doing?

That question brings me back to a time when I was an ardent admirer of the Dark Goddess. I gave her a full access pass and a place to live. I drank from dark waters, ate from dark fruits, and lived in the wrong part of town like her. She’s a backdoor girl with a bad reputation, and she ain’t no man’s woman, but she would pay me a visit just the same. The Dark Goddess shares her gifts of regeneration and ecstasy with those who ask, and I asked every day. She would sing to me, you can call me anytime, on my hello-happy-line.

So that’s the message, give her a call. Maybe she misses me, or wonders if I’d forgotten about her. I heard tell once that the edges of the wrong side of town must seem like they plummet into the depths, because anyone who leaves never comes back. I dial the Dark Goddess’s hello-happy-line, and leave a message.

That night, I have one of those vivid and detailed dreams I sometimes get. I’m in a huge labyrinth of a building, a creativity warehouse as one occupant puts it to me. I see every conceivable kind of artist, engineer, architect, editor and student associated with creativity engaged in projects too numerous to mention. Writers working on stories for a magazine, paintings of every conceivable type being painted using experimental techniques or to develop a series for museums or shows. Lithographers, gardeners, graphic artists working on advertising, all in a setting of hallways and rooms littered with toys, decorations and tools of the trade. Whole acting companies work out elaborate blocking of scenery next to rooms where speeches are being given on the future of sculpture. I climb a wooden ladder out of a sauna where rock stars are meditating on new songs, and walk down an aisle of computer-automated typewriters working out a formula for theater performances. Everywhere, there are secret doors, concealed passageways, and understated niches like altars to the making of things for their own sake. Quiet places, loud places, lighted by fireplace or fluorescent bulbs, or sometimes nothing at all. It’s a Willy Wonka Factory of every artist’s dream.

I realize in the dream that I’m looking for my backpack. I’m carrying a sword and wearing a costume from some previous artistic pursuit that I’ve moved away from. I’m looking around, searching, and wandering the place. That’s when I run into the Dark Goddess herself, and I realize the creativity warehouse is hers, she runs it and makes sure that there’s always ideas and play to fertilize the minds and souls of people. She tells me that she called because I left my backpack at her place, and I ought to have it back again. I come out of my dream as if I’d only just closed my eyes, and I write down everything she told me.

The next day, K is at the new computer figuring things out, and I’m working on my book. We have the sliding back door open (with the screen closed) to freshen up the air a bit. Something appears at the top of the screen, and for a moment we both think Frankie has climbed the sliding door to get at a moth or something like that. But it’s a screech owl, trying to get in. It sinks its claws in the screen and stares at us for a moment, then tries to get in again. The owl flies off into the night, without ever having made a sound or damaged the screen, and K and I marvel at the critter visit we just experienced. Totally cool!

Owls are sacred to the Goddess Lakshimi, symbolizing prosperity. They are also animals associated with Athena, and wisdom. In some Native American traditions they are night hunters who see through deceptions and the sorcery of others. Owls often carry the spirits of the ancestors and their messages. But most of all, the screech owl is sacred to Lilith, another aspect of the Dark Goddess.

Yup, that’s the Dark Goddess all right. She’s in your fridge, eating your food.

I get the feeling that the Klingon attack cruisers are out in force right now.  Celebrating their version of Thanksgrabbing I suppose.  Shooting energy torpedoes everywhere like gangbusters and not worried about where the things land.  So it was that not even Michael Monticore’s cat fur deflectors could keep us from taking a direct hit on the main computer.  Specifically, K’s computer gave us the blue screen of doom and that was pretty bad news.

My science officer, Kool Kat, did his best to bring the damaged system back online, resorting to the system restore disk which had worked very well twice before in previous episodes.  Alas, the system restore failed to take hold, and the blue screen of doom started appearing even with the computer in Safe Mode.  In game terms, we had to move the status chit on our character sheet for the Computer from “damaged” to “destroyed”, rather than “repaired.”

Well, one can’t have amazing adventures in outer space on a starship without a computer.  At least, not without switching idioms in mid-season, which could prove bad for ratings.  And I don’t think turning a sci-fi show into a western exactly is what K and I signed on for on this channel.  So, Kool Kat looked at me and gave me the report.  Cue close up of me in the command chair with suitably appropriate music as I have to make a command level decision.  K’s Sims happiness bar is going down by the hour without her online MUD connection.

No decision, really, but nice and dramatic with heavy sighing and first-rate acting.  I call up the engineer, Captain Boozer, and tell him we need an infusion of Warp Power from the bank account.  You see, moving the quality chit for the Computer from “used” to “new” automatically moves the status chit to “operational”.  Captain Boozer doesn’t exactly like giving up the bank account Warp Power, but that’s an order!  Luckily, we manage to obtain something cheap without getting too horribly fleeced, Kool Kat replaces the old console with the new one, the character sheet is updated, and K’s happy level goes up.

I chalk it up to the science officer using his special ability of “Emergency Damage Repair”, and we get back in the action.  I take this as a hint I should fortify some of my own systems, and I make sure to burn a hard copy of my book work to date.  Not that I wasn’t maintaining multiple copies, mind you, but always good to keep one step ahead of demands, as they say.  Got myself some hot flash drive action for easy transfer and backup.  The old floppy to zip disc action wasn’t cutting it anymore.

My sensors don’t pick up any Klingon attack cruisers out there at the moment.  But be on the lookout.  They could peek-a-boo at any moment and fire you a nice juicy surprise!  Just another day in the neutral zone of life, so to speak.

Picking up where I left off, K and I experience four days in Portland generally having a wonderful time. Shopping, sightseeing, eating and drinking without much in the way of hassles. Of course, it’s hard to tell because just about anything “bad” has to measure up to the living hell we just experienced on the train before we get upset. We more or less blank out the horrible fact that we have more to come and live for the now. We laugh at our recent misadventure as if it were some tale told to frighten children, never mind that this experience would make the boogeyman hesitate, and it was as real as a kick in the teeth.

Having been to Japan, and traveled on the bullet and regular trains both overnight and day-trip, I found the Amtrak experience a shock. In Japan the trains run smoothly, are well maintained, and the experience is average at a minimum and very often pleasant. I wasn’t expecting the same level of quality as in Japan, but the appalling experience K and I got made me confused when I thought about it during our vacation. Does not compute. System failure. System failure.

We thought about ditching the train and buying tickets on a flight, which is what the folks recommended, but the prices for such short notice just weren’t possible on our budget, or so I rationalized. So how bad could it be, right? Well, in retrospect I think we were out of our tiny little minds and should not have been allowed back on that train. The shock of the three day hell ride warm-up had rendered us incapable of making rational decisions. It’s only money.

So, vacation is over, time to go back on the train. This time, we tell ourselves, it will be different. We are ready to kick butt and take names. We bought ourselves some card and board games for the trip, a cache of water and snacks, and a can-do attitude. We know it’s going to be bad, so it won’t be as bad if we go in with clenched fists and a furrow of concentration.

Epic fail.

All the usual nonsense is there as before. The gorge is as scenic as it was before, and this time we get to see some of the scenery we missed on the way in because it was early morning. The card and board games hold up a little to the racket, but not as much as we’d hoped. The fun just isn’t there to be had, regardless of the activity, because your brain never gets a break from the stress that becomes panic and fear. We’re starting to fall into the old reliable habits of sit, stare, nap, talk, when the intercom buzzes with the conductor’s voice and makes a pronouncement.

Apparently, there’s been a train derailment on the track up ahead of us. As of now, trains using this track are being stopped at either end. The passengers are being put into buses and shipped to the other end of the derailment to board another train. Oh, great. At first it’s absurdly funny, but then we start facepalming ourselves. We should have flown home. Welcome back to hell. The train stops at some nowhere terminal with about eight or nine buses waiting to transport the suckers who paid for this trip. We grab our luggage and cart it into the bus, where we grab seats and try to make ourselves as comfortable as possible.

The attendants help an enormously overweight woman with bad legs onto the two seats in front of us. She’s in incalculable pain and tears are streaming down her face. The chairs creak when she is seated, and something plastic breaks. The smell of coach enters the bus as several passengers with bad hygiene enter and take seats. The air system of the bus doesn’t work. Neither does the toilet, but that’s a surprise awaiting us half way into the journey through time and space in search of new ways to experience hell. Oh yeah, dinner is canceled. And our snack and water cache is in the outside lower cargo hold of the bus.

The journey takes nine hours, through Idaho and into Montana. So much for seeing Glacier Park again. The windows open only a crack. The woman in front of us spends the entire trip either crying softly to herself in agony or sleeping with a loud, heavy breath. At one point she has to go to the bathroom, an epic effort accomplished with the help of the attendants and several brave passengers. This is when the toilet gives out beyond any shadow of a doubt, and a steady sewer smell wafts into the bus whenever someone goes to empty their bladder because they can’t hold it anymore. K and I can’t sleep, we can only stare into space and wait for it to end.  There is no smell.  I do not hear the sounds of suffering.  Fluffy clouds.

The bus is noticeably more stable a travel experience than the train. No jolts or swerves or clickity clack doom bang booms. But the bus drivers are driving like maniacs, putting the pedal to the metal such that we are passing cars and trucks like the bus in the movie Speed. K and I worry the bus is going to crash and flip around, and we’re going to be crushed by the overweight woman as the bus catches fire. Since the sun started to set right about the time the train stopped to kick us off, there’s nothing to see.  There’s nothing like the wholesome experience of travel by bus.

After what seems like an eternity of stink and boredom, we reach the small town where the derailment took place. There are tons of work lights everywhere around the wreck. We drive by, and it looks like a cargo train derailed. The tank cars are strewn all throughout the track’s immediate area in bent and half-buried hulks of metal wreckage. The tops of the tanks have burst, spilling out grain in huge piles. We get the scoop from one of the attendants. The train driver was going 75 mph in a 45 mph zone, and jumped the track. I blink, because I recognize this town as one we passed through during the night on the way to Portland. I suppose the reason we didn’t derail is because we slowed down to stop at the station. Nice to know!

The bus ride is not over yet. We stop in a huge parking lot behind a series of strip mall eateries. Amtrak has decided to feed us all with a massive Subway sandwich eat-a-thon. K and I watch in shock and horror as people exit the bus and mull around like a bunch of wild animals. A group of attendants carry an enormous cardboard box from the store over to the center of the mob, drop it, and back away. Within seconds people swarm around the box and pull away whatever turkey or ham sub sandwich they can get their hands on. It’s like feeding time at the zoo. The image burns into my brain as if this were the apocalypse and we’ve just entered the Road Warrior dark future where survival is measured by how fast you reach the Subway sandwich box.

K and I each manage to get a sandwich after the immediate feeding frenzy passes, about ten minutes later. For Subway, this is pretty substandard fare, but it absorbs the stomach acid, and lowers the stress level. Here we are, in a middle-of-nowhere Montana town, at night, being bussed across the land like convicts in what can only be considered good value for the dollar. If this were a rare occurrence, I could take some solace in knowing that it was just the roll of the dice on the random encounter table. But the way in which the attendants and conductor handle themselves, I get the impression that this is normal operating procedure. The experience itself is horrible, but the way in which the basics are handled (passenger management, transportation, food) is efficient and matter-of-fact. These people know what they are doing. It’s a losing battle, but they are soldiers in hell, and they will make it through with these civilians no matter what the cost. Maybe they should be running the Iraq war, I don’t know.

We hop in the bus again, and the journey continues. If we’d had a thought, we’d have gone to the bathroom in one of the convenience stores or fast food joints. But now it’s too late. Nothing but a clogged toilet for relief now! Good thing we had some cokes before we left. By the time we reach the next stop down the line, our bladders are in emergency power mode. We disembark and hit the relief valves in the station. Our bus driver was speeding so hard we reached the station ahead of everyone else, and because of the way the road goes, only one bus can unload at a time. Thank goodness we didn’t have to go native, because that’s what would have happened if there had been a line.

The new train isn’t ready because apparently the previous passengers were only just evacuated, and the attendants of the previous train left everything a mess for the current crew to pick up on. The attendant for our new car volunteers us to help him set up the rooms of the car. We reluctantly agree, one because it means we can stow our baggage first, and two because it means we can get on the train before anyone else. We help the guy take out old bedding and towels and install new ones. Oh, did you think you were on vacation? In an alternate universe where nothing is what it seems? We do this for about an hour, then the guy goes off to make a report. He leaves us with his portable DVD player and DVD selection as a reward for our service. As I get ready for my turn to shower before the hordes descend, I go into the baggage compartment to grab some new clothes. I notice that the toilet on the second level is dripping into the baggage compartment and leaking right on our luggage! Wow.

We empty out our suitcases and move them to another compartment with a grumble. Luckily we caught the leak in time, before it penetrated the casing, but it’s still gross beyond belief. The other passengers start boarding the train, and I direct the ones in our immediate area away from the contaminated storage compartment. The trip has officially gone from bad mojo to epic horror. K and I settle down to watch some DVD action as the train speeds up on it’s appointed night train hell ride. Luckily, the outlet works and we don’t have to drain the batteries. We watch about six episodes of Good Times before we realize a secret of kung fu on a train – watch movies. I make sure to tip the guy my last twenty when I hand the DVD back to him in the morning. And look there, old reliable coffee and juice, just when I need an emergency infusion of sanity.

Our cabin is on the bottom level of the superliner, and we keep to ourselves there as much as we can. The air doesn’t work, so we have to leave our door open to keep some sort of current going, but that means we have to hear the noise of our fellow passengers who have the same idea. I honestly have to question the sanity of people who decided to let their kids travel with them in these tiny little sardine two-fers. The choice is noise and distraction damage, or bad air and sweaty grime damage. Either way, you are taking the damage on. Sleep is still bad. Even though we don’t get quite the same sway and weave as the top end of the train, it’s still there. Instead, we are closer to the wheels, where we get harder jolts and louder clickity clack dings.

By the time we get into Chicago, we’ve missed our original train connection and have to wait until tomorrow before we can go home on the last leg of our harrowing journey. Everyone is taxied off to various hotels to spend the night on Amtrak’s dime until they can make their connection. We end up somewhere in downtown Chicago staying the night in a hotel in some tall building. It’s a tiny affair, and the building is old, probably going back to the thirties, but K and I are so exhausted we can’t think. It’s a bed, and the clickity clack fear is only an echo in my damaged brain.

I don’t know, are rest stops worse when you just keep going back to the same old torture? You never become used to the panic and fear. You recover only enough for the horror to regain its freshness.

We are broke, so we have to walk twelve blocks back to the station through town. I think I end up carrying three different pieces of luggage. I must look like a mule. We’re starved and thirsty. Wish Amtrak had bought us a coupon for a free breakfast at McDonalds right about now. We get to the station, and are accosted by a street derelict who begins pestering me with questions. “What train you on? What train you on? WHAT TRAIN YOU ON? What time you leave? What time you leave?” It’s about this time I completely lose my mind and say, “Dude, just leave me alone okay? I can’t think right now! Aaa!” The guy gets defensive and says, “Get your head together, fool!”

Aaa!  Malfunction!

We make it back to the complimentary lounge for cabin passengers and I avail myself to a breakfast of cheap bagels and coke. Thank God corporate excess got something right. We settle in and wait for the train to come in and take me away from this vacation from hell. But it ain’t over yet.

The next train arrives, and we board it. This time we get the top floor of another superliner. I’m totally sick of this. Another night at the top of the tree swaying to and fro. This time the coffee and juice is not there. The current attendant is a guy who dodges us every chance he gets after he checks our tickets. We’ve packed our stuff back into our toilet-contaminated luggage now that we’ve had a chance to dry it off. What choice do we have? We settle down and wait for something to happen, like a meal or a bathroom break. Something smells. A burnt rubber kind of smell comes through the vent. We go outside and it’s also in the car. The smell is not to the point where you gag and choke, but at the level of perfect discomfort without immediately impairing your health. The smell fades the further back in the train we go, in this case when we go to dinner.

Once again at dinner we get shortchanged in choices, and the meals have gotten more mundane, or we have lost all hope and see things as they really are now, a mess of pre-prepared food material edible enough to keep you from starvation but little else. Our table companions end up being a couple with whom we have nothing in common and ignore us after the first few cynical exploratory social exchanges. Fine with us, I want to stare at my proto steak slime with imitation potato and unrecognizable gristle. I really would have preferred K and I having our own little table together and eating in private without the intrusion of total strangers you have to put up with for forty minutes and then never see again. It’s one of the few times we could actually stretch out and sit comfortably without the sardine effect.

Night falls, and the speed begins. We stoically try the sleep game again, but the swinging and swaying, combined with the loud noise and horn blowing produces the usual panic and fear. Only this time the burnt smell makes it even more unbearable, if that can be believed. Just when you think you can’t sink any lower, hell shows you the next level. K and I go through the usual panic and fear until we collapse from exhaustion and wake up at the crack of dawn announcement from the conductor that we bite the big one and have a lot more coming to us. I think I might be hallucinating from the smell.  We decide to skip breakfast and the shower, and instead sit waiting until our time on this hellride is up. We just don’t care anymore. Right now, the only thing keeping me alive is the faint knowledge that at some point in the future timeline of what ought to be mainstream reality, K and I leave this train and recover from the never-ending terror of hell.

The smell gets worse, and I complain to the attendant, who gives me a frightened look. He says it’s “nothing” and everything will be alright. He then speaks into his walkie talkie that “the passengers are noticing.” Noticing what?  The smoke drifting past our window, of course.  K and I gape at the smoke and try to think, but nothing happens.  Brimstone, anyone?  Like fries with that jack-up?  Then the couple in the Sleeper opposite ours start freaking out. “Damn, man, there’s a fire goin’ on in that car up ahead!” The smoke and fumes are getting pretty bad now, so me and K start rummaging through our luggage for something to break the glass with. The window does not open like it does in Silver Streak, and at this point I’ve had it with Amtrak, and it’s lousy service, crummy freak-out random encounters, slip-shod maintenance, awful food, and randomly determined fearful staff. May they all burn in hell, because we’re going to bust open the window and flee this nightmare before anything more happens to us. The panic and fear are so palpable, I can feel my stomach acid wanting to pop up and say hello.

Yeah, I know, we were on the top story of a fast moving train. That’s how insane we had gotten. But then something happens. The clock strikes at dawn, the rooster crows, and the devil has to close up shop for the day. The train slows down and comes to a stop. The conductor comes over the intercom and says we have stopped for a “technical repair” and that everyone should remain where they are. Yeah, right. But then the smell disappears and so does the smoke. The passengers are broiling like chicken soup on high. Then the train starts up again, and all is well. Fifteen minutes later, we pull into Union Station and disembark. Halleluiah.

My folks are there to greet us. K and I look like rat bags. They grab our smelly, spare luggage and help us escape the land of hell and drive us home, while we relate the story of our harrowing experience in small bursts. The folks laugh like leprechauns, and I realize it really is over, the war hell ride is OVER! I can go back to work and my everyday life and not worry whether I’m going to die for hours on end in a train sardine can filled with panic.

K and I recover from the shock and the fear, but I fear the memory of it has burned a scar in our psyche from which we can never recover. I will never willingly board an Amtrak train again. I hate flying, but at least it gets you from point A to point B in a reasonable amount of time, and the suffering is minimal. Most of all, it makes me sad to see such a valuable institution as the railways in America reduced to such a pathetic shadow of its former self.

A few weeks back, I saw in the news a derailment of a train in the Northwest between Seattle and Portland. All passenger service had to be redirected by bus to their connections, according to the article. I could only think of a cardboard box filled with Subway sandwiches, dropped in the middle of a starving mob of people.

I was just talking to a co-worker the other day. She had returned from a cruise with her mom on one of those “tropical” packages. Now me, being one of those people who reads of cruise ships in the news and the kinds of whacky stuff that afflicts cruise-goers, I was of course interested to hear what she had to say about her experiences. One always reads of cruise ships losing a balance thruster and veering to the side, nearly knocking passengers off the deck, of outbreaks of unsavory diseases from the food or sick passengers, or of large scale failure of the toilet system. While my co-worker didn’t describe anything on that level of awful, her experiences were suitably “cuckoo” enough for her to render the phrase, “The Cruise Dimension.”

Ahhh. I know her tale well from my own travel experiences. Many of the things she related to me could easily have applied in some way to my own travel adventure. I’m talking about the Amtrak War Hellride that K and I went on one fine summer for vacation several years back. A tale so sordid and unbelievable it will take two posts to tell it properly!

We decided to visit Portland, Oregon and take the train there. Take the overnight from Union Station in DC to Chicago, then switch to the Empire Builder and take the two-day trip to Oregon through the northernmost United States. The Empire Builder stops through Glacier Park, Montana in the summer, and moves through the Columbia River Gorge on the Washington side. What could go wrong? Sounds idyllic and romantic, right? Harmony joy train-ride, here we come!

For reasons of economy, we decide to travel in a Roomette, which is two seats facing each other with a fold out table in the middle. A bed folds out from the ceiling and the two chairs fold to create a bed. A little cramped, but up close and personal as this is supposed to be quality romantic time for K and myself. There’s air-conditioning/heating, light panels, and piped-in music. Whee!

See, there’s this movie Silver Streak, starring Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, where Mr. Wilder plays a book editor who gets involved in a caper involving an international forgery ring. It has a pretty girl, murder most foul, and lots of absurd situations. It’s a pretty good mix of laughs and action, and it’s one of my favorite movies. Yes, yes, I’m getting stars in my eyes thinking I’m going to go on a train ride and experience the coolness factor of the movie in some way, right? Wrong! K and I are going to get the life-threatening peril and abject stress-out terror of the action, but none of the scenic beauty or comedy of this movie. Which, in a way is more realistic than the undefined fantasy.

I’d been on trains before, back when I studied in Japan and took several long trips around the country. The train system there is nothing short of impressive, so I was expecting, well maybe not as good, but a similar experience. How bad could it be?

So K and I board the train and reach our appointed sardine can. Whoa, smaller than the Amtrak 3D picture made it out to be. This is, well, very small and cramped. We stash our luggage and anipals where they will fit on the sides and at our feet, pull out the miniaturized table that might hold two sodas if they’re close together, and sit down on the rather uncomfortable fossilized cushions that will be a bed later tonight. Already I’m thinking we should have gone for a larger cabin, this is ridiculous. After one day of this we’re going to be crawling the walls!

I pull out my MP3 player and plug in the adapter. Both electrical outlets are dead. Good thing I brought batteries! K tries to adjust the air unit. No luck, the hot/cold dial has no effect on the trickle of tepid air coming out the vent. I try the music jack and get static in my headphones on all channels. The light panels work, thankfully. K tries the shades, even though it’s a cloudy day. We find out that the shades don’t work very well at keeping light out, nor do they move out of the way easily to allow light in. They work in a kind of nebulous Twilight Zone area of “almost but not quite” useful I find annoying.

We settle in for the ride, me with music and K with one of her new books on knitting. She’s brought a number of projects to work on, while I’ve brought some writing and drawing materials along. We plan to be artistic during this long trip, as we figure the ride will be conducive to quiet meditation and relaxation. Wrong! The first thing I notice is that the train jolts and makes a lot of noise as it travels over the tracks. The tracks must be in really poor shape to make such constant, annoying noise, and the train’s mechanical elements must be in need of repair to have no muffling effect on the jolts and swerves the train is making. I scratch my head, as this isn’t high technology railway stuff here. With over a century of railroad behind it, Amtrak should be at a Harley Davidson motorcycle level of tried and true tested design by now. It doesn’t bode well that the maintenance and upkeep is so poor.

Since we can’t relax or concentrate, we watch the landscape go by and make snide comments about how crummy Amtrak is. One thing I notice is that while we do pass some areas of nice natural beauty, we also pass a lot of decrepit old places. We go by an automobile and truck graveyard filled with rusty and broken frames overgrown with vines. Abandoned homes, burnt out old shells of factories, run down neighborhoods, and busted stone foundations. This motif is repeated all along the entire trip, and I can’t help but feel I’m seeing a vision of the United States as a third world country. Where entire sections of the country’s infrastructure have been left to deteriorate and crumble in silence. It’s a depressing sight, and it makes the journey less of a sightseeing expedition and more of a nightmare premonition of things to come.

Hungry or thirsty? Each car has an attendant who maintains a station with fresh coffee and juice. You want food, you have to hit the concessions stand in one of the observations cars, where they charge you outrageous prices for a candy bar. You can get microwaveable items or a sandwich, as well as beer or other drinks. In order to reach the concessions watering hole, you have to brave the coach cars, filled with smelly and obnoxious people, which struck me as odd as they also stand in the way between you and the dining car.

I have to admit that the coffee is really good, and the juice at least keeps you hydrated, which is important because the crummy air system seems to suck the moisture out of you without making you comfortable in any way. The coffee and juice station is going to be the only bright spot in what will be a horrific experience for us.

Now, when it comes time for a meal, breakfast/lunch/dinner whatever, the event is announced over the loudspeaker, which blares into your cabin like a holy terror on wheels. You can’t turn it down, it has one volume – loud. As K and I find out, by the time you traverse the half dozen cars to reach the dining car, the coach passengers are already in line ahead of you being seated. You are guaranteed a seat and a meal, but the coach passengers have already started making a dent in the food selection, of which there is a limited amount, so you might order say, the pizza only to be refused because it’s just run out. Meanwhile, the drunken jerk from coach who kept singing while you were in line at the concession stand is eating a pizza right across from you.

You also have to sit with total strangers at random. This is supposed to give you a chance to socialize and meet new people, but I find it only introduces me to people I find annoying and repulsive. For breakfast, K and I found ourselves sitting across from two stragglers put together at random. A white, conservative old woman and a young conservative black woman dressed so that only her face was not covered. Neither one of them made particularly good conversation to begin with, but once they hit the issue of politics K and I felt we were in a nest of rattlesnakes.

Come to think of it, that about sums up the general feeling of this trip by train. Being in a nest of rattlesnakes, in constant fear of being bitten. Nice, huh? Go Amtrak!

The food tended to vary in quality, but was generally speaking on the level of slightly-better than cafeteria food. It’s sometimes good, but most of the time it’s a little better than average. Nothing to smack your lips over. Breakfast tends to be the best, as it’s really hard to screw up something like eggs and toast. The concession food was on the level of average, at times threatening to drop to poor but not quite that awful. You can always count on a Snickers bar or a bag of Doritos giving you a dependable experience, but what, you going to eat that for six days of train travel? Get ready for gastric gripe as that delicious cafeteria food flows through your intestines like gravy on an incline.

The toilets on the train are nothing short of grotesque. Trying to balance yourself above the pit of despair while the train rocks and jolts, even in the tight quarters, is an exercise in panic and fear. The showers are tight quarters also, and the water pressure pathetic, but at least it’s hot. I would rate the shower experience as passable.

The attendants vary in service from “you don’t exist and I am in hell” to fearfully helpful, as if they are about to enter hell and want their last acts to mean something. This does nothing to dispel “The Rattlesnake Dimension” of train travel. K and I brought lots of fives and ones to tip the attendants whenever they helped us. We wanted to show our appreciation and be polite, after all. In all cases, the attendants accepted our money as if we were handing them a lit stick of dynamite. That floored me. I couldn’t help but imagine that they were all being watched by Big Brother and for every dollar they receive, they get an electric shock when they go on break. Speaking of which, they often seemed on break, and I’m not sure if the “page attendant” button really works, because it never once worked.

Then night falls, and the nightmare really begins. Your not-so-fun train experience goes from pathetic and uncomfortable, to Night of The Demon. See, after the sun goes down, the train speeds up because there’s no reason to go slow in order for people to view the trashy landscape anymore. Seriously, it becomes so dark you can’t see any detail out the window. As the train speeds up, the noise and jolts of the train going over the run-down tracks increases dramatically. And since you can’t see anything, you start to lose a certain amount of perspective, so that when the train swerves, it feels like the car is about to fall over for just a split second. This ratchets up the fear factor of the trip to unimaginable heights. The train begins to honk its horn regularly, so at times a jolt or swerve of the train is accompanied by a loud blare as if you are about to go careening off the tracks into the depths of hell. Reading, knitting, writing? Ha ha ha ha ha! Romantic cuddling? More like clutching each other in fear while praying you make it through the night.

The attendant comes by and sets up your beds for the night, then disappears before you can ask any questions. Well, K and I are definitely tired now, but sleep is impossible. Let me say that again, sleep is impossible. Lying horizontal while the train swerves, bumps and clickity-clacks like the sound of the hooves of the four horseman of the apocalypse? Closing your eyes while you bob and weave in your bed, the rope netting keeping you snug in your pod capsule? Drifting to sleep when every sound tells you that this is the last ride of your entire life? What drugs are you on, because I want some! Good Lord, I wouldn’t wish this on my enemies, it’s beyond cruel. Every waking moment is spent in mindless terror, and every waking moment lasts an eternity. You sweat bullets wondering when the nightmare will end, and this goes on hour after hour until you literally pass out from exhaustion due to terror.

This is the first day of the trip.

About half an hour after you pass out from exhaustion, the sun starts to come up and the train slows down. Half an hour later, the loudspeaker begins announcing breakfast for the various car sections. K and I shamble to our feet and make our way to the food queue like newly minted members of the living dead. By the time we have acquired a shower and a new set of clothes, the train is rolling into Chicago. We disembark and settle into the station for the layover until our sardine slot on the Empire Builder is ready. The food in the restaurants is an order of magnitude better, the walking around stretches our legs, and we call the folks from a payphone to let them know we made it. There’s a special lounge for the purchasers of cabin space, which we take advantage of. Plenty of comfortable furniture to sit on, free snacks and drinks, television, and a kindly, helpful staff. What, did I just land on Mars? I want this to be our train experience! And oh my God, real functional toilets that don’t look like they came from the mind of some mad scientist.

And to boot, I get to wander around the station where the finale of Silver Streak takes place. It’s a slight kick, and recovers me a few hit points of damage from the war hellride.

The wait is interminable, but at long last we board our new sardine can on a superliner, a train car with two levels to accommodate additional passengers and baggage. There is no increase in floor space, however. The train rolls out and it all begins again. This time it’s going to be two days of hell before we get any relief. I still hold out the hope that this leg of the trip will be different, that last night’s ordeal was just a fluke. But, I’m afraid my hopes are dashed against the rocks. The experience ends up being repeated along the entire length and breadth of this trip. I sure hope I get a vacation to recover from my vacation.

Now that the trip is getting out into the heartland of the country, you’d think the scenery improves, right? Nope. Still passing by the junkyard detritus of America. The landscape lacks trees of any size, and is mostly rolling hills and overgrown fields. Pretty unimpressive. It’s nice when we pass homes where the occupants have settled outside to watch the train pass in their lawn chairs. I get a good feeling out of knowing that our passage is a positive event, even if those folks have no clue of the monstrous horror within the iron horse as it toots by. The stops are somewhat picturesque at times. We get to stretch our legs for a few minutes, while K takes pictures.

We’ve discovered that you can catch brief naps during the day before cramps force you to wake up and shift around in the fossil chair. A second night of fearful sleep has turned us ragged and grumpy, but the day naps help. It’s not as if there’s anything historical, scenic or wholesome out the window. We’ve figured out that you have to hoard food and drink from the concession stand, because they don’t restock it regularly, oh no. They let it run dry and don’t replace it until they reopen every morning. You haven’t lived until you’ve fought the mutants for the last bag of BBQ Utz for the night. The previous drunkard has disembarked, but has now been replaced by a new guy who insists on the staff opening the secret Bat-stash of beer so he can have one last ticket to paradise city. The coach class did a run on the hamburgers, so dinner is reduced to slop meat sauce on garbled mixture of protein material, or pig knuckles on a hot croissant served with radioactive Chernobyl sauce green beans.

Oh yeah, because we’re on the second story of a super-liner car, when the train speeds up for the night, the swerves at the top of the train are worse than for the single car. Imagine being at the top of a tree swaying in the wind and you’ll get the idea. Panic and fear receive a bonus to their roll, so the stress level amps up beyond any reason. K and I suck down the wine we smuggled aboard, hoping to pass out drunk and at least get a decent sleep at the expense of a hangover, but it fails. Something about the Terror Train makes getting drunk impossible, and you go straight to throbbing headache with dulled reflexes, which makes moving about something of a fun house in terms of trying to stay sane. Curse the fates all you want, you still have to stay awake in fear until you don’t. Suicide? What if that doesn’t work? Nothing else seems to work, and what if it makes things worse? Remember, panic and fear in “The Rattlesnake Dimension”. No hope, only fear.

Glacier Park, Montana actually turns out to be scenic. We coil and twist through the mountain range, and get grand views of forest and valley. The stops are nice. Unfortunately, the track switches and we get a beautiful view of a cliff wall from then on after. And since we didn’t come upon it until the evening, the sun soon sets and we can’t see even that. The train speeds up, and we’re barreling through twists and turns at breakneck speed with the horn of hell blaring the final crash at any moment. We run out of snacks and water/soda, which is a minor emergency as right now the last battle at the concession stand is being fought. But we’re too worn out right now to care. The only thing keeping us sane is each other’s company. We can’t do anything other than sit, stare, nap or talk. The train makes anything else practically impossible.

Another night of “stay awake or die” passes, and we wake to the train entering the Columbia River Gorge. Now this mother-scratcher is scenic! The place looks like it hasn’t been totally devastated by humans, nor is there the ever-present sign of decrepitude I kept seeing. Just picturesque beauty and nice, unobtrusive signs of human habitation. Despite a gnawing hunger and thirst, K and I are too tired to go to breakfast. Thank the Maker for the coffee and juice station. The only sign of humanity in the entire damn train. The end of this leg of the ordeal is in sight, and all we can do is think about how it will soon be over. The wait is excruciating agony, especially when the train has to stop for a brief service check in Vancouver. So close!

We arrive, and stumble off the train with our luggage looking like a pair of refugees. The station is a nice, small, old school structure downtown. We are so out of it, we don’t call a cab and walk six blocks to the rental car agency, stash our stuff in the trunk, and walk to an actual café where we grab a vegetarian meal. Everyone is smiling and gossiping, having a good time. It’s like we just walked into happy land, and we’re so stunned we can’t talk. We eat with the slow weariness of victims. A random person walks by us on the street and asks if we’re okay and need help. I start shaking from shock. It’s too much, the lack of panic and fear. I get a tasty burrito and coffee into my stomach and I start to respond. K and I are alive, and it’s real vacation time.

But four days later we must face the unthinkable again, only worse, for another three days. Hell just got an upgrade, but we wouldn’t know that until later.

I’m at the workstation, doing my duties to mine the paycheck, when I get a call from K. Some lawyer woman called about it being vitally important I get back to her. Wouldn’t say what it was about, but that I should call. K referred the woman to my dad, thinking it was for him, since he actually deals with lawyers as president of the cluster association. He calls me next, saying its for me, and here’s the number. I’m like, whoa, what could be so important that I’m getting a call from a lawyer? I’m pretty sure I haven’t done anything out of the ordinary, so what gives?

So I call the “lawyer” woman up, and try to get the scoop. It’s not a “lawyer” at all, it’s some “representative” of so-and-so-services with a vague sounding name, and they are trying to get a hold of my neighbor, who lives at the end of the townhouse line. The tricksy slime ball of a woman deflects all my inquiries about what this is in regards to and who she is, and if I have any information about Mr. Next-door-neighbor-whoever, that would be appreciated. I’m like, Miss-whoever-you-are, I just moved into the neighborhood a few months ago, I don’t know anybody in my neighborhood yet! She sighs and suggests that I’m to blame for the loss of “close-knit” neighborhoods these days, and if I would only post-it her phone number or visit this person with a knocka-knock-knock at their door, that would be my good deed for the day. I’m like; “sure”, having been blathered as to what the blazes is going on.

I get home, and I look up the address the woman mentioned. Oh, that townhouse. I know for a fact no “Joe Whats-his-name” living there; it’s a nice family of people who certainly don’t look like fugitives. I talk with K and I come to the conclusion that I’m not helping this “woman” do squat. If it’s a mutha-scratchin’ emergency, she can call the cops. Even if “seemingly nice family” are a bunch of evil deadbeats, or if “Joe Whats-his-name” really does live there, or the names they gave me are false aliases, why on earth did I agree to help these monstrous bill-collectors do their stupid job? I’m not lifting a finger to help them, and they can, in the words of the Fonz, sit on it.

It’s an elementary truism that if you deceive someone, and they find out, they become unfriendly.

So I do jack squat, and I watch said family adopt a series of weird “dodging” behaviors. Getting up early and driving off as a family unit and not coming back until late at night. That kind of thing. So I guess they do owe money. But my thoughts are along the lines of, “That’s none of my damn business”, and why is some accursed bill collector company dragging me into the picture? I look it up on the internets, and I learn that it’s a standard bill collection procedure to call neighbors and get them to shame the deadbeats into paying up. The idea is that your neighbors cost you more face than talking to some loser on the phone. I can’t believe these shenanigans are legal. It’s between the parties involved, and dragging me (and who knows how many other dweebs) into the equation is about as discourteous as you can get.

I get another call from the bill collectors. They want to know if so-and-so neighbor’s car is in the parking lot. I get mad, so I start wasting their time. “What’s a Toyota look like?” That kind of thing. I want blood; this crosses the line of my privacy as an adult citizen of legal responsibility. They clue in and hang up. They don’t call me again.

I met the family at the grocery store the other day. I rapped with them and had a good laugh. Look like a nice bunch of people to me. I didn’t mention squat about the bill collectors. They could be the most evil bunch of deadbeats on the planet, but I’m on their side. Calling me and misrepresenting themselves? I’m wise to that now. I’ll never help the undead callers again, and I know the language codes now. They could have been honest; instead they tried to trick me. I won’t forget, or forgive that. I soiled my armor I was so scared! Now we hates them forever precious.

It’s early in the morning. I haven’t brought main power online yet, and the work patrol has yet to start. The coffee activator is only just manufacturing the reactor propellant that will kick-start my weary bones. Oh, crud! Trash day! That sound of machinery on the slow-monster march is the sanitation engineers tractor-beaming the week’s rubbish and conspicuous consumption for donation to the landfills for our future descendants to raid. I manage to do an emergency beam-out, flip flops in place of my shoes of doom, so maneuvers are at half impulse power. With seconds to spare, trash pick-up accomplished. I gather my handful of experience points and get back to business.

I’m closing the front door, when I see a fox casually walk out of the greenery across the street and head right for the place everyone puts their garbage. He sniffs the spot where the garbage was a minute ago, and I realize this scavenger does this as a regular circuit. The fox is just running late today, like me. The fox realizes someone is watching and looks up, spotting me. That fox kicks in the thrusters and walks on to the next waypoint, disappearing into the greenery ahead.

Now, I admit, I’m not exactly living in a concrete jungle here. The neighborhood is edged with trees and growth, so it’s perfectly feasible that animals can migrate from safe zone to safe zone, as long as they can navigate the occasional street crossing and don’t mind moving through the human neutral zone. But still, I’m a little surprised to see there’s a local fox. What else is moving about? Your pets roam at their own risk, sheesh!

So I’m on the couch, reading, with an afternoon view of my back porch. K and I have a number of cacti, moonflowers, cardinal creepers, wild mint, mosses, and ferns growing on the porch. More civilization training, you understand. All of a sudden, I see a hummingbird make a refueling run at what must be like a fully stocked, free gas station of flowers. I barely have time to let K know (she had never seen one before), when another hummingbird joins in the pit stop. Now that’s a first for me now, I’ve never seen more than one hummingbird, so it’s double bonus!

The two hummingbirds helicopter around from flower to flower until they’ve gone through each blossom, and then they head over to the neighbor’s yard. There are only some mundane houseplants without flowers, and I can almost hear them say “Rip-off!” They hit the warp drive and zoom out of sight. I tabulate up some experience points for keeping the hummingbird starbase open with my relentless watering and fertilizer efforts. Yeah, it’s all good.

Nighttime. I’m in the kitchen preparing a snack when I notice that it smells like skunk. Frankie freaks out and rushes up to the window. She meows the red alert and looks down at the bushes under our kitchen window. I stare in confusion for a moment, and then it dawns on me. Well, it must be skunk! I open the front door and whoosh! There’s some serious skunk smell coming from the bushes, and I hear a weird chirping noise. Whoa! Evasive maneuvers babykins! Door slams shut, and Frankie runs around like it’s a full-fledged invasion!

K asks me what that smell is and when I tell her she has to see for herself. Yo ho ho and a bottle of scum! Keep in mind the smell is so strong, you can smell it through a closed window! Must be a crack in the wall or something, phew! K thinks it’s hilarious. Luckily, the smell gradually fades and by morning only a lingering pee-yew smell remains. But every now and then I catch a whiff, so I know that culprit is in the neighborhood. I suppose the little rascal was just welcoming us to the neighborhood!

So I look up my tried and true copy of Medicine Cards, and according to this interpretation of Native American traditions, fox stands for camouflage (learn to observe from hiding), hummingbird stands for joy (embrace beauty and happiness), and skunk stands for reputation (project self-respect). Good lessons to keep in mind in this day and age!

It also occurs to me that the animals are all around us as we speak. The anipals and their daily rounds intersect with ours all the time, and we may not know it! Listen to what the anipals may be telling you. You can never have too many friends, either of the two-legged, four-legged, eight-legged, or winged variety. In the so-called “rational” territories, they need contact with us to stay whole, and we need their guidance to skirt the jackbots. They don’t need domestication (we have pets, special elite corps of human-contact volunteers for that), they need taming, which as you all know, means “to establish ties with”.

I’m in my go-cart of a car, by name of Micro-Blue, coming back from the comic book store. I stop at a red light and wait, my mind in the automatic pilot of the daily grind. I happen to look in my rear view mirror at just the right dramatically appropriate moment, and I watch the Batmobile draw up behind me. Not the Batmobile of the recent movies that started with Michael Keaton as Batman. No, I’m talking the Batmobile from the BAM-POW days with Adam West as Batman.

For a split second, it’s one of those surreal moments where you feel like you’ve just switched universes, and I’m actually in an episode of Batman. I’m one of those ordinary people the Dynamic Duo always passes by on the way up a building or through some everyday street. The goofy person who waves or says a few corny lines to them before they carry on. You know, a filler character. They shake their heads. You know how it is being a superhero; everybody wants to stop you for a moment to chat when you’re hot on the trail of the Riddler or the Penguin.

So I turn around, fully expecting to see Batman and Robin and to have my ten seconds of corny dialogue in the alternate universe. Only, the guy behind the wheel of the Batmobile looks like Chuck Norris during the moustache years with mirror shades. I smile and give him the “thumbs up” sign and he waves at me like the peasant I am. I’m disappointed to be back in Droid Land, to be sure, but it’s still the mutha-scratchin’ Batmobile, for goodness sake! The guy turns off at an intersection and I continue on, totally pumped that I got to see live and in person the actual Batmobile that I used to own as a kid, only in smaller size.

Corgi toys made a die cast metal Batmobile back in the seventies (or it was Dinky, but I’m fairly sure it was Corgi), and I had one as a kid. It was pretty cool, with a tiny plastic replica of the batphone in between the two seats, a plastic replica of flames shooting out the back tailpipe, the triple exhaust in the back shot missiles out the back, and you could press a button and a huge buzzsaw would pop out the front. Totally keen! Of course, it never survived the rough years of my wild childhood, and is lost to the ages, except perhaps on the internets as jpegs.

I get home and tell K, and she doesn’t believe me. So we hop in the car to go looking for the Batmobile! We don’t find it, which of course puts me in the position of having seen Batman and Robin, but no one will believe me. No really, I did see the Dynamic Duo! K gives me the eye. She believes me, but its fun mocking me for seeing things. Later on we discover that a diner near where we live holds “classic” car shows. So we’re guessing that was where the Batmobile was headed, and that it may still reside somewhere in the area!

But that’s how close a Carlos Castaneda moment can be. At any time, something can drive up behind you and send you into an alternate universe, or connect you with another reality. It may be that in another parallel dimension, I turn around and it is Batman and Robin behind me. What would I have said? Which episode would it be? Crumbs, it’s weird thinking how close I came to being a cornball one-shot character in the Batman real world show.

I hate it when main power goes down, and auxiliary power fails shortly after that. I can’t maneuver or shoot torpedoes for very long on emergency power. Shields? Forget it, I’m on reserves and goin’ down! I don’t know how it happened, but the Moavian Waoowl got loose, and every crew member on the ship started busting a move and getting jacked. Either that or the Councillor of Moppaplu snuck aboard and gave everyone some damn MeeGees. Either way, I change into one of my least favorite shtuper-heroes, El Sicko!

Have a linkdump! It all started when I ran into the butt-biting bug video on Boing Boing. Little did I know the Chaos that would ensue. My friend, The Liephus, sends me a countervideo, Human Tetris. Whoa, the sound you just heard was the sound of my synapses getting a charlie horse. Then my other friend, Doofball, sends me a video by the Squirrel Nut Zippers. The associations this has for me, not the best in my growing state of mind-mold. It’s about this time Cthulhu madness has set in, and I dare The Circuit to utube me more cowbell! Just a little softening up of the brainstem for the coup de grace, Miss South Carolina’s amazing escapegoat speech. I’m down for the count, Booji Boy style, and not even the New Mutants can pipe me in their smoke and put me!

In the words of the Riddler, bummmmmmerrrrrrrrr! It took some major hypersleep, followed by some tea and honey to even restore minimum temporary auxiliary power. The fevered dreams I had, whoo doggie, I don’t think I can relate. Cleaning up cat barf in the wrong house while the backwater mutants from Gummo invade your personal space sounds like a pretty exciting scene from a David Lynch movie. I still don’t know what to make of the extremely detailed grand tour of the Tower of Babel, where the representatives of the masters of the universe (not the He-Man kind, the plutocracy kind) were having their meeting. Time to bogue out on the millennium falcon! I sure hope that old man got the tractor beam out of commission or this cloud city’s chocolate sundae made by the damned is going to be one creepy desert.

Luckily, K was there with the proper antidote, a Wendy’s double cheeseburger and fries. Sometimes the way out is in! Warp core breech averted, ready to begin repair and reprogram procedures! Looks like the scene where the Moavian Waoowl is tamed by the Lieutenant of feline ancestry has occurred, and the episode is about over. It’s going to take some Slack points to repair all that engine and structural damage. Yes, I’m the Beavis who made the cheeseburger that saved The Enterprise, huh-huh, uh-huh-huh-huh, that was cool. I think I may understand why the cats want them. Fast food, fast times, fast relief. Chtulhu, you can’t handle the cheeseburger!