Fecal Creek, this sweltering armpit of a town, is a place where the heat doesn’t just sit on you – it climbs inside you, like some malevolent spirit, and starts rearranging your organs for sport.  It’s the kind of heat that makes you question your life choices, your ancestors’ life choices, and whether or not you’re actually in some kind of purgatorial simulation designed by a sadistic deity with a grudge against mammals.  But hey, 105F is practically a cold front compared to the usual Dante’s Inferno we call summer.  So, I guess we’re supposed to be grateful?  Grateful that the sun has decided to only lightly roast us this year instead of slow-cooking us like a brisket?  Sure.  Fine.  Whatever.

But let’s talk about the real problem here: the goddamn wildlife.  The coyotes, the mountain lions, the feathered sociopaths with wingspans that blot out the sun when they fly over.  They’re all out there, lurking, scheming, waiting for the moment you let your guard down.  And let me tell you, dear reader, these fuckers are getting bold.  The mountain lion on the Ring cam at 3 a.m.?  That’s not just a thirsty cat looking for a drink.  That’s a declaration of war.  That’s nature saying, “Hey, remember when you paved over my hunting grounds and built your little stucco McMansions?  Yeah, well, I’m here to collect.”

And those goddamn hawks.  These aren’t just majestic symbols of freedom soaring through the skies.  They are airborne thugs, feathered enforcers of some avian mafia, circling overhead like they’re auditioning for a Hitchcock reboot.  They don’t just look at you; they size you up.  They calculate angles, trajectories, wind speeds.  They’re running the numbers on whether they can snatch your 7-pound puppy and still make it back to their perch without breaking a sweat.  And the bastard turkey vultures are the cleanup crew, the ones how show up after the hawks have done the dirty work, picking the bones clean and leaving nothing but cold Darwinism.

It’s not just the animals, though.  It’s the principle of the thing.  The sheer audacity of these creatures to act like they own the place.  And maybe they do.  Maybe they’ve earned it, what with us humans being too busy sipping oat milk lattes and debating pronouns to remember that we’re supposed to be the apex predators here.  But I’m not about to let some coyote or hawk or mountain lion punk me out in my own backyard.  Not today.  Not ever.  Fuck no.  I’ve got a sidearm, a shitty attitude, and a deep-seated need to remind the animal kingdom that opposable thumbs and firearms trump fangs and claws every time.

So, yeah, dear reader, I suppose I’ll be out there until the rain comes again, scanning the skies, patrolling the yard like some deranged suburban commando, ready to thrown down with anything that moves.  Because this is Fecal Creek, goddammit, and if the heat doesn’t kill you, the wildlife just might.

Post Script:  Holy shit, dear reader!  I was talking about the arrogant wildlife in The Creek with a friend over lunch, and said friend told me something I could not believe: there are both scorpions and tarantulas in Fecal Creek.  Jesus!  Of course I assumed he was fucking with me, because I’ve lived in this part of California for almost all of my life, and I have not once seen either scorpions or tarantulas.  I just assumed we were too far north for such wicked creatures, but no!  I was wrong.  According to the interwebs: “the California common scorpion, Northern scorpion, and the Black hairy scorpion can be found around residential homes.”  And “the tarantulas around here live in burrows and come out at night to hunt for food, which can include insects, lizards, and even small mammals,” like 7-pound puppies!  So this means during full moons when I go out back wearing nothing but a sheen of Vaseline, a cowboy hat, and a smile, and dance around like a savage that I might be trodding upon a fucking tarantula?  Well, fuck that, dear reader!  I’m going to have to find more suitable accommodations post haste.

N.P.: “Headhunter” – La Muerte

I’ve been pretty misanthropic most of my life.  Not aggressively so, just kind of consistently disappointed in humans for myriad reasons.  But I’ve really spent a lot of time and energy trying to grow past that and become more understanding and patient with my fellow humans.  I’ve hung out with Buddhist monks, worked with counselors on empathy, compassion, and perspective taking.  And I’ve made a lot of progress, particularly in the last five years or so.  Living in a “big” small town has been helpful, I think, as opposed to some sprawling metropolis where you neither know nor want to know who the other city dwellers are and how they spend their time.

My view nowadays tends to be that the people I see around every day are basically good people: they get up every day to go to work (whatever that may mean in their cases) in order to take care of their loved ones.  In doing so, I believe they mostly want to avoid conflicts, problems, and hassles if they can be at all avoided.  Basically, for the most part, they just want to be left the hell alone.  Which is fine with me.  I can certainly work with that.  And I’m pretty much at peace with my fellow man.

But then I go to Costco.  And all that quasi-Disney shit goes right out the window.  All of that hard-earned progress, all of that inner peace, all of that carefully cultivated compassion for humanity?  It evaporates the moment I step into that fluorescent-lit coliseum of chaos.  Costco is where why misanthropy goes to stretch its legs, crack its knuckles, and say, “Oh, you thought you were over me?  Cute.”

To be honest, it always seems to start before I even enter the parking lot…people in The Creek are notoriously poor drivers, but for some reason, in that part of town, they are especially idiotic: stopping for no reason, have a sort of “contemplative” phase of going when the light turns green…it like they need a few seconds to consider the implications of releasing the brake and pressing on the accelerator.  So I’m always in a rapidly darkening mood by the time I get to the parking lot, which is less a place to leave your car and more a gladiatorial arena where SUVs and minivans battle for dominance.  There’s always some dickhead who decides that the rules of physics and common decency don’t apply to them, cutting across lanes diagonally like they’re being chased by a swarm of Africanized bees.  The transgressions are too numerous to list, but I’m convinced that Costco parking lots are where people go to audition for the role of “Biggest Shithead Out There.”

Then, assuming you’ve managed to find someplace suitable to leave your car and survive the hike to the actual doors of the store, you’re stopped dead in your tracks by half a dozen jackasses who somehow just realized they were at Costco and thus needed to present their Costco IDs.  So they just stop pushing the cart they just got…just stop, dead in their tracks, and start pathetically fishing through their pants pockets and wallet looking for their cards.  Get the fuck out of the way! Jesus!  Some of us can whip out our cards they same way ninja can pull out a shuriken.  I navigate around these dolts quickly, but they’ve done nothing to slow the darkening of my mood.  Then I finally step inside.

No matter how many times you’ve been there, the first thing that hits you is the sheer scale of it all.  It’s like someone took a regular grocery store, fed it steroids and meth for a year, and then dared it to fight God.  Everything is bigger, louder, and somehow more existentially threatening.

And then, of course, there are the people.  Oh, the fucking people.  Incapable of situational awareness or walking in a straight line, they meander aimlessly, pushing carts the size of small boats, stopping dead in the middle of the aisle to contemplate the mysteries of life – or, more likely, whether they really need 48 rolls of toilet paper.  Pro Tip: they do.  We all do.  It’s Costco.

Then there’s the weirdness throughout the free sample gauntlet, which is less about trying new foods and more about watching grown-ass adults devolve into feral scavengers.  I once saw a man elbow a grandmother out of the way for a tiny paper cup of microwaved ravioli.  Which was bad enough, but then I kind of respected him for it.  That’s what Costco does to you.  It makes you question your morals, your values, and whether you, too, would shove an elderly woman for a bit-sized piece of cheesecake.

The weirdness continues at the checkout line as I look down at the cartful of things I didn’t know I needed: industrial-sized tubs of baba ghanoush, a 12-pack of scissors, a kayak.  I’m almost positive all the employees hate all the customers.  How could they not?  We’re the worst.  Well, not me…I’m a fucking dream, The cashier scans my items with the dead-eyed efficiency of someone who has seen too much.  And I’m sure they have.

I need to lean on Costco delivery more.  It will help my world view.

N.P.: “Toccata And Fudge” – JUNKYARD REBEL

The last couple days seemed like they were spent running all over California putting out fires, solving problems, and making decisions.  It was kind of nuts.  But at the end of it, I was reminded of something I’ve been meaning to share with you, dear reader.

Lately, if I’m getting kind of depressed, or thinking things aren’t going well, or that we are all completely doomed, I’ve gotten much comfort and psychological release by watching Corey Feldman concert/live performance/what-have-you videos.  There’s something deeply cathartic about seeing a grown man throw himself into the tar pit of public humiliation with the sincerity of a first-grader showing off their macaroni art.  Feldman on stage is a spectacle so awkward it transcends cringe and lands somewhere in the realm of performance art.  Except the performance here isn’t intentional.  It’s like he’s both unaware and immune to the schadenfreude he triggers, a modern Icarus soaring on wings constructed entirely from false confidence and dollar-store glitter.

There’s no need to sugarcoat this.  Watching Corey Feldman crash through his Michael Jackson, rock-star fantasy feels like scratching an emotional itch.  It’s like seeing every embarrassing mistake you’ve made in your life, only televised and equipped with bad choreography.  For your consideration – and perhaps your morbid delight – here are my top five most skull-curdling moments from Feldman’s apocalyptic concert video collection, in no particular order:

1. “Here he comes…the Comeback King!”  The chanting.  Oh sweet lord, the chanting.  So just before his show is supposed to start, Corey sends the poor hapless bastards that comprise his band out on stage to attempt to lead the audience in a chant “to get Corey to come out.”  One has to feel sorry for these band members…they’ve been bouncing around L.A. trying to get big gigs as session players or, anything, really, and they finally get the call: a regular, paying gig.  But it’s in the backing band for Corey Fucking Feldman.  Shit!  Can you imagine?  Of course they’re going to take the gig…you don’t turn down work in L.A….a gig is a gig.  But this gig means going out on stage on the patio of some low-rent beer garden in North Hollywood and trying to get the people who have paid some nominal fee to see what the hell Corey Feldman’s doing these days, and the band members have to basically cajole the audience into chanting, “Here he comes…the Comeback King” over and over.  The band chants it over and over, waiting for the crowd (such that it is) to join in.  They don’t.  They never do.  Instead, what they get is scattered pity applause from a crowd of approximately seventeen people (including venue staff), most of whom look like they were lured in with free drink coupons.  Free drinks!  “Come on,” the poor lead singer whines, “let’s get Corey to come out.”  No effect.  It’s a trainwreck wrapped in a fantasy wrapped in $12 FedExed charisma.
2. So Corey eventually comes out onto stage, and the tens of people there cheer half-assedly.  But those cheers are almost immediately silenced when Corey starts shutting the band down a full five seconds into their set, shouting, ‘Start over!  Start over!  C’mon guys…”  Somewhere in the wasteland of Corey’s mind, there lives this bizarre idea that if a song starts badly, he can just stop it, snap his fingers, and have fate itself do a do-over.  The band look at each other, then at Corey, then back at each other as they kind of shrug and start playing again.  Watching it feels like being at a séance except the only ghost conjured is his career, and it refuses to stay dead.
3. Soon he launches into his rendition of “Cry Little Sister,” from the Lost Boys Soundtrack (which movie Corey was in back in the mid-80s).  He heads to the mic to start singing, but misjudges the space between the mic and his face, and WHAM.  His face meets the microphone on a tragicomic slow-motion collision that somehow feels inevitable (and also like something directly out of Spinal Tap).  The moment hangs there for a second, like the universe itself pausing to consider if Feldman deserves this.  Spoiler again…he does.  He actually says, “Ow,” and then tried to continue the song, with the precision and grace of a bird smacking into a glass door.
4. Thriller, with no thrills.  Here’s where Corey’s pathology breaks new ground.  With a wardrobe that looks like the clearance bin from Spirit Halloween and over-choreographed moves straight out of a middle school talent show, Feldman attempts to resurrect the gilded ghost of Michael Jackson.  The moonwalks are less “gliding on air” and more “dragging a reluctant dog across linoleum.”  To call it an homage is an insult to homages.  It is actually far beyond derivative.  It’s like watching someone mime their own midlife crisis to a bad cover of “Billie Jean.”  If MJ’s spirit is out there, it’s rolling its spectral eyes so hard it’s affecting the tides.
5. Feldman once decided – because of course he did – that he should rise above the stage clad in an angel costume with wings so cheap they looked like they were assembled from dollar-store placemats.  Suspended by what I can only assume were the same wires used for high school theater productions, he floated just high enough to make it awkward but not convincing.  Combine that with his dead-eyed expression as he yelped lyrics about “saving the children” or some such shit…it was just awful.  At this point, not only did I pity his band, but I almost started to pity him, hanging there like your grandpa’s ball bag.

This is a man who took his status as a beloved ’80s movie icon and chose to weave it into a tapestry of unchecked “musical” hubris.  And he’s the kicker – it’s not even mean to roast him like this.  The man seems impervious, an invincible cringe titan, trucking along, dream intact, as if sheer determination will one day form it into a coherent reality.  You almost – almost – have to admire that kind of kamikaze commitment.
For me, Corey Feldman’s live performances remain a monument to the human ability to fail spectacularly while refusing to quit.  And there’s something beautiful about that, in the same way watching a dumpster fire is beautiful.  Yes, it’s absolute chaos, but damn if it isn’t hard to look away.

N.P.: “Paint It Black” – The Tea Party

Well, shit, dear reader…it’s Monday.  This particular Monday seems to bring with it what I consider a rather undue amount of pain-in-the-assness.  So much so that I was inspired to write a haiku about it.  Behold, dear reader…this is called “A Case of the Mondays”:

Coffee scalds my soul,
Emails breed like cursed rabbits.
Fuck this goddamned day.

Shakespeare’s shitting himself, I’m sure.  Anyway, it isn’t all angst and annoyance today…today we raise a toast to Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was born in this day in 1792.  Who da hell is Percy Bysshe Shelley, I can hear you ask.  He was the dude wrote Ozymandias.  If that’s not ringing any bells for you, congratulations: you’re one of four people who made it through high school English class without this poem getting crammed into your brain via a wheezy substitute teacher.  So for you four (and anyone who might need a refresher, here’s a fast-and-filthy breakdown:

Some ancient king, Ozymandias, wanted the world to think he was the man.  He had this massive statue erected in the middle of nowhere because, well, that’s what insecure people with too much money and too many artisans lying around did back in the day.  The pedestal basically screams, “Look at my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” – except, plot twist: the empire is kaput, the statue’s a wreck, and the “mighty” are now mostly sand dunes auditioning for a Mad Max sequel.  Shelley delivers the whole thing like a mic drop at history’s least fun open mic night.

This is basically a restatement of yesterday’s post about “ubi sunt.”  The overall message of Ozymandias is a reflection/reminder of the impermanence of power, legacy, and human achievement.  Through the imagery of a ruined statue in a desolate desert, the poem reminds us that even the mightiest rulers and their grand empires are ultimately, like everything else, subject to the ravages of time.  So whatever huge problems you think you’ve been dealing with for a while, dear reader, are, ultimately, nothing.  Everything you’ve ever said, done, or felt, is, ultimately, nothing.  And no matter what you achieve in this life, no matter what, will be completely forgotten almost immediately after you die.  In fact, you will be forgotten almost immediately after you die.  You’ll be remembered by your children, maybe somewhat by your grandchildren, but once they die or stop remembering you, you will be forgotten.  No matter what.

There are, from my perspective, two ways of dealing with this: 1) get really depressed about the complete futility of absolutely everything and kind of give up on life, or 2) lean into this guaranteed irrelevance and quit worrying so goddamn much about every little one of your problems.  Maybe even take a risk, dare to live a little…because whether you have total triumph or humiliating failure, it won’t matter at all in a few years because no one will remember it.  (How’s that for a fucking Monday, dear reader?)

So a very happy birthday to Mr. Shelley.  Now go reread Ozymandias and then knock over the nearest metaphorical statue of anyone who takes themselves too seriously.  Percy would’ve liked that.

N.P.: “Cherub Rock” – Razed In Black

Dammit.

“No More Tears” – Ozzy Osbourne